Antoine Fumée, a contemporary and friend of Calvin, refers to him as a prophet in an undated letter to the reformer. Jean Morley calls Calvin a prophet in his Traicté de la discipline & police chrestienne ([Olivier] Millet cites an undated letter from Fumée to Calvin in which he calls Calvin a prophet, “plus grand propète de notre époque.”). Moreover, Theodore Beza writes the following about Calvin in August 1564 after his passing.
The following night, and the day after as well, there was much weeping in the city. For the body of the city mourned the prophet of the Lord, the poor flock of the Church wept the departure of its faithful shepherd, the school lamented the loss of its true doctor and master, and all in general wept for their true father and consoler, after God. (CO [Corpus Reformatorum: Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia], 21:45-6)
. . . Calvin self-identifies with the Old Testament prophets, who were (he believed) scriptural reformers. He could—it is, of course within the realm of possibility—have believed himself to be a prophet who received revelation and was able to predict the future, like, for example, his countryman Michel de Nostredame or the German prognosticator, Johann Lichtenberger, who famously predicted the 1525 Peasants’ War. And interestingly, Beza, in his reflections on Calvin’s life, points to an occasion when (he believes) Calvin engaged in just such prophesying. In Calvin’s lectures on Daniel, says Beza, he interpreted the prophet, “but, in the dedication, he also became a prophet, predicting impending storms at the very time when the meeting of the bishops was held at Poissy” (CO 21:91). (Jon Balserak, John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 5, 92-93)
Calvin can also speak of prophecy as still existing within the Christian church of his day. He does this in comments on Romans 12:6. He first asserts that “Christ and his gospel have put an end to all the former prophecies and to all the oracles of God,” but follows this by arguing for a continuation of the spiritual gift. In “the Christian Church today prophecy is (prophetia hodie . . . est) almost nothing except a correct understanding of the scripture and a singular ability in explaining them well” (Iohannis Calvini Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T. H. L. Parker [Leiden: Brill, 1981], 270). Plainly by referring to prophecy “today,” he intimates that prophecy and, hence, prophets still exist. Further support for this second strand of material can be garnered from the Frenchman’s sermons. In a sermon on Deuteronomy 18:14-22, Calvin teaches that God promises prophets to the New Testament church. He summarizes the basic point to God’s promise to the church with the declaration that: “there will always be prophets” (CO [Corpus Reformatorum: Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia] 27:499 [Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:9-15]). To make his point more explicit, he declares: “God promised a prophet not only to the Jews but also to us . . .” (CO 27:519 [Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:16-20]). “I have proved already,” he says in a later sermon on the same chapter, that Deuteronomy 18:15 “is not meant of Moses alone, or of those who lived under the Old Testament but that it extends even to us also and comprehends in it the whole reign of our Lord Jesus Christ” (CO 27:527 [Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:16-20]). The same basic point is expressed n his exposition of 1 Corinthians 14:29-31 (CO 49:499-500 [Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:10] and CO 49:529-30 [on 1 Corinthians 14:29-31]). These examples provide hints of a second strand, or trajectory which not only allows for the existence of prophets in the Early Modern church but seems to take for granted that they do exist and have been promised by God to “us.” (Jon Balserak, John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 10-11)
Analysis of Calvin on prophecy may be continued for a moment longer by noting the different senses which Calvin seems to have ascribed to it. We have seen that, for Calvin, prophecy is interpreting. I have shown this in relation to Romans 12:6, for instance. He makes the same point in comments on 1 Thessalonians 5:20, observing that, by the term prophesying, the writer of Thessalonians does not mean the “gift of foretelling the future” but, as in 1 Corinthians 14:3, the science of the interpretation of scripture, so that a prophet is the interpreter of the divine will (CO 49:517-18). Yet, when expounding Daniel 7:10 (“And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision”), Calvin clearly holds that prophecy is prognostication. He states that Daniel “alone was the recipient of these prophecies, as he alone was endued with the power of predicting future events” (CO 41:55-7). Calvin can also express a broader conception of prophecy. In his homily on Deuteronomy 18:21-2, he can ascribe to prophecy a range of activities.
