spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

6.2.1 John Calvin
The statement that Calvin contributed tremendously to the development of the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit in the Reformed tradition is undisputed. Perhaps Benjamin Warfield’s appraisal in
the introductory note in Abraham Kuyper’s The Work of the Spirit, should be nuanced a bit when
he said: “the doctrine of the work of the Spirit is a gift from John Calvin to the church of Christ”
(1946:17), yet the message underneath is very clear: John Calvin can be credited with being one
of the greatest Reformed commentators on the Spirit (cf. Warfield 1956:484f; Hesselink
2004:79; see also the major contribution of Krusche 1957 in this regard).
Calvin has been identified as ‘the theologian of the Holy Spirit’, because his theology is
permeated with ideas about the work of the Holy Spirit (Ganoczy 1989:135; Hesselink
2008:337). His references to the Spirit are not always explicit, but Calvin’s understanding of the
Spirit is that She plays a central role when it comes to creation, revelation, faith, justification,
sanctification and glorification. The work of the Spirit is the necessary link between God and the
believer. The most extensive discussions on the work of the Spirit are to be found in his
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3 and Book 4. These books cover two-thirds of the
complete work, which gives reason to think that the work of the Spirit occupies an important
place in Calvin’s theology (cf. Rogers 2003:245).
One evident feature of Calvin’s pneumatology is the Trinitarian perspective on the work of the
Spirit (Krusche 1957:1-14; Gunton 1999:253-265; Hesselink 2008:337; Doyle 2009:82-105;
Höhne 2009:160). First of all, the whole structure of the Institutes mirrors a Trinitarian
framework. Book 1 is about God the Father and creation, Book 2 is about God the Son and our
salvation, and Books 3 and 4 are about God the Spirit and our regeneration. Furthermore, Calvin
articulates explicitly the union of the Father, the Son and the Spirit, for example in Inst. 1.13.17
where he indicates that he cannot think of one of the Trinitarian persons without immediately
including the other two persons. According to Calvin, this Trinitarian communion is of the
utmost importance when it comes to the salvation of the believer: the union with Christ
established by the Spirit is nothing other than a participation in the life of the Triune God. In his
commentary on John 17:21, Calvin explicitly places the work of the Spirit in a Trinitarian frame:
“If the unity of the Son with the Father is not to be fruitless and useless, its power must be
defused through the whole body of believers. From this, too, we infer that we are one with
Christ; not because He transfuses His substance into us, but because by the power of His Spirit
He communicates to us His life and all the blessings He has received from the Father”
(1979:148, italics original).
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