Calvin. History and Reception of a Reformation Week 2. Calvin's Thought Sequence 5. Christ the Redeemer The identity and acts of Jesus Christ constitute the central question of Christian theology. On the one hand, the identity of Christ -- Christ as a person -- and, on the other, his actions, his accomplishments, his works. These are the two main themes of Calvin's Christology, as of countless other theologians'. For Calvin, Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, that is, he who saves, he who is -- in both his being and his acts -- the Mediator. Mediator is a key concept in Calvin's thought as it relates to Christ. Christ is a Mediator insofar as he brings together what was previously separated. He reconciles what was once divided; that which was no longer in a relationship, or that which was no longer in a sound relationship. Sin is a form of division; Christ's work is to reconcile that which has been divided. How is such a mediation possible? By God's sending His Son into the world, by God's assuming the human form in the person of His Son. In Christian theology, this is referred to as incarnation: God becomes flesh. God enters the material world, a world which God created and which God loves. The purpose of this mediation is for God's life to be communicated to God's entire creation -- in other words, to achieve communion between God and God's creation, God's creatures. God places himself on our level. Through His Son, God becomes visible, speaking to us in a language we can understand. As we've already seen, this theme of divine accommodation,
or divine condescension, is very important to Calvin. It is a theme borrowed by him from St John Chrysostom, the Greek Church Father, but one that is also prevalent in the writings of numerous other Christian theologians,
as well as in Jewish religious thought. God Most High descends to Earth and takes on human form -- fully human form. Christ is not half-human, half-divine, but fully divine and fully human. Jesus knew what it is to feel anxiety, fear of pain, of torture and of death. He felt sadness and the most absolute sense of dereliction, of abandonment by his friends and by God Himself. He experienced all these things without ever ceasing to be the Son of God, the Verb that fills and permeates the universe. The two natures of Christ coexist, but their unity is difficult for us to apprehend. Calvin has often been criticized for failing to sufficiently insist upon the unity of Christ, as if he were detaching the humanity of Christ from the divinity of the Verb. A distance seems to remain between Jesus the human being and Jesus the Verb of God. Is it possible that the divine Verb purposely maintains such a distance, even as Jesus is suffering and dying on the cross? In the name of God's majesty, liberty and glory, Calvin rejects any fusion -- any confusion, any amalgamation -- between Christ's humanity and his identity as Son of God. This is Calvin's foremost concern. Christ's divine properties are not transferable (or communicable) to his humanity, contrary to what Lutherans (following Luther) believed, namely, the possibility of a transfer (or transmission) of Christ's divine qualities towards, or into, his identity as a human. Such questions, complex and abstract as they may seem to us, have obvious consequences when it comes to the Lord's Supper (or Eucharist). Indeed, the question then becomes: how can Jesus' body be present in several places at once? This is known as the question of ubiquity. For Luther, ubiquity is possible precisely because of the transmissibility of Jesus' divine properties to his human identity. Calvin rejects this notion of transmissibility, or at the very least is less categorical on this point. To quote him directly: "the body of Jesus Christ is bounded by physical space just like any other human body.
Furthermore, [...] its ascension to heaven made it clear that it was not in all places at once
[here Calvin rejects the Lutheran notion of ubiquity], but that upon going to a new place, it left the one formerly occupied." Elsewhere, Calvin writes: "We say that it is not lawful to remove Him from heaven." The feast of the Ascension is important among Reformed Protestants. It symbolizes the departure from Earth of Jesus' corporeality (or humanity). Jesus confessed as Christ is the mediator insofar as he is both the Son of God -- no less divine than the Father and the Spirit -- and fully human. Thus Christ acts as a bridge between God the Creator and God's creation. Yet even before Christ's appearance on Earth in the flesh, he occupied the function of mediator by virtue of his being the divine Verb, the Word of God. It is through Christ that God creates all things. Here Calvin is following several passages in Scripture, beginning with the first few lines of the Bible, which emphasize the Verb, or Word, in the act of creation. The divine Verb -- Logos, in Greek -- is not confined to the human identity of Christ. The Son is more than the person of Jesus; it has not entirely "emptied itself" into Jesus. Calvin thus sets himself apart from what is known as kenotic theology (from the Greek kenosis, used in this context to mean "self-emptying"), the notion (subscribed to by Lutherans for the
most part, but not exclusively) according to which the Verb emptied itself -- if not entirely, at least
