The Reformation & Spiritual Formation

Luther and Calvin have a lot to teach us about heady doctrines like justification and election. We have to look elsewhere, though, when it comes to the brass tacks of Christian living. Any real engagement with the Reformers' work, however, dispels this widespread misunderstanding.

They knew nothing of the modern dichotomy between doctrine and life; like the ancient fathers, Luther and Calvin used the word "piety" to encompass both. The problem, I suspect, is that many evangelicals today have in mind a rather narrow definition of piety and a list of spiritual disciplines that are almost exclusively private and method oriented. It's the whole framework, not just the details, that distinguishes Reformation piety from other approaches.

Here are several such hallmarks of Reformation piety:

1. Reformation piety is not about moving higher than the gospel, but growing deeper into it.
2. It is more communal and covenantal. It's the external ministry through which the Spirit unites us to Christ and therefore to his visible church, and this public ministry defines our private piety, rather than vice versa.
3. Reformation piety treats good works not as something we do for God or even for ourselves, but for others: fellow saints, our family, and our neighbors through our various callings in the world. Hence, Reformation piety is extrospective more than introspective’looking up in faith to God and out to our neighbors in love.

When we think we're talking about piety, many of our brothers and sisters think we're talking about something else. They are often focused on means of commitment that lead to grace, where we're thinking of means of grace that produce commitment; private disciplines that we sometimes can do together, where we have in mind a public ministry that shapes our private disciplines; withdrawing from the world in solitude, when we're imagining a piety that drives us out into the world.

In many ways, contemporary evangelical approaches share more affinities with medieval than reformational piety. In fact, popular evangelical writers such as Dallas Willard and Richard Foster make this connection explicit by encouraging a revival of the practices that marked monastic spirituality. This more intensely personal relationship to God is promised by practicing the spiritual disciplines’especially private prayer, fasting, silence, contemplation, and solitude. Even in evangelical Calvinist circles, as well as Lutheran pietism, the Christian life is often individualistic and introspective. Even when informed by evangelical doctrine, the picture evoked is of the lonely pilgrim making his way to the Celestial City more than the "cloud of witnesses" cheering from the heavenly stands and the communion of saints on earth. While it is certainly better to preach the gospel than other things to ourselves, isn't it more important to hear the gospel proclaimed objectively and publicly to us and ratified in sacraments? Often, the Christian life is identified primarily with things we do by ourselves, to ourselves, and for ourselves.

The Medieval Sources of Evangelical Spirituality

Reacting against individualism, some people put transforming the world above transforming themselves. From the Reformation perspective, this is an in-house debate within medieval spirituality. Should primacy be given to the contemplative life or the active life? Different monastic orders were founded in answer to that question. From the Reformers' perspective, however, the whole paradigm needed rethinking.

The connection with medieval piety should not be surprising, since in many ways the Anabaptist movement grew in that soil. This is true especially of the Brethren of the Common Life, a remarkably effective lay movement that anticipated the parachurch network of evangelical pietism (see sidebar on page 30). The basic approach was captured by the title of a best-seller by Brethren alumnus Thomas à Kempis: The Imitation of Christ.

Like the Brethren movement generally, Anabaptists showed little interest in debates over justification and in some cases outright rejected it. In fact, many went beyond the more moderate mysticism of monastic spirituality, drawing especially on radical mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Johann Tauler. A sharp antithesis was maintained between spirit and matter, inner and outer, and direct experience within and the external ministry of preaching and sacrament.

The main difference between medieval and Anabaptist-Pietist spirituality was that the latter expected not only an elite group of monks and nuns, but all truly regenerate disciples to commit themselves to the separated life of rigorous introspection and holy solitude. By separating from the world’and a worldly church’their souls could ascend away from everything material and achieve union with God in all of his majesty. This trajectory is evident in Lutheran pietism and among some Puritans, such as Richard Baxter, who were more inclined toward Arminian views. It continued with William Law, in John Wesley's "Holy Club," the Keswick "higher life" movement, and myriad evangelical leaders and movements that have been shaped by this trajectory. Whatever their differences on various points, Luther and Calvin were at one on the chief emphases of biblical piety.

Union, Not Just Imitation

At the very outset, Calvin, like Luther, put the brakes on the monastic ascent toward the God of majesty:

The situation would surely have been hopeless had the very majesty of God not descended to us, since it was not in our power to ascend to him. Hence, it was necessary for the Son of God to become for us "Immanuel, that is, God with us," and in such a way that his divinity and our human nature might by mutual connection grow together. Otherwise the nearness would not have been near enough, nor the affinity sufficiently firm, for us to hope that God might dwell with us’¦.Therefore, relying on this pledge, we trust that we are sons of God, for God's natural Son fashioned for himself a body from our body, flesh from our flesh, bones from our bones, that he might be one with us. (1)

The object of faith is not merely "God," Calvin argues, but the Triune God, revealed in Christ, "as he is clothed in his gospel." (2) To attempt direct union with God apart from Christ is to "seek God outside the way." It is to be trapped in a labyrinth, as one finds in Roman Catholic piety.

