Monday, November 1, 2021

Calvin Understanding Himself to be Similar to Old Testament Prophets and Impeachable in His Interpretation of the Bible

  

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)

 


Blog Archive