Calvin Ruined the Protestant Faith: The Swiss Reformation Gave Us Barth,
Tillich, and Justification without Faith
Introduction
The Reformation began a
century earlier than most people count, when Hus refused to subordinate
doctrine to the power of the Vatican. In response, they burned him at the
stake. According to tradition, he said, “You are burning a goose (Hus is goose
in Czech), but out of these flames will rise a swan.” One hundred years later,
the Reformation began in earnest, with Martin Luther’s life spared, the newly
invented printing press spreading the Word of God. Hus did not die in vain,
because his message against tyranny continued and served as an indictment
against Luther but centuries later a symbol of opposition to Russian
oppression. Those who longed for freedom in Czechoslovakia gathered around the
Hus monument in Prague.
The German Reformation was
based upon profound faith in the Scriptures – not the pope – revealing God’s
will. This Biblical emphasis was not Luther’s alone. Nevertheless, it was a
minority view easily quashed when the established Church had centuries of
myths, legends, traditions, decrees, saints, and intellectuals backing Medieval
errors and attacks on the Gospel itself. Just as we see today in Protestant and
Lutheran seminaries, the students were not taught the content of the
Scriptures, but loyalty to the institutional church and trust in worldly wisdom
to be successful.
Luther quickly became a
European hero because of his thrilling emphasis upon the Word, his ability to
teach it in the language of the people rather than the elegant Latin of the
scholars. This proved on its own that the Spirit always teaches through the
Word rather than through man’s reasoned and ponderous dogmatic textbooks.
The
price of success was jealousy.
First Zwingli, then Calvin
sought to join the Reformation while building their own system that rivaled and
raged against Luther’s Biblical teaching. Far less educated and able than
Luther, Zwingli and Calvin sought to improve upon the Reformer, leaving behind
a rivalry that opposed Lutheran doctrine and also attached itself to Lutheran
doctrine, creating an amalgam in Pietism first, later in systematic theology
that made the field an exercise in creative writing.
1.
Zwingli and Calvin opposed and mocked the Means
of Grace, yet Zwingli raged at the Anabaptists, who took him at his word.
2.
The inherent weakness of the Swiss was their
magisterial use of reason. Human reason judged the Scriptures.
3.
This magisterial use of reason also contributed
to the sectarian use of Scripture, where verses or partial verses are clawed
out of the Bible to use as a hammer against viewing the Bible as one unified
Truth, the Book of the Holy Spirit, as Luther called it.
4.
The rationalism of the Calvinist dogmaticians
led to Lutheran intellectuals aiming thick volumes against them, tome for tome,
Latin topics for Latin topics, a period called orthodoxy but one which lacked
the spirit and content of the 16th century Reformation.
5.
Pietism was a response to this style of
re-inventing Thomas Aquinas, and the new movement began with a genuine spirit
of learning the content of the Bible. Halle University was established to teach
Biblical piety, but the weaknesses of Pietism invited and then relied on
rationalism to explain those small sections of the Scriptures they could still
tolerate.
6.
All of modern theology and Biblical “scholarship”
comes from Halle Pietism turned into Halle rationalism.
7.
In the new Biblical “scholarship” we find the
spirit of Zwingli and Calvin, and in Objective Justification the
bizarre claim of universal forgiveness without faith.
8.
Barth, Tillich, Bultmann, and most of the rest
are rationalists.
9.
Barth is the official theologian of Fuller
Seminary, probably the most influential theologian for Protestants, Lutherans,
and perhaps Catholics.
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| Glib, isn't he? Now Concordia St. Louis sounds just like Barth. |
