I have been buried this week in thoughts about John Calvin’s theory of natural law, some of which you can find over at Mere Orthodoxy. Along the way, I came upon this excerpt by David Little, who does a fantastic job of encapsulating the implications of Calvin’s doctrine of natural law:
“In Calvin’s hands, this doctrine of the total transformation of the will plays down the importance of appeals to nature, and instead raises the status and indispensability of the Calvinist church as the locus of true righteousness, since it is there and there alone that, under proper teaching and organization, the human will at least begins to be “created anew,” thus establishing the foundations for achieving a true righteousness. As such, the church, truly certified “wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution,” becomes a necessary condition for upholding proper law and order in society. Without it, chaos and disorder are the likely result.”
Little is exactly right that the Church plays an essential role for the proper ordering of the state.
But we could go one step further. When the State is properly oriented toward the heavenly kingdom and acts in accordance with the principles of equity and the natural law, it functions as an arm by which the providence of God aids the Church. Specifically, civil government is “to cherish and protect the outward worship of God…[and] to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church.” For Calvin, the heavenly kingdom is not opposed to the earthly, but transforms it and directs it to its proper end. While the Church is primary, our sinfulness requires a properly functioning State for the Gospel to go forward peacefully.
For Calvin, the political order is “initiating in us upon earth certain beginnings of the Heavenly Kingdom, and in this mortal and fleeting life affords a certain forecast of an immortal and incorruptible blessedness.” One of its duties is to “cherish and protect the outward worship of God,” and the magistrate is an “image of divine providence, protection, goodness, benevelence, and justice.” In rather shocking language to our modern sensibilities, Calvin even goes so far as to calls the magistrates “vicars of God.”
But all this is grounded in a political eschatology. Calvin writes:
“All of this I admit to be superfluous, if God’s Kingdom, such as it now is among us, wipes out the present life. But if it is God’s will that we go as pilgrims upon the earth while we aspire to the true fatherland, and if the pilgrimage requires such helps, those who take these from man may deprive him of his very humanity. Our adversaries claim that there ought to be such great perfection in the church of God that its government should suffice for law. But they stupidly imagine such a perfection as can never be found in a community of men.”
In short, it is precisely because the Church remains a church of humans that the state is needed. For now, until Christ Jesus comes again, Calvin insists on a separation and proper ordering of powers.
December 11th, 2009 | 12:41 pm | #1
Matt – have you seen Peter Leithart’s “Against Christianity?” I understand just how controversial Leithart is these days with his association with the Federal Vision issue, but he writes from within the broader calvinistic tradition and has some interesting thoughts on this matter.
He points out that the very phrase “ekklesia” refers to a political gathering. Jesus did not call his followers the “synagogue” a term which would have signified a meeting for worship, but he called us the “ekklesia” a term related to political and civic matters.
Ergo, the church is a political entity, we are the alternative “polis” with our own polity. One of my favorite quotes from Leithart is that he is not so much calling believers to renewed political activism, he is calling us to remember that the gathering of believers on the Lord’s Day each week is political activism in the purest sense. It is there, as members of the ekklesia, the alternative polis that we declare our allegiance to our King, i. e. we declare to ourselves and the world that Christ is Lord as opposed to Caesar is Lord.
Of course this does not negate our participation in the common affairs of the city of man, but reminds us that our first and truest national, political, citizenship allegiance is to the ekklesia, the true and alternative polis.
Alas, I have seen you quote Oliver O’Donovan a good bit and haven’t read any of his stuff, but from reading Leithart I get the idea that he sees himself and O’Donovan tracking along the same lines here.
Anyway, I find this rationale compelling and a good reminder of where our true political allegiance lies – as residents of the city of God we can and should participate with the members of the city of man in affairs that relate to the common good, but we must never forget our first and truest political responsibility – to the ekklesia.
December 11th, 2009 | 2:02 pm | #2
David,
Thanks for the comment. The last few months “Against Christianity” has kept popping up on my radar. I really need to buy it and read it. I read “The Baptized Body,” where he expounds on some of the same themes. It’s the only book that has made me move toward infant baptism (even though I still disagree with it). I have more thoughts on that here: http://mereorthodoxy.com/?p=2039
That said, from what I know about the book (and a good bit of that is your recap here), I agree with you about the overlap with O’Donovan. At least the O’Donovan of Desire of the Nations, anyway. It is less clear to me how his positive proposals for the relationship between church and state (Ways of Judgment) map on to this conversation.
Interestingly, both John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas conceive of the Church as an alternative polis as well, and they’re pretty strongly opposed to “Constantinianism.” And they’re also deeply post-modernism in their epistemology, too. But it’s interesting that they arrive at a very similar conception of the role of the church as O’donovan and Leithart.
Thanks for the helpful expansions–they are much appreciated.
December 11th, 2009 | 4:26 pm | #3
Matthew, John Howard Yoder and, to a slightly lesser extent, Hauerwas are prominent in the discussion Leithart gives in Against Christianity.
December 11th, 2009 | 5:11 pm | #4
Albert,
Good to know. I’ll definitely have to look it up now…
Matt
December 12th, 2009 | 10:21 am | #5
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December 13th, 2009 | 2:46 pm | #6
Matt,
Leithart is coming out with another volume on Constantine in the near future. Should be good incentive to finish AC sooner rather than later!
Great post, too. Political theology in the Reformed context is a fertile research subject, imho. You might also check out: Charles Mathewes’ A Theology of Public Life, Hunsinger’s Disruptive Grace, and Eric Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love, among others. And William Cavanaugh is really a must-read, too. FWIW.
