John Calvin And Genevan Presbyterianism

By Mark J. Larson

[Mark J. Larson is a doctoral student at Calvin Theological Seminary.]

I. Introduction: The Question of Calvin’s Church Polity

The Geneva consistory held a crucial place in the thinking of John Calvin. Doubtless, Calvin never would have returned to Geneva apart from a concession on the Genevan government’s part that he be allowed to establish a consistory.[1] Theodore Beza, his successor as the moderator of the Company of Pastors, wrote about the centrality the consistory in Calvin’s philosophy of ministry in his biography: “Or afin que on entende comment Calvin s’y est porté: premierement d’entré il protesta de n’accepter point la charge de ceste Eglise, sinon qu’il y eust consistoire ordonné et discipline ecclesiastique convenable: pour ce qu’il voyoit que telles brides estoyent necessaires et qu’il n’estoit point question de dilayer.”[2] Clearly, it was Calvin’s deep conviction that he could not properly fulfill his ministry apart from the establishment of a consistory with full ecclesiastical authority.

Scholars such as Lefferts Loetscher and Robert Kingdon have recognized the significance of Calvin’s church polity when it comes to Presbyterian church government. Without hesitation, Loetscher declares, “John Calvin. .. was the chief formulator of Presbyterianism.. .. Calvin more than any other one man gave to Presbyterianism its distinctive character.”[3] As to the form of government which Calvin established in Geneva, Loetscher asserts, “In Geneva, Calvin developed one of his most distinctive achievements—Presbyterian church government.”[4]

The proof which Loetscher offers for this statement is succinct: “He provided for four types of church officers: pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons. The clergy were equal, without superior bishop over them, and the lay elders, twelve in number, were elected. .. to share with the clergy in church government.”[5] This indeed is the traditional understanding of what constitutes Presbyterian government in contrast to Episcopalianism (which places authority in a higher clergy, the bishops) and Congregationalism (which gives governing authority to the local congregation). Since the Genevan church was neither ruled by a bishop nor the congregation, but by a consistory comprised of pastors and elders having ecclesiastical authority over multiple congregations, it follows that the church in Geneva had a Presbyterian form of government.

Although Kingdon does not put it as boldly as Loetscher, he too sees the roots of Presbyterianism going back to Geneva. Writing about the Geneva Company of Pastors, he says, “It provided the collective leadership for the newly Reformed Church of Geneva and may thus be regarded as the first Reformed Presbytery, depending, of course, on how one defines presbytery.”[6] Kingdon, likewise, recognizes Calvin’s opposition to the episcopal form of government which long had dominated the medieval church. Writing about Calvin and Geneva’s civil magistrates, Kingdon says, “They were all in violent reaction to the type of church government that had preceded the Reformation in Geneva, the monarchical government of a single prince-bishop. This single individual. .. was. .. the supreme leader of the local church.”[7] Glenn Sunshine concurs that Calvin opposed the traditional episcopal arrangement of government by superior bishops in a hierarchical structure: “He rejected any form of episcopal jurisdiction or authority, arguing instead for equality among all pastors.”[8]

Over against the views of Loetscher and Kingdon stand Basil Hall and Thomas Torrance, who both maintain that Calvin was not a Presbyterian. Hall asserts, “For Presbyterians Calvinism includes the explicit claim that Calvin was the founder and upholder of the Presbyterian system of church government and doctrine—a claim which is not quite justifiable.”[9] In addition to this declaration that Calvin was not a Presbyterian, Hall adds that Calvin had no real problem with episcopal church polity: “Calvin was not a doctrinaire Presbyterian, and he did not disapprove of episcopacy as long as prelacy, or the secularizing of the episcopal office, was avoided.”[10] Torrance is equally dogmatic when he says concerning Calvin, “He was definitely not a Presbyterian!”[11] This statement is made because, he maintains, the role of the Genevan elders differed somewhat from that of modern Presbyterian elders.[12]

Perhaps the fundamental weakness in the position of both Hall and Torrance is that it fails to take into account Calvin’s own assessment of what he had achieved in the establishment of the Geneva consistory. Shortly after the consistory began its meetings near the end of 1541,[13] Calvin wrote a letter to his friend Oswald Myconius (dated March 14, 1542) in which he said the following concerning his successful effort to establish the Geneva consistory: “Nunc habemus qualecunque presbyterorum judicium et for mam disciplinae, qualem ferebat temporum infirmitas.”[14] Already, in 1542, it was Calvin’s judgment that the Geneva church possessed a Presbyterian judicatory and a form of discipline. Since Calvin believed that he had established a Presbyterial Court, it appears to be inappropriate to say that he was not a Presbyterian.

Apart from Calvin’s own assessment that Geneva possessed a presbyterorum judicium, it may be convincingly demonstrated that Calvin was indeed Presbyterian in his church polity. The essential elements of classical Presbyterian government were, in fact, found in the Geneva church. The similarities of perspective on church government found in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1643–48) and the Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) are remarkable. The basic argument which is set forth in this paper is quite simple: If it can be demonstrated that the fundamental elements of Presbyterian polity expressed in the Westminster Confession are likewise articulated in Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances, the conclusion must be drawn that Calvin established a Presbyterian government for the church in Geneva.

In the argument which follows, we shall examine two major issues where the polity of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances seems almost to resurface in the Westminster Confession. First, there is the perspective in each document that there is a government in Christ’s church, and this government is entrusted to ecclesiastical assemblies (be it the Geneva consistory or a Puritan Presbytery) composed of fit ministers and fit elders (who have been delegated to the church assembly). In addition, there is an emphasis that the members of Christ’s church are to be in submission to this ecclesiastical government. Secondly, each document stresses that the ecclesiastical government in Christ’s church has judicial power. Both the Ordinances and the Confession argue that an ecclesiastical court may summon sinners before it to give an account of their ways, may conduct a trial, and, in the case of a guilty verdict, may bring censures against the person (verbal, and even excommunication).

II. “Ministers with Other Fit Persons”: The Presbyterial Government of the Churches

Contrary to the sixteenth-century Anabaptist mentality, which either remained indifferent to the issue of church polity or favored a congregational form of government in which the local congregation held final authority,[15] the Westminster Confession shows great interest in the subject of church govern ment and places ecclesiastical power in the hands of a selective group of individuals: “The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of His Church, hath therein appointed a government, in the hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate” (30:1).[16] This governing authority as it is exercised by the officers of the church occurs in connection with their service on the church’s governing assemblies: “For the better government, and further edification of the church, there ought to be such assemblies as are called synods or councils” (31:1). Ministers and elders are the two types of church officers who meet in these assemblies to govern the church: “The ministers of Christ. .. with other fit persons, upon delegation from their Churches, may meet together in such assemblies” (31:2). The Form of Presbyterial Church-Government, which was also produced by the Westminster Assembly, makes it very clear that this mentioning of “other fit persons, upon delegation from their Churches” is a reference to the office of elder:

As there were in the Jewish church elders of the people joined with the priests and Levites in the government of the church, so Christ, who hath instituted government, and governors ecclesiastical in the church, hath furnished some in his church, beside the ministers of the word, with gifts for government, and with commission to execute the same when called thereunto, who are to join with the minister in the government of the church. Which officers reformed churches commonly call Elders.[17]

It is important to note that the emphasis of the Confession is not upon what the Form of Government calls “Congregational Assemblies,” which is made up of “the ruling officers of a particular congregation” and which has limited ecclesiastical jurisdiction over only one congregation.[18] The Confession has in mind “synods or councils” (31:1) composed of “ministers. .. with other persons, upon delegation from their Churches” (31:2; emphasis added). Obviously, since these officers are delegated from their respective churches, the jurisdiction of these ecclesiastical assemblies is over multiple congregations. The Form of Government elaborates upon this when it says, “The scripture doth hold forth, that many particular congregations may be under one presbyterial government.”[19] As to the matter of Synodical Assemblies, it declares, “Synodical assemblies may lawfully be of several sorts, as provincial, national, and oecumenical. It is lawful and agreeable to the word of God, that there be a subordination of congregational, classical, provincial, and national assemblies, for the government of the church.”[20]

