What can John Calvin offer to charismatic theology?

MATTHEW WHITE

Eucharisma 2, (Autumn 2024), 20-24.

The idea of John Calvin as a joyless, harsh disciplinarian is frequently repeated. In Philip Pullman’s series of famous novels His Dark Materials, for example, Calvin moves the Papacy from Rome to Geneva where he sets up the evil consistory to control every aspect of human life. As humorous as such portrayals are, there can be something of the spirit if not the detail of this perception of Calvin in charismatic circles. Wasn’t Calvin a rationalistic theo-logician who perhaps got the Word aspect of Christianity right, but neglected the experiential dimensions of the Spirit? In this article I want to argue that the way Calvin conceptualises Christian experience offers generative resources for charismatic theology, particularly his dynamic concept of piety.

For an early modern theologian Calvin is surprisingly alert to the nuanced way in which experience functions in the Christian life.¹ There is nothing of the ‘stunted dualistic anthropology’ which later came to feature in modernity.² Although some in the later Reformed tradition could be accused of a hard separation between knowledge and experience, this can’t be said of Calvin.³ For him, the theologian’s task is not simply a propositional or conceptual one, it also means giving a theological account of the heart. Writing about how faith is produced in the heart by the Spirit, Calvin argues that ‘it will not be enough for the mind to be illumined by the Spirit of God unless the heart is also strengthened and supported by his power.’⁴ He criticises the Schoolmen ‘who identify it [faith] with a bare and simple assent arising out of knowledge, and leave out confidence and assurance of heart.’⁵ Calvin often argues that a bare cognition of God is insufficient to tangibly identify the work of the Holy Spirit in human experience, and further that the affective side of experience is actually a more reliable indication in this regard due to pneumatologically given feelings of confidence in God and assurance. Calvin’s overall point is that we discern the Holy Spirit’s role in producing faith not ‘if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart.’⁶ This prioritising of the heart in Calvin is a central feature of his pneumatology and anthropology and it is this aspect of Calvin’s theology which has the potential to be generative for charismatic theology. For example, James K. A. Smith argues that charismatic practice carries an implicit critique of western rationalism because ‘it assumes a holistic understanding of personhood and agency—that the essence of the human animal cannot be reduced to reason or the intellect.’⁷ In a similar but slightly different way Calvin argues:

‘It [the gospel] is not apprehended by the understanding and memory alone, as other disciplines are, but it is received only when it possesses the whole soul, and finds a seat and resting place in the inmost affection of the heart.’⁸

Both Calvin and charismatics, then, desire to give a holistic account of Christian experience that avoids reductionism. Furthermore, both Calvin and charismatic theology share the intuition that cognition is insufficient to tangibly identify the Holy Spirit in Christian experience along with a preference for the affective side of experience as the primary focus of theological reflection. In order to understand Calvin’s promise for charismatic theology more fully it will be necessary to briefly examine Calvin’s dynamic conception of piety in which knowledge, experience, adoration, worship and ethics are all brought together.

Piety (pietas)

In the preface to the Institutes addressed to King Francis I, Calvin says that his purpose was ‘to transmit certain rudiments by which those who are touched with any zeal for religion might be shaped to true godliness (pietas).’⁹ Piety describes a right attitude or disposition towards God and includes ‘true knowledge, heartfelt worship, saving faith, filial fear, prayerful submission, and reverential love.’¹⁰ Such is the importance of piety for Calvin that ‘we shall not say that, properly speaking, God is known where there is no religion or piety.’¹¹ Thus for Calvin the claim to know God is measured by the Christian’s piety which is expressed in affective patterns (love and reverence for God), true knowledge of God according to the Scriptures, engagement in worship and various devotional practices (e.g., prayer and repentance). In modern English, piety has a slightly negative association with self-righteousness or moral exceptionalism, but for Calvin piety is an entirely positive word describing a life rightly ordered before God and people. 

