In which Calvin practices mission
Sunday, 18 September, 2005
Did mission minded thinking translate into explicitly mission minded practice for Calvin?
and the answer is: He sure did! I present to you the second half of my essay:
History of Christian Mission essay Part 2:
Calvin was not just a theoretician, happy to espouse one view while refusing to let it impact his practice. Instead, in everything he did, the missio dei was always there in the background. He employed any means at his disposal to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. It could be argued that Calvin himself was a missionary for, exiled from his native France, he pastured a congregation of French refugees in Strasbourg and then established Geneva as a fortress of the Reformation.35 The missio dei can also be seen in his own practice of evangelism.36 In 1549 he dedicated his commentary on the Book of Hebrews to Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland and wrote, “Your kingdom is extensive and renowned, and abounds in many excellences; but its happiness will then only be solid, when it adopts Christ as its chief ruler and governor, so that it may be defended by his safeguard and protection”.37 In 1563, dedicating his commentary of Genesis to Henry, Duke of Vendome (later to become Henry IV of France), he wrote, “Now, in sending forth this book to the public under your name, my desire is, that it may effectually induce you more freely to profess yourself a disciple of Christ; just as if God, by laying his hand upon you, were claiming you anew to himself”.38 And in a letter to Edward the Sixth of England, in 1552, he wrote,
It is indeed a great thing to be a king, and yet more over such a country, nevertheless, I have no doubt that you reckon it beyond comparison better to be a Christian. It is therefore an invaluable privilege that God has vouchsafed you, sire, to be a Christian king, to serve as his lieutenant in ordering and maintaining the kingdom of Jesus Christ in England.39
He also facilitated the missio dei by using his influence to create favourable conditions so mission could take place. In addition to the epistles and dedications quoted above which demonstrate his eagerness for people in positions of power to lend their sympathies towards the Reformation, in 1558 Calvin wrote, in his second dedication of his commentary on Isaiah to Elizabeth I,
Yet it is not so much my object to be favored with your countenance in my personal labors, as humbly to entreat, and by the sacred name of Christ to implore, not only that, through your kindness, all orthodox books may again be welcomed and freely circulated in England. but that your chief care may be directed to promote religion, which has fallen into shameful neglect. And if this is justly demanded from all kings of the earth by the Only-begotten Son of God, by a still more sacred tie does he hold you bound, most noble Queen, to perform this duty ...40
It is doubtful whether Calvin's entreaty really did sway the Virgin Queen but, in any case, under her rule, Protestantism was allowed to exist somewhat peacefully within the realms of England.
In Geneva Calvin did his best to build up her citizens in the faith. Olson notes that, because he and the other Reformers, placed so much emphasis on the Scriptures, Geneva's education policy placed great importance on literacy.41 Calvin also wanted the younger generation to grow up well-instructed in the faith and so, in 1541, he prepared a catechism in which to train them and oversaw the establishment of a school that would educate them to university entrance level. Then in 1559 the Academie de Genève was founded to “offer courses at the university level to train boys for both the ministry and public administration”. It attracted students from many different parts of the world.42 From it, pastors were sent out to needy areas, both Catholic and Reformed. McGrath reports that at one point local Genevan parishes were being deprived of their pastors in order to satisfy the demand.43
However, Calvin's educational activities went beyond even this. As he kept his finger on the pulse of the Reformation by maintaining correspondence with Protestant leaders all around Europe,44 Geneva soon became a place of refuge for victims of persecution from surrounding countries and beyond who were attracted to the city as a safe haven and a stronghold of learning. But Calvin did not want them to settle down; he sought instead to train them up through regular lectures and daily sermons45—not just so that they would become strong in the faith but with the view that, “when properly trained they could go back to their own countries to spread the Gospel as missionaries”. In doing so, “he sought to make Geneva a veritable missionary centre to spread the Reformation and its teachings throughout Europe and beyond”.46
In 1555, the Company of Pastors, a confederate of the ministers of Geneva, began recording the names of the men they sent out to minister to the people of God scattered throughout the nations. They probably sent out missionaries before this but April 1555 was when it was regarded safe enough to record their names, their destinations and even their pseudonyms.47 Most of them went back to various cities (major and minor) and nearby islands of their native France but some also ventured further afield to Northern Italy and the Piedmontese valleys.48 Even Calvin's right-hand man, Nicolas des Gallars, was despatched overseas to Britain to work with a French congregation in London and also to play a key role in the Church of England.49 These missionaries aimed “to propagate the Gospel, and to establish an effective Christian witness where none was believed to exist”.50
