Van Groningen speaks of this as God bringing humanity into “his royal family.”[2] He continues, “[God endowed] them with the privilege and responsibility to be co-workers with Him in the regal tasks to be carried out in creation.”[3] God does not bestow life by bringing people into his presence to be peasants or slaves, but to sit with him on his throne to share in the glory of his kingdom. This point will prove significant when Paul speaks of believers who will “reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).

Adam was a public figure, that is, the royal mediator of the covenant of works and as such through his obedience or disobedience would lead all of humanity in him either to reign in life or to be put in bondage to death. Through his disobedience sin entered into the world and its dominion of death spread over all humanity. The restoration and consummation of life, then, would take place in a second and last Adam, a new royal mediator who would triumph over sin and pass beyond the possibility of death, and in doing so bring his people to reign with him in life over the consummated kingdom of glory forever (Rom. 5:17).

The Heidelberg Catechism expounds the significance of Jesus being called the “Christ,” meaning “Anointed,” in terms of his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king:

We are called “Christians” because we are members of Christ by faith and so share in his threefold anointing, filled with his Spirit of royal glory.

I am anointed [as a prophet] to confess his name, [as a priest] to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, and [as a king] to strive with a good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity (Q. 32).

Or in the words of Paul,

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Rom. 8:16-17).

All who believe in the risen Lord Jesus Christ have the shackles of the first Adam broken and the royal promise that God himself will place upon their head the crown of life (James 1:12; Rev. 2:10).

[1] Adam was not only king, but also prophet and priest in the garden-kingdom.

[2] Van Groningen, From Creation to Consummation, 1:64.

[3] Van Groningen, From Creation to Consummation, 1:64; see also T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch (3^rd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 119-33; idem., From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2008), 76-79: “to be made in the ‘image of God’ is to be given regal status” (77).

We’ll first consider the eschatological import of the tree (as it pointed to an escalated future reality) and then demonstrate how it reveals true life to consist in having God himself as your eschatological reward and kingdom inheritance (Rom. 8:17).

While man possessed life since the beginning when God breathed the breath of life into him and placed him in his garden-kingdom for life-giving fellowship, the tree of life was a symbol or token of a higher form of life that was offered to him.[1] As we noted in our previous post, life was not a fixed or static concept for Adam, but a redemptive-historical one that was to organically progress from its protological beginnings to an eschatological consummation of union and communion with God in perfect fullness and permanency. As Vos puts it, “The universe, as created, was only a beginning, the meaning of which was not perpetuation, but attainment.”[2]

In order to attain this eschatological blessing of escalated life and glory Adam was required to render unto the Lord perfect and personal obedience to his command, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17; WCF 7.2). The protological life of original communion with God in the garden-kingdom was not incorruptible, but corruptible; it was not irrevocable, but susceptible to removal in death. Herman Bavinck captures well the character of this probationary stage that Adam found himself tested in:

Adam … stood at the beginning of his ‘career,’ not at the end. His condition was provisional and temporary and could not remain as it was. It either had to pass on to higher glory or to sin and death. The penalty of transgressing the command was death; the reward for keeping it, by contrast, was life, eternal life. Our common conscience already testifies that in keeping God’s commands there is great reward, and that the violation of these commands brings punishment, and Holy Scripture also expresses this truth over and over. It sums up all the blessedness associated with the doing of God’s commandments in the word “life,” eternal life. Both in the covenant of works and that of grace, Scripture knows but one ideal for a human being, and that is eternal life (Lev. 18:5; Ezek. 20:11; Ps. 9:13; Matt. 19:17; Luke 10:28; Gal. 3:12). Hence, Adam still stood at the beginning. As yet he did not have this reward of eternal life but still had to acquire it; he could still err, sin, fall, and die. His relation to God was such that he could gradually increase in fellowship with God but could also still fall from it.[3]

The possibility of eschatological life (the consummation of the covenant communion bond with God) and death (separation from God) was symbolized in the two trees: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to which certain death was appended (Gen. 2:17). Here we are first introduced to the polar forces of life and death as the two possible destinies of humanity. This life-death antithesis from here onward will run throughout redemptive-history and the apostle Paul will pick it up with full eschatological might (see Rom. 4:1-25; Rom. 5:1-11).