The Theological Basis of Piety: Union with Christ

Union with Christ is one of the most frequently repeated motifs in Calvin’s theology. Calvin begins book III of the Institutes by stating that ‘the Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself.’¹² In this union with Christ brought about by the Holy Spirit (unio cum Christo), believers receive a double grace (duplex gratia) of justification and sanctification.¹³ The Holy Spirit brings people to faith which unites them with Christ and it is only in him that justification and sanctification occur. Calvin’s choice to not fully address justification by faith until he has addressed sanctification has long intrigued Calvin scholars. Whatever the reason for this ordering,¹⁴ Calvin is keen to stress that ‘the grace of justification is not separated from regeneration, although they are things distinct.’¹⁵ Justification and sanctification must be distinguished but remain inseparable because ‘Christ cannot be torn into parts’ just as ‘the brightness of the sun cannot be separated from its heat.’¹⁶ Although Calvin is keen to conceptually distinguish justification and sanctification, union with Christ is a spiritual reality into which Christians can grow. Calvin states that ‘Not only does he cleave to us by an indivisible bond of fellowship, but with a wonderful communion, day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us, until he becomes completely one with us.’ ¹⁷ It is this mystical and experiential reality which undergirds Calvin’s dynamic emphasis on piety. 

The Experiential and the Ethical?

One of the key ways that Calvin conceives of believers union with Christ is in mortification and vivification with the former identified primarily with Christ’s death, and the latter with Christ’s resurrection and ascension. Broadly speaking mortification refers to the putting to death of sinful appetites, and vivification refers to the giving of new desires for holiness. However Calvin is not satisfied with the definition of vivification given by some of the reformers as ‘the consolation that arises out of faith’, that is, the feeling of relief a sinner feels when they hear that they are forgiven.¹⁸ Instead Calvin opts for a fusing of the experiential and the ethical by defining vivification as ‘the desire to live in a holy and devoted manner, a desire arising from rebirth.’¹⁹ In other words, Calvin sees obedience and ethics as far better indicators of the Spirit in Christian experience than changeable emotional states. Calvin’s steadfast refusal to equate primary pneumatological significance to the emotional state of the believer is motivated by his understanding of the object of regeneration which is ‘to manifest in the life of believers a harmony between God’s righteousness and their obedience.’²⁰ The pneumatic participation of believers in Christ finds its corresponding human action in obedience and holiness of life rather than in happy states of mind; though it may also include these when they lead to a life of obedience. This is not because the ‘inmost affection of the heart’ is not important to Calvin, but rather because obedience is the fruit and measure of a heart changed by grace. As important as the heart is for Calvin, the believer must not look inward for primary evidence of their sanctification but outward to their interaction with God’s people and God’s world. Calvin ultimately refuses to equate sanctification with any implicit affectivity which does not lead to an ethical life in obedience to God:

‘True purity, no doubt, has its seat in the heart, but it manifests its fruits in the works of the hands. The Psalmist, therefore, very properly joins to a pure heart the purity of the whole life; for that man acts a ridiculous part who boasts of having a sound heart, if he does not show by his fruits that the root is good. On the other hand, it will not suffice to frame the hands, feet, and eyes, according to the rule of righteousness, unless purity of heart precede outward continence.’²¹

The inward, bodily life of the emotions must correspond to the outward life of ethics to be truly significant. Union thus conceived can produce an emotionally resonant but realistic doctrine of sanctification which holds together the affective and the ethical under one theological horizon. Calvin can therefore offer helpful contributions to the burgeoning discussion surrounding Christian experience opened up by Simeon Zahl in The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience. Zahl critiques Protestantism as having an anxiety about identifying the ‘practical recognisability of the Spirit’ in non-abstract, experiential terms.²² Although this critique seems valid for some expressions of Protestantism, Calvin’s understanding of piety offers a highly sophisticated coordination between the mind, the heart and the hands which can speak to the charismatic pursuit of a holistic anthropology. 

Affective intransigence and the necessity of sanctification

Zahl rightly argues that any compelling account of Christian experience must give a coherent account of what he calls ‘affective intransigence.’²³ This refers to the deep human resistance to external attempts to change the human heart. Protestantism has spoken in various ways about the necessity of sanctification in the Christian life, but Zahl detects in this language a risk of abstraction that is often not matched by actual Christian experience. What should Christians say when the transformation they desire in themselves or in others seems paltry and insignificant in comparison with the rich theological language they use to describe it? Zahl argues that the solution to this affective intransigence is (in part) a better understanding of human desire, and to better deploy the gospel/law distinction to help foster a genuine, willing response to God rather than a forced response. Zahl commends an Augustinian ‘desiderative pneumatology of Christian transformation’ because it ‘succeeds..in providing an experiential account of the Spirit’s sanctifying work that takes place in bodies in time.’²⁴ Rather than unpack what Zahl means by this, I want to explain why Calvin’s realism about sanctification can further contribute to the discussion surrounding Christian experience.

