Calvin on Sacraments

The following are tentative notes, reflections, criticisms, and interactions with Calvin?s understanding of sacraments in general in Book 4 of the Institutes.

4.14.1
Calvin calls the sacraments ?another aid to our faith related to the preaching of the gospel.?E Several questions occur to me. First, what are the other ?aids to faith?E The answer is the ?aids?Ediscussed in the preceding sections of the Institutes. He begins Book 4 by noting that, due to our ignorance and sloth, we need aids to ?beget and increase faith?Eand further us toward the goal of eternal blessedness. Among these aids, he mentions pastors and teachers, equipped with authority to teach, sacraments to draw us from the ?prison house of our flesh?Eto God, and civil order. The Church as a whole, with its officers and institutions, along with the civil order, are ?aids?Eto help and support our faith (4.1.1).

This leads me to my second question: where does he get this notion of sacraments as ?aids?Eto faith? It?s been a while since I read through the Institutes, but I think Calvin?s thinking is probably this: Faith is directed to the Word of promise (and thus to God Himself). We believe God when he promises to save and bless us, and we cling to that Word. But our faith is weak and therefore needs something in addition to that faith-word structure to support it. Calvin uses the image of a house in 4.14.6: the building is faith, and the Word is the foundation on which the house is built. The sacraments come in as pillars to give additional support to faith. Sacraments are the buttresses on the cathedral of faith.

I don?t think this is the most helpful way to picture things. First, to say that the church is an ?aid?Eto faith makes the church instrumental to the salvation of the individuals that constitute it. Particularly if we are focusing on the governmental aspect of the church, there is something to be said for this point. But in the NT the church is as much the object and reality of salvation as the instrument of it. The church is not only Mother nurturing her children; she is also Bride, for whom the Husband gave Himself. And if salvation means the restoration of wholeness and shalom in human life, and human life is necessarily social, then salvation is irreducibly a social reality and the church is the firstfruits of that restored world. The church is not just an instrument for salvation but the site where salvation first begins to take on historical reality. To say that the church is an ?aid?Eand ?help?Eto the salvation assumes an individualistic emphasis and does not do justice to the whole biblical picture.

Second, better than making word and sacrament two parts of the support of the house of faith would be recognizing that these two modes of God?s communication are on a continuum. Calvin does not recognize the significance of saying that the word is a sign (but then, who did before the past century or so?). When he goes on in 4.14.1, for example, he describes a sacrament as an ?outward sign.?E As opposed to what, I wonder? An ?inward?Esign? I suspect that the contrast is to the ?word.?E But, concretely, the word is just as much an outward sign (constituted of visual symbols or meaningful sounds) as the sacrament. Communication (and hence fellowship, friendship, communion) is inevitably by ?signs?E— by words, gestures, facial expressions, marks on paper, pictures, electronic impulses controlled to transmit linguistic symbols, etc etc. Word and sacrament are ways (not exclusive) in which God communicates with us. I think an analogy with human communication is perfectly appropriate here: Just as a relationship between two human beings does not exist somewhere ?behind?Ethe signs they use (words and gestures, etc) but precisely through and in those signs, so our relationship with God does not exist outside of His communication to us in Word and Sacrament and our response to that communication. God speaks to us, and we speak back in prayer and praise; God gives food to us and we eat. It is wondrously true that we also commune with God in silent prayer and meditation and with groans that cannot be uttered; God is never locked out of His world, and can commune with the comatose hospital patient; but even in extreme cases God still employs signs of various kinds and one is still communicating with Him with ?movements?Eor sounds — with ?signs?E— that are meaningful, at least to Him.

In this view, the relationship of faith and sacrament is somewhat different than for Calvin. Faith is not ?supported?Eby the sacraments, which implies that the sacraments are offered and received ?alongside?Ethe grace-faith dynamic. Instead, the grace-faith dynamic operates through signs; the relationship with God is constituted by the exchanges of signs. God speaks His words of hope and assurance, and offers us His sacraments, and in these ways He offers Himself as Lord and Friend. We respond in signs: by saying Amen to His promise and by accepting the food and drink He offers.

Calvin offers several definitions of the sacraments. The first consists of the following elements:

1. Outward sign.
2. By which Lord seals promises on consciences to sustain weakness of faith.
3. We attest our piety toward Him before men and angels.

Several elements of this definition may be noted. First, as I said above, I find talk of ?outward sign?Eodd. The opposition perhaps is to the ?word,?Ebut again the word itself is an outward sign. Once we speak or write something (assuming someone hears or reads what we say), it?s a public reality; the word becomes flesh and dwells among us. Second, Calvin is ambiguous in his use of ?seal.?E In later sections, the sacraments are described as seals placed on the word to prove the authenticity of the promise. Here, however, the object of the sealing is the conscience. Calvin generally ignores other uses of ?seal?Ein ancient and patristic Greek, uses that I think are more useful, at least for baptismal theology (eg., tatoo, brand, mark of ownership). Third, Calvin implies constantly that the ?target?Eat which the sacraments aim is the understanding or the conscience — which is where Barth (with some justification) takes off in charging Calvin and others with inconsistency and special pleading on infant baptism. For Calvin, the sacraments have a largely didactic purpose, reinforcing the message of the word. If we instead place the sacraments in a ?communication?Eor ?personal interaction?Ekind of framework, the ?target?Eof the sacraments is not the mind or conscience alone. Instead, God speaks (word) and acts (sacraments) in order to establish personal communion between Himself and His people; and personal communion is something more than mutual intellectual comprehension. When (yes, ?if?Eis better) I give flowers to my wife, I do want her to ?understand?Ethe message, but I expect that gesture to be more than an ?object lesson?Eteaching her about my love. The gift is a (symbolic) act that nourishes, shapes, constitutes my relationship with her.

