A Heart Aflame for God E-Book

Matthew C. Bingham

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 589

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

How 21st-Century Evangelicals Can Pursue Spiritual Growth through Early Modern Puritan Piety "Keep your heart" (Proverbs 4:23). "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18). Scripture beckons Christians toward obedience and maturity, but many modern approaches to spiritual formation are less than biblical. In A Heart Aflame for God, Matthew C. Bingham studies God-ordained spiritual practices modeled by the 16th- and 17th-century Reformers. Primarily drawing from Puritan tradition, Bingham shows readers how to balance belief in salvation through faith with a responsibility for one's personal spiritual growth. He studies biblical practices—including meditation, prayer, and self-examination—from a Protestant perspective. Blending historical analysis and practical application, this edifying study cultivates a greater understanding of Reformed theology and an ever-growing relationship with God.  - Puritan Tradition for Modern Evangelicals: Shows readers how classic Protestant traditions—including prayer, meditation, and appreciation for the natural world—steer wayward hearts toward Christ - Rich Reformed Perspective: Presents spiritual formation practices that are consistent with the 5 solas of the Protestant Reformation - Intermediate-Level Study: Written for theological students, pastors, and Christians interested in early modern Reformed theologians

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“A Heart Aflame for God is one of the most edifying and spiritually insightful books I have ever read. While confessional Protestants often look to other traditions for guidance in spiritual formation, Matthew Bingham is like a miner uncovering the rich, life-giving treasures of the Reformed tradition. I wish I could travel back in time and hand this book to my younger self. Highly recommended!”

Hans Madueme, Professor of Theological Studies, Covenant College

“In our current historical moment, rife as it is with digital noise, doctrinal shallowness, and irreverent worship, some professing Christians have moved away from the biblical faith in search of ostensibly soul-satisfying alternatives. Turning to denominations like Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, many crave the stillness, theological intricacy, and spiritual gravitas that are promised by those traditions but that, when weighed in the balances, are found wanting. Matthew Bingham returns to the old paths by examining the sound doctrine and experiential piety of the Reformed tradition, a faith whose theologians of previous centuries—whether the English Puritans, the Dutch Nadere Reformatie divines, or the Old Princeton theologians—were masters of the craft of vibrant spiritual formation. Bingham examines how the Reformed tradition promotes spiritual growth through the disciplines of Scripture reading, meditation, and prayer, as well as through self-examination, worship, and Christian fellowship. This is a very helpful exposition and affirmation of Reformed experiential piety.”

Joel R. Beeke, Chancellor and Professor of Homiletics and Systematic Theology, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary; Pastor, Heritage Reformed Congregation, Grand Rapids, Michigan

“In a time when many evangelicals are experiencing great spiritual anxiety and discontentment, Matthew Bingham retrieves a distinctively Reformed account of spiritual formation. This book is like food in a time of hunger. Many are leaving evangelicalism in search of a greater depth of spiritual practice. Bingham helps us see how this need can be met within the resources of our own tradition. Drawing especially from the Puritans, he builds a robust theology of prayer, Scripture reading, meditation, self-examination, relationship, and even nature and the human body. Rich in both theology and spiritual insight, A Heart Aflame for God will serve and edify readers at multiple levels. Highly recommended!”

Gavin Ortlund, President, Truth Unites; Theologian in Residence, Immanuel Church, Nashville, Tennessee

“Matthew Bingham calls us to leave the experiential shallows of modern evangelicalism and to plunge into the deeper understanding of Christian formation that was developed by the Reformers and Puritans from their sustained reflection on the word and works of God. This is an incredibly important new book—a word in season to those who are weary.”

Crawford Gribben, Professor of History, Queen’s University Belfast; author, An Introduction to John Owen

“This book on spiritual formation by Matthew Bingham is just the tonic for this age, in part because it relies on many ‘ages’ throughout church history. To address contemporary concerns, while also offering a positive approach to how to live as a Christian, Bingham has marshaled some of the best in this delightful treatise. A Reformed approach to living a spiritual life is not an oxymoron but rather part and parcel of how Reformed theologians, including many of the illustrious Puritan divines, did theology. This is a modern ‘Puritan’ work addressing a present need in the hopes that evangelicals will embrace the tools readily available to them to make them mature, deep-thinking Christians.”

