Calvin’s Language

CALVIN’S THEOLOGICAL USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE by Roland M. Frye Measuring the Immeasurable “Quam stultum sit eius immensitatem modo nostro velle met- iri. How foolish is it to wish to measure God’s immensity by our So wrote Calvin in the Institutes, posing a rhetorical measure.”

question which should answer itseif.f Or so’ one would think, but it was not altogether so in the sixteenth century, and it is surely not so in the latter decades of the twentieth. Yet Cal——— of unaided human capacity to reach to and understand God, Calvin followed Augustine Nicholas of Cusa, and a host of other Tearned Christians”in advocating a””learned ignorance.i2 For Calvin this was not an obscurantist position, although for others it may ‘be. Calvin had an extraordinarily high view of what humanitys whether Christian or not. could achieve in many fields within the bounds of this life by diligent inquiry and the use of reason. Of the arts and sciences he wrote, “if we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither (and scientists), rhetoricians. physicians, and mathematicians were immense:’ such achievements show man “to be a rational being, different from brute beasts, because he is endowed with understanding,” and Calvin held that “in the arrangement of this And yet, valuable as all this is “in the arrangement of this life,” these approaches can offer as a knowledge of God no more than “a slight taste of his divinity.” Aithough philoso- phers and poets may sense the existence of the divine, when it Calvin wrote, in a particularly beautiful passage, that even the greatest geniuses are jike a traveler passing through a field at night who in a momentary 1ightning flash sees far and wide, but the sight vanishes so swiftly that he is plunged again into the darkness of the night before he can. take even a step——— let alone And for all of us, whatever may be our natural gifts, our able. self-generated vision of God, so that in the realm of tthe pure knowledge of God, the nature of true righteousness and the apart from the gracious and providential self-disclosure of God. Calvin regarded the alternative position——— that we may be able

74 solely by our own reason or study or intuition to understand God——— as a massive violation both of reason and of revelation. because surely we should not expect to measure God’s immeasur- ableness by any little measure of our own. He could thus declare that “it is not without reason that the judgments of God are Qualis sit Deus?

If the little measurings attainable through our purely human perception are entirely inadequate for measuring the incom- tures to know God? In the Institutes. Calvin suggested that the sit Deus: what is God, the form of the question will invite Tdle speculations, for we cannot know God in himself. It is more to the point to begin by asking gualis..sit Deus. In effect, the vin’s principal and overriding concern: what God is like to us. Several chapters later, the Institutes reiterates the same crucial point, that God “is shown to us not as he is in himself. but as he is ‘toward us——— nobis describitur non quis sit apud se, Moving forward once again, we find the same issue dealt with in the third book: “In understanding faith it is not merely a question of knowing that God exists, but also——— and this especially——— of knowing what is his will toward us. For it is not so much our concern to know who he is in himself [quis in se sit], as what he wills to be toward us Equalis esse nobis velitl.

Calvin’s answer to the qualis esse nobis velit question. as Ford Lewis Battles summarized it, is that “patiently God, through our history, accommodates his ways of revelation to our condition. Thus, par excellence, the Word made flesh and the written word from which he speaks is God accommodating himself to us.trt Here we can recognize the basic principies of Christian the great theological tradition of reflection on the Scriptures. Those basic assumptions include at least the following: what we most need to know about God can come only from God, and it does written word; such self-disclosure is not total (many aspects of God we do not and cannot and need not understand); furthermore. that self-disclosure is typically couched in terms accommodated to the limits of human capacity: the human need for God’s accom- modation of himself in order for us to understand him and his peoples but “experience shows,fitl to be no less necessary to us These are the assumptions under- lying the “principle of accommodation” which Calvin found in the Scriptures and in the Fathers of the Church and which became central to his understanding of how God’s reality and purpose for

75 us are conveyed to us in revelation.

For Calvin, “the principle divine revealer and the believer, as Dowey put it, or in Battles* words, “in all his ways with man, God is accommodating his infin- +.* ity to our small measure,” or as william J. Bouwsma writes in his recently published book on Calvin, the reformer emphasized that In the Word made flesh we find the principal and central. although not the only. accommodation by God to our human condi- tion, As the Institutes expressed it with precision and elo quence, “the Father, himself infinite, becomes finite in the Son, According to Calvin’s Commentary on I John 1:22-23, exposure to the unac- commodated majesty of God would dazzle our eyes and blind us. That divine 1ight was made accessible to us through Jesus Christ the Son, “who is called the image of the Father ‘(Heb. 1:3) be- cause he sets forth and exhibits to us all that is necessary to In his Commentary on I Peter 1:20.