This same fundamental idea articulated in the Confession—the fact that there are to be ecclesiastical assemblies composed of fit ministers and fit elders with authority over particular congregations—lies at the very heart of Calvin’s Ordonnances Ecclésiastiques. Like the Westminster Divines, Calvin was convinced that this form of government was established by Jesus Christ himself. The introduction to the Ecclesiastical Ordinances states, “It has seemed to us adviseable that the spiritual government of the kind which our Lord demonstrated and instituted by His Word should be set out in good order so that it may be established and observed among us.”[21]

The ecclesiastical assembly in Geneva, composed of ministers and elders, which had authority over the particular congregations of the Geneva Church was called the Consistoire ecclesiastique.[22] And just as the Westminster Confession (31:2) expresses concern that ecclesiastical assemblies (speaking in this instance about synods) be composed of “fit” ministers and “fit” elders, the Ecclesiastical Ordinances written a century earlier sounded the same note: the consistory must have “fit” ministers and “fit” elders.

With respect to the minister who would sit on the consistory, his suitability included the necessity of an inward sense of God’s call to the pastoral office: “To the end that nothing disorderly should be done in the Church, no man ought to undertake this office without vocation.”[23] This sense of a Divine summons, however, did not automatically open the door into the pastorate. The aspiring ministerial candidate must endure an intense exami nation of his doctrine and conduct by the Company of Pastors in order to discern his “fitness”:

The examination consists of two parts, the first of which concerns doctrine, to ascertain whether he who is to be ordained has a good and sound knowledge of Scripture, and then whether he is a fit and proper person to communicate it to the people in an edifying manner.

To ascertain whether he is fit to teach, it will be necessary to proceed by way of interrogation and by privately hearing him expound the teaching of the Lord.[24]

The aspiring candidate for the ministry must not only be a gifted man, but he must also be blameless as to his manner of life: “The second part of the examination process concerns his life, namely, whether he is of good morals and has always conducted himself without reproach.”[25]

It should be kept in mind that these measures which were adopted to secure a qualified ministry were done in the context of Calvin’s dissatisfaction with the competence of the local ministers at the time of his return to Geneva.[26] Early in 1542, Calvin described the pastors of the Geneva Church in a letter in uncomplimentary terms:

Our colleagues are rather a hindrance than a help to us; they are rude and self-conceited, have no zeal, and less learning. But what is worst of all, I cannot trust them, even though I very much wish that I could: for by many evidences they shew they are estranged from us, and give scarcely any indication of a sincere and trustworthy disposition.[27]

Clearly, Calvin did not merely accept the status quo of a rude, ignorant, and untrustworthy ministry. The program of ministerial examination which was implemented in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances helped to bring about an upgrading—a real reformation—in the quality of Geneva’s ministry.[28]

This stress upon the importance of ministerial fitness helps to explain the phenomenon of an entirely foreign ministry in Geneva. William Bouwsma makes this observation: “What was accomplished in Geneva was done without the support of native clergy; indeed, no Genevan served as a pastor in the city between 1536 and the end of the century.”[29] Kingdon offers the likely explanation that a foreign ministry was necessary to meet the high educational requirements for a Geneva pastor: “The reason for this influx of foreigners into the pastoral corps was the educational requirements attached to the job. All were expected to have advanced training, at the university level, if possible, including instruction in Greek and Hebrew. There were simply no native Genevans with this kind of background.”[30]

Calvin took the matter of ministerial fitness to be a very serious thing indeed. But there was no less of a concern in Calvin’s thinking for “fit” elders.[31] The Ecclesiastical Ordinances state that the elected elders are to be “good-living and honourable men, without reproach and beyond all suspicion, above all who fear God and possess the gift of spiritual prudence.”[32] Another requirement was that he be one of the civil magistrates who governed the city-state of Geneva. Each of the lay elders who served on the consistory sat on one of the three councils which ruled the Geneva Republic. The Ordinances put it this way: “As this church is now placed, it will be desireable to elect two from the Little Council, four from the Council of Sixty, and six from the Council of Two Hundred.”[33] The benefit of this arrangement is obvious: the governors of the church (governors is the term Calvin uses for elders in Institutes IV. III. 8)[34] would be men with a proven ability to govern the state. Naphy makes an interesting point regarding eight of these elders who were added to the consistory in the years 1546–1547. All of these men continued to serve together on the consistory for the next six years; and seven of them, at one time or another, had served on Genevan civil courts.[35] Obviously, these gifts of judicial discernment would be highly valued on Geneva’s new ecclesiastical court. It can be seen, then, that the governors of the church, in a very real sense, had to meet higher requirements than the governors of the state. Only two men out of the twenty-five who composed the Small Council were to be elected elders, while only four came from the Council of Sixty and six from the Council of Two Hundred.[36] Surely, we see Calvin’s recognition in this structure that not every man who ruled over the Republic was necessarily fit to rule over the church of Jesus Christ.

This fact, that the church’s elders had to meet more exacting standards than the state’s governors, appears in the manner in which the election of elders was to proceed according to the Ecclesiastical Ordinances. The sorting and sifting process of finding suitable elder candidates was a collaborative effort involving both the Small Council and the Company of Pastors:

Accordingly we have decided that the manner of their election should be as follows: the Little Council shall consult with a view to nominating the most suitable and competent men that can be found; and, in order to effect this, it shall summon the ministers for the purpose of conferring with them.[37]

Calvin, as the moderator of the Venerable Company of Pastors, would have been very concerned in these consultations that the elder candidates who were to be presented to the General Council[38] for election to the eldership would be “godly, grave, and holy men” (Institutes IV. III. 8).

Once “the most suitable and competent men” had surfaced, there was a movement to the second stage in the sorting and sifting process which brought in the Council of Two Hundred, which was a new institution in Geneva established early in the sixteenth century:[39]

.. . and then they shall present those on whom they have agreed to the Council of Two Hundred for their approval. If they are approved and found worthy, they shall take a special oath, the form of which shall be drafted as for the ministers.[40]

The third stage in the process of putting fit elders into office occured in the annual election of men to serve on the various committees of both the civil and the ecclesiastical realms. It was in this annual February election that the General Council selected men to serve a one-year term on the Small Council, the Council of Sixty, the Council of Two Hundred, and the various standing committees of the civil government. When it came to the church, qualified men were elected to serve a one-year term as elders on the consistory, while other suitable men were chosen to serve for one year as deacons.[41]

While it is true that a man could only step into the office of an elder on the basis of his selection by the masses in the General Council, it should be noted that the slate of elder candidates presented to the people numbered only twelve individuals.[42] Twelve, of course, was the number of elders for which the Ecclesiastical Ordinances made provision.[43] It is evident from these considerations that the decisive determination as to who the church’s elders would be was not left to the will of the masses. In order to find the most suitable and competent men possible for the eldership, Calvin so crafted the church constitution that the political elite in the Small Council along with the Company of Pastors determined who was—and who was not—qualified for this important office.

