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| Subscription & Freedom | | Date Created: Nov 19, 2004, 10:12 AM |
In 1537, Peter Caroli, a Reformed minister at Lausanne, accused Calvin and Farel of Arianism. It seems that the Genevan Reformers were not using the Patristic terminology in their teaching about the deity of the Son and the Trinity. Their opponents wondered whether they were truly "orthodox" in their statements about the Trinity.
At a special synod, Caroli demanded that Calvin subscribe to the early church creeds. Calvin refused. No, that's not a misprint. He refused.
It is part of our Calvinian heritage to refuse to be bound by extrabiblical categories and terminology. The Bible has absolute priority over all traditional formulations, the Westminster standards included.
Now, you might just want to read Warfield's discussion of this episode and its significance in his "Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity" in The Works of B.B. Warfield, vol. 5, pp. 180-220.
Warfield says, "Calvin refused to subscribe to the ancient creeds at Caroli's dictation, not in the least because he did not find himself in accord with their teaching, but solely because he was determined to preserve for himself and his colleagues the liberties belonging to Christian men, subject in matters of faith to no other authority than that of God speaking in the Scriptures" (p. 207).
Beautiful. Freedom!
Calvin himself says, "I have long learned by experience, and that over and over again, that those who contend thus pertinaciously about terms, are really cherishing a secret poison" (Inst. 1.8.5).
But listen to what Warfield says and apply it mutatis mutandis to the current controversies in our circles:[Calvin's] sole design was to make it apparent that Caroli's insistence that only in words of these creeds could faith in the Trinity be fitly expressed was ridiculous (p. 211).
He [Calvin] considered it intolerable that the Christian teacher's faith should be subjected to the authority of any traditional modes of statement, however venerable, or however true; and he refused to be the instrument of creating a precedent for such tyranny in the Reformed Churches by seeming to allow that a teacher might be justly treated as a heretic until he cleared himself by subscribing ancient symbols thrust before him by this or that disturber of the peace (p. 208). Wow. How the Reformed church has fallen. Fallen into the sterile trap of Westminster traditionalism. These days, in some quarters of the Presbyterian church, if you don't define theological terms in exactly the same way as some branch of the Reformed tradition, you are a heretic.
Part of the problem is that we have so little theological imagination, not to mention intellectual honesty, that we cannot admit that the substance of a matter might be confessed using nontraditional words and categories. If someone is not speaking the language of the 17th century, defining terms like they did, they must be heretics.
Maybe the most troubling example of this is when N. T. Wright is accused of denying salvation by grace because he does not use the precise language and categories of the Westminster standards. No matter how loudly Wright protests that he doesn't believe in salvation by works and that he does believe that we are saved by Christ's righteousness alone, his traditionalist opponents say he's a Pelagian heretic because he doesn't subscribe to our confessional and catechetical theological algebra.
Of course, Wright may not be right about his own doctrinal formulations. But one thing he is doing, in good Calvinian fashion, is exegeting the Bible with the freedom that the Reformers won for the liberated churches of Protestantism. Wright professes to go where the Bible demands. That's a good thing. He may be wrong in his exegesis. But that's where the debate ought to be fought--at the level of biblical exposition, not subscription to one's confessional tradition.
If we are not careful, we will out do Rome in our Romanizing traditionalism. In some circles the Westminster standards seem to have become the infallible voice of the Reformed magisterium. If you deviate from the words and definitions or you suggest that they might be corrected by the Bible, you may be hauled before a Reformed inquisition.
As the traditionalists are ripping out various ministers' ecclesiastical entrails, perhaps a loud cry of "freedom!" now and then might rally the troops. Calvin would be proud. |
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