An Early Doctrinal Handbook: Farel’s Summaire Et Briefve Declaration

By Robert White

[Robert White is a Research Associate in the Department of French Studies, University of Sydney, Australia.]

It is the fate of forerunners to be speedily eclipsed by those whose way they have prepared. Guillaume Farel was one such forerunner. He is best remembered today, outside of Switzerland, as the energetic Reformer who, in July 1536, detained Calvin in Geneva and extorted from him the promise to assist in the work of church-building. Yet the Farel of 1536 was no neophyte. He already had a long and impressive career behind him as a gospel preacher, church planter, evangelist, educator, and Christian apologist, beginning with the Meaux reform movement of the early 1520s and followed by pastoral charges in Montbéliard (1524–1525), Strasbourg (1525–1526), and Aigle (1526–1530), where he served as the missionary agent of the Bernese government. The celebrated Lefvre d’Etaples, leader of the Meaux circle, had been his mentor; he knew Erasmus as an unforgiving critic; and he counted as friends Capito and Bucer in Strasbourg, Oecolampadius in Basel, and Zwingli in Zurich. He was present when Bern voted to adopt the Reformation in 1528, and played a decisive role in the introduction of the Reformation to Neuchatel (1530) and Geneva (1532 onward).[1]

It is not, however, these facts that interest us here. Our concern is rather with Farel’s efforts to formulate, in the decade preceding Calvin’s advent, a reasoned statement of Christian belief adequate to the needs of a burgeoning reform movement in France and French-speaking Switzerland. The statement in question is the amply named Summaire et briefve declaration d’aulcuns lieux fort necessaires à ung chascun chrestien pour mettre sa confiance en Dieu et ayder son prochain.[2] No copy exists of the first edition, published by Lyons printer Pierre de Vingle in 1529, and condemned the following year by the Parliament of Dole. The oldest extant edition, from the presses of Simon Du Bois, of Alencon, dates from around 1533, although the title page bears a false address and date (“Turin, 1525”). It is this printing which, by default, forms the base text for a study of the Summaire.[3]

I. General Characteristics

The Summaire was written, on Farel’s own admission, at the instigation of Oecolampadius, whom Farel had known since 1524 and who, some time later, urged him to compose a work of instruction “in the common tongue, for those who knew no Latin, briefly outlining a number of points which were not well understood.”[4]

The book begins with a foreword addressed to “all who love our Lord and desire to know the truth.” Farel has in view, in the first place, readers who, sincerely alarmed by the church’s spiritual condition, have not yet grasped the extent of its apostasy. “Because of the gross blindness, confusion, and gloom into which the world has been plunged, [no one] can see how much everything has been altered and spoiled: nothing pure is left.”[5] Such readers are reminded that spiritual declension is precisely what prophets, apostles, and Jesus himself foretold, and that only an unbiased reading of the Scriptures can lead to an understanding of God’s truth. At the center of Scripture stands the Lord Jesus, “the Sun of righteousness,” whose light alone can dispel the darkness of error, and whose Holy Spirit illumines the blind and ignorant. The Summaire is thus a tool designed to allow the Scriptures to be read evangelically. From time to time, however, Farel hints at the existence of a second type of reader for whom the book is, at least in part, intended—the lay or, more particularly, the clerical leader who exercises real power in the community and who is capable of great good and great mischief. This kind of reader is urged to use Scripture as God meant it to be used, and not as a pretext for persecuting believers. Such a reader is exhorted to destroy sin but to save transgressors, to “administer severe corrections with the utmost charity. .. using good and proper remedies”; he is, above all, to “learn the Savior’s kindness and gentleness (benignité et doulceur), and not the Pharisees’ cruelty and rage.”[6]

The Summaire is thus a hybrid work. It is first and foremost an invitation to the bruised idealist, the well-intentioned seeker, to consider the scriptural foundations of Christian belief and to live according to its precepts. It is also a plea for moderation and comprehension addressed to those who, armed with punitive powers, are in a position to help or hinder the gospel’s advance.[7]

Farel’s work consists of forty-two chapters of widely varying length and quality, written not, perhaps, at one stretch, but over a period of time and according to a somewhat flexible plan. David Wiley is probably correct when he discerns topical allusions in parts of the book that point to a date of composition no earlier than spring 1528.[8] The same cannot, however, be said of the first third of the book which appears to be of an earlier date, and is certainly closer to Farel’s original concept of a highly condensed, introductory manual.

The material that first meets us in the Summaire consists of succinct notes (the longest scarcely four octavo pages) arranged over fifteen chapters according to a contrastive pattern: God and man (chs. 1–2), law and gospel (chs. 4–5), sin and righteousness (chs. 6–7), flesh and Spirit (chs. 8–9), unbelief and faith (chs. 10–11), merit and grace (chs. 12–13), human tradition and Scripture (chs. 14–15). Chapter 3 (“Jesus Christ”) stands alone, its placement no doubt dictated by the Son’s dual nature as both God and man. Chapters 16 through 36 constitute a much larger amalgam of material whose theme may be loosely defined as the church, its nature, powers, and practices. This section of the work is noticeably more prolix in style and diffuse in content, the author’s initial concern to explain being in part overtaken by the need to defend evangelical doctrine and to discredit where possible contrary positions. Here, along with some fundamental teachings on the power of the keys, the sacraments, prayer, good works, and the forgiveness of sins, a number of controversial developments appear, tricked out in places by rhetorical flourishes suggestive, in one commentator’s words, of a preacher in full flight.[9] The cult of saints, the practice of auricular confession, the “fantasies and inventions” of false pastors, the prohibition of vernacular versions of the Bible, all arouse Farel’s sternest condemnation. Less colorful, but no less trenchant, are the barbs that he directs at the veneration of relics, pilgrimages, indulgences, belief in purgatory, obligatory fasting, priestly absolution, and, preeminently, the Mass. Three further chapters on the sword and temporal powers, on marriage, and on the education of children (chs. 37–39) suffice to define the Christian’s responsibility to society. The doctrine of the last things— preparation for death, the resurrection, and the judgment day (chs. 40–42)— fittingly brings the Summaire to a close. These chapters, with the exception of a short piece that warns against misplaced charity, mark a return to the more irenic tone of the book’s beginning.

Farel paints with a broad brush, often repeating the same strokes or else returning to add further touches to a canvas previously completed. A detailed evaluation of his work is impossible here. It will be enough perhaps if we examine a small number of doctrinal loci which, together, occupy a central place in Farel’s theological thinking. What, then, does the Summaire have to say about issues of revelation, the work of Christ, and the church and its ministry?

