The Swanson Lectures in Christian Spirituality Chair of Christian Thought, University of Calgary, October 5, 2009 Life with God: The Spiritual Theology of John Calvin John A. Vissers, The Presbyterian College, McGill University Introduction This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of the 16th century Reformer John Calvin (Jean Cauvin), born on July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France. Peter Steinfels noted in an anniversary piece that Calvin was a man “who may have done as much as anyone to shape the modern world. And yet after 500 years, John Calvin is still not an easy man to understand.”1 Despite attempts to rehabilitate Calvin’s image there are “vast legends” that surround him, making it difficult to distinguish historical fact from the caricatures. John Calvin has been called “incomparably the wisest man [of] the French Church” (Richard Hooker) and “the most Christian man of his century”(Ernest Renan).” At the same time he has been defamed as “a dictator,” the “murderer of Servetus” (Stefan Zweig) and a “sadist and torturer and killer” (Christopher Hitchens).2 Calvin is often imagined as “the implacable snoop who enforced a prudish morality on the citizens of Geneva.”3 At the same time, recent biographers of Calvin – T.H. L. Parker, William Bouwsma, Bernard Cottret, Alister McGrath, Herman Selderhuis, and Bruce Gordon - reveal a kinder, gentler Calvin, more complex, more humane, and more passionate than is commonly thought. This lecture, however, is not about Calvin the man; it is about Calvin’s theology. But when it comes to Calvin’s theology, caricatures also abound. Calvin is often portrayed as “a steely spinner of harsh theological doctrines about a depraved humanity

1

Peter Steinfels, “The Purpose-Driven Leader,” New York Times (July 10, 2009). Reprinted in The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, August 8, 2009. Section G, 8. 2 William Klempa, “500 Years of Calvin,” National Post, July 10, 2009, Section A, 15. 3 Peter Steinfels, New York Times, op.cit.

and a fierce God predestinating people to heaven or hell.”4 “Calvin is widely supposed,” Brian Gerrish notes, “to have been an authoritarian reformer and a coldly logical theologian, whose thought, presented in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, turned wholly on the dogma of predestination.”5 Calvin is said to have catalogued biblical propositions and force-fed them to the good citizens of Geneva. It is true that at a popular level such caricatures still abound but it should be noted that the scholarly understanding of Calvin’s theology has in fact varied through the years. It used to be fashionable to speak about the way in which Calvin’s training as a lawyer contributed to the rigorous logic he employed in the systematic exposition of biblical doctrine. More recently, however, the emphasis has shifted to Calvin’s training as a Christian humanist and the importance of Renaissance humanism on his thinking as a theologian. In either case, Calvin is known for his extensive biblical commentaries and theological treatises. He was a brilliant writer, a gifted stylist in both Latin and French, a student of rhetoric who knew how to put together a good argument and persuade people of the truth as he believed it. In this lecture I should like to focus on one particular aspect of Calvin’s theology: John Calvin as a “pastoral” or “spiritual” theologian. By spiritual theology I mean theology that arose from Calvin’s work as a preacher and pastor, a theology that was embedded in sermons and prayers as well as in biblical commentaries and theological treatises. I mean theology that arose from and reflected upon the Christian experience of God, what today we refer to as spirituality. “Spirituality” is a modern word created by French Jesuits in the eighteenth century to refer to the inner spiritual life. It was therefore not a word Calvin knew. He used the term “piety” to refer to the Christian life and I want 4

Peter Steinfels, op.cit. Brian A. Gerrish, John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, Edited by Elsie Anne McKee, in The Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press, 2001, xiii.

