French Reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) was far more influential on our politics than most realize. After becoming exposed to Protestantism as a student in Paris, he developed a system of thought that emphasized the freedom of the church (a valid government in its own right) from state control and sought to foster dispersed authority and decentralized control in polity. After settling in the city of Geneva and then being exiled to Strasbourg (1538–1541), he returned to Geneva and helped pioneer political ideas and practices that would be retrieved centuries later as Western republics were formed. The final chapter of his Institutes of the Christian Religion outlines a pattern of government[1] that (a) is a genuine advance; (b) emerges with improvement; and (c) is a sine qua non for modern, stable politics. He also addressed these matters in sermons, commentaries, and practices, which we will summarize below. However, many of the advances that we take for granted came from his disciples as they forged political ideas on the anvils of persecution, social upheaval, economic variation, regime change, and interactions with a band of political brothers. Not only did this Reformer address many political matters (his legal training was also drawn upon to help draft civic statutes for Geneva), but his contributions also laid the foundations for modern politics in ways that few pastors have or will.
1. I have provided summaries of this portion of Calvin’s Institutes in various places, e.g., “Calvin on Principles of Government” in Theology Made Practical: New Studies on John Calvin and His Legacy, eds. Joel R. Beeke, David W. Hall, Michael A. G. Haykin (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), 143–164; also in my Calvin in the Public Square: Liberal Democracies, Rights, and Civil Liberties (P&R, 2009), chap. 3.
Calvin’s Seminal Thought Summarized in Three Points
1. Depravity and Non-Utopianism
Depravity, or Augustinian realism, requires that governments presume that all citizens will not always act for the good; thus, restraint is needed. If we were already fully glorified, perhaps the strictures of government would not be so important. However, a polity is inevitably shaped by its view of human potential; and if sin is a factor, political thought (as Calvin taught) will be different.
In a sermon from the book of Galatians, Calvin said, “If we were all like angels, blameless and freely able to exercise perfect self-control, we would not need rules or regulations. Why, then, do we have so many laws and statutes? Because of man’s wickedness, for he is constantly overflowing with evil; this is why a remedy is required.”[2] James Madison would echo two centuries later in the Federalist (almost as if plagiarizing Calvin) about the innate tendency toward sinfulness and the exploitation of others that required governmental power to be circumscribed. To Madison, it was but “a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.” Madison reflected the thought of John Knox when he wrote: “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary” (Federalist #51). Had Madison, Hamilton,[3] and others derived this view from human experience alone, such linguistic correspondence would merit little comment.[4] However, it appears remarkably similar to a particular theological formulation from several centuries earlier and derived from a common well.
2. John Calvin, Sermons on Galatians, trans. Kathy Childress (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 313.
3. Alexander Hamilton (not the Lin-Manuel Miranda one) echoed Calvin’s ideas on the human condition as necessitating restraints on governors: “Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.” (“The Federalist No. 15: The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union,” Independent Journal (New York), December 1, 1787.
4. Centuries before James Madison echoed these thoughts, Luther also proceeded to explain in his 1520 Letter to the German Nobility that if the world were a perfect place, civil government would not be needed (“And if all the world were true Christians, that is, if everyone truly believed, there would be neither need nor use for princes, kings, lords, the Sword or law, what would there be for them to do?”). The need for civil government, therefore, went hand in glove with the corruption of human nature.
Beginning with the proposition not only that all men are created equal but also all men are equally and unavoidably stalked by sin, dystopia, evil, and oppression, Calvin catechized his disciples both to expect sinful incursions, but he also built government to protect citizens from those maladies. One of the enduring contributions of Calvinistic thought is to provide structures that restrain human sin. Such also keeps citizens from expecting divinized perfection from its governors or governments.
2. Limited Governmental Authority
Calvin also argued that government should not and could not do everything; it had to be limited in its task and scope. If it were not, it would run aground as in the time of the prophet Samuel.
Calvin’s sermon on 1 Samuel 8 addresses one of the most widely expounded passages about political thought in Scripture. His 1561 exposition discusses the dangers of monarchy, the need for proper limitation of government, and the place of divine sovereignty over human governments. It is an example of Calvinism at its best, carefully balancing individual liberty and proper government.
Calvin began his sermon on 1 Samuel 8[5] by asserting that the people of Israel, even on the brink of electing a king, were still free to change their minds; such freedom rendered the kingship optional. Then Samuel warned them “that the king who will reign over them will take their sons for his own purposes and will cause much plundering and robbery.” Calvin preached that “there are limits prescribed by God to their power, within which they ought to be satisfied: namely, to work for the common good and to govern and direct the people in truest fairness and justice; not to be puffed up with their own importance, but to remember that they also are subjects of God.”
5. Quotations in this section are from Douglas Kelly’s translation of Calvin‘s Sermon on 1 Samuel 8 in Calvin Studies Colloquium, eds. Charles Raynal and John Leith (Davidson, NC: Davidson College Presbyterian Church, 1982).
