Font of Pardon and New Life: John

Calvin and the Efficacy of Baptism

(OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL
THEOLOGY SERIES) Bierma
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Font of Pardon and New Life
 OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N H I S T O R IC A L T H E O L O G Y

Series Editor
Richard A. Muller, Calvin Theological Seminary

Founding Editor
David C. Steinmetz †

Editorial Board
Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University
George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame
Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University
Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-​Wilhelms-​Universität Bonn
Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago
John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame
Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia

THE REGENSBURG ARTICLE 5 ON THE COVENANT OF WORKS

JUSTIFICATION
Inconsistent Patchwork or Substance of True
Doctrine?
Anthony N. S. Lane
AUGUSTINE ON THE WILL
A Theological Account
Han-​luen Kantzer Komline
THE SYNOD OF PISTORIA AND
VATICAN II
Jansenism and the Struggle for Catholic Reform
Shaun Blanchard
CATHOLICITY AND THE COVENANT
OF WORKS
James Ussher and the Reformed Tradition
Harrison Perkins
The Origins, Development, and Reception of the
Doctrine
J. V. Fesko
RINGLEADERS OF REDEMPTION
How Medieval Dance Became Sacred
Kathryn Dickason
REFUSING TO KISS THE SLIPPER
Opposition to Calvinism in the Francophone
Reformation
Michael W. Bruening
FONT OF PARDON AND NEW LIFE
John Calvin and the Efficacy of Baptism
Lyle D. Bierma
 Font of Pardon and
New Life
John Calvin and the Efficacy of Baptism

LY L E D. B I E R M A

1
 3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Bierma, Lyle D., author.
Title: Font of pardon and new life : John Calvin and the efficacy of baptism / Lyle D. Bierma.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020036738 (print) | LCCN 2020036739 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197553879 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197553893 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Calvin, Jean, 1509–1564. | Baptism—Reformed Church. |
Infant baptism—History—16th century. |
Reformed Church—Doctrines—History—16th century.
Classification: LCC BX9418 .B54 2021 (print) | LCC BX9418 (ebook) |
DDC 234/.161—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036738
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036739

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197553879.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 Acknowledgments

There is something not quite right about placing just the name of the au-
thor below the title of his or her book when there are often others who as-
sisted the author along the way. In the case of this book, here are some of
those “others” whom I would like to thank: the administration and Board
of Trustees of Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, who
granted me semester-​long sabbaticals in 2013, 2016, and 2019 to work on this
project; Dr. Karin Maag and Mr. Paul Fields, director and curator, respec-
tively, of the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies at Calvin University,
who provided workspace and other assistance in the Meeter Center during
these sabbaticals; Dr. Herman J. Selderhuis, professor of church history and
church polity at the Theological University of Apeldoorn (Netherlands), who
graciously invited me to his institution as a visiting scholar during my 2019
sabbatical; Ms. N. van der Mijden-​Groenendijk and Ms. A. M. J. Buitink,
librarians at the Theological University of Apeldoorn, who offered both a
hospitable library atmosphere in which to work and ready answers to my
many questions; the editors at Oxford University Press, all of whom skillfully
and helpfully guided me through the publication process; Mr. Neulsaem Ha,
PhD student at Calvin Theological Seminary, who prepared the index; and
finally my wife, Dawn, who has been my traveling partner not only through
life but also on many of the trips to Europe that have added context and tex-
ture to my work on Calvin and the Reformed tradition. It is to her that this
book is dedicated.
 Abbreviations

CO Ioannis Calvini opera uae supersunt omnia. Edited by Guilielmus

Baum, Eduardus Cunitz, and Eduardus Reuss. 59 vols.
Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863–​1900.
COR Ioannis Calvini Opera omnia denuo recognita et adnotatione critica
instructa notisque illustrate. Edited by Brian G. Armstrong et al. 22 vols.
Geneva: Droz, 1992–​.
CT Consensus Tigurinus (Zurich Consensus, 1549)
NT New Testament
OT Old Testament
 1
Introduction

To paraphrase the book of Ecclesiastes, of the making of many essays on

Calvin’s doctrine of baptism there is no end. The Calvinism Resources
Database at the Meeter Center for Calvin Studies in Grand Rapids lists no
fewer than 239 journal articles, book chapters, and unpublished papers on
this subject from just the past one hundred years—​in Afrikaans, Dutch,
English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Spanish—​and these do
not include subsections on baptism in longer works on Calvin’s doctrine
of the sacraments or on his theology as a whole.1 Of the making of many
books on Calvin’s baptismal teaching, however, there is hardly a beginning.
A handful of theses and dissertations have appeared,2 but only a part of one
of these was ever prepared for further publication, and then only as a journal
article and three chapters of a larger work on baptism in the Reformed tra-
dition.3 A full-​length monograph devoted exclusively to Calvin’s doctrine of
baptism has yet to be published.
This paucity of longer works is somewhat surprising, given that the
many shorter studies of Calvin and baptism have often come to different
conclusions, especially with regard to his view of baptismal efficacy. Much
of the debate has centered on the interpretation of a few puzzling passages in
Calvin’s works that appear to teach a form of baptismal regeneration. I myself
first became interested in this topic some years ago when I stumbled across
Question and Answer 328 in Calvin’s Catechism of the Church of Geneva
(1542/​1545).4 There the minister asks, “But do you attribute nothing more
to the water [of baptism] than that it is only a symbol of washing?” And the
child responds, “I think it to be such a symbol that reality is [at the same
time] attached to it. For God does not disappoint us when he promises us his
gifts. Hence it is certain that pardon of sins and newness of life are offered to
us and received by us in baptism.”5
That is just one of what one scholar has called the “tough quotations” in
Calvin’s treatment of baptism.6 Among several others are the following:

Font of Pardon and New Life. Lyle D. Bierma, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197553879.003.0001.
2 Font of Pardon and New Life

But we must realize that at whatever time we are baptized, we are once for
all washed and purged for our whole life. (Institutes, 1536)7

For as in baptism, God, regenerating us, engrafts us into the society of his
church and makes us his own by adoption, so we have said, that [in the
Lord’s Supper] he discharges the function of a provident householder in
continually supplying to us the food to sustain and preserve us in that life
into which he has begotten us by his Word. (Institutes, 1543)8

We assert that the whole guilt of sin is taken away in baptism, so that the re-
mains of sin still existing are not imputed. That this may be more clear, let my
readers call to mind that there is a twofold grace in baptism, for therein both
remission of sins and regeneration are offered to us. We teach that full remis-
sion is made, but that regeneration is only begun and goes on making progress
during the whole of life. (Acts of the Council of Trent: With the Antidote, 1547)9

But as baptism is a solid recognition by which God introduces his chil-

dren into the possession of life, a true and effectual sealing of the promise,
a pledge of sacred union with Christ, it is justly said to be the reception
and entrance into the Church. And as the instruments of the Holy Spirit
are not dead, God truly performs and effects by baptism what he figures.
(Second Defence of the Pious and Orthodox Faith concerning the Sacraments,
in Answer to the Calumnies of Joachim Westphal, 1556)10