Life, as the enjoyment of the covenant communion bond, was not to continue in perpetuation, but would either be corrupted in death on account of disobedience or advance to a higher state of life beyond probation on account of obedience.[4] Vos affirms the “disclosure of the principles of a process of probation by which man was to be raised to a state of religion and goodness, higher, by reason of its unchangeableness, than what he already possessed.”[5] The higher state of life consisted of an unchangeable rectitude, being confirmed in holiness forever, and rising beyond the possibility of death in eternal life—all of this was to serve the communion bond with God.

As we have been saying, the tree of life was a sacrament through which God would convey eschatological life that was permanent and forever (Gen. 3:22). It is absolutely crucial to recognize that this promised reward of eternal life is not to be understood at any point apart from God himself, who is the comprehensive source of all life. The tree symbolized his life-giving presence.[6] More pointedly, the reward offered in the tree of life was nothing less than God conferring himself in a consummated communion bond in face-to-face fellowship with a holy people in his holy kingdom. True life, therefore, does not only have its source in God, but also its goal. As Vos puts it, “As it is strongly bound to God in its production, so it has a telic character directing it to God as its solitary goal.”[7] God himself is the eschatological reward of his people (see Gen. 15:1; Ps. 16:5; 119:57; 142:5; Rom. 8:17).

Our analysis thus far confirms the above point. Creaturely life has its archetype, source, and goal in the absolutely personal life of God, so that life can never be conceived of apart from him.[8] It is further confirmed when through a wider canonical lens the location of the tree of life is considered. The Genesis account informs us that it took root “in the midst of the Garden” (Gen. 2:9). In Revelation 2:7, the original tree reemerges in the paradise of God, that is, the restored and consummated kingdom of glory.[9] Then in Revelation 22:1-2 the tree of life is brought into the closest proximity with the throne of God and of the Lamb. It is from the throne that eschatological life is decreed in its consummate fullness, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (21:3).

In the same way the tree of life stood in close relationship to God, so the river that flowed out of Eden and divided into four rivers to water the garden (Gen. 2:10-14) will come to be referred to as the streams or waters of life. The waters are said to flow from God’s mountain dwelling place and also from the throne of God in the New Jerusalem with the tree of life on both sides (Rev. 22:1-2). In light of this, Vos’s comment is apt:

It will be observed that here the two symbolisms of the tree of life and the waters of life are interwoven. … The truth is thus clearly set forth that life comes from God, that for man it consists in nearness to God, that is the central concern of God’s fellowship with man to impart this.[10]

Both the tree of life and the waters of life point to the One who is the source and goal of life. The eschatological reward of life promised to Adam was nothing less than God promising to confer himself in a consummate communion bond of face-to-face fellowship to his holy people in his glorious kingdom. This conception of life is inherent to the Genesis account itself and enhanced with the clarifying light of later biblical revelation. So Vos can rightly state about the apostle Paul,

The tree of life and the other tree and the primeval paradise and the fall and death and the expulsion from the garden on account of the sin committed, all these are present in the scriptural narrative, and a single glance at Rom. v is sufficient to convince of the fact, that in the most fundamental manner they support (qua history) the entire eschatology of Paul. And the Apostles’ eyes were centrally focused on life and death in their forever interacting force.[11]

[1] On the nature of symbols and tokens see Vos, Biblical Theology, 27: “It is largely symbolical, that is, not expressed in words so much as in tokens; and these tokens partake of the general character of Biblical symbolism in that, besides being means of instruction, they are also typical, that is, sacramental, prefigurations conveying assurance concerning the future realization of the things symbolized. The symbolism, however, does not lie in the account as a literary form, which would involve denial of the historical reality of the transactions. It is a real symbolism embodied in the actual things.” On the tree of life as a sacrament see Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), 1:580-82; Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, vol. 1: God, Man, and Christ, trans. Bartel Elshout, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 1:259, 362-63.

[2] Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 73.

[3] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:564-65.

[4] Meredith Kline speaks of the tree of life as a symbolic “reproduction of the theophanic Glory-Spirit” and the “sacramental seal of man’s participation in the glory of immortality” (Kingdom Prologue, 93).

[5] Vos, Biblical Theology, 27. See Vos, Eschatology of the Old Testament, 73; Collins, Genesis 1-4, 115.

[6] This point is especially clear with the reemergence of the tree of life in Rev. 2:9 and 22:1-4. See G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 235.

