Adam’s Quest For A Better Life: A Study in Calvin’s Doctrine of Pre-Redemptive Eschatology

By James E. Dolezal

James E. Dolezal is a research fellow at The Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards and a Ph.D. candidate in systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, PA. The author is grateful to Professor Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. for his helpful suggestions on the material contained in this essay.

“It is not biblical to hold that eschatology is a sort of appendix to soteriology, a consummation of the saving work of God.” So writes Geerhardus Vos in his discussion of pre-redemptive eschatology. He goes on, “The universe, as created, was only a beginning, the meaning of which was not perpetuation, but attainment.”[1] It is not an uncommon notion today that if Adam had never sinned he would have remained forever in the earthly paradise of Eden. Eternal life was supposedly already in his possession prior to the fall. In the Reformed tradition, Vos offers a uniquely clear rebuttal to this idea, insisting that Adam, before the fall, was looking for an “absolute end” that he did not yet possess. But, it would be a mistake to view Vos as innovative or novel in asserting the operation of a pre-redemptive eschatology.

John Calvin also detected an eschatological principle operating apart from the consideration of sin and redemption. He did not view the original creation, and especially Adam, as static or absolutely complete. It is the aim of this article to establish and explain Calvin’s pre-redemptive eschatology. Calvin is not as systematic in his treatment of this issue as Vos and other twentieth-century Reformed theologians. But, even if somewhat underdeveloped, he certainly holds to an eschatological aim that precedes, and in some sense, regulates soteriology.

While redemption is highly important to Calvin, it is not necessarily the centre of his theology.[2] Yet, his emphasis on redemption makes any examination of his pre-redemptive eschatology somewhat complicated. He was purposefully conscious that the readers of his commentaries and Institutes, and the hearers of his sermons, were fallen men in need of salvation. So naturally there is a stress on redemption even in his treatment of the pre-lapsarian era. This creates a difficulty for our understanding of his view of the world considered apart from the curse.

Having acknowledged the prominent place that redemption occupied in Calvin’s thinking it is nevertheless clear that in Calvin’s assessment of the history of revelation an eschatological outlook precedes the fall and need of redemption. That Calvin regards Adam as possessing a definite eschatological vision prior to any notion of redemption is apparent in the ‘Argument’ of his Genesis commentary where, after treating the eschatological direction of the still-righteous Adam, he observes that Moses “soon adds the history of his restoration.”[3] Soteriology appears conspicuously after man’s original eschatological outlook has been established and expounded by Calvin. Thus, redemption fits within eschatology and soteriology serves the ultimate design of that eschatological vision.

This study will consider four features of Calvin’s pre-redemptive eschatology. First, different aspects of Calvin’s pre-fall theology will be drawn out which evidence Adam’s anticipation of a “better life” than that in Eden. Second, Calvin’s view of the covenant of works will establish Adam’s incompleteness and his movement toward something better. Third, Calvin’s explanation of Adam’s physical body will show that pre-fall man looked for something more than his original condition. Lastly, Calvin’s “back to Eden” view of salvation will be reconciled with his view of Adam’s pre-redemptive eschatology.

A Better Life

1. Something Better Than Eden

Was Adam meant to be forever satisfied with the Garden of Eden? Was it conceivable to have a superior spiritual or physical experience to what he experienced there? Writing of Adam’s original condition, Calvin relates “that he was endued with understanding and reason, that being distinguished from brute animals he might meditate on a better life, and might even tend directly towards God, whose image he bore engraven on his own person.”[4] To what could the “better life” be superior? Evidently it is a life better than even man’s sinless existence in Eden. Specifically this meditation on a “better life” is Adam’s “hope of celestial life.”[5] Clearly, according to Calvin, the Garden was never the eschaton. There was another age and condition in view for Adam from the very start.

