Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ

Written by J. Todd Billings Reviewed By T. Robert Baylor

Recent Calvin scholarship has seen a spate of new literature examining the nature and function of union with Christ within Calvin’s applied soteriology. Calvin, Participation, and the Gift is one of two dissertations recently published on the subject, the other being Mark Garcia’s Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology, each of which employs the same thread in Calvin’s theology, while weaving somewhat different garments. Billings’s work is unique because of its interest in contemporary theological and ethical debate on the meaning and significance of gift-giving, the complexities of which he first encountered as a community development worker in Uganda. “In this capacity, I was taught to be suspicious of gifts as a condescending response to poverty; yet, as a Christian, I also confessed that there is something like a ‘free gift’ in Christian salvation that is empowering” (p. v). Investing himself in contemporary scholarship on the social and theological problems of gift-giving, Billings found that these discussions all too frequently and unjustly cast Calvin as the embodiment of a radical unilateralism. Because Calvin’s God is a God of unilateral gifts, it is often argued, Calvin’s theology engenders a suspicion of reciprocity, which finally embodies itself in an ecclesial and social culture that enshrines “the economic logic of gift, debt, and counter-gift” (p. 6). Calvin, Participation, and the Gift is Billings’s attempt to unseat this reading of Calvin by drawing attention to the neglected theme of participation in Christ—a theme that Billings believes to reveal the true robustness of Calvin’s theology of the gift of salvation.

After a brief chapter summarizing uses of Calvin in the contemporary gift discussion, Billings moves on to examine Calvin’s theology of participation on its own terms. Contrary to many contemporary accounts that stress the radical opposition between nature and grace in Calvin’s metaphysic, Billings finds Calvin’s theology to be metaphysically eclectic and complex. Calvin finds the fulfillment of humanity in the life of gratitude enabled by the believer’s “substantial” union with Christ. While this union does not involve any ontological “leakage” between God and man, Calvin gradually began to employ the language of “substance” in order to contrast his own view of participation from those espousing a “mere imitation” of Christ (pp. 53–65). Moreover, as Billings demonstrates in chapter three, Calvin’s reversal on the use of the term “substance” took place within the larger context of his growing awareness of the biblical theme of participation with Christ, a theme that presents itself with increased frequency and importance throughout the development of his Institutio and commentaries.

Billings rounds out his treatment by examining Calvin’s understanding of how participation in Christ functions to free both the Christian and society for a life of gratitude in response to God’s grace. In chapter four, Billings interprets Calvin’s theology of participation with respect to the sacraments and prayer, arguing that each is integrally tied to the believer’s experience of the two-fold grace of union with Christ—justification and sanctification. The gifts of justification and sanctification, so far from being unilateral gifts disinterested in mutuality, actually establish and open communion between God and sinners. Likewise, in chapter five, Billings argues that Calvin’s theology of the law is not intended primarily to enslave or indebt humanity, but to lead them to “voluntary, joyful love of God and neighbour,” for in this way “believers are ‘one’ with Christ and ‘one’ with each other” (p. 184).

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift concludes with a chapter assessing several contemporary uses of Calvin, which Billings exposes as mere caricatures in light of the textured theology of participation expounded in the previous chapters. Billings makes his case compellingly. His writing is crystal clear, full of insight and sound judgment; but it is somewhat difficult to be optimistic about the impact his book will make. Readings of Calvin as the theologian against humanity are deeply entrenched in western scholarship, and it seems unrealistic to expect that this book will finally upend that state of affairs. Though some might find points of Billings’s account to be overly generous or optimistic, no one who interacts critically with him can contest that the Calvin of the “unilateral gift” is actually just a paper doll. But if Billings’s work is taken seriously and is emblematic of the future of Calvin studies, then there is perhaps good reason to hope that Calvin’s writings will enjoy a renewal in twenty-first-century Christian theology.


T. Robert Baylor

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Illinois, USA

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