Church and Congregation in Calvin

The Church as the' Congregation by Timothy George The two burning questions of the sixteenth-century Reformation were, to quote the Philippian jailor, "what must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:31) and, to quote St. Cyprian, "where can I find the true church?" These are the concerns, respectively, of the third and fourth books of Calvin's Institutes: the basis of saving faith and the Iocus of the true church. Protestant theology accepted, almost uncritically, the orthodox consensus of the early church as embodied in the decisions of the first four ecumenical councils. The real reformation of doctrine in the sixteenth century had to do not so much with the Person of Christ as with the Work of Christ, in particular with its appropriation through justification by faith and its communal embodiment in the congregation. As Melanchthon put it: "To know Christ is to know his benefits, not to Luther's quest for a gracious God found resolution in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the article by which the church stands or falls (articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae). The gospel, then, for Luther was constitutive of the church; it was, a Werner Elert has The gospel begat the believers: gathered them into fellowship (Gemeinschaft) around pulpit and tablez and united them into a 'supraindividual communion Ubi evangelium, ibi ecclesia: where the gospel is. (Gemeinsamkeit).

there is the church.

The contour of the church, however, in its historical reality as opposed to its spiritual nature, as it was organized for example in Saxony ar Nuremberg. proved difficult to define with precision. Luther sometimes referred to the church as ecclesia latens, the hidden church, On Calvin's approval of conciliax decisions: see Institutes. IV, 'Melanchthon, Loci Communes Theologici in Melanchthon and Bucer, ed. wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia, 1969), 2i-22.

On Luther's provisional concept of the church as a "gathered ecclesiola: and his influence on subsequent congregationalist traditions, see George H. Williams fiCongregationalist' Luther and the Free Churches, Lutheran Quarterly 18 (1967), 283-95. On Luther's ecclesiology generally see the valuable article of Karl Holl, "Die Entstehung von Luthers Kirchenbegriff," Gesammelte Aufstze zur Kirchengeschichte (Tubingen, t1 l923), 1, 245——— 78, and Ernst Rietschl, Das Problem des unsicht bar-sichtbaren Kirche bei Luther. Schriften des Vereins fur Reformationsgeschichte 50 (1932).

tradition, "the whole number of the predestined't (praedestinatorum universitas).

Nonetheless,.Luther was compelled by the exigencies of the'Reformation to consider the church in its earthly aspect: to define it, however approximately, as visible and recognizable. To do this he spoke of the notae or tesserae, the marks'or tokens of the church: the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. For all this, Luther refused to equate institutional form with spiritual reality. its reality as communion or fellowship perceptible by faith alone. Luther avoided what might be called "an ecclesiology of glory" by stressing the "givenness' of the gathered community, the source of its life in Christ. rather than its outward, empirical manifestation. If Luther's predominant concern was with the evangelical center of the church, later reformers took up thg difficult task of determining with some precision its clrcumference.

Zwingli. Bucer. and Oecolampa- dius had each struggled with this problem, yet it renained for Calvin. a theory and practice of the Protestant congregation. [The timidity, or are to understand his work at all. Luther was made for the part. screaming into the ranks of the reformers. Perhaps for this very reason he was able to bring both more dispassion and deeper engagement to the work of reform.l Beset by a resurgent Catholicism on the one hand and a proliferating sectarianism on the other, Calvin developed a more 'formal theory of the relation of the invisible church and the church as an external institution recognizable as "true" by certain distinguishing marks. At the beginning of Book Iv in the Institutes Calvin clarifies the function of the "marks": For, in order that the title church may not deceive us, every congregatian that claims the name,"church" must be tested by this standard as by a touchstone.

