John Calvin’s Ecclesiology: Ecumenical Perspectives 9780567660534, 9780567081025

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Acknowledgements The editors would like to express their sincere gratitude and appreciation to all of our contributors, to all at Continuum and its partner agencies who helped bring this book so efficiently into print, especially Mr P. Muralidharan and Molly Morrison at Newgen, as well as Anna Turton and Tom Kraft as ever, for T&T Clark. A very special debt of gratitude is owed to Justine Gonzales who worked so hard to produce the Index for this volume and also to Paul Avis for his incisive Foreword.

Foreword Paul Avis Perhaps the most important thing to say as we approach the study of John Calvin and his theology of the Church, is that Calvin belongs to the whole Christian Church. As a theologian he is too big to be appropriated in a partisan way. Although Calvin was one of the principal architects of the Reformed tradition of Christianity, he is a Catholic theologian, with huge significance for the Church at large. Calvin ranks among the titanic thinkers of Christian theology – with Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher and Barth, to look no further. As the range of contributions to this collection suggests, Calvin deserves to be taken seriously across the spectrum of Christian traditions. When Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Lutherans, as well as Reformed, ask, ‘What stake do we have in Calvin?’ we will know that we are in business as ecumenical theologians. Most of what Calvin writes in the Institutes is mainstream Christian theology and can be owned by many who do not stand overtly in the Reformed tradition. Some of what Calvin says is badly distorted by polemic, and in this he is a man of his time. From the controversies of the Reformation period we should learn the dangers of polemical theology, of digging ourselves steadily deeper into entrenched positions, from which it becomes ever more difficult to hear what our interlocutor is saying. Theology should not be reactive, but contemplative. The ‘object’ of theology (as Barth and Torrance would remind us) is not a particular Christian tradition, or an individual theologian who argues a different case, but the revelation of the triune God as it is embodied and embedded in created reality. In theology we need to learn to speak about God, and to speak before the face of God (coram deo), even to speak to God, while being acutely sensitive to all those who happen to overhear that Goddirected speech and so form our secondary audience. This is how Calvin saw his work. We do not need to pretend that Calvin always achieved this ideal in order to honour his intention. He urges his readers to bring to their study of his writings ‘a modesty corresponding to the veneration which I feel in handling the oracles of God’.

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Conscience is my witness, that with all reverence and humility, as in the sight of God and angels, I deliver to others what has been given me by the Spirit of Christ, and do not so much follow what pleases myself, as bring my mind into obedience to God.1 It has been well said in this volume that Calvin did not set out to provide a designer ecclesiology for one particular tradition of the Christian Church, least of all for one denomination. He aspired to articulate a catholic, or as we might say, an ecumenical ecclesiology. His aim was not, to put it crudely, to start his own church – in truth no-one can ever do that. Calvin’s aim was to renew the face of the existing church, for there can be no other. ‘All we have attempted’, he wrote in his reply to Cardinal Sadoleto, ‘has been to renew that ancient form of the Church’ which had been so damaged under the papacy.2 Calvin tends to speak about ‘the form of the Church’. He goes as far as to claim that, in extreme circumstances, the Church may exist without any external form; it may be hidden from human gaze, being known only to God.3 Here Calvin echoes Luther’s concept of the hidden identity of the Church. This is the catholic or ecumenical doctrine of the indefectibility of the Church (that the Church will be preserved in faith; that the gates of Hades will not prevail) in its minimalist form. It had been taken to an extreme by William of Ockham when he suggested that the faith of the Church might be preserved in the soul of one baptized infant. However, for Calvin, as for Luther, the visible form of the Church is to be known by the pure preaching of the word of God, and the due administration of the sacraments. As an exponent of ecclesiastical polity, Calvin is relaxed about episcopacy but implacably opposed to the late medieval papacy. Like other Reformers, he was repelled by the corruption of power in the hierarchy and the debasement of preaching and worship. The ideal of reform and renewal in the Church would reward further scrutiny and one should ponder the significance of the fact that it was embraced by the Second Vatican Council. Calvin is still stereotyped as a cold-blooded proponent of double predestination. Both in the Institutes and in the treatise Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God he is unsparing, unrelenting in driving this doctrine home. But his theology should not be defined by his extreme development of the doctrine of predestination – a doctrine that is also to be found in various forms in Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and Luther. What matters is the transcendent sovereignty of God and the graced response of human creatures to God’s saving presence and action in our midst. The Institutes, though hefty volumes, are dwarfed in size by Calvin’s commentaries. He wrote or preached on every book of the Bible except Revelation.

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Calvin intended the Institutes to serve as the master key to his hermeneutics of the biblical text. Biblical scholars still cite Calvin’s interpretation of a text (as they do Erasmus and Luther, when appropriate), though Calvin lived well before the emergence of the critical methods of biblical research that we take for granted today. Nevertheless, he was a Renaissance scholar, as were the Reformers generally, who brought the best contemporary humanist scholarship to bear on the study of the Bible. Calvin is acknowledged as one of the greatest biblical commentators. His commentaries are still worth consulting for their insight into the meaning of Scripture as well as for what they tell us of Calvin’s own mind. (Though for Calvin devotees it is perhaps necessary to add that his commentaries should not become a substitute for the best critical commentaries that are available today!) Calvin’s belief in the catholicity of the Church gave him a passion for unity. If we love God, we love God’s Church; if we love the Church, we strive for its unity. Calvin made it a point of principle not to quibble about non-essentials. His magisterial mind was impatient with petty differences. He was entirely happy to endorse the Lutheran Augsburg Confession.4 His reply to Cardinal Sadoleto was a reasoned apologia for the reform. He told Archbishop Thomas Cranmer that he would willingly cross ten seas to bring about unity among Protestants.5 Like the Reformers generally, Calvin was the heir of the Conciliar Movement of the fifteenth century, which had attempted to reunite a fragmented papacy, to reform abuses and to govern the Church, by calling together the whole Church in a representative and constitutional way. He knows enough to argue ad hominem that the papacy could not hold the Church together when it was itself a cause of division.6 In his lifetime and subsequently Calvin has been vilified for his life and his theology. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Roman Catholic polemic nothing was too fantastic or too repulsive to be flung at him. Lutheran insults were not much better. Like God’s Servant in Isaiah 52–53, ‘he was despised and rejected’. That fact alone might suggest that Calvin was a good man and an instrument of God’s work! Calvin was a self-effacing person who chose to be buried in an unmarked grave, but on the rare occasions that he spoke about himself what he stressed more than anything was his ‘fearful’ nature. On his deathbed he referred to this three times, according to Beza.7 Calvin was by nature reserved and fearful. The fact that he achieved so much against huge odds suggests to me that alongside timidity we should set courage. I think that the word that best describes him is courageous. Truly, in the words of one of his modern biographers, John Calvin was ‘the man God mastered’.8

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Notes 1 John Calvin, Appendix to the Tract on Reforming the Church in Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, trans. H. Beveridge and ed. T. F. Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1958), vol. 3, p. 358. 2 John Calvin, Reply to Cardinal Sadoleto in Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, vol. 1, p. 37. 3 John Calvin, ‘Prefactory Address to Francis, King of the French’, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by H. Beveridge (London: James Clarke, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 14–15: ‘We . . . maintain, both that the Church may exist without any apparent form, and moreover, that the form is not ascertained by that external splendour which they [the papists] foolishly admire, but by a very different mark, namely by the pure preaching of the word of God, and the due administration of the sacraments . . . as God alone knows who are his, so he may sometimes withdraw the external manifestation of his church from the view of men. This, I allow, is a fearful punishment which God sends on the earth . . . ’ 4 F. Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of his Religious Thought, trans. P. Mairet (London: Collins, 1963), p. 135. 5 Original Letters relative to The English Reformation, ed. H. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Parker Society, 1847), vol. 2, p. 713. 6 See the ‘Preface to Francis, King of France’, op. cit., pp. 16–17. On the Conciliar Movement see P. Avis, Beyond the Reformation? Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006, paperback 2008). 7 H. J. Selderhuis and F. P. Van Stam in H. J. Selderhuis (ed.), The Calvin Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 6, 37. 8 Jean Cadier, The Man God Mastered, translated by O. R. Johnston (London: IVP, 1960). A further collection of studies from the Calvin quincentenary can be found in Ecclesiology 6.3 (2010). David Cornick’s paper on Calvin and unity forms an introduction to the issue; it shows us Calvin as an ecumenist avant la lettre. David Fergusson also counters some negative stereotypes of Calvin and gives a broad reassessment of the Reformer in the round. Tony Lane looks at Calvin as a Catholic theologian and at what catholicity meant to Calvin – again a surprising angle to many. Martin Davie examines Calvin’s influence on the English Reformation and Ian Hazlett surveys some recent studies of Calvin, before reviewing more substantially the recent Calvin Handbook. Ecclesiology is the house journal of the Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network.

Notes on Contributors Sandra Arenas was born in Santiago, Chile, 1974. She holds the degrees of Bachelor in Theology (BA) and Master in Systematic Theology (STL) from the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (2000–2007) and Master in Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (2007–2008), where she is presently a Ph.D. researcher at the Faculty of Theology of the K.U. Leuven, undertaking a dissertation on the topic of The Doctrine of ‘elementa Ecclesiae’ before, during and after Vatican II and its ecumenical implications. Her research specialties are the fields of Ecclesiology, Roman Catholic Ecclesiology, Church History and Ecumenism. Paul Avis is the General Secretary of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity and Canon Theologian of Exeter Cathedral. He holds an honorary chair of theology at the University of Exeter and is a Chaplain to HM The Queen. He is the editor of Ecclesiology. His most recent book is Reshaping Ecumenical Theology (T&T Clark, 2010). Rose M. Beal is Assistant Professor of Theology at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona, MN. In her research, she focuses on questions of ecclesiology related to the theological developments of the twentieth century and their implications for today. Roger Haight, S. J. is a Jesuit priest who did his doctorate in theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago (1973). Thereafter he taught at Jesuit graduate schools of theology in Manila, Chicago, Toronto and Boston. He has been a visiting professor in Pune in India, Nairobi in Kenya, Lima in Peru and Paris, France. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has published works in the theology of grace, liberation theology, fundamental theology and christology. In 2008 he finished a three volume of a historical, comparative, and systematic work entitled Christian Community in History (Continuum). He is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and was named Alumnus of the Year of The Divinity School of the University of Chicago for the year 2005. He is currently working on a book entitled Christian Spirituality for Seekers.

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Dennis W. Jowers is Associate Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Faith Evangelical Seminary in Tacoma, WA. He holds an A. B. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago (1999), and a Master in Theology (2001) and Ph.D. (2004) in Systematic Theology from the University of Edinburgh. Besides authoring The Trinitarian Axiom of Karl Rahner: The Economic Trinity is the Immanent Trinity and Vice Versa (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2006) and co-authoring with H. Wayne House Reasons for Our Hope: An Introduction to Christian Apologetics (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, forthcoming), he has published articles in various journals, including the Scottish Journal of Theology, the Thomist, and the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. Stanley S. MacLean is a native of Nova Scotia. He received his education at Saint Mary’s University (BA), Regent College (MCS) and McGill University (Ph.D.). He recently received his Ph.D. in theology from McGill University, Montreal, with a dissertation titled The Eschatological Orientation in the Early Theology of Thomas F. Torrance, 1939–1963. He previously lectured in theology at Concordia University, Montreal, and is a member of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He is presently a lecturer at the Institute of International Education, Kookmin University, Seoul, in the Republic of Korea. Gerard Mannion is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies and Director of the Frances G. Harpst Center for Catholic Thought and Culture at the University of San Diego, CA. Educated at King’s College, Cambridge University, and New College, Oxford University, his career has previously taken in posts in Oxford, Leeds, Liverpool and Leuven, along with visiting research fellowships at Union Theological Seminary/Columbia University and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento (Italy), as well as visiting professorships at the Universities of Tübingen and Chichester. He has published widely in the fields of ecclesiology and ethics, with recent books including Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (2007), The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (2008, co-ed.) and The Ratzinger Reader (2010, co-ed.). He serves as chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and is editor of the Continuum Series, Ecclesiological Investigations. Amy Plantinga Pauw is the Henry P. Mobley Jr. Professor of Doctrinal Theology at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. Her writings include The Supreme Harmony of All: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Eerdmans, 2002) and Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics (Westminster John Knox, 2006). She is the general editor for Westminster John Knox’s new theological commentary series, Belief. Rodney L. Petersen is Executive Director of the Boston Theological Institute (BTI), the consortium of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant theological

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schools in Boston (USA). He also serves as Co-Director of the Religion and Conflict Transformation program at Boston University School of Theology and of the Lord’s Day Alliance, USA. He teaches in the member schools of the BTI and overseas and works with many non-governmental organizations. His publications include Preaching in the Last Days (Oxford, 1993), Earth at Risk (Humanities, 2000), Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation (Templeton, 2002), Theological Literacy for the 21st Century (Eerdmans, 2002), The Antioch Agenda (ISPCK, 2007) and contributions to The Political Culture of Forgiveness and Reconciliation (Bogotá, Colombia: Fundacion para la Reconciliación, 2010). He serves on the Board of the United Presbyterian Church General Assembly Committee on Ecumenism and InterReligious Affairs as well as on a number of church and inter-faith councils. Joshua Ralston is a Ph.D. candidate in Theological Studies at Emory University. He holds an MTh in World Christianity from New College, University of Edinburgh, and an MDiv from Candler School of Theology, Emory University. He has been a visiting lecturer in theology and Christian–Muslim relations at both ECWA Theological Seminary in Aba, Nigeria, and at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt. Alan P. F. Sell is a philosopher–theologian and ecumenist with strong interests in the history of Christian thought, not least in its Reformed and Dissenting expressions. Professor Sell has published 26 books (among them Nonconformist Theology in the Twentieth Century), and edited others, including the four-volume series, Protestant Nonconformist Texts. He has earned the senior doctorates, DD and DLitt, has served two English pastorates, held academic posts in England, Canada, Switzerland (Geneva) and Wales, and was Theological Secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational). He is a minister of The United Reformed Church. His most recent book is Four Philosophical Anglicans (2010). Eduardus A. J. G. Van der Borght (Ph.D. Leiden University 2000) is Desmond Tutu Chair and Associate Professor of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam. His research covers issues related to reconciliation, sociocultural identities and the Church, ministry and secularization. His recent publications include Theology of Ministry: A Reformed Contribution to an Ecumenical Dialogue (2007); Religion without Ulterior Motives (ed., 2006); Affirming and Living with Differences (ed., 2005) and, most recently, The Unity of the Church: A Theological State of the Art and Beyond (ed., 2010). He is also editor in chief of the Journal of Reformed Theology and of the series Studies in Reformed Theology.

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John Halsey Wood, Jr. is adjunct professor of religion at Lindenwood University (St. Charles, MO). His articles have appeared in various journals, including Journal of Reformed Theology, Journal for the History of Modern Theology and International Journal of Systematic Theology. His dissertation (‘Going Dutch in the Modern Age’: Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free Church in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands, Saint Louis University, 2010) expands many of the themes of this essay.

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Chapter 1 Calvin and the Church: Trajectories for Ecumenical Engagement Today – Volume Introduction Gerard Mannion In 1539, two scholars steeped in the learning of Renaissance humanism acted out an intensive theological debate – but not face to face. Rather they did so under the auspices of a pair of letters – the first addressed to the senate and citizens of Geneva, the second a response not from those recipients but rather from someone whom they had banished from their city the previous year, ironically in relation to ecclesiological differences of opinion. These letters covered a range of issues and debates that continue to make for fascinating reading centuries later. Themes central to the events and disputes of the Reformation era find treatment in the letters. The nature and authority of scripture, reflections on the Christian life and on church governance, authority and ministry all feature prominently in this debate, as do some profound contributions concerning justification by faith, the nature of faith itself and Christian action inspired by love (‘works’), as well as differing understandings of salvation. Typically, the treatments of this exchange concentrate on justification by faith and the theology of the word as their points of focus. Both are naturally of key importance to understanding the arguments offered by both writers, but perhaps we might suggest that the real core focus of both letters is the understanding of the church that each theologian subscribes to. This is the primary motif underpinning the treatments of each of these additional themes. It dominates the exchanges in both an explicit and an implicit fashion as they explore the church’s structures, authority and governance, the sense of how individual Christian and local church communities relate to the wider universal church and, especially in this case, to the church which is served by the Bishop of Rome as supreme pontiff vis-à-vis other manifestations of the church which had by then emerged adhering to differing ministerial, pastoral and theological practices and traditions. At times, the debate is highly charged and flourished with sometimes bitter polemic (on one side perhaps masked by a skilful use of understated irony) aimed towards practical outcomes involving the highest stakes pertaining to

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ecclesial communion and the perceived implications of such fellowship. And the specific behind that underlying ecclesiological motif, the theme that dominates above all, that lies as the backdrop against which all that is stated in these writings is set, is the unity of the Christian church. James Sadolet, the Cardinal Bishop of Carpentras in Dauphiné (Dauphiny) and John Calvin were two theological and intellectual heavyweights. But they were also, most importantly, ecclesiological ‘heavyweights’. That is why William Farel used every device available to him, including emotional, spiritual and soteriological ‘emotional blackmail’, if the stories can be believed, to ensure Calvin became so central to the daring ecclesiological experiment that was emerging in Geneva, as across other Swiss cities and cantons, as in other European regions.1 The Cardinal’s great learning, humility and pastoral sensitivity, which were much admired (even by the Protestant reformers), offered analogous reasons why Sadolet was believed to be the most appropriate person to reach out to the estranged ecclesial community of Geneva – seeking not to browbeat, coerce, correct and impose the will of alternative ecclesiological perceptions current in Rome, as would be the style and tone of certain later communications from the Roman Catholic central ecclesiastical authorities to diverse areas and communities that constitute the church in particular locations, cultures and contexts. Rather Sadolet’s approach was to reassure, acknowledge the failings of church leaders and pastors, survey the broader landscape and pluralistic reality and history of the church and to implore the Genevans that true reform could be theirs and the necessary ecclesial transformations they desired would take place, along with their pastoral needs and concerns being met and addressed, if only they could see how important it was to remain part of the broader family that would become known as ‘Roman’ Catholicism. Within the intricacies of the exchange between these two sixteenth-century ecclesiological antagonists are mirrored some of the enduring concerns pertaining to the Christian life and of its theological underpinnings. It is a debate that emerged as theological pluralism in general and ecclesiological pluralism and plurality in particular moved to a crescendo as the universities and religious houses of Europe, aided by not a little political intrigue, intensified the nature and implications of these debates. By reflecting in various ways and from differing perspectives upon the ecclesiological and (it would not be anachronistic to say) the ecumenical debates and exchanges of Calvin’s day, we might obviously learn much that helps us understand better the theological and ecclesial contributions and contexts of this giant reforming figure of ecclesiastical history. However that is not all we might gain from such an engagement for it could also help Christians today across differing traditions and in equally differing ecclesial contexts to understand

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better their own fellow Christians and indeed their own particular tradition’s ecclesiological riches and challenges. Above all, such an engagement might enrich in a somewhat novel fashion the ecumenical approaches that are required in the twenty-first century to encourage and move forward the renewed and expanded ecumenical dialogue for which today’s world cries out. When one delves deep into such a journey of comparative ecclesiological engagement, the results can be surprising, just as the sources and resources to inspire greater understanding, engagement and, so, dialogue can often be found in the most unusual of places. Therefore, in here taking the Sadolet–Calvin debate as just an initial and experimental ‘taster’ of what fruit might follow from a wholehearted ecumenical engagement with the ecclesiology of John Calvin, its era and its subsequent influence, we might discover that our ecumenical thoughts are provoked and our dialogical motivations can be stirred in unexpected ways. While no one should overlook the deep divisions that the debate also reflects, lessons from more recent initiatives in dialogue and conflict resolution, including contributions from ecumenical and comparative ecclesiological methods and practices,2 point increasingly towards a realization that we can and must strive to learn even – perhaps especially – from conflictual situations. The divisions, tensions and the potential for common ground and ways beyond such divides that these letters bring to mind can be fruitful in more than historical and hermeneutical ‘if only’ terms alone. Therefore, while Sadolet and Calvin, according to so many of the textbook accounts, never achieved a detente between their ecclesiological viewpoints during their lifetimes, might what we can today learn from their contributions help fire the ecumenical imaginations of those from across differing traditions in our times and beyond? And if so, what further lessons can we take for ecumenical ecclesiological reflection from such an ‘experiment’? In returning to this exchange and the debates which featured within it in order to mine their ecumenical value for today, we must learn from both the gifts and the ecumenical fault lines (obviously and admittedly perceived from the distance of centuries and with the gift of hindsight) that these two letters contain and reflect. For example, Sadolet often, and in many instances undeservedly, gets short shrift from many textbooks and historical summaries (history would appear to be on the side of the ‘victors’, even in relation to Geneva). Many praise the strongly worded response from Calvin as an unanswerable riposte. But of course, such things are never quite so either/or and it never helps in ecclesiological discussions and disputes (whether, from a later standpoint, these be interecclesial or intra-ecclesial) to allow such thinking or stereotypical tendencies to take hold. In the letters of both scholars, we have what appear to be, at first reading and indeed to many commentators, widely alternative perspectives being offered concerning the nature and mission of the church, and indeed even

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concerning what church unity means, as well as in relation to the nature of the faith and Christian life themselves. Although one would naturally expect unity perhaps to feature in Sadolet’s letter by its very rationale, one cannot underplay just how passionately Calvin also cared about and believed in the unity of the church entire. One could even say that Sadolet was an early ecumenist, admittedly after the fashion of his day, and as his personal ‘sanctity’ was referred to by many, one might judge his intentions as to have been noble ones. Hence, although what retrospectively is often perceived to be a vision of ‘return’ predominates in his letter to Geneva, he was certainly not aloof towards compromise nor lacking in sensitivity to the concerns of the reformers. And in his letter, amidst the rhetoric and parts which are gently polemical, his entreaties to the Genevans betray a learning, pastoral sensitivity and ecclesiological sincerity that transcend the tone of his rhetorical flourishes (which are, in the main, markedly softer in character than Calvin’s language, as most objective assessments would allow). Of course, Sadolet’s tactics were chosen well – he was an experienced ecclesiastical diplomat3 – but he nonetheless demonstrated sincerity here as elsewhere to reach out to ‘separated’ Christians. All of this is because of the fact that Sadolet was a reformer, too – he desired to see change in the church on many far-reaching fronts and he was a member of the committee appointed by Pope Paul III which, in 1537, issued a frank report on reforming the church, itself (Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia4) which criticized, among other things, aspects of the range and extent of the powers which the Pope held, along with many of the wider clerical abuses and practices that the Protestant reformers were so enraged about.5 But what is beyond question is that, alongside the many issues that would have preoccupied Sadolet in his work on that committee and elsewhere, in addition to his alleged sympathies with some of the German reformers in particular (Sadolet did not simply approach the Genevans, but he had already tried, in 1537, to charm Philip Melanchthon to reconsider taking a separatist path from Rome6 and he openly expressed a preference for Augustinian theology over other approaches more favoured in Rome at the time), this debate between Calvin and Sadolet became necessary in large part because of the evident gravity of the ecclesial reality of the upheavals brought into being in that particular part of Europe. This ecclesial situation having been fuelled, of course, by the wide-ranging theological and ecclesiological learning and leadership of John Calvin, among others. And so, although Calvin was banished from Geneva the year prior to Sadolet’s letter, the city, at the encouragement of Peter Kunz, still requested that the man who had been exiled should pen the response. In doing so, Calvin worked furiously (from Strasbourg, it is believed) and finished the reply in 6 days by 1 September (Sadolet’s letter is dated 18 March, although it had taken time to be circulated around Geneva and for the course of action in relation to a response to be determined).

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Might we suggest then that, in essence, despite the tone employed by both men (something quite customary for their day7) this debate could be seen also as an ecumenical debate par excellence, long before the clandestine musings, the grandiose imperatives, the collaborative excitements and eventual disappointments of, respectively, the eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century ecumenical arenas? In the debate, we see what follows when a vision of the faith is offered anew which, therefore, demands that a renewed vision of the church should follow accordingly. Sadolet pursues the path of humble access, acknowledging the need for reform yet trying to suggest in no uncertain terms that the Genevans have been led astray – all the change they seek can be theirs if they stay loyal to the church Catholic, warts and all.8 The end of the human person’s existence is salvation. Faith, which he suggests manifests itself in love, holds the key to the path of salvation. Sadolet tries to convince the Genevans that some reformers have forgotten the part of this equation that is concerned with the manifestation of faith in love and instead commended a ‘mere credulity and confidence in God, by which, to the seclusion of charity and the other duties of a Christian mind, I am persuaded that in the cross and blood of Christ my faults are unknown’.9 Sadolet does not deny the necessity of the belief that ‘we obtain this blessing of complete and perpetual salvation by faith alone in God and in Jesus Christ’,10 but wishes to persuade the Genevans that this it is not enough on its own, for we must also be prepared to do whatever is agreeable to God and allow the Spirit’s power to work in our lives accordingly. Sometimes this disposition will result in outward acts, sometimes it will not.11 It is thus that faith results in love, ‘the head and mistress of all the virtues’, which can be actualized in our deeds, the love that is the dwelling place of the Spirit, for God’s very self is love.12 Sadolet then takes leave of ‘disputation’, and invokes the witness of Christian martyrs across the centuries to commend dedication to the church across time and space, despite its faults and frailties, for its collective and continuous witness offers the hope that individualistic routes in the faith may lack.13 Sadolet goes on to craft a narrative device that somewhat resembles Pascal’s Wager in that he asks the citizens of Geneva to consider the relative soteriological implications of the testimonies of two men before God, one who had held fast to the church despite knowing its faults and failings and living through a tempestuous period where the church had not conducted itself as best it might,14 and the perceived arrogance of the other who chose to break away and discern the truth for himself, believing he might determine the meaning of scripture and doctrine better than the many who have collectively, as scholars, leaders, teachers and in council, gone before him in such an exercise (rather, we might say, like the Pharisee’s demeanour in comparison with the humility of the Publican).15 Even heathen soldiers were unwilling to divide the garment of Christ, Sadolet reminds

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the Genevans as he implores them to resist sectarian tendencies.16 In doing so, he invokes the Johannine prayer of Christ for unity among those who follow him,17 adding the request that, You see, dearest brethren, and in the clear light of the Gospel discern what it really is to be a Christian, since our faith towards God, and all the glory of God, both his with us, and ours with him, consists solely in this unity . . . ‘indeed the sacrifice of Christ “will produce fruit, both to the glory of God . . . and to our salvation . . . if we shall be one among ourselves, and one in him.18 Where else to go if you turn from the church, despite its faults, Sadolet asks.19 The church, as he defines it, which is, that which in all parts, as well as at the present time, in every region of the world, united and consenting in Christ, has been always and everywhere directed by the one Spirit of Christ; in which Church no dissension can exist; for all its parts are connected with each other, and breathe together. And even when strife and dissension arise, ‘the great body of the Church remains the same, but an abscess is formed, by which some corrupted flesh being torn off, is separated from the spirit which animates the body, and no longer belongs in substance to the body Ecclesiastic’.20 Sadolet, throughout his letter, urges humility as a true path towards salvation21 and does not deny that the church has had to be, ‘by every means of experiment and trial, beaten, as it were, with numbers of hammers, purified with much fire, heated, melted, consolidated, and worked into shape by so many toils and labours of saints’.22 He implores the Genevans to return ‘to concord with us, yield faithful homage to the Church, our mother, and worship God with us in one spirit’.23 Here, of course, the image of the church as Mother was one which Calvin, following Luther, embraced and will embrace again in his reply to Sadolet, to which we now turn.24 In various writings and public pronouncements, John Calvin employed his legal, humanistic, rhetorical and biblical learning to launch a damning indictment of what he perceived to the most serious failings of alternative ecclesial viewpoints and authorities at the time. His reply to Sadolet summarizes his position in relation to the majority of the issues of most concern to himself and other leading Protestant reformers. Despite the evident great theological and biblical learning demonstrated therein, few would disagree that this response is also brisk and, it must be said, aggressive in tone. And yet Calvin begins with praise for Sadolet, acknowledging his learning and the esteem he is widely held

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in as ‘a man worthy of love and honour’,25 and he suggests that anyone other than himself would not hesitate to criticize Sadolet’s skills in the ‘Romish arts’,26 but that Calvin will himself resist these and other aspersions some would cast upon Sadolet’s intentions, because such tactics, Calvin believes, would be unsuitable for one so ‘polished’ in the ways of liberal learning as Sadolet. Instead, Calvin claims to acknowledge that he accepts Sadolet wrote to the Genevans out of the ‘purest intentions’ and in their own interest,27 something Calvin equally lays claim to when he refers to his own situation in the following rather euphemistic terms, ‘For though I am for the present relieved of the charge of the Church of Geneva, this circumstance ought not to prevent me from embracing it with paternal affection’.28 But it is not long before the gloves come off and he effectively does indeed charge Sadolet both with flattery and deception of the Genevan citizens. Despite qualifications suggesting the contrary, Calvin takes Sadolet’s descriptions of the reformers in general quite personally and so his defence is equally personal and even vehement – somewhat calling into question his claim that he exceeds Sadolet’s tone in ‘maintaining gentleness and affection’!29 Calvin spares little in his generalizing denunciations of church leaders and ministers allied with Rome in his attempts to counter Sadolet’s equally generalizing insinuations against the intentions of some of the reformers and his accusations that they are ‘cunning men, enemies of Christian unity and peace, changers of things ancient and well established’ and a threat to church and society, alike.30 Calvin, instead, seeks to set the record straight without gloss, When the Genevans, instructed by our preaching, escaped from the gulf of error in which they were immersed and betook themselves to a purer teaching of the Gospel, you call it defection from the truth of God; when they threw off the tyranny of the Roman pontiff in order that they might establish among themselves a better form of Church, you call it desertion from the Church.31 Calvin is anxious to answer both charges, and along the way he suggests that Sadolet is either ‘deluded about the term Church, or else knowingly and willingly’ practicing deception.32 And so, with what some might perceive to be a little rhetorical Trinitarian dexterity, Calvin turns Sadolet’s ecclesiology of communion against his own arguments, When you describe [the church] as that which in all past as in present time, in all regions of the earth, being united and of one mind in Christ, has been always and everywhere directed by the one Spirit of Christ, what becomes of the Word of the Lord, that clearest of marks, which the Lord himself in

8

John Calvin’s Ecclesiology designating the Church so often commends to us? For seeing how dangerous it would be to boast of the Spirit without the Word, he declared that the Church is indeed governed by the Holy Spirit but in order that this government might not be vague and unstable, he bound it to the Word.33

And so, in attempting to counter the vision of the church set out within Sadolet’s letter, Calvin offers a supposedly different fundamental ecclesiology, grounded in the preaching of the Word and so commends to Sadolet a truer definition of the Church . . . as the society of all the saints which, spread over the whole world and existing in all ages, yet bound together by the doctrine and the one Spirit of Christ, cultivates and observes unity of faith and brotherly concord. With this Church we deny that we have any disagreement. Rather as we revere her as our mother,34 so we desire to remain in her bosom.35 Indeed, Calvin continues, the reformers have a far greater ‘agreement with antiquity’ and their motivation has been ‘to renew the ancient form of the Church which, as first distorted and stained by illiterate men of indifferent character, was afterwards criminally mangled and almost destroyed by the Roman pontiff and his faction’.36 He continues by arguing that the only true ecclesiology is that which comes down to us from the apostles and suggests that, after the era of the church Fathers, east and west, there has been marked decline. Calvin suggests the ‘safety’ of the church is founded upon (evangelical and prophetic) doctrine, discipline, the sacraments and, he now adds, ceremonies ‘by which to exercise the people in offices of piety’.37 Calvin believes the legacy of the ancients in relation to each of these has been lost. The reformers have sought an ecclesiology and ecclesiastical polity of retrieval, not innovation, and rather they have sought to strip away the innovations and additions of the centuries in-between, to re-inspire the study of scripture and theology for ministry alike, to encourage meaningful preaching once more, on this point offering some words in the final sentence which can speak beyond their age, and perhaps remind all theologians to be attentive to method and intelligibility when plying their craft (though sentiments which, ironically, are already echoed in Sadolet’s own letter),38 Do you remember what kind of time it was when the Reformers first appeared, and what kind of doctrine candidates for the ministry learned in the schools? You yourself know that it was mere sophistry, and so twisted, involved, tortuous and puzzling, that scholastic theology might well be described as a species of secret magic. The denser the darkness in which

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any one shrouded a subject, and the more he puzzled himself and others with nagging riddles, the greater his fame for acumen and learning.39 Even Rome has learned from and adopted some such reforms, Calvin continues, for example, being ‘shamed’ into improving the training and knowledge of preachers.40 Calvin goes on to defend fundamental Reformation teachings in like fashion. Here, already, the misunderstandings across the period’s ecclesial divides surrounding justification, sanctification and the place and inspiration behind ‘good works’ in a Christian’s life are brought into sharp relief. In particular, Calvin wishes to challenge any such confusion or misrepresentation that the doctrine of justification by faith might somehow give ‘free rein’ to ‘lust’. Rather, if he who has obtained justification possesses Christ, and at the same time Christ is never where his Spirit is not, it is obvious that gratuitous righteousness is necessarily connected with regeneration . . . faith cannot lay hold of Christ for righteousness without the Spirit of sanctification.41 While space dictates that we cannot open up this enormous debate and do it justice in any detail here, it would appear that theological nuance and ecclesiological priorities and characteristics lead to both Calvin and Sadolet employing language that seemingly accentuates differences between them when, in actual fact, their positions might not be so far apart as their respective rhetorical flourishes suggest to some interpreters.42 Just as the debates that shortly afterwards became still further intensified during the long period that encompassed the Council of Trent and were then revisited at differing points of history as John Henry Newman and Hans Küng among others, have helped illustrate, not least of all in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century debates about the Joint Declaration between the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches on justification,43 if the tone and composure of engagement on these issues across different perspectives had been somewhat different, then a degree of plurality of interpretation could have helped lead to the conclusion that differences of theological opinion and in hermeneutical pathways can be accommodated in dialogue across differing traditions within the Christian family. Furthermore, it might promote a realization that such plurality always has been so accommodated throughout the church’s long history and must necessarily be so accommodated. Indeed, it does not stretch matters too far towards a positive ecumenical re-evaluation of these two letters to say that, reading between the lines, such is not a conclusion that either theologian would necessarily disagree with. So, again for example, although Calvin admonishes Sadolet for the manner in which he appears to suggest that love brings about salvation,44 Calvin appears to interpret Sadolet as intending the emphasis to be upon the love

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wrought by humans,45 when Sadolet’s actual argument comes from the starting point that God is love (even if his letter actually works towards this assertion, logically, it is the premise upon which his reasoning is grounded).46 The understanding of justification–sanctification as a continuum is prominent in both letters. If only they could have found a somewhat different forum more conducive to dialogue and to debating the finer points that was less emotionally charged than that distanced fashion in which their ideas did come into contact, what additional benefits to the cause of Christian harmony might have followed? It is not as if this was an either/or, a zero-sum ecclesiological situation. The Genevans had taken issue with both Farel and Calvin, showing the volatility of relations and ecclesiological visions in the emergent reformed Christian church in many places. And Sadolet was criticized even by fellow cardinals in relation to some of his theological viewpoints and, it must always be remembered, what came to be termed the Roman Catholic church only actually laid down clear distinctive guidelines concerning the ‘official’ interpretation of certain doctrines (that had become particularly contentious in the so-called Reformation era47) at the Council of Trent which had yet to take place (Sadolet was involved in its preparations but did not participate in the Council itself and died two years after it began). Instead, Calvin moves on to revisit, in a succinct yet penetrating denunciation, the many perceived faults not simply in doctrinal matters, but equally in terms of pastoral and sacramental practice, order and governance of the Roman Catholic church which provoked so many of the Protestant reformers to action in the first place.48 Calvin then further denounces the arrogance of Sadolet and Catholics allied to Rome ‘to boast that you alone are the Church, and to deny it to all the rest of the world!’49 Calvin’s language here becomes stronger still in vehemence, denouncing the pope and ‘pseudo-bishops’ as ‘savage wolves’ who have scattered and trampled upon the kingdom of Christ.50 He proceeds to make more constructive points concerning church order, authority, governance, the role of the prophetic office in the church and the role of conscience in the Christian life.51 Calvin then puts a series of stern challenges to Sadolet, For to hang together, the body of Christ must be bound together by discipline as with sinews. But how on your part is discipline either observed or desired? Where are those ancient canons with which, like a bridle, bishops and presbyters were kept to their duty? How are your bishops elected? After what test? What examination? What care? What precaution? How are they inducted to their office? With what order? What solemnity? They merely take an official oath that they will perform their the pastoral office, and this apparently for no other end than that they may add perjury to their other crimes.52

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Calvin then proceeds to turn around Sadolet’s analogy of the Christian’s final testimony when called to judgement at the end of their lives, analogously invoking the role of prophets, both in ancient Israel and the early church.53 Calvin draws towards a conclusion with a further underlining of the reformers’ desire for Christian unity, ‘that religion be revived and that the Churches, which discord had scattered and dispersed, might be gathered together into true unity’.54 His final words describing the ‘only true bond of ecclesiastical unity’ viz., a plea that ‘Christ the Lord, who has reconciled us to God the Father, gather us out of our present dispersion into the fellowship of his body, that so, through his one Word and Spirit, we may join together with one heart and one soul’.55 All in all, then, if we can try to look beyond the polemic and rhetoric that both letters contain in different forms, we can see that there is much ecumenical food for thought that emerges from a re-engagement with such an exchange. Viewed side by side, the two letters, in many ways, suggest that Karl Barth was both correct in one sense and yet wide of the mark in another, in his own comparative ecclesiological assessment that, When we study this debate we have to listen once again to the Spirit of medieval Catholicism in the person of an extremely fine and sympathetic advocate – such was Sadolet – and then in antithesis to Calvin’s response, and this will give us yet another chance to see what not just Calvin but the Reformation in general both was and is as opposed to the finest and most sympathetic form in which that Catholicism might encounter it.56 Barth’s account captures the essence of Sadolet’s character and that of his letter, as well as the significance of Calvin’s response very well, but, of course, in articulating the merits of Sadolet, he challenges his own assumption that there was any uniform sense of ‘medieval Catholicism’ (beyond that invented for rhetorical purposes, both at the height of the Reformation period and utilized by most ‘sides’ and by later historians of the same) at all.57 For Barth, himself, acknowledges that Sadolet ‘was as it were on the left wing of the papal camp’ who ‘had formed an independent and distinctive view of Catholic Christianity’. He notes how he ‘contended constantly’ in Rome and ‘had his windows open’ to Protestantism.58 Barth admirably summarizes the thrust of Sadolet’s letter, describing it as a ‘masterpiece of its kind’ which has the character of ‘an Italian adagio’, and is deliberately lacking in offence, The letter firmly plays down what is hierarchical and superstitious in Roman Catholicism. It openly admits the partial corruption of the church. What remains is a refined and intelligent Christianity whose warmth one can hardly escape even if one does not have sharp ears. The words ‘love’

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology and ‘peace’ recur again and again, words which were not really the most used in the vocabulary of the Reformation and for which even today many churchgoers have an instinctive longing.59

Barth suggests that the debate, and especially Calvin’s reply, indicate a fundamental difference concerning what the church is. But I would suggest perhaps the deepest actual differences lie in terms of emphasis, language and questions of authority and governance, rather than what lies at the theological and ontological core of both scholars’ ecclesiologies, between which there is actually much common ground. Both believed that the church was an indispensable means by which Christians are led towards sanctification,60 just as both followed the Augustinian line that the church (as visibly manifest) was nonetheless far from being without blemish and contained sinners as much as saints, even among its leaders. Sadolet’s work on the council that sent the recommendations to Pope Paul III61 demonstrate clearly that he was aware of much that required change and his letter to Geneva reiterates his ecclesiological realism and reformist inclinations throughout. Indeed, Sadolet’s letter to Geneva would earn him further criticism from Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, who had chaired the commission on reform but who had also taken issue with Sadolet’s Commentary on St Paul’s Letter to the Romans62 – in relation to which Sadolet received particular admonishments from Rome as his commentary was considered to be too semi-pelagian in its explication of justification by faith (even Erasmus, a good friend of Sadolet’s, voiced concerns). On this point at least, Calvin and other Protestant reformers would be united with Rome! What, then, can we learn today, from delving back into this Reformation debate, which John Olin, in his introduction to a volume bringing both letters together, termed ‘one of the most interesting Catholic–Protestant exchanges of views of the Reformation era’?63 It is five hundred years since Calvin was born and so, somewhat less than half a millennium since this proto-ecumenical debate, albeit an exchange charged with fervour, passion and far-off intrigue on both sides, took place. In those near five hundred years since, Calvin’s writings on the church, as well as his own personal vision and practice in relation to ecclesial life, have had an enormous and wide-reaching impact upon the global family which calls itself Christian. Many have found his ecclesiological vision inspiring, empowering and enriching. Others have used it as a starting point and springboard for further drives to renewal, reflection and reorientation of the life of Christian communities refracted through a rich spectrum of Calvin and Calvinistic–inspired visions of the faith. Others, following in the footsteps of Sadolet – in one sense or another – have found an encounter with Calvin’s ecclesiology beneficial in a further sense still, in that it raises important questions and challenges that oblige them to revisit and enter into a serious engagement

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with the actuality of their own or their wider Christian community’s understanding of the nature and mission of the church and of the relationship between the latter and the heart of the faith itself and the practical implications of both. In more recent decades, and now in our own century, many more have increasingly taken Calvin’s ecclesiological and, indeed, wider theological writings as an important conversation partner from the annals of church history, the influence of which reaches so far and wide and which simply cannot be ignored or downplayed in any genuine fashion, regardless of one’s own starting point or ecclesial dwelling place. And so, therefore, they see how fruitful an engagement with Calvin’s ecclesial perspective, vision and the practices shaped by the same might be for the life of the entire church both local and universal in all its diversity. There are many reasons why this is so, but among the more significant of these are but a few we dwell upon here because they are reflected and elaborated upon in this volume as a whole. First, Calvin was a truly ‘systematic’ theologian and in a pioneering sense, part by training, part by inclination and part by necessity in having to ensure that his standpoint both informed the debates and events of the day and was not taken out of context so as to misinform and enable his opponents to undermine the work he believed was so important for the church in the regions where his influence was rapidly holding sway. The result was that he raised many important ecclesiological questions that subsequently received ongoing and insightful attention. Calvin, then, changed the ecclesiological agenda on many fronts through the influence of his work. Recall that Barth’s own magnum opus was purposefully entitled Church Dogmatics.64 Second, there are ethical and practical implications to Calvin’s ecclesiology which, in turn, impact a series of further issues. Calvin’s vision of church shapes and informs particular patterns and practices in and of church life.65 That vision likewise dictates and suggests ways of human existence and morality in a broader sense. But, perhaps more importantly for more explicitly ecclesiological academic discussions, it also implies particular ways and means of Christian ministry, Christian collaboration and Christian cooperation. Finally, drawing each of these factors together but also in its own right, Calvin’s ecclesiology impacts directly upon the moral Christian imperative of ecumenical endeavour itself. Calvin, himself, knew and affirmed that Christian unity was the will of God, however problematic the quest for unity might be. And all this relates to a third reason, viz., the ecumenical and ecclesiological implications of the very doctrinal heart of Calvin’s theological vision in general: the sovereignty of God over existence, come what may, and the full seriousness of what God’s incarnation in the person of Christ means in perpetuity for Christian communities. In other words, the implication not simply of the belief that God was in Christ, and what that means for us today, but also what it means for us today to say that the church is truly the body of Christ.

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All in all, no church today can ignore these questions and every church can profit through engaging with these debates and, indeed, with Calvin’s ecclesiological corpus and with many of those who have been inspired by Calvin’s ecclesiological reflections and practice in widely differing forms, in order to help their own attempts to answer such questions and in order to help their own efforts to be true to the Christ-spoken imperative that all followers of his way may be one, that is, to be true to the ecumenical cause. Providing one example of such an engagement, Roger Haight, the esteemed Jesuit and pioneering scholar of comparative ecclesiology, has suggested in ecumenically evocative terms that, in Calvin’s ecclesiology, we see an exemplary case of the (theological) principle of incarnation (or sacramental principle), as that which defines and supports the role of the church in human history. So, too, do we see an exemplary emphasis upon the theological principle of the relation between the Word and the Spirit of God in the life of the church – a Christocentric theology of the Word is reinforced by a ‘developed theology of the Spirit’. The reply to Sadolet illustrates this clearly. Thus, from Calvin’s ecclesiology, we also gain ‘profound theological warrant in the Trinitarian summary of God’s dealing with humankind in history’.66 Furthermore, on church–world relations, Calvin’s ecclesiology weds theological and organizational factors into ‘a powerful statement of the church’s involvement in society’ that offers abiding value for markedly different eras and contexts, as well.67 Calvin also well illustrates (unintentionally) that a plurality of models of church polity stand in diverse modes of relation to that of the early church, despite the rhetoric offered in various parts of his corpus (including the Reply to Sadolet) that suggests a more direct and normative relationship. But, as Haight also illustrates, and something which is especially relevant to our revisiting of the Sadolet–Calvin debate, appropriation of New Testament forms for ecclesiology can only take place in the light of the present-day historical and environmental context and, furthermore, a wide variety of different models of church organization at different times can claim validity by appeal to the New Testament itself. Here Haight helps further remind us of the tension between objective and existential, along with ideal and actual ecclesial elements in his consideration of Calvin, who ‘dramatises’ such tensions considerably in his published writings and correspondence, alike. In the discourse between Sadolet and Calvin we see these tensions illustrated in a vivid fashion indeed. And these tensions must be encountered if ecumenical dialogue is to move forward today. Haight believes that all churches exhibit such tensions in a variety of ways.68 What we are really seeing in both of the letters considered here, and indeed across the (Reformation) period in general, is an attempt to re-imagine the church and, equally, to re-imagine the teachings and practices within it, for a new age with new challenges and demands but also new gifts and opportunities. Tensions

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are released in an era of flux and change – an age with which parallels can be drawn with our own ‘postmodern era’. In a powerfully evocative essay by the Irish jurist and Dominican theologian, Joseph Kavanagh, who spent many years in Rome and even more in the Caribbean, before returning to the Priory at Tallaght, Dublin, a similar analogy is applied to canon law. Kavanagh takes as his starting point the line from Seamus Heaney’s poem, The Settle Bed, that ‘there is nothing given that cannot be reimagined’.69 I believe this analogy has empowering connotations in relation to the very heart of tradition, along with the development and emergence of doctrine.70 For the nature and development of doctrine both, in themselves, represent a ‘re-imagining’ of what Christians hold most true and enduring and important from age to age and context to context. And ecumenical discourse is essentially a collective endeavour to re-imagine church in ways that facilitate co-existence, respect and mutual flourishing. Although Sadolet and Calvin are nonetheless frequently portrayed as steadfast opponents, in many ways they share a great deal in terms of ecumenical intent, reformist inclination and re-imaginary persuasion: and all in the service of church unity. Reform, itself, is a ‘re-imagining’ of Christian belief, life and order. Of course, the fruit of much Renaissance humanist literature was precisely a re-imagining (literally a ‘re-birthing’) of the world, societies and communities within it, especially the church. Alas, it would today appear that zero-sum conceptions of Christian unity are rapidly making a comeback. This was illustrated by the remarks in November 2010 from the new head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, Kurt Koch – himself a bishop (and now a cardinal) from the land where the citizens over whom Sadolet and Calvin ‘debated’ hailed.71 We see something similar in current debates across the Anglican communion. Ecclesiological pluralism has been interpreted as somehow being a negative thing, as opposed to simply being a description of the reality that has always permeated the church and which is something that can and should be welcomed, insofar as such plurality is edifying for the church and life of Christians in differing contexts as well as collectively, in terms of contributing to the unity in diversity that, by definition, constitutes the communion shared by all Christians. And zero-sum options have been with the church throughout its entire story, also, as even the Council of Jerusalem illustrates. When one party within the church believes that authentic membership of the church can only be decided on their own terms, regardless of other traditions, contexts and needs among other Christians, when one group of Christians seek to say the church is and can only be what ‘we’ say it is and how ‘we’ say it is, then they are not really addressing the issue of unity but rather that of uniformity. Again and again, such perceptions lose sight of the fundamental truth that is communicated through the

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doctrine of the Trinity – a God of love who is a community of blissful perichoresis, unity in diversity. Both Calvin and Sadolet employed language which suggested they might also succumb to the temptation of zero-sum ecumenism, respectively Sadolet with his language of ‘return’, and Calvin in those passages marked by over-generalizing and a vehement tone lambasting the faults of the few and visiting his judgement upon the many, as if rigid uniformity existed even then across Catholic Christianity in communion with Rome. But, in actual fact, both men allowed for far greater ecclesiological diversity that might appear to have been the case and both knew the church had many faults in many areas where Christians seek to live out the Christian life but that such faults should not be the grounds for closing off communion from other Christians, although, at times, both spoke and (particularly, it must be said, in Calvin’s case) even acted, as if they believed the opposite. So perhaps our all too brief reassessment of the debate between Calvin and Cardinal Sadolet offers but one (test) case study of this potential fruitfulness. Further pertinent reflections here might follow if we entered into a more detailed consideration still in relation to how their ‘debate’ might have progressed had such a more dialogical perspective been more emphasized at the time, as opposed to polemic and rhetoric holding sway on both sides. A comparative interaction with historical ecclesiological events such as the Sadolet–Calvin debate can indeed inform ecumenical debates today and might bear much ecumenical fruit. For example, such could lead interlocutors to focus in particular upon the ethical implications of certain forms of ecclesiology. Key issues such as the understanding of and relations between the local and universal church, the moral implications of particular forms of church governance, forms of ministry, the value and significance of synodal and conciliar processes, and of additional forms and methods of engagement; indeed, the imperative of ecclesial dialogue in general could be illuminated by such an engagement. Calvin’s explication of particular marks of the church and his notion of the visible and invisible church are also of relevance here, and one might suggest they could prove of greater ecumenical relevance still if viewed through the lens of the idea of a hierarchy of truths, a doctrine somewhat present in nascent form in Sadolet’s letter. And, perhaps of particular contemporary value, Calvin’s understanding of the church as a place of schooling offers a valuable metaphor for ecclesiological discourse today provided we realize that all within the church, including pastors and leaders must embrace the notion of ‘lifelong learning’. Here, again, we see that Sadolet himself offered similar pedagogical ecclesiological musings in his study of education itself.72 One further yet crucial ecumenical lesson is offered to us from one of Calvin’s own failings, that is to say, the negative experience in relation to the case of

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Michael Servetus. This, of course, should remind all Christians that love, charity, must prevail in all things when engaged in encounters with those who hold and interpret things differently to ourselves, no matter how strongly and steadfastly we hold our own beliefs and opinions. What is contrary to the Word of God can never be an appropriate or true means of defending the Word of God, itself. Peace and love, the ecclesial importance of which Sadolet – and one of his interpreters, Karl Barth – both recognized, and which Pope John XXIII made watchwords for his own ministry as the Supreme ‘Bridge-Builder’ (Pontifex Maximus) of the Roman Catholic church, need to permeate our ecumenical discourse, both in language and intent. This present volume is, then, in its entirety, a form of what is termed comparative ecclesiology – and an especially ecumenical type of comparative ecclesiology at that, here focused upon the thought, contributions, influence and legacy of one major historical figure whose life and thought were especially focused upon the church in a multitude of ways. We learn many further lessons from comparative and ecumenical engagements with the ecclesiology of John Calvin in each and every chapter that follows. The book you hold in your hands brings together a rich variety of voices from many differing countries, churches and traditions within churches. The essays reflect different and divergent theological methods and schools, and even differing perspectives and viewpoints within the same schools, methods and ecclesial quarters. Roger Haight, himself, is the foremost pioneer of the formal emergence in recent times of the methodological approach known as comparative ecclesiology. So we are greatly honoured that Roger Haight is among the voices here present and especially so that such an exemplary Jesuit has here offered a highly illuminating and constructive comparative analysis of the ecclesial spiritualities of Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola, which both lead towards a firm commitment to social engagement. Haight’s own life and ministry, in the USA, Canada, the Philippines and India, illustrate a lived comparative method of both ecclesial spirituality and social engagement, alike.73 As I have sought to illustrate elsewhere,74 comparative ecclesiology draws upon the methodological insights of comparative theology; for example, it acknowledges and embraces the actuality of what Keith Ward has termed a ‘Pluralistic Christianity’75 and it strives to heed Roger Haight’s own call for a ‘dialogical’ mission to complement the church’s mission of witness.76 This method seeks to help forge a ‘new ecumenism’, here learning from and building upon the contributions of those such as David Tracy, who had previously illuminated the path which comparative theology, itself, might take, in efforts to ‘find new ways to learn from the other traditions’.77 Tracy’s work and that of these and other contributors to the dialogical cause help us to appreciate that such an approach is the pathway between conservative retreats into foundationalism and utter

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relativism. The median between must, by its very nature, be both pluralistic and yet affirming of the value of living traditions. Haight’s monumental and pioneering three-volume study in comparative ecclesiology is rapidly becoming a classic in this field.78 In brief, he defines this methodology thus: ‘Comparative ecclesiology consists in analysing and portraying in an organized or systematic way two or more different ecclesiologies so that they can be compared’.79 It is characterized by, first, utilizing social and historical science in its study of ecclesiologies; second, attention to representative and/or authoritative sources of particular ecclesiologies; third, organizing the different ecclesiologies under comparison according to a common pattern or template. It acknowledges that ‘it is no longer possible to think that a single church could carry the full flow of Christian life in a single organizational form’.80 To a limited extent, Sadolet and Calvin set about offering their own respective comparative analyses of the church, albeit in a less developed methodological fashion. Calvin’s letter seems to affirm Haight’s final point explicitly, although Sadolet’s more implicitly. Indeed, Haight clarifies his definition of comparative ecclesiology further, stating that ‘Comparative ecclesiology studies the church in a way that takes into account the various levels of pluralism which mark its existence today . . . . The thematic that constitutes an ecclesiology as comparative is precisely the various ways ecclesiology explicitly interacts with pluralism’.81 Haight has also identified five ‘premises’ of a comparative ecclesiology, namely, to immerse our explorations in historical consciousness, thereby inculcating the disposition of humility – both in methodological terms and, when one realizes how far short we fall of some of our ecclesial forebears, in terms of ecclesial life and practice, as well. Sadolet perhaps excels here; Calvin’s letter here is somewhat lacking the humility for his own perspective but is willing to identify such shortcomings in the ecclesiologies of the Roman persuasion! Second, the positive appreciation of ecclesial pluralism. Again, here Calvin scores highly, Sadolet also, if intention and implicit statements are allowed to count. Third, a whole–part conception of church, neither placing universal over and above local nor vice-versa. Here Sadolet’s letter sounds as if he would not be so affirming and yet, in reality, much of his life’s work and the tone and intention of his letter to Geneva perhaps suggest otherwise. Calvin can be found to accord with such a principle highly and in a deeply nuanced sense. Four, embracing the gifts and human challenges of religious pluralism. Here both scholars offer less encouraging conclusions, although Sadolet perhaps fares somewhat better. Calvin indeed chastises Sadolet for an ecclesiology that gives so much weight to tradition that it offers salvation in logical terms to Muslims and Jews. Servetus, of course, suffered far more gravely for an early and brave religious pluralism. Haight’s fifth and final principle we

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can affirm that both Sadolet and Calvin would have little difficulty embracing: ‘Retaining a confessional or particular ecclesial identity’.82 Haight underlines that such an approach need never lead to any sense that genuine differences must be ignored or dissolved, nor that ecclesial distinctiveness found differing churches must somehow be eradicated, comparative ecclesiology consists not in overcoming denominational Christianity or Christianity itself, but in transcending the limits of individual churches by expanding the sources brought to bear on the task of understanding the Christian faith, in this case, the church. What is learned from these sources is brought back as further light on the particularities of any given church. The concern for the truth contained in one’s own community guarantees that the discipline remains Christian theology.83 In a sense, both Sadolet and Calvin were utilizing the ecclesiology of the ‘Reformation other’ to refine and enhance their own; even if their use of other ecclesiologies was primarily in a negative critical sense, it nonetheless brought forth positive fruits. So, in our volume here, you will find a rich variety of differing forms of the comparative ecclesiological approach. The publications series of which this volume is a part is one medium of the conversations and exchanges that the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network seeks to facilitate on a regular basis. As such, it follows the dialogical method that permeates all the activities of the network. Alongside Haight’s essay, we have, in Amy Plantinga Pauw’s contribution from the Presbyterian tradition, a comparative analysis of the realistic practical ecclesiologies of Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, both in terms of convergence and divergence and with particular attention to how both had to adjust their perspectives in the light of experience, and especially so concerning clerical celibacy. In both theologians we find a constructive realism as opposed to idealized conceptions of a sinless church, Pauw helping to demonstrate how ‘The sorrows and frustrations of Edwards’s pastoral experience drew his practical ecclesiology closer to a Calvinist view of the peccable church existing in the “long and meaningful middle” of divine providence’. Dennis W. Jowers, whose own work has engaged a wide range of engagements across the ecumenical divides, seeks to discern whether, and if so in what sense, Calvin affirms the maxim, Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Jowers delves deep into the Calvin corpus to help construct an argument that, while Calvin maintains an ideal in terms of the church’s necessity for salvation, nonetheless his articulation of such a belief is highly nuanced and that furthermore, and crucially, he disowns ‘the most harshly exclusivist conceptions of the impossibility of salvation outside the church’.

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Coming from the Roman Catholic tradition, Rose Beal, who has also worked extensively on the writings of the great twentieth-century ecumenist, Yves Congar, explores Calvin’s influential interpretation of the threefold office of ministry in the church (priest, prophet and king). Beal places Calvin’s threefold formula within the context of the Christian tradition dating from the early church and examines its implications for Christian anthropology and ecclesiology in the development of Protestant and Catholic theology since Calvin. Her purpose in doing so is to explore potential bridges between Protestant and Catholic ecclesiologies emerging from the shared notion of the threefold munera Christi. Our next contribution comes from a Chilean Latin American perspective in the contribution of Sandra Arenas. She offers an intricate study of a much neglected ecclesiological theme, viz., the vestigia Ecclesiae. While all too often Christians historically and in the present time, especially, conceptualize the church in terms of their own specific confessional background, and so have determined membership of the ‘true’ church in like fashion, Arenas charts how the Calvinist doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae has been progressively re-understood in terms of a doctrine of elementa Ecclesiae in ecumenical dialogue texts as well as in Roman Catholic theology and magisterial teaching. So her intention is to explore ‘the ways in which this sixteenth-century ecclesiological category still has something to say in the context of ecumenical discussions regarding the ecclesial status of diverse Christian communities’. Continuing with a similar theme, Joshua Ralston of Emory University, Atlanta, USA, whose comparative credentials also take in spells working in interfaith contexts in both Nigeria and Egypt, wishes to explore in the light of Calvin’s belief that it was actually preaching which gave rise to and sustained the church itself, whether preaching should therefore be considered as a ‘missing mark’ of what constitutes the essential character of the church. Ralston also seeks to build constructively on words which were originally penned by Calvin as polemical critique, namely in the Preface to the Institutes, where he defines the marks of the church as ‘the pure preaching of God’s Word and the lawful administration of the sacraments’. Ralston wishes to explore if this ‘identification of the relationship between worship and ecclesial identity can be retrieved to develop an ecumenical ecclesiology from a Reformation perspective’. Drawing upon Eberhard Jüngel’s theology of justification by the Word and Calvin’s pneumatology, Ralston, therefore, wishes to assert that preaching actually creates the church. Nonetheless, as an ecumenical caveat, he equally emphasizes that a homiletic-ecclesiology ‘need not result in the exclusion of the sacraments à la Karl Barth, but can complement and enhance Eucharistic-ecclesiology’. The British philosopher–theologian and United Reformed minister Alan P. Sell suggests that, in contrast to familiar doctrinal themes such as baptism, Eucharist and ministry, one seldom finds a detailed treatment in ecumenical

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dialogues of other important ecclesiologically related doctrines, such as those doctrines of election, regeneration, adoption, union with Christ and covenant. And yet all are of vital importance if progress towards genuine catholicity is to be achieved, alongside the doctrine of the providence of God. Sell’s further bold contention is that it was the English and Welsh Separatists and their successors in the Congregational branch of the Reformed family, thanks in no small part to their own political contexts, who actually performed a great service to the church Catholic in their articulation of the relationship between these doctrines and ecclesiology in a manner that offered greater clarity than the way in which such doctrines vis-à-vis their ecclesiological (and ecumenical) implications had actually been outlined by Calvin himself. These English Christians on the margin, through ‘their speeches, writings and actions had the effect of rectifying Calvin’s ecclesiology at certain points’. Although a ‘Separatist–Congregational catholicity’ might at first sight appear a contradiction in terms, Sell’s contention is that it is rather a straightforward description that has passed down through this important branch of the Christian tradition and been articulated in impressive fashion. Another original reformed comparative perspective comes from John Halsey Wood Jr, of Lindenwood University, St Charles, Missouri, USA, who returns to the pluralistic, nationalistic and evangelical revivalist aftermath of the French Revolution in Europe and particularly its anti-religious drive. In particular, Wood explores how the Netherlands Reformed Church fared in this era, by focusing upon the life and work of the Dutch Calvinist pastor, theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper. His proposals for a modern reformation of the Dutch church included a revised ecclesiology for a church that would be separate from the state and, therefore one which equally entailed a new vision of the church’s place in society in general. Wood believes such an ecclesiology ‘was both a recovery of Calvin’s ecclesiology and a careful negotiation of Enlightenment ideals like the separation of church and state, democratic practices, voluntarism, and religious tolerance’. Rodney Petersen, from Boston University, is another who puts Calvin to work in a very explicit ecumenical fashion, and also explores, like Beal, both how Calvin might help bring two different traditions towards greater understanding and also looks at the threefold munera Christi (i.e. threefold offices of Christ). This time with regard to the relations between the Reformed and Orthodox churches. He suggests ways in which Calvin’s Eucharistic theology can be seen to hold similarities with Eastern Orthodox Eucharistic theologies despite quite obvious ecclesiological divergences. Petersen suggests that Calvin’s ‘view of the presence of the Spirit in the Supper gives substance to the idea that Eucharistic remembrance is not merely a repetition or mnemonic reality but a manifestation of the whole Christ. All is accomplished as we have access to the Father,

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find communion in the Spirit, and anticipate fullness of life in the kingdom’. Such is the common ground. But in Calvin’s ecclesiology, difference emerges through his understanding of ‘the Church’s role in extending the body of Christ in the world is limited by his Christology, seen in his use of the Orthodox conception of the triplex munus Christi albeit with the latter interpreted in a more Christological than ecclesiological fashion, as it is in the East. Petersen suggests such tensions between Calvin’s Eucharistic theology and ecclesiology have constructive ‘implications for the ethical agenda of the churches in relation to the World Council of Church’s Decade to Overcome Violence’, not least of all in that they help churches to explore once again the relationship between ecclesiology and ethics and ‘can suggest insight into appropriate ways of organizational networking in view of the common good’ because such an engagement can inform ethical practice through a greater shared understanding in relation to ‘Christ’s presence in the life of the believer and in the Church as the corporate body of Christ in the world’ and, so, offer clarity for ethical guidance’. Like Pauw and Wood, Stanley Maclean, a Nova Scotia native now working in South Korea, also wishes to explore how a later theologian has appropriated and constructively built upon the influence of Calvin’s ecclesiology. In this instance, his subject matter is the influential Scottish twentieth-century theologian and veteran of the ecumenical movement, Thomas Torrance, who is more frequently discussed, of course, in terms of his relationship to the theology of Karl Barth. Maclean however goes back much further in suggesting that a major source for Torrance’s own doctrine of the church is actually Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion of the 1559 edition, alongside his biblical Commentaries. Maclean offers an especially pertinent analysis of the ecumenical value of Calvin’s eecclesiology in charting how Torrance utilized and adapted Calvin’s ecclesiology to the ecumenical context of the 1950s, during which Torrance served on the Faith and Order Commission of the then nascent World Council of Churches. Maclean particularly illustrates how Torrance develops Calvin’s ecclesiology in an even more Christocentric and eschatological direction still, with the offering a vital key towards progress in the path towards unity, ‘The Church can make progress toward unity on earth, but its unity is actually hidden with Christ and will not be revealed until his final advent. Yet the Eucharist promotes unity, since it involves the Eucharistic parousia of Christ’. The Belgium Reformed scholar, who works in the Netherlands, Eduardus Van der Borght eloquently and succinctly rounds off our volume with an incisive essay that sets each of our chapters into the wider context of Calvin studies in general, both historically, in terms of major paradigms shifts in perspectives on Calvin’s work, and contemporaneously, in relation to the plethora of studies that emerged around the time of the Calvin quincentenary. Van der Borght

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believes the contributions here compare very favourably in terms of originality and the new insights concerning a range of important themes which they collectively help to bring to the table of Calvin studies, particular in relation to ecumenical perspectives. Therefore, Van der Borght’s concluding chapter celebrates the gathering initiated by the Ecclesiological Investigations Group, appropriately in the Francophone city of Montréal, at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting in November 2009, which led to the emergence of a majority of the chapters in this present volume, as illustrating in an exemplary fashion the diversity and ecumenical nature of the current research on Calvin’s ecclesiology. Van der Borght uses these contributions to ‘illustrate some major shifts that have occurred in the study of Calvin’s ecclesiology in recent years’, viz., the rediscovery of Calvin as a reformer of the church; the evolution of the Reformed reception of Calvin’s ecclesiology of the church; the discovery of Calvin as an ecumenical theologian; the perception of Calvin as a major theologian of the Western church; the dynamic pastoral character of his ecclesiology; the social impact of Calvin’s ecclesiology and, finally, the important ways in which the Institutes of the Christian Religion are related to other parts of Calvin’s oeuvre. So we warmly commend to you the fruits of the comparative, ecumenical and ecclesiological labours of each and every one of our contributors and their collective achievement (here a whole – part analogy might be borrowed from the method of constructive comparative ecclesiology itself). I hope we have offered some evidence for the contention that their two ecclesial forebears, Calvin and Sadolet, were equally engaged in an ecumenical debate – albeit couched largely in negative terms, with their intentions inclined towards supposedly opposing conclusions. Nonetheless, to return to our earlier observations, both firmly believed in the unity of the church. And theirs was also a debate that in several ways represented a form of engagement in comparative ecclesiology – again, both implicitly and explicitly – whereby differing resources, sources and methods are brought to bear upon an understanding of what it means to be church and to be part of the church. In returning to this debate we are, after all, left with a series of ‘what if’ questions. But not ones which simply remain ‘if only’, and peter out into disaffected resignation and eventual ecumenical silence, but rather questions that should inspire reflections upon method and the promotion of encounters of greater ecclesiological and ecumenical depth across churches today. So, indulging this ‘what if’ scenario to a certain extent: what if the rhetoric adopted by our two scholars had been somewhat different? What if the means and pathways of dialogue had been prepared and traversed? What if the words ‘love’ and ‘peace’ had been more utilized by all sides during the upheavals of the religious controversies of the sixteenth century instead of the more blunt at times, and

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penetratingly rhetorical at others, character of the missives that were exchanged back and forth, forcing so many in the different parts of the Christian family into polemical and stubborn positions? These concerns need never remain ‘what if’ speculations alone if comparative ecumenical engagements such as those which follow can be listened to and allowed to influence the building of bridges and increase in understanding throughout the Christian family of ours and future times. Both Sadolet and Calvin might well share in an utterance of Amen to such an end.

Notes 1 Farel having famously told Calvin that God himself would be displeased were he not to remain there and join in the campaign for reform. 2 This chapter (indeed, this volume), utilizes the comparative ecclesiological method, which will be explicated in a little more detail in what follows. True to that method, one must own one’s own background context and influence. So I am conscious of the fact that I write as a Roman Catholic, but I hope that those who are aware of my own ecclesiological writings elsewhere will acknowledge that an effort is made to be critically, ecumenically and pluralistically attentive here. 3 Sadolet had also served as a secretary to Pope Leo X, the Pope during the initial period of the Protestant Reformation (Sadolet being present during those controversies) and who issued the bull condemning Martin Luther, and also to Pope Clement VII (but not during the short-lived papacy of Adrian VI in-between). For background information on Sadolet cf., for example, Richard M. Douglas, Jacopo Sadoleto 1477–1547 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), and John C. Olin, ‘Introduction’, in John C. Olin (ed.), A Reformation Debate: John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 1–22. 4 See John C. Olin, Catholic Reform from Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495–1563: An Essay with Illustrative Documents and a Brief Study of St. Ignatius Loyola (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), 65–79. This volume supplements and builds upon an earlier (1969) background study by the same author, republished in 1992, The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola, Reform in the Church 1495–1540 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992). 5 And, to continue in our comparative and ecumenical approach, as the Protestant church historian, Owen Chadwick, remarks, the authors of this report, identified a series of areas where reform was urgently required and were ‘unpalatably frank in their denunciations of . . . [multiple ecclesiastical] abuses’. When the letter was leaked, German Protestants had it printed and distributed widely, as was ‘A picture . . . of three cardinals sweeping a church with foxes tails instead of brooms’, The Reformation, London, Pelican History of the Church, vol. III, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1964 edn, 267. In Olin’s words, the report ‘may be viewed as an instrument of reconciliation through reform, consonant with the basic attitude of Sadoleto and inaugurating on his part a series of initiatives aimed at ending the religious schism’, ‘Introduction’, 4. 6 Sadolet made similarly unsuccessful approaches towards Rupert Mosheim and Johannes Sturm.

