by Michael S. Horton, Ph.D.
First published in Evangelium, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Some of the most glaring distortions of Calvin’s ministry
and doctrine are related to his understanding of the law.
First, there is the question of the law and society: Was Calvin
an ayatollah, dedicated to making Geneva a revived theocracy?
Second, did Calvin embrace or depart from Luther with respect to
the relation of law and gospel? Third, what, according to
Calvin, is the main purpose of the law today in the lives of
Christians? I can’t hope to do justice to those questions here,
but will limit myself to this task: namely, to offer a brief
summary of Calvin’s answers on the basis of both the
Institutes and his commentaries.
Calvin and Theocracy: The Nature of the Law
Calvin never set out to be interesting, creative, or
ground-breaking. He managed to be all three in spite of his
intentions, but he possessed a conservative temperament,
satisfied to assume traditional views that he had no exegetical
reason to challenge. A good example of this is his adoption of
Thomas Aquinas’ three-fold division of the law into civil,
ceremonial, and moral laws.
Like Aquinas, Calvin says that the moral law summarized in the
Decalogue transcends the Mosaic theocracy and in fact is
“nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that
conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men”(1)
However, to this moral law God attached what Calvin calls
“supplements” unique to his covenant with Israel: “by which word
I mean, with respect to the First Table, the Ceremonies and the
outward Exercises of Worship; with respect to the Second Table,
the Political Laws…”(2)
According to Calvin, the second table of the moral law
inscribed on the conscience in creation can be reduced to
equity, which he understood as justice tempered with love.
His sharpest rebukes toward appeals to the Old Testament civil
law for modern states were directed toward the radical
Anabaptists: “I would have preferred to pass over this matter in
utter silence if I were not aware that here many dangerously go
astray,” he writes. “For there are some who deny that a
commonwealth is duly framed which neglects the political system
of Moses, and is ruled by the common laws of nations. Let other
men consider how perilous and seditious this notion is; it will
be enough for me to have proved it false and foolish” (Institutes,
4.20.14). As natural, equity is necessarily “the same for
all.” “Hence, this equity alone must be the goal and rule and
limit of all laws. Whatever laws shall be framed to that rule,
directed to that goal, bound by that limit, there is no reason
why we should disapprove of them, howsoever they may differ from
the Jewish law, or among themselves” (Institutes,
4.20.16).
It would be “malicious and hateful toward public welfare”
to be “offended by such diversity” in the application of natural
equity to the wide variations in the “condition of times, place,
and nation.” “For the statement of some, that the law of God
given through Moses is dishonored when it is abrogated and new
laws preferred to it, is utterly vain.” The political laws of
Moses cannot be abrogated by us, since they were never
given to us in the first place. “For the Lord through the
hand of Moses did not give that law to be proclaimed among all
nations and to be in force everywhere; but when he had taken the
Jewish nation into his safekeeping, defense, and protection, he
also willed to be a lawgiver especially to it; and—as becomes a
wise lawgiver—he had a special concern for it in making its
laws” (Institutes, 4.20.16).
However, Calvin goes further than medieval theologians like
Aquinas at least in practice with regard to the abrogation of
the political laws of the old covenant. For example, even
though the medieval church forbade the practice of usury
(lending money at interest) as a mortal sin, and even Luther
grounded his opposition of the practice in Exodus 22:25, Calvin
rejected this argument: “It is abundantly clear that the ancient
people were prohibited from usury, but we must needs confess
that this was a part of their political constitution. Hence it
follows that usury is not now unlawful, except in so far as it
contravenes equity and brotherly union.”(3)
Once again, Calvin thinks that the principle of general equity
offers an adequate way of navigating this issue. “Heathen
authors also saw this,” he wrote, “although not with sufficient
clearness, when they declared that, since all men are born for
the sake of each other, human society is not properly maintained
except by an interchange of good offices.”(4)
The exercise of equity—justice tempered by love—as the summary
of God’s moral law inscribed on the conscience—remains in effect
even if it is applied with considerable variety in view of the
particular constitutions, histories, and vices of nations.(5)
Therefore, Calvin was even more reticent than Aquinas or Luther
in applying the theocratic laws of Israel to modern states. The
remainder of this article focuses on the moral law.
