§15 Conflicts (part 3 of 4)

148. Bauke, Probleme; cf. 114 n. 44.
149. Kampschulte, I, 306f.
150. See above, 351.

oD

na First Genevan Stay

« if the secular power proved so willing to undertake the necessary regulating in the spiritual field as well? The Institutes had anticipated this.!! And how could the touncil object if the clergy commonly and repeatedly claimed its support along these lines? The council had itself asked the clergy to do so, and up to the spring of 1538 it had helped to push through all the proposals of the clergy to the best of its ability. _

In my view the conflict of church and state in Geneva was not primary but secondary, just as in the Institutes the possibility of revolt against the government is viewed as final and inescapable only when it is seen that God must be obeyed first [Acts 5:29].!52 Conflict between church and state could not arise here primarily or in principle, but only when the chosen representatives on the two sides no longer wanted the same thing as the theory presupposed and as had at first been the practice. Only then, by reason of the different desires of their representatives, could the two factors emerge as warring forces. It was a sign of prudence, if not of distrust, when Calvin asked for a consistory in addition to the council. In case the council were to use its assumed consistorial power in a way that did not suit the church, Calvin wanted to give the church a means by which it could protect its rights within certain limits. The situation was like that of swimmer across the English Channel who for the sake of safety arranges for a boat always to be present at a certain distance.

The demand for a consistory and the refusal of this demand did not cause the break as they would have done if the issue had been that of church and state. The real problem was that the council in a particular matter showed that it was exercising its ecclesiastical function in a way which made it clear that it wanted something different from the clergy. The state as Calvin envisioned it in the Institutes would not be in any sense subordinate to the church or the clergy, nor the church ranked above the state. What Calvin had in view was a perfect parallelism of the two forces, both of which had to serve the same end of the glory of God on earth, but with different means, the church with preaching, the state with regulatory measures. Like a lightning flash, it seemed for a moment in the fall of 1536 as though this parallelism had been achieved. But in fact it could only be for a moment in the midst of the reality of secular history in which such miracles usually manifest themselves only to vanish again. Then the question had to arise, not the question of the relation of church

151. See above, 209.

152. OS I, 279£; BI 310f. Cf also above, 225 with nn. 239f. and state as such, but the question whether this church and this state really meant the same thing when they were serving God’s glory, the one with its preaching, the other with its regulatory measures. Was the council really acting according to the law of God in its decisions, the clergy began to ask more or less clearly in their sermons. And on the other side it was asked whether what the clergy were preaching and demanding was really the law of God. During the whole of 1537 this double question remained latent. The only complaints were that the council was too dilatory, the clergy too zealous, though both basically wanting the same thing.

But when the new council was elected in February 1538 and Calvin's opponents were in a majority, these issues had to become acute, for now it was obvious that the council and the clergy did not understand the same thing by the glory of God. And because there had been no success in 1537 in setting up an emergency church authority with its own special ecclesiastical rights, there was no chance to do this now that the parallelism had broken down. It was not unimportant that the council had a different view of the glory of God from that of the clergy, for the council could now put this different view directly into practice in the field of the church. The question whether God should be obeyed first was thus put. (This issue arose much faster than Calvin could have foreseen at the end of the Institutes!) The conflict between church and state had come. But as we have said, it was not primary but secondary, not the cause but the effect of the much deeper conflict between what Calvin really wanted and what the Genevans really wanted.

In this latter conflict of approaches, of viewpoints, of concepts of God’s glory, the question of the Bern ceremonies took on symbolical significance just as for Bern itself the ceremonies were the exponent and symbol of its opposition to Calvin’s system, which did not fit in with Bern’s political calculations. In their own way the Genevans were in the same basic conflict with what Calvin wanted. So long as no issue arose to give living expression to this, the parallelism did not fall apart, though all the signs, as we have seen, pointed to its actual disruption. When the issue arose with the demand of Bern that there should be adaptation to the practices of neighboring churches, the Genevans realized and stated plainly that they wanted something different from what Calvin wanted. They were not ready to be a testing ground for Calvin's theology. They did not want to be different from neighboring communities. They did not want something distinctive of which there was talk all around, with much shaking of the head for the most part. They did not want to have to be

First Genevan Stay

* the people of God with all the claims that this involved. If not without religion, and indeed in harmony with the basic principles of the Reformation, they simply wanted to live as free citizens as best they could. What Calvin wanted, the parallelism of faith, and life, the paradoxical relation of otherworldly truth and this-worldly reality, the understanding of life as a pilgrimage with one’s gaze steadily fixed on the heavenly home, a visible holy community of men and women who before God, however, can only confess their total unworthiness, the total anchoring of existence in ground at an infinite depth so that in our little boats on the surface we constantly feel the tug on the chain that holds us fast below

— how could the Genevans want all that? What city, village, or hamlet could ever have wanted it? For them serving the glory of God simply meant something much more harmless and much less threatening and demanding, a halffriendly and half-serious commitment to life, not this determination of all life that posed such a threat, made such a claim, and involved such everlasting unsettlement.

We must add, of course, that naturally they did also want what Calvin wanted. How could they wholly escape the force of the truth that spoke to them out of what Calvin wanted? It was no empty self-deception when at first they gladly forced themselves to take the oath that was demanded, nor again when finally in 1541 they recalled Calvin, only to make life more difficult for him than it had been before, yet to go along with him for a considerable stretch on the way. Yes indeed, just as the people of any city or village want in some way that which to their great surprise was then presented to citizens in the form of the Calvinist way of life. Nevertheless, they also did not want it. It was the not wanting that characterized the situation and had come to the fore early in 1538. Being in contradiction,!>3 we still have a strong inclination not to want. The individualism of our old nature rises up and prattles about tutelage, bondage, arbitrary rule. Is it totally wrong to do so?

