Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology
254
Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology
254Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
For many today, John Calvin is best known as an austere, strictly intellectual teacher of Protestant doctrine. But Matthew Myer Boulton reads him very differently, arguing that for Calvin, Christian theology is properly conceived and articulated primarily for the sake of everyday, practical formation through the church's treasury of spiritual disciplines.
Although Calvin famously opposed the cloister, Boulton shows that his purpose was not the eradication but rather the democratization of spiritual disciplines often associated with monasticism. Ordinary disciples, too, Calvin insisted, should embrace such formative practices as close scriptural study, daily prayer and worship, regular Psalm singing, and frequent celebration of the Lord's Supper. This deeply formational approach to Christian doctrine provides a fruitful template for Protestant theology today — and tomorrow.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802865649 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2011 |
| Pages: | 254 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
LIFE IN GOD
John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant TheologyBy Matthew Myer Boulton
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2011 Matthew Myer BoultonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6564-9
Chapter One
The City a Desert
On a late summer day in Geneva, 1535, a violent mob stormed the Convent of St. Clare. As one sister later described it in her polemic memoir, the intruders numbered well over one hundred men, wielding "arms and weapons and all kinds of swords and dreadful instruments." Outbreaks of iconoclastic violence were on the rise in the city, and so the nuns had already removed and hidden the most precious "objects of piety" the mob had come to destroy. But the wild-eyed throng, not to be denied, forced the doorman to lead them to the secret cache, and once there, they set about their brutal work. "Like enraged wolves," the sister wrote, "they destroyed those fine images with great axes and hammers, especially going after the blessed crucifix, which was wonderfully handsome, and the image of Our Lady." As the hammers fell, the women withdrew to the chapel, "cried out for mercy without ceasing, and a terrible cry could be heard faraway; the whole convent resonated with the violence."
Less than a week later, the Poor Clares abandoned Geneva for good, and the city council took possession of the convent, eventually converting it to a hospital. That same month, the council seized all other church property within and around the city walls, and by the spring of 1536, Geneva had formally declared itself an "evangelical" stronghold. Priests and monastics converted, or fled. The coins minted that year in Geneva bore a new motto, a slogan that would soon be come a rallying cry for sixteenth-century reformers across western Europe: post tenebras lux, "after darkness, light."
The Rule of Life
And so when the young French lawyer and theologian John Calvin first set foot in the city, just three months after the council's declaration, the tides of reform had already turned against monasteries and monastic life — and not only in Geneva. That very year, five hundred miles to the north and west, the English Parliament authorized Henry VIII to disband hundreds of monasteries across England, Ireland, and Wales, confiscating fantastic amounts of land and treasure for the royal coffers. Analogous precedents for these maneuvers, each driven by its own mixture of motives, had recently appeared in Denmark, Sweden, and the Swiss city-states. For their part, reform-minded theologians took aim at monasticism in sermons, songs, pamphlets, broadsheets, and books, including tracts by Martin Luther, the audacious Augustinian monk who denounced monastic vows as unscriptural and unchristian. 3 It comes as no surprise, then, that Calvin, too, over more than twenty years of teaching, preaching, and writing in Geneva, developed his own critique of monasticism in what would become his signature theological work, Institutio Christianae Religionis.
What may come as a surprise, however, is the basis of Calvin's critique in the first place. Put briefly, in the Institutio Calvin grounds his quarrel with monasticism — in an endorsement of monasticism. That is, his argument hinges on a contrast between contemporary and ancient forms of monastic life, and a close reading of his case illuminates not only his views on the cloister, but also his overall vision of Christian discipleship as an immersive path of practical formation. For Calvin, monastics are mistaken only insofar as they make elite, difficult, and rare what should be ordinary, accessible, and common in Christian communities: namely, whole human lives formed in and through the church's distinctive repertoire of disciplines, from singing psalms to daily prayer to communing with Christ at the sacred supper.
Thus Calvin positions himself not only against monasticism as a critic, but also alongside monasticism as a fellow heir to the church's practical treasury. He argues that this inheritance belongs as much to the common laity as to monastics, and that the time has come for the whole church to reclaim what is rightfully hers. In this sense Calvin, too, sought to storm the privileged sanctuaries of late medieval Europe, though in a way quite different from the violent invasion of the Convent of St. Clare. For while the mob meant to destroy the "objects of piety" they understood as idols, Calvin's principal aim was restorative: he set out to recover the objects and practices of piety he understood as fit not for an exceptional class, but for the whole people of God without exception. For Calvin, even ordinary Christian life is a disciplined life, a life of discipleship formed in and through a particular suite of disciplines, and so at every turn in his theological and reforming work, Calvin sought to serve the church's broad program of practical formation.
