Participation in Christ and Eucharistic Formation: John Calvin and the Theodrama of the Lord's Supper

By Mary Patton Baker

This wonderful book proposes a theological model for understanding Eucharistic celebration that demonstrates its centrality to the Christian believer's sanctification and spiritual formation. It centres on John Calvin's framework for understanding the Lord's Supper which was founded upon the believer's union with Christ, along with the belief
that the Lord's Supper deepened that union. By bringing Calvin's Eucharistic theology into conversation with contemporary speech-act philosophy, Kevin Vanhoozer's divine/communicative ontology, Biblical theology, and historical and liturgical theology, this multidisciplinary dissertation provides a biblical and theological foundation for understanding the role the Eucharist plays in the worship, sanctification, and formation of the church and her communicants.
-Publisher

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authentic Publishers
• Release date: Sep 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781842279298

Mary Patton Baker

Mary Patton Baker is a Deacon at All Souls Anglican Church in Wheaton, Il., involved in ministries of teaching, discipleship, and spiritual formation.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Why did John Calvin consider the celebration of the Lord’s Supper to be so central to the piety of the church? That its celebration was an important theological doctrine for Calvin is evident in that every year from 1536 until his death in 1564, Calvin wrote about the Eucharist.¹ The longest chapters in the Institutes are on prayer and the Lord’s Supper. Through his participation in ecumenical meetings and agreements, Calvin worked hard throughout his ministry to bring eucharistic unity with Lutherans and his fellow Swiss reformers. He never stopped advocating in his writings for weekly observation, years after it became clear that the Genevan magistrates would never allow such a practice.

Accordingly, there are also volumes of secondary literature devoted to interpreting and debating Calvin’s theology of the Lord’s Supper. Did Calvin believe there was a special eucharistic gift? Is the reception of the elements spiritual or substantial? Was there really a difference between Calvin and Zwingli?

So why produce yet another volume on Calvin and the Lord’s Supper? Because I believe that students of Calvin are often still held captive by these essentially sixteenth century debates. And, unfortunately, buried in these ongoing debates concerning symbol and sign or spiritual or true presence is Calvin’s central insight that participating in the Lord’s Supper deepens our relationship to Christ and therefore nurtures our faith and deepens our sanctification. My task in this work is to retrieve this insight for the church today.

In the past twenty-five years, emphasis on spiritual formation has entered the sphere of study in evangelical churches, colleges, and seminaries. However, in the many books and conferences that have resulted, frequent celebration of the Eucharist is rarely mentioned as an integral component of spiritual formation. This includes those authors or groups who self-identify as Reformed.² And yet, many Reformed Confessions chiefly speak about the Lord’s Supper as a special grace given by God to nourish and strengthen our faith.³ Calvin’s important contribution to the debate of the sixteenth century was to place his central emphasis on the activity of the Holy Spirit in the transformation of the communicant and community, rather than on a precise description of what happened to the elements. Where some sought precision, Calvin sought ecumenical peace, and more importantly, clarity on the sacrament’s purpose.

This attention to the sacrament’s role in sanctification should not be too surprising given Calvin’s overall theological orientation. For while Calvin devoted his life to writing Christian doctrine, his intent was to further the piety of the church. As a pastor and teacher, the majority of his preaching and teaching was aimed not so much at convincing people to believe the Reformation doctrine of justification, but at moving those who believed it to holy living.⁴ In the subtitle of the first edition of his 1536 Institutes of Christian Religion, Calvin sets forth his central theological purpose for the work: Embracing almost the whole sum of piety, and whatever is necessary to know of the doctrine of salvation: A work most worthy to be read by all persons zealous for piety. As this subtitle suggests, his work was not intended as a summa theologia, but a pietatis summa (Totam fere pietatis summam).⁵ Brian Gerrish observes that the subtitle was entirely fitting in one respect: Calvin was determined to do theology within the limits of piety alone, under the authority of Scripture.⁶ Calvin’s mission was to teach all believers, not only those training for ministry, the content of their salvation, but only in the context of a life directed towards Christian pietas.

