John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty

Spiritual Liberty. In the heavenly kingdom, spiritual law and spiritual liberty stand counterpoised. God has ordained a "spiritual law" or "law of conscience" to govern citizens of the heavenly kingdom. This law teaches "those things that God either requires of us or forbids us to do, both toward [ourselves] and towards others."28 Its provisions are written on the heart and conscience of each person, rewritten in the pages of Scripture, and summarized in the Ten Commandments.29 Obedience of this spiritual law leads to eternal blessings and beatitude in the life hereafter. Disobedience leads to eternal curses and condemnation.

Since the fall into sin, Calvin argued, no person has been capable of perfectly obeying this law. The scourge of original sin infects all persons, even the most devout saints. By itself, therefore, the spiritual law becomes "a great accuser, condemning us in our conscience, cursing us to eternal damnation."30 Through his grace, God liberates the conscience from such curses and condemnation; he bestows "spiritual liberty" on believers, on citizens of the heavenly kingdom. This liberty has two dimensions. On the one hand, by accepting God's grace in faith, believers are freed from the requirement to earn their salvation by perfect obedience of the law. Faith and grace provide them with an alternative pathway to blessing and beatitude. Believers are made righteous and just despite their inability to obey the law.31 On the other hand, believers are freed to live by the law, without fear of its condemnation. Although God has cancelled the condemnation of the law, he has not cancelled its commandments. The law remains in place "as an exhortation to believers" to lead a Godly life. It is "not something to bind their consciences with a curse," but it is a means for them "to learn more thoroughly each day what the Lord's will is like."32 With the sting of the law removed, believers have the liberty of conscience to follow its commandments, albeit imperfectly.33

Liberty of conscience stands counterpoised not only to God's spiritual law, but also to the Catholic Church's canon law. Like other early Protestants, Calvin had little faith in the vast system of canon law rules and structures by which the Church had come to govern spiritual life and much of temporal life.34 He issued a bitter broadside against the arguments from Scripture, tradition, and the sacraments which the Church had adduced to support its canon law system.35 "[T]he power to frame laws was both unknown to the apostles, and many times denied the ministers of the church by God's Word," he argued.36 And, again, "it is not a church which, passing the bounds of God's Word, wantons and disports itself to frame new laws and dream up new things" for spiritual life.37

The church must respect the God-given liberty of conscience of Christian believers. To be sure, said Calvin quoting St. Paul, "all things [must] be done decently and in order."38 Certain rules and structures "are necessary for internal discipline [and] the maintenance of peace, honesty, and good order in the assembly of Christians."39 But the church has no authority to impose laws "upon consciences in those matters in which they have been freed by Christ," in the so-called adiaphora -- "the outward things of themselves 'indifferent'" to salvation.40 Though Calvin did not spell them out systematically, such matters included habits of food, drink, dress, holy days, confessions, pilgrimages, marital relations, and the like, which the Catholic Church traditionally governed in copious detail, backed by threats of spiritual sanction and discipline.41 Canon laws that govern such matters, Calvin regarded as illegitimate "human traditions" that improperly "establish another service of God than that which he demands [in his spiritual law], thus tending to destroy Christian liberty."42 Such canon laws "tyrannize," "ensnare," confuse," and "destroy the repose" of conscience by all manner of "traps and superstitions." In essential matters of faith and spiritual conduct, of course, Christians are bound to comply with God's spiritual law. But in discretionary matters of spiritual living (the adiaphora), Christian consciences "must be held in no bondage, and bound by no bounds."43 Christians might voluntarily bind themselves in such discretionary matters, especially to protect the frail consciences of other believers.44 But such restraint is neither necessary nor subject to the church's regulations.

