§13 Reformation Program! (part 1 of 2)

In the ensuing winter months of November and December the lectures and sermons met with growing success, and Calvin also drew up the chief documents for the first attempt to reorganize the church. These documents included a church order that he submitted to the council in a memorandum, a catechism that would be the basis of religious education for young people, and a confession of faith? to which adult citizens would solemnly subscribe in order to seal their resolve to accept the Reformation. Since the whole Geneva experiment, of which these documents were the start, is so important if we are to achieve a proper portrait of Calvin and his theology, we cannot refuse to look more closely at these pieces in their original form.

Church Order

On November 10 Farel came before the council to present some articles of church government. It was resolved to accept these as they were, to remove all images, and to establish an order for preaching according to detailed resolutions that would be passed at the next session. This at least is how I have to understand the rather obscure wording of the minutes of that session.> It certainly seems to me that these articles cannot have been the same as those presented by Farel and the other pastors on January 16, 1537, the articles on the organization of the church and worship at Geneva, in which nothing is said either about removing images or a preaching order. Probably the November articles were a first draft, but we know nothing about this apart from the points mentioned, and Calvin probably had little or no hand in them. It is indeed psychologically more likely that

1. In the MS the heading was added in the margin.
DROS les Goths 37/8ther4 sth
Ba COW 206:

Calvin, having just come back from Lausanne and Bern, and having previously been at work hardly a single month in Geneva, would not have rushed in at once with his incisive ideas on the organization of the church. He obviously had to tackle this subject, and he did so at the beginning of 1537 in a memorandum to the Council (10/I, 5ff.).4 He himself almost certainly did not draw this up, but equally certainly its contents in the critical portions are his work. We must briefly analyze it.

A first introduction rather clumsily summarizes the four main points that concern the pastors who present it.5 A second introduction admits that the confusion of the first period of reformation did not make for the quick reducing of everything to good order but claims that it has now pleased the Lord to establish his rule rather better here, and therefore the time has come to consider what church polity should be adopted as we are directed by his Word and have the assistance of his Spirit.° If the council sees that the following proposals are in keeping with God’s Word, then it should do its duty and put them into force as orders. For the Lord has indeed given the council the insight that the church’s ordinances (an actual use of this term already!) must always rest so far as possible on his Word, which is the sure rule of all government and administration, especially in the church.” Who was behind these statements we can hardly fail to see. They are memorable and historically weighty statements when we remember all that would follow this first link in the chain. From this time on we not only have Calvin but we have Calvin in Geneva, Calvinism. The first part of the memorandum, more than threequarters of the whole, deals with the Lord’s Supper.8 Then we have the singing of the Psalms, the catechism, and the order of marriage, but in comparison these are mere trifles. Calvin’s church order is a eucharistic order.

e The exposition begins with the clear-cut thesis that it would be desirable to administer the Lord’s Supper at least (!) every Sunday. Jesus did not institute it to be remembered only two or three times a year but as a constant exercising of our faith and love in which the congregation should engage every time it meets. The abomination of the mass has led to decline from the original use.? It will

be seen that Calvin had no thought

JOST, 3698,
. Ibid., 369.
/ Ibid.,.370.

Ibid.
. Ibid., 370ff.
fibids370;
0 ON
DAW

of sharing in a spiritualizing aversion from the sacrament. For him it was a constituent part of worship. He did not want to lag behind Roman Catholicism in this regard but to move ahead of it — an almost intolerable idea for us but one into which we must try to find our way somehow if we are to understand Calvin. In him’ as in the other reformers, even Zwingli, I have the impression that they had at their command at this point categories that we have lost but that in some manner that eludes us were linked to what was most central in their knowledge of God, the communion of Christians with Christ. They still knew what a sacrament is. Perhaps we will one day come to know this again. Calvin himself had to give up this ideal of an administration every Sunday. Because of the existing “weakness of the people” there was a danger that too frequent administration would bring disparagement on the mystery. For this reason it would be better to opt for a monthly administration, switching from one church to the other, though obviously with the whole city and not just one parish in mind.!° We are probably not mistaken if we see in this more limited proposal, which the council later would not find satisfactory,!! the result of a compromise among the pastors themselves. Calvin wanted to go further, others less far, so they agreed upon this middle course.