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to argue in this lecture that “piety” and “godliness” – or if you prefer, “spirituality,” was central to Calvin’s theology. Calvin was concerned about life with God, life lived in the presence of God – coram Deo, and his theology was fundamentally spiritual in character. Let me be clear – I am not the first person to notice this. In examining Calvin’s theology from this perspective, I am using the work of scholars such as John Leith, Elsie Anne McKee, Ellen Charry, Brian Gerrish, Serene Jones, Dennis Tamburello, Howard Hageman, Lucien Joseph Richard, Joel Beeke, Sou-Young Lee, Herman Selderhuis, Todd Billings, as well as the wonderful American novelist Marilynne Robinson.6 There is an increasing consensus in Calvin studies that this aspect of Calvin’s theology is foundational to understanding the entire corpus of his work. In a recently published book Herman Selderhuis reminds us that Calvin’s theologically monumental ideas were spiritually powerful and personally transformative in their context. Selderhuis identifies stages of Calvin’s life according to what he sees as “Calvin’s spiritual/existential tenor during various periods of his life.”7 “Calvin’s theology was born out of an intense, spiritual/existential wrestling with God, rather than mere biblical cataloging or logical deduction.” Selderhuis’ study produces an intimate understanding of Calvin’s theology from the standpoint of his life, a feature that puts a humane face on what are often viewed as “difficult and devilish doctrines.”8

6

See Marilynne Robinson’s stunning novels Gilead and Home as well as her fine collection of essays called The Death of Adam. 7 Herman Selderhuis, John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life (IVP, 2009). 8

James Merrick, ‘Review of Selderhuis’ John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life, August 27, 2009, www. theologyforum.wordpress.com

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Calvin was concerned with engaging Christians in understanding God deeply and personally.9 As a second generation Reformer he emphasized not only Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone but also the doctrine of union with Christ and regeneration by the Holy Spirit as the basis of the Christian life. The spiritual life is a grateful response to God’s gracious forgiveness. Calvin believed that Christians need moral strengthening and that God is the proper agent of reform. In fact, the purpose of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, as stated in the prefatory address to King Francis I in 1536, is godliness: “My purpose was solely to transmit certain rudiments by which those who are touched with any zeal for religion might be shaped to true godliness.”10 Twenty-three years later he re-iterated the same goal in the 1559 (and final) edition of the Institutes; Calvin “had no other purpose than to benefit the church by maintaining the pure doctrine of godliness…through…zeal to spread [God’s] kingdom and to further the public good.”11 Thus, it’s necessary to see Calvin as a spiritual theologian, one who, in the words of Ellen Charry, “sees theology as conducive to salutary formation of believers whose dignity lies not in their own power but in their obedience to Christ.”12 The purpose of theology is to strengthen the Christian identity of church members by helping them grasp the dignity of the new life accomplished for them by Christ. Theology’s task is to help believers understand and experience that the Lordship of Christ pervades all of one’s life – in family, at work, in the church, and among friends. In short, for Calvin, doctrine and piety belong together. The purpose of treating articles of religion is to enhance godliness, to promote spiritual growth. John Leith has noted, “Calvin wrote his theology

9

Ellen Charry, By The Renewing of Your Mind, (Oxford), 199. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 9. 11 Ibid., 4. 12 Ellen Charry, op.cit., 57. 10

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to persuade, to transform human life.”13 Even Calvin’s troubling doctrine of election was intended, rightly or wrongly, to provide true motivation for godly living. The truth of God, for Calvin, is grasped as, and in, the personal and deeply mutual relationship of humankind with God. The spiritual life for Calvin “represents a magnificent effort to give expression to what it means to have to do with the living God every moment of one’s life.”14 When viewed through this lens, Calvin’s theology begins to appear less rigid, less polemical, less oppressive, more relational, more participatory, and even liberating. This is what I want to argue and illustrate, and I want to do so by looking at Calvin’s theology of prayer in the Institutes of the Christian Religion. If one formed a judgment on the writing of a theologian, old or new, based on how much space that theologian devoted to the topic of prayer, then one would have to conclude without reservation that John Calvin was a theologian of prayer. George Hendry once noted, “Calvin devoted a chapter in the 1536 edition of the Institutes to prayer and that chapter remained throughout all the successive editions, becoming one of the great treatises in church history on prayer.”15 It contains seventy pages and is one of the longest chapters in the 1559 edition of the Institutes, surpassing even the venerable doctrine of predestination by ten pages. It also precedes Calvin’s treatment of predestination at the end of Book III in the Institutes. As my friend and Calvin scholar Victor Shepherd puts it: Not many in the history of Christian thought have written as much as Calvin on prayer. “Few have approached him in sensitivity and profundity. Fewer still have understood the social/psychological situation from which he wrote everything: the refugee who knows