II. The Knowledge Of God

Farel’s interest in problems of epistemology is limited to a single question: how may God be known? Speculative issues such as the nature and mode of man’s knowledge before the Fall, the status of reason since its impairment by sin, and the role of conscience as a moral guide do not concern him. Nor does he posit, on the analogy of Rom 1:19–20, a residual awareness of God (what Calvin calls a sensus divinitatis) which might be either innate or deduced from the data of nature. Farel is perhaps humanist enough to concede that our knowledge of the visible world is both real and valid.[10] In the things of God, however, intuition and intellect are alike useless. Worse, in assuming a form of piety, they offer a false religion instead of the true. He writes:

Human teaching, which presumes to meddle in what pertains to the soul’s salvation and to the worship of God, is merely an abomination in God’s sight, vanity, devilish lies and precepts, error and empty deceit. Such teaching seeks in vain to serve God; instead, it draws down his wrath upon all who follow it.[11]

Between God’s wisdom (sagesse) and man’s shrewdness (prudence) there is no common measure. Unredeemed human nature can merely assess (juger) and reckon (estimer) according to its own lights, when what is needed is certainty (assurance), understanding (entendement), and knowledge (congnoissance). Unbelief and self-will distort the workings of our mind; in our efforts to reach up to heaven, “we stumble and fall into the ditch.”[12] Natural theology is not an option open to natural man.

If God is to be known he must disclose himself. Knowledge of him and of his purposes comes only through special revelation, the written word of Scripture. It is Scripture that dispels our natural ignorance of God and condemns our pretensions to autonomy. All that is not according to God’s Word is sin.[13] The formal principle of the Reformation is thus unambiguously affirmed: by Scripture alone is God known and his will made plain. To know God is to know him as he presents himself in Scripture. There, and only there, we see, not what God is, but what he is like. Not God’s essence, but his nature, his character, his attributes, those qualities that his acts in history show him to possess—these for Farel constitute a proper and sufficient knowledge of God.[14]

To know God is, above all else, to know him as good. That is the statement that Farel places at the head of his first chapter, and it runs as an unbroken thread throughout the Summaire. The creation is his generous gift to humankind; the original image we bear is his; the catastrophe wrought by Adam’s sin is repaired “by the great kindness of God”; to receive salvation “begets such trust in God’s great goodness that nothing can part us from his love.”[15] God’s goodness is that of a Father who is both wise and full of solicitude for all he has made. To know him as Father is also to know the Son who came from the Father and who delights to do the Father’s will. The word of Scripture points to and culminates in Jesus, “Word and wisdom of the Father,” to know whom is to have eternal life.[16] Farel does not expressly say that to know Christ is to know God, but that God cannot be known apart from Christ is the clear and consistent message of the Summaire: “[He who] has eternal life has nothing more to do with the creature and with other empty things; he has knowledge of the Father through the Son, in whom he knows and comprehends God’s great kindness and endless mercy.”[17]

The epistemological problem thus resolves itself into the question of how Scripture, which reveals God to man, is to be read—or more accurately, how Scripture’s revelation of God’s goodness to man is to be appropriated. Scripture’s message is addressed principally to the human heart. To have its full effect it must engage our wills and our affections. It must awaken the keenest sense of gratitude. It must engender a “true and lively faith.” In his chapter on faith, Farel speaks of it as a singular gift of God, “a true apprehension (sentement), experience, and knowledge of God our Father who is good, perfect, powerful, and wise, and who for his love’s sake. .. has redeemed us through Jesus our Savior.”[18] There is no tension between faith and Scripture: the closest synergy exists between the two. “Where there is no light of faith, and no brightness from God’s Word, there reign the powers of darkness.”[19] The Word strengthens and confirms faith; faith in turn attests the truthfulness and authority of the Word, “against every human opinion, experience, and understanding”[20] As in Calvin, Scripture authenticates itself to the believing reader as God’s Word, in that it comes from the Spirit who knows the deep things of God, and who opens the understanding, prompting obedience to what is written and confidence in the promises it contains.[21]

The nexus between faith and Word rules out the possibility of any extra-biblical or extraordinary revelation, to which various sixteenth-century illuminist and spiritualist circles laid claim. Farel’s rejection of ecclesiastical tradition as a second or co-equal source of truth is motivated by the same consideration. He dismisses out of hand Romanist pretensions to be a church “gathered in Jesus’ name. .. and so led by the Holy Spirit as to commit no error.”[22] To seek to know God without and apart from Scripture is not to know him at all.

Implicit in all that the Summaire says about revelation is the assumption that Scripture is perspicuous: all teaching is to be weighed against “the manifest Word of God.”[23] Farel knows nothing of the distinction between Scripture’s “apparent” and “real” sense. He is silent, too, on the possibility of a hermeneutic problem such as was already dividing Lutherans and Zwinglians on the question of the Eucharist. He nowhere asks through what interpretative filter Scripture is to be read. Between the reader and the sacred text no intermediary is necessary save the Spirit who is its author, and who inscribes its message on the human heart. It is not therefore for the individual reader to make what sense he can of Scripture. There is no question of a right to private judgment. The Spirit brings the reader into subjection to the Word; he speaks with one voice, and he speaks consistently. His testimony to God’s goodness in redeeming sinners and in adopting them as his children is unvarying. Farel’s reading of both the OT and the NT centers wholly on the theme of a redemption conceived in heaven and executed on earth. A theology of grace is the essential interpretative category which the Summaire explicitly offers the reader. There are few pages in the book where the imprint of grace and the concomitant response of thankfulness are not found.

The expectation of the Spirit’s aid in deciphering the biblical text does not, however, imply a passive role for thought or conscious reflection. So frequently does Farel ask his readers to examine, appraise, test, and apply themselves to Scripture that, on one level, reading the Bible appears as a pedagogic exercise requiring the utmost diligence. In concluding his long chapter on Holy Scripture, the author lays down a precise strategy for successful study of the written Word. Nothing less than a literary-critical reading will do:

We must treat and handle Scripture with all fear and reverence toward the God of whom it speaks, carefully considering it not in bits and pieces but as a whole; noting what comes before and what after, why it was written and for what purpose. See too whether what is said appears more plainly and openly elsewhere, comparing one Scripture with another. For. .. although all who speak have done so by the Holy Spirit, he speaks more clearly in one place than in another.[24]

Bare reason or unaided intelligence can never be a privileged means of access to the message of the Bible. But when made whole by regeneration and illumined by faith, they are the means by which God chooses to be known and loved.

III. Jesus The Savior

Farel’s doctrine of man makes the merest reference to humanity in its first state of innocence. A single allusion to Adam’s lordship over nature suggests what our original destiny might have been. The Summaire contains no doctrine of general or common grace to relieve its presentation of man as “wicked, helpless, deranged, and reckless, full of falseness and hypocrisy, thinking only evil and sin, in which he is conceived and born.”[25] The belief of Erasmus and his fellow humanists in the relative value of human virtue finds no echo here. Man’s all-encompassing sin is, with God’s surpassing goodness, the essential premise on which Farel’s work rests.

