§15 Conflicts (part 1 of 4)

We have seen that the reformation program and its execution in Geneva led to a crisis in Calvin’s relation to those outside. It might seem to us that the knot had been tied tightly enough already to bring on disaster. But in reality we have as yet learned to know only one of the lines that led to the fatal end and the happy new beginning. Apart from the program of reform three great concerns filled and occupied Calvin at this time and finally produced, like clouds, that great storm. First, he was engaged in conflict with the Anabaptists, second with Dr. Peter Caroli, and finally with the leaders of church and state in Bern. The first two of these battles contributed only indirectly to the 1538 disaster, but indirectly they did so very powerfully. The third was decisive in precipitating it. Neither the question of the confession, nor that of the church discipline, nor the agitation of the Anabaptists, nor the accusations of Caroli, nor all of these combined could probably have brought about Calvin’s downfall. What actually brought it about was the most uninteresting and earthly or at any rate nontheological intervention of the republic of Bern in his affairs. In a secondary matter Bern obstinately insisted on its bond! and opposed both the view and the purpose of Calvin, a second time decisively for Geneva’s further history. It was around this event that the other difficulties that beset Calvin crystallized and this period in his life came to a sudden close. There was as a result something almost mathematical in the way all this had to come about as it did, but when it did, it seemed to do so by chance, by surprise, giving us a strange and clear example of the way in which, at turning points in history, that which is absolutely puzzling and unique and irrational will finally speak the decisive word amid all that runs at all points on foreseeable and understandable lines.

Anabaptists

On March 9, 1537, when Farel and Calvin were hard at work on their program, two Dutchmen were brought before the council, Hermann von Liittich and André Bénoit, with the request that they might be allowed to dispute with the preachers. They came to be known as Catabaptists,2 probably more in perplexity than because there was any exact knowledge of their purpose. From what took place we gain little clarity concerning their teaching. The only certain thing seems to be that they were mystics who toned down all church dogma and reshaped it into a comprehensive theory of a natural deification of humanity and a realistically conceived redemption through the implanting of the Spirit of God released in Christ’s death and resurrection.? That at least was the kind of mystical doctrine then proceeding from the Netherlands. It could come in two forms and might do so even in the same advocates, the one form ascetic, the other libertinistic. Those who combated it in the church might at will regard it as a serious teaching that, however, erroneously rejected culture, state, and church, and so on, or as a frivolous teaching that fanatics who preached the liberty of the flesh espoused. At a later date, in the 1540s, when he ran into this type of influence again, Calvin opted for the second possibility, and by using the label Libertines for the Enthusiasts was able to hit at two enemies at the same time, the foreign preachers on the one hand and on the other hand his foes at home, who were not, of course, mystics, but who for obvious reasons supported in part the doctrine of the liberty of the flesh.4 Calvin’s right to use the term “Libertines” for the Dutchmen has recently (ZKG 40, 83ff.) been contested by K. Müller on the basis of a thorough investigation of their writings.» Probably his objection to the Catabaptists in 1537 was not of that type. From the popularity of that

1. Cf. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, act 4, scene 1: “I would have my bond.” 2CO 21,208.

3. Cf. K. Miiller, “Calvin und die Libertiner,” ZKG 40 (1922), 83ff., esp. 85, also 97 with reference to the theology of the mystic Antoine Pocque.

4. Cf. the two works of Calvin in 1544 and 1545, CO 7, 49f. and 149ff.

5. See above, n. 3. argument we may almost conclude that it might be found in some degree in the records. Yet there is no evidence for it, and we are left with the impression that the authorities followed the two-day disputation without much understanding of it. Yet we also have no evidence of ascetic teaching.

We may thus suppose that the issue was instead the basic theological view of the foreigners, which, as is possible, they might well have asserted provisionally as such without working out the implications either the one way or the other. It is the great beauty of mysticism that we can always leave it open whether we turn to seriousness or frivolity. We remember, of course, that this basic mystical view was an old acquaintance of Calvin's from the days of his Psychopannychia, which still lay unpublished on his desk.” Since Calvin published this work in 1542 in the same form in which he had written it in 1534, might it not be that the form in which he met the Anabaptist opponents was the same as he had in view then, so that it was for this reason that he would now publish the older work that Capito had earlier called inopportune? And since his foe in this work was Quietist mysticism, might we not conclude that the people who were now trespassing in his not yet fully laid out garden were Quietists of the same kind? It need hardly be said that they were an unwelcome disruption at the very moment when Calvin was engaged in establishing the quite nonmystical parallelism between the national community and the eucharistic community.

The conduct of the council gives us the impression that they were definitely hostile to the alien prophets, though not without some fear of them. The foreigners had obviously gained a following in the city and were told to put forward articles for disputation. Nevertheless, the council thought it dangerous to hold the disputation publicly, and it was not to deal with all their articles but only with the question of the priesthood (“laffaire des prétres”).8 Parel in particular did not agree to the exclusion of the public from the disputation, and so, contrary to the real view of the council, a two-day disputation took place in the Cours de Rive church. Thus we read that on March 16 there was disputing all day at the Rive with two Catabaptists, and then disputing all day again on the 17th.? The

6. CO 21, 209Ff.
7. See 146ff. above.
SaCOIR208:
9. Ibid., 209.

council minutes tell us no more. The disputation must have been either too scholarly for the scribe, or too odd for him. Writing to Capito Farel says that the opponents were simple and ignorant.!0

On Sunday, March 18, the Council of Two Hundred convened and resolved (1) that the disputation should be broken off, since only diverse opinions were coming to light, the faith was coming out only flickeringly, and the attackers had not advanced sufficient reasons for their cause; (2) that all Anabaptist writings should be called in; (3) that Farel should be admonished not in the future to enter into any disputations with such people; and (4) that the Catabaptists should be told they had been refuted and should recant. But the latter were not of this view and replied to the council that they were subject to the will of God and would not recant. “Note,” added the council minutes touchingly, “that we first called them brothers, but since they did not agree with our church and would not pray with us, we no longer do so.”!! The following day, the 19th, it was resolved that if they refused to recant they should be permanently banned from the city. They again refused, appealing to conscience, and banishment ensued.!2 In spite of the assurances in Beza’s biography,!3 however, the reformers had not won a true or decisive victory, not merely because they had not convinced their opponents, but because an irritating number of followers still remained and even the clergy had been exposed to some slight infection. Whether there was an underground link to similar outbreaks with which Calvin had to contend in the 1540s we cannot say. The one sure thing is that the prestige of the reformers had suffered a blow through this affair, since it had been shown that people could have a form of piety different from that set forth in the official teaching of the church.