December 13th, 2009 | 9:19 pm | #7
Davey,
Thanks for the heads up on Leithart’s new project. I didn’t know that, and will definitely watch for it.
I’m slowly working my way through Mathewes’ book, and I think it’s fantastic. As for the others, they’ve been sitting in the queue for quite some time.
BTW, I’ve been reading theopolitical for quite some time and love it. Keep up the good work.
Best,
matt
December 13th, 2009 | 11:15 pm | #8
Sorry that I hijacked this thing and turned the comment section into a discussion on Leithart – it’s just that I just got through reading his book and it was on my mind and some of the things he said connected a bit here.
Leithart did talk a good deal about how the church constitutes it’s own political order and not as much about how we interact with the “secular” political order, though his last chapter is called “For Constantine.” He’s not advocating pietism or withdrawal, in fact he references a good bit of Rodney Stark and his stuff in “The Rise of Christianity.” He agrees that Constantinism went badly, but just because Christendom of that sort went badly doesn’t mean something like Christendom couldn’t be done right.
Also, he does interact thoughtfully with Hauerwas and Yoder but says they basically get things wrong.
This quote from Matt seems to me to approach something like Leithart’s ideal Christendom:
“For Calvin, the political order is “initiating in us upon earth certain beginnings of the Heavenly Kingdom, and in this mortal and fleeting life affords a certain forecast of an immortal and incorruptible blessedness.” One of its duties is to “cherish and protect the outward worship of God,” and the magistrate is an “image of divine providence, protection, goodness, benevelence, and justice.” ”
On the other hand, it seems to me that this quote could be turned in reverse:
“In short, it is precisely because the Church remains a church of humans that the state is needed.”
i.e. because the state is a state of humans the church is needed.
December 14th, 2009 | 8:41 am | #9
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December 14th, 2009 | 12:58 pm | #10
David,
Don’t apologize for spinning it toward Leithart. It’s a very natural direction to go, given my reading and interactions with him.
I wish I had written this line: “Because the state is a state of humans the church is needed.” I think it’s right, but it’s also interesting since it connotes a certain sort of view of the church as something other than human–or maybe more than human, or at least “regenerately human.”
I wonder how the invisibility of the Church plays into this conversation for Calvin. I know he thinks the Church is visible, too, but that distinction seems to add another problematic layer here.
More to come, I’m sure. Good discussion.
December 14th, 2009 | 3:12 pm | #11
Matt – yep, this conversation keeps going deeper and deeper doesn’t it? Thanks for getting it going and btw, since I only see you once every who knows how many years let me say thanks for all the work you are doing. I do try to keep up with your writing as much as I can and am always stimulated and challenged by it.
This would be a great place for someone with a better mind than mine to weigh in, particularly someone more familiar with the broader reformed tradition. From my limited knowledge of Calvin, Leithart and others in the same vein, I am not sure I or they would go with the other than, more than or “regenerately” human angle on this.
However, I have seen phrases somewhere along the lines of “truly human” in reference to the church. And if I am not mistaken, doesn’t C. S. Lewis speak in the same vein on occasion? In other words, regeneration doesn’t make us other than human it restores our true humanity, ergo, the church is the gathering of the true or restored humanity. I think this kind of verbiage helps do justice to the Christian’s solidarity with all humanity, regenerate or not, while similarly doing justice to the radical change wrought in regeneration.
Interestingly on this whole visible/invisible church thingy, this is one of several areas where Leithart and his federal vision friends have caused a bit of stir in the larger reformed community. They downplay the “invisible” aspect of the church in favor of the visibility of the church, and I am told almost to the point of denying the invisibility of the church (btw if an FV’er or someone more knowedgable is reading this please chime-in in case I am misrepresenting you on this).
I am not sure how that applies to the original discussion other than that it would seem to speak to the tensions between the city of God and city of man. I don’t know if it would resolve any of those tensions but it would certainly play into the discussion.
December 14th, 2009 | 11:34 pm | #12
David,
Thanks for the kind words (they are really much appreciated). I can reciprocate them quite easily. I have been enormously blessed by your ministry, and continue to remember you in my prayers.
That said, let the gloves come off! (J/k).
Actually, I don’t have too much to add without returning to the fount of this stream and dealing with Calvin in this context.
But I will say that the “truly human” angle is the right one to take, and (possibly) the only distinctively Protestant one to take. My understanding is that most Catholic approaches in the 20th century (I’m really swimming out of my depths here, so I hope others will correct me!) tend toward conflating Christ with his people, and so tend to divinize the latter. Oddly, it seems like that sort of move could find sympathies among the anabaptists, who might be accused of having what I would describe as an “angelic ecclesiology.”
But all that needs to be cleaned up before it’s really presentable.
As for Leithart, in The Baptized Body (really, a fascinating read!) he really does emphasize the visibility of the Church. At times, it seems like he makes the Church too analogous to culture. His argument for infant baptism, for instance, is that its because of the nature of the Church as a culture that infant baptism works. As someone whose doesn’t hold to paedobaptism, I want to point to the disanalogies between the Church and culture.
But that’s neither here nor there in this conversation, and I shouldn’t send the conversation down that rabbit hole. Instead, I’ll stop and simply wait until I can read through Leithart to continue.
December 14th, 2009 | 11:54 pm | #13
Sounds good, I’ll let this be my last comment here just to say thanks for engaging me on these matters. Cheers on reading Leithart, hopefully we can re-engage on another thread.
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