Central to Calvin’s theology of pietas is the importance he places upon the frequent celebration of the Eucharist as a form of right worship that serves to deepen our relationship with Christ as we grow more and more into his image. He believed that in the Eucharist the believer enjoys secret communion with Christ. So much so that we must consider it is as if Christ here present were himself set before our eyes and touched by our hands.⁷ This communion points to the believer’s union in Christ, for at the heart of Calvin’s conception of the Eucharist was his belief that our union with Christ is the special fruit of the Lord’s Supper.⁸ For Calvin, the purpose of eucharistic celebration for the church is boiled down to this central thesis. It is not a different union—it is a quickening of the same union that grants us salvation. Calvin uses a variety of language to express this central idea of his and it is not a coincidence that it is the same language he uses to describe the believer’s union in Christ.

This close connection between Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ and his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper follows two lines of development. First, Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper proceeds from his doctrine of union with Christ, and can only be understood within the context of that doctrine. One cannot participate in union with Christ in the Eucharist unless they are already in Christ through God’s initial acts of salvation: justification and sanctification / regeneration. Secondly, the very words Calvin uses in describing our union with Christ are replicated in his theological account of the divine/human encounter enjoyed in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In this Supper, Calvin teaches, God accommodates our human condition through the instrument of the sacrament to bring participants into a deeper enjoyment and realization of this union individually and collectively as the body of Christ.⁹ Because one can only fully appreciate Calvin’s eucharistic theology in the context of his soteriological and Christological understanding of our union with Christ, this work will begin by probing the content of Calvin’s doctrine of union and participation in Christ.

Calvin understood that salvation consists of both the free grace found in justification as well as the transforming grace found in sanctification, and both reside in our union with Christ. Calvin believed the transforming grace of sanctification lay not only in the first gift of regeneration, but also our ongoing participation in Christ. For Calvin, this present tense participation is a dynamic spiritual union between Christ and the believer enjoyed through the mystical union of salvation. As I will explain in Chapter Two, Calvin used the words communio and participatio to distinguish this ongoing dynamic relationship between Christ and the believer.¹⁰ Our participation in Christ is rooted in our relationship with the Holy Spirit who gives to us by grace what is Christ’s by nature, the fruits of the Spirit—love, peace, patience, and joy—given as we become more like Christ in our human existence. Thus, participation is both divine fellowship and divine gifting.

Calvin’s doctrine of participation has finally received the attention it deserves in recent years. Among the most important contributions is Todd Billings’ Calvin, Participation, and the Gift.¹¹ Billings ably demonstrates that Calvin’s conception of the believer’s dynamic participation in Christ counters any notion that Calvin understood salvation in merely forensic terms. Salvation for Calvin is a free gift of pardon, but Billings argues that Calvin’s rich pneumatology points to an incorporative emphasis in justification, and an empowering emphasis in sanctification.¹² Billings’ significant contribution to Calvin studies is that he has provided a picture of a Calvin who embraces human thriving in the life of the Spirit. Participation in Christ is a personal gift of relationship, but it is also communal as it takes place in the communal context of the church and its sacramental life.¹³

My goal in Chapter 2 is to build on the work of Billings and others by closely examining the close alliance between Calvin’s theology of participation and sanctification. I will also examine Calvin’s practical teaching for the Christian life of pietas, which involved both individual and public practices of worship, Scripture reading, and the sacraments, all shaped by gratitude towards the living God and daily communion with him.

Calvin desired that every Christian realize the riches of being in union with Christ, through participation in the Spirit. He believed the Eucharist provided a way of realizing that knowledge beyond the mere informational reality of it. The power of this knowledge is not abstract, but formational. In Chapter 3, my task will be to demonstrate Calvin’s understanding of the close relationship between our union with Christ and the Eucharist as the thread that unifies his eucharistic thinking. By providing a close analysis of his theological understanding of the Eucharist, I will provide an exposition of how he understood the Eucharist draws the believer into a deeper communion with Christ, a participation in our union with Christ, and further sanctification into the image of Christ.