The question of frequent administration, however, was not Calvin's main concern. The “principal order” that ought to be introduced was as follows. The

institution of the Lord’s Supper had as its aim the uniting of the members of Christ to their Head and their uniting among themselves as one body and spirit. But this union must not be stained and besmirched by the participation of

those whose evil lives declare that they do not belong to Jesus. This would be the dishonoring of God against which Paul made such serious threats in 1 Cor. 11 [vv. 17-34].!2 Those who have the power, then, must set up a polity that stipulates that only those may participate who are as it were approved members of Jesus Christ. This meant excommunication according to Calvin’s understanding of Matt. 18 [vv. 15-18]. The obdurate and those who lead an unchristian life in spite of admonition must be cut off from the body of the church as members that have rotted.!3 For — and here we have three reasons familiar to us

10. Ibid., 371.
11. CO 21, 206. The council fixed on four times a year.
OS Ih Bye
ISMibida 372.

from the /Institutes — (1) Jesus Christ must not be exposed to the suspicion that his church is a conspiracy of perverse and frivolous people; (2) those concerned should be brought to self-knowledge and repentance by the shame of this punishment; and (3) the rest should not be unsettled by their bad example but terrified by the example of their punishment.!4 Papal excommunication is a caricature of this, for the right to punish is there taken from the congregation and handed over to pseudo-bishops.!5 It must be given back to the congregation. To put it into effect the congregation must select a number of men of excellent life and character, proven convictions, and incorruptibility.

What this involves, though the word is not used here but only in later versions of the order, is the consistory. Chosen from all the parishes, the men mentioned will keep an eye on how people live, and if they find a serious fault (“notable vice”) in anyone, they will report it to a pastor, whose task it will then be to admonish the one concerned in brotherly fashion.!© If that does no good, the fault and obduracy will be reported to the congregation. If that again does not help, the congregation will be told that although it has done its duty, it has failed. If

the offender continues in hardness of heart, the time for excommunication has come, for exclusion from the “company of Christians,” for handing over for a time to the power of the devil until signs are given of remorse and repentance. In

token of this exclusion the person concerned will be refused Holy Communion and intimate dealings with other believers, but will still be allowed to hear sermons in order to get teaching and in an attempt again and again to see whether it will please the Lord to move the heart and to bring the person back to the right path.!7 Apart from this punishment the church will initiate no other proceedings, we are then told expressly, but if any thus excommunicated think they can laugh at this punishment, then the authorities will know ways of not leaving unpunished such deriding and mocking of God and his gospel.!8 This theory, we see, does not regard it right for the church to inflict bodily punishment (ecclesia non sitit sanguinem).'9 It is not unlike the Roman Catholic view

14. Ibid., 372; cf. 89f£; BI 83.
15. OS A373:
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 3736.
18. Ibid., 374.

19. On the history of this legal maxim cf. A. Erler, “Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem,” Handwiorterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol. | (Berlin, 1972), 795ff. that heretics should be handed over to the secular arm. The difference is that jurisdiction now extends only over the moral and not the religious life of the people, an uneasy advance on Roman Catholicism, but at any rate not its opposite.

Naturally Calvin did also regard religious attitudes as a matter for church discipline. Those totally “opposed to us in religion” were even less to be tolerated in the eucharistic fellowship than evil livers.2° For them the remedy was as follows. All the residents of the city were to make a confession so as to show who were in agreement with the gospel and who would rather belong to the kingdom of the pope than to the kingdom of Jesus Christ.2! And it would be an act of Christian magistrates if council members would individually subscribe to the confession in the council so as to make it plain that their doctrine really is that by which all believers link themselves to the church. By their example they will show the rest what they must do.2? A more unusual demand has seldom been made so formally of any government. The one who dared to put the demand can hardly have been a loyalist. Having made the confession, some of the council members should then go to individual citizens with a pastor to receive their assent to the confession. But this should be done only this one time when it is not known as yet what the attitude of people is to the teaching that is the true beginning of a church.”3 The thinking is obviously that a tradition will now be started to which there may be legitimate appeal should doctrinal differences arise later. In

this way Calvin focused church membership, church government, and the church confession on the Lord’s Supper. The purity and dignity of the supper is the standard by which to decide who are approved members of Jesus Christ, members of the church.*4 To maintain the purity and dignity of the supper a church board is needed, the consistory, but so too is the church confession if the whole structure is to rest on an authority and continuity that are more than personal and that may be invoked at any time.