The Three Uses of the Moral Law
As important for determining Calvin’s conception of the
nature of the law is his understanding of the relation between
law and gospel. Not even in this case did Calvin set out to
create a new theory. However, at this point he followed
Luther’s critical departure from medieval interpretation. For
Aquinas, the gospel (synonymous with the New Testament) is “the
new law,” superior to the old law because it brings the
realities to which the typological shadows merely pointed and
also because it is more gracious. And it corresponds to Old and
New Testaments, respectively.
Just as there are three divisions of the Old Testament law
(civil, ceremonial, and moral), the reformers agreed that there
were three uses of God’s moral law: (1) the elenctic or
pedagogical use (driving sinners to despair of their
righteousness); (2) the civil use (curbing evil and injustice in
society); (3) the didactic or normative use in guiding believers
in a life of grateful obedience.(6)
The Pedagogical Use of the Moral
Law
Like Luther, Calvin challenged the identification of the
Good News as “a new law” and Christ as a new Moses. However, he
introduced (with Melanchthon’s help) some critical nuances.
While Luther disagreed sharply with Aquinas’ characterization of
the gospel as a “new law,” he often perpetuates the tendency to
treat law and gospel as equivalent to Old and New Testaments.
The Anabaptists pushed this further toward a Marcionite
antithesis. In Calvin’s treatment, there is much greater
nuance.
First, Calvin can speak of an absolute contrast of law
and gospel in terms of the way in which we are justified. In
this respect, Calvin was simply a Lutheran, as were Reformed
theologians generally until quite recently. Luther emphasized
that the law commands and threatens punishment without mercy;
the gospel gives and freely absolves sinners through faith
alone. The law, whether adumbrated in the Old or the New
Testament, comes to kill the sinner, not to heal and reform.
Legis semper accusat: “The law always accuses,” Luther
insisted.
Similarly, Calvin explains that when treating the
matter of justification, Paul “appropriately represents the
righteousness of the Law and the Gospel as opposed to each
other.” “But,” Calvin quickly adds, “the Gospel has not
succeeded the whole Law in such a sense as to introduce a
different method of salvation. It rather confirms the Law, and
proves that every thing which it promised is fulfilled. What was
shadow, it has made substance.”(7)
It is clear that Calvin is affirming the law-gospel
antithesis with respect to justification (contra Rome) while
also preserving the unity of the covenant of grace with respect
to the Old and New Testaments (contra Anabaptists). With regard
to the latter, Calvin can assert, “The law included the whole
body of Scripture, up to the advent of Christ.”(8)
In this sense, the law includes the gospel.(9)
Especially in developing his apologetic for the unity of the
covenant of grace against the Anabaptists, Calvin can also speak
of a fundamental continuity, even in a Thomistic sense of lesser
light and greater light, shadow and reality, severity to greater
leniency, and so forth. Calvin himself acknowledges these two
senses. Commenting on Romans 5:10, he wrote, “The word law is
used in a two-fold sense. At times it means the whole doctrine
taught by Moses, and, at times, that part of it which belonged
peculiarly to his ministry, and is contained in its precepts,
rewards, and punishments.” “Thus from the Law they receive
nothing but this condemnation for there God demands what is due
to him, and yet gives no power to perform it,” he adds in his
comment on 2 Corinthians 3:7. “But by the Gospel men are
regenerated and reconciled to God by the free remission of their
sins, so that it is the ministration of righteousness and so of
life. But by the Gospel men are regenerated and reconciled to
God by the free remission of their sins, so that it is the
ministration of righteousness and so of life.”
Only if we do not recognize the nuance in Calvin’s use
of “law and gospel” can we conclude that he is inconsistent.