Mark Jones, Senior Minister, Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, British Columbia

“This work stands as a guiding light, showing us that a heart aflame for God can thrive within a Reformed understanding of spiritual formation. I highly recommend Matthew Bingham’s insightful and accessible book to anyone yearning for a stronger connection to the Reformed faith and a deeper walk with God. Protestant readers will discover that the resources for profound spiritual growth can be found within their tradition.”

Karin Spiecker Stetina, Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University

“One of the major effects for evangelical Christians living in the modern West with its ahistorical ethos and mentalité is an ignorance of the spiritual riches of their tradition. Matthew Bingham’s work on spiritual formation and what have traditionally been called the means of grace is a fabulous remedy for this dire situation. Drawing especially on the Puritan writings of our evangelical heritage (he even includes quotes from that relatively unknown star of the Puritan firmament Brilliana Harley!), Bingham charts a way for modern Christians to benefit from that notable era of spiritual wisdom and so walk worthy of their calling. It is a book, I trust, that will bring much good to God’s people and glory to the God of the Puritans!”

Michael A. G. Haykin, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Matthew Bingham helps the sons and daughters of the Reformation feel no shame for the origin story of their piety. He displays the rich fare of spiritual formation passed down to us by the Reformers, even as he strongly resists the modern trend of adopting spiritual and mystical practices from other traditions. This book outlines the contours of a truly healthy spirituality that is inseparably connected to healthy doctrine—with the ‘Reformation triangle’ at its foundation and with Christ at its center.”

A. Craig Troxel, Robert G. den Dulk Professor of Practical Theology, Westminster Seminary California; author, With All Your Heart

“Oh to have ‘great souls’ like the early modern saints. Our inner persons today have shriveled so small. We are fragile and weak of heart. We are in desperate need of enlarged, deepened, conditioned souls that glory in real glories, fear real threats, and keep Godward balance in the tides of unbelief, decadence, and trivial distraction. Bingham has collected many Puritan treasures in one chest, arranged them in order, and made them accessible for use today. The health of your soul in the late modern world—and perhaps, through you, the healing of others—may await a slow, attentive engagement with this book. The more I read, the better it got. I’ve already made plans to reread this book.”

David Mathis, Senior Teacher and Executive Editor, Desiring God; Pastor, Cities Church, Saint Paul, Minnesota; author, Habits of Grace

“In Galatians 4:19, the apostle Paul expressed his longing to see that ‘Christ is formed’ in believers. From this verse, the term spiritual formation has arisen to describe the biblical process of molding the mind, heart, and life of a Christian into conformity to Christ. Books related to this theme have appeared for as long as Christian books have been written, but I cannot recommend many of them because they rely heavily on writers who hold to a different gospel than the one taught in Scripture. They may say wonderful things about how a Christian should pray, for example, but behind those commendations is false teaching about how a person becomes a Christian in the first place. I cannot encourage the reading of some books on the subject because they advocate spiritual formation by means of practices not found in Scripture at all. But A Heart Aflame for God rightly contends for a sola Scriptura spirituality. Those unfamiliar with the Reformed tradition on spiritual formation (which seems to be true of some of the bestselling contemporary authors on spiritual formation) will be surprised by the depth and breadth of the riches uncovered by Bingham. He carefully considers the views of other traditions, but he maintains that all true spirituality must be founded on the Bible and the gospel it proclaims. As Jesus prayed, ‘Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth’ (John 17:17).”

