1. Historical Background⤒🔗

The First Stay in Geneva←↰⤒🔗

Evangelical religion did not begin in Geneva with the advent of John Calvin. In fact, 'the saving power of the Gospel began to be abundantly manifested in Geneva from the time when Antoine Froment with much trepidation, opened a school there (1532)'. ¹Calvin's own long association with Geneva began one evening, four years later in July 1536, when he was forced to spend the night in the city due to prevailing war conditions. The Protestant faith had been formally adopted by Geneva on the 10th of August 1535 and the city was by that time not a part of the Swiss Confederation but independent — the Duke of Savoy and his relative the Roman bishop (known as the 'Prince') having been expelled. Calvin had only intended an overnight stop but providence deemed otherwise.

In his own illuminating account of the occasion in the preface to his Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Calvin describes how William Farel, having driven the last vestiges of Romanism from the city with Peter Viret, came to see him at the inn and threatened him with a curse of God on his future studies if he would not join him in the work which needed doing in Geneva. ²

The twenty-seven year old Calvin — the first edition of his Institutes having been published the previous year — had hoped simply to pursue his private studies but he was so 'stricken with terror' by Farel's seemingly prophetic threat that he immediately agreed. ³

The two men became firm allies: 'We had one heart and one soul', said Calvin of his relationship with this man who was twice his age and of completely dissimilar character.⁴By September, Calvin was appointed 'professor in sacred learning to the Church in Geneva' and by January the following year (1537) he had presented a draft of reforms he wished introduced concerning four areas: the Lord's Supper, singing in public worship, the religious instruction of children, and marriage.

However, in order to prevent unworthy partakers from approaching the Lord's Table, Calvin invoked the idea of specially appointed worthies in each district of the city who could report to ministers 'all in their neighbourhood who despise Christ Jesus by living in open sin'. ⁵If, after being warned, such people persisted in their lawlessness, they were to be excommunicated. This kind of policy, plus others, such as the requirement of each household to sign a confession of faith, were too overbearing for the Genevan population, part of which still had the painful memories of the pervasiveness of Rome, while many others had retained a secret allegiance to it. Accordingly, the popularity of Farel and Calvin declined in the city and at Easter 1538, they were dismissed from their posts and banished after the Council — containing newly elected magistrates opposed to Farel and Calvin — had tried to lord it over them concerning ceremonial practice.

It is most important to realise here that the state which Calvin attempted to set up in Geneva was based on twin concepts which had never before provided the foundation stones of earthly governmental principles: namely, the sovereignty of God and the fall of man.

Calvin's aim was therefore to, establish a theocracy in the sense of a Holy Commonwealth, a community in which every member should make the glory of God his sole concern.⁶

First, though, let us contemplate what kind of a Geneva it was that Calvin was seeking to replace with his theocracy. Church historian Philip Schaff describes the Geneva of the mid-sixteenth century and its inhabitants in the following manner:

The Genevese were a lighthearted, joyous people, fond of public amusements, dancing, singing, masquerades and revelries. Recklessness, gambling, drunkenness, adultery, blasphemy, and all sorts of vice abounded. Prostitution was sanctioned by the authority of the State, and superintended by a woman called the Reine de Bordel. The people were ignorant. The priest had taken no pains to instruct them, and had them a bad example.⁷

The annals of contemporary history even show that shortly before Calvin went to Geneva the monks and bishops were guilty of the most heinous crimes.⁸Such was the city into which came the reforming zeal of John Calvin. Six months after his Genevan banishment in September 1538(958), Calvin took up a pastorate in Strasbourg which, contrary to his expectations, was not to last for very long.

