§15 Conflicts (part 2 of 4)

It may be noted again that if he was really determined to find a heresy Caroli might have seized perhaps on the last name, the name of Nestorius, with more success. The Lutherans later knew how to raise

72 CO 7 ONor:
73. Ibid., 314.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.

serious objections against the Nestorianism of Reformed christology.76 But Caroli let his best chances slip at every point. In so doing he showed that he no longer lived in the spirit of the ancient dogma but was a real man of a later generation who, unable to grasp the spirit of the new age, had to content himself with brandishing a few extracts from an earlier age against his adversaries. He was not in truth the dragon slayer of his posturing. Breaking off his report of the Lausanne colloquy at this point, Calvin asked who could not be satisfied with so clear a confession. What could a judge who was not wholly unjust miss in it?77

Calvin concluded his address with an explanation of the strange fact that he and his friends refused to meet Caroli’s demand for subscription to the early confessions. Why not? Simply because Caroli was demanding it. Yielding would have compromised their work thus far, and Farel in particular would have been left unprotected. They could not set a precedent by allowing the tyranny of an individual over the church or an obstinate insistence on words.’8 I cannot wholly avoid the impression that Calvin was glad to be able to use this defiant argument, which is so right. It really is the case that we must not yield to people like Caroli even though their cause is the very best. Nevertheless, why had not the Genevans themselves thought of honoring or at least mentioning the early creeds somewhere in their reformation program as the Augsburg Confession and the Schmalkald Articles do, and even Zwingli in the first article of his 1530 Fidei ratio?” It was really a good thing for them that the admonition regarding this omission came from a man to whom they could reply: “We cannot!” with pride and with no taint of suspicion. Calvin could even permit himself to jest about this argument, as he himself tells us (zocatus, 7, 315). Jocularly he pointed out to Caroli that he had recited the first lines (of the Athanasian Creed), stating that those who do not keep this faith cannot be saved, but he then observed that Caroli himself did not keep it, for with all his efforts he had reached only the fourth clause. Supposing death had overtaken him and the devil had come to fetch him after he had expressly consigned himself to the everlasting perdition that

76. This criticism arose in connection with the so-called Calvinistic extra; cf. A. Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum, vol. VII (Wittenberg, 1677), 225; J. Gerhard, Loci theologici, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1885), 506.

HI SSO) 16 sss
78. Ibid.
79. BSLK 55, 8f. 414, 25f; Z 6/II, 15ff.

is certain without the protection of this confession.80 Those who can joke in this way about the rather pompous introduction to the Quicumque can hardly be called ardent in their respect for the church’s tradition.

And the continuation is even better, for Calvin asks: What if he should deny that the statement that Caroli wants to thrust upon him really was the work of the Council of Nicea? Can we believe that the holy fathers, who surely wanted to put everything necessary in as brief a formula as possible, would have played around with such a superfluity of words? Is there not repetition in such clauses as “God of God, light of light, true God of true God”? Why this repetition? Or does it have some real point or meaning? What we have here is obviously more a hymn for singing than a confession, in which one syllable too many is absurd.8! This is a genuine Calvinist objection, but the astonishing thing is that it was raised at all. Historical criticism based on a judgment of taste! Those who go so far afield show that they have no direct relation to the object of criticism. It would have been better for the matter under discussion if that had been rather more apparent at the time. But we cannot dictate to history its tempo. And there was wisdom in the way in which Calvin made it clear how free he was regarding earlier authorities, did so better than any other reformer, yet did not come right out and say that these were not authorities for him. Something of that sort had taken place at the first Lausanne disputation.8? This time Calvin was content to put a few question marks after agreeing materially with the confessions. These observations brought his address to a close.

Caroli then spoke again, and again, providentially, he made himself an object of general ridicule. He thought he should reprove his youthful antagonist by bidding him respect his white beard, but instead of canus, meaning “white,” he used calvus, meaning “baldheaded”; and even though general laughter broke out, with his usual boldness, says Calvin, he repeated his statement three times, always with the same result. People then knew Latin better than they do now, and the mistake, along with the unintended pun calvus-Calvinus, was enough to make him once and for all a figure of fun. He had nothing new or cogent to add, and he certainly could not make any impression.

The president Megander tells us the result of the colloquy in a letter

S0NCO VRS 15:
81. Ibid.
82. See above, 319.

to Bullinger dated May 22, 1537 (Briefe, 61).83 Here he says that the synod of Vaud brethren met under his presidency on May 14 and came to a happy conclusion. Claudius of Savoy recanted his Arianism. (This was one matter the synod did take care of, though Calvin for obvious reasons does not mention it.) Farel, Calvin, and many other brethren, pious and learned men, were wrongly accused of heresy. Caroli, who was responsible for this tragedy, was on account of it, and of other ungodly, vain, and odd acts, deprived of his office by the brethren, and Megander had no doubt but that the council would support the judgment of the synod.84 Calvin, too, records the deposition, but also states that the synod recognized the Genevan confession.8> This was naturally more important for him than the ousting of Caroli, especially as there were other reasons for the latter apart from his calumniating of the Genevans.

It seems possible that here again Calvin later saw the actual proceedings in rather a different light. At any rate, he and Farel received an unfriendly letter from the Bern council on August 13 to the effect that it had been reported that Calvin had written to a Frenchman in Basel saying the synod had accepted and “approved” the Genevan confession. The exact opposite was the truth. He and Farel had expressed their readiness to subscribe to the Basel confession, which held sway in Bern. (Calvin himself mentions in passing that at Lausanne he did in fact endorse this confession.)8° There was surprise in Bern, then, that he should write the way he did, and he was told to desist, and that if he did not Bern would be forced to resort to other measures.” Obviously if Calvin had secured from the synod he so much wanted all that he had desired, namely, a full and unequivocal clearing of his name, Bern would not have dared to address him in this manner. Clearly the situation was that although his opponent Caroli had been defeated, this was not because he. and his accusation had been totally routed, but because he had succeeded in making himself impossible quite apart from his relation to Calvin.

