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| ISBN-13: | 9780521541541 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2004 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 262 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.67(d) |
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Cambridge University Press
052183371X - Calvin's Christology - by Stephen Edmondson
Excerpt
Introduction
Bernard's admonition is worth remembering: The name of Jesus is not only light but also food; it is also oil, without which all food of the soul is dry; it is salt, without whose seasoning whatever I set before us is insipid; finally, it is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, rejoicing in the heart, and at the same time medicine. Every discourse in which his name is not spoken is without savor.
John Calvin, The Institutes
Calvin's theological writing and thinking are a variegated field, heavy laden and ready for harvest, and yet so densely planted and so thickly intertwined in its growth that it is difficult to state in any definitive manner exactly what he has sown or the pattern by which he has sown it. Thus, among the reapers, there is confusion over what we should gather and the best method for our gleaning, not to mention the matter of separating the wheat, or whatever fruits we are searching for, from the tares. There is, simply, so much there and so much that seems at tension with itself, not only in terms of its content, but also in terms of its methodological underpinnings and its authorial purpose. In the past century, we have been told that Calvin's theology is centered on the sovereignty of God, predestination, Christology, the Trinity, the knowledge of God, and faith, and that it has no center at all; that he is a theologian who systematized Reformation insights and that he is a pastor whose interest lay not in any systematic presentation of theology, but in the spiritual nurture of his wards; that his theology is structured by pedagogical and consolatory and apologetic and polemical rhetorical ends, and that it is structured by the many theologies that can be found in Scripture. Calvin is a natural theologian and a theologian to whom natural theology is anathema. He has been called a theologian of one book, his Institutes, while in this book he argues that it is subservient to the many books of his commentaries. He is even a man who, in his thinking and writing, manifests two personalities - he is both medieval and modern, both a schoolman and a humanist, a practitioner of dialectical thinking, which dialect is resolved through the accommodation of the Divine Orator to us very human subjects. And the remarkable thing is, this all is in some sense correct. The field is overgrown. It is no wonder that Barth was provoked to comment: "Calvin is a cataract, a primeval forest, a demonic power . . . I lack completely the means, the suction cups, even to assimilate this phenomenon, not to speak of presenting it adequately."1
In such a tangle, crops will go unharvested and plantings be neglected. Indeed, Calvin's complex theological ecology almost insures a consistently partial ingathering, but it would no doubt dismay Calvin to discover that his Christology - that savor-making seasoning - is too often ignored, underutilized, or mis-taken in the cornucopia of modern Calvin scholarship. We have passed over the first fruits, he would decry. It is not that we disdain Christology or Calvin's thoughts on the matter, but readers of Calvin seem unable either to discern or to explain its content or its purpose in convincing detail. Thus, Serene Jones claims that we are often simply baffled by Calvin on this locus.2
This bafflement is most obvious in a work like Bouwsma's, where references to Christ are scant and trifling, but it is apparent in more theological readings of Calvin as well.3 Brian Armstrong, in an excellent essay on a rhetorical strategy that helps to shape the Institutes, offers the strong claim that "Calvin's entire theology is conditioned by his understanding of redemption through Christ," that Calvin's chief concern, humanity's relationship with God, is accomplished in Christ and our incorporation into his body.4 Such a gesture obviously takes Calvin's Christology seriously. Yet, within the article as a whole, Armstrong both rejects without comment any notion of Christology as the doctrinal center of the Institutes and skips over the specifically Christological sections of the Institutes when he recounts the contents of the work as a whole.5 Armstrong appears unable to cash out his claim for the significance of Christology in Calvin's thinking.
