Confessions, Conscience, and Coercion in the Early Calvin
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chapter 9 Confessions, Conscience, and Coercion in the Early Calvin John L. Thompson However radical or innovative the Reformation may have been in its doc- trine of justification or in its ecclesiology, it is commonly supposed that the Reformers did not wish to renegotiate Christianity’s credal core. Evidence of one sort might be inferred from the presence of the Apostles’ Creed as a standard component of Protestant catechesis.1 Still, it’s a rare generalization that does not fray at its edges. Certainly, in his 1536 Institutes, Calvin presented himself as firmly in the camp of Nicene orthodoxy.2 But the following year saw Calvin caught in circumstances that suggested some diffidence regarding both the form and substance of the Nicene Creed – circumstances that also exposed some ironies, if not inconsistencies, in his notion of how confessions ought to function. On the one hand, salvation by grace through faith frees the sinner’s conscience from the bondage of fear and guilt, as well as from the bur- den of “human traditions.” On the other hand, Calvin recognized, for a church to function decently and in order,3 one could not fairly claim membership and yet refuse to avow the very confession of faith on which the church’s identity rested – even if that confession were, technically, not God’s inspired word but rather a product of human wordsmiths, an artifact of human tradition. This essay will explore some documents from Calvin’s early years in order to map his developing thought on the intersection of conscience and coercion. These writings promise a glimpse of Calvin’s thought at a time when he was much in transition: as newly-hired in Geneva, soon-to-be fired from Geneva, on temporary assignment in Strasbourg – these are well-known details. But Calvin was no homebody during these years: he participated in an abundance 1 Examples abound where the Apostles’ Creed is either affirmed in passing or expounded in detail in the course of confessions and catechesis, including Luther’s catechisms (1529), the Acts of the Bern Synod (1532), Calvin’s catechisms (both 1537 and 1545), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and many more. Protestant confessional documents not infrequently af- firm also the Nicene Creed and sometimes the Athanasian Creed. 2 See n. 43, below. 3 The phrase derives from 1 Cor. 14:40, of course, but is also echoed by Calvin’s Institutes and throughout the several documents to be treated here. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004419445_010 156 Thompson of colloquies, synods, and quasi-diplomatic missions throughout the regions of Vaud, Neuchâtel, and Bern. The Reformation had few assured successes in these years, in any of these regions, and Calvin’s own mix of fragility and con- viction emerges in a variety of ways, not least in his vexed and all-too-public encounters with Pierre Caroli in Lausanne and Bern. The tale of how Caroli accused Calvin and Farel of Arianism at the Synod of Lausanne has been regularly rehearsed, most notably and at length by Edouard Bähler in 1904.4 But only in the 1970s did a copy of Caroli’s late attack on Farel and Calvin surface,5 and that work received a critical edition only quite re- cently, alongside Calvin’s vitriolic reply.6 Yet, however often the story has been retold, Calvin’s collision with Caroli has been retrieved for diverse reasons.7 Some, such as Michael Breuning, have studied it for what it discloses of the balky religio-political relations between authorities in Bern and their franco- phone clients and allies, including Calvin.8 Others, such as Max Engammare and Frans van Stam, have sympathetically illumined the character, utterances, and background of Caroli in order to deconstruct Calvin’s attempted character assassination as well as Calvin’s own foibles.9 Richard Gamble sought to dis- close something of Calvin’s theological method from this encounter.10 Gijsbert van den Brink has described the encounter with Caroli as a painful milestone 4 Eduard Bähler, “Petrus Caroli und Johannes Calvin: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Kultur der Reformationszeit,” Jahrbuch für Schweizerische Geschichte 29 (1904): 39–167. 5 Frans Pieter van Stam dates the discovery in 1971; see “Le livre de Pierre Caroli de 1545 et son conflit avec Calvin,” in Calvin et ses contemporains: Actes du Colloque de Paris 1995, ed. Olivier Millet (Geneva: Droz, 1998), 21. The critical edition (following note) dates the discovery in 1976. 6 COR 4/6 (2016) contains both treatises: Calvin’s Pro G. Farello et collegis ejus, adversus Petri Caroli theologastri calumnias, defensio Nicolai Gallasii and Caroli’s Refutatio blas- phemiae Farellistarum in sacrosanctam Trinitatem, ed. Olivier Labarthe with Reinhard Bodenmann; hereafter cited as Calvin, Defensio and Caroli, Refutatio. 7 The literature on Calvin and Caroli is substantial; especially full bibliographies can be found in Nijenhuis and Engammare (nn. 9 and 20, below), and Van Stam (“Le livre de Pierre Caroli”), as well as in COR 4/6. See also Wulfurt de Greef, The Writings of John Calvin: An Introductory Guide (expanded edition; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 158–60. 8 Michael W. Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud, 1528–1559 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005). 9 Max Engammare, “Pierre Caroli, véritable disciple de Lefèvre d’Etaples?” in Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1450?–1536): Actes du colloque d’Etaples, les 7 et 8 novembre 1992 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1995), 55–79; Van Stam, “Le livre de Pierre Caroli.” 10 Richard C. Gamble, “Calvin’s Theological Method: The Case of Caroli,” in Calvin: Erbe und Auftrag (Fs. Wilhelm Neuser; Kampen: Kok, 1991), 130–37..