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

In light of his first treatment of the Lord's Supper, i.e., in his initial edition of the
Institutio, Calvin's appeal to the Spirit here is striking. Whereas in his first exposition of
the Lord's Supper Calvin speaks of the Spirit almost exclusively with respect to
"reception," that is, as the one who illumines minds and softens hearts in order that the
sacraments might "enter in," here Calvin speaks of Christ's Spirit as a "bond,"
presumably between Christ himself and his own. The Spirit is a lien, by which (par)
Christ, "in virtue and in power," communicates "all that we are able to receive of grace
in his body and blood," making us "participant of his body and blood." The Spirit, then,
as this lien, is the "agent" of such communication.
The next statement of interest is the 1536 Confession de la foy, 132 likely
presented to the Genevan council by Farel (and perhaps Calvin) on 10 November
believers' participation of Christ's body and blood, particularly in the Supper? A conversation with
Richard Wevers, 3 Nov 2006, was invaluable for considering this. It would seem this genitive is an
"appositional" genitive, where "Holy Spirit" and "power" are almost something of a redundancy, and yet
the force of each (especially theologically in this case) is enhanced with two being in relation. Another
clear, general example, morbid though it be, is poena mortis, the penalty of death, or death penalty.
Spiritus virtute could be construed as "Spirit power."
132 "Confession of Faith which all the citizens and inhabitants of Geneva and the subjects of the
country must promise to keep and hold (1536)," Calvin: Theological Treatises, 26-31; CO 22:85-96.
Scholarly opinion varies as to the relation between this document and Calvin's Instruction et confession
de foi of 1537. The full title of the confession would seem to suggest that it is an extract of the
Instruction, but Olivier Labarthe makes the case that the structure of the Confession de la foy actually
follows that of two prior works of Farel, his Sommaire and his La maniere et facon, whereas the
Instruction et confession follows the structure of Calvin's 1536 Institutio. This would seem to suggest that
Farel is the principal author of the Confession de la foy and Calvin of the Instruction et confession de foi.
See Backus and Chimelli, La Vraie Piété: Divers traités de Jean Calvin et Confession de foi de
Guillaume Farel (Genevè: Labor et Fide, 1986), 42; and O. Labarthe, La Relation entre le premier
catéchisme de Calvin et la première confession de foi de Genève (thèse de licence, University of Geneva,
1967). See also Jean-François Gilmont, Jean Calvin et le livre imprimé (Geneva: Droz, 1997), translated
by Karin Maag as John Calvin and the Printed Book (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University
Press, 2005), 63: "In early 1537, [Calvin] wrote a catechism, Instruction et confession de foi. A few
months earlier, in late 1536, Farel had written a Confessio de foi [also referred to as the Confession de la
foy]."
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