In this reaction did not nemesis lurk for Calvin’s overly bold wishes: for the dramatic gesture we have seen, for example, in his daring to demand a confessional oath; for his overly precise knowledge of what was at issue, so precise that it almost seemed to involve forgetfulness; for the severity that is bound up with any overly ethical outlook and position, and that

153. “Mensch mit seinem Widerspruch” occurs in the last verse of the poem Homo sum, from Huttens letzte Tage: Eine Dichtung, by C. F. Meyer. It is also the motto of the whole work.

¢

often, as I said yesterday, leads those who take such a position most strongly far afield from the sphere of true ethics? What Calvin with his ideal of life was setting over against the old nature in Geneva was not the new nature as such and in its purity, nor was jt Jesus Christ himself. Let us say it for once, it was Calvin’s Christ, but it was also Calvin himself, Calvin causing offense. Calvinism is not the gospel pure and simple. Like all isms it stands under the judgment of the gospel. Hence we cannot deny that the not willing of the Genevans was relatively right, and why, indeed, should the actions that the Bern politicians and Lutherans took against Calvin have been contrary to the divine will (sine numine)?'54 I am not saying this to excuse them, but simply to make clear that I cannot with confidence one-sidedly condemn those who then thought they had to oppose their no to Calvin. In face of actions of this kind both excusing and blaming can have only limited worth. Better than both is understanding. In the context of the Reformation Calvin’s great attempt had to be made as the fiery sign of a possibility that then came within the compass of human willing and achieving, but only at once to show yet again that this is a divine possibility that is impossible for us [cf. Mk. 10:27 par.]. For that reason it was inevitable that there should be the massive opposition that Calvin encountered and that erupted — we are on earth — over a trifling cause.

From the point of view of Geneva, too, the issue was a minor one, a mere conflict about feasts, fonts, wafers, and bridal attire. But in these minor matters the people of Geneva found a way of expressing their not willing. They did not want compulsion, biblical purism, a radical alteration of custom. They saw this refusal plainly exemplified in the matter of the Bern ceremonies. More was being asked of them than of others. Living according to God!55 did not have to mean such a harsh destruction of every bridge as they were experiencing. The few church ceremonies that the Bernese had retained, more conservative and Lutheran as they were than Calvin, became a banner for what the Genevans understood by Christian liberty, namely, the rejection of all that was of the OT, terrifying and all-penetrating. That it was only a matter of opposing Calvin on ceremonies made it easier to offer resistance at this point. If what would have been much more oppressive moral and religious demands had been

154. Sine numine, constructed on ancient models, is a common expression in Zwingli; cf. his Sermon on Providence, ch. 5, Z 4, Ul, 143, 4-6.

155. CO 21, 199; see above, 257 n. 37. at issue the opposition would have been much weaker and with a more uneasy conscience. Just because the issue was a trifling one, they hoped for victory. Victory here might lead to victory later in more important matters. The Genevans had as little understanding of the theological motives of the Lutheran Peter Kunz as Calvin himself had, and they would naturally have rejected the underlying political aims of the Bern government. But they could understand and welcome the reaction against Calvin's program as such, and that is why they acted at once without any lengthy consideration of the matter. It was for the same reasons that they had elected an anti-Calvinist council in February 1538, and this council acted according to the wishes of those who elected it when it decided to accede to the demands of Bern.

Calvin’ Attitude (Easter 1538 in Geneva) Of most interest, of course, is the third question: What was the inner reason for the attitude of Calvin that the people of both Bern and Geneva opposed? But before we try to answer that question, let us first look simply at the facts. It was on March 11, 1538, that the council in Geneva basically decided to adopt the Bern order, that is, to live according to the Word of God and the ordinances of the rulers of Bern.!>© That was the anti-Calvinist interpretation of the law of God! It was certainly no accident that the following day a letter came from the Bern council politely stating that a synod would be held at Lausanne on March 31 to which Farel and Calvin should be sent.157 Plainly they were to be sent there only to receive sentence. That this was Bern’s intention may be seen from a second letter from the Bern council dated March 20 which states clearly that the business of the synod was to achieve unity on the basis of the Bern ceremonies. The Genevan preachers were invited to attend on the understanding that they would agree. If they were not ready to do so, Bern and Vaud would come to an agreement and then enter later into separate negotiations with Geneva.1>8

On both sides, then, Farel and Calvin faced a fait accompli when at the end of March they went to Lausanne accompanied by one of the negotiating syndics. In Lausanne, to which they had gone only at the command of the council, they held aloof from the real proceedings; and

156. Barth quotes according to n. 1 on letter 101, CO 10/II, 179f; cf. CO 21, 022,:

157. CO 10/II, 178f. (no. 100).

158. Ibid., 179 (no. 101). when the synod voted to adopt the Bern ceremonies, the theologians of Geneva refused to recognize this result. They stated that they had less against the ceremonies as such than against the way they were forced upon them, and they demanded a reconsideration of the whole issue at a general synod. They unconditionally rejected adoption of the four feasts that Bern was supporting. Thus they returned to Geneva unbowed, but with nothing settled. 159

Three uneasy weeks now had to follow with both parties resolutely refusing to give ground and both waiting for a chance to make this clear. On April 19 two new letters came from the Bern council to Geneva, the one addressed to the Geneva council communicating the results of the Lausanne synod, and in a friendly way asking that its decisions be observed in Geneva,!® the other addressed to the preachers with the courteous request that they should accept what had happened, since the two churches were at one in the fundamentals of the faith. What they should now do was proclaim this externally by unity in the ceremonies, thus taking away any reason for calumny on the part of enemies of the gospel. They were asked to consider that the differences were of little significance and that no harm could be done to the truth if the Genevans accepted the articles — a consideration that Bern was obviously inclined to put forward one-sidedly in its own favor. The preachers were also implored to reach agreement and therefore not to wait for the general council that was being planned for Zurich.!6!

