A Few Necessary Preliminaries

Some preliminary comments are needed. First, in terms of working definitions, while true that Calvin does not employ the language of “synergism” and “monergism,” the concepts are not foreign to his thought. As such, I take these terms to be valid shorthands for both descriptive and comparative purposes.Footnote ¹¹ Different from “pelagianism,” which is the belief that human beings can attain salvation entirely through their own effort, synergism maintains that human beings freely and actively cooperate, subserviently by divine grace, with the leading of God’s divine energy towards salvation.Footnote ¹² Meanwhile, monergism is the notion that the human will does not in any way contribute to the salvific process but rather that God’s agency is all-determining.Footnote ¹³ In order for the latter to be workable, some have distinguished between God’s “preceptive will” and “decretive will”—the former entailing how God intends for humanity to live (i.e., God’s moral precepts) and the latter entailing God’s secret predestination, absolute sovereignty, and determinative providence. As Erickson describes the difference: “The preceptive will is what God commands, such as the Ten Commandments. This is what ought to be done. God’s decretive will, however, causes every event. It causes what is done.”Footnote ¹⁴ In stating these definitions, the present study contends that the well-propagated monergistic assumption that “Calvin most clearly rejects the anthropological concept of cooperative will [i.e., synergism] associated with theosis [i.e., divinization]”Footnote ¹⁵ is in need of qualification, for absent in much of the literature is the fact that Calvin was not opposed to “synergism” so much as he was opposed to “synergism when it came to humanity in its fallen condition.”Footnote ¹⁶

Second, our move to distinguish Calvin’s prelapsarian synergism from his postlapsarian monergism turns on the research of Philip Walker Butin, whose rediscovery in 1995 of Calvin as a trinitarian theologian par excellence not only paved a way for the participationist readings of Calvin that followed but also refuted the traditional dialectical (2B) understanding of Calvin (put forth by the likes of Alexandre Ganoczy, Alister McGrath, Wilhelm Niesel, and François Wendel) as being a distortion of the Reformer’s thought.Footnote ¹⁷ Though Butin acknowledged that a divine-human dialectic is in fact present in Calvin, he also recognized that such dialectical opposition was not due to ontology but instead to humanity’s fall into sin.Footnote ¹⁸ This is not to suggest that, in Calvin’s mind, creator and creature were not always ontologically different, but rather that they only became opposed to each other after the fall. Prior to the fall, the creator-creature relationship was harmonious. In this regard, then, Butin rightly observes that Calvin’s conception of the divine-human dialectic “is only a provisional—not an ultimate—depiction of God’s relationship with humanity.”Footnote ¹⁹ Given this interpretive turn, it makes sense for us to delve deeper into the question of how, for Calvin, the event of the fall shifts the soteriological trajectory of humanity’s relationship with God so as to also reveal a redemptive pattern that is in keeping with Calvin’s thorough-going economic-trinitarianism (as will become evident below).Footnote ²⁰

Third, though Butin’s insights represent worthy contributions, his work was not above criticism.Footnote ²¹ Of especial relevance here is his improper imposition of perichoresis onto Calvin’s Christology: “The perichoretic interpenetration of divinity and humanity that characterizes the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ is that which provides the pattern for the restoration of the divine image in the rest of humanity.”Footnote ²² This erroneous interpretation of Calvin—represented above by (1A) and refutable by (1B)—would be echoed by Carl Mosser and with qualifications reflecting (1B) by Billings.Footnote ²³ It has been rightly disavowed by John McClean, Bruce McCormack, and Jonathan Slater.Footnote ²⁴ On a related note, though McCormack takes issue with Canlis’s conclusion that participation for Calvin was a participation in the intra-relational life and communion (koinonia) of the Trinity, McCormack admits that Canlis’s pneumatological view of a non-perichoretic participation in Christ’s humanity (rather than in Christ’s divinity) is a more accurate reading of Calvin’s view of participation than the perichoretic depictions offered by Mosser and Billings.Footnote ²⁵ On this latter point, McCormack represents a correct assessment of Calvin’s understanding of participation if such is to be considered solely or primarily from its postlapsarian mode.Footnote ²⁶ The present work will show, however, that a more complete picture of Calvin’s theology of participation emerges when we consider this postlapsarian understanding of participation through the prefacing terms of its prelapsarian mode—a prelapsarian mode which speaks anthropologically of a “participation in God” (2.2.1).Footnote ²⁷