Basically, it is the same two senses that we find in Romans
3:21: ““But now a righteousness from God has been manifested
apart from the law, to which the law and the prophets
testify.” The gospel, which is opposed to the law (as a
principle of justification), is taught in the law and the
prophets (as Old Testament scripture).
For clarity, let us call these the doctrinal and
the redemptive-historical senses of law and gospel. In
the first sense, law and gospel are absolutely opposed (contra
Rome); in the second sense, they are united by the covenant of
grace (contra Anabaptists). So Calvin is not indecisive on this
point. With respect to the doctrinal sense, Calvin is as
emphatic as Luther on the antithesis of law and gospel. In his
preface to the commentary on the Pentateuch he says that the
whole purpose of the old covenant law is “to shut us up deprived
of all confidence in our own righteousness, so that we may learn
to embrace his Covenant of Grace, and flee to Christ, who is the
end of the law.”(10)
As I. John Hesselink describes Calvin’s view, “Faith is not
produced by every part of the Word of God, for the warnings,
admonitions and threatened judgments will not instill the
confidence and peace requisite for true faith.”(11)
When discussing the “fatherly indulgence of God,” Calvin
explains Paul's reference to “the spirit of bondage” versus “the
spirit of adoption,” in Romans 8:15. “One he calls the spirit
of bondage, which we are able to derive from the Law; and the
other, the spirit of adoption, which proceeds from the Gospel”
(on Romans 8:15). The contrast is absolute: the one instills
fear, the other assurance. Echoing Romans 3:21 explicitly,
Calvin says, “Although the covenant of grace is contained in the
Law, yet Paul removes it from there, for in opposing the Gospel
to the Law he regards only what was peculiar to the Law itself,
viz. command and prohibition, and the restraining of
transgressors by the threat of death. He assigns to the Law its
own quality, by which it differs from the Gospel.” In this
doctrinal sense, there is no graciousness in the law. As a
covenantal principle, the law offers no hope, “for it promises
no blessing except on condition, and pronounces death on all
transgressors.” He adds, “Note that Paul connects fear with
bondage, since the Law can do nothing but harass and torment our
souls with wretched discontent as long as it exercises its
dominion. There is, therefore, no other remedy for pacifying
our souls than when God forgives us our sins, and deals kindly
with us as a father with his children.”
This law-gospel antithesis is repeated throughout his
writings, but, as one might expect, is especially pronounced in
his Galatians commentary, where he says especially of the third
chapter that it is “an argument from contradictions, for the
same fountain cannot yield both hot and cold.”
“The Law holds all men under its curse. From the Law,
therefore, it is useless to seek a blessing.” In this sense,
law and gospel are “irreconcilable” (on Galatians 3:10). “The
contrast between Law and Gospel is to be understood, and from
this distinction we deduce that, just as the Law demands work,
the Gospel requires only that men should bring faith in order to
receive the grace of God” (on Romans 10:8). For one thing, he
declares in his commentary on John, “The peculiar office of the
Law [is] to summon consciences to the judgment-seat of God” (Commentary
on John, Vol. 2, 140). We have already noted the many
references to Calvin's explanation of the purpose of the law
that make the pedagogical use central. In fact, “Moses had no
other intention than to invite all men to go straight to Christ”
(Commentary on John, Vol. 1, 217). The whole purpose of
the law was to drive people to Christ. This is especially
apparent in a sermon on Isaiah 53:11, where he basically echoes
Luther’s maxim, “The law always accuses”:
The Law only begets death; it increases our condemnation and
inflames the wrath of God....The Law of God speaks, but it does
not reform our hearts. God may show us: ‘This is what I demand
of you,’ but if all our desires, our dispositions and thoughts
are contrary to what he commands, not only are we condemned,
but, as I have said, the Law makes us more culpable before
God....For in the Gospel God does not say, ‘You must do this or
that,’ but ‘believe that my only Son is your Redeemer; embrace
his death and passion as the remedy for your ills; plunge
yourself beneath his blood and it will be your cleansing.’
