Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority

Luther's On Secular Authority and Calvin's On Civil Government, translated here, attempt to find a balance between Reformed Christians and the secular authorities.

John Calvin (Author), Martin Luther (Author), Harro Höpfl (Edited and translated by)

9780521349864, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 September 1991

146 pages
21.3 x 13.7 x 0.8 cm, 0.2 kg

'Dr Höpfl has provided his readers with an excellent translation of two seminal reformation texts realting to secular authroity … It deserves to become a standard text for any concerned with sixteenth-century political thought.' Journal of Theological Studies

Martin Luther and John Calvin were the principal 'magistral' Reformers of the sixteenth-century: they sought to enlist the cooperation of rulers in the work of reforming the Church. However, neither regarded the relationship between Reformed Christians and the secular authorities as comfortable or unproblematic. The two pieces translated here, Luther's On Secular Authority and Calvin's On Civil Government, constitute their most sustained attempts to find the proper balance between these two commitments. Despite their mutual respect, there were wide divergences between them. Luther's On Secular Authority would later be cited en bloc in favour of religious toleration, whereas Calvin envisaged secular authority as an agency for the compulsory establishment of the external conditions of Christian virtue and the suppression of dissent. The introduction, glossary, chronology and bibliography contained in this volume locate the texts in the broader context of the theology and political thinking of their authors.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Translator's note
Chronology
Glossary
Notes on further reading
On Secular Authority
On Civil Government
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]