Along such lines, of particular interest in the current debate is the question of Calvin’s theological anthropology and its divine context of participation—namely, whether he believed that “imaging God” was the static prerequisite for participation or whether participation was in fact the dynamic prerequisite for “imaging God.” Unfortunately, Calvin scholarship has at times prioritized the static over the dynamic in Calvin’s anthropological thought in ways that have obscured its dynamic participatory contours.Footnote ²⁸ The interpretation of Calvin’s anthropology which I offer seeks, with the help of likeminded others before me, to showcase the priority of Calvin’s anthropological dynamism and the manner by which such dovetails with both his prelapsarian and postlapsarian perspectives of participation—a participation that, in both modes, is always “in Christ,” the mediator.

Calvin’s Dynamic Mediatorial Anthropology

“Nearly all of the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves” (1.1.1). In opening his 1559 Institutes with these words, Calvin acknowledged the importance of anthropology when it came to the task of theology proper. For him, not only was it the case that “we cannot have a clear and complete knowledge of God unless it is accompanied by a corresponding knowledge of ourselves” (1.15.1), but also, “no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he ‘lives and moves’ [Acts 17:28]” (1.1.1). Implied in this reflexivity of knowledge was a conviction that true self-knowledge (i.e., correct anthropology) was not possible without participation in God: “For, quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God” (1.1.1). As an extension of this, it is vital to note that Calvin distinguished between humanity in its prelapsarian and postlapsarian conditions: “Knowledge of ourselves is twofold: namely, to know what we were like when we were first created and what our condition became after the fall of Adam” (1.15.1).

For Calvin, humanity’s prelapsarian condition when originally created consisted in its unblemished bearing of the image of God (Gen 1:26–27). More than simply meaning that pre-fallen humanity served as an exemplar of divine qualities like “justice, wisdom, and goodness” (1.15.1), Calvin explicitly conferred upon this notion a participatory spin: “Scripture attributed nothing else to [humanity] than that he had been created in the image of God [Gen 1:27], thus suggesting that man was blessed, not because of his own good actions, but by participation in God” (2.2.1).Footnote ²⁹ Partee infers from this passage that “the image of God is not to be understood only as a possession but a relationship” before specifying that the participatory relationship Calvin has in mind here is that of “union with Christ.”Footnote ³⁰

While such a supposition is certainly true of Calvin’s postlapsarian understanding of participation, union with Christ arguably describes what Calvin believed humanity’s prelapsarian participation entailed as well, for as easy as it might be to recognize Christ as mediator only after the fall (via the incarnation), Calvin saw that “even if man had remained free from all stain, his condition would have been too lowly for him to reach God without a Mediator” (2.12.1).Footnote ³¹ As such, he maintained that it was Christ who was mediator even before the fall—this, by virtue of the fact that even from the beginning, “Christ was set over angels and men as their Head,” as he was “ ‘the first-born of all creation’ [Col. 1:15]” (2.12.4).Footnote ³² “Hence, whatever excellence was engraved upon Adam [was] derived from the fact that he approached the glory of his Creator through the only-begotten Son” (2.12.6).Footnote ³³ Only by way of participation in Christ, then, was Adam a “mirror” of God’s glory.Footnote ³⁴ In other words, only by the dynamic of Adam’s union with Christ did God behold God’s self (i.e., did God “image” God’s self) in Adam.Footnote ³⁵ Even before the fall, “both angels as well as men were united to God by [Christ’s] grace so that they would remain uncorrupted.”Footnote ³⁶ Even before the fall, humankind was meant to “borrow life” from God, in Christ.Footnote ³⁷ In this regard, Calvin was affirming of those who judged the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden as being a participatory symbol for Christ by which, through the “sacramental” partaking of its fruit, Adam and Eve were continually reminded that their very lives (i.e., their ability to image God) was utterly dependent upon communion with God.Footnote ³⁸