Wim Janse offers an axiom, particularly in regard to the study of Calvin’s theology of the Lord’s Supper: The flesh-and-blood theologian should never be abstracted to a timeless theology, he warns.¹⁴ This is a wise axiom to observe in constructive theology when drawing upon a past theologian’s work to advance one’s thesis. It challenges the systematic theologian to take into consideration not only the development of thought and historical context of his subject, but also to discern as best one can how that theologian of the past understood his theology functioned in the day-to-day lives of his followers and society. To do otherwise may lead to hermeneutical mistakes in theological interpretation and application. The application of the work of a theologian such as John Calvin cannot be simply transferred into our contemporary milieu. His ideas arose within a historical situation very different from our own, so it is important to understand the historical context that certainly impacted the origin of his thought in order to glean how to correctly appropriate his thought into our present situation.

This approach applies especially to the theology of John Calvin who never intended his theology to be abstracted from real life. My first task is to reflect upon what Calvin believed in his particular situatedness before making the move to a contemporary application. Thus, the first few chapters may contain more historical information and analysis than one might properly find in a work of constructive theology. But I believe this approach will reap great dividends as I attempt a contemporary retrieval of Calvin’s theology in the following chapters.

My descriptive analysis of Calvin’s eucharistic theology will reveal that Calvin’s ontological descriptions of what he believes is truly happening in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper are often misleading, especially when he employs the vocabulary of substance. Calvin is very helpful in understanding what happens in the Eucharist up to a point, but where he is unclear, conceptual elaboration is required. Here is where I believe Kevin Vanhoozer’s theodramatic and communicative doctrinal model can be very helpful in understanding Calvin. I am not attempting to impose upon Calvin a foreign conceptual scheme but rather offering an interpretation of what I believe is inherent in Calvin’s ideas. While Calvin employed Augustine’s definition of a sacrament, he also went beyond Augustine’s semiotic instrumentalism. Calvin wrote consistently about how God speaks, exhibits, and reveals his grace in the sacramental event in a manner that is not mechanistic. If one is to understand Calvin’s conception of sacramental action one must grasp how Calvin integrated his eucharistic theology into his larger vision of divine revelation and the knowledge of God. Calvin’s unique focus is upon divine action and communication in the Eucharist through the earthly and physical elements, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. He explained his meaning of sacramental sign by saying that The signs here given are ceremonies [events not things] … by which God wills to exercise his people, first, to foster, arouse, and confirm faith within; then to attest religion before men.¹⁵

Therefore, I have chosen to use Kevin Vanhoozer as a conversational partner with Calvin because Vanhoozer’s work has primarily centered upon triune communicative agency as the formal and material principle of understanding God’s relationship with the world.¹⁶ In Remythologizing Theology, Vanhoozer proposes a communicative ontology to ground his version of a communicative theism that stakes a claim to the mantle of relational Trinitarian theology that Karl Barth first set down.¹⁷

I begin my conversation with Vanhoozer’s work in Chapter 4, in which I also commence to offer the constructive portion of this monograph. By way of a summary of Calvin’s foundational themes in his theology of eucharistic participation, I will show how Vanhoozer’s work complements Calvin. I will also draw upon Vanhoozer’s work in Drama of Doctrine, where he proposes that in theology we must attend "both to the drama in the text—what God is doing in the world through Christ—and to the drama that continues in the church as God uses Scripture to address, edify, and confront its readers".¹⁸ Vanhoozer identifies the drama in the text as well as God’s continued work in the world as theodrama. But he also considers the preaching of the Word and the practice of the sacraments theodramatic:

The gospel continues to be seen (in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper) and heard (in preaching). These are the means through which Christ becomes present to his people. In a real sense, therefore, we have seen and heard the gospel in its twofold form of Word and sacrament. What faith seeks to understand is inherently dramatic.¹⁹

Interpreting Calvin’s sacramental theology against the backdrop of Vanhoozer’s notion of theodrama brings Calvin’s understanding of the sacraments into a contemporary conversation.

