Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology) [1 ed.] 9780199211876, 0980045509, 0199211876

Table of contents :
Contents
Short References to Calvin’s Works
1. Calvin, Participation, and the Problem of the Gift in Contemporary Thought
1.1. Calvin and Theologies of the Gift
1.2. Calvin’s Distinctive Doctrine of Participation
1.3. Calvin’s Doctrine of Participation and Calvin Studies
2. Calvin’s Doctrine of Participation: Contexts and Continuities
2.1. Calvin’s Training and Context: Locating Calvin’s Theological Metaphysics
2.2. Calvin’s Claims of Continuity with the Church Fathers
2.3. Patristic and Reformational Appropriations in Calvin’s Theology of Participation and the Divine-Human Relation
2.4. Conclusion
3. The Development of Calvin’s Language of ‘Participation in Christ’
3.1. Early Writings: ‘Participation’ in the First Editions of the Institutes and Other Early Writings
3.2. Development of Calvin’s ‘Programme’ through Commentaries and Controversies
3.3. Participation and the Final Edition of the Institutes
3.4. Conclusion
4. Participation in Christ: The Activity of Believers in Prayer and the Sacraments
4.1. Gift and Gratitude: The duplex gratia and Prayer as Participation in Adoption
4.2. ‘True Participation’ in Christ: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as Participation
4.3. Conclusion
5. Participation and the Law: God’s Accommodation to Humanity so that Humanity may be Accommodated to God
5.1. A Primal ‘Mode of Relation’: The Law before the Fall
5.2. After the Fall: The Law Hidden, Accusing, Restraining
5.3. Participation and the Law of Nature
5.4. Participation, Accommodation, and Christ’s Fulfilment of the Law
5.5. Accommodated Knowledge and the Delight of Voluntary Love
5.6. Participation and the Two ‘Orders’
5.7. Conclusion
6. The Promise of Calvin’s Theology of Participation
6.1. Reassessing Calvin’s Place in the Gift Discussion
6.2. The Promise of Calvin’s Theology of Participation
Bibliography
Index
Index of References to Calvin's Works
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Index of Names
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Subject Index
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Citation preview

C H A N G I N G PA R A D I G M S I N H I S TO R I C A L A N D S YS T E M AT I C T H E O LO G Y General Editors Sarah Coakley Richard Cross

Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology General Editors: Sarah Coakley (Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge) and Richard Cross (John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame) This series sets out to reconsider the modern distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ theology. The scholarship represented in the series is marked by attention to the way in which historiographic and theological presumptions (‘paradigms’) necessarily inform the work of historians of Christian thought, and thus affect their application to contemporary concerns. At certain key junctures such paradigms are recast, causing a re-consideration of the methods, hermeneutics, geographical boundaries, or chronological caesuras which have previously guided the theological narrative. The beginning of the twenty-Wrst century marks a period of such notable reassessment of the Christian doctrinal heritage, and involves a questioning of the paradigms that have sustained the classic ‘history-of-ideas’ textbook accounts of the modern era. Each of the volumes in this series brings such contemporary methodological and historiographical concerns to conscious consideration. Each tackles a period or key Wgure whose signiWcance is ripe for reconsideration, and each analyses the implicit historiography that has sustained existing scholarship on the topic. A variety of fresh methodological concerns are considered, without reducing the theological to other categories. The emphasis is on an awareness of the history of ‘reception’: the possibilities for contemporary theology are bound up with a careful rewriting of the historical narrative. In this sense, ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ theology are necessarily conjoined, yet also closely connected to a discerning interdisciplinary engagement. This monograph series accompanies the project of The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Christian Theology (OUP, in progress), also edited by Sarah Coakley and Richard Cross.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ

J. TOD D B I L L I N G S

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß J. Todd Billings 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–921187–6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Preface and Acknowledgements It is appropriate that a book which engages theologies of the Gift begins with statements of gratitude. The origin of my interest in Calvin’s relation to the Gift discussion goes back for more than a decade, to when I was a community development worker in Uganda. In this capacity, I was taught to be suspicious of gifts as a condescending response to poverty; yet, as a Christian, I also confessed that there is something like a ‘free gift’ in Christian salvation that is empowering. In response to my time in Uganda, I immersed myself in literature which explored the problems related to Gift Giving — from Nietzsche to Marion, Milbank to Tanner. Gradually, I began to see that many of my questions were addressed in the writings of John Calvin, in spite of the fact that he was a frequent foil for Gift theologians. The questions were addressed in a way that both reframed the questions in the Gift discussion and gave them much more complex and nuanced answers. I am grateful to Miroslav Volf and John L. Thompson for being my teachers and mentors during this initial time of exploration at Fuller Seminary. My gratitude must extend to my mentors and colleagues at Harvard Divinity School, as the next stage of this project was my Th.D. dissertation completed there. The Theology Colloquium at Harvard Divinity School spent a year engaging with the Gift-Giving discussion, and I am grateful to faculty and students alike for their insights from that time. I was also privileged to work with a very Wne committee throughout the course of the thesis: Professors Sarah Coakley, David Little, and Kevin Madigan. All three contributed both energy and insight at every stage of the dissertation project. My advisor, Professor Coakley, deserves special thanks for her guidance and encouragement in the process of research and writing. Several doctoral students at Harvard have also offered a great deal of helpful feedback. I am particularly grateful to Benjamin King, Tamsin Jones, Mark Scott, Randall Short, and David Kim for this. My thanks also go to Harvard Divinity School for awarding me a

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Preface and Acknowledgements

Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, helping me to complete my original thesis research and writing much earlier than I would have otherwise. As the manuscript developed from a dissertation into a book, I have many to thank among my colleagues at Western Theological Seminary for their help in this process. Western had the foresight to give me a reduced teaching load as I began my teaching here, which has made space for my continuing work on this project. In addition, I am grateful to the faculty colloquy at Western for their encouragement and critical comments. My senior colleague I. John Hesselink has been especially helpful in giving feedback at the Wnal stages of this work. I am also grateful to various Calvin and Reformation scholars who have generously provided input at some stage of my writing project: Phil Butin, John L. Thompson, Tony Lane, Irena Backus, and Michael Horton. It has been a privilege to receive such useful advice. I should also note that my research for revisions on this book was completed in August of 2006. I regret that the Wne paper by Wim Janse, ‘Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology: Three Dogma-Historical Observations,’ presented at the 2006 International Congress on Calvin Research, appeared too late for me to incorporate its insights. A revised version of the essay is forthcoming with the conference proceedings in Calvinus Sacrorum Literarum Interpres, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis, Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. My thanks go to Oxford University Press for agreeing to publish this book and for providing excellent critical feedback through peer reviews, which has led to improvements at many points in the manuscript. In addition, I am delighted that this book has been selected as the Wrst book in a new series, ‘Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology.’ The boundaries between historical and systematic theology are porous. In many ways, this book is an interrogation of various recent uses of Calvin, and a reconsideration of the possible insights that Calvin’s theology can provide to contemporary theological discourse. I am also grateful for copyright permission granted by several publications which have printed earlier essays of mine that have some overlap with sections of this book: ‘John Calvin: United to God through Christ’, in Partakers of the Divine Nature, ed. M. Christensen and J. Wittung (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 200–18.

Preface and Acknowledgements

vii

‘United to God through Christ: Calvin on the Question of DeiWcation’, Harvard Theological Review, 98 no. 3 (July 2005), 315–34; ‘Milbank’s Theology of the Gift and Calvin’s Theology of Grace: A Critical Comparison’, Modern Theology, 21/1 (January 2005), 87–105. Finally, my thanks goes to my brilliant wife Rachel. Her encouragement, companionship, and proofreading have been essential for this project. Above all, Gloria Dei.

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Contents Short References to Calvin’s Works

xi

1. Calvin, Participation, and the Problem of the Gift in Contemporary Thought 1.1. Calvin and Theologies of the Gift 1.2. Calvin’s Distinctive Doctrine of Participation 1.3. Calvin’s Doctrine of Participation and Calvin Studies

1 3 14 17

2. Calvin’s Doctrine of Participation: Contexts and Continuities 2.1. Calvin’s Training and Context: Locating Calvin’s Theological Metaphysics 2.2. Calvin’s Claims of Continuity with the Church Fathers 2.3. Patristic and Reformational Appropriations in Calvin’s Theology of Participation and the Divine-Human Relation 2.4. Conclusion 3. The Development of Calvin’s Language of ‘Participation in Christ’ 3.1. Early Writings: ‘Participation’ in the First Editions of the Institutes and Other Early Writings 3.2. Development of Calvin’s ‘Programme’ through Commentaries and Controversies 3.3. Participation and the Final Edition of the Institutes 3.4. Conclusion 4. Participation in Christ: The Activity of Believers in Prayer and the Sacraments 4.1. Gift and Gratitude: The duplex gratia and Prayer as Participation in Adoption

24 26 39

42 65

68 70 85 100 102

105 106

x

Contents 4.2. ‘True Participation’ in Christ: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as Participation 4.3. Conclusion

5. Participation and the Law: God’s Accommodation to Humanity so that Humanity may be Accommodated to God 5.1. A Primal ‘Mode of Relation’: The Law before the Fall 5.2. After the Fall: The Law Hidden, Accusing, Restraining 5.3. Participation and the Law of Nature 5.4. Participation, Accommodation, and Christ’s FulWlment of the Law 5.5. Accommodated Knowledge and the Delight of Voluntary Love 5.6. Participation and the Two ‘Orders’ 5.7. Conclusion

116 141

144 146 149 151 158 162 170 184

6. The Promise of Calvin’s Theology of Participation 6.1. Reassessing Calvin’s Place in the Gift Discussion 6.2. The Promise of Calvin’s Theology of Participation

186 187 195

Bibliography Index

199 211

Short References to Calvin’s Works CC

D. W. Torrance and T. F. Torrance (eds.), Calvin’s Commentaries, 12 vols.

CO

Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, Corpus Reformatorum, ed. W. Baum et al., 59 vols.

Comm.

Commentary

CTS

Calvin Translation Society translation of Calvin’s Commentaries, 45 vols.

OS

Joannis Calvini opera selecta, ed. P. Barth et al., 5 vols.

TT

Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church, trans. H. Beveridge, 3 vols.

Wevers

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion of John Calvin, 1539: Text and Concordance, i, ed. Richard F. Wevers (Grand Rapids, MI: Meeter Center for Calvin Studies at Calvin College and Seminary, 1988)

Unless otherwise noted, English translations of the Wnal edition of the Institutes are from Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559, ed. J. T. McNeill and F. L. Battles, 2 vols.

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1 Calvin, Participation, and the Problem of the Gift in Contemporary Thought Is the God of Calvin a fountain of life, or a forceful tyrant? Does Calvin’s strong account of divine agency make salvation a coercive divine act or an empowering fulWlment of creation? These are perennial questions in the reception of Calvin’s thought, and they often emerge from divergent interpretations of the very same images in his work: when Calvin speaks of God as the fountain of all goodness, is this an image of God’s provision and love, or an exclusionary divine power which diminishes all agency but God’s? Does Calvin’s doctrine of the bondage of the will make salvation into a violent overriding of human consent, or does it actually facilitate consent by enabling a life of gratitude? Questions such as these are old questions; yet they are questions that do not seem to go away.1 In contemporary theological discourse, the negative side of this hermeneutical pole has been given new vigour by the development of systematic theologies of the ‘Gift’. Debates related to the ‘Gift’ have become prominent in recent theological discourse, with the notion of ‘Gift’ becoming a central category for discussions of revelation, grace, and ethics.2 These theologies draw upon an interdisciplinary 1 For a short account of these two hermeneutical perspectives on Calvin, particularly in relation to the image of ‘fountain’, see B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharist in John Calvin’s Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 21–31. 2 See Sarah Coakley, ‘Why Gift?’, paper presented at the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, 2003; Robyn Horner, Rethinking God as Gift: Marion, Derrida, and the Limits of Phenomenology, 1st edn (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001); John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (New York: Routledge, 2003); Kathryn Tanner, Economy of Grace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005); idem, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001); Stephen H. Webb, The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

discussion of gift giving to reconWgure the relation of divine giving (in creation and redemption) to human giving (self-giving love). As a part of this discussion, Calvin’s view of God has become pigeonholed as the textbook example of a ‘unilateral gift’—a one-sided gift that evacuates human agency as it claims the receiver. Echoes of a well-worn critique of Calvin lie in the background to these recent criticisms from the Gift discussion: a reading of predestination as the ‘central dogma’ of Calvin’s theology. While there have been vigorous (and quite varied) responses to this reading in Calvin scholarship, the Gift discussion brings several new issues to the table: (1) a concern to relate Calvin’s theology of grace to Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologies of ‘participation’ and ‘deiWcation’; (2) a concern about how Calvin’s portrait of divine saving relates to the activity of believers in redemption; (3) a concern about the nature of Christian love and how it relates to God’s love. These issues raised by the Gift discussion provide an opportunity to frame old questions about Calvin’s theology in a new way. What exactly is Calvin’s theology of ‘participation in Christ’, and how does it relate to the activity (or lack thereof) of believers? What, if any, are the metaphysical dimensions of Calvin’s doctrine of participation? Does the notion of participation connect God’s self-giving and human self-giving in a fruitful way? The critiques of Calvin in the Gift discussion reveal gaps in systematic and historical scholarship on Calvin, as well as providing a forum to explore these important, interrelated themes in Calvin’s theology. While I seek to explore Calvin’s doctrine of participation in Christ on its own terms, the ecumenical and interdisciplinary context of the Gift discussion provides the challenge and opportunity for locating Calvin’s doctrine amidst a variety of doctrinal alternatives. In addition, the critiques of Calvin made in the Gift discussion frequently overlap with critiques in Calvin studies, as well as Eastern Orthodox and feminist scholarship; I will note these areas of overlap at relevant places in my text. In this introductory chapter, I proceed by giving a more detailed account of the critiques of Calvin emerging from the Gift discussion. After this account, I will state my central thesis in response to these critiques, and brieXy consider key issues in Calvin studies related to this thesis.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

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1.1. CALVIN AND THEOLOGIES OF THE GIFT

1.1.1. Gifts of Exchange and the ‘Free’ Gift ‘Calvin denounced reciprocal notions that he found at the core of Catholic theology,’ historian Natalie Zemon Davis writes. ‘The whole Catholic apparatus of gift and obligation he tried to dismantle, recasting reciprocal relations in terms of gratuitousness wherever he could.’3 According to Davis’s analysis, Calvin has a theological suspicion of mutuality and reciprocity in God’s relationship to humanity. This suspicion leads to Calvin’s championing of a Christian people who give free gifts (just like their God), leaving behind prevailing early modern norms of reciprocity. A God of unilateral gifts leads to a Geneva of unilateral gifts, with regulations set on gifts of exchange related to weddings, elections, and other social events.4 According to Davis, Calvin gives clear instructions on how to give in love, but none on how to receive.5 Davis’s analysis in terms of gift relations does not come out of a vacuum—or from the terms of Calvin himself—but from engagement with an anthropological model of ethnographic analysis emerging from Marcel Mauss. In 1925, Mauss wrote Essai sur le don, translated in 1954 as The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Society. This pivotal work led an inXuential set of anthropologists, social theorists, and historians to analyse societies in terms of their implicit ‘gift economies’.6 Mauss himself saw the ‘gift economy’ as a transitional stage between an economy of ‘total services’—with exchange from clan to clan—and a market economy.7 Anthropologists after Mauss have tended to champion some version of a gift

3 Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 114. 4 See ibid. 114–21. 5 Ibid. 119. 6 For an introduction to the interdisciplinary scope of the Gift discussion, see Alan D. Schrift, The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity (New York: Routledge, 1997). 7 See Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls (New York: Norton, 1990), 5–7.

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Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

economy as an alternative to contemporary market capitalism.8 Rather than depending upon competition and self-interest, the gift economies in a culture can lead to social arrangements based on mutual interest and exchange. Mauss’s portrait of gift economies is based on a paradox: ‘gifts’ are ostensibly ‘free’, but always require an exchange. From the viewpoint of the giver and the recipient, there is a hiddenness to a gift that keeps it from being a purchase. A gift has a gratuity that personalizes rather than depersonalizes the transaction—the giver and recipient are bound together in a social alliance. Yet, precisely because of the gratuity, there is an expectation for a reciprocal response: ordinarily after a delay in time, the recipient must respond in gratitude with a counter-gift. Once again, this is not a cash purchase, but a response in gratitude which, if anything, should exceed the Wrst gift. Thus, a complex network of gift-giving relations develops in ‘traditional’ societies in which persons overcome animosity (and individualism) by forming social alliances through the reciprocal giving of gifts. From the viewpoint of the participants, gifts are ‘free’, yet they incur obligation. For anthropologists like Mauss, gifts are far from being free; they are inextricable from a non-capitalist, social system of exchange.9 In contrast to Mauss, Jacques Derrida sees the notion of ‘free gift’ as inherent in the integrity of the ‘gift’ itself. Derrida says that Mauss manages to speak ‘of everything but the gift’, because Mauss insists that gift giving always involves exchange.10 In terms of empirical observation, Derrida is not, in fact, distant from Mauss. But for Derrida the very notion of gift ‘must remain aneconomic’ and ‘foreign to the circle’ of give-and-take exchange.11 As soon as a gift appears as a gift, it is nulliWed. Why? Because it incurs obligation, and this obligation keeps the gift from being truly gratuitous, truly free.12 As such, the ‘gift’ 8 See Mary Douglas, ‘No Free Gifts’, in The Gift (New York: Norton, 1990), pp. vii–xviii; David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, 1st edn (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 9 See esp. Mauss, The Gift, 65–83. 10 Jacques Derrida, Given Time, I, Counterfeit Money (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 24; emphasis added. 11 Ibid. 7. 12 ‘For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt. If the other gives me back or owes me or has to give me back what I give him or her, there will not have been a gift’ (ibid. 12).

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

5

which is ‘impossible’ becomes a Derridean metaphor for his ethical turn on diVe´rance: one must always seek to give to the other—in a puriWed, free way—even though a pure gift will always be deferred. Derrida’s exploration of the gift builds upon suggestive comments of Heidegger about the limits of phenomenology (with the notion of es gibt), as well as a turn for Derrida’s thought in an ethical direction, in dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas.13 For Derrida, the sacriWce of Isaac by Abraham—the gift of death—becomes a type of ethical/religious model for the ‘pure gift’ that cannot appear.14 In relation to these two contrasting portraits of ‘the Gift’, contemporary theologians have developed a conception of ‘the Gift’ in relation to God. With Mauss, gift giving is exchange with substantive social goods as ends. With Derrida, gift giving necessarily involves a form of excess—giving away freely and gratuitously. In general, Gift theologians wish to adapt some version of Mauss’s economy of exchange, purifying this gift economy from the agonistic elements noted by Mauss. As such, Christianity can provide a ‘check’ and counterforce to the ways of global capitalism. In addition, some Gift theologians seek to appropriate aspects of Derrida’s emphasis upon the gift as an act of gratuity and excess. Stephen H. Webb combines aspects of both conceptions of the gift in his critique of Calvin and Barth. Webb argues that God is ‘both excessive and reciprocal’, and that Christian theology can point the way toward a renewal of reciprocity as well as ‘excessive’ gifts that challenge a mode of exchange.15 In relation to these poles, Calvin shows promise in the way that his God has ‘awesome generosity’ as the source of all goodness.16 Calvin’s God does not give out of need or lack; nor does this God give less than is eYcacious on its own. Yet, in terms of both ‘excess’ and ‘reciprocity’, Webb Wnds Calvin inadequate. 13 For an account of es gibt in Heidegger, see Horner, Rethinking God as Gift, 28–38. For Derrida’s reading of this notion, see John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 164–7. For the inXuence of Levinas on Derrida on the gift, see Horner, Rethinking God as Gift, ch. 3. 14 See Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), chs. 3–4. 15 Webb, The Gifting God, 11. 16 Ibid. 94.

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Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

In terms of ‘excess’, Webb thinks that Calvin misses the mark because of the way he ‘persistently’ portrays ‘gratitude in economic terms of repayment, exchange, debt, and labor’.17 This way of portraying the gift exchange between God and humanity takes away from the gratuity of the gift, resulting in a forced, grudging gratitude. Gratitude should be a free and voluntary response to God, but in Calvin’s theology it is ‘enforced, compelled and constrained’.18 This results from a conception of God’s ‘gift’ which Wts too easily into the economic logic of gift, debt, and counter-gift. On the other hand, Webb thinks that Calvin’s theology misses the crucial logic of reciprocity in the gift-giving relation between God and humanity. Calvin’s conception of the ‘indiscriminate abundance of God’s giving’ makes ‘indiVerence’ a tempting response. Why? Because ‘people are not content merely to receive this perpetual giving; they want to claim some form of giving as their own’.19 If God is the only giver, humans are not empowered, but powerless; they will have not joyful gratitude, but guilty striving. Calvin’s strong account of divine agency takes the receiver out of the true process of reciprocal exchange. ‘God’s giving controls the given so that what God receives is the same as what God gives. Consequently, our gratitude is an expression of our inability to give.’20 Because of this inability to do anything but receive from God, our gratitude is ‘anxious and strenuous labor’ that results from ‘thanklessness’ at the most basic level of our response.21

1.1.2. Gift Exchange and Participation Unlike Webb, most Gift theologians position themselves against the Derridean tradition of the ‘free’ or ‘unilateral’ gift of ‘excess’. Instead, they turn to the notion of gift as exchange as a way out of the transactional logic of global capitalism and the enigmatic ‘gift of death’ in Derrida. 17 Webb, The Gifting God, 97. Like Webb, Kathryn Tanner criticizes Calvin for the extent to which his account remains within the categories of loan and debt. See Tanner, Economy of Grace, 48–9. In addition, Tanner shares with Webb a suspicion of the notion of being ‘obligated’ to respond in gratitude, a suspicion which Webb extends in his critique of Calvin. See Scott N. DolV, ‘The Obligation to Give: A Reply to Tanner’, Modern Theology 21, no. 1 (2005), 119–39; Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, 85–90. 18 Webb, The Gifting God, 97. 19 Ibid. 95. 20 Ibid. 98. 21 Ibid.

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7

Most of these Wgures can be loosely categorized as theologians within a grouping known as ‘Radical Orthodoxy’.22 The notion of ‘gift’ has played a prominent role in the work of these theologians as they have sought to provide an alternative to Derridean postmodernism. Each in their own way—John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, and Simon Oliver—have used the category of ‘gift’ both constructively and by way of detraction. All of these Wgures present trenchant criticisms of Calvin in the course of their theologizing on the gift. It is Milbank who has the most detailed arguments against theologians of the ‘unilateral gift’, a grouping which includes Calvin. Milbank seeks to reconceive the doctrinal loci in terms of gift and exchange, making gift into a transcendental category.23 As part of this project, he wants to describe a Trinitarian exchange in which human beings are incorporated by way of participation. Participating in this self-giving exchange that is part of the very nature of God, humans enter into reciprocal relationships of self-giving and exchange on a horizontal level as well.24 In this way, humans reciprocate to God’s giving through ‘non-identical repetition’, manifesting the life of the Triune God through a puriWed form of Maussian social arrangements.25 As part of this constructive project, Milbank seeks to diVerentiate his approach from those who have ‘unilateral’ rather than ‘reciprocal’ conceptions of the gift. Derrida Wts this category, for a gift is annulled if there is any hint of reciprocation (or recognition as a gift, per se). Milbank sees Derrida as part of a long list of philosophers who champion nihilistic self-sacriWce and ultimately a Kantian notion of ‘disinterest’ over reciprocity and mutual regard. While Milbank’s genealogy is questionable,26 his long polemic against ‘unilateral’ gifts says a good deal about his own theological concerns. 22 Radical Orthodoxy is the name of a recent series by Routledge, which opened with the following book: Radical Orthodoxy, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward (eds.), (London: Routledge, 1999). 23 Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. ix. 24 See John Milbank, ‘Can a Gift Be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic’, Modern Theology, 11, no. 1 (1995), 119–61. 25 Ibid. 131. 26 See J. Todd Billings, ‘John Milbank’s Theology of the ‘‘Gift’’ and Calvin’s Theology of Grace: A Critical Comparison’, Modern Theology, 21, no. 1 (2005), 87–105, at 89.

8

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

For example, in his lengthy critique of Jean-Luc Marion, Milbank insists that Marion’s account of the divine donum in revelation is ‘exactly half right’. In Marion’s account of the saturated phenomenon, the language of ‘gift’ and ‘excess’ is used to speak about an appearance which could be revelation—an appearance which confounds and overwhelms the expectations of the receiver. Rather than bring our own horizon of expectations to this phenomenon, it is ‘saturated’ with its own horizon, such that the receiver cannot add to it. One does not gaze at the phenomenon—projecting from oneself—but one receives the gaze of a phenomenon that brings its own horizon.27 Milbank thinks that Marion is ‘half right’ in the sense that all gift giving emerges Wrst from God in creation ex nihilo. The very being of the receiver is a gratuitous gift. Furthermore, there is a sense in which salvation involves a free and excessive ‘giving’ of God to incorporate humans into the divine, Triune life. However, Milbank thinks that Marion describes a passive reception of the divine gift; Milbank Wnds this problematic.28 Milbank alleges that this passive reception, connected with ‘disinterest’, Wnds itself replicated in the emaciated ethics of Anders Nygren, who sharply opposes ‘agape’ to ‘eros’. According to Milbank, Marion’s God gives a gift of ‘agape’, as in Nygren, and its Achilles’ heel is that it champions gratuity and self-giving to the exclusion of reciprocity. Where is the place for the ‘necessary reception’ of the gift by the human, as with the Virgin Mary?29 Marion’s unilateral gift is said to demean human agency and reciprocity; in a word, it undercuts human participation in the divine gift. Rather than passive reception of the divine gift, Christians engage in ‘active reception’ which makes receiving simultaneous with giving.30 One cannot receive from God without actively 27 See Jean-Luc Marion, ‘The Saturated Phenomenon’, in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’: The French Debate, trans. Thomas Carlson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 176–216. 28 See Milbank, ‘Can a Gift Be Given?’, 133–44; idem, ‘The Ethics of Self-SacriWce’, First Things, no. 91 (1999), 33–8; idem, ‘The Soul of Reciprocity: Part One, Reciprocity Refused,’ Modern Theology, 17, no. 3 (2001), 335–91; idem, ‘The Soul of Reciprocity: Part Two, Reciprocity Granted’, Modern Theology, 17, no. 4 (2001), 485–507. 29 Milbank, ‘Can a Gift Be Given?’, 136. 30 Milbank uses the term ‘active reception’ in his essay on Gregory of Nyssa and the gift. See John Milbank, ‘Gregory of Nyssa: The Force of Identity’, in Christian Origins, ed. L. Ayres and G. Jones (London: Routledge, 1998), 94–116.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

9

participating in the exchange, without giving oneself back to God and others in love. In a similar manner, Milbank is profoundly suspicious of accounts of grace which involve ‘imputation’.31 Imputation is said to be a free, unilateral gift, in the worst possible sense: believers are said to receive this righteousness passively, a righteousness from outside themselves (extra nos), to which they cannot add. According to Milbank, salvation as imputation undermines the ‘active reception’ that constitutes a soteriology of participation in which human beings actively reciprocate. Certainly, Milbank agrees that human beings cannot reciprocate on the same level as the divine—God is the ground of all being and all gifts in Milbank’s account. Yet, human beings can be drawn into the self-giving exchange of the Trinity, becoming active participants in this exchange. This active, Trinitarian participation is in contrast to the unilateral gift and passive response of imputation. Nygren is seen as showing the ultimate ethical consequences of imputation: a love that has no concern for mutual regard and reciprocity, but is oriented toward self-sacriWce as an end in itself.32 In contrast to this portrait, Milbank describes love as a banquet; there may be sacriWce involved in helping another to join the banquet, but the goal is mutual regard, delight, and reciprocal love.33 Not surprisingly, Calvin’s doctrine of ‘imputation’ is a central target of Milbank’s critique of Calvin in terms of the gift. The forensic element of Calvin’s doctrine of justiWcation is seen as indicative of a nominalist metaphysic which stands in radical discontinuity with the patristic synthesis in Thomas’s theology of participation. Imputation capitulates to the late medieval replacement of ‘divine decree’ for ‘ontological infusion’ in justiWcation. As such, it breaks down the fundamental analogy between God and creation, stressing a univocal understanding of being rather than an ontology of participation.34 31 Milbank, Being Reconciled, 138. 32 Milbank, ‘Can a Gift Be Given?’, 132. 33 Milbank, ‘The Ethics of Self-SacriWce’, 35. 34 My reading of Milbank relies upon a correlation of his comments about Calvin with his overall account of the metaphysics of participation in Being Reconciled. See John Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, in Creation, Covenant and Participation: Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, ed. James K. A. Smith and James H. Olthius (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 25–41, at 27–9, 32–3.

10

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

According to Milbank, Calvin is right to understand salvation as a ‘gift’, and Calvin does display an admirable concern to rediscover the doctrine of participation in Christ through his doctrines of grace and sanctiWcation.35 However, because of Calvin’s insistence upon justiWcation by imputation, he is unable to rediscover the rich catholic heritage of participation and deiWcation that had been lost in the late medieval nominalists.36 Calvin’s permeating logic of forensic justiWcation is said to undercut his language about participating in Christ, rendering it spiritualized and ontologically ambiguous.37 In the end, Calvin’s gift of salvation is a ‘unilateral’ gift through imputation, a gift—accomplished through election— that allows only a passive human response. This diminishes and demeans the proper place for the human in actively receiving the divine gift. In the words of Pickstock, Calvin’s approach does not involve an ‘incorporation into the Son’ to achieve ‘reconciliation with the Father’, but ‘simply accept[s] a transaction carried out by God on our behalf ’.38 The external righteousness of imputation is seen to undercut a Trinitarian soteriology in which believers participate in Christ through the Spirit, being reconciled to the Father. Thus, although Calvin partially rediscovers the theme of participation in Christ as found in the patristic and Thomist heritage, his metaphysical ambiguity and tendency toward nominalism are said to empty his theology of participation of its previous signiWcance.39 For example, although Calvin speaks a great deal about love as the fulWlment of the law, Milbank claims that Calvin’s forensic logic has displaced love from its central place in the Christian life.40 Instead of love, faith as trust in God’s promises is given a central

35 Ibid. 27–30. 36 The term ‘nominalism’ is a contested one in contemporary theology and historiography. For an examination of the way in which this concept has been used by interpreters of Calvin, see Ch. 2. 37 Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 29, 32–3. 38 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 156–7. 39 Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 35–6. 40 Ibid. 32–3.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

11

role. Once again, this leaves a passive rather than participatory role for the believer qua human being. The divine gift is unilateral in Calvin. This leads to a love which is one-way from God to human and one-way from human to human, as believers seek to imitate the love which they have received unilaterally as a gift.41 Milbank considers Calvin’s theological metaphysics to be ambiguous but suspect; the forensic logic of imputation tends to separate God and humanity, not only undercutting Calvin’s theologies of justiWcation and sanctiWcation, but separating sign from signiWed in the sacraments and divinity from humanity in his Christology. In the end, Milbank thinks that Calvin fails in his own attempt to think through divine and human agency in concordance. Rather, they tend to be separated in a dualism which leads to deWciencies in Calvin’s soteriology, Christology, and sacramental theology.42 Other Radical Orthodox theologians, particularly Graham Ward and Simon Oliver, have focused their criticism upon Calvin’s language of participation in the Lord’s Supper.43 Unlike Milbank, they do not see Calvin’s metaphysics of participation as ambiguous. Rather, Calvin is said to be a clear ‘nominalist’ in his eucharistic metaphysics, as well as a great anticipator of modernity. They argue that Calvin places the epistemological ground for the ‘presence’ of Christ in the individual, who determines whether or not Christ is present by her act of faith or unfaith. Ward reads Calvin as anticipating Descartes’s methodological doubt by allegedly suggesting that the validity of signs is dependent upon whether God is a deceiver— making an ‘empty sign’ a possibility.44 Ward and Oliver see Calvin’s forensic logic of imputation as typical and indicative of his whole theology—a forensic logic that ultimately results in the arbitrary opposition and separation of God and humanity. Yet, like Milbank, Ward and Oliver see that Calvin does much with the language associated with earlier catholic theologies of participation. 41 Milbank’s critique of Calvin’s ethic of love parallels Natalie Zemon Davis’s account in The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France. 42 Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 32–5. 43 See Simon Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’, Modern Theology, 15 (1999), 331–53; Graham Ward, ‘The Church as the Erotic Community’, in Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context, ed. L. Boeve and L. Leijssen (Louvain: Peeters, 2001), 167–204; idem, Cities of God (New York: Routledge, 2000), 161–7. 44 Ward, ‘The Church as the Erotic Community’, 183.

12

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

To Ward and Oliver, Calvin’s theology presents the ultimate co-option of this language. SpeciWcally, Ward argues that Calvin’s eucharistic theology empties ‘participation’, ‘substance’, and ‘analogy’ of all of their pre-nominalist content.45 Calvin denies any ontological or metaphysical sense for his language of ‘participating’ in the ‘substance’ of Christ in the Eucharist, replacing it with a deWcient ‘spiritual’ participation.46 This ‘spiritual’ participation removes the Eucharist from the material world of bodies, the earthly reality of politics, and the social reality of the church.47 Instead, this metaphysical deWciency orients Calvin towards a modernity of individualism and self-validated ‘spiritual’ experiences. The deep ‘dualism’ between the divine and human— and heavenly and earthly realities—anticipates the dichotomies in modernity of internal and external, spiritual and scientiWc; ultimately, Calvin’s dualism anticipates the rise of ‘secular reason’ in modernity.48 In the work of Milbank, Ward, Oliver, and Pickstock, a strong connection is made between the language of gift, gift giving, and participation. A theology of participation is seen as the essential reintegrating factor, integrating the connections between divine love and human love and a Trinitarian soteriology of reciprocity. Each sees a certain virtue in Calvin’s doctrine of God—in which God is the sole fountain of goodness, the giver of all gifts. But the problem with Calvin is essentially twofold: Wrst, his notion of salvation as ‘gift’ is unilateral, as exempliWed in his doctrines of imputation and, by extension, predestination. As such, the human is left ‘passive’, and the divine model for giving is one-sided rather than reciprocal. Secondly, Calvin supposedly ‘empties’ the language of participation in Christ of its pre-nominalist theological signiWcance, undercutting an Augustinian–Thomistic model of reciprocity (as articulated by the theologians of Radical Orthodoxy). These criticisms by thinkers in Radical Orthodoxy have certain parallels in Webb and Tanner. As noted above, Webb is critical of Calvin 45 See ibid. 179–88. Also see Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’, 342–7. 46 Ward argues for this point as well as Pickstock, After Writing, 162–3. 47 Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’, 344. 48 Both Ward and Oliver argue for this ‘dualism’ which anticipates ‘modernity’, in Ward, ‘The Church as the Erotic Community’, and Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

13

on the issue of gratitude—his strong account of the divine ‘gift’ overruns the human space for response. In addition, however, Webb and Tanner think that Calvin lacks a theology of excess which moves beyond the logic of debt and repayment for the gift. Webb argues that there is a particular feature of ‘ecstatic’ reciprocity that is missing in Calvin. Overlapping with these criticisms on the place of human agency in Calvin’s theology are feminist critiques of Calvin’s account. For example, Anna Case-Winters argues that a binary opposition of God and the world is in play in Calvin’s theology that is characterized by divine ‘domination and control’.49 Such a theology lacks the reciprocity and mutuality that would be desirable in a divine–human relationship that will have outworkings in human-to-human relations. In addition, recent Eastern Orthodox writers have seen Calvin’s theology as an example of the typically Western traits which omit a theology of salvation as deiWcation. The Augustinian emphasis upon human sin (found in Calvin) leads to a notion of salvation as forgiveness, displacing the larger sense that salvation is the fulWlment of the creation’s purpose.50 Andrew Louth writes that Western theologies tend to miss the trajectory from creation to deiWcation, and thus tend to see ‘the created order as little more than a background for the great drama of redemption, with the result that the Incarnation is seen 49 Anna Case-Winters, God’s Power: Traditional Understandings and Contemporary Challenges (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 64–6. The speciWc criticisms of Case-Winters have parallels in feminist criticisms of other Reformed theologies of power and grace. See Sheila Greeve Davaney, Divine Power: A Study of Karl Barth and Charles Hartshorne (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 89–100, 229–32; Judith Plaskow, Sex, Sin, and Grace: Women’s Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980), 83–94. Plaskow’s critique is less focused upon issues of human agency, but she also criticizes a Reformed account of the role of the human in grace. 50 Although Calvin is rarely named, these critiques come from an Orthodox portrait of deiWcation emerging from Lossky that has an implicit argument against Calvinist theology. Indeed, deiWcation is seen as a way to overcome Calvinist versions of Augustinianism, with their doctrine of the bondage of the will and alleged separation of the divine and human in soteriology. See Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976). For a contemporary Eastern Orthodox account of deiWcation that contrasts Eastern with Western approaches, see Andrew Louth, ‘The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology’, in Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of DeiWcation in the Christian Tradition, ed. M. Christensen and J. Wittung (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 32–44.

14

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

simply as a means of redemption, the putting right of the Fall of Adam’.51 The exceptions to this rule, for Louth, are certain Western mystics, who have been subjected to ‘marginalization’ and ‘suspicion’.52 In other cases, Orthodox writers have argued speciWcally against Calvin’s theology, daiming that his account of divine and human agency is deWcient because it does not use the categories of late Byzantine theology.53 Like Radical Orthodox thinkers, these Orthodox writers imply that Calvin has a deWcient theology of participation. Like all of the above critics, they think that Calvin’s strong account of divine agency in salvation overpowers the legitimate reciprocal response of the human. In sum, the contemporary Gift discussion—and overlapping arguments from feminist and Orthodox theologians—present several historical and theological challenges to Calvin’s theology. The centre of the critique hinges upon Calvin’s language and theology of participation: does it have continuity with patristic theologies and pre-nominalist medieval theologies? What is the metaphysical signiWcance of this language? How does it relate to the activity of believers in justiWcation and sanctiWcation? Are humans merely passive toward God in this redemption, and if so, is this passivity passed on through ‘unilateral gifts’ toward others? Is there ‘reciprocity’ in Calvin’s sacramental theology and in his ethics of love?

1.2. CALVIN’S DISTINCTIVE DOCTRINE OF PA RT IC IPATION In addressing these contemporary questions, I undertake a historical and theological analysis which seeks to articulate Calvin’s theology of participation in all its distinctiveness. Contemporary critics of Calvin usually have a hidden ledger in mind: ‘participation’ is rightly articulated by Thomas; or ‘deiWcation’ is deWnitively stated in late Byzantine theologies; or ‘reciprocity’ is properly understood by Marcel 51 Louth, ‘The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology’, 35. 52 Ibid. 33. 53 See Joseph P. Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor (South Canan [sic], PA: St Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1989), ch. 9, appendix.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

15

Mauss or by other Gift theorists. In general, there is imposition of external criteria upon Calvin’s theology, and Calvin is found to fall short of the standard at hand. Certainly there is no way out of the hermeneutical circle. Readers do not (and should not) read Calvin with no purpose or interests in mind. But what has been lost in these contemporary discourses is the distinctive voice of Calvin and Calvin’s possible contribution to an ongoing theological discussion. An analysis of Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ reveals it as a compelling, yet enigmatic, aspect of his theology. It is not Thomist or Palamite, or a straightforward example of ‘gift exchange’. Calvin engages deeply with patristic and medieval theologies of participation. Yet, these theologies are radically recontextualized in his theology.54 Calvin’s relation to earlier theological tradition on the issue of participation is a subtle combination of continuity and discontinuity. In relation to the various ‘types’ of Christian theologies of participation, Calvin’s approach is distinctive.55 He sees participation in Christ as constituted by the duplex gratia, the graces of justiWcation and sanctiWcation, which are inseparable but distinguishable. Against Catholic and Orthodox theologies of impartation, Calvin believes that justiWcation is accomplished by God’s free pardon in imputation. While there is a sense in which imputation is a forensic act—as in Melanchthon—Calvin’s account of imputation is inextricably tied to union with Christ: believers come to ‘possess’ Christ and his righteousness. In the second grace of participation in Christ—namely, sanctiWcation—Calvin draws deeply upon earlier patristic and medieval theologies of participation as impartation. To participate in Christ, for Calvin, always involves a grateful fulWlment of the law of love, empowered by 54 Calvin ‘recontextualizes’ earlier theologies by using them for his own distinct purposes. He does not generally read patristic and medieval writings on their own terms, but adapts them to his own concerns. See n. 70. 55 In speaking of these ‘types’ of Christian theologies, I am speaking in broad ecumenical terms. I am not claiming that Calvin’s theology of participation is ‘unique’ in the sense that no one else’s theology had similar central features. To the contrary, Calvin held a great deal in common with Bucer and other contemporaries in his theology of participation. Rather than claim uniqueness, I am saying that Calvin’s theology of participation is distinctive in relation to prominent Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran theologies of participation.

16

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

the life-giving Spirit. This participation takes place in the communal context of the church and its sacramental life, which is connected to an interrelated set of outwardly moving loves: mutual love in the church, love of neighbour, love of the needy, and love manifested through justice and equity in society. Calvin eschews the Plotinian tradition of participation through a momentary ecstasy of the solitary contemplative. Participation in Christ—and hence the richest language about union with God in Christ through the Spirit—is always connected for Calvin with the life of horizontal love. Calvin’s theology of human love and sanctiWcation speaks in terms of the impartation and infusion of the Spirit, such that the human and her capacities are used through the Spirit. Yet, acts of human love never ‘merit’ justiWcation or eternal life—they are a response of voluntary praise to God. In the eschaton, believers will regain their primal participation in God, yet in an even more profound way of participation, since they have been made one with Christ through the Spirit.56 United to God, the second grace of sanctiWcation will reach its culmination, thus fulWlling the union which was already achieved by faith through the Wrst grace. As such, believers will be ex-sinners, united to God, having received by grace that which the Son has by nature. Yet, even in this Wnal state, the ground for union with God will be God’s gratuitous favour. Thus, through examining the development, scope, and metaphysics of Calvin’s theology of ‘participation in Christ’, I argue that Calvin’s theology of participation emerges from a soteriology which aYrms a diVerentiated union of God and humanity in creation and redemption.57 Through his engagement with biblical and catholic sources (especially Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria), Calvin 56 While Chapter 2 will say more on Calvin’s view of the Wnal state, for a helpful overview see Heinrich Quistorp, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Last Things, trans. Harold Knight. London: Lutterworth Press; New York: AMS Press, 1955, Parts 1 and 2. 57 By ‘diVerentiated union’ I mean that the distinction between Creator and creature is maintained throughout Calvin’s account, even as humanity is ‘united’ to God before the Fall and believers are ‘united’ to God in an eschatologically conditioned way. ‘Union’ here does not imply a fusion in which divine attributes overwhelm human attributes; it does not mean that creatures lose their identity when they are united to God. Rather, the true identity of human beings is in communion and union with God—an identity that has been disrupted by sin. Redemption, in Calvin’s account, involves the restoration of this primal, uniting communion with God. See Chs. 2 and 5.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

17

develops a wide-ranging and emphatic doctrine of participation. In prayer, the sacraments, and obedience to the law, believers are incorporated into the Triune life: as believers are made ‘completely one’ with Christ by faith, the Father is revealed as generous by his free pardon, and the Spirit empowers believers for lives of gratitude. In this way, Calvin’s strong account of divine agency enables, rather than undercuts, human agency in sanctiWcation. Grace fulWls rather than destroys nature, so that believers may ‘participate in God’, the telos of creation. Moreover, ‘participation in Christ’ is inseparable from participation in loving relationships of social mutuality and benevolence, both in the church and beyond its walls. At every stage, Calvin’s account of participation in Christ is grounded in a participatory vision of human activity and Xourishing. In this book, I seek to show not only that Calvin’s theology is not subject to the common critiques of the ‘unilateral gift’, but also that his nuanced Trinitarian account of God’s saving relationship with humanity is much more complex and multivalent than allowed by the categories of ‘gift’, ‘exchange’, and ‘reciprocity’. Thus, the present work can serve as a cautionary tale about the reductive dangers of Gift categories for theological discourse. I do this through expositing Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ, which not only responds to recent critiques but points to promising biblical and theological ways of framing God’s saving relation to creation that address the concerns of Gift theologians.

1 . 3. C A LV I N ’ S D O C T R IN E O F PART I C I PAT I ON AN D C A LV I N S T U D IE S Before proceeding to the body of my argument in this book, I would like to place the project in the context of the current literature in Calvin studies. While I cite relevant secondary material throughout the course of my argument, there are three topics that it would be helpful to examine brieXy before we proceed: Calvin and the category of participation; Calvin, Bernard, and ‘union with Christ’; and the question of forensic elements in Calvin’s theology of union with Christ.

18

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

1.3.1. Calvin and the Category of Participation The Wrst fact to note about the literature on Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ is what is missing: no monograph exists which focuses speciWcally on the development and scope of Calvin’s language and theology of participation. Part of the reason for this state of aVairs is that participation in Christ, and notions that Calvin associates with it such as adoption and engrafting, does not form a distinct locus of doctrine for Calvin. The concept appears in a very wide variety of doctrinal topics, as I explore in Chapter 3. Although it is a prominent concept in Calvin’s thought, its pervasiveness (as well as its elusiveness in translation)58 has meant that the topic has appeared in monographs on the sacraments, on ethics, on the Trinity, and on union with Christ, but there is no synthetic work on the topic. In bringing contemporary theological concerns to Calvin’s text, there is always a temptation to impose foreign categories. Indeed, for that very reason, I am not making an analysis of the language of ‘gift’ the primary burden of this book. While I think that Calvin has a theology of salvation as ‘gift’, it is not his primary metaphor for salvation or the Christian life. Calvin speaks about ‘gifts’ in a variety of contexts—sacramental, soteriological, pneumatological—but it is not his central category for organizing Christian doctrine. Thus, works such as Davis’s tends to overemphasize the centrality of ‘gift’ in Calvin’s thought, reading that category back into his theological teaching.59 In contrast, I hope to show that the notion of ‘participation’ is an important category for Calvin himself, largely because it is a biblical and patristic category. As Calvin develops his ‘programme’ of the Institutes in 1539 and his commentary series, beginning with Romans, the theology of participation in Romans 6, 8, and 11 develops wide-ranging signiWcance. Further, as Calvin comments on Johannine literature (while reading Cyril of Alexandria), his soteriology of participation is stated strongly: incorporation into the life of the Triune God by participation in Christ. While Calvin 58 The Battles translation of the Institutes frequently translates variants of participes with ‘communion’, or a related synonym. While this frequently portrays the sense of the overall thought in the Institutes, it obscures the prominence of the language of participation in the Latin. 59 See Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, 114–21.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

19

appropriates biblical and patristic language of salvation as participation, he also develops the notion in a horizontal direction. Thus, features of Calvin’s theology of participation are at work in his theologies of prayer, sacraments, and the law. In the end, the burden of the present work is not only to clarify the meaning of participation in Calvin’s theology, but to show that it is a weighty concept in his thought. This is a novel task, as there are no other monographs focused speciWcally on Calvin’s theology of participation. That said, it is worth taking note of how this project relates to trends in Calvin secondary literature related to this topic. With Richard Muller, I do not think that Calvin has a ‘central dogma’ from which his system as a whole can be deduced.60 As such, I do not think that ‘participation in Christ’ or the related concept of ‘union with Christ’ are ‘central dogmas’ for Calvin.61 This book has commonality with some earlier works related to ‘union with Christ’, but also signiWcant diVerences. By focusing on ‘participation’ rather than ‘union’, I Wx the focus on the believer’s activity in receiving salvation and living in Christ. In addition, unlike Dennis Tamburello, I do not draw upon ‘union’ as a way to explore ‘mystical’ dimensions of Calvin’s thought;62 instead, I draw upon notions related to ‘union’ (which is always a diVerentiated union in Calvin) as an antidote to the allegation that Calvin systematically separates the divine from the human.

1.3.2. Calvin, Bernard, and ‘Union with Christ’ Although I do not see ‘union with Christ’ as central to Calvin’s thought, this theme in Calvin’s theology has undeniable importance for an examination of his theology of participation in Christ. ‘Participation’, along with ‘union’, ‘engrafting’, and ‘adoption’, are central images for Calvin’s conception of what it means to be ‘in Christ’. Indeed, Calvin thinks that 60 See Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), chs. 4, 5. 61 In contrast to Charles Partee, ‘Calvin’s Central Dogma Again’, in Calvin Studies 3 (Davidson, NC: Davidson College, 1986), 39–46. 62 Dennis E. Tamburello, Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St Bernard (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), ch. 1.

20

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

the union with Christ that believers enjoy is worthy to be called a ‘mystical union’, terminology with signiWcant medieval precedence.63 As a result of this connection, studies such as Union with Christ by Tamburello have combined an interest in ‘mystical union’ in Calvin with assessing the inXuence of medieval predecessors. Tamburello gives a side-by-side comparison between Bernard and Calvin on subjects related to union with Christ, in the midst of an extended critique of Kolfhaus’ classic work Christusgemeinschaft bei Johannes Calvin.64 Tamburello rightly takes issue with Kolfhaus’ dogmatically driven eschewing of ‘mystical’ dimensions in Calvin’s theology. While Kolfhaus is correct in insisting that Calvin’s notion of ‘union’ with Christ is not a union with God involving assimilation and the loss of identity, his deWnition of ‘mysticism’ as necessarily including such an indistinct union is inappropriate in relation to the history of Christian mystical writings.65 Tamburello uses a comparison between Calvin and Bernard to show that Calvin has areas of similarity and dependence upon ‘orthodox’ mystics like Bernard, in spite of Kolfhaus’ discomfort with this line of continuity. Nevertheless, in many ways Kolfhaus’ work points in the right direction on Calvin’s theology of union with Christ. Kolfhaus’ dogmatic sensitivity helps him to see the far-reaching doctrinal signiWcance of Calvin’s theology and language of union: union with Christ is deeply connected with the sacraments in Kolfhaus’ account, showing the indispensable role of the sacraments in Calvin’s view of the Christian life.66 Further, Kolfhaus shows how union with Christ helps to animate a view of the church as a ‘living organism’ rather than simply an institution.67 Whatever the limitations of Kolfhaus’ work, he does make a case for the signiWcance of the category of ‘union with Christ’ for multiple aspects of Calvin’s theology. While Tamburello seeks to make up for the deWciency of Kolfhaus’ bias against the medieval tradition of mystical theology, Tamburello’s illumination of Calvin’s theology of ‘union with Christ’ also has 63 See Institutes, 3. 11. 10. 64 Wilhelm Kolfhaus, Christusgemeinschaft bei Johannes Calvin (Neukirchen: Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins K. Moers, 1939). 65 See ibid. 126–8; Tamburello, Union with Christ, ch. 6. 66 Kolfhaus, Christusgemeinschaft bei Johannes Calvin, 108–24. 67 See ibid. 86–107.

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21

distinct limits. By bringing Bernard’s theology to the forefront, one encounters the theology of union with Christ as part of a side-by-side comparison between Bernard and Calvin rather than an analysis which focuses on how Calvin appropriated and used Bernard. On the latter issue, Anthony Lane’s work has been more helpful in showing the context for the sixteenth-century reception of Bernard and the way in which Calvin used Bernard for his own purposes.68 In Lane’s account, Calvin uses Bernard to make points for Calvin, not to study Bernard on his own terms or to appropriate distinctly contemplative themes into his work. For example, the metaphor of erotic union between Christ and the church is central to Bernard’s writings. This metaphor is virtually absent in Calvin. Nevertheless, Calvin makes great use of Bernard’s commentary on the Canticle, where the metaphor of erotic union is explicit and central. In what way does Calvin use this material? He uses it selectively—for example, to speak about union with Christ as ‘imputation’: believers are so united to Christ and his righteousness that they can ‘rest’ in his ‘righteousness’.69 In this case, Calvin decontextualizes the erotic metaphor so that he can apply it to the quite sophisticated discussions of justiWcation happening in his day—discussions which were not at the forefront of Bernard’s mind. Whether this ‘use’ of Bernard is an ‘abuse’ of Bernard is not an especially relevant question for understanding Calvin’s thought. For Calvin’s theology of union with Christ, it is important simply to note that he incorporates Bernard’s language of union and rest—and hence is inXuenced by Bernard.70

68 See A. N. S. Lane, Calvin and Bernard of Clairvaux (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1996); idem, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999), chs. 1, 2, 5. 69 In defence of his account of the divine decree, Calvin quotes Bernard’s commentary on the Canticle that ‘it is suYcient for all righteousness to me to have him alone on my side’. Through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, the believer can exclaim ‘O place of true repose . . . O place in which God is beheld, not, as it were, aroused and in wrath, not as distracted with care, but in which is experienced the inXuence of his good and favorable and perfect will!’ (Institutes, 4. 21. 4). 70 In this book I speak about the way in which patristic authors ‘inXuence’ Calvin, but these inXuences are not of the patristic writings ‘on their own terms’. Rather, Calvin uses and appropriates the language of patristic texts for his own theological purposes. Nevertheless, there are ways in which patristic texts—as interpreted by Calvin—have substantial eVects on his theology. See Ch. 2.

22

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift

But if this is a medieval ‘mystical’ element in Calvin, it is a recontextualized one that is used for distinctively non-monastic, Reformation purposes. While the focus of the present work on participation in Christ highlights diVerent elements from previous studies on ‘union with Christ’, it will revisit similar issues in a new way. The issue of Calvin’s relation to patristic and medieval theologies remains central, but the focus is shifted from Bernard to theologies of participation found in Wgures such as Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria. In addition, the active focus of the image of ‘participation’ will allow us to examine more closely the activity of believers when they are united to Christ by faith. Finally, rather than simply respond to the limitations of Kolfhaus’ work, my focus upon participation extends elements of his thesis, showing the multivalent way in which Calvin speaks about union and participation in salvation, the sacraments, and the church.

1.3.3. Forensic Elements in Calvin’s Doctrine of Union with Christ The question of the meaning and signiWcance of Calvin’s forensic language about union with Christ is a signiWcant part of this work; it is an issue with its own set of secondary literature. In general, I see my approach as lying between what I consider to be two battling alternatives. First, what we might call an ‘Anti-Legal School’ of Calvin’s thought tends to downplay the forensic elements in Calvin’s doctrines of union with Christ and justiWcation, sometimes implying that the organic images of participation, adoption, and engrafting are alternatives to the forensic image of divine decree.71 On the other side, some writers emphasize the irreducible legal dimension of union with Christ in justiWcation in a way that may (however unintentionally) imply that 71 See Julie Canlis, ‘Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 6, no. 2 (2004), 169–84; James B. Torrance, ‘The Concept of Federal Theology—Was Calvin a Federal Theologian?’, in Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae professor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 15–40; idem, ‘Covenant or Contract: A Study of the Theological Background of Worship in Seventeenth-Century Scotland’, Scottish Journal of Theology, no. 23 (1970), 51–76.

