The Protestant Revolution in Theology, Law, and Community (Part III)
Predestination as the Principle of Community
The transfiguration of the Christian’s efforts into good works created not only a community of invisible believers but also shaped the new Protestant state and law. In On Secular Authority, Luther reiterated his position on political authority from his Address by referencing Rom. 13:1ff.: “Every soul is subject to governmental authorities; for there is no authority except from God; the existing authorities are constituted by God. Hence, who resists authority, resists the ordinance of God; and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.” Originally, Paul’s letter was addressed to the Roman Christian community who were subjected to pagan authorities.
Luther updated this passage by using Augustine’s ideas of the city of God and city of man, where the former was the community of invisible believers and the latter was the community of visible pagans. If the governmental authorities were Christians, then members of the city of God would need neither “temporal sword nor law”; but, if the governmental authorities were not Christian, or the Christians were a minority in society, then non-Christians would need to be restrained by the state. The nonviolent Christian otherwise would not survive. Both the Christian and non-Christian were restrained by governmental authority in order to protect and to secure their “body and property, and all external things on this earth.”
The next question that confronted Luther was how to distinguish between those who belonged to the city of God and those that were members of the city of man, given a theology of justification through grace by faith alone. For Augustine, the salvation of souls was knowable to God alone, with the church as the empirical representative (but not identical) with the city of God and the empire representative of the city of man. But in Luther’s time, it was not clear what corresponded empirically to the city of God. Luther himself understood this problem when he saw that “evil men under the Christian name would misuse evangelical freedom; they would indulge in their rascalities and say that they are Christian and not subject to law or sword—as even now quite a few are raving.” Luther tried to solve this problem by making the distinction between true Christians and others—“for the world and the mass are and will be non-Christians however much they are baptized and called Christians”—for which secular authority will provide restraint. In the event secular authority were to act against the true Christian, then the true Christian must resist according to his own conscience. This situation ultimately resulted in every person examining his own conscience to see whether he was a true Christian.
The political problem was fairly obvious: a society where individual conscience was without traditional or institutional restraint was no society at all. To escape this anarchy required the emergence of the secular state with its underlying rationale of legal positivism for its power. This was why the Christian did not need to engage in either politics or the law, since they achieved salvation through faith alone. But to prevent the Christian from being entirely socially isolated from the community, Luther must add that the Christian was required to submit to secular authority not out of salvation but out of utility and charity. Utility in the sense that discussion about Christ may endanger order and stability and put his fellow men at risk; charity in the sense that obeying secular authority was akin to assisting the poor, sick, and hungry: “he should serve those who have not yet risen as high as he has, and hence still need it.” But if the situation were to require it, the Christian would be permitted to assume secular authority, as Luther stated, “when you see that there is need for an executioner, constable, judge, lord, or prince, and you are fi t for the function, you should offer yourself for it so that the necessary power would not be despised and weakened or perish.”
The price of community from a doctrine of justification of grace by faith alone was the secular state with its rationale of legal positivism tempered by Christian teaching as interpreted by Luther. However, the question of why one should accept Luther’s interpretation over Aquinas’s, Calvin’s, or Müntzer’s was passed over. For example, when Müntzer claimed that history had entered the Last Days, when the corruption of Christianity had reached its ultimate peak, and that it was time for the elect to rise up and separate themselves from both ecclesiastical and secular rulers, what was Luther’s answer to this differing interpretation of the Bible? His response was that such an interpretation was unjustified: “For the slave can be a Christian and have Christian liberty, in the same way that a prisoner or a sick man is a Christian, and yet not free. This Article [III of the 1525 peasants’ rebellion] would make all men equal, and turn the spiritual kingdom of Christ into a worldly, external kingdom; and this is impossible, for a worldly kingdom cannot stand unless there is in it an inequality of persons, so that some are free, some imprisoned, and some lords, some subjects, etc.”9 Although in On Secular Authority, he had claimed that “heresy is a spiritual thing” that could be corrected only by teaching and not violence, Luther had changed his position when those who disagreed with his interpretation took arms against him.
Given Luther’s theology, particularly his doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone, legal positivism—although tempered by Christian teaching—became a source of legitimacy for the secular state. As Berman had stated throughout his work, as the state appropriated functions originally reserved for the church, the spiritual law became secularized and secular law became spiritualized: natural law became accompanied by positivism in the creation of a new Protestant community (197, 369, 375). Luther was able to complete this conception of the new Protestant community with the reintroduction of good works and the ideas of Augustine’s cities of God and man. But as the 1525 peasant rebellion had demonstrated, the reintroduction of these two concepts was not enough to solidify, on theological grounds, the formation of a new Protestant community. A new doctrine would be required: predestination.
