Intent on passing through Geneva after a one-night stay, John Calvin is asked to join the reform movement there. His efforts and leadership in effect resulted in a third branch of Protestantism: Reformed Christianity. In the late 1550s, a militant version of this movement spreads beyond Geneva and draws a large number of converts. The denomination reached its height in Scotland and migrated to America after engulfing Europe.
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 27: The Spread of Calvinism
A reformer of what can be considered the second generation, John Calvin, a methodical thinker and systematizer of the sixteenth century, unified various Protestant theologies into a cohesive set of doctrines. While Luther was consumed by the Protestant theology of justification by faith, Calvin centered his focus on the sovereignty of the Most High and sanctification. At a time when Spain was at war with France, the young scholar was forced to end his studies in France and leave the country. He traveled through Geneva where he planned to lodge for a single night. The town’s reputation was not the kind that afforded solitude. It was a pleasure-loving city that was in the middle of an identity crisis, having rejected both secular and religious authorities, that being the Duke of Savoy and the Roman pope. Catholic masses were no longer held and citizens were hostile to the city’s bishop. A gaping vacuum was ready to be filled by an influential reformer who could infuse the city’s religious institutions with the spirit of the Reformation, as had been done elsewhere.
A local reformer named William Farel had preached his brand of reform in the city for four years prior to Calvin’s visit, but not to great effect. Farel was familiar with one of Calvin’s publications, and when he learned that Calvin was in town, he rushed to his inn and urged the young man to remain in the city and aid in establishing a powerful reform movement there. When Calvin insisted that he must leave to continue his studies, Farel warned that he was only following his own wishes and, if he didn’t help the reform effort, the Most High would punish him for seeking his own interests. Calvin, stricken with terror, yielded, and immediately threw in his efforts for the reform movement in Geneva. He would eventually rise to a leadership position in what he called “the game,” and his brand of reformation, which was the third iteration after Lutheranism and the radical reform of the Anabaptists. Calvin spearheaded what came to be known simply as Reformed Christianity, also termed Calvinism. John Calvin, then, is the root of all Presbyterian churches, a good deal of Baptist congregations—which moved away from their Anabaptist origins—as well as many Congregationalists, and the Dutch and German Reformed Churches.
The torch had been passed from Luther to Calvin one could say. But these were very different men with different approaches to the Reformation.
“Luther dreamed of good princes, disliked law on principle, and had little interest in institutions. As a result, Lutheran churches ended up with a mishmash of governing structures.”
Writes Alec Ryrie, in his book Protestants.
“Calvin, by contrast, had trained as a lawyer, knew that structures matter, and favored more participatory government. He insisted that pastors should never have control over money…. More momentously, he distinguished pastors, the ordained ministers who preach and celebrate the sacraments, from elders, senior laymen who would take charge of discipline, and who become the sharp edge of a cultural revolution. Calvin saw the church as a covenanted community, a new Israel in which all were bound to be their brothers and sisters’ keepers.”
Calvin, like many other Christian leaders, shaped his church and its doctrine on personal views, based on what was inferred from a reading of the Messianic Writings. While he took up Luther’s torch, Calvin’s reform efforts rather followed Zwingli’s in structure, and he was able to build on Zwingli’s work. Zwingli’s influence reached other reform leaders who sympathized with his view of the Reformation over that of Luther’s, thus Zwingli’s brand of reform was able to spread throughout and beyond Switzerland, reaching Strasbourg in Germany, where another reformer, Martin Bucer—third in importance in that country only to Luther and his successor Melanchthon—took up the cause of Zwingli. After Zwingli was killed in battle, however, his cause lost the impact it enjoyed under his direct leadership, thus the center of the Protestant Reformation moved to Geneva, the French-speaking Swiss city that benefited greatly from Calvin’s disciplined leadership.
