1 Of Doorposts and Hinges: Calvin on Union with Christ 1 Mark A. Garcia They are likely the first words that come to mind when we think of Calvin and union with Christ. Taken from the opening lines of Book Three in his 1559 Institutes, they read: “First we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.” 2 If carefully considered, we recognize this as truly a bold, striking statement on the importance of union with Christ. All that Christ has suffered – his obedience under the yoke of the law, his anguish in swallowing the cup of covenant curse down to the last drop, his pain at Gethsemane and Golgotha – all of it is “useless and of no value for us” if Christ remains outside of us. In this respect, then, the virtue, the efficacy, the power, indeed the “usefulness” of the atoning work of Christ depends on the reality of our union with him. Without that union, his suffering accomplishes nothing for us; with this union, however, we have Christ in all his righteousness, and having him, we have all things. This, in fact, is the heart of Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ: not the union so much as Christ – who he is as Mediator and Savior in all he is for all his people. Yet, for Calvin, precisely because it is all about Christ, it is also all about union with him, rather than one or more particular benefits of that union, for instance justification. In what follows below, the basic contexts for and features of Calvin’s theology of saving union with Christ (as well as the most important texts for understanding this theology) will be outlined, and the question will be raised how one ought to understand Calvin’s view of the relationship of union with Christ to the justification “hinge” of true religion. But we are now slightly ahead of ourselves. We do want to think through this question – union with Christ and the justification/sanctification relationship – but we have to work our way there by considering first a few methodological and contextual matters. Making our Way to Calvin’s Texts on Union with Christ One of these preliminaries involves a bit of housecleaning. It is unfortunately difficult in our day to speak on Calvin and union with Christ because it is readily assumed one must have a theological program of one’s own to push, since this is indeed how the topic is 1 This was originally a conference paper written for a general, rather than professional, audience and I have chosen to allow that popular flavor to remain in its lightly edited, published form. This means that I have been content to leave some statements without full citation information in the footnotes. However, for those wishing to pursue documentation for any of the statements left undocumented here, the reader is referred to the fuller analysis in my Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology (Studies in Christian History and Thought; Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2008). I thank Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary for the gracious invitation to speak on such a timely and important topic. 2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Library of Christian Classics vols. 20-21; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.1.1. At points in this essay I opt for the Henry Beveridge translation reprinted by Hendrickson in 2008 over against Battles and McNeill. Latin citations of Calvin are taken from Calvini Opera Selecta, ed. P. barth, W. Niesel, and D. Scheuner (5 vols.; Münich: Chr. Kaiser, 1926-1952), abbreviated herein as OS.