He also
referred me to
Tom Brown’s
article on the Canon Question as sort of a model of how someone ought to
treat arguments. Before I get into detail on the meat of the argument, I’d like
to point out something that Tom Brown slips in, as if it were an established
fact, which impugns Calvin where Calvin most likely is correct.
The Called
to Communion guys are fond of
saying
things like “remember one of the cardinal rules in ecumenical inquiry:
Don’t get your Catholic theology from Protestant hearsay–and vice versa. Go to
the source, if you want to learn the truth”. This is certainly wise advice,
especially if one is tempted to listen to Roman Catholic hearsay about John
Calvin from a Roman epologist like Tom Brown. Brown cites Calvin, of course,
just to appear to be above board:
“But a most pernicious error widely
prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the
consent of the church. . . . For they mock the Holy Spirit when they ask: Who
can convince us that these writings came from God? . . . . Who can persuade us
to receive one book in reverence but to exclude another, unless the church
prescribe a sure rule for all these matters?”20
The footnote
(20) is to “John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book I, ch. 7,
sec. 1.” That’s fine as far as it goes. Then
Brown
says matter-of-factly, “As an initial matter, Calvin misstates the Catholic
position by stating that, according to the Catholic Church, Scripture has its
authoritative weight accorded to it by the Church. Rather, the Catholic
position is that Scripture has divine authority because it is God-breathed, the
Holy Spirit having inspired the texts’ authors. That is, Scripture has divine
authority because of its divine author, not because of the role of God’s Church
in producing it…”
But the
Battles version of Institutes footnotes this statement, [among other
references] to “John Eck, Enchiridion (1553), ch i., fo. 4a-6b”.
I’m not
going to spend the $35.00 at this point to see what Eck says. But I’d be
willing to surmise that Battles wouldn’t have spent the time translating this
work if there weren’t something in it that he wanted to show.
I’ll suggest
further, that a Reformed writer like Battles translated an Eck document, simply
because Rome wanted to hide what its Reformation-era apologists were saying.
After all,
wasn’t someone like
Robert
Bellarmine the great champion of Roman Catholic doctrine at the time of the
counter Reformation? And yet, it’s impossible to get English translations of
Bellarmine’s polemical works, unless you consult a source such as Turretin.
If any Roman
Catholic thinks that this is just a bit too skeptical, consider the “
Dialogus
de Potestate Papae” of Silvester Prierias (1518). Bernhard Lohse, in his
1999 “Luther’s Theology” (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press) notes of this writer
and this work:
[Prierias]
was a member of the Roman Commission entrusted with introducing canonical
proceedings against Luther in the spring of 1518. He composed the Dialogus as an expert opinion for the commission
in the spring of 1518, and may have submitted it as early as April or May 1518.
On August 7, 1518, Luther received the Dialogus
together with the summons to defend himself in person at Rome on suspicion of
heresy. The Dialogus, obviously,
cannot be regarded as a particularly brilliant theological treatise on the
papacy. Still, as evidence of the view
then dominant in Rome and of the aggravation it caused in Luther’s dispute, it
has a significance scarcely to be overestimated. Here we see how those who
set the tone at Rome thought of the church and the papal office, above all what
they had to find fault with in Luther. (107-108).
James
Swan has reproduced portions of this document, and in fact, he discusses
the whole issue of question “the Holy Scripture receives its authority or power
from the Roman see” from Luther’s perspective. So you can get the flavor of how
“official Rome” represented itself at the time of the Reformation:
1. Essentially the universal church is
the assembly in divine worship of all who believe in Christ. The true universal
church virtually is the Roman Church, the head of all churches, and the
sovereign pontiff. The Roman Church is represented by the College of Cardinals;
however, virtually it is the pope who is the head of the Church, though in
another manner than Christ.
2. As the universal church cannot err
when it decides on faith and morals, so also a true council cannot err if it
does its best to know the truth, at least not in the end result—and that I
understand under the inclusion of the head. For even a council can initially be
mistaken so long as the investigation of the truth is still in process; indeed
a council has sometimes erred: nevertheless it finally knows the truth through
the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, the Roman Church and the pope cannot err when he
in his capacity as pope comes to a decision, i.e., when he comes to a decision
in consequence of his office and thereby does his best to know the truth.
3.
He who does not hold the teaching of the Roman Church and the Pope as an
infallible rule of faith, from which even Holy Scripture draws its power and
authority, he is a heretic.
4. The Roman Church can establish
something with regard to faith and ethics not only through word but also
through act. And there is no difference therein, except that the word is more
suitable for this than the act. In this same sense custom acquires the power of
law, for the will of a prince expresses itself in acts which he allows or puts
into effect. And it follows that as he is a heretic who wrongly interprets
Scripture, so also is he a heretic who wrongly interprets the teaching and acts
of the Church in so far as they relate to faith and ethics.
Corollary: He who says in regard to
indulgences that the Roman Church cannot do what she has actually done is a
heretic (Michael Tavuzzi,
Prierias
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, p.111).
Lohse
concludes, “Prierias not only represented the view of infallibility to which
some gave expression toward the close of the Middle Ages, but with his third proposition actually set the Roman church over
Scripture”.
