§7 Introduction (part 3 of 7)
With each detailed statement in Calvin’s theology we should note how, when it is pressed, we reach a kind of joint where a new and apparently opposing statement comes to light that makes the meaning and content of the first one really clear if we can resolve upon following the dialectical movement in which all the statements engage. The point of this movement is always the same, namely, to think together the divine and
36. OS I, 60; BI 46.
§9 1536 asHbates
the human or the vertical and horizontal side, to relate the insight of Luther to the problem of the Middle Ages and the modern period, or to put the latter in the light of the former, to see God from our side and ourselves from his. Good care is taken, then, that this theology will have to remain humble. There can ‘be no question here of building a proud medieval structure. There has to be constant reference back to a first and original thing that cannot be put in any one statement but that simply stands creatively and critically behind all statements. In other words, all statements can only point to an inexpressible center, and to do so they must turn into apparently opposing statements. We might well say that the systematic element in Calvin consists of the applied insight that with words we can engage only in good polemics, and that with words, and the Word, we must be zealously polemical indeed when necessary, but that we cannot make a system of words, for only the theme of all words, God himself, can really be the system, the synthesis.37 When theology remembers this unattainable synthesis and sets itself under its constraint in all its words, that is in itself a great thing.38
I would like to give a few more examples in order to make this feature in Calvin's theology clear. As a good Lutheran, when he hears the term “good works,” Calvin never wearies of declaring that with all our efforts? and exertions we are worthy only of death and confusion. He was afraid that faith would collapse the moment it ceased to be totally the faith of promise, faith in God’s mercy. We do not simply have the forgiveness of sins; we have constant need of it. Even the good things we do in faith on the ways of God cannot make us pleasing to God in ourselves. Only the imputed righteousness of Christ can stand in the eyes of God (I, 47, 49).4° God’s people can build only on this righteousness (I, 113).4! Even those who have gone a long way on God’s paths are still far from the goal. They have the desire and the will and they try, but in them is no perfection. If they look at the law, they see that every work they attempt or plan is under a curse. For what is imperfect is not even partially good or acceptable, but bad and accursed. This is what we are assured with unyielding severity (I, 197).44 Hence we need
37. Cf. Goethe’s Faust, I, vv. 1997f.
38. Barth had here a graph in the margin that he no doubt put on the board.
39. The MS erroneously had “temptations” here; cf. OS I, 59; BI 45, which Barth was paraphrasing.
40. OS I, 58ff.; BI 44f.
41, -OS 1315 BE 132:
42. OS I, 225; BI 243.
Early Years, 15 09-1 536.
forgiveness for our stains and impurities, always needing to be covered by Christ’s purity and perfection so as not to come into judgment until the hour, the hour of death, when the goodness of God, perfecting us, giving the new Adam, Christ, the victory over the old Adam, takes us into his blessed peace, and when we await the day of our Lord, the day of resurrection, on which, in our new and incorruptible bodies, we will enter into the ereosy of his kingdom (I, 49).43
Yet all this does not alter in the slightest for Calvin i seriousness of the task that is posed for our lives by the divine law. How can the Holy Spirit not be given as Leader and Ruler into the hearts of those to whom Christ’s righteousness is imputed before God? But that is a seizing of our flesh. It means that our will can will no other than in every respect the glory of God. On the basis of the election of grace a life must be built up in which we demonstrate what we are: vessels of mercy [cf. Rom. 9:23] chosen for glory and therefore for cleansing. Those who are God’s are changed and have become a new creation [cf. 2 Cor. 5:17]. They are on the way, moving from the kingdom of sin to the kingdom of righteousness. Holiness of life is the way, not the way that leads but the way on which the elect are led by their God to the glory of his heavenly kingdom. It is the training that we have to undergo, a school for recruits (tirocinium),44 when we are justified by grace alone before God. Between the cursing that Calvin pronounces on all our works as such and the school for recruits in which we must receive training in good works for the glory of God there is apparently an unbridgeable gulf. There is indeed. We do not misunderstand Calvin, however, but perhaps suspect something of the fear and trembling [cf. Phil. 2:12] with which this man would see Christians standing before God, if we remember that it is again the line that is broken in God that he wanted to describe, and could obviously describe in no other way.
