Trying to drag Christ from heaven

Calvin's Institutes (1559)
Book 4 of 4 - External Means by which God Invites Us into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein

Chapter 17 - The Lord's Supper; what it brings to us

16-31 - No omnipresence of Christ's body; spiritual communion

[Deals with the Lutheran view]

20. Their most plausible objection is Christ's own words: "This is my body." This cannot be true in a literal sense, that bread is Jesus' body, lest it must be true that God is bread. "The bread is called the body in a sacramental sense.... Christ's words... ought not to be tested by grammar." This isn't to "diminish anything of that communication of Christ's body, which I have confessed."

21. "This is My Body" is a metaphor, like "Circumcision is a covenant" (Gen 17:13); "the lamb is the passover" (Ex 12:11); "the sacrifices... are expiations" (Lev 17:11; Heb 9:22; and "the rock... was Christ" (1 Cor 10:4). Because sign and reality are so closely connected "the name of the visible sign is given to the thing signified."

22. They don't allow "is" to be a figure of speech in this phrase, but it clearly is in 1 Cor 10:16; Gen 17:13; Ex 12:11; 1 Cor 10:4; John 7:39; Titus 3:5; 1 Cor 12:12. Why not here?

23. If we have to be this literal with our words all the time, figures of speech about God will become "boundless barbarism." Ex 15:3; Deut 11:12; 1 Kings 8:29; Job 7:8; Num 11:18; 2 Sam 22:7; 2 Kings 19:28; Isa 5:25; 23:11; Jer 1:9; 6:12; Isa 66:1; Matt 5:35; Acts 7:49. Also, "if we insist precisely upon the words," it wouldn't make sense to separate the body and blood. The bread is as literally blood, and the wine as literally the body.

24. They accuse us of believing nothing outside of common sense. As if "it is from physics we have learned that Christ feeds our souls from heaven with His flesh." We don't restrict what God could do, but what He has willed to do. "Flesh must therefore be flesh."

25. They think we have to overturn the whole order of nature to affirm God's power and mystery, here. They don't want to know how it works, but if a reasonable answer is ready, why not take it? Mystery remains, but we may inquire how it happens, like Mary - Luke 1:34.

26. The Spirit tells us Christ's body is finite and "contained in heaven" (see Acts 3:21), not Aristotle as they accuse us of relying on reason. Christ says He will leave - John 14:12, 28; 16:7; 12:8; Matt 26:8-11. He is not here but in heaven - Mark 16:6, 19. His departing and ascending are not in appearance only, but real, physically. He is still with us, "in majesty, in providence, and in ineffable grace" in the sacraments, according to Augustine.

27. They say of the Ascension of Christ that He was only removed from sight to show He isn't visible here anymore. But the text says He was taken up to heaven, and will come back from there - Acts 1:9, 11.

28. They claim Augustine agrees with them, but they are wrong. He said that Christ withdrew bodily to be present spiritually. Augustine: "We ought not to think that [Christ's body] is everywhere diffused according to this fleshly form, for we ought to beware lest we so affirm the deity of the Man that we take away the reality of His body."

29. They make Christ's body double: visible in heaven, invisible on earth. This defies the definition of "body." It messes up our resurrection hope, Christ's body being the example for ours - Phil 3:20-21; Acts 3:21. Jesus wants to be sought not in the bread, but in heaven. This is why He told Mary not to cling to Him in John 20:17. They claim evidence that Christ went through door, and disappeared from the two on the Emmaus Road (John 20:19; Luke 24:31), but this doesn't prove Jesus is invisibly, bodily omnipresent on earth.

30. This idea is "monstrous." Matt 28:20 doesn't mean bodily presence. They make Christ's human and divine natures a unity, like the early Eutychean heresy. The scholastics were right to say that "although the whole Christ is everywhere, still the whole of that which is in Him is not everywhere."

31. Christ is not brought down to us; we are lifted up to Him. "We do not think it lawful for us to drag [Christ] from heaven."

We are lifted up to heaven

Calvin's Institutes (1559)
Book 4 of 4 - External Means by which God Invites Us into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein

Chapter 17 - The Lord's Supper; what it brings to us

16-31 - No omnipresence of Christ's body; spiritual communion

[Deals with the Lutheran view]

16. This would be fine if they just said the truth is connected with the sign, but they insist on "a ubiquity [of Christ's body] contrary to its nature." In the end they "insist on the local presence of Christ," ruling out a spiritual partaking of His physical body.

17. Their view of Christ's body is that it was always omnipresent, but came to us in Incarnation, death, resurrection appearances and ascension to show us that "He was made king in heaven." This reduces His earthly ministry to docetism (it only appeared to us to be so). What body did Jesus offer His disciples in the bread, then, when instituting that Lord's Supper?

18. If Christ's body is in the elements it'll be torn apart: is it in the bread, then the wine? Body without blood? Blood without flesh? No, "we are lifted up to heaven... to seek Christ there..... He feeds His people with His own body... by the power of His Spirit."

19. We can't diminish Christ's heavenly glory by subjecting Him to earthly elements; and we can't ascribe inappropriate things to His earthly nature, making Him infinite in that way.

Chewed by the teeth?