Calvin used still different words to make the same point once [quodammodo parvum facit] in order to accommodate himself to our Just as to everything else in Christian faith and life? so the Word made flesh provides the key to the written word. The incarnation was God’s ultimate accommodation; as such it was historical and not figurative, although the Son himself often used figurative Ianguage in teaching about himself and about the Father. Anthropopatheia tive language as used in Scripture and in interpreting Scripture. without a recognition of the figurative. Calvin held, we cannot written word. In the Institutes, he made this point in reference to Isa. 65:2, where God is described as stretching out his arms principle: If anyone wishes “to apply all this Lhuman arms: etc.] to God, disregarding the figure of speech, many superfluous con- tentions will arise.” Ford Battles’ ‘English translations ” “super- fiuous contentions,” is typicaiiy carefui and responsible, but, I prefer something closer to the awkwardness of the 1etter of Cal- vin’s Latin, which reads multae supervacuae contentiones: label- ing as “supervacuous” those contentions that arise”from not know- ing how to deal with figurative language.

76 I have referred to the outstretched arms of God as an an- thropomorphism, because that is the famiiiar term used in our time, but Calvin chose instead to use the Greek word anthropo- Calvin’s choice of this word was probably due to the primary identification of “anthropomorphism” with the heretical sect of the Anthropomorphites, who in the fourth century disturbed the church,in ‘Syria, and Ngrth Africa by.insisting upon a. grossiy Calvin described them as imagining “a material view of God.

corporeal God from the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet.” For Calvin, “such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as this he must descend far beneath his loftiness. God often made such “descents” in the figurative language of Scripture, and Calvin referred to this kind of figure both as metaphor and anthropopathy. the latter forming a subset of meta- phor. Calvin described as metaphorical God’s promise in Exodus 6:6f. to redeem Israel “with an outstretched ‘arm,” whereas he described the same action in Isaiah 65:2 as anthropopathy, as we saw. Similarly, where Psalm 10:1 describes God “standing afar anthropopathy,” with a marginal gloss in the French edition ex- plaining anthropopathy as the attributingnto God of “the pas- Where Genesis 6:6 Caivin treated this as anthropopathy: because “we cannot compre- hend God as he is, it is necessary that, for our sake, he should. Figures, Signs, and Reality In such instances of anthropopathy: as with other forms of stantive references to God’s truth. Although these tropes are conception (1ike many I treat in this paper) was not invented by The Calvin, but can be traced back to the patristic centuries. Byzantine theologian Maximus Confessor expressed the matter with aphoristic force when he wrote that “scripture spoke in a way grasp what transcended literal accuracy.

So Calvin discussed tive modes of expression.which represent the Lord in a human manner LanthropopathosJ, in adaptation to our feeble capacity, so anxiousiy emptoyed by Moses for a thing of naught? were it not.. We hold that nothing can bear the image of’God but spirit. As with direct anthropopathic descrip- tions of God, so it was with indirect accounts.

77 Thus Calvin regarded Stephen’s vision revealing “the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God” as utteriy trustworthy. yet he wrote that “for mine own part. I think there was nothing changed in the nature of the heavens,… [and even if] we grant that there was some divi- sion or parting made in heaven, yet man’s eye could not reach so far.

whereupon it followeth that the miracle was not wrought in heaven, but in his eyes.” Indeed, as Calvin carefully pointed out, “properly speaking, that is, scientifically, there is no place above the heavens,” and “the whole text is’ a meta- phor.”

Yet Stephen’s vision was both miraculous and true, in was, but according to man’s capacity.

So too with the vision that came to Isaiah in the year that King Uzziah died: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a thrones high and’lifted up, and his train filled the temple.” The vision is’ not 1iterally accurate, because God “never appeared as he is in himself but as he could be understood by human minds. Therefore Isaiah was shown a form of a kind which enabled him with his own understanding to taste the inconceivable majesty of God,” as Calvin put it. Arthough the vision was not a iiteraliy accurate picture of God as he is in himself, neither was it “a game with such meaningless shapes as men use when they distort directly addressing Isaiah and, Calvin concluded, “since’ the vision was in no way a false symbol of the Bresence of God, In a similar as snow and the hair of his head like the pure wool; his throne which Calvin commented with characteristically dry wit that “God wheels.” He his essence nevertheless such appearances ‘”afforded them a taste of his presence for the sure acknowledgment of his Deity;… they able to bear it.”

More than once he flatly declared that “scientifically References to our Father in heaven, and to Christ on the right hand of the Father. are not in any sense astronomical reports. but by asking us to raise our eyes to heavens exalt the Deity of God above all his I’and “for this reason, it is, well to raise our hands creatures,” up while we pray.

