Calvinism's Roman Catholic Origin: Part 2

If you’ve ever heard someone say “Calvinism is purely biblical” or “the pre-trib rapture came from Jesuits,” we put those claims under a bright light and start following the paper trail. I’m Pastor James W. Knox, and this broadcast continues our study on the Roman Catholic roots of millennial Calvinism, focusing on one towering figure: Augustine. The question driving the whole message is simple and uncomfortable: if your system depends on Augustine, what else are you inheriting along with it?

We walk through the basics of Bible prophecy and end-times views, defining premillennialism as the literal 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ in Revelation 20, then contrasting it with postmillennialism and amillennialism. From there, we cite Reformed and Presbyterian sources that openly praise Augustine and credit him as a foundational influence on John Calvin. The discussion then turns to the “supreme irony” we see in church history: Augustine is also widely recognized as a major seedbed for Roman Catholicism, raising serious questions about how Protestants should talk about “Rome” when defending their own theological lineage.

We also trace a series of distinctly Roman Catholic doctrines back to Augustine’s writings and influence, including sacraments as a means of grace, infant baptism, Marian devotion, purgatory, and claims about postmortem forgiveness. We close by previewing the next step in this series: a documentation-heavy case aimed at disproving the theory that the Jesuits invented the pre-tribulation rapture. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves church history, and leave a review with the biggest question you want answered next.

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Transcript

Welcome And Ministry Approach

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Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W. Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delant, Florida. Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior. Now here's your host, Pastor James W. Knox.

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All right, greetings, ladies and gentlemen of all ships at sea. I'm Brother James, and I preach you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. And I welcome you to yet another edition of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. We're so glad and happy that God has touched the hearts of his people across the nation and around the world to sponsor this program on the particular station which you are listening right now. No solicitation, no fundraising, no begging for financial support, no selling of two dollar books for ten dollars, no selling of fifty cent cassette tapes for eight dollars, but just the ministry of God's word and trusting God to speak to the hearts of his people to open the doors and make the way. And God has been so good and so faithful to prove himself to be the rewarder of all those that will honor his word. And we certainly thank God for the privilege, privilege, and opportunity of being on this radio station today. And we're

The Study And Why It’s Needed

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mighty glad that you've tuned in to the preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. We started on the last broadcast what will prove to be a very interesting study if you'll follow along with us, but what will certainly prove to be a rather tedious study to those who are unfortunate enough to be attending churches where the Word of God is not taught and the biblical foundations that are required for such a study have not been laid. We are studying together, building upon a foundation so ably laid by Paul Bailey. We are studying together the Roman Catholic roots of millennial Calvinism. Now that's a mouthful, as I said, for those that are not students of the Word of God. The Calvinists who make up the Reformed movement and the Presbyterian movements primarily, and the primitive Baptist and the Hard Shell Baptists, these people claim to have taken their doctrinal positions from John Calvin, the uh Swiss reformer, actually a Frenchman, uh, but spent his time in Switzerland, did his writing there, who sought to reform the Roman Catholic Church from within the Roman Catholic Church, and then later sought to reform the Roman Catholic Church from without the Roman Catholic Church. And we have been pointing out, we showed on the last broadcast, how that the doctrines set forth and taught by John Calvin were nothing more than a rehash of the doctrines set forth by Augustine, and we showed this, we proved this, not from uh those writers who are anti-Calvinist, but from those writers and those uh publishing houses and those books which are produced