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23

the analogy of an external legal decree is suYcient in itself.72 While scholars on both sides of this divide have legitimate points to make, I argue that Calvin holds a position in the middle: his doctrine of justiWcation, and hence part of his theology of participation in Christ, is unmistakably ‘forensic’; a righteousness from outside ourselves (extra nos) is received both in being united with Christ and simultaneously through God’s free and gracious pardon. I realize that some in the Anti-Legal School argue that a forensic reading of Calvin’s doctrine of justiWcation tends to read later Reformed Orthodoxy back into Calvin. On the other hand, other scholars attempt to safeguard this distinctively Reformation doctrine by emphasizing the external nature of the divine decree. In contrast, I argue that one cannot simply label Calvin’s doctrine of the double grace (duplex gratia) wholly forensic or simply reducible to a non-forensic account of ‘union with Christ’. Calvin’s view is irreducibly forensic, but a courtroom analogy of an external, forensic decree is not the exclusive image for his theology of union with Christ and the double grace. Rather, Calvin’s theology of union with Christ is articulated with reference to participation, adoption, imputation, and the wondrous exchange. It is a multifaceted doctrine, utilizing both legal and transformative images. These broad comments concerning issues in Calvin studies serve as the beginning of a conversation with various Calvin scholars in this work. As I explore Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ in relation to the critiques of the Gift discussion, I seek to be in dialogue not only with contemporary theologians, but with Calvin scholars and sixteenth-century specialists. In the conclusion of this work, I will draw together the implications of my account for various historical and theological discourses that relate to Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ. 72 For accounts which emphasize the analogy of an external legal decree, see Edward A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, expanded ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 234; A. N. S. Lane, JustiWcation by Faith in Catholic–Protestant Dialogue: An Evangelical Assessment (Edinburgh; New York: T & T Clark, 2002), 17, 21; T. H. L. Parker, ‘Calvin’s Doctrine of JustiWcation,’ Evangelical Quarterly, 24 (1952) 101–7.

2 Calvin’s Doctrine of Participation: Contexts and Continuities Many critiques of Calvin’s notion of ‘participation in Christ’ relate to the context and background of his idea. As noted in Chapter 1, the claim of the Gift theologians is not that Calvin fails to speak of ‘participation’, but that he empties this language of its previous theological content, particularly as found in Augustine and Aquinas. The critique, in other words, is that Calvin’s theology of participation stands in radical discontinuity to earlier, pre-nominalist theologies of participation. In terms of theological content, Calvin is said to have emphasized the bondage of the will to sin in such a way that God and humanity are left in radical opposition.1 A consequence of this is an alleged tension between nature and grace, and a sharp separation between ‘sign’ and ‘signiWed’ in the sacraments. Calvin is also said to have a metaphysics of being as ‘univocity’, such that the creation is without any participation in God as Being.2 In this way, critics from the Gift discussion contend that Calvin the ‘nominalist’ has systematically ‘separated’ divinity and humanity, giving him a Nestorian Christology and a deWcient eucharistic theology.3 Calvin’s theology of ‘participation’ is said to be deWcient because of its distance from patristic and high medieval conceptions.

1 See Ch. 1 for a complete bibliographic account of these criticisms of Calvin. For an example of the criticism regarding the bondage and freedom of the will, see Milbank, Being Reconciled, 7–12. 2 See esp. Pickstock, After Writing, 156–68, 62–5; Ward, Cities of God, 164–5. 3 See esp. Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 32–5. Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’, 342–7; Ward, Cities of God, 161–7.

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These critiques of Calvin by the Gift theologians have a striking overlap with critiques of Calvin by a set of scholars who give a ‘nominalist’ account of Calvin’s training and his unspoken metaphysical assumptions. While the claims of these scholars will be reviewed later in this chapter, it may be useful to give an example here of their line of reasoning. Kilian McDonnell, in John Calvin, the Church and the Eucharist, claims that John Major, Duns Scotus, Gregory of Rimini, and ‘the nominalism of William of Occam’ constitute the major historical and theological background of Calvin’s thought. Historically, these thinkers are said to be the major inXuences transmitted during Calvin’s schooling; theologically, these thinkers are said to provide the appropriate late medieval, voluntaristic backdrop against which to interpret Calvin’s theology.4 Given this context, McDonnell claims that Calvin is a thinker who puts the divine and the human into a ‘dialectic’, such that he is ultimately unable to account for their union in the person of Christ.5 According to McDonnell, Calvin has a Pelagian-tending Christology, which leads to a eucharistic theology that fails to unite sign and signiWed.6 Moreover, Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ lacks the metaphysical weight of Aquinas’s conception.7 However one evaluates McDonnell’s interpretation of Calvin, one thing is clear: his assessment of Calvin’s scholastic and theological ‘background’ is decisive for his portrait of Calvin, which mirrors many of the critiques from the Gift discussion. In this chapter, I reassess the historical and metaphysical aspects of Calvin’s ‘background’ used to support the claim that Calvin systematically opposes the divine and the human, thus rendering superXuous his language of ‘participation in Christ’. First, I give a brief historical account of Calvin’s academic training and context, evaluating the common arguments for considering Calvin to be a ‘dialectical’ theologian who opposes the divine to the human. I argue that the late medieval inXuences upon Calvin are frequently misunderstood, and that the ‘nominalist’ tendencies are exaggerated. Rather, 4 Kilian McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 3. Also see McDonnell’s Introduction and ch. 1. 5 Ibid. 229–31, 367–71. 6 Ibid. 245, 367. 7 Ibid. 232–48, esp. 237–8.

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through a gradual and eclectic appropriation from various church fathers, Calvin develops theological presuppositions which do not neatly Wt into the generalized categories of ‘Thomist’, ‘nominalist’, or ‘voluntarist’. Second, after giving an introductory account of Calvin’s use of the church fathers, I proceed through a series of queries related to participation and Calvin’s appropriation of the fathers on particular points. In this section, I sketch a metaphysical account of God’s saving relation to humanity in Calvin’s theology. I show the way in which Calvin develops a theology of participation that builds upon the Pauline themes of participation and adoption, as well as upon the Johannine themes of indwelling, engrafting, and union. While Calvin avoids expansive metaphysical speculation, I shall argue that Calvin has a metaphysic that aYrms a diVerentiated unity of God and humanity in creation and redemption, such that humanity may participate in God through Christ; union with God is not only the eschatological end, but a paradigmatic feature of the God–human relationship. Readers should keep in mind that this is a chapter of beginnings, of backgrounds: in particular, Calvin’s early background up to 1536 and the general metaphysical background of Calvin’s thought as it relates to participation. As such, it introduces topics and ideas which will be pursued further in later chapters: historical questions related to Calvin’s development after 1536 will be pursued in Chapter 3; metaphysical questions related to Calvin’s sacramental theology will be considered in Chapter 4; metaphysical questions related to Calvin’s view of the law and nature will be further explored in Chapter 5. With this caveat in mind, we begin our examination of the twofold ‘background’ that relates to Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ.

2.1. CALVIN’S TRAINING AND CONTEXT: LOC AT I N G C A LV I N ’ S T H E OLO G IC A L M E TA P H YSI C S The content of Calvin’s academic training and the inXuence of this training upon his theology have been the subject of heated debate among Calvin scholars for half a century. Scholars agree on the

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27

factuality of several key events in Calvin’s life, although uncertainty remains about the dates of these events.8 As a teenager, Calvin went to Paris to study for his Master of Arts degree; after a brief time studying Latin at the Colle`ge de la Marche, Calvin moved to the Colle`ge de Montaigu, where he continued his study for the next Wve to six years. When he had completed his Arts degree in Philosophy at Montaigu, Calvin moved to Orle´ans to study law—changing from the path of the priesthood to that of law at his father’s decision. After about a year at Orle´ans, Calvin went to Bourges to study with the well-known Italian humanist Andrea Alciat. This period was interrupted by a return to Noyon in response to his father’s ill health and ensuing death. Following this, Calvin went to Paris to continue his humanist studies, studying Greek and Hebrew, and eventually writing his Commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia. This publication marks the point at which Calvin scholars begin to agree on dates, as it was published in April of 1532, when Calvin was 23 years old. The fruit of the last stage of Calvin’s training, as reXected in his De Clementia commentary, will be reviewed below. But what about Calvin’s studies at the Colle`ge de Montaigu? For this important period of Calvin’s education, we have little direct evidence. Unlike Luther, for example, Calvin does not mention his inXuential teachers or the types of philosophy or theology he studied. Yet, on the assumption that this period of study must have been a formative one, a variety of theories have developed. One of the most far-reaching theories is that Calvin studied with the Scottish theologian John Major while at the Colle`ge de Montaigu.9 This thesis usually bases its claims of continuity between Calvin and a variety of theological Wgures on speculation about 8 Parker was the Wrst to outline an alternative set of dates for Calvin’s early career in T. H. L. Parker, John Calvin: A Biography (London: Dent, 1975). Since the publication of this work, Calvin scholars have frequently made reference to both possible set of dates without making a decision between the two (e.g. Bernard Cottret, Calvin: A Biography, trans. M. Wallace McDonald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 11, 20, 348). For an account with the ‘standard’ dates for Calvin’s early career, see Franc¸ois Wendel, Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1987), 15–21. 9 This is a crucial part of Kilian McDonnell’s theory of background, described in the introductory section above. McDonnell goes so far as to speculate that Calvin studied with Major for three years, asserting that Calvin became steeped in Scotus and Occam under Major. See McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist, ch. 1.

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what Major might have taught Calvin. Reuter, for example, claims that Major introduced Calvin to a series of thinkers who deeply inXuenced his theology, yet were rarely acknowledged by Calvin: namely, Scotus, Thomas Bradwardine, and Gregory of Rimini.10 Thomas Torrance builds upon Reuter, adding to the list patristic authors such as Athanasius and Hilary.11 Both Reuter and Torrance see Major as mediating an Occamist or ‘nominalist’ metaphysic to Calvin.12 Alister McGrath seeks to moderate and restate the Reuter thesis by arguing that Calvin was inXuenced by general currents in late medieval theology—particularly the schola Augustiniana moderna, exempliWed by Gregory of Rimini—though not necessarily through Major.13 Variations on the John Major thesis are tempting to scholars for the ironic reason that one can name ‘sources’ and show the ‘inXuence’ of Wgures that Calvin rarely or never explicitly mentions. For example, the similarity between the late medieval Augustinianism of Gregory of Rimini and Calvin is indeed striking. Yet, there is no direct evidence that Calvin ever read Gregory.14 The Reuter thesis ultimately relies upon an argument from silence which assumes that Calvin never refers to the Wgures who actually inXuenced him, hence the historian must reconstruct these ‘sources’ from his curriculum and teachers. Although a historian is certainly warranted in harbouring suspicions about Calvin’s own account of his theological inXuences, the Reuter thesis opens the Xoodgate to a rather chaotic set of possible ‘inXuences’ based on apparent parallels with Calvin’s later theology. In addition to this historiographic problem, evidence has been mounting which calls into question the Reuter thesis. T. H. L. Parker’s 10 See Karl Reuter, Das Grundversta¨ndnis der Theologie Calvins: unter Einbeziehung ihrer geschichtlichen Abha¨ngigkeiten (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1963), 20–36. 11 Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCM Press, 1965), 84. 12 Reuter, Das Grundversta¨ndnis der Theologie Calvins, 24, 37–8; Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, 89. Reuter gives an account of Major’s hidden nominalist inXuence on Calvin in the midst of a chapter on the ‘polarities’ in Calvin’s thought. For a discussion of nominalism in historical scholarship, see pp. 31–3 below. 13 Alister E. McGrath, A Life of John Calvin: A Study in the Shaping of Western Culture (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 40–7. 14 See Lane, John Calvin, ch. 2. For a close analysis of the 1536 Institutes and a critique of the hidden source theory, see Alexandre Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, trans. David Foxgrover and Wade Provo (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 173 V.

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re-dating of Calvin’s early career casts doubt upon whether John Major was even at Montaigu during the same years as Calvin.15 Moreover, as an Arts student at the university, Calvin would not have taken classes in theology.16 In addition, LaVallee has rightly called into question the conceptual parallels between Major and Calvin that undergird the Reuter thesis.17 The ironic result of the debate about John Major and the Reuter thesis is that it has made all the more plausible the claim that Calvin was almost completely self-trained in theology. This can account for certain peculiarities in the Institutes—particularly when Calvin relegates to the commentaries issues that theologians more traditionally dealt with in the construction of a theological system.18 Given the questionable grounds of the Reuter thesis, what can one say about what Calvin did learn at Montaigu? The only solid evidence for such an answer must rely upon historical evidence about the overall educational programme at Montaigu.19 In general terms, the Arts programme would involve classes in logic, metaphysics, ethics, and rhetoric. This would entail study of Greek classics such as Aristotle, as well as some exposure, in all likelihood, to Scotist and nominalist philosophy. Even though Calvin probably did not study scholastic theology at Montaigu, it is likely that he studied scholastic philosophy.20 While Calvin was later consciously to reject much of this scholastic philosophy, Ganoczy makes the rather bold claim that Calvin ‘assimilated—without knowing it—diverse elements of the scholastic system.’21 Recognizing that Calvin was exposed to late medieval scholastic philosophy at Montaigu, however, does not justify readings of Calvin 15 See Parker, John Calvin, 11. 16 Ibid. 17 Armand A. LaVallee, ‘Calvin’s Criticism of Scholastic Theology: A Thesis’ (Harvard University, 1967), 242–7. 18 These include Calvin’s doctrine of divine attributes and of creation ex nihilo. See Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University, 2000), 152–7. 19 For accounts of this evidence, see Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, 57–63, 168–78; LaVallee, ‘Calvin’s Criticism of Scholastic Theology’; Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 40–1. 20 In speaking of the philosophy and theology included in Calvin’s training, Ganoczy writes: ‘according to the historical documents, it is quite likely that Calvin studied only scholastic philosophy at Montaigu and that he had no real contact with theology as such’ (The Young Calvin, 174). Also see Parker, John Calvin, 9–12. 21 Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, 178.

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which see Scotus or Occam as the central ‘hidden inXuences’ on Calvin. On a systematic level, Calvin uses philosophy in an ad hoc fashion. There are certain theological points in which Calvin does seem to have Scotist or nominalist tendencies, yet other points in which he is much closer to a Thomist position.22 Yet, reading Calvin in light of Scotus or Thomas is not entirely appropriate for assessing Calvin’s sources: Calvin did not engage either of these ‘representative’ Wgures extensively, but came under their inXuence through acquaintance with other Wfteenth- and sixteenth-century Franciscan and Dominican works.23 Given Calvin’s ad hoc use of philosophy and the lack of clarity about his particular sources in late medieval philosophy, assessment of Calvin’s theological metaphysics must be based on a case-by-case evaluation of the particular doctrine in question. How is one to assess the possible inXuence of Scotist and nominalist philosophy upon Calvin in relation to his theology of participation? This is a complex issue on historical and systematic levels. Historically, scholars like Ganoczy are correct in detecting a presence of the medieval ‘dialectical’ method of disputation in Calvin’s work. Muller has conWrmed the presence of this dynamic, in spite of the fact that certain features of modern editions of the Institutes obscure this dimension.24 However, even scholars of the calibre of Ganoczy display a dangerous slippage regarding the term ‘dialectic’. Although Ganoczy realizes that the scholastic method of ‘dialectic’ is distinct from the philosophical practice of systematically opposing the human and the divine, he says that Calvin is ‘dialectical’ in both senses. Ganoczy claims that Calvin dialectically opposed the ‘holy God’ and ‘completely corrupt man’ in such a way that he ‘was destined . . . to fail to attain a divine–human synthesis’ in various aspects of his theology.25 For Ganoczy, this second sense of ‘dialectic’ 22 For a summary of recent scholarship that places certain aspects of Calvin’s scholarship on a ‘nominalist’ trajectory and other parts on a ‘Thomist’ trajectory, see Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 40–2. 23 Muller, After Calvin, 40–1. 24 Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 68–77. 25 Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, 186–7. For a brief overview of accounts which use the language of ‘dialectic’ in a manner similar to Ganoczy, see Philip Butin, Revelation, Redemption and Response: Calvin’s tanan Understanding of the Divine–Human Relationship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 15–19.

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emerges from his interpretation of ‘nominalism’ as containing a theologically decadent ‘metaphysics that systematically opposed . . . the divine and the human’.26 While Ganoczy tends to blur these two very diVerent senses of the term ‘dialectic’, other scholars move even further from the sixteenth-century context by reading Calvin as a ‘dialectical’ theologian in a Barthian sense of the term.27 Yet, this use is unthinkable apart from Barth’s post-Kierkegaardian context, and it has virtually nothing to do with dialectic as the scholastic method of disputation.28 Nevertheless, it is still common to consider Calvin’s theology ‘dialectical’ in this distinctly twentieth-century sense.29 For the sake of clarity, it must be stated that ‘dialectic’ in a late medieval and sixteenth century context has no direct connection with the systematic opposition of the divine and the human, or any other theological topics. Dialectic is a method, not a doctrine;30 it was recommended by early modern Wgures such as Rudolf Agricola and Melanchthon as well as by earlier ‘scholastics’.31 As a method of disputation, ‘dialectic’ is the opposition of apparently conXicting sources of authority (in scripture and tradition), in order to resolve this apparent tension, implicitly aYrming the unity and availability of truth on the issue in question. It does not systematically oppose the loci of theology—such as God and humanity. If, in fact, Calvin does systematically oppose the divine and the human, it must be argued on other grounds than his continuity with the medieval ‘dialectic’. A related critique of possible nominalist inXuence comes speciWcally from the Gift theologians, particularly those associated with 26 Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, 178. Since the original French edition of Le Jeune Calvin in 1966, late medieval and early modern ‘nominalism’ has been reassessed. For an account of this reassessment, see pp. 32–3. 27 See n. 29. 28 For an account of the Kierkegaardian ‘distance’ between God and humanity in twentieth-century ‘dialectical’ theology, see James C. Livingston et al., Modern Christian Thought, 2nd edn., ii (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1997), 62–75. While ‘Barthian’ scholars of Calvin have been inXuenced by this sense of the term ‘dialectic’, careful scholarship has shown that Barth himself makes a more nuanced use of the term. See Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 29 For example, Wendel and Gisel also see the dialectical opposition of the divine and the human to be a central assumption in Calvin’s theology. See Pierre Gisel, Le Christ de Calvin (Paris: Descle´e, 1990), ch. 1; Wendel, Calvin, ch. 2. 30 See Muller, After Calvin, 27–33. 31 Ibid. 28.

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Radical Orthodoxy. In general, they make the claim that Calvin’s appropriation of Scotist and nominalist philosophy is such that humanity is separated and made ‘autonomous’ from God. Thus, Calvin’s language of ‘participation’ is undermined, lacking the Thomist metaphysics of participation in ‘being’ which involves participation in God.32 Moreover, this ‘loss’ of the Thomist heritage undermines the ‘analogy of being’ (analogia entis) between God and humanity which a Thomistic theology of participation provides.33 However, the portraits of nominalism oVered in the Radical Orthodoxy critique are questionable. Since the work of Heiko Oberman in the 1960s, there has been a signiWcant reassessment of the meaning of ‘nominalism’, highlighting its continuity on many points with thirteenth-century theology.34 The movement called ‘nominalism’ is more a ‘state of mind’ than a ‘doctrinal unity’. Dividing it into several divergent camps, Oberman posits a radical, ‘left-wing’ camp that leads to ‘scepticism’, ‘determinism’, and ‘Pelagianism’.35 Yet there is also a right wing camp which takes an Augustinian stand against Pelagianism and opposes some of the central tenets of the left-wing camp. In contrast to the left wing’s emphasis upon human ‘autonomy’, the right wing ‘sees in God not the opponent but the creator, preserver, and cause of man’s freedom’.36 Rather than systematically separating human and divine, many nominalists reXect a ‘quest for immediacy’ in the God–human relationship.37 Indeed, in terms of metaphysics, there is evidence that even Occam was not nearly as hostile to ontology and natural theology as is frequently claimed.38 32 On this point, Radical Orthodoxy’s interpretation of nominalism is similar to Ganoczy’s, discussed above. See Milbank, Being Reconciled; John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2001). 33 See Ward, Cities of God, 165. 34 For a summary of this reassessment, see William Courtenay, ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion’, in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 26–59. 35 The ‘left-wing’ nominalists include Robert Holcot and Adam Woodham. Heiko A. Oberman, ‘Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism’, Harvard Theological Review, no. 53 (1960), 47–76, at 54. 36 The ‘right-wing’ nominalists include Gregory of Rimini and Thomas Bradwardine (ibid. 55, 63). 37 Ibid. 62. 38 See Philotheus Boehner, ‘The Metaphysics of William Ockham’, in Collected Articles on Ockham (St Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1958), 373–99.

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Likewise, the interpretations of Duns Scotus in Radical Orthodoxy have been called into question. As Richard Cross points out, Scotus’ theory of univocity is a semantic theory rather than an ontological one;39 Scotus’ theory ‘is wholly consistent with the view that creatures somehow participate in divine attributes’.40 Cross argues that although theologians of Radical Orthodoxy frequently represent Scotus as making a decisive move away from Thomas’s theologies of analogy and participation toward ‘modernity’, this reading tends to overplay the genuine diVerences which do exist between Thomas and Scotus. Concerning Calvin’s relation to ‘nominalism’, one feature that Oberman and others have continued to see as key to nominalists is the ‘dialectics’ of God’s potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata.41 In spite of insinuations to the contrary,42 this formal distinction is explicitly rejected by Calvin.43 ‘We do not advocate the Wction of ‘‘absolute might’’ (absoluta potentia); because this is profane, it ought rightly to be hateful to us. We fancy no lawless God who is a law unto himself ’; rather, God’s will is the ‘highest rule of perfection, and even the law of laws’.44 Although Calvin emphasizes the freedom of God— bound by no laws—he holds this in tension with a critique of theologies in which God is ‘lawless’, an arbitrary law unto himself.45 Calvin holds a middle-ground position in these voluntarist/intellectualist debates.

39 Richard Cross, ‘ ‘‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’’: Duns Scotus and Radical Orthodoxy’, Antonianum, 76, no. 1 (2001), 7–41, esp. 16–19. 40 Ibid. 19. 41 Indeed, for Oberman nominalism is essentially an ‘attitude’ which reXects this distinction as a principle (Oberman, ‘Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism’, 47–51). 42 Albrecht Ritschl, and Kilian McDonnell are among those who claim that Calvin eVectually aYrms the potentia absoluta in spite of his own claim to reject the distinction. See Albrecht Ritschl, ‘Geschichtliche Studien zur Christlichen Lehre Von Gott’, in Jahrbu¨cher fu¨r deutsche Theologie, xiii (Gotha, 1868), 25–176, esp. 107; Kilian McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist, 8–10. 43 In its medieval context, the distinction between the absolute and ordained powers of God was an analogy seeking to say more about the created order than the divine nature. See Courtenay, ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion’, 42. 44 Institutes, 3. 23. 2. 45 For more on Calvin’s ‘middle-ground’ position in the voluntarist/intellectualist debates, see I. John Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1992), ch. 1.

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In a similar manner, Calvin holds a type of ‘middle’ position on the question of natural law, a question pursued further in Chapter 5. On the one hand, he appropriates aspects of the natural law tradition, in his use of both the book of Romans and the classical philosophy he studied as a humanist.46 His admiration for conciliarism may also contribute to his ethical appropriation of natural law.47 Yet Calvin also limits the natural law tradition through his strong doctrine of sin and his account of the necessity of revelation.48 Thus, in terms of the powers of God and the notion of natural law in ethics, Calvin seems to appropriate certain features of nominalism, but in a highly muted form. Yet other features of Calvin’s theology show stronger traces of Franciscan theology, at times in Scotist and at times in nominalist forms. The priority of faith and revelation over reason is appropriated from Luther, even if in tempered form. Luther, certainly, was greatly inXuenced by right-wing nominalists like Bradwardine. It is not surprising that Calvin adopts some of these nominalist features from Luther. In addition, Calvin follows Luther in rejecting the Thomist idea of the infused ‘habits’ of grace. While these ‘habits’ were also called into question by the nominalists, Calvin and Luther take a position that is relatively closer to Peter Lombard in the Sentences.49 In sum, since Calvin uses philosophy in an ad hoc fashion, and since little is known for sure about his earliest training at Montaigu, the metaphysics and philosophical inXuences on Calvin’s theology must be evaluated on a point-by-point basis. On the question of ‘Scotism’ and ‘nominalism’, Calvin probably did have exposure to the philosophical forms of these positions; his appropriation of these 46 See Ch. 5 of the present work. For an account of the inXuence of classical philosophy on Calvin’s ethic through Renaissance humanism, see Josef Bohatec, Bude´ und Calvin: Studien zur Gedankenwelt des franzo¨sischen Fru¨hhumanismus (Graz: H. Boehlaus, 1950), ch. 4. 47 Given Calvin’s admiration for the conciliar movement, it is possible that it may be one of the sources for Calvin’s theory of natural law. On natural law and conciliarism in the early modern period, see Francis Oakley, Natural Law, Conciliarism and Consent in the Late Middle Ages: Studies in Ecclesiastical and Intellectual History (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984), chs. 1, 9. 48 See David Little, ‘Calvin and the Prospects for a Christian Theory of Natural Law’, in Norm and Context in Christian Ethics, ed. Gene Outka and Paul Ramsey (London: SCM Press, 1968), 175–97. 49 See n. 105.

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schools of thought was muted and highly selective. Moreover, historians have called into question the portraits by Radical Orthodoxy of Scotus and the nominalists; inXuences upon Calvin by these thinkers would not necessarily undermine a robust theology and metaphysics of participation. Finally, accounts which use the notion of ‘dialectic’ to ground a supposed opposition of the human to the divine in Calvin should be viewed as anachronistic. Fortunately, historians can stand on Wrmer ground when speaking about the second phase of Calvin’s education, his legal training at Orle´ans and Paris. We have the advantage of knowing some of Calvin’s key legal teachers, as well as a work from his hand that originates in this period. It is clear that Calvin’s legal training involved a shift in a distinctly humanist direction—he studied Greek, Hebrew, and rhetoric with Guillaume Bude´, Pierre de l’Estoile, and Andre´ Alciat. There is an extent to which one should expect some tension between these humanist interests and those of scholastic philosophy, since Erasmus, Melanchthon, and others who inXuenced Calvin put forth a trenchant polemic against the ‘schoolmen’. Some read Calvin’s humanism as a sharp counterbalance to his nascent nominalist and ‘scholastic’ tendencies.50 Yet, as Muller has pointed out, this polemical distance should not obscure the signiWcant commonalities that humanists share with scholastic sensibilities. Certainly, there is a sense in which Calvin follows a distinctly humanist line in avoiding excessive speculation, for he thinks that some scholastic discourse undertakes ‘superXuous investigation of useless matters’.51 But there is also considerable continuity between scholastic conventions such as the ‘quaestio’ and ‘disputatio’ and Calvin’s later humanist methods.52 Since Calvin’s legal training included extensive work in rhetoric, recent Calvin scholarship has vigorously discussed the signiWcance of his rhetorical studies. At the very least, this discussion should make it 50 David Willis, ‘Rhetoric and Responsibility in Calvin’s Theology’, in The Context of Contemporary Theology, ed. Alexander McKelway and David Willis (Altlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1974), 43–64, at 46. 51 Institutes, 3. 25. 11. 52 Olivier Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole: E´tude de Rhe´torique re´forme´e (Geneva: Slatkine, 1992), 24. Muller gives a perceptive account of how the late sixteenth-century apparatus of the Institutes makes the scholastic structure of Calvin’s argumentation apparent. See Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 68–77.

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clear, as Willis has claimed, that Calvin’s legal training is not the source of ‘the idea of a God who rules by demanding ‘‘legalistic’’ obedience to his arbitrary and imperial-like decrees’. Rather, Calvin’s ‘humanistic legal training’ (with its emphasis on rhetoric) ‘strengthened the view that God is one who accommodates himself to human weakness to restore men to their lost freedom, to persuade them of their vindication in Christ, and to inform, delight, and move them to live out their adoption as free sons’.53 There is no doubt that Calvin’s rhetorical training inXuenced his doctrine of revelation and accommodation, as Willis, Jones, and Millet all point out.54 In revelation, God ‘accommodates diverse forms to diVerent ages’55 to inform, move, and delight. In this reception, it is clear that while the human does not take the initiative in faith, the pietas that God requires is profoundly existential: it involves knowledge of God’s paternal kindness in a way that brings delight and moves believers to action.56 Likewise, just as God ‘accommodates’ himself to evoke a particular response, so it is clear that Calvin ‘accommodates’ himself on a rhetorical level, adapting his style and language according to the audiences he is addressing.57 Calvin’s rhetorical training helps him to write in a way that adapts to the particular ends he wants to achieve in diVerent works—whether polemical, catechetical, or otherwise.58 Rhetorical complexity, however, should not be mistaken for a lack of conceptual coherence. Serene Jones argues that Calvin’s rhetorical approach to theology—in opposition to scholasticism—makes his theology thoroughly unsystematic, with little coherence of argument.59 Drawing upon classical rhetoric as well as post-structuralist 53 Willis, ‘Rhetoric and Responsibility in Calvin’s Theology’, 48. 54 Serene Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), 21–2, 133–4; Millet, Calvin et la dynamique de la parole, pt 3; Willis, ‘Rhetoric and Responsibility in Calvin’s Theology’, 47–50, 53–7. 55 Institutes, 2. 11. 13. 56 For an account of the experiential dimensions of this knowledge of paternal kindness, see Ch. 4. 57 See Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety, 27–30; Millet, Calvin et la dynamique de la parole, esp. sect. 7. 58 For more on the issue of genre in Calvin’s thought, see Ch. 3. 59 Speaking of the Institutes, Jones claims that conventional commentators make the mistake of assuming ‘a certain degree of textual coherence’ in Calvin; instead, one should recognize that the text has ‘no uniWed argument’ and ‘resists any attempt to locate its unity in terms of style or genre’ (Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety, 146).

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theory, Jones says that Calvin gives a ‘rhetorical play’ of text in order to push toward particular social and political ends.60 In contrast, Millet’s tome Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole shows how seemingly tangential aspects of Calvin’s style do not undermine his coherence, but are tied to speciWc sixteenth-century rhetorical conventions.61 The complexity of Calvin’s usage of such tropes and conventions should not be confused with post-structuralist claims about the instability of texts and systems of thought. While most recent discussion of Calvin’s humanist legal training has centred on Calvin’s appropriation of ancient and sixteenth-century rhetoric, there have also been attempts to see the Devotio Moderna movement as inXuencing Calvin through his humanist training.62 In general, these theories should be considered questionable on the same ground that the Reuter theory about John Major is questionable: they rely not upon direct evidence from Calvin’s works, but upon broad comparisons between Calvin’s thought and generalized features of the Devotio Moderna. Even a recent advocate of this theory admits that there is no direct evidence that Calvin ever read Thomas a` Kempis or works by the Brethren of the Common Life.63 Thus, in his reformulation of the thesis, Clive Chin argues that elements of the Devotio Moderna are mediated to Calvin through Erasmus and Jacques Lefe`vre d’E´taples. Although his study highlights some speciWc ways in which Calvin exhibits continuity with certain strands of medieval mysticism, it is not clear in the end why the Devotio Moderna

From a historical perspective, Jones’s argument is not convincing. As Millet, Muller, and others have shown, Calvin is keenly aware of issues of ‘style and genre’; certainly, the Institutes is a rhetorically complex work, but Calvin has very carefully diVerentiated the genre of the Institutes from the commentaries. The rhetorical complexity takes place within this carefully deWned context. 60 Ibid. 147–9. 61 See esp. Millet, Calvin et la dynamique de la parole, pt 8. 62 For a book-length examination of the inXuence of the Devotio Moderna upon Calvin, see Lucien Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1974). Richard is openly dependent upon the Reuter thesis in his account. Also see Reuter, Das Grundversta¨ndnis der Theologie Calvins, 28–36. McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist, 24–7; Suzanne Selinger, Calvin Against Himself: An Inquiry in Intellectual History (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984), 26–9. 63 Clive S. Chin, ‘Unio Mystica and Imitatio Christi: The Two-Dimensional Nature of John Calvin’s Spirituality’ (Ph.D. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 2002), 5.

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continues to be a helpful category, since it is so drastically changed by its intermediaries.64 There is also a danger of failing to see how Renaissance humanism was above all a practical set of methods and intuitions, not a particular ‘Neoplatonic’ metaphysical position.65 While certain aspects of humanism—such as its polemic against the ‘arid’ theology of the ‘schoolmen’—have some overlap with the concerns of the Devotio Moderna, there is no reason to see the Devotio Moderna itself as holding the hidden key to Calvin’s spirituality. In sum, in assessing the theories about Calvin’s early philosophical and theological training, readers should be cautious about two types of theories: theories of ‘hidden sources’, which claim that Calvin was deeply inXuenced by works that he does not cite, and theories of ‘metaphysical schools’, which closely connect Calvin with a particular overarching school of thought (e.g. a ‘voluntarist’ or ‘Thomist’ school). Calvin’s metaphysics are diYcult to discern, not only because of his reticence about speculation, but also because of his eclecticism. Calvin was a theologian constantly engaged with scripture and the church fathers, hearkening to the humanist cry of ‘ad fontes’. As a result, Calvin’s metaphysics draws together insights from a variety of theological schools and traditions. His approach is truly an eclectic one, for he does not let his ad hoc approach to philosophy keep him from making metaphysical claims. Rather, Calvin draws freely upon patristic and Scholastic developments when he feels that it will strengthen his biblical account of the loci of doctrine.

64 Given the signiWcant diVerences between Erasmus and the Devotio Moderna— and Calvin’s thought from Erasmus—the connections are shaky at best. In addition, Chin seems to imply that Calvin appropriates certain elements of the Devotio Moderna which Erasmus rejects. This is puzzling because Chin is open about the lack of evidence that Calvin read materials from the Devotio Moderna. See ibid. 65 In addition to Chin’s thesis, Carlos Eire’s War Against the Idols tends to paint Calvin’s humanist inXuences in broad strokes which characterize humanism by a metaphysics more than a method. For a critique of this approach, see Philip Butin, ‘Constructive Iconoclasm: Trinitarian Concern in Reformed Worship’, Studia Liturgica, 19, no. 2 (1989), 133–42; idem, ‘John Calvin’s Humanist Image of Popular LateMedieval Piety and its Contribution to Reformed Worship’, Calvin Theological Journal, 29, no. 9 (1994), 419–31; idem, Revelation, Redemption, and Response, 14–15.

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2. 2 CA LV I N ’ S C L A I M S O F C O N T I N U I T Y WITH TH E CH U RC H FAT HE RS Rejecting the Reuter thesis about Montaigu has implications for how one accounts for Calvin’s knowledge of patristic theology. Although his training included exposure to late medieval philosophy, we did not Wnd grounds for Calvin’s training in patristic theology to begin at this point. As for his legal training, on the assumption that Calvin tends to cite works that he has recently been reading,66 it is apparent that he has read a few works of Augustine because of references in his Commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia (1532).67 In addition, citations of Tertullian and Irenaeus in Psychopannychia show other patristic knowledge by 1534. Concerning his formal academic training, however, we are left to conclude that Calvin was self-taught as regards most of his knowledge of patristic theology. Calvin’s overall strategy in reading and using the fathers is shown by his Prefatory Address to King Francis in the 1536 edition of the Institutes. Calvin deWantly denies the charge that the teaching of the Reformers is ‘new’ and ‘of recent birth’. It is ‘new’ to Calvin’s Roman Catholic opponents, because ‘to them both Christ himself and his gospel are new’.68 But the gospel the Reformers preach is ‘ancient’,69 and ‘if the contest were to be decided by patristic authority, the tide of victory would turn to our side’.70 Although scripture is the only infallible authority, Calvin quotes a series of church fathers who agree with him about the (scriptural) approach to the sacraments. This use of the church fathers concerning the sacraments accounts for most of Calvin’s 100 references to the church fathers in the 1536 Institutes. 66 From a historiographic perspective, this has proved to be one of the most reliable ways to assess the sources that Calvin has been reading. See Lane, John Calvin, ch. 1, esp. pp. 10–11. 67 Calvin cites Augustine twenty times in the Commentary, with Wfteen of these references deriving from the City of God. Although this is not insigniWcant, it shows very little of the extensive knowledge of Augustine that Calvin was to acquire in the next decade. 68 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986), 5; OS 1. 25. 69 As ‘ancient’ as the teaching of Paul, Calvin says (ibid.). 70 Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 6; OS 1. 27.

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In addition to these appeals to the church fathers concerning sacramental theology, Calvin ranks the relative authority of certain thinkers by their period in church history. The ‘ancient fathers’ were of ‘a better age of the church’,71 since ‘for about Wve hundred years . . . religion was still Xourishing, and a purer doctrine thriving’.72 Thus, church fathers of the Wrst Wve centuries are generally given preference and priority, with Augustine at the forefront. Calvin frequently contrasts these patristic writers with the ‘schoolmen’, those ‘sophists’ who mislead the Roman church around him. Thus, Calvin’s argument is that the Reformation is not only a return to scripture, but a return to a purer form of doctrine found in the Wrst centuries of the church. Although by 1536 Calvin engages with a relatively wide range of patristic works, his knowledge of medieval scholastic theology (i.e. the ‘schoolmen’) is much less impressive. Ganoczy has shown that when Calvin refers to the ‘schoolmen’ in 1536, he has two Wgures in mind: Gratian and Peter Lombard.73 Calvin’s knowledge of both Wgures is quite limited at this point, as he has borrowed most of his references to them from Luther’s Babylonian Captivity of the Church.74 Calvin’s knowledge of the church fathers grows extensively in the decades after the 1536 Institutes, but it generally follows the pattern of his strategic, anti-Roman Catholic argument: the church fathers of the Wrst Wve centuries are closer to the scriptural Reformation doctrines than to the Roman Catholic doctrines, contra the polemicists writing against Calvin. In the Institutes of 1539 and 1543, Calvin expands this argument beyond sacramental theology to include doctrines of grace, predestination, the church, the Trinity, and other major loci. In addition, in response to Albert Pighius’s objection to his citation of the church fathers in favour of his theology of grace in 1539, Calvin writes On the Bondage and Liberation of the Will. In this work, he takes on Pighius on his own terms and argues that the church fathers are in his favour, most notably Augustine (with 240 references), with Tertullian and Irenaeus being the next most frequently cited.75 71 Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 6; OS 1. 27. 72 Institutes, 1. 11. 13. 73 Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, 174–8. 74 Ibid. 177; Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 44–5. 75 Johannes Van Oort, ‘John Calvin and the Church Fathers’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Dorota Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 661–700, at 678–9.

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The most dramatic extension, yet alteration, of Calvin’s strategic argument concerning the church fathers comes in the Wnal, 1559 edition of the Institutes. By this time, he has identiWed Bernard of Clairvaux as a decisive medieval source who is ‘on his side’, particularly regarding the freedom of the will and predestination.76 In addition, by 1559, Calvin seems to have given Lombard another reading,77 and frequently judges him to be superior to later scholastics. Calvin has also added patristic references related to the anti-Nicene controversies with Servetus and Gentile, as well as the eucharistic controversies with Westphal. The 1559 Institutes has 800 direct patristic references, about half of which are to Augustine, with an emphasis upon the antiPelagian writings.78 While this large number of references includes a great number of church fathers, it is important to note that Calvin was not necessarily acquainted with the full texts of some of the patristic writers he cites. For example, Calvin quotes Athanasius in his defence of Nicaea, but he uses citations gathered from other sources, such as his opponents; Calvin does not show signs of direct acquaintance with Athanasius’s texts.79 In contrast, the knowledge of Irenaeus and Cyril that Calvin displays indicates Wrst-hand acquaintance with full works by these church fathers.80 While other works provide overviews of Calvin’s relation to and appropriation of particular patristic writers, this chapter will proceed with a topical account of Calvin’s theology with regard to key patristic themes related to participation. As a result, Calvin’s use and appropriation of Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria will be at the forefront. While Calvin’s theology emerges from a variety of historical inXuences and exegetical eVorts (described in Chapter 3), his reading of the church fathers certainly inXuenced him to adapt and reframe his theology. Calvin’s use of patristic material was polemical, but not necessarily reductively polemical, as I will show below. 76 Calvin’s appreciation of Bernard began in the early 1540s and developed as he read Bernard’s Opera omnia. See Lane, John Calvin, ch. 5. 77 Van Oort, ‘John Calvin and the Church Fathers’, 682. 78 Ibid. 682–4. 79 Lane, John Calvin, 77–81. 80 See Irena Backus, ‘Calvin and the Greek Fathers’, in Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Later Medieval and Reformation History, ed. Robert J. Bast and Andrew C. Gow (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 253–76; Lane, John Calvin, 76–7. While Calvin cites Cyril’s commentary on John in his own commentary on the book, Backus posits that Cyril inXuences Calvin’s commentary more than the citations alone suggest.

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Contexts and Continuities 2 . 3 . PAT R I S TI C A N D R E F O R M ATI O NA L A P P ROPR I AT I ON S I N C A LV I N ’ S T H E O LOG Y OF PA RTICIPAT ION AND THE DIVINEH UM A N R E L AT I O N

2.3.1. Humanity and Divinity: Fundamental Separation or Communion? As noted in the introduction to this chapter, it is frequently asserted that a central characteristic of Calvin’s theology is a strong separation of humanity and divinity.81 How could one who so emphasized the majesty of God and the sinfulness of humanity—and hence the distance between the two—aYrm the possibility of their union? Yet, for the remainder of this chapter, I seek to show that Calvin aYrms the fundamental concordance and diVerentiated union of God and humanity.82 Certainly, Calvin avoids excessive speculation and is metaphysically eclectic. Yet, as he engages with the writings of patristic authors such as Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril, Calvin develops the biblical language of participation, engrafting, and adoption in a way that holds to the participation of humanity in God in the original creation and their union without assimilation in redemption. In redemption, humanity participates in the Triune God as believers are adopted by the Father, made one with Christ through the Spirit. 81 Roland Bainton expresses a common sentiment in claiming that Calvin’s God is ‘so high and lifted up, so unspeakably holy, and man so utterly unworthy, that no union between God and man could be thinkable’ (Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511–1553 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), 46–7). The rest of this chapter will interact with a number of Calvin scholars who make similar claims. For a brief overview of accounts claiming a ‘sharp separation’ between God and humanity in Calvin, see Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response, ch. 1. As Ch. 1 of the present work has shown, the Gift theologians tend to agree with this interpretation of Calvin as sharply separating the divine from the human. 82 In speaking of ‘union’, I am not following Carl Keller’s panentheistic interpretation of Calvin; see Carl A. Keller, Calvin mystique: Au Coeur de la Pense´e du Re´formateur (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2001). Rather, as this chapter will argue, Calvin aYrms a diVerentiated union of humanity with divinity in redemption which upholds the Creator–creature distinction and is eschatologically conditioned. Since union with God is an eschatological end, Calvin’s language about this is usually in the verbal form such that we are being united to God in redemption.

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Before I develop this account, however, I need to address more fully the central objection to the claim that Calvin could aYrm the fundamental concordance of the divine and the human. The core objection, as I have noted, is that Calvin systematically opposes humanity and divinity such that a transformative union between the two is made unthinkable.83 In his anthropology, Calvin emphasizes the sinfulness of human nature such that in salvation and sanctiWcation, humans seem to contribute nothing. This post-Augustinian anthropology seems to emphasize the powerlessness of the human to move toward the good telos of creation. Calvin not only repudiates theologies of synergism and co-operative grace, but he seems to speak of humanity becoming nothing, even to the point of obliteration in the process of redemption.84 Calvin’s view of sinful humanity in relation to an allpowerful divine will may give the impression that the human side of the divine–human relationship has virtually vanished.

2.3.2. Grace and Sin: Is Humanity ‘Nothing’ in Regeneration? Calvin faced criticisms related to his allegedly ‘negative’ anthropology in his own day. In reaction to Calvin’s theology of grace and providence presented in the 1539 Institutes, in 1542 Roman Catholic theologian Albert Pighius wrote Ten Books on Human Free Choice and Divine Grace. His central argument was that the church fathers speak in one voice against Calvin’s claim that the will is in bondage to sin apart from the eVectual work of the Spirit. Calvin’s strong doctrine of sin is said to distort his account of grace and regeneration. OVended by the idea that humans contribute nothing in salvation, Pighius defends an approach 83 See Ch. 2 introduction and n. 81. 84 In summarizing a passage from the 1539 Institutes Calvin writes that ‘everything which is ours should be obliterated when we are regenerated by the Lord’ (John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius, ed. A. N. S. Lane, trans. Graham I. Davies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), 212; CO 6. 380–1). The original passage that Calvin was summarizing is an exposition of Ezek. 36: 26–7, where the ‘heart of stone’ is removed by God to be replaced by ‘a heart of Xesh’ by the Spirit. Calvin writes: ‘If therefore, a stone is transformed into Xesh when God converts us to zeal for the right, whatever is of our own will is eVaced. What takes its place is wholly from God’ (Institutes, 2. 3. 6; OS 3. 279–80).

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which aims to ‘balance’ the work of salvation between God and humanity in order to preserve human responsibility. Calvin responded in 1543 with The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, a work which should be consulted regarding Calvin’s allegedly ‘negative’ anthropology for three reasons. First, in contrast to the earlier sixteenth-century debate between Erasmus and Luther on free choice, Calvin meets Pighius on his own terms and argues his case from the church fathers, rather than primarily from scripture.85 Second, in responding to these Roman Catholic objections, Calvin makes important distinctions and qualiWcations to his position (partly through concessions to patristic concerns) which are not included in the later editions of the Institutes.86 Third, this work is neglected in the secondary literature on Calvin’s anthropology and theology of grace, even in works which seek to portray Calvin in a positive light.87 In response to Pighius’ objection to Calvin’s ‘negative’ language concerning humanity in redemption, Calvin claims that these negative statements speak of ‘prideful’, fallen humanity, not humanity as it was created in Adam or fulWlled in Christ. It is fallen humanity which sees itself as essentially independent of God—claiming that it has power ‘in itself’ rather than ‘in’ or ‘united to’ God. Thus, when Calvin says that 85 Thus, perhaps not surprisingly, Bondage and Liberation of the Will has more patristic citations than any work of Calvin besides the Institutes. 86 Certain aspects of these developments are reXected in later editions of the Institutes. Yet, other crucial features of Bondage and Liberation of the Will, such as Calvin’s use of Aristotelian distinctions, are not included in the Institutes. On Calvin’s development through Bondage and Liberation of the Will, see Lane, John Calvin, 179–91. By the late 1550s, Calvin had written a great deal of material that he sought to incorporate in the Wnal edition of the Institutes, so limitations of time and energy may account for why some material is not included. In addition, with the Aristotelian distinctions in Bondage and Liberation of the Will, it may be that Calvin was hesitant to make potentially unnecessary ‘scholastic’ distinctions outside his particular debate with Pighius. 87 Gift theologians make no reference to Bondage and Liberation of the Will. Perhaps more surprisingly, the work is neglected among Calvin scholars. Although there are occasional references to Calvin’s account of how the will necessarily yet voluntarily sins, other important parts of his argument are virtually ignored in the secondary literature. For example, in his classic work on Calvin’s pneumatology, Krusche deals with a cluster of topics related to the bondage and liberation of the will. Yet Krusche never draws upon Calvin’s crucial Aristotelian distinctions about how the substance of the created nature is fulWlled in redemption, with sin Wlling an accidental role in relation to this original nature. Krusche merely draws upon the conventional distinction between external coercion and necessity. See Werner Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), ii. 3.

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‘whatever is ours’ is obliterated in regeneration, Calvin is not being ‘negative’ about humanity, but ‘negative’ about sin. His language is indebted to the Pauline notion that believers die to the ‘old self’, not living ‘according to the Xesh’ but ‘according to the Spirit’. Calvin writes: ‘By ‘‘whatever is ours’’ I understand that which belongs to us. Moreover, I deWne this as what we have in ourselves apart from God’s creation.’88 In Pauline terms, one ‘dies’ to the ‘Xesh’ in regeneration; thus, this is not the death of God’s good creation, but rather viviWcation and restoration by the Spirit.89 In a similar way, Calvin uses the image of the vine and the branches in John 15 to draw the contrast between the branch ‘in itself’, which is useless apart from the nourishment and strength of the vine, and the branch ‘in the vine’. The emphasis of this Johannine passage is that the human will ‘in itself’ does not co-operate with God—as if it could act and co-operate in its own power apart from God—yet when the human is grafted on to God as the vine, God produces fruit through those human faculties.90 Humanity at its fullest is humanity united to God. Yet, as in John, this positive principle has a negative corollary: ‘without me you can do nothing’ (John 15: 5). Calvin’s principle is, in fact, a deeply Christological one: one must not think of full humanity as essentially independent or autonomous from divinity; the two must be thought of together in a manner of interpenetration. Although Calvin quotes a variety of biblical, patristic, and conciliar sources in support of this view, one of the most important is Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings.91 While the Pelagian 88 Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 212; CO 380–1. 89 Although the original passage in 1536 was an exposition of Ezek. 36: 26–7, it is signiWcant that Calvin moves to Pauline sources when he further explains the meaning of his statement in the 1559 edition of the Institutes. I have chosen the Pauline language of dying to the ‘old self ’ and the contrast between ‘Xesh’ and ‘spirit’ because of its signiWcance in the book of Romans, which was so inXuential for Calvin, as well as its similarity to Calvin’s language that ‘whatever is ours’ is ‘annihilated’ in regeneration. OS 3. 279–80. 90 Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 229–31; CO 6. 393–5. 91 R. J. Mooi lists 1,708 explicit citations of Augustine in Calvin’s writings. The anti-Pelagian writings, in particular, were central for Calvin. See R. J. Mooi, Het Kerk, en dogmahistorisch Element in de Werken van Johannes Calvijn (Wageningen: H. Veenman, 1965), 369; Richard A. Muller, ‘Augustinianism in the Reformation’, in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 705–7.

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controversy may appear to some as distant from Christological concerns, for both Augustine and Calvin (in his appropriation of Augustine), the Incarnation is the supreme example of an antiPelagian theology of grace.92 For Augustine, grace is displayed through the priority of the Spirit in the Virgin Birth. In contrast to adoptionistic Christologies, Augustine taught that there was no humanity ‘prior’ to the union of divinity and humanity in Christ which could ‘will’ the union from an autonomous space. Indeed, although Augustine’s anti-Pelagian work preceded the debate between Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria, his concern to aYrm the presence of God the Word in the womb of Mary has certain parallels with Cyril’s later defence of the theotokos.93 In terms of his reception of Augustine’s theology of grace, Calvin highlights the importance of the Incarnation,94 thus complementing his larger claim that created and redeemed humanity is fundamentally united to God. In order to portray this union of humanity with God in the original creation, Calvin utilizes Aristotelian categories in Bondage and Liberation of the Will.95 Humanity is not naturally at odds with God, but opposed to God only because of the Fall: the substance of human nature as created by God, Calvin says, is good. Indeed, as he later expounds in the Institutes, before the Fall Adam is ‘united’ to God.96 Yet, after the Fall, human nature has been corrupted through the disease of sin. This corruption—as real as it is for Calvin—is accidental to human nature. Although the accidental characteristic of sinning will remain with believers through the present life, sanctiWcation involves the gradual diminishing of this accidental characteristic as the original human nature is restored and perfected. 92 For example, The Predestination of the Saints (15. 30–1) and The Gift of Perseverance (9:21), both in Augustine of Hippo, Four Anti-Pelagian unWuqs, trans. John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1992); Enchiridion (sects. 36, 40), trans. J. F. Shaw (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1993). For Calvin’s appropriation of Augustine on this theme, see Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 129–30; CO 6. 321–2. 93 See the letters between Cyril and Nestorius in Richard A. Norris, The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980). 94 See Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 129–30; CO 6. 321–2. 95 The Aristotelian categories of substance, accident, and habit are used repeatedly in the work. See Lane’s introduction for a listing of citations: Bondage and Liberation of the Will, pp. xxv, xxvi. 96 ‘It was the spiritual life of Adam to remain united and bound to his Maker’ (Institutes, 2. 1. 5).

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Through this Aristotelian language that is not later incorporated into the Institutes, Calvin provides a clariWcation of potentially misleading language used elsewhere in his writings. Calvin sometimes speaks of believers becoming ‘nothing’ so that God’s new creation can come forth. This is an aspect of participation in Christ’s death, such that one dies to the ‘old self ’ in which one lives by the ‘Xesh’, in order to live by the Spirit in Christ.97 Using this Pauline language of being cruciWed to the ‘old self ’ that is enslaved to sin, Calvin emphasizes that obedience involves a ‘death’ to sin. Yet Pighius has misunderstood this language when he sees this participation in Christ’s death as a ‘death’ to the good creation in Adam. For Calvin, this ‘death’ is a mortiWcation of the sinful desires which corrupt the good creation in Adam. Moreover, participation in Christ’s death is always followed by a participation in Christ’s resurrection,98 which involves a fulWlment of the original telos of creation, the good ‘substance’ of human nature. Thus, citing Irenaeus in favour of his position, Calvin aYrms that redemption heals and restores the original ‘good will’ and ‘good nature’ of Adam.99 Human nature was originally good, and the created nature is restored and fulWlled through redemption in Christ. This is not a nature conceived of as an autonomous possession apart from God. Rather, as with Adam—and even more fully with Christ—this ‘good nature’ is activated in the human only when the human is united to God by the Spirit. Thus, it is Calvin’s strong insistence that God and humanity are united in a fundamental way that makes him oppose Pighius, who seeks to honour human eVort

97 Institutes, 3. 3. 5–9. 98 Calvin is very insistent on this point, following Rom. 6: 5–6, that we will not simply be united with Christ in his death, but also in his resurrection: ‘Both things happen to us by participation in Christ.’ See Institutes, 3. 3. 9. 99 On the issue of freedom, Calvin claims that Irenaeus is in basic agreement with him in seeking to aYrm the goodness of the original creation (and the restoration that follows). See Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 71–2; CO 6. 281–2. For Calvin, human nature is not only restored to the Adamic state, but is transformed to a superior state. ‘The condition which we obtain through Christ is far superior to the lot of the Wrst man’ (Comm. 1 Cor. 15: 46, CTS; CO 49. 559). For more on this transformation, see Richard Prins, ‘The Image of God in Adam and the Restoration of Man in Jesus Christ: A Study in John Calvin’, Scottish Journal of Theology, no. 25 (1972), 32–44.