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7 John C. Olin’s assessment is as follows, ‘Both letters are lucid and eloquent statements of their respective positions. The dialogue they embody is polemical but withal their tone is elevated, and their arguments are substantial’, ‘Introduction’, A Reformation Debate, 1. I am not entirely sure the tone remains elevated throughout in either letter, but the rest of Olin’s assessment I can concur with! 8 James Sadolet, ‘Letter by James Sadolet, a Roman Cardinal, to the Senate and People of Geneva (18 March 1539)’, in John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises of John Calvin on the Reformation of the Church, vol. 1, trans. H. Beveridge, ed. Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1958), 1–22. This text and Calvin’s reply both also appear in John C. Olin (ed.), A Reformation Debate: John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000). 9 James Sadolet, ‘Letter by James Sadolet’, 9. 10 Ibid., 9. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 10. 13 Cf. Ibid., 10–15. Sadolet acknowledges how opinions, especially in the present time, are most variable, 13. 14 Ibid., 16–17. 15 Ibid., 17–18. The parable is found in Luke 18: 9–14. 16 Ibid., 19. 17 John 17: 21–3. 18 Ibid., 20. 19 Ibid., 19. 20 Ibid., 14. 21 Cf., in particular., Ibid., 5–6, 11, 15. 22 Ibid., 10. 23 Ibid., 21. 24 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols, John T. McNeill (ed.) and Ford Lewis Battles (trans.) (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 4, I, 4 (in this edition, vol. 2, 1016). 25 John Calvin, ‘Reply to Sadolet’, in Calvin: Theological Treatises, Library of Christian Classics, XXII, London, SCM, 1954, 219–56 at 221. 26 Ibid., 223. 27 Ibid., 224. 28 Ibid., 222. 29 Ibid., 223. As Olin states, just as Sadolet’s letter epitomizes the emphasis on unity and peace that was characteristic of the Christian humanism he was so well versed in, ‘Calvin’s response is in part a personal defence, an apologia pro vita sua that records his own religious experience’, Olin, ‘Introduction’, A Reformation Debate, 1. Cf. François Wendel, Calvin: the Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, Philip Mairet (trans.) (London: Collins, 1963), 38–9 (also cited by Olin). 30 John Calvin, ‘Reply to Sadolet’, 227. (Cf. Sadolet ‘Letter’, 4–5). 31 Ibid., 228. 32 Ibid., 229. 33 Ibid., 229. (Cf. Sadolet, ‘Letter’, 14). 34 [Playing on Sadolet’s invocation of a maternal ecclesiological metaphor which might well have been a play on Luther’s own use of this imagery]. 35 Calvin, ‘Reply to Sadolet’, 231.

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36 Ibid., 231. 37 Ibid., 38 Cf. Sadolet, ‘Letter’, 6, where he states that truth ‘both shines in darkness, and is perspicuous to every man, and is most easily perceived alike by learned and unlearned, and especially in matters of Christian doctrines, rests not on syllogisms, or quibbles on words, but on humility, reverence, and obedience toward God’ and he continues by describing and praising the penetrating power of the word of God itself. 39 Calvin, ‘Reply to Sadolet’, 233. 40 Here of course is one instance where a ‘chicken and egg’ debate might occur for many within the Catholic Church (what would become known as the Roman Catholic Church) had long agitated for such reforms. On this and other points, again a more nuanced consideration of historical evidence is necessary, as opposed to the generalizations that often cloud considerations of the era (and so accentuate division) – Calvin’s point here can be turned around: some of the key achievements of Protestant reformers built upon the work of reformers who remained working for change from within the Catholic tradition. The exchanges between Luther and Erasmus here offer a further case in point. Others were forced into difficult and challenging positions and forced to the margins, such as Jan Hus in Bohemia. And the legacy of Savonarola, in terms of reforming preaching and bringing the Bible back to a more central role both in preaching itself and the Christian life in general, should not be underplayed. Sadolet himself would not have disagreed about the pitiful state of much preaching in the Catholic Church prior to contemporaneous attempts to rectify this. 41 John Calvin, ‘Reply to Sadolet’, 236. This somewhat raises an important question in relation to Calvin’s charge against Sadolet that he neglected the Word in favour of the Spirit and had separated the two. For Sadolet can also be interpreted as essentially arguing something quite similar to Calvin on these very points, cf. Sadolet, ‘Letter’, 9–10. 42 Olin states that the exchange between the two men, itself, ‘does not probe very deeply into this knotty theological problem, although it does present the issue very clearly and forcibly’, ‘Introduction’, 17. 43 Sadly, John Olin’s nonetheless justifiable optimism about the issue of justification having been ‘in large part resolved’ by the Joint Declaration, in the preface to the new edition of his A Reformation Debate, ix–x, has proved not yet to be the case, as debates continue to bring about divisions on this subject, not least of all within the Lutheran communion itself. On the continuing debates, cf. Pieter De Witte, Doctrinal Dynamic and Difference: A Critical Study of the Emergence of Differentiated Consensus between Lutherans and Roman Catholics on the Doctrine of Justification and of Its Official Reception in the Joint Declaration (New York and London T&T, Ecclesiological Investigations Series forthcoming, 2012) and also, Minna Hietamäki, Agreeable Agreement: An Examination of the Quest for Consensus in Ecumenical Dialogue (New York and London: T&T Clark, Ecclesiological Investigations Series, 2010), especially 21–88 and also her constructive and methodological final sections and conclusion, 173–221. 44 Calvin, ‘Response’, 236–7.

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45 For instance, in Calvin’s eyes, purely ‘works’. 46 Cf. Sadolet, ‘Letter’, 9–11. 47 Again, it is necessary to always bear in mind that concerted efforts at reform in the church in Europe, be they in relation to doctrine, ecclesial practice and organization or in terms of spiritual and theological schools of thoughts and fashionable opinion, neither began nor ended with the sixteenth-century efforts that brought what became known as the protestant traditions into being. Here we speak of the time of Calvin and Sadolet as the ‘Reformation era’ or ‘period’ merely for the sake of convenience. Given the norm in much of the literature surrounding their exchange and related debates and events from the same period of church history. 48 John Calvin, ‘Reply to Sadolet’, 237–41. 49 Ibid., 241. 50 Ibid., 241. 51 Ibid., 241–5. 52 Ibid., 245. 53 Ibid., 249–50. This itself (i.e. the prophetic charisms in the church vis-à-vis other charisms, ministries and forms of exercising service and authority is a debate with a long history in the church). Cf., for example, the Roman Catholic attitudes towards this issue demonstrated consistently by Joseph Ratzinger, from the 1960s down to the 1980s and into the present century, which essentially also relate to the issue of doctrinal continuity, discontinuity and development, as well as the notions of a normative ecclesiology in comparison with contextual ecclesiologies, along with patterns and forms of ministry, authority and leadership. For example, cf. The Ratzinger Reader, Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion (eds) (New York and London: T&T Clark), 2010, esp. chapter 3, 81–118, chapter 6, 179–223 and chapter 7, 226–56 as well as Ratzinger’s ongoing disagreement with the arguments set forth in Leonardo Boff’s, Church, Charism and Power (London: SCM), 1985. Harvey Cox offers a fascinating and very readable study of the disputes between both men, drawing a comparison with the different skills, characters and ecclesial visions of Francis of Assisi and Bonaventure, in Harvey Cox, The Silencing of Leonardo Boff (London: Collins Flame, 1988). Here, cf., also, Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, Questions for the Church in Our Times (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier/Liturgical Press, 2007), chapter 3, 43–73. 54 John Calvin, ‘Reply to Sadolet’, 256. 55 Ibid., 256. 56 Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1995), 402. 57 As Chadwick reminds us, ‘The Catholic Church was no monolithic structure. The medieval Church contained a wide range of opinion, and now the Pope found himself pressed by two different schools. Everyone agreed upon reform’, but what that reform should consist of was the dividing issue, even in Rome itself, The Reformation, 267. Here see also, Christopher Ocker, ‘Ecclesiology and the Religious Controversies of the Sixteenth Century’, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, Gerard Mannion and Lewis Mudge (eds) (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 63–84.

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58 Barth, The Theology of John Calvin, 403. 59 Ibid., 404. 60 Cf. Calvin’s Institutes, 4, I, 4. See, also, chapter 3, below where Dennis Jowers offers a less exclusivistic interpretation of Calvin’s understanding of the Cyprian and Augustine inspired doctrine extra ecclesia nulla salus. 61 Douglas, Sadolet’s biographer, illustrates how Sadolet was even the ‘radical critic’ of the committee who dissented from the majority report. 62 In Pauli epistolam ad Romanos commentariorum, libri tres (1535). 63 Olin, ‘Introduction’ to A Reformation Debate, 1. 64 Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik (13 vols) (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1932–67). English trans. Church Dogmatics, new study edn, 31 vols (New York and London: T&T Clark, 2009). 65 Few could enter into such ethical considerations without being disturbed by the fate of Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto, 1511–53), a bright theological mind who appears to have been keen to promote a universalist understanding of God’s love and salvation (and so rejected predestination) and also wished to build bridges between Jews, Muslims and Christians, one of the reasons why, in a series of works, he felt compelled to reject the doctrine of the Trinity as traditionally understood. Servetus was burned at the stake for perceived heresy (denying the Trinity and infant baptism) in Geneva, and with Calvin’s approval (the two scholars had clashed over a period of time through correspondence). This action on the part of the Genevans seemed so contrary to everything Gospel-oriented, as Calvin himself, according to many commentators, seemed to come increasingly to appreciate, from his initial request that Servetus be decapitated rather than burned, to later expressions of what have been interpreted as regret. Needless to say, Calvin’s influence has endured, despite this moral lapse. 66 Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. 2 of Comparative Ecclesiology (New York and London, 2005), 143. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., 146. Cf. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, passim., and ‘Postmodern Ecclesiologies’ in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, Gerard Mannion and Lewis S. Mudge (eds), (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), 127–52, for further discussions of such tensions in different ecclesiologies. Note that the comparative ecclesiological ecumenical method does not seek to avoid the ‘hard questions’ that remain between churches, but rather to put these into their proper perspective when viewed alongside the commonality shared by Christians. Here cf. the general method outlined throughout Roger Haight, Ecclesial Existence, vol. 3 of Christian Community in History (2008). Note, also, it was a similar method to that pursued by many involved in Vatican II and, indeed, was Pope John XXIII’s explicit intention when he called the council. As the commentary to the Abbott edition of the conciliar texts makes clear, here speaking about Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relationship of the Churches to Non-Christian Religions: ‘The stress on what men have in common was one of Pope John’s operative principles. As he often made clear, this approach does not deny or neglect differences; it simply gives primary consideration – as this declaration says – to common goals or interests’, Walter M. Abbott, S. J. (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II (Dublin and London:

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Geoffrey Chapman), 660n2 (cf., also 660–61n.3 on human solidarity as a further priority for Pope John, as exemplified in his first encyclical, Ad Petri Cathedram from 1959). Needless to say, many Christian theologians and leaders, including in the Roman Catholic church in subsequent decades have rejected such an approach and favoured accentuating difference first and foremost to the detriment of dialogue and commonality. 69 Joseph Kavanagh, O. P., ‘The Blessing of Law’, in Vivian Boland, O. P. (ed.), Watchmen Raise Their Voices: A Tallaght Book of Theology (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 2006), 197–206, at 197. 70 I expand upon this theme in a forthcoming study on magisterium, A Teaching Church that Learns (Collegeville, Minnesota: Michael Glazier, 2012). 71 Robert Mickens and Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, ‘Koch says Protestants have rejected real purpose of ecumenism’, Tablet (20 November 2010), online edn, www.thetablet.co.uk/article/15558 (accessed 20 November 2010). 72 Sadolet, De Liberis, Recte Instituendis, Liber (Venice: Ioannes et fratres de Sabio, 1533), translated in Sadolet on Education, E. T. Campagnac and K. Forbes (eds) (Oxford, OUP, 1916), A. 73 Not everyone has responded in kind to the open and dialogical nature of Haight’s works, with some responses to Haight’s invitation to conversation, including from the central authorities of the Roman Catholic Church in the first decade of the twenty-first century, being markedly antithetical to dialogue and bearing more resemblance to the polemical character of so many writings in Calvin’s own day. 74 Including in this publications series, cf. the exploration of Haight’s work and broader considerations of comparative ecclesiology in Gerard Mannion (ed.) Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations, Ecclesiological Investigations Series, vol. 3 (New York and London: T. & T. Clark/Continuum, 2008), especially, Chapter 1, ‘What is Comparative Ecclesiology and Why is it Important? Roger Haight’s Pioneering Methodological Insights’, 13–40 and Gerard Mannion, ‘Constructive Comparative Ecclesiology: the Pioneering Work of Roger Haight’ in Ecclesiology, vol. 5, no. 2 (2009), 161–91. See, also, ‘Postmodern Ecclesiologies’ in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, Gerard Mannion and Lewis S. Mudge (eds), (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), 127–52; Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity. 75 Cf. for example, Keith Ward, Religion and Community (Oxford: OUP, 2000) and A Vision to Pursue (London: SCM, 1991). 76 Roger Haight, ‘The Church as Locus of Theology’, Why Theology? Concilium (1994, 6), 13–22. 77 David Tracy, ‘Beyond Foundationalism and Relativism: Hermeneutics and the New Relativism’, in his On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics and the Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 137. 78 Cf. Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, Continuum, 3 vols: vol. 1 of Historical Ecclesiology (2004), vol. 2 of Comparative Ecclesiology (2005), vol. 3 of Ecclesial Existence (2008). Cf. also, his ‘Comparative Ecclesiology’ in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, 387–401. 79 Haight, Christian Community in History, vol. II, 4. 80 Ibid., 7.

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81 Haight, ‘Comparative Theology’ in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church, 387. 82 The five are succinctly outlined in, Haight, ‘Comparative Theology’ in Routledge Companion to the Christian Church. 83 Ibid., 391–92.

Chapter 2 John Calvin and Ignatius Loyola on an Ecclesial Spirituality of Social Engagement Roger Haight, S. J. When one looks at sixteenth-century Europe in terms of the religious upheavals displayed there, three figures stand out: Martin Luther, John Calvin and Ignatius Loyola. The three religious leaders had unique profiles and left different legacies. But they also shared some commonalities. In this essay, I isolate Calvin and Loyola, distil the distinctive spiritualities of each and lay them side by side. This is an essay in comparative spirituality. In the concluding section, I draw some themes together into a fundamental rationale of an ecclesial spirituality of social engagement. Let me begin by laying out some of my premises and what I hope may be gained from such a project.1 By spirituality, I understand the way persons or groups lead their lives in relation to what is considered ultimate reality. This last point, the measurement of the logic of a life by its relation to transcendence, gives spirituality its distinctiveness. According to this construal, everyone who lives intentionally has a spirituality that may or may not be formally religious. It may not even be explicitly formulated. But it is operative. Insofar as some fundamental organizing value in a person’s life gives it a measure of coherence, there one has what I am calling spirituality. This approach to spirituality rescues the term from the eccentric and, at the same time, leaves it open to religion. This understanding of spirituality refers first of all to existential lived practice; the study of it would be the discipline of spirituality. A religious and Christian spirituality revolves around one’s relationship to God as God is communicated by Jesus Christ. The spirituality of Christians can be distinguished from their religiosity if this latter idea means participation in the church. The term ‘religious’ often refers to the public membership in a religious organization. It has become clear in the modern period that many people remain Christian and may even share a deep Christian spirituality but are not churchgoers.2 Spirituality represents the place where one’s relationship with God ultimately gets constituted because people shape their own being by the

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way they live. The maxim that actions speak louder than words will find a place in the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola. A spirituality of social engagement draws on the holistic definition of the topic. If spirituality transcends explicit religious activity, in the sense of formal worship and other religious practices, it also includes the whole scope of conscious behaviour. There is no time when we escape our being human. The phrase ‘spirituality of social engagement’ raises up this fact and focuses on the comprehensive integrity of a given person’s activity. By social engagement, I mean participation in everyday social life, as in one’s work and general social relationships. It also means intentional insertion into social structures in order to change them. Giving spirituality this scope at the same time raises up the importance of what may in themselves be considered trivial activity or secular and even explicitly non-religious behaviour. The move does not intend to convert recreation into a matter of brow-knitting concern for one’s salvation, for it has its own integral place in life. The point is rather that spirituality seeps into and has a bearing on the whole life of a person, including and, in some senses, especially everyday social life. Spirituality so defined also reaches deeply into the core of a person’s being, perhaps more deeply than some formal religious activity. The reason for this lies in the comprehensive scope of the whole sum of one’s activity. A correlation between spirituality so conceived and what theological ethics refers to as a fundamental moral option reveals the character of depth carried by this broad definition. The totality of all one’s actions constitutes a kind of personal centre of gravity, reflective of a fundamental value or set of them, to which a person gives himself or herself. These values, thus, go a long way in defining a person’s character and even one’s being. At this level of understanding, one can appreciate the various senses in which theology follows spirituality. It is a commonplace in modern theology that it consists in reflection on religious experience. There are various ways of formulating the priority of that experience: in primary religious language, in a type of revelatory experience of transcendence, in faith’s commitment that gives life to an assent to doctrinal beliefs. In all of these approaches, however, the common denominator emerges out of the two-way traffic between theology and religious experience as a conscious being-in-relation-to-God, and theology serves that relationship. Theology states it, clarifies it and nurtures it. It would not be an exaggeration to hold up spirituality as a criterion of the importance of theology. A theology that did not reflect or nurture spirituality would have little left to speak in its favour. With this constellation of ideas about spirituality as the backdrop of this comparative spirituality, I ask first John Calvin, and then Ignatius Loyola, the following question: what is the fundamental logic of their spirituality? In order

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to retrieve an answer to a large question in a small space, I shall construct the answer of each religious figure out of fundamental building blocks that are representative of their thought and together give a broad representation of their thinking. In a sense these constructs are like stick-figures, without flesh and, thus, too sharply defined. Despite the fact that I try to represent them in a common paradigm that would not be used if either were explaining himself, they are not presented polemically and my hope is that the order of the description does not distort the spirituality of either. The comparison will show the differences between these two classic authors and, by clarifying the distinctiveness of each, will also open up a large space of mutual complementarity. Such mutual complementarity should raise a question for theology: do not the large spiritual convergence between these two authors and the complementarities of their spiritualities moderate the significance of their theological differences?

John Calvin I begin this account of Calvin’s spirituality with a short biographical résumé. Most people are relatively familiar with one or the other of these two men. I present their paths mainly to show how different they are in their backgrounds. The distance between them, despite their near encounters with each other in Paris, makes certain parallels in their thinking all the more striking. John Calvin was born five hundred years ago in 1509 in a small city about sixty miles northeast of Paris. As a teenager this bright boy was sent to do his first studies at the University of Paris: he was there during his teenage years. Early in 1528, before his nineteenth birthday, he left Paris and began the study of law in French universities south of Paris. During his study of law, Calvin also developed skills as a renaissance scholar in the line of Erasmus, and before his work as a reformer he published a text on Seneca. Probably during the winter of 1533–1534, after he had finished the study of law, he converted to the evangelical movement and in 1536 published the first of several editions of the Institutes of the Christian Religion that immediately establish him at the age of 27 as an important religious thinker.3 The story of how Calvin ended up in Geneva, the place with which he is spontaneously associated, is as remarkable as it is well known. Later in 1536, in an effort to get to Basel, he had to take a detour through Geneva because of fighting in the region. Geneva had just established the reform movement in the city republic and the ministers needed a leader. Hearing that Calvin had just arrived in the city, one of the ministers there persuaded him, almost against his will, to take the job. He was at first unsuccessful and ejected from the city, but three years later he was invited back and he accomplished great and highly

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influential things in a period of just twenty years. The climax of his writing career appeared as the final expanded editions of The Institutes in Latin and French. I use this as the main source for sketching Calvin’s spirituality even though the portrait could be enhanced by his commentaries on scripture and other writings.4 I have organized this interpretation of Calvin’s spirituality around six items. Almost any one of them could be considered a ‘key’ or a point of entry into the whole vision of this theologian and leader. The number six is arbitrary; some of these points could be expanded into subthemes; other factors could be integrated into the mix. But these six points and sub-points trace the distinctive constellation that is Calvin’s spirituality. God’s sovereignty and providence. The first idea that comes to mind when considering Calvin’s theology is God’s awesome status as creator and sovereign power: God is God who radiates glory, and everything else is creature. All creatures, even the slightest event in the universe, depend on God’s ruling power and will (I.5.1–15). This relationship with a God of absolute transcendence and sovereignty provides the fertile soil in which Calvin’s belief in predestination is rooted. It almost follows as an entailment of God’s being creator: nothing can escape God’s power and empowerment (III.21.1–7; III.24.1–14). The idea of predestination, however, does not lie at the centre of Calvin’s thinking, despite the fact that many people outside the reformed tradition know little more about Calvin than his view on this subject. A more authentic way of approaching Calvin the predestinarian would ask about the relevance of the doctrine for spirituality. One has to imagine that for most members of the church, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination was a comfort; most would tend to think of their fidelity as a sign that they were being positively drawn to God. God “seals the elect by call and justification” (III.21.7). This spirituality would feel the awesome character of the creator of the universe. This recognition of God’s transcendence would then bathe each person with the accompanying sense of God’s providence here and now. God’s power envelops the whole universe and also one’s own personal self. Some clear adjustments to Calvin’s ideas have to be made in the light of our knowledge of the birth and development of the universe and the evolution of life in our planet. These shifts do not cancel God’s position of creator or God’s providence, but they will influence the way a person in our time might imagine or conceptualize God’s presence to the world as creating power. The individual’s vocation (I.17.6–11). The idea that each person has an individual calling in life flows from Calvin’s idea of God’s sovereign control over the world and loving providence in it. In Calvin’s view, God places each one in the world for a purpose; each one has his or her slot or niche. In contrast with today’s developed societies in the West which share a culture of social mobility,

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Calvin’s society was relatively static. There is evidence that Calvin had a more or less classical conception of the stable, God-given nature of things; the whole universe exhibits a certain organic order that stands in marked contrast with an evolutionary universe that is continually changing. Each one is called to be what God intended and to do what God’s specific will ordains for each person. It would be difficult to find a metaphysical conception of things that reinforced spirituality so directly and powerfully. If what a person is and what he or she is doing correlate neatly with God’s will, this should engender a deep sense of identity, security and satisfaction. The Godly person is set free from extreme anxiety and care (I.17.11). Established social roles get translated into more or less clear directives for the course of a life that one can be relatively sure is blessed by God. Such pictures are rarely so rosy in actuality, but life itself does not bear the ambiguities that each individual may actually face. Calvin’s relatively static society made the idea of a vocation easier to imagine; we are too used to upward aspiration and self-help to take Calvin’s idea of fixed vocations at face value. What were for Calvin ideals may appear today as actual disvalues. But despite these differences, if one has any sense of God as creator, one also has to recognize that all individuals have a set of talents that are uniquely theirs. These are called “gifts” because they were given to each one; they were received and not earned. This giftedness of each person as an individual introduces a way of appreciating how the destiny of each cannot be dissociated from God’s being our ultimate creator. Our new scientifically and socially constructed worlds do not cancel our sense of having an identity and a set of possibilities that have been given uniquely to us. Our individual calling or vocation will probably fall somewhere within the scope of our talents. Absolutely no reason compels us to think of a competition between what may be construed as a directionality given with an individual’s gifts and each one’s freedom of self-actualization. A Christian’s use of law. As a lawyer by training, Calvin had a positive regard for the law in society and its role in Christian life. He had full awareness of Luther’s, following Paul’s, recognition that in some respects the law appears negative because it holds up standards of virtue that frustrate our ability to live up to them. The law of God convicts reflective Christians of sin and forces them to rely only on God’s mercy, forgiveness and love as the sole possibility of salvation. While Calvin admitted this, he also saw how persons already justified through faith in God’s mercy also needed the law to help direct their lives, point them in the right direction and exhort them to obedience. He said “the law points out the goal toward which throughout life we are to strive” (II.7.13). He appreciated how law regulates a society and helps establish social harmony. One does not have to think that Luther would have disagreed with the basic point Calvin is making; there are places in later Luther which highlight the need

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for continual sanctification. But his early stress on justification by pure grace in contrast to works righteousness sets a tone in marked contrast to Calvin’s high regard for the law and a penchant for a church marked by a certain quality of moral life. This is a good example of where two theologians, who agree on the broad logic of the Christian life in doctrinal terms, place the emphases and accents in different places and, in so doing, create a different ethos. Who would doubt that Calvin was a man who valued law and order? Whether it was learned from his study of law or not, many aspects of his life reflect a disciplined man. Christians today will have different sympathies relative to the role of law in the spiritual life. It has to be balanced by the Pauline axiom that faith in Jesus Christ frees people from the law. Calvin was not ignorant of God’s grace working within us, releasing freedom to be more itself. One completely misreads Calvin on the law through Pelagian eyes. But Calvin’s reverence for the law has the perennial value within Christian spirituality of forcing persons to think of society beyond themselves. Law generally projects our highest values outward, makes them means of protecting the common good and encourages self-transcendence. The same is true for the church: laws embody Christian values as gleaned from Jesus of Nazareth and the New Testament, and the church holds them up for Christian emulation. Sanctification and a growth in holiness before God through one’s actions. The idea that one grows in closeness to God through one’s actions follows in the direction pointed by vocation and an appreciation of law. Calvin shared Luther’s doctrine that we are in a good relationship with God not by what we do, but by sheer faith in God’s mercy and love. When Calvin considered human nature on its own, so to speak, prior to any intentional connection with God, the language expressing his negative estimate shocks people today.5 He seems to consider human nature as intrinsically sinful and, thus, hostile to God prior to any help from God. He was never tempted to think that our good actions are good by themselves and, thus, meritorious of God’s favour. In all these respects, Calvin was, by and large, faithful to Luther. But within the sphere of grace, Calvin shifts the rhetoric and emphasizes that one grows in holiness before God by acting out one’s justification before God by following the law. Thus, Calvin also stressed the conviction that, once we are in a relationship of faith in God by accepting Jesus Christ, we grow closer to God through our good actions. Doing God’s will binds us more closely to God. We will never be perfect, but we can increase the strength of our loving response to God.6 One has to push this point further. One cannot limit Calvin’s insight to a person’s private actions as if these alone are what unite a person to God. Calvin thinks in terms of society – in his case, Geneva. Following one’s calling or vocation, and guiding our lives by the laws of God, church and society, strengthen our relationship with God. A person’s public activity in society, one’s position

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and work in society, one’s everyday relationships, become the vehicles for one’s sanctification. One grows in holiness not just in society as in a context or milieu, but by one’s participation in it, through being a citizen and in the playing out of one’s role in society. Here one sees a groundwork for a conception of a spirituality of everyday life in society. Christian spirituality may be distinguished from citizenship and its responsibilities, but it cannot be separated off from them. They clearly overlap and entail each other. This dimension of medieval and early modern spirituality will be deeply challenged by the deepening phenomenon secularization, but it will not be eliminated altogether because it can be integrated into it.7 Building a holy community: church and society. Calvin’s language of sanctification through action reveals a logic that extends beyond an interpersonal response to God. In Calvin’s time, in the sixteenth century generally, there could be only one church in a given nation, principality or city: religious pluralism in a single realm was not yet a general option. All Christians belonged to the same church or set of congregations that formed a single church, and all citizens were expected to belong to the church. We tend to forget that Calvin lived in a world where it was presumed that there was no salvation outside the church. This situation preserves an element that typified the medieval church, namely, that the church did not merely sanctify individuals but also society itself. Through the public activity of Christians and their social roles, not only the person but society itself begins to participate in this symbiotic relationship with God. Calvin saw the church as leaven in the dough, God’s catalyst or agent for sanctifying society and the world. If salvation was to be operative in the world, it had to be mediated through the church. This meant that the church was the instrument of God’s salvation that overflowed into society itself. The church was to mediate God’s salvation to a whole people in a city or region and not just to individuals discretely given. His spirituality thus plays a part in a much larger metaphysical plan for the history of the human race, and each member of the church has a role to play in this massive historical drama. In Calvin’s mind and in the politics of Geneva this theological vision was parsed in a clear theoretical distinction between city government and the church; they were distinct social entities (IV.20.1–7). But church and civil government, practically speaking, had overlapping functions in many areas, particularly in public morality and attention to the poor. In Calvin’s view, this did not result in competition but in complementarity; his vision also served to unify them. Thus, growth in holiness of the whole church meant growth in virtue of the whole city and society.8 This was Calvin’s ideal: the church did not govern society directly, but the church did influence all of society’s actions and, through them, the commonweal. In many respects, the city relied on the church to care for some of its most important functions, such as helping to maintain social order, providing

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for education and ministering to the poor. But the church also depended on society and government for its own protection and for defending the church’s rights and functions within society. Axioms for a spiritual life: (a) self-denial, (b) use of creatures according to God’s ends, (c) value things of this world but only relatively, (d) stewardship. Thus far we have an ecclesial spirituality that on the local level looks much like the medieval church in its relation to its immediate society. For the church member knows there is a distinction between being a citizen and a member of the church, but the two memberships formally complement each other. To round off this spirituality, Calvin offers some principles or maxims for how the church member should conduct his or her Christian life. What Calvin calls the Christian life corresponds almost exactly with what I have described as spirituality. His ecclesial spirituality appears completely consistent with his large view of the economy of history and the role of the church in it. I highlight four axioms which are basic and straightforward. The first is self-denial (III.7.1–10). An imitation of Jesus Christ who died on the cross and was raised urges the Christian to self-discipline. This ascetic dimension is not a value in itself; it invites the Christian to transcend self-seeking and live for higher values. Discipline and self-control are surely responsible for the underlying serious tone of Calvin’s spirituality. But the deeper point is obvious: following one’s vocation and the guidelines of law, and being faithful to the responsibilities of various memberships in family, work and society advance one’s relationship with God by conforming us to God’s will. Second, Calvin gives broad general instructions on how to use the things of this world according to their inherent purpose and goal that was established by God by their creation (III.10.2). Calvin sees a blend of natural and divine law written into creation. This rather classical sentiment moderates any extremist interpretation of an ascetic Calvin. If things were intended by God for our enjoyment, they should be enjoyed. One senses a kind of Aristotelian appreciation of moderation that mediates extremes by finding the sensible and reasonable path between them. The third principle I wish to highlight sets up a tension with the last. It says that, although we are to respect earthly values, we should also relativize them, absolutely transcend them and cling to the transcendent sphere to which they lead. Here a sense of purpose and eschatological destiny relativizes all finite goals and purposes. Viewed from within the context of our relationship with God “those who use this world should be so affected as if they did not use it” (III.10.4). This is the gospel principle of single-mindedness in the pursuit of God’s values or, in more objective terms, the kingdom of God. The relative values of the things of this world should be relativized and channelled towards the higher ends of God’s economy of salvation.

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Fourth and finally is Calvin’s magisterial principle of the stewardship of creation: the things of this world are “so destined for our benefit, that they are, as it were, entrusted to us, and we must one day render account of them” (III.10.5). This principle shows a great respect for human agency and responsibility. This principle has gained in importance as the awareness of the impact of human freedom on nature has grown. It shows how readily Calvin’s ecclesial spirituality can be adapted to modern and even postmodern situations. Let me sum up this ecclesial spirituality by characterizing it in Trinitarian terms. Reverence and awe for the sovereignty of God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, undergirds this spirituality. But at the same time Calvin is Christocentric and the whole Christian economy flows from and revolves around the event of Jesus Christ. Christian spirituality is a following of Christ. But Calvin also had a developed theology of the Spirit who is at work in each person’s life of faith and the whole community. Sanctification and the whole Christian life are supported by the Spirit of God. In Calvin, the Christian life unfolds in personal relationships in family and in public social responsibilities and citizenship. Calvin is clear about the distinctions between ecclesial and social memberships, but they are complementary and feed into each other. This is a spirituality that is single-mindedly devoted to God and participatory in society.

Ignatius of Loyola The life of Ignatius of Loyola also took a dramatic turn: whereas Calvin converted to the reform movement, Ignatius converted from soldier to pilgrim and spiritual leader. Born in 1491 and raised in an aristocratic family in northern Spain, Ignatius in his mid-teens was sent to live as a courtier in the household of a royal official. He became a soldier like his father and in 1521, in a battle against the French in Pamplona, he suffered a leg wound. The canon ball that shattered his leg also changed his life. He was carried home to Loyola to recuperate. During those long days he had nothing to read but a newly translated life of Christ and an anthology of the lives of the saints. Through them he was converted to a life of service of God, with Christ as his new king. In the spring of the following year, he travelled to Monserrat, just west of Barcelona, where he dedicated himself to God’s service and spent the next 10 months in a nearby small town schooling himself by prayer and an ascetic life. During this time, he recorded his experiences in a formal way with a rough draft of what became his Spiritual Exercises.9 These Spiritual Exercises, a book of meditations on Jesus’s life and ministry as recorded in the Gospels, and shaped by a series of basic principles of the spiritual life, are his signature work in spirituality.

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Ignatius’s story goes on: he made a pilgrimage to Palestine, he returned and began to study in Spain, beginning with Latin, and finally went to the University of Paris. He entered the city on 2 February 1528, just weeks or days after Calvin had left, and enrolled in the same college that Calvin had attended. During the course of his seven years of study, he won some companions for his ministry and with them formed the Jesuit order in 1540. The rest of his life was spent governing the Jesuits and composing their constitutions. He died in 1556, eight years before Calvin. All of the ingredients for a spirituality of social engagement that follow, I draw from Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius did not compose the Exercises as a manual for church membership, but as a vehicle by which any given member of the church could make a life-decision about his or her way of following Christ or reforming their life. But the ideas about Christian life that Ignatius proposes may readily be imagined as an ideal conception of ecclesial spirituality. I will structure this interpretation of Ignatius’s spirituality in the Exercises around a few principles that bear a rough parallel to those used to present Calvin’s spirituality in his Institutes. As in Calvin, I have chosen six points. All of them are important, but at the same time the number is a mere convenience that could be expanded. And the six are sufficient to capture the distinctiveness of Ignatius’s proposals and to carry the comparison and contrast with Calvin’s ecclesial spirituality. The reason for one’s existence. Ignatius of Loyola was a military man in the service of the king of Spain. His conversion did not move him towards a quiet contemplative life but rechanneled his service to a new Lord. As one of the foundational premises of his spirituality, he laid down as a basic principle, at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, that we are created to love and serve God and, in this way, advance towards final unity with God or salvation (SE, 23). Drawn from the catechism, this principle represents the fundamental logic of Catholic spirituality: we exist in this world in order to move towards a heavenly future. The principle was formulated in this teleological way in the Aristotelian language and logic of the medieval synthesis of theology. It became transcribed in the earliest catechisms of the medieval period. The principle states the goal of human life. It also provides a measure by which we can evaluate all our actions, for they are but means to our end. Any action that does not contribute to our goal, move us along the path of salvation, is suspect; everything that helps is good. Ignatius called this the “Principle and Foundation” of his Spiritual Exercises (SE, 23). It is not clear when this principle was written into the text of the Exercises: was it a later addition relative to other considerations? The question is meaningful for those who want to protect the obvious and prevailing Christocentrism of the Exercises and, more broadly, of Ignatius’s imagination. Although I agree that

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following Christ is at the core of Ignatius’s spirituality in the Exercises, I do not believe that stressing the importance of this principle threatens the role of Jesus Christ any more than God as creator threatens God as saviour through Jesus Christ. More positively, I highlight this principle for two reasons. The first is itself a question of principle. Following the creed and the Christian narrative it represents, this principle enters into the sphere of the Exercises through the door of creation. The doctrine of creation bears some absolutely fundamental convictions about God, our world and the human species that today cannot simply be taken for granted. This doctrine provides a clearinghouse for some of Christianity’s most basic suppositions and language that often do not seem to merit our attention. The second reason is practical: it serves as a parallel to Calvin’s sensibility to the sovereignty of God and, thus, helps set the stage for comparative spirituality. Finding God’s love in all things and responding by action more than words (SE, 230–237). The principle just considered lies at the beginning of the Exercises; this one is formulated at the end, but it is equally foundational. And like the last, it is grounded in the doctrine of creation. The doctrine of creation is not a scientific account of the beginning of the universe. It is a doctrine that depends on religious experience. Creation means that all reality is absolutely dependent at all times on the infinite power of God for its very being. God creates out of nothing, so that nothing lies between all finite being and God’s sustaining presence. God is intimately present to all created reality as the primary agent of its being. This doctrine of creation sacralizes the world in its very secularity, if I may speak paradoxically. The world is fully secular and finite and not filled with spirits and gods. Yet the whole of it is sustained by God’s active presence. God gives the world its autonomy, its not being God. Therefore, when Ignatius turned to the world, the everyday world of nature as well as the events of human lives, he contemplatively saw God’s love at work, not just generally, but also most particularly for the benefit of himself and, by extension, for each person. He, thus, invites each one to consider all the personal gifts that he or she has received, those especially which make us who we are and give us our identity, as the gifts given to each by God out of love. The whole world, beneath all the negativities, represents God’s gift and God’s activity sustaining each person in being out of love. The correlative response to God’s love is gratitude and a return of love. At this point, Ignatius becomes pragmatic and realistic. In response to God’s love, Ignatius uses the cliché that love is better expressed in deeds than in words to seal his spirituality with an activist spirit. At key junctures such as this, the earlier life of the author asserts itself. In this case it is Ignatius the soldier and man of action. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, from beginning to end, orient a person to a spirituality of action. Passive contemplation, reflective mediation and affective prayer always motivate and orient the person towards an active

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life. The point of the Exercises is to make a decision, or to reform one’s life, or to reset one’s resolve to follow Christ and become united with him. In the end, this is done not by affective prayer alone but by action. Augustine’s two spheres of history: the campaigns of Satan and Christ. Augustine, the great North African theologian of the fourth and fifth centuries, with his massive book The City of God, divided human history into two camps: the city constructed by human beings out of self-love and aggrandizement, and the city of God, fashioned by God out of people in the church who live selftranscending lives for God’s values and goals. Ignatius internalized this grand vision of all of history when he read about Augustine in The Golden Legend during his convalescence. The account of Augustine contained descriptions of his two cities in terms that mirror what Ignatius called the two standards: ‘For Christ is king over Jerusalem, Satan over Babylon. Two contrary loves gave birth to these cities. The city of Satan was built on self-love, mounting up even to contempt of God; the city of Christ was built on love of God, mounting up even to the contempt of self.’10 The two forces, darkness and light, evil and good, do not live in undisturbed parallel lines but are at war with each other, struggling for allegiance of individual human beings, and the outcome for each is destruction or salvation. This is not how we would describe the world today, but it has symbolic value and had a powerful controlling hold on Ignatius’s imagination. Thus, once again and in even more forceful and explicit terms, Ignatius frames his spirituality in terms of combat and expressed the struggle in the language of competing military campaigns, that of Satan and that of Christ (SE, 136–147). One path in life follows the banner of the prince of evil who encourages people to seek wealth and honour for themselves. This leads to pride, and from human pride flows all the evil of history. By contrast, Christ represents the very opposite style of life: he was poor and asks of us spiritual poverty or actual poverty; he suffered contempt and asks us to prefer reproaches from the world rather than the honour of the world. This strategy results in a humility from which flow self-transcending virtue and love. Ignatius, thus, takes aggressive military language and transforms it into a non-violent activism of service of God’s values in the world. What Augustine proposed as a cosmic vision and a schematic theology of human history Ignatius transforms into an option concerning the will of God for each individual who entertains the question of his or her life. The protagonists of a cosmic war are battling one another over each person. Ignatius raises the stakes for each individual person who is trying to decide his or her calling in life or is trying to get back on track. The call of Christ the king (SE, 91–98). With this principle, referred to here as the call and leadership of Christ the king, we find the explicit expression of Ignatius’s Christocentrism. The Spiritual Exercises consist in a series of contemplations on scenes from Jesus’s life that are punctuated by considerations that give the whole course of prayerful days a structure. The signature meditation of

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the whole experience, whose short name is ‘The Call of the King’, depicts a temporal king calling for troops to enlist in the noblest of causes, which no one could possibly resist. He then depicts Christ as the Eternal King, making an analogous appeal to follow him in his glorious combat for God’s kingdom, to win back history and the world for God. The military imagery does not readily appeal to many in the bourgeois world of North America today. But it does not take much creativity on our part to appreciate what is going on in Ignatius’s imagination. He has transferred a whole panoply of virtues from one world to another: commitment, loyalty, discipline, courage and eagerness to engage. At stake is the glory of God, not as in internal quality of the divine life, but in the cause of God succeeding in the world by drawing human beings to itself. It was a passionate single-mindedness that designed this contemplation that so deeply and pervasively characterizes the whole of Ignatian spirituality. The striking thing about this contemplation lies in the way it depicts Jesus Christ and our relationship to him. Ignatius has in absolute terms a high Christology: Jesus is divine. Ignatius can use the phrase “his divine majesty” of God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, and of Jesus of Nazareth. But Jesus is presented in the Exercises not as a king to be honoured or worshipped, but a leader to be followed. This reading lies right on the surface of the text, where Ignatius goes out of his way to stress that this leader shares in all the hardships of the earthly campaign that his followers will be asked to endure (SE, 95, 98). This insistence on Jesus as an earthly leader to be followed offers another insight into this activist spirituality. The military person engages the world. The project has divine or transcendent qualities: it advances God’s cause, God’s values and God’s glory. But it is a worldly pursuit that seeks to transform history. The more Satan’s values are defeated in the earthly struggle of history, the more glory is given to God. The first foundational end or goal of human existence as that was stated in the Principle and Foundation as salvation has been drawn up into an earthly struggle. The primary motive of the spiritual life that appears with Jesus Christ the leader is the struggle for the values of the kingdom of God in history. One’s personal salvation is surely not forgotten, but it accompanies the effort dedicated to something larger than the individual self. The discernment of spirits. Another Ignatian touch on spirituality lies in the discernment of spirits. By this, Ignatius meant real spirits, bad spirits like Satan and his associates, and good spirits like angels. The spirits have access to human consciousness and their presence is manifested in a person’s feelings of enthusiasm and despair, what Ignatius called consolation and desolation, that influence so much of our everyday action. In this way, the cosmic battle plays itself out within individual persons. It is relatively important when one reads Ignatius’s texts to at least be aware that he referred to these spirits in a quite literal way. For his part, this attention to the affects of these spirits gave Ignatius an extraordinary ability to read the dynamics of religious subjectivity. Because the angels of darkness

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posed as angels of light, discerning the movements of one’s interiority became a delicate affair requiring diligence and method. Thus, he developed fairly elaborate guidelines for discerning the spirits (SE, 313–336). Ignatius’s considerations about making an election or life-decision are also relevant here (SE, 169–89). Surely with our knowledge of psychology today we can read these subjective psychological dispositions in a more straightforwardly human way. Few people today see themselves as playthings of the gods or good and bad angels. Nevertheless, the several rules which Ignatius developed in order for us to read, discern, understand and act in response to what goes on emotionally in our spiritual life remain effective. The lesson in his attention to the discernment of spirits, however, is this: all that has been said about this spirituality is general and objective. It has to be internalized personally and experientially in a unique way by every single person. No two people are alike, and Ignatius strongly insisted that God as Spirit be allowed to move each person in the way that is best for each one. Ignatius’s principle behind all the discernment of spirits affirms the freedom of the Spirit in dialogue with each person’s freedom. Axioms for a spiritual life: (a) making ourselves humble in the likeness of Christ, (b) using creatures insofar as they fulfil one’s purpose, c) indifference to earthly values compared to our final goal, (d) the human ideal of doing the best we can for the greater glory of God in history. These axioms are not the same as Calvin’s, because they arise out of a different life experience and conception of things. At the same time, it will be difficult to ignore analogies and, more generally, how the two sets run fairly close to each other. I have set out these axioms of Ignatius in an order that runs in a rough parallel with those noted in Calvin’s spirituality. First, Ignatius also asks the follower of Christ to identify with the Christ who by suffering taught humility and service. Jesus sets the standard of a human life. Calvin expresses this in a framework of a theology of the cross and in terms of self-discipline and asceticism in daily life. Ignatius, too, sets up Jesus as the leader to be followed, but one who accepted humiliations in his ministry along a path leading to suffering and death (SE, 95). Ignatius makes an appeal to the classic spirituality of schooling oneself in humility against the temptation stemming from wealth, honour and pride because humility entails reliance on the power of God and issues in virtue and courage (SE, 146). Second, Ignatius’s overarching principle says that we should use the things of this world according to the criterion of their being means to our appointed goal – service of God in this world and salvation in the end. Both Ignatius and Calvin are operating in a teleological framework here. Calvin’s measure was the purpose God instilled in each creature. He has set things in a more objective framework of God’s creation and the order of things according to God’s wisdom. God’s way of doing things can be read in nature and human beings are to fit into that pattern. Ignatius’s measure is more subjective; it lies in the purpose of each person; we are

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created to ‘praise, reverence and serve God’, and all concrete things of this world should be used as means towards that end. The end bends back to be a criterion of human action and the way the agent uses the things of this world: to what extent does this use of creatures direct me towards my goal (SE, 23)? These different ways of understanding these ordering axioms are entirely compatible with and complementary to each other. Third, Ignatius so sets up the value of service of Christ’s kingdom as the logic of a Christian life that like Calvin he, too, counselled indifference to all thisworldly values and conditions of life relative to that transcendent value. Ignatius states this axiom in this way: ‘I must make myself indifferent to all created things’ in such a way that the person is completely free to ‘desire and elect only the thing which is more conducive to the end for which I am created’ (SE, 23). The term ‘indifference’ has a special meaning that does not connote disinterest and lack of involvement, but rather a condition of impartiality and being unbiased. Ignatius is striving for inner equilibrium and a considered freedom free from restricting inclinations and attachments. Calvin expressed this axiom out of an almost identical logic but in a language that contrasted absolute and relative values: one should be absolutely clear about the difference and should order relative values according to our relationship with God. Fourth and finally, each one will be judged not generally but according to his or her own niche in history and the opportunity it provides each one to serve the kingdom of God. Ignatius’s Exercises do not contain a principle of stewardship that is as explicitly enunciated as that of Calvin. But Ignatius does work with a couple of suppositions that show an analogous sentiment. One theme is the respect that Ignatius shows the individual person. The Exercises do not present a “one size fits all” program. In principle, and from beginning to end in their unfolding, the program presupposes that each person is an individual with a particular history and the dialogue of God as Spirit with that person is to be respected. This implies an absolute respect for the responsibility of each person. A second theme consists in the supposition of an activist spirituality, namely, that each person is treated as an agent, a self-actualizing subject. These do not add up to an explicit counsel for stewardship, but are the conditions for its possibility. This spirituality sets out high ideals for self-actualizing responsible agents of the kingdom of God.

Ecclesial Spirituality for Social Engagement This essay in comparative ecclesiology could now move in different directions. It would be instructive to highlight the analogies that run all through these two distinct conceptions of the Christian life. Another way of cashing in on this comparison would be to build a positive conception of spirituality on the deep

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things that these two men shared in common. If theology builds on spirituality and is meant to reinforce it with understanding, this would be a very useful ecumenical project of neutralizing theological differences that do not make a difference. Still another direction such a comparative spirituality might move would be to synthesize this spirituality within the framework of ecclesiology. I will follow this path and centre my reflections within the context of Calvin’s view of the church. Of the two thinkers and the sources considered, ecclesiology is most prominent in Calvin’s thinking. Ignatius’s full program of the Exercises are intentionally directed towards leaders. One could extrapolate an ecclesiology around this spirituality to great effect, but Calvin offers a picture of the general Christian life for all members of the church. The imaginative referential context of these reflections is the congregation or the parish. By an ecclesial spirituality, I mean the kind of life that is actually lived by a church, in this case a congregation or parish, and the understanding of the spiritual life that structures it in theory or practice or both. Spirituality is the sum total of the way a Christian leads his or her life before God. Transferred to the local church, the term ‘spirituality’ opens up in a concrete way the different aspects of the Christian life displayed in any given church. The most concrete way would be a description of the spirituality of a given church by congregational studies. By comparison, this analysis will be a highly abstract consideration of norms and principles that are so basic and commonly shared that they should be operative in any church. It will be helpful to make a distinction between two levels of such an ecclesial spirituality. On one side, an ecclesial spirituality refers to the corporate, institutional, and formative patterns of Christian life that a church embodies. This aspect of one’s consideration is objective; it consists in the common behaviour patterns of the members of a church and the shared ethos that informs them. This exists prior to any given member and is that into which an individual church member is socialized. This objective institutionalized spirituality changes slowly and tends to perpetuate itself in its objective forms. On the other side, this same ecclesial spirituality can be thought about in terms of the individuals who actually embody it consciously and intentionally. Undoubtedly, each one is shaped in some degree by the forms of life into which they are gradually initiated. Theoretically, each member of the church should assume responsibility for appropriating the nature and purpose and spirituality of the church of which they are a member. This will, of course, have wide-ranging degrees of actualization because of such a wide range of degrees of involvement in one’s own church. Nevertheless, this provides the logic of this symbiotic relationship between a church’s public spirituality and the intentional spirituality of each member. The relationship is meant to be reciprocal, but will vary greatly in intensity.

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Working within this framework, I describe the ecclesial spirituality that emerges from Calvin’s theology of the spiritual life and placed in dialogue with Ignatius with three qualities: (a) it is a mission spirituality, that (b) consciously engages with society in order to insert into social relations the humane values of the kingdom of God and that (c) forges in members a personal union with God. In each case I refer to the objective ecclesial and the subjective participatory level of this spirituality. A mission spirituality. The missionary character of Calvin’s ecclesiology does not appear in missionary language but in the Trinitarian character of his whole conception of the economy of salvation. His theology follows the outline of the creed: God, Father and Creator, Jesus Christ Redeemer, and the Spirit as sanctifier mediated in history by the church. In this economy of the salvific dealing of God with humanity, the church is not an afterthought, an add-on to the redemption of Jesus Christ, but a constituent element in the working out of human salvation. But this entails an essentially missionary church whose purpose is to mediate to people God’s grace in the form of Word and Spirit. Calvin is explicit about this as the title of Book Four indicates: the church is “the external means . . . by which God invites us into the society of Christ and holds us therein” (IV, title). The purpose of the church, its mission, is to represent to the world, to society, the message and the saving power of the event of Jesus Christ. Its whole being is a being sent to the world to communicate with the world. This is the mission of God, which sustains the church and is implicit in Calvin’s economic Trinitarian conception of God’s interaction with human reality. Many of the particulars of Calvin’s sixteenth-century perception might be changed today, but not the basic structure itself. The subjective side of this ecclesial mission spirituality is much more dramatically illustrated in Ignatius Loyola, with his image of Jesus Christ the leader calling for followers. Nothing that Ignatius says in this key consideration of his Exercises is in principle alien to Calvin’s ecclesial spirituality; rather the calling to follow Christ in active participation in a movement injects more personal intensity into membership than what one would normally find in the Institutes. In effect, when Ignatius’s spirituality becomes an ecclesial spirituality, it turns membership in the church into a crusade. This is not a crusade of empire, however, but an active, aggressive crusade of non-violent humility and service. This is a crusade that seeks victory, triumph and glory, but only through the means of the cross. Consciously engaged with society. Calvin’s church was deeply engaged in society, and his ecclesiology explicitly envisaged a complementary mutuality in the leadership of society. But at the same time, Calvin clearly distinguished church and government, and he insisted on the autonomy of each in its sphere

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(IV.20.1–7). These distinctions do not suffice to settle beyond dispute the issues of how these relationships were conceived or actually worked out in Calvin’s own time. The situation today is further complicated by almost universal acceptance in developed societies of a separation between church and state, whatever that might mean in different contexts. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Calvin’s church was deeply engaged in society. The purpose or mission of the church in extending the influence of the values of the kingdom of God means precisely promoting and actualizing these values within social relationships across different spheres of behaviour: education, business, science, service industries and so on. Concern for human life, for justice, for healing, for reconciliation – these are what Jesus championed in the name of God. Through its body of ministers, the institutional church in Calvin’s time exercised corporate influence on society. This it did by its role in regulating public morals, by its institutions and by its power of excommunication. Much of the church’s former power may have disappeared in societies where churches are voluntary organizations. But other roles and the impetus to fulfil them, like public support of the poor, providing education where it is not otherwise available, organizing agencies of social aid such as hospitals, shelters and so on, are intrinsic parts of the Christian mission that should be supported by church members. Calvin’s church in Geneva had, and churches today can also have, a deep impact on society by generating a spirituality of service among its members. Rather than the clergy, whose chief ministry is service to the church community itself and its institutions, the laity live their lives within the world. The church can have influence on society by the force of its numbers if the many churches can together agree on how the values of the kingdom of God come to bear on issues. They can have still greater impact when they cooperate with other religions to lobby for humane values over against those which are purely militaristic or commercial. In the end, insertion in society may be conceived as an extension of a mission spirituality. Each person may have an impact on society through the many people with whom he or she interacts. If a church embodies a strong spirituality of service and inculcates this in its members, they will carry the church into society. Engendering union with God. Exactly how the church as a public institution engages society is important in principle, but less important than shaping a spirituality of its members in their everyday lives. Calvin’s and Ignatius’s spiritualities together explain well how people can find personal union with God within the very performance of their secular work in the world. This is a personally integrating spirituality that brings together the sacred, in the sense of a relationship to God, and the secular, in the sense of constructive responsibility to the demands of the various sets of relationships in which we live. This is a union with God that is forged in a union of wills or intentions, where one’s personal decisions

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and actions are consciously intended to coincide with the will of God as best that can be construed in the light of Jesus’s ministry and an appraisal of one’s own talents and abilities. In both these authors one can read realistic meaning in today’s language of ‘mysticism and politics’. The sense of this phrase is not far from Ignatius’s ‘contemplation in action’ or ‘finding God in all things’ or Calvin’s conscious and intentional living out one’s social vocation within God’s providence. This constitutes a union with God through a participation in Christ’s ministry in the world today.

Notes 1 André Favre-Dorsaz, Calvin et Loyola: Deux Réformes (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1951) offers an extended descriptive account of the character and thought of these two religious figures. 2 Much more could be said about this, but it would draw attention away from the question at hand. 3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986). 4 John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, I–II, Ford Lewis Battles (trans.) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955). This is a translation of the 1559 Latin version. References to the Institutes in the text are by book, chapter and paragraph. 5 For example, as a result of Original Sin, human beings ‘are so vitiated and perverted in every part of our nature that by this great corruption we stand justly condemned and, convicted before God’ (II.1.8). 6 The economy of salvation effected by God as Spirit, who by pure grace causes faith and, through faith, repentance, regeneration and growth in sanctification, is discussed in the early chapters of Book III. Calvin is very cautious in these pages, but not so cautious that one could miss the positive construction of what God can do in a depraved nature through grace. 7 See the distinction of levels of secularization offered by Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 1–22. 8 For a description of how the Consistory operated in Calvin’s Geneva, see Roger Haight, Christian Community in History, II, Comparative Ecclesiology (New York: Continuum, 2005), 125–31. 9 Ignatius Loyola, ‘The Spiritual Exercises’, George E. Ganns (trans.), Ignatius Loyola: The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991), 113–214. Cited in the text by paragraph number. 10 Hugo Rahner, The Spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola: An Account of Its Historical Development (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1953), 28.

Chapter 3 In What Sense Does Calvin Affirm ‘Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus’? Dennis W. Jowers Introduction Numerous statements of Jean Calvin suggest that he denies the possibility of salvation to all mentally competent adults who die without having encountered explicit, human proclamation of the gospel. Certain of Calvin’s remarks, in fact, appear to indicate that he considers integration into the institutional Christian church a condition of human salvation: extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Calvin asserts, for example, that knowledge of the visible church is indispensable to salvation1 and that schism is tantamount to apostasy.2 In the following, nonetheless, we argue that, while Calvin does teach that faith in Christ and membership of the visible church are prerequisites of salvation, he does so with considerable nuance and disowns some of the most harshly exclusivist conceptions of the impossibility of salvation outside of the church.

The Indispensability of Faith in Christ That Calvin considers explicit faith in Jesus Christ indispensable for the salvation of adults, at least under ordinary conditions, seems evident from the following four considerations. First, Calvin identifies faith as that which savingly unites human beings to Christ. ‘We are not otherwise united to Christ’, Calvin writes, ‘than if our minds transcend the world. The bond of our union with Christ, accordingly, is faith, which lifts us up on high and sets its anchor in heaven’.3 Second, he declares faith devoid of knowledge insufficient for salvation. ‘Among Christians’, he writes, ‘there is no faith where there is no knowledge’.4 Again, writes Calvin, ‘there is no faith without knowledge’.5 Third, Calvin identifies quite a specific body of knowledge as constitutive of this saving faith. ‘We shall have a true definition of faith’, he writes, ‘if we say that

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it is a firm and certain knowledge of the divine benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the promise that is freely given in Christ and by the Holy Spirit, both revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts’.6 This faith, as Calvin explains elsewhere, encompasses not merely knowledge of God’s mercy to oneself, but submission to the entire word of God. ‘This alone is true faith’, he writes, ‘where we embrace not only half of God’s word, but subject ourselves to the whole’.7 Fourth, Calvin sometimes speaks as if all who lack access to human proclamation of the gospel are ipso facto reprobate. ‘Because faith is by hearing’, he writes, ‘there will be no faith, unless there is preaching’.8 ‘The Gospel’, Calvin writes likewise, ‘does not fortuitously rain down from the clouds, but is conveyed by the hands of men wherever it is sent from heaven’.9 That some persons do not know Christ’s name, moreover, constitutes, in Calvin’s view, not an excuse for their want of faith, but a sign of their reprobation. ‘Just as by call and justification the Lord seals his elect’, Calvin asserts, ‘so, by excluding the reprobate from knowledge of his name or from the sanctification of his Spirit, he reveals by these marks, as it were, what sort of judgment awaits them’.10

The Indispensability of Union with the Church Calvin insists, furthermore, that only members of Christ’s visible church attain eternal salvation. After specifying that he intends ‘to discuss the visible church’, he writes, ‘there is no other entry into life unless she herself conceives us in her womb, gives birth to us, feeds us from her breasts, and thenceforth maintains us under her care and governance. . . . Outside of her bosom no remission of sins is to be hoped for, nor any salvation’.11 These words are no mere obiter dicta; rather, they express a settled conviction of Calvin that he expresses throughout his corpus. Commenting on Gal 4:26, for instance, Calvin affirms that ‘he who refuses to be a son of the church desires to have God as his Father in vain. For only through the ministry of the church does God beget sons for himself’.12 In his Antidote to the Sorbonnists’ articles of faith, likewise, he asserts that, while one ought not to fear excommunication from the communion of Antichrist, ‘we must not only greatly fear, but also take care with particular application lest we be excommunicated from that church that has as the bond of its unity the pure doctrine of God. For there is no salvation outside of her communion’.13 Calvin’s Genevan catechism of 1541, moreover, includes the following: M. Why do you add remission of sins to the church? S. Because no one attains it unless he has been previously united to God’s people, maintains unity with Christ’s body perseveringly even to the

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Calvin is quite in earnest, therefore, when he affirms that outside of the church there is no salvation. Calvin teaches, furthermore, that God has made the true church, separation from which is tantamount to apostasy, discernible by the two marks of the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments. ‘Wherever we see God’s word purely preached and heard and the sacraments administered in accordance with Christ’s institution’, he writes, ‘that there a church of God exists is in no way to be doubted’.15 Calvin, indeed, counsels tolerance of defects in churches that retain the two marks in their integrity and even forbids separation from churches that depart from the marks in relatively minor respects. ‘Something of imperfection’, he writes, ‘may creep into the administration either of the doctrine or the sacraments, but this must not alienate us from her [the church’s] communion’.16 Accordingly, Calvin advises his supporters in Geneva to submit to the authority of the ministers who replaced Farel and himself during their exile from Geneva, notwithstanding these ministers’ unlawful appointment.17 Similarly, he counsels the congregation of Reformed refugees in Wesel18 to tolerate irregularities in the Lutheran administration of the Lord’s Supper. He expresses regret at John Hooper’s intransigence in refusing to don episcopal vestments;19 and he declares himself willing to submit to the authority of a reformed episcopacy.20 Calvin’s solicitude for the peace and unity of the church notwithstanding, he maintains that Christians not only may, but must, separate from the communion of Rome. ‘It is not only lawful for the faithful to shake off the Pope’s yoke today, but also necessary’, he asserts, ‘because they cannot keep his laws without departing from God’.21 Calvin grants, admittedly, that Catholic congregations are churches in an attenuated sense of the term. ‘I say they are churches’, he writes, ‘insofar as the Lord here amazingly conserves remnants of his people, albeit dispersed and scattered, and insofar as a few tokens of the church remain’.22 He insists, nonetheless, that, because they lack the two indispensable marks of the church, the preaching of the word and the due administration of the sacraments, ‘each [Roman Catholic] congregation and the whole body lack the lawful form of the church’.23

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Calvin displays little sympathy, moreover, for those persons who plead incompetence to distinguish between true and false doctrine as an excuse for remaining within Rome’s fold. ‘Today’, he writes, ‘we see that many are wilfully blind, because they think they are acquitted before God if they plead simplicity and say they are not credulous out of vice, but because they dare not curiously inquire’.24 With the Holy Spirit’s assistance, Calvin maintains, ordinary Christians may determine with relative ease whether, on the whole, their ministers preach in accordance with God’s word. ‘Everyone’, he writes: who wishes to discern with certainty among the various doctrines, by which the world is stirred, or rather shaken violently, can easily extricate himself from the confusion if he only offers himself to Christ as a disciple, and connects the Law and the Prophets with the Gospel, and uses this rule to test all doctrines; and meanwhile relies not on his own acumen, but subjects himself to God and entreats him for the spirit of judgment and discretion.25 While Calvin allows that a few regenerate persons remain within Rome’s communion,26 then, he seems scarcely capable of envisioning circumstances under which a responsible Christian could acknowledge Rome’s authority. One may safely conclude, therefore, that, in Calvin’s view, the vast majority of genuine Christians are Protestants. Even among these, moreover, Calvin’s affirmation of the inseparability of justification and sanctification excludes all but the devout.27 Naturally, Calvin holds that God alone can discern who are regenerate and who are not. ‘Of those . . . who publicly wear his badge’, Calvin writes, ‘his eyes alone see who are holy without pretense’.28 Nevertheless, Calvin asserts, God has prescribed criteria by which human beings ought provisionally to distinguish between the regenerate and the unregenerate among their peers. ‘Because he foresaw it to be somewhat profitable for us to know who are to be regarded as his sons’, writes Calvin: he has to this end accommodated himself to our capacity. And because [in this matter] the certitude of faith was not necessary, he substituted in its place a certain judgment of charity by which we acknowledge as members of the church those who by confession of faith, example of life, and participation in the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us.29 It might seem, therefore, that Calvin entertains the possibility of salvation only for those persons who profess an orthodox creed, live in a godly manner

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and participate in the sacraments of the church. We shall attempt to show in the following, however, that such a verdict would be premature.