[7] Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 309. Vos notes an organic consistency in biblical revelation on the concept of life: “What lends confirmation to thus joining the earlier and later is the emphasis placed upon the divine favor as an indispensable concomitant of the eschatological life. The concept of life would never have obtained in the Old Testament its comprehensive and pregnant significance, had it not from the outset been wedded to the profoundly-religious thought of prospering in the favor of God” (307).

[8] Death also can never be conceived of apart from God as it is nothing less than separation from God.

[9] See Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 94.

[10] Vos, Biblical Theology, 28.

[11] Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 304.

[T]hen the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed (Gen. 2:7-8).

Life cannot be possessed in the abstract, but only in relation to the source of life himself. As Kline writes,

Eternal life properly so called, the life signified by the tree of life, is life as confirmed and ultimately perfected in man’s glory-likeness to God, life in the fellowship of God’s Presence. Access to the tree of life and its fruit is only in the holy place where the Glory-Spirit dwells; to be driven from there is to be placed under judgment of death.[2]

This is the consistent testimony of Scripture.

Life is invigorated within a holy kingdom filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14).

The true path of life leads into a realm maximally charged with the presence of God where there is fullness of joy (Ps. 16:11).

Life is found there, where God receives unto himself a people to be his special possession and he gives himself to them as their God (Exod. 6:7; Lev. 26:12).

True life is nothing less than to possess God himself as one’s inheritance (Ps. 73:26; Rom. 8:17).

This concrete conception of life as a covenantal communion bond with God is evident from at least two elements contained in Genesis 1-3: (1) the garden of God and (2) the tree of life. We’ll consider the first in this article.

That the garden-kingdom was a theocentric realm where God placed man in personal relationship with himself is seen in that it was a garden he personally planted and was called the garden of God (Gen. 2:8; Ezek. 28:13; 31:8, 9). The garden, according to Vos, was “not in the first instance an abode for man as such, but specifically a place of reception of man into fellowship with God in God’s own dwelling-place.”[3] The garden was a created holy realm or kingdom that facilitated life, that is, union and communion with God.[4] It was the place where God walked with man in life-giving fellowship (Gen. 3:8).

The same point can also be argued by way of contrast. Death, as the opposite of life, is banishment from the kingdom where God’s presence abides and so to have the communion bond with the source of life severed.

In the Bible, death is the reverse of life—it is not the reverse of existence. To die does not mean to cease to be, but in biblical terms it means ‘cut off from the land of the living,; henceforth unable to act, and to enter another condition.[5]

Collins notes that מות can refer to a kind of “spiritual death,” that is “estrangement from a life-giving relationship with God.”[6] This sense is found in Prov. 12:28, “In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death” (see also Prov. 23:13-14). More pointedly, Vos writes,

It was intimated that death carried with it separation from God, since sin issued both in death and in the exclusion from the garden. If life consisted in communion with God, then, on the principle of opposites, death may have been interpretable as separation from God.[7]

So in carrying out the judgment of death in response to Adam’s disobedience, God drove man out of the garden of God, that is, out of his kingdom and so away from his life-giving presence (Gen. 3:24).[8] For this reason, the later exile of Israel from the promised land, in which the typological kingdom of God was established, was understood as a kind of death from which the nation would need to be resurrected like dry bones to new life (Ezek. 37:1-14).

[1] For an extensive argument for the garden as God’s covenant-kingdom see Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview, 22-61. See also G. K. Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, 617-22.

[2] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 94-95.

[3] Vos, Biblical Theology, 27.

[4] See Van Groningen, From Creation to Consummation, 1:71-72: “Eden … was the place of life.”

[5] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis, 171.

[6] Collins, Genesis 1-4, 117.

[7] Vos, Biblical Theology, 40.

[8] Those who are sentenced to eschatological death in Revelation are found outside the gates of the city (Rev. 22:15), having no right of access to the tree of life (22:14).

These questions have flowed like magma, but Cornelis Venema, with Bavinck-like fairness and sagacity, handles them like cooled off igneous rock in his recent publication, Christ and Covenant Theology: Essays on Election, Republication, and the Covenants (amazon; wtsbooks). Venema is president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary, where he is also professor of doctrinal studies. In this volume he brings his last two decades of study and writing to bear on these crucial issues, demonstrating himself to be a Reformed theologian of the highest order. In fact, Richard B. Gaffin Jr., endorsed the book, saying, “No one today is better qualified to address the perennially important issues of covenant theology than Cornel Venema.”

