“The abasement of the flesh was like a veil, by which the divine majesty was covered”

“The abasement of the flesh was like a veil, by which the divine majesty was covered” : The theme of kenosis in Book II of Calvin’s Institutes [1]

Rinse H. Reeling Brouwer, Amsterdam

Faith in Jesus Christ in the second edition of the Institutes of 1539

The work Christianae Religionis Institutio (Institutes of the Christian Religion), through which Calvin gained a degree of notoriety in 1536, could be characterised as a catechism on Reformation theology, designed to instruct adults. Its basic structure relates to the apostle Paul’s distinction of Law and Faith. With reference to the work of the Law, he writes that “those who discard all pride, being aware of their own poverty, reject themselves completely and deem themselves totally worthless, will begin to taste the sweetness of God’s mercy in Christ.” [2] The knowledge of Christ, then, is received by faith. In a more precise draft of his catechism for the city of Geneva in 1537 – itself partly an extract from the 1536 Institutes – he then continues as follows: when you ask “what our faith must behold and consider in Christ in order to be confirmed, it is explained in what is called the Symbol (Creed), that is, in what way Christ became for us wisdom from the Father, and redemption, and life, and righteousness and sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30)”.[3]

The second (Strasbourg) edition of the Institutes (1539) is characterised by a methodological shift away from this initial catechetical framework, which tracks the structure of the Apostels’ Creed, to a more systematic and academic organisation of his work, a shift which follows the example of the successive editions of the Loci Communes of Melanchthon (1521 then 1535). [4] In his explanation of the extensive second article of the Creed, however, Calvin actually follows the contents of the Creed more precisely in his theological reflections. [5] He does this specifically by unfolding all of his own Christological insights and proposals under the headings of the Apostles’ Creed. In this context, Calvin’s exclusive treatment of the reasons for and the way of the incarnation is fully identified with the article on the conception by the Holy Spirit and the birth from the Virgin Mary.

Already here, two remarks are required. First, a comparison can be made with the way in which Karl Barth describes the virgin birth. Barth distinguishes between the thing (res) of the incarnation and the sign (signum) of the virgin birth – and then also between the divine mystery and the miracle – and warns the reader neither to identify nor to separate these two dimensions.[6] This distinction was not yet necessary in the days of Calvin when precritical reading of the Bible was practised. But if we were to resolve to follow Calvin’s example now, we would have to reflect on the question whether the surprising and wonderful legendary material found in the gospels can bear the whole weight of the doctrine of the incarnation of the eternal Son.
Second, Bruce McCormack, in his masterly book The Humility of the Eternal Son, appeals to exegetical studies to argue that, in the Gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit is said by the angel Gabriel (Lk. 1.35) to be the “agent” of the miraculous conception of Jesus— and thus to do what would later be done in the church’s dogma by the concept of the “hypostatic union.” [7] Despite Calvin’s remarkable attention to the work of the Spirit, it seems that for him, nevertheless, in line with ancient Christologies, incarnation is about the eternal Son who becomes Son of man in the unity of the person, that is, about the Logos who takes on human nature. And what then is to be said about the Holy Spirit? Calvin himself does not offer any clarification, as far as I can see, but among later Reformed theologians, we can read a possible response to this question in the disputation on the incarnation by Antonius Thysius, included in the Leiden Synopsis of 1625. First, he stresses that the expression “the Word was made flesh” of John 1:14 has both a passive sense and an active sense. When we take it in an active sense, it is the work of God. After arguing that the incarnation is a divine work (opus) and activity (operatio) outside of himself (ad extra) and common to the whole Trinity, Thysius continues:

“It happens in such a way that the source of the action (fons actionis) comes from the Father, and consequently relates to him. The means (medium) of the action lies in the Son, who is the “wisdom of the Father,” while the outcome (terminus) is with the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as he is the strength and power of God most high, through whom the action is carried out … Therefore, in the Creed it says, “conceived by the Holy Spirit.”[8]

I do not conceive this proposal as a final solution to the problem, but it definitely seems to discern the question, and it leaves room for further elaboration on the role of the Holy Spirit. The proposal of McCormack, that we consider the Holy Spirit as the power through which the Logos – in his “wisdom,” Thysius would say – could practise a “receptivity” – a better word than the “passivity” (according to the grammatical passive sense) which Thysius references – in relation to his human “nature,” could be seen as just such an elaboration.[9]

The (Latin) Institutes of 1559 (and the French edition of 1560)

In the winter of 1558-1559, tormented by ‘the quartan fever’,[10] Calvin took his scissors, rearranged the material of the 1554 edition at hand and extended it with a range of additions.[11] The overall structure follows that of the Apostles’ Creed, and was divided into four parts: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Church. The most significant change—or renewal—is found in the explanation of the second part of the Creed, in the discussion of the Son. As already mentioned, in the first edition of the Institutes of 1536, the basic plan had been oriented by the distinction between law and faith (as in Paul) or law and gospel (as in Luther). But now, given the need that “the fallen human being” (II.i–v) ought to seek “redemption in Christ” (II.vi), both law (II.vii–viii) and gospel (II.xii–xvii), as documented by the Old and the New Testament (II.ix–xi), together give testimony to Christ. Therefore, when speaking of Christ (II.xii–xvii), the first point of interest will be that “our most merciful Father appointed what was best for us” in order to bring about our redemption.[12]
In this way, the ordo docendi of the locus attains a rather systematic-theological character. With his scissors, Calvin takes from the earlier edition 7,8–10 and places it at II.xii.1–3 (the question cur deus homo?); he lifts 7,11–12 and sets it at II.xiii.1–2 (on the true humanity of Christ); and he takes 7,13–16 and posits it at II.xiv.1–4 (on the elements of the Chalcedonian definition). This means that the materials that earlier belonged to the explanation of the conception by the Holy Spirit and of the birth from the Virgin Mary now structure the three chapters on what scholastics called the person of the mediator. At the same time, the virgin birth almost lost its character as a subdivision of the explication of the Creed. There remains interest only in the “true substance” of the flesh that his mother donated to Jesus Christ (II.xiii), and the remaining catechetical material from 1539 (7,17) has been removed.[13] Earlier we asked: “How justified was Calvin in making the Creed’s article on Christ’s conception and birth bear the whole weight of the doctrine of the incarnation?” But here, instead of bearing the weight of the doctrine, the same article has apparently disappeared. That is a strange affair.
Chapter II.xv is a revision of the former explanation of the title “Christ”—in his threefold anointing (formerly sections 7,2-5). This theme formerly dominated the whole treatment of Christology, and remains important, although the “person” is now treated prior to the “work”. Chapter II.xvi begins by repeating the earlier explanation of the name of Jesus as “Redeemer” (7,1), and continues by repeating the earlier explication of the Symbol in the order of (in terms of Reformation doctrine) the “two states”: first the humiliation (II.xvi.2–12, formerly 7,[19]22–29) and then the exaltation (II.xvi.13-19, formerly 7,30-37). We can recognize how Calvin prepares the way for Reformed Orthodoxy when we compare II.xii–xvi of the Institutes with the Compendium of Christian Theology of Johannes Wollebius (1626):[14]

