Visible Words

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 1 CORINTHIANS 10:16

The Reformation divided Christians over many things, but over none more painfully than the Lord’s Supper. Rome, Luther, Zwingli and the Anabaptists all held different views, and the Protestants themselves could not agree. Calvin spent much of his life trying to find a way through, and his teaching on the sacraments, set out in Institutes 4.14–18 and in his Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper of 1541, is among the most thoughtful and devotional things he wrote.

Why God gives signs

Calvin begins with our weakness. We are creatures of flesh, he says, and our faith is so feeble that unless it is propped up on every side it wavers and falls. So God, in His kindness, accommodates Himself to our capacity. Since we are earthly, He leads us to Himself by earthly elements, and sets before us in the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings (Institutes 4.14.3).

He defines a sacrament as an outward sign by which the Lord seals on our consciences the promises of His goodwill towards us, to support the weakness of our faith; and by which we in turn testify our devotion to Him before Him, the angels and the world (Institutes 4.14.1). Following Augustine, he calls a sacrament a visible word. It does not add anything to the promise of the gospel. It shows the same promise in a form we can see, touch and taste.

And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised. ROMANS 4:11

This means that sacraments are never separated from the Word. A sign without a promise is empty. Calvin was sharp with the medieval practice of saying the words of the sacrament in Latin that the people could not understand, as if they worked like a spell. The Word must be preached, he said, so that the sign can be understood and received by faith.

Baptism

Calvin taught that baptism is the sign of our initiation into the church, by which we are engrafted into Christ and reckoned among God’s children. It signifies the washing away of our sins and our death and new life in Christ. He defended the baptism of the infant children of believers at length (Institutes 4.16), chiefly on the ground that God’s covenant promise includes the children of His people, as circumcision did in the Old Testament. Christians of the Baptist tradition, many of whom share Calvin’s doctrine of grace, have not been persuaded, and the reader may weigh the arguments on both sides.

For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. ACTS 2:39

The Supper: truly fed

It is on the Lord’s Supper that Calvin is most distinctive. He rejected the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, which taught that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in substance. He also rejected Luther’s teaching that Christ’s body is present everywhere and so present in, with and under the bread. Christ’s human body, Calvin believed, is truly human, and so is in one place — at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

But he was just as firm that the Supper is not merely a memorial, a reminder of something absent. In the Supper, he insisted, believers truly receive Christ, His body and blood, and are truly fed by Him. The sign is not empty. What it signifies is truly given.

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. JOHN 6:51

How can both be true? Calvin’s answer is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit truly unites things separated in space. By the secret power of the Spirit, we are lifted up to heaven to feed on Christ, and His life is poured into us (Institutes 4.17.10, 18, 31). This is why the old liturgies said, Lift up your hearts. Calvin admits that this is a mystery too high for his mind to grasp or his words to express, and he says frankly that he would rather experience it than understand it (Institutes 4.17.32).

This is the same teaching of union with Christ that runs through all his work. The Supper does not give a different Christ from the one we receive by faith in the Word. It gives the same Christ, in a way fitted to our weakness. In his sermon The Mystery of Godliness Calvin speaks of Christ joining Himself to us so that we are made partakers of His substance; in the Supper, he believed, that union is sealed and nourished.

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. JOHN 6:54

Coming to the table

Calvin wanted the Supper to be celebrated often. He believed it should be given at least every week, and argued for it in the Institutes (4.17.43–46). The magistrates of Geneva would allow it only four times a year, and he had to accept that, though he recorded his disagreement. It is a striking fact that the man often blamed for coldness in worship wanted his people at the table more often than most Protestants have been since.

He also wrote tenderly about who should come. The Supper, he said, is not for the perfect but for the weak. Those who are troubled by their sins and hungry for grace are exactly the ones for whom it was given. It is medicine for the sick, not a reward for the healthy. Worthiness means not sinlessness but faith and repentance.

Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. 1 CORINTHIANS 11:28

Polemic and peace

Calvin laboured for agreement among the Protestants. In 1549 he and Heinrich Bullinger of Zurich reached a common statement on the sacraments, the Zurich Consensus, which drew the Swiss churches together. But the same agreement provoked a Lutheran pastor, Joachim Westphal, to attack it, and Calvin answered him in a series of increasingly bitter treatises. It is sad to see a doctrine of communion become the occasion of such anger. The modern reader may be grateful for Calvin’s teaching and grieved by his tone, and learn from both.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before you next come to the Lord’s Table, read John 6:47–58 and ask the Spirit to lift your heart to Christ.

2. Remember your baptism. Thank God for the promise it signified, and ask how you are living out your death and new life in Christ.

3. If you have stayed away from communion because you feel unworthy, remember that it is medicine for the weak.

4. Ask whether you value the sacraments as God’s gifts to your faith, or treat them as optional extras.

5. Pray for Christians with whom you disagree about the sacraments, and resolve to speak of them charitably.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You know how weak my faith is, and You have given me signs I can see and touch and taste.

In the bread and the cup, feed me with Yourself. Lift my heart by Your Spirit to where You are.

Seal to me the promise of Your love, and nourish the union You have made between us.

Forgive Your church for her quarrels at Your table, and draw us together in the communion of Your body and blood. Amen.