The church must also respect the liberty of conscience of non-believers -- Jews, Turks, Muslims, heretics, and others. Church leaders may certainly bar such "enemies of religion" from the communion; parishioners may likewise spurn such persons from their civic circles. But no church member may subject religious outsiders to forced baptisms, persecutions, inquisitions, crusades, and other forms of religious coercion practiced in the past. Christians must instead practice "clemency and moderation" in their treatment of religious outsiders, "lest we soon descend from [religious] discipline to butchery."45 As Calvin put it in his 1536 Institutes:

Through such benign means, religious outsiders might eventually be inspired to embrace the life, law, and liberty of the Christian faith.

Calvin's early views on liberty of conscience thus differed markedly both from the rationalist formulations of a Thomas Aquinas and the voluntarist formulations of a Marsilius of Padua. Calvin did not have in mind the freedom of the person to respond either to the dictates of reason or to the impulses of the will.47 And he certainly did not have in mind the Enlightenment conception of liberty of conscience, defined by James Madison as the liberty to choose "the duty that we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it."48 Calvin cast this classic concept in much narrower theological terms. Liberty of conscience is "in all its parts, a spiritual thing," he wrote, a liberty to obey the commandments of God with a free conscience. God defines the duties of man through his commandments. Man has the liberty to choose to obey them. The "whole force" of liberty of conscience, "consists in quieting frightened consciences before God whether they are disturbed or troubled over forgiveness of sins; or anxious whether unfinished works, corrupted by the faults of the flesh, are pleasing to God; or tormented about the use of things indifferent."49

Political Liberty. While God has ordained spiritual liberty to balance the spiritual law of the heavenly kingdom, he has ordained political liberty to balance the political law of the earthly kingdom. These twin forms of spiritual and political liberty and law cannot be conflated, Calvin insisted. "[C]ertain men, when they hear that the Gospel promises liberty ... think they cannot benefit by their liberty so long as they see any power set up over them.... But whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ's spiritual kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct."50 "Spiritual liberty can perfectly well exist along with political bondage."51 Spiritual bondage can perfectly well exist along with political liberty.

Calvin described the political rulers and laws of the earthly kingdom in largely general and homiletic terms in this early period. God has appointed political rulers to be his "viceregents," "vicars," and "ministers" in the earthly kingdom. Indeed, says Calvin citing biblical verses, "those who serve as magistrates are called 'gods'."52 They are vested with God's authority and majesty. They are "called" to an office that is "not only holy and lawful before God, but also the most sacred and by far the most honorable of all callings in the whole life of mortal men."53 They are commanded to embrace and exemplify clemency, integrity, honesty, mercy, humanity, humility, grace, innocence, continence, and a host of other Godly virtues.54

Political rulers must govern the earthly kingdom by written political laws, not by personal fiat. Their laws must encompass the biblical principles of love of God and neighbor, but they must not embrace biblical laws per se.55 Instead, "equity alone must be the goal and rule and limit of all laws"56 -- a term which Calvin used both in the classic Aristotelian sense of correcting defects in individual rules if they work injustice in a particular case, and in his own sense of adjusting each legal system to the changing circumstances of the community.57 Through such written, equitable laws, political rulers must serve to promote peace and order in the earthly kingdom, to punish crime and civil wrongdoing, to protect persons in their lives and properties, "to ensure that men may carry on blameless intercourse among themselves" in the spirit of "civil righteousness."58 Such laws must also, Calvin said in a pregnant but undelivered aside, "prevent idolatry, sacrilege against God's name, blasphemies against his truth, and other public offenses against religion." But he hastened to add that he did not wish to "commit to civil government the duty of rightly establishing religion, which I put ... beyond human decision."59 The political law, said Calvin in summary of his position, serves only to ensure "that a public manifestation of religion may exist among Christians, and that humanity may be maintained among men."60

These God-given duties and limits define not only the political office but also the political liberty of Christian believers in the earthly kingdom.61 Political liberty and political authority "are constituted together," said Calvin.62 The political liberty of believers is not a subjective right. It does not exist in the abstract; it is a function of the political office. When political officials respect the duties and limits of their office, believers enjoy ample political liberty to give "public manifestation of their faith," or in modern language, to have free exercise of their religion. When political officials betray their office, however, through negligence, injustice, overreaching, or outright tyranny, the political liberty of the believer is abridged or even destroyed.63