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by dividing the agency and credit between God and humanity.100 For Calvin, since God is the fountain of all life and goodness, Pighius’ partitive solution is unacceptable. In sanctiWcation, all of the human faculties are, in fact, utilized—but if one views humanity as fundamentally related to God, indeed as truly Xourishing only in union with God, then one must not speak of a good human action in separation from God’s action.101 For Calvin, the fundamental union of divinity and humanity is apparent not only in the Spirit’s activity of prevenience, but in God’s ‘gifts’ of faith and sanctiWcation to believers. The reception of faith involves the voluntary assent of believers. Yet, while this assent ‘is properly called ours’, it does not ‘derive from us’ apart from God, but is a work of the Spirit.102 Moreover, when believers act in love, it is not ‘as if constrained by a necessity of the law’, but voluntarily.103 How can Calvin speak positively of ‘assent’ and ‘voluntary’ love as human acts? For Calvin, the Spirit enables the free action of a human being, which is not in competition with the action of the Spirit.104 The Spirit empowers these actions and deserves the praise for these 100 Calvin does not accept the language of ‘co-operative grace’ as used in medieval scholasticism precisely because he thinks it divides the agency and credit between God and humanity in a partitive manner. While Calvin is more sympathetic to Augustine’s use of the language, he does not retrieve the phrase because of its possibly misleading connotations. See Institutes, 2. 3. 7. 101 See Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 193–200; CO 6. 367–73. 102 Ibid. 119–20; CO 6. 314–15. 103 Institutes, 2. 8. 49. 104 While the focus of this immediate exposition is the Bondage and Liberation of the Will, it is worth noting that selections of Calvin’s pastoral advice in his letters Wt quite well with his notion that voluntary human action goes together with the work of the Spirit in a non-reductive way. For example, in a letter to a woman who is in prison ‘for having wished to follow Jesus’, Calvin suggests that she must cry out to God and give herself completely over to God: ‘you must call upon God, beseeching him to have compassion upon you, and committing yourself entirely into his hand, to hope for such deliverance as he shall please to send you.’ Yet, this does not mean that the woman should passively wait for God’s work. ‘Nevertheless, if there were any right and lawful means of escaping out of the hands of him who detains you, you should ask counsel from God, so that by his Spirit he might teach you to take advantage of it.’ How might the woman escape from captivity? By actively pursuing the ‘right and lawful means of escaping’. Yet, this would be received from the hand of God; thus she is to pray that the Spirit might teach her this way (Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. D. Constable (ii, iii) and M. R. Gilchrist (iii, iv) (New York: B. Franklin, 1973), ii, letter 328). For similar passages, see i, letter 133; ii, letters 191, 299.

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actions, but these actions are still ‘properly called ours’. As a part of this account, Calvin denies the common medieval doctrine of ‘infused habits’, along with the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ virtues. Instead, Christian acts of love emerge directly from the indwelling activity of the Holy Spirit.105 Yet, in Calvin’s account, the human faculties are not bypassed in this process, but activated by the Spirit. Further, the divine will is not coercive toward the human person. Rather, God ‘renews a right spirit in their inner nature’ so that the will voluntarily obeys God, consenting to faith through the work of the Spirit.106 From this exposition, both in Bondage and Liberation of the Will and in the Institutes, Calvin develops a theology of redemption which seeks to have much in common with church fathers such as Augustine and Irenaeus. Calvin’s debt to Augustine is immense, as shown through his extensive appropriation of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian theology of grace. Calvin also shows his deep concern to aYrm unequivocally with Irenaeus the goodness of creation and the restoration of creation in Christ. Although Calvin utilizes Aristotelian categories to do so, he employs them to clarify the Irenaean motif that redemption in Christ, the second Adam, fulWls and restores the creation; thus, in Christ human beings can be united to God.107 Moreover, concerning unredeemed humanity, Calvin expands his theology of imago Dei in the Institutes, calling it a ‘participation in God’.108 In addition, Calvin adopts from Cyril of Alexandria strong language about what it means to participate in Christ. Although Calvin did not always agree with Cyril, overall he found him to be an ally in 105 Concerning the issue of whether love is an ‘infused habit’, Calvin is relatively close to Lombard in book 1. 17 of the Sentences. The majority of medieval Scholastics disagreed with Lombard on this point. In his Sentences commentary of 1510/11, Luther made his own agreement with Lombard on this point explicit. See Steven E. Ozment, The Age of Reform (1250–1550): An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 31–2. 106 Calvin denies that God would ‘coerce anyone by violence’. Instead, ‘so that he may have willing [voluntarios] servants who follow of their own accord and obey, he creates a new heart in them and renews a right spirit in their inner nature’. See Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 193–4, 232; CO 6. 367–8, 396. 107 Although Calvin does not use the term recapitulatio, he has a great deal in common with Irenaeus’ doctrine of recapitulation and his second Adam Christology. See Oort, ‘John Calvin and the Church Fathers’, 685–6. 108 Institutes, 2. 2. 1.

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Trinitarian and Christological matters, and in scriptural interpretation he is ‘the one who among the Greeks can be rated second’ only to John Chrysostom.109 While Cyril is sometimes referred to in the exegesis of certain commentary passages,110 and sometimes as an expositor of Christological doctrine,111 Calvin’s most extensive appropriation of Cyril is in Cyril’s application of Christology to eucharistic theology.112 Calvin appropriates the notion in Cyril’s theology that the Xesh of Christ is ‘life-giving’, ‘pervaded with the fullness of life’, and then ‘transmitted to us’ in the Lord’s Supper.113 Cyril’s language of viviWcation and indwelling has deep resonance with Calvin. In one of his many summaries of Cyril, Calvin says that ‘the Xesh of Christ is made vivifying by the agency of the Spirit, so that Christ is in us because the Spirit of God dwells in us’.114 Indeed, this language of viviWcation is included in Calvin’s liturgy for the Lord’s Supper in Geneva. Through the Supper the souls of the faithful are ‘nourished and viviWed with his [Jesus Christ’s] substance’. This is followed by a participation of believers in the ascension of Christ, wherein they are ‘raised above all terrestrial objects, and carried as high as heaven, to enter the kingdom of God where he dwells’.115 While Calvin certainly uses Cyril’s writings for his own early modern purposes,116 he nevertheless draws heavily upon Cyril’s language of viviWcation in his own account of what it means to partake of Christ in the Supper. While Calvin develops this soteriological account in dialogue with patristic writers, his central sources are scriptural. In addition to the Johannine language of indwelling and engrafting mentioned above, another key inXuence on Calvin is the language of participation in the book of Romans. For Calvin, Romans provides ‘an open door to all

109 See Oort, ‘John Calvin and the Church Fathers’, 693. In addition, Cyril is one of four Greek fathers who is cited by Calvin more than Wfty times, the others being Chrysostom, Irenaeus, and Origen. See Lane, John Calvin, 41–2. 110 See Comm. John 3: 7, 4: 44, 21: 15. 111 See Comm. Matt. 26: 37, in Harmony of the Gospels. 112 Cyril’s eucharistic Christology is signiWcant in the overall debate with Nestorius. See Henry Chadwick, ‘Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy’, Journal of Theological Studies, 2 (1951), 145–64. 113 Institutes, 4. 17. 9. 114 TT 2. 541; CO 9. 495. 115 TT 2. 122; CO 6. 200. 116 See Ch. 1 n. 70.

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the most profound treasures of scripture’.117 Thus, just as the book of Romans becomes crucial for the development of the Institutes and the commentaries, so the themes of participation, adoption, and engrafting in Romans become crucial for Calvin’s theology.118 Drawing upon Romans 6: 1–11, Calvin develops the theme of union with Christ in his death and resurrection, and the life of the baptized as participation in Christ. Working from Romans 8: 12–17, 26–7, Calvin emphasizes that believers are adopted as children of God, given access to the Father through the Spirit, who prays through believers. In Romans 11: 17–19, Calvin Wnds his well-loved image of the engrafting of believers by faith.119 As I will argue in Chapter 3, the content of these three passages—involving union with Christ, participation in Christ by the Spirit, adoption, and engrafting—forms a collage of mutually illuminating images.120 Frequently, even if a biblical passage uses only one of these images, Calvin will link another of these three images from Romans with it. Likewise, partly through the inXuence of Romans, the language of participation has a far-reaching inXuence on the doctrinal loci of the Institutes.121 Through the use of Romans as a ‘door’ to the rest of scripture and as a lens with which to reread the doctrinal loci, the themes of participation, adoption, and engrafting become prominent in Calvin’s theology. Calvin’s development of the biblical themes of union, adoption, engrafting, and participation give a strongly catholic character to his

117 At the beginning of Romans, Calvin writes that ‘if we have gained a true understanding of this Epistle, we have an open door to all the most profound treasures of Scripture’ (CC 5; CO 49.1). 118 While the inXuence of Romans upon the Institutes is frequently aYrmed in Calvin scholarship, Richard Muller has shown the extent to which Romans is vital for Calvin’s development of the doctrinal loci beginning in 1539. In addition, it is in 1539/40 that Calvin outlines his project for the commentaries. It is during this crucial time of development that Calvin makes his statement about Romans being an ‘open door’ to the rest of scripture. See Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, chs. 7 and 8. 119 Calvin sometimes speaks of believers being engrafted into the community of God’s people—the subject of Romans 11—but he also speaks of being engrafted into Christ, which develops imagery from John 15: 1–11. Although Calvin sometimes refers to one or the other sense, he makes no separation between the two. Theologically speaking, being engrafted into Christ and adopted by the Father is necessarily connected with being engrafted into the family of God’s children. See e.g. Institutes, 4. 1. 2–4. 120 See Ch. 3. 121 See Ch. 3.

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theology of redemption.122 Relying upon interpretations of John and Paul as well as appropriations of Irenaeus and Augustine, Calvin teaches that the Wnal end and goal for humanity is a Trinitarian union of humanity with God. The oneness and unity of the Trinity extends to incorporate believers: ‘Just as he [Christ] is one with the Father, let us become one with him.’123 In their union with Christ, believers are ‘participants not only in all his beneWts but also in himself’. Indeed, ‘day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us, until he becomes completely one with us’.124 Moreover, believers are ‘fully and Wrmly joined with God only when Christ joins us with him’.125 Yet, this union with Christ is impossible without a participation in the Spirit, who unites the believer to Christ.126 Indeed, through the Spirit we ‘become participants in God (in Dei participationem venimus)’.127 Through Christ and the Spirit, believers are gathered ‘into participation in the Father’.128 Since the ‘perfection of human happiness is to be united to God’, this union takes place in redemption.129 ‘We are united to God by Christ,’ Calvin writes. ‘We can only be joined to Christ if God abides in us.’130 In this way, ‘men are so united to Christ

122 In referring to the ‘catholic’ character of Calvin’s theology of redemption, I am pointing out theological features that Calvin’s theology shares with a variety of patristic theologies. Thus, these features are ‘catholic’ or ‘universal’ for the various Christian traditions that are indebted to these developments in patristic theology. 123 My own translation of et quemadmodum unus est in patre, ita nos unum in ipso Wamus. Note the parallel of ‘oneness’ and mutual indwelling between the Trinitarian oneness (Father and Son) and economic oneness (Christ and believers). Sermon on 1 Sam., 2. 27–36; CO 29. 353. 124 Institutes, 3. 2. 24. 125 Institutes, 2. 16. 3. 126 Institutes, 3. 1. 2. For an account of the crucial role of the Spirit in Calvin’s Trinitarian doctrine of participation, see Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response, 79–92; Canlis, ‘Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God’. 127 A literal translation. Beveridge renders the overall passage ‘By means of him [the Spirit] we become partakers of the divine nature (in Dei participationem venimus), so as in a manner to feel his quickening energy within us. Our justiWcation is his work; from him is power, sanctiWcation, truth, grace, and every good thought, since it is from the Spirit alone that all good gifts proceed’ (Institutes, 1. 13. 14; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. Henry Beveridge and Robert Pitcairn (Edinburgh: CTS, 1845); OS 3. 128). 128 Institutes, 1. 8. 26. 129 Institutes, 1. 15. 6. 130 Comm. 1 John 4: 15, CC; CO 47. 145.

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by faith that Christ unites them to God’.131 Yet, being united with God does not make believers ‘consubstantial with God’, as if they were a fourth member of the Godhead, but rather it takes place in Christ, by ‘the grace and power of the Spirit’.132 Calvin also speaks of a coming beatiWc vision, a ‘direct vision’ of the Godhead, ‘when as partakers in heavenly glory we shall see God as he is’.133 This Wnal, temporal end is in fact ‘the end of the gospel’, which is ‘to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us’.134 While Calvin does not indulge in detailed speculation about this Wnal, eschatological end, his language concerning a Trinitarian incorporation of humanity into union with God is clear and emphatic.

2.3.3. The Question of DeiWcation and Osiander Does Calvin’s theology of redemption, then, include a doctrine of ‘deiWcation’? This depends upon what is meant by the term. Recent studies have tended to look to the theology of late Byzantine Wgures such as Gregory Palamas to provide a standard deWnition of deiWcation, even when examining Western theologians who were unfamiliar with Palamas.135 However valuable this may be for ecumenical dia131 Comm. 1 John 4: 15, CTS; CO 47. 145. Cf. Comm. Jer. 31: ‘We shall at length be really and fully united to Thee [Almighty God] through Christ our Lord.’ 132 Institutes, 1. 15. 5. 133 Institutes, 2. 14. 3. 134 Comm. 2 Pet. 1: 4, CTS; CO 55. 446. Calvin’s willingness to speak of deiWcation, at this point, is in response to the statement in 2 Pet. 1: 4 about believers becoming ‘participants of the divine nature’. Passages like this one were key to patristic teaching about deiWcation. For an analysis of Calvin’s commentaries on the biblical passages that were frequently read in terms of ‘deiWcation’ by the church fathers, see Carl Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing: Calvin and DeiWcation’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 55, no. 1 (2002), 36–57. 135 See Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Tuomo Mannermaa, Der im Glauben gegenwa¨rtige Christus: Rechtfertigung und Vergottung zum o¨kumenischen Dialog (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1989); Michael J. McClymond, ‘Salvation as Divinization: Jonathan Edwards, Gregory Palamas and the Theological Uses of Neoplatonism’, in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, ed. Paul Helm and Oliver Crisp (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 139–60; A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union: DeiWcation in Aquinas and Palamas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). For a comparison of Luther and Palamas which aYrms that Luther teaches deiWcation, yet also indicates Luther’s distance from Palamas, see Reinhard Flogaus, Theosis bei Palamas und Luther: ein Beitrag zum o¨kumenischen Gespra¨ch (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997).

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logue, this approach tends to underestimate the possibility that there may be diVerent, yet legitimate, conceptions of deiWcation in the West, arising from the common sources for theologies of deiWcation: scripture and the church fathers. If late Byzantine theology is used as the paradigm for theologies of deiWcation, there is a danger not only of making Western theology look too much like late Byzantine theology, but also of dismissing Western theology when it fails to meet the late Byzantine ‘standard’.136 In fact, there are other ways to understand the Christian teaching of deiWcation. Drawing upon primarily Western theological sources, Augustine and Aquinas each oVer a doctrine of deiWcation that is distinct from Eastern conceptions.137 In a similar way, ‘deiWcation’ can be an appropriate term for Calvin’s theology of union with God through Christ, if understood as a soteriology that aYrms the unity of humanity and divinity, such that redemption involves the transformation of believers to be incorporated into the Triune life of God, while remaining creatures. If we are to use the term ‘deiWcation’ in describing a feature of Calvin’s doctrine of participation, several distinctively ‘Western’ 136 Both the Finnish School and Williams tend to overestimate the similarities between Western conceptions of deiWcation and late Byzantine notions of theosis; see n. 135. On the other hand, some scholars use a late Byzantine standard to critique or dismiss Western theologies of deiWcation. A key work for this approach which undergirds many of the others is Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 130–4, 196–216. For the use of Gregory Palamas ‘against’ Thomas Aquinas, see Eric D. Perl, ‘St Gregory Palamas and the Metaphysics of Creation’, Dionysius, 14 (1990), 105–30. For an evaluation of Calvin by late Byzantine standards, see the appendix of Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor. Perl and Farrell seem to imply that a theology of deiWcation is deWcient unless late Byzantine theological categories are utilized. 137 On Augustine and deiWcation, see Gerald Bonner, ‘DeiWcation, Divinization’, in Augustine Through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 265–6 On Aquinas and deiWcation, Anna Williams highlights key elements of Aquinas’s doctrine of deiWcation, yet Williams underemphasizes the signiWcant diVerences which remain between the Thomist and Palamite perspectives. See Williams, The Ground of Union. For accounts which correct Williams by noting the distance between Aquinas and Palamas, see Gosta Hallosten, ‘The Concept of Theosis in Recent Research—The Need for a ClariWcation’, in Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of DeiWcation in the Christian Tradition, ed. M. Christensen and J. Wittung (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 281–93; Nonna Verna Harrison, ‘The Ground of Union: DeiWcation in Aquinas and Palamas (Review)’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 45, no. 4 (2001), 418–21.

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features must be very clear. First, deiWcation does not, for Calvin, involve a leakage of divine attributes into human attributes. On the communication of idioms, Calvin stands in an Antiochene tradition, referring the communication to the person of Christ.138 For the believer in Christ, there are some divine attributes which remain exclusive to God. On this point, later terminology which distinguishes between ‘communicable’ and ‘incommunicable’ attributes is in basic continuity with Calvin’s thought.139 Second, for Calvin the language of deiWcation is appropriate, but hyperbolic. On this point he stands in continuity with patristic authors such as Irenaeus and Athanasius, who used the language of deiWcation, but in a hyperbolic way. In comments on 2 Peter 1: 4 Calvin uses the traditional language of deiWcation, but implies the hyperbole: God will ‘deify us’, ‘if we may so speak’.140 In addition, claiming that Calvin has a theology of deiWcation is not the same as saying that his theology contains the themes of union, participation, and adoption. A theology containing the themes typically associated with deiWcation would not necessarily result in a doctrine of deiWcation.141 These themes are, after all, 138 On this point, see the discussion of Calvin’s dispute with Osiander below. 139 On the [quite complicated] use of this distinction in Reformed Orthodoxy, see Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987), iii. 223–6. It is worth noting that although Calvin stands in the Antiochene tradition on the communication of idioms, he does not speak of believers participating exclusively in the humanity of Christ, in a Nestorian fashion. Rather, believers participate in the one person of Christ. This misunderstanding lies behind Jonathan Slater’s quite Nestorian reading of Calvin’s theology, which argues against the idea that Calvin aYrmed the deiWcation of believers. See Slater, ‘Salvation as Participation in the Humanity of the Mediator in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: a Reply to Carl Mosser’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 58, no. 1 (2005), 39–58. 140 Comm. 2 Pet. 1: 4, CTS; CO 55. 446. Another translation renders this ‘a kind of deiWcation’ (quasi deiWccari). Calvin’s use of deiWcari shows his concern to emphasize that the language of ‘humans becoming God’ is hyperbolic, rather than strictly literal. In this sense, Calvin’s theology of participation and deiWcation is similar to that of patristic writers like Gregory of Nyssa, who emphasized the hyperbolic nature of the language. In fact, Gregory of Nyssa avoided the term theosis, even though he also presents a theology that can be called one of deiWcation. See Rowan Williams, ‘DeiWcation’, in A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, ed. Gordon WakeWeld, (London: SCM Press, 1983), 106–8; Norman Russell, The Doctrine of DeiWcation in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 225–32. 141 For the distinction between a ‘theme’ of deiWcation and a ‘doctrine’ of deiWcation, I am indebted to Hallosten, ‘The Concept of Theosis in Recent Research’.

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biblical ones that can be found in nearly any Christian theology. A doctrine of deiWcation involves the development of these biblical themes, and a diVerentiation among various theological alternatives connected with them. For Calvin, some of this diVerentiation occurs through his appropriation of patristic developments relating to deiWcation, such as the goodness of creation, the union of divinity and humanity in Christ, and the beatiWc vision. In the course of this development, Calvin generally prefers to keep with biblical language to describe this process in redemption, though at times he also adopts the terms deiWcari and apotheosis, in both positive and negative senses, to diVerentiate his position from various alternatives.142 However, it was debate about the signiWcance of the language of ‘participation’ that led Calvin to most clearly diVerentiate his position from other sixteenth century alternatives. The controversy about ‘participation’ that is most pertinent to the question of deiWcation in Calvin is his dispute with Osiander.143 Calvin does not begin to write against Osiander until after he was accused of being Osiandrian in his theology by his Lutheran opponents.144 Indeed, Osiander held much in common with Calvin: he appropriated the Johannine language of indwelling; he emphasized 142 For more on Calvin’s use of these terms, see Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing’, 41, 53–5. In preferring the language of ‘participation’ to the particular term ‘deiWcation’, Calvin resembles Gregory of Nyssa. See Russell, The Doctrine of DeiWcation in the Greek Patristic Tradition, 232. 143 Other relevant controversies include Calvin’s eucharistic dispute with the Lutherans Westphal and Heshusius and his opposition to Servetus’ interpretation of Psalm 82. With the eucharistic dispute, the central issue is how one partakes of the ‘substance’ of Christ in the Eucharist. Calvin gives a strongly pneumatological account of this participation, claiming that his opponents fail to give suYcient weight to the Spirit as the mode by which believers partake of the Xesh of Christ. See Thomas J. Davis, The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin’s Eucharistic Teaching (New York: AMS Press, 1995), chs. 5 and 6. With Servetus, the central dispute seems to be the exegetical interpretation of Psalm 82, as well as the aYrmation of ‘deity in believers’ in a non-Chalcedonian, non-eschatological way. See Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing’, 50–3. 144 Although it is frequently pointed out that Calvin has a negative response to Osiander as early as the Colloquy of Worms, Calvin’s main polemic against Osiander’s theology does not come until the 1559 edition of the Institutes. In Calvin’s debate with both Westphal and Heshusius, he was accused of being Osiandrian. See David Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 91; James Weis, ‘Calvin versus Osiander on JustiWcation,’ SpringWelder, 29 (1965), 31–47, at 42–3.

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the importance of growth in holiness as one received the gift of faith; and he attempted to retrieve Augustine’s theology of grace.145 In addition, like Calvin, Osiander was fond of the language of ‘participation’, seeing justiWcation as participation in Christ’s righteousness. But for Osiander, this meant that justiWcation could not be forensic. For Osiander, a person is called righteous when Christ, as God’s righteousness, indwells the believer. Thus, the divine nature of Christ is possessed by the believer. This process is understood in light of 2 Peter 1: 4, such that believers ‘participate in the divine nature’. The original goodness of humanity is restored through this union with Christ, this partaking of Christ’s divine nature. As part of this schema, Osiander claimed that ‘justiWcation’ does not mean forensic pardon of a sinner by grace, but the possession of Jesus Christ’s divine righteousness by the infusion of the divine into the believer. JustiWcation, strictly speaking, refers not to God’s forgiveness of the sinner because of the cross of Christ, but to the righteousness of believers as they receive Christ’s righteousness as a positive commodity, so to speak. On this point, Osiander was condemned by his Lutheran colleagues. Thus, Calvin, holding so much in common with Osiander in his emphasis upon indwelling and Trinitarian incorporation, was condemned by some of these same Lutherans as being ‘Osiandrian’.146 Concerning the decisive issue of justiWcation, however, Calvin was not Osiandrian. For Calvin, justiWcation and sanctiWcation are distinguishable, but inseparable, for ‘Christ contains both of them inseparably in himself’. ‘You cannot possess him [Christ] without being made partaker in his sanctiWcation, because he cannot be divided into pieces.’147 While justiWcation always and necessarily leads to real sanctiWcation, the former is irreducibly forensic, and the latter involves 145 For a sympathetic account of Osiander’s appropriation of Augustine’s theology of grace and participation, see Patricia Wilson-Kastner, ‘Andreas Osiander’s Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the InXuence of Augustine of Hippo’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 10, no. 2 (1979), 73–91. Unfortunately, Wilson-Kastner misinterprets Calvin’s reasons for opposing Osiander, claiming that it is due to a ‘separation of the divine from the human’ in Calvin (p. 88). 146 Krusche rightly notes the similarity between Calvin’s language of becoming ‘one substance’ with Christ and Osiander’s formulation. See Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, 268–9. 147 Institutes, 3. 16. 1.

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a moral transformation of the believer by the Spirit. Calvin was very concerned to maintain what he saw as a scriptural connection between the cross of Christ and the forgiveness of sins.148 Calvin understands Osiander’s rejection of the forensic character of justiWcation to be also a denial of the necessity of Christ’s atoning work on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. If ‘justiWcation’ simply means the infusion of Christ’s positive righteousness—with no concern to ‘appease the Father by his sacriWce’—then Christ’s human work of dying on a cross was unnecessary.149 As a consequence, Calvin advocates a forensic moment (in justiWcation), which is distinct from the transformation that believers undergo by the indwelling of the Spirit.150 In contrast to Osiander, forensic notions of pardon are not opposed to the themes of indwelling and participation in Calvin. Rather, Calvin holds these two together. Why? In addition to the scriptural argument concerning the Cross and the forgiveness of sins, Calvin articulates two main reasons for holding together, but distinguishing, pardon and indwelling. First, if salvation is to be truly a gift from God—and sanctiWcation a life of gratitude—a forensic notion of pardon is the necessary prerequisite for such a life of sanctiWcation. In the late medieval model of the believer as pilgrim (viator), the ‘assurance’ of salvation cannot be emphasized, since it is dependent upon the continuing acts of sanctiWcation by the believer.151 Calvin criticizes this soteriology as keeping the conscience in fear and anxiety, thus unable to fulWl the law of love with gratitude. Rather than being in ‘perpetual dread’ as to whether they have fulWlled God’s law, with imputation, believers are moved to ‘eager readiness to obey God’ as they receive God’s pardon.152 When ‘forensic’ pardon is received, the adoption of believers is realized, for believers are freed from the ‘severe requirements’ of the law so that they can act like children: believers ‘hear themselves called with fatherly gentleness by God’ and ‘will cheerfully 148 Calvin cites Acts 20: 28 and 2 Cor. 5: 21 to support the connection between the cross of Christ and the forgiveness of sins. See Institutes, 3. 11. 8–9. 149 Institutes, 3. 11. 9. 150 Institutes, 3. 11. 6. 151 See Heiko Augustinus Oberman and Paul L. Nyhus, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought, 1st edn (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), 131–3. 152 Institutes, 3. 19. 4.

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and with great eagerness answer and follow his leading’.153 Calvin is clear that this grateful following of God’s leading is, in fact, a ‘participation’ in God through Christ, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Yet, theological emphasis upon the indwelling presence of God is not enough. For Calvin, if this indwelling presence is to be concordant with a truly human gratitude, one must oppose Osiander’s denial of the forensic character of justiWcation. A second signiWcant diVerence between Calvin and Osiander’s account relates to the Trinitarian dynamics of Osiander’s claim that believers share the deity of Christ in justiWcation.154 For Calvin, the bond of our union with Christ—and the manner of divine indwelling—is not through the ‘infusion’ of the ‘essence’ of God into the believer. Rather, Calvin says that Osiander ‘does not observe the bond of this unity’, which is that believers are ‘united with Christ by the secret power of the Spirit’.155 By the Spirit, believers participate not just in the divine nature of Christ, but in the whole person of Christ.156 Through this participation in Christ, believers participate in the Trinity.157 In emphasizing that the Spirit is the bond for our union with God in Christ, Calvin has several concerns. First, he wants to keep a Nicene, Trinitarian theology; Calvin fears that Osiander’s account of ‘participation in Christ’ leaves out the essential role of the Spirit.158 But Calvin is also expressing a concern to maintain a creature– Creator distinction amidst our union with Christ. Because Osiander denies a role to the human nature of Christ in justiWcation, Christ’s own human nature becomes dangerously de-emphasized.159 This raises concerns related not only to Chalcedonian orthodoxy (with a ‘union’ without ‘confusion’ between divinity and humanity), but if 153 Institutes, 3. 19. 5. 154 On the Trinitarian dimensions of Calvin’s polemic against Osiander, see Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response, 69–73. 155 Institutes, 3. 11. 5. 156 Institutes, 3. 11. 8. 157 Institutes, 3. 11. 5. 158 Canlis gives a helpful account of the crucial role of the Spirit in Calvin’s debate with Osiander. Unfortunately, her account tends to underestimate the decisive importance of imputation for Calvin in the Osiander controversy, downplaying Calvin’s ‘forensic’ dimensions in an eVort to retrieve his theology of participation. See Canlis, ‘Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God’. 159 Institutes, 3. 11. 8–9.

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believers participate solely in the divine nature, their perfected humanity in redemption seems to disappear. Just as for Calvin the communication of idioms is applied to the person of Christ in concreto,160 so too believers participate in the person of Christ, the focal point of the union (without confusion) of divinity and humanity. When they participate in Christ, they do not receive a direct infusion of the divine nature (as with Osiander)—they participate in the person of Christ through the mediating power of the Spirit. On the one hand, Calvin teaches that the believer is united with God through Christ so as to be ‘completely one’ with Christ, participating in God. Yet, the creature is not identical to the Creator, and this participation is always in Christ, through the Spirit. In his debate with Osiander, Calvin aYrms what he teaches elsewhere about 2 Peter 1: 4: that in the union of Creator and creature in redemption, the former does not ‘swallow up’ the latter.161 While Calvin’s emphasis upon the forensic character of justiWcation is distinct from his concerns as a Reformer, his insistence upon a union without ‘confusion’ of the divine and human has much in common with his conciliar and patristic sources. Calvin was not seeking to be unique in this latter emphasis, but to uphold the concerns of the broader catholic tradition. On the one hand, Calvin sought to be ‘orthodox’ on Trinitarian and Christological issues in broader catholic terms, refuting Roman Catholic accusations that the Reformation is a ‘new’ movement, leaving behind the church fathers and councils. Thus, Calvin’s doctrine of deiWcation, if we may call it such,162 retains a broadly catholic character in aYrming the union of divinity and humanity in Christology, and in the Wnal redemption of 160 See Muller, After Calvin, 13. 161 ‘The Manicheans formerly dreamt that we are a part of God, and that, after having run the race of life we shall at length revert to our original. There are also at this day fanatics who imagine that we thus pass over into the nature of God, so that his swallows up our nature. Thus they explain what Paul says, that God will be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28), and in the same sense they take this passage. But such a delirium as this never entered the minds of the holy Apostles; they only intended to say that when divested of all the vices of the Xesh, we shall be partakers of divine and blessed immortality and glory, so as to be as it were one with God as far as our capacities will allow’ (Comm. 2 Pet. 1: 4, CTS; CO 55. 446). 162 My claim is that Calvin does have a doctrine of deiWcation if the notion of deiWcation is ‘qualiWed’ in the way that I designate at the beginning of this section. In particular, Calvin’s doctrine of deiWcation does not involve a ‘leakage’ of distinctively divine attributes to the human, and it understands the language of ‘becoming God’ as

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believers in Christ. Calvin is concerned to maintain the Creator– creature distinction, and to avoid ‘confusion’ between the two natures of Christ. On the other hand, Calvin sought to be ‘orthodox’ on justiWcation in the terms of the Reformation; his distinctive concerns as a Reformer also shape his doctrine of deiWcation. In response to the criticisms of his Lutheran opponents, Calvin insists that participation in Christ has forensic elements in justiWcation. Calvin insists upon maintaining a scriptural connection between the Cross and the forgiveness of sins, which pushes against Osiander’s position of seeing righteousness solely in terms of the infusion of Christ’s righteousness into believers. In fact, Calvin claims that recognizing God’s free pardon in justiWcation is essential for participation in Christ through sanctiWcation—so that the Christian life can be a life of gratitude and voluntary obedience to God.

2.3.4. Types of Participation: ‘Substantial Participation’ versus ‘Mere Imitation’ In clarifying what he means by ‘participation in Christ’, Calvin says that participation is not a ‘mere imitation’ of Christ, but a real or ‘substantial’ participation. For example, in his commentary on Romans 6: 4–5 Calvin says that ‘the apostle does not simply exhort us here to imitate Christ’, as though Christ were a mere ‘example which it is appropriate for all Christians to follow’. Rather, through baptism believers receive a ‘participation’ in an eYcacious grace which actually brings about the death of the ‘depravity of our Xesh’ along with a ‘resurrection to a better nature within us’.163 Calvin goes on to describe hyperbolic. In this way, Calvin’s theology of participation and deiWcation is similar to that of patristic writers who are commonly thought to teach deiWcation, even though they do not extensively utilize the technical terminology of deiWcation. Irenaeus and Augustine, for example, teach deiWcation even though it would be ‘qualiWed’ in a similar manner to how I have qualiWed Calvin’s case. See Jules Gross, The Divinization of the Christian, trans. Paul Onica (Anaheim, CA: A & C Press, 2002), 120–30; Gerald Bonner, ‘DeiWcation, Divinization’. For more on how to consider Calvin’s theology in relation to theologies of deiWcation, see J. Todd Billings, ‘United to God through Christ: Calvin on the Question of DeiWcation’, Harvard Theological Review, 98, no. 3 (July 2005), 315–34. Also see idem, ‘John Calvin: United to God through Christ’, in Partakers of the Divine Nature, ed. Christensen and Wittung, 200–18. 163 Comm. Rom. 6: 4–5, CC; CO 49. 105–6.

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this ‘participation’ in terms of being engrafted into Christ, such that ‘we not only derive the strength and sap of the life which Xows from Christ, but we also pass from our own nature into his’.164 In a similar manner, in Calvin’s mature eucharistic theology he frequently connects the Eucharist with being engrafted into Christ, such that we partake of Christ’s substantia to become one with him. In our oneness with Christ, he comes to dwell in us so that we are ‘members of his Xesh’ and are ‘incorporated with him (so to speak) into one life and substance’.165 Through participation in Christ, believers participate in his substance and are united into one substance with him. Moreover, in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the participation in the substance of Christ is inseparable from participation in the communal Body of Christ on earth, the church. In naming Calvin’s view a ‘substantial participation’, I am departing from how several other commentators have described his views. Indeed, Julie Canlis speciWcally says that Calvin aYrms ‘a non-substantial participation in the person of Christ’.166 Canlis’ choice of words is puzzling, since Calvin frequently does speak of participating in the ‘substance’ of Christ, and never calls this a ‘non-substantial’ participation. Canlis, however, appears to be using the term ‘substance’ in a way that is parallel to Bernard McGinn in his work on late medieval notions of the ‘mystical union’. The language of ‘substantial union’ is frequently used by McGinn to designate an ‘indistinct union with God’ in which the human and the divine are fused.167 Canlis has similar concerns, for she seeks to diVerentiate Calvin’s view from Osiander’s account of the ‘transfusion of substance’ of Christ’s deity to the believer. Canlis is right to diVerentiate Calvin from Osiander. Yet, although Canlis says that Calvin has a strong theology of participation similar to the theosis of the church fathers, she claims that Calvin’s ‘non-substantial participation’ is ‘not Thomistic or platonic participation (dependent on ontology) but a participation that allows two diVerent beings to share in one another’s lives, by the Spirit’. While ‘Osiander wanted 164 Comm. Rom. 6: 5, CC; CO 49. 107; emphasis added. 165 Comm. 1 Cor. 11: 24, CTS; CO 49: 487. In speaking of becoming ‘members of his Xesh’, Calvin is making reference to Eph. 5: 30. 166 Canlis, ‘Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God’, 184. 167 Bernard McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge and Mystical Union in Western Christianity: Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries’, Church History, 56, no. 1 (1987), 7–24. at 14–15.

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substantial participation’, Calvin instead ‘wanted participation by the Spirit in Jesus’.168 In response to Canlis, it is important to keep in mind that the key term that Calvin objects to in Osiander is not ‘substance’, but the ‘inXowing’ or ‘transfusion’ of substance in a way that neglects the Spirit. For Calvin, union with Christ is always mediated by the Spirit, and participation in Christ is not simply participation in his divinity, but also in his humanity. Indeed, Calvin does not hesitate to speak about participating in the ‘substance’ of Christ;169 moreover, Calvin sometimes speaks of union with Christ making believers and Christ into ‘one substance’.170 In these examples, Calvin is not avoiding terms which have ontological implications. Although Calvin does not always provide analytic clarity on how he uses ontological terms, he does give enough detail to convey that the believer and Christ are not just individuals who share in each other’s life. The ‘oneness’ of the Father and the Son extends to believers who are made one with each other and one with Christ by the Spirit. Commenting upon the phrase ‘that they all may be made one’ in Jesus’s high priestly prayer in John 17: 21, Calvin writes: To comprehend aright what it meant that Christ and the Father are one, take care not to deprive Christ of His person as Mediator. But consider Him rather as He is the Head of the Church, and join Him to His members. Thus the connection will best be preserved; that, if the unity of the Son with the Father is not to be fruitless and useless, its power must be diVused through the whole body of believers. From this, too, we infer that we are one with Christ; not because He transfuses his substance into us, but because by the power of His Spirit He communicates to us His life and all the blessings He has received from the Father.171

The oneness of the Son and the Father should not be ‘fruitless and useless’, but rather through this oneness, the ‘life’ and ‘blessings’ of the Father are communicated through the Son, by the Spirit. As ‘mediator’, Christ is both one with the Father and one with the 168 Canlis, ‘Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God’, 177. 169 See Ch. 3 for a full account of Calvin’s thought on participating in Christ’s ‘substance’. 170 See n. 165. For an analysis of the instances in which Calvin speaks of the believers becoming ‘one substance’ with Christ, see pp. 82–4 below. 171 Comm. John 17: 21, CC; CO 47. 387.

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members of his body, the church. This is not a union or participation in the sense of McGinn’s ‘substantial union’; nor is it a oneness that occurs between the solitary contemplative and Christ. Rather, Calvin speaks of a oneness that extends the oneness of the Father and the Son to the oneness of the Son with ‘the whole body of believers’—the church. Although Calvin uses ‘substance’ negatively in the commentary on John 17 above, it is in reference to the idea of transfusing substance from God to the believer. But if one conceives of ‘substance’ in terms closer to Stoic theories than to nominalist theories, Calvin’s positive language of participation in and oneness with Christ’s ‘substance’ by the Spirit can be seen as a perichoretic model of interpenetration.172 Commenting on the unity of the Trinitarian persons, Calvin shares a passage from Gregory Nazianzus which ‘vastly delights me: ‘‘I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.’’ ’173 The splendour of this oneness and threeness is made even greater as believers are brought into oneness with Christ, and oneness with other believers in the church through participation in Christ. Believers receive the substance of Christ not by transfusion, but by the power of the Spirit, who brings the blessings of the Father given to the Son to the community of faith. Participation in the substance of Christ is irreducibly Trinitarian and communal in Calvin’s thought. In sum, the main purpose of Calvin’s language of ‘substantial participation’ is to diVerentiate his view from accounts of ‘imitating’

172 For an account of the perichoretic dimensions of divine–human relations in Calvin, see Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response, 42, 82–3. This account of Calvin Wts well with Verna Harrison’s account of perichoresis. According to Harrison, perichoresis draws upon ‘Stoic mixture theory’, so that there is ‘a complete mutual interpenetration of two substances that preserves the identity and properties of each intact’. Harrison points out that perichoresis refers not only to intra-Trinitarian relationships but to God–human relations. See Nonna Verna Harrison, ‘Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 35, no. 1 (1991), 53–65, at 54, 58–9. For a general account of Stoicism’s view of ‘substance’, see Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 118–25. Stead’s monograph also gives an account of how early Christian theology builds upon this Stoic account. 173 Institutes, 1. 13. 17. This quotation from Gregory is also given in Calvin’s commentary on John 1: 1.

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Christ which do not involve union with Christ. In faith, believers are united to Christ by the Spirit—forming the Body of Christ—and becoming ‘one substance’ with Christ. Incorporated into the Triune life, the oneness of believers with Christ and with other members of his Body is the same oneness by which the Son is united to the Father. Within this redemptive and ecclesial process, believers partake of the substance of Christ, receiving all that the Father has given to the Son. This participation is ontological and objective, even though the mode of participation is always by the power of the Spirit, thus not subject to circumscription.174 Yet, Calvin leaves no doubt that believers have a life in Christ that is participatory. The Body of believers is given oneness with Christ such that they do not follow Christ at a distance. They follow Christ by partaking of Christ along the Christian path of death, resurrection, and ascension—living lives en christo.

2.4. CONCLUSION In sum, it should be apparent how Calvin’s metaphysics of participation eludes many of the categories of the contemporary discussion of the Gift: Calvin does not fail to have a robust theology of participation because of Scotist tendencies; nor does he develop a theology of participation in Thomist or Palamite categories. As a humanist returning to the sources of theology, Calvin oVers his own appropriation of the biblical and patristic theme of participation, strongly emphasizing a Johannine theology of ‘indwelling’ along with a Pauline soteriology of sin and forgiveness. He exhibits a concern for the unity of divinity and humanity in creation and redemption, while not losing sight of the negative consequences of such an insight (‘without me you can do nothing’). He uses strong, extra-biblical language to emphasize the reality of the oneness that believers share with God through participation in Christ by the Spirit; yet Calvin never suggests that humanity is assimilated into the divine. Calvin is 174 For more on circumscription and the mode of participation by the Spirit, see pp. 136–9 below.

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willing to speak of the way in which believers are deiWed in redemption; yet this hyperbolic language does not imply, for Calvin, that distinctively divine attributes overwhelm human attributes in gloriWed believers. This chapter has shown that although Calvin’s knowledge of the church fathers is almost entirely self-taught and functions in a polemical way, he does make considerable use of patristic developments related to the doctrine of participation. As a humanist scholar, Calvin was not afraid to take on opponents on the ground of patristic interpretation; using the principle of ad fontes, Calvin shows direct engagement with the texts of key church fathers. Thus, while there is no church father with whom Calvin claims complete agreement, he does make impressive, if eclectic, developments in engagement with patristic texts.175 In this way, Calvin the biblical theologian is much more catholic on the theme of participation than his interpreters usually recognize. Calvin’s catholic theology of participation returns to the sources of theology in scripture and the church fathers, resulting in a metaphysics that does not Wt neatly into the broad, conventional categories of theologies of participation. Neither a Thomist nor a nominalist nor a Palamite, Calvin emphasizes the Trinitarian incorporation of believers through a diVerentiated ‘oneness’ and ‘participation’ that extend from creation to redemption, overcoming the disruption of sin by uniting believers to God, in Christ, by the Spirit. The context for participation in Christ is the communal life of the church, for believers are made into one Body as they are made one with Christ. Yet, Calvin the Reformer remains distinct from broadly catholic alternatives by insisting upon a theology of participation involving a forensic act of divine pardon. Through receiving God’s forgiveness by Christ’s work on the Cross, believers participate in the righteousness 175 Note that I am not claiming that Calvin reads the patristic writings strictly on their own terms (see Ch. 1 n. 70). Calvin does not encounter the Irenaeus or Cyril of Alexandria of twenty-Wrst-century critical scholarship. Calvin uses patristic texts. His use is shaped by the conventions of sixteenth-century theological discourse and polemics. Nevertheless, there are substantive developments and clariWcations of Calvin’s own position which take place as he interacts with these patristic texts. In The Bondage and Liberation of the Will in particular, Calvin gives clariWcation and nuance to his theology (while interacting with patristic texts) which do not occur in his other writings.

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of Christ which is beyond ourselves (extra nos); they are freed from the bondage of works righteousness, empowered by the Spirit to love God and neighbour in gratitude and thanksgiving. For Calvin, the path toward participation in God necessarily involves the reception of the Father’s free pardon as believers are united to Christ through faith, by the Spirit.

3 The Development of Calvin’s Language of ‘Participation in Christ’ What does Calvin mean when he speaks of ‘participation in Christ’? Having discussed a host of background and metaphysical issues that bear upon the question in Chapter 2, we now move to a close examination of the language itself. Chapters 4 and 5 explore how this theme relates to prayer, sacraments, the law, and society. Before this thematic analysis, however, an analytic task is necessary: in what contexts does Calvin’s language about ‘participation’ appear? When does this theme emerge, and what biblical material is Calvin building upon in speaking of ‘participation’? In order to carry out this analytic task, we need to consider the development of Calvin’s language of participation. Most theologians involved in the contemporary Gift discussion have ignored the question of development in Calvin’s thought, looking to the Wnal edition of the Institutes for the deWnitive statement of his theology.1 These theologians follow Alister McGrath in the sentiment that Calvin is essentially a man of one book.2 However, by

1 This is the case in the overall Gift discussion, for Wgures such as Stephen Webb, Kathryn Tanner, Catherine Pickstock, and John Milbank. What is particularly striking is that this trend of neglecting development and only looking to the 1559 Institutes is present in the works that have a special focus on Calvin’s theology of participation. See Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’; Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’; Ward, Cities of God. 2 McGrath downplays the signiWcance of the commentaries and the notion of development in Calvin’s thought. ‘In dealing with any given topic in the 1559 edition, the reader can rest assured that he or she will encounter everything Calvin regarded as essential to grasping his position on the topic’ (McGrath, A Life of John Calvin, 147).

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ignoring the development of the Institutes and the signiWcance of Calvin’s other genres and writings, the Gift theologians not only miss relevant material in areas where they critique Calvin’s theology, but risk misunderstanding the Institutes itself. It is a mistake to view the 1559 framework of the Institutes as a starting point rather than an ending point. In this chapter, I will show how attention to the development of Calvin’s ‘programme’, as carried out in the Institutes and the biblical commentaries, can illuminate the theme of participation in Christ in Calvin’s theology. In spite of recent attention in Calvin studies to the development of his thought, there is no current account of how the nexus of themes related to participation Wts into Calvin’s overall theological development. I intend to show that the theme of participation receives a great deal of expansion and intensiWcation through the course of Calvin’s work. After beginning to connect participation with justiWcation and the sacraments in 1536, Calvin greatly expands the theme beginning in 1539, applying the language to a wide variety of doctrinal loci. In addition, through Calvin’s extension of a Pauline hermeneutical lens to his commentaries, he uses a cluster of images related to ‘participation’ to interpret a wide variety of scriptural passages. In his commentaries, he enriches the meaning of the term participes and its variants, using it as a way to speak of how humanity is united to God, both in the Incarnation and in redemption. In addition, through his sacramental controversies with Westphal and Heshusius, Calvin’s key terms and concepts related to ‘participation’ are clariWed and intensiWed. Through all of these developments, Calvin not only extends the notion of ‘participation’ to a wide variety of doctrinal loci; he uses the term to designate a rich communion, or koinonia, which applies to both the Trinitarian adoption of humanity and the rich fellowship of the church. Through examining the development and scope of Calvin’s theology of participation, it becomes clear that ‘participation in Christ’ is a weighty and wide-ranging category in his thought. In his ‘Introduction’, Thomas Davis records others who treat Calvin as a man of ‘one book’. See Davis, The Clearest Promises of God.

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Calvin’s Language of ‘Participation in Christ’ 3 . 1. E A R LY WR I TI N G S : ‘ PA RT I C I PATI O N ’ IN T HE F I RS T E D IT I O N S O F T HE I N S TI T U T E S AND OTHER EARLY W RITINGS

3.1.1. The Origin of the Institutes, 1536 In the Wrst edition of the Institutes, Calvin develops the theme of ‘participation in Christ’ in relation to three major topics: the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and justiWcation. Calvin’s mature thought on these issues will be examined in depth in Chapter 4, but examination of the Wrst edition gives a window into the origin and development of Calvin’s overall theme of participation in Christ. Calvin wrote the 1536 Institutes as a little-known scholar at the age of 26, in exile in Basel from persecution in France. In 1535 Calvin Xed from Paris to Basel, as arrests and executions were taking place among evangelical sympathizers in response to the Placards controversy. The Placards were posters placed in cities around France severely attacking the Roman Catholic Mass as idolatry. Calvin and others with evangelical associations Xed this persecution, going to Basel, where Heinrich Bullinger, Guillaume Farel, and other Reformers were living.3 After developing friendships with his new colleagues in Basel, Calvin completed the Wrst edition of the Institutes in 1535–6. The genre of the 1536 Institutes conforms in a broad way to a medieval catechetical style. Other Reformers also adapted this catechetical style, including Luther, Farel, and Francis Lambert.4 Having recently identiWed himself with the movement of reform, perhaps it is not surprising that the topic of justiWcation leads Calvin to some of his strongest language of ‘participation in Christ’. In this Wrst edition, Calvin devotes only a short section to justiWcation; his thought on the subject shows the inXuence of Luther. Yet, this section is kept in all later editions of the Institutes, functioning as a key exposition as Calvin expanded his thought on justiWcation. In Calvin’s account, the biblical and patristic theme of the ‘wondrous 3 See Parker, John Calvin, 32–3; Cottret, Calvin, 82–8. 4 Ford Lewis Battles, ‘Introduction and Notes’, in Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), p. xxxvii.

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exchange’ plays a prominent role, forming his basic framework for imputation and regeneration: It is that thus engrafted into him we are already, in a manner, partakers of eternal life, having entered the Kingdom of God through hope. This is too little: we experience such participation in him (eius participationem) that, although we are still foolish in ourselves, he is our wisdom before God; while we are sinners, he is our righteousness; while we are unclean, he is our purity; while we are weak, while we are unarmed and exposed to Satan, yet ours is that power which has been given him in heaven and on earth to crush Satan for us and shatter the gates of hell; while we still bear about with us the body of death, he is yet our life. In brief, because all things are ours and we have all things in him, in us there is nothing. Upon this foundation we must be built if we would grow into a holy temple to the Lord.5

Even at this early stage, it is clear that imputation and regeneration are quite diVerent for Calvin than the portrait one sees of them in the critiques of Gift theologians such as Pickstock and Milbank.6 The wondrous exchange as imputation is not simply an externalized transaction that happens outside oneself, thus not requiring true transformation. As Calvin later states it, imputation and regeneration constitute a double grace (duplex gratia) and are inseparable.7 On the one hand, in contrasting his view with thinkers who make human merit a ground for justiWcation, Calvin can say that ‘in us there is nothing’. But this is after saying that—through a participation in Christ—believers have wisdom, purity, power, life, and all that Christ has. The moment of reception is inseparable from the moment of empowerment by which believers are enabled to ‘grow into a holy temple’. The wondrous exchange in imputation draws believers into a transforming union with Christ, even as the transformation of believers does not provide the ground for this union. For the 1536 Institutes overall, Calvin’s connection of participation with the wondrous exchange and justiWcation constitutes a signiWcant part of his theology of participation. This is apparent even when Calvin moves to the sacraments: the beneWt received through 5 Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 37; OS 1. 63. 6 See Milbank, Being Reconciled, 138; Pickstock, After Writing, 156–8. 7 Ch. 4 explores the notion of participation and the duplex gratia in considerable depth.

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the sacraments is supremely the beneWt received in justiWcation, a participation in Christ through whom we are forgiven our sin, adopted as God’s children, and empowered by the Spirit. Christ is the root and source for believers to Wnd nourishment; the righteousness, wisdom, and power of believers are only through this wondrous, participatory exchange with Christ.8 As we examine the language of participation and the sacraments in the Wrst edition of the Institutes, several elements of historical context are relevant to note. Although the Wrst edition of the Institutes had a catechetical style, it also had an apologetic edge. The work begins with a letter to Francis I of France, making a ‘plea for the persecuted evangelicals’ and an apology for the orthodoxy and antiquity of the Reforming movement. Thus, after addressing the standard topics of expositing the Decalogue, the Apostles’ Creed, faith, prayer, and the sacraments, Calvin adds two chapters with particular relevance to the possibility of political clemency toward the evangelical movement: a critique of ‘the Wve false sacraments’ and a Wnal chapter on ‘Christian Freedom, Ecclesiastical Power and Political Administration’. This is a catechizing work, but one which is seeking to catechize persons who should be prepared for political and ecclesial resistance, unless Francis I were to consent to Calvin’s plea for clemency. One aspect of this apologetic plea was that Calvin supported the evangelicals who had faced recent persecution in France, yet he diVerentiated himself from central propagandists behind the Placards controversy. The title of the Placards describes their purpose well: ‘Trustworthy Articles on the Horrible, Great and Unbearable Abuses of the Papal Mass: devised directly against the Holy Supper of Jesus Christ.’9 Calvin identiWes with his evangelical comrades in rejecting the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and in Xeeing Paris along with others of the Reforming cause. Yet, Calvin’s positive doctrine of the Lord’s Supper is quite diVerent from that of key French evangelical propagandists of 1534–5, Antione Marcourt and Guillaume Farel.10 8 See Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 87–8, 94–6, 102–3; OS 1. 118–19, 127–9, 136–8. 9 Battles, ‘Introduction and Notes’, 339. 10 On Marcourt and Farel, see Christopher Elwood, The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 2. Translations from Marcourt and Farel below are from Elwood’s book.

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Broadly considered, Marcourt and Farel were both Zwinglian in their doctrines of the Lord’s Supper. Marcourt borrows many of Zwingli’s arguments in the case against the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Mass. A common tactic of this Zwinglian polemic is to claim that the body of Christ is at the right hand of the Father, not contained or bound to the physical elements of bread and wine. Christ has ascended, and ‘a true body is ever only in one place at one time’.11 Farel, in contrast, published a liturgical handbook in 1534 which provided a positive doctrine of the Lord’s Supper for the French evangelical movement. For Farel, the key to the Lord’s Supper is remembering Jesus’s unique sacriWce of love which brings together the present Body of Christ—the church. The Supper ‘is a visible communion of the members of Jesus Christ’.12 This fellowship is ‘without any distinction . . . all living in the same spirit and the same faith’, in contrast to the Mass, where the clergy deny the cup to laypersons.13 Yet to Farel, the Supper is more than simply an act of memory that leads to mutual love. The communal fellowship involved in the Supper is intrinsically connected with language of being engrafted into Christ. [T]hose who take and break one and the same bread are one and the same body, which is the body of Jesus Christ, and members of another, grafted and planted in him, to whom they declare and promise to persevere until the end and to not be separated from the faith of the gospel and the union which they all have in God through Jesus Christ.14

Thus, while Farel stays within a broadly memorialist tradition concerning the Supper, he nonetheless gives it a distinct character through his language of union and engrafting into Christ. Given the context of the eucharistic discussion among evangelicals in 1534–5, one can see how Calvin’s language of participation in the 1536 Institutes draws upon this context, while transforming it into something new. With Marcourt, Calvin uses the argument that the ascended Christ has his body only in heaven, and thus that transubstantiation is profoundly blasphemous. And with Farel, Calvin seems to avoid 11 Antione Marcourt, ‘Petit Traicte de la saincte eucharistie’, in The Body Broken, trans. C. Elwood (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 35. 12 Guillaume Farel, ‘Le Maniere et Fasson’, ibid. 42. 13 Ibid. 43. 14 Ibid. 42–3.

