August 7, 2019

August 7, 2019 By

This is an installment of my series of replies to an article by Dr. David Madison: a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, who has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. It’s called, “Things We Wish Jesus Hadn’t Said” (Debunking Christianity, 7-21-19). His words will be in blue below. Dr. Madison makes several “generic” digs at Jesus and Christianity, in the written portion (it details a series of 12 podcasts):

A challenge for Christians: If you’re so sure Jesus existed, then you have some explaining to do. A major frustration is that, while believers are indignant at all the talk about Jesus not existing, they don’t know the issues that fuel the skepticism—and are unwilling to inform themselves.

Yes, I’m up to the “challenge.” No problem at all. I’m not threatened or “scared” by this in the slightest. It’s what I do, as an apologist. The question is whether Dr. Madison is up to interacting with counter-critiques? Or will he act like the voluminous anti-theist atheist polemicist Bob Seidensticker?: who directly challenged me in one of his own comboxes to respond to his innumerable attack-pieces against Christianity and the Bible, and then courageously proceeded to utterly ignore my 35 specific critiques of his claims as of this writing. We shall soon see which course Dr. Madison will decide to take. Anyway, he also states in his post and combox:

[S]o many of the words of Jesus are genuinely shocking. These words aren’t proclaimed much from the pulpit, . . . Hence the folks in the pews have absorbed and adored an idealized Jesus. Christian apologists make their livings refiguring so many of the things Jesus supposedly said.

The gospels are riddled with contradictions and bad theology, and Jesus is so frequently depicted as a cult fanatic—because cult fanatics wrote the gospels. We see Jesus only through their theological filters. I just want to grab hold of Christian heads (standing behind them, with a hand on each ear) and force them to look straight ahead, unflinchingly, at the gospels, and then ask “Tell me what you see!” uncoached by apologist specialists, i.e., priests and pastors, who’ve had a lot of practice making bad texts look good. . . . I DO say, “Deal with the really bad stuff in the gospels.” Are you SURE you’ve not make a big mistake endorsing this particular Lord and Savior? That’s the whole point of this series of Flash Podcasts, because a helluva lot of Christians would agree, right away, that these quotes are bad news—if no one told then that they’ve been attributed to Jesus.

Of course, Dr. Madison — good anti-theist atheist that he is — takes the view that we are not at all sure whether Jesus in fact said anything recorded in the Gospels in the first place. I don’t play that game, because there is no end to it. It’s like trying to pin jello to the wall. The atheist always has their convenient out (when refuted in argument about some biblical text) that Jesus never said it anyway [wink wink and sly patronizing grin], and/or that the biblical text in question was simply added later by dishonest ultra-biased Christian partisans and propagandists. It’s a silly and ultimately intellectually dishonest game, and so I always refuse to play it with atheists or anyone else, because there is no way to “win” with such an absurdly stacked, purely subjective deck.

In my defense of biblical texts, I start with the assumption that the manuscripts we have are quite sufficient for us to know what is in the Bible (believe it or not). Going on from there, I simply defend particular [supposedly “difficult”] texts, and note with appropriate argumentation, that “here, the Bible teaches so-and-so,” etc. I deal with the texts as they exist. I don’t get into the endlessly arbitrary, subjective games that atheists and theologically liberal biblical skeptics play with the texts, in their self-serving textual criticism.

Dr. Madison himself (fortunately) grants my outlook in terms of practical “x vs. y” debate purposes: “For the sake of argument, I’m willing to say, okay, Jesus was real and, yes, we have gospels that tell the story.” And in the combox: “So, we can go along with their insistence that he did exist. We’ll play on their field, i.e., the gospels.”

Good! So we shall examine his cherry-picked texts and see whether his interpretations of them can stand up to scrutiny. He is issuing challenges, and I as an apologist will be dishing a bunch of my own right back to him. Two can play this game. I will be dealing honestly with his challenges. Will he return the favor, and engage in serious and substantive dialogue? Again, we’ll soon know what his reaction will be. A true dialogue is of a confident, inquisitive, “nothing to fear and everything to gain” back-and-forth and interactive nature, not merely “ships passing in the night” or what I call “mutual monologue.”

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Dr. Madison’s eighth podcast of twelve is entitled: “On John 6:53-57, eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood are the key to eternal life”. Here is the passage:

John 6:53-57 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; [54] he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. [55] For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. [56] He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. [57] As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.

It’s hard to come up with a better example of magical thinking. How in the world could eating flesh and blood, even if it belonged to a God, bestow eternal life? . . . These verses in John’s Gospel are grotesque magic . . . eating a God to live forever is not real world thinking. It’s magical thinking. It’s bad religion; it’s bad theology. . . . What an embarrassment that this text ended up in the New Testament.

Dr. Madison makes two major points about this text. First he argues that it echoes elements in other mystery religions before or during the time of Jesus; therefore, it is immediately suspect, and was simply yet another deceitful technique used by cult propagandists Mark, Luke, and now John (or whoever he thinks put the Gospel that bears his name together), to put onto the lips of Jesus. He sees this as a disproof of the claim that Jesus even said what He did in John 6.

But it’s by no means certain that when an idea has some aspects within it that were previously present elsewhere, that in and of itself, it disproves the later idea. Why would anyone think that? Yet this is common playbook / talking-points of both atheists and dissident theological liberals, when approaching historic Christianity and the Bible. Let me provide three analogies or word-pictures to reveal the blatant fallacy involved here:

1) Modern astronomy and the theory of gravity both contain ideas which were present in the prior field of astrology; namely: distant bodies have an influence on the earth. Does it follow that, therefore, gravitation is untrue, simply because of this fact? No, of course not. Astrology had hit upon some truths, while also espousing many falsehoods. And in fact, Isaac Newton was neck-deep in the antiquated pseudo-science of alchemy and other occultic beliefs, at the same time he did legitimate, ground-breaking science; and early astronomers like Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler, were equally enthralled with astrology, even while they made their momentous contributions to modern astronomy and physics. By the way, St. Thomas Aquinas 300-400 years earlier, and St. Augustine 1100-1200 years earlier, both rejected astrology. Historical truth is much more interesting than revisionist historical fiction.

2) It’s often noted that there is a Deluge account in the Epic of Gilgamesh; therefore, this casts doubt on the story of Noah’s Flood. But why would it? Is it not more plausible to assert that if in fact (for the sake of argument) such a major Flood had occurred, that other cultures besides Hebrew culture would more likely know about it, rather than not? Say for the sake of argument that the Bible had mentioned Halley’s Comet. We now know that it passes by the earth every 76 years. No doubt many cultures have some written record of observing it. But if the Bible had happened to mention it, it would immediately be suspect because non-Hebrews also wrote about it? Clearly not.

3) Several cultures for centuries used mold in order to help people heal. Later it was discovered that the antibiotic penicillin was derived from mold. Is it therefore to be rejected as a result? Nope. This is shoddy reasoning. The Wikipedia article. “History of penicillin” noted:

Many ancient cultures, including those in Egypt, Greece, and India, independently discovered the useful properties of fungi and plants in treating infection. These treatments often worked because many organisms, including many species of mold, naturally produce antibiotic substances. However, ancient practitioners could not precisely identify or isolate the active components in these organisms.

A similar argument can be made regarding aspirin. The Wikipedia article notes: “A precursor to aspirin found in leaves from the willow tree has been used for its health effects for at least 2,400 years.” My own family has taken white willow bark for many years to treat pain.

In fact, Catholic apologist G. K. Chesterton, in his masterpiece, The Everlasting Man, argued that it is precisely to be expected, and is an argument in favor of Christianity, that there are many precursors to it: especially in the paganism that flourished in the previous 500 years or so. Anglican apologist C. S. Lewis, in his book, The Abolition of Man, has a section at the end (“Illustrations of the Tao”) in which he shows (and rejoices in) many similarities of world religions.

Young Lewis (very much like myself in my teen years) was enthralled with Norse mythology and Wagner’s operas, etc., and was an atheist. He became a theist after a discussion with J. R. R. Tolkien, in which the latter noted that “Christianity was a true myth.” It had never occurred to Lewis that there could be such a thing as a myth that actually happened. I have written about supposed “pagan elements” in Catholicism: which is a charge that anti-Catholic Protestants often make. It’s fascinating to now see an atheist former Methodist minister use the same fallacious tactic:

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The second argument Dr. Madison makes (if we can even call it that), is that this eucharistic discourse is merely a species of “magic” (and of a grotesque sort at that). What he calls “magic” (and ironically again, this is an old talking-point of anti-Catholic Protestant fundamentalism as well) is simply sacramentalism. Briefly defined, the word means; “use of matter to convey grace.”
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I don’t intend to write a mini-treatise on sacramentalism in this reply. Readers may consult my articles for that purpose (just as they can read about the exegesis of John 6 and eucharistic theology on that web page of mine: including extensive exegetical arguments in favor of the literal interpretation). Suffice it to say that it is a very common theme or motif in the Bible:
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Heartfelt Sacramentalism (Not Mere Charms) [1996]Why do Catholics Believe that Sacraments are Necessary? [2002]

Sacraments & the Moral Responsibility of Their Recipients [8-26-06]

Are Relics & Sacraments Mere Magical Charms? [2007]

Dialogue on Sacramentalism, Holy Objects, and Relics [2-26-09]

 

Bible on Physical Objects as Aids in Worship [4-7-09]

Sacraments: Bible & Church Fathers (vs. Calvin #34) [9-25-09]

The Biblical Understanding of Holy Places and Things [National Catholic Register, 4-11-17]

 

Biblical Evidence for Sacramentalism [National Catholic Register, 8-29-17]

Obviously, Dr. Madison is not likely at all to be persuaded of a full Catholic eucharistic theology (or any theology at all). He’s a hostile apostate. But I think perhaps he could be made to see at least (and many others can grasp) that it is not mere “grotesque magic.” He asks, “How in the world could eating flesh and blood, even if it belonged to a God, bestow eternal life?” Well, it can because an omnipotent God decreed it to be so, just as the Bible also teaches regeneration and salvation by means of water baptism.

If one thinks that it is weird to eat Jesus’ body (even in the “eucharistic manner” that we believe in, as opposed to literal cannibalism), then maybe an analogy would help. Jesus made it Himself in the passage under consideration. First He stated:
John 6:31 “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” 
Here Jesus starts to make the analogy between food for physical nutrition and “special food” for spiritual nourishment. He had just miraculously fed the five thousand in the passage preceding this discourse. This is a common technique in the Bible. Likewise, a parallel is made in 1 Peter 3:20-21 between Noah’s Ark saving him and his family from drowning; preserving their physical lives, and being saved spiritually through water of baptism. Then Jesus started saying that He was the bread of life:
John 6:35 . . . “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”
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John 6:48-51 “I am the bread of life. [49] Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. [50] This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. [51] I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever . . .”
Then He made it clear that He was not merely speaking metaphorically, but literally about His real, substantial, bodily presence in the Holy Eucharist:
John 6:51b-52  “. . . the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” [52] The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” [followed by the text that Dr. Madison cites]
Then Jesus ties it all together, to make sure that no one misses the analogy:
John 6:58 “This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

Jesus makes a similar parallel with the woman at the well:

John 4:9-14 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samar’ia?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. [10] Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” [11] The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? [12] Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” [13] Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, [14] but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

John 7:37-38 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. [38] He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, `Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” 

Revelation 21:6 . . . To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment. 

This is biblical sacramentalism. It’s nothing unusual at all. It’s what the Bible teaches. Whether one rejects it, is another matter, but the Bible does unmistakably teach it. In this case,  it make perfect internal sense: just as physical food gives biological nourishment, eucharistic “food” gives spiritual nourishment and grace.

Sacramentalism exists in the first place because God knew that human beings could relate a lot better to physical, concrete things that conveyed grace, rather than purely abstract grace. And He knew that they could grasp analogies, parables, and parallelism.

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Photo credit: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman (c. 1585), by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) and his workshop [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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February 4, 2019

February 4, 2019 By

This is an installment of a series of replies (see the Introduction and Master List) to much of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church) of Institutes of the Christian Religion, by early Protestant leader John Calvin (1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin; available online. Calvin’s words will be in blue. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.

Related reading from yours truly:

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (2010 book: 388 pages)

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (2012 book: 178 pages)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of “TULIP”)

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IV, 17:38-39

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Book IV

CHAPTER 17

OF THE LORD’S SUPPER, AND THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY IT.

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38. Ends for which the sacrament was instituted.

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Thirdly, The Lord intended it to be a kind of exhortation, than which no other could urge or animate us more strongly, both to purity and holiness of life, and also to charity, peace, and concord. For the Lord there communicates his body so that he may become altogether one with us, and we with him. 

But not physically . . . This is so obviously driven by a prior (quite unbiblical) antipathy to matter and sacramentalism in the proper traditional sense of the word. Calvin wants everything about the Eucharist except the physical aspect, which is essential to it.

Moreover, since he has only one body of which he makes us all to be partakers, we must necessarily, by this participation, all become one body. 

In order to do that, there has to be a physical characteristic to it! It’s so clear; how can Calvin miss it? Throughout the Bible is very literal about these things, by equating the Body of Christ with Christ Himself (at Paul’s conversion: Acts 9:5; cf. 8:1, 3, 9:1-2; cf. also 1 Cor 12:27; Eph 1:22-23; 5:30; Col 1:24); by Paul’s language about “in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col 1:24), by His reference to profaning the body and blood of Christ in an irreverent Communion (1 Cor 11:27-30), and particularly in the extraordinary theosis passages:

2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Ephesians 3:17-19 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, [19] and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.

Ephesians 4:13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;

2 Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, [4] by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature. (cf. Jn 14:20-23, 17:21-23)

1 John 4:9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

The Greek word for “fulness” in all instances is pleroma (Strong’s word #4138). Theosis and pleroma do not at all imply equality with God, but rather, a participation in His energies and power, through the Holy Spirit. The Church fathers believed in theosis, or divinization. For example:

[T]his is the reason why the Word became flesh and the Son of God became the Son of Man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God. (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III 19, 1)

When the Word came upon the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Spirit entered her together with he Word; in the Spirit the Word formed a body for himself and adapted it to himself, desiring to unite all creation through himself and lead it to the Father. (St. Athanasius, Ad Serap. 1, 31)

There is no reason to deny the literal sense to the eucharistic passages: to make an arbitrary exception in that case, just because Calvin has a Docetic antipathy to matter used by God to convey grace (just as in the incarnation and crucifixion).

This unity is represented by the bread which is exhibited in the sacrament. 

Holy Communion is not a touchy-feely sentimental affair with bread merely “representing” Christ’s Body. It’s far more profound. It is the Real Thing.

As it is composed of many grains, so mingled together, that one cannot be distinguished from another; so ought our minds to be so cordially united, as not to allow of any dissension or division. 

Denying the biblical, apostolic, patristic, Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist does anything but foster Christian unity. Calvin expresses the right thought, yet the doctrine he is promulgating here mitigates strongly against it, and is a heretical corruption of true doctrine.

This I prefer giving in the words of Paul: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many, are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Cor. 10:15, 16). We shall have profited admirably in the sacrament, if the thought shall have been impressed and engraven on our minds, that none of our brethren is hurt, despised, rejected, injured, or in any way offended, without our, at the same time, hurting, despising, and injuring Christ; that we cannot have dissension with our brethren, without at the same time dissenting from Christ; that we cannot love Christ without loving our brethren; that the same care we take of our own body we ought to take of that of our brethren, who are members of our body; that as no part of our body suffers pain without extending to the other parts, so every evil which our brother suffers ought to excite our compassion. 

Thus (sadly) Calvin sees a certain form of literalism, but fails to see the whole truth.

Wherefore Augustine not inappropriately often terms this sacrament the bond of charity. What stronger stimulus could be employed to excite mutual charity, than when Christ, presenting himself to us, not only invites us by his example to give and devote ourselves mutually to each other, but inasmuch as he makes himself common to all, also makes us all to be one in him.

But Calvin doesn’t understand biblical theosis. It’s ironic that he comes so close to it but simply can’t grasp it. In the final analysis, Calvin’s view basically comes down to pure Zwinglian symbolism (much as he would protest against this).

The Consensus Tigurinus was written by Calvin in 1549 in order to clarify “Reformed” eucharistic doctrine over against Lutheranism. It was adopted by the Zurich theologians (and remember, Zurich was where Zwingli resided, and also his successor, Heinrich Bullinger (who wrote some of the notes). That they would adopt a document by Calvin is highly significant. Here are some excerpts (translated by Henry Beveridge):

Article 7. The Ends of the Sacraments

The ends of the sacraments are to be marks and badges of Christian profession and fellowship or fraternity, to be incitements to gratitude and exercises of faith and a godly life; in short, to be contracts binding us to this. But among other ends the principal one is, that God may, by means of them, testify, represent, and seal his grace to us. For although they signify nothing else than is announced to us by the Word itself, yet it is a great matter, first, that there is submitted to our eye a kind of living images which make a deeper impression on the senses, by bringing the object in a manner directly before them, while they bring the death of Christ and all his benefits to our remembrance, that faith may be the better exercised; and, secondly, that what the mouth of God had announced is, as it were, confirmed and ratified by seals.

[ . . . ]

Article 9. The Signs and the Things Signified Not Disjoined but Distinct.

Wherefore, though we distinguish, as we ought, between the signs and the things signified, yet we do not disjoin the reality from the signs, but acknowledge that all who in faith embrace the promises there offered receive Christ spiritually, with his spiritual gifts, while those who had long been made partakers of Christ continue and renew that communion.

Article 10. The Promise Principally to Be Looked To in the Sacraments.

And it is proper to look not to the bare signs, but rather to the promise thereto annexed. As far, therefore, as our faith in the promise there offered prevails, so far will that virtue and efficacy of which we speak display itself. Thus the substance of water, bread, and wine, by no means offers Christ to us, nor makes us capable of his spiritual gifts. The promise rather is to be looked to, whose office it is to lead us to Christ by the direct way of faith, faith which makes us partakers of Christ.

[ . . . ]

Article 12. The Sacraments Effect Nothing by Themselves.

Besides, if any good is conferred upon us by the sacraments, it is not owing to any proper virtue in them, even though in this you should include the promise by which they are distinguished. For it is God alone who acts by his Spirit. When he uses the instrumentality of the sacraments, he neither infuses his own virtue into them nor derogates in any respect from the effectual working of his Spirit, but, in adaptation to our weakness, uses them as helps; in such manner, however, that the whole power of acting remains with him alone.

[ . . . ]

Article 15. How the Sacraments Confirm.

Thus the sacraments are sometimes called seals, and are said to nourish, confirm, and advance faith, and yet the Spirit alone is properly the seal, and also the beginner and finisher of faith. For all these attributes of the sacraments sink down to a lower place, so that not even the smallest portion of our salvation is transferred to creatures or elements.

[ . . . ]

Article 17. The Sacraments Do Not Confer Grace.

By this doctrine is overthrown that fiction of the sophists which teaches that the sacraments confer grace on all who do not interpose the obstacle of mortal sin. For besides that in the sacraments nothing is received except by faith, we must also hold that the grace of God is by no means so annexed to them that whoso receives the sign also gains possession of the thing. For the signs are administered alike to reprobate and elect, but the reality reaches the latter only.

[ . . . ]

Article 21. No Local Presence Must Be Imagined.

We must guard particularly against the idea of any local presence. For while the signs are present in this world, are seen by the eyes and handled by the hands, Christ, regarded as man, must be sought nowhere else than in Heaven, and not otherwise than with the mind and eye of faith. Wherefore it is a perverse and impious superstition to inclose him under the elements of this world.

Article 22. Explanation of the Words “This Is My Body.”

Those who insist that the formal words of the Supper, “This is my body; this is my blood,” are to be taken in what they call the precisely literal sense, we repudiate as preposterous interpreters. For we hold it out of controversy that they are to be taken figuratively, the bread and wine receiving the name of that which they signify. Nor should it be thought a new or unwonted thing to transfer the name of things figured by metonomy to the sign, as similar modes of expression occur throughout the Scriptures, and we by so saying assert nothing but what is found in the most ancient and most approved writers of the Church.

Article 23. Of the Eating of the Body.

When it is said that Christ, by our eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, which are here figured, feeds our souls through faith by the agency of the Holy Spirit, we are not to understand it as if any mingling or transfusion of substance took place, but that we draw life from the flesh once offered in sacrifice and the blood shed in expiation.

Article 24. Transubstantiation and Other Follies.

In this way are refuted not only the fiction of the Papists concerning transubstantiation, but all the gross figments and futile quibbles which either derogate from his celestial glory or are in some degree repugnant to the reality of his human nature. For we deem it no less absurd to place Christ under the bread or couple him with the bread, than to transubstantiate the bread into his body.

Article 25. The Body of Christ Locally in Heaven.

And that no ambiguity may remain when we say that Christ is to be sought in Heaven, the expression implies and is understood by us to intimate distance of place. For though philosophically speaking there is no place above the skies, yet as the body of Christ, bearing the nature and mode of a human body, is finite and is contained in Heaven as its place, it is necessarily as distant from us in point of space as Heaven is from Earth.

Article 26. Christ Not to Be Adored in the Bread.

If it is not lawful to affix Christ in our imagination to the bread and the wine, much less is it lawful to worship him in the bread. For although the bread is held forth to us as a symbol and pledge of the communion which we have with Christ, yet as it is a sign and not the thing itself, and has not the thing either included in it or fixed to it, those who turn their minds towards it, with the view of worshipping Christ, make an idol of it.

Protestant scholar Philip Schaff, in the 1919 sixth revised edition of his Creeds of Christendom (Vol, I, § 59. The Consensus of Zurich. A.D. 1549), comments on the background of this document:

In the sacramental controversy—the most violent, distracting, and unprofitable in the history of the Reformation—Calvin stood midway between Luther and Zwingli, and endeavored to unite the elements of truth on both sides, in his theory of a spiritual real presence and fruition of Christ by faith. This satisfied neither the rigid Lutherans nor the rigid Zwinglians. The former could see no material difference between Calvin and Zwingli, since both denied the literal interpretation of ‘this is my body,’ and a corporeal presence and manducation. The latter suspected Calvin of leaning towards Lutheran consubstantiation . . .

The wound was reopened by Luther’s fierce attack on the Zwinglians (1545), and their sharp reply. Calvin was displeased with both parties, and counselled moderation. It was very desirable to harmonize the teaching of the Swiss Churches. Bullinger, who first advanced beyond the original Zwinglian ground, and appreciated the deeper theology of Calvin, sent him his book on the Sacraments, in manuscript (1546), with the request to express his opinion. Calvin, did this with great frankness, and a degree of censure which at first irritated Bullinger. Then followed a correspondence and personal conference at Zurich, which resulted in a complete union of the Calvinistic and Zwinglian sections of the Swiss Churches on this vexed subject. The negotiations reflect great credit on both parties, and reveal an admirable spirit of frankness, moderation, forbearance, and patience, which triumphed over all personal sensibilities and irritations.

. . . It contains the Calvinistic doctrine, adjusted as nearly as possible to the Zwinglian in its advanced form, but with a disturbing predestinarian restriction of the sacramental grace to the elect.

Calvinist William G. T. Shedd offers his take on the implications of the document:

In this Consensus Tigurinus, he defines his statements more distinctly, and left no doubt in the minds of the Zurichers that he adopted heartily the spiritual and symbolical theory of the Lord’s Supper. The course of events afterwards showed that Calvin’s theory really harmonized with Zuingle’s. (A History of Christian Doctrine , Vol. II, New York: Charles Scribner & Co., 3rd edition, 1865, p. 468)

39. True nature of the sacrament, contrasted with the Popish observance of it.

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This most admirably confirms what I elsewhere said—viz. that there cannot be a right administration of the Supper without the word. Any utility which we derive from the Supper requires the word. 

No one disagrees with that. It comes from the Word of Holy Scripture, and so must be accompanied by that same Word.

Whether we are to be confirmed in faith, or exercised in confession, or aroused to duty, there is need of preaching. Nothing, therefore, can be more preposterous than to convert the Supper into a dumb action. This is done under the tyranny of the Pope, the whole effect of consecration being made to depend on the intention of the priest, as if it in no way concerned the people, to whom especially the mystery ought to have been explained. This error has originated from not observing that those promises by which consecration is effected are intended, not for the elements themselves, but for those who receive them. Christ does not address the bread and tell it to become his body, but bids his disciples eat, and promises them the communion of his body and blood. And, according to the arrangement which Paul makes, the promises are to be offered to believers along with the bread and the cup. Thus, indeed, it is. We are not to imagine some magical incantation, and think it sufficient to mutter the words, as if they were heard by the elements; but we are to regard those words as a living sermon, which is to edify the hearers, penetrate their minds, being impressed and seated in their hearts, and exert its efficacy in the fulfilment of that which it promises. 

This is such a ridiculous caricature of what goes on in the Mass that it doesn’t even deserve the dignity of a reply. Granted, there were corruptions in practice in that period of Catholic history, as there are in all periods (it is only a matter of degree), but that gives Calvin no license to extrapolate corruptions to all Masses everywhere, as he is wont to do, in his propagandistic anti-Catholic broad-brush painting. My main purpose is to reply to his reasoning for his own positions, not to correct every caricature and straw man that he constructs. One has only so much patience . . .

For these reasons, it is clear that the setting apart of the sacrament, as some insist, that an extraordinary distribution of it may be made to the sick, is useless. They will either receive it without hearing the words of the institution read, or the minister will conjoin the true explanation of the mystery with the sign. 

The Body and Blood of Christ are never “useless.” Under Catholic presuppositions, this makes perfect sense. Under Calvinist premises, it is senseless because there is no Body and Blood to give in the first place. Calvin makes no attempt to understand the Catholic’s own view. He simply bashes it.

In the silent dispensation, there is abuse and defect. If the promises are narrated, and the mystery is expounded, that those who are to receive may receive with advantage, it cannot be doubted that this is the true consecration. What then becomes of that other consecration, the effect of which reaches even to the sick? But those who do so have the example of the early Church. I confess it; but in so important a matter, where error is so dangerous, nothing is safer than to follow the truth.

It is in the effort to follow truth that one must often disagree with Calvin. He’s not the last word: Holy Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and Holy Mother Church provide that.

***

(originally 12-3-09)

Photo credit: Historical mixed media figure of John Calvin produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d’Aprix: from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures archive [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

***

February 4, 2019

February 4, 2019 By

This is an installment of a series of replies (see the Introduction and Master List) to much of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church) of Institutes of the Christian Religion, by early Protestant leader John Calvin (1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin; available online. Calvin’s words will be in blue. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.

Related reading from yours truly:

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (2010 book: 388 pages)

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (2012 book: 178 pages)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of “TULIP”)

*****

IV, 17:35-37

***

Book IV

CHAPTER 17

OF THE LORD’S SUPPER, AND THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY IT.