13

John Leith, John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, 17. Ibid., 224. 15 George Hendry, “The Lifeline of Theology,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, December 1972, cited in John Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine, 262. 14

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that life is precarious, political rulers can’t be trusted, betrayal is always at hand; above all, an outer and inner homelessness that will dissipate only in the eschaton as the City of God, long promised God’s people, is made theirs eternally.”16 Let us turn, then, to Calvin’s treatment of prayer. 1. Piety, Prayer, and the Knowledge of God “Prayer,” says Calvin, “is an intimate conversation of the pious with God.”17 Piety is a favourite word in Calvin’s theological vocabulary but it’s a word that’s been misused and misunderstood in the Christian tradition. As Marjorie Thompson notes, “Piety, a word once endowed with respect, now suggests to many a saccharin sentimentality or the delicate, easily shocked conscience of moral rigidity. Our caricature of a pious Christian has eyes rolled heavenward and hands permanently joined at the fingertips.”18 Ford Lewis Battles noted that “to the modern mind the word ‘piety’ has lost its historic implications and status.” It has become suspect, “bearing suggestions of ineffectual religious sentimentality.”19 That’s not how Calvin used the word. The word piety (Latin pietas) literally means “duty to God” and it refers to devotion and commitment to God expressed in the Christian life through a variety of actions. Calvin defined piety as “that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces” (Inst. 1.2.1). If prayer is an intimate conversation of the pious with God, obviously the intimacy with God about which Calvin speaks is not to be confused with saccharin self-absorbed feelings of spirituality. No, prayer is rooted in reverence, faith, and love for God, grounded in knowledge of God and what God has done for God’s people in Jesus Christ.

16

Victor Shepherd, “Calvin on Prayer,” Unpublished Paper. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960) 3.20.16. 18 Marjorie Thompson, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life, (Westminster), 6. 19 Ford Lewis Battles, “Introduction,” Institutes of the Christian Religion, lii. 17

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At the same time, the force of “intimate” is not to be diminished. Prayer is personal and experiential. Prayer is the “chief exercise of faith,” and the principal means by which believers “receive Christ’s benefits.”20 For Calvin and his contemporaries, then, piety was an honest word, free from an unsavory connotation. It was a praiseworthy dutifulness or faithful devotion to God and to others. “True piety consists…in a sincere feeling which loves God as Father as much as it fears and reverences him as Lord, embraces his righteousness…and conceives God as God shows and declares himself to be.”21 Prayer is an exercise of obedience to God as Father, Calvin notes, and service done God as Lord. Prayer is grounded in the command and promise of God. As an act of piety grounded in love for God, it is not simply an act of the interior spiritual life. True piety, grounded in reverence and love, is expressed in equitas (equity or justice). As the pious pray, they are exercising their duty to God and to others. Piety and prayer are not simply inner dispositions, but outward actions. The prayers of the pious move us “upwards” to God and “outward” to others. That’s why, in the Reformed tradition, the life of prayer is understood primarily as the cultivation of Christ-centered faith and godly knowledge in the service of God and neighbor. It does not exclude religious experiences either routine or ecstatic but fostering experiences of the divine was not the primary focus. The Reformed spiritual tradition has generally eschewed the monastic and contemplative in favor of active engagement with the world. All of life is understood as belonging to God and to be lived under the Christ’s Lordship. Christian piety is to find expression not only in the individual soul, and the church, but in every realm – social, political, economic, and cultural. Prayer is a worldly activity,

20 21

Institutes, 3.20.1; see also Victor Shepherd, “Calvin on Prayer,” Unpublished Paper. Calvin’s First Catechism, French, 1537; Latin, 1538.

