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Philippe Du-Plessis Mornay (1549–1623), widely regarded as the author of Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, by 'Junius Brutus', an early Calvinist defence of civil rebellion, published in Basle in 1579
I’ve heard it said
that John Calvin was not in favour of
rebellion against the government, and that it was John Locke to whom would-be
rebels looked to justify Christian rebellion, as we might call it. For a recent
example of this view see here. But
I think the matter is a bit more complicated than that, and that a case can be made for Calvin leaving open, in fact if not in
intention, the legitimacy of rebellion as a last resort against civil
injustice.
Government
It is worth
remembering that Calvin’s view of government was aristocratic. The king's power was not to be absolute, but he
is to govern together with his nobles. Calvin’s treatment of civil government is in
Book IV of the Institutes, the last
chapter (20). At the beginning of
Book IV Calvin explicitly links to his earlier teaching on the two kingdoms. (Book
III.19)
The
former [kingdom], in some measure, begins the heavenly kingdom in us, even now
upon earth, and in this mortal and evanescent life commences immortal and
incorruptible blessedness, while to the latter [kingdom] it is assigned, as
long as we live among men to foster and
maintain the external worship of God, to defend sound doctrine and the
condition of the church, to adapt our conduct to human society, to form our
manners to civil justice, to conciliate us to each other, to cherish common peace
and tranquility. (IV.2)
You might ask why if Calvin holds to the two-kingdom doctrine,
the Institutes should contain any
instruction in political matters. The answer is because he believes that the NT
teaches that government is warranted and put in place by God. As Paul says, the
powers that be are ordained of God. Christians need to be reminded of this, he
thinks, just as they need to know what the limits are to the powers of
government.
It is widely believed even amongst Reformed people that Calvin was mistaken in including the part that I have underlined among the duties of the civil magistrate. The state should not try to protect the profession of the faith, (as Calvin thought) but (instead) provide a public square in which any religion and none may or may not peaceably flourish. Calvin was a stranger to freedom of worship and toleration, as he was to a universal electoral franchise. He interpreted Paul’s words to Timothy ‘that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ rather more strongly than most Christians today would interpret it. But nothing (I think) turns on this in what follows.
It is widely believed even amongst Reformed people that Calvin was mistaken in including the part that I have underlined among the duties of the civil magistrate. The state should not try to protect the profession of the faith, (as Calvin thought) but (instead) provide a public square in which any religion and none may or may not peaceably flourish. Calvin was a stranger to freedom of worship and toleration, as he was to a universal electoral franchise. He interpreted Paul’s words to Timothy ‘that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ rather more strongly than most Christians today would interpret it. But nothing (I think) turns on this in what follows.
The forms of government
In Chapter 20 of Book IV
Calvin also says something about forms of government in general.
…..and
if you compare the different states with each other, without regard to
circumstances, it is not easy to determine which of these has the advantage in
point of utility, so equal are the terms in which they meet. Monarchy is prone
to tyranny. In an aristocracy, again, the tendency us not less to the faction
of the few, while in popular ascendency there is the strongest tendency to sedition.
When these three forms of government, of which philosophers treat, are
considered in themselves, I, for my part, am far from denying that the form
which greatly surpasses the others is aristocracy, either pure or modified by
popular government, not indeed in itself, but because it very rarely happens
that kings so rule themselves as never to dissent from want is just or right,
or are possessed of so much acuteness and prudence always to see correctly.
Owing therefore to the vices or defects of men, it is safer or more tolerable
when several bear rule…..
So, Calvin favours
aristocracy because of the need for the operation of what later came to be called
checks and balances. To put the point otherwise, the king needed his nobles as they needed him.
Government and equity
In the
course of his chapter on Civil Government, Calvin also has things to say about
the fact that there are different ways that the magistrate may express the natural law of God.