II.xii-xiv The Person of Christ God-and-Man
II:xv The Mediatorial Office of Jesus Christ (munus triplex)
II:xvi: Christ’s Two States, with as an appendix
II.xvii: On the Merit of Christ

Throughout, Calvin adds the results of his scriptural study[15] as well as of his reading of the church fathers from the period of the ecumenical councils. Most of the sections that are added to this last edition, however, present the fruits of several debates Calvin was involved in during the preceding years: namely with Andreas Osiander (II.xii.4-7), Menno Simons (II.xiii.3-4), Michael Servet and Giorgio Biandrata (II.xiv.5-8), Sebastian Castellio (II.xvi.10)[16], and Laelio Sozzini (the whole of the appendix of II.xvii) respectively.
In the following, Calvin’s position in these debates – as far as the person of Christ is concerned – will be analysed, looking for clarification from that point of view on the specificity of his thinking on kenosis. Thus the research will be limited to the debates in the three chapters on the person of the mediator (II.xii–xiv), leaving aside the debates that are documented in the three chapters on Christ’s work (II.xv–xvii) and their effects on Calvin’s thinking on Christ’s person.

Andreas Osiander (II.xii.4–7)

Calvin met the Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander (1498-1552) at a conference in Worms in 1541, where they did not make a positive impression on one another. Some of Osiander’s works subsequently reached Calvin’s study. The title of one such work, according to which Christ would still have become human even if no means of redeeming humanity had been required, provoked a response from Calvin, albeit after the death of its author.[17] Calvin remarks that this question had previously been only lightly touched on by a small number of scholars,[18] but that it had received a strongly speculative interest here. Osiander asserts that because Christ as a human being had been foreknown in the mind of God, he was the pattern according to which all human beings were formed.[19] When the one who is God-and-man[20] is said to be our righteousness, this can only be with regard to his divine nature; only in this respect can Christ be mediator between God and human beings, because the aim of the incarnation is the divinisation of human beings, the gathering of humanity into heavenly life.[21] One cannot say that Osiander’s position is typical of Lutheran Christology in general, for it was also controversial in his own environment. Nevertheless, one can observe that it belongs to the prehistory of speculation on a synthesis of divinity and humanity as it would be discussed in later German idealism, as well to the prehistory of a theosophical interest in the mystical process by which divine power penetrates human being. And one can also observe that a follower of Calvin would be inoculated against both tendencies, tendencies that would influence kenotic Christology in the nineteenth century. For, Calvin, in his humanistic mood, strongly repudiates any ontological speculation beyond the soteriological witness of Scripture to Christ, who at the cross redeemed the condemned, in an incarnation supposed to be for all creatures, regardless of their obedience. Calvin declares that whosoever desires to know more is apparently “not content with this very Christ, who was given to us as the price of our redemption.”[22]
At the same time, Calvin acknowledges that the mediatorship of Christ is not limited to the act of redemption. Already in the state of integrity Christ had been the head of angels and human beings.[23] Even if humanity had remained free from all stain, their condition would have been too lowly for them to reach the majesty of God without a mediator.[24] For Osiander, Christ is “the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1.15) as the logos incarnatus, but Calvin makes a distinction here. Christ is the mediator of creation as the eternal Son, in the “subsistence”[25] of the Word, always “being with God” (Jn. 1.1); he is the one who reveals the divine life that would otherwise have remained hidden, and he only became the mediator of redemption after the fall of Adam. The duality in the structure of the Institutes of 1559 finds its expression here: first, “The Knowledge of God the Creator” in Book I, and second “The Knowledge of God the Redeemer” – against the background of the fall – in Book II, with the historicizing order creation, fall, redemption. Therefore, with respect to the passage in Colossians quoted by Osiander, Calvin explains: “The apostle in one short passage sets forth two things to be considered: (1) ‘through the Son all things have been created,’ that he may rule over the angels [v.16]; (2) he was made man that he might begin to be our Redeemer [v. 14]”.[26] One can question, in my opinion, whether this “parallel” order corresponds with the structure of the passage in question. In Colossians 1 we find a hymn with two stanzas, both beginning with the expression “He is” (v. 15; v. 18b). The second stanza, in accordance with the context of the hymn, speaks of redemption and reconciliation. The first stanza, when read independently (without v. 18a), could be conceived as a Hellenistic-Jewish hymn on the mediator of creation. In context, however, the author of Colossians moves beyond this general consideration, identifying the “first born of creation” with the “firstborn from the dead”, and therefore with Jesus Christ. In addition, one can remark that “the thrones or dominions or rulers or powers” of verse 16 are not only “angels” in general, but rather ideological and political powers that have been overcome by the dominion of Christ.[27] In short: the Pauline order, in the way it was understood by Karl Barth as well,[28] seems to be an order running from Christ as the head of his church to the same Christ in his cosmic rule. There are also indications in Calvin’s writing that he considers the history of the incarnate Christ to give some colouring to the same Christ as the mediator of creation.[29] If we were to limit ourselves, with Calvin, to the dual structure of the two dimensions of the Mediation, it would become difficult to recognize the preparation for what McCormack proposed to be the “ontological receptivity” of the eternal Logos that already existed in the Logos prior to the incarnation. In addition, Calvin’s exegesis might be mentioned, as it was found in the Institutes of 1536 and maintained through the following editions including 1559: “What Christ said about himself – ‘Before Abraham was, I am’ (Jn. 8.58) – was far removed from his humanity … he is claiming for himself here what is (exclusively) proper to his divinity.”[30] In contrast, Karl Barth says on this point: “This verse, which reaches back to the Prologue [of the Gospel], although it certainly speaks of the eternal Logos, speaks also of the man Jesus.” [31] Therefore, in my view, although we must agree with Calvin in his criticism of Osiander, his doctrine concerning the mediator of creation can be further debated.