Finally, Calvin’s ongoing concern that the twelve men on the Bench of Elders be suitable for the office entrusted to them is reflected in the establishment of a “term eldership.” Every year, the lay elders sitting on the Geneva consistory had to face the fact that their appointment to serve was subject to a possible reversal. The Ecclesiastical Ordinances declare, “And at the end of the year after their election by the Council they shall present themselves to the Seigneury so that it may be decided whether they should be retained or replaced, though, so long as they are fulfilling their duties faithfully, it will be inexpedient to replace them frequently without good cause.”[44] This statement would place every elder on notice: Unfaithfulness with respect to one’s duties will result in the removal of one’s name from the annual slate of twelve nominees. With Calvin’s determination to have “the most suitable and competent men that can be found,” he might well have been the first to recommend to the Small Council that a particular man be terminated from the eldership.

We have shown that the Westminster Divines’ position that there should be ecclesiastical assemblies of fit ministers and elders with authority over multiple congregations was comparable to the ecclesiastical polity which Calvin formulated for Geneva. One of Calvin’s great achievements was establishing the consistory which had binding authority over the particular churches within the Geneva Republic. In this connection, it should also be stated that each document, the Westminster Confession and the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, maintains that there must be submission to the authority of this ecclesiastical government.

The Westminster Confession speaks about the necessity of submission with reference to the decisions of synods and councils (31:3):

It belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith and cases of conscience, to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of His Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same: which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission; not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in his Word.[45]

The concept of submission to ecclesiastical authority was crucial in Calvin’s thinking. He repeatedly maintained the clergy’s authority over the laity,[46] and he instructed his congregation of their duty to submit to the government in Christ’s church.[47] He reasoned that if the clergy are authorized to command, the laity are obligated to obey.[48] This perspective in Calvin’s theology has led some scholars to label Calvin as authoritarian. Bouwsma, for example, states, “There is clearly much evidence to support the notion of a severe and authoritarian Calvin.”[49]

The problem with construing an “authoritarian Calvin” is that it does not seriously take into account the strong emphasis in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances that Geneva’s ministers, including Calvin himself, were likewise accountable to ecclesiastical government. The principle of submission began from the very moment that a man sought the pastoral office. The pastoral candidate’s submission to the Company of Pastors is first manifested in his own subjection to their examining his doctrine and life.[50] Furthermore, his submission to the established confessional perspective of the Geneva church is reflected in this requirement of the Ordinances: “Moreover, in order to avoid all danger of some false belief being held by the one who is to be received, he will be required to declare that he accepts and adheres to the doctrine approved in the Church.”[51] Once a ministerial candidate had been installed into office, the principle of accountability and submission to his brethren in the ministry continued. The transition to this new subject in the Ordinances is made by this statement: “Moreover, just as it is necessary to examine ministers carefully when one wishes to elect them, so also it is necessary to have a good system whereby to hold them to their duty.”[52]

This principle of ongoing submission to the Company of Pastors is reflected in the very practical requirement that all the ministers of the Geneva church were obligated to attend a weekly meeting to discuss biblical doctrine. The authority of the Venerable Company over each pastor with respect to this weekly duty is put in straitforward language: “.. . and no one shall be exempted from this without legitimate excuse.”[53] Each minister’s accountability to the discipline of the Geneva Company of Pastors is no less blunt: “Any man who is negligent over this is to be reprimanded.”[54] Even those pastors who ministered in the hinterland surrounding the walled city of Geneva were required to submit themselves to this requirement of the church constitution:

As for those who preach in the villages under the jurisdiction of the Seigneury, our ministers of the city should exhort them to attend whenever they are able. In the event of absence for a whole month, however, this is to be treated as gross negligence, except in the case of illness or some other legitimate hindrance.[55]

It should be recognized that the ministers in Geneva were subject not only to the Company of Pastors, but also to the Geneva consistory (which included all the pastors and the lay elders). William Monter and Robert Kingdon in several studies point out that the number of men sitting on the consistory varied from the moment it began to function in 1542 until the time of Calvin’s death in 1564. When the consistory first began functioning in 1542, there were nine pastors; a generation later, in 1564, the number had increased to nineteen. During this same time period, the number of lay elders remained fairly constant at twelve.[56] It was the full consistory, then, numbering between twenty and thirty men, which was given the responsibility in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of maintaining discipline over the ministers.

Each minister who desired to serve the Geneva church needed to recognize the determination of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances regarding his accountability and submission to the consistory government: “Discipline will be imposed on him who merits it.”[57] The kind of discipline which would be imposed would depend, of course, upon the nature of the crime or vice which had been committed. It is at this point that the new church constitution provided two broad categories of possible ministerial sins. First, there are listed eighteen offenses which fall into the category of the impermissible —“crimes which are altogether intolerable in a minister.”[58] Secondly, there follows a list of sixteen vices which are described as “faults which may be endured provided that a fraternal admonition is offered.”[59] It is interesting that even here, in this first category of intolerable crimes, the theme of submission to ecclesiastical authority surfaces: the third intolerable offense is “rebellion against ecclesiastical order,” while the seventh is “leaving one’s church without lawful permission.”[60] Likewise, the necessity of the minister’s submission to the basic confessional stance of the church surfaces in the third vice which would merit, at the very least, “a fraternal admonition”: “The advancing of some doctrine or manner of conduct not accepted in the Church.”[61]

On the basis of these two broad categories of sins, the consistory and/or the civil magistrates took jurisdiction of a case.[62] Here, the Ecclesiastical Ordinances set forth three basic possibilities. First, if the minister had not only sinned, but had also in so doing committed a civil offense, the case would go immediately to the civil magistrates: “.. . the Seigneury shall take the matter in hand and, over and above the ordinary punishment customarily imposed on others, shall punish him by deposing him from his office.”[63] The fourth “intolerable” crime listed would certainly fit into this category: “Blasphemy which is open and deserving of civil punishment.”[64]

A second possible disciplinary procedure regarding a minister would involve the commission of an “intolerable” crime which would not be considered a civil offense. This would be the procedure, for example, for a pastor who might rebel against the existing ecclesiastical authority. In such cases, as the Ecclesiastical Ordinances put it,

.. . the first investigation belongs to the ecclesiastical consistory, the delegates (commis) or elders together with the ministers shall attend to them. And if anyone is convicted of them they shall report it to the Council, with their decision and judgment—but in such a way that the final judgment concerning the punishment shall always be reserved to the Seigneury.[65]

This passage shows a dual jurisdiction—the case first appears before the ecclesiastical court and then it goes to the civil court, the Seigneury.

The third possible disciplinary procedure related to ministerial vices—things “which may be endured provided that a fraternal admonition is offered.”[66] Such cases would not come under the jurisdiction of the civil authorities: “With regard to lesser vices which should be corrected by simple admonition, the procedure shall be according to the order of necessity, in such a way that in the last resort cases shall be brought before the Church for judgment.”[67] When it came to such vices as “curiosity in searching out vain questions” and “negligence in studying and especially in reading the Holy Scriptures,”[68] the case would never come before the civil magistrates. In fact, it would only be in the last resort that the case would come to the consistory for judgment. It could well be that a “simple admonition” would be sufficient to correct the erring brother.[69]

All of this discussion underscores the fact that the citizens of Geneva, the rank-and-file church members were not the only ones who were subject to the authority and discipline of the Geneva consistory. Kingdon and Monter have done well in describing the nature of the ecclesiastical power exercised by the consistory over the Geneva church, but it must be remembered that the pastors were no less subject to the consistory’s authority and discipline. The Ecclesiastical Ordinances not only assert that “discipline will be imposed on him who merits it,” but they go on to describe in explicit terms how this discipline will be carried out.

III. Discipline in God’s House: “The Censures of the Church”

Thus far, in examining the Geneva consistory, it has been demonstrated that it resembles a presbytery in terms of its composition (ministers and elders) and its authority over both congregations and pastors.[70] We shall now consider the nature of the ecclesiastical power exercised by the consistory. Once again, we find major similarities between the perspectives articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith (the classic creed of Presbyterianism) and the Ecclesiastical Ordinances. The Confession (31:3) provides this statement regarding the nature of ecclesiastical power:

It belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith and cases of conscience, to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of His Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same.. ..