Caroli'4

Briefe, 10, nos. 48-78, 193; Adversus Petri Caroli Calumnias Defensio Nicolae Gallasti 1545; E. Bahler, “Petrus Caroli und J. Calvin,” Jahrbuch fir

10. Letter dated 5.5.1537 (no. 59), CO 10/II, 99.
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12. Ibid., 210.
13. Ibid., 22f., 126.

14. In the margin the MS has here some headings for greeting Prof. E. Geismar of Copenhagen, who visited the class 7.6.1922 during a summer tour in Germany. See the Swiss edition, 420 n. 1, for details.

Schweizerische Geschichte 1904; F. Trechsel, Die protestantischen Antitrinttarier vor Faustus Socin, 2 vols. (Heidelberg, 1839 and 1844); Hundeshagen, Die Conflikte des Zwinglianismus, Luthertums und Calvinismus in der Bernischen Landeskirche (Bern, 1842).1°

The Caroli affair was one of the threads in the web that finally resulted in Calvin’s downfall in Geneva and in the closing of this second period of his life. Its main significance for us, however, is that it sets a specific aspect of Calvin’s theology, namely, his relation to the dogma of the early church, in a sharp light. Along with the biographical result of the affair is the historical result that it gave to Calvin a fuller awareness that the Reformation was not an innovation but a new understanding and comprehending of ancient catholic truth. As we have seen from time to time, he was already conscious of this and had stated it. But the Caroli affair made this insight an important and urgent one. Instinctively he had always held aloof from the sectarianism that thinks the world begins today with its own knowledge of the truth, that thinks that with its better knowledge it can rush heedlessly past the thinking of those who were wise before us.!© The Caroli affair gave Calvin the unpleasant experience of hearing from a strange Protestant crank what all his Roman Catholic opponents were naturally thinking and stating, namely, that he, Calvin, was himself just an innovator and sectarian who had fallen away from the center of the church's tradition, namely, the dogma of the Trinity, to the heresy of Arius, to Unitarianism. It was a charge without foundation. The first edition of the Institutes, in chapter II on faith, contains already an express confession of the trinitarian dogma.!7 Article 31 of the 1536 Catechism also stated the doctrine in a way that is free from objection.18 Calvin had only to give prominence to these two passages, to put them in more emphatic and lively terms, and the charge of heresy, which he could not allow to go undefended when made by Roman Catholics as well, since if not refuted it made all his theology heretical, would be left hanging in the air.

Whether we take it favorably to Calvin or unfavorably, we must at

15. On Briefe see CO 10/II, 81ff, 408ff. On Defensio Gallasii see CO 7, 289ff. E. Bahler, “Petrus Caroli und Johann Calvin,” Jahrbuch fiir Schweizerische Geschichte 29 (Zurich, 1904), 41ff. On Hundeshagen see above, 97 n. 10.

16. Goethe's Faust, 1, 572f: “Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht.”

17. OS I, 70-75.

18. OS I, 396. any rate adopt as a motto for our account of the Caroli affair the words: “Something sticks.”!9 There was something about the charge, and it has symbolical significance inasmuch as its occurrence helped to bring about the break in the course of Calvin’s reforming work. In a singular way it was the great question mark that we have to put against Calvin’s whole reforming position and work if we are to evaluate them properly. In the best sense Calvin’s theology rested on a rationalistic and monotheistic premise, and therefore it presented a window to antitrinitarianism that was not absolutely closed. Those who move far in any one direction in theology need not be surprised or annoyed if they are confused sometimes with undesirable neighbors who move a little further in the same direction, even though they may have a perfectly good conscience that they do not think as these neighbors do.

Calvin did venture far afield either in stressing a final link between faith and knowledge or in stressing the strict unity of God. Both emphases had a necessary basis in his historical and systematic position. He could have a good conscience in this regard because he did in fact lift up knowledge on to the step of faith rather than bringing faith down to that of knowledge, and because Christ was clearly the heart and axis of his monotheism. Nevertheless, like all the contrasts in his theology, the knowledge of God and faith in revelation, the unity of God and the deity of Christ, were linked in an extremely sharp and even paradoxical way. It could easily happen that less dialectical thinking than his would seize on one side of the contrast, ignore the other side, make some inference or other, and either espouse or accuse it, in a way that was the more difficult for him because he could not easily show dialectically less gifted minds how unjustified it was but had to be content simply to affirm in a more or less successful way how abhorrent it was to him. Self-evidently Calvin did at times make it possible for othérs to exaggerate some aspect of his teaching. No theology can be so careful as to make it totally impossible for others at times to seize on its own words and twist what it says, and especially what it has not said, into a cord that it finds hard to unravel.