Bern Synod, 5.31.1537°8 The next and last stage in the controversy, in which outwardly Calvin achieved rather more than at Lausanne, was also

$5 CO ao 1
84. CO 10/II, 104.
83. COT, 17.
86. Ibid., 319.
87. CO 10/II, 118f. (no. 73).
88. In the MS the heading is in the margin.

First,Genevan Stay

a Pyrrhic victory for him, the true and profoundest outcome of the whole affair being that although nothing could be made to stick against him, he was not really trusted, so that occasion was sought to prevent this uncannily zealous man from ‘Geneva from growing trees that would reach to heaven. Caroli saw fit to appeal from the French-speaking part of Bern canton and its decision to the German-speaking part, which came together on May 31 to deal with another dispute between the two city pastors Kunz and Megander.89 Calvin welcomed the opportunity to vanquish his adversary more completely. Here the situation proved to be different from the very outset, for Caroli was now the one who stood accused. Calvin and his companions were asked to bring their charges against him, and after he had tried in vain to anticipate them by frankly confessing some dark blots in his past, Farel and Viret gave a very full and most unedifying account of his moral weaknesses both past and present.?? It was not a happy occasion, since the final victory over Caroli was won simply with the help of a flood of old and new anecdotes, and the unfortunate man still had the audacity to compare himself to that great champion of the faith Athanasius, who had had to suffer so much for the truth.2! On June 5 the Genevans were rehabilitated in Bern as well, the judgment on Caroli was confirmed, and banishment sharpened it.9?

For reasons that are not clear there was a sequel to the decisive action of the synod, this time in the ecclesiastical court of Bern (7, 336). It seems that in spite of everything Caroli had friends in Bern, especially in the Lutheran faction among the clergy, and by turning to these friends he sought a last chance to come to terms with his opponents.?3 But again he conducted himself in such a way that he did not achieve his end, and Farel, Calvin, and Viret now went over to the offensive, visited the mayor, who had attended the synod along with the whole council, and asked that Caroli not be allowed to leave the city until he had cleared them as the synod demanded. Naturally this was not because he (Calvin) thought it necessary that his orthodoxy should be acknowledged by Caroli — which he had persistently and sharply refused to do — but because this public

89. Peter Kunz belonged to the Lutheran party in Bern, Megander to the Zwinglian; cf. Hundeshagen, 64ff., 157ff; and above, 97 n. 10.

M0; (GO) 1, BELT, 385:
91. Ibid., 335.
92. Ibid., 336.
93. Ibid., 336f.
94. The MS simply has er = Calvin.

humiliation of their adversary would give force to the somewhat cool declaration of the synod. Their request was granted, and it was to be formally satisfied on June 6. But Caroli did not show up at the time appointed by the mayor, and when a servant went to fetch him, it seems that the missing man had left the city before daybreak.95 He went to Solothurn, where the French ambassador resided, and from there, on June 16, he sent a remarkably shameless letter to the Lausanne council (Briefe, 660) saying that he thanked God for being freed by his grace from bonds that had irked him so long. The foes of the Holy Trinity would not be able to enjoy their triumph for long. He believed that all he had said was true, and he would uphold it before the forum of the whole church.96 What he meant by the last statement became clear at the end of the same month when we find him at Lyons with Cardinal Bishop Tournon, who would arrange for his (second) return to the Roman Catholic church. From Lyons he sent a no less astounding letter to Pope Paul II (Bahler, 8f.)°” saying that for thirteen years he had championed, spread, and preached the theses of Luther that were for the most part rejected, that finally for seven months he had led and taught the Lausanne congregation according to the new doctrine, although not in all points, and that in keeping with the accepted custom there he had taken a wife, but appealing to the holy father as a suppliant, he stated that he had seen others spread a dreadful heresy among these people and perceived a relapse into terrible ungodliness as he saw clergy and theologians who styled themselves preachers adopt the errors of Arius, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Nestorius, and Basilides, and even go so far as to ridicule, disparage, and tread under foot the symbols of the Council of Nicea and Athanasius, and to deny that these had ever been recognized by the true church, so that he, Caroli, could no longer tolerate such abhorrent apostasy and error and such dreadful blasphemy. At synods and disputations in Lausanne and Bern he had zealously made every effort to oppose such ungodly errors and to break the horns of the heretics above mentioned, and by God’s help he had become ever stronger and more victorious in this fight, but for that reason he had been the more hated and finally expelled. He had had to save his life by swift flight last of all from the city of Bern. In‘deep penitence for outwardly rather than inwardly leaving the bosom of holy mother church,

95. See n. 104 below.
96. CO 10/II, 110f.
97. Ibid.; see n. 3 on 310.

First Genevan, Stay

he now wished to return to its fellowship, to renounce all heresies, and to do penance for his sin. He begged that he might do this, and to that end he begged this his marriage might be annulled, and that he might be restored to his doctor’s degree, his ordained status, his ministry at the altar, and his qualification to receive a stipend.?8

Two years later, in July 1539, Caroli turned up again in Neuenburg, then Basel, then Strassburg, and for the third time he went over from Rome to Protestantism.?? He thus began a second and no less tumultuous period of relations with Calvin into which we cannot go here. Rightly to assess his letter to the pope, however, we must say that in Strassburg he signed the Augsburg Confession, and when asked how he had been able to go back to Christ’s enemies, he replied that he had taken this step out of weakness and error, but that in spirit he had never really left his former companions in the faith.!9° In him the relation between what is inward and what is outward, between the spirit and the flesh, must have been a complicated one. In 1543, after various switches, we find him in the role of a polemical Roman Catholic preacher at Metz,!9! and it was as such, in virtue of his attacks especially on Farel, that he became the target of Calvin’s polemical work in 1545 to which we owe the most detailed and vivid account of the whole affair.