Calvin—who was bound for Strasbourg, where he was prepared to study and write—was offered the position of Professor of Sacred Scriptures by Geneva’s city council, and in this office he dug his heels into the work of reform. A confession of faith was drawn up, which those residing in Geneva would have to accept. He also drew up plans for education reform, and insisted on excommunicating all who refused to adopt a certain spiritual standard.
“[B]ut the Genevans seemed to resist at every turn.”
Writes Carlos M. N. Eire in his book Reformations.
“The worst conflict was a power struggle between the clergy and the city council over the right of excommunication, which the ministers wanted to control, against the wishes of the magistrates. Having just rid themselves of what they viewed as an oppressive church, the elites of Geneva were not eager to see another one take its place. Unwilling to compromise, insisting on the clergy’s right to excommunicate, Calvin and Farel were expelled from Geneva in May 1538.”
Calvin took that as a sign from the Creator and gladly headed for Strasbourg, his original destination. He later confessed that the years spent in Strasbourg were among the happiest of his life. He had been liberated from the obligation of battling Anabaptists in the rebellious city of Geneva, whose citizens always saw him as an outsider. Strasbourg, on the other hand, was home to French refugees whom Calvin ministered to with ease. Strasbourg had also subdued the Anabaptists, and it was there that Calvin married one of their former members, a widow named Idelette de Bure. In time, Calvin also met up with influential reformer Martin Bucer, from whom he learned a great deal.
Calvin’s time in Strasbourg saw him achieve success as a teacher of Protestant theology; the city even honored him with the privilege of being its representative at religious conferences held in Germany, which were of some importance. But the happy, virtually carefree time in Strasbourg would be relatively short-lived, lasting from 1538 – 1541. Calvin’s main supporters in Geneva gained the upper hand in the city through favorable elections to the council, and they invited him back to continue his work of reform. Reluctantly, he returned to the burdensome city in September of 1541 and essentially picked up where he left off.
“His first task was the reorganization of the Reformed church.”
Writes Will Durant in his book The Reformation.
“At his request the small council, soon after his return, appointed a commission of five clergymen and six councilors, with Calvin at their head, to formulate a new ecclesiastical code. On January 2, 1542, the great council ratified the resultant Ordonnances ecclésiastiques, whose essential features are still accepted by the Reformed and Presbyterian churches of Europe and America. The ministry was divided into pastors, teachers, lay elders, and deacons. The pastors of Geneva constituted ‘The Venerable Company,’ which governed the church and trained candidates for the ministry. No one henceforth was to preach in Geneva without authorization by the Company. The consent of the city council and the congregation was also required, but episcopal ordinances—and bishops—were taboo. The new clergy, while never claiming the miraculous powers of the Catholic priests, and though decreeing themselves ineligible for civil office, became under Calvin more powerful than any priesthood since ancient Israel.”
This fourfold church government, or consistory, had only five pastors, who, not unlike the mother church in Rome, kept up the practice of administering sacraments, chiefly the eucharist. There were twelve lay elders, and since they outnumbered the pastors, they enjoyed the majority of leadership, yet Calvin’s authority and influence were such that the church government often yielded to him. For twelve years, the consistory, upon Calvin’s orders, sought to regulate the religious lives of Geneva’s citizens, who were also members of the Reformed church. Backed by the power of excommunication, the consistory ruled with an iron hand that created conflict with the secular government. But in 1553, Calvin’s strongest opponents rose to power once more and seriously challenged his authority in the city.
At that time, a brilliant but heretical Spanish physician named Michael Servetus, having fled Catholic persecutors in France, sought refuge in Geneva. As an escaped prisoner of the French Inquisition, once Servetus was recognized he was immediately arrested. Calvin personally drafted thirty-eight accusations against Servetus for views that were seen as heresies even among Protestants. Those who opposed Calvin came to Servetus’s aid and tried to convince the council of his innocence. In being tried as a heretic by Catholics, they reasoned, Servetus was therefore an ally of Protestants. The Genevan authorities sought the advice of leaders of the Swiss cantons and the view of the Protestant opposition was unanimously rejected. Servetus was sentenced to death by burning, since heresy at the time was a more serious offense than murder.
