Dear John Calvin… A Letter to a Reformer

Dear John Calvin…
A Letter to a Reformer

My dear Dr. Calvin,

I trust this letter finds you in that place where all our labors are finally weighed not by their success, but by their faithfulness. I have often wondered what you would make of our present age. You, who labored so carefully to order the Church according to the Word of God, would, I suspect, recognize more than you might wish.

It seems, once again, that the Church has found itself tempted by proximity to power. In your Geneva, you wrestled—at times with great severity—with the question of how the civil magistrate and the Church might coexist without one consuming the other. In my own time, that question has not been resolved; it has merely changed its vocabulary. We now call it “Christian nationalism.”

The phrase itself would perhaps strike you as imprecise, even theologically suspect. You did not think in terms of “nations” as we do, but rather in terms of ordered societies under God. Nevertheless, the underlying temptation would be familiar. There are those among us who believe that the Kingdom of God may be advanced, secured, or even preserved through political dominance. They speak as though the Gospel requires a particular cultural or national framework to survive. Moreover, they often presume that the success of the Church can be measured by its influence over the machinery of the state. How right you were when you said that the human heart is a factory of idols!

You, who wrote so carefully about the sovereignty of God, would surely remind us that Christ requires no such assistance.

However, the matter is not so simple. Those drawn to this movement are not always cynical or power-hungry. Many are sincere. They see a culture that has, in their view, abandoned its moral and theological foundations. They fear loss — loss of order, of identity, of memory. In this, I suspect, you might show them a measure of sympathy. You, too, lived in a time of upheaval, where the old certainties were collapsing and the future was uncertain.

Yet, my dear Doctor, sympathy cannot become acquiescence. The state and its machinery cannot become an object of devotion, much less worship.

The difficulty lies here: when the Church binds itself too closely to any political order, it inevitably baptizes not only its virtues but also its vices. In your own Geneva, your vision for a godly society produced both admirable discipline and, at times, a rigidity that has been judged harshly by history. You knew better than most that the line between pastoral oversight and coercion can become perilously thin.

Our present moment repeats this pattern, though in a different key. There are voices who would claim Christ for their nation in such a way that Christ Himself becomes subordinate to their national identity. The cross is carried, but it is often draped in a flag. Scripture is cited, yet it is frequently pressed into service of a preexisting political narrative.

This, I think, is where your theology offers both help and warning.

You insisted that the Word of God must stand above all human institutions, including the state. The magistrate has a role, certainly, but it is not salvific. It cannot regenerate the human heart. It cannot create the Church. Moreover, it cannot secure the Kingdom of God. Only God can do that.

However, one must also admit that your own legacy has, at times, been appropriated in ways you might not recognize. Some appeal to your vision of a disciplined Christian society as justification for their own political ambitions. They remember your order, but forget your insistence on the primacy of grace. They admire your structure, but neglect your profound awareness of human depravity—including the depravity of rulers and reformers alike.

It is precisely here that the doctrine of sin becomes essential. Any theology that places too much confidence in political power has, almost by definition, underestimated the depth of human fallenness. You knew this. You wrote of it relentlessly. It is, therefore, a strange irony that those most eager to “Christianize” the nation often appear least cautious about the corrupting influence of power.

Meanwhile, the Church itself remains divided, distracted, and at times captivated by the very forces it ought to critique. There are, to be sure, those who resist this trend—not always perfectly, and not always with clarity, but with a genuine desire to remain faithful to the Gospel rather than to any political program. They remind us, in their own imperfect way, that the Church does not exist to secure a nation, but to bear witness to a Kingdom that transcends all nations.

You might ask what, then, is to be done.

I suspect your answer would not be novel. You would call us back to Scripture—not as a tool of political argument, but as the living Word that judges all such arguments. You would insist upon the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the discipline of the Church. You would remind us that reformation begins not with the state, but with the Church itself.

Moreover, you would likely warn us that any attempt to shortcut this process—to achieve through power what can only be wrought by grace—will ultimately fail.

In this, you would be right.

I write to you, then, not because I expect an answer, but because your voice still speaks across the centuries. It speaks not with perfection, but with a clarity that we would do well to hear. The Church does not need to seize the levers of power to survive. It needs, rather, to recover its own identity as the Body of Christ—called to holiness, humility, service and witness.

That task is neither easy nor immediate. It requires time, discipline, and, above all, faithfulness.

Please remember us in your prayers, as we labor in a time no less vexed and complicated than your own.

With respect and gratitude, I remain,

Your student across the ages,