*

35. Absurdity of the adoration of sacramental symbols.

*

This consideration will easily dissuade us from that carnal adoration which some men have, with perverse temerity, introduced into the sacrament, reasoning thus with themselves: If it his body, then it is also soul and divinity which go along with the body, and cannot be separated from it; and, therefore, Christ must there be adored. First, if we deny their pretended concomitance, what will they do? For, as they chiefly insist on the absurdity of separating the body of Christ from his soul and divinity, what sane and sober man can persuade himself that the body of Christ is Christ? They think that they completely establish this by their syllogisms. But since Christ speaks separately of his body and blood, without describing the mode of his presence, how can they in a doubtful matter arrive at the certainty which they wish? What then? Should their consciences be at any time exercised with some more grievous apprehension, will they forthwith set them free, and dissolve the apprehensions by their syllogisms? In other words, when they see that no certainty is to be obtained from the word of God, in which alone our minds can rest, and without which they go astray the very first moment when they begin to reason, when they see themselves opposed by the doctrine and practice of the apostles, and that they are supported by no authority but their own, how will they feel? To such feelings other sharp stings will be added. What? Was it a matter of little moment to worship God under this form without any express injunction? In a matter relating to the true worship of God, were we thus lightly to act without one word of Scripture? Had all their thoughts been kept in due subjection to the word of God, they certainly would have listened to what he himself has said, “Take, eat, and drink,” and obeyed the command by which he enjoins us to receive the sacrament, not worship it. Those who receive, without adoration, as commanded by God, are secure that they deviate not from the command. In commencing any work, nothing is better than this security. They have the example of the apostles, of whom we read not that they prostrated themselves and worshipped, but that they sat down, took and ate. They have the practice of the apostolic Church, where, as Luke relates, believers communicated not in adoration, but in the breaking of bread (Acts 2:42). They have the doctrine of the apostles as taught to the Corinthian Church by Paul, who declares that what he delivered he had received of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:23).

Calvin in the previous section made much out of real or alleged agreement with him on certain points by St. Augustine. Yet the same Augustine believed in eucharistic adoration, which proves that he accepted a real, physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. This, Calvin describes as “carnal adoration which some men have, with perverse temerity, introduced into the sacrament.” Here is what St. Augustine taught and believed (according to Calvin he would thus be guilty of rank idolatry):

“And fall down before His footstool: for He is holy.” What are we to fall down before? His footstool. What is under the feet is called a footstool, in Greek uποπoδιον, in Latin Scabellum or Suppedaneum. But consider, brethren, what he commandeth us to fall down before. In another passage of the Scriptures it is said, “The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool.” Doth he then bid us worship the earth, since in another passage it is said, that it is God’s footstool? How then shall we worship the earth, when the Scripture saith openly, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God”? Yet here it saith, “fall down before His footstool:” and, explaining to us what His footstool is, it saith, “The earth is My footstool.” I am in doubt; I fear to worship the earth, lest He who made the heaven and the earth condemn me; again, I fear not to worship the footstool of my Lord, because the Psalm biddeth me, “fall down before His footstool.” I ask, what is His footstool? and the Scripture telleth me, “the earth is My footstool.” In hesitation I turn unto Christ, since I am herein seeking Himself: and I discover how the earth may be worshipped without impiety, how His footstool may be worshipped without impiety. For He took upon Him earth from earth; because flesh is from earth, and He received flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because He walked here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eateth that flesh, unless he hath first worshipped: we have found out in what sense such a footstool of our Lord’s may be worshipped, and not only that we sin not in worshipping it, but that we sin in not worshipping. (Exposition on Psalm XCIX, 8; NPNF 1, Vol. VIII)

St. Augustine’s theme of the “footstool” of God can be seen several times in Holy Scripture (1 Chr 28:2; Ps 99:5; 132:7; Is 66:1; Mt 5:35; Acts 7:49). Protestant historian Philip Schaff commented on the acceptance of adoration of the consecrated host in the doctrine of the fathers:

As to the adoration of the consecrated elements: This follows with logical necessity from the doctrine of transubstantiation, and is the sure touchstone of it . . . Chrysostom says: “The wise men adored Christ in the manger; we see him not in the manger, but on the altar, and should pay him still greater homage.” Theodoret, in the passage already cited, likewise uses the term proskuvnei’n [Greek for “worship”], but at the same time expressly asserts the continuance of the substance of the elements. Ambrose speaks once of the flesh of Christ “which we to-day adore in the mysteries,” and Augustine, of an adoration preceding the participation of the flesh of Christ. (History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, chapter 7, § 95. The Sacrament of the Eucharist; 501-502)

The worship of Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb in Scripture is also analogous to eucharistic adoration, in its rich Passover imagery:

1 Corinthians 5:7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed.

Revelation 5:8; 12-13 And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; . . . [12] saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” [13] And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!”

Revelation 22:3 There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him;

For further close biblical analogies to eucharistic adoration, see:

Eucharistic Adoration: Explicit & Undeniable Biblical Analogies

Biblical Evidence for Physical Objects as Aids in Worship

Biblical Evidence for Worship of God Via an Image

36. This adoration condemned. I. By Christ himself. II. By the Council of Nice. III. By ancient custom. IV. By Scripture. This adoration is mere idolatry.

*

The object of these remarks is to lead pious readers to reflect how dangerous it is in matters of such difficulty to wander from the simple word of God to the dreams of our own brain. What has been said above should free us from all scruple in this matter. That the pious soul may duly apprehend Christ in the sacrament, it must rise to heaven. But if the office of the sacrament is to aid the infirmity of the human mind, assisting it in rising upwards, so as to perceive the height of spiritual mysteries, those who stop short at the external sign stray from the right path of seeking Christ. What then? Can we deny that the worship is superstitious when men prostrate themselves before bread that they may therein worship Christ? 

Was it also superstition and idolatry when men worshiped God “toward” the temple?:

Psalm 5:7 . . . I will worship toward thy holy temple in the fear of thee.

Psalm 28:2 Hear the voice of my supplication, as I cry to thee for help, as I lift up my hands toward thy most holy sanctuary.

Psalm 138:2 I bow down toward thy holy temple and give thanks to thy name for thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness; for thou hast exalted above everything thy name and thy word.

In the Bible, men worshiped God through or via several physical objects: the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, the tabernacle, temple, and ark of the covenant (as detailed in the three papers of mine I linked to not far above). It’s no different whatsoever to worship God through the consecrated host.

The Council of Nice undoubtedly intended to meet this evil when it forbade us to give humble heed to the visible signs. And for no other reason was it formerly the custom, previous to consecration, to call aloud upon the people to raise their hearts, sursum corda. Scripture itself, also, besides carefully narrating the ascension of Christ, by which he withdrew his bodily presence from our eye and company, that it might make us abandon all carnal thoughts of him, whenever it makes mention of him, enjoins us to raise our minds upwards and seek him in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father (Col. 3:2). According to this rule, we should rather have adored him spiritually in the heavenly glory, than devised that perilous species of adoration replete with gross and carnal ideas of God. Those, therefore, who devised the adoration of the sacrament, not only dreamed it of themselves, without any authority from Scripture, where no mention of it can be shown (it would not have been omitted, had it been agreeable to God); but, disregarding Scripture, forsook the living God, and fabricated a god for themselves, after the lust of their own hearts. For what is idolatry if it is not to worship the gifts instead of the giver? 

Remember, all these charges apply to Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, and Theodoret. But don’t tell anyone; it’ll just be our dirty little secret.

Here the sin is twofold. The honour robbed from God is transferred to the creature, and God, moreover, is dishonoured by the pollution and profanation of his own goodness, while his holy sacrament is converted into an execrable idol. Let us, on the contrary, that we may not fall into the same pit, wholly confine our eyes, ears, hearts, minds, and tongues, to the sacred doctrine of God. For this is the school of the Holy Spirit, that best of masters, in which such progress is made, that while nothing is to be acquired anywhere else, we must willingly be ignorant of whatever is not there taught.

An idol by definition is an object that is replacement of God in one’s heart. Catholics are adoring what they believe to be God, not a piece of bread or some wine. Therefore, this act cannot be idolatry, by simple logic. For further reading along these lines, see my papers:

37. This adoration inconsistent with the nature and institution of the sacrament. Ends for which the sacrament was instituted.

*

Then, as superstition, when once it has passed the proper bounds, has no end to its errors, men went much farther; for they devised rites altogether alien from the institution of the Supper, and to such a degree that they paid divine honours to the sign. They say that their veneration is paid to Christ. 

Yes, exactly. Calvin’s eucharistic theology entails signs only, and symbolism, not ours. So now he wants to project his errors onto us, prior to condemning us, utilizing a premise that we ourselves do not hold?

First, if this were done in the Supper, I would say that that adoration only is legitimate which stops not at the sign, but rises to Christ sitting in heaven. Now, under what pretext do they say that they honour Christ in that bread, when they have no promise of this nature? 

“This is my body.”

They consecrate the host, as they call it, and carry it about in solemn show, and formally exhibit it to be admired, reverenced, and invoked. I ask by what virtue they think it duly consecrated? They will quote the words, “This is my body.” 

A fairly relevant text, isn’t it? Right to the point . . .

I, on the contrary, will object, that it was at the same time said, “Take, eat.” Nor will I count the other passage as nothing; for I hold that since the promise is annexed to the command, the former is so included under the latter, that it cannot possibly be separated from it. This will be made clearer by an example. God gave a command when he said, “Call upon me,” and added a promise, “I will deliver thee” (Psal. 50:15). Should any one invoke Peter or Paul, and found on this promise, will not all exclaim that he does it in error? And what else, pray, do those do who, disregarding the command to eat, fasten on the mutilated promise, “This is my body,” that they may pervert it to rites alien from the institution of Christ? 

John 6:53-58 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; [54] he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. [55] For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. [56] He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. [57] As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. [58] This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

Let us remember, therefore, that this promise has been given to those who observe the command connected with it, and that those who transfer the sacrament to another end have no countenance from the word of God. We formerly showed how the mystery of the sacred Supper contributes to our faith in God. But since the Lord not only reminds us of this great gift of his goodness, as we formerly explained, but passes it, as it were, from hand to hand, and urges us to recognise it, he, at the same time, admonishes us not to be ungrateful for the kindness thus bestowed, but rather to proclaim it with such praise as is meet, and celebrate it with thanksgiving. Accordingly, when he delivered the institution of the sacrament to the apostles, he taught them to do it in remembrance of him, which Paul interprets, “to show forth his death” (1 Cor. 11:26). And this is, that all should publicly and with one mouth confess that all our confidence of life and salvation is placed in our Lord’s death, that we ourselves may glorify him by our confession, and by our example excite others also to give him glory. 

The Sacrifice of the Mass does exactly that: make the one sacrifice on the cross present. It’s timeless and eternal and always “now” because God died and Jesus in His Divine Nature transcends time. What God does is outside of time. See: The Timeless Crucifixion (Sacrifice of the Mass).

Here, again, we see what the aim of the sacrament is—namely, to keep us in remembrance of Christ’s death. When we are ordered to show forth the Lord’s death till he come again, all that is meant is, that we should, with confession of the mouth, proclaim what our faith has recognised in the sacrament—viz. that the death of Christ is our life. This is the second use of the sacrament, and relates to outward confession.

And when the Jews celebrated Passover, it was regarded as an analogous instance of the transcendence of time, according to the Hebraic sense of “remember”. See: Passover in Judaism & the Supra-Temporal Mass.

***

(originally 12-2-09)

Photo credit: Historical mixed media figure of John Calvin produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d’Aprix: from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures archive [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

***

February 3, 2019

February 3, 2019 By

This is an installment of a series of replies (see the Introduction and Master List) to much of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church) of Institutes of the Christian Religion, by early Protestant leader John Calvin (1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin; available online. Calvin’s words will be in blue. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.

Related reading from yours truly:

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (2010 book: 388 pages)

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (2012 book: 178 pages)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of “TULIP”)

*****

IV, 17:31-33

***

Book IV

CHAPTER 17

OF THE LORD’S SUPPER, AND THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY IT.

*

31. The imaginary presence of Transubstantiators, Consubstantiators, and Ubiquitists, contrasted with the orthodox doctrine.

*

They are greatly mistaken in imagining that there is no presence of the flesh of Christ in the Supper, unless it be placed in the bread. They thus leave nothing for the secret operation of the Spirit, which unites Christ himself to us. 

And that is supposed to make more sense? Christ’s flesh is somehow present by “the secret operation of the Spirit” but couldn’t possibly be under the appearance of bread? If the former is possible, why not the latter? Jesus said nothing about this notion of Calvin’s, but He did explicitly teach that what was bread would somehow become His actual Body.

Christ does not seem to them to be present unless he descends to us, as if we did not equally gain his presence when he raises us to himself. 

But we are not really bodily present in heaven. For Calvin, that is possible during Holy Communion, but it is not possible for Jesus to be bodily present again on the earth in a eucharistic fashion. We can only magically travel up to heaven: Calvin finds this ultra-odd scenario quite plausible. Perhaps we Catholics can be forgiven if we do not.

The only question, therefore, is as to the mode, they placing Christ in the bread, while we deem it unlawful to draw him down from heaven. Which of the two is more correct, let the reader judge. 

I’m very happy to let the reader judge: especially now that both sides can be considered side-by-side, rather than Calvin’s position alone being presented.

Only have done with the calumny that Christ is withdrawn from his Supper if he lurk not under the covering of bread. For seeing this mystery is heavenly, there is no necessity to bring Christ on the earth that he may be connected with us.

We don’t “bring” Christ anywhere: He decides where He wants to go and how He wants to be present.

32. The nature of our Saviour’s true presence explained. The mode of it incomprehensible.
*

Now, should any one ask me as to the mode, I will not be ashamed to confess that it is too high a mystery either for my mind to comprehend or my words to express; and to speak more plainly, I rather feel than understand it. 

Then why does he go on and on if he himself admits that he can’t “comprehend” it or put it in words? And why is he so dogmatic in opposition to the unanimous patristic view, as if it were self-evident that he were right and all others wrong? Wouldn’t this lack of comprehension suggest that he should not write about it at all, let alone be arbitrarily and irrationally dogmatic about the matter?

The truth of God, therefore, in which I can safely rest, I here embrace without controversy. He declares that his flesh is the meat, his blood the drink, of my soul; I give my soul to him to be fed with such food. In his sacred Supper he bids me take, eat, and drink his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine. I have no doubt that he will truly give and I receive. 

But it can’t be physical. Calvin is prepared to believe every aspect of the Eucharist except that Jesus is truly there: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. He removes the very essence and profundity of the Holy Mystery.

Only, I reject the absurdities which appear to be unworthy of the heavenly majesty of Christ, and are inconsistent with the reality of his human nature. Since they must also be repugnant to the word of God, which teaches both that Christ was received into the glory of the heavenly kingdom, so as to be exalted above all the circumstances of the world (Luke 24:26), and no less carefully ascribes to him the properties belonging to a true human nature. 

More of the same old same old . . .

This ought not to seem incredible or contradictory to reason (Iren. Lib. 4 cap. 34); because, as the whole kingdom of Christ is spiritual, so whatever he does in his Church is not to be tested by the wisdom of this world; or, to use the words of Augustine, “this mystery is performed by man like the others, but in a divine manner, and on earth, but in a heavenly manner.” Such, I say, is the corporeal presence which the nature of the sacrament requires, and which we say is here displayed in such power and efficacy, that it not only gives our minds undoubted assurance of eternal life, but also secures the immortality of our flesh, since it is now quickened by his immortal flesh, and in a manner shines in his immortality. 

His flesh quickens us but yet according to Calvin it is not His flesh in the Eucharist. Makes a lot of sense . . .

Those who are carried beyond this with their hyperboles, do nothing more by their extravagancies than obscure the plain and simple truth. 

Calvin’s sophistical, logic-torturing, self-contradictory position is anything but plain and simple.

If any one is not yet satisfied, I would have him here to consider with himself that we are speaking of the sacrament, every part of which ought to have reference to faith. Now by participation of the body, as we have explained, we nourish faith not less richly and abundantly than do those who drag Christ himself from heaven. 

If anyone is “drag[ging]” anyone, it is Calvin dragging us to heaven in the Eucharist, rather than Jesus voluntarily being corporeally present with us.

Still I am free to confess that that mixture or transfusion of the flesh of Christ with our soul, which they teach, I repudiate, because it is enough for us that Christ, out of the substance of his flesh, breathes life into our souls, nay, diffuses his own life into us, though the real flesh of Christ does not enter us. 

Another self-contradiction:

1) Christ, out of the substance of his flesh . . . 

2) . . . the real flesh of Christ does not enter us . . .

I may add, that there can be no doubt that the analogy of faith by which Paul enjoins us to test every interpretation of Scripture, is clearly with us in this matter. Let those who oppose a truth so clear, 

Clear as mud, if Calvin is correct . . .

consider to what standard of faith they conform themselves: “Ever spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:3); 2 John ver. 7). These men, though they disguise the fact, or perceive it not, rob him of his flesh.

Another silly and groundless — but at least interesting — charge . . .

33. Our communion in the blood and flesh of Christ. Spiritual not oral, and yet real. Erroneous view of the Schoolmen.
*

The same view must be taken of communion, which, according to them, has no existence unless they swallow the flesh of Christ under the bread. But no slight insult is offered to the Spirit if we refuse to believe that it is by his incomprehensible agency that we communicate in the body and blood of Christ. Nay, if the nature of the mystery, as delivered to us, and known to the ancient Church for four hundred years, had been considered as it deserves, there was more than enough to satisfy us; the door would have been shut against many disgraceful errors. These have kindled up fearful dissensions, by which the Church, both anciently and in our own times, has been miserably vexed; curious men insisting on an extravagant mode of presence to which Scripture gives no countenance. 

The last clause exactly describes Calvin’s position, not ours.

And for a matter thus foolishly and rashly devised they keep up a turmoil, as if the including of Christ under the bread were, so to speak, the beginning and end of piety. It was of primary importance to know how the body of Christ once delivered to us becomes ours, and how we become partakers of his shed blood, because this is to possess the whole of Christ crucified, so as to enjoy all his blessings. But overlooking these points, in which there was so much importance, nay, neglecting and almost suppressing them, they occupy themselves only with this one perplexing question, How is the body of Christ hidden under the bread, or under the appearance of bread? They falsely pretend that all which we teach concerning spiritual eating is opposed to true and what they call real eating, since we have respect only to the mode of eating. This, according to them, is carnal, since they include Christ under the bread, but according to us is spiritual, inasmuch as the sacred agency of the Spirit is the bond of our union with Christ. 

Here Calvin is opposing Lutheran consubstantiation, which is far closer to the full eucharistic truth than his view.

Not better founded is the other objection, that we attend only to the fruit or effect which believers receive from eating the flesh of Christ. We formerly said, that Christ himself is the matter of the Supper, and that the effect follows from this, that by the sacrifice of his death our sins are expiated, by his blood we are washed, and by his resurrection we are raised to the hope of life in heaven. But a foolish imagination, of which Lombard was the author, perverts their minds, while they think that the sacrament is the eating of the flesh of Christ. His words are, “The sacrament and not the thing are the forms of bread and wine; the sacrament and the thing are the flesh and blood of Christ; the thing and not the sacrament is his mystical flesh” (Lombard, Lib. 4 Dist. 8). Again a little after, “The thing signified and contained is the proper flesh of Christ; the thing signified and not contained is his mystical body.” To his distinction between the flesh of Christ and the power of nourishing which it possesses, I assent; but his maintaining it to be a sacrament, and a sacrament contained under the bread, is an error not to be tolerated. Hence has arisen that false interpretation of sacramental eating, because it was imagined that even the wicked and profane, however much alienated from Christ, eat his body. But the very flesh of Christ in the mystery of the Supper is no less a spiritual matter than eternal salvation. Whence we infer, that all who are devoid of the Spirit of Christ can no more eat the flesh of Christ than drink wine that has no savour. 

So Jesus can be present or not present, as if He were a phantom who beckons to the whim and fancy of conjurers who determine whether He will be present or not, by their faith or lack thereof. The Bible doesn’t teach this; it teaches precisely the opposite. Paul doesn’t say that those who receive Holy Communion irreverently do not at all receive Jesus, but rather, that they “will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27) and that “anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself” (1 Cor 11:29). Clearly, we again need a Revised Calvin Version to correct these serious biblical errors from St. Paul. Calvin knows better than the great Apostle.

Certainly Christ is shamefully lacerated, when his body, as lifeless and without any vigour, is prostituted to unbelievers. 

No worse than He was treated when He was on the earth during the first century . . .

This is clearly repugnant to his words, “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him” (John 6:56). 

That is a general, proverbial-like statement, that admits of exceptions.

They object that he is not there speaking of sacramental eating; this I admit, provided they will not ever and anon stumble on this stone, that his flesh itself is eaten without any benefit. I should like to know how they confine it after they have eaten. Here, in my opinion, they will find no outlet. But they object, that the ingratitude of man cannot in any respect detract from, or interfere with, faith in the promises of God. I admit and hold that the power of the sacrament remains entire, however the wicked may labour with all their might to annihilate it. Still, it is one thing to be offered, another to be received. Christ gives this spiritual food and holds forth this spiritual drink to all. Some eat eagerly, others superciliously reject it. Will their rejection cause the meat and drink to lose their nature? They will say that this similitude supports their opinion—viz. that the flesh of Christ, though it be without taste, is still flesh. But I deny that it can be eaten without the taste of faith, or (if it is more agreeable to speak with Augustine), I deny that men carry away more from the sacrament than they collect in the vessel of faith. Thus nothing is detracted from the sacrament, nay, its reality and efficacy remain unimpaired, although the wicked, after externally partaking of it, go away empty. If, again, they object, that it derogates from the expression, “This is my body,” if the wicked receive corruptible bread and nothing besides, it is easy to answer, that God wills not that his truth should be recognised in the mere reception, but in the constancy of his goodness, while he is prepared to perform, nay, liberally offers to the unworthy what they reject. The integrity of the sacrament, an integrity which the whole world cannot violate, lies here, that the flesh and blood of Christ are not less truly given to the unworthy than to the elect believers of God; and yet it is true, that just as the rain falling on the hard rock runs away because it cannot penetrate, so the wicked by their hardness repel the grace of God, and prevent it from reaching them. We may add, that it is no more possible to receive Christ without faith, than it is for seed to germinate in the fire. 

Calvin rambles on and on from his convoluted perspective. I’ve already dealt with all of these errors.

They ask how Christ can have come for the condemnation of some, unless they unworthily receive him; but this is absurd, since we nowhere read that they bring death upon themselves by receiving Christ unworthily, but by rejecting him. 

Again, Calvin seems utterly (quite strangely) unaware of 1 Corinthians 11:23-30: alluded to above. Paul specifically states that some have died because they partook of Holy Communion “in an unworthy manner”; not “discerning the body.”

They are not aided by the parable in which Christ says, that the seed which fell among thorns sprung up, but was afterwards choked (Mt. 13:7), because he is there speaking of the effect of a temporary faith, a faith which those who place Judas in this respect on a footing with Peter, do not think necessary to the eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood of Christ. Nay, their error is refuted by the same parable, when Christ says that some seed fell upon the wayside, and some on stony ground, and yet neither took root. Hence it follows that the hardness of believers is an obstacle which prevents Christ from reaching them. All who would have our salvation to be promoted by this sacrament, will find nothing more appropriate than to conduct believers to the fountain, that they may draw life from the Son of God. The dignity is amply enough commended when we hold, that it is a help by which we may be ingrafted into the body of Christ, or, already ingrafted, may be more and more united to him, until the union is completed in heaven. They object, that Paul could not have made them guilty of the body and blood of the Lord if they had not partaken of them (1 Cor. 11:7); I answer, that they were not condemned for having eaten. but only for having profaned the ordinance by trampling under foot the pledge, which they ought to have reverently received, the pledge of sacred union with God.

Paul didn’t talk about a pledge, or profaning an ordinance, but of profaning the Body and Blood of Jesus: a completely different notion. Calvin’s sophistries know no end. He should have been a politician.

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(originally 12-2-09)

Photo credit: Historical mixed media figure of John Calvin produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d’Aprix: from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures archive [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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February 3, 2019

February 3, 2019 By

This is an installment of a series of replies (see the Introduction and Master List) to much of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church) of Institutes of the Christian Religion, by early Protestant leader John Calvin (1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin; available online. Calvin’s words will be in blue. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.

Related reading from yours truly:

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (2010 book: 388 pages)

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (2012 book: 178 pages)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of “TULIP”)

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IV, 17:29-30

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Book IV

CHAPTER 17

OF THE LORD’S SUPPER, AND THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY IT.

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29. Refutation of the invisible presence maintained by opponents. Refutation from Tertullian, from a saying of Christ after his resurrection, from the definition of a true body, and from different passages of Scripture.
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Since they put so much confidence in his hiding-place of invisible presence, let us see how well they conceal themselves in it. 

Okay; let’s.

First, they cannot produce a syllable from Scripture to prove that Christ is invisible; 

Is Calvin serious? That’s rather easy:

Matthew 18:20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Matthew 28:20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.

John 14:20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

John 14:23 Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

John 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

John 17:23 I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.

Romans 8:9-10 But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. [10] But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness.

Ephesians 1:22-23 and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, [23] which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.

Colossians 1:27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Colossians 3:11 . . . Christ is all, and in all. (cf. Eph 4:6)

1 Peter 1:11 they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory.

Calvin says there is not one “syllable” about this in Scripture; I have produced eleven passages. Readers can select the most probable position of the two.

but they take for granted what no sound man will admit, that the body of Christ cannot be given in the Supper, unless covered with the mask of bread. 

Obviously it is a different sort of presence than cannibalism.

This is the very point in dispute; so far is it from occupying the place of the first principle. And while they thus prate, they are forced to give Christ a twofold body, because, according to them, it is visible in itself in heaven, but in the Supper is invisible, by a special mode of dispensation. 

Indeed. And how is this impossible for a God Who can do anything that is possible to do? God can change the substance of the bread and wine into His Body and Blood, just as He created all substance to begin with. God the Father was mostly invisible, but also became visible in various ways, before the incarnation, as I have shown from Scripture elsewhere. Jesus was present in His post-Resurrection appearances, but sometimes those who witnessed Him did not know it was Him. So He was “hidden.” “Let him who has eyes to see . . .” Why Calvin wishes to tie God’s hands and draw the line at this particular miracle is an inexplicable wonder to behold.

The beautiful consistency of this may easily be judged, both from other passages of Scripture, and from the testimony of Peter. Peter says that the heavens must receive, or contain Christ, till he come again (Acts 3:21). 

