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United to God through Christ: Assessing Calvin on the Question of Deification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2005

J. Todd Billings
J. Todd Billings
Affiliation:
Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan
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“We shall at length be really and fully united to Thee [Almighty God] through Christ our Lord.”

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 98 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 315 - 334
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© 2005 Cambridge University Press

“We shall at length be really and fully united to Thee [Almighty God] through Christ our Lord.”1

From Calvin's prayer at the end of Lecture 123 on Jeremiah 31. This quotation and others labeled as “CTS” are from the Calvin Translation Society series of Calvin's Commentaries (ed. and trans. John King et al.; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845–1856; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1981). Quotations labeled “CC” are from Calvin's Commentaries (ed. David and Thomas Torrance; Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), a newer translation. Unless otherwise noted, quotations from the Institutes are from John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles; 2 vols.; Library of Christian Classics; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960). For many quotations from various works of Calvin's, I have included references to the following Latin editions of his works: Joannis Calvini Opera Selecta (ed. Peter Barth and Wilhelm Niesel; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1926), hereafter OS; or Johannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, Corpus Reformatorum (ed. G. Baum et al.; Brunsvigae: apud C. A. Schwetschke et filium, 1863–1900), hereafter CR.

For some, the only sure thing that can be said about Calvin and deification is that he did not believe in it.2

According to François Wendel (Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought [trans. Philip Mairet; Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1987] 259; see 258–60), Calvin fears “anything that might have led to the admission of any deification of man, even by way of Jesus Christ, and even in his person.” In addition, Roland Bainton claims that in Calvin, God is “so high and lifted up, so unspeakably holy, and man so utterly unworthy, that no union between God and man could be thinkable” (Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511–1553 [Boston: Beacon Press, 1960] 46–47).

How could someone who so emphasized the majesty of God and the sinfulness of humanity—and hence (presumably) the separation between the two—affirm deification?3

For a summary of the claims concerning the “sharp separation” of God and humanity in Calvin, see Philip Walker Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response: Calvin's Trinitarian Understanding of the Divine-Human Relationship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) ch. 1.

Moreover, some of the notions associated with Calvin—the bondage of the will to sin, an alleged tension between nature and grace—are cited as precisely the notions that a theology of deification allows one to escape.4

Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1976) 130–34, 196–216. Also, see a similar account in Joseph C. McLelland, “Sailing to Byzantium,” in The New Man: An Orthodox and Reformed Dialogue (ed. John Meyendorff and Joseph C. McLelland; New Brunswick, N.J.: Agora Books, 1973) 10–25.

The problem is made worse by the fact that recent studies tend to look to late Byzantine theologians such as Gregory Palamas as the standard statement on deification, even when comparing western theologians who were unfamiliar with Palamas.5

See Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998); Tuomo Mannermaa, Der im Glauben gegenwärtige Christus. Rechtfertigung und Vergottung. Zum ökumenischen Dialog (Hannover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1989); Michael J. McClymond, “Salvation as Divinization: Jonathan Edwards, Gregory Palamas and the Theological Uses of Neoplatonism,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian (ed. Paul Helm and Oliver Crisp; Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2003); A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). For a comparison of Luther with Palamas which affirms that Luther teaches deification, yet also indicates Luther's distance from Palamas, see Reinhard Flogaus, The sis bei Palamas und Luther. Ein Beitrag zum ökumenischen Gespräch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997).

However valuable this may be for ecumenical discussion, this approach tends to underestimate the possibility that there may be different, yet legitimate, conceptions of deification in the West, arising from the common sources for theologies of deification: Scripture and the church fathers. If late Byzantine theology is the paradigm for theologies of deification, there is a danger not only of making western theology look too much like late Byzantine theology, but also of dismissing western theology when it fails to meet the late Byzantine “standard.” Thus, while scholars like Eric Perl are right to guard against attempts to make Thomas Aquinas functionally affirm the late Byzantine distinctions of “essence” and “energies,” they are misguided in implying that the absence of this distinction is fatal to any theology of salvation as deification.6

See Eric D. Perl, “St. Gregory Palamas and the Metaphysics of Creation,” Dionysius 14 (1990) 105–30, where Perl enters into an older debate about the relation between Thomism and “Palamism.” There is a similar problem in Joseph Farrell's comparison of Calvin and Maximus the Confessor in the appendix of Joseph P. Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor (South Canaan, Pa.: St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 1989). Farrell is right in recognizing a certain amount of distance between Calvin and Maximus, displayed largely through a technical schema and vocabulary on the part of both authors that was unavailable to the other. Yet, he is wrong in inferring that because Calvin does not use Maximus's language, Calvin is subject to the criticism of Maximus's opponents.

I argue that Calvin teaches deification of a particular sort. Drawing upon the language of participation, ingrafting, and adoption in select Pauline and Johannine passages, Calvin teaches the participation of humanity in the Triune God, affirming the differentiated union of humanity with God in creation and redemption.

7

In using the term “union” in describing Calvin's theology of creation and redemption, I do not mean an “indistinct union” wherein the creature is assimilated into the divine. The “union” of God and humanity in Calvin's theology is a differentiated union that does not annihilate the distinction between creator and creature. Calvin himself frequently uses the language of union, but he makes it clear that this union does not absorb the creature into God. See 324–25, 327–28, below.

In his eclectic use of Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria, Calvin describes participation in the transformative, vivifying union with Christ. Particularly in his theology of the Lord's Supper and baptism, believers participate in Christ as they are ingrafted into Christ's body, becoming one with Christ. Thus, for Calvin, “participation in Christ” is inseparable from ecclesial

and social acts of love. Yet, in distinction from alternative theologies that teach deification, Calvin teaches that union with God through Christ is only properly understood when the imputation of Christ's righteousness is affirmed, and “partitive,” synergistic understandings of the Spirit's work are rejected. While Calvin's theology is quite different from late Byzantine conceptions of deification, his theology nonetheless offers an instructive account of the possible consequences of affirming that the fullest manifestation and final end of humanity are found in union with God through Christ.

Before I begin an exposition of Calvin on deification, I need to state more fully the central objection to the claim that Calvin “could” teach deification. The core objection is that Calvin systematically opposes humanity and divinity such that a transformative union between the two becomes unthinkable.

8

See nn. 2 and 3.

In his anthropology, Calvin emphasizes the sinfulness of human nature such that in salvation and sanctification, humans seem to contribute “nothing.” This post-Augustinian anthropology seems to emphasize the powerlessness of the human to move toward the good

of creation. Calvin not only repudiates theologies of synergism and cooperative grace, but he seems to speak of humanity becoming “nothing,” even to the point of “obliteration” in the process of redemption.

