ii

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION Scope of this Study Plan

CHAPTER ONE: FAREL THE MAN Overview of His Life and Ministry His Personality His Conversion

CHAPTER TWO: THE HEART OF FAREL’S THEOLOGY Farel’s Theology of God Farel’s Theology of Man

CHAPTER THREE: FAREL’S SOTERIOLOGY Justification by Faith God’s Sovereignty in Salvation Salvation’s Main Fruit: Faith

CHAPTER FOUR: FAREL’S ECCLESIOLOGY The Nature of the Church The Government of the Church The Church and the State

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 3 6

7 7

16 25

31 32 45

51 51 55 57

79 80 91 98

103

105

1

INTRODUCTION

Guillaume Farel is both famous and unknown. He is one of those many first-

generation reformers who are overshadowed by greater characters that came after

them. He is mainly famous for persuading John Calvin to settle in Geneva in October

1536, in order to help building up the Reformed church there four months after the

abolition of the Roman mass in the city. What is less often appreciated is that he also

played an essential part in bringing Calvin back to Geneva in 1541, through his

exhortations to him and to many others in Strasburg, Bern and Geneva.1 Visitors to

Geneva will also remember that he is one of the four characters represented in the

monument to the reformers in that city. His reputation is that of a fiery, but not

particularly thoughtful preacher, who laid the groundwork of the Reformation in

various Swiss cities, but who was more gifted at tearing down than building up. As for

his writings, they are generally dismissed as of mediocre quality compounded by a

heavy and convoluted style. “Better as an orator than as a writer, a man of action

rather than a man of thought”2 would be a typical appreciation of Farel. This

traditional view is true to some extent but somewhat simplistic and the fact remains

that few people have actually read his works or have any clear idea of what he

achieved during his ministry.

I do not propose to write a hagiography of Guillaume Farel, but to show that

he is worth rediscovering for several reasons: firstly, his writings, though modest in

comparison to those of other reformers, reveal a distinctive theology and piety and an

1 Jules Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle (Neuchâtel: Delachaux &

Niestlé, 1930), 440-443.

2 Gabrielle Berthoud, The Reformation, Many Men with One Idea (Geneva: Fondation Les Cléfs de St Pierre, 1985), 15.

2

original mind. Secondly, Farel’s concern in his writings was to educate the ordinary

believers of the laity rather than interacting with scholars. In fact, all of his works are

written in French except thirteen theses in Latin published in Basel in 1524.

Therefore, Farel’s writings give us an idea of how the basic tenets of the Reformed

faith would have been explained to the laity of the cities at an early stage of the

movement. Thirdly, Farel occupies an important role at the very beginning of the

Reformation as he began his ministry in the early 1520s, when the first works from

Luther were beginning to be available in France. Therefore, he bears witness to the

initial development of the Reformation in the French-speaking world before Calvin

appeared on the scene in the late 1530s. What also makes Farel interesting is his close

connection with ‘pre-reformers’ (as they are often called) like Jacques Lefèvre

d’Etaples (c.1455-1536), a scholar famous throughout Europe, or bishop Guillaume

Briçonnet (c.1470-1534), who is remembered for his attempt at reforming his diocese

of Meaux (north-east France). These people advocated or endeavoured clerical

reforms in France in the 1510s and 20s, but never left the established Church. A

comparison between his theological views and theirs, as far as is it possible, helps us

to reflect on what constitutes the core difference between Reformed theology and the

theology of the old Church. This is a particularly interesting question at a time when

some dispute the value of the Protestant Reformation or suggest that there is no longer

any substantial difference between the Roman Catholic and Reformed theologies. In

particular, I will argue that Farel’s writings illustrate the theological ideas that are at

the root of the Reformation: a high sense of God’s transcendence, sovereignty and

mercy, together with an acute sense of man’s depravity.

3

Scope of This Study

I propose to concentrate on Farel’s early writings from 1524 to the late 1530s

with the exception of a couple of later documents in which Farel gives important

information about his early life and conversion. There are two reasons for this: Firstly,

once John Calvin rose to prominence with the publication of the first edition of the

Institutes in 1536 and his arrival in Geneva a year later, it is generally acknowledged

that Farel was largely influenced by Calvin’s teaching,3 although such influence is not

so easy to ascertain in detail.4 Secondly, his later writings do not contain anything

significantly different from what he wrote in the early period of his ministry. The

corpus of Farel’s written works still extent today is not particularly large. This is

partly because some works and letters have been lost, but mainly because Farel was

more a pastor and evangelist than a theologian. As a consequence, he wrote little

although his correspondence is extensive, as is the correspondence of all the other

reformers.5 Farel would only write theological material if he felt it necessary.

Nonetheless, important and distinctive writings remain, especially in the early period

on which I am concentrating, and I will mainly draw on four sources that I will detail

briefly here in chronological order:

3 Charles Partee, “Farel’s influence on Calvin: a prolusion,” in Actes du Colloque Guillaume

Farel 1980, ed. Pierre Barthel, Rémy Scheurer and Richard Stauffer (Geneva: Cahiers de la Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, 1983), vol. 1, 173. Partee cautiously suggests that Farel probably had some influence on Calvin’s theology but is not very specific.

4 Most scholars studying Farel believe that he was strongly influenced by Calvin from the late 1530s onwards, which is difficult to prove, especially as Farel did not write many significant theological works in this later part of his life.

5 About 330 letters from Farel have been preserved. About three quarters are in Latin and the rest in French.

4

The first source is the thirteen Basel Theses.6 These are theses in Latin

published by Farel for a public debate at the University of Basel in February 1524,

soon after his arrival in that city. These theses encapsulate the new Reformed ideas on

faith and religious practices and challenge the key points of the traditional teaching

and liturgical practices of the Church.

The second source, also published in 1524, is a commentary on the Lord’s

Prayer and on the Apostles’ Creed in French: ‘Le Pater Noster et le Credo en

François.’7 It is the first Reformed exposition of these two texts in the French

language and it includes a valuable prologue that was later published separately. The

commentary on the Lord’s Prayer is itself in the form of a prayer. The Creed is a brief

commentary, largely inspired from a similar work by Luther, as we will see, but with

additional paragraphs from Farel. Interestingly, it is also written as a prayer addressed

to God. The importance and influence of these short documents should not be

underestimated as explained by Francis Higman who has published a critical edition

on the only extent manuscript:

These little books were published and disseminated almost more than any other texts in the French Reformation: the prologue three times, the Lord’s Prayer fifteen times, the Creed eighteen times. Because of their chronological priority they deserve attention as the first expression of Reformed piety in the French language. By their stylistic qualities, rhythmical and vibrant, they illustrate well Farel’s deep piety and burning conviction. These traits, thanks to this wide dissemination, have strongly influenced the piety and language of the French speaking Church.8 The third source is his most extensive and significant theological work: a

treatise commonly known as the ‘Sommaire and Brève Déclaration’, which I will

6 Alphonse Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue Française (Geneva: H. Georg, 1866-1897), vol. 1, 194. An English translation can be found in Steven Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities (Yale University Press, 1975), 69-70.

7 Guillaume Farel, Le Pater Noster et le Credo en François, ed. Francis Higman (Geneva: Droz, 1982).

8 Ibid., 26 (my translation).

5

hereafter refer to as the ‘Sommaire’.9 This is the first attempt to provide a systematic

summary of the new Reformed faith in the French language and, obviously, this

makes it significant for the history of the Reformation in France and Switzerland. It is

a small book divided in 42 chapters of unequal length dealing with specific points of

theology (from ‘God’ to ‘the day of judgment’) and addressed to educated lay people

newly converted to the new faith who needed help to grow in their understanding and

piety. It was long believed that the Sommaire was first published in 1525, but it is now

agreed that the first edition was in 1529, based on Farel’s own recollection and other

information available. That edition is now lost. One surviving copy of the Sommaire

is dated 1525 but that date has been shown to be almost certainly false. References to

the Sommaire in this study will be to a December 1534 edition republished in Geneva

in the 19th century which is regarded as the most accurate edition.10 Together with the

Sommaire, a few limited references will be made to Farel’s baptismal liturgy ‘Manière

et Fasson’ published in 1533, the first Reformed liturgy of its kind in French.11

The fourth and final source used is Farel’s correspondence (in French and

Latin) during the period which was preserved in the monumental edition of the

correspondence of the French-speaking reformers by Alphonse Herminjard in the 19th

century. Whilst many of Farel’s letters only deal with practical matters of no relevance

today some of them contain an exposition of his views on certain theological issues

and provide valuable insights into his piety and ministry. Among that correspondence,

9 “Summaire” in 16th century spelling. The full title is Sommaire et brève déclaration d’aucun

lieux fort nécessaires à chacun Chrétien pour mettre sa confiance en Dieu et aider son prochain [Summary and brief declaration of certain points most necessary for each Christian to put his trust in God and help his neighbour].

10 Guillaume Farel, Sommaire et brève déclaration d’aucun lieux fort nécessaires à chacun Chrétien pour mettre sa confiance en Dieu et aider son prochain (1534; repr., Geneva: Jules-Guillaume Fick, 1867).

11 Guillaume Farel, Maniere et Fasson (1533; repr., Paris: Cherbuliez, 1859).

6

I will mention a few prayers to God or exhortations to the readers in the form of a

letter that were either written for publication or were later published due to their

perceived value for Reformed readers.

Plan

In a first chapter, I will briefly locate Farel in the early European Reformation

by summarising his life and ministry and give a brief overview of his personality. I

will give particular emphasis to the narrative of his conversion. Unlike Calvin, Farel

did not shy from writing about himself and he wrote at length about his conversion on

a number of occasions. I will argue that his conversion had a decisive influence on his

theology. I will then look at the key ideas that constitute the heart of his theology and

see how his soteriology and ecclesiology derive from these ideas.

7

CHAPTER ONE

FAREL THE MAN

Overview of His Life and Ministry

Farel was born in Gap, in the French Alps, in 1489. 12 Like Luther, who was

born just six years before, he belonged to the first generation of reformers and he was

exactly twenty years older than Calvin. Farel outlived them both, dying in 1565 at 75

years-old, an unusually advanced age for the time. We know very little about his

childhood and education except that he came from a well-off family of the local

bourgeoisie whose members exercised the hereditary charge of notary public or served

in various ecclesiastical charges. Farel received an average education and refused to

join the army as his parents hoped, but rather requested to be allowed to continue

classical studies in Paris, a request to which his parents reluctantly assented. Little is

known for certain about the first twenty years of Farel’s life except that he seemed to

have a profound and naïve religious piety from his childhood, a piety that was shared

by his parents. Many years later Farel described a local pilgrimage in which he took

part with his family as a little child or, as he calls it, “the first notable idolatry I

remember.”13 This story is both a fascinating example of late-medieval piety (or

superstition) and a significant clue to the development of Farel’s theology and piety as

we will see below. It was a pilgrimage to a shrine on a hill near his native town of

Gap, which, like many others in Europe, was claimed to have fragments of the cross

of Christ. Pilgrimages were made to that cross to recover eyesight. Two fragments of

12 Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle remains the most thorough and

valuable source for Farel’s life.

13 Guillaume Farel, Du vrai usage de la croix de Jesus Christ (1560; repr., Geneva: Jules-Guillaume Fick), 147 (my translation).

8

wood had been made into a cross and were trimmed with copper which was said to

come from the basin in which Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. A little crucifix had

been attached to that cross. The priest claimed that despite the fact that the cross was

sometimes taken away and locked up in various places it would always come back on

its own on top of that hill. Farel then vividly describes people’s fear and ignorance at

the time in a story worth quoting in full:

The priest said that whenever stormy weather occurred the whole cross would shake. … but the crucifix, as the priest said, shook so much that it looked like it would come off as if it wanted to run after the devil. Moreover, he said that crucifix would throw out sparks of fire. Then a young woman came, looking as if she was devoted to nothing but the cross, which her baby was carrying covered in a linen. Then came the priest towards her and he took the woman and the child away into the chapel. I daresay that no dancer ever took a woman with a more eager face than those two had, but our blindness was such that neither their glances to each other nor even their disgusting groping appeared to us as anything but good and holy, for everything back then was holiness; everything was miraculous. To question anything would have been bold, for we would have been damned. It was clear that woman and that gallant priest knew what to think about the miracles and had that great cover for their encounters. … as for me I was very little and could hardly read. My father and my mother believed everything.14

Farel came to Paris to study humanities in 1509 and, due to the deficiencies of

his primary education, he did not complete his master in arts until 1517 when he was

appointed teacher in grammar and philosophy in the same college as Lefèvre

d’Étaples who played an essential part in Farel’s conversion. This appointment,

together with his family’s assets, would have allowed Farel to live a comfortable life

as a teacher in Paris, had he not left the old Church. This is confirmed by John Calvin

in a brief reference to Farel in his famous response to Cardinal Sadoletto in 1539. As

Sadoletto insinuated that the reformers’ zeal was more opportunistic than sincere,

Calvin responded by using Farel as an example, stating that if Farel wanted a

14 Ibid., 147 (my translation).

9

comfortable life, then, “he had already made attainments in literature which would not

have allowed him to suffer want, and he was of a more distinguished family than to

require external aid.”15 However, whenever Farel mentions his youth, the thing he

insists on is not his academic achievement, but his search for God. In a long letter in

Latin written to a friend in 1527,16 in which he reminisces about his youth in Paris and

his conversion, he mentions the thirst for devotion that consumed him. He read a great

deal, from the lives of saints, Aristotle, famous theologians and the Bible, but he

remained steeped in superstition and his piety was drying up.17 He sums it up in a

sentence that could no doubt apply to the views and piety of many humanists in that

early part of the 16th century: “Like many others, I wanted to be a Christian with

Aristotle, hoping that good fruit could come out of a bad tree.”18 It is during that time

that Farel, who was always a devout person and faithful to the established Church,

converted to the new ‘Lutheran’ faith (to use the adjective of that time19). The date of

his conversion is unknown; all that we know with certainty is that he was converted

by the first half of 1521 since he left his teaching career in Paris and started his

preaching ministry in Meaux in June 1521. Farel’s conversion is therefore very early

in the history of the French Reformation if we consider that the first works of Luther

15 John Calvin, “Letter to Cardinal Sadoletto” in Selected works of John Calvin, tracts and

letters, ed. Henry Beveridge, (1983; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker Books House,), vol. 1, 30.

16 Herminjard, Corrrespondance des réformateurs, vol.2, 41.

17 “pietatem deperiens, gravissima premebar superstitione…”

18 “Cum Aristotele, ut plerique omnes facere, Christianus esse volui, ab arbore mala bonos ex se edere foetus sperans.”

19 “Haeresis Lutheri” is the expression commonly used by the Sorbonne University to condemn

the new Reformed ideas, wherever they come from. See for example Jacques Lefevre d’Étaples, Epîtres et evangiles pour les cinquante & deux sepmaines de l’an, ed. M.A. Screech (Geneva: Droz, 1964), 41.

10

in Latin were only slowly being published in France from 151820 and some possibly

appeared in French as early as 1521 although evidence of this is lost.21

Indeed, from June 1521 to 1524 Farel became part of what has been called the

‘group of Meaux’, a group of preachers under the leadership of Guillaume Briçonnet,

bishop of Meaux (a diocese about 25 miles north east of Paris). Bishop Briçonnet was

one of these enlightened people who were conscious of the spiritual and moral

decadence of the Church and he decided to remedy that decadence in his diocese

through the appointment of itinerant teachers and preachers.22 Whilst Briçonnet

wanted to reform his diocese, the Reformation he had in mind was purely Erasmian, in

other words a moral and intellectual one, accomplished by the ecclesiastical

authorities. Briçonnet initially encouraged the reading of the New Testament in

French23, but he had no intention of changing the doctrine, the sacraments or the

liturgies. The fact that Farel had a much more radical ideas about reforming the

Church is clear from the fact that he was among the preachers that Briçonnet forced to

resign on 12th April 1523. Soon afterward, Briçonnet published two ordinances

(‘mandements synodaux’), one condemning Luther’s writings and the other to

reaffirm the existence of purgatory and the necessity to pray for the dead and to the

Virgin Mary and the saints.24 After a brief itinerant ministry in France, Farel left

France to Switzerland in December 1523, never to come back. From then on, Farel’s

20 Francis Higman, Les débuts de la Réforme en France 1520-1565 (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1992), 19. Froben, the famous printer from Basel, informed Luther in February 1519 that he had sold 600 copies of his works in France.

21 Bruce Gordon, Calvin (Yale University Press, 2009), 12. 22 Ibid., 14-17. 23 Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 115n2. A French translation of the

gospels by Lefèvre d’Étaples was published in Paris on 8th June 1523 and the entire New Testament on 6th November.

24 Briçonnet, letter to his Diocese, in Herminjard, Corrrespondance des réformateurs, I, 153; Briçonnet, letter to his clergy, in Herminjard, Corrrespondance des réformateurs, I, 156.

11

life and ministry would be divided into two quite distinct periods: the first and better

known of the two, from January 1524 to his expulsion from Geneva in April 1538, is

the pioneering period: Farel’s ministry would be that of an itinerant preacher, akin to

what we would call today a ‘church planter’. It is during this period that he wrote his

most significant works on which I will concentrate. The second and longest period is

the one of his pastoring in Neuchâtel until his death in 1565. Farel’s ministry during

the first period makes him an original figure in the Reformation on the continent. All

other Reformed churches were created by members of the clergy in city parishes who

converted to the new faith and started teaching it to their people. Indeed, all other

great continental Reformers have become associated to a certain place: Luther with

Wittenberg, Zwingli with Zurich or Bucer with Strasburg. Conversely, from 1524 to

1538 Farel sought to evangelise various places in Switzerland, most notably Basel, the

county of Montbéliard, Bern, Aigle, Neuchâtel and Geneva and many villages around

these towns. His method included public disputations based on theses published in

advance, a common method at the time, but also preaching in the street, door to door

evangelising or sometimes attempting to preach in churches during the mass with the

reaction that can easily be imagined. The vicissitudes of his ministry are fairly well

documented and aptly summarised by historian Owen Chadwick:

Farel was an itinerant, protected only from stones or lynching by letters from the Berne Government which he carried on his person. If they threw him out of town he was soon back… Priests hid their relics and monks hid their valuables when they heard that he was on the way. He arrived at a church during mass and preached with such vehemence that that the people started taking down the images and the priests fled in vestment to the manse.25

25 Owen Chadwick, The Early Reformation on the Continent (Oxford University Press, 2001),

123.

12

Another peculiar technique of his was to start legal proceedings for slander

against those who insulted him, in order to have an opportunity to expound the

Gospel, or calling priests “thieves” or “murderers of souls” in order to be sued.26 In

February 1528 the city of Bern embraced the Reformed faith and, from then on, Farel

would act under Bernese authority which would give him the authority he needed to

be heard.27 Hence, the itinerant nature of Farel’s ministry was not only due to the fact

that he was evicted from the towns in which he preached, although this happened on a

number of occasions, but also to a deliberate strategy for the propagation of the new

faith throughout the French-speaking area of Switzerland and one day, he hoped,

France.

One thing that is striking about Farel’s ministry is the natural authority that he

acquired in the Reformed world, an authority that no doubt stemmed from this mixture

of zeal, energy and godly integrity. An event that illustrates this point, and which is

also significant in itself, is his influence at the Waldensian Synod of Chamforan in

1532 at which the Waldensian community decided to embrace the doctrines of the

Reformation. This event illustrates the point because the agreement of the

Waldensians to join the Reformation movement was anything but a foregone

conclusion and, from what we know, Farel’s influence was decisive. The Waldensians

formed the oldest ‘heretical’ religious community in Continental Europe and their

origin is usually traced to the teaching of Pierre Valdo, a merchant from Lyon in the

late 12th century although nothing certain is known about their origin.28 After much

persecution, the two main groups of Waldensians left at the beginning of the

26 Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 23. 27 Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002), 149-151.

Gordon provides a useful summary of the progress of the Reformation in French speaking Switzerland.

28 The few hard facts that are known are summed up in a couple of histories written about them, for example J. Gonnet and A. Molnar, Les Vaudois au moyen-âge, (Turin: n.p., 1974).