Menno Simons (II.xiii.3-4)

In the Low Countries, the beginnings of the Reformation were found among groups of Anabaptists. At a later stage, the beginnings of the Reformed churches were characterized by repeated debates with this movement. John à Lasco disputed with the elder Menno Simons (1496-1561) concerning the incarnation, and word of this dispute had certainly reached Calvin by 1554. In 1556, Marten Micron reported on similar disputes in East Frisia, which received a response in turn from Menno,[32] and Micron asked for the help of Calvin (and of Bullinger) in ordering the arguments. Calvin indeed wrote a letter to Micron,[33] and in 1559 he inserted twenty quotations from this letter – containing his rebuttal of the arguments and the exegetical considerations of Menno – into the thirteenth chapter of Institutes Book II.
Already by 1539, polemical works against the thesis that Christ’s body was endowed with heavenly flesh – a thesis identified by Calvin as an inheritance from the Manichees[34] – were addressed to Anabaptist groups. Calvin himself stresses by contrast that the flesh that Christ received from Mary made him son of David, son of Abraham (Mt.1:1; Rom. 1:3).[35] That is an important element of our subject: if the incarnation concerns the real history of Jesus, then the context and past of this history, that is, the history of Israel, is also involved! In this connection, Calvin also inserts into the Institutes his explanation of Phil. 2.7 from his Commentary of 1548, according to which being made “in the likeness of men” does not mean that the Son only seemed to take a body—as the Neo-Marcionites, and thus the Anabaptists taught. Hence, Calvin notes, Erasmus is right to defend a “tropological,” ethical reading of the humiliation and the obedience of Christ, in which he acts as a real human being, without being changed in his divinity. [36] The doctrine of the “heavenly flesh” tries to escape the solidarity of Christ with the seed of Adam which was subjected to original sin. Its adherents suggest that without this teaching, the impious would be the brothers and sisters of Christ as well. However, Calvin argues, “when we say that Christ was made man that he might make us children of God, this expression does not extend to all men; for faith intervenes, to engraft us spiritually in the body of Christ.”[37] Menno asserts by contrast that Christ has not been made by woman (ex muliere), but only from woman (per mulierem), as if Matthew were describing Mary as a channel through which Christ flowed. Although Calvin avoids here a medical discussion, he does not adhere, as Menno does, to the Aristotelian view of conception and pregnancy. This view was that the woman produced the material for generation but that this material was animated by the seed of the man.[38] Theologically, Calvin stresses that Christ “was made free from all stain because he was sanctified by the Spirit,” such that “the generation might be pure and undefiled as would have been true before Adam’s fall”—an assertion that does not exclude that Christ could have sinned.[39] Therefore, the accusation that “if the Word of God became flesh, then he was confined within the narrow prison of an earthly body,” Calvin attests, is “mere impudence.” And to prove this point – apparently against an Anabaptist viewpoint, and not primarily against a Lutheran accusation – Calvin then writes his famous sentences on the existence of the eternal Son of God extra carnem during his earthly sojourn.[40]
The Enlightenment assumption that Mennonites did not have any interest in doctrinal questions lasted until the second half of the twentieth century, when what we now call the “Melchiorite-Mennist” doctrine of the incarnation was studied in more detail.[41] The doctrine had been proposed by Melchior Hoffman, a furrier and a Lutheran lay preacher,[42] who was interrogated around 1533 by the Reformation authorities in Strasbourg, and thereafter imprisoned until his death. It appears that gnostic parallels are only partly helpful in characterizing his doctrine, for in many respects Hoffman learned from the Lutheran teaching he received. The centre of his theology is relation to Christ, the mediator and reconciler, the source of universal grace and ethical perfection, and this relation is mediated by faith alone. Calvin’s remark that faith intervenes to engraft us into the body of Christ could have been endorsed by him. In that sense, his views differ significantly from the spiritualistic currents of his time. Reconciliation, satisfaction, and justification are real events, fulfilled by Christ during his life and at the cross, and do not evaporate in the new spiritual reality of our being with him. At the same time, it is true that the incarnation of the eternal Son, which can be identified with the gift of the “bread from heaven” of John 6, has no basis in the history of humanity since Adam’s fall. It is a total renewal, a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5.17), an opening of the gate to the kingdom of God (that will appear very soon!), and an incitement to the missionary work of the community of the reborn brothers and sisters. It is no coincidence that a disciple of Hoffman, Bernhard Rothmann, would play an important role in the violent and extremist Münster rebellion of 1534. Afterwards, the Anabaptist movement regrouped around Menno on a pacifist foundation. Nevertheless, Menno defended Hoffman’s doctrine of the incarnation, and concentrated on the community as being born “without a spot or wrinkle” (Eph. 5.27), increasingly separated from the “world.” In the course of several disputes – especially with the Reformed – Menno hesitated to clarify in more detail what was meant by “heavenly flesh” and where it comes from. At the same time, he held unshakeably that the incarnate Son in his pureness had never been touched by any splinter of the world of sin.
It seems clear to me that this newly reconstructed, more Reformational, and less spiritualistic, Melchioristic-Mennist doctrine would not have convinced Calvin. For example, the lack of any notion of a justification of the godless in it would have remained unacceptable to him. Nevertheless, I see at least two questions to think through in the unfolding of our argument. First, we saw that Calvin, writing against Osiander, rejected all speculation beyond the biblical witness. But in refusing speculation, he himself was in danger of reproducing classical doctrine that perhaps never had been “biblical.” Bruce McCormack, among others, mentions the presupposition of divine impassibility in this connection. By contrast, the adherents of the (monothelite) Mennist doctrine asserted that for the eternal, only begotten Son incarnation must mean that the perfect God had been made smaller, weakened, and changed.[43] Because of the mystery of divine love, reconciliation in accordance with Philippians 2 and John 6 must have implied such a kenosis, in which the eternal Son himself suffered and died for our sins. Calvin resisted such considerations in invoking Erasmus’s emphasis upon the ethical tendency of Phil. 2.7-8. But did Calvin say enough about the eternal Son with this defence? Second, in the discussion of Calvin’s dispute with Osiander, we contrasted “ontological” and “soteriological” intentions. Now, it is clear that the Mennist current brings pressure to bear upon the Reformation understanding of salvation. For Mennists, salvation is being born again, sanctification besides justification. In response, we must redefine “soteriology” along the main lines of the third book of the Institutes of 1559 as duplex gratia.[44] In this sense, it is said in the Netherlands that a Reformed believer, in contrast to a Lutheran, is a twin of the Mennonite.[45]