For (as I said before) God performs by the secret power of his Spirit,
whatsoever he shows and witnesses to the eye. So then we must ever come
to this point, that the sacraments are effectual, and that they are no tri-
fling signs which vanish away in the air, but that the truth is always so
matched with them, because God who is faithful, shows that he has not
ordained anything in vain. And that is the cause why in baptism we re-
ceive truly the forgiveness of sins, we are washed and cleansed with the
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are renewed by the operation of his
Holy Spirit. And how so? Does a little water have such power when it is
cast upon the head of a child? No. But because it is the will of our Lord
Jesus Christ that the water should be a visible sign of his blood and of the
Holy Ghost. Therefore, baptism has that power, and whatsoever is there
set forth to the eye, is forthwith accomplished in very deed. (“Sermon on
Deuteronomy 34,” 1556)11
 Introduction 3

These passages raise a number of questions. Did Calvin intend to teach

a kind of baptismal justification and regeneration, that is, did he mean that
a baptizand actually receives forgiveness of sins and new life at the time of,
and perhaps even by means of, water baptism? Did he understand the ex-
ternal sign of baptism to actually convey the spiritual realities it signifies
or only to mirror them? If baptism serves in some way as an instrument of
God’s grace, what then are the roles of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, divine elec-
tion, and faith? How is it that adults who approach the font in faith, and thus
presumably already possess the benefits of forgiveness and new life, receive
these benefits in baptism? Are such blessings also conferred at the baptism of
an infant? Finally, did Calvin’s teaching on baptismal efficacy remain fairly
constant throughout his lifetime, or did it undergo significant change over
the course of his career? On none of these questions has any scholarly con-
sensus been achieved. Indeed, as the following survey will demonstrate, the
scholarship of the past one hundred years has produced at least three basic
approaches to Calvin’s understanding of the efficacy of baptism, each with its
own variations.

Instrumentalist Interpretations

First of all, some Calvin scholars have maintained that the Genevan reformer
did teach a doctrine of baptismal forgiveness, regeneration, and union with
Christ. Employing labels that Brian Gerrish introduced in the 1960s to distin-
guish different Eucharistic theologies in the early Reformed confessions, we
could call this view “symbolic instrumentalism,” as distinct from “symbolic
memorialism” and “symbolic parallelism.”12 “Symbolic memorialism,” which
Gerrish traced to the confessional writings of Ulrich Zwingli, understands
the Lord’s Supper not as a means by which grace is communicated but as a
commemoration of Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross, a sign or symbol of
grace received in the past, a pledge of God’s goodwill to reassure our faith,
and a public testimony by which the participant identifies with the Christian
community.13 “Symbolic parallelism,” which Gerrish ascribed to Heinrich
Bullinger, holds to a union of sign and signified in the sacrament, but views
the sacramental elements as only an outer testimony, analogy, or parallel
to an inner working of God’s grace that may occur simultaneously with the
signs but is still independent of them. This view “lacks the use of instru-
mental expressions; the outward event does not convey or cause or give rise
4 Font of Pardon and New Life

to the inward event, but merely indicates that it is going on.”14 Finally, “sym-
bolic instrumentalism,” which Gerrish saw reflected in Calvin’s Eucharistic
theology, regards the elements of the Lord’s Supper as the very instruments
or means through which the grace of the sacrament is communicated. The
bread and wine are still symbolic, in that “for Calvin, symbolism is what
assures [the believer] that he receives the body of Christ without believing in
a localized presence of the body in the elements,”15 but through these signs
the very flesh and blood of Christ are offered and received.16 Gerrish applied
these distinctions primarily to the Reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper,
but in support of his claim that for Calvin “it is the nature of sacraments to
cause and communicate (apporter et communiquer) what they signify,”17 he
quotes the aforementioned Question and Answer 328 from the Catechism of
the Church of Geneva, where Calvin states that forgiveness of sins and new
life are both offered and received in baptism.18 As in the Lord’s Supper, so
also in baptism Christ’s benefits are not just signified but actually conveyed
through the elements.19
Sixteen years before Gerrish, François Wendel had proposed a sim-
ilar interpretation of baptismal efficacy in Calvin as it related to union
with Christ.20 Citing the opening lines of Institutes 4.15.6, “Lastly, our faith
receives from baptism the advantage of its sure testimony to us that we are
not only engrafted into the death and life of Christ, but so united to Christ
himself that we become sharers in all his blessings,”21 Wendel concluded that
“Calvin seems to be making union with Christ dependent upon reception
of baptism.” What puzzled him, however, is that almost everywhere else in
Calvin we read that union with Christ begins not at the sacrament of bap-
tism but at the time one comes to faith, independently of the sacrament.22
Not only that, says Wendel, but Calvin suggests elsewhere that sacramental
efficacy always presupposes union with Christ because it presupposes faith
on the part of the participant. Unfortunately, Wendel brushes off this conun-
drum with the words “however that may be” and moves on to other things.
Nevertheless, he understands Calvin to say, in this passage of the Institutes at
least, that one’s union with Christ and the benefits that flow from it begin not
when one first believes but when one is baptized, and that this happens not
independently of the sacrament but by means of it.23
A scholar in this category who has addressed the kind of questions raised
by Wendel is Jack Cottrell. In an essay in 1990, Cottrell points to two sets
of what appear to be contradictory passages in Calvin’s writings: first, some
“isolated” statements, including some of the puzzling quotations we cited
 Introduction 5

earlier, where Calvin seems to view baptism as the point at which a penitent
sinner first receives forgiveness and new life; and second, another group of
passages where Calvin makes very clear that an adult is saved through faith
alone prior to baptism.24 To explain this apparent contradiction, Cottrell
suggests that for Calvin an adult believer receives salvation through faith be-
fore baptism, but these same salvific benefits are offered again in baptism so
as to be appropriated with even greater faith and assurance.25 Hence, Cottrell
concludes, “Whatever is received in the sacraments is not received as if for
the first time; it was already there and is only enlarged upon.”26 Through bap-
tism the believer enjoys an increase both of faith itself and of the salvific gifts
that are appropriated by that faith. In other words, for Calvin baptism is an
instrument both of assurance and of the grace of forgiveness and new life.
Some who hold to this instrumentalist interpretation have been quick to add
that Calvin qualifies such baptismal efficacy in several ways, lest he be misun-
derstood to imply that baptism is effective in and of itself (ex opere operato) and
every time it is administered. A fine example of this more nuanced approach is
found in Ronald Wallace’s systematic treatment of Calvin’s doctrine of Word
and sacrament in 1953.27 Wallace begins by laying out an array of evidence
from Calvin’s works that points to the sacraments as instruments of salvific
grace. For Calvin, says Wallace, the sacramental event “is effectual in con-
veying the very grace depicted in its outward form. What God depicts in the
sacraments, therefore, He actually brings to pass through their agency.”28 The
sacraments function as “the instruments of a gracious divine action whereby
what is represented to us is also presented to us.”29 At the same time, Wallace
makes clear that for Calvin the sacraments have no efficacy or validity apart
from the Word or promises of God to which they are attached and which must
always be proclaimed alongside them.30 Furthermore, they can be effectual
only through the concomitant work of God the Holy Spirit, whose grace is not
bound to the material elements or human action in the sacraments but who
in his sovereign freedom uses such elements and action as means of grace ac-
cording to his good pleasure.31 Finally, Wallace devotes an entire chapter to
baptism and faith, in which he emphasizes that for Calvin baptism has no ef-
ficacy if the recipient does not approach the font in faith.32 Baptism can still
be a valid offer of grace and retain what Wallace terms a “latent efficacy” even
when faith is not present, but the sacrament is actually efficacious only when
the baptizand finally believes.33
A couple of recent theologians have followed Wallace’s line of interpreta-
tion here but have supplemented or modified it slightly. William Evans and
6 Font of Pardon and New Life

