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Theology, Anthropology, and the Human Body in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Margaret R. Miles
Margaret R. Miles
Affiliation:
Harvard University, The Divinity School
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Extract

One of the most important questions to ask when one is beginning to reformulate the views of a historic author on the human body is the question of what role his discussion of the body plays in his theology. Does his theology require and depend on his evaluation of the meaning and value of the body? Do pressing polemical or cultural discussions demand the author's interest in describing the role of the body in human life? These questions are consistently useful in illuminating the author's intent in writing about the body. Placing ideas of the body in the theological and anthropological context in which they appear is essential if we are to avoid the inevitable distortion of an author's ideas, which is the result of “proof-texting” the author's statements about the body.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , July 1981 , pp. 303 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1981

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References

1 As, e.g., Augustine of Hippo, challenged by Manichaean views of the body as well as a cultural strain of “body-hatred” (Dodds, E. R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety [New York: Norton, 1965] 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar), had pressing psychological and polemical reasons for philosophical/theological integration and rehabilitation of the human body; see my Augustine on the Body (Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1979)Google Scholar.

2 Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.3.8; see also 2.2.11: “Nostra humilitas eius est altitudo.” I have used the translation of the Institutes in the LCC by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), except when otherwise indicated. All references are to the Institutes.

3 In a passage, e.g., in which Calvin discusses the significance of the Lord's Supper, he finds one important meaning of the sacrament to be the intention of Christ to teach that “we are quickened by the true partaking of him, which he designated by the terms eating and drinking, lest anyone should suppose that the life which we obtain from him is obtained by simple knowledge” (4.17.5).

4 Ibid.; see also 3.1.2.

5 3.9.5.

6 3.10.1.

7 3.10.6.

8 Ibid.

9 1.16.6.

10 1.1.1–3; see also 1.15.1; “We cannot clearly and properly [liquido et solide] know God unless the knowledge of ourselves be added..”

11 3.3.3; “respiciens, sese erigit respirat [literally, begins to breathe] animum colligit, et velut e morte in vitam redit.”

12 1.16.9.

13 3.12.8.

14 1.15.3.

15 3.6.4.

16 Surely this is an enormously important insight of Calvin's, which cannot receive adequate treatment in terms of a contemporary application in this essay. The contemporary cultural location of “intensity” in erratic/erotic activity makes it difficult for us to recognize in Calvin's theology precisely the rejection of this identification—a rejection of the “spicy by-taste”—and a method for integrating intensity and integrity. Calvin's testimony that this identity of the “heightened consciousness” and “holiness” is a human possibility must be taken seriously before we can understand the method he recommends for achieving it. If we remain unable or unwilling to “vision” this possibility, Calvin's method will never achieve greater significance in our minds than anachronistic interest in a quaint historical devotional exercise.

17 3.6.5.

18 Ibid.

19 3.3.9.

20 3.1.2; Calvin puts more emphasis on urging that repentance should “in every Christian, last as long as life,” than that gratitude should be continually interwoven as method because repentance had not been seen as method but only as part of a temporal penitential sequence (3.3.3), whereas, from the earliest Christian pre-theological descriptions of the content of Christian faith, gratitude was seen as a continuous component of the Christian life.

21 1.15.2; translation mine.

22 There is still a question in my mind as to whether conscientia is more adequately translated “conscience” or “consciousness.” Although the latter word appears broader—and hence, perhaps, vaguer—some modern definitions of consciousness place the irreducible valuing function of conscious activity as central to its definition. This may be quite close to Calvin's understanding of conscientia —as awareness of good and evil—and therefore closer to our use of “consciousness” than to our understanding of the traditional term “conscience” which now connotes for us a self-judging and usually self-condemning psychic activity.

23 1.15.7–8.

24 1.15.1.

25 1.15.3.

26 1.15.3–4; translation: Beveridge, Henry, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975)Google Scholar.

27 1.15.5.

28 1.15.4; the result of the fall is the “fearful deformity” (horrenda sit deformitas) of human being.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.; “Plenum vero fulgorem obtinebit in coelo.”

31 1.15.7.