But are there problems with viewing Adam as created to seek a better life than he had in Eden? Calvin seems to make some contradictory statements in this connection. On Adam’s sin he writes, “For if ambition had not raised man higher than was meet and right, he could have remained in his original state.”[6] First, it appears that ambition for something higher is sinful. Maybe it shows that Adam was discontented with what God had given him in that Edenic paradise. Second, it sounds as if Calvin is suggesting that Adam would have simply continued sinless in Eden had he not transgressed. How can there be room here for the eschatological ambition of a “better life”? This statement surely gives the impression that Calvin might have believed Adam to already have been in the most desirable state. But Calvin gives no intimation that, had Adam remained in his original state rather than falling into sin, this original state would have been eternal or permanent. To remain in the original state, to Calvin, can mean nothing more than remaining in the bliss of the Garden until transitioning into the longed-for better life. While Calvin faults Adam for the ambition of wanting to be as God, he cannot be faulting all ambition for a better life. Such ambition is part of God’s original design for man.

Meditation on the heavenly or future life (meditatio futurae vitae) is another emphasis in Calvin’s writings that portrays Adam looking for something better than Eden. This meditation is clearly placed prior to sin’s entrance. “In the beginning God fashioned us after his image [Gen. 1:27] that he might arouse our minds both to zeal for virtue and for mediation upon eternal life.”[7] Whatever Adam possessed in the Garden, according to Calvin, it could not have been eternal life. Eternal life is placed in front of him as something to which he is to aspire. Calvin proceeds to set out God’s ultimate goal for man: “it behooves us to recognize that we have been endowed with reason and understanding so that, by leading a holy and upright life, we might press on to the appointed goal of blessed immortality.”[8] Again, immortality could not be something Adam already enjoyed in Eden’s perfection. “He was meant rather to use this life with its opportunities and its glory for meditation on the better and heavenly life which was to be his final destiny…. Thus the meditatio futurae vitae, and the life of faith in dependence on the grace of God, are, for Calvin, part of the original order of nature or creation which man was made to observe.”[9] Adam’s pressing on toward his final destiny is not an exact parallel to the apostle Paul’s striving against sin because Adam is moving toward the eschatological goal prior to sin’s entrance. So, Calvin insists upon a distinctly pre-redemptive pressing on to the appointed goal of immortality.

2. Adam As Viator

Calvin’s description of sinless Adam as ‘pressing on’ is yet another demonstration of his pre-fall eschatology.[10] The idea is that of Adam moving through this world to the next. In the Garden, Adam had a theologia viatorum, a pilgrim theology. Richard Muller defines this as “the incomplete or imperfect theology of believers in the world, in contrast to the theology of those who have reached their end in God.”[11] Though Calvin does not employ the precise scholastic language, the idea of pre- lapsarian Adam as a pilgrim is certainly present. Commenting on Gen. 2:8, he writes, “For we are now conversant with that history that teaches us that Adam was, by Divine appointment, an inhabitant of the earth, in order that he might, in passing through this earthly life meditate on heavenly glory.”[12] Calvin clearly detects a theologia viatorum as operative before the fall. The first Adam was moving somewhere, even prior to the crisis of sin. And where was he going? According to Calvin, he was on the way to heavenly glory, but had not yet arrived.

Adam is again represented as in movement when Calvin writes that “the image of God was only shadowed forth in man till he should arrive at his perfection.”[13] Clearly the first man is made to move somewhere beyond his original state. Sinless Adam is seeking heaven and the immediate presence of God no less than the redeemed are after the fall. “It is the will of God that so long as we are striving to reach our true fatherland we must be pilgrims on this earth; during the time of our pilgrimage, however, we imperatively need…help.”[14] For Calvin this is equally true of Adam in his integrity.