. By so directly associating the marks with the act of testing and verifica——— tion Calvin has surpassed Luther's concept of the marks as mere indicators of the visible church. They have become in some sense causative, constitutive of the visible church..Thus, in the Reformed confesslons, the notes are distinguished from the traditional Nicene attributes (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) precisely because they are not merely descrip- tive, but dynamic: they call into question the unity, holiness, catholic- ity and apostolicity of every congregation which claims to be a church, This inage was first used by Gordon Rupp, The Righteousness of God (London, 1953). 3l0. A recent elaboration is P. D.L. Avis,The Church in the.Theology.of. the Reformers (Atlanta, 1981), 13-63.

and so subject it to an outward, empirical investigation. "in this way. the face of the church emerges fnto visibility before our say Calvin, eyes.

tradition generally, in eleyating ecclesiastical discipline to the technical status of a nota.

For Calvin, as for Luther the more certain (certeoribus) marks remained the word purely preached and the sacraments duly administered. However, he did not for that reason disparage the importance of discipline for the well-being of the church. If the saving doctrine of Christ was the soul of the church. then Discipline: of the body were held together, each In Its own place. then, pertained to the constitution and organization, if not to the definition, of the true congregation. It belonged to the areua of ally in self-examination and corporately in the public procedures of admonition, censure, and excommunication.

Calvin's concern for the order and form of the congregation derived the Christian Iife. In contrast to the uniiateral accentuatlon of justification in the Lutheran Confessions, Calvin gave precedence to sanctification in his systematic arrangement of the "benefits of Christ." The two are connected as distinct but interrelated "moments" in the appropriation of the work of Christ. Together they comprise a twofold grace or double cleansing, so that "actual holiness of iife, so,to speak. fs not separated from free imputation of righteousness. In this life the locus of sanctification is the congregation, the visible isolated individuals, but as members of a body in which "all the blessings 1.12 which God bestows upon them are mutually communicated to each other. In this way the visible church becomes a "holy community," an agent of sanctification in the large society where every aspect of Iife is to be brought within the orbit of Christian purpases and Christian regulations. IV,l,9.

However, in the first edition of the Institutes (1536) Calvin did include "example of life" among the."certain sure notes." Cf. Calvini Opera, I, 89. On Bucer, See Avis, Church, 48-50. 10.

Inst. IV, 12, 1.

Having examined the presuppositions of Calvin's doctrine of the local church, we now turn to a more specific elucidation of them as set forth in his commentaries on three of the pastoral epistles, namely those of I and II Timothy and Titus. The choice of these commentaries is suggested by the content of the epistles which deals explicitly with the order and organizatlon of the congregation. Moreover, they were written in the late 154o's, seven to eight years after Calvin's return power in what has been called the second Genevan revolution of 1555. Calvin admits that he has not made as much progress in reforming the not the work,qf one or two years to restore a fallen church to a toler- These documents, then: written in the thrust of battle as it were, reflect Calvin's intense efforts to establish a godly congregation amid disturbances without and struggles within. The commentaries on Timothy were published in 1548. prefaced by a dedicatory epistle to the Duke of Somerset, Protector of England and tutor of the boy king. Edward VI. To this well-placed partisan of picture of the true government of the church.it He urges him to follow the building up of the church that cannot be drawn from them. Here we see Calvin as the episcopus of Geneva looking beyond national bounda- ries and the particularitfes of his local situation in the interests of an ecumenical congregational reform. The commentary on Titus, published the following year in l549, was dedicated to Guillaume Farel and Pierre Viret, Calvin's predecessors fn the reform of the Genevan church——— Calvin says he came to Geneva as their "assistant." Calvin claimed to stand precisely in the same relationship to these colleagues, who were then laboring at Neuchatel and Lausanne, as Titus had stood to Paul: he was their successor,, charged with putting the "finishing,touches" to the building which they had begun but ieft uncompleted.il 1. Calvin's Bipolar Ecelesiology. In his recent book The Christian Polity of John Calvin Harro Hopfi has argued that while Calvin's theology receiving only scant attention in the I536 edition of the Institutes. that in fact his thought came to be.more and more centered on the visible church until his early emphasis on the church as the communion 13.

Commentary on Titus i:5. All guotations are cited from Calvin's New Testament Commentaries. eds. David and.Thomas Torrance (Grand Rapids, 1964), yol. X.

14r Ibid.*182.

15.

Ibid., 347.