The Second Stay in Geneva←↰⤒🔗

On 22nd September 1540 the Council at Geneva — having undergone political changes — sent a deputation to Calvin begging him to return to his former home. The idea of this was extremely repugnant to him with its memories of the extreme antagonism which had been shown towards him during his previous stay in the city. In the Spring of the same year, he had said to Farel, having received a letter from his friend asking him to return to Geneva:

I would prefer a hundred other deaths to that cross, on which I should have to die a thousand times a day.⁹

However, after much agonising, Calvin did indeed return on the 13th September 1541. ¹⁰Immediately, he made his mark by drafting his famed Ecclesiastical Ordinances which were eventually to be ratified by the Council and which superseded his original draft reforms. These included the conservation of four ecclesiastical offices:

the pastors who are responsible for preaching the Word of God and administering the sacraments; second, the teaching elders, responsible for Christian education; third, the elders, who are to supervise every person's conduct, and fourth, the deacons, who are the social workers to care for the poor and to administer the hospital.¹¹

However, there were some key areas in which his proposals were not accepted. Calvin felt that the civil government should be under the rule of God working alongside the Church; but the civil authorities wanted the Church to be within their control, especially in matters of discipline and the choosing of pastors. But Calvin eventually won the day insofar as the right of excommunication was concerned, and a kind of ecclesiastical policing of the city was instituted through the Consistoire, composed of the ministers and twelve lay elders. It is in this area that the greatest controversy lies concerning Calvin's contribution to the spiritual development of the Genevan community. Many felt, and have continued to feel to the present day, that the discipline exercised at Geneva was severe to the extent of being an outrageous infringement of human rights.

All this has led to the oft-incanted concept that Calvin was a despot and that Calvinism was the highest form of theological fascism — especially asserted in relation to his dealings with theological opponents, such as the notorious Servetus who was burned at the stake for holding heretical beliefs.¹²But this is to misunderstand three important considerations: firstly, the prevailing manner in the sixteenth century of the oversight of civil justice; secondly, the conditions under which Calvin was working; thirdly, the Scriptural foundations for his theocratic purpose. We shall briefly examine these three elements which form a crucial bearing upon a correct understanding of the reformer's accomplishments.

2.The Social, Cultural and Scriptural Basis for Calvin's Genevan Reform←⤒🔗

Those who have a problem with Calvin's Theology often charge that Calvin's Geneva was the epitome of 'Big Brother' behaviour; yet this is a profound misunderstanding of the way in which policing was carried out in Europe in medieval times. As T. M. Lindsay states:

Every instance quoted by modern historians to prove, as they think, Calvin's despotic interference with the details of private life, can be paralleled by reference to the police books of medieval towns in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To make them ground of accusation against Calvin is simply to plead ignorance of the whole municipal police of the later Middle Ages. To say that Calvin acquiesced in or approved of such legislation is simply to show that he belonged to the sixteenth century.¹³

Likewise, James Atkinson assertively claims:

Historians often charge Calvin with seeking to regulate private lives by municipal and national laws. They are wrong. Such practice was the norm in that period. Every medieval town has its laws against drunkenness and revelry, cursing and swearing, gaming and dancing. What was new with Calvin was the church discipline.¹⁴

Calvin saw such discipline as an intrinsic part of his theological perspective. That this is so is proved conclusively from certain portions of his writings — notably in the Sermons on the Epistles to Timothy and Titus and the entire list chapter of his Institutes. In his exposition of 1 Timothy 2:2, Calvin shows why Paul entreats us to pray for those in Authority — even those who are despots — because 'God hath appointed kingdoms, principalities, and the seat of justice, to the end that we might live peaceably under his fear, and lead an honest life'.¹⁵Again, in his exposition of Titus 3:1, he says that Paul;

sheweth that such as cannot find it in their hearts to obey magistrates, seek nothing but trouble and confusion. And this argument is taken of the order that God hath set in the world. For why are there kings, magistrates and officers of justice? To the intent that men should not be as cats and dogs in snatching one at another, but that there might be justice so as the stronger sort might not go away with the goal, nor the poor and simple sort be trampled underfoot and eaten up. For that purpose was the order of Justice established ... So then, if we be ready to all good works, it is certain that we will love public government, and not seek to disobey the magistrate.¹⁶

In his Institutes the relationship between earthly government and the kingdom of God was expounded. He starts from the basis that Christ's spiritual kingdom and civil jurisdiction are completely distinct and must not be confused. It is important to stress this, as some people assert that Calvin was trying to set up the kingdom of God in Geneva. However, as Boettner states, Calvin was the first of the Reformers to demand complete separation between church and state.¹⁷Nevertheless, because, like his Redeemer, he knew what was in man, he equally knew that when there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).