Exceptional Cases That Calvin does not apply the criteria he sets forth in a draconian manner so as to exclude as many as possible from salvation appears from his treatment of three classes of persons: viz. unbaptized infants, children who die in their infancy and adults on the margins of the visible church. 1. Unbaptized infants. As to the first of these, Calvin at times seems implicitly to exclude them from salvation by representing baptism as a condition of membership in the visible church. In his Institutes, for example, Calvin defines baptism as ‘the sign of the initiation by which we are admitted into the society of the church’.30 In his second response to Westphal, likewise, Calvin asserts that ‘the proper function of baptism is to engraft us into the body of Christ’.31 Calvin holds, furthermore, that persons cannot consciously refuse baptism ‘without simultaneously rejecting the entire gospel’.32 ‘By neglect of baptism’, he writes, ‘we are excluded from salvation’.33 Nevertheless, Calvin insists that baptism does not constitute an indispensable condition of salvation. ‘There is a middle station’, he explains: between free and necessary, as the Romanists understand the latter word. For we also confess the use of baptism to be necessary: that it is not lawful for anyone to omit it through either negligence or contempt. And in this way we by no means make it free. We not only severely bind the faithful to its observance, but we also assert that it is God’s ordinary instrument in cleansing and renovating us and in finally communicating salvation to us. This only we except, lest God’s hand be bound to the instrument, that he can accomplish salvation of himself. For where the possibility of baptism is absent, God’s promise alone abundantly suffices.34 Calvin asserts, in other words, that when the Reformed deny baptism’s indispensability to salvation, they mean neither to deny its obligatoriness nor to dispute its salvific efficacy, when properly understood. The Reformed wish merely to acknowledge God’s power to save without the instrument of baptism, at least in extraordinary conditions. To Westphal’s criticism that baptism cannot constitute an entry into the church, outside of which there is no salvation, if one can obtain salvation without baptism’s aid, Calvin responds by calling attention to persons, such as

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Cornelius, who received saving faith and repentance unto life before they received baptism. ‘If he [Westphal] denies that they were members of the church before baptism’, writes Calvin, ‘then, according to him, the effect of faith and repentance will be nothing’.35 Since this consequence is manifestly unacceptable, Calvin asks, ‘What, therefore, is left but for Westphal to concede to me that in some respect . . . they were members of the church who were later initiated into her society by baptism?’36 This consideration amounts to more than a mere reductio ad absurdum against Westphal; for Calvin, arguing against Lutherans and Anabaptists alike, grounds the propriety of infant baptism in the claim that believers’ descendants are members of the church before they receive baptism. ‘Infants are to be baptized’, writes Calvin, ‘because they are of the household of the church [domestici ecclesiae]. For pedobaptism rests on this law: that God already acknowledges as his own those who are presented to him by our ministry’.37 This is especially significant for our present discussion, because it implies that the possibility of children’s salvation before baptism does not necessarily constitute an exception to the principle Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The rite of baptism, Calvin explains, constitutes the New Testament equivalent of circumcision. ‘The promise . . . is one in both’, he argues: viz. that of the paternal favour of God, the remission of sins and eternal life. . . . The thing represented, moreover, is one and the same, viz. regeneration. The foundation on which the fulfilment of these things rests is one in both. . . . It is right to conclude, therefore, that whatever pertains to circumcision pertains likewise to baptism, excepting the difference of the visible ceremony. . . . Baptism has taken circumcision’s place that it may perform the same functions for us.38 Infants received circumcision under the old dispensation, Calvin maintains, because they were already the seed of Abraham, whom God had promised that he would be the God of his progeny (Gen 17:7). Since the descendants of Christians are Abraham’s descendants (Rom 4:16; Gal 3:7, 29), Calvin argues, they too are entitled to the confirmation of this status by an outward seal. ‘Otherwise’, he writes, ‘if the testimony by which the Jews were assured of the salvation of their seed were snatched away from us, God’s grace would be made by Christ’s advent more obscure and less attested to us than it was beforehand for the Jews’.39 Likewise, Calvin reasons, one cannot hold that God necessarily damns unbaptized infants without implying that Christ’s coming withdrew from human beings privileges they possessed before his Incarnation. For in the old dispensation, he

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claims, death before circumcision did not imperil children’s salvation. ‘Because it was then not lawful to circumcise before the eighth day’, he writes: if anyone died three days after birth, there was no harm, since the covenant and the promise to him sufficed for the right of adoption. Now, when a day is not prescribed for baptism, it is more than absurd that those, who through neither contempt nor negligence omit the sign, be defrauded of a blessing from God that the Jews obtained under the law. Otherwise, we would have to say that Christ came not to fulfil, but to abolish the promises, inasmuch as the promise that beforehand sufficed of itself to confer salvation, will now not be fulfilled without the aid of a sign.40 Calvin’s argument for the salvation of unbaptized infants might appear deficient, admittedly, inasmuch as he establishes that they belong to the elect only in a mitigated sense of the term. Calvin distinguishes quite sharply, that is to say, between the sense in which God elects all descendants of believers and the sense in which he elects only some of these to eternal life. All children of the covenant, Calvin maintains, are holy secundum quid and possess membership in the outward community of the faithful and a conditional promise of salvation. Nevertheless, many of these children, whom one might term ‘generally elect’, do not receive the grace of regeneration. ‘A twofold class of sons’, he writes: appears in the church. For, because the entire body of the people is gathered together by one and the same voice into God’s sheepfold, all without exception are in this respect accounted sons. The name ‘church’ is applied indiscriminately to them all. Yet, in God’s inmost sanctuary, no others are reckoned God’s sons than those in whom the promise is ratified by faith.41 Writing of the church in the almost exclusively Jewish form in which it existed before Pentecost, likewise, Calvin explains: God’s election for that people was twofold; for the one was general and the other special. Holy Jacob’s election was special, for he was truly one of God’s sons. Special also was the election of those who are called by Paul sons of the promise. There was another, a general election, because he received his [Jacob’s] entire seed into his faith and offered his covenant to them all. . . . [These] were, indeed, in their own manner elect: i.e. God offered them the covenant of salvation. By their ingratitude, nonetheless, they caused God to abandon them and to repudiate them as sons.42

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God denies saving grace to some heirs of the covenant, then; indeed, Calvin believes, he denies it to most. ‘Few are saved’, he writes, ‘compared with the vast multitude of those who take to themselves the name of God’s people’.43 It seems at least conceivable, therefore, that all of those who die before baptism might suffer damnation. Nevertheless, Calvin manifestly believes that some covenant children who die before they undergo baptism can receive salvation. In his words, ‘their fiction is plainly to be rejected, who adjudge all of the unbaptized subject to eternal death’.44 Calvin appears to supply no compelling exegetical warrant, however, for the conclusion that even one infant, who is born after Pentecost and yet dies before her baptism, attains final beatitude. His willingness to affirm that some unbaptized infants who die unbaptized definitely attain salvation, then, may indicate a kind of presumption on Calvin’s part of divine mercy at least in a restricted number of cases. 2. Those who die in early childhood. The question of whether baptism is under some circumstances dispensable, naturally, differs from that of whether salvation for those who die in infancy, when they are apparently incapable of faith, repentance, and so on, is conceivable at all. Although we have touched on this issue when discussing the fate of unbaptized infants, we have yet to address directly Calvin’s explanation of the very possibility of infant salvation. That, in Calvin’s view, some who die in early childhood do undergo salvation seems unmistakable. In his Institutes, for example, he asserts that ‘it is altogether certain that some of that age are saved’.45 Likewise, he declares elsewhere, ‘To exclude that age from the grace of redemption would be excessively cruel’.46 Calvin finds what he takes to be three conclusive arguments for the possibility of infant salvation, moreover, in the examples of John the Baptist, the infant Jesus and the children whom Christ took in his arms and blessed. Referring to Luke 1:15b, in which Gabriel tells Zechariah that his son will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, Calvin writes: ‘one may clearly see that the angel, when he declared this to Zechariah, meant . . . that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit before he was born’.47 If God can do this in John’s case, Calvin reasons, he can do likewise in others. Calvin argues similarly that the case of the infant Jesus renders infants’ salvability indisputable. ‘If’, Calvin asserts, ‘we have in Christ the most perfect [absolutissimum] exemplar of all graces, this also will certainly be for us a proof that the age of infancy is not utterly averse to sanctification’.48 Third, Calvin argues that Christ’s blessing of children constitutes firm evidence of their salvation. Commenting on Matt 19:14, Calvin writes: ‘Certainly, the imposition of hands was no frivolous or ineffectual token, nor did Christ pour his prayers into the air in vain. He could not solemnly offer them to God without giving them purity, however. What did he, then, pray for them but that

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they might be received among God’s sons? Whence it follows that they were regenerated by the Spirit to the hope of salvation’.49 To the objection that God regenerates human beings by faith alone, and that infants, who know neither good nor evil (Deut 1:39), are incapable of faith, Calvin responds with a twofold argument. First, abandoning the position he advocates in his Institutes of 1536,50 Calvin maintains that God does not require faith of infants as a condition of eternal beatitude. ‘When they [the Anabaptists] contend that we are not otherwise reconciled to God . . . than by faith’, Calvin writes, ‘we admit this of adults, but that it holds for infants, this passage [Matt 19:14] proves false’.51 Second, hearkening back to the views expressed in his Institutes of 1536, Calvin asserts that God might conceivably endow infants with a kind of latent, seminal faith that suffices for their justification. He asks in his Institutes of 1559, for example, ‘Why may the Lord not also at present, if he so pleases, shine with a small spark on those whom he will illumine [in the beatific vision] with his light’s full splendour . . . ?’52 Calvin does not claim that God might endow infants with an adult-like apprehension of the truths of faith. ‘I do not wish’, he writes, ‘rashly to affirm that they are provided with the same faith as that which we experience in ourselves, or that they have altogether the same knowledge of faith’.53 Nor does Calvin endorse the claim of numerous later Reformed theologians that God justifies all infants whom he saves through a habitus or potentia fidei that he infuses in them. Nevertheless, he clearly entertains the possibility that God might save infants in some similar manner.54 The implications of all of this for the sense in which Calvin affirms extra ecclesiam nulla salus will remain obscure, it seems, unless we can determine whether some of those whom God regenerates before they attain the use of reason are outside of the covenant: sc. not descended directly or remotely from regenerate persons.55 Calvin seems to exclude from the elect at least some persons who are born outside of the covenant and who die in infancy. In a résumé of Servetus’s errors drawn up by Calvin, for instance, appears the claim that ‘whatever infants and children are taken from life are exempt from eternal death’.56 Again, contesting Pighius’s denial that original sin entails eternal damnation, Calvin and the entire Venerable Company argue: If original guilt does not suffice, for Pighius, to damn people, and the secret judgement of God has no place whatsoever, what will he make of infant children who, before they can bring forth any such specimen because of their age, have been snatched away from this life? When the infants who died in Sodom and in Jerusalem had the same condition of being born and dying, and there was no difference at all in their works: why will Christ in the last day separate them, some standing on his right, others on the left?57

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Also relevant in this context is Calvin’s startling challenge to Castellio: ‘Put forth now your virulence against God, who hurls blameless infants, torn from their mothers’ breasts, to eternal death’.58 Calvin manifestly denies, then, that all who die in infancy are among the elect. This is significant for our current discussion, because if Calvin thought otherwise and excused even those infants who, being outside of the covenant, are in no sense members of the church from the requirement of church membership, then he would seem implicitly to dispense all persons invincibly ignorant of the gospel from this requirement. As the matter stands, however, Calvin does not unambiguously affirm that anyone outside of the covenant who dies in infancy attains salvation. Indeed, to our knowledge, he does not guarantee that all of those within the covenant who die in infancy attain salvation, although he manifestly believes that some do. 3. Adults on the margins of the visible church. In order to determine precisely what Calvin means by his endorsement of the axiom Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, naturally, we must consider not only infants, but also adults who lack the disabilities for which Calvin makes allowance in young children. Especially relevant to our inquiry are adults, whom Calvin declares regenerate at a time when they cannot participate in any conventional manner in the life of the visible church. Accordingly, we shall consider in this section Calvin’s discussions of three such persons: Cornelius, Naaman and the Canaanite woman of Matthew 15. a. Cornelius. The case of the centurion Cornelius poses special difficulties for Calvin in that, on a superficial reading at least, Scripture: (a) ascribes to him good works before his regeneration, and (b) represents Peter’s proclamation of the gospel to him as the reward of those good works. Calvin, nevertheless, argues that Cornelius must have been regenerate before the angel charged him to send for Peter. Cornelius’s ‘fear of God and piety’, he writes, ‘clearly demonstrate that he had been regenerated by the Spirit. For Ezekiel59 reserves this praise to God alone: that he frames the hearts of men to fear him’.60 Calvin appears to believe, moreover, that, before his initial encounter with Peter, Cornelius fulfilled the three criteria he sets forth for discerning the living members of the visible church: viz. profession of the orthodox faith, righteous conduct and participation in the sacraments. Acts 10:2 and 4 render Cornelius’s piety unquestionable. Likewise, Calvin argues, Cornelius could not have prayed in a God-pleasing manner if he had not possessed true faith. ‘For’, writes Calvin, ‘he could have achieved nothing through prayers unless faith had gone before, because it alone opens for us the door to praying’.61 Admittedly, Calvin grants, Cornelius’s apparent ignorance of Christ the mediator poses a severe difficulty for the contention that Cornelius savingly believed before he encountered Peter’s preaching. ‘Cornelius’, he acknowledges, ‘a man who was a Gentile and a Roman, could hardly have comprehended what was not understood by all of the Jews’.62 Nevertheless, Calvin argues, he cannot

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have failed to possess knowledge of the Messiah sufficient to attain salvation. ‘He certainly did not thus embrace the worship of the true God, whom only the Jews used to adore, without also having heard something about the promised mediator; granted that his knowledge was obscure and implicit, yet there was some’.63 The theme of redemption by the Messiah so pervaded the Jews’ religion in those days, Calvin continues, that one could not even reside in Judea without attaining some knowledge of him. Hence, Calvin concludes, ‘Cornelius is to be placed in the catalog of the old fathers who hoped for salvation by a redeemer who had not yet been made known’.64 In other words, if the scanty materials available to Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and so on, sufficed to convey saving knowledge of Christ to them, surely Cornelius’s instruction could have performed the same function for him. Although Calvin does not say so explicitly, moreover, it seems that he must either regard attendance by Cornelius at synagogue worship sufficient to fulfil the requirement of participation in the sacraments, or consider Cornelius dispensed in some measure from this demand. Regardless of Calvin’s precise opinion, he displays remarkable magnanimity in discussing the case of Cornelius, who presumably failed to receive circumcision. Calvin’s liberality towards Cornelius, then, suffices to falsify any rigoristic construal of his insistence on incorporation into the church as a prerequisite of salvation. b. Naaman. Calvin’s discussion of Naaman tends further to qualify his statements about the necessity of church membership to salvation. He affirms, admittedly, that Naaman possessed a rudimentary faith in the Messiah and that he received this from Elisha. ‘Seeing that Elisha instructed him about small matters’, Calvin explains, ‘it would have been too absurd for him to have been silent about the most important point’.65 Likewise, Calvin insists, Naaman strikingly manifested his piety by abstaining, unlike all of his countrymen, from idolatrous worship. Calvin’s remarks on this subject occur in the context of arguments against what Calvin dubbed Nicodemism: the practice of those who, their Protestant convictions notwithstanding, participate in the mass in order to conceal their Protestant faith and, so, escape persecution.66 In defence of their conduct, such persons argue that they commit no sacrilege as long as they worship purely in their hearts and cite as a precedent for their behaviour the conduct of Naaman who, after his conversion to the true religion, made the following request to Elisha. ‘May the Lord pardon your servant on one count. When my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count’ (2 Kings 5:18). In reply to this argument, Calvin distinguishes sharply between the Nicodemites’ practice and that of Naaman. ‘This’ he writes:

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is the form of the request: if my king, perchance, enters the temple of Rimmon and worships, leaning on me, if I at the same time worship in the temple of Rimmon, let the Lord not impute this thing to his servant. If they do not observe . . . this that is so plainly, so notably said about the king’s leaning on him, they are indeed obtuse. For from this he is inferred without controversy to have requested no other worship to be conceded to him than that he may accommodate himself to the bending of the king, whom he upholds.67 Naaman, in other words, sought permission not to worship Rimmon, but merely to bend so as to avoid dropping his king. Calvin insists, moreover, that Naaman made it unmistakable to all that he abhorred Rimmon and all other false gods. Before he uttered the request to which the Nicodemites appeal, Calvin observes, Naaman promised that he would never again perform sacred rites to gods other than the God of Israel. ‘Under this promise was comprehended’, Calvin continues, ‘a public testimony whereby he would make both the king and the entire nation of Syria aware of his religion’.68 Hence, Calvin ascribes to Naaman the singular courage openly to abandon the religion of his nation, while dwelling within it, and to adopt the religion of another. Given Naaman’s circumstances, this appears to qualify Naaman as one who displayed the holy example of life Calvin treats as characteristic of the church’s living members. Any claim that Naaman participated in the church’s sacraments, however, would seem highly problematic. As Calvin admits, ‘We do not read that Naaman was circumcised, and it is unlikely he was’.69 Naaman, accordingly, lacked what in his time was the seal of the covenant. Likewise, Naaman did not participate in Israel’s worship even to the extent that Cornelius did, although he did transport two mule-loads of earth to Aram that he might sacrifice to God on Israelite soil (2 Kings 5:17). Like Cornelius, it seems, Naaman possessed adequate faith and a sterling post-conversion life, but participated in the sacraments only in the most oblique of senses; and this apparently sufficed, in Calvin’s eyes, to qualify him as a member of the visible church. c. The Canaanite woman of Matthew 15. The Canaanite woman of Matthew 15 seems even more remote from a churchly existence than do Cornelius or Naaman. Like these figures, the woman clearly possessed a rudimentary faith. ‘Although this woman was foreign to the Lord’s flock’, Calvin asserts, ‘she had, nonetheless, imbibed some taste of piety. For, without some knowledge of the promises, she would not have called Christ the son of David’.70 Evidently, Calvin holds, she possessed some knowledge of God’s word and of the redeemer promised therein. The Canaanite woman’s perseverance, moreover, evidences a strength of character becoming someone endowed with saving faith. ‘With only a small

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spark of doctrine as her guide’, Calvin writes, ‘she not only discerned the authentic office of Christ and attributed heavenly power to him, but persevered constantly through such arduous obstacles. She allowed herself to be abased, retaining only her conviction that she would not fail to secure Christ’s help’.71 The Canaanite woman, nevertheless, seems in no way to have partaken of the sacraments. Even the penitent thief presumably excelled her in this respect.72 In at least one case, then, Calvin considers sharing in the church’s sacramental life inessential to that membership in Christ’s visible body, which he regards as indispensable to salvation. 4. Conclusion. Calvin displays considerable flexibility, then, in his interpretation of the axiom Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. As we have seen, he explicitly dispenses those children of the covenant who die in infancy from all of his criteria for identifying the living members of the visible church. His comments about the integrality of assurance to saving faith and the indispensability of commitment to Scripture as a whole notwithstanding, Calvin seems willing to acknowledge only a smattering of knowledge as sufficient for the salvation of mentally competent adults. He even appears to regard participation in the sacraments as inessential to the salvation of adults in certain circumstances. By no means, therefore, does Calvin construe the necessity of church membership to salvation in a draconian manner.

The Destiny of the Unevangelized We should be remiss if, before concluding our inquiry, we did not briefly explore Calvin’s views about the eternal prospects of those who grow to adulthood, but, through no fault of their own, never encounter the proclamation of the gospel. Calvin’s most superficially promising statement pertinent to this subject occurs late in his Institutes in the context of a discussion of infant baptism. ‘When he [Paul] makes hearing the beginning of faith’, Calvin writes: he describes only the ordinary economy and dispensation of the Lord, to which he customarily keeps in calling his own. He, moreover, does not determine in advance for him a perpetual rule so that he may never use another way. He has certainly used such a way in the calling of many, whom in an interior manner, by the illumination of the Spirit with no preaching intervening, he has given true knowledge of himself.73 The context of this passage suggests that Calvin refers primarily to God’s endowment of infants with incipient faith. Milder affirmations of God’s power to save human beings by extraordinary means, however, appear scattered

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throughout Calvin’s corpus. Commenting on Rom 10:14, for example, Calvin notes that, although Paul refers explicitly only to the word preached, he does not mean to suggest that God can communicate saving faith only through human preaching. ‘If anyone . . . contends that God cannot instil the knowledge of himself in men otherwise than by the instrument of preaching’, he writes, ‘we shall deny that this was the intention of the apostle, who considered only the ordinary dispensation of God, but did not wish to prescribe a law for his grace’.74 Statements such as these testify powerfully to Calvin’s determination not to answer questions about which Scripture is silent and not to depreciate God’s power to operate as he pleases. They appear, moreover, to reflect a cautious optimism that God may in exceptional cases save human beings who never encounter human proclamation of the Gospel. Calvin’s remarks about the unevangelized in his Institutes 2.6.1, however, give the opposite impression. After declaring knowledge of God as creator without knowledge of Christ as inadequate for salvation, Calvin writes, ‘Hence, all the more loathsome is their stupidity, who open heaven to any and all of the impious and unbelieving, who are without the grace of him whom scripture everywhere teaches to be the one and only door through which we enter into salvation’.75 In almost vituperative language, Calvin then proceeds to remind the reader that all outside of Christ are estranged from God, accursed and children of wrath; that under the law, the redeemer was promised to the chosen people alone; that all the heathen are without God and bereft of hope, and so on. One can reconcile Calvin’s pessimism about the destiny of the unevangelized with his openness to the Spirit’s ability to work in an extraordinary manner, it seems, by viewing these seeming contradictories in the light of several of Calvin’s fundamental principles and one of his most striking illustrations. The fundamental principles are familiar. As we have already seen, Calvin considers faith indispensable to the salvation of adults, and believes that saving faith requires knowledge of the gospel. ‘That one thing’, writes Calvin, ‘that suffices for our complete happiness, and without which we are most miserable, is not otherwise conferred on us than through the gospel’.76 The ordinary means by which human beings learn of the gospel, according to Calvin, is the church’s preaching. In Acts 10:36, he explains, Peter ‘expressly conjoins peace with preaching, because this is the one and only way by which the fruit of the reconciliation procured by Christ reaches us’.77 Nevertheless, Calvin indicates in a different context, ‘We certainly do not deny that it is possible for us to be perfected by God’s power alone without the assistance of men’.78 Calvin indicates something of the extent to which he believes God exercises such extraordinary influence in a remarkable illustration of the necessity of preaching. In 1 Cor 3:6, Calvin explains, Paul likens the preaching of God’s word to agriculture. In order for the earth to yield crops, the farmer must labour.

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Yet his labour is wasted if God does not give the increase. Likewise, in order for God’s word to bear fruit, ministers must preach. Yet their preaching will be wasted if the Spirit does not engender faith in their hearers. This comparison, Calvin asserts, underscores the necessity of diligently preaching God’s word. ‘It would be no more difficult’, he writes: for God to bless the earth without the diligence of men, so that it would bring forth food of itself, than to coax, or rather wrest, its yield from it through much assiduity by men and great sweat and trouble. Yet, because the Lord has so ordained that man should labor, and the earth should respond to his husbandry, let us proceed accordingly. Likewise, nothing hinders God from being able to inspire faith in sleeping persons, if he wishes, without the activity of men. Yet he has decreed otherwise so that faith is assuredly produced by hearing. Therefore, the person who, though he despises this means, trusts that he will obtain faith, acts just as if farmers, casting aside the plough, neglecting sowing and abandoning all cultivation, were to open their mouths and expect to be provided with food from heaven.79 This agricultural metaphor, it seems, captures precisely the kind of relation Calvin envisions between God’s ordinary manner of gathering the church through preaching and his ability to communicate the Christian faith by extraordinary means or no means at all. Few Christians of Calvin’s day would have denied that God could rain food from heaven; according to Scripture, he did so for forty years during Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Yet no one would have expected God to do this, even for Christians in peril of starvation. Likewise, it seems, Calvin sincerely believes that God can convey knowledge of the gospel without the mediation of human beings. Yet he does not expect God to do this even once. One who thinks in this manner, it seems, could both fulminate as Calvin does in Institutes 2.6.1 about the vile stupidity of those who open heaven to the unevangelized and still affirm, as Calvin does elsewhere, that it is God’s prerogative to save human beings in whatever manner he chooses.

Conclusion Calvin, then, is no advocate of the ‘wider hope’ as to the salvation of the unevangelized, which became fashionable in the nineteenth century and had already found favour in Calvin’s day with humanist intellectuals like Erasmus and Zwingli. Neither, however, is he so stern and unbending an exclusivist as to debar from

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heaven infants who die unbaptized or those who, like Naaman, fail because of special circumstances formally to unite themselves to the covenant community. Calvin, admittedly, does consider membership of the visible church to be a condition of salvation. He qualifies the sense in which salvation is conditional on church membership, however, in two ways. First, Calvin views incorporation into the church through baptism as necessary to salvation only by a necessity of precept, not by a necessity of means. In other words, Calvin does not regard the sacrament as indispensable to the salvation of infants or adults. Otherwise, the salvation of unbaptized infants and of the apparently uncircumcised Naaman would be inconceivable. Second, Calvin regards incorporation into the visible church through baptism as a consequent condition, not an antecedent condition, of eternal blessedness. Calvin believes, that is to say, that God forgives human beings of their sins through the instrumentality of faith alone and not in any sense through the baptism by which one gains entry into the community of the church. Nevertheless, Calvin also holds that the God who forgives human beings through faith in Christ governs their lives henceforth in such a way that they bring forth fruit unto holiness, one aspect of which ordinarily consists in faithful adherence to God’s visible church. Calvin articulates a version of the classic Christian conviction, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, then, that neither closes the kingdom of God to those who lack access to the church’s sacraments nor expands the sense of ecclesia so radically as to render persons who have never heard the gospel, intra ecclesiam for the purpose of salvation. In the context of his time, Calvin charts something of a via media: allowing for the salvation of persons relatively isolated from the visible church without blunting the radicality of Reformation Christianity’s exclusive claims.

Notes 1 Cf. Institutio religionis christianae (henceforth, Inst.) 4.1.8 (OS 5:13), especially the final sentence. All translations in this chapter are our own. 2 Cf. Inst. 4.1.10 (OS 5:14–15) and Calvin’s Confession de foy au nom des églises des réformées du royaume de France (CO 9:763). 3 Dilucida explicatio de vera participatione carnis et sanguinis Christi in sacra coena ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas (CO 9:522–3). Cf. also Confession de foy (CO 9:757) and Commentarius super (henceforth, Comm.) Eph 3:12 (CO 51:183). 4 Comm. Gal 1:8 (CO 50:173). 5 Comm. Tit 1:1 (CO 52:404). This conviction plays a central role in Calvin’s polemic against the Catholic notion of ‘implicit faith’. Cf. Inst. 3.2.2 (OS 4:10). 6 Inst. 3.2.7 (OS 4:16). Cf. Comm. Rom 4:14 (CO 49:78) and Comm. 1 Cor 2:12 (CO 49:342).

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology Comm. Acts 10:33 (CO 48:241). Cf. Interim adultero-germanum, cui adiecta est vera christianae pacificationis ratio (CO 7:599). Comm. 1 Tim 3:15 (CO 52:288). Comm. Rom 10:15 (CO 49:205). Inst. 3.21.7 (OS 4:379). Cf. 3.24.12 (OS 4:423) and Comm. Amos 8:11 (CO 43:151). Inst. 4.1.4 (OS 5:7). Calvin’s employment of maternal imagery for the church here and elsewhere recalls Cyprian’s De unitate ecclesiae 5–6. For the two thinkers’ conceptions of the unity of the church and these conceptions’ interrelations, cf. Anette Zillenbiller, Die Einheit der katholischen Kirche: Calvins Cyprianrezeption in seinen ecclesiologischen Schriften (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1993), 133–54. Comm. Gal 4:26 (CO 50:239). Cf. Comm. Acts 2:47 (CO 48:61). Articuli a facultate Parisiensi determinati. Cum antidoto 21 (CO 7:34). Catechismus Genevensis (henceforth, Cat. Gen.), qq. 104–5 (OS 2:90–1). Inst. 4.1.9 (OS 5:13). While Calvin considers the vigorous exercise of discipline necessary to the church’s well-being, he declares even the total absence of discipline in a church insufficient to warrant separation from it. ‘We confess indeed’, he writes, ‘that it is an imperfection and a grave blemish in a church, when this order is not at all present. Nevertheless, we do not cease to consider it a church and to persist in its communion, and we hold that it is not lawful for a private individual to separate from it’ (Brieve instruction pour armer tous bons fideles contre les erreurs de la secte commune des Anabaptistes [CO 7:65–6]). In Calvin’s view, therefore, discipline does not constitute a mark of the church in the strictest sense of the term. On the relation between discipline and the marks in Calvin’s ecclesiology, cf. Johannes Plomp, De kerkelijke tucht bij Calvijn (Kampen: Kok, 1969), 122–7. Inst. 4.1.12 (OS 5:16). Cf. e.g. Epistola (henceforth, Epist.) 149, ‘Calvinus Farello’ (CO 10b:274–5); Epist. 156, ‘Calvinus Pignaeo’ (CO 10b:307–10); and Epist. 175, ‘Calvinus Genevensi ecclesiae’ (CO 10b:350–5). Epist. 1929, ‘Le ministres de Genève aux frères de Wesel’ (CO 15:78–80). Epist. 1463, ‘Calvinus Bullingero’ (CO 14:75). Supplex exhortatio ad Caesarem et principes (CO 6:522–3). Calvin believes that God mandates no particular form of church polity. ‘Each of the churches’, he writes, ‘is free to institute a form of polity that is suitable and advantageous to itself, because God has prescribed nothing definite [about this]’ (Comm. 1 Cor 11:2 [CO 49:473]). Comm. Acts 23:5 (CO 48:506). Inst. 4.2.12 (OS 5:42). Cf. Iacobi Sadoleti epistola. Ioannis Calvini responsio (henceforth, Resp. ad epist. Sadoleti) at OS 1:476, Epist. 90, ‘Calvin a du Tillet’ (CO 10b:149), and Epist. 1323, ‘Calvinus Socino’ (CO 13:487). Inst. 4.2.12 (OS 5:42). Comm. Jer 27:15 (CO 38:555). Cf. Comm. Jer 23:21 (CO 38:432). Comm. Jer 29:9 (CO 38:590). Cf. Comm. Zech 11:17 (CO 44:320). Cf. e.g. Inst. 3.16.1 (OS 4:249), Resp. ad epist. Sadoleti (OS 1:470), and Comm. 1 Cor 1:30 (CO 49:331). Inst. 4.1.8 (OS 5:13). Inst. 4.1.8 (OS 5:13).

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30 Inst. 4.15.1 (OS 5:285). Cf. Comm. Tit 3:5 (CO 52:430). 31 Secunda defensio contra Ioachimi Westphali calumnias (henceforth, Def. sec. c. Westph.) at CO 9:114. 32 Comm. Isa 7:12 (CO 36:152). 33 Comm. John 3:5 (CO 47:55). 34 Acta synodi Tridentinae. Cum antidoto (CO 7:499). 35 Def. sec. c. Westph. (CO 9:114). Cf. Consensus Tigurinus 19 (CO 7:741). 36 Def. sec. c. Westph. (CO 9:115). 37 Appendix libelli adversus Interim (henceforth, App. lib. adv.) (CO 7:678). Cf. Inst. 4.15.22 (OS 5:303). 38 Inst. 4.16.4 (OS 5:308). 39 Inst. 4.16.6 (OS 5:310). Cf. Cat. Gen., qq. 336–8 (OS 2:136–7). 40 App. lib. adv. (CO 7: 682–3). 41 Comm. Gen 17:8 (CO 23:238). 42 Comm. Hos 12:3 (CO 42:454). The distinction between general and special election suffices to refute Egil Grislis’s charge that Calvin contradicts himself by: (a) declaring perseverance an inexorable consequence of election; and yet (b) admitting that covenant children, although elect, may apostatize (‘Calvin’s Doctrine of Baptism’, Church History 31 [1962], 46–65 at 56–7). For Calvin declares perseverance inevitable only for the specially elect: a class from which he excludes many generally elect covenant children. For a more thorough exposition of the notions of general and special election in Calvin’s theology, cf. Benjamin Charles Milner, Jr., Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 47–70. 43 Comm. Rom 11:5 (CO 49:214). 44 Inst. 4.16.26 (OS 5:331). 45 Inst. 4.16.17 (OS 5:321). 46 Comm. Matt 19:14 (CO 45:535). 47 Inst. 4.16.17 (OS 5:321). 48 Inst. 4.16.18 (OS 5:322). 49 Comm. Matt 19:14 (CO 45:535). 50 ‘No one is saved except by faith’, writes Calvin in 1536, ‘whether children or adults’ (OS 1:136). 51 Comm. Matt 19:14 (CO 45:535). 52 Inst. 4.16.19 (OS 5:323). 53 Inst. 4.16.19 (OS 5:323). 54 On the continuity between Calvin and later Reformed theologians on this subject, cf. Otto Gründler, ‘From Seed to Fruition: Calvin’s Notion of the semen fidei and Its Aftermath in Reformed Orthodoxy’ in Elsie Anne McKee and Brian G. Armstrong (eds), Probing the Reformed Tradition: Historical Studies in Honor of Edward A. Dowey. Jr. (Louisville, KY: WJK, 1989), 108–15. 55 In Calvin’s view, not only the immediate descendants of godly parents, but all infants who fall within the thousand generations of believers’ descendants to whom God promises mercy (Ex 20:6; Deut 5:10) are within the covenant and thus entitled to Christian baptism. Cf. Calvin’s App. lib. adv. (CO 7:680–1) and Epist. 3128, ‘Calvinus Knoxo’ (CO 17:666–7). This stance, as Richard Hooker observes, seems to entail a perverse consequence (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 3.1.12 in Works [Oxford: Clarendon, 1875] 1:285). If (a) the earth, as Calvin believes, is less than 6,000 years old (cf. Inst. 3.21.4 [OS 4:372]); (b) Adam, as Calvin also believes, is

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology among the elect (cf. Inst. 2.10.7 [OS 3:408]); and (c) a biblical generation lasts even six years; then Calvin’s position seems to imply that every infant alive is within the covenant and thus entitled to baptism. Naturally, Calvin rejects this conclusion (cf. Inst. 4.16.23–4 [OS 5:328–9]). Fidelis expositio errorum Michaelis Serveti et brevis eorundem refutatio ubi docetur iure gladii coercendos esse hæreticos (CO 8:642). De aeterna praedestinatione Dei (CO 8:309). De occulta Dei providentia 13–14 (CO 9:312). Calvin refers to Ezekiel here by mistake; the verse to which he alludes is Jer 32:40. Comm. Acts 10:4 (CO 48:226). Ibid. Inst. 3.2.32 (OS 4:43). Comm. Acts 10:4 (CO 48:227). Ibid. Inst. 3.2.32 (OS 4:43). For an overview of Calvin’s critique of Nicodemism as a whole, cf. Mirjam van Veen, ‘Verschooninghe van de roomsche afgoderye’: De polemiek van Calvin met nicodemetien, in het bijzonder met Coornhert (Utrecht: Hes & De Graaf, 2001), 35–68. De fugiendis impiorum illicitis sacris, et puritate christianae religionis observandae (OS 1:322). Ibid. (OS 1:321). Que doit faire une homme fidele entre les papistes (CO 6:559). Comm. Matt 15:22 (CO 45:456). Comm. Matt 15:28 (CO 45:459). Calvin considers circumcision and the Passover sacraments, the Old Testament equivalents of baptism and the Eucharist (cf. Comm. 1 Cor 10:1–3 [CO 49:451–4]; Inst. 4.14.26 [OS 5:284]). Being Jewish, the penitent thief would presumably have participated in these sacraments. Inst. 4.16.19 (OS 5:323). Comm. Rom 10:14 (CO 49:205). OS 3:321. Comm. 2 Cor 5:20 (CO 50:73). Comm. Acts 10:36 (CO 48:244). Comm. Eph 4:12 (CO 51:199). Comm. 1 Cor 3:6 (CO 49:350).

Chapter 4 Merely Quantifiable Realities? The ‘Vestigia Ecclesiae’ in the Thought of Calvin and its Twentieth-Century Reception Sandra Arenas Since the beginning of the twentieth century, an innovative category has entered discussions related to the restoration of Christian unity. The category vestigia Ecclesiae has been used by both Roman Catholic and non-Catholic theologians. As an ecclesiological category it is intimately bound to the ‘requirements’ of particular church membership, as well as membership of the Church of Christ as such. The doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae has been progressively reconfigured in terms of a doctrine of elementa Ecclesiae, which itself has been understood and employed differently in Roman Catholic, Protestant and ecumenical circles. From a systematic and historic point of view, this paper will examine the sixteenth-century doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae, including its reception in the doctrine of elementa and its content.

Sixteenth-Century Foundation of the Doctrine Calvin’s notion of Vestigia Calvin developed his ecclesiology in his principal theological work entitled Institutio Christianae Religionis; his views on the church underwent profound transformations in various successive editions from 1536 to the last one in 1559.1 In the second chapter of the fourth book in the last edition of the work (IV 2, 11), Calvin goes back to his doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae already formulated in the 1539 version. The context of this statement is his views on the nature of the church, stressing the church’s invisible aspects. Nonetheless, at the same time he also affirmed the visible reality of the church, which became increasingly central to him.2 Although the first foundation of the church and its unity is God’s election,3 and, therefore, its invisible origin is crucial and

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constitutive, Calvin acknowledges that the church is also spatially–temporally situated and its members are joined by the visible bond of the profession of the same faith and submission to the same authority. To the ‘pure preaching of the Word and the sacraments recte administered’ found in the Confessio Augustana,4 Calvin has, therefore, added the obedience of the community to the preached Word. In his mind, the communication of the Word of God goes through the living voice of the preacher, a nuance that leads him to acknowledge the importance of the physical presence of an auditive community. These marks are realities rather than as abstract criteria.5 Over and against the Roman Catholic Church, he argues that the latter lacks precisely these essential traces. However, contrary to Melanchthon,6 Calvin’s criticism of the ecclesial value of the Roman Catholic Church is not entirely negative. He does indeed claim that the Catholic Church teaches the Gospel erroneously and holds a false sacramental doctrine and practices; nonetheless, he concedes to the existence of some ecclesial elements in it, elements which he labels vestigia Ecclesiae. The afore-sketched is basically his understanding of the ‘primitive church’, which in Calvin’s eyes equals the true church, in which there was a visible and an organic institution established by Christ himself, and in which the pastors are necessary for both preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments. Calvin concludes that through baptism the papal institution contains certain vestigia of the initial church which testify to the presence of God: so in the present day we deny not to the Papists those vestiges of a Church which the Lord has allowed to remain among them amid the dissipation . . . So having deposited his covenant in Gaul, Italy, Germany, Spain, and England . . . He, in order that his covenant might remain inviolable, first preserved baptism there as an evidence of the covenant.7 They do not only refer to the traces of the church left in the papacy but they are also real vestigia present in the organized society.8 That vestigium is confirmed by the ordination beyond the dignity of the person. Calvin also introduces the category of reliquia, closely bound to vestigia, but distinguished from the notae Ecclesiae. The argumentation is clear: Therefore, while we are unwilling simply to concede the name of Church to the Papists, we do not deny that there are churches among them. The question we raise only relates to the true and legitimate constitution of the Church, implying communion in sacred rites, which are the signs of profession, and especially in doctrine . . . In one word, I call them churches, inasmuch as the Lord there wondrously preserves some remains (reliquias) of his people, though miserably and scattered, and inasmuch as some

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symbols of the Church still remain symbols especially whose efficacy neither the craft of the devil nor human depravity can destroy. But as, on the other hand, those marks to which we ought especially to have respect in this discussion are effaced, I say that the whole body, as well as every single assembly, want the form of a legitimate Church.9 Based upon insights of both Melanchthon and Luther, Calvin expresses various aspects of the authenticity and also disingenuousness of the elements which Reformation thinking and Roman Catholic views have in common. The Institutio and also the Confession de Foy of 1559 offer an ecclesiological criteriology: where the church’s community life no longer responds to these traces, it becomes possible and necessary to conclude to its non-existence as a church.10 Nevertheless, the Confession claimed that Catholicism has become une petite trace d’Église. In fact, given that for Calvin the true church is the reformed one, he evidently uses the notion of vestigia Ecclesiae in the pejorative connotation of ruin or wreckage.11 Thus, relations of communion between the two churches will always be deficient. Calvin’s doctrine implies that continuity exists despite the fault of the ministers.12 This idea would play a certain mediating role in the Protestant polemic against Roman Catholicism because, in Calvin’s perspective, the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church has not been destroyed. Later Reformers have taken up this category; the church could be founded in the papacy because the papacy has not destroyed the fundamental articles of the faith, it has just added inauthentic developments of it.13 Given that the vestigia have a pejorative connotation, evoking ruins, all the common elements between the churches may exist, but they have been damaged and have lost their original qualities.14 In this sense, a pertinent question arises: are the vestigia actual fragments of the true reality of the church, or mere mementos of its reality? It is clear that there are some terminological difficulties when addressing the issue, connected to the fact that two different types of ecclesiology adopt the same terms, seemingly applying them to distinct realities. This is an important issue for the ecumenical movement, because the classical Protestant doctrine considered the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments to be signa or notae of the church. Yet, from a Roman Catholic point of view, these same practices have been considered as constitutive elements of the church’s visible reality. Therefore, we think that Calvin’s expression of reliquiae would express that reality better than vestigia.15

The Roman Catholic congregatio fidelium Although the Council of Trent did not talk about vestigia, it shared an interest with the reformers in trying to develop a criterion for defining the original true

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Church focalizing itself on an implicit–practical ecclesiology, for instance, the ecclesiology of the salus animarum.16 The presence of the true church depends upon all four notes constituting the congregatio fidelium. Trent only indirectly addressed the problem of membership in the church, departing from an inclusive consideration of them17 by emphasizing historic–theological continuity as the external criterion by which to recognize the true tradition with binding value in the true Church18: We have received those traditions in and through the church by means of apostolic succession. Therefore, any external sign or criterion to consider a Christian community to belong to the ‘Church of Christ’ is based both upon an historical dimension (apostolic origin), and a historic–theological dimension (apostolic succession).19 The presence of these constitutive elements of the ‘Church of Christ’ is only given within the Roman Church. There was no room to face up the subject of the ecclesiastical values contained in separated communities as it was – in a way − done by Calvin. In line with this approach, the ecclesiology and the catechisms of the Counter-Reformation period mainly focus on the visible, hierarchical–institutional elements of the church, while its spiritual, charismatic reality tended to be overlooked.20 Thus, the vestigia Ecclesiae considered in relation to the Roman Catholic Church have considered an image of the church constituted by Christ as a perfect society in which its authority is complete and supreme21 and criterion of unity.22 All this shows the vera Ecclesia Christi.23 In sum, while Protestant theology was centred on the two properties of the Confessio Augustana, Catholic theologians gradually reduced the number of the notes of the church, until finally they were rooted in the four notions present in the Creed.24

The Twentieth-Century Reception of the Doctrine The ecumenical arena, from Vestigia to Elementa Ecclesiae Since the forties, and especially among Francophone theologians, we have found out the doctrine. In fact, as a methodological question already in 1937, Yves Congar asked himself what the status of the Églises separées is. To approach this, he appeals to the éleménts de l’Église as principles or realities of the relationship between God and his People in Christ.25 A person could spiritually be united with Christ, even without ecclesiastical communion; in this argumentation, the Christian dissidents might not be full members of the One Church, yet admit that they can possess éléments de l’Église on different levels. Around the same time, the category of vestigia Ecclesiae was brought to the ecumenical arena by a private meeting held at the Istina Centre in Paris in 194926

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for a group of Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians.27 On this occasion, Congar helped to focus upon the concept of vestigia Ecclesiae,28 where could be found a starting point for the rethinking of relations between the churches. 29 The World Council of Churches (WCC) gathered in Toronto in 1950. This was the first time that an official ecumenical document approached the issue of vestigia Ecclesiae. The document replaced the category of vestigia by elementa Ecclesiae, equalling the latter to elementa veritatis. It was officially declared the recognition of some elements which would determine the conditions for membership in the WCC. The final report pronounces the following thesis: The member Churches of the World Council recognize in other Churches elements of the true Church. They consider that this mutual recognition obliges them to enter into a serious conversation with each other in the hope that these elements of truth will lead to the recognition of the full truth and unity based on the full truth.30 So, on the one hand, in continuity with the Confessio Augustana, the assembly maintained that visible elementa were to be found among all churches participating in the ecumenical movement and are treated as constitutive elements of the church. Those traces are not merely indicia of the church, rather they constitute essential–visible elements, implying a mutual recognition of ecclesial value, and because of that they are called elementa veritatis themselves. The enunciation of the elementa veritatis could elicit some doubt about its exact meaning. In a general view, those elements seem to be a literal transposition of Article VII of the Confession of Augsburg.31 The WCC defended the necessity of visible unity through the so-called vestigia Ecclesiae as ‘elements of the Church’32 and held the conviction that outside of its own member churches it would be possible to find vestigia Ecclesiae, but never a true church. The elements and traces founded in both preached Word and sacraments administrated are of fundamental importance for the fact that membership in the Church of Christ is more comprehensive than membership in any one Church of the WCC.33 Because they constitute essential–visible elements of the true church, we do believe that Toronto was looking to establish the sacramental minima and doctrinal conditions for the unity of Christian confessions. Despite what they officially pointed out,34 still this is our concern whether the WCC claims to be more than a council, as an ecclesial body itself.35 The same year Congar redefined the list of those principles by saying that the elements which give structure to the church are a substantially correct faith, the sacraments and the apostolic ministry.36 Since they are essential to the nature of the church, their absence would indicate a less perfect realization of it.37

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Nevertheless, possessing something of the church, anyone can in fact be sanctified in them in and through their confession. The issue was taken up in April 1951 again at the invitation of l’Institut de Bossey by ecumenical Catholic scholars. A questionnaire containing 13 questions was published,38 and a meeting was organized in November at Présinge, Geneva. Its aim consisted in clarifying both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant positions regarding the Ecumenical Movement. This was done, in the aftermath of Toronto, precisely through an analysis of the doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae.39 In April 1952, the Conférence Catholique pour les Questions Oecuméniques was established in Fribourg, uniting several Catholic centres that were involved in unofficial ecumenical dialogue up until then.40 By means of concluding that meeting, Willebrands stated the following: ‘Nous reconnaissons la grande utilité d’un approfondissement d’une théologie des vestigia ecclesiae subsistant dans les communions dissidents.’41 Nothing on the elementa appears up to Evanston’s meeting, 1954.42 The first section of the report states that unity is rooted in the recognition of Christ as Saviour and the apostolic testimony expressed through the Word and the sacraments.43 The WCC member churches then “possess certain constitutive elements”44 of the unique Church of Christ which are visibly manifested.45 Even if Evanston claims four elements as Christian values, the Declaration does not reflect upon whether these elements can be considered purely and legitimately as present in the members themselves. Now then, how might we judge their existence independently of their pureness and validity?

Theological discussions on the elementa on the eve of Vatican II In his Histoire Doctrinal du Mouvement Oecuménique, Gustave Thils uses interchangeably vestigia Ecclesiae and elementa Ecclesiae,46 Thils stresses the explanation of the exact nature of the éléments on different levels, formulated as questions: Can all the communities which come from the Reformation possess religious and Christian realities of an ecclesiastical nature? What are these exactly? What is their theological meaning? Preliminarily, Thils concludes that all of those realities must be realities of ecclesiastical nature. 47 The question then remains on how to define the limits between Christian and ecclesiastical goods?48 His further development takes on two different forms: On the one hand, he says that one should consider the entire church reality, both in its invisible and visible constitution, and then call elements of the church those goods which are essentiel or propre to the church.49 In this case, we end up having elements of the church of an invisible nature, such as the Holy Spirit’s presence, and we would also have to acknowledge elements of the church such as its visible nature within

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apostolic succession.50 Significant for our purpose is that Thils enters into discussion with sixteenth-century debates saying that the51 comparative treatment of the notes would logically have implied a study of the ecclesiastical values contained in separated Christian communities. It was done, however, in the course of the seventeenth century, which implied a study of Christian values. In the same way, other authors at that time have considered the vestigia as being traces (Restspuren) of the unique and true Church present in other communities; it implies to recognize the realities of the ecclesial being (wirklichkeiten des kirchlichen Seins) present in the communities which have separated from Rome.52 Clarifying the content of the éléments, Thils stresses the identification of ‘elements of the Church’ with ecclesiastical patrimony. This category had already been mentioned at the Toronto Assembly as ‘certain aspects of the Church,’ and it was used in subsequent magisterial documents, as well.53 At the end, he installs a certain gradation in the possession of the elements by stressing that all of them are driven towards communion, which will be more or less full communion, according with the ecclesiological relevance of those elements. Thils says that the collection of those means of grace constitutes l’institution apostolique dans son intégrité, stating that ‘integrity’ does not imply perfection.54 On the basis of this affirmation, Roman Catholics cannot affirm that they possess the elements in their complete actuality, perfection or vitality.55 In 1956, Charles Boyer published a work on our subject, entering into discussion with all of the authors who have used the category of vestigia Ecclesiae in ecumenical circles. He chiefly examines the reception of it in Protestant theology, pointing out that the understanding of vestigia has to do with the understanding of what the church is as such. He draws a distinction between plenitude and constitution of the church by saying that the church can be constituted in its essence even if she is not constituted likewise in her plenitude.56 The criteria then to be called church are restricted to possessing the essential elements, namely: doctrine, sacraments and organization. When there is presence of only one or two of them, they are to be called vestigia or elements. As signes de l’Église dans les Églises, Giovanni Miegge treated the topic of the vestigia Ecclesiae in 1957.57 He exposed Calvin’s teaching in a much more positive light, seeing in the notion of vestigia an expression of the indefectibility of the church. He claims that the Calvinist expressions were adopted in Toronto as a possible means of defining the basis upon which an encounter would become possible. They represent the minimal conditions required to recognize that the Church of Christ is essentially present. They carry specific religious– ecclesiastical principles; the authentic Christian elements survive any heretic or schismatic intention. In great contrast to that, Edward Hanahoe considered that the vestigia are not part of the church, nor do they take part in the full reality of

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the church. There is not a common denominator that might lead to church unity.58 In his views they tend to disappear,59 in clear opposition to Congar’s views there.60 The author does not assign any positive value to the vestigia Ecclesiae or to the ‘dissident communities’. In the same perspective, Bernard Leeming found it difficult to assign a religious value to the vestigia as traces, footprints, elements, characteristics and gifts which would exist in a separated church.61 Even if Gérard Philips has had a major influence in the preparation of Lumen Gentium,62 he, too, did not attach much of authentic value to the presence of some elements of the Catholic Church (as the true church) in the separated communities, although he did acknowledge their partial presence not as particular Christian values, but merely general, immanent values.63

Vatican II’s approach of the elementa Ecclesiae In speaking about the nature of the vestigia Ecclesiae before Vatican II, Thils described them as ‘authentic Christian values’,64 identifying them with the elementa Ecclesiae. They would reply to the duty to recognize the Church in the Churches.65 In that way, then, did the Second Vatican Council recognize the bona or elementa of sanctification and truth which it claims to be present in other churches and ecclesial communities (LG 8; UR 3) – even if a close link between the Church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church has been maintained, as well. Hence, there is at least ‘some’ ecclesial status for Christians outside of the Roman Catholic Church. This implies a great progress over the previous Roman Catholic position. When the draft De Oecumenismo was discussed towards the end of the second period, several speakers insisted that the ecclesial reality of the Churches of the Reformation was not sufficiently acknowledged.66 Then, in the section of De Ecclesia on non-Catholic Christians we now find a reference, even if a hasty one, to other Christian communities. The text simply states that separated Christians “are consecrated by baptism, in which they are united with Christ. They also recognize and receive other sacraments within their own Churches or ecclesial communities”67 On the other hand, the Constitution explains the relationship of the mystical body and the Catholic Church in different terms to those employed by Pius XII. There were Fathers who were attentive to the risk of assuming an identity between the two without any qualifications.68 The Council resolved this by saying that they are not simply identical but diverse aspects of the same complex reality (LG 8). Although this is still a discussed issue, in our opinion, there was a sort of qualified identification when the final text states that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic

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Church.69 The expression would correspond better with what is affirmed about the ecclesial elements which are present elsewhere.70 The same understanding comes over and over through the entire Constitution. As a matter of fact, when the chapter on the People of God comes to the question of who must be considered as incorporated into the church, the draft proposal on the Constitution still argued that reapse et simpliciter loquendo,71 only the Catholic faithful are incorporated into the church. In the final text, however, it becomes clear that the Catholic faithful are plene incorporated in the church. As a consequence, it must be stressed that, apart from the plene belonging to the church, still there are other, less perfect ways. This notable modification from reapse to plene has made the doctrine more consistent with the entire Constitution. The Church of Christ would truly be present in other Christian communities, even though these are only institutionally non-plene realizations of the church.72 Going a bit further, the elements that in their totality make up the church exist in the Christian communities with greater or lesser density. Examples of these gifts present in the separated churches are said to be the scriptures as the Word of God, the life of grace, faith, hope and charity, the interior gifts of the Spirit, and finally the visible elements, namely, the sacramental and hierarchical gifts (UR 3)73, the list is left open. A qualification of the elements would refer to their invisible and strongly accentuated character. Even if it still remains unclear why Vatican II in some instances emphasizes the quantitative communion with the unity of the Catholic Church74, while at the same time recognizing the bona or elementa of sanctification and truth in other churches and ecclesial communities, we do think there is a viability and liability of the Council doctrines for contemporary ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Reformed Communities.

Concluding Remarks In taking the aforementioned approaches into consideration, we would say that the image that we have of the church determines the understanding we have either of the vestigia or the elementa Ecclesiae. Moreover, it will equally influence the way in which we assess the various characteristics of Christian communities; for instance, whether one considers the church as the sum total of separate communities or as one visible and invisible complex reality. Bringing those views into the ecumenical arena, we could better ask ourselves whether every Christian confession has not only the chance but also the basic right to believe itself to be a genuine manifestation of the Church of Christ. In our opinion, if such belief is lacking, the supposition is bound to be made that a community of this kind perceives elements within itself, in accordance with its

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own doctrinal–dogmatic self-understanding, which are incompatible with the nature of the true church. This would be unreasonable. To put it negatively, in order to keep their own identities, every Christian community considers that outside itself the church of Christ cannot be found in its wholeness; at most it appears only fragmentarily, or in distorted form, that is to say, in the form of vestigia. Given that for Calvin the true church is the reformed one, he evidently uses the notion of vestigia Ecclesiae in the pejorative connotation of ruin or wreckage. That becomes quite paradoxical through the fact that, for example, as a member Church of the WCC, while believing that the ecclesial nature of my own church is the only legitimate one, we also have to recognize that all the other communities have the right to believe the same of themselves. The outcomes are equally contradictory if we ask in what direction those elements are at work. Even if we have found a better way in which the means of grace are administered, can one expect another Christian community to accept it? The way of recognition of vestigia in other communities have frequently meant asking for correction from outside. When the Catholic Church takes over the category of vestigia, it is to a certain point in the same position as a member Church of the WCC; in doing so, it expresses the faith that it is in some way the presence of the true church that conforms with the institution. Though, the situation is at variance, in that the Catholic Church has refused to recognize the other communities as churches on an equal footing (or at all). This attitude has undoubtedly simplified the problem noticeably. Let’s try to understand the underlying principle. She examines the gifts of grace which form the heritage of her as Church, and then examines the magnitude to which the same gifts stay alive in other Christian communities. According to the number of such gifts which correspond to its own, the Catholic Church then assigns to those communities a place closer to or further from itself; this is what Vatican II argues with the well-known ecclesiology of concentric circles. They insist that these vestigia should be reconstructed into notae. The Catholic Church also indicates the exact way in which this should be done: a non-Catholic community should give up its own existence and become an integral part of the Catholic Church. Guarantee is given that such a community would not lose anything of value in doing so, because the Catholic Church would be gifted by Christ himself with the plenitude of all the gifts of grace, therefore it possesses possibilities of developing everything that is good and valuable. On the other hand, since the Catholic Church already possesses the plenitude of the gifts of grace, it will not itself be enriched if another Christian community returns to it, except in non-fundamentals. That is why the category of the vestigia Ecclesiae might be used to demand a return to Rome. This merely quantitative comparison has always been unsatisfactory for one side or another.

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Nevertheless, we do think that there has been an improvement in such terminology precisely through Vatican II’s doctrine of the elementa Ecclesiae, a doctrine which has its foundations in the sixteenth century. There was a progressive reception of it in theological and ecumenical circles until fruitful theological discussions immediately prior to Vatican II. Those discussions not only clarified the content of the vestigia Ecclesiae but also distinguished it from the classical notions of notae and signa, and, in so doing, space was left for a reception of the positive meaning of vestigia in the new category of elementa. This reception could be considered as an explicit recognition of the basic right to believe that the Church of Christ legitimately expresses itself in one’s own Christian community. In the WCC, this basic right is granted to every member church, therefore it cannot be denied to the Catholic Church. In the case of Roman Catholicism, still the main question would be how she applies this basic right. As we have already pointed out, even if she has operated with the distinction between what is ‘essential’ and what is ‘contingent’ – a purely quantitative evaluation – she also has strongly made a recognition that the plene incorporation into the church also depends on the Spirit, because of the ontological transcendence of the church. From those views, what would be the nature of the separated communities, what would be the value of their non-erroneous Christian content? The first point of contact with the church is baptism, through which members of the church are created. If there has been a valid baptism, the eventual explanation of the vestigia is derived from it. Calvin himself concludes that through baptism the papal institution contains certain traces or vestigia of the initial church, which testify to the presence of God and his alliance with humankind. Connected with the reception of baptism is the obligation to profess the faith and acceptance of the social bonds with the rest of the faithful, under the same authority of the hierarchy. On the other hand, the internal bonds must be also required. This question embraces things natural and supernatural, things historical and things living, things social and things individual. The Decree on Ecumenism is cautious on this; the Council Fathers did not want to enumerate all of those elementa Ecclesiae which can be found in other communities; thus, the list was left open. In determining the ecclesial quality of every Christian community, this point of view takes the intrinsic spiritual value of the elements into serious consideration. Calvin would call it the recognition of an ecclesiastical via in other Christian communities, traces of the church beyond my own ecclesiastical institution. All Christian communities are partial realizations of the church and are oriented to communion because they are not static, material realities. The elementa Ecclesiae present in them are living spiritual values. Since the church is not merely a sum of separated pieces that are put together and constitutive of its

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image, those elementa must be considered not only in their Roman Catholic but also in their ‘ecclesial’ character. The hermeneutics of this ecclesiology after Vatican II has taken different and sometimes opposite ways in both theology and magisterial teaching; that is why a careful analysis of the sources themselves must still be done.

Notes 1 Cf., F. Wendel, Calvin, Sources et évolution de sa pensée religieuse (Paris: 1950). A. Ganoczy, ‘La doctrine Ecclésiologique de Calvin,’ Unam Sanctam 48 (Paris: Cerf, 1964), 183–222 and 386–400. 2 It is well known that Calvin’s interest in the visible reality of the church was growing since 1539 when he lived in Strasbourg with his teacher and spiritual father M. Bucer. Cf., David F. Wright (ed.), Martin Bucer: Reformed Church and Community (Cambridge: University Press, 1994). Calvin’s ecclesiological evolution is seen in the same way by Bouwsma and Antón, Cf., W. J. Bouwsma, John Calvin. A Sixteen Century Portrait (Oxford: 1998) and A. Antón, El misterio de la Iglesia (Madrid: BAC, 1986) I, 667–72. 3 Cf., J. Calvin, Institution de la religion chrétienne III, 21, 5–7; Corpus Reformatorum XXX, 775–6 and XXXII, 612–14. This election has an eternal existence in God, before the creation of the world and it is realized in Christ. Now then, this election means predestination, which exclusively depends on the will of God, we can read ‘elegit Deus tantum quos voluit,’ Institution II, 21, 10. The church is equal to the universus electorum numerous; afterwards the Calvinist exposition of the nature of the church will comment upon the different aspects of this constitutive predestination of the people of God. 4 Calvin, in accordance with Luther and Melanchthon, agrees in principle on these two main distinctive marks of the church: Word and sacraments, which are distinctive enough to be clearly recognizable. Cf., G. W. Locher, Sign of the Advent: A Study in Protestant Ecclesiology (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2004), 88. 5 ‘Uni enim cunque Dei verbum sincere praedicari atque audiri, ubi sacramenta ex Christi instituto administrari videmus, illic aliquam esse Dei ecclesiam nullo modo ambigendum est’. Institutio IV, 1, 9; Corpus reformatorum XXX, 753–4. ‘Wherever we see the Word of God sincerely preached and heard, wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence’. [translation mine] 6 Especially because he tries to keep the internal, spiritual reality of the church intimately joined to its external, social, visible reality, ‘At ecclesia non est tantum societas externarum rerum ac rituum Sicut aliae politiae, sed principaliter est societas fidei et spiritus sanctii in cordibus, quae tamen habet externas notas’. The church, then, is a spiritual reality, but it is also an external visible society. Locher points out that the concept of an essentially hidden church, indicated by visible marks, still governs Melanchthon’s perception of the church, Locher, Op. cit., 104. These views were held by Calvin himself. 7 ‘ita nec hodie papistas adimimus quae superesse ex dissipatione vestigia ecclesiae inter eos Dominus voluit . . . Sic quum foedus suum in Galia, Italia, Germania,

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Hispania, Anglia deposuerit . . . quo tamen foedus suum inviolabile maneret, baptismum primo illic conservavit, foederis testimonium, qui eius ore consecratus, invita humana impietate, vim suam retinent’. Institutio IV, 2, 11; Corpus reformatorum XXX, 775–6. [emphasis added, translation mine]. ‘Quod Ecclesiae reliquias manere in Papatu dico, non restringo ad electos, qui illic disperse sunt: sed ruinas dissipatae Ecclesiae exstare intelligo’. Épître à Socin, 7 déc. 1549, Corpus reformatorum 13, col. 485–6. ‘Quum ergo ecclesiae titulum non simpliciter volumus concedere papistas, non ideo ecclesias apud eos esse infitiamur, sed tantum litigamos de vera et legitima ecclesiae constitutione, quae in communione cum sacrorum, quae signa sint professionis, tum vero potissimum doctrinae requiritur . . . In summa, ecclesias esse dico quatenus populi su reliquias, utcunque misere dispersas ac disiectas, illic mirabiliter Dominus conservat, quatenus permanent aliquot ecclesiae symbola, atque ea praesertim quorum efficaciam nec diaboli astutia, nec humana pravitas destruere potest. Sed quia e converso deletae sunt illic notae quas praecipue in hac disputatione respicere debemus, dico unumquemque coetum et totum corpus carere legitima ecclesiae forma’. Institutio IV 2, 11–12. See also Commentaire sur les Actes, XXIII; Épître à Sadolet, ed. ‘Je sers’, 71; Confession de foy de La Rochelle, art. 28. ‘Sous ceste croyance nous protestons que la ou la parole de Dieu n’est receveur, et (ou) on ne fait nulle profession de s’assujettir à icelle, et ou il n’y a nul usage des sacrements a parler proprement, on ne peut juger qu’il y ait aucune Eglise’. Confession de foy de La Rochelle, art. 28. According to Boyer, Calvin was the one who gave to the vestigia Ecclesiae a dogmatic meaning, Cf. Boyer, ‘Vestigia Ecclesiae. Vestiges de la veritable Église’, Unitas IX, 28 (1956) 87. ‘Non abs re contendimus, ita saeculis aliquot laceratam et dissipatam fuisse Dei ecclesiam, ut destitute fuerit veris pastoribus. Contendimus nihil minus quam pastores fuisse, qui hunc honoris titulum sibi arrogarunt . . . Nos certe non negamus semper fuisse Dei ecclesiam in mundo’. Vera Ecclesiae reformandae ratio, l.c. This is the case of Turrettini, a very orthodox Protestant of the seventeenth century. In his Institutio Theologiae Elencticae, he says that God has also reserved the reliquia of his church in the Roman Church, in Papatu. Cf., F. Turrettini, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae (Geneva: 1679–1685, 3 parts), Locus (XVIII), De Ecclesia, quaest. IX and X De Ecclesiae Splendore. In the Edinburgh edition (1847), vol. III, 41–60. The Latin text says, ‘Sed addimus insuper, fuisse Ecclesiam nostrum in ipso, Papatu, quatenus Deus in media Babilone sibi simper reservavit reliquias secundum Electionem gratiae, verso scilicet fideles, qui sub illa captivitate gementes, ad liberationem spiritualem anhelabant’, Locus XVIII, quaest. X, 15 (Edimb. III, 53). [emphasis added] Speaking about the baptism received for the papacy, he says that it has been corrupted and profaned for the previous blessing of the water and for the secondary rites. Cf., Sermon 200 sur Deut. XXXIV (CR, t. 29, col. 227); Homélie 59 sur I Sam., XVI, (CR, t. 30, col. 171); Sermon 6 sur Daniel VI (CR, t. 41, col. 386); Sermon 23 sur Daniel IX (CR, t. 41, col. 564). In the same line, Hamer states that Catholic theology, when it wants to define the church as a visible society appeals to fides (as Evangelium) et sacramenta and, on the other hand, Protestant theology, will base itself on the expression of the Article VII of the Confession of Augsburg, namely ‘In qua evangelium pure docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta.’ Cf., J. Hamer, ‘Le baptême et l’Église. A propos des ‘vestigia

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology Ecclesiae’, Irénikon 25 (1952) 150–1 (in two parts: 142–64 and the suite 262–75). His position is limited by the categories of schismatic and heretic in the context of Augustin’s struggle against the Donatists. Cf., G. Alberigo, ‘L’ecclesiologia del Concilio di Trento’, Rivista della Storia della Chiesa in Italia 18 (1964) 234. G. Alberigo, ‘Il significato del concilio di Trento nella storia del concili’, in G. Alberigo and I. Rogger (eds), Il Concilio di Trento nella prospettiva del terzo millennio: Atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il 25–28 settembre 1995 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997), 35–55. ‘Si quis dixerit, baptismum, qui etiam datur ab haereticis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, cum intentione faciendi quod facit Ecclesia, non esse verum baptismum, anathema sit. Canon 3 on the sacrament of baptism’. DS 1617. Even more, Alberigo concluded that with Trent, the members of the church are not only the baptized but rather those who have received baptism according to the spirit and letter of the New Testament. Cf., G. Alberigo, ‘L’ecclesiologia del Concilio di Trento’, 231. Nonetheless, according to Vercruysse, the main sense of this 40th canon on the sacrament of baptism of the Council of Trent was to summarize the result of the quarrel on the subject of baptism by heresies of the third and fourth centuries and its confirmation in theology and practice during subsequent centuries. It reaffirms this conviction of many centuries up to the threshold of the modern era in the face of Protestantism. Against ‘the permanent temptation to rebaptize’, this text has kept alive the consciousness of the sacramental bond, which is common to all Christians. Cf., Joseph E. Vercruysse, ‘ “Baptismus, qui etiam datur ab haeretici”: genèse et signification du canon tridentin sur le baptême des hérétiques’, Gregorianum 51,4 (1970) 649–70 ; see also A. Aubry, ‘Faut-il rebaptiser’? Nouvelle Revue Théologie 89 (1967) 199. ‘hanc veritatem et disciplinam contineri in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus, quae ab ipsius Christi ore ab Apostolis acceptae, aut ab ipsis Apostolis Spiritu Sancto dictante quasi perm anus traditae ad nos usque pervenerunt . . . nec non traditiones ipsas, tum ad fidem, tum ad mores pertinentes, tamquam vel oretenus a Christo, vel a Spiritu Sancto dictatas et continua successione in Ecclesia catholica conservatas, pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia suscipit et veneratur . . . Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in Ecclesia catholica legi consueverunt . . . et traditiones praedictas sciens et prudens contempserit: anathema sit” Cf., De libris scriptis et de traditionibus recipiendis, DS 1501–5. Cf., A. Franzini, Tradizione e Scrittura. Il contributo del Concilio Vaticano II (Roma: Brescia, 1978), 95. And also J. Salaverri, ‘La Tradición valorada como fuente de la Revelación en el Concilio de Trento’, Estudios Eclesiásticos 20 (1946) 33–61. This is clear in the Roman Catechism of 1566, and in the magisterial teaching up to the Mystici Corporis encyclical. See Catechismus ex Decreto Concilii Tridentini ad Parochos Pii Quinti Pont. Max. Iussu (Romae: In aedibus Populi Romani, apud Paulum Manutium, 1566), see especially 61 (I 10, 11). Bellarmine would be the best example on that; see Bulla Iniunctum nobis, DS 1868, and a good analysis on that in Paul Kuntz, ‘The hierarchical vision of St Roberto Bellarmino’, in M. Kuntz & P. G. Kuntz. (eds), Jacob’s Ladder and the Tree of Life: Concepts of Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), 111–28. Another famous catechism of the Jesuit Edmund Auger (published in 1573) against the Calvinist errors in France reveals the same perspective. E. Auger, Catéchisme et sommaire de la Religion chrétienne (Bordeaux: 1573).

