Yesterday, I read this article by Paul Owen.  It’s entitled “Eight Theses for Evangelical Catholic Unity.”  The first thesis is:

Sola Scriptura is only true if the Bible is viewed as the possession of the Church, and not the possession of the individual. It is the early Church which published the Bible (the same Church which wrote the early Creeds), and therefore it is to that Church that we must first look to guide our understanding of the deposit of faith found in Holy Scripture. Sola Scriptura simply means that the Bible contains the only divinely revealed (and therefore infallible) statement of our Faith, so that public revelation is not to be sought outside of Scripture. It means that the authority of the Church is to be expressed through a reverent submission to Holy Scripture, neither adding to it nor taking from it. But sola Scriptura is a principle for the Church, and not a hermeneutical rule for the individual in his Bible study. For an individual to employ a sola Scriptura principle (I base my belief on the Bible alone) is a sure recipe for subjectivism, heresy and disaster. Such is the heresy of the Radical Reformation and much of today’s “evangelical” Baptistish Bible-onlyism.

In other words, individuals ought to submit to the Church, not to Scripture.  The theory is that the Church is submitting to Scripture; but the individual really has no way of knowing this, since the individual is required to agree with the Church no matter what Scripture says (after all, for the individual to use his private judgment to assert that Scripture is against what the Church teaches is, in Owen’s words, “a sure recipe for subjectivism, heresy and disaster”).

This is important to consider as we continue.  After all, Owen includes in number 7 the following statement:

Calvin’s love, respect, and cordial unity in Christ with believers like Melanchthon should provide a pattern for how Calvinists relate to believers of other theological viewpoints.

So the next question should be…what did Calvin think of Owen’s first premise?

Ironically, I just read the following passage from Calvin today (and it immediately brought back to mind Owen’s claims above).  Calvin writes:

Furthermore, to state truly and frankly the real fact of the matter, this fiction [e.g. the Schoolmen's view of "implicit faith"] not only buries but utterly destroys true faith.  Is this what believing means–to understand nothing, provided only that you submit your feeling obediently to the church?  Faith rests not on ignorance, but on knowledge.  And this is, indeed, knowledge not only of God but of the divine will.  We do not obtain salvation either because we are prepared to embrace as true whatever the church has prescribed, or because we turn over to it the task of inquiring and knowing.  But we do so when we know that God is our merciful Father, because of reconciliation effected in Christ [II Cor. 5:18-19], and that Christ has been given to us as righteousness, sanctification, and life.  By this knowledge, I say, not by submission of our feeling, do we obtain entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. …

We see the sort of labyrinth they have constructed with this “implication” of theirs!  Anything at all, provided it be palmed off on them under the label “church”–sometimes even the most frightful errors–the untutored indiscriminately seize upon as an oracle.  This heedless gullibility, although it is the very brink of ruin, yet is excused by them; only on condition that “such is the faith of the church” does it definitely believe anything.  Thus they fancy that in error they possess truth; in darkness, light; in ignorance, right knowledge.

But let us not tarry longer over refuting them; we merely admonish the reader to compare these doctrines with ours.  The very clarity of truth itself will of itself provide a sufficiently ready refutation.  For they do not ask whether faith is wrapped in many remnants of ignorance, but define right believers as those who go numb in their own ignorance, and even brag about it, provided they give assent to the authority and judgment of the church in things unknown to them.  As if Scripture does not regularly teach that understanding is joined with faith!

Calvin, John (1960). Institutes of the Christian Religion Volume 1 (III. ii. 2, 3) F. L. Battles Trans.,  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. (pp. 545-546, all emphasis added)

Calvin, far from supporting Owen’s ideas, resoundly refutes them.  We are not to remain ignorant of Scripture, only trusting in what the Church says to believe; no, we are to know Scripture, not the oracles of the church!  Calvin is so clear on this issue that it is obvious to all, except for Owen, that he would stand opposed to Owen.