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Jan
15

The Extra Calvinisticum

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incarnation2Have you ever wondered how Christ was all present, yet located locally in Jesus Christ of Nazareth? Have you ever wondered how Christ continued to uphold the universe yet walk around Jerusalem? Or, how did the fulness of deity dwell bodily in Christ (Col. 2:9)? In other words, how do we uphold the deity and the humanity of Christ?

This is quite a monumental subject, and something which I admit to be quite the learner about.  Yet, I think this doctrine of the Extra Calvinisticum is of crucial importance for Christology.

Usually attributed to John Calvin (by the Lutherans due to the debate on the ‘Real Presence’ in the Lord’s Supper), this is a very important and orthodox doctrine that I’ve been reading about lately.  Basically it states that in the Incarnation, God the Son retained his divine properties such as omnipresence, omniscience and immensity, and therefore Christ was not confined within the limits of a creaturely human. In other words, Christ was not less than divine nor less than human.  Later reformed theologians used the dictum: finitum non capax infinitum (the finite cannot grasp, or exhaust the infinite) to describe this.  The reverse is also true: the infinite God grasps finite human nature in the Incarnation.

One great passage in Calvin where this is explained is here:

“For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein.  Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.” Institutes II.13.4

John_CalvinAs E. David Willis shows in his excellent study on the Extra Calvinisticum, this doctrine has undeniable orthodox catholicity – so much so, that Willis thinks a better term might be the Extra Catholicum! We find this doctrine in Cyril, Athanasius, Augustine, John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas and the reformed orthodox in the 16th and 17th centuries.  I’ve listed these quotes and others, here.

One area which this doctrine is helpful is in protecting against kenotic theologies which claim that in the Incarnation, Christ emptied himself of divine properties such as omniscience or omnipresence.  This seems to be a mistaken exegesis of Philippians 2, where the reference to ‘emptying’ is taken to refer to Christ losing particular attributes, rather than referring to the general movement of descent from heaven to earth as a man.  The Extra protects Christ’s divinity by insisting that whilst fully man, Christ nevertheless filled the universe with His presence.  And although His glory was veiled within human flesh, he was still nevertheless utterly glorious as the fully divine second person of the Trinity.  Paul Helm describes this as follows:

“The Logos, as Calvin liked to say, in true Chalcedonian fashion, ‘remains what He was’; what happened was that at the Incarnation, while continuing to exist eternally in the form of God, the logos, in Incarnation, took the form of a servant.”  Calvin’s Ideas, p64.

The other area where the Extra Calvinisticum is very important is with respect to Christ as God’s revelation.  Without a doubt, Christ is the true revelation of God.  He is the true image of God (Col. 1) and the exact imprint of God (Heb. 1).  There is no other way to know the Father except through Him (John 14:6).  Yet, the Extra Calvinisticum supports revelation extra Christ – for instance, Scripture and General Revelation.  In other words, as Muller puts it:

“Christ, the God-man, the center of everything we can say about salvation, is not the center of everything we can say about God, and not even the rule for everything that we can say about the Word in its work of creation, providence and revelation.  The extra-Calvinisticum allows, therefore, both for a genuine revelation of God in nature, accomplished by the Word extra Christum or, as the fathers would have said, the Logos asarkos, and a special revelation of God focused soteriologically upon but not restricted to the person of Christ, the Logos ensarkos.”  Richard Muller, The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A Response to T.F. Torrance.

As I see it, the Extra Calvinisticum brings great and helpful benefits to our understanding and love of God.  Firstly, it protects Chalcedonian Christology by preserving the humanity and deity of Christ against kenotic Christologies which empty Christ of His true divinity.  Secondly, it preserves General Revelation by admitting true revelation beyond the flesh of Christ (of course, sadly the unregenerate man suppresses the truth of God’s revelation as per Romans 1).  Thirdly, this brings some sense to the confusions surrounding the term ‘Christocentric.’  It insists upon a Soteriological Christocentrism whereby Christ is the beginning and center of Salvation (which is historically orthodox), yet banishes the idea of a Principial Christocentrism which insists that Christ (not Scripture) is the beginning, ground and center of all doctrine of God (which is not historically orthodox).  The danger of the wrong-headed idea of a Principial Christocentrism, Muller says is that: ”… it becomes a Christological reductionism, a ‘Christmonism,’ as some have labelled it.”  Muller, The Barth Legacy. p691.

All in all, I think that the Extra Calvinisticum is a wonderfully catholic and orthodox doctrine which frees us up from dangerous ideas about God, and allows us to rejoice in the greatness of our divine Saviour’s Incarnation which led to His gracious redemption of us!

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10 comments

  1. Reuben says:

    January 16, 2010 at 9:17 am (UTC 10 )

    Thanks Mark, really good post!

    You back in Newtown atm? come round to #13 LQueen for a coffee sometime if you are…

  2. Mark says:

    January 16, 2010 at 10:06 am (UTC 10 )

    Hey Reuben! Thanks mate – glad you enjoyed it… I think I might post another one up soon on the EC…

    Yep, I’m back over at Chappo – heading up to Katoomba for NextGen on Sunday night, but when I’m back I’d love a cuppa mate. Will sms you then!

