Through rigorous examination of Calvin’s writings, Billings elucidates Calvin’s doctrine of participation, showing that it is firmly grounded in exegesis, particularly the book of Romans, and through his reading of the church fathers. Images of participation, adoption, and engrafting are all brought together to develop a theology of koinonia that extends beyond fellowship—rather a real metaphysical union with Christ. And Calvin’s doctrine of participation, so well outlined through Billings’ meticulous mining of Calvin, is the focal point of this piece.
In chapter 2 of his work, Billings’ outlines the context of Calvin’s doctrine of participation by tracing out Calvin’s own development of it through his various editions of the Institutes and his commentaries. Patristic writers Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril are strong support figures, as Calvin looks to them in his appropriation of terms and metaphors employed in his theology. A key work where Calvin introduces the Aristotelian distinctions of substance and accidents into his anthropology,[3] which we do not find in his Institutes, is in his, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will.[4] Calvin adopts these distinctions to develop his understanding of man’s union with God in original creation (46). Calvin deploys substance to classify the pre-Fall Adam’s state, whereby humanity is originally created good by God and is united to God. And then in the Fall, humanity is corrupted, which Calvin utilizes the distinction accidental to speak of this corruption, which remains with the believer during his life on earth but will diminish as he is being perfected and restored to a pre-Fall state.
The Pauline term “old self,” referring to the “flesh,” which a new creation in Christ dies to, “is a mortification of the sinful desires which corrupt the good creation in Adam” (47). The telos of redemption is to return to the ‘good’ substance of human nature. The ‘good will’ of humanity is activated when a believer is united to God by the Spirit. And this union, Calvin considers, is real.[5] In order for a human to do a good action, one must be fundamentally united to God (48). And for Calvin, this is the ‘gift’ of faith, in order to sanctify believers. And this gift is a pay-it-forward gift (which should appease the ‘Gift’ theologians), whereby the believer voluntarily acts in gifting God’s love towards others. But this is where Calvin gets chided due to his ‘nominalist’ tendencies (which, as Billings’ notes, is an over exaggeration). How can Calvin speak of human voluntary acts when they only occur because of the work of the Spirit? Well, such actions are human actions, but the Spirit deserves the praise because he has freed and empowered a believer’s will to carry them out. The Spirit doesn’t bypass man’s faculties; rather, he “renews a right spirit in their inner nature.”[6] Clarifying Irenaeus’ redemptive theology, Calvin adopts substance-accident language to express the real connection between Christ and humanity, whereby the Second Adam restores creation (i.e., the union man had with God) (49).
To advance further his real-connection motif, Calvin appropriates Cyril’s eucharistic theology, whereby “the flesh of Christ is ‘life-giving,’ ‘pervaded with the fullness of life,’ and then ‘transmitted to us’ in the Lord’s Supper” (50).[7] Calvin was indebted to Cyril’s concept of vivification in the Eucharist, in that the flesh of Christ—his substance—is vivified through the Spirit, nourishing the souls of believers. The elements do not become his physical body; rather, the Spirit, as agent, manifests the spiritual body—substance—of Christ in the hearts and minds of those partaking in the Supper, elevating them to the heavenly kingdom of God (50).
