Latest / Reformed Thinking / Why the Papal Mass Destroys the Lord’s Supper | John Calvin

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Why the Papal Mass Destroys the Lord’s Supper | John Calvin · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome back to another session of Reformed Thinking.
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I'm really glad you're here with us today.
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It's good to be back. So if you're a regular listener,
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you already know the drill. We we take a stack of historical
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documents, theological treatises, confessions.
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Things that are usually heavy enough to prop open a cathedral
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door. Exactly.
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And we try to pull out the core truths that matter for us today.
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We do it specifically through the lens of Reformed theology
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and of course, the Westminster Confession.
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We want to see the world and the word the way the Reformers did.
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And we're not just, you know, reading history for the sake of
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nostalgia. We are looking for the signal in
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all the noise. We want to really get to grips
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with the arguments that shaped the church.
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Well, the signal today is coming through loud and clear, and
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honestly, it sounds a bit like a distress signal.
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Or maybe a battle cry. It could be we are opening up
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John Calvins Institutes of the Christian Religion.
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We're in Book 4, Chapter 18. The chapter on the papal Mass.
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Yeah. And this is not the gentle,
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pastoral Calvin we sometimes talk about.
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This is Calvin with the gloves off.
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I mean, the section is titled the Papal Mass, a sacrilege by
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which Christ's Supper was not only profaned but annihilated.
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He is not mincing words there, not at all.
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He certainly isn't. And before we dive into all the
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details, I think it's good to set the stage for you today.
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We're undertaking a really serious examination of what was.
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I mean, you could argue it was the most heated theological
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battleground of the entire Reformation, right?
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When we read this today, it's so easy to just think, OK, well,
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different denominations have different worship styles.
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But for Calvin, this was not about style.
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It wasn't about smells and bells or, you know, the the color of
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the carpet. No, he uses words like
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abomination, blasphemy, poison. I was reading Section 1 and he
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calls it a deadly Whirlpool. I had to double check the
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translation. Does he really say that the mass
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plunges the world into a deadly Whirlpool?
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It's so heavy. It is heavy, but he's not just
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being mean spirited for the sake of it.
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He's defending the sufficiency of the cross, the central
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question we are tackling today. Our real mission here is to
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understand why Calvin believed the Roman Catholic Mass wasn't
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just an error. But a destructive.
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Force the destructive force that actively tries to erase the work
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of Jesus. The whole thing boils down to
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this question. Was Christ's sacrifice finished
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once and for all, or does it need to be repeated every single
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day? Those are the stakes.
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So let's unpack this thing. We've got a lot of ground to
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cover. We're going to talk about the
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theological dismantling of the Mass, the definition of a true
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priest versus a false. One the role of money and
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corruption, which is a huge part of it.
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A huge part. And finally, what Christian
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sacrifice is actually supposed to look like according to
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scripture? All right, let's get to work.
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So Calvin starts this section off with a really a very intense
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claim. He says that Satan has a
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strategy, and it's not just to make people bad, it's to blind
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them. He calls the Mass a thick
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darkness sent specifically to erase the memory of the true
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Lord's Supper. And that's a crucial starting
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point for Calvin. The devil just cannot stand the
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purity of the Lord's Supper because it points us directly to
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the completed work of Christ. So the strategy is to raise up a
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counterfeit the Roman definition of the Mass at that time, and
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doctrinally this is still the issue is that the Mass is a
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sacrifice and an offering to obtain forgiveness of sins for
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both the living and the dead. You know you have to put
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yourself in the shoes of a 16th century peasant to really feel
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the weight of this. You're terrified of purgatory,
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you were told. Every single sin you commit adds
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time to your sentence there. So the Mass wasn't just, you
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know, going to church. It was a transaction.
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It was the only way you could pay down your spiritual debt.
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And then Calvin comes in and says, stop paying.
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The debt is cancelled. He's not just correcting A
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doctrine. He's dismantling an entire
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economy built on fear. That's a really helpful way to
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frame it. The logic of the Mass was that
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God is angry and he needs to be appeased.
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So the priest holds up the body of Christ, the wafer, and offers
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it to the Father to say, look at this and forgive these people.
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So it shifts the focus. It completely shifts the focus
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away from what happened on Calvary 1500 years before, and
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it places the focus on what's happening on the altar right
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now, in this moment. Let's pause on that definition,
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because that's where he says the danger lies.
