SOURCE: "Calvin on the Word as Sacrament," in Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher, Westminster John Knox Press, 1996, pp. 14-25.

In the following excerpt, De Vries analyzes the importance of Calvin's notion of the Word of God as a "means of grace" and as a paradigm shift.

Calvin, like Luther before him, borrowed from Augustine the notion that sacraments were "visible words."¹ While this meant that the Reformers tended to verbalize the sacraments, it also led them to "sacramentalize" the Word.² In order to understand the significance of Calvin's doctrine of the Word, however, we must first explore how preaching was understood by Calvin's predecessors.

the Doctrine of the Word and the Task of Preaching Before Calvin

While it cannot be asserted that the Reformers of the sixteenth century invented the notion of the Word as a means of grace, it is commonly said that...