Calvin and the Sacraments

My former professor Keith Mathison’s work Given For You is undoubtedly the best work on Calvin’s view of the Sacraments. The book argues that Calvin avoided the pit-falls of the Roman Church and the symbolic memorialism of the Zwinglians. Rather, Calvin approached the sacraments with biblical vocabulary focusing attention on sacraments as signs and seals (Rom. 4:11) and the centrality of union with Christ (John 15:4-8).  In Calvin, there is a parallelism between the action of God and the action of the minister. God truly accomplishes what he signifies in the sacraments (271). The sacraments are not empty signs, but the “Holy Spirit uses them as his instruments (271).”

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