John Calvin often gets caricatured for a variety of reasons; the unfortunate thing about such caricatures is they keep people from benefiting from some very rich theology that he offers in the whole of his oeuvre. What I appreciate most about Calvin’s theology is both his union with Christ (unio cum Christo) and double grace (duplex gratia) motifs. Both emphasize in very Pauline and Christologically rich ways what a good participationist soteriology should look like, and yet most miss this because they get hung up on his thinking in regard to God’s decretive activities, and his doctrine of double predestination (both things I recently critiqued him on through Barth and Torrance in my personal chapter in our EC2 book). But note the following; here in a pretty famous passage from Calvin’s Institutes we see just this kind of participationist emphasis that we might even mistake for some patristic theologian’s offering. Calvin writes:

We must now examine this question. How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son—not for Christ’s own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men? 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. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us. For this reason, he is called “our Head” [Eph. 4:15], and “the first-born among many brethren” [Rom. 8:29]. We also, in turn, are said to be “engrafted into him” [Rom. 11:17], and to “put on Christ” [Gal. 3:37]; for, as I have said, all that he possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him. It is true that we obtain this by faith. Yet since we see that not all indiscriminately embrace that communion with Christ which is offered through the gospel, reason itself teaches us to climb higher and to examine into the secret energy of the Spirit, by which we come to enjoy Christ and all his benefits.[1]

Do you see what I mean? For Calvin, the whole of salvation is accomplished in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ (we might even mistake this for Barth or Torrance — but they receive such emphases from Calvin, actually). For Calvin, Justification/Sanctification and ultimately Glorification are all resplendent and present in Jesus Christ; our only hope is to be united to him by the Spirit in the bond of faith.

But if you follow all the caricatures of Calvin’s theology you’ll naively end up thinking that he was the foment of some of the most hideous monstrous theology on planet earth. As the passage above should illustrate you and your caricature would be severely out of place.

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[1] Calvin, Institutes 3.1.1.