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To: Cronos
Yes, Calvin and Luther disagreed about some things. Calvin was second-generation reformer; Luther was first. Luther was still tied to Rome in many ways.

Thankfully, God did not stop the Reformation with Luther. He continued to reform the church then, as He does today.

1,864 posted on 09/07/2010 8:45:22 AM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg (("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: Dr. Eckleburg
John Calvin: Facts and extensive reading list
Perhaps not only irritability but also self-importance were exposed in 1545 when John Calvin by letter solicited Luther’s opinion on what John had written. Luther refused, arguing that his responses by letter were often carried around and exploited independent of Luther’s main writings. John was enraged. In a fury he wrote:

[Luther] allows himself to be carried beyond all due bounds with his love of thunder...in the Church we must always be upon our guard, lest we pay too great a deference to men...If this specimen of overbearing tyranny has sprung forth already as the early blossom in the spring-tide of a reviving Church, what must we expect in a short time...Let us therefore bewail the calamity of the Church...

         

         Calvin’s rage was unwise. In 1545 Luther was not only a dying man but one often immobile from excruciating bouts with kidney stones. Yet in 21st Century eyes even John’s self-important rage pales beside his intolerance of opposing views. For Calvin the persecuted became Calvin the persecutor. He particularly disliked a man named Servetus for his expressed views on Christian doctrines. In a letter to a friend John warned:

Servetus lately wrote to me and coupled with his letter a long volume of his delirious fancies...He would like to come here if it is agreeable to me. But I do not wish to pledge my word for his safety. For, if he comes, I will never let him depart alive, if I have any authority...

         That grim warning—‘I will never let him depart alive’—was not just rhetoric. Foolishly, Servetus did show up in Geneva. And John Calvin did have some ‘authority’. Servetus was arrested and condemned to die. Genevans feared no interference because the Catholics in France had also given Servetus a death sentence. Just what was John Calvin’s part in the execution? Could he have prevented it? It seemed his mercy extended only to recommending beheading instead of burning. Genevans burned Servetus to death in 1553.


[Sources: T.H.L. Parker, John Calvin: a biography. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975, and Jules Bonnet, editor, Letters of John Calvin. UK: Banner of Truth Trust, abbreviated English translation of 1855-57 edition in French, 1980.]

1,957 posted on 09/07/2010 12:58:08 PM PDT by Cronos (Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. "Allah": Satan's current status)
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To: Dr. Eckleburg
did not stop the Reformation with Luther. He continued to reform the church then, as He does today

Yup, after the first generation Lutherans and ANglicans, you had the second generation Presbyterians, then the third generation Anabaptists, the fourth generation BAptists and Unitarians, the fifth generation Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons and Presbyterian-conservationists, the sixth generation Christian Scientists, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the seventh generation like Machen's OPC, the eigth generation like the Bible Presbyterian C and the Scientologists and more extreme Mormons.

Great going! However, it wasn't God who directed this level to go down to Scientology and Mormonism..
1,958 posted on 09/07/2010 1:01:43 PM PDT by Cronos (Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. "Allah": Satan's current status)
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