In line with this, Calvin described Adam as having originally borne the image of God “when he had full possession of right understanding, when he had his affections kept within the bounds of reason, all his senses tempered in right order, and he truly referred his excellence to exceptional gifts bestowed upon him by his Maker” (1.15.3). Such “referring” was not merely an act of factually acknowledging God’s handiwork and work in oneself but entailed heartful gratitude to God expressed through love, trust, prayer, and worship (see 1.14.22). Not only was this how humanity was originally designed to reflect God’s glory and goodness back to God as if like a “mirror” (2.12.6),Footnote ³⁹ but the conscious ability to be grateful was also what differentiated human beings from the rest of “the brute creation.”Footnote ⁴⁰ For this reason, Gerrish has suggested that, in Calvin’s mind: “The existence of humanity in God’s design is defined by thankfulness, the correlate of God’s goodness, and the existence of humanity in sin is defined by thanklessness, the antithesis of God’s goodness.”Footnote ⁴¹ In other words, the shape of communion (koinonia) was especially marked by humanity’s gratitude to God, which was a dynamic response resulting in active obedience.Footnote ⁴²

Yet, even before the fall, this dynamic response was not rooted in servitude but in a sonship deriving from participation in the Son’s filial relationship to the Father by way of the Holy Spirit.Footnote ⁴³ This prelapsarian conception of God’s fatherhood over humanity can be found in the 1559 Institutes, for example, when Calvin implies such from the postlapsarian perspective that “in this ruin of mankind no one now experiences God. . . as Father” (1.2.1) or through direct allusions to God’s prelapsarian “fatherly love toward mankind” (1.14.1) and “fatherly solicitude toward us” by way of the one who is “this most gracious Father” (1.14.22). An excursion through Calvin’s commentaries further establishes both the prevalence and significance of the “father-child” metaphor in Calvin’s understanding of anthropology and particularly the filially trinitarian contours of his conception of humanity’s bearing of the divine image.Footnote ⁴⁴ While most of Calvin’s commentaries speak specifically to the postlapsarian rather than prelapsarian condition, regardless of which mode, it is clear that Calvin identified humanity’s image-bearing with sonship in a way that both were intimately related and even inseparably overlapping. Whereas this was a direct identification in the prelapsarian mode, sonship was via adoption in the postlapsarian mode. Examples of the latter abound and some are offered chronologically here, from his first commentary on Romans (1540) to his last on the Gospel of John (1563).Footnote ⁴⁵ In citing these texts, it is essential to keep in mind that, even as early as 1540, Calvin already perceived the Holy Spirit to be “the Spirit of adoption”Footnote ⁴⁶—a moniker he later specified as being the Spirit’s first title (3.1.3).Footnote ⁴⁷ Where applicable, this “first title” has been hermeneutically applied to the quotes below.Footnote ⁴⁸ Further, I take words like “example” (exemplar) and “resemble” (refero) to be implicit allusions to the notion of “image”:

Insofar as Calvin’s understanding of postlapsarian image-bearing was directly tied to adoption (e.g., “we are then partakers of divine adoption, when we resemble [referimus] God as children their father”),Footnote ⁵⁴ Calvin’s commentary on Genesis (1554) provides evidence that he associated prelapsarian image-bearing with the even more basic notion of sonship (which postlapsarian adoption aims at). Not only does he allude to this in his comment that “one man was created by God, whilst, nevertheless, he possessed the fullness of the Spirit,”Footnote ⁵⁵ but also a few chapters later, Calvin explicitly writes with reference to prelapsarian humanity that:

In his commentary on Psalms (1557), Calvin added: “It is indeed true, that, in the person of Adam, men were created at first for the very purpose that they should be the sons of God.”Footnote ⁵⁷ In short, for Calvin, the notion of sonship was correlated with both his prelapsarian and postlapsarian understandings of imaging God. Further, Calvin was consistent in viewing both nuances as dynamically taking place by means of a trinitarian pattern for participation in Christ’s own filial relationship of Sonship to the Father by way of the Holy Spirit.