Humanity needs a Savior. Farel’s favorite term to designate the author of salvation is simply “Jesus” or, less frequently, “Jesuchrist” (a common sixteenth-century spelling). The more honorific “our Lord Jesus” usually occurs in formulaic expressions such as “according to our Lord Jesus’ command” or “as our Lord Jesus taught.” The solemn designation preferred by Calvin, “our Lord Jesus Christ,” is found only once in Farel, appropriately in the Summaire’s concluding line. References to Jesus’ threefold office are rare. There are two allusions to Jesus as king, but as yet his rule is largely hidden from the world. Of the prophetic office there is no trace; and the priestly is present by implication, in those passages which portray Christ as mediator and advocate, and in others—much more numerous—which speak of the shedding of blood for sins.[26]

Jesus’ intimate relationship with God the Father is everywhere stressed, and his complete deity affirmed. He is the “most dear Son” in whom reside the Father’s might and power, and who possesses by reason of his divine origin fullness of life, wisdom, grace, and righteousness. Since the Father wholly indwells the Son, to receive Jesus is to receive the Father. Through the Son we have the inheritance of heaven and eternal life; we are delivered from sin, becoming God’s sons and heirs and being made new as at the first creation.[27]

Farel’s high Christology is steeped in references to the NT writings—chiefly John’s Gospel and Paul’s Epistles—so much so that at times he does no more than assemble a catena of proof texts, many of them freely paraphrased:

[Jesus], made obedient to the Father [Heb 5:8], born of a mother—of a virgin, no less—apart from man’s seed, made subject to the law [Gal 4:14], did not insist on his own glory or will [Phil 2:7], but on that of the Father [John 4:34], doing and saying nothing of himself but only of the Father who was in him [John 5:30; 14:24], reconciling the world to himself [2 Cor 5:19]. He so humbled himself that he died for us, he the just and blameless for us the unjust and evil [1 Pet 3:18], offering his body and blood in order to purify our souls [Heb 9:14; 1 John 1:7].[28]

The reader of the Summaire is left in no doubt that Jesus’ death makes full atonement for sin. The motive force behind the atonement is the Father’s love; the necessity for it is the Father’s justice; the means by which it is effected is the Son’s obedience. Farel is perfectly orthodox in the way he views the cross. In very basic terms, Jesus “suffered for us,” “ died for us,” “ abolished our death and destroyed our wickedness.” There is a strong preference for penal categories in the Summaire: sin incurs the law’s curse; sinners are debtors to the law’s commands; the penalty they have incurred through their lawlessness is borne by Jesus; the curse pronounced on the transgressor falls on him, the innocent, so that God is able to give “full remission of punishment and guilt, and to pardon everything for his love’s sake through Jesus our Lord.”[29] Christ died not in an attenuated sense as our representative, but as our substitute. The vicarious nature of his death is conveyed by recurring images of sacrifice, burden-bearing, and washing. His body and his blood are the perfect offering whereby sin is atoned for; he carried our sorrows and weaknesses on the cross; through him our souls are purged and cleansed. All three images are sometimes combined in one powerful statement: “He shed his precious blood for the forgiveness of sins, and to purge us of our transgressions; he is the Lamb of God who bears the sins of the world;.. . when we believe this our hearts are purified and our souls quickened.”[30]

By grace the believer is thus transported from death to life. All that was lost through Adam’s sin is now restored, and more besides. For while Adam knew the Creator’s power and providence, the believer knows the Father’s love; Adam’s inheritance was earthly, the believer’s is heavenly. Through Jesus we are called to a life no longer corporal and corruptible but spiritual, not subject to decay. Through him all things are ours.[31]

It is tempting to look in the Summaire for a full-orbed statement of justification by faith. Some who have done so find Farel less than convincing in his readiness to follow Luther.[32] The chapter that bears the title “Righteousness” (ch. 7— “Justice” in French) defines the term as “God’s true image which shines through regeneration effected by God’s Word and received by faith.”[33] Justification here is merely a synonym for the new birth, an antecedent to the new life conferred on those who by faith have entered God’s family. To be justified is not so much to be declared righteous as to be made righteous, since Farel passes immediately to the idea of the fruit borne by the sanctified life: “Through the knowledge he has of God, [the believer] bears fruit, knowing how to choose what is good and to condemn what is bad,. .. rejecting help from any but God, and shunning all that is not found in his clear and simple command.”[34] Further light on Farel’s understanding of justification is provided by the chapter on “Merit” (ch. 12). Here the author comes closer to Luther, thanks in part to a textual borrowing from Paul:

If then we are justified and saved by grace, it is not by works.. .. He who works is paid not as a gift of grace but as a debt which is owed to him, which he has deserved. But to him who believes, his faith is counted to him for righteousness (sa foy luy est reputée à justice), without works.[35]

Nowhere else in the Summaire does the explicit notion of imputed righteousness occur. The author appears on the whole happier with less forensic categories of thought.[36]

Farel’s doctrine of salvation is predestinarian in character. God’s love is an electing love, directly related not to his being or essence as God, but to his redemptive purposes. Predestination is, in Farel’s thinking, an extension of God’s saving work in Christ, rather than an exercise of his omnipotence. His Holy Spirit quickens those whom he has ordained to life before the foundation of the world. His decree, rooted in his gratuitous good pleasure, is immutable and, to the reverent mind, admirable, embracing in its unconditional and universal reach the soul “born and bred in Turkey, and the babe which dies in its mother’s womb.”[37] The Summaire does not treat the question of election in a systematic way. The issue is always raised en passant; its truth is assumed, never argued for, still less defended. The paradox of God’s justice and his indiscriminate love, of human volition and divine determination, of limited and unlimited atonement, of the selective operation of grace and the universality of the gospel call—the moral and theological tensions implicit in the doctrine of special election are passed over in silence. Farel is content if his readers understand that salvation is wholly God’s work, neither an act of unfettered free will nor a reward for merit. The glory of it is God’s alone.

Election in Farel is overwhelmingly positive: sinners are elected to salvation, not to perdition. The nearest approach to a doctrine of double predestination is found in the penultimate chapter, “Resurrection” (ch. 41), where reference is made to God’s patience “toward the children of wrath appointed to death (ordonnez à la mort).”[38] The phrase is unique, and the rest of the Summaire knows nothing of a final reprobation grounded in God’s hidden counsel. Where the idea of reprobation might be expected to occur—in connection, for example, with the themes of faith, repentance, justification, and regeneration—it is conspicuously absent. In the final analysis, it is not God’s predestinating will that, for Farel, deprives sinners of saving grace; it is God’s law that condemns them to judgment, and unbelief that closes the kingdom of heaven to them.[39] In the meantime, evil-doers may yet have recourse to repentance; for such as do repent, “gentle Jesus waits to receive them into his mercy”[40]

IV. Church And Ministry

It is Farel’s understanding of the church which best betrays the relatively early date of the Summaire. The chapter “Church” (ch. 16) follows immediately the author’s treatment of Holy Scripture, and inaugurates a long series of twenty chapters related to the church’s essence, worship, and practice. Throughout, the firmest distinction is drawn between true and false church, and here more than anywhere else in the book polemic mixes freely with exposition.

