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

prior to the preparation of his first edition of the Institutio. 714 Concerning the Eucharist,
Luther decries the scholastic concept transubstantiation:
Let us not dabble too much in philosophy, however. . . . For my part, if I cannot
fathom how the bread is the body of Christ, yet I will take my reason captive to
the obedience of Christ [II Cor. 10:5], and clinging simply to his words, firmly
believe not only that the body of Christ is in the bread, but that the bread is the
body of Christ. . . . . What does it matter if philosophy cannot fathom this? The
Holy Spirit is greater than Aristotle. Does philosophy fathom their
transubstantiation? Why, they themselves admit that here all philosophy breaks
down. . . . 715
Calvin nowhere quotes Luther regarding the preeminence of the Spirit, 716 though
he shares with Luther an antipathy toward this particular scholastic philosophical
explanation. Indeed, Calvin's distaste of scholasticism's definition of aspects of the
Lord's Supper may have been whetted by Luther's distaste of the same. Ironically, it
seems Luther eventually went back on his skepticism of scholastic philosophical
conception, 717 as he later relied on the categories of Occam and Biel to work out his
doctrine of Christ so that it might be compatible with, and even facilitate (to use Quere's
word), his doctrine of eucharistic real presence: In his Confession Concerning Christ's
714 See discussion in Chapter 3 above.
715 LW 36:34, emphasis added. "Quid, si Philosophia naec non capit? Maior est spiritussanctus
quam Aristoteles. Nunquid capit transubstantiationem illorum, cum et ipsi fateantur, hic universam
philosophiam ruere?" (WA 6:511, emphasis added).
716 This claim is based on a search of the digitized version of the CO: Calvini Opera Database
1.0, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis (Apeldoorn: Institute voor Reformatieonderzoek, 2005).
717 David Steinmetz, "Scripture and the Lord's Supper in Luther's Theology," in Luther in
Context (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). Steinmetz writes: Luther retained the doctrine of
real presence but rejected the theory of transubstantiation which had been used to explain the manner of
that presence. In part, Luther rejected the philosophical explanation because of a deeply held conviction
that the use of Aristotelian philosophy by scholastic theologians had seriously impeded their efforts to
understand the mind of the New Testament. . . .The pagan Aristotle was not only unbaptized but
unbaptizable. Luther was therefore skeptical of any philosophical explanation of the eucharistic presence
of Christ. His skepticism did not, however, prevent him from appealing to philosophy in his own later
quarrel with Zwingli" (David Steinmetz, "Scripture and the Lord's Supper," 73).
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