Yet
we see that amid this diversity they all tend to the same end. For they all
with one mouth declare against those crimes which are condemned by the eternal
law of God. – i.e. murder, theft, adultery and false witness; though they agree
not as to the mode of punishment. This is not necessary, nor even expedient. (IV
20.17)
This is valuable
for those who see here a recognition of distinctive elements of the
New Testament in Calvin’s understanding
of the relation between the church and society, and not an attempt at a re-production
of Mosaic theocracy. In recognizing legitimate differences in the way that the natural law
is administered in different nations he recognises the international character of New Testament Christianity.
These different modes of administering the law are, Calvin says, to be seen as
different ways in which the magistrates' sense of equity may be expressed.
But can Calvin be
saying that the natural law, however understood, must be seen as a legitimate
recognition of the natural law, God’s ‘eternal law’? This cannot be, for in his
commentaries and elsewhere Calvin pays attention to the ‘barbarous’ nations.
Barbarous nations are presumably those that do not give appropriate recognition
of the natural law. And in any case he cannot think that whatever edicts the
magistrate upholds are, simply in virtue of his upholding them, made
equitable and so legitimate. (Note what he later says about the 'undue license ' of kings.) That is surely the road to tyranny.
We can at least
say this. Calvin’s distinction between the equity of the natural law and the
various ways in which is concretely interpreted and applied in different societies opens up a gap or fissure to allow a critic of the status quo to
probe the question: This is the law, but is it equitable? And to cite certain
arrangements as oppressive and a legitimate target for rebellion.
Civil disobedience
Besides the issue
of resistance to tyranny, and of equity, there is also the matter of civil disobedience. Calvin was
against the government forcing people to sin, forcing them to attend the Mass,
say. No, he said, Christians are to obey
God, not men. So they must either publicly dissent by refusing attendance, and take the consequences, or flee.
No Nicodemism! But are not such acts (or abstentions) of individuals, acts of
civil disobedience?
But
in that obedience which we hold to be due to the commands of rulers, we must
always make the exception, no, must be particularly careful that it is not incompatible
with obedience to Him to whose will the
wishes of all kings should be subject, to whose decrees their command must yield, to whose majesty
their sceptres must bow….
But what has civil
disobedience to do with rebellion? Quite a bit, actually. Suppose that the
number of Reformed Christians in France had been much greater than it was and
these had agreed with Calvin in not adopting Nicodemism, then one can conceive
of widespread instances of civil disobedience. And such passive resistance, as
we know, can sometimes be brutally suppressed by the authorities. But also as
we know, it can be successful in bringing about change. We need think only of
Gandhi in colonial India, and the civil rights movement in the US.
Calvin and rebellion
These data - on the
scope of government, on aristocracy as the preferred type of government, on government and equity, and on
civil disobedience - provide the background to his brief remarks on rebellion in
the closing paragraphs of the Institutes.
First, vengeance against the tyranny of kings.
Although
the Lord takes vengeance on unbridled domination, let us not therefore suppose
that that vengeance is committed to us, to whom no command has been given but
to obey and suffer. I speak only of
private men. For when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the
tyranny of kings…and perhaps there is something similar to this in the power
exercised in each kingdom by the three orders, when they hold their primary
diets. So far am I from forbidding these officially to check the undue license
of kings, that if they connive at kings when they tyrannize and insult over the
humbler of the people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free from
nefarious perfidy, while knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its
appointed guardians.
So Calvin is
saying that God in his providence may arrange things so as to bridle the
tyranny of kings. The instruments he uses for this may undertake this role
consciously, or they may be God’s unwitting partners. And the 'popular magistrates' have a responsibilty to curb the 'undue license' of kings, a responsibility which they may shirk. What then? Are there any other
avenues of permissible resistance to the king? Calvin did not go so far as to say that this can ever be an option for Christians.
Yet it can be argued
that for all his personal conservatism, there were, in Calvin’s view of
civil society, enough chinks and fissures through which a case for rebellion
against civic injustice could be developed. Calvin himself was certainly not an advocate of rebellion. Far
from it. But what of those who came after? That this is the road that
some Calvinists trod can be seen from Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 2: The
Age of Reformation.
Next time, a look at the Contra Tyrannos
Next time, a look at the Contra Tyrannos