The application of theodrama to Calvin’s work is extended even further in Chapter 5. I revisit Calvin’s overall conception of the purpose of the sacraments, both Baptism and the Eucharist, to demonstrate the usefulness of Vanhoozer’s model for understanding the importance Calvin placed upon sacramental celebration. Calvin refers to the threefold presence of Word, sacrament, and Spirit as the blessings of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper:

But for one blessing of God, which they proclaim, we recognize three. For first, the Lord teaches and instructs us by his Word. Secondly, he confirms it by the sacraments [the visible words]. Finally, he illumines our minds by the light of his Holy Spirit and opens our hearts for the Word and sacraments to enter in, which would otherwise only strike our ears and appear before our eyes, but not at all affect us within.²⁰

I articulate my presentation of the Eucharist in Chapter 5 as theodramatic by examining this central thesis of Calvin’s vis-à-vis the work of J.L. Austin who pioneered the philosophy of language, termed speech act philosophy.²¹ The premise of speech act philosophy is that speech transmits more than thoughts—to speak is also to perform an act. Austin’s insight is important to eucharistic theology. Theologians have spent centuries arguing over the propositional logic of bread and wine as Christ’s literal body and blood, overlooking the very intent of these texts: Do this (Luke 22:19). If one begins with the premise that Christ asked that these words be performed, not propositionally analyzed, where then should our primary interest lie? Should it lay in how the words have been propositionally related to doctrines of the sacrament or how the words have been performed in the liturgies of the church? While both are important, systematicians have primarily overlooked the latter interest. Therefore, this project includes an examination of Calvin’s liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, as found in his Forms of Prayer, the liturgical treatise he published in 1542.²² Employing Austin’s conceptual tools to analyze Calvin’s actual liturgy, I will show how the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a series of divine and human communicative acts which bring the participants into a fellowship with Christ that magnifies their union with him.

Chapter 6 will probe further into Vanhoozer’s concept of remythologizing, which he describes as inquiring into the speech acts of God in salvation history in order to make sound theological judgments. Vanhoozer defines mythos as the construal of God’s acts in Scripture into a whole out of a multiplicity of events.²³ The Scriptures are the source of discerning the biblical mythos (or remythologizing) because what we have in Scripture is divine discourse about divine deeds (i.e. divine ‘projections’ into language and history that become the stuff of the biblical mythos).²⁴ In construing sacramental action as theodramatic, the sacraments are located in the divine mythos. The Eucharist celebrates the climax of the divine theodrama of Triune activity in the world: the selfoffering of the Son of God for the salvation of the world.

Locating sacramental celebration in the Scriptural mythos comprises another aspect of my constructive project. Calvin also held a rich understanding of the canonical sacramental aspects of God’s communicative dealings with his covenantal people. Thus, building on both Calvin and Vanhoozer, I will offer my own biblical theology of the Eucharist, by examining the canonical patterns Calvin pointed to. The goal of this endeavor is to provide a biblical warrant for grasping how the Eucharist brings us into a deeply formative fellowship with Christ that deepens our union with him.

Chapter Seven contains my conclusion to this project including a few final thoughts concerning how liturgical enactment is a source for spiritual formation. In Drama of Doctrine Vanhoozer contends that if Christians are to live under the authority of Scripture, then they must not merely assent to the propositions of biblical beliefs, but must also attend to the performance of the text in the way they live their lives. I will briefly touch on how eucharistic liturgy helps us practice for the larger performance of the text in our lives. We practice our performance of the text by participating in an intimate anamnesis of God’s divine theodrama.

Ultimately, the goal of this work is to build upon Calvin’s insights of the importance of eucharistic practice, and to retrieve his belief that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper brings the believer into the presence of Christ, enfolding the eucharistic community into participation in him. Calvin held that participation in Christ is the source of our sanctification, and that the Eucharist is one of the core practices given to the Church by Christ to deepen this participation in him. In the divine theodrama reenacted in the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper each week, communicants actualize the way they are to be in the world, in communion with their Lord, and offering up their lives in a sacrifice of praise to what God is doing in establishing his Kingdom on earth.

¹Thomas J. Davis, The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin’s Eucharistic Teaching (New York: AMS, 1995), 6. Calvin used both Eucharist and Lord’s Supper in reference to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the former emphasizing Calvin’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper as an opportunity for giving thanks, eucharistia.