More keenly than the other reformers Calvin felt and emphasized the provisional and questionable nature of our temporal life. How often do we read in this man of only twenty-seven years of age expressions like “so long as we live in the flesh” or “so long as we are confined in this prison of the body”4> we are sinners and stand under judgment and have to bear the burden of this earthly life, so that we must be ready to journey
4300S 1, (Gl, 476
44. OS I, 67; BI 55; cf. n. 47 below.
45. OS I, 59; BI 45; cf. 133, 138.
on here below. Strangely seldom does he sound a triumphant note as Luther so often does. With earnest agreement he repeats the familiar thoughts of Luther that cause him at this point to use words in which we unmistakably recognize a restrained rejoicing. But it is always restrained. It is as though he is lifting up his hand to show us that the situation is really too serious for us to let ourselves go even for a moment. We never trust God enough except in mistrust of ourselves. Our courage in him is never so high that it does not have to be broken in us. We never find enough comfort in him unless we are without comfort in ourselves. We can never really boast of ourselves in him unless we renounce all self-boasting (I, 48)
46
Or listen to his description of the lives of Christians who, looking to the divine promise in faith, have ventured to tread his way. Scripture, he says, has left us nothing of which to be proud before God. Its whole aim is to suppress our arrogance, to humble us, to make us small, to keep us within bounds. But it comes to the aid of our weakness, which would crumble at once were it not sustained and comforted by expectation. How hard it is to give up and abnegate not merely what is ours but our very selves is something that we must all consider individually, but that is the school for recruits in which Christ trains his disciples, that is, all the pious. He then disciplines us all our lives with the discipline of the cross so that we do not lose our hearts to the desire for temporal goods or to trust in them. In short, he treats us almost as though, wherever we look so far as the eyes can see, we see meeting us only despair. So that we do not go down under such heavy pressure the Lord comes to us and reminds us (so that we may lift up our heads and learn to look further ahead) that we may find in him the felicity that those in the world do not see (I, 54f.).47 Or listen to what he says about faith in another context. To believe with our whole heart, he tells us, is not to cling perfectly to Christ but simply to lay hold of him sincerely, not to be fully satisfied in him but to hunger and thirst and sigh after him with burning desire (I, 104).48
Naturally all these notes may be caught in Luther, too. The difference is that they have become the basic note in Calvin. He correspondingly draws the lines more strongly on another side. Above the problems and assaults of the present life there shines always the thought of the day of
46. OS I, 60; BI 46.
ATZOSANG/5 BUSS:
48. OS I, 120; BI 120.
' Early Years, 1509-1536
the consummation of the kingdom with the revelation of divine judgment when God alone will be the sun and all in all, when his own people will be gathered in glory, and when the kingdom of Satan will be shattered and overthrown (I, 94);49 or, in less eschatological terms, in an exposition of the fourth commandment (I, 37), the eternal sabbath which is already dawning wherever we rest from all works that are not done by us as the fruit of the Spirit, and will dawn with eternal rest the moment the divine “then” comes that confronts our human “then.” To be fair to Calvin we must look at both the harsh and stringent appraisal of time and the bright prospect of eternity in which we often almost think we hear the notes of a Tersteegen. When we do this we see from a new angle what the sure secularity of Calvinism is all about. It is the diagonal>! between a sober view of temporal things that is free from all illusions and a looking ahead to the reality of the Absolute at an unheard-of upward angle. There are portraits of Calvin in which we can nearly grasp this conjunction of reasonable sternness with almost radical enthusiasm.
Sacraments
Always from the same standpoint we must take a preliminary look at Calvin's doctrine of the sacraments. We are in the mid-1530s and the issue is one that divided and still divides adherents of the Reformation movement. On which side would the young Calvin come down? What was the debate really all about? The historical facts are well known and so are the historical explanations. I can only say that the usual comments on the matter do not satisfy me.°* An issue on which Luther would sooner see the whole Reformation confounded than yield had to be in some way more important and central than we view it today with the help of the usual slogans. But what was the important point of the sacramental controversy? Why did this issue stand at the heart of all the controversies?
Iwill first try to explain Luther's insistence on an almost material
49. OS I, 109; BI 108.
50. OS I, 47; BI 31f.
51. Cf. Bohatec, Calvinstudien, 353, for the term “theology of the diagonal”; also Bauke, 16f.
52. This sentence in the margin replaces an original (erased): “I admit that I am in some difficulty here because I do not rightly understand (inwardly) what the controversy was really about.”
tie
§9 1536 Wastittes
presence of the divine in the sacred actions in terms of his general tendency to make of the divine an independent material entity. Thus in him faith and the Word of God and the kingdom of God always have a remarkably isolated position from which at best we have then to find connections and bridges. His experience, the great Reformation experience, is before him as a something in time and place like the Wittenberg tower. We must let the Word stand.°3 It may be that Luther had in mind here something that no one since has really considered, something for which, for us latecomers, the antennae are in some way not available. For him everything depends on the Word enduring in its purity and distinctiveness. “ This is my body” [Mark 14:22 par.]. The thought of sacramental objectivity had value for him as an expression
of that other objectivity which in the mere Word seemed to be too little safeguarded against human caprice and unbelief.
Zwingli, as we saw earlier,-4 did not have this interest in the objectivity and purity of the divine element, or had it in a different way. For him all the stress fell on application, on practice. He could see in Luther's view only a relic of the medieval idea, which it was not. For him the divine element, the Spirit, the object of faith, was wholly and‘ utterly a relation, a movement, theos being derived by him from theein (I, 165).° It is flesh and not spirit that is thing, body, a matter of sense, and the flesh is of no avail [John 6:63]. Hence: significat. Zwingli’s sacramental teaching has its own fervor and force; let us make no mistake about that, and let us be careful not too speak too hastily about profundity and less profundity. An interest in relation is in truth a profound interest, too. Here, then, were the great opposing views with which Calvin had to deal in 1536.
