The Effects of Confessional Strife on Religious Authority in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

This chapter discusses the confessional controversies on biblical authority and ecclesiastical tradition in the first half of the seventeenth century. While Protestant theologians upheld the status of the Bible as a divinely inspired, unique, coherent, and self-evident source of faith and stressed the subordinate significance of the patristic legacy, the Roman Catholic camp embraced the importance of the teachings of the Church Fathers, conciliar decrees, and papal decisions as a rock-solid criterion for a sound interpretation of the Bible. On the basis of treatises authored by eminent and hard-core exponents of Calvinism like Abraham Scultetus, Jean Daillé, Louis Cappel, and André Rivet, set against the views of the Jesuit Denis Pétau, expert in the history of the primitive church, it is argued that debates led to a reciprocal undermining of viewpoints, which eventually paved the way for more radical positions at the end of the century.