Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority

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

• Luther and Calvin are the most important figures of the Reformation and these two pieces are their most important writings on the relationship between Church and polity • This is the first time that these two works have been presented together in one volume. They are accompanied by the full editorial apparatus: recent translations, introduction, glossary, chronology and bibliography • Harro Höpfl is author of The Christian Polity of John Calvin (CUP, 1982) and numerous articles on the subject

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

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