This is how it is with the relation between Calvinism and Unitarianism. It was naturally no accident that the latter enjoyed particular success in the Anglo-Saxon world. We cannot deny that in the history of dogma Calvinism’s neighbor on the left is Socinianism. That Calvin did in fact

19. Cf. Plutarch, De adulatore et amico 24: “Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret.”

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initially open the door to this neighbor and to the charges that resulted for himself may be seen from the strangely unemphatic and “loveless” position that the doctrine of the Trinity occupies in the Institutes and the catechism. It has an honorary place, but we cannot possibly maintain that his heart beat faster when he dealt with it. It began to do so only when there were those who dared to question his orthodoxy. He had in fact transposed the core of his trinitarian and christological dogma into the doctrine of the appropriation of salvation. It was there that the questions arose for him and the decisions were made. He could very well have done without the dogma if it were not there, not because he was against it but because its content was not for him an urgent concern. The same applied, of course, to all the reformers. Luther, for example, essentially honored the lofty mystery of the Triunity, tipped his cap to it in his own words,?° but then went back to his own questions. In Luther, however, great reverence for the church’s past acted as a cover, and Calvin definitely did not have any such reverence. In this regard, then, Luther never left any opening, any occasion for a charge such as that of Caroli.

As an authority or formula, the early church confessions meant little to Calvin, as he would say more than once in the Caroli controversy. Perhaps, as in Institutes, ch. II, he would find in the terms ousia and hypostasis, in which the dogma of the mystery of the deity was expressed, a useful and necessary clarification and definition of biblical truth, so that we are not to reject them,*! but he definitely did not have what we can call a real relation to these venerable teachings. He had this only from the moment when he was brought to awareness by Caroli’s accusation that it might almost seem as though he had something against them. He could say with a good conscience that he did not, but that he saw little in their favor is clear from the fact that he did not object when Farel’s confession of faith, after devoting only six lines to christology and not touching on the decisive points in the ancient dogma, was content merely to quote the Apostles’ Creed.?? This attitude of Calvin shows us that the questions and answers of the early church were for the Reformation only ballast in the sense that it had to work at first on its own new questions.

20. WA 37, 40, 16ff. Barth was using the rather different EA (2nd ed.), 9, 1 version, as in Loofs, Leitfaden, 4th ed., 751, and he seems to have followed Loofs in seeing disinterest in the Trinity in Luther.

ZAI OS. Wyk 22,08 17420;

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That could not mean, however, that the reformers wanted to separate themselves from the Christianity of past centuries and begin a new church history. Fundamentally they were much too strongly convinced that for all the differences of times and people there can ultimately be only one truth, only one question and answer, to be able rather arbitrarily, like the antitrinitarians, to sever the link with the dearly won classical results of the theological battles of the past even though they might not see at once in these results their own results won on a very different field. When the issue was put to them, they were naturally able and obliged to affirm these results, for severing the link that related their own enterprise to the church of the past would not only have compromised that enterprise outwardly — the reformers did not really fear this even though they took precautions against it — but above all would have made the enterprise meaningless in their own eyes because it would have entailed losing the connection with the real world to which the church belonged. The moment the dogma came into question as an expression of the truth-content of the catholic church, the Reformation had to abandon its indifference to it and affirm it. How far it was able truly to demonstrate the unity of old and new questions and answers, to build early theology into its own Reformation theology, was another matter. It was a difficult matter that gave rise to a full-scale scholasticism with whose emergence a dividing post was set up marking the end of reformation and the resumption of church history. In any case, however, the response had to be a positive one if the whole breadth of the Reformation conception as a relating of conservatism to Radicalism were to be preserved and the Reformation were not to go the way of the Enthusiasts.

That is the point of this moment in the life of Calvin. Here he plainly took on the feature in his physiognomy that made him the last reformer, the Hippocratic feature in the face of the man who closed the cycle that Luther had begun and ended it on a higher level than at the start. Yet it was not blind chance, as Doumergue thought, that even outwardly the picture of the aging Calvin with its unbearably sharply etched lines impressed itself upon the recollection of the nations rather than one of the more expressive portraits from the earlier years.23 What is that Calvin to us? No doubt he lived at one time. But the historical Calvin is the man with the uplifted finger, half teaching and half threatening, the man who laid hold of his racing spirit, checked it, and forced

23. E. Doumergue, Iconographie Calvinienne (Lausanne, 1909), 10.

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it backward, the man who on the far side of the antithesis of enthusiasm and traditionalism subjected himself to the law of historical continuity, and who now demands the same iron obedience of others. This Calvin — the Calvin who had Servetus burned — begins to emerge in the Caroli affair. It is not for nothing that in his letters on this affair he brings to light for the most part the less pleasant side of his character. It is not for nothing that this affair caused him to write his most crushing and from a human standpoint his most questionable polemical work, the Defensio Gallasii.24 The doctrine of the Trinity was the issue here as it would be sixteen years later in the Servetus trial. But then the accused became the accuser. Changes of that kind do not usually go unpunished.

Dr. Peter Caroli had become the first pastor in Lausanne in the fall of 1536. Like Farel he came intellectually from the Faber Stapulensis circle. He was born in 1480. He was thus almost thirty years older than Calvin and could easily have been his father.?> It is not without importance to note that two generations of the evangelical movement in France were here confronting one another. An older man, who might have been the father, had to understand and agree with and perhaps indeed follow a younger. Farel did that. But it is not the norm. If the younger are understood by the older, it is by their grandfathers rather than their fathers. When it is by the fathers, as it may often be, that is grace.

Caroli was a French evangelical like Bishop Roussel, with whom Calvin had crossed swords in the second open letter of his Italian journey. He belonged to the school whose conscience had been awakened by Luther but whose heart was still in the beautiful medieval liturgy, the school that was judicious but had no sharpness of insight, that was gentle and patient with others but especially with itself, trying to veil the antithesis of the old and the new ages rather than to grasp their unity, trying to glue them together and merge them by compromises and combinations. If people of his kind could be hostile, it had to be against a man like Calvin, who so coldly and unlovingly rejected their dearest concept, that of an evangelical Catholicism. As a rule they showed no hostility. They left anger and fury to those who would hate them for their many-sidedness.

