Calvin: The Most Misunderstood Theologian of the Reformation

Michael Horton:
Does this sound like irresistible grace? God has endowed the will of man with that natural liberty, so that it is neither forced nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good or evil. We even say in our confession—Calvin said in the Institutes—Adam and Eve sinned of their own free will. The reason the will is bound is not because of the sovereignty of God and predestination. The reason the will is bound is because of sin.

Bob Hiller:
That’s great.

Michael Horton:
So it’s God’s regenerating grace that frees the will to freely embrace Christ. 

Michael Horton:

Well, John Calvin had a mean view of God and a terrible view of human beings: they’re as bad as they can possibly be. God’s sovereignty is the center of John Calvin’s thinking; predestination is his main idea, and everything emanates from this core doctrine of predestination. No free will, no human responsibility. Calvinism is against missions and evangelism. And besides that, as if that weren’t enough, Calvin had Michael Servetus burned at the stake, as well as witches and all kinds of Anabaptists. He just threw a lot of people on the fire. So that’s Calvin and the Reformed tradition, according to many people. Whenever you read about it in the newspaper—New York Times, just not that long ago, I saw that kind of representation of Calvin and the Reformed tradition. Here to talk about that are my good friends: Bob Hiller, Walter Strickland, and Justin Holcomb. I’m Mike Horton. So, brothers, we talked in the last program about Luther and misunderstandings about Luther. I think Calvin is the most misunderstood figure of the Reformation.

First of all, let me just say: Calvin is not the center of the Reformed tradition. Martin Bucer, who was really Calvin’s mentor, left a huge imprint on the Reformed tradition, as well as, you know, the Anglican wing of the Reformed tradition—Peter Martyr Vermigli, for example. The same could be said of Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian reformer who was a great influence on the Reformed tradition. You just go down the list. And so, just as you said, Bob, in the Lutheran tradition, don’t pick up something Calvin wrote and say, “Well, this is what we confess.” Look at our confessions. And here, for example, is what the Westminster Confession says about human beings and free will:

“God has endowed the will of man with that natural liberty so that it is neither forced nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good or evil.” And then the chapter on God’s providence also says, “When God ordains what will come to pass, neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures. Nor is the liberty or contingency of secondary causes taken away, but rather established”—perfectly in line with the way Thomas Aquinas talks about it. So there really is an Augustinian tradition here that flows right into Luther’s Bondage of the Will. His mentor, Johann von Staupitz, wrote a treatise on the eternal predestination of God against the new Pelagians. And basically, you have everything in there that Calvin would ever teach about the subject. And Luther’s Bondage of the Will—Calvin even said, “There are some things said there… The way I wouldn’t say it that way—it’s a little too extreme.”

Bob Hiller:
Just a quick side note. Did you know even Melanchthon didn’t like that thing? In Luther’s funeral address, Melanchthon’s like ripping on the Bondage of the Will because he thought it went too far.

Michael Horton:
Well, and unfortunately Melanchthon moved in that synergistic direction that just made Calvin pull his hair out—because they were such good friends. But, there again, Calvin translated his Loci Communes—basically his systematic theology—translated it into French. And people said, “Well, what about the free will and everything, conditional election? God chose those he foresaw. This is against what Luther taught and what you teach.” Calvin said, “Yeah, but the rest of it’s good.” Calvin wrote the Geneva Catechism, which nobody uses—no Reformed churches use now. But the Geneva Catechism doesn’t have anything on election and predestination. The Heidelberg Catechism only mentions predestination in passing, under the Church: “the full number of the elect visible in this world as a mixed assembly”; Belgic Confession. That’s why the Arminians could claim that they were still Reformed, and why the Canons of the Synod of Dort had to affirm a strong view of predestination, and particular redemption, and regeneration as a monergistic act, and perseverance of the saints—so that the Arminians wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

Bob Hiller:
So one of the big critiques I always hear of the Reformed tradition is what you’re addressing there—that predestination is the core of everything. I think you would say, obviously that is not an accurate depiction of how you really want to think about the theological system in the Reformed Church. But, therefore, would you say, so what is it? Is it TULIP? Because that’s the other side of it: I always hear, “Well, it’s the TULIP acronym—Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.” That’s Reformed theology. Like, would Calvin agree with that? And then really, what’s a better way of thinking about Reformed theology?

Michael Horton:
It’s a great, great question.

