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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2009
With a long and venerable history in both Catholic and Protestant traditions the doctrine represented by the term extra Calvinisticum has fallen out of favour within contemporary theologies of the cross. Through an examination of the history of the doctrine and its constituent features the present article advocates the reclamation of the doctrine as a necessary component for a contemporary theology of the atonement, with special emphasis on the trinitarian dimensions of the death of God on the cross. The extra Calvinisticum is then adopted to refute contemporary theologies of a suffering God.
1 Willis, E. D., Calvin's Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin's Theology (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 2; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), p. 1Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 1. He also adds that both sides agreed that the doctrine was part of Calvin's theology but disagreed over whether or not Calvin derived this teaching from the scriptures and tradition (the Reformed view) or was alien to the faith (the Lutheran view). Willis’ thesis is thus to articulate Calvin's use of this doctrine and its historical antecedents, if any. It is universally accepted that the extra Calvinisticum is clearly established within Calvin's work. Willis cites the following as evidence, ibid., n. 1: Wendel, F., Calvin: Sources et évolution de sa pensée religieuse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), p. 168Google Scholar; F. Loofs, ‘Kenosis’, Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche (RE), vol. 10, p. 258; Cave, S., The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (London: Duckworth, 1925), p. 151, n. 2Google Scholar; J. Ternus, ‘Chalkedon und die protestantische Theologie’, Das Konzil von Chalkedon, Geschichte und Gegenwart (KCGG), pp. 3, 536; Niesel, W., The Theology of Calvin, trans, Knight, H. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), p. 119Google Scholar; and Barth, K., CD, IV/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), pp. 180–1Google Scholar.
3 Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology, p. 8. To clarify Willis writes (p. 60): ‘The label “extra Calvinisticum,” applied to the affirmation that in the Incarnation the Eternal Son of God was united to but not restricted to his humanity, is misleading, to say the least. There is nothing uniquely Calvinist about the doctrine, for as a means of interpreting the Biblical witness to Christ it had widespread and ancient usage.’ Later we read, ‘If one wanted to add to the terminological explosion which threatens and delights the theological world, one might coin “extra Catholicum” or “extra Patristicum” as being more appropriate than “extra Calvinisticum”’, p. 60. David Willis-Watkins noted that so widespread is its use historically that it could just as well be called the etiam extra catholicum. D. Willis-Watkins, ‘Extra Calvinisticum’, in Encyclopaedia of the Reformed Faith, ed. D. K. McKim (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), p. 132. In like fashion Paul Jacobs argues that, given its universal and ancient adoption, the term could be called the extra Evangelicum and the extra Augustinum, ‘Pneumatische Realpräsencz bei calvin’, Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuse 44 (1964), pp. 391–2.
4 Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology, pp. 50–1.
5 See Moltmann, J., The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)Google Scholar.
6 Lewis, A. E., Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001)Google Scholar.
7 Fiddes, P. S., The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
8 See Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T., trans. Battles, Ford Lewis (Library of Christian Classics, 20 and 21; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960)Google Scholar, 2.13.4.
9 Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology, p. 27.
10 I am roughly following the outline of Rohls, J., ‘Christology and the Calvinist “Extra” (Extra Calvinisticum)’, in Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen (Columbia Series in Reformed Theology), ed. Rohls, J., trans. Hoffmeyer, J. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 102–17Google Scholar.
11 Ibid., p. 107.
12 Ibid., p. 108.
13 Wyatt, P., Jesus Christ and Creation in the Theology of John Calvin (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 42; Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1996), p. 35Google Scholar.
14 Calvin, Commentary on John 1:14, cited in Wyatt, Jesus Christ, p. 35.
15 Wendel, F., Calvin: Origins and Development of his Religious Thought, trans. Mairet, Philip (repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1997), pp. 222–3Google Scholar.