Michael Servetus (II.xiv.5–8)

In my view, Calvin appears deeply shocked by the enthusiastic, extremely direct ecstasy spoken of by Michael Servetus (1509/1511–1553), the Spanish Marrano, physician, and provocative thinker. Servetus seems to suggest that any border between divinity and humanity, as well between creatures, should be erased. Calvin comments that “[Servetus] regards Christ to be a mixture of some divine and some human elements, but not to be reckoned both God and man.”[46] Through such confusion and mingling, Servetus tries to achieve an immediate experience of an overflow of divine glory that neglects the need to look forward to the realization of eschatological promise, the need to stand at the “sentry post” of eternity, which for Calvin characterizes the life of a Christian in this world.[47]
In chapter II.xiv, Calvin seeks to insert his criticisms of Servetus’s Christology in the previously written sections on the person of the mediator, though even in 1539, Servetus was not completely absent. Such an insertion was not a simple operation, because Servetus could hardly be seen as a thinker of the church, who in thinking critically about dogma tries to improve or to vary it. Servetus’s whole co-ordinate system is very different. It is my impression that Calvin tries to make clear how the doctrine of the hypostatic union is the instrument by which every attempt to cross boundaries that have been drawn by dogma can be blocked. God as such cannot be flesh, and the flesh as such cannot be God. There is no connection between (and no separation in the connection between) the divine nature and the human nature of Christ in abstraction from the decision and the free act of the triune God, in which the Word becomes flesh. For that reason, it is important that it is said in Phil. 2:7 that “Christ could not divest himself of Godhead, but he kept it concealed for a time, that it might not be seen, under the weakness of the flesh”, for kenosis must be seen as a covering of divine majesty.[48] No immediacy! No direct accessibility! Esteeming the mystery of the incarnation, and therewith enduring in humility and obedience, has been asked of Jesus Christ and (in him) of all of us as well. In contrast, Servetus willingly renounces that mindset.
For Calvin, as he elaborates in his 1548 commentary, an orthodox, anti-Arian interpretation of Phil. 2:6 is necessary: “being in the form of God, he reckoned it not an unlawful thing for him to show himself in that form”. Although Erasmus pretends to be in favour of a Nicene orthodoxy, he denies that this orthodoxy can be confirmed by this verse and proposes to read this verse as referring to the logos ensarkos (as he does again vis-à-vis verse 7, in which case Calvin follows him). But then the complaint – perhaps somewhat “fundamentalist” in our perception – follows: “But what I am the better for his orthodox confession, if my faith is not supported by any Scripture authority?”[49] Here in Institutes II.xiv we can discover the reason for Calvin’s stubbornness. A major part of the dispute with Servetus—including at least eleven of the thirty-four quotations from his works that are cited in this chapter, sixteen of which are located in section 8—is dedicated to the defence of the “orthodox” doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. Servetus rejects the Nicene dogma, but in Calvin’s analysis, his basic assumption for that is rather Sabellian than Arian in nature. “Before Christ was revealed in the flesh there were only shadow figures in God”, Servetus asserts, and continues: “the truth or effect of these appeared only when the Word, who had been destined for this honour, truly began to be the Son of God” [50]; and “the Son of God was from the beginning an idea”, so that “the figurative representation of Christ took the place of begetting”.[51] On this ground, for Servetus, the “being in the form of God” of Phil. 2:6 must be read as a “sheer formal” distinction of the persons (and hence, indeed, in the manner of Sabellianism). If the Word becomes Son, then, this takes place not only in Jesus, but at the same time in the fulness of all persons and things who were intended in this initial divine idea. Against this tendency, Calvin wants to maintain unwaveringly that “to neither angels nor men was God ever Father, except regarding his only begotten Son; and men, especially, hateful to God because of their iniquity, become God’s sons by free adoption because Christ is the Son of God by nature”.[52] Therewith, the argument is quite fundamental: if Christ is not the eternal Son, the faith of all ages would have been void. The eternal generation is the actual ground of faith. It is worth while keeping in mind the importance of this insight for Calvin, when we ask – as we have already done and will continue to do – concerning the effects of the experiences of Jesus Christ in his history on the eternal Logos.