In what I have told you about the matter I have used this account with caution, with hints at various times why this is so. Controversy, with its terrible urge to be right and to win on both sides, and of which we have just seen a striking example, offers a good deal of smoke as well as fire. It was the dust cloud of the Reformation and not its marching column. We recall the tragic ambivalence of Calvin’s whole historical position. He stood at the point where the flame was becoming smoke. Someone had to stand there. When we realize that, we will be on guard against disliking Calvin because he wanted to be right and he had to win after the manner of his day, but more fiercely, consistently, and brilliantly than perhaps any of his contemporaries. But we will also use great caution in viewing the testimonies of his lively spirit as sources by which to evaluate others.

It cannot be maintained that much can be said to redeem Caroli. Nevertheless, we cannot say anything final in evaluation of him because

98. Bahler, 84ff.
99. Ibid., 96fFf.
100. Ibid., 112, 115.
101. Ibid., 122f.

we have too little of his own sayings and writings. To engage in a thorough investigation of his life and his relation to the Reformation from a broader and deeper standpoint than we find in Bahler would be a rewarding task in the course of which it would perhaps emerge that this virtuoso of switching back and forth might have been an example at least of a little regarded but much stronger and more widespread middle movement between the Reformation and the Middle Ages, the type of movement which, with no feeling for the either-or that the epoch posed, tried to hold the balance and thus had a certain characteristic significance of its own. Was it not inevitable that most people of the time, though unable to switch back and forth as Caroli did, should still be basically undecided in exactly the same way? In the long run being a classical representative of those who do not see that the hour has struck counts for something. Caroli finally died in a hospital in Rome, naturally, as Calvinists would have it, as a result of his excesses.

102 But let us go back to his opponent who triumphed in 1537, to Calvin. At his insistence the Bern council gave him a testimony to his innocence, as he called it, on the day after Caroli’s flight, June 7. It is worth noting that he was able to steel himself to request this from the neither very spiritual nor very intellectual men of the Bern regime, he who had so scrupulously argued that he was under no suspicion and that he would not regard Caroli’s approval as even remotely necessary. But so seriously did he take his view that secular governments have a vocation to watch over the orthodoxy of what the church preaches that he was willing to do this. Since the synod had acknowledged that he was right, the council could not refuse to make this officially known. The council accepted the logic of this. The remarkable official document is now in the Geneva Library with the seal of the republic of Bern on it, showing the bear that is slowly but surely inclining upward, an eloquent symbol of what Bern has always wanted and not wanted. In religious matters Bern wanted order, precision, comprehensibility, not intellectual ferment of any kind, not unfathomable depth or freedom of thought, especially not what was arbitrary and strange, and might disturb the peaceful course of administration.

The unhappy Caroli now came to feel the severity of this bear’s claws, but Calvin and his party did not wholly escape. The people of Bern gladly made use of the occasion to say that it was they who had the say in their territories, not merely in judicial and military matters but in those per-

102. Ibid., 165. taining to the Holy Trinity as well. Not for a moment, however, did they think of confirming turbulent Jehan Chauvin, who for them was basically on the same level as Caroli, in what had become his somewhat doubtful seat in the saddle at Geneva. Hence the testimony to Calvin's innocence did not mean much (Briefe, 63).!93 Caroli had not been able to make good his charge of Arianism. The accused were innocent. The charge had no merit. At the request of Farel and Calvin the ecclesiastical court had been ready to arrange a declaration of innocence. The flight of Caroli had blocked this. At the further request of Farel and Calvin the government had declared them innocent, having no good reason not to. It thus ordered all its officials, if necessary, to see to it that right was done to Farel and ' his fellows against Caroli and his supporters.!°4 But if the tone of this document is not enough to show us how unfavorable things really were in Bern for Calvin and his friends, we should read the singular letter, already mentioned, that Bern sent to Farel and Calvin on August 13 (Briefe, 73), which tells the learned, modest, loyal, and good friends that they were reported to have tried to convince the preachers in neighboring Gex that the terms “Trinity” and “person” were empty terms, and to seduce them from their allegiance to the customary way of speaking of the Trinity that they had inherited from the catholic church. There is then added the complaint about Calvin’s untrue account of the Lausanne Synod, which made out that Bern had accepted his confession rather than he himself accepting that of Bern, with the threat of other measures should this warning not suffice. !9

Reading this crude missive might well have given Calvin cause to consider the shadow side of his concept of church and state. He departed from his own path, of course, as little as Bern did from its path. But the lords of Bern were not the only ones for whom the palpable result of the Caroli affair was in fact a distrust of Calvin that was hard to remove. Read the letters that passed between Myconius, Bullinger, and Grynaeus that summer (Briefe, 60, 65, 69, 71, 72),!96 and you will be convinced what shaking of heads there then was after Calvin’s victory over Caroli even

LOSREOWNOB 7:
104. CO 10/II, 105f.
105. Ibid., 118.

106. Ibid., 103. (no. 60), Myconius to Bullinger, 5.20.1537; 109f. (no. 65), Grynaeus to Calvin, June 1537; 113f. (no. 69), Myconius to Bullinger, 7.9.1537; 116f. (no. 71), Bullinger to Myconius, 7.23.1537; 117f. (no. 72), Myconius to Bullinger, 7.26.1537. among stout Protestants, and even, indeed, in leading Reformation circles from the shores of Lake Geneva to the unruly and riotous people of the Allobrogi. Any letters addressed to the author of the Institutes were always respectful and restrained, but there was no decisive shunning of Caroli, at least not until his return to Rome was complete, and the letters were not without a tone of quiet avuncular admonition to Calvin, with some anxiety about all the things that might be possible in Geneva, and joy at any report that seemed to indicate that things were not as bad with this good friend as had at first been assumed. When the disaster took place in Geneva a year later, the admonitory tone became more pronounced, as usually occurs when something bad happens. In Bern, as later events would show, Calvin had made a definite and conscious enemy of the Lutheran Kunz.