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extensive discussions of the elements per se, lest an adoration of the elements block one from the signiWed—the real point of the Lord’s Supper—which is communion with God and others through union with Christ. Calvin’s language of participation in Christ is a way to express this union, but in somewhat stronger, less memorialist terms than Farel. In his chapter on the sacraments, Calvin sorts through the various eucharistic disputes that his ‘opponents Wght over’, and points to what he believes is the core of the matter that they neglect: those who feel thus [in arguing], do not pay attention, in the Wrst place, to the necessity of asking how Christ’s body, as it was given for us, became ours; how his blood, as it was shed for us, became ours (quomodo sanguinis eVusi participes Wamus). But that means to possess the whole Christ cruciWed, and to become a participant in all his beneWts.15

Although Calvin speaks of possessing Christ, receiving what is Christ’s, and partaking of his blood, it is important to note that Calvin’s early eucharistic theology is still closer at this point to the Zwinglian emphasis of Marcourt and Farel than his later theology will be. The diVerence is quite clear even on the level of terminology. In the 1536 edition of the Institutes, the idea of the Supper ‘exhibiting’ Christ is used negatively,16 whereas later Calvin uses it positively. He also uses the idea of Christ being ‘substantially’ present in a negative sense only, another theme which becomes a hallmark of Calvin’s mature eucharistic theology.17 Nevertheless, Calvin’s early eucharistic theology does use the language of participation to develop and intensify Farel’s theme of union with Christ and mutual love in the Supper. Calvin’s eucharistic theology eventually moves from a memorialistic conception to one emphasizing a ‘true participation’ in Christ, similar to that of Martin Bucer.18 15 Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 104; OS 1. 139. 16 Ibid. 103; OS 1. 138. 17 Ibid. 104; OS 1. 139. 18 For more on Calvin’s eucharistic development from his early statements in the 1536 edition of the Institutes, see Davis, The Clearest Promises of God, ch. 3. On Bucer’s eucharistic theology see Irena Backus, ‘La the´orie logique de Martin Bucer: la pre´dication chez P. Crockaert, Georges de Tre´bizonde, R. Lever et M. Bucer’, Cahiers de la revue de the´ologie et de philosophie, no. 5 (1980), 27–39; idem, ‘Polemic, Exegetical Tradition and Ontology: Bucer’s Interpretation of John 6:52, 53, and 64 before and after the Wittenberg Concord’, in The Bible in the Sixteenth Century, ed. David Steinmetz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 167–80.

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In comparison with his account of the Supper, Calvin is more emphatic in his language of participation in the 1536 Institutes when it comes to baptism. Through baptism one really—not just symbolically—participates in the death and resurrection of Christ. Calvin contrasts this with mere ‘imitation’ of Christ (imitationem eius), as if our participation in Christ were merely an exhortation to ‘die to our desires’ and ‘by the example of his resurrection to be aroused to righteousness’. Rather, ‘he takes hold of something far higher, namely, that through baptism Christ makes us sharers in his death (Christus nos mortis suae fecerit participes), that we may be engrafted into it. And just as the twig draws substance and nourishment from the root to which it is grafted, so those who receive baptism with right faith truly feel the eVective working of Christ’s death in the mortiWcation of their Xesh, together with the working of his resurrection in the quickening of the Spirit.’19 For Calvin, baptism is truly a sacrament in which God works eVectually: it is not simply a testimony or an exhortation to follow Christ; rather, through the Spirit one is enabled to follow Christ, to participate in Christ. Baptism does have moral implications in terms of mortiWcation and sanctiWcation; but these moral ends are accomplished through God’s power, nourished by the root into which believers are engrafted. In sum, several features of Calvin’s emerging doctrine of participation are apparent in 1536. First, the notion of participation is tied to justiWcation and the involvement of believers in the wondrous exchange. As such, participation as justiWcation informs Calvin’s sense of what ‘participation’ involves when applied to the sacraments. Thus in baptism, the wondrous exchange is experienced by believers, as they participate in the death and new life of Christ through the Spirit. Baptism eVects what God promises, as believers are mortiWed and viviWed. In his eucharistic theology, however, Calvin is not so clear. Calvin follows Farel in strengthening the French evangelical emphasis upon mutual love with an account of union and engrafting in Christ at the Supper. But Calvin also stands at this point in a memorialist tradition, using the key eucharistic terms of ‘substance’ and ‘exhibit’ in negative senses as part of a polemic against the Mass. 19 Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 95; OS 1. 129.

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3.1.2. From Catechism to Theological System: the Institutes from 1539 to 1543 The Institutes and Calvin’s theology of participation undergo dramatic changes between 1539 and 1543. During this time, the Institutes are transformed by Calvin’s new reading of the book of Romans. The theme of participation is greatly expanded, extending to more theological loci and intensifying in content. In particular, the intensiWcation of Calvin’s language of participation goes hand in hand with changes in his eucharistic theology. Throughout this period, Calvin develops a theology of participating in the substance of Christ, becoming one with God through the Spirit. After an unsuccessful time with Farel as a Reformer in Geneva (1536–8), Calvin went to Strasbourg, and through the encouragement of Bucer became a lecturer in Bible.20 Calvin also set to writing a second edition of the Institutes, Wnished in 1539, as he was working on his Wrst biblical commentary, on Romans. The years 1538–41 were crucial for Calvin’s theological development, as he found himself away from the ecclesial and political struggles of Geneva in a Strasbourg which gave him time and space for rethinking and writing.21 During this time, the Institutes moves from being an extended, apologetic catechism in 1536 to a theological system that bears Calvin’s distinctive character in 1539.22 As Richard Muller writes: Calvin departed from the 1536 framework in barely three years—at which point he indicated in his revised title that the 1539 work was, Wnally, a genuine institutio. The 1539 order, in its two major expansions of 1543 and 1550, was the order of the Institutes that served him for twenty years, during his most productive period. It was also the primary form by which his theology was known and assessed by his contemporaries, and it was the place where Calvin most clearly and precisely identiWed the theological loci that he believed ought to be elicited from scripture and gathered into a ‘right order of teaching’. If the order changed somewhat in 1559, the actual identiWcation of topics or loci altered but little, and, in fact, much of the 1539 Pauline ordo remained in the 1559 edition.23 20 See Wendel, Calvin, ch. 2. 21 See William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 21; Cottret, Calvin, 132; Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 27. 22 Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 186–7. 23 Ibid. 186.

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In this movement to a theological system, Calvin not only expands upon the topics present in the catechism, but adds topics that were absent in the catechism according to the Pauline order drawn from Romans. Following Melanchthon and using his humanistic training, Calvin gives a rhetorical reading of the book of Romans to order the topics or loci of theology.24 Like Melanchthon, Calvin felt that Romans provided the key for interpreting the whole of scripture. ‘If we have gained a true understanding of this Epistle, we have an open door to all the most profound treasures of scripture.’25 If the 1539 Institutes was no longer a catechism, what exactly was this Pauline-ordered approach to the loci of theology? Calvin gives a sense of this in his ‘Letter to the Reader’, which he wrote in 1539 and which was included with the Institutes (in revised form) until the Wnal edition: Moreover, it has been my purpose in this labor to prepare and instruct candidates in sacred theology for the reading of the divine Word, in order that they may be able both to have easy access to it and advance in it without stumbling. For I believe I have so embraced the sum of religion in all its parts, and have arranged it in such an order, that if anyone rightly grasps it, it will not be diYcult for him to determine what he ought especially to seek in Scripture, and to what end he ought to relate its contents. If, after this road has, as it were, been paved, I shall publish any interpretations of scripture, I shall always condense them, because I shall have no need to undertake long doctrinal discussion, and to digress into commonplaces.26

Calvin then goes on to say that ‘the program of this instruction is clearly mirrored in all my commentaries’, recommending his (forthcoming) commentary on Romans as an exemplary example.27 From this ‘Letter to the Reader’, several things should be noted. First, the Institutes provides a ‘sum of religion’ in a way that prepares 24 See Richard A. Muller, ‘Ordo docendi: Melanchthon and the Organization of Calvin’s Institutes, 1536–1543’, in Melanchthon in Europe, ed. Karin Maag (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999), 123–40. 25 Comm. Romans, ‘Argument’, CC; CO 49. 1. 26 OS 2. 6. Where the passages quoted in the editions from 1539 to 1550 undergo no alteration, translations are from Battles’s translation of the Institutes, unless otherwise noted. Relevant Latin phrases and alternative renderings of English phrases appear in parentheses. 27 Ibid.

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persons to understand and apply scripture rightly. The goal is not for a self-standing, speculative system of theology, but a ‘sum’ of the relevant topics of doctrine for understanding scripture. Secondly, the Calvin of 1539—who has not Wnished any commentaries—here sets out his plan for future commentaries and also future editions of the Institutes. The two are to be interrelated, as ‘long doctrinal discussion’ is to be avoided in the commentaries but to be dealt with in the Institutes, a practice which explains many of the later revisions of the Institutes. With this close but strictly distinguished interrelationship between the Institutes and the commentaries, it should not be surprising that a full account of Calvin’s theology simply must attend to the commentaries. Although the Institutes is the ‘sum of religion in all of its parts’, preference for inclusion in the Institutes is given to loci that have come into particular dispute, as well as those that Wt with the already established Pauline loci. With this approach, Calvin’s theology in the Institutes is a ‘system’ of theology in a very particular sense. It is not a deductive theory of dogma, where one argues from a centre like ‘predestination’ or even ‘union with Christ’, with a particular dogma functioning as ‘Wrst principles’.28 On the one hand, Calvin’s loci in the Institutes are drawn from his exegetical work. On the other hand, Calvin does seek to exposit the deep coherence among the loci, a coherence with a Pauline shape. But establishing this coherence does not give his theology a deductive logic, particularly on points like predestination, in which his argument is based directly upon his reading of scripture and tradition, tempered only by his doctrine of accommodation that functions in a roughly apophatic way. While Calvin’s loci method is distinctively Reformed in its practice of adopting a Pauline ordo from Romans, it also has continuity with the original construction of topics in Lombard’s twelfth-century Sententia, as Muller has pointed out.29 It is a system, but a system of ‘common places’ relevant to the

28 For an extensive response to the notion that Calvin’s theology is a deductive system, see Muller, After Calvin, chs. 4, 5. Muller also gives an insightful account of the loci method in Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, ch. 6. 29 Richard A. Muller, ‘Calvin and the ‘‘Calvinists’’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy’, Calvin Theological Journal, 31 (1996), 125–60, at 131.

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reading of scripture, holding together the varied doctrinal content of scripture in a distinctively Pauline fashion. How does Calvin’s theme of participation function in this new context of the 1539 Institutes? On some topics, such as the Lord’s Supper and justiWcation, there is signiWcant expansion and—with the Lord’s Supper—intensiWcation of the language of participation.30 However, on other topics something new happens: certain loci, especially the loci in the Creed, develop a doctrine of participation that was previously absent. This is indicative of the theological rethinking that Calvin is doing, wherein the Institutes is transformed from a catechetical work to a system of theology. Moreover, this system of theology shows the distinctive marks of Romans, with its theology of participation in chapters 6 and 8 having implications for a variety of loci.31 These changes Wrst become apparent in the new chapter 2 of 1539, ‘On the Knowledge of Humans and the Freedom of the Will’. Here Calvin gives his anthropology, in which no part of the human soul is untouched by sin. But Calvin also adds material concerning the imago Dei, which is later expanded in the Wnal edition of the Institutes.32 By 1539, Calvin is claiming that humanity was given ‘the highest degree of honor’ by being ‘created in the image of God, thus suggesting that man was blessed, not because of his own good actions, but by participation in God (Dei participatione fuisse)’.33 30 To account for this language of participation, one should note not only the inXuence of Melanchthon and Calvin’s own work on Romans, but also the language of participation in Calvin’s host and senior colleague in Strasbourg, Bucer. See p. 74 above. 31 From Rom. 6. 1–14 Calvin develops the themes of union with Christ, engrafting into Christ, and participation in Christ’s death and resurrection for baptized believers. From Rom. 8, Calvin develops a Trinitarian account of adoption—that believers are united to Christ by the Spirit, who works in believers and enables them to call out to God as ‘Father’. Believers are made participants in Christ’s suVering, as well as participants in Christ’s glory (Rom. 8: 17). A related theme is God’s indwelling Spirit in believers, also prominent in ch. 8. 32 In the Institutes of 1536 and Catechism of 1538, Calvin speaks of the image of God being ‘cancelled and eVaced’ (Institutes, 1536) and seemingly lost. But, as Hesselink points out, Calvin later makes it clear in the commentaries and the Institutes that this is not a total loss, for a vestige remains. The language of participation added here is part of Calvin’s development on this point in 1539. See John Calvin and I. John Hesselink, Calvin’s First Catechism: A Commentary Featuring Ford Lewis Battles’ Translation of the 1538 Catechism, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), 62–8. 33 Wevers 19, in 2. 6. 25 (of 1559 edn).

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In Calvin’s chapter 4 of the 1539 edition, ‘On Faith and the Apostle’s Creed’, Calvin adds numerous instances of participation language, applying it to Christ, the Spirit, and the believer’s Trinitarian incorporation into the church. Chapter 4, on the Creed, will be expanded into three chapters by the 1543 edition. Two years later (in the 1545 Catechism), Calvin develops his fourfold division of the Creed that roughly corresponds to the fourfold division of books he uses in the Wnal 1559 edition of the Institutes.34 The new material on participation in chapter 4 of 1539 forms a soteriological theme which will be spread across the Wnal edition of the Institutes, as the 1559 edition constitutes a reorganizing of the material in accordance with Calvin’s fourfold division of the Creed. Thus, while one reference to participation in chapter 4 ends up in book 2 among Calvin’s 1559 chapters on Christology, another passage speaks of participation and the Trinity, a section that will end up in book 1.35 Several passages that speak of the Spirit’s work in the church using the language of participation end up in book 4, chapter 1, on the church.36 In this way, Calvin’s broadening of the theme of participation in 1539 is already anticipating the breadth that the concept will have in 1559. From the language of participation in the Creed (chapter 4, 1539), Calvin’s language about the Spirit is most striking. The translations of both Beveridge and Battles shy away from the directness of one passage, where Calvin speaks of believers becoming ‘participants in God’ through the Spirit. ‘By means of him [the Spirit] we become partakers of the divine nature (we become participants in God in Dei participationem venimus), so as in a manner to feel his quickening energy within us. Our justiWcation is his work; from him is power, sanctiWcation, truth, grace, and every good thought, since it is from the Spirit alone that all good gifts proceed.’37 This is clearly a Trinitarian participation, as Calvin elsewhere puts it in chapter 4, in speaking of the elect, ‘that all those who, by the mercy of God the Father, through the eYcacy of the Holy Spirit, have become partakers with Christ

34 See Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 132. 35 Thus Wevers 116 is included in 2. 16. 7 in 1559 on Christology. Wevers 102 is included in 1. 13. 14 in 1559 on the Trinity. 36 Wevers 121, 123, in 4. 1. 2, 3, respectively. 37 Wevers 102–3, in 4. 27. 15. Beveridge trans., Institutes.

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(in Christi participationem venerunt)’.38 Thus, in expositing the Creed and speaking of the work of God, Calvin views salvation as involving participation in God and Christ by the Spirit. Indeed, at one point in chapter 4 Calvin adds to a 1536 passage speciWcally to emphasize that salvation entails believers being called ‘not only’ to the ‘inheritance of eternal life’ (which is where 1536 ends) ‘but to participation in one God and Christ (sed in unius Dei ac Christi participationem etiam vocati)’.39 Participation in Christ, by the Spirit, unites believers to God. Calvin also makes additions on the theme of justiWcation in chapter 6 of the 1539 Institutes, supplementing the already strong language of participation in the 1536 edition. Certain passages continue to reXect language of the wondrous exchange: ‘You see that our righteousness is not in us but in Christ, that we possess it only because we are partakers in Christ (Christi sumus participes); indeed, with him we possess all its riches.’40 But to ground his very close connection of justiWcation with sanctiWcation—and at the same time the distinction between the two—Calvin emphasizes the oneness brought about through participation. ‘For in what way does true faith justify save when it binds us to Christ so that, made one with him, we may enjoy participation in his righteousness (participatione iustitiae eius fruamur)?’41 As in 1536, Calvin’s argument is unapologetic regarding imputation. If one denies that we ‘participate’ in Christ’s righteousness and not just our own, one also denies the true union and oneness of believers with Christ. In chapter 12 of the 1539 edition, on the Lord’s Supper, Calvin has strengthened his language about the objectivity and eYcacy of the Lord’s Supper, using the language of participation as part of this strategy. Several terms are used positively in the 1539 edition which were not used in 1536, or were not used in an unequivocally positive way. He introduces a phrase, to be expanded in later editions, that by Lord’s Supper ‘we are quickened by the true partaking of him (nempe vera sui participatione viviWcari)’.42 In addition, with regard to sign and signiWed, Calvin says that ‘The Lord truly represents the participation in his body’ such that ‘he truly presents and shows (vere praestet atque exhibeat) his body’.43 As other studies have shown, 38 Wevers 123, in 4. 48. 25. 40 Wevers 167, in 6. 6. 11. 42 Wevers 293, in 12. 9. 19.

39 Wevers 121, in 4. 46. 52. 41 Wevers 191, in 6. 33. 37. 43 Wevers 295, in 12. 13. 35.

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these terms become important ones for Calvin’s mature eucharistic theology.44 Calvin seems to be following the path of Bucer in his distinctive reception of Augustine and conWguration of the ‘union with Christ’ in the Supper.45 It is important to recognize, however, that they take place as part of expansions that speciWcally emphasize the language of participation, seeking to explain what it means to have a ‘true participation’ in Christ through the Supper. Indeed, although the revisions of 1543 continue to Wt with the 1539 ordering of topics, Calvin continues to make additions which reXect the Pauline theology of Romans.46 This includes expanding upon the meaning of participation in Christ by adding a potentially controversial new term: substantia. Although Calvin generally avoids using non-biblical terms in a normative way, he decides to use substantia—in conjunction with participes—to emphasize the reality of Christ’s body and blood given for believers in the Supper.47 Now, even though all these things have to do with faith, I leave no place for the sophistry that what I mean when I say Christ is received by faith is that he is received only by understanding and imagination. For the promises oVer him, not for us to halt in the appearance and bare knowledge alone, but to enjoy true participation in him. And indeed, I do not see how anyone can trust that he has redemption and righteousness in the cross of Christ, and life in his death, unless he relies chieXy upon a true participation in Christ himself. For those beneWts would not come to us unless Christ Wrst made himself ours. I say, therefore, that in the mystery of the Supper, Christ is truly shown to us (Christ is truly exhibited to us, Christum vere nobis exhiberi) through the symbols of bread and wine, his very body and blood, in which he has fulWlled all obedience to obtain righteousness for us. Why? 44 See Davis, The Clearest Promises of God, chs. 5 and 6. Also see Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response, ch. 9; Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, ch. 5. 45 See p. 74 above and Davis, The Clearest Promises of God, 147. 46 Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 146. 47 Calvin’s Wrst positive use of substantia with regard to the Supper is in the Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper in 1541, followed by the Geneva Catechism, also in 1541. In the Short Treatise, the sense is slightly diVerent from the Catechism and Institutes of 1543. In the Short Treatise he speaks of Jesus Christ as the ‘substance’ of the sacraments, a ‘substance’ which is conjoined with the signs in the elements (TT 2. 169–70, 172–3; OS 1. 507–8, 509–10). In the Catechism and the 1543 Institutes, Calvin speaks of believers partaking of the substance of Christ, in order to be one with Christ. Cf. Geneva Catechism of 1541, where Calvin says that in the Supper Christ ‘makes us partakers of his substance (sustantiae participes), by which we are joined in one life with him’ (TT 2. 91; CO 6. 128).

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First, that we may grow into one body with him; secondly, having been made partakers of his substance (participes substantiae eius facti), that we may also feel his power in partaking (in . . . communicatione) of all his beneWts.48

Thus, by 1543, Calvin is contrasting an approach whereby Christ is received in the Supper by the ‘understanding’ with ‘bare knowledge’ with his doctrine in which believers have ‘a true participation in Christ himself ’. Calvin then uses the language of substantia to make this point emphatic: in being united to Christ in the Supper, believers have been ‘made partakers of his substance’. Calvin expands upon the language of substance and union even further in another passage in the 1545 French edition, claiming that in becoming members of Christ’s Body believers are ‘made of one substance with him’. In this passage, Calvin says that ‘daily he [Christ] more and more unites himself to us in one and the same substance (une mesme substance)’.49 Although these additions of ‘substance’ language in the 1545 Institutes are later deleted, Calvin continues to speak of believers and Christ uniting into ‘one substance’ in several commentaries, keeping this language through the Wnal editions of these works.50 It is clear that by the middle years of the 1540s, Calvin has established distance in his eucharistic theology not only from Farel and Marcourt, but from his own more cautious words of 1536. Indeed, Calvin deleted passages from the 1536 Institutes which objected to the claim that Christ’s substance is received in the Eucharist (with reference to transubstantiation). While Calvin still objects to transubstantiation, he now claims that Christ’s substance is indeed received in 48 OS 5. 352–3. 49 OS 4. 35. David Willis-Watkins, ‘The Unio Mystica and the Assurance of Faith according to Calvin’, in Calvin: Erbe und Auftrag, ed. Willem van’t Spijker (Kampen, Netherlands: J. H. Kok, 1991), 77–84. at 90. 50 Much is made of these deletions by Mosser and Willis. See Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing’, 48; Willis, ‘The Unio Mystica’, 80. However, Calvin uses the same language in his commentaries. For example, in speaking of the incorporation of believers into Christ in the Supper while commenting on 1 Cor. 11: 24, Calvin speaks of being united into ‘one life and substance’ with Christ (CO 49. 487). Calvin uses ‘substance’ in a similar sense in his commentary on Ephs. 5:31. A third example of ‘one substance’ language regarding union with Christ is in Calvin’s sermon on Gal. 3. 26–9. Both commentaries were written after the Institutes of 1545, and these passages are kept through the revisions of the Epistle commentaries in 1551 and 1556.

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the Supper.51 The gradual intensiWcation of Calvin’s language concerning the Lord’s Supper has been documented elsewhere,52 but what should be recognized from the present analysis is that the addition of Calvin’s new terms of emphasis and realism (namely, vere praestet, vere exhibeat, and substantia) are closely linked with his intensifying language of participation in Christ. In sum, I have sought not only to brieXy chronicle the transformation of the Institutes in 1539/43 in terms of Calvin’s theological ‘programme’, but I have argued that the broadening and intensiWcation of his doctrine of participation was an important part of the implementation of this programme. In the movement from catechism to theological loci ordered and guided by a Pauline logic, the doctrine of participation starts to play a normative role not only for Calvin’s doctrine of justiWcation, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, but for his doctrine of imago Dei, the Trinity, Christ, and the Spirit. Moreover, the emphasis upon participation in God and oneness with Christ has been heightened with the development of this language. Some of the sources for these additions are a result of Calvin’s work on his Wrst commentary, Romans (1540), which he worked on simultaneously with the 1539 Institutes. Thus the language and images of participation from Romans 6 and 8 come to play a prominent role through these revisions in the Institutes. Another cause of additions was Calvin’s overall eVort to develop further his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. In addition, one must account for the change in genre that the Institutes itself has undergone: from a catechism to a Pauline-ordered excursus about the interrelated loci of theology. As a part of this task of rethinking and rewriting, Calvin is Wnding what early church fathers had found: that the soteriological theme of participation in Christ is one that brings together reXection about God and humanity, God’s ways and the human way of following, and ultimately the profound union of God with humanity in its fullest state.53

51 See Elwood, The Body Broken, 67–8; David Willis, ‘Calvin’s use of Substantia’, in Calvinus ecclesiae Genevensis custos, ed. Wilhelm H. Neuser (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1984), 289–301. 52 See Davis, The Clearest Promises of God, chs. 3–6. 53 See Ch. 2 for a discussion of participation and patristic theology.

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3 . 2 . D EV E LO P M E N T O F C A LV I N ’ S ‘ P ROG R A M M E ’ T H RO U G H C O M M E NTAR IES AND C ONTROVERSIES Although Calvin outlined his ‘programme’ for the Institutes and the commentaries in 1539/40, his ambitious commentary task was delayed by his return to Geneva.54 Calvin’s relative leisure from the tumults of sixteenth-century ecclesial-political demands was coming to an end. While Calvin established the Ordonnances upon his return, which provided for a theology school where he could continue his ‘programme’ through giving lectures on biblical theology, the new demands of Geneva were to exact their toll. Calvin’s Wrst commentary after Romans was not published until 1546, in spite of his giving lectures on the Pauline and pastoral epistles in the early 1540s. Nevertheless, Calvin’s theological schema for biblical exegesis established in 1539/40 was to have a far-reaching impact. In the following section, I will focus on how the theme of participation is incorporated into the central hermeneutical and theological assumptions that unfold in the exegetical part of Calvin’s ‘programme’. After beginning with an account of his hermeneutical approach in Romans (1540), I examine the distinctive theological beliefs that supplement his hermeneutics, outlined in sections on the Testaments in the Institutes of 1539. Having articulated these aspects of Calvin’s ‘programme’ of 1539/40, I then show where he chooses to expand the theme of participation further and where he does not. In this account, I will show how a cluster of themes related to participation in Romans 6 and 8 plays an important role in the conception and execution of his commentary work. In addition, I will show how the linguistic sense of participes, along with koinonia and metoxos, is expanded through the commentaries. 54 The church of Geneva called him back. Calvin reluctantly accepted Farel’s call to return to Geneva (in 1541). ‘Had I the choice at my own disposal,’ Calvin wrote to Farel, ‘nothing would be less agreeable to me than to follow your advice. But when I remember that I am not my own, I oVer up my heart, presented as a sacriWce of the Lord’ (Letters of John Calvin, i, letter 73). Calvin speaks speciWcally about his ‘programme’ for the commentaries and the Institutes in his ‘Letter to the Reader’ in the Institutes of 1539 (and retained in later editions). OS 2. 6.

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3.2.1. Participation and the Extension of Calvin’s ‘Programme’ in Biblical Commentaries Having suggested that he was to write commentaries which would avoid ‘long doctrinal discussions’ in his ‘Letter to the Reader’ in the Institutes of 1539, Calvin expands upon his method for the commentaries in a prefatory letter to Romans.55 He begins by expressing his great admiration for the work of previous commentators. These include the ‘ancient commentators’ as well as Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Bucer. While all of these works have value for Calvin, he wants his commentary work to be distinctive for its ‘lucid brevity’. ‘Since it is almost his only task to unfold the mind of the writer whom he has undertaken to expound, he misses his mark, or at least strays outside his limits, by the extent to which he leads his readers away from the meaning of his author.’56 Thus, while Bucer has an ‘incredible and vigorous fertility of mind’, he ‘does not know how to stop writing’ and is ‘too verbose’ for many readers.57 With Melanchthon, the problem is that ‘he neglected many points which require attention’, since he does not comment verse by verse, but tends to discuss only points he Wnds to be notable.58 In contrast, Calvin says that the need is to use brevitas (unlike Bucer) but comment on every verse of the biblical text (unlike Melanchthon). Having given a hermeneutical rationale for this method—related to unfolding the mens of the author—Calvin also gives a speciWcally theological rationale to his commentary work. ‘We ought to have such respect for the Word of God that any diVerence of interpretation on our part should alter it as little as possible. Its majesty is somehow diminished, especially if we do not interpret it with great discretion and moderation.’59 Calvin believed that practising brevitas and restraint can function both to avoid unnecessary Christian divisions over

55 The close relationship between these passages in the 1539 Institutes and 1540 Romans is indicated by the close temporal proximity of the prefatory letters. The Wrst letter is dated Aug. 1539, the second Oct. 1539 (although the commentary was not published until 1540). The prefatory letter in Romans is addressed to Simon Grynaeus. 56 Comm. Romans, Preface, CC; CO 10. 402–3. 57 Ibid.; CO 10. 404. 58 Ibid.; CO 10. 404, 403. 59 Ibid.; CO 10. 405.

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particular passages, as well as to honour the majesty of God by the ‘discretion and moderation’ with which it is interpreted. This preference for brevity and moderation serves not only to deWne the genre of the commentaries in relation to the Institutes, but it coincides with his polemic against the misuse of ‘allegory’ by Origen and many other Christian commentators.60 Calvin champions John Chrysostom rather than Origen as an ‘ancient’ commentator worthy of emulation. Indeed, shortly after completing his commentary on Romans, Calvin began work on Preface to the Homilies of Chrysostom with added reXections on the proper interpretation of scripture. Although Calvin’s plan—which was to translate Chrysostom’s sermons into the vernacular French—was never completed, his Preface is nevertheless instructive. In contrast to the digressions of the allegorists, Calvin praises Chrysostom for advocating the ‘plain meaning’ of scripture (scripturae sinceritatem), the simple sense of its words (simplici verborum sensu).61 Yet, Calvin is also quite frank that he disagrees with many of Chrysostom’s interpretations of scripture. His admiration of Chrysostom is mainly in terms of Chrysostom’s hermeneutical method and his restraint concerning allegory. This corresponds with Calvin’s own preference for ‘analogies, types, metaphors’ as opposed to ‘allegory’, however blurry the boundary between the two may be.62 Calvin’s restraint with regard to allegory, along with his humanist sensitivity to keep with the mens of the author through original language texts, gives Calvin’s brevitas a distinctive character. How does Calvin’s hermeneutical approach, as outlined above for 1539/40 and carried out over the next two decades, retain a distinctively theological character? This is an important question for examining Calvin’s theme of participation, for it is the Pauline-inXuenced form of this theme which provides key language for Calvin about how to think through the two Testaments. Calvin’s two chapters on 60 On a rhetorical level, Calvin is quite critical not only of Origen, but of Augustine and contemporaries like Luther, in being excessive rather than moderate with regard to allegory. See David Lee Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament, 1st edn (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), 54–5, 106–13. 61 See John L. Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, in Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 63. Also see Backus, ‘Calvin and the Greek Fathers’, 254–9. 62 See Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, 67–8.

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the ‘similarity’ and ‘diVerence’ between the Testaments Wrst appear in the 1539 Institutes at the outset of his exegetical programme, being included with very few alterations through the Wnal 1559 edition. The Old Testament is not to be interpreted simply as a ‘Wgure’ for what is fulWlled in the church. Rather, Calvin uses the language of ‘engrafting’ along with ‘participation’ to describe a diVerent approach. ‘The covenant made with all the patriarchs is so much like ours in substance and reality that the two are actually one and the same. Yet they diVer in the mode of dispensation.’63 God’s people in the Old Testament are part of the ‘same church’; they are adopted by God through grace just as later believers are, being partakers of God through Christ.64 This is a participation in ‘God’s Word’, which is a ‘life energy’ for all who partake of it. Indeed, Calvin is emphatic on this point: I mean that special mode which both illumines the souls of the pious into the knowledge of God and, in a sense, joins them to him. Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, and other patriarchs cleaved to God by such illumination of the Word. Therefore I say that without any doubt they entered into God’s immortal kingdom. For theirs was a real participation in God (erat enim solida Dei participatio), which cannot be without the blessing of eternal life.65

By this solida Dei participatio Calvin is not primarily lauding the Israelite patriarchs in order to make them moral examples to imitate, a common practice in medieval exegesis. To the contrary, in his commentaries Calvin will depart from the majority of his contemporaries by his willingness to condemn the shortcomings of the patriarchs where the biblical text is silent about an apparent immorality.66 Rather, just as the Christian has the real participes of Romans 6 and 8 while still being the sinners of Romans 3 and 7, so the Old Testament patriarchs have a solida participatio in God while not being sinless examples. The Old and New Testaments do not ultimately point toward moral examples, or to the church, but to God’s work of uniting his people to himself through a participation with a Trinitarian character: a participation in Christ by the Spirit, revealing the Father who adopts them as his children. 63 OS 3. 404. 64 OS 3. 424, 403–4. 65 OS 3. 408. 66 Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, 66.

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Calvin’s language of participation and adoption helps to enable a strong emphasis on the continuity between the Testaments. Just as there is one Word in which God’s people of the Old Testament partake, so there is one covenant of which they both partake. There are no ‘natural’ people of God; all are God’s people by adoption, by election. In addition, Calvin claims that ‘the apostle makes the Israelites equal to us not only in the grace of the covenant but also in the signiWcation of the sacraments.’67 They did not simply receive ‘carnal’ sacraments; ‘the Lord not only communicated to the Jews the same promises of eternal and heavenly life as he now deigns to give us, but also sealed them with truly spiritual sacraments.’68 Thus, since all of God’s people partake of God’s righteousness through Christ by faith, sealed by the Spirit with sacraments, there is signiWcant continuity amidst the diVerent ‘stages’ in the development of God’s people. Calvin does note diVerences between the Testaments, largely based on his characterization of the Israelites as being a part of the ‘childhood’ of the church—with diVerent divine accommodations than in the New Testament, thus requiring diVerent administrations or dispensations of the covenant. But, utilizing his theology of participation, adoption, and sacramental presence, Calvin’s central emphasis is upon the continuity between the Testaments. Calvin’s account of the relation of the Testaments has a mixed impact on the theme of participation as it is developed in the next two decades through his commentaries and sermons. On the one hand, as Calvin gives lectures and sermons and writes commentaries on the New Testament epistles in the 1540s, he continues to develop the Pauline theme with much of the same language as discussed above. As a part of this, he is quite willing, for example, to follow 1 Corinthians in using sacramental language about the manna in the wilderness. Against ‘the schoolmen’ who argue that the sacraments of the Old Testament only ‘Wgure’ grace, Calvin argues that ‘the reality of the sacrament was conveyed to the people of old just as much as to us’.69 This spiritual feeding is connected for Calvin with the language of participation, both in 1 Corinthians 10 and John 6. Yet, when Calvin comes to his lectures and commentaries on the Old Testament, from 1550 until his death in 67 OS 3. 406–7. 68 OS 3. 407–8. 69 Comm. 1 Cor. 10: 3, CC; CO 49. 454.

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1564, he is generally quite restrained in his exposition about applying the language of participation to the passage. As John Thompson notes about Calvin’s comments on Exodus, ‘the apostles’ typological expositions are mentioned but remain distinctly in the background’. Instead, Calvin ‘sticks closely to the historical context and to the intention of Moses’.70 This is an ironic result of Calvin’s emphasis upon the continuity of the Testaments, in addition to his humanist interest in the mens of the author, with its aversion to unrestrained allegory. Because the people of the Old Testament participate in the same ‘reality’ of faith, adoption, etc., Calvin attempts to treat that dispensation on its own terms, avoiding extended development of speciWcally New Testament themes in his Old Testament commentaries. Thus, the Old Testament commentaries tend not to be as expansive as one might expect upon some of the speciWcally Pauline themes of participation. The place where the language of participation occurs most frequently in the Old Testament commentaries is in Calvin’s prayers. Perhaps this is not surprising. As noted above, in the 1539 Institutes Calvin gives an important place to the language of participation in speaking about the relation of the Testaments, and thus how the Christian should approach the Old Testament. In the prayers, Calvin is ‘applying’ the Old Testament teaching to the hearer’s life in Christ, particularly as it reaches fulWlment in participating in Christ’s glory.71 This emphasis on participation in the prayers indicates how the language of participation remains part of the mode of appropriation of the Old Testament message, even when it is not central to the exposition. 70 Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, 70. 71 These prayers follow formulaic patterns, where Calvin leads the listeners to look forward to the future fulWlment of one’s present faith through a participation in glory through Christ. Calvin’s commentary on Jeremiah alone provides ample evidence for this pattern. See the prayers connected with the following passages: Jer. 4: 14, 5: 15, 30–1, 7: 17–19, 9: 25–6, 11: 20, 14: 20, 16: 18, 22: 18–19, 32: 20, 34: 4–5, 36: 15–16, 49: 18. The theme of participation is prominent in the prayers related to the prophetical writings; but it would not be surprising if they were present in prayers after sermons on other scriptural passages. Unfortunately, the prayers relating to the lectures on the prophets are all that survive from Calvin’s Old Testament commentaries. John Calvin, John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, ed. Elsie A. McKee (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 31.

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An important part of Calvin’s commentaries is the Latin translation he gives of the Greek and Hebrew biblical texts.72 Indeed, one of the key features of the commentaries that does not occur in the sermons or the Institutes is the philological and text-critical arguments that Calvin here provides. For the New Testament commentaries, Calvin consulted multiple Greek texts and several Latin translations, providing his own fresh translation in Latin. After working with Greek texts, Calvin would give his own Latin translations, also in consultation with the Vulgate and two Latin editions of Erasmus. Calvin frequently makes his text-critical choice of words or his translation a part of his overall exegetical argument.73 In Calvin’s Latin translation, there are two Greek words that account for the majority of his translations to participes and its variants: koinonia and metoxos. His use of both of these terms is worthy of attention. Out of twenty-one uses of the term, seven appear to be translations of koinonia.74 Calvin thinks that koinonia involves a fellowship, sharing, and participation of such intimacy that the word koinonia itself is worth returning to. For example, in his 1 Corinthians commentary, Calvin repeatedly calls attention to the term koinonia in articulating believers’ participation and communion in Christ. Paul says that the cup blessed in this way is koinonia, a communion in the blood of Christ. ‘What exactly does that mean?’ someone asks. . . . It is true that believers are bound together by the blood of Christ, so that they become one Body. It is also true that a unity of that kind is properly called a koinonia or communion. I would also say the same thing about the bread. Moreover, I am paying attention to what Paul adds immediately afterwards, as though by way of explanation, that we ‘are all made one body, because we share the same bread together.’ But, I would ask, what is the source of the koinonia or communion, which exists among us, but the fact that we are united to Christ

72 Calvin’s translation into Latin has been compiled in Richard F. Wevers, A Concordance to the Latin Bible of John Calvin: Along with the Biblical Text Itself Reconstructed from the Text of His Commentaries, vol. i (Grand Rapids, MI: Meeter Center for Calvin Studies at Calvin College and Seminary, 1985). 73 As Parker has shown, his reasons for text-critical determinations rely not only upon the reputed authenticity of various texts, but upon contextual and theological factors. T. H. L. Parker, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, 2nd edn (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 66. 74 Rom. 11: 17; 1 Cor. 9: 23, 10: 20; 2 Cor. 6: 14; Phil. 1: 7; Heb. 2: 14; and 1 Pet. 5: 1.

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so that ‘we are Xesh of His Xesh and bone of His bones?’ For it is necessary for us to be incorporated, as it were, into Christ in order to be united to each other. Besides, Paul is discussing here not a mere human fellowship (non tantum de mutua inter communicatione), but the spiritual union between Christ and believers (sed de spirituali Christi et Wdelium unione), in order to make it plain from that, that it is an intolerable sacrilege for them to be contaminated by communion with idols. Therefore from the context of this verse we can conclude that koinonia or communion of the blood is the alliance which we have with the blood of Christ when he ingrafts all of us into His body, so that He may live in us, and we in Him.75

To strengthen his notion of communion and fellowship, Calvin repeatedly returns to the term koinonia. According to his analysis, koinonia does not involve just mutua inter communicatio but a real unio with Christ, one that involves the mutual interpenetration of Christ and believers: believers are incorporated and engrafted ‘into His body’, the church, ‘so that He may live in us, and we in Him’. Thus, when Calvin uses Latin variants of participes for passages like this one in 1 Corinthians, he nevertheless wants to keep the sense of ‘union’ and mutual interpenetration involved in the koinonia of Christ’s body. The second term that Calvin frequently translates as ‘participation’ is metoxos, translated into a form of participes nine times.76 Out of these, Wve of the references are in Hebrews. On the one hand, Calvin’s use of participes language in the Hebrews commentary coincides with a repeated preoccupation with the Incarnation in the commentary and an exposition of a Christology which is Chalcedonian.77 On the other hand, Calvin continues to use the participes language to speak about one’s participation in Christ.78 Hebrews uses metoxos in relation to participating in Christ (3: 14) and participating in the Spirit (6: 4). Calvin combines this with the language of koinonia in Hebrews 2: 14 concerning the Incarnation, all rendered with participes in

75 Comm. 1 Cor. 10: 16, CC; CO 49. 464. 76 1 Cor. 9: 10, 10: 16, 17, 30; Heb. 3: 1, 14; 5: 13, 6: 4, 12: 8. 77 See Comm. Heb. 1: 3, 12; 2: 11, 14, 16; 5: 2. Commenting on Heb. 5: 2, Calvin writes: ‘The Apostle before taught us that mankind are [sic] united to God in the person of one man, as all men partake of the same Xesh and nature; but now he refers to another thing, and that is, that the priest ought to be kind and gentle to sinners, because he partakes of their inWrmities’ (CTS; CO 55. 58). 78 See Comm. Heb. 1: 12, 3: 14, 9: 11, 10: 22, 13: 10.

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Latin. The interface between these levels of sharing, interpenetration, and participation is indeed appropriate for the broader notion of metoxos. Whether or not the author of Hebrews was aware of it, the notion of metoxos played an important role in Plato and various forms of Platonism, and as Rowan Williams has shown, plays a role in the later controversy between Arius and Athanasius. An important part of Athanasius’s argument is his accusation that for Arius the persons of the Trinity are ametochoi, without participation, without mutual interpenetration.79 Calvin’s concern in Hebrews is Christological rather than speciWcally Trinitarian, but his portrait supports one of interpenetration between the Word and humanity in the Incarnation, and a corresponding interpenetration and indwelling of Christ in believers in salvation. Calvin’s use of the language of participes from metoxos and koinonia in Hebrews constitutes a further expansion of the language of participation from the 1539 Institutes and Romans to the concept of the Incarnation, involving an interpenetrating union of the divine and human in Christ and, by adoption, an indwelling of Christ in believers. One of the most striking trends in the commentaries that relates to participation is the way in which Calvin begins to deal with the themes of participation as a cluster of mutually related images and metaphors, even when unwarranted by the immediate biblical context. Calvin frequently pulls together seemingly divergent biblical passages when he thinks that it can result in intertexual illumination. Yet, the cluster of images related to participation occur together in a wide variety of commentaries and contexts, frequently without referring to another scripture passage and with no warrant for the clustering of language from the immediate context.80 SpeciWcally, the language of adoption, engrafting, and participation all seem to come together in the commentaries.81 This practice of clustering goes back

79 Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2nd edn (London: SCM Press, 2001), 222. 80 For example, in the extended quote about koinonia from the 1 Cor. commentary above, Calvin uses the language of engrafting, which is foreign to the immediate context of his passage. 81 Examples of this clustering, without the warrant of the immediate context, include commentary passages on the following passages. Each passage speaks of

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to Romans in 1540, and extends through Calvin’s use of the theme in the commentaries. In Romans, Calvin weaves together the language of participation, adoption, and engrafting. While there are various parts of the commentary where these images are developed, all three are tied together in Romans 6.82 The result is often emphatic. For example, after speaking about participation and adoption, Calvin uses the image of engrafting to speak of union with Christ with language reminiscent of 2 Peter 1: 4: In the grafting of trees, the graft draws its nourishment from the root, but retains its own natural quality in the fruit which is eaten. In spiritual ingrafting, however, we not only derive the strength and sap of the life which Xows from Christ, but we also pass from our own nature into his (sed in eius naturam ex nostra demigramus).83

Thus, Calvin uses the language of engrafting to argue not only for the intimacy of the union between believers and Christ, but for the actual transformation that happens in this participatory, uniting act of engrafting. In this way, Calvin’s commentaries continue to cluster and develop images and themes related to participation, even as the commentaries keep an overall brevity in the attempt at closeness to the mens of the author. The prominence of this cluster of images testiWes to the far-reaching inXuence of the Pauline nexus of themes established in the 1539/43 Institutes which impact the exposition of his commentaries.

participation in God, Christ, or the Spirit, linked with the language of adoption and/ or engrafting: Gen. 17: 8, participation and adoption; Isa. 40: 8, participation and adoption; Isa. 60: 2, participation and adoption; Luke 23: 43, participation and engrafting; John 3: 29, participation and adoption; Acts 10: 4, participation and engrafting; Eph. 2: 4, participation and engrafting; Phil. 1: 7, participation and adoption; i Thess. 4: 14, participation and engrafting; i Thess. 5: 10, participation and engrafting; 2 Tim. 1: 9, participation and engrafting; Titus 3: 5–6, participation, engrafting, and adoption; Heb. 6: 4, participation and adoption; Heb. 10: 22, participation and adoption; 1 John 1: 3, participation and adoption; in addition, there are multiple occurrences of this cluster of images in Romans. 82 Calvin works together the images of participation, union with Christ, and adoption in Comm. Rom. 6: 2. He extends the cluster of images to include engrafting along with participation and union in Comm. Rom. 6: 4–6. 83 Comm. Rom. 6: 5, CC; CO 49. 107.

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While Calvin’s commentaries contain other references relevant to the theme of participation, these will be dealt with in other chapters as topically relevant.84 At this point it is suYcient to pull together the various strands of the present account. The task Calvin has set out for his commentaries since 1539 is one that is tied into a theology of the Testaments with a continuity articulated by the language of participation drawn largely from Romans. This results in the language of participation being used frequently in the prayers connected with his Old Testament lectures. Moreover, the images related to participation from the book of Romans are frequently used together as a cluster, even when the immediate context provides no precedence for this. In addition, in books like Hebrews, Calvin has expanded the theme of participation to new loci, applying it to the Incarnation such that as the Word participates in humanity, so also believers participate in Christ. As such, the notion of ‘participation’ becomes a rich way to speak about a type of communion that involves both union and a type of interpenetration.

3.2.2. Participation and the Controversies of the 1550s There are two major sets of controversies in which Calvin is involved in the 1550s. One is with Servetus and later Gentile and other Italian anti-Nicene advocates; the other is an extended dispute with a group of Lutherans, including Joachim Westphal and later Tileman Heshusius, a controversy which also led Calvin to attack the position of Andreas Osiander.85 While the former set of controversies certainly

84 The following topics, in particular, have important commentary additions which relate to the theme of participation: prayer (discussed in Ch. 4), sacraments (Ch. 4), and law (Ch. 5). 85 Calvin’s dispute with Osiander was discussed in Ch. 2 in relation to their common reception of Augustine’s doctrine of participation. Although it is frequently pointed out that Calvin indicates a negative response to Osiander as early as the Colloquy of Worms, Calvin’s main polemic against Osiander’s theology does not come until the 1559 edition of the Institutes. The likely historical reason for this indicates how the dispute with Osiander was intertwined with the debate with the Lutherans about the Lord’s Supper: both Westphal and Heshusius accused Calvin’s eucharistic theology of being Osiandrian, which was clearly out of favour among Lutherans in the late 1550s. Thus, Calvin must attack Osiander if his own eucharistic

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led Calvin to give more extended exposition of his Trinitarian theology and Christology as in accord with the ancient councils, the language of participation per se was not in question.86 Indeed, Calvin’s disputes with Servetus and Gentile had little to do with the particular theology that Calvin espoused, besides the fact that it was broadly catholic in its Christological and Trinitarian claims.87 Indeed, before being arrested in Geneva, Servetus had already been examined and condemned to death by Roman Catholic authorities in southern France; likewise, Gentile was condemned and executed in Bern, not just condemned by the authorities in Geneva.88 These disputes were not just with Calvin, but with Roman Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran authorities throughout Europe. In contrast, Calvin’s dispute with Westphal and Heshusius puts Calvin’s language of participation sharply into focus. The controversy began shortly after the publishing of the Mutual Consent in regard to the Sacraments in 1551. The Mutual Consent is an attempt to confess sacramental unity among the Reformed churches in Geneva and Zurich, a document which is generally recognized to be a compromise position for Calvin’s sacramental theology in relation to that of Bullinger and his predecessor Zwingli.89 Even if Calvin was able to frame the agreement in such a way that it could be reconciled with his ‘higher’ sacramental theology,90 he undoubtedly sacriWced some of the key terms he had developed between 1539 and 1545 to describe the Lord’s Supper in particular: Calvin’s language of parti-

theology is not to be discredited in a like manner. See Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings, 91; Weis, ‘Calvin versus Osiander’, 42–3. 86 A possible exception to this regards how Calvin’s polemic against Servetus may relate to deiWcation. Calvin’s objection is not to the transformation of humanity by divinity, but to the nearly automatic way in which Servetus thinks that all humans are deiWed through the hypostatic union. Ultimately, Calvin’s objection is not to the notion of deiWcation in itself, but to the non-Chalcedonian Christology in which Servetus articulates a doctrine of deiWcation. For more on Calvin and Servetus’s version of deiWcation, see Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing’, 52–3. 87 Even a sympathetic account of Servetus, as by Roland Bainton, assesses his Trinitarian theology as both subordinationist and modalistic (Bainton, Hunted Heretic, 45). 88 Parker, John Calvin, 123. 89 See Davis, The Clearest Promises of God, ch. 2; Wendel, Calvin, 329–30. 90 See Willis, ‘Calvin’s use of Substantia’, 297–9.

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cipes in the substantia of Christ, as well as the vera participes in Christ, is nowhere to be found; instead, substantia appears only in a negative polemic against the Mass.91 The Mutual Consent does retain the language of engrafting and oneness with Christ, as well as the language of Christ being exhibited (exhibere) in the sacraments;92 nevertheless, the overall document seems much closer to the Institutes of 1536, which was broadly Zwinglian in its emphasis. It was in the context of this ‘compromise for the sake of unity’ on the part of Calvin, exempliWed in the Mutual Consent, that Westphal in Hamburg wrote Farrago of Confused and Divergent Opinions on the Lord’s Supper Taken from the Books of the Sacramentarians in 1552. According to Westphal, the Swiss Reformed claims to unity are a sham. In the Farrago, Westphal draws upon the writings of Calvin, Bullinger, Zwingli, Peter Martyr, Carlstadt, Bucer, and other ‘sacramentarians’ to develop a chart giving twenty-eight diVerent interpretations of the words ‘This is my Body’. In contrast to the alleged disunity among these Reformed thinkers, Westphal gives an apology for the Lutheran formula. Westphal’s positive case was expanded in Right Belief in regard to the Lord’s Supper, published in 1553. Although Calvin’s Wrst response to Westphal was part of an eVort for a ‘united front’ response on the part of the Swiss Reformed churches, before long the attacks and counterattacks were no longer generalized to the larger movement, but speciWc to the theology of Calvin.93 Thus, when Calvin’s Second Defense of the Pious and Orthodox Faith concerning the Sacraments in Answer to the Calumnies of Joachim Westphal appeared in 1556, the dispute had become a polemical one between Westphal and Calvin. In spite of the attempts of Beza and others to keep the dispute from escalating into a

91 TT 2. 219; CO 7. 742. 92 Yet, Davis points out that even this language of exhibere was not included in the agreement in May 1549. Calvin later insisted that the language be included. See Davis, The Clearest Promises of God, 41–3. 93 The Wrst response to Westphal was The Defense of the Sound and Orthodox Doctrine of the Sacraments, which included a ‘Letter to the Swiss Ministers’ in response to Westphal, approved after Calvin made suggested revisions by the Zurich ministers. See Joseph N. Tylenda, ‘The Calvin–Westphal Exchange: The Genesis of Calvin’s Treatises against Westphal’, Calvin Theological Journal, 9 (1974), 182–209, at 193–5.

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Calvin–Westphal war of words, this dynamic continues through Calvin’s Last Admonition to Westphal in 1557. When one sees the claims of Westphal in light of Calvin’s earlier theme of participation in Christ in the Institutes and Short Treatise, there is a clue as to why Calvin would consider Westphal a much more serious threat than Bullinger and others of a more Zwinglian orientation. According to Westphal, because the Reformed do not aYrm that Christ is substantially in the elements of the Supper, one is left with nothing but ‘bare signs’, a memorial meal of mutual love. While Calvin clearly objects to Westphal’s language of local presence in the elements (along with the Lutheran prepositions which use spatial language for the presence), Calvin does aYrm the true substantial presence (‘substance’) of Christ in the Supper. The substantia of the Supper is Jesus Christ.94 Indeed, Calvin says in his treatise that ‘our souls are truly fed by the substance of Christ’s Xesh’, and ‘by the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit, life is infused into us from the substance of his Xesh.’95 On this point, Calvin is quite diVerent from Bullinger and the language of the Mutual Consent. The Lord’s Supper is not just about memory, but the substance of Christ is received in the sacrament, and Christ’s life is infused into believers. Although Westphal’s Farrago certainly exaggerated the disunity and diversity among the Reformed, there does seem to be some truth to his claim of diVerence when it comes to Calvin and Bullinger. Yet, ironically, Westphal himself seems unaware of the real diVerences, attributing an essentially Zwinglian, memorialist position to Calvin even though he was familiar with several of Calvin’s other eucharistic writings. Calvin’s response to this is one of irritation. In response to an attack of Westphal about the Reformed not having an account of the koinonia of the Body of Christ, Calvin writes angrily: ‘What? Ought he not at least to have excepted those who speak diVerently? Let him turn over my Commentaries. . . . Certainly, when calling upon me by name, he ought not to have forgotten what I have written on that passage.’96 Calvin goes on to paraphrase his account of koinonia in his comments on 1 Corinthians 10: 16–17. This 94 TT 2. 277–8, 384; CO 9. 70, 170. Also see Calvin’s very strong ‘substance’ language in response to Heshusius: TT 2. 506, 560; CO 9. 470, 509. 95 TT 2. 277; CO 9. 70. 96 TT 2. 270; CO 9. 65.

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commentary passage, a portion of which is quoted above regarding koinonia, uses some of the strongest language about union with Christ found in Calvin’s writings. It speaks of a simultaneous vertical and horizontal communication and participation that is rooted in a oneness with Christ, such that ‘we are Xesh of his Xesh and bones of his bones’.97 Yet, Westphal repeatedly wants to Xatten out this strong sacramental language into a Zwinglian form. Again, in another angry account, Calvin recalls Westphal’s claim that receiving the body and blood of Christ is reduced to ‘nothing else than believing in Christ’ for Calvin. ‘And yet my writings everywhere proclaim, that eating diVers from faith, inasmuch as it is an eVect of faith. I did not begin only three days ago, to say that we eat Christ by believing, because being made truly partakers of him, we grow up into one body, and have a common life with him.’98 Repeatedly in the antiWestphal and anti-Heshusius treatises, Calvin moves beyond the language of the Mutual Consent to that of ‘true participation’ in Christ, feeding upon the substance of Christ, along with other themes from his more mature eucharistic theology of the Institutes of 1539/43, the Short Treatise, and relevant commentaries.99 Indeed, the centrality of this language is shown by the title of Calvin’s Wnal treatise on the subject, The True Partaking of the Flesh and Blood of Christ in 1561. The ironic outcome of Calvin’s compromise in the Mutual Consent is the strengthening of the centrality of Calvin’s language of participation for his sacramental theology. Although the Mutual Consent used little of Calvin’s stronger language associated with his concept of participation in Christ, that is precisely the language he uses to respond to Westphal and Heshusius’s misinterpretation of his theology in a Zwinglian, memorialist direction.100 Thus, it is not surprising that the 1559 edition of the Institutes includes additions of polemics against 97 Ibid. 98 TT 2. 283; CO 9. 73. 99 TT 2. 248, 280–1, 293, 366, 374, 384, 481, 506, 560; CO 9. 47, 72, 81, 157–8, 162, 170, 241, 470, 509. 100 In addition, in the dispute with Westphal and Heshusius Calvin takes the opportunity to defend his doctrine of participation not only from scripture, but quite extensively from patristic sources. Beyond the numerous references to Augustine, Calvin also cites Cyril, Irenaeus, Hilary, and others in defence of his particular language of participation in this dispute. See esp. TT 2. 537–52; CO 9. 492–503.

