Pneumatological turn

Calvin’s early Eucharistic theology was neither Zwinglian nor Lutheran. It was Melanchthonian, argues Richard Muller in a 2010 Calvin Theological Journal essay: “Of great interest here is that the 1536 Institutio, despite its denial of a substantial presence of Christ’s natural body, does not develop anything like his later doctrine of Christ’s eucharistie presence as a sursum corda, namely, as a work of the Spirit raising the heart of the believer and joining together in heavenly places things otherwise disparate. Instead, Calvin argues that, given Christ’s ascension to heaven, he cannot be corporeally present on earth; but, inasmuch as he now sits at the right hand of God, his kingdom and power extend everywhere, and he can hold forth his body and blood to believers. Calvin’s focus is on a presence understood christologically, not pneumatologically . . . .

“Not only does Calvin’s use ?? exhibere , verum , and adsum lean toward a Melanchthonian doctrine, so also does the way that he understands a local ascension to a nonlocal divine right hand. Significantly also, Calvin’s denial of a real presence of the substance of Christ is not yet a denial of any Lutheran teaching. The Lutheran confessional documents to which he was party had not used the term, and the other language Calvin uses to explain Christ’s presence is not only Melanchthonian but evidences a close relationship to the apology of the Augsburg Confession and the Wittenberg Concord. The positive elements of this early teaching, moreover, carry over into the catechisms of 1537 and 1538 and, to a certain extent, the Confessio fidei de Eucharistia (1537) in which the denial of substantial presence has dropped out. Inasmuch, moreover, as Bucer and Capito had signed the Wittenberg Concord, Calvin’s Melanchthonian language also pointed him toward agreement with Strasbourg” (254).

But this was not where Calvin ended. Muller speaks of a “pneumatological turn” in the 1539 Institutes , where “the right hand of God is interpreted for eucharistic purposes no longer as divine power but, in accord with Calvin’s reading of the ascension, as a location, and the agency of the Spirit is the basis of union between earthly believers and the heavenly body of Christ.” In 1539, too, Calvin states thatChrist holds forth ( exhibet ) not his body but his benefits so that faithful recipients participate in his substance” (254).

Richard Muller, “From Zurich or from Wittenberg: An Examination of Calvin’s Early Eucharistic Thought,” CTJ 45 (2010) 243-44.