“Finally, it was when I went back to John Calvin and read what he so confidently wrote about the Holy Spirit leading the individual conscience that I began to see A-G’s posts in a different light.”
Calvin does hold a very high view of the conscience, especially the regenerated conscience. Yet he leaves quite a creative tension between the conscience and the Church.
I commend to you a book by William R Stevenson jr, entitled, “ Sovereign Grace: The Place and Significance of Christian Freedom in John Calvin’s Political Thought”, in which he works through these tensions.
Thanks for writing.
Thanks for the suggestion which just prompted me to order it from Amazon. Looks very promising...
The Reformation thinker John Calvin had significant and unusual things to say about life in public encounter, things which both anticipate modern thinking and, says William Stevenson, can serve as important antidotes to some of modern thinking's broader pretensions. This study attempts to give a coherent picture of Calvin's political theory by following the stream that flows from his fascinating short essay, "On Christian Freedom," one chapter in the magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion. Stevenson argues that a full examination of this essay yields not only a more thorough explication--and historical placement--of Calvin's political ideas proper but also a more complete and coherent picture of their theological underpinnings. "The Calvin scholarship in this work is impressive. Stevenson draws on Calvin's sermons, tracts, letters, commentaries, and other works. He has an excellent command of recent secondary material. Moreover...Stevenson draws out both the revolutionary and conservative elements of Calvin's thought. However,...he uses Christian liberty to reconcile them, rejecting the idea that Calvin is a schizophrenic thinker emphasizing both radical change and political order. Anyone who has ever worked on Calvin will appreciate Stevenson's learning."--Journal of Religion