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neither passive nor quiescent. It is active, world-engaging, and on occasion even revolutionary.22 On this basis, Calvin adduces six reasons for prayer. Let me rehearse them briefly. The first is “That our hearts may be fired with a zealous and burning desire ever to seek, love and serve God, while we become accustomed in every need to flee to God as to a sacred anchor.” For Calvin, prayer should cultivate the habit of prayer, i.e. one of the results of prayer is more prayer. Prayer becomes an attitude in which life is lived. Second, “That there may enter our hearts no desire and no wish at all of which we should be ashamed to make God a witness, while we learn to set all our wishes before God’s eyes, and even to pour out our whole hearts.” Prayer cleanses our thoughts and aids in our sanctification. What Calvin means here is that there ought to be nothing about which we cannot pray. All of life ought to be named in God’s presence. Third, “That we be prepared to receive God’s benefits with true gratitude of heart and thanksgiving, benefits that our prayer reminds us come from God’s hand.” Prayer is an act of gratitude which expresses absolute dependence upon God. Reformed spirituality emphasizes the Christian life as a joyful response of gratitude to God. Prayer teaches us to see life as a gift and to recognize God as the source of all that we are and have. Fourth, “That having obtained what we were seeking, and being convinced that God has answered our prayers, we should be led to meditate upon God’s kindness more ardently.” Prayer changes our attitude toward God. As Howard Rice puts it, “As we pray, we come to see that God is the Divine Lover who hears our cries and whose will is for our wholeness and well-

22

See John Vissers, “Reformed (Calvinist) Spirituality,” in Glen Scorgie (ed.) Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, Zondervan, forthcoming 2010.

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being.”23 Fifth, “That at the same time we embrace with greater delight those things which we acknowledge to have been obtained by prayers.” We learn to receive what God has for us in life. And finally, “That use and experience may, according to the measure of our feebleness, confirm God’s providence.” This may be perhaps the most difficult reason to put into practice. Prayer, Calvin argues, teaches us to know the providence of God as an experiential reality, that we may come to know the sustaining and protecting grace of God in whatever circumstance we may find ourselves. Calvin’s six reasons for prayer are followed by his four “rules” of prayer. The first rule has to do with reverence as one might expect since Calvin’s understanding of piety is rooted in reverence. “That we be disposed in mind and heart as befits those who enter conversation with God.” The right and pure contemplation of God means we must pay attention to God in the conversation and wean ourselves from the thoughts and cares that distract us. In an age of distraction where little attention is paid to anything, this is perhaps one of Calvin’s most important points. At the same time, Calvin was realistic. He knows that we can’t be expected to rid ourselves from worries, distractions, and anxieties completely but even here we bring them to God and make them the occasion for prayer. The second rule has to do with honesty: when we pray we must be aware of our insufficiency. “We pray from a sincere sense of want, and with penitence…that in our petitions we ever sense our own insufficiency, and earnestly pondering how we need all that we seek, join with this prayer an earnest – nay, burning – desire to attain it.” Prayer requires an awareness of reality. It is not an exercise of whim or illusion. Prayer is not perfunctory for Calvin – it matters. Prayer is grounded in wisdom, self-knowledge, selfperception, and self-examination which flow from the knowledge of God. This reflects 23

Howard Rice, Reformed Spirituality, 78.

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the opening words of the Institutes: “Nearly al the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts; the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”24 The knowledge of God and self-knowledge are intimately connected for Calvin, and both are experienced profoundly in prayer. The third rule is humility: We yield all confidence in ourselves and humbly plead for pardon…that anyone who stands before God, in his humility giving glory completely to God, abandon all thought of his own glory…and put away all self-assurance…” Calvin insisted that that the heart of prayer is the petition that God forgive our sins. In prayer we are reminded that God is merciful and gracious precisely because he stands over us as judge. Fourth, we pray with confident hope. As the pious converse with God they may be assured that their prayer will be heard and answered. Hope and faith always overcome fear in Calvin’s theology of prayer. Prayer is an audacious act of assurance which presumes upon God’s divine benevolence. It is an audacious act of the imagination in which one dares to entrust one’s life, with all its cares and concerns, to another, to call on that other relentlessly, the God who alone can be trusted in life and in death. That’s why it ought to be a persistent practice. In sum, what is prayer for Calvin? It is an intimate conversation of the pious with God. Who are the pious? Those who have a reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of God’s benefits induces. Why should the pious pray? Prayer is the chief exercise of faith, the means by which the faithful daily receive God’s benefits. It is the means through which God’s people dig up the treasures that were pointed out by the Lord’s gospel, and which their faith has gazed upon. God’s people pray because they wish to obey the command of God and because they trust in the promise of God. Prayer is often portrayed in the Reformed tradition as a one-sided monologue, where the faithful 24

Institutes, 1.1.1.

