John Calvin’s
Theology of the Sacraments: B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude 4-6
By John L Drury
This paper will continue the outline as well as the line of criticism regarding Gerrish’s reading strategies. The second half of the book is more careful to balance different aspects of Calvin’s thought. This may be accounted for by the decline in emphasis on the systematic coherence of fatherhood and fountain images, as Gerrish moves to the more wiry matters of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The resultant closer readings are more accurate to the complexities of Calvin’s thought on the issues under discussion. However, the aspects that were earlier underemphasized (e.g., the doctrine of predestination and the past tense substitution of Christ) come back to haunt these otherwise careful expositions.
Before moving into his discussion of baptism, Gerrish first addresses Calvin’s understanding of forgiveness and repentance (ch. 4). The focus of his exposition is that the Fatherhood of God correlates to the freedom of a Christian. The connection comes by way of the process of adoption: in both justification and regeneration, the servant becomes a son. This is an illuminating application of the fatherhood theme to Calvin’s criticism of penance and merit. One only wonders whether this treatment does not overlook the place of merit in the atoning work of Christ (Institutes II.17). Although he mentions the merits of Christ once (99), Gerrish has sidelined merit to focus on fatherhood. Certainly Gerrish is right that Calvin’s “entire theological vocabulary … is colored by father-son language” (89). But the father who forgives does so justly through cultic means.
Gerrish describes Calvin’s doctrine of baptism as a patchwork of ideas that simultaneously point us in different temporal directions (110f). Calvin interestingly speaks of adoption as occurring before, during, and after baptism. Gerrish does not see Calvin as coherently holding these three tenses together, and is determined to keep Calvin from falling into a Zwinglian mode of thinking that separates the sign from salvation (cf. 115). Gerrish puts the emphasis on the present tense to bring out the sacramental character of baptism. Yet might this miss the point of Calvin’s three tenses? What if Calvin’s doctrine of baptism is not a patchwork at all? What if Calvin’s sacramental present tense is built on a historical past tense (one that reaches further back than the moment of faith, but rather to the acquired righteousness of Christ)?
The pattern of three tenses persists into Gerrish’s treatment of the Lord’s Supper (ch. 5). He notes Calvin’s distinction between the daily self-giving of Christ and the “one and only giving that took place on the cross” (131). He states that the “two givings are inseparable and mutually dependent” (131). But the present tense eventually overshadows the past. Gerrish states that “faith does not see Christ in the distance but embraces him. The Supper is a gift; it does not merely remind us of a gift” (136). Would be more adequate to say that faith does not only see Christ at a distance? Is there not some kind of fides historica in Calvin, even if it is never separated from the unio mystica? Certainly Calvin’s emphasis on the present tense is apparent in his discussion of the sacraments in Book IV. But once we begin to systematically connect the sacraments to salvation, the past tense of Book II must not be forgotten.
In his final chapter (ch. 6), Gerrish turns again to the problems of efficacy and presence mentioned at the beginning of the book. He set them aside at that time in order to read Calvin on his own terms and according to his own themes. The question that one must put to this chapter is whether this commendable strategy of transference bears the promised fruit? Does this reordering of the material shed light on these perennial debates? Unfortunately, it does not, for it is on these topics that Gerrish becomes the most critical of Calvin. He concludes that although Calvin’s views on these matters are not as bad as his critics think, they are fatally flawed. The odd result is that the eucharistic themes of Calvin’s theology serve to illumine everything except the Eucharist itself.
The two main lines of Gerrish’s criticism line up with the two crucial problems of the Eucharist: sacramental efficacy and real presence. During his treatment of the first, Gerrish responds to the Lutheran criticism that the doctrine of predestination undermines the efficacy of the Supper. He rightly counters this objection, noting that it merely limits but does not undermine sacramental efficacy (172). But he is sure to point out that the doctrine is flawed and must be altered (171). The question is whether the efficacy of the Lord’s Supper is so easily removed from its ground in the election of God. Is not the word “efficacious” found as often in Calvin’s loci on predestination as it is here in Book IV? Is not effectual calling the ground of effective word and sacrament? Gerrish’s criticisms may very well be correct, but the problem may not be so easily excised.
Gerrish’s second line of criticism regards the local embodiment of Christ. He accuses both Luther and Calvin of being stuck in spatial categories regarding the body of Christ. In place of Calvin’s “puzzling” (183) notion of the presence of Christ in heaven, Gerrish offers Schleiermacher’s ecclesiology as interpreted by Troeltsch, wherein the historical Christ is embodied in the community upon whom he exerts influence (188-89). Gerrish argues that something like this can be found in Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, though it is admittedly a minor theme (184-87). It is intriguing that here at the conclusion of a book arguing for a robust sacramental Calvinism, Gerrish makes an appeal to the church’s agency to solve this crucial eucharistic conundrum. Is Schleiermacher’s “Spirit = Church” formula anything more than a modern form of Zwingli’s memorialism? If Christ’s body is exclusively the church, then a singular agent is posited, and thus the offering is no longer twofold. Grace and gratitude become one and the same thing. Under these conditions, the differences between Luther and Zwingli are rendered irrelevant, as is Gerrish’s careful work of locating Calvin between them. Gerrish of course admits that these critical alternatives move beyond Calvin. The question is whether something essential to Calvin is lost in the process.