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

In order to assure readers that he truly means that Christ's flesh and blood are
"substantially offered and exhibited" in the Supper, 46 Calvin recognizes the necessity of
clarifying the relation between the sacramental sign, symbol, or figure, and that which it
signifies. 47 Indeed, their relation is essential to the communication of "Christ and his life
to us" 48 in the Supper. "Although I distinguish between the sign and the thing signified,"
says Calvin, "I do not teach that there is only a bare and shadowy figure, but distinctly
declare that the bread is a sure pledge of that communion with the flesh and blood of
Christ which it figures." Christ does not present "an empty image to amuse the eye," he
says, "but he truly (vere) and in reality (re) performs what he promises by an external
symbol." 49 The "general rule in regard to all the sacraments, which not only human
reason compels us to adopt, but which a sense of piety and the uniform usage of piety
dictate," says Calvin, is that the "symbol" bears with it an "inseparable connection with
the thing and reality." 50 For Calvin, a "true symbol" bears with it "the exhibition of the
46 Tracts and Treatises 2:506. CO 9:470. See footnote 26 above and its referent.
47 Calvin discusses this also in, e.g., his 1541 Petit Traicté de la saincte cène, his 1545
Catechism for the church of Geneva, his 1546 Commentary on 1 Corinthians, and his treatises addressed
to Westphal in the mid-1550s.
48 See footnote 36 above.
49 Tracts and Treatises 2:507. "Etsi autem signum discerno a re signata, non tamen trado nudam
et umbratilem figuram esse, sed articulate pronuncio panem certum esse pignus communicationis cum
carne et sanguine Christi quam figurat: quia Christus neque pictor sit, neque histrio, neque Archimedes
quispiam; qui inani tantum obiecta imagine oculos pascat, sed vere et re ipsa praestet quod externo
symbolo promittit" (CO 9:470-71). See also Tracts and Treatises 2:563; CO 9:512.
50 Tracts and Treatises 2:508. ". . . qua individua sit huius cum re et vertitate connexio" (CO
9:471). See also Inst. 1559 LCC 4.17.5: " . . . we should not, by too little regard for the signs, divorce
them from their mysteries, to which they are so to speak attached." In the Institutio, in the context of this
passage which appeared already in 1543, Calvin sharply distinguishes between adnecto and adfigo –
"annexed" and "affixed" – with respect to this "connection." This distinction will be further noted in the
succeeding chapter. See also Inst. 1559 LCC 4.17.12, 16, and 19, where this distinction is repeated. These
passages, too, derive from the 1539 Institutio. See also Raitt, "Three Inter-related Principles," 55.
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