3. Mirrors And Ladders

Calvin sees numerous helps given to Adam in his Edenic pilgrimage. These helps furnish yet another piece of evidence that man was never ultimately intended to remain in the Garden. The original created order is one of the helps by which man comes to know God. In the ‘Argument’ portion of his Genesis commentary, Calvin writes, “Now, in describing the world as a mirror in which we ought to behold God, I would not be understood to assert, either that our eyes are sufficiently clear-sighted to discern what the fabric of heaven and earth represents, or that the knowledge to be hence attained is sufficient for salvation.”[15] True, Calvin is emphasizing the inability of fallen man to truly appreciate what is to be understood in the natural order (here he pulls the redemptive focus back into his discussion of the pre-fall world). But also significant is his description of the natural order as a ‘mirror’. In addressing the theology of the viator, Heiko Oberman writes, “Not even in paradise was it possible for man to have immediate knowledge of God; man in the state of innocence knew God only as in a mirror.”[16] A mirror is reflective of the real thing, but is not itself the thing reflected. Calvin is not saying that the world is of ‘mirror’ status after the fall, but teaches that it was such in its original state. Eden as a ‘mirror’ strongly suggests that there was something even better to behold. The mirror was reflective of God himself. Knowing God without the terrestrial mirror is the better life for Calvin. But the mirror of Eden gives him a glimpse of that life.

Calvin is also fond of speaking of various ‘ladders’ by which Adam could ascend from Eden, as it were, into the heavenly presence of God. These ladders were helps by which Adam could climb up off of this earthly paradise to taste the heavenly and future paradise. Adam experienced real, though not complete, communion with God through these ladders.[17] One such ladder was the tree of life, which Calvin categorizes as a sacrament. In his commentary he limits his description of the tree of life to a memorial of the life Adam had received from God.[18]

Certainly there is nothing eschatological in that. But one remark does give the idea of something more than memorialistic about the tree of life. Calvin says, “He [God] does not indeed transfer his power into outward signs; but by them he stretches out his hand to us, because, without assistance, we cannot ascend to him.”[19] Where is Adam ascending if he has the fullness of communion with God in the Garden? In his Institutes Calvin ascribes a distinctly eschatological dimension to Adam’s use of the tree of life. “One [natural sacrament] is when he gave Adam and Eve the tree of life as a guarantee of immortality, that they might assure themselves of it as long as they should eat of its fruit.”[20] If they had already possessed unshakable immortality there would be no need for a sign to assure them of it. Elsewhere Calvin is very clear that eating from the tree of life involved a “promise by which he [Adam] was bidden to hope for eternal life.”[21] ‘Promise’ and ‘hope’ conspicuously convey eschatological concepts. When God, after the fall, revokes the use of the tree of life Calvin sees it as the removal of God’s “symbol of…promise” lest Adam should entertain a vain “hope of immortality.”[22] Ronald Wallace summarizes Calvin’s view: “The glory of this earth was meant to enable him, helped by God’s Word and God’s sacramental gift in the tree of life, to raise his mind to the greater glory of his heavenly inheritance.”[23]

Sacraments did not begin to be eschatological tokens only after the fall; they have always had that unique function. Wallace again says, “But the purpose of God in extending to us these aids is that we may raise our thoughts far above such aids, ‘that our minds may not grovel upon the earth’, and the purpose of God in ‘coming down’ through the sacraments into the midst of our world is that we may be ‘raised up’ spiritually to heaven for a communion that transcends our earthly existence.”[24]

4. Impermanence Of The Original Creation

A fourth indication of Calvin’s doctrine of a better eschatological life is drawn from his description of the impermanence of the original creation. Some might object that Calvin is quite clear about the world’s original ‘perfection’. Indeed, Calvin writes, “that there is in the symmetry of God’s works the highest perfection, to which nothing can be added.”[25] So, ‘perfection’ is not too strong of a term for Calvin to use in describing the original creation. “[U]nderstand that the last touch of God has been put in, in order that nothing might be wanting to the perfection of the world.”[26] But by ‘perfection’ Calvin is not implying permanence or durability; he means ‘completeness’ in regard to God’s intent for this world. But is it God’s intent that the earth, or Eden, should continue forever in its original state? Was that the place of a fully realized eschatology? Consider the temporal boundaries that Calvin sees, when he writes, “since the eternal inheritance of man is in heaven, it is truly right that we should tend thither; yet must we fix our foot on earth long enough to enable us to consider the abode which God requires man to use for a time.”[27] The fact that this observation is made in his comments on Gen. 2:8 shows that Calvin clearly sees Eden within temporal, non-ultimate, boundaries. So whatever the perfection is of which he speaks it cannot be understood as ultimate in every way, or as precluding a future eschatology for the first man. The completeness was not in regard to eschatology or the heavenly life, but to the temporal design of this world and this life. There is no contradiction between Calvin’s discussion of the earth’s original perfection and its impermanence unless it can be proved that he saw it as God’s original intent that Eden remain forever as the eschatological realization. But he plainly indicates that the heavenly life is ultimate.

