§18 Participation in German Colloquies

This side of Calvin’s stay in Strassburg is important because here for the first time we have external evidence of the European place occupied by Calvin as man and thinker. You can read in more than one book of the pedagogical significance of his experiences at this point.! They supposedly widened his outlook and horizon and directed his attention to the general European situation of Protestantism. I do not think this reading is right. Calvin was from the first a good European who did not take national boundaries seriously and never gave proof of any distinctively French or Genevan way of looking at things; who even in his student days had learned to know the German way; who then on his first visit to Strassburg, and especially in the vital dealings of Geneva with Bern, Basel, and Zurich,

MS. He originally wrote: “As one who for years has never preached without consulting Calvin’s commentaries I can finally do no more than bear witness that I have always found pleasure in this distinctive combination of historical and pneumatic exegesis even when... .”

24. Cf. Barth on Calvin as a model in the 1921 preface to his own Romans, and cf. above, 260 n. 10.

25. CO 10/II, 402f.

26. Ibid., 404. Barth follows the translation of Stahelin, I, 187 n**.

27. Barth had obviously not finished preparing his lecture here and simply sketched the outline in the MS. Cf. above, 241 n. 71.

1. Stahelin, I, 171; cf. Kampschulte, I, 323; and Lang, 49.

Strassburg Stay, 1538-1541

which were then regarded as Upper German cities, had long ago gained a better sense of this; who in his contacts with the cosmopolitan Bucer had long since come to be immersed in the complicated tangle of the Reformation movement as a whole; and who by the synthetic character of his first theological essay — we have seen how he tried to look at all sides and to bring all possibilities within his purview —had plainly enough manifested the religio-political universality of his purpose:

The plainest proof that he did have such a broad horizon seems to me to lie in the letters he wrote about the first colloquy to Farel,? for these are rich in acute comments on men and things and show that he was no novice on this stage. Kampschulte says about these letters that a native could not have given a better evaluation than this Frenchman who was not an expert on the Germans. His later accounts again do not sound like those of one who was gaining experience and learning new things. He judges too quickly for that. He almost sounds the charge. He understands only too well. He has to be there. He sees the importance of the matter, initially more so than later. He is zealous for the cause. But there is no sign of the industrious commitment of one who is a dilettante abroad and in affairs. On the contrary, he has seen through the magic. As a genuine cosmopolitan he realizes that people are the same everywhere, in Regensburg, Strassburg, or Geneva, and that it is,no more important or worthwhile to head large or even the largest companies, since everything depends on how this is done.

True universalists do not have to have their horizons broadened, and Calvin was such. He showed this by his participation in the German colloquies. For him the practical result of these was that he went back from the broader arena to the narrower, from Regensburg and Charles V to Geneva and the proximity of Peter Kunz of Bern. If he learned anything from the talks, it was by way of disillusionment, that is, something negative, the fact that European policies and religious policies that he himself would later distinctively pursue would move along different tracks from those in which he was participating there as a critical observer and reporter. After that he would not travel a great deal. He would not expect much from the conferences that were then so popular with their mass pronounce-

2. CO 10/II, 322-29 (no. 162) and 330-32 (no. 164). These letters to Farel tell of the experiences at Frankfurt February to April 1539, with Bucer from the middle of March. Cf. also Kampschulte, I, 329.

3. Kampschulte, I, 330: Barth puts geschah for Kampschulte’s geschiet. ments. He would seldom make any effort to work with princes and other secular powers, or indeed with any others among whom he would simply be one among the rest and compromise would be the only goal or the only means of making headway. Instead, without losing sight of the whole picture, indeed, just because he Kept it in view so firmly and without any illusions, he would form a center. He would position himself in relation to this center, which means essentially to himself, and from it he would radiate his influence, preferably indirectly by his writings, by the summons that he and Geneva issued, by his letters that he sent to influential people, so that the impact would be simply his own, which was as yet the case only to a small extent in Germany. Calvin's participation in the German colloquies was indeed important as regards his European relation, not as regards its origin, but as regards the way in which he would put it into effect.

We will first let the facts speak for themselves. Calvin's stay in Strassburg coincided with the time when Charles V, harassed by Francis I on the one side and the Turks on the other, had to try to come to an agreement with the Protestants in the empire. This was the final moment when things favored, humanly speaking, the Protestant cause in Germany. No less was at issue than behind the back of Rome, as it were, which was constantly postponing the promised general council, the achieving of a religious peace in Germany. Under pressure the emperor himself had made the overture, so that no matter what the form of the agreement might be, it would be a basic victory for the Reformation. Typical was a scene at the Worms colloquy in December 1540, of which Calvin reports in triumph that the papal nuncio was not allowed a place of privilege but was seated with all the rest of the delegates; that even Roman Catholics avoided making mention of the pope; and that the nuncio had to suffer the defeat of alone baring his head when he himself referred to the holy father, whereas all the delegates did so when the name of the emperor was mentioned.

