The Power of the Consistory in John Calvin's Geneva

In 1538 John Calvin was exiled from Geneva. For the next few years he lived in Strasbourg where he learned from Martin Bucer and preached. In 1541 the city of Geneva asked him to return. One of the demands he made if they wanted him back was the creation of a institution to oversee the Christian discipline of the population of Geneva. Calvin's request led to the creation of the Consistory, a church court that oversaw the discipline of the citizens of Geneva. The Consistory became the primary ecclesiastical tool to deal with the sins of the people.

The Consistory was made up of around 2 dozen men, which included pastors, elected officials, and Calvin,the moderator. It met every week on Thursday with sessions that could last for several hours. The Consistory had spiritual authority, but no civil authority. It could and often did recommend that the civil authorities look into a situation.

John Witte and Robert Kingdon note that before Geneva "most early Protestant regimes...refused to give their churches a general power of excommunication." Calvin and other pastors fought for this right and eventually obtained it. Here is the authors' comment on the power of the Consistory:

A crucial new weapon won in this political battle was the Consistory's unequivocal power to enforce its spiritual discipline by using either the ban (temporary preclusion from communion) or excommunication (exclusion from the church altogether, which often also entailed banishment from the city as well). An important statute of 1560 confirmed victory by urging the use of admonition and simple bans in routine cases, and the use of excommunication in serious cases. The ban became a regular tool of discipline hereafter, but excommunication remained rare. Between 1560 and 1564 the Consistory banned nearly forty persons for every one it excommunicated. The Consistory had no further spiritual powers-and no formal legal power. If it decided that a case needed further investigation and further punishment, it had to refer it to the Small Council [a civil court]. 

Being banned from the Lord's Supper does not sound serious to 21st century Christians. However:

If the Consistory found someone guilty of particularly offensive behavior or particularly stubborn in resisting correction, it could ban the accused sinner from communion in the next one of the four communion services offered to the entire population each year. The ban from communion was a far more serious punishment then than it is now. People saw it as preventing them from receiving a sacrament that was sign of God's grace and formerly, in Catholic times, a necessity for salvation. It was also a social humiliation that could interrupt normal social routines and business. Banned sinners could not act as godparents, an important honor, or marry, or be assured of poor relief and access to the hospital. (Witte and Kingdon, p. 67)

Here are a couple of other notes from Witte and Kingdon on the Consistory. When a person came before the Consistory they,

Were not allowed to bring a lawyer or adviser, but had to handle questions entirely on their own. Sometimes they submitted affidavits, petitions, contracts, certificates, or other documents for the Consistory's review. The Consistory often questioned the parties about these documents, and summoned witnesses to validate their authenticity. The Consistory also had wide subpoena power to compel witnesses to appear. 

You could get in trouble for failing to appear when called. The most common "punishment" the Consistory gave was an "admonition," which was an exhortation to the person to stop sinning. Besides addressing more grievous sins, such as adultery, they would exhort former Catholics to stop praying to Mary, encourage a man to attend the sermon, order someone to pay an agreed upon price for marriage, or tell someone to stop gambling. The Consistory would often set a date for the individual to check back in. They would also work to bring reconciliation between two estranged parties, such as husband and wife who were fighting or two business partners who were at odds. This could lead to a private "ceremony of reconciliation" and if the case had "achieved general notoriety, a public ceremony of reconciliation might be held in a parish church." (This book is a chronicle of Consistory's records from 1542-1544.)

The Consistory could also order individuals to perform a public reparation. People so sentenced had to appear at a main Sunday sermon, get down on their knees, confess the errors of their ways, and beg for forgiveness. 

The Consistory was a remarkably intrusive institution. Six to seven percent of the entire adult population was called before it every year. The Consistory was also a remarkably effective institution. The combination of scoldings, public reparations, bans, excommunications, and referrals to the legal system seems to have worked. John Knox remarked that while they had found true doctrine rightly preached in other communities, they had never before found Christian life so rightly lived as in Geneva. If people did not like this lifestyle or the Consistory's presence or pressure, they could always leave Geneva.

Finally,

The Consistory did not limit itself to sex, marriage, and family life. In its early years, it spent a good deal of time trying to root out surviving Catholic religious practices. In later years years it spent time in trying to root out sharp business practices and disrespect for the leaders of government and church. But a clear majority of the Consistory's cases involved sexual and marital issues (emphasis mine). 

Some things never change.

Book Review: A Neglected Grace

A Neglected Grace: Family Worship in the Christian Home by Jason Helopoulos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good, solid introduction to the reason for, worth of, and practice of family worship. I appreciated his pastoral tone and graciousness as he laid out why this practice is so valuable. The personal stories he told of other families were convicting. He described interviewing a young girl for admittance to the Lord's Table and she started quoting Habakkuk because she had memorized portions in family worship. His appendices gave several examples of different structures for worship, as well as resources. The book is a good contribution to the growing literature on this lost practice.