Millennium Views Explained Simply

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by the Calvinists themselves. Now, the reason we are pointing this out is because uh in our world today, increasingly, and in our world of religion, primarily, more and more we have men who are abandoning the doctrine of the premillennial coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, again, this requires some background. The millennium, that is the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ Himself on this earth. It's set forth in Revelation chapter number 20. That doctrine is denied by the Reformed theologians, that doctrine is denied by the majority of the Presbyterians, that doctrine is denied by uh the majority of the hard-shelling primitive Baptists who are Calvinist in their teachings. Now, in place of this, they have one of two one or two positions. They have post-millennialism, which means that after the church brings in a glorious kingdom of peace on earth, uh, then Jesus Christ will come back and the church will give to Jesus what they gained for him, which is entirely reverse, the complete opposite of everything the Bible teaches. Jesus Christ wins the victory and gives the victory to uh his uh believing people. That's the New Testament doctrine in all 27 books of the New Testament. And then there is the Amelineal position, which teaches that the whole thing is just an allegory and just a uh sort of a religious myth or fairy tale, and that Jesus Christ is not coming back at all. This is the position of John Calvin and uh is the position uh which he learned from Augustine. Now that's where we left off on the last broadcast. We were giving these quotations to show how the Calvinistic writers uh one after another stands up and states that John Calvin got his doctrines and got his theology from Augustine, the, for all intents and purposes, the founder of the Roman Catholic Church. The Apostle Paul was, of course, a other than the Apostle Paul, uh, Amelinial Calvinists can see no greater theologians than Augustine and Calvin. The forward to uh Warfield, Benjamin Warfield's book Calvin and Augustine, states, quote, these two extraordinarily gifted men tower like pyramids over the scene of history. You realize, of course, there are no pyramids in Israel. There are no pyramids in Europe, there are no pyramids in the United States of America, apart from the one built out in Las Vegas, Nevada for gambling purposes. The pyramids are in Egypt, which we covered on the last broadcast. Lorraine Bittner reflects Warfield, and uh he claims in his work, and let me let me make sure I've got the right uh one of Bittner's books here, uh, yes, again from Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, this time page 405. Bittner says, quote, he, Calvin, and Augustine easily rank as the two outstanding systematic expounders of the Christian system since Paul. Paul was not a systematic expounder of the Christian system. He was

Calvinism’s Stated Debt To Augustine

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a proclaimer of biblical truth. There is a difference, you know. Now, although all millennial Calvinists would claim that their beliefs are based on the Bible, there is no doubt that by their own admission, they view Augustine as the very foundation stone on which their house is built. It is he, Augustine, they have to thank and praise for formulating their particular belief systems. Not Paul, not the Bible, not the Lord Jesus Christ, not the Holy Spirit, but Augustine. Now, having established that Augustine started A millennialism, and that Augustine started Calvinism, we come to the twist in the tail, the supreme irony. Augustine also started what is now called Roman Catholicism. Shocking as it may seem, well-informed A millennial Calvinists who freely acknowledge their doctrinal debt to Augustine also freely admit that Augustine was, in the words of Benjamin Warfield, in a true sense the founder of Roman Catholicism. Now Warfield said that on page 313 of his book Calvin and Augustine, published by the Presbyterian Reform Publishing Company. On page 312 of the same book, he says, quote, in Augustine are found at once the seed out of which the tree that we know as the Roman Catholic Church has grown. Now, isn't it an amazing thing that men writing for the Reformed Publishing House, the Presbyterian Reformed Publishing Company, would denounce the Pope as Antichrist and renounce the papal system and yet at the same time build their doctrinal found uh their doctrinal house upon the very founder of Roman Catholicism. You've got to admit that's a strange, strange thing indeed. Those of us who are premillennial and believe in both a future antichrist and a rapture for the church prior to the Great Tribulation stand accused of following the Jesuits. Yet all the time, by their own admission, our accusers have taken their prophetic views from none less than the very founder of Roman Catholicism itself by their own admission. More potent still is the fact that Augustine's allegorical interpretation of the 1,000-year-long millennium actually helped in the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm reading from volume 15, page 495 and 496 of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Quote, the new idea of the Church, Capital C, nowhere capitalized in the Bible, brought out by Augustine