Donald S. Whitney, Professor of Biblical Spirituality and John H. Powell Professor of Pastoral Ministry, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; author, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life; Praying the Bible; and Family Worship

A Heart Aflame for God

A Heart Aflame for God

A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation

Matthew Bingham

A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation

© 2025 by Matthew C. Bingham

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Chapter 9 is a revised version of Matthew C. Bingham, “Brains, Bodies, and the Task of Discipleship: Re-aligning Anthropology and Ministry,” Themelios 46, no. 1 (2021): 37–54. Used by permission of the publisher.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2025

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked GNV are from the Geneva Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-9262-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-9264-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-9263-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bingham, Matthew C., 1983– author.

Title: A heart aflame for God : a reformed approach to spiritual formation / Matthew Bingham.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2025. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024022134 (print) | LCCN 2024022135 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433592621 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781433592638 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433592645 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Reformed Church. | Christian life.

Classification: LCC BX9422.3 .B544 2025 (print) | LCC BX9422.3 (ebook) | DDC 248.088/2842—dc23/eng/20241207

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024022134

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024022135

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2025-03-03 11:08:03 AM

For Amelia, John, James, and David—

olive shoots around the table,

who I pray will grow up well (Ps. 128:3).

Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

Part 1: Foundations

1  Spiritual Formation

A Simple Concept with a Complicated History

2  Spiritual Formation in a Reformation Key

Five Solas for Head and Heart

Part 2: The Reformation Triangle

3  Scripture

Hearing from God

4  Meditation

Reflecting on God

5  Prayer

Responding to God

Part 3: Widening Our Scope

6  Self-Examination

Looking Inward

7  The Natural World

Looking Outward

8  Christian Relationships

Looking to One Another

Part 4: Challenges

9  What about the Body?

Connecting the Spiritual and the Physical

10  When Things Go Wrong

Wrestling with Spiritual Weakness

  Epilogue

Appendix: A Brief Note on Spiritual Formation, Individualism, and the Church

  General Index

  Scripture Index

Acknowledgments

It is a privilege to thank those who helped shape this book and bring it to fruition. First and foremost, I am grateful to all my students at Oak Hill College, especially those who took my elective courses on spiritual formation and Puritanism. Much of the material developed in this book began in those class sessions, and both the content and form of what follows has been sharpened and strengthened by the many thoughtful comments and questions shared in the classroom. Likewise, I owe a huge debt to my colleagues at Oak Hill and Phoenix Seminary, whose support and interest has been a wonderful source of encouragement. In particular, I am grateful to Matthew Sleeman, a mentor, prayer partner, and friend who championed this project from the beginning and always had time for a chat along the way.

In addition, I am indebted to the entire team at Crossway, all of whom have been a joy to work with. In this connection, I must extend a special word of appreciation to David Barshinger, whose keen editorial sensibility has considerably strengthened this book.

I am grateful to Crawford Gribben for continuing to be a constant source of wisdom and good advice. I owe many thanks to my good friends in ministry Reagan Marsh and Joshua DeLong, who read portions of the manuscript and offered tremendously helpful feedback. And I am so thankful to Gareth Burke, who models godliness and faithfulness in all that he does and whom I will always consider a mentor and friend. I am also blessed to have Christian parents and parents-in-law—Gordon, Lisa, Gary, and Nancy—all four of whom model faithfulness, generosity, and love.

This book could never have happened without the support of my beautiful wife, Shelley. Walking alongside me at every stage of the writing process, she has provided encouragement and enthusiasm, reading the manuscript from start to finish and improving it at every turn. She is the love of my life and my best critic!

Finally, I am thankful for my children—Amelia, John, James, and David—who bring me joy each day and to whom this book is dedicated.

Introduction

You can learn a lot about the state of twenty-first-century evangelicalism by talking to those who leave it. This isn’t always true, of course—some ex-evangelicals leave with such a bitter taste that their subsequent commentary feels more vindictive than insightful—but many offer useful lessons to those of us who remain within the fold.