Calvin insisted that "private individuals" have a Godly duty to obey tyrannical political officials up to the limits of Christian conscience.64 But this duty of obedience does not preclude believers from petitioning officials to repent of their abuse, to return to their duties, and thus to restore the political freedom of religious believers. Calvin, in fact, opened his 1536 edition of the Institutes with precisely such a petition to King Francis I of France, on behalf of the persecuted Protestants within his regime.65 In his dedicatory epistle to Francis, he stated that, as a believer, he was compelled to "defend the church against [political] furies," to "embrace the common cause of all believers."66 Against "overbearing tyranny," Calvin later put it, a Christian must "venture boldly to groan for freedom."67

Calvin set forth no declaration of religious liberty in his dedicatory epistle. Such an act would have been suicide given the political climate of the day. Instead, he cleverly singled out those abuses of Protestants that defied widely recognized rights and freedoms, particularly criminal procedural rights. Calvin protested the widespread and unchecked instances of "perjury," "lying slanders" "wicked accusations," and the "fury of evil men" that conspired to incite "public hatred" and "open violence" against believers. He protested that "the case" of the evangelicals "has been handled with no order of law and with violent heat rather than judicial gravity." He protested various forms of false imprisonment and abuses of prisoners. "Some of us are shackled with irons, some beaten with rods, some led about as laughing stocks, some proscribed, some most savagely tortured, some forced to flee." He protested the many procedural inequities: Protestants are "fraudulently and undeservedly charged with treason and villainy." They are convicted for capital offenses, "without confession or sure testimony." "[B]loody sentences are meted out against this doctrine without a hearing." He protested the bias of judges and partiality of the proceedings. "Those who sit in judgment ... pronounce as sentences the prejudices which they have brought from home." He protested the intrusions on the church's freedoms of assembly and speech. "The poor little church has either been wasted with cruel slaughter or banished into exile, or so overwhelmed by threats and fears that it dare not even open its mouth." All these offenses stood diametrically opposed to basic political freedoms recognized at the time both in the Empire and in France.68 "[A] very great question is at stake," Calvin declared to King Francis: "how God's glory may be kept safe on earth, how God's truth may retain its place of honor, how Christ's kingdom may be kept in good repair among us."69

Calvin sought no absolute political liberty for religious believers. He was fully aware of fraudulent and excessive religious exercises. He urged his fellow believers to "to keep within its own limits all that liberty which is promised and offered to us in Christ."70 He likewise urged Francis and other political officials to root out the impious imposter: "[I]f any persons raise a tumult under the pretext of the gospel, ... if any depict the license of their own vices as the liberty of God's grace, there are laws and legal penalties by which they may be severely restrained according to their deserts. Only let not the gospel of God be blasphemed," nor those who adhere to it be defamed.71

Calvin's early formulations on religious liberty revealed a bold and brilliant young mind at work. Calvin had mastered the intricacies of the Lutheran two kingdoms theory, and converted it to his own use. He had charted a course between the radical antinomianism and radical legalism of his day. He had crafted a theory that balanced freedom and order, liberty and law both within the church and within the state. He had provided a lean and learned apologia for religious liberty that would inspire fellow evangelicals for generations, indeed centuries, to come. This was no small achievement for a man newly converted to the evangelical cause and still in his early twenties.