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Why is that specific phrasing, obtaining forgiveness so
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dangerous? Because of what it implies about
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the cross. If the Mass is an expiatory
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victim and that just means something offered to satisfy
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God's wrath and pay for sin, then it stands in direct
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competition with Calvary. So it's one or the other.
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It's one or the other. Calvin's logic is that if you
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need a daily sacrifice to handle your sins, you are by
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implication saying that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross
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wasn't enough to cover them. It's like saying, well Jesus
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paid the down payment but I have to make the mortgage payments
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every week. That hits the nail on the head.
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That's exactly it, Calvin says. This notion has blinded nearly
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the whole world. It changes the entire mechanism
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of salvation from Christ did it to the priest is doing it right
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now. And if the priest is doing it.
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Then Christ's work was only partial.
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It was a good start, but it wasn't the finish.
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This brings us to a really fascinating a deep biblical
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argument that Calvin spends a lot of time on.
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It's about this mysterious figure from Genesis named
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Melchizedek. I'll be honest, when I first
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read Genesis, Melchizedek just seemed like this strange cameo
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appearance. But in the Reformation debates,
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this guy is center stage. The Melchizedek argument is
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massive and this is a classic example of how the reformers use
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scripture and deep exegesis of scripture to dismantle a
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tradition that had built up over centuries.
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OK, so remind us, who is Melchizedek and why was the
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Roman church using him to defend the mass?
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All right, so Melchizedek appears in Genesis 14.
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Abraham is coming back from a huge battle.
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He's just rescued his nephew Lot.
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He's tired, He's dusty. He's probably completely
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exhausted. And Melchizedek, who is the
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priest king of Salem, comes out to meet him.
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And the text says he brought out bread and wine.
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Now, the Roman argument was basically, look, a priest
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offering bread and wine. This is a prefiguration of the
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Mass A. Foreshadowing.
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A foreshadowing They argued that because the book of Hebrews says
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Christ is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, then
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Christ must also offer bread and wine in the Mass through his
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priests. Seems like a slam dunk at first
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glance. You've got bread and wine in the
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Old Testament. You've got bread and wine in the
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Mass. But Calvin just shreds this
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argument. He absolutely takes it apart.
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He goes back to the context, to the Hebrew.
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He looks at the situation. Why did Melchizedek bring bread
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and wine? Was he setting up an altar to
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offer a sacrifice to God? No, he gave it to Abraham and
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his soldiers. So it was catering.
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He's basically running a supply line for the troops.
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That is the argument. That's Calvin's point.
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If you look at the Hebrew context, it was refreshment.
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These men were coming off a battlefield.
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And Calvin points out that Moses, who wrote Genesis, prayed
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Melchizedek, humaneness, his hospitality, not some hidden
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mystery of sacrifice. The bread and wine were for the
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men, not for God. And Kelvin also points out a
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huge glaring omission in the New Testament about this.
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The author of Hebrews talks about Melchizedek for chapters.
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That's the clincher. It really is.
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The author of Hebrews writes extensively about Melchizedek.
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In chapters 5 and seven, he compares Melchizedek to Christ
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in every possible way. No genealogy, no beginning or
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end of days, superior to Abraham, all of it.
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But the one thing the author of Hebrews never ever mentions is
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the bread and wine. Which is a great point.
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If the bread and wine were the main point of the foreshadowing.
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If that was the critical link to the mass, why would the apostle
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just leave it out? Calvin's argument is that if
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this were the key to the whole priesthood, the Holy Spirit
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wouldn't have forgotten to mention it.
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It's an argument from silence, but it's a powerful 1.
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He says. Rome was coining a mystery where
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there wasn't one. So they were reading it back
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into the text. They were trying to find a
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biblical hook to hang their theology on, but the hook just
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wasn't there. It shows how desperate they were
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to find some kind of scriptural justification for a practice
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that had evolved centuries later.
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OK, so moving from Melchizedek, Calvin gets into the nature of
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the priesthood itself, and this is where he starts throwing
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around some insults. He refers to the priest saying
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the Mass as priestlings. Sacrificulos in the Latin.
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It's a diminutive. He is absolutely belittling of
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their claim to authority. But it's not just name calling.
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He's pointing out what he sees as a serious theological
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category error. Why is he so hostile to the idea
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of a human priest standing at an altar?
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It all comes down to the concept of succession.
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In the Old Testament, you had the Levitical priesthood.
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Aaron was the high priest, but Aaron was a man.
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He got old and well, eventually he died.
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Right, so you needed a replacement.
