Section 7. It is not sufficient, while omitting all mention of flesh and blood, to recognize this communion merely as spiritual. It is impossible fully to comprehend it in the present life.
Q7I am not satisfied with the view of those who, while acknowledging that we have some kind of communion with Christ, only make us partakers of the Spirit, omitting all mention of flesh and blood. As if it were said to no purpose at all, that his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed; that we have no life unless we eat that flesh and drink that blood; and so forth. Therefore, if it is evident that full communion with Christ goes beyond their description, which is too confined.
(Q7 Calvin's beginning dissertation and rebuke in section 7 is good. Unfortunately many protestant advocates of Calvin's thought have not fully read his report and therefore would not understand that Calvin would have taken umbrage at there lack of faith in the believer's communion with the real flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, and their distortions of what he actually wrote. Neither did Calvin and those of Calvinist thought understand that the unseen Spirit of Holy God is One with the Sanctifying Water and Blood of Jesus Christ. (See Fountain of Living Water)
Calvin's disclaimer: I will attempt briefly to show how far it extends, before proceeding to speak of the contrary vice of excess. For I shall have a longer discussion with these hyperbolical doctors, who, according to their gross ideas, fabricate an absurd mode of eating and drinking, and transfigure Christ, after divesting him of his flesh, into a phantom: Q7a if, indeed, it be lawful to put this into words, a mystery which I feel, and therefore freely confess that , so far am I from wishing any one to measure its sublimity by my feeble capacity. Nay, I rather exhort my readers not to confine their apprehension within those too narrow limits, but to attempt to rise much higher than I can guide them. For whenever this subject is considered, after I have done my utmost, I feel that I have spoken far beneath its dignity. And though the mind is more powerful in thought than the tongue in expression, it too is overcome and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the subject. All then that remains is to break forth in admiration of the mystery, which it is plain that the mind is inadequate to comprehend, or the tongue to express. I will, however, give a summary of my view as I best can, not doubting its truth, and therefore trusting that it will not be disapproved by pious breasts.
(Q7a We see above in section 7 green that from Calvin's own admission of his own inadequacy of both mental comprehension and in the verbal expression of this great mystery that we can easily surmise that a heart of pure "Faith in the Word" is far greater in understanding than his own feeble rhetoric that follows. That heart of pure faith says, "It Just "IS", just because the very WORD of GOD, Jesus Christ says it "IS". For the simple in the heart of the mind, the intellectual rhetoric of Calvin or of any man will not surpass the simplicity of faith in the Love of God nor make the cause and effect of God's Love more understandable with more words derived from the essence of the natural intellect. There can be a futility of effort in much words, especially if the full measure is not read and comprehended as the writer intended. Therefore, it is wisdom to hear the whole of the matter before drawing a final conclusion.)
If the reader of Calvin's rhetorical analysis on Communion does not understand that Jesus Christ is the absolute Word of the Father's doctrine (see Calvin in following section 8) and because of the Father's Love, the Word has come in flesh, then you will not understand the "Word's primacy" in all things of substance, seen and unseen.
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8.
for the next Section: In explanation of it, it may be
observed,—
I. There is no life at all save in Christ. II. Christ has life in a
twofold sense;
first, in himself, as he is God; and, secondly,
by transfusing it
into the flesh which he assumed, that he might thereby communicate life to us.
Communion