"In All This Love Will Be the Best Guide": John Calvin on the Christian's Resort to the Secular Legal System

Abstract

John Calvin was a student of law before he was a systematic theologian. Although he soon left behind a career in the law, his legal training and orderly mind are evident in his theological writings. While we must be wary of the simplistic and misleading assumption that the Institutes of the Christian Religion reads like a lawyer's treatise, we cannot deny that certain habits of mind dating from his law school days remained with Calvin when he turned to writing a comprehensive exposition of Christian doctrine.Scholars debate the extent to which particular elements of the Institutes were influenced by Calvin's legal training. Certainly the law of God is a prominent theme throughout the Institutes and especially in Calvin's treatment of the uses of the law and the Decalogue. But Calvin's familiarity with law and the legal system is demonstrated most clearly in a portion of the Institutes that has rarely received scholarly attention. Lodged within his treatment of civil government are several sections where Calvin discusses the attitude Christians should adopt towards the secular legal system. In these sections, and in his later commentary on The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, Calvin argues that a Christian is not barred from making use of the secular legal system, but warns against resort to litigation unless the Christian can bring the proper inner disposition — love — to the proceeding. Calvin's analysis is rooted in his reading of I Cor. 6:1-11, but also evinces a keen understanding of legal practice and of the psychological and moral costs of litigation.