Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:31:28.636Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Early Calvinist Resistance Theory: New Perspectives on an Old Label

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Glen Bowman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the article The Use of Natural Law in Early Calvinist Resistance Theory, David VanDrunen, Robert B. Strimple Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary (California), analyzes natural law as it appeared in the writings of several sixteenth—century resistance theorists—John Knox, Christopher Goodman, John Ponet, Theodore Beza, Francois Hotman, and the unknown writer of Vindiciae contra Tyrannos. Van Drunen's article is much needed, since Richard Tuck, in his otherwise astute 1979 study on natural law, does not adequately address Reformation-era developments, focusing instead on Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf, and other seventeenth-century theorists. Nevertheless, I take issue with Van Drunen's assertion that these writers were all “committed to the theology of Calvin” and were “early Calvinist resistance theorists.” One could make the case that most of these writers were, but there is one notable exception: English reformer, humanist, bishop, and polemicist John Ponet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , 2007 , pp. 309 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origins and Development (Cambridge U. Press 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. VanDrunen, David, The Use of Natural Law in Early Calvinist Resistance Theory, 21 J. L. & Religion 143–167 (2005–2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought vol. 2, 227, 240, 254 (Cambridge U. Press 1978)Google Scholar.

4. Kingdon, Robert M., Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550-1580, in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 193–218, 195 (Burns, J.H. ed., Cambridge U. Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

5. Id. at 194.

6. Skinner, Quentin, The Origins of the Calvinist Theory of Revolution, in After the Reformation 309–330 (Malament, Barbara ed., U. Pa. Press 1980)Google Scholar.

7. Hudson, Winthrop S., John Ponet, Advocate of Limited Monarchy (U. Chi. Press 1942)Google Scholar.

8. Ponet, John, A notable sermon concerninge the ryght use of the Lordes Supper sig. E ii (rv) (London 1550)Google Scholar.

9. Ponet, John, A short catechisme (1553), reprinted in Two Liturgies 506, 507, 519 (Ketley, Joseph ed., Cambridge U. Press 1844)Google Scholar.

10. Ponet, John, A way of reconciliation of a good and learned man touching the trueth, nature, and substance of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament 36, 76 (Russell, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby trans., Russell 1605)Google Scholar.

11. Id. at 19, 21.

12. Id. at 22, 73.

13. Id. at 25, 26.

14. Id. at 49, 67, 68.

15. Id. at 16, 17.

16. Id. at 41, 32, 65.

17. Id. at 48, 61.

18. Id. at 61, 33, 76, 93.

19. Id. at 10, 36, 40, 78.

20. Id. at 33, 41, 42.

21. Richardson, Cyril C., Zwingli and Cranmer on the Eucharist 19 (Seabury-Western Theological Seminary 1949)Google Scholar.

22. Gerrish, B.A., Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistie Theology of John Calvin 166–167 (Fortress Press 1993)Google Scholar.

23. Ponet, A way of reconciliation, supra n. 10, at 102-103.

24. What Bullinger genuinely believed in the 1550s is somewhat of a mystery; his fifth and final volume of Decades (a particularly popular publication in England in the 1550s) says one thing, but the Consensus states a different position. After all, he stated in his Decades that the sacraments neither confer nor offer grace, arguing that if grace can be delivered through the Lord's Supper, then works righteousness is efficacious, because the sacrament is a human celebration, a ceremony. Calvin disagreed with Bullinger's interpretation, because how can sacraments be even considered human works if they come from God? Rorem, Paul, Calvin and Bullinger on the Lord's Supper 24–27 (Grove Books Limited 1989)Google Scholar.

25. Bullinger, Henry, The Decades 3:31 (Harding, Thomas ed., Cambridge U. Press 1849–1852)Google Scholar.

26. Ponet, A short catechisme, supra n. 9, at 511.

27. Id. at 512.

28. Ponet, John, An apologie fully aunsweringe by scriptures and aunceat doctors, a blasphemose bookgatherid by D. Steph. Gardiner and other papists sig. L 5 (r) (Zurich 1555)Google Scholar.

29. Gulley, Frank, The Influence of Heinrich Bullinger and the Tigurine Tradition Upon the English Church in the Sixteenth Century 183–184 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt U., 1961) (on file at Vanderbilt U.)Google Scholar.

30. Ltr. from Cranmer to John a Lasco (July 4, 1548), in Original Letters relative to the English Reformation vol. 1, 17 (Robinson, Hastings ed., Cambridge U. Press 1846–1847)Google Scholar.

31. Hall, Basil, John a Lasco, 1499-1560: A Pole in Reformation England 19–30 (Dr. Williams' Trust 1971)Google Scholar.

32. DiGangi, Mariano, Peter Martyr Vermigli, 1499-1562: Renaissance Man, Reformation Master (U. Press Am. 1993)Google Scholar. Martyr was at Strasbourg in 1555, for John Hooper's widow Anne sent him a copy of one of her husband's writings to him there. By June 1556, Martyr had left Strasbourg for Zurich. Ltr. from Ponet to Bullinger (Apr. 14, 1556), supra n. 30, at 115; Ltr. from Ponet to Bullinger (June 1556), id. at 117.

33. Greaves, Richard, The Origins and Early Development of English Covenant Thought, 31 The Historian 28 (1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Green, Ian, The Christian's ABC: Catechisms and Catechizing in England c. 1530-1740, at 188 (Clarendon Press 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (U. Cal. Press 1967)Google Scholar.

36. Lake, Peter, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (Unwin Hyman 1988)Google Scholar.

37. Lake, Peter & Dowling, Maria, Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England (Croom Helm 1987)Google Scholar.

38. Thompson, W.D.J. Cargill, The Political Thought of Martin Luther (Barnes & Noble 1984)Google Scholar.

39. Bowman, Glen, Elizabethan Catholics and Romans 13: A Chapter in the History of Political Polemic, 47 J. Church & St. 531–544 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Benert, Richard Roy, Inferior Magistrates in Sixteenth-Century Political and Legal Thought (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, U. Minn., 1967)Google Scholar (on file at the U. of Minn.). For a more recent discussion, see Whitford, David M., John Adams, John Ponet, and a Lutheran Influence on the American Revolution, 15 Lutheran Q. 143–158 (2001)Google Scholar.

41. Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics 103 (Harv. U. Press 1965)Google Scholar. Skinner disagrees. See Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, supra n. 3, at vol. 2, 222.

42. Walzer, supra n. 41, at 103-105.

43. Elazar, Daniel J., Covenant and Commonwealth 273–274 (Transaction Publishers 1996)Google Scholar.

44. But Ponet's A Short Treatise did have an effect on seventeenth-century writers who did employ covenant language. Vallance, Edward, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism, and the Political Nation, 1553-1682, at 7 (Boydell Press 2005)Google Scholar.

45. Mason, Roger A., Knox, Resistance and the Moral Imperative, in 1 History of Political Thought 411–436, especially at 426–427 (1980)Google Scholar.

46. Raath, Andries & de Freitas, Shaun, Heinrich Bullinger and the Marian Exiles: The Political Foundations of Puritanism, 28 Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 1, 1–34 (2001)Google Scholar. Oddly, it is claimed in this article that Ponet, like Knox and Goodman, held “covenantal views of civil society and resistance to tyranny” (p. 5), yet the authors provide no evidence whatsoever that Ponet even mentioned the covenant.

47. Id. at 20.