In other words, Calvin charged Christians to follow the teachings of the Scriptures as authoritative in matters of faith and life, but not for guidance in such discip- 1ines as astronomy. This is the essential, theological truth in al1 such biblical references. similarly: where Ephesians 4:8-10

78 that heo is somewhere among the cosmic spheres, counting the stars!”29 it is not meant that he is inside it [again, note the wry humorl: we must remember the words ‘heaven of heavens do not contain him.* This expression sets God apart from all creatures, and warns us that no mean and earthly, thoughts about him sgguld enter our minds, because he is higher than the whoie worid.is In such interpretations, Calvin was in effect doing three things. Above all, he was striving to make clear the saving meaning of the word of God, but he was also removing occasions for idolatry among the gu’lible, and he was clearing away stumb- Iing blocks for the more sophisticated. His Geneva Catechism of 154i/45 declared that there is no need for the reality to agree at all points with the symboba if only it suit sufficiently for 31 the purpose of symbolizing.

That is an utterly basic prin- ciple: for Calvin, the sign is valid because of the authority of God’s providential use of the Scriptures for our instruction. inaccurate.

Metaphors Most of the examples cited thus far are metaphorss al though they, may3also fit’ under some closely related term such as anthropopathy.

Whether as a general or as a more specific term, metaphor meant a carrying over or a carrying beyond, and referred to the use to a new sense, which is taken as analogous to it. For legal weighing of opposing sides in a law case in order to reach an equitable “judgment: this is a “carrying over” or “carrying beyond the obvious or dictionary reference of scales: because propriate becauses judges do weigh evidence. In my observation at least, metaphors are cited more fre- quently than any other rhetorical’term in Calvin’s writings, and it would be weil to consider at more length how he treated this form.

He commented on Jesus’ saying “you are the salt of the earth” by observing that “our Lord skillfully pursues his meta- phor” through to the conclusion that spoiled ‘salt is ggod for On a more pleasant topic, Calvin taught that the.twenty-third Psalm fully developed throughout, and he added that in the Bible God “often assumes the title and role of shepherd,” as that metaphor 36 On’the washing of the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, along with the

79 assurance that only the feet needed to be washed, he held that “the term feet.:. is metaphorically applied to all the pas- thing so complete as repeated baptism.

As for the descriptions of hell as punishment by fire, sulphur, brimstone, and worms that turn not, he advised against being preoccupied with “subtle dis- courses”‘and “idle speculation. with which silly people weary themselves for nothing,”, and interpreted the entire picture as metaphorical. But this is certainly not to say that Calvin re- garded flaming fire and brimstone as what some of our contempo- raries (even theological contemporaries) would naively call a “mere metaphor,” meaning thereby ‘that it either means nothing or provide a firm biblicai foundation for the existence of purga- tory. In I Corinthians 3:12-15, Paul referred to the fire that wili reveal “what sort of work each one has done,” adding that “if any man’s work is burned up. he will suffer loss, though he himseif will be saved, but only as through fire.”” Here, Calvin said, his adversaries “claim to have an invincible phalanx…. What fires they ask, can this be but that of purgatory by which was not speaking of a literal purging fire, but that he used a metaphor when he called the doctrines devised by men’s own, brains “wood, hay, and stubbie.”

“hay, wood, and stubble” are set on fire, they are sud- denly consumed. Thus the inventions of men, not grounded in the word of the Lord, cannot bear testing by the Holy Spirit, but immediately fall and perish…: [Yet the foolish people themselves may be]’saved, but as’through and delusion are acceptable to the Lord, but because they are cleansed from these by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, anyone who fouls the golden undergo the loss of his work.

It was a skiiifully managed point, showing that his opponentst shoddy work that Paul prophesied God’s fire would indeed destroy. Calvin’s refutation was made possible by his firm grasp of meta- phorical operations and meanings: there would indeed be a cleans- ing fire, but it would be the Holy Spirit’s rejection of man-made doctrines such as purgatory.

80 Calvin’s rebuttal of the purgatorial interpretation of cated, even if it may have impressed his adversaries as. somewhat contrived, but it stopped weli short of turning the metaphor into an allegory. Calvin knew the difference as well as anyone, and he observed it carefully. Of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 4, he wrote that this whole passage is “metaphorical——— nays properly speakings it is an allegory, since an allegory is only a under the figure of a tree, it would have been a metaphor; but Calvin was quite ready to interpret allegory in its own terms, as he did here in Daniel. against allegorizing. he was protesting not against finding a spiritual meaning in a passage, but against finding one that was not there.’ The problem, as Calvin’ put it, was ‘that such al- “threw the sacred word of God around as though it were legorizers a tennis ball…. Now anybody could do anything. and many did. there was no madness so absurd’ or so great ‘that it could not be practised in the name of some allegory.”