Rich Lusk recognize both an instrumental efficacy in Calvin’s doctrine of

baptism and some of the qualifications to such efficacy that Wallace had iden-
tified many years before.34 They make the additional qualification that, in
Calvin’s view, God’s use of baptism as an instrument of salvation is grounded
in his sovereign decree of election. Baptism objectively offers Christ and his
benefits to all who receive it, but it bears fruit only in those whom God has
chosen from eternity to believe.35 Moreover, as a proponent of the so-​called
federal vision movement,36 Lusk stresses that baptismal efficacy in Calvin is
rooted in God’s covenantal relationship to humanity. The sacraments are ef-
fectual for salvation because God is forever faithful to the promises he has
made to his partners in the covenant of grace.37

Parallelist Interpretations

A second group of scholars interpret Calvin’s approach to baptism in a way

that sounds closer to what Gerrish termed the “symbolic parallelism” of
Heinrich Bullinger. In a 1926 treatise on Calvin’s doctrine of the sacraments,
for example, Joachim Beckmann asserted that the essence of a sacrament for
Calvin is a divinely established parallelism of heavenly and earthly actions—​
a clear illustration of the influence of Platonic thought on his theology. The
earthly action revolves around the external signs, that is, the material elem-
ents and human activity of a sacrament; the corresponding heavenly or in-
ternal action is the work of God, by which the substance, power, truth, and
grace of the sacrament are made effective. “It almost goes without saying,”
Beckmann maintains, “that these two actions are strictly separated [streng
geschieden], despite the fact that at the same time they must be joined to-
gether in the closest possible way by God’s eternal salvific will.”38 The grace of
the sacrament exists outside of and independent of the reception of the signs,
by which Calvin means not only that such grace remains in effect after the
signs are received but also that it can be present already before their recep-
tion, through the appropriation of God’s promises by faith. Indeed, any re-
ception of grace at the ceremony of the sacrament itself presupposes that the
participant already possesses such grace to some degree by God’s promise
and through faith.39
Beckmann grants that drawing such a sharp line against any magical inter-
pretation of the sacraments leaves Calvin open to the charge that a sacrament
is only a bare sign, merely a psychological assurance of a promise and grace
 Introduction 7

already appropriated by faith. He insists, however, that Calvin steers clear of

this danger, too, and that he manages to preserve the grace-​bearing character
of the sacraments. What is offered and received by faith at the sacraments for
Calvin is no different from what is offered and received by faith in the Word
alone, namely, union with Christ and his benefits through the operation of
the Holy Spirit. The sacraments simply accommodate that Word to our crea-
turely weaknesses and the full range of our human senses.40 The outer signs
or symbols are testimonies, seals, pledges, attestations, and representations
of a corresponding divine grace, but any connection between the signs and
the signified is possible only because of the will, good pleasure, and depend-
ability of God. It is only in that limited sense that the sacraments can be con-
sidered instruments, organs, or vehicles of grace in Calvin.41 What makes a
sacrament not just an earthly symbol but an efficacious means of grace is its
connection to the Word, the accompanying work of the Holy Spirit, and faith
in a God who always keeps his promises.42 Unfortunately, Beckmann does
not spend much time applying this analysis to Calvin’s doctrine of baptism,
but he seems to espouse a parallelist interpretation of Calvin’s general sacra-
mental theology without discarding instrumental language altogether.
A second example of this parallelist approach is a recent essay on Calvin’s
doctrine of baptism by James Cassidy. Cassidy begins by describing baptism
in Calvin as what sounds like a means of grace in the strongest of terms: for
Calvin baptism is an effectual instrument of grace that communicates and
confers the benefits of adoption, regeneration, and washing away of sins that
it signifies and seals. Cassidy is quick to point out, however, that this does
not happen automatically (ex opere operato), in Calvin’s view, but rather with
several qualifications: baptism is a means of grace only for the elect, it confers
what it signifies and seals only by the power of the Holy Spirit and only if re-
ceived in faith, and the grace of baptism is not necessarily tied to the sign. In
God’s sovereign freedom, the Holy Spirit may not even confer the grace of
baptism at the time the sacrament is administered. Indeed, for Calvin bap-
tism is ordinarily a sign that precedes faith (in infants) or follows faith (in
adults), and the Holy Spirit communicates the grace signified by baptism
whenever infants come to faith and whenever believers look back at their
baptism by faith.43
What then about those passages in Calvin that appear to teach a form of
baptismal regeneration? According to Cassidy, Calvin is able to avoid a me-
chanical view of baptismal efficacy and still hold to a close relationship be-
tween the sign and the thing it signifies by speaking at times as if the sign
8 Font of Pardon and New Life

were the thing signified. Here Calvin is following the pattern of the apostle
Paul, whose reference to baptism as “the washing of rebirth” (Titus 3:5), for
example, was only sacramental shorthand for baptism as a sign of the washing
of rebirth.44
Cassidy then applies this way of interpreting Calvin to what he calls some of
the “tough quotations” from Calvin that we cited earlier. When Calvin asserts
in the Antidote, for example, that “the whole guilt of sin is taken away in bap-
tism,”45 what he means is that the sign of baptism and the grace it signifies are
so closely connected that the attributes of the latter can, in a certain use of sac-
ramental language, be predicated of the former. Nevertheless, the two should
not be fully identified or confused with each other, as happens in Roman
Catholic doctrine, since baptism is still only a sign and seal of the forgiveness of
sins.46 Calvin’s claim in Institutes 4.17.1 that God regenerates us in baptism47 is
also only a sacramental way of speaking. God actually regenerates us by means
of the Word, “and then we receive the sign of that invisible grace.” Baptism only
represents regeneration and our engrafting into the church; it “visibly points to
that regeneration given by the Spirit by means of the Word of God.”48 Finally,
when Calvin states in his sermon on Deuteronomy 34 that “in baptism we
truly receive the forgiveness of sins, we are washed and cleansed with the blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ, [and] we are renewed by the operation of his Holy
Spirit,”49 Cassidy once again understands him to be highlighting the close re-
lationship between sign and signified by predicating of the external sign those
characteristics that properly belong to the grace that it signifies. Baptism for
Calvin is more than a mere sign. At the same time, however, it is effectual only
in its power to signify and only insofar as the sign “accompanies the thing sig-
nified when and where the Holy Spirit chooses.”50 Although Cassidy begins
his article by claiming that for Calvin baptism is an effectual instrument of
grace, his appeal to the language of sacramental predication and representation
makes the sacrament sound more like a sign of a parallel grace than a vehicle of
that grace itself.
A couple of parallelist interpretations in the last sixty years have even bor-
dered on what Gerrish called a “symbolic memorialist” approach to Calvin’s
doctrine of baptism. In a 1959 dissertation on Calvin’s doctrine of the
church, John Burkhart concluded that for Calvin baptism is only “a symbol
and example of our cleansing” that assures us of the full forgiveness of our
sins through the blood of Christ.51 It also shows us our dying and rising
with Christ, a new birth that begins “in approximate coincidence” with the
sealing of that benefit in baptism. It may begin at baptism, but it could also
 Introduction 9

happen before baptism, after baptism (as in the case of an infant), or even
without baptism at all (as in the case of the thief on the cross).52 Finally, bap-
tism for Calvin “testifies that we are so united with Christ himself that we
are participants in all his benefits.”53 Burkhart still finds an efficacy to bap-
tism in Calvin, but such efficacy is related only to the cognitive effect of the
sacrament, that is, its role of providing believers with the knowledge of their
salvation, not the salvation itself. Even when a baptized person comes to faith
many years after being baptized, the sacrament is efficacious at that time only
by its being a “confirmatory testimony” to the Word received in faith; it is in
the “remembrance” of our baptism that we experience its power.54
Richard Schlüter was even more adamant that for Calvin baptism is not
a means but only a sign of the saving activity of God. According to him,
the outer sacramental act and the inner divine activity it signifies are inde-
pendent events for Calvin, connected only by the work of the Holy Spirit in
the faith of the person being baptized. Schlüter acknowledges that Calvin
finds an effectual as well as a signifying dimension in baptism, but for Calvin
that efficacy is related to the power of baptism to assure and strengthen one’s
faith. Forgiveness and new life are represented, promised, and confirmed to
us there, thus giving the sacrament primarily a cognitive significance.55