Fourth, I suppose that I could accept the idea that the sacraments ?sustain?Efaith if we understood it this way: Words and acts of kindness strengthen the bond between persons. The more I serve my wife the stronger our marriage becomes. So too, through participation in the sacraments (continual improvement of baptism and repeated participation in the Supper), my bond with God through Christ is nourished and strengthened. This may not be too awfully far from what Calvin wants to say; he is, after all, sharply critical of medieval imagery of the sacraments that tended to depersonalize the exchange that takes place. Sometimes, though, it seems that Calvin means something like this: Our relationship with God is ?internal,?Ean encounter between God and the soul, and the ?externals?Eof religion are condescensions that help the embodied human being to move toward that internal and spiritual (though not unmediated) encounter. That still

places emphasis on a personal encounter, but the encounter is moved behind the scenes; I?m much more inclined to put the encounter in the foreground, taking place in word and sacrament from God?s side, and in worship, prayer and profession from our side. Partly I want to do this because I don?t think theology should have any trouble with our being embodied; rather, theology should celebrate the body. Finally, I like the idea that the sacraments attest piety before men and angels; this nicely combines a social/historical and heavenly dimension, and highlights the court of God. It emphasizes that the sacraments are signs that mark out the community of the church as the new model society, in distinction from the communities of the world.

Calvin?s second definition is:

1. A testimony of divine grace
2. Confirmed by an outward sign
3. With attestation of our piety toward Him.

This is a briefer version of definition #1. The problem I have with this formulation would be similar to the problem I had with the first: it separates the sign and the testimony. It would be superior to say that the sign IS the testimony of grace. Calvin seems to be working with three steps: grace, testimony of grace, a sign confirming the grace; I think two is better: grace and a sign testifying of the grace.

The third definition is taken from Augustine: ?a visible sign of a sacred thing.?E Several issues need to be addressed here. First, in saying that the sacraments are ?visible,?ECalvin wants to imply more than the bland observation that they can be seen. Visual imagery and analogies are quite frequent in Calvin?s discussion of the sacraments; he speaks of the sacraments as ?images?E(this is not incidental to his opposition to icons and idols; see his INVENTORY OF RELICS). Such an emphasis moves in the wrong direction, treating the sacraments as things or actions to be viewed, rather than rites to be enacted. The Eucharist is not played out in front of the church; it is played out BY the church. Second, perhaps ?thing?Eshouldn?t be pressed too hard, but what does Calvin (or Augustine) mean by a sacred ?thing?E Are they speaking of grace? But grace is not a thing.

Third, there are problems with Augustine?s idea of sign. Augustine presents his theory of signs in the early part of CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. He divides the field in three: things that signify (the stone that Jacob slept on); pure SIGNA that only signify and have no reality apart from that (words); things that do not signify (stones, beasts, etc in general). I don?t know how much Augustine presses this typology of signum-res relations in his sacramental theology, but it introduces a problem right from the beginning. The latter category can hardly be accepted by anyone operating self-consciously from the doctrine of creation. This model makes ?signifying?Esecondary to ?existing,?Ea layer of meaning added to an essentially inert and meaningless thing. Perhaps (as the Orthodox insist) the whole of Western sacramental theology?s efforts to unite thing and sign rests on the fundamental error of separating them in the first place. In a creationist account, being a sign is not something added to being a creature; to be a creature is to signify, to point beyond onself to God. Created things (like bread and wine) can take on richer meaning through (redemptive) history, but that meaning is added to a significance built into the creation. (Michael Lawler, in his SYMBOL AND SACRAMENT, consistently speaks of sacramental and symbolic meanings being added to a ?natural level?Eof reality; thus, a meal exists at a ?natural level,?Eas does marriage, and the gospel attaches a symbolic meaning to these natural events. This is the Augustinian SIGNUM-RES gone to seed. Try to imagine a meal WITHOUT symbolic dimensions; everyone has to eat in SOME way, and these choices are meaningful, part of a cultural tradition of eating. And a non-symbolic wedding??!?? As John Milbank says again and again, symbolism is ?always already there.?E

Calvin?s final definition (also borrowed from Augustine) seems to me the best of the lot: a sacrament is ?a visible form of an invisible grace.?E Rather than implying distance between the sign and the thing, this definition implies the opposite: grace takes visible form in the sacrament. I like that. The sacrament is not something pointing beyond itself to an invisible reality that exists in parallel to what is taking place visibly; the sacrament instead IS the grace of God in a visible form; the sacrament IS an act of God?s grace, a symbolic act (if one wants to say this), but symbolic acts are still acts. I would want to take it a step further to say that this visible form is an essential element of what the God aims to accomplish in being gracious. Let?s say I have compassion on a homeless person lying by the side of the road; I want to befriend and help him; so I invite him to my house and give him a place to sleep for the night; neither the offer nor the reality of friendship is possible unless my compassion takes the outward, visible form of an invitation to eat and sleep at my home. Without those words and significant acts of kindness, there simply will be no friendship, no grace. Similarly, grace is God?s unmerited offer of fellowship and friendship with Himself; the offer and reality of friendship do not become reality until God invites us to His house for dinner. The friendship does not exist in some ineffable mystical realm, apart from the invitation and the act of hospitality, and our acceptance of them.

In sum, I don?t think that Calvin has quite made good on his claim (end of 4.14.1) to ?dispel all doubts?Econcerning the definition of the sacraments.

