The Apostle of the Alps

Guillaume (William) Farel is sometimes only remembered as the man who threatened John Calvin (1509–1564) with God’s displeasure if he rejected the invitation to join the reform in Geneva. However, Farel’s vibrant gospel ministry and thundering rebuke of idolatry sparked the French reformation, liberated countless thousands from the bondage of Roman superstition, and earned him the nickname the “Apostle of the Alps.”

His Popish Heart

Born five years after Luther and Zwingli in the small French mountain town of Gap, Farel grew up in an affluent family deeply committed to the defective, consumptive piety of late medieval Catholicism. Over previous centuries, Roman church tradition had abandoned the gospel by rejecting justification by faith and replacing it with a convoluted system of merit-making practices. Veneration of relics and saints, prayers for the dead, attendance of religious services, and participation in the Eucharist provided no true solution to the problem of sin. The more one embraced medieval devotion, the more elusive assurance of salvation seemed to become.

Farel, however, doubted nothing — passionately embracing Catholic piety, making pilgrimages with his family to the shrine near their Alpine home, and ardently defending papal authority and the system of merit. In a letter to a friend many years later, Farel commented,

In truth popery itself was not, and is not, as popish as my heart was. . . . The devil was to me transformed into an angel of light, and I do not believe that all the devils together could have more completely deceived and enchanted any poor heart than they did mine. (William Farel, 27)

Mercifully, that enchantment was soon to be broken.

Against Religious Tyranny

In 1509, Farel enrolled at the University of Paris to study philosophy, ancient languages, and theology. His primary tutor, Jacques Lefévre d’Étaples (1455–1536), introduced him to the Pauline epistles and to the doctrine of justification by faith. Challenged to examine the Scriptures for the first time in his life, Farel began to discover the deceitfulness of Roman church teaching. He was astonished to find that the Scriptures nowhere mentioned the pope, clerical hierarchy, transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences, worship of the saints, priestly celibacy, or any sacraments beyond baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

By 1521, while Luther’s works were yet unavailable in France, Farel had reached similar convictions: salvation was to be found in Christ alone, the Scriptures were alone the rule of faith, and Roman traditions were merely the traditions of men.

Farel realized that the piety in which he was raised was devoted to idolatry rather than true worship. Through false teaching, countless sincere Christians had been deceived into empty worship that was an affront to God himself. He lamented,

O God, what horror! O sun, can you shed your rays on such a land? O earth, can you bear such men and give fruit to such people, who thus condemn and despise your Creator? And you, Lord God, are You really so merciful and slow to wrath and vengeance against so very great an outrage made against you? (Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries, 92)

And so, Farel dedicated his life to gospel-centered apostolic ministry. “Shall I die,” he prayed, “without hearing your holy Word preached openly?” (Early French Reform, 83). First in France and then in the Swiss confederacy, Farel went from town to town proclaiming the gospel, teaching the Scriptures, and planting churches. He pleaded with those entranced by false worship,

Withdraw from the cruel tyranny of the one who has put unbearable burdens on your backs and shoulders, in which he does not move them from anyone with one finger. Come to Him who has taken our burden and who has placed it upon his shoulders and carries it! Trust in him and you will be assured, and come to him only and no other. . . . Have faith in him and not in your auricular confessions; address him and not to these tyrants full of pride and iniquity. (Reformed Confessions, 84)

Evangelist to the End

Dogged and creative, Farel gave lectures, engaged in theological disputations, and even started legal proceedings for slander against those who insulted him to gain one more opportunity to share the gospel. While friends like John Calvin and Robert Olivetan consolidated Reformation thought and translated the Scriptures into French, Farel remained unrelentingly focused on his missionary task.

Despite being beaten, stoned, poisoned, and shot at, Farel continued preaching, praying, evangelizing, and pastoring for an astonishing 35 years. Only when he saw the gospel taking sufficient root among the Alpine cities did he finally consider marriage — controversially wedding Mary Thorel when he was 69 years old. Farel died seven years later, having outlived Calvin as the last of the first-generation French Reformers.

Second-generation French Reformer Theodore Beza (1519–1605) fittingly reflected,

Unbroken by difficulties, undeterred by threats, insults, and even beatings, it was Farel who gained Christ for the people of Montbéliard, Neuchatel, Lausanne, Aquileia, and ultimately Geneva. Besides his great piety, learning, innocence of life, and exceptional modesty, he possessed a unique presence of mind, a sharp intellect, an intensity of proclamation such that he seemed to thunder, rather than speak; and such a fervency in prayer that those who heard him were lifted up as to heaven. (History of the Christian Church, 8:213)