28 Ibid., chap. L.24. See also ibid., chap. 1.4, 1.7, 6.47, 6.49.
29 Ibid., chap. 1.4, 7-23. 30 Ibid., chap. 1.4, 1.33.
31 Ibid., chap. 6.2. 32 Ibid., chap. 1.33, 6.3.
33 Ibid., See also ibid., chap. 1.30.
34 See generally James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London and New York: Longsman, 1995).
35 See Institutes (1536), dedicatory epistle, and chap. 6.14-32.
36 Ibid., chap. 6.17.
37 Ibid., chap. 6.20.
38 Ibid., chap. 6.32 (quoting I Cor. 14:40).
39 Geneva Catechism (1536), item 17, "Human Traditions," reprinted in Arthur C. Cochrane, ed., Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), 117ff.; Institutes (1536), chap. 6.32. 40 Institutes (1536), chap. 6.14.
41 Ibid.; Geneva Catechism (1536), item 17.
42 Ibid.
43 Institutes (1536), chap. 6.4.
44 Ibid., chap. 6.8-6.13
45 Institutes (1539), in OS, vol. 5, 221-222.
46 Institutes (1536), chap. 2.28. In subsequent editions of the Institutes, Calvin dropped the last two sentences of this text -- thereby neither extending such "clemency" to "Turks and Saracens" nor condemning outright traditional forms of religious coercion. See Institutes (1559), bk. 4, chap. 12.10; but cf. this same text in the 1560 French edition of the Institutes, which restores the language of the 1536 text quoted above. Calvin's critic Sebastian Castellio highlighted this textual shift, in his condemnation of Calvin's participation in the execution of Michael Servetus, arguing that Calvin had effectively betrayed his own premises. See De haereticis an sint persequendi (1553; fasc. ed. Geneva, 1954), 108 and discussion infra notes 140-156; R. White, "Castellio Against Calvin: The Turk in the Toleration Controversy of the Sixteenth Century," Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance, vol. 46 (1984): 573; J. Pannier, "Calvin et les Turcs," Revue Historique 180 (1937): 268; Jack H. Robinson, Calvin and the Jews (New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992).
47 For earlier rationalist and voluntarist formulations, see Brian Tierney, "Religious Rights: An Historical Perspective," in John Witte, Jr. and Johan D. van der Vyver, eds., Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives (The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996), 17- 45.
48 James Madison, "To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" (1785), para. 1, in Madison Papers, William T. Hutchinson and William M.E. Rachael, eds. (Chicago, 1962), 8:298.
49 Institutes (1536), chap. 6.5.
50 Ibid., chap. 6.35.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 6.38-40. See also Geneva Cathechism (1536), item 21 “Magistrates.”
53 Institutes (1536), chap. 6.39.
54 Ibid.; Geneva Catechism (1536), item 21 "Magistrates" and the lengthy discussion in Calvin's Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. See generally McNeill, "John Calvin on Civil Government," 30ff.; Höpfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin, 43ff.
55 Institutes (1536), chap. 6.48.
56 Ibid., chap. 6.48-6.49.
57 On the classic Aristotelian view of equity as a corrective in the individual case, see Aristotle, Ethics, bk. 1, chap. 5; id., The Art of Rhetoric, bk. 1, chap. 12. See also Calvin's Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia, bk. 1, chap. 18 (Latin text, 111; Battles and Hugo trans., 371) and discussion in Beyerhaus, Studien zur Staatsanschauung Calvins, 5-8. On Calvin's view of equity as the adjustment of general norms of love to the legal system of particular communities, see Institutes (1536), chap. 6.49. where Calvin writes: "every nation is left free to make such laws as it foresees to be profitable for itself. Yet these must be in conformity to that perpetual rule of love, so that they indeed vary in form but have the very same purpose. . . . What I have said will become plain if in all laws we examine (as we should) these two things: the constitution of the law, and the equity on which its constitution itself rests. Equity, because it is natural, cannot but be the same for all and therefore, this same purpose ought to apply to all laws, whatever their object. Constitutions have attendant circumstances upon which they in part depend. It therefore does not matter that they are different, provided all equally press toward the same goal of equity."
58 Institutes (1536), chap. 6.36-6.37. See also ibid., chap. 1.33, where Calvin describes the "civil use of the law."
59 Institutes (1536), 6.37.
60 Ibid., 6.37.
61 See esp. Josef Bohatec, Calvin und das Recht, 2. Ausgabe (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1991), 81-82; id., Calvins Lehre von Staat und Kirche mits besonderer Berücksichtigung des Organismusgedankens, 2. Ausgabe (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1968), 109-116.
62 Bohatec, Calvins Lehre von Staar und Kirche, 109.
63 Ibid., 6.54.
64 Ibid., chap. 6.55-56. Calvin did allow for "magistrates, appointed by the people to restrain the willfulness of kings" -- a text which became a locus classicus for later Calvinist theories of resistance, revolution, and regicide. See generally Julian H. Franklin, Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); Ernst Wolf, "Das Problem des Widerstandsrechts bei Calvin," in Wiederstandrecht, ed. Arthur Kaufmann & Leonhard E. Backmann (hrsg.), Widerstandrecht (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 152-169.
65 According to some interpreters, this may also have been one of his goals in drafting his Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. See, Gilbert Beyerhaus, Calvins Staatsanschauung in Seneckommentar von 1532 (Berlin: Trowitzsch, 1910), 29 (calling the tract a "Tendenzschrift" addressed to the pressing problems of persecution and political abuse in Calvin's day); Emile Doumergue, Jean Calvin. Les hommes et les choses de son temps (Lausanne: G. Bridel, 1899-1927), 1:211ff. (arguing that Calvin's commentary was a protest against religious persecution, an appeal for royal clemency and restraint, and, as such "a magnificent manifesto on liberty" for persecuted Protestants). But cf. criticisms in Breen, John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism, 80ff. Whatever Calvin's actual intent in 1532, he certainly adopted much of the same style of argumentation for political liberty of Christians in his dedicatory letter in the 1536 Institutes. Moreover, many of the passages in his Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia counselling political magistrates to respect their offices and thereby to protect the liberty of their political subjects have close parallels in various editions of Calvin's Institutes. See the convenient table in Calvin's Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia, appendix 4, 393-395. 66 [Dedicatory Epistle] to the Most Mighty and Most Illustrious Monarch Francis, Most Christian King of the French, His Esteemed Prince and Lord, in Institutes (1536).
67 Letter to Melanchthon (June 28, 1545), Calvin, Letters, 1:467.
68 See John H. Langbein, Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Adhemar Esmein, A History of Continental Criminal Procedure with Special Reference to France, repr. ed. (South Hackensack, NJ: Rothman Reprints, 1968). 69 Institutes (1536), dedicatory epistle.
70 Ibid., 6.35.
71 Ibid., dedicatory epistle.