Developmental Interpretations

A third and final group of scholars have examined Calvin’s writings chrono-
logically and noted modifications and development in his sacramental the-
ology over time, depending on the context in which he was working. John
Riggs was the first to point modern scholarship in this direction in his doc-
toral dissertation on the development of Calvin’s baptismal theology (1985)
and in a subsequent article (1995) and section of a book (2002) based on
his dissertation.56 Riggs lamented the fact that so little work had been done
on the context and growth of Calvin’s understanding of baptism, especially
since diachronic studies of the baptismal views of other major reformers
like Luther and Zwingli had discovered “theological shifts in emphasis
depending on historical context.” Riggs pledged to help fill that lacuna by
exploring whether there was change and development in the baptismal the-
ology of the Genevan reformer as well.57
According to Riggs, Calvin from the beginning of his ministry sought to
bridge the gap between Luther’s understanding of baptism as God’s promise
10 Font of Pardon and New Life

connected to an external sign and Zwingli’s view of the sacrament as prima-

rily a public pledge or confession of faith on the part of the baptizand. The
Zwinglian emphasis was secondary to the Lutheran in the first edition of the
Institutes (1536), Riggs claimed, but by 1539 Calvin had had several years of
ministerial experience on which to reflect and thus devoted more attention
in the second edition of the Institutes to the visible church and to baptism as
a public pledge. After three more years of ministry to refugees in Strasbourg
and further reading in the church fathers, Calvin gave these ecclesiolog-
ical aspects even greater prominence in the 1542/​1545 Catechism of the
Church of Geneva and 1543 Institutes and integrated them more fully with
his doctrines of Christ, covenant, election, and sacramental signification.
After 1545, however, there was no substantial development in Calvin’s doc-
trine of baptism, only changes of emphasis and nuance in his treatment of the
sacramental sign, faith, and covenant. Throughout the 1550s, for example,
Calvin reasserted the importance of the sacraments (baptism in particular)
as promises of God that nourish, confirm, and even arouse or create faith.58
Rich Lusk also explored a chronological or developmental approach
in an online article in 2002 that included a subsection entitled “Calvin on
the Sacraments: Means of Assurance or Means of Salvation?” Lusk defined
sacraments in the former sense as “signs of assurance that serve to confirm and
strengthen our faith” and through which “God grants certainty to believers.”
In the latter sense, they are “genuine instruments of salvation . . . [that] ef-
fect what they represent and perform what they picture.”59 Since both strands
appear side by side in Calvin’s mature theology in the 1559 Institutes, says
Lusk, it is worth asking how they might have been harmonized in Calvin’s
own mind. One possibility is that throughout his life Calvin emphasized one
or the other, depending on the circumstances, and that the 1559 Institutes
bears the marks of some of this earlier history. While in Strasbourg (1538–​
41), for example, Calvin could not help but be influenced by the “high view
of sacramental instrumentality and . . . ambitious ecumenical projects” of his
mentor, Martin Bucer. After returning to Geneva, however, his work on the
Consensus Tigurinus (Zurich Consensus, 1549) with Heinrich Bullinger and
the Reformed church in Zurich led him to put less emphasis on sacramental
efficacy. Then in the years following the Zurich Consensus, he stressed once
again the salvific action of God in the sacraments in his debates with the
Gnesio-​Lutheran Joachim Westphal. In the last analysis, however, Lusk does
not find this a fully adequate explanation, especially since in the final edi-
tion of the Institutes Calvin combines both emphases in a highly nuanced
 Introduction 11

fashion. Perhaps, Lusk concludes, “The most satisfactory answer is simply to

leave the two strands side by side. Calvin does not seem to think they need
harmonizing, so why should we? The salvific and assuring functions of the
sacraments can simply be combined into an organic whole. Calvin himself
does this repeatedly and effortlessly in his baptismal theology [in the 1559
Institutes].”60
Six years later, Wim Janse offered a brief developmental sketch of Calvin’s
baptismal teaching as well, but he did not portray the last phase of this de-
velopment in the same way that Lusk had. In an essay on the polemical ex-
change on infant baptism between Calvin and Westphal,61 Janse argued that
prior to the Zurich Consensus with Bullinger in 1549, Calvin’s sacramental
theology had been “very lutherfreundlich [favorable toward Luther],” empha-
sizing the objective, instrumental, and exhibitive character of the sacra-
ment: sacraments offer and actually confer the salvific benefits they signify.62
In the course of the discussions that led to the Zurich Consensus, however,
Calvin sacrificed some of his theological principles for the sake of a church-​
political compromise, and in so doing he adopted a “Bullingerianizing” po-
sition that he continued to defend in the controversy with Westphal in the
1550s. The result was that in the end “[Calvin’s] baptismal theology suffers
from a tension between certainty and liberty, between the objectivity of the
offer of salvation and the liberty God possesses in his elective grace. Westphal
emphasized especially the first aspect, Calvin at the same time the second.”63
Randall Zachman, too, claimed that Calvin’s doctrine of baptism changed
over time, but he saw it shift toward a more Roman Catholic view of the
sacraments that could have been the result both of Calvin’s participation in
several religious colloquies with the Catholics from 1539 to 1541 and of his
close association with Bucer and Melanchthon during the same period.64
According to Zachman, in the first (1536) and second (1539) editions of
the Institutes as well as in his Catechism of 1537/​1538, Calvin understood
water baptism not as a means of grace but only as a confirmatory testimony,
analogy, and cognitive seal of that grace. “At this point in his career, bap-
tism does not offer what it represents, nor does God act through baptism
as through an instrument to effect in us what baptism represents and offers
to us.”65
In the years following the colloquies with the Catholics, however, Calvin
inserted a new emphasis on the ecclesial and corporate aspects of bap-
tism into the third edition of the Institutes (1543) and the Catechism of the
Church of Geneva (1545). He also insisted for the first time that the salvific
12 Font of Pardon and New Life

benefits signified by water baptism are truly attached to, offered in, and con-
ferred through the sacrament to those who place no obstacle in their way
(Catechism of the Church of Geneva, Q/​A 328). Calvin continued on this
trajectory in his commentary on 1 Corinthians (1546); in the Acts of the
Council of Trent: With the Antidote (1547), which for the first time uses the
language of “instrument” for baptism; in his commentaries on Galatians and
Ephesians (1548), Titus (1550), and 1 Peter (1551); and in the final edition
of the Institutes (1559).66 Calvin is careful to point out that baptism is only
God’s ordinary instrument of grace (God can still save without it), that the
conferral of such grace is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit, and that
baptism is not efficacious without faith and repentance on the part of the
baptizand. But, Zachman concludes, Calvin’s view of the sacrament now as
truly presenting and offering the reality it symbolizes represents a signifi-
cant revision of his earlier understanding of baptism as simply a testimony
of grace—​a modification that may have reflected the impact of his recent
dialogues with the Roman Catholics.67