Insofar as “image” for Calvin was not a static gift but a dynamically participatory one, Oberman makes much of the idea that Calvin described humanity as moving “toward the image of God” (formatum ad imaginem Dei) in an “evolution towards fulfilment and happiness”Footnote ⁵⁸—a “perfection” Calvin described as being “united with God.”Footnote ⁵⁹ At the same time, Calvin opposed interpretations of Gen 1:26–27 which distinguished between “image” and “likeness.”Footnote ⁶⁰ On this, Calvin disagreed with Aristotelian-based interpretations that relegated “image” to substance and “likeness” to accident.Footnote ⁶¹ Certainly, the Christian East’s depiction of “image” as representing the potential for progress (by participation in God) towards the actuality of being “like” God (i.e., divinization) would have been rejected by Calvin for its latent compatibility with the above Aristotelian-based logic that he deplored.Footnote ⁶² Instead, Calvin attributed his conflation of “image” and “likeness” to Moses’s employment of “repetition”—a Hebraic rhetorical device involving the use of similar terms for sake of clarification (1.15.3).Footnote ⁶³ Yet, one wonders how Calvin could intelligibly understand humanity’s conflated “image and likeness” in the dynamic terms Oberman has observed—that is, in terms of movement from “image/likeness” towards “image/likeness”—if not for some sort of progressive differentiation between two distinct poles.Footnote ⁶⁴

The key to resolving this tension lies in Calvin’s perception of the divine image as a dynamic rather than static possession. For Calvin, imaging God was “the result of”—rather than “a prerequisite for”—humanity’s participation in Christ the mediator, by the Holy Spirit, to the Father (see 2.2.1; 2.12.6).Footnote ⁶⁵ In Comm. 1 Jn. 3:6, this dynamic participatory notion of imaging God shone through: “But here we are again taught how lively and efficacious is the knowledge of Christ; for it transforms us into His image.”Footnote ⁶⁶ What is being connoted here is that a person’s bearing of the “image” (and therefore “likeness”) of God did not necessarily mean they bore it in its entirety or in the same way as others. Rather, movement from “image/likeness towards image/likeness” entailed bearing the “image and likeness” of God incompletely towards bearing the “image and likeness” of God more and more fully whilst on earth, ultimately becoming conformed to its “full splendour” in heaven (1.15.4).Footnote ⁶⁷ This was as true for pre-fallen Adam as for postlapsarian believers regenerated by the Spirit. That Adam as originally created bore the image of God without blemish did not mean that there was no room for the “evolution” of his happiness in Christ, but rather it simply meant that sin was not (yet) impossibly in the way of that pursuit.Footnote ⁶⁸ Nevertheless, whereas Calvin’s anthropological conflation of “image” and “likeness” allowed for participatory movement from “image/likeness” towards “image/likeness” to be attributable to humanity’s prelapsarian nature as per God’s grace (see 1.15.1–8), it did not allow such “naturally-graced” participation after the fall (see 2.3.6–14), for in Calvin’s descriptions of the postlapsarian (but not prelapsarian) condition, he pit grace against nature.Footnote ⁶⁹ Before we speak more about this postlapsarian antagonism, however, we would be remiss if we did not first mention Calvin’s understanding of the devastating effects of humanity’s fall for the rest of creation, as per his “anthropological cosmology.”

Calvin’s Anthropological Cosmology

Calvin believed all things to have been created for the sake of humanity,Footnote ⁷⁰ whom God had “raised above all other creatures” and “separated from the common mass” by virtue of having created them in God’s image (1.15.3).Footnote ⁷¹ He regarded the created world (the cosmos) as a “glorious theater” of God’s magnificent works, a place where humanity, as “spectators,” witnessed and “contemplated” the immeasurable and unfathomable glory, goodness, and wisdom of God.Footnote ⁷² Calvin believed the cosmos had been created in order to be the context in which humanity could enjoy communion with God.Footnote ⁷³

It is not difficult to grasp, then, why he also believed that humanity’s fall is what caused the “native excellence” of the cosmos to be “destroyed.”Footnote ⁷⁴ Insofar as humanity’s communion with God had become disrupted at the moment of Adam’s sin, the cosmos’s role as “ground and grammar” of such communion became disrupted as well.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the words of Calvin: “It is indeed meet for us to consider what a dreadful curse we have deserved, since all created things in themselves, blameless, both on earth and in the visible heaven, undergo punishment for our sins.”Footnote ⁷⁶ Putting it somewhat differently, he added: “The condemnation of mankind is imprinted on the heavens, and on the earth, and on all creatures.”Footnote ⁷⁷

