Calvin on signs: an Augustinian dilemma.

The article reports that protestant reformer John Calvin's emphasis upon the two sacraments instituted by Christ, baptism and the eucharist, is, like that of other reformers, in some measure an attempt to clarify by insisting upon differences. But it is necessary only because of the established habit of linking images and relics and all sorts of 'significant things' with the outward and visible signs of the sacraments as means of instruction used by God to teach his people about spiritual realities. The theory of signification which underlies this habit of thought is Saint Augustine's. When Calvin refers to the sacraments as visible 'words', he is assuming with Augustine that words and things are both capable of signification.