Bern Synod, 9.22.1537'” The last act in the Caroli affair, mainly unfavorable to Calvin, took place in the presence of Bucer, Capito, Myconius, and Grynaeus. It was the Synod of Bern on September 22, 1537,!08 and centered on the agreement with the German Lutherans concerning the Lord’s Supper. This synod, fully in line with the wishes of the Bern Council and under the dominant impress of Bucer’s personality, would establish the preponderance of a Lutheranizing trend in Bern. But the aim was also to settle in this broader Reformed circle the question of the Trinity that had not yet been wholly laid to rest. The letter sent by the Bern Council to Farel and Calvin requesting their presence (Briefe, 77) does not mention either item on the agenda but simply says that the synod will deal with certain matters concerning the catholic faith. Capito and Bucer had expressed a wish that, being of like mind, Farel and Calvin should take part in the discussions. To advance the “true truth” (“vraie verité”) and to please them this wish was granted.!9 But basically the attitude of Bern to the Genevans was equivocal. On the one side they were doing the Strassburg leaders the favor of according them the like-minded helpers they wanted in the eucharistic controversy (at that time Calvin was thus regarded as anti-Zwinglian at least). On the other side the Genevans were being called to account before this forum in the matter of the Trinity, in relation to which the attitude of Bern was naturally one of caution if not of actual mistrust. And we have to say that for these statesmen, who knew so well

107. In the MS this heading is in the margin.

108. On the course of the synod cf. Hundeshagen, 79ff., 114; also Trechsel, I, 163f. 109. CO 10/II, 125f.

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* how to direct the play put on by the unsuspecting theologians, everything went astonishingly very much as they desired.

Our present interest, of course, is in the part that Calvin played in the proceedings. As regards the Lord’s Supper he had the undoubtedly important task of presenting in the name of the Swiss churches a statement that the Strassburgers, of whose sincerity there was at first some mistrust, could sign as a proof of their agreement with the Swiss at the points at which they were particularly opposed to Luther. This statement, the Confessio Fidei de Eucharistia (9, 711£.),")° is brief, but it is a little masterpiece for which a Calvin was needed. It_sets out with extraordinary sharpness the essence of the Lutheran view and that of the Zwinglian view (as Calvin understood it!) and makes no attempt to mediate between them. Instead, precisely by harshly opposing them to one another, itaims at a paradoxical but as such illuminating unity, and says nothing whatever about the points that are not essential on either side (i.e., not essential for Calvin).

\ The spiritual life that Christ gives us, says Calvin, is not just vivification by his Spirit but also participation in his flesh; it is an imparting of the whole Christ. No words can worthily describe the mystery of our fellowship with the body of Christ.!!! There we have Luther. Calvin adds, however, that all this in no way contradicts the fact that our Lord is exalted to heaven, that he has withdrawn from us the spatial presence of his body, which is not needed for the purpose. For though we pilgrims in our mortality cannot be with him in the place where he is, nevertheless the efficacy of his Spirit is no less surely not restricted by any limits, as though the Spirit could not bring together and unite into one that which is separated in space.!!? There we have Zwingli. We thus read in conclusion that we find in the Spirit of Christ the order or bond of our fellowship with Christ, but in such a way that the Spirit truly nourishes us to immortality by the substance of his body and blood, and imparts life to us by the fellowship of this body and blood. Christ, however, proffers us this fellowship of his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine in the most sacred supper, and he gives (exhibet) it to all who celebrate the supper rightly according to its institution.!!3 There we have Calvin.

For purely technical reasons, quite apart from the force and depth

110. OS I, 435£.
111. Ibid.
2S Uriel,
113. Ibid.

of the underlying conception, those who know a little of what the eucharistic controversy of the time was all about will rejoice at the quality of what Calvin did here. From this lofty height how tedious the battle about the est (“is”) seems, how scholastic the Lutheran inference that the wicked also partake, and how rationalistic Zwingli’s eternal insistence that the flesh profits nothing. But how unnecessary, too, seems the attacking of either left or right now that the two are brought together in this unity as equivalent ways of describing the same thing, comprehended in the cardinal concept of the Spirit of Christ by whose power the impossible becomes possible, the distant near, the heavenly earthly, though not for a moment losing its own worth or significance and becoming an immediate actuality. Here we have a mediating theology that is not a mediating theology because no room is left in it for either party as such.

The Strassburgers signed without demur, though Bucer at least appended a brief statement to the effect that he had never believed that Christ was locally in the elements or diffused everywhere, but also that we cannot allow the wine and the bread to be called naked and empty symbols.!!4 If we want to study the difference between good theology and average theology, superior theology and untalented theology, we should compare the two brief statements made by Calvin and Bucer on the Lord’s Supper. From the standpoint of Calvin’s statement the controversies regarding ubiquity on the one side and the purely symbolical character of the elements on the other are now meaningless in virtue of the strong reference to the miracle of the Spirit, who is himself the Lord. But Bucer, according to his appended statement, seems to have had little comprehension of this point. Be that as it may, Bucer and Capito, who were present in Bern as go-betweens for the great zealot of Wittenberg, signed Calvin's statement, and if as a result concord between Luther and the Swiss was closer to achievement than it has ever.been before and would ever be again, this was. due not least of all to Calvin. It was not his fault if the peace proved to be of short duration.

Naturally, however, the domestic problems of the Reformation movement were too serious to be set aside by one good formula. Calvin would derive no pleasure from what he did. He had built for the Strassburgers a golden bridge to the hearts of the Swiss, but the result historically was not to lift up the debate to the higher level of the statement. Instead, against Calvin’s intentions, the crude and banal outcome was a strengthening of

114. Ibid., 436.

First Genevan. Stay

the Lutheran influence as opposed to that of the Zwinglian in Bern. The one who came out on top in Bern was now Kunz, and the one who soon after had to give ground was Megander.!!5 The Bern regime had in fact triumphed. It preferred Lutheranism to Zwinglianism, for Lutheran teaching suited the government, giving free rein to the state, much better than Zwinglian teaching, in which the church with its threats and actions claimed that it should at least have a say in determining the course of the state. In fact the obstinacy of Luther had also triumphed when, to the annoyance of Calvin, his!16 statement was at once openly given a Lutheran interpretation. After the deposing of Megander in Bern, Calvin wrote a letter to Bucer on January 12, 1538, in which he openly expressed his displeasure at the situation created by what he called Bucer’s craftiness (Briefe, 87; Schwarz, 15).!!7