13

Reformation were located in Provence and, especially, in the French and Italian Alps,

between Farel’s province of origin, Dauphinée, and Piedmont. At least, it is in these

areas that they were numerous and isolated enough to openly practice their different

beliefs. These beliefs and practices are not entirely documented either, but what is

certain is that they were characterised mainly by the rejection of certain beliefs and

doctrines of the official Church like prayers for the dead or the purgatory and the

priesthood (they were led by elders called ‘barbes’ chosen among the oldest and most

knowledgeable among them). They were also known for their moral integrity and

especially their attachment to the Scriptures. However, in many other ways they seem

to have conformed to the outward behaviour of an ordinary medieval ‘orthodox

Christian’, including for instance confession and receiving sacraments.29 They were

no precursors of the Reformation as many of the reformers’ doctrines, like the total

depravity of man, the sovereign election of believers by God and justification by faith

alone were unknown to them. The Waldensians quickly sensed that they had to take

side for or against the Reformation and the Chanforan synod was organised precisely

to clarify the points of the reformers’ doctrines that the Waldensians were unsure

about. Waldensian barbes asked the Reformed congregations in Switzerland to send

authoritative leaders to explain the Reformed doctrines and Farel was chosen with his

assistants Antoine Saunier and Louis Olivier.30 What we know for sure about the

synod is that the discussions were long, that several barbes strongly opposed the

reformers’ ideas, but that the synod eventually approved the reformers’ doctrine at a

large majority. This seems to have angered many of the oldest barbes who sought help

29 Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford University Press, 1991), 77.

30 Author of the first translation of the Bible in French from the original manuscripts, published

in Neuchâtel in 1535.

14

from other groups in Bohemia,31 complaining that the synod had effectively turned its

back on their ancestral faith.32 What is interesting from our perspective is the fact that

Farel’s intervention almost certainly caused the synod to decide in favour of the

Reformation, despite the opposition of many older members. In addition to this, Farel

noticed the handwritten copies of the Bible in vernacular language used by the

Waldensians and he “strongly exhorted the brothers saying that it would be highly

necessary to rewash33 the Bible in the French language from the Hebrew and Greek

languages.”34 The Waldensian synod agreed to give 500 gold écus on the spot to

finance the new translation. This shows both Farel’s ability to cease any opportunity

for the gospel and his power of persuasion, two qualities that would be on display in

Geneva.

Farel came to Geneva for the first time in June 1532 and he spent an increasing

amount of time there until the official adoption of the Reformed faith by the city and

the prohibition of the mass on 21st May 1536. Calvin would arrive four months later

when Farel convinced him to stay during that famous encounter. Farel then dedicated

himself to organising the new Reformed faith and worship in Geneva with Calvin and

Pierre Viret. Calvin paid homage to both men’s tireless work in November 1549 when

he dedicated his commentary on Titus to both of them:

John Calvin to two eminent servants of Christ Guillaume Farel and Pierre Viret, his dearly beloved brethren and colleagues… The task of putting the finishing hand to that building, which Paul had begun in Crete, but left

31 A secret society in Bohemia called the “Unitas Fratrum”, composed of Waldensians and of a

few remaining “Taborites”, a similar heretical movement crushed by the authorities in 1453. 32 Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 293. 33 “repurger”.

34 Louis Olivier [Olivétan], Epître à ses frères fidèles en Notre Seigneur, Hilerme Cusemeth

[Farel] et Antoine Almeutes [Saunier], quoted in Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 292.

15

incomplete, was undertaken by Titus. I occupy nearly the same position with regards to you. When you had made some progress in rearing this church with vast exertions and at great risk, after some time had elapsed, I came first as your assistant, and afterwards was left as your successor...35

Farel and Calvin were both expelled in April 153836 and this marks the beginning of

the second part of Farel’s life which has attracted much less attention, partly because

attention shifts to Calvin at that point and partly because he settles in a long pastoral

ministry in Neuchâtel and his life is relatively less eventful. It is quite telling that the

few biographies of Farel written in the English-speaking world (usually written for a

young audience and presenting Farel as a sort of Prophet Daniel of the Reformation)

almost entirely concentrate on that first period. For example, Frances Bevan’s

biography published in the 19th century and frequently republished dedicates 51

chapters out of 52 to his life until 1538.37

In 1538 Farel was called by the city of Neuchâtel to become its first pastor, a

function that he kept until his death. His ministry in that period was aptly summed up

by one of his best biographers: “no longer evangelist but pastor and churchman; no

longer Berne’s agent but Calvin’s lieutenant.”38 Farel essentially dedicated himself to

his city and assisted Calvin in the many controversies he had to face during those

years. His duties on Sunday included, among other things, preaching twice in the

morning (once at the city hospital, once in church), leading the children catechism at

35 John Calvin, Commentaries (repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979), vol. 21, 275. 36 Gordon, Calvin, 63-81. 37 Frances Bevan, The life of William Farel (repr., Bible Truth Publishers, 1975).

38 Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 417.

16

midday and preaching again in the evening. He also preached at the hospital on

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.39

The nature of Farel’s ministry during the first period of his life, as described

above, must be borne in mind as we study the works written during that period: these

works do not contain elaborate theological arguments for a scholarly audience, but are

a simple exposition of the Reformed faith, usually in sermonic form and with a

polemic dimension, written for the urban laity of the French speaking world as part of

Farel’s preaching ministry.

His Personality

In addition to the context of the time and Farel’s ministry, we need to say a

few words about his personality insofar as it helps us to understand his theological

ideas. Owen Chadwick sums up the traditional portrait of Farel:

Well-educated and yet no thinker, but an evangelist, bold and rash, brimming with energy and simplicity of faith. His sermons were a storm at sea… to persuade the thoughtful he was of little use. As a writer he was heavy and confused. As an orator of the people he was agreed to be the most powerful that that age knew.40

This description, based on a limited number of testimonies, must be nuanced:

Farel’s bold language and seemingly rash behaviour must be placed into the context of

his age which witnessed the equally flowery language of Luther’s polemical works

and the bawdy fictional works of Rabelais, an age when reformers were burned and

anabaptists were drowned in lakes. Secondly, whilst it is clear that Farel’s methods

39 Articles for the Reformation of Neuchâtel edicted by the City Council in 1541, quoted in

Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 460.

40 Chadwick, Early Reformation, 123.

17

and language did worry some of his friends in the initial period of his ministry, it is

equally clear that Farel gradually became more moderate after a few years and that,

whilst he sometimes lacked discernment in his preaching and his assessment of

people, he never lacked compassion for the lost.

This trait comes out clearly from his correspondence in the late 1520s. When

in 1524 Farel spent the summer evangelizing the small duchy of Montbéliard in the

Jura mountain between France and Switzerland, his friend and mentor Oecolampadius

wrote to him three times in a month to express his concern. In a first and remarkable

letter, dated 2nd August 1524, he warns Farel about excessive optimism after the initial

success of his preaching:

I am pleased with the extraordinary progress of Christ’s gospel through your work… It is good that you have found such a fertile field and that the seed has grown so quickly, but we will only rejoice if such fruit is fruit in Christ, if our hope is not disappointed or at least not through our own fault, if our ministry is faithful and beyond reproach. Strive to make people not knowledgeable but better; they will then be true scholars taught by God. Indeed, it is easy to proclaim some dogma to people’s ears but to change hearts is a divine work.41

In the last one, dated 29th August, Oecolampadius is more clearly concerned about

Farel’s methods and behaviour from reports he has heard from someone:

While praising your tireless zeal and indomitable energy and your happy successes he told me that you pour a flood of invectives on the priests. I know what they deserve and in what way it is proper to describe them, but I would still say to you amicably (I speak as a friend and a brother) that you do not seem entirely aware of your mission. You were sent not to curse, but to evangelize… In your immoderate zeal you seem to forget the weakness of your brothers. They did not all embrace the priesthood through bad motives. Many did it through ignorance, constrained by their parents, many attracted by the

41 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.1, 253. “Gaudeo mirum in modum rem Christi per te

incrementia isthic sumere… Bene quod tam uberem agrum nactus es et quod tam brevi seges provenit; sed tum beati erimus si fructum Christo attulerit, si spes non elusa fuerit, aut saltme nostra culpa id non contingat, si ministerium inculpatum et fidele numquam makle audire coeperit. Dabis operam non ut doctos sed bonos, hoc est, vere doctos et qeodidaktouV multos gignas. Facile enim est aliquot dogmata auditorium instillare et inculcare auribus: anumum autem immutare divinus opus est”.

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beauty of the vocation, many through superstition. Whilst they did not enter through the door they did not all have a thief’s soul. Ask yourself whether Christ would always treat hardened heart according to your method and do what would do the living Christ in you from whom you must learn meekness and humility.42

However, Farel’s piety and humility are also praised by his contemporaries and come

out from his own letters. A good example of this – and a good illustration of Farel’s

personality and evangelistic methods - is a public dispute he had with a monk in

Vevey on Lake Geneva. The Bernese council had authorised the nuns of a local

convent to organise a public collection for their needs.43 In November 1527, while

collecting wine from people in the streets of Vevey a monk of a mendicant order had

publicly declared that Farel’s doctrine was against God and those who listened to him

were damned. Farel caught up with the monk on the road as he was leaving the city

and, walking alongside him, challenged him to prove his assertions. The monk

became furious and the discussion caused a public commotion until both Farel and the

monk were jailed. As they appeared before the local council and a Bern representative

a few days later, the monk admitted he had slandered Farel and asked for forgiveness.

We know about this episode because Farel felt the need to write to the nuns of Vevey

to justify his behaviour and ministry and to take the opportunity to expound the gospel

to them.44 Farel describes the monk’s repentance with emotion. As the monk knelt

42 Ibid., I, 265. “Is quum mire extulisset sedulitatem infatigabilem ardoremque inextinguibilem

et satis felicem successum subdidit quod in sacrifices imbres effundas convitiorum. Non ignoro quid illi mereantur et quibus coloribus depingi debeant: pace tamen tua dexerim, amicus et frater fratri, non videris per omnia officii tui reminisce. Evangelizatum non maledictum missus es… Immodico zelo videris fraternae infirmitatis parum memor. Non omnes pessimo animo sacerdotio illo polluto fngi coeperunt: multi ignorantes, multi a parentibus coacti, multi inoptia destitui, multi puchritudine ministerii allecti, multi superstitione, non per januam ingressi sunt non tamen furandi animo… Cogita num eadem illa semper Christus ingereret obduratis et fac quae Christus in te vivens faceret a quo discas mititatem ac humilitatem”.

43 Ibid., vol.2, 66n6. The town of Vevey was under Bernese control. The Bern government had

banned public collections from mendicant orders but agreed to make an exception on that occasion.

44 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.2, 64.

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down asking for forgiveness Farel told him, “my brother and friend do not ask me for

mercy for before I had seen you I had forgiven everything you said against me,

praying God for you. But what is at stake here is the doctrine that I preach on which

depends God’s honour. As for me I am a poor sinner like the others, putting my trust

not in my own justice or good deeds but in Jesus’s death.” As the Bern representative

challenged him once more to prove that Farel was not preaching the gospel faithfully,

“the brother threw himself on his knees once again begging for mercy to the lord

(from Bern) and to me, which made me ashamed and I prayed him to ask mercy to the

Lord and advance his honour.”

Apart from that remarkable example of piety and humility, the fact that Farel

spent the final twenty-seven years of his life pastoring the same town of Neuchâtel,

despite many trials and many frictions with the Town council is also evidence of his

dedication, patience and pastoral abilities.

Farel’s personality also shines through his writing style and I believe it is

useful to say something about this because style and rhetoric were important issues for

16th century reformers and humanists. The common assertion that Farel’s writings are

mediocre and confused seems to be justified for his idiosyncratic Latin style as Farel

himself admitted that he never fully mastered that language despite years of study. He

wrote to Calvin to lament that fact in 1550:

I am never happy with myself…I cannot get rid of my expressions and solecisms. My style lacks clarity…here are my letters to Bucer. Do not read them but have them read by some idle person. Why should I tire you with my ineptitude? If you have time, have someone read some of them to you, you will do me a favour by reproaching me as I deserve.45

45 Farel to Calvin, 27th August 1550, quoted in Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie

Nouvelle, 25.

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What about his French style since most of the works quoted in this work are

from his French works? Again, it may appear wordy and convoluted to a modern

reader. Jason Zuidema and Theodore Van Raalte explain that, in their translation of

the Sommaire, “the often obtuse sentences of the original have been smoothed out for

clarity and readability.”46 Farel’s apparent wordiness is always unfavourably

compared to Calvin’s concision and one episode is often quoted in that respect: When

in 1549 Farel wrote a long treatise in French against the libertines ‘Le glaive de la

parolle veritable’ (‘the sword of the true word’), he repeatedly asked Calvin for

comments and it is clear that Calvin had reservations about the work because he was

reluctant to respond. Eventually, Calvin got away with an indirect criticism: “You

know how much respect I have for Augustine and yet I cannot hide that I dislike his

prolixity. My concision may be dry and I do not intend to discuss the merits of each

method… I only fear that the somewhat convoluted style [of the book] and the

prolixity of the exposition may undermine the worthy parts that I have noticed.”47 So

can anything be said in favour of Farel’s style? Three things I believe.

Firstly, if a subjective, personal, opinion may be adduced here, I do not find

Farel’s style difficult to follow, apart from a few sentences of excessive length, and

the Sommaire, his shorter works and his correspondence do not seem to me much

harder to read or more stylistically confused than Calvin’s treatises or correspondence.

Indeed I believe the comparison with Calvin is somewhat unfair because

commentators often compare Farel’s works with Calvin’s Institutes or commentaries.

Calvin’s style is rightly praised for its clarity, but the Institutes and the commentaries

46 Jason Zuidema and Theodore Van Raalte, Early French Reform, the Theology and

Spirituality of Guillaume Farel (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History: Ashgate, 2011), 30.

47 Calvin to Farel (1549), quoted in Jean-Francois Gilmont, Jean Calvin et le livre imprimé (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 167.

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were conceived from the start as books to be studied and were composed in a polished

‘written’ style. Conversely, what strikes the reader of Farel’s writing is the oral nature

of his style. One feels that the prayers to God and the exhortations from the pulpit are

always present behind the text. Therefore, the main difference with Calvin’s style is

that in Farel the gap between the ‘oral’ and ‘written’ styles is limited and I believe that

Farel’s style would compare favourably to Calvin’s correspondence, sermons and

polemical works. In fact, as Jean-François Gilmont notes in passing in his interesting

analysis of Calvin’s style, Calvin’s main objection against the publication of his

sermons was that they were too long-winded and not polished enough.48 Secondly, it

is interesting that the scholars who studied Calvin’s style in his historical context like

Gilmont or Francis Higman49 noted that for many 16th century authors, it is concision,

not long-windedness, which is a criticised because they feel it entails a lack of clarity.

Gilmont for example notes how Pierre Fabri, a famous rhetoric expert, in his book

‘Great and true art of full rhetoric’ published in 1521 states that, when it comes to

translating texts, “if the substance is brief and obscure it must be expanded to make it

clearer.” Fabri seems to take it for granted that concision is a source of obscurity and

he is one example among several. Similarly, the translator in French of Calvin’s

commentary on Isaiah indicates in his introduction that Calvin reworked the text “to

clarify what could be obscure because of brevity.”50 What appears long-winded to us

may have been a guarantee of clarity in a civilization in which vernacular languages

were only slowly becoming used for prose and sustained argumentation.

48 Ibid., 169.

49 Francis Higman, The Style of John Calvin in his Polemical Treatises (Oxford University

Press, 1967). 50 Gilmont, Calvin et le Livre Imprimé, 168.

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In fact, and this is the third remark, the quality of Farel’s style is confirmed by

the most objective criteria of all: popularity. His French treatises were very successful

which shows that they were clear enough to the original readers and I refer again to

Higman’s assessment of the popularity of these works quoted on p.5 above. We may

suppose that the popularity of his writings is due to the same reasons as for his

sermons. In his study on what moved people to embrace the Reformation, historian

Andrew Pettegree quotes with approval another scholar’s study on preaching in

Scotland whose description of those sermons apply quite well to Farel:

What strikes the modern readers… are the repetition of themes, so useful for oral transmission of complex ideas; the frequency of numbered lists of ideas, again a practical device to aid memory; the simplicity and vividness of the language; and the combination of rather dry exposition of text – purely a transmission of data and doctrine – with intensely emotional and evocative language in exhortation.51

If we keep in mind that assessment whilst reading Farel, we can understand

that, despite any reservation we may have about his style, it admirably fulfils his

education and persuasion purposes.

Coming back to Farel’s education, we can say that despite his struggles with

Latin, he had received a solid education and was more influenced by humanist culture

than he is often credited for. In that respect, Euan Cameron’s distinction between

humanist and non-humanist reformers and his assertion that Farel was never a

humanist is disputable. Cameron wonders, “just why these figures [Karlstadt, Zell of

Kaysersberg and Farel] were so little touched by renaissance humanism.”52 The

meaning of “humanism” is debated by scholars. Some suggest that is it ultimately

51 Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, CN:

2002) 50, quoted in Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35.

52 Cameron, The European Reformation, 175.

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characterised by an attempt to recover the “spoken eloquence” of Ancient Rome and

Greece.53 Perhaps this is too limitative. A passionate rediscovery of ancient languages

and culture on order to rethink the world is, I would suggest, the best definition and

Farel is definitely a man of his time in that respect. A good illustration can be found in

chapter 39 of the Sommaire about the education of children. Farel does not hesitate to

say that parents should seriously consider teaching their children Latin, Greek and

Hebrew, if they can afford it and if their children show adequate linguistic abilities.

This, says Farel, would be most useful not only for a right intelligence of the

Scriptures, so that children may “drink from the fountain”, but also for them to see

“how wonderful God is in his works, how mutable men are and so that they may learn

what has been written about nature, about animals, trees and plants and other things

God created to serve man.” 54 Learning classical languages in order to better

understand the Scriptures and the created world: this is as ‘humanist’ as one gets in

1529.

Farel himself would agree that he was no first rate theologian and he was

conscious of Calvin’s superiority in that respect. In 1552 he wrote to a printer that his

Sommaire was no longer necessary since Calvin’s Institutes were in print. It is worth

quoting his words full of humility and admiration for his younger friend:

John Calvin, my good and faithful friend has, in his Institutes, so comprehensively treated all the points I touched upon in my booklet that he has surpassed not only what I have said in my booklet, but also what I could say, so there is no longer any need for me or others to write about these things. Let all those who read my booklet turn to these beautiful Institutes and they will no longer need my smallness, nor will they need to bother to read my booklet.55

53 Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (London: Blackwell,

2004), 34. 54 Farel, Sommaire, 110.

55 Epître aux lecteurs fidèles [annexed to the 6th edition of the Sommaire in 1552], quoted in

Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 354.

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Christian publishers are rarely requested by authors to discontinue publishing one of

their books on the ground that a better book on the subject is available so this

constitutes a notable example of humility. Given Farel’s main objective, always

present in his mind, to reach the ordinary lay reader, his theological writings are

affirmative rather than deductive: Farel does not write to engage with elaborate

theological arguments from other writers, but to affirm in clear and simple terms the

basic truths of the Gospel and denounce the errors of the Roman Church. Nonetheless,

Farel did have theological insights that bear his unmistakable personal mark as I will

show in the next chapters.

Whatever conclusion one reaches about Farel’s personalities and abilities, one

fact remains certain that will strike any reader of his works and his correspondence:

his zeal for the proclamation of the gospel, the unshakable certainty that he is right

and that the Roman Church is wrong and his compassion for those he believes are

straying away from God, even when they oppose the Gospel. A perfect example,

among many, of all these traits can be found in a long prayer written in 1543 to ask

God’s help for the adherents to the new Reformed faith persecuted in the Duchy of

Lorraine:

Lord, as you were pleased to change St Paul’s heart who was so violent and zealous against your word, have mercy on these poor priests, monks and all those who, through ignorance, contravene to your Word and try to destroy your Church and the doctrine of faith for they do not know what they are doing.56

The reason for his zeal, his desire to proclaim the gospel to the laity in simple terms

and his passion in preaching and evangelising is largely explained by the

circumstances of his conversion and this is the last important aspect of his personality

56 Farel, Du vrai usage de la croix, 287.

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to which we must turn before looking in some detail at the fundamental aspects of his

theology and piety.

His Conversion

The reality of what we would call today ‘conversion’ 57 is undeniable in the

life of the reformers and few reformers were more thoroughly changed by their

religious conversion than Farel. As Reformation historian Euan Cameron rightly says,

the personal motives for the reformers’ conversion are ultimately inexplicable, but one

did not become a first-generation reformer by habit, compulsion or default. As he puts

it, “they were some of the most conscientious revolutionary ever to rebel against

authority.”58 Farel was certainly conscious that his conversion was a momentous

rebellion against the established religious authorities and he was so marked by the

experience that he has given accounts of his conversion several times, the most

detailed of which is in a short treatise in the form of a letter dated 1548.59 This treatise

is written to warn new converts to the Reformed faith against apostasy or nicodemism.