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plead their cause before God from a distance, and then passively receive what God may or may not throw down from heaven in response. A careful reading of Calvin on prayer, however, shows that this is not the case: prayer is intimate, personal, conversational, and relational. It is true that Calvin emphasizes reverence – after all, God is God, but this does not preclude a conversation in which there is pushing and pulling and pleading and yes, even resting in the joy of the presence of the Other. 2. Participation, Prayer, and Union with Christ Prayer is also a participation in the intercessory ministry of the ascended Lord Jesus Christ. Calvin is a thoroughly Christological theologian and nowhere is this seen more clearly than in his theology of prayer. Prayer is the means through which our faith may contemplate Christ, our expectation may depend on Christ, and our hope may cleave to and rest in Christ. Calvin’s Christology is set out primarily in Book II of the Institutes, “The Knowledge of God the Redeemer.” Calvin assumes the Christology of the early church, i.e. the Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures – human and divine, and the one person of Christ, but the creative aspect of his Christology focuses on the concept of mediation. “Mediation is the bringing of parties together to try to effect reconciliation.”25 A mediator is one who stands between parties in order to effect such a reconciliation and in the New Testament, Calvin observed, the term is applied to Jesus Christ as “the one mediator between God and humankind (1 Timothy 2:5) who has effected reconciliation by overcoming sin (cf. Hebrews 8:6; 9:15; 12:24).26 The mediatorial work of Jesus Christ is expressed, Calvin notes, in his office as prophet, priest, and king, the so-called munus

25 26

Donald K. McKim, Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms (Westminster John Knox, 1996) 170. Ibid., 170.

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triplex or “threefold office of Christ.” Calvin was not the first to use this idea – one finds it in the church fathers—but he was the first to develop it and use it fully as a link between the work of Christ and the covenant history of Israel.27 Here’s the point: after Calvin sets out the four rules of prayer, he moves on to discuss the intercession of Christ as the theological foundation for the life of prayer. He begins by emphasizing that Christ is our mediator in prayer, more specifically our intercessor. Why do we pray in the name of Jesus? asks Calvin. Because the risen and ascended Christ is our intercessor. He represents us before God in prayer; he intercedes for us. This is the ongoing priestly ministry of Jesus. As prophet he teaches, as king he reigns, and as priest he makes propitiation for sin in his death on the cross, and continues to intercede for us as the risen and ascended Lord. “We stand in confidence before God because God in Christ bore our sins and God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now Christ has risen (and ascended) to the right hand of God, where he is our intercessor.”28 Jesus Christ is our great high priest. For Calvin, Christ is no long-distance representative relaying our prayers by remote-control. In addition to being grounded in the mediation of Christ, Calvin’s theology of prayer is also grounded in our “union with Christ.” At the beginning of Book III of the Institutes, in which we find Calvin’s treatment of prayer, Calvin describes the dynamic of the Christian life: “First,” he says, “we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, we are separated from him, and 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 to dwell

27 28

Ibid., 180. See John Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine, 265.

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within us.”29 Mystical union with Christ is the centre of Calvin’s theology, certainly his theology of the spiritual life. Union with Christ “is that personal engrafting of the believer into Christ which constitutes the foundation of the Christian life. As branches are joined with the vine (John 15), or members of a body with their head (Ephesians 4), so the elect are united with Christ. This engrafting does not entail dissolution of the believer’s individuality in the divine, nor does it stand as the goal of a process of spiritual development. It is, rather, the work of the Holy Spirit which engenders faith and enables us as individuals to share in the fruits of Christ’s saving work. Baptism is a sign and seal of this union; the Lord’s Supper nourishes and sustains it.”30 The bond of unity between Christ and the believer is the Holy Spirit. This union is effected by the exercise of faith which involves trusting in and resting on the resources of Christ as though they were our own. Faith, for Calvin, is a “firm and certain knowledge of God’s goodwill toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”31 What does all this mean? Simply this: in union with the ascended Christ, our mediator, our priest, our intercessor, by the Spirit, through faith, we pray with Jesus, and Jesus prays with us, and for us. That’s why we pray in the name of Jesus – it’s not some magical mantra invoked to gain access to some secret place. It’s an acknowledgement that Jesus is already and always praying for us, and it’s an invitation to join him in these prayers. It is an invitation to participate in the life of the triune God. As our mediator Jesus has forever taken his humanity into the life of God, and in union with him we share