For Farel, the necessity of the church arises from the fact that every believer is, without exception, united to Christ by faith and incorporated into his body Since the body is one, all who are members are one, sharing a common life (as God’s adopted children), having a common purpose (to please the Father), and advancing to a common destination (heaven). Here again, Farel shows himself to be an attentive student of the NT, and chiefly of Paul:

The church of Jesus Christ is the holy assembly of believers joined in true faith to the body of Jesus Christ whose members they are [1 Cor 12:27]. Because Jesus is the true Son of God, all his members are, through him, sons of God [Eph 1:5]. Jesus is the head, true Christians are his body [Col 1:18]. He is the husband, believers are his spouse [Eph 5:23–25?] whom he purged with his blood [1 John 1:7], bestowing salvation on his body and saving his people from their sins.[41]

The Summaire flatly rejects the notion of the church as a hallowed space. It is not tied to a particular place, but exists wherever two or three meet in Jesus’ name. It allows for no distinctions based on a hierarchy of functions or on man-made ordinances. With Luther, Farel affirms the spiritual equality of all believers; unlike Luther, he does not enunciate a doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, but recognizes the sacrifice of praise, along with prayer, as the church’s one essential offering to God. The church is a faith-community whose principal concern is to “hear and believe the holy voice of Jesus.”[42] Here the simple are taught and the lesser are accorded the greater honor; any who possess a particular gift of God employ it for the good of all; those who exhort and warn and those who interpret Scripture (“in the common tongue”) do so in order to edify The idealized nature of the church as Farel sketches it combines elements both of Jesus’ model of selfless service (Matt 20:25–27 and parallels), and of the interdependent pattern of church life outlined in 1 Cor 12–14. Either way the sympathetic reader of the Summaire cannot fail to set Farel’s ideal against the reality of the Roman church, with its monarchic leadership, its rigid separation of laity and clergy, its arcane rituals, and its neglect of Scripture.

Farel’s individualistic pneumatology accords little direct importance to the role of the Holy Spirit in the church’s work and witness. Nothing is said of the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost or of his bestowal of various charismata by which the whole body is edified. It is as the author of Scripture and as its interpreter that he is first of all active in the believer’s life. He is the divine pledge (arrhe) of our sonship and ultimate salvation; he renders us obedient to God’s command and jealous of his honor; he makes us imitators of the Father’s goodness.[43]

Farel’s definition of the church, although framed in very general terms, implies a high degree of visibility. The church assembly (“congregation”) needs to grow in its understanding of God’s truth. There is therefore a teaching function, variously represented by the terms prophecy, exhortation, and admonition. That this function belongs primarily to the pastorate is implied but only explicitly stated in a later chapter, “The Good Shepherd” (ch. 34). Here Jesus appears as the archetype of the “good, true, and faithful pastor” who nourishes his flock with the Father’s teaching, “instructing his sheep and disciples according to Scripture which he opens to their understanding”[44] The Christian pastor thus patterns himself on the Savior whose minister he is, earnestly desiring the salvation of the souls committed to him, following sound doctrine, setting by his life a worthy example, and careful to see that human traditions do not encroach on believers’ freedom. Paul’s portrait of the faithful “bishop” (1 Tim 3:2–6) is held out as an additional model for pastors to follow.[45]

To the pastor, too, is committed the administration of the sacraments. In common with all the mainstream Reformers, Farel recognizes only two, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. No attempt is made to argue for their biblical or historical basis or, with the sole exception of the Roman Mass (ch. 19), to consider alternate sacramental theologies. The classical definition of the sacraments as the visible sign of God’s promised grace is implicit in the text of the Summaire, but Farel’s preference is to view them as tokens of the love-fellowship enjoyed by Christ’s people: “The sacraments are a sign and affirmation of things as they should be among believers; their purpose and effect is to preserve, enhance, and increase charity one toward the other.”[46] The issue of infant versus adult baptism does not arise, although Farel’s text suggests that he has the latter in mind: to seek baptism is to declare openly one’s wish to “follow and live for Jesus.”[47] The Lord’s Supper is, more particularly, a sign of Christian unity. It affirms that all believers are members of the one body. “They confess that our Lord gave up his body in death so that we, out of love for him, might love one another, and lay down our lives for each other.”[48] Zwingli’s influence is perhaps to be discerned in the notion that the second sacrament is not only a eucharist, but more especially a memorial meal: “Taking the bread of blessing and drinking from the cup, we rehearse (racompter) and remember (rememorer) our Lord’s death until he comes.“[49] As to the question of who may share in the sacraments, no test save that of Christian profession is applied. Nothing could be further from the Anabaptist model of a “pure” church than Farel’s insistence on a “mixed body” ecclesiology: “We do not know the heart as God knows it.. .. We know only externals.. .. Many who use the sacraments are far from possessing the reality to which they point, for they are common to the good and the bad, as is anything which is merely external.”[50]

Farel’s concept of the church is one which nevertheless admits the necessity of discipline. In a mixed church scandals may arise which threaten the peace and unity of the fellowship, and which require firm means in order to bring sinners to repentance. The topic is treated at some length in the chapter “Excommunication” (ch. 32). The model applied, as later also in Calvin, is the threefold pattern of intervention outlined in the First Gospel (Matt 18:15–17). Sentence is pronounced not by the few but communally, by the whole church (“all members of the parish”), the ultimate sanction being exclusion from the Lord’s Supper (but not, significantly from normal social intercourse). Farel envisages excommunication as a temporary discipline, to be applied not vindictively but out of love, in the spirit of prayer, and with the earnest hope of a rapid amendment.[51]

It is perhaps not surprising, given the authority vested in the clergy of the Roman church, that the Summaire should twice address the question of the powers of the pastor and of the obedience owed to him (chs. 35 and 36). No formal process of ordination or calling is envisaged: the pastor appears to function within the local congregation by common consent.[52] The authority he exercises is conferred solely by the Word. To him are committed the keys of the kingdom, not by virtue of his office or rank, but by virtue of the gospel he proclaims. “Whoever believes, truly heaven is open to him, he is loosed from his sins.. .. He who does not believe, heaven is shut, he remains bound.”[53] Since confession of sin is made to God alone, the pastor is not, as the priest is, in a position to abuse the penitent’s trust. And since forgiveness of sins is God’s prerogative, absolution is not within the pastor’s power to bestow. For the rest, while the faithful minister has a right to be supportedby the congregation he serves, he has no right to its unconditional obedience. It is God who commands obedience, not the man or the office. In a final blow aimed at Rome’s pretensions, the Sum-maire exhorts believers to test the preacher’s doctrine and, if found wanting, to repudiate both message and messenger. Farel thus assigns the Christian pastor to a position of permanent probation, and in so doing places the church yet again under the rule of sola Scriptura.[54]

