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Originally Posted by Louis Bouyer
The logic of the principle of justification by faith, in its subjective aspect . . . testifies clearly to the strange power of Protestant institutions, built up on the original system, to eliminate altogether the religious insights it was considered to subserve. Here, as we have already observed, the reaction against its negative possibilities came much sooner than elsewhere, since it was aroused in Luther himself by the anarchical excesses of the Anabaptists of Muster, who, however, had only taken literally some of this expressions on the subject of “faith.” Hence his insistence on a church where the authority of the temporal ruler should replace that of the bishops, and whose laws, framed in the spirit of purest absolutism, should replace the Canon Law of tradition. In this way the Lutheran church soon became a wholly bureaucratic church, one among other departments of the modern State, with the absolute ruler directly governing men’s souls.
The Calvinist church, for its part, escaped that danger. But, to the extent that Calvin or his imitators in Scotland and Holland succeeded in what they aimed at, it represented a form, no less severe, of spiritual regimentation. In order to restrain the anarchy and counter the dispersion of the various subjectivisms, it tried simply to authorize and impose on all the subjectivism of the founder. The Calvinist church, and artificial construction to ward off the effects of the dissolution of the Church of tradition, where Protestantism, on plea of reform, had destroyed it, was but a particular ideal of Christianity, stamped in every detail with the genius of Calvin, and made a norm for all.
However, this is not true only of those systems erected as a result of a reaction, prompted by prudence, against the element of anarchical subjectivism introduced by Luther in his preaching of personal religion. It applies equally in cases where this reaction was not present, though in forms less obvious or at any rate less naively displayed. In fact, apart from the extreme case of absolute subjectivism, resulting immediately in the rejection of any organized church, whenever a Protestant church is set up, it must be on a basis of subjectivism, particularly when organized in opposition to another and to the traditional elements it retains. A person who makes his own ego the ultimate norm of this religious beliefs and practice can obviously not feel at ease in a church that holds to any objective criterion. The church, however, that he himself founds will soon become far more oppressive for other people, being based on his particular brand of subjectivism. This is the reason for the ceaseless multiplication of Protestant sects, which, once started, gathers speed, since each new foundation is as a rule established on a narrower base than its predecessor. Hence, too, those doctrinal formulations, carried to the extreme of theological subtlety, that the churches, desirous of putting a stop to this crumbling process, come to impose on their members. The two processes seem antagonistic and are so, historically; but they both spring from an individualism that either carries the protest against any form of objectivity still further, in the name of freedom or else creates an ersatz objectivity out of tyrannical individualism. Experience shows that the human mind is prone to oscillate continuously between these two tendencies; the ego is correspondingly less respectful of other as it is more preoccupied with itself..
From, The Decay of the Positive Principles of the Reformation
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