The corollary to all this was Calvin’s opinion that inasmuch as humanity was restored to its “excelling glory” by virtue of restored filial relationship with God, “all creatures shall be renewed to amplify [this glory] and to render it illustrious.”Footnote ⁷⁸ This was not a doctrine of “cosmic deification” where the cosmos’s telos was theologically prioritized over that of humanity’s.Footnote ⁷⁹ Rather, Calvin’s thematic understanding of God’s restoration of the cosmos to “a perfect state” by way of participation in a “better condition”—each created being according to its own nature—was such that “cosmic participation” was expressly for the sake of humanity’s imaging of God (i.e., humanity’s participation or divinization, “if we may so speak”).Footnote ⁸⁰ As such, Calvin commented that “not all creatures shall be partakers of the same glory with the sons of God.”Footnote ⁸¹ Yet, he in no way lessened the Pauline truth that “all things were created by [Christ], and for [Christ]” (see Col. 1:16–17).Footnote ⁸² On this, he inferred that simply by virtue of having been created by Christ, the cosmos and everything in it “ought to be viewed as having a relation to him, as their legitimate end.”Footnote ⁸³ This “relation,” however, was thought proper only to the extent that creation “was ordered through and to Christ” for the sake of reflecting and accentuating humanity’s communion with God.Footnote ⁸⁴

Such an anthropologically-oriented cosmology is bolstered by the way Calvin reappropriated the classical notion of humanity as “microcosm.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Literally meaning “a little world” or “a world in miniature,”Footnote ⁸⁶ the classical sense of the term indicated that humanity reflexively represented the cosmos at large, for the ancient philosophers believed that whatever happened to or within humanity would happen also to or within the rest of the world and vice versa.Footnote ⁸⁷ Along such lines, theologies of “cosmic deification” often relied on this classical notion of microcosm, for under such a paradigm, the deification of humanity could readily be translated as the deification of the cosmos.Footnote ⁸⁸

Though Calvin was happy to apply the term microcosm to his understanding of humanity, Calvin employed the term in a manner that “evaded the [classical concept’s] deeper implications.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Rather than being a term signifying the reflexivity of humanity and the universe, Calvin used it to signify the way in which humanity “is a rare example of God’s power, goodness, and wisdom, and contains within himself enough miracles to occupy our minds” (1.5.3). It is because humanity was a “little world” in itself, “a miniature theatre in which all sorts of miracles of God are displayed in a most vivid way,”Footnote ⁹⁰ that Calvin considered humanity to be a microcosm of creation which, as the “theater of God’s glory,” itself displayed these marks, albeit in a less concentrated way than in humanity.Footnote ⁹¹ Very far indeed, then, was Calvin’s use of the term from that of the ancient philosophers. Rather than a “cosmic anthropology,” Calvin maintained an “anthropological cosmology.” The result of this was that his participatory soteriology focused upon the salvation of humanity (via restoration of humanity’s communion with God) rather than upon the deification of the cosmos (i.e., his was an “anthropological soteriology” instead of a “cosmic theology”).Footnote ⁹²

While both Calvin’s anthropological cosmology and anthropological soteriology were grounded in his understanding of Christ as mediator (not just of humanity to God, but of all creation to God as well), in Calvin’s mind, the mediating work of Christ did not begin with the postlapsarian events of the incarnation and redemption but rather began even before the fall with the divine second person of the Trinity who, as creator of all, was mediator from the very moment of creation.Footnote ⁹³ Yet, how should Christ’s prelapsarian, pre-incarnate work of mediation be interpreted?

