Two Kingdoms

The kingdom of Christ is not instituted by the sword but through the Spirit’s use of the Word of God, resulting not only in spiritual regeneration but sanctification.  While the temporal kingdom produces a civil righteousness, the church cultivates a spiritual righteousness.

The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, by Matthew Barrett

Calvin has by now returned to Geneva and established his position, still, however, with the authority over excommunication left somewhat ambiguous: was this in the hands of the magistrate or the church?  This would soon enough be tested.

The consistory would call the Favre family to account for breaking Geneva’s moral code – ranging from sexual immorality to the disrespect of pastors during the Lord’s Supper.  The family did not acknowledge the consistory’s authority on these matters.  While the family did not get away with their transgression, a pattern was set.

Parents were prohibited from using Catholic names for the babies, and further prohibited from baptizing infants.  Riots ensued.  The consistory demanded excommunication; the council gave a “no” in reply.  Calvin would vocalize from the pulpit: the authority over excommunication belonged to the minister.

Time was on Calvin’s side regarding such disputes.  Geneva would become home to many French protestants fleeing persecution at home, and most of these refugees were supporters of Calvin.  The tension grew to a head by 1553, once again due to a confrontation with the Favre family. 

Many supporters of this family were in high positions of Genevan government.  Through the Small Council, they relieved an individual who was otherwise on the path to excommunication.  Philibert Berthelier was now free to participate in the Lord’s Supper.  He did not do so, fortunately, as this might easily have erupted in a brawl at the Table.

Ten years of unresolved tension; everything Calvin had labored to achieve was ignored.  The councils of Geneva decided to give Calvin a hearing – and he had the advantage, as few in the city could match his persuasiveness.  He presented his two kingdoms view:

…Calvin was advocating for the independence of the church from the state, a path that deviated from that of other Protestants, from Germany to Switzerland.

I will take an aside here.  Calvin was also deviating from the practice in the Eastern Church; as I have written about elsewhere, primarily through the work of John Strikland and examined here. During the previous five-hundred years or more in the West, there was some form of this separation, as each of church and state had authority – with the balance shifting in different times and different places.

With the start of the Reformation, the only way it could be birthed was via some reliance on the civil authority: recall Luther, who would not have survived without the protection of Frederick.  Further, no pocket of Protestantism could withstand Rome without the local prince being aligned to the cause.  In other words, at minimum this reliance of church under state was pragmatic – albeit, Luther attempted to safeguard the distinction.

I say all this to point out that various models have been seen throughout Christian history.

Returning to Barrett, the councils were convinced by Calvin’s arguments.  Riots by followers of the Favre family ensued.  This could not be tolerated by the civil authorities; capital punishment followed.  A decade of ecclesiastical autonomy followed for Calvin, from 1555 until his death.

Calvin set in place a paradigm that would forever change the course of church-state relations not only in Geneva but across Europe and eventually America.

Which brings us to Michael Servetus.  Beginning in 1531, he began publishing on the errors of the Trinity; in his view, the church abandoned true religion.  The issue of heresy was immensely significant in any case, let alone heresy within Protestant circles which would only bring further accusation from Rome.

Everyone aligned against Servetus: Rome, the Reformers, Charles V.  Servetus spent years in hiding, on the run, taking an alias wherever he went.  Calvin would become a fixation for Servetus; for him, Calvin was Antichrist.  He wrote often to Calvin (under an alias, although Calvion knew who it was), and Calvin would reply – until Calvin decided that replying was pointless.  Although Calvin stopped replying, Servetus continued writing, sending dozens of letters.

In 1553, Servetus wrote On the Restoration of Christianity.  He scorned the Creator-creature distinction, embracing a form of pantheism; he denied the Trinity; he detested the idea of predestination; he had no patience for infant baptism.  He used this occasion to attempt to engage Calvin again, and this time Calvin replied by sending a copy of his Institutes. 

The Inquisition of Lyon captured Servetus; he was scheduled for execution, but escaped.  Yet, he did not lie low – off he went to Geneva!  While he said he was just passing through, this was unlikely given the dozens of ways he could travel and countless cities to which he could settle.  Was it a suicide mission?

