The year 2009 is the 500th year of commemoration of the birth of the great reformer, John Calvin. In preceding articles we considered some aspects of his life and personality We also briefly viewed Calvin's doctrine of communion with Christ, prayer, the Holy Spirit and psalmody. Now we trace his views on democracy.

The Roots of Democracy⤒🔗

We live in an age in which parliamentary inquiries take place. Presidents and secretaries of state can be ordered to appear before congressional committees to give an account of their actions. Public inquiries can be demanded. We are accustomed to vote for members of parliament. Our Western civil system of government is unique in history. True, there were other democratically ruled countries in history. We know that ancient Greek cities had some form of government by the common people, and in Britain, since the Magna Ghana of 1215, the king's power was officially curtailed, although not so much in practice. But throughout history and currently, much of the world is still governed by tyrannical and corrupt governments, while modern Western Europe is governed by democracies.

We can ask the question: Where did democracy come from? Tyrants, kings, who wielded absolute authority, governed medieval Europe. But in the 16th century the Protestant Reformation erupted. This proved to be a major impetus to the implementation of democracies. Moreover, we must also recognize the influence of humanism and the enlightenment, as well as the simple desire of people who were gaining more economic affluence to be less dependent upon a ruler.

Calvin's Influence←⤒🔗

But in the midst of these influences, the major impact of the thoughts of John Calvin cannot be denied. Luther was far less politically engaged than Calvin. Calvin dedicated many of his writings to various European monarchs and gave direction to political action and thought. His impact was far greater than we can imagine. That is primarily because of his ardent desire to maintain the church's freedom from government interference. This in turn laid the basis for the political freedom of the citizens of a nation independently from the king.

Calvin, on the one hand, summoned people to obey their king, but on the other hand also stated that kings are under the law of God and when they violate His law, his subjects may take action. This laid the groundwork for the civil wars in France of the 16th century, the civil wars in Britain of the 17th century and the American Revolution of the 18th century. We can even say that modern democracies are an outflow of Calvin's thinking, although he himself favoured a more aristocratic democracy.

Calvin's Interest In Government←⤒🔗

Throughout Calvin's life he had a strong interest in political matters. This was already present in his dissertation of 1532: Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. Here Calvin made a plea for monarchs to rule according to the principles of compassion, concern and tenderness. They must be concerned about justice for the people.

This political concern continued through subsequent years, when Calvin published his first copy of the Institutes in 1536, which he devoted to the French king, Francis I. This book was in reality an apology for the persecuted evangelicals in France. His political concern was emphasized in the last chapter: "On Freedom, and Ecclesiastical and Civil Power."

Calvin's interest in government was demonstrated in 1541 when, after he had set up a detailed church order, the city councils of Geneva asked Calvin to take time off from his preaching ministry in order to codify the civil and constitutional laws of Geneva. Calvin was able to do this, seeing he had been extensively instructed in law as well as philosophy.

His ideal was a church that could operate not independently from the government, but freely in its own sphere. This is in contrast to Luther who allowed the German churches to be subjected to politi­cal powers. As a result of that view, today the German clergymen of the state church still receive their salary from the German government, while in the reformed and Calvinistic traditions churches supplied their own pastors and provided for their needs.

Separation Between Church and State←⤒🔗

Calvin's view was that the church would be free from the state, while each has its own sphere. For example, matters of doctrine, excommunication and church government would fall under the autonomous sphere of the church, while matters of civil law would be in the sphere of the government. Important here is the prin­ciple that citizens have freedom within the state. The outflow of this would be that citizens also have the freedom to determine their own government, not just in ecclesiastical matters but also in the political realm. The principle is that all men are ultimately accountable to God. But God's Word also calls us to honour the government (Institutes IV, 20 ,31):

But we must, in the meantime, be very careful not to despise or violate that authority of magistrates fill of venerable majesty, which God has established by the weightiest decrees, even though it may reside with the most unworthy men, who defile it as much as they can with their own wickedness. For, if the correction of unbridled despotism is the Lord to avenge, let us not at once think that it is entrusted to us, to whom no command has been given except to obey and suffer.