“That did not exactly end the Servetus affair, however.”
Writes Glenn S. Sunshine in his book The Reformation for Armchair Theologians.
“Some time earlier, a man by the name of Castellio had been a teacher in Geneva. He wanted to become a pastor, but due to a disagreement over how to interpret the Song of Solomon, Calvin opposed his ordination. Castellio, disappointed, left Geneva for Basel, carrying with him a very positive attestation from Calvin about Castellio’s abilities as a teacher. When he heard about the Servetus affair, Castellio was furious. Servetus wasn’t a dangerous heretic like Thomas Munzer or the Anabaptists at Münster, or even the Swiss Brethren, whose rebaptism of adults threatened the social fabric in the community. Rather, he was prosecuted simply for what he thought, for his ideas. Castellio wrote a book entitled On the Coercion of Heretics, in which he argued that prosecuting heretics was counterproductive. Servetus’s ideas would have sunk like rocks if Calvin hadn’t made a capital case out of them. In fact, because of what Calvin did, Servetus’s ideas were much better known than they would have been otherwise. If the person commits no physical crime, he should not be subject to prosecution, and thus heretics ought to be tolerated in society.”
The book angered Calvin and caused him to appeal to the city council to silence Castellio. It refused to do so. Therefore …
“Castellio would end up writing other books against religious warfare, and promoting peace, harmony, and other ‘outlandish’ ideas. But he was largely a voice in the wilderness. Very few other people in Europe were ready for arguments for toleration.”
While Calvin preferred that Servetus be beheaded rather than burned at the stake, since he led the Inquisition against him, he was seen as the one who had Servetus burned. Two years after the event, however, Calvin would be secure in his position and enjoy a largely unchallenged role in influencing the religious and moral affairs of Geneva. And, as Glenn S. Sunshine writes:
“Despite these controversies, Calvin’s ideas spread widely, and helped shape religious thinking in a number of areas in Europe.”
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
By placing the sovereignty of the Most High at the center of his theology, those who embraced Calvinism viewed the state in a different light. Luther considered the state to be the highest authority, which is why German Lutheran princes were afforded such power within his church. Calvin taught that no man on earth was to be imbued with unlimited power, neither king nor pope. In this way, he encouraged resistance to tyrannical monarchies. The church, Calvin taught, was to lead and guide the secular government in matters of morality and spiritual concern. Emboldened by this stance, Calvin’s followers went about threatening revolutions throughout Europe, and sought to overthrow suppressive governments or religious powers deemed false.
Geneva was viewed as the unofficial capital of this religious revolution, which the ardent followers of Calvin saw as a promise of the coming Kingdom. From Geneva, many of Calvin’s disciples returned to their European countries to spread his brand of theology, and thus Calvinism was able to break out of its original boundaries and become an international denomination. The movement started as a minor affair in France, but when influential members of the nobility were converted, all of that changed. Most notably, the Huguenots, who were French Calvinists that took Calvin’s words completely to heart, attempted to seize control of the French government. Thousands of them were butchered in 1572 on what is called St. Bartholomew’s Day. This put an end to their efforts to threaten the Catholic hold on that region, though they retained some influence in the country.
The spread of Calvinism to the Netherlands, which was being ruled by Catholic Spain, was a crucial moment in Christian history. At the time, Philip II sat on the Spanish throne, taking over from Charles V who had abdicated. Philip inherited all the provinces once held by Charles V, except those in Austria. In Philip’s possession were Spain, Milan, Sicily, Southern Italy, Mediterranean islands like Sardinia, as well as all the territories under Spanish control in the new world and Asia. He even inherited the nation that formed the Low Countries. In 1580, when the last of the Portuguese royal line died out, Philip annexed Portugal and seized its colonies in Asia, Africa, and the new world. Spain existed as the most powerful nation on earth, whose empire stretched worldwide.