Farel and Calvin were next invited to attend a meeting of the council at which these two letters were read to them. It was Good Friday. Easter was at hand. The council made a peremptory demand that the Lord’s Supper should then be administered according to the Bern rite. Farel and Calvin replied with a request that the innovation be postponed until Pentecost and that in the meantime they should await a decision by a general synod. They also asked for time to consider, and then withdrew. In their absence the council resolved in any case to forbid the pulpit to the aged Courault. How far this move was directly connected to the Bern issue is not wholly clear. On Sunday Courault had preached from the pulpit that there was no longer any righteousness in Geneva and that what was right was being trodden under foot by the syndics. He had compared Geneva to a state of frogs and called the citizens rats who lived in the

159. Kampschulte, I, 310.
160. CO 10/II, 184f. (no. 106).
161. Ibid., 185 (no. 107).

B77

First. Genevan Stay

~*~ straw, a wild and unruly horde. He was thus forbidden to preach on pain of imprisonment. At the same time the council decided to stand by its demand that at Easter the Lord’s Supper should be administered for the first time with wafers as at Bern. It also seems to have negotiated separately with one pastor who, as would be seen later, did not go along unconditionally with Calvin, Henry de la Mare, trying to arrange that if necessary he would take the place of the others. But this pastor refused, so that in the minutes we read that all three protested, Farel, Calvin, and Henry.!6 Obviously the council was determined but did not know quite what to do. When the bailiff was then sent to Farel and Calvin requesting a definitive answer, the unequivocal response was that they would neither preach nor give communion if the Bern ceremonies were adopted.

Who, then, did preach on the Saturday before Easter and was at once thrown into prison? The aged Courault! The battle had begun. Farel and Calvin, accompanied by all their secular supporters, at once came forward to protest the imprisonment of Courault and to call for the summoning of the Council of Two Hundred. The minutes said of the secular supporters that they had many strong things to say. One of them even declared that their friends would preach regardless, and an angry Farel, recalling his decisive role in the Reformation, went so far as to remind the rulers that without him they would not be sitting there at all! An attempt was made to make clear to the complainants that the arrest of Courault was not related to the eucharistic issue but had taken place because he had held the council in contempt. But the presence of the participants provided an opportunity to ask them again whether they would comply. They replied that they would do nothing but what God ordered them to do. The proceedings closed with a lively discussion whether bail would be accepted for the imprisoned Courault. The request was finally rejected on the ground that Courault was not a citizen of Geneva, and after one of the supporters of the preachers had stated threateningly that there were traitors in the city and that they were well known, the complainants left.!63 Strangely the council thought it advisable to send the bailiff a second time to the preachers with a further demand that they comply, and only when he naturally did not meet with any success did he tell Farel and Calvin that they were forbidden to preach the next day.164

162. €O 21, 224.
163. Ibid., 224f.
164. Ibid., 225.

It was a strange Easter Day for the people of Geneva and their pastors in 1538. During the night arquebus shots had again been repeatedly fired in front of Calvin’s door and the cry went up through the streets: Into the Rhone with the preachers! a sure sign that the government and the people were at one on this issue. At the last hour the Bernese envoy von Diesbach tried to persuade Calvin to yield. But it was too late. Both sides were now more sharply and intransigeantly determined than could have been intended or foreseen at Bern when the stone had first been set rolling. What had now happened had not, in fact, been what Bern had planned.

When the morning of Easter came, without any flinching, as though there were no official prohibition, as though one part of the Institutes had never been written, or rather, as though the last resort for which it finally provided had come, Farel and Calvin went to church with their supporters, prudently armed for the occasion, Calvin to St. Pierre cathedral, Farel to St. Gervais on the right bank of the Rhone. They mounted the pulpits and told the large crowds that assembled that for the time being they would no longer administer the Lord’s Supper in Geneva, not out of dislike for the disputed Bern rite, but because the situation in Geneva was obviously such that the sacred mystery could only be profaned and the supper eaten only to judgment. There followed a description of the then state of the city and its inhabitants that must have been extremely colorful, and in conclusion the preachers declared that never and nowhere could they recognize such a people as Christian or cast at their feet the supreme graces of Christianity. Growing murmuring on the part of the assembled congregations greeted this not very Easter message. Finally, the voices of the preachers threatened to be drowned out by the furious clamor, swords were drawn, and it was at the peril of their lives that the preachers had to be escorted back through the inflamed mobs to their own homes.!®© I have told you already how we are to explain such incidents in Calvin's life. He had a flair for the dramatic. When he wanted or did not want something, he loved to press things to a climax, signifying not merely by words but by meaningful actions what the issue was in a way that was quite unmistakable. We need not be surprised that the less the situation was in keeping with the NT the more forceful was the purpose and the more dramatic the action. That was Calvin.

The council was told what had happened. Its first concern was the

165. For this account cf. Kampschulte, I, 312f; Stahelin, I, 134ff£; CO 10/II, 190 (no. 110) and 205 (no. 121).

B52

remarkable one of making arrangements to replace the Lord’s Supper that had not been administered. It decided to hold it the next Sunday. Calvin's outlook had already made such an impact that in the last resort the eucharistic community was now the basis of the civic community. Even without Calvin, or in opposition to him, this basis of the state had to be secured. It was also decided to summon the Council of Two Hundred and the Conseil général and to leave any further decisions te them. Finally, Pastor Henry de la Mare, who, it was confidently thought, would not stand by Calvin through thick and thin, was asked to preach in the afternoon. From him, however, the council received the weak answer that Farel and Calvin had forbidden him to do so under pain of excommunication.!©6 He did not dare as yet to act as a strikebreaker.