God appoints our rulers and ordains them as, protectors and vindicators of public innocence, modesty, decency, and tranquility, and that their sole endeavour should be to provide for the common safety and peace of all. ¹⁸

Therefore, anyone who stands in the way of effective government is standing in the way of God as He appoints all the world's rulers (cf. Daniel 2:21, 37; 4:17). Therefore 'a wise king sifts out the wicked, and brings the threshing wheel over them' (Proverbs 20:26). This does not imply tyranny as king and subjects are equal before God. Coupled with this, 'the magistrate in administering punishments does nothing by himself, but carries out the very judgements of God'.¹⁹We must remember, too, the mandate contained in Genesis 9:5, 6 which gives powers of execution to those in authority over men.

All this, in Calvin's conception of the theocratic state, should be carried out with clemency and restraint, for one acts as a servant of God not as a capricious tyrant. If those who accuse Calvin himself of tyranny and despotism would study his writings on this, they would find less excuse to cavil. Much misunderstanding has arisen simply because he was wise enough to see — with its outworking appearing in his own life and work — that an affectation of gentleness could just as often be cruel as an excessive severity. ²⁰He certainly was not a cruel man himself.

Tucked away in all this is the fact — often overlooked — that Calvin has borne the brunt of completely unwarranted criticism and defamation of his character and teaching. As a result, he had to work in the most trying conditions which themselves deserved strong rebuff and even suppression. When Shakespeare had Mark Anthony say in his posthumous eulogy to Julius Caesar: 'The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones', he could, in a sense, have been speaking of the fate that has befallen the reputation of John Calvin, were it true that he had been evil. The problem has been the fact that most of the 'evil' that has been attributed to him is the result of the sinful minds of a 'perverse and crooked generation' which has either misunderstood his teachings through ignorance, or has refused to understand through wilful denial of the force of biblical truth (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:3, 4)

Such animosity was no less prevalent while he was actually alive. In his Commentary to the Psalms, he held this persecution up as being a prime qualification for his understanding of the afflictions to which David had been subjected, while decrying the authors of such slanders as being motivated by a desire to 'destroy the authority of Christ's servants'.²¹

He knew full well the innate power of his reassertion of biblical, apostolic, Augustinian Christianity and could say:

Because I affirm and maintain that the world is managed and governed by the secret providence of God, a multitude of presumptuous men rise up against me...²²

And still they do so today. Interestingly, Calvin wrote an entire book on the classic stumbling blocks;

which, in our day, frighten away a great many people, and are even the cause of alienating some from the pure doctrine of the gospel. ²³

Of the three classes of scandals (or stumbling blocks) which he discusses, the third he calls 'extrinsic' and deals with the kind of defamations to which he was subjected all his life, although he sought nothing but anonymity. Writing of his second period in Geneva, he said:

Were I to narrate the various conflicts by which the Lord has exercised me since that time (returning to Geneva), and by what trials he has proved me, it would make a long history.²⁴

In the same passage he makes reference to the capitally punished victims of his theocracy, claiming that it was indeed a pitiable and painful spectacle to him, that he always 'rather desired that they might live in prosperity, and continue safe and untouched'.²⁵How does one, in the end, deal with impenitent and determined people who purposefully set out to destroy the ministers of Christ and pervert his Gospel? Calvin was constantly amazed that the perpetrators of such calumnies — many of whom were ministers themselves — could make a lukewarm profession of repentance, only to 'present a brazen face in the pulpit three days later'. ²⁶Such behaviour was anathema to Calvin who asserted that 'the best way of taking care of the honour of the Christian name is to cleanse the temple of God of filth again'.²⁷

This defamation of Calvin and Calvinism is nowhere more apparent than in relation to the classic view of the relationship between Calvinism and the missionary process. This is worthy of some independent examination.