9

In summarizing a passage from the 1539 Institutes, Calvin writes that “everything which is ours should be obliterated when we are regenerated by the Lord” (The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius [ed. A. N. S. Lane; trans. Graham I. Davies; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1996] 212; CR 6:380–381). The original passage from 1539 that Calvin was summarizing is an exposition of Ezek 36:26–27, where the “heart of stone” is removed by God to be replaced by “a heart of flesh” by the Spirit. Calvin writes: “If therefore, a stone is transformed into flesh when God converts us to zeal for the right, whatever is of our own will is effaced. What takes its place is wholly from God” (Institutes 2:3:6; OS 3:279–280).

A doctrine of deification normally provides an anthropology from within a trinitarian doctrine of God and in which divinity and humanity are in fundamental concordance. In contrast, Calvin's view of sinful humanity in relation to an all-powerful divine will may give the impression that the human side of the divine-human relationship has virtually vanished.

The Unity of Divinity and Humanity in Calvin's Theology of Creation and Redemption

Calvin faced criticisms related to his allegedly “negative” anthropology in his own day. In reaction to Calvin's theology of grace and providence presented in the 1539 Institutes, Roman Catholic theologian Albert Pighius wrote Ten Books on Human Free Choice and Divine Grace (1542). The central argument was that the church fathers speak in one voice against Calvin's claim that the will is in bondage to sin apart from the effectual work of the Spirit. Calvin's strong doctrine of sin is said to distort his account of grace and regeneration. Offended by the idea that humans contribute “nothing” in salvation, Pighius defends an approach that aims to “balance” the work of salvation between God and humanity in order to preserve human responsibility. Calvin responds in 1543 with The Bondage and Liberation of the Will. This work of Calvin is important to consult regarding the allegations of Calvin's “negative” anthropology for two reasons: First, in contrast to the earlier sixteenth-century debate between Erasmus and Luther on free choice, Calvin meets Pighius on his own terms and argues his case from the church fathers rather than primarily from Scripture.10

Thus, perhaps not surprisingly, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will has more patristic citations than any work of Calvin besides the Institutes. See A. N. S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999) 151.

Secondly, in responding to these Roman Catholic objections, Calvin makes important distinctions and qualifications to his position (partly through concessions to patristic concerns) that are not included in the later Institutes.11

Though certain aspects of Calvin's developments in The Bondage and Liberation of the Will are included in later editions of the Institutes, some crucial features, such as Calvin's Aristotelian distinctions, are not. On Calvin's development through The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, see Lane, John Calvin, 179–91.

In response to Pighius's objection to Calvin's “negative” language concerning humanity in redemption, Calvin claims these negative statements speak of “prideful,” fallen humanity, not humanity as it was created in Adam or fulfilled in Christ. It is fallen humanity which sees itself as essentially independent from God, claiming that it has power “in itself” rather than “in” or “united” to God. Thus, when Calvin says that “whatever is ours” is obliterated in regeneration, he is not being “negative” about humanity but “negative” about sin. His language is indebted to the Pauline notion that believers die to the “old self” and do not live “according to the flesh” but “according to the Spirit.” Calvin writes, “By ‘whatever is ours’; I understand that which belongs to us. Moreover, I define this as what we have in ourselves apart from God's creation.”12

Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 212; CR 6:380–381.

In Pauline terms, one “dies” to the “flesh” in regeneration; this is not the death of God's good creation, but a vivification by the Spirit.13

Although the original passage in 1536 was an exposition of Ezek 36:26–27, it is significant that Calvin moves to Pauline sources when he further explains the meaning of his statement in the 1559 edition of the Institutes. I have chosen the Pauline language of dying to the “old self” and the contrast between “flesh” and “spirit” because of its significance in the book of Romans, which was so influential on Calvin, as well as its similarity with Calvin's language that “whatever is ours” is “annihilated” in regeneration (OS 3:279–280).

In a similar way, Calvin uses the image of the vine and the branches in John 15 to draw out the contrast between the branch “in itself,” which is useless apart from the nourishment and strength of the vine, and the branch “in the vine.” The emphasis of this Johannine passage is that the human will “in itself” does not cooperate with God—as if it could act and cooperate on its own power apart from God—yet, when the human is ingrafted onto God as the vine, God produces fruit through those human faculties.14

Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 229–31; CR 6:393–395.

Humanity at its fullest is humanity united to God. As in John, however, this positive principle has a negative corollary: “without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Calvin's principle is, in fact, a deeply christological one; one must not think of full humanity as essentially independent or autonomous from divinity, but the two must be thought of together, as a unity. Although Calvin quotes a variety of biblical, patristic and conciliar sources for this view, one of the most important is Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings.

15

Remko Jan Mooi, in Het Kerk. En Dogmahistorisch Element in de Werken Van Johannes Calvijn (Wageningen: H. Veenman, 1965) 369, lists 1,708 explicit citations of Augustine in Calvin's writings. The anti-Pelagian writings, in particular, were central for Calvin. See ibid., and Richard A. Muller, “Augustinianism in the Reformation,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (ed. Allan Fitzgerald; Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1999).

While the Pelagian controversy may appear to some as distant from christological concerns, for both Augustine and Calvin (in his appropriation of Augustine), the incarnation is the supreme example of an anti-Pelagian theology of grace.16

For example, The Predestination of the Saints (sections 15:30–31), The Gift of Perseverance (section 9:21), Enchiridion (sections 36, 40). For Calvin's appropriation of Augustine on this theme, see his The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 129–30; CR 6:321–322.

For Augustine, grace is displayed through the priority of the Spirit in the virgin birth. In contrast to adoptionistic Christologies, Augustine taught that there was no humanity “prior” to the unity of divinity and humanity in Christ that could “actively will” the union from an autonomous space. Indeed, although Augustine's anti-Pelagian work preceded the debate between Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria, his concern to affirm the presence of God the Word in the womb of Mary has certain parallels with Cyril's later defense of the

.

17

See the letters between Cyril and Nestorius in Richard A. Norris, The Christological Controversy, Sources of Early Christian Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980).

In terms of his reception of Augustine's theology of grace, Calvin highlights the importance of the incarnation,18

See Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 129–30; CR 6:321–322.

thus complementing his larger claim that full humanity is naturally and fundamentally in union with God.

In order to portray this union of humanity with God in the original creation, Calvin utilizes Aristotelian categories in The Bondage and Liberation of the Will.19

The Aristotelian categories of substance, accident, and habit are used repeatedly in the work. See pp. xxv–xxvi of Lane's introduction to The Bondage and Liberation of the Will for citations.

Humanity is not naturally at odds with God, but only opposed to God because of the fall: the substance of human nature as created by God, Calvin says, is good. Indeed—as he later expounds in the Institutes—before the fall Adam is “united” to God.20

“It was the spiritual life of Adam to remain united and bound to his Maker” (Institutes 2:1:5).

Yet, after the fall, human nature has been corrupted through the disease of sin. This corruption—as real as it is for Calvin—is accidental to human nature. Thus, when salvation comes to a person, the bond of this accidental characteristic of sinning is gradually diminished, although this process will be far from complete in this life.