Itis a fact that in remarkable and instructive tension with the spiritual and even otherworldly character of Calvin’s Christianity his community in its original conception is so expressly a eucharistic community, and also,

KD, OS Ik, BHA
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 374f.
DSalbidesyo:
24. See above, n. 13.

as we have seen, that the state, by means of the confession made by the supreme authority and the sum of its citizens, should confess its identity with this community, and should thus show itself to be a Christian state, a legitimate power that God has instituted not only in his wrath but also in his grace. The parallels to what we find in Roman Catholicism are obvious. I hinted at some of them yesterday. But it should be pointed out again and again that in contrast to this strongly developed element of visibility in Calvin’s concept of the church the thought of predestination offers very sharply an element of invisibility, so that there can be no real equation with the concept of medieval Catholicism.

Let us recall again at this point that in Calvin ecclesiastical power comes under the heading of Christian liberty and has a place only there. The church is not for Calvin a saving institution, seriously though he takes it. It is the visible fellowship of believers. But in its proper place and with every necessary caveat we have to take it seriously as such. In the Lord’s Supper there is no corporeal presence of God, no direct miracle, but in it we have the presence of the promise of God, the sign and image of the miracle, and where people find themselves in the fellowship of those who expect this, who look beyond the visible, there is the community of Christ on” earth, and-again it is to be taken seriously as such. Finally, even the church discipline is not a way to God that is necessary for salvation. God’s judgment remains sovereign over both those who are inside and those who are shut out. It is an instrument of humanity,*> a measure by which the community may keep its witness pure. And who permits us, Calvin thinks, not to use this visible measure, knowing its relativity? What we really have here is the force and breadth of Calvin’s genius that are almost beyond our comprehension — a clear vision of the this-worldly element on the one side and the otherworldly element on the other, but with an equal appeal to both as complementary to one another. In considering the church order for Geneva with its uncomfortable concreteness, we must thus pay more attention than formerly to the transcendent, eschatological, and theocentric motifs in his theology, not being content merely to shake our heads at all that we heard yesterday.

The second matter on which the pastors of Geneva gave their advice to the council concerned the introduction of psalm singing after the manner of the early church so as to protect common prayer against coldness and to lift up the hearts of the people to God. At this point, too,

25. OS 256; BL 231f the papacy had robbed the church by making of loud praise to God's glory a thoughtless mumbling. The Psalms should first be taught to children, then adults should be taught to sing them, so that they might become a common inheritance of the church.26 |

The third article dealt with Christian education.?7 Faith and confession go together, especially for young people. In the existing situation in particular something had to be done to make possible for them an intelligent confession of the faith of the church to which they belonged. There was to be seen in them an astonishing “rudeness and ignorance” such as were not tolerable in the church of God.28 Needed, then, was a brief and easy summary of the Christian faith by which children might be examined at certain times of the year by the pastors until they showed themselves to be adequately instructed. It was really the parents’ duty to see to it that children learned this summary of the faith, and they should be admonished to attend to this by the council. As we see, we have here a primitive form of religious education. There is no talk at all of confirmation or the like. A church whose pastors knew what they wanted did not really have to take these things tragically, only seriously. Being so concerned about content and so sure of the power of Christian truth, they did not need to worry about quantity or educational refinement. Today when religious pedagogics is in full bloom and church circles show a general concern for the quantity of religious education,?? you must answer for yourselves the question where there is a similar concern for content or a similar confidence in the power of Christian truth.

Finally, the fourth article has to do with the order of Christian marriage, especially as regards impediments, in regard to which scriptural injunctions were to be brought back in place of the complex papal rules.3° The memorandum closes with a challenge to the council to test what has been said by the Word of God. If the Word is in agreement with it, then it is not the pastors who have said it, and no difficulty should prevent the council from doing its duty and setting affairs in order. If we follow the commands of God, we must also have good hope that God in his goodness will bring our undertaking to a successful conclusion. God has

26.,OS 1-375;
2/7. Ibid. 3726.
28. Ibid., 376.