“Curiously, despite this enormous empire and the influx of gold and silver from the new world, Philip’s finances were never particularly stable.”
Writes Glenn S. Sunshine.
“Spain was a rural country whose principal export was the wool of Marino sheep, the highest quality of raw wool available at the time, but hardly a major money-maker in the grand scheme of things. Further, of all the countries of Europe, Spain was probably the least prepared for the challenges of colonization. It had little skilled industry or manufacturing to provide the finished goods the colonists wanted in return for their gold and silver. As a result, the hard currency that flowed into Spain flowed right out again to purchase manufactured goods for the colonies, mostly to northern Italy and the Low Countries. To make matters worse, Spain was constantly involved in wars outside its borders. Philip was a devout, conservative Catholic who saw it as his duty to defend and promote the faith against both Muslim expansion and Protestant heretics, so he spent the majority of his reign fighting wars, mostly—though not entirely—over religion.”
It was largely because of Philip’s navy that the Ottomans were unable to expand their empire into the eastern Mediterranean region during his reign. He even took the side of Catholics in the religious French wars against the Huguenots and Calvinists in France that lasted till 1598—this was predicated on the spread of Calvinism in that country. Of all of Philip’s wars, however, the most prominent among them is the war that resulted from a Dutch revolt against his rule in the Netherlands, which also brought him into conflict with England. The Netherlands, or Low Countries, are known today as the Benelux countries, comprising Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. The nation was bursting at the seams with Protestants who had earlier ignored many of the edicts of its ruler Charles V, since he had declared Protestantism a religious and civil offense. Yet the Low Countries were the source of half of Charles’s revenue stream.
When Philip took the throne, he was viewed as a foreign ruler by those in the Low Countries, whose way of life he would never understand. The Low Countries were made up of republics that were governed by the highest rungs of the local citizenry who sought the protection of national privileges and rights. The region, which was also home to Catholics, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and Reformed Protestants (or Calvinists), saw no major conflict arise between these groups which were fairly moderate toward one another. That changed toward the end of the 1550s when the Protestants became more militant in their religious stance. This was due largely to Calvinists from France and Genevan missionaries who descended on the Netherlands with new views preached by John Calvin, which made them intolerant of the high taxes and persecution of Protestants being inflicted by the Spanish. In time, converts began to flock to their numbers. Glenn S. Sunshine adds:
“By 1561, they were numerous enough to hold a synod, adopt a Calvinist statement of faith known as the Belgic Confession, based on the 1559 French-Gallican Confession, and set up a church order paralleling that of the Huguenots.”
Indeed, Calvinists in the Netherlands would rise and fight against their oppressive Catholic Spanish rulers well into the seventeenth century. Calvinist pastors were among the first to migrate to the Low Countries and lead the resistance. This amounted to what would be considered freedom fighting or guerilla warfare today. A national party that was established in the northern province had as its leader William the Silent, who became a Calvinist in 1573, and in another decade, he would help create a Dutch republic, which united the provinces of the Low Countries and lasted until 1795. But the Low Countries was just one region among many to which Calvinists would spread.
Back in Geneva, John Calvin had bested his opponents and seized property from a powerful family among them. On this property he founded the Geneva Academy in 1559, where a preparatory school for youths and a seminary for pastoral training were established.
“Its first rector, the French émigré Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605), was Calvin’s right-hand man and anointed successor.”
Writes Carlos M. N. Eire.
“Under his direction, the academy quickly became a veritable factory of Reformed clerics, and especially of hundreds of French natives, who returned to their kingdom immediately. Full of zeal and well educated in Reformed theology, these missionaries trained at Calvin’s academy brought home with them the Genevan model, and set about creating throughout France a tight, growing network of Huguenot churches. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Geneva would thus play a role in French history more significant than any other French city, save Paris.
“Geneva would also figure prominently in the history of many other nations. In the 1550s, especially, Geneva became a truly international center of religious fervor, earning itself that title of the Protestant Rome: Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Scots, Englishmen, Netherlanders, Poles, Hungarians, Moravians, and others took up residence, or passed through. Those who returned home, like the French clergy trained in the academy, brought with them Calvin’s theology and his Genevan blueprints for reform.”
