![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/572\/2019\/01\/Calvin17.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This is an installment of a series of replies (see the\u00a0Introduction and Master List<\/a>) to much\u00a0<\/em>of Book IV (Of the Holy Catholic Church<\/em>) of\u00a0Institutes of the Christian Religion<\/a><\/em>, by early\u00a0Protestant leader\u00a0John Calvin<\/a>\u00a0(1509-1564). I utilize the public domain translation of Henry Beveridge, dated 1845, from the 1559 edition in Latin;\u00a0available online<\/a>. Calvin\u2019s words will be in\u00a0blue<\/span>. All biblical citations (in my portions) will be from RSV unless otherwise noted.<\/p>\n Related reading from yours truly:<\/p>\n Biblical Catholic Answers for John Calvin<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(2010 book: 388 pages)<\/p>\n A Biblical Critique of Calvinism<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(2012 book: 178 pages)<\/p>\n Biblical Catholic Salvation: \u201cFaith Working Through Love\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(2010 book: 187 pages; includes biblical critiques of all five points of \u201cTULIP\u201d)<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n IV, 17:3-10<\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Note the \u201cas if\u201d \u2014 it dilutes the Real Presence.<\/p>\n For these are words which can never lie nor deceive\u2014Take, eat, drink. This is my body, which is broken for you: this is my blood, which is shed for the remission of sins.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Indeed they cannot: if they are believed and not sophistically watered down and explained away.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n 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;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSymbol\u201d, \u201cspiritually bestowed\u201d . . . 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.<\/p>\n and the use is to foster, refresh, strengthen, and exhilarate. For if we duly consider\u00a0what 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnalogy\u201d, \u201crepresent\u201d<\/span> . . . we see the direction of Calvin\u2019s thought. He is far closer to Zwingli\u2019s pure symbolism than to Luther\u2019s traditional eucharistic realism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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\u2014I 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Typical Calvin incoherent word games and sophistry: going far beyond what the biblical text teaches us about these matters . . . again, the Eucharist can only \u201cseal and confirm that promise\u201d<\/span> rather than be the actual Body and Blood of Christ. It\u2019s the same thinking process he applied to baptism. It is no less fallacious in this instance than it was in that one.<\/p>\n For we do not eat Christ duly and savingly unless as crucified, while with lively apprehension we perceive the efficacy of his death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously the crucifixion is the backdrop of the Eucharist. Catholics and Protestants have no disagreement on that.<\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n This is all true.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is very subtle heretical reasoning: the Eucharist has power not because of what it inherently\u00a0is<\/em>: the Body and Blood of Christ, but only because it\u00a0represents<\/em>\u00a0other things that we comprehend in and with faith. Hence, \u201cit calls to remembrance that Christ was made the bread of life.\u201d<\/p>\n 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, \u201cThe bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world\u201d (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,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Jesus doesn\u2019t become a piece of bread. This is the absurdity that Calvin\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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\u2019t grasp the new realities that the Incarnation has opened up.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0what 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Exactly. Some depart from the universal understanding of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, from Jesus and the apostles until Calvin\u2019s time.<\/p>\n 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\u2014viz. 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here he is describing the purely symbolic position of Zwingli and the Anabaptists (and of many Protestants, including Calvinists, today).<\/p>\n 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;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019 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).<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n No; in fact the difference is little in reality, despite the word games Calvin applies, because there is a \u201cbottom line\u201d and a premise and a presupposition underneath all the flowery, high-sounding, pious rhetoric.<\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n This is true, as far as it goes. It just doesn\u2019t go far\u00a0enough<\/em>: to Real Presence and transubstantiation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And Catholics add that we receive His actual Body and Blood.<\/p>\nBook IV<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n\nCHAPTER 17<\/span><\/h3>\n
3.\u00a0The Lord\u2019s 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.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n*<\/span><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n4.\u00a0The chief parts of this sacrament.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n*<\/span><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n5.\u00a0How 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.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n*<\/span><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n6.\u00a0This mode of eating confirmed by the authority of Augustine and Chrysostom.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n*<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n