Reformed spirituality

Week beginning 31 July 2005

'Spirituality' is one of the buzz words of our modern age. A visit to any modern bookstore is ample proof of that; the shelf space devoted to books on spirituality and spiritual experience just keeps on growing.

The alarming thing is the variety of spiritual experience on offer; Eastern religions, in all their guises compete with self-help techniques and crystal-based therapies to produce the feel-good factor. In this scientific age of ours, it's remarkable how much the pendulum has swung from the head to the heart.

But it was a New Testament apostle who warned us not to believe every spirit, and, by extension, every spirituality. The rise of modern spiritualities is symptomatic of a major shift in our perception and our language. Pilate once asked 'What is Truth?' To which the modern gurus of spiritual awakening answer 'whatever feels right for you'.

Sadly, it's not just the world that speaks in this way. This whole experience-oriented approach to things has also infected much of the contemporary church. Its worship (meaning its music) has the immediate concern not to exalt Christ as to transform the audience; and its gospel is so focussed on our spiritual experience that doctrinal truth has long gone. Who worries about the design of the atonement or the mode of the incarnation when one is filled with the Spirit?

Enter Calvinism. One of the major critiques the modernist worldview has made of Reformed theology is precisely this: that it has been too cerebral, too intellectual, too doctrinal. It has insisted in propositional theology at the expense of spiritual experience. Our concern for theological exactness, it is alleged, has meant that we have no spirituality to speak of.

Take the Westminster Confession of Faith, for example. Why is there no chapter on the Holy Spirit there, and on his gifts, graces and fruit? In the twenty-first century, who would make such an omission?

By the way, I often wonder what would happen if Parliament today repeated the exercise of the seventeenth century and charged us with producing a confessional theology with catechisms, for the benefit of the church. How would it compare with what we have? I have no doubt that it would be vastly inferior to what the Puritans gave us in the magisterial documents of Westminster.

My point, this week, however, is to defend Calvinism against the charge that it lacks a robust spirituality. On the contrary, a careful reading of the Confession of Faith shows that it is infused with a sense of the Holy Spirit and his work in the lives of believers. In other words, it offers an authentic spirituality.

Take, for example, the opening chapter, which deals with the doctrine of Scripture. Having set forth the Bible's teaching on its own origin, composition and authority, the Confession makes the beautiful statement that 'our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts' (I.6).

So here is one element of Reformed spirituality: the Holy Spirit witnessing in our hearts, opening our eyes to the glory of the text of Scripture, and assuring us that this is God's book. There can be no authentic spiritual experience that is not grounded in that persuasion of the authority and uniqueness of the religious text we call the Bible.

Then there is the grand statement on election in the chapter 'Of God's Eternal Decree'. This one would be radically re-cast in a modern confession, yet it statements are gleaned from vast tracts of biblical literature. And of the redeemed it says that they 'are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season' (III.6).

So Reformed spirituality not only emphasises the authority of the Bible; it also emphasises the sufficiency of Christ and of faith in him for our salvation. Authentic spiritual experience is not that which makes us 'feel good' merely -- it is that which draws us to Jesus.

Or take the statement in the chapter 'Of Good Works' that the ability of Christians to do good works 'is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ' (XVI.3). Not that believers are to be negligent in their duty on that account ('as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit') but rather to stir up the gift within them.

Reformed spirituality wants to move beyond mere experience to that which is the fruit and consequence of an experience of the Holy Spirit in human life. While the modern world (and the church too) is happy with the experience, the spirituality of the Confession of Faith wants to go further, and subject the experience to a more public test.

The same sentiment appears in the chapter 'Of the Law of God', where the Confession of Faith discusses the threefold use of the law in its political dimension, its spiritual dimension and its dimension as a continued rule of life for the believer. The chapter ends with this statement: 'the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully which the will of God revealed in the law requireth to be done' (XIX.7).

At this point much modern evangelicalism will part company with Reformed theology, yet the proof-texts cited for these doctrines are clear. Both Ezekiel and Jeremiah prophesied that the new covenant would involve walking in God's statutes. So Reformed spirituality means that the Holy Spirit enables me cheerfully to do that which the law of God requires. It's a brilliant insight.

Finally I could cite the statement of the chapter 'Of the Sacraments'. Interestingly, sacramental theology has benefitted from the new emphasis on experience; what could be more moving, introspective and emotionally charged than eating bread in silent contemplation?

But the Confession is careful to state that 'the grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments, rightly used, is not conferred by any power in them; neither doth the efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of him that doth administer it, but upon the work of the Spirit, and the word of institution' (XXVII.3).

In other words, to benefit from the sacrament is to look beyond the sign to the thing signified; and that requires a ministry of the Holy Spirit, and a genuine spiritual experience which is not content merely to participate.

It is a travesty to charge Calvinism with defaulting either on a theology of the Holy Spirit or on a genuine spirituality. Indeed, in our feel-good age, it is only a spirituality rooted in the text of Scripture and focussed on Jesus Christ that is worthy of the name.

iaind@backfreechurch.co.uk