The Theology of John Calvin by Karl Barth

Author:Karl Barth
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2013-08-28T17:20:00+00:00

But he does it. And that is how the Institutes ends. What are we to do when we suffer under a bloodthirsty, avaricious, spendthrift, idle, and ungodly ruler? Answer: We are to remember our sins that have merited this punishment and consider that it is not for us to ward off such evils.233 Note here that the loyalty that Calvin so urgently recommends is again apparent. It is not the tyrant who plagues us but God who punishes us. And if we were to set out to remove the tyrant it would not help us. Our only help comes when God ceases to chastise us through the tyrant. Our one resort is to call upon God. There is really no such thing as the power of government on earth. What we describe as such sinks into oblivion when the one who has appointed rulers his servants comes on the scene in opposition to them. He is God and he will stand in the assembly of gods and judge them in the midst. All kings and judges of the earth who have not kissed his anointed will fall down before him and will be cast down (Ps. [82: 1;] 2 [vv. 10-12]), all kings and judges who have passed unjust laws in order to wrong the poor in judgment and to do violence to the cause of the lowly, in order to rob widows and to seize the goods of orphans (Isa. 10 [vv. 1£]).234 It will then be clear that these rulers and judges are only servants.

God also has other servants. This is the first bar to tyranny. From among them, if need be, God raises up avengers and gives them a commission to punish wicked rulers and to liberate people from their misery. To this end he can even use the fury of those who have in mind and before them something very different from the will of God.235 There is a legitimate divine vocation to oppose kings without violating their divine appointment because a greater power is now restraining the lesser, as when a king can and may proceed against his ministers.236 We have examples in Moses and the judges when they avenged and liberated their people. There is also, however, an unwitting doing of God's will here when those concerned may perhaps themselves have only evil in mind.

It is still true, however, that no matter how we are to evaluate the human actions, the Lord uses them to do his own work of breaking the scepters of bloodthirsty kings and toppling regimes that have become impossible.237 Thus the Assyrians executed judgment on Egypt, the Egyptians on Tyre, the Medes and Persians on Babylon, the Babylonians on Judah and Israel. Wernle sees it as a sophism that Calvin thinks a legitimate divine vocation to resist government is possible, and he conjectures that out of sheer biblicism, since all the examples of the overthrow of tyrants are taken from the Bible, Calvin is in self-contradiction in advocating a right of resistance.

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