Through this Aristotelian language, which is not later incorporated into the Institutes, Calvin provides a clarification of potentially misleading language in his theology and piety. Calvin often speaks of believers becoming “nothing” so that God's new creation can come forth. This is an aspect of participation in Christ's death, such that one dies to the “old self,” in which one lives by the “flesh,” in order to live by the Spirit in Christ.

21

Institutes 3:3:5–9.

Using this Pauline language about being crucified to the “old self” that is enslaved to sin, Calvin's rhetoric emphasizes the need to “die” to sin. Yet, Pighius has misunderstood this language when he sees this participation in Christ's death as a “death” to the good creation in Adam. For Calvin, this “death” is a mortification of the sinful desires that corrupt the good creation in Adam. Moreover, participation in Christ's death is always followed by a participation in Christ's resurrection,22

Calvin is very insistent on this point, following Rom 6:5–6, which says that we will not simply be united with Christ in his death but also in his resurrection: “Both things happen to us by participation in Christ” (Institutes 3:3:9).

which involves a fulfillment of the original

of creation, the good “substance” of human nature.

Thus, citing Irenaeus in his favor, Calvin affirms that redemption heals and restores the original “good will” and “good nature” of Adam.23

On the issue of freedom, Calvin claims that Irenaeus is in basic agreement with him in seeking to affirm the goodness of the original creation (and the restoration that follows). See Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 71–72. For Calvin, the nature is not only restored to the Adamic state, but is transformed to a superior state: “The condition which we obtain through Christ is far superior to the lot of the first man” (Calvin, Comm. 1 Cor 15:46 from CTS; CR 49:559). For more on this transformation, see Richard Prins, “The Image of God in Adam and the Restoration of Man in Jesus Christ, a Study in John Calvin,” SJT 25 (1972) 32–44.

The created nature is good, and the created nature is restored in redemption. This is not a nature conceived of as an autonomous possession apart from God. Rather, as with Adam—and even more fully with Christ—this “good nature” is activated in the human only when the human is united to God by the Spirit. It is Calvin's strong insistence, then, that God and humanity are properly united in a fundamental way that makes him oppose Pighius, who seeks to honor human effort by dividing the agency and credit between God and humanity.24

Calvin does not accept the language of “cooperative grace” as used in medieval scholasticism precisely because he thinks it divides the agency and credit between God and humanity in a partitive manner. While Calvin is more sympathetic to Augustine's use of the language, he does not retrieve the phrase because of its possible misleading connotations. See Institutes 2:3:7.

For Calvin, since God is the fountain of all life and goodness, Pighius's partitive solution is unacceptable. In sanctification, all of the human faculties are, in fact, utilized, but if one views humanity as fundamentally related to God—indeed, as truly flourishing only in union with God—then one must not speak of a good human action in separation from God's action.25

See Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 193–200; CR 6:367–373.

For Calvin, the fundamental union of divinity and humanity is not only apparent in the Spirit's activity of prevenience, but in God's “gifts” of faith and sanctification to believers. The reception of faith involves the voluntary assent of believers. Yet, while this assent “is properly called ours,” it does not “derive from us” in exclusion from God, but is a work of the Spirit.26

Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 119–20; CR 6:314–315.

Moreover, when believers act in love, it is not “as if constrained by a necessity of the law,” but voluntarily.27

Institutes 2:8:49.

How can Calvin speak positively of the human acts of “assent” and “voluntary” actions of love? For Calvin, the free action of a human being is not in competition with the action of the Spirit. The Spirit empowers these actions and deserves the praise for these actions, but these actions are still “properly called ours.” As a part of this account, Calvin denies the popular medieval doctrine of “infused habits,” as well as the distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” virtues. Instead, Christian acts of love emerge directly from the indwelling activity of the Holy Spirit.28

Concerning the issue of whether love is an “infused habit,” Calvin is relatively close to Lombard in Book 1:17 of the Sentences. The majority of medieval scholastics disagreed with Lombard on this point. In his Sentences commentary of 1510/1511, Luther made his own agreement with Lombard on this point explicit. See Steven E. Ozment, The Age of Reform (1250–1550): An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) 31–32.

And yet, in Calvin's account, the human faculties are not bypassed in this process but are activated by the Spirit. Moreover, the divine will is not coercive toward the human person. Rather, God “renews a right spirit in their inner nature” so that the will voluntarily obeys God, consenting to faith through the work of the Spirit.29

Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 194; CR 6:367. Calvin denies that God would “coerce anyone by violence.” Instead, “so that he may have willing [voluntarios] servants who follow of their own accord and obey, he creates a new heart in them and renews a right spirit in their inner nature.” See ibid., 193–94, 232; CR 6:367–368, 396.

From this exposition, both in The Bondage and Liberation of the Will and in the Institutes, Calvin develops a theology of redemption that has much in common with patristic writers such as Augustine and Irenaeus.30

Certainly Calvin's theology of participation, adoption, and ingrafting is influenced by more patristic writers than Augustine and Irenaeus. Later in this piece, I point out how Calvin draws upon Cyril of Alexandria in his eucharistic theology of participation. Numerous studies have also chronicled the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux upon Calvin. See, e.g., Dennis Tamburello, Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1994); A. N. S. Lane, Calvin and Bernard of Clairvaux (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1996); idem, John Calvin, chs 4–5. As Lane points out, when assessing the patristic influences upon Calvin one must keep in mind that Calvin tends to use patristic and medieval writers for his own distinct purposes. For example, although Calvin repeatedly draws upon Cyril of Alexandria, his christology remains Antiochene rather than Alexandrian in orientation. Likewise, although Calvin draws upon the mystical writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, he tends to decontextualize these works from their monastic context and draws upon him to defend his view of the bondage of the will and imputation, while rejecting many of his contemplative assumptions. For instance, although Calvin repeatedly draws upon Bernard of Clairvaux's commentary on the Canticles, in which Bernard's erotic metaphor for contemplation is central, Calvin draws selectively so that he does not have to give the erotic metaphor a prominent place in his thought.

Calvin's debt to Augustine is immense, as is shown through his extensive appropriation of Augustine's anti-Pelagian theology of grace. Calvin also shows his deep concern to stay with Irenaeus in the unequivocal affirmation of the goodness of creation and the restoration of creation in Christ. Although Calvin utilizes Aristotelian categories to do this, these categories clarify for Calvin the Irenaean motif that the original union of God and humanity in Adam is restored and fulfilled in Christ, reuniting humanity to God.31

Although Calvin does not use the term recapitulatio, he has a great deal in common with Irenaeus's doctrine of creation, recapitulation, and second-Adam christology. See Johannes Van Oort, “John Calvin and the Church Fathers,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists (ed. Irena Backus; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997) 685–86.

Moreover, concerning unredeemed humanity, Calvin expands his theology of imago dei in the Institutes, calling it a “participation in God.”32

Institutes 1:2:1.