Giorgio Biandrata (II.xiv.3.4.6) and beyond

After the execution of Servetus, anti-Trinitarian feelings remained present among the Italian community in the city of Geneva. Giorgio Biandrata (latinized as Blandrata, 1515/1516-1588), also a physician (Calvin had difficulties with members of this profession), was a searching soul who visited the reformer with persistent questions. After Biandrata had written these questions down, Calvin responded in a series of short, thetic sentences.[53] Most of those theses were used by Calvin in the chapter on the Trinity in Book I of the final edition of the Institutes, but four questions remained for the chapter in question on the mediatorship of Christ.[54] Generally, one can say that Biandrata was a disciple of Servetus, but gradually, and especially in his later years in Poland and Transylvania, he evolved in the direction of unitarianism and Socinianism. In this way, he personifies a development in anti-Trinitarian thought from an initial ecstatic pantheism towards a more rationalistic deism.
Most of Biandrata’s questions suggest that it would be enough to acknowledge the Godhead of the Father. A double procedure the speaking of the Son—equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards the mediatorship of reconciliation—would be unnecessarily complicated.[55] In the New Testament, the name “Lord” should be reserved to Jesus Christ—as in 1 Cor. 8:6: “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist”—and it is only used of the Father when the work of his Son is meant. However, Calvin answers, “to restrict the word Lord to the person of the Mediator is trifling and silly because the apostles indiscriminately use the word Lord of Yahweh.”[56] Then how, Biandrata further asks, does Christ exercise his lordship “through whom all things exist” in the office of mediator before the incarnation? In this respect, Calvin’s answer is more elaborate than the question anticipates:

“As Mediator he puts himself, with reference to his office, on an inferior level, in order to draw us little by little to the Father. In this respect, the Son himself submits to the Father in the future age because the very perfection of divinity, which is now seen in a mirror according to our capacity, will be then made most clear to us.”[57]

Up until now, we have only heard Calvin speaking on the mediatorship (of creation) before the incarnation, but now, uninvited, he also speaks of and looks for its future state.
“In this way”, Calvin adds in the Institutes,

“the validity of 1 Cor. 8.6 is only provisional: that is, to him was lordship committed by the Father, until such time as we should see his divine majesty face to face. Then he returns the lordship to his Father [1 Cor. 15.24-28] so that–far from diminishing his own majesty–it may shine all the more brightly. Then, also, God shall cease to be the Head of Christ, for Christ’s own deity will shine of itself, although yet is it covered by a veil.”[58]

This reasoning, going beyond the letter of Biandrata’s question, is continued in the following chapter in connection with the royal office of the mediator, which will end with the Final Judgment as the last act of Christ’s reign.[59]
Recently, Rowan Williams has characterized this proposal as a “very eccentric proposition at first sight,”[60] and indeed it is difficult to grasp. Is it meant in the sense of the fourth-century theologian Marcellus of Ancyra, who seems to teach an end of the history of the incarnation at the eschaton, so that the economic Trinity will come to an end and only the immanent Trinity will be left? In any case, Calvin does not seem to deny that “of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk. 1.33), the sentence with which the Council of Constantinople in 381 rejected the doctrine of Marcellus. In the eyes of Calvin, then, there remains some room for an eternal kingdom of Christ in his divine majesty. But it does seem to be important for Calvin that “the veil, by which the divine majesty was concealed” though the humility of Jesus Christ, according to the hymn on the kenosis of the Son, will be removed, so that we will enjoy a pure vision of the triune God himself in his glory, “and Christ’s humanity will then no longer be interposed to keep us back from a closer view of God.”[61] In this view, the humanity of Christ is not imperishable.
In the Netherlands, it was Arnold A. van Ruler (1908-1970), professor of dogmatics in Utrecht, who tried to rethink this specific heritage of Calvin for the twentieth century.[62] For him, the work of Christ as redeemer was undertaken with the aim of restoring creation after the Fall to its original order (and not as a “new creation” in the Anabaptist sense). Christ is the mediator of creation, too, and this work of his is not substitutional. The incarnation was only an “emergency measure” that became necessary because of the sin and the guilt of human beings, but Christian doctrine neither begins nor ends with it. Instead of the “Christological concentration” of Karl Barth, one can better speak of a “messianic intermezzo” between the beginning and the end. For it must be said, Van Ruler argued, that the work of redemption is, indeed, in the centre, but it is not the focus of what the incarnation is for, namely, the honour of God and the happiness of human beings before God. For that reason, the church certainly has to preach the Gospel, but it must equally – or even more – impose the Law, to Christianize civilizations on earth. Therefore, in my perception it was not by chance that Van Ruler defended the colonial politics of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Indonesia after the Second World War on theological grounds.
Of course, Van Ruler’s theology does not offer the only possible interpretation of Calvin’s “very eccentric propositions” regarding the eschatological ending of the office of the mediator of redemption. Precisely in this connection I prefer to give the last word to Karl Barth. In his lectures on the ethics of reconciliation at the end of his academic career (1959-1961), and specifically in his reflections on the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, the plea for the swift coming of the kingdom and its justice, Barth asks whether the kingdom of the Father must be identified with the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who prays for it. And in that connection, he too is compelled to offer his reading of the “famous passage” 1 Cor. 15.24-28: “Christ at his final Parousia will hand over the kingdom to the Father and having overcome all hostile forces will himself be subject to God, who has subjected all things to him”. Barth writes:

“This passage says that in its future and definitive manifestation, in the form in which we are still to expect it, the kingdom of God will be revealed as the kingdom whose warring, victorious, and triumphant King and Lord is the Son of God and therefore Jesus Christ, the Son of God, however, who does not advance his own cause as distinct from the Father’s, but who subjects himself to the Father, is obedient to him, and acts in his service and in fulfilment of his will and work. If then, he is manifested in the last form of his Parousia in his subjection and servanthood, if his kingdom is manifested as that of the Servant of the Lord [ebed Yahweh], this implies no later restriction but is the authentic interpretation of his action as King and Lord in the kingdom of God as his own kingdom. His passion was itself his action as Kyrios. It is the very thing that proves and confirms the identity of his kingdom with God’s. Precisely in his humility as the Son of the Father, he has overcome the world and reconciled it to God. Precisely in relation to it, then, there can be no talk of the limitation of his kingdom by God’s or of the end of his kingdom. No, in it “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name” (Phil. 2:9). In it he is the One of whose kingdom there will be no end, for God’s kingdom is everlasting.”[63]

Read in this way – 1 Cor. 15.24-28 from the perspective of Phil. 2.5-11 – the humility of the eternal Son is no incident, no intermezzo that will be dissolved, but decisively and for ever characterizes this particular God! Perhaps we might even take one step further and suggest a possible reading of Paul’s next eschatological outlook, ‘that God may be all in all’. This God will not possess a Reign only for Himself, for in the end, after finishing all dominance and all enmity, He will only God when His humility and His willingsness to serve, the characteristics in which He was and remains amidst us in His Son, will be common to all creatures, who then will be all servants of one another.[64]

Conclusion

The extent to which we can combine Barth’s eschatological vision with that of Calvin is surely questionable. But can Calvin’s doctrine, as it has been sketched in our analysis, be accepted? For Calvin, neither the pre-existence of the Logos as the mediator of creation nor the eschatological outcome of his divine majesty—that it is no longer covered, but that it can shine without a remnant of the humanity even of the human being Jesus—has been touched by the humility of Christ. Is it, therefore, a doctrine in which kenosis is conceived as a sheer temporary measure? Karl Barth certainly had reasons, when he discovered (by my reckoning at the earliest around 1933-1934 [65]) that a “pure” Reformed concept of kenosis needed correction. In Barth’s context it was a correction that took the Lutheran position into account. We, however, are free to rethink it in our own way.  

NOTES:

1 Title is taken from John Calvin on Phil. 2:7, in Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. 11: Galatians, Philippians and Colossians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 248.
2 John Calvin, Opera Selecta [hereafter OS], five volumes, eds. Petrus Barth and Guilelmus Niesel (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2018), I, 92. In English quoted in Frans H. Breukelman, The Structure of Sacred Doctrine, ed. Rinse Reeling Brouwer, trans. Martin Kessler (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 81.
3 OS I, 396; Breukelman, The Structure of Sacred Doctrine, 96 and 195.
4 Cf. Richard Muller, “Establishing the ordo docendi: The Organisation of Calvin’s Institutes, 1536-1559,” in The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: OUP, 2000), 118-139; see also Breukelman, The Structure of Sacred Doctrine, 117-121.
5 In the Institutes of 1539, Calvin opens his ‘Explanation of the Symbol’ with a passage about his hermeneutic with regard to the Apostles’ Creed (as a painting of salvation history). John Calvin, Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia [hereaftere CO], 59 volumes, eds. W. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss (Brunswick: C. A. Schwetschke, 1863–1900), I, 477-480; and Breukelman, The Structure of Sacred Doctrine, 8. In the editions between 1543 and 1554, this passage represents the beginning of Chapter 6; in the division into sections of the edition of 1550 this passage represents sections 1–5. In the following, we will refer to these editions as 6, 1–5. For Calvin’s own translation of the 1539 edition into French (a landmark in the history of the French language for intellectual communication!), see John Calvin, Institution de la Religion Chrétienne (1541), vol. I (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 562-567.
6 CD I/2, 178-181.
7 Bruce McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 226; also 147-148.
8 Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, volume II, edited by Henk van den Belt, translated by Riemer A. Faber (Leiden: Brill, 2016), II, Disputation 25, “The Incarnation of the Son of God and the Personal Union of the Two Natures in Christ,” Thesis 6, 68-70 (Latin) / 69-71 (English).
9 Karl Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics I, ed. Hannelotte Reiffen, trans. G.W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 154, quotes Thesis 6 of the Leiden Synopsis, but thereafter immediately continues: “True, the whole Trinity is the subject of revelation, of the incarnation … The result, however, is the incarnate Logos, not the incarnate Trinity.” (This sentence on the “result” could be taken from Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, Disputation 25, Thesis 4). Barth misses the opportunity to think through a possible inconsistency in the doctrine of Reformed Orthodoxy here.
10 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, two volumes (Library of Christian Classics; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1961), vol. 1, 3 (“John Calvin to the Reader”).
11 Cf. Barth’s comment on Calvin’s working method in 1559, CD IV/3, 553; “scissors” seems to me to be a better translation of “Schere” than “sifting” as in Bromiley’s translation.
12 Calvin, Institutes, II.xii.1. McNeill translates “statuit” (here: “appointed”) with “decreed.” However, Calvin does not appreciate the dictatorial stem decerno; instead of decretum (decree) he prefers consilium (counsel) or beneplacitum (good pleasure).
13 Millet in Calvin, Institution (1541), 626, footnote 338, remarks as an introduction to section 7, 27 that Calvin returned here, at the end of his treatment of the virgin birth in 1541, to “the sum of our salvation” from a catechetical rather than a theological perspective. The catechetical perspective practically disappears in 1559, and the theological perspective finds a new place. In their edition of the 1559 Institutes, [Peter] Barth and Niesel mention this section only in a footnote; see OS III, 457 line 30-41.
14 J. Wollebius, Christianae Theologiae Compendium (Basel: Ioh. Iac. Genathi, 1626), chap. xvi: The Person of Christ God-and-Man, chap. xvii: The Mediatorial Office of Christ and chap. xviii-xix: Christ’s State of Exaninition and of Exaltation; cf. Breukelman, “De christologie van Calvin,” in Theologische opstellen (Kampen: Kok, 1999), 313-352, 346.
15 Calvin’s second edition of the Institutes of 1539 was – as the Loci of Melanchthon had been in another way – closely orientated to Paul’s letter to the Romans as the basic model for Christian teaching. Therefore, there is a strong interaction between the Strasbourg Institutes of 1539 and Calvin’s first biblical commentary, that on Romans (1540). From that moment onwards, the results of his biblical studies are carried into future editions of the Institutes, where they provide clarification of doctrine or ammunition for polemics. Conversely, the Institutes – as Calvin remarks in the preface to the second edition – offers the opportunity to expose the key words and the main topics in biblical language separately, and this helps to avoid long excursuses on these matters in his commentary work. Stephen Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) presents the interaction between Calvin’s commentaries and his Institutes in the development of his Christology. In what follows, we will encounter in Calvin’s Institutes of 1559, II.xii-xiv, some of the outcomes from Calvin’s commentaries on 1 Corinthians, Philippians, and Colossians.
16 Castellio was a colleague of Calvin in Geneva and a good reader of Scripture. Calvin evidently encountered disagreement in explaining Scripture in the Vénérable Compagnie, in this case on the explanation of the descent to hell. In the eyes of Castellio, Calvin’s existential interpretation of the temptation of Christ was too realistic and not stoic enough.
17 Andreas Osiander, An Filius Dei fuerit incarnandus (Montegerio Prussiae [Königsberg]: publisher unknown, 1550).
18 OS III, 443 l. 37-43 cites Alexander of Hales, Duns Scotus and Pico della Mirandola, all of whom are mentioned by Osiander. McNeill’s edition of the Institutes mentions these names, but refers to the Opera Selecta for the exact references, I, 470n6.
19 Quoted in Calvin, Institutes, II.xii.7 (OS III, 445 l. 17-18).
20 Barth, at CD IV/2, 115, explains why for his part he avoids the description of Jesus Christ as theanthrōpos.
21 I. A. Dorner, Entwickungsgeschichte der Person Christi (Stuttgart: Liesching, 1839), 200-204.
22 Calvin, Institutes, II.xii.5; OS III, 442 l. 28-30.
23 Calvin, Institutes, II.xii.4; OS III, 440 l. 24.
24 Calvin, Institutes, II.xii.1; OS III, 437 l. 24 – 438 l. 2. For this reason, in the year 1560 Calvin would oppose Franscesco Stancaro, for whom the mediatorship of Christ could be limited to his human nature: already as the eternal Son, he is God in his condescension! Cf. Responsum ad fratres Polonos, quomodo mediator sit Christus, ad refutandum Stancaro errorem, CO IX, 333-342.
25 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.6; OS III, 116 l. 11-16.
26 Calvin, Institutes, II.xii.7, OS III, 446 l. 2-5. Cf. Calvin’s Commentary on Colossians, CO LII, 84-87.
27 Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology, 145, remarks that Calvin in his Institutes does not explicitly tie this creative work of the Son to his royal office, but such a reference can be found in the afore-mentioned Responsum ad fratres Polonos.
28 CD, IV/3, 756; Barth refers here to Calvin’s doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit in the whole cosmos, as set out by Werner Krusche, Das Wirken Des Heiligen Geistes Nach Calvin. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957).
29 For example, Calvin, Commentary on Acts (1552), on Acts 7:30, CO XLVIII, 144, writes: “Therefore, let us, first of all, set down this for a surety, that there was never since the beginning any communication between God and men, save only by Christ; for we have nothing to do with God, unless the Mediator be present to purchase his favour for us.”
30 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.2, OS III, 459 l. 12-14; cf. in the editions of the Institutes between 1539 and 1554, this was at 7, 14 – for example, Calvin, Institution 1541, I, 623 (“Ce … ne se pouvoit entendre de l’humanité”); and cf the first edition of the Institutes of 1536 at OS I, 79.