²To define evangelical, many now refer to David Bebbington’s four marks or priorities of evangelical piety: "conversionism , the belief that lives need to be changed; activism , the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism , a particular regard for the Bible; and … crucicentrism , a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross". See David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: a History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2-3. With the designation Reformed, I refer to those whose theological perspective is largely derived from the theological tradition that emerged from the work of John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli, in contrast to the Lutheran or Anabaptist traditions. Anglicanism, at least as constituted by the Thirty-Nine Articles , is also considered to be an important subgroup within the Reformed tradition, especially in regard to soteriology and Christology.

³From the Belgic Confession (1561), Article 33. See, also, Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Question Sixty-Five, Cannons of Dort (1619), Article Seventeen, and Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), Question 161 in Joel Beeke, Reformed Confessions Harmonized (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 208.

⁴Jonathan H. Rainbow, Double Grace: John Calvin’s View of the Relationship of Justification and Sanctification, Ex Auditu 5 (1989): 100.

⁵John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition , trans. and ed. Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), CO 1.1. All English quotations from the 1536 edition are from this translation. Quotations from any edition other than the 1559 edition of the Institutes will indicate the year of the edition.

⁶Brian A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 18.

⁷Inst. 4.17.3.

⁸This is the focus of section 4.17.2 of the 1559 Institutes. The editors of the 1960 Battles edition sub-titled the section: Union with Christ as the Special Fruit of the Lord’s Supper. Volume number, book number when applicable, and page number are separated by digits in all citations of Calvin’s works, including the Selected Works, Letters , and Commentaries. When the original language is quoted I will provide citations to Calvin’s original Latin or French works from John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini Opera omnia quae supersunt , ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss, 59 vols., Corpus Reformatorum (Brunsvigae: C.A. Schwetschke, 1863), abbreviated as CO. Columns in the CO are separated from volumes by a digit, such as CO 1.1.

⁹And 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 chiefly upon a true participation in Christ himself. For those benefits would not come to us unless Christ first made himself ours. I say, therefore, that in the mystery of the Supper, Christ is truly shown to us through the symbols of bread and wine, his very body and blood, in which he has fulfilled all obedience to obtain righteousness for us. Why? First, that we may grow into one body with him; secondly, having been made partakers of his substance, that we may also feel his power in partaking of all his benefits Inst. 4.17.11.

¹⁰ See Calvin’s letter to Vermigli, 8 August 1555, CO 15.722. I will explain these comments in full below.

¹¹ J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (New York: OUP, 2007). Two other recent monographs I found helpful in my study, also devoted entirely to the themes of participation and union in Christ are Mark Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008); and Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). All three of these works offer significant contributions to Calvin scholarship, and there are no major disagreements among them in regard to Calvin’s understanding of our union with Christ in salvation. However, the focus of each is different. Billings’ scope is broader as he outlines the development of Calvin’s understanding of participation, and his thesis is directed against the gift theologians of the Radical Orthodoxy movement who he demonstrates have incorrectly portrayed Calvin’s theology as strictly transactional and static in regards to the divine-human relationship. Garcia’s treatment contains a focused exposition of Calvin’s Commentary on Romans as the hermeneutical key to understanding Calvin’s doctrine. Garcia demonstrates that key passages from Romans gave Calvin hermeneutical-theological priority to his union doctrine in the formulation of his soteriology (109). Julie Canlis offers the most recent addition and her emphasis upon Calvin’s pneumatological insights as a theology of ascent provides a fresh outlook on this subject. None of these works assert that union with Christ be cast as Calvin’s central dogma, but instead seek to correct a singular emphasis upon forensic justification that overlooks the integral role of union with Christ in Calvin’s soteriology.

¹² Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, 188.

¹³ Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift , 16.

¹⁴ Wim Janse, Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology: Three Dogma-Historical Observations, in Calvinus Sacrarum Literarum Interpres: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research , ed. H.J. Selderhuis, Reformed Historical Theology (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 69.

¹⁵ Inst. 4.14.19.

¹⁶ Vanhoozer’s work is contained in four primary monographs: Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There A Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998); First Theology (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2002); The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: WJKP, 2005); and Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship , Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: CUP, 2010).

¹⁷ Vanhoozer, Preface to Remythologizing , xv.

¹⁸ Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine , 17.

¹⁹ Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine , 17, emphasis original.

