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John Calvin's Christological Assertion of Word Authority in the Context of Sixteenth Century Ecclesiological Polemics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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The late medieval synthesis reflected in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) generally and in the doctrine of transubstantiation in particular established an understanding of the nature of the church and authority that was to be varied and wide in its effects. Transubstantiation as doctrine and as coalescor of Church worship laid the groundwork for a particularly formative understanding of the ekklesia of Christ. It issued in a view of immanental, divine authority and grace that would come to manifest itself in the indulgences, the treasury of merits, invocation of saints, relics, etc. To be critical of the Mass was to bring into question the entire hierarchy of the Church and its authority on earth. In this context of strong ecclesiological authority, God was reckoned primarily as immanent and immediate through the papal head. In the face of this development, John Calvin asserted that Christ, as center of all true Christian reality, is the necessary focus and the preeminent authority in and to the Church through the Word of God, the Scriptures.
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References
page 465 note 1 Ford Lewis Battles, ‘The Theology of John Calvin,’ tape series presented at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, VA, 1973.
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page 469 note 19 Ibid.
page 470 note 20 Ibid.
page 470 note 21 Ibid., IV, xi, 1.
page 470 note 22 Ibid., IV, xi, 6.
page 470 note 23 Ibid.
page 471 note 24 Ibid., IV. xi, 11. cf. The discussion in this paragraph on the rise and method of papal power.
page 471 note 25 Ibid.
page 471 note 26 Ibid., IV, vii, 2.
page 472 note 27 Ibid., IV, viii, 2–3.
page 472 note 28 Ibid., I, viii, 4.
page 472 note 29 Ibid., IV, viii, 6.
page 472 note 30 Ibid., IV, viii, 9.
page 473 note 31 Ibid.
page 473 note 32 Ibid., IV, viii, 10.
page 473 note 33 Ibid., IV, viii, 9.
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page 477 note 52 Ibid., p. 59.
page 477 note 53 Bouwsma, p. 44.
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