6. Was John Calvin a Feminist?: Theologians and Women’s Equality
Theologians and Women’s Equality
Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology—absolutely.
BILLY GRAHAM
It might have been a sixteenth-century Parisian love story—a romance between Charles d’Espeville and Renée, a French princess. She was born in the autumn of 1510, he a year earlier. They did not meet until the spring of 1536, however, when he visited her home in Italy, staying on for a month. She was married with children; he was single. But during that most extraordinary month, these two strong-willed individuals began a long-term, long-distance relationship marked by admiration, affection, and, dare we say, abuse.1
The visitor with an assumed name was John Calvin; the hostess was the princess of Ferrara. He had fled Paris, fearing for his life. She, a budding secret Calvinist, gave him cover. Both were playing with fire, risking their lives for the Protestant Reformation. Both had taken a stand against a powerful church that lacked conscience or qualms about burning or beheading a heretic.
After he left Ferrara, they carried on their relationship through secret correspondence. He stroked her with compliments, offering his “pure and true affection” for her. He pledged his undying loyalty, “myself a castaway if I neglected” you. But only so long as she remained loyal to him and his Reformed beliefs. She did—but not at the cost of losing her two young daughters.
Her husband, Duke of Ferrara, was the grandson of Pope Alexander VI, thus making Renée a choice religious plum for Calvin. When the Duke began to suspect his wife’s Reformed leanings, he interrogated her. With her admission of guilt, he called in the palace guards. On September 17, 1544, she was locked (with her maid) in solitary confinement. Both little girls, Lucrezia and Eleonore, were taken to a convent. Renée was beside herself. What could she do to save herself and her little girls? Her mentor, Charles d’Espeville (a.k.a. John Calvin), had saved his own skin by surreptitiously fleeing Paris dressed as a farmer with a hoe over his shoulder. She had no such options. So she sent word to her husband that she would see a priest, say confession, and receive Communion. Soon she was free and reunited with her daughters.
How did Mr. d’Espeville, now in Switzerland, respond? With sympathy and relief, reminding her of how he himself had once fled the strong arm of the church? Did he quote Jesus: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them”? Did he send her a box of Swiss chocolates? Hardly. He sharply reprimanded her: “I fear you have left the straight road to please the world . . . And indeed the devil has so entirely triumphed that we have been constrained to groan, and bow our heads in sorrow.”2
Telling Renée that the devil had triumphed was heartless, implying she had made a Faustian bargain, selling her soul to the devil. Here is a mother desperate to do right by her young daughters, and he is castigating her, accusing her of leaving the straight road to please the world? What is this man thinking? Words do matter. They often come in the form of spiritual abuse.
John Calvin, love him or hate him. I confess that, like Renée, I have mixed emotions. It’s not as though I can ignore him. My ex-husband proudly professed to be a “five-point Calvinist.” My husband, John, who was born and raised in the Christian Reformed Church and taught for more than thirty years at Calvin College, is a native Calvinist (albeit, ambivalent about those five points). For more than a decade, I taught a course each year at the college and for six years was a professor at Calvin Theological Seminary. John Calvin, for better or for worse, is about as tangled up with me as he was with Renée.
For a number of reasons, Calvin is an important figure in this volume, and not only for the aforesaid connections. He has had an enormous influence on the American mind. And today he is the most respected—if not always revered—Reformation theologian among evangelicals. Most of the complementarians, dare I say without statistical support, profess to be Calvinists—or rather, New Calvinists. In fact, New Calvinism rated a 2009 top-ten spot in Time magazine’s “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now”:
In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards invested Calvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken in the U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with human will . . .
No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don’t operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, “everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world”—with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle’s pugnacious Mark Driscoll, and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom’s hottest links.3
Most of these New Calvinists are Baptists or Independents with a Baptist flavor. Along with Calvin, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a nineteenth-century Baptist megachurch preacher in London, is one of their heroes. But perhaps even more so is the New England Congregational preacher, philosopher, and theologian Jonathan Edwards. This is not the place for a review of Spurgeon or Edwards, but it is important to note that God’s supremacy is a critical aspect of their theology. As such, they are heroes to John Piper and other New Calvinists. Regarding Edwards and Piper, Austin Fischer, minister and author of Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed, writes:
I sat and watched the meticulous picture of God that Edwards and Piper painted. I loved so many of the strokes and colors. They finished painting, stepped back, and said, “What a masterpiece! The manifold excellencies of the glory of God, displayed in the doctrines of grace.” I stepped back and said, “I really want to see that! . . . but I’m afraid I see a black hole instead.”4
Here we see that the differences are not merely about how a wife should properly show deference to her husband. The central issue is a proper portrayal of a majestic and holy God. On the Desiring God website, the description of Piper’s book John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God places him and Calvin on precisely the same page: “John Piper fires readers’ passion for the centrality and supremacy of God by unfolding Calvin’s exemplary zeal for the glory of God.”5 This emphasis on the supremacy of God was Piper’s primary focus when the two of us debated at Wheaton College. He argued that a husband’s headship is based squarely on God’s supremacy, though he did not claim then that Calvin had made the same case.