10 It is true that in successive editions of the Institutes Calvin's discussion of the visible church was greatly expanded, eventually achieving the status of an entire book. However, this was not done at the expense of Calvin's emphasis on the invisible church. "The two poles of Calvin's ecclesiology, divine election and the local congregation, are held together in the closest possible connection, frequently in the same sentence. The church is called God's house, explains Calvin, because "not only has He received us as His sons by the grace of adoption (electign), but He Himself dwells in the midst of us" (the congregation? Again: the upbuilding 18: of the church is for the sake of the elect. Only when we realize that Calvin never relaxes the visible/ invisible tension can we understand his diverse characterizations of the church. On the one hand, the church appears in mortal danger. If false doctrines are allowed to spread, they wiil "completely destroy the church." kindled light of reformation may soon be put out. At the same times the invisible. The former is a corpus permixtum, wheat and tares growing in the same field, whereas the latter includes elect angels, Old Testament worthies, and assorted predestined souls who find thenselves outside. the "Lord's walled orchard."t Indeed, the inscrutability of election and the objectivity of Word and Sacrament (but not discipline!) congregations still in Roman obedience——— "to 'the extent that some marks of the,church remain, we do not impugn the existence of churches among This provided, we might add, a convenient rationale for not them."21 rebaptizing papist converts to Protestantism. 2. Ecclesia Externa as Mater et Schola. Calvin begins his discussion of the visible church in Book Iv of the Institutes by 16 Harro Hopfl, The. Christian Polity_of John Calvin (Cambridge, 1982), 34, 84-85. Cf. the following claim: "The universal church, the communion of saints, continued to recede inexorably frou view. becoming the one-ness of the church in such a way as to wrest this weapon from the Romanists, t ibid., 84.

17 Comm. I Tim. 3:15.

18.

Comm. II Tim. 2:10.

19.

Comm. II Tim. 2:17: I Tim. 1:l9.

20.

Comm. II Tim. 2:19.

21 Inst. IV, 2, 12.

11 applying to it the well-worn metaphors of Mater and Schola. We are conceived in the womb of Mother Church, nourished at her breast,: and enrolled as pupils in her school all the day of our lives. The Interlacing images of the church as mother and school also recur through- out the commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles. The church is the mother of all believers "because' she brings them to new birth by the Word of God, educates and nourishes them all their life, strengthens them and finally leads them to complete perfection.

n23 The church is also "God's school.——— the "pillar and ground of the truth" as the text reads——— yhich dispensing of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Calvin calis baptism "our entrange into the Church and the symbol of our He interprets the phrase "the washing of regeneration" in Titus 3:5 as baptism by water, noting that "God does not play games with us with empty figures [perhaps a swipe at Zwingli?] but inwardly aggomplishes by His own power the thing He shows us by the 126 outward sign.

Nonetheless, Calvin required that baptism be applied indiscriminately to everyone in the visible church. The congregation might be a mixed flock of sheep and goats, God alone knowing for sure who was which, but it could not be a company of baptized and unbaptized lest the civic order, and the proclamation of the gospel which depended upon it, be imperiled. Epistles and Calvin the exegete is properly silent about it. There is, however. one reference to the Supper which distinguishes the blessing of ordinary food at table from the blessing of the sacramental meal. receive it Iegltimately and without uncleanness, but we consecrate the bread and wine in the sacrament supper in a more solemnemanner that they may be to us pledges of Christ's body and blood. 22.

Inst. IV, l. 4.

24.

Comm. I Tim. 5:7.

25 Comm. Titus 3:5.

27.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Iv/4, l30. We may discern the view of Calvin behind the statement of the Second Helvetic Confession (I566) that to be baptized fs "to be purged from the filthiness of sins, and to be endued with the manifold grace of God."

Creeds of Chrfstendom, ed.

Philip Schaff (New York, 1877), III, 290.

28.

Comm. I Tim. 4:5.

12 If anything. Calvin finds the image of the congregation as a school more attractive than that of mother. Indeed, he frequently combines the two metaphors. Speaking of Timothy's education he says: Having been rightly instructed in the faith from your infancy, and having: so to speak, sucked in sound doctrine with your mother's milk, and having made till now. continual progress in it. take gins by a faithful ministry to prove that you are still the same.

