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How the Papacy Overturned the Ancient Church Order | John Calvin · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. This is the deep dive where we
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  get into the historical sources, into the theology, and try to
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  understand it on its own terms. Today we're opening up John
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  Calvin's Institute's, which can be pretty dense, but we're
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  giving you a shortcut. We're going straight to his
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  critique of the church government of his day.
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  Our mission is to really pull apart what Calvin saw as the
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  proper scriptural roles for presbyters, deacons and bishops
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  and then show how he argued they were just completely destroyed
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  by greed and, well, politics. And it's not just a rant that's
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  the thing to get here. This is a systematic theological
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  assessment. He's looking at the office, the
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  call, how it's financed, and he's measuring it all against
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  scripture. And this is key against the
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  ancient church canons. He's citing councils like Chao,
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  Sadan and Akalea. The main argument you see him
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  building is that the hierarchy kept all the names, the titles,
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  the fancy clothes, but the actual reality of spiritual
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  government was gone. It had been overthrown.
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  A hollow shell. Completely.
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  And when you see the contrast he draws, it reveals this shocking
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  system of patronage, of financial abuse and just massive
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  moral failure. OK, so let's start at the
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  beginning. The presbyter.
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  The pastor, Calvin is very clear that this is a job at active
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  duty, not just a title you hold. Right.
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  He defines the genuine office as a call to govern the church.
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  It's a verb, not a noun. The absolute core of the duty is
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  to lead and feed the people. So what does governing look
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  like? Is that just, you know, giving
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  sermons? It's more than that.
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  It's the whole administration of what he calls the spiritual
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  Kingdom of Christ. It means taking on the burdens
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  of the office. The practical stuff.
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  Yes, the care of discipline and the administering the
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  sacraments. He sees the Word, the
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  sacraments, and discipline as the tools you use to keep the
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  community spiritually healthy. If any of those fail, the Church
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  itself just Withers. And he also talks about the
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  structure of that leadership, doesn't he?
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  He argues for something more collaborative than a strict top
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  down hierarchy. He does.
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  It's this idea of collegial leadership, he argues, that in
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  the early church, presbyters were meant to rule the church in
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  common with the Bishop. So they were colleagues.
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  Exactly. Colleagues in the pastoral
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  office. The Bishop was first among
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  equals, sure, but the governance was meant to be collective.
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  That was a huge point for Calvin, because in his day the
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  presbyter had been reduced to a mere servant.
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  And the feeding part of the duty for him that's non negotiable
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  it's. Absolute center, the flock is
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  fed by the preaching of doctrine.
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  His stance is so sharp here. He says if a man isn't given a
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  place to teach, he has no lawful office to exercise.
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  He really goes after the priests who didn't preach.
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  Oh, he's scathing about it. He calls it a dumb priesthood.
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  Men who held the title that thought preaching was, you know,
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  beneath their dignity or too much work, He asks.
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  How can you call yourself a steward if you keep the keys to
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  the storehouse, the word of God, locked away from the people?
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  So that's the ideal, the active teaching, governing presbyter.
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  Now let's pivot to the reality he was seeing.
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  What had the office become? It had been completely warped.
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  The work of ruling and feeding was just gone.
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  It was replaced by a ritual. The office was reduced to one
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  single function to perform sacrifices.
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  The Mass. The Mass, which Calvin of course
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  called an impious profanation. And it wasn't preaching, it was
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  just chanting or muttering Masses, often in a cloister
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  somewhere with no real interaction with any
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  congregation. It sounds like the role became
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  transactional, not spiritual. That's a perfect way to put it.
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  It stopped being about service and became a transaction.
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  The priest became a mercenary who, you know, sells his labor
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  for a fee. Calvin describes them wandering
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  around trying to get paid for performing a Mass for the dead
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  or some other ritual. The job wasn't stewardship
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  anymore, it was an hourly wage gig.