While Calvin develops this soteriological account in dialogue with Augustine and Irenaeus, his central sources are scriptural. In addition to the Johannine language of indwelling and ingrafting mentioned above, another key influence on Calvin is the language of participation in the book of Romans. For Calvin, Romans provides “an open door to all the most profound treasures of scripture.”33

At the beginning of Comm. Rom., Calvin writes that “if we have gained a true understanding of this Epistle, we have an open door to all the most profound treasures of Scripture” (CC 5; CR 49:1).

Thus, just as the book of Romans becomes crucial for the development of the Institutes and the Commentaries, so the themes of participation, adoption, and ingrafting in Romans become crucial for Calvin's theology.34

While the influence of Romans upon the Institutes is frequently affirmed in Calvin scholarship, Richard Muller has shown the extent to which Romans is crucial for Calvin's development of the doctrinal loci beginning in 1539. In addition, it is in 1539/1540 that Calvin outlines his project for the Commentaries. It is during this crucial time of development that Calvin makes his statement about Romans being an “open door” to the rest of Scripture. See Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University, 2000) chs. 7 and 8. Also see Rhétorique et théologique. Calvin, le commentaire de l'épitre aux Romains by Benoit Girardin (Paris: Beauchesne) 1979.

From Rom 6:1–11, Calvin emphasizes union with Christ in his death and resurrection in baptism, and the life of the Christian as participation in Christ. From Rom 8:12–17, 26–27, Calvin emphasizes the adoption of believers as the children of God, given access to the Father through the Spirit, who prays through believers. In Rom 11:17–19, Calvin finds his well-loved image of the ingrafting of believers by faith.35

Calvin sometimes speaks of the believer being ingrafted into the community of God's people—the subject of Romans 11—but he also speaks of being ingrafted into Christ, developing imagery from John 15:1–11. Although Calvin sometimes refers to one or the other sense, he makes no separation between the two. Theologically speaking, being ingrafted into Christ and adopted by the Father is necessarily connected with being ingrafted into the family of God's children; see, for example, Institutes 4:1:2–4.

In the Commentaries, the content of these three passages—involving union with Christ, participation in Christ by the Spirit, adoption, and ingrafting—are used together as mutually illuminating images.36

On the Institutes, see the following note. Examples of this clustering in the Commentaries without the warrant of the immediate biblical context include passages on the following texts, each of which speaks of participation in God, Christ, or the Spirit, and is linked with the language of adoption and/or ingrafting: Gen 17:8, participation and adoption; Isa 40:8, participation and adoption; Isa 60:2, participation and adoption; Luke 23:43, participation and ingrafting; John 3: 29, participation and adoption; Acts 10:4, participation and ingrafting; Eph 2:4, participation and ingrafting; Phil 1:7, participation and adoption; 1 Thess 4:14, participation and ingrafting; 1 Thess 5:10, participation and ingrafting; 2 Tim 1:9, participation and ingrafting; Titus 3:5–6, participation, ingrafting and adoption; Heb 6:4, participation and adoption; Heb 10:22, participation and adoption; 1 John 1:3, participation and adoption; in addition, there are multiple occurrences of this cluster of images in Romans .

Frequently, even if only one image is used in the biblical passage, Calvin will link another of these images from Romans together with it. Likewise, partly through the influence of Romans, the language of participation has a far-reaching influence on the doctrinal loci of the Institutes. The Institutes uses this language to speak of justification, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the resurrection, the incarnation, the Trinity, the atonement, the imago dei, and “participation in God.”37

There are many examples of participation language applied to a variety of loci. Here are a few examples from the topics listed above: justification (3:17:11), baptism (4:16:2), the Lord's Supper (4:17:10), the resurrection (3:3:9), the incarnation (2:12:5), the Trinity (4:1:3), the atonement (2: 16:12), the imago dei (2:2:1), and “participation in God” (1:13:14).

Through the use of Romans as a “door” to rest of Scripture and as a lens to reread the doctrinal loci, the themes of participation, adoption, and ingrafting become prominent in Calvin's theology.

While Calvin develops a wide-ranging theology of participation, his strongest language of participation relates to the sacraments. The sacraments are not empty symbols, but they involve the “communicating of Christ,” for in them God “truly executes whatever he promises and represents in signs.”38

Institutes 4:14:7, 4:14:17.

The sacraments are gifts, not to be venerated in themselves, but received in gratitude and faith.39

For an account of Calvin's eucharistic theology that is particularly sensitive to the sacraments as “gifts” involving grateful reception, see B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993).

The grateful response of believers is rooted in a trinitarian sacramental theology, such that they receive the gracious pardon of the Father, having been united to Christ and empowered by the Spirit to live a new life of gratitude.40

For more on the trinitarian dynamics of Calvin's sacramental theology, see Butin, Revelation, Redemption and Response, 107–21.

Thus, through the sacraments believers truly participate in Christ; they do not simply imitate Christ or partake of his benefits.41

See Institutes 3:2:24, and Calvin, Comm. Rom. 6:3–4.

In baptism and the Lord's Supper, believers participate in the person of Christ, ingrafted into his body.42

For more on Calvin's theology of participation in relation to the sacraments, see pp. 330–332 below.

Calvin's development of the biblical themes of union, adoption, ingrafting, and participation give a strongly “catholic” character to his theology of deification. Relying upon interpretations of John and Paul as well as Irenaeus and Augustine, Calvin teaches that the final end and goal for humanity is a trinitarian union of humanity with God. The oneness and unity of the Trinity extends to incorporate the believer: “Just as he [Christ] is one with the Father, let us become one with him.”43

My own translation of “ et quemadmodum unus est in patre, ita nos unum in ipso fiamus,” from Calvin's Sermon on 1 Samuel 2:27–36; CR 29:353. Note the parallel of “oneness” and mutual indwelling between the trinitarian oneness (Father and Son) and economic oneness (Christ and the believer).

In their union with Christ, believers are “participants not only in all his benefits but also in himself.” Indeed, “day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us, until he becomes completely one with us.”44

Institutes 3:2:24.

Moreover, believers are “fully and firmly joined with God only when Christ joins us with him.”45

Ibid., 2:16:3.

Yet, this union with Christ is impossible without a participation in the Spirit, who unites the believer to Christ.46

Ibid., 3:1:2. For an account of the crucial role of the Spirit in Calvin's trinitarian doctrine of participation, see Julie Canlis, “Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6:2 (2004) 169–84.

Indeed, through the Spirit we “become participants in God [in Dei participationem venimus].”47

Institutes 1:13:14; OS 3:128; my literal translation. In John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. Henry Beveridge and Robert Pitcairn; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845), Beveridge renders the overall passage “By means of him [the Spirit] we become partakers of the divine nature (in Dei participationem venimus), so as in a manner to feel his quickening energy within us. Our justification is his work; from him is power, sanctification, truth, grace, and every good thought, since it is from the Spirit alone that all good gifts proceed.”

Through Christ and the Spirit, believers are gathered “into participation in the Father.”48

Institutes 1:13:26.