The Covenant Of Works

Though Calvin never employs the terminology “covenant of works” in the way it came to be used by his successors, his concept of its operation in the Garden is important for grasping Adam’s eschatological trajectory. If Adam had an eschatological goal in Eden then it would stand to reason that his existence there was not static. But where does one find Adam’s movement toward what Vos calls ‘attainment’? Besides being found in promise form in the various sacraments, mirrors, and ladders, it is seen in Adam’s active obedience to God’s law (or covenant of works). Obedience has a goal, an end to attain. Although Calvin rejected the medieval scholastics’ idea of Adam in a ‘pure’ state of nature prior to the fall (in puris naturalibus), he concurred with them about Adam’s pre-fall covenant context. Mark Karlberg writes, “The eschatological goal of creation, namely, communion and life with God in consummated glory, was to be attained in the way of covenant promise and reward. Whereas the state of nature was static, the covenant order was established by God as the means of realizing humanity’s final state of glorification and beatitude.”[28] The covenant gives occasion to forward movement and attainment. For Calvin, this covenant period did not follow the natural, or ‘pure’, period, but rather embraced the whole period before the fall. Adam was never static but was always moving toward the better life in the pre- redemptive era. One reason that Calvin rejects the concept of a ‘pure’ state of nature (i.e., without any pre-redemptive favor or obligation) is that it leaves Adam inert and without an eschatological goal toward which he was headed. An Adam not tending toward an eschatological objective is unacceptable. The covenant of works provides the immediate context for movement toward this goal.

The first Adam had a deep ‘obligation’ to “devote and dedicate himself entirely to obedience towards God.”[29] There seems to be conditionality to the original creation that rested on man’s shoulders. Mutability accompanies this ‘obligation’. Calvin is even more pointed in his discussion on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “Adam was denied the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to test his obedience and prove that he was willingly under God’s command.” Calvin adds that, “the terrible threat of death once he tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, served to prove and exercise his faith.”[30] This was a probationary period that must be passed by Adam in order for him to attain to eternal life. Peter Lillback explains:

Calvin’s treatment of Adam’s pre-fall state in his Genesis commentary…indicates that he considered Adam to be under a covenant that required obedience to law to become perfect before God. Calvin creates the problem for which a covenant of works is a perfect solution, namely, he describes Adam as in a temporary period of earthly innocence that was less than spiritual perfection.[31]

Again, the covenant of works indicates a future condition and life for Adam that he did not yet enjoy in Eden. His existence under the covenant of works was unconfirmed and provisional.[32] Yet all of this predates sin and redemption. Adam was looking for the confirmed and eternal state regardless of the crisis of sin. “Adam’s task may be understood as the obligation, by means of successful probation, to raise the pre- eschatological, psychical order to the eschatological order, which it anticipates.”[33]

The First Adam Was Not Built To Last

As the covenant of works shows Adam’s unconfirmed spiritual condition, the nature of his original body highlights his provisional physical condition. He was both spiritually and physically incomplete. But Calvin’s descriptions of Adam as complete and perfect might be posed as an argument for his durability. Indeed, Calvin asserts that pre-fall Adam, “was, in every respect, happy…[and] in his body was no defect, wherefore he was wholly free from death.”[34] Later he adds, “in our uncorrupted nature, there was nothing but what was honourable…since our parents had nothing in themselves which was unbecoming until they were defiled with sin.”[35] But being free from death and corruption does not, for Calvin, imply permanence and eternality. In his comments on Gen. 2:7 he had already insisted that Adam’s earthly life, though not subject to death, was also not meant to endure forever. His body may not have been under the power of decay, but neither was it so constructed as to enter the eternal state. Calvin places a particular emphasis on 1 Cor. 15:45: “Paul makes an antithesis between this living soul [i.e., Adam in his original state] and the quickening spirit which Christ confers upon the faithful, (1 Cor. xv. 45) for no other purpose than to teach us that the state of man was not perfected in the person of Adam; but it is a peculiar benefit conferred by Christ, that we may be renewed to a life which is celestial, whereas before the fall of Adam, man’s life was only earthly, seeing it had no firm and settled constancy.”[36] Calvin is correct to see the contrast between Christ’s resurrection body and Adam’s pre-fall body as between that which is enduring and that which is not.

