THE PROVENANCE OF JOHN CALVIN'S EMPHASIS ON THE ...

seemingly conceded the use of the term organa, a term more palatable to Bullinger. 265
Exhibere, or a derivative thereof, appears but once in the treatise, and then only in one
of the articles Calvin proposed later, and not specifically with reference to the
sacraments themselves. Throughout the treatise, the Holy Spirit is confessed as
operative, not with respect to faith and the sacraments as Calvin would have it, but with
respect to faith alone, as Bullinger would. These, along with the sacraments "figuring"
rather than "exhibiting," 266 are concessions Calvin himself articulates in the twenty-third
article:
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. 267
But again, looking on Calvin's correspondence with Bullinger, with its robust
expressions of the instrumentality of the sacrament, and then on his second refutation of
Westphal, in which Calvin declares that the sacraments are "living organs of the Holy
Spirit, which offer nothing to the eyes that God does not efficaciously effect within"—
with such claims is Calvin anticipating his eventual claim that "through the agency of
(trans. Rorem, Calvin and Bullinger, 49; CO 13:439; Bucer's letter of 14 August 1549 to Calvin is fouind
in CO 13:350).
265 Rorem, Calvin and Bullinger, 49: "Calvin's comments to Bucer [see note above] argue
against the alternative hypothesis that the substitute of 'implement' for 'instrument' was actually a victory
for Calvin's instrumentalism." Indeed. See also Davis, Clearest Promises, 55.
266 E.g., in the Ultima admonitio against Westphal (1557), Calvin says of the Lord's Supper that
"Christ works effectually by its means" (Tracts and Treatises 2:374). "Christum, qui coenam instituit,
efficaciter per eam operari" (CO 9:162).
267 Tracts and Treatises 2:219. From Calvin's letter to Bullinger, 6 July 1549. "Quod autem
carnis suae esu et sanguinis potione quae hic figurantur Christus animas nostras per fidem spiritus sui
virtute pascit, id non perinde accipiendum quasi aliqua fieret substantiae vel commixtio vel transfusion,
sed quoniam ex carne semel in sacrificium oblate et ex sanguine in expiationem effuso vitam hauriamus"
(CO 13:306, emphasis added).
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