But that verse has to be synthesized with all the ones above. If He is exclusively in heaven, as Calvin foolishly imagines, then how is He also “in” us (Jn 14:20, 23; 15:4; 17:23; Rom 8:10; Col 1:27; 1 Pet 1:11)? How is He constantly in our midst (Matt 18:20; 28:20)? How is He “in all” and how does He fill “all in all” (Eph 1:23; Col 3:11)? If Calvin were here I would love to hear His answers to those questions (assuming he would even condescend to waste his time with a poor deluded papist such as I). How much Scripture does he plan to ignore or explain away?

These men teach that he is in every place, but without form. 

And that is because it is a biblical teaching: in His Divine Nature He is omnipresent (as seen in the above eleven passages). If Calvin denies this then He is either denying the divinity of Jesus or he is again exhibiting Nestorian confusion and heresy (two things that he himself denies). This is not all that difficult to understand or establish from Holy Scripture. What is the oddest thing about all of this, however, is that elsewhere in the Institutes Calvin shows that he does believe in some sense of omnipresence of Jesus (and directly contradicts his statements above, denying that Christ could be in any sense invisible after the ascension):

[A]s God, he cannot be in any respect said to grow, works always for himself, knows every thing, does all things after the counsel of his own will, and is incapable of being seen or handled. (Inst., II, 14:2)

Yet now when he futilely argues against the Holy Eucharist, he wants to deny the same thing that he asserted before (and in a later section), simply because Jesus ascended to heaven:

Another absurdity which they obtrude upon us—viz. that if the Word of God became incarnate, it must have been enclosed in the narrow tenement of an earthly body, is sheer petulance. For although the boundless essence of the Word was united with human nature into one person, we have no idea of any enclosing. The Son of God descended miraculously from heaven, yet without abandoning heaven; was pleased to be conceived miraculously in the Virgin’s womb, to live on the earth, and hang upon the cross, and yet always filled the world as from the beginning. (Inst., II, 12:4)

Certainly when Paul says of the princes of this world that they “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8), he means not that he suffered anything in his divinity, but that Christ, who was rejected and despised, and suffered in the flesh, was likewise God and the Lord of glory. In this way, both the Son of man was in heaven because he was also Christ; and he who, according to the flesh, dwelt as the Son of man on earth, was also God in heaven. For this reason, he is said to have descended from heaven in respect of his divinity, not that his divinity quitted heaven to conceal itself in the prison of the body, but because, although he filled all things, it yet resided in the humanity of Christ corporeally, that is, naturally, and in an ineffable manner. There is a trite distinction in the schools which I hesitate not to quote. Although the whole Christ is everywhere, yet everything which is in him is not everywhere. . . . our whole Mediator is everywhere . . . (Inst., IV, 17:30)

Thus, we observe an absurd scenario whereby Calvin thinks that Jesus “descended miraculously from heaven, yet without abandoning heaven” but that after He ascended to heaven He no longer “filled the world” or could be invisibly present (let alone invisibly). In other words, He must (to follow by “symmetrical logic” Calvin’s statement about the incarnation) abandon the world, and so cannot possibly be present in the Eucharist.

Calvin thinks that Jesus could become incarnate and still fill all in all, but He couldn’t ascend and be all in all (as if he has any scriptural support for such a strange position). This makes no sense. If He is God, He remains God, and retains the attributes of His Divine Nature at all times. This doesn’t cease simply because He took on Human Nature and ascended to heaven. Moreover, in an earlier section, Calvin stated:

For, in order to exhort us to submission by his example, he shows, that when as God he might have displayed to the world the brightness of his glory, he gave up his right, and voluntarily emptied himself; that he assumed the form of a servant, and, contented with that humble condition, suffered his divinity to be concealed under a veil of flesh. (Inst., II, 13:2)

So Christ can come to us “concealed under a veil of flesh” but He cannot come “covered with the mask of bread” or “invisible, by a special mode of dispensation”? Why is one thing believed by Calvin to be actual, but the other denied and disbelieved? On what grounds are they distinguished? This is one reason why Catholics believe that the Eucharist is an extension of the principle of the incarnation. Somehow human flesh can at the same time be God, and a Divine Nature and Human Nature can be in one Man; therefore, what was once bread and wine can be the Body and Blood of Christ. Calvin condemns his own reasoning in this regard, when he writes:

For we must put far from us the heresy of Nestorius, who, presuming to dissect rather than distinguish between the two natures, devised a double Christ. (Inst., II, 14:4)

They say that it is unfair to subject a glorious body to the ordinary laws of nature.

First of all, Christ is not subject to the “ordinary laws of nature” because He is the Creator and Lord of nature in the first place:

Matthew 28:18 . . . All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. [KJV: “power”]

Philippians 3:20-21 . . . the Lord Jesus Christ, [21] who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.

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Colossians 1:16-17 for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. [17] He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Hebrews 1:3 He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

1 Peter 3:22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.

Therefore it is beyond silly to restrict Him in such a way now.

But this answer draws along with it the delirious dream of Servetus, which all pious minds justly abhor, that his body was absorbed by his divinity. I do not say that this is their opinion; but if it is considered one of the properties of a glorified body to fill all things in an invisible manner, it is plain that the corporeal substance is abolished, and no distinction is left between his Godhead and his human nature. 

That is simply untrue, and it is inconsistent with Calvin’s own reasoning applied to the incarnation, as just shown. Jesus was God when He was born in Bethlehem. He remains God since the time He ascended and was glorified. Therefore, He is omnipresent now; that doesn’t cease! But Calvin seems to think that it did, and that it is strange to believe that Jesus could be invisibly present (a denial of the indwelling) or present under the special miraculous circumstance of the Holy Eucharist. His logic is thoroughly inconsistent and arbitrary.

Again, if the body of Christ is so multiform and diversified, that it appears in one place, and in another is invisible, where is there anything of the nature of body with its proper dimensions, and where is its unity? 

Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Body was no ordinary Body when He took on human flesh, and it is no ordinary Body now that He has been resurrected and glorified. That trumps all of Calvin’s arbitrary limitations, that he can find nowhere in Scripture. And when he does on rare occasion in these discussions feebly attempt to argue from Scripture, he is immediately refuted by ten times or more Scripture than he was able to come up with. He can’t argue his points now against criticism, but his followers can do so.

Far more correct is Tertullian, who contends that the body of Christ was natural and real, because its figure is set before us in the mystery of the Supper, as a pledge and assurance of spiritual life (Tertull. Cont. Marc. Lib. 4). 

Tertullian did not hold to Calvin’s eucharistic heresy. He was stating in this book (chapter XL), that there is no figure if Christ’s body were not real in the first place (over against Marcion’s heresy), not that “figure” means no physical body is in question, and the whole thing is spiritualized. Calvin always has to set one against the other, but Scripture and the fathers and Tertullian do not do that (but Calvin nonetheless cites them as if they do). Here is what Tertullian wrote, in context (the entire chapter):

Title: How the Steps in the Passion of the Saviour Were Predetermined in Prophecy. The Passover. The Treachery of Judas. The Institution of the Lord’s Supper. The Docetic Error of Marcion Confuted by the Body and the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In like manner does He also know the very time it behoved Him to suffer, since the law prefigures His passion. Accordingly, of all the festal days of the Jews He chose the passover. In this Moses had declared that there was a sacred mystery: “It is the Lord’s passover.” How earnestly, therefore, does He manifest the bent of His soul: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” What a destroyer of the law was this, who actually longed to keep its passover! Could it be that He was so fond of Jewish lamb? But was it not because He had to be “led like a lamb to the slaughter; and because, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so was He not to open His mouth,” that He so profoundly wished to accomplish the symbol of His own redeeming blood? He might also have been betrayed by any stranger, did I not find that even here too He fulfilled a Psalm: “He who did eat bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” And without a price might He have been betrayed. For what need of a traitor was there in the case of one who offered Himself to the people openly, and might quite as easily have been captured by force as taken by treachery? This might no doubt have been well enough for another Christ, but would not have been suitable in One who was accomplishing prophecies. For it was written, “The righteous one did they sell for silver.” The very amount and the destination of the money, which on Judas’ remorse was recalled from its first purpose of a fee, and appropriated to the purchase of a potter’s field, as narrated in the Gospel of Matthew, were clearly foretold by Jeremiah: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him who was valued and gave them for the potter’s field.” When He so earnestly expressed His desire to eat the passover, He considered it His own feast; for it would have been unworthy of God to desire to partake of what was not His own. Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure. If, however, (as Marcion might say,) He pretended the bread was His body, because He lacked the truth of bodily substance, it follows that He must have given bread for us. It would contribute very well to the support of Marcion’s theory of a phantom body, that bread should have been crucified! But why call His body bread, and not rather (some other edible thing, say) a melon, which Marcion must have had in lieu of a heart! He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: “I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,” which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed “in His blood,” affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood. In order, however, that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure for blood, turn to Isaiah, who asks, “Who is this that cometh from Edom, from Bosor with garments dyed in red, so glorious in His apparel, in the greatness of his might? Why are thy garments red, and thy raiment as his who cometh from the treading of the full winepress?” The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the labourers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. Much more clearly still does the book of Genesis foretell this, when (in the blessing of Judah, out of whose tribe Christ was to come according to the flesh) it even then delineated Christ in the person of that patriarch, saying, “He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes” —in His garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out his flesh, and His blood in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine, who then (by the patriarch) used the figure of wine to describe His blood.

No one need take my word alone on this. Protestant patristic scholar J. N. D. Kelly believes the same thing about Tertullian, over against Calvin’s understanding:

In the third century the early Christian identification of the eucharistic bread and wine with the Lord’s body and blood continued unchanged, although a difference of approach can be detected in East and West. The outline, too, of a more considered theology of the eucharistic sacrifice begins to appear.

In the West the equation of the consecrated elements with the body and blood was quite straightforward, although the fact that the presence is sacramental was never forgotten. Hippolytus speaks of ‘the body and the blood’ through which the Church is saved, and Tertullian regularly describes [E.g. de orat. 19; de idol. 7] the bread as ‘the Lord’s body.’ The converted pagan, he remarks [De pud. 9], ‘feeds on the richness of the Lord’s body, that is, on the eucharist.’ The realism of his theology comes to light in the argument [De res. carn. 8], based on the intimate relation of body and soul, that just as in baptism the body is washed with water so that the soul may be cleansed, so in the eucharist ‘the flesh feeds on Christ’s body and blood so that the soul may be filled with God.’ Clearly his assumption is that the Savior’s body and blood are as real as the baptismal water.” (Early Christian Doctrines, Harper SanFrancisco, 1978, 211)

Kelly goes on to analyze the exact question and passage at hand here: what Tertullian means by “figure”:

Occasionally these writers use language which has been held to imply that, for all its realist sound, their use of the terms ‘body’ and ‘blood’ may after all be merely symbolical. Tertullian, for example, refers [E.g. C. Marc. 3,19; 4,40] to the bread as ‘a figure’ (figura) of Christ’s body, and once speaks [Ibid I,14: cf. Hippolytus, apost. trad. 32,3] of ‘the bread by which He represents (repraesentat) His very body.’ Yet we should be cautious about interpreting such expressions in a modern fashion. According to ancient modes of thought a mysterious relationship existed between the thing symbolized and its symbol, figure or type; the symbol in some sense was the thing symbolized. Again, the verb repraesentare, in Tertullian’s vocabulary [Cf. ibid 4,22; de monog. 10], retained its original significance of ‘to make present.’ All that his language really suggests is that, while accepting the equation of the elements with the body and blood, he remains conscious of the sacramental distinction between them. In fact, he is trying, with the aid of the concept of figura, to rationalize to himself the apparent contradiction between (a) the dogma that the elements are now Christ’s body and blood, and (b) the empirical fact that for sensation they remain bread and wine. (Kelly, ibid., 212)

For much more on Tertullian’s views and this effort by Calvin to desperately seize upon one word and misinterpret what was meant by it (much the same as he does with St. Augustine), see the superb paper by Catholic apologist Phil Porvaznik: Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen and St. Clement of Alexandria on the Eucharist: Analysis of “Symbolical” and Allegorical Language.
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And certainly Christ said of his glorified body, “Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). Here, by the lips of Christ himself, the reality of his flesh is proved, by its admitting of being seen and handled. 

Exactly; and His “glorified” Body (note that this is before the Ascension, not after) already had extraordinary qualities that show there was far more in play than ordinariness. He was able to go through walls, even though He was not a spirit (Lk 24:39 above):

John 20:19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

John 20:26 Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.”

Disciples were “startled and frightened” by Him (Lk 24:36) and didn’t recognize Him (Lk 24:15-16, 30-31; Jn 20:14-16). If all these unusual things were true of Him then, why is the Real, Substantial Presence in the Eucharist and transubstantiation frowned upon as impossible miracles? Are they any more impossible for God than rising from the dead itself?

Take these away, and it will cease to be flesh. 

Only in a completely “natural” understanding. But glorified bodies are already in the realm of the supernatural, so Calvin is beating a dead horse. He is stuck in the natural world, whereas this is a supernatural matter.

They always betake themselves to their lurking-place of dispensation, which they have fabricated. 

We haven’t fabricated anything: it all flows from Holy Scripture and solid reasoning and a robust faith in what God can and does do.

But it is our duty so to embrace what Christ absolutely declares, as to give it an unreserved assent. 

Amen! Finally, something I can wholeheartedly agree with!

He proves that he is not a phantom, because he is visible in his flesh. Take away what he claims as proper to the nature of his body, and must not a new definition of body be devised? 

A glorified body is already a new definition. A God-Man is already a new and indeed completely unique thing; so is a body that can rise from the dead and ascend to heaven.

Then, however they may turn themselves about, they will not find any place for their fictitious dispensation in that passage, in which Paul says, that “our conversation is in heaven; from whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Phil. 3:20, 21). 

Yes: the glorified Jesus comes from heaven at the Second Coming. That doesn’t rule out the Eucharist.

We are not to hope for conformity to Christ in these qualities which they ascribe to him as a body, without bounds, and invisible. 

He is omnipresent in His Divine Nature.

They will not find any one so stupid as to be persuaded of this great absurdity. 

Only all the Church fathers . . .

Let them not, therefore, set it down as one of the properties of Christ’s glorious body, that it is, at the same time, in many places, and in no place. 

No one is saying that it is “in no place,” so that is a red herring. It can be in many places, by virtue of God’s omnipotence.

In short, let them either openly deny the resurrection of his flesh, or admit that Christ, when invested with celestial glory, did not lay aside his flesh, but is to make us, in our flesh, his associates, and partakers of the same glory, since we are to have a common resurrection with him. For what does Scripture throughout deliver more clearly than that, as Christ assumed our flesh when he was born of the Virgin, and suffered in our true flesh when he made satisfaction for us, so on rising again he resumed the same true flesh, and carried it with him to heaven? 

It was the same flesh, but was glorified, just as we will be one day, too.

The hope of our resurrection, and ascension to heaven, is, that Christ rose again and ascended, and, as Tertullian says (De Resurrect. Carnis), “Carried an earnest of our resurrection along with him into heaven.” 

Absolutely.

Moreover, how weak and fragile would this hope be, had not this very flesh of ours in Christ been truly raised up, and entered into the kingdom of heaven. But the essential properties of a body are to be confined by space, to have dimension and form. 

Jesus transcended dimension when He walked through walls. He will transcend space at His second coming, when every eye shall see Him (Matt 24:30).

Have done, then, with that foolish fiction, which affixes the minds of men, as well as Christ, to bread. For to what end this occult presence under the bread, save that those who wish to have Christ conjoined with them may stop short at the symbol? 

It is the extension of the incarnation and a means to become all the closer to Christ, and to be saved, as He said.

But our Lord himself wished us to withdraw not only our eyes, but all our senses, from the earth, forbidding the woman to touch him until he had ascended to the Father (John 20:17). When he sees Mary, with pious reverential zeal, hastening to kiss his feet, there could be no reason for his disapproving and forbidding her to touch him before he had ascended to heaven, unless he wished to be sought nowhere else. 

That is certainly not the only possible interpretation.

The objection, that he afterwards appeared to Stephen, is easily answered. It was not necessary for our Saviour to change his place, as he could give the eyes of his servant a power of vision which could penetrate to heaven. 

He can do that but for some inexplicable reason He can’t appear in the Holy Eucharist? Calvin’s argument gets weirder by the minute.

The same account is to be given of the case of Paul. The objection, that Christ came forth from the closed sepulchre, and came in to his disciples while the doors were shut (Mt. 28:6; John 20:19), gives no better support to their error. 

Really?

For as the water, just as if it had been a solid pavement, furnished a path to our Saviour when he walked on it (Mt. 14.), 

More strange behavior for a human body . . .

so it is not strange that the hard stone yielded to his step; although it is more probable that the stone was removed at his command, and forthwith, after giving him a passage, returned to its place. To enter while the doors were shut, was not so much to penetrate through solid matter, as to make a passage for himself by divine power, and stand in the midst of his disciples in a most miraculous manner. 

What’s the difference? This is textbook sophistry: make a distinction with no logical difference (the mere appearance of strength of argument where there is none in actuality):

Proposition: “enter while the doors were shut”.

Description #1: “not so much to penetrate through solid matter”.

Description #2: “make a passage for himself by divine power . . . in a most miraculous manner.”

Calvin approves of the positive assertion #2 and sophistically contends that it is different from the negative claim of #1, that he objects to. But how are the two essentially different? Calvin has been arguing all along that Jesus is somehow limited by the laws of nature and matter. But He had a body when He walked through walls.

He was not merely a spirit. Therefore it has to be accounted for: how He did this. We know He did. And if He did, then He has already greatly transcended the limitations of matter, which is what Calvin thinks is his knockout punch against the Substantial Real Presence and transubstantiation.
*

They gain nothing by quoting the passage from Luke, in which it is said, that Christ suddenly vanished from the eyes of the disciples, with whom he had journed to Emmaus (Luke 24:31). In withdrawing from their sight, he did not become invisible: he only disappeared. 

Another distinction without a difference; this, too, was a physical Christ, after the resurrection. Calvin is special pleading all over the place. It is embarrassing how weak and insubstantial (no pun intended) and pathetic; how desperate, his arguments are. Most of them in this regard are not even worthy of the name of “argument.”

Thus Luke declares that, on the journeying with them, he did not assume a new form, but that “their eyes were holden.” But these men not only transform Christ that he may live on the earth, but pretend that there is another elsewhere of a different description. In short, by thus trifling, they, not in direct terms indeed, but by a circumlocution, make a spirit of the flesh of Christ; and, not contented with this, give him properties altogether opposite. Hence it necessarily follows that he must be twofold.

Jesus is omnipotent. God the Father is omnipotent. That is all that is strictly necessary for the Eucharist to be possible. The indication that it is in fact a reality is in Scripture. The plausibility of this state of affairs is indicated by the dozens of biblical analogies I have been producing. The implausibility of the contrary (Calvin’s position) is shown in the logical and scriptural counter-indications to them at every turn.

30. Ubiquity refuted by various arguments.
*
Granting what they absurdly talk of the invisible presence, 

This makes the many scriptural references (I found eleven) to Christ “in” us or among us or “all in all” also absurd. If Calvin wants to attack the Bible, so be it. But it is the Bible he is differing with, not some novel Catholic interpretation of the Bible. He is the innovator, not us.

it will still be necessary to prove the immensity, without which it is vain to attempt to include Christ under the bread. Unless the body of Christ can be everywhere without any boundaries of space, it is impossible to believe that he is hid in the Supper under the bread. 

The Catholic position doesn’t entail a “bodily omnipresence”; only a local presence in many places. Calvin continues to provide no solid grounds of refutation.

Hence, they have been under the necessity of introducing the monstrous dogma of ubiquity. 

Ubiquity itself is a Lutheran error, and not a Catholic doctrine (as noted in past installments). It holds that Jesus is omnipresent even in His Human Nature.

But it has been demonstrated by strong and clear passages of Scripture, first, that it is bounded by the dimensions of the human body; and, secondly, that its ascension into heaven made it plain that it is not in all places, but on passing to a new one, leaves the one formerly occupied. 

These arbitrary limitations of an omnipotent God have all been dealt with many times now in this reply to Book IV of The Institutes and refuted in many different ways, in my opinion. Calvin repeats the same old weak arguments over and over. I need not repeat myself ad nauseam, too.

The promise to which they appeal, “I am with you always, even to the end of the world,” is not to be applied to the body. 

Correct, but Calvin also asked where there was one syllable in the Bible about an invisible presence of Jesus, and this is one.

First, then, a perpetual connection with Christ could not exist, unless he dwells in us corporeally, independently of the use of the Supper; 

How does that follow? This is more of Calvin’s odd reasoning.

and, therefore, they have no good ground for disputing so bitterly concerning the words of Christ, in order to include him under the bread in the Supper. Secondly, the context proves that Christ is not speaking at all of his flesh, but promising the disciples his invincible aid to guard and sustain them against all the assaults of Satan and the world. 

I don’t see how that passage excludes any eucharistic sense whatever. It might very well include that as well as the non-material indwelling.

For, in appointing them to a difficult office, he confirms them by the assurance of his presence, that they might neither hesitate to undertake it, nor be timorous in the discharge of it; as if he had said, that his invincible protection would not fail them. Unless we would throw everything into confusion, must it not be necessary to distinguish the mode of presence? 

No.

And, indeed, some, to their great disgrace, choose rather to betray their ignorance than give up one iota of their error. I speak not of Papists, whose doctrine is more tolerable, or at least more modest; 

About as close to a compliment that Calvin ever gives to Catholics . . .

but some are so hurried away by contention as to say, that on account of the union of natures in Christ, wherever his divinity is, there his flesh, which cannot be separated from it, is also; as if that union formed a kind of medium of the two natures, making him to be neither God nor man. So held Eutyches, and after him Servetus. But it is clearly gathered from Scripture that the one person of Christ is composed of two natures, but so that each has its peculiar properties unimpaired. That Eutyches was justly condemned, they will not have the hardihood to deny. It is strange that they attend not to the cause of condemnation—viz. that destroying the distinction between the natures, and insisting only on the unity of person, he converted God into man and man into God. What madness, then, is it to confound heaven with earth, sooner than not withdraw the body of Christ from its heavenly sanctuary? 

What madness is it to confine Jesus to heaven? Where is that ever stated in Scripture?

In regard to the passages which they adduce, “No man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven” (John 3:13); “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18), they betray the same stupidity, scouting the communion of properties (idiomatum, κοινωνίαν), which not without reason was formerly invented by holy Fathers. Certainly when Paul says of the princes of this world that they “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8), he means not that he suffered anything in his divinity, but that Christ, who was rejected and despised, and suffered in the flesh, was likewise God and the Lord of glory. In this way, both the Son of man was in heaven because he was also Christ; and he who, according to the flesh, dwelt as the Son of man on earth, was also God in heaven. For this reason, he is said to have descended from heaven in respect of his divinity, not that his divinity quitted heaven to conceal itself in the prison of the body, but because, although he filled all things, it yet resided in the humanity of Christ corporeally, that is, naturally, and in an ineffable manner. There is a trite distinction in the schools which I hesitate not to quote. Although the whole Christ is everywhere, yet everything which is in him is not everywhere. 

This section, that contradicts other aspects of Calvin’s argument, was dealt with above.

I wish the Schoolmen had duly weighed the force of this sentence, as it would have obviated their absurd fiction of the corporeal presence of Christ. 

What Jesus teaches; what the apostles and fathers and Schoolmen and Doctors of the Church taught, is not an absurd fiction. Calvin’s denial on arbitrary and unreasonable grounds is that.

Therefore, while our whole Mediator is everywhere, he is always present with his people, and in the Supper exhibits his presence in a special manner; yet so, that while he is wholly present, not everything which is in him is present, because, as has been said, in his flesh he will remain in heaven till he come to judgment.

More as-yet-unestablished and unfounded conclusions . . .

***

(originally 12-1-09)

Photo credit: Historical mixed media figure of John Calvin produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d’Aprix: from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures archive [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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February 2, 2019

February 2, 2019 By

This is an installment of a series of replies (see the Introduction and Master List) to much of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church) of Institutes of the Christian Religion, by early Protestant leader John Calvin (1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin; available online. Calvin’s words will be in blue. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.

Related reading from yours truly:

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (2010 book: 388 pages)

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (2012 book: 178 pages)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of “TULIP”)

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IV, 17:24-28

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Book IV

CHAPTER 17

OF THE LORD’S SUPPER, AND THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY IT.

*

24. Other objections answered. No question here as to the omnipotence of God.

*

This infamous falsehood cannot be completely wiped away without disposing of another charge. They give out that we are so wedded to human reason, that we attribute nothing more to the power of God than the order of nature admits, and common sense dictates. 

That is what Calvin’s logic regarding the Eucharist amounts to, yes. He is caught up into a limited rationalistic worldview without seeming to realize that he is. He’s a prisoner of his own false presuppositions. He lacks the perspective of Christian mystery, paradox, and miracle.

From these wicked calumnies, I appeal to the doctrine which I have delivered,—a doctrine which makes it sufficiently clear that I by no means measure this mystery by the capacity of human reason, or subject it to the laws of nature. 

What else can one call a view that wants to limit God by saying that Jesus’ Body can only be in heaven and not eucharistically present as well?

I ask, whether it is from physics we have learned that Christ feeds our souls from heaven with his flesh, just as our bodies are nourished by bread and wine? 

And I ask whether it is from logic and Christianity, this notion that we can eat the flesh of Jesus but not do so at the same time, because it is in heaven only?

How has flesh this virtue of giving life to our souls? 

The same way that the crucifixion and Jesus’ blood gave life to our souls.

All will say, that it is not done naturally. Not more agreeable is it to human reason to hold that the flesh of Christ penetrates to us, so as to be our food. In short, every one who may have tasted our doctrine, will be carried away with admiration of the secret power of God. But these worthy zealots fabricate for themselves a miracle, and think that without it God himself and his power vanish away. 

The Catholic view (and Orthodox and Lutheran and traditional Anglican), is simply taking Jesus’ words at face value and accepting them in faith. We’re not trying to rationalize them away.

I would again admonish the reader carefully to consider the nature of our doctrine, whether it depends on common apprehension, or whether, after having surmounted the world on the wings of faith, it rises to heaven. We say that Christ descends to us, as well by the external symbol as by his Spirit, that he may truly quicken our souls by the substance of his flesh and blood. 

The substance of flesh is actually physical flesh: but Calvin denies that, so his view is metaphysically (as well as theologically) nonsensical.

He who feels not that in these few words are many miracles, is more than stupid; since nothing is more contrary to nature than to derive the spiritual and heavenly life of the soul from flesh, which received its origin from the earth, and was subjected to death, 

This mentality would take out the incarnation and crucifixion and redemption and resurrection, too.

nothing more incredible than that things separated by the whole space between heaven and earth should, notwithstanding of the long distance, not only be connected, but united, so that souls receive aliment from the flesh of Christ. 

