“The Consistory is for fornicators, and I am no fornicator,” replied the Purse-Maker and former Anabaptist Jane Pignier to a direct question from Consistory member John Calvin in December, 1544 (1). Perhaps she was not, but the Consistory took note of her frequent association with Benoite Jacon, wife of Pierre Amyaux, who admitted adultery to the Consistory exactly one week previous. Benoite claimed that givine charity to one’s Christian brothers included “living with all men and that they are all her husbands,” and that she received by direct revelation from the Holy Spirit himself that fornication is not wrong.(2) When the Consistory summoned Jane Pignier, formerly imprisoned and subsequently banished from Geneva for Anabaptism, to inquire whether she now intends to “live according to the consent and union of the church of Geneva,” they could not pass up the opportunity to question her relationship with the promiscuous Madame Benoite Jacon. Such was their mandate.

The Consistory was the most important institution in Geneva for preservign the family. Prior to the Reformation in Geneva, the lifestyle of merchants resulted in an organized guild of prostitutes whose solicitation, though supervised by the city government, was encouraged.(3) Though Geneva was in decline, its prosperity was largely due to four annual trade fairs which brought merchants from as far away as Northern Italy.(4) Though these visiting merchants fueled the prostitution industry in Geneva, eventually some Saxon merchants began bringing Lutheran pamphlets and other literature which stirred feeling of Reformation and tilled the Genevan soil even before the arrival of William Farel from Bern. With the arrival of the Reformation in Geneva, the only approved lifestyle was the nuclear family: husband, wife, children, and some domestic servants if they could be afforded. Men and women were both strongly encouraged to marry once of appropriate age.(5)

The Consistory oversaw a vast array of cases. In the early years, however, it was primarily concerned with religious practices.(6) It was not until after the Reformation had gained a solid footing in Geneva that the Consistory turned its fullest attention to other matters. Among those important matters was their fervent desire to uphold the institutions of marriage and family. In its attempt to preserve the family and bring reconciliation between husband and wife, reconciliation which was often forced on the couple, the Consistory worked diligently and occasionally used the harshest means at is disposal to emphasize the importance of the family. The Consistory, however, had no power to punish beyond that of excommunication, so it often referred unrepentant cases to the city courts for trial and sentencing if blatant immorality was judged by the Consistory to be the cause of the rift. The Consistory, however, saw its purpose as corrective, not punitive. If punishment was needed, the Council took jurisdiction.(7)

All issues of a sexual nature were particularly important to the Consistory becuase they were all viewed as threats to the family. Fornication, homosexuality, and adultery were especially threatening.(8) Sexual offenses which threatened the institutions of marriage and family were treated quite harshly, sometimes even punished by death.(9) In spite of these harsh responses, the motive was to preserve and nurture the family. In cases where children were involved, the Consistory showed surprising care and compassion for the children, and also for unwed mothers.

[footnotes to follow]

More to come…

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Calvinism, History, Reformation | 2 Comments »

I once had the privilege of taking a seminar with Hughes Oliphant Old, and of all that he has written this is my favorite paraphraph. Consider it this week’s Lord’s Day meditation.

In our evangelistic zeal we are looking for programs that will attract people. We think we have to put honey on the lip of the bitter cup of salvation. It is the story of the wedding of Cana all over again, but with this difference. At the crucial moment when the wine failed, we took matters into our own hands and used those five stone jars to mix up a batch of Kool-Aid instead. It seemed like a good solution in terms of our American culture. Unfortunately, all too soon the guests discovered the fraud. Alas! What are we to do now? How can we possibly minister to those who thirst for the real thing? There is but one thing to do, as Mary, the mother of Jesus understood so very well. You remember how the story goes. After presenting the problem to Jesus, Mary turned to the servants and said to them, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). The servants did just that, and the water was turned to wine, wine rich and mellow beyond anything they had tasted before. [Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship Reformed According to Scripture, p176]

This Lord’s Day refrain from turning the church into a culturally relevant Kool-Aid stand and watch as God creates and forms his people through the unadulterated Gospel.