of certain of its divine qualities -- into Jesus. For Calvin, Christ "lost nothing of his majesty, nor was his eternal glory reduced or diminished." This is a point -- the refusal to reduce the Son of God to the person of Jesus -- upon which Calvin insisted more and more as he grew older. The Son is more than Jesus, goes beyond Jesus. This aspect of Calvin's thought, though present in the writings of many Church Fathers, is referred to as the "extra calvinisticum" (the Calvinistic beyond/outside). This term was coined by Lutherans in the 17th century. If there is a downside to the "extra calvinisticum," it is in the risk of separating Jesus from the Verb (Logos), of maintaining a distance between the Son of God
and the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. This risk was particularly highlighted and debated in 20th century theology. On the plus side, the "extra calvinisticum" allows for a positive interpretation of the world's various religious traditions, each of which can be considered
a historical space in which the Verb disseminated certain elements of truth. From Calvin's point of view, the act of God by which God descends into the human realm and meets man on man's level, is by no means the end point of Christian theology. The purpose of this descent, which reaches all the way down to hell, the place from which God is supposed to be absent, is a reconciliation, one which implies the elevation of man, just as Jesus Christ ascended towards his Father. Thus, inherent in God's descent is a corresponding elevation. Some might object that all these notions belong to the realm of myth, of religious fantasy, of imagination. For Calvin, however, far from being mythical, they are positively historical. Indeed, they relate to the materiality of God's entry -- through Jesus, through his assumption of the flesh -- into human history, with which he was already in relation. God does not merely contemplate history from above, from the clouds, but establishes a covenant with His creatures. In Christ, God is renewing this covenant, without revoking or discarding the previous one. Calvin often uses the word "adoption." Just like a child can be adopted, cared for and loved, humans are adopted by God. Through Jesus Christ, by entering into a relationship with the Son of God, humans themselves become sons and daughters of the Lord. God is the Father not only of His Son Jesus Christ, but also of each and every human being. This is important: God's love is unwavering, the paternity of God implies the fraternity of all human beings. This was an important notion among the "social Christians" (the social Gospel) of the late 19th/early 20th century. The paternity of God implies the fraternity of humans, with all the social and ethical consequences this entails. Though Christ is the mediator in his very being, we are able to know this because of what he did, because of his works. In Calvin's view, Christ's works were threefold and intimately related to the being of Christ. His being and his doing coincide. For Calvin, Christ is priest, king and prophet. He is like no other priest, king or prophet before him or after him. These are the three offices of Christ, the three aspects of his works. Theologians refer to this as the "munus triplex" (threefold office). As priest, Christ makes possible the reconciliation of the Creator and His creatures by sacrificing his own life. This is a voluntary sacrifice, not one imposed from without. Whereas man is and continues to be disobedient, Christ is obedient. Obedient until death, he appeases God's wrath towards prideful and rebellious humanity. With Christ's sacrifice of his life on the cross, the sources of life in God are once again able to reach those who had turned their backs on God. So that's Christ's office as priest. As king, Christ takes care of his people. Unlike some kings, he is no despot. His royalty is in the exercise of justice -- justice that is divine, unlike our imperfect human justice. Christ is Lord over the world and over his Church. This is something the faithful believe in spite of what they see, in spite of our experience of the world. For Calvin, this is a source of hope. He believes in the ultimate victory of divine justice -- the only real justice, the only justice worthy of being called just. Finally, as prophet, Christ announces the will of the Father; his role is to manifest what his Father wills. The Church's duty, then, is to carry on this mission: to announce the Gospel, the good news, and to proclaim the justice of God, which confounds human justice whenever the latter turns
into a parody of true justice. The Church is thus an instrument whose role it is to carry on Christ's prophetic mission, announcing the will of God and denouncing everything that opposes or contradicts divine justice. In Calvin's view, this continuation of Christ's prophetic mission is a far more essential mandate for the Church than that of Christ's two other offices (priest and king). Thus God reconciles us with Himself through Jesus Christ. God forgives us and makes us just -- without any merit on our part, simply by the faith we put in Christ. God is regenerative: God returns to us the life we had lost because of our own shortcomings. By faith, we enter into association with Christ, we are united with Christ through his death and his resurrection. By faith, all of Christ's good deeds are conferred, or transferred, to us. Calvin writes: "so long as we are without Christ and separated from him, nothing which he suffered and
did for the salvation of the human race is of the least benefit to us." The Christian life, the life of faith, is a life of communion with Christ, of intimate union with him, and of participation in his life.
