Mc Donnell is a find! This is a great book. Everyone who wants to know what Calvin thinks about the Sacraments must have this little volume...all 400 pages of it.
"So far, then, is God from resigning the grace of his Spirit to the sacraments that all their efficacy and utility are lodged in the Spirit alone." His sovereignty "demands that a division between Spirit and sacraments" be made so that "the power to act rests with the former, and the ministry alone is left to the latter - a ministry empty and trifling apart from the action of the Spirit, but charged with the great effect when the Spirit works within and manifests his power." This division between Spirit and sacraments is the dialectic between total commitment and the uncomitted in Calvin's Pneumatology.(p. 260 McDonell)Cool... Posted by tripp at March 18, 2004 02:08 PM | TrackBack