I will give you as a sample a passage dealing with Luther, since it shows us instructively what was Calvin’s image of Luther — and there are bothersome passages — when he became annoyed at him. He did not take it kindly, he said, that Luther would accept them with this confession, for Luther was not the only person worthy of note in the church of God. We would have to be thrice-dreadful barbarians if we did not take into account the many thousands who would be terribly insulted by a union of that kind. What Calvin ought to think of Luther, he said, he did not know, though he was firmly convinced of his true piety. If only it were not true what even most of those who would not allow any injustice to be done to him still maintain, namely, that there is a good deal of stubbornness mixed in with his staunchness for the faith. Luther himself is not the least responsible for this suspicion. If it was true, as Calvin had recently heard, that there was a rumor going about in all the Wittenberg congregations that they had now brought almost all the churches to a recognition of their error, what vanity that would be! Would that there were no such unhealthy arrogance among us, that it were enough that Christ alone be held to be true, and that /is truth shine in human hearts! Truly I see how it will be, said Calvin. There can be no health among us so long as the fury of arrogance is at work. Both sides, then, must bury all recollection of the past if they want lasting peace. The battle was too sharp and too

115. Cf. Hundeshagen, 94-96.

116. I.e., Calvin's.

117. CO 10/H, 137-44; R. Schwarz, Johannes Calvins Lebenswerk in seinen Briefen. » vol. I (Tübingen, 1909), 26-31 (1961 ed., Neukirchen, vol. I, 58-64). bitter to be remembered without at least some sparks reigniting, and if Luther wants so much the glory of victory, no true union in the truth of God can prosper. For this reason, if there is a desire to do anything for Luther as a favor or out of respect, we must see to it that he subject his former opponent in the unholy dispute to Christ and not to himself, and that he himself be ready to welcome the truth even where he is in contradiction with it.118

This, then, was Calvin’s part in the first item on the agenda of the Bern Synod. The second affected him more closely, and here the result brought him less regard and was much more unpleasant for him. The aim was to settle two outstanding matters that arose for Protestant circles out of the Caroli affair. First, why did not the Genevans use the terms “Trinity” and “person”? Second, what did they mean by equating Christ with Jehovah? They now had to explain themselves on these issues in the presence of the Strassburg leaders. We see how different the situation was even outwardly. As regards the Eucharist, Calvin in his statement was representing the Swiss churches to Strassburg. Now, however, the Strassburg leaders were witnesses, if not judges, in questions addressed to Calvin himself. The second point seems to have caused no difficulty. The Genevans explained that calling Christ Jehovah summed up his deity, which pertains to the Father, Son, and Spirit equally, and that it does not imply any denial of the Son’s begetting from the Father even according to his eternal essence.!!9 No one apparently offered any opposition to this explanation. Here Calvin had logic if not custom on his side. Yet he never liked his views to be regarded as peculiar to Geneva even when they were recognized to be such, and so, as we have noted already, in his later account he took steps to conceal the fact that this issue was a point of controversy. We have here one of the few cases where Calvin, though officially justified, showed by his later silence that he was not ready to insist on his view.

The situation was not such a good one for the Genevans on the other issue, the question of the terms “Trinity” and “person.” Calvin's view, and the advice of the Strassburgers, was that no one should be compelled against his or her conscience to use these doubtful terms.!29 For Calvin, who had to protect his friend Farel in this regard, this meant that the use

118. CO 10/II, 138ff. Barth uses the translation (with a correction) given in Schwarz, 26f. (59).

119. CO 9, 708.

120. Trechsel, I, 163f.

First Genevan, Stay

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of the terms should be wholly voluntary, but for the Strassburgers it meant that in time fear of the words would and should evaporate, though there should be no enforcement of them. The formula upon which agreement was finally reached!2! can only be described as unfavorable to Geneva. The Genevans had to allow that they saw that in the churches of Christ these terms were calculated to suppress unhappy controversies and that therefore they would not refuse to accept them, to hear them from others, and to use them themselves. They had to recognize that as they had been used previously, so their use should not be stopped in their churches. They would not avoid them and they would teach others not to be afraid of them. If there were any who in mistaken zeal would not use them, they would not approve of this and would make every effort to correct them. But since such zeal is no reason for rejecting those of true faith, they would tolerate their lack of insight on this matter and not excommunicate them or regard them as heretical. They would not take it amiss, however, if the Bern pastors would not admit to the ministry of the Word any who would not accept the terms (9, 707f.).

If it had only been a matter of Calvin’s own position, this formula, apart from the final provision sponsored by Bern, would not have been so bad. Calvin had said this much in ch. II of his Institutes, that since the terms “Trinity” and “person” had come in with good reason, it would be wrong to reject them.!22 But things were different for Farel, against whom, as we saw, Caroli’s attack was chiefly directed. Farel’s intentional avoidance of the terms in his Sommaire,!*3 even though he himself was not mentioned by name, was now branded as superstitious and preposterous. It might be tolerated but it could not be sanctioned, and Bern would not even tolerate it.!24 The last point was a slap in the face for Calvin in his solidarity with Farel. The whole conclusion meant no more and no less than that the Genevans had to fall back on their repeated declaration that they refused to use the required terms only for tactical reasons (i.e., not to yield to Caroli), but that fundamentally they had nothing against them. In my view this was tantamount to admitting that the charge was legitimate except as Caroli’s, to promising amendment, and also to promising not to take it amiss if Bern adopted toward them the same attitude as that of Caroli.