As Geneva grew in popularity, so too did Calvin’s fame rise. Even decades after his death, his theological views lived on in others, such as John Winthrop, the Massachusetts Bay Colony governor—and a disciple of Calvin’s—who sailed to the new world to establish a puritanical city. In fact, most of the Puritans were Calvinists, which speaks to John Calvin’s great influence and the heights it eventually reached.
Scotland illustrates this fact. This was a land that in the sixteenth century was home to subjects who were of one religion and a queen who was of an entirely different one. Mary Queen of Scots married into French royalty at a young age, leading the Scots and the English alike to fear that Scotland would soon become a possession of France. Out of this tense situation emerged John Knox, a preacher and activist who had fled persecution in Catholic England to deliver his brand of Calvinism to the Scots. Within his message was the idea that the queen could be challenged by her subjects.
“Scotland was a latecomer to the Reformation.”
Writes Alec Ryrie.
“In 1559 – 60, an inchoate evangelical movement fused with nationalistic resentment to spark a rebellion against the pro-French Catholic regime. The man who crystalized this movement was John Knox, a disciple of Calvin’s, who lacked his master’s subtlety and made up for it in zeal. He had seen the future as a refugee in Geneva and wanted to make it work in Scotland. Above all, he was entranced by the idea of spiritual equality. In a series of polemics in 1558, he warned his fellow Scots that they could not shirk their responsibilities to reform the church simply because they were commoners.”
Knox assured them that, in the Creator’s eyes …
“… ‘[A]ll man is equal; equal not in rights, but in responsibilities. If you lived in a land of idolatry, it was your duty to demand reform, and to take action to separate yourself from the sin around you.’ … After a decade of confusion, Scotland’s Protestants succeeded in deposing their Catholic queen, Mary, and replacing her with her infant son, now King James VI.”
But after going through all the trouble of ridding the realm of a Catholic ruler, they were reluctant to submit to a king of their own choosing. Alec Ryrie goes on to say:
“James was raised Protestant, but spent his adult life in a running battle with Protestant churchmen who would not accept his power over them in any meaningful sense. They wanted a church that elected its own leadership, so-called Presbyterianism, from the Greek word for elders. The king wanted the church to be governed by bishops, partly for tradition’s sake, but mostly so that he could appoint them himself. Worse, like the true Calvinists they were, the Presbyterians wanted comprehensive moral discipline, and to be able to haul even the king before church elders.”
All of this was ignited by the efforts of John Knox, who had elaborated on Calvin’s original view of Protestantism and stressed the right of commoners to resist, by force if necessary, their overbearing monarchs. The Scottish nobility was drawn to this enticing notion, and so was the public at large. Civil war erupted in the country in 1559, and by the summer of the next year, the country’s capital, Edinburgh, was in Calvinist hands. John Knox personally drafted the articles of religion, which parliament adopted for Scotland. This meant the end of Catholicism in that country. When the queen finally returned to her kingdom in 1561, she was a nineteen-year-old widow forced to witness a Calvinist takeover.
Scotland stood as the embodiment of the Reformation with its decisive Catholic versus Protestant conflict; the lowly preacher and his common followers pitted against the powerful highborn queen, her court, and the mother church. The dynamic would shift in Knox’s favor, however, and even Mary’s descendants would fail to slow the progress of Calvinism in the country. In fact, Scotland came to be the most Calvinistic of all countries in the world. And when John Calvin met his end in 1564, Calvinism had spread throughout Europe and would soon storm America. Thus, many labored tirelessly to ensure that Calvinism would not die with its founder.
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: William Farel, Geneva, justification by faith, sanctification, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Congregationalist, John Calvin, Martin Bucer, Strasbourg, Strassburg, Michael Servetus, Huguenots, Philip II, Belgic Confession, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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