Calvin knew how to stress and exploit this angle of Germany versus Rome in a work against Cardinal Farnese published anonymously in March 1541, in which, addressing the Germans in such terms as “we Germans” and “our Germany”> — terms, Kampschulte feels, that the German nation had not heard since the days of Hutten (I, 335) — he

AKO i, 138 (no. 268), Dec. 1540.

5. CO 5, 461-508; for the terms, see CO 5, 507.

Strassburg Stay, 1538-1541

issued a warning to the papal mercenaries among them who were traitors to the fatherland, and defended the right of the Germans not to wait any longer for the council but to protect themselves by their own peaceful negotiations. This: was perhaps one of the rare cases when a Frenchman could speak along the lines of German nationalism. Calvin’s own true aim was naturally not to be found along such lines, but he did want to strengthen German Protestantism and therefore indirectly the whole Protestant cause. He had proved this the previous summer at Hagenau, where he had zealously appealed for an alliance between the German Protestants and Francis I against the emperor, and for this reason was the recipient of many compliments from Margaret of Angouléme, the king's sister, in a letter she sent him.® Nevertheless, the strengthening of German Protestantism was primary for Calvin, and nowhere in his letters had he more bitter complaints than when he spoke about the indecisiveness and disunity of the German princes and yet the skill with which they could handle the papal legates and assert themselves,’ two factors that together were finally hampering the formation of a national outlook. We need not be incensed as Kampschulte was that Calvin’s plan was to play off Germany against Rome and France against Germany, or at least against the emperor.® His true cause was neither the French nor the German cause, but the Protestant cause, and it was so to a degree of impartiality found in hardly any other theologian, corresponding exactly to the policy that the internationally oriented adversary in Rome was following. If the aim was to advance the Protestant cause on the stage of global politics, no way of doing it was more shrewd that that which Calvin had in view.

But I will now take things as they come. The series of discussions began in Frankfurt at the end of February 1539 with a conference of Protestant delegates alone.? Calvin had an unofficial role as a companion of Bucer. Incredibly quickly, as we have said, and without knowing German, he gained detailed information about the new world into which he had now stepped, and in conversations with the statesmen and theologians present he tried to work chiefly in two directions, first, to unite Protestants, to concentrate their forces, and to play down their differences, then to secure help for the oppressed Protestants in France. He first advocated an

6. CO 11, 62 (no. 226).
7. Cf. ibid., 178f. (no. 290).
8. Kampschulte, I, 331-35.

9. CO 10/II, 322, 9 (no. 162); also Stahelin, I, 230ff.; and Kampschulte, I, 328ff. alliance between the German Protestants and Francis I by which he hoped to gain a breathing space for those who were under persecution in his own country. But he found no great hearing for this proposal. He thus worked the more energetically at first to achieve the primary goal. He wrote with obvious irritation about the Duke of Wiirttemberg, who at that time preferred to go hunting instead of attending meetings that might decide what would happen to his state and perhaps to his own head.!9 Everything that seemed to give material or moral strength to the Schmalkald League interested Calvin and gave him pleasure. If he had had there the influence that Luther had and did not use, things might have turned out very differently! In Frankfurt — and this was a subsidiary aim of his going there — he met Melanchthon for the first time, and although he saw his weaknesses, he quickly came to a remarkably good understanding with him. There thus arose the friendship between the two, cultivated though it was more diligently by Calvin than by Melanchthon, that would last until the death of the latter.!! It was undoubtedly their common origin in Humanism that linked them at first, but also perhaps the need to complement one another that two very different people so often have. As we know, Melanchthon before his death became almost a martyr to his crypto-Calvinism. It would be a worthwhile study to examine the relation between the two more closely.

The commencement of the more polemical colloquies had to wait a year, but at last in June and July 1540 a conference took place at Hagenau. The Roman Catholic delegation was so weak, however, that no really important decisions could be reached. The Roman party was clearly trying to gain time so as to prevent the achieving of any agreement, or even the discussion of essential questions, without papal participation. Here again Calvin called for vigorous action on the part of the Protestant states with the cooperation of Francis I. The pope and the emperor were simply biding their time until they could attack with force.!2 The result of Hagenau was the calling of a fresh conference at Worms, which was opened in October 1540 and lasted until January 1541. Calvin now took part officially as the representative of the dukes of Liineburg,!> at first gladly, but quickly

10. CO 10/II, 326.

11. Stahelin, I, 230ff., 237ff.

12. CO 11, 50ff. (no. 221) to Farel, 6.21.1540; and 64-67 (no. 228) to du Tailly, 7.28.1540; cf. also Kampschulte, I, 330f.

