John Calvin Complaint with the Catholic Church.?

Question

What was his complaint with the Catholic Church?

Answer 1

His main complaint would have to be the Catholic belief in the avoidance of Hell through a sufficiently holy life, as opposed to Calvinism's complete inability to merit Heaven. Keep in mind that both views maintained a belief in original sin. Catholics were able to "erase" this through the rite of baptism, while Calvinists denied that it could be erased at all. Calvin's view kept babies as sinners needing a Savior while the Catholic Church viewed them as being innocent until the age of reason, whereupon they would join the church and continue to be held in its care as the bride of Christ. And the church would continue to dispense its merits and its holiness to the believers and thus obtain heaven. The idea is that since the church is the bride, the bride is united to Christ and must therefore be holy. Since that bride consists of all the members of one body, its sanctifies itself and is by definition pure.

Calvinism takes a much darker view of man. He stands condemned before the Lord, guilty to the core and cannot look to God for salvation at all, left on his own. That means a loving God would have to reach to man rather than man reaching to God, or even sharing the responsibility. This allows predestination to take on its full meaning of ordaining salvation for the ones that God had chosen from before the the foundations of the world.

The Catholic Church holds that it is the true church, that the Reformation broke away from its teachings. But the Reformation was initially a movement from within the Catholic Church to bring it back in line with the Bible. Politics, technology, and other changes took place at that time which also helped to break a singular belief into two.

Answer 2

they told him he was predestined to lose at bingo.