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

same, he also emphatically affirms the "nature" of a sign: "the reality figured is truly
given at the same time" as the sign, the sign being not nudas, naked or bare.
To this point in the development of his thought, Calvin's work reveals a shift in
his conception of sacraments as instruments. He first speaks of the sacraments as
instruments that convey a "testimony of God's good will toward us." While he never
abandons this view, he also seemingly advances it, eventually speaking of, e.g., the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper as an instrument by which Christ nourishes souls with
his very body and blood, by which Christ "distributes" this spiritual food for the
spiritual journey. As an instrument of this sort then, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper
communicates, really and truly, the very body and blood of Christ, a mystery which
transpires only, says Calvin emphatically and repeatedly, by the secret, miraculous, and
incomprehensible virtus spiritus sancti, who is the bond of believers' union with Christ.
Calvin's conception, as ameliorating as he might have hoped it to be, roused the
suspicions of detractors from the followers of Luther and Zwingli alike. When Calvin
speaks of the Lord's Supper in the late 1540's and beyond, his theological accent seems
to get somewhat inflected according to his audience 237 in order that—ultimately—he
might maintain the theological and sacramental best that each, e.g., the Germans and the
Swiss, have to offer. 238 What remains consistent, however, theologically and
237 See Janse, "Calvin's Eucharistic Theology," 52ff, in which he "compares Calvin's exegeses of
the consecration words according to 1 Corinthians and the synoptic gospels before and after 1549 . . . .
Before 1549 he wrote his Commentary on 1 Corinthians (1546; French version 1547); for the time after
1549 we have his nineteen Sermons sur le dixieme et onzieme chpatre de la premiere Epistre de sainct
Paul aux Corinthiens (1558, preached from 1555) and the Commentary on the Harmony of the Gospels of
1555."
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