Calvin and the Mediatorial Question Surrounding Prelapsarian Participation

For Calvin, Christ’s pre-incarnate work of prelapsarian mediation, by way of his divinity, involved his being “the substance or foundation of all things,” as all things were created “in him,” “by him, and for him”—that all things would have “a relation to him, as their legitimate end.”Footnote ⁹⁴ As Canlis interprets this, “communion is the underpinning of all creation,” yet such was always by way of the trinitarian economy, which is to say that it was always in Christ the mediator, by the Holy Spirit, to God the Father.Footnote ⁹⁵ It makes sense, then, that Calvin believed “the proper condition of creatures is to keep close to God,”Footnote ⁹⁶ for it is only by such communion that God (in Christ, by the Spirit) “sustains them by his power, and upholds them in their condition.”Footnote ⁹⁷ Thus, even before the fall, in Christ the mediator alone was there found sustenance and life; not only the creation but “both angels as well as men were united to God by his grace so that they would remain uncorrupted,”Footnote ⁹⁸ that “the life which was otherwise hidden in God would flow from him,”Footnote ⁹⁹ and that from him, “the grace of God [would thereby flow] to men.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Given all this talk about prelapsarian participation in Christ, Calvin was unfortunately ambiguous as to exactly “what” of the pre-incarnate Christ was participated by angels, humans, and the rest of creation. The question is valid since humanity’s postlapsarian participation in Christ was clearly not in his divinity but was instead in his vicarious humanity in its “life of faith, obedience, prayer, and worship.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Such was made especially clear via Calvin’s well-documented polemic against Osiander, who, in Calvin’s mind, had erroneously argued that salvation was by virtue of participation in the “essential righteousness” of Christ’s divine nature rather than in the imputational righteousness as achieved by Christ in his humanity for the believer’s forensic justification (see 3.11.5–12).Footnote ¹⁰² All of this elicits a question: prior to the incarnation, what of Christ was participated if his humanity had yet to exist? His divinity? Was the “image of God” that Adam participated a “created good” or an “uncreated good”? Calvin does not specify except to say that such imaging was by way of participation in a mediator Christ who had yet to take on created flesh.Footnote ¹⁰³

While Calvin was not completely clear about this prelapsarian matter, it is reasonable to assume that some sort of continuity between prelapsarian and postlapsarian participation existed in his mind—or at least in the trajectory of his thought—when it came to Christ’s original mediatory role as sustainer. If we work backwards from Calvin’s postlapsarian concerns, Lee’s observation of an implicit distinction in Calvin between “divine essence” and “divine kind” is constructively helpful, not only because it opens up ecumenical space for comparative dialogue with (2A) “essence-energies” divinization theologies but also because it helps to formalize a direction that McCormack hinted at towards the end of his essay through a quotation of Comm. 2 Pet. 1:4 (a quote which Lee also worked with), where Calvin expounds upon what is meant by the phrase “partakers of the divine nature”:Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The word nature does not denote essence but kind [qualitatem]. The Manicheans used to dream that we took our roots from the stem of God and that when we have finished the course of our life we shall revert to our original state. Likewise today, there are fanatics who imagine that we shall cross over into God’s nature so that His nature absorbs ours.. . . This kind of madness never occurred to the minds of the holy apostles. They were simply concerned to say that when we have put off all the vices of the flesh we shall be partakers [participes] of divine immortality and the glory of blessedness, and thus we shall be in a way one with God so far as our capacity allows [quantum modulus noster feret].Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Especially in consideration of Calvin’s postlapsarian debate with Osiander, if McCormack is correct in his conjecture that participation for Calvin was in “created” life, goods, and righteousness (“appropriate to the creature as creature”) rather than in “uncreated” life, goods, and righteousness,Footnote ¹⁰⁶ then not only can we perhaps formally correlate the former with Lee’s “divine kind” and the latter with Lee’s “divine essence,” but such can also help illuminate Lee’s comment that “the immortality which we receive from God is not God’s own immortality [uncreated], but immortality as God’s gift [created].”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Might such a move be applicable to the way in which Calvin understood humanity’s prelapsarian “participation in God” (2.2.1)? Though Calvin was vague about “what” of the pre-incarnate Christ was participated when it came to humanity’s prelapsarian participation, it seems feasible to work backwards from postlapsarian to prelapsarian using the categories of “divine essence” (uncreated) versus “divine kind” (created).Footnote ¹⁰⁸

At the same time, what is often not recognized is that Calvin’s postlapsarian participation also needs to be prefaced by his prelapsarian participation because postlapsarian salvation for Calvin involved the restoration of the prelapsarian divine image to humanity via “participation in Christ’s own perfect participation in God”Footnote ¹⁰⁹—this “perfect participation” of Christ’s being a thoroughly human participation in that it followed Calvin’s trinitarian contours (i.e., by the Spirit, to the Father) in the way that Adam was originally created to realize in Christ the mediator but did not.Footnote ¹¹⁰ It is in this sense, then, that Christ is “the most perfect image of God” (1.15.4), for “while Adam was the image of God only in an attributive sense, Christ is the image of God essentially.”Footnote ¹¹¹ Nevertheless, Calvin’s prelapsarian participation, as described above, should be considered an important hermeneutic key for understanding the contours of his postlapsarian participation (even if this prelapsarian participation was left somewhat vague and ambiguous by the Reformer).Footnote ¹¹²

