Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology)

J. Todd Billings
Oxford University Press (2007)
ISBN 9780199211876
Reviewed by Dr. Michael Philliber for Reader Views (9/08)

 

Often John Calvin is characterized as describing God in a cold, hard way: a deity who is easy to displease because of His vast holiness, but hard to be loved by His failing human creatures. Sometimes this depiction grows from apocryphal stories of Calvin’s dealings in Geneva, and sometimes this portrayal is nurtured through a misreading of his writings. That is why J. Todd Billings’ recent book, “Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ” is exceptional. This densely argued book is written for Calvin scholars, seminarians and pastors who are ready to work through Calvin’s thinking on what participation in Christ means, and how it holds together the Christian life.

To narrow the theological playing field, Billings takes on a specific set of dialogue partners by discoursing with the assessments of “Gift Theologians” like John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward and Simon Oliver. Therefore, throughout “Calvin, Participation, and the Gift,” Billings will reflect on their critiques, and allow Calvin to answer for himself. Yet the thoughtful interchange is empty of rancor or acrimony. The final chapter gives a delightful summary of the discussion that will be helpful for most readers.

In “Calvin, Participation, and the Gift” J. Todd Billings demonstrates how Calvin’s teaching on believers’ participation in Christ, though not a formal category of his theological framework, was an important aspect which shaped a whole network of themes.  With his broad ingestion of biblical and patristic sources, Calvin cultivated a far-reaching and lively doctrine of participation which flowed through his thinking on prayer, the sacraments, ecclesiology and obedience to the law.  Billings further reveals an important underpinning for Calvin which was the duplex gratia, the double grace of gift and gratitude; how justification and sanctification, though distinct, are inseparable.

Another significant topic for Calvin that Billings points out was how this participation in Christ began before the fall of Adam. Humanity in union with God has always been humanity at its fullest. Through the fall that union was disrupted, and brought a distortion to human nature. But sin is not the essence of human nature, only an accident. Therefore, salvation is a gracious restoration to the primal state, which will enter into its fullest purpose at the return of Christ in which redeemed humanity will enjoy a Trinitarian union that will render us conformable to God. But, as Billings makes crystal clear on numerous occasions, this deification will always be a differentiated union, the Creator-creature distinction will never be annihilated. Humanity will never be absorbed into divinity.

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