03 February 2014

Book 3, Chapter 2, Sections 1-7

It's worth noting that Calvin often inveighs against the "Schoolmen" or scholastics, but is often referring specifically to (Romanist) theologians at the "College of Sorbonne" at the University of Paris. Later with Ramism, scholasticism in general to a greater degree earns a bad name among many Reformed scholars, despite the fact that Ramism was one Reformed effort (among others) at further revision of medieval Aristotelianism, and basically still a kind of Protestant scholasticism.

Among some of those reviving Protestant scholasticism in recent decades, it has been claimed that scholasticism is only method and involves no significant material content.  I don't agree, but that would take us too far afield. (As an aside, for more on Ramus, see F.P. Graves' excellent book).

It's not clear to me that Calvin's teaching on implicit faith, so far as he says there is such a thing and describes it, is significantly different from what Aquinas taught, if you sift out the chaff of the Romanist (erroneous) doctrine of the church's infallibility and/or nature of its authority. That requires further inquiry.

Calvin maintains that if we find ourselves ignorant about what the Word teaches on some matter, "in such cases the fittest course is to suspend our judgment, and resolve to maintain unity with the Church."  But this ignorance and suspension of judgment is not in any sense faith (implicit or otherwise). And saving faith "consists in the knowledge of God and Christ [John 17:3], not in reverence for the Church" (section 3). Calvin applies this to the true (Reformed) church of course.  This is something Romanists can't afford to do.

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