Ambiguities aside, from a certain perspective, Calvin’s understanding of participation in both its prelapsarian and postlapsarian forms was, in fact, the same. If we consider that participation for Calvin (i.e., imaging God) was a dynamic rather than static reality, what we realize is that humanity’s fall does not so much change “participation,” per se, but changes instead the way in which that “participation” is mediated and entered. In the words of Willis:

What Willis has uncovered is that Christ’s mediatory role after the fall no longer only consisted of sustaining humanity and all creation but now also included the work of reconciling humanity and creation back to God. Because the dynamic of participation in Christ the mediator (by the Holy Spirit, to the Father) was a prerequisite for (rather than a result of) humanity’s imaging of God, insofar as the way in which Christ mediated between God and creation changed after the fall, humanity’s way of bearing God’s image changed as well. To be clear, the image itself did not change,Footnote ¹¹⁴ but the mode of its being borne had necessarily changed because Christ’s mode of mediating had changed. In this regard, to tap into participation as it had been intended by God’s prelapsarian order of creation, fallen human beings had to now participate in Christ’s flesh in its perfect, thoroughly human participation by the Holy Spirit, to the Father.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Along these lines (as will be demonstrated below), whereas Calvin’s understanding of the prelapsarian shape of participation was synergistic, he understood the shape of postlapsarian participation to be monergistic. Further, the fact that Christ’s mediatory work now included the role of (monergistic) reconciler in addition to its original role as sustainer was the reason for why postlapsarian participation was considered by Calvin to be of a “richer measure of grace” than Adam’s prelapsarian life in Christ.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Thus, we finally turn to the subject of this shift from a prelapsarian synergism to a postlapsarian monergism.

Calvin’s Prelapsarian Synergism and Postlapsarian Monergism

In terms of the shift in question, it must first be observed that Calvin believed the “seat” of the divine image to be the soul, not the body (1.15.1). Calvin believed the image was not physical but spiritual (1.15.3). Even so, he was quick to qualify that “there was no part of man, not even the body itself, in which some sparks [of the divine image] did not glow” (1.15.3). As Calvin wrote elsewhere, “the chief seat of the Divine image was in his mind and heart, where it was eminent: yet was there no part of him in which some scintillation of it did not shine forth.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ Though Calvin preferred not to distinguish between “spirit” and “soul,” when he felt pushed by Scripture to make clearer distinctions, “spirit” meant one’s “intellectual faculty” (mind), while “soul” included “all the affections” (heart).Footnote ¹¹⁸

It is important to note that Calvin also used the words “understanding” and “will” to describe the “two faculties” of the human soul (1.15.7). By associating “understanding” (and “reason”) with the mind, Calvin commented that such was given to human beings for the purpose of guiding one’s “will,” the faculty of the soul which governed one’s choices (1.15.8). When it came to humanity’s prelapsarian condition, then, Calvin believed that “man in his first condition excelled in these preeminent endowments,” even to the point that “in his integrity man by free will had the power, if he so willed, to attain eternal life” (1.15.8). In being careful not to raise the treacherous questions surrounding predestination and election, Calvin affirmed that, according to God’s original design of human nature, “Adam could have stood if he wished” but that “he fell solely by his own will” (1.15.8). In its original state, un-infused with “the constancy to persevere,” Adam’s will was “capable of being bent” (1.15.8).Footnote ¹¹⁹ Nevertheless, Calvin also maintained that Adam’s pre-fallen will to freely choose good or evil was, indeed, truly free (see 1.15.8).

