The following excerpts are from:
Lyle D. Bierman, Font of Pardon and New Life: John Calvin and
the Efficacy of Baptism (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2021)
Select quotes from Calvin on the efficacy of water baptism:
“But do you attribute nothing more
to the water [of baptism] than that it is only a symbol of washing?”
“I think it is 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.” [Question and
Answer 328 in Calvin’s Catechism of the Church of Geneva (1542-1545)]
. . .
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)
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)
We assert that the whole guilt of
sin is taken away in baptism, so that the remains 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 remission is made, but that regeneration
is only begun and goes on making progress during the whole life. (Acts of
the Council of Trent: With the Antidote, 1547)
But as baptism is a solid recognition
by which God introduces his children 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)
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 his point, that the sacraments are
effectual, and that they are no trifling 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 receive 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). (Lyle D. Bierman, Font of Pardon and New Life: John Calvin and the
Efficacy of Baptism [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2021], 1, 2)
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 faith is not efficacious without faith and repentance on the
part of the baptizand. (Ibid., 12)
[Calvin’s] repudiation of baptism
as an instrument in the Roman Catholic sense does not mean that Calvin denied
its instrumentality altogether. As we have seen, he also uses the terms “means
and instruments” in a positive way in the 1536 Institutes in his
treatment of the sacraments in general. (Ibid., 34)
On the one hand, Calvin cites
Scripture texts that imply that the sacrament is the actual vehicle for conveying
the three benefits of baptism—forgiveness, renewal, and union with Christ. Both
Matthew 28:19 and Acts 2:38, for example, indicate God’s desire that everyone
who believes be baptized “for the remission of sin.”. Indeed, says,
Calvin, “we must realize that at whatever time we are baptized, we are once for
all washed and purged for our whole life.” Paul’s references in Romans 6:3-4
and Colossians 2:11-12 to our being baptized into Christ’s death and buried
with him by baptism also make clear that “through baptism [per baptismum]
Christ makes us sharers in his death, that we may be engrafted in it.” This
mortification begins “with our baptism” (a baptism), and “in it” (in
eo) the purity of Christ is “offered” (oblata) to us. So far as our union
with Christ is concerned, Galatians 3;26-27 teaches “that we put on Christ in
baptism [in baptism].” Moreover, Calvin challenges those who regard baptism
as nothing more than a sign by which we profess our religion before others to remember
the promises of God that whoever “believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark
16:16), that Christ has cleansed the church “with the washing of water in the
Word of life” (Ephesians 5:26), that “he saves us . . . through the washing of
rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5), and that “Baptism . . .
saves us” (1 Peter 3:21). All of these verses seem to portray baptism as the
very means through which God communicates the benefits of salvation. (Ibid. 29)
When he says, for example, that
our mortification begins “with” our baptism and that it is “through” baptism
that we become participants in Christ’s death (Romans 6;3-4), he might meant
that at and through baptism we receive a greater assurance of the mortification
and participation in Christ’s death that we already enjoy by faith. Moreover,
for Paul to say that we are cleansed “with the washing of water in the Word of
life” (Ephesians 5:26) or that God “saved us . . . through the washing of
rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5) could mean that in baptism
we receive a greater awareness and assurance of the cleansing and renewal that
God has effected within us (Calvin, Institutes [1536], 94-95: “For Paul
did not mean to signify [in Eph. 5;26 and Titus 3:5] that our cleansing and
salvation are accomplished by water intervening, or that water is itself the instrument
to cleanse, regenerate, and renew; or that here is the cause of salvation, but
only that in this sacrament are received the knowledge and certainty of such
gifts.”). And to be clothed with or “put on” Christ “in” baptism (Galatians 3:26-27)
might suggest that the sacrament provides us with a greater certainty of the spiritual
bond with Christ and all his benefits that we already have through faith.
(Ibid., 32)
Concerning Calvin’s Catechism of 1537/1538:
The third section is a very brief
and selective abridgement of Calvin’s treatment of baptism in the 1536 Institutes,
so it is hardly surprising that here, too, he focuses on baptism as a means of knowledge
and assurance of salvation, not as a means of salvation itself. Baptism only “represents”
to us the cleansing (forgiveness) that we obtain through the blood of Christ
and the mortification that is ours through his death. When the Lord commanded
us to be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins (Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38),
and when Paul taught that the church has been cleansed by the washing of water
(Ephesians 5:26) and baptized into Christ’s death so as to walk in newness of
life (Romans 6:3-4), “These words do not signify that the cause or effective
working of cleansing or regeneration inheres in the water, but only that the
knowledge of such gifts is received in this sacrament.” That is what Scripture
means “when we are said to receive, obtain, get [in baptism] what we believe to
have been given us by the Lord.” (Ibid., 43)
Whereas in the Institutes
Calvin discussed three things that baptism signifies and attests to—remission of
sins, mortification and vivification in Christ, and union with Christ—here in
the catechism he connects baptism directly only to the first two benefits.