As it can be seen, here, ecclesiastical power in Presbyterian doctrine is both executive and judicial, but not legislative. Executive authority is reflected in the statement that synods and councils may “set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of His Church.” Thus, such bodies may produce directories of worship and forms of government.

But the real emphasis of the Westminster Confession is upon the judicial authority of the church’s governing assemblies. In the preceding quotation (31:3), synods and councils “determine controversies of faith and cases of conscience,” and they “receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively. .. determine the same.” The judicial nature of ecclesiastical power not only surfaces in the entirety of Chapter 30 (“Of Church Censures”), but even in the midst of a discussion in Chapter 20 on the subject of Christian liberty and liberty of conscience. Concerning those who sin by maintaining false and erroneous opinions and practices, the Confession states (20:4), “They may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the Church.. . .” This statement assumes that ecclesiastical power, which is judicial in nature, resides in the courts of the church. Church courts may do three things, two of which are explicitly asserted and one which is implied: first, they may summon people before them to give an account of their opinions and practices;[71] secondly, they may (implicitly) conduct a trial which may result in a conviction of guilt; and thirdly, in the case of a guilty verdict, they may bring censures against a person. The specific censures mentioned by the Confession are “admonition,” “suspension from the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper for a season,” and “excommunication from the Church” (30:4).

A careful study of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances makes it clear that Calvin likewise viewed the consistory as being a court with judicial power. To be sure, it was an ecclesiastical court and not a civil one, and, thus, its jurisdiction was ecclesiastical rather than civil. This point is made in the closing paragraph of the Ordinances:

All this is to be done in such a way that the ministers have no civil jurisdiction and wield only the spiritual sword of the Word of God. .. and that there is no derogation by this consistory from the authority of the Seigneury or the magistracy; but the civil power shall continue in its entirety.[72]

The spiritual jurisdiction of the consistory, rather than any civil jurisdiction, is specifically mentioned in connection with marital cases:

Regarding disputes in matrimonial cases, since this is not a spiritual matter but mixed up with civil law, it shall remain a matter for the Seigneury. Nevertheless we have advised that the duty of hearing the parties should be left to the consistory, so that they may report their decision to the Council for it to pass judgment.[73]

This recognition that ecclesiastical power is limited to a spiritual jurisdiction reappears a century later in the Westminster Confession’s statement that “synods and councils are to handle, or conclude, nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth” (31:5).

The fact that the consistory was an ecclesiastical court with a spiritual jurisdiction is seen in the type of cases that the Ecclesiastical Ordinances contemplate as coming before it. Basically, a Geneva parishioner would find himself or herself before the consistory because of either a doctrinal or a behavioral problem.[74] The Ordinances speak about the possibility of a doctrinal aberration, assuming that such a case belongs to the consistory’s jurisdiction: “If anyone speaks critically against the received doctrine, he shall be summoned for the purpose of reasoning with him.”[75] When it comes to problematic behavior, the Ordinances provide two specific examples which the consistory would respond to because they clearly fall into the category of a spiritual issue: “If anyone is negligent to come to church in such a way that a serious contempt of the communion of Christians is apparent, or if anyone shows himself to be scornful of ecclesiastical order, he shall be admonished.. . .”[76] Both of these examples may be classified as “religious” behavioral problems. Kingdon contends that the consistory in the early days gave much attention to religious deviations:

In the beginning, particularly, it devoted much of its energy to wiping out vestiges of Roman Catholicism. It stopped such practices as the saying of traditional prayers in Latin. It punished those who left Geneva to receive Catholic sacraments. It complained of acts labelled “superstitious” to which Catholic authorities had not objected. For example, a number of Genevans were disciplined for going to a country spring to collect samples of water believed to have miraculous ability to cure certain diseases.[77]

The consistory in Calvin’s time (1542 to 1564) was also committed to dealing with “moral” behavioral problems. The consistory registers (as delineated by Kingdon, Monter, and Watt) show that the spiritual jurisdiction of the consistory embraced such moral aberrations as domestic quarrels, disagreements between neighbors, fornication and related sexual offenses, the sin of lying, stealing, vandalism, public insults to the pastors, rebelling against the authority of the consistory, and many other sins as well.[78]

Having established that the jurisdiction of the Geneva consistory was spiritual, it remains to be demonstrated that it was in fact a church court, possessing the authority of summoning sinners before it, conducting trials, and censuring the guilty. The evidence shows that the Geneva consistory was, in Kingdon’s words, “a quasi-judicial body, whose members. .. were expected to function in part as judges.”[79]

1. Summoning Sinners

The Westminster Confession’s position that sinners in the church “may lawfully be called to account” (20:4) reflected a practice which had been in effect in the Geneva church for more than a century. In fact, the Geneva consistory actually had a paid employee, called the “officier,” who had the responsibility of summoning people to consistory meetings for the purpose of questioning.[80] This was precisely what Calvin had in mind already in 1541 when he produced the Ecclesiastical Ordinances. Concerning the basic order which was to be observed regarding the catechetical instruction of the children and their admission into the communicant membership of the church, the Ordinances provide this warning: “Those who contravene this order shall be called before the Company of elders or delegates.”[81] Disobedience to the proper structure would not be the only action/act which would merit a consistory summons. The consistory would not tolerate dissent from the Reformed faith: “If anyone speaks critically against the received doctrine, he shall be summoned for the purpose of reasoning with him.”[82]

It is clear from these two examples that insubordination, when it came to proper procedure or Protestant doctrine, would result in an appearance before the consistory. Inappropriate moral behavior would likewise bring the same result. As Jeffrey Watt puts it, those who were summoned before the consistory had or were accused of having violated “the Reformed moral code.”[83] This is not to say that every sin conceivable brought a directive to appear before the consistory. The Ordinances distinguish between sins which are scandalous and those which are not. Scandalous sinners must be called before the consistory: “As for those notorious and public vices which the Church cannot condone, if they are faults which deserve admonishment only, it shall be the duty of the elders or delegates to summon those who have offended.”[84] Ordinary sinners, manifesting the faults and weaknesses common to all, were to be dealt with in a much different way: “Secret vices should be rebuked in secret and. .. no one should take his neighbor before the Church to accuse him of some fault which is neither notorious nor scandalous, except after finding him rebellious.”[85]

This fact that the consistory maintained the right—and exercised the practice—of summoning sinners before it to give an account assumes the reality of both formal and informal spiritual oversight in the Geneva church. The importance of formal oversight surfaces in the existence of the office of elder which had this responsibility outlined in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances:

Their office is to watch over the life of each person, to admonish in a friendly manner those whom they see to be at fault and leading a disorderly life, and when necessary to report them to the Company, who will be authorized to administer fraternal discipline and to do so in association with the elders.[86]

The Ordinances also assume that in the Christian community of Geneva there would be an informal oversight of the Christian brethren with respect to one another. Reference is made in the Ordinances to rather stubborn sinners who “mock at the specific admonitions of their neighbor.” This was not a matter, as Kingdon suggests, of “a fair amount of spying by the residents of Geneva on each other.”[87] Undoubtedly it goes back to Calvin’s determination to be biblical in relationships in the Christian community. Indeed, in the context of his discussing this informal brotherly oversight, Calvin plainly alludes to the procedure outlined in Matt 18:15–17 and adds these words: “As for correcting such faults as may be in the life of each person, one must proceed according to the order which our Lord has commanded.”[88]

2. Conducting Trials

Although the Westminster Confession does not explicitly refer to the authority of the church courts to conduct trials, it does assume this right in a number of places, particularly in its discussion on church censures. Having discussed the necessity of censures (30:3), the Confession makes a significant statement concerning its listing of three possible specific censures (30:4):

“For the better attaining of these ends, the officers of the Church are to proceed by admonition; suspension from the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper for a season; and by excommunication from the Church; according to the nature of the crime, and demerit of the person.”[89]

Obviously, this text assumes that the church judicatory, which is imposing the censure, has conducted a formal investigation of the person and thus fully recognizes the nature of his crime and his particular demerit.