In order to dissuade them against any compromise with Rome, Farel writes at length

about the deeply rooted superstitions of his youth and the difficulties he had in giving

up his former beliefs. In so doing he describes the process of his conversion with

remarkable insight and identifies four different steps in his conversion: his first doubts

came from reading the Bible and his surprise to discover the discrepancy between

what he read in it and the beliefs and practices of the Church he saw around him.

However, says Farel, Satan soon convinced him that he did not understand the

57 In the 16th century, “conversion” was more or less equivalent to monastic vows.

58 Cameron, The European Reformation, 185. 59 “Epistre à tous Seigneurs”, in Farel, Du vrai usage de la croix.

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Scriptures properly and that he should trust the judgment of the Church. The following

steps occurred through his relationship with Lefèvre d’Etaples from the mid 1510s.

Despite his superstitious devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints at that time,

Lefèvre was aware that the Church needed reforming and told Farel several times that

he felt that God was about to “renew the world” and that Farel would witness it.60 His

relationship with Lefèvre had two consequences: his great admiration for the devotion

and scholarship of the man and the persecutions that he was enduring from the

Sorbonne for several of his publications at the time began to open Farel’s eyes about

the true nature of the Church authorities. Then, Lefèvre convinced him that one cannot

deserve anything in God’s eyes, that salvation is entirely of grace and that the only

merit that matters is Christ’s merit. That new understanding of grace was the second

step of his conversion. A modern reader of his testimony may be tempted to think that

Farel was fully converted to the new Reformed faith at this point. Are not Sola Gratia

and Sola Fide the cornerstones of it? But for Farel that was not yet the case because he

still invoked the Virgin Mary and the saints, as Lefèvre himself continued doing for a

while. As Farel explains, neither he nor Lefèvre realized the contradiction between

trusting only in Christ’s merits and the invocation of the saints. As he puts it:

So I persevered (in error) having my pantheon in my hearts with so many advocates, so many saviours and so many gods… that I could have been a papal register of martyrs… and I had won the crown of malediction, torment and death for I served days and nights the Devil according to the man of sin, the Pope.

Then Lefèvre understood that since only Christ’s merits mattered then only Christ

should be prayed, and he convinced Farel, with difficulty that it was so. It is worth

letting Farel spell this out in his own words:

60 “Guilelme, oportet orbem immutari et tu videbis!” Farel to Conrad Pellican (1556), in

Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.1, 481.

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Although I easily accepted that there is no other merit but Jesus’s merit… it was hard to accept the pure invocation of God because I had so much trust in the Virgin Mary and the Saints to whom I would mumble endlessly hours, prayers and invocations day and night… but in the end, after bitter resistance… God allowed me to see that He alone must be invoked and that all invocation of the dead and of all those who are out of this world… is true idolatry. At that point the papacy was truly shaken in my heart and I began to hate it as a diabolical thing, upset as I was to have been deceived for so long, and the Holy Word of God began to have the first place in my heart… and I began to believe that all that did not comply with the Word of God was sin, evil and cursed and that the human laws and traditions that burden consciences are all abominable.61

Remarkably, Farel did not believe that his conversion was complete at that point

because there was one final obstacle to overcome:

Nevertheless, there still remained a big root of Satan’s spell [in Farel’s heart] in that I could not reject the mass, but I was still so spellbound by it that I thought that despite the evil I might see in it and whatever pit of curse might be in it, there was still much good and blessings in it… but above all I was for a long time blinded by its seduction because of the adoration of the bread and wine and the fact that I believed the body and blood of Christ were in them instead of bread and wine.62

Farel’s fascination for the Eucharist is by no means unusual and this reminds us of the

central importance of the sacraments in people’s mind at the time, as visible

embodiments of spiritual realities. The sixteen century reformers were not merely

arguing about abstract spiritual doctrines and the signs given by God to represent

those doctrines were inextricably linked to the doctrines themselves. This is a reality

that is sometimes underestimated by modern scholars who wonder why people at the

time spent so much energy arguing about the sacraments.63 In Farel’s case, as we will

61 Farel, Du vrai usage de la croix, 173. 62 Ibid., 173. 63 “The English reformers appear to have busied themselves chiefly with Eucharistic

controversies – unnecessarily drawing attention to their differences in doing so – rather than with the doctrine of justification.” Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei, A history of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2.285.

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see, this initial fascination for the Eucharist would lead him to focus more on

denouncing it than on explaining the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. It is clear that

Farel rejected early on any idea of physical presence of Christ in the elements, but he

never articulated his theological understanding of the Lord’s Supper in detail.

Although he was forced to take side in the controversies between Luther and the Swiss

Reformers (siding with the latter obviously) his focus remained on the denunciation of

the Eucharist as a deceitful practice. Tellingly, neither the early editions of the

Sommaire nor his 1533 liturgy of the Lord’s Supper (Manière et Fasson) contain

anything about his understanding of the sacrament, nor any thought on any ‘spiritual’

presence of Christ.64 The Liturgy simply contains the briefest reminder that the

sacrament was given as a memorial and that believers must take part in it through

faith. Coming back to the narrative of Farel’s conversion, he finally rejected that

“spell” by “God’s grace” and broke free from the Church of Rome.

The two things that strike the reader of the whole treatise is the acute

humiliation for having been deceived by the Church for so long and the difficulty in

breaking free from the institution and its practices. As he himself reflects at the end of

the treatise:

So it was that, having started to follow God and having been put in the right path of the Word of the Gospel, doing and walking as it commands, the things that the Pope commanded were so dear to my heart that I could not leave them without deep regret and it would have been very pleasant indeed to be able to do both together.65

64 Elfriede Jacobs, “Die Abendmahlslehre Wilhelm Farels” in Actes du Colloque Farel, 161. Jacobs takes the view that Farel followed Oecolampadius and Bucer early on but, again, the question of any spiritual presence of Christ in the elements does not appear to have been a central concern for him.

65 Farel, Du vray usage de la croix, 176.

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It is important to analyse Farel’s conversion narrative in detail because it contains

some remarkable features and, since conversion experiences often condition to a

significant extent theological outlooks and piety, this is especially so with in his case.

Despite common ideas about what constitutes the key ideas of the

Reformation, it is striking that the discovery of the Bible and the opposition between

salvation by grace and works are not the determinative factors of Farel’s conversion.

Sola Scriptura and Sola Gratia were not the main point because Farel’s central

problem was idolatry. The worship practices of the established Church were not just

deficient or corrupt piety, they constituted a false religion based on men’s

commandments rather than God’s and as such they were sinful and worthy of

damnation. In this we can see a striking difference (to which I will return) between

Farel and all the people that history books usually bundle under categories like ‘pre-

reformers’ or ‘Christian humanists’ (people as diverse as Savonarola, Briçonnet or

Erasmus for example) who simply wanted to reform morality and worship practices.

For Farel, the worship and practices of the old Church are beyond reforming. They

constitute a lie and a false worship and one must break free from them. We can also

see a significant difference with Luther that Carlos Eire has summed up well in his

study on the reformers and the Reformation of worship: “Farel’s conversion, unlike

Luther’s is not centred on the problem of faith and justification. His focus is false

worship and the satanic influence behind it.”66 Being driven away by Lefèvre from a

“false opinion of merit”67 as he calls it was only the first step. Renouncing the

intercession of the saints and the mass was the key. Farel’s question was not ‘how can

I be good enough to meet God’s standards’, but ‘what does true worship and a true

66 Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols, The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin

(Cambridge University Press, 1989), 188. 67 Farel, Du vray usage de la croix, 173.

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relationship with God look like?’ This also largely explains why the theme of

justification by faith, whilst clearly present in Farel’s thinking, is not the prominent

theme of his theology as we will see.

His conversion also explains the vehemence with which Farel repeatedly

denounces idolatry and false worship. This is the vehemence of someone who is angry

to have been deceived. In his study about the appeal of Protestantism to the urban

population of 16th century Germany and Switzerland, Steven Ozment argues that the

iconoclasm of the early Reformation period must be read as the violent response of

people who have been for a long time burdened with false religious beliefs and who

feel themselves fooled by something they had taken seriously.68 This analysis would

certainly apply to Farel and this is why on several occasions he used the story of his

conversion to warn people against idolatry or false doctrines. I will return to the

importance of Farel’s conversion as I now deal with the distinctive aspects of his

theology.

68 Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, 44.

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CHAPTER TWO

THE HEART OF FAREL’S THEOLOGY

As I said in the first chapter, Farel was not primarily a systematic theologian

and his main ministry was preaching and evangelizing. Therefore most of his writings,

even the few of them which are meant to be more systematic, are in sermonic form. In

one of the few studies on the Sommaire, Robert White writes, “Farel’s theological

expertise is not that of an original or systematic thinker. But it is that of a man who

has thoroughly mastered Scripture in the original tongues and who fully understands

its meaning.”69 Farel’s theology is expressed through affirmations more than

deductions and the heart of it is entirely set on a sharp contrast between two opposite

realities that I will now unpack in more details. Indeed, Farel likes articulating his

theological thinking around sharp contrasts and most of the Sommaire is articulated

along contrastive patterns, especially in the first chapters, as has been noted by White

and others:70 Apart from one chapter on Jesus Christ, the first 15 chapters of the

Sommaire are arranged in the following contrastive pattern: God and man; law and

gospel; sin and justice; flesh and spirit; incredulity and faith; merit and grace; men’s

traditions and the Scriptures. Some scholars have also noted the structural similarities

of the Sommaire with Zwingli’s ‘Commentarius de vera e falsa religione’ of 1525, for

example the fact that both books start with a contrast between God and man.71

However, Farel goes further than Zwingli in that respect. The one chapter on the

69 Robert White, “An early doctrinal handbook: Farel’s Summaire et breve declaration”,

Westminster Theological Journal, 69 (2007): 23. 70 Ibid., 23. 71 Gottfried W. Locher, “Farels Sommaire und Zwinglis Commentarius” in Barthel, Actes du

colloque Guillaume Farel, 142.

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gospel in Zwingli’s book is broken into several contrastive chapters.72 Moreover, the

same contrasts can also be found in many of Farel’s letters in which he expounds the

gospel. These contrasts no doubt have a pedagogical value for Farel’s audience, who

can easily remember the basic concepts of the Reformed faith, but they are also a

mark of his approach to theology.

The most fundamental contrast on which Farel’s theological thinking hinges is

the one between God’s glory and sovereignty on the one hand and man’s wickedness

and sin on the other. God’s glory and man’s sin are ever-present themes in Farel’s

mind with the consequence that man’s will is opposed to God’s will. In their recent

overview of Farel’s Sommaire, Jason Zuidema and Theodore Van Raalte correctly

identify this as the central theme from which the rest of his theological ideas flow

although they do not pursue this further in their study: “This clash of the divine and

human (viz. diabolical) wills, in a nutshell, is one of Farel’s recurring ideas.”73 The

reason why true pastors, who preach the Word of God faithfully, are persecuted, as

were the Lord Jesus and the apostles before them, is “to show that the strength of the

truth proclaimed by the servants of God is unbearable for the world and absolutely

opposed to it.”74 I will analyse this clash of will by looking first at Farel’s theology of

God and then his theology of man.

Farel’s Theology of God

To do justice to Farel’s theology of God it is helpful to divide this topic in two

parts, namely the knowledge of God and the attributes of God.

72 Ibid., 142. 73 Zuidema and Van Raalte, Early French Reform, 18. 74 Farel, Sommaire, 87.

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The Knowledge of God

Farel is not interested in what God is, but in what He is like. In other words,

there is no speculative thinking in his writings about the nature or the attributes of

God, not even in the Sommaire. In fact, one of the few critiques he faced about the

Sommaire is the lack of explicit reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1537, Farel

was accused, together with Calvin, of Arianism by Pierre Caroli.75 The two reformers

were quickly absolved of this accusation by a synod in Geneva in August 1537, but

the main arguments invoked by Caroli were the lack of reference to the Trinity in the

Geneva Confession of Faith drafted by the two reformers76 and the lack of reference to

it in the Sommaire. The accusation was absurd for both of them and Farel clearly

affirms the deity of the Son in his writings. Already in his 1524 commentary on the

Lord’s Prayer he writes about the heavenly Father having sent “his beloved Son, true

God and true man, Jesus Christ our unique saviour.”77 In the Sommaire, he states that

“in Jesus Christ dwells the whole Deity, not in appearance or image but bodily and

truly.”78 Nonetheless, Farel does not mention the word Trinity in the Sommaire (or his

other wirings) and does not discuss it at all. Farel candidly explains why in a later

edition: 79 he simply did not want to confuse the simple readers for whom he was

writing with these deep mysteries. What he is interested in, and what he wants his

75 Gordon, Calvin, 72-77. Pierre Caroli was a Parisian scholar who joined Bishop Briçonnet at

Meaux in 1521 and worked alongside the reformers in Switzerland. He later returned to Catholicism. 76 The authorship of the 1536 confession is debated. Older scholars, following Beza, attributed

it to Calvin whereas modern scholars would tend to attribute it mainly to Farel who officially presented it to the council.

77 Farel, Le Pater Noster, 35.

78 Farel, Sommaire, 10. 79 In the appendix of the 1542 edition of the Sommaire.

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readers to focus on, is what they need to know about God for their salvation and their

Christian life. This attitude is typical of the reformers and it is of course significant

that Calvin says the same thing in the final edition of his Institutes, even though he

dedicates a chapter to the Trinity: “What is God? Men who pose this question are

merely toying with idle speculations. It is more important for us to know of what sort

he is and what is consistent with his nature.”80 This is in sharp contrast to the

scholastic and mystical speculations about God in the late medieval period.

This approach logically leads to a second essential question about the knowledge of

God: how may God be known? Indeed, this is the only epistemological question that

interests Farel. He is not interested in general theological issues like man’s knowledge

and reason (before or after the fall). He is obviously not concerned about

demonstrating the existence of God since, in all his works, he writes for people who

take it for granted. Their main problem is that they do not worship God in the right

way and are blind to their own sin and God’s glory. The only source of knowledge of

God that Farel has in mind is Scripture. Whilst God’s power and wisdom can be seen

in creation to some extent, ultimately God’s attributes and His will can only be known

if he reveals himself and he has done so in the Bible.

Since for Farel the knowledge of God is practically identical to knowledge of

the Scriptures it is appropriate to say something here about his views on the

Scriptures, before looking at what he believes the Scriptures reveal about God’s

attributes. He does not consciously have a theology of the Scriptures; he simply trusts

them and believes they reveal what we need to know about God. Not surprisingly, he

has a high view of the Scriptures because God’s glory shines through them. In fact,

the motto on his seal is, “quid volo nisi ut ardeat” or, “What do I want if not that it

80 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, Tr. F. L. Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I.2, 41.

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burns (or shines).” It is generally agreed to refer to the Scriptures since that motto is

engraved around the image of a sword, the traditional symbol of God’s word. 81 The

central importance of the Scriptures is apparent from the first chapter of the Sommaire

titled ‘Of God’:

God is goodness, power and infinite wisdom, without beginning nor end, immutable truth. This we clearly understand by the creation of the world in which there is nothing useless or without profit. And although it is made out of nothing and is greatly diverse, it is nevertheless preserved by God’s power and his great wisdom that has ordained everything so well. This also the Holy Scriptures show us and how our God is so good that he formed us in his image…82

As soon as Farel mentions a residual knowledge of God accessible from the data of

nature, he immediately moves on to the Biblical data.

Even more striking is the definition of “the key of the Kingdom of God” in chapter 17

of the Sommaire: “the keys of the kingdom of God are the knowledge of God, the

word of God, the Holy Gospel, the food of the soul.”83 Here, the knowledge of God

and of his Word are indissolubly linked in one formula. Therefore, if we do not

receive what Scripture says about what God is like, and what he expects from us, we

are in the dark as he states in the Sommaire, in the chapter on ‘incredulity’: “Where

the light of faith and the clarity of the Scriptures are not present, there the prince of

darkness reigns.”84

This supposes two assumptions about the Scriptures: their perspicuity and the

need to interpret them at face value. Farel assumes that the Bible is intelligible for the

81 And not to the soul, as stated by Owen Chadwick in Early Reformation, 123. 82 Farel, Sommaire, 8. 83 Ibid., 33.

84 Ibid., 21.

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layman provided the Holy Spirit helps him.85 ‘At face value’ does not mean an

unintelligent literal reading. Unfortunately, we have very little from Farel in the way

of exegesis or commentary, but what we do have is his constant reference to the

clarity of Scripture. Although he does not discuss hermeneutical issues and he

advocates a literal reading of the Scriptures, ‘literal’ does not mean ‘unintelligent’. In

his chapter on the Scriptures in the Sommaire, he recognises that the Old Testament

laws and ceremonies are to be read typologically, pointing towards Jesus Christ and

his teaching in the New Testament:

What was signified and represented by the images, commandments and ceremonies of the law in a veiled and hidden way, Jesus Christ taught his apostles clearly; similarly the sacrifices foreshadow the unique, true and perfect sacrifice that the holy gospel shows us fulfilled in the death of Jesus.86

He also gives some brief advice to the reader on how to approach the Bible:

We must approach and study the Scriptures with fear and reverence for God of whom they speak. We must study them with care, not in bits and pieces87 but as a whole; we must be careful to what precedes and follows a passage, for what purpose it is written and for what reason; looking at other passages where the same is said more clearly, comparing a passage with another. Indeed, the Scriptures have been written by one Spirit who speaks more clearly in one passage than another, even though all those who spoke and whose testimony is contained in the Scriptures spoke through the same Holy Spirit. This explains why a passage explains another.88

The perspicuity of Scripture is assumed and there is no hint in here or anywhere else

in his writing of any need for extra revelations. As White says in his study of the

Sommaire, “the nexus between faith and Word rules out the possibility of extra-

85 For example, in chapter 17 of the Sommaire (“Of the keys of the kingdom of God”) he writes about God “giving his Holy Spirit to open the intelligence of Scripture.”

86 Farel, Sommaire, 29.

87 “par pièces et par morceaux”. 88 Farel, Sommaire, 30.

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biblical and extraordinary revelation to which various 16th century illuminists and

spiritualists laid claim.”89 More than illuminists and spiritualists, he has in mind the

Church of Rome and its claims of infallibility for its tradition. The “nexus between

faith and the Word” means that we can appropriate with assurance God’s promises

included in the Scriptures. I will come back to that in more details when I look at his

understanding of faith. His view of the Scriptures rules out any mystical or allegorical

reading, a fact worth stressing because it is perhaps difficult for us to measure the

striking novelty of the Reformed interpretation of the Scriptures 500 years later

illustrated. That novelty can be appreciated by comparing Farel to his contemporary

bishop Briçonnet whose hermeneutical approach is typical of his time.90 His views on

the interpretation of the Scriptures can be seen in his correspondence with Marguerite

d’Angoulême91 written while Farel was working for him in Meaux: in a letter written

in 1523, Briçonnet provides the most vivid summary of the allegorical reading in late

medieval tradition:

The Holy Scriptures are a different sort of commodity from what many think… for the whole Scripture is either exclusively spiritual, without literal meaning, or literal without spiritual meaning (very little) or both literal and spiritual. There are fewer passages that may be only interpreted literally than the other two. This is why we say that the literal understanding is like the candle that only costs a penny… The spiritual understanding is the hidden pearl which we find with the candle, which is the letter, and that we leave once the pearl is found; such pearl is not found and its value not appreciated by all. That is why our Lord forbids it to be thrown among the pigs; that is the spiritual knowledge does not smell good to many who are carnal and literal, who see without seeing, who hear without hearing as was prophesied to the Jews.92

89 White, “An early doctrinal handbook”, 26. 90 See for example Guy Bedouelle’s helpful overview in Lefèvre d’Étaples ou l’intelligence des

Ecritures (Geneva: Droz, 1976), 173.

91 Sister of Francis I, King of France. Born in 1491 – died in 1549. 92 Guillaume Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, ed. Christine

Martineau and Michel Veissière (Geneva: Droz, 1979), vol.1, 13.

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In a subsequent letter, Briçonnet gives a good example of how far one can go in

finding hidden meaning in the Scriptures: referring to the Messianic prophecy of

Isaiah 9:5-6 he points out a spelling anomaly in the Hebrew word generally translated

‘of the increase’ or ‘multiplication’ in English versions. In this word (lemarbeh), the

letter ‘mem’ after the initial ‘lamed’ is not in the ‘open’ form that would be correct,

but the ‘closed’ form that is normally only written at the end of words. This spelling

mistake has been noted by scholars for centuries. Following Pseudo-Denys (5th c.