On one hand, in the Institutio Calvin casts his monastic contemporaries as models of corruption, men "polluted by all sorts of foul vices; nowhere do factions, hatreds, party zeal, and intrigue burn more fiercely." Moreover, he diagnoses the ailment as finally institutional, not merely personal: "I have spoken rather of monasticism than of monks, and noted not those faults which inhere in the life of a few, but those which cannot be separated from the order of living itself" (ICR 4.13.15). But on the other hand, at the same time, Calvin frames his critique by way of a fundamental contrast: on one side, the "present-day monasticism" he condemns, and on the other, what he calls the "holy and lawful monasticism" of an earlier age. Thus with every blow Calvin strikes against the corrupted descendant, he thereby commends the venerable ancestor. For in the days of Augustine, Calvin contends, "a far different mode of living once prevailed in monasteries," and this mode of living had at least two advantages (4.12.8, 10).
First, ancient monasteries were strongholds of spiritual "severity" and "discipline." "They slept on the ground," Calvin writes, "their drink was water; their food bread, vegetables, and roots," and their time was spent (here Calvin quotes Augustine directly) "'together, living in prayers, readings, and discussions.... Brotherly love especially is kept: diet, speech, clothing, countenance — all are conformed to it'" (4.13.8, 9). But these living conditions and everyday practices were not ends in themselves, but rather, formative "preliminaries" by which the monks "prepared themselves for greater tasks": namely, the pastoral and episcopal leadership of the church. In other words, "the monastic colleges were, so to speak, seminaries of the ecclesiastical order," preparing and forming such "great and outstanding men" as "Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, and Chrysostom" for the pastorate or bishopric, precisely so "they might be fitter and better trained to undertake so great an office." Thus for Calvin, ancient monastic life was commendable first of all because it took place for the sake of the fitness and formation of church leadership, and in that sense for the sake of the church universal (4.13.8).
The second advantage follows from the first, since as Calvin conceives it, a shepherd's practical piety should never surpass the capacities of his flock. "Augustine requires a kind of monasticism," he writes, "which is but an exercise and aid to those duties of piety enjoined upon all Christians" (4.13.10). Far from a special, independent class of Christian virtuosos, these monks were taught to serve so that "by their example they may shed a light" for other Christians in their own education and development, the better to help "preserve the unity of the church" (4.13.10). Accordingly, an ancient monk's piety was typical and accessible, not extraordinary. If he spent his time "living in prayers, readings, and discussions," if he let neighborly love form even his "diet, speech, clothing, countenance," he merely modeled the kind of training and discipleship to which "all Christians" are called.
From this angle, then, Calvin commends ancient monastic life not only because it helped form church leaders, but also because it was consistent with Christian formation generally, prescribing, developing, and demonstrating the very "duties of piety" that apply to every disciple, bar none. In this way, Calvin extols ancient monasticism for what he takes to be its service to the wider church on the one hand, and its spiritual accessibility on the other. And precisely here, in clear view of this allegedly "holy and lawful monasticism" of Augustine and Gregory and Basil and Chrysostom, Calvin delivers his critique of "present-day" monastic life.
Rather than building up spiritually fit church leaders, Calvin contends, "our monks" orchestrate "a conspiracy by which a few men, bound together among themselves, are separated from the whole body of the church." And likewise, rather than building up exemplary disciples for "all Christians" to imitate, "our monks are not content with that piety to which Christ enjoins his followers to attend with unremitting zeal. Instead, they dream up some new sort of piety to meditate upon in order to become more perfect than all other people." Thus Calvin charges contemporary monasticism with separatism on the one hand and elitism on the other — contrasting perfectly with the sup posed ecclesial service and spiritual accessibility of its ancient counterpart (4.13.10).
On both counts, then, Calvin's fundamental concern is to reject what he calls "double Christianity," conceived either as two separate camps side by side or as two separate ranks in a hierarchy of discipleship. By setting up a "private altar," he argues, sixteenth-century monastic communities "have both excommunicated themselves from the whole body of the church and despised the ordinary ministry," thus creating two camps or kinds of Christianity. And by inventing and vowing to carry out a "new sort of piety," these monks claim that "a more perfect rule of life can be devised than the common one committed by God to the whole church," thus creating a two-tiered ladder of Christian perfection (4.13.10, 12).
Against all this, Calvin sets not a vision of a world without monasticism, but rather an appreciative portrait of the ancient monastic approach. In those days, he writes, there was but one "rule of life" common to all Christians, one set of "duties of piety," and monasteries served as laboratories of "exercise and aid" for learning how to follow that rule and discharge those duties, all in the service of forming the piety of the wider church. As long as monks remained what Calvin calls "part of the people," the monastic office was an honorable one, and the monastery was a useful showcase and training ground for practical formation.
The historical accuracy of Calvin's portrait of ancient monasticism is, for my purposes here, beside the point. The point is this: Calvin's critique of sixteenth-century monasticism is taken up from a position sympathetic to what he takes to be the original, authentic monastic mission, namely, to manifest and facilitate the practical formation of individual disciples and, crucially, the church as a whole. In a characteristic move, Calvin arraigns the corruption of the present by commending the allegedly sound, exemplary, bygone practices of the past.
