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)