There is no hint of triumphalism in Farel’s concept of the church. Antichrist and his servants are unremitting in their opposition. The call to suffer and, if need be, to die for the gospel, is addressed to all members of the church, and to none more than its pastors and evangelists. The return of Jesus as king and the vindication of the elect are of course sure. Farel’s eschatology is nevertheless devoid of millenarian or apocalyptic overtones. Believers live by faith within a time frame of indeterminate length leading up to and culminating in the resurrection and final judgment. The Summaire does not hold out the promise of easy or rapid victory. What it does offer, however, is the vision of a church where kingdom values are actively pursued and practiced. Put simply, the church of Christ is a servant church. It could hardly be otherwise, given Jesus’ example and the explicit teaching of the Gospels and Epistles. The theme of duty to neighbor, announced in the Summaire’s title, finds expression in a number of contexts linked by the idea of conformity to the Father’s will and zeal for his glory. Thus Christians are urged in obedience to the Spirit to seek “the honor and glory of God, our kind and everlasting Father, loving him with all our heart and, for his love’s sake, giving our neighbor assistance and support in every upright way.”[55] Good works are the natural outcome of the Holy Spirit’s work in us. They are not so much the test of the regenerate life as its inevitable expression. Faith grafts us, to use a metaphor dear to Farel, on to the good root, Jesus, who enables us to bear much fruit. Active charity is never conceived as an extra-religious activity, nor as an enlightened social obligation. If Farel interprets Matt 25:35–40 narrowly so as to make mutual help the norm among Christians, no such restriction applies to his gloss on Rom 13:10 or Gal 5:14, where forgiveness irrespective of the offense or the offender is in view: “The end of the law is charity. Whoever loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.”[56] Every religious observance becomes an opportunity for generous self-giving. The sacraments thus remind us to love as Christ has loved us: they bid us see that no one suffers want, and encourage us to risk our lives in each other’s service if that is what is required. Fasting, when undertaken voluntarily, in love, and not as a work of merit, gives us freedom to use our resources to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, and show pity to all who are in dire need. Alms-giving, to cite a third example, is dismissed as an empty gesture unless motivated by genuine compassion for the poor—not only friends and neighbors, but enemies also, “all whom the Lord brings to you, and to whom you can do good, knowing their necessity”[57] Ultimately, compassion is an expression of the reasonable service we owe God; it is, properly speaking, an act of worship, rendered to the all-wise and all-loving Father by his grateful children. The reality of the Spirit is demonstrated not in ritual or external performance, but in help of neighbor: “[God] has no need in himself of us or our goods; it is in our neighbor that he wills to be served, inasmuch as what we do to our neighbor we do to God.”[58]

V. Conclusion

In his later explanation of the history of the Summaire, written in 1542, Farel complains of the reception accorded his work by certain critics. Some have read into the book meanings that were not there. Others, equally ill-intentioned, have treated the work as if it were a systematic treatise containing the sum total of Farel’s theology. In so doing they have failed to appreciate the difference between “a short entree and introduction,” which the Summaire is, and “a full and elaborate exposition,” which it is not. As a result, the book’s omission of any reference, for example, to infant baptism or to the doctrine of the Trinity, has given rise to the charge that the author is either intellectually inept or dangerously heterodox.[59]

In assessing the Summaire, we would do well to heed Farel’s complaint. To regard the book as a first, rather awkward draft of Calvin’s 1536 Institutes would be quite to misunderstand the purpose of each work and the very differing circumstances in which each author was placed. No one was more conscious of the difference than Farel himself. By 1542 the success of Calvin’s Institutes was such as to make the Summaire, in Farel’s eyes, redundant. Marginally useful it might continue to be, but to all intents and purposes the book had done its work. History had moved on to the point where more than an elementary presentation of Christian truth (“some small taste”) was required. The need now was for a more substantial presentation which could be thoroughly “chewed over.” Calvin’s work, since 1541 available in French, amply supplied that need.[60]

Farel’s theological expertise is not that of an original or systematic thinker. But it is that of a man who has thoroughly mastered Scripture in the original tongues and who fully understands its meaning. It is useful in this connection to place the Summaire in the context of Farel’s earlier career. What such an exercise reveals is not the embryonic nature of his theological thinking, but its relative maturity and consistency. To Lefvre and the Meaux reformists Farel owed, at an early date, belief in God’s grace as the sinner’s sole resource, and in Scripture as the undisputed authority in matters of belief.[61] His first published work, the Thirteen Theses proposed for debate in Basel in February 1524, articulates a number of polemical themes characteristic of the Summaire, and includes an unmistakable (Lutheran?) affirmation of justification by faith.[62] In August of that same year his short commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed, Le Pater noster et le Credo en françoys, appeared in print. The book’s preface offered a rapid but broad précis of a number of Christian fundamentals, including revelation, the person and work of Jesus (“true God and true man, our only Savior and Mediator”), the church, faith, and works. In addition, four trinitarian formulae (borrowed, it is true, largely from Luther) leave no doubt as to Farel’s orthodoxy.[63] Finally, Farel’s French liturgy, La Maniere et fasson qu’on tient en baillant le sainct baptesme, composed in all probability in 1528, makes specific provision for infant baptism, inline with the universal practice of the church.[64] It seems safe to conclude that, in composing the Summaire, Farel was far from enunciating doctrines that were unfamiliar to him, imperfectly assimilated, or heterodox in their intention. The same impression of continuity and consistency emerges from a study—too large to be undertaken here—of Farel’s correspondence between 1525 and 1528, where theological issues are freely canvassed and confidently handled.[65]

A similar conclusion might be drawn from a study of Farel’s post-1529 works, notably the Genevan Confession of Faith of 1536 and his contribution to the Lausanne Dispute of the same year.[66] That he owed a substantial debt to the German and Swiss Reformers of the first generation is clear, although the extent of that debt has yet to be established.[67] The idea that Farel was Zwinglian until 1536 and Calvinist after that date is, as Elfriede Jacobs observes, impossibly simplistic.[68] When all is said and done Farel remains, in his own right, the most influential voice in French Protestantism in its early years, and its most persuasive advocate. That he refined his theology with the passage of time is of course true, but the fundamentals were clearly in place by 1529. Later changes tend to be, as Henri Heyer long ago recognized, nuances, not radical revisions.[69]