29

Institutes, 3.1.1 P. Mark Achtemeier, “Union with Christ,” Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith, Edited by Donald K. McKim (Westminster John Knox, 1992), 379-380. 31 Institutes, 3.1.7 30

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in this. Because Christ is our advocate, Calvin insists, we are freed from shame and fear, which might well have thrown our hearts into despair, and we are filled with confidence. “Calvin’s insistence that prayer be made in the name of Jesus Christ…stands over against any notion that prayer should be made in the name of a human being”…whether it be our own name…or “even the saints in heaven.”32 The Lord’s Prayer, which Calvin goes on to expound at some length, is not simply given as an example of what it means to pray like Jesus; it is given as an invitation to pray with Jesus. James B. Torrance puts it nicely: Christian prayer “is our participation through the Spirit in the Son’s communion with Father, in his vicarious life of worship and intercession”…The triune God of grace has created us and redeemed us to participate freely in his life of communion and his concerns for the world. God does not have to be conditioned into being gracious by what we do, our religion, our piety, our spirituality. The Christian life is a life lived in union with Christ on the basis of what Christ has done for us. Prayer, therefore, is the work of Christ’s Spirit in us.33 In sum, prayer for Calvin is a participation in the intercessory ministry of our great high priest, the ascended Lord Jesus Christ. By grace we participate in Christ and through Christ in the life of the Triune God of grace. Prayer is an exercise of faith, by the Spirit, in which we contemplate the Christ who intercedes for us, trust in the Christ who prays for us, rest on the promises of the Christ who advocates on our behalf, and possess Christ as our own. Prayer in the Reformed tradition has often missed this Christological dynamic which is found in Calvin.

32 33

John Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine, 265. James B. Torrance, Worship, Community & The Triune God of Grace (IVP, 1996), 13-18.

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3. Godliness, Prayer, and the Sanctifying Work of the Spirit For Calvin, prayer is an intimate conversation of the pious with God, and a participation in the intercessory ministry of the ascended Lord Jesus Christ. It is also a spiritual discipline through which the Holy Spirit roots out sin, creates growth in grace and godliness, for the good of the believer, and the good of the world.34 It is a means of grace nurturing sanctification or holiness. The spiritual theology of John Calvin is rooted in a theology of the Holy Spirit, what theologians call “pneumatology.” Despite appearances to the contrary, “John Calvin is preeminently a theologian of the Holy Spirit.”35 The Holy Spirit is everywhere in the Institutes. We come to trust in the revelation of God through the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit, Calvin says, who spoke through prophets and apostles, testifies to our faith that the Bible is the Word of God and speaks to us today through Holy Scripture. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the triune God, proceeding from the Father and the Son. The Spirit was – and is, at work in creation, by common grace. The chief work of the Spirit toward humanity, Calvin says, is the creation of faith, and regeneration from which the well-spring of new life flows. In other words, the Holy Spirit is at work uprooting sin and creating new life. The Holy Spirit opposes everything that militates against human flourishing. The Spirit of God animates, energizes, enlivens, and renews the human spirit to be and to do all that God intended human beings to be and to do. For Calvin, prayer is an exercise of self-examination. Calvin begins the Institutes, as we already noted, with these well-known words: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of

34 35

Ibid. William Stacy Johnson and John Leith, Reformed Reader, Volume I, 239.