View all my reviews

Did the Mission Change When Obama Won?

We often forget our mission until God brings some disaster along to remind us of what we are supposed to be doing. The mission of the church did not change on November 7th. Matthew 28:18-20 did not all of the sudden show back up in the Bible. It has always been there. But prior to the election  many had forgotten what that mission was. The never changing mission of the church is to bring glory to God by evangelizing and discipling the nations. But every church in America will agree with this. Mission statements and bulletin boards are filled with this type of language. We know we are supposed to evangelize and disciple the nations. But the Devil is in the details. And so is our love for and obedience to Jesus. How can the church grow more obedient to Jesus over the next four years? Here are ten things I think we should do. They are not radical for most of us. But they are essential. There is more that could be added. Only the first four are in order.

First, we must live in obedience to Jesus Christ our Lord, repenting where we are wrong and confessing that we are sinners saved by grace. This must be preached, sung, and lived in every home, pew, and pulpit in the land.

Second, God’s Word must be central to everything we do. We need to delight in it, preach it, study it, listen to it, sing it, memorize it, pray it, and above all believe and obey it. Any man who seeks to undermine God’s Word is a wolf and should be chased away from the sheep.

Third, we must show dependence upon God by steadfastly seeking him in prayer and thankfulness to him by rejoicing in all his kindnesses to us.

Fourth, we must preach the Gospel, calling upon men to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or they will perish in eternal fire.

Fifth, we must work to disciple the men.  For our country to change our homes must be in submission to Christ. This begins with godly husbands and fathers who love their wives and train their children.

The Church Friendly Family: Part II

Here is another set of quotes from The Church-Friendly Family.  These are all from the second half of the book where Pastor Rich Lusk discusses, Missional Parenting, What Is Marriage For?, and The Blessed Family.  Pastor Lusk uses the word missional, which he knows is a buzz word. By using that word he just means that our kids to be raised to be sent out into the world. He says you can substitute the word "apostolic" from the phrase "one holy, catholic, and apostolic church," if you wish. 

“The word for training [in Ephesians 6:4] in Greek is paideia. It is an all-encompassing term which essentially means our children are to be socialized into the life and culture of the kingdom of God.” (p. 62)

“If God has blessed our families with salvation, he wants us to be instruments of blessing others with salvation as well.” (p. 63)

“We raise moral children as an end in itself, but we do not reach the ultimate missional goal of raising children who can reach the world with the blessing of the gospel. Parents and pastors alike simply must get this: We should not aim at familiocentric churches, but at ecclesiocentric families. Raising children rightly is simply a stepping stone, it’s penultimate. The real goal is to plug our children into the mission of the Church.” (p. 64)

“It is crucial to understand that in the Old Testament righteousness and justice are not concepts or doctrines we are to think about, but rather are things we do and practice in the world.” (p. 69-70. He is commenting on Genesis 18:19)

“There is a vital link between raising children and the mission of the Church, and this means parenting must have a missional flavor…You don’t raise godly children so you’ll have godly children. You raise godly children so they can carry forth the mission that God entrusted to Abraham in the beginning…Parental nurture feeds and supports kingdom mission.” (p. 73)

“If all you do is seek to protect your children, your parental endeavors are terribly incomplete. Parents are not engaged in a rear guard, defensive action. Genesis 18:19 calls us to offensive, missionally aggressive parenting.” (p. 74)

“Raising kingdom kids means a lot more than just raising kids who are ‘good Christians’ and stay out of trouble. It means more than teaching kids to pray and stay chaste. It means we as parents cannot allow our kids to settle for a privatized righteousness. We cannot settle for moral kids; we must raise missional kids, kids who learn to live with a sense of being ‘sent’ into the world with a divine mandate. That means raising children is a form of missionary training.” (p. 77)

“The issue [defense of marriage] will not be won on the political battlefield, but in the bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms, and family rooms of our homes. The best defense of marriage we can offer is…well our own marriages.  But for our marriages to defend marriage properly, they must be strong, healthy, beautiful and biblically formed.” (p. 82)

“The happiest marriages are not those that aim at marital happiness but that aim at the kingdom of God.” (p. 87)

“Marriage also teaches us humility by exposing our own sin. Marriage does not simply change who we are; it reveals who we are. Marriage is like a full length mirror for the heart.” (p. 92)

“This psalm [Psalm 128] shows us that the most important ingredient in a blessed family life is the faithfulness and godliness of the husband and father. If a man is not experiencing the blessing of God in his family life, it is not his wife’s fault, nor is it the children’s fault. It is the man’s fault.” (p. 101)

“What the world calls indoctrination and brainwashing, Paul calls raising our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (p. 109)