A Pentecostal Engagement with John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper
Bibliographic record
Abstract
John Calvin’s theology has not historically attracted the interest of most Pentecostals. Although he has been graced with the title “Theologian of the Holy Spirit” by some within the Reformed tradition, soteriological and pneumatological differences have made Pentecostals hesitant to look to the Genevan as a resource. Nevertheless, Pentecostals would benefit greatly from engaging Calvin’s theology of the Lord’s Supper, which consistently emphasized the Holy Spirit’s work and the importance of personal faith. Although many Pentecostals have long formally rejected the notion that practices such as baptism or the Lord’s Supper may be considered means of grace, many first-generation Pentecostals clearly understood the Lord’s Table as more than a memorial service. Early primary sources indicate that Pentecostals believed that Christ was present at the Table in the power of the Holy Spirit and imparted himself to those who received the elements in faith. However, in comparison to other key theological distinctives, Pentecostals never developed formally their eucharistic theology to any great extent, and the issue has not commanded great attention throughout the movement’s history. The operative theology of the Supper that early Pentecostals exhibited has rarely translated into a robust formal theology. Therefore, although contemporary Pentecostal scholars have expressed interest in developing further the movement’s sacramental theology, such a project would be well served by looking outside of Pentecostalism itself for assistance. Calvin’s eucharistic theology offers an attractive aid to the movement, given his pneumatological emphasis and the centrality of faith inherent in his position. His position also promises to serve as a point of contact within the ongoing Reformed–Pentecostal dialogue, which has yet to address the sacraments as a point of conversation. Pentecostal engagement with Calvin, for the purposes of enriching Pentecostalism itself, might in turn lead to engagement with the broader Christian tradition—particularly the Reformed tradition—to which Pentecostalism’s rich operative sacramental theology has much to contribute.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".