John Calvin’s Views on Corporate Sin Applied to Racial Justice
Pushing Back Against Corporate Sin
Discussions about racial justice both inside and outside of the church fundamentally have to deal with the questions of corporate sin. In other words, what does the Bible have to say about the following:
- Can a whole group of people be considered guilty of an individual’s sin?
- Can an individual’s posterity be considered guilty for his/her sin?
Those who are opposed to the aims of racial justice often claim that it is unfair or unwarranted for people in the present to be held responsible for racial sins of the past, including but not limited to chattel slavery, brutalization of Native Americans, and the demonization and otherization of non-White cultures.
The shocking thing is that Christians — including theologically conservative ones — will often make such claims. The Bible, according to their understanding, emphasizes personal guilt for sin and personal redemption in Christ. It is illegitimate and improper to place guilt upon someone for the sins of another either contemporaneous with them or from earlier in their family tree.
Calvin’s Affirmation of Corporate Sin
While there are various streams of Protestant Christianity today, I’d like to focus on my own tradition, namely, Reformed theology. One thing off the bat is the fact that, to my knowledge, none of the Reformed statements of faith expansively treat the topic of corporate sin beyond the discussion of Adam’s sin and its effects on the human race. The Reformed statements of faith are quite simply, what Reformed Christians at their core were able to agree upon in the midst of their various differences of opinion and conviction. These were ecumenical at heart and limited in scope for the express purpose of unifying Reformed Christians and giving them liberty to disagree with one another as brothers and sisters.
So, at the core, Reformed theology narrowly considered does not treat this topic in depth. However, the Reformed tradition is heavily indebted to the works of John Calvin. In particular, Calvin was a prolific commentator of the Bible, and much of his exegetical work was systematized in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. While many Christians may begin with Calvin’s Institutes, I do think that the real treasure troves are in his commentaries.
Calvin’s views of corporate sin are extremely helpful as we think about the pursuit of racial justice today. From his commentary on Lamentations 5, Calvin expounds on verse 7, which reads, “Our fathers sinned, and are no more; and we bear their iniquities”:
“It may yet be said that children are loaded with the sins of their fathers, because God, as he declared by Moses, extends his vengeance to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5). And he says also in another place,
‘I will return into the bosom of children the iniquity of their fathers’ (Jeremiah 32:18).
God then continued his vengeance to their posterity. But yet there is no doubt but that the children who had been so severely punished, bore also the punishment of their own iniquity, for they deserved a hundred deaths. But these two things well agree together, that God returns the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children, and yet that the children are chastised for their own sins.” (Emphasis added)
Calvin’s interpretation is critical because he holds together and affirms two biblical truths that on the surface seem contradictory: 1) God will not hold children guilty of the sins of their fathers; and 2) God will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generation.
In fact, in his commentary on Ezekiel 18:20, he specifically comments on how these two seemingly contradictory truths are in fact reconcilable and go hand in hand:
“These passages [which say that the iniquity of the fathers should fall upon the sons and also that the son should not pay the penalty due to the father] seem opposed to each other, but it will be easy to remove the contradiction by beginning with the fall of Adam, since if we do not consider the whole race fallen in Adam, we can scarcely extricate ourselves from that difficulty which we often feel as causing pungent scruples. But the principle of one universal fall in Adam removes all doubts. For when we consider the perishing of the whole human race, it is said with truth that we perish through another’s fault; but it is added at the same time, that every one perishes through his own iniquity.”
In other words, Calvin understands the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity as a model to demonstrate that in a post-fall world, people can be held accountable for the sins of their forebears, while at the same time, people perish through their own iniquity.
Calvin expands upon this idea in his commentary on Achan’s sin in Joshua 7, which is an example where a whole body of people are condemned for the contemporaneous individual sin of one person:
“…it seems very unaccountable that a whole people should be condemned for a private and hidden crime of which they had no knowledge. I answer, that it is not new for the sin of one member to be visited on the whole body. Should we be unable to discover the reason, it ought to be more than enough for us that transgression is imputed to the children of Israel, while the guilt is confined to one individual. But as it very often happens that those who are not wicked foster the sins of their brethren by conniving at them, a part of the blame is justly laid upon all those who by disguising become implicated in it as partners… [God] wished by an extraordinary manifestation to remind posterity that they might all be criminated by the act of an individual, and thus induce them to give more diligent heed to the prevention of crimes.
Nothing, therefore, is better than to keep our minds in suspense until the books are opened, when the divine judgments which are now obscured by our darkness will be made perfectly clear. Let is suffice us that the whole people were infected by a private stain; for so it has been declared by the Supreme Judge, before whom it becomes us to stand dumb, as having one day to appear at his tribunal.” (Emphasis added)
To Calvin, it’s nothing new biblically speaking to consider a group of people guilty for the sins of one person. Ultimately, it’s a truth that is mysterious — a whole people can be condemned for the sins of one person, while at the same time, individuals ultimately perish by their own fault. Calvin leaves it as a point of mystery that all Christians should nevertheless affirm. While we may not understand the specific mechanics and minutiae of how these biblical truths work together and play out in real life, we are all called to simply say “Amen” and live in light of these truths.
Calvin’s Views of Corporate Sin Applied to Racial Justice
There is much to glean from Calvin’s understanding of corporate sin, especially as it relates to the topic of racial justice today.
First, Christians who believe in the Word of God as the inspired rule of faith and life cannot claim that the Bible does not teach a doctrine of corporate sin. Calvin’s exegetical work in his commentaries is grounded in a simple reading of the Old Testament that has to wrestle with a seeming contradiction. If the idea of corporate sin did not come from the pages of Scripture, Calvin would have had no reason to have extended discussions on this matter in several of his commentaries.
Second, the appearance of a contradiction, or an “antinomy” as J.I. Packer calls it, does not give readers of the Bible the license to pick and choose one truth over another. Just as the antinomy of God’s absolute sovereignty and human responsibility requires us to affirm both, the antinomy of corporate sin and individual sin requires us to affirm both. To neglect one over another leads into skewed theological conclusions and attempts to solve something that is meant by God to remain a mystery.
Third, the sins of the past have an impact on the present. We should not assume that the pollution of sin is thwarted by a cosmic moat of time and space, as though the present is quarantined from the past. It is more than reasonable to believe that a nation that has never repented of systemic injustices and oppression of the past would be experiencing the condemnation of these sins in the present. It is more than reasonable to believe that a church and Christian institutions and movements that were either complicit in or proactively engaged in these heinous sins and has never repented are also undergoing a time of discipline or judgment today.
Fourth, corporate sin requires corporate repentance. Even in biblical examples, there were most likely individuals who were in all different shades of the spectrum in terms of personal, individual guilt for sins. Take idolatry, as a prime example. Some were propagating the sins of their fathers. Some were silent and doing nothing, yet allowing the system of idolatry to continue that their fathers created (perhaps even benefiting from the system as well). Others may have been actively fighting against these systems. But at the end of the day, when confession was made, it was done corporately. Racial justice in the United States has two “corporations,” as it were, that require corporate repentance: the church and the state. While corporate repentance may be difficult to implement in the state, the church should be the prime environment where corporate repentance and all that involves is done.
Fifth, and most importantly, the gospel is the answer for corporate sin too. I believe we have too often thought of the gospel in solely individualistic ways. But, the existence of corporate sin reminds us that God’s provision of grace has corporate dimensions as well. In fact, it is a testament to the cosmic renewal inaugurated in Christ at His resurrection that will be consummated at His return. God is not simply saving disembodied and disconnected souls to a one-on-one with Jesus in the skies, but he is renewing whole persons and whole peoples with the gospel.