So was John Calvin a feminist? If not, was I trying to transform him into one, as my ex-husband charged me with doing? This issue became a major problem in our marriage. When I was in the editing process of my coauthored book Daughters of the Church, my ex-husband was employed as an editor at Zondervan Publishing House. My coauthor, Walt Liefeld, had written the biblical chapters and those pertaining to the church fathers. I had written the historical section, beginning with the medieval church.
Although my ex-husband was not the editor for this particular book, he obtained an unauthorized copy and concluded that I had not shown John Calvin to be sufficiently supportive of male headship. I explained that I had presented Calvin in traditional terms, while at the same time showing he was more nuanced than certain other theologians, and that I would not be changing the text. Later, he surreptitiously took the final edited copy and refused to return it until I had made changes according to his dictates. He also strongly objected to certain biblical interpretations and exegesis done by Walt.
Stealing a hard copy of a manuscript today would seem rather senseless since the entire manuscript is electronically stored and transmitted. Back in the mid-1980s, however, the theft was more serious.
I’ll never forget flying into Chicago the morning after he had taken the manuscript. I was tense as my driver chatted while taking me to the seminary in Deerfield. After checking my mail and getting settled into my office, I found Walt and informed him of the problem. He immediately called Zondervan to assess the situation and make other arrangements. All this while I was preparing for my afternoon class. The flare-up the night before had left me drained. I feared having to return home the next day to more pent-up rage. I felt guilty and utterly ashamed for my part in slowing down the editorial process. I had tried so hard to become part of the seminary community and to cover up my traumatic home life. Now Walt knew, and other colleagues might find out too.
And how would I ever solve this crisis? Even if I had wanted to, I could never have convinced Walt to change his writing to pass my husband’s inspection. The whole idea was absurd. How much easier life might have been had I stuck to subjects more suited to nursery schools. But had I even for a moment given such thoughts serious consideration, I would have realized that a violent man who terrorizes his wife is not mollified by a simple change in genre or perspective.
How would John Calvin have settled our situation back in sixteenth-century Geneva? Would he have told me to defy my husband? Perhaps, especially if I could use my influence to further the Reformed cause. After all, Calvin did encourage Renée to defy her husband in religious matters. Calvin needed a loyal supporter in Italy, and her loyalty to him trumped wifely submission to her Catholic husband.
Calvin played an entirely different tune, however, when a matter closer to home was brought to his attention:
We have a special sympathy for poor women who are evilly and roughly treated by their husbands, because of the roughness and cruelty of the tyranny and captivity which is their lot. We do not find ourselves permitted by the Word of God, however, to advise a woman to leave her husband, except by force of necessity; and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beats her, but when there is imminent peril to her life . . . We . . . exhort her to bear with patience the cross which God has seen fit to place upon her; and meanwhile not to deviate from the duty which she has before God to please her husband, but to be faithful whatever happens.6
In this instance, submission was required, even at the peril of a woman’s own life. At the same time, Calvin’s concept of “headship” in his personal life seemed to fall short of what is promoted today—the husband as ruler and protector of the wife.
With no eHarmony available, Calvin actually had difficulty finding a wife. He asked friends for help, and they obliged. But more than once, plans fell through. He made it clear in a letter to his friend William Farel that he was not one “of those insane lovers” who is “smitten at first sight with a fine figure.” Rather, he was desirous of an “economical” woman who would be “interested about my health.” When he did marry Idelette de Bure, a young widow in his own church, he found neither health nor wealth. Her only “fortune” was her two children.7
After three difficult pregnancies (none of which resulted in a surviving infant) and a lengthy illness, she died only nine years after they were married. Calvin was heartbroken. He loved her deeply, and his onetime dream of finding a wife to tend his physical needs had been dashed. How different was Martin Luther’s marriage to Katharina von Bora. She had escaped a Benedictine convent at age twenty-four. He was forty-one when they were married two years later. She was a strong and forceful wife who bore a brood of children.
But why waste words on biographical details when dealing with theological matters? Why should anyone care about Calvin’s or Luther’s or Renée’s private life? Years ago, I read James McClendon’s Biography as Theology: How Life Stories Can Remake Today’s Theology. The book gave me a new perspective on the critical nature of biography when considering the underlying perspectives of a theologian. McClendon features biographies of four individuals, including Martin Luther King Jr., and shows how their lives informed their theology.