13. Kampschulte, I, 332.

oo7

Strassburg Stay, 1538-1541

enough disillusioned by the delaying tactics of the Roman party, which endlessly raised questions of form and procedure. From this time onward Calvin's letters to Farel become increasingly morose. On the only decisive issue discussed, that of original sin, the Roman Catholics were ready to compromise, for in this matter they were not agreed among themselves — “it was remarkable how noisily they wrangled among themselves over it” — 14 but they were victorious as regards their main objective of obstructing any kind of binding agreement. It is not surprising that Calvin, who almost died of impatience, had no great desire to take part any further when it was resolved to continue the talks in connection with the Diet of Regensburg. At first he refused to go there, but Melanchthon in particular summoned him to do so, and thus, most unwillingly, he went (invitissime Ratisponam trahor).'

The proceedings began on March 10, 1541. In the short intervening time Calvin had written the polemical work against Farnese under the name of Eusebius Pamphilius (5, 461ff.).!° This work simply shows how different would have been the caliber and tempo of the action he favored from what he was now —a Prometheus bound — permitted to do. At the very beginning of the Diet Calvin, along with the other Protestants, had had to sign the Augsburg Confession, for the Roman Catholics would hold conversations only with its adherents. !7‘The version was the /nvariata, that is, that which was least favorable to Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper.!8 But how could he not sign? He had already persuaded himself at Frankfurt that its author thought in the main essentially as he himself did. The anti-Calvinist reading that the relevant article would be given later was not as yet to hand. For Calvin only the existence of the Variata made the J/nvariata the shibboleth of an exclusive Lutheranism that it became.

At last in Regensburg serious discussions began between the Roman

14. CO 11, 138 (no. 268).

15. Ibid., 156 (no. 277) to Farel. Following Kampschulte, I, 334 n. 1, Barth has invitissime for invitissimus.

16. See above, 395 n. 5.

17. Stahelin, I, 234.

18. See above, 182 n. 88. We cannot say for certain which version Calvin signed. In favor of the Jnvariata cf. CO 15, 336; in favor of the Variata, 16, 430. Stahelin calls the question one we cannot answer for sure, and three years later Barth himself opted for the Variata; see Theology and Church (1st German ed. Munich, 1928; ET New York, 1962), WA

Catholics Eck, Gropper, and Julius of Pflug on the one side and the Protestants Bucer, Melanchthon, and Pistorius on the other.!9 Calvin's initial pleasure was dampened by the admission, in spite of every protest, of the papal legates Contarini and Morone and by the presence of the emperor, which from the outset weighed down the scales decisively in favor of the adversaries.20 Nor could he be pleased that the Evangelicals were much too conciliatory and in this way, as he saw it, showed their weakness. On the basis of Augustine an agreed formula was reached on original sin and even on justification.2! But when an attempt was made to take up the questions of the church and especially transubstantiation, the talks collapsed, to Calvin's no little satisfaction.22 For a long time he had been listening skeptically. And when Eck, to his sorrow, did not die as the result of an assault (“the world does not yet deserve to be rid of this brute”),23 and things threatened to drag on forever, the patience he had been showing finally gave out, and he left prematurely on June 15. Undoubtedly negotiations for his return to Geneva played a part in his departure. But it was also in keeping with the mood and viewpoint that had increasingly become his relative to the whole business. He no longer expected anything to be achieved by these efforts.

In this affair, we may quietly admit, Calvin was totally isolated. This must be our starting point, I think, if we are to arrive at any understanding. The way in which he constantly felt himself impelled to open his heart in long and detailed letters to Farel, all of them full of irony and concern, tells us that more than any other theologian there he found himself a stranger who stood alone. Nor was that simply because he was French. I can think of no instance when, as he might so easily have done, he broke out in sighs or scorn at the foreign way things were done. It was what he wanted and was pursuing that isolated him even from his German friends, even from Bucer and Melanchthon. He was isolated in his aims and also in his assessment of things. At the first, and on all sides, the Protestant faction valued him and respected him, but they saw things with different eyes and they were thus separated from him as by a glass partition. This is what irritated him at certain times, as though he would like to ask them why they wanted him in their game when their aims were quite different.

19. Cf. CO 11, 203 (no. 302) to Farel, 4.24.1541.
20. Kampschulte, I, 334-36.
21. CO 11, 215 (no. 308) to Farel, 5.11.1541.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 217f. (no. 309) to Farel, 5.12.1541.

ooD

Strassburg. Stay, 1538-1541

The second related fact was what we might quietly call his total lack of success or influence. He entered into the discussions with his renowned ‘conceptual sharpness — we have already referred to what he had to say about justification and sanctification at Regensburg’4 — and he participated strongly in private talks, some of them with Roman Catholics. In general, however, the course of the whole colloquy would hardly have been different at any point if this stranger, who would later be so influential, had not been there. The only palpable impact he made that calls for mention is that he did perhaps do something to check Melanchthon’s tendency to yield and Bucer’s to compromise, that is, to rein in the far too conciliatory spirit that the two showed in their different ways.”