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You needed a successor. You needed a son to take his
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place. It was a constant cycle of death
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and replacement. The whole system was built on
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mortality. OK, but the argument from
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Hebrews is that Christ is different.
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Christ is immortal. He rose from the dead.
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He does not die anymore. Therefore he has no need for a
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successor. He has no need for a vicar to
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stand in his place and do his work.
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It's like, think of a Prime Minister or a president.
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Why do they have successors? Because they leave office or
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they die. A successor is proof of absence.
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If the king is still sitting on the throne and you try to
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appoint a new king, that isn't succession.
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That's a coup. That is exactly how Calvin views
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it. He says they're trying to cast
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Christ down from the right hand of the Father.
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They are robbing him of the honor of being the only eternal
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priest. If you have 1000 priests
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offering sacrifices every single day, you don't have one high
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priest anymore. You just have a system that
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looks a lot like the Old Testament.
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The very shadows that Christ was supposed to have fulfilled and
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replaced. It feels personal though,
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doesn't it? When he calls them priestlings,
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it sounds almost petty. It does sound petty if you just
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think he's critiquing a job title, but look at the logic
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behind it. He calls them sacrificulos
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because they are claiming to do the one thing that only the God
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man can do. They're claiming to take away
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sin. For Calvin, that's stealing
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glory from Christ. It is the ultimate act of
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arrogance. And this leads us directly into
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the heart of the matter, the cross itself.
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Calvin has this really vivid imagery where he says as soon as
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the altar for the Mass is set up, the cross of Christ is
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toppled. It is a 0 sum game for him.
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You cannot have both. You either have the altar or you
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have the cross. Let's explore that once for all
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logic. This seems to be the bedrock of
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his entire argument. It's the bedrock of the book of
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Hebrews, and because of that, it's the bedrock of Reformed
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soteriology, our doctrine of salvation.
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Hebrews 9 and 10 repeat that phrase once for all, multiple
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times. Christ offered himself to
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sanctify us forever. If that offering was effective,
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if it actually worked, then there is nothing left to pay.
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But the logic of the mass suggests the payment isn't quite
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finished. Right.
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And Calvin compares it directly to the Old Testament animal
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sacrifices. Why did the Jews have to
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sacrifice an ox or a calf every year or even every day?
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Because the blood of a bull can't actually take away sin it.
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Was a placeholder. It was temporary, it was weak,
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it had to be repeated over and over because it didn't solve the
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problem permanently. So by repeating the sacrifice in
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the Mass, Calvin is saying that Rome is reducing Christ to the
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level of an ox. Yes, they are saying Christ's
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sacrifice is just as weak as a goats.
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It needs to be done again today. It means yesterday's didn't
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quite finish the job. OK, now I can hear a modern
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Catholic apologist or even 1 from Calvin's own day saying
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hold on, hold on, you're me understanding us.
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We are not engaging in a new sacrifice.
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We're not killing Jesus again. The Mass is just an application
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of that one sacrifice to us today.
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And that is the standard defense.
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It's not a repetition, it's an application.
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Calvin anticipates this. He calls it a subtle chink.
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They try to escape through, but he slams the door shut on it.
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How does he refute that? Because I mean application
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sounds reasonable. We do need the cross applied to
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us. We absolutely do.
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But Calvin asked the key question, how does the Bible say
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the cross is applied to us? It isn't applied by re enacting
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the killing on an altar. So how's it applied?
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It's applied by the preaching of the gospel and the
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administration of the Supper, which is then received in faith.
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So the method of application matters.
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Hugely. Paul says in First Corinthians
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that Christ, our Passover has been sacrificed, past tense,
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finished. Therefore, he says, let us feast
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the feast. The Communion is how we enjoy
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the benefits. We don't perform the sacrifice
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to get the benefits. We eat the meal because the
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sacrifice is already done. That is a critical distinction.
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1 is work doing a sacrifice. The other is rest eating a meal.
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You are spot on, and Calvin brings up another brilliant
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logic trap regarding the Word Testament.
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We talk about the Old and New Testament, but we often forget
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that the word literally means a will, like a last will and
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testament. A legal document.
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Exactly, and Hebrews 9.16 is crystal clear.
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A testament is only confirmed by the death of the testator.
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You don't get the inheritance until the person who wrote the
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will dies. OK, I follow that the death
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triggers the payout. So, Calvin argues, the Mass
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claims to be a New Testament, yielding new forgiveness if it
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is a New Testament. Then it requires a new death.
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It requires a new death of the testator.
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Oh wow, I see where this is going.
