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Calvin as an Ecumenical Churchman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John T. McNeill
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Extract

Many years ago, almost on my first acquaintance with Calvin, I was impressed by a phrase in that last brief letter of his to his old companion in labor and battle, William Farel:

Live mindful of our union which, as it has been useful to the Church of God, so its fruits await us in heaven.

We may begin here, though it is where Calvin's work ended. His friendships, labors, struggles, and studies had as their aim to be “useful to the Church of God.” It was in Geneva that they had been fellow-laborers, but it is not merely to the Church of Geneva that he thinks their labor to have been useful. It was a contribution to a far wider community, the Church of God, that has no boundaries narrower than the communion of believers, the divine society extending over all the world and throughout all the ages of mankind's history. The Holy Catholic Church was for him a universal reality, however hidden from men's eyes through the prevailing abuses and the proud assumptions of those who claimed to rule and speak for the Church.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 57 , supplment S1 , March 1988 , pp. 43 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1932

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References

1. Text in Kidd, B. J., Documents of the Continental Reformation (Oxford, 1911), p. 31.Google Scholar

2. John, Quidort of Paris, De potestate regia et papali (1302?)Google Scholar, in Goldast, M., Monarchia sand, Roman, imperii (1610), II, p. 339.Google Scholar

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4. Commentary on the Psalms, Ps. 113:7.

5. Commentary on the Psalms, Ps. 106:28.

6. Commentary on Isaiah, Is. 44:7.

7. Commentary on I Corinthians, 12:4.

8. Commentary on I Corinthians, 1:10.

9. Reply to Sadoleto, Caloini opera selecta, I, p.466; trans. Reid, op. cit., p. 231.

10. Institutes, IV, i, 3.

11. Institutes, III, i, 8.

12. Acta des Gesprächs zwischen Predicanten und Teuffbruederen inn der Stadt Bern (1538); sfrom the Bern Archives; film copy in Goshen College Library.

13. Institutes, IV, i, 16–17.

14. Institutes, III, xix, 7

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16. Institutes, IV, x, 32.

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26. Last Admonition to Westphal, Opera omnia, IX, p. 238Google Scholar; trans. Beveridge, , Tracts, II, p. 476.Google Scholar Readers of Dutch may examine Calvin's attitudes to Lutheran and other Reformation Churches with the aid of the careful study of Nijenhuis, W., Calvinus Oecumenicus: Calvin en de Eenheid der Kerk in het Licht van zijn Briefwisseling (‘s-Gravenhage, 1958).Google Scholar

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28. Institutes, IV, vi, 16.

29. Sermons on Galatians, ch. 6:9–11; Opera omnia, LI, p. 105Google Scholar. Cf. Institutes, II, viii, 39: “The Lord has bound by a kind of unity the whole race of men.”

30. Wallace, R. S., Calvin's Doctrine of the Christian Life (Edinburgh, 1959), p. 150Google Scholar. Calvin's ‘ecumenical humanism” is cogently affirmed by André, Biéler in L'Humanisme sociale de Calvin (Geneva, 1961), pp. 95ff.Google Scholar

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