And When He Doesn’t, There Isn’t

“In the event of God’s ‘connecting Himself’ thus with the preacher, to make his act of speaking the effective Word of the Lord, a relationship is set up between the human act of the preacher and the divine action of grace which we may call a sacramental union . . . when God graciously comes to give His presence and power along with the human word, there is the closest identity between the divine and human actions” (Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament, pp. 90-91).