The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. Historical Setting of Calvin’s Psychopannychia

As the learned Archdeacon Francis Blackburne, Conditionalist historian, puts it, it was just two years after Luther published his commentary on Ecclesiastes in 1532—in which the great German Reformer took his stand with those who maintain the “sleep of the soul” upon a Scripture foundation, and then “made use of it as a confutation of purgatory and saint worship”—that John Calvin began to “figure” in the struggle. This came about by his issuing, as noted, his earliest work, Psychopannychia against the sleep of souls, printed at Orleans. In contrast, in this treatise Calvin contends that the soul is awake “throughout the whole night of death, with all the consciousness and sensibility necessary to the enjoyment of happiness.” ⁴ CFF2 116.2

The timing and place of publication of this tract are both significant, for according to the historian Sleidan, in that very year and in that very city of Orleans the apparition of a “ghost” was making weird and spiteful appearances. It had been “conjured up” by the Franciscans, he records, in support of the doctrine of Purgatory and was “encouraging masses, and bringing large profits to the priests.” But after Luther’s teachings became known—that “the souls of the dead are at rest, waiting for the final judgment”—the ghostly “disturbances, frightful noises and phantoms,” as Sleidan describes them, began to subside, wreaking havoc on the priests’ “trade of apparitions.” So, according to Blackburne, Calvin’s position promoted the profiteering, whereas Luther’s teaching, “consigning all the dead to a state of rest and sleep, left no pretence for the appearance of human souls after death.” ⁵ CFF2 116.3

The intensity of feeling aroused by this question and the strong invectives used by Calvin now came into the open. Blackburne depicts Calvin’s treatise as “hot, furious, and abusive.” ⁶ The Genevan calls the advocates of soul sleep “Hypnologists” (from hypnotic sleep), and berates them as “bablers, madmen, dreamers, drunkards.” He classifies them as Anabaptists and “Catabaptists” (baptizers who “dip under water”)—terms then used to comprehend “all sorts and kinds of wickednesses.” CFF2 117.1

Calvin speaks with alarm of “some thousands” then known to hold to the “sleep of the soul” view, some, however, being “good men; that is to say, not Anabaptists.” So, responsibility for the situation could not all be laid to the extravagancies of “enthusiasts.” But Calvin charges that soul sleepers “pay no regard to the Scriptures.” And, according to Blackburne, Calvin’s treatise furnished all later “orators and disputants for the consciousness of the separate soul, from that day to this (1765),” with their arguments, “feeble and sophistical,” as he describes them. In any event, the pattern there laid down has been consistently followed. In this tractate, says Blackburne, Calvin was constantly “labouring and sweating to set aside the force of a great number of texts” that the soul sleepers had used effectively in support of their position. ⁷ CFF2 117.2

In disgust, Blackburne says with considerable warmth that it “would be doing too much honour to this contemptible string of quibbles to offer a replication. We therefore bid John Calvin good night.” ⁸ In another place he characterizes the treatise as “an angry, disingenuous, weak performance.” ⁹ Thus deep feelings and convictions were involved on both sides at the time and later. Blackburne also calls specific attention to the fact that Calvin’s own commentaries, composed in his mature years, contradict some of the “foolish interpretations of many scriptures” he had employed in the early Psychopannychia. ¹⁰ CFF2 117.3