Some Questions for Calvin from the Prefatory

Ok, I might get into the weeds a bit here, but I want to ask some questions of Calvin and see if any of you have answers for me. But first: overall, the Prefatory was good and helpful. Monsieur Jean does a nice job walking His Majesty through the reasons why the Protestants don’t need to be persecuted by the Catholics and the regime. He lays out a pretty straightforward case against the corruption of the Catholic bishops and the biblical problems with that corruption by pointing to Scripture and the Gospel. It is an appeal based on truth and Scripture. I find him pretty persuasive, except on a few main points, which is where my questions are located.

1. Does Calvin actually expect the King to listen to him? I’ve not done the research on this, and so I’m genuinely asking the question, but I can hardly believe that someone with Calvin’s sense of humanity’s fallenness doesn’t see that Francis’s major problem with the Reformation won’t be doctrinal but political. That is, Francis is sure to care much more about the fact that the Reformation undermines the place of authority (ecclesial, primarily, but that will clearly have influence regarding France’s monarchy) than that the Catholics are operating in unbiblical ways. Even a biblically-oriented monarch would not give quarter to Protestants if they perceive their interests to be under threat. Those monarchs of the period who did switch from Catholicism to Protestantism usually did so in their own interest. Calvin makes no appeal of that kind in this Prefatory which I find either naive or kind of praiseworthy, in that he wants to appeal only to truth and let the chips fall where they may. Fine, but that leads me back to my original question: does he really expect Francis to listen? And, if not, why is he writing this? Does he have a third party in mind as the audience? Who? Why?
2. Looking back from our perspective, was Francis right to reject Calvin’s pleas? I don’t have any desire to blame Calvin or the Reformation for the French Revolution and its tragedies, but could we say that Francis was no fool for wanting to maintain authority and reject subversive Protestants? Not all Protestants were subversives, and not all Catholics were loyalists, but there was a structure within Catholicism that maintained a kind of order. Yes, there was all manner of corruption and untruth, but that did not cease nor were things better off once the Huguenots gained steam, and the resulting chaos was bitter and dark. And the chaos led to interpretive chaos (what Vanhoozer calls “interpretive Babel”), where French philosophy went off a kind of deep end that led to Reason-worship and regicide. From the perspective of the 16th century French royals, that might have been a foreseeable outcome of allowing Protestantism to flourish. So, I want some push back on this, but I really want to know — if you were King Francis, would you have been interested at all in Calvin or the Protestantism he represents?
3. And again looking back from our perspective, do Calvin’s arguments about the visible form of the Church and the true reality of the Church still seem legitimate? From Calvin’s angle I can see that it makes good sense to reject the kind of form of the visible church that requires ornamented robes and gold-plaited shoes and elaborate censers, etc. But his argument for the invisible church has led to (what I would call) a pretty divided church. Instead of mutual love (John 13:34) we have mutual disinterest; instead of mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21) we have self-sufficient pride; instead of common communion (Luke 22:14–30 and 1 Corinthians 11) we have broken denominations. It is up for debate whether we are in a period of Exile because of the shattering of visible church unity (as Ephraim Radner has argued), whether we can work out some kind of visible unity (as the World Council of Churches seems to hope for), or whether visible unity is even desirable (as my tradition seems to ask often enough; for example, see Ray Stedman’s Body Life). Visible unity seems to me to be a key to the Father’s answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17, but Calvin seems to argue differently in point 6 of his Prefatory. I wonder if he would argue differently if he were writing today. Would the visible church matter to him more if there was nothing resembling visible unity? I am looking forward to Book IV to see how he might deal with that, and to see how I might appropriate his ecclesiological insights in our current situation.

I have to say that I’m excited to see how the Institutes itself reads. Next week! Hoorah!

Blessings,

Josh