But we’re not limited by Calvin’s arbitrary restrictions of time and place. God is bigger than all that.

Let preposterous men, then, cease to assail us with the vile calumny, that we malignantly restrict the boundless power of God. They either foolishly err, or wickedly lie. 

Neither. Calvin is wrong, as shown by the Bible, Church history, and reason alike.

The question here is not, What could God do? but, What has he been pleased to do? We affirm that he has done what pleased him, and it pleased him that Christ should be in all respects like his brethren, “yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). What is our flesh? Is it not that which consists of certain dimensions? is confined within a certain place? is touched and seen? 

Jesus has shown that His Body has elements that go beyond dimension and the usual restrictions. The Resurrection, Ascension, post-Resurrection appearances, and the Second Coming are not ordinary physical events. Neither is the Eucharist. Calvin unnecessarily restricts his vision.

And why, say they, may not God make the same flesh occupy several different places, so as not to be confined to any particular place, and so as to have neither measure nor species? Fool! why do you require the power of God to make a thing to be at the same time flesh and not flesh? It is just as if you were to insist on his making light to be at the same time light and darkness. 

We don’t do that. We believe that it is His Body and Blood, but in a unique eucharistic fashion. It is Calvin’s word games and metaphysical hodge-podge that introduce contradictions and nonsense into the question.

He wills light to be light, darkness to be darkness, flesh to be flesh. True, when he so chooses, he will convert darkness into light, and light into darkness: but when you insist that there shall be no difference between light and darkness, what do you but pervert the order of the divine wisdom? 

None of this applies to the Catholic view . . .

Flesh must therefore be flesh, and spirit spirit; each under the law and condition on which God has created them. 

But Jesus’ flesh is a special case: He being God and having taken on a human body in the Incarnation.

Now, the condition of flesh is, that it should have one certain place, its own dimensions, its own form. On that condition, Christ assumed the flesh, to which, as Augustine declares (Ep. ad Dardan.), he gave incorruption and glory, but without destroying its nature and reality.

We will all have glorified bodies one day, so it isn’t implausible at all that Jesus Christ should manifest the extraordinary capabilities of a glorified body Himself: especially since He is God as well as Man. There is nothing in the slightest bit strange or contradictory or implausible in that. Calvin is straining at gnats.

25. Other objections answered.
*

They object that they have the word by which the will of God has been openly manifested; that is if we permit them to banish from the Church the gift of interpretation, which should throw light upon the word. 

Interpretation has to be from within an existing Christian tradition: not the arbitrary ramblings of a revolutionary, who wishes to depart from all that and ignore what has been received and make his own opinions the unquestioned truth.

I admit that they have the word, but just as the Anthropomorphites of old had it, when they made God corporeal; just as Marcion and the Manichees had it when they made the body of Christ celestial or phantastical. 

And just as Calvin the semi-Nestorian had it when he tried to limit the glorified Body of Christ based on the restrictions of natural science and the omnipotence of God, and a lack of faith in the parameters of the miraculous.

They quoted the passages, “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47): Christ “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7). But these vain boasters think that there is no power of God unless they fabricate a monster in their own brains, by which the whole order of nature is subverted. 

How melodramatic . . .

This rather is to circumscribe the power of God, to attempt to try, by our fictions, what he can do. 

A perfect instance of Calvin projecting his own faults onto others . . .

From this word, they have assumed that the body of Christ is visible in heaven, and yet lurks invisible on the earth under innumerable bits of bread. 

That is no more implausible or impossible than an omnipresent Spirit-God making Himself somehow specially present in fire and clouds and burning bushes, or present in human form before the Incarnation, or in each Christian (the indwelling). If God can do that, He can also be present eucharistically. It is simply a further extension of the incarnation.

They will say that this is rendered necessary, in order that the body of Christ may be given in the Supper. In other words, because they have been pleased to extract a carnal eating from the words of Christ, carried away by their own prejudice, 

No; it is Calvin who assumes a carnal, cannibalistic, simplistic understanding of the whole thing, not us. He is like the ancient pagan Romans. He just doesn’t get it, and so he has to mock what he doesn’t have faith enough to understand.

they have found it necessary to coin this subtlety, which is wholly repugnant to Scripture. 

Calvin has been providing precious little Scripture throughout, to back up his heretical eucharistic theology, whereas I have been providing dozens and dozens of passages, and incorporating the overall biblical worldview all along.

That we detract, in any respect, from the power of God, is so far from being true, that our doctrine is the loudest in extolling it. 

One can say any phrase, but the concepts and beliefs have to also be behind the words and part of the worldview being offered.

But as they continue to charge us with robbing God of his honour, in rejecting what, according to common apprehension, it is difficult to believe, 

Lots of Christian beliefs are difficult to believe (and go far beyond mere reason). The curiosity with Calvin is: why does he accept many mysteries, yet balk at accepting the Real Presence in the Eucharist? Why does he draw the line here?

though it had been promised by the mouth of Christ; I answer, as I lately did, that in the mysteries of faith we do not consult common apprehension, but, with the placid docility and spirit of meekness which James recommends (James 1:21), receive the doctrine which has come from heaven. 

That’s correct. Would that Calvin would follow his own advice.

Wherein they perniciously err, I am confident that we follow a proper moderation. On hearing the words of Christ, this is my body, they imagine a miracle most remote from his intention; and when, from this fiction, the grossest absurdities arise, having already, by their precipitate haste, entangled themselves with snares, they plunge themselves into the abyss of the divine omnipotence, that, in this way, they may extinguish the light of truth. Hence the supercilious moroseness. We have no wish to know how Christ is hid under the bread: we are satisfied with his own words, “This is my body.” We again study, with no less obedience than care, to obtain a sound understanding of this passage, as of the whole of Scripture. We do not, with preposterous fervour, rashly, and without choice, lay hold on whatever first presents itself to our minds; but, after careful meditation, embrace the meaning which the Spirit of God suggests. 

Such reasoning has to be grounded in a biblical worldview. Mostly we observe Calvin pontificating out of his own head, under the influence of false philosophies and traditions of men. He talks a lot about Scripture, but doesn’t cite or interpret it much. This is obvious throughout this entire chapter.

Trusting to him, we look down, as from a height, on whatever opposition may be offered by earthly wisdom. Nay, we hold our minds captive, not allowing one word of murmur, and humble them, that they may not presume to gainsay. In this way, we have arrived at that exposition of the words of Christ, which all who are moderately versant in Scripture know to be perpetually used with regard to the sacraments. Still, in a matter of difficulty, we deem it not unlawful to inquire, after the example of the blessed Virgin, “How shall this be?” (Luke 1:34).

More words out of his head, that do nothing to further his case . . .

26. The orthodox view further confirmed. I. By a consideration of the reality of Christ’s body. II. From our Saviour’s declaration that he would always be in the world. This confirmed by the exposition of Augustine.
*

But as nothing will be more effectual to confirm the faith of the pious than to show them that the doctrine which we have laid down is taken from the pure word of God, and rests on its authority, I will make this plain with as much brevity as I can. 

So after 25 sections, Calvin finally at length decides to go to the Bible to prove his case. Cool! Let’s see what he can come up with.

The body with which Christ rose is declared, not by Aristotle, but by the Holy Spirit, to be finite, and to be contained in heaven until the last day.

Where does it claim this? I’m unfamiliar with any such passage (perhaps that is why he hasn’t produced one).

I am not unaware how confidently our opponents evade the passages which are quoted to this effect. Whenever Christ says that he will leave the world and go away (John 14:2, 28), they reply, that that departure was nothing more than a change of mortal state. Were this so, Christ would not substitute the Holy Spirit, to supply, as they express it, the defect of his absence, since he does not succeed in place of him, 

Now Calvin shows his astonishing biblical ignorance, since it is not only the Holy Spirit Who indwells us, but Christ as well, and this is particularly seen in the very same chapter that Calvin cites. The Holy Spirit is not a “substitute.” It’s yet another “both/and” scenario; not “either/or”:

John 14:18 I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. (cf. 14:16-17)

John 14:20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

John 14:23 Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

John 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

John 17:23 I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.

Romans 8:9-10 But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. [10] But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness.

1 Peter 1:11 they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory.

Moreover, God the Father indwells us as well (Jn 14:23; 1 Jn 3:24; 4:12-16). Scripture says many things about indwelling beyond just the Holy Spirit indwelling us: it refers to Jesus and the Father doing so (Jn 14:23), and the Father and the Holy Spirit (1 Jn 3:24; 4:12-16), and also “God” without specification as to Divine Persons (2 Cor 6:16).

St. Augustine makes the same argument in his Tractate 75 on John 14:18-21:

After the promise of the Holy Spirit, lest any should suppose that the Lord was to give Him, as it were, in place of Himself, in any such way as that He Himself would not likewise be with them, He added the words: I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.Orphani [Greek] are pupilli [parent-less children] in Latin. The one is the Greek, the other the Latin name of the same thing: for in the psalm where we read, You are the helper of the fatherless [in the Latin version, pupillo], the Greek has orphano. (1)

This is precisely the opposite of Calvin’s position. Calvin thinks that Christ wanted to “substitute the Holy Spirit,” but Augustine argues against “lest any should suppose that the Lord was to give Him, as it were, in place of Himself, in any such way as that He Himself would not likewise be with them”. St. Augustine incorporates all of the relevant biblical data, but Calvin sees only what he wants to see, to bolster his preconceived notions. This is classic, picture-perfect eisegesis, or “reading into Scripture what is not there.”

Furthermore, Calvin neglects or doesn’t comprehend an important and dogmatically accepted aspect of trinitarianism and Christology: what is known as the perichoresis (Greek) or circumincession (Latin). Fr. John A. Hardon. S.J., in his Modern Catholic Dictionary (Doubleday, 1980) precisely defines it, under the first Greek term and then the Latin word:

The penetration and indwelling of the three persons reciprocally in one another. In the Greek conception of the Trinity there is an emphasis on the mutual penetration of the three persons, thus bringing out the unity of the divine essence. In the Latin idea . . . the stress is more on the internal processions of the three divine persons. In both traditions, however, the fundamental basis of the Trinitarian perichoresis is the one essence of the three persons in God.

The mutual immanence of the three distinct persons of the Holy Trinity. The Father is entirely in the Son, likewise in the Holy Spirit; and so is the Son in the Father and the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit in the Father and the Son. Circuminsession also identifies the mutual immanence of the two distinct natures in the one Person of Jesus Christ.

For more on perichoresis, see my paper on that topic.

nor, on the other hand, does Christ himself descend from the heavenly glory to assume the condition of a mortal life. 

Eucharistic presence is hardly an instance of that, so this is a non sequitur.

Certainly the advent of the Spirit and the ascension of Christ are set against each other, and hence it necessarily follows that Christ dwells with us according to the flesh, in the same way as that in which he sends his Spirit. 

No; He dwells in us spiritually in the same way as the Spirit, but this doesn’t rule out a physical presence as well (“both/and” again), because it was Jesus, after all, Who took on human flesh; the Holy Spirit didn’t do that. Nor are the ascension and the indwelling set against each other, as I have just shown. The ascension makes the indwelling of all Christians possible (there is a chronological progression here), but it is not in the sense that Jesus is not also present within us.

Moreover, he distinctly says that he would not always be in the world with his disciples (Mt. 26:11). 

That is, in the sense of walking the earth as a man, just as we do . . . Hence his reference to His burial in the next verse.

This saving, also, they think they admirably dispose of, as if it were a denial by Christ that he would always be poor and mean, or liable to the necessities of a fading life. But this is plainly repugnant to the context, since reference is made not to poverty and want, or the wretched condition of an earthly life, but to worship and honour. 

To the contrary, the context is all about anointing Him for His burial (26:7-10, 12-13): it is about the ending of His earthly sojourn as a man, in the natural sense. It is in that sense that Jesus was not to be with them always. Jesus returned to His disciples in His post-Resurrection appearances, and these were physical. Hence, it makes sense that He would also return in the eucharistic sense, to maintain His physical presence with men (as He stressed in most graphic terms at the Last Supper and John 6 discourse). It’s a beautiful thing.

The disciples were displeased with the anointing by Mary, because they thought it a superfluous and useless expenditure, akin to luxury, and would therefore have preferred that the price which they thought wasted should have been expended on the poor. Christ answers, that he will not be always with them to receive such honour. No different exposition is given by Augustine, whose words are by no means ambiguous. When Christ says, “Me ye have not always,” he spoke of his bodily presence. 

Yes, but in the tangible fashion of walking about as we do: the natural sense. This doesn’t exclude the Eucharist. Calvin only thinks it does, because he is a prisoner of his own arbitrary restrictions on God.

In regard to his majesty, in regard to his providence, in regard to his ineffable and invisible grace, is fulfilled what he said: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Mt. 28:20); but in regard to the flesh which the Word assumed—in regard to that which was born of the Virgin—in regard to that which was apprehended by the Jews, nailed to the tree, suspended on the cross, wrapt in linen clothes, laid in the tomb, and manifested in the resurrection,—“Me ye have not always.” 

“Me ye have not always” is not the same as “once I go you will never have Me physically again.”

Why? Since he conversed with his disciples in bodily presence for forty days, and, going out with them, ascended, while they saw but followed not. He is not here, for he sits there, at the right hand of the Father. And yet he is here: for the presence of his majesty is not withdrawn. Otherwise, as regards the presence of his majesty, we have Christ always; while, in regard to his bodily presence, it was rightly said, “Me ye have not always.” In respect of bodily presence, the Church had him for a few days: now she holds him by faith, but sees him not with the eye (August. Tract. in Joann. 50). 

Calvin cites St. Augustine on this point, yet St. Augustine believed in the Real; Physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and eucharistic adoration, and the sacrifice of the Mass; so he is hardly a support for Calvin’s view. Once again it is the illusory appearance of support where there actually is none.

Here (that I may briefly note this) he makes him present with us in three ways—in majesty, providence, and ineffable grace; under which I comprehend that wondrous communion of his body and blood, provided we understand that it is effected by the power of the Holy Spirit, and not by that fictitious enclosing of his body under the element, since our Lord declared that he had flesh and bones which could be handled and seen.

Yes, in that earthly, natural sense. This doesn’t logically exclude further eucharistic appearances, anymore than God the father being a spirit only excluded His appearances before the incarnation as a man, and in physical things (clouds, fire, burning bush, or in conjunction with the ark of the covenant).

Going away, and ascending, intimate, not that he had the appearance of one going away and ascending, but that he truly did what the words express. Some one will ask, Are we then to assign a certain region of heaven to Christ? I answer with Augustine, that this is a curious and superfluous question, provided we believe that he is in heaven.

Calvin is not thinking according to a biblical worldview and biblical categories. His vision is arbitrarily restricted by unnecessary rationalistic elements.

27. Refutation of the sophisms of the Ubiquitists. The evasion of visible and invisible presence refuted.

*

What? Does not the very name of ascension, so often repeated, intimate removal from one place to another? 

Yes. But this proves nothing one way or the other for the issue under dispute.

This they deny, because by height, according to them, the majesty of empire only is denoted. But what was the very mode of ascending? Was he not carried up while the disciples looked on? Do not the Evangelists clearly relate that he was carried into heaven? 

Yes, but the argument is much ado about nothing. It doesn’t exclude the Eucharist. Calvin falsely assumes that it does, and so he thinks he has a good argument.

These acute Sophists reply, that a cloud intervened, and took him out of their sight, to teach the disciples that he would not afterwards be visible in the world. As if he ought not rather to have vanished in a moment, to make them believe in his invisible presence, or the cloud to have gathered around him before he moved a step. When he is carried aloft into the air, and the interposing cloud shows that he is no more to be sought on earth, we safely infer that his dwelling now is in the heavens, as Paul also asserts, bidding us look for him from thence (Phil. 3:20). For this reason, the angels remind the disciples that it is vain to keep gazing up into heaven, because Jesus, who was taken up, would come in like manner as they had seen him ascend. Here the adversaries of sound doctrine escape, as they think, by the ingenious quibble, that he will come in visible form, though he never departed from the earth, but remained invisible among his people. 

He did remain invisibly or spiritually, as we saw above in the Indwelling passages. He also says:

Matthew 18:20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Matthew 28:20 . . . I am with you always, to the close of the age.

And the Apostle Paul says about Jesus:

Colossians 3:11 . . . Christ is all, and in all.

As if the angels had insinuated a two-fold presence, and not simply made the disciples eye-witnesses of the ascent, that no doubt might remain. 

The angels didn’t have to do that, since Jesus already had done so.

It was just as if they had said, By ascending to heaven, while you looked on, he has asserted his heavenly power: it remains for you to wait patiently until he again arrive to judge the world. He has not entered into heaven to occupy it alone, but to gather you and all the pious along with him.

We do await His Second Coming. No disagreement there.

28. The authority of Fathers not in favour of these errors as to Christ’s presence. Augustine opposed to them.

*

Since the advocates of this spurious dogma are not ashamed to honour it with the suffrages of the ancients, and especially of Augustine, how perverse they are in the attempt I will briefly explain. 

Calvin attempts all the time to “co-opt” St. Augustine for his heretical novelties, and fails every time. The present instance is no exception.

Pious and learned men have collected the passages, and therefore I am unwilling to plead a concluded cause: any one who wishes may consult their writings. I will not even collect from Augustine what might be pertinent to the matter, but will be contented to show briefly, that without all controversy he is wholly ours. 

That’s a convenient evasion . . .

The pretence of our opponents, when they would wrest him from us, 

The Calvinists never “had” St. Augustine to begin with, so how could we Catholics “wrest” him away?! This is a very clever use of a presumed truth that has not even been established, and is, in fact, a falsehood. I have documented the great father’s belief in the real physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In the next chapter it will be even more plain that St. Augustine also believed in eucharistic adoration and the Sacrifice of the Mass: things considerably more repugnant to Calvin than the Real Presence and transubstantiation.

that throughout his works the flesh and blood of Christ are said to be dispensed in the Supper—namely, the victim once offered on the cross, is frivolous, seeing he, at the same time, calls it either the eucharist or sacrament of the body. But it is unnecessary to go far to find the sense in which he uses the terms flesh and blood, since he himself explains, saying (Ep. 23, ad Bonif.) that the sacraments receive names from their similarity to the things which they designate; and that, therefore, the sacrament of the body is after a certain manner the body. With this agrees another well-know passage, “The Lord hesitated not to say, This is my body, when he gave the sign” (Cont. Adimant. Manich. cap. 12). 

I have shown in a past installment that for Augustine, sign and reality are not antithetical, as they are for Calvin. I gave not only my opinion, but that of Protestant historians discussing Augustine’s views.

They again object that Augustine says distinctly that the body of Christ falls upon the earth, and enters the mouth. But this is in the same sense in which he affirms that it is consumed, for he conjoins both at the same time. There is nothing repugnant to this in his saying that the bread is consumed after the mystery is performed: for he had said a little before, “As these things are known to men, when they are done by men they may receive honour as being religious, but not as being wonderful” (De Trinit. Lib. 3 c. 10). 

Calvin cites the following sentence from chapter 10, section 20:

But because these things are known to men, in that they are done by men, they may well meet with reverence as being holy things, but they cannot cause wonder as being miracles.

But in the next section (Book III, chapter 10, section 21), Augustine draws the same analogy to God appearing in physical things, that I have used in this respect:

What man, again, knows how the angels made or took those clouds and fires in order to signify the message they were bearing, even if we supposed that the Lordor the Holy Spirit was manifested in those corporeal forms? Just as infants do not know of that which is placed upon the altar and consumed after the performance of the holy celebration, whence or in what manner it is made, or whence it is taken for religious use. And if they were never to learn from their own experience or that of others, and never to see that species of thing except during the celebration of the sacrament, when it is being offered and given; and if it were told them by the most weighty authority whose body and blood it is; they will believe nothing else, except that the Lord absolutely appeared in this form to the eyes of mortals, and that that liquid actually flowed from the piercing of a side which resembled this.

St. Augustine — contra Calvin — casually assumes that it is the Body and Blood of Christ.

His meaning is not different in the passage which our opponents too rashly appropriate to themselves—viz. that Christ in a manner carried himself in his own hands, when he held out the mystical bread to his disciples. For by interposing the expression, in a manner, he declares that he was not really or truly included under the bread. 

Calvin seizes upon one word, to supposedly turn the issue in his favor . . . In this exposition on Psalm 34, St. Augustine makes it clear many times that he literally believes in the physical presence of Christ. He refers to the Sacrifice of the Mass:

Because there was there a sacrifice after the order of Aaron, and afterwards He of His Own Body and Blood appointed a sacrifice after the order of Melchizedek . . . (1)

He assumes throughout a striking literal eucharistic realism:

For very humility taught our Lord in His Own Body and Blood: because when He commends His Own Body and Blood, He commends His Humility . . . (3)

Or rather some spiritual Christian invites us to approach to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. But let us approach to Him and be lightened; not as the Jews approached to Him, that they might be darkened; for they approached to Him that they might crucify Him: let us approach to Him that we may receive His Body and Blood. They by Him crucified were darkened; we by eating and drinking TheCrucified are lightened. (9)

Now will He speak openly of the same Sacrament, whereby He was carried in His Own Hands. O taste and see that the Lord is goodPsalm 33:8. Does not the Psalm now open itself, and show you that seeming insanity and constant madness, the same insanity and sober inebriety of that David, who in a figure showed I know not what, when in the person of king Achis they said to him, How is it? When the Lord said, Except a man eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, he shall have no life in him? John 6:53 And they in whom reigned Achis, that is, error and ignorance, said; what said they? How can this man give us his flesh to eat?John 6:52 If you are ignorant, Taste and see that the Lord is good: but if you understand not, you are king Achis: David shall change His Countenance and shall depart from you, and shall quit you, and shall depart. (11; complete)

All this; yet Calvin (like all good sophists) seizes on one word and pretends that it proves his case over against Catholicism and the thoroughly Catholic St. Augustine. This is a classic example; Calvin constantly does this. It’s dishonest scholarship and deceptive toward his readers, to continually present highly selective facts to the exclusion of other equally relevant facts in context.

Nor is it strange, since he elsewhere plainly contends, that bodies could not be without particular localities, and being nowhere, would have no existence. 

That is no argument against eucharistic local presence. It’s an argument against no presence at all for a body; thus it is yet another non sequitur.

It is a paltry cavil that he is not there treating of the Supper, in which God exerts a special power. The question had been raised as to the flesh of Christ, and the holy man professedly replying, says, “Christ gave immortality to his flesh, but did not destroy its nature. In regard to this form, we are not to suppose that it is everywhere diffused: for we must beware not to rear up the divinity of the man, so as to take away the reality of the body. It does not follow that that which is in God is everywhere as God” (Ep. ad Dardan.). He immediately subjoins the reason, “One person is God and man, and both one Christ, everywhere, inasmuch as he is God, and in heaven, inasmuch as he is man.” How careless would it have been not to except the mystery of the Supper, a matter so grave and serious, if it was in any respect adverse to the doctrine which he was handling? 

Unfortunately, I can’t locate this letter online, so as to show how Calvin has distorted its meaning (as he always seems to do with the fathers, and as we saw again not far above).

And yet, if any one will attentively read what follows shortly after, he will find that under that general doctrine the Supper also is comprehended, that Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, and also Son of man, is everywhere wholly present as God, in the temple of God, that is, in the Church, as an inhabiting God, and in some place in heaven, because of the dimensions of his real body. 

Jesus is omnipresent in His Divine Nature. And He is locally physically present in the Eucharist.

We see how, in order to unite Christ with the Church, he does not bring his body out of heaven. This he certainly would have done had the body of Christ not been truly our food, unless when included under the bread. 

Calvin here merely assumes what he fails to prove.

Elsewhere, explaining how believers now possess Christ, he says, “You have him by the sign of the cross, by the sacrament of baptism, by the meat and drink of the altar” (Tract. in Joann. 50). How rightly he enumerates a superstitious rite, among the symbols of Christ’s presence, I dispute not; but in comparing the presence of the flesh to the sign of the cross, he sufficiently shows that he has no idea of a twofold body of Christ, one lurking concealed under the bread, and another sitting visible in heaven. 

This doesn’t follow at all; it is merely Calvin reading his own false belief into St. Augustine. The mention of “altar” in this section 12 of Tractate 50 on John 11 and 12 is without question a reference to the Sacrifice of the Mass. Altars always have to do with sacrifice:

If you are good, if you belong to the body represented by Peter, you have Christ both now and hereafter: now by faith, by sign, by the sacrament of baptism, by the bread and wine of the altar. You have Christ now, but you will have Him always; for when you have gone hence, you will come to Him who said to the robber, Today shall you be with me in paradise.Luke 23:43 But if you live wickedly, you may seem to have Christ now, because you enter the Church, signest yourself with the sign of Christ, art baptized with the baptism of Christ, minglest yourself with the members of Christ, and approachest His altar: now you have Christ, but by living wickedly you will not have Him always.

If there is any need of explanation, it is immediately added, “In respect of the presence of his majesty, we have Christ always: in respect of the presence of his flesh, it is rightly said, ‘Me ye have not always.’” They object that he also adds, “In respect of ineffable and invisible grace is fulfilled what was said by him, ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’” But this is nothing in their favour. For it is at length restricted to his majesty, which is always opposed to body, while the flesh is expressly distinguished from grace and virtue. 

This is more Nestorian heresy from Calvin. St. Augustine points out elsewhere in the same larger work, in Tractate 27 on John 6:60-72 that “son of Man” (Jesus’ usual reference to His human Nature or the incarnational aspect) is referred to as in heaven, according to His unity of one Divine Person with two Natures:

And He said, It is the Spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing. Before we expound this, as the Lord grants us, that other must not be negligently passed over, where He says, Then what if you shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before? For Christ is the Son of man, of the Virgin Mary. Therefore Son of man He began to be here on earth, where He took flesh from the earth. For which cause it was said prophetically, Truth is sprung from the earth. Then what does He mean when He says, When you shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before? . . . Christ, both God and man, is one person, not two persons, lest our faith be not a trinity, but a quaternity? Christ, therefore, is one; the Word, soul and flesh, one Christ; the Son of God and Son of man, one Christ; Son of God always, Son of man in time, yet one Christ in regard to unity of person. . . . He was Son of man in heaven in that manner in which He was Son of God on earth; Son of God on earth in the flesh which He took, Son of man in heaven in the unity of person. (4)

The same antithesis elsewhere occurs, when he says that “Christ left the disciples in bodily presence, that he might be with them in spiritual presence.” Here it is clear that the essence of the flesh is distinguished from the virtue of the Spirit, which conjoins us with Christ, when, in respect of space, we are at a great distance from him. 