Consider, for example, the case of Joel and Stephanie Dunn, a married couple who left their Southern Baptist roots to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. As described in an article in the Christian Post, the Dunns were drawn to Orthodoxy because they believed it offered spiritual resources that were absent from the evangelical churches they were familiar with. After Joel came “face-to-face” with a sense of his own “depravity,” he arrived at the conclusion that in his Baptist tradition, “there was nothing . . . to help [him] through it other than” advice to “pray harder and have faith.” Convinced that “there’s got to be more than that,” the Dunns went looking for a church that would provide “more tools” to help them on their Christian journey. The article’s author writes, “The Orthodox Church had the tools, they soon discovered, and not only were they helpful resources but they helped create saints.”1 In converting from evangelicalism to Eastern Orthodoxy, the Dunns were not alone. A May 2023 piece in the Wall Street Journal reported on a surge of new converts swelling the ranks of Orthodox parishes, many coming from evangelical backgrounds.2 What is it exactly that draws them? At least in the case of Joel and Stephanie Dunn, it seems that what they were really after was spiritual formation.

To be perfectly honest, I can relate to their feelings. I grew up in a vibrant evangelical church. The people in the pews were almost all friendly, well meaning, and generous. My pastors were passionate about ministry and genuinely concerned for their congregations. We had no shortage of events on the church calendar; from weekly youth group and vacation Bible school to short-term summer missions trips, my days and nights were full of well-run, thoughtfully constructed activities. If there was any scandal or impropriety in our church, I didn’t know about it. In other words, I enjoyed a happy evangelical upbringing for which I am genuinely thankful to God.

And yet for all this exposure to a seemingly healthy contemporary evangelical culture, something was missing from my Christian life, or at least underdeveloped. For a long time, I felt confused by what should be, from one angle, the most basic aspect of my faith: my own spiritual formation. Though I remember a desire to deepen my spiritual life in theory, I often felt confused about how exactly to pursue such an aim in practice. Beyond a simple commitment to some sort of daily “quiet time,” I would have struggled to articulate what it actually might look like to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18) and to “work out [my] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

I suspect that I was not alone in this feeling. I have spoken to many Christians with a background like mine who would express a similar sense that the evangelical busyness in which they participated left gaps in their understanding of Christian growth. Some of these people, like Joel and Stephanie Dunn, have left evangelicalism altogether and now claim to have found a more satisfying faith within Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. Others have left not just evangelical Christianity but Christianity full stop. And among those who have remained within the evangelical fold, a lack of clarity about how they ought to pursue the spiritual life is often paired with a troubling openness to spiritual techniques and methods that owe more to nonevangelical, non-Protestant, and even non-Christian traditions than to the Reformation heritage that ostensibly ought to be theirs. This is deeply unfortunate because evangelicalism actually has a rich biblical tradition of spiritual formation, and yet, somehow, it often gets ignored.

To a large extent, the particularities described here reflect a long-standing impulse within evangelical Christianity, namely, a preference for outward expansion and growth at the expense of inward development and depth. Considered on its own terms, of course, this outward impulse points toward something very good: extending and fulfilling Christ’s charge to his first disciples “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Whether it’s George Whitefield (1714–1770) barnstorming up and down the American colonies, Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) charging into the interior of China, or Billy Graham (1918–2018) filling up Madison Square Garden for an evangelistic rally, the picture of evangelicals at their best has typically involved men and women relentlessly pressing onward, seeking the lost wherever they might be found, and advancing the kingdom of God in all directions.

And yet even as we celebrate the positive side, keen observers of evangelical culture, both from within and without, have long sensed that the drive for outward expansion has sometimes seemed to come without any accompanying pursuit of greater depth. The vine has spread with marvelous speed, but the roots below have not always gone very deep. “To put it most simply,” writes historian Mark Noll, “the evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian.” The result of this restless energy, argues Noll, is that evangelical culture “allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment.”3

