Tea at Trianon: John Calvin and Gnosticism

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, August 21, 2023

John Calvin and Gnosticism

Part 1. From Catholic Answers:

For the purpose of this article, I will define an article of faith as “gnostic” if it is imparted to the individual by God directly. This is the opposite of a “public” article of faith, which God imparts to everyone by means of a duly authorized representative—i.e., apostolic (“sent”) authority.

The Christian faith has always been fundamentally public. Christ commissioned the apostles to disciple the nations, and in doing so, he gave them authority to teach, in a public fashion, articles of faith to be believed by all Christians.

Thus, from the beginning, Christians could not claim that God gave them a personal revelation as a means to contradict, add to, or subtract from articles of faith publicly taught by the apostles and their successors as duly authorized representatives of God. If someone claiming to be Christian did make such an assertion, it would be gnostic, as it would amount to the claim that the Christian revelation publicly imparted by authorized representatives had in fact been privately imparted directly to them.

This public nature of the Christian religion is evidenced all over Scripture. Perhaps the most significant example is the Council of Jerusalem, in Acts 15. When a theological controversy was “unsettling [the] minds” of Christians (v. 24), the apostles and elders they had already begun to appoint to succeed them settled the controversy with divine authority, declaring, “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us . . .” (v. 28). Of the men who had initiated this controversy, they said, “We gave them no instructions” (v. 24). (Read more.)

Part 2 is HERE.