Calvin and the Word of God
... [I]t is faith that must cleanse us.... If men enjoin spiritual laws upon us, we need not observe them, being assured that such obedience cannot please God, for in so doing, we set up rulers to govern us, making them equal with God, who reserveth all power to Himself. Thus, the government of the soul must be kept safe and sound in the hands of God.
—John Calvin, sermon, “The Word Our Only Rule”
Calvin and the Word of God
o preach [God’s] Word purely and chastely” is how Calvin
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understood the work of Christian ministry. Though it is a short phrase—God’s Word—it is at the heart of Calvin’s understanding of God and how God is revealed and reconciled to humanity. It is also a complicated phrase that is weighted with several interlocking meanings.
Calvin believed human beings could never understand God as God; human beings could only grasp God insofar as God chose to reveal himself. But because Calvin believed God to be a “good Father,” to use one of his favorite metaphors, he also believed God engaged in a process of accommodation in order to commune and communicate with his children.
The word accommodation simply means to make suitable. Calvin thought that God had taken a number of steps to make himself and his purpose suitable for human understanding. Martin Luther once said that God engaged in baby talk in order to speak to humanity. Calvin’s thoughts are along the same line, though they operate on a much larger scale than just speech. The rest of this chapter will detail the variety of ways Calvin thought God accommodated himself in order to reveal his good will and purpose to his children. All of these accommodations can be understood at some level as “God’s Word.”
THE WORD MADE FLESH: JESUS CHRIST Following traditional Christian teaching, John Calvin believed that Jesus was the savior. He thought humanity as a race had essentially “gone bad” by rebelling against God. Jesus served as the mediator between God and humanity, and through his death on a cross, Jesus atoned for sin. He set straight the cosmic scales of justice, and he placed the Christian into proper relationship with God.
Also following traditional Christian teaching, Calvin believed that Jesus was not only human but also divine, part of the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus, the divine nature in Jesus existed from eternity and was properly part of God.
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In the beginning of the New Testament Gospel of John, this divine aspect of Jesus is described as the “word”: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. This one, he was in the beginning with God.” A few verses later, the Gospel of John states, “And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” This is the basis of the Christian teaching about incarnation—a word that comes from Latin that literally means “enfleshed.” Thus, at the birth of Jesus, the divine Word of God took on a body.
In its most fundamental sense for Calvin, the Word of God meant Jesus Christ. Thus, whenever he spoke of preaching the Word of God, at the heart of that Word was the person of Jesus Christ.
It is here that we can see clearly the notion of accommodation at work in Calvin. Though he accepted the traditional teachings of the church of Christ as savior and Christ as the word made flesh, his way of explaining how the salvation process works reflects his concern that God works to make himself “suitable” for human understanding.
In one of his sermons, Calvin states bluntly that Christ is mediator between God and humanity insomuch as Christ is human.“We cannot know Jesus Christ to be a mediator between God and man,” Calvin proclaimed, “unless we behold him as man.”27 That does not mean the divine nature is unimportant, but it is to say that the way Christians receive the gift of salvation from God comes through Christ’s humanity. This is the way Calvin explains it in his Commentary on John.
He says that righteousness, that which makes human beings fit to be in communion with God, properly resides in God alone. Because the divine part of Christ is part of God, belonging to the Holy Trinity, however, that righteousness also properly belongs to the Son, Christ. That righteousness is then transferred from the divine person of Christ to the human person of the incarnated Christ Jesus. Then it is through Jesus’s humanity that the righteousness of God is bestowed upon Christians in their humanity. In other words, Calvin said, “His [Christ’s] flesh is a
Calvin and the Word of God
channel to pour out to us the life which resides intrinsically... in His divinity.”28
It is Christ’s life in the body (the incarnation) that Christ speaks, ministers, teaches, heals, dies, and is resurrected. Thus, for Calvin, it is through communion with the human Christ, through Christ’s spirit, through Christ’s words, but also through Christ’s body (this shall be discussed at greater length later) that Christians obtain the benefits of his grace, his gift of salvation.
Though Calvin has sometimes been painted as one who had a very somber view of God, one that makes God seem far removed from humanity because of God’s great majesty, his way of talking about Christ was his method to, in a sense, “humanize” God, which is what the incarnation was really all about in Calvin’s mind. Thus, in reading Calvin, for all his intellectual abilities, one comes across a very tender view of Christ and the Christian’s relationship to Christ. It is this Christ that is the Word of God accommodated to fit human weakness, so that humanity may understand God’s love.
