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Democratic Freedom and Religious Faith in the Reformed Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Winthrop S. Hudson
Winthrop S. Hudson
Affiliation:
Divinity School, University of Chicago
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Extract

During recent years there has been an interesting shift in the attitude of many historians with regard to the relationship of Calvinism to the development of democracy. A generation ago, the contention that modern democracy was a daughter of Calvinism was eminently respectable in academic circles. The fact that modern democracy arose and put down its strongest roots in lands most deeply influenced by the Reformed faith—in England, Scotland, Holland, America and Switzerland—was regarded as self-evident confirmation of this contention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 1946 , pp. 177 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1946

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References

1 10–12.

2 Concerning Heretics (1935), 74.Google Scholar

3 We should not discount the importance of a hostile environment. The necessity for resistance usually evokes a philosophy of resistance, as was demonstrated at Magdeburg in 1550 when the Lutherans of that city resisted the imposition of the Interim. The important point is that some groups are rendered somewhat impotent because of the absence within their own tradition of any clear-cut basis upon which they can erect a philosophy of resistance. Confusion, bewilderment, and uncertainty are the result. In Calvinism however, the basis and even the obligation of resistance was clearly apparent. It was inherent in Calvinistic thought.

4 “Le Calvinisme et l'état Chrétien,” Études sur Calvin et le Calvinisme (1935), 151.Google Scholar

5 “Civil government is designed, as long as we live in this world, to cherish and support the external worship of God, to preserve the pure doctrine of religion, to defend the constitution of the Chureh, to regulate our lives in a manner requisite for the society of men to form our manners to civil justice, to promote our concord with each other, and to establish peace and tranquility.” (Institutes, IV, xx, 2).Google Scholar

6 Institutes, I, xvi, 4.Google Scholar

7 “The moral law is no other than a declaration of natural law, and of that conscience which has been engraven by God on the minds of men. The whole rule of this equity, of which we now speak, is prescribed in it” (Inst., IV, xx, 16).Google Scholar

8 Among the rights protected by natural law, according to Calvin, was the right of “every person” to “enjoy his property without molestation” (Insti., IV, xx, 3).Google Scholar

9 Foster, Herbert D., Collected Papers (1929), 81–82.Google Scholar

10 “Medieval Political Thought,” The Social and Political Ideas of Some Great Thinkers of the Middle Ages, ed. F. J. C. Hearnshaw (1923), 21–22.Google Scholar

11 von Gierke, Otto, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, Trans. F. W. Maitland (1900), 15.Google Scholar

12 A characteristic Protestant statement as to the necessity of private judgment is to be found in a sermon by John Ponet, who was at the time chaplain to Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. “It is not enoge,” he said, “for yow to say that ye beleve as the churche of the electes and chosen of god both beleve, oneles ye know and feele in your hertes that thynge it is that the churche beleveth … Beieve not the doctryae because I or anye other preacher doth preache it unto you: but beleve it to be true: because your own fayth doth assuer you it to he true” (A Notable Sermon (1550), no pagination). The obvious deduction and application in the realm of polities was made by Ponet in his Shorte Treatise of Palitique Power (1556): “It is not the mannes warraunt that can discharge thee, but it is the thing it self that must justifie thee … before the throne of the highest … And therfore christen men ought well to consider, and weighe mennes commaundmentes before they be hastie to doo them, to see if they be contrarie or repugnaunt to Goddes commaundmentes and justice: which if they be, they are cruell and evill, and ought not to be obeyed” (Facsimile reproduction in Hudson, , John Ponet (1942), 53).Google Scholar

13 Theoretically, since the Reformers felt the meaning of Scripture to be self-evident, there was no conflict in their minds between the right of individual interpretation and the responsibility of the church to validate the Correct interpretation. Actually, of course, the right of individual interpretation was to destroy the effectiveness of corporate control.

14 “In the obedience … due to the authority of governors, it is always necessary to make one exception, … —that it do not seduce us from obedience to him, to whose will the desires of kings ought to be subject … How preposterous it would be for us, with a view to satisfy men, to incur the displeasure of him on whose account we yield obedience to men … If they command anything against him, it ought not to have the least attention; nor, in this case, ought we to pay any regard to all that dignity attached to magistrates,” (Insti., IV, xx, 32)Google Scholar. In making this exception, Calvin, of course, is not justifying resistance, but merely passive disobedience.

15 God effects the overthrow of tyrants in various ways, sometimes by “providential saviours.” On occasion, says Calvin, God “raises up his servants as public avengers, and arms them with his commission to punish unrighteous domination, and to deliver from their distressing calamities a people who have been unjustly oppressed … When they are called forth to the performance of such acts by a legitimate commission from God, in taking arms against kings, (they) were not chargeable with the least violation of that majesty with which kings are invested by the ordination of God; but, being armed with authority from heaven, they punished an inferior power by a superior one” (Insti., IV, xx, 30)Google Scholar. On this basis, some of Calvin's conteniporary interpreters justified tyrannicide even by a “private person,” if he had “some special inwarde commandment or surely proved motion of God.” (E.g., Ponet, John in his Shorte Treatise of Politike Power (1556)Google Scholar, facsimile reproduction in Hudson, op. cit., 112.)