3. Geneva as Mission Centre←⤒🔗

There is a great misconception about the relationship between the Reformers and the work of missions. The Concise Dictionary of the Christian World Mission rightly states that

With most scholars of church and mission history it has long been a kind of dogma that the Reformers of the 16th century were incapable of both missionary thought and action.²⁸

An example of this view occurs in the writing of J. Herbert Kane's Concise History of the Christian World Mission who claims that, there were the Predestinarians, whose preoccupation with the sovereignty of God all but precluded the responsibility of man. If God wills the conversion of the heathen, they will be saved without human instrumentality. If God does not will the salvation of the heathen, it is both foolish and futile for man to intervene. Calvin wrote: 'We are taught that the kingdom of Christ is neither to be advanced nor maintained by the industry of men, but this is the work of God alone'.²⁹

Not only is this a dishonest form of quoting out of context (in which Calvin's original statement was indeed true), but it is also a gross distortion of the attitude of Calvin's Geneva to mission work. As David Bosch states:

The Calvinists expected the world to endure, and they believed themselves to be the instruments of God to convert it ... Calvinism has taught us that we are to make something of this world ... As far as the Reformers were concerned, Europe, too, was a mission field. Mission is the Church crossing frontiers into the world, but they judged that the world had entered the Church. They thus saw their primary task within the borders of historical Christianity. Trained preachers left Geneva and other Reformed centres —  frequently in secret — for France, the Netherlands and Scotland; the Roman Catholics in these countries were, after all, objects of mission.³⁰

In 1559, Calvin had founded the Academy (which in 1873 became Geneva University), and this was attended by thousands of pilgrim pupils from continental Europe and the British Isles, carrying the renewal of biblical Christianity to every corner of Christendom. It was not for nothing that John Knox called Geneva 'the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles'.³¹

There were valid reasons for the fact that the Reformation years saw little in the way of witness to the heathen lands:

a desperate shortage of preachers even at home, no Protestant monastic orders, preoccupation for the struggle for existence in Europe, lack of contact with non-Christian nations, no colonial expansion of Protestant powers before the 17th century.³²

In spite of these drawbacks, to Calvin belongs to a portion of the credit for the ill-fated first Protestant foreign missionary expedition to Brazil in 1555. Additionally, between 1555 and 1563 the Academy sent at least eighty-eight missionaries to France, while another list claims that one hundred and fifty-one were sent. ³³By 1562 some two thousand one hundred and fifty congregations among the Huguenots with around three million members had been established as a result of Calvin's work. ³⁴

All this may well be surprising to those who equate Calvinism with the mindless fatalism with which it has become so associated in the popular mind. They may be equally surprised to learn that one of the main attractions for Calvin to return to Geneva the second time was the City's potential as a missionary centre. On April 5th 1541, the pastors of Zurich had written to him, imploring him to return with these words:

You know that Geneva lies on the confines of France, of Italy, and of Germany, and that there is great hope that the gospel may spread from it to the neighbouring cities, and thus enlarge the ramparts (les boulevards) of the kingdom of Christ. — You know that the Apostle selected metropolitan cities for his preaching centres, that the gospel might be spread throughout the surrounding towns.³⁵

In spite of Calvin's own 'Calvinism' such a prospect was irresistible and he consented to return to Geneva!

4. Influence of Geneva←⤒🔗

The overall influence of Calvin's Geneva, both within its own time and in subsequent history, cannot be overestimated. E. W. Smith highlights especially Calvin's contribution to the concept of education:

Our boasted common-school is indebted for its existence to that stream of influences which followed from the Geneva of Calvin, through Scotland and Holland to America; and, for the first two hundred years of (America's) history almost every college and seminary of learning and almost every academy and common school was built and sustained by Calvinists.³⁶

William of Orange, Oliver Cromwell, John Knox and many others were to carry the torch of the Sovereignty of God over civil affairs and humanity's dependence upon Him into the affairs of the world. The English Puritans also drew heavily on Calvinism to bring a renewal of biblical Christianity, not only to their own time but to ours also as there has been recently a great revival of interest in their much needed purity of early post-Reformation spirituality. All this must have its roots somewhere in Geneva. T M. Lindsay claims that;

