Calvin on Government and Freedom

This continues my series on Calvin's political theology

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Calvin’s view on secular government intersects with his view on Christian freedom. In the first edition of Institutes, the section on freedom immediately preceded those on ecclesial and civil power.

Against Rome, Calvin asserted that the Christian’s conscience was freed, through justification by faith in Christ alone, from slavery to rituals, works-righteousness, and earthly authority in this justificative sense. Christians are saved not by being rightly related to Rome through the institutional church, but by being rightly related to God, in Christ, through the Spirit. Against the Anabaptists, he asserted this freedom was not for license or insurrection, but for obedience to God’s commands, expressed in an ordered life, submissive to earthly rule.