All symbolic, not all instrumental

Calvin gives us an important principle that we can use when considering the oft-made claim that everything is somehow 'sacramental'.

Calvin distinguishes a broader category of things or actions that are symbolic (e.g. some annointings with oil, such as of the sick) from a narrower subset which are also instrumental. Sacraments proper belong in the instrumental category.

For example, everything is symbolic: it carries the marks of its creator. Everything speaks to us of God. But the Bible is the instrument in or by which God has promised to speak in a special sense.

All bread is symbolic of daily nourishment, of human work blessed and so on. But it is the sacramental bread of the Lord's Supper that speaks to us of the death of Christ and much more, spiritually communicates Christ to us as an instrument to which God has attached his promise of the work of the Spirit when we receive it by faith.

See further Institutio 1536 V.46, CO 1:178B; Inst 1536:159 cited in Zachman Image and Word p319