The church, of course, is a school from which one never graduates (this side of heaven, if thent), hence the need for continual Instruction. The church is also, in the best sense of the term, a "reform schooi," complete with specified dress code, censored reading matter, compulsory attendance at chapel, and truant officers to deal with recalcitrant students! Calvin, in fact, insists that we give special care to the instruction of rebels: Since the conversion of a man is in God's hands, who knows whether those who today seem unteashable may be suddenly changed by God's -a statement markedly similar to his description of his own "sudden 31 conversion' by which God subdued his heart to docilitas, teachableness. 3. Order and Office. The installment of a fourfold office of pastor, teacher, elder, and deacon was an essential component of the Genevan settlement of religion which brought Calvin back to his adopted city in I54l. Aiexandre Ganoczy, among others, has argued that Calvin 32 Matthew had presented just such an arrangement.

In any event, by 1541 Calvin had come to believe that such a pattern was mandated by Scripture; it was in fact the cornerstone of the new polity embedded in Ies Ordonnances Ecclesiastigue.

congregation would be amply set forth in the New Testament, especially in epistles expressly designed as manuals of church order. (Calvin of course, nowhere questioned the Pauline authorship of the Pastorals; in agreement with modern biblical scholarship, however, he did see them as public letters on church order rather than private correspondence.) This proves not to be the case. Of the four offices, the Iion's share 29.

'comm. I Tim. 4:6.

30.

Coml. II Tim. 2:25.

31 Cf. the discusslon of Calvin's conversion In T. H. L. Parker, John A Biography (Philade1phia, 1975): 162-65.

Calvin: 32 Alexandre Ganoczy, Calvin:. Theologien de l Eglise et du Ministere (Paris, 1964), 298-99.

13 of attention is devoted to the pastorate, at which we shall Iook more closely in a moment. Nothing at all is said of the teaching office, and Calvin tends to conflate it with the pastorate. On the other hand. Calvin seems almost embarrassed by Paul's lengthy comments on the diaconate as opposed to the eldership, given the inverted importance of these two lay offices in his own polity.

Calvin does in fact hold the office of deacon in high esteem. Deacons are public officers in the church entrusted with the care of the poor. He urges that they be skilled in the Christian faith since, in the coursesof their ministry, "they will often have to give advice and Indeed, the deacons in Calvfn's Geneva should have been experts in what we call today social work as well as pastoral care since they both dispensed relief to tha poor and tended the sick in hospital. Calvin admitted that the diaconate could sometimes serve as a "nursery [again the maternal motif] from which presbyters are chosen," yet he opposed the Roman custom of making the deacon the first step toward the priesthood. This Bractice was an invidious undermining of "a highly honorable office.

As to the eldership, Caivin notes that the word presbyteros describes not an age but an office. Timothy, to whom Paul was writing, was quite young: Calvin himself was only 27 when he was called to Geneva. As applied both to himself and to Timothy, however, the word presbyteros was synonymous with episcopus or pastor. Calvin discovers that there are in fact two kinds of presbyters in the New Testament. The textual basis for this "discovery" fs the verse: 'Let the elders that rule well word and in teaching't (I Tim. 5:l7). He further explains: The plain meaning of the words is that there were some who ruled well and honourably. but who did not hold a teaching office. The people elected earnest and well-tried men, who, along with the pastors in a common council and with the authority of the Church. would administer discipline and act as censors for the correction of morals.

the Genevan church, and then read them back into the New Testament.

While a more nuanced interpretation may be preferred. those of us who are not divine-right presbyterians must wonder if there is not at least a grain of truth in it.

33.

Comm. I Tim. 3:9.

34 Comm. I Tim. 3:13.

35 Comm. I Tim. 5:l7, text' for the Iay eldership is Rom. 12:8. Cf. also Inst. IV, 3, 8.

14 4. The Reformed Pastor.