Nicholas Wolterstorff argues in The Sacramental Word that Calvin’s definitions of sacraments are in tension. In the initial definition he speaks about God-agency (outward sign by which God testifies of His good will toward us) but in the second he speaks of sign-agency (visible sign of invisible grace). If we go with a personal/social/relational model for the sacraments, the tension disappears: personal agency, personal assurances of love and good will are communicated through signs. When one puts it as Wolterstorff does, I come out a lot more Calvinistic than medieval. The medieval definitions tended to depersonalize the sacraments, especially the Eucharist; the elements were not treated as a means of interpersonal exchange and interaction but a thing to be adored, venerated, worshipped.

1.14.2
Calvin sets out to explain the usage of the word “sacramentum.” The reason is that the “translator” used sacramentum to translate MYSTERION. He cites Eph 1:9 and 3:2-3, Colossians1:26-27 and 1 TIm 3:16 as examples. To write “secret” tends to trivialize it, so he used “sacrament” as a secret in reference to a sacred thing, and from there to those signs that represent sublime and spiritual things. He cites Augustine’s comment that one should not argue over the variety fo signs that apply to divine things. This seems to leave open the possibility that signs other than baptism and the supper might be legitimately called “sacraments,” and Calvin later says that he does not object to calling ordination a sacament, though he declares it not an “ordinary sacrament.” There is nothing particular problematic or substantive in this section.

1.14.3
Beginning from his definition #1 (that the sacraments testify to the promise of God’s good will toward us), Calvin draws the implication that a sacrament is never without a preceding promise, and that the sacrament has the purpose of confirming and sealing the promise, of making it more evident and ratifying it. Several questions arise here. First, does Calvin’s inference follow from his definition? Does the idea that the sacraments testify to God’s promises imply that the sacrament is always an “appendix” to the promise? That depends, it seems to m
e. It depends largely on whether we take “preceding” in a temporal sense. If we take it that way, then it is not always true that the sign is an appendix, temporally subsequent, to the promise. In the experience of an individual, the sign may in fact precede any conscious recognition or response to the promise. So, in a sense, the sign is a prelude to the promise. In another sense, of course, even in the case of someone baptized in infancy, the promise temporally precedes the sign, because the sign would not be administered to the infant without a promise/demand issued to the parents and church. I don’t think it’s true that in the Bible every sign is temporally preceded by a promise; Jesus did “signs” and never explained them. Let’s take Calvin’s talk of precedence as “logical precedence.” Thus, logically, the promise precedes the sign. In a global sense, this is true; we would not enact the sign, or know what sign to enact, without a Word from God. I?m not sure it?s true even logically when our focus is on the individual who receives the sacraments. How does Calvin?s insistence on the priority of the promise link up with his defense of infant baptism?

Based on my comments on 1.14.1, however, I would also want to fuzzy up the edges between word and sign, and hence between promise and sign. The promise comes to us, concretely, in the form of linguistic signs. If the promise as well as the “confirmation” has a sign-character, we can still speak of the logical priority of the promise (Word), but we will have a harder time speaking fo the logical subordination of the sacrament. The fact that it is a “sign” will no longer be sufficient to relegate it to the status of an “appendix.” Instead, word-signs and act-signs are the two means by which God communicates with us. AS we greet one another with words and gestures (hand-shakes, smiles, hugs, kisses, bows), God greets us with words, with water, and by spreading a table for our enjoyment.

And Calvin does subordinate the sign to the Word precisely because of its sign character, or more precisely, because of its earthly character. This becomes clear as Calvin goes on to explain why the sacraments are “attached” to the promise as an appendix. The Word is God’s answer to our ignorance; the sacrament to our weakness. God’s promise is sufficiently clear of itself, but because our faith is so weak it has to be propped up (sacraments as buttresses again), else it will collapse. This weakness is due to the fact that we “creep on the ground” and “cleave to the flesh” and don’t conceive anything spiritual. So, the Lord condescends to our earthiness by using earthly elements as “mirrors” of spiritual blessings. Citing Chrysostom, he says that if we had no bodies, God would give us the same things naked and incorporeal. Given our bodiliness, God imparts spiritual things under visible ones.

There are a number of serious problems with this. First, the rhetoric is significant. Calvin strains to express the weakness of our faith (using no less than 2 adjectives and 4 vivid verbs). His image of man suggests a worm or snake (creeping on the ground) and there is a hint of a sexual image in his reference to ?cleaving to the flesh,?Eand a hint of disgust as well. But what is Calvin describing in all this? He has indeed spoken of “ignorance” but the main target of his vitriol (for that is what it must be called) is our earthiness, our bodiliness. He is not talking about man the sinner but man the embodied soul. It’s true that the sacraments are intimately connected with the nature of man as an embodied creature, but Calvin makes that sound so BAD.

Second, the rhetoric reflects the theology. Calvin appears to be operating with a sharp dichotomy of earthly and spiritual. What we should be interested in are spiritual things, but what we are occupied with are earthly things. This supports Eire’s and Holifield’s contention that Reformed theology has an entrenched dichotomy of spirit and matter that makes an ill fit with sacramental theology. Calvin says things that run cross grain to this general tendency, but the tendency is undeniably there. (We may call this ?Platonic?Eif we wish; I find myself increasingly ignorant of what Platonism really means, and using the term hardly adds anything important to the point.) I don’t think that the sacraments are a condescension to our createdness in the way that Calvin’s tone suggests. He sounds wistful about the lost opportunity for naked and incorporeal communication of the “spiritual things”; if only our souls were not engrafted into bodies, if only we were not creeping on the ground, if only! I don’t think I’m imagining this. I get this idea from Calvin: Too bad God made us with bodies because if he hadn’t we would be able to receive spiritual things in their naked form. I think the biblical picture is rather: It’s great that God created us with bodies; in fact, VERY great. And, once He did that, it’s inevitable that He would communicate with us through physical things. What alterative is there, given God’s Wise and Good choice to make us bodily creatures? He could communicate through dreams; but dreams make use of the brain, don’t they? Even if God plants an idea in our minds, our thinking of that idea makes use of our body.