31 CD, IV/2, 33.
32 See Calvin, OS III, 449 l. 27-32, and W. Balke, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals, trans. William Heynen (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1999), 203: Een waerachtigh verhaal der ’t zamensprekinghe tusschen Menno Simons en Martinus Micron van der Menschwerdinghe Jesu Christi (A true story of the conversation between Menno Simons and Martinus Micron about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ) and Een gantsch Duidlyck ende Bescheyden Antwoordt … op Martini Microns Antichristische leere (A very clear and modest response to … the antichristian doctrine of Martinus Micron) – respectively.
33 Calvin, Contra Mennonem, CO X-a, 167-176.
34 On this point, Bucer and Bullinger were better informed: the thesis was defended by Valentinus, not the Manichees. See also Thysius in Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, Disputation 25, Antithesis III.
35 See also the Belgic Confession of 1561, article XVIII (whereas the French Confession of 1559 in its corresponding article XIV attacked Servetus).
36 Calvin, Commentarii in Pauli Epistolas ad Galatas, ad Ephesiso ad Philippenses, ad Colossenses, CO LV, 27; on Calvin’s quoting of Erasmus, see Kirk Essary, “The radical humility of Christ in the sixteenth century: Erasmus and Calvin on Philippians 2:6-7,” Scottish Journal of Theology 68 (2015), 414-415.
37 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiii.2, OS III, 453 l.1-4; italics mine.
38 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiii.3. On the differences between the old Aristotelian and the more modern Lucretian-Hippocratic schools of physicians, see Balke, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals, 206.
39 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiii.4; OS III, 457 l. 12-16. Calvin here follows here the Thomistic view, which is distinguished from the Scotist proposal of an immaculata conceptio to prevent Mary from original sin; the latter view would not become Roman Catholic dogma until 1854.
40 Calvin, OS III, 458 l. 5-13. Because of this type of quotation, Friedrich Loofs, lemma kenosis, PRE3, Vol. X (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1901), 258 concludes that the Reformed tradition “never reached the idea of incarnation” in a real kenotic sense.
41 S. Voolstra, Het Woord is vlees geworden. De melchioritisch-menniste incarnatieleer (Kampen: Kok, 1982).
42 Calvin shows a certain humanistic, (pseudo-)aristocratic disdain for his less educated Anabaptist conversation partners; see Balke, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals, 206–207. This demonstrates that we cannot neglect the issue of class in interconfessional relationships.
43 Voolstra, Het Woord is vlees geworden, 168, quoting sentences of the Flemish Mennists De Cuyper and Outerman.
44 Calvin, Institutes, III.xi.6, OS IV, 187 l. 30.
45 Oepke Noordmans, Verzamelde Werken Deel 2 (Kampen: Kok, 1979), 464.
46 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.5, OS III, 464 l. 11-13.
47 For this image (derived from Cicero) see Calvin, Institutes, III.ix.4 and III.x.6. For Calvin’s strongly eschatologically motivated criticism of Servetus, Calvin, Institutes, II.ix.3, OS III, 400 l. 25-27, is instructive: “He pretends that by faith in the gospel we share in the fulfilment of all the promises. As if there were no difference between us and Christ!”
48 Cf. Calvins’ explanation of Phil. 2:7 as mentioned above, footnote 1. The corresponding sentence in the Institutes can partly be found already in the edition of 1543: 7, 12; CO I, 520 (also OS III, 451 footnote l. 27-29) and later in the Institutes of 1559, II.xiii.2, OS III, 450 l. 20: quia scilicet imaginem servus induit, et ea humilitate contentus, carnis velamina suam diviniaten abscondi passus est (“He took the image of a servant, and content with such lowliness, endured his divinity to be hidden by a ‘veil of flesh’,” translation revised). How kenosis as occultatio divinae maiestatis (governed by the perception of revelation as divine accommodatio) pervades Calvin’s explanation of the synoptic gospels has been sketched in the fine book of Dieter Schellong, Calvins Auslegung der synoptischen Evangelien (München: Kaiser, 1969).
49 Cf. Essary, “The radical humility of Christ in the sixteenth century: Erasmus and Calvin on Philippians 2:6-7”, 411; McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son, quotes Calvin’s agreement with Erasmus on the interpretation of verse 7 but is silent with regard to Calvin’s dissent from Erasmus vis-à-vis verse 6.
50 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.5, OS III, 464 l. 14-17.
51 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.8, OS III, 470 l. 8-10 and l. 15-16 respectively.
52 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.5, OS III, 465 l. 24-28. A more extensive variant of this reasoning can be found in Calvin’s Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate, published in 1554, the year after Servetus’s execution, CO VIII (453-644) 488.
53 Quaestiones Blandratae, CO XVII, 169-171, and Calvin’s Responsum ad quaestiones Georgii Blandratae, CO IX, 321-332. See N. Tylenda “The warning that went unheeded: John Calvin on Giorgio Biandrata,” Calvin Theological Journal 12 (1977): 24-72. An English translation of Biandrata’s memorandum and of Calvin’s answers are offered in the appendix.
54 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.20(–27); Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.3, 4 and 6. See in the apparatus of OS III, 134-135, 142, 144, 462, and 466.
55 Cf. the formula in the so-called Athanasian Creed that displeased Biandrata: “equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity.”
56 Calvin, Responsum ad questions Blandratae, CO IX, 328; Tylenda (1977), 59.
57 Calvin, Responsum ad questions Blandratae, CO IX, 326-327; Tylenda (1977), 56.
58 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.3, OS III, 462 l. 18-23.
59 Calvin, Institutes, II.xv.5, OS III, 478 l. 8 – 479 l. 33. In this section, we also find once again the section 7, 7 from the Institutes between 1539 and 1554, on the title “Lord” in the Apostles’ Creed.
60 Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 149-150.
61 Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:27 (1546), CO XL, 549: “Christ will then restore the kingdom which he has received, that we may cleave wholly to God. Nor will he in this way resign the kingdom but will transfer it in a manner from his humanity to his glorious divinity, because a way of approach will then be opened up, from which our infirmity now keeps us back. Thus, then Christ will be subjected to the Father, because the veil being then removed, we shall openly behold God reigning in his majesty, and Christ’s humanity will then no longer be interposed to keep us back from a closer view of God.” Cf. Breukelman, “De christologie van Calvin,” in Theologische opstellen, 350. For me, it is difficult to grasp how it is possible to combine this vision with the importance of the humanity of Christ as safeguarding our eschatological humanity for God.
62 A.A. van Ruler, “De verhouding van het kosmologische en het eschatologische moment in de christologie” (1961), in Verzameld Werk Deel IV-A. Christus, de Geest en het heil (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2011), 139-165.
63 Karl Barth, The Christian Life, trans. G.W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), 263-264, translation slightly corrected. It is delightful to read here Barth’s comment regarding Graf N. L. von Zinzendorf, who “took terrible offense at Paul over this, chalked it up as an error, flatly refused to recognize it as binding and ventured the bold hypothesis that because of it Paul was punished with the ‘thorn in the flesh’ mentioned in 2 Corinthians 12:7.”
63 Cf. Rinse H. Reeling Brouwer, “‘Und seines Königreiches wird kein Ende sein.’ Ein klassischer Widerspruch: Lukas 1:33 oder 1 Korinther 15:28?,” in J.W. Dyk and others (eds.), Unless some one guide me… Festschrift for Karel A. Deurloo (Amsterdamse Cahiers voor Exegese van de Bijbel en zijn Tradities, Supplement Series 2; Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2001), 293-301.
64 Rinse H. Reeling Brouwer, “Jesus Christ,” in Paul Dafydd Jones and Paul T. Nimmo, The Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 284-285.