Prospectus

What we have found in this survey of scholarship is that a century of research

on Calvin’s doctrine of baptism has reached little consensus on how he un-
derstood the efficacy of this sacrament. There is no agreement on whether
he viewed baptism as an instrument/​means of grace, as a parallel testimony
or analogy of grace, or as one or another of these at different points in his
lifetime. Even those who have made a case for change and development in
his doctrine of baptism have not agreed on the phases of this development.
Zachman noted a shift in Calvin in the 1540s from baptism as a confirma-
tory sign of grace to an actual instrument of grace, but he did not address
the question of where the 1549 Consensus Tigurinus fit into this picture.
Janse, by contrast, detected a significant new direction in Calvin’s baptismal
thinking in the Consensus Tigurinus, where, in his view, the Genevan re-
former abandoned his earlier salvific understanding of baptism in favor of a
more Bullingerian perspective that he later employed in the exchanges with
Westphal. But Janse did not deal with Calvin’s earliest treatment of baptism
in the first edition of the Institutes. Riggs was the only one who addressed the
entire span of Calvin’s career from 1536 through 1560, but he found the early
Calvin moving from a more Lutheran to a more balanced Lutheran-​Zwinglian
 Introduction 13

view of baptism in the years before 1545, with no substantial change there-
after. And not even he examined all of Calvin’s statements on baptism over
this span of time.
In light of these disagreements and lacunae in the secondary literature,
there is warrant for a monograph on Calvin’s doctrine of baptismal efficacy
that engages the whole body of his work over the whole of his career. It is
my contention that the best way to construct such a study is with a chron-
ological and contextual analysis of all of Calvin’s major statements on bap-
tism throughout his lifetime—​in his commentaries, catechisms, sermons,
consensus documents, polemical treatises, and various editions of the
Institutes. Riggs, Lusk, Janse, and Zachman have made the first attempts at
such an analysis, but their studies were, for the most part, relatively brief, did
not cover the full range of Calvin’s writings, and arrived at rather different
conclusions.68
The best models of the approach I am proposing are two studies on Calvin’s
doctrine of the Lord’s Supper by Thomas Davis and Wim Janse, respectively.69
Davis, first of all, challenged the sizable body of literature that examined
Calvin’s Eucharistic thought only through the lens of the 1559 Institutes and
portrayed his doctrine of the Supper as relatively stable throughout his life-
time. He argued that in the context of Calvin’s ongoing pastoral care, biblical
scholarship, and polemical discussions, his teaching on the Lord’s Supper ac-
tually underwent a process of change and maturation.70 Tracing this devel-
opment through the full complement of Calvin’s Eucharistic writings, Davis
claimed that Calvin moved from a noninstrumental, and in some ways am-
biguous, position on the Lord’s Supper in the 1536 Institutes, to an instru-
mental view in the years before the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549. Calvin
then reverted to a more symbolical viewpoint in the Consensus itself before
radically reinterpreting the Consensus in the decade following the agree-
ment with Zurich. This journey reached its completion in the 1559 Institutes
and two treatises in 1561, in which “Calvin claimed as essential those very
elements [e.g., the Eucharist as an instrument of grace, sacramental par-
taking of the substance of Christ] that he had originally denied.”71 No longer,
therefore, should Calvin be considered a man of just a single book (the 1559
Institutes) or a static position on the Eucharist over the course of his life.
Janse, too, stated in no uncertain terms that to speak of “the eucharistic
theology of Calvin” is simply a “fiction.”72 Like Davis, he took a develop-
mental approach, in which he added texture and nuance to Davis’s earlier
work by offering some of his own observations. Surveying much of Calvin’s
14 Font of Pardon and New Life

career and theological corpus, Janse saw the Genevan reformer moving in
his Eucharistic thought from an early “Zwinglianizing” phase (1536–​37) to a
“Lutheranizing” period (1537–​48), then once again to “spiritualizing tenden-
cies” in the Consensus Tigurinus and its aftermath (1549–​50s), and finally
back to a more “Luther friendly” tone in the 1560s.73 At every stage, “Calvin
not only . . . showed docility, flexibility, and development in thought, but was
also able, being an astute church politician and vulnerable human being, to
allow himself to be led by a desire for consensus or for dissent.”74 In this re-
spect, Calvin proved himself a true disciple of his mentor, Martin Bucer.75
In the next five chapters of this book, my analysis of Calvin’s doctrine of
baptismal efficacy will proceed along a chronological path similar to the
one Davis and Janse charted for his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Both of
those scholars saw Calvin’s Eucharistic theology as developing through five
roughly similar time periods:

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

Davis 1536 1537–​41 1541–​4976 1549–​57 1559–​61
Janse 1536–​37 1537–​48 1549 1550s 1560s

To determine how closely, if at all, Calvin’s doctrine of baptism mirrored

the changes that Davis and Janse found in his teaching on the Lord’s Supper,
we, too, will trace Calvin’s treatment of baptismal efficacy through five time
periods that approximate the phases delineated in the preceding grid. In
­chapter 2 (phase 1) we will examine the 1536 Institutes, which laid the foun-
dation and established a baseline for Calvin’s subsequent work on baptism.
In ­chapter 3 (phase 2) we will look at three significant works from the five
years comprising Calvin’s first ministry period in Geneva (1536–​38) and his
subsequent three-​year stay in Strasbourg (1538–​41): his catechism of 1537/​
1538, the 1539 Institutes, and his commentary on Romans (1540). Chapter 4
(phase 3) covers Calvin’s major writings from his return to Geneva up to the
Consensus Tigurinus (1541–​48): the Catechism of the Church of Geneva
(1542/​1545), the baptismal liturgy in the Form of Prayers (1542), the 1543
Institutes, his commentary on 1 Corinthians (1546), the Acts of the Council
of Trent: With the Antidote (1547), and his commentary on the epistles to the
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians (1548). Chapter 5 (phase
4) will focus on the 1549 Consensus Tigurinus itself, and ­chapter 6 (phase
5) on Calvin’s writings after the Consensus to near the end of his life: his
 Introduction 15

commentaries on Titus (1550), 1 Peter (1551), Isaiah (1551), and Acts (1552,
1554), his first two treatises on the sacraments from his polemical exchange
with Joachim Westphal (1555, 1556), and the 1559 Institutes.
Throughout these five chapters I will argue that in a lifelong attempt to
chart a middle course between Roman Catholic and Zwinglian/​Anabaptist
views of the sacraments, Calvin constructed a doctrine of baptismal efficacy
that displayed elements of all three interpretative categories outlined ear-
lier: instrumentalism, parallelism, and development and change. This in-
terpretation falls somewhere between the static view of Calvin’s doctrine of
baptism that has dominated so much of past scholarship and the claims of
major alterations that a few scholars have put forth more recently. I will show
that although there was indeed change and development in Calvin’s under-
standing of baptismal efficacy, they were changes in emphasis, nuance, and
clarity, and not the more dramatic shifts that Janse and Zachman detected in
Calvin’s doctrine of baptism or the kind of significant turnabouts that Davis
and Janse found in his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.
Once we have explored Calvin’s doctrine of baptismal efficacy in general,
we will turn in ­chapter 7 to his understanding of the efficacy of infant bap-
tism and demonstrate how it was integrated into the rest of his baptismal
theology. In c­ hapter 8 we will examine part of Calvin’s historical and theo-
logical legacy by situating his teaching on baptismal efficacy in the context of
the major Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Chapter 9 will then conclude this study with a summary of its findings.

