John Calvin And Missions

By Derek Thomas

Calvin’s espousal of the doctrine of predestination is considered by some to be irretrievably at odds with evangelism and missions. Typical are the comments of A. M. Hunter in a book called The Teaching of Calvin, a Modern Interpretation (“Modern”—it was written in 1920) where he suggested that Calvin “displayed no trace of missionary enthusiasm.” Ralph Winter writes equally strongly about the Reformers generally: “[they] did not even talk of mission outreach.” [1]

But this is palpably wrong. In fact, a case could easily be made that the modern missionary movement began not with William Carey but with John Calvin in Geneva! To begin with, Calvin was clear enough that the responsibility to spread the gospel lies with Christians: “it is our duty to proclaim the goodness of God to every nation…the work is such as ought not to be concealed in a corner, but to be everywhere proclaimed.” [2]

Theology

If by “missions” we mean regularly held recruitment cycles with special meetings aimed at securing an immediate, conscious, decisive act of faith in Jesus Christ where those who wish to respond are invited to come forward, raise a hand, and fill out a card in some act of public testimony, then Calvin knew neither the term nor the practice. Based on a faulty anthropology, this view of missions assumes moral ability on the part of the sinner to respond at whatever time he or she so chooses. Calvin, on the other hand, believed the natural man to be in a state of moral and spiritual bondage, totally depraved in every aspect of his faculties (mind, heart, will, and affections) and unable to choose that which he is bound to do.

That this did not prevent Calvin from asserting an obligation on the part of the individual believer to evangelize (or on the part of the unbeliever to respond) can be seen in what Calvin wrote in (of all places) his Treatise on Predestination:

Since we do not know who belongs to the number of the predestined and who does not, it befits us so to feel as to wish that all be saved. So it will come about that, whoever we come across, we shall study to make him a sharer of peace.... Even severe rebuke will be administered like medicine, lest they should perish or cause others to perish. But it will be for God to make it effective in those whom He foreknew and predestined. [3]

Commenting on Micah 2:1-4, with its world-wide vision of the kingdom, Calvin could say:

The kingdom of Christ was only begun in the world when God commanded the gospel to be everywhere proclaimed and…at this day its course is not yet complete.” [4]

Calvin’s comments on 1 Timothy 2:4 —“who will have all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth”— anticipates fierce debates among Calvinists in the seventeenth century in which the issues of the “Free Offer of the Gospel” and the “Warrant of Faith” became the center of much attention. Calvin argues:

the Apostle simply means, that there is no people and no rank in the world that is excluded from salvation; because God wishes that the gospel should be proclaimed to all without exception. Now the preaching of the gospel gives life; and hence he justly concludes that God invites all equally to partake of salvation. But the present discourse relates to classes of men, and not to individual persons; for his sole object is, to include in this number princes and foreign nations. That God wishes the doctrine of salvation to be enjoyed by them as well as others, is evident from the passages already quoted, and from other passages of a similar nature.... Now the duty arising: out of that love which we owe to our neighbor is, to be solicitous and to do our endeavor for the salvation of all whom God includes in his calling, and to testify this by godly prayers. [5]

In a similar comment on Matthew 28:19, Calvin writes:

the Lord commands the ministers of the gospel to go a distance, in order to spread the doctrine of salvation in every part of the world. [6]

Practice

We should not fail to notice that Calvin himself was a missionary in Geneva, a city that had turned against him in 1538 and certainly not one he cared to be in by natural temperament. But under Calvin’s leadership, Geneva became a “hub of a vast missionary enterprise” [7] and a “dynamic center or nucleus from which the vital missionary energy it generated radiated out into the world beyond.” [8] Protestant refugees from all over Europe fled to Geneva; they came not merely for safety but also to learn from Calvin the doctrines of the Reformation so they could return home to spread the true gospel. Since 1542, Calvin’s Geneva had been a center of refugees from all over Europe, particularly France and Holland. By 1555, the population had doubled. The administration of these refugees was a work of skill. Calvin wrote to Farel in 1551:

I am, meanwhile, much preoccupied with the foreigners who daily pass through this place in great numbers, or who have come here to live.... Should you pay us a visit next autumn, you will find our city considerably increased — a pleasing spectacle to me, if they do not overwhelm me with their visits. [9]

The point is that many of these refugees heard the gospel and the distinctive shape of it as preached by Calvin and others and then returned home as missionaries. In this way, the gospel was exported to such places as Holland, Poland, England, and Hungary. Geneva become a “school of missions” which had, by the mid-1540s, become the hub from which missionaries travelled from Geneva to all parts of Europe with the good news of the gospel. Pastors in Geneva met regularly with Calvin and kept sporadic notes of their actions. We know, for example, that returning refugees, following a stay in Geneva, were constantly in touch with the company of pastors in Geneva for prayer and advice about how to promote the gospel in their own cities. The Academie de Genève (established in 1559) trained boys and young men for ministry and public administration, most of whom left the city to take the gospel to far flung corners of Europe. Many of Europe’s printing presses (and printers) were in Geneva, including the names of Estienne, Crespin, and Perrin from France. [10]

As early as 1553, Calvin began sending missionaries to France, five years before the establishment of the Academie. [11] David Calhoun calls the French mission from Geneva: “A thrilling chapter in the history of missions.” [12] And the renowned Calvin scholar, Robert Kingdon, calls it a “concentrated missionary effort.” [13] In April of 1555, the Register of the Company of Pastors in Geneva for the first time began to officially list men who were sent out from Geneva to “evangelize foreign parts.” [14] Due to the persecution many faced in France, some details were not to be recorded. What we do know is that a network of churches was established, which included the cities of Aix-en-Provence, Nîmes, Montpellier, Toulouse, Nèrac, Bordeaux, la Rochelle, Nantes, Caen, Dieppe, Tours, and Orlèans. Following persecution by Henry II, a number of the congregations began to form themselves into synods for mutual help and encouragement: half a dozen in and around Poitiers, five or more in Paris, and three in Orlèans.