A reading of the Summaire reveals in the first place a passion for Scripture and its proper interpretation that makes the appeal to other authorities superfluous, at best a diversion, at worst a fertile source of error. The Protestant insistence on a return ad fontes finds no stauncher champion than Farel, who on his own admission owed his conversion solely to the power of Holy Writ[70] and who, in the course of his “brief explanation” of Christian belief, makes no statement and advances no claim, which is not confirmed by Scripture itself. As to the substance of his theology, two features might be singled out for mention. The first is his abiding sense of God’s goodness. This, as we have seen, is the first and fundamental lesson of revelation; it is the very heart of piety as Farel understands it. With Luther and Calvin, but more visibly than Calvin,[71] Farel celebrates the fatherly goodness of God, who treats us infinitely better than we deserve and who, by a supernatural act of grace in Jesus and by the vivifying power of the Spirit, rescues us from death and by faith joins us to his Son, adopting us into his family, acknowledging us as his heirs, leading us once delivered from the body to everlasting bliss and, in the interim, making us like himself. A second aspect of Farel’s theology is directly related to the first: the importance he attaches to works of mercy, works motivated not by fear or the desire for reward but by gratitude to God for all his kindnesses. Remarkably, since references to the Epistle of James are extremely rare in the Summaire, the idea of active charity is so prominent in the book as to constitute a third (or, with discipline, a fourth) mark of the church. Faith without works is not what Farel understands by a “true and lively faith,” and if Romanist insistence on meritorious works is, for him, the death of true religion, so too is the divorce between right doctrine and right living.[72] Farel is doubtless averse to the notion of the imitatio Christi as a spiritual discipline. But when stripped of its medieval trappings, the idea of following Jesus’ pattern of costly servanthood lies close to the surface of the Summaire, and challenges our propensity to make self-esteem and personal advancement, rather than love, our aim.

