Spiritual Formation and the Reformation: Comer, Willard, Calvin

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1. 0:00

   Michael Horton

   In recent months, there's been a renewed interest in spiritual formation. Gen Z college students, especially interested in John Mark Comer's book, Practicing the Way, are at the forefront of this movement. Trevin Wax writes, "Nothing in this movement is especially new. It's a popularized and renewed vision of Dallas Willard's work on discipleship, combined with an A.W. Tozer-tinged evangelical mysticism, sometimes pointing to practices stretching back beyond the Reformation." Many folks attracted to the spiritual formation movement are feeling disillusioned with modern evangelicalism. They want a tangible rule for life that helps them live in the world and grow in their discipleship to Jesus. That's great, but the question is: is a spiritual formation that moves beyond the practices of the Reformation what we really need to help our disillusionment?

2. 01:03

   Michael Horton

   Some say that Luther and Calvin have a lot to teach us about heady doctrines like justification and election, but we have to look elsewhere when it comes to the brass tacks of Christian living. But any real engagement with the Reformers dispels that 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 — though really the whole framework, not just the details, that distinguishes Reformation piety from other approaches. Here are several hallmarks of Reformation piety. Number one: Reformation piety isn't about moving higher than the gospel, but growing deeper into it. It's more communal and covenantal.

3. 02:06

   Michael Horton

   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. Number two: Reformation piety treats good works not as something we do for God, or even for ourselves, but for others — fellow saints, our family, 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're often focused on means of commitment that lead to grace, where we're thinking of means of grace that produce commitment. Others focus on private disciplines that we sometimes can do together, where what we have in mind is a public ministry that shapes our private disciplines. Others withdraw from the world in solitude, when we're imagining a piety that drives us out into the world.

4. 03:17

   Michael Horton

   In many ways, contemporary evangelical approaches share more affinities with medieval than Reformation piety. The current spiritual formation movement is largely built on the work of the late Dallas Willard, and he made this connection explicit by encouraging a revival of those 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 sometimes 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 their pilgrimage to the great city. While it's 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 then ratified objectively in the sacraments? Often the Christian life is identified primarily with things we do by ourselves, to ourselves and for ourselves.

5. 04:48

   Michael Horton

   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, the whole paradigm needed rethinking. The connection with medieval piety shouldn't be surprising, since many of the Anabaptists grew in that soil. This is true especially also of the Brethren of the Common Life, a remarkably effective lay movement that anticipated the parachurch network of evangelical Pietism. The basic approach was captured by the title of a bestseller by Brethren alumnus Thomas à Kempis called The Imitation of Christ. Like the Brethren movement generally, Anabaptists showed little interest in debates over justification and in many cases outright rejected it. In fact, many went beyond the more moderate mysticism of monastic spirituality, drawing especially on radical mystics like Meister Eckhart and Johann Tauler.

6. 06:02

   Michael Horton

   A sharp antithesis was maintained between spirit and matter, inner and outer, and they directed experience introspectively rather than extrospectively — faith coming by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. In an interview we did with Dallas Willard in 2013 for our magazine, Modern Reformation, Dr. Willard himself said that the influences behind his writing were, quote, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, then Lectures on Revival by Charles Finney and his autobiography, then the writings of John Wesley, and then A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law. After these, in slower progression in later life, the writings of Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, Francis de Sales, John Owen, and others similar to them." Now, 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, as they saw it, 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 of the more radical Puritans, such as Richard Baxter. 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.

7. 08:01

   Michael Horton

   At the very outset, Calvin, like Luther, put the brakes on the monastic ascent toward the God of majesty. Calvin puts it this way: "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 Emmanuel, 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 actually dwell with us." Therefore, he went on to say, 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 bone, that he might be one with us." Calvin argues the object of faith isn't merely God, but the triune God revealed in Christ, quote, "as he is clothed in his gospel." To attempt direct union with God apart from Christ, he said, is to seek God outside the way.

8. 09:16

   Michael Horton

   It's 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 and to lift us up to him. All of our salvation is found in Christ, not in ourselves. Indeed, Calvin said, "if you want to contemplate yourself, that is sure damnation." The Spirit who united the Son to us in the incarnation also unites us to Christ by his gospel. From this saving union, we discover our election, redemption, effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. All these benefits belong to every believer in Christ alone through faith alone. In union with Christ, we receive justification and sanctification as gifts.

9. 10:15

   Michael Horton

   There isn't one gift, justification, and then some other supposedly higher gift, sanctification, reserved for the spiritually elite. Justification speaks to the legal aspect of this union, while Scripture draws an organic imagery for sanctification, such as vine and branches, head and members. See, the Christian life isn't only a matter of getting used to our justification, but also of getting used to being in Christ. Therefore, not only in justification, but in sanctification, faith receives every good from Christ alone as the source. Calvin again: "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 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." There's just no place for first-class saints who move on to a higher gospel, a higher state of victorious living through monastic practices. All of us who are baptized are baptized into Christ, justified, and being sanctified.

10. 11:36

    Michael Horton

    Calvin says, "certain Anabaptists of our day conjure some sort of frenzied excess instead of spiritual regeneration." See, the Reformers' concern was that those who are preoccupied with raising their standing in God's estimation actually offend God, deepen their own guilt, and do nothing for their neighbors. The monk might evoke a romantic picture for weary and burned-out modern folks today, but to the Reformers, the monk was the ideal portrait of a confused spirituality.

11. 12:14

    Michael Horton

    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's what the individual does with the Word that saves, rather than what the Word does with the individual. Baptism, many believe, 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 isn't itself the gift of Christ with all his benefits.

12. 12:59

    Michael Horton

    Even in public prayers, the emphasis often 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 had such a wide impact in the United States. The apostles teach that we're born again by the preaching of the gospel — 1 Peter 1:23–25, Romans 10:6–17, and so on. So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. In Acts, conversion is identified with the public hearing of the gospel, baptism, and being added to the church. Again, this seems different from Dallas Willard's project.

13. 13:46

    Michael Horton

    From our interview, we asked Dr. Willard: "What role does the corporate hearing of the Word and receiving of the sacraments play in a spiritual discipline's approach to piety?" "They play an essential role," he said, "but if they are taken, as they often are, as the sole and sufficient activities to be engaged in, they will fail miserably. Experience should make this clear to any observant and honest person." The Reformers believed that biblical faith is created by the Spirit through the external and public Word, creating faith within each of us and making us one body. 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 main 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: preaching, baptism, the Lord's Supper, and public corporate prayers.

14. 14:54

    Michael Horton

    Elsie Ann McKee explains that although Calvin provides 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. See, I think we really have to resist the false choice between public and private, formal and informal, planned and spontaneous. You know, a trellis can't make a vine grow, but it can help the vine grow in the right direction. A rich life of prayer in the family and in private will flourish in the fertile soil that has been filled and tended by the apostles' teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers — Acts 2:42. The public prayers we pray together don't stifle our more informal and spontaneous prayers in daily life. On the contrary, the public prayers train us to bring our thanksgiving, confession of sin and faith, and laments and petitions to the Father with the whole church spread throughout the world.

15. 16:03

    Michael Horton

    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're 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 our daily life, and the body and blood of Christ we receive sustains us in our fellowship with the saints and our witness to the world. See, the flow of gifts is from God to us, and then through us out to others we encounter every day. God is pleased, we are delighted in God's glory and our neighbor's good, and our neighbors have a little more of what they need for that day. That is Reformation piety. That is spiritual formation.

16. 17:06

    Michael Horton

    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.