Third, the sacraments in this model become a means, as they do for Augustine, for raising us up beyond the earthly to the heavenly. Correctly understood, this is unobjectionable. Heaven is the focus of the Christian, because that is where Christ is and Christ is the focus of our attention. The final heavens and earth form the horizon of our hope, and the sacraments point to heavenly things in this sense as well. But in both these cases, heaven is not to be sharply separated from earthly things; heaven instead is the telos of earthly thing, the goal toward which earthly things are aiming, the fulfillment of earthly history. Jesus in heaven is a token of the full completion of the dominion mandate (Hebrews 2), and the final heavens and earth is the union of the two realms that God has always purposed from the beginning. For Calvin, however, the idea is more of an elevation away from the bodily and the earthly toward the incorporeal and spiritual.

Fourth, I don’t like the image of a “mirror” for the sacraments, which, like many of Calvin’s images, suggests a visual orientation rather than an active, participatory conception of the sacraments. The sacraments, again, are not to be looked at but to be done.

Fifth, Calvin speaks about God offering the “things” in a “naked” form and when he speaks of God giving spiritual things “under” visible ones. The image seems to be that the spiritual, incorporeal, ineffable blessings are clothed in material signs as part of God’s condescension. The problem here is not only that the visible and corporeal is being considered as a secondary layer on the really important spiritual thing. The problem is just as much that Calvin is speaking, as he does several times in these early sections, about spiritual ?things.?E What kinds of ?things?Eare we talking about? In his better moments, he speaks of the sacraments as tokens of God?s favor, which makes them means of personal communication and communion. But to talk about what the sacraments offer as ?things?Eis a reversion to medieval impersonal conceptions. Grace is not a thing. Justification, sanctification, forgiveness are not ?things.?E

Sixth, Calvin again fails to recognize the sign character, and the inevitably physical character of language (either marks of ink on paper, electronically generated linguistic signs, or movements of air produced by physical organs). He tends to place language, the Word, in the category of ?sp
iritual things,?Ebut the sacraments in the category of ?physical things.?E This doesn?t work, as I?ve been emphasizing.

He closes the section by qualifying his statement that God imparts spiritual things under the cover of visible signs. He does not want to transfer the agency to the sign itself, so he adds that the gifts are not bestowed in the nature of the things, but rather because the physical things ?have been marked with this signification by God.?E The idea is this: We have water with which we can wash; sprinkling water itself does not communicate or testify to God?s favor; but God has spoken and so marked the water, identified it as the washing of regeneration and the means of incorporation into Christ; thus, and only thus, does the water have any spiritual significance. The ?word?E(or ?promise?E here definitely has both temporal and logical priority, since it identifies the washing with water as sacrament. What Calvin speaks of here is not, however, the word preached and believed but the dominical words of institution.

1.14.4
Calvin is explaining the meaning of the ?word?Ein the formula, word + sign = sacrament. The word, he insists, is not a magic incantation, whispered by a priest but the word preached and believed. This indicates that the ?priority?Eof the word to the sign implies that the sign must be understood to be effective. I think this is going to get Calvin in trouble with infant baptism. The quotations from Augustine don?t help. Where, he asks, does water get this power to cleanse the heart? And the answer is, from the word, not because it is said but because it is believed. On the one hand, I want to say Yes: unless the promise is believed, the sacrament does not have any cleansing effect on the heart. On the other hand, I want to say No: Augustine?s formulation suggests that the water is merely water unless people believe it to be otherwise. I want to say that the water of baptism is never merely water, whether anyone believes it or not; so long as the water is used according to the commandment of Christ, and the name of God is invoked, it is baptism. The reality of baptism does not depend on the faith of the baptized but on the ordination of God.

Calvin says that the ?sacrament requires preaching to beget faith.?E The pattern is: preaching announces God?s promise, which the hearer believes; the preaching includes instruction on the meaning of the sign; understanding the sign and believing the promise to which the sign is attached, the person receives the sacraments with faith in the word of promise, and therefore the sign is effective. Without the explanation of what the sign means — and the explanation will always be in terms of a promise — ?our senses would be stunned in looking at the bare sign.?E I like much of this. It is certainly true that rites and signs cannot properly be understood outside the narrative context in which they exist. The failure to recognize this leads anthropology down blind alleys looking for the significance of ?ritual?Eas such; ?ritual?Eas such is a more or less (probably less) useful category, but it doesn?t exist in real life. What exists are specific acts that have meaning in specific contexts. On the other hand, I would make two qualifying points: 1) the preaching itself is a manipulation of signs; 2) in the experience of individuals the sacrament is prior to preaching and certainly to any response to preaching.

