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

this view in his definition of the sacraments, given in his Commentary on True and
False Religion, 1525:
The sacraments are, then, signs or ceremonials . . . by which a man proves to the
Church that he either aims to be, or is, a soldier of Christ, and which inform the
whole Church rather than yourself of your faith . . . . [B]y the Lord's Supper we
give proof that we trust in the death of Christ, glad and thankful to be in that
company which gives thanks to the Lord for the blessing of redemption which
He freely gave us by dying for us. 772
In contrast, Calvin ever affirms that God is the primary actor in the sacrament, and that
God does in fact use the sacraments as a means by which to nourish the soul. For
Calvin, sacraments are testimonies, but they are testimonies first of God's grace, not of a
person's faith. In this regard, Calvin's thought is compatible with Luther's, and
Melanchthon's definitions after him. In light of his encounter with Zwingli's view, in
1539 Calvin wrote to André Zébédée, a Zwinglian in Orbe, that "Zwingli had not
grasped all the richness of what is given to the congregation in the Lord's Supper." 773
While these significant differences exist in the sacramental doctrines of Calvin
and Zwingli, some aspects of their doctrines are undeniably compatible. 774
God in Christ nourishes God's own. Zwingli's appraisal of what is received does not reciprocally balance
Calvin's appraisal of what is done.
772 "On True and False Religion," LWZ, 184.
773 According to Locher, "In Spirit and in Truth," in Zwingli's Thought, 20, citing the letter of
Calvin to André Zébédée, Strasbourg, May 19, 1939 (CO 10:346). Might Calvin have said this with an
understanding, if only an inference, of Zwingli's assertion following on Augustine's classic definition of a
sacrament: "I believe the sacrament to be the sign of a sacred thing, that is, of effected grace"? For
Zwingli's statement, see Locher, " Characteristic Features," in Zwingli's Thought, 215.
774 The forthcoming discussion does not mention "metonymy," a concept regarding symbols,
their names and what they signify, that Zwingli introduces already in at least two works: Amica exegesis,
id est, exxpositio eucharistae negotii ad M. Lutherum (1527), and Ad illustrissimos Germaniae principes
Augustae congregatos (1530). Calvin also works favorably with this linguistic term and concept in his
discussions of the Lord's Suppe, but interestingly not until after his attempts toward rapprochement with
Bullinger in the late 1540s. So presumably Calvin assimilated this term and concept into his discussion
not from Zwingli, but from Zwingli's successor. Pursuing this discovery in further detail would be
interesting, but lies beyond the scope of the project at hand.
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