Called to Response

John Calvin is not very fashionable these days. Scottish poet Edwin Muir (1887-1959) well captures the antipathy his name arouses in many quarters:

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology)

J. Todd Billings (Author)

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

232 pages

$176.61

King Calvin with his iron pen,
And God three angry letters in a book,
And there the logical hook
On which the Mystery is impaled and bent
Into an ideological argument.

Scholarship, in its attempt to do Calvin justice, often perpetuates this very caricature. Battle lines are drawn. Defenses are fortified. Books and articles are produced at a furious rate on all sides of the debate. And Calvin himself is impaled and bent into an ideological argument.

Several years ago, Todd Billings entered this scene of conflict with a remarkable first book, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, an ambitious attempt to remove one “logical hook” that has impaled Calvinism for too long. Billings challenges the long-held stereotype that Calvin’s God is systematically opposed to humanity—a tyrant whose power excludes all human initiative and whose “grace” is irresistible to passive sinners. The key word that Billings uses to challenge this alleged passivity is “participation,” a philosophical term with a long history and, perhaps surprisingly, plenty of scope and place in Calvin.

Perhaps this book never would have been written had it not been for the claims of various theologians of “the gift” that Calvin and participation are irreconcilable opposites. This piqued the curiosity of Todd Billings, who hitherto had little interest in Calvin. Contemporary academic fascination with the nature and far-reaching implications of gift-giving began in anthropology and spread from there to other disciplines. In theology this inquiry has centered on an understanding of salvation as gift, with the proviso that unilateral gifts are essentially destructive in nature. As the Trinitarian model for love is reciprocal and self-offering, so the argument goes, the gift of salvation cannot be unilaterally given to the sinful recipient, but must involve the dignity of response in some way. Humans, even if they cannot reciprocate on the level of divine gifts, are called to reciprocate in the gift of their whole selves. Even the gift of the Son of God was actively received through Mary’s own response of obedience and self-offering love.

The rather sweeping rejection of Calvin by theologians of the gift hinges on the perception of Calvin’s doctrine of imputation, in which salvation is a gift in the worst possible sense: sinners passively receiving a changed status in the divine ledger books, carried out on their behalf. This gift occurs over their head with no possible involvement, accomplished before the beginning of time through election. Those familiar with Puritan theologian William Perkins’ “Golden Chain” may remember an elaborate diagram explaining election, in which certain Christians are damned (despite their baptism and participation in Christian fellowship and sacraments) while certain hedonists are saved, due to the “mysterious working” of election. A unilateral gift? Indeed—and sometimes forced upon (possibly unwilling) children. Billings challenges this view by focusing on Calvin’s thought regarding the activity of believers in receiving salvation and living in Christ.

Many critiques of Calvin begin, Billings notes, with an exaggerated understanding of the influence of nominalism on his early education, particularly that gained in his formative years at the College de Montaigu. This misunderstanding has led to assumptions about the dialectical nature of Calvin’s thought, ultimately “explaining” Calvin’s inability to hold together divine/human in the incarnation and sign/signified in the Eucharist. Billings sets this portrait of Calvin aside, as well as the flawed account of nominalism used to provide the palette. He turns instead to Calvin’s consistent use of the Johannine language of indwelling (most particularly in Bondage and Liberation of the Will) and the Pauline language of participation (in Commentary on Romans). From these oft-overlooked works, the themes that consistently emerge are those of union, participation, adoption, engrafting, and interpenetration. As a result, Billings endorses a clear pattern of deification in Calvin—Osiander notwithstanding—that is not an imitation or “following Christ at a distance” but a true ontological, objective participation “by partaking of Christ, along the Christian path of death, resurrection, and ascension—living lives en Christo.”

But—I can hear good readers of Calvin asking—how does this square with forensic imputation? Billings turns to the duplex gratia to remind us that even as Calvin separates imputation and regeneration, he always binds them tightly together; in fact, they are one in the person of Christ. While imputation is logically prior to union with Christ, the moment of reception and the moment of empowerment are one: “The wondrous exchange in imputation draws believers into a transforming union with Christ, even as the transformation of believers does not provide the ground for this union,” Billings writes. Calvin’s theology of participation is not despite his “nominalist” formation but is a true synthesis, drawing from his ad hoc patristic readings and his role as scriptural exegete. While Calvin has been all too often “impaled and bent” just here, Billings gives us a treatment of participation that is as deep as it is wide, inseparable from imputation but not impaled by it.

Is this too good to be true? Is it merely a hagiographic reconstruction of Calvin? No. Though motivated by obvious ecumenical intent, Billings’ work on Calvin is, quite simply, brilliant. He provides a rich consideration of Calvin’s use of the word “participation,” refining and deepening its meaning with attention to subsequent editions of the Institutes (always in dialogue, of course, with the Commentaries and controversies). I have long been struck by Ford Lewis Battles’ seeming inability to cope with these nuances in his translation of the Institutes, such as his rendering of koinonia as “fellowship” in even the most explicit of texts. Billings’ work should begin to restore to fullness the flat renderings of these passages, all which point to a mature doctrine of participation that grew and strengthened over the course of Calvin’s life.

Particularly helpful is Billings’ synthesis of all the careful research thus far around the theological loci of the believer’s adoption and the sacraments. Prayer, which gets short shrift in many tomes on Calvin, is given its proper place as the activity in which believers both receive their identity and are energized toward moral response. In prayer, both communal and private, believers participate in their adoption, becoming children of the Father by the Spirit, with Christ as their brother, within the larger church family. Here the duplex gratia is strikingly apparent, as it is also in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Billings argues strongly that neither in prayer nor in the sacraments are believers passive recipients but, rather, that they are called to response through gratitude and piety. Whether or not these “actions” go far enough to satisfy gift theologians, the divine gift can hardly be called “unilateral” here.

Billings concludes with a closer look at Calvin’s understanding of the Law as the locus for participation. What is the relation of Christians to the Law, given that they are now forgiven and living under grace? Does the Law serve only to point out moral failure before God? Billings shows that the Law is God’s gracious invitation for the believer voluntarily to love God and neighbor, thus “uniting” humanity to God. Calvin’s theology of Law displays the “active, communal, participatory place” of the human being in creation. It is as believers participate in Christ—the Law’s fulfilment—that they can once again experience the delight intended for them in creation.

The bottom line is that this book matters. Whether or not readers are familiar with the gift theologians and their critique of Calvin, many Christians stand in an uncertain relationship to their ability to act. I have often noted that it is precisely the Protestant churches that encamp around Calvin’s theology of grace that are uncertain how also to respond to God’s gift in Jesus Christ beyond salvation. And so the “Christian life” can become reduced to a pattern of shared moral behaviors that signify one’s saved-by-grace status.

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift lays the academic groundwork for recovering a key dimension of Calvin’s theology and, perhaps more important, spirituality. Billings has broadened our understanding of Calvin as one for whom God’s grace and our faithful response form two parts of a whole. Participation is precisely this dynamic reality, whereby one is not following an external standard but is energized to respond to Christ, in Christ. It is the answer to the “How?” question that naturally follows Bonhoeffer’s “Who?“

Julie Canlis is the author of Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension (Eerdmans).