Key to McClendon’s method is what he terms “a theology of character”—a “theology which incorporates the study of character—biography as theology.”8 McClendon is not the only scholar who has recognized the importance of biography in the study of theology. Other historians have drawn similar conclusions. For example, Philip Holtrop studied the lives and theological perspectives of Calvin, Beza, and Bullinger:
They respected each other—but their temperaments seemed to shape their theologies in different ways. In a large part, theology is autobiography—and both are forged in the crucible of history. Genevan predestinationism was shaped also by personalities and historical contingencies—and not only by scholarship and biblical studies.9
We are far off the mark if we imagine that today’s theological perspectives or those of decades or centuries past have little to do with the personality and character of the man or woman behind the pen or the podium. Indeed, when we listen to preachers, particularly those who have an ax to grind, we would not be off the mark to wonder how their theological perspectives are influenced by their personalities. Is the individual easily threatened and defensive? Such traits are revealing.
In his commentaries, John Calvin argues for the superior rank of the husband and the inferior rank of the wife as he believed was taught by Paul:
He [Paul] establishes by two arguments the pre-eminence, which he had assigned to men above women. The first is, that as the woman derives her origin from the man, she is therefore inferior in rank. The second is, that as the woman was created for the sake of the man, she is therefore subject to him, as the work ultimately produced is to its cause. That the man is the beginning of the woman and the end for which she was made, is evident from the law.10
Though supported by Calvin in ignoring his “superior rank” argument and defying her husband’s headship, Renée should not have been surprised that neither he nor those he sent to Italy to mentor her were open to the concept of gender equality. She had long resented having been passed over to succeed her father as the French monarch. “Had I had a beard I would have been the king of France,” she fumed. “I have been defrauded by that confounded Salic Law.”11 Since her father had no sons to succeed him, Francis, Renée’s third cousin, had ascended the throne. She was surely not unaware of other female monarchs, most notably Queen Isabella of Castile and co-monarch of Spain with her husband Ferdinand. And Isabella was succeeded by her daughter Joanna the Mad (who was apparently pushed over the brink into madness by her abusive husband). For the brilliant and strong-willed Renée, discrimination in the realm of politics had been a particularly bitter pill to swallow. But religious discrimination among the Reformers seemed like a wholly unnecessary slap in the face.
She strongly challenged François de Morel (sent to Italy to serve as her chaplain) about denying her a role in church decision making. He then wrote to Calvin: “Renée wants to attend the meetings of the synod . . . But if Paul thought that women should be silent in the church, how much more should they not participate in the making of decisions. How will the Papists and the Anabaptists scoff to see us run by women!”12 Once again, her gender stood in the way. But she refused to be silent. Nor would she look the other way when she saw those in the Reformed camp committing atrocities against Catholics.
“Monsieur Calvin,” she wrote, “I am distressed that you do not know how the half in this realm behave. They even exhort simple women to kill and strangle. This is not the rule of Christ. I say this out of the great affection which I hold for the Reformed religion.”13 Calvin refused to take responsibility, placing the blame on others.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of John Calvin in religion (as well as culture). Puritans, Presbyterians, and Baptists of many stripes looked to his guidance long after he had passed from the scene. And his opponents were equally numerous. Among those who were forced to come to terms with Calvin since the sixteenth-century Reformation are three giants whose influence has nearly equaled his own: Abraham Kuyper and Karl Barth—who were considerably shaped by Calvin—and C. S. Lewis, who was not.
Abraham Kuyper was a leading Dutch politician, theologian, journalist, social reformer, and pastor whose influence has waned little in the century since his death in 1920. Calvin College, to name just one institution, would not be what it is today without the Kuyperian focus on integrating faith and learning—indeed, faith and every aspect of public life.
Karl Barth’s name is almost synonymous with twentieth-century Protestant theology. Any serious theologian has had to come to terms with him, a man who some have suggested should be ranked alongside the church fathers. Although his so-called neoorthodoxy does not raise hackles among evangelicals as it did a half century ago, his works remain controversial.
C. S. Lewis, no doubt the most widely known of the three, profoundly shaped Christian thinking in the half century since his death. His influence on theological and biblical studies, however, is less clearly defined. What brings these three together in this volume is their strong stance against women’s equality. They affirmed the traditionalist position of gender hierarchy in ministry and marriage. Their views have seeped into the evangelical consciousness. Indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate their combined influence in this realm.
In many respects, however, these three twentieth-century giants pale alongside the mighty John Calvin, whose five hundreth birthday was celebrated in 2009. He stands alone in his religious influence over the modern world and over individuals such as myself. I had barely unpacked my bags when I arrived for my freshman year at St. Paul Bible College (now Crown College) when someone affronted me with the question, “Are you a Calvinist or an Arminian?” We argued endlessly, relishing every moment.