The office of prophet was not only to tell of things to come, but also to give people good instruction, to exhort them to amend their lives, and to edify them in the faith. As, for example, we see that the prophets did not only say such a thing will befall you but also confirmed the covenant by which God had adopted the people of Israel and told them of the coming of the redeemer on whom the hope of all God’s children was grounded. Moreover, the comforted the sorrowful by preaching the promises of God’s favor to them; further they threatened the people when they became disordered; they discovered their faults and transgressions; they cited sinners to God’s judgement to make them humble themselves. (CO 27:529-30 [Sermon on Deuteronomy 18:21-2)
Here prophecy would appear to include a range of activities including urging hearers towards personal reform, predicting the coming messiah, comforting, threatening, preaching, and other actions. Hence, we might ascribe to Calvin various positions. (1) Prophecy is the special gift of interpreting the divine will. (2) Prophecy is predicting the future. (3) Prophecy is a range of activities which includes not only predicting the future but also comforting, warning, and other functions, which are often associated with preaching and the preaching office. (Ibid., 12)
On Calvin’s understanding of 1 Cor 12:28-31:
Could it be that in his mind there simply did not exist a clear, strong, unambiguous conception of what it means to be a New Testament prophet? This is, of course, speculation, but it seems, nonetheless, to be credible. It finds support, furthermore, from Calvin’s handling of the New Testament office of prophet in the 1543 edition of his Institutio, in which he declares: By prophets, he means not all interpreters of the divine will, but those who excelled by special revelation; none such now exist, or they are less manifest (qualles nunc vel nulli exstant, vel minus sunt conspicui)”(CO 2:779 [this is Institutio 4.3.4 in the 1559 edn.]) Such ambiguity seems peculiar and yet seems to typify his feelings towards the New Testament version of the office. (Ibid., 72)
In point of fact, Calvin aligns his reforming program with that of the old covenant prophets, which he took as a kind of blueprint. So, for example, in [Institutio 4.2], Calvin argues against the charge of schism by contending that he and his fellow reformers were following in the path of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the other Old Testament prophets and that to accuse the sixteenth-century reformers of schism requires accusing their Old Testament counterparts of the same. The two ministries stand or fall together, Calvin clearly believes. The likes of Jeremiah and Ezekiel did not continue to worship with the visible church of their day, Calvin argues (continuing his line of thought), as that would have involved them in idolatry. Thus, Calvin’s verdict on the issue of schism: “And surely if those were churches, it follows that Elijah, Micah, and others in Israel, and Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and the remainder of those in Judah, whom the prophets, priests, and people of their day hated and execrated more than any of uncircumcised, were aliens from the church of God” (CO [Corpus Reformatorum: Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia] 2:774-5). To condemn Calvin is to condemn Elijah and the other prophets.
Continuing, we may investigate the character of Calvin’s own reforming program in more detail. How did he pursue reformation? A major element in this pursuit of it was biblical interpretation. He insists time and time again that his reading of the scriptures was right and the church’s reading was wrong. This may be seen in at least three ways. First, continuing the line of thought found in the last paragraph, Calvin identifies numerous practices propounded by the Roman church as extraneous to scripture and idolatrous—his belief being that the theologians, priests, and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church had wrongly understood the Bible (Examples abound; one example is CO 42:246 [on Hos. 2:17-18]). Second, Calvin regularly asserts, in his own expositions of scripture, that other interpreters are wrong and he himself right (These instances are, likewise, quite common; see, for instance, CO 42:432 [on Hos. 11:1]). Calvin, in other words, is correct and must agree with him, or they are wrong. . . . suffice to say . . . Calvin pursues his reforming agenda by appearing as a scriptural interpreter whose calling it was to enforce the true meaning of the Bible upon a church which had strayed from it. (Jon Balserak, John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 82-83)
Calvin’s intensity contained within it the conviction that war could advance God’s kingdom. In this regard, the just-mentioned Hussite Wars and other religiously oriented wars seem to me helpful sources for my understanding of Calvin. This is not because all religiously oriented wars are fundamentally the same, but because all, or at least many of them, share this common conviction about the advancing of God’s kingdom—a conviction which is so foreign to the Western world in the twenty-first century. For Calvin, he and his pious fellow evangelicals fought under the banner of Christ, and when the war took the form of armed resistance against the French authorities, he continued to articulate the same message. In all of this, it is the modern West, and not Calvin, which is out of touch with tradition (perhaps happily so).