The Ecclesiastical Ordinances are much more explicit concerning the fact that the consistory would indeed conduct formal trials to determine the innocence or guilt of those who were summoned before it. Regarding its discussion of ministerial discipline, the Ordinances explicitly assert that the consistory would conduct a trial if a minister was charged with the commission of an intolerable crime: “With regard to other offenses of which the first investigation belongs to the ecclesiastical consistory, the. .. elders together with the ministers shall attend to them.”[90] As Kingdon says, the minister, like anyone else summoned before the consistory, would be “cross examined by the entire body of elders and pastors.”[91] In such cases in which the minister was found to be guilty, the procedure would be as follows: “And if anyone is convicted of them they shall report it to the Council, with their decision and judgment.. . .”[92]

Later, in the section dealing with marriage, the Ordinances again bring up the idea that the consistory is a judicial body, even making provisional determinations in marital disputes:

Regarding disputes in matrimonial cases, since this is not a spiritual matter but mixed up with civil law, it shall remain a matter for the Seigneury. Nevertheless we have advised that the duty of hearing the parties should be left to the consistory, so that they may report their decision to the Council for it to pass judgment.[93]

Kingdon, who has conducted an intensive examination of the Registers of the Geneva consistory, helps to explain the historical outworking of this passage in Adultery and Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva. He demonstrates that marital cases often involved several sessions of the consistory along with the inclusion of multiple witnesses. In the end, however, it was the Small Council alone which had the authority to grant a legal divorce.

3. Censuring the Guilty

As we have seen, the Westminster Confession takes a strong position on the administration of censures by the church courts. Admonition, suspension from the Lord’s Supper, and excommunication are listed as possible censures which may be measured out by the officers of the church (30:4). Such disciplinary measures were not a matter of vindictiveness. Regarding the necessity of ecclesiastical discipline, the Confession stresses that there were positive ends in view (30:3):

Church censures are necessary, for the reclaiming and gaining of offending brethren, for deterring of others from the like offenses, for purging out of that leaven which might infect the whole lump, for vindicating the honour of Christ, and the holy profession of the Gospel, and for preventing the wrath of God, which might justly fall upon the Church, if they should suffer His covenant and the seals thereof to be profaned by notorious and obstinate offenders.

The notion, articulated by the Confession (30:4) that “the officers of the Church” are given the authority to exercise discipline, was, of course, a major theme in Calvin’s thinking.[94] As William Naphy affirms, this emphasis in Calvin distinguished him from many of the ministers who were in Geneva when he returned in 1541. Many of them believed that Calvin’s approach was usurping power which really belonged to the civil government.[95] Calvin’s approach toward church discipline also distinguished him from most of the other Reformers. As Bouwsma puts it, “In other Protestant communities, the right to excommunicate had been retained by the magistrates and was little exercised; in Geneva alone it was substantially taken over by the ministers.”[96] Kingdon elaborates on this by focusing on alternative forms of Protestantism. As to Lutheranism, he writes, “In practically every one of these areas.. .. Lutheran attempts to establish ecclesiastical institutions of discipline failed. .. discipline, including all attempts at control of morals, remained the sole responsibility of secular governments in almost all Lutheran lands.”[97] Zwinglian Christianity was quite similar. Kingdon cites the Repub lic of Bern, which favored the Zwinglian variety of Protestantism, as an example of a bastion of Protestant religion which opposed significant disciplinary power being given to church officers:

Bern complained repeatedly about the way in which individual “children of Geneva” had been treated. And Bern made it absolutely clear that it did not want the principle of consistorial excommunication, which it felt undermined its own plenary powers to control law, to be adopted in any part of the territories under its control.[98]

Clearly, Calvin’s reform program in Geneva, featuring discipline at the hand of church officers, was exceptional in terms of Protestantism as a whole.[99] It should be noted, however, that it was not unique. Uprichard argues that the influence of Martin Bucer on Calvin’s ecclesiastical polity was substantial. He maintains that “Calvin’s organization in Geneva of the consistory. .. was based on Bucer’s Kirchenpfleger and Kirchenkonvent.” [100] The Board of Kirchenpfleqer corresponded to the lay elders in Geneva who sat on the consistory, while the Kirchenkonvent was identical to Geneva’s Company of Pastors. The significant thing is that the Reformed church in Strasbourg was governed by both the ministers and the elders who administered church discipline—“all that had to do with holy admonition and censure.”[101] Thus, it may be more proper to speak of Bucer as being the “founder” of Presbyterianism. However, it may still be maintained that Calvin was its “father.” This is because, as Burleigh observes, the form of ecclesiastical government as established by Calvin in Geneva spread through out the world—going to France, Scotland, England, Holland, Hungary, the United States, and elsewhere.[102] Indeed, it was Geneva and its particular church polity, rather than Strasbourg, which served as a model for all the Calvinistic churches of the world.[103]

One must recognize, then, that the disciplinary program of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances was unique in its historical context. Another feature of the Ordinances, which is one of its most striking characteristics, is that it bears the imprint of a first-class legal mind. Calvin, of course, had been well-trained in the law at the universities of Orleans and Bourges. The Ordinances noticeably reflect Calvin’s legal training and his concern for proper legal procedure. His desire for proper order is set forth in this statement: “As for correcting such faults as may be in the life of each person, one must proceed according to the order which our Lord has commanded.”[104] Although the Ordinances do not provide biblical citations at this point, it seems clear that Calvin constructed the disciplinary procedure for the Geneva church largely on the basis of Matt 18:15–17.

This orderly structure of discipline is reflected, first of all, in the distinction which Calvin makes between informal discipline (which would occur outside of the Thursday consistory meetings) and formal discipline (which would occur in the weekly meeting of the consistory). This distinction first appears in the discussion in the Ordinances of the office of elder: “Their office is to watch over the life of each person, to admonish in a friendly manner those whom they see to be at fault and leading a disorderly life.”[105] This friendly admonition would occur in a one-on-one conversation between the elder and the parishioner. Incidentally, this reference to a “friendly” admonishing shows the inappropriateness of the claim which Kingdon once made that the consistory instituted a “moral reign of terror” (a claim which he now admits showed too much sensationalism).[106]

We shall also note that the elders were not the only ones who were allowed to participate in this type of informal discipline. Every church member in Geneva had some responsibility, although on an informal level, with reference to church discipline. The Ecclesiastical Ordinances recognize this and demand the recognition that not all cases of sin should be taken to the consistory: “This requires that secret vices should be rebuked in secret and that no one should take his neighbor before the Church to accuse him of some fault which is neither notorious or scandalous, except after finding him rebellious.”[107]

Because of the wide-spread myth that the consistory tyrranized the inhabitants of Geneva, it needs to be stated that not every person who was summoned before the consistory was actually punished. Many people who appeared before the consistory benefited from its ministry of reconciliation. Monter states, “Contrary to a tenacious legend, the Elders spent more time reconciling neighbours, kin and spouses than they did punishing various kinds of sinners.”[108] Also, obviously enough, there would have been people summoned who upon investigation proved to be innocent. In addition, there is one type of case anticipated in the Ordinances in which wrongdoing resulted in something less than a censure: “If anyone speaks critically against the received doctrine, he shall be summoned for the purpose of reasoning with him.” Here, the first step of the consistory is to reason with the offender, rather than to rebuke him. In fact, to be reasoned with in such a fashion should not be regarded, say the Ordinances, as something of which to be ashamed: “If he is amenable he shall be dismissed without scandal or disgrace.” The consistory would only move to the level of censure if he refused to be corrected. First, there would be the verbal rebukes, then there would be excommunication: “But if he is stubborn he shall be admonished for a number of times until it becomes apparent that there is need of greater severity, and then he shall be forbidden the communion of the supper and denounced to the magistrate.”[109] This statement which stands at the beginning of the final section of the Ordinances (which deals with the specifics of disciplinary procedure) is significant because it shows that the consistory had the power to administer two levels of censure: on a lesser level, a verbal admonishing; and on a more severe level, excommunication from the Lord’s Supper.

