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virtue. Obedience to the Word concerned society and Calvin
strove align reason, political will, and human desire with the Word
of God. Indeed, reforming Geneva was as critical a task to Calvin
as reforming the church.
I declared that a Church could not hold together unless a
settled government should be agreed on, such as is prescribed
to us in the Word of God, and such as in use in the ancient
Church. I requested that they would appoint certain of their
number who might confer with us on the subject. Six were
then appointed. 169
This required discipline and obedience, for as Calvin argued
―no society, indeed no house with even a moderate family, can be
kept in a healthy condition without discipline.‖ 170 Calvin was
involved in all aspects of life in Geneva. Some of the social
experiments he attempted failed and others have been decried as
heavy-handed and puritanical. Certainly, he did attempt to impose
his biblical rigor on all citizens regardless of their acquiescence.
Nonetheless his ardor to engage and apply God‘s Word to practical
civil matters have influenced Reformed thought ever since.
He succeeded in getting regulation hours and conditions of
labour; restriction of the task imposed upon women and
children; control of inflationary prices of bread, meat and
wine; the right to organize for unskilled, non-guild labour;
public investment in business enterprise to relieve
unemployment; subsidization of the work of the diaconate
from public funds; adoption of orphans as wards of the city;
and the like. What he fought for and did not get is nowhere
recorded. But so strenuously did he thrust the pulpit into
169 J. A. Wiley, The History of Protestantism, Vol. 2, (Available [Online]:
), [23 April 2000].
170 Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin, Geneva, and the Reformation: A Study of Calvin
as Social Reformer, Churchman, Pastor and Theologian, Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1990, p. 31.