Calvin did three things for Geneva, all of which went far beyond its walls. He gave its Church a trained and tested ministry, its homes an educated people who could give a reason for their faith, and to the whole city an heroic soul which enabled the little town to stand forth as the Citadel and City of Refuge for the oppressed Protestants of Europe.³⁷

What holds true for the protesting Christian of Calvin's Geneva must still be true for his counterpart today, who is no less reviled by the world for holding to the faith once delivered to the saints. As Williston Walker points out:

To an Evangelical believer of Amiens or of Paris, living among a people that wished his physical death and that believed and tried to impress upon him that by separating himself from the ancient communion he had doomed himself to death eternal, the thought must have come as an unspeakable strength and consolation that God had a plan for him, individually, from before the foundation of the world; that God had chosen him to life; that the whole power of God was behind him; and that nothing that any man, be he priest or magistrate, could do could frustrate the divine purpose on his behalf.³⁸

Such a message is universal in its relevance, timeless in its application.

5. Conclusion←⤒🔗

Calvin's Geneva will not bear with a superficial examination of its elements. One's depth of understanding of the social, cultural, historical and biblical components will determine whether one views Geneva as a nightmare or a necessity, and Calvin as its despot or deliverer. The picture painted of Calvin as a humourless authoritarian is not one with which his friends would have identified. In a letter to one, he wrote: 'I shall soon come to visit you, and then we can have a good laugh together'. ³⁹

He was so unassuming, without vanity, that he demanded there should be no monument on his grave, which lies unmarked to this day. As Schaff puts it:

He wished to be buried, like Moses, out of the reach of idolatry. This was consistent with his theology which humbles man and exalts God.⁴⁰

On his lasting global influence, Bancroft has this to say:

More truly benevolent to the human race than Solon, more self-denying than Lycurgus, the genius of Calvin infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva and made it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed plot of democracy.⁴¹

That Calvin's Geneva was the foundation stone of modern democracy and republicanism is often asserted. It is certainly true that the Protestant revolt against Rome, epitomised in sixteenth century Geneva, gave the modern world its first taste of genuine religious and civil liberty in a way not generally understood. As far as the Church was concerned, Calvin himself longed for a true ecumenism and unity among the Lord's people, in spite of the reputation in the popular mind of Calvin as the rigid and divisive sectarian. In a letter he wrote to Thomas Cranmer from Geneva, he said:

This other thing also is to be ranked among the chief evils of our time, viz., that the Churches are so divided, that human fellowship is scarcely now in any repute amongst us, far less that Christian intercourse which all make a profession of, but few sincerely practice ...Thus it is that the members of the church being severed, the body lies bleeding. So much does this concern me, that, could I be of any service, I would not grudge to cross even ten seas, if need were, on account of it. ⁴²

How ironic it is that Geneva in the twentieth century should have become a key strategic centre — in some cases, the global headquarters — for many political and ecumenical organisations which are making a major contribution to the currently fashionable endeavour to found a universal brotherhood, although with a distinct bias against Reformed Evangelical Christianity! Among these are the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the League of Nations, the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, the Lucis (formerly Lucifer Trust), the International Labour Organisation and many world disarmament agencies. However, in the same way that the radiation of Christianity throughout the world during the Gospel Age without the necessary restraint of civic order would be mere woolly idealism, so the new democratic world order which these organisations are trying to forge without the kernel of biblical Christianity is a lifeless humanistic social experiment, destined to failure.

By way of contrast, four hundred years ago in Geneva, John Calvin managed to combine civic order and biblical Christianity in a state of mutual aid and collaboration, yet always in recognition of the necessity of a fundamental separateness between the two which will find its fullness in the creation of the New Heavens and the New Earth in which righteousness dwells, when the temporary nature of the temporal order will be dissolved in fire and the elements will melt with fervent heat.