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

In an elaboration on this point in a passage new to his 1559 Institutio, Calvin works in a
metaphor of Augustine: "I hold that men bear away from this Sacrament no more than
they gather with the vessel of faith." 89
Faith receives Christ. It is the instrument by which one receives Christ and all
his benefits. And faith, says Calvin, is wholly a gift of the Holy Spirit, a manifest
expression of Christ's dwelling in us by the Holy Spirit. Insofar as the Spirit is the agent
of faith, then, the Spirit is also the agent of the reception of what is truly and objectively
held forth to all by Christ in the Supper, namely, Christ's body and blood. So, in the
context of a discussion of the Lord's Supper, Calvin readily declares, as has been cited,
"Christ . . . cannot enter any human body which is devoid of his Spirit." Any who come
to the table "devoid of the Spirit," devoid, if you will, of faith, receive the elements of
the sacrament, but do not partake of Christ. The body and blood of Christ are given
them, says Calvin, but they partake only of the sign, the symbol, the bread and the wine
of the sacramental celebration. 90 Believers, however, in whom Christ dwells by his
Spirit, receive Christ's body, by the Spirit, by the symbol. Liturgically, in the moment of
the communion, Christ holds forth his body and blood, and believers' souls, eating with
88 Tracts and Treatises 2:579. CO 9:518.
89 Inst. 1559 LCC 4.17.33 (CO 2:1033). The citations here of Augustine's works in LCC are
those of the translator Ford Lewis Battles and/or John T. McNeill, not Calvin's. Calvin simply makes a
general reference to Augustine.
90 E.g., Dilucida, Tracts and Treatises 2:522. CO 9:481. Also Inst. 1559 LCC 4.17.33 (CO
2:1033): "And this is the wholeness of the Sacrament, which the whole world cannot violate: that the
flesh and blood Christ are no less truly given to the unworthy than to God's elect believers. At the same
time, it is true, however, that, just as rain falling upon a hard rock flows off because no entrance opens
into the stone, the wicked by their hardness so repel God's grace that it does not reach them. Besides, to
say that Christ may be received without faith is an inappropriate as to say that a seed may germinate in
fire."
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