Biola University.jpg)
When I first came to seminary, I called myself an Arminian. That wasn’t true, really. The reality was that I just didn’t like people I knew who called themselves Calvinists! I simply knew too many folks who were far too arrogant and far too unconcerned about embracing a life conformed to Jesus, who boasted in doctrinal supremacy under the banner of “Calvinist” but who only had learned second-hand summaries of an overly reductive vision of Reformed thought (I should note that this is not true of many who are Reformed or all who use the term Calvinist, but only that I knew too many who were like this).
And, of course, much of the friction I had with these folks was due to my own arrogance as well.
When I eventually started reading the history of Reformed theology, I fell in love with it and was astonished by what I discovered. It was so rich and refreshing to what I was seeing in those who called themselves Calvinist or Reformed (it also led me to discover a much richer understanding of the term “Reformed”).
As an aside, many of you have asked about Michael Horton’s video on Sola Media about spiritual formation. Mike is a friend of mine, and he has asked me to come on the show and talk with him about spiritual formation as a sort of follow-up. I’ll let you know when that happens and when it is put on air.
In all of this, one weird aspect to my own story, not unlike Richard Lovelace’s, is that I came to Reformed theology through Reformed spirituality. I fell in love with the tradition that refused to bifurcate the theoretical from the spiritual and that adamantly advanced an integrated theological vision rather than merely a speculative theology divorced from a life lived with God.
But one of the biggest differences between what I was hearing by preachers, contemporary writers, and friends who called themselves Calvinists, compared to the Reformed tradition I was reading in the primary sources, was the centrality of love.
I didn’t hear much about love from the Calvinists I knew or the preachers they told me to listen to. I could listen to whole presentations of the Gospel and the work of Christ without ever hearing the word love mentioned.
In contrast, let me suggest that the true heart of Reformed spirituality is love, precisely because the God who stands at the center of all things is the fountain of love.
Calvin writes,
“It is of great importance that we should be told what is necessary for us to know, and what the Lord desires us to contemplate, above and below, on the right hand and on the left, before and behind. The love of Christ is held out to us as the subject which ought to occupy our daily and nightly meditations, and in which we ought to be wholly plunged. He who is in possession of this alone has enough. Beyond it there is nothing solid, nothing useful, - nothing, in short, that is proper or sound. Though you survey the heaven and earth and sea, you will never go beyond this without over-stepping the lawful boundary of wisdom.”
Likewise, Henry Scougal, whose The Life of God in the Soul of Man is one of the great Reformed spiritual classics as well as one of the great fountainheads of Methodist spirituality, devotes much of his work to love (Scougal was also a professor at my alma mater, the University of Aberdeen, and so I’ve long felt a unique kinship with him).
Scougal writes, in a meditation on the love of God, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.”
Love is a kind of through-line in Reformed spirituality. Love is the governing and guiding reality of the Christian life, because God is love, and because, through Christ, we are invited into the love that the Father and Son know eternally (John 17:26). It was because God so loved the world that he sent his Son, and when we are united to him by faith we can rest in the fact that the Spirit pours forth love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5).
Furthermore, as with all things in this life, we weigh the earthly, present and visible things with the heavenly, future and invisible perfection of those things.
Along these lines, Jonathan Edwards can write that the saints in eternity “shall eat and drink abundantly, and swim in the ocean of love, and be eternally swallowed up in the infinitely bright, and infinitely mild and sweet beams of divine love,” and, furthermore, “the soul hereby shall be inflamed with love,” and “...the soul shall, as it were, all dissolve in love in the arms of the glorious Son of God and breath itself wholly in ecstasies of divine love into his bosom...”
The language of being “swallowed up” does not fall victim to our modern worries, as if Edwards believed that God’s self-giving love was somehow in competition with our persons and identity. Rather, as we are swallowed up in God we are most fully ourselves, for the same reason that where the Spirit is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17).