As the “perfection of human happiness is to be united to God,” this union takes place in redemption.49

Ibid., 1:15:6.

Yet, this union does not make us “consubstantial with God” like a fourth member of the Godhead, but it is in Christ, through “the grace and power of the Spirit.”50

Ibid., 1:15:5.

Calvin also speaks of a coming beatific vision, a “direct vision” of the Godhead, “when as partakers in heavenly glory we shall see God as he is.”51

Ibid., 2:14:3.

This final, temporal end is in fact “the end of the gospel,” that is, “to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us.”52

Calvin, Comm. 2 Pet 1:4 from CTS; CR 55:446.

While Calvin does not go into detailed speculation on this final, eschatological end, his language concerning a trinitarian incorporation of humanity into union with God is clear and emphatic.

Calvin's Differences with Osiander on Participation

Does Calvin, then, have a doctrine of deification? To claim this goes beyond simply asserting that his theology contains the themes of union, participation, and adoption. A theology containing the themes typically associated with deification would not necessarily result in a doctrine of deification.

53

For the distinction between a “theme” of deification and a “doctrine” of deification, I am indebted to Gosta Hallonsten's paper, “The Concept of Theosis in Recent Research—The Need for a Clarification,” presented at Drew University, May 21, 2004.

These themes are, after all, biblical ones that can be found in nearly any Christian theology. A doctrine of deification involves the development of these biblical themes and a differentiation among various theological alternatives connected with them. For Calvin, some of this differentiation comes through his appropriation of patristic developments relating to deification such as the goodness of creation, the union of divinity and humanity, and the beatific vision. In the process of this development, Calvin usually prefers to keep with biblical language to describe this process in redemption, though at times he makes positive and negative use of “ deificari” and “

” to differentiate his position from various alternatives.

54

On Calvin's use of these terms, see Carl Mosser, “The Greatest Possible Blessing: Calvin and Deification,” SJT 55:1 (2002) 41, 53–55.

However, it was dispute over the significance of the language of “participation” that led Calvin to differentiate his position most clearly from other sixteenth-century alternatives.

The controversy about “participation” that is most pertinent to deification is Calvin's dispute with Osiander.55

Other relevant controversies include Calvin's eucharistic dispute with the Lutherans Westphal and Heshusius, and Calvin's opposition to Servetus's interpretation of Psalm 82. With the eucharistic dispute, the central issue is how one partakes of the “substance” of Christ in the eucharist. Calvin gives a strongly pneumatological account of this participation, claiming that his opponents fail to give sufficient weight to the Spirit as the mode by which believers partake of the flesh of Christ. See Thomas J. Davis, The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin's Eucharistic Teaching (New York: AMS Press, 1995) chs. 5 and 6. With Servetus, the central dispute seems to be the exegetical interpretation of Psalm 82, as well as the affirmation of the “deity in believers” in a non-Chalcedonian, non-eschatological way. See Mosser, “The Greatest Possible Blessing,” 50–53.

Calvin does not start writing against Osiander until he is accused of being Osiandrian in his theology by his Lutheran opponents after Osiander's death in 1552.56

Although it is frequently pointed out that Calvin has a negative response to Osiander as early as the Colloquy of Worms, Calvin's main polemic against Osiander's theology does not come until the 1559 edition of the Institutes. In Calvin's debate with both Westphal and Heshusius, he was accused of being Osiandrian. See David Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971) 91; James Weis, “Calvin Versus Osiander on Justification,” Springfielder 29 (1965) 42–43.

Indeed, although Calvin seeks to downplay his common ground with Osiander, their teaching had similarities: Osiander, like Calvin, appropriated the Johannine language of indwelling; he emphasized the importance of a growth in holiness as one received the gift of faith; and he wanted to appropriate Augustine's theology of grace.57

For a sympathetic account of Osiander's appropriation of Augustine's theology of grace and participation, see Patricia Wilson-Kastner, “Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the Influence of Augustine of Hippo,” Sixteenth Century Journal 10 (1979) 73–91. Unfortunately, Wilson-Kastner misinterprets Calvin's reasons for opposing Osiander, claiming that it is due to a “separation of the divine from the human” in Calvin (88).

In addition, like Calvin, Osiander was fond of the language of “participation,” seeing justification as participation in Christ's righteousness. But for Osiander, this meant that justification could not be forensic. For Osiander, a person is called righteous when Christ, as God's righteousness, indwells the believer. Thus, the divine nature of Christ is possessed by the believer—Osiander's notion of “essential righteousness.” The original goodness of humanity is restored through this union with Christ by partaking of Christ's divine nature. Justification does not mean forensic pardon of a sinner by grace, but rather the possession of Jesus Christ's divine righteousness by the infusion of the divine to the believer. On this decisive point, Osiander was condemned by his Lutheran colleagues. And, holding so much in common with Osiander, Calvin was condemned by some of the same Lutherans as being “Osiandrian.”

Concerning the decisive issue of justification, Calvin was clearly not Osiandrian. For Calvin, justification and sanctification are distinguishable but nevertheless inseparable, for “Christ contains both of them inseparably in himself…. You cannot possess him [Christ] without being made partaker in his sanctification, because he cannot be divided into pieces.”58

Institutes 3:16:1.

While justification always and necessarily leads to real sanctification, the former is forensic and the latter involves a moral transformation of the believer by the Spirit. In contrast to Osiander, forensic notions of pardon are not opposed to the themes of indwelling and participation in Calvin. Rather, Calvin has two main reasons why these two must be held together.

First, if salvation is to be truly a gift from God—and sanctification a life of gratitude—a forensic notion of pardon is the necessary prerequisite for such a life of sanctification. In the late medieval model of the believer as pilgrim (viator), the “assurance” of salvation cannot be emphasized since it is dependent upon the continuing acts of sanctification by the believer.59

See Heiko Augustinus Oberman and Paul L. Nyhus, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1966) 131–33.

Calvin criticizes this soteriology as keeping the conscience in fear and anxiety, thus unable to fulfill the law of love with gratitude. Rather than being in “perpetual dread” as to whether one has fulfilled God's law, with imputation the believer is moved to “eager readiness to obey God” in properly receiving this pardon from God.60

Institutes 3:19:4.

When “forensic” pardon is received, the adoption of the believer is realized, for believers are freed from the “severe requirements” of the law so that they can act like children: believers “hear themselves called with fatherly gentleness by God” and “will cheerfully and with great eagerness answer and follow his leading.”61

Ibid., 3:19:5.

Calvin is clear that this grateful following of God's leading is, in fact, a “participation” in God through Christ, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Yet, theological emphasis upon the indwelling presence of God is not enough. For Calvin, if this indwelling presence is to be in concordance with a truly human gratitude, one must oppose Osiander's denial of the forensic character of justification.