Let?s look at ?priority?Emore closely. John Frame, in his Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (pp. 260-264) distinguishes various of ?priority?Erelations. Understanding (as I think is fair to Calvin) that ?word?Emeans ?word preached, heard, and believed,?Ehere?s what I came up with as possible explanations of the Word?s priority:

1. Temporal priority: It does seem at times that Calvin had temporal priority in mind. The pattern is: word is preached; I believe; my faith is strengthened by participation in the sacraments. But I want to distinguish between a) temporal priority for the church in general, and b) temporal priority in the life of a particular recipient of the sacrament. Within a) we can distinguish a1) temporal priority in sense of the whole Christian church?s reception of the word and practice of the sacraments and a2) temporal priority in a particular liturgical celebration of the sacraments. In sense a1) the Word does have priority, since the church would not perform the acts with water, bread, and wine unless God had commanded it and attached promises to the act. Also in sense a2) the word has priority; the synaxis properly precedes the communion. In sense b) it is not true that the word always has temporal priority, since an infant is baptized without first responding (at least in any discernible way) to the word in faith. I don?t see any particular reason to stress the temporal priority of the word to sacrament; in sense a1) the word is prior but this is not a distinctively Protestant conception, in sense a2) the word also has temporal priority but this again is not a Protestant conception, and in sense b) it?s not true in every case.

It may be more fair to Calvin to suggest that, instead of being primarily concerned about the priority of the word he is more concerned about the form that the word takes. What he insists upon is not so much that the synaxis precede the eucharist, which the Catholics would also believe; rather, he is concerned that the word actually be preached and not merely ?mumbled?Elike a magic formula.

2. Logical priority: the relations that Frame includes in sections (I)-(v) on pp. 261-262 don?t fit, since they describe relations between propositions.

3. Causal relations: This would mean that the Word causes the sacrament; of course, we?re not talking magic formulae here; expanded, the preaching and believing of the word causes the sign to be effective. This is part of what Calvin means. (Calvin would of course insist that the principal cause of what the sacraments do is the action of God.) I think I could agree with this if ?effective?Emeans ?effective for blessing?E even then I?m not sure, since baptism is a gift to an infant who does not yet believe (at least not in any discernible way). I don?t want to say (as Kline does) that a baptized infant is not a recipient of grace; the water itself is a blessing, being marked with God?s seal is a blessing, being plugged into the olive tree is a blessing; as JBJ says, Adam started in the garden, in a state of blessing not a state of neutrality. But I want to say, with Kline this time, that the sacraments are effective as covenant signs for blessing and curse; therefore, the word (in sense of word preached and believed) is not the cause of the effectiveness of the sacraments. The sacraments are effective even if the word is not believed by the individual recipient of the sacrament. (Suppose we have a case where NO ONE believes the gospel and the sacraments continue to be celebrated anyway. The situation seems unlikely, but assuming this is possible, what do we say? A couple of options: 1) that the church is no church and therefore the sacraments are no sacraments, that the glory has departed the temple; 2) that going through the motions of Christian worship without faith is abominable to God, and therefore He brings judgment upon them. But perhaps these are two ways of saying what amounts to the same thing.)

4. Neither the ?whole-part?Enor the ?teleological?Esenses of priority seem to be relevant here.

5. Moral/legal causality: This would mean that the word provides legal or moral justification for the sacrament. This is true, and seems sometimes to be what Calvin is after; that is, the promise of God gives us warrant to believe that through this water and at this meal Christ will meet us through His Spirit. While true, I don?t think this is a specifically Protestant notion. Again, at the level of a particular celebration of the sacraments, the word is preached and the people respond with faith by enacting the sacrament; thus, we can say that
the word gives them warrant to believe that their enactment of the sacrament will be effective. If we move from the level of the words of institution to the experience of individual recipients, we lose the priority of the Word again; for parents bringing an infant for baptism the word is prior since it gives them a legal/moral justification for bringing their child, but for the child clearly the Word does not provide warrant for his coming to baptism.

6. Presupposition: This would mean that the sacraments presuppose the word. I?m not quite sure what that means. Sacramental theology presupposes the word as the revelation that explains what the signs mean. But the sacraments themselves presuppose the word? I don?t think this is a useful category here.

7. Pedagogical priority: A couple of different levels here. First, thinking of the actual practice of the sacraments and their explanation, JF, JBJ and others have pointed out that we often learn in the midst of doing; so it?s not true in the pedagogy of church members that they have to understand (word) before they enact the sacraments. Second, I don?t see much use in saying that bibliology must necessarily precede sacramentology as a locus of systematic theology. Anyway, I don?t suppose that this is what Calvin or Reformers had in mind.

To the question, does the word precede the sacrament? my answer is, ?Sic et non.?E It depends on what you mean. To sloganize about the priority of the word in an unqualified way seems to me rather unhelpful.