This is again in direct opposition to St. Augustine, whom he claims is on his side. The latter doesn’t make flesh and spirit antithetical, but joins them together:

What is it, then, that He adds? It is the Spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing. Let us say to Him (for He permits us, not contradicting Him, but desiring to know), O Lord, good Master, in what way does the flesh profit nothing, while You have said, Except a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he shall not have life in him? Or does life profit nothing? And why are we what we are, but that we may have eternal life, which Thou dost promise by Your flesh? Then what means the flesh profits nothing? It profits nothing, but only in the manner in which they understood it. They indeed understood the flesh, just as when cut to pieces in a carcass, or sold in the shambles; not as when it is quickened by the Spirit. Wherefore it is said that the flesh profits nothing, in the same manner as it is said that knowledge puffs up. Then, ought we at once to hate knowledge? Far from it! And what means Knowledge puffs up? Knowledge alone, without charity. Therefore he added, but charity edifies.1 Corinthians 8:1 Therefore add to knowledge charity, and knowledge will be profitable, not by itself, but through charity. So also here, the flesh profits nothing, only when alone. Let the Spirit be added to the flesh, as charity is added to knowledge, and it profits very much. For if the flesh profited nothing, the Word would not be made flesh to dwell among us. If through the flesh Christ has greatly profited us, does the flesh profit nothing? But it is by the flesh that the Spirit has done somewhat for our salvation. Flesh was a vessel; consider what it held, not what it was. The apostles were sent forth; did their flesh profit us nothing? If the apostles’ flesh profited us, could it be that the Lord’s flesh should have profited us nothing? For how should the sound of the Word come to us except by the voice of the flesh? Whence should writing come to us? All these are operations of the flesh, but only when the spirit moves it, as if it were its organ. Therefore it is the Spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing, as they understood the flesh, but not so do I give my flesh to be eaten. (Ibid., section 5: complete)

Protestants (following Calvin’s convoluted reasoning), unfortunately influenced by the heresies of Docetism and Nestorianism, typically misinterpret the flesh that is opposed to spirit in this portion of John 6 as proving that the Eucharist is not physically real. But Jesus is opposing a carnal understanding of flesh as dichotomized from spirit: the same thing that Calvin is asserting. Both Jesus and St. Augustine contradict Calvin’s understanding.

He repeatedly uses the same mode of expression, as when he says, “He is to come to the quick and the dead in bodily presence, according to the rule of faith and sound doctrine: for in spiritual presence he was to come to them, and to be with the whole Church in the world until its consummation. Therefore, this discourse is directed to believers, whom he had begun already to save by corporeal presence, and whom he was to leave in corporeal absence, that by spiritual presence he might preserve them with the Father.” 

In the sense of walking the earth, He is not with us. But again, this doesn’t logically exclude an additional sense of eucharistic physical presence.

By corporeal to understand visible is mere trifling, since he both opposes his body to his divine power, and by adding, that he might “preserve them with the Father,” clearly expresses that he sends his grace to us from heaven by means of the Spirit.

Scripture doesn’t completely dichotomize (as Calvin does) the Human Nature of Jesus and His power as a Divine Person, as well as majesty. It is true that He is not omnipotent in His human nature, or omnipotent, etc. (the Lutheran error of ubiquity), but on the other hand, there is no huge divide between His Human Nature, including His Body, and His power and majesty. We see this in the use of “Son of Man,” which clearly refers to His Human Nature, in conjunction with both heaven and power:

Matthew 13:41 The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,

Matthew 16:27 For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.

Matthew 19:28 . . . in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne . . .

Matthew 24:30 then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; (cf. 24:37, 39, 44)

Matthew 25:31 When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

Matthew 26:64 Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.

Mark 2:28 so the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath. (cf. Lk 6:5)

Mark 13:26 And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. (cf. 8:38)

Mark 14:62 And Jesus said, “I am; and you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

Luke 21:27 And then they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. (cf. 9:26; 12:40; 17:30; 18:8)

Luke 22:69 “But from now on the Son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”

John 1:51 And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

John 3:13 No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man. (cf. 6:62)

John 5:27 and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man.

Acts 7:56 and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.”

Revelation 1:13 and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden girdle round his breast;

Revelation 14:14 Then I looked, and lo, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand.

All of this teaches the unity of person in Jesus: the Chalcedonian Christology, over against Nestorianism and Calvin’s quasi-Nestorianism and Docetic tendencies.

Jesus even refers to Himself as the “Son of man” giving us His flesh to eat:

John 6:27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.

John 6:53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you;”

Jesus is even “glorified” as the “Son of man” as well:

John 12:23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.

John 13:31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified;

Moreover, Jesus is repeatedly referred to as the “Lamb” in heaven (Rev 5:6, 8, 12; 6:1; 7:14; 8:1; 12:11; 13:8; 14:1, 4; 19:7, 9; 21:9, 14, 22-23, 27), even in the context of sitting on His throne and being honored there with all majesty and glory (Rev 5:13; 7:9-10, 17; 22:1, 3), and judging sinners at His Second Coming and Last Judgment (Rev 6:16; 7:9; 14:10; 17:14).

Nothing refers more to His body and Human Nature than the reference as “Lamb” (of God). That is the Human Nature, the crucifixion, and the Sacrifice of the Mass. Calvin would like to have everything in a neat little package, with Jesus glorified in heaven, and all the messy, incarnational, Human Nature stuff now over with, but Scripture is not nearly that simple or dichotomous.
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This same “Son of man” who comes again in glory, Who is glorified by God the Father, Who judges, sits on God’s throne, has great power even during His earthly life, who is Lord of the Sabbath, Who has power over life and death (He raised Himself: John 2:18-22; 10:18), and raised others from the dead), gives us His Body and Blood to eat for eternal life (Jn 6:27, 53). There is no big dichotomy between His body and heaven, and glory and majesty there, and His Body on earth, both during the Incarnation, and during His physical presence in the Holy Eucharist.

Lastly, Calvin referred to, above, Jesus’ “majesty, which is always opposed to body, while the flesh is expressly distinguished from grace and virtue.” Again, Scripture (which he has hardly brought to the table at all in this entire dispute) contradicts Calvin. It does not dichotomize Christ’s majesty from His role as Son of Man and Sacrificial Lamb and High Priest, or from His Human Nature and body:

Hebrews 1:3 He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

2 Peter 1:16-18 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. [17] For when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” [18] we heard this voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

Scripture even asserts that Jesus is a priest for us specifically because He is in heaven (Heb 8:4). A priest offers sacrifice, and the sacrifice that Jesus offers is Himself, as the Lamb of God (and He does so because He is a Man, with flesh):

Hebrews 8:1-4 Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, [2] a minister in the sanctuary and the true tent which is set up not by man but by the Lord. [3] For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; hence it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. [4] Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.
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(originally 11-30-09)

Photo credit: Historical mixed media figure of John Calvin produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d’Aprix: from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures archive [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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February 2, 2019

February 2, 2019 By

This is an installment of a series of replies (see the Introduction and Master List) to much of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church) of Institutes of the Christian Religion, by early Protestant leader John Calvin (1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin; available online. Calvin’s words will be in blue. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.

Related reading from yours truly:

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (2010 book: 388 pages)

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (2012 book: 178 pages)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of “TULIP”)

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IV, 17:16-23

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Book IV

CHAPTER 17

OF THE LORD’S SUPPER, AND THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY IT.

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16. Refutation of consubstantiation; whence the idea of ubiquity.
*
Some, who see that the analogy between the sign and the thing signified cannot be destroyed without destroying the truth of the sacrament, admit that the bread of the Supper is truly the substance of an earthly and corruptible element, and cannot suffer any change in itself, but must have the body of Christ included under it. 

He is referring to Lutherans here.

If they would explain this to mean, that when the bread is held forth in the sacrament, an exhibition of the body is annexed, because the truth is inseparable from its sign, I would not greatly object. But because fixing the body itself in the bread, they attach to it an ubiquity contrary to its nature, and by adding under the bread, will have it that it lies hid under it, I must employ a short time in exposing their craft, and dragging them forth from their concealments. 

Lutheran eucharistic reasoning is far less objectionable than Calvin’s. At least Lutherans take the Bible at face value: if it (and Jesus) says “this is My Body” then they believe that, whereas Calvin wants to play word and philosophical games and have the body there, but only in a spiritual sense; hence not really there. Lutherans at least develop the biblical thought in a fairly acceptable way. Catholics disagree, but it is not hugely different. Jesus is still truly present, substantively. But Calvin massively eisegetes Scripture and brings foreign philosophies to it, in constructing his eucharistic view.

Here, however, it is not my intention professedly to discuss the whole case; I mean only to lay the foundations of a discussion which will afterwards follow in its own place. They insist, then, that the body of Christ is invisible and immense, so that it may be hid under bread, because they think that there is no other way by which they can communicate with him than by his descending into the bread, though they do not comprehend the mode of descent by which he raises us up to himself. They employ all the colours they possibly can, but after they have said all, it is sufficiently apparent that they insist on the local presence of Christ. How so? Because they cannot conceive any other participation of flesh and blood than that which consists either in local conjunction and contact, or in some gross method of enclosing.

Most of this has been previously dealt with. I would simply ask: if Jesus was locally present when He walked the earth, why is it seen as an impossible position, to assert that He can be locally present eucharistically? In what terms does one argue that an omnipotent God cannot do this? Calvin is not content to simply disagree with Luther and Lutherans. He has to deride them as idolaters also, just as he does with Catholics. In his book he is careful to not mention Luther. But in his letters he gave his full view of the matter:

[I]f Luther has so great a lust of victory, he will never be able to join along with us in a sincere agreement respecting the pure truth of God. For he has sinned against it not only from vainglory and abusive language, but also from ignorance and the grossest extravagance. For what absurdities he pawned upon us in the beginning, when he said the bread is the very body! And if now he imagines that the body of Christ is enveloped by the bread, I judge that he is chargeable with a very foul error. What can I say of the partisans of that cause? Do they not romance more wildly than Marcion respecting the body of Christ? (Letter to Martin Bucer, January 12, 1538; in John Dillenberger, editor, John Calvin: Selections From His Writings, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co. [Anchor Books], 1971, 47)

In their madness they even drew idolatry after them. For what else is the adorable sacrament of Luther but an idol set up in the temple of God? (Letter to Martin Bucer, June 1549; in Jules Bonnet, editor, Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters: Letters, Part 2, 1545-1553, volume 5 of 7; translated by David Constable; Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983; reproduction of Letters of John Calvin, volume II [Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1858], 234)

Calvin even went so far as to refer to Lutheranism as “evil”:

I am carefully on the watch that Lutheranism gain no ground, nor be introduced into France. The best means, believe me, for checking the evil would be that confession written by me . . . (Letter to Heinrich Bullinger, July 2, 1563; in John Dillenberger, ibid., 76; italics added)

17. This ubiquity confounds the natures of Christ. Subtleties answered.
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Some, in order obstinately to maintain the error which they have once rashly adopted, hesitate not to assert that the dimensions of Christ’s flesh are not more circumscribed than those of heaven and earth. His birth as an infant, his growth, his extension on the cross, his confinement in the sepulchre, were effected, they say, by a kind of dispensation, that he might perform the offices of being born, of dying, and of other human acts: his being seen with his wonted bodily appearance after the resurrection, his ascension into heaven, his appearance, after his ascension, to Stephen and Paul, were the effect of the same dispensation, that it might be made apparent to the eye of man that he was constituted King in heaven. What is this but to call forth Marcion from his grave? 

Lutherans are compared to the heretical Marcionites.

For there cannot be a doubt that the body of Christ, if so constituted, was a phantasm, or was phantastical. 

His Body was glorified after the Resurrection. He could suddenly appear through walls (John 20:19; 26). This shows that the normal physical limitations of a human body no longer applied to Him. His many post-Resurrection visitations of the disciples were no ordinary phenomenon at all. The reactions of the disciples prove this. For example:

Luke 24:36-39 As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them. [37] But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. [38] And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? [39] See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

John 20:14-16 Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. [15] Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” [16] Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rab-bo’ni!” (which means Teacher).

In another example, in His appearance to the two disciples walking to Emmaus, they didn’t recognize him the whole time, then when they did (after He broke bread: a clear eucharistic referent), “he vanished out of their sight” (Luke 24:31). It was a supernatural thing. He was there with them, and then suddenly He was not. Thus, more is in play here than ordinary physical laws applying to human bodies. There is no reason why He could do the same with regard to the Holy Eucharist, should He choose to do so.

The Second Coming is of the same nature. That is Jesus in His physical body. But it transcends the limitations and laws of physics, because it is said that everyone on the earth will see it. That isn’t physically possible on a spherical earth for Him to be in one place and yet all see Him at the same time. But it is possible for God because it is a supernatural occurrence, and transcends the laws of physics:

Matthew 24:30 then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; (cf. Zech 12:10)

Revelation 1:7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, every one who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. (cf. possible cross-reference: Isaiah 40:5)

If God can supersede the laws of physics in the Second Coming, He can and does also do so in the Holy Eucharist. He is no more limited in the latter than He is in the Second Coming or was in His post-Resurrection appearances. Calvin’s argument is naive, biblically shallow, and lacks the understanding and faith of the very nature of Jesus as God. This is why he has often been suspected of Nestorianism. His Christology is deficient: very notably in the present case.

Some employ a rather more subtle evasion, That the body which is given in the sacrament is glorious and immortal, and that, therefore, there is no absurdity in its being contained under the sacrament in various places, or in no place, and in no form. But, I ask, what did Christ give to his disciples the day before he suffered? Do not the words say that he gave the mortal body, which was to be delivered shortly after? 

The Eucharist was just as much a miracle during the Last Supper as it has been henceforth.

But, say they, he had previously manifested his glory to the three disciples on the mount (Mt. 17:2). This is true; but his purpose was to give them for the time a taste of immortality. 

It is just as plausible to take the words literally, than to resort to Calvin’s facile reasoning of an actual thing being merely a sign and figure and not the actual thing it merely represents. That reads into Scripture something that isn’t there. The actual account of the transfiguration, shows that it was very real:

John 17:1-6 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. [2] And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light. [3] And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Eli’jah, talking with him. [4] And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli’jah.” [5] He was still speaking, when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” [6] When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe.

Still they cannot find there a twofold body, but only the one which he had assumed, arrayed in new glory. 

And how is this relevant to the discussion of the possibility of eucharistic Real Presence?

When he distributed his body in the first Supper, the hour was at hand in which he was “stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isa. 53:4). So far was he from intending at that time to exhibit the glory of his resurrection. 

That doesn’t make transubstantiation any less possible.

And here what a door is opened to Marcion, if the body of Christ was seen humble and mortal in one place, glorious and immortal in another! And yet, if their opinion is well-founded, the same thing happens every day, because they are forced to admit that the body of Christ, which is in itself visible, lurks invisibly under the symbol of bread. And yet those who send forth such monstrous dogmas, so far from being ashamed at the disgrace, assail us with virulent invectives for not subscribing to them.

How is that different in essence from His being hidden to the eyes of His disciples even when He was present in human form (Lk 24:15-16, 31, 36-37; John 20:14-15)? He was invisible to their eyes, too, yet no less present. How is it different from God before the Incarnation, appearing in fire, clouds, and burning bushes? He even appeared as a man in theophanies, with the people not always knowing it was Him at the time.

None of this suggests that the Catholic belief is like Marcion or a “monstrous dogma.” All it suggests is that Calvin doesn’t form his thoughts within the backdrop of a thoroughly biblical worldview. He is too influenced by Nestorianism and Docetism, which in turn derive from false elements of pagan Greek philosophy.

Catholics do differ from the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity, however. Lutherans confuse the functions of the Two Natures of Christ just as Calvinists do, but in a different direction:

The old Lutheran Doctrinal Theology theology inclines to the monophysitic error which posits a real transference of Divine attributes such as omniscience, omnipotence, ubiquity, by reason of the Hypostatic Union, to the human nature of Christ, and teaches that “Christ, not only as God, but also as man knows all, can do all, and is present to all created things” (formula concordiae I 8, 11). . . .

The nature of the Hypostatic Union is such that while on the one hand things pertaining to both the Divine and Human nature can be attributed to the person of Christ, on the other hand things specifically belonging to one nature cannot be predicated of the other nature. . . . Thus it is false to say: “Christ’s soul is omniscient,” “Christ’s body is ubiquitous.” (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 160-161)

Peter J. Riga, in his article, “Lutheranism and Transubstantiation” (The American Ecclesiastical Review, December 1961, 100-122), explains the error of Lutheran ubiquity:

Luther rejects the idea of God dwelling in a place. God the Creator is everywhere. But Christ is God, so He is everywhere. Moreover, wherever Christ is as God, He is there also as man. Hence his body must be present everywhere and so in the Eucharist. The uniqueness of Christ’s bodily presence in the Eucharist stems from the purpose for which he is present there. So the communicatio idiomatum applies to the unity of the two natures in such a way that what is said of one nature applies to the other. The omnipresence of Christ becomes the basic argument against the “Enthusiasts,” and likewise the crowning argument against transubstantiation. Christ is in the elements long before they were put on the altar, for the Son has imparted the attribute of omnipresence to his human nature.

. . . the doctrine of Ubiquity, the basis of the Lutheran explanation of Christ’s presence, is finally asserted. In the Epitome of the Formula, Absolute Ubiquitarianism is maintained and in the Solida Declaratio of the Formula,Hypothetical Ubiquitarianism is taught.

18. Absurdities connected with consubstantiation. Candid exposition of the orthodox view.

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But assuming that the body and blood of Christ are attached to the bread and wine, then the one must necessarily be dissevered from the other. For as the bread is given separately from the cup, so the body, united to the bread, must be separated from the blood, included in the cup. For since they affirm that the body is in the bread, and the blood is in the cup, while the bread and wine are, in regard to space, at some distance from each other, they cannot, by any quibble, evade the conclusion that the body must be separated from the blood. Their usual pretence—viz. that the blood is in the body, and the body again in the blood, by what they call concomitance, is more than frivolous, since the symbols in which they are included are thus distinguished. 

There can be a symbolic distinction without entailing a metaphysical equation. St. Paul shows that both the body and blood are included in what was formerly bread and wine:

1 Corinthians 11:27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.

The “or” proves that Paul believed that both the cup or what was formerly bread (considered individually) contain both the Body and Blood of Christ after consecration. This was one of the reasons that withholding the cup from the laity was justified, under Catholic presuppositions. Calvin chooses to wallow in his own fallacious speculations. We take our stand on the Word of God revealed in Holy Scripture.

But if we are carried to heaven with our eyes and minds, that we may there behold Christ in the glory of his kingdom, as the symbols invite us to him in his integrity, so, under the symbol of bread, we must feed on his body, and, under the symbol of wine, drink separately of his blood, and thereby have the full enjoyment of him. 

Calvin, then proposes we in effect travel to heaven every time we partake of Holy Communion, and he thinks that is a more plausible interpretation of the eucharistic biblical texts than the Catholic or even Lutheran views. But it comes out of his own head, not from Scripture. There is not a hint of it in Scripture.

For though he withdrew his flesh from us, and with his body ascended to heaven, he, however, sits at the right hand of the Father; that is, he reigns in power and majesty, and the glory of the Father. This kingdom is not limited by any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions. Christ can exert his energy wherever he pleases, in earth and heaven, can manifest his presence by the exercise of his power, can always be present with his people, breathing into them his own life, can live in them, sustain, confirm, and invigorate them, and preserve them safe, just as if he were with them in the body; in fine, can feed them with his own body, communion with which he transfuses into them. After this manner, the body and blood of Christ are exhibited to us in the sacrament.

Calvin states the right premises, but fails to follow them through to their proper conclusion. If indeed Jesus Christ “is not limited by any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions” and if indeed He can “exert his energy wherever he pleases, in earth and heaven” then why does Calvin object to His bodily presence in the Eucharist, which is what the Church had always taught? Why does he oppose it on such flimsy and absurd, literally un-biblical or non-biblical or a-biblical grounds?

19. The nature of the true presence of Christ in the Supper. The true and substantial communion of the body and blood of the Lord. This orthodox view assailed by turbulent spirits.
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The presence of Christ in the Supper we must hold to be such as neither affixes him to the element of bread, nor encloses him in bread, nor circumscribes him in any way (this would obviously detract from his celestial glory); 

Why does it “obviously detract” from His glory, since God had long since manifested Himself as “enclosed” in or “affixed” to fire, clouds, burning bushes, and the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant (and within the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and temple)? Why is the Eucharist suddenly an alleged radical departure from all that? If the Eucharist “circumscribes” God, then why do not all these other things, too? What’s the big difference? One marvels at such muddleheaded thinking, seemingly entirely divorced from the rich storehouse of biblical analogies and cross-references.

and it must, moreover, be such as neither divests him of his just dimensions, nor dissevers him by differences of place, nor assigns to him a body of boundless dimensions, diffused through heaven and earth. 

Transubstantiation doesn’t entail a “body of boundless dimensions.” That is the confusion of the Lutheran ubiquity doctrine, insofar as it ascribed omnipresence to Christ’s Human Nature. Classic patristic Christology didn’t hold to that heretical view.

All these things are clearly repugnant to his true human nature. 

Catholics believe that we are receiving Jesus Christ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist: not just a “human nature.” Jesus is a Divine Person. Calvin’s continued separation of the natures in ways that are not required, smacks of Nestorianism.

Let us never allow ourselves to lose sight of the two restrictions. First, Let there be nothing derogatory to the heavenly glory of Christ. 

Amen! Jesus has plenty of heavenly glory, but that didn’t stop one writer of inspired Scripture (after the Ascension and Jesus’ glorification in heaven) from describing Him as “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). He continues to refer to Jesus in heaven as the “Lamb” (with direct Passover and crucifixion and eucharistic implications) over and over (Rev 5:8, 12-13; 6:1, 16; 7:9-10, 14, 17; 8:1; 12:11; 13:8, 11; 14:1, 4, 10; 15:3; 17:14; 19:7, 9; 21:9, 14, 22-23, 27; 22:1, 3).

This happens whenever he is brought under the corruptible elements of this world, 

Such as fire, water, clouds and burning bushes . . . Calvin is so dense on this that he comes very close to blasphemy.

or is affixed to any earthly creatures. 

We’re not claiming that God does that, but He did become a Man.

Secondly, Let no property be assigned to his body inconsistent with his human nature. 

Like walking through walls or being seen by all on the earth simultaneously at the Second Coming?

This is done when it is either said to be infinite, or made to occupy a variety of places at the same time. 

The supernatural by nature transcends the laws and limitations of natural law.

But when these absurdities are discarded, I willingly admit anything which helps to express the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, as exhibited to believers under the sacred symbols of the Supper, understanding that they are received not by the imagination or intellect merely, but are enjoyed in reality as the food of eternal life. 

Calvin is all for “communication” as long as it is relegated to the non-physical sphere.

For the odium with which this view is regarded by the world, and the unjust prejudice incurred by its defence, there is no cause, unless it be in the fearful fascinations of Satan. What we teach on the subject is in perfect accordance with Scripture, contains nothing absurd, obscure, or ambiguous, is not unfavourable to true piety and solid edification; in short, has nothing in it to offend, save that, for some ages, while the ignorance and barbarism of sophists reigned in the Church, the clear light and open truth were unbecomingly suppressed. 

I beg to differ and have been expending great amounts of effort to show exactly why I vehemently disagree with Calvin’s arguments (and also how I believe that the Bible clearly does, too).

And yet as Satan, by means of turbulent spirits, is still, in the present day, exerting himself to the utmost to bring dishonour on this doctrine by all kinds of calumny and reproach, it is right to assert and defend it with the greatest care.

We don’t doubt Calvin’s sincerity, only his reasoning or lack thereof and his lack of biblical and patristic support for his novel heresy.

20. This view vindicated from their calumnies. The words of the institution explained in opposition to the glosses of transubstantiators and consubstantiators. Their subterfuges and absurd blasphemies.
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Note how Luther (the founder of Protestantism), Melanchthon, and Lutherans are included in the description of “subterfuges and absurd blasphemies.” The early Protestants were not a big happy family, by a long shot.

Before we proceed farther, we must consider the ordinance itself, as instituted by Christ, because the most plausible objection of our opponents is, that we abandon his words. 

I agree!

To free ourselves from the obloquy with which they thus load us, 

Note the mutual antipathy between Calvinists and Lutherans . . .

the fittest course will be to begin with an interpretation of the words. Three Evangelists and Paul relate that our Saviour took bread, and after giving thanks, brake it, and gave it to his disciples, saving, Take, eat: this is my body which is given or broken for you. Of the cup, Matthew and Mark say, “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Mt. 26:26; Mark 14:22). Luke and Paul say, “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). The advocates of transubstantiation insist, that by the pronoun, this, is denoted the appearance of bread, because the whole complexion of our Saviour’s address is an act of consecration, and there is no substance which can be demonstrated. But if they adhere so religiously to the words, inasmuch as that which our Saviour gave to his disciples he declared to be his body, there is nothing more alien from the strict meaning of the words than the fiction, that what was bread is now body. What Christ takes into his hands, and gives to the apostles, he declares to be his body; but he had taken bread, and, therefore, who sees not that what is given is still bread? 

Jesus could have easily said, “this is a sign of my Body” or “this represents My Body.” But He did not. When Jesus spoke parables (which is pretty much what Calvin’s view entails with regard to the Eucharist, since the rite becomes symbolic and “spiritual” in a non-physical way), He often clarifies that the word pictures and analogies of the parable represent something else: a literal thing:

Matthew 13:18-20 Hear then the parable of the sower. [19] When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path. [20] As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; (cf. 13:22-23)

Matthew 13:31 Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field;

Matthew 13:33 He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

Matthew 13:36-40 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” [37] He answered, “He who sows the good seed is the Son of man; [38] the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one, [39] and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. [40] Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age.

Matthew 13:44-47 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. [45] “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, [46] who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. [47] “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind;

Mark 4:34 he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

Luke 8:11-14 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. [12] The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, that they may not believe and be saved. [13] And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy; but these have no root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. [14] And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.

Jesus does occasionally make reference to “signs”, but He does so in a way differently than Calvin does: a reduction of it to symbolism only. Jesus doesn’t separate sign and reality when He is talking about the Eucharist. In fact He takes the greatest pains to prove that He means what He says quite literally, especially in John 6:

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Transubstantiation, John 6, Faith and Rebellion [National Catholic Register, 12-3-17]
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Hence, nothing can be more absurd than to transfer what is affirmed of bread to the species of bread. 

It’s not absurd at all in a biblical worldview filled with unusual phenomena, supernatural occurrences, and rich symbolic imagery (construed so as not to necessarily entail pure symbolism in every case).