By 1562, religious wars had broken out in France, and it was no longer safe to record the names of missionaries. However, between 1555 and 1562, the Register records 88 men by name who were sent out from Geneva to different places (Poitiers, Paris, Lyons, Bergerac, and Dieppe) as “bearers of the gospel.” [15]

The growth is nothing short of astounding: in 1555, there were five Reformed churches in France. Four years later, there were almost a hundred. Three years later, the number had reached 2,150 with a total membership estimated at 3 million (out of a total population of 20 million). [16]

By 1561, attention had been drawn to it by the new king of France. The accession of Charles IX in 1561 brought accusation of “sedition” and “dissention…disturbing his reign” and asking that these pastors be recalled. Calvin replied on January 28 from Geneva:

We have never attempted to send persons into your kingdom as your majesty has been told…; so that it will be found that no one, with our knowledge and permission, has ever gone from here to preach except a single individual who was asked of us for the city of London.”

Calvin explains they had simply instructed them,

to exercise their gifts wherever they should go for the advancement of the gospel. [17]

Williston Walker writes:

A great national Church, for the first time in Reformation history, was created independent of a hostile State; and the work was one for which Calvin had given the model, the inspiration, and the training. [18]

Of perhaps the greatest interest to us is a record in the Register for Tuesday, August 25, 1556, stating that “M. Pierre Richier and M. Guillaume” had been sent as ministers to Brazil. “These two were subsequently commended to the care of the Lord and sent off with a letter from this church.” [19] The ministers were sent as a response to a request from Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot leader. Sadly, the mission was not successful: the leader of the group betrayed them, some members of the group were killed, and little is known what happened to these missionaries. What we do know, however, is that a missionary zeal existed in Calvinist Geneva that impelled them to send men, perhaps to their death, as far away as Brazil.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Genevan missions is the influence Calvin had on immigrants and refugees in his own city. Without ever having to leave Geneva, he could effectively influence the whole of Europe and beyond. With the issue of immigration and student visas in our own time, an opportunity to do just that exists on our own doorstep. Through effectively targeting foreigners in our country, by God’s grace, a door of opportunity is opened for mission work in parts of the world where we might not be welcome. Learning from the Genevan Reformer, we could by God’s grace “turn the world upside down.”

Notes

1. Ralph Winter, “The Kingdom Strikes Back,” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (Pasadena: William Carey library, 1992), 18.
2. Commentary (on Isaiah 12:5).
3. John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J. K. S. Reid (London: James Clarke and Co., Ltd, 1961), 9.
4. Commentary (on Micah 2:1– 4).
5. Ibid.
6. Some have seen Calvin’s use of the Great Commission text in Matthew 28:19 in the Institutes to counter Roman Catholic arguments for apostolic succession as (wrongly) implying that Calvin believed the Great Commission was only a temporary commandment.
7. Frank A. James III, “Calvin and Missions,” Christian History 5, 4 (Fall 1986):23.
8. Philip E. Hughes, The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 25.
9. Corpus Reformatum XIII, col. 134, cited in G. R. Potter and M. Greengrass, John Calvin: Documents of Modern History (New York: St. Martins Press, 1983), 386.
10. Stanford W. Reid, “Calvin’s Geneva: A Missionary Centre,” in The Reformed Theogical Journal 42, 3 (Sept. – Dec. 1983), 65-74.
11. The first year of Academy, 280 students enrolled in the seventh class alone (aged 8 or 9). They came from all over Europe, especially France.
12. “Missionary Hero or Missionary Failure?” Presbuterion 5, 1 (Spring 1979), 27.
13. “Calvinist Religious Aggression,” in The French Wars of Religion, How Important Were Religious Factors?, ed. J. H.M. Salmon (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Co., 1967), 6.
14. Hughes, 308.
15. Alistair McGrath, A Life of John Calvin: A Study of Western Culture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 182.
16. These are Kingdon’s numbers.
17. John Calvin, Tracts and Letters, ed. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 7:177.
18. Williston Walker, John Calvin: The Originator of Reformed Protestantism 1509 – 1564 (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1906), 385. Strife and bloodshed there would be, however. After the massacre of Vassy and the peace of Amboise in 1563, Calvin wrote, “I would always counsel that arms be laid aside and that we all perish rather than enter again on the confusions that have been witnessed.”
19. Hughes, Register, 317. Jean de Lery (1536-1613) was an explorer and writer born in Lamargelle, Cote d’Or, France. Little is known of his early life; he might have remained unknown had he not accompanied a group of Protestants to their new colony on an island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The colony was founded by the Chevalier de Villegagnon, with promises of religious freedom, but on arrival, the Chevalier contested the Protestants’ beliefs and persecuted them. After eight months, the Protestants left their colony and settled on the mainland, near the Tupinamba Indians. These events were the basis of de Lery’s book, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Also Called America (1578). On his return to France, de Lery married unhappily and became a Protestant minister. He endured the Siege of Sancerre, remarking in his book, History of the City of Sancerre (1574) that his hardships in Brazil served him well, because he taught his fellow soldiers to make hammocks and eat anything, including shoe soles (though cannibalism still repelled him).