There are more substantive recent appraisals of Calvin's Christology. Richard Muller offers what, in many ways, is a précis of the argument of this book in his brief observations about both the soteriological emphasis of Calvin's Christology, an emphasis manifested through the Christology's historical form in the context of the economy of salvation, and Calvin's privileging in his account of Christ's work over Christ's person.6 However, within the scope of this earlier work, Muller is unable to flesh out more thoroughly these intimations, and, in a later work, when he takes up the structure of the Institutes, Christology has again fallen off the map.7 Randall Zachman's construal of Calvin's Christology in his work on assurance in Calvin and Luther offers a portrayal that is accurate to the details and spirit of Calvin's work; perhaps this is the benefit of a dedicated exegesis of the argument of the Institutes in its entirety.8 His emphasis on Christ as the fountain of every good thing through his life and work among us again sounds a theme that I develop in this work; but Zachman provides little framework that would helpfully synthesize the pieces of Calvin's Christology in their relationship to each other, and he mistakes a result of Christ's saving work as Mediator, that he is the image of the invisible Father, for the heart of this work. His difficulty is that he reads Christology from within Calvin's narrative of the human conscience rather than locating its proper narrative context within Calvin's theology, God's covenant history with God's chosen. So even here, where much of the substance of Calvin's Christology is laid to hand, there is a certain bafflement about the order and logic behind the substance.9
Calvin's adherence to the Reformation platform of sola Christi commits him to a certain Christocentrism in his theology, at least on a material if not on a formal level. His recollection of Bernard's counsel of the centrality of Jesus-talk to any reflection on God and the world serves as his earnest to make good on that commitment. If we want to make good on our desire to gather the full harvest of Calvin's sowing, then we must strive for an understanding of Calvin's Christology that is not merely adequate to what he says in places, or reflective of a theme echoed here or there within his entire corpus, but that captures the full-throated, robust hymn of Jesus' saving work that Calvin would sing to a Church otherwise bereft of God without the clarity of this Gospel. Hence this book on understanding Calvin's Christology.
In the following pages, I hope to offer at least an initial persuasive answer to the question of Calvin's Christology, an answer that allows those who wish to enter into conversation with this book a greater appreciation of the tenor and dynamic of Calvin's Christological discourse and of the role that this discourse plays in his theology overall.10 My answer is persuasive to the extent that it presents a Christology accurate to Calvin, especially as it is coherent, richly funded, and forcefully centered. Therefore, this book is integrally informed by three methodological decisions that are consistent each with the others.
First, I draw my material largely from Calvin's commentaries on the Old and New Testaments as well as from the 1559 Institutes. This decision reflects the formal recognition, with so many Calvin scholars of late, that the Institutes are in many ways best understood as a complement to his copious exegetical writings, not as their compendium;11 but it also conveys my conviction that Calvin's commitment to the interpretation of Scripture as his primary theological task bears fruit in the depth and diversity of Christological material found in his biblical commentaries.12 I have chosen to work largely with the 1559 Institutes over against the earlier iterations of this text because we find the culmination of his thinking within it, especially as it is the primary beneficiary of his exegetical work on the Gospels and the books of the Old Testament.
Second, I treat the Christological picture that emerges from this consideration holistically, not developmentally. Calvin, at least from his Gospel commentaries on, works within one general Christological framework through to the end of his writings. He further defines the picture within this framework with successive works, but the overall picture is never discontinuous with what preceded it.13 One advantage to taking his Christological thinking as a whole is that it allows me to establish a baseline Christology that might be amended or questioned by further work with Calvin, rather than leaving the reader only with fragmentary images that allow us little traction on the broader question.
Finally, I take as the center of Calvin's Christology his repeated titular definition in the 1559 Institutes of Christ as the Mediator and articulate the form and content of Calvin's teaching around this central focus. In the Institutes, Calvin not only introduces his Christology proper (II.ⅻ-ⅹⅴⅱ) with a discussion of Christ as the Mediator, he also begins his narration of the broader story of God's saving history with God's chosen after the Fall under this same rubric, arguing that now, "no knowledge of God apart from the Mediator has had power unto salvation" (II.vi.1). Calvin repeatedly returns to this designation in his exegesis of Christ's person and work in the Institutes, and we also find that it pervades the Christological passages in his commentaries.