And though Noll’s concern is largely with “the weaknesses of evangelical intellectual life,” these trends raise larger questions about our more basic theological commitments and spiritual health.4 Richard Lovelace (1931–2020) drew attention to the problem in his 1979 book Dynamics of Spiritual Life, in which he coined the term “sanctification gap” to describe evangelicalism’s “peculiar conspiracy . . . to mislay the Protestant tradition of spiritual growth” in favor of “frantic witnessing activity.” In particular, Lovelace lamented his discovery during seminary that “most Protestants were ignorant of the body of tradition which seemed . . . to be the living heart of the Reformation heritage.”5 Among twenty-first century evangelicals, real progress has been made on this score, thanks in part to Lovelace’s own work. But his criticism struck a chord that still resonates with many today. Commenting on Lovelace’s “sanctification gap,” John Coe and Kyle Strobel note that the “critique remains as accurate now as it did nearly four decades ago.” Moreover, they go on to helpfully observe that despite a growing evangelical interest in spiritual growth, “there has not always been a recovery of a distinctively evangelical understanding of formation.”6 This latter point is a crucial one. As we explore further in chapter 1, the decades since the publication of Lovelace’s book have seen a flood of titles dedicated to spiritual formation, but many of these works do not consistently align their vision of Christian growth with the Reformation heritage evangelicalism arose out of.

The need, then, is not simply to address spiritual growth per se but to do so in a way that takes seriously the foundational Protestant theological commitments that motivated the Reformation in the first place. The purpose of this book is to do just that: to explore and commend a distinctively Reformed Protestant vision of Christian growth for twenty-first-century evangelicals. In so doing, I hope to address not only committed evangelicals desiring deeper roots but also those within evangelical circles who are feeling the pull of nonevangelical traditions. Often, as in the case of Joel and Stephanie Dunn, that pull is predicated less on intellectual agreement and more on the perceived allure of the opportunities for spiritual formation that these other communions offer. Alongside such stories of ordinary people questioning evangelicalism, high-profile converts to Roman Catholicism (e.g., Christian Smith) and Eastern Orthodoxy (e.g., Hank Hanegraaff) serve to highlight and further a growing sense of religious discontent among many. Increasing numbers of Christians reared in evangelical churches are disillusioned and frustrated by a religious culture that, at its worst, can seem superficial, shallow, and almost wholly disconnected from the ancient faith that once inspired men and women to bravely go to the lions. They are seeking a deeper, more serious Christian expression, a quest that often leads to methods and techniques beyond the boundaries of Reformation Protestantism.

A chief goal of the present volume is to speak to what Kenneth Stewart has described as an “evangelical identity crisis” by pointing readers to the rich Reformation heritage that is already theirs.7 While guarding against an uncharitable “anti-Catholicism” or an unattractive and pinched parochialism, the book aims to demonstrate to evangelical readers that the spiritual depth and seriousness they rightly long for can be found without having to look to Rome or Constantinople.

Locating Our Reformation Heritage

If the main burden of this book is to retrieve a Reformed approach to spiritual formation for the benefit of contemporary Christians, then we need to be clear on just what it is we are attempting to retrieve. To that end, we need to plot something of the historical territory—exactly who and what are we talking about? When we refer to “our Reformation heritage,” we are focusing our attention mostly on the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers and their seventeenth-century post-Reformation successors. Within these pages we often use the label “early modern” to refer to this period of history (ca. 1500–1800). Early modern Protestants are our primary focus because it was these men and women who recovered the distinctively word-centered approach to the spiritual life we are concerned with and faithfully preserved, advanced, and elaborated its legacy in subsequent centuries.

And though we sometimes speak more broadly of “Reformation Christianity,” we should note at the outset that our primary touchpoint is the Reformed tradition, which represents one important and distinctive strand within the larger Protestant Reformation. Typically, historians have divided the Protestant Reformation into three such distinctive strands: the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the Radical. The first two, the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, are often grouped together and described as constituting the “magisterial Reformation.” This term is used because both Lutheran and Reformed churches worked in cooperation with the state, enjoying the official sanction of the various “magistrates” under whose protection they operated. This contrasts with the so-called Radical Reformation, a label popularized in 1962 by historian George Huntston Williams and used as a sort of catchall term to describe various Protestants who broke away from Rome but were also at odds with the magisterial Reformers.8

