"Pure and undefiled..."

[Contarini]

Read the post. I didn’t cite Calvin as a historian. I was making the argument that when any **other ** historian makes a statement about secular history there is no demand that that historian be “infallible”, but when it regards a statement about the historicity of the Catholic Church all of a sudden infallibility is required?

Then you are citing Calvin as a historian, obviously. I’m really baffled by what you are saying. If you’re not calling him a historian, then the phrase “any other historian” makes absolutely no sense.

And again, if you think that people commonly change their opinions on important issues based solely on the say-so of a single historian, then all I can say is that I fervently hope they are wrong. That would be extremely irresponsible behavior.

The question still stands: If the Catholic Christian Church sold out to paganism at the time of Constantine why do we still find peculiarly Catholic writings from the first, second, third centuries on?

You’ve mistaken your target. I not only agree with Calvin–I think that the Orthodox Church at least has remained doctrinally pure and undefiled until the present time. I’m less sure about your Communion, and I’m quite sure that Protestants haven’t!

I’m just pointing out that Calvin isn’t an authority that will carry much weight with most fundamentalists, and even those who respect him will need more evidence before changing their minds on such an important subject.

And why is Calvin not to be taken at his word when he speaks of this Church being “pure and undefiled” for the first 600 years of her existence?

What would Calvin know about it? He wasn’t there. Why is the opinion of one theologian 900 years later of such immense importance? It makes no sense at all.

Note: I would hope that many Protestants would think that this is a significant bit of evidence, and that it would make them reconsider their position. But I’m not holding my breath, and I certainly don’t expect anyone to change their mind based solely on this quote. In fact, I’d be disappointed if they did so–such a person wouldn’t be very reliable, since a single quote by someone else they trusted would swing them back again!

Edwin

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

This is a great point and something I happen to really agree with strongly! Evangelicals place so much faith in Calvin’s view of history, which I happen to think is self-advancing and tunnel vision, as well as overly-simplistic (especially with his NT view of church polity etc.). I don’t trust Calvin’s view of history and, like you, think Luther’s arguments and ability to appeal to antiquity, the Fathers, councils, and the East were more lucid. Calvin never impressed me. I can’t see how someone can look at Calvinism and think that in any way, shape, or form that he “re-created” the Early Church. Calvinism in itself is a very scary and sad worldview IMO. It ignores the accomplishments of the Early Fathers all the way through the Middle Ages and relies so much on his dark view of human nature. Anyway, great point, Edwin.

Well, personally I don’t trust Calvin on history further than I can throw him (nor do I put much reliance on him as a theological authority–even within Protestantism I prefer Luther, Wesley, and Barth, and I give much more weight to the Fathers, the Byzantine theologians, the medieval Western scholastics up to and including Aquinas, and modern neo-patristic Catholic and Orthodox theologians, than to any Protestant theologian). Not because he was deliberately dishonest, but because he was a busy religious leader whose interest in history was for what he could make of it to further his theological agenda. Also, no modern historian would give much credence to any historical claim made by anyone in the sixteenth century about anything that had happened centuries earlier. Why on earth do so? There are plenty of better sources. Renaissance scholars made some important discoveries, but we don’t accept them on their say-so.

 

[Nicea325]

I have heard a lot of fanciful histories and theories perpetrated by evangelicals in their attempt to denegrate the Catholic Church. Many taken from Boettner’s “Roman Catholicism” and Woodrow’s “Babylon Mystery Religion”.

These theories concentrate on Constantine’s legalization of the Catholic Christian Church after his takeover of the Roman empire.

John Calvin in his work “The Divine Institutes” admitted that the Church for the first 600 years of her existence remained “pure and undefiled.”

To me that makes any claim by Fundamentalists that the Church somehow sold out to Paganism after the Edict of Milan spurious and ignorant of the facts.

Given this admission by the “father” of modern evangelical fundamentalism, how do the Fundamentalists on this forum explain their theories?

Nothing in the Edict of Milan mentions,discusses or refers to the creation of ANY Church…period! Funny how those who use the edict as proof can never provide the names of bishops or priests who wrote about joining a so-called new church called Catholic.

It is all a bunch of ignorant non-sense!