Christ: The Center of Covenant Theology

Following a helpful forward by Sinclair Ferguson, there is a concise introduction in which the importance of the doctrine of the covenant and its central relationship to Christ is elucidated. “The burden of my argument throughout,” writes Venema, “is that Christ, and Christ alone, is always the One through whom God’s gracious intention to enjoy fellowship with his people finds its beginning and end” (xxiv). This is a consistent note that Venema strikes often and strikes well throughout this work. The covenant is not an abstraction, nor is it an impersonal contract or merely an impetus for divisiveness; rather, it furnishes the possibility of true religion for it has as its substance the personal and real fellowship of man and the triune God. The central, driving promise of the biblical drama, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” is consummated and enjoyed in Christ alone. In him all the promises of God find their Yes and Amen (2 Cor. 1:20). In him we have the sure hope of a new creation in which the eternal dwelling place of God is with man (Rev. 21:3).

Following the introduction, the book is divided into three major parts: (1) The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace; (2) Covenant and Election; and (3) Covenant Theology in Recent Discussion. I’ll simply summarize some of Venema’s conclusions with the hope that you will read the book for yourself to get his careful argumentation and exegesis.

Part 1: The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace

Part 1 consists of three essays honing in on the bi-covenantalism codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith. By this time in the historical development of covenant theology, a distinction was formed between a prefall covenant of works and a postfall covenant of grace. Venema then goes on to argue at length that the view that the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace included a republication of the covenant of works in some sense was a minority position in the orthodox period. He primarily engages the essays found in The Law is Not of Faith, being critical of their conclusions, while also recognizing the diversity and difficulty of the topic (see esp. pp. 139-44). His discussion of the typology in the Mosaic covenant was especially informative as he expounds various insights from Geerhardus Vos, Meredith Kline and O. Palmer Robertson. He writes regarding the obedience required of Israel,

“Consistent with the pattern of biblical typology, the promises and demands of the Mosaic economy are ‘typical’ of the promises and demands of the new covenant economy. The redemption promised in the covenant of grace always requires the response of faith and sincere, albeit imperfect, obedience on the part of the people of the covenant. As it was in the covenant administration of Moses, so it is in the covenant administration of Christ” (129).

Part 2: Covenant and Election

In Part 2 Venema takes up the relationship between covenant and election. It was previously understood that election supplied Reformed theology in the orthodox period with a kind of organizing principle. As such it injected both abstraction and austerity into the entire Reformed system of doctrine. Accordingly, a unilateral (or monopleuric) formulation of the covenant based on election arose, which diminished its mutuality and conditionality. However, another formulation arose which gave greater emphasis to the history and mutuality of the covenant relationship between God and his people. After expounding the covenant theology of Herman Bavinck, Venema concludes, relating the covenant of redemption and the historical covenant of grace,

“Since the covenant of redemption is a pretemporal compact in which the triune God arranges the covenantal means to secure the salvation of the elect, there is an intimate and necessary connection between these doctrines. In broad terms, the covenant is the divinely-appointed instrument whereby the triune God achieves his saving purposes in time and history. If election is the doctrine that describes God’s sovereign and gracious purpose to redeem his people in Christ, then covenant is the doctrine that describes God’s chosen means to accomplish this purpose in time. Just as God displays his mercy and justice in his eternal decree to save the elect in Christ and to leave others in their sins, so God displays his steadfast faithfulness and intra-Trinitarian communion in his covenantal administration of the history of redemption” (182-83).

Venema also considers in Part 2 the pastoral implications of the relationship between covenant and election for parents who lose their child in infancy as it is stated in the Canons of Dort 1.17,

“Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with the parents are comprehended, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy (Gen. 17:7; Acts 2:39; 1 Cor. 7:14).”

For more on the Canons of Dort, see Venema’s book But For the Grace of God: An Exposition of the Canons of Dort.

Part 3: Covenant Theology in Recent Discussion

In the final part, Venema summarizes and assesses what has come to be termed “Federal Vision.” His assessment focuses on whether or not the views purported by the Federal Vision camp agree with the Three Forms of Unity (i.e., Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession and Canons of Dort). He concludes that Federal Vision is as much at odds with the Three Forms as it is with the Westminster Standards. He also draws out the ways in which this new teaching compromises the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ’s work alone, with a particular engagement with N. T. Wright and Romans 5:12-21.

