Reading in John Calvin’s sermons on 2 Samuel today, I came across this wonderful statement. This comes from a sermon preached on July 3, 1562, “The True Worship of God,” an exposition of 2 Sam. 6:1-7. Calvin is discussing the implications of the affirmation that Yaweh, the God of Israel, “dwells between the cherubim.”
“Nevertheless, in order that we might know that God does not want to frustrate us, and that the signs which he gives us are not frivolous and empty baggage, like toys for little children, it says that God truly dwells between the cherubim. This does not mean that his essence is enclosed in the ark, but that he wishes to display his virtue there for the salvation of his people. Similarly, today in the waters of baptism, it is the same as if the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ poured down from heaven to water our souls and cleanse them from their uncleanness. When we have the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, it is the same as if Jesus Christ were coming down from heaven and making himself our food, so that we could be filled with him. We must not, therefore, take these signs as visible things and figures that are to feed our spiritual senses, but are to realize that God joins his virtue and truth to them, so that the thing and the effect are joined to the figure. We must not put asunder what God has joined together”.1
COMMENT FROM JAMES B. JORDAN
Yes, the Directory is quite wrong at this point. Jesus said to take the bread in hand and give thanks. Then, after all have eaten, to take the cup of wine in hand and give thanks for it. Consecrating stuff plays no part in any Biblical ritual.
Whatever inconsistencies Calvin may have had in practice, his statement cited by Jeff is correct: We receive Jesus in the act of eating and drinking. This is called Dynamic Receptionism, true reception by the power of the Spirit. And, unlike Bullinger, Calvin’s view was not Parallelism, that we receive Christ along with bread and wine, but Instrumentalism, that we receive Christ by means of bread and wine.
Adding a rite of “setting apart” or consecrating elements is presumptuous, because we have no power to do such things. It also has led routinely to superstition and even idolatry. No. Only the bread that is eaten communicates Jesus to us; what is left over is only bread and never was anything else.
ADDITIONAL COMMENT FROM JAMES B. JORDAN
I should add that while the American 1928 Book of Common Prayer speaks of what is to be done with leftover “consecrated” bread and wine, the actual prayer of Invocation asks God to bless and sanctify the gifts and creatures in order THAT WE RECEIVING them may be partakers…. That is, all the prayer really asks is that the bread eaten and the wine drunk may communicate Christ to us.
And, this prayer comes AFTER the earlier prayer during which the minister takes the elements in hand while reminding God of the words of institution. Hence, in the actual rite, this initial handling of the elements cannot be taken as an act of consecration, since the minister asks for blessing to be given through the bread and wine after this.
The Episcopal rite contains no moment in which the minister “sets apart these elements from common use,” as way too many Presbyterians do. So, I would commend to all a consideration of the Anglican way in this particular matter. Properly considered, the Anglican use of the word “consecrate” only means prayer, and does not imply any change of status in the bread and wine as such.
One of my teachers, the great evangelical Anglican scholar Philip E. Hughes, was always most insistent on this matter!
Jeff Meyers is pastor of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. This piece was originally posted at the Biblical Horizons blog.
- (Sermons on 2 Samuel: John Calvin, trans. by Douglas Kelley [Banner of Truth, 1992], 236) ↩︎