In that year negotiations for union were in train between Wittenberg, Strassburg, and Zurich that reached a provisional and not very promising conclusion in the so-called Wittenberg Concord.>® We might expect in advance that in relation to this controversy Calvin would display the greater perseverance and desire, for concerns of both Luther and Zwingli were present in him. With Luther he laid all the stress on the objectivity of the divine element, and with Zwingli he staked everything on the real
53. An allusion to the last verse of Luther's Ein feste Burg of 1529 (based on Ps. 46).
54. See above, 96.
55. Cf. Zwingli’s True and False Religion, Schuler and Schultess III (Zurich, 1832), 165.
; 56. For the text of the Concordat, which Melanchthon composed, cf. CR III, 75;
and Tschackert, 261 f.
| Early Years, 1509-1536
relation to humanity and the world. Hence both the sacramentalism of the former and the spiritualizing of the latter were alien to him, or, rather, he saw the element of truth behind the two as one and the same, so that he had. to go his own way between the two contending brothers.
I must also say at this point that Calvin did not opt for a mediating path either here or elsewhere. He was not a man of no fixed opinions like Bucer busily rushing back and forth between Wittenberg ahd Zurich.>” He really did go his own way, already in 1536 when he had France chiefly in view, but also later as well. The implacable anger of Luther and the Lutherans was soon enough directed at him as well, and by 1560 Calvin's name was in as much ill repute in North Germany as was Zwingli’s.°8 If Calvin’s theology did in fact prove to be ecclesiastically mediating, this was only to the extent that in some areas of Germany it made the Reformed version of the Reformation possible, giving it a more acceptable form than Zwingli’s theology had done.
But let us now get to the point. Calvin calls a sacrament an appendix of the promise by which God seals the pr
promise and makes it more credible to us. He stresses that the promise itself does not need this seal. God’s truthfulness is sure enough in itself. It is our “imbecility” that needs it. The sacrament thus bears testimony to the grace of God by means of an outward symbol that confirms our faith (I, 102).°9 The water of baptism is not itself our cleansing and salvation, but simply the instrument of these, mediating to us the knowledge and assurance of this gift of God that takes place through the Word (I, 110).6° What happens is not the forgiveness of sins but a strengthening of faith in forgiveness (I, 115).°! Similarly the Lord’s Supper is not the bread of life or Christ himself, but it reminds us that Christ is the bread of life (I, 120).62 In it the Lord seeks to nourish the soul rather than the stomach. We are not to seek Christ in the body, as though we could grasp him with our bodily senses, but in such a way that the soul knows and grasps his presence (I, 121). Here is the basis
57. Cf. Tschackert, 263, on Bucer’s attempted mediation.
58. Barth obviously refers to the controversy between Calvin and Westphal of Hamburg; cf. OS II, 263f£; CO 9, 51ff. and 141ff. The controversy hardened the rejection of Calvinism in North Germany and Lutheran northern Europe.
59 OST, 18) BISuns,
60. OS I, 127; BI 128.
61. OS I, 133; BI 134.
62. OS I, 138; BI 141.
63. OST, 1398; Bl 142,
of the belief that in the flesh Christ is in heaven in our place.“ Those who would say that his body is not there but here with us really mean the spirit. Hence Calvin argues that he is truly and effectively exhibited, not naturally (naturaliter).°> We are given, not the substance or the true and natural body of Christ, but the benefits that he has mediated to us in his body (I, 123).6° The point of the sacred action is (1) to remind us of the goodness of God in Christ and to summon us to recognize it, (2) to enable us to perform an act of confession, and (3) to bring us to a fresh awareness of our fellowship with the brethren and to lead us to love of them in Christ and of Christ in them (I, 126).67
I Ido not really understand how Wernle can arrive at the thesis that in this. question, and in his approach to the sacraments, Calvin may be seen as a Lutheran when he really sought to stay clear of the e
far too strong material element in Luther’s thinking.®® Instead we are tempted to take the line actually taken by many of his contemporaries and claim him as a rather cautious Zwinglian. Yet that again would not be correct, of course. We must take note once more of the hinge that suddenly sheds a different light on the picture. Calvin did not go along with the liberal antisacramentalism of Zwingli that under the sign of spirit and faith left no place for the objectivity of the divine element. Under the form of thinking that was Zwinglian, or close to that of Zwingli, he did in fact speak no less strongly than Luther about the objectivity of the divine element in the means of grace, but developed the thought without the massive materialism of Luther. When Calvin referred to the appendix of the promise, the exercising of faith, the act of confession, or the act of fellowship, he did not add any “merely” to these concepts or weaken the presence of the divine element. As we saw yesterday, promise for him was the supreme and proper form in which God now draws near to us. Faith in the promise, eschatological faith in things that we do not see, was for him full and profound saving faith. This faith precisely, and this faith alone, which is set on Christ
64. OS I, 140; BI 142.
65. OS I, 142; BI 145.
66. OS I, 142f.; BI 145.
67. OS I, 145f. BI 148f.
68. P. Wernle, Der evangelische Glaube nach den Hauptschrifien der Reformation, vol. III, Calvin (Tubingen, 1919), 92, argues that Calvin undoubtedly saw himself on the side of Luther, not the Swiss, but just because he felt so strongly Lutheran he thought he should fight the more vigorously against a superstitious confusion of the external sign with the thing signified.