A.D.) whose writings influenced many mystics and theologians in the late medieval

period, Briçonnet explains that this letter ‘mem’ in ‘closed’ form in a word meaning

‘multiplicabitur’ as per the Vulgate is a cryptic prophecy of the birth of the Messiah

from an eternally virgin Mary, whose womb will never be opened.93 The contrast

between the two men could not be greater and it is fascinating to think that Briçonnet

wrote these letters at a time when Farel was working diligently to expound the Gospel,

in simple language, to the “carnal and literal pigs” of his diocese.

Whilst Farel’s approach to the Bible is far from Briçonnet’s approach, it is

quite close to that of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. Although Lefèvre still interpreted

certain passages allegorically (because he thought it was legitimate due to their

literary genres, for example Jesus’s parables94), the hermeneutical gap between the

master and his disciple is narrower than sometimes acknowledged by scholars.95

Lefèvre had a significant influence on him and his influence on the other French-

93 Guillaume Briçonnet to Marguerite d’Angoulême, 26th September 1524, in Correspondance,

vol. 2, 272. 94 For example the woman hiding yeast in three measures of flour in Matthew 13.33 represents

God’s wisdom that “buried [the knowledge of] Christ in people’s hearts in the three great regions of the world; Europe, Africa and Asia.” Bedouelle, Lefèvre d’Étaples, 185.

95 For example White who says that “Farel parts company with Lefèvre in refusing to recognise

any distinction between the Bible’s “literal” and “spiritual” sense. White, “An early doctrinal handbook”, 27.

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speaking reformers, in particular from the hermeneutical point of view, is a subject

that would probably be worth studying in greater depth than it has been so far. As

early as 1512, in the prologue to his famous Quintuplex Psalterium, a critical edition

of the Psalter in several Latin and Greek versions, Lefèvre’s exhortations to the

readers are similar to Farel’s a few years later. Instead of resorting to the traditional

four senses of the Scriptures in medieval exegesis,96 Lefèvre exhorts the reader to seek

the literal sense of the Scriptures. However,interestingly, he distinguishes between

two ‘literal’ readings. The wrong literal reading is the one of the Jews, the one that

does not apply the Scriptures to Christ. The second literal reading is the ‘spiritual’

christocentric one: applying the scriptures to Christ.97 This reading is ‘spiritual’ in the

sense that it is achieved through the Holy Spirit, but Lefèvre insists in calling it

‘literal’:

There is another meaning [from the Jewish literal meaning], that is the meaning which is in the intention of the prophet and the Holy Spirit speaking through him. And this meaning I call literal, but it coincides with the Spirit: for the prophets and for those who can see it there is no other meaning… but for those who cannot see but believe that they can, there is another kind of letter, the one that kills, as the apostle says, and goes against the Spirit. It is this meaning that the Jews still follow today…That is why I say there is a double literal meaning: a wrong one for those who cannot see…another one, the true one, for those who see and are illumined. The first one is invented by man’s feelings, the second inspired by the Spirit of God.98

In his prologue to the Bible in French published in Antwerp in 1530, Lefèvre gives the

readers common sense advice that is identical to Farel’s advice in the Sommaire one

96 Literal, allegorical (what is believed), anagogical (what is hoped for) and tropological

(pertaining to moral conduct). McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 198.

97 In other words, for Lefèvre, “literal” is very close to “Christological”. The complex issue of Lefèvre’s hermeneutics is helpfully summarised in Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Dogmatics (Baker Academics, 2003), vol.2, 59-50, 470.

98 Préface au Quintuplex Psalterium, 2nd edition of June 1513, in Guillaume Bedouelle, Lefèvre

d’Étaples ou l’intelligence des Écritures, 178.

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year earlier: if some passages of the Scriptures are difficult, let the obscure passages

be clarified by clearer ones. Then Lefèvre sets out three rules for a correct

understanding of the Bible: paying attention to the language and literary genre of each

passage,99 bearing in mind the immediate context and reading it with a believing

mind: “with a faithful and submissive heart, seeking in them not the glory of man nor

the curiosity of knowledge, but the glory of God and the edification of one’s

neighbour.”100 This advice constitutes the perfect marriage of humanistic scholarship

and Christian humility and Farel is the direct heir of Lefèvre in this respect.

Now, Lefèvre is an erudite scholar, his thinking on hermeneutics is still

medieval in some ways and, in any case, far more complex than Farel’s so the

comparison between the two must not be pressed to far. However, the comparison is

meaningful insofar as the advice they give about the proper interpretation of the

Scriptures to a lay reader in the 1520s is substantially similar. Farel would agree with

Lefevre’s idea of ‘wrong’ literal interpretation and when Farel denounces ‘spiritual’ or

‘allegorical’ interpretations, he refers to people distorting the sense of the Scriptures

by refusing to focus on what they say about Christ’s works and teaching. That is what

he means when, for instance, he denounces one of his enemies in a later book, saying:

“he gives himself licence to twist the Scriptures as he pleases, allegorizing everything

and not taking anything in its natural and proper meaning101 not keeping himself to the

simplicity that even Jesus and his apostles kept.”102 If then, the Scriptures must be

taken seriously, as God’s word, and interpreted literally, what do they teach us about

God according to Farel?

99 “Langue et propre manière de parler”.

100 Bedouelle, Lefèvre d’Étaples, 173. 101 “au naïf et propre sens”. 102 Zuidema, Early French Reform, 18.

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The Attributes of God

For Farel, knowing God is to know him as good, sovereign and trustworthy.

The first things that Farel emphasizes about God, more than any other reformers it

seems, are his goodness and benevolence towards man. God’s goodness is a theme

that runs as an unbroken thread, not just in the Sommaire, but in all his writings. This

is the first thing he says in the first chapter of the Sommaire: “God is goodness, power

and infinite wisdom, without beginning or end, immutable truth.”103 The goodness of

God is something that Farel always exalts in glowing terms in all his writings and this

is one of the things that contribute to the warmth of his theological writings. When

writing advice for pastors for the visitation of the sick at the end of his short treatise

on the sacraments he encourages them to direct the attention of the afflicted brethren

to the goodness of God: “Let him never forget our Lord nor despair of his great

mercy, but, in all his afflictions and agonies, let him continually have recourse to the

great sea of good104 – to our Father in whom alone he has his trust.”105 Such goodness

was already emphasized in his extended paraphrase on the Lord’s Prayer, that text

being itself in the form of a prayer to God.106 Indeed the main reason why we pray,

says Farel, is our awareness of God’s goodness: “Faith only looks at the abyss of

God’s goodness, depending entirely on the mercy and benevolence of God and one of

the most noble fruits that it produces is prayer.”107 The prayer itself then begins with

103 Farel, Sommaire, 8. 104 “La grande mer de tout bien.” 105 Zuidema, Early French Reform, 221. 106 Unlike Luther’s commentary for example which is addressed directly to the reader. Farel’s

paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed was the first one entirely written in the French language.

107 Farel, Le Pater Noster, 36.

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an hymn to God’s goodness manifested in his work of creation and redemption: “O

our blessed God and almighty Father how can we fathom your great mercy and

goodness.”108. God clearly manifests his goodness in his work of creation and

redemption, but also, more specifically, in his desire to make himself known. In the

introduction to his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, he states: “Our heavenly Father,

most merciful God by his infinite goodness wanted to declare his holy will to us so

that we would find him with certainty.”109 Faith relies on God’s goodness and

trustworthiness and that is why faith needs the Scriptures where God’s promises are

declared. I will come back to this more fully when I look at Farel’s idea of faith in the

next chapter.

The second thing he stresses very strongly about God is his sovereignty and his

holiness. This comes out especially in the constant concern for God’s honour that we

find in all his writings. This concern shines out in his letters and constitutes his main

motivation for all that he does. For example, in a letter to the Duke of Württemberg,

he denounces an itinerant Catholic preacher who intends to come to the town

Montbéliard to ‘fleece’110 the people by selling indulgences and invoking the

protection of Saint Anthony. Farel warns that as long as this man will be left free to go

about his business, “he will do the work of a murderer of souls and public thief who

robs God from the honour due to him and the poor from the fruit of his labour.” 111

Farel’s concern for the poor appears strongly here and will also feature in his

ecclesiology as we will see. However, the first thing that he stresses once again is

108 Ibid., 40. 109 Ibid., 35. 110 “plumer”. 111 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.1, 303.

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God’s honour. In the letter to the nuns of Vevey quoted above112, he mentions God’s

honour as a constant refrain. In his dispute with the slandering monk, he says that

everything one says and preaches must be for God’s honour because, “God’s honour

must be dearer to us than anything else.” Later he justifies his intransigence before the

magistrates: “My brother do not ask mercy for, before meeting you, I had already

forgiven you for all that you said against me, but the matter in question is the doctrine

that I preach in which God’s honour is at stake.” He concludes asking the nuns “for

the honour of our Lord and the death of our Saviour and Redeemer Jesus who shed his

precious blood for the salvation of poor souls” to tell him if any of his sermons are

unhelpful or unedifying. In a letter written a year before to one of his converts and

friends, Farel describes the true believer’s piety and he admirably mingles the theme

of God’s love and honour in one very long sentence which is typical of his exalted

style:

Knowing God and tasting the infinite goodness and mercy of God in him and the great blessing and honour he bestowed on him through Jesus Christ, fired up with love by the Holy Spirit, with whom he is sealed in his heart as a guarantee of eternal life, he [the true believer] cannot help but give thanks to the Father for such great benefits and do works of faith and charity to manifest and exalt his Father’s glory and name… not because he fears to be damned if he does not do these works, but to manifest the glory of his Father. And he would not fear to go down in hell, preferring like Moses and Saint Paul to be blotted out from the book of life and separated from Christ than letting God’s name be dishonoured.113

These themes of God’s love for us, his holiness and his honour are everywhere present

in Farel’s writing so it is not necessary to multiply examples. This high view of God’s

goodness, but also his transcendence and sovereignty, has far-reaching consequences

for the rest of his theology. In particular, as I will show in the next chapters, it is that

112 See footnote 43. 113 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.1, 398.

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high view of God that controls his ideas about proper worship and his concept of faith

as trust in a reliable God.

Interestingly however, despite his constant reference to God’s love for us, he

also stresses several times that God saves us out of love for himself and he obviously

does not view the two ideas as contradictory. Indeed, in the 1524 commentary on the

Lord’s Prayer, he can say, “I cannot marvel enough of your great goodness and love

that you show us… that so graciously you receive us as your children.”114 and, after a

couple of pages, “you love nothing in us except your grace and favour.”115. The same

theme appears in the Sommaire.116 However, the most sustained exposition of that

idea can be found in the Lausanne disputation organised in October 1536 by the

Bernese Government to promote the Reformation in that city.117 Farel, who had the

leading role on the protestant side, expresses it like this:

Forgiveness [of God] is the cause of love and not love the cause of forgiveness. For good must proceed from God. Otherwise, if God forgave us because of our love for him, Isaiah would not have spoken well when he said ‘I am the one who blots out your sins for my own sake.’ God would not blot out sins for the love of himself but for our love for him.118

Luther had of course expressed the same idea memorably in the 28th Heidelberg thesis

a few years earlier: “The love of God does not find but creates that which is pleasing

to it.”119

114 Farel, Le Paster Noster, 40. 115 Ibid., 44. 116 “… out of love for himself and not for us” in Farel, Sommaire, 11. 117 See Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 343. 118 Les Actes de la dispute de Lausanne 1536, ed. Arthur Piaget, (Université de Neuchâtel,

1928), 102.

119 Timothy Lull, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings (Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 1989), 48.

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The reason why, for Farel as for Luther, God forgives us for his own sake is

not just that he cares for his glory above all things but because man’s depravity means

that there is nothing lovable in him. This constitutes the second facet of that great

Farelian contrast, his theology of man.

Farel’s Theology of Man

This high view of God is in sharp contrast with Farel’s view of man’s

corruption. He has a radical view of man’s sin and depravity which are described in

vivid terms in the Sommaire. He makes no mention of man before the fall in the

Sommaire and he does not say anything about common grace. His description of

man’s sin is unremittingly bleak. The brief Chapter 2 of the Sommaire (‘of Man’) is

striking and worth quoting in full to feel the weight of man’s depravity that he

expresses through this long description:

Man is evil, powerless, foolish and reckless, ambitious, full of falseness and hypocrisy, inconstant, unreliable, thinking only evil and sin in which he was born and conceived. In all and everywhere he is self-seeking, only caring about himself and his own benefit, always seeking to magnify his works, faculties and skills, full of ingratitude and disobedience. He is keener to keep his own inventions, laws and statutes than God’s. He cannot stand to be humiliated, dishonoured or despised, but he wants to elevate himself above God, above his Hoy Word, laws and commandments. The fuller he is of iniquities, the more appearance he has of justice and holiness. Therefore, he is cursed, miserable and a liar, as a rotten root and evil tree cannot bear but bad fruits. For all is corrupt in him because, through the disobedience of the first man, he can only bear fruits leading to death and damnation. All his thoughts are evil because all that comes out of his heart is only evil continually. For he is flesh and all that comes from his heart and all fleshy desire are evil.120

This leaves the reader in no doubt about the dreadful condition of the human heart.

Crucially, Farel understands that sin is not just a matter of actions, but is located in the

will. Man is arrogant and wants his will to prevail over God’s will. He insists on this

120 Farel, Sommaire, 9.

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clash of wills and the fact that man cannot stand to be humiliated (by other men or by

God), but wants his will to prevail. This is of course similar to Luther’s view of sin as

‘self-will’ (‘ichwill’) as Bernhard Lohse defines it: “the desire to set oneself in place

of God, not allowing God to be one’s God.”121 This radical view of man’s sin is

crucial not just to understand Farel’s theology, but also the unbridgeable gap between

his (and the reformers’) view of man and the view of 15th century theologians or

religious writers (of the devotio moderna for example) or even humanist and pre-

reformers like Briçonnet and Erasmus. For them, although man is clearly sinful, sin is

located more in the realm of desires and is understood as what pertains to the body as

opposed to the soul as the ‘Imitation of Christ’ teaches: “The greatest and indeed

whole obstacle to our advance is that we are not free from passions and lusts, nor do

we strive to follow the perfect way of the Saints.”122 It is interesting in that respect to

compare Farel once again with the man who first called him to the ministry at Meaux,

Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet. In his correspondence with Marguerite d’Angoulême

quoted earlier, Briçonnet talks about sin in the same way as Thomas À Kempis. In a

letter dated 5th February 1522 which accurately reflects the theological ideas

expounded in that correspondence, Briçonnet gives Marguerite an allegorical

exposition of God’s provision of manna to Israel in the desert and he says, in his

flamboyant and recondite late medieval mystical style:

To be able to receive the true manna vivifying our death and, mortifying by vivifying, giving us eternal life, we must come out of Egypt, renouncing the Prince of Darkness and, drowning this body of death in plenitude of baptismal grace, follow, under the protection of the Holy Spirit, by loving desire, sweet Jesus, the true manna, by contemplation of his painful passion that we must have daily before our eyes to feed our soul, mortifying in the desert all our

121 Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. R. Harrisville, (Minneapolis MN: Fortress

Press, 2011), 250. 122 Thomas À Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (London: Penguin classics, 1952), 38.

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sinful desires and pleasures, leaving behind all other help or will and having no other will but God’s. And as the body of the unfaithful Jews died in the desert, so must the unfaithfulness of our repellent carrion die day after day until it is fully dead and we may be only spirit through true faith… the food of the soul is poison for the body and destroys it; their foods are incompatible.123

Although Briçonnet speaks of sin in strong terms he still essentially identifies sin with

desires and lusts and the main source of sin in Briçonnet’s mind is a body that must be

mortified. What a contrast with Farel who, just a few years later defines the flesh in

comprehensive terms: “Everything man desires, wants, understands, knows, knows by

experience124, decides and does.”125 Indeed, one way the flesh works explains Farel is

through counterfeit devotion:

It [the flesh] seems to have zeal for God and desire to honour him… and that he may be served with more holiness and reverence. To this end, it invents new ways [of worship] not found in God’s Word; new factions, rules, teachings, feigning in all this things holiness and love for God.126

Farel alludes here to liturgical practices and idolatry as we will see when we look at

his ecclesiology. Speaking about the difference between the penance imposed by the

Church and true repentance, he once again lays down this axiomatic opposition of

wills in perhaps its clearest terms:

All our desires draw us to evil and our will is contrary to God’s will. Our covetousness is also contrary to God’s will and we must hate it and renounce it, ourselves and our will, reason and understanding and everything that is ours and love God with all our heart, soul mind, power and vigour.127

123 Guillaume Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, vol. I, 142. 124 “connaît” 125 Farel, Sommaire, 17. 126 Ibid., 18.

127 Ibid., 42.

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Consequently, he has no time for mystical introspection precisely because he has

understood that we cannot trust our own heart on which mystics rely too much:

That is why we must not hastily follow what seems to be of divine origin in our heart or other men’s heart, but we must diligently test what spirit inspires it. For, as the angel of darkness transforms himself in angel of light, so do his ministers and above all the wisdom of the flesh.128

It is worth stressing that point because a radical view of sin which affects all aspects

of man’s personality, including his will and intelligence, underlies the whole of his

theology and remains a hallmark of the reformers’ theology. It also remains an

irreconcilable difference with the Roman Church as shown by the decrees of the

council of Trent which stated that infant baptism wipes out original sin, not just the

guilt of it but the effect as well. Whilst the council admitted that some sin remained in

the baptised person, it minimised its effect and reduced it to desires or tendencies that

may (and ought to) be resisted:129

This holy synod confesses… that in the baptized there remains concupiscence, or an incentive (to sin)130; which, whereas it is left for our exercise, can not injure those who consent not, but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ; yea, he who shall have striven lawfully shall be crowned. This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin, the holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood it to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again, but because it is of sin, and inclines to sin.131

Today’s catechism of the Catholic Church puts forward a similar view:

Sin is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject

128 Ibid., 18. 129 The Council of Trent, fifth session, Decree concerning original sin, paragraph 5. 130 “concupiscentiam vel fomitem.” 131 “ecclesiam catholicam nunquam intellexisse peccatum appellari, quod vere et proprie in

renatis peccatum sit, sed quia ex peccato est et ad peccatum inclinat.”

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to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called ‘concupiscence’.132

Like the other great reformers, and sometimes even more so, Farel opposed

this traditional view and vigorously asserted the total depravity of man because he

believed that a correct understanding of the true nature and consequences of sin is a

pre-requisite to understanding the good news of the Gospel. One detail in his

commentary of the Apostles Creed published in 1524 shows the importance of this

fact for him. Francis Higman clearly showed that the text of this commentary is

simply a translation of a similar work by Martin Luther published a few years

before.133 Interestingly, one of the only two additions by Farel himself occurs in a

passage where Luther states that man cannot trust himself because he is a sinner, but

that faith must overcome everything and trusts in God. Farel adds a paragraph at this

point to put greater stress on man’s sinfulness and the contrast between unregenerate

and regenerate man. In so doing, he entangles himself somewhat in the issue of why

regenerated Christians continue to sin.

…therefore, I only trust you [God] because I know that by myself, without your grace and favour and without your Holy Spirit I can only but sin. But being in your grace through faith I cannot sin, not because in this life I may do anything without imperfection, but because your grace and your spirit which you give to such faith extinguish and destroy all the strength of the evil in me and cause my imperfections and iniquities not to be imputed, but rather covered as if it were not there.

Despite the theological difficulties that may be posed by the indwelling sin in the

believer, Farel feels the need to stress even more strongly the reality of the sin and its

dominion over the human heart. For him, there is therefore an abyss between God and

132 The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, 405.

133 Eine kurze form des glaubensbekenntnisses [a short form of the confession of faith], 1520.

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man and this abyss was created by sin. Man does not want what God wants, man

wants to do things in his own way. This abyss is only bridged by the perfect man,

Jesus Christ, who, unlike sinful men, fully obeyed and submitted to his father.

Significantly, whilst he clearly affirms the deity of Christ in the Sommaire,134 the first

thing he emphasises about Christ is his submission to the Father:

He [Jesus] was made obedient to his father…he has not sought his own glory nor his own will but the Father’s, not doing or saying anything of his own initiative but only of his Father’s who was in him, reconciling the world to himself.135

Hence, not surprisingly, he later describes the effect of grace as “denying and

detesting one’s own will.”136 This contrast between God’s will and man’s will is the

central concept on which his soteriology and ecclesiology are based: man’s ideas

about salvation and proper worship are opposed to God’s. This is through this contrast

that he expounds his views on salvation and on the Church.