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Westphalian positions, along with signiWcant additions in the language of participation regarding the sacraments. It is to that expanded and restructured version of the Institutes that I now turn.

3.3. PARTICIPAT ION A ND THE FINAL E DI T I O N O F T H E INSTITUTES When his health showed signs of failing by 1557, Calvin made it a priority to provide a Wnal edition of the Institutes which could show the progress of his ‘programme’ outlined in 1539, where doctrinal digressions are reserved to the Institutes rather than the commentaries. As a result, many of Calvin’s Wnal additions appropriate and develop material discussed in his commentaries or sermons. Furthermore, much material from the controversies of the 1550s with Servetus, Westphal, etc., is added to the Institutes. But when Calvin says that ‘I was never satisWed until the work had been arranged in the order now set forth’, in his revised ‘Letter to the Reader’, it is clear that the Wnal edition is more than a collected set of accumulated additions. It is the Wnal edition of the Institutes that brings the credal restructuring and rethinking of the loci communes to its highest level for Calvin. His fourfold book division clearly goes back to his fourfold reading of the Creed in the 1545 Catechism, which gives the loci a roughly credal and Trinitarian logic: book 1 on God the Father and creation, book 2 on Christology and redemption, book 3 on the work of the Holy Spirit, and book 4 on the church. It is certainly the case that not all of the chapters Wt neatly into this fourfold credal/book division.101 Yet, the fourfold book division certainly does represent a central innovation for the 1559 Institutes. One must keep in mind, however, that this fourfold book division is not an abandonment of the larger project of thinking through the loci in a Pauline fashion as developed in 1539. Rather, it is the completion of this project. Just as the book of Romans is ‘an open 101 Some of the original catechetical material, such as that on prayer and the Decalogue, does not seem to have a clear placement in the credal scheme. See Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 137–8.

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door to all the most profound treasures of Scripture’ for Calvin, so the Wnal edition is a Pauline reading of the loci in a roughly credal form. Thus, it is not surprising that the language of Romans 6 and 8 concerning ‘participation’ continues to be expanded in the 1559 Institutes as part of a deeply Pauline project of ordering and thinking through theology. Approaches which ignore the development in Calvin’s thought, or take the fourfold division as a starting point rather than an ending point, are bound to be misleading. Works that begin rather than end with the 1559 edition tend to miss the way in which central Pauline themes repeatedly emerge in diverse parts of the Institutes, yet function in a normative way which presupposes their interconnection.102 By the 1559 edition of the Institutes, Calvin’s doctrine of participation has been expanded to an impressive scope. He has no fewer than thirty-two references in the Latin to believers participating in Christ (participes), with many more references in less direct language.103 The language of participation is used with regard to justiWcation, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Resurrection, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the imago Dei, and ‘participation in God’.104 In addition, Calvin has expanded the accompanying themes of union with Christ, union with God, engrafting into Christ, and adoption. The theme of participation has been broadened and intensiWed as Calvin’s Pauline soteriological language is used to read and reread a great variety of credal loci. Calvin has also made structural changes that highlight the importance of the theme of participation, such as his creation of book 3, on receiving the grace of Christ through the Holy Spirit. In the remark102 For example, see Muller’s critique of Edward Dowey’s early work on the duplex cognitio, where the central problem is not understanding this theme in relation to the Pauline ordo. See ibid. See nn. 1–2 above for examples of scholars and Gift theologians who begin, rather than end, with the 1559 Institutes. 103 These passages speak of believers’ participation in Christ (with variants of participes): 2. 15. 5, 16. 7; 3. 2. 24, 35; 3. 3. 9; 3. 4. 26; 3. 11. 1, 8, 23; 3. 15. 5, 6; 3. 16. 1; 3. 17. 11; 4. 1. 2, 3; 4. 14. 16; 4. 15. 5, 6, 14, 16; 4. 16. 2, 17; 4. 17. 4, 5 (2), 9, 10, 11, 12, 38; 4. 18. 8; 4. 19. 8. 104 There are many examples of participation language applied to a variety of loci, some of which will be examined in detail in later chapters. Here are a few examples from the topics listed above: justiWcation (3. 17. 11), baptism (4. 16. 2), the Lord’s Supper (4. 17. 10), the Resurrection (3. 3. 9), the Incarnation (2. 12. 5), the Atonement (2. 16. 12), the imago Dei (2. 2. 1), and ‘participation in God’ (1. 13. 14).

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able Wrst chapter on the Holy Spirit, Calvin adds to previous material from 1536 and 1539 on the Spirit and participation, bringing together a wide range of themes to introduce the material of book 3: through the Spirit believers are able to ‘share’ with Christ ‘what he has received from the Father’, so that Christ could ‘become ours’ and ‘dwell within us’.105 Thus, believers are adopted by God, engrafted into Christ, abiding in Christ, and he in us. In this short chapter introducing the new book division,106 McNeill and Battles record no fewer than forty-six references to Pauline and Johannine works, with the theme of participation, indwelling, and abiding taking a central place in the chapter. While the division of this material in book 3 is new, and Calvin has added material to the 1539 edition’s exposition on the Holy Spirit, the introductory chapter to book 3 also demonstrates continuity with other divisions. Calvin is still speaking about the Spirit in the images of Romans, with those of engrafting, adoption, and participation playing a crucial role in his exposition, even as related material in other biblical books is added.

3.4. CONCLUSION While examination of the theme of participation will continue in later chapters, this chapter has given an account of the development and scope of Calvin’s language of participation. For the Institutes, the development from 1536, with Calvin’s language about participation regarding justiWcation and the sacraments, is considerable. The 1539 Institutes marks the beginning of Calvin’s ‘programme’ for writing. This work reXects an ordo and structure that are deeply Pauline, with the language of participation from Romans 6 and 8 being expanded to a wide variety of loci. These Pauline additions to the Institutes continue in later editions, and are eventually combined with an eVort to Wt the Institutes into the fourfold, broadly Trinitarian structure of the Apostles’ Creed. In the process of these changes, Calvin’s language of participation is intensiWed and applied to a wide variety of loci.

105 Institutes, 3. 1. 1.

106 This chapter is only 6 pages in Battles, Institutes.

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The second part of Calvin’s ‘programme’, the biblical commentaries, also began in 1539/40 with Romans. Since Romans provides an ‘open door’ to the rest of scripture for Calvin, he uses his theology of participation in Romans in establishing his theological presuppositions for exegesis, expressed particularly in the 1539 chapters in the Institutes on the similarity and diVerence between the Testaments. Thus, it is not surprising that the theme of participation appears in his prayers that appropriate Old Testament scripture, and that the nexus of themes related to participation occurs as a cluster in a wide variety of commentaries, whether or not suggested by the immediate context. While Calvin does keep quite close to the mens of the author and avoids expansive allegories, he nevertheless uses the language of participation, engrafting, and adoption (as found in Romans) as a hermeneutical lens in a variety of biblical contexts. In addition, in commentaries such as Hebrews and 1 Corinthians Calvin deepens the sense of his term participes. In Hebrews, Calvin’s use of ‘participation’ to describe both the descent of the Incarnation and the ascent of redemption enriches the Christological connections of the term. In 1 Corinthians, Calvin connects participes with koinonia such that it involves a communion of mutual interpenetration and indwelling. Believers are incorporated and engrafted into Christ, being made into the Body of Christ, as they have koinonia with Christ’s body and blood—and each other—in the Lord’s Supper. Beyond Calvin’s discreet ‘programme’, Calvin’s dispute with Westphal and Heshusius functions to intensify and clarify Calvin’s language of participation related to the Lord’s Supper. Although Calvin gave up many of the terms related to participation in his compromise with Bullinger in the Mutual Consent, he returns to that language in his defence of his eucharistic theology. It is the language of participes and the related language of substantia which, for Calvin, diVerentiates him from the Zwinglianism of which he is accused. The signiWcance of Calvin’s development of a doctrine of participation is far-reaching for the contemporary Gift discussion. Just as a lack of attention to development has distorted accounts of Calvin’s eucharistic theology and the duplex cognitio,107 so various aspects of the scholarship on Calvin and participation are inadequate. Accounts 107 See Davis, The Clearest Promises of God; Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, 137–8.

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such as Oliver’s and Ward’s fail to see the signiWcance of Calvin’s link between participes and substantia in his eucharistic theology, partly because they miss the fact that the terms are added to intensify his eucharistic theology, diVerentiating it from Zwinglian alternatives.108 Other treatments do not ask why Calvin has chosen to utilize the language of participation in the way he does, missing the insights that come from realizing that participation is part of Calvin’s broader project of thinking through the loci and the Creed in a distinctively Pauline way.109 Moreover, contributors to the Gift discussion tend to assimilate Calvin’s theology of participation too quickly to foreign categories—whether modern or medieval.110 Attention to when and why Calvin expands and intensiWes his language of participation clariWes the relationship between his own usage and that of contemporary systematic theologians. Whereas this chapter has focused on a diachronic account of the development of Calvin’s language of participation, there has been little space for in-depth analysis of how this theme relates to, and interconnects between, various loci. In addition, the historical nature of this chapter has not permitted a conceptual analysis of a question emerging from the Gift discussion: namely, what is the role of the activity of believers in union with Christ? We now turn to this topical and conceptual analysis in Chapters 4 and 5. 108 See Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’; Ward, Cities of God. 109 This is true of a variety of otherwise insightful works that discuss Calvin’s theology of participation. For example, see Trevor A. Hart, ‘Humankind in Christ and Christ in Humankind: Salvation as Participation in Our Substitute in the Theology of John Calvin’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 42, no. 1 (1989), 67–84; Tamburello, Union with Christ. 110 On the one hand, Calvin’s language of participation is frequently (and unfavourably) compared to that of Aquinas, without analysis of Calvin’s development as a clue to his sense of the language of participation. See Ward, Cities of God, 161–7; Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’. On the other hand, Calvin’s theological ‘system’ is interpreted more as a ‘central dogma’ theology than a loci communes combined with biblical commentaries.

4 Participation in Christ: The Activity of Believers in Prayer and the Sacraments Having addressed the sources, development, and metaphysics of Calvin’s theology of participation, we are able to return to the central systematic question emerging from the Gift discussion: what is the place of believers qua humans in Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ? In order to answer this question, I must move beyond a straightforward exposition of Calvin’s theology of participation per se. Instead, in Chapters 4 and 5, I examine how Calvin’s theology of participation illuminates the place of the human in Calvin’s account of salvation. What is the role of humans as redeemed sinners who receive grace? Are believers simply ‘passive’ as they experience salvation as an ‘external transaction’, as Gift theologians allege about Calvin, or are they somehow more ‘active’? In order to answer these questions, one must bring together what has been held apart by many Calvin scholars. As noted in Chapter 1, there is an ‘Anti-Legal School’ in Calvin scholarship that tends to emphasize Calvin’s distance from scholasticism, his Xuidity in the use of image and metaphor, and his rich Trinitarian theology. Language about forensic transaction is generally treated with suspicion, in preference for the more organic images of transformation. In reaction to this school, the ‘legal’ aspects of Calvin’s thought tend to be emphasized by others, particularly his distinctively Reformed concerns for the doctrines of justiWcation and imputation. Accounts of one school of thought tend to either ignore or deny the other side.1 1 See Ch. 1. For an example of the ‘Anti-Legal’ School, see Canlis, ‘Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God’; J. B. Torrance, ‘The Concept of Federal Theology’; idem, ‘Covenant or Contract’. For an alternative that strongly emphasizes Calvin’s ‘legal’ reasoning, see Parker, ‘Calvin’s Doctrine of JustiWcation’.

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In this chapter, I will argue that the place of the human is illuminated in Calvin’s theology of participation by seeing a Trinitarian account of the duplex gratia as the framework for participation. For Calvin, participation in Christ must emphasize the legal and the transformative language in the ‘double grace’ of justiWcation and sanctiWcation. In prayer, believers act in ascetic struggle to pray rightly, yet the foundation for their active struggle is a recognition of God’s free pardon. Likewise, in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, believers act in response to God’s justifying act in a way that incorporates them into a Trinitarian soteriology: the Father is revealed as gracious and generous through his free pardon of believers in their union with Christ; this union also involves the activation of believers by the Spirit—toward a life of piety and love, requiring ascetic eVort and activity. Believers are made active in the ecclesial and social community. A participatory, Trinitarian account of the duplex gratia plays an important role in Calvin’s theological account of the sacraments. ‘Participation’ in baptism is so real that it is almost biological. Celebrating the Lord’s Supper involves participating in Christ’s ascension to heaven to feed on his lifegiving Xesh and blood. Calvin’s theology of prayer and the sacraments is a theology that is theocentric, but also participatory, activating believers in love of God and neighbour as the body of Christ.

4.1. GIFT AND GRATITUDE: THE D U P L E X G R ATI A A N D P R AY E R A S PA RTI C I PAT I O N I N A D O P T I ON

4.1.1. The Double Grace and SanctiWcation The duplex gratia, or ‘double grace’, is a pivotal concept for bringing together several seemingly dissonant yet important themes in Calvin’s theology: the Wrst grace is justiWcation, an act of God wherein by imputation believers come to participate in Christ’s righteousness; in this act, the gratuity of God’s grace is deeply evident: God freely declares sinners to be righteous, bringing believers into union with God through Christ in the Spirit. Although the righteousness that believers come to possess is formally external to themselves, Calvin uses the images of union, adoption, engrafting, and participation to

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describe this ‘wondrous exchange’ so that the imputation is not from ‘a distance’ but from union with Christ. Calvin writes: ‘Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body—in short because he deigns to make us one with him.’2 The Wrst grace of imputation takes place not through the distance of believers from Christ, but through their becoming one with Christ by faith; imputation takes place together with the engrafting on to the vine of Christ and adoption as children of a gracious Father. The second part of this double grace also relates to the oneness with Christ that comes with the engrafting and adoption of believers. The second grace is regeneration and sanctiWcation. Being ‘engrafted into Christ through faith’ makes one ‘a son of God, an heir of heaven, a partaker in righteousness’;3 yet this engrafting and sharing in Christ is ‘not without works’ even though it is ‘not through works, since in our sharing in Christ, which justiWes us, sanctiWcation is just as much included as righteousness’.4 In Christ, through the Spirit, believers begin the slow process of moral transformation. Yet, the Wrst grace of free pardon provides the indispensable context for the second. For Calvin, the formal relationship between these two graces is crucial: they are distinct, yet inseparable. There is no temporal gap between these two graces. It is impossible to receive one without the other. In fact, since both are contained in Christ, ‘these two which we perceive in him together and conjointly are inseparable—namely, righteousness and sanctiWcation’.5 Just as one cannot divide the two natures in the person of Christ, so the graces of justiWcation and sanctiWcation can be distinguished, but not divided.6 Indeed, since 2 Institutes, 3. 11. 10. 3 Institutes, 3. 15. 6. 4 Institutes, 3. 16. 1; emphasis added. 5 Institutes, 3. 11. 6. 6 See ibid. Although Calvin does not make an explicit reference to the formula of Chalcedon as an analogy for this double grace, Calvin uses language about the two graces that echoes that of Chalcedon about the two natures. The nature of the union of the two graces is compared to sunlight, in which ‘the brightness cannot be separated from its heat’. There is a ‘mutual and indivisible connection’ between the two. However, this should not result in a ‘confusion’ of the two graces which ‘mixes’ the two graces in such a way that they are ‘one and the same’ (ibid.). The double grace, like the two natures in Chalcedonian Christology, are united ‘without confusion, without change, without division, without separation’, to use the terms of Chalcedon.

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the double grace is ultimately a part of Calvin’s theology of union with Christ, the images of adoption, engrafting, and participation are used to bring together these two seemingly divergent notions of grace. By the Spirit, believers participate in Christ’s righteousness, having been adopted from their ‘kin’ as sinners to become children of God.7 By the Spirit, believers are also engrafted on to Christ—receiving him as nourishment for gradual transformation and growth.8 Moreover, the images can be reversed: as adopted children, believers gradually grow by the Spirit through participation in Christ;9 also, as branches engrafted on to the vine (which are useless in themselves), believers move from death to life and receive the blessings of Christ through the Spirit.10 While Calvin is strict in establishing the formal relationship between justiWcation and sanctiWcation, the images of union, participation, adoption, and engrafting can move quite Xexibly to hold together these two senses.11 It is in the context of this diVerentiated unity of the duplex gratia that Calvin develops his theology of sanctiWcation. Frequently, Calvin uses a type of ‘shorthand’ for these dynamics of double grace. For example, when Calvin speaks of faith, it has a twofold character. Faith is an act of the Spirit, a ‘gift’ from God, received through God’s freely elected favour. Yet, faith is also a human act, requiring consent, knowledge, and the aVections of the heart, Faith needs to grow, in a gradual manner, through being nurtured by the Word and the Spirit. In a twofold way, faith involves reception as a ‘gift’, but it is inseparable from a human response of grateful knowledge through the Spirit. These two, like the two natures of Christ, can be distinguished but not separated.

4.1.2. The Double Grace and Calvin’s Trinitarian Account of Prayer as the Experience of Adoption The logic of the double grace provides crucial theological context for Calvin’s theology of prayer. Prayer is the only chapter topic to remain 7 See Institutes, 2. 14. 5, 3. 15. 5. 8 See Institutes, 3. 14. 4, 4. 17. 1. 9 See Institutes, 3. 14. 18, 4. 1. 7. 10 See Institutes, 2. 3. 9, 3. 2. 35, 4. 17. 1. 11 Compare the passages listed in Ch. 3 nn. 103–4 for a small sample of Calvin’s usage. Calvin uses the images of adoption, engrafting, and participation in ways that apply to justiWcation and sanctiWcation, without erasing the distinction between the two.

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the same through all of the various editions of the Institutes. By the Wnal edition, it is the longest chapter in the Institutes.12 Certain features of the chapter still bear the marks of the catechetical form of the Institutes of 1536, such as an exposition on the Lord’s Prayer. Other parts of the chapter deal with controversial practices, such as prayer through the saints. Yet, although one should not make too much of the speciWc order in which it is placed in book 3,13 it is clear that it Wts with the overall theme of the book of sanctiWcation as the second of a double grace by the Spirit.14 Although it receives signiWcant development and clariWcation in later editions, Calvin’s rendering of justiWcation and sanctiWcation provides much of the shape for Calvin’s theology of prayer since the initial chapter in 1536.15 12 Calvin’s strong pastoral and theological interest in the topic of prayer is in contrast to the sparse attention that his thought on the topic has received among scholars. Even Roland Wallace, in his insightful and wide-ranging volume on Calvin and the Christian life, devotes relatively little space to the topic (Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 271–95). Niesel, in a somewhat reductionistic fashion, claims that ‘in the Institutes Calvin gives instruction about prayer rather than a doctrine of prayer’. For Niesel, prayer is the ‘practical’ result of Calvin’s theological vision (Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (London: Lutterworth Press, 1956), 156). Nevertheless, Calvin’s lengthy chapter on prayer in the Institutes shows signs of involving both practical instruction and theological reXection. In addition, Calvin’s writing on prayer provides a glimpse of the believer’s experience of adoption in the life of faith. 13 For more on the placement of the prayer chapter, see Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin. Charles Partee gives a Wne exposition on the importance of assurance by connecting Calvin’s account of prayer with his doctrine of predestination. However, the structure of the duplex gratia provides a better explanation for the divine initiative and human response than predestination, though the two are compatible. Nevertheless, Partee rightly illuminates how a divinely secured assurance of salvation is indispensable for Calvin’s theology of prayer. See Charles Partee, ‘Prayer as the Practice of Predestination’, in Calvinus Servus Christi, ed. Wilhelm H. Neuser (Budapest: Pressabteilung des Raday-Kollegiums, 1988), 241–56. 14 It is worth noting that the chapter on prayer follows closely after chapters focused on the ‘double grace’ in the Wnal edition of the Institutes. Indeed, the chapter immediately preceding the ‘prayer’ chapter can be seen as working out implications of the ‘double grace’ in terms of issues of works and reward (3. 17–18) and the character of grateful action (3. 19). 15 Even in the relatively short section on justiWcation in the 1536 Institutes, Calvin articulates the key features of the duplex gratia. ‘For our merciful Lord Wrst indeed kindly received us into grace according to his own goodness and freely-given will, forgiving and condoning our sins, which deserved wrath and eternal death. Then through the gifts of his Holy Spirit he dwells and reigns in us and through him the lusts of our Xesh are each day mortiWed more and more. We are indeed sanctiWed, that is, consecrated to the Lord in complete purity of life, our hearts formed to obedience to the law’ (Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 34–5; OS 1: 60–1).

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Calvin begins his chapter on prayer with a Trinitarian portrait of prayer’s signiWcance. When a person sees how in himself he is ‘destitute and devoid of all good things’, he ‘must go outside himself ’ to seek after his or her need. In this midst of this situation, a wondrous exchange takes place when one receives the revelation of Christ by faith. The Lord willingly and freely reveals himself in his Christ. For in Christ, he oVers all happiness in place of our misery, all wealth in place of our neediness; in him he opens to us the heavenly treasures that our whole faith may contemplate his beloved Son, our whole expectation depend upon him, and our whole hope cleave to and rest in him. This, indeed, is that secret and hidden philosophy which cannot be wrested from syllogisms. But they whose eyes God has opened surely learn it by heart, that in his light they may see light.16

Prayer is the place where people ‘learn it by heart’, namely, the dynamic reality that they must look outside of themselves for happiness, wealth, and communion. This takes place ‘in Christ’, revealing the Father. After we have been instructed by faith to recognize that whatever we need and whatever we lack is in God, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the Father willed all the fullness of his bounty to abide so that we may all draw from it as from an overXowing spring, it remains for us to seek in him, and in prayers to ask of him, what we have learned to be in him.17

In explaining how we draw upon this ‘overXowing spring’, Calvin speaks of the Spirit and the adoption enabled through the Spirit. ‘The Spirit of adoption, who seals the witness of the gospel in our hearts, raises up our spirits to dare show forth to God their desires, to stir up unspeakable groaning, and conWdently cry, ‘‘Abba! Father!’’ ’18 While union with Christ makes the riches of the Father available to believers, the Spirit enables believers to pray. Moreover, the Spirit enables believers to experience God as Abba, Father. In Calvin’s exposition of this Trinitarian-structured experience, many of the major themes of the prayer chapter become apparent. Through calling upon the Father by the Spirit, believers receive ‘an extraordinary peace and repose to our consciences’.19 When one 16 Institutes, 3. 20. 1. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Institutes, 3. 20. 2.

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experiences God as Father, one recognizes that God deals with us with generosity and kindness, ‘gently summoning us to unburden our cares into his bosom’.20 In experiencing this adoption through the Spirit by praying in Christ, one needs to have ‘true gratitude of heart and thanksgiving’, for all good gifts come from the Father.21 Indeed, one of the purposes of prayer is that ‘we embrace with greater delight those things which we acknowledge to have been obtained by prayers’.22 Since all of the goodness and riches of this life are in fact from the Father, prayer is a spiritual exercise to help believers live out the reality that all good things are gratuitous gifts received from God. Yet, there is a ‘negative’ side to this same theme. Two of the central ‘sins’ that one can commit in a wrong approach to prayer involve the violation of Calvin’s Trinitarian portrait of adoption: Wrst, since one is under obligation to always give thanks to God, the sin of ‘ingratitude’ in prayer is a strong concern for Calvin.23 True gratitude, of course, can be enabled only through the Spirit. It is not an act of the believer in response to God performed in separation from God. Nevertheless, gratitude is a necessary disposition for prayer, and Calvin often exhorts believers about the necessity of gratitude to the ever-giving Father. The second frequent ‘sin’ of prayer is similar to the Wrst, but it makes the structure of the duplex gratia all the more apparent: an uneasy conscience. The experience of prayer entails ‘extraordinary peace and repose’ for the conscience precisely because of the Wrst grace: the imputation of Christ’s righteousness upon believers, assuring them of their salvation. In contrast, others rely upon the prayers of the saints because their consciences have not experienced this Wrst grace. After asking why persons rely upon the intercession of the saints, Calvin writes: ‘If we appeal to the consciences of all those who delight in the intercession of the saints, we shall Wnd that this [practice] arises solely from the fact that they are burdened by anxiety, just as if Christ were insuYcient or too severe.’24 This not only brings dishonour to Christ, but ‘at the same time they cast out the kindness of God, who manifests himself to them as the Father. For he is not Father to them unless they recognize Christ to be their 20 Institutes, 3. 20. 5. 21 Institutes, 4. 20. 3. 22 Ibid. 23 See Institutes, 3. 20. 14, 19, 28, 41. 24 Institutes, 3. 20. 21.

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brother.’25 If the imputation received from one’s union with Christ is not recognized, the Spirit of adoption does not manifest the kindness of the Father. The conscience can be calmed in only one way: by recognizing the kindness of the Father in freely pardoning the sinner, through the imputation of Christ’s fully suYcient righteousness. In Calvin’s account, those who rely upon the prayers of the saints do not explicitly seek to dishonour Christ. Yet, because they have not accepted the Wrst grace of imputation, they necessarily dishonour Christ by implying that Christ’s righteousness is insuYcient. Thus, when Calvin speaks of the importance of gratitude in prayer— in contrast to the sinful posture of ingratitude—he has dynamics from the duplex gratia and his Trinitarian portrait of adoption at work. Although gratitude also plays an important role in his doctrine of creation,26 Calvin’s repeated concern in the prayer chapter is that believers express gratitude to God with a conscience at rest, not trusting in their own righteousness, but in the assurance that comes through the Spirit that the Father has freely pardoned believers because of their participation in and oneness with Christ. Believers are freed from terror before God, because ‘our prayers depend upon no merit of ours, but their whole worth and hope of fulWllment are grounded in God’s promises, and depend upon them’.27 Accepting that one has no worthiness ‘in oneself’ before God is part of the dynamic of entering into the wondrous exchange—experiencing the reception of Christ’s righteousness through a restored relationship with the Father through the Spirit. Even though the prayers of believers are always ‘a mixture of faith and error’, they ‘are not nulliWed’, because the Father generously pardons their defective prayers.28 Thus, even though believers cannot perfectly express the adoption received, they can be repeatedly encouraged to enter into this adoption through the Spirit by bringing all of their burdens and thanks before the generous Father. Lest one think that this experience of adoption in prayer happens just between the individual and God, Calvin argues that this imagery 25 Institutes, 3. 20. 21. 26 See Institutes, 1. 14. 20–2. 27 Institutes, 3. 20. 14. 28 Institutes, 3. 20. 15–16. Indeed, Calvin’s frank recognition of the fallibility of the believer’s prayers testiWes to his attention to the human dimension of prayer, even though prayer is a divine–human act (i.e. enabled through the Spirit). I am indebted to Tamsin Jones for this insight.

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itself implies a corporate sense of prayer. In his section on the Lord’s Prayer, Calvin brings together his reXections on the Spirit of adoption from Romans 8 with the opening of the prayer, ‘Our Father’. After explaining the aVection that believers should have for God as Father, Calvin says that ‘Christ is the pledge and guarantee of our adoption’, and the Spirit is ‘witness to us of the same adoption, through whom with free and full voice we may cry, ‘‘Abba, Father.’’ Therefore whenever any hesitation shall hinder us, let us remember to ask him to correct our fearfulness, and set before us that Spirit that he may guide us to pray boldly.’29 After giving this context of Trinitarian adoptionism in understanding ‘Our Father’, Calvin continues: However, we are not so instructed that each one of us should individually call him his Father, but rather that all of us in common should call him our Father. From this fact we are warned how great a feeling of brotherly love ought to be among us, since by the same right of mercy and free liberality we are equally children of such a father. For if one father is common to us all, and every good thing that can fall to our lot comes from him, there ought not to be anything separate among us that we are not prepared gladly and wholeheartedly to share with one another, as far as occasion requires.30

This status of being ‘equally children’ of a generous Father obliges persons to share the goods received from the Father. Calvin goes on to explain how this sharing can be ‘gladly and wholeheartedly’. Just as one who truly and deeply loves any father of a family at the same time embraces his whole household with love and good will, so it becomes us in like measure to show to his people, to his family, and lastly, to his inheritance, the same zeal and aVection that we have toward this Heavenly Father. For he so honored these as to call them the fullness of his only-begotten Son [Eph. 1: 23] Let the Christian man, then, conform his prayers to this rule in order that they may be in common and embrace all who are his brothers in Christ, not only those whom he at present sees and recognizes as such but all men who dwell on earth.31

Calvin’s Trinitarian portrait of the experience of adoption in prayer has a communal and outward focus. While God alone is worthy of honour and glory, Calvin claims that when one truly honours and loves the Father, one ‘embraces the whole household with love and good will’, with the ‘same zeal and aVection’ as one has toward the 29 Institutes, 3. 20. 37.

30 Institutes, 3. 20. 38.

31 Ibid.

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Father. Although believers are unworthy in themselves, they should realize that the community that is in Christ has received the fullness of the Son, being able to call Christ a brother. Moreover, although only believers—who have received the Spirit of adoption—are in the ‘family’ of the Father, the fact that the work of the Spirit is ‘secret’ requires that believers show this love to ‘all men who dwell on earth’.32 The Spirit not only leads believers to a trustful and loving relationship with the Father because of the free pardon in Christ; this same love, gratitude, and trust—which is activated by the Spirit— comes to be directed to the church and to all persons. Given this account of the Trinitarian experience of prayer, how should one consider the criticism of Gift theologians that humans remain ‘passive’ in sanctiWcation for Calvin? On a formal level, the response is simply that these Gift theologians underestimate the dynamism of diVerentiation and unity involved in the duplex gratia. There is a dimension of passivity involved in receiving the ‘gifts’ of faith and works of love in sanctiWcation. The human person ‘in himself’ cannot produce fruit. Moreover, there is an imputation of Christ’s righteousness which must be simply received and recognized in prayer, not achieved. Yet, even for the Wrst grace that is received, the human is not simply ‘passive’ in a simple sense of the term. Through the gift of faith, one ‘possesses’ Christ in the Wrst grace, justiWcation. This taking hold of Christ through faith gives believers a new identity through the wondrous exchange. Hence, in justiWcation, believers become adopted children of the Father, new creations by the Spirit. In this Wrst grace, Calvin is speaking not simply about a legal decree, but about an entrance into a new way of being and acting through union with Christ.33 32 When Calvin writes that one should love ‘not only those whom he at present sees and recognizes as such [brothers in Christ] but all men who dwell on earth’, the reference is to the secret work of the Spirit in predestination. In his doctrine of predestination, Calvin is at pains to emphasize that one cannot give an external determination of the secret, internal work of the Spirit. Although a believer can receive assurance of his or her own election, there is no ground in Calvin for treating others as if one knows that they are reprobate, for this knowledge is hidden from human beings. See Institutes, 3. 24. 1–5. 33 The Wrst grace of justiWcation undoubtedly involves a righteousness outside ourselves (extra nos), received in union and exchange with Christ. Calvin’s Wrst grace is ‘forensic’ in character, but it is also not reducible to a courtroom analogy of forensic decree. The Wrst grace is a participation and sharing in Christ that comes from being united with Christ by the Spirit in faith.

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Moreover, the inseparable second grace—as living out the implications of this Wrst grace in a Trinitarian context of adoption—is highly active. Although believers are dependent upon the Spirit for any good ‘gifts’ manifested through his person, this does not mean that they simply wait for the Spirit to act. In speaking of prayer, Calvin repeatedly admonishes believers not to passively ‘wait’ for the Spirit in a way that could cultivate laziness. Although ‘to pray rightly is a rare gift’, which can come only from the Spirit, ‘these things are not said in order that we, favoring our own slothfulness, may give over the function of prayer to the Spirit of God, and vegetate in that carelessness to which we are all too prone’.34 Instead of a strong emphasis upon the Spirit’s agency leading to passivity, it should lead to active prayer for the Spirit’s help and empowerment. ‘Our intention is that, loathing our inertia and dullness, we should seek such aid of the Spirit. And indeed, Paul, when he enjoins us to pray in the Spirit, does not stop urging us to watchfulness. He means that the prompting of the Spirit empowers us so to compose prayers as by no means to hinder or hold back our own eVort, since in this matter God’s will is to test how eVectually faith moves in our hearts.’35 Through these repeated exhortations, Calvin is clear that prayer is diYcult, human work, involving ascetic struggle. When something good happens, such as a prayer in faith, credit must go not to the human eVort, but to the Spirit. Such a human act is a ‘gift’, and the proper response is not pride but gratitude. Yet, this labour of gratitude, the ‘sacriWce of praise’, is far from passive from a human standpoint.36 34 Institutes, 3. 20. 5. 35 Ibid. Also see Institutes, 3. 20. 3, 28, 46, 50–1. 36 This account of prayer involving ascetic eVort—yet giving credit to God for this eVort—concords with Calvin’s pastoral advice contained in his letters. For example, to a woman who is in gaol for her connection with the evangelical faith, Calvin advises: ‘On no account would I induce you to Xinch, or to seek out any by-way which might turn you out of the strait path which God points out to you in his word. Although I have heard that God has endowed you with admirable constancy, for which I bless and magnify his name, I would yet rather strive to increase you still more in such courage than in any degree lessen it.’ The woman has ‘admirable constancy’—for which Calvin gives thanks to God. But this does not mean that she is passive because she has received this virtue. Indeed, the point of Calvin’s admonition is that she must strive to stay faithful amidst persecution. Her faithfulness and the work of the Spirit in giving her ‘admirable constancy’ stand side by side, although

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Calvin’s argument is not one of passivity, but of dynamic movement: moving out of one’s ‘old self’ and trust in oneself apart from God, one enters into a God-given identity as child of the Father, united to Christ. In giving up hope in oneself and putting all of this hope in Christ, the ‘overXowing fountain’, one is formed by the Spirit into the image of Christ, receiving true riches and happiness. Calvin thinks, however, that the present life of the Christian will not be of sinlessness—indeed, in reading Romans 7 as a portrait of the struggling Christian, he thinks that the present life necessarily involves struggle between the sinful desires of the ‘Xesh’ and the new creation in Christ. This struggle makes prayer indispensable for the Christian. For in prayer, believers cry out to the Father by the Spirit, with Christ as their ‘brother’, from within the family of the church. In prayer, believers are reshaped by the Spirit into a new creation in Christ. Prayer, along with the communal love connected with prayer, becomes a way in which the wondrous exchange is experienced. In prayer, the duplex gratia becomes the Trinitarian mode of transforming believers.

4.2. ‘ T RUE PARTICIPAT ION’ IN CHRIST: BAPTISM AND THE LORD’S SUPPER AS PARTICIPATION

4.2.1. Participation and the Metaphysics of the Sacraments Prayer, both in its communal and private manifestations, entails the participation of believers in their adoption by the gracious Father through the Spirit, since they are ‘in Christ’. With the sacraments, similar features are evident. Just as the double grace provides the context for Calvin’s Trinitarian account of prayer, so also the Trinitarian logic of the double grace is crucial to Calvin’s pastoral and metaphysical account of the sacraments.37 the credit and thanks go to the Spirit (Letters of John Calvin, ii, letter 328). For another letter that uses similar language about the Spirit, prayer, and human agency (also written to persecuted Christians), see iii, letter 432. The context of persecution helps to display that Calvin is simultaneously calling his readers to action in prayer as well as persevering in the truth, all the while crediting this faithfulness to the Spirit. 37 By setting a Trinitarian account of the duplex gratia as the context for Calvin’s sacramental theology, I am taking exception to McDonnell’s reading of Calvin on the

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This double grace is evident even in Calvin’s deWnition of a sacrament. Like Luther and other Reformers, he follows Augustine in his basic deWnition of a sacrament as ‘ ‘‘a visible sign of a sacred thing’’ or ‘‘a visible form of an invisible grace’’ ’.38 Yet, Calvin’s deWnition in his own words is signiWcant. It [a sacrament] is an outward sign by which the Lord seals on our consciences the promises of his good will toward us in order to sustain the weakness of our faith; and we in turn attest our piety toward him in the presence of the Lord and of his angels and before men.39

Perhaps the most revealing words of Calvin’s deWnition are ‘conscience’, ‘good will’, and ‘piety’. These words evoke the same experience of the duplex gratia discussed above about prayer. By means of a sacrament, the conscience of believers is given rest because of the reality of the Wrst grace—that ‘the Lord’ does not hold their sins against them, but his ‘good will’ is revealed. This free pardon can be known only by means of the Word, which is the foundation of faith. ‘So faith rests upon the Word of God as a foundation; but when the sacraments are added, it rests more Wrmly upon them as upon columns.’ For ‘by them he manifests himself to us . . . and attests his good will and love toward us more expressly than by the word’.40 Thus, for Calvin the sacrament does not simply manifest divine presence. The sacrament brings a particular type of presence: a gracious presence which assures believers of God’s good will and free pardon, building up the gift of faith. From this Wrst grace, a second grace follows in which ‘we in turn attest our piety toward him’. Calvin’s term pietas is signiWcant, for in Calvin’s vocabulary it has a quite speciWc meaning. At the beginning Eucharist: ‘Though the Eucharist is actually an ecclesial reality with strong sociological implications, the remote and often unspoken theological determinant is the pure will of God electing, predestining, and sanctifying. Though the church is the body of Christ, the theological point of departure for this body is not the Incarnation but election and predestination’ (McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist, 363–4). Gerrish gives a more helpful account of the theological signiWcance of Calvin’s eucharistic theology, though he tends to underestimate the centrality and precision in Calvin’s use of the duplex gratia. See B. A. Gerrish, ‘Calvin’s Eucharistic Piety’, in Calvin and Spirituality, ed. David Foxgrover (Grand Rapids, MI: CRC Product Services, 1998), 52–65; idem, Grace and Gratitude. 38 Institutes, 4. 14. 1, see Muller, ‘Augustinianism in the Reformation’. 39 Institutes, 4. 14. 1. 40 Institutes, 4. 14. 6.

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of the Institutes, Calvin claims that Adam had pietas before God preceding the Fall, but ‘in this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God either as Father or as Author of salvation, or favorable in any way, until Christ the Mediator comes forward to reconcile him to us’.41 Calvin goes on to give his deWnition of the term: I call ‘piety’ that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his beneWts induces. For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service [nunquam ei se voluntaria observantia subiicient]. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.42

Thus, when applied to sacramental theology, Calvin is saying that the sacraments are not just about reception of a manifestation of Christ, but about receiving in such a way that believers can render a voluntary response of gratitude in ‘willing service’. After the Fall, this voluntary response of gratitude is impossible without divine help, for ‘no one now experiences God . . . as Father’ until one experiences the consequences of being adopted by the Father through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.43 In recognizing this ‘good will’ of the Father, the pietas of Adam before the Fall is restored. This leads to actions of gratitude toward God and other persons (‘we in turn attest our piety toward him in the presence of the Lord and of his angels and men’).44 This gratitude is, in some sense ‘our own’ since it is freely given. Yet, the gratitude as the expression of our pietas is precisely that which recognizes that ‘he is the Author’ of ‘every good’. Thus, once again, underlying Calvin’s account of the sacraments is the duplex gratia, aYrming the free pardon of the Father in imputing Christ’s righteousness to believers (which assures the conscience) and the response of gratitude to the reality of the Father’s ‘good will’. Moreover, this is a distinctly Trinitarian experience. In receiving the preached Word along with the sacrament, believers partake of Christ through the Spirit by the gracious promise of the Father. The sacrament is eYcacious by faith, through which believers receive the gifts of the Father in their union with Christ by the Spirit. 41 Institutes, 1. 2. 1. 42 Ibid.; OS 3. 35. 43 Ibid. 44 Institutes, 4. 14. 1.

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How does this discussion relate to Calvin’s sacramental metaphysics? Although Calvin uses a basically Augustinian paradigm of signum and substantia of the sacrament, the way in which Calvin uses these terms is deeply inXuenced by this Trinitarian account of the duplex gratia.45 For Calvin, Christ is the ‘substance of all the sacraments; for in him they have all their Wrmness, and they do not promise anything apart from him’.46 The sacramental sign has a ‘union’ with the substance of the sacrament (Christ) such that the substance ‘must always be distinguished from the sign, that we may not transfer to the one what belongs to the other’.47 Why ‘must’ the sacramental sign be ‘distinguished’ from Christ (the substance) if they are united? Because an undiVerentiated notion of ‘union’ could lead to the adoration of the created elements involved in the sacraments, which are instruments of God by the Spirit. It is our duty to put no conWdence in other creatures which have been destined for our use by God’s generosity and beneWcence, and through whose ministry he lavishes the gifts of his bounty upon us; nor to admire and proclaim them as the causes of our good. In the same way, neither ought our conWdence to inhere in the sacraments, nor the glory of God be transferred to them. Rather, laying aside all things, both our faith and our confession ought to rise up to him who is the author of the sacraments and of all things.48

The sacraments, as signs, are not ‘causes of our good’. Rather, they point to the ‘author’ of all good. Once again, Calvin’s logic is evocative of his theology of pietas: after the Fall, humans do not recognize God as Father, with his generosity and good will, apart from regeneration by the Spirit. When the Spirit enables persons to pray to ‘Abba! Father!’, they are able to recognize God’s good will to them, and that all good gifts are from God. Thus, just as gratitude is in some sense ‘ours’ and faith is ‘ours’, both are ‘gifts’—with a cause and source outside ourselves, extra nos. Likewise, persons should not trust in the sacraments 45 For a general account on sign and substance in Calvin’s sacramental theology, see Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1953), ch. 8. My account seeks to make connections between Calvin’s general theology of signs and his Trinitarian soteriology of adoption as conditioned by the duplex gratia. 46 Institutes, 4. 14. 16. 47 Institutes, 4. 14. 15. 48 Institutes, 4. 14. 12.

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‘in themselves’—for the cause of their power is extra nos. To trust in the sacraments as a purely physical institution is the ‘vice’ of ‘not lifting our minds beyond the visible sign, to transfer to it the credit for those beneWts which are conferred upon us by Christ alone’.49 God’s manifestation should not be ‘transferred’ to the sacramental elements such that they receive the ‘glory’ due to God alone. The logic of gratitude is key here: pietas involves a trust that ‘every good thing’ comes from God; it is a restoration of the knowledge of God in Adam before the Fall, at a time in which Adam was ‘united to God’, and his righteousness was through ‘participation in God’;50 the restoration and fulWlment of this pietas in Christ means a recognition that all good comes from God in such a way that the sacramental elements have value only as chosen by God; in themselves, i.e. apart from God, they are worthless. Nevertheless, in the sacraments God ‘truly executes whatever he promises and represents in signs’.51 When received in faith, believers truly receive the substance of the sacraments, Christ, for the sacraments involve ‘the communicating of Christ’.52 Yet, just as believers should not glory in their great faith—since it is a ‘gift’—so believers should not glory in the elements, which are simply the chosen instruments of God. Just as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness takes away cause for ‘boasting’, so the fact that it is exclusively God’s power which makes the sacraments eVective takes away cause for ‘boasting’.53 The elements received are gifts from God, and faith as a mode to receive 49 Institutes, 4. 14. 16. 50 See Institutes, 2. 1. 5, 1. 51 Institutes, 4. 14. 17. 52 Institutes, 4. 14. 7. 53 Paul’s statement that salvation is through grace, not works, so that no one can boast (Eph. 2: 8–9) has a profound inXuence on Calvin and Reformation theology in general. In applying this principle to the sacraments, Calvin is clear that faith does not give a reality to the sacraments which they otherwise lack. Christ’s presence in the sacrament is not a ‘reward’ for faith. The presence of Christ is truly (vere) oVered by God in the sacrament, whether or not received by faith. Yet, without faith the sacrament does not give its beneWt. ‘You will ask: Do the wicked, then, by their ungratefulness cause the ordination of God to be voided and nulliWed? I reply: What I have said is not to be understood as if the force or truth of the sacrament depended upon the condition or choice of him who receives it. For what God has ordained remains Wrm and keeps its own nature, however men may vary. For since it is one thing to oVer, another to receive, nothing prevents the symbol consecrated by the Lord’s Word from being actually what it is called, and from keeping its own force. Yet this does not beneWt a wicked and impious man’ (Institutes, 4. 14. 16). Graham Ward misses this crucial aspect of Calvin’s sacramental theology when he interprets it as a precursor to modern ‘projection’ theories of knowledge. See Ward, Cities of God, 161–7.

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is also a gift, so there is no reason for boasting left.54 This is a ‘true participation’ in Christ through the sacraments: a participation which calls one to move from the ‘old self’ of sin to the ‘new creation’ in Christ by voluntary gratitude to God for all good gifts, without exception. In this dynamic movement, the ‘elements’ are transformed, in a sense, into ‘gifts’ from the generous God, enacting the promises of Christ. But as gifts, they belong to God so deeply that they should not be seen to have power ‘in themselves’—apart from their substance, Christ—who uses them as instruments to communicate himself by the Spirit. The elements qua creation are not denigrated, but honoured precisely by pointing to God in Christ, the author of creation. The elements become part of God’s plan for calming the conscience and cultivating pietas, showing the good will of the Father as believers partake of Christ through the Spirit.

4.2.2. Children of Abraham by the Spirit: Participation and Baptism Although Calvin’s eucharistic theology undergoes signiWcant development and intensiWcation related to the theme of participation, Calvin already uses strong language about baptism as participation in the Wrst edition of the Institutes. After quoting Romans 6: 3–4 about being baptized into the death and new life of Christ, Calvin writes: By these words he [Paul] not only exhorts us to follow Christ as if he had said that we are admonished through baptism by the example of Christ’s death to die to our desires and by the example of his resurrection to be aroused to righteousness. But he also takes hold of something far higher, namely, that through baptism Christ makes us sharers (participes) in his death, that we may be engrafted in it. And, just as the twig draws substance and nourishment from the root to which it is grafted, so those who receive baptism with right faith truly feel the eVective working of Christ’s death in the mortiWcation of their Xesh, together with the working of his resurrection in the quickening of the Spirit.55 54 See Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, 171–3. 55 Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 95; OS 1. 129.

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As noted in the last chapter, Calvin’s contrast is between viewing Christ as a mere example to be followed and the substantial participation and sharing in Christ’s death and resurrection through the Spirit. Calvin’s image for substantial participation here is that in baptism believers are engrafted on to Christ. The engrafting of believers applies both to the ecclesial/communal dimension of being engrafted into God’s people, as well as the real incorporation of believers into Christ by the Spirit, enabling a death to the ‘Xesh’ and viviWcation by the Spirit. Engrafting takes place on both levels: into Christ and into the church. Most importantly, the language of engrafting and participation indicates that baptism is not simply an exhortation to die to the Xesh and live by the Spirit; it is the means by which God enacts the promise to do so.56 As Calvin develops his deWnition of baptism, he draws together the familiar themes of engrafting and adoption. ‘Baptism is the sign of initiation by which we are received into the society of the church, in order that, engrafted in Christ, we may be reckoned among God’s children.’57 Not surprisingly, this account is tied to a Trinitarian account of the duplex gratia. In baptism, ‘the free pardon of sins and the imputation of righteousness are Wrst promised us, and then the grace of the Holy Spirit to reform us to newness of life’.58 On the one hand, ‘all the gifts of God proVered in baptism are found in Christ alone’.59 However, ‘this cannot take place unless he who baptizes in Christ invokes also the names of the Father and the Spirit. For we are cleansed by his blood because our merciful Father, wishing to receive us into grace in accordance with his incomparable kindness, has set this Mediator among us to gain favor for us in his sight. But we obtain regeneration by Christ’s death and resurrection only if we are sanctiWed by the Spirit and imbued with a new and spiritual nature.’60 As in his general account of the sacraments, Calvin emphasizes how the Father is manifested as ‘merciful’ and ‘kind’ only when we receive the Wrst grace of imputation through participation in Christ. Yet, this Wrst grace is inseparable from being sanctiWed by

56 See Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, ch. 14. 57 Institutes, 4. 15. 1, added in 1543. 58 Institutes, 4. 15. 5. 59 Institutes, 4. 15. 6. 60 Ibid.

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the Spirit, who gives believers a ‘new and spiritual nature’ in their participation in Christ. While Calvin gives a strong account of divine agency in the sacrament, he is clear that the second grace does not preclude ascetic struggle. The process of mortifying sin and growing into one’s life as a new creation will never be complete in this life, so there is always reason to struggle for progress. Indeed, even Christians who are ‘disturbed and pricked by their own Xesh should not faint and be discouraged’. Rather, they should ‘think that they are still on the way, and believe that they have made good progress when they feel that a bit is being taken away from their lust each day, until they reach their destination, that is the Wnal death of their Xesh, which shall be accomplished in the close of this mortal life. Meanwhile, let them not cease to struggle manfully [strenue certare, ‘actively strive’] to have courage for the onward way, and to spur on to full victory.’61 Baptism is the beginning of the process of mortiWcation—a process in which ‘good progress’ is indeed possible, albeit in small steps. This process, like baptism itself, is the work of the Spirit. But it clearly requires a great deal of eVort—it is an active struggle (strenue certare) that requires ‘courage’. Once again, one can see the inXuence of Calvin’s interpretation of Romans 7 as an internal conXict between Xesh and Spirit in the Christian. Ironically, Calvin’s interpretation of Romans 7 in this manner was a decisive point in which Arminius later disagreed with Calvin, even though Calvin uses the passage to expand rather than narrow his vocabulary for speaking about human agency and ascetic struggle.62 Although the fulWlment of one’s baptism involves human agency and struggle, a central concern of Calvin’s is to aYrm the reality of God’s action in the ‘sign’ of baptism. Rather than being an empty sign, ‘we ought to deem it certain and proved that it is he [the Lord] who speaks to us through the sign; that it is he who puriWes and washes away sins and wipes out the remembrance of them; that it is he who makes us sharers in his [Christ’s] death, who deprives Satan 61 Institutes, 4. 15. 11; OS 5. 293. Although Battles’ translation of strenue certare as ‘struggle manfully’ gives the basic sense, it brings masculine associations to the phrase that are not present in the Latin. Thus, I render the phrase more literally as ‘actively strive’. 62 See Institutes, 4. 15. 12, and McNeill’s n. 20.

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of his rule, who weakens the power of our lust; indeed, that it is he who comes into a unity with us so that, having put on Christ, we may be acknowledged God’s children.’63 The baptism with water is eVective to do all these things. Yet, one should not (with ingratitude) ‘attribute everything to the power of the water’, but the water should help ‘fasten our minds upon Christ alone’.64 However, this does not make the water unnecessary or insigniWcant. God ‘does not feed our eyes with a mere appearance only, but leads us to the present reality and eVectively performs what it symbolizes’.65 The sign is not ‘empty sign’ or simply a human testimony. In baptism, God performs the actions of puriWcation and regeneration, the ‘putting on’ of Christ and adoption to be God’s children. Calvin’s theme that God truly performs what is promised in the sign of baptism is crucial when it comes to his defence of infant baptism against the position of the Anabaptists. Indeed, Calvin states his argument against the Anabaptists so strongly that a real, substantial participation may be seen to be more primary than faith. Of course, Calvin wants to hold together participation and faith; it is only in his discussion of infant baptism that the two can be seen as in tension. Although Calvin is willing to speak of the ‘faith’ of infants in 1536, he later changes his position, claiming that it is possible that infants may have the ‘seed’ of faith ‘implanted by the hidden working of the Holy Spirit’.66 Because of this admission that infants may have a ‘seed’ of faith rather than what can properly be called ‘faith’, Calvin’s argument for infant baptism draws upon a theology of participation with an almost biological character. ‘Let us accept as incontrovertible that God is so good and generous to his own as to be pleased, for their sake, also to count among his people the children whom they have 63 Institutes, 4. 15. 14. 64 Institutes, 4. 15. 2. 65 Institutes, 4. 15. 14. 66 Institutes, 4. 16. 20. On this change in Calvin’s position of 1536 concerning the faith of infants, see Joachim Beckmann, Vom Sakrament bei Calvin: die Sakramentslehre Calvins in ihren Beziehungen zu Augustin (Tu¨bingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1926), 97. Note that Calvin’s position would not be properly characterized as ‘seminal regeneration’. The promise oVered in baptism does not guarantee the regeneration of the infant. Thus, Calvin is not saying that all baptized infants receive a ‘seed’ of faith— only that they may receive this. They are ‘baptized into future repentance and faith’, and so the work of the hidden seed is not fully shown until later.

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begotten.’67 Faith is still important—this will be the work of God in due time. But the fact that faith is not visible or full does not keep infants from true participation in Christ. Indeed, infants can receive the duplex gratia. Children are born sinners, and are in need of a ‘good conscience’ that can rest, so that grateful acts may result.68 Since ‘infants [can] receive forgiveness of sins’, they ‘must not be deprived of the sign’ of baptism. Moreover, since children are ‘heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 19: 14]’, they should be recognized as those who are ‘engrafted into the body of Christ through baptism’.69 The Spirit works in this engrafting and adoption, bearing the fruit of regeneration in God’s own timing, for ‘when we are not old enough to be taught, God keeps his own timetable of regeneration’.70 Although Calvin’s exegetical defence of infant baptism has been subject to criticism,71 it should be admitted that Calvin does develop a strong theology of participation in his scriptural account of baptism. Calvin’s key argument is an analogy between circumcision and baptism on the basis of the common covenant of grace. As noted in Chapter 3, Calvin uses the language of participation in relating the Testaments such that the Old Testament ‘sacraments’ are not just ‘shadows’ but act with equal eYcacy as the sacraments in the new dispensation of the covenant. Circumcision was the sign of ‘adoption as the people and household of God’, which contained both ‘mortiWcation’ and ‘regeneration’ as it was lived out (through the ‘circumcision of the heart’). Through being made participants in the covenant with Abraham, Jewish children participated in Abraham’s adoption, receiving ‘God’s fatherly favor, of forgiveness of sins, and of eternal life’.72 Thus, ‘there is no diVerence in the inner mystery’ of the sacraments.73 And since Jewish infants received both sign and signiWed in the sacrament of circumcision, why should the infants of Christians be denied the sign? In expanding upon his analogy between circumcision and baptism, Calvin frequently uses the language of lineage. Just as Calvin takes seriously the notion that original sin means a real participation in (the fallen) Adam, the promise to Abraham and his ‘seed’ also 67 69 71 73

Institutes, 4. 16. 15. 68 Institutes, 4. 16. 21. Institutes, 4. 16. 22. 70 Institutes, 4. 16. 31. See Wendel, Calvin, 328–9. 72 Institutes, 4. 16. 4. Ibid.

