Journal: Reformed Presbyterian Theological Journal
Volume: RPTJ 10:1 (Fall 2023)
Article: Privacy, Please: How Calvin’s Christocentric Pneumatology Fortified Protestant Polemics In The Fight For Private Judgment
Author: Rutledge E. Etheridge III

RPTJ 10:1 (Fall 2023) p. 60

Privacy, Please: How Calvin’s Christocentric Pneumatology Fortified Protestant Polemics In The Fight For Private Judgment

Rutledge E. Etheridge III

Professor of Biblical Studies
Geneva College

Within the storms of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debate between Catholics and Protestants on church authority, the doctrine of Scripture was a lightning rod that attracted some of the era’s most heated invectives and brilliant diatribes. William R. Wittingham, in his introduction to John Jewell’s 1570 A Treatise on Holy Scripture,1 surmises with regard to one of its most polemically charged subtopics:

Every corruption which deforms the system of Rome may be traced to the operation of erroneous views upon that subject. The most grievous exertion of the tyranny which the reformers shook off when it could no longer be endured, was the contravention of the principle, that all need, and all may claim of right, the Scriptures for their own private use. The strongest bulwark of the reformation is the allowance and exercise of that privilege.2

Sympathetic to the Catholic side of the controversies, Anthony C. Cotter corroborates this prioritization of extant issues within the doctrine of Scripture:

When the Protestants walked out of the Church, they took the Bible with them. But severing its essential connection with the Church, they made the Bible the sole rule

RPTJ 10:1 (Fall 2023) p. 61

of faith, urged all to read it and allowed all to interpret it according to their private judgment. They insisted that the Bible by itself was clear enough to be understood and interpreted rightly by all.3

Wittingham’s statement comports well with the writings of John Calvin and the English Reformers who followed in his theological wake during the era which Richard Muller identifies as “the early orthodox period” (ca.1565–1640).4 The sentiment simmers throughout both editions of Calvin’s Institutes and comes to a boiling point in several places, particularly on the issue of “implicit faith,” the belief that believers ought to accept something as biblically true based on the unappealable authority of the church.5 At the earliest stage of his 1536 work, Calvin signaled implicit faith as a pressing matter in itself and an instructive impetus for further discussion in his systematic exposition of the Christian faith.You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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