Calvin believed that the offices of prophet, apostle, and evangelist, so prominent in the New Testament, were temporary in nature and had ceased at the end of the apostolic age. Of the offices which are extant in this dispensation. that of the proper order and well being of the congregation. Hopfl perhaps ecclesia and clerus.

For Calvin congregational assent was taken very seriously. His doctrine of the ministry requires that popular control and executive rule be tempered in the interests of communal edification. Still, Calvin did have what we can only cail a sacramental view of the ministry.

In the spiritual upbuilding of the congregation, the appointment 'of pastors was second in priority only to the acceptance of pure doctrine. Indeed in Calvin's mind these two goals are so closely intertwined, they can hardly be separated. The New Testament terms bishop, elder (presbyter), minister, pastor, and sometimes teacher (doctor) all refer to the same office. What is the role of the pastor?——— to represent God's 39 sense of "tenant lieu de") ', to erect and extend God's Kingdom, to care for the salvation of souls, to rule the church which is God's inheritance.

Calvin held that there should be at least one pastor in every town, though of course some towns such as Geneva might have need of several pastors——— in due course Geneva could boast an entire "company" of pastors.

one should deliberately seek the office. While it is certainly wrong for an individual to "thrust himself forward' out of self-seeking ambition, it is proper for one moved by a godly desire to prepare for 'what are theological schools if not nurseries for Yet one must be publicly called according to the order the church prescribes. In Geneva this required a prior examination and selection by the company of pastors (an intimidating prospect!), presentation to the city council, and approval by the common consent of the congregation.

This process would then be followed by ordination which Calvin described as a "solemn rite of Institution" into the pastoral office. Calvin elsewhere refers to ordination as a sacrament, and admits that 37 Cf. Ganoczy's comment: "Le Pasteur est le ministre par excellence. Il peut assumer la fonction des autres ministres, mais les Calvin: Theologien de l'Eglise, 300.

39.

Inst. IV, 3, l. Cf. Jagues Courvoisier.,De la Reforme au Protestantisme: Essai d'Ecclesiologie Reformee (Paris, 1977), 66-7l. 40.

Comm. I Tim. 3:l.

Ibid.

15 grace is conferred through this outward sign. Indeed, he used language strikingly similar to his description of baptism. Ordination is not a vain or useless sign, but a faithful token of the grace received from God's own hand. Again, it is a "legitimate act of consecration before God, something that could be done only by the power of the Holy Spirit."42 absolutist view of church polity. There is the curious fact that He also rebuked the refugee congregation at Frankfort for himself.

seeking to depose their pastor, Valerand Poullains on the grounds that he had not been properly ordained. Concerning Poullain he wrote: "Those who'first worked to plant the Gospel ought to be accepted as Calvin, then was willing to allow a certain leeway in the method of choosing ministers. The pastoral office itself is never adiaphorous, but the details of appointment may be. It was precisely this kind of fiexibility which enabled Calvin to influence, if not direct, an internatianal reform movement in such diverse political setting as France, Poland, Scotland, England, and the Palatinate.

have a chance to read the Scriptures for himself?"t asked Calvin. Here indeed was the Protestant dilemma. Thomas Hobbes, looking back on the age of Calvin, would comment: After the Bible was translated.

.. * every man, nay. every boy and wench that could read English thought they spoke with God Almighty and understood what he said, when by a certain number of chapters a day they had read the Scriptures once or twice over.

Such a prospect was no more to Calvin's liking than it was to Hobbes's. Word, "likesa father dividing the bread into small pieces to feed his children.

Scriptures, so that they can rightly instruct the congregation in heavenly doctrine.

set forth by Professor Leith. Calvin has no truck with those who arrogate to themselves the title of "bishop," who go about dressed up in 42.

Comm. II Tim. 1:6.

43.

M. Hunter, The Teaching of Calvin (London, 1950), 202 fn. l42, citing Doumergue.

44.

Ibid., 203.

45..

Thomas Hobbes, Works, ed. William Molesworth (London, l839-45). VI, 190.