From this conviction, Calvin prayed. He prayed like Moses or David; imprecating his (and as he saw it, the church’s) enemies, and earnestly entreating God to defeat them. He looked specifically at God’s ways of delivering his people in the past and desired that God would do the same thing for the Huguenots. By praying in this manner, Calvin betrayed a profound sense of continuity with those in the old covenant community. His prayers entreated God to fight, to defend, to eradicate the enemy. For him, as for Joshua, God was the Lord Sabaoth. God would fight for the Huguenots against the French Catholic armies in precisely the same manner he had for Israel against the Philistines.
What this study has unearthed, then, is a Calvin who, in certain key ways, was like an Old Testament figure. Some of these ways have been noted in previous paragraphs, but we still might reflect upon the assertion for a moment longer. Calvin was, of course, still the humanist, still the Genevan pastor, still the cutting-edge theologian, but in certain ways he lived in the mental world of Elijah, David, and Ezekiel. Moreover and more particularly, he believed that he possessed their authority. OF course, Paul would be the same to have recourse to if one were to locate Calvin within a New Testament world of meaning (though, as this monograph makes clear, the Pauline office of prophet was essentially poisoned as a possible identity for Calvin because of the Anabaptists’ claims to that office). And no doubt Calvin identified with Paul powerfully and often. But because the Calvin uncovered in this study is an idol fighter and possessed such a clear conception of his own authority over earthly rulers, the names of Elijah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are more fitting.
Possessing the authority of a Jeremiah or an Elijah, Calvin did not conceive himself simply as one among many laboring to find the truth of God in sixteenth-century Europe. Rather, he saw himself as the voice of God in Europe; this was particularly true by the late 17540s, by which time Luther, Oecolampadius, Capito, and Zwingli had all died. Calvin was one of very few left who spoke the word of God purely. If Servetus or Castellio (or for that matter, Bullinger) agreed with him, that was good, but if they disagreed with him, then they disagreed with God ipso facto. In my reading of Calvin, this seems absolutely undeniable. He believed he was right simpliciter. All the rest of the world could disagree with him, but if they did, they were wrong. The idea that he was wrong was something which I do not think he even contemplated, at least in relation to the public persona which he fashioned. (Ibid., 181-83)
Under the header of “Warfare and Prayer: Entreating the Lord of Hosts for Victory over the Godless Enemy,” Jon Balserak wrote of Calvin and his self-understanding as a prophet raised up by God thusly:
With his prayers—with which he concluded each of his lectures on the prophets, covering a period of almost ten years—Calvin sought the support of God for himself, his ministerial charges, and the pious remnant in France for the warfare in which they were engaged. . . . While these prayers of Calvin touch on a wide range of topics (as one would expect), they are nonetheless full of requests related to war; indeed requests that refer patently to waging a military campaign which, while spiritual in nature, is also unmistakably temporal; i.e. it finds and expression in armed conflict. . . . He prays, for example, at the end of a lecture on Zechaiarh 9:12 that “today” they would not look for a redeemer to save them from their miseries but that they “would carry on warfare under his cross” (tantum militamus sub cruce eius)” (Calvin, Praelectiones in duodecim Prophetas minores, 677). Similarly, in his prayer following his lecture on Jonah 1:13-17, he requests that they learn to subject their thoughts to God, have regard to God’s will, and undertake nothing except what he approves, “so that we may fight under your command” (sub tuisauspiciis)” (Calvin, Praelectiones in duodecim Prophetas minores, 344). He also, incidentally, uses these phrases in the body of the lectures themselves—as when he declares (when treating Hosea 9:17), “[w]e may then lawfully reprove the papists, and say that God is opposed to them, for we fight under his banner”—but such phrases were more common on his prayers. . . . Calvin also refers in these prayers to strife, conflict, assaults, violence, and the like. He asked in a prayer at the end of his lecture on Daniel 3:8-18: “When we have learned what worship pleases you, may we constantly persist to the end and never be moved by any threats, or dangers, or violence, . . .” (Calvin, Praelectiones ioannis calvini in librum prophetiarum danielis, 36v-37r). He prays at the end of his twenty-seventh lecture on Daniel a prayer which includes the sentiment that “we mahy proceed under the protection of your support against the malice of humankind; and that whenever Satan besieges us from every side and the wicked lay traps for us and we are attacked by the fierceness and