I’m currently working on another blog post about John Calvin and the Lutheran view of Christology, but while working on that, I wanted to go through his various scriptural arguments against the Lutherans, who he calls the Ubiquitists, and their view of Christology, culminating in an exegetical analysis of our Lord’s words in John 14 about his absence.
While this is generally a refutation, first I would like to make a positive argument for the Lutheran Christology. In Ephesians 4:9-10, St. Paul describes either the descension of Christ into hell or His incarnation and then follows with a description of the ascension, about which he says, “He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.” There’s not really much more to say about it. In the ascension, Christ fills all things, and thus whatever He takes into the ascension is that which fills all things, including His human body. Colossians 1:17, 19, and 2:9-10 are also relevant here: “And [Christ] is before all things, and in Him all things hold together…For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” In these couple passages, it seems that Christ's entire person "fills all things," without distinction between his human and divine natures. In addition, our Lord has a beautiful word of comfort for the apostles at the end of the great commission, moments before His ascension, where he says, "behold, I am with you always, to the end of the ago” (Matt. 28:20). As a final, and I think very excellent, verse is Acts 1:9, in which Luke says, "And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight." Admittedly, this isn't the most explicit passage, but what it specifically doesn't say is relevant. Notably, St. Luke tells us not that He was taken from the apostles, but that he was taken "out of their sight." In this way, there seems to be a confession that He didn't leave the apostles but that he left from their sight. These passages, especially the first, all point to the clear fact that our Lord's presence in heaven doesn't separate Him from us but makes us all closer to Him.
With all that said, his first and simplest passage that Calvin uses to support His Christology is Matthew 26:11: "For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me." He uses this passage to argue that our Lord is confessing a strong departure in bodily presence from His people. However, I would propose two possible solutions. First, there is the verse immediately after, "In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial." In this way, it seems the departure our Lord was referring not to His bodily presence but is a foreshadoing to His death. While this is a reasonable interpretation, I do think that on deeper level, it is also referring to His ascension in types and shadows. However, such a distinction of Him being present according to the divine nature but not the human is nowhere in the text, and I would argue that we instead our Lord refers to Himself being "taken from their sight," rather than being gone as a whole.
The second and probably strongest text comes from Acts 3:21, where St. Peter confesses that "heaven must receive [Christ] until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets long ago." As mentioned above, this text I certainly Calvin's strongest, though I don't think it's a silver bullet. With the language of heaven's reception of Christ, it does seem to circumscribe our Lord to a heavenly throne-room elsewhere. However, I think that that it may be read otherwise. The Ephesians 4 text mentioned above is especially relevant here, since St. Paul speaks of the ascension into heaven as Christ filling all things; as is Acts 1, since our Lord speaks of His departure as His leaving from sight. In this way, we can see our Lord's reception into heaven as Him going away visibly until the eschaton, but with His presence filling all things then and afterwards.
From there, I would like to do a bit of an analysis of John 14, since this passage is chock-full of references to our Lord's departure. Verses 2-3 and 12 aren't particularly relevant, since they really just speak of His coming absence, speaking of it beautifully as Him preparing a place for us and going to the Father to advocate for us. This second one, however, is complicated by verses 10-11 where our Lord describes His unity with the Father. Thus, we see that Christ will go to the Father (v. 12) and yet He is already united (present tense) with the Father (10-11). I contend that this conundrum is solved in verses 18-19, where Christ says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” In this verse, we see Christ specifically explain His absence not as Him being spiritually present to us but not to the world, or the flesh. Instead, He says that He is invisible to the unbelievers but visible to us. In this way, we can see it as Christ departing visibly so that we and the world, with fleshly eyes, are unable to see Him (though He redeems the eyes of certain individuals for the sake of miracles, like Sts. Paul and Stephen). However, with the eyes of faith, we are able to see Christ filling all things and feeding us with His flesh and blood in the Eucharist, for though "at present, we do not see everything in subjection to Him...faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb 2:8, 11:1).
In the following verses, Jesus describes His close relationship with the Father, and He says that we too will commune with Him: "In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." (20-21) These verses are fascinating in conjunction with those that come before, because our Lord's absence is for our closeness with the Godhead. That unity between the Father and the Son is made ours as well when Christ ascends and makes us "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4) by bringing the human nature into the Godhead in the ascension. Thus we can see the paradox between unity and absence resolved in the wisdom of Christ.
The close of John 14 is also extremely relevant to the discussion at hand, where our Lord elaborates on the Holy Ghost, saying, "These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me" (25-30). To close, He tells them of His departure, following up with the fact that the Spirit will remind them of His teachings. He speaks words of peace and calm, and then reminds them of the gloriousness of the Father and how wonderful it is for Him to ascend. But it is his final warning that is most relevant here, in which He says that He will no longer talk much with them. Here, He connects all the pieces, saying that He is going away to bring us to the Father and to fill all things at His right hand, since He, too, fills all things. But, in doing so, we mortal men are unable to walk with God as in the beginning and thus He is hidden from our sight and hearing. The solution for this dilemma is the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who brings us the eyes of faith that we may see our Lord among us both in His filling all things and by presence in the sacrament, once again made able to walk with God in holiness until we can see Him "whom my eyes shall behold, and not another" (Job 19:27). O Lord Jesus, come quickly and make that day soon.
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