In another context he wrote that “people praise the Word of God rightly as our very light, but still. our own darkness obscures the Word of God to an error Calvin sought to avoid, usually with success. Scripture. we ought never to fetch from a distance subtle ex- planations, for the true sense will, as I have previously ex- pressed it;.flow naturally from a passage when it is weighed with maturer deiiberation.n4 Signs and Symbols in the Sacraments As forced allegorizing could confuse and subvert the plain meaning of a text, so too could an inappropriate 1iteralism, and Calvin rejected both such allegorizing and such literalizing. We bibiical theology, but it occurs with greatest intensity in his interpretation of the Lord’s Supper. Of the New Testament refer- ences’ to the sacrament, he declared that “it.4annot be, doubted As Calvin saw it, a literal reading of “this is my body” and “this is my blood” the gravest abuses, including idolatry.

Otto weber’s German edition of the Institutes supplied one of the crucial paragraphs on the Lord’s supper with the title’. titie was appropriately maintained by Battles. In that para- graph, Calvin had likened some of his opponents who advocated transubstantiation or consubstantiation to those ancient Anthro- pomorphites who “forbid even the siightest deviation from the

81 letter…. Once this principle is accepted,” Calvin warned, “a boundtess barbarism wi1l overwhelm the whole 1ight of faith. For Scripture if they be allowed ta-raise in objection every tittle presence could not be dismissed by charging that they were based on “tittles, and in implying that they were Calvin was indulg- ing as he too often did, in the flamboyant exaggeration that tarnished theological and all other forms of controversy during the Renaissance and Reformation eras. Unfortunately debate over the Lord’s Supper-instituted as a sacrament of unity in the camps. In the heat of partisan contentions: it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the central issues and even the principal posi principles: not upon the larger sacramental debate, and not upon recall that Calvin held a remarkably high view of the sacrament. that he wrote of it repeatedly and extensively, with clarity. view. he affirmed “a true participation in His conception of that true participation was worked out through the relationship between signs and symnbois. on the one hand, and the realities to which they referred and which they and he was equally wine. As he wrote in his 1540 Treatise on the Lord’s Supper. “the’ whole representation which our Lord wished to give in remain.””Whereas the Romanists held to. a transubstantiation of the elements, and the Lutherans posited a consubstantiation of the same elements, Calvin focused upon the meaning and operation of the words of the institution: For the meaning of the words which our Lord requires us and maintained so far as the body is concerned by eating souls are vivified.

By the accommodation here, we are taught that from by a sort of analogy to spiritual things…. When we see wine set forth as a symbol of blood, we must reflect on the benefits which wine imparts to the body. and so realize that. the same are spiritually imparted to us by

82 Christ’s blood. These benefits are to nourish, refresh, strengthen, and gladden.

Between ourselves and the benefits conferred through the eucharistic elements. Cavin held that we can interpose two faults of our own making: first, we can give too 1ittle honor to the signs. by separating them “from their mysteries to which they are so to speak attached,” and second we can extol the signs im- moderately and thereby obscure the mysteries themselves. As Calvin put it elsewhere.

“the human mind is unable to refrain from enclosing the powes of. God in signs, or substituting signs in the place of”God.n53 What Calvin sought to expound was a the signs and the’thingsasignified, yet we do not disjoin the reality. from the signs.15.

In this way, he maintained, we are given “no fallacious figure” but a sure pledge by which “the substance and reality are conjoined; in other wgrds that our This insistence that the sign is not the thing for which it stands, but that nonetheless the sign is conjoined with the thing signified. so characteristic of Calvin’s theology: was disturbing to some of his readers. Of these Joachim Westphal of troublesome during the 1550s. It was the Lutheran Westphal and his supporters whom Calvin described as forbidding even the body.156 The Romanist position was of course, at least equally committed to a 1iteral’ application of “this ‘is my body.i In replying to Calvin, both Romanists and Westphal’s Lutherans their interpretive emphasis upon tropes or figurative language. language in his interpretation, Calvin replied in the Institutes that “i indeed admit that the breaking of’the bread is a ‘symbol; it is not tne thing itself. But. having admitted this. we shal1 Giving another and equally force- ful expression to the same conception, Calvin wrote that'”christ does not say to the bread that it shall become his bodys but he commands his disciplesrto eat and promises them participation in Calvin knew that his opponents were Concord of 1561 he attempted to show that “the realityis”not exciuded by the figure, only a difference is denoted between the their union.” For Calvin, the *differences denoted” were not important for pedantic reasons, but iest anyone should suppose that the bread is called ‘the body of Christ’ as absolutelxolita

83 Metonymy in the Sacraments Calvin never minimized the figurative element of his in- terpretation, convinced as he was that the great mysteries of Scripture could not be understood apart from its frequent re- course to symbols. signs: and appropriate kinds of figurative communication, tropes which had been providentially employed by God in accommodating his nature and will to human understanding. In particular, Calvin observed of bibiical sacraments that “Scripture assigns [them] a peculiar mode of expression,” and taken grammatically to denote a metonymy.