Notes

1. The standard work on Farel s career is the collectively written Guillaume Farel, 1489–1565. Biographie nouvelle (Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1930). Additions and corrections are supplied by contributors to the Actes du colloque Guillaume Farel: Neuchâtel, 29 septembre-1er octobre 1980 (ed. Pierre Barthel, Rémy Scheurer, and Richard Stauffer; 2 vols.; Cahiers de la Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 9.1 and 9.2; Geneva: Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie, 1983), hereafter cited as Colloque Farel.
2. Summary, with Brief Explanation, of Certain Points Most Necessary for Each and Every Christian to Place His Trust in God and to Help His Neighbor. (English translations of Farel’s work are the author’s.) The title is, in itself, a recapitulation of the two tables of the Law. Various aspects of the Summaire are examined by Francis M. Higman, “Dates-clé de la Réforme française: Le Sommaire de Guillaume Farel et La Somme de l’Escripture saincte,” Bibliothque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 38 (1976): 237-47; Elfriede Jacobs, Die Sakramentslehre Wilhelm Farels (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1978), 29–44; Gottfried W. Locher, “Farels Sommaire und Zwinglis Commentarius,” in Colloque Farel, 1:137–46; David N. Wiley, “Towards a Critical Edition of Farel’s Sommaire: The Dating of the Editions of 1525 and 1542,” in Colloque Farel, 1:203–18; Hans H. Esser, “Die Stellung des Sommaire von G. Farel innerhalb der frühen reformierten Bekenntnisschriften,” Zwingliana 19 (1991–1992): 93-114.
3. The Du Bois edition seems from internal evidence to be a “pirated” or unauthorized version of the original 1529 text. Two modern versions of the 1533 Summaire have appeared in print: a facsimile edition, Summaire et briefve declaration (ed. Arthur Piaget; Paris: Droz, 1935), and a version accompanied by a modern French adaptation, Sommaire et brve déclaration (ed. Arthur-L. Hofer; Neuchâtel: Belle Rivire, 1980). All references in this article are to the (unpaginated) Piaget edition, hereafter cited as SBD.
4. Farel, “La Raison pour quoy ceste oeuvre a esté faicte,” appendix to his Summaire: C’est une briefve declaration (Geneva: [Jean Girard], 1542), S.2v. This edition, which for the first time bears Farel’s name on the title page, contains much new material. Five editions of the Summaire are known to have appeared between 1533 and 1552. For full bibliographical details, see Jean-Francois Gilmont, “L’Oeuvre imprimé de Guillaume Farel,” in Colloque Farel, 2:118–22.
5. SBD, a.2r-2v
6. SBD, a.3v-a.4r. The suggestion has been made that these last remarks are addressed to evangelical pastors (Wiley, “Towards a Critical Edition,” 214). The severe nature of Farel’s admonitions makes this highly unlikely. He alludes among other things to those who “trample upon the food meant for the sheep” and who “create havoc, striking out with [their] horns” (SBD, a.3v)—classic images of Romanist oppression. An abusive and misguided group of individuals is what he has in mind.
7. Whether the plea for moderation is heard or not, Farel is aware that he faces formidable opposition. He designates active opponents by a variety of terms, ranging from the relatively mild “unbelievers,” “ prayer-mumblers,” and “popish devotees,” to “madmen full of empty dreams,” “idolators,” “ God-punishers,” “ shedders of blood,” and “the church of the wicked” (SBD, c.1r e.4v, g.7r, h.4v, l.6v, m.7r, n.8v). Behind them all stands the Antichrist, identified not with the Pope and his curia (who appear in the Summaire in their own guise), but with the Prince of darkness, whose servants they are, but whose reign will not long endure (SBD, g.8r). While such combative language serves to demonize Farel’s enemies, it also reminds his readers of the solemn nature of the choice set before them, and of their need of sustaining grace.
8. Wiley, “Towards a Critical Edition,” 215–16.
9. Hofer, in Farel, Somamaire et brve déclaration, 243 n. 11, 281 n. 24. An example of Farel’s preacherly style is provided by the following protest against the ban on the circulation of the NT in French (SBD, k.2r-2v): “Ah God! What horror is here! How, O sun, can you continue to shed your light upon a country like this? How, O earth, can you sustain such people and bear fruit for such a nation which so scorns and despises your Creator? And you, Lord God, are you so full of mercy and so slow to anger when you have been so outrageously used? Have you not appointed your Son to be king over all? Must [your] holy precepts ... be suppressed as evil, wicked, and harmful to all who read them? Is the holy gospel to be like the law of Mohammed, which none but a few dare read or speak of?”
10. Only in ch. 39 (“The Education of Children ) does Farel speak positively of the arts and sciences, commending the study of botany, zoology, history public affairs, and languages as “useful in the service of God and one’s neighbor” (SBD, m.4v-m.5v). These disciplines remain strictly subordinate, however, to the study of Scripture, without whose light we are blind.
11. SBD, c.6r-6v
12. SBD, c.2r.
13. SBD, a.8r-8v, c.3v
14. Farel’s approach thus anticipates that of Calvin, who in his 1559 Institutes (1.2.2) invites his readers to ask, not “What is God?” but “What is he like?” (Calvin, Opera selecta [ed. Peter Barth and Wilhelm Niesel; 5 vols.; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1926–1952], 3:35). In his autobiographical fragment, “La Raison pour quoy,” (S. 7v), Farel specifically disclaims any interest in God’s “essence,” which is “in every respect, incomprehensible.”
15. SBD, a.7r-7v
16. SBD, b. 1r, b.2v.
17. SBD, b.2v
18. SBD, c2v.
19. SBD, c.2r, c.3r.
20. SBD, c.3r.
21. SBD, b.8r-8v In an avowedly popular work, Farel avoids any reference to the Scholastic distinctions between implicit and explicit, formed and unformed faith. Faith is for him an undifferentiated trust in God’s mercies and in the sure promises of his Word. Such a definition places Farel firmly within the classic Reformed tradition.
22. SBD, c.7r.
23. SBD, d.2r.
24. SBD, d.1r-1v. Farel’s hermeneutic method is essentially that of the humanists. A close parallel exists with the practice, for example, of his old mentor, Lefvre d’Etaples, who insists on the importance of style, literary genre, and context, and on the necessity of interpreting Scripture by Scripture. Farel parts company with Lefvre, however, in refusing to recognize any distinction between the Bible’s “literal” and “spiritual” sense. Cf. Guy Bedouelle, Lefvre d’Etaples et l’intelligence des Ecritures (Geneva: Droz, 1976), 173–89.
25. SBD, a.8r.
26. See, e.g., SBD, b.1v-2r, d.4v, d.8v, e.6r, f.8v, g.5r, h.7r.
27. SBD, a.7v, b.1v, e.3v, f.2v, f.4r.
28. SBD, b.1v. Farel shows little interest, on the other hand, in questions of typology. Two brief allusions to the Suffering Servant of Isa 53 (SBD, h.4r, h.8v) exhaust the OT promise of a God-ordained deliverer. The Jewish sacrificial system is represented as prefiguring the unique sacrifice of Jesus (c.7v-8r). None of the usual elements that form the Gospel narrative of Jesus’ earthly humiliation appear in the Summaire, and the popular motif of the afflictiones Christi is pointedly avoided. Nor does Farel explore the cosmic reach of Christ’s work in creation and redemption, a prominent theme in the Ephesian and Colossian letters.
29. SBD, n.7r-7v. T he idea of God s wrath against sin is present as a secondary theme in the Summaire. For Farel, following Paul (Rom 4:15), it is the law that reveals God’s wrath (b.3v). It is because Christ’s death fully satisfies the law’s demands that divine mercy can replace wrath; it is for the same reason that the attempt to win salvation independently by works is denounced as a blasphemy of Antichrist (h.8v).
30. SBD, h.7r
31. SBD, b.2v.
32. Stauffer, ‘Farel a la Dispute de Lausanne, in Colloque Farel, 1:114–15.
33. SBD, b.5v
34. SBD, b.6r.
35. SBD, c.5r. Cf Rom 4:4–5.
36. See also SBD, b.3v, where, in discussing The Law and Its Power (ch. 4), Farel is again led to cite Paul on justification (Rom 10:4): “[The law] shows us that we must seek Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law and who justifies all who believe in him.”
37. SBD, n.4v
38. SBD, n.1r-1v.
39. SBD, c.2r-2v. d.3r-3v, d.5v-6r, h.4v, h.6v. When, on rare occasions, Farel speaks of reprobates (reprouvez), it is in a non-technical sense. The term is bracketed with “unbelievers,” “ the lost,” “ the wretched,” and designates those who refuse the gospel offer of forgiveness. (See SBD, n.1v, n.2r-2v.)
40. SBD, n.7v
41. SBD, d.1v.
42. SBD, d.2r.
43. SBD, b.8v-c.1r, c.3r, d.6r, m.6v. The Summaire tends to present a functional or instrumental view of the Holy Spirit. His deity is not expressly affirmed. He is described not as a person, coequal with Father and Son, but as an impulse (mouvement) and disposition (affection) by which men are made new (SBD, b.8r). Farel does not specifically associate the Spirit with the work of conviction or repentance; he is much more attentive to the lessons of Rom 8:14–16 and 26–27, where the Spirit both assures us of our adoption as God’s children and helps us in our inarticulate prayer (d.6r, f1r). That Farel held to the full deity of the Spirit emerges from Erasmus’s account of a meeting with Farel in July 1524 (Erasmus, Opus epistolarum [ed. P. S. Allen; 12 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906–1958], 5:570–71; letter of 27 Oct. 1524 to Antony Brugnarius).