Calvin’s calls to submit to the governor hinted at a limitation that was atypical then. God established magistrates properly “for the use of the people and the benefit of the republic.” Accordingly, kings also had charters to satisfy: “They are not to undertake war rashly, nor ambitiously to increase their wealth; nor are they to govern their subjects on the basis of personal opinion or lust for whatever they want.” Kings had authority only insofar as they met the conditions of God’s covenant. Accordingly, he proclaimed from the St. Pierre Cathedral pulpit, “[S]ubjects are under the authority of kings; but at the same time, kings must care about the public welfare so they can discharge the duties prescribed to them by God with good counsel and mature deliberation.”
The republican-type plan suggested by Jethro (Exodus 18) appears as an innovation that did not originate in the mind of man, thought Calvin. Other commentators, ranging from Aquinas and Machiavelli to Althusius and Ponet, viewed Jethro’s advice as a pristine example of federalism or republicanism. Commenting on a similar passage in Deuteronomy 1:14–16, Calvin stated: “Hence it more plainly appears that those who were to preside in judgment were not appointed only by the will of Moses, but elected by the votes of the people. And this is the most desirable kind of liberty, that we should not be compelled to obey every person who may be tyrannically put over our heads; but which allows of election, so that no one should rule except he be approved by us. And this is further confirmed in the next verse, wherein Moses recounts that he awaited the consent of the people, and that nothing was attempted which did not please them all.” Thus, Calvin viewed Exodus 18 as a representative republican form. Geneva’s smallest Council of Twenty-Five was also known as the Senate.
This Genevan beacon, whose sermonic ideas later saturated American communities, enumerated the ways kings abuse their power from the Samuel narrative, and he distinguished a tyrant from a legitimate prince in these words: “a tyrant rules only by his own will and lust, whereas legitimate magistrates rule by counsel and by reason so as to determine how to bring about the greatest public welfare and benefit.” Calvin decried the oppressive custom of magistrates’ “taking part in the plundering to enrich themselves off the poor.” Tyrants could soon be resisted with theological buttressing.
The character of Calvinism is exhibited in this (and other) sermons that advocated limited government. Calvin was correct that individual responsibility was a good speed bump to a government taking over more than it should. He altered the trajectory of governance, no less.
3. Decentralized Politics: The Republic
One of the procedural safeguards of the 1543 civic reform in Geneva—a hallmark of Calvinistic governing ethos—was that the various branches of local government (councils) could no longer act unilaterally; henceforth, at least two councils were required to approve measures before ratification.[6] This early mechanism, which prevented consolidation of all governmental power into a single council, predated Montesquieu’s separation of powers doctrine by two centuries; this is a Calvinistic contribution that is not always recognized. The driving rationale for this dispersed authority was a simple but scriptural idea: even the best of leaders could think blindly and selfishly, so they needed a format for mutual correction and accountability. This kind of thinking, already incorporated into Geneva’s ecclesiastical sphere and essentially derived from biblical sources, anticipated many later instances of political federalism. Genevan ecclesiology began to influence Genevan civil politics; in turn, that also furthered the separation of powers and provided protection from oligarchy. The result was a far more open and stable society than previously, and Calvin’s orientation toward the practical is obvious in these areas.
6. E. William Monter, Calvin’s Geneva (New York: Wiley,1967), 72. In 1542, the General Council adopted this proviso: “Nothing should be put before the Council of Two Hundred that has not been dealt with in the Narrow Council, nor before the General Council before having been dealt with in the Narrow Council as well as the Two Hundred.”
This Calvin-shaped polity of open elections, which appeared to be either liberal or daringly democratic for its day, provided checks and balances, separation of powers, voting by residents, and other elements of the federal structure that would later be copied as one of Geneva’s finest exports. Additional features of federalism, including an early appellate system, were developed by the late 1540s. Not only was Calvin’s Geneva religious, but she also sought the consent of the governed to a degree not previously seen, leading the world to new and stable forms of republicanism. At the very least, one should acknowledge “the rather striking correlation, both in time and in place, between the spread of Calvinist Protestantism and the rise of democracy.”[7]
7. Robert M. Kingdon, Calvin and Calvinism: Sources of Democracy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1970), vii.
In keeping with the teachings of Calvin,[8] elected governors perceived themselves as having a duty to God, one that compelled them to serve the public good and avoid pursuing personal benefit. This notion of selfless political duty owed much of its staying power to Calvin, and it soon became an integral feature of Genevan public culture. Municipal officials were not full-time salaried employees in the time of Calvin, and the combination of checks and balances between the various councils required government to be streamlined and simple. Political offices in Geneva, in contrast with medieval and some modern customs, were not profitable for office holders. Service in such offices was even avoided by some, requiring the threat of a fine if a citizen refused to serve after election.[9]
8. Monter observed that Calvin did not so much purpose to instruct the existing magistrates “as to show others what magistrates are and for what end God has appointed them.” E. William Monter, Studies in Genevan Government, 1536–1605 (Genève: Droz, 1964), 58.
9. E. William Monter, Studies in Genevan Government, 1536–1605, 57.
Geneva became the chief laboratory for the implementation of many of Calvin’s republican ideas. As such, her local political model yields hints about the character of Calvinism, complete with its tendency to limit government. Features such as limited terms, balance of powers, citizen nullification, interpositional magistracies, and accountability were at the heart of New World governments, which further amplified Calvinism to other generations and locales.