wild beasts, may we remain under your protection, and evenif we must endure one hundred deaths, may we learn to live and die to you” (Calvin, Praelectiones ioannis calvini in librum prophetiarum danielis, 71v). Likewise, he describes his remnant church as “in danger every day and every moment, not only from the threat of a single raging tyrant, but from the devil who arouses the whole world against us, arming this world’s princes and impelling them to destroy us” (Calvin, Praelectiones ioannis calvini in librum prophetiarum danielis, 16r).After his last lecture on the prophet Joel, he asks God to grant to them that they would “persevere in this contest” as they have “in this world, to fight continually, not only with one kind of enemy but with innumerable enemies and not only with flesh and blood but also with the devil, the prince of darkness” (Calvin, Praelectiones in duodecim Prophetas minores, 222). He prays at the end of a lecture on Zephaniah 2:15:
Grant, almighty, God, as you test us in the warfare of the cross (sub militia crucis) and arouse the most powerful enemies whose ferociousness might justly terrify and greatly alarm us if we did not depend on your aid—grant, that we may call to mind how wonderfully you delivered your chosen people in the past (olim), and how promptly you brought them help, when they were oppressed and completely overwhelmed, so that we may learn today to flee to your protection, and not to doubt that when you show your favor to us, there is in your sufficient power to preserve us and to overthrow our enemies (hostes nostros), no matter how much they may now exult and think that they triumph above the heavens, in order that they may, ultimately, understand by experience that they are earthly and frail, whose life and condition is like the mist which soon vanishes; and may we learn to long for that blessed eternity, which is laid up for us in heaven by Christ our Lord. Amen. (Calvin, Praelectiones in duodecim Prophetas minores, 554)
Quoting a full prayer provides us with an opportunity to glimpse in a richer way how Calvin addresses warfare in these prayers—again, all of the just cited prayers were prayed prior to the Massacre at Vassy.
As the question of meaning is delved into, we should notice two senses of continuity in these prayers. The first relates to the character of war as referred to by Calvin. Examining these prayers, it becomes clear that Calvin does not only have spiritual warfare in mind. Though he unmistakably does have spiritual warfare in mind, he also conceives of it as possessing a temporal aspect. He and the Huguenots . . . have an Old Testament perspective . . . This perspective dominants his approach to war in these lectures, and it can be seen particularly clearly in these prayers. It is anchored in the Covenant bond which, according to Calvin, links the Églises Réformées de France with the old covenant remnant. So even prior to the commencement of hostilities in March 1562, his prayers reflect the belief that God would support God’s people in such hostilities; that God would fight for his people and God’s people would fight. The above quotations should make this sufficiently clear, but, unsurprisingly, it becomes clearer when the prayers after the initiation of armed hostilities are examined.
Once military conflict commences, Calvin betrays an intensity which is striking and is focused squarely upon waging war. Calvin’s prayers after the beginning of hostilities cover a range of relevant interests. The following entreaty comes at the end of his lecture on Jeremiah 51:32.
Grant, almighty God, as of old (olim) you testified your favor towards your Church by not sparing the greatest Monarchies (tantae Monarchiae), that we today also might know you to be the same (eundem) towards all your faithful people who call upon you. And because the power and cruelty of our enemies are so great, raise up your hand against them, and show that you are the perpetual defender of your Church, so that we may have reason to give glory to your goodness through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen. (Calvin, Praelectiones in Librum prophetiarum Ieremiae, et Lamentationes . . . [Geneva: apud I. Crispinum, 1563], 387r)
For God to be the defender of the church is plainly for God to fight and win the battle for the Huguenots after the manner of, inter alia, Psalm 18 . . . Here the idea of tyrannicide is explicitly addressed, with God’s past actions in relation to a tyrannical monarch being recalled as a way to plead to him to behave in the same manner in this present contest. Here Calvin’s God is a God of war, who will crush the church’s enemies now, just as in the days of Moses, David, or Elijah. Calvin could declare, in direct relationship to the military conflict in which the Huguenots were engaged, that “Satan . . . [is] . . . the captain of our enemies” (Calvin, Praelectiones in Librum prophetiarum Ieremiae, et Lamentationes, 376v). And he could also, in the very next prayer, pray that their enemies would be confounded just as God used to confound the enemies of his people, Israel.