All three of these Reformation expressions rejected the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and all three sought to reform the church in a manner consistent with the principles of sola Scriptura and justification by faith alone.9 For this reason, it is appropriate to group them all under the common banner of the Protestant Reformers, and yet this common identification should not obscure the fact that the three branches have their own distinctive qualities as well.10 Many of these characteristic emphases represent the varying degrees to which the three streams sought to either preserve or reject the medieval Catholic doctrine and religious culture that preceded the Reformation. In key respects, especially on issues relating to liturgy and worship, Lutheranism was the most conservative of the three—in the sense of wishing to “conserve” traditional inherited forms—while the Radical Reformers, as the name suggests, were the most eager to wipe the inherited slate clean and start afresh.11 The Reformed tradition landed somewhere in the middle, happy to retain and preserve a catholic inheritance wherever possible while also looking to boldly follow Scripture even when it led to sharp breaks with the medieval past. And while most of what is said in the present volume would apply to all evangelical Protestants, it is also true that the sources I draw on and some of the distinctive ideas I defend come specifically from the Reformed tradition.

In terms of its starting point, the Reformed tradition began with the Protestant churches of sixteenth-century Switzerland, a group led by men such as Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), who succeeded Zwingli in Zurich, and, of course, the Genevan Reformer John Calvin (1509–1564). Because of Calvin’s international reputation and tremendous literary output, he is sometimes equated with Reformed Protestantism itself, a trend reflected in and bolstered by the use of the term Calvinism. And yet while the Calvinist label is long-standing and widely used, it’s important to recognize that the Reformed tradition extends well beyond the theology and legacy of any one individual, however significant he might be.12 Indeed, while originating in Switzerland with Zwingli as “the father of Reformed Protestantism,” this particular flavor of Christianity quickly spread throughout France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, England, Scotland, Ireland, and eventually North America.13

And as the tradition spread geographically, it also became increasingly varied theologically, admitting greater variation in its approach to subjects like church government, the sacraments, the proper role of the civil magistrate, and the precise relationship between the biblical covenants, all while retaining an identifiable core that would continue to differentiate Reformed Protestantism from its alternatives. Through the production of confessional documents like the Belgic Confession (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Westminster Confession (1646), and the Second London Baptist Confession (1677/1689), the substance of the Reformed tradition was codified in forms that still guide churches around the world right up to the present day.14 And though these confessional statements do not agree in every detail, they are all connected by common themes and emphases and a distinctive doctrinal consensus on key issues. As Paul Nimmo and David Fergusson explain, across its various representative texts, “the Reformed tradition sets forth a particular agenda of theological discourse in a remarkably symphonic way” and is marked by “an identifiable set of theological instincts, of doctrinal impulses—a certain Christian sensibility.”15

And while Protestant evangelicals today express a wide range of opinions regarding the Reformed tradition, all of us are indebted to it whether we continue to identify with it or not. “From one point of view,” writes Sinclair Ferguson, “most evangelical theology in the English-speaking world can be seen as an exposition of, deviation from or reaction to Reformed theology.”16 Of the three major Reformation divisions we discussed earlier, the Reformed stream represents something of a majority report among those who would go on later to identify with the evangelical movement. This analysis applies across the spectrum of evangelical theology, but for those of us who identify with one of the Reformed confessions named above or even for those who see themselves fitting in more loosely with a more general “Calvinism,” looking to the Reformed tradition to take our historical bearings makes good sense.17

