Calvin on the Lord's Supper
No presence means no point!
I will never forget reading John Calvin’s shorter treatise on the Lord’s Supper when he states:
We begin now to enter on the question so much debated, both anciently and at the present time—how we are to understand the words in which the bread is called the body of Christ, and the wine his blood. This may be disposed of without much difficulty, if we carefully observe the principle which I lately laid down, viz., that all the benefit which we should seek in the Supper is annihilated if Jesus Christ be not there given to us as the substance and foundation of all. That being fixed, we will confess, without doubt, that to deny that a true communication of Jesus Christ is presented to us in the Supper, is to render this holy sacrament frivolous and useless—an execrable blasphemy unfit to be listened to.
Yes, you read him right. If there is no presence, then the supper has no point!
Michael Horton in People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology, argues that the spiritual presence of Christ in the supper is not spatial nor imaginary, but relational and eschatological. The earthly sign has a heavenly reality and the supper is a fissure in the present age that has been opened up by the Spirit for our semi-realized participation in the consummation. Horton detects in Calvin's eucharistic theology patristic influences from the East whereby the Spirit communicates the energies of Christ's life-giving flesh in the sacrament.
Horton qualifies that by saying that the East's category of energies is better translated into the covenantal idiom of the workings of God, specifically, the redemptive speech-act of Father in the Son by the Spirit. While the person of Christ cannot be communicated through the sacament in total, the workings of Christ can be presented to us and we can participate in them and be nourished by them.
Horton writes:
"It is through the working of God through Word and sacrament, received in faith, that the Spirit clothes us with Christ inwardly in this age and outwardly adorns us with righteousness, beauty, glory, and immortality in the age to come. Once more we recognize the point ... the emphasis on the sacraments as mediating God's presence-in-action rather than naked manifestation."
Finally, Horton quotes B.A. Berrish as to how Calvin's eucharistic theology has been received in the Reformed churches:
Calvin's eucharistic piety has repeatedly been lost, or at least curtailed, in the churches that officially claim him as their Reformer but in fact have moved closer in their sacramental theology to the Zwinglian view, which Calvin rejected as "profane." It has even become commonplace to make a sharp distinction between "evangelical" and "sacramental" piety. The distinction, as such, could hardly find support in Calvin, for whom the Supper attested a communion with Christ's body and blood that is given precisely by the gospel.
I find this amusing because I often joke that I can turn any Presbyterian into a Baptist by putting bread and wine before them! The Reformed testimony to sacramental grace is suddenly evacuated in favour of naked symbolism concerning the supper.
What do you think? Let me know below!
I quite agree with Calvin and Horton. We may debate the metaphysics of the Eucharist, but the real presence of Christ is essential to the rite.
Thanks very much for pointing out this emphasis in Calvin's writings. I read his Institutes of the Christian Religion years ago and was profoundly impacted by his nuanced theological assessment of this sacrament. In fact, reading him demonstrated to me the emptiness of the memorialist view of the Lord's Supper. After reading Calvin on this I could never again seriously consider a memorialist only view. By the way, could you please supply the exact source for this quote from Calvin that you opened up this piece with? Thanks.