Liberty of conscience stands counterpoised not only to God's spiritual law, but also to the Catholic Church's canon law. Like other early Protestants, Calvin had little faith in the vast system of canon law rules and structures by which the Church had come to govern spiritual life and much of temporal life.34 He issued a bitter broadside against the arguments from Scripture, tradition, and the sacraments which the Church had adduced to support its canon law system.35 "[T]he power to frame laws was both unknown to the apostles, and many times denied the ministers of the church by God's Word," he argued.36 And, again, "it is not a church which, passing the bounds of God's Word, wantons and disports itself to frame new laws and dream up new things" for spiritual life.37

Thyanks for the ping, t_c!

....we should not be surprised to find that the Calvinists took a very important part in American Revolution. Calvin emphasized that the sovereignty of God, when applied to the affairs of government proved to be crucial, because God as the Supreme Ruler had all ultimate authority vested in Him, and all other authority flowed from God, as it pleased Him to bestow it.

The Scriptures, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind, were taken as the final authority for all of life, as containing eternal principles, which were for all ages, and all peoples. Calvin based his views on these very Scriptures. As we read earlier, in Paul's letter to the Romans, God's Word declares the state to be a divinely established institution.

History is eloquent in declaring that the American republican democracy was born of Christianity and that form of Christianity was Calvinism. The great revolutionary conflict which resulted in the founding of this nation was carried out mainly by Calvinists--many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian college of Princeton....
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In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”

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