In exploring how that tradition has approached spiritual formation, I of course take an interest in what John Calvin had to say, but I also draw on a range of other Reformed voices. This includes movements such as the Dutch Nadere Reformatie, or Further Reformation, a movement of renewal within the Netherlands that featured profound explorations of spirituality from writers such as Willem Teellinck (1579–1629), Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635–1711), and Campegius Vitringa (1659–1722).18 It includes soundings from the eighteenth-century North American Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), a pastor-theologian described by one near contemporary as both “the possessor of a mighty mind” and “one of the most holy, humble and heavenly minded men, that the world has seen, since the apostolic age.”19 One particularly rich source for Reformed reflection on spiritual growth comes from the so-called “Old Princeton” theologians, a group including Archibald Alexander (1772–1851), Charles Hodge (1797–1878), and B. B. Warfield (1851–1921). While these individuals have long been recognized for their contributions to Reformed scholarship, in recent years they have been increasingly appreciated for their sustained attention to “the formation of Christian character and the cultivation of ‘vital piety.’”20 But among all the varied pools of Reformed thought from which we draw in the pages that follow, perhaps no single source is as significant as that of the English Puritans.

Defining just what exactly constituted “Puritanism” has been a long-standing source of historical controversy and debate.21 For our purposes here, we can happily understand the English Puritans as a group of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English Protestants who wanted to bring the Church of England into closer alignment with the Reformed tradition that we’ve just been describing.22 Beginning under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) and continuing into the second half of the seventeenth century, these men and women wanted to “purify” the English national church of any remaining inappropriate attachments to Roman Catholicism and thus to reform it “according to the word of God, and the example of the best reformed Churches.”23 In so doing, they developed a religious culture that thrived across English, Scottish, Irish, and North American contexts, producing some of the finest pastor-theologians that the church has yet seen.24 Names like Richard Sibbes (1577–1635), John Owen (1616–1683), Thomas Watson (1620–1686), and John Flavel (ca. 1627–1691) were steady-selling authors in their day and continue to draw appreciative readers in our own.

There are at least four good reasons to give the Puritans the sustained attention they receive in this book. First, for English-speaking Christians looking to retrieve a Reformed Protestant heritage, the Puritans are a logical center point for the simple reason that they were early modern Reformed Christians who spoke and wrote primarily in English, making their enormous body of theological and pastoral writings much more accessible to English speakers today. If one wants to discover what early modern Reformed Christianity looked like in an English-speaking context, then one is necessarily looking to Puritan authors to do so. Indeed, when historian David Hall is asked the question “What was Puritanism?” his answer is “to emphasize everything the movement inherited from the Reformed and how this inheritance was reshaped in Britain and again in early New England—as it were, the Reformed tradition with a Scottish, English, or colonial accent.”25 This linguistic proximity to us means that English-speaking Christians today can enjoy reading Puritan authors in their own words and without the need for translation.

Second, moving beyond this linguistic continuity, a deeper and more substantive thread connects early modern Protestants with contemporary evangelicals. The eighteenth-century Great Awakening that birthed the evangelical movement can be credibly interpreted as taking up the theological and spiritual mantle of the Puritan movement that preceded it. While evangelicalism was shaped by several key streams, none were as singularly significant as Puritanism for influencing its priorities, theological emphases, and inner logic.26Key figures like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764) embodied and advanced the warm Calvinist piety that characterized the Puritans before them. Even John Wesley (1703–1791), whose Arminian theology put him out of step with the aforementioned evangelical leaders, had great admiration for Puritan devotional writing, including many Puritan extracts in his fifty-volume Christian Library, a collection of abridged devotional works intended to help itinerant Methodist ministers.27Such observations lend force to the conclusions of historian John Coffey:

The terms “Puritanism” and “evangelicalism” force us to chop the history of the tradition into separate slices, breaking up the flow of the story. But again and again, one finds that it is simply impossible to account for key features of modern evangelicalism without reference to their roots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.28

For contemporary evangelicals, then, if we want to better understand how our theological forebears understood spiritual formation, we cannot ignore our Puritan inheritance.