It was the special individuality of Caroli, however, that he was a sharp proponent of what was basically not sharp. He was a recognized

24. See above, 310 n. 15.

25. Bahler, 44. scholar of his day. In 1529 he had published a fresh edition of Faber’s translation of the NT.?¢ He would undoubtedly have made an even greater name for himself in this direction if the Reformation had not partly deflected him and made him archurch agitator. I say “partly” because for all the instability that gives him the stamp of a restless spirit, we never see in him any real or deep unsettlement or disturbance. He had the posture and fervor to make him a reformer, but not the discipline or humility. I say, too, a “church agitator” because in what he undertook, apart from an overly strong interest in his own person, his obvious concern is the church, the visible church, which he seeks now in one place and now in another. What he did in these later years of his life makes this plain. For all his gruff individuality and self-will, he was more an exponent than a cipher, that is, an exponent of the instability with which innumerable scholars, even theological scholars, faced the questions that were put to them for decision at that time. No less than three times he turned his back officially on the Roman Catholic church and its theology, and no less than three times he returned to them. According to the accounts of his adversaries, in early years he had pandered both gladly and generously to both Bacchus and Venus. He certainly had a strongly developed vitality, a worldly streak, which might also manifest itself as a business sense. Yet although the reformers knew all this and could not stop it, they took him seriously. His youthful sins and instability of character first came to be portrayed and emphasized only when they had to defend themselves against him on other grounds. The age was familiar with two approaches. It could quietly and nonpharisaically overlook human failings but it could no less mercilessly attack the person publicly when occasion seemed to demand. At any rate, one would do well not to engage the man polemically from that angle.

He had his second departure from the church behind him when he came to Geneva in the spring of 1535 and in his own strange and ambivalent way took part in the decisive religious discussion of the time. To no obvious end he sought to mediate and would not sign the minutes of the disputation. He then went to Basel, where he became friendly with Erasmus and Karlstadt and especially Grynaeus and Myconius. It must have been then that the idea came to him that would bring him historical fame, the shabby idea that he would declare the stout Farel under suspicion of Arianism because in his Sommaire he had described Triunity as an incomprehensible mystery which he did not propose to deal with in this work that had practical piety as its

26. Ibid., 48f. aim.27 Caroli thus set Basel in an uproar and caused a question to be put to Farel, though we do not know what answer he sent.?8 In May 1536 Caroli became pastor in Neuenburg, and as such, having first married, he took part in the Lausanne Disputation. His appearance there must have made a good impression, at least among the Bernese who were present, and even the Genevans would later have no reason to complain of his conduct on this occasion, which they would certainly have done had there been any grounds. The result was that he was called to be the first pastor of Lausanne along with Pierre Viret, Calvin's intimate friend.??

But now strange signs began to appear. He seems to have viewed his position as first pastor in the Vaud capital as a kind of episcopate, and to have allowed himself to address his colleagues as though they were under his charge (Bahler, 59). Much more offensive was a further step that he took in January 1537 when his colleague Viret was in Geneva. To the great astonishment of the congregation he then read from the pulpit a number of theses defending prayers for the dead.3° He was not proposing a revival of the medieval idea of purgatory or of intercessions that would earn merit on behalf of its residents. But his position was certainly not in line with the customary caution of the reformers regarding anything to do with death or the dead. If my view is correct, Caroli (7, 328)3! had generally in mind a stressing of the neglected eschatological complex of ideas in the NT. If he had really taken this in bitter earnest, he would truly have made contact with Calvin on this issue. In the background of his plea for prayers for the dead stood the thought of the coming of God’s kingdom that would put an end to death. In expectation of this coming redemption all creation sighs and Christ intercedes for his community as high priest before God. Trusting in the divine promise, the community living on earth must stand in for the departed and beseech the Lord that he will soon cause the day of judgment and resurrection to dawn.3? But Caroli was not enough of a serious and disciplined religious thinker to realize that in no way may we send an intuition of such breadth flashing and sparkling forth only

27. Ibid., 71, quoting Farel’s 1537 or 1538 preface to a new edition of his Sommaire.

28. Bahler, 56.

29. Ibid., 56-58.

30. Ibid., GOf For the text of the theses cf. CO 7, 328f.; and cf. Farel to Calvin, 10.21.1539, CO 10/II, 408f. (no. 193).

ile (QO) Tg evAcy 32. Barth summarizes here Caroli’s eight conclusions; cf. theses 5 and 8 in CO 7, Sy): aphoristically and even with very worldly secondary purposes. What he himself put to the fore, to the jubilation of the people of Vaud who had only just been forced out of their traditional beliefs and practices, and to the irritation of all honest Protestants, especially his colleague Viret, was the curious, futile, and noxious dogma, as Calvin called it,33 of a renewal of an active relation of piety, such as we find in Romanism, between living believers and those that have gone before them.

On hearing the news, Viret hastened back as fast as possible to Lausanne.*4 Who knows, there might have been a peaceful and profitable discussion if Caroli had been a little greater than he was. There was in fact a real lacuna in Reformation thinking at this point, as we are now well aware for many reasons, more so than was the case then. But Caroli was Caroli, and he was ill-advised enough, in lively conversation with Viret but in some context unknown to us, to question again the trinitarian orthodoxy not now of Farel alone, but also of Viret and Calvin.

With the putting of this new question the eschatological question at once lost its prominence. Viret took the accusation seriously, reported it at once to Geneva, and in mid-February 1537 Calvin, no less aroused than Viret, went to Lausanne. We learn about the course and content of the discussions that now began mostly from Calvin's own records. Apart from their biographical and theological interest, which engaged us yesterday, these offer us a welcome insight into Calvin as a fighter according to his own depiction of himself. He would often be in similar situations later. It will repay us to give close attention to this first instance because it is typical of all that would follow (Defensio Gallasii, 7, 289ff.). Those who do not know how Calvin could conduct a quarrel do not know him at all. According to his own statement he saw in Caroli’s thrust (Briefe, 50)5° a threat to the foundations he had laid in his work thus far. He viewed the calumny as an intolerable stain that would bring shame on the gospel as a whole if not removed.

