Calvin on Church and State: Two Co-ordinated Governments

This continues my series on John Calvin's political theology

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Calvin did not hold to a two-kingdom view of church and state, properly speaking, but a two-government (duplex regimen) view of God’s unified kingdom.

This was different from the Lutheran view, which drew a sharper antithesis between internals and externals, the world and the spirit. It was also different to the Anabaptist separation of church from state. Both these views effectively denied that the state had any useful role in establishing piety.

Calvin also differed from the Zwinglian delegation of church governance to secular authorities. Calvin insisted that church officers, not secular magistrates, control spiritual matters, including the right to communicate. This insistence caused his 1538-41 exile from Geneva. To achieve their independence, Geneva had relied upon military assistance of the Swiss Protestant cities of Fribourg and Bern. In 1538, the Senate instituted a Zwinglian submission of the church to the state, which conformed with Bern’s ecclesio-political arrangement, but which Calvin opposed. The Senate responded by exiling Calvin.

Calvin maintained a distinction, though not separation, between church and state. The church establishes God’s inner kingdom, in the believer’s conscience, through word and sacrament. The church must not bear the sword – it must not use coercion to achieve Godliness. We experience a true, partial realisation of the Kingdom of God in the church, not the state.

The state’s jurisdiction is ‘secular’ insofar as it is focused on ordering external, visible, ‘public’ life. The state must not intrude into the internal realm of conscience, nor attempt to use its weapons of coercion in that realm. ‘[N]either the laws and edicts of men, nor the punishments inflicted by them, enter into the consciences.’

Nevertheless, this outward public order is an aspect of true piety, and, by analogy, a testimony to the internal peace and order that the gospel establishes. Negatively, civil government restrains sin. Positively, it establishes humane relations among all people, and establishes true religion. Human government is therefore not just a necessary evil, but is God’s good provision for human flourishing. It is a providential aid to Godliness, which helps us enact the earthly aspects of our heavenward pilgrimage.