Indeed, he said, we the name of the thing signified by metonymy to the sign.

aterm familiar to every student who had passed beyond grammar school. to give a contemporary example of how it works.. Let us suppose that you or I were to put in a telephone call to the white House. and that the switchboard operator there answered by saying, “This is the White House.” We would not for a moment assume that the phone itself was being answered by the house itself, but we would automatically decode the message ‘into its intended sense. and we would probably do so without being conscious that the meaning had been communicated through an ancient and widely used figure of speech.

This particular figure, metonymy, was borrowed by modern languages from the Latin metonymia: which transliterated the Greek original. and means “a figure of speech which consists in substituting for the name of a thing the name of an attribute of Calvin observed that metonymy was “used in Scripture when mysteries are under discus- sion”which can be understood only if we.”take themeas _spoken with meanings transferred” according to God’s promise. In such metonymies, as Calvin pointed out, ‘the two terms used (the sign another,” and “from the physical things set forth in the sacra- ments we are led by a sort of analogy to spiritual things,t be- cause, such, analogies are, “excellentiy adapted to express ‘those In order for a metonymy to apply, there must be an association or relation between the symbol’and the thing symbolized, but it cannot op- erate sacramentally unless God chooses the association and under- girds it with his promise to us.

We find the figure used in this way in the Oid Testament sacraments. The rainbow, for example, was given to Noah as a Here Calvin observed that the rainbow.””which is but a reflection

84 of the sun’s rays upon the clouds opposite,” could not of itself forestall floods, but that nonetheless God gave it to Noah as a seal of his promise, and that to Noah and his descendants it op- erated as a covenant of promise. In effect, then, the rainbow signified what it was not and indicated God’s wi’lingness to guarantee what the rainbow itself did not. similar expressions of old Testament sacraments through metonymies: as cited in the Institutes, are “circumcision is a covenant” (Gen. 17:13), “the lamb is the Passover (Ex. 12:11): the appearance of God to Moses Covenant as God or God’s face (Ps. 84:8; 42:3). Turning to the New Testament, Ca’vin took the descent of the Holy Spirit in the appearance of a dove at Jesus’ baptism to be a metonymy “by which the sign is put for the thing signified. the name of a spiritual object being applied to the visible sign.6% And in another instance, “the rock from which water flowed in the desert” for the Israelites, as we read in Ex. 17:6, 08 is metonymously identified by paul with Christ. In each of these cases, the changing of one name for another is a new rela- tionship providentially established by God between a physical and visible sign, and a spiritual and heavenly “thing symbolized.# In every instance. the name of the spiritual reaiity is trans- ferred to the visible sign. And so it was, Calvin held, with the Christian sacraments. E but the water in and by itself as H,o could not wash away sins. The Lord’s Supper is’the communion of the body and ‘blood of Christ, but the physical elements of bread and water do not 1iterally become that 1iteral body and blood. To summarize, Calvin’s view was that we participate in the upper room, nor after the conception of transubstantiation that asserts a miraculous transformation of the wine and bread before us into the very body and blood of Christ, now sacrificed anew upon the altar.

On the contrary, Calvin said the Christian’s but that we take and eat that which has been offered and immo- cross.

Thus, we partake of the risen and ascended Christ in are joined to Christ only if our minds rise above the world. Accordingly the bond of our union with Christ is faith, which raises us upwards and casts its anchor in heaven, so that, in- stead of subjecting Christ-to the fictions of our reason, we seek Calvin argued that “we cannot be blamed for seeking Jesus Christ on high,” and he cited as evi——— dence””the preamble which had at aii'”times” been used “in the celebratign of this sacrament——— “sursum corda. Raise your hearts on high.72

85 Calvin persistently assumed and asserted the importance of figurative communication——— tropes. symbols, and signs——— through which we can find God accommodating his truth to our understand- ing. both in the sacraments and ‘in the Scriptures. Replying directly to Roman and Protestant critics of his sacramental doc——— while nothing is more absurd to extot the sacraments above the Word, whose appendages and seals they are, they will find nothing applicable to the Word that we do not also give to the sacra- means, it fully applies to Calvin’s interpretation of figurative language both in the proclamation of the Scriptures and in the administration of the sacraments. Both were. Calvin believed. given by “God as the only author of our salvation..tobe our Synecdoche and the Law and metaphor or anthropopathy in the descriptions of God, so Commandments, in this case synecdoche. Calvin briefly defined it part, sometimes a part for the whole, and he Ggmmented that this A brief example may be found in the Lord’s Prayer in the petition, “Give us this bread as meaning all bodily food, and impiying in “a still more extensixe meaning… ail that is necessary for the present He found many examples of synecdoche in the Bible but he appears to have found its most extensive and structural use in the Decalogue. Here Calvin pointed out “such manifest synec- doches” that “the commandments and prohibitions always contain then evoked what he called the “commonplace” principle that “when a good thing is commanded, the evi1 thing that conflicts with it is forbidden…. Land that the opposite duties are enjoined of both positive and negative commandments.