And so we might expect him to complete this familiar rhetorical pattern with a call for restoration. That is, in a typical Protestant polemic, comparing the present unfavorably with the "holy and lawful" past is prologue to an appeal for a contemporary renewal, a modern recovery of the older, "original," bona fide way of life. But Calvin issues no such appeal. He does not recommend a return to the fourth-century monastic model. For as it turns out, in one key respect, his critique applies even to the days of Augustine: "I grant that they were not superstitious in the outward exercise of a quite rigid discipline, yet I say that they were not without immoderate affectation and perverse zeal. It was a beautiful thing to forsake all their possessions and be without earthly care. But God prefers devoted care in ruling a household, where the devout householder, clear and free of all greed, ambition, and other lusts of the flesh, keeps before him the purpose of serving God in a definite calling" (4.13.16, emphasis added). Ancient monasticism may have been a commendable, "beautiful thing," but something else is more beautiful still — and so God "prefers" it. Without withdrawing his praise for the alleged ecclesial service and spiritual accessibility of ancient monasticism, and in fact extending the logic underpinning this praise, Calvin argues that God prefers the "devoted care" of a householder managing his possessions to that of a monk who has forsaken his. For while both may be "devout" — that is, suitably disciplined and therefore "free of all greed, ambition, and other lusts of the flesh" — the householder's devotion is properly tempered and formed, neither "immoderate" nor "perverse." That is, the devout householder "keeps before him the purpose of serving God in a definite calling," and so his life is not set apart such that he may live "without earthly care." On the contrary, his cares are decidedly earthly, and he thereby serves God in heaven through the nit and grit of a particular vocation on earth.
Thus Calvin not only rejects the idea that cloistered life "is the best way of all to attain perfection" such that "all other callings of God are regarded as unworthy by comparison." He also maintains that these "other callings of God" are actually preferable to the cloister as venues for Christian formation. In this way, like so many sixteenth-century reformers, Calvin seeks to overturn some long-standing tables of vocational prestige — and to do so, he mounts arguments on both scriptural and moral grounds (4.13.11).
First, since on his reading of Scripture many "other callings" are mentioned and approved "by God's own testimony," and the call to the cloister is not, Calvin concludes that these "other callings" are in fact the higher ones. "I should like to ask [the present-day monks]," he writes, "why they dignify their order alone with the title of perfection, and take the same title away from all God's callings," particularly since "their order" is "an institution nowhere approved by even one syllable" of Holy Writ. Calvin stops short of disputing the monks' claim to being on a path of "acquiring perfection"; his point is that they have no right to claim this title for themselves alone, since the status applies to "all God's callings." As we shall see, this expansive, relatively democratizing logic is a key signature of Calvin's approach. But at the same time, by invoking the divine "testimony" of Scripture, Calvin lays the standard Protestant groundwork for nevertheless discrediting the supposed call to the cloister (4.13.11).
Second, now arguing on broadly moral grounds, Calvin contends that a formational path lived in and through the world of "earthly care" is more in keeping with Christian humility, philanthropy, and responsibility: "It is not the part of Christian meekness, as if in hatred of the human race, to flee to the desert and the wilderness and at the same time to forsake those duties which the Lord has especially commanded." Calvin leaves these special commands unspecified, but for him they presumably run the scriptural gamut from Genesis ("be fruitful and multiply") to the Decalogue ("honor your father and mother") to any number of works of mercy ("care for the widow and the orphan"). In a word, Calvin indicts the ancient monks for being overzealous, manifesting an "immoderate affectation and perverse zeal" that in practice cut them off from a range of Christian virtues and obligations. And accordingly, in direct contrast to such intemperance, Calvin insists that Christian "meekness" and love for humanity are better incarnated in the ordinary spheres of household and city than in the extraordinary seclusion of the desert (4.13.16).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from LIFE IN GOD by Matthew Myer Boulton Copyright © 2011 by Matthew Myer Boulton. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments....................xINTRODUCTION: The Sacred City....................1
1. The City a Desert....................11
The Rule of Life....................12
Christian Paideia....................22
2. Calvin's Geneva....................29
The Sacred Schoolhouse....................29
Singing the Psalter....................33
Prayer and the Supper....................38
3. Summa Pietatis....................45
Pietas....................46
The Role of the Institutio....................50
Pietatis Doctrina....................53
4. Six Kinds of Knowledge....................61
"The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves"....................63
Intimacy and Speculation....................70
Creator and Redeemer....................76
5. Radiance and Oblivion....................83
Creation....................86
Providence....................88
Oblivion....................91
6. Seeing through Scripture....................96
Scripture and the Spirit....................98
Scripture in the Institutio....................105
7. God with Us....................112
Us without God....................112
The Mediator....................117
In Christ's Image....................128
Flesh and Faith....................131
8. Doxology and Destiny....................138
Humility and Hope....................139
Sheep out of Wolves....................149
A Church beyond Our Ken....................156
9. Prayer and Communion....................166
The Communion of Prayer....................167
The Sacred Supper....................180
10. Reforming Calvin....................191
Quietism....................193
Masochism....................199
Misanthropy....................202
11. Life in God....................210
Calvin's Ideas....................211
Calvin's Approach....................215
Reforming Formation....................222
Reforming Church....................228
Bibliography....................233
Index....................239