LIVING WITH JOHN CALVIN

History is one fascinating subject whether it be American history (Bunker Hill, The Alamo, et al.) or church history. Church history is the redheaded stepchild of many a Christian's ranking of what's what in the past, but fascinating it is. 

For example, what was it like to live in Geneva, John Calvin's "New Israel," AKA Geneva? You don't have to wonder, we have the receipts. 

In time, with the authority of the Geneva city council, Calvin became the religious dictator of Protestant Geneva, empowered to root out all manifestations of Catholicism and immorality. And root he did.

His was an overt totalitarian regime. Calvin instituted a kind of religion police that he and the city council empowered to inspect people’s houses to ascertain if they behaved according to Calvin’s ordinances. (Could you live with those inspectors and their inspections?)

The council said, "No way" to having Rosaries and relics in your domicile, and it became illegal to name children after saints. (Could live with city officials telling you the approved names for your children?)

Next, your choice of reading material came under Calvin's purview. “Immoral” or Catholic books were locked down; art, music with instruments, dancing, and theater were not allowed. 

Then your dinner table came under his watchful eye. There were regulations for the amounts of the edibles allowed at your table, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

Next came your wardrobe which included the prescribed colors of clothing. What about your hair style? That was fair game too.  Gambling, drunkenness, adultery, promiscuity, immodest dress, profane songs, idolatry, heresy, and speaking ill of the clergy were punished, often by exile or execution. (I sort of like that "no speaking ill of the clergy" idea, but that's just me.)

They censored the press, and severely so. Education, which Calvin regarded as inseparable from religion, was carefully regulated. New schools were established, with emphasis on arithmetic, writing, and history in primary school, and Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in secondary schools to facilitate study of the Bible. They eliminated begging by having the government regulate charity.

Fifty-eight people were executed during the first five years of Calvin’s rule, and seventy-six exiled. Most notorious was the case of Michael Servetus, the scientist and theologian with whom Calvin had corresponded earlier but they disagreed on religious dogma. 

Specifically, Servetus (indeed a heretic) denied the existence of the Trinity. On his way to Italy he made the fatal error of passing through Geneva, was arrested, tried for heresy by the city council, and condemned to death. 

Calvin agreed with the sentence and wanted him beheaded. But the council decided to have him slowly roasted at the stake in a fire made expressly of green wood so that it would burn more slowly and prolong his agony.

One author states, "John Calvin’s Geneva, represented the ultimate in repression. The city-state of Geneva, which became known as the Protestant Rome, was also, in effect, a police state, ruled by a Consistory of five pastors and twelve lay elders, with the bloodless figure of the dictator looming over all. In physique, temperament, and conviction, Calvin (1509–1564) was frail, thin, short, and lightly bearded, with ruthless, penetrating eyes, he was humorless and short-tempered."

The slightest criticism enraged him. Those who questioned his theology he called “pigs,” “donkeys,” “riffraff,” “dogs,” “idiots,” and “stinking beasts.” One morning he found a poster on his pulpit accusing him of “Gross Hypocrisy.” A suspect was arrested. No one produced any evidence as to his guilt, but he was tortured day and night for a month untill he confessed. Screaming with pain, he was lashed to a wooden stake. His feet were nailed to the wood; ultimately he was decapitated.

Now here's a thought: had Calvin been a classical dispensationalist, those 58 people would have lived; those 76 could have stayed at home. The classical dispensationalist distinguished Israel from the church and that would have made all the difference in the world.

Any takers to move to 16th century Geneva and live with John Calvin?