Grant almighty God, that since you were formerly (olim) so solicitous concerning the salvation of your people that you undertook war for their sake (bellum eius causa susceperis) against the most powerful nation we today may also know that we will be safe and secure under the protection (praesidio) of your hand, and that our enemies will be confounded . . . (Calvin, Praelectiones in Librum prophetiarum Ieremiae, et Lamentationes, 382v)
The sense of covenantal continuity is profound (a point which is also true of the earlier-cited prayer from Calvin’s lectures on Zephaniah 2). (Jon Balserak, John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 166-69)
On Calvin’s Contemporaries Believing that They were Prophets:
Calvin’s contemporaries, Zwingli, Bullinger, Bibliander, Pellican, Bucer, Gwalther, Vermigli, Musculus, and others, articulate a powerful vision of the prophet. Aligning themselves with the Old Testament, they conceive of prophets as individuals raised up to interpret the scriptures authoritatively in order to call back from the brink a church which had fallen into idolatrous ruin. This authority seems to include within it an implied sense of infallibility. Prophets, they argue, are God’s mouthpiece in the world, adding nothing to God’s divine utterances but interpreting them purely and applying them to all, even the kings and high priests over whom they have been given authority. (Jon Balserak, John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 66)
The prophet is called to be aggressor. Prominent here is Jeremiah 1:9-10. “I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have appointed you this day over the nations and the kingdoms to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (NASB). The importance of Jeremiah’s calling to Zwingli and Bullinger is rightly noted by Peter Opitz (Opitz, “Von prophetischer Existenz zur Prophetie als Pädagogik,” ii. 493-513, esp. 501-3), who draws attention to Zwingli’s use of it in his Der Hirt and its influence upon his understudy as appears in Bullinger’s De Prophetae Officio (See Opitz, “Von prophetischer Existenz zur Prophetie als Pädagogik,” ii. 494-8). The importance of this biblical passage can also be seen in Zwingli’s Von dem Predigtamt and Bullinger’s Commentary on Jeremiah 1:9. The passage—which is also of marked significance to Calvin . . . sets down the notion that the prophet is a kind of covenant prosecutor, raised up in order to “pluck up and destroy” (abbreche und zersöre)” (ZW 4:397) anything set in opposition to God and God’s kingdom. It also asserts that the prophet should replace opposition to God with submission to the divine will. Here, the prophet, who is given authority over the world and even kings, is enlisted to go on the offensive, attacking fearlessly all powers whether ecclesiastical or civil, to bring everything under the authority of the word of God” (ZW 3:23-4; ZW 4:394, 397).
Such was the calling and authority not only of the Old Testament prophets but also of their Early Modern counterparts. That they believe themselves to possess such a calling and authority (i.e. that they themselves are prophets) is apparent in many of their writings, such as Zwingli’s Von dem Predigtamt (and, arguably, in Der Hirt too) and throughout Bibliander’s Oratio . . .ad enarrationem Esaiae prophetarum principis. The same can be said for Bullinger’s De officio prophetico. Likewise, Bullinger declares, when speaking of Zwingli, that he is a “prophet” and that “God raised up this man to restore the glory of his church” (Bullinger, De Prophetae officio, 33r). Bullinger also identified a “company of prophets” in one of his sermons on Revelation (preached in the early 1530s and published in 1537), listing “Mirandola, Reuchlin, Erasmus, Luther, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and Melanchthon” (Heinrich Bullinger, In Apocalypsim conciones centum [Basel: Johannes Oporin 1557], 148). Additionally, one finds Philip Melanchthon identifying Martin Luther as a prophet, discussing those prophets mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians who are singularly gifted for the renewal of doctrine, “as Augustine was in his age and Luther is in ours” (See Melanchthon’s thoughts on Luther in Commentarii in epist. Ad Corinthios 12:28 in CR 15:1133-4). Ulrich Zwingli identifies Martin Luther as Elijah, one of the two witnesses—Elijah and Enoch—promised in Revelation 11:3 (Bibliandr, Oratio Esaiae 2r-v). Likewise, the exchange of letters between Zwingli and Oecolampadius makes it clear that the two conceive of one another as prophets (D. D. Ionnis Oecolampadii et Huldrichii Zwinglii Epistolarum libri quatuor [Basel: R. Winter, 1536]). This collection of men is, they believe, raised up by God to interpret God’s Word with divine authority and enforce its truth upon a church which had gone astray into idolatry. (Ibid., 62-64)