The next day, April 22, the Council of Two Hundred was asked whether it would accept the Bern ceremonies and what should be done about the disobedience of Farel and Calvin. Should they be put in prison? the council asked, obviously uncertain because of the protest in the case of Courault. The Council of Two Hundred resolved to accept the ceremonies and to banish Farel and Calvin.!°7 The Conseil général agreed the following day but made the sentence of expulsion even more severe by stating that they must leave the city within three days. The bailiff who communicated the decision to the pastors came back with the report that Calvin had replied: “Well and good, if we were serving men, we would be poorly rewarded, but we serve a great Master who will reward us.”168 The two did not wait for the three days to expire but, no doubt in order to make a demonstration, packed and left at once the same day (April 23). The exalted mood in which they did so finds expression in Calvin's later preface to his commentary on the Psalms (31, 25): “On being violently ejected, I was more joyful than was fitting.” Due to his more timorous nature he was not really a match for events of that kind and he viewed the disaster as deliverance from a calling that did not suit him and as permission to retire to a life of private scholarship. Everything points to the fact that his conduct during those days was a kind of outbreak of enthusiasm.

But the rejoicing on the other side was just as great. A popular feast was celebrated, and Farel in particular was exposed to the city’s ridicule in

IGG COT 2256
167. Ibid., 226.
168. Ibid., 226f.

a kind of shrovetide masquerade.!6° On April 25 the aged Courault was released from prison and expelled like his colleagues. On the 26th a first hearing took place for the remaining pastors Jacques Bernard and Henry de la Mare. The council asked them whether it was not really according to God (selon Dieu) if brides were adorned on their wedding day, and they received the satisfactory answer that it was not against God (contre Dieu) but that the way their hair was done was a totally indifferent matter (tout égal).\/0 The new era of a more moderate Christianity had begun in Geneva.

We are now in a position to put our last question: What did Calvin have in mind when he consciously allowed his work to be wrecked over this question of the Bern ceremonies? In Lang’s biography of Calvin (p. 45) I find the judgment that the reformers’ attitude in this matter was both stupid and morally dubious, stupid since an unimportant practical issue of this kind was no proper occasion for the battle for great principles that in practical life always have to be brought to recognition in struggles about detailed requirements, and morally dubious because fidelity to principle does not rule out yielding in small and detailed matters.!7! There is some basis for this verdict in that Calvin later did not try to justify his attitude at this time.!72 This was right, for who would not be able to put against it all kinds of question marks regarding its wisdom or moral soundness? Nevertheless, I for my part would not make this kind of judgment. We might well ask whether unimportant practical matters do not often provide in fact the occasion for the battle for great principles, and whether, in so doing, they do not cease to be unimportant. We might also point out that even if fidelity to principle does not rule out yielding in matters of detail, it does not at any rate necessarily include it.

As regards the specific issue, we may also say that the whole question of the Bern ceremonies no doubt seems petty and unimportant to us because we no longer appreciate the power of symbolical thinking. In our thinking forms constantly detach themselves from content, images from things, appearances from essence, and in so doing form a second kingdom of truth that we like to call petty and unimportant. But I regard that not as progress but as a bad sign that we are perhaps approaching, as Spengler

169. Kampschulte, I, 313.
AO. (CO) Wl, DM,
7k thers, SYA, Ds
172. See below, 382 nn. 53f.

‘ First Genevan Stay

would have it, the fellaheen stage of culture that is characterized by insipid abstraction.!73 Calvin and his contemporaries thought in more fullblooded terms. |

In trying to look at the conflict from the standpoint of Bern and Geneva, we have noted already that in Calvin’s deviation from the Lutheran ceremonies of Bern his opponents had to see signs of a champion of a whole system of life that they found strange and suspect.: When the Bern council wrote to Farel and Calvin on April 15, 1538, that the matter was not of such great importance that it would damage the truth if the pastors were to yield, that was an effective rhetorical flourish; materially there stood behind it, however, a consideration that the people of Bern (and not just the Bern theologians) did not relate to their own standpoint.!74 No one ventured to argue this point seriously against Farel and Calvin because no one really thought that it had any cogency. Those who blame them today on the ground that the issue was small and unimportant take their stand on a reason that was then a mere flourish.

For Calvin, in fact, all these forms, without ceasing to be such, or ruling out the freedom that he fully recognized, represented content with an urgency that made it impossible for him to separate the two. How this was so, of course, we can gather only tentatively from his thinking elsewhere. As regards the four feasts, which were the main point at issue, his chief objection was biblical, but apart from that he must have seen the triumphant way in which the Middle Ages were always on the point of going too far toward making weekdays Sundays and the next world this world. Sunday is Sunday and heaven is heaven, and by God’s ordinance and command they are set at a fitting distance from us. Anything more comes of evil! [cf. Matt. 5:37]. His insight into the relation between God and the world shows us this. Again, in Calvin's eyes, and from the standpoint of his sacramental teaching, the baptismal font and eucharistic wafers of Bern looked like attempts to detach the matter of the sacrament from the earthly sphere of the sign, to come to the help of faith with direct vision, to weaken the paradox of the presence of the risen Lord by the Spirit with the bridge of things that quicken the imagination, to transform pilgrimage and promise into the bold depiction, however modest, of arrival and possession. Calvin did not want that, nor could he want it. Finally, the strange offense that he took at the Bern wedding adornment that the

173. Barth refers to O. Spengler’s Decline of the West (New York, 1926), 107ff. 174. See above, 357 and n. 161. ladies of Geneva so much coveted, apart from the rather amusing biblical reason,!7> was surely due, was it not, to his dislike for anything that might be seen as a demonstration of vivacity. Vivacity urgently needed to be disciplined, checked, held back. In no case must it be solemnly affirmed. In no case must it be linked to a religious and ecclesiastical action.