Could it be possible, then, that Calvin might not have had a problem with synergism if such was applied strictly to humanity’s prelapsarian condition? The evidence overwhelmingly points in this direction.Footnote ¹²⁰ To begin, we reiterate that, for Calvin:

Within the context of these statements, Calvin’s understanding of the philosophers’ errors only bolsters the thesis that a synergistic understanding of prelapsarian humanity was not antithetical to his thought. In citing that the secular philosophers had maintained that “man would not be a rational animal unless he possessed free choice of good and evil,” Calvin concluded that they would have been right “if there had been no change in man” (1.15.8). From his vantage point of having been a recipient of revelation (i.e., the scriptures), he opined that the philosophers erred in the face of “great obscurity” (1.15.8). For by having only postlapsarian humanity to inform their respective understandings of anthropology, “they were seeking in a ruin for a building, and in scattered fragments for a well-knit structure” (1.15.8). As Parker summarizes, “the philosophers confused man before and man after the Fall, and so were able to ascribe free will to fallen man.”Footnote ¹²¹ The implication of this is that Calvin was not at all opposed to humanity having a fully free will prior to Adam’s fall—and such free will is a prerequisite for the notion of participatory cooperation with God, or “synergism.”Footnote ¹²²

Looking to the Church Fathers, Calvin noted their collective divergence, inconsistency, and obscurity in terms of free will’s applicability to postlapsarian humanity.Footnote ¹²³ Thus, he was not in favor of the way in which many of the “ancients frequently extol free choice and ascribe to it more than is proper.”Footnote ¹²⁴ Again, what Calvin considered improper was when free will was ascribed to humanity’s postlapsarian rather than prelapsarian condition (see 2.2.4). In his refutation of Pighius, a “confused soul” who had attempted to advance a Pelagian understanding of the will, Calvin refuted Pighius’s hasty use of Church Fathers like Basil, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, showing that the citations of the “ancients,” which Pighius had presented, had in fact been speaking of free will only in the agreeable terms of humanity’s prelapsarian condition:

Calvin also turned to Augustine for help: “Let [Pighius] in turn hear that refrain which comes not from my mouth but from Augustine’s: ‘The will was free when it was whole, but now that it is so gravely and mortally wounded it needs humble confession, not proud defence.’ ”Footnote ¹²⁷

In sum, though Calvin is usually interpreted through his understanding of humanity’s postlapsarian condition, his prelapsarian anthropology was one that included humanity’s freedom to choose good. In light of the dynamic participatory framework that Calvin maintained (i.e., “imaging God” through “union with Christ,” who was our mediator even before the fall), synergism was not antithetical to his “preceptive” notion of humanity’s prelapsarian condition—“preceptive” because Calvin had intentionally set aside his understanding of God’s “decretive will” (i.e., God’s secret predestination) for the express purpose of explicating the original condition of humanity.Footnote ¹²⁸ As he himself put it: “Here it would be out of place to raise the question of God’s secret predestination because our present subject is not what can happen or not, but what man’s nature is like” (1.15.8). What this means is that only with humanity’s fall into sin does a monergistic order of participation come into effect. As Butin interprets Calvin: “Due to the fundamental disruption of the divine-human relationship caused by sin, human beings cannot respond positively to the true God—or indeed accomplish any good at all—apart from divine enablement.”Footnote ¹²⁹ Put simply, for Calvin, at the event of the fall, the soteriological shape of participation in Christ (by the Spirit, to the Father) shifted from synergism to monergism.Footnote ¹³⁰ In this regard, Calvin’s understanding of the divine image as being spiritual rather than physical also had its own soteriological implications. Insofar as sin, for Calvin, was more an “inward disposition” than an outward manifestation,Footnote ¹³¹ “original sin” meant that the descendants of Adam were guilty of personal sin even before having a chance to act it out (see 2.1.8; 2.16.3). Thus, with their nature corrupted to the extent that they were no longer able to freely choose good, Adam’s fall necessarily shifted the shape of participation from synergism to monergism. As Calvin commented: “I say that the will is evil not by nature (that is, by God’s creation) but by the corruption of nature, and that it cannot be otherwise until it is changed to be good by the grace of the Holy Spirit.”Footnote ¹³² Calvin’s understanding of the divine image as spiritual meant, then, that the only way in which the image could be restored and renewed was through the spiritual means of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, for “regeneration is a renewal of the divine image in us” (3.17.5; see also 1.15.4; 2.1.7). “The object of regeneration, as we have said it, is to manifest in the life of believers a harmony and agreement between God’s righteousness and their obedience, and thus to confirm the adoption that they have received as sons” (3.6.1).