134 As he also did in 1524, in the introduction to the Lord’s Prayer: “he [the Father] sent us his

most precious Son, true God and true man, Jesus Christ our unique saviour and mediator…” Farel, Le Pater Noster, 35.

135 Farel, Sommaire, 10. 136 Ibid., 25.

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CHAPTER THREE

FAREL’S SOTERIOLOGY

Justification by Faith

One of the common assertions made by scholars who studied Farel’s works

(usually the Sommaire) is that he gave little importance to the doctrine of justification

by faith and was, on this point, quite far from Luther. One example is Gottfried

Locher in his comparative study of the Sommaire and Zwingli’s commentaries:

If we set the justification of the sinner by grace and the tension between law and Gospel as Luther’s benchmark, and that is what we should do, then Farel never became a Lutheran. For him, salvation is the incorporation of the believer into Christ and justification the gradual acquisition137 of a clean heart and the image of Christ through faith.138

In his study of the Sommaire, Robert White is more nuanced, but notes that Farel

“appears on the whole happier with less forensic categories of thought.”139 Now, it is

true that Farel spends relatively little time discussing salvation by grace as opposed to

works. This does not mean that he did not firmly believe in the doctrine or that he

thought it unimportant and I believe that scholars like Locher overstate the gap

between him and Luther. Before looking at the reason why, in my views, he gives

little prominence to the doctrine of justification by faith, let us remove any doubt that

he believed in this doctrine.

In February 1524, Farel posted for debate at the University of Basel thirteen

theses which he describes in his preface to the reader as “propositions on which

137 “der allmahlicher gewinnung…” 138 Locher, “Farels Summaire” in Actes du colloque Farel, 137. 139 White, “An early doctrinal handbook”, 30.

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depends the whole of Christian liberty and which shatter the tyranny of human

traditions.” The title already highlights the contrast between God’s will leading to

freedom and man’s will leading to tyranny. Thesis number eight is the most striking

one as it encapsulates his Soteriology: “He who hopes to save himself and be justified

by his own abilities and strength and not by faith, raising himself to the level of God

by his own free will, is blinded by impiety.”140 This thesis illustrates man’s way of

being saved: merit. For Farel, relying on one’s own merit for salvation amounts to

saving oneself and placing oneself at God’s level which amounts to both foolishness

and impiety. The Sommaire also condemns merit in strong terms: “Merit is a word full

of arrogance, completely opposed to God and all the Scriptures, invented by the spirit

of pride and error to nullify the grace of our Lord.”141 Farel often repeats the same

views. What is striking here is his emphasis on man’s arrogance. The main problem

with trying to gain salvation through good works or our own merit is not just that it is

illusory, but that it is an impiety. It means putting ourselves in the place of God, not

realizing the true state of our sin.

Conversely, God’s way for salvation is by grace through faith. How does God

save people? This is possible only because of the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. Farel

is clear about this and the traditional Reformed doctrine of salvation by grace alone

through faith alone is clearly there in his writing. For example, in the chapter of the

Sommaire about ‘merits’ he clearly refers to Paul’s writings on the subject: “Pride…

do you not understand that justification is without merit, by God’s grace and through

Christ’s redemption, that we are saved by grace and not from ourselves?... If then we

140 Herminjard, Correpondance, vol. 1,195. “Qui suis viribus et potentia se saluari sperat ac

iustificari, et non potius fide, sese erigens deum per liberum arbitrum facciens, impietate excecatur.” 141 Farel, Sommaire, 23.

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are justified by grace it is not through works, otherwise grace would not be grace.”142

The same classic argument is found in an interesting letter that he wrote to a Roman

Catholic man in Geneva in 1535. The addressee is anonymous, but it is evidently

someone whom he knew and who believed in salvation by works. Farel puts forward

the evangelical response in a friendly and balanced way:

If then by keeping the law we have such great good [salvation], what was the point of Jesus’s coming? Would he not have died in vain (Gal 2)? In truth, everything the holy apostle puts forward in Romans and Galatians, showing that it is by faith in Jesus that we are saved and not through the law, contradicts what you write. I pray, read the 3rd and 4th chapters of Romans and think about it, praying our Lord that he may give you clear understanding and you will see how far off you are.143

Farel spells out the doctrine in the clearest terms in one of the theses he wrote for the

Lausanne disputation against Catholic theologians in 1536:144

The Holy Scripture does not teach any other way to be justified but by faith in Jesus Christ who was offered once and never again will be. So that the one who puts forward any other satisfaction, oblation or purgation for the remission of sin entirely destroys Christ’s power (‘virtue de Christ’).145

Doubts about the Farelian authorship of this thesis have been expressed by those who

think that it is too concise and well-written to be from him and some have suggested

that Calvin helped him with the drafting. However, in his helpful study of this

disputation, Richard Stauffer, points out that Farel’s theses were approved by the

Bernese authorities on 16th July 1536, before Calvin’s arrival in Geneva. Stauffer sees

142 Ibid., 25 143 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.3, 427. 144 The disputation took place in Lausanne from 2nd to 8th October 1536. Farel came from

Geneva to act as the main Protestant representative and his theses were handed in to the Bernese authorities for approval beforehand.

145 Richard Stauffer, “Farel à la dispute de Lausanne”, in Actes du colloque Farel, 109.

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many common points between this thesis and some articles of the first Helvetic

confession of faith.146 In any case, whether written on his own or from another

document, the fact remains that this thesis was presented by Farel in his own name

and therefore expresses a teaching that he judged to be true and essential to his case.

Similarly, in the Sommaire, he denounces those who claim that salvation cannot be

obtained without performing certain works, in particular through the sacraments.

Again, for him this is nonsensical and a negation of Christ’s death: if anything is

required from us for salvation it means that Christ’s blood is not enough. Therefore, it

is important to turn things around and put sacraments in their proper place: as sign of a

salvation bestowed to us, not as requisite for salvation.

The Christian heart touched by faith does everything to God’s glory and draw others to him as much as he can. This must be said against those who want to destroy Christian liberty, some by subjecting us to water, others to bread and wine as if we should seek God in these things whereas in fact we must search him within us and be sanctified by his Holy Spirit. Thus we sanctify the water, not the water us, and also the bread and the wine which are for our service, not us for theirs.147

These quotes (and others could be adduced) show that he had fully grasped

that justification by faith was a central doctrine of Reformed theology. However, as

mentioned earlier in this chapter, it is nonetheless true that the references to salvation

by grace as opposed to works are relatively infrequent in his writings. It is not the

topic of soteriology that he wishes to stress. In that respect, he is distinct from other

early followers of Luther who spelt out the basics of the Reformed faith in the 1520s.

The example of Patrick Hamilton comes to mind. His summary of the new faith,

146 Farel may also have read the first Latin edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian

religion published in March that year. 147 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.2, no. 182a.

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‘Patrick’s Places’148 written around 1526 is entirely structured around the opposition

between the doctrine of law and good works and the doctrine of the gospel and faith.

Farel did believe and appreciate the importance of that doctrine, as the above quotes

show, but he was much more interested in God’s sovereignty and glory in salvation

than in the forensic ‘mechanics’ of salvation itself. This is because, as I mentioned in

the first part and will show below, his main concern was not so much man’s inability

to meet God’s standard than wrong, idolatrous worship. Therefore his soteriology is

focused on two themes: God’s sovereignty in salvation and the fruits of such

salvation.

God’s Sovereignty in Salvation

Tellingly, in the only chapter of the Sommaire titled ‘Of Righteousness’149,

Farel defines righteousness as:

the true image of God shining through the regeneration produced by the Word of God received by faith and written in the heart of God’s sons, through which man dies to himself, denying himself in every way and loving only God, having his law in his heart, taken out of earthly things and burning for the heavenly ones.150

What is odd in this definition is that justification seems to be akin to regeneration and

Farel passes immediately to the fruits of such regeneration in the believer. This is this

kind of quotes that elicited the comments from scholars noted above. He does not

focus on how God declares people righteous, but on how he makes them righteous.

The emphasis here is on God’s sovereign power and on what the Holy Spirit produces

148 “Patrick’s Places,” accessed June 5, 2003, http://www.truecovenanter.com/gospel.hamilton_ loci_communes.html. 149 “De Justice”. 150 Farel, Sommaire, 16.

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in the heart of the believer. The same thing can be seen in the chapter titled ‘the

Gospel’. How does he define the good news of the Gospel? As “the divine strength

able to save each believer, the comfort of the afflicted, the release of the captives, life

for the dead…an inexpressible joy in the heart.”151 This good news is possible through

the death of Jesus Christ because, adds Farel, those who are united to Christ are

“delivered from the power of death and sin in which they were held captive by the

law… They are made sons of God by their faith, firmly believing that everything is

forgiven them by Jesus who has powerfully triumphed over our enemies.”152 Again

we see how the forensic aspect of justification is present, through the references to

Christ’s death, the law, and forgiveness, but constantly overshadowed by the theme of

God’s power. The good news is about being ‘delivered’ or ‘released’ from ‘captivity’;

it is about a display of God’s ‘power.’

Farel understood that God’s glory was a pre-eminent theme in the Bible and

that his sovereignty was a major source of comfort for the believer. This is shown for

example by the way he deals with the doctrine of predestination in the Sommaire. His

soteriology is clearly predestinarian, but, although it is everywhere present, White

correctly notes that “the issue is always raised en passant; its truth is assumed, never

argued for, still less defended.”153 Typical of this is, for example, a letter to his friend

Nicolas D’Esch in which he talks about the true faith that God “sets in the hearts of

our Lord’s elect.” A few paragraphs later he exhorts his friend to wait patiently for the

conversion of those that “our Lord wants to draw.”154 This shows that he has

assimilated the language of predestination even if he does not expound the doctrine

151 Ibid., 14. 152 Ibid., 15. 153 White, “An early doctrinal handbook”, 30.

154 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.2, no. 182a.

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directly. However, he does mention predestination much more clearly and in vivid

terms in the very last chapter of the Sommaire entitled ‘On judgment day’:

Then the elect, written down and numbered in the book of life before the world existed, the true children of God by adoption and by grace… will hear the sweet, gracious and compassionate voice ‘come you happy ones, the ones blessed by God my father…’ For, before the world was created, God foreknew and elected his own. Therefore he does not say ‘come to me you who are circumcised or baptised…’ but to all languages and nations he says ‘come to me you to whom my Father has given his blessing and prepared a kingdom from the beginning of the world’. For nothing can thwart God’s election and its immutable effect, whether the one he ordained to life was born and bred in Turkey or he dies in his mother’s womb.155

He makes it clear that this doctrine must be proclaimed so that God may be

worshipped and praised for his glory and his mercy because he set apart his elect “not

because of their works or merits, but by his infinite love and goodness.”156

Conversely, it is worth noting that he says nothing about the reprobates, but simply

leaves them to the judgment of God. So, for him, the doctrine of predestination is a

positive one; it provides assurance to the believer and focuses his attention on God’s

glory.

The quotes above have already touched on the fruits of salvation which Farel

always insists on. Among all the benefits and fruits of salvation, none is more

important for him than faith.

Salvation’s Main Fruit: Faith

Farel has a great deal to say about faith. As we have seen, he does not spend

much time spelling out the forensic aspect of justification and, consequently, he does

not focus on faith primarily as a means for salvation. Of course he does believe, with

155 Farel, Sommaire, 119. 156 Ibid., 119.

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the whole Reformed tradition, that faith is the means by which believers appropriate

their justification before God and he expresses that in various ways as we have seen.

A good illustration of this is the article about faith in the Geneva Confession of Faith

presented to the council of Geneva in 1536: 157

We confess that the entrance which we have to the great treasures and riches of the goodness of God that is vouchsafed to us is by faith; inasmuch as, in certain confidence and assurance of heart, we believe in the promises of the gospel and receive Jesus Christ as he is offered to us by the Father and described to us by the Word of God.158

However, Farel is much more interested in focusing on faith as a result of salvation,

more specifically as a result of regeneration. He talks about faith in glowing terms

throughout his writings, emphasizing the fact that it is a gift. For example in the

chapter dedicated to it in the Sommaire: “Faith is a great and unique gift of God

through which we are made sons of God.”159 Calvin, of course, echoes this statement

in his Institutes when he says that “Faith is the principal work of the Holy Spirit.”160

However, Farel insists on three aspects of faith that he emphasises more than most

reformers: the opposition between faith and idolatry, the subjective aspect of faith

(assurance) and the importance of faith as ‘experience’.

Faith as opposed to Idolatry

To appreciate Farel’s conception of faith as opposed to idolatry we must turn

back to his conversion. As we saw in a preceding chapter, it would appear that the

157 Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, ed. Mark A. Noll (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1991), 128.

158 As we said before, the authorship of the Confession is debated but modern scholars tend to

attribute it to Farel. In any case, this article faithfully represents the views of both of them about faith.

159 Farel, Sommaire, 22. 160 Calvin, Instit. 3.2.4.

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central focus of his conversion was not so much the unworthiness of sinful man before

God nor the opposition between justification by faith as opposed to works, but the

problem of false worship and idolatry. Farel, as a 16th century man and a convert from

the Roman Church was acutely aware that people desperately need to place their faith

in something or someone but, in his view, they place it in anyone except the only true

God of the Bible who fully revealed himself in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, his

writings stress the fact that true faith is first and foremost faith in the only true God

worthy of that faith, the God of the Bible. Whilst this may sound fairly obvious to

many today, I believe it is very significant in Farel’s historical context as we have

already briefly touched upon in the section about his conversion.

Scholars who studied the state of lay devotion and piety in late 15th century

Europe (as far as this is possible) disagree about the level of piety and religious

practice of the lay population although they tend to paint a bleak picture of the moral

state of the Church as an institution. 161 However, and it is important, they all stress

that everything points to an anxious search for certainty and reassurance before death.

Etienne Delaruelle,162 in his wide-ranging study about the Church in early 15th century

Europe puts forward evidence of the enduring popularity of religious rituals and

institutions, although such devotion is superficial in his view. Crucially, as rightly

stressed by Steven Ozment, Delaruelle also states that all evidence shows that these

rituals and institutions failed to quiet people’s inner anguish.163 This failure to find

reassurance is linked to the idolatry that Farel rejected in his conversion and

161 Some scholars argue that late 15th century piety was basically sound while others find lack of true piety and widespread corruption. Others scholars, like Etienne Delaruelle, find a great deal of external piety and faithful attendance to church ceremonies that they deem to be superficial. Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, 22.

162 Etienne Delaruelle, l’Église au temps du grand schisme et de la crise conciliaire, 1378-1449 (London: Bloud & Gay, 1962).

163 Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, 22.

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denounced thereafter. Through the worship of the saints and the innumerable relics

linked to them, through the prayers of the Church, either the dead praying for the

living or vice versa, people were seeking certainty and such worship and prayers were

exploited by the Church on a large scale. As one scholar put it vividly, the obsession

with the saints was a sign of “an oppressive uncertainty about salvation together with

the longing for it.”164 Farel’s childhood memory of his pilgrimage to see a cross and a

crucifix endowed with spiritual power against the Devil reminds us that a large part of

medieval religiosity was simply interested in tapping supernatural powers and

bringing it under control. This kind of religion has been rightly described as

‘magical’.165 Unfortunately, this search for supernatural help tapped and controlled

through various practices only increased uncertainty. Idolatrous practices appeared to

give some kind of assurance, but in reality they made life more uncertain because

entirely dependent on unpredictable and uncontrollable powers. Moreover, it made

God more distant, impersonal and unpredictable. A scholar quoted by Carlos Eire

summed it up perfectly:

Increased impersonality and a tendency to delimit what is above man to a fragile extension of his own good intentions are not necessarily the recipe for human happiness.166

Against that background, Farel’s appeal to trust in God alone as opposed to anything

or anyone else is truly significant. This theme is so pervasive in all his writings that a

few quotes from the Sommaire will suffice. He stresses that idolatry is both wrong and

164 Bernd Moeller, “Piety in Germany around 1500” in Eire, War against the idols, 13.

165 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: n.p., 1971), 49. 166 Peter Brown, “Society and the Supernatural,” Daedalus 104.147, in Eire, War Against the

Idols, 25.

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foolish. It is wrong because it constitutes lack of faith in God and so demeans his

honour. In the chapter about the forgiveness of sins, he says:

Whoever does not have this faith but seeks other things and trusts in his works, indulgences, confessions or prayers of the Church remains in death for he does not believe in the name of the only Son of God.167

He makes his thought more concrete when discussing the importance of prayer for the

Christian:

For God it is a great and detestable idolatry to rely on someone else but him. It shows diffidence for his infinite goodness and mercy, as if there was someone better or more merciful than him and for his power and wisdom, as if he were unable to help us or did not know how.168

Conversely, when writing about how Christians should prepare themselves for death,

an all important subject on which the Reformers would write a great deal,169 he says

this:

He [the Christian] will prepare himself for the beautiful supper of our Lord in whose hand he will entrust everything and who knows how to dispense all things, be it life, death, health or disease. He will entrust his spirit to him that he may receive him after the pilgrimage in this valley of miseries, without taking into account his sins… but for the love of the one who never did evil, who perfectly kept God’s law and fulfilled his holy will and carried our sins, receiving him with loving-kindness and mercy… By firmly believing that this is granted him from the father, he does not set his heart on anyone else but God alone and he does not call anyone else for help but God, the most gracious father.170

167 Farel, Sommaire, 75.

168 Ibid., 51. 169 “Since death was the greatest of faith’s temptations, as tradition had taught, Protestants,

starting from Luther’s 1519 sermon on the subject, directed the mind of the dying solely to life, grace and heaven.” Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, 55.

170 Farel, Sommaire, 114.

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Although God is invisible, the Christian who has understood God’s power, loving-

kindness and faithfulness does not need to call anyone else for help, like a saint or his

ancestor. As Luther said beautifully, the true Christian will “take the risk of placing

his confidence in the one and only God.”171 What Farel is doing here, like Luther and

the other reformers, but with a particular vehemence given his reaction against his

own idolatry, is recovering the transcendence of God against the superstitions of

popular piety. He looked back on his idolatry with bitterness, especially his idolatry

for the mass, what he scornfully called the “magic morsel” or “god of dough.”172 Far

from being contained in objects like hosts and relics, the true God is transcendent and

sovereign. One cannot bribe him, as idolaters try to do; one can only rely on his

promises which he is faithful and powerful enough to keep: that is what gives

assurance. This brings us back to the topic of justification by faith and explains once

again to some extent why Farel does not insist so much on the forensic aspect of faith.

Carlos Eire notes that, unlike Luther, “faith and justification enter into Farel’s

conversion only as concept that allowed him to see the omnipotence and

transcendence of God and that helped him away from false worship.”173Whilst the

difference between the two men must not be exaggerated, it is undeniable that the

simple but powerful idea that Farel has grasped is that faith is the means to

appropriate the salvation that we need from the all-powerful God who can provide it

and this is this aspect that he stresses repeatedly. He illustrates the fact that the

doctrine of justification by faith could only be recovered precisely because the

transcendence of God was recovered. One does not seek to be justified by faith if one

171 Martin Luther, Personal Prayer Book (1522) in Luther’s works ed. Jaroslav Pelikan,

(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968) vol. 43, 25.

172 “Morceau enchanté” and “dieu de paste”, in Farel, Du vray usage de la croix, 174. 173 Eire, War Against the Idols, 188.

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tries to be justified by one’s works. But equally, and more importantly in the 16th

century, one does not seek justification by faith until one believes in a transcendent,

reliable God who can be trusted rather than bribed through religious practices and

intermediaries. This is why denouncing the invocation and worship of the saints was

always high on his list of priorities. Significantly, in a letter to Zwingli in 1527, in

which he describes his evangelistic activities in the town of Aigle, Farel bemoans the

ignorance of the population which forced him to delay the preaching of the full gospel

and to tolerate many superstitions. But, he adds, “I have nonetheless started to deny

the doctrine of the purgatory and, Christ willing, I will not spare any means to

demolish the invocation of the Saints.”174

This leads us to consider the second aspect of faith that Farel emphasizes, the

subjective one, namely assurance.

Assurance of Salvation

Many scholars have interpreted the Reformation as the rediscovery of the

assurance of salvation and it is undeniable that this doctrine was one of the

Reformation’s major contribution. Steven Ozment, in his discussion of the original

Protestant doctrine put forward by the first reformers, talks about “the key to the new

Protestant way of life” which is “the new concept of faith with its almost brash

security and certitude.”175 This ‘brash’ assurance features strongly throughout Farel’s

174 Herminjard, Correspondance, II, no.197. “Purgatorium speciatim deturbare sum adgressus.

Si Christus adspiraverit sanctorum adnitar profligare invocationem.” 175 Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, 70.