46 Comm. II Tim. 2:15.

16 theatrical clothes, but who in fact are "dummies who never preach"——— an epithet which will resound in the Puritan excoriation of Anglican divines as "dumb dogs" who have a "bare reading" ministry. In a pastor profound learning must be accompanied by a talent for teaching. There are many who, efther because of defective utterance or insufficient mental ability: or because they are not sufficlently in touch with ordinary people, keep their knowledge shut up within themselves. Such people ought as the saying goes. to sing to themseives and the muses——— and go and do something else..:. What is required is not merely a voluble tongue, for we see many whose easy fluency contains nothing that can edify. Paul is rather commending wisdom in knowing how to apply God's Word to the profit of His people.

about among the subtleties of frivolous curiosity"; he must not, to use be sound doctrinally, it must also seek the "solid advantage" of the church, that is: ft must be practical, applicable discriminating. The pastor is charged not only with preaching: but also with the sheep and the other for driving away wolves and thieves. The disciplinary role of the pastor requires that his own conduct be above reproach. Calvin does not hesitate to advocate a double standard for Calvin observes: He might have to some extent tolerated in others sowething that in bishops was quite intolerably disgraceful. Calvin has not here relapsed into the two-tiered morality of medieval Christendom. He is concerned with the visibility of the church, with the "face" of the church. An unworthy minister can do irreparable harm bility.

5. The Church and the Worid. By rejecting the Anabaptist concept of the congregation as a conventicle sequestered from the environing the medieval corpus christianum. In a perceptive article on "The 'Extra' Dimension in the Theology of 'Calvin," Heiko Oberman has argued that the relatlvely more progressive element in the' Reformed concept of the state could be traced to Calvin's view of God as Legislator and King, and that the rule of God was not limited to the congregation only. 47 Comm. I Tim. 3:3.

48.

Comm. Titus l:9.

49 Comm. I Tim. 3:2.

17 50 but extended etiam extra ecclesiam: even beyond the church. Calvin's tension between the congregation and the saeculum. At times Calvin can speak in a manifestly sectarian tone about the exclusivity of the visible church. A right relationship with God is touch is defiled by our sins and unclean, legitimately enjoy as our own all the wealth He supplies. Unbelievers are in fact usurpers and thieves! Everything which they Rhetoric we might have expected from a communitarian sectary, is not to disendow all non-Christians, but rather to enphasize the unity of redemption and creation, and to assert the sovereignty of Christ (not just God) over the entire created realm.

Far from advocating withdrawal from the world, Calvin urges Christians to be engaged in it. Their prayers are to be universal in Christians are not to exalt themselves proudly over others, but to deal' with sympathea. tomorrow they may be added to it.

The rule of Christ is ideally manifested in the institution of a godly magistracy. Calvin Iists three advantages of a well-ordered government: tranquility, gravity or modesty, and piety. In the words of Isaiah, Calvin urges the magistrates to be "nursing fathers" to the Reformation. They are to maintain not only civic order but also. religious uniformity. Yet the ius reformandi is not an authority the relationship of the two: which Calvin was still struggllng to realize in.Geneva when he wrote these commentaries, is illustrated by the exampe of a pertenacious heretic. After thorough examination——— Calvin warns that Christians should not be hasty in labeling as heretics everyone who disagrees with them——— and patient admonition: the obstinate heretic may be, must be. expelled from the congregation by excommunication. 50.

iThe tExtrat Dimension in the Theology of Heiko A. Oberman.

Calvin," Journal_of Ecclesiastical History: 2l (1970): 43-64. Comm. I Tim. 4:5.

53.

Comm. I Tim. 2:1.

54 Comm. Titus 3:3.

18 within his bounden duty in bringing to bear what Calvin calls, somewhat euphemistically, "further measures of greater rigor." There is, Calvin notes, a difference between the duty of a bishop and that of a magistrate.