Crucial to Calvin’s theology of participation, adoption, and engrafting is Paul’s letter to the Romans. For Calvin, Romans is the loci of Christian theology; it is the window to the mysteries of God. From Romans 6:1–11, Calvin puts forth his theme of union in Christ, as identified in his death (thus our death) and his resurrection (thus our resurrection). In Romans 8:12–17 and 26–7, Calvin underscores the communion element of access that we as adopted children have to God. And in 11:17–19, Calvin’s preferred metaphor of “engrafting” redeemed creatures to God by faith, together (with the previous passages) culminate in “a collage of mutually illuminating images” (51). The telos of Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ is that of Trinitarian union with God, in which all believers participate, not only in the benefits of God’s grace but in God himself (52).[8] Redeemed humanity’s union with God is real in that it takes place in Christ. The final end of the gospel is ‘to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us’(53).[9]
Deification, if not clarified correctly, can place a classical theologian in exile. And Calvin is under enough scrutiny as it is. For Calvin, deification is not ontological enhancement. His view is soteriological, in that the union between man and God is transformative (i.e., communication of idioms), whereby through Christ believers are incorporated into the Triune life of God. Following an Antiochene tradition, the language of deification then is hyperbole; it is a per se-ism (54–5).[10] Calvin’s doctrine of deification is catholic, in that he maintains the Creator-creature distinction; however, his understanding of participation is not mere but a real substantial participation (61). In this manner, believers receive this participation through grace, “which brings about the death of the ‘depravity of our flesh’ along with a ‘resurrection to a better nature within us’”(61).[11] And here is where the real participatory element of Calvin’s theology emerges:
There is great force in this word [engrafted], and it clearly shows, that the Apostle does not exhort, but rather teach us what benefit we derive from Christ; for he requires nothing from us, which is to be done by our attention and diligence but speaks of the grafting made by the hand of God. But there is no reason why you should seek to apply the metaphor or comparison in every particular; for between the grafting of trees, and this which is spiritual, a disparity will soon meet us: in the former the graft draws its aliment from the root but retains its own nature in the fruit; but in the latter not only we derive the vigor and nourishment of life from Christ, but we also pass from our own to his nature.[12] (62)
Billings’ designation of Calvin’s theology as substantial participation, is, as he admits, a departure from other Calvin commentators. However, Billings holds his ground because he is keen to Calvin’s thinking, not Calvin’s critics who understand substance as the “inflowing or transfusion of a substance” (63). Rather, as Billings’ writes: “For Calvin, union with Christ is always mediated by the Spirit, and participation in Christ is not simply participation in his divinity, but also in his humanity. Indeed, Calvin does not hesitate to speak about participating in the substance of Christ; moreover, Calvin sometimes speaks of union with Christ making believers in Christ into ‘one substance.’ In these examples, Calvin is not avoiding terms which have ontological implications” (63). Calvin’s nuanced doctrine of participation is Triune, in that a believer is brought into union with Christ through the Spirit, thus it is an ontic relationship. God does not infuse his divine essence into a creature; rather, it is an immediate working of the Divine Essence, whereby a believer is made one with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Triune God brings creatures into a perichoretic-like activity with himself. And in so doing, we “do not follow Christ at a distance; [we] follow Christ by partaking of Christ along the Christian path of death, resurrection, and ascension—living en Christo”(65).
Conclusion
There is much more to undertake in Billings’ exposition, and I have passed over Billings’ other avenues of exploration in order to keep my post brief. I want to save it for the first-hand reader to mine for himself. Like I said, it is a fascinating work of scholarship. I am very complimentary of Billings’ work because he has expounded an area of Reformed studies that is desperately needed in contemporary theology—the relational side of Reformed classical theism that is overlooked by its critics. A doctrine of unilateral divine sovereignty has become a deleterious phrase, leading to a religious me-too movement that looks down on a theology that holds such views of God. Billings’ work helps close the gap on a view of God that seems to only emphasize his transcendence. Billings’ (thus Calvin’s) exposition promotes a balanced (Reformed) view of Calvin’s God of the Bible, one who is completely transcendent yet fully immanent to his children.
~ Romans 11:36
___________________________________
[1] J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ, 1st ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). All page numbers will be parenthetically noted in the body of the essay.
[2] I am not going to devote attention to this aspect of Billings’ work, though it is important to the full scope of his thesis.
[3] The term substance refers to what something is to be what it is. An accident is an addition or property added to a substance, yet it is not required or necessary for the substance to be what it is. For example, a man is a human substance (essence or nature are more appropriate terms). A man can have red hair or brown hair, which would be considered an accident because his “human” substance does not require a certain color hair (or any hair for that matter) in order to be human. Otherwise, there would be many men losing their “humanness” (or manliness) when they reach their 40s.
[4] John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius, ed. A. N. S. Lane, trans. G. I. Davies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002).
[5] As we will see later, real for Calvin is ontological.
[6] Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 193–94.
[7] John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 4.17.9. It is interesting to see the parallels Calvin has with Augustine in developing his views of participation, in that Augustine came over from the dark side (Manichaeism) after adopting a platonic understanding of substance. Doing so allowed him to see God as a real spiritual thing and not a physical/material thing, which cornered Manichaeism into a dualist ontology. It was perplexing for Augustine to understand how God could be omnipresent if he is a material being; spiritual substance was the key to unlock that door.
[8] Ibid., 3.2.24.
[9] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles: 1 Peter, 1 John, James, 2 Peter, Jude, ed. and trans. John Owen (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2010), 2 Pet. 1:4.
[10] Calvin’s participation doctrine aroused controversy in his time, on which Billings elaborates in detail.
[11] John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. John Owen (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 221.
[12] Ibid., 223.
Comments