Augustine Tied To Roman Catholicism

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on the basis of the altered political situation of the Church, Capitol C, dealt an enormous blow to the premillennial belief of the primitive Christian Church. Augustine was the first who ventured to teach that the Catholic Church, in its empirical form, was the kingdom of Christ, that the millennial kingdom had commenced with the appearing of Christ and was therefore an accomplished fact. The doctrine of Amillennialism is one of the one of the cornerstones of the Roman Catholic system. It came from Augustine. It's clear, therefore, that premillennialism actually acts as a buttress against Roman Catholicism. Whereas Amillenalism and its formulator, Augustine, turn out to be Roman Catholicism's representatives. And as we'll go on to prove, there's plenty of evidence to confirm that Augustine was indeed the doctrinal founder of Romanism. To start with, the Vatican has honored only 32 teachers with the title church doctor. They're not like the Baptists who hand out the title of doctor to just anybody and everybody that comes along. And if you'll let me into your church for a meeting, I'll let you into my church for a meeting, and if you'll distribute my newspaper, I'll distribute your books, and then we'll each give one another a doctorate degree. It's not one of those deals. There's only 32 of them in the entire history of the Roman Catholic Church. This is because the Church of Rome considers them to be exceptionally trustworthy guides to Catholicism. Eight of these are called major doctors and have been canonized as saints. This, according to James McCarthy, the Gospel according to Rome, page 297. Among those eight major doctors, only eight in all the history of the Roman Catholic Church, one is Augustine. Now, anyone who cares to read will soon discover the errors of Romanism. And they will learn that these errors first saw the light of day in the writings of Augustine. He was the first man ever to define the so-called sacraments as a means of grace. That's from Philip Schaaf History of the Christian Church, Volume 3, page 1020. He was the first theologian to maintain a place for infant baptism in Christian theology. That's uh Brother Larry Vance in his work on the other side of Calvinism. Nowhere in the Bible can you find any suggestion of any such thing as infant

Catholic Doctrines Traced To Augustine

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baptism. You say, Where'd it come from? It came from Augustine. He promoted the worship of Mary. Philip Schaaf, page 1020 to 1021, and he taught that Mary was sinless. Peter Di Rosa, Vicars of Christ, page 333, Corgi Books, published 1989. He was the one who, as Lorraine Bittner admits, gave the doctrine of purgatory its first definite form. That's Lorraine Bittner on his book Immortality, Presbyterian Reform Publishing Company. And Augustine in the City of God, pages 990 to 991, said, quote, some in fact will receive forgiveness in the world to come for what is not forgiven in this. He maintained as well, according to Lewis Burkhoff for the History of Christian Doctrines, page 256, that unbaptized babies went to hell. Now you think you listen to this. I'm simply pointing out to you that Augustine is the chief cornerstone of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the first one to define the sacraments as a means of grace, not taught in the Bible. He was the first to maintain a place for infant baptism in the Christian Church, not taught in the Bible. He was the first to promote the worship of Mary, not taught in the Bible. He was the first to teach she committed no sin, not taught in the Bible. He gave purgatory its first definite form, nowhere taught in the Bible. He taught that forgiveness that was not obtained in this world could be obtained in the next, not taught in the Bible. And he said that unbaptized babies went to hell, not taught in the Bible. So if you're going to build a doctrinal system upon the heresies of a man, instead of the truth of the word of God, you may as well pick Augustine as any other man. Now there are two groups that have built their doctrinal house upon Augustine, the Roman Catholic Church and the Calvinists. Sir Robert Anderson concluded, The Roman Church was molded by Augustine into the form it has ever since maintained. Of all the errors that later centuries developed in her teachings, there is scarcely one that cannot be found in Embryo in his writings. That's Sir Robert Anderson in Catholic Paths Retraced, quoted by Samuel Fisk on page number 95. What a revelation it is to read the City of God. Have you ever read it? Don't criticize me and say I'm misquoting Augustine if you haven't read Augustine. In the City of God, Augustine said Well, let me just read to you what he said about uh the healing properties of holy relics. Oh yes, oh yes. Holy relics read idols, if you're a Bible believer. I quote When the relics of the glorious martyr Stephen, you can just bet you that Stephen was carrying around little dolly statues with him. You just know it. When the relics of the glorious martyr Stephen arrived at Aqua Tibetane, that's T I B I L I T A N A E, there was an immense gathering of people. Among them was a blind woman who begged to be led to the bishop as he carried the relics. The bishop gave her some flowers, which he was carrying, she took them and put them on her eyes, and immediately her sight was restored. Eukarius is a presbyter from Spain. He was cured by the relics of the same martyr. Later on he was stricken with another disease, he was laid out for dead, his thumbs were already tied together, but the presbyter's tunic was sent to the martyr's shrine. No such thing anywhere in the Word of God. It was brought back and put on his body, and by the aid of the martyr the Presbyter revived. You know what Augustine believed? He believed that idols and images and garments had special healing powers. You know where the Roman Catholic Church picked up those ideas? From Augustine. Is it any wonder, in the light of all the above facts, and that's what they are, they're facts, that Xanchius, in his in his book, uh that's Jerome Xanchius, the doctrine of absolute predestination, page 168-169, Baker Bookhouse. Is it any wonder that he refers to Augustine as one of the four legs supporting the papal chair? Or that Philip Schaff, in his church history on page 1018, calls him the principal creator of the Latin Catholic system? Now here's the question. Do those who accuse us of getting the doctrine of the pre-tribulation rapture from the Jesuits think nothing of the fact that two of the main planks of their systematic theology were devised by the founder of Roman Catholicism? It would seem to me that would bother you if you hold to that particular view. Can not those who accuse us of getting the doctrine of the pre-tribulation rapture from the Jesuits see the beam that is in their own eye? Apart from its historical inaccuracy, how can they continue to promote this myth about the so-called Jesuit origins of pre-tribulationism while at the same time promoting major doctrines which by their own admission come straight out of