  3. bruce pass says:

    January 18, 2010 at 10:46 pm (UTC 10 )

    great post. it raises three questions for me

    1) do you think finitum non capax infinitum really requires the extra?
    2) in what sense is Christ truly ubiquitous in his person as the incarnate son?
    3)what implications does the NT role of the spirit have with respect to the incarnation and the attributes of the perpetually incarnate son?

    given that calvin said so much about the spirit, i would like to get to know calvin’s pneumatology better to understand the extra. it would be great to see you again and chew the fat. moving house tomorrow to king st.

    bruce

  4. Mark says:

    January 28, 2010 at 4:24 pm (UTC 10 )

    G’day Bruce,

    Just got back earlier this week and have now a little bit of time for internet things! Let me have a crack at answering your questions:

    1) From what I’ve read they are pretty much synonymous. Ie., they’re trying to do the same thing; namely, to preserve the full humanity and divinity of Christ. So, my short answer would be yes.

    2) I’m not entirely sure what your question is exactly here, but I’ll throw around a few thoughts.

    Perhaps we should start with the an/enhypostasis. Before the Incarnation there was one ‘ousia’ in the ‘Person’ of the Son, and after the Incarnation two ‘ousia’ (divine and human) were in the ‘Person’ of the Son. By preserving this distinction, the two ‘Leontioi’ were protecting against a) that the divine nature became a human nature, and b) that the divine person (hypostasis) of the Son became a human ‘person’. What they were asserting was that the Person of the Son assumed a human nature to himself. Thus, the one who is eternally the subject of divine nature also ‘becomes’, in time, also the subject of a human nature.

    Well, back to your question! I would answer that just as Christ is truly divine and ubiquitous prior to the Incarnation, so he is also divine and ubiquitous after the Incarnation.

    If you question wasn’t so much about the ‘Person’ issue, but more along the lines of the communication of the attributes, I would simply say that omnipresence is an incommunicable attribute. It makes sense for God to say ‘Be holy, as I am holy’ but doesn’t really make sense to say ‘Be omnipresent, as I am omnipresent!’

    3) Good question. Haven’t really read too much about the work of the Holy Spirit with respect to the communication of the attributes, though I understand that John Owen is being retrieved in contemporary theology for his theology of the Holy Spirit in Christology. That said, I’ve only got rough thoughts about it and nothing that would really give a helpful response I’m sorry!

    Ditto to chewing the fat, and ditto to thinking about the role of the Holy Spirit wrt. the extra!

    Cheers brother,
    Mark

  5. dave miers says:

    February 8, 2010 at 9:49 pm (UTC 10 )

    i love mark earngey

  6. Mark says:

    February 8, 2010 at 11:15 pm (UTC 10 )

    i love dave miers too!

  7. Tony Byrne says:

    May 22, 2010 at 6:48 pm (UTC 10 )

    Thanks for this post and the document with the other quotes. I just posted Richard Muller on the Extra Calvinisticum [click].

  8. Tony Byrne says:

    May 22, 2010 at 7:04 pm (UTC 10 )

    Here are several other quotes:

    “8. What then? If He came hither, where was He? “He was in the world.” He was both here and came hither; He was here according to His divinity, and He came hither according to the flesh; because when He was here according to His divinity, He could not be seen by the foolish, by the blind, and the wicked. These wicked men are the darkness, concerning which it was said, “The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” Behold, both here He is now, and here He was, and here He is always; and He never departs, departs no-whither. There is need that thou have some means whereby thou mayest see that which never departs from thee; there is need that thou depart not from Him who departs no-whither; there is need that thou desert not, and thou shalt not be deserted.”

    Augustine, “Homilies on the Gospel of John: Tractate II.8″ in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004), 7:16.

    “But what means that passage of the great Evangelist, He was in the World, and the World was made by him? (John i. 10.) The sense sure is, that he was sent hither with regard to his Humanity, but was really here before, and all-along in respect of his Divinity.”

    Augustine, from Pious Breathings. Being the Meditations of St. Augustine, His Treatise of the Love of God, Soliloquies and Manuel. To which are added, Select Contemplations from St. Anselm and St. Bernard, trans. George Stanhope, 5th edition (London, 1720), 25-26.

    Notice how Augustine is protecting the integrity of both Christ’s divinity and humanity by predicating the properties of both natures to his one Person, while not predicating the properties of each nature [such as omnipresence] to each nature, thus avoiding the ubiquitarian error [i.e. Jesus' human nature is omnipresent].

  9. Tony Byrne says:

    May 22, 2010 at 7:08 pm (UTC 10 )

    Here’s Calvin, who is in line with the above Augustine quotes:

    “To fill often signifies to finish, and it might have that meaning here; for, by his ascension into heaven, Christ entered into the possession of the authority given to him by the Father, that he might rule and govern all things. But a more beautiful view, in my opinion, will be obtained by connecting two meanings which, though apparently contradictory, are perfectly consistent. When we hear of the ascension of Christ, it instantly strikes our minds that he is removed to a great distance from us; and so he actually is, with respect to his body and human presence. But Paul reminds us, that, while he is removed from us in bodily presence, he fills all things by the power of his Spirit. Wherever the right hand of God, which embraces heaven and earth, is displayed, Christ is spiritually present by his boundless power; although, as respects his body, the saying of Peter holds true, that ‘the heaven must receive him until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.’” From Calvin’s Commentary on Eph. 4:10

  10. Mark says:

    May 28, 2010 at 4:53 pm (UTC 10 )

    G’day Tony,

    Thanks for the quotes above, they are fantastic. Yes, the Muller article in his dictionary of terms is excellent. In fact, that book itself is incredible.

    You might also be interesting in having a read at this little article I wrote for an online journal of Moore College students called The Catechist: “Here is Something Marvellous – The Extra Calvinisticum

    Thanks for pointing me to your blog. I’ll be sure to pop my head in from time to time and have a read!

    Blessings,
    Mark

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