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writings. In fact, Farel sometimes stresses assurance so much that he seems to identify

faith with it.176

Assurance of salvation is the great gift of God that must be appropriated by the

believer. In the 1524 Basel theses, the first theological writings we have from him, he

already presents assurance as a key doctrine. Thesis number seven states: “He defeats

the gospel who renders it uncertain, and he despises Christ who does not sincerely

teach the gospel, fearing God more than man.”177 In the same year 1524, when he

publishes his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle Creed, he writes a

prologue to it which starts with these words: “Our very merciful heavenly Father, in

his infinite goodness, wanted to reveal his holy will so that we may surely reach

him.”178 These two statements reveal how central the idea of assurance is for him. The

idea in both of them is clear: the gospel is of no value at all if it is not certain because

no assurance can be derived from it.

Our discussion of Farel’s theology until now has already highlighted the

elements that combine to produce assurance of faith: the first one is a transcendent,

powerful and benevolent God, in other words a God who reveals himself and is able

and willing to keep his promises. The second one is the personal or relational nature of

the Christian faith (not a mere belief in factual truths, but reliance on a personal God).

The third one is the existence of promises: this is why the Bible is key for him, as for

the other reformers, because it contains the promises by which God has bound

himself. There would be no profit, and only fear, in knowing that God is all-powerful,

176 This is not dissimilar from the Heidelberg Catechism which, immediately after presenting faith as the means of salvation (Question 20) then defines faith as assurance (Question 21): “faith is not only a knowledge and conviction… but also a deep-rooted assurance created in me by the Holy Spirit that… I have my sins forgiven…”

177 “Opprimit ille euangelium qui illud incertum facit, ac illum pudet Christi: qui non sincere fratrem docet, plus hominess quam deum timens.”

178 “certainement parvenir à lui.” Farel, Le Pater Noster, 35.

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but has not made any promises. The final one is the Holy Spirit who gives the believer

full conviction that these promises are true. Therefore, as I indicated in the previous

section on the importance of the Scriptures, for Farel as for the other reformers, the

reliability of God is inextricably linked with the reliability of Scripture and this is

why, in the Basel thesis quoted above, he insists on the fact that the gospel must be

certain. As Carl Trueman put it in an essay about the trustworthiness of God: “By

identifying Scripture alone as the cognitive ground of theology, the Protestant

Reformers then forged a basic connection between the trustworthiness of God and the

trustworthiness of Scripture.”179 Interestingly, the 20th century catholic theologian

Yves Congar does not say anything different when he describes the heart of the

reformers’ doctrine as the “personal and dramatic relationship created by the Word of

God.”180 All these elements are already present in the first chapter of the Sommaire

(‘of God’):

This thing [Christ’s redemption work as explained in the Scriptures], being understood and written in our heart produces such a confidence in God’s goodness that nothing can separate us form his love.181

Assurance is based on God’s goodness (he is not only able but willing to keep his

promises), the understanding of what His promises are through the Scriptures and the

work of the Holy Spirit who seals those promises in the believers’ heart. In fact, faith

largely consists in the assurance of God’s goodwill towards us.

179 Carl Trueman, “The God of unconditional promise”, in The trustworthiness of God,

perspectives on the nature of Scripture, ed. Paul helm and Carl Trueman (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm Eerdmans, 2002), 177.

180 Yves Congar, l’Église de Saint Augustin à l’époque moderne (Paris : Cerf, 1970), 353 (my

translation). 181 Farel, Sommaire, 9.

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Conversely, all the wrong substitutes that men seek for their salvation are not

only wrong and opposed to God’s will, but also tragically mistaken because they

provide no assurance. Again Farel illustrates this point in his simple language. In the

previous section we quoted from chapter 30 of the Sommaire (On remission of sin) in

which he talks about those who do not have the true faith, but seek to place their trust

in works or indulgences or prayers. He concludes the same chapter with this revealing

statement:

Encouraging people to seek remission for sin and forgiveness in anything else but him [Jesus Christ], either in pilgrimages, indulgences or other inventions about which there is no promise at all in Scripture [my emphasis], is denying and making other deny Christ.182

The thought in this passage is significant. The problem with pilgrimages and

indulgences is not so much that they are wrong in themselves or not commanded in

Scripture (although he would say that), but that there is no promise attached to them in

Scripture. Therefore, relying on such things is foolish and is another manifestation of

that clash between man’s sinful will and God’s perfect will on which much of his

thinking revolves.

Another key point emphasised in this passage is that assurance may only be

obtained if we trust Jesus Christ alone. Trusting in anything else is an act of distrust

against God. This is one of the most radical points of the reformer’s doctrine and the

story of Farel’s paraphrase on the Lord Prayer in 1524 is a case in point. The editorial

story of this text is complex and outside the scope of our study, but suffice it to say

that the text was condemned as heretical by the Sorbonne in 1531. A new edition was

then published in which an anonymous editor made a few crucial corrections. Francis

Higman, in his critical edition of the text, shows that the key changes consisted in

182 Ibid., 76.

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softening the uncompromising doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone

in Farel’s text by removing all the ‘alone’ or ‘only’ and watering down his

affirmations concerning faith.183 For example, in sentences like “through your benefit

alone can we be made pure” or “in you alone we place our trust”, the ‘alone’ were

removed. When Farel wrote:

I believe that such a faith which relies and trusts entirely on you… either in life or in death, makes alone a person a Christian.

The new edition removes the phrase “makes alone a person Christian.” When Farel

wrote:

I do not put my trust in any man, nor in myself, nor in my virtue or good works, no matter how holy or great they seem to be, nor in my merits or knowledge.

The editor removes any mention of merit.

With key modifications like these, the very same text from Farel was reprinted

thirteen times until 1543 and was officially endorsed by the Sorbonne on 13th March

1549 who declared that there was nothing objectionable to it.184 This shows that the

Sorbonne had understood, perhaps better than some theologians today, that the

irreconcilable difference between the reformers’ doctrine and the traditional teaching

of the Church was encapsulated in those ‘alone’. In that sense, the modified version

betrayed Farel’s thought: his idea was not that man is sinful and should trust in God,

but that God alone, to the exclusion of anything or anyone else, should be trusted for

our salvation: this is the necessary condition to obtain assurance.

The reader of Farel’s works may sometimes wonder whether this emphasis on

‘cast iron’ assurance is not to some extent naïve. Is he not aware about the doubts that

183 Farel, Le Pater Noster, 14-27.

184 Francis Higman, Censorship and the Sorbonne (Geneva: Droz, 1979), 104.

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assail the believers? It is true that he does not have a great deal to say about doubts in

his writings, not because he had not thought about them or experienced them, but

because, like all of the early reformers, his writings are polemical and aimed at the

perceived idolatry of the established Church and the doctrine of salvation by works or

acts of piety that they denounce. However, Farel is obviously aware of the issue and

he sometimes freely acknowledges the frailty of faith and he does not see this as a

contradiction with assurance. The chapter about faith in the Sommaire does not

contain any hint at the possibility of doubt. Faith is exalted as a great and mighty gift

of God that infallibly gets hold of his promises and triumphs over all temptations and

oppositions. However, five years before, in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer

written in the form of a prayer, he made it clear that he expected Christians to ask for

help against the weakness of their faith:

O most benevolent father, turn I pray the eyes of your great mercy towards us your poor children who are on this earth, full of earthly worries, sadness, trials and tribulations, still full of sin, incredulity and without faith in you. Therefore we pray that you may help our incredulity and strengthen our weak faith.185

In the great prayer to ask God’s mercy for Christians persecuted in the Duchy of

Lorraine from which we have already quoted above, he is equally lucid about the

frailty of the believers’ faith:

Ah, good saviour, although our faith is very weak186 we do come to you to ask for this water to drink. Increase and confirm our faith by giving us your Word and your holy sacraments in a pure way.187

185 Farel, Le Pater Noster, 42. 186 “légère”, literally “light”. 187 Farel, Du vrai usage de la croix, 283.

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He states more clearly here than anywhere else that faith needs help and that help can

be found not just in God’s Word, but also in the sacraments. Calvin will later agree

that sacraments are given “to sustain the weakness of our faith.”188 In his study about

the doctrine of assurance in the theology of 16th and 17th century reformers, Joel

Beeke makes the important distinction between the doctrine of faith in its assuring

character (as mostly described by the 16th century reformers) and assurance as a self-

conscious, experimental phenomenon (aspect emphasised in the Westminster

Confession of faith).189 Beeke shows how Calvin for example was obviously

conscious of the difference. The same distinction clearly applies to Farel. Like the

other reformers, he was part of a theological revolution that recovered the doctrine of

assurance, but he had first-hand experience of the weakness of faith in front of

persecution. This distinction between the faith that believers ought to have and what

they feel leads us to consider the subjective aspect of faith which occupies a

prominent role in Farel’s theology.

The Experience of Faith

All scholars who studied Farel’s writings noted that one remarkable aspect of

his theology is his appeal to ‘experience’, or ‘experiential faith’. Whilst they rarely

praise his for the depth of his thinking and do not often give him credit for his original

thinking they often praise him for what they call his ‘warm piety’ or sometimes

‘mysticism’. One of them said that it is perhaps one of the most peculiar aspects of his

theology. 190 Very recently, another scholar studied more specifically the importance

188 Calvin, Instit. 4.14.1.

189 Joel Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance (The Banner of Truth trust, 1999), 53. 190 Charles Partee, “Farel’s influence on Calvin: a prolusion,” in Actes du Colloque Farel, 180.

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of prayer in his ‘spirituality’ (to use a modern term for what Farel would probably

have called ‘piety’).191

It is indeed an aspect of Farel’s theology worthy of attention, but, before we

illustrate it with a few examples, it is perhaps useful to define what we mean by

‘experience’ or ‘experiential faith’. In 16th century language, ‘experiential faith’ seems

to mean a certain perception of the truth of the gospel and of the benevolence of God

that goes beyond mere intellectual understanding, but moves the whole person. That

is perhaps close to what we would call ‘feelings’ today although this term would

probably be a bit too limited. The semantic evolution of words is an interesting

indication in that respect. Farel often uses the verb ‘sentir’, which means ‘to feel’ in

modern French but which, in the 16th century, does not just refer to emotions, but

knowledge as we have just defined it: an experiential knowledge of truth involving the

whole person.192

Why is ‘experiential faith’ so important for Farel? What we have seen about

his theology until now, in particular his views on faith and justification gives us the

answer: for him, salvation is much more than simply forensic; it is much more than

forgiveness of sin or even beliefs. Rather, salvation involves a complete

transformation of the whole person, effected by the Holy Spirit. So the gospel is not

just about ‘believing’, but also about ‘experiencing’ and ‘doing’. This ‘experience’ is

a necessary fruit of assurance. In fact, that is exactly what assurance is all about: A

complete transformation of the human heart that produces good works. This is a key

idea for him and it is obviously not by chance that the full title of the Sommaire

191 Theodore Van Raalte, “Farel’s upward spirituality: leading in prayer (1524),” in Zuidema,

Early French Reform, 71-100.

192 In the quotes below, I translate “sentir” as “to experience”. The word is usually translated in this way when used by other 16th century French prose writers like Calvin or Montaigne.

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contains two distinct parts: a summary of certain necessary things for, on the one

hand, “putting one’s trust in God” and, on the other hand “helping one’s

neighbour.”193 In the letter to an anonymous Roman Catholic that we have already

quoted, Farel concludes with a paragraph that sums up, in an unusually systematic

way, how he sees the grace of God working in the believer’s life:

This grace of God, known and understood, tasted and savoured through faith and the Spirit of Jesus Christ who makes us certain of it, causes us to love God with all our heart and, above all, admire and honour him194 and to love our neighbour like ourselves.195

This is a great definition of true faith and we can see clearly the movement of his

thought on the subject: The grace of God is revealed by the Scriptures and

experienced through faith. This produces assurance which, in turn, produces a change

of heart. That is why the Bible is addressed to the whole person. We see this, for

example, in a very farelian definition of the Holy Scriptures in the Sommaire which, at

first sight, may seem somewhat odd:

The Holy Scriptures… contain the complete sum of what we must do, that is what we must experience and believe from God our Father, serving him from the heart, in spirit and in truth, making sure that his holy habitation, that is our body, may be always kept pure from all filth and iniquity.196

Perhaps not many evangelical Christians today would have defined the Holy

Scriptures as the complete sum of “what we must experience”, but it makes perfect

193 This is an idea that will be close to the hearts of many Reformed theologians. For example,

it is interesting that in his “Marrow of Theology” published one hundred years later, William Ames divides theology in two parts, “faith” and “observance”, in other words doctrine and practical piety deriving from it. William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, ed. John Dykstra Eusden (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1997).

194 “on le prise et l’honore”. 195 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.3, p.427. 196 Farel, Sommaire, 28.

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sense for him, since salvation, as we have just indicated, is about transformation.

Since the Gospel is the true power of God for the salvation and transformation of the

believer, then the Bible contains not just what we must believe, but also what we must

experience. In fact, ‘knowing’ and ‘experiencing’ (and, to some extent ‘doing’) so

often go together in Farel’s mind that they sometimes seem synonymous. Let us take

for example the knowledge of God:

For we live for him [God] by experiencing and knowing him, because this is eternal life: to know the only true God and the one he sent, Jesus Christ.”197

Or the action of the Holy Spirit in the Christian:

The Spirit leads man in order that he may not experience God or behave in any other way, but what God has expressly commanded.198

The end of this chapter on the Holy Spirit contains the most surprising piece of advice

which is typical of Farel for its ‘down to earth’ quality. After describing what the

Bible teaches about the role of the Holy Spirit, insisting in particular on how the Holy

Spirit leads the Christian to love the Word of God, he concludes:

It is much better to know all this [the role of the Spirit] through experience than through a book. Nevertheless, the book is written for the elect so that they may desire with passion the gift of the spirit and pray that it may be given to them and so become new men and have the knowledge of the things of God by his Spirit.199

What is remarkable in this statement is how Farel encourages the believer to go

beyond mere biblical knowledge and seek a full, transforming experience of God. The

197 Ibid., 9. 198 Ibid., 20. 199 Ibid., 20.

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aim of theology is not to know the Bible; rather, we read the Bible so that we may be

led to ‘experience’ God.

Given this emphasis on experience it is no surprise that he places great stress

on prayer. He calls it, “one of the noblest fruits produced by faith.”200 Interestingly, as

soon as he mentions prayer, both in his introduction to the Lord’s Prayer and the

Sommaire, the first thing he says about it is that we do not know how to pray. This is

why the Lord has given believers a model prayer and why they need the Holy Spirit.

Prayer is the greatest expression of the ‘experience’ of God because it comes from our

most inner being. He translates this fact in practical advice, as usual:

Let us pray with great passion and few words. Let the tongue stop talking much before the heart and start talking long after it; and let not the tongue talk to pray if the heart is not with God.201

We know that he himself practiced what he preached because what is striking about

his writings is not that they contain many exhortations to pray, but that so many of

them are actually written in the form of a prayer. His 1524 commentary on the Lord’s

Prayer is more a paraphrase than a commentary, being itself written as a prayer to

God. His commentary of the Apostle Creed (of the same year) is almost entirely

translated from a similar work by Luther, as we saw earlier, but with the striking

difference that Luther’s text is addressed to the reader whereas Farel’s text is again

turned into a prayer addressed directly to God while the reader is turned into a

spectator (in the great tradition of Augustine’s confessions). This is a great rhetorical

device because instead of explaining the creed or exhorting readers to believe it the

writer acts on their emotions and will by encouraging them to imitate his or her

200 Farel, Le Pater Noster, 36. 201 Farel, Sommaire, 51.

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devotion. Whoever reads these short works is left in no doubt that Farel understood

the importance of public pastoral prayer as an effective means of preaching to the

congregation by allowing it to identify with the fervour of his own prayer. The

Sommaire itself frequently abandons its neutral 3rd person style addressed to the

reader and turns into a prayer to God. Several commentators have noted this fact and

said that it is typical of his sermonic style. The most commonly quoted passage is the

one where he loses his temper as he enumerates the abuses and error of the Church:

Oh God, how awful! O sun, how can you shine on such a country? O land, how can you bear such a people and give fruits to them who despise your creator? And you Lord God are you so merciful and slow to anger against such great offences against you?202

Whilst it is true that passages such as these may give us an idea of what Farel sounded

like in the pulpit they are probably even more indicative of his prayer life. When

reading Farel, one feels that for him the activities of preaching and praying are very

close indeed.

Prayer is also important for him because it is linked intimately with worship

and true worship, as opposed to sinful, rebellious, idolatrous worship, is one of the

central elements of this thinking as we have seen. How significant then is the fact that,

at the end of the 1534 edition of the Sommaire, he added a prayer to Jesus Christ

which is clearly patterned on the ‘Hail Mary’:

Hail Jesus Christ, king of mercy. Hail Jesus our life, our sweet hope. We, the sons of Eve who are banished cry out to you. We long for you, moaning and groaning in this valley of misery. Onward, our mediator! Turn your merciful eyes to us. O blessed Jesus, show us the face of your Father after this exile. O gracious, O merciful, O sweet Jesus Christ. In all our tribulation and anguish rescue us, our salvation and glory.203

202 Ibid., 88.

203 Ibid., 159.

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Then follows another prayer to Christ in which Farel asks him to grant Christians that

they may know him as saviour through true faith and always experience his presence

as mediator with God the Father, linking once again the idea of ‘knowing’ and

‘experiencing’ the reality of the gospel through a true and living faith.

The last question that I would like to deal with before moving on to Farel’s

ecclesiology is the fairly common reference to his supposed ‘mysticism’, especially in

older studies. In particular, it is sometimes claimed that the influence of the Devotio

Moderna movement204 partly explains his ‘warm piety’. Here is a fairly typical

example:

Finally, the most unexpected trait of Farelian piety is its mystical character which manifests itself in the love and adoration of Jesus. Farel drank from the pure and sweet source of medieval piety.205

The question of the influence of mystical medieval theology on the Reformation is

outside the scope of this study and ultimately improvable, but a few comments may be

made in relation to Farel.

Firstly, the fact that he, or for that matter other reformers, teach things which

are similar to certain mystical writers does not prove direct influence. Both may have

taken those things from another source, namely the Scriptures. It is striking that Farel

makes no mention and no allusion to any medieval or patristic writers. The fact that

scholars may have found him ‘mystical’ because they found ‘heart-warming’ prayers

in his writings probably says more about their preconceived opposition of dogma and

piety than anything else: on the one hand systematic theologians and on the other

204 The spiritual ideal initiated by Gerard Groote in the Netherlands in the 14th century and the

religious movement deriving from it. 205 Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 21.

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mystics. This distinction would obviously have been completely foreign to him. His

theology and piety both stem from the Bible. He exalts the virtue of living faith and

the need to be renewed by the Holy Spirit and experience God’s redemptive love in

Jesus Christ because he read all this in the Scriptures.

Secondly, a major difference between Farel and the medieval mystics is that he

is writing to people who have rebelled against the established Church and are likely to

be persecuted as a result. The long prayers on which Theodore van Raalte focuses in

his study on Farel’s piety206 were written to and for Reformed Christians persecuted

for their faith in the Duchy of Lorraine in the early 1540s. Even his 1524 paraphrase

of the Lord Prayer denounces the “deep darkness” in which the Church is as a result of

lack of devotional material in vernacular languages. Similarly, the ‘Hail Jesus’ prayer

quoted above is the prayer of a Christian suffering for his faith. So whereas someone

like Thomas À Kempis sees piety mainly as a fight against a sinful flesh and a sinful

world, Farel is closer to New Testament piety which also consists in trusting God in

the face of tribulation and persecution from the world.

Finally, two interesting facets of the Devotio Moderna may be compared to

Farel’s piety: the first one is its ‘democratic appeal’. In his famous comparison

between scholastic theology and mystical theology, Jean Gerson207 had already argued

that mystical theology was more ‘democratic’ and even simple people (‘idiotae’)

could become expert because personal experience, more than university training, was

required.208 The 15th century Devotio Moderna went further in that direction by

emphasising godly living more than supernatural experience and Thomas À Kempis is

206 Van Raalte, “Farel’s upward spirituality”, in Zuidema, Early French Reform. 207 The chancellor of the University of Paris and great theologian and mystic (1363-1429). 208 Jean Gerson, “De mystica theologia,” in Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Mgr Glorieux, (Paris:

Desclée & Company, 1971), vol. 8, 18.