Justin Holcomb:
Just how much did Calvin write about predestination? Because people—I mean, he’s writing things on psalms and prayer, and you’ve said before, you know, “this much is predestination, this much is on…” Which is kind of interesting.

Bob Hiller:
Yeah, very interesting, right.

Justin Holcomb:
Just fold that into it.

Michael Horton:
Sure. In fact, Calvin’s Institutes, which were written basically to train pastors on the run from persecution—

Bob Hiller:
On the run, with very strong backs, because it’s a very big book!

Michael Horton:
But the first edition really didn’t have much on election at all. But then you started having these disputations, just like Erasmus stoked the fire that Luther decided to respond to with Bondage of the Will. Calvin was responding to Roman Catholic apologists who were really anti-Augustinian. There’s nothing that Calvin taught about predestination that wasn’t already taught by Thomas Aquinas and by Bonaventure, Thomas Bradwardine, the medieval Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote The Case of God against the New Pelagians. There is this strong Augustinian current that was certainly there with Luther, as an Augustinian monk. And Augustine was Calvin’s favorite patristic theologian. So it became more important as it was rejected, as it was denied—but it was never a central dogma.

First of all, you know, the whole idea of a central dogma comes out of 19th-century German historiography where you find the central dogma—it’s very Hegelian: find the central dogma of any system and you can deduce what everything else will be out of that central dogma. So, sovereignty of God for Calvinism; deduce all sorts of things. And then justification for Lutheranism. B.B. Warfield kicks that out of the park, just absolutely decimates it. And he makes the point: really, the fatherhood of God and the mediatorial role of Christ is more apt as the center of Calvin’s thinking. His idea of an indulgent and merciful God.

Justin Holcomb:
Gratuitous and merciful.

Michael Horton:
Gratuitous.

Justin Holcomb:
Extravagant.

Michael Horton:
Gratuitous. Yeah, liberal. He uses those terms a lot for God. And in the Institutes he treats election—he talks about it under Providence a little bit. But where he really treats election is after prayer, not after “T” (Total Depravity)—after prayer. Why? Because of a pastoral question.

How do I know my prayers for non-Christians have any value? How do I know that praying that someone will be saved has any efficacy if God has already predestined who’s saved? And everybody believed that in the Middle Ages; in the seminaries, in the schools, it was a standard slogan to say: “Christ’s death is sufficient for the sins of the whole world, efficient for the elect only.” And so that is quoted in the Canons of the Synod of Dort. It’s not invented by the Canons of Dort. You find it in Thomas Aquinas also. It’s not at all a central dogma. It’s a pastoral question: how do I know that I’m really saved? And Calvin believed only by looking to Christ. If you look to Christ—he called him “the mirror of our election”— If you look to Christ, then you know your election. If you look away from Christ, you can’t know your election. And you go down into a labyrinth, as he called it. So it’s very much like Luther’s “hidden God, revealed God.” You only find a saving God through the mediator, Jesus Christ. And so that’s really the focus of Calvin’s thinking. And the Reformed tradition was very clear all along. I read from the Westminster Confession, but also in the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism…

That’s why irresistible grace is not—does this sound like irresistible grace? “God has endowed the will of man with that natural liberty that it is neither forced nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil.” We even say in our confession—Calvin said in the Institutes—Adam and Eve sinned of their own free will. The reason that the will is bound is not because of the sovereignty of God and predestination. The reason the will is bound is because of sin.

Bob Hiller:
That’s great.

Michael Horton:
So it’s God’s regenerating grace that frees the will to freely embrace Christ.

Justin Holcomb:
Okay, while Mike was setting it up, I just want to ask: Calvin was a tyrant. He’s drowning Anabaptists. He is executing Servetus. He’s executing witches. Geneva’s a theocracy, and Calvin is a tyrant. And here you are talking about the center of his theology being the gratuitous mercy and extravagant love of the Father—fatherly liberality. That doesn’t fit. All this pastoral stuff, the tyranny stuff—

Michael Horton:
Yeah. First of all, Calvin couldn’t have been a tyrant because he didn’t even get his way when it came to the church. All he wanted was for the Company of Pastors—the consistory—to be able to determine its own affairs. See, the city paid the salaries, the city determined what the church calendar would be, the city determined how many times communion would be celebrated. The city wanted communion to be celebrated during the six festival days of the calendar. Calvin wanted the Supper to be celebrated, as he put it, every time the Word is preached—or at least weekly. And the city council said no.

