Calvin & Leithart on 'Visible Words'

Peter Leithart has (rightly in my view) criticised the Calvinistic tag of the sacraments as “visible words”. He suggests that taken on its own it can imply (a) that the sacraments are intended primarily like words to communicate information to us and (b) that the sacraments are principally to be looked at.

I guess Leithart would agree that Calvin’s writings properly understood answer these criticisms. Calvin repeatedly and strongly attacks the Roman Catholics who stupidly gaze at the elements without understanding. And he also attacks the holding up and carrying around of the elements. They are not to be looked at but to be taken and eaten by all believers, he stresses.

Having said all that, I think Leithart is right that some tag such as “edible words” or “tangible words” might be better in this respect.

It is also worth saying that both words and sacraments do far more than communicate information or state propositions. Again, I think this is something that Leithart and Calvin could agree on, but perhaps a shift of emphasis from Calvin is helpful. Calvin is very big on knowledge and so on, though admittedly a relational emotion engaging personal sort of knowledge, not just an intellectual abstraction of info. Again Calvin’s anti-medieval-Roman Catholicism helps to account for the stress on doctrine since the RC church had gone so wrong in its doctrine of the Supper and said that understanding it and preaching the Word were comparatively unimportant. Calvin is centre-staging the neglected.