Politics Religion and State building (11th – 16th/19th centuries)

John Calvin's world was quite different from Luther's: he had grown up in the kingdom of France, belonged to a younger generation, and had been trained in the law; his theology was self-taught against the background of a humanist culture. His relation to civil society was rather different from Luther's in that Calvin took concrete steps towards setting up a political regime in keeping with the Gospel as he understood it. Unlike Luther who never really cared much to set up an ecclesial discipline, Calvin drafted ordinances (which would be promulgated by Geneva's Little Council^[1] in 1541) and he demanded that worshipers conformed in behaviour to precise social expectations. Indeed Calvin, even more than Luther, insisted on the need daily to translate into action one's God-given faith: thus « God's commandments » must be observed in private life and in society ... and means must be found to make sure that these « commandments » were indeed observed. Drunks, gamblers, blasphemers, were reported and sentenced as were violent husbands and neglectful parents. In Geneva, he set up an institution of control and of moral and religious education, the Consistoire, on which sat both ministers of the cult and magistrates^[2].

For Calvin like for Luther, the magistrates exercised their power in the name of God by whom it had been entrusted to them: indeed they were « viceregents of God », that is in some way his « ambassadors » on earth (Institutes, book 4 Ch. 20, 6). It followed that they must be obeyed. In Calvin's eye, the movements of Radical Reformation^[3], that taught that the state can be dispensed with denoted idealists, dangerous dreamers, or, as he called them, “fantastics”. But what regime to favour? Calvin did not like the monarchy which he defined as domination by a single person, for it was liable to descend into tyranny and it is well known, he wrote, that good kings are a rarity. He hated democracy, which he saw as the domination of the people, for it could soon degenerate into sedition. This left the aristocracy, « or the dominion of the principal persons of a nation », thus the least bad political system wherein « The vice or imperfection of men therefore renders it safer and more tolerable for the government to be in the hands of many, that they may afford each other mutual assistance and admonition, and that if any one arrogate to himself more than is right, the many may act as censors and masters to restrain his ambition. » (Institutes, book 4, chap. 20, 8 - trans. John Allen).

The political system Calvin found in Geneva thus seemed ideal to him: magistrates none of whom had prevailing power on the others (with the exception of the syndics but they were elected for one year only, and by their peers) and a people who obeyed them. In the last years of his life (from1555 to 1564), for all the moral authority he enjoyed in Geneva, Calvin remained subject to the decisions of the civil power. He would, for instance need, like anyone else, the Little Council's authorisation before getting a book printed.

Up to this point, Calvin seems very close to Luther. However, the difference between the two reformers can be pinpointed in the possibility envisaged by Calvin – with the utmost caution – to resist rulers when they abuse their powers. The very last page of his Institutes is precisely dedicated to the limits of the obedience due to rulers. The main rule for Calvin is that obedience to the magistrate must never detract from obedience to God as taught by the apostle Peter himself « we ought to obey God rather than men » (Acts Ch 5, 29), as a result of which an order contrary to God must be held null and void.

Accordingly, in a 1560 sermon, Calvin explained that Sarah, jealous when her servant gave birth to a son, had abused her power in her mistreatment of Hagar. His discomfort is palpable: on the one hand he feels Hagar should have obeyed her mistress and patiently born her insults; on the other hand, he indicates that masters who abuse their authority are themselves in breach of God's order. When kings « wish to force their subjects to follow their own superstitions and idolatry », « they are kings no longer », that is to say they have overstepped the role assigned to them by God (sermon 76 on Genesis). This may not as yet be a call for civil disobedience but it well and truly leaves open the option of resistance to power.

Calvin's disciple and successor, Theodore Beza^[4] would press the point further notably in a book published in 1574. By then religious wars were tearing France apart; two years earlier, many Protestants had been massacred in several French cities. Reflecting on the attitude to endorse when faced with an abusive power, Beza arrived at this conclusion: « Assuredly, (it is clear) that peoples did not in the first instance originate from rulers, but such peoples as desired to be ruled by a single monarch or by several chieftains elected by them were anterior to their rulers. Hence it follows that peoples were not created for the sake of rulers, but on the contrary the rulers for the sake of the people, even as the guardian is appointed for the ward, not the ward for the guardian, and the shepherd on account of the flock, not the flock on account of the shepherd. » There existed therefore a contract, mutual obligations between a sovereign and his people, whereby the sovereign may, in extreme cases, be unseated. Beza was in no way minded to preach revolt against their prince to the people for, according to him, if the king became a tyrant and had to be removed, it would not fall to the rabble but to the lower magistrates to act. Still, Beza's principle according to which the power is there to serve the people would be taken up a few years hence in the first lines of the United Provinces's^[5] Declaration of Independence : «  And whereas God did not create the people slaves to their prince, to be used by him, to obey his commands, whether right or wrong, just or unjust, but rather the prince for the sake of the subjects (without which he could be no prince), to govern them according to equity, and reason, to love and support them as a father his children or a shepherd his flock, and even at the hazard of life to defend and preserve them ».

This principle exercised thereafter a direct influence on the 18th century's (American and French) revolutions. So, even if the 16th century reformers were nowhere near advocating democracy, they still hold an indisputable place in the history of the emergence of this concept.