iS
Early Years, 1509~1536
enthroned in heaven, and which is awakened by the Holy Spirit whom Christ has sent from there and given us from above, is an assured and certain faith that fully suffices.
Spiritualizing for Calvin does not mean any volatilizing, any subjectivizing. It is supreme objectivizing. Unlike Zwingli, on no account did he want, of course, a Spirit that freely roams and rules. As he brought Spirit and letter into a dialectical relation, so he did Spirit and sign. He always had two sides strongly in view, the eternal and majestic God in his unsearchable loftiness and freedom, and we in all our imbecility and arrogance who cannot do without external words and signs. For this reason Calvin expressly defends the sacrament in a way that is plainly directed not least of all against Zurich, against the arguments that faith does not need it, that it restricts the Holy Spirit, and that it infringes on the honor of God by bringing in such a creaturely element.®? His basic response is always to recall how needy and provisional is that which we call faith — a consideration that was by no means unnecessary face-toface with the overconfident folk at Zurich — yet also to recall7° the way in which God himself wills to meet us by such means, and finally to recall how obvious it is that we should not trust in the sacraments but in God alone, the ministry of the sacraments being to help us to do this (I, 104f.).7!
Along these lines, then, baptism is important and meaningful; it is good to have assurance that it is God himself who speaks to us through the sign.”* We certainly need a lifelong testimony that we are not only growing into the death and life of Christ but that we are one with Christ in God’s sight and share his blessings (I, 114).73 In the same way the Lord’s Supper documents the promise and bears witness to it. Where the promise is, faith has something on which to base itself and with which to comfort and strengthen itself (I, 118).74 We are offered that here and not elsewhere; it is as though Christ himself were present before us and could be seen and touched by us.’> Note that Calvin puts this in the conjunctive. For
69. The editor at OS I, 120 n. 30, thinks that the second and third objections discussed by Calvin go back to Schwenckfeld.
70. By an oversight the MS has here an auf for an.
71. OS I, 120; BI 1206.
Ja: OST 132; BI134:
7a OS 1132) DIN133.
TAOS, '137;, BE 13%
75. OS I, 137; BI 140.
§9 1536 Ineseupes
him the corresponding indicative is of a higher order that does not belong in this context. Yet he leaves us in no doubt that it has its place. We We are to move by analogy from bodily things to spiritual things. We must t listen to the words: We are told to take, and that means that it is ours; we are told to eat, and that means that the other thing that we cannot see or take or eat becomes one substance with us.76 The whole force of the sacrament, says Calvin, lies in the Word: “given for you,” “shed for you.” Those who take in the language of the sign truly take the thing signified. In later editions of the Institutes Calvin used formulas that came even closer to Luther and the Lutherans. He could do so with calm confidence. The ground on which he moved, not Lutheran or Zwinglian but his own, was solid and broad enough to allow of free movement without peril. His failure to win over the Lutherans shows outwardly that he had made no concessions. The more the pity for all of us that this farsighted and superior intelligence did not succeed in calling the confused minds on both sides to order!
Church
By way of orientation let us look finally at the doctrine of the church as Calvin presented it in 1536. The breadth of his whole conception, the almost titanic nature of his theological enterprise, is nowhere perhaps so clear as at this point. At issue is the antithesis that is usually depicted under such headings as visible and invisible church or church of faith and church of holiness. I myself would like to put it more one-sidedly and yet also more ambivalently as the divine church and the human church. Who are those who belong to Christ? What is the nature of their membership? How do we distinguish these people from others? Here obviously we have a very important field of battle for decision regarding the Reformed and Reformation interest in the relation between the vertical and the horizontal, the above and the below, eternity and time, Lutheran and medieval or modern thinking. Can we succeed in simultaneously saying the two things as one, that the church is God’s work and yet that as such it is also a human reality? Can we trace membership of Christ wholly to free grace and yet precisely for the sake of the truth of God’s grace see another angle and make a distinction from nonmembership? Can we attribute God’s judg-
76. OSA,, 1375 BE 141.
l7.
ment on individuals wholly and solely to him and yet, just because this judgment counts as the most valid of all life’s realities, establish the point _ that it means_a strict and pitiless distinction?