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a perfect example. In the ‘Imitation of Christ’, there is little theology and dogma, but

neither are there any visions, stigmata or supernatural manifestations. There are only

common sense exhortations to live a simple, frugal and pious life and rules which

require neither academic achievements nor mystical abilities. In his enlightening study

of the movement, Léon Halkin located the true modernity of the Devotio Moderna in

“the psychological realism of its religion and a reasoned diffidence for everything that

exceeds ‘common sense’.”209 This ‘democratic’ ambition is certainly shared by Farel:

He wrote in the vernacular language (in his case French) more than most other

reformers (and more than Thomas À Kempis who still wrote in Latin). All his writings

show genuine faith and piety and his writings about prayers, as we have seen, strongly

stress the personal aspect of faith over the ritual aspect.

However, the second aspect, linked to the first, is one of contrast. One of

Ozment’s theses about the novelty of the Reformation is its break from medieval

piety:

A striking difference between the late medieval and Reformation piety, which may go far toward explaining the latter’s appeal is that, whereas the late medieval Church measured lay by clerical life, the Reformation went a long way toward subjecting clerical to lay values.210

It seems to me that a book like ‘The Imitation of Christ’ confirms and

illustrates Ozment’s point. Devotio Moderna mystics were writing for lay people who

thought that monastic life provided the ultimate example of faith and piety and they

then tried to follow monastic ideals and rules. Writers emphasising the influence of

such movements on Farel should reflect that he was going in the opposite direction

that Ozment spelt out: like other reformers, he emphasised the fact that profound faith

209 “La commune mesure”. Léon Halkin, La “‘Devotio Moderna’ et les origines de la Réforme aux Pays-Bas,” in Courants Religieux et Humanisme à la fin du 15e siècle et au début du 16e siècle, Colloque de Strasbourg (Paris: Presse Universitaire de France, 1959), 49.

210 Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, 22.

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and piety were not a monastic trait that had to be imitated by lay people. It was within

the reach of, and even required from, ordinary men and women living ordinary lives

once they had grasped the promises of God made in Scripture and appropriated them.

That meant, among other things, that for him monastic life had no justification for his

existence. As I now turn to his ecclesiology, I will show how the denunciation of the

monastic orders is a significant part of his criticism of the old ecclesiastic institutions.

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CHAPTER FOUR

FAREL’S ECCLESIOLOGY

Farel’s ecclesiology can be ascertained from a few of his 1524 Basel theses

and some of his letters, but most of his ideas about the Church are expounded in more

detail in the Sommaire. He has a great deal to say about the Church in the Sommaire

and especially about its practices. Out of the 42 chapters in the book, chapters 16 to 36

deal with, or at least touch on, the Church and its practices (although it is not always

obvious from the title of the chapters) and those chapters are noticeably longer than

the other ones. He writes about the Church as a reformer who comes immediately

after Luther and his views reflect the early date of his writings (1520s and early 30s)

with a few emphases of his own. He took part in the failed experiment of Meaux from

1517 to 1523 and that experiment convinced him that reforming the established

Church was bound to fail. Luther and what had now become the ‘Roman’ Church had

excommunicated each other in 1519. The schism between the Church of Rome and the

new Church was now complete, although some would still attempt a reunification in

the years to come.211 Therefore, as Luther did shortly before him, Farel almost always

treated ecclesiological questions in a polemical fashion against the Church of Rome.

That polemics entailed three questions for the Reformers: If the Church of Rome is

not the true church how does one recognise the true one? What kind of leaders does

the Church need and what is their role? What is the relationship between the Church

211 Most notably at the Regensburg colloquy in 1541 which many hoped would mark the

reunion of the two churches.

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and the political institutions?212 Farel made a contribution of all three questions,

especially the first one.

The Nature of the Church

Arguably the most crucial point of the polemics between Rome and the

Reformers is the marks that distinguish the true Church from the false one. Farel’s

mind was perfectly suited to work along such categories as ‘true’ and ‘false’ and his

ecclesiology is entirely articulated on the great contrast we identified as the heart of

his theology: God’s will and man’s will. As we saw earlier, that contrast governs his

theology of God and man and his soteriology. Man has rebelled against God and

wants to do his will rather than God’s will. The true believer behaves like his Lord

Jesus Christ who sought to do his Father’s will, not his own. This is also true in

worship and we saw the sharp contrast Farel draws between faith, leading to true

worship, and idolatry. It is therefore not surprising that the same holds true with

regards to ecclesiology. For him things are simple: there is a false church represented

by the Pope and a true church which is the body of Christ. Spotting the difference

between the two is easy: the false church of the Pope has rebelled against God and his

Son and follows it own will whereas the true church does her Father’s will like the

Son. The idea runs through all of his writings and correspondence. Here is a sample:

We cannot condemn the pope and his people better than simply showing that everything they have done is the opposite of what Jesus has done.213 It is impossible to believe the Pope… because we can see that he never acts according to the divine will, but he has heavens and hell for sale as they say.

212 Euan Cameron, the European Reformation, 145. Cameron provides a useful summary of

these three questions and the reformer’s responses. 213 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.5, 430.

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Jesus gives the kingdom of heavens to the poor, but the Pope bestows his pardon and indulgences only to the rich.214 The Pope’s and the bishops’ excommunication is as close to the evangelical one as they are close to God and their doctrine to God’s doctrine and their life of the Apostles’ life.215

As is usual for him, he tackles ecclesiological issues in practical terms and

shows little interests for abstract theological concepts. Consequently, he does not

discuss the nature of the Church in detail. However, he does start the chapter on the

Church with a definition which gives us some clue about his ecclesiology:

The church of Jesus Christ is the holy assembly of the faithful who are incorporated by true faith in Jesus Christ and who are members of His body. And since Jesus is the true son of God, all his members are sons of God through him. Jesus is the head and true Christians are his body. He is the husband, the faithful are his bride whom he cleansed through his blood, bestowing salvation on his body and saving his people from their sin.216

That definition is steeped in Scripture as every part of it alludes to verses from the

apostle Paul’s letters. It shows that Farel has well assimilated the Apostle’s teaching.

Several aspects are worth noting in this definition, aspects that he subsequently

unpack in the same chapter and the rest of the Sommaire:

A Christ-Centred Church

The Christ-centeredness is remarkable and Farel has piled together all the most

vivid, concrete expressions that the New Testament provides to express it: body, part,

head, husband etc. It is more vividly christocentric than, for example, Calvin’s

definition in his letter to Sadoletto in which he talks about an assembly of the saint

214 Farel, Sommaire, 61. 215 Ibid., 80. 216 Ibid., 31.

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scattered in all times and all places, but “yet bound together by the one doctrine, and

the one Spirit of Christ.”217 This christocentric definition of the church is hardly

surprising since Christ and his atoning sacrifice is always assumed in his teaching. At

the beginning of the Sommaire, he has already made clear that all those who have a

true faith are “united and incorporated” in the body of Christ.218 Several scholars have

argued that union with Christ is the heart of Farel’s theology219 and such a definition

would seem to prove them right. However, I hesitate to go that far because I believe

that its importance for him is only relative when put into context. The fact that a

theological theme is often alluded to by an author does not necessarily mean that

theme is consciously important for that author and Farel is a good example: Firstly, as

I have argued, anyone who reads his works can clearly see that the heart of his

theological thinking is the contrast between God’s will and man’s sinful will. This

contrast largely conditions the theme of worship (true worship in accordance with

God’s will as opposed to idolatrous worship deriving from man’s sinful will) and, as a

consequence, his ecclesiology. Secondly, although he certainly understands and

believes in the central importance of Christ’s atoning sacrifice and he often mentions

the theme of the believer’s union with Christ, I feel that this is a theme that he is not

particularly interested in explaining in detail. He mentions it because he finds it in the

New Testament, but he does not develop it. In fact, the above definition of the church

is revealing of his turn of mind. It is really a collage of biblical verses and themes

rather than a synthetic definition of his own. This is very different from what we see

for example in Calvin’s Institutes (insofar as we can compare the Sommaire and the

217 Calvin, “Letter to Sadoletto”, in Tracts & Letter, vol.1, 37. 218 Farel, Sommaire, 12. 219 For example Gottfried Locher: “Farels Summaire,” in Actes du Colloque Farel, 137.

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Institute) in which the necessity of union with Christ is strongly affirmed at the

beginning of book three and all the subsequent developments about justification and

sanctification in that book stem from that central theme. Thirdly, after defining the

church in this way, Farel immediately turns to other aspects of the church that derive

from its Christ-centeredness, but that he is much more concerned about, especially the

solidarity that must exist among true believers. In his letter to the Nuns of St Claire

already quoted, he describes the union of believers with Christ in the way that seems

to indicate that for him the essential and visible outcome of the union is a sense of

solidarity between believers.

Very dear sisters in our Lord Jesus, true husband and only head of his holy church which he cleans daily with his own blood that he shed, offering himself once to his father in order that all the true and faithful Christians may be united together as a body under this holy head - for all true Christians are the body of Christ and members one of the other by true faith united and joined to each others by the Holy Spirit who is love [‘charité’] poured in our hearts, sole and true rule and faith of all believers.220

It is clear that he envisages the church as a local community of people who

know and care for each other. This is illustrated by an interesting point he makes

about the Roman practice of excommunication. “They [the church authorities] show

their stupidity when they excommunicate someone who has done something wrong

whom nobody knows. How can I avoid someone at the table of our Lord whom I do

not know and that neither do you know, pope or bishop, since you cannot name

him?”221

This also shows that, for him, church disciple is meaningless and oppressive if

applied anonymously. As he makes clear, church discipline must be restorative, not

220 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.2, no.210.

221 Farel, Sommaire, 80.

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punitive: “excommunication is not ordered for us to hate the person excommunicated,

but for us to love and discipline him like a brother.”222

A Scripture-Centred Church

In the rest of the chapter on the church, and indeed the whole Sommaire, he

stresses the importance of the word of God in the life of the church. The church is the

assembly of the faithful who are joined together because they believe the Word and

want to hear it. Indeed the church consists in “a true union of faith in our Lord Jesus,

listening and believing his holy voice” and all she seeks is what she believes “on the

basis of the clear word of God.”223 That idea is nothing new and Farel follows in the

steps of Luther here. Luther’s conception of the church will vary in many ways during

his life, but the idea of a congregation of people gathered to hear the word of God will

always remain central to his definition of the church,224 as shown for example in his

famous statement in the Smalcald Articles, published eight years after the first edition

of Farel’s Sommaire: “Thank God a seven-year-old child knows what the church is,

namely, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd. So the

children pray ‘I believe in one holy Christian Church’.”225

The centrality of the Word of God means that teaching must occupy a central

place in the activities of the church and the failure of the Roman Church to teach it is

one thing on which Farel concentrates his most virulent attacks throughout his

writings. In the 1524 commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, he reminds the reader that the

Apostle Paul required that everything said in the congregation should be in intelligible

222 Ibid., 79. 223 Ibid., 31. 224 Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, 278.

225 The Book of Concord (Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 315.

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language or that people should keep quiet. That reference to Paul’s first letter to the

Corinthians chapter 14 obviously alludes to the Latin liturgy of the Church. Then, he

bemoans that “if we had observed this commandment we would never have been

covered by such thick darkness because we would pray our Heavenly Father in spirit

and truth and not like earthly creatures in the flesh and vanity.”226 This denunciation

continues in the Sommaire and the next chapter after the one on the Church is,

logically, “the key of the kingdom of heavens” which is defined as the knowledge of

God’s Word and which, he claims, has been hidden until now by the “hypocrites” and

the “wolves” who should have given it to the people. The violence of such attack must

again be placed not only in the context of the Protestant polemic against Rome, but

also Farel’s own conversion. We saw how the salient aspect that comes out from his

conversion narrative is the realization of having been deceived for so many years. No

doubts many of his readers would feel like him and would empathise with his desire

for ordinary believers to be taught the truth.

A Hierarchy-Free Church

This is clearly the aspect that Farel is most passionate about and in which the

polemics against the established Church is at its sharpest. The church he depicts is an

informal gathering of believers, not an institution. He does say something about the

government of the church as I will show below, but the informality is stressed. This

‘informal’ or ‘democratic’ conception of the church that is displayed in the Sommaire

led Robert White to suggest that it is the element of his ecclesiology that “best betrays

the early date of the Sommaire.”227 White is probably thinking about Luther’s early

226 Farel, Le Pater Noster, 37.

227 White, “An early doctrinal handbook”, 30.

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conception of the church which then evolved towards a more structured conception in

particular as a result of the peasants’ revolts in 1525. Whilst it is clearly true, it is

worth noting that his description of the church is not very different from the definition

in the Geneva Confession of Faith in 1536 in which the church is also defined as the

assembly of the faithful gathered to hear the Gospel and receive the sacraments

properly administered.228 Moreover, unlike Luther, Farel does not mention the

priesthood of all believers, but only the spiritual equality of all believers which is the

point he wants to stress. Immediately after the general definition of the church,

mentioned above he continues:

This church does not consist in a diversity of hierarchical positions229, laws, decrees and sacramental functions230 given by the will of man, but in the true union of faith in our Lord Jesus, hearing and believing his holy voice. She does not have specific places, but, wherever two or three are assembled in Jesus’s name, there she is.231

As this definition shows, his understanding of a church as believers united to

Christ through faith means first of all that he rejects the notion of the church as a

hallowed place. He mentions later in his chapter on worship that the kingdom of God

is “within us” so God is not to be found in any “particular location” because God does

not reside in buildings made by men.232 More importantly, it means the rejection of

any hierarchy or special status in the church, be it the distinction between clergy and

laity or monastic orders. The reason is the same as the reason why the church is not a

228 Confessions and catechisms of the Reformation, ed. Mark Noll, 131. 229 Literally “degrez” which meant both a certain rank or function in the ecclesiastical

hierarchy and a university qualification corresponding to it, as per “degree” in modern English. 230 Literally “ordres” which is an old word for sacrament, in particular the sacraments

conferring certain ecclesiastical functions.

231 Farel, Sommaire, 31. 232 Ibid., 56.

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building: God is present in every believer. In his 1533 baptismal liturgy, he makes the

point again that the kingdom of God is within the believer so he does not need to go

and seek the Lord Jesus into a religious order.233

For him the distinction between clergy and laity is not only wrong because it is

unbiblical but for other reasons. Firstly at the heart of these distinctive statuses there is

pride and a rejection of God’s Word (as always, the clash of wills). People join

monastic orders or the clergy because they think that it will make them better

Christians than ordinary believers and they will be ‘closer’ to heaven. In his chapter

on good works, Farel humorously goes through a list of grand religious orders that

people are proud to join.

…these men are not satisfied with the holy law of God but, as if it were insufficient in itself for a holy life, follow the rules of men. They are no longer happy to simply call themselves Christians but companions of St James, Saint Sebastian, Our Lady of Comfort, Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Le Puys, our Lady of Lorette, Our Lady of Montferrat, of the first or second order of St Francis,234 of the major or minor orders or minims.235 Thus, those who enter into those so called spiritual orders promise what is not in their power to keep, like perpetual chastity or keeping all sorts of laws and ordinances in addition to the law of God.236

Therefore, these religious institutions represent a tragic illusion; illusion of superior

piety and victory over sinful flesh. As for the distinction between clergy and laity, it is

therefore entirely contrary to God’s will and it is one of the main reasons why the

mass is so wrong in Farel’s view. If one were to ask evangelical Protestants today

233 Farel, Maniere et Fasson, 29.

234 St Francois de Paul (1416-1507). 235 “Ordres majeurs, mineurs ou minimes”. The “ordres majeurs and mineurs” in Farel’s time

were religious orders including people fulfilling various ecclesiastical functions like priests, deacons or exorcists, among others. The “Minimes” were the members of the order founded by St Francois de Paul mentioned by Farel.

236 Farel, Sommaire, 44.

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what they think is wrong with the Roman Catholic mass, most of them would

probably respond with theological arguments: the denial of transubstantiation or the

affirmation that Christ was sacrificed once and for all on the cross and does not need

to be sacrificed again every week. Farel would concur with this, but, significantly,

these are not his first objections. As Ozment rightly observes, Farel does not dwell so

much on the usual theological objections, although he mentions them as well later, but

rather “stresses what would be more immediate to a simple parishioner”237, namely

that the mass is designed maximise the difference between the priest and the people.

He says, “The holy table to our Lord is meant to make us see that we are all one… on

the contrary, the mass is meant to show the enormous difference between priests and

the people.”238 Indeed, says Farel people are taught that it is a sacrilege to touch or

drink anything that only they are supposed to touch or drink. That blatant difference

could not escape the most ignorant of parishioners and he must have known that it was

a cause of resentment for many people. Interestingly, Pierre Viret denounced the same

thing at the Lausanne disputation in 1536 in which he worked alongside Farel against

the Catholic representatives: “priests do not want anyone to touch the altar, the bread

or the chalice except them and they must put bread in other people’s mouth!”239

The second reason why the mass is wrong for him also explains why the

division of the church in clergy, laity and monastic orders is wrong: because it favours

laziness and the exploitation of the poor. That brings us to the last key aspect of the

church for Farel which is its dedication to the poorest and weakest members of

society.

237 Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, 71.

238 Farel, Sommaire, 37. 239 “Pierre Viret at the Lausanne Disputation,” in Les actes de la dispute de Lausanne, ed.

Arthur Piaget, vol. 6, 173.

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A Serving Church

Zuidema helpfully sums up this all-important aspect of Farel’s ecclesiology:

The distinction of wills shows itself in all the activities of the church. A false church is full of people who serve themselves and their own advancement; a true church is full of members who serve each other… the Lord brings together the faithful, not just for a relationship with himself, but also with each other – a church is no church thinks Farel without mutual service. Farel says ‘the faithful members of Jesus do not serve themselves but others’.240

The denunciation of the exploitation of the poor is a constant theme in the second part

of the Sommaire. After denouncing the fact that the mass magnifies the gap between

priests and parishioners, he continues his tirade with arguments that no doubts

resonated with a large number of the urban population of Western Europe at the time:

Because of the mass the poor, the widows and the orphans are ruined for through it the Pope’s church extorted all sorts of things. And what should have been given to the poor members of Jesus [Christians] is offered and spent on luxurious garments and all sorts of clothing taken from the infidels, pagans and from Jewish ceremonies... innumerable wealth is spent and the poor are neglected. Similarly, dead people’s bones are embedded in reliquaries covered in gold, silver and precious gems…241

It may not be immediately obvious to us why he makes such a link between the mass

in particular and the wealth of the Roman Church. However, it probably would be to

his contemporaries. The Eucharist is the centre of the mass and, given what it is

supposed to represent – the presence of God mediated through the church – it would

obviously confer much power to the church and justify the expenses for the pomp that

surrounds it. However, Farel adds a more specific criticism of the mass, namely the

business of the indulgences for the dead that is linked to it: “during the mass people

240 Zuidema, Early French Reform, 25.

241 Farel, Sommaire, 37.

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are strongly encouraged to give to those who are out of this world to take them out of

purgatory as the priests say.”242 This teaching is pernicious in his view because it

draws many into eternal damnation, but also, as he does not omit to point out, because

“the world is devoured by the lazy stomach of the priests, monks and nuns.” This was

undoubtedly a relevant criticism at a time when so much wealth was spent on

endowments and chantries for the benefit of the dead. By 1516-18, the diocese around

the city of Geneva counted some 1,435 chantries. 100 of which were housed by the St

Pierre cathedral by 1536, the year the mass was banned in Geneva.243

Farel repeatedly denounces the idleness and laziness of monks who not only have

separated themselves from the rest of society through their own rules, but are a burden

for the rest of society, especially for the peasants who have to work to feed them. This

is a concern that he voiced early on in this 1524 Basel thesis: “Those who are in good

health and whose energy is not consumed by the service of the Word of God must,

according to the teaching of the Apostle, work with their hands.”244 This is obviously

a direct reference to the clergy and monks who, in his view and no doubt many

people’s view at the time, are neither “consumed” with the study of God’s word nor

with work. They are therefore parasites of society and he can see no justification for

their existence.

Similarly, in the chapter about religious feasts and holidays, it is interesting

that the main reason he gives for the institution of the Lord’s Day is the need for rest,

in accordance with Deuteronomy 6 rather than the creational argument of Exodus 20.

242 Ibid., 39.

243 Thomas A Lambert, “Preaching, praying and policing the Reform in sixteenth-century

Geneva,” Ph. D. diss. (University of Wisconsin-Madison 1980), quoted in Zuidema, Early French Reform, 41.

244 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.1, 195. “Qui corpore valent quos in totum verbum dei non

detinet Apostoli sentential minibus operari debent.”.