Forced Religion And Civil Penalties

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Rome? With one breath they stigmatize pre-tribulationalism as Romanistic, but with the next they laud Roman Catholicism's founder to the skies. You've got to admit that's a very, very strange thing. Now further historical research reveals that Augustine showed all the intolerant bigotry one would expect from the founder of Romanism. We don't spend any time trying to close down Roman Catholic churches. We don't spend any time harassing Roman Catholic priests. We don't spend any time trying to get Roman Catholic programming off of radio and TV. But you know as well as I do what happens when somebody begins to put out material like the material we're putting out right now. That also started with Augustine. He was the first so-called Christian to attack the true doctrine of believers' baptism with civil law. Thomas Armitage in The History of the Baptist, page 100, Maranatha Baptist Press, tells how that Augustine tried to get the law courts to ban believers' baptism by immersion. And it was thanks to Augustine that an edict was passed declaring that anyone who performed a re-baptism, or that those actually baptized should be put to death. You can find the documentation of this in G. H. Orchard, a concise history of the Baptist, page 60 and pages 94 to 95, in a book published by Bogard Press. Now you know what Augustine said? He not only said that infant baptism was Christian, which of course it's not, he not only said that sprinkling babies would place them under the covenant of elected grace, just as John Calvin taught, which of course it doesn't, but he also had a had an edict passed that anyone who later in life got born again and saved according to the New Testament scriptures and followed the Lord Jesus Christ in believers' baptism should be put to death by civil authorities. Boy, that's some Christian, isn't it? After the Council of Carthage in 418 A.D., which had been called due to Augustine's influence, that according to History of the Donatists by David Benedict, much persecution took place. I'm quoting now from Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 2, page 233. Three hundred Donatist baptists are bishops, with many thousands of the inferior clergy, were torn from their churches, stripped of their ecclesiastical possessions. Banished to the islands, and proscribed by the laws, if they presumed to conceal themselves in any of the provinces of Africa. Their numerous congregations were deprived of the rights of citizens and of the exercise of religious worship. By these severities, which obtained the warmest approbation of Saint Augustine, great numbers of Donatists were reconciled to the Catholic Church. You know what that means? That means that Augustine got the law courts to threaten these people with death if they didn't come back and become active members of the Roman Catholic system. If I was a Calvinist, I wouldn't tell anybody. I'd say I believed in the doctrine of grace. I'd say I was a covenanter. I would say I was a reformed uh believer. I would say that I was uh uh I believed in the sovereignty of God. I I wouldn't tell anybody I was a Calvinist if I was you. I'd come up with some other code name so that nobody knew what I really was. Augustine held the pagan philosopher Plato, see Colossians 2.8, for God's comment on philosophy in high esteem, constructing what he called a Christian philosophy. Warfield admits that uh this philosophy