4.14.5
Here Calvin begins by refuting an argument that reduces the significance of the sacraments. The argument is: 1) we know or are ignorance of the word that precedes the sacrament; 3) if we know the word, we learn nothing new from the sacrament; 4) if we do not know the word, the sacrament will not tell us. Calvin?s answer is to describe the sacrament as a seal, which he defends by citing Rom 4:11’s statement that circumcision is a seal. He generalizes, without much argument, from this to say that the promise is sealed by the sacraments. Calvin is using ?seal?Ehere in the sense of a seal of an official document. Seals, by themselves, mean nothing; if attached to a blank page, the seal is pointless. When the seal is added to a document with writing on it, however, I actually seals what is written. Several issues need to be raised here. First, the term ?seal?E(I suppose the Latin is signaculum) is not limited to the seals attached to official documents. This analogy makes the most sense to Calvin only because he thinks he has already established the priority of the Word and promise, and shown that the sacraments are mere ?appendixes?Eto the word. If one uses the patristic analogies — seals as brands on animals, tattoos on soldiers, etc — the priority of the Word is much less evident. Second, when Paul uses the term ?seal?Ehe is speaking specifically about circumcision. An argument is needed to show that this can be generalized to the sacraments (Calvin uses the plural). From Paul?s usage, it is certainly much easier to apply the term to baptism than to the Supper. Third, the way that Calvin sues the seal imagery reinforces the static conception of the sacraments. Thomas spoke of character as the effect of the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and ordination; the sacrament itself was a rite, an action. Calvin speaks of the sacrament itself as a seal, and makes it analogous to an official seal on a document. Thus, sacraments add to the promise by presenting the promises ?as painted in a picture from life.?E Fourth, Calvin?s intellectualism and didacticism is also in evidence here: Since the sacraments make the promise clearer, they are fit to support and strengthen faith. By ?clearer?Ehe seems to mean ?clearer to the mind?Eor ?easier to understand.?E I wonder if this is really true. Do we really understand redemption better because of the sacrament of baptism? Do we really understand union with Christ more fully because the Lord?s Supper presents it to us as a picture? Or rather, in reality, do not the sacraments often add complications and difficulties? Is the purpose of a rite or a symbol in fact to make something ?clearer?E Does this even follow from the analogy of the seal? Does a seal on a document make anything more ?clear?E And is it true that the clearer things are the more fitting they are to support faith?

Calvin recognizes distinctions between the seal of an official document and the sacraments. Seals on official documents are earthly elements attached to temporary edicts and such. Are such earthly elements adequate to seal God?s promises, which are spiritual and eternal? Answering this, Calvin follows the Augustinian model of seeing the physical elements of the sacraments as stepping stones to spiritual realities. The believer does not halt at the physical elements, but moves beyond them to the spiritual reality that the physical elements signify. The physical elements are steps by which one ascends beyond the physical to the ?lofty mysteries?Ethat are ?hidden in the sacraments.?E This is precisely the wrong thing to say. It is the very physicality of the sacraments that reveals their essence as firstfruits of the new creation, and the essence of the kingdom as this world renewed. Calvin wants to move beyond the physical elements to a spiritual essence, to use the physical elements as stepping stones toward a . . . what? A disembodied, unmediated, aphysical encounter with God? Biblically, I think we rather want to say that the physical elements are not to be moved beyond, but rather show that through our very physicality we communicate and commune with God. We can take Calvin in a somewhat better sense: the ?mystery?Eto which the sacraments ?point?Eis God Himself, and communion with Him in Christ. But I?m still not satisfied in saying that the physical elements are stepping stones to get to something hidden behind or in them, or that they are reminders of or pointers to something behind — no more than a kiss is a stepping stone to get beyond a physical act to the ineffable ?thing?Ecalled love. No: the kiss is the act of love, it is love expressed; without the kiss or actions like the kiss (including words) there is no relationship of love. The sacraments are not acts or objects to be used and bypassed on the way to a direct meeting with God; they (with Word and Person) are the materials by which the exchange of love, the renewal of the covenant, takes place.

4.14.6
Calvin here stresses the inseparability of Word and Sacrament by using the covenant model. I want to stress that I do not deny the inseparability of Word and Sacrament. What I challenge is the insistence on subordinating Sacrament to Word, reducing it to an appendix, and I also want to make more clear the continuities between Word and Sacrament — that both are signs. In any case, I don?t disagree with what Calvin says here: without words of explanation, the gestures are ambiguous. Slaughtering animals, raising hands can mean a variety of things; it is only in the context of covenanting words that the gestures have their meaning. No argument here. Except, again, that I want to press Calvin to explain more fully what ?precede?Emeans. If the word is the word of promise, or the words of institution, then certainly the words both logically and temporally precede the sacrament; without God?s instruction to Do This and His promise to offer Himself to those who Do This, we would not Do This. But I think we get into difficulty with infant baptism if we say that the Word and conscious faith must precede the particular administration of the sacrament. I think of Romans 6:17: we are to be conformed to the typos of teaching to which we have, by baptism, been committed; here the sacrament introduces us into a pedagogy. Catechesis follows, not precedes, the commitment by baptism. Sacrament precedes, not follows, word. So too with the Israelites from Egypt: they were delivered through the waters, and only then journeyed to Sinai to r
eceive the word. Sacrament came before the Word, union with God before instruction in His ways.

The sacraments, Calvin says, makes us more sure of the ?trustworthiness of God?s Word.?E How? God speaks, and I am uncertain that what He speaks is true. So God offers baptism. How does this do anything to address my uncertainties? Is ?uncertainty-certainty?Ethe right universe of discourse in which to understand the sacraments?

The sacraments are condescensions to our fleshly existence. God instructs us according to the flesh, leading us by the hand as tutors lead children. Again, I have some problems with Calvin?s idea of condescension. In the sense that creation itself involves condescension the sacarments do too; in the sense that all God?s movements toward creatures involve condescension, the sacraments do. But the physical form of the sacraments does not seem to me to indicate any special kind of condescenion. Rather, once God created and determined to communicate himself to physical creatures, how could He do that except by employing physical means — words spoken and written, signs, spokesmen?

What does Augustine mean by calling the sacraments ?visible words?E I think this is a wonderful phrase – -provided the emphasis is not placed on the visibility of the sacraments. If instead the emphasis is placed on the linguistic character, I think we have an insight into the nature fo the sacraments. For words function not only to communicate information and to make things clear to the mind, but words are the means we use to establish personal communion with others. And words are the means by which God has established communication with us. If sacraments are visible words, then they too function not only to communicate information or to make things clear, but to establish personal relations. And again, just as the personal relation is not something mysically existing behind the linguistic exchanges but in and through those exchanges, so too for our relationship with God. Calvin, unfortunately, wants to focus on the visibility of the sacraments rather than their linguisticality (?painted as in a picture,?E?sets them before our sight,?E?portrayed graphically and in the manner of images?E.