12 COM O74:
122. See above, 312 n. 21 and 318 n. 43.
123. See above, 316 n. 27.
124. CO 9, 708 (cf. above, n. 121).

So the last act of the Caroli affair ended with the ignominious retreat of its true hero. Unquestionably Calvin and his party had not gained a victory but suffered a defeat. Calvin’s contemporaries saw it that way in spite of the reassuring manner ia which they told Calvin how glad they were to be convinced now that he was innocent.!25 This came to light later in 1539 in Strassburg when Caroli resurfaced and all the proceedings of 1537 came under fresh scrutiny.!2° The impression left in Bern, Basel, and Strassburg, perhaps least of all in Zurich, and despite all Calvin's efforts to counteract it, was that in this matter he had gone too far and made a mistake.!*7 The general view of Calvin as he emerged from his first period in Geneva was that he was a learned and zealous man who could not be rated too highly as such, but that he was still too young and hasty and rather unpredictable — who really knew what he might do next? Certainly nothing could have been more galling to Calvin than the half-distrustful and half-paternal tenderness with which people usually greeted him from now on and well into his Strassburg days. That it was the skill of the Bern government that had been able to bring him into this situation in 1537, and with his theological help in the matter of the Eucharist to put the Bernese Lutherans in the saddle, was one of the humiliations at the hands of these men on the banks of the Aare that the reformer could never forget. We will not try to examine how far the quiet anger that he would cherish from this point on was on account of his cause or on account of his own reputation and person. All his life it had on a big scale, as with most of us on a small scale, both sides to it.

We may remark that Calvin was perhaps right, when giving his account of the affair in 1545, to refer to the fatal second synod of Bern in September 1537 only incidentally, unobtrusively, and without saying anything about the solemnity of the occasion. Strictly speaking, it was no longer a real part of the Caroli affairthat he was seeking to report. But he was hardly justified in ending the work by quoting the testimony to his innocence that at his insistence the Bern Council had provided, thus giving the impression that this was the end of the matter and that the same council had not, shortly afterward, sent that very different letter, !28

125. Barth has in view Bullinger’s letter to Farel and Calvin, 11.1.1537, CO 10/11 128 (no. 80).

126. Babler, 112-20.
127. Ibid., 116f.
128. CO 7, 335. See above, 336 n. 103, 331 n. 87.

. First Genevan Stay

quite apart from the autumn synod. Nor was he right innocuously to present the declaration that he and his friends had had to make concerning the terms “Trinity” and “person” as though it were a testimony to his goodwill offered to an intimate circle of Bern pastors, and to leave out the final and decisive caveat of Bern, so that the declaration closes with the statement that those who do not use the terms are not to be excommunicated or regarded as heretics.!29 That was an amending of the sources after the manner of the Ems dispatch and a well-known example of our own day.130 There is no excuse here except perhaps to claim that in the spheres into which Calvin believed he had to move energetically on the basis of his own view of Christianity, he could not operate without ambiguities of this type.

It is not without penalty that we push on as forcefully as Calvin sought to do to the glory of God. Normally and gladly we find in the Jesuits the dangers of doing all to the greater glory of God. But honestly we have to see the same dangers in the reformers as well. Nor is it any wonder if in their different ways we find the dangers especially clearly in Zwingli and Calvin. They arose for these two, as they did not for Luther, just because of the temptations to which they were exposed in virtue of their distinctive tendency to engage in decisive action in the world. It has always been the feature precisely of an ethically oriented Christianity that it does not safeguard its best and most zealous champions from the ethical ambiguity of all human action but has often made them embodiments of the warning to play the man and not follow them!!3! That is part of the tragedy of the life and work of Calvin to which we have often alluded and which rightly, as it should, arouses fear and pity!32 in us but should not cause us not to see how necessary and relatively justified is the reformation type that he represents.

129200) 7,319;

130. Barth alludes first to Bismarck’s emending of the Ems dispatch in July 1870 that whipped up Prussian opinion against France and prepared the way for the Franco- Prussian war. Regarding the second allusion, in the typed copy of the MS Barth puts the name Eisner here, referring to Kurt Eisner (1867-1919), a Bavarian politician, and possibly to his making public some documents on the question of German guilt for the war of 1914-18 in the hope of gaining Allied support for his plans.

131. Barth quotes from the last line of Goethe's poem On the Sorrows of the Young Werther: “sei ein Mann, und folge mir nicht nach,” which was the motto of the novel in the 2nd ed., 1775.

132. Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 7.1449b, on the purpose of tragedy.

We know little or nothing of the direct repercussions of the Caroli affair in relations in Geneva. Indirectly it contributed more strongly than anything else to a thickening of the atmosphere of mistrust under which the preachers were living there. Ivcould not be concealed from the people of Geneva that abroad, especially in their highly regarded and indispensable neighbor Bern, their strict reformers did not enjoy the unconditional respect that they demanded at home, if not for themselves, at least for their teaching. It must have made a remarkable impression when it could be told that the authors of the new confession, to which all residents had to swear on pain of banishment, were refusing to sign the venerable, ancient, and fundamental creeds of Christianity (A. Lang, 41).133

When Farel and Calvin returned to Geneva from the fifth and last of all the disputations and synods, at a session of the Council of Two Hundred on September 27, they did, of course, refer finely and plainly enough to the constitutional powers of these representatives of the people and to their duty to admonish the people to live according to the law and commandments of the Lord, to act justly in relation to all, both rich and poor, and to live in harmony with the lords of Bern (words no doubt taken from a concluding address at the Bern Synod and specifically directed at the delegates from Geneva). They also reported that the lords of Bern had paid their expenses and given them each another two ducats for the journey, and that after all the proposals and speeches had been heard agreement had been reached at last on the question of Christ’s presence at the supper.

134 This account was undoubtedly calculated to give a favorable impression of the acts and experiences of the reformers abroad, but the impression did not last long. Shortly thereafter the dispute concerning the Genevan confession began to come to a head. It made the whole winter a period of unrest. With the spring there came from outside the great wave of resentment that the Caroli affair had intensified. In Geneva itself other charges against the preachers combined with this to produce the flood that finally engulfed them.