With respect to these verbal censures, the Ecclesiastical Ordinances use several terms to describe them (the French nouns remonstrances and admonitons, for example), but the most frequent word is the French verb admonester, “to admonish” (used five times in the final disciplinary section of the Ordinances).[110] Most cases, Kingdon observes, were concluded with a verbal censure, neither needing to reach the point of excommunication, nor needing to be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Small Council which handled civil infractions.[111] Kingdon also makes an interesting observation regarding the participation of Calvin, the moderator of the Company of Pastors, in the process of delivering verbal admonitions: “Calvin, reportedly, was especially good at it. In fact, he confessed that he was sometimes too good at it, that he got carried away by his indignation and displayed an excessive and unnecessary zeal in bawling out sinners.”[112]

The highest level of punishment which could be measured out by the consistory was excommunication. Indeed, the Ecclesiastical Ordinances call it “correction with punishment.”[113] The consistory’s power to excommunicate was something over which Calvin refused to compromise. He even threatened to leave Geneva if the government dared to tamper with this power.[114] Calvin’s refusal to negotiate over the issue of excommunication was not based upon the later Reformed doctrinal conception that discipline should be viewed as one of the indispensable marks of a true visible church. This mark accompanied the true preaching of the Word of God and the proper administration of the sacraments. In Calvin’s thinking, the Word and the Sacraments are the only two distinguishing marks of Christ’s church: “Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists” (Institutes IV. I. 9).[115]

Calvin’s unyielding insistence upon the power of consistory excommunication was based upon his passion for good order in the church of Jesus Christ (Institutes IV. I. 15):

I confess it a greater disgrace if pigs and dogs have a place among the children of God, and a still greater disgrace if the sacred body of Christ be prostituted to them. And indeed, if churches are well ordered, they will not bear the wicked in their bosom. Nor will they indiscriminately admit worthy and unworthy together to that sacred banquet.[116]

For Calvin, if the church would be well-ordered, the wicked not only had to be removed from the church’s bosom, but they had to be removed (maintain the Ecclesiastical Ordinances) by the consistory itself: “If, then, we wish to have the Church well ordered and maintained in its entirety, we must observe this form of government.”[117]

The Ordinances describe this maximum censure of ecclesiastical discipline in the following ways: “he shall be forbidden the communion of the supper,” “he shall be separated from the Church,” and “they shall. .. be made to abstain from the supper.”[118] Such statements do not merely reflect good intentions. William Monter shows, from the consistory registers, that a large number of people were excommunicated from the Geneva church in the last years of Calvin’s life and in the years immediately following his death in 1564. A decade after the Ordinances were drafted, there were only four people excommunicated. The next year (1552), there were still only four people. In 1559, the year in which the final edition of the Institutes came out, over two hundred were excommunicated. In the year that Calvin died, the number jumped to three hundred. Five years later (in 1569), 535 people were censured with excommunication.[119]

To give a balanced picture, we must recognize that most of these excommunications were brief in duration. Monter states, “A guilty person was expected—indeed required—to show signs of repentance rapidly, and apply to have his excommunication lifted after missing only one of the four annual communions.”[120] Also, the phenomenon of over five hundred excommunications per year must be understood in terms of the nature of the Geneva church. It was not a gathered-assembly church model, in which the church is a distinct entity in the midst of the larger society. In Geneva, there was a complete identification between the church and the society. As Roland Bainton observes, Geneva exhibited “that parallelism of church and state which had been the ideal of the Middle Ages.”[121] Since Calvin held to a territorial church model, where all the inhabitants of the Geneva city-state necessarily belonged to the church, it stands to reason that there would be a high number of annual excommunications.[122] More specifically, this number of annual excommunications must be viewed against the background of the actual size of the Geneva church. Naphy affirms that the population of the city itself, excluding certain possessions held by the Republic of Geneva, generally numbered about 12,000 inhabitants during the time of Calvin’s ministry.[123] However, due to a large influx of Protestant refugees from France, the population of Geneva by 1562 probably swelled to somewhere between 18,000 and 20,000 people.[124] Five hundred annual excommunications in a population of 20,000 people is not outrageous.

Needless to say, implementing ecclesiastical discipline by the consistory had a number of effects. To begin with, it was a means for the pastors to gain control. As Bouwsma contends, in Geneva the ministers succeeded “in establishing, through the power of excommunication, effective control over an urban church.”[125] But there was also the effect which all of this had on the purification of the Genevan society. Monter argues that the consistory was “the effective motor behind the establishment of the first ‘Puritan’ society.”[126] Kingdon elaborates upon this in describing the corruption of Pre-Reformation Geneva. It was a society characterized by moral laxity and debauchery, legal prostitution, illegitimate children, drunkenness, and gambling.[127] Post-Reformation Genevan society presented a striking contrast to this lax state of affairs. Kingdon describes the change:

After the Reformation, by the seventeenth century, behavior in Geneva had changed dramatically. A new lifestyle had developed that was sober and austere, that contained characteristics we in the Anglo-Saxon world have come to label “Puritan.”[128]

As can readily be anticipated, such “vigorous discipline” was bound to result in resistance.[129] For over a decade, until the middle of the 1550s, there was great opposition to Calvin’s program of vigorous consistory discipline. The group opposing Calvin were called the “children of Geneva.”[130] The Geneva pastors had to contend with a long list of abuses. Bouwsma writes about such things as open letters of dissent and Calvin’s sermons being interrupted by unruly protestors.[131] On a more subtle level, there were people who dishonored Calvin by publicly saying that he was not a good man; one person called his dog by the name “John Calvin.”[132] Amazingly enough, opposition to Calvin’s discipline program has continued, in some sense, to the present day in terms of the undying misrepresentation of Calvin as being an autocrat—“the Genevan Dictator, ruling a cowed population with a rod of iron.”[133]

It is true that Calvin believed in what he himself called a “severe discipline.” In his discussion of the moral debauchery of the Papacy, he takes the bishops of Rome to task because they merely winked at sin, even though the office of a bishop is “to curb the people’s license with severe discipline” (Institutes IV. VII. 29).[134] Although Calvin maintained that there is a place, at times, for a certain severity in the discipline process, he did believe that this ought to be a controlled severity:

Nevertheless, all this is to be moderated that no severity should have the effect of overwhelming the offender, but rather that the disciplines imposed should act as medicines to bring sinners back to the Lord.[135]

This perspective, as articulated in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, hardly fits in with the repetitions of a tyrannical autocrat of Geneva. Like the Westminster Confession (30:3) which came a century later, the Ordinances see a redemptive and beneficial end for church discipline: it is for the purpose of bringing “sinners back to the Lord.”