But if Adam’s body was neither subject to death not fit for eternity (as was Christ’s resurrected body) what kind of body did he have? Calvin allows for a third category of body that is not eternal and is not dying. Only Adam and Eve ever possessed this non-dying, non-eternal physical body. Even without the entrance of sin and death, Calvin teaches that, “His [Adam’s] earthly life truly would have been temporal; yet he would have passed into heaven without death, and without injury.”[37] It is impossible to miss the pre-redemptive eschatological direction in this statement. Commenting on Gen. 3:19, Calvin makes the point again: “Truly the first man would have passed to a better life, had he remained upright; but there would have been no separation of the soul from the body, no corruption, no kind of destruction, and, in short, no violent change.”[38] Implied here, though, is that Adam would have experienced a non-violent ‘change’. Also, the eschatological condition of the “better life” is once more presented as the direction to which unfallen man tended. If Eden were the realization of ultimate things then righteous Adam would have been tending nowhere. So much for the various attestations to Adam’s pre- redemptive eschatology. It remains now to show how Calvin relates that idea to men in the redemptive era under the covenant of grace.

Back To Eden?

1. Calvin’s “Back To Eden” View Of Salvation

Calvin, in a certain sense, conceives of redemption as man’s recovery of Eden. So he says, “he [God] admonishes us from what excellence we have fallen, that he may excite in us the desire of its recovery.”[39] But what would be attractive about returning men to the Edenic state if it were merely a temporal condition awaiting the better existence? If man was created for a “better life,” why then does Calvin have as a redemptive goal the recovery of the Edenic life? Referring to Adam’s recovery after the fall, he writes, “Now, there remained an expiation in sacrifices, which might restore him to the life he had lost.”[40] In his comments on 1 Cor. 15:21-22, he states, “Christ…did not rise for himself alone; for he came, that he might restore everything that had been ruined in Adam.”[41] Considering Calvin’s pre-redemptive eschatology it almost appears that his soteriology is anti-eschatological when he speaks of restoration to the pre- fall Adamic condition. Recovery to the Garden seems to move man in the opposite direction of the ultimate and final goal of heaven. But still Calvin can assert that Christ has put on human nature “for this purpose, that he might restore to us what we had lost in Adam.”[42]

Calvin’s emphasis on recovering, in Christ, what Adam lost in the fall might appear contradictory with his other emphasis on the better position men enjoy in Christ. How can there be a recovery for redeemed man of what Adam lost while at the same time a bestowal of something greater than Adam’s pre-lapsarian condition? The reformer is clear, “that the condition that we obtain through Christ is greatly superior to the lot of the first man.”[43] He hastens to add, “Christ came to restore our nature from ruin, and raise it up to a better condition than ever.”[44]

2. Eschatology As The Point Of Contact

So, does redemption in Christ take man back to Eden or toward the future and eternal life? Certainly man cannot be carried in both directions at once, can he? The solution is in understanding that, for Calvin, recovery to Eden and movement toward the future and eternal life are not two different things. Pre-fall Eden is an eschatologically directed environment. Sinless Adam is a man on the way to the better, celestial life. Likewise, so are all the redeemed in Christ. Calvin sees one aspect of recovering what Adam lost as the renewal of God’s image in man. But another aspect of regaining what Adam lost is recovery to his eschatology.[45] In the ultimate sense Adam’s pre-redemptive eschatology is no different than redemptive eschatology: both are hoping for the same eternal life. Herman Bavinck expresses this well:

The covenant of works and the covenant of grace do not differ in their final goal but only in the way that leads to it.[46] 

[R]eligion, the moral law, and man’s final destiny are essentially the same in both the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. In both the goal and end is a kingdom of God, a holy humanity, in which God is all in all.[47]

It is significant to understand that the telos of the pre-redemptive man is the same as that of the redeemed man. Bavinck seems to express in summary what Calvin was getting at when he spoke of redemption in “back to Eden” terms.