He uses another analogy: faith is a house, with the word as the foundation. Sacraments are like columns added to support the house of faith. OK, let?s go with the house analogy. First in Scripture, the house seems to be mainly an image of the collective, of the people of God. The sacraments give support to the house of the church, and without the word and sacraments the house falls. Of course, the hosue image can also be applied to the individual believer. And in this sense, we can speak of the Word and sacraments together supporting the believer?s ?house.?E To say that the house is ?faith?Eseems rather abstract. ?Faith?Edescribes a set of dispositions, actions, beliefs, etc that are held by a person. The house-faith analogy fits ill with the biblical imagery of houses.

Calvin ends by speaking of the sacraments are ?mirrors?Ein which we may ?contemplate?Ethe riches of God?s grace. This seems to perpetuate the worst of medieval theology and piety: the sacraments as aids to contemplation and devotion, to be gazed upon and meditated upon.

4.14.7
Calvin addresses the question of how the sacraments can be testimonies to God?s grace is they are also offered to the wicked, since the wicked are not assured of God?s favor but instead ?incur a heavier condemnation.?E Calvin responds by returning to the image of the seal on an official document. The fact that some are indifferent and others curse the seal on a document does not mean that it loses its efficacy. In a similar way, the Lord offers mercy and a pledge of grace in the sacraments, but it is understood only by those who come with faith; yet not all believe. Calvin finds in Paul this kind of distinction in Paul: when Paul speaks to believers, he speaks as if the sacraments communicate Christ as a matter of course, but when he speaks of the misuse of the sacraments he ?treats them as nothing more than cold and empty figures.?E For the first point, Calvin quotes Galatians 3:27 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, but for the second, he does not include any quotations from Paul. I suppose he has in mind Paul?s polemics against circumcision. But I think it?s very risky to generalize from this to a Pauline view of the ?sacraments.?E Would Paul ever say that ?baptism is nothing, and unbaptism is nothing?E I find it hard to believe so. The polemic against circumcision is bound up with the polemic against those who cling to the shadows now that the truth has appeared. Paul?s opposition to circumcision is not based on some general view of the efficacy or non-efficacy of rites.

Calvin?s conclusion that Paul means to imply that the perversity and impiety of men cannot prevent the sacraments from bearing witness to Christ is good. If God is the primary agent in the sacraments, as Calvin rightly insists, then the sacraments do not lose their significance because of the refusal of men to acknowledge God in them.

At the end, Calvin returns to the question of how the sacraments can be said to strengthen faith. The objection here is that if faith is already good it cannot be made better, and that it is not genuine faith unless it is already strong. Calvin easily disposes of this by pointing to the biblical passages that speak of weak faith, increasing of faith. Clearly, faith is not something that is just there, without variation. Calvin?s quite right here.

4.14.8
Calvin returns to the question of whether we can speak of increase or confirmation of faith. If faith ?fills the whole heart,?Ewhat point do the sacraments have as confirmations and strengthening ordinances of faith? His answer is twofold: 1) every honest Christian must admit that a ?good portion of their heart is devoid of faith?Eand 2) there is supposed to be progress in the Christian life, toward ?full manhood?E(Eph 4:13). To believe with a whole heart is not to be reach a point of satiation, but precisely to hunger and thirst for a fuller enjoyment of Him. To do something with the ?whole heart?Eis to do something ?sincerely?Eor ?devoutly.?E

Some, he claims, say that if the sacraments sustain and strengthen faith, then the Spirit was given in vain, for the Spirit is given to sustain and strengthen faith. Calvin gladly concedes that faith is the work of the Spirit, without whom minds are blinded and dull. But Calvin sees three blessings where his opponents see only one. Instead of merely the Spirit, Calvin says that the Lord gives the Word, Sacrament, and the Spirit, the last given to open the heart for the Word and Sacrament to have effect. The Word and Sacrament merely strike the senses if the Spirit is not active to open the heart. This seems a Kuyperian ?immediate?Eregeneration idea: the opening of the heart is not through Word and Sacrament but alongside Word and Sacrament.

4.14.9
The previous section leads Calvin naturally into a discussion of the Spirit?s work in the sacraments. The sacraments do not have any secret force or power in them to promote faith. This seems to be a shot against the scholastic idea that the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, contained a secret power by virtue of the words of consecration. On the contrary, Calvin argues, the reason the sacraments play this role is because they have been instituted by the Lord to establish and increase faith. The efficacy of the sacraments in this section is connected to the word of authorization rahter than to the word of consecration or even the word preached. Calvin?s polarization of the issue is as follows: either 1) there is a secret power in the sacraments themselves or 2) the sacraments have their effectiveness because of Christ?s institution. I?m not sure this is entirely fair polarization. No scholastic, after all, would say that the sacraments communicated grace by some inherent power in water, bread, or wine. The words
of consecration are effective because there has been a prior authorization of the sacrament by the Lord, or so I suspect Aquinas would say.

