Tracts & Letters (Vol 2) - Calvin - XII - Chapter 10 continued (Last admonition...)

Required reading
Tracts and Letters (Volume 2) by John Calvin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Continue Chapter X (Last admonition of John Calvin to Joachim Westphal) by reading up to the paragraph beginning 'We must now see how dexterously they dispose of our arguments which they pretend to be woven of sand, because Irenaeus so spoke of heretics.' (page 418 in the Banner edition).

My summary
Today we continue the tract from Calvin against Westphal that we began last week.

In the previous reading we started looking at Augustine's support for Calvin's view of the Lord's supper.  Roughly half of this week's reading finishes looking at Augustine.  Much of it concerns Jesus' existence as God and Jesus' existence as human with statements like: 'Augustine plainly asserts that our Saviour, in respect of his human nature, is in heaven, whence he will come at the last day; that in respect of human nature, he is not everywhere diffused, because though he gave immortality to his flesh, he did not take away its nature ; that therefore we must beware of raising the divinity of the man so as to destroy the reality of the body ; that if we take away locality from bodies they will be situated nowhere, and consequently not exist ; that Christ is everywhere present as God, but in respect of the nature of a real body occupies some place in heaven.'

Then the rest of today's reading is taken up with Calvin arguing against the Confessions of the Saxons which Westphal has cited in favour of his view.  Calvin proceeds to refute each of their twenty-eight heads.

What grabbed me
I love hearing Calvin come back to the authority of Scripture again and again: 'The third head which he has undertaken to refute is, That we communicate in the flesh and blood of Christ, but in such manner, that the reality of his human nature remains entire. Our people, after showing, from numerous passages of Scripture, that God has taught them this doctrine, have also proved that it is held by Augustine. Westphal, purposing to deprive us of this support, but feeling it somewhat more troublesome than he could wish, goes beating about, and saying, that in the mysteries of the faith we are not to depend on human reason or physical arguments. Granting all this, I say that our argument is derived not from philosophy, but from the heavenly oracles of God. Scripture uniformly teaches that we are to wait for Christ from heaven, from whence he will come as our Redeemer. And there is no obscurity in the doctrine of Paul, that the image and model of future redemption is displayed in the person of Christ, who will transform our poor body, so as to be like his own glorious body. Have done, then, with the futile evasion, that philosophy should not be the mistress of our faith, since we hold nothing in regard to the reality of our flesh that was not delivered by Christ himself, the highest and the only teacher.'

Human reason and physical arguments are not our final authority.  The word of God is our final authority.

Next week's reading
Continue Chapter X (Last admonition of John Calvin to Joachim Westphal) by reading up to the paragraph beginning 'The thirtieth argument is, He who is in a place is not everywhere: Christ being received into the heavens is in a kind of place:  Therefore, he is not corporeally in the Supper' (page 455 in the Banner edition).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.