133. Lang, Johannes Calvin.

134. CO 21,216:

~. First Genevan Stay

Bern Ceremonies

A look at this third and decisive controverted issue and the related disputes will lead on directly to an account of the disastrous outcome that had been in course of preparation for so long. What was the issue? At the beginning of December 1537 the Bern Council dealt for the first time with some differences in church practices between the churches of Bern and Geneva that Bern regarded as disruptive and wished to set aside, naturally by the submission of Geneva to Bern’s judgment. There were four main differences.!35 (1) In Bern Christmas, New Year, the Annunciation, and the Ascension were still kept as feasts, a modest remnant of the medieval calendar. In Geneva, however, all such feasts were done away with on strict biblical grounds, and only Sundays were observed. (Later, when Calvin's system triumphed, even keeping Christmas at home could be punished, !5° and on Good Friday street work is still done in Geneva today as needed.) (2) Bern churches retained the font, Geneva discarded it along with other medieval furnishings. (3) Bern used wafers at the Lord’s Supper, Geneva ordinary bread. (4) At church weddings Bern had brides wear hair adornment, Geneva forbade this on the basis of 1 Pet. 3:3: “Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, and of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart.”

All of us would probably agree with Hermelink when he calls these differences mere trifles.!37 But the z in Aomoiousios and Luther’s est (“is” at Marburg and many another strange jot and tittle in the history of the Christian church were also mere trifles, and it is a distressing truth that very decisive things may hinge precisely on such trifles. It so happened in this case that on the matter of these four differences all the combustible material that had gathered around what Calvin was doing caught fire, and that in connection with them the event took place which would for the time being bring the work that he had begun to an end, although, as would be seen, it had more vitality than was supposed, and would only establish itself on more solid foundations, because by its very nature it did not allow of any turning back.

135. On what follows cf. Hundeshagen, 129.

136. Cf. Kampschulte, II, 290.

137. Hermelink, 161, sees a question of principle — whether church or state should have final ecclesiastical authority — behind the trifling issue of wafers.

The Calvin who was expelled from Geneva in 1538 seemed there to be someone they had done with altogether. But the Calvin who had been expelled and who had to be recalled in 1541 was one they could not do without as things then were. When wrong and hurt have been done to a person, but then it is seen that we cannot do without this person, that we are tied to this person, then the injury that has been done is all the more serious and severe. Without the painful event of the spring of 1538 Calvin would not be the Calvin who later fought and won. That event was the secret accolade that made him invincible. For this reason it will repay us to deal with the trifles that led to the event. Why did it come about that this question of the Bern ceremonies acted at once like leaven in Geneva? What did Bern want in demanding that Geneva accept them? What did Geneva want when at once a majority voted in favor of compliance? And finally, looking at the third actor in the drama, what did Calvin not want when he stubbornly, and ultimately at the cost of his career and work in Geneva, resisted the demand?

Bern View'38 We begin with the first question. Why did the Bern government insist on these trifles? The first answer, if we adopt a theological approach, is undoubtedly that Bern, as we have seen, was then inclining to the Lutheran side. The results of the September synod had far-reaching ramifications along these lines. The catechism of the Zwinglian Kaspar Megander, which had thus far been the standard of instruction throughout the canton, was subjected to a thorough revision by Bucer without Megander’s knowledge or consent. Understandably Megander opposed this, and as a consequence he was dismissed by the regime.!3? Heading the clergy in his place were Sebastian Meyer, a native of Bavaria, who was a committed follower of Bucer, and Peter Kunz, a more passionate and coarser man, who had studied for some years at Wittenberg, then made his name as the reformer of his native Simmental in the Bernese Oberland, and come out as a decided Lutheran.!4° It was Kunz who now became normatively responsible for the theological character of Bern's ecclesiastical policy.

When Bern made strenuous efforts to counteract the biblicist purism of Geneva, it was first undoubtedly in an application to externals of the

138. In the MS the heading is in the margin.
139. Hundeshagen, 93-95.
140. Ibid., 69f.

= First Genevan Stay

well-known Lutheran conservatism that might also be called liberalism. Above all no legalism! “Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it! 2[Isanos: 3): Reverence for what has come into being and is now present! No understanding for the synthesis of OT and NT: approaches, of antipagan fervor and moral earnestness, that characterized the reformation in Geneva. More instinctively than intellectually, with something of hostile peasant cunning, Kunz sensed clearly from the very first that Calvin was the adversary they had to fight in every possible way. During the whole of the Caroli affair he tenaciously took Caroli’s part, different though the two were. Then as the ecclesiastical leader he began attacking Geneva long before the Bern authorities determined on any definite steps. It was hardly without his knowledge that in December 1537 the Bernese areas near Geneva forbade their pastors to invite the Genevans to their discussions or to attend discussions in Geneva, or that Farel, who had so many contacts in all western Switzerland, and who had done so much to promote the Reformation there, was forbidden to preach on Bernese soil. Certainly it was his doing that pastors who had been admitted or accepted in Geneva were no longer given free access to the territory of Bern and that pastors who inclined to Geneva were brought under severe pressure.!4! Calvin complained strongly about this in a letter to Bucer (January 12, 1538) to which I have referred already. Notorious Anabaptists, known thieves, people worthy to be hanged on the gallows, were now appointed pastors in Bern territories, while even the best who had proved themselves in Geneva were not accepted.!42

It might well be that what Kunz was doing along these lines was seen by him as an executing of the Bern caveat at the end of the agreement on the question of the Trinity. But his opposition to Geneva on that issue rested simply on the all-consuming hostility of Lutheran theology to this new and alien body that had arisen in the west after Zwinglianism had been set aside. Here then, in a narrow section of western Switzerland, especially in the extreme corner of Vaud where it borders on Geneva, and in the poor heads of rural pastors who only a short time ago had read their last mass, the two great waves of Lutheranism and Calvinism broke upon one another for the first time. We would do much to know more about what this involved in detail. It is unfortunate at any rate that the young master in Geneva had no worthy opponent on the other side. The

141. Ibid., 130.

142. CO 10/II, 141f. (no. 87). spirit of Kunz did not permit any large-scale engagement. Kunz dragged Calvin into a petty strife of whose meanness we have sad glimpses in more than one letter that Calvin wrote that winter and the following spring.