By such applica- tions of ‘synecdoche: he was able to expound through the Decalogue all duties concerning the expression of our worship of God and our love for our human brothers and sisters. Let us take Calvin’s explanation of the sixth Commandment as an example of how he would, as he put it, “go beyond the words” by applying the principle of synecdoche, with the part signifying the whole. Under the straightforward prohibition of

86 one of his own besetting sins). and hatred, and doing another person any manner of harm, whether physical or mental. Again, on the principle that when an evil is prohibited, the opposite good seek the good of our neighbors, to protect their 1ives and well- being in every way, and to hold them sacred because in them as in not kil1″ is extended to mean the exclusion of all ‘forms of i1l peace.

this method of approaching the Decalogue,.

Calvin In claimed no originality, identifying it as “commonplace.” What- ever may be said about it in other ways, this method had the great and obvious advantage of being an effective teaching devices in that it ailowed the interpreter to use what the Hebrews called the ten words as a brief epitome through which to draw together a broad range of moral duties and principles either contained or implied in those first seventeen verses of Exodus 20. It thus provided a functional synthesis for all, or vir- tually all: moral obligations found ‘n the Scriptures. One further comment needs to be made at this point. Most three major tropes: metaphor (inciuding anthropopathy), and met- onymy, and synecdoche. Limiting attention to a few figures has enabled us to explore these at some length. but even so I must said more about each of the figures chosen; and other figures: perhaps a dozen more, could not be mentioned at all. In a sense, this paper is itself a kind of synecdoche, because.the part has been taken for tne whole: but the part cnosen is representative. By carefully considering a few key figures. I hope it has been possible- to show the method, value, and significance of Calvin’s figurative analysis in general. This having been said, we now need to proceed to some observations about the integration of the figurative into Calvin’s larger hermeneutics. “To Prepare for Reading. the Divine Word When Calvin began his work in Geneva. he was given the title “professor of sacred Letters.” No title could have been theoTogy for the reading of the Divine Word.” To that end his knowledge of rhetoric was of great value.

As he wrote in his commentary on I Cor. 1:17, rhetorical ski1ls “contain sound learning and depend on principles of truth useful and byt

87 used “help out our meaning” and those used “to adorn our As a perceptive Iiterary critic, Calvin could and did appreciate beauty of style, but his principal concern as a bib- 1ical scholar was necessarily for “figures of thought” that con- vey meaning.

It was therefore necessary, Calvin declared, “to know how Holy Scripture uses words;.

. we cannot at all understand the doctrine of God if we dganot know the procedure it employs and The laity were not exempt from need- once disabling to them and dangerous to others. We have already ative language. what he had written on this subject as a young must send those back to their rudiments who have not yet Tearnedn how to interpret the figurative.

Calvin’s underlying skepticism, on which this paper opened, led him to judge that we cannot know God as he is in himself or in his own terms. and that our humaniy self-generated The only reliable knowledge we can have of God is that which he himself discloses to us, decisively in the ‘incarnate Word and through the written word wi’thout which we cannot know the in- carnate Word. This divine selfdisclosure in Scripture is ac- Always the divine Logos is present in any authentic disclosure of God, medi- ating between eius immensitatem, God’s immensity, and our small nostro,torecali my opening quotation from the measure: modo Institutes.

Without divine mediation. we can have no sure understanding or experience of God.

In the written Word, that mediation often operates through figurative language. The biblical teachings about God are admit- tedly fraught with the particularities of Hebrew and early Chris- tian experience——— sometimes called “the scandal of particularity” parochial. According to Calvin, the biblicat expressions for God do not bind him to one place or people. Rather, they are of the pious upon that God who by his covenant that he is in no wise lawful to turn aside from such a pattern. In summary, I suggest that we can best describe Calvin’s biblical hermeneutics as vertebrate, in the sense of being at the same time tough and flexible. He protected the Scriptures from a

88 paralytic literalism by his emphasis upon divine accommodation to integrity. Throughout, Calvin’s purpose in applying learning to passage.” In the service of that larger purpose, a knowledge of as he observed, “many supervacuous contentions will arise,” as indeed they havgzarisen, in his age, in every age, and not least in our own age.

