Christian Freedom

Freedom from the Law#

The doctrine of Christian freedom, Calvin explains, follows immediately from justification by faith. Since it is impossible for a human being to fulfill the requirement of the law that we "love our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength" (4; 836), then “believers, in seeking assurance of their justification before God, should rise above and advance beyond the law, forgetting all law righteousness.” We should "turn our attention from ourselves"—that is, from our own "works" — "and look only to Christ" (2; 834).

Christian freedom means, thus, freedom from the law. Meanwhile Calvin hastrens to add that it is wrong “to infer from this that the law is superfluous to believers”. Belivers are like sons who trusting in the generosity of their father “do not hesitate to offer them incomplete and half-done and even defective works”.

Separation of Two Kingdoms#

In order to free believers from the spiritual tyranny of human beings, Calvin thus seems to deny any knowable spiritual purpose
to human action. But in order to check the apparent anarchic potential of this doctrine, in order to show that “spiritual freedom
can perfectly well exist along with civil bondage” (IV.xx.1; 1486), Calvin, in concluding this discussion of “Christian Freedom,” must rigorously distinguish between two kingdoms.

There is a twofold government in man[…] There are in man, so to speak, two worlds, over which different kings and different laws ahve authority.

These worlds/kingdoms are the “spiritual” and “temporal” realsm, a dichotomy that Calvin here equates with that between the sould and the body, between “inner mind” and “outward behavior”, and between the “forum of conscience” and the “outer forum”. The believer finds all his spiritual needs in Christ alone, but this spiritual freedom does not abrogate the necessity of a political kingdom or jurisdiction.

The Jurisdiction of Present Life#

Calvin specifies that the jurisdiction of “‘the present life”’ goes beyond, if not above, “food and clothing’’; this jurisdiction also concerns “laying down laws whereby a man may live his life among other men holily, honorably, and temperately.” 

How it is possible for the realm of the body to extend not only to the temperate and honorable but even to the holy should be examined by looking at Calvin's description of the spiritual kingdom and then again at his account of civil government.