Lausanne Disputation, 2.17.1537© On February 17 an official disputation took place between Calvin, Viret, and Caroli in the presence of

33. Cf. CO 10/II, 82 (no. 49), Genevan to Bernese pastors, February, 1537; also 7.333; 10/Mx 85.

34. Barth has here the marginal reference 7, 314, but this cannot be CO 7, 314. Calvin tells of Viret’s return in CO 7, 334. For details see the Swiss edition.

35. CO 10/II, 85-87, Calvin to a Bern pastor, February, 1537.

36. In the MS this heading was in the margin.

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Bernese envoys then in Lausanne under the leadership of the city secretary Zyro (cf. Briefe, 49, 50, 74).37 The proceedings seem to have opened with the reading by Caroli of eight theses on prayers for the dead.38 Then Zyro asked him to listen to what his colleagues had to say about them. Caroli replied rather pompously that he would give an account of them to the Bern council and clergy (Briefe, 49). Calvin then spoke, and according to his own record he argued so victoriously that Caroli could make no response and suddenly switched to his real theme, furiously and without cause assailing Calvin and his followers with the charge of Arianism.3? The main point made, at least according to Calvin, was that in their writings Caroli’s opponents avoided the terms “Trinity” and “person.”4° In answer Calvin quoted two passages from his catechism, articles 31 and 33, which, as he saw it, gave material expression to an orthodox confession of the Triunity.4! It is true that the terms Caroli was asking for were not used. Calvin might justly have appealed to ch. 2 of the Institutes in which they were.42 He did not do this. Perhaps in Lausanne he had to maintain solidarity with Farel, who was especially severely attacked and threatened. Or perhaps he realized that the point of that passage in the Institutes was that the trinitarian confession, though possible and necessary, has no literal basis in scripture, and cannot be shown to be necessary in the context of the Reformation doctrine of salvation.43 Even less could he adduce the passage in the Genevan Confession, which was the main object of the attack. He did not occupy, then, a wholly favorable position.

Caroli, however, did not enter into a discussion of the passages in the catechism that Calvin quoted, but simply declared that we must ignore all new confessions and subscribe to the three early church symbols. Calvin

37. CO 10/II, 82-84, 85-87, 119-23.
38. See above, 316 nn. 31f.
39. CO 10/II, 83 (no. 49).
40. CO 7, 316, 318.
41. CO 10/II, 83 (no. 49).
42. See above, 310 n. 17.

43. The MS originally had a further sentence to the effect that Calvin probably realized that the two terms did not occur in the passage, but Barth struck this out and added the marginal note that this suggestion did not fit in view of 7, 316; he then struck this note out as well, adding instead that the terms are in the Institutes at 7, 316. In fact Calvin used “person” in his account of the doctrine of the Trinity (OS I, 72ff.) but used “Trinity” only in the short treatment of the Holy Spirit (85). The term is, of course, implicit in the passage I, 72. Barth’s marginal reference is to a passage in Adversus Petri Caroli calumnias, CO 7, 316f. (Note: BI 65 has “trinity of persons.”) and his followers were under suspicion in his eyes because they did not accept in particular the Athanasian Creed, which Calvin claimed not to have the support of any legitimate church (Briefe, 49), and in relation to which he stated that he was not accustomed to recognize anything as God’s Word, which he had not thoroughly tested (Briefe, 50).44 Caroli then made the dramatic declaration that Calvin was not worthy to be called a Christian (Briefe, 50).4

Calvin had clearly spoken somewhat audaciously to evoke this angry cry from Caroli. In a letter of justification to the Zurich clergy in August 1537 (Briefe, 74) he left out that utterance of his and contented himself with the offering of material reasons why he would not subscribe. As he put it, the only ground on which they avoided the use of “person” was that as Caroli put his demand its acceptance would have amounted to a confession of guilt. Requiring subscription to the symbols would have meant not only casting doubt on what they had built up with their ministry but actually overthrowing it radically. They did not want an example to be given in the church of the kind of tyranny that declares people heretics because they will not subscribe to what others put before them.*¢

But in the Defensio Gallasii, which was published in 1545 and addressed to a wider European public, we find no mention of this first Lausanne disputation even though a broad and explicit account of the affair as a whole is given. Calvin had “forgotten,” then, his own much too extreme sayings, and even the whole gathering, proof enough that he did not look back on them with any feelings of pleasure. The two letters from which I have quoted (49 and 50), which he obviously wrote immediately on his return from Lausanne, the one to the Bernese clergy, the other to a single unnamed Bernese minister, almost certainly Megander (the note in CR on 50 rests on a confusion!),4” show that he had two aims in view: first to gain support for himself in Bern against Caroli, and second to arrange if possible for a synod before Easter to settle the dispute once and for all. For no settlement had been reached at Lausanne. Calvin himself tells us that the envoys from Bern could see no outcome in view of the

44. CO 10/II, 83f., 86.
45. Ibid.
Ab CO} 1LO/ME 1208.

47. The editors of CO 10/II (85, n. 1) thought Megander was at the disputation and refer to a letter he wrote to Bullinger (88f.) containing an account of

it. Barth, however, argued on the basis of Calvin's account in CO 7, 310, that Megander was not in Lausanne until May 14. He believed the reference in 88f. was to the Bern Disputation on 2.28.1537.

ot)

< controversy regarding the authority of the Athanasian Creed, and he stated that a theological convention would have to decide the matter.

Bern Disputation, 2.28.1537* For the time being the convention was not held, but a second preliminary confrontation between the two parties took place on February 28, 1537, two weeks later, before the body that exercised spiritual jurisdiction in Bern, and that Calvin had asked to convene a synod (cf. Briefe, 59, Farel to Capito; and Defensio Gallasit, 7, 308ff,; also on this Briefe, 660, Viret to Calvin, 7.14.1545!).4 Things must have gone much the same in Bern as in Lausanne, but were much more dramatic. Caroli expanded on his view of prayers for the dead. Viret and Calvin refuted him, and they seem to have succeeded in getting a ruling that Caroli should in the future stop teaching his theory. But Viret and Calvin were also told not to boast of their triumph, that is, to say nothing about it. That was a typical Bern decision.