²⁰ Inst. 4.14.8.

²¹ J.L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).

²² Found in CO 6.1-159, and SW 2.100-135.

²³ Vanhoozer, Remythologizing , 6.

²⁴ Vanhoozer, Remythologizing , 27.

CHAPTER 2

Union with Christ, Sanctification, and Christian Formation

Calvin believed that the perfect salvation achieved for us by the Mediator, Jesus Christ, was decreed by the Father from eternity, accomplished in time by the God-man Jesus Christ, and applied to us through our union with Christ, the Holy Spirit being the bond of that union. This plan of salvation is revealed through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. In Jesus alone is salvation revealed and in Jesus alone is salvation received. No benefit of salvation, neither justification nor sanctification can be received outside of participation in him: we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us.¹ This joining together of head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union, is understood by Calvin as the highest value of salvation.

Because one can only fully appreciate Calvin’s eucharistic theology in the context of his soteriological and Christological understanding of our union with Christ, my primary purpose in this chapter is to elaborate upon Calvin’s understanding of union with Christ and how it relates to Calvin’s concept of participatory sanctification in personal as well as corporate piety. My exposition will draw from the 1559 Institutes and Calvin’s biblical commentaries and the large work of recent scholarship in this area. This introductory chapter will lay a foundation for understanding Calvin’s doctrine of union, participation, and Christian formation, so that I may present in the following chapter a fuller account of Calvin’s theology of participation in Christ in the Eucharist.

The Double Sided Grace of Salvation

As summarized above, at the heart of Calvin’s doctrine of salvation is the believer’s incorporation into the life of Christ. Through God’s gift of faith, we, as believers, offer our lives to Christ for his possession, and the Holy Spirit joins us to Christ and we are brought into union with him. It is in this union that we receive two blessings: the duplex gratia of justification and sanctification. Calvin sums up his doctrine by explaining that "Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace (duplex gratia): namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life."² Gratia is singular because the one grace is our union with Christ, yet there exists two aspects of this one reality. The believer does not contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us, but rather we must put on Christ.³ The righteousness of Christ is imputed to us in justification, while the putting on of Christ, sanctification, is begun in salvation through regeneration.⁴ However, the present imperative we must put on Christ, also signals that sanctification involves a process of the continual putting on of Christ. Imputation cannot take place afar, or outside of our union with Christ, and yet our union is not static but an ongoing reality.

The following subsections will contain a close examination of each aspect of Calvin’s doctrine of the duplex gratia: faith and the two sides of our union with Christ: justification and regeneration/sanctification. The chapter will then close with a fuller examination of Calvin’s understanding of the life of pietas, the ongoing sanctification that flows from the believer’s participation in Christ through our communion with Christ in the life of the Spirit.

Faith and Repentance

The divine gift of faith is the first step in receiving salvation. Salvation begins with God’s call to us and our response of faith. Calvin states a bare and confused knowledge about God must not be taken for faith, but that which is directed to Christ in order to seek God in him.⁵ Rather, we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.⁶.

Knowledge of God and faith are intimately intertwined. But the kind of knowledge of God that Calvin always gives priority to is the knowledge of God, not knowledge about him. Calvin famously opens his Institutes with this statement: Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.⁷ John McNeil explains that when the Latin cognitio is used by Calvin, it is never ‘mere’ or ‘simple’ or purely objective knowledge…. Probably ‘existential apprehension’ is the nearest equivalent in contemporary parlance.⁸ The knowledge of God and ourselves are interconnected because the knowledge of God’s greatness against the sin of the human condition leads one to Christ, and to the extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good things of God … we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves. For the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him.⁹ The twofold knowledge then consists of the knowledge of ourselves as fallen people in need of a relationship with God and the knowledge of God’s goodness exhibited in his offer of free grace and forgiveness.