16 “We shall only read him aright if we figure to ourselves the proclamation of the duty of submission by a herald in the market-place, and the whispering of the right of resistance in the by-lanes of the city” (English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (1927),6).Google Scholar

17 The inferior magistrates “ought to apply their greatest diligence, that they suffer not the liberty, of which they are constituted guardians, to be in any respect diminished, much less to be violated: if they are inactive and unconcerned about this, they are perfidious to their office, and traitors to their country” (Insti., IV, xx, 8).

18 Some of the governments, England for example, were considered by the leading theorists to be a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

19 A Defense of Liberty against Tyrants: A Translation of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, ed., H. J. Laski (1924), 191, 213.Google Scholar

20 Sermons (1856 ed.), I, 470.Google Scholar

21 More or less typical is the conclusion which Ponet draws from the premise that princes are ordained “to procure the wealthe and beneflte of their subjectes, and not to work their hurt or undoing.” In the light of this, he asserts that “indifferent expounders of the laws” have concluded that “neither pope, Emperor, nor king may doo any thing to the hurt of his people without their consent” (op. cit., pp. 26–27). In the last edition of the Institutes, Calvin himself suggests that there may be certain limits beyond which a tyrant cannot go without abrogating his power entirely and thus making it possible for any subject rightfully to resist him. He cites as an illustration, Darius, the king of Babylon, who “had exceeded his limits and not only been injurious to men, but by raising his horn against God, had virtually abrogated his own power” (Insti. IV, xx, 32)Google Scholar. Two years later, Calvin had clarified his thought still further. Commenting on Daniel 6:22, he wrote: “Earthly princes lay aside all their power when they rise up against God, and are unworthy to be reckoned in the number of mankind. We ought rather to spit on their heads than to obey them when they are so restive and wish to rob God of his rights” (Corpus Reformatorum, LXIX, 25f).Google Scholar

22 Institutes, IV, xx, 8Google Scholar. A parallel statement of Calvin's mature views is to be found in his Commentaries on Micah: “In this especially consists the best condition of the people, when they can choose, by common consent, their own shepherds; for when any one by force usurps the supreme power, it is tyranny, and when men become kings by hereditary right, it seems not consistent with liberty” (Comm. on Micah 5:5).

23 Merriam, Charles E. (A History ot American Political Theories (1928), 69)Google Scholar points out that James Otis, John and Samuel Adams were among those who explicitly approved the concept of a mixed state.

24 Chenevière suggests, in this connection, that the people are simply actors on the political stage; “they are neither the director of the theater nor the author of the play” (325). If he is serious in pressing this point, he makes the whole discussion of monarchy and democracy as alternative forms of government irrelevant, for kings no less than the general populace are regarded by Calvin as puppets in the hands of the Almighty. Even the discussion of Calvin's emphasis on obedience, which occupies a large portion of Chenevière's book, is to no useful purpose, for it is God who determines whether or not they actually will obey. The decision is actually beyond: their power. What Chenevière forgets is that God works through the people by making available to theni means, and instruments, and “cautions,” and that they are to act as if the decision were not beyond their power. The important point, so far as the development of political hfe is concerned, is that the people were not to regard themselves as puppets.

25 It is beside the point to note that the doctrines associated with the developing political ideas of Calvinism were advocated by political theorists in the Middle Ages, and thus to discount the contribution of Calvinism in advocating these doctrines. What does this prove? Many of these ideas may be traced back to Cicero, and from Cicero to Plato, but before any idea becomes effective and influential in the world it must be espoused by a powerful and dynamic movement which is actually shaping the future. This was the contribution of Calvinism.

26 Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, II, 771Google Scholar. For a discussion of Calvin's attitude toward the political ideas of Knox and Goodman, see Hudson, op. cit., 192–93.

27 “The fact that, for Calvin, the magistrate is the vicar of God on earth absolutely prevents us from considering him as a representative of the people bound to them by an oath” (324). “The magistrate is responsible for his conduct not to the people but only to God, since it is God who has fixed the limits of his power” 324–25). The inferior magistrates, “although constituted for the defense of the people, are not the representatives of the people. As with all magistrates, their authority comes from God and not from the people.” (335).

28 The problem of religious liberty provided Calvinism with one of the most critical issues it had to face. Early Calvinism insisted upon the necessity of religious uniformity. To have done otherwise would have been to fly in the face of one of the most deeply held political convictions of the age in which it arose. This conviction gave way only when the development of religious diversity made it an impossible ideal. In the presence of diversity men had to learn to live together. Confronted by this necessity, Calvinism was about as successful as any religious tradition, and more successful than some, in formulating a philosophy of toleration to justify the necessity.