Quote Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr View Post
It's more the Church that emerged after they started to develop the idea of Papal Supremacy that is criticised. As the quote I gave a few posts up shows, the Papacy clearly shifted it's doctrine in order to push that idea. Until that point, the ancient theologians and scholars that it produced are treated like any other in the Reformation writers. Heck, Augustine was Calvin's hero figure.
So God decided that the Roman Church would be good until.... when exactly? 1200? 1382? 1415?

This, more than anything Calvin's legacy. Wyclif may have denounced the Church of his own age as Anti-Christ and irredeemably corrupt, but he was a priest living in a country under pressure from Rome and faced with TWO POPES!

Calvin's theology is deterministic, if the Church has fallen it is because God has withdrawn his Grace, and for no other reason. Ockham's Razor suggests the proposition is absurd, because it makes a mockery of the divine mind and is needlessly complex.