A second significant difference between Calvin and Osiander relates to the trinitarian dynamics of Osiander's claim that believers share the deity of Christ in justification. For Calvin, the bond of our union with Christ—and the manner of divine indwelling—is not through the “infusion” of the “essence” of God into the believer. Rather, he maintains, Osiander “does not observe the bond of this unity,” namely, that believers are “united with Christ by the secret power of the Spirit.”62

Ibid., 3:11:5.

By the Spirit, believers participate not just in the divine nature of Christ but in the whole person of Christ.63

Ibid., 3:11:8.

Through this participation in Christ, believers participate in the Trinity.64

Ibid., 3:11:5.

In emphasizing that the Spirit is the bond for our union with God in Christ, Calvin has several concerns. First, he wants to keep a Nicene trinitarian theology; Calvin fears that Osiander's account of “participation in Christ” leaves out the essential role of the Spirit.65

Canlis gives a helpful account of the crucial role of the Spirit in Calvin's debate with Osiander. Unfortunately, her account tends to underestimate the decisive importance of imputation for Calvin in the Osiander controversy, downplaying Calvin's “forensic” dimensions in an effort to retrieve his theology of participation. See Canlis, “Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God,” 170–77.

But Calvin is also expressing a concern to maintain a creature-creator distinction amidst our union with Christ. Because Osiander denies a role to the human nature of Christ in justification, Christ's own human nature becomes dangerously de-emphasized.66

Institutes 3:11:8–9.

Not only does this raise concerns related to Chalcedonian orthodoxy (with a “union” without “confusion” between divinity and humanity), but if believers participate solely in the divine nature, their perfected humanity in redemption seems to disappear. Just as Calvin applies the communication of attributes to the person of Christ in concreto,67

See Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 13.

so also do believers participate in the person of Christ, the focal point of the union (without confusion) of divinity and humanity. Likewise, in his debate with Osiander, Calvin holds that one is united with God through Christ so as to be “completely one” with Christ, participating in God. Yet, the creature is not identical to the creator. Through his debate with Osiander, Calvin affirms what he teaches elsewhere about 2 Pet 1:4—that in the union of creator and creature in redemption, the former does not “swallow up” the latter.68

“The Manicheans formerly dreamt that we are a part of God, and that, after having run the race of life we shall at length revert to our original. There are also at this day fanatics who imagine that we thus pass over into the nature of God, so that his swallows up our nature. Thus they explain what Paul says, that God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:28), and in the same sense they take this passage. But such a delirium as this never entered the minds of the holy Apostles; they only intended to say that when divested of all the vices of the flesh, we shall be partakers of divine and blessed immortality and glory, so as to be as it were one with God as far as our capacities will allow” (Calvin, Comm. 2 Pet. 1:4 from CTS; CR 55:446).

While Calvin's emphasis upon the forensic character of justification is distinct to his concerns as a Reformer, his insistence upon a union without “confusion” of the divine and human holds much in common with his conciliar and patristic sources. Calvin was not seeking to be “unique” in this latter emphasis, but to uphold the concerns of the broader catholic tradition. On the one hand, Calvin sought to be “orthodox” on justification in the terms of the Reformation, in response to the criticisms of his Lutheran opponents. On the other hand, he sought to be “orthodox” on trinitarian and christological issues in broader catholic terms, refuting Roman Catholic accusations that the Reformation is a “new” movement leaving behind the church fathers and councils. Thus, Calvin's teaching about participation, ingrafting, and union retains broadly a catholic character in affirming the union of divinity and humanity in Christology and in the final redemption of believers in Christ. Yet, as the debate with Osiander shows, Calvin's theology is also shaped by his concern as a Reformer to uphold the free pardon of God in justification.

Calvin's Distinctive Doctrine of Deification

In terms of contemporary theological discussion, perhaps the greatest danger in claiming that Calvin teaches “deification” is that his view could be too quickly assimilated into late Byzantine notions of

, from which he retains distance. As noted above, frequently Palamite theology is used as the “standard” by which to judge other theologies of deification. As a result, theologies of deification in the West end up looking like more or less truncated versions of a late Byzantine theology with which they never explicitly engaged. Scholarship on Calvin is no exception to this trend. In an account emerging from Orthodox-Reformed dialogues in the 1960s, Joseph McLelland makes some strange claims regarding Calvin and deification.

69

This dialogue, from 1968 to 1970, was between representatives of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in America and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, North America Area. For the papers emerging from this dialogue, see The New Man: An Orthodox and Reformed Dialogue.

As part of a comparison of Calvin with Palamas, he draws upon Calvin's theme of “participation in Christ,” particularly the notion that we “participate” in Christ's righteousness in justification and sanctification. After noting that in Calvin this theme takes place in the context of the “mystical union” between Christ and the believer, McLelland claims that “on this decisive point Calvin is one with our Orthodox brethren in their idea of

.”

70

McLelland, “Sailing to Byzantium,” 16.

After this, however, McLelland laments how this “mystical” dimension in Calvin's thought is greatly diminished in later Calvinism, such that “justification has become legal, forensic.”71

Ibid., 17. In this section, McLelland also claims that Calvin puts justification “ within the context of sanctification”—a point showing significant conceptual confusion on the part of McLelland. Against Roman Catholic theologians and also Osiander, Calvin is at pains to emphasize that justification is distinct from sanctification—providing the only proper starting point for sanctification—even though justification is ultimately inseparable from sanctification. See Calvin's account of this “double grace” in Institutes 3:11.

While I believe that McLelland is correct in ascertaining that Calvin taught deification in some sense, his analysis actually undermines some of Calvin's distinctive concerns. Let us examine a passage in which Calvin discusses justification in the first edition of the Institutes (1536), an account which was retained and greatly expanded in later editions.

We experience such participation in him that, although we are still foolish in ourselves, he is our wisdom before God; while we are sinners, he is our righteousness; while we are unclean, he is our purity; while we are weak, while we are unarmed and exposed to Satan, yet ours is that power which has been given him in heaven and on earth to crush Satan for us and shatter the gates of hell; while we still bear about with us the body of death, he is yet our life. In brief, because all things are ours and we have all things in him, in us there is nothing. Upon this foundation we must be built if we would grow into a holy temple to the Lord.72

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition (trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986) 37.