The disputation seemed to be at an end. In reality it had only just begun. For hardly had Caroli recovered from the way in which the judgment shook him — as Farel and Calvin tell the story he even shed tears — before he asked permission to make an announcement. For the glory of God and the honor of the government of Bern, he said, to promote the purity of the faith, the unity of the church, and public peace, and to fulfill his duty of venerating God, he had to tell them something on which he had for a long time kept silence and secrecy — after this invocation of all the gods some decisive novelty was naturally expected, but it turned out to be the same old thing: many preachers in Geneva and in Bern as well were tainted with the ungodliness of Arianism.>° To the general consternation a list was then produced and read of those whom Caroli had in mind. He offered no proofs, says Calvin, but was content to have spread abroad his poison and taken his revenge. It was a genuine stroke of the theater on Caroli’s part.

But then Calvin spoke, and he told the assembly, according to his own account, that Caroli had recently invited him to a meal since he was a beloved brother. He had also told him to send friendly greetings to Farel. He thus regarded all those whom he now called heretics as brothers, and said that he had always tried to cultivate fraternal fellowship with us.

48. In the MS the heading is in the margin.
49. CO 10/II, 97-106.
DON COS

“There was never any word about Arianism. Where, then, was the glory of God and the honor of the government of Bern? Where was the purity of the faith? Where the unity of the church? Either you are now making it clear that you lied to God and,men and are a culpable traitor to the truth, or it is evident to all of us that you have other reasons for your accusation than those you give. For with what kind of conscience could you twice celebrate the Lord’s Supper with your Arian colleagues? If you had even a single spark of true faith and zeal, would you have been able to tolerate it that your brothers and colleagues were denying the Son of God? How could you have dealings with those who were infected with so great ungodliness? But let us assume that your own zeal is not the issue. I ask you how you know that I am an Arian heretic. I recall that I have given open testimony to my faith and you will not easily find anyone who is more zealous than I am in upholding the deity of Christ. My works are in the hands of the people, and I have found that all orthodox churches approve of me and my beliefs. But you, have you ever documented your own faith except in drinking and tippling? That has been thus far the warfare in which you have engaged. With what right, then, do you accuse me of Arianism? I will purge myself of this insult and will not tolerate it that such unworthy suspicion should rest upon me.”*!

Note the refined technique that Calvin displays in this address. The old attorney has reawakened in the reformer. How cutting he is, how self-conscious, how sharply prepared to be in the right at any price, how ready not only to smash his foe intellectually but also to destroy him morally! And this was how Calvin portrayed himself eight years later, when the battles were long since over and another might perhaps have looked back on the stormy time with gentle irony. But Calvin at 36 was not prepared to take Calvin at 27 any the less seriously or to refrain even one jot or tittle from justifying him.

Caroli in response was forced to some extent to withdraw. He was not attacking Calvin’s writings, which were in fact orthodox, but Calvin had made common cause with Farel, of whom the same could not be said. But at once Calvin and Viret replied that they were prepared to vouch for the absentee’s innocence. The affair ended with fear and trembling for Caroli, said Calvin.52 The disputation concluded at this point. Calvin attained his wish in that Bern resolved to convene a synod, but against

51 Abid:, 309:

52. Ibid. his®3 desire it was put off until after Easter. For the rest it was clear that he did not meet with favor in Bern. We have a remarkable letter from Megander, one who soon enough would have to suffer much from Bern, addressed to Bullinger and dated March

8, 1537 (Briefe, 52), which is definitely not friendly at all to Calvin. Megander briefly describes the collision on the eschatological issue and writes that some of the French in the newly occupied territory (Vaud) are under suspicion of unorthodox teaching about Christ and the Trinity of persons. For this reason Calvin came to Bern and obstinately asked for a synod, which was denied him until after Easter. Be on the watch for how much work these bigoted and refractory Frenchmen (Galli illi superstitiosi ne dicam seditiost) will still cause us.>4

Crisis?> At this same period Farel received a most ungracious letter from the Bern council (Buhler, 69).5° The offense was that during the absence of Viret and Caroli he had gone from Geneva to Lausanne. It was surmised that he had done this to stir up feeling against Caroli. This greatly displeased Bern, and he was told to desist at once. His church was Geneva, and he should not meddle in the affairs of others. At the time relations between Bern and Caroli seem to have become increasingly friendly and the latter still had unbroken confidence in his cause. We can well understand why Calvin was pressing for further and clearer decisions.

Meanwhile the situation was made more complicated by the compromising emergence of a real antitrinitarian close to Calvin. This came in the person of a certain Claudius of Savoy (Trechsel, 56;57 Bahler, 73). Claudius was an unstable and volatile advocate of a mere humanity of Christ, the son of God naturally and in time, but not the eternal Son. He had been driven out of Bernese territory and went to Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg by way of Basel. Nowhere finding a welcome, he returned to his own home territory of Thonon, formerly in Savoy but now part of Bern. There he was trustingly received by the local pastor Fabri, a close friend of Calvin and Viret. On fresh instructions from Bern he went to Geneva to await the return of Calvin with a view to a disputation with

53. The MS had shren (“their”) here for seinen (“his”).
54. CO 10/II, 89.
55. In the MS this heading is in the margin.
56. Bahler, 69 n. 1, prints an extract from the letter.
57. Trechsel, vol. I.

him. In the interval Farel and the other pastors who had stayed behind worked on him so thoroughly that they succeeded in securing an orthodox confession of faith from him.