THE WRITTEN WORD: THE HOLY SCRIPTURE Calvin’s first job in Geneva, and one he continued through all his years in that city, was as a Reader of Holy Scripture, meaning that he taught about the Bible. Calvin believed that the Bible was a further accommodation by God to human weakness. It made clear God’s will, and it prophesied the coming of Christ and then bore witness to his life, ministry, death, and resurrection.
The Bible served to make clear what sinful nature had blurred. For example, Calvin believed that the universe itself was enough to proclaim God’s existence and God’s goodness. The will of God, as it were, was written large across the skies, in the sun and moon and stars and in the earth. Human beings, however, because of sin, could not read rightly the signs set before them in the physical world. According to Calvin, Scripture worked as “spectacles”—eye glasses that JOHN CALVIN
brought the created order into focus so that Christians could see God’s goodness in God’s creation.
Calvin also thought that embedded in each human being was a conscience—a natural ability to tell right from wrong. Again, because of sin, however, this ability had been warped. Therefore, God accommodated to human weakness, and in the Bible spelled out what should be plain in each person’s heart: Do not lie; do not steal; do not murder. In other words, the moral code of the Ten Commandments found in the Old Testament and the reinforcement of that morality in the New Testament in the Sermon on the Mount were gifts of God, written in plain language to help those who had lost the right use of conscience.
At the heart of the Scripture for Calvin, however, was Jesus Christ. He believed that Christ, because as divine he was eternal, could be read about in the Old Testament (before his being born on earth). Not only did prophets foretell his coming, according to Calvin; he also believed that there were “types” of Christ in the Old Testament that outlined what the Christ-to-be-born would be like.
The New Testament, of course, contained the witness to Christ: the words he spoke, the life he lived, and the cross he bore. The gospels presented the life of Jesus; other books, such as the letters of the Apostle Paul, presented the true teachings about the meaning of Jesus’s life.
Whereas Christ, then, was the living Word, the Bible was the written Word, accommodated to humanity’s need and weakness. It served as a sure guide to understanding the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Hence, Calvin believed the study of the Bible, in its original languages (mostly Hebrew and Greek), to be essential for the health of the Christian church. He thought the task of the interpreter of Scripture—someone like himself—was to lay bare the mind of the author. Of course, in an immediate sense, that meant laying bare the mind of Moses, whom Calvin understood to have written Genesis; or of Paul, who wrote so many letters; or of one of the Gospel writers. In a
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deeper sense, however, Calvin believed he was laying bare the mind of God, the ultimate author of Scripture, at least in the accommodated way God made himself known through Christ in Scripture.
It is interesting to note, however, that Calvin did not set the Bible up as a thing to be worshiped unto itself; he believed the Bible to be an instrument used by God for the purpose of presenting Christ. The real value of the Bible for Calvin lay in the way in which the Holy Spirit—the Spirit that Christians traditionally believe flows from God and Christ—could breathe life into the Scripture and make of it a living thing that could unite the Christian to Christ and make Christ present and real.
Calvin certainly believed that the Bible stood as the foundation of truth about Christ. He joined many early Protestants in their cry of “Scripture Alone!” when it came to seeing the Bible as the only source of authority for true Christian faith and worship. In order for that truth to make a life-changing difference, however, one would have to be illumined by the flame of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit works, through the words of Scripture, to unite the Christian with Christ. As one scholar has noted when speaking of Calvin’s view of Scripture, “Scripture comes alive in fellowship with Christ.”29
THE SPOKEN WORD: CHRIST MADE PRESENT BY PREACHING John Calvin held to an exalted view of preaching. Whereas he held the Scripture in the highest esteem and valued its private and public study, he especially emphasized the preached Word of God, based on Scripture. At one point, in his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Calvin states, “The Word... is required for a true knowledge of God. But it is the preached Word alone which Paul has described, for this is the normal mode which the Lord has appointed for imparting His Word.” 30
Indeed, the act of preaching was so important to Calvin because he saw it as one of the primary ways in which God had
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chosen to be present. Christ, Calvin thought, practically stood among the congregation when preachers purely spoke the Word of God. “If the Gospel be not preached,” Calvin proclaimed,“Jesus Christ is, as it were, buried.”31 In another place, Calvin boldly stated, “Jesus Christ shows himself openly to those who have the eyes of faith to look upon Him, when the gospel is preached.” 32 Of course, Calvin believed God had to will this to take place, and the Holy Spirit had to effect the presence. God was in charge, not humans. Given that caveat, however, Calvin very much believed that God did act to present Christ in preaching.
In a sense, preaching represented a type of “time machine” for Calvin. The written Word, the Bible, recounted events from hundreds of years before: important events, such as the death
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Some estimates place the number of sermons given by Calvin at more than 4,000. He believed passionately that the sermon, based on Scripture, served as God’s Word to the congregation.