Is this passage “legal” (like the “Calvinists”) or “mystical,” as McLelland would have it? The passage certainly makes it clear that the doctrine of justification is not simply a detached, “judicial” doctrine wherein an impersonal transaction takes place: it is about union with Christ, and the wondrous exchange that takes place in this union. In addition, Calvin makes it clear that the believer grows in real holiness in sanctification, such that we “grow into a holy temple to the Lord.” Yet, contra McLelland, the passage is deeply “forensic” and “legal” in asserting that by participation in Christ, Christ's righteousness is imputed to the believer. (“While we are sinners, he is our righteousness; while we are unclean, he is our purity.”) In Calvin, the “forensic” imputation of Christ's righteousness and the mystical union with Christ are held in the closest possible relationship—one is unthinkable without the other. For Calvin, “forensic” pardon is not an opposing category to the more “organic” images of union, adoption, and ingrafting to speak of participation in Christ. The two belong together. Indeed, as noted above, believers can participate in their adoption only when they have come to realize the Father's kindness in freely pardoning sinners. Without imputation, Calvin's ethics of “participation in Christ” become impossible, as the conscience is never given the rest that true gratitude requires.73

In his work on Calvin's ethics, The Concept of Equity in Calvin's Ethics ([Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997] 49), Guenther H. Haas writes: “Calvin bases his view of the Christian life upon our participation in Christ. Every action of the Christian is to be an expression of this participation.” While Haas gives a good account of how love is involved in this participation, the notion of gratitude is key also. On the necessity of freeing the conscience for gratitude and love, see David Little, Religion, Order and Law (New York: Harper & Row, 1969) 48–52.

In a word, according to Calvin, a participation in Christ without a participation in his righteousness (through imputation) is no participation at all.

In addition, McLelland speaks of the “mysticism” of Calvin (in common with other accounts of deification) in a way that does not recognize Calvin's distinctive approach to mystical participation in Christ.

74

For another approach to the question of “mysticism” in Calvin, see Tamburello, Union with Christ, chs. 1 and 6. Tamburello improves upon several earlier studies that denied that Calvin would have drawn upon medieval mystics like Bernard of Clairvaux in any substantive way. Yet, the term “mysticism” itself is slippery, and Tamburello has to provide a modern definition of mysticism to apply to Calvin, at the risk of anachronism. Nevertheless, his work, along with that of Lane (Calvin and Bernard of Clairvaux), does show areas of commonality between Calvin's thought and medieval thinkers termed “mystics” like Bernard of Clairvaux. See n. 30, above.

For Calvin, participation in Christ is inseparable from the active participation in the love and unity of the body of Christ, the church. A key passage for Calvin on this point is 1 Cor 10:17. Calvin argues that just as believers have a vertical participation in the body and blood of Christ, they simultaneously have a horizontal participation in the church as body. In receiving the Lord's Supper, we must have

in both directions.

What is the source of the

or communion, which exists among us, but the fact that we are united to Christ so that “we are flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones?” For it is necessary for us to be incorporated, as it were, into Christ in order to be united to each other. Besides, Paul is discussing here not a mere human fellowship, but the spiritual union between Christ and believers, in order to make it plain from that, that it is an intolerable sacrilege for them to be contaminated by communion with idols. Therefore from the context of this verse we can conclude that

or communion of the blood is the alliance which we have with the blood of Christ when he ingrafts all of us into His body, so that He may live in us, and we in Him.

75

Calvin, Comm. 1 Cor 10:16 from CC; CR 49:464.

This

wherein Christ lives in us and we in him is, in fact, the source of the

among members of the church. The “ingrafting” into the body of Christ is both mystical and horizontal, or social. Indeed, when late sixteenth-century English Puritans stubbornly refuse the practice of a “private” eucharist, they are in deep accord with Calvin here.

76

See Little, Religion, Order, and Law, 154.

It is impossible to participate in Christ through the Lord's Supper in an exclusively “vertical” direction. Participation in Christ simply must involve the horizontal activity of

and love.

While participation in Christ in the Lord's Supper is inseparably connected with ecclesial

and the broader duties of charity,

77

For an account of the connection between the Lord's Supper and almsgiving in Calvin, see Elsie Anne McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving (Genève: Droz, 1984) ch. 2.

this does not stop Calvin from emphasizing the significance of the vertical communicatio which takes place in the sacrament. The Lord's Supper involves a “true participation in Christ himself. For those benefits would not come to us unless Christ first made himself ours.” Thus, in the Supper believers “grow into one body” with Christ and become “partakers of his substance, that we may also feel his power in partaking of all his benefits.”78

Institutes 4:17:11.

Indeed, Calvin appropriates the notion in Cyril's theology that the flesh of Christ is “life-giving,” “pervaded with the fullness of life” and then “transmitted to us” in the Lord's Supper.79

Ibid., 4:17:9.

In one of his many summaries of Cyril, Calvin says that “the flesh of Christ is made vivifying by the agency of the Spirit, so that Christ is in us because the Spirit of God dwells in us.”80

John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises (ed. Thomas F. Torrance; trans. Henry Beveridge; vol. 2; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1958) 541; CR 9:495. One of Calvin's affirming quotations of Cyril is particularly revealing on how far Calvin was willing to go with Cyril on the subject of indwelling: “‘Just as a man by pouring other wax upon melted wax completely mixes both together, so it is necessary, if one receives flesh and blood of the Lord, for him to be joined with Christ, so that Christ may be found in him and he in us’” (Institutes 4:17:35).

This language of vivification is included in Calvin's liturgy for the Lord's Supper in Geneva. Through the Supper, the souls of the faithful are “nourished and vivified with his [Jesus Christ's] substance.” This is followed by a participation of the believer in the ascension of Christ, wherein believers are “raised above all terrestrial objects, and carried as high as heaven, to enter the kingdom of God where he dwells.”81

Calvin, Tracts and Treatises, 2:122; CR 6:200.

Through the power of the Spirit, believers participate in the ascent of Christ.82

On the participation of believers in the ascent and glorification of Christ, see Institutes 4: 17:29, 4:17:31; Calvin, Comm. 2 Thess. 1:10, 12; and Mosser, “The Greatest Possible Blessing,” 45–46.

Calvin's teaching that believers participate in Christ's substance in the Lord's Supper was not uncontroversial. Bullinger in Zurich refused to affirm the language in the Mutual Consent in Regard to the Sacraments of 1551. Although Calvin had already spoken favorably about participating in the substance of Christ, the only reference to substantia in the document is part of a polemic against transubstantiation in the Mass.83

Calvin, Tracts and Treatises, 2:219; CR 7:742.

Yet, although Calvin was willing to compromise in the Mutual Consent, he never abandoned his stronger language of participating in the substance of Christ in the Lord's Supper. In response to Lutheran critics of the Mutual Consent, Calvin repeatedly returned to the language of participating in the substance of Christ in expositing his own position.84

In response to Westphal, see ibid., 2:277–278, 384; CR 9:70, 170. Also, see Calvin's very strong “substance” language in response to Heshusius (ibid. 2:506, 560; CR 9:470, 509).

Although the propriety of speaking about participating in the substance of Christ continued to be controversial into the 1560s and 1570s,85

For example, as part of this controversy Claude De Saintes wrote a “thesis” in 1567 that “ Christus licet a suis fidelibus non sit absens, tamen illius substantiale corpus constanter affirmamus non esse praesens in hac coena.” For more on this controversy, see Henri Meylan, “Beze et les Italiens de Lyon (1566)” in D'Erasme À Theodore de Beze (Geneve: Library Droz, 1976) 175–89.

article 36 of the French Confession of Faith (1559) uses the language, and Calvin repeatedly affirms this way of speaking.86

In the words of the French Confession de foi et discipline ecclésiastique des églises réformées de France (Toulouse, 1864): “ nous nourrit et vivifie de la substance de son corps et de son sang.” For an example of Calvin's usage, see Institutes 4:17:11.

