No more than a comatose drunk who’d accidentally exposed himself, and then suffering from a hangover cursing his grandson, because the grandson’s father had seen him naked, and told his brothers. That happened in the case of Noah, his son Ham, and grandson Canaan (Genesis 9:20-27).
Or as my old pastor put it, “How much notice would you take of a drunk’s curse?”
But it’s in the Bible, ostensibly because the Jews later wiped out the Canaanites. They had to have some theological reason to think the Canaanites were cursed. Centuries later, it was also one of the verses used to justify Aparthied in South Africa, since the black people of Africa were supposed to be descendants of Ham, and could therefore be treated as sub-human and cheap labour.
Farel was a hot-head, and Calvin was a martinet. But both of them lived at a time when they took their faith seriously, and thought it really mattered.
There were some fiery things being said on the Catholic side as well.
One of the short term effects of the Catholic Counter Reformation for example was the outlawing of polyphonic music by the Council of Trent since Lutheranism allowed it. That was just plain stupid, but it was a reactionary response.
If we went through Church history, Catholic or Protestant, we’d find a fair amount of nonsense as well as wisdom. It’s one of the reasons, as a former Protestant, I’m not much of a fan of the dogma of “Papal Infallibility”.