Because he believed Scripture—because connected to Christ—to be the living Word of God, he understood it to be the preacher’s task to make the Scripture come alive. He always thought that, once the best techniques were applied to the text of Scripture in order to understand its author’s mind, the lessons of that text should be brought into contemporary life. In other words, he believed that Scripture had to do as much with the present as with the past.
Calvin always wanted the preaching of Scripture to have an effect, not just on the person’s head, but also on the heart. The best way to do that, according to Calvin, was to pick the right expression, the appropriate figure of speech, to convey the significance of the Word of God. He preached in the familiar style, using common and everyday expressions and metaphors to explore the meaning of Scripture. Couched in such language, he thought, the Word could more easily penetrate the heart of the believer.
At its best and most effective, Calvin believed preaching lifted the congregation into the very presence of God. No wonder, then, that he devoted so much time to it.
Calvin and the Word of God
of Jesus on the cross. The spoken Word, preaching, bridges the time span, taking the events of the Bible and, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, bringing them to life in the present. It is one thing, according to Calvin, to believe that Christ once died. It is another to realize, through the preached Word, that the death of Christ makes a difference in the present; whereas the Scripture testifies to a Christ who was raised from the dead, the sermon preaches Christ raised now and living among his people. Indeed, as Brian Gerrish has stated, “The idea of Christ’s living presence, effected through the Word of God, is the heart of Calvin’s gospel.” 33
No wonder Calvin placed so much emphasis on preaching and learning to preach well. He thought one should be trained in ancient languages and history, in the use of language and rhetoric, so that the living Word about which the written Word speaks might be placed before Christians to learn from, live with, and love.
THE VISIBLE WORD: THE EUCHARIST AND THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST Calvin believed that, just as Christ is offered in the preached Word, so Christ is also presented to believers in the Eucharist. In fact, referring to both baptism and the Eucharist (the two sacraments of Reformed Christianity), Calvin taught that the promises God offers are seen most clearly in the sacraments. The reason, Calvin explained, is that since human beings learn and know things through their senses, a sacrament like the Eucharist engages all of a Christian’s senses: One sees the bread and wine, touches the elements, smells the food, and tastes it; these senses, in turn, reinforce what is heard during the service about God’s promises.
What God promises is forgiveness of sin through the mediation of Christ, and Calvin thought that the mediation of Christ involved a real communion with him; in fact, more than simply communion, Calvin wrote that between Christ and the Christian there is a real union by which the benefits of Christ—the living JOHN CALVIN
Word—are shared with the Christian. Calvin meant not just a union with Christ’s spirit, but also Christ’s body, because it is the human person of Christ that is the mediator between God and humanity.
Calvin tried for years to fully explain how he thought Christ was truly present in the Eucharist. He did not believe like the Catholics, who thought that the bread and wine became the body and blood of Christ; he did not think like the Lutherans, who believed that, while the bread and wine remained intact, the body and blood of Christ were added to these things; and he did not believe like the Zwinglians, who thought the bread and wine simply represented Christ’s body and blood, so that Christ was not present bodily in the act of the Eucharist.
If Calvin did not believe these things, what did he believe? He himself was always the first person to say he did not fully understand how the Christian could commune with Christ’s body and blood, but he did forcefully state that he experienced such a communion. Furthermore, he thought that such union with Christ was essential to salvation. He ended up teaching that, in the act of the Eucharist, through the instruments of bread and wine, the Christian’s spirit was lifted into the divine realm, there to commune with the true, full Christ, body and blood. Participation in the Eucharist, having the senses flooded with the signs of bread and wine being taken into and united to the body of the believer, served as a visible Word by which the Christian was united to the living Word Christ. And it is clear that such talk was not simply metaphorical for Calvin.
Indeed, one of Calvin’s most passionate defenses of his notion of union with Christ through the instrument of the Eucharist is his commentary on the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 5, which is about a husband and a wife. Calvin takes this type of union as the model for the closeness of the Christian’s union with Christ.
Calvin could never fully explain how such a union could take place. Still, he held strongly to this position, in the end simply proclaiming,“I am overwhelmed by the depth of this mystery.”34
Calvin and the Word of God
Indeed, a sense of awe sat at the heart of Calvin’s religious experience and thought. The gracious Word of God in all its senses, one accommodation after another to human weakness, if truly believed and grasped, could finally draw forth only one appropriate response: utter thankfulness in light of God’s unfathomable goodness. Indeed, as one scholar has said, “The theme of grace and gratitude... lies at the heart of Calvin’s entire theology.”35