44. SBD, i.6r.
45. SBD, i.v-8r
46. SBD, d.4r .
47. SBD, d.4v
48. SBD, d.4v.
49. SBD, d.4v-5r.
50. SBD, d.5r. Farel s discussion of the sacraments is surprisingly brief. It is nevertheless clear that he had no interest in Luther’s doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and even less in the efficacy of the sacrament ex opere operato. Without faith, the sacraments are empty signs (SBD, d.5r-5v): “Our salvation cannot lie in externals, so that in availing ourselves of them we are saved, or in being deprived of them we are damned.”
51. SBD, i.2v-3v. Calvin’ s 1536 Institutes cites Matt 18, and makes the sentence of excommunication consequent upon “the vote of the believers.” So too in the Instruction and Confession of Faith of 1537. It is not until 1543 that the Institutes assigns the power of excommunication to a representative group, the pastors and the assembly of elders. Cf Calvin, Opera selecta, 1:187, 416.
52. The term pastor is invariably used by Farel to designate the minister of the Word, except once where the term “elder” (ancien) is used (SBD, k.6v). No clearer picture of church structure or organization is to be found in the Summaire. The book envisages no body beyond the local congregation which appears to function, internally by consensus. Here we have a simplified pattern of ministry based, in essence, on Farel’s own experience in Montbeliard, Strasbourg, and Aigle, where he exercised a pastoral role partly by consent of the church members, partly by leave of the local authorities.
53. SBD, d.3r-3v Farel discusses the power of the keys, usually regarded as providing dominical authority for the exercise of discipline, without reference to discipline itself The latter, as we have seen, is principally a requirement of charity grounded in the need to bring the wayward to repentance. For parallels with Bucer and Calvin, see Alexandre Ganoczy Le Jeune Calvin (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1966), 175–78.
54. SBD,k.5r-5v. The duty of Christians to “prove” the doctrine of their preachers is already highlighted in a liturgical work by the Meaux reformers, Epistres et Evangiles pour les cinquante et deux dimenches de l’an (1525). See the exhortations for the Third Sunday in Advent, the Tuesday after Pentecost, and the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Lefvre d’Etaples and collaborators, Epistres et Evangiles [ed. Guy Bedouelle and Franco Giacone; Leiden: Brill, 1976], 13–14, 223–24, 269–70). The idea of lay oversight was one of the forty-eight propositions censured by the Sorbonne when it condemned the work in Nov. 1525.
55. SBD, c.1v.
56. SBD, h.2r; cf. e.3v. According to Steven E. Ozment (The Reformation in the Cities [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975], 72), “Farel, anticipating fateful developments in later Calvinism, cites. .. simple faith and service to one’s neighbour as the singular way the faithful may signal their ‘election’.” The text he cites is a 1534 variant of the Du Bois edition and is in part freely translated. Placed in the context of the last judgment (SBD, n.5v-6r), Farel’s statement simply affirms that there is a qualitative difference between the works of believers and non-believers, a difference wholly attributable to the action of God’s Spirit in the lives of his children. Here as elsewhere in the Summaire, election is a gift to be received, not a condition to be proved.
57. SBD, e.7v, f.4v-5r.
58. SBD, e.6v, n.6r.
59. La Raison pour quoy, S.6v-8r. Farel s complaint is directed above all at his former Meaux colleague, Pierre Caroli, who in 1537 lay charges of Arianism against Calvin, Farel, and Viret. The charges were not sustained, and Caroli was severely sanctioned by the synods of Lausanne and Bern (May–June 1537). He was to renew his attack on the “Farellists” in 1545. See Calvin, Défense de Guillaume Farel et de ses collgues contre les calomnies de Pierre Caroli (ed. Jean-François Gounelle; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 1–25, 53–76.
60. “La Raison pour quoy” S.7v-T.2r. Farel’s reluctance to reissue the Summaire should not be construed as an admission of theological weakness. To claim, for example, as Georges Bavaud has done (La Dispute de Lausanne [Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1956], 185), that Farel articulated a faith which Calvin turned into a theology is to set up a false dichotomy which is fair to neither Reformer. As Higman has shown in another context, by 1540 theological fashion was beginning to change: the demand was not so much for the shorter catechetical, devotional, or polemical works of earlier years, but for more substantial “study works,” of which Calvin’s Institutes was a typical example (Francis Higman, “Ideas for Export: Translations in the Early Reformation,” in Renaissance Culture in Context: Theory and Practice [ed. Jean R. Brink and William F Gentrup; Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1993], 100–113).
61. Cf. Farel s autobiographical text (c. 1548), ‘Epistre à tous seigneurs et peuples, in his Du vray usage de la croix (Geneva: J-G. Fick, 1865), 162–75. A useful review of Lefvre’s theology is provided by Richard Stauffer, “Lefvre d’Etaples, artisan ou spectateur de la Réforme?,” in Interprtes de la Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1980), 11–29.
62. On the Thirteen Theses, see A.-L. Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française (9 vols.; Geneva: H. Georg/Paris: G. Fischbacher, 1866–1897), 1:193–95; N. Weiss, “Guillaume Farel: La Dispute de Bale (1524),” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 69 (1920): 115-45. Cf Thesis 8: “Whoever hopes to be saved and justified by his own powers and strength, rather than by faith, sets himself up and makes himself as God by his free will (per liberum arbitrium), and is blinded by impiety” Farel’s attack on free will put him immediately at odds with Erasmus, whose defense of the doctrine (De libero arbitrio) was published six months later, in Sept. 1524. Luther’s rejoinder (De servo arbitrio) followed in 1525.
63. Farel, Le Pater noster et le Credo enfrançoys (ed. Francis Higman; Geneva: Droz, 1982), 35–38. The greater part of the exposition of the Creed was borrowed from Luther’s Betbüchlein of 1522. Farel’s preface describes faith as that which is founded on “holy doctrine” and which, contemplating the “abyss” of God’s goodness, issues in good works.
64. Farel, La Maniere et fasson qu’on tient en baillant le sainct baptesme (ed. J.-G. Baum; Strasbourg: Treuttel & Wurz/Paris: J. Cherbuliez, 1859), 16–25. The liturgy is concerned with infant baptism alone; there is no separate form proposed for adult baptism. The work also contains a form for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The theology that underlies it is exactly that of the Summaire.
65. Among the important letters of the period, see those published by Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs, 1:393–98 (to Johann Bugenhagen [Pomeranus], 8 Oct. 1525); 2:18–21 (to Zwingli, 9 June 1527); 2:41–51 (to Nöel Galéot, 7 Sept. 1527); 2:64–69 (to the nuns of Vevey 14 Oct. 1527); 2:78–87 (to Martin Hanoier, 1528); 5:398–411 (to Nicolas d’Esch, 16 Oct. 1526).
66. The Confession of Faith (1536), generally agreed to have been authored by Farel, though containing an expanded doctrine of the church, the sacraments, and civil authority contains nothing intrinsically at odds with the Summaire of 1529. On Farel’s interventions in the Lausanne Dispute, see the transcript published by Arthur Piaget, Les Actes de la Dispute de Lausanne (Neuchâtel: Secretariat de l’Université, 1928).
67. Both Melanchthon’s Loci communes (1522) and Zwingli’s De vera et falsa religione (1525) were known to Farel (Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs, 5:409–10). On the possible influence of Zwingli’s work, see Locher, “Farels Sommaire und Zwinglis Commentarius,” 137–46. Olivier Fatio believes that the Summaire represents an autonomous synthesis of elements derived from Zwingli on the one hand and Oecolampadius and Bucer on the other (“Farel,” TRE 11 [1983]: 30-36).
68. Elfriede Jacobs, ‘Die Abendmahlslehre Wilhelm Farels, in Colloque Farel, 1:62.
69. Henri Heyer, Guillaume Farel: Essai sur le développement de ses idées théologiques (Geneva: Ramboz & Schuchardt, 1872), 133. Between Farel’s first and subsequent editions of the Summaire, Heyer finds evidence of Calvin’s influence in the more developed doctrines of the Trinity the Lord’s Supper, and faith and works. Despite its age, Heyer’s study offers a highly valuable introduction to Farel’s theology.
70. “Epistre à tous seigneurs et peuples,” 175. Cf Henri Meylan, “Les Etapes de la conversion de Farel,” in L’Humanisme français au debut de la Renaissance (Paris: Vrin, 1973), 253–59.
71. See the remarks of Brian A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 22–31, and the literature cited there.
72. The belief that faith must issue in love was a popular theme among the Meaux reformers; it was duly censured by the Sorbonne as contrary to apostolic teaching. Cf. Lefvre d’Etaples and collaborators, Epistres et Evangiles, 113 (exhortation for Quinquagesima Sunday): “If the faith we have is without love, it is not faith. It is dead faith, imperfect faith, faith which is not living; for living faith works by love.”