Question. Hendricks reads Divine Principle’s “Preparation for the Messiah” analysis as praising the free-church Protestant tradition (Pietism, Wesley, Quakers, Swedenborg, Great Awakenings) and not praising the magisterial reformers (Luther, Calvin) per dp-praises-free-church-not-magisterial-reformers. The footnote-75 quote describes Luther receiving “scant praise” and Calvin being “criticized over the predestination issue.” But how strong is the actual textual evidence? Does DP explicitly criticize Luther and Calvin (treating them as failures of the providential project), or does it merely praise the free-church side more enthusiastically while leaving Luther/Calvin neutral?
Why it matters. The strength of Hendricks’s populist-church argument depends on this distinction.
If DP explicitly criticizes Luther and Calvin for magisterial features (state-church alliance, infant baptism, parish system, doctrinal centralization), then the populist case has strong doctrinal grounding — DP is naming the populist features as providentially preferred.
If DP merely omits Luther/Calvin from praise while warmly endorsing the free-church side, that’s softer evidence — it’s compatible with DP being neutral on magisterial reformers while admiring the parallel free-church developments. Many readings of providence affirm both Lutheran/Calvinist and free-church Protestantism as legitimate work of the Holy Spirit in the preparation period.
The third possibility — that DP praises both in different sections — would weaken Hendricks’s thesis significantly, since selective citation could produce either reading.
Current best guesses. EDP p. 341 (per footnote 73 of 06-unification-church-and-the-populist-style) explicitly states the Reformation “opened the way for people to freely seek God through their own reading of the Bible, without the mediation of the priesthood” — that is praise of the Reformation generally, which would include Luther. EDP p. 352 (per footnote 74) speaks of the people rebelling against “ritualism and rules of the church… papal authority… unquestioning obedience to the dictates of the Church” — that praises both magisterial and free-church reformers since both rejected Roman primacy. EDP 356-7 is the section that positively names Pietism, Methodism, Quakerism. The pattern looks like general praise of the Reformation as a whole + additional specific praise for the free-church / Abel-type side, which is the softer reading. Hendricks’s stronger framing may be over-reading.
Resolve by close reading of EDP pp. 341-358 once DP is ingested.
Source. Raised in br-06-uc-and-the-populist-style REVIEW, from dp-praises-free-church-not-magisterial-reformers.