Furthermore, whenever Calvin describes the purpose of the law in
one given passage, it is almost always the pedagogical use that
he describes: “The Law is like a mirror, in which we behold,
first, our impotence; secondly, our iniquity which proceeds from
it; and lastly, the consequence of both, our obnoxiousness to
the curse, just as a mirror represents to us the spots on our
face.”(12)
“Paul, by the word law, frequently intends the rule of a
righteous life, in which God requires of us what we owe to him,
affording us no hope of life, unless we fulfill every part of
it, and, on the contrary, annexing a curse if we are guilty of
the smallest transgression.”(13)
“The life of the Law is man's death.”(14)
This raises the question of the proper function of the law.
The Third (Didactic) Use of the
Moral Law
So far I have underscored what the reformers referred to as
the elenctic use of the law: driving sinners to despair of their
righteousness so that they will flee to Christ. Especially when
provoked by the antinomian controversy, Luther affirmed the
law’s normative (or didactic) use. It was Melanchthon who first
formulated the “third use of the law”: that is, its didactic use
in guiding believers in God’s moral will. In fact, Article 6 of
the Formula of Concord explicitly affirms the third use. If
Calvin and his heirs more fully elaborated this use, it is just
as true that they not only agreed with but in fact appropriated
the Lutheran formulation.
For all of his emphasis on the terrors of the law, Calvin
warns against concluding that this is the only service it
renders.nders.(15)
Nevertheless, Calvin insists (expounding Romans 3:21) that even
believers after they are justified must be vigilant in
distinguishing the law and gospel; otherwise, they will, with
Augustine, conclude that the righteousness that they have before
God, though a gift of regenerating grace alone, is inherent in
the believer. “But it is evident from the context that the
apostle includes all works without exception, even those which
the Lord produces in his own people.” “That peace of
conscience, which is disturbed on the score of works, is not a
one-day phenomenon, but ought to continue through our whole
life.”(16)
Since we are ever-assaulted by the fear inculcated by the law,
we must be ever-assured of the promises of the gospel.
The law no longer represents God as Judge, but God as
Father to the justified. “Here Calvin does not differ
significantly from Luther, except in emphasis and discretion,”
notes Hesselink.(17)
In the Institutes, Calvin observes that one “may indeed
view from afar the proffered promises, yet he cannot derive any
benefit from them.”
Therefore this thing alone remains: that from the goodness of
the promises he should the better judge his own misery, while
with the hope of salvation cut off he thinks himself threatened
with certain death. On the other hand, horrible threats hang
over us, constraining and entangling not a few of us only, but
all of us to a man. They hang over us, I say, and pursue us
with inexorable harshness, so that we discern in the Law only
the most immediate death (2.7.4).
The law covenants conditionally, while the Gospel covenants on
the basis of Christ's fulfillment of all conditions in the
believer's stead. “The promises of the Law depend on the
conditions of works while the Gospel promises are free and
dependent solely on God's mercy” (Institutes, 3.11.17).
Contrary to what is often supposed, then, Calvin did not
embrace the law-gospel hermeneutic for conversion, only to place
believers back under the law as a method for obtaining
righteousness in sanctification.
If this is so, then how do we reconcile Calvin’s repeated
insistence that the main purpose of the law is to drive us to
Christ by its threats (the first use) and his statement that the
third use is “the principal use” (Institutes, 2.7.12)?
Interpreters often fail to recognize that for Calvin the
difference lies in the believer’s relation to God and therefore
to his law. The law’s imperative drives the sinner to the
indicative of the gospel announcement. But once the believer is
justified, this order must be reversed to avoid
works-righteousness and, in fact, is reversed in the
scriptures. What is abolished in the law for Calvin is not its
precepts, but its condemnation (maledictio legis).
“Being thus led to despair of attaining any righteousness of
their own, they were to flee to the haven of divine goodness—to
Christ himself. This was the purpose of the ministry of Moses”
(on Romans 10:5).