In both his isolation and his lack of influence Calvin may be compared only with the one Protestant contemporary who held aloof from the whole affair and who in his own way also viewed it critically, namely, Luther. Typically, of course, Calvin wanted precisely what Luther wanted least, namely, the promotion of Protestantism with the help of political combinations. One can hardly imagine any sharper antithesis to Luther's style than the game Calvin wanted to play with France, Rome, and Germany. But the extremes met. In spite of his greater independence and distinctiveness, or perhaps because of them, Calvin was a more faithful theological disciple of Luther than Bucer or Melanchthon, and for that reason his political stance was in its result (i.e., in that isolation and lack of influence) much closer to that of Luther than the stances of the other two, who, without Calvin's resolve upon political action, but with a zeal for compromise, actually did much more to politicize the gospel than did Calvin, who with ‘all his grandiose political schemes had so consistent a concern for the purity of the cause that he damaged his influence.

Then as later we may perhaps describe Calvin's attitude in world politics as one of soberness or objectivity. We saw earlier that his tendency to keep the distance between heaven and earth gave him an inner freedom to tread the more surely and resolutely on earth. He did not act politically as an enthusiast. He was not swayed by religious feelings. As he saw it, he simply acted in obedience. The kingdom of Christ has also an earthly side that we must differentiate from the heavenly. We have to proceed realistically on this side. A game of chess is in order in relation to it. The total lack of any confusion between the visible and the invisible enabled Calvin

24. Cf. 246 n. 4, though the reference is to Worms.

25. Cf. Kampschulte, I, 337.

$18 Participation in German Colloquies

to look calmly at the visible as such in all its distinctiveness, to see the Protestant cause as a related complex with its own needs face-to-face with the Roman Catholic adversary and the states involved. He wanted to be a champion of this cause, or, if he was that already, he wanted to be it more truly and zealously. Here is the explanation of the earnestness with which he gave himself to the task and the skill that he showed in doing so. His very lack of success, and the subsequent need to develop his own political style, showed that his soberness had less of an earthly origin that it might seem to have at first glance.

We see Calvin’s soberness and objectivity especially in the three motifs that finally characterize all that he had to say on this subject. First, he sees European Protestantism as a whole, more so than any of the German Protestants. If there was to be Protestant political action, then, following the example of the adversary, it could be only from a universal and not a German standpoint, the national standpoint being only a means to the end. We may lament when we find the national standpoint primary for someone, but we then have to consider what we are really after. Calvin at least knew that. Second, Calvin had an emphatic and active concern to promote Protestant unity. At all costs he wanted to stay above the Protestant split in Germany. This is why he inclined so strongly to Melanchthon. But his letters to Switzerland also show how zealously concerned he was to urge his friends there to steer clear of Swiss eccentricity, to reconcile themselves to the styles of Bucer and Luther, to stop making so much of Zwingli.26 Calvin was not aiming to set up any Calvinism, though he might easily have done so. Third, we see an aversion to the zeal of others to reach a modus vivendi. The aim must be not to make peace with Roman Catholics but to clear the way for the cause of Protestantism. Calvin was surely in no sense a middleman when he could dryly write that the first principle of Roman Catholic theology is that there is no God and the second that Christianity is a swindle, from which two all the rest follow.?7 Precisely at this point we see that Calvin's realism, though it took its own path, was no different from that of Luther but totally different from the weak bartering of Bucer and Melanchthon.

The result for Calvin, as we have said, was disillusionment. Protestants as they were were not for now any use on the field of world politics. They were no match for the opponent. They were good people, but they

26. CO 11, 24 (no. 211) to Farel, 2.26.1540.

27. CO 5, 654; cf. Kampschulte, I, 336. ss Strassbur¢ Stay, 1538-1541

had too little knowledge of what they wanted, they vacillated too weakly between different standpoints, they were not outstanding people. A secondary result of this whole period was that Calvin gained information about the conditions of German Protestantism in particular. He objected to three specific things in it: its lack of religious discipline, its form of worship, which had been too little purified and was too Judaizing, and its dependence on the different leaders.?8 At all these points something better had to be done. An active and superior shock force was needed. It was with that resolve that Calvin left Regensburg and went for the second time to Geneva. The confirmation of his own most inward view that the German colloquies gave him was no mean thing. We may thus say that this episode was of decisive significance for him in his life.