However, at the beginning of the section on baptism in the catechism, he states
that this sacrament was given to us by God to serve our faith, a faith that “looks
to the promise by which our merciful Father offers the communication of his
Christ, that clothed with him we may share in all his benefits” (Hesselink, Calvin’s
First Catechism, 34). Here Calvin clarifies the relationship among the
three baptismal gifts he had identified in 1536: being clothed or united with
Christ through faith, which is strengthened at baptism, is not just one benefit
alongside the others but the foundational gifts that includes the other two. (Ibid.,
58 n. 15)
Commentary on Galatians,
Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians (1548)
The greater emphasis in Calvin’s Acts
of the Council of Trent: With the Antidote on baptism as an instrument of
grace than as an instrument of assurance carried over into his commentary on
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians a year later. Calvin does
state in his comments on a phrase in Ephesians 5:26 (“cleaning [the church]
with the washing of water”) that baptism is an “outward symbol” and “visible confirmation”
of our forgiveness and regeneration, the equivalent of a divinely spoken “pledge”
of our sanctification. But he immediately adds that God does more in baptism
than simply declare that we are washed; God at the same time performs what is
symbolized there. “For unless the reality [rei veritas] or, which is the
same thing the presentation [exhibition] were connected [coniuncta
esset] with baptism, it would be improper to say that baptism is the
washing of the soul.”
Another way that Paul describes
this is that we are buried with Christ in baptism (Colossians 2:12), which
Calvin interprets as a spiritual circumcision that happens “through baptism” (per
baptismum) or “by baptism” (baptism). The sacrament is indeed a sign
but “a sign of the thing exhibited” there, namely, our mortification. Thus,
When [Paul] says that this is done
through baptism [per baptismum] (as also in Rom. 6:4), he speaks in his
usual manner, ascribing efficacy to that sacrament, that it may not fruitlessly
signify what does not exist. By baptism, therefore, we are buried with Christ,
because the mortification which Christ there figures, He at the same time
effectively executes, that the reality may be conjoined with the sign [res
signo sit coniuncta]. (Ibid., 76-77)
So far as instrumental terminology
is concerned, Calvin was more inclined from 1541 to 1548 than before to
describe the sacraments in general and baptism in particular as “means” and “instruments”—and
in all cases, positively. (Ibid., 79)
Concerning “The Consensus Tigurinus” (1549) and whether it is
consistent with Calvin’s sacramental theology:
Article 2. A True Knowledge of the
Sacraments from the Knowledge of Christ.
Since the sacraments are
appendices to the gospel, one can only speak fittingly and usefully of their
nature, force, office and fruit when one starts from Christ. And one is not
only to touch lightly upon the name of Christ but one is to hold true to the
purpose for which he was given to us by the Father and to those good things
which he has brought us. (Ibid., 88)
What is striking in all of these
contexts is that the subservient role that Calvin assigns to the sacraments in
general and baptism in particular in no way prevents him from still labelling a
sacrament as an instrument, even at times an instrument of salvation. Later in
the Acts of the Council of Trent, for example, the same sacrament of
baptism that is “nothing else than an appendage of the gospel” is also “the
ordinary instrument of God in washing and renewing us; in short, in
communicating salvation.” The reference to sacraments as “appendixes to the
gospel” in CT Article 2, therefore, is not un-Calvinian in and of itself. For
Calvin, placing sacraments in an inferior position to the Word does not
preclude their functioning as a means of salvation. (Ibid., 89)
Calvin’s writings from 1550-1564:
. . . in his exposition of Titus
3:5 in 1550, Calvin interprets the clause “according to his mercy he saves us, through
the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost,” and particularly the
phrase “through the washing of regeneration,” as allusions to baptism. Baptism
has, first of all, an instructional and testimonial function, revealing God’s
grace to us, symbolizing our engrafting into Christ, sealing to us the
salvation that Christ has acquired, and confirming our faith. As Calvin
paraphrases the verse, “God saves us by His mercy and He has given us a symbol
and pledge of this salvation in baptism.” But baptism is more than a symbol and
pledge; it is aptly called the “washing of regeneration” also because with it
God performs within the baptizand the very thing demonstrated by the outer
sign. For believes the sign is not “vain [inane] and efficacious” but
always effective because it is connected (connectet) to the thing
signified, joined with (coniungitur) “its reality and effect” (veritate
et effectu). Even the baptism of unbelievers retains a certain power (vim)
from God’s perspective, even though the ungodly reject the grace offered at the
font and are neither cleansed nor renewed there. (Ibid., 115—in many respects,
this is similar to the distinction between the material and formal reception of
a sacrament in Catholic theology).
