God’s Fatherly
Nourishment: B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude
By John L Drury
The purpose of B. A. Gerrish’s book Grace and Gratitude is to understand Calvin in light of the eucharistic character of his theology. The book is therefore more than an account of Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. It is also a description of his whole theology in eucharistic categories of God’s grace and human gratitude. This description of the whole is then turned to illumine Calvin’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper, instead of trying to locate Calvin within preconceived sacramental categories. Thus Gerrish’s strategy is to transfer our attention away from traditional controversies in order to allow Calvin’s own pervasive themes to guide the discussion. Whether this strategy of transference does not degenerate into a displacement of Calvin’s other themes will be the critical focus of this paper. This displacing procedure mitigates but does not undermine Gerrish’s thesis. The following outline serves as a summary of Gerrish’s themes and strategies:
As Gerrish is arguing for a systematic center and shape of Calvin’s theology, one might ask whether the proposed center is the actual center. Secondarily, if the proposed center is the actual center, does the presentation of this proposal function to illumine other themes or displace and suppress them? It would take much more space to answer these correlative questions, so at this point I just wish to raise them pointedly.
According to Gerrish, “Calvinism actually began its existence in the Reformation era as a distinct variety of sacramental theology, more particularly as a distinct interpretation of the central Christian mystery of the Eucharist.”[i] Is this an accurate historical judgment? This is certainly in some sense true. But the secondary question is immediately pressing: does this characterization displace other Calvinist distinctives? This question is especially apt regarding alternative candidates for the center of Calvin’s theology. Gerrish himself makes the above statement in direct opposition to the typical association of Calvin with Predestination. If eucharistic patterns are so central to Calvin’s theology, then they will surely illumine and possibly explain Calvin’s other powerful theme of sovereignty. Yet Gerrish offers no such discussion, but merely displaces sovereignty by repeatedly marginalizing issues of predestination, providence, and suffering (cf. 24, 29, 39). Could it be that his otherwise corrective strategy of transference has been used here as a slight-of-hand?
Gerrish makes brilliant use of this same strategy of transference with regard to the Lord’s Supper itself. Gerrish turns our attention away from the question of how the Eucharist does what it does to the question of “why, or to what end, there is a Lord’s Supper at all” (13). Gerrish’s answer is that for Calvin the Lord’s Supper signifies life-giving nourishment, pointing us to the focal image of God’s banquet. This shift from how to why allows Gerrish to delay his discussion of the traditional problems of instrumentality and presence to the last chapter of his book. Insofar as this delay reflects Calvin’s own irenic point of entry, such a move is commendable. But the question remains whether the language of nourishment is the controlling motif of Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and if it is, whether Gerrish has not reduced all other motifs under it. The very fact (which Gerrish admits) that banquet language diminishes after the 1536 Institutes should give one pause regarding a wholesale acceptance of Gerrish’s proposal (or at least his presentation of it).
Lastly, Gerrish lifts up the nourishment theme as the central theme of Calvin’s whole theology (19). Gerrish notes that only his book as a whole can substantiate this claim. The question for us is whether his explication of Calvin’s entire theology in a eucharistic key does justice to Calvin’s texts, or leaves to one side essential components of Calvin’s theology. I would argue that Gerrish is correct in emphasizing the eucharistic structure of Calvin’s theology, but that his exposition manages to exclude rather than include these other themes. The next two sections will bear this out.
Gerrish makes a strong case that Calvin’s pictures of God as fountain and father are dominant motifs. Just a quantitative count of the use of these images in the first book of the Institutes would suffice to defend this claim. Inasmuch as interpreters have neglected these metaphors, Gerrish has performed a great service. However, he fails to incorporate conflicting metaphors of God as Lord and Judge. He mentions these themes, only to set them aside (28-29). He states that Calvin’s purpose in his doctrine of providence is to point us away from God as judge to God as father. Although this is certainly the trajectory of Calvin’s argument, Calvin never leaves the justice of God behind. Gerrish leaves the impression that Calvin only brings up judgment in order to turn us to grace. But judgment remains an indispensable part of the whole picture for Calvin. The continued suffering of the Christian as a form of judgment serves as just one example of the complex interconnection between God as Judge and God as Father. God is certainly primarily our father, but as our father he is also our judge. Gerrish’s proper transference of emphasis from judge to father has here been reduced to a displacement of the judge by the father. Perhaps the perspectival parallelism of Mary Potter Engel (a Gerrish student) would be a more subtle way of relating these themes.
