Participation in Christ and Eucharistic Formation by Baker Mary Patton;

Author:Baker, Mary Patton;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authentic Media
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wolterstorff suggests a way to understand what Calvin meant by a seal. It is common to think of a seal as something that ratifies something which is past. But Wolterstorff argues this is not what Calvin meant, for Calvin understood that “God’s promise is not made episodically.” Rather, Wolterstorff suggests, “What in the sacrament is done here and now is the issuing of the assurance that the promise once made remains in effect. That is what is new, or part of what is new: the assurance of which, as Calvin sees it, we frail human beings are still very much in need.”115 The liturgical remembrance and reenactment of the Lord’s Supper allows the Spirit to seal the sacrifice of Christ on our hearts, in the promise of its efficacy in the here and now.

Doesn’t God also assure us in the here and now by the preached word? Yes, but Calvin thinks that the perlocutionary effects of sacramental celebration “are exercises which make us more certain of the trust-worthiness of God’s Word”.116 Indeed, the believer, “when he sees the sacraments with his own eyes, does not halt at the physical sight of them … but rises up in devout contemplation to those lofty mysteries which lie hidden in the sacraments”.117 This is why the sacramental symbol is the second blessing of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Wolterstorff adds a caveat to his argument that the sacraments seal: “the perlocutionary effect in speech is not produced simply by the sound or the looks of the words. It occurs only when the recipients discern the illocutionary acts performed—only when they discern that God is assuring them that the promise made in Jesus Christ remains in effect for that.”118

Speaking to this very point, Calvin states that the sacraments properly fulfill their office only “when Spirit, that inward teacher, comes to them, by whose power alone hearts are penetrated and affections moved and our souls opened for the sacraments to enter in”. The Spirit then is the “inward teacher” of both the word and sacrament. In other words, the believer cannot discern the illocutionary force without the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. Calvin succinctly describes here the relationship between the word, the sacraments, and the Spirit as one in which the Holy Spirit uses both the word and the sacraments (the sacramental verbal pictures and liturgical actions) as the instruments of God’s grace in both communicating and sustaining the faith of the Christian. “Finally, he illumines our minds by the light of his Holy Spirit and opens our hearts for the Word and sacraments to enter in.”119 Just as the word is dependent upon the illumination of the Holy Spirit, so the true receiving of Christ’s body and blood is dependent upon the Spirit.

The agency of the Spirit is the common denominator in Calvin’s understanding of the efficacy of the preaching and hearing of the word and in the faithful reception of the Eucharist. Here we have the counterpart and completion to Calvin’s doctrine

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