Although Calvin is clear that sanctification is an irreducible part of the piety which flows from union with Christ, he is equally insistent that Christians cannot achieve perfection or anything close to it in this life. One of Calvin’s favourite images for the Christian life is that of a long pilgrimage. Calvin states that sanctification ‘does not take place in one moment or one day or one year; but through continual and sometimes even slow advances God wipes out in his elect the corruptions of the flesh, cleanses them of guilt, consecrates them to himself as temples renewing all their minds to true purity that they may practise repentance throughout their lives and know that this warfare will end only at death.’²⁵ Charismatic theology has inherited from evangelicalism an emphasis on conversionism and personal transformation. But the potential risk with these immanent emphases is that the slower ‘long obedience in the same direction’ isn’t sufficiently articulated.²⁶ The result of this can be an over reliance on dramatic stories of conversion and overnight character change, without sufficient attentiveness to the slow, steady and incomplete nature of sanctification (and the ecclesial practices which foster it). Calvin’s emphasis on the slow and even frustrating nature of sanctification provides charismatic theology with a rigorous grammar of sanctification that expresses both the priority of the heart and the need to evaluate the heart not by introspective analysis, but by an outward focus on the interaction with God’s people and God’s world. 

Conclusion

The inaccurate stereotype of Calvin as harsh, detached or inattentive to the Spirit should not discourage charismatics from drawing on his rich experiential theology of union with Christ. Calvin’s emphasis on the heart bears striking similarity to many charismatic emphases on the Christian’s lively experience of God’s reality.²⁷ At the same time, Calvin’s insistence that obedience and ethics are the primary means of measuring a heart that has been changed by grace adds a further layer of discernment for charismatic theology to consider again. The charismatic movement has not been immune from the scandals and abuse that have rocked all denominations in recent years, and therefore Calvin’s insistence that sanctification is an irreducible benefit of being united with Christ feels particularly relevant at the moment. Calvin also provides a rich theology of the Christian life rooted in pilgrimage in which sanctification is a difficult and lifelong process with patchy and sometimes incomplete results. This realism in Calvin challenges overly simplistic or fast accounts of conversion and Christian transformation more generally by recognising that being united with Christ in his death and resurrection means a daily, ongoing battle against sin, the world, and the devil. Of course, there are discontinuities between Calvin and the charismatic movement such as his cessationism, but when it comes to Calvin’s emphasis on the affective aspects of being united to Christ, I certainly have found Calvin to be a friendly and immensely helpful conversation partner.

1. Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University, 2000), 171. ↩︎
2. James. K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2010), 61. ↩︎
3. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. E.C. Hoskyns, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 10. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, (London: T. Nelson & Sons, 1873), 1. ↩︎
4. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, eds. J.T. Mcneill, F.L. Battles, (Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006)  3.2.33. ↩︎
5. Ibid. ↩︎
6. Institutes, 3.2.36. ↩︎
7. James. K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2010), 72. ↩︎
8. Institutes 3.6.4. ↩︎
9. Institutes, Prefatory Address to King Frances I of France, 93. ↩︎
10. Joel. R. Beeke, ‘Calvin on piety’ The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 126. ↩︎
11. Institutes, 1.2.1. ↩︎
12. Institutes, 3.1.1. ↩︎
13. Institutes, 3.11.1. ↩︎
14. ‘The theme of justification was therefore more lightly touched upon because it was more to the point to understand first how little devoid of good works is the faith, through which alone we obtain free righteousness by the mercy of God’. Institutes, 3.11.1. ↩︎
15. Institutes, 3.11.11. ↩︎
16. Institutes, 3.11.6. ↩︎
17. Institutes, 3.2.24. ↩︎
18. Institutes, 3.3.3. ↩︎
19. Ibid. ↩︎
20. Institutes, 3.6.1. ↩︎
21. Commentary, Psalm 24:4. ↩︎
22. Simeon Zahl, The Holy Spirit in Christian Experience, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 48. ↩︎
23. Zahl, Holy, 153. ↩︎
24. Zahl, Holy, 198. ↩︎
25. Institutes, 3.3.9. ↩︎
26. Eugene. H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, (Downers Grove: IVP, 2000). ↩︎
27. Mark. J. Cartledge, ‘Pentecostal Theology’ The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism eds. C.M. Robeck, Jr & A. Yong, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 254-272. Keith Warrington, Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter, (London: T&T Clark, 2008). Amos Yong, ‘The pneumatological imagination: The logic of Pentecostal theology’ The Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology ed. W. Vondey, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 152-162. ↩︎