Obviously Calvin does not conceive of redeemed man as recovered to every aspect of Adam’s life in the Garden. If he is returned to Adam’s eschatology, he is certainly not returned to his conditionality. He is not placed again under the terms of the covenant of works. The Christian’s movement toward eschatology is ‘better’ and ‘superior’ to Adam’s by virtue of the confirmed condition that he enjoys in that movement. It is wrong to think of a different eschatology in Christ, and it is right to think about a better movement or course toward that eschatological realization. So Calvin, following Augustine, describes this as “indefectible constancy” that is “far superior to the excellency and honour which Adam at first possessed.”[48]

As we proposed above, Calvin’s soteriology fits within his eschatology. Christ returns a man to the same eschatological goal that was in place before redemption. It might be asked: In what way could Calvin’s thought on pre-redemptive eschatology possibly be relevant to fallen men, no longer living in those pristine conditions? The answer is that it applies to redeemed man because it is the same eschatological hope. Pre- redemptive eschatology is not merely a theological novelty which does not extend into the present or shape the Christian’s present hope. It is one and the same hope as the Christian presently enjoys, even though the Christian, because of the last Adam’s achievements, is confirmed in this hope in a way the first Adam never was.

Notes

1. Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, ed. James T. Dennison Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing Company, 2001), 73.
2. See Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), 61. Niesel proposes a Christological centre for Calvin. It might be better to speak of centers of Calvin’s theology, which must give weight to his eschatology.
3. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of Genesis, trans. John King, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), vol. 1, 65. This is a reprint of Calvin’s Commentaries originally printed for the Calvin Translation Society. Hereafter references to the commentaries will give the Scripture reference with the volume and page number.
4. Ibid., vol. 1, 65. Emphasis added.
5. Ibid., vol. 1, 64. This is in contrast to the distinctly terrestrial life in Eden.
6. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. and indexed by Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 2.1.4. Hereafter this reference will appear simply as Institutes. All references are to this edition.
7. Ibid., 2.1.1. Emphasis added.
8. Ibid.
9. Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1959), 104-105. Though Wallace uses the term ‘grace’ in reference to a pre-redemptive situation it need not be assumed that this is the more common notion of soteric grace. Wallace probably means something like kind provision, favour or blessing. Cf., Heinrich Quistorp, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Last Things, trans. Harold Knight (London: Lutterworth Press, 1955), 40-41. Quistorp writes: “Meditatio vitae futurae is for Calvin more than mere reflection, meditation, or contemplation of eternity and the beyond; it is the orientation of the whole man and his whole temporal life towards the future goal which can best be represented by the Biblical idea of endeavour.”
10. I use ‘eschatology’ as shorthand for ‘eschatological outlook’.
11. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), 304. Though Muller defines pilgrim theology in terms of fallen man his description is well-suited to Calvin’s notion of pre-fall Adam’s journey toward his end.
12. Genesis 2:8, vol. 1, 115. Emphasis added. This same pilgrimage imagery is used in reference to the redeemed after the fall: “Disciples must above all be equipped for the journey and pass through the world without thought of staying and seek their abiding home nowhere but in heaven. The children of God can only be such as know themselves to be tenants on earth.” Calvin, Matthew 24:43. For Calvin the theologia viatorum is part of God’s original design for man on the earth, regardless of whether man has fallen into sin or not. The theologia viatorum is in effect on both sides of the fall.
13. Genesis 1:26. vol. 1, 95. Emphasis added.
14. Calvin, Institutes, 4.20.2.
15. ‘Argument’ in the Genesis Commentary, vol. 1, 62.
16. Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 62.
17. See Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, 248.
18. Genesis 2:9, vol. 1, 116.
19. Ibid., vol. 1, 116-117.