While Calvin is usually cautious in his use of extrabiblical theological language, at times he was quite daring in the way he would speak about union with Christ through participation in his substance. In the 1545 French edition of the Institutes, Calvin wrote that in union with Christ, believers are “made of one substance with him.” Calvin goes on to say that “daily he [Christ] more and more unites himself to us in one and the same substance [une mesme substance].”87

OS 4:35. See David Willis-Watkins, “The Unio Mystica and the Assurance of Faith According to Calvin,” in Calvin. Erbe und Auftrag (ed. Willem van't Spijker; Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1991) 90.

Although these additions of “ substance” language in the 1545 Institutes are later deleted, Calvin continues to speak of believers and Christ uniting into “one substance” in several commentaries, keeping this language through the final editions of these works.88

Although much is made of this omission by Mosser (“The Greatest Possible Blessing,” 48) and Willis-Watkins (“The Unio Mystica and the Assurance of Faith According to Calvin,” 90), Calvin uses the same language of union into “one substance” in his Commentaries. For example, in speaking of the believer's incorporation into Christ in the Supper while commenting on 1 Cor 11:24, Calvin speaks of being united into “one life and substance” with Christ (CTS, CR 49: 487). Calvin uses “substance” in a similar sense in Comm. Eph. 5:31. A third example of “one substance” language is in Calvin's sermon on Gal 3:26–29. Both of the commentaries are written after the Institutes of 1545, and these passages are kept through the revisions of his commentaries on the epistles in 1551 and 1556.

As noted above, Calvin is clear that he does not advocate a union such that humanity is “swallowed up” or completely assimilated into divinity.89

See pp. 324–25 and 327–28, above.

Nevertheless, Calvin pushes the limits of biblical language in seeking to express the closeness of the union between believers, Christ, and God. In explaining the image of ingrafting into Christ in his comments on Romans 6, Calvin finds it necessary to move to the language of 2 Pet 1:4:

In the grafting of trees, the graft draws its nourishment from the root, but retains its own natural quality in the fruit which is eaten. In spiritual ingrafting, however, we not only derive the strength and sap of the life which flows from Christ, but we also pass from our own nature into his (sed in eius naturam ex nostra demigramus).90

Calvin, Comm. Rom. 6:5 from CC; CR 49:107.

Conclusion

Does Calvin's teaching related to participation, ingrafting, and union constitute a doctrine of deification? The question remains an elusive one. On the one hand, Calvin only rarely speaks in the extrabiblical terminology of deification; when he does, it is usually in response to a passage like 2 Pet 1:4 that poses the issue quite directly. If a doctrine of deification requires a large set of technical theological distinctions, Calvin's doctrine would not qualify.

However, if doctrines of deification are to include the teaching of Athanasius, Augustine, and even Gregory of Nyssa, who avoided the term

,

91

Gregory, like Calvin, thinks that it is a hyperbole to say that “humans become God,” because a distinction between the Creator and creature always remains. Thus, Calvin affirms “a kind of deification” (quasi deificcari), rather than a literal deification. Calvin, Comm. 2 Pet. 1:4, CC, CR 55:446. While many other theologians with a doctrine of deification share the commitment to maintain the creator-creature distinction, Gregory and Calvin are cautious with terminology of deification because of the misunderstanding that takes place when the terms are understood literally rather than hyperbolically.

Calvin's theology would qualify.92

All three of these patristic writers are commonly considered to have a doctrine of deification. On Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa, see Rowan Williams, “Deification,” in A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (ed. Gordon Wakefield; London: SCM, 1983) 106–8. On Athanasius, see Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) 77–80.

It does not have the analytical precision of late Byzan-tine theologies of deification, but like these patristic authors, Calvin develops the biblical images of participation, ingrafting, and union in a way that has consider-able extrabiblical content. Although he mentions Plato positively on the theme of deification,93

See Institutes 3:25:2, and Calvin, Comm. 2 Pet. 1:4.

Calvin's main sources are biblical and patristic, ranging from the language of participation, union, adoption, and ingrafting in Paul, to that of abiding and indwelling in John, and including various theological developments borrowed from Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril. Calvin's appropriation of these sources gives a broadly catholic character to his doctrine of deification. Redemption involves the restoration and fulfillment of the original union of God with human beings in creation, which has been disrupted by the fall. The life of the Christian involves a participation in Christ through the Spirit as the believer grows to be “conformable” to God; this process is culminated in the participation in Christ's resurrection and glorification, and in a beatific vision. In addition to adopting this soteriological structure wherein the culmination of the Christian life of sanctification is in deification, Calvin spreads the language of “participation,” union, and adoption through a wide variety of doctrinal loci in his Institutes and Commentaries. Viewed as a soteriological theme rather than simply a matter of extrabiblical terminology, the catholic dimensions of Calvin's doctrine of deification are robust and strongly stated.

Yet, Calvin's doctrine of deification is distinctive.

94

In claiming that Calvin's doctrine of deification is distinctive, I do not mean that it is unique. Although a full length comparison would be necessary to make an assessment, other early Reformers with sympathies for the church fathers (such as Martin Bucer) seem to have a great deal in common with Calvin's “distinctive” doctrine of deification. My point is that Calvin's doctrine is “distinctive” in relation to theologies that are commonly known as “theologies of deification:” namely, late Byzantine theologies in the East, and in some discussions, Aquinas's theology in the West.

It cannot be assimilated into late Byzantine notions of

. Although there may be ways to find hints of distinctions in Calvin paralleling the Palamite usage of “essence” and “energy,”

95

For an attempt to find a parallel to the “essence” and “energy” distinction in Calvin, see Mosser, “The Greatest Possible Blessing,” 54–55.

I have generally avoided making distinctions foreign to Calvin's own tradition. Calvin has his own way of maintaining the creator-creature distinction. On the other hand, Calvin's theology is also quite distinct from theologies of deification found in figures such as Aquinas, even though he holds in common many of the western sources for deification. The genuinely catholic elements of Calvin's doctrine of deification should not blind us to Calvin's distinctive claims: participation in Christ is impossible without imputation; participation in the life-giving substantia of Christ in the sacraments is inseparably linked with ecclesial unity and love; full humanity as humanity united with God means that partitive, synergistic understandings of grace and the Spirit must be rejected. In his various disputes with Pighius, Osiander and Westphal, Calvin made his commitment to these distinctives quite clear. These features are not just “additions” to the “catholic” passages in Calvin which teach that the end of the gospel is “to deify us.” Rather, they are constitutive to Calvin's distinctive doctrine of deification.

Footnotes

I am grateful to Sarah Coakley, Tony Lane, and Benjamin King for their feedback on earlier drafts of this work.