So the traditional thing in Lutheran and Reformed discipline was that the civil power exercised discipline; the church did not. And that was true in Geneva until Calvin tried to wrest the discipline of the church away from the state and say, “The state only has power over the body, not over the soul. And we are shepherds of the flock, and we will determine what the church calendar looks like. We’ll determine as pastors how we’ll care for the flock.” And that was never followed. Calvin, to his dying day, never had the freedom for the church that he wanted. Far from being a tyrant, it was the city council that made all the decisions. And the city council decided that Servetus should be burned.

Now, let me just tell that story a little bit. Calvin actually left Geneva to go to a prison in France where Servetus—Michael Servetus, who was an Anabaptist and also an Arian (he denied the Trinity) but was a famous physician in France—was being held in Vienne to be burned at the stake the next morning. Calvin went to the prison under the cover of darkness and tried to convert him, and he was unsuccessful. So Calvin came back, and he thought Servetus would be burned the next day. He wasn’t, because he escaped. Servetus escaped. And then, lo and behold, one day he shows up in St. Peter’s Cathedral, as Calvin is preaching, and interrupts the sermon, vilely attacking the Trinity. Well, this is a capital crime in Christendom. And so the police take Servetus away. Calvin still goes to his cell and tries to talk him out of it, with no success. The city council then goes—not to Calvin—but to Melanchthon and to the other leaders in the Reformed churches and asks them what they think should be done. And they all agree, including Melanchthon.

Bob Hiller:
Can’t blame him for everything, but okay.

Michael Horton:
Well, he’s called “Gentle Melanchthon!”

Bob:
I know I know! This is great. It’s amazing.

Michael Horton:
And you wouldn’t think that he would go along with this, but he said, “absolutely, you have to.”

Bob Hiller:
Fascinating.

Michael Horton:
He has to be executed. Otherwise, the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope will say we’re not even Christian. And so it was still a united church and state, so you still had to do that. And so Calvin didn’t have Servetus burned; the city council had him burned, on the request of the whole Protestant movement. He was going to be burned by the Roman Inquisition, but escaped. So everybody wanted Servetus burned. Now, having said that, you could almost exonerate Calvin from that part, but not what came afterwards. Calvin then wrote a treatise defending—under the guise of defending the doctrine—the idea; he was really defending his action there and the action of the city council. He wrote a treatise on the necessity of corporal punishment for those who deny the Trinity.

Bob Hiller:
Interesting.

Michael Horton:
He wasn’t a tyrant. He didn’t burn witches. He didn’t burn Anabaptists.

Justin Holcomb:
I said drowned Anabaptists.

Michael Horton:
Well, Zwingli drowned Anabaptists.

Justin Holcomb:
I’m just being clear.

Michael Horton:
But you couldn’t live in Geneva if you were an Anabaptist. You couldn’t live in Geneva if you were a witch. Calvin’s own stepdaughter was a prostitute and she couldn’t live in Geneva. But that was true in Wittenberg; that was true anywhere in Christendom at that time. It’s horrible, what he wrote. You know, we talk about Luther—Luther, those horrible things that he said…

Sam:
About Jews—

Michael Horton:
About Jews, yeah. Well, Calvin, horrible things that he said about why—basically what Catholics had been saying for centuries about misinterpreting Paul: punishing his body so that his soul might be saved.

Walter Strickland:
And, Mike, just for our listeners who are kind of hearing us talk about these documents—are they something that people should invest their time into reading, or is this something that we should just hear about and just move on to his more helpful works? What do you think about that? Because I often get that question when people are hearing about the clay feet of a hero: “Well, you’ve got to read them exhaustively,” or “Don’t, because this is just a part of their legacy that we should just cast off to the side.” What do you think about that?

Michael Horton:
Well, I think that we can’t just say, “Well, they are people of their time, they’re people of their age.” There were plenty of people, including Reformed theologians, who lamented Calvin’s defense of executing anti-Trinitarian heretics: “Isn’t it time to stop doing this? I thought we had a Reformation so that we only used the word of God and not the sword!” There were people of Calvin’s day—highly respected people: Martin Bucer, his mentor, for example—who didn’t agree with it. And so there were plenty of people of Calvin’s day who did not share Calvin’s view. And it’s a blot on his career. And I think it’s so helpful to study the history because you know a little bit more.

I wrote a book, Calvin on the Christian Life, where I talk about his personality and so forth. You know, I might not have wanted to hang out with Calvin a lot. He was always sick; he was always in pain; he always had something going on health-wise; a workaholic; didn’t like to be disturbed. But he was a wonderful husband to a woman who had left Anabaptism to become Reformed. And he married her after her husband had died, became a father to those children.