32 1.15.8; translation mine.

33 1.15.6; Beveridge translation.

34 1.15.2; see also 1.15.5.

35 1.15.6.

36 Again, we should acknowledge that at least a part of the contemporary interest in the human body, and the feeling that historical theologians have not described the physical aspect of human being in an adequate way, comes from a lack of interest in immortality—the very center of Calvin's concern. Many of us want the “powers and faculties of the soul” firmly attached to “this present life.” Calvin emphatically did not.

37 1.15.2; emphasis mine.

38 Ibid.

39 1.15.2; 3.9.4; 3.6.5, etc.

40 3.6.5.

41 41.15.2; 3.25.1; 3.9.5, etc.

42 2.3.1; “… oportere hominem renasci, quia caro est. Non secundum corpus renasci prae-cipit.”

43 1.15.2; see n. 22 on conscientia.

44 We must be careful here, though, not to equate “flesh” and “body” (as the argument of this section has shown), as we are explicitly invited to equate soul and spirit.

45 2.3.1: “Sic enim carni comparatur spiritus, ut nihil relinquatur medium. Ergo quidquid non est spirituale in homine, secundum earn rationem dicitur carneum. Nihil autem habemus spiri-tus, nisi per regenerationem”; see also 3.14.1.

46 2.3.1: “Est igitur caro quidquid habemus a natura.”

47 3.14.5.

48 We must note, however, that even the term “flesh” has a range of uses and does not always designate a sinful agenda for Calvin; see, ex. 3.7.6: the stranger as “your own flesh”; 3.25.7 the “resurrection of the flesh.”

49 1.5.5.

50 1.3.3: “Cuius neminem oblivisci natura ipsa patitur.”

51 2.2.11; Beveridge translation.

52 1.5.3.

53 1.14.21.

54 3.3.8: “Illa naturae nostrae abnegatio.”

55 See also 3.14.1: “Flesh, under which name are comprehended all those works which are enumerated by Paul; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, reveliings, and all kinds of pollutions and abominations which it is possible to imagine.”

56 2.1.5.

57 2.1.11.

58 4.18.8: “Sed descendendo vim istam in carnem quam induit, diffudisse, ut inde ad nos vitae communicato promanaret.” Emphasis mine.

59 4.15.6: “Ideo enim baptismum in suo corpore dedicavit et sanctificavit, ut communeum eum nobiscum haberet, ceu firmissimum unionis ac societatis quam nobiscum inire dignatur est vinculum.”

60 4.7.9.

61 Ibid.

62 4.17.12: “Vinculum ergo istius coniunctionis est spiritus Christi, cuius nexu copulamur.”

63 Ibid.

64 4.17.10.

65 4.17.11.

66 3.25.7.

67 3.9.5.

68 3.9.4.

69 Ibid.; emphasis mine.

70 3.9.5.

71 See my Augustine on the Body, 120ff., for a discussion of Augustine's very different treatment of death as a “separation of body and soul,” two aspects of human being that are joined by a “natural appetite” so that their separation is a “harsh and unnatural” experience (asperum sensum et contra naturam).

72 See my forthcoming book, Fullness of Life: Historical Foundations for a New Asceticism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981)Google Scholar, for a discussion of Ignatian ascetic methods and goals.

73 Augustine on the Body, 62ff.; Augustine De utilitate jejunii 1.

74 4.12.15: “in animi affectu.”

75 4.12.16.

76 3.25.7.

77 Ibid.; Beveridge translation; emphasis mine.

78 Ibid.; Tertullian De resurrectione carnis 51.

79 Ibid.

80 3.25.1.

81 3.25.2.

82 3.25.3.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid.

85 3.25.7–8.

86 3.25.8.

87 3.25.10.

88 1.14.22: “Ergo nihil unquam nobis defutuum est quoad salutis nostrae referet.”

89 Ibid.

90 3.25.9.

91 1.15.6: “The soul occupies the body … not only animating all its parts, and rendering th e organs fit and useful for their actions … ”

92 1.15.4.

93 3.25.7; “Quid quo d etia m membra sunt Christi?”