Faith believes in this knowledge of God’s goodness and love towards us. Calvin states, To sum up: when first even the least drop of faith is instilled in our minds, we begin to contemplate God’s face, peaceful and calm and gracious toward us.¹⁰ Faith is given to us because if we do not first know that God exists we cannot turn to him. But we mean to show that a man cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God. But no one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he has first recognized God’s grace.¹¹

Calvin reminds his readers that Christ and John the Baptist first urged the people to repentance, then added that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.¹² Thus, it ought to be a fact beyond controversy that repentance not only constantly follows faith, but is also born of faith … [N]o one can embrace the grace of the gospel without betaking himself from the errors of his past life into the right way, and applying his whole effort to the practice of repentance.¹³

Consequently, Calvin does not understand faith to consist of simply verbally repeating a creedal statement or even to be a mere mental assent: If someone believes that God both justly commands all that he commands and truly threatens, shall he therefore be called a believer? By no means! Therefore, there can be no firm condition of faith unless it rests upon God’s mercy.¹⁴ Faith is above all a gift of God’s divine mercy. And God’s mercy is demonstrated to the faithful when they embrace God’s forgiveness with a heart of repentance and throw themselves upon the mercy of God, in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ: "By faith … we receive Him, possessing and enjoying him as our Savior…. Most people consider fellowship (participatio) with Christ, and believing (credere) in Christ, to be the same thing; but the fellowship, which we have with Christ, is the consequence of faith…. Christ is not to be viewed afar by faith, but to be received with the embrace of our souls (animae), so that He may dwell in us, and so that we are filled with the Spirit of God.¹⁵ Faith involves embracing Jesus Christ and the faithfulness of his character. For elsewhere Calvin claims the chief hinge on which faith turns: that we do not regard the promises of mercy that God offers as true only outside ourselves, … rather that we make them ours by inwardly embracing them".¹⁶

Faith then is the instrument that brings believers to the object of faith, the person Jesus Christ. Repentance flows from faith. Repentance and faith are to be distinguished and yet both faith and repentance bring us into a unio and a participatio, a fellowship with Christ. The knowledge of God born out of faith is ultimately intimate and relational, rooted in our union with Christ.

Further, repentance and embracing Christ in faith is not a one-time occurrence, just as the believer’s knowledge of God grows as the relationship with God deepens. Calvin defines repentance as the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of him; and it consists in the mortification of our flesh and of the old man, and in the vivification of the Spirit.¹⁷ Calvin then employs the term repentance to refer not only to the first turn to Christ, but also to the entire life of sanctification.¹⁸ Similarly, regeneration for Calvin does not signify only the regeneration that occurs in salvation, but the ongoing renewing of our souls by the Spirit, often called the vivification of the Spirit. For Calvin writes: Therefore, in a word, I interpret repentance as regeneration, whose sole end is to restore in us the image of God that had been disfigured and all but obliterated through Adam’s transgression.¹⁹ Consequently, Calvin often uses the terms sanctification, repentance, and regeneration interchangeably.²⁰ For Calvin, repentance, regeneration, and sanctification all happen at a moment in time when the believer is brought into union with Christ, but are experienced perpetually until the eschaton.

The certainty of faith received in salvation is also not to be regarded to serve only one point in time either. Calvin argues how absurd it is that the certainty of faith be limited to some point of time, when by its very nature it looks to a future immortality after this life is over!²¹ Calvin chastises those that teach we have no certainty of our salvation, for the promise of eternal life is actually the substance of our faith: The nature of faith could, seemingly, not be better or more plainly declared than by the substance of the promise upon which it rests as its proper foundation.²² The believer is not to doubt that God’s faithfulness to her cannot last the duration of a lifetime’s struggle with sin.

It is important to notice here that Calvin’s use of the word substance is not used in a philosophical manner, as in Aristotelian metaphysics. As we shall see in the next chapter Calvin also began using the word substantia in regard to the verity of eucharistic partaking in the 1539 edition of the Institutes. But the following statement, concerning the substance of faith, is found in the first 1536 edition of the Institutes, and provides us with a context for understanding Calvin’s meaning in employing substance elsewhere: faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the proof of things not seen [Heb. 11:1]. By the substance or hypostasis, (as the Greek has it) [Heb. 13:1] he [the writer of Hebrews] understands a support on which we lean and recline. It is as if he were to say that faith itself is a sure and certain possession of those things which God has promised us."²³ In short, for Calvin the substance of faith is the certainty that we possess Christ eternally. Substance refers then to the central truth and