Posted on 06/19/2009 7:09:41 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
For the non-Calvinists or anti-Calvinists among us who may worry that this issue of WORLD has several articles about John Calvin, be not afraid: It happens only once every 500 years. July 10 brings the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth—and the great theologian, even with his warts, deserves a better press than he has typically received in recent decades.
Calvin was a fallen sinner, as all of us are, but was he especially mean-spirited? He taught that God created the world out of love and loved the world so much that Christ came down from the glorious kingdom of heaven and plunged into this world's muck. Calvin saw God as a generous giver and His mercy as an abundant resource. Jehovah's Witnesses would later insist that heaven has room for only 144,000, but Calvin understood that God's grace is infinite.
Did Calvin emphasize in-group harshness toward the poor and the alien? No: He wrote, "We cannot but behold our own face as it were in a glass in the person that is poor and despised . . . though he were the furthest stranger in the world. Let a Moor or a barbarian come among us, and yet inasmuch as he is a man, he brings with him a looking glass wherein we may see that he is our brother and neighbor." Everyone is created in God's image and worthy of respect.
Did Calvin want us to abstain from all material pleasures? He wrote that God "meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. . . . Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor?" He opposed any doctrine that "deprives us of the lawful fruit of God's beneficence."
Calvin also opposed doctrines that deprive us of political liberty. His understandings—that God-given laws are superior to those of the state, the king, and any other institution, and that individuals have direct access to the Bible, without dependence on pope or priest—are common now, but compare them to the political and theological theories fashionable before his time. In ancient times, pagan states revered leaders as semi-divine. Those who argued with such bosses were seen as deserving death. In medieval times, the interpretations of church officials often trumped the words of the Bible itself (which few people could read). They identified God's kingdom on earth with a church monopoly, and hanged, burned, or decapitated some with other ideas.
Calvin and other Reformation leaders, though, separated church and state while emphasizing the importance of believers working to lead the state. Calvin contended that, since God reigns everywhere, His followers should be entrepreneurs in every strategic institution, including government, civil society, commerce, media, law, education, the church, and the arts. This emphasis led directly to what has become known as the "Protestant ethic," with its unleashing of individual initiative and its emphasis on hard work in purportedly secular areas. Many kinds of labor are equally worthy, Calvin argued, and those in charge of one activity should not dictate to others.
Calvin's writings also had an implicit anti-statism. Since fundamental law comes from God, obeying the law means obeying God, not necessarily the state. Rebellion against an unlawful state act, led by "lesser magistrates" such as local leaders, is really a justifiable maintenance of true law. One Calvin disciple in 1579 wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos ("Vindication Against Tyrants"), which emphasized the limits of power.
Would freedom ring? The English jurist Blackstone called "the power and jurisdiction of Parliament transcendent and absolute . . . sovereign and uncontrollable." English lawyers joked that "Parliament can do everything except make a woman a man, or a man a woman." (Some of our jurists and legislators are more ambitious.) But generation after generation of Calvinists read Vindiciae and emphasized that government must be under God. According to John Adams, its doctrines greatly influenced Americans of the 1760s and 1770s.
Calvin's birthday comes six days after the Independence Day that owes much to his teaching. Bake a cake and know that Calvin was not against enjoying it.
They take Christ at his word: John 6.
And that she floated up to heaven bodily.
Funny no one saw that take place, isn't it? No doubt we'll soon be told there was a whole gaggle of mystics who witnessed that fever-dream.
They're not dead. Calling them dead is to call Christ a liar.
More vicious anti-Catholic hate.
...and they all believe that man has the power to forgive them...
Again, taking Christ's word as True. Matthew 16:18-19
I'd explain it to you, but it's beyond you, I think.
Ditto.
This is where words matter. It's not "non-Roman Catholics," but rather "non-Catholics." You have no idea how this is defined, or you do and don't care. I think it's the former.
Oh, and you say "the church in Rome" like it is a building. The Catholic Church is the body of all believers in Christ.
From your catechism at vatican.va...
968 Her role in relation to the Church and to all humanity goes still further. "In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior's work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace."509
Blasphemy. Mary did not and does not cooperate in "the Savior's work of restoring supernatural life to souls."
What hideous idolatry. Flee from it.
That's another gross misstatement of Catholic teaching, a point on which I have personally corrected you more times than I can recall.
It is not "faith alone" or "works alone," it is faith and works.
The problem with the way you slander about a billion people is that you're so GOOD at it. You really seem to enjoy it.
I know you don't and can't believe it, because you reject your own God-given gift of free will (an act, ironically enough, which is an exercise of your free will).
As though you'd believe it if someone claimed they had!
After all, that someone would be a Catholic Church father, and you reject all that stuff.
Cauvin told you to.
Not my catechism, the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The church at Rome misreads one line by James and has extrapolated a deviant philosophy from it.
"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" -- Titus 3:5"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11
That would be a perfect header for all of your posts.
More of your “I’m rubber; you’re glue” debate methodology.
“2) I think Calvin’s acceptance of the idea of her “perpetual virginity” was more a sign of the times.”
Oh, and let’s not forget his acceptance of the RC amillennialism. Well, he got most of the other things right so let’s cut him some slack on his birthday.
You are missing much my dear Dr. The more you post, the more obvious it is.
I did not expect you to admit it. As I said before, you are insufficiently wedded to truth.
The church at Rome misreads one line by James and has extrapolated a deviant philosophy from it.
Doesn't matter to me, I'm not a member of any "church at Rome." I'm a Catholic.
I’m just refleting your projecting.
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