Naturally, different decisions in such matters might well be reached in all good faith, and Calvin himself declared that except on the subject of the feasts he could at a pinch yield. But with what wisdom or morality did he have to yield? Indeed, we might well ask finally whether he ought to yield when the demands of Bern were presented to him so plainly as the expression of a basic outlook that was opposed to his own, when he could see so plainly reasons of principle on his adversaries’ side. Mutatis mutandis, was the decision for him so different from that for Luther at Worms even if the fact that it was now a problem of ethics or conduct —those whom it suits may add an “only” here — meant that his gesture could not be such a magnificent one as that of Luther.

We cannot accuse Calvin of mere obstinacy. He was not just insisting on his own will (sic volo, sic iubeo).!”© He constantly insisted that the dispute ought to be settled by a general Swiss synod, that is, on an informed basis achieved by way of dialogue, not by self-will on the other side. In this respect he was unquestionably right. If he was obstinate it was only because he was given no reasons, or only the inadequate reason that he should yield because of a desire for external conformity. In the long run, however, this obstinacy was the proof of a greater freedom than would have been shown by a conciliatory approach. In people who know what they want and have the right to want what they know, conciliatoriness of that kind for no good reason is not usually what wisdom dictates.

But no matter how we look at all that in detail, we certainly cannot view Calvin's attitude in those critical days as a fixed and intrinsically meaningless proof of character. When he said that he served a great Master who would reward him,!77 he did not mean a fad that he was promoting or a system to which, once it was set up, he was feverishly attached, but a well-considered position in a living situation in which, taking into account all that might be said either way, he could not in the long run just as well say yes as no, but finally had to say no in spite of everything.

175. See above, 346f.

176. “Sic volo, sic jubeo; sit pro ratione voluntas,” Juvenal Satire 6.223. 177. See above, 360 n. 168.

One other thing that we must add is that often in explanation of Calvin’s attitude there has been appeal to the struggle for the formal principle of the church’s independence of the state. Calvin, it is stated, wanted to show the state plainly that the church would not allow interference of that kind.!78 I cannot accept this explanation. As I argued last time, Calvin’s opponents in Geneva, too, were not trying to establish the state’s authority over the church. To think that way is to introduce modern issues, I think, into a situation that knew nothing of a dispute of that kind. By his conduct Calvin did indeed offer a dramatic proof of the need for the church’s autonomy; but for him, like the authority of the state for his adversaries, this was a secondary issue and not the primary issue, an emergency measure when the parallelism of church and state that he envisioned in the /Institutes was painfully denied. It would not have occurred to Calvin to violate the majesty of the state even in matters of church policy, which included the ceremonies. Later, indeed, he showed that for him even the subtle questions involved in the doctrines of predestination and the Trinity were matters for the state as well as the church, to be referred to the council as well as the consistory.

If a conflict could arise between church and state, it was not because one or the other was going beyond its competence. What external affairs in Geneva were not within the competence of the church, what internal affairs were not within that of the state? The eucharistic community there constituted the civic community, and the civic community had to remind itself again and again that from the very first it was the eucharistic community. If conflict arose, it could be only because representatives of the one party or the other lost sight of,the common orientation. That in a given case this would be the civic community, the representatives of the state, was naturally the determinative insight for Calvin. But he did not make of this insight, in a _kind of papal whim, an a priori normative one, as is alleged against him.

Instead, when serious controversies arose, as in the cases of Bolsec and Servetus,!79 he urged that before deciding opinions should be sought from

178. Lang, 45; and see above, 351 n. 149.

179. The physician Hieronymys Bolsec (died ca. 1584/5) publicly criticized Calvin's doctrine of predestination-and_after debating with Calvin was expelled from Geneva in 1551. The magistrates sought the views of other Swiss churches during the course of the trial. Michael Servetus (15112-1553) was prosecuted at Calvin’s request on account of his antitrinitarian views. Opinions were sought from the other Protestant cantons. He was burned for heresy in 1553. Melanchthon expressly approved of the city’s action in a letter to Calvin, CO 14, 268f. other Reformed and even Lutheran spiritual and secular bodies. He appealed neither to his own intellect nor to his own exposition of scripture, but to the consensus of mind and exposition in Geneva on the one side and in Basel, Bern, Zurich, Strassburg, and even at times Wittenberg on the other, and always on the assumption that he would find in these places not only a church but also a state serving the same ends as the church.

In this first and most severe of all his conflicts he called for a general synod that would be an organ for the participating states as well as churches. His call meant that now that the parallelism between one church and state had been fatally disrupted restoration could be achieved by means of the intact parallelism of all the churches and all the states. It was not Calvin who acted violently and arbitrarily but the people of Bern and Geneva when they did not follow up this call, and in this regard the Genevans heedlessly went much further than Bern (and would be at once disowned by the latter, as we shall see) by thinking they could unilaterally restore the broken parallelism by simply expelling the obstinate preachers and sending them packing when they did not yield as Bern had obviously hoped they finally would.

On Bern’s view the council should no more enforce its own will than should Calvin. The prohibiting of the pastors from preaching was already an infringement, and Calvin and Farel were right not to dispense the Eucharist in either the Bern form or their own, but to withhold it, even if they did this provocatively. The situation that arose when the council banished those who resisted it and put strikebreakers in their place was from the outset an untenable one, for a church on this basis could not be regarded as a complete church by the other churches, nor was it thus regarded, so that the council had to reap what it had itself sown. It could not evade the consequences. Desperate though everything must have seemed at first, the rehabilitation of Calvin was from the very first inevitable unless the consensus of the national Protestant communities, which found such arbitrary actions intolerable, was to be totally rejected.