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  This is where that ship's captain analogy really helps
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  make sense of it. It does, doesn't it?
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  A real captain is on the ship, steering it through storms.
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  He's present. He's working.
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  The man Calvin criticized this gets the title captain because
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  he knows someone important. He lives in a mansion miles from
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  the sea, and he thinks he's doing his job by just waving a
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  flag from his balcony once a day.
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  He never sets foot on the ship. And the ship, the church, is
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  just left adrift. No one's at the helm.
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  Total spiritual desolation. The congregation is left
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  untaught, undisciplined, uncared for.
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  How can you be a shepherd if you've, as he says, never seen a
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  sheep of his flock? Which brings us right to the
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  residency mandate. You can't be an absentee
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  shepherd. You can't.
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  And this is where he pulls out the ancient church canons to
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  back him up. He cites the Council of
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  Chalcedon. What did it say?
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  It said there should be no ordinations free of pastoral
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  obligations. You had to be assigned to a
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  specific community. You had to live there.
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  You had to work there. It was a safeguard against
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  exactly this kind of corruption. And the system in his day made a
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  mockery of that. A complete mockery.
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  These bishops and presbyters didn't see their churches as
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  spiritual responsibilities. They saw them as farms.
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  Just a source of income. Right, they'd hire a cheap
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  steward, a vicar to manage the farm, collect the rent and send
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  it back to them while they lived in luxury somewhere else.
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  The office was just a title attached to a revenue stream.
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  So if the primary office of pastor was so broken, what
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  happened to the supporting roles?
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  Let's talk about the Deacon. What was that office originally
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  for? It was a ministry of mercy,
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  simple as that. Goes back to Acts 6.
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  The deacons were responsible for the stewardship of alms.
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  So managing the church's charity fund, basically.
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  Basically, yeah. Their job was to gather alms and
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  then distribute them to the needy.
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  Widows, orphans, the poor. They were the financial officers
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  of mercy. It was a check against the
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  clergy becoming greedy. But like the president's office,
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  it got corrupted. It shifted from practical work
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  to just. On a total shift in the 16th
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  century, the deacon's duties were all about assisting the
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  priest during the Mass they administer at the altar, handle
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  the chalice and patent. The cup and plate.
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  Right. And maybe they'd read or chant
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  the Gospel. The whole thing turned the
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  diaconate from this vital, distinct calling of social
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  service into just a stepping stone, an internship for the
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  priesthood. And the consequence of that is,
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  well, it's pretty horrifying for the people who actually needed
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  help. The social welfare work just
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  vanished. It was abolished, and the money
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  that was supposed to go to the poor, well, it was either eaten
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  up by the clergy's greed or spent on what Calvin calls
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  superstition. What does he mean by?
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  That he means building gigantic ornate stone churches, erecting
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  statues, buying gold vessels for the altar, all while the living
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  temples, the poor were starving. That's a powerful phrase, Living
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  temples. It is.
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  His conclusion is brutal. He says the poor receive nothing
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  more of those alms than if they were cast into the sea.
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  He argues they'd rather let thousands of people starve to
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  death than meltdown a single golden cup to feed them.
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  The priorities were completely inverted.
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  So once you see that the jobs themselves were empty, the next
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  question is how did the wrong man get these jobs in the 1st
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  place? And it all starts with stealing
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  the authority to appoint them. The disenfranchisement of the
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  people. Calvin was pretty strong on the
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  idea that the congregation should have a say.
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  He saw it as their divine right to elect their own Bishop, but
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  that right was systematically taken away.
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  First, the whole power was transferred to the canons alone.
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  The Cathedral chapter. Right.
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  This group of already powerful clergy just usurped the people's
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  vote. The congregation's ascent and
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  subscriptions, which were required by ancient practice,
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  just disappeared. And what was their excuse for
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  doing this? The usual one, really.
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  They claimed that public elections were messy.