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22 See K. Schilling, Die Kirchenlehre der Theologia Wirceburgensis (Paderborn: 1969). 23 H. Tournely, for instance, distinguishes the following elements: (1) divine vocation; (2) eternal life; (3) Christ as invisible head and the pope as visible head; (4) sacraments as bonds of unity; (5) charity, peace and concord; (6) the Last Supper; (7) the submission to legitimate pastors; (8) faith and doctrine. Cf., J. Mayr, Die Ekklesiologie Honoré Tournelys (Essen: 1964), 50. 24 T. Bozius (1548–1610) grouped a list of 100 notae. H. Tournely proposes 7. Cf., J. Mayr, Die Ekklesiologie Honoré Tournelys (Essen: 1964), 45–65. The Catechisms of the twelfth through thirteenth centuries present a variable number of the notes from 3 to 19. Bellarmine spoke of 15 notes; but gradually the tendency of theologians was to speak of 4 notes. 25 ‘Ces principes sont les réalités par les quelles Dieu se recrute dans l’humanité, et incorpore à son Christ, un peuple qu’il destine à recevoir son héritage: ce sont, dans l’ordre d’une formation de plus en plus explicite et complète de l’unité’. Chrétiens desúnis, 302. 26 Even if, according to Vereb, by the use of the term ‘spiritual ecumenism’, Couturier himself anticipated, by more than a decade, the Daniélou phrase vestigia Ecclesiae, meaning footprints of Christianity in all Christian liturgical expressions. Cf., J. M. Vereb, ‘Because he was a German!’, 54–8. 27 There were ten Roman Catholic theologians: Congar, Dumont, Hamer, Daniélou and Rouquette, Villain, Lialine, Michalon, l’abbe Desmettre and Guitton; they all were from the Francophone side of the Catholic ecumenism and ten other theologians of various Christian denominations who represented the interest of the World Council of Churches. Cf., W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, Memoirs (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1987), 319–20. According to Congar, ‘Cette rencontre avait un caractère strictement prive, les personnalités non catholiques . . . non seulement n’ayant reçu aucun mandate du Conseil oecuménique, mais ne l’ayant même pas informe de leur demande [sic]. Du côté catholique il va de soi que les participants de cette rencontre se présentaient comme théologiens prives n’engageant en rien la hiérarchie’. Cf., Report on World Council Roman Catholic Conference at Istina, Paris, 24–25 September 1949, ‘Conseil Oecuménique des Églises Archives’, ‘Study Department.’ D. 97. 28 W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, Memoirs, 320, and M. Velati, Una difficile transizione. Il cattolicesimo tra unionismo ed ecumenismo (1952–1964) (Il Mulino: 1996), 50. Daniélou said that the common task was to arrive at a dynamic reception of this category, because these traces of the church could be developed and lead to further agreement. W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, Memoirs, 320. It is interesting to note that even Henri de Lubac – a close friend of Daniélou – later used in his ecclesiology the metaphysical component of the vestigia Ecclesiae; he reported at an international meeting of the Secretariat for Non-believers that he found himself compromised by a lack of appreciation for the religious vestigia or footprints of the church which were de facto points of convergence. Cf., H. De Lubac, At the Service of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 47. 29 In December of the same year was promulgated De motione oecumenica, which stressed an ecumenism of return. Even then, it also positively recognized the influence of the Spirit in non-Catholics. Thus, the sacramental via is one of the most important vestigia Ecclesiae, although it is not the only one; the other vestigia maintain in a Christian existence the disperse parts while awaiting future reintegration. Cf., D. Th. Strotmann, ‘Les membres de l’Église’, Irénikon 25 (1952) 249–62 and W. A. Visser ‘t

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology Hooft, Memoirs, 321, who points out that the Instruction has appreciated the ecumenical movement as the outcome of a desire for unity which had been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Despite this recognition, as a matter of fact in 1950, the Roman Catholic Church condemned the so-called nouvelle théologie movement. This document gave an impulse to Catholic ecumenical reflections, which was later to be followed by the foundation of Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. According to Schmidt, this Instruction also drove all the ecumenical activity of Bea as secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and drove the ecumenical issues before the promulgation of Unitatis redintegratio in 1964. Cf. Stjepan Schmidt, Agostino Bea. Il cardinale dell’unità (Rome: Città Nuova, 1987), 251–2. WCC, Minutes and Report of the Third Meeting of the Central Committee (Toronto: 9–15 July 1950), IV, 5. Namely ‘Est autem Ecclesia congregatio sanctorum, in qua evangelium pure docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta’. ‘It is generally taught in the different churches that other churches have certain elements of the true Church, in some traditions called “vestigia ecclesiae”. Such elements are the preaching of the Word, the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the administration of the sacraments. These elements are more than pale shadows of the life of the true Church. They are a fact of real promise and provide an opportunity to strive by frank and brotherly intercourse for the realization of a fuller unity. Moreover, Christians of all ecclesiological views throughout the world, by the preaching of the Gospel, brought men and women to salvation by Christ, to newness of life in him, and into Christian fellowship with one another’. WCC, Minutes and Report of the Third Meeting of the Central Committee (Toronto: 9–15 July 1950), IV, 5. Brunner said that since the instrumental nature of Word and Sacraments was recognized, we should discern only elements of the Word as it was preached, and in its sacraments only traces of a correct administering of them. Whether God performs His work of salvation by these means, then clearly everything turns on the potency of these means. We might well find a soul lost in spite of these vestigia Ecclesiae because it did not encounter the Gospel in its full purity. P. Brunner, ‘The Realism of the Holy Spirit. Observations on the Theological Significance of the Toronto Statement’, The Ecumenical Review 3 (1950–1951), 221–30. Before establishing the conditions for which to consider a group as Council member, the document emphasized that a group does not become something like a ‘Super Church’ or a ‘Universal Church’. WCC, Minutes and Report of the Third Meeting of the Central Committee (Toronto: 9–15 July 1950), III, 1. Does the Council as Council not contain traces, vestigia Ecclesiae, since it is something more than an ecclesial lattice? Tomkins rightly stressed that the Council qua Council may surely be said to possess certain vestigia Ecclesiae, even while it repudiates the pretension to be Ecclesia. When the various vestigia have, thus, found their true relationship to the whole and all are agreed upon the essential content, presumably, the Council has become Church. Cf., O. Tomkins, ‘The Church, The Churches and The Council’, The Ecumenical Review 4 (1951–1952), 259–68. We can hardly believe, however, that they could be present in the Council as it itself rejected to be called Ecclesia. Y. Congar, ‘Notes sur les mots “Confession”, “Église” et “Communion” ’, Irénikon 23 (1950), 3–36. In Chrétiens desúnis, he had enumerated a series of principles which have as their font the sacramental reality of the church: he subordinated all of them

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to the principle of unity, as the major principle. Apart from baptism, Eucharist and the sacrament of orders, he also refers to the communion in the true faith as well as the true caritas. This communion is manifested in a collective submission to the governance of apostolic hierarchy and pastoral government. ‘Il y a un certain nombre d’éléments essentiels dont la présence fait qu’il y a Église, l’absence, qu’il n’y a pas Église, et la réalisation plus ou moins parfaite qu’il y a Église de façon plus ou moins achevée’. Ibid., 25. More than vestigia, they would be portions substantielles of the church, Cf., B. Lambert, Le problème oecuménique (Paris: 1962) vol. I, 186. See also H. Küng, Structures de l’Église (Paris: 1963), 251, ‘Grâce à une vue des structures de l’Église approfondie en exégèse et en dogmatique, ne pourrait-on pas, dans la doctrine traditionnelle des vestigia Ecclesiae, mettre l’accent plus sur ecclesia que sur vestigia?’ Y. Congar, ‘Vestigia Ecclesiae’, Vers l’unité Chrétienne 32 (avril 1951) 6–7. Months later, Dumont wrote to Dom Lialine on the Genevian impression of the reception of vestigia Ecclesiae at Toronto: ‘Si l’impression a été moins bonne, cela est dû, pour une part à des facteurs intrinsèque moindre cohésion des deux équipes, dont plusieurs membres se rencontraient pour la première fois . . . Mais surtout, cela est dû à ce que la discussion s’est terminée par une certain déconvenue chez les auteurs de la déclaration de Toronto, qui ont du reconnaître qu’ils avaient employé le terme vestigia Ecclesiae sans se rendre compte de tout ce dont il est historiquement et théologiquement chargé’. According to Fouilloux, the letter was written on 14 March 1952. Cf., Fouilloux, Op. cit., 801. Vereb probably mistakenly said that the CCEQ was established already in 1949. Cf., J. M. Vereb, ‘Because he was a German!’ Cardinal Bea and the Origins of Roman Catholic Engagement in the Ecumenical Movement (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006), 26. “We recognize the great value of a deepening of the theology of the “vestigia ecclesiae” that endures in the separated communions’. Fgr. Willebrands, Conférence Catholique pour les questions oecuméniques. Réunie à Fribourg du 11 au 13 aout 1952. Conclusions sur les rapports et discussions. The correspondence between Dom Lialine and Dumont gave way to ulterior clarifications and new contributions. The Conférence prepared a contribution to the next Assembly of the WCC. ‘Le Christ, l’Église et la grâce dans l’économie de l’espérance chrétienne. Vue catholique sur le thème d’Evanston’, Istina 2 (1954), 132–58. The Evanston Report. The Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches. 1954 edn. By Visser ‘t Hooft (London: SCM Press, 1955). See also J. Dumont, ‘Premières impressions de la Conférence d’Evanston,’ Vers l’Unité Chrétienne 65–6 (Juillet– octobre, 1954), 73–90; and G. Tavard, ‘Un point de vue catholique sur l’ecclésiologie d’Evanston’, Foi et Vie (1955) 54–64. Evanston, 29. The Council is aware that the ‘member churches’ and not the Council as such possess those elements. Ibid., 79. 93–4. In both the 1955 version as well as in the revised 1963 edition of the same book. As De Mey rightly has pointed out, Thils consistently uses the Latin expression vestigia Ecclesiae in the first edition but it is almost absent in the second edition. It is very illuminating that he added a summary on this issue as it was approached in WCC reports, which is similar in both editions. Cf., Peter De Mey, ‘Gustave Thils and Ecumenism at Vatican

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology II’, in The Belgian Contribution to the Second Vatican Council (BETL 216, 2008), 389–413. He consistently argues an identification in his 1967 L’Eglise et les églises: perspectives nouvelles en oecuménisme. In this work, Thils points out that Vatican II was a source of new orientations for thinking about the bonds between Christian Churches, largely from the aforementioned doctrine of the ‘elements of the Church’. In his 1963 Histoire, Thils no longer employed vestigia Ecclesiae as a concept. The category of elementa Ecclesiae has, in fact, absorbed it as well as its content. In fact, Thils starts his identification of both the elementa and the vestigia saying that: ‘L’étude des éléments d’Église – vestigia Ecclesiae – de leur signification ecclésiologique, est le fait du XXe siècle’. However, in identifying them, he claims the difference between elementa and notae saying: ‘Il ne suffit pas de dire, comme nous le verrons, qu’il y a une théorie des “notes negatives” pour résoudre la question des “éléments d’Eglise”! Il y a les notes et il y a les éléments constitutifs; il y a les éléments “d’Eglise” et les éléments de “christianisme” ’. G. Thils, Histoire doctrinale (BETL 8, 1963), 247. In January 1952, Congar stresses that the doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae refers to the éléments de l’Eglise and their content, which – by definition – is visible, whereas the signa Ecclesiae would be invisible realities. Cf., Yves Congar, ‘A propos des “Vestigia Ecclesiae” ’, Vers l’unité Chrétienne 39 (janvier 1952) 3–5. There was already an interchangeable use of the concepts. In fact, in August 1952, Congar noticed that ‘éléments d’Église . . . transcririons-nous, en théologie catholique, l’expression réformée “Vestigia Ecclesiae” ’. On that occasion, he insisted on the fact that a positive consideration of the elements of the church is the condition of possibility for a catholic ecumenism; nevertheless, he also stressed that we find the fullness of the means of grace/constitutive elements in the Roman Catholic Church; therefore, we can just find some of them in other Christian communions. ‘Les éléments d’Église ne sont pas n’importe quelles biens de la religion chrétienne: ils sont des biens de nature “ecclésiastique”. Or où commence et où finit la ligne de démarcation entre les biens “chrétiens” et les biens “ecclésiastiques”?’ Cf., G. Thils, Histoire doctrinale (BETL 8, 1963), 252. ‘On pourrait considérer la réalité entière, invisible et visible, qui constitue l’Eglise véritable, et appeler “élément d’Eglise” tout ce qui est essentiel ou propre à l’Eglise. Il y aurait, en ce cas, des “éléments d’Eglise” de nature invisible, comme la présence de l’Esprit Saint, et des “éléments d’Eglise” de nature visible, comme la succession apostolique ininterrompue. Rien n’exclut, a priori, cette manière de penser et de parler. Si elle n’est pas éclairante du point de vue de la discernibilité de la vraie Eglise, elle peut être utile pour le jugement d’ensemble à porter sur le caractère ‘ecclésiastique’ des différentes communautés chrétiennes non-romaines’. G. Thils, Histoire Doctrinal (BETL 8, 1955), 188. Already in 1962, we find a marked development from his early thought, mustering many of the arguments presented during the Council to support the position of Unitatis Redintegratio. They were further reflected in that second edition of his Histoire doctrinale. Cf., G. Thils, ‘Chrétiens séparés et “éléments” d’Église’, Collectanea Mechliniensia 47 (1962), 466–77. These dual perspectives answer different questions. The first one seems to offer a clarification dealing with the ecclesiastic character of the myriad separated communities, but does not contribute to the discernment of the true Church of Christ. The second perspective, more classical, asks for the one constitutive element of the Church of Christ. According to Thils, this constitutive element would have to be something essential to the true Church of Christ, utterly determining its nature. Any hermeneutic of this nature will

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determine the amplitude or rigidity of thinking regarding the presence, to a lesser or greater degree, of the elements of the Church of Christ in the separated communities. Namely, claiming that the Roman Catholic Church holds or expresses in the best way the marks of the true Church. This is the case of Th. Sartory, Die Oekumenische Bewegung und die Einheit der Kirche, (Meitingen: 1955), 147–94. In the same line, Vodopivec, who considers that those vestigia-traces belong exclusively to the unique Church of Christ. J. Vodopivec, La Chiesa e le chiese, in Problemi e orientamenti di teologia dommatica (Milan: 1957) vol. I, 537–40. Cf., G. Baum, L’unité chrétienne d’après la doctrine des Papes, de Léon XIII à Pie XII (Paris: Ed. Cerf, 1961), 66–85. Cf., also the exhaustive magisterial references in this regard in G. Thils, Histoire Doctrinal (BETL 8, 1963), 252–3. Thils points to that in all of them, the ‘patrimony’ is considered incomplete, imperfect and only can be accomplishment at all in the Catholic plenitude. He refers to Bea’s discourses as President of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, he would have implicitly described the elements as follows: sincere pity, veneration for the Word of God which is in the scripture and a sincere effort to behold God’s commandments. Thils exemplifies that clearly, ‘On peut posséder un élément d’Église et le laisser s’étioler, le négliger: ainsi, on peut posséder une Bible, mais ne jamais en lire un chapitre, ne pas la prendre comme noirriture de foi, et même l’oublier dans sa bibliothèque. On peut posséder un élément d’Église, mais qui ne remplit son rôle que très imparfaitement: un prêtre validement ordonné peut être médiocre, un pasteur qui ne reconnaît pas la sacramentalité de l’Ordre peut être un témoin fervent de la Parole et un instrument de sanctification’, Ibid., 257. The same approach in H. Pauwels, Geloofsverkondiging en proselytisme¸in Werkgenootshap van Katholieke theologen in Nederland (Jaarboek: 1958), 153. In contrast to this, Davis considers that the Roman Catholic Church is always the mediator of those elements. Cf., Ch. Davis, ‘Faith and Dissident Christians’, The Clergy Review 44 (1959), 214–17. Plenitude of the church in his understanding has to do with the perfection where the church is able to accomplish all God’s designs. Cf., Ch. Boyer, ‘Vestigia Ecclesiae. Vestiges de la véritable Eglise,’ Unitas 28 (1956), 87–9. G. Miegge, ‘Vestigia Ecclesiae, signes de l’Église dans les Églises’, Verbum Caro 43 (1957), 200–12. E. Hanahoe, Vestigia Ecclesiae. Their Meaning and Value, in Hanahoe E. and Cranny T. (eds), One Fold (New York: Graymoor Press, 1959), 272–83. ‘These evidences tend to deteriorate or evaporate over the course of time until a mere shadow remains. This process, however, does not take place all at once, everywhere, and in every respect according to a regular pattern’, 284–5. ‘L’apologétique ne se prive pas de faire valoir le fait qu’elles [les dissidences chrétiennes] auraient été de déchéance en déchéance, mais la réalité, si on veut la voir telle qu’elle est, présente aussi d’autres aspects: positifs, des fruits positifs de mission ou d’évangélisation, de pensée religieuse, de vie chrétienne’, Y. Congar, Sainte Église, 330–1. Cf., E. Leeming, The Church and the Churches, A Study of Ecumenism (London: 1960), especially 254–9. See K. Schelkens, Carnets conciliaires de Mgr Gérard Philips, secrétaire adjoint de la commission doctrinale: texte néerlandais avec traduction française et commentaires.

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology (Leuven: Peeters, 2006); L. Declerck, Leo, W. Verschooten and J. Grootaers, ‘Inventaire des papiers conciliaires de Monseigneur Gérard Philips, secrétaire adjoint de la commission doctrinale’, Instrumenta theologica 24 (2001). ‘les vraies valeurs, ou plutôt les seules qui subsistent pour lui, sont immanentes. Tout le reste est ritualisme vide, sinon magie’, G. Philips, ‘Individu et communauté’, Revue Ecclésiologique de Liège 28 (1936–1937), 271. The ecclesiastical organization as such would be also this kind of rest. ‘Pour les Réformés il subsistait une reste d’organisation ecclésiastique, ayant pour but unique de déclancher le sentiment religieux de l’individu à l’occasion d’un prêche ou d’un choral’. Ibid., 162. Philips pays particular attention to the intimate bond between the members of this body and their head. Cf., G. Philips, ‘La Vie de la grâce dans l’Église’, Revue Ecclésiologique de Liège 28 (1936–1937), 237–43. The bonds with Christ and the bonds with the visible, social community drive us to the Church of Christ as such. Gérard Philips, ‘La Sainte Église catholique’, in Bibliothèque de l’Institut Supérieur des Sciences religieuses de l’Université catholique de Louvain 3 (Tournai: Casterman, 1947), In-8, 31. G. Thils, Histoire Doctrinal (BETL 8, 1955), 187. In the same sense, Dumont would have said that it is as ‘quasi-potential parts of the Church’. C. J. Dumont, Les Voies de l’unité Chrétienne (Paris: Du Cerf, 1954), 126. This is what Hanahoe stresses, but we notice that Dumont had referred here to the dissident communities rather than to the vestigia. Gustave Thils, L’Eglise et les églises: perspectives nouvelles en oecuménisme (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1967), 19–20. See also G. Miegge, ‘Vestigia Ecclesiae, signes de l’Église dans les Eglises’, Verbum Caro 43 (1957), 212. These are the words of Bishop Gabriel Manek spoken in the name of 30 bishops of Indonesia: ‘The title of “Church” should not only be attributed to the Oriental Churches separated from us, but also to the communities which arose from the Reformation . . . These communities are in all truth “Churches”, even if in analogous sense and less perfectly than the Orthodox Churches. They possess visible elements of ecclesial unity. Through holy rites they represent, produce and foster the life of grace, so that we must acknowledge the Holy Spirit present in their midst making use of them as means of salvation. They also receive from that fullness of grace and truth that has been entrusted to the Church’. J. C. Hampe, Ende der Gegenreformation? (Stuttgart: 1964), 330. Lumen Gentium, 15. Cardinal Lercaro, for instance, said that the church as society and as mystical body of Christ expresses two distinct aspects that fully and perfectly coincide as far as the essential order and constitutive norm given by Christ. But he stresses that these two aspects can never be the same in the existential and historical order. Notice that even the adverb ‘Roman’ was left out in the latter versions of Lumen Gentium. How far is Pius XII’s doctrine remote to Vatican II’s views? In this regard, Cardinal Ratzinger says in 2000: It becomes necessary to more carefuly investigate the word ‘subsistit’. By using this expression, the Council distantiates itself from Pius XII who in his Encyclical Mystici Corporis had said: the catholic Church ‘is’ (est) the only mystical body of Christ. A questo punto diviene necessario indagare un po’ più accuratamente circa la parola “subsistit”. Il Concilio si differenzia con questa espressione dalla formula di Pio XII, che nella sua Enciclica “Mystici corporis Christi” aveva detto: la Chiesa cattolica “è” (est) l’único corpo mistico di Cristo’, in l’Osservatore

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Romano (4.3.2000), 7. It seems that, indeed, Vatican II’s perspective is far from Pius XII’s doctrine, even if the hermeneutic of the subsistit has taken different ways, not only in theology but also in the magisterial teaching. The most recent discussions in A. Von Teuffenbach, Die Bedeutung des subsistit in (LG 8): zum Selbstverständnis der katholischen Kirche (Rome: PUG, 2002); J. F. Sullivan, ‘The Meaning of Subsistit in as Explained for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’, Theological Studies 69 (2008), 116–24; K. Schelkens, ‘Lumen Gentium Subsistit in Revisited: The Catholic Church and Christian Unity After Vatican II’, Theological Studies 69 (2008), 875–93; and L. Welch and G. Mansini, ‘Lumen Gentium No. 8, and Subsistit in, Again,’ New Blackfriars 90 (September 2009), 602–17. See the ‘Responses to some questions regarding certain aspects of the doctrine of the Church’ of the CDF of 27 July 2007 and good remarks on it in P. De Mey, ‘Eine Katholische Reaktion auf Antworten auf Fragen zu einigen Aspekten der Lehre von der Kirche der römischkatholischen Kongregation für die Glaubenslehre’, Ökumenische Rundschau 56 (2007), 567–1. ‘Really and simply speaking’. At one point, it was also suggested to put in reapse et sine restrictione. In the line of Journet, Congar and Thils (Cf., footnotes 33, 36 and 96) 8 December 1960, Willebrands also indicated that ‘there are degrees in the visible ways that one belongs to the Church’. The Decree on Ecumenism refers explicitly to the ecclesial elements (as elementa Ecclesiae) in the number 3. In the number 23, although it does not refer to the elementa Ecclesiae in general, rather to ‘common elements’ (as elementa communis) referring to the same ancient common liturgy, this is, in fact, quite particular. Thils, for instance, considers that we must not address the issue as a plenitudequantity but rather approach things in terms of a plenitude-fidelity, ‘nous en arriverions à constater que tous les chrétiens peuvent être “imparfaitement” d’Église. Aussi longtemps que le critère de qualification est limité aux éléments “visibles”, les catholiques, estimant qu’ils professent la foi intégrale de l’Église, qu’ils vivent de toute sa vie liturgique et sacramentelle, qu’ils reçoivent intégralement son ministère apostolique, se considèrent en excellente condition: à leurs yeux, leur statut “ecclésiastique” est complet, et en ce sens plénier, parfait. A leurs yeux disions-nous. Car c’est précisément cette plénitude qui leur est reprochée. Aux yeux des réformés, la “véritable plenitude” implique plutôt “moins” dans le développement dogmatique, sacramentel et hiérarchique; et ce qu’il y a de “plus” dans le catholicisme paraît nuire à la vraie plénitude, par une majoration indue de ce qui est réellement central et fondamental pour le christianisme. Nous devons donc prendre garde à ne pas penser une plénitude quantité, mais bien une plénitude-fidélité’. G. Thils, L’Eglise et les églises (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1967), 26–7.

Chapter 5 Priest, Prophet and King: Jesus Christ, the Church and the Christian Person Rose M. Beal In the final edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), John Calvin introduced the threefold offices of Christ – priest, prophet and king – as the necessary and sufficient framework for the theology of the salvific work of Jesus Christ. He further applied the triplex of offices to the elect and to the ministers of the church, all of whom share in Christ’s work. While Calvin’s insistence upon the soteriological necessity of the triplex of offices was a new development in Christian theology, the triplex itself is rooted in the long tradition of the Christian church, which itself looked to the practice of anointing in ancient Israel. Likewise, since Calvin’s day, Christian theologians and communities have continued, to the current day, to refine and develop their interpretations of the triplex of offices.1 An appreciation for the historical development of the theological understanding of priest, prophet and king as a triplex of offices suggests that the triplex may be a useful point of departure for ecumenical conversation, particularly among the Catholic and Protestant communities. The development of three distinct, but not unrelated, applications of the triplex of offices can be seen in the Christian tradition. First, the triplex has been applied to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Second, it has been applied to the Christian believer. Last, it has been applied to the mission and ministers of the church.2 This chapter traces the development of these three applications – Christological, anthropological and ecclesiological – in order to demonstrate the commonality, flexibility and scope of the triplex within the Christian tradition, because it is precisely these three qualities that equip the triplex to serve as a vehicle for consideration of contested issues among the separated communities. Priest, Prophet and King in the Pre-Reformation Tradition Priest, prophet and king are bound together in the Christian tradition as a triplex based on the practice, common to all three offices, of anointing in

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ancient Israel. By anointing, the individual was consecrated to a particular service within the people of God. The priest performed cultic rituals required by the covenantal relationship. The prophet proclaimed God’s word to and within the community, calling Israel to fidelity to that relationship. The king governed Israel as God’s representative. Thus, the triplex of offices comprised the functions given by God to his people precisely that they might be built up and live as his people.3 In the early centuries of the church, the triplex was applied both to Jesus Christ and to the Christian believer. The earliest Christian text establishing the three anointed offices of ancient Israel as a triplex, exclusive of other offices and titles, is found in the Apostolic Tradition, which describes communal practices of liturgy, initiation and Christian life in the third century. It records a prayer of thanksgiving to be said by the bishop over oil offered as part of the liturgy: O God, sanctify this oil: grant holiness to all who use it and who receive it, and as you anointed kings, priests and prophets, so may it give strength to all who consume it and health to all who use it.4 Two insights can be gleaned from this reference to ‘kings, priests and prophets’. First, the simple fact of the bishop’s recollection of the kings, priests and prophets anointed by God establishes that as early as the third century, the Christian community recognized a relationship between these three offices, based on the common practice of anointing. Second, the use of the oil in the initiation of new Christians is the earliest hint of the anthropological application of the triplex. The sanctified oil over which the prayer was said appears to include the oil used for anointing during the initiation rite for new Christians described in the second part of the Apostolic Tradition.5 In that rite, the newly baptized were anointed with sanctified oil ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’, and ‘in God the Father Almighty and Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit’.6 No explicit reference to the three offices was made during the anointing of the catechumens. The symbolic value of the oil, however, is suggestive: the oil that anointed the kings, priests and prophets of ancient Israel was appropriated to the new people of God, anointing those who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In scripture and in other early church writings, priest, prophet and king appear as several among many titles of Jesus Christ. The earliest record of the application of the exclusively threefold office to Christ is found in the fourth-century Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius of Caesarea. He wrote that ‘the one true Christ of God’ is ‘the divine and heavenly Word who is the sole High Priest of the universe, the sole King of all creation, and of prophets the sole Archprophet of the Father’.7 Where Jesus Christ was divinely anointed, the priests, prophets and

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kings of Israel were physically anointed and thus ‘became Christs in pattern’.8 Jesus, then, is not the Christ because he fulfils the ancient offices; rather, the offices established by God in Israel are in imitation of Christ. While the Apostolic Tradition did not explicitly articulate the extension of the three offices to the baptized, John Chrysostom did just that in the fifth century. In his Third Homily on the Second Letter to the Corinthians, the bishop explained the relationship between the anointing of Christian believers described in 2 Corinthians 1:21 and the anointing of the priests, prophets and kings of the Old Testament: And what is, ‘anointed’, and ‘sealed’? Gave the Spirit by Whom He did both these things, making at once prophets and priests and kings, for in old times these three sorts were anointed. But we have now not one of these dignities, but all three preeminently.9 Chrysostom correlated this anointing to Christian baptism: ‘So also art you yourself made king and priest and prophet in the Laver’.10 The baptized, anointed by the Spirit and washed in the waters of baptism, are made priests, prophets and kings in a way that surpasses the ancient anointing. In Israel, only a select few were anointed for service; in the Christian community, all are anointed. Additionally, most of those anointed in Israel served only in one of the three offices, whereas the baptized Christian holds all three offices ‘pre-eminently’ through the seal of the Spirit. It is noteworthy that in this earliest explicit application of the offices to the baptized, Chrysostom did not describe the offices with reference to Christ, who is mentioned only in connection with the office of priesthood. Rather, he described them in terms of their continuity with and distinction from the anointed offices of Israel. The early Christological and anthropological applications of the triplex were brought together in the teaching of Fastidius, a fifth-century bishop. Fastidius linked the anointing of all the baptized by the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ’s own anointing, which was the culmination of the physical anointing of priests, prophets and kings in ancient Israel. ‘All [the baptized] are anointed as prophets and priests and kings’, Fastidius wrote. ‘Thus we receive the name Christian because we are anointed like Christ the anointed one’.11 By the fifth century, then, the three offices had been applied both to Christ and to the baptized Christian, and the relationship between the anointed ones of Israel, Christ and the Christian baptized on the common basis of anointing had been recognized. In the Middle Ages, the use of the triplex waned as the priest–king dinome gained prominence. Peter Lombard, for example, applied the titles of priest and king to Christ in parallel with the Old Testament practice of anointing priests

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and kings, making no reference to prophets. The less frequent reference to the triplex of offices coincided with a growing emphasis on the doctrine of the two powers of the church (that is, the ordained hierarchy).12 Nevertheless, the application of the triplex to Christ and Christian believers persisted in some quarters. For example, Theophylact, the eleventh-century Archbishop of Bulgaria, is an influential medieval source for the anthropological application of the triplex to the baptized. Like John Chrysostom, Theophylact interpreted the anointing and sealing text in 2 Corinthians 1:21 as saying of each person who is baptized, that is, anointed and sealed by God, ‘we are made prophets, priests and kings’.13 Scholars note that the text referring to the triplex, while not central to Theophylact’s theology as a whole, was frequently cited in scholastic exegesis, suggesting a broader application of the Christian anthropological sense of the triplex than is generally acknowledged.14 Likewise, Thomas Aquinas applied the three titles (among others) to Christ and his works. Like Eusebius, Aquinas explained that the title Christ corresponded to the three anointed offices of Israel and asserted that Jesus exercised those three offices.15 Many scholars have held that the triplex was not influential in Aquinas’s Christology. Yves Congar was a notable dissenting voice, suggesting that the triplex does have a place in Aquinas’s Christology. Among the evidence he presented for his claim, Congar pointed to Aquinas’s early characterization of the evangelists according to their representation of the divinity of Christ. The synoptic Gospels each correspond to one of Christ’s three ‘dignities’: ‘royal (Matthew), prophetical (Mark), priestly (Luke)’.16

John Calvin John Calvin wrote and published his Institutes of the Christian Religion in five successive drafts from 1536 to 1559. In the final-edition Institutes, he took the triplex of priest, prophet and king as the necessary and sufficient framework for the theology of the salvific work of Christ as Mediator. Like other Reformation theologians, Calvin understood Jesus Christ alone to be the mediator between God and humanity.17 Where other Reformation theologians (notably Martin Luther) developed a soteriology centring on Christ as priest and king, Calvin came to insist that Christ’s office of prophet was likewise essential to his work as mediator. Although in his earlier editions of the Institutes Calvin had explained Christ’s salvific work in terms of just two offices (priest and king) in 1559, he added the third office of prophet, writing, Therefore, in order that faith may find a firm basis for salvation in Christ, and thus rest in him, this principle must be laid down: the office enjoined

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Calvin distinguished between Christ’s work as king and priest (whereby he effects mediation) and his work as prophet (whereby he reveals and explains his mediation). While the office of prophet is subordinate to those of king and priest, it is nonetheless necessary to Christ’s work as Mediator (II.15.2). For each of the offices, Calvin explained how Christ carried out the office and how the elect share in it. As prophet, Christ ‘was anointed by the Spirit to be herald and witness of the Father’s grace’, that is, of Christ’s own work of salvation (II.15.2). This anointing was ‘diffused from the Head to the members’ of Christ’s body, the church, for the effective preaching of the Gospel (II.15.2). Church teachers share in Christ’s prophetical office by doing what Jesus Christ himself did: proclaiming and explaining the truth of salvation in Christ. As king, Christ is ‘the eternal protector and defender of his church’ (II.15.3), which he rules. As such, he sustains and preserves both the church and the individual believers in this age, until the final judgement, ‘which may also be properly considered the last act of his reign’, until he may ‘lead us little by little to a firm union with God’ (II.15.5).The elect share in the kingship of Christ in that they ‘are truly joined to God in perfect blessedness’ (II.15.4). Armed and equipped by Christ’s power, they conquer sin and death in this world, to the glory of God. Lastly, Christ is priest and sacrifice, in order ‘by his holiness to reconcile us to God’ (II.15.6). Christ not only reconciles the elect to the Father, but also admits them into a participation of his priesthood: Now, Christ plays the priestly role, not only to render the Father favorable and propitious toward us by an eternal law of reconciliation, but also to receive us as his companions in this great office [Rev. 1:6]. For we who are defiled in ourselves, yet are priests in him, offer ourselves and our all to God (II.15.6). Calvin’s extension of the offices to the faithful elect differs from the anthropological application of the triplex that preceded him in the Christian tradition. Rather than associating the triplex with baptism and the baptized, he applied it only to the elect. Among those who have been baptized ‘are mingled many hypocrites who have nothing of Christ but the name and outward appearance’ (IV.1.7). Christ’s offices only extend to the elect, who are ingrafted to him. Calvin’s association of the elect with the offices of Christ, taken in conjunction with his distinction between the visible and invisible church, introduced a specifically ecclesial application to the interpretation of the triplex. The visible church is ‘the whole multitude of men spread over the earth who profess to

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worship one God and Christ’ and who participate in the sacraments and receive the ministry of the word (IV.1.7). Not all members of the visible church, however, number among the elect. In contrast, the invisible church is ‘that which is actually in God’s presence’ (IV.1.7), comprising ‘all God’s elect . . . united with all other members under Christ, our Head’ (IV.1.2). The elect are the true church; thus, their participation in the offices of Christ constitutes the participation of the church itself in those offices. According to Calvin, in governing the church, Christ ‘uses the ministry of men to declare openly his will to us by mouth, as a sort of delegated work . . . just as a workman uses a tool to do his work’ (IV.3.1): Through the ministers to whom he has entrusted this office and has conferred the grace to carry it out, he dispenses and distributes his gifts to the church; and he shows himself as though present by manifesting the power of his Spirit in this his institution, that it be not vain or idle. (IV.3.2) Calvin identified three offices instituted for the governance of the church: pastors, teachers (or doctors) and elders.18As noted above, Calvin associated Christ’s work of governance with his office of kingship. Thus, through their ministry, those who fill these offices in the church – in particular, the pastors and elders who are responsible for church discipline – are the instruments of Christ’s office of kingship.19 Additionally, the ministers to the word (pastors and teachers) share in Christ’s exercise of his office as prophet. While Christ, as prophet, brought ‘the perfect doctrine’ in the revelation of God’s salvation, his spiritual anointing as prophet is shared with his body for the good of the elect (II.15.2). In the church, pastors and teachers are responsible for ‘Scriptural interpretation – to keep doctrine whole and pure among believers’ (IV.3.4). This ministry, therefore, is an active participation in Christ’s prophetical office for the benefit of those who are to be saved. Calvin’s use of the triplex in the Institutes was distinctive in that he returned to the three titles for Christ rather than employing the priest–king dinome that was commonly used by Martin Luther and other Protestant theologians. Two features of Calvin’s recovery of the triplex are notable. First, he established the triplex as the necessary and sufficient framework for understanding the salvific work of Christ. As did Eusebius, Calvin associated the titles of Christ with the anointing of priests, prophets and kings in ancient Israel. Moreover, Calvin made explicit that in bearing those titles, Jesus Christ actively exercises those offices in his ministry, passion, death and glorification. Thus, they are the offices or works of Jesus Christ as mediator, not simply eternal titles of the Son. Second, Calvin extended the offices of Christ to the elect, who are grafted into the body of Christ. Through this extension, he introduced an ecclesiological application

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of the triplex to the church, particularly in its ministry of governance and preaching.

The Triplex since Calvin The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) of the Reformed church testifies to the influence of Calvin’s application of the triplex to the work of Christ and to the Christian elect. The catechism, still influential today, explains that Jesus is the Christ according to the work he accomplished as God’s anointed prophet, priest and king, clearly reflecting the soteriology Calvin built around the three offices.20 The catechism also employs the three offices to explain the name Christian, given to the one who is ‘a member of Christ by faith, and thus a partaker of his anointing’,21 followed by a description of the exercise of the offices by the faithful, although without making the distinction between the baptized and the elect found in Calvin’s work. The Catholic church also saw renewed attention to the triplex in the sixteenth century. The triplex appeared in the 1552 preparatory work for the Decree on the Sacrament of Orders at the Council of Trent. The acta for the decree included a passage stating that by virtue of their ordination, priests are participants ‘in some way’ in Christ’s offices of priest, prophet and king.22 Although the association of the offices with the ordained ministers of the church was not included in the final text of the decree (nor in any other decree or canon of the Council itself), its appearance in the acta suggests that there was, in Catholic theology at that time, a renewed application of the triplex to Christ and, by extension, an ecclesiological application of the triplex to the ministers of the church. The triplex did, however, appear in the final text of the catechism promulgated after the council. The Catechismus Romanus (1566) recalled the anointing of priests, prophets and kings in the Old Testament, stating that: when Jesus Christ our Saviour came into the world, He assumed these three characters of Prophet, Priest and King, and was therefore called Christ, having been anointed for the discharge of these functions [offices], not by mortal hand or with earthly ointment, but by the power of His heavenly Father and with a spiritual oil.23 Christ exercises these three offices as saviour, whereby he is the revelation of God’s plan of salvation, the high priest of that salvation and the reigning sovereign over the whole world. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the triplex gained prominence in Protestant theology. It achieved its definitive status in modern Protestant

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(particularly Lutheran) theology in the nineteenth century as a result of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s work in The Christian Faith (first published in 1821–1822), in which he set forth the whole work of Christ according to the three offices of priest, prophet and king. The triplex maintained a persistent, if modest, presence in Catholic theology until the nineteenth century, when the development of its ecclesiological sense gave the triplex new significance in Catholic theology. The theological development of the triplex in the nineteenth century advanced along three related paths in the work of Johann Adam Möhler, George Phillips and John Henry Newman. The first path by which the triplex was inserted more substantially into Catholic theology began with Möhler’s theology in Symbolik (1832), which incorporated the Christological and anthropological applications of the triplex. Möhler explained that Christ’s salvific work is accomplished via the ‘organic unity’ of Christ’s life: It is the merits of the entire, undivided God-man, the Son of God whereby we are won again to God. His three offices, the prophetic, the high-priestly, the royal, are alike necessary; take one away, and the remaining immediately appear as unintelligible, as devoid of consistency.24 Jesus Christ accomplishes salvation through all three of his offices. These offices, moreover, are shared by the faithful and are to be ‘adopted’ by them in that ‘the entire undivided Christ’ lives in them.25 Although Möhler did not specify how the faithful are to exercise those offices, his description of their adoption by virtue of the indwelling of Christ suggests an active share in the offices, rather than the passive share described by Calvin with regard to Christ’s priesthood and kingship. The second path by which the triplex was developed extended from the German Catholic canonists to the Roman universities and ultimately to magisterial pronouncements, including the papal encyclical, Mystici Corporis (1943). The overlay of the Protestant German rationalist notion of the Kingdom of God with the Catholic notion of church prompted Catholic canonists, including George Phillips, to adopt the triplex as an alternative to the traditional two-powers theory in canon law.26 The kingdom model of the church as interpreted in Catholic theology required the church to satisfy three tasks: magisterium, ministerium, regimen.27 Phillips and others challenged the traditional twofold power structure of potestas ordinis and potestas jurisdictionis with the suggestion of a triplex of powers corresponding to the triplex of the offices of priest, prophet and king. While the triplex never fully overtook the twofold theology of powers, the nineteenth-century extrapolation of the threefold offices of Christ to the threefold functions of the church led to the extension of the triplex to an ecclesiological application of the triplex to the hierarchy.

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Phillips himself did not envision the ecclesiological application of the triplex in an exclusively hierarchical sense. With regard to lay participation in the offices of Christ, he wrote, The laity have a particular role to exercise in the fulfilment of the threefold function of the Church. First, lay people offer their prayers to God; second, they are both the first teachers of the faith to their children as well as the Church’s catechists; and third, they influence the governmental direction of the Church in important ways.28 This application is ecclesiological rather than anthropological because it explicitly addresses the participation of the laity in the functions of the church. Despite Phillips’s inclusion of the laity in the ecclesiological application of the triplex, magisterial documents reflected only the hierarchical exercise of the powers corresponding to the three offices of Christ.29 For example, the Vatican I draft text on the church, Tametsi Deus Ecclesiam, stated: Therefore, this dogma of Catholic faith must be maintained: by divine ordination there are some persons in the Church endowed with power to sanctify, teach and govern which others lack; the Church cannot accurately be said to be a gathering of equals.30 The draft of the decree, which was never completed, made no reference to the role of the laity in fulfilling the functions of the church. The incorporation of three functions of the church corresponding to the three offices of Christ into the canon law doctrine of powers provided a Christological grounding for the Catholic theology of powers that was previously lacking.31 The use of the triplex to describe the functions of the church did not demand an exclusively hierarchical application (as demonstrated by Phillips’s interpretation). However, in practice, the triplex of powers was assigned only to the hierarchy of the church. The third path by which the triplex became more deeply embedded into Catholic theology in the nineteenth century is that of John Henry Newman. He appears to have inherited his application of the triplex to Christ’s work as saviour from his Evangelical heritage, specifically from Thomas Scott, who closely followed Calvin’s use of the triplex as a systematic soteriology.32 For Newman, Christ’s fulfilment of the offices was the point of reference for the application of the triplex to the church and to the individual. His application of the triplex to the individual differed from previous interpretations in that he associated the offices with all people, not just the baptized or the elect. Thus, Newman wrote:

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Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and, even though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway.33 Newman described conscience as the law which the Creator has implanted ‘in the intelligence of all His rational creatures’.34 All human beings, by virtue of the gift of conscience endowed upon them by God, bear within themselves the functions of priest, prophet and king in the pattern of Christ. The source of inspiration for Newman’s innovation in extending the offices of Christ to all people is not apparent. Elsewhere, he attributed an active participation in the offices specifically to the followers of Christ and situated that participation within a structural ecclesiological context.35 As a whole, Newman’s ecclesiological application of the triplex was influenced by the work of the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop, John Pearson. In his theology of the church, Pearson had brought patristic understanding of the notes, or marks, of the church together with Calvin’s theology of the three offices of Christ to construct a strong, nearly divinizing ecclesiology.36 Newman himself made clear that the church shares in the offices of Christ as Christ’s representative, according to Christ’s plan and gift of the Spirit in establishing the church.37 However, he deviated from Pearson’s ecclesiology to introduce a new element into the ecclesiological application of the triplex by using it to explain ‘corruption and perversion of truth’ in the church.38 Newman described the church’s participation in the three offices as follows: ‘He [Christ] is Prophet, Priest, and King; and after His pattern, and in human measure, Holy Church has a triple office too’.39 In Newman’s judgement, tension among the three offices in the church is only to be expected, given the inherent contradictions between the three offices, which are ‘so divergent and so conflicting’.40 The conflict among them was resolvable only by Christ’s perfection, but, Newman noted, ‘whatever is great refuses to be reduced to human rule’.41 What Christ bears perfectly in the three offices, the church executes imperfectly.42 Like George Phillips, Newman included the laity in the ecclesial exercise of the offices of Christ. He emphasized the role ordained ministers served in carrying out the offices of the church through their ‘teaching, rule, and sacred ministry’,43 while still allowing for some role for the laity in the ecclesial exercise of the three offices. Thus he wrote, ‘All [the Church’s] children, high and low’ take part in the three offices, ‘the glory of the Church, to speak, to do, and to suffer, with that grace which Christ brought and diffused abroad’.44 With regard to the prophetical (teaching) office in particular, Newman reflected that the manifestation of ‘the tradition of the Apostles, committed to the whole Church in its various constituents and functions per modum unius, manifests itself

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variously at various times’, specifically referring to both the episcopacy and ‘the people’ as conduits.45 In the twentieth century, the use of the triplex became even more pronounced in Catholic theology, particularly in magisterial documents. In 1943, Pope Pius XII promulgated the encyclical Mystici Corporis, on the church as the body of Christ. Building on the work of the German Catholic canonists in the nineteenth century, the encyclical used the triplex to explain the share that the institutional church has in the offices of Christ. The hierarchy of the church shares in the offices of Christ through the power given by Christ to his apostles and their successors ‘to teach, to govern, to lead men to holiness’.46 The encyclical did not explicitly link this threefold power to the offices of Christ, although near the end of the encyclical, a brief reference was made to Christ as priest, prophet and king in the context of acknowledging Mary as the Mother of God.47 The encyclical also referred to the exercise of these three powers – teaching, governing and offering the divine Sacrifice – ‘by the whole body of the Church’, through prayer, poverty, chastity and obedience and in charitable works.48 Thus, while the encyclical did not explicitly refer to the share of the non-ordained members of the church in the offices of Christ, it acknowledged the participation of individuals, as members of the church, in the church’s share in Christ’s offices. The application of the triplex found in Mystici Corporis paralleled the theology of Dutch Jesuit theologian Sebastian Tromp, widely considered the author of the encyclical. In his systematic ecclesiology, Corpus Christi Quod Est Ecclesia (1946), Tromp recounted the Christological, ecclesiological and anthropological applications of the triplex. He followed Eusibius’s application of the triplex to explain Jesus’s designation as the Christ.49 He then extended the offices to the Christian faithful, stating that all the faithful ‘participate in some way in the priestly, royal, and prophetic dignity of the Savior’.50 He recalled John Chrysostom’s homily on 2 Corinthians in making this assertion, but linked the participation of the faithful in the three offices more directly to their relationship in and to Christ, as had Fastidius. Additionally, Tromp’s anthropological application of the triplex had ecclesiological significance. His ecclesiology centred on an appreciation of the church as the mystical body of Christ and he emphasized that the participation by individual Christians in the offices of Christ is by virtue of their membership in the one body of Christ, the church.51 In the same timeframe, Yves Congar published Lay People in the Church (1953), in which he proposed an innovative re-articulation of the ecclesiological application of the three offices that expressed, in detail, how the laity share in the church’s participation in the offices of Christ. His text was a response to the many requests for such a treatise that he had received in the course of his pastoral work with the laity. Without diminishing the legitimate role of the ordained priesthood,

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Congar was intent on correcting the ‘hierarchology’ that he saw as an outgrowth of the excessive clericalism in the Catholic church following the Protestant Reformation.52 In his judgement, the only solution was to work towards a ‘total ecclesiology’ that is, ‘a whole ecclesiological synthesis wherein the mystery of the Church has been given all its dimensions’.53 Among the dimensions that required synthesis was the share that both the hierarchy and the laity have in the mission of the church. Thus, he wrote, ‘Christ’s kingly, priestly and prophetical mediation is at work in two ways: through the apostolic hierarchy, for the formation of faithful people; through the whole body, in respect of the world’.54 Congar had examined the question of the participation of the church in the offices of Christ repeatedly as a young theologian, beginning with his lectoral thesis in 1931 and continuing in the ecclesiology courses he taught from 1932 until 1953. In these courses, Congar struggled to work out the causality of the church. Initially, he identified Christ as the principal efficient cause and the apostolic hierarchy as the instrumental cause, insofar as the hierarchy participated in the powers of Christ.55 He described that participation in terms of both the two powers of jurisdiction and orders and the three powers of teaching, governing and sanctifying. In 1941, while detained in a German prisoner of war camp, Congar had a crucial insight regarding the church’s participation in the offices of Christ: it is the entire church that participates in the munera Christi.56 There is a twofold ‘distribution of these powers within the body of the church: the power immanent to the body [as a whole] and second the properly hierarchical “powers” ’.57 According to the first, ‘each member of the faithful, as a member of the body, has something of the priestly, of the royal and of the prophetic’.58 At the same time, while there are many functions in the church, ‘the life of the body as such is organized and governed socially by one authority, function, [that is,] the hierarchy in priesthood, government, and teaching’.59 At that time, he worked to describe the participation of the whole church in each of the three powers, but was unable to explain how the lay faithful participate in Christ’s power of governance.60 In writing Lay People in the Church after the war, Congar further investigated how the laity participate actively in the church’s priestly, royal and prophetical functions, developing a more active exercise of the function of governance than he had envisioned in 1941. In Lay People, Congar imposed a rigid separation between the offices, which he later regretted.61 He came to see in Christ, and therefore in the church a sort of circumincession: the functions are one within the other and mutually qualify each other. The royalty is priestly and prophetic, the prophetic office is priestly and royal, the priesthood is prophetic and royal. This is true within the whole people of God.62

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Despite the shortcomings of his book, Congar’s monumental achievement in Lay People was in building a successful theological argument for granting to all the faithful a full participation in the offices of Christ extended to the church. In the Catholic church, the application of the triplex to Christ, the church and the baptized culminated at the Second Vatican Council, where it figured prominently in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. The council affirmed the participation of the entire people of God, including the laity as well as the ordained ministers of the church, in Christ’s priesthood, his prophetic office and his kingship. The laity’s share in the offices of Christ is based on their incorporation into Christ’s body through baptism.63 The participation of bishops and priests in the offices of Christ is further vested in them by virtue of the sacrament of orders.64 Thus, Vatican II integrated the three applications of the triplex of offices, affirming the full share of the whole church in the offices of Christ, while maintaining a distinction in the way in which those in different states (lay and ordained) participate in those offices. Since the council, theologians across the Christian communities have continued to explore the significance of the triplex. In Catholic theology, the ecclesiological and anthropological applications of the triplex of offices have received continued interest.65 In recent decades, the anthropological and ecclesiological applications of the triplex have also been explored by Protestant theologians,66 some of whom have also proposed a Trinitarian application of the three offices.67 In the context of ecumenical dialogue, consideration of the triplex formed part of the World Council of Churches’ reflection on the biblical image of the church as the people of God in its text on the nature and mission of the church68 and was an element of the third consultation between the Reformed and Orthodox churches in 1992.69 These few examples demonstrate the theological interest in the triplex in the recent scholarship of a variety of Christian communities (Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical and Orthodox). In conclusion, the history of the three offices of priest, prophet and king within the Christian tradition has been recounted here to illuminate the potential utility of the triplex as a topic of inquiry in ecumenical conversation, particularly between Catholic and Protestant theologians. Specifically, this history demonstrates three characteristics of the triplex – commonality, flexibility and scope – that make it a profitable point of departure for addressing differences among the Christian communities. First, the triplex plays a part in both Catholic and Protestant doctrine. It has its origins in the sacramental and theological tradition of the early undivided church, and therefore provides a shared point of reference for the now-separated Christian communities. As such, it can serve as a shared framework within which Christian communities can draw on their own histories to reflect in common on those questions with which the triplex has been associated. Second, the scope of the triplex spans a number of

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theological topics important to ecumenical dialogue, including the saving work of Jesus Christ, the mission and ministry of the church, the individual Christian and, most recently, the Trinity. The triplex bridges issues that are often separated within the usual structure of theological inquiry and compels creative engagement with the relationships that bind them together. In exploring those interrelationships, Christian communities may be able to reconcile their differing emphases, particularly in their theologies of the church. Last, and perhaps most importantly, the triplex enjoys a flexibility of theological interpretation. While the triplex is common to both Catholic and Protestant doctrine, its interpretation has never been so solidly entrenched in any tradition as to render it closed to question and development.

Notes 1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Books II and IV, Ford Lewis Battles (trans.), vols 20 and 21, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1960). 2 Yves Congar, ‘Sur la Trilogie: Prophete-Roi-Prêtre,’ Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 67 (1983): 98. Congar describes L. Schick’s applications in his critique of Schick’s thesis, Das DreifacheAmt Christi und der Kirche (Bern: Peter Lang, 1982). See also Ludwig Schick, ‘Das Munus Triplex – EinökumenischesoderkontroverstheologishesTheologumenon?’, Catholica 37 (1983): 95. 3 Congar, ‘Sur la Trilogie’, 98. 4 Hippolytus, On the Apostolic Tradition 5.2. Translation taken from Alistair Stewart-Sykes, On the Apostolic Tradition (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 76. 5 Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2002), 49. The relationship between oils thusly blessed and early initiation rites is based on a joint reading of Apostolic Tradition 5 and 21. 6 Apostolic Tradition 21. 7 Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, G. A. Williamson (trans.), reprinted 1984 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Dorset Press and Penguin Books, 1965), 43. 8 Ibid. 9 John Chrysostom, 2 Cor. homilia 3, 4–5. 10 Ibid., 7. 11 Fastidius, De Vita Christiana, 1, PL 50: 394, as quoted by Peter Drilling, ‘The Priest, Prophet and King Trilogy: Elements of Its Meaning in Lumen Gentium and for Today’, Église et Théologie 19 (1988): 189. 12 Aurelio Fernandez, Munera Christi et Munera Ecclesiae: Historia de una Teoría (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S. A., 1982), 163 and 190–1. 13 Theophylact, Expos. inep. II ad Cor., PG 124: 812–13. 14 Congar, ‘Sur la Trilogie’, 100 and Fernandez, 171–2.

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15 Thomas Aquinas, Super Evangelium S. Matthaei, c. 1, l. 1; Ad Rom. l. 1; and Summa Theologiae IIIae, q. 22 a. 1 ad 3 and q. 31 a. 2 sol. 16 Congar, ‘Sur la Trilogie’, 100 and 102. 17 Calvin, Institutes, II.12.1–2. 18 Ibid., IV.3.5 and 9. Calvin recognized a fourth office, that of deacons, which he described as involving administration, but made no explicit reference to governance. 19 Calvin, Institutes, IV.3.1. 20 Heidelberg Confession, q. 31. Translation taken from Rick Brannan, ed., Historic Creeds and Confessions (Oak Harbour, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1998). 21 Ibid., q. 32. 22 Congar, ‘Sur la Trilogie’, 104. Congar noted that the triplex appears in the writings of a number of sixteenth-century Catholic theologians, many of whom participated in the Council. 23 Catechism of the Council of Trent, John A. McHugh and Charles J. Callan (trans.) (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., 1923), 35. No mention was made of the anthropological or ecclesiological applications of the triplex. 24 Johann Adam Möhler, Symbolism, James Burton Robertson (trans.), Michael J. Himes (ed.) (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997), 182–3. 25 Ibid. 26 Josef Fuchs, ‘Origines d’uneTrilogie Ecclésiologique a L’époque Rationaliste de la Théologie’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 53 (1969): 193–4. Fuchs does not reflect on the possible influence of either Phillips’s Protestant religious background or his professional relationship with Möhler on the canonist’s attention to the triplex. Phillips converted to Catholicism in 1828. He joined the University of Munich faculty in 1834 and was part of Möhler’s intellectual circle until the latter’s death in 1838. 27 Fuchs, 209, with reference to H. Klee, Katholische Dogmatik, vol. 1, 2nd edn, (Mainz, 1839), 162ff. 28 George Phillips, Kirchenrecht, I (Graz: AkademischeDruck-u. Verlaganstalt, 1959; a reprint of the 3rd edn of 1855), #32, 33, as quoted in Drilling, 195. 29 Congar, ‘Sur la Trilogie’, 105. 30 Johannes Dominicus Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, vol. 53 (Graz: AkademischeDruck-u. Verlaganstalt, 1961), chapter 3, col. 310, as quoted by Drilling, 191. 31 Ormond Rush, ‘The Offices of Christ, Lumen Gentium and the People’s Sense of the Faith’, Pacifica 16 (June 2003): 142, with reference to Fuchs’s study. 32 H. D. Weidner, ‘Introduction’, in John Henry Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church, H. D. Weidner (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), i–li. 33 John Henry Newman, A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation (New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 1875), 73. 34 Newman, Letter, 71. 35 John Henry Newman, ‘The Three Offices of Christ’, in Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day (London: Rivingtons, 1879), 55–6. 36 Halbert Weidner, ‘Newman’s Application of the Offices of the Church in the Search for a Reformed Catholicism’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 1, no. 1 (2001): 46.

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37 John Henry Newman, ‘The Christian Ministry’, in Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 418–30. 38 Newman, ‘Preface’ to Via Media, 26. 39 Ibid., 25. 40 Ibid., 56–7. Here Newman echoes Möhler, although there is no evidence of direct influence. However, it may be significant that Newman studied with Passaglia and Perrone, scholars at the Gregorian University, at the time of Möhler’s influence on Roman institutes, particularly the Gregorian. Another student of Passaglia and Perrone, Matthias Josef Scheeben, appears to have been influenced by Möhler’s work, although he advanced it in a different direction, emphasizing the Christologic triplex. 41 Ibid., 26. 42 Newman, ‘Three Offices’, 52–62, first preached 25 December 1840, and Newman, ‘Preface’, 27. Newman seized upon the value of acknowledging the human limits of the church’s participation in the offices of Christ as early as 1840, prior to his conversion to Catholicism in 1843–1845. 43 Newman, ‘Preface’, 25. 44 Newman, ‘Three Offices’, 62. 45 John Henry Newman, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961), 63. Newman did not explicitly refer to the triplex or to the teaching office per se in this text, but it is reasonable to take the examples in his treatise on the consensus fidelium as instances of the church as pastors and faithful participating actively in the prophetical (teaching) office of the church. 46 Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis (1943), 38. 47 Ibid., 110. 48 Ibid., 47. 49 Sebastian Tromp, Corpus Christi Quod Est Ecclesia, vol. II, De Christo Capite Mystici Corporis (Rome: Gregorian University, 1960), 105. The 1960 edition is a republishing of the 1946 edition, with only minor revisions. 50 Ibid., 318. 51 Ibid., 324. Specifically, Tromp repeatedly referred to the description by Prosper of Aquitaine of the whole Christian people (totus populus Christianus) as priestly, which emphasized that the Christian’s participation in the offices of Christ is as a member of church, not merely as separate individuals. 52 Yves Congar, ‘My Path-Findings in the Theology of the Laity and Ministries’, The Jurist 32 (1972): 170. 53 Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church, revised edition (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965), xv–xvi. 54 Congar, Lay People in the Church, 118. 55 Yves Congar, Cours d’Ecclésiologie (1932–1933) (Archives of the Dominican Province of France), loose interleaf inserted at p. 63. 56 Yves Congar, Cours sur l’Eglise (1941) (Archives of the Dominican Province of France), ‘Pouvoirs’, 1–5. 57 Congar, Cours sur l’Eglise (1941), loose interleaf inserted at p. 56. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Congar, ‘Pathfindings’, 174.

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Congar, ‘Sur la Trilogie’, 112. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (1964), 10–12 and 31–6. Lumen Gentium 20–1 and Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis (1965), 1. See, for example, John Paul II, ‘Address to the faithful saying that all are called to share in Christ’s threefold messianic mission as Priest, Prophet and King’, Osservatore Romano (English) (1 October 1984) 854, 24; and Neil Ormerod, ‘On the Divine Institution of the Three-fold Ministry’, Ecclesiology 4, no. 1 (2007): 38–51. See, for example, Randall E. Otto, ‘Baptism and the Munus Triplex’, Evangelical Quarterly 76, n. 3 (2004): 217–25; and Gerry Breshears, ‘The Body of Christ: Prophet, Priest, or King?’ Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37 (1994): 3–36. See, for example, Robert Sherman, King, Priest and Prophet: A Trinitarian Theology of Atonement (New York: T&T Clark, 2004) and Christopher B. Kaiser, ‘The Incarnation and the Trinity: Two Doctrines Rooted in the Offices of Christ’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43 (1998): 221–55. World Council of Churches, The Nature and Mission of the Church (Geneva: The World Council of Churches, 2005): 7. Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43 (1998): 205–342. The entire volume is dedicated to the ‘Third Official Theological Consultation Between Reformed and Orthodox Churches (Kappel-am-Albis, Switzerland, March 9–15, 1992)’.

Chapter 6 Practical Ecclesiology in John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards Amy Plantinga Pauw ‘Tho’ his Principles were Calvinistic, yet he called no Man, Father. He thought and judged for himself, and was truly very much of an Original’.1 This assessment of Jonathan Edwards by his protégé Samuel Hopkins has not encouraged interpretations of Edwards as a faithful bearer of John Calvin’s legacy. The paucity of direct references to Calvin in Edwards’s writings, and the conspicuous absence of Calvin’s name from Edwards’s ‘Catalogue’ of books and his Account Book have likewise contributed to an impression that there is little direct theological connection between the two. Finally, we have Edwards’s own disclaimer in the preface to Freedom of the Will, where he declared, ‘I should not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction’s sake: though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believing the doctrines which I hold, because he believed and taught them; and cannot justly be charged with believing in everything just as he taught’.2 Particularly when it comes to Calvin’s doctrine of the church, American historians have tended to take Edwards at his word. They have generally dismissed any strong theological connection with Calvin’s ‘high’ churchmanship and read Edwards’s ecclesiology as an anticipation of the populist Protestant evangelicalism that would later take centre stage. It is rare, however, for persons to be truly cognizant of their own intellectual debts. While Edwards cannot justly be charged with believing in everything just as Calvin taught, Edwards’s doctrine of the church displays deep commonalities with Calvin’s, especially in its persistent tension between the ideals of inclusiveness and holiness. In his fine book on Nathaniel Taylor, Douglas Sweeney complains that ‘only those whose doctrinal articulations evinced a sufficient reverence for and a seemingly literal continuity with Edwards’s own phraseology – or who proved so culturally conservative that they refused to adapt to the changing times – have been deemed authentically Edwardsian.’3 It would be unfortunate to replicate this false standard of authenticity in the case of John Calvin. Neither Edwards’s breezy irreverence towards Calvin nor his willingness to adapt Calvin’s

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ecclesiology to his own pastoral circumstances should disqualify him from being considered a rightful heir to Calvin’s theological legacy.

Practical Theology It has been common to trace Calvin’s theological influence on Edwards with broad strokes, focusing on doctrines such as divine sovereignty, Original Sin and election. But these aerial surveys of soteriology do not do justice to the practical, ‘on the ground’ theological reflection that was at the centre of their pastoral work. Both Calvin and Edwards understood theology as practical in a broad sense, as concerning knowledge about God’s gracious relations with humankind, a knowledge that informed Christian life and led to the good of reconciliation and union with God. Theology is, according to Edwards, ‘the doctrine of living to God by Christ’.4 But their theology was also practical in the narrower sense of requiring continual pastoral discernment about the operations of grace in specific situations, and here, too, theological links between Calvin and Edwards can be discerned. Both devoted themselves to pastoral ministry; and pastoral ministry is never primarily a theological recital of God’s saving deeds, a matter of standing above the fray of daily experience and witnessing to the timeless truths of the Gospel. The lives of pastors revolve around the church’s daily life in the world as it negotiates material issues of community. Pastors testify to and embody divine grace through their attention to the ordinary tasks of nurture and education, through concrete decisions about polity and budget, discovering in the process that the redeeming work of God regularly eludes human comprehension and control. In pastoral work, neither scorn for established Christian practice nor slavish adherence to it is appropriate; instead, what is required is careful and critical reflection on the difficulties and opportunities of the church’s present context. Attention to this kind of practical theology reveals Calvin and Edwards’s theological convergences at a different level, one that has as much to do with the challenges of pastoral discernment as with doctrine. Though their theological convictions about the centrality of divine grace in the salvation of sinners never wavered, their ability to discern this grace in particular pastoral situations was much less steady. Divine grace has many counterfeits, and, often, the pastoral discernment of grace is a retrospective exercise. All true grace leads to practice, but Christian practice is stuttering and ambiguous, and even God’s best gifts are marred by human sin. The earthly progress of God’s work of salvation seems agonizingly slow and indirect most of the time. Calvin and Edwards’s pastoral experience yielded an unsentimental realism about the church and its wandering path towards holiness. After an overview of

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the theological elements that seem to make pastoral frustration endemic to Reformed views of the church, the remainder of this essay will focus on two concrete examples of Calvin and Edwards’s practical ecclesiology: Calvin’s arguments against requiring clerical celibacy and Edwards’s arguments in support of the revivals. Both are cases of pastoral discernment that represented a break from established church practice and laid bare their ecclesiological commitments.

Reformed Ecclesiology John Milton’s poignant final portrait of Adam and Eve captures a central dynamic in Reformed ecclesiology. At the very end of Paradise Lost, the Archangel Michael assures Adam and Eve that their grievous fall into sin will be remedied by Christ, who will come and restore all things. But as Adam and Eve leave Paradise, the mood is wistful: ‘They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,/Through Eden took their solitary way’.5 Though they have received God’s promise of salvation, they are keenly aware of the enormity of what they have lost and anticipate a long and difficult journey ahead. Likewise, the Reformed doctrine of the church declares that Christians live in the assurance that their salvation has been accomplished in Christ; but, as fallen creatures, their way back to Paradise is ‘wandering and slow’. This characteristic Reformed theme is displayed in the ecclesiologies of both John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards.6 A Reformed narrative of the church has no Eden. Like Milton’s Adam and Eve, the church on earth has always existed ‘after the fall’, often in the midst of great religious and political turmoil. The perception of scandalous failings in the established church significantly shaped Reformed ecclesiology from the beginning. According to Calvin, God has entrusted the church with the ‘power of the keys’ (Matt. 16:19), but Christian communities can so abuse this trust that, in them, ‘Christ lies hidden, half buried, the Gospel overthrown, piety scattered, the worship of God nearly wiped out’.7 Reformed ecclesiology emphatically affirms the church’s peccability. ‘We claim too much for ourselves’, Calvin insisted, if we are tempted to withdraw ‘from the communion of the church just because the morals of all do not meet our standard or even square with the profession of Christian faith’.8 Remaining in the fellowship of the earthly church is essential, not because the church is spiritually exemplary, but because God’s promises can be trusted. Old Testament Israel is often referred to as ‘the Church’ in early Reformed writings, and the ecclesiological significance of this should not be underestimated. The paradigm for the church’s self-understanding on this model is not an idealized

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community of Christian disciples but the believing community of Israel, struggling and often failing to respond adequately to God’s covenant faithfulness. Like the prophets of Israel, Calvin and Edwards were capable of unstinting criticism of the moral and spiritual failings of God’s people. Commenting on the Apostles’ Creed, Calvin noted that the church is properly an article of belief, ‘because often no other distinction can be made between God’s children and the ungodly, between his own flock and wild beasts’.9 Jonathan Edwards extended this bestial metaphor even further, comparing the church to Noah’s ark: just as the door of the ark ‘was open to receive all sorts of creatures – tigers, wolves, bears, lions, leopards, serpents, vipers, dragons – such as men would not by any means admit into the doors of their houses’, so likewise, ‘Christ stands ready to receive all, even the vilest and worst’.10 Because of the dubious constitution of the earthly church, Calvin insisted that Christians do not properly believe in the church: ‘We testify that we believe in God because our mind reposes in him as truthful, and our trust rests in him’.11 Both Calvin and Edwards found support for their vision of the church as a haven for sinners in the long Christian tradition of appealing to the church as the mother of believers. Christians are conceived in the womb of the church, fed at her breast, guided and instructed by her throughout life. As Calvin wrote in his commentary on Eph 4:12, ‘The Church is the common mother of all the godly, which bears, nourishes and governs in the Lord both kings and commoners’.12 Drawing no doubt on the experiences of his own household, Edwards declared that the church watches over and feeds her spiritual children in much the same way as ‘tender mothers are want to do to their little children’: When the mother wakes up in the night, she has her child to look after, and nourish at her breast; and it sleeps in her bosom, and it must be continually in the mother’s bosom, or arms, there to be upheld and cherished. It needs its food and nourishment much oftener than adult persons; it must be fed both day and night. It must be very frequently cleansed, for ‘tis very often defiled. It must in everything be gratified and pleased; the mother must bear the burden of it as she goes to and fro. This is also a lively image of the care that the church, especially the ministers of the Gospel, should have of the interest of Christ committed to their care.13 But both Calvin and Edwards were concerned to guard against any spiritual complacency that this tender maternal imagery might encourage. Commenting on Eph. 4:14, Calvin insisted that there must be growth after birth. Christians are not to remain infants, eternally confined to a milk diet. In a daring analogy, Calvin declared that ‘the life of believers, longing constantly for their appointed state, is like adolescence’.14 In the midst of turbulent spiritual emotions and

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repeated moral failures, Christians are to strive by God’s grace to grow into a mature life of gratitude and holiness. Portraying the earthly church as a mother not of a helpless infant but of a large band of unruly adolescents better reflects both Reformed ecclesiology and Calvin and Edwards’s pastoral experience. The eschatological dynamism of Reformed ecclesiology is captured in another feminine image: the church as the bride of Christ. At its best, the Reformed ecclesiology has held these two ecclesial images of mother and bride not only in tension but also in paradoxical relation: the church as a gasping, panting mother is on her way to becoming the pristine bride of Christ.15 The perfect holiness and faithfulness of the church as bride is an eschatological reality. While ‘the Lord is daily at work in smoothing out wrinkles and cleansing spots [Eph. 5:27]’, Calvin saw the earthly church as holy ‘in the sense that it is daily advancing and is not yet perfect’.16 He urged believers not to ‘toil slowly or listlessly, much less give up’, but declared it ‘a devilish invention for our minds, while as yet we are in the earthly race, to be cocksure about our perfection’.17 Even the lifelong process of sanctification does not yield the perfect holiness that characterizes Christ’s bride. As Edwards insisted, ‘the time of Christ’s last coming is the time of the consummation of the church’s marriage with the Lamb, and the time of the complete and most perfect joy of the wedding’.18 The pastoral question for both Calvin and Edwards was the extent to which this eschatological reality could be anticipated in the visible church. As will become evident, Edwards as pastor was repeatedly tempted by an ecclesiology of glory that sought the eschatological perfection of Christ’s bride within the frailties of the earthly community of saints. The image of the church as bride must remain eschatological not only because of the imperfections of the saints, but also because the earthly church is a mixture of the regenerate and unregenerate. Some of the unregenerate will eventually experience the saving work of the Spirit, but others will be left in their lost state. Calvin and Edwards followed Augustine in positing, within and beyond the visible church, a church invisible to all but God, composed of the elect saints from every time and place. Forged in the fire of the Donatist debates, Augustine’s understanding of the church rejected rigorist conceptions of earthly Christian community that would confine its membership to the truly holy. It was a given for Augustine that the visible church is a mixed body, and he repudiated the violence and hypocrisy of premature human attempts to separate saints from the non-elect. Following Augustine, Calvin and Edwards identified the ‘true’ church with the invisible church of the elect, its membership past and present determined by God’s secret decree. It is this invisible church that will be wed to Christ. Together they will rejoice ‘in consummate, uninterrupted, immutable, and everlasting glory, in the love and embraces of each other, and joint enjoyment of the love of the Father’. Indeed, for Edwards, the marriage of the church

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with Christ is the culmination of God’s magnificent work of redemption: ‘The creation of the world seems to have been especially for this end, that the eternal Son of God might obtain a spouse, towards whom he might fully exercise the infinite benevolence of his nature, and to whom he might, as it were, open and pour forth all that immense fountain of condescension, love and grace that was in his heart, and that in this way God might be glorified’.19 The shadow church of the truly elect stood in some tension with the Reformed insistence on the importance of the Israel-like visible church as the primary site of God’s redemptive work. Appeal to an invisible church of the elect tends to diminish the significance of the comfort and spiritual nourishment provided by the visible church and encourages uneasy Christians to seek other grounds for spiritual assurance. The doctrine of the invisible church is also a tempting theological refuge for pastors tired of the stresses and disappointments of ministry with flesh-and-blood parishioners. If Calvin and Edwards regarded the invisible church as the ‘true’ church in some respects, the visible church was the real context for their pastoral ministry. As pastors, they were not to speculate about the identity of the elect but, rather, to preach the good news to all and benevolently pray for the salvation of all members of the gathered community. ‘Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners’, Edwards proclaimed in his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.20 But, in the end, as Brian Gerrish notes, it seems that preachers are called to be more benevolent than God, for not all who have been ardently preached to and prayed for were from eternity chosen by God as members of the invisible church.21 The tension between the ecclesial conceptualities represented by the images of mother and bride creates distinctive pastoral dilemmas in Reformed ecclesiology. Calvin, and Edwards after him, attempted to draw together the Catholic notion of the church as a sacrament of grace for all sinners and the radical Reformation’s image of the holy gathered church. In Calvin’s Geneva, and in the Puritan society Edwards longed to restore in New England, the church was to exist both as established institution demanding the allegiance of everyone and as a community set apart by its disciplined life. The church strives for comprehensive membership and for visible holiness. The interplay of these aims can be seen in Reformed theologies of the Lord’s Supper. The emphasis on church as mother led Calvin to call for frequent celebrations of communion to nurture and strengthen faith, while the stress on church as bride encouraged an ongoing concern, though variably enacted, to fence the table against all who would pollute it by their unworthiness. In Edwards’s church in Northampton (MA), the clash between views of the Lord’s Supper as nourishment for the spiritually weak and as love feast for none but the truly faithful brought an acrimonious end to his pastorate.

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In their doctrine of the church, Calvin and Edwards, therefore, seem to set themselves up for pastoral frustration. Their rigorous ecclesiology called for both breadth of membership and depth of spiritual transformation, and yet their theological anthropology reminded them that they had only mediocre human material with which to work. As Edwards’s biographer George Marsden notes, ‘Edwards’s ideal for the church and ultimately for the town was that everyone should follow a virtually monastic standard for all of life’.22 Given the fallenness of humanity in general, and the pragmatic, family-oriented religiosity of Northampton in particular, this was clearly an unrealistic aim. Calvin and Edwards both strove for a high degree of spiritual self-discipline themselves, but they were continually disappointed by what they judged to be the spiritual and moral laxness of their parishioners. It is not surprising, then, that impatience and uncharitableness could get the best of them at times. What follows are two snapshots of their pastoral responses to this theological conundrum.