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involves real participation in Christ. For Calvin, a strong sense of the ‘oneness’ of fallen humanity with Adam is a necessary corollary to a strong theology of ‘oneness’ with Christ. A person belongs to one or the other, and just as being a child of Adam is not a matter of ‘mere imitation’, so also living en Christo is not ‘mere imitation’. It is real participation and oneness with the progenitor through lineage.74 In countering his Anabaptist opponents, Calvin argues that their denial of infant baptism neglects the reality that infants are ‘children of Adam’. ‘If it is admitted that they are among the children of Adam, they are left in death, since in Adam we can but die. On the contrary, Christ commands that they be brought to him. Why is this? Because he is life. Therefore, to quicken them he makes them partakers in himself.’75 Although Calvin denies Augustine’s doctrine that unbaptized children who die are damned, Calvin nevertheless describes two stark alternatives for children: participants in Adam or participants in Christ. Calvin also frequently refers to circumcision and baptism making persons ‘children of Abraham’, since the covenantal promise applies to Abraham’s ‘seed’ in two senses: ‘seed’ in the sense of Abraham’s descendants, ‘seed’ in the sense of a ‘holy seed’ that included the ‘children of the Jews’ as opposed to the ‘children of the impious’.76 Thus, even though their adoption was fulWlled only when they responded with gratitude and faith in receiving the covenant promises, the mode of transmission of the Wrst dispensation of the covenant was nothing less than biological. Calvin explicitly disagrees with commentators who claim that ‘God’s spiritual blessing was never promised to Abraham’s physical oVspring’.77 Being a child of Abraham before the coming of Christ involved participation on a biological level, of which circumcision was a sign. The new dispensation of the covenant opens the door for Gentiles to be engrafted and adopted through faith. Yet, even this ‘faith’ has a logic of lineage: ‘faith’ is necessary to become a child of Abraham, but since these promises of Abraham now apply in equal measure to believing 74 See Calvin’s discussion of the Pauline comparisons of Adam and Christ, Institutes, 2. 1. 6. When Calvin speaks about infants as ‘children of Adam’ in discussing baptism, he is ultimately referring back to his discussion of original sin in book 2 of the Institutes. 75 Institutes, 4. 16. 17. 76 Institutes, 4. 16. 6. 77 Institutes, 4. 16. 12.

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Gentiles, they can entrust their children with a sign of the covenant. With Calvin, the biological character of being a ‘child of Adam’ or a ‘child of Abraham’ is not undermined in the new covenant, but it is rather extended to include those Gentiles who have faith, along with their ‘seed’. Although Calvin draws upon a qualiWed sense of biological participation in asserting the decisive diVerence between being a ‘child of Adam’ and a ‘child of Abraham’, one should not conclude that Calvin therefore has a ‘static’ view of the ‘chosen people’ that is biologically determined. Adoption into God’s family is not caused by the heart of the infant or even the faith of the parents, but by the Spirit. Although the physical oVspring of the ‘children of Abraham’ are also ‘children of the promise’ of the covenant, these secondary oVspring can respond with ingratitude to the covenant, not bringing it to fulWlment in faith. This is true for both dispensations of the covenant.78 Indeed, although God’s power is oVered in baptism, its power is received only as faith is developed.79 As Calvin’s teaching on predestination makes clear, one cannot ultimately use a biological criterion to discern whether another person is ‘chosen’ by God, who is free. God’s chosen people are those who do in fact respond to God in faith and gratitude, showing the gifts of the Spirit. This is not biologically determined. It is the ‘secret adoption’ of the Spirit, for God freely chooses to initiate faith and regeneration.80 Nevertheless, Calvin holds the notion of God’s free election in tension with aspects of his defence of infant baptism. Baptism involves a real participation in Christ, emerging solely from the Spirit’s initiative. Yet, this frequently takes place through the physical ‘seed’ of the believing parents in a community of faith. Calvin believes that 78 See Institutes, 4. 16. 13–14. 79 In his commentary on Titus 3: 5, Calvin speaks about how ‘Although by baptism wicked men are neither washed nor renewed, yet it retains that power, so far as relates to God, because, although they reject the grace of God, still it is oVered to them’ (Comm. Titus 3: 5, CTS; CO 52. 431). Wallace deduces from this that the ‘sign of Baptism can retain its latent eYcacy till it becomes proWtable’ by faith (Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, 185). 80 See Institutes, 3. 21. 7, 24. 4, 6. One should note that Calvin is not claiming that the sacrament of baptism is ‘empty’ when the Spirit does not move to regenerate the infant at some point in her life. Rather, Christ was still oVered by God in baptism (‘promise’), but Christ was not received. See n. 53.

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children of the covenant have a ‘hereditary right’ to the sign of participation in that covenant.81 Calvin uses similar language in commenting on Psalm 103: 17, that God’s goodness is ‘from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness upon the children’s children’. Calvin writes: ‘It is a singular proof of his love that he not only receives each of us individually into his favor, but also herein associates with us our oVspring, as it were by hereditary right, that they may be partakers of the same adoption.’82 Yet, Calvin is clear that it is not the hereditary right per se but the free, initiating work of the Spirit that makes baptism eVective.83 The Spirit initiates a real and substantial participation in Christ, such that children of Adam are now children of God. It frequently takes place through infant baptism, by which infants participate in the ‘hereditary right’ of their parents’ adoption. But ultimately, participation in this lineage is only through the power and agency of the Spirit, who brings about adoption into the lineage of Abraham, adopted by the Father as ones who are united to Christ. In sum, for Calvin the duplex gratia is experienced in baptism through a Trinitarian adoption by the Spirit. The promise contained in baptism involves movement from being real participants in Adam to real partakers in Christ. As the sign of baptism is brought to fulWlment through faith, believers receive the free pardon of the Father as they are empowered for a life of true participation in Christ by the Spirit.84 Since children must belong to the lineage of either 81 See Institutes, 4. 16. 24. Calvin’s prototype for this is the way in which Isaac, as an infant, receives the ‘sacrament’ of circumcision, based on the ‘hereditary right’ of the promise to his father, Abraham. 82 Comm. Ps. 103: 17, CTS; CO 32. 82. 83 Institutes, 4. 16. 9. 84 As Butin and Tylenda have argued, a central aim of Calvin’s sacramental theology is to account for the sacraments as true (veri) participation in Christ. See Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response, 114–21; Joseph N. Tylenda, ‘Calvin and Christ’s Presence in the Supper—True or Real’, in Calvin’s Ecclesiology: Sacraments and Deacons, ed. Richard C. Gamble (New York: Garland, 1992), 215–25. Thus, when it comes to the Eucharist, Calvin prefers to put the question in terms not of real (reali) presence but of true (veri) participation. However, although Calvin prefers the latter term, he does aYrm both terms. ‘My conclusion is that the body of Christ is really (realiter), to use the usual word, i.e. truly (vere) given to us in the Supper, so that it may be health-giving food for our souls. I am adopting the usual terms, but I mean that our souls are fed by the substance of his body, so that we are truly made one with him’ (Comm. 1 Cor. 11: 24, CC; CO 49. 487). On the question of real

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Adam or Abraham, biological families have the ‘hereditary right’ to give their children the sign of God’s promise. Yet, participation in the promise emerges exclusively by the work of the Spirit, through faith. A central place for nourishment and rejuvenation in this true participation is the Lord’s Supper.

4.2.3. ‘True Participation’ in the Flesh and Blood of Christ: The Lord’s Supper While Gift theologians are frequently confounded by Calvin’s language of ‘participation in Christ’ in his eucharistic theology,85 its central features emerge from the same concerns expressed above about prayer, the sacraments generally, and baptism: a Trinitarian account of adoption conditioned by the duplex gratia.86 In explaining what Calvin means by ‘participation in Christ’, it is necessary to begin with this account, and move on to his sacramental metaphysics from that starting point. For the central features of Calvin’s eucharistic metaphysics are designed to preserve and highlight this Trinitarian account of adoption through participation in Christ, conditioned by the duplex gratia. From the Wrst sentence in the 1559 Institutes on the Lord’s Supper, adoption is central. ‘God has received us, once for all, into his family, to hold us not only as servants but as sons.’87 This is not simply adoption as ‘sons’ rather than simply as ‘servants’, but it is a revelapresence, see the Tylenda article above as well as I. John Hesselink’s account of Calvin’s position in ‘The Reformed View of the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper’, in Four Views of the Lord’s Supper, ed. John H. Armstrong (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, Forthcoming). Ward’s account of Calvin’s eucharistic theology erroneously assumes that Calvin denies the notion of ‘real’ presence. See Ward, ‘The Church as the Erotic Community’, 179–88. 85 For example, Milbank questions the coherence of Calvin’s eucharistic theology. See Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 34–5. Ward and Oliver also criticize the language of ‘participation’ in Calvin’s eucharistic theology: Ward, Cities of God, 161–7; Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’, 342–7. See Ch. 1 for a summary of these criticisms. 86 For an account of the development of Calvin’s eucharistic doctrine of participation and its polemical context, see Ch. 3. This account is intended to supplement the features of Calvin’s eucharistic thought already highlighted in Ch. 3. 87 Institutes, 4. 17. 1.

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tion of the abundant generosity of the Father. ‘To fulWll the duties of a most excellent Father concerned for his oVspring, he undertakes also to nourish us throughout the course of our life. And not content with this alone, he has willed, by giving his pledge, to assure us of this continuing liberality.’88 To assure believers that the Father is loving and generous, God provides a ‘spiritual banquet, wherein Christ attests himself to be the life-giving bread, upon which our souls feed unto true and blessed immortality’, for ‘Christ is the only food of our soul, and therefore our Heavenly Father invites us to Christ’.89 Without revelation, God appears to be a harsh tyrant. Yet, in the revelation mediated in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the Father is shown to be gracious and Christ is declared to be ‘the only food of our soul’. Moreover, as Calvin repeatedly emphasizes, this feeding upon and participation in Christ can take place only through the Spirit. ‘The Spirit alone causes us to possess Christ completely and have him dwelling in us.’90 Through this Trinitarian participation in adoption, a wondrous exchange (miriWca commutatio) takes place. Believers take ‘great assurance and delight’ from this sacrament because, in spite of their sin, believers can be assured that ‘we cannot be condemned for our sins’ because of the Wrst grace of imputation.91 With the second grace, believers are assured that they are empowered by the Spirit for a life in Christ. In a passage with strong patristic resonance, Calvin explains how the Incarnation and the Cross provide theological grounds for this ‘wonderful exchange’: This is the wonderful exchange (miriWca commutatio) which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness.92

Thus, in the Trinitarian adoption of believers, there is a movement from death to life such that they become children of God, immortal, 88 Institutes, 4. 17. 1. 91 Institutes, 4. 17. 2.

89 Ibid. 92 Ibid.

90 Institutes, 4. 17. 12.

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strengthened, wealthy, and righteous. All of these statements in the exchange are ‘parallel’ in the sense that all of them Xow from the gracious action of God, the fountain of all goodness. Yet, in this Trinitarian inclusion of believers, some features such as ‘righteousness’ rely upon a Wrst grace of imputation, while features like ‘strengthening’ rely upon the second grace of regeneration. Both graces are received through participating in Christ, by the Spirit, receiving the gracious bounty of the Father. Perhaps the clearest place within Calvin’s eucharistic discussion in which he distinguishes between these two graces is his discussion of the Lord’s Supper as a ‘sacriWce’. From the Wrst edition of the Institutes to the last, one of Calvin’s central arguments against the Roman Catholic Mass is that it falsiWes the true notion of sacriWce.93 According to Calvin, each enactment of the Mass claims to be ‘a sacriWce and oVering to obtain forgiveness of sins’.94 The priests claim to have continuity with sacriWces for sin in the Old Testament, repeatedly oVering a new ‘sacriWce’ for sin; but Calvin thinks that this usurps Christ’s role as the ‘eternal priest’, and ‘wipes out the true and unique death of Christ and drives it from the memory of men’.95 Through the cross of Christ, there is ‘only one sacriWce’ to pardon humanity for sin, such that ‘no place was left afterward for any other sacriWcial victim’.96 Thus, rather than ‘an altar upon which to oVer a victim’, the table of the Lord’s Supper is ‘a Table at which to feast’.97 In clarifying the precise sense in which the Mass misuses the notion of sacriWce, Calvin claims that sacriWces come in two diVerent types. One is a sacriWce of ‘expiation’, wherein the sinner is cleansed, so that ‘purged of their Wlth and restored to the purity of righteousness, [they] may return into favor with God’.98 This type of sacriWce corresponds with the ‘Wrst grace’, wherein one receives God’s pardon in free imputation, and the Father is revealed as loving and gracious to the adopted child. This was ‘accomplished in reality by Christ alone’, for ‘whatever was necessary to recover the Father’s favor, to obtain forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and salvation—all this was performed and complete by that unique sacriWce of his’.99 In the 93 See Institutes, 4. 18. 95 Institutes, 4. 18. 5. 97 Institutes, 4. 18. 12.

94 Institutes, 4. 18. 1. 96 Institutes, 4. 18. 6, 13. 98 Institutes, 4. 18. 13.

99 Ibid.

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Trinitarian incorporation of believers, the crucial Wrst step is realizing the way in which Christ has accomplished what sinners could never accomplish. Christ is the eternal priest and the perfect sacriWce, such that no more sacriWces are necessary. In this sense, Christian clergy are not ‘priests’, and the Lord’s Supper is not a ‘sacriWce’. Yet, by the deWnition of a second type of sacriWce, the Lord’s Supper is a ‘sacriWce’. The second type of sacriWce is ‘a sacriWce of praise and reverence’, where by believers act in gratitude to God with ‘their whole selves and all their acts’.100 This sacriWce, which can be called ‘thanksgiving’, includes all the duties of love. When we embrace our brethren with these, we honor the Lord himself in his members. Also included are all our prayers, praises, thanksgivings, and whatever we do in the worship of God. All these things Wnally depend upon the greater sacriWce, by which we are consecrated in soul and body to be a holy temple to the Lord . . . so that all that is in us may serve his glory and may zealously aspire to increase it.101

In an exact parallel to the relationship of the duplex gratia, the second sacriWce ‘depends’ upon the Wrst. The nature of the second sacriWce is gratitude, praise, and thanksgiving, made possible because the Wrst grace is a gratuitous gift, a free pardon. Thus, sanctiWcation is freed from the pedantic work of moral calculus; the conscience is freed from its persistent anxiety; and believers can dedicate themselves fully to the worship of God and the duties of love. ‘This kind of sacriWce has nothing to do with appeasing God’s wrath, with obtaining forgiveness of sins, or with meriting righteousness; but is concerned solely with magnifying and exalting God.’102 This sacriWce is a free, grateful self-oVering that is involved in the gradual ‘increase’ of holiness. In

100 Institutes, For Calvin, although the sacriWce of praise is a sacriWce of ‘thanksgiving’, it certainly involves willingness to suVer for Christ’s sake as one participates in Christ. Here is an example from Calvin’s letter of 19 April 1556 to persecuted Christians in Angers: ‘Think also that we have no excuse for refusing to suVer for Him who died and rose again, in order that we should dedicate our lives as a sacriWce to him. And though the world not only derides our simplicity, but detests our persons, let it content us that it is a service above all agreeable to God, to bear witness to the truth of his gospel. In a word, since the Lord Jesus is the pattern to which we should conform ourselves, take heed to model yourselves entirely on him’ (Letters of John Calvin, iii, letter 432). 101 Institutes, 4. 18. 16. 102 Ibid.

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this second sense of ‘sacriWce’, all Christians are priests; indeed, ‘the Lord’s Supper cannot be without a sacriWce of this kind’.103 Thus, although Calvin does not make the connection explicit, his two types of ‘sacriWce’ correspond with the two types of ‘grace’, which work together in an interdependent, Trinitarian way. It involves Christ doing what sinners could never do for themselves, returning them to the abundant favour of the Father enjoyed by Adam before the Fall, and even more fully by Christ as Son of the Father. It also involves a transformation by the power of the Spirit, wherein believers oVer themselves to God and to others in love. All credit for this growth in holiness goes to the Spirit, thus back to the gracious favour shown in this Wrst grace. These features of the duplex gratia are crucial for the Trinitarian incorporation of believers, even when not made explicit in his account of adoption and participation in the Lord’s Supper.104 In the context of this Trinitarian account of the adoption, conditioned by the duplex gratia, Calvin’s allegedly ‘confusing’ eucharistic metaphysics can be seen in a new light. The gift of the Lord’s Supper expresses the free pardon of the generous Father as believers receive adoption through oneness with Christ. The reception of this gift must also mean complete gratitude to God through the Spirit, such that one’s life and loves are consecrated to God’s glory. These graces are together in Trinitarian incorporation and adoption, yet the graces are distinct. In this unity, yet distinction, of the duplex gratia one Wnds the ground for the unity yet distinction of substance and sign of the sacrament along with Calvin’s account of a true

103 Institutes, 4. 18. 17. 104 For example, in the context of discussing priesthood and the language of ‘sacriWce’ in the Lord’s Supper, Calvin writes the following: ‘We do not appear with our gifts before God without an intercessor. The Mediator interceding for us is Christ, by whom we oVer ourselves and what is ours to the Father. He is our PontiV, who has entered the heavenly sanctuary and opens a way for us to enter. He is the altar upon which we lay our gifts, that whatever we venture to do, we may undertake in him. He it is, I say, that has made us a kingdom and priests unto the Father’ (Institutes, 4. 18. 17). When believers oVer praise as priests, it is always dependent upon the prior work of Christ as priest and sacriWce. In recognizing the way in which Christ opens the way for a relationship with the Father (Wrst grace), believers can oVer themselves and ‘whatever we venture to do’ to the Father in gratitude (second grace).

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participation of Christ in the Supper that can nevertheless not be circumscribed. When applying his metaphysics of the sacraments to the Lord’s Supper, the union of sign and substance means that the ‘reality’ of the Xesh and blood of Christ are ‘exhibited’ (re ispa . . . exhibentur) through the signs.105 In this, believers receive Christ, who is the ‘life-giving Word of the Father, the spring, and source of life’, for ‘the Xesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain that pours into us the life springing forth from the Godhead into itself’.106 The fact that Christ’s Xesh is life giving is a consequence of the Incarnation, for when the eternal Word ‘came down from heaven for us’, the Word ‘poured that power upon the Xesh which he took in order that from it participation in life might Xow unto us’.107 Yet, along with this account of the real exhibition of the body and blood—and the true eVectiveness of this participation in Christ through the Spirit—Calvin gives an instrumental account of the role of the created elements (in themselves). The expression ‘This is my body’ is a metonymy in which the sign takes the name of the thing itself and ‘truly exhibits it’; but it ‘diVers in essence from the thing signiWed’.108 Although the Supper communicates the life-giving power of Christ, one must not direct gratitude to the created sign, but to the Giver of gifts. Believers should ‘lift up their hearts’ to venerate Christ alone, for only Christ can calm the conscience, only the substance of the sacrament (Christ) can feed the soul.109 105 ‘Have we in the Supper only a Wgure of the beneWts you have mentioned, or are they there exhibited to us in reality? Seeing that our Lord Jesus Christ is truth itself, there cannot be a doubt that he at the same time fulWlls the promises which he there gives us, and adds the reality to the Wgures. Wherefore I doubt not that as he testiWes by words and signs, so he also makes us partakers of his substance, that thus we may have one life with him’ (TT 2. 91; CO 6. 128). The relation of sign and substance in Calvin’s eucharistic theology is a vexed question. For two contrasting approaches, see B. A. Gerrish, ‘John Calvin and the Reformed Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper’, in Calvin’s Ecclesiology: Sacraments and Deacons, ed. Richard C. Gamble (New York: Garland, 1992), 227–40, at 232–4; McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist, 227–31. 106 Institutes, 4. 17. 8, 9. 107 Institutes, 4. 17. 8. 108 Institutes, 4. 17. 21. 109 Institutes, 4. 17. 35–6. Calvin’s repeated references to the conscience in his polemic against adoring the elements is due to his conviction that adoration separates the ‘promise’ from the ‘command’ of the sacrament, thus departing from the plain teaching of the Word which brings assurance.

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‘What is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the Giver himself?’110 The signs exhibit the Xesh and blood of Christ, but if all gratitude is to be directed to God alone, then signs should not be honoured beyond their God-intended purpose: a means of God’s gratuitous grace. The relation of the substance and the sign is further complicated by Christological concerns distinctive to the Lord’s Supper in contrast to baptism. In particular, Calvin’s particular brand of Chalcedonianism becomes relevant. For Calvin’s Christology, as well as his pneumatology, the divine nature is not subject to spatial limitations or circumscription.111 Thus, in speaking about the bread and the wine, if participation in Christ is to be always mediated by the Spirit, spatial metaphors must be rejected. This sets Calvin against the Lutherans as much as the Roman Catholics. The Lutherans use terms of local presence for the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, such as ‘in’, ‘with’, and ‘under’. Since the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Roman Catholic Church has taught that the body and blood of Christ are ‘contained’ in the elements.112 For Calvin, these terms which localize and circumscribe divine presence are unacceptable. The power of the Spirit, as well as the divine nature of Christ, is not bound in any way, so that ‘Christ is not prevented from exerting his power wherever he pleases, in heaven and on earth’.113 On the other hand, the body of Christ must be able to be circumscribed if it is to be a true body. Since human persons have bodies subject to circumscription, and a Wnite body must be assumed by the Word in order to be healed, Christ must have a Wnite body. For Calvin, the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s body makes

110 Institutes, 4. 17. 36. 111 The presence of the Spirit cannot be ‘enclosed’ in a local sacramental presence any more than Christ’s divinity can be ‘enclosed’ or limited to a body of Christ, subject to circumscription. For a description of this parallel, see Elwood, The Body Broken, 70. 112 Canon 1 of the Fourth Lateran Council states that Christ’s ‘body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the Wgures of bread and wine’ (John H. Leith, Creeds of the Churches, 3rd edn (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1982), 58; emphasis added). 113 Institutes, 4. 17. 18.

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‘a spirit out of Christ’s Xesh’ and is unmistakably Eutychian, such that Christ’s ‘body was swallowed up by his divinity’ so that ‘the substance of the body is wiped out’.114 Instead of a ubiquitous body, Calvin stays with his anti-Roman Catholic polemic that Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father rather than ‘carnally’ present in the Mass. How, then, do we receive Christ’s body in the Supper? Calvin’s frequently questioned solution is that believers are ‘lifted up’ to heaven in the Lord’s Supper to feed on Christ’s Xesh and blood.115 However counterintuitive the notion of being ‘lifted up’ to receive Christ’s body may be for some readers, this theme has deep coherence with Calvin’s Trinitarian account of adoption and the duplex gratia. Calvin repeatedly emphasizes that believers are participants not only in the death of Christ, but in the resurrection and ascension of Christ. In receiving the gift of Christ’s death, one receives the propitiatory oVering from the eternal priest, bringing the pardon that reveals the gracious mercy of the Father. This is the Wrst grace of the Lord’s Supper. Next, however, believers are given new life by the Spirit to participate in the resurrection and ascension of Christ, which manifests itself in the ‘duties of love’ and a life consecrated to God. This is the second grace of the Lord’s Supper. For Calvin, the key problem with the Lutheran and Roman Catholic view of the Eucharist is that they ‘drag him [Christ] from heaven’ in such a way that they do not appreciate the ascent of the Christian into heavenly places in their union with Christ.116 To some this sounds ‘other-worldly’, wanting to leave behind earthly matter and the aVairs of ‘this’ world.117 From Calvin’s perspective, nothing could be further from the truth. In defending the value of common bodies subject to circumscription, Calvin is emphasizing how the Incarnation meets humanity in all of its physical limitations. The Incarnation must redeem our natural body; thus, the ‘true and natural body’ of Christ—the same body ‘which hung on the cross’—must be communicated to us in the Supper.118 Likewise, in emphasizing the ‘pointing’ 114 Institutes, 4. 17. 29. 115 For example, see Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 35. 116 Institutes, 4. 17. 30. See also TT 2. 277–80; CO 9. 70–2; and my discussion of the eucharistic controversies in Ch. 3. 117 See Oliver, ‘The Eucharist before Nature and Culture’, 342–4. 118 TT 2. 401–2; CO 9. 183.

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character of physical signs, he is giving elements such as bread and wine the high status of ‘exhibiting’ Christ’s Xesh and blood. But perhaps most importantly, Calvin teaches that the love and almsgiving which are connected with the Lord’s Supper are indispensable to participation in Christ in the heavenly places through the Spirit.119 This is the second grace of the Lord’s Supper: love, gratitude, voluntary obedience to God, and almsgiving. This sacrament leads believers to the well, to ‘draw life from the Son of God’. It involves being engrafted into Christ, to ‘grow more and more together with him, until he perfectly joins us with him in the heavenly life’.120 While this engrafting Wnds its culmination in an eschatological future, believers are currently engrafted into the church as the Body of Christ, and the activity of the church is a participation in this body. As noted in Chapter 3, participation in Christ in the Lord’s Supper is inseparably connected with love, equity, and justice. It is at once a taste of the heavenly union and a participation in the hard work of earthly love. In light of this bringing together of heaven and earth, it is possible to respond to a misunderstanding of Calvin’s eucharistic doctrine by the Gift discussion: that the body of Christ is separated from believers in literal space.121 The misunderstanding is based upon two of Calvin’s eucharistic claims: that the body of Christ is ‘in heaven’, at the right hand of the Father, and that the Spirit can unite what is separated by space. Thus, the assumption of this interpretation is that a spatial barrier brought about by the Ascension separates believers from Christ’s body; this barrier can only be overcome through a ‘spiritual’ partaking of the body through the Spirit. Yet, this interpretation neglects Calvin’s key point that spatial terms are not appropriate for speaking about the Spirit, for this makes God subject to circumscription. When Calvin says that the body of Christ is not enclosed in the bread, but has ascended to the 119 For more on the connection between the Lord’s Supper and mutual love, see Ch. 3. For the connection between the Lord’s Supper and almsgiving, see Ch. 5. 120 Institutes, 4. 17. 33. 121 According to Ward, ‘he [Calvin] is obsessed with spatial determinants throughout his account of the eucharist’ (Ward, Cities of God, 164). Although Calvin frequently uses language that seems spatial (e.g. the body being ‘in heaven’), he is using it within a theology of revelation as accommodation that is not as directly ‘spatial’ as Ward claims. Also see Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 35.

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right hand of the Father, he refuses to describe this in Xatly ‘spatial’ terms. In responding to Westphal, who claims that Christ is substantially present in a local way in the elements, Calvin has two levels of response: Christ can be substantially available without being locally present, and local presence is simply the wrong way to conceive of Christ’s presence in the Supper. The Spirit does not ‘unite’ the real spatial distance between the right hand of the Father and the elements—spatial distance is simply the wrong category. Christ’s body and blood are communicated by the Spirit ‘without any change of place’, so that ‘our souls obtain spiritual life from his substance.’122 In a similar manner, when considering ‘where’ the right hand of the Father is, Calvin thinks that the phrase ‘does not mean any particular place, but the power which the Father has bestowed on Christ, that he may administer in his name the government of heaven and earth’.123 ‘It is in vain, therefore, to attempt to prove that, because Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, he dwells in heaven alone.’124 Certainly, there is a sense in which Calvin’s position entails that Christ’s gloriWed body continues to be a body subject to circumscription.125 But this does not give him warrant for speculation about the spatial qualities of heaven.126 Indeed, as Calvin’s theology of the ascent of believers in the Lord’s Supper suggests, ‘heaven’ is not a spatially distant place. ‘Heaven’ is not identical with any ‘place’ in space and time. Rather, Calvin’s theology of the ascent of believers in the Supper indicates how the ‘heavenly’ body is made available on earth. In the Lord’s Supper, heaven is tasted. Ultimately, there is a sense in which heaven is ‘distant’, but this ‘distance’ is not literally one of space, but one of transcendence.127 122 TT 2. 384; CO 9. 170. 123 Comm. Eph. 1: 20, CTS. 124 Ibid. 125 See Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, 204–6. 126 This subtlety becomes apparent when one examines Calvin’s account of the body of Christ in heaven. Calvin says that the claim that the body of Christ is in heaven is found in both the Bible and Augustine. While Calvin is emphatic about this point, he simply refuses to answer questions which probe the ‘spatial’ nature of heaven. ‘Shall we therefore, some will say, assign to Christ a deWnite region of heaven? But I reply with Augustine that this is a very prying and superXuous question; for us it is enough to believe that he is in heaven’ (Institutes, 4. 17. 26). 127 In interpreting Calvin’s notion of distance as primarily a metaphysical rather than a spatial distance, I am in basic agreement with Wilhelm Niesel’s reading in Calvins Lehre vom Abendmahl (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1930), 92.

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It is this distance that is overcome only by the work of the Spirit. The virtue (‘power’) of the Spirit can bring the life-giving Xesh and blood of Christ to believers—a body which cannot be ‘enclosed’ or ‘contained’ in an earthly institution. Through the Spirit, believers taste the life-giving power of heaven on earth. Yet, this tasting and eating is not something which involves Christ’s body being ‘enclosed’ or ‘contained’; rather, it is given for the nourishment of believers. The ‘distance’ of Christ’s heavenly body is not erased by a ubiquitous body in the bread and wine; rather, the bread and wine, as signs, are divine accommodations by which believers receive the heavenly Christ. In the Last Admonition to Westphal, Calvin explains how the Passover and circumcision were signs or ‘types’ that exhibited Christ in the Old Testament. In these Old Testament sacraments, ‘the lamb was the Passover, and circumcision a covenant, in the same way in which the bread is now body to us’. To reject the ‘pointing’ character of these signs is to arrogantly deny God’s gracious, accommodating aid. Responding to his Lutheran opponents, Calvin writes: Their allegation, that ever since Christ was exhibited to the world, there is no more room for types, not only originates in disgraceful ignorance, but shows, that from proud contempt, they spurn the grace of Christ. Is their faith so perfect that they can reject the aid of types, and receive Christ present? And to what end did Christ institute the Supper and Baptism, but just in accommodation to our weakness, to raise us upwards to himself by the vehicles of types? I confess, indeed, that the body and substance of those things which the law shadowed forth now exist in Christ, as Paul plainly teaches; only let this be referred to the diVerent modes of signifying, and let us not be altogether deprived of the use of signs, which experience shows to be no less necessary to us than to the ancient fathers.128

By drawing upon his notion of accommodation, Calvin makes it clear that the ‘distance’ he wants to preserve in eucharistic reception is not a spatial distance; only through accommodation and types can the heavenly, life-giving body of Christ be made available to believers.

128 TT 2. 428; CO 9. 202; emphasis added.

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Of course, this explanation does not answer all of the metaphysical questions about Calvin’s account. Calvin himself claims that while he avoids ‘absurdities’, he does not follow ‘reason’ as a guide in this account of the Lord’s Supper or seek to ‘diminish anything of God’s power.’129 Indeed, at one point Calvin quips, ‘I would rather experience [the mystery of the Lord’s Supper] than understand it.’130 Yet, a Trinitarian account of adoption and the duplex gratia does illuminate some of the striking features of Calvin’s account. On the one hand, Calvin emphasizes that the Supper is a ‘gift’ to the extent that one can receive pardon only through Christ, calming the conscience and opening up a relationship with the merciful Father.131 The ‘gift’ character of this Wrst grace means that no physical elements can or should receive the honour for this gratuitous act already accomplished. In addition, the body and blood of Christ are given rather than ‘enclosed’ or ‘contained’ in the elements in a way that would make the work of the Spirit subject to circumscription. On the other hand, Calvin draws heavily upon Cyril of Alexandria, emphasizing that the Lord’s Supper involves truly partaking of the life-giving, transforming, heavenly Xesh and blood of Christ by the Spirit.132 This heavenly partaking is active and empowering, occurring in the earthly church with earthly elements. In this ‘heavenly place’ of the earthly church, Christians can claim ‘to possess Christ entire’ in the Lord’s Supper, for in a real sense ‘the whole Christ is everywhere’.133 Yet, drawing upon a Lombardian distinction, ‘the whole of that which is in him is not everywhere’.134

129 Institutes, 4. 17. 25, 30. 130 Institutes, 4. 17. 32. 131 Also see Gerrish, ‘John Calvin and the Reformed Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper’, 235–6. 132 See Ch. 2 for more on Calvin’s use of Cyril. Calvin’s most extensive appropriation of the church fathers on the Lord’s Supper is in his Wnal treatise on the Supper, The True Partaking of the Flesh and Blood of Christ in the Holy Supper. 133 Institutes, 4. 17. 33, 30. 134 Institutes, 4. 17. 30. Lombard, Sentences, iii. xxii. 3. Calvin draws upon Lombard at this point to reinforce his claim that Christ can be everywhere in some sense, even while the body of Christ per se is not ubiquitous. Calvin’s speciWc application of this principle has been labelled by some as the ‘extra Calvinisticum’: Christ in his deity is everywhere, but his humanity is able to be circumscribed (because of the body). Thus, in the words of David Willis, ‘the Eternal Son of God was united to but not restricted to his humanity’. Although some consider this teaching to be a peculiarity of Reformed theology, Willis shows how this teaching is widespread among patristic

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The hearts of believers are brought to this ‘place’ by the Spirit, precisely in the context of the Lord’s Supper as a meal involving the obligations of mutual love.135 The second grace in the Lord’s Supper takes the form of gratitude and love of God and neighbour. This is the heavenly yet earthly movement of sanctiWcation as participation in Christ.

4.3. CONCLUSION Given our focus emerging from the Gift discussion on the activity of believers in receiving grace, what features does Calvin hold in common through his account of prayer and the sacraments? I have argued that the key theological structure is one of adoption and incorporation, developed in a Trinitarian manner conditioned by the duplex gratia. When it comes to complicated issues such as sacramental metaphysics, Calvin has many doctrinal issues at stake related to Christology, pneumatology, etc. But key to his reasoning are essentially pastoral concerns: the duplex gratia must be upheld so that the conscience can rest from its anxiety and believers’ life in Christ can Xow from a base of gratitude and freedom. This takes place in an unmistakably Trinitarian context, revealing the generous pardon of the Father as believers are united to Christ and empowered by the Spirit and united into one body, the church. In his pastoral strategy, Calvin does not hesitate to remind believers that they must put great eVort into the spiritual life—they cannot simply ‘wait’ for the Spirit to work. Yet, lest the gratitude due to God be undermined, believers are constantly reminded to give the credit for their life in Christ to God alone. Acts of gratitude, prayer, and the reception of the sacraments are all ‘gifts’ in the sense that they

writers. The direct inXuences upon Calvin on this point are from Augustine and Lombard, but it was a teaching that ‘was in fact almost universally confessed—from Origen to Theodore of Mopsuestia, to Athanasius and Cyril, to St. Thomas and Gabriel Biel’ (David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the SoCalled Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 60). 135 Institutes, 4. 17. 18, 38.

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emerge from God, yet they Xow in and through the active lives of believers. Contrary to the suspicions of those engaged in the Gift discussion, Calvin’s consistent focus on the honour of God does not denigrate humanity, systematically separating God from creation; rather, in Calvin’s theology of participation in prayer and the sacraments, believers actively move toward the purposes of creation and redemption: to live in loving fellowship with each other, united to God. Thus, baptism is a sign of God’s promise to move children of Adam to the lineage of Abraham through Christ. Although the children of believers have a ‘hereditary right’ to receive this sign of God’s covenant promise, its reception through faith emerges from the free action of the Spirit, who enables believers to experience the free pardon of the Father through Christ. Possessing the gift of Christ’s righteousness, believers are activated to love God and neighbour in gratitude, ascetically struggling by the power of the Spirit. In baptism, believers are adopted by the Father through Christ and incorporated into Christ’s body, the church, which is Wlled with the Spirit to empower lives of thankful love. In the Lord’s Supper, believers partake of Christ’s body and blood through the Spirit, receiving God’s gifts and the empowering presence of the Spirit. In the meal, the pietas of Adam is restored as the Father’s gracious pardon is revealed and the conscience is given rest. In the midst of this rest from the eVorts of self-justiWcation, believers draw nourishment from Christ as heavenly food that empowers a life of loving God and neighbour. Believers receive the life-giving Xesh and blood of Christ in the accommodating form of bread and wine, as signs which point to Christ, the substance of the Supper. Enabled by the Spirit to partake of Christ in the Supper, believers taste heaven as they receive what the Father has given to the Son and simultaneously reach out to others in love, by the Spirit. This love emerging from the Lord’s Supper is not a ‘unilateral gift’ that implicitly disregards reciprocity. Rather, the rich communion and fellowship that are experienced in the partaking of Christ are given a horizontal dimension, unifying believers with a spiritual bond as Christ’s Body. Indeed, the ‘sacriWce of praise’ that takes place in the Lord’s Supper includes ‘all the duties of love’. Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper involves an active participation in the Body of

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Christ, such that believers participate in the koinonia of the Body of Christ and the outreaching love of neighbour. As they communally participate in Christ on vertical and horizontal levels, believers actively enter into koinonia with Christ through the Spirit, enabled by the same Spirit to have koinonia with one another.

5 Participation and the Law: God’s Accommodation to Humanity so that Humanity may be Accommodated to God Many of the criticisms of Calvin by the Gift theologians cluster around issues related to Calvin’s theology of love, mutuality, and the law. Milbank, for example, argues that Calvin and Calvinism have displaced the ‘centrality of love’ in the Christian gospel, replacing it with the more passive acts of trust or hope.1 In addition, Calvin’s theology of love is criticized for the way it is connected with the theology of the law. As such, Calvin’s theology of love turns into a duty-based legalism, with little place for delight and no place for mutuality.2 As Zemon Davis says, Calvin tells his parishioners in Geneva how to give, but not how to receive. Calvin is said to promote unilateral gifts.3 Loving exchange is excluded. As God remains separated from humanity through giving a ‘free gift’, so also the Calvinist giver remains separate from the receiver. In addition, Calvin’s theology of the law reXects an allegedly negative, punitive anthropology to some critics.4 Calvin does state that ‘the end of the natural law, therefore, is that man may be rendered inexcusable’.5 Particularly for scholars involved in the twentieth-century Barth–Brunner debates about natural theology,

1 2 3 4 5

Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 33. See especially the discussion of Webb in Ch. 1. See also ibid. 32–3. Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, 114. This is part of the overall critique of Calvin’s anthropology discussed in Ch. 1. Institutes, 2. 2. 22.

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Calvin’s theology of the law seems to simply anticipate Barth’s magisterial Nein! to natural theology. As Niesel boldly states, ‘the law of nature has only one purpose: namely to make man inexcusable before God.’6 Niesel is correct in naming this central role for the law in Calvin’s theology, given the present fallen state. However, in the overly negative account of Niesel and others, the creational purpose of the natural law and the present uses of the law are obscured. It is simply not the case that Calvin represents a break with the ‘whole tradition’ of natural law.7 This chapter explores the deep and multivalent ways in which the law is connected with human participation in God and the participation of believers in Christ. Beginning with creation, the law is an accommodation for human beings to voluntarily delight in God and love their neighbour. The law is a gracious accommodation by God to unite humanity to God. This accommodation Wnds its full expression in Christ. Moreover, although persons experience the new order of Christ only in an eschatologically conditioned way, the primal order of voluntary love and communion with God and neighbour provides the ultimate portrait of human Xourishing for both church and state. In the church, participation in Christ involves mutual love within the body and love of neighbour—extending to the needs in society. These loves seek to restore the primal harmony and communion between human beings. In the state, external obedience can be enforced by coercion; yet the civil government must Wnd a place for the voluntary will of the people, seeking to restore voluntary participation in government where possible. Calvin’s theology of the law displays the active, communal, participatory place of the human being in creation through the imago Dei and in redemption as believers participate in Christ by faith, through the power of the Spirit.

6 Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, 102. For the scope of viewpoints on this issue, see William Klempa, ‘John Calvin on Natural Law’, in Calvin Studies 4, ed. John H. Leith and W. Stacey Johnson (Davidson, NC: Davidson College, 1988), 1–24. 7 Contra Paul Lehmann’s characterization of the ‘Reformation’ in ‘Law’, in A Handbook of Christian Theology, ed. Marvin Halverson and Arthur Allen Cohen (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 206.

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5.1. A PRIMAL ‘MODE OF RELATION’: THE LAW BEFORE THE FALL Although it is known as the ‘third’ use of the law, the law’s role as guidance for believers is in fact the primary role.8 It gains this primary status through its place in Calvin’s account of the economy of salvation as creation–Fall–restoration–fulWlment. The negative uses of the law function as they do because of the Fall. The third use of the law, however, is a primal gift from God, what Dowey calls a ‘mode of relation’ between humanity and God in the prelapsarian state.9 The law provides this ‘mode of relation’ so that humanity can be properly united to God before the Fall. A proper union with God is a voluntary one—thus engaging the will as well as the intellect; therefore, the command not to eat from the forbidden tree in the garden is an expression of this law. ‘Adam was denied the tree of knowledge of good and evil to test his obedience and prove that he was willingly under God’s command.’10 God desired voluntary obedience from Adam. God gave the command to Adam so that he ‘might know he had a Director and Lord of his life, on whose will he ought to depend, and in whose commands he ought to acquiesce’. But God wanted Adam’s dependence upon himself to be a voluntary, ‘willing’ dependence, in which Adam ‘might acknowledge that he lives not by his own power, but by the kindness of God alone’.11 The original telos of the law is still the telos of the law for Christians: union with God. As Calvin states, the law contains commands ‘whose purpose is to unite us to our God. And that [union with God] constitutes our happiness and glory’.12 Indeed, ‘the principle end and use of the Law’ is ‘to invite men to God; and, indeed, their true happiness lies in being united to God.’13 The law leads humanity to 8 Institutes, 2. 7. 12. 9 Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 225. 10 Institutes, 2. 1. 4; emphasis added. 11 Comm. Gen. 2: 9, CTS; CO 23. 38. 12 John Calvin, John Calvin’s Sermons on the Ten Commandments, trans. Benjamin Wirt Farley (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1980), 39; CO 26. 237. 13 Comm. Isa. 45: 19, CTS; CO 37. 145.

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their only true happiness, their only true glory—union with God. During this life, the law will still function to [rightfully] show Christians their sin; in the midst of the struggle with the ‘Xesh’, or the ‘old self ’, the law Wlls this negative role. But even this negative role for the law leads to the path of union—for in repentance believers ‘Xee to his [God’s] mercy, repose entirely in it, hide deep within it, and seize upon it alone for righteousness and merit’.14 Through the negative function of the law, believers are pushed to Wnd their identity ‘in Christ’, united to God.15 In this way, the law is a gift from God, intended to evoke a grateful, active response. In reXecting on the presentation of the law to the Israelites through Moses,16 Calvin writes: Let us begin to enumerate the beneWts which we have received from him: ‘Poor creature, how lax you are not to adhere to your God when he has revealed his will to you! Consider what you take from him. Consider the beneWts which he has distributed until now.’ Therefore let each one of us examine how much we are indebted to him to the end that we might be that much more motivated to serve him.17

The revelation of God’s will in the law is a precious gift, showing how God seeks out a people for relationship and gives them all that they have. Thus, they have occasion to ‘examine’ how ‘indebted’ they are to God. Yet, the obedience the law requires is not a grudging 14 Institutes, 2. 7. 8. 15 See ibid. 16 Calvin has a surprisingly long passage about the obligation to gratitude in his sermon on Deut. 4: 44–5: 3; see Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 41–3; CO 26. 238–40. On what grounds in Deuteronomy does Calvin give this exposition that relates gratitude to the giving of the law? Calvin seems to be capitalizing on the fact that the Ten Commandments are given ‘in the land of King Sihon of the Amorites, who reigned at Heshbon, whom Moses and the Israelites defeated when they came out of Egypt. They occupied his land and the land of King Og of Bashan’ (Deut. 4: 46–7a, NRSV). In Calvin’s gloss, this is signiWcant because the Ten Commandments are given in the context of the victory and gracious provision of God for his people (ibid. 42; CO 26: 239). Thus, the law is to be received with gratitude. ‘These were two strong and robust kings who were defeated . . . whom God delivered into our hands. Who was the cause of these victories? Was it not God who directs and governs all things? Seeing then that he has had compassion on us and has begun to accomplish the promise which he made to our fathers . . . is it not truly appropriate that we take the trouble to yield ourselves to our God and totally be subject to him?’ (ibid.). 17 Ibid.

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submission. Rather, as believers taste of the oneness with God accomplished for believers through Christ, they experience joy. For Calvin, one of the key diVerences between those who disobey and those who obey is that the former respond in ‘idleness’ and ‘indiVerence’ to the law, while the latter respond in ‘joy’ and ‘excitement’.18 Obedience to the law emerges from delight in God’s ‘paternal love’.19 God’s gift of the law, which reveals his will for intimate fellowship, is an act of condescending love. The law comes with a covenant, wherein ‘the living God humbles himself’ to ‘enter into a common treaty’ where ‘he mutually binds himself to us without having to do so’.20 The law is a condescension that anticipates an even greater revelatory condescension: the Incarnation. After speaking repeatedly of how God humbles himself with the law, Calvin continues: When he [our Lord] sent his unique Son, he revealed himself as our father and savior more amply than he had ever done and in an unsurpassably gentle and conciliatory manner, as if he had divulged his most intimate feelings. Accordingly, God has given us his heart in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ who so intimately communicates with us that he no longer calls us his servants but his friends.21

The law is a gift of love—fulWlled in the gift of God’s heart in Jesus Christ. Through Christ, the ‘gentle’ Father tells ‘his most intimate feelings’. Paradoxically, the law is fulWlled in such a way that one is not simply subservient to a master, but ‘friends’ in intimate communion. The gift of the law leads to communion and close fellowship. Thus, the purpose of the law in creation—and through redemption in Christ—is far from a dry legalism. The law is part of God’s loving, revealing condescension to unite humanity to God in joy and intimacy.

18 Institutes, 2. 7. 8. 19 ‘And assuredly the reverence which is paid to God Xows from no other source than the tasting of His paternal love towards us, whereby we are drawn to love Him in return’ (Comm. Deut. 10: 12, Harmony of the Law, iii, CTS; CO 24. 723. 20 Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 45; CO 26. 242. 21 Ibid. 46; CO 26. 242–3.

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5.2. AFTER THE FALL: THE LAW HIDDEN, ACC U SI N G , R E S T R A I N IN G For Calvin, the primary function of the law—as a ‘mode’ of proper relation between God and humanity—has been disrupted. The gift of the law has become hidden; God does not appear to humanity as a loving father.22 Although in the ‘natural order’ (genuinus ordo) the universe itself was a ‘school in which we were to learn piety, and from it pass over to eternal life and perfect felicity’, there is now a ‘curse’ which ‘overwhelms our souls with despair’.23 For ‘even if God wills to manifest his fatherly favor to us in many ways, yet we cannot by contemplating the universe infer that he is Father’.24 To the contrary, rather than knowing oneself as an adopted child of God, our ‘conscience presses us within and shows in our sin just cause for his disowning us and not regarding or recognizing us as his sons’.25 Ironically, it is the Wrst use of the law to show us our distance from the fulWlment of the primal, third use of the law. The Wrst use of the law acts as a mirror to human sinfulness, showing sinners as inexcusable before God. Before the Fall, the law cultivates pietas and assurance of adoption; after the Fall, the same law reveals impietas and human worthiness for condemnation. Yet, even after the Fall and before Christ’s appearance, there was a positive function for the law. The ceremonial laws of the Old Testament display the Father’s gracious adoption of Israel as God’s people, ‘a priestly kingdom unto God’ who ‘become partners in God’s glory’.26 By witnessing to Israel’s adoption and partnership with God, the ceremonial law retains traces of the primal, prelapsarian law. The 22 Although human beings still have a sense of divinity (divinitatis sensus), Calvin thinks that God does not appear to humans as a loving, gracious God except by divine revelation. Apart from revelation, God appears to humanity as a judge and a tyrant. God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, however, provides a decisive revelation of the Father’s loving and gracious character. One should note that Calvin is not saying that God should appear as a tyrant apart from revelation. Rather, because of the conscious guilt of the conscience, God does appear as a judge and an enemy. The main force of Calvin’s claim is descriptive, given his account of the universality of the conscience and its power to convict of sin. See Institutes, 1. 3–6, 2. 6. 1–2, 2. 7, 3. 19. 23 Institutes, 2. 6. 1; OS 2. 320. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Institutes, 2. 7. 1.

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‘fullness’ of this positive relationship between God and Israel— grounded in covenant and law—is culminated in Christ. Nevertheless, the ceremonial law itself reXects the glory of God’s accommodation in the law and ultimately of God’s accommodation in Christ. In a sense, however, the law as positive provision may seem to be cancelled out by the law as negative condemnation, since sinners never fulWl God’s perfect law. Christ perfectly embodies the law, but his illumination of the law functions as a ‘mirror’ to show how far others have fallen short.27 Thus, ‘the feebleness of the law shows itself ’, for since no one successfully upholds the law, ‘we are excluded from the promises of life’ and adoption by God as Father.28 For the covenant requires ‘perfect obedience’ to the moral law. But this is precisely the point at which Calvin’s Christology makes the decisive diVerence: the promise of adoption to Abraham and his spiritual children is completely void without Christ. After the Fall, humans have been ‘blinded’ by sin to the point that only by participation in Christ and his righteousness can the primordial ‘union’ with God be restored. The ‘promise’ of life and adoption that comes with the law is conditional upon obedience. Yet, through participating in Christ by imputation (the Wrst grace), God is ‘supplying what is lacking to complete it’, so that God ‘causes us to receive the beneWt of the promises of the law as if we had fulWlled their condition’.29 As possessors of the promise of adoption through Christ, the Spirit also works to make believers ‘participate’ in Christ in the second sense (corresponding to the second grace): believers participate in Christ as the embodiment of the law, thus growing in obedience to the commandments through the Spirit. In this way, the gap between what humans ‘ought’ to do and what they ‘can’ do is bridged. Through the Wrst grace of imputation the demands of the law are fulWlled (‘ought’), and the second grace gradually enables the believer to obey the law (‘can’). What holds these two graces together—in both the old and the new dispensations of the covenant—is participation in Christ. Following the logic of the Wrst grace, Calvin thinks that the Wrst step towards obeying the commandments is admitting that one cannot do so. Although obedience to the commandments fulWls the primordial telos of human nature, the Fall makes obedience a dynamic action of 27 See Institutes, 2. 7. 2.

28 Institutes, 2. 7. 3.

29 Institutes, 2. 7. 4.

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moving beyond the ‘old self’. (Even in the Garden, however, Adam’s righteousness was through ‘participation in God’.30) Obedience requires a humble reception of Christ’s righteousness, extra nos, through faith. This movement from the ‘old self’ is extended in the second grace, in which the active obedience of believers is, in fact, a participation in Christ by the Spirit. In order to obey the law, one cannot simply focus on the commandments; one must give oneself over to Christ. Calvin openly admits that the negative functions of the law are accidental to the purpose of the law. When Paul says that the ‘ ‘‘law is the minister of death’’ ’ (2 Cor. 3: 7), Calvin says ‘it is so accidentally, from a corruption of our nature’, for God imposed the law for a good purpose ‘from the beginning’.31 Yet, the Wrst and second functions of the law have soteriological signiWcance. The Wrst function—as a mirror to human disobedience—points persons to look beyond themselves to Christ—a righteous saviour, extra nos. The second function of the law is to curb public evil-doing, resulting in a ‘constrained and forced righteousness’ that is ‘necessary for the public community of men’.32 Soteriologically, this restraint of evil-doers helps to provide the conditions in which a community of faith can function without undue negative inXuences from the society at large. In the end, the negative functions of the law help spur persons to Wnd the true way of righteousness, the true way of communion with God: through union with Christ by faith, partaking in the law-fulWller through the Spirit. As the law condemns and restrains, it points beyond itself precisely by revealing the impotence of the sinner. It creates a longing in the heart of the sinner that only Christ can fulWl.

5. 3 . PA RTI C I PAT I O N A N D T H E L AW O F NAT U R E As noted above, the law is a gracious accommodation of God to humanity, a good gift that was present before the Fall. Before the Fall, the law provided a mode for humanity to be united in fellowship with God. After the Fall, does the law enable a similar type of 30 Institutes, 2. 2. 1. 31 Comm. Gen. 2: 16, CTS; CO 23. 45.

32 Institutes, 2. 7. 10.

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participation? Through the Wrst use of the law, persons are challenged to move beyond a ‘participation’ in the [fallen] Adam, to seek righteousness in Christ as the fulWlment of the law. In the second use of the law, persons are challenged to participate in a Godordained ordering for civil society. But how does the third and primary use of the law relate to ‘participation’? The answer to this question is twofold: the third use of the law as participation in the law of nature, and the third use of the law as participation in Christ. These dimensions are not separate from one another or equal in signiWcance. Rather, participation in the law of nature is a penultimate stage of participation that is fulWlled only by participation in Christ. The issue of natural law and its relationship to natural theology in Calvin has been a contested issue in Calvin scholarship for more than half a century.33 Concerning natural law, scholars like McNeill emphasize the Thomist tendencies of Calvin’s thought, in contrast to Barthian readings which see only a negative use for natural law.34 Between these two hermeneutical poles, scholars such as Bohatec, Hesselink, Little, Grabill, and Backus have portrayed Calvin as taking a middle-ground position on natural law.35 Certainly, one of the central soteriological 33 For summaries and bibliographies for this debate, see Stephen J. Grabill, ‘Theological Foundation for a Reformed Doctrine of Natural Law’ (Ph.D. thesis, Calvin Theological Seminary, 2004), 108–18; Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, 57–60; Klempa, ‘John Calvin on Natural Law’. 34 In addition to McNeill, (Institutes, i. 367–8 n.), Gu¨nter Gloede provides an important work that interprets Calvin as heavily indebted to the natural law tradition. See Gu¨nter Gloede, Theologia naturalis bei Calvin (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1935). Those who take a more Barthian, negative view of Calvin’s use of natural law include T. F. Torrance, Werner Krusche, and W. Niesel. See Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin; Niesel, The Theology of Calvin; Thomas F. Torrance, Calvin’s Doctrine of Man (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957). 35 See Irena Backus, ‘Calvin’s Concept of Natural and Roman Law’, Calvin Theological Journal, 38, no. 1 (2003) 7–26, at 7–15; Josef Bohatec, Calvin und das Recht (Graz: H. Boehlaus, 1934), 19–26; Grabill, ‘Theological Foundation for a Reformed Doctrine of Natural Law’, 148–64; Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, 60–73; Little, ‘Calvin and the Prospects for a Christian Theory of Natural Law’. Although each scholar has a somewhat diVerent account of Calvin’s theology of natural law, all of them disagree with the Barthian reading, which sees no ‘positive’ use for natural law, and with readings which see Calvin as a Thomist on the natural law. In the most recent account, Grabill characterizes Calvin as taking part in a ‘realist tradition’ of natural law which has certain commonalities with intellectualist and voluntarist traditions of natural law (p. 157).

