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The Mystical Presence

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Here's the myth: Roman Catholicism invents the idea that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper actually conveys grace. This eventually becomes the superstition of Transubstantiation. Then Luther and Calvin rise up and liberate the masses from such belief in magic. Luther never quite liberates himself, but Calvin gives us Luther's justification by faith undergirded by nothing more than hard-core predestinarianism. The sacraments are simply symbols, pictures, and/or dramatizations of a spiritual truth designed to bring it into the participant's remembrance.

Nevin's _The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist_ was a reality check for American Evangelicalism. He demonstrated that the assumption of American "puritans" that their heritage came from sixteenth-century Geneva was purely a delusion. Calvin believed and taught repeatedly and emphatically that believers truly partook of Christ's flesh and blood in the Lord's Supper. The idea that the Eucharist was merely a symbol was a complete abomination in Calvin's eyes.

Nevin's makes his case masterfully. He quotes copiously from Calvin to show that His view of the real presence of Christ in the rite was not an obsure part of his teaching but an essential componant of his theology. He also explains how Calvin's view of the Eucharist was essential to his soteriology. For Calvin, a person is not saved from the wrath of God simply because God imputes "in a merely outward way" Christ's righteousness to him. A person is saved because he is incorporated into Christ's human body so that he is more intimately bound to Christ than a branch to a tree, a member of a body to his head, or a human to Adam. Only those united to Christ in this way by the power of the Holy Spirit can benefit from Christ's righteousness, having it imputed to them as His glorified human life is imparted to them.

The Lord's Supper, says Nevin, according to Calvin and the other sixteenth-century Reformers, renews and strengthens this union. We are truly given Christ's human body by the Holy Spirit when we partake of the Sacrament. Anything less would not be sufficient for our salvation and sanctification.

Nevin carefully distinguishes Calvin's view not only from the socinians and other rationalists, but from that of traditional Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Regarding the former, Nevin must have made his contemporary Evangelical readers wince when he pointed out that their view was identical to that of unitarians and other liberals of the day. On the other hand, unlike tran- and consubstantiation, Calvin's view did not allow for actual material particles to be locally present in the elements or to pass into the bodies of partakers.

Probably one of the most difficult aspects of Calvin's view was his insistence on a real participation in Christ's flesh and blood without any matter being transported into the participant. Thus, Nevin's attempt to formulate and improve on Calvin's explanation is perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of the book. Nevin make the rather obvious but head-aching comment that a physical organism does not consist in particular physical particles! Living human beings pass out and ingest new particles all the time. Our human body is actually a "law" or "force" which must have matter to exist but is not identical with it. An acorn is considered identical to the oak tree which grows from it, but the oak tree is exponentially more massive and probably does not possess one material particle in common with the acorn from which it originated. By these analogies Nevin clears away the conceptual difficulties which make Calvin's view hard to believe. It would do no good if mere dead particles from Christ's flesh were transported into us. What we need is Christ's life. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ's resurrected, glorified, human life is given to us so that we become sharers in it.

There is much else of value in Nevin's work, more than I can recite from memory as I punch out this brief review. Perhaps the most questionable portion of Nevin's work is his exegesis. There he makes statements about the incarnation which are hard to makes sense of. On the other hand, the texts he uses are very similar to those used by Richard Gaffin in _Resurrection & Redemption: A Study in Pauline Soteriology_. In other words, Nevin was a century ahead of the cutting edge of conservative Reformed scholarship. The difference is that Gaffin concentrates on the Resurrected humanity of Christ, instead of the "theanthropic person" which concerns Nevin almost exclusively and in my opinion leads to some difficulties.

Anyone claiming to be Evangelical and/or Reformed needs to read this book. There is simply nothing else like it. You will never be the same again. --Mark

160 years ago john Williamson Nevin threw a hand grenade in the Reformed world. The full explosion of which happened in 2003 in Monroe, LA.

Nevin argued that modern Puritan theology, manifested in the tendencies of the Hodges of Princeton and the Dabneys of the South, represented a signficant deviation from Calvin's eucharistic theology. And as Nevin goes on to argue, given the life-giving importance of the Eucharist for the church, this was a major deviation, indeed.

Nevin simply summarizes and improves Calvin's eucharism. He argues that in the Lord's Supper we feed upon the humanity of Christ (flesh and blood) through faith by the Holy Spirit. Against late Roman Catholicism we see Christ's humanity in heaven with the Father. However, Calvin would say that "gap" (bad terminology, but go with it at the moment) is bridged by faith or the Holy Spirit.

Nevin improves that language by positing humanity as an organic whole. Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches. This is a significant improvement, but one not without its problems. Reformed (and Anglican) exegetes in the 20th century would improve this with their theologies of the Resurrection.

Nevin also includes a damning critique of American sacramental theology. There is simply no way to get around the evidence. The American Reformed church treats the sacrments lower--waaaay lower--than their Reformed ancestors. Low sacramental theology necessarily denigrates the role of the sacraments in the Church. How often does your church celebrate the Supper?