John Calvin on Clerical Celibacy Calvin’s arguments against requiring clerical celibacy were a part of his polemic against what he saw as the Roman Catholic corruption of church practices and theology. Celibacy, in Calvin’s view, while a good in itself, had become an idol, a law that the clergy used to justify themselves, to proclaim their own righteousness and to tyrannize others. ‘There was no law requiring celibacy in the early church’, Calvin noted, ‘but an absurd admiration for it became so strong that marriage was condemned as shameful for bishops. Afterward, the severity of a law gradually crept in and has produced countless forms of evils for us’.23 According to Calvin, the result of making celibacy mandatory for clergy was to introduce ‘a sink of iniquities’ into the church and ‘cast many souls into the abyss of despair’.24 In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 7, Calvin was explicit about what he saw as the practical evils of enforced clerical celibacy. Because ‘pious and prudent men’ refused to vow perpetual celibacy, ‘the church was robbed of very many good and faithful ministers’. Meanwhile, those who imprudently vowed celibacy, without being ‘endowed with the power and gift’ to keep that vow, were assailed by lust and, after a time, resorted to keeping concubines and to even more ‘monstrous enormities’.25 From Calvin’s perspective, these practical troubles grew from a mistaken theology of sin and grace. The church had promulgated a falsely exalted view of clergy as free from the weaknesses that assailed ordinary Christians. This led to regarding marriage ‘as a kind of life unbecoming the holiness of their order’. Calvin agreed with the apostle Paul that the unmarried state is a good thing – in his view, sexual continence ‘lends not a little

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dignity to the ministry’. But, in Calvin’s experience, ministers of the Gospel did not tower over other Christians in spiritual discipline and maturity. Of the gifts that God has given to ‘properly adorn’ the ministry, it was clear to Calvin that ‘celibacy is not among them’. By extravagantly honouring celibacy, ‘good men [are] frightened away from marriage, even when their need of it is urgent’.26 It is no good for ministers to pretend that they have ‘made an agreement with God as to perpetual strength’ from sexual temptation. Calvin thought that ‘the infirmity of our flesh’ exposed all Christians, ministers included, to Satan’s wiles, and they should not ‘aspire beyond their limits’ by rashly vowing ‘what is not in their power and what they will not obtain as a gift’.27 Furthermore, in Calvin’s view, even if some church authorities found that encouraging clerical celibacy was not ‘an obstacle for [them] at present’, that was not reason enough to continue this practice. ‘Austerity’ about this matter, he insisted, ‘can be a great obstacle to future generations, for whom, as you know, we must take thought’.28 Augustinian that he was, Calvin foresaw no huge gains in the spiritual and moral discipline of ministers before the eschaton. Given the ongoing Christian struggle against sin, unduly austere practices that exerted pressure and tyranny on future generations of ministers would only lead to spiritual hypocrisy or despair. While Calvin regarded celibacy as ‘an excellent gift’, he mocked those who extolled it ‘as if it were the most excellent of all virtues’, or even a form of the worship of God.29 ‘Celibacy has its own disadvantages’, Calvin coolly noted, even apart from ‘the difficulty of sexual continence’. Indeed, he found that ‘celibate men are distracted by no slighter and fewer distractions than married men’.30 In an uncharacteristically autobiographical aside in a sermon on 1 Timothy, Calvin confided: For me, I would not want anyone to attribute my unmarried state to virtue; if I could best serve God in marriage, it would be a vice to stay as I am. Being unable to claim before God and others that I was unmarried would not worry me at all. But I know my weakness, so that perhaps a woman would not find herself well with me. However that may be, if I abstain, it is only to be freer to serve God. It is not that I think myself more virtuous than my brothers.31 Even if every minister received the gift of celibacy, and, as it was, Calvin thought that this was true of ‘scarce a hundredth part of them’, this gift, too, has been marred by human sin and would not place clergy anywhere near the ‘angelical perfection’ that some claimed for themselves.32 Like celibacy, marriage, too, is a good and holy gift from God, and Calvin vigorously denounced those who would ‘despise it as if it savoured of the pollution

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of the flesh’.33 ‘Christ deems marriage worthy of such honour that he wills it to be an image of his sacred union with the church’, Calvin declared in the Institutes. ‘What more splendid commendation could be spoken of the dignity of marriage?’34 Yet, in his sermons and commentaries, he was remarkably candid about its reallife difficulties. He did not respond to those who exalted the holiness of celibacy by exalting the holy joys of marriage. Calvin’s pastoral experience, as indicated by the frequency with which marital problems surface in the Registers of the Consistory of Geneva, seems to have tempered his estimate of the benefits and pleasures of marriage. While God instituted marriage as ‘a good plan, sin afterwards came in to corrupt that institution of God’.35 The result, according to Calvin’s frank assessment, was that ‘in place of so great a blessing there has been substituted a grievous punishment, so that marriage is the source and occasion of many miseries’.36 Marriage, Calvin conceded, is ‘attended by innumerable vexations’ and afflicted by many ‘anxieties and distresses’. The annoyances of marriage are indeed so great that ‘Satan has always endeavoured to make it an object of hatred and detestation, in order to withdraw men from it’.37 Thus, though God ordained marriage for humankind’s general advantage, it is attended by so much disagreeableness that many are prone to despise it. In humanity’s sinful state, marriage is an effective but bitter medicine. ‘Let us therefore learn not to be delicate and saucy’, Calvin counselled, ‘but to use with reverence the gifts of God, even if there be something in them that does not please us’. In the eschaton, there will be no marriage or giving in marriage (Matt. 22:30), for the church will be the bride of Christ. But, for the time being, considering ministers’ urgent need of it, marriage was a gift to be accepted gratefully, despite its innumerable vexations.38

Jonathan Edwards on Revivals Innumerable vexations also attended the eighteenth-century New England revivals. There are some broad parallels between Calvin’s defence of married clergy and Jonathan Edwards’s defence of the revivals. Like clerical marriage, the revivals were viewed by their opponents as an unwarranted break with established church tradition, a threat to the order and holiness of the church. Edwards, like Calvin, was in the difficult pastoral position of defending what he saw as a gift of God, when there were legitimate reasons to despise it. In polemical contexts, Edwards could be as uncompromising in defence of the revivals as Calvin was in the case of marriage, yet there were also moments of candour, when Edwards was honest about the revivals’ bitter fruit. But whereas Calvin’s sober assessment of marriage remained quite consistent, Edwards’s theological evaluations of the revivals were as volatile as the revivals themselves, revealing the strains that pastoral circumstances placed on his ecclesiology.

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In the immediate wake of the Northampton area revivals of 1734–1735, Edwards was effusive about both their extent and their positive effects. In a May 1735 letter to Benjamin Colman, later expanded into A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Edwards described at length the ‘truly wonderful and astonishing manner of the Spirit’s saving influences’, revelling in how: many seem to have been suddenly taken from a loose way of living, and to be so changed as to become truly holy, spiritual, heavenly persons; ‘tis extraordinary as to the degrees of gracious communications, and the abundant measures in which the Spirit of God has been poured out on many persons; ‘tis extraordinary as to the extent of it, God’s Spirit being so remarkably poured out on so many towns at once, and its making such swift progress from place to place.39 This ‘surprising work of God’ was understandably gratifying to Edwards, both as a minister and as a writer who early on had ambitions to make a name for himself beyond the colonial hinterlands. Moreover, the revivals relieved some of the pastoral frustrations endemic to Edwards’s Reformed ecclesiology: now that nearly everyone in Northampton seemed to be exhibiting extraordinary spiritual progress, a comprehensive community of converted and sanctified believers did not seem completely out of reach. But this relief from pastoral frustration proved disappointingly fleeting. By 1737, as the first edition of A Faithful Narrative appeared, Edwards was writing again to Colman, confessing that it was ‘a great damp to that joy to consider how we decline, and what decays that lively spirit in religion suffers among us, while others are rejoicing and praising God for us’.40 By the end of the 1730s, the gap between Northampton’s international reputation for holiness and its spiritual declension had yawned even wider. It was clear to Edwards that he had seriously overestimated the genuine spiritual gains of the revivals. The way of redemption for his parishioners was to be wandering and slow after all. Despite their mixed results, these early revivals seem to have encouraged Edwards to attribute glorious significance to the role of periodic awakenings in God’s work of redemption. This revivalist ‘theology of glory’, to borrow Avihu Zakai’s characterization,41 was a departure from Calvin’s pragmatism about the visible church and seems to have fostered in Edwards, at least intermittently, an un-Calvinist optimism regarding the prospects for spiritual advancement in his congregation, and in Protestantism more generally. But pastoral realities in Northampton repeatedly chastened Edwards’s theology of glory, drawing him back towards a Calvinist sobriety about the church’s progress towards redemption. If revivals were indeed the appointed means of establishing Christ’s kingdom, the spiritual gains they brought seemed disturbingly transitory. Edwards

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lamented how the surprising outpourings of the Spirit in his congregation could be closely followed by a deluge of party spirit, moral confusion and spiritual arrogance. Even what Edwards judged to be the genuine work of the Spirit was unsettling, threatening the institutional control of established ministers like himself and sowing agitation, innovation and dissension. Rehearsing the central themes of Calvinist soteriology, Edwards reasserted the ambiguous, conflict ridden nature of the earthly work of redemption, noting that, even after conversion, Christians will have ‘an exceeding disposition’ to self-righteousness as long as they live and, in particular, will be tempted to ‘make a righteousness of spiritual experiences’.42 Edwards was still reeling from the blow to his own pastoral pride, and, in the spiritual trough following the revivals, Edwards found patient, generous dealings with his ‘stiff-necked unworthy parishioners to be difficult.’43 So perhaps it is not surprising that, when the winds of revival blew through New England again in the larger colonial awakenings of the 1740s, Edwards was tempted once more by a theology of glory regarding the course of God’s work of redemption. Unfortunately, even religion in its most glorious state was plagued by embarrassing disorders and bitter divisions. In his analysis of the colonial revivals, James West Davidson has described an ‘afflictive model of progress’ that paradoxically made it possible for Edwards and his contemporaries to see the most troubling aspects of the revivals ‘as confirmation of their validity because ‘ “the more Satan was chained, the more he raged” ’.44 There would be, Edwards predicted, ‘many sore conflicts and terrible convulsions, and many changes, revivings, and intermissions, and returns of dark clouds, and threatening appearances, before this work shall have subdued the world, and Christ’s kingdom shall be everywhere established and settled in peace’.45 In the uncompromising apologetics of Some Thoughts on the Revival, Edwards saw satanic agency at work, principally in those who criticized the revivals’ alarming excesses and failed to recognize the seasons ‘when God manifests himself in such a great work for his church’.46 Davidson notes, ‘That was the beauty of the afflictive model of progress. It promised redemption of a sort which the mixed temper of the Awakening could provide’.47 Eager to avoid repeating the embarrassment of spiritual declension following the earlier revivals, Edwards drew up an elaborate church covenant in the spring of 1742 in an attempt to preserve the spiritual progress achieved during the revivals. As George Marsden remarks, Edwards was ‘like the disciple Peter on the mount of transfiguration, . . . proposing to build a permanent structure that would conserve so spectacular a spiritual outpouring’.48 But Edwards’s pastoral strategy proved futile, and, soon after the covenant ceremony, Northampton returned to its selfish and divisive ways. Across the New England region, spiritual fervour was also on the decline, and the shocking irregularities and virulent

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hostilities unleashed by New Light sympathizers made claims that the revivals were the work of the Holy Spirit increasingly implausible. Once again, Edwards’s revivalist theology of glory was deflated by pastoral realities.49 Edwards’s theological response to the discouraging outcome of the revivals was to draw closer to Calvin’s ecclesiological principles. Rather than an ‘afflictive model of progress’, Calvin could be said to have embraced an afflictive model of Christian existence, famously describing his pastorate in Geneva as ‘that cross, on which one had to perish daily a thousand times over’.50 The church’s comfort, in Calvin’s view, is not the trust that its afflictions paradoxically indicate spiritual progress but simply the assurance that the church is finally in God’s hands, come what may. Edwards’s mature reflections on the revivals reflect a similar view. In words that could have come from Calvin’s pen, Edwards wrote to a Scottish correspondent in November 1745 that: events have tended remarkably to show us our weakness, infirmity, insufficiency, and great and universal need of God’s help; we have been many ways rebuked for our self-confidence and looking to instruments, and trusting in an arm of flesh; and God is now showing us that we are nothing, and letting us see that we can do nothing.51 Edwards’s earlier self-confident attempts to explain and capitalize on the New England revivals now gave way to an admission of human ignorance and weakness. Only God could pierce through the obscurities and ambiguities of the wandering and slow path of human redemption. Calvin’s ecclesiological legacy in Edwards’s reflections on the revivals is displayed most clearly in the latter’s 1746 treatise Religious Affections. The revivals had brought home to him the mystery ‘that so much good, and so much bad, should be mixed together in the church of God’. But the revivals had also revealed the fallibility of his pastoral judgment in distinguishing the good from the bad. A humbled Edwards exclaimed, ‘How great therefore may the resemblance be, as to all outward expression and appearances, between an hypocrite and a true saint! . . . And what an indecent self-exaltation, and arrogance is it, in poor fallible dark mortals, to pretend that they can determine and know, who are really sincere and upright before God, and who are not!’52 That this humility would not survive the end of Edwards’s Northampton pastorate only underlines the Calvinist insistence that ministers are promised no ‘perpetual strength’ in confronting spiritual temptations. Unlike Edwards’s earlier treatises on the revivals, Religious Affections was directed primarily at the misguided supporters of the revivals. Edwards’s criticisms of those who claimed extraordinary gifts of the Spirit have striking parallels with Calvin’s admonitions to defenders of mandatory clerical celibacy.

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According to Edwards, the extreme New Lights were deluded about their degree of spiritual strength and were prone to extravagant honouring of their particular spiritual gifts. Because they claimed a much higher degree of holiness than they actually had, they were driven to hypocrisy. They were also guilty of dangerous spiritual arrogance, wrongly assuming the prerogative to judge others as deficient in spiritual gifts. The misguided severity of their standards for genuine conversion plunged other Christians into despair and wounded the community of faith. Edwards, who had himself struggled with unduly austere understandings of the required steps in Christian conversion, was, like Calvin, not eager to burden future generations of believers with narrow understandings of the Spirit’s work in individuals. The remedy Edwards proposed to misguided New Lights in Religious Affections is a reminder that the visible church was still for Edwards, as it was for Calvin, the centre of God’s redeeming work. Edwards’s hope had been that revivals would strengthen the life of local congregations, including their traditional patterns of deference to established pastoral authority. The revivals were supposed to be a catalyst for the revitalization of traditional ecclesial structures, not a replacement for them. The populist, schismatic character of revivalist religion surprised and dismayed Edwards. ‘Christian practice’, he concluded at the end of Religious Affections, ‘is the sign of signs, in this sense that it is the great evidence which confirms and crowns all other signs of godliness’. Contrary to New Light claims, the presence of the Spirit was not primarily a matter of personal intuition or private experience. Instead, holy love visibly exercised in the Christian community was at the heart of the Spirit’s work. Loving practice within the established community of faith is not only ‘one kind or part of Christian experience’ – ‘both reason and Scripture represent it as the chief, and most important, and most distinguishing part of it’.53 The Holy Spirit’s presence in the heart is most clearly displayed by outward acts of love within the community of the visible church. Edwards would not live to see another large revival in the colonies. His fondest hopes for the New England revivals dashed, he became disillusioned about the breadth of the Spirit’s work there. In the bitter communion controversy that spelled the end of his Northampton pastorate, Edwards abandoned the Reformed ecclesiological tension between comprehensive membership and visible holiness. Though acknowledging that ‘you can’t keep out hypocrites, when all is said and done’, his treatise An Humble Inquiry defended stringent membership requirements that attempted to do just that. Written in 1749, at the height of his pastoral disappointment and frustration, this treatise revealed Edwards’s yearning for a realized eschatology in the life of the church.54 Not surprisingly, Edwards’s ‘new’ views on qualifications for communion were most popular among Separatists and ‘strict Congregationalists’.55 Calvinist that he was, this was a

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source of dismay to him. Calvin’s Eucharistic theology had maintained an uneasy balance between invitation and table-fencing: the Lord’s Supper was at once nourishment for the spiritually weak and ‘the sacred food that Our Saviour Jesus Christ gives to none but the faithful of his own household’.56 Under the pressure of his pastoral circumstances, Edwards lost that precarious theological equilibrium and insisted that communion privileges in the earthly church belonged solely to those who could already declare themselves ‘by profession and in visibility a part of that heavenly and divine family’.57

Eschatology and Providence Calvin was an amillennialist who professed not to understand the book of Revelation. He rejected the idea, common in his time, that the world was just about to end and, along with it, the anxious preoccupation with eschatological signs. Calvin’s pious agnosticism about eschatological details meant that the doctrine of providence served as the main backdrop for his ecclesiology. Providence, as Joe R. Jones notes, is ‘a grammar of a long and meaningful middle’.58 Pastoral faithfulness in this ‘long and meaningful middle’ requires sustaining hope in God’s redemptive presence without presuming to know its exact present contours, much less the day or the hour of the kingdom’s arrival. The frailties of the church’s past require that the central pastoral task not be the maintenance of a historic tradition but the prayerful discernment of the best present form of ecclesial life. Pastoral faithfulness may, thus, involve advocacy for genuine change. For Calvin, this included the discernment that pastors should be permitted to marry. But marriage was not a harbinger of the kingdom – it was God’s gift to the church to sustain it for the long haul of earthly existence. Edwards’s intermittent departures from Calvin’s ecclesiology were, in part, a function of his eschatology. Edwards spent much of his adult life making ‘notes on the Apocalypse’ and viewed his pastoral triumphs and frustrations through an eschatological lens of the saints’ progress towards glory. He fit the particulars of his own ministry into a larger narrative in which ‘all the unhappy commotions, tumults and calamities’ attending the revivals eventually subside, ‘the whole heathen world’ is converted, and the church enjoys ‘the happy state of the millennium’.59 For Edwards, the colonial revivals were a harbinger of this glorious millennial future. What made his revivalism un-Calvinist was not his pastoral discernment that revivals could be a new gift of God to the church but his tendency, in the process, to lose sight of God’s continuing redemptive presence in the church over the long haul. By defining the advance of God’s work of redemption in terms of special seasons of revival and awakening, it was tempting to view ordinary life in the church, in Sidney Mead’s words, as ‘a struggle

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across dull plateaus between peaks of spiritual refreshing’, an ecclesiological perspective that fed Edwards’s pastoral impatience and frustration.60 Yet, it has been the argument of this essay that the ecclesiological contrast between Edwards and Calvin should not be too sharply drawn. If the grand narrative of Edwards’s theology sometimes departed from Calvin’s in its confident eschatological prognostications, his concrete pastoral experience repeatedly threw him back on the doctrine of providence.61 While in the privacy of his study Edwards continued to exult in what he took to be definitive signs of progress towards the last days, revivals and millennial expectations were not the totality of Edwards’s pastoral experience. The world he encountered both in Northampton and on the Stockbridge frontier was a precarious place full of disappointments and unforeseen calamities; much of the affliction that fell in Christian lives could not be neatly accommodated in a theological algorithm of redemptive progress. As Edwards preached at the funeral of a beloved minister, often the best that bewildered and disheartened Christians could do was to spread their sorrows before Jesus.62 The sorrows and frustrations of Edwards’s pastoral experience drew his practical ecclesiology closer to a Calvinist view of the peccable church existing in the ‘long and meaningful middle’ of divine providence.

Notes 1 A version of this essay appeared in Thomas J. Davis (ed.), John Calvin’s American Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 91–110. Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1765), 41. 2 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1, Freedom of the Will, Paul Ramsey (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 131. 3 Douglas A. Sweeney, Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 10. 4 Jonathan Edwards, ‘Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth’, in Sermons and Discourses 1739–1742, Harry S. Stout (ed.); Nathan O. Hatch and Kyle P. Farley, vol. 22 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Harry S. Stout (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 86. 5 John Milton, Paradise Lost, 2nd edn, Alastair Fowler (ed.) (Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2007), 678. Edwards listed Paradise Lost twice in his ‘Catalogue’ of books he wished to obtain or consult. 6 A fuller exposition of Reformed ecclesiology can be found in my essay ‘The Graced Infirmity of the Church’, in Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics, Amy Plantinga Pauw and Serene Jones (eds) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 189–203. 7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John T. McNeill (ed.), Ford Lewis Battles (trans.) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 4.2.12.

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8 George Lindbeck, ‘The Gospel’s Uniqueness: Election and Untranslatability’, in The Church in a Postliberal Age, James J. Buckley (ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 246; Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.18. 9 Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.2. 10 Jonathan Edwards, Notes on Scripture, Stephen J. Stein (ed.), vol. 15 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Harry S. Stout (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 271. 11 Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.2. 12 John Calvin, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (eds), vol. 11 of The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, T. H. L. Parker (trans.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 181. 13 Edwards, Notes on Scripture, Stein (ed.), 289. 14 Calvin, Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, Parker (trans.), 182–3. 15 I explore the interplay of these images in Amy Plantinga Pauw, ‘The Church as Mother and Bride in the Reformed Tradition: Challenge and Promise’, in Many Voices, One God: Being Faithful in a Pluralistic World, Walter Brueggemann and George Stroup (eds) (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1998), 122–38. 16 Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.17. Here Calvin disagreed with his Anabaptist contemporaries, who found in nuptial imagery ‘a description or lifelike portrait of the Christian congregation’, not only ‘in the perfection of heavenly existence’, but also ‘how it goes on here’, in the power of the Spirit. See Dietrich Philips, ‘The Church of God’, in Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, George H. Williams and Angel M. Mergal (eds) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970), 255. 17 Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.21. 18 Jonathan Edwards, ‘Church’s Marriage to Her Sons, and to Her God’, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 25 of Sermons and Discourses 1743–1758, Wilson H. Kimnach (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 183. 19 Edwards, ‘Church’s Marriage to Her Sons, and to Her God’, 184, 187. 20 Jonathan Edwards, ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’ in Sermons and Discourses 1739–1742, Stout, Hatch, Farley (eds), 416. 21 B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 171. 22 George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 160. 23 John Calvin, Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Advice, Mary Beaty and Benjamin W. Farley (trans.) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 115. 24 Calvin, Institutes, 4.12.23. 25 John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 20, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, vol. 1, John Pringle (trans.) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), 233. 26 Calvin, Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Advice, 115. 27 Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, 229, 232. 28 Calvin, Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Advice, 115. 29 Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, 232–3. 30 Calvin, Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Advice, 114.

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31 John Calvin, ‘Vingtunième Sermon sur la Première à Timothée’, in Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 81 (Braunschweig: C. A. Schwetschke, 1895; repr., New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964), 255 (my translation). 32 Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, 233. 33 John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 21 of Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, William Pringle (trans.) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), 134. 34 Calvin, Institutes, 4.12.24. 35 Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, 224. 36 Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 134. 37 Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, 255. 38 John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 16 of Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 2, William Pringle (trans.) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), 386, 385–6. 39 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4 of The Great Awakening, C. C. Goen (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 101, 107. 40 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 16 of Letters and Personal Writings, George S. Claghorn (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 67. 41 Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 56–8. 42 Jonathan Edwards, “Bringing the Ark to Zion a Second Time,” in Sermons and Discourses 1739–1742, Stout, Hatch, and Farley (eds), 255–6. 43 Edwards, The Great Awakening, Goen (ed.), 354–5. 44 James West Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 169. 45 Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, Claghorn (ed.), 136. 46 Edwards, The Great Awakening, Goen (ed.), 349. 47 Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought, 168. 48 Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 262. 49 Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, Claghorn (ed.), 135. 50 John Calvin to Guillaume Farel, 29 March 1540, in Letters of John Calvin, vol. 1, Jules Bonnet (ed.) (repr. edn, Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2006), 151. 51 Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, Claghorn (ed.), 181. 52 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, Religious Affections, John E. Smith (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 85, 183–4. 53 Edwards, Religious Affections, Smith (ed.), 444, 451. 54 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 12 of Ecclesiastical Writings, David D. Hall (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 310. 55 Kenneth P. Minkema, ‘Jonathan Edwards: A Theological Life’, in Sang Hyun Lee (ed.), The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 11. 56 John Calvin, ‘The Form of Prayers and Manner of Ministering the Sacrament according to the use of the Ancient Church’, quoted in John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 151. 57 Edwards, Ecclesiastical Writings, Hall (ed.), 321, 205; Edwards, Notes on Scripture, Stein (ed.), 271.

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58 Joe R. Jones, A Grammar of Christian Faith: Systematic Explorations in Christian Life and Doctrine, 2 vols (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 1:259. 59 Jonathan Edwards, ‘Notes on the Apocalypse’, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 5, Apocalyptic Writings, Stephen J. Stein (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 411. 60 Sidney E. Mead, The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 125. 61 I draw out this contrast between Edwards’s theological grand narrative and his pastoral experience in Amy Plantinga Pauw, ‘Edwards as American Theologian: Grand Narratives and Pastoral Narratives’, in Jonathan Edwards at 300: Essays on the Tercentenary of His Birth, Harry S. Stout, Kenneth P. Minkema, and Caleb J. D. Maskell (eds) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005), 14–24. 62 Jonathan Edwards, ‘The Sorrows of the Bereaved Spread Before Jesus’, in Sermons and Discourses 1739–1742, Stout, Hatch, Farley (eds), 464–75.

Chapter 7 Preaching Makes the Church: Recovering a Missing Ecclesial Mark Joshua Ralston In the Institutes of Christian Religion’s prefatory address to King Francis I, John Calvin famously defines the marks of the church as ‘the pure preaching of God’s Word and the lawful administration of the sacraments’.1 In doing so, Calvin draws from the seventh article of the Augsburg Confession to respond to Roman Catholic critiques that the Reformation movements had ‘torn up and destroyed’2 the unity of the church. Rather than dividing the church, Calvin believes that it is being reformed in accordance with Scripture and in continuity with the early church and theologians such as Augustine, Cyprian and Chrysostom. Five hundred years of Reformed theological and ecclesial development threatens to obscure the fact that Calvin understands his ecclesiology to be truly catholic. Ecclesial unity and catholicity are vital; ‘there could not be two or three churches unless Christ be torn asunder’.3 Yet, Calvin does not share the assumption that ecclesial unity is established by visible allegiance to Rome. Catholicity is grounded in Christ and unity is given through the Spirit. ‘Mine, however, was a unity of the Church, which should begin with Thee and end in Thee’.4 Catholicity is a theological reality. A distinction must be made between the visible hierarchy and the true church. The true church is not identified by external indicators, but by the internal working of the Spirit in the faithful through the Word, Font, and Table. As Randall Zachman explains, ‘The form of the church is not to be found in the splendour of the Roman episcopacy but rather in the Word and the sacraments; and this form is at times not seen in the world’.5 The fixation on the visible unity of the church obscures its true unity, which is grounded in faithfulness to the Gospel. ‘To embrace the unity of the church in this way, we need not see the church with the eyes or touch it with the hands’.6 This is not to say that the church is necessarily invisible or unrecognizable. The one true church is to be discerned in each of its particular local instantiations by its true marks: the Word and the sacraments. ‘Every congregation that claims the name “church”

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must be tested by this standard as by a touchstone’.7 Calvin identifies the marks of the church in order that the church may be reformed according to the Gospel, united in the Spirit and visible in the world. While Calvin penned these words in polemical contrast with the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century, his identification of church as the community where the Word is preached and the sacraments celebrated need not be ecumenically divisive. In an astute essay entitled ‘Calvin in ecumenical context,’ Jane Dempsey Douglass argues that Calvin’s formulation of the marks of the church ‘permit a Christian to find the church of Jesus Christ under many forms or structures’.8 Calvin’s marks of the church should not function as boundaries to divide Protestants from the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox; ‘they are better understood as directional signs that point to the core of faithful church life’.9 The ecclesial purpose of Calvin’s marks is to encourage renewal in preaching and sacramental practice so that visible unity can be achieved. It must be said that for Calvin, Rome or the episcopacy is not the problem per se; the problem in his view was that the Catholic church of the sixteenth century betrayed the Word and the sacraments. Calvin admits that the true church has been hidden within the Roman Catholic Church. Vestiges of the church remain in and under the external church, no matter how corrupt. Therefore, no church can be written off completely. Under this reading of Calvin’s marks, the claim ‘whenever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists’10 invites the heirs of Calvin to recognize the presence of the true church of God in the Roman Catholic church, other Protestant denominations and the Orthodox churches. Still, further engagement and debate on the fundamental issues of sacramental theology and preaching that divide Christ’s one church is necessary. In this essay, I employ Calvin’s marks of the church to develop an ecumenical ecclesiology from a distinctly Reformed perspective. To make my argument, I begin with Calvin’s second mark, sacramental theology, briefly describing recent retrievals of Calvin’s theology of the Eucharist and querying whether Reformed liturgical renewals should embrace Eucharistic ecclesiologies. In the second section, I offer a reading of Calvin’s theology of the Word, one that highlights the central role that preaching plays in the divine economy of salvation. I aver that preaching takes logical priority over the sacraments in ecclesiology. In the third section, I draw on my reading of Calvin to offer a few constructive suggestions for a homiletic ecclesiology, one that riffs on de Lubac’s famous Eucharistic maxim, by claiming instead that ‘preaching makes the church’. The essay concludes by inviting further discussion between a Reformed homiletic ecclesiology and Roman Catholic views on preaching and the sacraments.

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The Second Mark of the Church Calvin’s second mark of the church, the sacraments, has been at or near the centre of ecumenical discussion in the past 50 years. Baptism, in particular, has proven to be a key point of debate and tentative agreement. On the Roman Catholic side, ‘The Vatican II decree on Ecumenism states that baptism in Christ gives us the right to be called Christians and is the basis for accepting as brothers and sisters all who have been justified by faith in baptism’.11 For Protestants, the Orthodox, and others, the 1982 Lima Document of the World Council of Churches on Baptism, Eucharist and the Ministry provides a formal statement on mutual baptismal recognition. ‘Mutual recognition of baptism is acknowledged as an important sign and means of expressing the baptismal unity given in Christ. Wherever possible, mutual recognition should be expressed explicitly by the churches’.12 Certainly, key theological differences regarding sign and symbol, the place of human faith and God’s grace, and infant and believer baptism are not resolved.13 Nevertheless, ecclesial communities are increasingly recognizing the baptism of other branches of the Christian church. Susan K. Wood notes, ‘In a very real sense, the whole ecumenical movement rests on a mutual recognition of baptism among Christian churches’.14 The formal recognition of the validity of baptism was one of the major accomplishments of ecumenical theology in the twentieth century.15 Returning to Calvin’s marks of the church, mutual recognition of baptism invites Reformed churches to see that the baptized, regardless of denomination, are ‘received into the society of the church, in order that, engrafted in Christ, we may be reckoned among God’s children’.16 Divides over the Eucharist have proven more intractable than those on baptism. Still, the liturgical renewal movements afoot since the close of the Second World War and spurred on by Vatican II have reshaped the thought and practice of numerous Reformed churches and traditions.17 The increased interest in sacramental theology has resulted in and been enhanced by something of a Reformed ressourcement of Calvin’s liturgical thought. Calvin’s writings, particularly those on the Lord’s Supper, have been re-examined and utilized for both internal Reformed renewal and ecumenical debate. A key strategy in this ressourcement is to juxtapose Calvin’s thought against other Reformed views; Zwinglian memorial tendencies and Barthian suspicion of religion and sacraments, in particular, come under attack. Two historical theological studies illustrate the approach. Brian Gerrish’s Grace and Gratitude18 argues that Calvin’s theology is sacramental throughout and explicitly offers an alternative to Zwingli’s low sacramental views. Randall Zachman’s Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin attempts to ‘counter the one-sided emphasis on the proclamation of Christ introduced by twentieth-century theologians such as Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann’19 and thereby ‘demonstrate the ecumenical

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promise of Calvin’s theology’.20 Gerrish and Zachman are both convinced that Calvin’s thought, when freed from its Zwinglian and Barthian ‘corruptions’, can be employed for dialogue with Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. A number of recent Reformed proposals have taken these historical studies a step further and produced theological works on the Eucharist that are ecumenically oriented and explicitly Reformed. Martha Moore-Keish’s Do This in Remembrance of Me argues that the Reformed tradition has neglected liturgical and communal enactment in its sacramental practice. In order to shift Reformed fixation with theoretical clarity to attention on God’s self-manifestation in the practice of Eucharist, she retrieves Calvin’s understanding of the ‘Eucharist as an event through which the Holy Spirit works to shape people over time into relationships with one another and God’s own self’.21 While Moore-Keish’s work is primarily aimed at renewing the practices of American Presbyterian churches, J. Todd Billings’s Calvin, Participation and the Gift defends Calvin’s Eucharistic theology against Radical Orthodoxy’s critiques. What is interesting to note is how Billings’s defence of Calvin occurs primarily on the grounds of Radical Orthodoxy’s own concerns for a high view of participation and gift. Billings argues, ‘In Calvin’s mature Eucharistic theology he frequently connects the Eucharist with being engrafted into Christ, such that we partake of Christ’s substantia to become one with him’.22 He recognizes that this reading departs from how several other commentators have described Calvin’s view of participation, gift and communion. The accuracy of Billings’ reading need not detain us. What is important to note is the concern of a Reformed theologian to bring Calvin into sympathetic conversation with contemporary Anglican and Roman Catholic thinkers. George Hunsingser’s The Eucharist and Ecumenism has the most explicitly ecumenical agenda. He attempts to ‘develop a set of proposal that could be achieved in practice without involving any tradition in unacceptable compromises’.23 To accomplish this, he directly addresses the three major issues dividing Reformed theologies of the Eucharist from Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologies: the real presence, the Eucharistic sacrifice and the ministry. With careful attention to the subtleties of both Reformation theology and contemporary ecumenical debate, Hunsinger tries to ‘show how the Reformed tradition might be brought closer to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teachings without compromising Reformed essentials’.24 The result of Hunsinger’s work are clear theses on Christ’s real presence in the meal, sacrifice and the ministry that invite further study and debate so that one day Reformed, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians will be able to fully discern the presence of Christ’s church in each body. Given these ecumenical strides on baptism and the Eucharist, should Reformed theologians and churches embrace recent Roman Catholic and

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Orthodox claims that ‘the Eucharist makes the church?’ According to Eucharistic ecclesiologies, the Eucharist is the special object of ecclesial reflection, the central mode of Christ’s presence, the means for communion with others and the sign of the unity of the church. Henri de Lubac, the theologian most often associated with the rise of Eucharistic ecclesiologies,25 states that the ‘sacrament which contains the whole mystery of our salvation, the Eucharist, is also especially the sacrament of unity’.26 The Eucharistic feast creates the church by offering the community Christ and his body stretched across space and time. Henri de Lubac’s exegesis of patristic authors and his own formulation of Eucharistic ecclesiology has found widespread support among Roman Catholics and theological allies in Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant traditions.27 The Roman Catholic Church has largely adopted de Lubac’s vision of the church and the Eucharist. For instance, in John Paul II’s encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, he writes that the ‘Eucharist builds the church and the church makes the eucharist’.28 Moreover, §1396 of the Roman Catholic Catechism explicitly states that the Eucharist ‘makes the church’. Calvin’s focus on the sacraments as a primary mark of the church and recent Reformed proposals on the importance of the Eucharist might suggest that the Reformed tradition could embrace Eucharistic ecclesiologies. If Reformed theologians are now willing to recognize that the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist are present in the contemporary Roman Catholic church, then why not claim that the Eucharist makes the church? Is Douglas Farrow correct in his assessment that ‘there is no context in which to ground serious thought about the church but the Eucharistic assembly’?29 Is the Eucharist the only proper centre for theological reflection on the church? The retrievals of Calvin’s thought on the Eucharist and the renewed interest in ecumenical convergence might suggest so. However, the Reformed tradition has historically claimed that the Eucharist only creates the church if the Word is present. Therefore, while these liturgical and ecumenical strides are to be applauded, and may be tentatively embraced, there also has been a curious absence of contemporary ecclesiological reflection on Calvin’s first and primary mark of the church: the Word rightly preached. For those indebted to the Reformation tradition in general, and to Calvin more specifically, this lacuna invites response.

The Priority of Preaching: Recovering a Missing Ecclesial Mark In his 1539 exchange with Cardinal Sadelto, Calvin highlights the ecclesial priority of the Word: ‘Whenever the prophets foretell the renewal of the church or its extension over the whole globe, they always assign the first place to the

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Word’.30 In large part, Calvin’s ecclesiology is a response to the assumption that apostolic succession, claims to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and the sacramental office prove adequate marks of the true Church. Calvin demurs and argues that the true Church is to be found where the Word of God is properly preached and heard, since the ‘Word of God alone lies beyond our judgment’.31 The Word of God is the primary means for the church’s growth and the standard by which the church is judged. Calvin follows Luther in claiming that sacramental practices are liable to corruption and, therefore, must constantly be reformed by the Word of the Gospel. The Word, then, takes functional priority over the sacraments. The sacraments alone do not guarantee the presence of a church. They ‘ought not to move us a whit to grant that the church exists where God’s Word is not found’.32 In contrast, Calvin appears willing to grant that the church may theoretically exist through the Word alone; ‘the church is Christ’s kingdom, and he reigns by his Word alone’.33 In his treatise on the Necessity of Reforming the Church, Calvin clearly states the centrality of preaching, ‘None of our churches is seen without the ordinary preaching of the Word of God’.34 Calvin, however, is not attempting to pit the Word and Spirit or Word and sacraments against one another, especially since much of his debate with Sadoleto revolves around the ecclesiological import of the co-inherence of Word and Spirit. ‘It is no less unreasonable to boast of the Spirit without the Word, than it would be absurd to bring forward the Word itself without the Spirit’.35 Word and Spirit, like Word and sacrament, are always intricately bound together, since ‘Word and sacrament work equally in the confirming of our faith’.36 Calvin demands that Eucharistic piety be coupled with authentic preaching and genuine hearing of the Word. Thus, we can say that, for Calvin, the Eucharist only makes the church when the Word of God is proclaimed. Calvin’s understanding and use of the term Word of God is multivalent; he variously describes the Word of God as Scripture, the Gospel and Jesus Christ. This is not so say that he offers an account of the Word as threefold – Jesus Christ, scripture and preaching – à la Karl Barth. Scripture is the Word of God, not merely a witness to it. Still, it is clear that Calvin ‘does not simply equate the words of scripture with the Word of God’.37 Scripture, apart from its proclamation and interpretation in the community of faith, risks being bent and distorted. Right preaching and true hearing of the Gospel is a check against scriptural misinterpretation. The entire preaching event, both proclamation and reception, is a central element of Calvin’s understanding of the term ‘Word of God’. Calvin so values preaching that he states that the Word of God is primarily given through ‘ordinary preaching’.38 Preaching is God’s chosen vehicle for communicating God’s Word in the world. The Word of God is not merely explained in preaching; the Word is actually given through the preaching of human

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ministers. ‘We hear his ministers speaking just as if he himself spoke’.39 Calvin’s thought resonates with the Second Helvetic Confessions’ bold claim that ‘the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God’.40 In his commentary on Ephesians, Calvin can be seen offering something of a homiletic rejoinder to Eucharistic ecclesiologies: ‘In the strict sense of the term, Christ is the only foundation. He alone supports the whole church. He alone is the rule and standard of faith. But Christ is actually the foundation on which the church is built by the preaching of doctrine’.41 The church, which is founded by Christ, is built up through the preaching of human beings. In order to understand why Calvin ascribes such an important place to preaching in his ecclesiology, it is vital first to explicate Calvin’s understanding of the role of preaching in the economy of salvation by turning to Books III and IV of the Institutes. A key question animating Calvin’s discussion in Book III is how the historic and external work of Christ explicated in Book II can be received by human beings. For Christ’s benefits to be useful for humans, his historic and external work must become present internally in each person. ‘As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us . . . he had to become ours and dwell within us’.42 Human beings need to be united to Christ’s person in order to partake in Christ’s benefits. According to Calvin’s theology, the Holy Spirit, and the faith imparted by the Spirit, is the power that unites human beings to Jesus Christ and imbues them with his benefits. ‘God the Father gives us the Holy Spirit for his Son’s sake’.43 The Spirit enables human beings, separated by space and time from the exalted Christ, to commune with him and receive his benefits. The way that the Spirit accomplishes this task is by creating faith in human beings. ‘Faith is the principal work of the Holy Spirit’.44 The Spirit is poured into the human heart and mind in order that persons might truly know God through Christ. Faith provides ‘the knowledge of God’s will towards us’.45 Through faith, the Spirit dwells in humans, and Christians can be confident that they are secure in God’s grace. It is on this foundation, given by Christ and received in faith through the Holy Spirit, that Calvin constructs his understanding of justification, sanctification, the Christian life and the church in Books III and IV of the Institutes. The question remains open, though, how the Spirit and faith are given to human beings. Given Calvin’s views of divine transcendence, freedom and sovereignty, God is certainly free to save as God chooses. God could save through divine fiat. God could communicate God’s will through a talking donkey or a burning bush. The Gospel might be known in creation or through personal study, the Spirit given as God sees fit. Calvin certainly leaves space for God’s freedom to communicate as God wishes. Still, he is clear that whenever God

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gives the Spirit and faith, ‘there is a permanent relationship between faith and the Word’.46 The Word, faith and the Spirit always go hand in hand; there is no way to find one without the other. Faith is given through the Spirit by the Word. In Book III, Calvin withholds comment on whether or not ‘a human ministry is necessary for sowing God’s Word’, comfortable that ‘however it is imparted to us’ the Word is a ‘mirror in which faith may contemplate God’.47 However, he already hints at the priority of preaching when he intimates that the Word is primarily heard, not read. ‘For unless the power of God, by which he can do all things, confronts our eyes, our ears will barely receive the Word or not esteem it at its true value’.48 In Book IV, this claim becomes explicit. Human preaching is the ordinary means by which the Spirit is imparted, faith received and the Gospel known. God in God’s wisdom has chosen to accommodate to humanity by using frail and sinful persons as the means for communicating the Gospel. ‘For, although God’s power is not bound to outward means, he has nonetheless bound us to this ordinary manner of teaching’.49 Preaching is a sign of God’s accommodation to us and God’s valuing of human beings. God ‘adorned the human race’ with a ‘singular privilege that he deigns to consecrate to himself the mouths and tongues of men in order that God’s voice may resound in them’.50 By God’s grace, the human mouth becomes the very mouthpiece of God. Calvin is even more explicit about the close relationship between human preaching and God’s Word in his commentaries and treatises. In his Commentary on Isaiah, he states, ‘For God does not wish to be heard but by the voice of his ministers, whom he employs to instruct us’.51 The voice of God is typically heard in and through human speech. Similarly, in the Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper, Calvin claims that we receive the ‘merit of his death’ through the ‘message of the Gospel as it is proclaimed to us by the preaching of the ministers, whom God has appointed as his ambassadors’.52 Here, Calvin locates preaching centrally within the economy of salvation by depicting human preaching as the prime means for the Gospel’s communication. ‘Preaching itself becomes the Word of God, in the sense that it discloses the person of Christ and Christ’s witness to his Father’.53 In the preaching and hearing of the Word of God, human beings receive Christ’s merits and benefits. As Thomas J. Davis notes, ‘Preaching spans the gap that separates the “then” nature of the events of the Gospel from the “now” nature of redemption’.54 Preaching is a key aspect of God’s economy of salvation. Calvin confirms this in his Commentary of Romans, stating, ‘But observe how much Paul ascribes to the ministry of the word, when he testifies that God thereby puts forth his power to save; for he speaks not here of any secret revelation, but of vocal preaching’.55 This high view of preaching does not lead Calvin to sacralize human words or instrumentalize preaching. Preaching, like all other human religious activities,

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is a frail instrument incapable of containing the majesty of God. Preaching is of value only because God chooses humbly to accommodate to us by predicating God’s Word onto human words. To check against sacral or instrumental views of preaching, Calvin emphasizes the determining role of the Spirit in preaching. ‘The power of preaching as the Word of God does not reside in the sound of the words themselves or even in their meaning. The power of preaching is an act of the Holy Spirit that makes the words, their sound, and their meaning, the occasion of the voice of God’.56 Preaching, like faith, depends on the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit works through the Word in the congregation to stir faith. This dual work of the Word and Spirit is captured in the Summary of Doctrine Concerning the Ministry of Word and Sacrament: ‘The external minister holds forth the vocal word, and it is received by the ears. The internal minister, the Holy Spirit, truly communicates the thing proclaimed through the Word, that is Christ’.57 Christ’s benefits come through the Spirit by preaching and are received in faith. Calvin’s discussions of preaching and the economy of salvation naturally touch upon important issues in practical ecclesiology. The benefits that individuals receive from God in Christ through the Spirit by the preaching of the Word are to be enjoyed in communion with others. Preaching and faith, while personal, are not individualistic. Preaching draws human beings together and by inviting them into a community of faith. ‘The saints are gathered into the society of Christ on the principle that whatever benefits God confers upon them, they should in turn share with one another’.58 We can say, then, that Calvin understands the task of preaching to play a vital role in ecclesiology. According to Calvin, a major reason that God chose to communicate the Gospel through human voices was to encourage community, unity and humility. At first glance, this claim may seem odd. Common critiques of the Reformation highlight the individualism produced by personal scriptural interpretation and the resulting splintering of the church. Preaching, as the task of the solitary individual in the pulpit, would appear to be the epitome of such problems. As a second generation Reformer, Calvin was acutely aware of these dangers. Calvin harshly critiques those who claim to ‘profit enough from private reading’ and, therefore, ‘despise public assemblies and deem preaching superfluous’.59 By avoiding the community of proclamation, the individual shows their pride and fails to recognize the mystery of the divine choice that God’s Word is ‘preached through men like us and sometimes even by those of lower worth than we’.60 Gathering around the Word is an exercise in humility where the individual is asked to hear God’s Word proclaimed in and through another human being. It is also important to highlight that preaching is not an individual activity; it is a public event carried out in the community of a congregation. God’s Word is spoken when the community gathers around the Gospel as it is both preached

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and heard. Here, it should be noted that Calvin added the phrase ‘and heard’ to the Augsburg Confession. The church is identified not only by the proclamation of the Word, but also by its reception. In order for church to be discerned, the preached Word must be heard, take root and bear fruit in the life of the community. The community that gathers to hear the Word is a central part of the proclamation event. The preacher’s words must be tested against scripture and confirmed by the illumination of the Holy Spirit in order for his or her words to be considered the Word of God. The addendum to Augsburg shifts attention to the important role that the community of faith plays in the work of preaching. Hearing the Word is as vital as speaking it. Thus, preaching is always and everywhere a community activity. While Calvin does note the important role of the congregation in his theology of preaching, the preacher is still God’s elected symbol of ecclesial unity. As previously stated, Calvin believes that the church’s unity is found in Christ and the Spirit, not through visible continuity with Rome. A key aspect of this theological vision of ecclesial unity is doctrinal unity. Continuity in the Gospel is the true sign of apostolicity. The preacher is commissioned with the task of ‘building up the body of Christ, until we all reach the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God’.61 Preaching is divine pedagogy. The preacher teaches true doctrine, correcting errors. Calvin’s words in his Commentary on I Corinthians illustrate this well, ‘God will have his church trained up by the pure preaching of his own word’.62 The ministry is God’s chosen channel for maintaining conformity to the Gospel and distributing God’s gifts to God’s people. It is the human ministry that is ‘the chief sinew by which believers are held together in one body,’63 since through ordained ministry God gives Christ to the people through the Spirit. The ecclesial unity given by God through the office of the ministry is a result of both Word and sacrament. The true Church is not seen only in the preaching of the Word, but is also known by the sacraments, which circles the paper back to Calvin’s second mark of the church. Calvin writes that, it is a ‘settled principle that the sacraments have the same office as the Word of God: to offer and set forth Christ to us, and in him the treasures of heavenly grace’.64 The sacraments are an aid to faith, a source of spiritual nourishment, and living signs that present what they promise. Through the font and the table, like in the pulpit and pew, Christ and his benefits are given to the faithful in the sacraments. ‘And he cometh down unto us, even at this day, by baptism and the supper, and also by the external preaching of the word’.65 The importance of the sacraments as central marks of the church and vital aids in the life of faith cannot be ignored. And still Calvin’s understanding of the sacraments grants priority to the work of the Word; the sacraments flow from the ministry of the Word, not vice versa.

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The sacraments are always preceded by the promises of God given through the Word in the Spirit. This is why Calvin will speak of the sacraments as ‘a sort of appendix’66 that is ‘joined’ to the ‘preaching of the Word’.67 Heeding the caution of the recent scholarship on Calvin’s Eucharistic theology, it is important to emphasize that Calvin is not attempting to minimize the importance of sacraments for the life of the church. The sacraments are a gift of God that build up the society of Christ by strengthening faith. Nevertheless, Calvin insists that ‘the sacrament requires preaching to beget faith’.68 For Calvin, then, there is logical priority given to the preaching of the Word. The sacraments do nourish, strengthening faith and uniting us with Christ. However, neither baptism nor the Eucharist creates the church. The sacraments exist because the church does. The church exists because God has called it into being through God’s Word and it is the Word of God that establishes the efficacy of the sacraments. None of this means that we need to deny the important historical and ecumenical advances made in the ressourcement of Calvin’s sacramental theology. They have corrected misreadings and offered a fuller and richer view of Calvin’s thought. However, both historical work and ecumenical dialogue should proceed with attention to the priority of preaching in Calvin’s ecclesiology.

Preaching Makes the Church: Homiletic Ecclesiology Having listened, however briefly, to Calvin’s claim for the priority of preaching, I must sin boldly and ask how Calvin might be used in contemporary ecclesial discussion.69 Calvin’s argument that human preaching is God’s chosen vehicle through which the Spirit communicates Christ’s benefits and establishes, unites and builds up Christ’s church suggests an ecclesial maxim: ‘preaching makes the church’. It is in and through the ordinary preaching of human beings that God establishes faith, creates community and builds up the society of Jesus Christ. The claim that preaching makes the church rests on solid biblical grounds. The New Testament regularly indicates that preaching or proclamation is the primary vehicle through which God’s Spirit spreads the Gospel. Jesus’s life, death and resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit are the foundation of the church’s existence. The community of faith exists only in and through Christ and the Spirit. Still, Acts 2 describes the creation of the church as a work of both the Spirit and human preaching. At Pentecost, God calls the church into being through the Spirit falling on the disciples. The Spirit is spread and the community expanded as Peter preaches. It is not until Peter’s preaching unlocks the mystery of God’s saving work in Jesus that the gathered crowd converts. ‘When they heard this, they were cut to the heart’ (Acts 2:37). The connection between

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preaching and the growth of the church is illustrated throughout Acts, since nowhere is the church or faith established without human testimony. Philip preaches in Samaria and they ‘accepted the word of God’ (Acts 8:14); Gentiles hear the Good News and receive the Spirit through the preaching of Peter (Acts 10:34–48); Paul and Barnabas’s mission in Cyprus, Antioch and Iconium is marked by a proclamation of the Word of God (Acts 13–15). The important place of preaching in the creation of the church is also indicated in Paul’s letters; the preaching of the Word is the reason that there are visible churches in Corinth, Ephesus and Galatia. I Corinthians 3 points to the vital role that Paul ascribes to human ministers in creating and building ecclesial community. As Calvin aptly comments, ‘This statement consists of two parts; first, that Christ is the only foundation of the church; and secondly, that the Corinthians had been rightly founded upon Christ through Paul’s preaching’.70 The New Testament, then, indicates that it is in and through human preaching that Christ and the Spirit create and expand the church. The ongoing mission of the church is to be fundamentally marked by the task of preaching. Karl Barth declares, ‘If the church is constituted by the testimony of the apostles, by revelation, what is then the task of preaching? It has simply to repeat the testimony by which the church is constituted’.71 The church exists as witnesses or preachers who testify to God’s work in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. However, as Calvin continually notes, preaching is of importance because God has elected to employ preachers as a means to impart faith and share the Good News of salvation. Preaching makes the church only in so far as it is God’s chosen vehicle for disclosing his Word of justifying grace. Preaching’s role in ecclesiology is derivative, living off the Word of God – incarnate, crucified and raised – that justifies and saves human beings. Thus, a homiletic ecclesiology recognizes that the Word comes first and foremost from outside of itself. Neither the church nor the preacher possesses the Word; they always receive it afresh. The pugnaciously Protestant theologian Eberhard Jüngel’s insistence on the sola verbo in his Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith highlights the saving power of the external Word of God: ‘It is the Word alone that can come from outside into our innermost being in such a way as to move us to the place where we should be, where we have the right to be together with God’.72 Highlighting the external nature of the Word in ecclesiology forces the church to recognize that it is constituted by hearing God’s Word, not by controlling it. The church is marked not simply by preaching, but also by hearing the Word through the Spirit. Eberhard Jüngel emphasizes that ‘the church comes into being as the hearing church and only by hearing becomes what it is’.73 Highlighting the importance of hearing in a homiletic ecclesiology invites confessional humility. If the Word of God is not a possession of the church, but a gift

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it receives through hearing in the power of the Spirit, then the Word can be found outside the bounds of any one tradition. Karl Barth in his Göttingen Dogmatics recognizes the ecumenical importance of preaching and hearing the Word: ‘I expect to hear God’s Word as well from Irvingites, the Christian Catholics and the Salvation Army. I am also glad to have heard God’s Word in Roman Catholic preaching’.74 The Word of God that creates the church comes in and through right preaching and hearing in diverse settings. An advantage of such a homiletic ecclesiology is to recognize the porous borders or what Serene Jones calls the bounded openness of the church.75 Since the Word creates the church through the Spirit and the Spirit works through diverse individuals, the church cannot be fenced off at the table or clearly demarcated by confessionalism. In highlighting the freedom of the Word and Spirit to impart faith and create the church where it will, a homiletic ecclesiology still must guard against individualism. Here, Calvin’s emphasis on the Word heard is a vital supplement to the Augsburg Confession. Preaching is not an event carried out solely in the pulpit, nor is it the communication of God through the preacher to individuals. Instead, preaching is a public activity that occurs in the midst of community. Preaching, always and everywhere, should proclaim the Good News of God’s saving work in Christ and Spirit. This Good News is community forming as it draws humans outside of themselves to God and others. In his lectures on preaching, Bonhoeffer writes, ‘The Word intends that no one should remain alone, for in him no one remains alone. The Word makes individuals part of one Body’.76 The community is gathered by the Word that they might live together through the Word in the Spirit. The community forming Word naturally flows into the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. The church that preaching creates is sacramental. In baptism, individuals who receive the Word in faith through the Spirit visibly enter the community. In the Eucharist, the community called into being by the Word shares together in Christ’s presence. What the Word proclaims in preaching ‘becomes a concrete reality in baptism and the Lord’s supper’.77 The community forming power of the Word becomes most clearly visible in sacramental life. Therefore, a homiletic ecclesiology should reject Barth’s early claim that ‘the Reformation wished to see something better substituted for the mass it abolished, and that it expected that that better thing would be – our preaching of the Word. The verbum visibile, the objectively clarified preaching of the Word, is the only sacrament left to us’.78 Rather than excluding the Word’s presence in the sacrament, a homiletic ecclesiology must highlight the importance of the sacraments. ‘There can be no question of damaging the significance of the sacraments by emphasizing the exclusive formula by the Word alone. The contrary is true’.79 Preaching creates the church, but as Barth himself admits, ‘We do not know what preaching is if we have no knowledge of the sacraments’.80 In both

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preaching and the sacraments, the Word of grace is at work through the Spirit in creating and shaping the community of faith. Highlighting the priority of the first mark of the church does not negate the importance of the second.

Concluding with Questions I want to conclude this essay by asking what the ecumenical import of a Reformed homiletic ecclesiology might be. Is the Reformed claim for the priority of the preached Word in ecclesiology a retrenchment behind sixteenthcentury dividing lines? Or might further discussion on the theology of preaching between the heirs of the Reformation and the Roman Catholic church bear useful ecclesial fruit? There is solid biblical and theological ground on which to claim ‘preaching makes the church’. The Reformation, whatever its faults, served the church of Jesus Christ by trumpeting the power and potency of the preached Word. The Word of God proclaimed through the mouths of men and women is integral in the ongoing mission and building up of the church. It is through preaching in the power of the Spirit that the Gospel is heard and faith imparted in particular human lives. There is no reason for Reformed theologians to compromise on these insights. The 500 years of ecclesial development and the 45 years of formal ecumenical discussion between Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians after Vatican II demands further consideration about the role of Word and sacrament in the ecclesiology. Sacramental theology must continue to hold a place of profound importance in ecclesial discussions. The continued divides over the theology of baptism must be debated and full sharing in the Eucharist banquet worked towards. In this regard, historical works such as Randall Zachman’s and the ecumenical proposal of George Hunsinger are of special importance for those who trace their heritage back to Calvin. Calvin’s theology of preaching and my initial suggestions for a homiletic ecclesiology also invite further dialogue and debate over the role of preaching in the church. From my Reformed view, there are promising signs of possible intersections emerging from various Roman Catholic theologians. Paul VI’s 1965 encyclical Mysterium Fidei, while highlighting the priority of the Eucharist, does recognize that ‘there is more than one way in which the Christ is present in His church’.81 The encyclical states that Christ is ‘present in the church as she preaches, since the Gospel which she proclaims is the Word of God’. 82 Paul VI also notes, like Calvin, how preaching is intricately related to the creation of ecclesial unity. ‘It is only in the name of Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, and by His authority and with His help that it is preached, so that there might be “one flock resting secure in one shepherd” ’.83 Paul VI’s terse statements invite numerous questions

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for further development. For instance, Protestants and Roman Catholics may wish to explore what role, if any, lay members have in the ministry of preaching. How do Roman Catholics understand preaching by women and Protestants? Is homiletic plurality a source of ecclesial unity or division? How can Eucharistic debates on inculturation learn from the inculturation that occurs in every sermon? In order to begin to address these questions, increased attention must be given to the theology of preaching. As Mary Catherine Hilkert notes, ‘Disputes about the relationship between sacraments and preaching as well as scripture and tradition were central to difference between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic church at the time of the Reformation’.84 The Reformation tradition still holds fast to the claim that the preached Word of God has logical priority over the sacraments, even as the Word is always sealed by water, wine and bread. The Roman Catholic position, at least as John Paul II and the current Catechism explicate it, gives logical priority to Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Might it be, as Karl Barth says in his Homiletics, that ‘both the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant overemphases represent a disruption, a distortion, and even a destruction of the church’?85 Retrievals of Calvin’s sacramental theology suggest a willingness on the Reformed part to heed Barth’s corrective warning. Roman Catholic claims such as Yves Cognar’s conjecture that ‘if in one country Mass were celebrated for 30 years without preaching and in another there was preaching for 30 years without the Mass, the people would be more Christian in the country where there was preaching’86 suggest a similar openness to reform. Increased attention to the theology of preaching and its relationship with sacramental life is of prime theological and ecclesial importance. There is still much that visibly divides Christ’s one Church, however. It is vital that we heed Calvin’s injunction as we go forward in debate. ‘If it has the ministry of the Word and honours it, if it has the administration of the sacraments, it deserves to be held and considered a church’.87 Might we, better than Calvin himself, be willing to see the presence of Christ’s Church in Word and sacrament across ecclesial divides?

Notes 1 John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, 2 vols, John T. McNeill (ed.) and Ford Lewis Battles (trans.) (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 24–5. 2 John Calvin, Theological Treatises, J. K. S. Reid (ed. and trans.) (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 231. 3 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.2 (2: 1014). 4 John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate, John C. Olin (ed.) (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1966), 85.

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5 Randall Zachman, Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2007), 403. 6 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.3 (1015). 7 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.11 (1025). 8 Jane Dempsey Douglass, ‘Calvin in Ecumenical Context’ in Donald K. McKim (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 306. Calvin’s comments in Institutes, IV.1.9 lend support to such a contextual reading of Calvin’s ecclesial marks. He writes, ‘The church universal is a multitude gathered from all nations; it is divided and dispersed in separate places, but agrees on the one truth of divine doctrine, and is bound by the bond of the same religion. Under it are thus included individual churches, disposed in towns and villages according to human need, so that each rightly has the name and authority of the church’. 9 Joseph D Small, ‘A Church of the Word and Sacrament’ in Christian Worship in Reformed Churches Past and Present (Nashville, TN: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 312. 10 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.9 (1023). 11 Susan K. Wood, One Baptism: Ecumenical Dimensions of the Doctrine of Baptism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 20–1. 12 Baptism, Eucharist, and the Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), ‘Baptism’, 15. 13 See Eduardus van der Borght, Theology of Ministry: A Reformed Contribution to an Ecumenical Dialogue (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007). Part II offers a close and astute reading of the Lima Documents from a Reformed perspective. 14 Susan K. Wood, One Baptism, 20. 15 On the Reformed side as early as the 1950s, T. F. Torrance was employing Calvin and Barth’s thought to highlight the Christological foundation of mutual baptismal recognition. 16 Calvin, Institutes, IV.15.1 (1303). 17 Lukas Vischer (ed.), Christian Worship in Reformed Churches Past and Present (Nashville, TN: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), offers numerous examples of liturgical renewal in countries such as France, Netherlands, Congo and the United States. 18 B. A. Gerrish, The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin: Grace and Gratitude (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). 19 Randall C. Zachman, Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2007), 19. 20 Ibid., 21. 21 Martha Moore-Keish, Do This in Remembrance of Me: A Ritual Approach to Reformed Eucharistic Theology (Nashville, TN: Eerdmans Press, 2008), 16. 22 J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 62. 23 George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 313. 24 Ibid., 11. 25 Paul McPartlan claims that Henri de Lubac was the first to coin the term ‘The Eucharist makes the church’ in Sacrament of Salvation: An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology (London: Continuum Press, 1995), 30.

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26 Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund (trans.) (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988), 89. 27 For a study of De Lubac’s ecclesiology and its relationship to that of John Zizioulas, see Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Creates the Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993). 28 Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §26. 29 Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 1. 30 Calvin and Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate, 60. 31 Calvin and Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate, 92. 32 Calvin, Institutes, IV.2.4 (2:1046). 33 Calvin, Institutes, IV.2.4 (2:1046). 34 Calvin, Theological Treatises, 206. 35 Calvin and Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate, 61. 36 Calvin, Institutes, IV.14.11 (2:1286). 37 Dawn DeVries, Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 15. 38 Calvin, Theological Treatises, 206. 39 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.5 (2: 1017). 40 Second Helvetic Confession (5.004). 41 Calvin, Commentary on Ephesians, 2:20. Italics are mine. 42 Calvin, Institutes, III.1.1 (I: 537). 43 Calvin, Institutes, III.1.2 (I: 538). 44 Calvin, Institutes, III.1.4 (I: 541). 45 Calvin, Institutes, III.2.6 (I: 549). 46 Calvin, Institutes, III.2.6 (1: 548). 47 Calvin, Institutes, III.2.6 (1:549). 48 Calvin, Institutes, III.2.31 (1: 577). 49 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.5 (2: 1018). 50 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.5 (2: 1018). 51 Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah, 50:10. 52 Calvin, Theological Treatises, 157. 53 Devries, Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher, 17. 54 Thomas J. Davis, This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 100–1. 55 Calvin, Commentary on Romans, 1:16. 56 John H. Leith, ‘Calvin’s Doctrine of the Proclamation of the Word and Its Significance for Today’, in Timothy George (ed.), John Calvin and the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1990), 211. 57 Calvin, Theological Treatises, 173. 58 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.3 (2: 1014). 59 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.5 (2: 1018). 60 Calvin, Institutes, IV.3.1 (2: 1054). 61 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.5 (2: 1017). 62 Calvin, Commentary on I Corinthians, 3:12. 63 Calvin, Institutes, IV.3.1 (2: 1054). 64 Calvin, Institutes, IV.14.17 (1292). 65 Calvin, Commentary on Acts, 7:40. 66 Calvin, Institutes, IV.14.3 (2: 1278).

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67 Calvin, Theological Treatise, 131. 68 Calvin, Institutes, IV.14.3 (2: 1279). 69 Richard Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 188. 70 Calvin, Commentary on I Corinthians, 3:11. 71 Karl Barth, Homiletics, Donald E. Daniels and Geoffrey W. Bromiley (trans) (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 62. 72 Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, Jeffrey F. Cayzer (trans.) (London: T&T Clark, 2001), 206. 73 Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays vol. I, John Webster (trans.) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 205. 74 Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 34. 75 See Serene Jones, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), chapter 7. 76 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Worldly Preaching, Clyde E. Fant (ed.) (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1974), 127. 77 Eberhard Jüngel, Justification, 232. 78 Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, Douglas Horton (trans.) (New York, NY: 1957), 114. 79 Eberhard Jüngel, Justification, 233. 80 Barth, Homiletics, 58. 81 Mysterium Fidei, §35. 82 Mysterium Fidei, §36. 83 Mysterium Fidei, §36. 84 Mary Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination (London: Continuum Press, 1997), 30. 85 Karl Barth, Homiletics, 59. 86 Quoted in Mary Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace, 58. 87 Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.9 (1023–4).

Chapter 8 Rectifying Calvin’s Ecclesiology: The Doctrinal and Ecumenical Importance of Separatist–Congregational Catholicity Alan P. F. Sell It is hardly surprising that baptism, Eucharist and ministry have been among the topics most regularly discussed in local, national, regional and international inter-confessional dialogues over the past 40 years, for these are widely perceived as being neuralgic issues that clamour for attention. I, however, have become increasingly convinced that to treat ecclesiological themes in isolation from other doctrines and from certain particular presuppositions is not the most constructive way of proceeding if we genuinely wish to break the sectarian logjams which prohibit the gathering of the saints at the table of the Lord. Thus, for example, the presuppositions that are entertained regarding doctrinal development cannot but influence what is believed concerning the ministry; yet, in my experience, the doctrine of the development of doctrine itself is rarely subjected to detailed scrutiny by those engaged in ecumenical dialogues. I have elsewhere elaborated upon this point.1 As for ecclesiology-attendant doctrines, the argument of this paper is (a) that unless due attention is paid to the doctrines of election, regeneration, adoption, union with Christ and covenant, our progress towards genuine catholicity will be seriously impeded; and (b) that in the providence of God, and in the particular political circumstances in which they were placed, it fell to the English and Welsh Separatists and their successors in the Congregational branch of the Reformed family to articulate the relationship between these doctrines and ecclesiology more clearly than was done by Calvin himself.2 It goes without saying that Calvin was well aware of, and committed to, the doctrines I have just named. I think it can be argued, however, that he did not fully work out their implications concerning the ‘matter’ of the Church and church polity. I state what I take to be the case, I do not blame; for while, as is nowadays widely recognized, the Restorationist hope of finding a specific church polity (namely, one’s own) in the New Testament is doomed to disappointment, the

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corollary is that church order has unquestionably been influenced by biblical clues, the diverse sociopolitical circumstances in which Christians have found themselves and even by sometimes idiosyncratic personalities. Thus, when in 1883 Eustace Conder (1820–1892) declared that in the seventeenth century the Congregational objective was ‘the restoration of the Apostolic Church Polity: Christ’s Church reformed on Christ’s model’,3 he (a) overlooked the fact that Christ left no one model polity; and (b) gave the impression that the Congregational witness concerns church organization alone – as if to say ‘We believe more or less the same as every other churchly body, except that we think that our polity is more biblical’. This does not strike deeply enough, for the distinctive contribution derives from convictions concerning what the other doctrines imply as regards polity. Since, however, we are all children of our time, we never ‘see’ all that is to be seen, and a modicum of humility will encourage us to wonder in regard to which topics, in two centuries’ time, our heirs and successors will be specifying our relative blindness. I am aware that the title of my paper will offend any who think that Calvin’s ecclesiology is that last word on the subject; and I do not intend to suggest that the originators of Separatist catholicity sat down in the quiet of their studies with a view to writing papers in which they would put Calvin right on ecclesiology. Rather, their position was forged in the courtroom and, in a number of cases, witnessed to on the scaffold. My claim is that their speeches, writings and actions had the effect of rectifying Calvin’s ecclesiology on certain points. If I may upset some Calvinistic purists, I may also puzzle any who regard ‘Separatist–Congregational catholicity’ as a contradiction in terms. It is not; nor is it a paradox: it is a straightforward description. Moreover, it is an inheritance which flowed down from the Separatists themselves to their Congregational successors. Behind those words there lies a long story. It is clear that the Congregationalists Independents of the mid-seventeenth century objected strongly when they were nicknamed ‘Separatists’ or ‘Brownists’, after Robert Browne, of whom more shortly. But they were living in that brief Cromwellian period of English history when circumstances had never been more favourable towards those of their ecclesiological stance. Indeed, they could even, briefly, contemplate a national church constituted along Congregational lines – the kind of establishment that their friends in Massachusetts were pioneering. In those circumstances, to have owned the term ‘separatist’ would have been counter-productive, and would have played into the hands of those whom it suited to regard them on a par with the more radical sectaries of Commonwealth times. The fact remains, as Alexander Mackennal (1835–1904) observed with reference to the seventeenth-century Congregationalists: They were not true Separatists; had they been so, they would not have sat in the Westminster Assembly, nor entered into Cromwell’s purpose of founding

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a comprehensive National Church. But Baillie and Baxter, and the Presbyterians generally, were not wrong in calling them so. All they knew of Congregational Independency, gathered Churches, discipline the association of the members with the ministers in church government, the desire for toleration, had been formulated for them by [the Separatists] Browne and Barrowe, and John Robinson, and Henry Jacob, and Hendy Ainsworth.4 The preliminary explanations given, let us brace ourselves and proceed.