Finally, concerning the judicial power of the consistory, it should be noted that its highest punishment was excommunication. The Ordinances make this point in two ways. First, it states that “the ministers have no civil jurisdiction and wield only the spiritual sword of the Word of God.”[136] Calvin and the rest of the consistory never put a single heretic (including Servetus), a single murderer, or a single adulterer to death.[137] They may well have concurred with a particular execution, but it was the Small Council alone which had the power of the supreme penalty of capital punishment. Secondly, the Ordinances not only specify what the consistory could not do, but they also buttress the already established powers of the civil rulers:

There is no derogation by this consistory from the authority of the Seigneury or the magistracy; but the civil power shall continue in its entirety. And in cases where there is need to administer some punishment or to restrain the parties, the ministers together with the consistory having heard the parties and administered such reprimands and admonishments as are desireable, shall report the whole matter to the Council, which thereupon shall take steps to set things in order and pass judgment according to the requirements of the case.[138]

This specified limitation upon the power of the consistory—this separation between the jurisdiction of the ministers, on the one hand, and the jurisdiction of the magistrates, on the other—was in sharp contrast to the previous history of Geneva when it was ruled for centuries by a prince-bishop, who possessed both civil and ecclesiastical authority.[139] This struc ture which distinguished between ecclesiastical government and civil government was also in marked contrast to the arrangement which had long prevailed in Rome in which the Pope was both the head of the church and the temporal prince of the Papal States. Interestingly enough, this doctrine that the rulers of the church have a limited jurisdiction resurfaces in the Presbyterianism of the Westminster Confession (31:5): “Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude, nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth.” This seventeenth-century limitation of ecclesiastical authority is in full continuity with the Geneva church constitution: “Ministers have no civil jurisdiction.”[140]

At the same time, although the Ordinances conclude with this limitation on the consistory’s jurisdiction, the main point of the Ordinances is that there is such a thing as an ecclesiastical government which is distinct from the civil government. It was the consistory, not the civil magistrate, which had judicial power in the church. Again, this point, as well, is strongly maintained in the Presbyterian scheme of the Westminster Confession (30:1): “The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of His Church, hath therein appointed a government, in the hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate.[141] Calvin’s never-ending fight for the consistory’s exclusive right to censure by excommunication, along with its exclusive right to readmit a person into the communion of the church, was appropriated in seventeenth-century confessional Presbyterianism. The Westminster Confession declares (23:3), “The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”[142] There is no room in the Westminster Assembly’s Presbyterian polity for an Erastian conception of the civil magistrate exercising discipline in Christ’s church.

Furthermore, there could be no evasion of the authority of the officers of the church by getting the civil magistrate to lift a censure of excommunication. The Confession later states (30:3) that church officers alone have the keys committed to them, by which “they have power. .. to shut that kingdom against the impenitent. .. by. .. censures; and to open it unto penitent sinners. .. by absolution from censures.”[143] It was in the Berthelier case, that Calvin showed that he would not compromise over the exclusive right of the consistory to lift a sentence of excommunication.[144] The Presbyterians assembled for the Westminster Confession took exactly the same stance.

IV. Conclusion: The Essential Elements of Presbyterianism

This discussion has demonstrated the legitimacy of conceiving that the historical roots of Presbyterian polity go back to John Calvin and the Geneva Church. It is true that Genevan Presbyterianism is not precisely identical to the mature, fully-developed Presbyterianism of the Westminster Assembly’s Confession and Form of Government, which deposit ecclesiastical authority on sessional, presbyterial, and synodical levels. But the previous discussion shows that the essential elements of Presbyterian polity as expressed in the Westminster Confession were found a century earlier in the ecclesiastical polity articulated in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances.

Already in 1542, Calvin could say concerning the ecclesiastical polity of the Geneva Church: “Nunc habemos qualecunque presbyterorum judicium et formam disciplinae.”[145] In the preceding development, something of the significance of this statement has been unfolded. In the Geneva consistory, Calvin envisioned an ecclesiastical assembly composed of fit ministers and fit elders with authority over both congregations and pastors. As a body invested with judicial power, it would be an ecclesiastical court with a spiritual jurisdiction, and possessing the authority of summoning sinners, conducting trials, and censuring the guilty. This was the nature of Genevan Presbyterianism, and these are the essential elements of what it means to have a Presbyterian government in the church of Jesus Christ.