So he was tender. There were really aspects—when he lived in Strasbourg, he and Idelette had a hostel for people in Strasbourg who wanted to live in their house. Kind of like Luther and Kate. But Calvin was intensely defensive and did not like to be criticized and had a very—you know, if Luther was kind of proud and impetuous, Calvin was tight and really liked to nail things down. That’s why I think he and Melanchthon were good friends: because they really did not like overheated rhetoric, they didn’t like overstatement. They wanted theology to be done—everything in order. And I think that’s true about Calvin.

Justin Holcomb:
You just described Mike: defensive and wanting to get it right the first time and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you and I are friends, so you hang out with me.

Michael Horton:
Yeah, you’re very much like Calvin. But I do like hanging out with you—so maybe I would have liked hanging out with Calvin.

Justin Holcomb:
He would have been just fine with us.

Michael Horton:
Well, and people also think of Reformed—the, you know, killjoy. You know, Calvin must have just been looking for anybody who’s having fun and chopping off their hands. Calvin was paid most of his salary in wine and beer.

Justin Holcomb:
Yep.

Michael Horton:
Now, he wasn’t a drunk.

Justin Holcomb:
We keep on saying that about our guys!

Walter Strickland:
Well, I won’t.

Bob Hiller:
Will that come up in Walter’s episode?

Michael Horton:
All right. But, yeah, he said in the Institutes: “God has not forbidden us to laugh or to have good wine or to add new clothes to old ones.” And he said, “Why, if God is so stingy—as the monks believe, you have to wear a hair shirt and you can’t drink wine, only water, and only—not the best water—but if you’re going to go down that road, why did God make so many shades of green?”

Bob Hiller:
I love it. I think my favorite—I love that line. It’s so good.

Justin Holcomb:
In his writing. I mean, just on that—and I want to go to another topic—but he writes beautifully. I know people who know Latin, French, and the way they talk about the beauty of his writing and the intentionality of what was going on. I’ve heard one scholar say, “I don’t like reading Calvin at all for the content, but I love reading his writing.”

Bob Hiller:
Interesting.

Justin Holcomb:
I thought that was just a neat way to put it.

Michael Horton:
He was a product of the French Renaissance. I mean, he really, really was. His first book was a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia—On Clemency. By the way, On clemency, because he said—and here he would differ from Luther a little bit—that equity, everything should be judged by equity. Not the laws of Moses, but by the principle of equity, which is natural law. Well, what is that? He said, justice tempered by love. Justice tempered by love. And part of that was based on the work that he did on Seneca. So he knew Cicero. And this first book of Calvin’s was used as a textbook in the law schools of France during the Renaissance.

Walter Strickland:
So, Mike, as I’m teaching my students—and I teach at a Baptist seminary, we have the General and Particular Baptists there in the classroom. For those who aren’t aware of that terminology, that’s a more Calvinistic leaning—either Amyraldian or Five Point Calvinist—and some Arminians in the room. And for those who are more Arminian in their theological perspective, when they hear about Calvinism and a limited atonement, they shudder at the idea that God doesn’t love the lost. You know, there’s a grand missiological ethos, to use the Bebbington Quadrilateral language, and, you know, there’s an activism that you really see amongst Baptists that’s pretty pronounced. So many of the people that I teach who are considering the doctrines of grace, they sort of shudder at the idea that God doesn’t love the lost. So how would you help them better understand their concern, their misunderstanding?

Michael Horton:
Sure. Well, I would start, first of all, with the empirical evidence—the fact that the first Protestant missionaries sent to the New World were from Calvin’s Geneva. Calvin was passionate about missions. He told the underground pastors of the Reformed churches—the Huguenots in France—“Send us your best wood and we’ll send you back arrows.” The joke was that their diploma was their death sentence. A diploma from Geneva was their death sentence in France. Lots of missions—missions to Poland and elsewhere. Calvin was very missions-minded.