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The seventh day of rest is given “by charity, out of compassion for the workers and

servants so that they may not be oppressed by continual toiling.”245

Farel sums up the difference between a true and a false church in this way: “Jesus

gives the kingdom of heavens to the poor, but the pope gives his pardon and

indulgences only to those who have money. The poor get nothing. He gives also to big

foundations so the poor get nothing.”246

Therefore, we can see that in his mind the church is by nature a community of

believers united in Christ to hear his word and help the weakest and poorest members

of society. This is very interesting because one who reads his chapters on the church is

left with the impression that for him the two essential marks of the true church are the

faithful teaching of the word and care for the poor, both inside and outside the

church. He does mention the importance of church discipline and the proper

administration of the sacraments, and his denunciation of the mass is of course

uncompromising, but these two elements do not feature so strongly when he defines

the nature of the church. In that sense, his main challenge for us today is perhaps to

reflect on the importance we give to helping the poor in our understanding of the

church’s mission.

The Government of the Church

Farel dedicates several chapters of the Sommaire to the government of the

church by pastors. He does not seem to distinguish between the functions of ‘pastor’

and ‘elder’. In conclusion to a chapter called “obedience due to pastors” he says,

“These are the honours due to the elder, the minister of the Word who serves for the

245 Farel, Sommaire, 64.

246 Ibid., 62.

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gospel.”247 All these terms seem interchangeable for him. It is not clear whether the

distinction between ‘pastor’ and ‘elder’ is not relevant to him or whether he does not

wish to enter into more complex considerations. In any event, he has some interesting

things to say about the duties and authorities of the ‘pastors’ as he usually calls them.

The Duties of Pastors

All the reformers from the beginning of the Reformation assert that the main

duties of the pastor are to teach the Word of God and to administer the sacraments.

This is what Luther clearly says, as early as 1520, in his treatise “To the Christian

Nobility of the German Nation”: “the ministry which God has instituted, the

responsibility of which is to minister Word and sacrament to a congregation among

whom they reside.”248 For Farel, the duty to teach the Word is paramount. Whilst he

certainly agrees that administering the sacraments is also important, he does not dwell

on it at all. Teaching the Word intelligibly is for him an all-important requirement and

this concern surfaces in his very first theological writings, the 1524 Basel Theses. As

thesis five unambiguously states, “the most pressing mission for priests (or elders) is

to wholeheartedly apply themselves to the Word of God, and seek nothing beyond

it.”249 That concern is repeated in the Sommaire and he contrasts this duty to teach the

flock to the selfish ambition of the pastor who wants to be served rather than serving.

The true pastor must “forget himself to feed [the flock] with the Word.”250 The

requirements for pastors are highlighted in two chapters articulated on Farel’s usual

247 Ibid., 93.

248 Luther’s Works, vol 44, p.176. 249 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.1, 194. “Presbyterorum verissimum officium verbo dei

instare, cui ita addictos opportet, ut nihil ducant angustitus…”. 250 Farel, Sommaire, 84.

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contrast: ‘the fake pastor’ and the ‘good pastor’. Not surprisingly, Farel draws on

Christ’s contrast between the good shepherd and the robber. The good shepherd wants

to do the will of his father, like Christ, and he not only keeps his law, but teaches it to

his sheep by making it intelligible: “He is zealous for the Holy Scripture that he

studies to exhort, correct, admonish correct and teach.”251 For Farel this duty to teach

implies a constant vigilance to ensure that what is taught is not the fruit of the pastor’s

own will or imagination: “He will not invent anything nor expound anything invented

by others, even by an angel from heaven, but he will only give the sheep what he

believes fully and what is certain and approved by the Holy Scriptures.”252 This duty

also leads him to insist on the importance of the education of pastors and people in the

church. Education is also a duty for the flock and he dedicates a surprisingly long

chapter to the instruction of children. This instruction is entirely aimed at knowing and

serving God and understanding his Word. As we saw earlier, Farel has ambitious

ideas for children: apart from learning the skills necessary for a job, he exhorts parents

to teach their children classical languages if they can afford it and if their children

show abilities for them.

The other duties of the pastors are briefly summarised at the end of the chapter

and consist essentially in the qualities listed by Paul in his first epistle to Timothy so

they do not require any specific mention. The duty to teach the Word is the one that he

really wants to emphasize. One detail though is worth noting at this point: Farel

mentions that one duty of the pastor is to “honour the holy estate of marriage by being

the husband of one wife.” That would not be significant in itself were it not that

almost all references to priests and monks in the Sommaire include a denunciation of

their vows of chastity and their immorality and that the chapters about pastors’ duties

251 Ibid., 85. 252 Ibid., 83.

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and prerogatives are immediately followed by a chapter on ‘marriage’ which is one of

the longest chapters in the book. The amount of space he dedicates to this topic is

truly surprising. He denounces in the strongest possible language the celibacy of

priests imposed by the Roman Church. What is remarkable in this chapter is that he

does not just denounce this prohibition to marry because it contradicts the Scriptures

and leads to immorality, as most other reformers do, but he dwells on the blessings of

marriage and the importance of marital faithfulness in an unusually warm manner:

To exercise true and perfect charity, which is the fulfilment of the law, God made the woman to help man in holy marriage. When it is kept pure, the two are one body in true love. Consider also what love there is from fathers and mothers to their children when they come from a faithful marriage, when the father truly knows that these are his children and that the mother did not love anybody else but was ever faithful to her husband… what joy is there [in marriage] because of the mutual encouragement to do always better. If any misfortune happens, what compassion and encouragement in adversity. In the holy estate of marriage, deeds of true love are practised visibly and there is no other estate where love has so many opportunities to manifest itself. The one who is love instituted it, honoured it and commanded it; the one who is the devil and hatred himself spoiled it, dishonoured it and prohibited it as much as he could.253

This quote gives an idea of the importance of marriage for Farel. His favourite words

to describe it are “holiness” and “dignity”. He concludes the chapter exhorting

husbands to “understand the dignity of that estate.” It is also worth noting that his

work ‘Manière et Fasson’ first published in 1533 also contains a brief wedding liturgy

which describes marriage in equally lofty terms.254 Such high view of marriage may

also be the sign of a longing for marriage on the part of a reformer whose life was too

busy and precarious to allow it. This is only speculation, but one cannot help thinking

253 Ibid., 101. 254 Farel, Manière et Fasson, 64.

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about his surprising marriage at the age of 69,255 just seven years before his death,

with a young girl in her twenties, Mary Thorel. That marriage was shocking at the

time (Calvin expressed his disapproval) and one of Farel’s colleagues brutally

summed up people’s feelings in a note added to the banns registry: “The marriage was

deemed by most people to be very strange and out of season and it seemed to them

that since he had reached the age of 69 without thinking about it, he could have done

without it now that he was on the edge of the grave.”256 The little information

available suggests that it was a happy marriage and that Mary provided him with all

the “compassion and encouragement in adversity” that he mentioned in the Sommaire

thirty years before.

Whether or not this passage in the Sommaire expresses a personal longing, it

certainly shows that marriage was a significant issue at the time. I believe that what I

have expounded so far about Farel’s theology has shown that he can always be trusted

to know the practical issues that mattered to his audience. Therefore, the unexpected

space dedicated to marriage in a short book that purports to summarise the main

doctrine of the Reformed faith is a sure indication that it was a burning issue in his

own time. In fact, the immorality of the clergy and of the monasteries was denounced

at the time and there is little doubt this contributed to discredit the Church in the eyes

of many. His diatribe at the end of his chapter is telling:

You, kings and princes, lords, judges and other men entrusted by our Lord to govern his people, do you not see the great scandals that the ministers of the Antichrist cause in your land, kidnapping and seducing young girls and women, openly committing adulteries and all kinds of dirty immoralities so that we see thousands of poor girls seduced by them and lost and innumerable marriages destroyed leading even to murders.257

255 On 20th December 1558 in Neuchâtel. 256 Pétremand et al., Guillaume Farel, Biographie Nouvelle, 677.

257 Farel, Sommaire, 104.

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Even allowing for Farel’s fiery rhetoric, he would not have been able to write this if it

did not match a certain reality that people could see. Therefore, it was fitting for him

to insist on the marriage and sexual morality of pastors as an essential condition for

the credibility of the true church and an essential condition for its credibility among

the population.

The Authority of Pastors

As often in Farel’s writing, his distinctiveness comes less from his original

insight on theological concepts than on what he stresses or ignores. This is a case in

point. Contrary to other reformers, Luther in particular, who discuss in fairly great

details the authority of the ministerial office and issues of delegations and

ordination,258 he completely ignores the issue. There is no mention of ordination or

anything similar in his writings. In many ways, this reflects not only his convictions

on the subject, but also his own ministry: he was never ordained by any church. He

was either encouraged to preach by well-meaning friends (like Oecolampadius) or

acting under a political mandate (when he evangelised the Bernese territory) or simply

chosen as pastor by a city (in Neuchâtel). In the Sommaire, he assumes that the pastor

has got the trust of his congregation, but is not concerned about how he came to be

chosen. His thoughts on the subject are summed up in an interesting paradox: in the

chapter about the “power of pastors” he states that their authority simply derives from

their faithful preaching of God’s Word. That is the only authority he envisages:

258 For example, Bernhard Lohse helpfully summarizes the evolution of Luther’s thought

towards a more hierarchical conception of the ministerial office. Lohse, Martin Luther’s theology, 291-295.

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Pastors preach faithfully, the Word of God acts powerfully and everybody knows they

have authority:

When true pastors preach the pure gospel, God speaks through them with such great strength that believers have eternal life and unbelievers are silenced. True messengers of God, true evangelists will never be defeated for God, as he promised, gives his own a mouth and wisdom that no-one can resist.259

At the same time, in the next chapter about the prerogatives of pastors, he states that

congregations have two great duties towards them: the first one is to “check

everything they say” and evaluates whether his teaching is faithful to the Word of

God.260 Farel obviously trusts that the Holy Spirit will help both pastors and their

congregations to discern what is truly faithful to the Scriptures. This balancing act

between trusting one’s teacher and checking that his teaching is faithful to the

Scriptures is something to which we are accustomed today, but it was clearly

revolutionary at a time when the laity was not supposed to question the authority of

ordained clergy. So his call for parishioners to ‘check’ must have been something

immensely empowering.261

This limited material about the duties and prerogative of the church is valuable

because it is a very concrete and lucid summary of the questions the first reformers

had to tackle and what issues were paramount in people’s mind at the time, as they

tried to make the crucial distinctions between a true church and a false one.

259 Farel, Sommaire, 86. 260 The second one if to support them financially. 261 Euan Cameron suggests that one of the keys to the Reformation’s success was that “it

flattered its hearers by treating them as fit to hear and to judge the most arcane doctrines of the religious élite and by portraying the layman as a true custodian of biblical truth.” Cameron, The European Reformation, 311.

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The Church and the State

Farel dedicates one chapter to the power and prerogatives of the State. He

follows the traditional distinction of the Reformers between political and spiritual

powers based on the distinction between body and soul, each part being subject to its

respective authority. The thrust of his teaching is that Christians must submit to

political powers instituted by God for everything that falls within their sphere,

“whether they make good use of the sword or not”262, provided they do not command

something contrary to God’s will as set out in the Scriptures. Political powers must

remember that they are instituted by God himself and must therefore be careful to

comply with His will and administer justice with integrity. However, Farel insists

more on the submission of Christians and expressly condemns any rebellion against

the power of the sword, drawing an analogy with the apostle Peter’s command to

servants to obey their master whether they are good masters or not.263 He also insists

on the fact that it is legitimate for Christians to own servants and to exercise public

duties. This whole chapter seems to be written largely as a refutation of the

Anabaptists’ teaching on the subject. In his exposition of the Christian faith written

two years after the first edition of the Sommaire (Summer 1531), Zwingli concluded

his exposition with a fairly lengthy chapter on the Anabaptists in which he denounced

their teachings in very strong terms, mentioning the fact that, in their view, “it is

unlawful for a Christian to execute the office of a magistrate… that he must not take

an oath.”264 Zwingli obviously felt the need to distance himself from the Anabaptists,

262 Farel, Sommaire, 94. 263 1 Peter 2:18.

264 Huldrich Zwingli, An Exposition of the Faith, ed. G. W. Bromiley (The Library of Christian

Classics, Westminster Press, 1953), 276.

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with whom he and other reformers were associated.265 It is likely that Farel, without

specifically referring to them or their teaching, also had them in mind and he was keen

to emphasise the duties of Christians towards the political authorities.

Farel barely touches on the issue of the relationship between the political

power and the church. In the year of the Sommaire’s first edition (1529)

Oecolampadius first set out what would become the ‘classic’ Reformed position on

the issue: a clear separation of Church and State with religious congregations being

disciplined only through exhortations and spiritual sanctions. His proposals were

rejected by the Basel authorities, but were taken up later by Bucer and Calvin.266

Whilst Farel would later suffer from the interference of the political authorities in

Geneva and Neuchâtel, he does not tackle the issue in the Sommaire. Interestingly, the

only point he makes in that respect is the opposite one: the duty of the Church to

submit to the State with respect to the proper sphere of power granted to it. Once

again, this is clearly meant as a condemnation of the Church of Rome for failing to

recognise the political power and trying to elevate itself above it. The key passage is

this:

This contempt [of Satan for God’s institutions] is seen in the things that God wants to be honoured like the power of the sword which has been abased by the priests to the point that it could not fulfil its duty because subjected to those that should be subjected to it and who nullify that holy authority with a bit of tonsure or oil.267

In this passage, he alludes to all the privileges that the Church has conquered

over several centuries, allowing the clergy to stay outside the jurisdictions of civil

265 All the more since he was writing to the King of France Francis I to convince him that the

reformers were not heretics. 266 Cameron, The European Reformation, 154. 267 Farel, Sommaire, 100.

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courts. Because of these various exemptions, not only members of the clergy were

outside the civil courts’ jurisdiction, but members of the clergy also exercised political

and judicial power over the laity on certain church lands. It was the case for example

with certain abbeys who had the additional privilege not to be subject to the authority

of the local bishop, but were placed directly under papal authority. The abbot also

exercised temporal authority over the people living on the land owned by the abbey.

Of course Farel would have been familiar with such situations from an early age. For

example he taught in Paris for several years in a college located close the Abbey of

Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which owned about 42,000 acres of fields and forests, and

whose inhabitants were under the temporal authority of the abbey.268 Farel mentions

specifically these ‘exemptions’ as they were known and his chapter on the authority of

the sword thus becomes once again a denunciation of the Church of Rome:

Let them [the political authorities] render to each one according to his due, without showing favouritism, neither to the rich nor the poor, nor to any state [social category] nor any exemption invented against God’s will and the sacred authority [of the State]269

This critique of exemptions helps us to put in context the reformers’ appeal to

Christians to submit to the State. When Farel (maybe helped by Calvin) penned the

1536 Geneva Confession of Faith and wrote in article 21, “all Christians are bound

to… obey statutes and ordinances which do not contravene the commandments of

God.”270 he was not simply calling all believers to submit to the authority of the

Church, although he certainly also meant that, still having in mind the peasant

rebellions of the 1520s in Germany and Switzerland. He was also refuting the

268 Guillaume Farel, Sommaire et Brève Déclaration, ed. Arthur Hofer (Neuchâtel: Edition

“Belle Rivière”, 1980), 269n41. 269 Farel, Sommaire, 96.

270 Confessions and catechisms of the Reformation, ed. Mark Noll, 132.

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temporal power of the Church and clearly asserting the basic principle that believers

have no political privileges over unbelievers.

Is Farel’s ecclesiology distinctive then and if so in what way? We have seen

that his general theology of the church is not markedly different from that of Luther or

other first generation reformers. We find the usual distinctions and categories like

visible and invisible church for example. Although he does not use the terms he

clearly has that distinction in mind. We also find the usual emphasis on the

community of believers gathered to hear the Word of God. However, his distinctive,

once again, is his emphasis on the practical and sociological consequences or the

Reformed doctrine of the church. His idea of the church implies a good deal of

visibility. In particular, as we have seen in the section about the marks of the church,

his concern for the poor and the responsibility of the church towards them is striking.

The radical departure from the Roman Church’s ecclesiology comes out strongly in

his short writings on the subject. The contrast could not be greater: one the one hand, a

self-serving church keen to emphasise hierarchies and defend privileges, organised

around a visible figure-head who represents Christ in the world. On the other hand, a

humble, serving community of people refusing hierarchies and distinctions inside and

refusing privileges and exemptions outside. His passionate appeal at the end of his

chapter on the confession to Christ and to the priest is a fitting summary of the great

conflict on which his whole ecclesiology is based.

Christians, do withdraw from the cruel tyranny of the one who placed on your back and your shoulders unbearable burdens that he does not touch with a finger. Come to him who has taken our burden, put it on his shoulders and carries it. Trust in him; come to him and no other… trust in him and not in your confessions. Turn to him and not to these tyrants full of pride and iniquity.271

271 Farel, Sommaire, 71.

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No doubt Farel would have found himself in agreement with Cardinal Congar’s

summary of the reformers’ theology in his book on the history of the Christian Church

quoted above:

In the Reformers’ eyes, the Church as a system of practices, rules and sacerdotal mediation and the clerical authority summed up and symbolised by the Pope has been hypertrophied to Christ’s detriment. The Regnum Christi must be re-established against the Regum papale.272

272 Congar, L’Église de Saint Augustin à l’époque moderne, 353 (my translation).

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CONCLUSION

I would hope that this brief exposition of Farel’s theology and piety has shown

that his personality and his ministry make him one of the most distinctive first-

generation reformers. His piety is inspiring and his passion for God and zeal for the

Gospel are the traits that are most striking for the reader of his works. The Protestant

historian Edouard Urech may have come up with the best summary of his personality

when he said that he was not really a theologian, nor a churchman, nor a humanist, but

that, ultimately, he was a man of God.273 I am inclined to think that Farel would have

been pleased with this assessment.

Farel is also significant for the way he shared his conversion experience and

for the influence such event had on his ideas and ministry. In that sense he provides a

valuable glimpse into the spiritual trauma of many in his generation. Many at the time

reflected on their or other people’s spiritual journeys. In 1528, the German reformer

Wolfgang Capito wrote a long letter to Marguerite d’Angoulême, in which he praised

her for her sincere faith and he wrote a fascinating account of her spiritual journey

since her youth in the mid 1510s

You have been through the whole range of superstitions as I know from ocular witnesses. Then… you devoted yourself to what is called ‘contemplation of God’ and you benefited from it as far as this method can bring forth good fruit. I have read myself two letters in French addressed to you in which, the writer,274 imitating Nicola of Cusa,275 philosophised on the essence and power of God. Experience then taught you the vanity of all these works and practices to which you had devoted yourself… I can well imagine the interior turmoil you must have been through as you felt your faith in good works and this

273 Edouard Urech, Guillaume Farel (Geneva: Editions St Clair, 1965), 107. 274 Most probably Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux. 275 Born in 1401, died in 1464. His mystical treatises were very popular in the early 16th

century.

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sacred philosophy vanish… but in the end, in the midst of this darkness you saw the splendid true light and the One who is the life of the world: Jesus Christ. Jesus only, and Jesus crucified became the object of your devotion; him alone can enable you by his spirit to accomplish all good works.276

Farel went through a similar journey at the same time except that he skipped the

second phase (mysticism) and passed directly from “the whole range of superstitions”

to the “splendid true light” of Jesus Christ. At a time when some question the

significance of the differences between Roman Catholic and Protestant theology, his

experience, like Marguerite’s or the other reformers, bears witness to the undeniable

spiritual transformation that the Reformation brought to so many men and women of

all conditions. People like Farel did not do what they did because they had just

misunderstood the teaching of the Church, but because they had discovered and

experienced something radically new.

This is why his writings are significant: they bring in sharp relief the novelty

of the Reformation and its irreconcilable differences to the traditional faith. The most

distinctive marks of this theology, and the most challenging ones for evangelical

Christians today, are his passion for God’s glory and his uncompromising attitude

towards idolatry. Farel shows that if one has understood something about God’s glory

and man’s depravity, this must have an impact on the way one worships God. Idolatry

is a constant threat and we worship what we trust. Finally his care for the poor that I

have mentioned is challenging because he does not prioritise between what we would

call ‘social action’ and ‘evangelising’, but he simply assumes that care for the poor

and the weak should be a normal manifestation of God’s love shining through the

Christian. The sum of Christianity, as he put it in the title of his main work, is what is

needed to “put one’s trust in God and help one’s neighbour.”

276 Herminjard, Correspondance, vol.2, 119.

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