However, when the government violates its God-given authority, Calvin says, citizens have the right to rebel against such a monarch. Although Calvin did not go as far as to allow the common people to revolt, he does allow lower magistrates to revolt against a tyrannical power:

I am speaking all the while of private individuals. For if there are now any magistrates of the people, appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings, ... I am so far from forbidding them to withstarnd in accordance with their duty, the fierce licentiousness of kings, that if they wink at kings who violently fall upon and assault the lowly common folk, I declare that their dissimulation involves wicked treachery because they dishonestly betray the freedom of the people, of which they know that they have been appointed protectors by God's ordinance.

This also explains Calvin's ideal view of government. Although he recognizes monarchy, aristocracy and democracy as legitimate forms of government, he states his preference (Institutes IV,20,8): I will not deny that aristocracy, or a system compounded of aristocracy and democracy, far excels all others...

Calvin finds the biblical basis for this especially in the Old Testament, where God also allows ungodly kings to be overthrown. Douglas F. Kelly writes in The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World (p. 18): "Calvin's desire for an elective, representative, republican type of government, was certainly influenced by his many years of writing and preaching on the Old Testament." Also councils of patriarchal elders sitting in the gate and the council of seventy elders raised up to help Moses in the wilderness in ruling the people are examples to Calvin of proper civil authority.

Different From John Knox's Views←⤒🔗

Calvin does not allow private citizens the right to make revolutionary decisions. They must be subject to the higher powers. However, when lesser magistrates agree together that tyrannical power must be stopped, this is an official act and therefore acceptable. In this Calvin disagreed with John Knox who in the 1550s promoted a more radical stand for civil resistance by the populace.

Knox taught the right and duty of the common people to undertake revolution against the ruling authorities who persecuted the Reformed religion, even without the leadership of lesser magistrates. Calvin became more lenient towards this point of view in the 1560s during the religious wars in France. Geneva was to be not only a centre of printing Reformed literature but also a large manufacturer of arms and gunpowder to support the forces fighting in France for the Calvinist cause.

Increasingly, it was understood that kings derive their authority from the people and that their subjects are not obliged to obey him when he commands anything contrary to the New Testament. The assignment of unlimited powers to a mortal creature was considered an offense against the sovereignty of God. God's Word demands legal limitations also upon the rulers of state.

In this way Calvinist political thought countered the absolutist trend of the 16th century in the monarchies of northern Europe. Based on the pattern of Reformed church order, which allows the members to vote for office bearers who have authority in the church, the Reformed citizen also felt competent to choose his rulers in the political realm.

These views were worked out historically in Ulster, Scotland, England, and Holland, and were eventually implemented in the North American colonies. Many Calvinists from France, Britain and Holland emigrated to America. Due to their views of individual civil and reli­gious liberty, these matters would dominate church/state relations. The American Declaration of Independence has its roots in Knox's insistence that individuals have the moral duty to resist tyranny and in the French Huguenot treatise, Vindicae contra Tyrannos, a justification of rebellion on the basis of the rights of the people to bring a ruler into line with the law under which his reign is bound (Kelly, p. 132). John Adams stated that the Vindicae was one of the most important writings circulating in pre-revolutionary America.

Janet G. Gray, in The French Huguenots (p. 47), concludes that

...a link between Calvinist political thought and propensity toward democracy does seem feasible when one studies the development of democratic ideas as they spread from sixteenth-century Geneva to the rest of Switzerland; France, the Low Countries, England Scotland and later North America. Within each of these countries the elements of society that earlier had adopted Calvinism later developed democratic ideals. Often the leaders in political actions in each country were Calvinists.

Calvin's Impact←⤒🔗

Although other influences also played a role, we may see the influ­ence of John Calvin through the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, the English Puritans and the Scottish Presbyterians, in the formation of Western democracies. Calvin's views on personal liberties, fleshed out by later generations of Calvinists, have a major impact even on our present day world and maybe even in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, where attempts are made to implement a Western style of democracy.