Others, in interpreting the particle is, as equivalent to being transubstantiated, have recourse to a gloss which is forced and violently wrested. 

“Is” is simple enough to understand in English. What other language could be used if indeed the writer meant a literal equation (as we hold)? If He uses “is” Calvin and others deny the plain meaning anyway. If He had used “sign” or some such, then Calvin would have had a field day claiming that this proves symbolism, whereas Jesus referred to the “sign of Jonah” and that was one literal event signifying or giving an analogy to another real event: His Resurrection, so that even the terminology of “sign” doesn’t necessarily prove that there is no reality.

They have no ground, therefore, for pretending that they are moved by a reverence for the words. The use of the term is, for being converted into something else, is unknown to every tongue and nation. 

I agree. At that point in the narrative, we would contend that the bread and wine have already been transformed, so the “is” doesn’t refer to the act of consecration and the miracle, but rather, to the consecrated elements that have already been miraculously changed.

With regard to those who leave the bread in the Supper, and affirm that it is the body of Christ, there is great diversity among them. 

As always in Protestantism . . .

Those who speak more modestly, though they insist upon the letter, This is my body, afterwards abandon this strictness, and observe that it is equivalent to saying that the body of Christ is with the bread, in the bread, and under the bread. To the reality which they affirm, we have already adverted, and will by-and-by, at greater length. I am not only considering the words by which they say they are prevented from admitting that the bread is called body, because it is a sign of the body. But if they shun everything like metaphor, why do they leap from the simple demonstration of Christ to modes of expression which are widely different? For there is a great difference between saying that the bread is the body, and that the body is with the bread. 

Calvin has a certain point. My present purpose is not to defend Lutheranism. They will have to do so themselves. But Calvin’s word games are hardly any more plausible to a Catholic observer than these difficulties that he observes in Lutheranism.

But seeing it impossible to maintain the simple proposition that the bread is the body, 

No position maintains that. Calvin says it is mystical symbolism and spiritual equation; Lutherans hold that they are both present; we say that one has become the other.

they endeavoured to evade the difficulty by concealing themselves under those forms of expression. 

Similar to Calvin and his verbal sleight-of-hand magic!

Others, who are bolder, hesitate not to assert that, strictly speaking, the bread is body, and in this way prove that they are truly of the letter. If it is objected that the bread, therefore, is Christ, and, being Christ, is God,—they will deny it, because the words of Christ do not expressly say so. But they gain nothing by their denial, since all agree that the whole Christ is offered to us in the Supper. It is intolerable blasphemy to affirm, without figure, of a fading and corruptible element, that it is Christ. 

We agree. So do Lutherans. This is why it is ridiculous for Calvinists (and Lutherans) to accuse us of idolatry. It can’t possibly be by the nature of the case, because nothing has replaced God. Calvinists accuse Lutherans of the same, but it is equally absurd because they haven’t equated bread and wine with God.

I now ask them, if they hold the two propositions to be identical, Christ is the Son of God, and Bread is the body of Christ? 

It is an inapt comparison: one is an ontological category, while the other has to do with a physical eucharistic miracle.

If they concede that they are different (and this, whether they will or not, they will be forced to do), let them tell wherein is the difference. All which they can adduce is, I presume, that the bread is called body in a sacramental manner. Hence it follows, that the words of Christ are not subject to the common rule, and ought not to be tested grammatically. I ask all these rigid and obstinate exactors of the letter, whether, when Luke and Paul call the cup the testament in blood, they do not express the same thing as in the previous clause, when they call bread the body? There certainly was the same solemnity in the one part of the mystery as in the other, and, as brevity is obscure, the longer sentence better elucidates the meaning. As often, therefore, as they contend, from the one expression, that the bread is body, I will adduce an apt interpretation from the longer expression, That it is a testament in the body. What? Can we seek for surer or more faithful expounders than Luke and Paul? I have no intention, however, to detract, in any respect, from the communication of the body of Christ, which I have acknowledged. I only meant to expose the foolish perverseness with which they carry on a war of words. 

Calvin does no differently; he interprets according to a wooden logic of his own, based on false premises.

The bread I understand, on the authority of Luke and Paul, to be the body of Christ, because it is a covenant in the body. If they impugn this, their quarrel is not with me, but with the Spirit of God. However often they may repeat, that reverence for the words of Christ will not allow them to give a figurative interpretation to what is spoken plainly, the pretext cannot justify them in thus rejecting all the contrary arguments which we adduce. Meanwhile, as I have already observed, it is proper to attend to the force of what is meant by a testament in the body and blood of Christ. The covenant, ratified by the sacrifice of death, would not avail us without the addition of that secret communication, by which we are made one with Christ.

There are plenty of arguments contra Calvin. I have been providing many: whatever one may think of them. But in any event we are not all struck dumb by the profundity of Calvin’s professed singular wisdom, as if there were no conceivable alternatives to his fancies.

21. Why the name of the thing signified is given to the sacramental symbols. This illustrated by passages of Scripture; also by a passage of Augustine.
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It remains, therefore, to hold, that on account of the affinity which the things signified have with their signs, the name of the thing itself is given to the sign figuratively, indeed, but very appropriately. I say nothing of allegories and parables, lest it should be alleged that I am seeking subterfuges, and slipping out of the present question. I say that the expression which is uniformly used in Scripture, when the sacred mysteries are treated of, is metonymical. For you cannot otherwise understand the expressions, that circumcision is a “covenant”—that the lamb is the Lord’s “passover”—that the sacrifices of the law are expiations—that the rock from which the water flowed in the desert was Christ,—unless you interpret them metonymically.”

Scripture, in its very rich use of language in many different ways, does include this attribute, but it doesn’t apply to the Eucharist, as has been shown in many different ways. The main way to determine whether an expression is metonymical is to look at context. When one does that, Calvin’s contention fails.

Nor is the name merely transferred from the superior to the inferior, but, on the contrary, the name of the visible sign is given to the thing signified, as when God is said to have appeared to Moses in the bush; 

God did appear in the burning bush; this is not even an example of what Calvin is discussing. The bush wasn’t called God. The Scripture says that God was “in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” (Ex 3:2) and “God called to him out of the bush” (Ex 3:3). That’s why those analogies are precisely analogous to the Catholic view of the Eucharist, and why I used them in that fashion. It shows how God can be “in” matter, while not becoming the matter. An omnipresent God was in the burning bush in some mysterious fashion. Likewise He is in what still appears to be bread and wine in a mysterious fashion.

the ark of the covenant is called God, and the face of God, 

Not sure what he is referring to . . . I’m unfamiliar with this, and I just recently looked through many passages about the ark of the covenant, in showing how God was associated with physical things.

and the dove is called the Holy Spirit. 

That is clearly symbolism, since the Spirit is immaterial.

For although the sign differs essentially from the thing signified, the latter being spiritual and heavenly, the former corporeal and visible,—yet, as it not only figures the thing which it is employed to represent as a naked and empty badge, but also truly exhibits it, why should not its name be justly applied to the thing? But if symbols humanly devised, which are rather the images of absent than the marks of present things, and of which they are very often most fallacious types, are sometimes honoured with their names,—with much greater reason do the institutions of God borrow the names of things, of which they always bear a sure, and by no means fallacious signification, and have the reality annexed to them. So great, then, is the similarity, and so close the connection between the two, that it is easy to pass from the one to the other. 

If the context permitted this, Calvin might have a point. But it does not. For example, when Paul talks about profaning the Body and Blood of Christ (1 Cor 11:27), that makes no sense whatever if all he was referring to was “special” bread and wine (and nothing else but that). All kinds of exegetical and cross-reference data in John 6 support the literal interpretation.

Let our opponents, therefore, cease to indulge their mirth in calling us Tropists, when we explain the sacramental mode of expression according to the common use of Scripture. 

Even granting that this was so obvious or plausible, why do the fathers all disagree with Calvin on this score?

For, while the sacraments agree in many things, there is also, in this metonymy, a certain community in all respects between them. As, therefore, the apostle says that the rock from which spiritual water flowed forth to the Israelites was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), and was thus a visible symbol under which, that spiritual drink was truly perceived, though not by the eye, so the body of Christ is now called bread, inasmuch as it is a symbol under which our Lord offers us the true eating of his body. 

This is an interesting analogy, but again, context in the eucharistic passages suggests that a lot more is intended than mere metonymy. It is always true in cases of possible divergent use of language, or forms of language, that context has to be consulted. A simple one-on-one comparison is not conclusive in and of itself.

Lest any one should despise this as a novel invention, the view which Augustine took and expressed was the same: “Had not the sacraments a certain resemblance to the things of which they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all. And from this resemblance, they generally have the names of the things themselves. This, as the sacrament of the body of Christ, is, after a certain manner, the body of Christ, and the sacrament of Christ is the blood of Christ; so the sacrament of faith is faith” (August. Ep. 23, ad Bonifac.). He has many similar passages, which it would be superfluous to collect, as that one may suffice. I need only remind my readers, that the same doctrine is taught by that holy man in his Epistle to Evodius. Where Augustine teaches that nothing is more common than metonymy in mysteries, it is a frivolous quibble to object that there is no mention of the Supper. 

Calvin is distorting what St. Augustine believed. For St. Augustine, as with our Lord Jesus, there is no necessary antithesis or rigid distinction between a sign and the thing that is a sign. I noted this elsewhere, in my published cover article on the Eucharist:

. . . “sign” and “reality” need not be opposed to each other. . . . The Bible itself confirms this. For example, Jesus refers to the “sign of Jonah,” comparing Jonah’s time in the belly of the fish to His own burial (Mt 12:38-40). In other words, both events, although described as “signs,” were literally real events. Jesus also uses the same terminology in connection with His Second Coming (Mt 24:30-31), which is, of course, believed by all Christians to be a literal, not a symbolic occurrence.

J. N. D. Kelly, a highly-respected Protestant scholar of early Church doctrine and development, writing about patristic views in the fourth and fifth centuries, concurs:

It must not be supposed, of course, that this ‘symbolical’ language implied that the bread and wine were regarded as mere pointers to, or tokens of, absent realities. Rather were they accepted as signs of realities which were somehow actually present though apprehended by faith alone. (Early Christian Doctrines, revised edition, 1978, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 442)

About St. Augustine in particular, Kelly concludes:

. . . There are certainly passages in his writings which give a superficial justification to all these interpretations, but a balanced verdict must agree that he accepted the current realism . . . One could multiply texts . . . which show Augustine taking for granted the traditional identification of the elements with the sacred body and blood. There can be no doubt that he shared the realism held by almost all his contemporaries and predecessors. (Ibid., 446-447)

Likewise, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church makes the same point about allusions to “symbolism” with regard to the general teaching of the Church Fathers:

Even where the elements were spoken of as ‘symbols’ or ‘antitypes’ there was no intention of denying the reality of the Presence in the gifts. (Second edition, edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, Oxford University Press, 1983, 475)

Here are further examples in the Bible of a “sign” being a real thing; not merely a representation of something else:

Matthew 24:30 then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory;

Matthew 26:48 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him.”

Mark 13:3-8 And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, [4] “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?” [5] And Jesus began to say to them, “Take heed that no one leads you astray. [6] Many will come in my name, saying, `I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. [7] And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet. [8] For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines; this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.

Mark 16:17 [disputed biblical text] And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; (cf. 16:20)

Luke 2:12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

Luke 11:30 For as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nin’eveh, so will the Son of man be to this generation.

John 2:11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

John 2:23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did;

John 3:2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.”

John 4:54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. [i.e., healing a man’s son]

John 6:2 And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. (cf. 6:14, 26, 30; 7:31; 9:16; 10:41; 11:47; 12:18, 37; 20:30)

Acts 2:22 Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know —

Acts 2:43 . . . many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. (cf. 4:16, 22, 30; 5:12; 6:8; 7:36; 8:6, 13; 14:3; 15:12)

Romans 15:19 by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyr’icum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ, (cf. 2 Cor 12:12; Heb 2:4)

Were this objection sustained, it would follow, that we are not entitled to argue from the genus to the species; e. g., Every animal is endued with motion; and, therefore, the horse and the ox are endued with motion. Indeed, longer discussion is rendered unnecessary by the words of the Saint himself, where he says, that when Christ gave the symbol of his body, he did not hesitate to call it his body (August. Cont. Adimantum, cap. 12). He elsewhere says, “Wonderful was the patience of Christ in admitting Judas to the feast, in which he committed and delivered to the disciples the symbol of his body and blood” (August. in. Ps. 3).

As explained above, with the aid of Protestant scholarly sources, Calvin is drawing an unwarranted conclusion about St. Augustine, as if he agreed with Calvin’s heresies.

22. Refutation of an objection founded on the words, This is. Objection answered.

*

Should any morose person, shutting his eyes to everything else, insist upon the expression, This is, as distinguishing this mystery from all others, the answer is easy. They say that the substantive verb is so emphatic, as to leave no room for interpretation. Though I should admit this, I answer, that the substantive verb occurs in the words of Paul (1 Cor. 10:16), where he calls the bread the communion of the body of Christ. But communion is something different from the body itself. 

This is an excellent example of how context provides the correct interpretation:

1 Corinthians 10: 18-21 Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? [19] What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? [20] No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. [21] You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.

Thus, in context, Paul is discussing a graphic comparison of sacrifice: that of the pagans at their “table” and that of Christians at theirs.

Nay, when the sacraments are treated of, the same word occurs: “My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant” (Gen. 17:13). “This is the ordinance of the passover” (Exod. 12:43). To say no more, when Paul declares that the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), why should the substantive verb, in that passage, be deemed less emphatic than in the discourse of Christ?

Because of context . . .

When John says, “The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39), I should like to know what is the force of the substantive verb? If the rule of our opponents is rigidly observed, the eternal essence of the Spirit will be destroyed, as if he had only begun to be after the ascension of Christ. 

How does that follow? This passage is about the indwelling being possible for all Christians, whereas before that time it had only been selectively the case. Calvin no doubt caricatures Catholic arguments here (whatever they were), as he is wont to do.

Let them tell me, in fine, what is meant by the declaration of Paul, that baptism is “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Tit. 3:5); though it is certain that to many it was of no use. 

That baptism regenerates (obviously)!

But they cannot be more effectually refuted than by the expression of Paul, that the Church is Christ. For, after introducing the similitude of the human body, he adds, “So also is Christ” (1 Cor. 7:12), when he means not the only-begotten Son of God in himself, but in his members. 

That gets back to the literalism I referred to in a past reply: there is an equation of the Body of Christ (the Church) with Christ Himself: most notably seen in the language Jesus uses towards Paul at his conversion.

I think I have now gained this much, that all men of sense and integrity will be disgusted with the calumnies of our enemies, when they give out that we discredit the words of Christ; though we embrace them not less obediently than they do, and ponder them with greater reverence. Nay, their supine security proves that they do not greatly care what Christ meant, provided it furnishes them with a shield to defend their obstinacy, while our careful investigation should be an evidence of the authority which we yield to Christ. They invidiously pretend that human reason will not allow us to believe what Christ uttered with his sacred mouth; but how naughtily they endeavour to fix this odium upon us, I have already, in a great measure, shown, and will still show more clearly. Nothing, therefore, prevents us from believing Christ speaking, and from acquiescing in everything to which he intimates his assent.

I have offered reasoned arguments. I don’t need to get into the ceaseless insults and aspersions upon motivations that Calvin utilizes, or how reverent each party may be.

The only question here is, whether it be unlawful to inquire into the genuine meaning?

Of course it is lawful and necessary. And when we do that, I contend that the extreme weakness of Calvin’s counter-case is revealed all the more.

23. Other objections answered.

*

Those worthy masters, to show that they are of the letter, forbid us to deviate, in the least, from the letter. On the contrary, when Scripture calls God a man of war, as I see that the expression would be too harsh if not interpreted, I have no doubt that the similitude is taken from man. And, indeed, the only pretext which enabled the Anthropomorphites to annoy the orthodox Fathers was by fastening on the expressions, “The eyes of God see;” “It ascended to his ears;” “His hand is stretched out;” “The earth is his footstool;” and exclaimed, that God was deprived of the body which Scripture assigns to him. Were this rule admitted, complete barbarism would bury the whole light of faith. What monstrous absurdities shall fanatical men not be able to extract, if they are allowed to urge every knotty point in support of their dogmas? 

Catholics have no objection to anthropomorphism or anthropopathism. Again, context is crucial in showing how the Eucharist is a different case.

Their objection, that it is not probable that when Christ was providing special comfort for the apostles in adversity, he spoke enigmatically or obscurely,—supports our view. For, had it not occurred to the apostles that the bread was called the body figuratively, as being a symbol of the body, the extraordinary nature of the thing would doubtless have filled them with perplexity. For, at this very period, John relates, that the slightest difficulties perplexed them (John 14:5, 8; 16:17). They debate, among themselves, how Christ is to go to the Father, and not understanding that the things which were said referred to the heavenly Father, raise a question as to how he is to go out of the world until they shall see him? How, then, could they have been so ready to believe what is repugnant to all reason—viz. that Christ was seated at table under their eye, and yet was contained invisible under the bread? As they attest their consent by eating this bread without hesitation, it is plain that they understood the words of Christ in the same sense as we do, considering what ought not to seem unusual when mysteries are spoken of, that the name of the thing signified was transferred to the sign. 

That doesn’t follow at all. We simply don’t have enough information. They could have been obedient while not understanding; could have partaken in a stunned, bewildered silence, assuming that Jesus would explain what He meant more fully later, as He did with His parables; it may have been inappropriate to speak in a ceremonial sense at the time, during the Passover. meal. So this is a rather weak argument from silence.

What we do know is that in John 6, some of His disciples were perplexed about His meaning (Jn 6:60-61). Jesus never explains that it is merely a symbol (6:62-63 and previous related passages in the same discourse), and so these disciples forsook Him (John 6:66-67). We know for a fact that it was due to disbelief and lack of faith, because Jesus said so, and the narrator reiterates it (6:64). That is actual, explicit scriptural proof from a concrete incident. The only time we know of when Jesus’ disciples left Him was because they refused to accept in faith the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

There was therefore to the disciples, as there is to us, clear and sure consolation, not involved in any enigma; and the only reason why certain persons reject our interpretation is, because they are blinded by a delusion of the devil to introduce the darkness of enigma, instead of the obvious interpretation of an appropriate figure. 

Whoever disagrees with Calvin must do so under a demonic delusion, and due to bad character . . .

Besides, if we insist strictly on the words, our Saviour will be made to affirm erroneously something of the bread different from the cup. He calls the bread body, and the wine blood. There must either be a confusion in terms, or there must be a division separating the body from the blood. Nay, “This is my body,” may be as truly affirmed of the cup as of the bread; and it may in turn be affirmed that the bread is the blood. If they answer, that we must look to the end or use for which symbols were instituted, I admit it: but still they will not disencumber themselves of the absurdity which their error drags along with it—viz. that the bread is blood, and the wine is body. Then I know not what they mean when they concede that bread and body are different things, and yet maintain that the one is predicated of the other, properly and without figure, as if one were to say that a garment is different from a man, and yet is properly called a man. Still, as if the victory depended on obstinacy and invective, they say that Christ is charged with falsehood, when it is attempted to interpret his words. It will now be easy for the reader to understand the injustice which is done to us by those carpers at syllables, when they possess the simple with the idea that we bring discredit on the words of Christ; words which, as we have shown, are madly perverted and confounded by them, but are faithfully and accurately expounded by us.

Most of this has been dealt with already in my past installments; it’s mere reiteration on Calvin’s part.

***

(originally 11-27-09)

Photo credit: Historical mixed media figure of John Calvin produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d’Aprix: from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures archive [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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January 31, 2019

January 31, 2019 By

This is an installment of a series of replies (see the Introduction and Master List) to much of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church) of Institutes of the Christian Religion, by early Protestant leader John Calvin (1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin; available online. Calvin’s words will be in blue. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.

Related reading from yours truly:

Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin (2010 book: 388 pages)

A Biblical Critique of Calvinism (2012 book: 178 pages)

Biblical Catholic Salvation: “Faith Working Through Love” (2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of “TULIP”)

*****

IV, 17:3-10

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Book IV

CHAPTER 17

3. The Lord’s Supper exhibits the great blessings of redemption, and even Christ himself. This even evident from the words of the institution. The thing specially to be considered in them. Congruity of the signs and the things signified.
*

To all these things we have a complete attestation in this sacrament, enabling us certainly to conclude that they are as truly exhibited to us as if Christ were placed in bodily presence before our view, or handled by our hands. 

Note the “as if” — it dilutes the Real Presence.

For these are words which can never lie nor deceive—Take, eat, drink. This is my body, which is broken for you: this is my blood, which is shed for the remission of sins. 

Indeed they cannot: if they are believed and not sophistically watered down and explained away.

In bidding us take, he intimates that it is ours: in bidding us eat, he intimates that it becomes one substance with us: in affirming of his body that it was broken, and of his blood that it was shed for us, he shows that both were not so much his own as ours, because he took and laid down both, not for his own advantage, but for our salvation. And we ought carefully to observe, that the chief, and almost the whole energy of the sacrament, consists in these words, It is broken for you: it is shed for you. It would not be of much importance to us that the body and blood of the Lord are now distributed, had they not once been set forth for our redemption and salvation. Wherefore they are represented under bread and wine, that we may learn that they are not only ours, but intended to nourish our spiritual life; that is, as we formerly observed, by the corporeal things which are produced in the sacrament, we are by a kind of analogy conducted to spiritual things. Thus when bread is given as a symbol of the body of Christ, we must immediately think of this similitude. 

The bread and wine is initially symbolic, but when transubstantiation takes place, Jesus is truly physically present under the appearances of bread and wine. That is the step Calvin refuses to take: over against the Bible and the fathers (virtually to a man).

As bread nourishes, sustains, and protects our bodily life, so the body of Christ is the only food to invigorate and keep alive the soul. When we behold wine set forth as a symbol of blood, we must think that such use as wine serves to the body, the same is spiritually bestowed by the blood of Christ; 

“Symbol”, “spiritually bestowed” . . . For the Catholic, spiritual realities are not inherently antithetical to physical realities, because for us, the Eucharist is an extension of the Incarnation, which was very much a physical reality.

and the use is to foster, refresh, strengthen, and exhilarate. For if we duly consider what profit we have gained by the breaking of his sacred body, and the shedding of his blood, we shall clearly perceive that these properties of bread and wine, agreeably to this analogy, most appropriately represent it when they are communicated to us.

“Analogy”, “represent” . . . we see the direction of Calvin’s thought. He is far closer to Zwingli’s pure symbolism than to Luther’s traditional eucharistic realism.

4. The chief parts of this sacrament.
*

Therefore, it is not the principal part of a sacrament simply to hold forth the body of Christ to us without any higher consideration, but rather to seal and confirm that promise by which he testifies that his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood drink indeed, nourishing us unto life eternal, and by which he affirms that he is the bread of life, of which, whosoever shall eat, shall live for ever—I say, to seal and confirm that promise, and in order to do so, it sends us to the cross of Christ, where that promise was performed and fulfilled in all its parts. 

Typical Calvin incoherent word games and sophistry: going far beyond what the biblical text teaches us about these matters . . . again, the Eucharist can only “seal and confirm that promise” rather than be the actual Body and Blood of Christ. It’s the same thinking process he applied to baptism. It is no less fallacious in this instance than it was in that one.

For we do not eat Christ duly and savingly unless as crucified, while with lively apprehension we perceive the efficacy of his death. 

Obviously the crucifixion is the backdrop of the Eucharist. Catholics and Protestants have no disagreement on that.

When he called himself the bread of life, he did not take that appellation from the sacrament, as some perversely interpret; but such as he was given to us by the Father, such he exhibited himself when becoming partaker of our human mortality, he made us partakers of his divine immortality; when offering himself in sacrifice, he took our curse upon himself, that he might cover us with his blessing, when by his death he devoured and swallowed up death, when in his resurrection he raised our corruptible flesh, which he had put on, to glory and incorruption.

This is all true.

5. How Christ, the Bread of Life, is to be received by us. Two faults to be avoided. The receiving of it must bear reference both to faith and the effect of faith. What meant by eating Christ. In what sense Christ the bread of life.
*

It only remains that the whole become ours by application. This is done by means of the gospel, and more clearly by the sacred Supper, where Christ offers himself to us with all his blessings, and we receive him in faith. The sacrament, therefore, does not make Christ become for the first time the bread of life; but, while it calls to remembrance that Christ was made the bread of life that we may constantly eat him, it gives us a taste and relish for that bread, and makes us feel its efficacy. For it assures us, first, that whatever Christ did or suffered was done to give us life; and, secondly, that this quickening is eternal; by it we are ceaselessly nourished, sustained, and preserved in life. 

This is very subtle heretical reasoning: the Eucharist has power not because of what it inherently is: the Body and Blood of Christ, but only because it represents other things that we comprehend in and with faith. Hence, “it calls to remembrance that Christ was made the bread of life.”

For as Christ would not have not been the bread of life to us if he had not been born, if he had not died and risen again; so he could not now be the bread of life, were not the efficacy and fruit of his nativity, death, and resurrection, eternal. All this Christ has elegantly expressed in these words, “The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51); doubtless intimating, that his body will be as bread in regard to the spiritual life of the soul, because it was to be delivered to death for our salvation, and that he extends it to us for food when he makes us partakers of it by faith. Wherefore he once gave himself that he might become bread, 

Jesus doesn’t become a piece of bread. This is the absurdity that Calvin’s position actually entails, but that, ironically, Catholics are accused of believing: as if we consciously believe we are worshiping wheat bread rather than Jesus Himself. Because the Calvinist Eucharist remains bread, they then apply the same state of affairs to Catholic worship; therefore, they accuse us of idolatry because we worship Jesus in the Eucharist (whereas they do not, precisely because for them it is not actually the Body and Blood).

But if anything is truly characterized as idolatry, it is the Calvinist position, since the bread never ceases being what it is. Catholics believe that God can be specially present in many different ways: for example, as in the pillars of cloud and fire, or in the ark of the Covenant and Holy of Holies. The Eucharist takes it a step further, in light of the Incarnation, since God has now become man. Calvin doesn’t grasp the new realities that the Incarnation has opened up.

when he gave himself to be crucified for the redemption of the world; and he gives himself daily, when in the word of the gospel he offers himself to be partaken by us, inasmuch as he was crucified, when he seals that offer by the sacred mystery of the Supper, and when he accomplishes inwardly what he externally designates. Moreover, two faults are here to be avoided. We must neither, by setting too little value on the signs, dissever them from their meanings to which they are in some degree annexed, nor by immoderately extolling them, seem somewhat to obscure the mysteries themselves. That Christ is the bread of life by which believers are nourished unto eternal life, no man is so utterly devoid of religion as not to acknowledge. But all are not agreed as to the mode of partaking of him. 