How many were sent? The Register gives the names of 88 men between 1555 and 1562 when the wars of religion broke out in France and it was no longer safe to record such things, but there are those who suspect that many more answered the call.51 Even though they had to operate in secrecy and lived under the shadow of persecution, these Christian soldiers march on and continued to do the work of the missio dei. Their zeal and dedication reflects the extent to which they imbibed Calvin's teachings about the kingdom of Christ.52
But there are some who would claim that, even though Calvin espoused a view of the missio dei that extended “even to the end of the world”, he did not act so in practice for the missionary endeavours that drew his backing rarely ventured beyond Europe. His world was fairly insular; his knowledge of the heathen was taken mainly from the Bible and from classical literature and there is little evidence that he ever came into contact with Asia, Africa or even the Turks.53 However, as Zwemer points out, “John Calvin lived in the sixteenth century, not in the nineteenth. We cannot expect of him a world-view and world vision like that of William Carey”.54 Edwards reasons that the Reformers were generally “poor in purse” and could not fund such enterprises.55 Van den Berg draws attention to the fact that “there was no clear distinction between the Reformation and the church's missionary task in the strict sense of the word” and speculates whether Calvin's vitriolic evaluation of the missionary work of the monastic orders had made him averse to the kind of instutionally-organized missions we are familiar with.56 He posits that the Reformers” lack of missionary activity was purely due to external circumstances: they had little access to the heathen world, all foreign colonies were under the control of Roman Catholic nations and the struggle for Biblical truth on the home front took up most of their efforts.57
However, opportunities to reach the heathen did arise. In August 1556 Pierre Richet and Guilllaume Charretier, along with a group of Reformed colonists, were sent to the islands the French had taken just off the coast of Brazil. Richer and Charretier were to be chaplains to the colony and missionaries to the South American Indians. But Villegagnon, the governor of the colony, betrayed them, executing four of their number and forcing the others to flee. Van den Berg contends that the episode shows that Calvin and his followers appeared to have had a “warm heart for missionary work as soon as the door to the heathen world was opened”.58 However, as Wilcox warns, “It is important not to exaggerate the extent of Calvin's involvement and interest in this episode”: he did not take the initiative and he was not really involved in the decision-making and planning. But it is probably correct to say that he approved of the venture, even if it ended disastrously, and his theology was “able to support missionary enterprise beyond the borders of Europe”.59
Wilcox then goes on to lay the charge that, “In practice, however, the progress of Christ's Kingdom was equivalent for Calvin himself to the progress of the reformation in Europe”.60 His conclusion is partly based on the circumstances of the Brazil episode and on Calvin's attitude towards the Turks:
Calvin only ever perceives the Turks as a threat. He interprets their military victories as evidence of God's judgment on the Church [Comm. Is 36:20], and equates the relation of the Turks to Christian Europe with the relation of, for example, the Egyptians of Isaiah's day to the people of Israel. They threaten the dependence of God's people on divine protection, by offering an alternative source of aid [Comm. Is 30:1]. The recent Franco-Turkish treaties will end in disaster [Comm. Jer 13:21]. It is in relation to the Turks that Calvin is at his most nationalistic, and he construes contact between the French and “the heathen” entirely in negative terms: the Turks corrupt the French [Comm. Is 30:1]. Calvin's stance is scarcely more positive in the 1559 Institutes. If he accepts the possibility that a Turk might be baptised, it is with reluctance [Inst. IV.xvi.24]. To Calvin's mind, the Turks, (with the Papist and the Jews), were members of an unholy trinity. He never raised the possibility that contact between Christians and Turks might be of benefit to the Turks within the providence of God, and it certainly seems never to have occurred to him to see the proximity of the Turks as an evangelistic opportunity.61
To be fair, Calvin was not alone in expressing these sentiments; Luther also held the same view. It was probably formed under the influence of popular opinion as the Turks began to invade Eastern Europe, taking Constantinople in 1453 and laying siege to Vienna in 1529. Furthermore, for Calvin, the Turks represented Islam, a religion, like Roman Catholicism, opposed to the gospel of Christ. However, if a Turk had ever approached him with the question, “What must I do to be saved?”, Calvin probably wouldn't have turned him away. In any case, it must be remembered that Calvin's spiritual descendents were among the earliest to penetrate the world of Islam: the first missionary to the Turks was Venceslaus Budovetz of Budapest.62
Calvin died in 1564 and it is significant that, with his passing, the missionary drive in Geneva seems to have deteriorated.63 However his passion for the missio dei was carried on by his other successors. Consider the Dutch Calvinists, the work of John Knox in Scotland or the blooming of the Reformation in England. Then, as more and more Protestant nations started colonising the world, the gospel was spread to America, India, Africa and “even to the end of the world”.
