Thunder Speak

Here's my new effort to incorporate footnotes into my blog posts.[1] Though I'm not sure how well they will work (much less the computer logic behind them), I hope it clears up my posts.[2]

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).

All of the above was just filler,[3], designed to help me understand just how prescient these links are truly going to be. (Or not.)[4] Nevertheless, the above is from Jeffrey J. Meyers blog[5]. My ideas and shamelessly stolen work on hyperlinked footnotes were stolen from here.
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Footnotes

[1]These will be mostly incorporated into What the Thunder Said... so it won't appear too often here. Back to text

[2]Yeah right. We all know these things don't actually lend to readability or conciseness. They make it look pseudo-scholarly, and that is all. Back to text

[3]Shameless, I know. However, if you are still reading at this point, you need to stop. This is all just HTML gymnastics for yours truly, and this isn't going to become valuable for you any time soon. Apologies all around. Back to text

[4]This exists solely to test n. 4. So far, the footnotes work, but not the link back. This should fix it. Back to text

[5]Yeah, this one is the same too. If this doesn't work, I'm coming back with brackets. Back to text