Let us go back to what took place. Our theme is the period between Calvin's expulsion from Geneva and his arrival in Strassburg. Naturally the enthusi-

1. In the MS the heading is in the margin. asm with which the reformers and the Genevans parted company was only one side of the matter. The other side was that the reformers had lost a battle. Calvin, who had avbetter view of things, understandably was the first to see that they could not leave it at that. First of all then, and more painfully than his opponents, he had to discover that it is easier to run a ship aground than to refloat it. He tells us in the commentary on the Psalms that he returned to his private studies with joy when he turned his back on Geneva.? Nevertheless, the broadly undertaken reformation of the faith and life of fifteen thousand people that he had initiated in Geneva, and that for the time being had been brought to a halt, had become so much a part of his own being, at least as much a part of him as his academic achievements and plans for the future, that he could not simply break free from it when he shook off from his feet the dust of this city that was so hard of hearing. Perhaps he thought of what he was now doing as a kind of mopping up and concluding of what lay in the past, but at any rate his next steps were not at all directed to the finding of a place somewhere to study, but rather, astonishingly enough, to the opening again of the gates of Geneva, which he had just left so dramatically and with such satisfaction.

Calvin in Bern3

He and Farel went — who would have expected it? — directly to the place which had set the stone rolling that caused the landslide, namely, to Bern. Here again we have proof of Calvin's sure political instinct. The rulers and pastors of Bern were not his friends. He knew that, as we have seen. But he guessed rightly that the way things had turned out could not be what Bern had planned or wanted if it had any grasp of the situation at all. If he, Calvin, aroused no sympathy in Bern due to what was seen there simply as his restless French radicalism, in the eyes of the people of Bern his adversaries had shown themselves equally at fault by their turbulent proceedings. No matter what ecclesiastical aims the people of Bern might have, they certainly could have no liking for crude and one-sided swing movements, and what one might expect from them would be an attempt to restore the equilibrium that had been disturbed. The Protestant cause in Geneva, where it was still so new, had clearly been severely compromised

2. COST, 26.

3. In the MS the heading is in the margin. by the ejection of the reformers, and it was now under threat again from Roman Catholicism. But on this cause, even though they would have preferred that it be prosecuted along different lines from those adopted by Calvin, there hung the interests of Bern in Vaud, and again the political status of Bern in the west, which was by no means finally secure against either France or Savoy, quite apart from the rather far-ranging plans that might well have been in the minds of the imperialists of Bern. Hence Calvin's strange plan of appealing to Bern for help was in the first instance the most perspicacious, even though things might finally turn out a little differently from what he had thought.

Immediately after their arrival in Bern Farel and Calvin presented a written complaint to the council there (Briefe, 110).4 In this complaint we see signs of the feverish indignation that they felt after the experiences of the past few days. They first complained of the imprisonment and treatment of the aged Courault. Then they tackled the charge made against them that they had acted like rebels and were opponents of ecclesiastical conformity with Bern. Both charges were false. They had never simply rejected this conformity but had merely insisted that consideration must be given to the way in which to achieve a true upbuilding of the church. An unworthy compromise had been proposed to them that involved the deposing of their colleague Courault in exchange for the council’s leaving the issue of the ceremonies to the synod. This would have meant for them acting against an express command of scripture, and conflict had thus ensued. According to their explicit declaration from the pulpits, their refusal to give communion was not because the Bern rite was to be used but because administering the mystery would have profaned it in view of the obvious moral and religious state of the city at the time. The Geneva council had never given them the chance to present their reasons either to it, to the Council of Two Hundred, or to the people; it had simply passed resolutions and acted. The council's aim was not to establish the Bern ceremonies but to expel the preachers.

The Geneva council would later complain that this document of the preachers contains many lies.> It may well be that in matters of detail (Courault? hatred?)° there are exaggerations and omissions. But in spite

4. CO 10/II, 188-90.

5. Ibid., 194f. (no. 113), dated 4.30.1538. The letter charges that what Farel and Calvin have said in their complaint is contre vérité.

6. The word given here as “hate” is hard to decipher. If correct, Barth must have had in mind CO 10/II, 189f. (no. 110).

‘ First Genevan Stay

of the fact that they were so incensed they were right in the main. On both sides the issue of the ceremonies was only the occasion for bringing to light more deep-seated differences.

I must now lead you through a period in Calvin’s life that was very active but that has little to offer the student by way of reward. One reason for this was that in keeping with the situation Calvin was less concerned with the future planning and promoting of his cause than with looking back at himself. It must have surprised Geneva when even before a week had passed after the ousting of the pastors a letter came from the Bern council that against all expectation, if it did not strenuously favor the banished preachers, did in fact criticize the attitude of Geneva. A copy of the complaint that Farel and Calvin had made the previous day was enclosed. The letter made three decisive points (Briefe, 109).” Bern states (1) that the whole process of expelling the preachers was a scandal and detrimental to the Christian religion (referring, of course, to the Protestant cause in the west); (2) that Bern’s demand in the matter of the ceremonies has been meant as an affectionate recommendation (de bonne affection) and not as an attempt to use force and pressure in things in which there has to be liberty (Bern had in fact categorical desires about how this liberty was to be exercised, and at the time of the banishment the envoy in Geneva, von Diesbach, had surprisingly taken no steps to tell the Genevans that they were misinterpreting what Bern wanted, though they were not then so exposed as not to be able honorably to retreat); and (3) that Bern found very disorderly and displeasing the harsh way in which Geneva had dealt with the preachers. Bern acted just as Calvin had expected. It took into account the fatal consequences abroad of what had been done, it adopted a broad view of the theological aspect, which meant disapproval of the lack of perspicacity in Geneva, and it strongly disliked the unruliness that the Genevans had displayed. The letter made no demands except that poor blind Courault be released from prison, and, as we know, this had already been done. Bern also requested that it be given the pleasure of seeing its points considered. Calvin could be well content with this result. It had now been insisted, as he expected, that there be a radical cooling down in Geneva.