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So if the priest is offering a sacrifice for the forgiveness of
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sins today, he is metaphorically requiring Christ to die again
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today, Calvin says. By performing the Mass, they are
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cruelly slaying him in 1000 places at every moment.
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That is a horrifying way to think about it.
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It turns the church service into a murder scene.
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It is, he basically asks. Christ's final word was.
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It is finished. Why are we trying to sew patches
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onto a garment that the Son of God himself said was complete?
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It implies that the cross provided a limited fund of
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grace, like a bank account that runs dry and needs a top up
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every Sunday. But the biblical view is an
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infinite ocean of grace secured once.
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It really changes how you view the Sunday service.
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We're not there to top up the tank, we're there to celebrate
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that the entire journey is already paid for.
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Precisely. I want to shift gears a little
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bit to how Kelvin handles scripture and history, because
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the Roman church didn't just, you know, make this up out of
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thin air. They had verses they pointed to.
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One of the big ones was from the prophet Malachi.
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Malachi 1.11 In every place incense shall be offered to my
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name and a pure offering. Right.
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So Rome looks at that and says, see, Malachi predicted a
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physical sacrifice, incense, an offering happening everywhere,
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not just in Jerusalem. That must be the mass.
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It's a very literalistic interpretation, but Calvin puts
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on his exegete hat here. He explains that the Old
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Testament prophets often used physical terms to describe
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future spiritual realities. They spoke in the language of
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their time. Can you give us another example
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of that? Sure, think about when the
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prophets talk about the worship of God spreading to the
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Gentiles. They use language like going up
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to Jerusalem or bringing gold and frankincense.
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But we know that in the New covenant, we don't literally
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have to travel to Jerusalem to worship.
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Exactly. We worship in spirit and in
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truth wherever we are. So when Malachi says incense, he
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doesn't mean literal smoke. Calvin argues that incense is a
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metaphor for prayer and praise. The cure offering is the
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spiritual worship of the church, not a piece of bread turned into
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a victim. So it's spiritual language for a
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spiritual Kingdom. You have to interpret it that
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way, otherwise if you force a literal interpretation on
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Malachi, you run into all sorts of problems with other
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prophecies. You'd have to start slaughtering
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Rams again because Isaiah mentions them.
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It doesn't work. But what about the Church
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Fathers? This is usually the strongest
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card Rome plays. The early Church believed this
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and cows. It actually concedes a little
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bit of ground here, doesn't he? He does, and it shows his
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intellectual honesty. He's not trying to whitewash
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history. He admits that the early
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writers, people like Augustine Chrysostom and others, use the
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word sacrifice when they talked about the Lord's Supper.
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And that seems really damaging to his case.
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If the earliest Christians call it a sacrifice, aren't the
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Reformers the ones who are innovating?
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It would be damaging if they meant what Rome means by
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sacrifice. But Calvin digs deeper.
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He argues that when the Father said sacrifice, they almost
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always meant a sacrifice of praise or a memorial sacrifice.
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They did not mean a propitiatory sacrifice.
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There's that word again. Propitiatory wrath, absorbing
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sin, paying. Calvin quotes Augustine, who
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made this beautiful distinction. Augustine said the Hebrews had
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the prophecy of the future victim.
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Christians have the memorial of the past victim.
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Yeah, it's a great way to put it.
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One looks forward, 1 looks back. Exactly.
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But Calvin does admit that the early church sinned somewhat.
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That's his phrase. He thinks they got a little too
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close to Jewish customs. They liked the pageantry, the
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ceremony, the ritual, the ritual.
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And they used the language of altar and priesthood a bit too
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loosely. Over centuries, that loose
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language hardened into the false doctrine of the Mass, he says.
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They obscured the simplicity of the Gospel, even if they didn't
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outright deny it. So it's a lesson in being
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careful with our words. What starts as a simple metaphor
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can end up as an idol a few generations later.
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Language drifts, and Calvin is trying to anchor the church back
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to the specific, careful language of Scripture.
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Now let's talk about the consequences of this theology,
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because bad theology always leads to bad practice, and
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Calvin gets very, very worked up about private masses.
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Oh yeah, this was a common practice in his day.
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A priest would stand at the altar, say the Mass, eat the
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bread, drink the wine, and the people would just watch.
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Or maybe there were no people there at all.
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Sometimes no one, just the priest and God in a side Chapel.
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And Calvin hates this. Why?
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Because of the definition of the word communion, the word itself
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implies community, sharing, distributing.
