In 1544 John Calvin wrote a letter to Emperor Charles V to be presented at the Imperial Diet at Spires. In that letter, he defended the work of Luther and the Reformation and identified a number of corruptions that necessitated reform “without delay.” This was a call for reform in both “doctrine and the Church.”
For Calvin, it was not only the doctrines taught in Scripture that he cared about but also the government of the church. Rome had become “a species of foul and insufferable tyranny” led by one man, the pope, and located in one place, Rome. It was this centralization of the “vaunted power of the Church” that Calvin said was “leading men like sheep to the slaughter.”
The apostolic commission to take Christ freely to the nations was replaced by a “tyrant [who] ever so monstrously abused the patience of his subjects as to insist that everything he proclaimed should be received as a message from heaven.” The gospel had lost its simplicity and the worship of God its universal application.
The church was only recognized as it appeared in the external form prescribed by the leadership at Rome. Ironically, the Roman Catholic Church had ceased to be catholic.
Gene Osterhaven wrote:
The Reformation was needed and continues to be needed because of the lack of catholicity in the church. The Reformers’ work was necessary because the church had become too “Roman” in some areas, and too “Greek” in others. The church was no longer “catholic,” or universal, in its breadth, outlook, and teachings, but had become provincial and errant. The Reformers sought to restore it to true catholicity. (The Spirit of the Reformed Tradition, Eerdmans, 1971)
Leave A Comment