Berman correctly identified the corporate aspect of Calvinism that Weber had strangely neglected (10, 264, 341–43, 380). According to Weber, Calvinists’ dedication to self-discipline, austerity, and hard work created an “inner loneliness,” for which individuals compensated by proving to themselves and their communities that they were part of the elect in their entrepreneurial economic activities (342). For Berman, the theory was incorrect: Calvinism had a “communitarian ethic and spirit” that was supported by the legal institutions and the development in law, particularly in England with the development of the joint-stock enterprise that required not an individualist but a communitarian ethic (342). In the second half of his project, Berman meticulously demonstrated how Calvinism had influenced English law and legal science, which, in turn, affected the formation of English communities. Of this I have no disagreement except again to supplement Berman’s argument with an analysis of Calvinist theology, particularly the doctrine of predestination.
Calvin’s doctrine of predestination provided the theological substance to make Protestant communities socially effective. The doctrine itself was relatively clear—all men were fallen with original sin, from which God for His impenetrable reasons elected some to salvation and condemned the rest to damnation—but its role in Calvin’s theology progressively became placed in the position of prominence as revisions to the Institutes of the Christian Religion continued throughout Calvin’s own life.10 Predestination became the social organizing principle of the new Protestant community: the fallen as well as the elect were to submit to Calvin’s discipline and sacraments because both groups sought the “second degree of election” with its “special call” that assured the elect of their status. As Calvin wrote:
“We are not commanded here to distinguish the reprobate from the elect, which is not our province but that of God alone; we are only required to be assured in our minds, that all those who by the mercy of God the Father, through the efficacious influence of the Holy Spirit, have attained to the participation of Christ, are separated as the peculiar possession and portion of God; and that being numbered among them, we are partakers of such grace . . . we must leave to God alone the knowledge of his Church, whose foundation is eternal election.”11
The elect were to be content with their status but should not try to distinguish between the reprobate and themselves, for that was God’s province alone, while the reprobate, in spite of his record of sin, was unsure whether he would receive the call tomorrow. Predestination thus became the principle which organized the visible church of both the elect and the damned in a new community.
The elect were not only called for salvation but also were to be the ecclesiastical foundation for the new, universal Christian church. In his commentary on the prayer, “That the Kingdom of God may come,” Calvin wrote for the elect that “it is our duty to descend to the impious, by whom his authority is resisted with the perseverance of obstinacy and the fury of despair,” for “it ought to be the object of our daily wishes, that God would collect churches for himself from all the countries, that he would enlarge their number, enrich them with gifts, and establish a legitimate order among them.”12 But when prayer was not sufficient, action was demanded of the elect to “overthrow all the enemies of the pure doctrine and religion,” while God “raises up some of his servants as public avengers, and arms them with his commission to punish unrighteous domination, and to deliver from their distressing calamities a people who have been unjustly oppressed.” But like Luther, Calvin only permitted passive resistance to unjust magistrates except for those prophets, presumably like himself, who were called by God.
Prophets, from time to time, had been called forth by God “in taking arms against kings” because they had the “authority from heaven, they punished an inferior power by a superior one, as it is lawful for kings to punish their inferior officers.”13 Besides prophets, another protection for the elect was estates that had the right to actively resist a tyrant’s rule: “I am so far from prohibiting [the estates] in the discharge of their duty to oppose the violence or cruelty of kings, that I affirm, that if they connive at kings in their oppression of their people, such forbearance involves the most nefarious perfidy, they know that they have been appointed protectors by the ordination of God.”14 And, finally, there was a confederation of Christian princes who protected the elect from foreign attack: “if any disturbance arise in their [allied princes’] territories, they will render each other mutual assistance, and will unite their forces together for the common resistance of the common enemies of mankind.”15 In short, Calvin’s theology provided an arsenal of weapons for the elect to protect themselves from heretics as well as to establish a new universal church.
Notes
9. Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, eds. Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 46 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962–71).
10. There were several revisions of The Institutes: it was first published in Latin in 1536, published again in Latin in 1539, organized into seventeen chapters and published in French in 1541, and authoritatively published in Latin in 1559 and in French in 1561. Calvin, Jean. Institues of the Christian Religion, trans. John Allen (London: Walker, 1813).
11. Ibid., 4.i.2–3.
12. Ibid., 3.xx.42.
13. Ibid., 4.xx.30.
14. Ibid., 4.xx.31.