In correspondence to God’s fatherly care, Gerrish discusses humanity in terms of gratitude. It is in this subsection that Gerrish’s larger thesis about the eucharistic shape of Calvin’s theology bears the clearest expositional fruit. Calvin indeed describes Edenic piety in terms of gratitude and attributes Adam’s sin to ingratitude. The only critical question here is whether Gerrish’s actualistic description of the image of God is fair to Calvin. Is the soul only the mirror, and the image the reflection (43)? The quote Gerrish supplies does not appear to substantiate this claim. The image may be more substantial than Gerrish admits. Although this is a finer point, it indicates once again how Gerrish’s well-placed emphasis can slip into misplaced suppression of Calvin’s actual views.
It is within his chapter on redemption that Gerrish makes his most explicit moves toward displacement. In each of its three subsections (atonement, faith, and the word), Gerrish lays out a pair of aspects. In each case the second aspect, though it initially complements the first, ultimately displaces it. When comparing two components, he uses strong categorical terms, such as “x is not simply y; it is z” (cf. 76, 85). A more subtle relationship would be “x is not only y, but is also z,” or, better yet, “as x is y, it is also z.” But Gerrish allows his emphasis on Eucharistic categories to suppress other aspects of Calvin’s thought.
Regarding the person and work of Christ, Gerrish first surveys the controversies surrounding Calvin’s views. He then sets aside these debates. Gerrish considers these controversies to concern the question of how Christ is our savior, whereas he believes Calvin is concerned with what end Christ is our savior (56). As shown above, this preference for ends over processes is the constitutive basis for Gerrish’s strategy of transference (13). Gerrish offers an accurate definition of Christ’s work as opening up access to God the fountain and father. This emphasis is correct. But Gerrish explicitly sets the language of access up against any consideration of expiation and satisfaction. Ironically, Gerrish has grabbed onto the key word for Calvin (“access”), yet he interprets it without any mention of its cultic valence. By correctly transferring emphasis from how to what end, Gerrish has incorrectly displaced Calvin’s own way of describing how the atonement works. Not only does Calvin use the term “how” in his discussion, but he makes ample use of the categories of expiation and satisfaction. Substitution is the condition for the possibility of access. It is not an interpretive advance to replace an undue emphasis on the condition (substitution) with an undue emphasis on the result (access). What is needed is an account that includes both in their full interrelated sense. The same goes for the relation of forensic and familial categories. Whereas Gerrish claims that familial language ultimately “supplants” the forensic (61), Calvin keeps the two united throughout. Gerrish is once again completely right about what should be emphasized, but he has allowed this emphasis to suppress requisite aspects of the whole.
The same pattern of displacement is at work with regard to faith. Gerrish defines faith first as pious knowledge of God as father. He then brings in the effect of faith as union with Christ by spiritual eating. The first element must be supplemented by the second, and Gerrish does a wonderful job of describing Calvin at this point. By the end, however, union has so overshadowed knowledge that he can say that “Calvin’s alleged intellectualism vanishes into a devotion of the heart that is repelled by rationalism” (76, emphasis added). Does the strong intellectual nature of Calvin’s definition of faith ever vanish into its effect as union with Christ? Does Gerrish’s otherwise correct emphasis here become an one-sidedness that misrepresents the tensions in Calvin’s theology?
Finally, with regard to the Word, Gerrish lays out its function as doctrine as well as an instrument for communicating grace. He notes that these two aspects parallel the distinction between faith and it effects in the previous subsection (76). Accordingly, his procedure is also parallel, as the first aspect is displaced by the second. Gerrish states that the vision of God’s fatherly face is “the point” of Reformed worship, which is unfortunately overshadowed by the “heavy didacticism” (82). No one would argue with this complaint. Yet the didacticism reveals the importance of correct doctrine for Calvin that can be lost in a turn to the word as sacrament. As above, Gerrish intends to keep the two united. But his unrelenting preference for the second supplants the first. He notes critically that the word is “not simply a dogmatic norm” (85). Would it not be better to say that the word as doctrine is sacramental, instead of setting them in a constant contrast foreign to Calvin? For Gerrish, the word as means rises while the word as testimony sets. Gerrish’s emphasis is accurate to Calvin and a helpful corrective to the tradition. Yet his rhetorical overstatement belies an undercurrent of one-sidedness in his interpretation of Calvin’s systematic thought. I truly hope that this undercurrent does not undercut his much needed voice in the contemporary appropriation of Calvin’s eucharistic theology.[ii]
[i] B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress, 1993; reprinted: Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002) 2. Hereafter cited in-text.
[ii] One might wonder how to account for Gerrish’s procedure of displacement. As stated, all these themes are in Calvin and may very well be ordered as he orders them. But why is it that Gerrish repeatedly suppresses some aspects? Could it have anything to do with his relationship to Schleiermacher and his “Schleiermacher’s reading of Calvin” (cf. x, 16, 25, 37, 51)?