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Ecclesiology, Quotes | No Comments »

Wyman Richardson over at Communio Sanctorum recently posted Calvin Miller’s poem “My Easy Christ Has Left the Church” from Miller’s The Unfinished Soul.

I’m not sure what I think of it. Some of the indictments ring true, but to say that Christ has left the church? Read it for yourself: 

My easy Christ has left the church.
Who can say why?
Maybe it’s because His video-logged apostles all
read diet-books, travel agency brochures
and Christian fiction thrillers
on how the world should end
But none read books on what the starving ignorant
should do until it does.
He left the church so disappointed that Americans
could all spell “user friendly”
but none of them could spell “Gethsemane”

Can we say for sure he’s quit?
Oh yes, it’s definite, I’m afraid:
He’s canceled his pledge card.
I passed him on the way out of the recreation building
near the incinerator where we burn
the leftover religious quarterlies
and the stained paper doilies
from our Valentine banquets.
“Quo Vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
walking out of town past seminaries where
student scholars could all parse the ancient verbs
but few of them were sure why they had learned the art.
He shook his head counfounded that many
had studied all his ancient words
without much caring why he said them.
He seemed confused that so many
studied to be smart, but so few prayed to be holy.

Some say he left the church
because the part-time missionaries were mostly tourists
on short-term camera safaris,
photographing destitution to show the
pictures to their missionary clubs back home.
I cannot say what all his motives were.
I only know I saw him rummaging through dumpsters
in Djakarta looking for a scrap of bread
that he could multiply.
“Quo vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

He’s gone - the melancholy Messiah’s gone.
I saw him passing by the beltway mega-temple
circled by its multi-acred asphalt lawn,
blanketed with imports and huge fat vehicles
nourished on the hydrocarbons of distant oil fields
where the poor dry rice on public roads
and die without a requiem, in unmarked graves.

Is it certain he is gone?

It is.

We saw him in the slums of Recife,
telling stories of old fools
who kept on building bigger barns,
oddly idealistic tales of widows with small coins
who outgave the richer deacons of the church.

I saw him sitting alone in a fast-food franchise
drinking only bottled water and sorting through
a stack of world-hunger posters.
He couldn’t stay long.
He was on his way to sell his
old books on Calvin and
Arminius to buy a bag of rice for Bangledesh.

My easy Christ has left the church.
I remember now where I last saw him.
He was sitting in one of those new
square, crossless mega-churches
singing 2x choruses and playing bongos
amid the music stands and amplifiers
with anonymous Larrie and Sherrie.
He turned to them in church and said
“I am He! Follow me!”
But they told him not to be so confrontational
and reminded him that they
had only come for the music and the drama,
and frankly were offended that he would dare
to talk to them out loud in church.
After all, they were only seekers, with a right to privacy.

I followed him out through the seven-acre vestibule,
where he passed the tape-duplicating machine
where people could buy the “how to” sermons
of the world’s most famous lecturers.

He left the church and threaded his way
across the crowded parking lot,
laying down those whips and cords
he’d once used to cleanse the temple,
and looked as though he wanted to make
key-scrapes on Lexi and huge white Audis
and family buses filled with infant seats.

He stooped and shed a tear after
and wrote “Ichabod” in the sand.
In a sudden moment I was face to face with him.
“Quo vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
abandoning his all-star role in Easter pageants
to live incognito in a patchwork culture,
weeping for all those people who
cannot afford the pageant tickets.

He picked up an old junk cross,
lugging it into the bookstore
after the great religious rally,
and stood dumfounded
among the towering stacks of books
on how to grow a church.
“Are you conservative or liberal,” I asked him.
But he only mumbled, “Oh Jerusalem…”
and said the oddest thing about a hen
gathering her vicious, selfish chicks under her wings.
He left the room as I yelled out after him,
“Lord, is it true you’ve quit the church?
Quo vadis, Domine?”
“Somewhere else,” he said.

Your thoughts?

 

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Poetry, Quotes, Theology | 6 Comments »