Rethinking Merit in Calvin's Doctrine of the Atonement: Beyond Possessive Individualism

Abstract

Joan Lockwood O'Donovan argues that the Reformation doctrine of grace entails a rejection of the proprietary anthropology of self-owning individuals and its attendant notion of justice – what C. B. Macpherson termed the “theory of possessive individualism.” Although O'Donovan praises Calvin's anthropology and his account of law for its non-proprietary dimensions, the classical Protestant doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement appears to uphold the late-medieval and proto-modern account of moral agents as proprietary subjects. In this essay, I offer a reading of Calvin's soteriology, particularly his account of Christ's merit, to argue that his understanding of merit, which is central to the doctrine of penal substitution, entails a break with the proprietary conception of merit as privately possessed. By his denial that Christ accrues any merit for himself, Calvin asserts merit's irreducibly communicative character and the ecstatic nature of human moral agency.