Both Calvin and the Bern council were mistaken, however, if they thought that would happen. The letter certainly created astonishment in Geneva, for it was not what was expected, but it quickly became apparent

Fe COMOML 13878 that compliance with the wishes of Bern had not by a long way been the driving force behind the ousting of the preachers. The reply from the Geneva council, written at once the day the letter from Bern was received (April 30), is characterized above all by a total and by no means unintentional failure to understand what Bern was trying to do (Brief, 113).8 The reply does not go into the precise points made by Bern but acts as though it were a matter of refuting Calvin’s complaint; as though the fact of the violent breach between the council and the preachers were not the matter on which Bern wished to guide further reflection in Geneva; as though the concern of Bern were to make sure that the Lord’s Supper would now be administered according to the Bern rite and that there was a determination to live according to the Bern ceremonies. The main content of the reply, namely, a vivid description of the obstinacy with which Farel and Calvin had simply refused to accept the Bern ceremonies even though they had been lovingly (charitablement) asked to do so once, twice, three times, and more,’ completely misses the point because it forgot to answer Calvin’s charge that the preachers had been confronted with a fait accompli, to which they should say either yes or no, with no chance at all to state their case or to appeal to the synod. This omission can hardly be due to bungling or misunderstanding, for the Bern letter and Calvin’s complaint were written in good French and were clear enough. Geneva was clearly bent on going its own way either with or without Bern. Its will was stronger than the rulers of Bern had assumed. It had now to be seen whether these rulers were prepared to take further statesmanlike actions in the matter.

Zurich Synod, 4.28.1538'°

For the time being the reply from.Geneva was tabled. The court had primarily to be allowed to speak for whose decision Calvin had again and again appealed in Geneva, that is, the Swiss synod, which had assembled in Zurich on April 28. Once this decision had been reached specific demands could be made of Geneva that Bern had not made in its first letter. The complicated interplay of individual and general church and state authorities made this necessary. The synod, which was composed of

8. Ibid., 194f.
9. Ibid., 194.
10. In the MS the heading is in the margin.

First'Genevan Stay

a

both spiritual and secular delegates, had met in the presence of Bucer and Capito once again to discuss an answer to an extremely friendly and hopeful letter that*Luther had sent to the Reformed Swiss cantons on the matter of the Concordat.!! Once that was dealt with the Geneva affair was taken up.

Two documents in particular give us information about the proceedings (Briefe, 111f.).!2 First we have the fourteen articles in which Calvin stated his position, then we have the part of the minutes of the synod that states the position of the German Swiss churches. In the articles Calvin lists — I do not know what we should call them, whether the concessions he is inclined to make or the conditions he must insist on if he is to have any further part in the reformation in Geneva. The articles are a remarkable testimony to his complete inner constancy at that time. In spite of the external humiliations that it involved, the disaster had had no real effect on him inwardly. He speaks with the same considered but unhesitating singleness of mind and sense of purpose, with the same willingness to yield wherever he would and could, but also the same readiness to gain his way by hook or by crook where he would not and could not, as he had already shown before every court in the Caroli affair and as he had also shown in this conflict from the very first. Not incorrectly Kampschulte (316)! thinks that the articles must have aroused strange feelings in the assembly. What he was demanding after his defeat was more, he says, than the spiritual authority in any of the Swiss churches could give. At that time and later they could back Calvin, but they could not give him the help he wanted and expected until finally he knew best how in some way to help himself. In any case, there was no way to cause him any confusion as to what he thought he had to desire. He desired it the most strongly when he saw that he could least count on any help. But let us look more closely at these articles that lay at the heart of the discussion at the Zurich synod and that would also play an important role after it.

In article 1 Calvin declared himself ready to yield in the matter of the font if there were no other changes in the rite of baptism, that is, if it were to be administered during public worship and proper instruction on its significance were to be given each time from the pulpit. In my view, Calvin yields in order to stress the more forcefully in another way

11. WA B 8, 149-53, no. 3191, dated 12.1.1537.
12. CO 10/II, 190-93.
13. Kampschulte, vol. I.

$16 April to September 1538

the opposition to sacramentalism that really lay behind his initial obstinacy.

In article 2 he accepts the wafer required by Bern but adds that he does so on the condition that Bern will accept the Genevan custom of breaking the bread. Again, while on the one side apparently abandoning his antisacramentalism, on the other side he underlines the more forcefully his familiar understanding of the Lord’s Supper as a proclamation of the death of Christ that awakens and strengthens faith.

In article 3 he again yields a little regarding the four feasts. So be it, we will accept them, but those who wish to do so must be free to work as on a working day after hearing the sermon. It seems to me, then, that the command to work six days [Exod. 20:9] remains unbroken but that four of these working days each year begin with a festal sermon, after which individuals may work or not work as seems best to them.