Endnotes
35 Ramirez, “Missiological Perspectives of Calvin's Old Testament Interpretation”, 5-6.
36 Ibid, 9.
37 Calvin, Comm. Epistle Dedicatory: Heb.
38 Calvin, Comm. Epistle Dedicatory: Gen.
39 Quoted in Edwards, “Calvin and Missions”, 50.
40 Calvin, Comm. Epistle Dedicatory: Is.
41 Jeannine E. Olson, “Calvin and social-ethical issues”, in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin (ed. Donald K. McKim, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 153.
42 Reid, “Calvin's Geneva: a missionary centre”, 67. C.f. Olson, “Calvin and social-ethical issues”, 157-159.
43 Alister E. McGrath, A Life of John Calvin: A Study in the Shaping of Western Culture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) 189.
44 Zwemer, “Calvinism and the missionary enterprise”, Theology Today 7 Jl (1950): 208.
45 “It has already been suggested that even if not all of those who attended Calvin's lectures were missionaries in training, the majority were caught up with him in an evangelistic enterprise.” (Wilcox, “Evangelisation in the Thought and Practice of John Calvin”, 212).
46 Reid, “Calvin's Geneva: a missionary centre”, 67. C.f. Ramirez, “Missiological Perspectives of Calvin's Old Testament Interpretation”, 7; Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, “The Geneva of John Calvin”, The Churchman 78 (1964): 271, 275; and Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, “John Calvin: director of missions” in The Heritage of John Calvin (ed. John H. Bratt; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973) 44. John Knox described Geneva as “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles”.
47 McGrath, A Life of John Calvin, 182.
48 Hughes, “John Calvin: director of missions”, 46-47.
49 Hughes, “The Geneva of John Calvin”, 275.
50 Wilcox, “Evangelisation in the Thought and Practice of John Calvin”, 202.
51 Hughes, “The Geneva of John Calvin”, 271-272: “[T]here were many more who are not mentioned in these annals. In 1561, for example, which appears to have been the peak year for this missionary activity, the dispatch of only twelve men is recorded; whereas evidence from other sources indicates that in that year alone no less than 142-nearly twelve times twelve-men ventured forth on their respective missions.” Hughes cites Robert M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of the Religion in France, 1555-1563, Geneva, 1956.
52 McGrath helpfully draws attention to the limits of these missionary endeavours: these men were mostly middle-class who spoke nothing but French and therefore could only really minister to those of their kind. As a result, the peasantry, who did not understand French but only spoke patois. “Yet there was virtually nothing the Venerable Company of Pastors could do. They could only send men whom they had at their disposal”, and, as a result, the peasantry was excluded from the outset. (McGrath, A Life of John Calvin, 188.)
53 Zwemer, “Calvinism and the missionary enterprise”, 208.
54 Ibid, 207.
55 Edwards, “Calvin and missions”, 47.
56 J. Van den Berg, “Calvin and Missions”, 168.
57 J. Van den Berg, “Calvin's missionary message”, 180.
58 J. Van den Berg, “Calvin and Missions”, 172.
59 Wilcox, “Evangelisation in the Thought and Practice of John Calvin”, 215-216.
60 Ibid, 217.
61 Ibid, 216-217. I have added the footnote references into the text.
62 Zwemer, “Calvinism and the missionary enterprise”, 215.
63 Reid, “Calvin's Geneva: a missionary centre”, 72.
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