While the monk ascends to the God of majesty through contemplation, speculation, and merit, in the gospel God descends to us in humility, in our flesh, to rescue us. All of our salvation is found in Christ, not in ourselves. Indeed, "if you contemplate yourself," Calvin warns, "that is sure damnation." (3)

The Spirit who united the Son to us in the incarnation also unites us to Christ by his gospel. "As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him," says Calvin, "all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and dwell within us. For this reason, he is called 'our Head' [Eph. 4:15], and 'the first-born among many brethren' [Rom. 8:29]." (4) From this saving union we discover our election, redemption, effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. All of these benefits belong to every believer in Christ alone through faith alone.

In union with Christ we receive justification and sanctification as gifts. There isn't one gift (justification) and then some other supposedly higher gift (sanctification) reserved for those who experience a "second blessing." Calvin explains that faith embraces Christ himself and therefore all of his gifts together. Justification speaks to the legal aspect of this union, while Scripture draws on organic imagery for sanctification, such as vine and branches, head and members. The piety in which he was reared emphasized imitating Christ by following his example ("What would Jesus do?"). Calvin pointed to something deeper:

Let us know that the Apostle [in Romans 6] does not simply exhort us to imitate Christ, as though he had said that his death is a pattern which all Christians are to follow; for no doubt he ascends higher, as he announces a doctrine with which he connects an exhortation; and his doctrine is this: that the death of Christ is efficacious to destroy and demolish the depravity of our flesh, and his resurrection, to effect the renovation of a better nature, and that by baptism we are admitted into a participation of this grace. This foundation being laid, Christians may very suitably be exhorted to strive to respond to their calling. (5)

This is true of everyone who is united to Christ, not just to a superior class, he adds. Thus this "ingrafting is not only a conformity of example, but a secret union." (6)

Christ is not only our hero, model, or pattern, but our vine’and we are branches. He is the head of his body of which we are members, the firstfruits of the whole harvest to which we belong. Calvin says that we are "in Christ (in Christo) because we are out of ourselves (extra nos)," finding our sanctification as well as our justification not by looking within but by clinging to Christ. (7) The Christian life is not only a matter of getting used to our justification, but also of getting used to being in Christ, from whom we receive both justification and sanctification through the same gospel. Therefore, not only in justification, but in sanctification, faith receives every good from Christ alone as the source.

There is no place for "first class" saints who move on from the gospel to a higher state of "victorious living" through monastic practices. "Certain Anabaptists of our day conjure some sort of frenzied excess instead of spiritual regeneration," Calvin relates, "thinking that they can attain perfection in this life." (8) "Removing, then, mention of law, and laying aside all consideration of works, we should, when justification is being discussed, embrace God's mercy alone, turn our attention from ourselves, and look only to Christ’¦.If consciences wish to attain any certainty in this matter, they ought to give no place to the law." (9) Those who are preoccupied with raising their standing in God's estimation offend God, deepen their guilt, and do nothing for their neighbors. The monk was the ideal portrait of this confused spirituality.

The Direction: Outside to Inside, Public to Private

In various ways, Roman Catholic teaching collapsed personal faith into the believing act of the church and its sacramental operations. At the other extreme, radical Protestants tend to separate the personal from the public, the external from the internal, and the formal from the spontaneous. It is what the individual does with the Word that saves, rather than what the Word does with the individual. Baptism is the believer's decision and pledge, not God's. The Supper merely offers an opportunity for individual believers to reflect on Christ's death and recommit their lives, but is not itself the gift of Christ with all of his benefits. Even in public prayers, the emphasis falls on spontaneous expression’either of the individual pastor or of the people who are offering their own private prayers independently.

This approach is especially true of the pietistic and revivalist traditions that have had such a wide impact. The apostles teach that we are born again by the preaching of the gospel (1 Pet. 1:23-25, Rom. 10:6-17, and so on). "So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ" (Rom. 10:17). The gospel is "the power of God for salvation" (Rom. 1:16). In Acts, conversion is identified with the public hearing of the gospel, baptism, and being added to the church. "And they gathered regularly for the apostles' teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers" (Acts 2:42). In radical Protestantism, however, we are born again by inviting Jesus into our hearts. It is a personal relationship with Jesus that "none other has ever known." "This is just between you and the Lord," we are told. "Getting saved" is not only distinguished from but often contrasted with "joining a church." One has a relationship with Christ that may be expressed publicly, but authentic faith is deeply individual, personal, and private. It begins privately, within, and expresses itself publicly.

In the Reformers' view, biblical faith is created by the Spirit through the external and public Word, creating faith within each of us. What results from this divine action are not only individual deciders, but a communion of forgiven sinners. There can be no doubt that the Reformers impressed hearers with their need for personal faith. They opposed with might and mane the idea of implicit faith, the corporate church acting as a surrogate for individuals. Nevertheless, personal faith is shaped by the public means of grace, as described in the following four points.