Calvin's Institutes (1559)
Book 4 of 4 - External Means by which God Invites Us into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein

Chapter 17 - The Lord's Supper; what it brings to us

11-15 - Relation of symbol and reality misstated; transubstantiation

11. So the Supper is not just to give a bare mental assurance, "but to enjoy true participation with Him." It is to grow in union with Him, and to "feel His power."

12. The Roman error from Satan is that "Christ is attached to the element of bread!" He is not locally present, but remains in heaven. The Spirit makes the union real, anyway - Rom 8:9.

13. Lombard and Rome say the bread is a mask for the physical body of Christ under it.

14. They can only explain this with the "fiction" of transubstantiation. Ancient writers spoke of the elements as "converted," yes. But they meant that there was something more going on than just bread and wine, not that the earthly bread and wine were annihilated and replaced with Jesus' physical body. God uses physical bread to witness that "His flesh is food."

15. The root of this error is thinking the consecration does some magic. They claim for back-up the instance when the rods being changed to serpents, yet were called rods (Ex 7). But there was an actual change to be seen there. No, the bread is a seal and sacrament "only to those persons to whom the word is directed."

Our souls fed by the flesh and blood of Christ

Calvin's Institutes (1559)
Book 4 of 4 - External Means by which God Invites Us into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein

Chapter 17 - The Lord's Supper; what it brings to us

8-10 - Communion brought about by the Holy Spirit

8. We lost communion with God in our sin. We must be restored to it, to live. This has begun, body and soul, in believers - John 6:48, 51-2, 55-6.

9. We must partake of Christ's body and blood to "aspire to heavenly life." We see this in Eph 1:23 (The church is the body of Christ); 4:15-16 (He is the head; we are the body); 1 Cor 6:15 (our bodies are members of Him); Eph 5:30 ("we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones"). "It would be extreme madness to recognize no communion of believers with the flesh and blood of the Lord" when Paul marvels at the mystery, rather than explaining it.

10. The flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls, in the Supper. This only happens by union. The Spirit "unites things separated in space." This is why 1 Cor 10:16 calls the cup a "participation in His blood." It isn't just a figure of speech. There is symbolism, but also the reality for those who believe. Whenever we see the sacraments we should "be persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is surely present there." Why would He give you the symbol, and not the reality?

Overwhelmed by the greatness

Calvin's Institutes (1559)
Book 4 of 4 - External Means by which God Invites Us into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein

Chapter 17 - The Lord's Supper; what it brings to us

4-7 - Promise sealed - partaking of Christ's body a mystery

4. The point isn't just to offer us Christ, but to confirm the truth that He nourishes us. He is our bread (John 6:48, 50, 55-6), not because He is offered at the Supper, but because of what He did at the cross (1 Pet 3:22) and resurrection (1 Cor 15:53-54).

5. Applying these events to our lives is done by Gospel preaching, "but more clearly through the Sacred Supper." We should neither separate the spiritual reality of the Sacrament from the symbols "by too little regard for the signs," nor obscure the reality "by extolling [the symbols] immoderately." The Supper shows that partaking of Christ is more than "mere knowledge:" we don't just see the bread, we eat it. Our spiritual life is fed by union with Christ, not just knowing about Him.

6. Augustine and Chrysostom said this, too: it's okay to say that the physical eating is like spiritual faith, as long as that faith is more than "mere imagining" or seeing, but involves union with and partaking of Christ.

7. We don't understand the Supper fully, but something is more is going on than partaking of the Spirit only, "omitting [Christ's] flesh and blood." That error of omission isn't as great as Rome's transubstantiation nonsense, though. "My mind is conquered and overwhelmed by the greatness of the thing [meaning of the Lord's Supper]".

Consider them as if Christ were here present

Calvin's Institutes (1559)
Book 4 of 4 - External Means by which God Invites Us into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein

Chapter 17 - The Lord's Supper; what it brings to us

1-3 - It provides spiritual food

1. Taking us as His sons, God nourishes us at "a spiritual banquet." The bread and wine represent "the invisible food that we receive from the flesh and blood of Christ." Regeneration comes by means of baptism; He sustains us in this new life by Communion. "Christ is the only food of our soul." Our union with Christ is a mystery, so God gives this picture for us. As food feeds our bodies, so Christ feeds our souls. God "renews, or rather continues, the covenant which He once for all ratified with His blood... whenever He proffers that sacred blood for us to taste."

2. The supper witnesses our union with Christ, which makes posssible the great exchange: He takes our sin while we are "clothed with His righteousness.... By His descent to earth, He has prepared an ascent to heaven for us."

3. "Almost [the] entire force of the Sacrament lies in these words: 'which is given for you,' 'which is shed for you.'" Jesus Himself is offered in the Supper, as nourishment for us.

Let us offer our infants to Him

Calvin's Institutes (1559)
Book 4 of 4 - External Means by which God Invites Us into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein

Chapter 16 - Infant Baptism fits with the nature of baptism

31-32 - Servetus

31. Calvin deals with 20 weak objections by Servetus.

32. Satan "is trying to take away from us the singular fruit of assurance and spiritual joy which is to be gathered from [infant baptism].... Unless we wish spitefully to obscure God's goodness, let us offer our infants to Him, for He gives them a place among those of His family and household, that is, the members of the church."