Calvin. History and Reception of a Reformation Week 2. Calvin's Thought Sequence 6. The Sanctifying Spirit Hello! We are coming to you today from the Parc des Bastions, located between the University of Geneva and the Reformation Wall. Today, we will be talking about the Holy Spirit in Calvin's thought. I'd like to introduce you to Bernard Rordorf, who is honorary professor of Systematic Theology
at the University of Geneva. Bernard, what approach will we be taking in discussing the Holy Spirit today? Could you please give us a brief introduction? The first thing to know is that, in the history of Christian theology, Calvin is one of the greatest and most consistent thinkers on the subject of the Holy Spirit. Just in terms of quantity, if we look at the "Institutes of the Christian Religion," which is Calvin's attempt to coherently expound, in a single work, the entirety of Christian doctrine, we see that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit makes up, in my estimation, more than two-thirds of the total content. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, then, occupies a central place in Calvin's theology. The idea of the Holy Spirit appears very early in the "Institutes," as early in fact as book 1, in which Calvin discusses God and creation. For Calvin, Holy Spirit means God conceived as, or in God's aspect of,
active operator -- in short, God at work. In his writings, the term "Holy Spirit" is often interchangeable with "hand," "effectiveness," or "virtue" (i.e., power). So the Holy Spirit, for Calvin, is an expression of "God insofar as God acts." To which we could also add: "God insofar as God wishes to communicate himself," "God insofar as God wishes to be present in his creation and among his creatures." Coming back to book 1 of the "Institutes," where creation and providence are discussed, Calvin explains that God did not create mankind, fauna, flora, etc., just to then leave them unattended. He remains present in his creation, and everything that happens in it happens according to his will. This continuous action of God can be referred to as divine providence. In Calvin's work, one could say that the terms "providence" and "Holy Spirit" are essentially equivalent. The Holy Spirit, or providence if you prefer, expresses the universal action (or operation) of God. Everything that takes place in creation is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Anything good that is produced -- human creation in the ethical sphere, in politics, the arts, but also in all sorts of other trades and professions -- relates to, or results from,
the agency and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So the action of the Holy Spirit goes well beyond the limits, for instance, of the Church -- correct? Calvin's is a very general, universal vision of the Holy Spirit... Yes, absolutely. The Church, in a sense, represents the framework in which the Holy Spirit operates particularly or specifically, that is, directly in the hearts and minds
of the faithful. Section 1 of book 3 of the "Institutes" is entitled "The benefits of Christ made available to us by the secret operation of the Holy Spirit." Calvin often uses this word "profit." We must seek out the profit in what God has said and what God has done; in other words, we must appropriate them for ourselves in order to obtain the fruits they yield. So, we are here dealing with the theme of union -- union of the Holy Spirit with the faithful (or believers) -- through a process of appropriation... Yes. Union with Christ, as regards the faithful, is effected by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Calvin is hardly innovating in this respect. As I understand it, the Holy Spirit as a connection, a union, between the divine and mankind was already
a longstanding theme in Christian theology (with St Augustine, for instance)... Indeed. We can go as far back as the New Testament, in fact, from which Calvin quotes profusely. He quotes, for example, Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:
"It is no longer I who live; but Christ who lives in me." We could say that Christ lives in us by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is what makes it possible for Christ to live in us and enables us to become participants in the work of God. What is the function of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments: baptism and the Eucharist (or the Lord's Supper)? Well, before we can talk about the function of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments, we need to talk about the function of the Holy Spirit in the Word. Book 3 of the "Institutes" discusses union with Christ, i.e., the Christian life. The main theme of book 4 is the external means by which God -- that is, the Holy Spirit --
keeps us in Christ, or in Calvin's words, "retains us in Jesus Christ." Here, the preaching of the Word and the performance of the sacraments are central. When we talk about the preaching of the Word, we must keep in mind that Calvin conceives of the Word, first and foremost, as a promise (he echoes Luther in this respect),
and this is a fundamental notion in his thought. The Word is not to be understood as the communication of a doctrine. Rather, it is better described as "declarative," meaning that it entails a personal commitment on the part of He who pronounces it,
a personal communication with the person spoken to. Thus the Word of forgiveness, the Word of reconciliation, can only be understood as a promise. The Bible is a collection of texts which can be read, studied and analyzed from a variety of perspectives: literary, philological, exegetical -- as for example
in the exegesis courses of our very own School of theology. But when we are in church, during the service, we say "Let us listen to the Word of God." The Bible is not in itself, as a mere text, the Word of God. For Calvin, what enables us to go from the biblical text to the Word of God, the thing that operates the conversion, is what he calls "the inner witness of the Holy Spirit." The expression "inner witness of the Holy Spirit" comes from the apostle Paul. In Romans 8, Paul writes: "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God." So this text, which is now over 2,000 years old and can be studied historically, etc., becomes a Word of God, for me personally and in a way that is immediately pertinent to my life,
by virtue of the "inner witness of the Holy Spirit." So, in a way, the Spirit gives life to the text... Yes, absolutely. In fact, "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" is another well-known expression taken from the apostle Paul. Calvin takes this, too, as a description of the "operation of the Spirit." So we've seen that the operation of the Spirit, in Calvin's theology, has a universal, or general dimension -- it is active, or effective, throughout creation and throughout the world, in the form of
divine providence. And we've seen that the Spirit also operates on an individual, or particular, level in
its personal interaction with the believer. What about the sacraments? What can you tell us
about them? First and foremost, we must understand -- especially in an ecumenical context -- that the sacraments do not say, or do, anything different than the Word. Calvin wrote: "The sacraments have no other office than the Word." The Word says things publicly -- to everyone. In the sacraments, however, a person is wet with water, eats bread, drinks wine: these are ways by which the Word can be appropriated on a physical, or corporeal, level. In other words, what the Word proclaims to everyone, the sacraments communicate to me, directly and personally, such that I may appropriate the Word for myself, such that I may
make the Word my own. Here, Calvin echoes the Augustinian distinction between the symbol and the thing symbolized, between the sign and the substance. For instance, the bread is the sign, the substance is the presence of Christ. In the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, by virtue of the words of the institution, the sign actually becomes, in a material sense, the substance. For Calvin, however, what connects and unites the sign and the substance -- i.e., the bread and the presence of Christ -- is the agency of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit never ceases being active. For the non-believer, that is, the person who is not open to the action of the Holy Spirit, the bread remains just that: bread. The agency and the primacy of the Holy Spirit -- both in the Word and in the sacraments -- are in fact reflected in the very structure of the Protestant worship service. Indeed, before reading from
Scripture and before the celebration of the sacraments, a central place is reserved for the
epiclesis -- the prayer of invocation of the Holy Spirit. The epiclesis is a way of asking for help, of asking for the Holy Spirit to intervene so that the Word we hear with our ears may penetrate our hearts and transform us, so that the sacrament
may indeed communicate to us the living presence of Christ. Thus the Holy Spirit is that which connects, or unites, things that would otherwise be separate and distant from one another: God on the one side and believers, or humans in general, on the other. Thank you very much, Bernard Rordorf, for this overview of Calvin's theology of the Holy Spirit.
