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Calvin keeps pressing the same central nerve—if Christ is sufficient, anything added to Him becomes dangerous—and here he turns directly to purgatory, calling it not a harmless speculation but a destructive invention that shifts satisfaction for sin away from the blood of Christ and onto something else entirely. He refuses to treat it as a minor issue, arguing that once you allow expiation to happen anywhere outside of Christ, you undermine the gospel at its core. From there he dismantles the Scripture passages often used to support it, showing that they either refer to the guilt of sin, earthly reconciliation, or the final judgment—not some intermediate place of cleansing—and he exposes how loosely and creatively those texts have been handled. He even challenges the use of sources like the Maccabees, arguing they lack the authority needed to establish doctrine, and that the early Church itself did not treat them as binding in the same way as the Law and Prophets. The deeper issue, though, is not just bad interpretation but a pattern: when Scripture is unclear, human imagination fills the gap, and then builds systems that eventually compete with Christ. Calvin’s conclusion is sharp and consistent with everything he has been arguing—salvation, cleansing, and satisfaction belong entirely to Christ, and any system that redirects that trust, even subtly, is not just mistaken but spiritually dangerous.

Today’s Readings:

John Calvin — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 5 (Sections 6–10)

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