But these dealings of the Genevans with a suspected heretic, even though they led to his conversion, were obviously not calculated to make a favorable impression abroad. It all seemed to indicate that things were not well with the triumvirate Farel, Calvin, and Viret. I will quote two letters to prove this. On May 20 Myconius of Basel wrote to Bullinger to the effect that something would have to be done by learned men if these Genevans were trying to bring back the Arian heresy, as he had heard, or even worse the evil error of the Spaniard Servetus (Briefe, 60).58 During this whole period Myconius was a definite friend of Caroli and his cause. Even in July (Briefe, 72), when Caroli had become a Roman Catholic again, he could still write that he would have sworn that Caroli was a good man, whereas it was in a dissident spirit that those in Geneva and Lausanne refused to subscribe to the Athanasian Creed and thus seemed to cast doubt on belief in the Trinity (Briefe, 69).°? What those at a greater distance, with no knowledge of the details, thought of the way things were going in western Switzerland may be seen from a letter sent by Melanchthon to V. Dietrich on August 5, 1537, in which he said he had heard that an associate of Servetus was scattering the seed of samosatanic error and that frivolous people were paying so much attention to this new delirium as to hold a synod already to deal with it.©? Naturally there is here a confusion or intermingling of the causes of Caroli and Claudius, but we can still see that the reputation of the author of the /Institutes was damaged if he could be spoken of in that way. We must take all these considerations into account if we are to explain Calvin’s attitude. If we do so, we can at least understand, if not condone, his more than energetic response to Caroli. His life’s work was at stake when he defended himself so strongly against the attack of this man.

Lausanne Synod, 5.14.1537°! On May 14, 1537, the synod that Calvin had wanted for so long finally met in Lausanne. To know how it went we are almost totally dependent on Calvin’s own account in his Defensio

58. CO 10/II, 103.
SOnCO 10M m7heise
60. CR 3, 400 (no. 1599); cf. also Bahler, 91.
61. In the MS this heading is in the margin.

Gallasii (7, 310ff.). The synod convened in the Franciscan church and consisted of over one hundred pastors from the Vaud territories conquered by Bern and twenty from Neuenburg. The two pastors from the city of Bern, Megander and Kunz, presided, and the Bern government was represented by two council members, Rudolf von Graffenried and Nikolaus Zurkinden. The synod had the character of an inner Bern affair, with the Genevans Farel, Calvin, and Courault present only as guests. The antitrinitarian Claudius seems to have been there as well.

After the reading of a formal complaint drawn up by Caroli, Viret was asked to respond first. This type of opening shows something we might gather from Megander’s letter of March 8, namely, that in the trinitarian dispute the situation of Calvin’s party was not a favorable one subsequent to the February colloquies. The tension of the months in which Calvin and his friends were under formal complaint helps to explain the crushing force with which Calvin proceeded to reply to Caroli now, then to reply again eight years later, and then to attack Servetus later still. In no circumstances did he wish to see his life’s work exposed again to the peril under which it stood in the spring of 1537, when people were linking his name to that of Claudius of Savoy, and indeed confusing the two, as we learn from Melanchthon’s letter.

Viret made the following declaration in answer to Caroli’s charge: “When we confess the one God, then in the essence of the one Godhead we associate the Father with his eternal Word and the Spirit. We thus name God the Father in such a way that we proclaim the Son and his Spirit with the Father as the true and eternal God, but without confusing the Father with the Word or the Word with the Spirit. For we believe that the Son is other than the Father and the Spirit other than the Son, though there is only one divine essence. For this reason we say only of the Son, not of the Father or of the Spirit, that he became flesh, and thus that Christ is very God and very man. For at the time appointed for our redemption he took our flesh, and became participant in our humanity, in two natures that are united but not mingled.”®2

We see from this statement that good care was taken to retain the content of both the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian definition, to avoid Arianism on the one side and Sabellianism on the other, yet not to use — for reasons we saw last time — the terms that Caroli was demanding, namely, “Trinity” and “person.” The statement was a real work of

627C Ow, 310, theological craftsmanship. Caroli called the confession sparse and thin, too short, ambivalent, and scanty, and for his part he began to recite the Nicene Creed and then the Athanasian Creed, and to do so with such strange twisting of the body and shaking of the head, and in such a bellowing voice, that general laughter broke out. By an unhappy chance he also got stuck after the third clause of the Athanasian Creed, so that he was abruptly forced to abandon his declaiming of it.63 His obvious purpose was again to demand of Calvin’s party subscription to these ancient symbols, or express confession of them.

This moment of comedy turned the tide against Caroli. Calvin's moment had come. On the principle that attack is the best form of defense he opened a strong point-blank attack on the devilish and envious rage with which Caroli was daring to confuse the church, to halt the progress of the kingdom of Christ, and to tear down worthy men. Caroli, he said, has kindled strife regarding the nature of God and the distinction of persons in God. He himself would begin further back. He would ask Caroli whether he believed in one God at all. For he would maintain before God and men that there was no more faith in him than in a dog or a swine. The proof was that he was an Epicurean in lifestyle, as they all knew.

After this pithy introduction, which reminds us of the insults with which Homer’s heroes usually opened their battles, Calvin read an express confession upon which he had reached an agreement with his Genevan colleagues, since they could not afford to let this kind of affront rest upon them. As he put it, a confession of faith must be based on respect for the mystery of the divine majesty and therefore on the Word of God. It must not be affected in any way by what is pleasing to others. It must state the very truth of scripture itself, not according to the words but according to the sense. God is eternal, infinite, spiritual essence. As the one God he has his being of himself, and he has conferred being on his creatures. In this one essence of God we recognize Father, Son, and Spirit, not as three gods, nor as mere terms for his operations, but as three hypostases, subsistences, or modes of being that are not to be mixed with one another and that all lie in his essence. Thus in scripture the Son, too, is called Jehovah (Heb. 1 [vwv. 7ff.]), our life, light, salvation, righteousness, and sanctification, in whom we put our trust and on whom we set our hope.

63. Ibid., 310f.
64. Ibid., 311.
65. Ibid., 311f.

a2)

But this is practical knowledge, not idle speculation. That it has to do with being quickened and enlightened and saved and justified and sanctified makes it certain knowledge, a viewing and grasping of God very present to us. Similarly, the deity of the Spirit follows from the manner of his working on us, which we see to be divine.® It is in this context, Calvin is saying, that the doctrine of God as Father, Son, and Spirit is scriptural and that we accept it. (He again stubbornly and: in opposition to Caroli leaves out the terms “Trinity” and “person.”)