Notes Inst. IV.17.l0, using Ford Lewis Battlest translation, in Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadeiphia: Westminster Press, 1955).Library of Christian Classics, vols. XX and XxI. The Latin is from Calvini Opera Selecta, ed. Peter Barth and Wilhelm Niesel (Munich: Kaiser, 1928-36), vol. V, p. 351 1ines 28f. Unless otherwise noted, my references are to one or both of these texts. also came from classica1 authors; see Cicero, De Finibus 5.18.49. in H. Rackhams ed.s Loeb Ciassical Library. London,”i9i4, p. 45l. Inst. I1.2.15.

Inst. II.2.12, 13, and 17, and for his basic distinction between the understanding of earthly and of heavenly things, see especially par. 13.

Inst. II.2.18.

Inst. I1.12.1 and I1.2.13.

Commentary on Gen. 9:25, trans. Joseph Haroutunian, Calvin: Commentaries (Philadelphia: Westminster Press: 1958), p. 275,”The Library of christian classics. vol. Xxrll.. Inst. I.2.2. Quirinus Breen observes that both the quid and qualis questions were very carefully examined by the scholas——— tics,whereas Calvin dismissed the first as toying with frigidis Church History 26 (1957): 10-11.

Inst. I.10.2.

10.

Inst. I11.2.6.

Battles, “God was Accommodating Himself to Human Capaci- ” Interpretation 31 (1977): 34: a section on “The Incarnation

89 as Accommodation” begins on p. 34; the patristic background for accommodation is summarized, pp. 22-26; the background on classi- cal rhetoric is mentioned, pp. 21-22, and Battles provides a fuller rhetorical treatment, in’his edition of Calvin’s Commentary Society of America, 1969). 72-84.

to Joachim Westphal, 1557, in Tracts andTreatises,” trans..”Henry Beveridge,”with historical notes and introduction by Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958): 2:428. 13c See Edward A. Dowey, Jr., The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s.. Theology. (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press,1952); Ford Lewis Battles, “God was Accommodating Himself to our Capaci- ty,” 29; and william J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 124. 14 Inst. II.6.4, where Calvin also cites the influence of Irenaeus. Adversus Haereses 4.2.2.

Rapids: Baker, l98l), Commentary on theCatholic Epistles: pp. 196-197. This series will hereafter be cited as cTs, fo11owed by subject of commentary, chapter, and verse. alone who can make consciences at peace that they may dare to come in confidence to God, thereby integrally 1inking the cogni- tive and the moral dimensions of redemption. See’ cTs, Comm. I Peter l:20, p. 250.

text is “figuram negligere.”

see Jerome, “Letter to Pammachius against John of Jerusalem,’ paragraph 1l, in Niceneand Post-Nicene Fathers. second series, 6:430, along with the entriesin The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclo- pedia of Religious Knowledge, 1907,and in The Catholic Encyclo- pedia, 1907.A similarsect arose in northern Italy in the eleventh century.

19.

Inst. I.13.1, p. 121.

University of Chicago Press, 1974) 2:14, citing pG 90:621, 812.

90 23 Psychopannychia, 1534/42, Tracts and Treatises, 3:424. “philosophically” to represent more precisely Calvin’s sixteenth- century intent.

25.

Comm. on Isa. 6:1-5, in Calvin: Commentaries, trans. Haroutunian, 120-121.

in Tracts and Treatises,2:220,stating his viewsin words aimost Comm. on Acts 7:56, cited in’ n 24. 28.

Comm. on John 17:1, slightly amended from Calvin: Com- mentaries trans. Haroutunian. 287. Matt.

6:9f.2 with interna’ on quotation of 2 Chron. 2:6.

Reid (PhiTadeTph’a:”westminster, 1954), The Library of Christian Classics: 22:1i2, and the congruent Latinsource in Opera Selecta, 2:l03, about the significance of the, sabbath rest. 32.

This understanding is implicit also in many of Calvin’s teachings on the elements of the Lord’s Supper, which will be treated below.

33N Note that the writing of the Decalogue on the two stone mentary on Exodus, although similar descriptions were called anthropopathies: as with the Psalmist’s expression about God “standing afar off.”

See Comm. on Exod. 3l:18 (see also 8:19. and Luke”11:20) and Comm. on Ps. 10:1. 34.

Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca’s.De. Clementia 25:3 cal1s scales metaphorica locutio, but also callsfitting or appropriate metaphorshonestae translationes L36.8] and uses translatite [15:28] to mean metaphorically. This synonymy of metaphora and translatio was often used elsewhere by Calvin and others in the patristic and Reformation periods. Of “salted with salt* in Mark g:49, Calvin wrote that “to give the name of sait to what is salted is a rather harsh metaphor. but it creates no doubt as to the meaning” (p. 273).

