Law, Equity, and Calvin's Moral Critique of Protestant Faith

Abstract

This dissertation examines the themes of law and equity in John Calvin's moral and legal thought. Part One of the dissertation focuses on Calvin's immanent critique of Lutheran faith, particularly his nuanced recalibration of Luther's law-gospel dialectic and Melanchthon's doctrine of the third use of the law. Building on the work of I. John Hesselink, the study explores how Calvin simultaneously defines the relation between law and gospel in terms of an antithesis, thereby preserving Luther's (Pauline) doctrine of justification by faith, and in terms of a continuum, thereby creating the theological warrant for the law's normative use. Calvin does this by distinguishing between the "bare law" (nuda lex) which stands in antithesis to the gospel and the "whole law" (tota lex) which stands in a "sacred link" (sacrum nexum) with the gospel when the law is seen through a Christological lens.

Part Two of the dissertation examines innovations to the tradition of equity during the early stages of the Protestant Reformation. Within the context of the sixteenth century, Luther sought to harness the Aristotelian conception of equity (epieikeia) as a legal rationale for discretionary departure from traditional Catholic laws and precedents. But while Luther offers significant (and underappreciated) innovations to the Aristotelian tradition of equity, his privileging of the virtue of equity, as "necessary" and to be "praised most of all," combined with inadequately developed ideas about reestablishment and regulation of laws, left Protestant teachings vulnerable to abuses. Luther's definition of and priority on epieikeia, thus, would set the agenda for second generation reformers like Calvin, who, in response, sought to constrain appeals to equity within a natural law framework. Calvin's appreciation for the potential abuses of epieikeia partly explains the care he gives to formulating a new Protestant theory of equity, one that is more compatible with the goals of reconstructing a moral and legal order. In granting discretionary powers to rectify deficient laws, which the task of reform requires, Calvin appeals to natural law elements in the tradition of equity so that arguments from equity would not be interpreted as sanctioning unbridled, unprincipled acts.