16 Ibid. Calvin claims in Institutes, 2.14.1: ‘Thus . . . the Scriptures speak of Christ: they sometimes attribute to him what must be referred solely to his humanity, sometimes what belongs uniquely to his divinity; and sometimes what embraces both natures but fits neither alone. And they so earnestly express this union of the two natures that is in Christ as sometimes to interchange them. This figure of speech is called by the ancient writers “the communication of properties”.’
17 Tylenda, J. N., ‘Calvin's Understanding of the Communication of Properties’, in An Elaboration of the Theology of Calvin, vol. 8 in Gamble, R. C. (ed.), Articles on Calvin and Calvinism: A Fourteen-Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992), pp. 148–59Google Scholar.
18 Tylenda notes of this third category, ‘Christ had been endowed with these prerogatives when he was manifested in the flesh. It is true that along with the Father he held them before the creation of the world, but it had not been in the same manner or respect, and they could not have been given to a man who was nothing but a man’, ‘Calvin's Understanding’, p. 150.
19 Tylenda, ‘Calvin's Understanding’, p. 153. A helpful clarification is added by Tylenda (p. 154): ‘Calvin does not mean that a human concrete attribute as “blood” or “dying” can be applied to divinity as such, or to the divine nature in the abstract, for example, “divinity is mortal”, because he has already rejected such predication in his commentary on Acts 20:28. But he does mean, and so do the Scriptures, that “blood” and “dying” can be predicated of divinity in the concrete, of a divine being, if the divine being, is also human, and therefore has blood and is mortal. Hence, Christ is a single subject having two real natures (he is true God and true man) we can truthfully say by the communication of idioms that “God purchased the church with his blood”.’ Such statements are thus true when understood in concreto, that is, when one sees the subject of the statements in the person of Christ, but not in one of the two natures. When it comes to Mediation or Reconciliation, then both natures are ascribed to the offices of Christ, in this case we can consider the communicatio idiomatum in abstracto. See Rohls, ‘Christology’, p. 110.
20 Tylenda, ‘Calvin's Understanding’, pp. 158–9.
21 A. E. Lewis, ‘The Burial of God: Rupture and Resumption as the Story of Salvation’, paper delivered to the Joint Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Theology and the Irish Theological Association, in Belfast, N. Ireland (April 1986), p. 11.
22 Lewis, A. E., Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001)Google Scholar.
23 Lewis, ‘Burial of God’, p. 14.
24 Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, pp. 91–2.
25 Lewis, ‘Burial of God’, p. 15. See also Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, pp. 86–7.
26 T. G. Weinandy, ‘Easter Saturday and the Suffering of God: The Theology of Alan E. Lewis’, International Journal of Systematic Theology (IJST) 5/1 (2003), p. 66. Earlier (p. 62) Fr Weinandy offered an introductory critique which I fully endorse: ‘I very much support Lewis’ desire to address candidly, from within a Christian context, the critical issues of evil, sin, suffering and death as they ultimately express and so fully realize themselves in the horror of Holy Saturday. Nonetheless, while Lewis can be quite insightful and is by no means a rampant innovator or indifferent relativist, yet at the heart of his endeavour, within the substantive questions that he raises and within the substantive answers he offers, there resides an almost complete, though unintended, misunderstanding of the Christian gospel.’
27 Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, pp. 224–5.
28 Ibid., pp. 244–5.
29 Weinandy, ‘Easter Saturday’, pp. 70–1.
30 On notions of space-time in relation to theological questions, especially the extra Calvinisticum, see Torrance, T. F., Space, Time and Incarnation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997)Google Scholar, and Space, Time and Resurrection (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1998).
31 A criticism made by D. G. McCartney in a book review of Richard Bauckham: ‘God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament’, Westminster Theological Journal 61/2 (1999), pp. 283–6.
32 Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, p. 197.
33 Wrath simply being God's approval of what sin itself rightfully demands.
34 Weinandy, T. G., Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), p. 228Google Scholar.
35 See Matt. 20:28; John 15:13; Eph. 5:2; 1 John 3:16.