Notes

1. E.g., Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Tyler,
TX: Geneva Divinity School Press, 1982), 175–​96; François Wendel, Calvin: The
Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet
(New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 318–​39.
2. Jules Martin, “Notion du Baptême dans Calvin: Signification, Efficacité et
Conditions” (ThB thesis, Faculté de Théologie Protestante de Montauban, 1894);
John Q. Lynch, “The Teaching of John Calvin on Baptism” (MA thesis, St. Michael’s
College, University of Toronto, 1963); Hugh Reid Montgomery, “Baptism in the
Teaching of John Calvin” (STM thesis, Biblical Seminary in New York, 1965);
Humbert Matthew Eussen, “John Calvin: The Effects of Baptism” (STL diss., Aquinas
Institute of Philosophy and Theology [Dubuque, Iowa], 1967); John W. Riggs, “The
Development of Calvin’s Baptismal Theology 1536-​1560” (PhD diss., University of
Notre Dame, 1985); Carol Thorley, “ ‘No Part of Our Salvation Should Be Transferred
16 Font of Pardon and New Life

to the Sign’: John Calvin’s Understanding of the Sacrament of Baptism in Light of

Faith Union with Christ” (ThM thesis, University of Otago [Dunedin, New Zealand],
2005). Riggs (p. 18) states that “the single greatest surprise concerning secondary
work on Calvin’s baptismal theology is its paucity.” That is certainly true so far as
books, dissertations, and theses are concerned.
3. John W. Riggs, “Emerging Ecclesiology in Calvin’s Baptismal Thought, 1536–​1543,”
Church History 64 (March 1995): 29–​43; Riggs, Baptism in the Reformed Tradition: An
Historical and Practical Theology, Columbia Series in Reformed Theology
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 19–​70.
4. For my first published reflections on this passage, see Lyle D. Bierma, “Baptism as a
Means of Grace in Calvin’s Theology: A Tentative Proposal,” in Calvinus sacrarum
literarum interpres: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research, ed.
Herman J. Selderhuis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 142–​48. As this
book will show, I no longer hold to everything I tentatively proposed then.
5. “Q. Verum, annon aliud aquae tribuis, nisi ut ablutionis tantum sit figura? A. Sic
figuram esse sentio, ut simul annexa sit veritas. Neque enim, sua nobis dona
pollicendo, nos Deus frustratur. Proinde et peccatorum veniam, et vitae novitatem
offerri nobis in baptismo, et recipi a nobis certum est” (CO 6:118). I have followed
the English translation in Calvin: Theological Treatises, ed. and trans. J. K. S. Reid,
vol. 22 of Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954), 133, but
I have altered it slightly based on my own reading of the Latin text. Reid, for example,
does not translate the critical word simul (“at the same time”) in the first sentence of
the answer. Part of the title of this book (Font of Pardon and New Life) is based on this
question and answer.
6. James J. Cassidy, “Calvin on Baptism: Baptismal Regeneration or the Duplex Loquendi
Modus?,” in Resurrection and Eschatology: Theology in Service of the Church. Essays
in Honor of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., ed. Lane G. Tipton and Jeffrey C. Waddington
(Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2008), 546.
7. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1536 Edition, rev. ed., trans. and
annot. Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 95.
8. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans.
Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., vols. 20–​ 21 of Library of Christian Classics
(Philadelphia: Westminster), 2:1360 (4.17.1). This is Battles’s English translation of
the 1559 Institutes, but, using a simple critical apparatus, he identifies which parts of
the 1559 text first appeared in the 1536, 1539, 1543, and 1550 editions.
9. John Calvin, Acts of the Council of Trent: With the Antidote, in John Calvin, Calvin’s
Tracts, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 3 (1844; reprint, Eugene: Wipf and Stock,
2002), 85–​86.
10. John Calvin, Second Defence of the Pious and Orthodox Faith concerning the
Sacraments, in Answer to the Calumnies of Joachim Westphal, in Calvin’s Tracts, 2:339.
11. John Calvin, The Sermons of M. John Calvin upon the Fifth Book of Moses called
Deuteronomie, trans. Arthur Golding (1583; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth
Trust, 1987), 1244. I have modernized some of the language and spelling of this
translation.
 Introduction 17

12. Brian A. Gerrish, “Sign and Reality: The Lord’s Supper in the Reformed Confessions,”
in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 118–​30. This is a reprint of an essay
first published in Theology Today 23 (1966–​67): 224–​43. See also Jan Rohls, Reformed
Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen, trans. John Hoffmeyer, Columbia Series
in Reformed Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 181–​85; and Paul
Rorem, “The Consensus Tigurinus (1549): Did Calvin Compromise?,” in Calvinus
Sacrae Scripturae Professor: Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, ed. Wilhelm H.
Neuser (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 90.
13. Gerrish, “Sign and Reality,” 118–​21.
14. Ibid., 124.
15. Ibid., 122.
16. Ibid., 123.
17. Ibid., 122. Gerrish’s French phrase is from Calvin’s 1562 “Confession de Foy au
Nom des Eglises Reformees de France pour Presenter a L’empereur et aux Estats
D’Allemagne,” in CO 9:764. The full quotation reads as follows: “Ainsi nous croyons
que les Sacremens, combien qu’ils soient administrez par gens meschans et indignes,
retiennent tousiours leur nature, pour apporter et communiquer vrayement à ceux
qui les reçoyvent ce qui est là signifié.”
18. See n. 4.
19. Gerrish, “Sign and Reality,” 122, 128. Some years later, Gerrish did acknowledge
that this represented “a somewhat different variety of sacramental theory than we
find in the 1536 Institutes,” where Calvin’s emphasis is on sacramental “verification
of a gift already given,” not “the actual giving of a present gift.” Brian A. Gerrish,
“Children of Grace,” in Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 114.
20. Wendel, Calvin, 321. This work first appeared in French in 1950.
21. Calvin, Institutes (1559), 2:1307. Actually, Calvin had included this line in the
Institutes as far back as the first edition in 1536 (Calvin, Institutes [1536], 98).
22. Later in the book, Wendel raises a similar question with respect to Calvin’s view of the
Lord’s Supper: “But this union with Christ, as we have seen, is given us from the very
moment when we are incorporated in Christ by faith; it therefore does not originate
in the Supper. . . . Prior to the Supper, and surviving it, union with Christ subsists
therefore beyond the Supper itself and is always independent of it; since, according to
Calvin, we may attain to it by other means, such as preaching, the reading of the Bible,
or prayer. But here we are obliged to ask ourselves, what exactly does the Supper give
us that we cannot obtain otherwise?” Calvin: Origins and Development, 353.
23. Cf. also Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (1956; reprint,
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 220: “Calvin mentions three gifts which are imparted
to us in baptism: forgiveness of our sins, our dying and rising again with Christ, and
our communion with the Lord Himself; but the first two of these gifts depend wholly
upon the third.”
24. Jack W. Cottrell, “Baptism according to the Reformed Tradition,” in Baptism and the
Remission of Sins, ed. David W. Fletcher (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1990), 69–​70.
18 Font of Pardon and New Life