I There is a constellation of doctrines which bear directly upon ecclesiology. No doubt the all-embracing, and Trinitarian, way of putting the point is to say that on the ground of the Son’s finished work at the Cross, the Father, by the Holy Spirit, graciously calls out one people for his praise and service. Here we have the root of catholicity – a point to which I shall return. But I am immediately concerned with the matter of the Church, and in this connection the doctrines of election, regeneration, adoption, union with Christ and covenant clamour for attention. They are so closely intertwined as to be almost inseparable; they are saying the same thing in different ways, rather than specifying a series of particular occurrences in a temporal sequence. It is important to emphasize that in what follows I have no interest in denying that those of other communions than the Separatist–Congregational have maintained these doctrines. My concern is with the way in which the Separatists and Congregationalists worked out the implications of these in relation to the matter and polity of the Church.5 John Leith spoke nothing less than the truth when he wrote that ‘John Calvin gave more attention to polity than did any other major reformer’.6 If we looked no further than the Institutes, we should find that Book IV, on the Church, runs to more than 500 pages, and that it would remain a bulky contribution even if the church history and the contextually understandable anti-Roman polemic were omitted. Calvin strove for orderly church life in Geneva and for well-taught Christians. As means towards these ends, he instituted the offices of minister, elder and deacon, later adding doctor. Ministers and elders were to meet together in the consistory, and all four offices, he declared with more than a little exaggeration, rested on the authority of Christ.7 Above all, he insisted that, ‘Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists’.8 But who comprise the Church? According to Romans 1:7, Christian believers are ‘saints by calling’. Some English translations declare that they are ‘called to be saints’, but this might be taken as implying that sainthood is something to be

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striven for – even that it is not achieved until perfection of life is attained. However, the former reading is to be preferred, not least because when Paul wrote to the saints of the various churches he knew quite well that he was not writing to companies of the perfect: indeed, very often the purpose of his writing was to rebuke them and encourage them along the path of sanctification. Moreover, he knew in his own experience that the saints were also sinners, and that the ‘old man’ was ever trying to drag the ‘new creature’ down. The saints, then, are the Christians, the believers – all of them, not a special class within them; and they are saints because they have been called. Here is the doctrine of election to which Calvin adhered with considerable intensity. At the same time, it must be granted that there is ambivalence in his writings, as John Whale (1896–1997) pointed out. Here Calvin thinks of the elect as comprising the invisible Church; there he thinks of them as visible saints; and yet again he thinks of them as representing but a portion of the empirical Church, with all that that entails regarding church discipline and even excommunication. Whale says, ‘he is playing at one and the same time the three roles of Augustine, Cyprian and Wesley: the successive editions of the Institutio with their increasingly articulate churchmanship are a tense synthesis of the predestinarian logic of the first, the explicit churchmanship of the second and the perfectionism of the third’.9 As to the third strand of thought, The Second Helvetic Confession (1566) pulled no punches: ‘[N]ot all that are reckoned in the number of the Church are saints and true members of the Church. For there are many hypocrites’.10 As we shall see, Calvin’s ambivalence was called into question by the Separatists and Congregationalists, who urged that the Church comprises the ‘twice-born’. Those are saints who have been called by God’s gracious Spirit. We may also say that they are the regenerate. According to The Geneva Confession (1536), ‘[W]e acknowledge that by his Spirit we are regenerated into a new spiritual nature . . . the evil desires of our flesh are mortified by grace . . . our will is rendered conformable to God’s will . . . we are delivered from the servitude of sin’.11 Calvin rightly emphasizes the role of the Spirit, ‘For it would be easier for us to create men than for us of our own power to put on a more excellent nature’.12 God’s purpose in regeneration is ‘to restore in us the image of God that had been disfigured and all but obliterated through Adam’s transgression’.13 Regeneration is bestowed upon the ground of Christ’s death and resurrection, and by the Spirit’s sanctifying work.14 Hence we cannot parade our ‘works’ or our deserts.15 A long line of Separatists and Congregationalists echo the general idea, albeit they balk at making baptism the invariable occasion of regeneration, and later writers queried, or flatly denied, the imputation to us of Adam’s sin. Thus, in the seventeenth century, John Owen (1616–1683) declared that ‘regeneration is expressly required in the gospel to give a right and privilege unto entrance into the church or kingdom of Christ’. While baptism is the symbol of this, the granting of regeneration ‘cannot consist in any outward rite, easy to be

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observed by the worst and vilest of men’. In fact, ‘God alone is judge concerning this regeneration, as unto its internal, real principle and state in the souls of men. . . . The church is judge of its evidences and fruits in their external demonstration, as unto a participation of the outward privileges of a regenerate state, and no farther, Acts viii.13’.16 In our own time, H. F. Lovell Cocks (1894– 1983) explained that: To be regenerated is to have ‘the mind of Christ’. . . . Nowhere is there any confounding of Christ with the believer, or of the Holy Spirit with the human spirit. We do not become Christs, nor are we absorbed into the divine substance, but we are remade after the pattern of Him who is the image of God. . . . [W]e receive the right to become children of God.17 This last sentence leads us to the next way of speaking of the status of saints: they are God’s sons and daughters by the adoption of grace. As if to prove my claim that in considering this constellation of doctrines we are not dealing with isolable events in a temporal series, Calvin can say that regeneration confirms ‘the adoption that [believers] have received as sons’.18 This confirmation of status has more than immediate significance. Calvin reminds his readers that Paul calls the Holy Spirit ‘both “the Spirit of adoption” and the “seal” and “guarantee of the inheritance to come” ’.19 Both the immediate and prospective benefits of adoption are encapsulated in Chapter XII of the Congregational Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (1658), which at this point reiterates Chapter XII of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647): All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth in and for his only Son Jesus Christ to make partakers of the grace of Adoption, by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and priviledges of the Children of God, have his Name put upon them, receive the Spirit of Adoption, have access to the Throne of Grace with boldness, are enabled to cry Abba Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him as by a father, yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of Redemption, and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting Salvation.20 Since, as has often been truthfully said, Nonconformists in general learned their doctrine through their hymns (even through what connoisseurs of fine writing might dismiss as ‘godly doggerel’), it is not inappropriate to quote the first stanza of one of Joseph Hart’s many offerings: it was sung by an estimated 20,000 people in 1768 at his burial in Bunhill Fields, London: Sons of God by blest adoption, View the dead with steady eyes:

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A further way of summing up the saints’ status is to say that they are, by grace, united to Christ by faith. There can be little question that the idea of union with Christ pervades the writings of Calvin. Indeed, Thomas Torrance (1913– 2007) judged that ‘It is around this doctrine of union with Christ . . . that Calvin builds his doctrine of faith, of the Church as the living body of Christ, and his doctrines of the Christian life, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Apart from union with Christ, Calvin says, all that Christ did for us in His Incarnation, death and resurrection, would be unavailing.’22 Baptism, declares Calvin, testifies that ‘we are not only grafted into the death and life of Christ, but so united to Christ himself that we become sharers in all his blessings.’23 In particular, to quote the great nineteenth-century Congregationalist, R. W. Dale (1829–1895), ‘When God calls us into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, He calls us back to those Divine heights which are native to us, and restores us to our original place in the Divine household.’24 The word ‘household’ with its corporate overtones leads us to the next point. We should be untrue to the Bible and to the Separatist–Congregational tradition if we were to construe election, regeneration, adoption and union with Christ atomistically – as if the concern were simply with me and my soul. On the contrary, Christian faith, though personal, is not private. It is life in fellowship with Christ; but life in fellowship with Christ necessarily entails life in fellowship with all who are his. To put it in Johannine terms, those who by grace are grafted as branches into Christ the Vine are ipso facto related to all the other branches. This is the consequence of election, regeneration, adoption and union with Christ. In one word, saints are initiated into the covenant. In the words of the Separatist, Robert Browne (1550?-1633?), Christians are those who ‘by a willing covenant with our God . . . are under the government of God and Christ, and thereby do lead a godly and Christian life’.25 As the Savoy Declaration of the Institution of Churches, and the Order Appointed in Them by Jesus Christ declares, [T]he Lord Jesus calleth out of the World unto Communion with himself, those that are given to him by his Father, that they may walk before him in all the ways of Obedience, which he prescribeth to them in his Word. Those thus called (through the Ministery of the Word by his Spirit) he commandeth to walk together in particular Societies or Churches, for their

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mutual edification, and the due performance of that publique Worship, which he requireth of them in this world. The Members of these Churches are Saints by Calling, visibly manifesting and evidencing (in and by their profession and walking) their obedience unto that Call of Christ . . . [they] do willingly consent to walk together according to the appointment of Christ, giving up themselves to the Lord, and to one another by the will of God in professed subjection to the Ordinances of the Gospel.26 As John Owen, the principal architect of the document, elsewhere explained, a covenant between God and man requires, (1) That it be of God’s appointment and institution; (2) That upon a prescription of duties there be a solemn engagement unto their performance on the part of men; (3) That there be especial promises of God annexed thereunto, whereof mutual express restipulation is the form.27 It remains only to add that election, regeneration, adoption, union with Christ and membership of the covenant family imply a distinction of eternal significance between those who are in Christ and those who are not. This conviction was of great importance to the Separatists and Congregationalists: their entire polity turned upon it; and from the fact that it is seldom mentioned by their current heirs and successors we should not conclude that it is redundant. To Isaac Watts (1674–1748), it was crucial, and he addressed preachers thus: Let your hearers know that there is a vast and unspeakable difference betwixt a saint and a sinner, one in Christ, and one out of Christ. . . . [The change results from] the operations of the word and Spirit of God on the hearts of men, and by their diligent attendance on all the appointed means and methods of converting grace. It is a most real change, and of infinite importance.28 How does the change come about? Watts answers, The sovereign will of God alone Creates us heirs of grace, Born in the image of his Son, A new, peculiar, race.29 What could be more personal – or more corporate? As he looked back across the centuries to his early forebears in the Congregational Way, Dale remarked,

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‘It was for the immense and immeasurable difference between those who are on Christ’s side and those who are not that they were contending’.30 Having now introduced some of the main doctrines on which the Separatist and Congregational polity was founded, I shall proceed to discuss their specifically ecclesiological principles from the point of view of their ecumenical importance.

II From the Middle Ages, there flowed down the idea of the divine right of kings, and the view that Church and state should be in intimate union. In the case of sixteenth-century England, newly Protestant and with Roman Catholic Spain its principal enemy, this led the authorities to conclude that in the interests of national unity there must be a comprehensive Church, and that in order to achieve this, religious uniformity was essential and must be required. Compatibly with this it was held that to be a loyal English person was to be a Christian; that in England to be a Christian was to be a member of the Church of England; and that all born in one of that Church’s parishes were such members. From the beginning of the English Reformation, there were those who felt that the reform had not reached far enough. For them the break from Rome was but the beginning. They sought a pure Church reformed according to the Word of God – hence their name, Puritan. Some of these hoped to achieve further reform from within the Church, others from the outset regarded that as an aspiration doomed to disappointment. Accordingly, they did not opt into the Anglican establishment, and they became known as Separatists. This placed them in the position not of heretics, but of traitors; hence their shadowy underground religious practice.31 It is important that their not opting into the established Church be clearly understood, for it has sometimes been suggested that English Dissent began with the Great Ejectment of 1662. By 24 August 1662, Black Bartholomew’s Day in Dissenters’ eyes, more than 1,700 ministers had left their livings in the Church of England rather than give their ‘unfeigned assent and consent’ to the Book of Common Prayer, and undertake to use it only in worship. It was not merely that they objected to some parts of the Book of Common Prayer – though they did; their principal objection was that it was not the prerogative of king or parliament to order the worship of the Church. This act undoubtedly moved Dissent along, but the Separatist harbingers of Dissent of the previous century should not be passed over. As Congregationalism’s distinguished historian, Bernard Lord Manning (1892–1941), pointedly remarked, We of the Three Dissenting Bodies [that is the Congregationalist, Presbyterian and Baptist] never ‘left the Church’. From the moment when,

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at the Reformation, the mediaeval Church began to split up, there were churchmen who stood in this country for a Church after the Calvinistic pattern, and hoped to make such a Church the Church of England. Of those men we are the descendants.32 I shall now specify the ways in which, in the light of the doctrines already mentioned, the Separatists and Congregationalists developed their ecclesiology in the politico-ecclesiastical context in which they found themselves. In the course of doing this, their rectifications of Calvin’s ecclesiology will become clear. First, the Separatists and Congregationalists, like Calvin, understood that the Church invisible is prior to the Church visible. ‘We are not made members of Christ by being joined to the visible Church’, wrote Lovell Cocks, ‘we are joined to the invisible Church, the company of true believers, by being joined to Christ in trust and love, and we unite ourselves to the visible Church because love of the brethren has been put into our hearts and we know we must share in the fellowship of their witness’.33 As to the visible Church, Calvin declares that: Holy Scripture speaks of the church in two ways. Sometimes by the term ‘church’ it means that which is actually in God’s presence, into which no persons are received but those who are children of God by grace of adoption and true members of Christ by sanctification of the Holy Spirit. Then, indeed, the church includes not only the saints presently living on earth, but all the elect from the beginning of the world. Often, however, the name ‘church designates the whole multitude of men spread over the earth who profess to worship one God and Christ. . . . In this church are mingled many hypocrites who have nothing of Christ but the name and outward appearance.34 To the Separatists and Congregationalists, however, Calvin’s first understanding of ‘church’ was the only one sanctioned by scripture. They understood well enough that, as we might put it, sociologically, a church congregation might include unbaptized children and adults, hypocrites, visitors and passing atheists, but, theologically, these were not the church, though the baptized children of professed members were within the covenant. In The True Church and the False Church (1588) – a work by Henry Barrow with possible contributions from John Greenwood (d. 1593) – we read, The true planted and rightly established church of Christ is a company of faithful people; separated from the unbelievers and heathen of the land; gathered in the name of Christ, whom they truly worship, and readily obey as their only king, priest and prophet; joined together as members of

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What is to be noticed here is that separation has primarily to do with separation from the ‘world’ qua naughty, not qua geographical. As perceived by the Separatists, the problem was that the ‘world’ had invaded the Church of England. This was, for example, a significant strand of the Cambridge-educated lawyer Barrow’s testimony before the Lord Treasurer on 18 March 1588/9. When asked why he would not attend the parish churches, he replied, ‘Because all the profane and wicked of the land are received into the body of your church’.36 He elsewhere denied that the established Church was a true church of Christ because, among other things, the wicked and impenitent were permitted to receive the sacrament.37 He shortly returned to the point in greater detail. The established Church’s officers, he thundered, ‘justifie the most wicked, graceless, impenitent wretches, atheists, blasphemers, idolatours, papists, Anabaptists, heretickes, conjurers that dye in their sinnes, as though such could have anie benefite by the death of Christ’.38 Barrow levelled the identical charge against Calvin. Although Calvin had affirmed that one of the objectives of church discipline was to ensure that ‘the good be not corrupted by the constant company of the wicked, as commonly happens’,39 Barrow complained that Calvin ‘mad no scruple to receave al the whole state, even all the profane and ignorant people into the bozome of the church, to administer the sacraments unto them’.40 He further objected to Calvin’s restriction of the marks of the Church to right preaching and administration of the sacraments, for thus was omitted ‘obedience unto and practise of the word’ – church discipline.41 With these Separatist sentiments, the Congregationalist John Owen was in entire sympathy: ‘[I]t is so come to pass, that let men be never so notoriously and flagitiously wicked, until they become pests of the earth, yet they are esteemed to belong to the church of Christ; and not only so, but it is thought little less than schism to forbid them the communion of the church in all its sacred privileges’.42 The Church comprises gathered, disciplined saints. For maintaining these truths, in 1593 the names of Barrow and Greenwood were added to the list of those executed for their faith. In less dangerous times, R. W. Dale thought that he was merely stating the obvious when he said that ‘The members of a Christian Church should be Christians’. He added, ‘[T]his, I say, was the fons et origo of the whole Congregational movement’.43 There is a direct line from the Separatists, through Owen and Dale, to Geoffrey Nuttall (1911–2007): ‘[I]t would be difficult to deny that the Church is called out of the world: called out, it is true, that, back in the world, it may be the means of the world’s redemption, but still called out first, to become, and in a sense perpetually to remain, different from the world, different from what the world, in its un-Christian state, can ever be’.44

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Second, entry to the church is by the voluntary making of a credible profession of faith,45 evidenced by a ‘godly walk’. Barrow neatly put the two criteria together thus: ‘Ther may none be admitted into the church of Christ, but such as enter publicke profession of the true faith. None remayne there, but such as bring forth the fruites of faith’.46 Owen likewise ruled that ‘a man known to live in sin cannot regularly be received into any church’.47 As to profession of faith, not place of birth, as the requirement for reception into the Church, Browne wrote, in words which imply criticism of the Church of England: ‘the Kingdom of God Was not to be begun by whole parishes, but rather of the worthiest, Were they never so few’.48 ‘Then you hold that the parish do not make it a church’? the Lord Chief Justices asked John Greenwood on 25 March 1588/9. ‘No,’ Greenwood replied, ‘but the profession which the people make’.49 Furthermore, as Browne put it, ‘the Lord’s people is of the willing sort’.50 Three hundred years later, R. W. Dale put the Separatists’ point thus: The English nation was not . . . a Church; for a man was not a Christian merely because he was born within the four seas and under the sovereignty of Queen Elizabeth. The population of an English diocese was not a Church. . . . The population of an English parish was not a Church. . . . To baptize the people of a parish did not make them Christians; to preach to them did not make them Christians; to give them access to the Lord’s Supper did not make them Christians.51 In other words, The constitution of the Anglican Church declined to recognize the awful contrast between those who are loyal to Christ and those who are in revolt against Him. The English nation constituted the English Church. This was the theory of Whitgift, as it was afterwards the theory of Hooker.52 It must be admitted that the Church of England’s (and Calvin’s) parish ideal poses ecumenical problems to this day. Because of its concern for whole parishes, the Church is reluctant to speak of church membership in the sense of enrolled saints. The reality is, however, that in some parishes the majority population comprises those of other faiths, and even where that is not the case it cannot truthfully be said that the majority population of a parish is always baptized and, hence, deemed regenerate. Again, many Anglican churches are de facto gathered churches, drawing their congregations from across parish boundaries, and/or catering to one or other of the several traditions of churchmanship ranging from Forward in Faith to ultra-Protestantism that are to be found within that body. Still, the gentle observation of a distinguished and gracious

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Methodist scholar is indicative of a certain movement on the matter: ‘The establishment of the Parochial Roll is so far a recognition that the Church is not the nation, nor yet the baptized citizens’.53 John Owen laid it down that those being received as members of the Church must ‘make an open profession of the subjection of their souls and consciences unto the authority of Christ in the gospel, and their readiness to yield obedience unto all his commands’; they must have a ‘competent knowledge’ of the Gospel, ‘especially concerning the person and offices of Christ’; they must acknowledge ‘the authority of Christ in the church’, practise self-denial and cross-bearing, confess their sins, constantly perform ‘all known duties of religion’, and abstain from sin.54 Herein resides a challenge of quasi-monastic rigour, and at a time such as the present, when ‘spirituality’ is rampant and sometimes amorphous, it is worthwhile recalling the doctrinal roots of the ecclesiology with which we are concerned. Of Congregationalism, Dale’s contemporary, J. Guinness Rogers (1822–1911), wrote that its: ideal Church is a body of spiritual men converted by the grace of God, and living by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is something radically different from a society of truth-seekers, resolved to live up to their light and wait in the hope that more light will come. Both societies manage their affairs on the same plan, but no agreement in method can get rid of the essential distinction in principle.55 To the Separatists and Congregationalists alike, the fellowship of the Church was inescapable. To love Christ was to love the brothers and sisters: If we find a person that is orderly admitted into church society, he is as certain and evident an object of our love as if we saw him lying in the arms of Christ. . . . Let none, then pretend that they love the brethren in general, and love the people of God, and love the saints, while their love is not fervently exercised towards those who are in the same church Society with them. Christ hath given it you for a trial; He will try your love at the last day by your deportment in that church wherein you are.56 Owen’s sentiments were delightfully updated by Bernard Lord Manning in an address to students at Cambridge: It is little use your feeling mystical sympathy with St. Francis who is dead, with St. Somebody Else who never existed, with men of good will all over the world whom you are quite safe from meeting. If you do not love your brothers whom you have seen . . . you cannot, in fact, love those brothers

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(whom you call the Church) whom you have not seen. Congregationalism makes us not flabby and sentimental about the Church, but tells us to get down to it in practice.57 As I have elsewhere put it, Congregationalism’s ‘sainthood is a grounded sainthood’.58 More formally, Manning declared, ‘We Congregationalists and Baptists have never been able to conceive of a churchless Christianity, a private sect, a Christian experience that is not also an ecclesiastical experience. We have always associated the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with the communion of saints’.59 Third, implicit in what has already been said is the conviction that what one is received into on profession of faith is the Church catholic, comprising all the saints in heaven and on earth, of which the church local is an outcrop. Moreover, there is but one Lord of the Church and, hence, one Church. On this point the Separatists and Congregationalists were in entire accord with Calvin: ‘The church is called “catholic”, or “universal”, because there could not be two or three churches unless Christ be torn asunder – which cannot happen!’60 Henry Allon (1818–1892) put it bluntly, ‘Because we are Congregationalists we are of necessity Catholics. For more than this we do not care to contend’.61 Hence, Owen’s statement that, ‘However . . . we plead for the rights of particular churches, yet our real controversy with most of the world is for the being, union and communion of the church catholic; which are variously perverted by many, separating it into parties, and confining it to rules, measures and canons of their own finding out and establishment’.62 This amounts to a critique of that sectarianism which follows in the wake of the Galatian heresy by adding new circumcisions to the Gospel. Whenever a group of Christians says to other Christians, ‘Unless and until you accept our truth in the way we declare and hold it, and/or bring your church polity and order into line with ours, we shall have no full fellowship with you and may even unchurch you’, the sectarian spirit is at work. It was this attitude, for example, which prompted Manning to brand the Church of England ‘an Episcopalian sect’,63 and this notwithstanding the fact that, officially, that Church teaches only that bishops are the bene esse of the Church, not its esse. Happily, since Manning wrote, a good deal of water has flowed under the ecumenical bridge, yet still the full implementation of a recommendation in the international Anglican–Reformed dialogue report is awaited: ‘We recommend that where churches of our two communions are committed to going forward to seek visible unity, a measure of reciprocal communion should be made possible; for communion is not only a sign of unity achieved, but also a means by which God brings it about’.64 Despite this, there are still Anglicans who would not accept the Lord’s invitation to communion in a Reformed church, and some who would deny that such churches have true sacraments at all.65 This is a

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profound denial of catholicity. I do not believe that such persons affirm that the saints of my tradition are not called by grace, not regenerated, not adopted as God’s sons and daughters, not united with Christ by the Spirit, not members of the covenant – in which case they ought to be at the Lord’s table with us. What prevents them? It can only be that sectarian denominational small print is elevated above the Gospel of God’s grace. This is tragic. Fourth, it cannot be denied that while Calvin sought to preserve the distinction between Church and state, in practice the lines became blurred when the magistrates became involved in the enforcement of doctrine deemed pure, the election of ministers and elders and the maintenance of good order. Thus, ‘the magistrate ought by punishment and physical restraint to cleanse the church of offenses’, and to ‘defend sound doctrine’.66 It was the magistrates who prevented Calvin from having the Lord’s Supper as frequently as he would have wished.67 The Separatists and Congregationalists would have none of this. Well aware of their obligations as citizens, frequently protesting their loyalty to the monarch, they nevertheless maintained that, in spiritual matters, the state was not above the Church. With reference to the Act of Uniformity of 1559, Henry Barrow was appalled that, ‘All this people . . . were in one daye, with the blast of Queen Elizabeth’s trumpet, of ignorant papists and grosse idolaters, make faithfull Christianes and true professors’.68 He grants that rulers may, by godly government, assist the church, comfort the faithful and advance the Gospel,69 but ‘no prince or mortal man can make any a member of the church’.70 As Dale later explained, ‘the complaint of the Congregationalists was not that the queen had trampled on the personal rights and violated the freedom of the English people, but that she had usurped the authority of Christ’.71 In Owen’s day the issue was the legal imposition of the Book of Common Prayer with penalties specified for refusal to comply with its sole use. ‘Religious worship’, declared Owen, ‘not divinely instituted and appointed is false worship, not accepted with God’.72 Throughout, the convictions were that Christ alone is head of the Church and, hence, the monarch cannot be the Church’s temporal head; and that the Church is catholic, not national.73 It was left to P. T. Forsyth to make a further important point: ‘There is nothing in history that the State could not amend or annul in the great interest of the nation; but that is not so with the Church. No consideration of utility could justify the abolition of the historic gospel’.74 If one last observation may be made, it is this: it behoves the saints always to remember that they are sinners. It must be admitted that those Congregationalists who sought religious freedom in the New World were not always so eager to accord it to others. Hence, the banishment of Roger Williams to Rhode Island on his adoption of Baptist views; hence also, the 1659 execution of the Quakers, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, who had been banished from Massachusetts but had been sufficiently ill-advised

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to return. Assuredly, the rule of the saints can be a terrible thing, and a theocracy can become a mirror image of those totalitarian states that do not have the excuse that they are acting as God’s agents. The remedy is proper Church–state relations, always with the proviso which flows down to the United Reformed Church75 from its Separatist and Congregational forebears: The United Reformed Church declares that the Lord Jesus Christ, the only king and head of the Church, has therein appointed a government distinct from civil government and in things spiritual not subordinate thereto, and that civil authorities, being always subject to the rule of God, ought to respect the rights of conscience and of religious belief and to serve God’s will of justice and peace for all men.76 Fifth, the most significant rectification of Calvin’s ecclesiology made by the Separatists and Congregationalists was the institution of the Church Meeting, or to make the point clearer, the Church Meeting. Calvin was more than ready to acknowledge the importance of the idea of the priesthood of all believers, and he did allow that ministers should be called to pastorates ‘by the consent and approval of the people’;77 but it was not a regulative principle of his church order which, from the point of view of Congregationalism, was left hanging with elders and deacons. In his defence it might be suggested that with Anabaptists, some of them unduly excitable, and sundry other enthusiasts milling around, and all claiming inspiration by the Spirit, the possibility, never mind the rightness, of according a place in church government to all the church members was one of the things which, in his context, he did not ‘see’. Frequently misunderstood by others, Congregationalists have not always been the best exponents of their polity. The scholarly R. F. Horton (1855–1934), who ministered at the fashionable Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead, London, from 1880 to 1930, lamented of his saints, ‘They do not know what a Church Meeting is. In fifty years I have failed to teach them’.78 At their best, Congregationalists and their united heirs understand Church Meeting as closely related – indeed, as an extension of – public worship; for it is a credal assembly in which, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ is sought regarding the worship, service and mission of the church.79 It is not a business meeting as such; it is not a democratic assembly of the ‘one-person-one-vote’ variety where the objective is majority rule. After all, ‘The democracy will recognise no authority but what it creates, the Church none but what creates it’.80 Rather, the objective is unanimity in Christ, and this is achieved analogously to the Quaker ‘sense of the meeting’, rather than by voting. Moreover, the Church Meeting is chaired by the minister (not, for example, by someone with a lot of experience of business meetings), on the ground that the one called to lead the church to the throne of

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grace, and preach the Word, is the one to lead the church in reflecting upon the question, How are we to commend the Gospel we have received? It is a prominent example of the Congregationalists’ desire to honour ‘the crown rights of the Redeemer’ in his Church. To Henry Barrow, ‘It is manifest, that all the members of the church have a like interest in Christ, in his word, in the faith; that they altogether make one bodie unto him; that all the affaires of the church belong to that bodie together’.81 Later, having referred to formally called church officers, he explains that ‘I never thought that the practise of Christ’s government belonged only to these officers; I rather thought it had been their duty and office to have seen this government faithfully and orderly practised by all the members of the church’.82 John Robinson went so far as to say, So far are the officers from being the formal cause of the church . . . they are, in truth, no absolutely necessary appurtenance unto it . . . And the reason is, because the church is essentially in the saints, as the matter, subject, formed by the covenant, unto which the officers are but adjuncts, not making for the being, but for the well-being of the church . . . The Lord Jesus is the king of his church alone . . . [He] doth communicate [his power] with his church, as the husband with the wife. . . . And in this holy fellowship, by virtue of this plenteous anointment, every one is made a king, priest, and prophet . . . There is not the meanest member of the body but hath received his drop or dram of this anointing.83 To Dale, ‘The Church – the whole Church – is responsible for the persons who are received into membership and retained in membership; for the order of worship; for the substance, at least, of the teaching which is given to the Church itself, and which is given in the name of the Church to people outside’.84 To this I would add that the whole church is responsible also for those who are baptized in its midst; they are charged with surrounding the baptized individual and his or her family with Christian love and care? Again, it is the whole church that celebrates the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; it is not each member individualistically ‘making my communion’, still less is it the saints having religion ‘done to’ them by a priestly caste. No doubt not every Church Meeting attains the heights, but many of them do. Probably most of them fall between the commendation of the Meeting I once heard a member give to an enquirer: ‘You come along to Church Meeting: it’s where we can all stick our oar in!’ (thereby thinking in terms of ‘an aggregate of “saved” individuals’ rather than of a ‘living fellowship’85 or of the priesthood of all the believers together), and Dale’s panegyric which used to be recited in church membership classes:

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[T]o be at a church meeting – apart from any prayer that is offered – any hymn that is sung, any words that are spoken, is for me one of the chief means of grace. To know that I am surrounded by men and women who dwell in God, who have received the Holy Ghost, with whom I am to share the eternal righteousness, and eternal rapture of the great life to come, this is blessedness. I breathe a Divine air. I am in the new Jerusalem which has come down out of Heaven from God, and the nations of the saved are walking its streets of gold. I rejoice in the joy of Christ over those whom He has delivered from eternal death and lifted into the light and glory of God. The Kingdom of God is there.86 In the light of what has now been said, it may be clear why I was disappointed by the chapter on ‘Ministry’ in the convergence document, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. The chapter begins well, with a section on the ministry of the whole people of God, and proceeds to say that, ‘The word ministry in its broadest sense denotes the service to which the whole people of God is called’.87 But then it almost immediately lapses into a discussion of the ordained ministry. There is no reflection upon how the ministry of the whole people of God might be given its due place in church polity.88 No doubt, this would have been an almost impossible task given that many churches, even if they adhere to the foundational doctrines of election, regeneration, adoption, union with Christ and covenant, do not draw out their ecclesiological implications. That is to say, they have no concept of saints enrolled on profession of faith. Far from simply rectifying one aspect of Calvin’s ecclesiology, Church Meeting challenges all church orders as to the matter of the Church and the most appropriate way of honouring an important complex of Christian doctrines. With reference to the gathered company of believers J. Guinness Rogers wrote, The power it possesses no prince or prelate can confer, and none can take away. It is a power which does not accrue from some natural right belonging to its members separately, or in their corporate capacity, but comes directly from the presence of Christ Himself in accordance with His own promise. Christ is wherever His saints meet in His name, and the presence of Christ makes the Church, and gives its decision validity and force.89 Last, charges of ‘granular independency’ and isolationism notwithstanding (and there is no smoke without fire), the Separatist–Congregational tradition is well able to accommodate church fellowship wider than that of the local church. It would be distinctly odd if this were not the case, given the acknowledgement that the one Church is found in many locations. Robert Browne endorsed the idea that a ‘Synod is a Joining or partaking of the authority of many Churches

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met together in peace, for redress, and deciding of matters, which cannot well be otherwise taken up’.90 Throughout the history, however, there was sounded the caution that the deliverances of wider churchly bodies should have moral, not legal authority only. We are not here in the realm of an hierarchy of church courts. The reasoning was that there could be no higher authority than that of the guidance of the Holy Spirit addressed to the gathered saints. Hence, ‘Besides these particular Churches, there is not instituted by Christ any Church more extensive or Catholique entrusted with power for the administration of his ordinances, or the execution of any authority in his name’.91 Nevertheless, advisory synods or councils were envisaged with the proviso that they ‘are not entrusted with any Church-Power properly so called, or with any Jurisdiction over the Churches themselves, to exercise any Censures, either over any Churches or Persons, or to impose their determinations on the Churches or Officers. . . . [N]or are there any Synods appointed by Christ in a way of Subordination to one another’.92 With the passage of time, the ‘particular churches’ found themselves cooperating with one another in ever more ways: for example, in county mission societies, then in overseas mission, until at last, in the nineteenth century, the age of the creation of denominations as we have come to know them, the Congregational Union of England and Wales was constituted in 1832. Some felt nervous at this departure, so the traditional refrain was reiterated in the Constitution: ‘[T] he Union shall not, in any case, assume legislative authority, or become a court of appeal’.93 In the twentieth century, the question arose whether the Union should transform itself into a Church. Among the reasons given for this were that the ever-increasing cooperation among the churches, and the mutual support offered by local churches to other churches through the Union’s maintenance of the ministry scheme, for example; and the fact that the guidance of the Holy Spirit was sought in assemblies no less than in local Church Meetings – all of this, it was said, argued for the rightness, and not simply the usefulness, of the wider churchly body. This view was opposed by those who argued that the Bible knew of no ‘church’ between the local church and the catholic church; that wider churchly bodies ought to have no authority over local churches; and that to become a ‘Church’ might harden the denomination into a bloc, thereby threatening the understanding of catholicity. The biblical point was granted, and the fears of many, though not all, were assuaged when it was made clear that an hierarchy of church courts was not envisaged, and that mutuality of episcope would be practised as between the several foci of churchly life.94 The crucial question, ‘Which body has the final authority – the Assembly or the local Church Meeting?’ was answered thus: Neither. The final authority is in Christ. The local Church has the responsibility of seeking to learn the will of Christ on matters relevant to

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its own life, and the Assembly has the responsibility of seeking to learn the will of Christ for the whole fellowship of churches. Each in matters belonging to its proper sphere rightly claims the authority of Christ for decisions sincerely made in obedience to Him. Each should be prepared to learn from the other, and may have to admit that it as mistaken. Church Meetings, County Executives, and national Church Assemblies are all liable to err, and have erred.95 As for the suspected threat to catholicity, it was agreed that to use the term ‘Church’ of the denomination was a temporary, irregular expedient, given the present divided state of the visible Church. The decision to change from ‘Union’ to ‘Church’ was taken on 19 May 1965, and a Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication was held in London on 22 May 1966.96 Six years later, some 40 years after talks had begun between them, the Presbyterian Church of England united with the Congregational Church in England and Wales to form The United Reformed Church.

III Since, humanly speaking, church order is in the hands of saints who are also sinners, it is not surprising that every known polity is susceptible to error. If there can be argumentative Congregational Church Meetings, there can also be wayward Episcopal bishops and recalcitrant Presbyterian assemblies. It cannot be denied that some in the Separatist–Congregational tradition have so construed autonomy as to transform the local church into their personal fiefdom; or that church discipline has on occasion degenerated into petty point-scoring by the insufferably pious. But, perhaps remarkably, for the most part it has not been so. It is also the case that every church order faces particular challenges. In traditional Congregationalism, for example, attendance at the Lord’s Supper followed an individual’s profession of faith. Moreover in the service of reception of members the duties of membership were specified in some detail, including that of faithful attendance at Church Meeting. Thus, in a 1959 service for ‘The reception of members on profession of faith’, the candidate is, inter alia, asked, ‘Do you resolve to fulfil the duties of membership in the Church, joining regularly in public worship, in the Communion of the Lord’s Supper, and in the Church Meeting?’97 By 1980, in the United Reformed Church’s Book of Services, the question is more general, the importance of Church Meeting in the united Church notwithstanding: ‘Do you promise, in dependence on God’s grace, to be faithful in private and public worship, to live in the fellowship of the Church and to share in its work?’98 But in many churches today, as indicated

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earlier, children participate in the Lord’s Supper at an early age, yet we do not, for example, expect 5-year-olds to share in the discussions concerning the calling of ministers. This suggests the need of a reaffirmation of faith when a person accepts the full responsibilities of membership. Yet again, it was frequently the case that the Lord’s Supper was held as a separate service following the ministry of the Word. This bore witness to the fact that the sacrament is the sacrament of the Church, and that those who receive it are professed believers (a class wider than enrolled Congregational saints). But the liturgical movement of the twentieth century has taught many that Word and Sacrament belong together – as, indeed, Calvin believed – and, thus, an integrated service is nowadays the norm. This sharpens, perhaps a little uncomfortably, the distinction between the church, which takes communion, and other members of the congregation who are present, but do not partake. A witness is nevertheless made, and those who regularly attend but are not enrolled ought to receive pastoral care and, if they wish it, instruction with a view to making their profession of faith. Enough has been said to indicate some of the challenges faced by the Separatist–Congregational ecclesiology. The fact remains, however, that, properly conceived, the Separatist–Congregational tradition was able to rectify Calvin’s church order at certain important points. Influenced both by the Bible and by the political circumstances in which they were set, the Separatist–Congregationalists pursued the logic of the doctrines of election, regeneration, adoption, union with Christ and covenant further into ecclesiology than did Calvin. They brought the eternal distinction between those who are in Christ and those who are not into the day-to-day ordering of the church. They fastened upon the matter of the Church: the baptized, professed saints, believing that the Church comprises Christians, and that one cannot be a Christian ‘in general’, for union by grace with Christ entails union with all who are his. Furthermore, all who are Christ’s are to be loved for his sake – hence their opposition to any brand of sectarianism that would divide those whom God has made one in Christ, and their staunch commitment to, and leadership within, the modern ecumenical movement.99 They committed the ordering of the church’s life to all the saints gathered in Church Meeting where, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they sought the mind of Christ in relation to their church life, witness and service; and (albeit with certain fluctuations at particular times) they sought to honour the claims of the state while keeping it more at arm’s length than Calvin was able to do where the worship and governance of the Church were concerned, and insisting that the Church’s catholicity was not to be compromised by national borders. In a word, they held that ‘The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord’. What they have never been able to understand is how some Christian bodies can, with such apparent ease, refuse to enjoy full communion with all whom the Holy Spirit has made saints by calling. Their

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catholicity challenges such sectarianism, whether it arises from sacerdotalism on the one hand or conservative biblicism on the other, and they manifest it whenever, in the Lord’s name, they welcome all who are his to his table.100 As C. J. Cadoux (1883–1947) wrote some 80 years ago, ‘the key problem of reunion is, primarily, not agreement regarding ministerial orders or essential doctrines, but the mutual recognition of Christians by Christians as being really fellowmembers of that One Church to which they severally claim to belong’.101 In seeking thus to honour Christ as the only Lord of the Church, those of the Separatist–Congregational Way developed what can only be described as a doctrine of the Church than which there is no higher. In the Victorian era, they were not slow to employ the adjective in a cheekily polemical manner against those Anglo-Catholics who thought that they were high Church. The fact remains, however, that as P. T. Forsyth roundly declared, ‘Congregationalism . . . is High Church or nothing’.102 ‘On the one hand’, wrote Bernard Lord Manning, ‘Congregationalists have outdone all other Christians in the emphasis that they have laid on the visible church and on the supreme importance of continuous personal exercise in it by every individual. On the other hand, Congregationalists have clearly understood, frankly confessed, and effectually lived by the truth that this all-important visible church is a divine spiritual society, that it depends wholly on grace, not at all on law.’103 In both respects, they rectified Calvin’s ecclesiology – and all on the ground of the Father’s electing, regenerating, adopting, uniting, covenantal grace, the Son’s living presence in the midst of the saints and the witness and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Notes 1 See further Alan P. F. Sell, Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Evangel. Theological Themes and Thinkers 1550–2000 (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), chapter 6. 2 Even ‘by anyone else’ – but Calvin is enough to handle in one paper! My judgement is made on the basis of careful analysis, not in a triumphalist spirit – as will become clear when I come to the pitfalls of the polity. We should do well to remember that when writers on ecclesiology proclaim that ‘the Church is x, y, z’, they frequently mean, ‘ideally, the Church is . . . ’. 3 E. R. Conder, in Jubilee Lectures: A Historical Series Delivered on the Occasion of the Jubilee of the Congregational Union of England and Wales (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1882, I), 195. 4 A. Mackennal, Sketches in the Evolution of English Congregationalism (London: Nisbet, 1901), 123. 5 For a fuller account of a number of matters here briefly touched upon, see Alan P. F. Sell, Saints: Visible, Orderly and Catholic. The Congregational Idea of the Church (1986), now available from Wipf & Stock of Eugene, Oregon. 6 J. H. Leith, Introduction to the Reformed Tradition (Atlanta: John Knox), 1981, 152.

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7 J. Calvin, Institutes, J. T. McNeil (ed.), Ford Lewis Battles (trans.) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), IV.iii.4. 8 Ibid., IV.i.9. 9 J. S. Whale, The Protestant Tradition. An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge: CUP, 1960), 151–2. 10 The Second Helvetic Confession, XVII. 11 The Geneva Confession, VIII. Cf. Institutes, II.v.15. 12 Institutes, III.iii.21. Cf. ibid., II.xv.7. 13 Ibid., III.iii.8. 14 Ibid., IV.xv.6. 15 Calvin makes his points crisply in his Geneva Catechism (1541), Q&A 126, 330. 16 J. Owen, The True Nature of a Gospel Church and its Government (1689), in his Works (1850–1853), William H. Goold (ed.) (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1968), XVI, 12, 13. 17 H. F. Lovell Cocks, By Faith Alone (London: James Clarke, 1943), 154–5. Cf. 183. 18 Institutes, III.vi.1; Cf. III.ii.11. 19 Ibid., III.xxiv.1; see Romans 8: 15, Ephesians 1: 13–15, II Corinthians 1: 22, 5: 5. 20 Cf. the Westminster Larger Catechism, Q&A 74; J. Owen, Works, II, 186, 207, 211. 21 J. Hart (1712–1768), Hymns Composed on Various Subjects (Cranbrook, Kent: J. T. Dennett, 1871), 189–90. For an account of the burial service, see the ‘Memoir’ prefixed to the Hymns, xxiv–xxvi; Thomas Wright, Joseph Hart (London: Farncombe, 1910), 91–3. I know of no modern hymnal in which these words appear. 22 T. F. Torrance, ‘Our witness through doctrine’, Proceedings of the 17th General Council of the Alliance of the Reformed Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian Order (Geneva: Office of the Alliance, 1954), 134. Author’s italics. 23 Institutes, IV.xv.6. 24 R. W. Dale, Fellowship with Christ and Other Discourses (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1900), 11. 25 The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, A. Peel and Leland H. Carlson (eds) (London: Allen & Unwin, 1953), 226. 26 Savoy Declaration of the Institution of Churches, II, III, VIII. This document of 30 clauses is appended to the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order. Paragraph VIII was reaffirmed in 1951 when Congregationalists were invited by the Faith and Order Department of the World Council of Churches to acquaint that body with their ecclesiological position. See Congregationalism. A Statement by Representatives of the Congregational Union of England and Wales to the Faith and Order Department of the World Council of Churches, 1951, 18. 27 J. Owen, Works, XVI, 27. Cf. ibid., 29. For an account of Congregational covenants, and other Congregationalist ways of confessing the faith, see Alan P. F. Sell, Dissenting Thought and the Life of the Churches. Studies in an English Tradition (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), chapter 1. 28 The Works of the Reverend and Learned Isaac Watts, D. D. (London: J. Barfield, 1810), III, 18. 29 The Psalms and Hymns of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D. (London: Caxton Press, [1718]), Hymn 148, 390. 30 R. W. Dale, Essays and Addresses (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899), 194. Cf. his paper in Jubilee Lectures, I, 45. Cf. idem, Jubilee Essays, I, 45.

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31 I do not overlook the fact that the Roman Catholics were, and in England remain, technically Nonconformists, but in this chapter I am concerned with Calvin’s heirs only. 32 B. L. Manning, Essays in Orthodox Dissent, (1939) (London: Independent Press, 1953), 132. 33 H. F. Lovell Cocks, By Faith Alone, 203–4. 34 Institutes, IV.i.7. 35 The Writings of John Greenwood, together with the Joint Writings of Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, Leland H. Carlson (ed.) (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962), 98. 36 The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587–1590, Leland H. Carlson (ed.) (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962), 179. 37 Ibid., 308. 38 H. Barrow, The Writings of Henry Barrow 1590–1591, Leland H. Carlson (ed.) (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), 83. 39 Institutes, IV.xii.5. 40 H. Barrow, Writings 1587–1590, 316. 41 Ibid., 295, 306. Discipline was added in the Scottish Confession of Faith of 1560, chapter XVIII. 42 J. Owen, Works, XVI, 11. 43 R. W. Dale, Essays and Addresses, 185. By contrast, the fons et origo of those comparative youngsters, the Methodists, was not ecclesiological, but evangelistic. From the outset, the Separatists and Congregationalists were saying that the Church is something other than what the Church of England thought it was. 44 G. F. Nuttall, Christian Pacifism in History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), 13. 45 Classically, the profession of faith was made in person at Church Meeting, though with the passage of time a written statement from the candidate, or a sponsor, or a report by the minister, would suffice. The member would then be received as a member (i.e. not ‘made’ a member – he or she was already within the covenant) and admitted to the full privileges and responsibilities of membership at the Lord’s Supper. Attendance at Church Meeting would thereafter be expected. This assumed a confession of faith made at years of discretion. The increasing reception of children at the Lord’s table on the ground that they are baptized obscures the logic of the classical order, and necessitates further instruction prior to the acceptance of the full responsibilities of membership. This change seems to have been influenced by the increasingly fashionable ecumenically inspired view that infant baptism marks a person’s entry to the Church (with which is frequently associated the untenable view that regeneration and baptism are necessarily contemporary events). Paedobaptism marks the beginning of a person’s process of initiation and declares the Gospel that when we can do nothing, God does everything: his grace is prevenient. In other words, the baptism of the children of members of the covenant places those children within the covenant as catechumens. The first thing to do in the case of the children of those who are not within the covenant is to evangelize their parents, for requests by such parents for baptism present evangelical opportunities which need to be taken. Edward White recalls the occasion on which a respected Congregational minister asked Archbishop A. C. Tait whether joint evangelization of the people of England might be contemplated. ‘No,’ replied the Archbishop, ‘for you proceed upon the supposition that the non-church-going people require to be regenerated, man by man, but we proceed upon the belief that they are regenerated in baptism already’.

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See Jubilee Lectures, II, 169. The truth would seem to be that all require to be regenerated, that this may or may not happen at baptism, that we cannot accurately specify the moment when it occurs and, hence, that godly agnosticism is the most appropriate stance to adopt. H. Barrow, Writings 1587–1590, 280. J. Owen, Works, 11. The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, 404. The Writings of John Greenwood, 27. Ibid., 162. R. W. Dale, Essays and Addresses, 186. Ibid., 181. John T. Wilkinson, 1662 and After. Three Centuries of English Nonconformity (London: Epworth Press, 1962), 198 n. 108. J. Owen, Works, XVI, 14–17. J. G. Rogers, The Church Systems of England in the Nineteenth Century (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1881), 644. How seldom do those who, fashionably, make much of our ‘personal journeys’ distinguish between the journey towards faith and the journey of faith. J. Owen, Sermon XXI, ‘Gospel Charity,’ in Works, XI, 262. B. L. Manning, Why Not Abandon the Church? (1939) (London: Independent Press, 1958), 37–8. This loving of one another is a sign of our regeneration (1 John 3: 14). It also has implications for the size of local churches. John Robinson (ca. 1575–1625), the pastor to the Pilgrims, wrote, ‘No particular church under the New Testament ought to consist of more members than can meet together in one place’. See his Works, R. Ashton (ed.), 1851, III, 13. John Owen thought in terms of pastoral care: ‘It is the duty of a shepherd to know the state of his flock; and unless he do so he will never feed them profitably’. See his Works, IV, 511. Interestingly, present-day sociologists suggest that close-working relations cannot be achieved where more than 200 people are involved. However that may be, one suspects that were Robinson or Owen redivivus to land in a megachurch, they would have no difficulty in agreeing that it was mega, but might well deny that it was a church. It is not easy to love (in the sense of care for) 20–40,000 individuals. Alan P. F. Sell, Saints: Visible, Orderly and Catholic, 3. Idem, Essays in Orthodox Dissent, 99. Institutes, IV.1.2. H. Allon, The Congregational Year Book, 1882 (London: Congregational Union of England and Wales, 1882), 54. J. Owen, Works, XVI, 186. Cf. ibid., XIII, 175 ff. B. L. Manning, Essays in Orthodox Dissent, 136. God’s Reign and Our Unity. The Report of the Anglican-Reformed International Commission, 1981–1984 (London: SPCK; Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1984), 82. Italics in the original. See Alan P. F. Sell, Aspects of Christian Integrity, (1990) (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998), chapter 4. Institutes, IV.xi.3; IV.xx.2. On frequency see Institutes, IV.xvii.44. The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587–1590, 283.

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69 It must be granted that there were shades of opinion among the Separatists. Browne posited a judicial rule of the magistrates over the church, Barrow did not. 70 The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587–1590, 288. 71 R. W. Dale, Essays and Addresses, 217. 72 J. Owen, Works, XVI, 249. 73 A number of Congregationalists observed that at the Reformation the Church of England had isolated itself not only from the Dissenters but also from the Reformed churches of continental Europe. See, for example, J. Guinness Rogers, Jubilee Lectures, II, 217. 74 P. T. Forsyth, Faith, Freedom and the Future, (1912) (London: Independent Press, 1955), 227. 75 This Church resulted from the union in 1972 of the Presbyterian Church of England with the majority of the Congregational Church in England and Wales. In 1981, the Re-formed Association of Churches of Christ joined the union, as did the majority of the Scottish Congregationalists in 2000. 76 ‘A statement concerning the Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church’, in David M. Thompson (ed.), Stating the Gospel. Formulations and Declarations of Faith from the Heritage of The United Reformed Church 9 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), 263. My italics. Cf. the ‘Principles of church order and discipline’ adopted by the Congregational Union of England and Wales in May 1833: ‘The power of a Christian church is purely spiritual and should in no way be corrupted by union with temporal or civil power’. This document was printed in full in The Congregational Year Book from 1846 to 1917. See further on historic Dissent vis-à-vis the Church of England, Alan P. F. Sell, Dissenting Thought and the Life of the Churches, chapter 22; idem, Testimony and Tradition. Studies in Reformed and Dissenting Thought (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), chapter 11. 77 Institutes, IV.iii.15. 78 Albert Peel and J. A. R. Marriott, Robert Forman Horton (London: Allen & Unwin, 1937), 186. 79 Cf. Nathaniel Micklem, Congregationalism and the Church Catholic (London: Independent Press, 1943), 30. 80 P. T. Forsyth, Faith, Freedom and the Future, 192. Cf. ibid., 209. 81 The Writings of Henry Barrow 1587–1590, 319. 82 Ibid., 608–9. 83 J. Robinson, Works, II, 110 and extracts to 141. 84 R. W. Dale, Essays and Addresses, 203. 85 H. F. Lovell Cocks, ‘The Gospel and the Church,’ in John Marsh (ed.), Congregationalism Today (London: Independent Press, 1943), 37. 86 R. W. Dale, ‘The evangelizing power of a spiritual fellowship’, in Dugald Macfadyen (ed.), Constructive Congregational Ideals (London: H. R. Allenson, 1902), 136. 87 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), 21. 88 See further, Alan P. F. Sell, ‘Some Reformed responses to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry,’ Reformed World, XXXIX no. 3, September 1986, 549–65. 89 J. G. Rogers, Jubilee Essays, II, 235. 90 The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, 271. 91 Savoy Declaration of the Institution of Churches, VI. 92 Ibid., XXVI, XXVII. Cf. J. Owen, Works, XVI, 183–208. 93 The Congregational Year Book, 1846, xii.

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John Calvin’s Ecclesiology The tradition much prefers to think in terms of ‘farther and nearer’ than of ‘higher and lower’. Oversight and Covenant. Interim Report of Commission no. I. Some Questions and Answers (London: Congregational Union of England and Wales, n.d.), Q&A 6. For a full and partly autobiographical account of this episode, see Alan P. F. Sell, Testimony and Tradition, chapter 12. See also idem, Saints: Visible, Orderly and Catholic, 112–15. A Book of Services and Prayers (London: Independent Press, 1959), 53. A Book of Services (The Saint Andrew Press, 1980), 58. The names of A. E. Garvie (1861–1945), Norman Goodall (1896–1985), Leslie E. Cooke (1908–1967) and W. John F. Huxtable (1912–1990) spring at once to mind. I believe it remains the case that Congregationalists have entered into more transdenominational united churches than any other confessional family. See further, Alan P. F. Sell, Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Evangel, chapter 11; idem, ‘Receiving from other Christian traditions and overcoming the hindrances thereto: some Reformed reflections,’ forthcoming in a collection ed. Paul D. Murray and Marcus Pound. C. J. Cadoux, ‘The true Catholicism,’ in A. Peel (ed.), Essays Congregational and Catholic issued in Commemoration of the Centenary of the Congregational Union of England and Wales (London: Congregational Union of England and Wales, [1931]), 58. P. T. Forsyth, Faith, Freedom and the Future, 215. B. L. Manning, Essays in Orthodox Dissent, 164. I am most grateful to Dr Gerard Mannion for the invitation to write this chapter, which summarizes all too briefly the catholic principles I have been privileged to introduce into ecumenical discussion from the local to the international over the past half-century.

Chapter 9 Making Calvin Modern: Form and Freedom in Abraham Kuyper’s Free Church Ecclesiology John Halsey Wood, Jr. Albert Camus did not fear the God of Christianity, but he did fear the gods of revolution and, above all, those of the French Revolution. After the revolution dethroned God and king, it straightaway enthroned the will of the people; ‘this political entity, proclaimed sovereign’, was considered a ‘divine entity’. It was a new ‘mystique’, divine in every sense: infallible, sovereign and absolutely free, or in Rousseau’s terms, sacred, inviolable and absolute. But this last god was worse than the first. It tolerated no difference. Reason was its sceptre; it begat virtue, and virtue demanded unity. When reason failed to produce unity, the guillotine became ‘a logician whose function is refutation’. Revolutionary politics was religion by another name: ‘All that was God’s will henceforth be rendered to Caesar’.1 Before Camus, a rather round Dutch Calvinist had said the same thing, almost to the word. Abraham Kuyper asked the Netherlands, ‘Is the individual freer now . . . faced with the super-corporation State? . . . How will you resist if the deification of the State continues to brand every form of protest a sacrilege from the start’?2 The French Revolution was an imposter, parading in the guise of liberty but knowing nothing of the true substance. It did not tolerate diversity. ‘The slogan of false unity today has become, through uniformity unification, by centralization toward Caesarism’.3 Kuyper challenged those who believed that the French Revolution had in fact brought liberty. But if not the revolution, what was the source of modern liberties? Kuyper traced them back to an unlikely place: Calvinism. Admitting that abuses existed, he still maintained that the freest nations – the Netherlands, England and America – were those where Calvinism flourished most. Calvinism in general and the Calvinist church in particular was the ‘source and stronghold of our constitutional liberties’.4 Calvinism as a ‘stronghold of liberty’ is counter-intuitive to conventional wisdom, but it was not to Abraham Kuyper. For Kuyper, religious freedom was the first freedom, and others proceeded from it. In the nineteenth century, the

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Netherlands experienced the social upheavals common to European society. It witnessed a new pluralism of religions and ideologies, aided by new freedoms resulting from the separation of church and state. Established churches like the Dutch church faced a predicament. ‘Orphaned by the withdrawing of the state and no longer obvious symbol of the existing order, [the church] needed a new legitimation’.5 Before Abraham Kuyper began his career in government or academics, he had already involved himself deeply in ecclesiastical politics, where he developed his own vision of the church’s new ‘legitimation’. It would be a free church, ‘the daughter of Calvin’.6 Kuyper’s free church negotiated several internal and external pressures at once. Ernst Troeltsch defined the free church as: the destruction of the mediaeval and early Protestant idea of a social order welded together by one uniform State Church . . . This meant that the question of Church membership now became a matter of individual choice, and that, at least outwardly, the form of Church-order becomes that of a voluntary association, even though theologically the community which thus comes into being may still continue to be considered as an objective, ecclesiastical institution.7 Troeltsch’s definition highlights the question that Kuyper’s free church ecclesiology sought to answer: how to reconcile Calvinism’s traditional commitment to ecclesiastical forms and freedom of conscience in a way amenable to the modern world? These things, form and freedom, animated Kuyper’s ecclesiology. Strict adherence to ecclesiastical norms does not often bespeak of religious liberty, but that was just what the modern era required. This was, however, no simple re-pristination of sixteenth-century ideals, for Kuyper also ‘saw at once that we had to advance exegetically, psychologically and historically beyond [Calvin]’.8

Converted to Calvin According to his own admission, as a theological student Abraham Kuyper treated the church and John Calvin as little more than historical curiosities. Although he did have an academic interest in the church, like many of his peers Kuyper assumed that modern society made the church obsolete. His first serious research, under the tutelage of church historian M. de Vries of Leiden University, examined the development of papal power under Pope Nicolas I (d. 867). Kuyper commended Nicolas for his Christian piety, his concern for the oppressed, his zeal for justice and his use of papal power to these ends. Yet, the church, in

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external forms like the papacy was for a humanity underage, one that lacked the spiritual maturity (and self-confidence!) of the nineteenth century: Religion exerts a mighty influence on the destiny of the world from within through the human heart, and where it fulfils its destiny, then only by that route. On a lower level of development, it works less as an inspiring principle, but manages to intervene in the course of events through the Church as its organ. Thus, the more religion comes into its own, to that degree the Church loses its importance in history. Already in the history of our day the Church has been designated a most subordinate role.9 A year later, in his doctoral dissertation on the ecclesiologies of John Calvin and John à Lasco, Kuyper was more optimistic about the church as a spiritual community, but he still viewed its tangible, visible form as only ancillary and contingent. Jasper Vree attributes this view to the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher.10 The sacraments exemplified Kuyper’s spiritualized ecclesiology. They promoted Christian unity but lacked any gracious efficacy. ‘Baptism and the Supper are actions of a symbolic appointing, which in the glorious memory of our Lord advance the unity of the institute of the church, at the same time also pricking and inspiring us, in order that we may embrace Christ with a whole heart and that we may foster the most tender love towards our brothers’.11 Calvin, on the other hand, had incorrectly ascribed a ‘magical power’ and ‘excessive stability’ to the sacraments.12 He, apparently, belonged to a lower level of human development. Kuyper brought these convictions with him to his first pastorate in Beesd, but they eventually folded under the weight of pastoral responsibility. In his first sermon as a pastor, ‘A Walk in the Light’, Kuyper stressed heart, feeling and personal holiness as the true bond between Christians, and warned of superficial reliance on rituals: All that the church of Christ has been able to do in the course of the centuries, she has wrought it through no power of doctrinal systems or forms, no, the Church has never been able nor shall be able to do anything except through being the image-bearer of Christ, in Him making the spirit of the only-born of the Father eternally live, in him to fulfill the most ardent prayer of the Son of Man [i.e., that all may be one], through joining person to person in warm love as brothers . . . There is no other communion in the church of Christ than that which is grounded in holiness.13 But the church was attacked on all sides, and this rationale was insufficient. Modernist theologian Allard Pierson argued the church’s obsolescence and caused a

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scandal by leaving it. Pietists like Pietje Baltus condemned the church as worldly and withdrew themselves from it to form conventicles.14 There was no succour in contemporary theology. ‘It failed to give direction and left you in a fix’!15 When Kuyper recounted these events in his 1873 book Confidentially, he recalled finding in Calvin exactly what he could not find elsewhere, a formidable doctrine of the church. ‘Calvin had founded a church, and through his fixed church form he succeeded in spreading blessings and peace to receptive hearts among all the nations of Europe and across the sea, in town and village, even among the poor and lowly’.16 While much ecclesiology in the nineteenth century de-emphasized the institutional and formal aspects of the church, precisely these aspects made Calvin so attractive to Abraham Kuyper at this early stage of his career.

Kuyper’s Calvinist Ecclesiology Contending for the ‘fixed forms’ of the church put Kuyper at odds with both modernists and conservatives in the Dutch national church, the Netherlands Reformed Church. Kuyper prized the Reformed confessions and liturgical forms, but the ‘radical individualization of confession’ made for a ‘discomfort’ with creedal statements in the modern era.17 Even an ‘evangelical–confessionalist’ like J. J. van Toorenenbergen chastised Kuyper for his commitment to doctrinal and liturgical forms.18 Toorenenbergen distinguished between the main points of the confessional statements and the subordinate points. He rejected the notion of an unchangeable confession and distinguished between the letter of the confessions and the substance. According to him, adherence to the standards meant adherence to the substance in one’s heart.19 In response, Kuyper explained that yes, the confession lived in the heart of the church and as such had no printed letter. But the church as a visible institute must also have a confession in a public form, though of course it could be amended. 20 ‘ “Fixity but not immutability of form for liturgy and confession both,” was then and still remains my motto’.21 Kuyper did not want a confessional strait-jacket but ecclesiastical transparency. The rationalistic premises of modern historiography precipitated a crisis of religious authority. They made it difficult to detect the divinity of scripture. The problem, as Kuyper saw it, was not the demise of religious authority. ‘No one works without [some kind of] authority’.22 Rather, the problem was the democratization of religious authority. ‘One lives out of his own caprice or the arbitrary authority of one who forces himself on us’. Kuyper took the occasion of J. H. Gunning’s recent biblical studies as a case in point. An otherwise orthodox Protestant, Gunning had suggested that portions of the Bible were mythological. Kuyper’s response in Confidentially suggested that Gunning’s problem was at least as much his ecclesiology as his hermeneutics. Kuyper warned that if biblical

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interpretation was taken from the church and given to individuals, then ‘even the first principles of religion are unscrewed and a Babylonian confusion ensues’.23 To deal with the pressures of modern society that made it increasingly difficult to build consensus, the Netherlands Reformed Church gradually eased its insistence on the Reformed confessions. In 1827, ministerial vows were adjusted to demand less and less from ministerial candidates in terms of their commitment to the church’s confessions. It became ambiguous whether ministers subscribed to the confessions ‘insofar as’ they conformed to scripture or ‘because’ they conformed to scripture. Following democratizing trends in society, many preferred the looser ‘insofar as’ formula which made the individual minister, not the church corporate, the final arbiter of scripture. Kuyper protested. He treated the church’s confessions as its constitution with legally binding power (reflecting his own political views as a constitutional monarchist). In 1883, all reference to the Reformed confessions and even to Jesus Christ was removed from the ministerial vows of the Netherlands Reformed Church, though the confessions remained the official doctrinal statements of the church. But Kuyper believed that a confession had no value if it was not enforced. This was the sin of ‘ecclesiastical dualism’.24 It was dishonest if the church in its inner chambers did not act on what it confessed before the world. Kuyper also defended the use of strict liturgical formulas, especial the baptismal formula, as a variety of alternatives sprung up in the broadening national church. In the 1860s, the synod decided to permit a variety of baptismal formulas alongside the traditional Trinitarian. Members could now be baptized ‘into the name of the Father’, ‘into the name of the congregation’, ‘into faith, hope and love’, or ‘for the initiation into Christendom’.25 Kuyper summed up the result: ‘In order to maintain doctrinal freedom the synod abandons Christian baptism’.26 In two series of articles in his weekly church newspaper, Kuyper explained why the Trinitarian formula was not arbitrary but essential to a distinctively Christian baptism: the Trinitarian name was God’s fullest self-revelation to his people.27 The importance of fixed ecclesiastical forms did not negate the importance of heartfelt religion. His discussions on baptism reflected a concern for both ecclesiastical form and individual spirituality. He charged the Netherlands Reformed Church with spiritual dishonesty in the matter of baptism. It was ‘lying’ if those coming for baptism did so unwillingly or for the wrong reasons, if the husband went along with the baptism of a child only to appease his wife, if the mother sought baptism of a child out of superstition, or if the liturgist used the traditional baptismal formula but believed nothing of it. In short, there was with such an act a complete absence of everything that makes such a solemnity into baptism – absence of form, absence of formula of baptismal confession of the church, absence of faith in the baptism both

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The conservative Dutch Reveil party in the church, which originated in the revivals of the early nineteenth century, could go halfway with Kuyper. Personal religiosity was necessary, but doctrinal and liturgical formulas much less so. The Reveil exemplified the inward turn of Christianity, modernist and evangelical, in the nineteenth century. German immigrant to America Philip Schaf described the phenomenon (in less-than-appreciative terms): if rationalism (i.e. modernism) is ‘one-sided theoretic religious subjectivism’, then evangelical sectarianism is ‘one-sided practical religious subjectivism’, and both deviated from historic churchly Protestantism.29 Himself given to deep private spirituality, introspective soul searching and ethical concern, Kuyper criticized the pervasive spiritual nominalism of the national church. Membership was often a reflex of birthright and custom instead of voluntary decision. The challenge for Kuyper’s free church ecclesiology was to reconcile the objective aspects of church, like confessions and liturgy, and the strong subjective impulse that Kuyper also shared with his era. The apostle Paul’s description of the church as ‘rooted and grounded’ pointed the way forward.30 As rooted in Christ, the church was a spiritual organism that moved freely under divine guidance. ‘ “Rooted,” that is the metaphor of the free life that does not come through the human skill, but immediately from the hand of the Creator, bearing power in its own core and the law of its life in its own germ’.31 The organism grows from its own inner life principle, and there were only two possible principles, divine election and humanity. (The distinction between the two became the basis for Kuyper’s doctrine of the ‘antitheses’.) Through divine election, God created a new human organism from the old one corrupted by sin, but Kuyper complained that the conservatism of the national church neglected this inner religious principle. The Roman Catholic church, conversely, forcibly imposed the institution on it, and modernists abandoned it altogether. Kuyper outlined the correct relation between organic and institutional forms of the church. The organism was incomplete without expressive life forms, and the life form of the Christian organism was the institutional church – not the modernists’ ‘hyper-spiritualism that evaporates everything’ or the ‘petrifaction’ of the conservatives. Instead, Kuyper proposed, ‘we should not abandon the church either as organism or as institute, but rather join both in a free church’.32 ‘Grounded’ was Paul’s metaphor for the institutional church. Whereas the organism grew, the institutional church was built. Yet the institute was not a human invention, not simply society of like-minded persons such as the voluntary religious associations cropping up everywhere (many by Kuyper’s own hand).

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The institute was a divine work. It depended on the organism, and the organism on it. The institute created a ‘life sphere’ that fed and protected the organism from the world. Rebuffing Kuyper’s attempts to reform the institution through strict confessional subscription, J. Cramer and J. H. Gunning said ‘the reformation of the church must proceed from inside out. First the church changed, and then the church form’.33 But they misunderstood Kuyper. Reform did not move from outer form to inner conviction, but in both directions at once. Inside out, and outside in. The institute nourishing the organism, the organism blossoming into an institute. The confessions were the public expression of what the organism confessed inwardly. ‘In a national church a fixed confession is spiritual coercion and therefore remains a dead letter. But if one accepts the free church . . . then this objection falls away’.34 The free church was, therefore, more than the reconciliation of subjective and objective aspects; it was also a thesis about religious liberty.

A Calvinist Church for Modern Society Nicolas Healy explains the predicament of modern ecclesiology: ‘All churches found it necessary to reconsider their nature and function and their relation to society. While such tasks are hardly novel, they were performed within a new, “modern” situation in which the churches had greatly diminished control over their social and intellectual environments’.35 In other words, Christian churches had to rethink their social posture because Western society itself was less and less Christian. Western society no longer took Christian beliefs and practices for granted or considered them undisputed. Modernist theology dealt with the challenges of modern society by accommodating itself to the new modes of thought. Fundamentalists fought back or withdrew.36 Abraham Kuyper, in contrast, reached back to Calvin for a way forward. In addition to the fixed church forms that Calvin championed, he also offered a model for relating to society at large. Kuyper’s free church ecclesiology drew inspiration from Calvin’s notions of freedom of conscience, the separation of church and state and religious tolerance, but Kuyper faced pressures that Calvin did not fully anticipate or reckon with, and some adjustment was necessary. Increasing religious pluralism and the separation of church and state were two of the most salient features of the new modern situation in the Netherlands (and all of Europe). The French Revolution toppled the unity of the dominant churches and the state and so opened the way for a variety of religious movements. Historian Hugh McLeod explains, ‘Pluralism is the key to the religious situation in later-nineteenth-century Europe, and . . . trends towards secularization have to be seen in the context of intense religious competition, whether between rival branches of Christianity or between religious and secular views of the world’.37 Diversity meant competition, and competition was hardly more intense

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anywhere than within the Netherlands Reformed Church itself (the NHK, the national church). The NHK was ‘between 1850 and 1880 a hotel for very diverse religious schools’.38 Kuyper learned to negotiate the party system in ecclesiastical politics and even showed a natural affinity for it. The parties in the church ranged from the more socially and theologically conservative parties to the modernists, who, Kuyper believed, hardly bore any resemblance to historic Christianity at all. Towards the pietist heirs of the early-nineteenth-century revivals Kuyper was antagonistic, and Methodism, Darbyism, Alexander Vinet and the French Reveille, and the Reveil party in the Dutch church all came in for a lashing for their ‘one-sided spiritualism’ that neglected church forms. These various groups represented the range of options available within Christian circles, and beyond that there was theosophy, Madam Blavatsky, Mary Baker Eddy and Franz Anton Mesmer to choose from.39 Pluralism gained constitutional imprimatur in the liberal constitution of 1848, which established the separation of church and state and the freedom of assembly. The constitution opened new possibilities for marginal groups such as Catholics or Lutherans like J. R. Thorbecke, the author of the constitution. Implementing this new arrangement, however, was not straightforward or immediate, and many Protestants objected to these new social arrangements. In 1816, King William I had transformed the old public church into an established church, the Netherlands Reformed Church. In the late nineteenth century, there were still numerous entanglements. Even after the new constitution, the common conviction was that church and state coincided.40 For example, when the Roman Catholic church established a bishopric in the Netherlands under the freedoms accorded them in the constitution, Protestants revolted and demanded the king step in. As a pastor in Utrecht, Kuyper himself was paid out of state coffers. There was also a need to divide up the cultural spoils between church and state. It had to be decided who received control over matters like church property and welfare. Kuyper believed both belonged to the church,41 but efforts towards emancipating the church from the state confused and angered many others who were loath to give up the privileges and influence of establishment. In this uncertain situation, ecclesiology had to adapt.

