Yes

by Judy Joyce

Created on: September 29, 2008

THE WORLD WOULD BE DIFFERENT WITHOUT CALVIN'S ATTACK ON THE PAPACY: A Voice in the Reformation bring Pilgrim's to America.

BAPTISTS ON CALVIN

As the Southern Baptist Convention approaches the contentious issue of the unwelcomed rise of Calvinism within it's seminaries, the voice of John Calvin can be heard calling out through the corridors of the Reformation down through the centuries.

Looking for dialogue but girding for theological confrontation within it's ranks, as recently as September 8, 2008, Clear Creek Bible Church announced it's intention to hold a conference entitled "Meeting the Challenge of Calvinism".

CATHOLIC COMMENTS

To understand the challenge of Calvinism today, a look at how John Calvin influenced Europe's relationship with the papacy. The New Catholic Encyclopedia identifies John Calvin as:"This man, undoubtedly the greatest of Protestant divines, and perhaps, after St. Augustine, the most perseveringly followed by his disciples of any Western writer on theology, was born at Noyon in Picardy, France, 10 July, 1509, and died at Geneva, 27 May, 1564". ....

And reporting that the French family name of Cuavin was Latinized as customary at the time sums up his identity generally as a generation after Luther (Calvin did not know Luther) lists:

..."we may sum up Calvin as a scholastic; he gives articulate expression to the principles which Luther had stormily thrown out upon the world in his vehement pamphleteering; and the "Institutes" as they were left by their author have remained ever since the standard of orthodox Protestant belief in all the Churches known as "Reformed." His French disciples called their sect "the religion"; such it has proved to be outside the Roman world".
FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS

While some would agree, Calvin's followers were swayed by Calvin's authority, an admirer, J. A. Froude, questions the logic of this reformer:

To represent man as sent into the world under a curse, as incurably wickedwicked by the constitution of his nature and wicked by eternal decreeas doomed, unless exempted by special grace which he cannot merit, or by any effort of his own obtain, to live in sin while he remains on earth, and to be eternally miserable when he leaves itto represent him as born unable to keep the commandments, yet as justly liable to everlasting punishment for breaking them, is alike repugnant to reason and conscience, and turns existence into a hideous nightmare. (Short Studies, II, 3.)

Thus, the theology of predestination would become identified with Calvinism and later with the presbyterian sect of Calvin's theology. This split with the Catholic theological position, advanced most notably by the Jesuit, Molina, would forever separate Protestant and Catholic theological interpretations of the meaning of grace.
THE IMPLICATIONS ON THE THEOLOGY OF GRACE

"To Calvin the ordinances of Deity seemed absolute, i.e. not in any way regardful of the creature's acts, which they predetermined either right or wrong; and thus reprobation - the supreme issue between all parties - followed upon God's unconditioned fiat, no account being had in the decree itself of man's merits or demerits. For God chose some to glory and others to shame everlasting as He willed, not upon foreknowledge how they would act. The Jesuit school made foreknowledge of "future contingencies" or of what creatures would do in any possible juncture, the term of Divine vision "scientia media" which was logically antecedent (as a condition not a cause) to the scheme of salvation.

Grace, said Catholic dogma, was offered to all men; none were excluded from it. Adam need not have transgressed, neither was his fall pre-ordained. Christ died for the whole human race; and every one had such help from on high that the reprobate could never charge their ruin upon their Maker, since he permitted it only, without an absolute decree. Grace, then, was given freely; but eternal life came to the saints by merit, founded on correspondence to the Holy Spirit's impulse. All these statements Calvin rejected as Pelagian, except that he would maintain, though unable to justify, the imputation of the sinner's lapse to human nature by itself." (Source: New Advent)

IMPLICATIONS IN THE NEW WORLD OF THE AMERICAS

Descendant's of the Mayflower society maintain on their website Sail 1620 the following definitions; (partial) Church of England church governance dictated by bishops, contained people of Calvinist persuasion and Anglicans preferring ceremony and ritual;
Puritans determined Calvinist reformers working to "purify" Church of England so as to be consistent with Calvinist principles, began during the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547)
Pilgrims Separatists who fled to Holland (1607/8) and sailed on Mayflower in 1620

So it is, that those of Calvinist persuasion settled the East coast of the United States while Roman Catholic Spanish and French Jesuits settled from the Mississippi to the California missions. Is there any wonder what the divide between Calvin and the papacy brought. Today, we often remark about how "driven" and "buttoned down" the East Coast is. The West is seen as open minded to the goodness of one's fellow man. In our own time, it just might be that Calvin and the papacy have been able to blend the United States into a culture that is both ambitious and appreciative of the "good life". To this we might want to add our own "amen".

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