Furthermore, the language of ecstasy can sound odd or troubling to our ears, but ecstasy names the movement of love that draws us out of ourselves (“ecstasy” is about being drawn out of oneself). True love, and more particularly, divine love, so grounds us that we can offer all we have and are back to God. To be with God is to be filled with him to overflowing.
In explaining this, Scougal waxes similarly, writing, “What an infinite pleasure it must be, as it were, to lose ourselves in Him, and, being swallowed up in the overcoming sense of His goodness, to offer ourselves a living sacrifice, always ascending unto Him in flames of love!”
This is why the Christian longs to dwell with God, as Edwards writes, “to be ravished with his love, favour, delight, forever.”
But this might not be what you’ve heard about these stuffy Reformed scholars. Maybe you hear about the Puritans and all that comes to mind are uptight people who were fixated on rules. Comically, Edwards has similar worries! “We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood,” Edwards writes, “as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely.” (WJE 10:429)
For Edwards, the love of God ravishes, in that it so fully captivates the human person that they are reordered entirely around this love. This love becomes both the foundation and end; one is displaced from the center of their lives, calling out, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me” (Gal. 2:20).
While humans have always been captivated by love, and seduced by worldly loves, the love of God is of a different order. Edwards proclaims, “The love of so glorious a Being is infinitely valuable, and the discoveries of it are capable of ravishing the soul above all other loves.”
Thomas Watson, in his book The Godly Man’s Picture: Drawn with a Scripture Pencil (a truly great title), which is a wonderful little meditation on the love of God in the heart, explains, “A holy heart is the garden where God plants the flower of his love. God’s love to his people is an ancient love, it dates from eternity (Eph. 1:4). He loves them with a choice, distinguishing love; they are the ‘early beloved of his soul’ (Jer. 12:7).”
As if this picture were not profound enough, Watson continues, “He loves the godly as he loves Christ (John 17:26). It is the same love in kind, though not in degree. Here the saints merely sip God’s love; in heaven they shall drink of rivers of pleasure (Psa. 36:8).” Later, Watson writes, “You who are enriched with the treasures of godliness, bless God for it. This flower does not grow in nature’s garden.”
In my Easter sermon this year, I noticed that the texts I was choosing tended to have the phrase “much more” in them. I was trying to articulate the fullness of the Gospel beyond what we normally look for or embrace. In a similar way, these writers are all saying, “You think you’ve understood the love of God?! How much more is his love beyond anything you’ve fathomed?!”
Those of you who know my work will know that I find Edwards particularly insightful here. The image of this reciprocating love, poured into our hearts by the Spirit (Rom. 5:5) that fills us to overflowing, is writ large by Edwards concerning the eternal city of love. Heaven is a world of love, declares Edwards, because the God of love stands at the center:
“All shall stand about the God of glory, the fountain of love, as it were opening their bosoms to be filled with those effusions of love which are poured forth from thence, as the flowers on the earth in a pleasant spring day open their bosoms to the sun to be filled with his warmth and light, and to flourish in beauty and fragrancy by his rays. Every saint is as a flower in the garden of God, and holy love is the fragrancy and sweet odor which they all send forth, and with which they fill that paradise. Every saint there is as a note in a concert of music which sweetly harmonizes with every other note, and all together employed wholly in praising God and the Lamb; and so all helping one another to their utmost to express their love of the whole society to the glorious Father and Head of it, and [[to pour back]] love into the fountain of love, whence they are supplied and filled with love and with glory.”
On this through line of the Reformed spiritual tradition, spanning generations of Reformed authors, we discover the call that love should govern and guide our meditations and our contemplations. We are formed by beholding and sharing in God’s glory, and therefore we should spend our time in meditation and contemplation of the God who is infinitely glorious in his love.
For those who have read When God Seems Distant, you may remember how we reframed what spiritual practices are around the idea of being transformed in love, by love, and for love. This vision (in chapter 9) stems from this tradition that makes love the defining feature of God’s recharacterization of our souls.