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  They led to tumults and factions.
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  They said the common people were too emotional to make a good
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  choice. And that they, the educated
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  canons, knew better. Of course, Calvin just dismisses
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  that as a flimsy pretext for a power grab.
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  The end result was that the new Bishop was just presented to the
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  people to be adored, not to be examined.
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  They were just spectators. But the power didn't even stay
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  with the Canons. It became a political football.
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  It did. Once the power was centralized,
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  it became a bargaining chip. The next step was collusion with
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  secular rulers. Princes, kings, Dukes.
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  They got the right to nominate bishops.
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  So church offices became political rewards.
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  The largest of Princess is the phrase Calvin uses.
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  They were handed out as rewards for political loyalty or
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  military service. It was a complete usurpation.
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  Spiritual authority was being treated like a piece of land you
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  could just give away. So you end up with bishops who
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  are what courtiers. You end up with bishops who are
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  hunters and falconers. Seriously, men who were good at
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  training the King's birds were given charge of a whole diocese,
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  and these men were forced on populations that didn't want
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  them, didn't know them, and certainly didn't choose them.
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  It's just staggering to think about that a man's skill with a
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  Falcon could make him a spiritual leader.
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  It shows you how far things had decayed.
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  The qualifications were just gone.
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  Let's talk about those qualifications or the lack of
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  them. The examination of learning was
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  seen as what too old fashioned. Completely old fashioned, they
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  didn't want theologians who could preach.
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  They wanted lawyers who could argue in court, manage property
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  and handle money. The ability to preach the gospel
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  was not a valued skill. He gives a pretty shocking
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  statistic on this. It's almost unbelievable.
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  He says that for 100 years scarcely one man in 100
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  appointed to these offices had any real grasp of sacred
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  learning. They were managers, not
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  ministers. And what about moral
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  qualifications? The ancient rule was that a
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  Bishop had to be above reproach. That was totally ignored.
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  This is the moral collapse. Calvin is blunt.
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  He says bishops were often drunkards, fornicators,
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  gamblers. He says if you judge the current
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  bishops by the standards of the ancient canons, you'd be lucky
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  to find one in 100 who wouldn't be immediately thrown out of
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  office. So these high spiritual offices
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  actually became rewards for bad behavior.
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  In some cases, yes, Bishop bricks became prizes for
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  adulteries and panderings. They were given to men who had
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  performed some scandalous service for a Prince or a
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  patron. The whole idea of moral purity
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  was just off the table. And the whole system ran on
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  money on simony. Simony was the engine, the
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  buying and selling of church offices, Calvin says.
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  Scarcely one benefits in 100 is conferred without simony.
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  You either bought the position with cash or you got it through
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  what he calls the sordid currying of favor.
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  Just shameless bribery and flattery.
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  Which led to some truly absurd people getting these jobs.
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  It was almost comical if it weren't so tragic, he says.
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  Bishop Ricks were given to barbers, cooks, mule tears and
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  such dregs of humanity. Mule tears, children.
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  As boys, they were simply the favorite servants or the young
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  relatives of the powerful patrons who controlled the
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  appointment. And the Pope's role in all this
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  was basically to line off on it, to grant the exceptions.
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  He was the one who made it all possible.
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  The Pope would grant dispensations to ignore all the
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  canonical laws. This is how you end up with boys
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  scarcely 10 years old being made bishops.
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  A 10 year old Bishop. It's just.
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  Calvin calls it a monstrous transgression, and he's right.
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  It shows that the Office was seen purely as a financial
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  asset. If you let a child be in charge
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  of souls and property, you clearly don't believe there's
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  any spiritual substance to the job at all.
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  And yet they still went through the motions of an ordination
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  ceremony. They had to keep up appearances,
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  but the examination was a pure mockery.
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  It was a stage play. What?
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  Would they ask them? Ridiculous things.
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  Can you read a bit of the mass? Can you decline a Latin noun?