The Reformed tradition generally was very missions-minded. And that’s true of the modern missionary movement; a lot of the leading—David Livingstone, William Carey, Hudson Taylor—Calvinists were at the forefront of a lot of modern missionary movements. So it didn’t actually turn out that way. George Whitefield, a Calvinistic Anglican, and Charles Spurgeon, a Calvinistic Baptist—these are some of the greatest evangelists you could imagine. So empirically, Calvinistic theology more broadly has encouraged and inspired a lot of missionary activity. Why, if you believe that God has not chosen everybody to be saved? Because you don’t know who the elect are—we’re not called to preach the gospel to the elect. We’re called to say, “Come unto me.” Jesus says, “Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “My sheep hear my voice.” We don’t go find the sheep and then speak the gospel to them; we preach the gospel to everyone. And it’s up to the Holy Spirit to call through that gospel whomever He will. That’s none of our business—to figure out who the elect are. It’s to proclaim the gospel to everyone.

And God so loved the world—everybody—that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes, by the grace of God, should never perish but have everlasting life. God so loved the world, he chose people from every tribe and kindred and tongue and nation to belong to his Son who would otherwise perish. And that’s the mercy of God. And it’s very important for people to understand, you know, in Reformed theology we say, “God’s treatment of the non-elect is not equivalent or symmetrical with his treatment of the elect.” God has to, as it were, go through a lot of trouble to save the elect. He doesn’t have to do anything to not save the non-elect. He just leaves them.

As Paul says, one lump—from one lump He takes. He just passes over the non-elect. He’s not actively… And this is why we call it an active decree to save the elect and a passive decree to pass over the rest, because God is free in His mercy. So God is not out there actively making people reject Jesus. He is out there actively freeing people from bondage—the bondage of their will—to embrace Jesus Christ, who otherwise would not.

Walter Strickland:
That’s very helpful, Mike. And I think in our culture that assumes that justice equals, like, “We have to treat everybody the same”—well, God is just to give people the wages of their sin, which is death. But he’s so, in his fatherly mercy, as we were saying earlier, he offers grace and salvation to the elect.

Michael Horton:
Yeah, and he regenerates the elect so that they can embrace it. Their will is now freed to embrace it. So that’s why I don’t like “irresistible grace.” So, the TULIP arose at the beginning of the 20th century in America. There is no TULIP anywhere in any of our confessions. These are not terms that I like very much: total depravity—

Justin Holcomb:
You can tell by the tone of the week: TULIP from 20th century…

Michael Horton:
So, like “total depravity”—first of all, we don’t start at the Fall. We start at creation and the goodness of creation. Calvin and the Reformed tradition even gripe at the Roman Catholic tradition for having too grim a view of human nature, because they say, “concupiscence: man sinned because the lower part of the soul was dragged down by the body and its passions.” Calvin said, “No, it didn’t. No, it didn’t.” The Fall happened in the very citadel of the highest part of his mind and soul.

And so this is not a part of us that is just kind of weak or fallen. We naturally have free will, just like I quoted the Westminster Confession—natural liberty. We don’t have moral liberty. The problem isn’t that we’re missing a part, or that our will doesn’t work right. The problem is that our will is warped now. Our will is turned inward on ourselves so that we don’t look out to Christ for our salvation. We have to be freed for that to happen.

So “total depravity” makes it sound like people are as bad as they can possibly be. No, it just means that our whole person—there’s no place in us (our intellect, our will, our body, our soul), there’s no place in us where Christ finds a safe landing. He has to regenerate us. He has to save us. “Unconditional election,” that’s fine. “Limited atonement” makes it sound like God says, “Sorry, I know you want it, but there’s not enough for you.”

Justin Holcomb:
Scarcity mentality.

Michael Horton:
Horrible! A scarcity issue. No, it’s not limited. It is efficacious. He doesn’t make salvation possible through the death of Christ; He actually saves his people from their sins. And it’s available—there’s enough, not only for every human being in the world, but if there are people on other planets, there’s enough for them, too.

“Irresistible grace.” No, He doesn’t coerce us. It’s not like He forces us to believe. A lot of people have this misconception of Calvinism because of TULIP. I love in the Canons of Dort, it says, “The Holy Spirit through the gospel sweetly inclines our heart to embrace the gospel.” That’s not coercion. I don’t like “irresistible grace.” I don’t like that term. That’s not what the Bible teaches. “Perseverance of the Saints” is great—now, that’s terrific. Better even, “the Preservation of the Saints by God,” but the saints do persevere because God perseveres with them. God will finish what He starts. So go to the confessions. Don’t go to little sound bites that people come up with, either friends or foes. Go to the confessions. And there’s more on the sacraments in our confessions than there is on predestination or election, that’s for sure.

Bob Hiller:
I think we have time for one more question—speaking of the sacraments. Calvin was not Zwingli in his view of the sacraments, which is a pure memorialist, but Justin had, I think, in the last episode—Justin, you said, “Lutherans are accused of being Eutychian and the Reformed are Nestorian.” I don’t remember how you worded it.