29. Earlier Barth had been much involved in this issue. For a list of relevant writings cf. the Swiss edition, p. 364 n. 31.

30. OS I, 376.

e

already given the council the grace to seek his glory.3! Before we look at the basic significance and historical outcome of the memorandum, we have still to turn our attention to the two other elements in Calvin's reforming of the church.

Catechism32

We are now dealing with the original form of the famous Latin and French Catechism of the Genevan Church of 1545, which became a norm and model for all Reformed catechisms until a year before Calvin’s death it was put in the shade by the work of the theologians Ursinus and Olevianus, the much more practical and usable Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 (6, 1ff.; Miller, Bekenntnisschrifien, 117ff.).33 The Catechism or Instruction in the Christian Religion of 1538 was the direct forerunner of the 1545 work.34 It claims to be a translation of an earlier French original35 and was drawn up to defend the author and his colleagues publicly against the charge of Arianism that Caroli had brought against them in Lausanne. The earlier French original was for a long time thought to be lost, but suddenly it was rediscovered in 1877 in a collection in the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, published, and then included in CR (22, 33ff; Latin 5, 323ff.).3° This French original has the title Zstruction and Confession of Faith Used in the Church of Geneva, and it is surely that brief and easy summary that the memorandum of the pastors, as we say, requested of the council. The time of its appearance is not easy to fix since it is not dated, nor is it mentioned in the records of the council, but according to the testimony of Beza’s biography?” and a letter of Calvin to Grynaeus in

ZBL Ibid., 37/7.
32. Ibid., 378ff.
33. BSRK 117ff; Schaff, 307Ff.

34. In a marginal note Barth refers to Calvin’s quoting of the catechism in answer to Farel, but the reference should be to Caroli. In a letter of the Genevan pastors to Bern dated February 1537 (CO 10/II, 82-84), Viret is defended against Caroli’s charge of Arian error. Two quotations are given from the Latin version of the catechism that agree word for word with the text in CO 5, 337f.

35. For the full title see CO 5, 323f.

36) GiCO 22,.9:/OS 12378th> Latin, CO: 5, 3238.

37. Beza, Vita Calvini, CO 21, 126. For the letter to Grynaeus see CO 10/II, 106-9 (no. 64), with reference to Viret and Arianism on 107.

May 1537 it must have come out at the end of 1537 or early in 1538, that is, at much the same time as the memorandum was presented.

As regards authorship, internal and external evidence leaves us in no doubt that the work was Calvin’s and only Calvin’s. Apart from arrangement, the original differs from the better-known 1545 Catechism in that it does not consist of questions and answers. Like Luther's Large Catechism, but more crisply, it consists of a sequence of sixty succinct presentations. Three characteristic texts from 1 Peter serve as a motto: “As newborn babes, desire pure spiritual milk” (2:2); “Be always ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (3:15); “If anyone speaks, let him do it as speaking God’s Word” (4:11). The Ten Commandments, Apostles’ Creed, Lord’s Prayer, sacraments, preaching ministry, and government are the topics. Seven articles on the knowledge of God and self form the introduction. Nine articles on the Commandments and the Creed deal with the significance of the law for salvation, predestination, faith, justification, repentance, and good works. Between the Creed and Lord’s Prayer three articles deal with hope and prayer.

As we see, we have on the whole a repetition of the J/Institutes, and there are even some verbal echoes at times. All the same, I would recommend you to read the work and can hardly pass it by altogether here. Its relation to the Institutes resembles that of Kant’s Prolegomena® to the Critique of Pure Reason. It is an authentic summary of the larger work and in it many sayings and thoughts that do not receive emphasis there take on for the first time their true color and force. At the same time there are in it no new approaches or expositions that carry us further. I will thus simply pick out certain things from this catechism. For the purpose of these lectures we cannot impress upon ourselves too strongly the distinctive expressions and concepts of Calvin’s theology.5?

Article 14° tells us that in view of the fragility and brevity of life it has to be a meditation on immortality. But we can find eternal and immortal life only in God; hence we have to seek God.