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purposes of the natural law is that it provides the grounds for unregenerate humanity to see how they fall short of the standards of their conscience; fallen humanity knows what is right but does not do what is right. It is in this context that Calvin writes that ‘the purpose of natural law . . . is to render man inexcusable’.36 However, Calvin also has other, more positive uses for the natural law.37 The negative use of the law to lead to repentance is not its exclusive purpose. In order to understand the place of the natural law in Calvin’s theology, several distinctions in his terminology need to be made. The ‘natural law’ or the ‘law of nature’ is the law in creation before the Fall. However, when Calvin speaks of the natural law, he is frequently speaking of the ‘internal law’ (lex interior) which is ‘engraved, upon the hearts of all’.38 Although this law is written on the human heart, human understanding of this law is greatly tarnished from the blindness and sin resulting from the Fall. What is the content of the ‘internal’ law? The ‘internal’ law, although perceived imperfectly, is the same as the ‘moral law’, which is ‘the true and eternal righteousness, prescribed for all nations and times, who wish to conform their lives to God’s will’.39 The content of the moral law is summed up in the Decalogue, which can be fully understood only in light of Christ and the double commandment to love God and love neighbour.40 Thus, the ‘moral law’ is also part of the ‘natural law’, even though humans have imperfect access to this natural, moral law apart from revelation. In his account of the loss of knowledge of the moral law through the Fall, Calvin makes a great deal of the traditional division of the Decalogue into the Wrst and second tables. The Wrst table of the moral law relates to the right worship of God, ‘what we owe him’.41 The 36 Institutes, 2. 2. 22. 37 See Backus, ‘Calvin’s Concept of Natural and Roman Law’, 10–15; Grabill, ‘Theological Foundation for a Reformed Doctrine of Natural Law’, 112–14; Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, 58–60. 38 Institutes, 2. 8. 1. 39 Institutes, 4. 20. 15. Calvin goes on to say that the moral law ‘is his [God’s] eternal and unchangeable will that he himself indeed be worshiped by us all, and that we love one another’. 40 Institutes, 2. 8. 7, 51. 41 Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 122; CO 26. 300. For Calvin, the Wrst table of the law includes the Wrst four commandments, and the second table includes the last six. Calvin’s division of the commandments diVered from that of Lutherans and Roman Catholics. See Institutes, 2. 8. 12.

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second table of the moral law relates to the duties of love toward humankind.42 On the one hand, obedience to the Wrst table necessarily leads to obedience to the second table. Yet, the two tables are not aVected in the same way by the Fall. The internal knowledge of the Wrst table of the law is almost completely vanquished.43 Calvin’s account of the natural knowledge of the law in book 2 of the Institutes implicitly draws upon his account of the natural knowledge of God in book 1.44 In book 1, Calvin gives a paradoxical and quite original reading of Romans 1: 18–32, arguing that the natural knowledge of God is oVered by God but not received.45 The blindness resulting from the Fall keeps the natural knowledge of God (related to the Wrst table) to a minimal content: that God exists and that God is a judge.46 The knowledge of God and of the lawful worship of God is possessed by ‘natural’ humanity just enough to make humanity responsible (in some sense) and hence ‘inexcusable’. However, the second table of the natural, moral law is a diVerent story. Although fallen humanity has a distorted view of the second table until they have received God’s revelation, humans nevertheless have an innate knowledge of good and evil that is reasonably reliable.47 On the one hand, this extends Calvin’s argument from Romans 1 that human beings know the diVerence between good and evil, but nevertheless do what is evil. But it also provides an open door for an account of ‘natural law’ in the ethics and codes of civil society. The second table of the law is so ‘internalized’ that there is no society which does not have a sense of justice and injustice that 42 Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 122; CO 26. 300. 43 Natural reason and the conscience do ‘not at all comply with the principal points of the First Table’, being ‘blind’ in many respects to the ‘lawful worship of God’. Nevertheless, natural capacities still bring ‘some notion of the spiritual worship of God’, even if it is ‘at once pervert[ed] with false devisings’ (Institutes, 2. 2. 24). 44 Compare Institutes, 1. 3–5, with 2. 2. 45 See David Steinmetz, Calvin in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 28–32. 46 See Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 72. 47 This knowledge comes through the ‘conscience’, a natural faculty ‘which distinguishes suYciently between just and unjust’ so as to deprive humans of the ‘excuse of ignorance’ (Institutes, 2. 2. 22). On ‘conscience’ in Calvin, see Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 56–72; Backus, ‘Calvin’s Concept of Natural and Roman Law’, 10–12; Marc E´douard Chenevie`re, La Pense´e politique de Calvin (Geneva: Editions Labor, 1937); Grabill, ‘Theological Foundation for a Reformed Doctrine of Natural Law’, 148–64.

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fails to reXect the second table of the law.48 Since there is a considerable amount of ‘secular’ access to the second table, Calvin is able to draw upon classical notions of ethics and equity in his account of civil society.49 Indeed, through the vehicle of conscience, the laws of pagan societies are a reXection of the eternal law of God, since they reXect the natural law.50 The second table can only be understood fully in light of Christ, but the internal knowledge of this natural law remaining after the Fall is still considerable. With these distinctions in mind, we can sense the shape of Calvin’s soteriological argument. The ‘natural’ knowledge of God and God’s law does not involve the rich knowledge of pietas. Through the conscience, which is ‘a certain mean between God and man’,51 human beings are able to distinguish between good and evil, even in their fallen state.52 While this innate sense of good and evil is part of the imago Dei,53 it cannot lead humans back to God. Indeed, although knowledge of the second table is valuable, it does not in itself constitute proper ‘knowledge’ of God as seen in pietas. For Calvin, knowledge of God through pietas is not information about the good, or even information about God; rather, knowledge of God always involves communion and reunion with God. Both tables of the law function so as to lead persons to Wnd this salviWc communion 48 Calvin gives a providential purpose for the fact that there is ‘somewhat more [natural] understanding of the precepts of the Second Table’: ‘because these are more closely concerned with the preservation of civil society among them’ (Institutes, 2. 2. 24). Calvin’s reasoning assigns a relatively high place to the civil order: God preserves the natural knowledge of the second table so that civil society does not fall into disorder, for a greatly disordered civil society could disrupt God’s soteriological purposes. 49 See Guenther H. Haas, The Concept of Equity in Calvin’s Ethics (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997). Calvin is very clear that the ground for the positive law of nations should be the ‘natural law’ and ‘equity’, not the particular laws given to the Jewish nation through Moses. The ‘natural law’ prescribes ‘equity’, and ‘equity alone must be the goal and rule and limit of all laws’ (Institutes, 4. 10. 16). 50 See Comm. Rom. 2: 14–15. The notion of conscience is given a particularly prominent role in Calvin’s (limited) validation of pagan civil law. See Backus, ‘Calvin’s Concept of Natural and Roman Law’, 10–15. 51 Institutes, 4. 10. 3. 52 For example, Calvin writes: ‘There are two principal parts of the light which still remains in corrupt nature: Wrst, the seed of religion is implanted in all men; next, the distinction between good and evil is engraved on their consciences’ (Comm. John 1: 5, CTS; CO 47. 6). 53 See Comm. Gen. 2: 9, CTS; CO 23. 38.

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and righteousness in Christ. Yet, along with this dynamic movement out of oneself, Calvin’s emphasis upon the prelapsarian role of the law means that a renewal by the Spirit is also an internal renewal into the creature that God created one to be. Thus, Calvin’s insistence upon the necessity of the Spirit for regeneration does not mean that God must violently intrude upon the ‘natural’, fallen human.54 Rather, the Spirit’s initiative leads to an internal restoration of the human creature so that the human can ‘participate in God’, which is the truly ‘natural’ state. The Spirit restores natural knowledge of God and knowledge of the natural law. The Spirit alone enables the third use of the law to be the primary use: the law as guidance for Christians in living a holy life. Said diVerently, the Spirit’s advent is itself a ‘participation’ which enables another type of ‘participation’ in believers. Through the Spirit, believers have intimate communion with God and are united to Christ. The Spirit enables believers to obey God voluntarily, to follow voluntarily the path of the law. The way of the law is itself a uniting communion with God. As a consequence, voluntary obedience is not possible without the interpenetrating participation of the Spirit. Seen in this light, Calvin’s emphasis upon the bondage of the fallen will accents his high pneumatology: only the Spirit can enable voluntary obedience to the law, because voluntary obedience must always be connected with a communion with God which both restores the primal human nature and enables humanity to ‘participate in God’ through Christ. A free obedience that was not fully the Spirit’s work would allow for a type of ‘boasting’ prohibited by Paul (Eph. 2: 4–10). Moreover, a free obedience that was not fully the Spirit’s work would postulate a view of the primal human nature—and the primal law—in which a restoration of creation involves an evacuation of divine power. Since both the primal human nature and the primal human law involve a diVerentiated oneness and communion between God and humanity, there is no reason to set human freedom over and against the eVective grace of the Spirit’s power. The intimate communion of the Spirit is precisely what restores the voluntary, intimate communion with God that is missing after the Fall. 54 For Calvin’s direct response to the idea that God ‘violently’ intrudes upon the fallen creature, see Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 193–4, 232; CO 6. 367–8, 396.

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In light of his distinction between the two tables of the Law, the Spirit not only bridges the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, restoring the primal human nature, but the Spirit also restores the divinely intended unity between the two tables. Humans cannot obey the Wrst table by themselves, a table whereby ‘the worship of God [is] the beginning and foundation of righteousness’.55 For ‘whenever it [worship] is removed, whatever equity, continence or temperance men practice among themselves is empty in God’s sight and worthless’.56 Calvin is not claiming that persons who do not rightly worship God are completely without the virtues of ‘equity’ (aequitas) that are contained in the second table of the law. Rather, without the Spirit, such ‘virtues’ are ‘worthless’ in providing true righteousness, which can only take place through reunion with God, through the Spirit, in Christ. Since righteousness is above all a characteristic of God, after the Fall it can be regained only through participation in the Godhuman, Christ.57 Calvin writes: Let us consider who God is. For he does not wish to be known according to our nature . . . rather he wants to be known as he truly is; that is to say as just [and] good, that he is the perfection and fountain of all wisdom, of all virtue, of all integrity and righteousness. Thus once we begin to conceive of God as he truly is, that is, in his justice, integrity, and righteousness, we will only want to accommodate ourselves to him.58

Since God is the fountain of all righteousness, true human righteousness comes only through participation in Christ, thereby becoming ‘accommodated’ to God. By our ‘union with God’, God’s righteousness is ‘infused’ into believers.59 Thus, it is not surprising 55 Institutes, 2. 8. 11. 56 Ibid. 57 Thus, in justiWcation believers come to possess Christ’s righteousness—the righteousness of God—rather than depend upon their ‘own’ righteousness. See Institutes, 3. 14, for examples of this contrast. 58 Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 77; CO 26. 267. Note the way in which ‘accommodation’ is used in this passage about the sanctiWcation of believers in redemption. Thus, ‘accommodation’, like ‘participation’, can describe God’s revelatory descent or the believer’s saving ascent in redemption. On the dual directions of ‘participation’ language, see the discussion of the Hebrews Commentary in Ch. 3. 59 Although Radical Orthodox thinkers tend to see ‘imputation’ as sharply diVerentiated from ‘infusion’, Calvin is quite willing to speak of ‘infusion’ in the context of our ‘union with God’. Yet, this must take place in the context of the double grace. ‘From what foundation may righteousness better arise than from the Scriptural

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that the absence of true worship (table 1) leads to an absence of true righteousness (table 2), even if there is a residual expression of ‘equity’ left among those who do not worship. Because of the necessity of participating in Christ by the Spirit to receive righteousness, the two tables of the law must be held together. To participate in God’s righteousness necessarily involves the love of God and the love of neighbour because these loves are held together as one in Christ. As one participates in Christ through being active in double love, one’s primal nature is restored by entering into God’s gracious accommodation of the law. In this redemptive context, the law no longer simply condemns, but points the way to life. The content of this life is irreducibly one of loving communion with God through Christ and love of one’s neighbour. Life in Christ cannot omit one of the loves. ‘Integrity and uprightness, indeed, give God delight; but none will say that man’s life is duly ordered, if whilst they exercise equity one towards another, they defraud God of his right.’60 Just as the duplex gratia involves a unity yet distinction of the two ‘types’ of grace, so also the double love commands (corresponding to the two tables) are inseparable, but they must be distinguished. Both are held together through the work of the Spirit.

5.4. PART ICIPAT ION, ACCOMMODATION, AND CHRIST ’S FULFILMENT OF THE LAW Given the soteriological use of the law exposited in the last section, we can say that Calvin postulates a penultimate ‘participation’ in the moral law that is brought to completion through ‘participation’ in Christ. Obedience to the moral law in the Decalogue has a shadowy warning that we must be made holy because our God is holy? Indeed, though we had been dispersed like stray sheep and scattered through the labyrinth of the world, he has gathered us together again to join us to himself. When we hear mention of our union with God, let us remember that holiness must be its bond; not because we come into communion with him by virtue of our holiness! Rather, we ought Wrst to cleave unto him so that, infused with his holiness, we may follow whither he calls’ (Institutes, 3. 6. 2; emphasis added). 60 Comm. Deut. 6: 20, Harmony of the Law, i, CTS; CO 24. 225.

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correspondence to obedience to Christ as Lord. Two related consequences follow from this double participation in the law and Christ: Wrst, one cannot participate in Christ and neglect the requirements of the moral law. Second, participating in Christ and obeying the law are not separate acts for believers. Rather, obedience to the moral law and participation in Christ are inseparable dimensions of God’s gracious accommodation to reunite humanity to God. Because of this theology of accommodation, Calvin can bring into close relationship the Incarnation and the requirements of love. The moral law is summed up by the love of God and neighbour, and Calvin seeks to interpret the entire corpus of Old Testament law in light of this principle in Harmony of the Last Four Books of Moses. In the old dispensation of the covenant, the law is only a dead letter if it is without the illumination of the Holy Spirit.61 Moreover, in addition to this necessary participation in the Spirit, love of God and neighbour among the Israelites involves a participation in the mediator, Christ. A central advantage of the new covenant is that our partner in participation has been disclosed more fully. The ‘substance’ of the law remains, while the ‘obscurity [of the law] has been abolished with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ’.62 God’s gift of the law to the Israelites is always connected with the notion of covenant in Calvin. In giving the law, God brings his people into a covenant in which God ‘mutually binds himself to us without having to do so’, choosing to be ‘our father and savior’.63 When the Israelites obeyed the law through the Spirit, they were participating in their part of this covenantal relationship. In so far as they experienced this covenantal bond with God, they participated in the Mediator, Christ. For Christ ‘was always the bond of union between God and man’.64 ‘God has never manifested himself to men in any other way than through the Son’, for fellowship with God would be impossible apart from Christ as mediator.65 Because of the centrality of Christ in the bond of relation between God and humanity, the love of God’s people in response to the law is given profound signiWcance: 61 62 63 64 65

See Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, 96. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 98; CO 26. 284. Ibid. 45; CO 26. 242. Comm. Gen. 48: 16, CTS; CO 23. 584–5. Institutes, 4. 8. 5. Cf. Comm. Gen. 48: 16, CTS; CO 23. 584–5.

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when the Israelites or Christians love God and neighbour, they are not simply loving God and neighbour. They are participating in the covenant made through their eternal mediator, Christ. Because of the close connection between the covenant and Christ, love of God and neighbour necessarily involves participation in Christ by the Spirit. Thus, Christ is not simply an example of the law or its deWnitive interpreter. Christ is the substance of the law. The coming of Christ continues God’s accommodation in the law by revealing the ‘good news’ of its substance, Christ. ‘The gospel did not so supplant the entire law as to bring forward a diVerent way of salvation. Rather, it conWrmed and satisWed whatever the law had promised, and gave substance to the shadows.’66 Christ was the substantial content of the law all along, for ‘the gospel diVers from it [the whole law] only in clarity of manifestation’.67 It is only through the Word that the patriarchs were bound to God in a covenant and its stipulations in the law.68 The gracious gift of the law is made concrete and visible only in the Word made Xesh. In his sermon on Deuteronomy 4: 44–5: 3, Calvin describes how the accommodation in the law is fulWlled through an accommodation in Christ, enabling intimacy with God. In giving the covenant and the law to Israel, God ‘humbles himself ’ to ‘enter into a common treaty’ with a mutual bond; so ‘when he receives us as his Xock and his inheritance, let us abide under his protections, Wlled with its eternal life for us’.69 In the covenant, God says, ‘I come here to present myself to you as your guide and savior.’70 After marvelling about this accommodation in the covenant and the law, Calvin writes: ‘when the living God humbles himself to that extent, I beg you, should we not be more than ingrates if we did not humble ourselves before him and abstain from all pride and arrogance? For it is not without cause Moses speaks here of the covenant which God made with his people, primarily that his goodness and grace might be known.’71 The covenant and its stipulations—which have the purpose ‘to unite us to our God’—should evoke a voluntary response of gratitude.72

66 69 70 72

Institutes, 2. 9. 4. 67 Ibid. 68 Institutes, 2. 10. 7. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 45; CO 26. 242. Ibid. 71 Ibid. 46; CO 26. 242. Ibid. 39; CO 26. 237.

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While Calvin frequently speaks of the continuity between the law and the gospel since they are both grounded in God’s accommodating covenant, he also recognizes a contrast between the two. On the one hand, Calvin uses parallel language about God’s revelation in the law and in Christ—in both God reveals himself as ‘our father and savior’.73 The ‘substance’ of God’s accommodation in both dispensations is the same—Christ himself. On the other hand, Calvin is willing to develop a contrast between the ages of the law and the gospel, since Paul claims in 2 Corinthians 3 that there was a ‘veil’ over the law before Christ. Thus, according to Calvin, the veil prevented ‘the fathers from having known God in such a way and as intimately as we know [God] today’.74 For Calvin, the discontinuity between the ‘age of the law’ and the ‘age of the gospel’ is one in which the vision of persons in the ‘age of the law’ is dim in comparison with what comes to light in the ‘age of the gospel’. The substance of the law in both ages is the same. Although in the Wrst age the law already revealed God’s generous paternal care, this aspect of the law per se could not be fully seen until the coming of Christ. Combining the image of sight with that of light, Calvin discerns Paul’s ‘distinction between the law and the Gospel’ to be that ‘the brightness of the former rather dazzled men’s eyes, than enlightened them, while in the latter, Christ’s glorious face is clearly beheld’.75 On the one hand, the accommodation of the law is still a precious revelatory gift, ‘for the law is in itself bright’. However, ‘it is only when Christ appears to us in it [the law], that we enjoy its splendor’.76 Thus, when the law itself is made fully manifest through the Incarnation, God is revealed ‘in an unsurpassably gentle and conciliatory manner’ as our brother and ‘friend’, not simply as a master to a ‘servant’.77 Only through the eyes provided through the gospel of Jesus Christ can one discover that ‘he accepts us as his children and heirs. That was not the case in the time of the law.’78

73 74 75 76 77 78

Compare examples at ibid. 45–6; CO 26. 242–3. Ibid. 52; CO 26. 247–8. Comm. 2 Cor. 3: 12, CTS; CO 50. 44. Comm. 2 Cor. 3: 14, CTS; CO 50. 45. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 46; CO 26. 242–3. Ibid. 52; CO 26. 248.

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While the substance of the law is Christ, the transition from the ‘age of the law’ to the ‘age of the gospel’ involves a progression in divine revelation. The condition for this progressive revelation—indeed, this progressive reunion with God—is the unknowability of God apart from divine accommodation. Although the ‘veil’ has been lifted since the incarnation of the Word, our knowledge of God is still ‘only in part’. Although today we have such an intimate knowledge, and such a personal one at that, what we have just cited continues true, that we see only in part. Why? Because we are not yet participants in the glory of God, thus we cannot approach him; rather, it is necessary for him to reveal himself to us according to our rudeness and inWrmity. That fact that since the beginning of the world when God appeared to mortal men, it was not in order to reveal himself as he was, but according to men’s ability to support him. We must always keep this in mind: that God was not known by the Fathers. And today he does not appear to us in his essence. Rather he accommodates himself to us. That being the case, it is necessary for him to descend according to our capacity in order to make us sense his presence with us.79

God accommodates himself so that humans can have an ‘intimate’ and ‘personal’ knowledge of him. Indeed, as Calvin notes elsewhere, God ‘presents himself to us at present, so as to be seen by us, and openly beheld’.80 Yet, since the current ‘participation’ in divine glory has not been eschatologically fulWlled, our knowledge is still ‘only in part’. God’s self-presentation is ‘only so far as is for our advantage and in so far as our capacity admits of ’.81 79 Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 52–3; CO 26. 248. 80 ‘The knowledge that we have of God for the present is obscure and slender, in comparison with the glorious view that we shall have on occasion of Christ’s last coming. At the same time, He presents Himself to us at present, so as to be seen by us, and openly beheld, in so far as is for our advantage, and in so far as our capacity admits of ’ (Comm. 2 Cor. 3: 18, CTS; CO 50. 47). Note how God ‘presents Himself to us at present, so as to be seen by us, and openly beheld’, but this is soteriologically conditioned by how this vision may be to our ‘advantage’ (i.e. related to spiritual progress) and according to our ‘capacity’. 81 Ibid.

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When believers participate in Christ by the Spirit—living in obedience by faith—they experience this intimate relationship with God. Yet, the very joy of intimacy should lead believers to gratitude: while their intimacy with God is real intimacy, it is an intimacy enabled by accommodated knowledge. The intimacy with God enabled by faith in Christ is intimacy with a God who is stooping over, condescending God’s own self to humanity. Believers presently experience a ‘vision of God’, of sorts, but it is in the mode of accommodated knowledge. Just as Gregory Palamas thinks that the knowledge of God’s energies is ‘really’ knowledge of God (although not of the essence of God), Calvin believes that accommodated knowledge of God is ‘really’ knowledge of God (although not of God’s essence).82 For Calvin, the notion of God’s accommodation in the law is part of a soteriology of knowing God intimately, yet only in part. Accommodated knowledge of God is the best knowledge that humanity can hope for; it is true, intimate knowledge of God that transforms the beholder. But human knowledge of God is never proper or adequate to its object. With this background concerning accommodation and Christology in mind, Calvin’s vision of the Christian as participating in Christ through obeying the law of love takes on a new cast. Obedience to the law is a participation in God’s accommodating covenant consummated in Christ. Obedience to the law involves nothing less than a participation in Christ, the mediator who reveals the true content of the law and acts as the substance of the law. What does the human side of this covenantal relation look like? Voluntary love. Believers should voluntarily come to God with a ‘sincere and cheerful heart’, and ‘this cannot be done unless we love him’.83 Therefore, ‘the beginning of obedience, as well as its source, foundation, and root, is 82 Calvin was not aware, of course, of the ‘essence–energy’ distinction used in late Byzantine theology. It should not be surprising, however, that his doctrine of accommodation—which Wlls a similar doctrinal role to apophaticism in late Byzantine thought—has a similar concern to speak about a real and intimate mode of knowing God that nonetheless keeps the ‘essence’ of God unknowable. Both Calvin and Palamas speak about believers having a vision that beholds God in the present life in a way that seeks to uphold the unknowable transcendence of God. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Calvin’s and Palamas’s overall portraits of the present ‘vision of God’ are very diVerent, particularly because of Calvin’s insistence upon the deferral of eschatological fulWlment until after death. 83 Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 76; CO 26. 266.

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this love of God; that we would not attempt to come to him unless we found in him our deepest pleasure’. Delighting in God, loving God is ‘our true blessedness’.84 This delight in God is a gift—it is the root of obedience to the law, which itself is a gracious accommodation. Moreover, delighting in God can only take place as one is reunited to God through the Spirit. The source of obedience to the law is voluntary delight in God enabled by God in the Spirit. Paradoxically, love as voluntary delight in God both fulWls and surpasses the law. On the one hand, when the consciences of believers are given rest through the Wrst grace of the Father’s pardon, believers ‘should rise above and advance beyond the law, forgetting all law righteousness’.85 Yet, this voluntary delight from the pardon given by God is indeed true obedience to the law, since it emerges from ‘eager readiness’ rather than ‘perpetual dread’.86 As long as the conscience is worried about how to earn God’s favour, only servile and joyless obedience is possible, which is not true obedience. But having been freed from the ‘severe requirement’ of the law, believers can ‘hear themselves called with fatherly gentleness by God, [and so] they will cheerfully and with great eagerness answer, and follow his leading’.87 Just as the Wrst table of the law leads to the second, Calvin believes that voluntary delight in and love for God must necessarily lead to the love of neighbour. There are several interrelated dimensions and spheres of this neighbour love. The command to love one’s neighbour means a command to love every other human being, even one’s enemies. ‘We ought to embrace the whole human race without exception in a single feeling of love.’88 Moreover, actions of love are not suYcient. Just as one must ‘delight’ in God to truly obey God, so one must serve one’s neighbour motivated from ‘a sincere feeling of love’.89 Obeying the law of neighbour love means that one’s delight and trust in God overXow to a genuine love and regard for one’s neighbour, regardless of whether they are ‘worthy or unworthy, friend or enemy’.90 Neighbour love, as such, is an act of restoration from the losses of the Fall. Just as fallen humans are alienated from God—believing that God is a tyrant—so fallen humans are also 84 85 87 89

Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, CO 26. 267. Institutes, 3. 19. 2. 86 Institutes, 3. 19. 4. Institutes, 3. 19. 5. 88 Institutes, 2. 8. 55, 57. Institutes, 3. 7. 7. 90 Institutes, 2. 8. 55.

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alienated from each other. The work of the Spirit reverses this tendency of the fallen nature, restoring the relationships with God and other humans that were harmonious before the Fall. The act of cheerfully loving one’s neighbour is an act that restores the image of God in believers, as they partake of Christ in acts of love. Although all persons are to be included in the command to love one’s neighbour, there are diVerent types of obligations that are appropriate for diVerent persons. For example, Calvin admits that ‘it is the common habit of mankind that the more closely men are bound together by the ties of kinship, of acquaintanceship, or of neighborhood, the more responsibilities for one another they share. This does not oVend God.’91 In a similar way, Calvin delineates a robust set of obligations for those who Wnd themselves adopted by God into a common family, made into the Body of Christ on earth. For those who are not in the Christian fellowship, love takes on the character of justice (ius) and equity (aequitas) toward persons in society, with a particular concern for the poor. Even for this broader sphere of the duty of love, cheerful and sincere love is required, although the practices of justice and equity usually involve less intimacy than love for one’s biological or spiritual family. Calvin’s most poignant words about the nature of love among those in the church come in speaking about the signiWcance of the Lord’s Supper. As I outlined in Chapter 3, Calvin’s reading of 1 Corinthians 10: 16–17 connects the participation in the body and blood of Christ inseparably with participation and koinonia in the church as body. ‘For it is necessary for us to be incorporated, as it were, into Christ in order to be united to each other.’92 Just as the many grains are mixed and united to make bread, so ‘we should be joined and bound together by such great agreement of minds that no sort of disagreement or division may intrude’.93 The unity of the body is such that ‘as no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be aVected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him’.94 Not only are other believers due the love of kinship (brothers or sisters) or of oneself (one’s own body), believers 91 Institutes, 2. 8. 55. 93 Institutes, 4. 17. 38.

92 Comm. 1 Cor. 10: 16, CC; CO 49. 464. 94 Ibid.

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ought to love others as they love Christ himself. ‘We cannot love Christ without loving him in the brethren.’95 Christ provides the model and the means for the love and oneness of Christ’s body. ‘For what sharper goad could there be to arouse mutual love among us than when Christ, giving himself to us, not only invites us by his own example to pledge and give ourselves to one another, but inasmuch as he makes himself common to all, also makes all of us one in himself.’96 In the Lord’s Supper, Christ gives his body and blood, making himself ‘common to all’. As believers partake of Christ through the Spirit, they also must cheerfully and willingly love other believers as they love their own body. In this process, believers are made one because of their oneness with Christ. Calvin’s extension of the ethic of love to society more broadly has been the subject of controversy in theological circles. In speaking about how neighbour love should have a universal scope, Calvin frequently refers to a common human nature such that ‘the whole human race is united by a sacred bond of fellowship’.97 According to Barth, Calvin’s view ‘is more a Stoic than a New Testament doctrine’.98 Certainly, Calvin’s theology of neighbour love has incorporated and adapted pagan thought, particularly classical notions of natural law and equity. As noted above, Calvin believes that all persons do have a signiWcant amount of natural knowledge of the second table of the law, thus every society’s laws oVer an (imperfect) reXection of the second table’s stipulations. This provides an open space for Calvin to engage pagan thinkers who have insight about the civil order and law. As Haas has shown, Calvin develops his notion of neighbour love as ‘equity’ through appropriating classical models, albeit in a modiWed form.99

95 Institutes 96 Ibid. 97 Comm. Luke 10: 30, CTS; CO 45. 613. Calvin aYrms this ‘sacred bond of fellowship’ uniting all humanity in his commentary on the parable of the Good Samaritan with its opening question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ See also Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 126–7; CO 26. 304. 98 Barth insists that ‘the biblical sense of the concept of my neighbor is not each of my fellow-men as such’ but an ‘event’ such that ‘my neighbor is my fellow man acting towards me as a benefactor’ (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. GeoVrey William Bromiley and Thomas Forsyth Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), I/II, 419–20). 99 See esp. Haas, The Concept of Equity in Calvin’s Ethics, chs. 1 and 2.

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Yet, against Barth’s claim that Calvin’s view is more ‘Stoic’ than Christian, Hesselink rightly points out that Calvin ‘does not say that we are to love our neighbors simply because they are members of the human race’, but because they are created in the image of God.100 The image of God is a ‘participation in God’. As such, there is a sense in which human beings are not completely separated from God even before regeneration. God has chosen that all humanity partake in the glory of the divine image. Thus, when Calvin says that ‘we ought to embrace the whole human race without exception’, his rationale is that this should be done ‘since all [persons] should be contemplated in God, not in themselves’.101 When we turn aside from such contemplation, it is no wonder we become entangled in many errors. Therefore, if we rightly direct our love, we must Wrst turn our eyes not to man, the sight of whom would more often engender hate than love, but to God, who bids us extend to all men the love we bear to him, that this may be an unchanging principle: whatever the character of the man, we must yet love him because we love God.102

Calvin’s reasoning here is similar to his reasoning about the character of divine mercy of prevenient grace. Although the good, original nature of human beings has been corrupted, ‘the Lord wills not to lose what is his in us’, so ‘out of his own kindness he still Wnds something to love’.103 Fallen humans still bear God’s image, so God ‘is moved by pure and freely given love of us to receive us into grace’.104 God loves humanity for who they are ‘in God’, so to speak. Likewise, the command to love one’s neighbour involves seeing fellow human beings as ‘in God’, in relation to the divine image. Through loving God and Christ as the perfect image of God, one’s love is also able to discern the ‘image’ that calls forth love toward sinful humanity. This Wts well with Calvin’s account of human nature in the Bondage and Liberation of the Will, discussed in Chapter 2. The ‘substance’ of human nature is good; it is united to God, apart from the Fall. However, after the Fall, this ‘substance’ is obscured by the 100 Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, 136. 101 Institutes, 2. 8. 55. 102 Ibid. 103 Institutes, 2. 16. 3. 104 Ibid. Also see Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 206.

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‘accidental’ character of sin, which disrupts the primal communion with God. In Calvin’s ethics of universal neighbour love, Calvin is asking believers to see that which has been obscured by sin: the substance of human nature as united to God, bearing God’s image. This image has been gravely tarnished, but it is nevertheless central to the distinctive place of humans in the universe. Because of the distinctive place of humanity as image-bearer, Calvin develops an ethic of neighbour love with a universal scope. Thus, while the ground for this universal neighbour love is rooted in the imago Dei and a view of humanity as being ‘in God’ in some sense, Calvin does utilize Stoic and other classical resources in articulating the implications of this universal neighbour love. As Haas has shown, Calvin articulates a very close relationship between ‘love, equity, and justice’ in the socio-political aspect of his thought, using this linkage as an expansive way to interpret the neighbour love of the golden rule. As a part of this process, Calvin draws upon classical notions of justice and equity.105 Equity (aequitas) is to render to our neighbours what belongs to them—giving each person their due. This is done in light of the ‘natural law’ of treating others as one would want others to treat oneself. Justice involves the extension of this equity to all persons, giving to each person ‘his due’.106 Although equity and justice are a part of the extension of neighbour love, Calvin thinks that the obligations of love have a special application to the poor and to others in need. Calvin makes this particularly clear in his comments on the Pauline admonition to help the poor in the Jerusalem church. Although there is a certain sense in which work is a natural and God-ordained activity, the wages of work are not an exclusive possession of the labourer because ‘we owe to God, not merely a part, but all that we are, and all that we have’.107 Thus, ‘as our heavenly Father freely bestows upon us all things, so we ought to be imitators of his unmerited kindness in doing good’ toward those in need.108 This does not mean that obedient persons will have ‘stripped’ themselves ‘of every thing’ as the ‘fanatics’ claim,

105 106 107 108

Haas, The Concept of Equity in Calvin’s Ethics, ch. 4. See the multiple citations of Calvin on this issue in ibid. 50–3. Comm. 2 Cor. 8: 13, CTS; CO 50. 100. Comm. 2 Cor. 8: 4, CTS; CO 50. 97.

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for whom ‘no one can give alms with a quiet conscience’.109 Rather, one is to give in ‘moderation’, ‘so far as our resources allow’, with ‘a cheerful mind’.110 The goal is not that ‘they are at ease, and we are in want’ but that one participates in the cheerful self-giving love of God, relieving ‘the necessity of our brethren from our abundance’.111 While Calvin prescribes ‘moderation’ along with ‘cheerfulness’ in giving to the poor, the duty to love the poor is nevertheless a demanding one. Because of the self-centredness that has taken hold since the Fall, ‘it is our part to stir ourselves up . . . to liberality, because we must not be so much afraid of going to excess in this department’. Rather, ‘the danger is on the side of excessive niggardliness’.112 Moreover, since all possessions belong to God, one must see that God’s purpose in giving these possessions to a person was not to provide for luxury, but to provide for the necessities of those in need. ‘Let those, then, that have riches, whether they have been left by inheritance, or procured by industry and eVorts, consider that their abundance was not intended to be laid out in intemperance or excess, but in relieving the necessities of the brethren.’113 Indeed, when we heap up riches for the future, ‘we defraud our poor brethren of the beneWcence that we owe them’.114 While there is a special obligation to those in need generally, this obligation has particular application to members of the church. For ‘when we relieve the brethren, we do nothing more than discharge a ministry that is due to them. On the other hand, to neglect the saints, when they stand in need of our aid, is worse than inhuman, inasmuch as we defraud them of what is their due.’115 Participating in the body of Christ means cheerfully giving of heart, mind, and Wnances. In Calvin, this process of ‘participation’ is profoundly congruent with notions of duty, justice, and equity— giving a person their due, even when their circumstance of need increases the obligation that is ‘due’ to them. Thus we can say that when believers are made one in Christ, Calvin does not think that this should result in a literal ‘oneness’ of Wnances, held in common. Rather, as Bieler writes, ‘a direct consequence of 109 111 113 114 115

Comm. 2 Cor. 8: 13, CTS; CO 50. 100–1. 110 Ibid.; CO 50. 101. Ibid. 112 Ibid.; CO 50. 100. Comm. 2 Cor. 8: 15, CTS; CO 50. 102. Ibid.; emphasis added. Comm. 2 Cor. 9: 1, CTS (emphasis added); CO 50. 106.

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communion with Christ’ in Calvin is the ‘spontaneous redistribution of goods’.116 Energized by the Spirit in a way that is always connected with gratitude and cheerfulness, believers are to be ‘one’ through voluntary love that also extends beyond the community of faith. Unlike the portraits of Calvin in the contemporary Gift discussion, the very nature of love and gift giving is not ‘unilateral’. Calvin’s emphasis upon ‘participation in Christ’ in fulWlling the rule of love shows how cheerfulness and mutual regard are always connected with love. In the church, this is obvious—a ‘mutual communication’ among the members of the church that has ethical and Wnancial consequences.117 In the world, Calvin does insist that believers must love every person whether or not that love is reciprocated; however, it is always a love ready for mutual regard, rendered with cheerfulness and gratitude to persons who are viewed with their identity as ‘in God’. In both spheres, Calvin highlights the way in which love—with all its demanding obligations—must emerge from a conscience at rest (from receiving the Father’s free pardon), empowered by the Spirit to delight in God and love others by participating in Christ.

5 . 6 . PA RTI C I PAT I O N A N D T H E T WO ‘O R D E R S ’

5.6.1. Participation and the Order of the Church In voluntarily seeking to fulWl the law of love, Calvin thinks that believers are participating in the new ‘order’ of the Kingdom. The word ‘order’ here has two senses: ‘order’ as opposed to ‘disorder’, and ‘order’ as epoch.118 The primal epoch of true order for Calvin was before the Fall. All creation responded directly to God’s command, 116 Andre´ Bie´ler, The Social Humanism of Calvin, trans. Paul T. Fuhrmann (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1964), 37. 117 See ibid. 118 For an account of Calvin’s notion of ‘order’ and harmony as the primal state of creation and the Wnal end of redemption, see David Little, Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), ch. 3. I am indebted to Little for pointing out the signiWcance of the multivalent theme of ‘order’ for Calvin’s theology of church and state.

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a command which always brings order rather than disorder. God’s commands freely willed the good, the way of order.119 Likewise, human beings, made in the image of God, were created so that they could voluntarily will the good. Commenting on the Garden of Eden, Calvin notes that ‘our life will then be rightly ordered, if we obey God, and if his will be the regulator of all our aVections’.120 In contrast to God’s ordering command, disorder came upon all creation in the Fall, for ‘whatever is disorderly in the world, are the fruits of sin’.121 ‘For ever since man declined from his high original, it became necessary that the world should gradually degenerate from its nature.’ However, disorder and confusion should not be attributed to the ‘order of nature’ (before the Fall) or ‘the hand of God’, but to ‘the sin of man’.122 In response, the work of Christ leads to the cosmic restoration of order, for ‘sin has been blotted out, salvation has been restored to men; and, in short, the whole world has been renewed, and every thing restored to good order’.123 As part of this restoration, believers themselves begin to reXect the free election of God, voluntary choosing of good over evil, order over disorder. Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, which highlights the free, voluntary choice of God, is mirrored in his account of sanctiWcation in which believers voluntarily choose the way of Christ.124 Although true human freedom is lost in the Fall, the Spirit enables believers to freely obey the law of love as a ‘sacriWce of praise’ to God. In other words, after experiencing God’s free election, believers freely elect to participate in God’s own sovereign choice for restoring the order of creation. God’s election of a ‘new order’ in Christ is carried out through the divine election of persons, who then ‘voluntarily devote and submit themselves to be governed by him’.125 119 See Comm. Gen. 2: 2, CTS; CO 23. 31–2, and Calvin’s contrast between the ‘legitimate order’ of creation with the ‘confusion’ of a fallen world in Comm. Ps. 8: 5–7, CTS; CO 31. 92. 120 Comm. Gen. 2: 16, CTS; CO 23. 45. 121 Comm. Gen. 3: 19, CTS; CO 23. 75. 122 Comm. Gen. 2: 3, CTS; CO 23. 32. 123 Comm. John 13: 31, CTS; CO 47. 317. 124 See Little, Religion, Order, and Law, ch. 3, esp. pp. 47–56. 125 Comm. Matt. 6: 10 [Harmony 1], CTS; CO 44. 197. Calvin speaks about this voluntary devotion in commenting upon the phrase ‘thy Kingdom come’ in the Lord’s Prayer.

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A key dimension to the human willing of God’s order is in the movement from passivity to activity. As noted in Chapter 4, Calvin chides those who would utilize a strong doctrine of divine sovereignty to justify a ‘lack of eVort’ in prayer. Instead, Calvin says that the Christian must enter into ascetic struggle in the context of gratitude, giving ‘a sacriWce of praise’. One should not passively wait for God to establish the kingdom, for the source of the present disorder is with the ‘indolent’ who ‘employ themselves in no honorable and useful occupation’ because they do not consider ‘for what purpose we were made’.126 Humans were made to be active, to eagerly and voluntarily will the order (in both senses of the word) that God desires. The special sphere of this new order of voluntary activity is in Christ’s Body, the church. For this reason, the community of the church ‘does not have the right of the sword to punish or compel’; for ‘it is not a question of punishing the sinner against his will [in the church], but of the sinner professing his repentance in a voluntary chastisement’.127 While the state is given the power by God to exert coercive power to bring obedience, the church—by deWnition—is a place of voluntary repentance and obedience. Since persons in the church are also sinners, they need to be subject to the state’s coercive authority also. But the ‘new order’ of the church should be a manifestation of the Kingdom through the voluntary, participatory form of its relations and government. Thus, Calvin’s ecclesiology emphasizes that each member of the body must be active in order to serve the common goal of living as Christ’s Body in the world. The church is ruled by the Spirit, and Christ is the head of the church. All the elect are so united in Christ that as they are dependent upon one Head, they also grow together into one body, being joined and knit together as are the limbs of a body. They are made truly one since they live together in one faith, hope, and love, and in the same Spirit of God. For they have been called not only into the same inheritance of eternal life but also to participate in one God and Christ.128

No Christian is head of the church.129 Christ alone is the head, and dependence upon Christ leads to greater dependence upon one 126 Comm. 2 Thess. 3: 6, CTS; CO 52. 211. 127 Institutes, 4. 11. 3. 128 Institutes, 4. 1. 2. 129 See Institutes, 4. 6. 8–10.

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another. The Spirit, binding together believers, also distributes gifts for the function of building up Christ’s Body.130 As Calvin discusses the oYces of the church in book 4 of the Institutes, he avoids reference to rank, but turns instead to function: rather than emphasizing a chain of command in the church from the top down, Calvin claims that Paul ‘assigns [to believers] nothing but the common ministry, and a particular mode to each’.131 While some are given authority for leadership in the church, Calvin seeks to emphasize how the diVerent roles in the church are constituted by their functions in the service of Christ and his Body.132 As a part of this functionalized ecclesiology, it is important that the free, active will of believers participate in the process of choosing church oYcers. A minister should have ‘the consent and approval of the people’, for this is the ‘common right and freedom of the church’.133 In contrast, in the Roman church ‘the people’s right in electing a bishop has been taken away. Votes, assent, subscriptions, and all their like have vanished,’ and they have ‘no regard for law or equity’.134 The church, as a place that seeks to fulWl God’s law through the administration of the Spirit, should display a type of ‘participatory equity’. It should function through the organic coordination of complementary gifts of the Spirit. This does not eliminate the notion of authority within the church, but it functionalizes that authority, giving it participatory checks and balances.135 Calvin’s participatory ecclesiology coincides with his theology of ‘participation in Christ’, particularly as exempliWed in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In the Supper, ‘the Lord so communicates his body to us that he is made completely one with us and we with him. Now, since he has only one body, of which he makes us all partakers, it is 130 See Institutes, 4. 1. 3. 131 Institutes, 4. 6. 9. 132 For an account of this functionalized ecclesiology, see Little, Religion, Order, and Law, 62–80. 133 Institutes, 4. 3. 15. 134 Institutes, 4. 5. 2. 135 Calvin’s concern to maintain a participatory ‘equity’ in the church (even as its hierarchy is maintained) is shown in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541. Pastors, elders, and deacons are elected as well as given examinations related to doctrine and giftedness. OYcers are to be held accountable to their ordination vows, with speciWc disciplinary procedures outlined in the Ordinances. Calvin’s emphasis upon election and checks and balances emerges from his participatory, conciliar view of the church.

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necessary that all of us also be made one body by such participation.’136 The oneness of the church is a oneness by participation in the one Christ. Believers are united in a common meal because of the common food for their souls: Christ. The Lord’s Supper is not a distant act performed by clergy oVering up the body of God, acting in persona Christi. The Supper is a participation of the gathered believers in Christ and his body and blood; simultaneously, it is participation in the law of love and equity, tasting of the primal human communion which has been disrupted by sin.137 As such, mutual love in the Body is inseparable from the communing love of partaking of Christ. Partaking of Christ in the Supper is a way of experiencing the fulWlment of the double love commandments, restoring the divinely intended order of the creature loving the creator amidst the mutual love of other creatures. The love at the Lord’s Supper extends to the needs of society, especially the poor and the needy. Calvin makes this explicit in his explanation of the eucharistic liturgy: With Him [Jesus Christ] He [the Father] has given all things: the remission of sins, the covenant of eternal salvation, the life and righteousness of God, and Wnally, all desirable things which are added unto the children of God, to those who seek His kingdom and His righteousness. Then with good and just cause, we oVer and submit ourselves completely to God the Father and to our Lord Jesus Christ, in recognition of so many and so great beneWts. And (as Christian love requires) we testify this by holy oVerings and gifts which are administered to Jesus Christ in His least ones, to those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, strangers, sick, or held in prison. For all who live in Christ, and have Him dwelling them [sic], do voluntarily what the law commands them. And the latter commands that one not appear before God without an oVering.138

In the Lord’s Supper, believers receive the gifts that the Father has given to the Son in Jesus Christ. In response to this divine gift in the Supper, believers ‘oVer and submit ourselves completely to God’, along with all of the ‘beneWts’ (material and spiritual) that believers 136 Institutes, 4. 17. 38. 137 Before the Fall, human beings enjoyed ‘intercourse with each other, which is preserved from being broken up by certain sacred bonds’ (Comm. Ps. 8: 5–7, CTS; CO 31. 92). 138 OS 2. 41–2. Translation from Elsie A. McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1984), 50.

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have received from God. As a part of this self-oVering response to the divine gifts in the Supper, believers do something that parallels the prior gift:139 believers oVer voluntary gifts, in love, ‘to Jesus Christ in His least ones, to those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, strangers, sick or held in prison’. Like God, believers voluntarily ‘testify’ to their love in ‘gifts’. Believers participate in God’s ordering way as they ‘do voluntarily what the law commands them’. Thus, in the Supper, the self-giving love of believers—which testiWes to God’s prior self-giving love—moves in an outward spiral, restoring the primal order. Believers receive the body and blood of Christ as gifts through the Spirit. This participation in Christ is an activating one, which leads believers to act on the ‘requirements’ of the law of ‘love’: mutual love, certainly, but also the giving of alms, which are not restricted to the worshiping community.140 These gifts in ‘return’ are in some sense oVered to God, administered to ‘Jesus Christ’ in the needy. Believers do not give a ‘return-gift’ on the level of the original eucharistic gifts from God, but nevertheless believers give responsive gifts which are directed to the neighbour seen in light of the imago Dei. Calvin’s explanation is an example of how his ethic of neighbour love arises from seeing the neighbour ‘in God’: speciWcally, the giving to the ‘hungry thirsty, naked’, etc., is in fact a type of ‘giving’ to God in Christ.141 Giving in this way helps to restore the harmony between creatures that existed in the Wrst order, before the Fall. 139 One is tempted to use Milbank’s phrase of ‘non-identical repetition’ to describe what is taking place in this speciWc aspect of Calvin’s eucharistic theology. See Milbank, ‘Can a Gift Be Given?’, 131. 140 The collection of alms in the service of the Lord’s Supper is a complex issue; see McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving, chs. 1 and 2. McKee argues that Calvin probably collected alms in the service of the Lord’s Supper in Strasbourg (pp. 52–3), although Geneva did not institute the practice until after Calvin’s death. According to McKee, ‘this was a practical concession, not a theological position’, because Calvin’s thought was supportive of the incorporation of almsgiving into the worship service (p. 64). Calvin’s theological justiWcation, drawing upon Bucer, depends upon a distinctive reading of Acts 2: 42 as involving the Lord’s Supper and the giving of alms (see McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving, ch. 3). 141 In the passage above, Calvin uses the images of Matt. 25: 31–46 with regard to the connection of almsgiving with worship, and almsgiving was not exclusively for members of the church. However, Calvin’s commentary on Matt. 25: 31–46 is somewhat more complicated. The phrase of the ‘hungry, thirsty, naked, strangers, sick, or held in prison’ is seen to apply Wrst and foremost to believers, since they are referred to as ‘the least of my brethren’ (Matt. 25: 40). Calvin says that the ground for

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Calvin’s concern to connect the church’s worship with the service of the needy leads him to revise dramatically the Roman Catholic oYce of deacon in his time. Rather than functioning as a stepping stone to the priesthood, Calvin thought deacons should be entrusted with care for the poor. Based on his interpretation of Romans 12: 8, Calvin designates ‘two distinct grades’ of deacons: ‘one to serve the church in administering the aVairs of the poor; the other, in caring for the poor themselves.’142 Thus, although the civil authorities continued to bear responsibility for certain aspects of social welfare, deacons as oYcers of the church were designated as the bearers of alms that were the ordinary fruits of Christian worship. In Geneva, this theology of the diaconate led to the organized mode of charity in a public hospital.143 In sum, God’s new order of the Kingdom is a restoration of the primal order of communion with God and others. With Christ as its Head, the church is activated by the Spirit to move from passivity to voluntary action, actively electing to participate in God’s renewal and ordering of creation. While Calvin does not do away with oYces in this preferential treatment of believers is the fact that ‘though there is a common tie that binds all the children of Adam, there is a still more sacred union among the children of God’. Nevertheless, Calvin thinks that the purpose of the passage is ‘to encourage those whose wealth and resources are abundant to relieve the poverty of brethren, yet it aVords no ordinary consolation to the poor and distressed, that, though shame and contempt follow them in the eyes of the world, yet the Son of God holds them as dear as his own members. And certainly, by calling them brethren, he confers on them inestimable honor.’ Although Calvin sees the passage as bringing special ‘honor’ to the poor and a close association between Christ and those who face ‘shame and contempt’ by the world, the ground for this connection between Christ and the needy appears to be in God’s election and their identity ‘in Christ’ (Comm. Matt. 25: 40 [Harmony 3], CTS; CO 44. 698–90). 142 Institutes, 4. 3. 9. 143 See William R. Stevenson, ‘Calvin and Political Issues’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, ed. Donald K. McKim (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 173–87, at 179. Also see W. Fred Graham, The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1987), 98–104. Graham calls the hospital system in Calvin’s Geneva one of ‘ ‘‘socialized medicine’’ ’, since ‘the doctor and surgeon who served the hospital did so at the city’s expense’ (p. 104). Yet, in contrast to the contemporary American sense of ‘socialized medicine’, the hospital in Geneva was inextricably a joint venture of church and state. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that health care in Geneva was far from market-driven: it was part of the obligation of the church and the state to provide for the necessities of those in need, including health.

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the church, the church’s life is given a participatory cast: believers should participate in choosing church leadership, whose role is functionalized and given checks and balances, since the whole body is to work together to serve Christ as the Head. In the Lord’s Supper, the worship of the church is connected to the needs of broader society. Believers participate in Christ through receiving Christ’s body and blood, entering into loving communion with other believers, and extending this love by alms to be administered by deacons to the needy in broader society. In all of these ways, the church loves God and neighbour through the Spirit, having been united to Jesus Christ. However, a concern for obedience to the law of double love is not restricted to the order of the church, but extends in a diVerent way to the civil order as well. While believers seek to restore the original order of creation through their participation in Christ and the consequent free outpouring of love, the civil government must seek to curb the damage of the Fall by fulWlling its God-ordained function. The way in which Calvin delineates the function of civil government in relation to the church is signiWcant as we continue to explore the implications of the notion of ‘order’ for Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ.

5.6.2. Participation and the Order of the State According to Calvin, there is a related but distinct order to the order of the church: the order of the state, which is ‘a divinely established order’.144 The fact that the civil order has theological signiWcance for Calvin is apparent from his inclusion of a section on the government in the 1536 Institutes, a departure from the otherwise catechetical style of that work. This section was retained and expanded in later editions of the Institutes. In my account, I will focus on the ways in which the notion of ‘participation in Christ’ illuminates Calvin’s thought on the civil order. It should not be surprising that this theme has political consequences, because for Calvin the ‘twofold

144 Institutes, 4. 20. 1.

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government’ of church and state is always deeply interrelated even as these two forms of government are distinct.145 The theme of ‘participation’ can illuminate Calvin’s thought on the political order through an analysis of his concept of Christian freedom, a notion which originally shared a chapter with the civil order in the 1536 Institutes.146 Calvin’s exposition of Christian freedom has three parts. First, having received God’s justiWcation, ‘the consciences of believers . . . should rise above and advance beyond the law, forgetting all law righteousness’.147 Since ‘the law leaves no one righteous’, persons should abandon the task of self-justiWcation through seeking to fulWl God’s law.148 Instead, believers must look to ‘Christ alone’ for justiWcation, ‘who surpasses all perfection of the law’.149 The second aspect of Christian freedom is paradoxically ‘dependent upon the Wrst’: that ‘consciences observe the law, not as if constrained by the necessity of the law, but that freed from the law’s yoke they willingly obey God’s law’.150 This freedom is received as a ‘gift’ from Christ, since the conscience can be calmed by Christ’s righteousness.151 Freedom from the law involves freedom from the ‘perpetual dread’ of judgement—both by God and other persons, for in Christian freedom we are ‘released from the power of all men’.152 Yet, all of this freedom is experienced to enable grateful obedience, so that believers ‘will cheerfully and with great eagerness answer’ God and ‘follow his leading’.153 Believers now fulWl the law in voluntary gratitude, by the Spirit. For areas in which aspects of the Old Testament law has been abrogated, a third aspect of Christian freedom entails freedom in external matters that ‘are of themselves ‘‘indiVerent’’ ’.154 In relating Christian freedom to the orders of church and state, one must Wrst recognize that ‘Christian freedom is, in all its parts, a 145 Institutes, Also see Herbert D. Foster, The Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster (privately printed, 1929), 40. 146 See Calvin, Institutes, 1536 Edition, 176–226; OS 1. 223–80. For a book-length account of the way in which Calvin’s notion of freedom connects his theological and political thought, see William R. Stevenson, Sovereign Grace: The Place and SigniWcance of Christian Freedom in John Calvin’s Political Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 147 Institutes, 3. 19. 2. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 Institutes, 3. 19. 4; emphasis added. 151 Institutes, 3. 19. 14. 152 Ibid. 153 Institutes, 3. 19. 5. 154 Institutes, 3. 19. 7.