1. There is the public preaching of the Word

Ministers are trained to interpret the Scriptures in the original languages, aware of the history of church teaching and grounded in the creeds and confessions, as well as how to bring this Word effectively to the people of God. Their calling by Christ through his church is to full-time study and prayer, and to share the burden of spiritual care of the flock along with the elders. According to the apostle Paul, pastors and teachers are "the gifts [Christ] gave" for the building up of his church as one body, rooted in his Word (Eph. 4:1-16). When I read Scripture with my family or even alone, I am reading with the church. My reading is guided by what I have heard’together with my brothers and sisters’in the public assembly of Christ's covenant people, through his appointed ambassadors.

2. There is public baptism

The Reformers saw the whole Christian life as a daily living out and returning to our baptism, dying and rising with Christ. Again, in family life, friendships, and callings in the world, we are shaped by what God did to us and gave to us in baptism. Our personal relationship with Christ in daily life is formed by our sharing in "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. 4:5).

3. There is the regular administration of the Lord's Supper

The Supper confirms and deepens our union with Christ, as the Spirit delivers Christ's body and blood to us through his Word and the bread and wine. As we grow more and more in our union with Christ, we grow more and more in the communion of saints. Luther and Calvin disagreed over some important details, but they were at one in opposing both the Roman tendency to collapse personal faith into the public ministry of the church and the Anabaptist tendency to separate them. "We are assailed by two sects," Calvin told Cardinal Sadoleto, "the pope and the Anabaptists." Both tend to separate the Spirit's work from the external Word. According to Calvin, Rome binds God to earthly means, while the Anabaptists disallow that God can freely bind himself to them. (10)

4. Even the public prayers in church shape our family and private prayers

Indeed, writes Calvin, "whoever refuses to pray in the holy assembly of the godly knows not what it is to pray individually, or in a secret spot, or at home." (11) Even in our private prayers we are not alone but joined with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And, united to Christ, we are joined to our brothers and sisters beside us’indeed the whole church everywhere. Just as our private Bible reading is informed and enriched by the communal faith proclaimed and confessed in the church, our private prayers are as well.

Elsie Anne McKee explains, "Although Calvin provided guidelines for private prayers, he was primarily interested in defining public prayers, the liturgy, because he understood all personal or individual devotional acts as an extension of the corporate worship of the body of Christ." (12) We have to resist the false choice between public and private, formal and informal, planned and spontaneous. (13) A rich life of prayer in the family and in private will flourish in the fertile soil that has been tilled and tended by "the apostles' teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers" (Acts 2:42). Anyone reared in synagogue worship would have known that "the prayers" meant communication with God’prayers the whole church said and sung as one body. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he gave them’and us’the Lord's Prayer. Like a trellis, common prayer trains our hearts to conform our communication with God to his Word. A trellis can't make plants grow, but it helps them grow in the right direction.

The public prayers we pray together do not stifle our more informal and spontaneous prayers in daily life. On the contrary, the public prayers train us to bring our thanksgiving, confessions of sin and faith, and laments and petitions to the Father with the whole church spread throughout the world. Because of this public ministry there is a place for more informal, individual, and spontaneous ways of interacting with God and his Word. Only now, even in our private praise, laments, confessions, and petitions, we are never alone. Our meditation on Scripture is now part of the creedal and confessional interpretation that we share in common with the whole church as we snack throughout the week on the rich morsels from the weekly feast. We live out our baptism in the concrete circumstances of daily life, and the body and blood of Christ we received sustains us in our fellowship with the saints and our witness to the world.

The Gift-Giving Ethic: Where Good Works Go

Theologies of glory ascend to heaven with humanly devised methods for bringing Christ down or for descending into the depths to make his living real to us; but a theology of the cross receives him in the humble and weak form of those creaturely means he has ordained. (14) "And the ministry of the Church, and it alone, is undoubtedly the means by which we are born again to a heavenly life." (15)

The Reformers were attracted to Augustine's description of the essence of sin as being "curved in on ourselves." Yet this was precisely what monastic piety encouraged: an inward-looking and upward-striving piety that ignored both God's gifts and neighbors' needs. Nobody benefited from the monastic life. Far from being pleased, God was offended with works he had not commanded being offered to him as meritorious claim. The monk himself was not saved by such service, and the neighbor was not served. In short, the monastic life reversed the flow of God's gifts.

Taking a different approach, the Reformers understood Scripture to teach that we come to church first of all to be served rather than to serve. The result of the gospel ministry is faith and this faith bears the fruit of love and good works’not for us, but for others. The fountain is the public ministry of Word and Sacrament, and its gifts flow in ever-expanding concentric circles from the communion of saints to callings in the world. The flow of gifts is from God to us and, through us, out to others we encounter every day. God is pleased, we are delighted in God's glory and our neighbors' good, and our neighbors have a little more of what they need for that day. Although we may be surprised to learn that such an ordinary piety transformed millions of people, historians document how it happened’even if they don't understand the reasons. May God send us a revival of this genuinely evangelical piety.