Calvin’s Institutes and the Reform of Geneva

John Calvin left France, his native country, and was living quietly at Basel when, as he later wrote, many were burned in France for their faith and pamphlets put it about that the victims were Anabaptists and rebels. He says that he published the Institutes to clear them, and that the book was then only a small treatise summarizing the chief truths of the Christian religion (Calvin, Preface to the Psalms preface). He addressed it to King Francis I. His first purpose, he tells the king, had been to give his countrymen the rudiments of godliness; he now offers the book as a confession from which the king may learn what the doctrine is that is being punished with prison, exile and fire (Calvin, Institutes Prefatory address to Francis I).

By 1557, he says, it had grown into a much larger work (Calvin, Preface to the Psalms preface). In its final form it opens: “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves” (Calvin, Institutes 1.1.1). Its third book defines predestination as “the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man”, and adds that “some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation” (Calvin, Institutes 3.21.5).

By his own account Calvin meant to spend a single night in Geneva on the way to Strasbourg. Guillaume Farel, who with Pierre Viret had lately driven “Popery” from the city, pressed him to stay, and when entreaty failed declared that God would curse his retirement and his studies if he refused to help. Calvin says that he was struck with terror and stayed (Calvin, Preface to the Psalms preface). The council register records that the two preachers would not accept the ceremonies that Bern pressed on the city and the councils adopted, that they preached after being forbidden, and that on 23 April 1538 the General Council voted that they leave the city within three days (Geneva registers, Council, 21–23 April 1538). Calvin says that Martin Bucer then drew him back into the ministry (Calvin, Preface to the Psalms preface).

On 13 September 1541 the register notes that Calvin had arrived from Strasbourg, that he asked that the church be set in order and the order put in writing, and that the council resolved to ask him to stay for good (Geneva registers, Council, 13 September 1541). The resulting ordinances were passed by the General Council on 20 November (Geneva registers, Council, 20 November 1541). They name four offices which, they say, the Lord instituted for the government of his church: pastors, teachers, elders and deacons (Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) p. 590). Twelve elders, chosen from the city’s councils, are to watch over the life of everyone and to meet the ministers each Thursday. The councils added that the ministers have no civil jurisdiction and wield only the spiritual sword of the word of God (Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) pp. 595, 600, and 602 note 1).

On 27 October 1553 the council, having taken the advice of the churches of Bern, Basel, Zurich and Schaffhausen, condemned Michael Servetus, whom the ministers had had imprisoned for his heresies, to be burned alive at Champel, and the sentence was carried out (Geneva registers, Company of Pastors, 13 August and 27 October 1553). Later events in the Reformed churches include the Heidelberg Catechism and the Scottish Reformation.