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He points to the Last Supper in Luke 22 or Paul's instructions
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in 1st Corinthians 10. The command is always take, eat,
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divide it among yourselves. So if the priest eats it alone,
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he isn't really doing the Lord's Supper at all.
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Calvin goes so far as to say it is a form of excommunication.
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When the priest devours the victim alone, as Calvin puts it,
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he is separating himself from the body of believers.
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It's a false imitation that mocks God.
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It really does turn the congregation into an audience
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rather than participate. It totally does.
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It validates the idea that the priest is a special class of
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holy man who has access to God that you don't.
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He does the religious work, you just watch and well, you pay.
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And that leads to this psychological impact on the
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believer. Calvin argues that the Mass
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actually robs the believer of assurance.
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This is the real tragedy of it all.
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If you are taught week after week that you need a new
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redemption in the Mass, you eventually stop trusting the old
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redemption of the cross. You begin to doubt that Jesus
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really did pay at all. It keeps you on a spiritual
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treadmill. A treadmill of guilt and it
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fosters works righteousness. The Mass teaches that we,
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through the priest, are offering Christ up to the Father to merit
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favor. It makes us the active party.
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We are giving something to God to get him to like us.
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But the Gospel is the complete opposite of that.
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It's the reverse. The biblical model is that the
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Father gave Christ to us. The flow of grace is always
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downwards from God to man. The Mass tries to reverse that
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flow, turning a gift from God into a payment by man.
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Speaking of payment, we have to talk about the money.
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This is where the Reformation gets really gritty, the sale of
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masses. You cannot separate the theology
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of the Mass from the economy of the medieval church.
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They were completely intertwined.
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Masses were a commodity. You could pay for a mass to be
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said for your sick cow for a safe journey.
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Or most commonly, to get your relatives out of purgatory.
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That was the big one I. Want to make sure the listener
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really understands this? Imagine you're a widow, you've
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just lost your husband, you're grieving and the church comes to
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you and says he is suffering in fire right now.
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But for a few coins, we can conform A ritual that will
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lessen his pain. It's financial extraction based
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on spiritual terror. It's predation.
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And Calvin pulls out a very, very biting comparison to Judas
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here. He does the math on.
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It he does, he notes that Judas sold Christ for 30 pieces of
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silver. Then he notes that in his day
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the going rate for a Mass in France was very small.
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He calls it 30 pieces of copper. Ouch.
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So he's saying they are cheapening the betrayal.
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And not just that, he says Judas sold Christ once.
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These priests sell him thousands of times a day all across
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Europe. That really highlights the
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merchandise aspect that Jesus hated so much when he cleansed
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the temple. You have made my Father's house
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a den of thieves. It is the commodification of
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grace, and interestingly, Calvin brings in a secular source to
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critique this. He cites Plato.
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Yeah, I was surprised to see Plato in the Institute's book
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Two of the Republic. What is the connection he's
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making? Well, Plato is critiquing the
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corrupt religion of his own day. He ridiculed wicked men,
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tyrants, robbers who thought they could pay off the gods with
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rituals and festivals. They believed that if they just
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sacrificed enough bulls, they could escape the penalty for
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their crimes. They were trying to bribe the
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justice system of the universe. That's it.
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And Calvin says, look, even a Pagan philosopher saw through
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this scam. The Mass serves the same
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function for wicked men in Christendom.
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They live evil lives, they oppress the poor, and then they
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pay for a Mass to settle the bill with God.
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It becomes an engine for cheap grace.
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So it allows people to feel religious without ever actually
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repenting. It's the perennial human
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temptation, isn't it? We want a mechanism to control
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God, and the mass in its corruption became that control
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mechanism. So to clear up all the
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confusion, Calvin divides sacrifice into two very distinct
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categories. I think this is really helpful
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for our listeners to grasp the difference.
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Yes, this is the theological anchor.
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If you get this, you get the whole argument.
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Calvin says there are two types of sacrifice.
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Type 1 is propitiatory or expiatory.
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This is a sacrifice designed to appease God's wrath, to satisfy
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His justice, and to wash away sin.
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And who can do this? Christ alone, when did he do it?
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Once on the cross. No human can perform this.
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It is finished. OK, that's type 1.
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What's type 2? Type 2 is Eucharistic.
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That word comes from the Greek for Thanksgiving.
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This category includes the sacrifice of praise, of worship,
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almsgiving, and dedicating our whole lives to God.