A year later, in his commentary on
the canonical epistles, Calvin dealt with another well-known baptism passage, 1
Peter 3:21: “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save
us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good
conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” This time Calvin
mentions the subjective side of baptism only briefly (“the testimony of the
remission of sin and the pledge of our renovation.” Denoting most of his attention
to the objective character of baptism as a means of grace. In so doing,
however, he maintains a delicate balance again between baptismal efficacy and divine
sovereignty, in part because he uses the occasion to challenge sacrament traditions
on both ends of the spectrum.
He begins by interpreting
Christian baptism, which “doth also now save us” (v. 21) as an antitype of the “baptism”
that Noah and his family underwent when they were “saved by water” at the time
of the flood (v. 20). The similarity or correspondence here, Calvin understands
Peter to say, is that both Noah, who was entrapped in the “grave” of the ark,
and baptized believers today, who are entrapped by the world and their flesh,
experience a kind of deliverance from death to life as they pass through the
water. Where the typology might break down, Calvin admits, is in the scope of
these two baptisms, since only a few were saved in Noah’s “baptism” and almost everyone
is baptized in the church today. Anticipating such an objection, however, Peter
immediately added the phrase “not the putting away of the filth of the flesh,”
by which he meant that the outward act of baptism is not enough to cleanse one
spiritually. Baptism must also be received “really and effectually” (vere et
efficaciter), and, as in the time of Noah, so also today, such “reality” (veritas)
is found in relatively few.
This leads Calvin to launch a
two-pronged attack against both “fanatics” like Caspar Schwenckfeld, who strips
the sacraments of all “power and effect” (vim et effectum), and “the
Papists,” who do not properly distinguish between the sign and thing signified
but place their hope of salvation in the elements. Against Schwenckfeld Calvin
argues that Peter’s point in verse 21 is not that baptism is “vain and inefficacious,”
the same phrase he had used a year earlier in the Titus commentary, but that
hypocrites render it so by their own flesh. Roman Catholics, however, fall into
the opposite error. Rather than “tear away the thing signified from the sign,”
as Schwenckfeld does, they “tie the secret power of the Spirit to the visible
sign” by ascribing the glory of Christ’s death to the water of baptism. Both
extremes must be avoided. On the one hand, we ought never “to separate what has
been joined together [coniuncta sunt] by the Lord.” On the other hand,
to preserve the honor of Christ and the Holy Spirit, “No part of our salvation
should be transferred to the sign”; what is symbolized in the baptismal water
comes from Christ alone. (Ibid., 116-117)
But baptism is more than just an
assurance of benefits received in the past. The faith with which one comes to
baptism and which is bolstered in baptism also appropriates these benefits in
the sacrament itself. Remission of sins, Calvin states in his comments on Acts
2:38, is “a result of faith” not only before baptism but also at baptism. The
repentance, faith, crucifying of the old self, and rising to new life that
begins when one first turns to God must continue throughout one’s whole life.
And just as repentance is a part of the daily life the Christian, so also is
the fruit of repentance and faith, the remission of sins:
Surely [remission] is no less
necessary to us through the whole course of our life than at our first entrance
into the Church. So it would profit us nothing to be once received into favour
by God, unless this embassy of His, as it were, should be continually maintained,
“Be reconciled unto God, because he was made sin for us who knew no sin, that
we might become the righteousness of God in him” (II Cor. 5:20).
When a believer is baptized, therefore,
remission of sins “is joined to it [baptism] as to the lesser means” (tanquam
inferiori medio . . . annecitur) and is appropriated anew by the faith that
is strengthened at the font. Indeed, “The grace of the Spirit will always be
conjoined [anenxa erit] to baptism, unless a hindrance arises in our
part.” (Ibid., 120)