A variety of implications are entailed by Calvin's choice of this central moniker for Christ, but let me call our attention to one of them here at the start. For Calvin, a focus on Christ as the Mediator makes the doctrine of Christ's office in its relationship to Christ's work the fundamental organizing principle in his Christology. It is, to begin with, a statement about the centrality of Christ's office so that his entire discussion of the metaphysics of Christ's person is undertaken within the context of this initial statement. Calvin's intention, I shall argue, is to point his reader to the culmination of his Christology, how Christ accomplished our salvation (II.ⅹⅴⅰ), given his claim that Christology as a whole is directed to this one objective, that we seek salvation in Christ (II.ⅹⅴⅰ.1). We fully understand this exposition of Christ's saving work only as we grasp the relationship between this work and Christ's mediatorial office. In some sense, this commitment on my part is a substantiation and expansion of Oberman's comment that in Calvin there is a shift of accent "from a natures-Christology to an offices-Christology, converging towards a Mediator-theology."14
The task that I have laid out is primarily analytic and descriptive in character, but to carry it out I must include a synthetic, constructive dimension as well. I would argue that the perplexity over Calvin's Christology is due, in part, to the lack of organization and incomplete expression of its form in Calvin's writings. The Christology in the Institutes, for example, does not communicate completely and clearly all that Calvin has to say on this matter, which is not surprising, given that Calvin's purpose for the book was not exhaustive, doctrinal exposition. My purpose, however, is such exposition. Calvin was not interested in writing a Christology, but it would be of great benefit to Calvin's modern audience to have his Christology at hand - to help us both to understand Calvin and to understand Christology. Therefore, I need to find within Calvin's writing structures that hold his many Christological notions together and that are distinctly his. Fortunately, I believe that such structures are readily evident and emerge from the methodology that I outline above.15
Indeed, Calvin's concern that theology be a low-level flight over the reading of Scripture and his understanding of Christ through his office as the Mediator point us toward the fundamental Christological structures that organize his thought. Principally, these are: (1) a perception that Scripture narrates, in the first place, God's history with God's people, a history that culminates in the Gospel history of Christ. Notice the emphasis on history, an emphasis for which Calvin's training as a humanist has implications. (2) An understanding that the covenant, made first with Abraham and fulfilled in Christ, is essential to this history of God with God's people. Scripture's history, then, is the covenant history, which means that Christ's office as Mediator is defined by his role as the Mediator of this covenant. This delineation of Christ's mediatorial office in its relationship to the covenant history is evident throughout Calvin's biblical commentaries, and Calvin's work on these commentaries shapes his understanding of Christ's work as the Mediator in the 1559 Institutes. (3) A delineation of Christ's mediatorial office within the context of the covenant history, under the threefold rubric of his work as priest, king, and prophet. The significance of this rubric to Calvin is, again, evident throughout his Old Testament commentaries, commentaries which led to the composition of his chapter on Christ's threefold office in the 1559 Institutes.
THE OUTLINE OF THIS BOOK
The organization of this book is determined by the methodological and material commitments that I have just described. Chapter 1 introduces more expansively the fundaments of Calvin's Christological thinking through an exploration of his controversy with Stancaro over Christ's office as Mediator. This introduction allows us a brief look at the medieval theological tradition to which Calvin is responding - a tradition that Stancaro is attempting to champion - and the manner in which Calvin contrasts his Christology with this tradition, as represented by Stancaro. Four points emerge in this chapter about Calvin's understanding of thinking about Christ: that it should have a biblical shape; that it should emphasize the fullness of Christ's office; that this fullness stands in relationship to the whole of Christ's person; and that our understanding of Christ's person and office needs to be focused on Christ's work in God's economy for our salvation.
In chapter 2, I take up the first point, the biblical shape of Calvin's Christology, and explore both the fundamental structure that Calvin sees in Scripture - the history of the covenant through which God has chosen to redeem and relate to God's Church - and the manner in which Calvin relates Christ to this structure - he is the Mediator of the covenant. This involves setting forth the general narrative of this covenant history while highlighting Christ's role within the narrative. It also takes us to the question of what it means for Calvin's Christology that it is set in the context of this historical narrative. I rely on Calvin's commentaries on the Old Testament and the four Gospels in my discernment of this relationship of Christology to covenant history, as these recommend themselves as the best sources to discover Calvin's Christological reading of Scripture; but I take the template read-off of these commentaries and apply it to Calvin's Institutes in the following chapters, in the belief that we find this same structure of the covenant history reflected there.16 With this structure of the covenant history in its relationship to Christ's mediating work in place, we find the categories of Christ's threefold office as priest, king, and prophet, which form the ribs of the structure. This leads us into the rest of the book.
In chapters 3, 4, and 5, I engage in a detailed explication of Christ's threefold office, exploring Calvin's explanation of Christ's work for us as priest, king, and prophet as it is found both in his Gospel commentaries and in the Institutes. In the process, these chapters also develop the manner in which Christology relates to the Institutes as a whole and stands, in some sense, at its center. In chapter 3, I begin with Calvin's explication of Christ's priestly office and how Christ has opened the way for the Church's relationship with God through his expiation of our sins. Within this discussion, I examine Calvin's understanding of Atonement as expiation found in the Institutes. Noteworthy in this understanding is the manner in which Calvin interweaves the so-called objective emphasis of Anselm, in its concern for what Christ has done apart from us to set our relationship straight with God, with the so-called subjective emphasis of Abelard, in its concern for Christ's drawing us into God's waiting embrace.