Notes

1. Robert M. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) 11.
2. Theodore de Beze, Vie De J. Calvin (Paris: J. Cherbuliez, Libraire, 1864) 48.
3. Lefferts A. Loetscher, A Brief History of the Presbyterians (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978) 23.
4. Ibid., 25.
5. Ibid.
6. Robert M. Kingdon, “Calvin and ‘Presbytery’: the Geneva Company of Pastors,” Pacific Theological Review 18 (1985) 43.
7. Ibid., 44.
8. Glenn S. Sunshine, “Reformed Theology and the Origins of Synodical Polity: Calvin, Beza and the Gallican Confession,” in Later Calvinism (ed. William Fred Graham; Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994) 148.
9. Basil Hall, “Calvin Against the Calvinists,” in John Calvin: A Collection of Distinguished Essays (ed. Gervase Duffield; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966) 22. Hall offers no arguments in support of his position that Calvin was not Presbyterian in his church government.
10. Ibid., 26.
11. Thomas F. Torrance, “The Eldership in the Reformed Church,” Scottish Journal of Theology 37 (1984) 509.
12. Ibid. Torrance does not provide a substantial defense of his thesis. He maintains that in the Church of Scotland there was a departure from Calvin’s governmental model when “with the Melvillean revolution, the Church embarked upon a course in which it was to substitute elders, set apart for life in place of Calvin’s deacons,. .. while restricting the functions of deacons in the Church of Scotland mainly to the gathering and distributing of the alms of the congregation in its social care of the needy.” It seems to me that it is a far better procedure in seeking to ascertain the essential elements of Presbyterianism to examine the creed of Presbyterianism—the Westminster Confession of Faith—than to look to the structure of the Church of Scotland as the determiner of what Presbyterian government actually is.
13. Robert M. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline in Geneva: The Institution and the Men Who Directed It,” Nederlandsche Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 70 (1990) 162.
14. Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia (59 vols.; Corpus reformatorum; Brunsvigae; Apud C.A. Schwetschke Et Filium, 1873; hereafter CO) 11. 379.
15. Paul Peachey asserts concerning the Anabaptists, “Anabaptism and Church Organization,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review 30 (July 1956) 215, “One is struck by the general indifference to, and even occasional hostility toward, the question of polity.” Among the early Anabaptists, he says (p. 227), there was an “absence of power structures.” Robert Friedman, in The Theology of Anabaptism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973) 126, speaks about the Anabaptist notion of congregational government: “It appears quite helpful to call the Anabaptist brotherhood a church of order.. .. For in it the corporate body determines in principle the pattern of life for its members and assumes the final authority over their behavior.”
16. All citations from the Westminster Confession of Faith are from the original text found in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990).
17. The Subordinate Standards and Other Authoritative Documents of the Free Church of Scotland (Belfast: The Franklin Press, 1933) 307-8.
18. Ibid., 310.
19. Ibid., 311.
20. Ibid., 314.
21. The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (trans. Philip E. Hughes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966) 35. This volume provides a good English translation of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, hereafter cited as RCP.
22. Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs de Gen ve au temps de Calvin (ed. Jean-Francois Bergier and Robert M. Kingdon; Geneva: Droz, 1964) 1:5. E. William Monter, Calvin’s Geneva (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1967) 137, maintains that the name Consistory came from the designation which had been used for an old episcopal court which had primarily dealt with marriage cases.
23. RCP, 36.
24. Ibid. Emphasis added.
25. Ibid.
26. William G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994) 54-56.
27. See Calvin’s letter to Myconius (March 14, 1542) in Letters of John Calvin (trans. Jules Bonnet; New York: Lenox Hill, 1972) 1:314.
28. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 75.
29. William J. Bouwsma, “The Peculiarity of the Reformation in Geneva,” in Religion and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation (ed. Steven Ozment; Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1989) 56.
30. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 164.
31. Williston Walker, John Calvin: The Organiser of Reformed Protestantism, 1509–1564 (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906) 270, recognized the fundamental significance which the Ecclesiastical Ordinances gave to the office of elder: “No section of the Ordonnances was more important than that having to do with the. .. elders.”
32. RCP, 41–42.
33. Ibid., 41.
34. All references in the text to Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion are the 1559 edition (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960).
35. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 77–78.
36. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 12–13.
37. RCP, 42.
38. The General Council was made up of all the men in Geneva, twenty years old and above, who were either citizens or members of the bourgeois. See Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 12.
39. Ibid.
40. RCP, 42. Emphasis added.
41. Robert M. Kingdon, “The Control of Morals in Calvin’s Geneva,” in The Social History of the Reformation (ed. Lawrence P. Buck and Jonathan W. Zophy; Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1972) 6-7.
42. Robert M. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Family: the Work of the Consistory in Geneva,” Pacific Theological Review 17 (1984) 5.
43. RCP, 42.
44. Ibid.
45. Emphasis added.
46. William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) 220.
47. Ibid., 219.
48. Ibid., 222.
49. Ibid.
50. RCP, 36.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 37.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 37-38.
56. See E. William Monter, “The Consistory of Geneva, 1559–1569,” Bibliothque d’ Humanisme et Renaissance 38 (1976) 469. Cf., Kingdon, “Calvin and the Family,” 5–6.
57. RCP, 38.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid., 39.
62. When I speak about the civil magistrates or the Seigneury in the following discussion concerning the discipline of the Genevan ministers, I am referring to the Small Council which stood at the apex of the hierarchy of the three councils which governed Geneva. The Small Council was composed of twenty-five citizens who wielded the real power in the Republic of Geneva. Harro Hopfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 132, makes the point that “they exercised the power of life and death.”
63. RCP, 39.
64. Ibid., 38.
65. Ibid., 39.
66. Ibid., 38.
67. Ibid., 39.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Douglas Kelly, The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992) 13-14, refers to the Consistory as a “church session.” It is much more appropriate to speak about it as being a presbytery. Unlike a session, the Geneva Consistory had authority over several congregations.
71. This concept of people being “called to account” (Westminster Confession, 20:4) is expanded upon in the Westminster Assembly’s “Form of Church-Government.” Speaking about the power which is common to all ecclesiastical assemblies (congregational, classical, and synodical), the Divines assert, “It is law, and agreeable to the word of God, that the several assemblies before mentioned have power to convent, and call before them, any person within their several bounds, whom the ecclesiastical business which is before them doth concern,” quoted in The Subordinate Standards, 310.
72. RCP, 49.
73. Ibid., 45.
74. Walker, John Calvin, 274.
75. RCP, 48.
76. Ibid.
77. Kingdon, “The Control of Morals,” 9.
78. See Monter, “The Consistory of Geneva,” 467–84.
79. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 17. Cf., Torrance, “The Eldership,” 504–5.
80. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 163.
81. RCP, 47. Emphasis added.
82. Ibid., 48.
83. Jeffrey R. Watt, “Women and the Consistory in Calvin’s Geneva,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1993) 429.
84. RCP, 48. Emphasis added.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid., 41.
87. Kingdon, “The Control of Morals,” 10.
88. RCP, 48.
89. Emphasis added.
90. Ibid., 39.
91. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Family,” 7.
92. RCP, 39.
93. Ibid., 45.
94. Emphasis added.
95. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 56.
96. Bouwsma, “The Peculiarity of the Reformation in Geneva,” 75.
97. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 159–60.
98. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 20.
99. Walker, John Calvin, 266.
100. R. E. H. Uprichard, “The Eldership in Martin Bucer and John Calvin,” The Evangelical Quarterly 61 (1989) 27. Although Robert White, “Oil and Vinegar: Calvin on Church Discipline,” Scottish Journal of Theology 38 (1985) 37, concurs that Bucer’s influence on Calvin was decisive, he also suggests that the impact of Oecolampadius upon Calvin’s thinking still needs to be assessed. Glenn Sunshine, “Reformed Theology and the Origins of Synodical Polity,” 142, likewise draws attention to Calvin’s dependence upon Bucer and Oecolampadius for his ecclesiology. Akira Demura, “Calvin’s and Oecolampadius’ Concept of Church Discipline,” in Calvin’s Ecclesioloqy: Sacraments and Deacons (ed. Richard Gamble; New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992) 302, agrees that Calvin learned much in Strasbourg, but he suggests on the basis of the 1537 Articles that Calvin already had his distinctive views on church discipline in seed form before he ever went to Strasbourg: “Already in the 1537 ‘Articles,’ there are some indubitable signs of a peculiarly Calvinistic view of church discipline in marked distinction from such Swiss cities as Zurich or Bern.”
101. Uprichard, “The Eldership,” 23–24.
102. John H.S. Burleigh, “What Is Presbyterianism?” The Evangelical Quarterly 23 (1951) 8-9.
103. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 169. Cf., E. William Monter, “Daily Life and the Reformed Church,” in The Reformation (ed. Pierre Chaunu; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990) 249.
104. RCP, 48. Emphasis added.
105. Ibid., 41. Emphasis added.
106. This original claim is found in Kingdon, “The Control of Morals,” 12. Kingdon backs off from this perspective in “Calvin and the Family,” 7.
107. RCP, 48. Emphasis added.
108. Monter, “Daily Life and the Reformed Church,” 246.
109. RCP, 48.
110. Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs, 1:12.
111. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 17–18.
112. Kingdon, “Calvin and ‘Presbytery,’” 47.
113. RCP, 49.
114. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 166. Cf., Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 19–21.
115. Glenn Sunshine, “Reformed Theology and the Origins of Synodical Polity,” 149, maintains that this is one area where Beza went beyond Calvin, adding correct polity as a third mark of a true church.
116. Emphasis added.
117. RCP, 36. Robert White, “Oil and Vinegar,” 25, summarizes Calvin’s thinking on the place of discipline in these words: “Discipline. .. belongs not to the church’s esse, but to its bene esse.”
118. RCP, 48–49.
119. Monter, “The Consistory of Geneva,” 476.
120. Ibid., 477.
121. Roland Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952) 117-18.
122. Kelly, The Emergence of Liberty, 12.
123. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 122, 192.
124. E. William Monter, “Crime and Punishment in Calvin’s Geneva, 1562,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 64 (1973) 282.
125. Bouwsma, “The Peculiarity of the Reformation in Geneva,” 66.
126. Monter, “The Consistory of Geneva,” 467.
127. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 167. Cf., Kingdon, “The Control of Morals,” 4.
128. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 167. Cf., Monter, “Daily Life and the Reformed Church,” 244.
129. Calvin believed in what he called a “vigorous discipline.” Speaking about the kind of sinners who are members of the visible church—“many ambitious, greedy, envious persons, evil speakers, and some of quite unclean life”—he says, “Such are tolerated for a time either because they cannot be convicted by a competent tribunal or because a vigorous discipline does not always flourish as it ought” (Institutes IV. I. 7).
130. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 18–20.
131. Bouwsma, “The Peculiarity of the Reformation in Geneva,” 74.
132. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Family,” 12. Cf., Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation, 66.
133. Hopfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin, 139.
134. Emphasis added.
135. RCP, 49.
136. Ibid.
137. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 118–119.
138. RCP, 49.
139. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce, 7, 11.
140. RCP, 49.
141. Emphasis added.
142. Emphasis added.
143. Emphasis added.
144. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Family,” 9.
145. CO, 11.379.