Freedom of conscience Freedom of conscience was the first freedom of Kuyper’s free church. He learned this freedom from Calvin, but whereas Calvin’s appreciation of freedom of conscience diminished over his life (in comparison with his growing appreciation for the freedom of the institutional church), Kuyper’s grew.42 Although the Reformation broke the bonds of Rome’s ‘world–church’, Kuyper said, it stopped

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short of full reformation when it accepted the landskerk system (state/national church system), which ‘twisted the spiritual lines of humanity to its geographical boundaries.’43 The Dutch national church (the NHK) was a variation on this theme. Its ambition was for the people, the nation, if not first for their geographical borders. It lacked freedom in two respects. First, its form was imposed upon the nation by the state action of 1816 and by the synodical hierarchy the state created. Second, participation in the national church was not voluntary but assumed and confused with national and hereditary membership, to the neglect and spiritual apathy of its members. Kuyper estimated that only a small portion of the membership of his Amsterdam congregation actually attended public worship. ‘Now our whole city [Amsterdam] lies . . . uncared for and unattended, and souls die away by hundreds, who never received anything from the church . . . whereas they comfort themselves with the thought that they still belong to the national church, they live calm and satisfied’.44 Participation in the church must be voluntary and active. The fixed forms that Kuyper praised such as the confession should not be imposed from above (i.e. by the synod) but should arise from below.45 The church should be Reformed by its own ‘life-choice’.46 Kuyper emphasized this point in his polemics against the national church when he broke with the church in the 1880s. Christians had the right to form a church according to the dictates of their conscience. The special office of the church did not rule over the general office of believers (the general membership of the church); it was grounded in the lay members who elected the special offices of minister and elder.47 The foundation for these rights of individuals in the church (and state) lay in Calvin’s doctrine of election. ‘A church that confesses the doctrine of election as the cor Ecclesiae cannot be clerical, but is bound to find its power in the elect, that is, in the church members. Thus the democratic form of church government sprang up from this confession. Transferred from the church to the state, it would soon give birth to the liberties of our Dutch folk, the liberties of the Whigs in England, and, not least, the liberties of America’.48 The opposite were the twin doctrines of a national church and state sovereignty, which rooted sovereignty in the immanent state rather than the eternal God. Because it was artificially imposed, the unity of the national church was a unity only in appearance. It broke the unity of spirit, which only a voluntary, free church could produce.

Separation of church and state The free church would also be separate from the state for the good of both entities. Kuyper objected to the state’s financial subsidy of the church, although he had benefited from it himself as a minister. He compared the Amsterdam

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congregation of the national church with the Christian Reformed Church (CGK), a secession church from 1834. The Amsterdam congregation of the national church counted almost 140,000 members, while the whole CGK church totalled only about 100,000. Kuyper estimated that since 1834 (the year of the secession of the CGK from the NHK), the Amsterdam congregation had received almost 8 million Guilders in state subsidy, while the entire CGK had not gotten a cent. What did the national church have to show for it? The Amsterdam congregation had 14 buildings and 27 pastors. The CGK, on the other hand, had 200 buildings and 220 pastors – with nothing but the free-will gifts of its members! Kuyper continued for half a dozen pages with example after example of the deadening effects of state subsidy.49 He predicted that the days of the established church ‘are numbered. . . . The movement of spirits is more powerful than our wishes. If it turns out now that this ends in particularizing, differentiating, individualizing, then this view demands a future in which either every church communion ceases or every spiritual circle finds a church according to the needs of the heart’.50 Kuyper’s divorce of church and state eventually had consequences for his approach to social engagement, where he preferred a network of voluntary associations united by common religious conviction, while conservative supporters of the national church continued to view the church itself as an instrument of social reform and one directly concerned with matters of state.51 Kuyper went beyond Calvin in his theory of the separation of church and state, with good reason. The modern state was secular, and the Christian underpinnings that Calvin assumed of the state and state officials no longer held. Like Calvin, Kuyper demarcated the state and church as distinct spheres, though both subordinate to God. They were distinct in origin, essence, nature and purpose. The sovereignty of both state and church originated with God, flowing through different human heads, the king and Christ, respectively. State power pertained to external bodily life; church power pertained to the spiritual, inner life. They also had two different types of authority: the state, magisterial, and the church, ministerial. As to their purpose, the magistrate aimed at preserving peace on earth, while the church aimed at making the elect fit for heaven.52 The difference between Kuyper and his Reformed forebears was apparent in the matter of capital punishment for heretics, signalling Kuyper’s adaption of Reformed theology to the secular state and plural society. Then as now, interpretation of Michael Servetus’s execution said as much about the interpreter as it did about Servetus and Calvin. Initially, Kuyper excused Calvin’s actions as comparable to any of his contemporaries, and accurately so. 53 Later, however, Kuyper showed less leniency and forthrightly broke with Calvin and also with Theodore Beza, Gisbertus Voetius, Johannes A. Marck, Francis Turretin, Frederick Spanheim and other lesser lights on this matter.54 The overarching question was

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the cooperation between church and state. Should the state cooperate with the church in spiritual matters? Here, where Calvin said yes, Kuyper said no.55 This put Kuyper in a bind. The state had a responsibility to God, but it was no longer competent to judge which god.56 Thus, Kuyper waffled on paragraph 36 of the Belgic Confession, which laid on the state the responsibility for maintaining the true church and true Christian teaching. Occasionally, he said that the state did have the responsibility to enforce both tables of the law, though even then he refused the extreme judgement that it could carry out capital punishment against heretics.57 More consistently, he argued that article 36 was no longer a rule of state policy.58 Assigning the state spiritual responsibility, especially the grave punishment of heretics, overlooked an obvious practical problem. ‘This proposition supposes that the magistrate is in a position to judge the difference between truth and heresy, an office of grace which, as appears from the history of eighteen centuries, has not been granted by the Holy Spirit, but withheld’.59 It may have been possible in Calvin’s Geneva to merge the civil and the congregational council, but this could occur only in the rare instances where there was unity of faith, which was manifestly no longer the case. The most suitable way for the magistrate to avert heresy was not to punish it, but to allow the church freedom in its spiritual mission. This also had direct consequences for Kuyper’s attempt at reforming the church in the Netherlands. When the Christian Reformed Church had seceded from the Netherlands Reformed Church in 1834, it stumbled on this point. This church had expected the government to judge on the side of the true spiritual inheritor of the old church of the Dutch Republic, for instance, the church that maintained the same historic confession of faith. But lacking the competence to judge in spiritual matters, Kuyper explained, the civil government could only decide based on legal and institutional points. As a result, the seceding Christian Reformed Churches lost their civil disputes with the Netherlands Reformed Church.60

Religious tolerance Kuyper’s free church ecclesiology issued in a particular concept of religious tolerance, surprisingly, a new, broader application of religious tolerance. The principle of tolerance at work in Kuyper’s theology was, in fact, the mirror opposite of the practice of tolerance under the present establishment. The Netherlands Reformed Church dealt with religious pluralism by enlarging its borders, specifically by broadening its confessional standards and liturgical practices. The national church was a broad church that aimed at bringing the whole nation under its wings. It practiced a generous religious tolerance within the church.

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Outside was another matter. During the era of the Dutch Republic, there was a sort of religious tolerance, but it was a very lean tolerance – as anyone who has visited the Roman Catholic Our Lord in the Attic church in Amsterdam can attest.61 In the nineteenth century, the Netherlands Reformed Church pulled mightily to limit the freedom of Roman Catholics and other Protestants in Dutch society, even and especially after the official separation of church and state. Through public education, missions, philanthropy and even outright public protest, conservative Protestants in the Netherlands Reformed Church ‘saw it as [the church’s] task to bring state policy into agreement with the Christian [i.e., Protestant] character of the nation’.62 Tolerance for those outside the bounds of the Netherlands Reformed Church was minimal. Kuyper’s confessional church, on the other hand, set narrow bounds for diversity within the church, but outside the church he allowed religious liberty to flourish. The church should be a confessional church, publicly and vigorously maintaining adherence to its confessions. Yet, adherence to the church and its confessions was also voluntary. Contrary to national church presumptions, the borders of the church did not extend to the borders of the nation. Rather, the church was composed of freely assenting believers. Thereby, individual religious liberty was maintained in church, society and state. This voluntarism also implied that churches with differing confessional standards could coexist in the same city, something Calvin probably would not have permitted.63 For public institutions like the state and schools, Kuyper devised a scheme of religious tolerance to accept the religious plurality of the nineteenth century. In public schools, for example, Christian morality was not to be taught. Yet Kuyper did not accept the facile Enlightenment metanarrative of religious neutrality. To create a level playing field for all religious groups, whether Protestant, Catholic or secular, it was necessary that all ‘special’ schools (i.e. religious private schools) be able to receive public funding. Thereby, the state did not prefer one religion or church over another by funding the secular, public school to the exclusion of private, religious ones. Thus, Kuyper pursued a broad religious tolerance in state and society.

Conclusion John Witte notes that Calvin and Calvinism are more often remembered for their abuses than for their achievements. To remedy that, Witte shows that Calvinism was indeed a wellspring for a great many liberties. For Calvin’s part, it was not because he constructed a concatenated system of civil laws and liberties, but because he devised a new ecclesiology. Reform began for Calvin in the church. Liberties like freedom of conscience, democracy and the separation

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of church and state then dispersed from the Calvinist church through society at large.64 As if to make Witte’s point, Abraham Kuyper made good use of Calvin’s example as an alternative to the French Revolution-style liberty. Of course, human rights do not have their unvarying source in Calvinism. Nor was Abraham Kuyper the great or only emancipator of the Netherlands. Nicknames like ‘Abraham the Terrible’ testify that he was not. Nevertheless, Calvinism and liberty were intertwined, and they even interacted, with salutary effect. More to the point, ecclesiology was one of the chief intersections for these considerations. Kuyper took at least two things from Calvin: the importance of Calvinist forms and some of the basic principles of religious freedom for ensuring these. Kuyper’s Calvinist ecclesiology was filled with particular details like confessions, liturgy and polity. The national church dealt with modern changes by moderating these particulars (and in that respect it was more like Camus than Kuyper was). The national church tended to downplay differences rather than exaggerate them – just the opposite of Kuyper. It turned out, however, that Kuyper’s Calvinist distinctives and the need for liberty went hand in hand. In a modern, plural and secular society, confessional Calvinism, once again, fell in the minority. Fortunately, Calvinism had its own tradition of liberty that Kuyper drew on and developed, and that tradition provided an alternative to the conservatism of the national church and to the militantly anti-religious concept of liberty emanating from the French Revolution. Kuyper’s church was hard and angular and resisted filing down; it required liberty and tolerance precisely because it could not be moderated or negated. Notes 1 Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), 115–32. 2 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Calvinism: Source and Stronghold of Our Constitutional Liberties (1874)’, in James Bratt (ed.), Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 282. 3 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Uniformity: The Curse of Modern Life (1869)’, in James Bratt (ed.), Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 24. 4 Kuyper, ‘Calvinism: Source of our Constitutional Liberties’, 279–322. 5 Joris van Eijnatten, and Fred van Lieburg, Nederlandse Religiegeschiedienis (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005), 271. 6 Abraham Kuyper, Confidentie: Schrijven aan den Weled. Heer J. H. van der Linden (Amsterdam: Höveker & Zoon, 1873), 107. 7 Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Olive Wyon (trans.), 2 vols: vol. 2 Library of Theological Ethics (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1960), 656. 8 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Confidentially (1873)’, in James Bratt (ed.), Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 58.

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9 Abraham Kuyper, ‘De Ontwikkeling der Pauselijke Macht onder Nicolaas I’, in Kuyper Archief (Amsterdam: Historisch Documentatiecentrum voor het Nederlands Protestantisme (1800-heden)), 13. 10 Jasper Vree, ‘Historical Introduction’, in Abraham Kuyper’s Commentatio (1860): The Young Kuyper about Calvin, A Lasco, and the Church, 2 vols: vol. 1, Brill’s Series in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 49–53. 11 Abraham Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper’s Commentatio (1860): The Young Kuyper About Calvin, A Lasco, and the Church, Jasper Vree and Johan Zwaan (eds), 2 vols: vol. 2 Brill’s Series in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 2005), ss. 179, page 322. Emphasis mine. 12 Ibid., ss. 175, page 312; ss. 188, page 335. 13 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Een Wandel in ‘t Licht: De Grondslag van alle Gemeenschap in de Kerk van Christus, August 9, 1863’, in Archief Kuyper 152 (Amsterdam: Historisch Documentatiecentrum voor het Nederlands Protestantisme), 8, 13. Also Abraham Kuyper, ‘De Wedergeboorte, May 1, 1864’, in Kuyper Archief 153 (Amsterdam: Historisch Documentatiecentrum voor het Nederlands Protestantisme). 14 Among Dutch historians there is a debate over which group, the pietists or the modernists, most impacted Kuyper. George Puchinger, following Kuyper’s own autobiographical remarks, emphasized the pietists, and one in particular: Pietje Baltus. More recently, Jasper Vree has questioned Puchinger’s account and pointed in the direction of the modernists. I do not discount the importance of either group. See George Puchinger, Abraham Kuyper: De Jonge Kuyper (1837–1867) (Franeker: Weaver, 1987), 205–43; George Puchinger, Abraham Kuyper: His Early Journey of Faith, George Harinck (ed.), Simone Kennedy (trans.) (Amsterdam: VU Press, 1998); Jasper Vree, ‘More Pierson and Mesmer, and Less Pietje Baltus: Kuyper’s Ideas on Church, State, and Culture during the First Years of His Ministry (1863–1866)’, in Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of his Life and Work, Cornelis van der Kooi and Jan de Bruijn (eds) (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1999), 209–309; Jasper Vree, Kuyper in de Kiem: De Precalvinistische Periode van Abraham Kuyper, 1848–1874 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2006), 129–62; Abraham Kuyper, ‘Pietje Baltus (De Standaard, March 30, 1914)’, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, James Bratt (ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 15 Kuyper, ‘Confidentially (1873)’, 60. 16 Ibid., 59–60. Emphasis original. 17 Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2003), 486–97. 18 D. Nauta, De Verbindende Kracht van de Belijdenis Schriften: Verhandeling over de Formulierkwestie in de Negentiende Eeuw in Nederland (Kampen: Kok, 1969), 86. 19 R. A. Flinterman, ‘Toorenenbergen, Johan Justus van’, in Biografisch Lexicon voor de Geschiedenis van het Nederlands Protestantisme, D. Nauta, et al. (eds), 6 vols: vol. 2 (Kampen: Kok, 1983), 421–4; Nauta, De Verbindende Kracht, 84–91. 20 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Tweede Annexe: Referaat over de Belijdenis’, in Revisie der Revisie Legende (Amsterdam: J. H. Kruyt, 1879), 56–68, here 57. 21 Ibid., 56. 22 Kuyper, Confidentie, 51. 23 Ibid., 52; Vree, Kiem, 209. 24 Abraham Kuyper, Tractaat van de Reformatie der Kerken, aan de Zonen der Reformatie Hier te Lande op Luther’s Vierde Eeuwfeest Aangeboden (Amsterdam: Höveker & Zoon, 1883), ss. 42.

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25 David Bos, In dienst van het Koninkrijk: Beroepsontwikkeling van Hervormde Predikanten in Negentiende-Eeuws Nederland (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1999), 61–2. 26 Abraham Kuyper, ‘De Doopskwestie’, De Heraut, 7 Oct 1870. 27 Abraham Kuyper, ‘De Naam in de H. Schrift’, in Uit Het Woord. Stichtelijke Bijbelstudiën (Amsterdam: H. de Hoogh, 1873); Abraham Kuyper, ‘De Spitse der Openbaring’, in Uit Het Woord. Stichtelijke Bijbelstudiën, 6 vols: vol. 1 (Amsterdam: H. de Hoogh, 1873). 28 Abraham Kuyper, Kerkvisitatie te Utrecht in 1868 met het Oog op den Kritieken Toestand Onzer Kerk (Utrecht: J. H. van Peursem, 1868), 6–7. 29 Philip Schaf, The Principle of Protestantism as Related to the Present State of the Church (Chambersberg, PA: Publication Office of the German Reformed Church, 1845), 184. 30 Ephesians 3:17. 31 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Geworteld en Gegrond (1870)’, in Predicatiën, in de jaren 1867 tot 1873, tijdens zijn Predikantschap in het Nederlandsch Hervormde Kerkgenootschap, gehouden te Beesd, te Utrecht, en te Amsterdam (Kampen: Kok, 1913), 329. 32 Ibid. 33 J. Cramer, ‘Vrijmaking der Kerk, Waardoor? en Wanneer?’, Stemmen voor Waarheid en Vrede 7 (1870): 410. 34 Kuyper, Confidentie, 98. 35 Nicholas M. Healy, ‘The Church in Modern Theology’, in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (New York: Routledge, 2008), 106. 36 Cf. William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard U. P., 1976); George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford, 1980). 37 Hugh McLeod, Secularization in Western Europe, 1848–1914 (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 28. McLeod refers to Jeffery Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society (New York: Oxford U. P., 1982); Thomas Kselman, ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience in Urban Modern France’, in European Religion in the Age of the Great Cities, 1830–1930, Hugh McLeod (ed.) (London: Routledge, 1995), 165–90. See also Peter Berger, ‘Secularization Falsified’, First Things, no. 180 (2008): 23–7. 38 van Eijnatten, and van Lieburg, Nederlandse Religiegeschiedienis, 271–4, here 274; G. J. Schutte, Het Calvinistisch Nederland: Mythe en Werkelijkheid (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), 125–8. 39 van Eijnatten, and van Lieburg, Nederlandse Religiegeschiedienis, 275; Vree, ‘More Pierson and Mesmer’, 308. 40 Cornelis Augustijn, ‘Kerk en Godsdienst 1870–1890’, in Wim Bakker (ed.) De Doleantie van 1886 en haar Geschiedenis (Kampen: Kok, 1986), 42–3. 41 See pamphlets like Abraham Kuyper, Vrijmaking der Kerk (Amsterdam: H. de Hoogh, 1869); Abraham Kuyper, De Kerkelijke Goederen (Amsterdam: H. Höveker, 1869). 42 Kuyper, ‘Calvinism: Source of Our Constitutional Liberties’, 304. John Witte argues that Calvin de-emphasized liberty of conscience in the later part of his life, John Witte Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2007). 43 Abraham Kuyper, ‘Vrijheid: Bevestigingsrede van Dr. Ph. S. van Ronkel (1873)’, in Predicatiën, in de jaren 1867 tot 1873, tijdens zijn Predikantschap in het Nederlandsch Hervormde Kerkgenootschap, gehouden te Beesd, te Utrecht, en te Amsterdam

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(Kampen: Kok, 1913), 405. Cp. Abraham Kuyper, ‘De Sleutelmacht’, in Uit het Woord. Stichtelijke Bijbelstudiën, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: J.A. Wormser, n.d.), 101. Kuyper, Confidentie, 82–3. Kuyper, ‘Vrijheid’, 406. Kuyper, Confidentie, 81. Kuyper, Tractaat van de Reformatie der Kerken, ss. 26. Kuyper, ‘Calvinism: Source of our Constitutional Liberties’, 310. Kuyper, Confidentie, 86–91. Ibid., 84. Annemarie Houkes, ChristelijkeVaderlanders: Godsdienst, Burgerschap, en de Nederlandse Natie (1850–1900) (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2009), 231–70. Kuyper, Tractaat van de Reformatie der Kerken, ss. 21; Abraham Kuyper, ‘Locus de Ecclesia’, in Dictaten Dogmatiek, 5 vols: vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: J. B. Hulst, n.d.), 268–93. Kuyper’s point is driven home by a quote from Servetus himself to the effect that heretics should be put to death. Kuyper, ‘Calvinism: Source of our Constitutional Liberties’, 304. On Calvin, see Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 105. Benedict says that the idea that the civil government should use capital punishment for heretics was ‘scarcely controversial among either Switzerland’s leading theologians or much of the Genevan population’. Kuyper, Tractaat van de Reformatie der Kerken, ss. 62. Descriptions of Calvin’s view of church and state, often according to the passions of the author. Separate but cooperating spheres seems to be a suitable shorthand description. See Roger Haight S. J., Christian Community in History: Comparative Ecclesiology, 3 vols: vol. 2 (New York: Continuum, 2005), 125; Witte Jr., Reformation of Rights, 70–6. Cf. Petrus Antonius van Leeuwen, Het Kerkbegrip in de Theologie van Abraham Kuyper (Franeker: Wever, 1946), 196. Kuyper, Tractaat van de Reformatie der Kerken, ss. 62. Kuyper, ‘Vrijheid’, 400; Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), 99–107. Kuyper, Tractaat van de Reformatie der Kerken, ss. 62. Abraham Kuyper, Separatie en Doleantie (Amsterdam: J. A. Wormser, 1890), 49. Our Lord in the Attic is an example of the seventeenth-century clandestine Roman Catholic churches that could only worship in secret. Houkes, ChristelijkeVaderlanders, 272. Also George Harinck, ‘Een Leefbare Oplossing: Katholieke en Protestantse Tradities en de Scheiding van Kerk en Staat’, in Marcel ten Hooven and Theo de Wit (eds), Ongewenste Goden: De Publieke Rol van Religie in Nederland (Amsterdam: Sun, 2006), 106–30; Augustijn, ‘Kerk en Godsdienst’, 41–75. Kuyper, Tractaat van de Reformatie der Kerken, ss. 37. Witte Jr., Reformation of Rights, 64.

Chapter 10 REGNUM CHRISTI: Thomas Torrance’s Appropriation of John Calvin’s Ecclesiology Stanley S. Maclean While Thomas Torrance’s reputation as a theologian rests primarily on his development of a ‘theological science’, he also made outstanding contributions to ecclesiology and our understanding of John Calvin’s theology. One of his earliest works is Calvin’s Doctrine of Man (1949). This was followed by Royal Priesthood (1955), which deals with the church’s worship and ministry. On the heels of this was his study of Reformation eschatology under the title Kingdom and Church (1956). Then there is his two-volume collection of papers, titled Conflict and Agreement in the Church (1959, 1960).1 This chapter deals with the confluence of those two subjects. It examines Torrance’s use of Calvin’s ecclesiology in the 1950s, while he was a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The chapter will demonstrate that Torrance borrows central principles of Calvin’s ecclesiology in order to solve the problem of disunity in the church. Second, it shows that Torrance also builds upon Calvin’s ecclesiology, by giving it both a stronger Christological foundation and a clearer eschatological orientation.

Torrance, Calvin and the Modern Ecumenical Movement Torrance’s engagement with Calvin began when in 1940 as a newly inducted pastor in Alyth, Scotland, he received a complete edition of Calvin’s biblical commentaries as a gift from a fellow minister. His close, intensive study of Calvin’s commentaries (as well as his sermons) gave him a deep appreciation for the real Calvin, as opposed to the ‘traditional Calvinism’ that he had been exposed to. In the preface to Calvin’s Doctrine of Man, he refers to the ‘hardened system that has long passed under the name of Calvinism’. He calls it a ‘species of Aristotelianism’ that reduces Calvin’s biblically centred theology to ‘arid logical forms’.2 When explaining Calvin, Torrance steers clear of secondary sources. He prefers

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to let Calvin speak for himself, to ‘lay bare’ his own ideas. But Torrance does more than lay bare Calvin’s theology. He appropriates it for his own purposes. He was, after all, primarily a constructive theologian, not an historian. As a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC, Torrance was responsible for helping churches achieve unity in matters of doctrine and polity. It soon became apparent, however, to Torrance and his colleagues that this was going to be a daunting task. The newly formed WCC at Amsterdam exposed a deep ‘difference’ in the church, one described as ‘irreconcilable’. This was the difference, roughly described, between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ (or ‘evangelical’) definitions of the church.3 The former stresses the visible unity of the church, defined by episcopal succession and an ecclesiastical tradition; while the latter defines the church in terms of the proclamation of the Word and the correct administration of the sacraments. Torrance, however, did not regard this deep difference within the church as irreconcilable. He believed it could be solved by means of eschatology and Christology.4 For him, these loci are organically related. He would define eschatology as the ‘application of Christology to the Kingdom of Christ and to the work of the church in history’.5 The unity of the church is in Jesus Christ, but this unity is an ‘eschatological reality that both interpenetrates history and transcends it’.6

Torrance on Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church Kingdom and Church contains Torrance’s interpretation of Calvin’s doctrine of the church. While this book was published in 1956, its origins extend much further back. It is based on Torrance’s lectures on eschatology at the University of Edinburgh from 1950–1952. These lectures, moreover, were the product of years of wrestling with Calvin’s commentaries. Torrance believed that the fractured church could be healed through the application of Calvin’s reformed catholicity, which is distinguished by an emphasis upon the humanity of Christ and the church as Christ’s Body in history. Many Protestants would be shocked by the very Catholic-sounding statements from this father of Protestantism. ‘What God has thus joined, let not man put asunder (Mark x.9): to those to whom he is Father, the church must also be a mother’.7 ‘Moreover, beyond the pale of the church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for’.8 ‘Whence it follows, that revolt from the church is denial of God and Christ’.9 Kingdom and Church is an examination of Reformation eschatology. But, as the title suggests, Torrance finds a close connection between that subject and Reformation ecclesiology. Torrance lauds Luther for proclaiming the invisible nature of the church, the community that is constituted by the Word of God.

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Calvin also believed strongly in an invisible church (i.e. the church of the elect), although Torrance glosses over this fact. He is drawn instead to Calvin’s doctrine of the visible church. ‘In contrast to Luther’, for whom the ‘real church was wholly concealed under the larva dei’, Calvin, Torrance wisely points out, ‘laid greater emphasis upon the ecclesia externa sive visibilis’.10 Thus, on this view, the church is ‘correlative’ of the Kingdom of Christ, and so the Kingdom can in ‘some measure’ be seen in the church. Among the three Magisterial Reformers he examines (Luther, Bucer and Calvin), Torrance suggests that Calvin is the best theological guide for the worldwide church in the twentieth century. In general, this has to do with the fact that Calvin had a ‘precise doctrine of the church’ and was committed to ‘restoring the face of the Catholic church’. Torrance wraps up his study of Calvin in Kingdom and Church (and the book itself) with a spotlight on the reformer’s ecumenical activity. ‘The church’, he writes, ‘should ever be engaged in ecumenical activity, which the whole idea of the Regnum Christi and the facies Ecclesiae carries with it’.11 In the 1950s, Torrance was also working hard to restore the face of the Catholic church, through an application of Calvin’s doctrine of the church. But, as we will see, he relies on classical and modern Christology to make Calvin’s doctrine even more precise. Indeed, Torrance maintains that Calvin’s eschatology is really about the ‘analogical transposition of Christology to the whole understanding of the church’.12 In one sense, this eschatology is a fully realized one. The Kingdom has truly come in Jesus Christ, in his person and work. But if the Kingdom is regarded in terms of the whole people of God, then it is not fully realized. What has been accomplished in Christ ‘ “must be transferred to the whole body of the church” ’. This explains why, according to Torrance, Calvin affirmed the ‘two conditions of the Kingdom or . . . of the church’. This is the ‘condition of humiliation and the condition of glory, which correspond to the humiliation of Christ in his first advent and the glory and power of Christ which he will manifest in his second advent’.13 As Torrance sees it, Calvin’s analogical transposition of Christology explains why eschatology in Book 4 of the Institutes (1559) is ‘woven into’ the doctrines of the church, the ministry and the sacraments. Likewise, Torrance, as we will observe, interweaves eschatology with his own doctrines of the church, the ministry and the sacraments.

Torrance’s Doctrine of the Church In the 1950s, Torrance wrote extensively on the church. He did not produce a systematic doctrine, but we can construct his picture of the church on the basis

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of Royal Priesthood, which deals with the church’s worship and ministry, and on the basis of his numerous occasional papers, which are contained in Conflict and Agreement in the Church (1959, 1960).

a. The nature and mission of the church Torrance’s doctrine of the church centres on the biblical image of the church as the Body of Christ. This image became widely popular within the nascent WCC, but few favoured it or exploited it as much as did Torrance.14 He was convinced it would help the ecumenical movement to recover the New Testament view of the church, which, he points out, portrays it as an ‘earthly actuality’, never as something invisible. Torrance insists, then, that the Body of Christ must not be conceived of as a corpus mysticum. For Torrance, the Body is not simply another metaphor for the church. The Body of Christ is ‘essential reality’.15 He also favours this image because, in his view, it is the most Christological image of the church in the Bible. And because it is the most Christological, Torrance is confident that this image can repair faulty doctrines of the church; ones that tend to divorce the church from Christ, the Body from its Head. ‘Because we believe in Jesus Christ we believe also in the church as the Body of Christ’. This statement is found in the report which issued from the third Faith and Order conference at Lund, Sweden, in 1952. For Torrance, this statement is a call to theological action. He feels it is time to make it the ‘starting point’ for a new and profound doctrine of the church. Torrance believes he is following Calvin’s lead here. He points out that the reformer was one of the first to try to construct an ecclesiology on the basis of this image.16 Certainly in Kingdom and Church, the Body is the image that Torrance employs most often to symbolize Calvin’s doctrine of the church (and in order to distinguish it from Luther’s doctrine), although – it has been pointed out – societas is Calvin’s favourite word for church.17 Torrance feels it is time to unlock the profound truths behind this image of the Body, in order to arrive at a ‘full dogmatic formulation’ of the church. Principally, this will involve thinking about the church as an analogous reality. The Body of Christ refers to an ‘analogical relation’ between Christ and his church. This means the relation between the church and Christ is neither one of ‘identity’ nor ‘difference’.18 Using Karl Barth as his guide, Torrance argues that the relation has to be modelled after the hypostatic union of the two natures in the one person of Christ.19 However, he maintains that the ‘hypostatic union’ needs to be made more dynamic, in accord with the whole mission and work of Christ. This will entail thinking about it in terms of Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension and Second Advent.

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Again, the influence of Calvin’s ecclesiology on Torrance becomes apparent. Calvin helps him to see the church not merely as the Body of Christ but as a Body that is ‘continuously actualized in history’, that extends itself in time and space.20 For Torrance, the dynamic nature of Calvin’s ecclesiology is a corollary of its ontological nature. The church has a real foundation in Christ. And since it is truly united with Christ, the church becomes the Body of Christ. So, as Calvin saw it, ‘whatever happens to the Head happens also to the members’.21 Calvin realized that since it is ‘as Man that Jesus Christ is given to have life in himself’, the new Christian life will entail ‘time-relations’ and, hence, a life of ‘increase and growth’.22 Applied to the church, this means the ‘Heavenly Session of Christ’ and the ‘church’s pilgrimage’ are related through the church’s ontological union with Christ. Hence, the ‘course of the church in history is to be understood in terms of growth, advance, increase, edification, that is to say in terms of the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Epistle to the Hebrews’.23 Torrance calls this type of growth the teleological aspect of the church’s existence. He concludes that this growth of the church is based on the analogy of Christ, rather than on the analogy of nature. Its ‘teleological growth’ entails a desperate struggle, because it is analogous to the suffering and death of Christ. Yet this struggle is not an end in itself. It is necessary to see it in terms of the ‘eschatological fulfilment’ of Christ; in other words, in terms of his resurrection, ascension and advent. Torrance himself will conceive the church in terms of Ephesians and Hebrews. He does this in Royal Priesthood. Here he describes, on the basis of Ephesians 1 and 4, the church’s participation in Christ’s movement towards pleroma or fullness. Torrance believes the church is signified in Ephesians 4:10, because the church is the Body of Christ. And since it is filled with the Spirit of Christ, the church ‘is caught up’ in the ascended Christ’s movement to fill all things. The church’s movement to pleroma takes place ‘intensively’ within the Body of Christ, as members who are ‘rooted and grounded in love’ grow up into the ‘fullness of Christ’. Withal, it happens ‘extensively’ as the church carries out its evangelical mission to all corners of the world, until the final advent of Christ. In sum, Torrance defines the church’s fulfilment as both ‘a teleological and an eschatological movement’.24 Its teleology is really a function of the church’s ontological union with the Christ, who as the new creation has a definite relation to space and time. On the other hand, its eschatology reminds us that this movement is not natural but due to the actions of God in Christ – to the resurrection, ascension and the operation of the Holy Spirit. In short, the church’s teleological and eschatological movement represents the interpenetration of the church’s being and mission. Torrance utilized this concept of the growth of the church in his ecumenical discussion with Anglicans, who also clung to the idea of the visible unity of the church. Those Anglicans who represented the ‘Catholic’ view of the church

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(i.e. Anglo-Catholics) believed that the key to unity was in the ‘recovery of the wholeness of tradition’.25 On the other side, the evangelical Anglicans spoke for the unity of the church in terms of the ‘growth of the church into the fullness of Christ’.26 Torrance, however, rebukes the ‘Catholics’ for seeing this wholeness in terms of the ‘historical continuity of the Body of Christ’. He insists that the only wholeness is the ‘once-and-for-all’, eschatologically conditioned wholeness of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, he takes issue with the evangelicals for conceiving the church’s growth in terms of ‘biological growth’ instead of growth in terms of the church’s ‘eschatological fulfilment’ in Christ. In the 1950s, Torrance was worried that his Anglican counterparts would misconstrue his doctrine of the Body of Christ. He feared they would yield to the temptation to ‘interpret it in the direction of a Christus prolongatus or coredemptio’ – which would be ‘devastatingly harmful’, in his view.27 This is why he takes strong measures to solidify the Christological foundation of the church. He posits a ‘radical substitution’ of Christ for the church.28 The upshot of this is that the ‘oneness of the church is grounded in the incorporating and atoning action of Christ’.29 In other words, the church, as the Body of Christ, is based on the ‘mutual involution’ between the hypostatic union and atonement. But this is not all Torrance does. To further safeguard the church, he fortifies the hypostatic union with two more classical theological concepts: the anhypostasia (not-person) and enhypostasia (in-person). They assert that the atonement is the one complete act of the God-man. Briefly, Jesus Christ is ‘at once the One and the Many’. The anhypostasia indicates that the atonement is an act of God. The enhypostasia tells us that it is an act of God as man – and something else. It indicates that a ‘concrete substitution’ of our humanity takes place.30 Christ does not enter into the relationship between God and man as a ‘third party’. The one Son of God becomes also the one Son of Man. Christ atones as God and Man, not as God alone. He is at once the judge who condemned sin in the flesh, and the judged who was obedient unto death. Christ’s substitutionary atonement has deep implications for the doctrine of the church as the Body of Christ. For Torrance, what is true for the One – Christ is true for the Many – the church. The church therefore has to submit to Christ. It can do this only by imitating him. ‘The only way the church can follow Him is by way of anhypostasia, by way of self-denial and crucifixion, by letting Christ take its place and displace self-assertion; and by way of enhypostasia, by way of incorporation and resurrection’.31

b. The sacraments: The church’s union with the Body of Christ As we have seen, Torrance underscores Calvin’s interest in the progress or growth of the church. He explains that for Calvin the ‘most important point’ in this

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progress is the ‘actual incorporation into the Body of Christ, for it is the Body of Christ which is the substance and form of the . . . Kingdom of Christ’.32 In short, incorporation is the first stage in the church’s growth into Christ. For Calvin, the sacraments are given to the church to help it grow into Christ. Baptism incorporates the people of God into the church, the Body of Christ; while the Lord’s Supper nourishes them with the body and blood of Christ (his ‘vivifying flesh’). Torrance’s doctrine of the sacraments betrays his debt to Calvin. Following Calvin, Torrance maintains that the sacraments have no power by themselves, but are made effective only through the Word (kerygma). ‘Apart from the Word there is only an empty sign that is nothing but ceremony’.33 For Torrance, both baptism and the Lord’s Supper stand for ‘incorporation’ in Christ, or the union between the church and the new creation. Although with baptism, he explains, the accent is more on the ‘once-and-for-all incorporation’. That is why baptism is unrepeatable. The Lord’s Supper is repeated because the accent here is on the incorporation-union as an ‘enduring’ reality and as a ‘temporal fact’. It renews the once-and-for-all-union between the church and Christ. Torrance applauds Calvin for moving away from Augustine’s ‘static’, ‘metaphysical’ interpretation of a sacrament towards a more ‘dynamic’ (and ‘biblical’) one.34 Torrance goes further than Calvin in this matter. Indeed, his definition sounds more Barthian than Calvinist.35 Torrance calls the sacrament an ‘event’. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper belong together for him. Thus, he speaks of the ‘sacrament of the Word made flesh, of the Christ-event’.36 Torrance is actually applying the principle of the analogy of Christ to the sacrament. Yet again he is following Calvin. A sacrament contains a sign, in the form of bread, wine or water. But Torrance reminds us that for Calvin a ‘true sign . . . has in it something of that which it signifies; it is analogous to the thing signified, and corresponds appropriately to its nature’.37 Thus, the sacramental relation between the bread and Christ is neither one of ‘identity or difference’. This explains why Calvin repudiated both the Roman doctrine of the Mass and the Zwinglian doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. The former confounded the sign and the thing signified; while the latter separated them. Calvin applied his principle of analogy also to the sacrificial dimension of the Lord’s Supper. Thus, he rejects the ‘propitiatory sacrifice’ of the Roman church in favour of a ‘Eucharistic sacrifice’. Likewise, Torrance in his paper ‘Eschatology and Eucharist’ for the Faith and Order Commission upholds this same distinction. He reprimands theologians of the ‘ “Catholic” type’ for ‘using “sacrifice” and “offering” univocally of God and the church’.38 More than anything else, it is the eschatological element in Torrance that signals his reliance on Calvin. Torrance believes that the ‘crucial point’ in Calvin’s doctrine is the ‘ascension and all that it implies’.39 So while Calvin holds that Christians feed spiritually upon Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper, he also insists that there is an ‘eschatological distance’ between the church and

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Christ that needs to be ‘observed’ in the Lord’s Supper.40 This explains why the sursum corda (‘Let us raise our hearts’) is an essential part of Calvin’s Eucharistic liturgy. For the Geneva reformer, Torrance explains, the ‘Eucharistic presence of Christ is . . . to be understood eschatologically, in which the moment of real union and the moment of celestial glory are held somewhat apart until the final resurrection’.41 Torrance stoutly maintains that the Eucharist is a sacrament of unity for the church. He sees intercommunion not just as a goal (as many did) for the church but as the ‘divinely given means of unity’ in the church. Yet he believes it can be effective in this sense only as far as the eschatological element in it is recognized. In the presence of the Eschatos (the Last One), he claims, ‘all barriers to intercommunion are broken down’.42 This is because in the Eucharist the church receives sacramentally ‘the wholeness of its union with Christ’. Yet since the church is under the ‘impact of the eschaton’, it is also faced with the judgement of the cross upon her divisions. These divisions within the church reflect the tensions and conflicts in the world. But, more profoundly, they reflect the clash between the new creation and the old creation. The church participates in the old creation; yet it must not become imprisoned in its ‘forms and fashions’, for her future is in the new creation, which she participates in now through the Eucharist. The eschatological element is present in the Eucharist, and that is why Torrance avers that this is where the church ‘really becomes the church, both as an ontological and eschatological reality’.43 However, if the church ignores the eschatological element – if it omits the Maranatha from its liturgy, if it does not make room for the Eschatos in the Eucharist – then it is in danger of becoming a merely ‘human church’.44

c. The ministry of the church As we learned, Torrance thinks about Calvin’s eschatology as having to do with the analogical transposition of Christology to the whole understanding of the church. This includes the forms of the church’s governance and ministry.45 Torrance contends that Calvin regarded all ‘orders in the church in terms of eschatological suspension’.46 Now it is easy to recognize the relevance of Calvin’s view for the ecumenical movement. Visible church unity cannot be achieved until there is mutual recognition of ministerial orders in the church. In the 1950s, Torrance was involved in discussions between the Presbyterian and the Anglican churches in Britain, and he sensed that a union between these churches was within reach. He was aware of the obstacles, of course. These churches have conflicting orders of ministry and governance. Anglo–Catholics,

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in particular, regard episcopacy as of the esse of the church. This implies that there can be no church if there is no bishop. Naturally, they saw the historic episcopate as the key to the reunion of the church. This episcopate also guarantees the validity of the church’s ministry, or, in other words, its continuity with the apostolic teaching. All ministers or priests must be ordained by a bishop. Presbyterians, on the other hand, see no difference between a bishop and a presbyter (elder), since in the New Testament the terms are synonymous (see Acts 20:17, 28). Hence, the Presbyterian churches find no need for a separate (not to mention ‘higher’) episcopal office. Episcopal oversight is handled by the presbyters and their courts. Torrance points out that while Calvin, on the one hand, held to the idea that the church and the Kingdom (of God) are ‘essentially correlative’, this idea was conditioned by his recognition of the ‘eschatological distance’ established by the ascension of Christ. This meant that the order of the church ‘is essentially ambiguous’, for it cannot transcribe the ‘perfect form of the Kingdom in earthly existence’. Calvin, he writes, insists on a ‘fixed form’ of church order, yet one that is ‘not so rigid’ that it stifles the church’s ‘growth and development’.47 Torrance isolates a ‘deeper reason’ why the form of the church is essentially ambiguous for Calvin. It has to do with the fact that the church lives currently ‘under the Cross’. Thus it is not now what it ‘will be in the glory of the Kingdom’. ‘At present the Kingdom of Christ is to be understood in terms of Christ’s humiliation as described by St. Paul in Phil. 2:9–11’.48 In Torrance’s view, Calvin sees that the order of the Kingdom is established in the church by means of a ‘combination of Regnum Christi (Kingdom of Christ) and Sacerdotium Christi (Priesthood of Christ)’.49 Now this is the perspective that Torrance takes in Royal Priesthood, his profound study of the worship and ministry. The motivation behind this monograph was the desire to establish a doctrine of the priesthood that would be agreeable to both ‘Catholics’ and ‘Protestants’. Torrance does this, first, by postulating that Christ is the true priest of the church. He fulfilled once and for all the priesthood of Israel, because he is the Son of God in the flesh (Cf. Heb. 1:2–3). This, he figures, is the main lesson of the epistle to the Hebrews. Christ fulfilled it perfectly because he is the union of God and Man, person and work, word and action. ‘He is Priest in final reality, fulfilling the Mosaic priesthood because his Word is identical with Kingly act; fulfilling the Aaronic priesthood because his offering is identical with his Person’.50 In Torrance’s view, these facts make Jesus’s priesthood a ‘Royal Priesthood’. What is more, Jesus not only fulfils the old priesthood, he fulfils it ‘for us’. His priesthood is, therefore, a substitutionary priesthood, too. If we want to be schooled in priesthood of the church, though, Torrance feels we must turn to Saint Paul’s epistles. The main point here is that the liturgy

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(leitourgos) of this priesthood extends beyond the Eucharistic celebration. It includes especially acts of love in the church and suffering witness to the Gospel outside the church. In other words, it is a ‘liturgy done in the flesh, enacted in the body, as sacrificial oblation to God’.51 The model for this liturgy is the Suffering Servant. ‘The way in which the church draws near to God is the way of the Son of Man’.52 The church is ‘not yet the church triumphant . . . it is still the church militant, and as such the suffering servant on earth’.53 But ‘if it suffers with Christ it will reign with Him (2 Tim. 2.12), and of that the church already has a glorious anticipation in its sufferings for Christ’.54 Torrance pays heed to Calvin’s doctrine of ‘the corporate priesthood of the church’. Yet while Calvin teaches that this priesthood is essentially about ‘praise’55, Torrance would have us believe that it is also about suffering service to God. On the other hand, he argues that the church’s priesthood is only a ‘participation’ in Christ’s priesthood. It can never be an independent priesthood. Here we find Torrance applying the ‘radical substitution’ of Christ to the ministry of the church. For Torrance, then, the priesthood of the church cannot afford to neglect its eschatological side, since it participates in the priestly action of the ascended Christ. First of all, it must see itself involved in Christ’s redemption of time. Eschatology is not simply futurism. It is about gathering up the past too. This happens through the church’s ministry, as it fills up in the Body of Christ ‘that which is eschatologically in arrears of the sufferings of Christ’56 (Col. 1:24f). Like Calvin, Torrance sees a correlation between the church and the Kingdom of Christ. But Torrance puts more emphasis on the eschatological nature of the order of the church. He contends that the Eucharist is the focal point of order for the whole church. A particular priesthood (presbyters) is needed, in his view, for the maintenance of order around the Lord’s Table. However, he insists that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is what actually creates order in the church. ‘The order of the priesthood is itself ordered by the sacrament of the Eucharist’.57 Yet it is important to recognize an eschatological reserve even in the divine order of the church. Christ’s presence is not fully revealed in the Eucharist, and so neither is the divine order of the new creation. Hence, there can be no ‘direct reading’ of order from the Eucharist before the consummation of the Kingdom of God. In an essay, ‘The Doctrine of Order’, Torrance explains that the eschatological nature of order manifests itself in that twofold eschatological tension between the ‘new and the old’ and the ‘present and the future’. ‘True order in the church of Christ is order that points above and beyond its present forms to its new order in the risen Christ, and points beyond its present forms to the future manifestation of its order in the new creation’.58 The main theme of the First Assembly of the WCC (1948) was ‘Man’s Disorder and God’s Design’, but for Torrance the solution to disorder is not so much

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a recovery of God’s design as a recovery of hope in the order of God’s new creation. The Eucharist is the locus for this hope, for it is a sign of the in-breaking of the new creation, of the new divine order. This principle of order is another example of Torrance’s appropriation of Calvin’s ecclesiology. Benjamin Milner, in his important study of Calvin’s ecclesiology, maintains that ‘order’ is one of the governing themes in Calvin’s doctrine of the church. He concludes that redemption for Calvin ‘is essentially the restoration of the order established in the creation’.59 Yet the church cannot possess the divine order of creation. The ordering of the Eucharist must not be confounded with the divine order itself, which is really the coming of the new creation. The purpose, then, of order in the church, and of obedience to the Word and the Spirit, is to make way for the new creation. It exists ‘to make room in the midst for the presence of the risen Christ so that the church’s fellowship becomes the sphere where the resurrection of Christ is effectively operative here and now’.60 Indeed Torrance sees the risen Christ, in his new humanity, as the personification of order. In him, ‘everything has its proper order, proper time, proper place, proper sequence and proper end’.61 Torrance thinks that without an eschatological orientation, the church’s order ‘is dead for it does not serve the resurrection, and does not manifest the love of Christ or His coming again to reign’.62

d. Church governance It was clear to Torrance that the historic episcopate was a prime cause of that deep difference between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ doctrines of the church. In fact, early on, Torrance accentuates this difference. He inveighs against the doctrine of apostolic succession, because it betrays an attempt to extend the incarnation through fallen space and time, to turn ‘eschatology into temporal succession’.63 He also rejects the idea that the episcopate is an ‘effectual sign’ of the church (i.e. ‘no bishop, no church’), because this idea undermines the principle that Christ is the Head of the church. Doubtless, Torrance recognizes a need for oversight (episkopoi) in the church, as well as the importance of the episcopate for the ‘Catholic’ branch of the church. While he will not side with the Anglo-Catholics who insist that the bishop is the ‘effectual sign’ of church, he concedes that the episcopate is a ‘universal sign’ and even an ‘essential sign’ of the church’s unity. However, he lays down clear guidelines for the episcopal office. But he gets these guidelines from Calvin (and his use of Cyprian). It may be a surprise to know that Calvin accepted bishops in the church; although he did so only on the basis of custom, for he saw no biblical mandate for them. Torrance, thus, interprets the episcopate in terms

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of the priesthood of Christ. ‘Christ is himself the Episcopos or Bishop of our souls in the supreme sense’.64 The episcopate in the church, however, is not identical to Christ’s episcopate. Like the relationship between the priesthood of the church and the priesthood of Christ, the episcopate can only participate in Christ’s oversight. Or, as Torrance learned from Calvin, the episcopate in the church is really ‘a subministration’ of that One Bishop.65 Also, like the priesthood of the church, the episcopate involves the whole Body of Christ. It is a ‘corporate episcopate’. However, this does not mean that oversight needs to be diffused throughout the whole church, so that every member of the church is a bishop. Just as there is a particular priesthood or presbyterate (i.e. ordained ministers) within the corporate priesthood, there is a ‘membering’ within the corporate episcopate. This takes place within the particular priesthood. Thus, the episcopate is held ‘in solidum by the ministers’. The bishop can only act ‘in presbyterio’, as a ‘president’ of the Body in which the ‘corporate episcopate is gathered up to a head’.66 Torrance interprets the corporate episcopate, like the particular priesthood, as something functional and provisional. It exists to build up the Body of Christ in this time of grace, which is the time of the church. Unlike the Body, however, it is temporal. It will be defunct in the new creation. The episcopate bears witness, he explains, to the ‘eschatological ordering of the whole church in Christ’. This divine order, however, is given to us only in part. Its full revelation is reserved for the final advent, when ‘the Chief Shepherd will be manifested in his episkopai or visitation’.67 In summary, Torrance embraces Calvin’s doctrine of the corporate episcopate, since it ‘seeks to hold together in it equality of ministers before God and yet distinction in place and authority within the presbytery’.68

e. The new humanity One of the distinctive features of Torrance’s ecclesiology is the honour it gives to the humanity of Christ. Indeed he calls this aspect the ‘crucial issue in eschatology’.69 Again, Torrance reveals his debt to John Calvin. In his estimation, Calvin’s eschatology is all about the ‘the new humanity in Jesus Christ’. This is the main reason he labels it an ‘eschatology of hope’. It only follows that the humanity of Christ is a ‘crucial issue’ in ecclesiology, as well. We must not forget that for Torrance eschatology is the application of Christology to the Kingdom of Christ and to the work of the church in history. It is no surprise that this definition is very close to his definition of Calvin’s eschatology: the ‘analogical transposition of Christology to the whole understanding of the church’.70

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Torrance’s concentration on the humanity of Christ helps to explain why the image of the church as the Body of Christ was so important to him. Not only does this image highlight the Christological basis of the church and the visible wholeness of the church, it points, like no other, to the humanity of Jesus Christ. And, as he discovered in Calvin, it is the humanity of Christ that is behind the church’s ‘increase and growth’. At the same time, the church’s growth is one into the ‘perfect manhood of Christ’, as indicated in Ephesians 4. Specifically, Torrance is eager to bring attention to the humanity of the risen Christ. He relates that while in the past the church struggled to hold on to the humanity of the historical Jesus, today it must struggle for the ‘humanity of the risen Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty’.71 There is no doubt that Rudolf Bultmann’s demythologizing left the humanity of Christ in the dust, but Torrance also blames C. H. Dodd, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich for leaving us with a docetic risen Christ.72 For Torrance, it is not only the humanity of Christ that is at stake, it is our humanity, as well. After all, Christ is the New Man who gathers up humanity in himself through his movement from descent to ascent. This final stage is vitally important. It means that Christ goes on to ‘fill all things’; thence, the ‘new humanity is pressed toward its universalisation or catholicisation’.73 Torrance’s concern for the new humanity is apparent even in his discussion of order in the church. The Eucharist for him, if we recall, is the focal point of order in the church. Yet the Eucharist must be ordered according to the risen Christ, the ‘firstfruits’ of the general resurrection. ‘Thus the whole ordering of the church on earth must be poised upon its expectation of the resurrection in the body (1 Cor. 15:23), and must therefore be an ordering of the church as soma pneumatikon’.74 There is an anticipation of the resurrection in the church, only because the risen Christ, the Eschatos, is actively present in the Eucharist.

Conclusion It is obvious that Torrance mined Calvin’s ecclesiology at a time when he was forced to deal with the formidable problem of church disunity. Torrance’s perspective on Calvin’s ecclesiology is certainly unique. It bears little resemblance to Calvin’s ecclesiology as found in Book IV of the Institutes. There are reasons for this. First, Torrance does not rely on the Institutes for Calvin’s doctrine of the church. He makes extensive use – even more use – of Calvin’s commentaries. While many scholars would object to this approach, it is one that others have effectively utilized.75 At any rate, Torrance’s reading of Calvin’s ecclesiology accords with the Institutes if this work is read as a Christ-centred whole, which is how Torrance reads it. Thus, he sees Calvin’s doctrine of the nature and work

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of Christ in Book II (13–16) as foundational for his doctrine of the church – although Torrance gives comparatively more weight to the priestly office of Christ. Likewise, Torrance applies Calvin’s doctrine of the Christian life in Book III, which involves an emphasis on the cross of Christ and eschatology (9, 25), to the whole Body of Christ. Indeed, Calvin himself urges this approach in Book III. He insists that the ‘whole body of the faithful, so as they live on the earth, must be like sheep for the slaughter, in order that they may be conformed to Christ their head’.76 Second, Torrance deals with Calvin’s ecclesiology from the perspective of eschatology. Eschatology is a subject that preoccupied Torrance at the time, for he saw it as a key to the church’s reunion. Third, he handles Calvin’s ecclesiology from the perspective of Christology, which for him is a cornerstone doctrine. It holds together eschatology and ecclesiology. Torrance’s Christocentrism is the reason why in his study of Calvin he seizes upon the image of the church as the Body of Christ. However, he wrings more out of this image than Calvin. Christology ultimately subsumes ecclesiology. Torrance posits the ‘radical substitution’ of Christ, and that permits him to assert boldly that ‘Christ is the church’.77 There has never been a consensus on what is the central doctrine or ‘governing intention’ in Calvin’s theology.78 For a long time, the sovereignty of God, manifested in God’s secret election, held the field, especially among traditional Calvinists. For Torrance, the sovereignty of God is not the central doctrine in Calvin’s theology. It is the person and work of Christ. Yet it would be more accurate to say that Torrance wants to leave no doubt that Christology is the central doctrine in Calvin. In Calvin’s Institutes (1559) it looks like God’s predestination, or secret election, is the basis of the church.79 Torrance, though, frankly objects to Calvin’s doctrine of predestination for not being ‘grounded wholly on Christ’.80 Understandably, Torrance makes the incarnation of Christ the starting point for the church. He can do this, he believes, without betraying Calvin. After all, Calvin also describes Christ as the ‘mirror in which we ought . . . and in which . . . we may contemplate election’.81 We are now in a better position to understand why Torrance gives Calvin’s ecclesiology such a strong eschatological cast. Eschatology provides a counterweight to predestination. In fact, Torrance is convinced that these two things are really inseparable for Calvin. ‘There can be no doubt’, he argues, ‘that for Calvin predestination is the prius, eschatology the posterius, of the Christian faith, and between these two the whole life of the church on earth is to be understood’.82 Calvin’s doctrine of predestination suggests that the church is essentially an invisible, predetermined reality. For Torrance, Christ is the church – specifically, Christ in his incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension and advent. And this doctrine helps us to see the church by contrast as an ‘ontological and eschatological

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reality’, whose unity is indestructible, although in this period of grace we cannot fully behold this unbroken reality.

Notes 1 Torrance also co-edited a new series of Calvin’s New Testament commentaries and penned a work on Calvin’s interpretation of scripture: The Hermeneutics of John Calvin (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988). 2 A good illustration of the ‘Calvinism’ that Torrance is referring to is the Westminster Confession (1647). This confession statement is one of the standards of the faith in the Church of Scotland and in most Presbyterian churches around the world. Calvinism is also associated with ‘Protestant Orthodoxy’. A well-referenced survey of these subjects is found in Charles Partee, The Theology of Calvin (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 3–27. 3 ‘Catholic’ in this case does not refer to the Roman Catholic Church, which at this time forbade its members from even attending ecumenical conferences. It refers to churches, though, which have an affinity with the Roman church such as the Church of England, the Orthodox churches and Old Catholic churches. In Europe, the term ‘evangelical’ is used instead of ‘Protestant’ and it is the term Torrance prefers to use, as well. 4 In a 1948 letter to Karl Barth, his Doktorvater, Torrance indicates that he has received the task of doing a study of eschatology by the Faith and Order Commission of the British Council of Churches. He writes: ‘At their last meeting they felt that in many respects it was in eschatology that the great differences between Catholic and Reformed positions were at their acutest; and it was decided to concentrate on the study of this in order to elucidate the positions of both communions in regards to such doctrines as the church, its continuity, sacraments, ministry, justification’. Copy of an unpublished letter from T. F. Torrance to Karl Barth, 30 March 1949, Karl Barth-Archiv, Basil, Switzerland. 5 Thomas F. Torrance, Royal Priesthood (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1955), 43. 6 Thomas F. Torrance, ‘Concerning Amsterdam I. The Nature and Mission of the Church’, Scottish Journal of Theology 2 (1949): 242. 7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Henry Beveridge (trans.) (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), IV, I.1. 8 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, I.4. 9 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, I.10. For more on Calvin’s ecclesiology, especially its catholic nature, see the following: G. S. M. Walker, ‘Calvin and the Church’, Scottish Journal of Theology 16 (1963): 371–89; I. John Hesselink, ‘Calvinus Oecumenicus: Calvin’s Vision of the Unity and Catholicity of the Church’, Reformed Review 44, no. 2 (1990): 97–122; Otto Weber, ‘Die Einheit der Kirche bei Calvin’, in Calvin-Studien, Jürgen Moltmann (ed.) (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1960), 130–43. 10 Thomas F. Torrance, Kingdom and Church: A Study in the Theology of the Reformation (1956) (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1996), 148. 11 He then closes with a quotation from Calvin’s Commentary on Hebrews: ‘For to what end did Christ come except to collect us all into one body from that dispersion

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in which we are now wandering? Therefore the nearer His coming is, the more we ought to labour that the scattered may be assembled and united together, that there may be one fold and one shepherd’. Thomas Torrance, Kingdom and Church: A Study in the Theology of the Reformation (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1999), 164. Regarding Calvin’s ecumenicalism, see also Richard Stauffer, The Quest for Church Unity: John Calvin to Isaac d’Huisseau (Allison Park, Penn.: Pickwick Publications, 1986), 1–24. Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 101. Thomas F. Torrance, Conflict and Agreement in the Church, vol. 1: Order and Disorder (London: Lutterworth Press,1959), 81. See especially ‘What is the Church?’, The Ecumenical Review 11 (1958): 6–21; also ‘Concerning Amsterdam I. The Nature and Mission of the Church’, 241–70. Thomas F. Torrance, ‘Where Do We Go from Lund?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 6 (1953): 57. Torrance, ‘Where Do We Go from Lund?’, 57. See Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 101, 114, 116, 131, 138, 141–2, 144, 146, 147 and 159. In regard to the last point, see I. John Hesselink, ‘Calvinus Oecumenicus’, 100. On the importance of the image of the Body in Calvin’s ecclesiology, see also Geddes MacGregor, Corpus Christi: The Nature of the Church According to the Reformed Tradition (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1958), 53; and Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 26. Torrance, ‘Where Do We Go from Lund?’, 58. Torrance says that ‘the whole question of the analogical relation between Christ and his church has undergone the most ruthless scientific searching and criticism particularly at the hands of Karl Barth’. Torrance, ‘Where Do We Go from Lund?’, 57. Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 147, 98. Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 101. Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 94. Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 143. Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 24. Church of England, Catholicity: A Study in the Conflict of the Christian Traditions in the West (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1949), 17. Church of England, The Fullness of Christ. The Church’s Growth into Catholicity (London: SPCK, 1952). As the title indicates, this work is inspired by Ephesians 4:10–15. Copy of an unpublished letter from Thomas Torrance to Karl Barth, 13 March 1953, Karl Barth-Archiv, Basel, Switzerland. Torrance is indebted to F. W. Camfield and Karl Barth for this notion of ‘radical substitution’. See Torrance’s ‘Atonement and Oneness of the Church’, Scottish Journal of Theology 7 (1954): 250–1; also F. W. Camfield, ‘The Idea of Substitution in the Doctrine of Atonement’, Scottish Journal Theology 1 (1949): 282. Camfield begins with a statement from Barth on the ‘substitution of Jesus Christ’. Torrance, ‘The Atonement and Oneness of the Church,’ 246. Torrance, ‘The Atonement and Oneness of the Church,’ 251. Torrance, ‘The Atonement and Oneness of the Church,’ 252. Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 157; also 102, 131. Thomas F. Torrance, ‘Eschatology and the Eucharist’, in Intercommunion, edited by D. M. Baillie and J. Marsh (London: SCM Press, 1952), 313.

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34 Thomas F. Torrance, Conflict and Agreement in the Church, Vol. 2: The Ministry and the Sacraments of the Gospel (London: Lutterworth Press, 1960), 142. 35 See Karl Barth, The Heidelberg Catechism for Today (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1964), 95–6. 36 Torrance, ‘Eschatology and the Eucharist,’ 305. 37 Torrance, Conflict and Agreement in the Church, vol. 2 141. For a fuller description of Calvin’s application of analogy to the sacraments, see Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1953), 161–9. 38 Torrance, ‘Eschatology and the Eucharist,’ 328. 39 Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 1996, 130. 40 Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 1996, 130. 41 Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 1996, 145. 42 Torrance, ‘Eschatology and the Eucharist,’ 340. 43 Torrance, ‘Eschatology and the Eucharist,’ 337. 44 Torrance, ‘Eschatology and the Eucharist,’ 322, 328; also Thomas F. Torrance, ‘The Modern Eschatological Debate,’ Evangelical Quarterly 25 (1953): 230. 45 In his important study of the Reformed doctrine of the church, Geddes MacGregor states that ‘[n]o ecclesiology has ever more exalted the ministry, under Christ, than does Calvin’s’. MacGregor, Corpus Christi, 57. 46 Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 138. 47 Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 135. 48 Torrance, Kingdom and Church,136. 49 Torrance, Kingdom and Church,153. 50 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 14. 51 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 17. 52 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 17. 53 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 86. 54 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 86. 55 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 18.17 56 Torrance, ‘The Atonement and Oneness of the Church,’ 257. 57 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 77. 58 Thomas F. Torrance, ‘The Doctrine of Order,’ Church Quarterly Review 160 (1959): 25–6. 59 Benjamin Charles Milner, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 9. 60 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 67. 61 Torrance, ‘The Doctrine of Order,’ 23. 62 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 68. 63 Thomas F. Torrance, ‘Concerning the Ministry,’ Scottish Journal of Theology 1 (1948): 199. 64 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 102. 65 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 88, 91. 66 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 104. 67 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 102. 68 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 91. 69 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 43. 70 Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 101. 71 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 43.

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72 Thomas F. Torrance, ‘The Place of the Humanity of Christ in the Sacramental Life of the Church,’ Church Service Society Annual. The Church of Scotland. 26 (1956): 2. Even the nascent WCC failed to highlight the humanity of the risen Christ, despite the Christ-centred theme for its second assembly in Evanston, Illinois (1954). See ‘Christ Our Hope’, Report on the Advisory Commission on the Main Theme: Evanston, 1954, in David P. Gaines, The World Council of Churches: A Study of its Background and History (Peterborough, NH: R. R. Smith, 1966), 1140–67. Torrance tries to redress this problem in a post-Evanston sermon on Hebrews 6:17–20: ‘Our Sure and Certain Hope’. He writes: ‘We do not worship some inhuman Ghost, we worship and adore Jesus – and that belongs to the very substance of our hope: that Jesus wearing our humanity, Jesus bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, is at the right hand of God, Lord and King of All – and you and I are anchored to him within the veil’. Torrance, Conflict and Agreement in the Church, Vol. 1: Order and Disorder, 154. 73 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 25. It comes as no surprise that Torrance understands the image of God in man in the same way he understands the church. In Calvin’s Doctrine of Man, he argues that imago dei in man ‘must be understood teleologically and eschatologically, for it is only shadowed forth in man until it reaches perfection’ (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949), 61. 74 Torrance, Royal Priesthood, 67. 75 This is the method that Benjamin Millar follows in his valuable study of Calvin’s ecclesiology. Millar, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church, 1. 76 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 9.6. 77 Torrance, ‘What is the Church?’, 9. 78 Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin (London: Lutterworth Press, 1956). 79 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 1.2, 1.7; III, 21. See also Eduard Buess, ‘Prädestination und kirche in Calvins Institutio’, Theologische Zeitschrift 12 (1956): 347–61. 80 Torrance, Calvin’s Doctrine of Man, 66. 81 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 24.5; Cf. also II. 16.19. 82 Torrance, Kingdom and Church, 108.

Chapter 11 The Spirit, the Church and the Decade to Overcome Violence: Trajectories in Reformed and Orthodox Theology Rodney L. Petersen Reformed and Orthodox theological dialogue has been taking place since the beginning of the contemporary ecumenical movement.1 Issues of soteriology and proselytism, Christology and eschatology, pneumatology and charges of Protestant ‘activism’ have all been aspects of the theological agenda that have been taken up at one point or another. With the end of the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) and its concluding International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), this dialogue would do well to encompass ways by which the Reformed and Orthodox churches understand Christ’s presence in the life of the believer and in the church as the corporate body of Christ in the world. The question is one of spiritual formation as well as of political action.2 Clarity of thought in this area is important for how the churches take up the agenda of the Convocation in relation to other faith communities, non-governmental organizations and human rights movements in the coming years.3 This issue asks us to think how people engage community life and others in the world. For example, do we engage the world as individuals or as groups? All people can engage the world in forms of direct political action, but the question arises about a person’s understanding of themselves and themselves as potential actors representing religious or deep communal motivation.4 Central to the evolution of the Christian tradition, and particularly the Christian tradition in the West, are evolving ideas of sovereignty lodged in the community and in the individual person.5 In Christian communities, how one participates in Christ and how Christ participates in community shape an understanding of human rights, community participation and an engagement with political life. This has been insufficiently recognized in recent ecumenical and interfaith reflection.

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For the purposes of this chapter, such larger issues will be kept limited to work on aspects of Orthodox and Reformed theology with respect to the Eucharist, then with ecclesiology in view and, finally, on the question of polity and political engagement. What is said here is more suggestive than definitive and the use of sources and representative figures is here necessarily kept limited. We begin with the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper because here is where deep identity is established (John 6:25–59; I Cor. 11:23–26) between Christ, the person of the believer, and Christian community or the church.

