The divine of Reformed Christendom: why Jewel stands above Calvin
the worthiest Divine that Christendom hath bred for the space of some hundreds of years (II.6.4).
It is interesting to compare this with Hooker's praise for Calvin:
incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church did enjoy, since the hour it enjoyed him (Preface, 2.I).
The difference is rather significant. Calvin is the "wisest man" that the Gallican Church has known but Jewel is the "worthiest divine" Christendom had seen in centuries. This is despite Calvin's Institutes and commentaries on Scripture, "which have deservedly procured him honour throughout the world" (Preface, 2.8).
Part of the issue for Hooker is that Calvin's influence and reception, despite the Institutes and commentaries, was not straightforwardly positive. We get more than a hint of this when Hooker compares Calvin to Peter Lombard:
Of what accompt the Master of Sentences was in the Church of Rome, the same and more amongst the preachers of the Reformed Churches Calvin had purchased: so that the perfectest divines were judged they, which were skilfullest in Calvin's writings (2.8).
This comparison with the scholasticism which the Reformation overthrew was not, of course, flattering. Add to it also Hooker's reference to Calvin advocating "the singular necessity" of the polity of the Genevan church, together with the description of this advocacy as a call for "universal obedience" to the Genevan polity (2.8), and we get a sense of the thrust of Hooker's criticism: Genevan theology and polity was becoming a new popery, threatening the well-being and peace of the national and particular churches of the Reformation. As Hooker said of those within Geneva who challenged the ecclesiastical polity proposed by Calvin:
they objected against it the example of other reformed Churches living quietly and orderly without it ... that such a discipline was little better than popish tyranny disguised and tendered unto them under a new form (2.4).
Hooker then points to the Church of Heidelberg, which was "in most peaceable sort" and blessed with "divines whose equals were not elsewhere to be found" (2.9), before the agitation of those who held to the polity "which Geneva adoreth". This he compares to the Puritan agitation in England, "against all the orders and laws wherein this Church is found unconformable to the platform of Geneva" (2.10).
Jewel's work, by contrast, both defended the Reformed Church of England and the other Churches of the Reformation, with their diverse polities and ceremonies. Jewel's work did not provoke controversy and disorder, instead defending "Zwinglians and Lutherans" (Part III), "what is done in England and Germany" (Part IV). Jewel's insistence that the Reformation had "disordered no commonwealth" could also act as a description of the Church of England's relationship with the settled Reformed Churches of such commonwealths:
There continue in their own accustomed state and ancient dignity, the kings of our country of England, the kings of Denmark, the kings of Sweden, the dukes of Saxony, the counts palatine, the marquesses of Brandenburg, the landgraves of Hesse, the commonwealth of the Helvetians and Rhaetians, and the free cities, as Argentine, Basil, Frankfort, Ulm, Augusta, and Nuremberg (Part IV).
It is worth noting at this point how Jewel not only includes Lutheran Denmark, Sweden, and Saxony but also lists them before, for example, the Reformed commonwealth of Helvetia. This defence of national and particular Churches is at the heart of Jewel's understanding and his rejection of papal primacy:
there can be no one mortal creature, which is able to comprehend or conceive in his mind the universal Church, that is to wit, all the parts of the world, much less able rightly and duly to put them in order, and to govern them rightly and duly (Part II).
This is his basis for affirming the rights of national Churches to engage in the work of Reformation:
we do not despise councils, assemblies, and conference of bishops and learned men; neither have we done that we have done altogether without bishops or without a council. The matter hath been treated in open Parliament with long consultation, and before a notable synod and convocation (Part VI).
As Andrew Gazal says:
With all Protestant commonwealths of Europe working in tandem to reform themselves, they would together form the true, restored Catholic Church in Europe. Thus, in defending the orthodoxy of the Church of England, Jewel presented to Europe a church that had reformed itself back into catholicity.
Here we can see something of why Hooker lauded Jewel as the divine of Christendom but Calvin as merely the divine of France. The polity and order which Calvin claimed was jure divino had brought disunity and division to peaceful, well-ordered national and particular Churches. Jewel, by contrast, articulated a generous Reformed Catholicism embracing all the national Churches of the magisterial Reformation. He, not Calvin, was the divine of a renewed and reformed Christendom.
Two comments, one more substantive and one perhaps picayunish, noting that neither of them overthrows your argument.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the picayunish:
>>It is worth noting at this point how Jewel not only includes Lutheran Denmark, Sweden, and Saxony but also lists them before, for example, the Reformed commonwealth of Helvetia.<<
Is it not possible that there is political and not theological significance in this? One notes that first Jewel, the subject of a monarch, lists monarchs first, then a republic (or better, a republican confederation), and then free cities? One might note also that within the list of monarchs that they are listed by precedence: kings, then a duke, then an imperial elector (the Count Palatine), then a margrave (marquess), then a landgrave. (One finds a similar precedence in the list of signatories to the Canons of Dort. After the list of officers—president, assistant president, and secretaries—the delegates of Great Britain, the Palatinate, and Hesse are noted before those of the republics and free cities. The exceptions are the delegates from the duchy of Gelderland and the kingdom of France, though in the latter case, while from a kingdom, the delegates did not represent a national church in the way that the delegates of Great Britain did—nor indeed most of the other participants.) I therefore suspect the order of Jewel's list is merely a matter of precedence, not a comment on Jewel's assessment of the superiority of the Lutheran (or Palatinate Reformed) reform as compared with the Swiss reform.
Second, the more substantive. Whatever claims Calvin may make in the Institutes and elsewhere for the novel polity of Geneva of doctors, pastors, elders, and deacons, it is also true that he did not object to superintendents ("bishops") in the Reformed churches of Transylvania, Poland, and Lithuania, and there remains that tantalizing (and unsubstantiated) claim of a correspondence between Edward VI and Calvin regarding the introduction of episcopacy into Reformed churches in France and elsewhere. Should we perhaps not regard the advancement of any jure divino claims for Genevan polity as a matter of the out-Calvining Calvin by the "godly" of England and elsewhere? Yet another area in which the Calvinists exceeded their teacher?
Todd, many thanks for your comments. I almost entirely agree with both points.
DeleteRegarding the first, yes, I accept that the priority given to the Lutheran kingdoms reflected a precedence because of constitutional ordering. It is clear that there is a political significance to Jewel's list but this, of course, also carries with it theological significance. Ensuring that the Lutheran kingdoms etc. were understood as a part of a wider Reformed Christendom was a characteristic concern of the diplomacy of Elizabeth and James, and reflected advanced Conformist concerns that the Reformed churches alone should not determine the definition of 'Reformed' (with its consequences for the internal debates in the CofE).
On the second point, I entirely agree that Calvin was in fact open to a form of episcopacy as seen in the Reformed churches of eastern Europe. That said, Hooker's concern is with the use of Calvin in the English debate to further jure divino claims for the presbytery. Does this represent "out-Calvining Calvin"? Yes, this does make sense but it was not a claim made by Hooker.
Brian.