Recommendation

I would especially recommend this book to pastors, scholars, and interested church members because of its relevance for many contemporary issues. However, anyone willing to follow Venema in his deft articulation of the covenant will be the better for it. With clarity and exactness, Venema leads you into the swirling waters of these covenant debates and proves a helpful and trustworthy guide. And while we can get so fixated on the swirls, Venema brings us beyond to enjoy the everlasting ocean of covenantal fellowship in Christ with the triune God in whose presence there is fullness of joy and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore.

You can purchase the book here.

[1] Anthony Hoekema, Herman Bavinck’s Doctrine of the Covenant, 360.

By Bard Thompson²

Edited by Glen Clary

The first Reformer to arrive on the Genevan scene was the fiery Frenchman, William Farel, a fearless campaigner for the Word of God. As soon as he had gotten the Reformation underway (c. 1534), Farel replaced the Roman Mass by a liturgy, called La Maniere et fasson, which he had written some years before.³ His simple, wordy, but ardent services constituted the first evangelical book of worship in the French language. It was Farel who persuaded the retiring young Calvin to quit the scholar’s cell and get his hands into the difficult business of transforming Geneva into an evangelical community. Working side by side, they used the plain services of La Maniere when they conducted worship.

In April of 1538, the two ministers were expelled from Geneva, having exceeded the patience of the magistrates by their program for a disciplined community. Calvin spent his exile in Strassburg, where he enjoyed the Christian wisdom of Martin Bucer, the Reformer of that city, whose influence upon the Reformed churches has never been fully appreciated. While he lived among the Germans of Strassburg, Calvin was pastor of a congregation of French refugees. For their sake, he appropriated Bucer’s German liturgy; and when he had gotten it cast into French, he revised it measurably and used it to lead his people in worship. That was the original edition of The Form of Prayers. We ought not say, as many scholars do, that it was a mere copy of the German rite of Strassburg. Actually, Calvin kept the best of Farel’s primitive liturgy and contributed much of his own spirit as he refashioned the words of Bucer.

Calvin was recalled to Geneva in 1541. In place of Farel’s liturgy, he introduced The Form of Prayers, which he had brought along from Strassburg. Though the magistrates were glad enough to have him back, they could not accept some of the liturgical ideas which were written deeply into that liturgy. Chief of these was Calvin’s lifelong insistence upon having the Lord’s Supper every Sunday: “It was not instituted by Jesus for making a commemoration two or three times a year … Christians should use it as often as they are assembled.” The magistrates feared of such an innovation; they would not even entertain Calvin’s concession of having the Supper once a month, but insisted upon the schedule of quarterly Communion which had been proposed by Zwingli, the Reformer of Zurich. Even by the end of the sixteenth century, the Zwinglian method prevailed over a large segment of Protestantism and brought about the flattening-out of Reformed worship, which came more and more to be dominated by the sermon. The Genevan liturgy stood opposed to that drift. Despite the scruples of the magistrates, it remained a unified service of Word and Sacrament; on those days when the Lord’s Supper was not celebrated, the portions of the liturgy pertaining to the Supper were simply omitted. But Communion Sunday or not, the whole service was conducted from the Lord’s Table, except when the Minister mounted the pulpit to proclaim the Word of God. The two great symbols of Reformed worship—pulpit and Table—were thereby drawn together in common expression of the God who speaks and gives to His people. The essential response of those who worshiped was to bear and receive His gracious gifts.

The Form of Prayers was the most authentic expression of the way of worship among the early Calvinists. Indeed, it was the inspiration for all the great Reformed liturgies of the Reformation age. Therefore it drew together in a fellowship of worship the Huguenots of France, the Presbyterians of Scotland, the Dutch Reformed congregations, and the German Reformed people (whose modern American representative is the United Church of Christ, through the Evangelical and Reformed branch). We should not assume, however, that all of these services were exactly alike. The Calvinists placed no particular premium upon a similarity of forms. What they really held in common was a body of ideas about the meaning of Christian worship.