At the time Calvin wrote these words most of the "magistrates" of Europe were, of course, inveterately opposed to the very reformation Calvin felt they should be supporting. Calvin nonetheless counsels obedience ta such rulers, just as Paul had done with respect to the magistrates of his day, ali of whom were "sworn enemies of Christ." the face of opposition and persecution Calvin calls for perseverance and in whatever country they live, should not only obey the laws and the behests of the mggistrates, but should also in the prayers commend their Nowhere in the commentaries on the Pastorals is there a hint of the tyrannicide advanced by later Calvinists. The decade following the writing of these commentaries. however witnessed a heightened persecution of the Protestant congregations in France.. Calvin's doctrine of passive obedience was pushed to the linit. Yet as Iate as better should we gll perish a hundred times than expose the gospel to However, as Kingdon has shown, the Genevan Company of Pastors was drawn more and more into open support of French of the war efforts of the Huguenots on the grounds tnat legitimate magistracy was represented by a prince of the. blood, Louis de Conde. Despite the advances of the Reformation in Geneva, Calvin writes for a congregation beseiged by physical and splritual enemies alike. of a church at. war, in combat, its very survival a matter of fntense struggle.

Satan... a thousand times a day draws us away from the right course. I say nothing of fire and sword and exiles and all the furious attacks of our enemies. I say nothing of slanders and other such vexations. How many things there are within that are far worse! Ambitious men openly attack us. Epicureans and against us: those who are wise after the flesh do us harm, and we 55 Comm. Titus 3:l0.

56.

Comm. I Tim. 2:2.

57.

Les Lettres de Jean Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnett (Paris, l854). Il, 382.

1.9 are harassed in many different ways on every side. The only remedy and always to put our trust in it.

order and reformation, must be awaited in patience by the faithful as the eschatological act of God.

II1 By way of conclusion, let us ask how Calvin's concept of the church as the congregation may inform our own efforts to be a faithful people of God in a culture removed by 500 years and an ocean from sixteenth- century Geneva. Looking back over the road we have traveled, we can see that Calvin's doctrine of the church was itself 'a development of Luther's emphasis on the priority of the gospel. Both reformers shared a radically of God in salvation. Such a perspective would be a healthy corrective to the prevailing neo-Pelagianism of contemporary American Christianity. The true visible church is not an aggregate of like-minded individuals. each tub sitting on its own bottom, nor a social agency with only a slightly more spiritualized mandate than the Rotary club. If the church is to retain its integrity in a secular culture, then we must see it again as the special creation of the Holy Spirit, a community which can point men and women to the transcendent source of their lives and of Iife itself.

Secondly, Calvin's concept of the notes of the church can serve as a critical principie to save us from the idolatrous tendency toward ecclesiocracy. Anyone who takes seriously Calvin's doctrine of the Fall will know that all institutions are inherently evil, including seminaries, synods and local congregations, though not necessarily In that order. The true church must always examine itself, and be examined, tested for authenticity, by its congruence with the notae ecclesiae: Word, Sacrament. and if we follow the later Reformed tradition and also Anabaptism. Discipline. Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda. Third, Calvin's doctrine of the ministry encourages us to think of ways in which clergy and laity alike will serve the congregation. Fourth, Calvin's vision of the rule of God obtaining even beyond which the redeeming power of Christ thrusts beyond the heart of the justified sinner and beyond the boundaries of the church, to encompass the state, society and the whole created order. In a world where thousands of our fellow human beings perish from hunger, in a world which faces the possibility of sui-genocide by nuclear destruction, this aspect of Calvin's ecclesiology speaks with urgency to us all. 58.

Comm. I Tim. 6:14.

20 Calvin, of course, is not an infallible guide to faith and practice, pace the clains of Calvin enthusiasts of various denomina- tional pedigrees. He was, as Luther said we all are, simul iustus et peccator, at once righteous and sinful. We can only deplore his coerc- ive view of society, his intolerance of dissenters, his acguiescence in the death of Servetus. notwithstanding his plea for leniency in the mode of execution. Perhaps we can all agree with the words of John Robinson. pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, a devoted Calvinist and defender of the Synod of Dort, who remarked to the departing Pilgrims that he was determined. to follow Calvln no further than he had followed Christ. 5 to break forth out of his holy Word.

59.

For an assessment of Robinson's theology and its indebtedness to Tradition (Macon, Ga.: 1982).