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  The kind of thing a schoolboy could do?
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  It was all scripted. And the final moment of the
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  ceremony is the worst part. It's the institutional lie at
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  the heart of it all. Someone stands up and formally
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  asks if the candidate is worthy, and another man who's never met
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  him, who knows nothing about him, just recites his line.
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  They are worthy. Just a complete farce.
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  Calvin sees it as them shamelessly mocking God.
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  They had to perform the ritual, but they denied the spiritual
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  reality. It was just a play to legitimize
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  a financial transaction. And that transaction, that
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  financial engine, was the benefit system.
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  To understand the corruption, you really have to understand
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  how the benefits worked, or rather how it was broken.
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  So a benefits was originally the salary right?
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  The support for a minister doing his job.
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  Right, it was the priestly living tied to active service in
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  a specific place. Your title required a duty.
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  But the hierarchy found a loophole.
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  They redefined the word title. They did, and this is the
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  crucial move. They redefined title to mean
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  simply an income sufficient for their support.
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  The duty part was dropped. So the was detached from the
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  work. Completely detached.
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  And that gave birth to what Calvin calls idle benefits.
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  And these were what exactly? They were positions like
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  canonries or chaplain sees. They were titles that had become
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  nothing more than salaries for, as he puts it, elegant men who
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  earn their keep by singing. They had no real ministry
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  function. The job was gone, but the
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  paycheck remained. And because it was just income,
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  people started collecting them. This is the abuse of pluralism.
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  It's the logical next step. If a spiritual office is just a
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  source of revenue, why not have more than one?
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  Calvin talks about cannons laden with 5-6 or seven benefices.
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  Collecting 7 salaries while doing 0 jobs.
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  Precisely, he said they treated the church office like prey cast
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  to dogs to hunt or like enemy loot to be grabbed.
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  It was about accumulating personal wealth, not
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  administering a church. The no show job analogy really
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  clarifies this for today. It's a perfect modern parallel.
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  You have a publicly funded job meant to provide a service, but
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  in this corrupt system, the job title is just a name on a
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  payroll. It's an income stream you can
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  give to your nephew. And the nephew collects the
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  check every month but never shows up to the office.
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  Never. Yeah, and he might have five
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  other no show jobs in different cities.
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  That is exactly how the church's money was being siphoned off by
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  men who were, for all intents and purposes, embezzling
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  spiritual salaries. And all this wealth created a
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  debate about glory, about what a Bishop is supposed to look like.
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  What did the ancient Church say was true glory?
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  The ancient church valued humility and service.
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  Calvin quotes Saint Jerome, who said the glory of the Bishop is
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  to provide for the poor. Not to be rich himself, no.
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  Jerome said it was the disgrace of all priests to seek after
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  their own riches. Calvin also cites the Synod of
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  Aquila which stated glorious is poverty and the priests of the
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  Lord. The old standard was service to
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  the vulnerable. In the hierarchy of his day had
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  turned that completely on its head.
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  They had they went in for what Calvin calls false splendor and
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  they even trying to justify it theologically.
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  They said they were fulfilling prophecies about the glory of
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  the Church. By building palaces.
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  Magnificent palaces. Elegy begins of apparel, a great
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  retinue of servants. They wanted to live like
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  Princess Calvin just shoots this down, he says.
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  The prophets were talking about spiritual gifts, not
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  accumulating filthy lucre. The firefighter analogy works
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  well here. It really does.
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  True glory for a firefighter is being covered in soot after
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  saving a family. It's the evidence of service,
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  right? The false glory is the Fire
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  Chief who spends all the department's money on a pristine
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  gold threaded uniform and refuses to go near a fire
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  because he might get it dirty. The outward show replaced the
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  actual substance of the job. And this was only possible
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  because they were plundering the church's funds.
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  How is that money supposed to be used?