So back to my original question: Was John Calvin a feminist? Obviously he was no modern feminist, as I was accused of fashioning him. But he may have been more egalitarian than is typically believed. Of course, it depends on where one is quoting from Calvin. Here Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen’s conclusions are worth considering: “If, as Calvin believed, men were mandated by God to be in authority over women in family, church and other spheres of society, this was simply for the sake of maintaining social order.”14 Van Leeuwen goes on to point out that Calvin was concerned about “decorum and edification”—as was Paul himself when, for example, Paul placed restrictions on women speaking in church (1 Corinthians 14:34). “The discerning reader,” according to Calvin, would be able “to come to the decision that the things which Paul is dealing with here are indifferent,” and thus would fall under the category of doing what does not give offense to the gospel. Indifferent. So is Calvin sitting on the fence?
How would Monsieur Calvin have reacted to recent changes in denominations that have historically most closely followed his teachings, namely, the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church (where I have successively held memberships since 1985)? Would he have said that the decisions of both denominations to ordain women were indifferent and depended on decorum and edification and of not giving offense to the gospel? And how would he respond today to domestic violence as it is being dealt with by the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) today?
In December 1989, the CRC’s Synodical Committee on Abuse asked the Calvin College Social Research Center to survey adult members of the denomination to determine the prevalence of abuse in the CRC. About one in eight respondents reported having experienced physical abuse or neglect (12 percent) or sexual abuse (13 percent). Nearly one in five (19 percent) reported emotional abuse. In addition, 28 percent of respondents reported having experienced at least one of the three types. The survey yielded both qualitative and quantitative data for researchers and proved that church-goers are not immune to issues of abuse.15
In the quarter century since that time, the CRC in its annual synodical meetings has repeatedly revisited the subject, and more steps have been taken to ensure that abuse victims have channels of support. Although this denominational show of concern was not specifically focused on women who endure domestic violence, it goes without saying that an abused wife today in the CRC would not have to suffer a second time by hearing Calvin’s altogether insensitive counsel: “We do not . . . advise a woman to leave her husband, except by force of necessity; and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beats her.”
It could be argued that Calvin was a man of his times, and one could imagine Martin Luther giving similar advice. In fact, while Luther spoke against wife beating, he left the door open for such discipline if nothing else worked. But unlike Calvin, Luther was married to Katharina von Bora, a feisty former nun who talked back and never played the part of a subdued, subservient wife. When they first married, he judged her too proud. But what he took to be pride may have been her way of showing him she was not about to be stepped on. Their partnership was a marriage of mutuality, an interesting contrast to the marriage of John Calvin.
Martin and Katie set up housekeeping in the Black Cloister—a generous wedding gift from the Elector of Saxony. It was the onetime Wittenberg campus for the Augustinian friars. Katie was responsible for the administration of this large, rambling house (and hotel to a continual stream of traveling visitors), as well as the surrounding lands, where she raised and sold livestock, including cattle, pigs, goats, chickens, and geese (in addition to various household pets). She also maintained a brewery and often traveled to oversee still another farm at Zühlsdorf. Beyond those daily activities, she took charge of the on-site medical clinic, often full to capacity during epidemics.
That she reared six children and took in several orphans, in addition to lingering students, sums up her hectic life that easily parallels that of the Proverbs 31 woman. Is it any wonder that Martin spoke of her as “Dr. Katrina” and “My Lord Katie”? Her participation in lively discussions with students around the large table added an intellectual touch to her harried schedule. That he made derogatory remarks about her and women generally may say more about the steins of her beer he and his students consumed than his actual attitude.
“On one occasion,” writes historian Ronald Fritze, “he put her on a search committee to hire a new pastor . . . To the grumblers Luther commented that his wife would show better judgment than he would. He also let Katherine handle much of his business with publishers. Frequently, Luther also took her advice on intellectual and political matters.”16
To imagine Luther as a modern-day egalitarian would be inaccurate. He held, as did classical Greek philosophers, that women in theory were inferior to men. He drew his biblical support straight out of the story of Adam and Eve. He quoted Paul to make a case for denying women a voice behind the podium or pulpit. That position was standard biblical hermeneutics of the day, and there is no evidence that Katie resisted.
“No matter what Luther taught, no matter what Katharina accepted,” write the authors of Luther on Women, “when the need arose Käthe took to the streets and marketplace, spoke out, doled out money to Martin, and ruled her household with as iron a fist as order demanded.”17
Biography as theology—an interesting concept as it relates to Martin Luther and male headship. His and Katie’s was an egalitarian marriage for all practical purposes, and it offers us a good example of a loving relationship of equals. Together they headed the first family of the Reformation, and their marriage, nearly five hundred years ago, stands as a model for today.
Luther’s opening lines in a letter to her reveal as much as do his commentaries:
To my beloved wife, Katharina,
Mrs. Dr. Luther, mistress of the pig market,
lady of Zülsdorf,
and whatsoever other titles may befit thy Grace.18