Setting aside the extraordinary offices of apostle, evangelist and prophet,15 Calvin taught that there were four offices in the church: pastor, teacher, elder and deacon,16 or three if one conflates pastor and teacher as two types of presbyter, as Calvin sometimes did.17 Calvin will focus his efforts primarily on the office of the pastor18 because of its central role in building the church from the Word of God.19 The pastor represents God on earth by speaking God’s Word authoritatively to his people,20 something personal Bible reading cannot do.21 The pulpit is therefore “the seat of God from which he wants to govern our souls.”22
Hence, the church must meekly receive the Word preached by pastors,23 for to reject it is to reject God.24 Because the pastor speaks for the Father, we are to regard him as a father to be respected in and outside of the pulpit.25 God chooses to speak to us through other men, not because he is incapable of speaking directly to us, but because we would be annihilated by the majesty of God.26 “God accommodates himself to our lowliness and weakness.”27 The pastoral ministry itself is the end of a lengthy process of God’s accommodation,
14
W. van ’t Spijker, “Calvin’s Friendship with Martin Bucer: Did it Make Calvin a Calvinist?” Calvin
and Spirituality, Calvin and His Contemporaries, Calvin Studies Society Papers, 1995, 1997 (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: CRC Product Services, 1998) 183.
15 Institutes 4.2.4. 16
Institutes 4.3.4.
17 Institutes 4.4.1; Reid, Treatises, 58, “Ecclesiastical Ordinances,” 1541; cf. Niesel, Theology of Calvin, 202; Parker, Calvin’s Thought, 136.
18 I. Backus, “Calvin’s Patristic Models,” 28-31; cf. Institutes 4.3.8, Calvin will call pastors
interchangeably bishops, presbyters or ministers.
19 Parker, Calvin’s Thought, 136.
20 Institutes 4.1.5; Commentary, Jer. 43:10; 50:2. Cf. Selderhuis, Pilgrim Life, 110. 21 Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 252.
22
“Sermon on 1 Tim. 5:17-20,” CO 53:520.
23 Sermons on Micah, 158.
24 Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 261-62.
25 CSW, Vol. 4, 144, Calvin to the Church of Geneva, June 25, 1539, CO 10b:352; cf. Commentary, 1
Thess. 5:12.
26 Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 259.
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which moves from creation, to Scripture, to Christ, to pastor and culminates in the sermon and sacrament, which finally we may receive.28
The pastor’s role was more than preaching, however. While Calvin will maintain two marks of the church, Word and sacrament, when it comes to defining the duties of a pastors, Calvin, following Bucer, would add to the duties of preaching and administering the sacraments a third duty: discipline.29 Calvin defines discipline as one duty which separates “teachers” from “pastors.”30
The true pastor is “to instruct the people to true godliness, to administer the sacred mysteries and to keep and exercise upright discipline.”31
Though Calvin may at times have subsumed discipline under the role of teaching to individuals,32 as in the annual pastoral home visit,33 pastors were required to “enjoin brotherly corrections,”34
to know their flock35 and grieve over the sins of individuals,36 all functions of pastoral care and discipline.
All three duties of the pastor had one core purpose: to build up the church. Preaching “is the edification of the Church.”37 The right administration of the sacraments was to nourish and protect the church, lest the Supper be “profaned by being administered indiscriminately.”38
Disciplining the morals of the church was necessary in order to build up the church as the holy bride of Christ.39 The pastor was therefore central to the life and health of the church. “Thus the renewal of the saints is accomplished; thus the body of Christ is built up.”40
This lofty understanding of the role of pastor as mouthpiece of God and builder of the Church of God would have a sanctifying effect. Men, realizing they were unworthy, would be humbled by a true call to such a lofty role (Principle 1, Two-fold Knowledge and Response). “We know that the whole authority belongs entirely to God, with regard to the doctrine of religion, and that it is not in the power
28 L. Carrington, “Calvin and Erasmus on Pastoral Formation,” Calvin and the Company of Pastors, Calvin Studies Society Papers 2003 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: CRC Product Services, 2004) 142-43. 29 M. Bucer, Praelectiones doctiis, in epistolam D. P. ad Ephesios (Basel: Peter Perna, 1562) 107:
“Truly there are three kinds of ministries: of teaching, of sacraments, and of discipline.” Cf. Holder, “Exegetical Understanding,” 181; McKee, Elders and the Plural Ministry, 25.
30
Institutes 4.3.4.
31 Institutes 4.3.6. 32 Institutes 4.3.6.
33 CO 18:236, Calvin’s letter to Olevianus, Nov. 1560; cf. Selderhuis, Pilgrim Life, 249. 34
Reid, Treatises, 58, “Ecclesiastical Ordinances,” 1541.
35 Sermons on 2 Samuel, 177.
36 Commentary, 2 Cor. 12:21; 1 Thess. 4:11. 37 Commentary, 1 Thess. 5:12.
38
Institutes 4.12.5.
39 Reid, Treatises, 58, “Ecclesiastical Ordinances,” 1541. 40 Institutes 4.3.2.
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of men to blend this or that, and to make the faithful subject to themselves. As God, then, is the only true teacher of the Church, whosoever demands to be heard, must prove that he is God’s minister.”41
At the same time, pastors must look upward to God for the ability to fulfill such a high calling (Principle 4, Rely on God). “There are peculiar endowments required for the prophetic, the apostolic, and the pastoral office, which are not in the power or at the will of men. We hence see that the hidden call of God is ever necessary, in order that any one may become a prophet, or an apostle, or a pastor.”42