From the outset we must say that even Calvin could not succeed in really establishing and upholding both aspects, at least as one and the same. As everywhere, so here, too, he had to be content to put the two alongside one another and to show how they are interrelated and affect one another. And as everywhere, especially in his sacramental teaching in which it is plain enough where his heart is, so here he is closer to Zwingli than to Luther, staking everything on God’s relation to us and therefore on the visible holy human church, though also with Luther as distinct from Zwingli, we must immediately add, staking everything also on the what, on the content of the relation, and therefore also, even if rather against the grain, on the invisible church of God that we can only believe. But if Calvin’s undertaking did not and could not succeed — the person who has found the right word in this predicament has not yet been born — his intention is plain and instructive enough.
It is interesting to see how the Calvin of 1536, in dealing with the article regarding the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, was never more Lutheran than precisely at this point, a sure sign that here especially he thought of going further in the opposite direction. For he here defined the church as the sum total of the elect (numerus universus), whether angels or humans, and if humans, dead or alive, and if alive, living in various lands and scattered among many peoples. There is ove church, one communion, one people of God, of which Christ our Lord is the prince and leader, the head of the body. In him they (all) are elected by the kindness of God before the foundation of the world so as to be gathered into the kingdom of God (I, 72).7”7 From the foundation of the world there has been no time when the Lord did not have his church on earth, nor will there ever be such a time. For out of the corrupt mass he always sanctifies to himself some vessels to his glory, so that there should not be any generation that does not have experience of his mercy (I, 74).78 For Calvin, then, the..concept.of the church rests on that of election, or predestination; which-in.the 1536 Institutes is worked.out here and-only here. Note in this regard two points.
1. When we see that this is how predestination comes into Calvin’s
TOSS 862B1 78:
78. OS I, 87; BI 80. theology, we certainly c: cannot say that it
it is the starting point or center of
fact t
that. aes Calvin would-stress.so »vividly this theologoumenon whose content is so arresting, and that he would defend si against all attacks,
himself anes
necessary, for Luther did not go so far in the sponsoring of a visible church of the sanctified and obedient. For the same reason the doctrine of predestination had already been much stronger in Zwingli thanin.
Luther, but Calvin, the synthesizer, knew far better what he was doing, Modern Reformed theology, ‘Which for sentimental reasons thinks it may_ or must throw the ¢
concept 0 Of predestination overboard, has burdened and punished it
itself, <
as we see in ‘Switzerland and America, j
precisely with what_
beseetenctand sant itself with great moral leveling, with a hah, industrious and astonishingly visible churchiness that knows little, however, of the fear and trembling at the grace of God [Phil. 2:12] that is the basis and meaning of the real nature and life of the church. Things will not get better until those who are thus occupied see in some way that the ancient master of Reformed theology had good reasons for introducing this counterweight precisely at this point.
2. But we have also to take note of what the counterweight means precisely at this point: a strict election of grace as the constitutive principle of the church! Where, then, is all the rest, the assurance, the continuity, that at least today we regard as essential for the development of a so-called flourishing congregational life? Is it not clear that we are constantly facing the beginning again, or nothing again? Who of us have the courage today to base our congregational work on proclamation of the God who truly elects and rejects according to his good pleasure, and whom we can never anticipate? Would not this be like laying a foundation at which we solemnly put a big load of dynamite on the foundation stone instead of engaging in the harmless ceremonies that are customary? Calvin had this courage, as we see not only in his dogmatics but also in his sermons, in which again and again he ruthlessly begins at the beginning.’”? In this regard we can only note with astonishment that he achieved a success in
79. A common phrase in Barth; cf. Christliche Dogmatik, part II of Gesamtausgabe (Zurich, 1982), 390f. n. 14; and Rémerbrief, 1st ed., reprinted in part II of Gesamtausgabe (Zurich, 1985), 163, 171, 382. upbuilding that none of us today can emulate, and that obviously it was precisely with this rediscovery that he had the courage and the good conscience to take much more energetic steps in building up a true visible, holy community than we moderns do who shrink back from what he discovered.
For him — and again we must face the paradoxical connection —it was precisely the apparently uncertain thing that lies beyond us, predestination, the unconditional freedom of God’s dealings with us, that gave him the possibility of taking firm steps in this world, and good reason to do so. Of the elect who make up the church he said that their salvation rests on such secure and solid planks that it would not collapse or fall even if the whole cosmic machine (tota orbis machina) were to break in pieces. For it is linked to God’s election and could change or fall only with this eternal wisdom. The elect may thus tremble and be tossed hither and thither and even fall, but they cannot perish, for the Lord holds them with his hand (I, 73).8° I think we can see expressly how the other side already comes to light in these eschatological statements, namely, the church, but not the church as a mere ideal or conceptual entity, not an invisible church in the watered-down modern sense of the term. No, cost what it will, here is something that will take shape visibly on earth during the reign of the emperor Charles V, not in spite of, but precisely because of, the fact that it has its roots where other plants do not, that is, in heaven.
