Calvin on using 1 Timothy 5:9-12 as a prooftext for monastic vows

 As I mentioned in my sermon this morning, the Roman Catholic Church uses this passage as a proof text about a monastic vow of chastity.  Calvin on this vow:

“The attempt of the Papists to support, by means of this passage, a vow of perpetual celibacy, is absurd. Granting that it was customary to exact from the widows an engagement in express terms, still they would gain nothing by this admission. First, we must consider the end. The reason why widows formerly promised to remain unmarried, was not that they might lead a holier life than in a state of marriage, but because they could not, at the same time, be devoted to husbands and to the Church; but in Popery, they make a vow of continence, as if it were a virtue acceptable to God on its own account. Secondly, in that age they renounced the liberty of marrying at the time when they ceased to be marriageable; for they must have been, at least, sixty years old, and, by being satisfied with being once married, must have already given a proof of their chastity. But now, vows are made among the Papists to renounce marriage, either before the time, or in the midst of the ardour of youthful years.”[1] 

He then says, 

“Now we disapprove of the tyrannical law about celibacy, chiefly for two reasons. First, they pretend that it is meritorious worship before God; and secondly, by rashness in vowing, they plunge souls into destruction. Neither of these was to be found in the ancient institution. They did not make a direct vow of continence, as if the married life were less acceptable to God, but only, so far as it was rendered necessary by the office to which they were elected, they promised to keep from the tie of marriage for their whole life; nor did they deprive themselves of the liberty of marrying, till the time when, though they had been ever so free, it was foolish and unreasonable for them to marry. In short, those widows differed as much from the nuns, as Anna the prophetess from Clauda the Vestal.”[2]

We are certain that marriage is a blessing just based on what Paul says a couple of verses later: "Therefore, I want younger widows to get married" (v. 14).  He also had just referred to the forbidding of marriage as a doctrine of demons (4:1-5), and that is an apt description of such monastic vows.


[1] John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 132.

[2] Jbid., 132–133.



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