But you did not address the author's main assertion along those lines: that John Calvin would not recognize, much less approve of the wide diversity of sects, all of whom call themselves evangelical, such as stated in the following extracts:
Is he wrong about what he asserted regarding John Calvin?
In other words, the strawman argument is making a re-statement about what Evangelicals believe. An answer to the author's assertion is to document whether John Calvin would have agreed with what modern evangelicals have become.
One of the difficulties in arguing against Roman Catholic arguments is assumptions of authority. Calvin taught (even if he didn’t practice) that scripture alone is final and fully authoritative. Obviously, he himself was a huge authority...who acted in very authoritarian and dictatorial ways—and assumed an authority of the government, which today we find reprehensible.
So for one, evangelical individualism, while at odds with Calvin’s practice, is NOT at odds with Calvin’s principle; namely that the Bible alone has full and final authority.
This principle is why Protestants generally, and Calvinists in particular, have no problem in differing with Calvin when they think he was wrong and not biblically sound (as on the authority of the Church/State alliance). Calvin is not an infallible pope, whom we must logically defend...his own teaching undermined his personal authority.
Personally, I think evangelicals go too far with individualism,...and I agree that the Church itself has an interpretive authority above that of the individual.....however still it’s authority is derivative from the Apostles, of which the only objective record of we have is in scripture. Apostolic authority, which Rome sees as exercised through the institution acting upon Tradition...the Magisterium, is, properly, the Church acting in submission to the Bible....the only reliable place Apostolic tradition can be proven. So we have what seems to be an irony...the Church with authority to interpret the bible, but, with responsibility to submit its authority to that same bible.
In a religiously tolerant and free society however, such individuality and “chaos” is inevitable however....as we cannot have any “official” church, or religion, lest we lapse back into burnings-at-the-stake religion. Therefore the yearning for a unified Church is yearning for an illusion...as up until the last couple hundred years, religious unity existed ONLY as coerced by the sword.
This is one reason I find Roman Catholicism as an historic institution so repugnant...the amount of blood on the institution’s hands over history (even if it technically was on the State’s hands...reality says the Church is responsible).
Bottom line is yes, the individualist spirit, while having gone too far, is contrary to Calvin....and Calvin himself in practice is contrary to the development of religious tolerance, Calvin, like the 16C generally, in the West is universally acknowledged as morally wrong on tolerance.... praise God for religious tolerance and freedom!
I agree that Christians should put less emphasis on personal interpretation, or what the “passage means to me” and more on what their Church teaches. Does that go against the grain of (hyper)individualism? Yes, and it should—as submission to authority is a Christian virtue, one not well appreciated especially in America.
This is one reason I am a creedal/confessional Christian. I buy into what my religious fore-bearers believed, and don’t make it all up as I go along...me, alone with my bible... We learn and live in community, not as isolated individuals. That community need not be determined and dictated by one historic and demonstrably fallible institution or one fallible pope, or one fallible tradition. This is why an infallible text is important...
I also agree that personal experience is no basis of assurance. 1st John for example gives this test for assurance: Are we walking in obedience and love of Jesus? I also agree with Calvin that holy Communion is another way of assurance given us by Christ Jesus.
None of these things point logically to Rome however. They are reasonable criticisms of (many, not all) evangelicals, but not proofs for the Magisterium or the papacy.