What were some of those ideas? First, the Calvinists agreed with Luther that a true Reformation could never be brought about by sheer human power, least of all by sudden and drastic changes in the life of the churches. It could only be accomplished by the proclamation of God’s Word among men. Luther, in fact, was very reluctant to impose a program of radical reforms upon the people, lest they become confused and bitter. He preferred to purify and reinterpret many of the old practices which Christians had been accustomed to see, hear and do in church. At just that point, the Reformed theologians tended to exceed Luther’s prudence. They argued that if the Gospel were to be given a really clear and authentic expression in worship, then it would be necessary to abandon the Mass, without attempting to fix it up, and to find new forms which would express the Gospel with the utmost simplicity, precision and power. Therefore, the Reformed liturgies had something of a radical character. They were meant to be profoundly simple. They did a lot of teaching, explaining and exhorting in an effort to edify and be precise. They rejected all things which were deemed unscriptural, ambiguous, or sentimental. They permitted no bric-a-brac to confuse the Gospel or complicate the essential need of the worshiper to meet God in His Word. Theological integrity was their hall mark. Calvin believed that his liturgy conformed “to the custom of the ancient church,” not to the custom of the Medieval church.

The second idea has been alluded to several times. Our spiritual forebears went to church not to rush into words or to give God gifts, but to hear the Good News of forgiveness and sonship, and to receive that great gift with thanksgiving and joy. They conceived it to be God who spoke in worship, provided His Holy Spirit was in the midst of the congregation, making His Word real, alive and effective in the hearts of men. Therefore, in essence, a Reformed liturgy was the fervent prayer of the people to hear the Word of God and to participate in the Communion of His Son, and a heartfelt response of praise and supplication by those who had heard and received, whose faith became articulate so that they could not contain the joy and wonder of it all.

Now, by modern practice, some things may seem strange about Calvin’s liturgy. What, for instance, is the meaning of that grisly list of sinners (on p. 7) who are told to stay away from the Lord’s Table? Calvin’s whole liturgy rested on the assumption that a true Christian community would be a disciplined community. And that idea, in turn, arose from his conviction that the Christian life was one of profound obedience to the will of God. Therefore, the Lord’s Supper was reserved for those “people who are distinguished by sincerity of faith and holiness of life.” Our Lord did not intend to give the benefits of His Table to any except His disciples, to any “except they belong to His household of faith.” The unfaithful, who were strangers to Christ, and the sinners, whose conduct made it plain that they did not belong to Him either, had no place at the fellowship meal; they must be excommunicated, excluded from the communion, fenced from the Table, lest the holy sacrament of our union with Christ and with one another become soiled and meaningless. Thus, the critical issue of the Christian life was precisely one’s fitness to go to the Lord’s Table.

Calvin also handled the elements of bread and wine differently. He much preferred the use of common household bread, because it was more primitive and less likely to foster superstition. Grape juice, had it been invented, would scarcely have been the vogue in Geneva. Never was it the custom in the Reformed churches to prepare the Communion Table before worship or apart from the Word which “ought to resound in our ears as soon as the elements meet our eyes.” Fearful of idolatry, Calvin did not have the bread and wine brought to the Table until it was time for the Words of Institution and the Communion Exhortation, through which the very commands and promises of Christ could be added to the elements, giving them their true meaning. That, said Calvin, is the “Word which seasons the elements” and makes the sacrament valid. But we ought not suppose that the elements are thereby changed. We, the people, are the ones who are consecrated by this “lively preaching of the promises of Christ.” He does not address the bread, commanding it to become His body; He speaks to us, calling upon our faith and promising us the communion of His body and blood.

Neither did Calvin believe that the ministers should be the last to receive the elements, as a gracious host would do at his own banquet. Christ Himself is both, the Host and the Food of this spiritual feast; and the ministers, who are leaders of Christians, should be the first to partake of it.

Notes

1. This short treatise on the Genevan Liturgy was published at the celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the Presbyterian Church held on November 18, 1959 at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee.

2. Bard Thompson received his Ph.D. in church history from Columbia University in 1953 and was ordained as a minister in the Evangelical Reformed Church, which later merged with the Congregational Christian Churches forming the United Church of Christ. At the time this article was written, Thompson was Professor of Church History at Vanderbilt University. He was also preparing a book on Reformed worship, which he published under the title Liturgies of the Western Church (1961). In 1965, he joined Drew University as professor of church history and served as dean of the graduate school from 1969–1986. Bard Thompson passed away in 1987 at 62 years of age.

