"The Calvinists didn't believe that power corrupts man, but that man corrupts power. Man is a sinner by nature and therefore cannot be trusted with power. Only a true fear of God, they believed, can hold sinful man in check."
Interesting, because Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic, famously said "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Is this a difference between a Calvinist view of power and a Catholic view? 🤔
It's a distinction without a difference in this context. The "Calvinists" came to the same conclusions about power as the Enlightenment scholars did (namely that it should be limited, distributed, etci), except two centuries earlier. The real point of difference between Rome and the Reformers was the nature of man in his pre-fall state. The Reformers' point is that man is already corrupt even without power--but only the most pedantic would disagree with the point of Lord Acton's quote.
TL;DR: no, it's a difference between their views of man, not of power.
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."--Frank Herbert.