Many ideas that began with Calvin’s reformation in Geneva and later became part of the fabric of America were cultivated and crossbred in the seventeenth century. Customs now taken for granted, like freedom of speech, assembly, and dissent, were extended as Calvin’s Dutch, British, and Scottish disciples refined these ideas.
His Disciples Fuel the Movement
Calvin was not a soloist—he attracted and supported a community of other thinkers. While at his death, Calvin still supported a reasonable monarchy, in the following generations, his followers would advance and refine the principles he’d already articulated. His closest disciple, Theodore Beza (1520–1605), extended and applied Calvin’s seminal thought in a 1574 work, shaped in no small part by the horrendous and shocking St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris (1572). Beza was led to a better exegesis of the various “house table” passages (Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5–6), particularly advocating for a limitation on submission to evil authorities. The resulting realpolitik of Beza, John Ponet, John Knox, Francois Hotman, and Christopher Goodman made Calvinism a veritable political force for good if not its own multiplying tradition.[10]
10. For more on this political tradition and its political tracts, see my discussion in “A Torrent of Power, A Presbyterian junto, and Calvinistic Republicanism,” Calvinus frater in Domino: Papers of the Twelfth International Congress on Calvin Research, eds. Arnold Huijgen and Karin Maag (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 219–231.
11. Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster, Professor of History at Dartmouth College, 1893–1927: Historical and Biographical Studies. (New York: Privately Printed. 1929), 163–174. I have summarized the five points of political Calvinism slightly differently, referring to: Depravity as a perennial human variable to be accommodated; Accountability for leaders provided via a collegium; Republicanism as the preferred form of government; Constitutionalism needed to restrain both the rulers and the ruled; and Limited government, beginning with the family as foundational. The resulting mnemonic device, DARCL, though not as convenient as TULIP, seems a more apt summary if placed in the context of the political writings of Calvin’s disciples.
12. Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster, 174. Besides Calvin, this idea was reiterated in Buchanan, Beza, Peter Martyr, Althusius, Hotman, Daneau, Vindiciae, Ponet, William the Silent, and others.
Of all the theologies, Calvinism has made the earliest and most significant contribution to free, stable, and limited government. One summary of political Calvinism reduced Calvin’s ideas to five points that may be of continuing validity. Herbert Foster noted the following as hallmarks of Calvin’s political legacy,[11] and these permeate the cultural contributions noted above:
- The absolute sovereignty of God entailed that universal human rights (or Beza’s “fundamental law”) should be protected and must not be surrendered to the whim of tyranny.
- These fundamental laws, which were always compatible with God’s law, are the basis of whatever public liberties we enjoy.
- Mutual covenants, as taught by Beza, Hotman, and the Vindiciae, between rulers and God and between rulers and subjects were binding and necessary.
- As Ponet, Knox, and Goodman taught, the sovereignty of the people flows logically from the mutual obligations of the covenants above.
- The representatives of the people, not the people themselves, are the first line of defense against tyranny.[12]
At least an elementary grasp of Calvin is essential to any well-informed self-understanding of Western democracy—indeed, for modernity itself. Unfortunately, many remain unaware of the signal contribution that the leadership of Calvin has made to open societies. We may, moreover, credit Calvin’s Reformation with aiding the spread of participatory democracy. Even if this heritage no longer holds a place of honor in our textbooks or in our public tradition, we owe our Calvinistic forefathers a large debt of gratitude for their efforts to establish limited government and personal liberty grounded in virtue.
Conclusion
Theologian Jurgen Moltmann made this summary observation of the evolution of Calvinist resistance theory: “As opposed to the medieval discussion about the right of resistance, the Reformation brings with it the novel case of resistance for religious reasons against a change of religion decreed by the state.”[13] Whereas Beza had defended the right of the intermediate magistrates to resist a ruler based on the people’s fundamental rights (“Everyone can resist those who in the violation of their official duties assume a tyrannical power over the subjects.”[14]), and whereas the premier Scottish theologian of the loci, George Buchanan, advocated that citizens were “relieved of their obligation of obedience if the ruler damages the contract of rulership,”[15] Junius Brutus (the pseudonymous author of the Vindiciae) went so far as to advocate that “the traditional right of resistance of the estates against the crown is no longer defended but rather a new federalistic-democratic idea of the state is propagated.”[16]
13. Jurgen Moltmann, “Covenant or Leviathan? Political Theology for Modern Times,” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 47, no. 1 (1994): 21.
14. Moltmann, “Covenant or Leviathan?” 22.
15. Moltmann, “Covenant or Leviathan?” 22.
16. Moltmann, “Covenant or Leviathan?” 22. See also Junius Brutus, A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants, 1581.
To be sure, Calvin did not create a political party nor agitate for direct revolution. Notwithstanding, his work spread at a time that was coextensive with the birth of many Western republics. Its cultural reception indicates that it provided one of the sources that religious adherents could identify to support rebellion against tyrants in the period.