But let us tarry for a while on this side. We naturally ask who these elect are who make up the church. Calvin replies that we can only believe the church as we regard ourselves as also called and elect, leaving the position of onlookers and questioners and standing by the answer that is given us in Christ, by the goodwill of God toward us.8! The one thing we must not do, he cries out with Luther, is ignore Christ as we put the question. Any secondary guarantee of our election that ignores the origin, the revelation, would instead provoke God’s wrath against us, and as we plunge into the abyss of his majesty we could only be crushed by his glory.8* This terrible threat shows us how seriously Calvin took the danger of finding a basis for the church and its membership in this world. At the end of this road he can see only the plight, indeed, the despair of those who want to have dealings with God but not seriously. Calvin knows
80. OS I, 87; BI 80.
81. Ibid.
82. OS I, 88; BI 81.
--§9 1536 Institutes
something of the fact that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God [cf. Heb. 10:31]. By humility, objectivity, and worship we learn not to ask whether we are elect.
Clearly the prompt yes with which Calvin can answer believers as to their church membership simply underlines the thesis that the church is the church of God that rests on the revelation of his goodwill. As regards others the answer is not so simple, for in the strict sense we can all believe only for ourselves. We obviously cannot deny to even our nearest neighbors the venture of trust or the seriousness of obedience, nor can we ascribe them to them. But for the same reason we must refrain from any final decision either way. It is God’s prerogative to know those who are his [2 Tim. 2:19]. Even the lost can still convert, and even those who seem to stand the most firmly can still fall.83 When he referred to binding and loosing for the kingdom of heaven [Matt. 16:19], Christ was not putting in our hands a judicial means of determining plainly who the bound and the loosed are.84 The final truth is, then, that the church is God’s and his alone. The last sentence of the whole section on the church tells us that the church is not a carnal thing that we may know by the senses or locate in a set place or restrict to that place (I, 77).®
Calvin spoke in a more succinct and one-sided and Lutheran way than Luther himself about the church as the church of faith — of faith, that is, of God alone. In 1536 he came close to the spiritualizing concept of a church that we may see only in terms of God. We must be surprised at the manner in which he found his way back from this point. But he did find his way back. The extreme manner in which he spoke about predestination seems to me to be a proof that from the first his intuition was twofold, that from the first the concept of a visible church, a very visible church, was his goal, that it was not suggested to him, as Wernle thinks, only by wrestling with the practical problems of church life after 1536.86 We can be so radical on the one side only if we are no less radical on the other, and with even greater need, I would say, in Calvin's case.
How about that other side in Calvin? As regards others, he says, we
83. Ibid.
84. OS I, 89; BI 82.
85. OS I, 91; BI 83.
86. Wernle, Calvin, 56, argues that a few years of church work after the 1st edition were enough to shift Calvin's thinking from the invisible ideal church to the visible church, so that in the next edition he was no longer hovering between heaven and earth but had both feet firmly on the ground. cannot know the elect with any certainty of faith. But we do have some signs or indications by which we may at least have some probability. You all know what are the “notes” of the church according to the Augsburg Confession: “The church is the congregation of saints in which the gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments are rightly administered.”8” Here is an attractive solution. The sanctity of the church has an objective basis in its institution. The saints are not saints; they are the sanctified by participation in that institution. Visibility, then, means such participation, or, more strictly, the disclosing and communicating of the primary accounts of it, that is, the right proclamation of the gospel and administration of the sacraments. We seem to have here a happy solution to the problem how the invisible can be visible without losing its objectivity and becoming something contingent, human, and limited, and we can well understand why modern Lutherans (Stange!)88 do not seek any closer definition but constantly retreat into this sure and tested stronghold. When Calvin came to speak about the visible church, why could he not be content with this classical Augsburg formulation to which he subscribed®? and of which he undoubtedly approved?
This is not the only point at which the difference between Lutheran and Reformed theology is not one of deviation but of agreement and yet with something extra, a further dialectical refraction, on the Reformed side. We shall perhaps see that as regards the Lord’s Supper, too, where the extra is apparently on the Lutheran side, the situation is no different. Here in the concept of the church it is plain. No, Calvin could not be content with Augsburg’s definition of the “notes” of the church. We may really doubt whether the definition, even though its obvious purpose is to secure the objectivity of the concept of the church, actually does this in face of every velleity?® and constriction. The history of the Lutheran church at any rate seems to me to give us good reason for such doubt. What is meant by right teaching and right administration? Obviously only the founder of the church can decide, and he only directly. Luther (in a 1521 sermon; Tschackert, 104) said that we humans can consecrate bishops and
87. Augsburg Confession, article VII, has “pure docetur” according to BSLK 59f., but in J. T. Müller, Die symbolischen Biicher der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Giitersloh, 3rd ed. 1913), 40, which he used, Barth found “recte”; and cf. Schaff, 12.
88. Carl Stange (1870-1959) was a Gottingen colleague of Barth, professor of systematic theology.
89. 1541 at Regensburg; see 398 n. 18.