91 36 comm.

on Ps. 23, in Calvin: Commentaries. trans.

Haroutunian 260-261. Calvin: Commentaries, trans. Haroutunian, 402. 39.

Inst. III.5.9. See also Calvin’s reply to the 1542 man- ifesto of the Faculty of Sacred Theology at Paris, Articles. with the Antidote, Article XviI, Tracts and Treatists,I:100. 41 Haroutunian, Introduction to Ca’vin: Commentaries, 28. 42 Ibid. 108. 43 Ibid.. 405, Comm. on John 16:25. I must say that Calvin’s treatment of the burning bush, in his Comm. on Acts although this is a rare instance of his doing so. 45.

Last Admonition to Joachim westphal in Tracts and Treatises,3:426. called it “an invention forged by the devil, to corrupt the truth of the Supper (Treatise on the Lord’s. Supper, in Calivin: Theo- logical Treatises, trans. Reid, 158. 47 Inst. IV.17.23. 48 Inst. IV.17.11. 49 Inst. IV.17.1. 50.

Treatises, trans. Reid, 158. 51 Inst. IV.17.3. 52 Inst. IV.17.5. 53 Mutual Consent of the Churches.of Zurich and Geneva as to the Sacraments: Exposition of theHeads of Agreement. in Tracts and Treatises, 2:229. 54.

+Ibid.: 215.

92 read: “In saying that the Supperis a sign, we mean not that it is a simple figure or remembrance, but confess that the thing that God ‘s infallible truth, it is certain that he means not to amuse us with some vain appearance, but that the substance of what the sacraments signify’is conjoined with them” (Tracts and Treatises 2:157.

Opera Selecta: 5:371Tine 18 and note 1 for references to the useof theallegation by Westphal and the Magdeburg ministers on the Lutheran side to which I add the famous Roman Catholic exegete ians (The. Great Commentary, trans. w. F. Cobb [London: John Hodges,”18951, 278), we find the question, “If Christ ask the Calvinist, why didst thou wrest my words from their proper mean- ing into a figure of speech,’ what answer will he make?” 58.

Inst. IV.17.10. I am perplexed by the fact that even so rule, he [Calvin] does not. use like moderns the term”symboiti and even that the word is “not used by Calvin with reference to the sacraments,” whereas the Latin texts of Opera Selecta show that it was repeatedly almost insistently, used.See Fuhrmann’s edition, Calvin, Instruction in Faith (1537) (Philadelphia: West- minster Press, 1949), 93 n. 223.

59.

Inst. IV.17.39.

60.

Best Method of Obtaining Concord, trans. Reid, Calvin: Theological Treatises, 327.

611bid.

62h FMutual Consent of. the Churches, in Iracts and Treatises: 2:243. For”thosewho mightpreferto ca11″the figure a synec- doche Calvin refused to quarrel over which technical term should be used, and proposed that the choice be left to grammarians. “over the thing ‘itself,”‘if it were important where necessary (Inst. Iv.19.2).

63 Oxford English Dictionary, s.V. “metonymy.” 64 Inst. IV.l7.21. For other examples of Calvin’s treat- ment of metonymies, see his Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal. 1557, Tracts and Treatises, 2:372.420, 478, and 484.

93 66 Inst. IV.17.21.

French version, p. 205 n 2. 68.

Inst. IV.17.21, also citing I Cor. 10:4. 69 Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal, 478. 70- Treatise on the Lord’s Supper, in Calvin: Theological Treatises, trans. Reid, 156. IBest Method of Obtaining Concord, in Calvin:Theological Treatises, trans. Reid, 328 and 330. 72 Confession of Faith in the Name of the Reformed Churches of France, 1562, in Tracts and Treatises, 2:160, par. 37. ism… [becausel the faithful receive the power (virtus) of the Body and Blood of Christ”; see Geddes MacGregor,”Corpus Tradition LPhiladelphia: Westminster Press, 1958J, 178ff. 2:227, and 0pera Selecta, 2:273. andTreatises.

in Tracts 3:458.

in Latin “our supersubstantial bread,” because Erasmus did not think it likely that Christ would teach us to come into the presence of the Almighty and mention food. Calvin dismissed that argument as “exceedingiy absurd, and affirmed that Christ did needs of this life.

Inst.

11.8.8-9.

Inst.

11.8.39-40.

(New York: 0xford University press, 1954), 136 and 127-128. 18, pp. 301 and 351 in Loeb Classical Library, ed. H. E. Butler. 82.

Sermon on John 1:1-5, 465. as translated by wi11iam Bouwsma: John Ca1vin: 118-119.

94 here referring particularly to a misinterpretation of synecdoche. I1.6.1 and 2. 86 Inst. 11.8.15. 7see above, n 44 and n 17.