The efficacy of the sacraments fulfill their office only when the Spirit comes to them and causes them to penetrate the heart and soul. The Spirit is here called the ?inward teacher,?Ewhich may indicate that Calvin is still operating with a didactic model of the sacraments; the sacraments are played out before us, but we don?t derive any benefit from them until the Spirit teaches us their significance inwardly. In any case, Calvin insists on making a ?division?Ebetween the Spirit and the sacraments, so that ?the power to act rests with the former, and the ministry alone is left to the latter.?E By itself the sacramental elements and actions is ?empty and trifling?Ebut becomes effective when the Spirit works. How are we to understand this? In one sense, I think Calvin is on to something very important. The sacraments are not to be detached from the personal action of God, but the sacraments are the means by which the Spirit personally interacts with us. But this is not precisely, it seems, what Calvin is getting at. His language suggests more of a filling of the sacramental elements with the power of the Spirit, a conception more in keeping with medieval notions.

He compares the work of the Spirit to sight and hearing. Blind eyes are unaffected by the sun, and deaf ears cannot be struck with any noise. So, apart from the Spirit?s working of sight and hearing in us, we receive nothing from the sacraments.

4.14.10
Again, Calvin sees himself as combating on two fronts. He wants to avoid doing despite to the Spirit by attributing to creation what only the Spirit can do. Therefore, the Spirit must be seen as the sole author of the sacraments?Eefficacy. Faith is confirmed and increated not by the material elements but by the Spirit.

To illustrate the necessity of the Spirit?s operation, Calvin uses the illustration of human persuasion. A good argument does not move someone who has no intelligence, no capacity to judge arguments, no desire to learn, no confidence in you. When a hearer is intelligent, teachable, and confident in his teacher, he can learn. This is what the Spirit does in us: to make the sacraments effective, he must soften the stubborn heart, and ?compose?Eit to obedience, and then ?transmits?Ethe outward words and sacraments from ears to the soul. What do we say about Calvin?s insistence that the Spirit makes the sacraments effective? In some ways, he still seems to be operating within a medieval framework. The sacraments are ?things?Ethat must be enlivened and animated by the Spirit working through and in them. Sacraments are inert material things that need to be filled with the life of the Spirit. If instead the sacraments are considered as actions or events in a personal interaction, as the means by which the Spirit establishes and maintains a personal relationship with us, then the questions shift a good bit. It is no longer that the sacraments are merely visible objects or events that require something additional to make the effective; they are gestures of the Spirit to which we are called to respond with love and faith. It is significant, too, that Calvin employs a didactic analogy to explain the Spirit?s work. Sacraments are here again understood as aids to learning, God?s ?flannelgraph.?E Finally, it certainly does seem that Calvin is thinking of the Spirit?s operation as being ?parallel?Eto the operation of the sacraments. The Spirit does not pry open ears with the crowbar of the word; the Spirit independently pries open the ears and then transmits the word. His final comment in this section is that the ?Father of Lights?Eillumines our minds ?with a sort of intermediate brilliance through the sacraments, just as he illumines our bodily eyes by the rays of the sun.?E By this, he means to emphasize that the sacraments are full of their own brilliance and light. The fault, if we fail to receive illumination from the sacraments, is not in the dullness of the signs but in the dullness of our sight. Again, the idea is that the Spirit operates alongside the sacraments to open blind eyes to see the inherent brilliance of the sacrament. It is not so much the case that the light of the sacrament itself bestows sight or that the Spirit bestows sight through the use of sacraments.

He ends this section by saying that the sacraments confirm faith when the ?set before our eyes?Ethe favor of the Father. Again, the emphasis is on the visual character of the sacraments. The Spirit?s operation in this model is to confirm faith ?by engraving this confirmation [of the sacrament] in our minds?Ethereby making it effective.

4.14.11
The last sentence of this section sums up Calvin?s point: the need to distinguish between God?s and man?s part in the renewal of sinners. To make this point, Calvin has developed two biblical analogies. First, he calls attention to the NT image of the Word of God as a seed. The seed is the ?outward Word?E as such, it is not automatically effective. A seed can fall on hardened ground and in such cases produces nothing. If a seed, however, falls on good ground it bears fruit. So, the seed of the outward Word bears fruit only if it falls into a soul that is ?cultivated by the hand of the Heavenly Spirit.?E Falling upon the ears of a stiff-necked and hardened sinner, it produces no effect. At this point, it sounds as if Calvin wants to diminish the role of the ?outward Word.?E The word, after all, does not seem to have any effect or power of its own. The Spirit is not pictured as operating through the word, but as working prior to and apart from the word. But in the end Calvin wants to exalt the outward word. He ends the first paragraph by point out that we attribute the growth of seeds to a power of the seed itself, even though we know that the seed can produce its effect only under the proper conditions. So also, beginning, increase and perfection of faith can be attributed to the Word, even though it is the Spirit that ultimately accomplishes redemption.

Even given Calvin?s intent, his description seems to founder. He would apparently explain texts in the NT that attribute life-giving power to the Word as a matter of attributing to the means what properly belongs to God Himself. Thus, when Peter writes that we have been born again by the living and enduring word of God, there is a kind of communicatio idiomata going on: the Spirit is the one who gives new birth, but Peter is attributing the Spirit?s work to the means. My question is, how does the Spirit?s preparatory work take place? Does it take place by some kind of immediate contact with the human soul? Or does it take place through means? It seems that the latter is far more likely. A soul is prepared for the Word through circumstances, through some vague exposure to the Word, through some Christian. In none of these cases is the Spirit?s work immediate and direct.

Second, Calvin points to Paul?s language about the ministers of the Word. At times, Calvin points out, Paul speaks as if the Spirit were ?joined by an indissoluble bond to his preaching.?E Elsewhere, however, Paul compares the preacher to a farmer who plants and waters, but is dependent upon God?s blessing for growth. We have both the distinction of divine and human work and the confidence that the Spirit works in preaching as an instrument.