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  Historically, church income was divided four ways to support the
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  Bishop, the other clergy, the church buildings, and the poor.
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  And the poor were supposed to get at least half, but they
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  didn't. Not even close, Calvin says.
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  The clergy seized the money like thieves dividing spoils.
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  The funds were eaten up by the voraciousness of the priests,
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  and the poor were left with nothing.
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  And we come back to that idea of spending on superstition, on
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  buildings instead of people. That was the ultimate moral
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  failure for him. They would core money into
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  statues, gold vessels, and extravagant churches.
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  Meanwhile, the living temples, the poor who are the actual
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  dwelling place of the spirit, were abandoned.
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  He saw it as a form of idolatry, loving the gold more than the
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  people God commanded them to care for.
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  So when you pull back and look at the whole system, it's just
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  one of total institutionalized neglect.
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  It was designed to pay a man a princely salary for doing no
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  actual pastoral work. All the real qualifications,
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  doctrine, the holy life, the consent of the people, actual
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  service, they were all replaced by a system that ran on
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  corruption. It was, as you said, a formless
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  chaos. That's his term for it.
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  He says The bishops no more think of feeding the flock than
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  a Shoemaker of plowing. They just saw their churches as
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  farms to be milked for revenue. The result was a desolation that
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  kept the mask of a church but was totally alien to what Christ
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  instituted. The shepherd became a landlord,
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  the servant of the poor became their chief plunderer, and the
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  preacher went silent. You know, before we finish, I
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  want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, Calvin's use
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  of the ancient canons like Chalcedon.
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  Why was that so important for his argument?
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  Why not just stick to the Bible? That's a great question.
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  It was a really smart strategic move.
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  By citing these ancient, universally respected church
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  councils, he was doing two things OK.
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  First, he was proving that the corruption he saw was new.
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  It was a deviation. The people hierarchy had broken
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  with its own best traditions. 2nd, and maybe more to the
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  point, he was framing the Reformation not as an
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  innovation, but as a restoration.
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  So he's saying we're not the radicals here, you are.
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  Precisely. We're not starting a new church.
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  We are trying to get back to the pure ancient church order that
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  existed before your systemic corruption took hold.
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  It completely flips the script on who the innovators are.
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  They were the innovators of corruption.
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  The Reformers were the restorers of antiquity.
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  So it was a way of claiming the mantle of tradition for the
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  Reformation. Yes, it showed the papacy had
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  abandoned not just Scripture but the most revered figures and
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  councils of the early Church. On all these key issues, morals,
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  elections and especially money, hashtags tag out trip.
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  We've walked through Calvin's analysis and what you see is
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  this picture of a complete systemic failure of church
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  government. The outward mask was still
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  there, the titles, the ceremonies, but the spiritual
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  reality was just gone. It was hollowed out by simony,
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  by idleness, and by the abolition of the ministry of the
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  Word and care for the poor and understanding.
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  This critique gives you, the listener, a pretty clear set of
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  parameters for thinking about spiritual authority helps you
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  ask the right questions. Is the focus on governing and
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  actually feeding the flock, or has it slipped into something
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  else? Patronage, self enrichment
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  ceremony without substance. Calvin's argument really shows
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  how the call, the work, and the resources of an office are all
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  tied together. When one of those breaks, when
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  the call is stolen, the work is abandoned, and the resources are
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  plundered, the whole thing just collapses into corruption.
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  It's not just a story about the 16th century, it's a timeless
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  warning about how institutions decay.
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  We saw that the ancient church said a Bishop should be deposed
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  for being a drunkard or gambler, and that his real glory was in
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  caring for the poor. So here's a thought to leave you
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  with if those are the benchmarks, what practical steps
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  could a church today, one that's committed to Reform doctrine,
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  take to guard its offices from the more subtle, modern forms of
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  idleness and self seeking from the modern no show job?
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  What happens when a title, any title, outlives the active duty
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  it was created to perform?