Justin Holcomb:
That’s the misconception, yeah.

Bob Hiller:
Oh, the misconception that they’re Nestorian. Got it. So talk to me about Reformed Christology. So let me preface this question this way: I’ve read or I’ve heard, and you can help me on this, that because of Calvin’s Christology and the way he wants to maintain the humanity of Christ, he does some things with the scriptures. Like: when Jesus walks on water, he doesn’t actually walk on water, but the water miraculously becomes like a sidewalk or something like this for Jesus. When Jesus appears in the upper room, he doesn’t kind of come through the door, but he comes underneath the door. Are these accurate depictions of Calvin, because the humanity of Christology, the humanity of Christ, needs to be maintained? Or how does he think Christologically, in terms of the sacrament and that sort of business?

Michael Horton:
Well, the background here for Calvin is the Creed of Chalcedon.

Bob Hiller:
I heard of it.

Michael Horton:
What Justin was talking about—distinction without separation—I argue in Calvin on the Christian Life that that Chalcedonian formula runs throughout Calvin’s entire corpus of writing.

Bob Hiller:
Interesting.

Michael Horton:
Yeah. It’s the way he talks about the sign and the thing signified in the sacraments, it’s the way he talks about the relationship between the Word preached and regeneration, it’s baptism and regeneration. He talks about distinction without separation all over the place. The Law and the Gospel. In Reformed Christology, we can say that Mary is the mother of God, and we can, with Paul—Acts 20:28—refer to “the blood of God,” because the one who bled is God, and the one who was born of Mary is God.

Bob Hiller:
Right, right.

Michael Horton:
Not because the attributes of the divinity penetrate the humanity, but because the one person has these two natures. We like to even say “one person in two natures.” It’s not like two boards glued together. So basically, does the human nature retain its humanity? Our question isn’t logic—I mean, our question isn’t how do you explain everything rationally for us? The issue is: do we lose the humanity of Christ? And if we lose the humanity of Christ united to his divinity, then will our humanity that is united to him be raised in the same way he was raised and glorified in the same way he is glorified now? What he did not assume, he did not heal, and what he does not keep, will not be kept for us. That is the main point for it.

Well, so what does that mean in the sacraments? It means that the Holy Spirit is the one who unites us to Christ. And so, if we can be said to be seated with Christ in heavenly places, as Paul says already now, that can only be because the Holy Spirit unites us to the person of Christ. He really does unite us to him. And in every sacrament, there is a sign and a thing signified. The sign—water, bread and wine; the thing signified—regeneration, new birth, the Holy Spirit indwelling; and then, with the Lord’s Supper, the body and blood of Christ. So, Zwingli said that it is just a metaphor: “This is my body, this is my blood.” That’s just a metaphor; he was speaking metaphorically. And Calvin said, “No, absolutely not.” He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. It was a synecdoche. What is a synecdoche? Does that make anything better? Well, a synecdoche is when you refer to a part of something as the whole: like, “It’s so good to see your face.” Well, I mean, it’s so good to see you—not just your face, but it’s good to see your face. And in the same way Jesus: “This is my body, this is my blood, this is my sacrifice.” This bread and wine communicate to you the benefits of my redemption. And you can’t have the benefits of Christ without Christ himself. And so Paul says, “This body that we break is the participation in the body of Christ. The bread we break—participation (koinonia) in the body of Christ—the cup that we share…”

So it is the body and blood of Christ, we say in our liturgy, for example, for baptism, we say, “We thank the Lord, we thank the Holy Spirit for giving this child the gift of salvation and treating the child as he or she grows up as part of the family of God, a child of God.” We talk about in the Belgic Confession, we confess what we receive in the Lord’s Supper is nothing less than the crucified body and shed blood of Christ our Savior. So how does that happen? We don’t know. As Calvin said, “I would rather adore the mystery than understand it.” So it’s not rationalization, it’s not all that. It’s just—we want to be sure that what we’re receiving is nothing less than the crucified body and shed blood of Christ. How we receive it is mysterious because the Holy Spirit is the one who does it. Some people say, “It’s a spiritual view; we feed on Christ’s spirit.” No, it’s “by the Holy Spirit”—that’s why it’s spiritual feeding: it’s by the Holy Spirit that we truly, really feed on the true body and blood of Christ. The Holy Spirit can do that, because the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ.