Preaching With Spiritua; Power

Calvin's Understanding of Word and Spirit in Preaching

Ralph Cunninton

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781781916544

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THE SPIRIT-ACCOMPANIED WORD

In the previous chapter we saw how Calvin employed the Christological maxim, ‘distinct but not separate’ to describe the relationship between the sacramental signs and the reality to which they point. While the sacraments are never efficacious apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, they do not lose their essential nature by virtue of their not being received with faith. This means that the grace to which they point is always available with the sign when received with Spirit-wrought faith. In this chapter we turn to consider the relationship between Word and Spirit in preaching and it quickly becomes apparent that the relationships are analogous. The same questions arise. Is the Word ever separated from the power of the Gospel? Is the preaching of the Word ever unaccompanied by the Spirit? Does the Word cease to function as a means of grace simply by virtue of it not being received with faith?

As we saw in chapter one, Robert Strivens suggests that Calvin separated Word and Spirit so that the two are not tied together irrevocably.¹ In Strivens’ reading of Calvin, while the preacher may rightly expect the Spirit to be at work when the Word is preached, ‘the Spirit does not necessarily and in every case give efficacy to the Word’ and sometimes ‘the Word can be preached in a manner that is bereft of the Spirit.’² In this chapter, we will scrutinise those statements to ascertain whether they accurately reflect the full tenor of Calvin’s thought as expressed in the Institutes, his commentaries and other writings.

GOD’S WORD AND THE PREACHED WORD

At the outset, it is important to grasp the relationship between God’s Word and the preached Word in Calvin’s thinking. ³ Calvin understood that God ordinarily uses means to communicate with his people.⁴ This has been God’s pattern throughout his dealings with humanity, ‘for God does not speak openly from heaven, but employs men as his instruments, that by their agency he may make known his will.’⁵ Under the Old Covenant, God used prophets for this purpose and enabled them to speak his words with his own power and authority. Commenting on Haggai 1:12, Calvin wrote:

[T]he people received not what they heard from the mouth of mortal man, otherwise than if the majesty of God had openly appeared. For there was no ocular view of God given; but the message of the Prophet obtained as much power as though God had descended from heaven, and had given manifest tokens of his presence. We may then conclude from these words, that the glory of God so shines in his word, that we ought to be so much affected by it, whenever he speaks by his servants, as though he were nigh to us, face to face, as the Scripture says in another place.⁶

Today, God speaks through ministers who have been commissioned to faithfully expound the Scripture.⁷ Such ministers speak on the same basis as the prophets of Israel since, ‘if they derogate nothing from the authority of God, it follows that none except the only true God ought to be heard.’⁸ Indeed, ‘where preaching is, there God’s voice ringeth in our ears.’⁹ Ministers of the Word are the fundamental channel through which God’s Word is communicated to his people. God ‘does not wish to be heard but by the voice of his minister’¹⁰ and he ‘does not speak Himself, but through men.’¹¹ So close is the relationship between Christ and his ministers that in the parable of the sower ‘Christ claims for Himself what in a sense He shares with His ministers.’¹² It can be said that Christ sows the seed of his Word when his ministers preach because they are ‘like His hand.’ When the gospel is preached we should not think of it being told by the men themselves but ‘by Christ with their lips.’¹³ Elsewhere Calvin speaks of the ministry of the Word as a ‘sort of delegated work’ whereby he uses the preachers’ mouths to do his own work, much like a workman uses a tool.¹⁴ When the ministers faithfully declare the words of Christ, their mouth is his mouth and their lips are his lips.¹⁵

It is clear that just as God is present whenever the sacraments are administered, so too God is present whenever the Word is preached. In the Institutes, Calvin teaches that the sacraments and the Word have the same office: ‘to offer and set forth Christ to us and in him the treasures of heavenly grace.’¹⁶ The connection is highlighted in Calvin’s Short Treatise on the Supper. It is in Christ that the fullness of life is communicated but the instrument that God has ordained to dispense Christ and his benefits to us is the Word.¹⁷ It is through his Word that God reveals himself to those he wishes to call,¹⁸ and through the preaching of the Word that God ‘stretches forth his hands to us exactly as a father stretches forth his arms, ready to receive his son lovingly into his bosom.’¹⁹ When the Word is preached God approaches his people and gives to them the very token of his presence.²⁰ Commenting on Cornelius’ experience of receiving the Word from Peter in Acts 10:33, Calvin writes that, whenever the Word is set before us, we ought to recognise that ‘God is present and calling us.’²¹ Describing Calvin’s understanding of preaching as a sign of the presence of God, Ronald Wallace writes: ‘Through the preaching of the Word by His ministers, Christ therefore gives His sacramental presence in the midst of His Church, imparts to men the grace which the Word promises, and establishes His Kingdom over the hearts of His hearers.’²²

THE POWER OF THE WORD

Given the close relationship between God’s Word and the preached Word it is important to ascertain exactly what Calvin understood the power and efficacy of the Word to be. Calvin was convinced that the Word is always effective to achieve its purpose. Commenting on Isaiah 55:10, he wrote: ‘if we see great efficacy in the rain, which waters and fertilises the earth, much greater efficacy will God display in his word.’²³ Calvin was careful though to elaborate upon what such efficacy looks like. He recognised that some understood the text to mean that the preaching of the gospel always yields some fruit. He affirmed the truth of this statement but opined that it was not Isaiah’s primary meaning.²⁴ Rather, the prophet’s focus was on the fact that God’s words are never spoken in vain; his promises are never merely scattered into the air. We will actually ‘receive the fruit of them, provided that we do not prevent it by our unbelief.’²⁵ This conditional aspect of efficacy is important and we shall return to it below.