Article 4 deals with the way in which the concessions are to be made. Through its envoys Bern must state that the customs in use in Geneva are not in the least displeasing to it and that it does not wish to see any change in them that might not be in accordance with biblical purity, but that its sole concern is for the unity and concord that might be better achieved with a uniformity

of rite. The preachers for their part are to preach on the freedom of ceremonies but then to give detailed reasons to the people for accepting uniformity. The church must be allowed its full freedom of judgment. With good reasons the state may express its own desires, but must not seek to overthrow that freedom. In the freedom that is retained for it, the church on its own judgment will accept the state’s desires when good reasons are advanced for them. Once again we have a masterly combination of concession and firmness.

Article 5 is typical of Calvin. It was an intolerable act of “barbarism and inhumanity” that in Geneva they were not given the chance to explain and justify their attitude. As a result they are now covered with opprobrium. Calvin could never tolerate having what he regarded as calumny heaped upon him without replying. He had an almost demonic need to explain and justify himself. He would usually track down any accusation that was made against him until he had dug it out by the roots. It was this need that brought such monstrous expansion to the later /Institutes and that made it a book we find hard to enjoy in many passages. What can we say about this need? We are confronted here by a strange phenomenon of his nature that primarily defies explanation. We suspect perhaps that between this need and the need to proclaim as loudly and con-

oe a

? First ‘Genevan Stay

sistently!4 as possible the total unworthiness and culpability of humanity there is some odd relationship of complementarity that we cannot explain in purely psychological terms. Here, then, was the first condition of a return to his charge at Geneva. He had to have the opportunity of saying all that he was unable to say before the break because he was not permitted to do sO.

Article 6 shows more plainly than those that precede that Calvin's mood was more one of offense than defense. If he was to go back to Geneva, then the discipline — the greatest rock of offense, as we know, that he had put in the way of the Genevans — had to be confirmed. If it were not, then all that had been achieved would be lost. He undoubtedly had in mind more than he was as yet prepared to say. What was absolutely essential was stated next.

According to article 7 the city must be divided into parishes, pastoral districts that would be assigned to the individual pastors. Article 8 then called for more pastors to match the population. Article 9 demanded a consistory to deal properly with excommunication. Article 10 dealt with the ecclesiastical institution of pastors by the laying on of hands and the need not to replace this totally by secular induction. (We see here provisions made for the emergency situation that experiences had already shown to be possible.) Article 11 asked Bern for its part to adjust to Calvin's Geneva in the two points raised in the next two articles: in more frequent communion (article 12), at least once a month if the custom of the early church could not be restored, and in the singing of the Psalms at worship (article 13). Finally (article 14), certain obscene songs and their tunes were to be forbidden so that in this matter the people of Geneva could no longer appeal to the liberty enjoyed at Bern.

In evaluating these articles note that although they are an appeal to the Swiss synod they are really a program that had been tested only in a few points in Geneva itself and that would be in the main points an unheard-of innovation in the places represented at Zurich. The situation was obviously this, that after Calvin’s expulsion, although no one had spoken of restoring him to Geneva, the synod had to decide whether something should be done along these lines. He himself acts as though his return were a foregone conclusion. He would in fact return, and it was only a matter of fixing the conditions on both sides. His position is subject to criticism at Geneva but first and foremost at Bern, and whether anything

14. Editorial emendation: The MS read anderen, nicht laut und beharrlich genug.

O72

$16 April to September 1538

can be done for him obviously depends finally on whether and how far he can and will yield. But he for his part seeks above all to make a defense, and in reality it is only incidentally that he refers to his concessions, and not without at once making his’counterdemands, proposing once again a consistory and monthly communion that Geneva had either tacitly or openly rejected, and finally putting to Bern four demands exactly equal in number to Bern’s own demands: breaking the eucharistic bread, monthly communion, singing of the Psalms, and the forbidding of immoral songs. Truly a most unusual course of events! We can really explain it only if we assume that Calvin was aiming in part to secure his return to Geneva in this way, but chiefly that he wanted to set up a sign again, that he wanted to give a demonstration of himself and his whole idea, even at the risk of setting himself in a strange light and achieving nothing, as did in fact happen in the first instance.

The impression he made on the German Swiss is best summed up in what their leader Bullinger said a few days later in a letter to von Wattenwil of Bern in which he was commending the cause of Farel and Calvin to him: “They are overzealous, but they are holy and learned men and much, I think, should be given them” (Briefe, 114).!> This evaluation of the two zealots could clearly be reversed: They are holy and learned men, but overzealous! Nor is it wholly clear which way the synod read the judgment. So far as we can tell, they read it for the most part in the second way. The minutes strikingly do not go along at all with the fourteen articles. They state that as a result of the division and unrest the church at “Jhannf” (Geneva) is in danger of perishing. The pastors had perhaps been too strict and the churches are now despoiled. We must have sympathy both with the pastors and with the church and in Christian love see to it that good-hearted Christians are not left destitute. Whether or not the pastors were formerly at fault or too strict, they were now ready to be directed.!¢ The minutes report all this as coming from Calvin and Farel. I cannot think that they did in fact talk that way. What we find there is obviously the view that the synod majority took of the matter and communicated to them. The statement is in too little keeping with what we know authentically of Calvin’s position at the time from the fourteen articles. And it fits in too well with the discussions and decisions of the synod itself. It was not only a matter of the church and preachers, the majority

15. CO 10/II, 195 (5.4.1538).

16. Ibid., 193 (no. 112).

. First’ Genevan Stay

said, but of many other good-hearted people in Geneva who might profit from these excellent men. It was thus resolved that a friendly recommendation be made to. the council at Geneva that it have patience with them, and that Bern be requested to send envoys to Geneva to urge this, and above all to make excuse for any errors on the part of the preachers, since the synod was convinced that their desire was to promote good Christian things. The synod also resolved that some of its own delegates should earnestly counsel the preachers to restrain their in some sense unfitting severity and cultivate Christian gentleness among this people that was as yet unedified.1!7