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ourselves.”36 The spiritual life, the life of piety, is a life of self-examination and selfknowledge. As we look at ourselves, Calvin says, we come to see ourselves as both creatures and sinners. There is a dignity to being human that makes us realize, Calvin says, that “our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God.”37 But as we look at ourselves we also come to realize that things are not the way they’re supposed to be. We live in a world of misery and sin is never far from us. So, without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God. But, at the same time, and more importantly, without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self. “It is certain,” Calvin says, “that we never achieve a clear knowledge of ourselves unless we have first looked upon God’s face…”38 And in a stark challenge to our secular world, Calvin asserts that if we do not look beyond ourselves, and if we become quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly and fancy ourselves all but demigods, and ultimately become demagogues.39 The rooting out of sin is necessary not only for spiritual health, it is a requirement for social order. Sin is not a series of wrong acts which must be corrected, it is a condition which must be transformed, a state of death into which resurrection life must be infused. Every day, says Calvin, we need the Holy Spirit that we may not mistake our way. The Holy Spirit works through the means of grace. The means of grace are “the ways by which God’s grace is extended and received by human beings.”40 In Calvin’s theology, the emphasis is on the Word and the Sacraments and prayer as God’s instituted means of conveying the grace that leads to justification and sanctification. That’s why 36

Institutes, 1.1.1 Ibid., 1.1.1 38 Ibid., 1.1.1 39 Ibid., 1.1.1 40 Donald McKim, Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, 120. 37

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Reformed spiritual practices have focused primarily on the means of grace, called in the Westminster Shorter Catechism “the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of his redemption,” especially the word, the sacraments, and prayer (Q.88). And that’s why the Bible has been central in Reformed piety. The spiritual life exists from hearing and believing the Word of God. Following Calvin, the Reformed tradition teaches that this Word is the source of personal renewal and that God’s Spirit uses the written Word to help believers grow in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Baptism bestows Christian identity on believers and their children. Calvin spoke of the “true presence of Christ” in the Lord’s Supper and emphasized the communion of the believer by faith and the Holy Spirit with the ascended Christ. The infrequent celebration of communion in the later tradition (contra Calvin who wanted weekly communion)) emphasized the need for true repentance and faith. Reformed celebrations of communion were often preceded by preparatory services which focused on prayer and self-examination.41 This emphasis on self-examination has meant that Reformed piety and prayer have often been deeply introspective and marked by anxiety, brooding, and spiritual heaviness. This reflects the doctrine of predestination and the desire for assurance of salvation. While spiritual practices in the Reformed tradition were never the means through which one earned salvation, they often became the means through which one sought assurance of salvation. Calvin’s approach to prayer does not rule out contemplation. In fact, one of Calvin’s heirs, the Puritan Richard Baxter, practiced a form

41

See John Vissers, “Reformed (Calvinist) Spirituality,” in Glen Scorgie (ed.) Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, Zondervan, forthcoming 2010.

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of lectio divina or divine reading (spiritual reading) in which prayer and meditation are combined with reflective Bible reading. Conclusion To summarize, then, I have been arguing that “while Calvin is often depicted as an intellectualist and theological rationalist, in fact his theology is pervaded by mystery” and paradox and spirituality.42 Nowhere does one see this more clearly than in Calvin’s theology of prayer. Prayer is an intimate conversation of the pious with God: personal, conversational, and relational. Prayer is a participation in the intercessory ministry of the believer’s great high priest, the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ: Christ-centered, active, and confident. Prayer is a spiritual discipline in which we examine ourselves, contemplate God, and through which the Holy Spirit effects the believer’s growth in grace and godliness: dynamic, contemplative, active, engaged, transformative. In short, prayer for Calvin is characterized by conversation, participation, and examination. Prayer is a profoundly Trinitarian act: conversation with God, in union with Christ, through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. And prayer is just one example of how thoroughly Calvin’s theology of the spiritual life is shaped by a Trinitarian understanding of God. Life with God is life with the triune God of grace. For Calvin the doctrine of the Trinity is not an abstract mathematical description of divinity; it is at the heart of Christian faith and practice. Calvin was far from perfect, as a man, as a pastor, and as a theologian. He made big mistakes. In fact, Calvin died confessing, “All I have done is of no worth…I am a miserable creature.” And at his request, he was buried in a common grave without a marker. But his life’s goal was to serve God. His personal emblem was a picture of a 42

Timothy George, “John Calvin: The Comeback Kid,” Christianity Today, September 2009, 32.

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flaming heart held up in a hand with a written inscription which read (in Latin): Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere; “My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.” In an age of spiritual hunger, Calvin’s spiritual theology continues to point women and men toward the adoration of the triune God.

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