Whatever his purpose, it is clear that he felt the time had come to take on Calvin in the flesh.  He not only entered Geneva; he walked right into a church service where Calvin stood in the pulpit.  In little time, he was arrested.

What proceeded was not the mindless, illogical, angry pandemonium of some angry mob.  Geneva had a law and a court procedure, one that they had followed in the past.

The magistrates acted on the belief that they had the right to excommunicate.  However, they did ask for Calvin’s theological assessment of Servetus’s views.  Calvin and other ministers outlined the many Christian doctrines Servetus rejected, in a series of thirty-eight articles.

These articles only inflamed Servetus’s hatred for Calvin; Servetus said that Satan himself had possessed Calvin to write these articles.

The council even wrote to the Swiss, and received a reply from Bullinger: Geneva had an opportunity – in fact, the obligation – to stop Satan’s advance on God’s kingdom.  The council decided: heresy.  Calvin agreed.  The punishment would be execution.  Calvin pressed for a swift execution – by the sword; the council disagreed: Servetus would be burned at the stake.

At the request of Servetus, Calvin visited him in prison.  He blew up at Calvin, furious and full of spite.

Calvin would recount how many times he tried to get Servetus to change his mind; he still could even at this late hour.  Servetus refused.

As the flames climbed Servetus, he cried, “O Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have pity on me!”  The prayer maintained Servetus’s commitment to heresy; he refused to call Jesus himself the eternal Son of God.

Conclusion

In the months and years to follow, this episode was used to attack Calvin’s reputation.  These critics were motivated by revulsion at the execution, rejection of the broader principal of punishing heretics, and hatred of the doctrine of predestination.  Calvin was incorrectly made out to be the chief prosecutor of Servetus. 

Looking back from our lens, many are also rightly troubled.  But the sixteenth century knew nothing of this idea of freedom of religion.  Further, Calvin did nothing remarkable in this affair.  He was asked to provide an examination of Servetus’s doctrine, and he gave it.  This was done countless times by both Reformers and Roman Cardinals.

Zurich had been drowning Anabaptists since the 1520s, and no such unique indignation sits here.  Calvin’s followers in France were also executed for heresy, yet this draws none of the unique condemnation that Calvin draws.

In the aftermath of this event, the knives came out for Calvin.  It both exhausted and depressed him.  He wished death would take him away from all of it – he preferred being burned alive by the pope than being repeatedly stabbed in the back by his Protestant neighbors.

Modern judgment may still hold Calvin accountable for the part he did play in the Servetus trial, but only to the same extent as every other sixteenth-century European participated in the killings of Protestants and Catholics alike.

Epilogue

The Lord’s Supper.  A key sticking point of division among the Protestants.  Even Martin Bucer, the peacemaker, could not bring the sides together.  By 1544, the division seemed impossible to resolve.  Calvin was far more sympathetic to the Lutherans than to the Zwinglians, yet there were aspects of Luther that kept Calvin from fully embracing this position.

Recall that Luther had no patience for discussion on this issue – any reconciliation, he felt, could only happen at the expense of truth. 

For Calvin, the Lord’s Supper was a visible picture of the union between Christ and the Christian, a sacrament that seals the promises of the gospel on the Christian conscience. 

Per Calvin, transubstantiation failed to consider the Spirit as the bond between Christ and the Christian; if Christ isn’t brought to the table in a corporeal way, then he isn’t present via any conversion of the bread or wine; yet, Calvin saw in this a symbol more meaningful than the understanding of Zwingli – “the truth of the thing signified is surely present there.”

Of course, his views made no one in any other camp happy.  His view was described as too close to Rome by Bullinger.

For Calvin, “a sign is the guarantee of a present reality.”  Participation in the supper is participation in the body of Christ.  On that score, Calvin had far more in common with Thomas Aquinas that Duns Scotus.

Ultimately, unity amongst the Protestants was not achieved.  And this in the face of Charles’ gaining control over the Smalcald League and the Council of Trent which condemned the Reformation.  Things certainly looked bleak for the Reformers.