These concepts of Calvin that I have justypresented throw great light on the whole situation. Calvin was inclined to regard the Greek dogma as idle speculation in contrast to the practical knowledge that he himself thought he could gain from scripture, and it was only to the extent that the doctrine of the Trinity could be understood as practical knowledge that it seemed to him to be scriptural and acceptable. This evaluation of the Greek dogma, which was then original and necessary, has now become, especially under the influence of the view of dogmatic history inspired by Ritschl, one of the theological things that sparrows trill from the rooftops.°” I would advise you to treat it with great caution. When an age regards the statements of a previous age as idle speculation, in the first instance this is just an indication that it now has different problems, or rather the same problems in another form. Calvin might permit himself to suspect the serious religious thinking

of the 4th century

of

being idle speculation, but_this. evaluation was no more correct than. if we, as we might easily be tempted to do, were to. _permit_ ourselves to reject the the” contention that the Reformation doctrine of justification or predestination is practical knowledge. The contrast that Calvin made simply shows us how great was the curve in the path that came with the Reformation, so great that the stretch behind the reformers was no longer visible to them and they could no longer adjudge the thinking of that earlier period to be practical knowledge. Caroli had not gone round this curve. Insofar as he did any vital thinking at all, he did so on the path of the older problems, and what Calvin had to say about the God who is so present to us seemed to him to be idle speculation, a modern discovery, as one might say today.

66. Ibid., 312f.

67. Barth obviously has in mind Harnack’s thesis that early church dogma was a Hellenizing of Christianity (History of Dogma, I [New York, 1962], 47ff.), where the argument is that in the light of historical research we must see in the development of dogmatic Christianity a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the gospel.

In the last analysis not merely two different minds but two different dogmatic epochs were speaking past one another here.

Calvin upholds then — and as in the Jnstitures his scriptural proof lies chiefly in the baptismal formula — the belief that there is distinction in the Godhead, but he argues tHat this does not abolish the most simple unity, so that the Son is one God with the Father because he is in harmony with the Father in one Spirit, and the Spirit is in no way different from the Father and the Son because he is the Spirit of the Father and the Son.°8 Arius is expressly repudiated for contesting the eternal deity of the Son. Macedonius, the bishop of Constantinople who was deposed in 360, is repudiated because in Calvin's eyes he was responsible for the heresy of the Pneumatomachi, who sought to subordinate the Spirit to the Son. Finally, Sabellius is repudiated for abolishing the distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit.©

It should be noted in this regard that had Caroli been more acute he would have had to accuse Calvin and his party of Sabellianism rather than Arianism. On this front his offensive would have been more promising, for Calvin himself later found the equation of Christ and Jehovah, in spite of its biblical basis, rather surprising, and for this reason, in a way that is not entirely free from objection precisely in the most striking passages of his Lausanne confession, he omitted it in the Defensio Gallasii (7, 322; cf. 9, 708!).7° The reformers undoubtedly tended to stress the unity rather than the distinction in God, as we see plainly in Calvin. You probably are aware that on the last pages of his Christian Faith Schleiermacher counsels a serious weighing of the Sabellian solution in contrast to the Athanasian.”! Calvin did not go that far, but a more perspicacious adversary who advocated the Greek dogma could certainly have found it necessary to attack him on this side. Calvin himself could rightly feel immune to the charge of Arianism, for the Reformation approach, like that of the early church, found the deity of Christ to be self-evident, no matter what one might think of the authority of Athanasius. Just because so much depended for Calvin on the true and eternal deity of the Son

(CONG Bile
69. Ibid.
70. For the 1537 text cf. CO 9, 708; for the 1545 text, 7, 322.

71. The Christian Faith, §172, where Schleiermacher finds the NT unclear, views the Athanasian and Sabellian concepts as both valid and serving the same purpose, and asks whether the latter does not do so without entangling us in insoluble difficulties.

S27

(and not simply on rational grounds here!), he felt that he had to stress the unity more than the distinction. If he was an antitrinitarian — and if there are any who; feel confident enough to take this view in spite of his assurances, let them do so! — then it was certainly not as an Arian. Caroli’s accusing him of being both an Arian and a Sabellian at the same time was, of course, nonsensical. (In almost all the controversies of this kind Calvin had the good fortune to fight with opponents who put their case with astonishing ineptitude.)

A further section of the confession deals with the two natures in Christ. Calvin calls Christ prior to his incarnation the eternal Word before all time, begotten of the Father, true God, of one essence, power, and majesty with the Father, and therefore himself Jehovah, that is, the selfexistent one.’2 For if he is God, everything that is true of God is true of him, too. There can be no God of a second ranking for Calvin in spite of all the difficulties that arose for him here and in spite of the proximity to Sabellianism into which he brought himself. In calling Christ the Word, he adds, he does not have in mind the fleeting and dying voice of the oracles and prophecies given to the fathers, but, as he puts it with admirable clarity, the perpetual wisdom resident with God from which all oracles and prophecies derive. For the ancient prophets and others who imparted the truth of God to us spoke no less by the Spirit of Christ than the apostles.’3 As the incarnate Word Christ is both true God and true Man. The natures remain distinct, but are in mutual communication, so that we can predicate the qualities pertaining to each of the other. The church is redeemed by the blood of God, the Son of Man is in heaven.74 This is the familiar doctrine of the idiomata (“attributes”), and it was the part of the early teaching that Calvin found it necessary to appeal to most. He rejected the Marcionites, who in his view substituted a specter for Christ’s body; the Manichees, who spoke of a heavenly flesh of Christ; Apollinarius, who accorded to Christ only a half humanity; and Nestorius, who taught both a human and a divine Christ.75