Cf. Christ, Nature, Scripture, Sacraments etc.

For anyone who can't wait for the Magnum Opus, here's a passage that might somehow get included:

“Within the sacrament, the sign’s relationship to “the Word” mirrors Christ’s relationship to God the Redeemer… (p156) [quotes Institutes IV.XIV.3]. Like Christ, the signs are perceptible, but also like Christ, their appearance does not express their meaning transparently, simply, directly, or self-evidently. Like Christ, the signs are “earthly,” simple, seemingly common; like Christ they serve to bridge human blindness and divine revelation, bot not automatically or simply. Like Christ, they belong to the cognitive and somatic complexity of God’s communication with humanity…. Calvin distinguishes a range of divine representations: nature, Scripture, Christ, the elements of the sacraments. All share in representing God to humanity. Nature is a manifestation which originates in God and displays his magnificence and love. Scripture also originates in God, abd articulates in words his will. Christ represents God more complexly, bridging in his person the divine and human, embodying and giving voice to God’s commands and instructions. God designated the elements, made of them “signs”; they do not manifest God in the same way as nature, Scripture or Christ. All share the fact of their physicality, but the ways in which they represent differ. How they function to communicate differs. And the content of their communication differs. Christ and the elements belong most fully to God’s communication of his covenant with humanity.

Those earthly elements “have been marked with this significance by God.” Their meaning is not autonomous of God speaking. The faithful learn to read the true meaning of the elements within the culture of preaching the Word of God. At the same time, the elements themselves provide a cognitive bridge, between the corporeality of human intelligence and God’s speaking. The two exist in interdependence, the one providing the verbal articulation of meaning, the other providing the tactile, visible, audible means by which that meaning is made accessible to humankind. The two sacraments exist in different relationship to preaching. Baptsim initiates the infant into the culture of preaching (Chapter XVI), signalling with the earthly element, water, the covenant between God and man. As children age, they grow in understanding of baptism (section 21). The Lord’s Supper, like preaching, recurs.” (p157)

Wandel, Lee Palmer, The Eucharist In The Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006)