Exactly. Some depart from the universal understanding of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, from Jesus and the apostles until Calvin’s time.

For there are some who define the eating of the flesh of Christ, and the drinking of his blood, to be, in one word, nothing more than believing in Christ himself. But Christ seems to me to have intended to teach something more express and more sublime in that noble discourse, in which he recommends the eating of his flesh—viz. that we are quickened by the true partaking of him, which he designated by the terms eating and drinking, lest any one should suppose that the life which we obtain from him is obtained by simple knowledge. For as it is not the sight but the eating of bread that gives nourishment to the body, so the soul must partake of Christ truly and thoroughly, that by his energy it may grow up into spiritual life. 

Here he is describing the purely symbolic position of Zwingli and the Anabaptists (and of many Protestants, including Calvinists, today).

Meanwhile, we admit that this is nothing else than the eating of faith, and that no other eating can be imagined. But there is this difference between their mode of speaking and mine. According to them, to eat is merely to believe; while I maintain that the flesh of Christ is eaten by believing, because it is made ours by faith, and that that eating is the effect and fruit of faith; 

Yet it is not the true Body and Blood that are eaten. Is this not, in most major respects, a distinction without a difference? Calvin wants to play word games and draw complicated distinctions, to try to distinguish himself from the Anabaptists and Zwingli on the one hand, and Luther and Catholics, on the other. Yet in the end we are left with his position that the Eucharist does not literally give us Jesus’ Body and Blood, as Jesus Himself plainly says that it does. What we receive is one step removed from actual reality. It has become abstracted and only spiritual (in the non-physical sense).

or, if you will have it more clearly, according to them, eating is faith, whereas it rather seems to me to be a consequence of faith. The difference is little in words, but not little in reality. 

No; in fact the difference is little in reality, despite the word games Calvin applies, because there is a “bottom line” and a premise and a presupposition underneath all the flowery, high-sounding, pious rhetoric.

For, although the apostle teaches that Christ dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17), no one will interpret that dwelling to be faith. All see that it explains the admirable effect of faith, because to it it is owing that believers have Christ dwelling in them. In this way, the Lord was pleased, by calling himself the bread of life, not only to teach that our salvation is treasured up in the faith of his death and resurrection, but also, by virtue of true communication with him, his life passes into us and becomes ours, just as bread when taken for food gives vigour to the body.

This is true, as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go far enough: to Real Presence and transubstantiation.

6. This mode of eating confirmed by the authority of Augustine and Chrysostom.
*

When Augustine, whom they claim as their patron, wrote, that we eat by believing, all he meant was to indicate that that eating is of faith, and not of the mouth. This I deny not; but I at the same time add, that by faith we embrace Christ, not as appearing at a distance, but as uniting himself to us, he being our head, and we his members. 

And Catholics add that we receive His actual Body and Blood.

I do not absolutely disapprove of that mode of speaking; I only deny that it is a full interpretation, if they mean to define what it is to eat the flesh of Christ. 

And we deny in turn that Calvin’s interpretation is the full one. It is tragically incomplete.

I see that Augustine repeatedly used this form of expression, as when he said (De Doct. Christ. Lib. 3), “ Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man” is a figurative expression enjoining us to have communion with our Lord’s passion, and sweetly and usefully to treasure in our memory that his flesh was crucified and wounded for us. Also when he says, “These three thousand men who were converted at the preaching of Peter (Acts 2:41), by believing, drank the blood which they had cruelly shed.” But in very many other passages he admirably commends faith for this, that by means of it our souls are not less refreshed by the communion of the blood of Christ, than our bodies with the bread which they eat. 

St. Augustine (unlike Calvin) believed in the Real, Substantial Presence in the Eucharist. I have copiously documented this. He didn’t fall into the illogical “either/or” mentality: pitting sign against reality, as Calvin does.

The very same thing is said by Chrysostom, “Christ makes us his body, not by faith only, but in reality.” He does not mean that we obtain this blessing from any other quarter than from faith: he only intends to prevent any one from thinking of mere imagination when he hears the name of faith. 

Yes: he, too, has a realist view that Calvin moves away from, while continuing to semi-dishonestly cite these fathers as on his side (by a selective presentation). Hence, Anglican patristic scholar J. N. D. Kelly writes of St. John Chrysostom:

While admitting that the spiritual gift can be apprehended only by the eyes of the mind and not by sense, Chrysostom exploits the materialist implications of the conversion theory to the full . . . Thus the elements have undergone a change, and Chrysostom describes them as being refashioned or transformed. In the fifth century conversionist views were taken for granted by Alexandrians and Antiochenes alike. . . . [In prod. Iud. hom. I, 6; in Matt. hom. 82, 5] (Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper & Row, fifth revised edition, 1978, 443-444)

St. John Chrysostom believed that the bread and wine change into His Body and Blood:

“This is My Body,” he says. This statement transforms the gifts. (Homilies on the Treachery of Judas, 1, 6)

I say nothing of those who hold that the Supper is merely a mark of external profession, because I think I sufficiently refuted their error when I treated of the sacraments in general (Chap. 14 sec. 13). Only let my readers observe, that when the cup is called the covenant in blood (Luke 22:20), the promise which tends to confirm faith is expressed. Hence it follows, that unless we have respect to God, and embrace what he offers, we do not make a right use of the sacred Supper.

That’s correct. We must approach the Lord’s Table in all solemnity, without serious sin on our soul, and believing in the miracle that has taken place.

7. It is not sufficient, while omitting all mention of flesh and blood, to recognise this communion merely as spiritual. It is impossible fully to comprehend it in the present life.
*

I am not satisfied with the view of those who, while acknowledging that we have some kind of communion with Christ, only make us partakers of the Spirit, omitting all mention of flesh and blood.

That’s more consistent, I submit, than Calvin “mentioning” flesh and blood, while believing at the same time that they are not really there. At least Zwingli is elegantly simplistic in his heretical error, rather than sophistically convoluted, as Calvin is. From a Catholic perspective, in some ways Calvin’s error is more objectionable than Zwingli’s, because it seems that Calvin should know better than to believe what he does. He’s beholden to mere philosophies and traditions of men, whereas Zwingli is clueless from the outset, and so perhaps can get somewhat of a pass for ignorance.

As if it were said to no purpose at all, that his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed; that we have no life unless we eat that flesh and drink that blood; and so forth.

That’s right. If only Calvin would accept these words at face value . . . He uses them against Zwingli and pure symbolism, yet ironically falls back toward that position himself, more than towards Lutheran and Catholic traditional eucharistic realism.

Therefore, if it is evident that full communion with Christ goes beyond their description, which is too confined, I will attempt briefly to show how far it extends, before proceeding to speak of the contrary vice of excess.

Calvin places himself in the middle, and assumes that this is reasonable. But what Jesus applies to zeal, I would also apply to Calvin’s “moderate” position on the Eucharist:

Revelation 3:15b-16 Would that you were cold or hot! [16] So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.

To follow the analogy: Zwingli is “cold” and the Catholic position is “hot.” Calvin’s view is the “lukewarm” one. It is nothing to glory in.

For I shall have a longer discussion with these hyperbolical doctors, who, according to their gross ideas, fabricate an absurd mode of eating and drinking, and transfigure Christ, after divesting him of his flesh, into a phantom: if, indeed, it be lawful to put this great mystery into words, a mystery which I feel, and therefore freely confess that I am unable to comprehend with my mind, so far am I from wishing any one to measure its sublimity by my feeble capacity.

I would have thought Calvin was describing his own position here. Perhaps a bit of projection . . .

Nay, I rather exhort my readers not to confine their apprehension within those too narrow limits, but to attempt to rise much higher than I can guide them. For whenever this subject is considered, after I have done my utmost, I feel that I have spoken far beneath its dignity.

I can wholeheartedly agree with that!

And though the mind is more powerful in thought than the tongue in expression, it too is overcome and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the subject. All then that remains is to break forth in admiration of the mystery, which it is plain that the mind is inadequate to comprehend, or the tongue to express. I will, however, give a summary of my view as I best can, not doubting its truth, and therefore trusting that it will not be disapproved by pious breasts.

The great mystery and difficulty in understanding the Eucharist for all parties, partially accounts, no doubt, for Calvin’s glaring errors in his own position. But he chose to place himself in a position of authority and to speak dogmatically over against the Catholic tradition. No one forced him at gunpoint to do so. Therefore, he must be held responsible and accountable for the confusion and disbelief that his views caused in others, according to the scriptural injunction:

James 3:1 Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness.

8. In explanation of it, it may be observed,—I. There is no life at all save in Christ. II. Christ has life in a twofold sense; first, in himself, as he is God; and, secondly, by transfusing it into the flesh which he assumed, that he might thereby communicate life to us.
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First of all, we are taught by the Scriptures that Christ was from the beginning the living Word of the Father, the fountain and origin of life, from which all things should always receive life. Hence John at one time calls him the Word of life, and at another says, that in him was life; intimating, that he, even then pervading all creatures, instilled into them the power of breathing and living. He afterwards adds, that the life was at length manifested, when the Son of God, assuming our nature, exhibited himself in bodily form to be seen and handled. For although he previously diffused his virtue into the creatures, yet as man, because alienated from God by sin,

Jesus was never “alienated from God” because He was God as well as man. This is Nestorian heresy and blasphemy.

had lost the communication of life, and saw death on every side impending over him,

That never happened, either.

he behoved, in order to regain the hope of immortality,

Jesus never lost hope of immortality. He didn’t have to “hope” in it at all (or have “faith” – which is a creaturely attribute, not a divine one), as He already possessed it and knew full well that He did. More Nestorian nonsense and highly deficient Christology . . .

to be restored to the communion of that Word.

Jesus didn’t have to be “restored.”

How little confidence can it give you, to know that the Word of God, from which you are at the greatest distance, contains within himself the fulness of life, whereas in yourself, in whatever direction you turn, you see nothing but death? But ever since that fountain of life began to dwell in our nature, he no longer lies hid at a distance from us, but exhibits himself openly for our participation. Nay, the very flesh in which he resides he makes vivifying to us, that by partaking of it we may feed for immortality. “I,” says he, “am that bread of life;” “I am the living bread which came down from heaven;” “And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:48, 51).

This is correct, but Calvin waters it down and makes his view incoherent by rejecting eucharistic realism.

By these words he declares, not only that he is life, inasmuch as he is the eternal Word of God who came down to us from heaven, but, by coming down, gave vigour to the flesh which he assumed, that a communication of life to us might thence emanate. Hence, too, he adds, that his flesh is meat indeed, and that his blood is drink indeed: by this food believers are reared to eternal life.

One wonders how Calvin can miss the clear meaning in “meat indeed” and “drink indeed”?

The pious, therefore, have admirable comfort in this, that they now find life in their own flesh. For they not only reach it by easy access, but have it spontaneously set forth before them. Let them only throw open the door of their hearts that they may take it into their embrace, and they will obtain it.

Believing in Calvin’s errors will not speed up that process or make it easier.

9. This confirmed from Cyril, and by a familiar example. How the flesh of Christ gives life, and what the nature of our communion with Christ.
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The flesh of Christ, however, has not such power in itself as to make us live, seeing that by its own first condition it was subject to mortality, and even now, when endued with immortality, lives not by itself. Still it is properly said to be life-giving, as it is pervaded with the fulness of life for the purpose of transmitting it to us.

The first sentence might easily be interpreted as more Nestorianism, but I’ll let that pass and give Calvin the benefit of the doubt, since there is a sense in which some of this is true, and his next sentence is much better. In any event, Scripture asserts that the blood of Christ has an inherent power:

Acts 20:28 Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son.

Romans 3:25 whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. . . .

Romans 5:9 Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace

Ephesians 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ.

Colossians 1:20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Hebrews 9:11-14 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) [12] he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. [13] For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, [14] how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,

Hebrews 10:29 How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace?

Hebrews 13:12 So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

Hebrews 13:20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,

1 Peter 1:18-19 You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, [19] but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

1 John 1:7 but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Revelation 1:5 and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood

Revelation 5:9 and they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation,

Revelation 7:14 I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

In a paper about basic Christology, I clarified some matters that may be relevant presently:

The orthodox Catholic notion of communicatio idiomatum holds that:

The human and the divine activities predicated of Christ in Holy Writ and in the Fathers may not be divided between persons or hypostases, the Man-Christ and the God-Logos, but must be attributed to the one Christ, the Logos become Flesh . . . It is the Divine Logos, who suffered in the flesh, was crucified, and rose again . . . (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 144)

Christ’s Divine and Human characteristics and activities are to be predicated of the one Word Incarnate. (De fide.)

As Christ’s Divine Person subsists in two natures, and may be referred to either of those two natures, so human things can be asserted of the son of God and Divine things of the Son of Man. (Ott, p. 160)

In this sense I understand our Saviour’s words as Cyril interprets them, “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). For there properly he is speaking not of the properties which he possessed with the Father from the beginning, but of those with which he was invested in the flesh in which he appeared. Accordingly, he shows that in his humanity also fulness of life resides, so that every one who communicates in his flesh and blood, at the same time enjoys the participation of life. The nature of this may be explained by a familiar example. As water is at one time drunk out of the fountain, at another drawn, at another led away by conduits to irrigate the fields, and yet does not flow forth of itself for all these uses, but is taken from its source, which, with perennial flow, ever and anon sends forth a new and sufficient supply; so the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain, which transfuses into us the life flowing forth from the Godhead into itself. Now, who sees not that the communion of the flesh and blood of Christ is necessary to all who aspire to the heavenly life?

Then why not maintain the biblical realism that is so apparent not only in the eucharistic passages, but also the (semi-eucharistic?) ones about blood above?

Hence those passages of the apostle: The Church is the “body” of Christ; his “fulness.” He is “the head,” “from whence the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth,” “maketh increase of the body” (Eph. 1:23; 4:15,16). Our bodies are the “members of Christ” (1 Cor. 6:15). We perceive that all these things cannot possibly take place unless he adheres to us wholly in body and spirit.

More realism, which reinforces my overall point . . .

But the very close connection which unites us to his flesh, he illustrated with still more splendid epithets, when he said that we “are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph. 5:30). At length, to testify that the matter is too high for utterance, he concludes with exclaiming, “This is a great mystery” (Eph. 5:32). It were, therefore, extreme infatuation not to acknowledge the communion of believers with the body and blood of the Lord, a communion which the apostle declares to be so great, that he chooses rather to marvel at it than to explain it.

Just because it is a mystery (not completely grasped by reason alone and requiring much supernatural faith), it doesn’t follow that we have to relegate the whole thing to symbolism or mysticism, rather than literalness and realism. We need not fully understand a thing in order to believe that it is real and not merely symbolic of something else that is real. In other words, lack of full understanding in our reason is no necessity for moving to symbolism, as a way to comprehend the mystery.

That doesn’t follow. We don’t have to place everything in the neat little box of our own making, based on our inadequate comprehension. We can believe, for example, that electricity or light or protons and neutrons and electrons are real things, without fully understanding all the ins and outs of them.

10. No distance of place can impede it. In the Supper it is not presented as an empty symbol, but, as the apostle testifies, we receive the reality. Objection, that the expression is figurative. Answer. A sure rule with regard to the sacraments.
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The sum is, that the flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread and wine maintain and support our corporeal life.

It doesn’t necessarily follow (logically) that the “flesh and blood of Christ” must be received only mystically and immaterially, because our souls are immaterial, which is subtly implied by the comparison above:

Physical food supports a physical body.

Non-physical spiritual food supports non-physical souls.

For there would be no aptitude in the sign, did not our souls find their nourishment in Christ. This could not be, did not Christ truly form one with us, and refresh us by the eating of his flesh, and the drinking of his blood. But though it seems an incredible thing that the flesh of Christ, while at such a distance from us in respect of place, should be food to us,

Here we start to realize how far from the truth of the Eucharist Calvin really is. Note how he separates the flesh of Christ from the Eucharist, by stating that it is in actuality “at such a distance from us in respect of place.” This gets into his notion (which he elaborates later) that Jesus cannot possibly extend His incarnation in a miraculous eucharistic sense; Calvin has Him confined in heaven, as if that is required of a Divine Person Who is omnipresent and omnipotent.

let us remember how far the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit surpasses all our conceptions, and how foolish it is to wish to measure its immensity by our feeble capacity.

And to limit God due to our own lack of understanding of biblical, Christological categories . . .

Therefore, what our mind does not comprehend let faith conceive—viz. that the Spirit truly unites things separated by space.

Why cannot the same Spirit (Who is the Omnipotent God) unite things spatially and physically? Why is one thing considered impossible while the other is possible merely because it is non-material? Calvin arbitrarily limits God. This is a major flaw in his eucharistic theology.

That sacred communion of flesh and blood by which Christ transfuses his life into us, just as if it penetrated our bones and marrow,

It’s the “just as if” which is unnecessary and mistaken. God has the power to actually “penetrate our bones and marrow.” Why would He not do so?

he testifies and seals in the Supper, and that not by presenting a vain or empty sign, but by there exerting an efficacy of the Spirit by which he fulfils what he promises.

Calvin’s ultimately shallow and “lukewarm” middle ground again . . .

And truly the thing there signified he exhibits and offers to all who sit down at that spiritual feast, although it is beneficially received by believers only who receive this great benefit with true faith and heartfelt gratitude.

“Signified” and “spiritual feast” exhibit Calvin’s non-physical mysticism.

For this reason the apostle said, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ”? (1 Cor. 10:16.) There is no ground to object that the expression is figurative, and gives the sign the name of the thing signified. I admit, indeed, that the breaking of bread is a symbol, not the reality.

And here we see Calvin’s blind refusal to accept the text at face value. How much clearer could St. Paul be? What else could he say to get across that he intended literal realism and equation of the Eucharist with the Body and Blood of Christ? Why are these words not sufficient? Yet Calvin (astonishingly) redefines Paul’s rather obvious meaning. At some point this must be accounted for. Why does Calvin think in this way?

My theory through the years has been to posit a certain antipathy to matter as inferior to spirit (hearkening back to the Docetic heresy and the pagan Greek philosophy that also led to Gnosticism): an aversion to sacramentalism, and ultimately an insufficient understanding of the import of the Incarnation, which lies behind eucharistic sacramentalism. If one looks down on matter as inferior, then one will tend to reduce physical sacraments to mere symbolism or only a little less objectionable mysticism, or to discard them altogether. And this antipathy extends to a rejection of things like the Sacrifice of the Mass and relics as well.

But this being admitted, we duly infer from the exhibition of the symbol that the thing itself is exhibited. For unless we would charge God with deceit, we will never presume to say that he holds forth an empty symbol.

Nor a symbol, empty or not, when He intends physical presence.

Therefore, if by the breaking of bread the Lord truly represents the partaking of his body,

Not “represents” only, but “presents”.

there ought to be no doubt whatever that he truly exhibits and performs it. The rule which the pious ought always to observe is, whenever they see the symbols instituted by the Lord, to think and feel surely persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is also present.

It is truly disconcerting to see Calvin assert the same basic and unscriptural category errors over and over. He is beholden to some false traditions of men in this regard.

For why does the Lord put the symbol of his body into your hands, but just to assure you that you truly partake of him?

Why indeed would He do that when He has the power to actually give us Himself in a tangible, physical way?

If this is true let us feel as much assured that the visible sign is given us in seal of an invisible gift as that his body itself is given to us.

I would also suggest that there is a certain lack of faith exhibited in these errors. Calvin doesn’t have enough faith to believe that God could become physically present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in what was once bread and wine. It takes a lot of faith to believe that, and Calvin and his followers lack it for some reason. False teaching, therefore, has the sad effect of lessening the faith of its adherents, and making them less aware of supernatural realities that they might otherwise be open to, but for the inculcation of false teachings and misguided category mistakes.

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(originally 11-24-09)

Photo credit: Historical mixed media figure of John Calvin produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d’Aprix: from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures archive [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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October 22, 2018

October 22, 2018 By

. . . Especially St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Theology of the Eucharist

My two dialogue opponents are Reformed Protestant (Calvinist). Dr. Joel Garver‘s words will be in blue; Kevin Johnson’s in green. See the related paper, from five days earlier: John Calvin and St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Comparative Eucharistic Theology. Reference is made to it below.

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I would like to particularly thank Joel for replying (though also Kevin, of course); I know he must be a very busy man (like all academics) and could find many better things to do, so I appreciate it, and I again express my great admiration for his fine work.

Well, I also still think you’re pretty much talking right past what Kevin is saying and what much of recent scholarship has indicated.

Perhaps so, but if so, I will have to be shown this by rational argumentation, with documentation (as I have tried to do). As for recent scholarship, I would be delighted to learn what it holds. I have neither the time nor money to follow all of that (even less now, after having started a part-time job that requires my services seven days a week), but if someone such as yourself can summarize it for me or send me to some links which do, I am all ears. Please teach us.

As you indicate, the fundamental question here is not whether Calvin rejected the late medieval doctrine that he identified with “transubstantiation” because, of course, he did. The question is [a] whether that late medieval doctrine was identical with that of Cyril and a number of the early Fathers when understood in their own immediate contexts and 

I think (based on what I know, be it a little or a lot) that the (“Roman”) Catholic doctrine is far closer to St. Cyril’s doctrine than Calvin’s is. Development is a given. The terminology and Aristotelian philosophical sophistication (as well as the theology itself) developed, but the essential components remain the same: however one calls it, this view entails a transformation of the bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ. Cyril clearly teaches this; so does the Catholic Church. Calvin does not. One can quibble about words all day long, but this is the bottom line.

[b] whether, when properly contextualized, Calvin coincides with Cyril in important ways that separate them both from the late medieval context.

Okay; well, again, teach us; show us where we have gone astray. I’ve done my work. Now, if my argument is to be overthrown I need to be shown by you or someone else at what point it went off: how it took anything out of context or (inadvertently, as it was surely not deliberate) misrepresented anything or drew wrong conclusions, etc. This can’t be done by simply making general statements. it has to be argued properly . . . Surely as a philosopher, you understand this. Whether you have time to do so yourself is something else, but you must agree that what I have produced will take a bit of work and time to overthrow.

On the question of the presence of Christ himself in the eucharist, when the Reformers speak of “transubstantiation” and reject it, they are speaking of a particular theory of Christ’s presence, cashed out in terms of substance and accidents, as those categories were communicated to them in the context of later medieval ontologies, which were either nominalistic or a kind thomism knocked out of shape by nominalism.

Perhaps so, but that doesn’t give them the excuse to co-opt transformational views like that of St. Cyril and make out that they were not so. This is as much about development of doctrine I think, than about eucharistic theology per se.

Earlier medieval and patristic notions of “substance” and how those were contextualized in the eucharist—seen not just as elements and words, but also as an action of the assembled Body of Christ and teleologically directed toward reception by the faithful—would not have necessarily been objectioned to by Calvin, had he a better grasp on them.

Good. I certainly agree that he (just like Luther) had a jaded view of Scholasticism due to the corruptions of that school of thought by nominalism. But he was sharp enough not to have made the wild statements that he made about Catholic teaching.

His own eucharistic views, I submit, are attempting to approach those patristic views, such as Cyril’s, though somewhat metaphysically handicapped by his own philosophical context. Indeed, depending on one’s ontology of “substance”—particularly after a century of revisionist thomism, renewed study of Christian neoplatonism, and so on—then Calvin’s own views might be termed “transubstantiation” (though, given the complexion of that term in his day, Calvin would likely turn over in his grave at the suggestion).

I need to be shown this. My extensive discussions on his eucharistic theology with Josh and Alastair on this blog were extremely interesting and (I think) fruitful, but I was not convinced at all that Calvin’s view can be defended as even internally coherent, let alone consistent with the broad views of the Fathers.

Nothing you’ve said strikes against this in the least since you’ve neglected to explain what each of the historical figures actually meant within their own particular contexts and with their own assumptions about ontology and the like.

This is untrue, and (with all due respect) you must not have read my paper very closely, because I was making my argument in part by virtue of citing historians of doctrine, who made exactly these kinds of interpretations. Philip Schaff, for example, wrote:

In general, this period, . . . was already very strongly inclined toward the doctrine of transubstantiation, and toward the Greek and Roman sacrifice of the mass, . . .

He says that “the kind and mode of this presence are not yet particularly defined” and classifies Fathers in different categories, but gives transubstantiation a strong place. Then when he gets to Cyril he writes (emphasis added):

With the act of consecration a change accordingly takes place in the elements, whereby they become vehicles and organs of the life of Christ, although by no means necessarily changed into another substance. To denote this change very strong expressions are used, like metabolhv, metabavllein, metabavllesqai, metastoiceiou’sqai, metapoiei’sqai, mutatio, translatio, transfiguratio, transformatio; illustrated by the miraculous transformation of water into wine, the assimilation of food, and the pervasive power of leaven. Cyril of Jerusalem goes farther in this direction than any of the fathers . . . In support of this change Cyril refers at one time to the wedding feast at Cana, which indicates, the Roman theory of change of substance . . .

Schaff also cites Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary, and Ambrose as proponents of the transformationist view, and states that the last two “come nearest to the later dogma of transubstantiation.”

Furthermore, I cited J. N. D. Kelly along these lines. He described Cyril as the “pioneer of the conversion doctrine,” and states that “In the fifth century conversionist views were taken for granted by Alexandrians and Antiochenes alike.” Kelly is one of the leading experts on patristic doctrine. If you disagree with his conclusions or that of Schaff, then by all means make an argument and show how they are wrong.

But in any event, I have made the argument by citing them in agreement. As they are Protestants, they cannot be accused of a Roman bias. This is my usual methodology, because I am always anticipating the Protestant response. I cite almost all Protestant scholars, so I can undercut the objection of bias and the “party line,” etc.

The question of Christ’s presence is also distinct from that of the eucaharist as sacrifice, but Reformed theologians were willing to speak of a eucharistic sacrifice and even to admit that it was propitiatory (sometimes citing what they took to be Lombard and Aquinas’ understanding of that, in accordance with the Fathers). But they rejected what they understood the Roman church to be teaching on the subject as having departed both from Scripture and tradition

Well, they were wrong! They are not in accord with Tradition on this point. Schaff demonstrated that, and much more could be brought to the table, demonstrating it.

and, even in the midst of retrieving the tradition, they shied away from the traditional language because they perceived it as having been corrupted.

That’s fine. But whatever language is used, there are bottom line issues here:

1. Are the bread and wine literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ?

2. Can God do such a miracle, or is this not possible because Jesus is at the right hand of the Father?

3. Is it proper to adore the consecrated host, given #1 (from which it would seem to straightforwardly follow)?

4. Is the Mass a making present of the one-time historical sacrifice of Christ on Calvary?

5. What do the Fathers believe about these things, and what does Calvin believe?

My answers are: #1-4: yes; #5: Calvin greatly differs from the Fathers, because, by and large, they held to the same position on #1-4 as I presently am.