A key passage on the efficacy of God’s Word is Calvin’s commentary on Hebrews 4:12. In it, he makes several important observations concerning the different effects of God’s Word upon its listeners to which we shall return below. All we need to note at present is the general tenor of his comments. Calvin maintained that ‘[i]f anyone thinks that the air echoes with an empty sound when the Word of God is sent forth, he is making a great mistake. This was something alive, and full of hidden power which leaves nothing in man untouched.’²⁶ Once more, Calvin insists that God’s Word is not scattered in vain; nor does he allow it to fall to the ground neglected. Instead he has ‘imbued His Word with…power’ so that it searches out every part of the soul and scrutinises our thoughts.²⁷ There is no obstruction too powerful to prevent the Word from doing its work; ‘there is nothing so hard or firm in a man, nothing so deeply hidden that the efficacy of the Word, does not penetrate through to it.’²⁸

For Calvin, the efficacy of the Word resides in the matter that the Word contains, namely the death and resurrection of Christ.²⁹ When James speaks of the Word being able to save (James 1:21), Calvin assures us that James does not mean that salvation is received merely through the outward hearing of the Word, as if God’s saving task were being put into the hands of others. Rather James speaks of ‘the Word which penetrates, by faith, to the heart of man, and means only that God, as Author of salvation, accomplishes this by the agency of His own Gospel.’³⁰

In describing the efficacy of the Word, Calvin adopted language familiar to contemporary speech act theory.³¹ God’s Word is inseparable from His action. He does what he says and his words have both illocutionary and perlocutionary force. Calvin expresses this understanding of the effect of God’s Word in his commentary on Romans 3:4: ‘God…is true, not only because He is prepared to stand faithfully by His promises, but also because He fulfils in deed whatever He declares in Word; for He says, “As my power, so also shall my work be”.’³² In commenting on the words of Isaiah, ‘For the mouth of the Lord has commanded’ (Isa. 34:16), Calvin writes, ‘nothing that comes out of God’s holy mouth can fail of its effect.’³³ Whatever God has decreed will come to pass and it cannot be reversed. The same point is made in Calvin’s discussion of the rendering of dunamis (power) in 1 Thessalonnians 1:5. He recognises that some take dunamis to refer to miracles but he prefers the view that it refers to the spiritual power of doctrine. While the eloquence of man is often lifeless and empty, the living voice of God is ‘inseparable from its effect.’³⁴ Commenting upon the words of Isaiah 34:16, ‘For the mouth of the Lord has commanded’, Calvin insists that nothing that comes forth out of God’s mouth can ‘fail of its effect.’³⁵ God’s words are never ‘thrown away and ineffectual.’³⁶ They do what they declare.

This still leaves open the question of whether this performative efficacy of the Word is in effect whenever the Word is preached. In his discussion of Paul’s comments on the work of ministers in 1 Corinthians 3, Calvin notes that Paul speaks of ministers in two ways. Sometimes he speaks of them so as to emphasise the efficacy of their work as ministers of the Spirit. But at other times, he emphasises, as in 1 Corinthians 3:7, that ministers are nothing but instruments of God, dependent on the Lord for effective power. Even here, however, Calvin is quick to remind his readers that ‘Christ puts forth his own power in the ministry which He instituted, in such a way that it is evident that it was not instituted in vain…His power is made known as efficacious in the minister.’³⁷

Calvin makes similar observations in his commentary on Malachi 4:6, noting that when God speaks highly of his ministers, the power of the Spirit is not excluded. Indeed, when he transfers to the minister that which is his own (efficacy), he does so in a way that it never ceases to dwell in him: ‘he never resigns to them his own office, but makes them partakers of it only.’³⁸ Calvin is always careful to distinguish between Christ and the minister, emphasising that Christ does not take away anything from himself. This is important in understanding the relationship between efficacy and the preacher but we will defer our discussion of that to a later point.

THE SOURCE OF THE WORD’S POWER

In the previous chapter we saw that, in Calvin’s understanding, the efficacy and power of the sacraments resides wholly in the Holy Spirit who joins his virtue to the sacraments whenever they are properly received.³⁹ Exactly the same can be said of the preaching of the Word. The efficacy of the Word is to be ascribed to the Holy Spirit.⁴⁰ ‘Preaching would be of little use, if God did not give power and efficacy to his doctrine by the Spirit.’⁴¹ In giving efficacy to the Word, the Spirit enables mortal voices to become instruments of eternal life.⁴² Calvin writes: ‘Certainly God works effectively through his Word, but we must affirm that its efficacy is...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Current Controversy
• Debate Among the Reformers
• The Spiritual Presence and The Supper
• The Spirit-Accompanied Word
• Conclusion
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