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spiritual thing’.155 Thus, in terms of the ‘twofold government’ over humankind, the church is the central place for the manifestation of this voluntary freedom that is simultaneously fulWlling the law and going ‘beyond’ it. Christian freedom is dependent upon the Spirit’s regeneration; moreover, it is only experienced now in part by believers, since believers are still sinners (Romans 7) even as they experience the transformation of the Spirit (Romans 8). Thus, while the church is the sphere for a voluntary, active participation in the Body of Christ—as the last section described—persons in the church are still in need of the governance of the state. Although the civil government does not operate in the sphere of ‘Christian freedom’, it is ordained by God to fulWl both ‘civil’ and ‘religious’ ends. The central purposes of civil government are ‘to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church, to adjust our life to the society of men, . . . and to promote general peace and tranquility’.156 Thus, clearly both governments are concerned with the Wrst table of the law (right worship) and the second table of the law (right relation to neighbour).157 Even though the ‘internal’, unregenerate knowledge of the moral law involves mainly the second table, both tables are contained in natural law, and the positive laws of civil society should reXect both. Thus, the state must in fact serve ends that are common to the church—indeed, there is a sense in which the state can be seen as ‘subordinate’ to the church.158 Yet, in spite of their overlapping ends, the state and church must not be confused, because the two ‘have a completely diVerent nature’.159 Christ alone is the Head of the church. Kings, magistrates, and other rulers have been appointed by God as ‘heads’ of state. In the church, obedience in voluntary gratitude is the norm. In the state, external obedience must be maintained, frequently with the use of coercion. Since all persons are sinners, the state must restrain disorder and chaos by methods that are expedient given the presence of wickedness. For, if a ruler has ‘excessive severity’, he may ‘harm more than heal’.160 On the other hand, given the vulnerability of the 155 Institutes, 3. 19. 9. 157 See Institutes, 4. 20. 9. 159 Institutes, 4. 20. 1.

156 Institutes, 4. 20. 2. 158 See Little, Religion, Order, and Law, 55. 160 Institutes, 4. 20. 10.

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innocent, a ruler should avoid a ‘superstitious aVection of clemency’, which is ‘the cruellest gentleness’ that can ‘abandon many to their destruction’.161 In God’s providence, the state has been given to assist the church in seeking to restore the original ‘order’ of creation. As a part of this restoration, the notion of ‘voluntary participation’ connected with Calvin’s theology of both ‘Christian freedom’ and ‘participation in Christ’ comes to play a special role. The state is not, strictly speaking, a ‘natural’ institution. Apart from the Fall, there would be no need for the state. It is ordained by God as a provision to fulWl an eschatologically conditioned role—of promoting public worship, helping the poor and the needy,162 and curbing external disobedience by coercion. On the Wnal issue, the state puts the second use of the law into action—the law as a way to curb public evil-doing. Although the law’s second use is indispensable in this fallen world, the state shares with the church a vision of the original order in which the second use of the law was unnecessary: an epoch of voluntary obedience to God and voluntary relationships of love and harmony with other persons. Since the state seeks to uphold and restore God’s reign, it must be aware of the necessity of balancing coercive limitations (producing ‘forced obedience’) with the Wnal telos of voluntary, active obedience. As noted above, the vision of a voluntarily obedient, communally functioning ‘humanity’ is displayed in Calvin’s ecclesiology. Christ is the only Head of the church. OYcers of the church fulWl diVerent roles depending upon their diVerent gifts, dispensed by the Spirit. Moreover, church leaders should be chosen through the exercise of the voluntary, participatory will of church members.163 The church has no Christian monarch, and the authority of Christ in the church is in some sense a corporate authority, since all members participate in Christ, the Head, by the Spirit.

161 Institutes 162 ‘A just and well-regulated government will be distinguished for maintaining the rights of the poor and aZicted’ (Comm. Ps. 82: 3, CTS; CO 31. 769–70). 163 While Calvin wants church oYcials to be elected, he also desires for the election to be a regulated process overseen by pastors. Christians, as sinners, can still have ‘disorder’ in their proceedings, so oversight is necessary (Institutes, 4. 3. 15).

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In a similar manner, a communal, participatory vision of human Xourishing can be seen as a model for Calvin’s notion of the civil order. On the one hand, Calvin thinks that no particular form of civil government is de facto excluded from God’s providential plan. Yet, Calvin thinks that a government with checks and balances can be a helpful way to avoid tyranny.164 Moreover, whatever the form of government ordained by God, Calvin emphasizes how the will of ‘the people’ should have an inXuence upon the government, in whatever form it takes. ‘This is the most desirable kind of liberty, that we should not be compelled to obey every person who may be tyrannically put over our heads; but which allows of election, so that no one should rule except he be approved of by us.’165 Indeed, connected with the notions of natural law and the natural endowments of the imago Dei, Calvin’s political thought is arguably an important source for the later development of natural rights theory.166 Given this preference, however, Calvin also thinks that popular participation should be regulated, since ‘the people’ are still sinners. Indeed, Calvin’s support of coercive means in curbing heresy (as with Servetus and others) indicates an eschatological pessimism that, in the end, matters of faith cannot be left to the voluntary conscience.167 The wills of sinners need 164 See Institutes, 4. 20. 8. Note in particular how Calvin advocates a communal government of checks and balances. ‘Men’s fault or failing causes it to be safer and more bearable for a number to exercise government, so that they may help one another, teach and admonish one another; and, if one asserts himself unfairly, there may be a number of censors and masters to restrain his willfulness.’ 165 Comm. Deut. 1: 13, CTS; CO 24. 190. 166 Herbert D. Foster, professor of history at Dartmouth from 1893 to 1927, develops this theme in Calvin and traces it through Calvinist political thinkers. See Foster, The Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster, chs. 3–4. David Little also gives an account of this ‘liberal Calvinist’ tradition in David Little, ‘A Christian Perspective on Human Rights’, in Human Rights in Africa, ed. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im and Francis M. Deng (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1991); idem, ‘Human Rights: A Reformed Perspective’, AYrmation, 6 (1993), 13–24; idem, ‘Religion and Human Rights: A Personal Testament’, Journal of Law and Religion, 18, no. 1 (2002), 57–77. The notion of ‘natural rights’ is also present in Conciliar thought, which Calvin’s ecclesiology draws upon. See Oakley, Natural Law, Conciliarism and Consent in the Late Middle Ages. 167 See Little, ‘Religion and Human Rights’, 62. In spite of his insistence upon the voluntary character of the church—in which coercion is not permitted—Calvin approves of the civil government using coercive means to ‘protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church’ (Institutes, 4. 20. 2).

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to be checked and regulated. Yet, in a counterbalancing tension with this, Calvin has a clear sense that the voluntary, participatory will of the community is precisely what the reign of God will mean in the church, and its own way, the state.168 Calvin’s political thought necessitates what Ho¨pel calls a ‘controlled form of popular participation’.169 Given Calvin’s concern to avoid the extremes of both anarchy and tyranny, we can follow Ho¨pel in saying that Calvin sees ‘the best form of government’ as including [regulated] popular participation as well as ‘a secure enjoyment of legal rights’.170 Thus, while there is an eschatological tension between the free participation of the original order and the coercion and regulation necessary for a world of sin, Calvin is nevertheless clear that the eschatological end is toward free, voluntary participation of persons in the various structures of society. At times, this eschatological tension is stretched to a breaking point. How are Christians to respond to an oppressive ruler who fails to uphold justice and has no regard for the will of the people? Calvin’s usual answer is that believers must continue to obey this ruler, unless obedience would involve disobedience to God’s commands.171 Popular revolutions seem to be prohibited, in principle, for even unjust rulers are appointed by God for the restraint of wickedness and deserve ‘public obedience’.172 Nevertheless, Calvin does allow for a narrow exception in the Institutes: magistrates are ‘appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings’ who neglect justice.173 On what grounds? ‘Because they [unjust kings] dishonestly betray the freedom of the people, of which they know that they have been appointed protectors by God’s ordinance.’174 In addition, in letters written near the end of his life, Calvin says that ‘it would be lawful for all good subjects’ to give ‘armed assistance’ to princes Wghting against the unjust king.175

168 On this tension, see ibid. 169 Harro Ho¨pel, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 159. See ibid. 158–60. 170 Ibid. Also see Foster, The Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster, 64–5. For an alternative reading of these [alleged] tensions in Calvin’s thought, see Stevenson, Sovereign Grace, 149–52. 171 See Institutes, 4. 20. 24–32. 172 Institutes, 4. 20. 24–5. 173 Institutes, 4. 20. 31. 174 Ibid. 175 Calvin, Letters of Calvin, iv, letter 588.

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This advice corresponds with what appears to be increasing openness to the right of resistance in Calvin’s late sermons.176 There are distinct limits concerning how far the civil authorities can justiWably minimize the order of human Xourishing as involving human freedom and active participation. Thus, although Calvin remained essentially a political conservative on questions of revolution, there are lines of continuity between Calvin’s thought on voluntary freedom and the more revolutionary strains of Calvinist political thought emerging from Geneva.177 In sum, in this section on participation and political order, I have sought to show how Calvin’s vision of the original order in which humans voluntarily obey God’s law has an important inXuence on his political thought. On the one hand, the civil government has overlapping goals with the church government, since both seek to cultivate obedience to both tables of the law in the community. Both seek to restore the original order and harmony. The church, however, is an eschatologically privileged arena, as a place in which coercion is not used because believers are activated by the Spirit to be voluntarily ‘above’ yet ‘fulWlling’ the law. Yet, even persons in the church are sinners, and a second form of government is necessary for all people. This second, civil form seeks to uphold external obedience, by coercion when necessary. As such, the second order is eschatologically provisional—it will be superseded by the order of the church when Christ is ‘all in all’. The original order of harmony will be fulWlled in Wnal redemption. Thus, while Calvin remains a political ‘conservative’—such that civil authority and rulers are appointed by God and deserve ‘public obedience’—the eschatological vision of human Xourishing as involving free, voluntary participation still has an inXuence on his political thought. SpeciWcally, the provision for magistrates to resist a king when the king betrays ‘the freedom of the people’ is indicative 176 The apparent development in Calvin’s position may have been in response to the increased persecution of the Calvinists in France. However, as Hesselink points out, claims for change in Calvin’s position do not always correspond with the dates of the increases in French persecution. See I. John Hesselink, ‘Calvin on the Nature and Limits of Political Resistance’, in Christian Faith and Violence, ii, ed. Dirk van Keulen and Martien E. Brinkman (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2005), 69–72. 177 See Andre´ Bie´ler, La pense´e ´economique et sociale de Calvin (Geneva: Librairie de l’Universite´, 1959), 3. 3. 4; Little, Religion, Order, and Law, ch. 4.

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of the [limited] freedom and participation that Calvin envisions in a state. The state, like the church, must make modest yet real eVorts to restore the original, participatory order of creation.

5.7. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have sought to show the way in which Calvin has a complex, multifaceted theology of the law with strong connections to his notion of ‘participation in Christ’. The law is God’s accommodation to humanity intended to unite humans to God. Its ‘principle end’ lies in inviting humans to God so that they can experience ‘true happiness’, in ‘being united to God’.178 Before the Fall, the law was the primal mode by which humans could participate in God. After the Fall, the law leads humans to repentance and curbs the social wickedness of humanity. However, through participating in Christ—the fulWlment of the law—believers can have a present taste of the delight and intimacy with God that was lost in the Fall. In this way, contra Milbank, love is placed at the very centre of Calvin’s view of the Christian life.179 The human way of entering into the divine accommodation of the law is through a voluntary, joyful love of God and neighbour. In this double love, believers are ‘one’ with Christ and ‘one’ with each other, engrafted and incorporated into Christ’s body. Through the eucharistic reception of the vivifying Christ, believers also extend gifts (alms) and love to all human persons, especially the needy. The public extension of this love takes the form of a social concern for ‘equity’, ‘justice’, and a commitment to provide for the necessities of those who are sick, poor, and in need. Far from being ‘unilateral’ in character, love within the church and toward society is active, mutual, voluntary love of God and neighbour. Christian love has ecclesial, economic, and political dimensions as believers seek to participate in God’s restoration of the original harmony among human beings before the Fall.

178 Comm. Isa. 45: 19, CTS; CO 37. 145. 179 See Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 33.

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Since the primal order of proper human relations involves voluntary obedience to the law of love, the church and state must be organized in a way that gives space for this voluntary participation to operate. In the church, administered by the Spirit with Christ as the Head, voluntary obedience and functionalized authority are central norms. In the state, external obedience can be enforced by coercion; because of the Fall, coercion has been made necessary on a temporary basis. Nevertheless, the state has an eschatologically conditioned mandate to receive the guidance of the voluntary will of the people. In their own ways, both ecclesial and civil governments seek to restore, as much as possible, the way of order, harmony, and voluntary participation rather than disorder, sin, and alienation. In electing for this kind of order, believers participate in Christ and simultaneously in God’s sovereign choice to restore the communion between self, God, and neighbour. Paradoxically, the concern for order stands behind both Calvin’s controlling tendency with regard to state coercion, and his vision of a harmonious, communal, participatory view of properly functioning humanity. Calvin’s controlling tendency indicates an eschatological pessimism, such that state coercion is necessary to curb sin, even in matters of faith. Calvin’s participatory vision emerges from his profoundly voluntary vision of human activity in the imago Dei (creation) and in participation in Christ (redemption). Because of the disruption of sin, these two themes in Calvin’s theology are in tension with one another in determining the practical outcomes related to church and state. Nevertheless, they emerge from a vision that holds creation and redemption closely together through a theology of the law: the law, as voluntary love of God and neighbour, is a gracious accommodation that Wnds its fulWlment in Christ, the great accommodation who unites believers to God.

6 The Promise of Calvin’s Theology of Participation The starting point for our inquiry has been the new—yet old— questions raised by contemporary theologies of the Gift: does the God of Calvin’s theology coerce creatures with sovereign, divine power? For Calvin, does God’s saving relation to humanity involve some sense of reciprocity, or is it a unilateral gift which simply claims the receiver? References to Calvin are widespread in discourse on the Gift, not least because Calvin is seen as providing an archetypical example of a theology of the ‘unilateral gift’. Gift theologians tend to use Calvin as an example of theological thinking brought to an extreme: a theology of sovereignty with no room for response, a theology of love with no room for gratitude, a theology of freedom which excludes the voluntary. In response to these criticisms of the Gift theologians—and parallel criticisms by Eastern Orthodox and feminist theologians1—I have examined the signiWcance of a contested concept in Calvin’s thought: his theology of participation in Christ. Gift theologians associated with Radical Orthodoxy tend to read Calvin’s theology of participation as an extreme departure from pre-nominalist theologians of participation. They see Calvin as rejecting strategies formulated by Augustine and Thomas for speaking about ‘reciprocity’ and divine–human relations in properly Trinitarian terms. Other theologies of the Gift implicitly assume a similar narrative, as they portray Calvin as having a strictly unilateral account of divine–human relations. A theology of 1 See Ch. 1 for a full account of the criticisms of the Gift theologians, as well as the parallels in Eastern Orthodoxy and feminist theology.

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participation in Christ, in which believers are united to God through Christ, would seem to be foreign to Calvin. In my examination of Calvin’s theology of participation, I have sought not only to respond to these criticisms, but to provide a synthetic exposition of the signiWcance of participation in Calvin’s thought. ‘Participation’, like ‘gift’, was not a formal locus of doctrine in Calvin’s thought. Yet, participation, along with the biblical images of adoption and engrafting, formed an important nexus of themes in Calvin’s theological programme from the year 1539. Calvin gives us a theology of participation that emerges from his use of Paul’s Letter to the Romans as a lens through which to view the rest of scripture. From this exegetical basis, Calvin develops the notion in relation to a wide variety of doctrinal loci.2 In this Wnal chapter, I will brieXy assess the signiWcance of this work for the ongoing Gift discussion, as well as evaluate the criticisms and promise of Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ.

6 . 1 . R E A SS E S S I N G C A LV I N’ S P L AC E I N T H E G I F T D IS C US S I O N

6.1.1. The Category of ‘Gift’ and Calvin’s Theology The Wrst thing to note in assessing Calvin’s theology in relation to the Gift discussion is that the category of ‘gift’ has distinct limits in its explanatory power for Calvin’s theology. Gift theologians are not completely clear about the systematic status of language about gift and exchange in their account of divine and human action.3 Indeed, the theological method of thinkers like Milbank may suggest that ‘gift’ becomes a driving category in a theology emerging from a ‘central dogma’.4 While it is helpful to consider the adequacy of 2 On the development of Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ to a wide variety of loci, see Ch. 3. 3 For example, Milbank says that he is using Gift as a ‘transcendental category’, but he does not explain what he means by this (Milbank, Being Reconciled, p. xi). If it is a transcendental category in the sense of a category of understanding, Milbank will need to do considerable epistemological work to defend his thesis. 4 Billings, ‘John Milbank’s Theology of the ‘‘Gift’’ and Calvin’s Theology of Grace’, 98–100.

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theological analogies for God’s saving relation to humanity and the resulting Christian ethic, Calvin is quite distant from theological approaches which give a normative status to certain Gift language because of the result of anthropological analysis. Nevertheless, we have seen instances in which the language of ‘gift’ holds a signiWcant place in Calvin’s theological thought. Calvin follows the Pauline logic that salvation is a ‘gift of God’, by ‘faith’ rather than a human achievement of ‘works’ (Eph. 2: 8–9). Thus, in Calvin’s doctrine of justiWcation, salvation itself is received as a ‘gift’ through faith. Calvin insists that this Wrst grace of the duplex gratia must involve righteousness that is beyond ourselves (extra nos); this righteousness is received, not merited; no human work can add to the righteousness received in Christ—there is nothing missing, so there is nothing to add. In God’s gracious act of (forensic) pardon, God declares sinners to be righteous because in their union with Christ through faith, they possess Christ’s righteousness. As a dynamic in the Wrst grace, Calvin uses the Pauline language of gift to speak about the unmerited way in which God comes to enliven believers. As such, the rhetorical emphasis of ‘gift’ language is not that of an impersonal transaction, but the way in which God’s prior, wholly suYcient grace brings humans to life—freely consenting in faith. On the external side, Calvin’s language of ‘gift’ certainly implies that salvation involves more than the sum total of the believer’s internal renewal. The gift of salvation is received from outside oneself. Yet, this gift is also one of relationship, of God seeking out the fallen so that their primal communion with God is restored. In addition, we have seen how the language of ‘gift’ Wgures prominently in Calvin’s sacramental theology. Although Calvin’s rhetorical use of gift language varies in the diVerent contexts, it frequently has what might be called an incorporative emphasis upon divine initiative: in justiWcation, the Spirit unites the believer to Christ, revealing the pardon of the Father; in sanctiWcation, the Spirit empowers believers to participate in Christ, growing in Christlikeness. In the context of the duplex gratia, the sacraments are gifts—received externally—yet they incorporate believers into God’s Triune work. The sacraments are also ‘gifts’ in the sense that the creaturely elements of the sacraments must not be thought to have power in themselves. Such would violate the character of sacraments as ‘gifts’. The sacraments,

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like believers themselves, have power in the Spirit, not in their own strength. In a similar way, Calvin’s less common (but still signiWcant) references to the law as ‘gift’ emphasizes the divine initiative which incorporates humanity. The law is ‘gift’ because it is a divinely enabled mode of communion with God which unites humanity to God. Although this does not correspond to the duplex gratia in a direct way, the teaching that the law is a ‘gift’ makes it clear that the law is primordially good—a good beyond human production, a gift of communion with God and neighbour. As such, the proper reception of the gift of the law is inseparable from obedience to the law of double love and participation in Christ. Calvin also sees a certain relationship between divine giving and human love and self-giving. Perhaps the most direct connection between the two is in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, where the gift of faith enables persons to receive the gifts of God, which involves a simultaneous communion with Christ, communion with other believers, and outreaching love to neighbour. Concretely, Calvin’s preference that almsgiving be connected with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper shows an inherent connection between God’s self-giving and the self-giving of believers. Yet, lest one see this almsgiving as indicative of a ‘unilateral’ gift, it is crucial to remember the way in which sacramental participation involves an outward movement which seeks relationships of mutuality when possible, and loving justice and equity to all persons (see Chapter 5). As important as these images of divine and human giving are in Calvin’s thought, it is imperative to keep in mind that the ‘gift’ is one of many biblical images that Calvin uses to describe aspects of his theology and ethics. ‘Gift’ and ‘reception’ simply cannot replace ‘justiWcation’ and ‘sanctiWcation’ in Calvin’s thought. Ironically, because Calvin uses ‘gift’ as one of many biblical terms, his theology eludes many of the criticisms of theologians who translate his theology into ‘gift’ terms without remainder. Faith is a ‘gift’, but faith is also a participation in a covenant, which requires voluntary consent. Salvation is received from outside oneself—as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness—but this imputation is not simply a ‘unilateral gift’, but a feature of his theology of union with Christ. Faith itself is not just about receiving, but about possessing Christ, about entering into a

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new life of love. The concept of ‘gift’, which tends toward the two options of being ‘unilateral’ or ‘bilateral’, ‘passively’ or ‘actively’ received, is simply not adequate to express the biblical and theological complexity of Calvin’s thought.5

6.1.2. Calvin’s Theology of Participation and its Critics Does Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ provide a response to the critiques of the Gift theologians, who claim that Calvin’s theology restricts humans to a ‘passive’ role in relation to a sovereign, coercive God? This is an alternative that theologians such as Milbank, Ward, Pickstock, and Oliver have considered. Aside from some words of qualiWcation from Milbank, these theologians reject the possibility that Calvin’s theology of participation can ameliorate the criticisms of Calvin as a theologian of the unilateral gift.6 Having stated the objections to Calvin’s theology of participation in Chapter 1, and having made intermittent reference to them throughout the book, I shall brieXy review the various criticisms and how they have been addressed.

1. Calvin’s theology of participation stands in radical discontinuity with pre-nominalist theologies of participation While the issue of Calvin’s relative continuity with various patristic and medieval traditions is a complex one, I have shown how Calvin selectively draws upon patristic authors such as Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria in his theology of participation (Chapter 2). Calvin develops many of the same Johannine and Pauline themes that inXuenced the patristic writers in their account of participation in God, and the material result is one that has broad commonalities with key patristic teachings on creation (and the restoration of creation in redemption), the imago Dei, the beatiWc vision, and salvation as participation or ‘deiWcation’ (Chapter 2). In addition, Calvin develops a type of ‘middle ground’ position between Thomism and 5 See ibid. 90–3. 6 For Milbank’s words of qualiWcation, see Milbank, ‘Alternative Protestantism’, 27–32.

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voluntarism which makes signiWcant use of the concept of natural law (Chapters 2 and 5).

2. The forensic logic of imputation undercuts a theology of participation While Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ has irreducibly forensic elements, it is inaccurate to say that a juridical image of a divine decree is the only appropriate analogy for this union. For Calvin, imputation does not undercut the theological logic of participation, but holds it together: imputation and regeneration are held together by being two aspects of participation in Christ for believers. Moreover, the forensic element in Calvin’s theology of participation provides a solid ground for the Christian life as one of gratitude: only when believers receive the free pardon of imputation can God be recognized as a gracious Father. This recognition comes as one is united to Christ, through faith. Through the recognition of free pardon, believers can respond in voluntary gratitude, participating in Christ through the power of the Spirit (Chapters 2 and 4).

3. Calvin emphasizes justiWcation by faith rather than participation in Christ, displacing the centrality of love in the Christian life JustiWcation by faith is the Wrst of the inseparable double grace (duplex gratia), constituted by participation in Christ. To participate in Christ is to participate in Christ’s righteousness, to receive free adoption, which inevitably means a participation in the law of love by the Spirit (Chapter 5). For Calvin, the double grace provides the basic structure for the Christian life such that one does not have to pose an either/or between faith and love. Faith and love, like the two graces, are distinguishable but inseparable. Through faith the primal union and communion of God and humanity begin to be restored as believers grow in their love and delight in God and neighbour, who is ‘in God’ through the imago Dei. The growth of this double love takes place through participation in Christ by the Spirit. As shown in celebration of the Lord’s Supper, participation in Christ always involves participation in the mutual love and

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fellowship of the church (Chapters 3 and 4); in addition, it involves love for persons in the broader society, expressed through a concern with justice, equity, and care for the poor (Chapter 5).

4. Calvin’s God comes to humanity with a ‘unilateral’ gift, toward which humanity can only be passive, undermining true gratitude Calvin uses a wide range of multivalent images and analogies to speak about God’s saving relation to humanity. This saving relation cannot be properly described as simply ‘unilateral’ or ‘bilateral’. On the one hand, humans are not so autonomous that they can know God without the communing fellowship of the Spirit (Chapters 2 and 5). On the other hand, Calvin repeatedly admonishes his listeners not simply to ‘wait’ for the Spirit, but to be active in ascetic struggle (Chapters 4 and 5). The faith and love of Christians engage the activity of their faculties, yet faith and love are also received as gifts from God. Moreover, Calvin sets gratitude at the centre of his conception of sanctiWcation: a voluntary, rather than compulsory, obedience to the law of love is precisely what characterizes a life in the Spirit. The Christian life is a response of gratitude to the gracious work of God in Christ, but it is a gratitude that is not forced, but involves consent and active, voluntary love (Chapters 2, 4, and 5).

5. Calvin’s concept of ‘participation in Christ’ as ‘spiritual’ makes Christ’s presence in the Eucharist dependent upon the subjective response of the individual Ward and Oliver read Calvin as anticipating modernity’s turn to the subject and turn to the individual. As I have shown in Chapters 3 and 4, this characterization is inadequate. Calvin’s language for the Lord’s Supper undergoes considerable development, adding the language of vera participes, exhibere, and substantia to diVerentiate his position from memorialist alternatives (Chapter 3). In addition, Calvin repeatedly emphasizes that what is promised by the signs in the sacraments is truly given by God. This is not created or manufactured by the individual subject. Indeed, believers are

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united with Christ and one another, receiving the ‘substance’ of Christ in the Supper. Moreover, Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ at the Supper is not preoccupied with ‘the individual’. The Supper is profoundly communal—it is impossible to ‘participate in Christ’ on a vertical plane (so to speak) without also participating in the body of Christ horizontally, in the corporate, mutual love of the church. It is true that Calvin emphasizes that participation in Christ at the Supper is ‘spiritual’—it is by the power of the Spirit. This Wts with Calvin’s overall Trinitarian soteriology (Chapter 4). ‘Spiritual’, however, does not mean produced by the subjective consciousness of the believer for Calvin; rather, the substance of the sacrament— Christ—is oVered to all in the Supper. Those without faith do not have the Spirit who unites believers to Christ, however, so they do not receive what is oVered (Chapter 4).

6. Calvin’s theology of participation is disrupted by a dualism that systematically separates God from humanity Far from systematically separating God from humanity, Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ reveals a soteriology in which humanity is united to God in creation and redemption. Adam was righteous through ‘participation in God’,7 and this primal participation is fulWlled in redemption when sinners who are in Christ will be transformed by the Spirit, receiving all that the Father has given to the Son. In the Wnal end, God will transform believers through ‘a kind of deiWcation’,8 although the distinction between Creator and creature will remain, and divine attributes will not overwhelm distinctively human attributes. Calvin’s theology does not frequently use the technical language of deiWcation. But neither do the theologies of Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, or Augustine. Nevertheless, unless one takes a medieval standard like Palamas or Thomas to deWne theologies of deiWcation, Calvin’s theology of salvation contains the key elements of patristic theologies of deiWcation (Chapters 2 and 5).9 7 Institutes, 2. 2. 1. 8 Comm. 2 Pet. 1: 4, CC; CO 55. 446. 9 See pp. 51–61 above and esp. Ch. 2 nn. 135–42 and 162.

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7. Calvin’s theology of participation is metaphysically ambiguous This criticism, presented by Milbank in one of his most circumspect treatments of Calvin, does point to a restraint in Calvin’s metaphysical speculation that some will consider to be a drawback. On the one hand, it should be said that Calvin’s metaphysics of participation in Christ is not completely ambiguous. Calvin makes claims with metaphysical weight related to how participation relates to the sacraments, the law, anthropology, soteriology, and doctrine of God (Chapters 2, 4, and 5). In Calvin’s Trinitarian account of God’s saving relation to the world, there is a diVerentiated ‘oneness’ and ‘participation’ of creatures in God that has been disrupted by sin, but can be overcome through the union of believers with Christ, by the power of the Spirit, revealing the free pardon of the Father. Calvin’s account of the sacraments, the law, anthropology, and soteriology Wt within this Trinitarian framework. In addition, in his debate with Osiander, Calvin presents a weighty doctrine of participation which eludes many of the broad categories of ‘Thomist’, ‘Scotist’, or ‘Palamite’ (Chapters 2 and 4). Calvin’s theology of participation is a complex combination of a variety of biblical, patristic, medieval, and early modern inXuences. On the other hand, there are points at which Calvin’s hesitancy to make speculative distinctions may seem to push aspects of his theology of participation toward ‘ambiguity’, as Milbank says, or at least a lack of analytical clarity in some of his writings on ‘participation in Christ’. For example, in Chapter 2 we saw how Calvin uses Aristotelian distinctions to explain how redemption is not the annihilation of God’s good creation. Yet, some of these distinctions are buried in the details of Bondage and Liberation of the Will, and were never added to his discussion in the Institutes. While Calvin does utilize certain distinctions from Scholastic theology, his tendency to reject Scholastic distinctions as unnecessary ‘speculation’ can have two results: it can lead to a lack of clarity for readers, thus inciting unnecessary misunderstandings of his thought; and it can leave his thought open to be adapted to a wide range of metaphysical frameworks. A limited amount of metaphysical ambiguity in Calvin’s theology of participation is not necessarily a shortcoming, of course. Given

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the critiques of metaphysics in twentieth-century theology, many contemporary theologians might rejoice in this relative lack of metaphysical precision on the part of Calvin. In addition, metaphysical precision was not a top priority for Calvin, partly because his primary audience was Christians in the evangelical movement—many of whom were under persecution—rather than university theologians. Moreover, with his humanist restraint, Calvin generally avoids speculation when it does not serve his purpose of expositing the biblical text. Calvin’s way of doing theology has profound trust in God’s revelatory accommodation in scripture, and this trust is accompanied with a general distrust in extra-biblical speculation, with its analytic distinctions. In many instances, Calvin does present analytic clariWcations to his teaching on ‘participation in Christ’. But his theology of participation still eludes classiWcation into one of the broad metaphysical schools of thought on participation, whether ‘Thomist’ or ‘voluntarist’ or ‘Palamite’. Since his theology sought to be, Wrst and foremost, an exposition of God’s address in scripture, bringing closure on points of metaphysical ambiguity would not necessarily have been seen as a virtue for Calvin.

6. 2 . TH E PROM I S E OF C A LV I N’ S T H E O LO G Y OF PART ICIPAT ION As we have seen, Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ emerges from an exegesis of scripture that gives an important place to the images of participation, adoption, and engrafting. Calvin weaves these images together with a Pauline logic developed from his reading of Romans, and also extends his use of these images of participation through his exegesis of other scriptural books and his reading of the church fathers. In various Christological and sacramental controversies, Calvin’s range of meaning in speaking of ‘participation’ is clariWed. Although some options are counted out, Calvin extends his notion of participation in Christ to a wide range of doctrinal loci, including the duplex gratia, the Incarnation, the Trinity, the imago Dei, the sacraments, the law, and the Spirit.

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While Calvin’s theology of participation is wide-ranging, it is distinctive in relation to contemporary discussion, because it brings together what are usually held apart: organic images of transformation into Christlikeness by the indwelling of the Spirit with forensic images of God’s free pardon; a strong account of humanity’s sin with a soteriology based on the restoration of a primal uniting communion with God. Calvin’s scriptural theology of participation refuses to attend to the images of union and participation (Romans 6 and 8) while neglecting the seriousness of sin (Romans 2–3, 7). If some current theologies of participation and deiWcation have a tendency to become theologies of glory—underplaying the less fashionable themes of human sin and Christ’s cross—the same cannot be said for Calvin’s theology of participation. Calvin’s theology of participation takes seriously the transformative language of scripture and tradition about the incorporation of believers into the Triune life; but Calvin retains a realism about the power and extent of human sin. The Christian life is one of corporate participation in Christ, an eschatologically conditioned reuniting with God. But the eschaton is not collapsed into the present, and sinners are not said to be perfected in this life. While Calvin’s theology of participation brings together what many theologies of participation hold apart, it also has a great deal of common ground with Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox theologies of participation. Calvin’s soteriology gives a central place to the problem of sin and forgiveness, but it is not Wxated on those themes. Rather, those themes occur within a larger vision of salvation that is, in many ways, a catholic vision. Calvin is concerned, along with key patristic writers, to aYrm the goodness of creation and that redemption is a fulWlment rather than a disruption of the originally good human nature. Calvin oVers a soteriology that is Trinitarian from beginning to end, continually returning to the way in which we are united to Christ by the Spirit, revealing the Father. Calvin’s theology of participation is both sacramental and ecclesial, emphasizing the centrality of the Word and sacraments for the life of Christ’s Body, which can receive the sacraments only in the communion of the church. The church itself is a participation in Christ the Head by the Spirit, with its members active in choosing church oYcers, who Wll functionalized roles in service to Christ, the

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Head. Participation for Calvin also involves a love of neighbour that extends to the broader society; this love expresses itself in a concern for equity and justice, as well as an eschatological orientation that keeps a place for voluntary participation, when possible, in the civil order. Calvin’s theology of participation has promise, in the end, not just for the misunderstandings that it corrects, but for the biblical and theological themes it illuminates. A central passage for Calvin’s teaching on participation was Paul’s statement that, in baptism, believers participate in Christ’s death with him, as well as in his resurrection. The old self is cruciWed, and believers are made alive to God (Rom. 6: 1–11). Calvin’s theology of participation is, in some sense, a scriptural reXection on that claim at the heart of the baptismal mystery. From one perspective, Calvin’s account of participation is very complex, combining insights from scripture, the church fathers, medieval and early modern writers, and contemporaneous debates; its scope ranges from Trinitarian theology to anthropology, from soteriology to eschatology. Yet, there is also a sense in which Calvin’s theology of participation is very simple: the life of faith is one of participation in Christ through the power of the Spirit, receiving the pardon of the gracious Father. As such, the life of faith is a life of voluntary gratitude, made possible by the God who restores to sinners what they have lost, and reunites them with God.

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Index of References to Calvin’s Works Catechism of 1538, 79 Commentaries on the Old Testament Genesis 93n81, 146, 151, 155, 159, 171 Harmony of the Law 148, 158–9 1 Samuel (sermon) 52 Psalms 128, 171, 174, 180 Isaiah 93n81, 146, 184 Jeremiah 53, 90 Commentaries on the New Testament Harmony of the Gospels 50, 166, 171, 176 John 50, 73, 155, 171 Acts 93n81 Romans 50–1, 61–2, 77, 86, 91n74, 94, 155 1 Corinthians 47, 62, 89, 92, 128, 165 2 Corinthians 91n74, 161–2, 168–9 Galations (sermon) 83n50 Ephesians 93n81, 138 Philippians 91n74, 93n81 Hebrews 92, 93n81 1 Thessalonians 93n81 2 Thessalonians 172 2 Timothy 93n81 Titus 93n81 1 Peter 91n74, 93n81 2 Peter 53, 55, 60, 193 1 John 52–3, 93n81 Ecclesiastical Ordinances 173 Forms of Prayers for the Church 50 Geneva Catechism (1541) 82, 134 Institutes, 1536 Edition 39–40, 70–2, 74–5, 77, 79, 109, 121, 178 Institutes, 1539 Edition 43n84, 77, 79–81, 87–88 Institutes, 1543 Edition 80, 82–3, 122 Institutes, 1545 Edition 85 Institutes, 1559 Edition

Institutes, Book 1, 1. 2., 49, 118 1. 3., 149, 154 1. 8., 52 1. 11., 40 1. 13., 52, 64, 101 1. 14., 112 1. 15., 52–3 Institutes, Book 2, 2. 1., 46, 120, 126, 146 2. 2., 101, 144, 151, 153–5, 193 2. 3., 43, 48, 108 2. 6., 149 2. 7., 146–151 2. 8., 48, 153, 157, 164–5, 167 2. 9., 160 2. 10., 160 2. 11., 36 2. 12., 101 2. 14., 53, 108 2. 15., 101 2. 16., 52, 101, 167 Institutes, Book 3 3. 1., 52, 102 3. 2., 52, 101 3. 3., 47, 101 3. 4., 101 3. 6., 158 3. 7., 164 3. 11., 20, 58–9, 101, 107 3. 14., 108, 157 3. 15., 101, 107 3. 16., 57, 101, 107 3. 17., 101 3. 19., 58–9, 164, 178–9 3. 20., 110–3, 115 3. 21., 127 3. 23., 33 3. 24., 114 3. 25, 35 Institutes, Book 4 4. 1., 51, 172

212

Index of References to Calvin’s Works

Institutes, Book 4 (cont.) 4. 3., 173, 176, 180 4. 5., 173 4. 6., 172–3 4. 8., 159 4. 10., 155 4. 11., 172 4. 14., 101, 117–20 4. 15., 101, 122–4 4. 16., 101, 124–8 4. 17., 50, 101, 129–30, 134–8, 140–1, 165, 174 4. 18., 101, 131–3 4. 20., 111, 153, 177, 179, 181–2 4. 21., 21 Last Admonition of John Calvin to Joachim Westphal 98–9, 136, 138–9 Letter to the Reader 77, 85, 100

Letters of John Calvin 48, 85, 116, 132, 182 Mutual Consent in Regard to the Sacraments 96–9 Sermons on the Ten Commandments (Sermons on Deuteronomy) 146–8, 153–4, 157, 159–66 Second Defense of the Faith concerning the Sacraments 97–99, 136 Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper 82, 98–9 The Bondage and Liberation of the Will 40, 43–9, 66, 156, 167, 194 The Defense of the Sound and Orthodox Doctrine of the Sacraments 97–9 The True Partaking of the Flesh and Blood of Christ 98–9

Index of Names Alciat Andrea 27, 35 Aquinas Thomas 9, 14, 24–5, 30, 32–3, 53–4, 104, 140n134, 186, 193 Aristotle 29, 44, 46–7, 49, 194 Athanasius 28, 41, 55, 93, 140 Augustine of Hippo 16, 22, 24, 39–42, 45–9, 52, 54, 57, 60, 82, 87, 95, 99, 117, 126, 138, 140, 186, 190, 193

Chin Clive 37–38 Chrysostom John 50, 87 Coakley Sarah i, 1n2 Cottret Bernard 27n8, 70, 76n21 Courtenay William 32n34, 33n43 Cross Richard 33 Cyril of Alexandria 16, 18, 22, 41–2, 46, 49–50, 66, 99, 140, 190

Backus Irena i, 41n80, 74n18, 87n61, 152, 153n37, 154n47, 155n50 Bainton Roland H. 42n81, 96n87 Barth Karl 5, 31, 144–5, 166–7 Basil of Caesaria 28 Battles, Ford Lewis 70, 72, 80, 102, 123 Beckmann Joachim 124n66 Bernard of Clairvaux 17, 19–22, 41 Beza Theodore 97 Bie´ler Andre´ 169–170, 183n177 Billings J. Todd i, 7n26, 60n162, 187 Boehner Philotheus 32n38 Bohatec Josef 34n46, 152 Bonner Gerald 54n137, 60n162 Bouwsma William J. 76n21 Braaten Carl 53n135 Bradwardine Thomas 28, 32, 34 Bucer Martin 15n55, 74, 76, 79n30, 82, 86, 97, 175n140 Bude Guillaume 34n46, 35 Bullinger Heinrich 70, 86, 96–8, 103 Butin Philip i, 30n25, 38n65, 42n81, 52n126, 59, 64n172, 82, 128n84

Davaney Sheila Greeve 13n49 Davis Natalie Zemon 3, 11n41, 18, 144 Davis Thomas J. 56n143, 68n2, 74n18, 82, 84, 96n89, 97n92, 103n107 Derrida Jacques 1, 4–7 DolV Scott 6n17 Douglas Mary 4n8 Dowey Edward A. 23, 101, 146, 154n46–7

Calvin John see particular topics in Subject Index. Canlis Julie 22n71, 52n126, 59, 62–3, 105n1 Caputo John D. 5n13 Carlstadt Andreas 97 Case-Winters Anna 13 Chadwick Henry 50n112 Charry Ellen T. 167n104

Eire` Carlos, 38n65 Elwood Christopher 72n10, 73, 84n51, 135n111 Erasmus Desiderius 35, 37, 38n64, 44, 91 Farel Guillaume 70, 72–6, 83, 85 Farrell Joseph P. 14, 54n36 Flogaus Reinhard 53n135 Foster Herbert D. 178n145, 181n166, 182n170 Ganoczy Alexandre 28n14, 29–32, 40 Gerrish B.A. 1n1, 82, 116n37, 134n105, 140n131 Gisel Pierre 31n29 Gloede Gunter 152 Grabill Stephen J. 152, 153n37, 154n47 Graeber David 4n8 Graham W. Fred 176n143 Gratian 40 Gregory of Nazianzus 64

214

Index of Names

Gregory of Nyssa 8n30, 55n140, 56n142, 193 Gregory Palamas 15, 53–4, 65–6, 163, 193–5 Gregory of Rimini 25, 28, 32 Gross Jules 60 Haas Guenther H. 155n49, 166, 168 Hallosten Gosta 54n137, 55n141 Harrison Nonna Verna 54n137, 64n172 Hart Trevor A. 104n109 Heshusius Heinrich 56n143–4, 69, 95–9, 103 Hesselink I. John i, 33n45, 79n32, 128n84, 152, 153n37, 159, 167, 183n176 Ho¨pel Harro 182 Horner Robyn 1n2, 5n13 Irenaeus of Lyon 16, 22, 39–42, 47, 49–50, 52, 55, 60n162, 66n175, 99n100, 190, 193 Jenson Robert 53n135 Jones Serene 36–7 Keller Carl A. 42n82 Klempa William 145n6, 152 Kolfhaus Wilhelm 20, 22 Krusche Werner 44n87, 57n146, 15 Lambert Francis 70 Lane A. N. S. i, 21, 23, 28n14, 39n66, 41n76, 41n79–80, 43n84, 44n86, 46n95, 50n109 LaVallee Armand A. 29 Lehmann Paul 145n7 Leith John H. 135n112 Levinas Emmanuel 5 Little David i, 34n48, 152, 170n118, 171n124, 173, 179n158, 181n166–7, 183n177 Livingston James C. 31n28 Lombard Peter 34, 40–1, 49n105, 78, 140 Lossky Vladimir 13n50, 54n136 Louth Andrew 13–4 Luther Martin 27, 34, 40, 44, 49, 53, 70, 87, 117

Major John 25–9, 37 Mannermaa Tuomo 53n135 Marcourt Antione 72–4, 83 Marion Jean-Luc i, 1, 5, 8 Mauss Marcel 3–5, 7, 15 McClymond Michael J. 53n135 McCormack Bruce 31n28 McDonnell Kilian 25, 27n9, 33, 37n62, 116n37, 134 McGinn Bernard 62, 64 McGrath Alister E. 28, 68 McKee Elsie A. 90n71, 174n138, 175n140 McNeill John T. 102, 123n62, 152 Melanchthon Philipp 15, 31, 35, 77, 79n30, 86 Milbank John i, 1n2, 7–12, 24, 32, 68n1, 71, 104n110, 129, 136n117, 137n121, 144, 175n139, 184, 187, 190, 194 Millet Olivier 35n52, 36–7 Mooi R.J. 45n91 Mosser Carl 53n134, 55, 56n142–3, 83n50, 96n86 Muller Richard A. 19, 29–31, 35–6, 40n74, 45n91, 51n118, 55n139, 60n160, 76–8, 80n34, 82n46, 100n101, 101n102, 103n107, 109n13, 117n38 Niesel Wilhelm 109n12, 138n127, 145, 152n34 Norris Richard A. 46n93 Nygren Anders 8–9 Oakley Francis 34n47, 181n166 Oberman Heiko A. 32–3, 58n151 Oliver Simon 7, 11–2, 24n3, 68n1, 104, 129n85, 136n117, 190, 192 Oort Johannes Van 40n75, 41n77, 49n107, 50n109 Osiander Andreas 53–63, 95, 194 Ozment Steven E. 49n105 Parker T. H. L. 27n8, 28–9, 70n3, 91n73, 96n88, 105n1 Partee Charles 19n61, 109n13 Perl Eric D. 54n136

Index of Names Pickstock Catherine 7, 10, 12, 24n2, 32n32, 68n1, 71, 190 Pighius Albert 40, 43–4, 47–8 Plaskow Judith 13n49 Prins Richard 47n99 Puckett David Lee 87n60

215

Thompson John L. i, 87n61–2, 88n66, 90 Torrance James B. 22n71, 105n1 Torrance Thomas F. 28, 152n34 Tylenda Joseph N. 97n93, 128n84 Vermigli Peter Martyr 97

Quistorp Heinrich 16n56 Reuter Karl 28–9, 37n62, 39 Richard Lucien 37n62 Ritschl Albrecht 33n42 Russell Norman 55n140, 56n142 Schrift Alan D. 3n6 Scotus Duns 25, 27–35, 65, 194 Selinger Suzanne 37n62 Servetus Michael 41, 56n143, 95–6, 100, 181 Slater Jonathan 55n139 Stead Christopher 64n172 Steinmetz David 56n144, 95n85, 154n45 Stevenson William R. 176n143, 178n146, 182n170 Tamburello Dennis E., 19–20, 104n109 Tanner Kathryn, i, 1n2, 6n17, 12–3, 68n1 Tertullian 39–40

Wallace Ronald S. 109n12, 119n45, 121n54, 122n56, 127n79, 138n125 Ward Graham 7, 11–12, 24n2, 32n33, 68n1, 104n108, 104n110, 120n53, 128n84, 129n85, 137n121, 190, 192 Webb Stephen H. 1n2, 5–6, 12–13, 68n1, 144n2 Weis James 56n144, 95n85 Wendel Francois 27n8, 31n29, 76n20, 96n89, 125n71 Westphal Joachim 41, 56n143–4, 69, 95–100, 103, 138–9 William of Occam 25–32 Williams Rowan 55n140, 93 Williams A. N. 53n135, 54n137 Willis David 35–6, 83n49–50, 84n51, 96n90, 140n134 Wilson-Kastner Patricia 57n145 Zwingli Ulrich 73–4, 96–9, 104

Subject Index accommodation (God’s accommodation to humanity) 36, 78, 89, 137n121, 139, 144–5, 150–1, 157–64, 184–5, 195 adoption 18–9, 22–3, 26, 36, 42, 51, 55, 58, 69, 72, 79, 88–94, 101–3, 106–42, 149–50, 165, 187, 191, 195 ascension/ascent 50, 65, 103, 106, 130, 136–8, 157 baptism 61–2, 70, 75, 84, 101, 106, 121–9, 135, 139, 142, 197 Calvin, see also theological topics in index early career and training 26–41 use of the church fathers 15, 18–22, 26, 38–50, 53–4, 60, 62, 66, 84, 99n100, 140, 190, 193–4, 195–7 catholic character of Calvin’s theology 10–11, 16, 51–2, 60, 66, 96, 196 christology, see also Incarnation, Trinity, cross of Christ 11, 24–5, 49–50, 60, 80, 92, 96, 100, 107, 135, 141, 150, 163 church and participation, see also baptism, Lord’s Supper 170–7, 184–5, 191–2 commentaries and Calvin’s language of participation 76–95 communion, see also koinonia 16, 18, 42, 69, 73–4, 91–2, 95, 103, 110, 142, 145, 148, 151, 155–8, 168, 170, 174, 176–7, 185, 188–9, 191, 196 communication of idioms 55, 60 Creator-creature distinction 16, 42, 59–61, 174, 193 cross of Christ 57, 58, 61, 66, 82, 101, 130, 131, 136, 196 deiWcation 2, 10, 13–4, 51–61, 96, 190, 193, 196

dialectic, 25, 30–1, 35 double grace (duplex gratia) see also justiWcation and sanctiWcation 15, 23, 71, 106–19, 122, 125, 128–9, 132–3, 136, 140–1, 157–8, 188–91, 195 election and predestination 2, 10, 12, 40, 41, 46, 78, 80, 89, 108–9, 114, 116, 127, 171, 176 equity 16, 137, 155, 157–8, 165–6, 168–9, 173–4, 184, 189, 192, 197 Eucharist see Lord’s Supper Father, God as (in Calvin’s theology) see also Trinity, adoption 10, 17, 42, 51–2, 58, 63–5, 67, 73, 79–80, 88, 100, 102, 106–7, 110–16, 118–22, 128, 130–42, 148–50, 164, 168, 170, 174, 188, 191, 193–4, 196–7 forensic 9–11, 15, 17, 22–3, 57–61, 66, 105, 114, 188, 191, 196 gift, see also Gift theologians as a category in contemporary theology, 1–13, 144–5, 170, gift in Calvin’s theology 17–8, 58, 108, 114–5, 117–21, 127, 132–5, 140–2, 146–9, 151, 159–61, 164, 170, 173–5, 178, 184, 187–90, 192 gift as alms 137, 169, 175, 176, 177, 184, 189 Gift theologians 1–6, 14, 17, 23–5, 31, 42, 44, 68–9, 71, 101, 103–5, 114–5, 129, 137, 141–5, 170, 186–7, 190–5 Holy Spirit, uniting believers to Christ 59–60, 79n31, 81, 142, 188 working upon the human will 42–53 and participation in Christ 58–60, 62–7, 80–1, 92–4, 188

Subject Index and the sacraments in general 89, 118–9, 121, 141–2 and Baptism 75, 121–9, 141–3 and the Lord’s Supper 56n143 129–43, 192–3 and Prayer 109–116 and the moral law 145, 150–1, 156–60, 163–6, 191–2 and the orders of church and state 170–180, 183, 185, 196 as the agent in activating human activity 47–9, 106–8, 114, 141–3, 170, 173, 176, 183, 188, 196 humanity as active 8–9, 22, 105–6, 115, 123, 140, 142, 145, 147, 151, 158, 172–3, 179–84, 192, 196 imputation 9–12, 15, 21, 23, 58–9, 71, 81, 105–7, 111–2, 114, 118, 120, 122, 130, 131, 150, 157, 189, 191 Incarnation, see also christology, Trinity 13, 46, 69, 92–3, 95, 101, 103, 116n37, 130, 134, 136, 148, 159, 161, 162, 195 infusion 9, 15–6, 49, 57–61, 98, 157 ingrafting 18–9, 22, 26, 42, 50–1, 62, 73, 75, 79, 88, 92–4, 97, 101–3, 106, 107–8, 122, 125, 184, 187, 195 Institutes, development of language of participation 70–84, 100–4 intellectualism 33, 152 also see voluntarism justice 16, 137, 154, 157, 165, 168–9, 182, 184, 189, 192, 197 justiWcation 9–11, 14–6, 21–3, 52, 56–61, 69–72, 75, 79–81, 84, 101–2, 105–9, 114, 142, 157, 175, 178, 188–9, 191 koinonia, see also communion 69, 85, 91–3, 98–9, 103, 143, 165 law, see also love, equity critique of Calvin’s view, 10, 144–5, 191–2 Calvin’s view in general, 15, 17, 33–4, 48, 58, 109n15, 139, 145–85, 189, 191–2, 194–5

217

Wrst use 149–52 second use 152, 180 third use 48, 58, 146, 149, 152, 156, 158–70, 191–2 moral law 150, 153–4, 158–9, 179 natural law 33–4, 144–5, 152–6, 166, 168, 179, 181, 191 Lord’s Supper 11–2, 24–5, 27, 41, 50, 56, 62, 72–6, 79, 81–4, 95n85, 96–9, 101, 103–4, 106, 116–21, 128–42, 165–6, 173–5, 177, 184, 189, 191–3 love, theology and ethic of see also koinonia critiques of Calvin’s view 1–3, 9–14, 144, 191 love in Calvin’s overall theology 15–6, 48–9, 58, 67, 106, 113–8, 189–93, 197 the Lord’s Supper and love 15–6, 73–5, 132–3, 136–7, 141–3 the law and love 15–6, 144–5, 148, 153–4, 158–60, 163–77, 180, 184–6 nominalism, 9–12, 24–35, 64, 66, 186, 190 oneness, see also communion, deiWcation 52, 62–6, 81, 84, 97, 99, 107, 112, 126, 133, 148, 156, 166, 169, 174, 194 ontology 1, 9, 32, 62, 74 Orthodoxy, Eastern, see also Gregory Palamas, DeiWcation 2, 13–5, 53–4, 65–6, 163, 186, 193–6 participation in Christ see also union with Christ, Holy Spirit, and related topics 2, 10–19, 22–6, 47, 51, 57, 59, 61–84, 88, 92, 98–108, 122–30, 134–5, 137, 141, 145, 150–2, 157, 159, 160, 163, 170, 173, 175, 177, 180, 184–197 participation in God 16–7, 24, 26, 32, 49, 52, 59, 62–3 67, 79, 81, 84, 88, 93, 101, 120, 145, 151, 156, 158, 163, 167, 171, 175–6, 184, 190, 193 pietas 36, 106, 117–21, 142, 149, 155

218

Subject Index

prayer 17, 19, 63, 68, 90, 95, 100, 103, 106–17, 129, 141–2, 171–2 predestination, see election and predestination Radical Orthodoxy 7, 9, 12, 14, 32–3, 35, 157, 186 regeneration 43, 45, 71, 107, 119, 122, 124–5, 127, 131, 156, 167, 179, 191 resurrection 47, 51, 61, 65, 75, 79, 101, 121–2, 136, 197 sacrament, see also Baptism, Lord’s Supper 11, 14, 16, 18, 26, 40, 69, 75, 89, 96, 98–9, 116–30, 133–5, 137, 141, 188–9, 193, 195–6 sanctiWcation, see also Double Grace 10–1, 14–7, 43, 46, 48, 52, 57, 58, 61, 75, 80–1, 106–9, 114, 132, 141, 157, 171, 188–9, 192 sermons 89–91, 183 substance, substantia, 12, 44, 46–7, 50, 56–7, 62–5, 75–6, 82–3, 88, 98–9,

119–21, 128, 133–39, 142, 159–63, 167–8, 193 Theosis, see DeiWcation Thomism 10, 15, 26, 30, 32–4, 37–8, 54, 65–6, 152, 190, 193–5 Trinity see also Father, christology, and Holy Spirit 1, 5–7, 9, 18, 38, 40, 52, 59, 79–80, 84, 93, 108, 194–5 union with Christ see also participation in Christ 15, 17–23, 51–61, 63, 65, 71, 74, 78–9, 82–3, 94, 99, 101, 104, 106–118, 122, 126–7, 136, 151, 188–9, 191 union with God see also participation in God, deiWcation 16, 20, 26, 42, 48, 53–62, 101, 106, 146–7, 155, 157, 162 voluntarism, see also intellectualism 26, 33, 38, 152, 191, 195