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

Calvin's concern here is soteriological: The flesh of Christ has been endowed
with the life of the Godhead, the source of that life being ultimately God the Father. So
endowed, the very flesh of Christ becomes an instrument by which life is communicated
to believers, 638 and the efficacy of that communication—whether within the sacramental
celebration or without—is the Spirit. Or, to render Calvin's metaphor banally, the Father
is the font or source of the water, the Son the water itself, and the Spirit the channel
through which that water flows. Though not in so few words, Calvin is declaring here
with respect to the promise of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper that which he declared
earlier with respect to the promise of the sacrament of baptism: "we clearly discern in
the Father the cause, in the Son the matter, and in the Spirit the effect" of our
quickening. Or, as he put it in the preamble to the exposition of the creed: "to the Father
is attributed the beginning of activity, and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to
the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things; but to the Spirit is
assigned the power and efficacy of that activity." 639 Again, these soteriological and
sacramental claims stand in "explicit continuity." 640
637 Institutio 1539, as in Inst. 1559 LCC 4.17.8-12, though the 1559 edition presents a
rearrangement of this text. Italicized text in the quotation above offers a guide for reading, highlighting
the metaphor of a spring (fons) and the Trinitarian movement of Calvin's thought. Battles' insertions of
Biblical citations that Calvin himself did not include are omitted and paragraph breaks are set according
to the 1539 edition.
638 Davis suggests that Calvin's concept of the "instrumentality of Christ's flesh" doesn't develop
until the 1550s, at the time Calvin published his commentary on the Gospel of John (1553) (Davis,
Clearest Promises, 170-173). But does not this passage in the 1539 Institutio suggest Calvin has already
then a clear conception of the "instrumentality of Christ's flesh"?
639 Institutio 1539, as in Inst. 1559 LCC 1.13.18. "Quam tamen scripturis notatam distinctionem
animadvertimus, subticeri non convenit. Ea autem est, quod patri principium agendi, rerumque omnium
fons et scaturigo attribuitur; filio sapientia, consilium, ipsaque in rebus agendis dispensatio; at spiritui
virtus et efficacia assignatur actionis" (CO 1:490).
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