I think it would be best to isolate out the question of adoring Christ in the eucharist from the wider discussion, for several reasons.

First, one could very well hold to some version of transubstantiation and reject the kinds of fetishized treatments of the eucharistic elements to which Calvin is objecting, because one might worry about pushing the eucharist apart from the action of the assembly and from the faithful receiving it.

If He is really there, He is really there! I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t see how one thing can be separated from the other. Jesus is either present or not. If He is, He can and should be worshiped. If He is not, then He shouldn’t be (not in terms of attention upon the Host). You can’t have it both ways. If there is no worship permitted, then obviously Jesus isn’t there and the Real Presence is denied.

Second, “adoring Christ in the eucharist” to which the Father attest is not necessarily identical with “adoring the consecrated host”. After all, we know the adoration of Christ in the eucharist in the Fathers didn’t involve kneeling during the consecration, the kinds of reservation that arose later, and certainly not “eucharistic adoration” as that is practiced in later medieval period onwards.

Posture is far less important than the internal attitude and action of worship. Worship of God, by nature (like idolatry) is an internal action of the will and the spirit which can be expressed in many ways. So whether the fathers knelt or not does not decide this question one way or another. Most Catholics in most countries (and most Orthodox) do not kneel, but that doesn’t mean that they believe any less in the Real, Substantial Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. They are worshiping by standing.

First, I want to thank you for a response that obviously took some work to research and put together.

You’re most welcome. And thank you, as always, for your gracious, gentlemanly dialogical approach.

I have a couple of observations as well as a question or two immediately for you. First, I hope you will note that the primary link between Calvin and Cyril is in regards to the Real Presence. No one is claiming that their views are practically identical in all respects (and I don’t think you made that claim either).

Sure, but that is a notoriously nebulous term, used in all kinds of ways. I sought to demonstrate that when it is applied to Cyril, it meant something highly akin to transubstantiation — which you in tern made out to be a late medieval invention (or corruption). Secondly, David Willis, whom you cited in agreement, expressly tied in the notion of transubstantiation and Real Presence, stating that Calvin rejected the former.

But since Cyril seems to have accepted it in a less developed form, it is relevant to discuss it. All these things are tied in together. Overall, Calvin’s view was not all that similar to Cyril’s from what I can see. I’m not convinced at all. If I am wrong about that, then show me. State your case, and document, as I have done.

Second, classic Protestants use the term Real Presence to speak to the What of what is present in the sacrament, in other words, it speaks of Christ being present in the sacrament. Calvin’s view, like that of the other magisterial Reformers (save Zwingli) is that Christ was present in accordance with his nature as defined by Chalcedon–both man and God really present in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

Yes, but like I said, these are a bunch of high-sounding words. We don’t really know what is meant by them unless we dig deeper and examine exactly what both Calvin and the Fathers believed. The fact that they adored Jesus in the consecrated host and regarded the Mass as a sacrifice indicates quite a bit about their eucharistic theology. What they believed, Calvin regarded as the grossest abomination, idolatry, sacrilege, etc.

This is what I demonstrated, I think, in my post: the disconnect between Calvin and the Fathers on this one. I don’t see that this is rocket science. I think it is all rather obvious and I don’t understand how Reformed think differently. Hopefully, you can at least help me understand how that can be, as I am truly puzzled. As in most of these discussions, we won’t persuade each other away from our positions, but we can at least reach a much better mutual understanding and achieve some constructive discussion.

What is not treated with this issue generally by Protestants is the question of the sacrifice of the Mass and the nature of that sacrifice. While I will grant you that it is perhaps difficult to conceive (especially from the side of Roman Catholicism) that we can speak of the Real Presence without speaking of the sacrifice of Christ, much of Protestantism is all about making the proper distinctions to emphasize certain truths over others depending on what is in question. I hope that is understandable.

Yes, but it needs much further discussion. I think the crux of the discussion comes down to whether Protestantism or Catholicism more closely reflects patristic thought. If the appeal wasn’t made to the Fathers, there wouldn’t be nearly the amount of controversy. But because they are brought in, now we have a factual matter that can be ascertained by recourse to the fathers’ writings and scholarly summaries of their views (such as that of Schaff or Kelly or Pelikan, etc.).

So, for the moment, I will be side-stepping your comments on the nature of how the Fathers viewed the sacrifice of the Mass. I am hopeful you will agree that it has developed over the centuries, though we might disagree as to the degree to which it developed.

Absolutely. All doctrines develop. It’s a given.

At any rate, I would just ask you to remember the original comments of my blog entry were to point to a highly specialized and technical journal article that did not treat the whole of the matter.

Fair enough. Nevertheless, you made statements about the supposed late origins of transubstantiation which (I submit) are not consistent with the facts of the matter, as ascertained through historical analysis.

Here I will let you in behind the curtain for a moment. I’m honestly not sure I’ve completely grappled with the idea of the Fathers’ view (and the overall Catholic view) of the sacrifice of the Mass. There are issues I see regarding the Incarnation and how it relates to the Real Presence that I have not fully worked out, that bear more research and discussion, as well as a lot more reading. So, I don’t feel fully prepared to comment on that aspect of your post.

That’s fine. I respect that. Kudos to you for wanting to study the issue more.

Regarding Cyril, I do have a couple of questions. You quoted Cyril as follows:

Moreover, the things which are hung up at idol festivals, either meat or bread, or other such things polluted by the invocation of the unclean spirits, are reckoned in the pomp of the devil. For as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of the Holy and Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, while after the invocation the Bread becomes the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ, so in like manner such meats belonging to the pomp of Satan, though in their own nature simple, become profane by the invocation of the evil spirit. (Cyril of Jerusalem, Five Catechetical Lectures to the Newly Baptized, First Lecture on the Mysteries, 19.7)

1. Given the nature of the parallel between what is sacrificed to Satan and the Eucharist, are you prepared to argue that Cyril here is saying that the meat sacrificed to idols is changed in the same manner as the bread and wine (i.e. that it changes substance and ceases to exist)?

I don’t think the analogy requires that. The category of “profane” is a spiritual or subjective one. That gets into Pauline discussions of “meat sacrificed to idols” and so forth. No one would argue that it ceases to be meat. But it is meat unfit for Christians because of the implications of how it is used. Cyril is not speaking in those terms regarding the Eucharist. There he uses unbridled realism and literalism (just as St. Paul himself does).

2. If not, what necessitates my taking this quote to mean the elements are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ?

One interprets it in conjunction with other statements from Cyril, just as cross-referencing is used in Scripture study. And just read other statements from the very same work, which I have provided. it’s quite clear what he means, just as Calvin is pretty clear when all his statements on a given subject are taken into account.

3. Isn’t it clear that Cyril here, by invoking the parallel to meat sacrificed to evil spirits being profaned is not speaking of a change in the substantial nature of the elements as much as he is their sacred use? To argue otherwise means you must recognize a change of substance in the meat otherwise there is no reason for the parallel.

You have to interpret it in light of his other statements. I don’t think your analysis of the analogy itself holds. It is a partial comparison. Likewise, I have made an analogy to transubstantiation (in my first book) of water being ice, or steam, or liquid (an accidental as opposed to a substantive or essential change). That was not an absolutely exact analogy, but it is still an analogy (or parallel), in that what changed is reversed: accidents change rather than substance.

I believe that is Cyril’s meaning here. It was not intended as a comprehensive analogy. Otherwise, he contradicts himself in the same work, and you have to explain what he meant by the other statements that I cited. You don’t resolve your difficulty by making this argument, because you still have the other texts to deal with, and presumably, Cyril was self-consistent, or sought to be, anyway.

4. How would you defend the idea that your look at Cyril is something other than anachronistic for nowhere (and here Schaff agrees with me, though he states his case not as strong) is it necessary for us to see the essential elements of transubstantiation in Cyril, especially given the above passage in reference to pagan sacrifices?

You have merely taken one passage and made out that it contradicts this interpretation. I don’t think it does, and I have explained why. My view involves no anachronism because it is based on documented statements and interpretations by Protestant scholars (cited again above) who have no stake in making out that Cyril believed something that (prima facie if nothing else) looks more “Catholic” than “Protestant.” I wasn’t the one who claimed that he went further in this regard than any other Father. That was Schaff.

I wasn’t the one who called him the “pioneer of the conversion doctrine,” or who opined, “In the fifth century conversionist views were taken for granted by Alexandrians and Antiochenes alike.” That was J. N. D. Kelly (not a Catholic, that I know of). If my view is anachronistic, then so is theirs. Or do you somehow separate their opinions from mine simply because I am a Catholic and they are not (even though on this point we are greatly in agreement)?

It’s just the historical facts of the matter . . . the notion of conversion of the elements is the essence of transubstantiation, and many fathers (including Cyril) clearly believed this. What is anachronistic is the incessant reading back into the Fathers Protestant views. This is most often dome with regard to sola Scriptura, but also in this area and many others, and never more than with St. Augustine.

Then in your comments at your blog post, you wrote:

If you can show me how Cyril is definitively teaching the elements of transubstantiation (I do not think it is even necessary to bother with needing to see the technical language) in the quote I put in the blog entry, then I think you would have a case. But, until that one is explained we should view the other bare quotes on the subject with some suspicion.

I’ve done that by providing several quotations and citing experts on patristic theology. Your methodology here is backwards. You don’t seize on one statement that looks like it might read “Protestant” and then ignore other relevant statements and become suspicious of them because they don’t fit into your assumed interpretation of one. This is a circular argument.

You need to interpret all the statements in harmony, just as you would when you approach the Bible. You interpret the less clear in light of the more clear. That is, unless you want to assume that Cyril and other fathers were characterized by internal inconsistency. That strikes me as a more “liberal” attitude towards patristics, and lacking a proper charity and sympathetic “identification” with the subject under consideration (Cyril). I think, therefore, that you are far more guilty of the very thing you accuse us of (anachronism and selective citation).

I gave several citations and have now given my explanation of the “problem” that you raised. You have simply stated your position and then adopted a stance of “suspicion” towards the quotes that don’t seem to fit into your view (and then used the tired recourse to “out of context”).

“Pontificator” [Fr. Alvin Kimel] hit the nail on the head in another comment on your blog:

I do not interpret Cyril as teaching transubstantiation, as explicated by Thomas Aquinas, just as I do not interpret Ignatius of Antioch as teaching the homoousion. There is such a thing as development of doctrine. We should not expect to find a scholastic precision in the early Fathers on a matter that was never seriously disputed.

You wrote, in turn, on his blog:

I guess what I don’t understand is why Roman Catholics will grant that the Orthodox view is legitimate even though it can’t really be spoken of with the same categories in mind, yet a high Protestant view like Calvin’s is simply something other than catholic.

That’s easy: the Orthodox view incorporates the essential notions of transformation and literal presence of Jesus’ body and blood, and allows adoration, and the notion of sacrifice. Calvin;’s position (especially when closely scrutinized) denies all three of these things. Therefore it is neither in accord with Tradition nor catholic. It is a novel innovation and a corruption of previous received eucharistic doctrine.

I also don’t buy this unanimity in the Fathers concerning this issue.

It’s about as unanimous as any doctrine gets, in its main outlines.

More research is required, but both Augustine and Ratramnus (and, though disputed, Cyril) viewed this issue of a change in the elements differently than what is currently being held up as the standard of orthodoxy.

There is no essential difference between Augustine’s view and the Catholic one, because for Augustine, “sign” and reality can be one and the same. They need not be dichotomized, as in so much of Protestant thought.

It is more than just a matter of avoiding special terms put forth by the scholastics in the High Middle Ages and there is a fair level of diversity on these issues which I have not seen addressed by those towing ‘the party line’.

I addressed whatever diversity there truly was by citing Schaff, who stated that there was such diversity in some respects. But the transformation view was still the most prominent one, and it was held by Cyril. Therefore, it is wrongheaded to claim that Calvin’s view closely approached Cyril’s (even if you want to restrict that to the issue of the “real presence” — however you define that — alone).

If Cyril would be regarded as a blasphemous, sacrilegious idolater by Calvin (assuming the latter applies his indignation consistently), then how can it be said that Calvin’s view is so close to Cyril’s? He is just one more ignorant idolater, just like all of us hopeless “papists.”

Thanks for the discussion. I await any reply from either of you with great eagerness.

***

(originally 6-19-04)

Photo credit: The Young John Calvin (anonymous, 16th century) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

October 11, 2018

October 11, 2018 By

The great Church Father makes many statements which have been traditionally seized upon as evidence of his adoption of either a purely symbolic or Calvinistic notion of the Lord’s Supper. This consideration will be dealt with first, before consulting the primary materials:

I. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, translated by Patrick Lynch, edited by James C. Bastible, Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1974 (orig. 1952 in German), 377-378:

The Eucharistic doctrine expounded by St. Augustine is interpreted in a purely spiritual way by most Protestant writers on the history of dogmas. Despite his insistence on the symbolical explanation he does not exclude the Real Presence. In association with the words of institution he concurs with the older Church tradition in expressing belief in the Real Presence . . .When in the Fathers’ writings, esp. those of St. Augustine, side by side with the clear attestations of the Real Presence, many obscure symbolically-sounding utterances are found also, the following points must be noted for the proper understanding of such passages: (1) The Early Fathers were bound by the discipline of the secret, which referred above all to the Eucharist (cf. Origen, In Lev. hom. 9, 10); (2) The absence of any heretical counter-proposition often resulted in a certain carelessness of expression, to which must be added the lack of a developed terminology to distinguish the sacramental mode of existence of Christ’s body from its natural mode of existence once on earth; (3) The Fathers were concerned to resist a grossly sensual conception of the Eucharistic Banquet and to stress the necessity of the spiritual reception in Faith and in Charity (in contradistinction to the external, merely sacramental reception); passages often refer to the symbolical character of the Eucharist as ‘the sign of unity’ (St. Augustine); this in no wise excludes the Real Presence.

II. Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 4, edited by Angelo di Berardino, tr. Placid Solari, St. Augustine chapter (VI) written by Agostino Trape, Allen, Texas: Christian Classics, 1950, 449-450:

His thought [on the sacraments] has been widely studied but has not always been expounded in an unequivocal manner. Here as in other instances, it is necessary to keep in mind the various aspects of the dogma which he illustrates and defends. Thus……..his insistence on the ecclesiological symbolism of the Eucharist does not obscure his explicit affirmations of the real presence (the bread is the Body of Christ and the wine is the Blood of Christ: Serm. 227; 272; In ps. 98, 9; 33, 1, 10) and of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist (De civ. Dei 10, 19-20; Conf. 9, 12, 32; 13-36).

III. In a paper I recently wrote detailing in more technically theological fashion my odyssey to the Catholic Church (recalling the period in which I was voraciously studying people like Dollinger, Salmon and Kung, in order to refute Catholic claims to infallibility), I recounted my own use of the approach I am now critiquing:

I claimed that St. Augustine . . . adopted a symbolic view of the Eucharist. I based this on his oft-stated notion of the sacrament as symbol or sign. I failed to realize, however, that I was arbitrarily creating a false, logically unnecessary dichotomy between the sign and the reality of the Eucharist, for St. Augustine — when all his remarks on the subject are taken into account — clearly accepted the Real Presence. The Eucharist — for Augustine, and objectively speaking — is both sign and reality. There simply is no contradiction.

A cursory glance at Scripture confirms this general principle. For instance, Jesus refers to the sign of Jonah, comparing the prophet Jonah’s three days and nights in the belly of the fish to His own burial in the earth (Mt 12:38-40). In this case, both events, although described as signs, were quite real indeed. Jesus also uses the terminology of sign in connection with His Second Coming (Mt 24:30-31), which is believed by all Christians to be a literal event, and not symbolic only.

Now, on to St. Augustine’s statements which very strongly support the opinion that He held to the Real Presence in the Eucharist:

IV. From Ott, ibid.:

1) The bread which you see on the altar is, sanctified by the word of God, the body of Christ; that chalice, or rather what is contained in the chalice, is, sanctified by the word of God, the blood of Christ. (Sermo 227; on p. 377)

2) Christ bore Himself in His hands, when He offered His body saying: “this is my body.” (Enarr. in Ps. 33 Sermo 1, 10; on p. 377)

3) Nobody eats this flesh without previously adoring it. (Enarr. in Ps. 98, 9; on p. 387)

4) Referring to the sacrifice of Melchizedek (Gen 14:18 ff.):

The sacrifice appeared for the first time there which is now offered to God by Christians throughout the whole world. (City of God, 16, 22; on p. 403)

Ott cites other references or beliefs of St. Augustine:

A) Interpretation of Jn 6:51b-58 as referring to the Eucharist (p. 374)

B) Christ was both the sacrificing Priest and the sacrificial Gift in one Person (City of God, 10, 20; Ep. cf. 98, 9; on p. 406)

C) The sacrifice of the Mass is that foretold by Malachi [1:10-11] (Tract. adv. Jud. 9, 13; on p. 406)

D) The Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice bringing about remission of sins and the conferring of supernatural gifts (De cura pro mortuis fier. 1, 3; 18, 22; Enchir. 110; on p. 413)

V. William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 3, edited and translated by Jurgens, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1979:

5) He took flesh from the flesh of Mary . . . and gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation . . . we do sin by not adoring. (Explanations of the Psalms , 98, 9; on p. 20)

6) Not all bread, but only that which receives the blessing of Christ, becomes Christ’s body. (Sermons, 234, 2; on p. 31)

7) What you see is the bread and the chalice . . . But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice the Blood of Christ. (Sermons, 272; on p. 32)

8) Christ is both the priest, offering Himself, and Himself the Victim. He willed that the sacramental sign of this should be the daily sacrifice of the Church. (City of God, 10, 20; on p. 99)

9) Not only is no one forbidden to take as food the Blood of this Sacrifice, rather, all who wish to possess life are exhorted to drink thereof. (Questions of the Hepateuch, 3, 57; on p. 134)

VI. Hugh Pope, St. Augustine of Hippo, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image, 1961 (orig. 1937):

10) The Sacrifice of our times is the Body and Blood of the Priest Himself . . . Recognize then in the Bread what hung upon the tree; in the chalice what flowed from His side. (Sermo iii. 1-2; on p. 62)

11) The Blood they had previously shed they afterwards drank. (Mai  26, 2; 86, 3; on p. 64)

12) Eat Christ, then; though eaten He yet lives, for when slain He rose from the dead. Nor do we divide Him into parts when we eat Him: though indeed this is done in the Sacrament, as the faithful well know when they eat the Flesh of Christ, for each receives his part, hence are those parts called graces. Yet though thus eaten in parts He remains whole and entire; eaten in parts in the Sacrament, He remains whole and entire in Heaven. (Mai 129, 1; cf. Sermon 131; on p. 65)

13) Out of hatred of Christ the crowd there shed Cyprian’s blood, but today a reverential multitude gathers to drink the Blood of Christ . . . this altar . . . whereon a Sacrifice is offered to God . . . (Sermo 310, 2; cf. City of God, 8, 27, 1; on p. 65)

14) He took into His hands what the faithful understand; He in some sort Bore Himself when He said: This is My Body. (Enarr . 1, 10 on Ps. 33; on p. 65)

15) The very first heresy was formulated when men said: “this saying is hard and who can bear it [Jn 6:60]?” ( Enarr . 1, 23 on Ps. 54; on p. 66)

16) Thou art the Priest, Thou the Victim, Thou the Offerer, Thou the Offering. (Enarr . 1, 6 on Ps. 44; on p. 66)

17) Take, then, and eat the Body of Christ . . . You have read that, or at least heard it read, in the Gospels, but you were unaware that the Son of God was that Eucharist. (Denis , 3, 3; on p. 66)

18) The entire Church observes the tradition delivered to us by the Fathers, namely, that for those who have died in the fellowship of the Body and Blood of Christ, prayer should be offered when they are commemorated at the actual Sacrifice in its proper place, and that we should call to mind that for them, too, that Sacrifice is offered. (Sermo, 172, 2; 173, 1; De Cura pro mortuis, 6; De Anima et ejus Origine, 2, 21; on p. 69)

19) We do pray for the other dead of whom commemoration is made. Nor are the souls of the faithful departed cut off from the Church . . . Were it so, we should not make commemoration of them at the altar of God when we receive the Body of Christ. (Sermo 159,1; cf. 284, 5; 285, 5; 297, 3; City of God, 20, 9, 2; cf. 21,24; 22, 8; on p. 69)

20) It was the will of the Holy Spirit that out of reverence for such a Sacrament the Body of the Lord should enter the mouth of a Christian previous to any other food. (Ep. 54, 8; on p. 71)

It is difficult to conceive of anyone denying that St. Augustine believed in the Real Presence (or the Sacrifice of the Mass) after perusing all of this compelling evidence. His other symbolic utterances have been sufficiently explained and are easily able to be synthesized with the above beliefs. St. Augustine is indeed an “insufficient witness” to Protestant belief in a symbolic, or “dynamic” Eucharist.

One of the (hostile) Protestant participants in the public online List on which I posted the above paper, responded on 12/8/96:
***
It is in his death on the cross (during is incarnation on earth, while taking “the form of a servant”) that Christ was “both the priest, himself making the offering, and the oblation,” not in the Eucharist, which was the “sacramental symbol” of the true sacrifice. Christ is not offered at every mass — it was “one sacrifice,” the “supreme” and “true sacrifice.” 

St. Augustine’s symbolic language can be synthesized with his “realistic” language, because realism can co-exist with symbol while retaining its realism, as I illustrated from the undeniable biblical examples of the “sign of Jonah” and the “sign of the coming of the Son of man.”

The symbolic language can also (and indeed often does in Augustine) refer to other, more communal aspects of the Eucharist which complement (but are not contrary to) the “Real Presence” aspect of it. So there are at least two ways in which this can be explained as consistent with Catholic theology.

Even Jaroslav Pelikan, the source [my opponent] attempted to use against me (and one of my favorite Church historians), alludes to this option in the following somewhat ambiguous, paradoxical summary, on the same page as the citation he gave:

It is incorrect, therefore, to attribute to Augustine either a scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation or a Protestant doctrine of symbolism, forhe taught neither — or both –– and both were able to cite his authority. (The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971, 305, emphasis added)

And this after Pelikan had just given several examples of rather obvious and extreme Eucharistic realism and literalism (many if not all included in my own proofs). The simple fact of the matter is that Augustine speaks in both ways. But we can harmonize them as complementary, not contradictory, because Catholics, like Augustine himself, tend to think in terms of “both/and” rather than the dichotomous “either/or” prevalent in Protestantism. Thus, when some Augustinian symbolic Eucharistic utterance is found, it is seized upon as “proof” that he thereby denied the Real Presence.

This is neither logically compelling, nor scholarly, since there are many of his statements which clearly indicate that he held to the literal, Real physical Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the priesthood, which makes no sense without sacrifice, and the efficacy of the Mass (as well as other prayers) for the aid of the dead in purgatory, etc.

In other words, Catholics have a cogent explanation for both types of language in Augustine, whereas I haven’t seen anyone who denies that Augustine held to Real Presence, explain statements such as the twenty I compiled, as “symbolic” only. Accordingly, [my opponent] has totally ignored those, and with very good “reason,” given his premises. On the other hand, I’ve openly dealt with his particular objection and presented my twenty citations as compelling evidence which utterly contradicts his interpretation of Augustine’s Eucharistic views. Fair observers, therefore, can see who has straightforwardly faced the issue head on.

Apparently lacking a reasonable response (what else could I conclude from his silence?), instead [my opponent] offers the following mockery of my (and Catholic) views:
***
This is weak at best. Is it possible that he believed it was both a reality and a sign? Sure – anything’s possible – would you like to buy some ocean-front property in Arizona? But if it’s so clear that he “never for a moment” doubted or denied the “Real Presence,” it shouldn’t be hard to argue from his writings, rather than arguing from silence or misquotes. In fact, the passage I quoted in full from the City of God mitigates against your claim, since Augustine differentiated between the “reality” of Christ’s death on the cross and the “sacramental symbol” celebrated in the Church. 

Any “differentiation” is in a complementary, not contradictory sense, for there are still the abundant citations in which he explicitly upholds the Real Presence. That being the case, he must have either contradicted himself, changed his mind, or else my “take” on the situation is correct. The communal (“symbolic” if you will) aspects of the Sacrifice of the Mass, to which Augustine refers, are totally consonant with Catholic theology, and are discussed, e.g., in the following passages from the new Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, Misouri: Liguori Publications, 1994):

1359 The Eucharist, the sacrament of our salvation accomplished by Christ on the cross,is also a sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for the work of creation. In the Eucharistic sacrifice the whole of creation loved by God is presented to the Father through the death and the resurrection of Christ. Through Christ the Church can offer the sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for all that God has made good, beautiful, and just in creation and in humanity.

1360 The Eucharist is a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, a blessing by which the Church expresses her gratitude to God for all his benefits, for all that he has accomplished through creation, redemption, and sanctification. Eucharist means first of all ‘thanksgiving.’

1361 The Eucharist is also the sacrifice of praise by which the Church sings the glory of God in the name of all creation. This sacrifice of praise is possible only through Christ: he unites the faithful to his person, to his praise, and to his intercession, so that the sacrifice of praise to the Father is offered through Christ and with him, to be accepted in him. (emphasis in original)

1372 St. Augustine admirably summed up this doctrine that moves us to an ever more complete participation in our Redeemer’s sacrifice which we celebrate in the Eucharist:

This wholly redeemed city, the assembly and society of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice by the high priest who in the form of a slave went so far as to offer himself for us in his Passion, to make us the Body of so great a head . . . Such is the sacrifice of Christians: “we who are many are one Body in Christ.” The Church continues to reproduce this sacrifice in the sacrament of the altar so well-known to believers wherein it is evident to them that in what she offers she herself is offered. (City of God, 10,6: PL 41, 283; cf. Rom 12:5)

2643 The Eucharist contains and expresses all forms of prayer: it is ‘the pure offering’ of the whole Body of Christ to the glory of God’s name [Note: cf. Mal 1:11] and, according to the traditions of East and West, it is the ‘sacrifice of praise.’ (emphasis in original)

Obviously, then, since this aspect of the Eucharist is presented openly and repeatedly in the Catechism (even quoting St. Augustine), it is not seen to be at all contradictory to the “Real Presence” essence of the Eucharist. And indeed it isn’t, unless one creates unnecessary dichotomies in order to salvage one’s own theological views . . .

I continue to eagerly await an explanation of my twenty proofs of St. Augustine’s espousal of the Real Presence. And if no one is able or willing to do so, I would say that intellectual honesty and historical objectivity compels Protestants to concede this point, which is illustrative of too-common Protestant misuse (conscious or not) of the Fathers.

***

(originally 1996)

Photo credit: Saint Augustine, by Antonio Rodríguez (1636-1691) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

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