20. Calvin, Institutes, 4.14.18. Another sacrament in use prior to the fall was the Sabbath. Meditation upon the Sabbath was meant to move men to aspire to the “coming perfection of his Sabbath in the Last Day.” See Institutes, 2.8.30. Evidently the Sabbath in Eden was anticipatory of something future and perfect.
21. Ibid., 2.1.4.
22. Ibid., 4.14.12.
23. Wallace, Christian Life, 104.
24. Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of Word and Sacrament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1953), 227.
25. Genesis 1:31, vol. 1, 100.
26. Genesis 2:2, vol. 1, 104.
27. Genesis 2:8, vol. 1, 114. Emphasis added.
28. Mark W. Karlberg, “The Original State of Adam: Tensions Within Reformed Theology,” in Evangelical Quarterly, 59.4 (October, 1987): 292.
29. ‘Argument’ in the Genesis Commentary, vol. 1, 64.
30. Calvin, Institutes, 2.1.4. Emphasis added.
31. Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 288. Emphasis added.
32. Ibid., 302.
33. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Calvin and the Sabbath (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 154-155.
34. Genesis 2:16, vol. 1, 127.
35. Genesis 2:25, vol. 1, 137.
36. Genesis 2:7, vol. 1, 112-113. Emphasis added. Interestingly, Calvin is not as clear about the temporal/eternal contrast in his commentary on 1 Cor. 15:45. This may indicate a development in his understanding of pre-redemptive eschatology in that he published the 1 Corinthians commentary in 1547 and the Genesis commentary in 1554. The commentary on Genesis 2:7 reveals that he is aware of Adam’s need for a better body.
37. Genesis 2:16, vol. 1, 127.
38. Genesis 3:19, vol. 1, 180. Calvin’s emphasis on upright Adam’s need for a better body is not without precedent in the orthodox tradition. Augustine, in his treatise The Literal Meaning of Genesis (published in 416 AD), speaks of Adam and Eve’s forfeiture of the “wonderful condition, which was to be bestowed upon them through the mystical virtue in the tree of life.” This “wonderful condition” included bodies “later to be transformed for the better.” In Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, book XI, para. 42, in On Genesis, ed. John E. Rostelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), 453. Augustine also argues that the original body of Adam, though not subject to death, needed “to be changed…and so receive full immortality.” In Ibid., book VI, para. 37, 322. Martin Luther’s commentary on Genesis, which undoubtedly Calvin consulted extensively in composing his own, also affirms pre-fall Adam’s need for a transformation. With a view toward 1 Cor. 15:45, he argues that if Adam had not sinned “he would have been translated by God to the spiritual life.” Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, 55 vols., eds. Jaroslav J. Pelikan, Harold J. Grimm, Helmut T. Lehmann (St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia Publishing House and Fortress Press, 1957-1986), 1:86. But Luther, following Augustine, restricts the “translation” to be merely from animal life to spiritual life. Though he calls the latter “future and eternal life,” it still appears to be a terrestrial, Edenic existence. See Ibid. Thus, Calvin goes further than Augustine and Luther in conceiving the better life, not as indestructible earthly existence, but specifically as heavenly life.
39. Genesis 1:27, vol. 1, 96-97.
40. Genesis 3:22, vol. 1, 184.
41. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, trans. John Pringle, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, vol. 2, 25.
42. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), Hebrews 1:2, 34. Cf. Calvin’s remarks in Institutes 2.1.1 to the effect that in Christ “each of us may recover those good things which we have utterly and completely lost.”
43. 1 Corinthians 15:45, vol. 2, 53.
44. Ibid.
45. Ronald Wallace sees recovery of the imago Dei as entailing the recovery of the eschatological dimension of meditation on the future life. See Wallace, Christian Life, 105. Wallace also states this clearly, when he writes, “The whole process of meditatio futurae vitae in the Christian life must be thought of as the restoration of the true order of nature.” Ibid., 125.
46. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt, volume 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 570.
47. Ibid., 577-578.
48. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Prophet Jeremiah and the Lamentations, trans. John Owen, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), Jeremiah 32:40, vol. 4, 218.