25. Ibid., 70.

26. Ibid., 71.
27. See n. 1. For a more recent example of this approach, see Russell Haitch, “John
Calvin: Baptism Is Sign and Seal,” in From Exorcism to Ecstasy: Eight Views of Baptism
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 93–​111.
28. Wallace, Word and Sacrament, 159.
29. Ibid., 160.
30. Ibid., 135.
31. Ibid., 169–​71.
32. Cf. Walter Kreck, “Die Lehre von der Taufe bei Calvin,” Evangelische Theologie 6
(1948): 247: “Die Zueignung des in Christus erworbenen Heils geschieht durch den
heiligen Geist, der durch das Wort den Glauben wirkt. Die Taufe gehört in diesen
Kreis hinein als bekräftigendes Siegel, d. h. sie ist nicht zu lösen von Wort, Geist, und
Glauben.”
33. Wallace, Word and Sacrament, 184–​86. On this distinction between validity and ef-
ficacy in Calvin’s sacramental doctrine, see also John Ernest Burkhart, “Kingdom,
Church, and Baptism: The Significance of the Doctrine of the Church in the Theology
of John Calvin” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1959), 180–​82, 201–​4.
34. William B. Evans, “‘Really Exhibited and Conferred . . . in His Appointed
Time’: Baptism and the New Reformed Sacramentalism,” Presbyterian: Covenant
Seminary Review 31/​2 (Fall 2005): 72–​88, here 78–​80; Rich Lusk, “Paedobaptism
and Baptismal Efficacy: Historic Trends and Current Controversies,” in The Federal
Vision, ed. Steve Wilkins and Duane Garner (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2004),
89–​91; Lusk, “Baptismal Efficacy and Baptismal Latency: A Sacramental Dialogue,”
Presbyterian: Covenant Seminary Review 32/​1 (Spring 2006): 18–​37, here 19–​20.
Lusk refers to all six of the “tough quotations” from Calvin’s works that I cited
earlier.
35. Evans, “Really Exhibited and Conferred,” 80, 82–​83; Lusk, “Baptismal Efficacy and
Baptismal Latency,” 21–​ 22. According to Evans, however, “Divine sovereignty
functions quite differently in the baptismal context for Lusk than for Calvin or [the]
Westminster [Standards].” “Calvin, Baptism, and Latent Efficacy Again: A Reply
to Rich Lusk,” Presbyterian: Covenant Seminary Review 32/​1 (Spring 2006): 38–​45,
here 39. Cf. also J. van Genderen, “De Doop bij Calvijn,” in Rondom de Doopvont,
ed. W. van ‘t Spijker et al. (Goudriaan: De Groot, 1983), 274: “Ook in de leer van de
sacramenten komt uit, dat Calvijn beleed dat ons heil afhangt van de verkiezende
genade van God. Zoals hij zeggen kan, dat alleen de gelovigen het ontvangen, kan hij
ook zeggen, dat alleen de utiverkorenen het ontvangen.”
36. This is a cluster of Presbyterian and Reformed pastors and theologians in the United
States that has arisen over the past decade with the goal of (re)awakening interest
in a covenantal (“federal”) perspective on theology and the church. See Wilkins and
Garner, The Federal Vision.
37. Lusk, “Paedobaptism,” 91.
38. “Es braucht kaum gesagt zu werden, daß diese beiden Actiones streng geschieden
sind, trotzdem sie zugleich durch Gottes ewigen Heilswillen aufs engste verbunden
 Introduction 19

sein müssen.” Joachim Beckmann, Vom Sakrament bei Calvin: Die Sakramentslehre
Calvins in ihren Beziehungen zu Augustin (Tübingen: Mohr, 1926), 35.
39. Ibid., 55.
40. Ibid., 55–​63.
41. “Auf der einen Seite steht das symbolum mit seinem geheimnisvollen Gehalt als
testimonium, sigillum, pignus, als testificatio, repraesentatio—​und weil es Gottes
symbolum ist, entspricht ihr eine exhibitio, eine himmlische veritas, denn Gott is
der Wahrhaftige, und was er zusagt, das hält er gewiβ. Aber wirklich nur von Gott
aus, nach seinem Willen und Wohlgefallen, ist es solches Symbol, nur insofern ist es
instrumentum, organum, vehiculum gratiae.” Ibid., 35.
42. “Daß das Sakrament tatsächlich dem Wort gleichgeordnetes Gnadenmittel und nicht
nur ein irdisches Symbol ist, sondern daß der irdischen Handlung eine göttliche
(nicht psychologische, von den Symbolen ausgehende) Geisteswirkung entspricht,
findet bei Calvin letzlich keine andre Begründung als im Glauben an die Veracitas
Dei.” Ibid., 61.
43. Cassidy, “Calvin on Baptism,” 539–​43.
44. Ibid., 544–​46.
45. See n. 6.
46. Cassidy, “Calvin on Baptism,” 546–​49.
47. See n. 10.
48. Cassidy, “Calvin on Baptism,” 550.
49. See n. 8.
50. Cassidy, “Calvin on Baptism,” 550–​52 (emphasis added).
51. Burkhart, “Kingdom, Church, and Baptism,” 190–​92.
52. Ibid., 192–​93.
53. Ibid., 193–​94.
54. Ibid., 203–​4. See also pp. 207–​8.
55. Richard Schlüter, “Das sakramentale Taufverständnis bei Calvin,” in Karl Barths
Tauflehre: Ein interkonfessionelles Gespräch (Paderborn: Bonifacius-​Druckerei, 1973),
150, 152–​53.
56. See nn. 2 and 3.
57. Riggs, “Emerging Ecclesiology,” 29.
58. Riggs, Baptism in the Reformed Tradition, 41–​60.
59. Rich Lusk, “Calvin on Baptism, Penance, and Absolution,” Theologia (2002),
accessed November 5, 2019, http://​www.hornes.org/​theologia/​rich-​lusk/​
calvin-​on-​baptism-​penance-​absolution.
60. Ibid.
61. Wim Janse, “The Controversy between Westphal and Calvin on Infant Baptism,
1555–​1556,” Perichoresis 6/​1 (2008): 3–​43.
62. Ibid., 16–​17.
63. Ibid., 3, 15, 31.
64. Randall C. Zachman, “Revising the Reform: What Calvin Learned from Dialogue with
the Roman Catholics,” in John Calvin and Roman Catholicism: Critique, Engagement,
Then and Now, ed. Randall C. Zachman (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 168.
20 Font of Pardon and New Life