3. For a detailed history of the Genevan liturgies, see Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church, pp. 183–224.

Herman Bavinck, with his characteristic eloquence, has brought this connection between the objective work of redemptive history and its application to bear on the necessity of the limitation, or better put, the definiteness of Christ’s atonement.

All the benefits of the covenant of grace are linked (Rom. 8:28-34) and find their ground in the death of Christ (Rom. 5:8-11). Atonement in Christ carries with it salvation and blessedness. For Christ is the head and believers are his body, a body that receives its growth from him (Eph. 4:16; Col. 2:19). He is the cornerstone, and we are the building (Eph. 2:20-21). He is the firstborn, and we are his brothers (Rom. 8:29). Believers, accordingly, have objectively died, been crucified, buried, raised, and seated in the heavens with and in him. That is, the church is not an accidental and arbitrary aggregate of individuals that can just as easily be smaller or larger, but forms with him an organic whole that is included in him as the second Adam, just as the whole of humankind arises from the first Adam. The application of salvation must therefore extend just as far as its acquisition. The application is comprehended in it and is its necessary development. … If Jesus is truly the Savior he must also really save his people, not potentially but really and in fact, completely and eternally. And this, actually, constitutes the core difference between the proponents and opponents of particular atonement.[1]

This line of thinking can be extended to help explicate how the definite work of Christ in historia salutis bears upon an aspect of its application to his elect in the means of grace of the Lord’s Table. We can do this specifically to help us unfold the distinctive Reformed insistence on how the believer experiences communion with the body and blood of Christ there.

As we come to the Lord’s Table by faith we really and truly commune in his body and blood, but not because we physically ingest the substance of Christ’s flesh there, nor because his physical presence somehow comes down from whence it has ascended. Rather, we do so because we are united to him by the Spirit and in that union we own Him as our head who acts on our behalf in redemptive history.

We truly commune in his body and blood because as he yielded up his body and blood he did this for us particularly by name as those written in the book of life before the foundation of the world, as those whom the Lamb had determined to purchase specifically through his body and blood by which we have been represented in the historia salutis and unto which we have been united in the ordo salutis. We commune with Christ’s body and blood at the Lord’s Table because the lifeblood he spilled and the skin and muscle he rent were given with a deliberate exactitude that foreknew the face of each and every person for which it made atonement.

We truly commune in his body and blood because the Spirit whom the Lamb has sent, he has sent precisely to each he has purchased with his body and blood in order to call them irresistibly and give to them irrevocably the boundless efficacy of his sacrifice for them. The Spirit sent to the Church is the Spirit of Christ as the representative Head of his elect Body. And thus the Spirit ensures that as we approach the table which Christ has set, there we find that our Host has laid out places for us which are adorned with our own namecards. We come there as those written on a guest list which he has drafted by his body and blood. We come there and hear Jesus say, “This is my body which is given for you” and “This is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you” (Lk. 22:19-20) and know that he does not speak those pronouns to an undifferentiated mass of potential believers, but to the definite number of his elect.

And so there we really and truly commune with his body and blood as their gracious potency nourishes us by faith again and again until all the ransomed church of God is gathered up to where the physical body of Christ is in fact presently located. While the Table is an act of covenantal remembrance in which we appropriate by faith the abiding significance of Christ’s sacrifice into the contemporary, it is also much more than a sheer act of memory. It is an act of union and communion in the body and blood that was offered up once and for all.

For this communion in Christ’s body and blood we do not need a transformation of substance or a transportation of Christ’s body down from heaven. For this communion we only need the Spirit and the faith which he gifts to us. For this communion we only need the relationship Scripture has shown us to exist between the coextensive nature of the acquisition of salvation and its application.

The link between the Lord’s Supper and the physical body and blood of Christ is not one forged by substance at a physical location at the table, but by the Spirit wrought union of the believer with Christ in what has been done for him in redemptive history. In that faith-union when the believer receives the bread and wine which Christ hands to him particularly, he really and truly receives the body and blood which Christ offered up for him particularly in the historia salutis and continues to plead for him particularly at the right hand of God as the Spirit applies it to him particularly in his vital union with Christ in his experience of the ordo salutis.

[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, (ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003-08.),3:466-467.