90. Willkiirlichkeiten. make parsons, but only the Holy Spirit can make good preachers, and if he does not, then all is lost.9! Again (in his 1518 Psalms commentary, EOL XIV, 66) he said that the church, God’s holy city, is where Christ most purely teaches Christ.?? That is the authentic interpretation of “rightly.” It has to be so, for would not any other more obvious and more readily comprehensible interpretation at once interfere with the aim of the whole formula, namely, to secure the purity and objectivity of the concept of the church? But if there is no other interpretation of the decisive “rightly,” then clearly it says no other than what Calvin is saying in his “number of the elect,” that is, that the Lord knows who are his [2 Tim. 2:19}.
At the end of his discussion Calvin thus adopted the Augsburg concept, but with some not inessential changes or, better, sharpenings. He says that where the Word of God (not just the gospel) is sincerely (not just an objective “rightly”) preached (not just taught) and heard (again not just taught), and where the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution (not just an indefinite “rightly”), where we see all this we cannot doubt that the church of God is also there? — note the caution as compared to the assurance of Augsburg: “The church is.. .” Nor does Calvin ever speak here of notes, let alone of notes of that which it is his final concern to seek. He speaks thus only to give final comfort face-to-face with the fact that there can be no ultimate certainty as to individual membership or nonmembership of the church. In this matter he does in fact seek notes or indications, things to which we can cling. But he does not do this in the impersonal matter of the true church, which we cannot know in practice. The changes that he proposes in the Augsburg definition obviously point in this direction, though he does not himself specify them. The Word of God that embraces both law and gospel (not just the gospel) as it is sincerely preached and heard and the sacraments as they are administered according to Christ’s institution — they constitute the true church. But here is only Calvin’s final comfort where all else fails. As proper notes or signs he does not adduce the qualities or activities of the church as such but only those of the people who as the elect of God have a share in it.
What did Calvin fear most? The spiritualizing imprecision that leaves
91. WA 9, 603, 6-8.
92. Cf. WA 5, 60Ff. on Ps. 2:7.
Wey, OSadl, ils eH! tip.
it open whether the “rightly” is expounded authentically in Luther's sense? Certainly he did not want to stop at the number of the elect that such an interpretation would finally give but saw clearly that if there must be notes something more is needed. Or did he fear institutionalizing more, the objectivity of the pastorate to which the other interpretation would inevitably lead? We have no data on which to judge. The most we can say is that he had simply no antenna for the specifically Lutheran concept of the ministry. Positively, at any rate, he wanted a truly visible church against the background of the invisible church, a human church that might dare with fear and trembling to equate itself with the invisible church, but without being condemned thereby to passivity in this world; in short, a congregation of saints in which there would be no need to take the term saints so strongly that of the subjects of this holiness, the living persons concerned, no more would in truth be left than a kind of church roof arching in friendly fashion over them. When he inquired into the elect, the members of the church, Calvin was seeking the living persons to whom they relate. We should not really regard his aim too hastily as a kind of relapse from the Reformation and denounce it as a new monasticism or Humanistic velleity.°4 The relation of the knowledge of God to the living persons, and thus to the culture, or lack of it, in which they live, is also, as I said last time in regard to Zwingli, a serious and a profound concern. What would the knowledge of God be, and what would come of it, if there were no such relation? Can there be such a thing as a knowledge of God in itself? We must see the valid reasons for the concern that drove Calvin beyond Luther and Augsburg, just as we must understand the concern of the latter when they did not go beyond that definition. Only when we have grasped Calvin’s concern have we any right to shake our heads because he could find no way of meeting the concern.
Calvin's notes of the church are as follows. We must have regard to a person's (1) confession of faith, (2) example of life, and (3) partaking of the sacraments. If in these three things the person confesses the same God and Christ as we do, then we should accept that person as one of the elect and a member of the church, but if not, then for the time being we should not.» In Calvin’s view church membership, or election, will necessarily show itself in certain subjective signs, and he himself specifies the above
94. Cf. A. Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. | (Bonn, 1880), 76; Troeltsch, Soziallehren, 627; Loofs, Leitfaden, 893; also in n. 156 below.
