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 me. 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 ?spiritual 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