Calvin on Government

The other discussion of Calvin's that caught my attention was that of the 10th commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house [...] or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

Calvin's understanding of this commandment is as an application of Jesus's message to "love your neighbor as yourself". Calvin points out that an earlier commandment already forbids actually taking your neighbor's belongings, so the essence of this commandment is something else and points us toward Jesus's message. If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, we certainly must eliminate the covetous envy that we harbor.

Of course, not coveting does not by itself imply love of neighbor. (It is necessary but not sufficient.) However, Calvin's view is that the commandment requires love. He cites Augustine as well as the Apostle Paul, who wrote "the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart..." I.e., the goal of the commandment is to love your neighbor not simply to avoid wanting their stuff.

Of all of Calvin's discussions of commandments, this was the one with the most obvious political implications.

For example, it is hard to hear a pundit nowadays talking about the "top 1%" without straying directly against this commandment. Indeed, many political arguments pretty much say, "Look how much bigger their house is than yours!" It's hard to be more blatantly afoul than that.

This is not to say that one cannot care about the poor without being un-Christian. Indeed, Jesus praised charity frequently and loudly.

However, it is possible to try to help the poor without stoking feelings of envy. Indeed, it is not clear that most discussions of the "top 1%" have anything to do with the poor. Usually the pundit is saying that we should take from the rich and give to the middle class (in the form of medical care, education, or retirement benefits for "ordinary Americans").

Finally, it is worth pointing out that, while the author of the 10th commandment describes a scenario that involves clear inequality (e.g., your neighbor has a bigger house), he does not point at inequality as being the primary outrage. Rather, he is outraged by the covetousness of the first man.

Indeed, it is easy to see that inequality is not a moral problem in and of itself. For example, suppose that, of two neighbors, the owner of the smaller house is retched and covetous. Now, suppose that the larger house burns down in an accident. Then the owner of the smaller house may no longer feel covetous. His emotional state has improved, yet the problem in his heart remains.