Plato, Constantine, And Pagan Influence

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was built out of largely Platonic materials. Remember, Plato was an evolutionist and a polytheist, and he subscribed the transmigration and reincarnation of souls. Uh Larry Vance documents that real well on page twenty of his book. Augustine also thought highly of the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine, of whom he wrote uh page two twenty of his uh of his book. God in his goodness heaped worldly gifts such as no one would have dared to hope for on Constantine, one who made no supplication of demons, but worshipped only the true God, and God even granted him the honor of founding a city. He didn't found a city. He conquered one in a military victory and changed the name of it. History shows, however, contrary to Augustine's fairy tales, that Constantine was a compromiser who deliberately did not oppose the paganism of the Roman Senate, who worshipped the sun god Baal to the day of his death, who only accepted Augustine's brand of Christianity as the religion of the Empire for political reasons, and who, having dedicated his new city Constantinople, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, was eventually sprinkled on his deathbed and died with no testimony of salvation at all, except visions of strange crosses in the sky. So we have

Next Step On The Jesuit Claim

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conclusively proved on these first two broadcasts in our series that omillenalism and Calvinism sprang from a polluted source, Augustine. And Jesus said that a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit in Matthew 7, verse 17. Now, having laid this foundation, we are going to move forward in the in the subsequent broadcast and disprove conclusively and disprove to any honest listener the theory that the Jesuits invented the pre-tribulation rapture. We are going to show you from writings, we are going to show you from Scripture itself. We are going to show you in unmistakable clarity, line upon line, precept upon precept, documented fact upon documented fact, quotation upon quotation, that the pre-tribulation rapture did not come from the Jesuits.

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Alright, you've been listening to the preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast. This has been part two in a six-part series on the Roman Catholic origins of Calvinism. You hear a lot these days about so-called Reformed theology, and it is nothing more than a cover and a code name

Free CD Offer And How To Order

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for ancient pagan Roman philosophy, and we're in the midst of proving that to you beyond any shadow of a doubt. This is a six-part series, and we are going to put all six radio programs on one CD and send them absolutely free of charge to anyone who writes and asks for them. No follow-up letters, no solicitation, no hidden cost, no love offering required. Absolutely free, the six-part series on the Roman Catholic origins of Calvinism. Now you may order that by visiting our website, JameswKnox.org. And when you do, just leave us a letter of testimony, your name and address, and the call letters of the station to which you listen, and we will send you this six-part series. That's JamesW.Knox.org. If you'd like to order by mail, same thing. Send your name, address, call letters of the station. A letter of testimony is such a blessing. Please include that in there. But write to us at 872 Glenwood Road. 872 Glenwood Road. That's in D-Land. D-E-L-A-N-D. D-Land, Florida. The zip code number 32720. That mailing address is in the United States of America. Order your free copy of the six-part series, The Roman Catholic Origins of Calvinism. This program is heard by the grace of God and the help of God's people on many different stations across America and around the world. The announcer will be on in just a moment to tell you when we're coming your way again on this station. And we hope at that time that you and a friend that you invite to listen with you will join us for the Preaching of the Cross radio broadcast. Until then, I'm Brother James. May the Lord richly bless you.

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Thanks for tuning in today. Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit

Closing Thanks And Where To Find More

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our YouTube channel, James W. Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist the Land, or our website, Bible Baptisttheland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.