Even when believers are reminded by the terrors of the law
to flee to Christ, they are simultaneously reminded that they
are beyond the reach of its condemnation. Now, instead of
speaking of three uses that can be applied to everyone, he
introduces a two-fold office of the law: one for believers and
another for unbelievers. He makes this point explicitly in his
1536 catechism: “For among unbelievers it does nothing more than
shut them out from all excuse before God. And this is what Paul
means when he calls it the ministry of death and condemnation.”
Nevertheless, “In regard to believers it has a very different
use.” The law cannot condemn believers, but it still reminds
them that “it requires of them much more than they are able to
perform.” It “urges them to seek strength from the Lord, and at
the same time reminds them of their perpetual guilt, that they
may not presume to be proud.” This third use also exhibits the
boundaries of Christian liberty, keeping in check our natural
tendency toward both legalism and antinomianism. Thus, even in
its third use, the goal is to lead us to Christ as much as to
guide us under his reign, but it does not drive us to Christ
with threats and punishments as it does unbelievers. For all who
trust in themselves, the threatening office of the law is not
only its principal but its exclusive use. When the question of
our justification is in view, “If consciences with to attain any
certainty in this matter, they ought to give no place to the
law” (Institutes, 3.19.2). Thus, Calvin’s emphasis on the
third use actually emphasized more than Luther the end of the
law’s condemning power over the believer’s conscience. “For the
law is not now acting toward us as a rigorous enforcement
officer who is not satisfied unless the requirements are met,”
but is rather pointing out “the goal toward which throughout
life we are to strive.” Before, the law only accused, but now
it has a different purpose: “Now, the law has power to exhort
believers. This is not a power to bind their consciences with a
curse,” but to point the way toward divinely-approved service (Institutes,
2.7.12-13). I would suggest that Calvin reckoned even more
fully than Luther with the decisive change that justification
brings in the believer’s relationship with God.
When seeking righteousness, duty is a legal preoccupation,
but once the law’s thunder is silenced, God uses the law to
discipline his children and recall them to their former course.
Nevertheless, the law cannot do anything more than prod—and by
this, Calvin means nothing more than reminding us of our duty.
Only the evangelical promises can move us to grateful obedience:
“He lays hold not only of the precepts, but the accompanying
promise of grace, which alone sweetens what is bitter. For what
would be less lovable than the Law if, with importuning and
threatening alone, it troubles souls through fear, and
distressed them through fright? David especially shows that in
the Law he apprehended the Mediator, without whom there is no
delight or sweetness” (Institutes, 2.7.12).
Footnotes
1 John Calvin, Institutes of the
Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford
Lewis Battles; Library of Christian Classic, XX-XXI
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 4.20.16 [back to text]
2 John Calvin, Preface,
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, Vol.
1, trans. Charles W. Binham (rep., Grand Rapids: Baker,
1996), p. xvii. [back to text]
3 John Calvin, Preface,
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, 132 [back to text]
4 Ibid., 126 [back to text]
5 Ibid., 128 [back to text]
6 On these three uses, see Calvin,
Institutes 2.7.6-12. [back to text]
7 John Calvin, Institutes
2.9.4 [back to text]
8 Calvin, in the Pringle translation of the Commentary
on Corinthians, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984),
452. All references to the New Testament are from this
set and are cited in the text of my article. [back to text]
9 Calvin, "The Preface to the
Prophet Isaiah," in the Pringle translation of the Old
Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984),
Volume 1 of Isaiah, p. xxvi. [back to text]
10 John Calvin, Preface,
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, Vol.
1, xviiiz [back to text]
11 I. John Hesselink, Calvin's
Concept of the Law (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick,
1992), 28 [back to text]
12
The Isaiah 53:11 reference is cited by Hesselink, 212
n.188; cf. Institutes, 2.7.7. [back to text]
13 Calvin, Institutes 2.9.4 [back to text]
14 John Calvin, Four Last Books
of Moses, Vol.1, 316 [back to text]
15
John Calvin on Galatians 3:19 [back to text]
16
John Calvin on Romans 3:21 [back to text]
17 I. John Hesselink, 158 [back to text]
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