Eucharistic Identity In reflecting upon the place of Orthodox and Reformed theology in relation to fostering theological clarity behind questions of ethical engagement, we might begin with the Eucharist, point of deep personal and communal engagement with Christ. For much of the Reformed tradition, the theology of John Calvin has been and is foundational, if not always determinative.6 Calvin’s Eucharistic theology bears important marks of identity with Eastern Orthodoxy. While this influence is best traced with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity and in terms of our knowledge of God,7 it exists in a more pervasive way with respect to the spiritual depth found in the Eucharist.8 While the Reformed perspective on the Eucharist is not unified, moving from a mnemonic perspective (Zwingli) to one of deep spiritual presence (Bucer), Calvin’s view of the presence of the Spirit in the Lord’s Supper and of how the Spirit is conveyed to us provides an important point of departure for ecumenical dialogue. It is developed in such a way as to promise union with Christ, spiritual presence and a depth of participation seen in the mystery of Christ’s Body.9 It is in the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist or communion, that one meets Christ – hence the significance in the Reformed tradition of the ‘fencing’ of communion lest one eat or drink unworthily (I Cor. 11:27–31). Furthermore, in developing his theology of spiritual participation, Calvin drew on such Orthodox theologians as John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil of Caesarea, the Cappadocians and John of Damascus. The implicit essence–energies distinction which is developed in Eastern Orthodoxy, whereby God interacts with God’s creatures, enriches the Reformed understanding of covenant, whereby God has chosen to interact with humanity.10 This gives substance to the idea that Eucharistic remembrance is not merely a repetition or mnemonic reality but a manifestation of the whole Christ to the whole people of God. The Lord’s Supper does not remember, complete or extend Christ’s work. Rather, all was accomplished and is accomplished and is exemplified in it. Through the Eucharist, we see our access to the Father, find communion

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in the spirit and anticipate the fullness of life in the kingdom.11 To import a word from contemporary ecclesiology, Calvin’s ecclesiology comports with communion theology as developed in the twentieth century under Orthodox auspices, although it also has certain tensions to which we will turn that work against it but in the interests of personal covenantal ownership. While Orthodoxy affirms the real, physical presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, Orthodoxy refrains from explaining how this happens. For example, it affirms mystery rather than making appeal to a doctrine of transubstantiation (Roman Catholicism), consubstantiation (Lutheranism) or an array of theories (Anglicanism within one ecclesial tradition or in the diverse churches of the Reformed tradition). The Divine Liturgy of Saint Chrysostom makes a straightforward claim that the ‘mystical supper’ is ‘for the purification of the soul, for the remission of sins, for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, [and] for the kingdom of Heaven’. Different Orthodox theories exist as to what, exactly, this means, but Chrysostom’s liturgy remains definitive of the Eucharistic sacrifice. He writes: ‘Your own, from your own, we offer you, in all and for all’. Christ is thus ‘the Offerer and the Offered, the Acceptor and the Distributed’, all in such a way that nothing is added to his once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. The baptized participant in the Eucharist is fully a member of the communion, marking a point of sacramental regeneration that stands in tension with normative practice in the Reformed churches. The centrality of the Eucharist for Orthodoxy is seen in the proposal by Nicolas Afanassieff and the discussion that his work has initiated, that Eucharistic, or communion, ecclesiology replace that of universal ecclesiology to end the schism between the Orthodox and Catholic churches.12 At the same time, it recognizes a point of deep affinity with Reformed theology, particularly that of Calvin. For both Orthodox and Reformed, Christ is fully present in the Eucharist. This is not to say identical. For among the Orthodox, the bishop remains the distinctive empirical sign of the local church, whereas among the Reformed there is, arguably, a corporate bishop in the presbytery, synod or consistory. Both traditions, Orthodox and Reformed, acknowledge a certain autonomy and independence of the local church, but not to the exclusion of wider relationships fostered by mutual identity. The importance of communion ecclesiology is to underscore the ontology of communion. The unity of the church depends on the same Eucharist being celebrated in different local churches. Of value for Roman Catholic–Orthodox dialogue this is found by theologian John Zizioulas in the theology of Vatican II.13 Communion ecclesiology is important for an understanding of how corporate personality is manifest. ‘The importance of the incorporation of the “many” into the “one”, or of the “one” as a representative of the “many” goes back to the time of Paul’.14 In Orthodox–Roman Catholic dialogue, this draws us to the question of primacy and the office of the papacy.

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While the question of primacy is a living one with the Reformed, albeit along more conciliar lines of thought, how the rights of the one and those of the many are understood and expressed becomes important in modelling the body of Christ. The importance of this Eucharistic identity is significant as the traditions of the Eastern and Western churches come to understand themselves, particularly since the BEM document,15 as grappling with a common spiritual mystery that is central to the ecumenical well-being of the churches. Reformed theologian George Hunsinger has argued that the ancient patristic idea of ‘transelementation’, found also in Calvin among the Reformed, as in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, might provide a suggestive way forward towards a common Eucharistic understanding centred on a definition found in the Cappadocians and other Orthodox Fathers.16 Again, the importance of this is in how we act as agents in the world.

Ecclesial Differences However similar a Eucharistic spirituality reality may be, additional differences pertain between Orthodox and Reformed ecclesiologies. These also need to be attended to in ecumenical dialogue. They are differences that extend by way of a caesura in Calvin’s doctrine of the church. There is a rhythmic break formed by Calvin’s concept of the visible and invisible church and of election made by human assent to salvation.17 While sharing in the Nicene–Constantinopolitan definition of the church, and understood as the ‘mother of all the godly’ and our ‘common Head’, the corporate body of the church does not stand in quite the same place for the Reformed as for the Orthodox, with respect to the individual believer and the infusion of the Spirit. The nature of Christ’s relationship to the church and the church’s role in extending the Body of Christ in the world (I Corinthians 12:27) raises questions about the relationship of Calvin’s Christology to his ecclesiology, which marks the Reformed community in ways different from that of the Orthodox churches. The church, Calvin writes, can be identified by its two marks, proper preaching as it raises up Christ and proper sacramental practice as such develops and makes real the work of Christ18 – but herein ended unity among the Reformed. To foster holiness, Calvin instituted discipline. Yet Martin Bucer, earlier, and John Knox, later, and others were to make discipline a third mark of the church – and a point of controversy to the present. This ‘third mark’ of the church was to draw out in the history of the Reformed churches heightened reflection on the personal appropriation of faith and the effects of justification in the life of congregations and in the personal life of the conscious believer. This move offered

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space for the evolution of debate surrounding the moral life of individuals, a move that was also ripe for political engagement.19 With implications for ecclesiology, Reformed churches have generally emphasized two related truths that stand as differences from an Orthodox understanding of communion and Eucharistic practice. First, throughout its history, Reformed churches have generally seen to the necessity of personal conversion, or an ‘owning’ of the covenant through faith and repentance on the part of the individual believer. Second, this emphasis on the part of what the individual must do for salvation often became determinative of the idea of the church and was buttressed by the Reformed emphasis on Christ’s substitutionary atonement. And while for Calvin, this doctrine was the locus of all true religion, it might also be said that among the Arminian ‘Reformed’, exemplary theories of Christ’s work on the cross, derivative of Abelard rather than Anselm in the history of the church, could have as effective significance for social life as a more severe penal theory might have had.20 When compared with the Reformed tradition and its emphasis on the faith of the believer together with the doctrine of justification, the idea of theosis stands for the Orthodox in its place, for example, the progressive transformation of a person into the likeness of God beginning with baptism (II Peter 1:4). Additional points define the Reformed tradition from that of Orthodoxy that bear upon the place of the individual before God, including the effects of inherited guilt and the consequences of Adam’s fall. However, what is acknowledged or declared as true for the Orthodox in the church in the Eucharist – and is by implication for the Reformed, nevertheless for the Reformed, the effects of salvation need to be worked out and made visible through individual justification by faith against a doctrine of the atonement that provides the theological justification to make this salvation possible. While the process of working out the theological and psychological implications of this would take place in almost all Reformed communities, it is nowhere clearer than in the heart of Anglo-American Puritan reflection in New England. The theologies of William Perkins, William Ames and Richard Sibbes are among those whose work would become a locus for the development of the consequent doctrine of election – but inadvertently as well for ideas that would become central to the emergence of human rights and political engagement in the West. What is assumed in Orthodox ecclesiology is community. In an ecclesiology of communion with baptismal regeneration, the accent is on a communion of churches, not of individuals. What is assumed for the churches of the Reformed tradition is the manifestation of righteousness through the life of the faithful in community. This caesura or ‘break’ in continuity between Eucharistic practice and ecclesiology, however worked out in the history of the churches, created an opening for a heightened sense of the individual conscience and for subsequent

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political engagement. The Reformed tradition lost something of a sense of given community but gained unrecognized ground in what would become the emerging struggle for human rights.21 The tradition became one of the chief architects of the modern human rights movement, anticipating the European Enlightenment and anchoring key elements of that movement in a theological world view that would become prominent in eighteenth-century political revolutions.22 Among the Orthodox, history would be quite different. Orthodoxy since the onset of the early modern period and almost to the present has had to live with the largest portion of its flock under often-hostile political frameworks. The dislocation of communism in the twentieth century was only the latest in a long line of misfortunes – Arabic, Seljuk, Crusader, Mongol, Ottoman – with which it has had to cope in the last millennium and a half. The continuing political pressure of the Ottoman Turks and then the dominance of the Soviet period would offer little opportunity for the evolution of an Orthodox rights tradition through a similar historical period experienced by most Reformed communities. Orthodox churches stood as representative of and instrumental for ethnic communities encompassed and defined by a larger political regime.23 The rights of conscience in relation to church membership point to differences in the evolution of the Reformed and Orthodox traditions as they have evolved in modern European history. Apart from its theological significance, the Orthodox Patriarchical Encyclical Epistle of 1848, admitting no doctrinal change through history, is symbolic of the social history faced by most Orthodox churches.24 This is not to say that differences between Reformed and Orthodox ecclesiologies are irreconcilable. It is to recognize different theological tendencies and the historical circumstances in which they emerged. For example, a heightened but different engagement with the social order can be seen among the Orthodox growing out a Eucharistic understanding of the church in the work of Nicolas Afanassieff, John Zizioulas and Dumitru Staniloae. This has led to the articulation of two concepts, both expressions of a more engaged corporate understanding of the church, the church’s liturgy itself and ‘the liturgy after the liturgy’.25 As argued by Ion Bria, communion or Eucharistic ecclesiology is a sacramental actualization of the economy of salvation, a part of history and eschatology but not limited to the worshipping community. The economy of salvation frames these two ways of understanding liturgy. The church is both the worshipping community but it is not limited by actions for its own, but it is to build up the body of Christ for all people and all ages within the economy of salvation. While the heavenly banquet is constantly expressed in the liturgical assembly of the church, it is an affirmed reality not only for members of the church but also for non-Christians and strangers. This is the liturgy within the liturgy itself. It is essential for the church but also reaches beyond the church assembled. It is the

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Eucharistic assembly of the faithful ‘until He comes again’ but it also manifests and realizes the process by which ‘the cosmos is becoming ecclesia’. This understanding of Eucharistic ecclesiology calls for a corporate mentality that works itself out in a pattern of discipleship that includes a reorientation of relationships: family, property, authority, positions and social relationships as governed by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. As lives are renewed through the liturgy itself, a radiating power of this service is carried into the world for the sake of witness and human liberation. On the one hand, it is the work of the deacon that expresses this double movement, offering the gifts of the people at the altar and distributing the sacrament. On the other, everyone has a diaconal function towards reconciliation in the economy of salvation.26

Engaging Politics The contributions of the Reformed tradition to the emergence of the human rights agenda is manifest and includes not only the work of John Calvin27 but also that of John Locke28 – and in the further evolution of the tradition of Roger Williams,29 Isaac Backus,30 and Thomas Jefferson.31 For some, this has led to a radical individualism and loss of community. We need to ask what would be the effect of a more fully Orthodox engagement with the social order in ecumenical circles. Will it lead to a greater sense of social cohesion?32 Without rehearsing the whole history of Reformed theology on the Continent and in the Anglo-American setting, there is no place where this ecclesiology is more clearly seen or developed with respect to the human rights tradition as we know it and with reference to the emergence of the individual conscience than in New England theology.33 It is valid to look here in a paper like this, given the fact that the emerging United States, at least in rhetoric if not always in fact, is a leading proponent of the human rights movement. We might limit our considerations to three moments in this development, the articulation of the rights of conscience, the ownership of church property and the separation of church and state – conscience, property and politics. Each of these issues raises concerns about religion and human rights grounded in persons made in God’s image, vested with reason and will, and with an inviolable dignity and freedom. Coming out of a period of political ferment in revolutionary seventeenth-century England are ideas of personal agency that bring this to the fore in communal, if not always revolutionary, engagement.34 A moment of importance for the articulation of the rights of the individual conscience arises with respect to the ‘Half-Way Covenant’ in Reformed theology in New England, the move that opened the way to church membership for those

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without an apparent conversion experience but who affirmed the work of the church. Because the infant baptism of believers’ offspring, indeed, could scarcely serve as the sacramental connective tissue for New England any longer, clerical findings were accepted by the Court in 1662 and would become known as ‘the Half-Way Covenant’.35 The local synod under the royal governor thereby permitted people who lived respectable lives, who owned a modified church covenant, and who promised thereby to support and obey the local church, to be baptized through the faith of their parents and to have their own progeny baptized as infants even though these third-generation parents could not themselves recount a saving conversion experience of their own and, therefore, might still not partake of communion or give voice in church offices. In this unfolding church life, the principle of the Half-Way Covenant would be extended by Samuel Stoddard, pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, to admit all baptized of upright lives to communion, even though they had not experienced conversion. Under him, communion would come to be regarded as a ‘converting ordinance’. By 1665, under pressure from the Crown, the right of franchise ceased to be restricted to members of the Congregational churches in the Province of New England and was extended to male property owners. In this evolution of rights, the role of conscience becomes increasingly visible, drawing upon previous contests of conscience with Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams and the Reformed clerical establishment, but now in a more institutional setting. A second moment in Reformed ecclesiology that highlights an emerging rights tradition concerns the right to church property, referred to as the Dedham Court Case (Baker vs. Fales) and the schism in the Standing Order of Massachusetts and Maine (1820). Early nineteenth-century New England could still be characterized as a quasi-Erastian settlement, that is, the affairs of the church were under the influence of a theocratic state. In the town of Dedham, south of Boston, the Trinitarian Congregationalist members of the church had withdrawn in 1818 in dissent from the call extended by the parish to a liberal pastor, to be supported by town taxes. Although such a call by the parish rather than by the church was contrary to the old Puritan Congregational ecclesiology, it was consonant with the terms of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, which allowed for the parish, that is, the inhabitants of the town or precinct, to choose the minister qua teacher of public morals. In Dedham, the conservative Deacon Eliphalet Baker and two-thirds of the church withdrew and challenged the sole remaining liberal deacon, Samuel Fales, for recovery of the meetinghouse and property for the Trinitarian Congregationalists. However, the court decision went in favour of the minority in the parish, arguing that the members of the church who remain, though a minority in such a parish, retain the right and property.36 As a result of the Dedham Decision, the liberal or ‘broad church’ interpretation of Christianity became part of a growing ‘movement’37 that

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included almost all the first parish meetinghouses of the original New England settlement. The significance of this is that in the formative period of New England in the seventeenth century churches were the voluntary societies working in tandem with local towns, but now that a hiving process had begun it was only to continue in the evolution of voluntary organizations in society. The Dedham Court Case, together with the evolving rights tradition in New England and throughout the new United States, would eventually lead to the separation of church and state, an evolution as beholden to the emerging European Enlightenment as to these examples in the movement of Reformed theology in New England. The last state to adopt such would be Massachusetts (1833), precisely where the Reformed theological tradition had been so visibly played out. This process, running together with the American War of Independence, would propel much of Reformed theology in North America into a new model of ecclesiology, more voluntary and often under the sway of revival movements from the late eighteenth century and into the present, and with a heightened individualism in ecclesial authority. This process has led to the argument that human rights and representative and democratic politics, so typically grounded in the European Enlightenment and eighteenth-century revolutions, are also lodged in and are worked out of the Reformed theological context.38 John Witte finds five contributions to political liberty and human rights that arise out of the Reformed tradition. These are, first, the liberty of conscience, something we have seen work its way out in debate in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England. Cited second is an ecclesiology with a polity that is framed by democratic processes within the context of liberty and order in church life, balanced by a respect for the rule of law whereby even in the face of disappointment that sense of law is upheld. This also is something seen in the Dedham Court Case. Third is a healthy respect for human sinfulness played out in a need for the balance of powers in an institutional setting. Witte finds, fourth, an integrative theory of rights. This also can be seen in the elaboration of court cases respecting church and state. In the American setting, it will come to a certain head in the Bill of Rights as eventually attached to the United States Constitution. The fifth point is most interesting, that such rights are dependent on religious norms and narratives, a point to which we will return.39 This evolution of Reformed theology finds theoretical expression in the work of James Luther Adams.40 Adams’s conception of the meaning and importance of individuality in the context of voluntary associations grew directly from his understanding of an authentically free spirit in a ‘free church’, perhaps characteristic of both his Plymouth Brethren background and later Unitarian affirmation. The free church, in his definition, is a body of believers freely joined in a covenant of loyalty and intentionally inclusive of dissent, governed by its own

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members and fiercely independent from government control. Under the reign of the spirit of love, its members are to be seen in their voluntary assumption of responsibility for the just character of their whole society. Adams believed this to be the root idea of the Judeo-Christian tradition, of which Western civilization and its political institutions are the fruit. Paraphrasing Jesus, Adams gives voice to his theology with the expression, ‘By their groups ye shall know them’.41 A question still remains: how does the more corporate affirmation of Christian identity as worked out in Orthodoxy express itself in the life of the church? There is the need for the individual moral conscience and engaged social commitment in our world today, a common heritage of all the churches but so much a focus in the Reformed tradition. There is also a need for a greater corporate witness of the church as the body of Christ, again also a common heritage of the churches but of such deep concern within Orthodoxy. How does the church through its liturgical life express in history its eschatological reality? (This is also of symbolic importance in all of the polities of the churches.) An answer to this question as provided by Bria is lodged in finding precisely in worship the missionary impulse and evangelistic witness, to find mission taking place in the context of prayer, worship and communion, a point that is well made by Orthodox theologian Emmanuel Clapsis, who writes of the ‘Eucharist as a missionary event in a suffering world’.42 To see this is, in Bria’s language, to affirm ‘the liturgy after the liturgy’ in terms of a fresh engagement of Gospel and culture. What might corporate Orthodox witness look like? Bria argues that it may involve, first, recognition of the value of the separation of church and state, where such a ‘symphonic’ or closely cooperative arrangement might still exist for the sake of the Gospel. Second, this would need to happen in the context of a renewed commitment to teaching the faith to the rising generation. Third, in addition to establishing new centres of public worship, there is the need to move beyond the institutional life of the church and to see the church in mission. The liturgical model for mission can also provide a fresh centre for social integration in the face of community division and disintegration. Finally, the church needs to reassess its own past and complicity, where warranted, with forms of political idolatry.43 Many of these concerns resonate with the Reformed tradition, although Orthodoxy will offer its own genius to social reconstruction often through the use of the liturgy. This is an affirmed liturgical and corporate reality that stands in contrast to the evolving emphasis found in justification and related understandings of the atonement characteristic of Reformed ecclesiology. Each variant of Christianity has its own contribution to make. If the accent among the Reformed is upon individual affirmation and appropriation of faith (‘by grace alone’), the emphasis in Orthodoxy is upon the corporate reality of which we are a part and into which we are to live. One places accent upon individual responsibility and

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behaviour and the other upon corporate responsibility and behaviour.44 For both traditions, there is an increasing concern about the ethical implications of faith, how it is expressed in lifestyle, social ethics and behaviour. This concern reaches into the question of how one’s spirituality is expressed as actors or agents in the world. Such ‘moral meaning-making’ is done by Christians in light of the One who came and comes into the world (John 3:5; 6:33).

The International Ecumenical Peace Convocation As the churches look beyond the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) and its capstone event, the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), questions about the nature of spiritual formation for political action will grow in proportion to the challenges facing the human community in the twenty-first century. How churches and their constituencies take up the agenda of the Convocation in relation to other faith communities, non-governmental organizations and human rights movements in the coming years will grow in importance. The four themes identified by the DOV, Peace in the Community, Peace in the Marketplace, Peace with the Earth and Peace Among the Peoples are not the private concerns of churches, but involve the whole human community.45 In terms of Eucharistic identity, ecclesial differences and spiritual representation in political life, the DOV and its IEPC pose challenges to how we understand individual human rights, corporate understanding and the nature of spiritual agency in the world. Dialogue among the Orthodox and Reformed, as also with all aspects of Christianity and religions, around these topics will be important for the DOV goal, that of reducing violence in the world, but also for the ongoing work of ecumenical witness. Few things are as central to the Reformed understanding of its own tradition as its conception of human rights. It relates to the nature of personal life through the salvation of the individual and engagement in the world versus all forms of idolatry. It is a spur towards mission and impetus in political engagement. For many, it is not only the basis for the separation of church and state but also for engagement with the state. For some, it is a movement that best leads to the United Nations (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights with its advocacy of the freedom of religion, while for others it necessarily leads to an ecclesiology of disengagement with the world in the interests of a perceived holiness. Yet a growing chorus of voices has emerged that includes Michael Sandel, Robert Putnam, Michael Walzer and others that have decried the loss of the bonds of community, at least in the United States, and that the character of our civic life has changed in ways that often seem to accentuate individual, as opposed to community loyalties.

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The DOV can address this loss of a communal sense through Orthodox sensitivities, the recognition of what it means to be the ‘Body of Christ’ in the world, so resonant in the Orthodox liturgy. The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom affirms ‘the sacrament of the brother’, the idea that spiritual sacrifice, the philanthropy and service which Christians have to offer outside of worship, in public places and on the altar of the neighbour’s heart. Here the work of mission is to build up the human community. This can be theologically affirmed through a doctrine of the Trinity that finds God’s work among all peoples of the world, even as Cyrus was appointed by the Lord (Isa. 44:28–45:13), allowing the exiles to return and to rebuild the temple. Grounded in Christian identity, the churches can take up the agenda of the Convocation in relation to other faith communities, non-governmental organizations and human rights movements in the coming years. So, too, churches must take ownership of human rights. Grounded, arguably, in the Reformed and other traditions of Christianity in the West, churches must resist their erosion in the face of global challenges from corruption, political expediency, or regressive regimes and poverty. It was noted earlier that rights are dependent upon religious norms and narratives. This is an area of much current debate. Samuel Huntington began a line of thought arguing for fixed values in a civilization. From the perspective of this ‘scientific’ fundamentalism or objective realism as it has been called, a clash of civilizations is inevitable.46 Talal Asad has argued that modern society is derivative of colonialism. Suspicious of human rights and ‘secularism’, he argues that they are not needed in the contemporary world.47 David Little takes the middle ground and argues a Kantian ‘natural law’ position to articulate a place between fundamentalism and post-modernity in his case for the necessity of human rights laws.48 In the context of contemporary debate over human rights thinking, a Reformed–Orthodox dialogue can have a positive impact upon a discussion of the competing claims of individual and corporate rights that will bear upon the human rights debate. As John Witte and David Little argue, in the contemporary human rights discussion there is a need to find the space between theories of natural law and positive law, a kind of common law perspective, that allows for a genuine interreligious defence of human rights in the context of community values for which religions and the churches can bring the full force of their doctrinal vigour, liturgical healing and moral suasion to bear upon our most intractable problems as identified by in the Millennium Development Goals, issues that contribute to the rise of violence in the world.49 Oneness in Christ seen in the Eucharist is what sets the church and ministry as different from secular organizations. It is also what gives religious vigour to the human rights debate and offers a sense of the meaning of personal agency. As churches deal with the end of the Decade to Overcome Violence, we must ask

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what about our separation as churches contributes to that violence – and what one or two things can be done to overcome violence that reflects the witness the churches wish to make. Among the five dimensions of Christian ministry identified by Robert K. Martin as characterizing the work of Reformed ministry, leitourgia (commonly interpreted as the worship of God), kerygma (the proclamation and enactment of the Word of God), diakonia (the service of Christians in and beyond the faith community), didache (identified with the teaching office), and koinonia (community appropriate to Christian fellowship), leitourgia is the dimension that is fundamental to all the others.50 This Reformed conception of ministry has certain resonance with Orthodox identity. As this spirit is brought to bear upon the work outlined by the IEPC, perhaps this common work will become a new point of departure for ecclesial dialogue. In light of the desire to make the third millennium of the Christian movement a millennium for Christian unity in the context of a common commitment to justice in the earth, the economy and peaceful co-existence, discussion of ways by which the Reformed and Orthodox understand Christ’s presence in the life of the believer and in the C\church as the corporate body of Christ in the world offers clarity for ethical guidance.51

Notes 1 While conversations began earlier, direct bilateral conversations between the representatives of Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches began in Leuenberg, Switzerland, in 1988. The first three sessions of the Orthodox–Reformed dialogue (Leuenberg, 1988; Minsk, 1990; and Kappel, 1992) dealt with the doctrine of the Trinity. See Thomas F. Torrance (ed.), Theological Dialogue Between Orthodox and Reformed Churches, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985, 1993); and Steven C. Salaris, ‘Christology in the Reformed–Orthodox Dialogue’, 38, Journal of Ecumenical Studies (22 September 2001). 2 See comments in Konrad Raiser, ‘Challenges for Ecumenical Learning in Theological Education in the 21st Century’. Opening address at the consultation on ‘The Future of Theological Education in Central and Eastern Europe’ at the Sambata Monastery, Romania, 25 September 2008. 3 Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? (Geneva: WCC Risk Books, 1991). Following a Trinitarian paradigm opens the way for churches to embrace cooperative work with other networks of organizations, secular and other religious bodies. 4 Robert Bellah notes the role of the Bible in ‘communal re-creation’. He writes of the way people use religious narratives to create images and discourses to know the world and act in it. See in Bellah et al., The Good Society (New York: Knopf, 1991): 206–11; and Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and the Genesis of “Classes” ’, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 229–51.

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5 Charles Taylor illuminates the moral framework for values around three axes, belief around the value of human life, about the kind of life worth living and dignity and usefulness in society – each important to the argument in this chapter. See his Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). I use the word ‘person’ because of its distinct theological resonance. 6 T. H. L. Parker, John Calvin – A Biography (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007 edn). Parker writes of Calvin, ‘The food which the Lord gives is himself. The Lord’s Supper is the giving and receiving of the Christ who gave himself on the cross’ (63–4); Cf. Brian Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1993.), 124–9. 7 Carl Mosser, ‘The Greatest Possible Blessing: Calvin and Deification’. Scottish Journal of Theology 55 (2002), 36–57. See also the discussion of Johannes van Oort, ‘John Calvin and the Church Fathers’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, vol. 2., Irena Backus (ed.) (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1996). Calvin references Basil of Caesarea and Chrysostom in his early Reply to Cardinal Sadoleto (1539), referring the cardinal to a better time in the history of the church, as in the days of ‘Chrysostom and Basil, among the Greeks, and of Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine, among the Latins’; on the influence of Gregory Nazianzus, see Thomas F. Torrance, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity in Gregory Nazianzen and John Calvin’, Sobornost 12 (1990), 7–24. This article is also found in Torrance’s Trinitarian Perspectives. Toward Doctrinal Agreement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 41–76. 8 For example, see in the simile used by Gergory Nazianzus of iron and fire, cited by Herrmann Sasse, This Is My Body (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 150. 9 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.17.1–7. 10 Michael C. Horton, People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology (Westminster John Knox, 2008). 11 Compare Petros Vassiliadis, ‘The Eucharist as an Inclusive and Unifying Element in New Testament Ecclesiology’, Einheit der Kirche im Neuen Testament, Anatoly Alexeev, Christos Karakolis und Ulrich Luz (eds), Wissenshaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 218 (Paul Siebeck). 12 John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness (New York: T & T Clark International, 2007); Dumitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church (New York: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1997); and see Radu Bordeianu, ‘Orthodox–Catholic Dialogue: Retrieving Eucharistic Ecclesiology’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies (March 22, 2009). 13 John Zizioulas, ‘Primacy and the Church’, Eastern Churches Journal, 5.2 (Summer, 1998), 116. 14 John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1985), 145. 15 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: World Council of churches, 1982). 16 George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 71–81. 17 Calvin, Institutes, 4.2.1–12; 3.21.1–7. 18 Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.9: Calvin argues that we know the true Church by two marks or characteristics: (1) Where the Word of God is rightly preached and heard, and (2) where the sacraments are properly administered and received. Calvin explains, ‘The sacraments have the same office as the Word of God: to offer and set forth Christ to us, and in him the treasures of heavenly grace’ (4.14.17).

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19 Joseph Haroutunian, Piety versus Moralism: The Passing of New England Theology from Edwards to Taylor (New York: Henry Holt, 1982; reprint edn, 2007). 20 Frank James and Charles E. Hill, eds, The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Historical and Practical Perspectives (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), especially the chapter, ‘The Atonement in John Calvin’s Theology’, by Henri Blocher (279–303). 21 The movement from a given community to freely chosen associations as a pattern for social life is a topic to which much attention has been given. On the sociology of this, see Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Know Press, 1992 edn); on the ‘rights’ dimension, see John Witte, Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20–37; Cf. David Little, ‘Religion and Human Rights: A Personal Testament’, The Journal of Law and Religion, vol. 18 (2002–2003), 57–8. 22 David Little, Religion, Order and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 23 This is not to suggest there was no public or corporate witness. Bria writes of the contribution of the churches to the collapse of Communism. See Liturgy after the Liturgy, 46, 66–7. 24 The epistle does ask for a larger interpretation of the kinds of external change allowed for in governance, customs, canons, ritual symbols, even doctrinal language following Romans 10:14–18. 25 Ion Bria, The Liturgy after the Liturgy: Mission and Witness from an Orthodox Perspective (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1996). The idea of the ‘liturgy after the liturgy’ emerged in the mid-1970s in ecumenical discussion as to how to relate missiology and ecclesiology. See Bria, 19. 26 See the New Valamo Consultation (September 1977). The Consultation dealt with three specific items on the contemporary ecumenical agenda, ‘The Local Church’, ‘The Proclamation and Articulation of our Faith’ and ‘The Churches’ Responsibility in the World Today’; it dealt with the idea of social responsibility from the perspective of ‘the liturgy after the Liturgy’. 27 David Little, ‘The Reformed Tradition and the First Amendment’, in James E. Wood Jr. (ed.), The First Freedom: Religion and the Bill of Rights (Waco, TX: J. M. Dawson Institute of Church–State Studies, Baylor University, 1990): 29–32. References here and the next four are given by John Witte, Jr. 28 David Little, ‘Natural Rights and Human Rights: The International Imperative’, in Robert Davidoff (ed.), Natural Rights and Natural Law: The Legacy of George Mason (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1986), 95–7. 29 David Little, ‘Roger Williams and the Separation of Church and State’, in James E. Wood Jr. (ed.) Religion and the State: Essays in Honor of Leo Pfeffer (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 1985), 3–23. 30 Little, ‘The Reformed Tradition’, 21–2. 31 David Little, ‘Religious Freedom and American Protestantism’, in Alec G. Hargreaves, John Kelsay and Sumner B. Twisse (eds) Politics and Religion in France and the United States (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 29–48. 32 One place to look for this might be in recent decisions in the World Council of Churches for making decision by consensus rather than following a more ‘rightsoriented’ Roberts Rule of Order voting process.

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33 John Witte, Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20–37. 34 William Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–60 (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1969), 12–15 et passim. 35 See Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); C. E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960), 84; and Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing (1893; 2010 edn), 170–82. 36 The most accessible text of the Dedham decision, Baker vs. Fales, is in John Thomas Noonan, The Believer and the Powers That Are: Cases, History, and Other Data Bearing on the Relation of Religion and Government (New York: Macmillan, 1987). 37 The term ‘movement’ came later to be the preferred designation of the Unitarians for their denomination. The term appears to have been first used for precisely this period in the theological schism in the Standing Order. See Joseph Henry Allen and Frederic Henry Hedge, Our Liberal Movement in Theology (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1882; Nabu Press, 2010). 38 John Witte, Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20–37; and David Little, ‘Conscientious Individualism’, chapters 1–5. 39 Witte, ibid.; see also David Little, ‘Reformed Tradition’, 31. 40 George K. Beach, The Essential Jla: Selected Writings of James Luther Adams (Skinner House Books, 1997). 41 See in James Luther Adams and George K. Beach, The Essential Jla: Selected Writings of James Luther Adams (Skinner House Books, 1997). 42 Emmanuel Clapsis, ‘The Eucharist as Missionary Event in a suffering World’, in Orthodoxy in Conversation. Orthodox Ecumenical Engagements (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press and WCC Publications, 2000), 191–7; see also Nikos A. Nissiotis, ‘The Church as a Sacramental Vision and the Challenge of Christian Witness’, in Gennadios Limouris (ed.), Church, Kingdom, World: The Church as Mystery and Prophetic Sign (Geneva: WCC, 1986), 103. 43 Bria, Liturgy after the Liturgy, 46–54. 44 See the church–world models into which we are called to live developed by Lewis Mudge, ‘Ecclesiology and Ethics in current Ecumenical Debate’, The Ecumenical Review, 48: 1 (1996), 20. 45 See www.overcomingviolence.org (accessed August 2010). 46 Samuel Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, Foreign Affairs (1993). 47 Talal Asad, ‘Religion, Nation-state, Secularism’, in van der Veer and Lehmann (eds), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 48 David Little, ‘Religion, Human Rights, and Secularism’, in William Schweiker et al. (eds), Humanity Before God: Contemporary Faces of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Ethics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006). 49 Arguments as made in Little, Sachedina and Kelsay, ‘Christianity, Islam, and Religious Liberty’, in Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1979), 17; and see David Little, ‘Rethinking Human Rights: A Review Essay

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on Religion, Relativism, and Other Matters’, Journal of Religious Ethics 27 (Spring, 1999), 152. 50 Robert K. Martin, ‘Christian Ministry as Communion: Contributions of Orthodox– Reformed Dialogue to a Reformed Theology of Ecclesial Ministry’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 35 (1998). 51 Petros Vasiliadis, ‘The Future of Theological Education in Europe’, in P. Vassiliadis (ed.), Oikoumene and Theology. 1993–1995 Erasmus Lectures in Ecumencial Theology (Thessaloniki, 1996), 11–24; Petros Vasiliadis, ‘Theological Education and Orthodox Issues for the 3rd Millennium’, in Ministerial Formation (July 2000), 15–21.

Chapter 12 Calvin’s Ecclesiology Revisited: Seven Trends in the Research of Calvin’s Ecclesiology Eduardus Van der Borght When I began my research on Calvin’s theology of ministry, it was only after reading the dissertation of Hans Küng’s student Alexander Ganoczy on Calvin’s theology of the church and ministry published in the 1960s that I finally got the feeling that I was beginning to understand Calvin’s ecclesiology.1 I am convinced it was not by chance that it required an excellent Roman Catholic scholar to present a new interpretation that not only took theological research on the ecclesiology of Calvin to a much higher academic level, but also offered a deeper insight in the scope of his ecclesial and ecclesiological enterprise. Ganoczy revealed in much more detail than ever before how his ideas and practices on church and ministry had developed during his long residence in Geneva. He did not only help reveal the full dynamics of Calvin’s ecclesiological writings, but, above all, their ‘catholic’ intention. Ganoczy’s work is a milestone in the theological research on Calvin’s ecclesiology. For Ganoczy, Calvin was not only the reformer who led the most solid theological foundation for the development of many churches from within the Reformed tradition. He rather presented Calvin as a theologian of the Western Christian tradition that had contributed with his ecclesiology to a new wider interpretation of church and ministry in general. So it is in the first place, the merit of the work of the Roman Catholic scholar Ganoczy, that the reframing of Calvin’s ecclesiology has been developed. Calvin was a key player in the ecclesial discussion of his time and his writings have become a key theological resource within the Reformed tradition. But as that tradition developed, the doctrine of the church became less prominent than it was for Calvin himself. As time moved on, the urgency to rethink ecclesiology seemed to have slipped away. In Protestant theology, the understanding of salvation remained a central issue in the theological debate. The need to link that to the nature and mission of the church received less priority. And because, until recent decades, it was mostly theologians from the Reformed tradition who

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persisted with diligent readings of Calvin, the wavering interest in his ecclesiology resulted in a less than satisfactory attention for the importance of Calvin’s theology of the church. This collection of essays that finds its origin in the call for contributions to one of the sessions of the Ecclesiological Investigations Group at the AAR annual meeting in Montreal in November 2009 illustrates well the diversity and ecumenical nature of the current research on Calvin’s ecclesiology. This chapter uses these contributions to illustrate some major shifts that have occurred in the study of Calvin’s ecclesiology in recent years. The following seven topics will be covered: the rediscovery of Calvin as a reformer of the church; the evolution of the Reformed reception of Calvin’s ecclesiology of the church; the rediscovery of the Catholic nature of his ecclesiological writings; the perception of Calvin as a major theologian of the Western church; the dynamic pastoral character of his ecclesiology; the social impact of his ecclesiology; and finally the way that the Institutio Christianae Religionis2 is related to other parts of his oeuvre.

A Rediscovery of the Theology of the Church in the Work of John Calvin In his paper, John Wood describes how Abraham Kuyper was attracted to Calvin’s ecclesiology, because he found ‘in Calvin exactly what he could not find elsewhere, a formidable doctrine of the church’. Kuyper had indeed observed well what is in fact very evident but was not seen in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century. I make three observations on this. a. If we focus on the number of words, pages and chapters of the total of the Institutes dedicated to ecclesiology, Book IV of the Institutes is by far the most corpulent volume and it is almost completely devoted to the church. To this quantitative evidence, internal cohesion should be added. His thoughts on the church are not a kind of appendix as in the past has been suggested, but a fully integrated part of his theology.3 Book III on the internal means used by the Spirit is followed in Book IV by the external means that keeps us in the society of Christ. The doctrine of the church is a major part of Calvin’s theology. b. Kuyper became fascinated by Calvin’s ecclesiology because of the fixed church form, which means an ecclesiology in which the institutional aspects were fully integrated. Also here, some quantitative evidence to illustrate the point: ten out of the 20 chapters of Book IV of the Institutes are directly related to the ordained ministry in the church. Precisely this integration of the institutional aspects has been referred to as a major factor for the relative success of the Reformed reformation of the church on the Protestant side. This is undoubtedly partly to be attributed to Calvin’s juridical formation. Before becoming an

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autodidactic theologian, Calvin had studied law. Because of his legal training, he had developed sensitivity for institutional questions. c. Kuyper saw what others on the Protestant side did not see. Kuyper was an exception, as was Thomas Torrance almost 100 years later. Jonathan Edwards, a century before Kuyper, illustrates better the general attitude towards Calvin. In her chapter, Amy Plantinga Pauw refers to the ‘Edwards’s breezy irreverence toward Calvin’. More on the reception history of Calvin can now be read in the work of Irene Backus.4 In the Battles translation of the Institutes published in 1960, the editor, John McNeill, also observed the discrepancy between the importance Calvin attributed to his doctrine of the church and the lack of attention from his later interpreters.5 The question is whether this has changed since then. In this context, the decision to organize a separate session on Calvin’s doctrine of the church in the Ecclesiological Investigations Group at the AAR on the occasion of the Calvin quincentenary is more than opportunistic. For Calvin, his doctrine of the church was central to his theology. And as a theological resource it deserves more attention when theologians are called upon to help in the construction of a theology of the church as a minority in postmodern times.

Shifts in the Reformed Reception of Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church Joshua Ralston questions the similar results of the recent Reformed re-reading of Calvin’s theology of the Lord’s Supper by Martha Moore-Keish, Todd Billings and George Hunsinger.6 Together they provide a more sacramental interpretation of Calvin. Ralston is sceptical because this suggests that the Reformed tradition could embrace the Eucharistic ecclesiologies of the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox tradition. Instead, he prefers to construct a homiletic ecclesiology that confirms the priority of the preached Word in the ecclesiologies of the Protestant Reformation. He develops his argument primarily on the basis of Calvin’s own writings, especially the first of the marks of the true Church, the Word rightly preached. His paper provides a fine example of how Calvin’s ecclesiology functions within the Reformed tradition. Each of them, Moore-Keish, Billings, Hunsinger and Ralston, use Calvin himself as a theological resource with authority in an internal conversation within the Reformed tradition in order to contribute to an ecclesiology that is more apt for the current challenges the churches are facing. The discussion shows how complex and layered the theology of the church of Calvin was and how inspiring the re-reading of his ecclesiology is for the renewal of the church. I wish to make two more observations on the Reformed reception of Calvin’s ecclesiology. The first is in relation to the fact that Calvin’s ecclesiology received

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much less attention than did the rest of his oeuvre. Two imported impulses have contributed to renewed interest in Calvin’s theology of the church. Joshua Ralston’s paper, but also Stanley MacLean’s and Rodney Petersen’s contributions, confirms the impact of the ecumenical movement on the re-reading of Calvin within the Reformed tradition. The second incentive is the result of the research of historical theologians. Ralston offers the examples of Brian Gerrish and Randall Zachman in relation to the sacramental aspects of Calvin’s ecclesiology. Other well-known examples are the work on the minutes of the church councils in Geneva by Robert Kingdon and the research on the academy in Geneva by Karin Maag. Moore-Keish, Billings, Hunsinger and Ralston demonstrate that ecclesiologists from within the Reformed tradition try to respond to these new insights. I understand my own research on the theology of ministry in Calvin as another example of recent constructive ecclesiological work within the Reformed tradition.7 It is my impression that Reformed ecclesiological contributions in the field of constructive systematic theology that use Calvin as a theological resource are still too limited. Hopefully, the Calvin quincentenary of 2009 in general and the AAR session on Calvin’s ecclesiology in particular might contribute to a renewed attention for the potential of Calvin’s theology of the church within the Reformed tradition. My second observation concerns the still-prevalent use of Calvin’s ecclesiology within the Reformed tradition. Calvin’s doctrine of the church, ministry and sacraments was almost self-evidently understood as the basis for current ecclesial practices. In fact, the use of Calvin’s theology of the church was and still often is apologetic. This confirms a general remark made by Gilles Routhier at another of the Ecclesiological Investigations Sessions at the 2009 AAR that ecclesiology has traditionally been of an apologetic nature. Calvin’s ecclesiology is still too often read in the context of a church that justifies its existence by portraying itself as an alternative to the Roman Catholic Church, in which the hierarchy tends to dominate the Word of God, and to the free churches, in which the Spirit tends to be detached from the Word. Especially in the AngloSaxon world, less so on the European continent, church polity developed on the basis of Calvin’s understanding of the theology of ministry and his church order became a very important identity marker. Calvin’s understanding of Christ’s presence in the sacrament in the Spirit is generally understood as an alternative for Roman Catholic transubstantiation and Lutheran consubstantiation. This confessional reading of Calvin’s theology of the church is still prevalent. The renewed non-apologetic attention for Calvin’s ecclesiology within the Reformed tradition will not only lead to a much more nuanced understanding of various aspects of his theology of the church, but also to a going beyond Calvin. This is illustrated well in the article of Alan Sell. He explains the English and Welsh Separatist–Congregational understanding and practice of catholicity

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of the church as a ‘rectification’ of Calvin’s ecclesiology. He argues that their Reformed doctrines of election, regeneration, adoption, union with Christ and covenant would lead them to an ordering of the church that expressed better the eternal distinction between those who are in Christ and those who are not. They criticized Calvin’s theology of the church for its too uncritical acceptance of the parish system of the church in the Middle Ages, for its lacking of discipline as a third mark of the church, for its dependence on civil authorities within the church and for the reduction of the catholicity of the church to the national level. Sell makes the reader aware once more of a fundamental Reformed hermeneutical insight: Scripture is norma normans, the ultimate rule of faith. In relation to Bible, the other authoritative texts of the tradition have a norma normata, that is, they all have to be evaluated by the highest authority of scripture. This undermines the apologetic use of Calvin. For Reformed ecclesiology, Calvin’s theology of the church will always be a major reference point, but it will not be the final standard next to the Bible. My conclusion on the reception of Calvin’s ecclesiology within the Reformed tradition is in line with my first point. The attention for his theology of the church is not abundant, and it still tends to be apologetic in a confessional context. The interest in Calvin’s work in recent decades has come much more from researchers in the field of historical theology than from systematic theologians. The challenge for the latter group will be to integrate the results of the historical research and, at the same time, to contribute towards a theology of the church that spreads its field of vision beyond the narrower confessional and often apologetic mode.

The Rediscovery of Calvin’s Ecclesiology as Catholic Theology Sandra Arenas offers a fine example of historical theological research on the reception of a much neglected element of Calvin’s ecclesiology – viz. his remarks on the vestigia ecclesiae in the Roman Catholic church – within the ecumenical movement, as part of her contribution to a renewed understanding of fundamental ecclesiology. It provides me with the opportunity to add some observations on how Calvin’s ecclesiological writing might be understood as important contributions towards catholic theology. It was through the work of Ganoczy that I started to understand better the fundamental structure of the Institutes. Calvin has never removed the introductory letter to the king of France, Francois I, in the first version of the Institutes of 1536, indicating that the Reformed church in France was not just an alternative to the existing Roman Catholic church, but that it was the real Una Sancta, that should replace the existing church that had become a farce. He keeps alive

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the hope until his death that the moment will come when the king will opt for the reformation of the church, and that through his decision the Roman Catholic church in the kingdom of France will be transformed into the Reformed Catholic church in the kingdom of France. The introductory letter also explains that Reformed believers in France have nothing to do with Anabaptist radicals who had been responsible for the Munster debacle in 1535. For that reason, the first chapter of Book IV refutes the Anabaptist challenge. In Calvin’s opinion, the church had actually ceased to exist among this group. In his view, the Anabaptists are no alternative. After having dismissed their claims in the first chapter, he addresses the other contender for the status of Una Sancta, the church of the Pope in Rome. He is convinced that it has lost its legitimacy because of its abuses. In his lengthy argument which is developed over many chapters, he becomes very angry from time to time, especially when he deals with the development of the papacy. But the stakes are high. Which church represented the Una Sancta? For this reason he was initially against the plan of the Reformed congregations in France at the end of the 1550s to form a separate synod, as an official alternative to the French Roman Catholic church. It proves the catholicity of his intention. Not the Reformed church, but the reformation of the church was what is was all about. From an ecclesiological point of view, still a lot of work must be done on this re-conceptualization of Calvin’s ecclesiology. It is, of course, not a Roman Catholic ecclesiology, but neither is it a Reformed ecclesiology in the sense of willing to provide the theological basis for a Reformed denominational ecclesial existence. Calvin intended to present a catholic or an ecumenical theology of the church in the sixteenth century. In my opinion, the study of Calvin’s ecclesiology will profit enormously from an ongoing reception of this understanding of Calvin as a catholic, ecumenical theologian.

The Reception of Calvin’s Ecclesiology within the Context of the Church of the West When Calvin is understood as a catholic theologian, it becomes more evident to put him in historical perspective, and to present his work as part of the of the ‘shift in the theology’ church in the West. This is well illustrated by the contribution of Rose Beal. She explores the way the three offices of ancient Israel – priest, prophet and king – have been developed within Christian theology in relation to the work of Christ, the offices within the church and the life of all the faithful. Calvin is well known for the way he interprets the work of Christ along the three offices of priest, prophet and king. By comparing this approach to the preReformation use of these offices among some church fathers and among the

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theologians of the Middle Ages, and the use by other Reformers such as Luther, the original contribution of Calvin to the development of this threefold concept within theology becomes clear. Beal also describes how Calvin’s approach would influence the developments within Roman Catholic theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the past, studies that analysed the way Calvin has been influenced by the church fathers and by the theologians of the Middle Ages revealed important theological resources for Calvin’s work.8 Richard Muller has contributed a great deal to the understanding of the way Calvin’s theology is linked to scholastic theology.9 He studied the way Calvin was influenced by the scholastic theology before him and the manner by which Calvin in turn influenced the development of the scholastic Reformed theology after him. All these studies contributed to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the way in which Calvin’s theology is embedded in the evolution of the theology of the Western church from the moment of its inception until the beginning of the twenty-first century, and so no longer limited to the development of Reformed theology but Western theology in general. The contribution of Beal also illustrates how this catholic, ecumenical approach is fruitful for the traditional Reformed research. It is often assumed in churches of the Reformed tradition that Calvin linked the three main offices of the church – that is, minister of the Word and sacraments, elder and deacon – to one of the offices of triplex. In this construction, the minister represents the prophetic office, the elder the kingly one and the deacon the priestly one. Beal describes how the linkage of specific ministries to offices of the triplex is an evolution within the Roman Catholic theology in the nineteenth and especially the twentieth centuries.10 Calvin developed the meaning of the triplex for the explanation of the work of Christ. It would have been remarkable, even strange, if he had applied the three offices of Christ to the offices of the church. This would have suggested continuity between the work of Christ and the work of the offices in the church, a suggestion he wanted to avoid at all costs. It was precisely on this issue that Calvin criticized the prevailing Roman Catholic theology of ministry from that time. In his opinion, it tended to replace Christ as the head of the church and it took away of honour of Christ, who alone has been responsible for the salvation of human kind. Rodney Petersen provides us with another application of this renewed catholic understanding of Calvin’s ecclesiology. He describes how it has become fruitful in the bilateral theological dialogues between the Reformed and the Orthodox tradition. The Reformed part introduces Calvin’s ecclesiology into the dialogue in a non-apologetic way. Of course, Calvin is a very central reference theologian for Reformed ecclesiology, but in the context of the dialogue, the Orthodox partner discovers an understanding of the Eucharist that bears

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more affiliation with the communal, Eucharistic ecclesiology within the Orthodox tradition than with the individualized ecclesial practice and individual experience of the Lord’s Supper within many Reformed churches. At the same time, it provides the Orthodox churches with an example of an ecclesiology that inspires the churches to take societal responsibility.

Calvin as Pastoral Theologian of the Church Amy Plantinga Pauw offers a beautiful example of the practical nature of Calvin’s ecclesiology in her analysis of his thoughts on clerical celibacy. It corrects the image of a stern and inflexible Prinzipienreiter, often accompanied by the reference to the execution of Michel Servetus and Calvin’s role in this terrible history. The picture is more complex. Plantinga Pauw’s intentions are not apologetic. I read them as a contribution to an ecclesiology that incorporates practical considerations taking into account human nature, in other words, an ecclesiology that has a pastoral character. Also here much work still has to be done to come to a new reception of Calvin’s ecclesiology. In recent years, the historical theologian Wim Janse showed that we can no longer speak about ‘the’ theology of Calvin on the Lord’s Supper. Janse analysed Calvin’s various interpretations of the Eucharist during his long theological career and revealed how in one description he sounded more Zwinglian and in another, for example, more Lutheran.11 These changes were motivated by his intention to protect the unity of the church. The reinterpretation of the recently published minutes of the Consistoire in Geneva at the time of Calvin, together with the various editions of the Institutes and the succeeding versions of his church order, will in the future reveal many more examples where practical experience influenced his ecclesiology. It does not only reveal the dynamic nature of his ecclesiological writings and practice, but even more than that it is a testimony of their fundamental pastoral, practical nature. It is not only imported to renew the understanding of the nature of Calvin’s ecclesiology in this way. It might also contribute to a more pastoral approach to new ecclesiological constructs. The history of the church is at the same time an ongoing history of suffering on behalf of the church, not only because of external pressure, but also because of internal conflicts. Today, we are witness to fierce discussions between and within churches on the understanding of the sacraments, and the conditions for ordained ministry in relation to celibacy, gender and sexual orientation, and of the pain it inflicts on those involved. Time and again, reference is made in these discussions to the steadfastness of the major theologians, among whom Calvin is very prominent. Often, people are

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insufficiently aware of the actual creative flexibility of these theologians, who have tried to combine a strong conviction on theological opinions with a need to be contextual, pastoral and practical. Traditionally, ecclesiology is often situated at the crossroads of Christology and pneumatology, but new reflection on the church that takes into consideration its status in relation to the eschaton, and the importance of social anthropology in the context of creation theology will certainly open new vistas for ecclesiology.

The Social Impact of Calvin’s Ecclesiology Roger Haight highlights in his contribution the social engagement that is part of Calvin’s ecclesial spirituality. His spirituality focused on the communion with Christ and sanctification of life on the personal and communal levels. Within the context of the close relationship between church and state, Calvin developed a theocratic understanding of society in which the church was called not only to sanctify its own life as a Christian community, but also to sanctify the life of society at large. Calvin’s battle to transform Geneva into such a God-fearing city reads like a novel with many twists and turns. The link between ecclesiology and the society at large becomes evident when one realizes that the last chapter of Book IV of the Institutes on the topic of civil government is part of his ecclesiology. We would be mistaken if we were to understand this institutional element to mean that the prime intention of Calvin’s ecclesiological enterprise was to transform society. In fact, it is the other way round. As the title of Book IV of the Institutes indicates, the external means, that is the church (chapters 1 and 2), its offices (chapters 3 to 12) and its sacraments (chapters 13 to 19), and the way civil society is organized (chapter 20), are intended to invite us in the society of Christ. Thus, a holy society helps us to focus on Christ. The transformation of society is an integral part of this ecclesial focus on the communion with Christ. For this reason, the study of Calvin’s ecclesiology will continue to reveal the societal impact of his plans for the reformation of the church. In many parts of the Western world, secularization has drastically changed the impact of the church in society and most churches have left behind theocratic notions in their relationship to civil society. At the same time, more than ever in these changed circumstances, theologians are expected to provide new visions and new concepts to help the churches reconfigure their mission in society. Therefore, Calvin’s ecclesiology with his societal component continues to be a resource and inspiration for churches that continue to feel responsible for the societies in which they operate.12

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The Complete Oeuvre as Basis for Interpretation Stanley MacLean provided us with an interesting description of the influence of Calvin’s ecclesiology on Thomas Torrance’s ecumenical work in the 1950s and the 1960s. It illustrates Torrance’s capacities to develop constructive theological trajectories, which would become even more prominent later in his theological career. But Stanley MacLean also observes how Torrance’s perspectives on Calvin’s ecclesiology bear little resemblance to Calvin’s ecclesiology as found in Book IV of the Institutes. In fact, Torrance did not rely on Book IV of the Institutes, but used intensively Calvin’s commentaries and Calvin’s doctrine of the nature and work of Christ in Book II. MacLean feels uncomfortable about this usage of Calvin’s work. Was Torrance providing an adequate picture of Calvin’s ecclesiology, or was this in reality more an exposé of Barth’s ecclesiology presented as Calvin’s? The time has come for a more in-depth reflection on the relationship between the Institutes and his other writings, especially in relation to church and ministry, and the way we use them in academic theological research. In order to do justice to Calvin’s theology of the church, we cannot put aside his theology of the church and ministry, which he developed and expanded for more than two decades in the Institutes. Interpretations of Calvin’s theology of church and ministry that are based solely on quotes out of his Bible commentaries, and/or sermons, letters and church orders, or on other parts of the Institutes taken in isolation, run the risk of missing the real point he is making in the context of his broader theology of the church. A mature interpretation of Calvin’s ecclesiology cannot afford to neglect Book IV of the Institutes. This is not a plea only to study Book IV of the Institutes if one intends to do research on Calvin’s theology of church and ministry. On the contrary, the Bible commentaries, the sermons, and the letters supply us with historical evidence that provide data for a contextual understanding of the theology more extensively developed in Book IV of the Institutes. Especially these sources make it possible to arrive at a more practical and pastoral reading, referred to in the previous point. The contribution of Dennis Jowers proves this point. Calvin affirmed in Book IV the claim of Cyprianus, extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Faith in Christ and membership of the visible church are prerequisites of salvation. At the same time, with the help of other part of his work, Jowers shows how this stance is nuanced when confronted with questions in relation to the salvation of specific groups, such as infants, who died in early childhood before baptism, and adults on the margin of the visible church (e.g. Cornelius, Naaman and the Canaanite woman in Matt. 15). Although Calvin disagrees in

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strong terminology with those who open heaven to the unevangelized (Institutes II, 6.1), at the same time statements in his Bible commentaries reveal that God keeps the prerogative to save human beings in whatever manner he chooses. This leads Jowers to a nuanced and less exclusivist conception of the impossibility of salvation outside the church in the work of Calvin.

Conclusion Although Ganoczy has already written his groundbreaking work on Calvin’s ecclesiology in the 1960s, it has taken some years before the catholic and ecumenical character of his writing have really become more widely appreciated. Since then, new historical research on the Consistoire and its minutes and on the founding of the Genevan Academy have shed new light on the dynamical context in which Calvin’s ecclesiological writing have to be understood. It makes the reading of his texts a fresh ecumenical and pastoral experience, leaving behind older confessional and apologetic interpretations.

Notes 1 Alexandre Ganoczy, (1964), Calvin: Théologien de l’ église en du ministère (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1964 and idem, Ecclesia Ministrans. Dienende Kirche und kirchlicher Dienst bei Calvin, Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 1968. 2 J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis (1559), in P. Barth and W. Niesel (eds), Johannis Calvini Opera Selecta, vol. III, IV and V (München: Kaiser, 1928–1936). Several English translations of this last edition of this work that Calvin kept on redrafting and expanding are available in English as Institutes of the Christian Religion. 3 B. Hall, ‘Calvin against the Calvinists’, in G. E. Duffield (ed.), John Calvin (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1966), 23–5. 4 I. Backus, Life Writing in Reformation Europe: Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes (Aldershot; Ashgate, 2008). 5 J. T. McNeill (ed.), Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, (Louisville – London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 1011, fn 1. 6 M. Moore-Keish, Do This in Remembrance of Me: A Ritual Approach to Reformed Eucharistic Theology (Nashville, TN: Eerdmans, 2008); J. T. Billings, Calvin, Participation and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008); G. Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 7 E. A. J. G. Van der Borght, Theology of Ministry: A Reformed Contribution (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2007). 8 A. N. S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999).

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9 R. A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and idem, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987–2003). 10 See on this also P. E. Persson, Repraesentatio Christi. Der Amtsbegriff in der neueren römisch-katholischen Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966). 11 W. Janse, ‘Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology’, in H. J. Selderhuis (ed.), Calvinus sacrarum literarum interpres (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). 12 A. Biéler, La pensée économique et sociale de Calvin (Genève: Librairie de l’Université, 1959); E. Dommen and J. D. Bratt (eds), John Calvin Rediscovered: The Impact of His Social And Economic Thought (Louisville–London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007); and J. Witte Jr, The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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Index Adams, James Luther 211 adoption 143, 145, 147, 148, 149, 162 Afanassieff, Nicolas 205, 208 Ainsworth, Henry 145 Allon, Henry 155 Ames, William 207 Anglicanism 150, 152, 167, 205 Anglo-American Puritan 207 Anhypostasia 190 apostasy 52 Apostolic Tradition 91 Aquinas, Thomas viii, ix, 93 Arabic 208 Asad, Talal 214 Augsburg Confession 125, 134, 137 Augustine of Hippo viii, ix, 42, 111, 125, 146, 191 authority, ecclesial 1, 10, 12 Backus, Isaac 209 Baillie, Robert 145 baptism 54–7, 65, 67n. 55, 68n. 72, 127, 137, 138, 173–4 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM) 206 Baptist Christians 155 Barrow, Henry 145, 151–2, 153, 156, 158, 167 Barth, Karl viii 11, 13, 17, 127, 130, 136–7, 139, 140, 142, 188, 191, 199n. 4, 200n. 19, n. 27, n. 28 Church Dogmatics 13 Basil of Caesarea 204 Baxter, Richard 145 Belgic Confession 179 Beza, Theadore x, 178

Bill of Rights 211 Bishop of Rome see Papacy bona-elementa 76 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 137, 142 Bria, Ion 208, 212 Browne, Robert 144, 145, 148, 153, 159, 167 Bucer, Martin 187, 204, 206 Cadoux, Cecil John 163 Calvin, John and catholicity 125 Christology 125–6, 130–5 doctrine of the elect 94–5, 207 doctrine of faith 127, 130–5 doctrine of grace 131–2, 134, and passim Institutes of the Christian Religion viii, ix, 90, 93–6 Marks of the Church 125–7, 130, pastoral character 227–8 pneumatology 130–3 preaching 129–5 social character 228 spirituality of 34–9 on the unity of Church 2, 4, 11, 13, 15, 23, 126, 129, 133 Camus, Albert 169 Canaanite woman (Matthew 15) 59, 61–2 Cappadocian Fathers 204 Castellio, Sebastian 58 Catholic Conference for Ecumenical Questions (1952) 74 catholicity 125, 145, 155–6 Catholic nature 224–5 Christ body of 10, 204, 206, 208

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Christ (Cont’d) union with 143, 145, 148, 149, 162 Christology 185–90, 192–3, 195–8, 206 Chrysostom, John 92, 100, 204 Church early 8, 11, 14, 20, 91, 113, 125 of England, 150, 152, 167 discipline 66n. 15, 152, 165 as hearing the Word 136–7 marks of 16, 20, 50–2, 60, 63, 66n. 15, 99, 125–7, 134, 154 matter of, 145–50, 152, 153, 154, 162 Meeting, institution of 157–9, 160, 161, 162, 165 as mother 6, 8, 51, 66n. 11 polity 14, 52, 66n. 20 as preaching the Word 136–7 property 209 and society, 37–8 and state, 150–7, 161, 167 understanding of 1, 16, 111, 187, 192, 196, 208 circumcision 55–6, 60–1, 68n. 72 Clapsis, Emmanuel 212 Cocks, Michael Francis Lovell 147, 151 Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God ix Conciliar Movement x Conder, Eustace 144 Congar, Yves 72, 93, 100–2 congregatio fidelium 71 Congregational Church in England and Wales 161, 167 Congregationalism 143–68 Congregational Union of England and Wales 160, 167 conscience 10, 207 Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia 4 consubstantiation 205 Contarini, Gasparo (Cardinal) 12 Cornelius 55, 59–60 Council of Trent 9–10, 96 covenant 56–9, 61–2, 65, 67n. 42, 55, 204 Cranmer, Thomas (Archbishop) x

Cromwell, Oliver 144 Crusader 208 Cyprian of Carthage (Bishop) 66n. 11, 146, 195, 229 Cyril of Alexandria 204 Cyril of Jerusalem 204 Dale, Robert William 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 156, 158 Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) 203, 213–14 Dedham Court Case 210–11 de Lubac, Henri 126, 129 Divine Liturgy of Saint Chrysostom 205, 214 Earth, age of 67n. 55 Eastern Orthodoxy 204 ecclesiastical patrimony 75 ecclesiological criteriology 71 ecclesiological pluralism 2, 14, 15 Ecclesiology communion 205 comparative 3, 14, 17, 23 eucharistic 20, 129, 208–9, 227 fundamental 8 homiletic 135–8 universal 205 Western 225–7 and passim economy of salvation 208 ecumenical dialogue 3, 13, 20, 74, 102–3, 135, 143, 204, 206 election 207, 143, 145, 146, 148, 149, 162 general 56, 67n. 42 special 56, 67n. 42 elementa ecclesiae 69–80 Enhypostasia 190 episcopacy xi, 52, 100, 125–6, 193 Erasmus, Desiderius ix, 12, 64 Eschatology 185–7, 189–99 ethics xiii, 22, 32, 213 Eucharist 20, 22, 52, 68n. 72, 127–9, 137–9, 143, 159, 192–7, 204–5, 207, 212–14, 226–7 Eucharistic Identity 204, 206, 213 European Enlightenment 208

Index European history 208 Eusebius 91, 93, 95 excommunication 51 faith 50–1, 54–5, 57–65, 67n. 50 justification by 1, 9, 12, 35, 53, 58, 127 manifestation of 5 nature of 1 Farel, William (Guillaume) 2, 10, 52 First Vatican Council 98 Forsyth, Peter Taylor 156, 163 Francis of Assisi 154 Free Church 169–84, 211 French Revolution 169–84 Geneva 1–7, 10 Great Ejectment 150 Greenwood, John 152 Half-Way Covenant 209–10 Hart, Joseph 147 Healy, Nicolas M. 175 Heaney, Seamus 15 Heidelberg Catechism 96 Hooker, Richard 67n. 55, 153 Hooper, John 52 Horton, Robert 157 human rights 203, 207–9, 214 Hunsinger, George 128, 138, 140, 206 Huntington, Samuel 214 Hutchinson, Anne 210 idolatry 60 Ignatius of Loyola 31–2, 39–49 activist spirituality 45 The Call of Christ the King 42–3 detachment 45 discernment of spirits 43–4 ecclesial 46–9 encountering God in the world 41 humility 44 mission spirituality 47 reason for existence 40–1 self-denial 38 of social engagement 47–8 The Spiritual Exercises 42 spirituality of 41–5

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stewardship 38–9 union with God 48–9 use of creatures 38, 44–5 infants 54–8, 62, 65, 67n. 42, n. 55 damnation of 58–9 integrity 75 International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) 203, 213 Isaiah, book of x Istina 72 Jacob, Henry 145 Jefferson, Thomas 209 Jewish people, Juadism 55–6, 59–60, 68n. 72 John XXIII, Pope (Angelo Roncalli )17 John the Baptist 57 John of Damascus 204 John Paul II, Pope (Karol Wojtyła) 129, 139 Jüngel, Eberhard 136, 142 justification 53, 58 Kavanagh, Joseph 15 Knox, John 206 Koch, Kurt 15 Küng, Hans 9 Kunz, Peter 4 Kuyper, Abraham 169–84 Łaski, Jan (John a Lasco) 171 Leith, John 145 Little, David 214 Locke, John 209 Lombard, Peter 92 Lord’s Supper 161–2, 165 see also Eucharist love 1, 5, 7, 9–11, 16, 23 Luther, Martin viii, ix, 6, 31, 186–8 Lutheran Augsburg Confession x Lutheran church 9 Lutheranism 205 Mackennal, Alexander 144 McLeod, Hugh 175 Manning, Bernard (Lord) 150, 154–5, 163

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Martin, Robert K. 215 Melanchthon, Philip 4 Methodists 165 Milnar, Benjamin 195 ministry 1, 8, 13, 15, 17 Möhler, Johann Adam 97 Mongol 208 Mystici Corporis Christi (Encyclical of Pius XII) 97, 100 Naaman the Syrian 58, 60–1, 65 National Church 169–84 Netherlands 169–84 New England theology 209 Newman, John Henry (Cardinal) 9, 97, 98–9 Nicene–Constantinopolitan definition 206 Nicodemism 60–1, 68n. 66 Niebuhr, Reinhold 197 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) 203 notae Ecclesiae 69–70 Nuttall, Geoffrey 152 Olin, John 12 Orthodox Patriarchal Encyclical of 1848 208 Orthodox–Roman Catholic dialogue 205 Ottoman Empire 208 Owen, John 146, 149, 152, 154, 155, 156, 166 Papacy, (also Bishop of Rome) ix–x, 1–2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 70–1, 171, 205, 225 Pascal’s Wager 5 Passover 68n. 72 Paul III, Pope (Alessandro Farnese) 4, 12 Paul of Tarsus, Saint ix, 12, 35, 56, 62–3, 113, 132, 136, 146–7, 174, 193, 205 Perkins, William 207 personal conversion 207 Phillips, George 97–8 Pighius, Albertus 58 Pius XII, Pope (Eugenio Pacelli) 100 plene/non-plene (realizations of the Church) 77

Pontifical Council for Christian Unity 15 preaching 51–3, 59, 62–4, 125–42 predestination xi, 34, 198 Presbyterian Church of England 161, 167 Putnam, Robert 213 reception 222–4 tradition viii reconciliation 209 Reformation period viii, 1, 8, 10–12, 14 Reformed Arminian 207 Church 178 confessions/Confessionalism 169–84 Reformed Church of the Netherlands 169–84 regeneration, 56, 58–9, 143, 145, 147, 148, 149, 162, 166 religious tolerance 179–80 reliquia 69–70 Renaissance x humanism 1 repentance 55, 57 rhetoric 4, 7, 8, 11, 14, 16, 23–4 rights of conscience 209 Robinson, John A. T. (Bishop) 145, 158, 166 Robinson, William 156 Rogers, James Guinness 154, 159 Roman Catholicism 2, 11, 51–3, 65n. 5, 165, 205 Roman Catholic Church 9, 10, 17, 70–2, 76, 126 129, 137–9, 174–6, 222–5 sacramental regeneration 205 sacraments 8, 52–7, 59–62, 65, 67n. 55, 68n. 72, 187, 190–2, 194, 197 Sadolet, James (Jacopo Sadoleto, Cardinal ) ix, x, 2–12, 14–16, 23–4 129, 130 salvation 1, 5, 9 outside of the church (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus)19, 50–65, 229 sanctification 12, 53, 65, 36–7 Sandel, Michael 213 Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order 147, 164

Index schism, ecclesial 50, 52, 152, 205, 210 Schleiermacher, Friedrich viii, 97, 171 Second Vatican Council ix, 76, 127, 138, 102, 205 sectarianism 155, 163 Seljuk 208 separation of church and state 177–9, 209 Separatists 143–68 Servetus, Michael (Miguel Serveto) 17, 58, 178 sovereignty and providence of God ix, 13, 34, 39, 41, 108, 131, 178, 198 Spirituality 31–2 Standing Order of Massachusetts and Maine 210 Stăniloae, Dumitru 208 Stevenson, Marmaduke 156 Subsistit in (subsists in) 76 substitutionary atonement 207 Tait, Archibald C. 165, 148 theological pluralism 2 theosis 207 Thils, Gustav 74 Tillich, Paul 197 Torrance, Thomas F. viii, 185–98 tradition 1–3, 9, 15, 17–21, 34, 72, 90–2, 94, 97, 99, 102–3, 115, 119–20, 127–9, 137, 139, 148, 153, 156, 159–62, 181, 186, 190, 203–14, 219–28 transubstantiation 205 Trinity 145 Turretin, Francis 178

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unevangelized destiny of 62–5 United Reformed Church 161 United States Constitution 211 Vatican II see Second Vatican Council Vestigia Ecclesiae 69–70 vestigium 69–70 vocation 34 Voetius, Gisbertus 178 voluntarism 177 Vree, Jasper 171 Walzer, Michael 213 Watts, Isaac 149 Wesel reformed congregation at 52 Wesley, John 146 Westphal, Joachim 54 Whale, John 146 Whitgift, John 153 Willebrands, Johannes (Cardinal) 74 William of Ockham ix Williams, Roger 209, 210 Witte, John 180–1, 211, 214 Word of God 7, 14, 17, 130–2 works, (good) 9, 59 World Council of Churches, (WCC) 185–6, 188, 191, 194 (General assembly of Toronto 1950) 73 Zachman, Randall 127–8, 138, 140 Zizioulas, John 205, 208 Zwingli, Ulrich (Huldrych) 64, 191, 204