Was Calvin a Nestorian?

Was John Calvin a Nestorian? I ask because of the (at least superficial similarity) between the *extra calvinisticum* and Nestorian thought, and because his theology of the Lord's Supper has historically gotten him accused of Nestorianism. Read on for more on each of these reasons. # Background on Nestorius # Nestorius , patriarch of Constantinople, was condemned as a heretic at the council of Ephesus in 431 for his over-emphasis on the distinction of Christ's natures, which practically made those natures persons in their own right. Nestorius' difficulties at Constantinople in 428-431 with St. Cyril of Alexandria over the issue of the term Theotokos ("Mother of God") were related most basically to his fear that the Cyril, in stressing the unity of Christ, was endangering the essential distinction between created nature and the Creator. In the person of Christ, Nestorius feared any mixing of the human and the divine natures, for the term Christ properly "designates the impassible and the passible in only one person.... impassible with respect to the Divinity, and passible as regards the bodily nature."1 # The extra calvinisticum # Nestorius repeated the fear to Pope St. Celestine that the error that he was opposing at Constantinople was similar to that of Apollinaris and Arius, namely, the "blending together of the Lord's appearance as man into a kind of confused combination."2 And later, just prior to the council of Ephesus, in answer to Cyril's twelve anathemas against him, Nestorius himself condemned anyone who, >asserts that, at the union of the Logos with the flesh, the divine Essence moved from one place to another; or says that the flesh is capable of receiving the divine nature ... or ascribes to the flesh by reason of its reception of God. an extension to the infinite and the boundless. > >Nestorius' Counter Anathemas to Cyril, in C. J. Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, III (1883), p. 35, Anathema 2. Meanwhile, Calvin says, >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 the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet He continuously filled the world even as He had done from the beginning! > >John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:481 . This belief of Calvin's is what Lutherans and others call the *extra calvinisticum *, a Christological belief that the finite is incapable of the infinite (*finitum non capax infiniti*). "In other words, the finite humanity of Christ is incapable of receiving or grasping infinite attributes such as omnipresence, omnipotence, or omniscience."3 # Consequences for Eucharistic theology # In Cyril's third letter to Nestorius he explained why proper hypostatic union Christology is crucial for Orthodox view of Eucharistic Adoration , >[W]e offer *the unbloody worship*4 in the churches and so proceed to the mystical thanksgivings and are sanctified having partaken of the holy flesh and precious blood of Christ, the Saviour of us all. This we receive not as ordinary flesh, heaven forbid, nor as that of a man who has been made holy and joined to the Word by union of honour, or who had a divine indwelling, but as truly the life-giving and real flesh of the Word. For being life by nature as God, when He became one with His own flesh, He made it also to be life-giving, as also He said to us: "Amen I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood." For we must not think that it is the flesh of a man like us (for how can the flesh of man be life-giving by its own nature?), but as being made the true flesh of the one who for our sake became the son of man and was called so. > >Cyril of Alexandria, Third Letter to Nestorius . In relation to what he just explained, the twelve anathemas are appended to his third letter connecting the denial of Real Presence in Eucharistic Adoration as a denial of incarnation.5 >If anyone does not confess that the flesh of the Lord is life-giving and belongs to the Word from God the Father, but maintains that it belongs to another besides Him, united with Him in dignity or as enjoying a mere divine indwelling, and is not rather life-giving, as we said, since it became the flesh belonging to the Word who has power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema. > >Cyril of Alexandria, Anathema 11 . With these in mind we can compare Council of Ephesus Christology with Calvin's unique Christology on the Lord's Supper which is that of a real spiritual presence with Christ in heaven where the saints feed on Christ's body and blood spiritually.6 >Away, then, with those who, on the view of a missal-god of wafer, bend their knees in hypocritical adoration, and allege that they sin the less because they worship an idol under the name of God! As if the Lord were not doubly mocked by that nefarious use of His name, when, in a manner abandoning Him, men run to an idol, and He Himself is represented as passing into bread, because enchanted by a kind of dull and magical murmur! > >Calvin, On Shunning the Unlawful Rites of the Ungodly, and Preserving the Purity of the Christian Religion, 1537; translated by Henry Beveridge, 1851; reprinted in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, Vol. 3: Tracts, Part 3, edited by Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983; citations from pp. 386-387 . I'd like to understand how Calvin's denial of Eucharistic Adoration relates to Cyril's affirmation of it. It was, after all, Calvin's view of the Supper that resulted in the Lutherans calling him a Nestorian. Calvin also admitted that his view was different from the early church fathers'.7 He believed that the early church practices and beliefs were corrupted. So, was John Calvin a crypto-Nestorian ? --- 1 Nestorius, Letter II to Cyril, in F. Loofs, Nestoriana, pp. 175f.; for the French tr., see F. Nau, Revue de L ’Orient Chretien, XVI (1911), pp. 182f. 2 Nestorius' First Letter to Celestine, Library of Christian Classics, III, p. 347. 3 Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 111 4 In Latin text sacrificii servitutem and in Greek text τελοῦμεν λατρείαν. 5 "Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God.... They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes." St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 6. 6 Unlike what allegedly accused of Calvin, he has in mind a higher view of the Lord's Supper than merely a memorial view. 7 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1559 ed., translation of Ford L. Battles, edited by John T. McNeill, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 2 volumes, 1960, from vol. II, pp. 1439-1440