But the fine eyes of Peter Kunz or even regard for the theology of his teacher Luther were naturally not the only reason for the intervention of Bern in church matters in Geneva. We know that the government of Bern had political plans for Geneva. Reformation in Geneva, indeed, radical reformation, formed part of these plans. Because of the difference in language, Bernese theologians, or theologians from any part of German-speaking Switzerland, could not bring about reformation there. It was a pity, but unavoidable, that the reformers would have to be French. It was intolerable, however, that these Frenchmen should champion, and champion so energetically, a theology and ethics that were as alien to Bern lifestyle and sentiment as Calvin’s were; that Geneva should thus experience a different, non-Bernese, strangely abstract, radical, and international type of reformation; that a new and alien world of thought should arise precisely at what was meant to be the key bastion of a revived Burgundian kingdom. It may be that Bern saw in this theology and ethics something that was simply French, and that they feared Calvin and fought him as an emissary of the French spirit and even of French politics.

In February 1538 came another intrigue on the part of Francis I, who himself had not given up his own designs on Geneva, and who had made alliance with some of the citizens of Geneva who, not wholly by accident, were also friends of Calvin.!43 The powerful French immigration (and occupying of clergy positions)!44 was also a factor that had to be dealt with. The equation of Calvin with what was western and of Luther with what was Germanic was already playing a role at that time. It is testimony to the undeniable sharpness of vision of the Bern rulers that on the one hand they treated Calvin with great respect, and sometimes supported him in his position, for example, in his difficulties with the confession, as we saw, and even later, on the occasion of his expulsion from Geneva and recall to it, when they saw that a strong man was indispensable to their own interests; but that on the other hand they did not cease whistling him back, as it were, humiliating him a little, throwing a few rocks in his path,!45 in order that his work in Geneva should not be too

143. Kampschulte, I, 308f.

144, CO 21, 221 (council minutes, 3.15.1538).

145. But cf. the feeble support given by Bern to Farel and Calvin, above 297ff. On

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« successful after its own Calvinist manner, since, if that were to happen, if a distinct spiritual kingdom were actually to be set up, then the hope of a political unification of Geneva and Bern, and indeed the political assimilation of the newly conquered neighboring Vaud, would be severely jeopardized.

For all its original unpopularity in Geneva, the Genevan view of the church had great revolutionary, missionary, and infectious force. It produced great agitation. The rulers of Bern did not fail to see this. We have here a good example of Christianity being such a real and vital factor in social life that a clever and farsighted government could not be indifferent to the question what kind of Christianity its subjects and even its neighbors were cultivating. It was realized, and feared, that if it were truly different, then something would come of it. It would have political ramifications. It would have to be watched and checked no less than Bolshevism has to be in our day. But for what denomination or trend would a modern state have the same kind of respect as Bern then had for Calvinism? What modern denomination or trend today would the state work to counter?

Bern worked thus against Geneva, as we have seen, by means of the attitude it adopted in the Caroli affair. It then continued its opposition by treating the divergent biblicist ceremonies of the Genevan church as exponents of the Genevan view of the church, and by taking offense at this view as the champion of, shall we say, an antinational or anational view of life and the world that Bern could not use as a suitable basis for its attitude to the state. That Bern did not treat these obvious trifles as trifles, but as symbols which as such had more real significance than many a great and apparently serious controversy, is yet another sign that the Bern rulers had good eyes in their heads.

Geneva View\46 Ata first glance it is much less easy to understand why the Genevans, especially the council newly elected in February 1538, acceded to the Bern demands. With surprising certainty and force, once the question had been put precisely, they decided to yield, that is, to accept the Bern ceremonies.!47 Undoubtedly an explanation in terms of Calvin versus Bern, or Calvinism versus Lutheranism, or solely in terms of Ger-

Calvin's expulsion and recall, see below, 368f., 379ff. See also Hundeshagen, chs. 6 and 7 (253ff.), which reflect the tensions between Geneva and Bern, 1549-1559.

146. In the MS the heading is in the margin.

147. CO 21, 223f; and Kampschulte, I, 310. many versus France, such as we find indirectly in the recent depiction of Calvin by H. Bauke,!48 will not hold water. This antithesis played a part, no doubt, but if it were decisive, why did not the decision go in favor of the conational Calvin and not in favor of his German Swiss opponents? We should also note how unlikely it really was that a city which had only recently secured its freedom would let itself become entangled with another city, passionately adapting itself to ordinances that came to it from a power that had, of course, just before given it strong support, but of whose selfish purposes, threatening to its own independence, it had undeniable proof? There had to be some strong reason why, against their French nationalism and their civic pride, the Genevans came to the decision they did.

Even when we look at the theological antithesis, we would really have expected that the rigorist standpoint of the preachers in Geneva would have won greater applause than the Lutheran tendency that lay behind the demands of Bern. For rationalistic, if not biblicist, reasons, the radicalism with which Calvin and his party were purging out the papist leaven from every obscure part of the cultus would seem to be more in keeping with the character of the people. In Geneva there could certainly be no question of the Lutheran motives that lay behind what Peter Kunz was doing in Bern.

It has often been suggested!4? that for the council a decision was being made in the battle of the secular against the spiritual power that it was now hoped to win with the help of the Bern demands. Considerations of this kind, which are stupid and muddled vis-a-vis the real situation, might well have motivated some members of the anti-Calvinist trend in Geneva, especially among the most radical of those who had fought for freedom. But I have the impression that we are making too much of them if we see here the real reason for the Genevan attitude. Calvin's theory did give the state an almost incomparable dignity and majesty, and even in practice a conflict between council and clergy could have taken place only insofar as the council did not wish to be left behind by the clergy in zeal for church affairs, and would thus be unwilling to hand over the decision in church practices to a special consistory,!° a position that on the basis of his concept of church and state, even though he might have serious practical doubts, Calvin could hardly oppose. How could the clergy object