Article 24! deals with the difference between true and false religion.

38. The Critique came out in 1781, the Prolegomena in 1783.

39. Barth put the themes of the articles, or groups of articles, in the margin, underlined in red pencil.

40. OS I, 378. Theme: “God and Immortality.”

41. Ibid., 379. Theme: “True Religion.”

INP

People constantly come up with the idea of a deity they have to fear. But true piety is not fear. Fear of the deity may well go hand in hand with an irregular life and with great security. Fear is not yet recognition of the infinite majesty of God. Fear fashjons its own god according to the dreams and illusions of the heart. We have here a criticism of religion that we might well feel reminds us of Feuerbach. True piety shows itself in the genuine zeal that never tries to conceive of God as our own presumption dictates but seeks the knowledge of the true God in God himself, conceives of him only as he himself reveals himself and declares himself, namely, as Father and Lord, reaches out after his righteousness, and has more fear of offending him than of death itself.

Article 342 has to do with the knowledge of God. True and solid piety is faith conjoined with fear and trembling. We cannot comprehend God’s majesty as such. We are simply shattered by its brightness. We must cling, then, to his works, which represent what we cannot see.43 We see in the universe of things the immortality of our God as their common beginning and origin, his power, wisdom, goodness, righteousness, and mercy.*4 Note that here God’s immortality is put before all his other attributes and is linked to the thought of creation — another instance of Calvin’s basic eschatological, or, if one will, Platonic, orientation. Properly, he thinks, the universe of things ought to teach us about God, were we not blinded to the witness of this second created light as well. This being so, we need the divine Word, which tells us what we cannot see for ourselves, that every good thing comes from God and must redound to his praise. We have to come to ourselves, to the revelation of God as the living, wise, and almighty God, to the proofs of his righteousness, clemency, and goodness toward us, if we are to understand the language of heaven and earth.45

What can article 446 say about us, however, but that we have damaged our divine likeness by revolt against the Lord, against God. It is only stripped of all glory of our own that we can now know God. Everything about us is profane and abominable to God.47

42. Ibid., 379f. Theme: “Knowledge of God.”

43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 380.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 381. Theme: “Self-Knowledge.”

47. Ibid.

As article 548 puts it, nothing we undertake is the true freedom it ought to be; all is corrupt and spoiled.

Article 649 tells us that we are born thus and are constantly ensnared in what then happens along these lines. If this insight plunges us into terror and despair, it is essential that with no righteousness of our own, no trust in what we can do, no possibility (“expectation”)

of life at all, we learn to cast ourselves down before the Lord, acknowledging our poverty and shame.>9

For — we read in article 7>! — this very self-knowledge creates for us the possibility of true knowledge of God. Or rather, with it God himself has opened for us a first door to his kingdom by destroying the two evil pests of security against his retribution and false self-confidence. We now begin to lift up to heaven eyes that were previously focused on earth. We no longer rest in ourselves but sigh for the Lord.°2

To bring this about is the purpose of the law of God, of which Calvin speaks in articles 8-20.93 You must read the exposition of the commandments for yourselves.

If there are any people, we read in article 21,>4 who really exhibit God’s law in their lives, they have to have the perfection that God expects. If our wills were in line with God’s, the law would be enough for salvation. But that is not so. The more clearly the law reveals to us the righteousness of God, the more clearly it also reveals our own corruption.>>

Hence, article 22 tells us,>° God himself intervenes for us and comforts us with the confidence in his power and mercy that he gives us in Christ, his Son. In the law he seemed to be only the righteous Judge; in Christ we see him in his grace and clemency.57 We note that here Calvin keeps in the background two thoughts that elsewhere he stresses strongly: the promise concealed in the law and the unity of the OT and the NT. He follows instead the familiar Lutheran schema of an unequivocal an-

48. Ibid. Theme: “Free Will.”

49, Ibid., 381£. Theme: “Sin and Death.”

50. Ibid., 382, n. 50.

51. Ibid., 382. Theme: “Alteration.”

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid., 383ff. Theme: “The Law.”

54. Ibid., 389.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid., 389f. Theme: “The Gospel.”

57. Ibid., 390.