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And who does this? The church, all believers, we do
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this every day. But, and this is the key, it
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does not pay for sin. It's a response of gratitude
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because our sin has already been paid for.
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So the verdict is the Mass tries to be type 1A propitiatory
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sacrifice, which Calvin calls blasphemy because it competes
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with Jesus, right? Whereas the Lord's Supper should
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be Type 2, a Eucharistic or Thanksgiving sacrifice, which is
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our holy duty. Correct.
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Rome blurred the lines. They took the Thanksgiving meal
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and they turned it back into a propitiatory event.
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Calvin is just putting the lines back where Scripture drew them.
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This brings us to the final section of our discussion today,
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the sacraments, and Calvin drastically limits the list.
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Rome had 7 sacraments. Calvin cuts it down to 2.
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Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Why only those two?
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What's the criteria he uses? Calvin says a true sacrament
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needs two things. First, it must be instituted by
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God himself and 2nd, it must contain a promise of salvation.
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That makes sense. His logic is very legal.
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He asks who has the authority to promise salvation?
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Only God. Therefore, only God can sign the
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check. A sacrament is like the seal on
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a legal document. If I write a check, but I don't
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have the authority to sign for the bank, that check is
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worthless. So if the Church invents A
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sacrament like Confirmation or Extreme Unction, it's
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essentially a forgery. In the sense that it claims to
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convey a divine promise that the Church as a human institution
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doesn't have the power to guarantee, Calvin says.
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Adding human invention to God's ordinances is like pouring water
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into wine or adding yeast to dough.
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It dilutes and sours the whole thing.
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And he says the Mass buried the true supper.
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Yes, the true sacrament was hidden under layers and layers
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of pageantry, Latin mumbling and bad theology.
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He even notes that in his day, the people only received the
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bread, the wafer. The wine was reserved only for
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the priest, so it was a mangled sacrament at best.
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Calvin ends this entire section with some incredibly strong
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rhetoric. He calls the Mass a deadly
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Whirlpool, and then he makes this striking reference to Helen
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of Troy. He calls it the Helen of the
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Enemies of Truth. For those of us who slept
24:50
through Greek mythology, Helen was the woman for whom the
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Trojan War was fought, the face that launched 1000 ships.
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Right. Calvin is saying the Mass is the
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idol. It's the beautiful thing that
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the Roman church is willing to fight and die for.
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It's the object of their spiritual fornication.
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They are more attached to this human made ritual than they are
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to the truth of the gospel. It shows that for the
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Reformation this wasn't some side issue, this was the main
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event. So as we wrap up this deep dive,
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let's try to synthesize all this.
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We've walked through the theology, the history, the
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economics, even the insults. What is the big take away?
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I think the take away is that the rejection of the mass wasn't
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about being anti ritual or even just anti Catholic for the sake
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of it. It was about protecting the
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honor of Christ. Protecting his unique status is
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the only High priest. Yes.
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If Christ is the perfect high priest who offered the perfect
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sacrifice, then any attempt to add to it is actually a
25:45
subtraction from it. If you add a + 1 to Infinity,
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you've ruined the concept of Infinity.
25:50
If you add your works or your priests to Christ's finished
25:54
work, you are declaring His work insufficient.
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It effectively says Jesus needs my help to save me.
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And that, for the Reformers, is the death of the gospel.
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It is a sobering thought. We often think of reformed
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thinking as just, you know, being intellectual.
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But this is deeply emotional. It's about being jealous for the
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glory of Jesus. It is very much so.
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Before we go, I want to leave our listeners with something to
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chew on. The final thought?
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Here's something to carry with you.
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Calvin describes the Mass as an engine designed by Satan to
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besiege the Kingdom of Christ. He saw it as a war for the soul
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of the world. In our modern context, we desire
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unity, we desire tolerance, and those are good things,
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especially in the civic sphere. But in the spiritual sphere,
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have we lost the ability to see how high the stakes actually
26:42
are? That is a tough question.
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If the distinctives of the gospel that Christ alone saves
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once for all are compromised for the sake of getting along, do we
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really have a gospel left to share?
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Are we willing to be as intolerant of error as Calvin
26:57
was if that error obscures the cross?
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A heavy question, but a necessary one.
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Thank you for guiding us through this text today it.
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Was a pleasure. And thank you to you, the
27:05
listener, for joining us on Reform Thinking.
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We always encourage you not to just take our word for it.
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Pick up the Institute's, read book 4, Chapter 18.
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See the fire on the pages for yourself.
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Until next time, keep thinking and keep reforming.