95. OS I, 89; BI 82. three, especially the first two. But this means that notwithstanding his almost spiritualizing or at any rate extremely Lutheran concept of the church, he has to demand church discipline, the right of the congregation to excommunicate. This is essential (a) lest anything unworthy be imputed to Christians to the dishonoring of God, as though his holy church were a conspiracy of lawbreakers and openly ungodly people, (b) in order that the bad example of such people should not corrupt others by their accepted presence, and (c) in order that by being put to shame such people should repent and make public confession.%
To his well-known demands Calvin did, of course, attach some provisos that put the matter in a different light from that in which it is usually seen. We are not to be simply offended by the moral imperfection of others, at least so long as they have not totally fallen victim to it. We are not to regard temporary exclusion from the church as though those thus punished had fallen from God’s hand, from the number of the elect, and were lost — unless, as he adds, those concerned are openly condemned by God’s Word, opposing the truth, suppressing the gospel, extinguishing God’s name, and resisting the Holy Spirit.?” By the nature of the case this limitation of the limitation, that is, the possibility of directly recognizing those directly marked by God and treating them as such, had to be more influential in practice than it should have been according to the theory. In his later life Calvin met a surprising number of people whom he would recognize to be wicked in this sense. But this was, perhaps, inevitably his destiny in view of his distinctive witness. At any rate, we must not overlook the fact that he wanted to exercise the church discipline that he envisioned with great caution and restraint. We cannot limit God's ability or make rules for his mercy. God can change the worst of people into the best. He can bring in the alienated. He can put those who are outside inside. He can thus shatter all human thinking: We must mutually think the best of each other, and if we cannot we must commend ourselves to God’s hand and at least hope for something better from one another. In this way we shall maintain peace and love and refrain from foolish prying into the mystery of God’s judgments. Even though Paul may hand over someone to Satan in 1 Cor. 5 [v. 5], that is only a condemnation in time for the sake of salvation in eternity.?8
96. OS I, 89. BI 83.
97. OS 1-90; BI 83.
98. OS I, 91; BI 84.
In a word, we are not to condemn others. Their persons are in God’s hands. For our part we can only evaluate their deeds by the standard of the law of God that is the rule of the good and the bad.®? Our purpose with the excommunicated, then, is simply to motivate them to bring forth better fruits and hence to return to the society and unity of the church. !00 There follows a passage that perhaps unfortunately but at least significantly Calvin omitted from later editions. In it he stated that we were not to treat only the excommunicated in this way but also Turks and Saracens and other enemies of true religion. We must totally reject the ways in which thus far many have tried to convert them to faith by withholding from them water and fire and other common necessities of life, by refusing to discharge to them the duties of humanity, and by persecuting them with iron and the sword (I, 77).}01
From all this we see that Calvin was well aware of the ambiguity and danger of his movement in the direction of a visible church. But we must also note that on the basis of the subjective notes that he boldly advanced these were only restrictions on the demand he made for church discipline. What he really wanted deep in his heart was a church that can honor God in the world, a church that has the advantages of a sect without the disadvantages, a church that knows what it wants and does not want, a church that knows its people, a church militant that could be compared to the Jesuit order in external power if not perhaps in inward organization because after all it is not an order or society but in spite of everything a church. Here was the step, then, that Calvin took beyond the Augsburg Confession. In later editions of the Institutes he worked out this side of his teaching with increasing force and more and more pushed the other side, the Lutheran side, into the background, though he never abandoned it altogether. Precisely at this point we see in a distinctive way the synthetic approach in his theology. He knew what he was doing when he dared to be a resolute and blunt churchman. He also knew what he was doing when he dared to be a resolute and blunt predestinarian. Even today we should take note of his pointing finger in this regard: Not the one side without the other. Both sides are valid.
99. OS I, 90; BI 83.
100. OS I, 91; BI 84ff
101. OS I, 91; BL85.
False Sacraments
We have now familiarized ourselves with the main content of the first four chapters on law, faith, preachingand sacraments. We have still to take a look at the last chapters on false sacraments and Christian liberty, which, as we have said, expand the schema offered in Luther’s Catechism. But since these two chapters together make up no less than half the main work, we must be on guard against claiming Calvin here as a kind of translator of Luther into French. Calvin did not really find Luther’s Catechism exhaustive, and, as we have seen, he would often go his own way even when following it. The two chapters do not, of course, make easy reading. In them we get some impression of the ambivalence of the fact that Calvin completed Luther’s work. What we see and hear now is reformation that has truly and finally come down from heaven to earth. We now have a detailed answer to the momentous question facing all religious movements: “Men and brethren, what shall we do?’ [Acts 2:37]. How could this question fail to call forth a detailed answer in the Reformation, too? The threatening foes and uncertain friends of the cause force the leader to say precisely how all things would now be. It was a thankless task to give this answer. Luther played his part in shouldering the burden. But Calvin carried more of it. For in his case the insight into its inevitability was not the bitter end but the beginning that already stared the twenty-seven-yeatold in the face as he realized that there was no option.
Ido not know whether it is apt to do as Wernle often does and speak about Calvin being inspired.!°* Those who from the outset had to undertake that thankless task had to have much more than inspiration or whatever else we might call it. Much more apt, I would think, is a description like harnessed enthusiasm, which Wernle also coined for Calvin in one place.!93 Seen on the highest level, this attitude is perhaps one of the greatest and most heroic one can find among us. But at a first glance, it might easily seem to make a person dry and dull and all too human. Calvin could never achieve popularity either in his own lifetime or later. He could not become a theme of myth like Luther. It is more understandable that unlike the latter, he walked rather than flew. The 1909 anniversary in Geneva was thus a celebration for pastors and professors,