In the chapter 4, I take up Calvin's explication of Christ's royal office, through which he, as the one Head, unites the many members and bestows blessings upon the fellowship that is his body. Here we find the many rubrics under which Calvin expansively defines this one office, that Christ is our brother and our Lord, the Fountain of Life and the pattern by which we live our lives. This discussion leads us past the specifically Christological sections of the Institutes (II.xii-xvii) into Calvin's discussion of the form and content of the Christian life (Inst. III) and the relationship of Christ to creation and to God's predestination of the elect.
My discussion of Christ's prophetic or teaching office in chapter 5 takes a different shape from the preceding two chapters. I not only consider the dimensions of this office as it is fulfilled by Christ, but also note that Calvin understands the work of all the Church's teachers, from the Old Testament prophets to pastors and theologians in the contemporary world, to have a part in this teaching office. Thus, we are opened to the question of how Calvin as a teacher of the Church, especially in his Institutes, carries out this office; and, insofar as the central purpose of this office, according to Calvin, is to set forth Christ and him crucified, I ask in what way we can find a Christocentric focus in the Institutes.
In chapter 6, I consider Calvin's understanding of Christ's person within the context of the understanding of his work developed in the previous chapters. I first examine how Calvin uses the term persona in a manner congruent with his emphasis on Christ's activity in history. I then explore the significance that Calvin places on Christ's revelation as the God-human within the covenant history before concluding with his discussion of the metaphysical reality of Christ's two natures within his one person.
Two methodological notes, apparent from this summary, can be added. First, my exploration of Calvin's Christology is not guided by a historical narrative of the theological battles in which Calvin was engaged. I note these conflicts when they impinge on Calvin's expression of the substance of his Christology, but I believe that they determined neither this substance nor its expression in any systematic way.17 Rather, the form and the substantial content of Calvin's Christology were determined first and foremost by his reading of Scripture, especially as Scripture relates the narrative of God's covenant history with God's Church, fulfilled in Christ's Gospel.18 It would be fruitful to examine both the manner in which theological controversy stretched or molded Calvin's expression of his Christology in a variety of texts and the manner in which Calvin used Christology as a weapon in such disputes; indeed, such a study might suggest pertinent modifications of the theses that I develop in this book. But I do not believe that any such study would invalidate the theological fundamentals of Calvin's Christology as I outline them, and to include such a study would, in the end, only make this book unwieldy in its exposition of Calvin's Christological thinking.
Second, outside of chapter 1, there is little sustained exploration of the relation of Calvin's Christology to the theological traditions that preceded him. My reasons for this decision are manifold, but they principally evolve out of my perception of the possible and the helpful. There was not a single theological tradition that preceded Calvin but innumerable traditions, many with a depth and complexity equal to Calvin's. Thus, although it is admirable always to place Calvin in this broader context, attempts to do so often betray the traditions that they are trying to honor through explications that are inevitably superficial.19 This book is weighty enough (in ounces if not in wisdom) as it simply attempts to manage Calvin's thought.
Moreover, I would argue that, whatever Calvin's relationship to the traditions that preceded him, we first need to understand his Christology as distinctly his Christology. Regardless of which, any particular piece of his argument is radically new, we should recognize that the manner in which he configures a teaching broadly drawn from the Church's tradition puts a definitive stamp on the teaching, making it Calvin's own. As I tell my students yearly, what makes a theology unique and powerful is, as often as not, the particular emphases within a broader consensus or a subtle nuance in expression within a shared vision that help to shape the spiritual life in one direction or another. Such emphases and nuance must first be recognized in their relation to the topography in which they are embedded before they can most fruitfully be held up for comparison with other theological landscapes. This book is as much about such emphases and nuance in Calvin's work as it is about any set of theological nova. Thus, after chapter 1, in which we get a broad sense of how Calvin would distinguish his Christological landscape from at least one strand of the tradition that preceded him, I focus on the specific contours of Calvin's thinking in the belief that this is the primary context in which we can hear what was Christologically significant to him. A more comparative Christological work, looking at a variety of types of Christology within the theological traditions of the medieval and Reformation periods, would be helpful; but such a work would depend on efforts like this one, which explore the constitutive parts from which this larger quilt would be sewn.20
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