65. Ibid., 169–​70.

66. For Zachman’s interpretation of Calvin’s statements on baptism from his Ephesians
commentary through the 1559 Institutes, see Randall C. Zachman, Image and Word in
the Theology of John Calvin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007),
328–​30.
67. Zachman, “Revising the Reform,” 169–​72.
68. Elsie McKee, in her monumental The Pastoral Ministry and Worship in Calvin’s
Geneva (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2016), also provides a brief overview of the develop-
ment of Calvin’s doctrine of baptism (pp. 395–​407), but because the main purpose of
her study “is to examine the relationship between Calvin’s teaching and Geneva’s wor-
ship practice” (p. 394), she does not devote much attention to the stages of develop-
ment in his baptismal thought. She does maintain, however, that by 1539 Calvin had
backed away from an explicit denial of baptism as an instrument of grace (pp. 398–​99,
405–​6).
69. Thomas J. Davis, The Clearest Promises of God: The Development of Calvin’s Eucharistic
Teaching, AMS Studies in Religious Tradition 1 (New York: AMS Press, 1995); Wim
Janse, “Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology: Three Dogma-​Historical Observations,” in
Selderhuis, Calvinus sacrarum literarum interpres, 37–​69.
70. See especially Davis, Clearest Promises of God, 1–​8, 86.
71. Ibid., 212.
72. Janse, “Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology,” 37.
73. Ibid., 39–​40.
74. Ibid., 40.
75. Ibid., 51–​67.
76. Davis deals with the 1549 Consensus Tigurinus early in his book and out of chrono-
logical sequence so that it can “serve as a hermeneutical device to pose questions of
Calvin’s work prior to the Consensus and to set the stage to examine his teaching after
the Consensus.” Clearest Promises of God, 7.
 2
The 1536 Institutes

We begin our analysis of Calvin’s doctrine of baptism as a means of grace

at the place where he himself first addressed it, the inaugural edition of the
Institutes in 1536. Although this little book was published at the beginning of
Calvin’s first period of ministry in Geneva, he had actually finished it already
in Basel in the summer of 1535, a full year before he settled in Geneva.1 It
thus establishes a baseline for how he understood baptism at the beginning
of his ministerial career. We should note that Calvin had composed two other
major works before 1536, a commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia (1532)
and a treatise against the Anabaptist view of soul sleep (Psychopannychia,
1534; published in 1542), but neither one mentions the sacrament of bap-
tism. In this chapter, therefore, we will examine Calvin’s earliest reflections
on baptismal instrumentality in the first two sections of the fourth chapter of
the 1536 Institutes, his treatments of the sacraments in general, and then of
baptism itself.

The Sacraments in General

Calvin’s introduction to the sacraments in the 1536 Institutes is a valuable re-

source for understanding his early thinking on baptism, since we can assume
that everything he says there about the sacraments in general is true also of
baptism in particular. These introductory paragraphs turn out to be espe-
cially important because they paint a broader picture of sacramental efficacy
than we encounter in the section on baptism alone.
Calvin begins this introductory section with two brief definitions of a
sacrament: (1) “an outward sign by which the Lord represents and attests to
us his good will toward us to sustain the weakness of our faith,” and (2) “a
testimony of God’s grace, declared to us by an outward sign.”2 The second
definition is really just a truncated version of the first: the outer sign, divine
grace, and attestation are mentioned again, but not the representative and
nurturing functions of the sign. To get a fuller sense, therefore, of how Calvin

Font of Pardon and New Life. Lyle D. Bierma, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197553879.003.0002.
22 Font of Pardon and New Life

understood sacraments as means of grace early in his career, we need to take

a closer look at these definitions and his elaboration on them in the rest of the
introduction.
First of all, Calvin describes a sacrament as an “outward sign.” The question
is: a sign of what? His definitions indicate that a sacrament signifies God’s
“good will” and “grace” toward us, but Calvin actually starts off the chapter by
emphasizing that it is a sign joined to “a preceding promise,” the very Word
of God.3 In fact, the term “sacrament” could be understood broadly enough
to include any such sign that God had annexed to promises in the course of
biblical history. Some of these were natural things, such as the tree of life in
the Garden of Eden and the rainbow after the flood. The former served as a
guarantee of the promise of immortality, and the latter as a reminder of God’s
promise never to destroy the earth again with a flood. Other such sacraments
in Scripture were miracles. The wet and dry states of Gideon’s fleece, for in-
stance, were signs of God’s promise of victory, and God’s turning back the
time on Hezekiah’s sundial signified a promise of safety. Indeed, God could
make a sacrament of any earthly thing—​sun, stars, earth, stones—​simply by
inscribing it with a promise:

Why are crude and coined silver not of the same value, though they are
absolutely the same metal? The one is merely in the natural state; stamped
with an official mark, it becomes a coin and receives a new valuation. And
cannot God mark with his Word the things he has created, that what were
previously bare elements may become sacraments?4

These signs from the past, however, were extraordinary. The “ordinary”
signs or ceremonies that God instituted for the church are circumcision,
purifications, and sacrifices in the old dispensation, and baptism and the
Lord’s Supper in the new. In general terms, they are signs of “things that are of
his Spirit,” “the riches of God’s grace,” and “holy and spiritual things.”5 More
specifically, they betoken the covenant promise that God will be our God and
we will be his people,6 as well as the blessings of righteousness, cleansing, for-
giveness, and redemption.7 Ultimately, these ordinary sacraments—​of both
dispensations—​point to Christ himself, the one who came to cleanse and re-
deem us. That is because the signs are connected to God’s salvific promises,
and those promises are offered to us only in Christ.8
The critical question for our study, of course, is how exactly in 1536 Calvin
understood the sacramental signs in relation to these promised spiritual
 The 1536 Institutes 23

realities. What do they actually do with respect to the things they signify?
Are they only testimonies to their truth or also means or instruments
through which such realities are conveyed? We should note, first of all, that
in this section Calvin does regard the sacraments as, in some way, means or
instruments in the hands of God. In the first definition, he describes a sacra-
ment as an outward sign “by which” (quo) the Lord represents and attests to
his goodness. And according to the second definition, God’s grace is declared
“by an outward sign” (externo symbolo).9 Both of these constructions are in
the ablative case in Latin and function as ablatives of means, which implies
that God is at work in the sacraments by means of the sacramental signs.
Indeed, Calvin goes on to say, God uses a variety of “means and instruments”
(mediis ac instrumentis) when it is deemed expedient. For example, God
feeds our bodies “through” (per) bread and other food, gives light to the world
“through” (per) the sun, and provides warmth “through” (per) fire. These are
all “instruments” (instrumentis) for the distribution of divine blessings, not
the actual causes of these good things but created means “through whose
ministry” (quarumque ministerio; ablative of means) God lavishly bestows
his gifts upon us. So also with the sacraments: “In like manner [ita], he
nourishes faith spiritually through [per] the sacraments,” although “in the
same way” (ita) we also may never put our confidence in the sacraments
themselves.10
That still leaves the question of how these sacramental means function for
Calvin, that is, how God employs them as instruments, or what God actually
does through them. Calvin’s definitions suggest three ways that God uses the
outward signs of the sacraments as means or instruments: to “represent” his
goodwill to us, to “attest to” or “declare” his goodness and grace to us, and, by
virtue of the first two, to “sustain the weakness of our faith.”11 The first two of
these purposes focus on the sign itself, and the third upon us as recipients of
the sign. First, in representing God’s goodwill toward us, the signs function
largely in a pedagogical manner. They are “exercises” designed to “instruct”
us at the level of our limited capacity, leading us by the hand like “tutors”
guiding the children entrusted to them.12 In the old dispensation, for ex-
ample, circumcision was a symbol by which God “admonished” the Jews that
whatever came forth from human seed was corrupt and in need of pruning.
In addition, circumcision was a “lesson” (documentum) and “reminder”
(memoriale) of God’s covenantal promises. The baptismal and purification
ceremonies of that age, too, “disclosed” (exponebant) human uncleanness
and promised spiritual cleansing. And the sacrificial ceremonies of the Old
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