Calvin’s Program for Geneva

It expressed his historical sense and gratified his religious temper, while adapting the church to the city, so that the city might become a better church.

Continuing Calvin Driven From Paris to Geneva,
with a selection from Calvin and the Reformed Church in The Cambridge Modern History, Volume 2 by A. M. Fairbairn. This selection is presented in 5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Calvin Driven From Paris to Geneva.

Time: 1533
Place: Paris

Its chief pastor had persuaded him to stay as a colleague, and the council appointed him professor and preacher. He was young, exactly twenty-seven years of age, full of high ideals, but inexperienced, unacquainted with men, without any knowledge of Geneva and the state of things there. He could therefore make no terms, could only stay to do his duty. What that duty was soon became apparent. Geneva had not become any more moral in character because it had changed its mind in religion. It had two months before Calvin’s arrival sworn to live according to the holy evangelical law and Word of God; but it did not seem to understand its own oath. And the man whom his intellectual sincerity and moral integrity had driven out of Catholicism could not hold office in any church which made light of conviction and conduct; and so he at once set himself to organize a church that should be efficaciously moral.

He built on the ancient Genevan idea, that the city is a church; only he wished to make the church to be primary and real. The theocracy, which had been construed as the reign of the clergy, he would interpret as ideal and realize as a reign of God. The citizens, who had assumed control of their own spiritual destinies and ecclesiastical affairs, he wanted to instruct in their responsibilities and discipline into obedience. And he would do it in the way of a jurist who believes in the harmony of law and custom; he would by positive enactments train the city, which conceived itself to be a church, to be and behave as if it were indeed a church, living according to the gospel which it had sworn to obey.

Thus a confession of faith was drawn up which the people were to adopt as their own, and so attain clarity and concordance of mind concerning God and his Word; and a catechism was composed which was to be made the basis of religious instruction in both the school and the family, for the citizen as well as the child. Worship was to be carefully regulated, psalm-books prepared, psalm-singing cultivated; the preacher was to interpret the Word, and the pastor to supervise the flock.

The Lord’s Supper was to be celebrated monthly, but only those who were morally fit or worthy were to be allowed to communicate. The church, in order that it might fulfil its functions and guard the holy table, must have the right of excommunication. It was not enough that a man should be a citizen or a councillor to be admitted to the Lord’s Supper; his mind must be Christian and his conduct Christlike. Without faith the rite was profaned, the presence of Christ was not realized. Moreover, since matrimonial cases were many and infelicity sprang both from differences of faith and impurity of conduct, a board, composed partly of magistrates and partly of ministers, was to be appointed to deal with them; and it was to have the power to exclude from the church those who either did not believe its doctrines or did not obey its commandments.

These were drastic proposals to be made to a city which had just dismissed its bishop, attained political freedom, and proclaimed a reformation of religion; and Calvin was not the man to leave them inoperative. A card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and two bridesmaids were arrested because they had adorned the bride too gayly; an adulterer was driven with the partner of his guilt through the streets by the common hangman, and then banished. These things taxed the temper of the city sorely; it was not unfamiliar with legislation of the kind, but it had not been accustomed to see it enforced. Hence, men who came to be known as “libertines,” though they were both patriotic and moral and only craved freedom, rose and said: “This is an intolerable tyranny; we will not allow any man to be lord over our consciences.” And about the same time Calvin’s orthodoxy was challenged. Two Anabaptists arrived and demanded liberty to prophesy; and Peter Caroli charged him with heresy as to the Trinity. He would not use the Athanasian creed; and he defended himself by reasons that the scholar who knows its history will respect. The end soon came. When he heard that he had been sentenced to banishment he said, “If I had served men this would have been a poor reward, but I have served Him who never fails to perform what he has promised.”

In 1541 Geneva recalled Calvin, and he obeyed as one who goes to fulfil an imperative but unwelcome duty. There is nothing more pathetic in the literature of the period than his hesitancies and fears. He tells Farel that he would rather die a hundred times than again take up that cross “in qua millies quotidie pereundum esset.” And he writes to Viret that it were better to perish once for all than “in illa carnificina iterum torqueri.” But he loved Geneva, and it was in evil case. Rome was plotting to reclaim it; Savoy was watching her opportunity, the patriots feared to go forward, and even the timid dared not go back. So the necessities of the city, divided between its factions and its foes, constituted an appeal which Calvin could not resist; but he did not yield unconditionally. He went back as the legislator who was to frame laws for its church; and he so adapted them to the civil constitution and the constitution to them, that he raised the little city of Geneva to be the Protestant Rome.

The Ordonnances ecclésiastiques may be described as Calvin’s programme of Genevan reform, or his method for applying to the local and external church the government which our Lord had instituted and the Apostles had realized. These ordinances expressed his historical sense and gratified his religious temper, while adapting the church to the city, so that the city might become a better church. To explain in detail how he proposed to do this is impossible within our limits; and we shall therefore confine ourselves to the most important of the factors he created, the ministry.

A. M. Fairbairn begins here. Jean M. V. Audin begins here.

More information here and here, and below.

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