Third, the Puritans devoted an incredible amount of time and attention to the subject of spiritual formation. “At its heart,” writes historian Charles Hambrick-Stowe, “Puritanism was a devotional movement, rooted in religious experience.”29 Whether using the language of “keeping the heart” or “practicing piety,” Puritan authors wrote at length on what it means to live and grow as a Christian. “Insofar as Protestantism experienced an era of consolidation in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” writes historian Dewey Wallace, “Puritanism can be seen as an important (perhaps the most important) phase in the development of a distinctly Reformed piety and spirituality.”30 In part, this prodigious output of devotional literature flowed from their reflexive understanding that Christian living and Christian theology were mutually reinforcing and in no way at odds with one another. When the Puritan theologian William Ames (1576–1633) sought to define theology, he drew on precisely this connection, writing that “theology is the doctrine or teaching of living to God.”31 Among other verses quoted in support of this definition, Ames drew his readers’ attention to Acts 5:20, where the angel, after freeing the apostles from prison, instructs them, “Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life.” The apostolic preaching and teaching about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit was not mere information transfer but was instead the God-appointed means through which real spiritual life is conveyed. The Puritans were deeply impressed by this reality, and it led them to produce an enormous body of devotional literature still unrivaled in its quality and fidelity to Scripture.

Finally, the fourth reason for this book to give a disproportionate share of its attention to the Puritans is that Puritan authors wrote with a biblically grounded spiritual intensity that twenty-first-century evangelicals sorely need. Sinclair Ferguson has observed that “for those unacquainted with their writings, a first encounter with Puritan literature can be like entering a world where people seem bigger, wiser, and years older.”32Similarly, J. I. Packer (1926–2020) has argued that when we measure modern evangelicals against the Puritans, we discover, to our shame, that “the Puritans, by contrast, as a body were giants. They were great souls serving a great God.”33 Others have made similar observations, noting a sense of contrast between the depth and power of the Puritan vision and the relative shallowness and weakness of our own. Whatever reasons we might posit for this contrast, it seems that what the Puritans had is what we now desperately require.34

As taste-making voices in pop culture, academia, and the corporate world conspire to make the thought world of Scripture seem ever more implausible, remote, and offensive to contemporary, post-Christian sensibilities, the temptation for evangelical Christians will always be toward a sort of reverse discipleship in which the claims of Christ are accommodated ever more to the claims of culture and in which believers become conformed to this world rather than being “transformed by the renewal of [their] mind” (Rom. 12:2). This is, of course, a perennial temptation in every age, but given that we in the West are now witnessing the collapse of many heretofore foundational societal assumptions about morality, sexuality, and what constitutes real human flourishing, the urgency of our need for countercultural biblical formation feels especially pressing.35

Under such conditions, the Puritans offer real help. Where we doubt and lack confidence in the authority and relevance of Scripture across all areas of life, they speak with vigor and conviction. Where we feel tempted to water down the biblical worldview to bring it more in step with the spirit of the age, they double down. Where we seek refuge in a therapeutic Christianity that appeals to our wounded pride but is ultimately foreign to a scriptural worldview, the Puritans remind us afresh that sin before a holy God is our most serious problem and that Christ and his gospel are our only solution. In a word, the Puritans speak with a freshness and fire that can correct some of the characteristic weaknesses of our present cultural moment, and this makes them most excellent conversation partners as we look to retrieve a Reformed approach to spiritual formation.

The Shape of What Is to Come

Before we go any further, three caveats should be made to set expectations for what this book is and is not. First, in presenting a “Reformed approach” to spiritual formation, this book is not trying to suggest that everything that follows belongs exclusively to the Reformed tradition. Certain ideas, of course, are genuinely definitional for Reformation Christianity and are not easily found elsewhere. And yet all three historic branches of Christianity—Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy—are indeed branches from a common trunk, sharing core concepts, convictions, and sensibilities. At many points throughout this book, then, you will find ideas, practices, and attitudes ascribed to the Reformed tradition that surely admit numerous parallels and continuities with other Christian traditions. The point is not to argue that Reformed spirituality represents a hermetically sealed capsule unto itself but rather to recognize both that there is a characteristic shape to how Reformed Christians have pursued spiritual formation and that its distinctive contours are well worth our patient attention.

Second, the reason this book pays so much attention to Reformed spirituality is because I am persuaded that a Reformed approach to spiritual formation is consistent with what the Bible itself teaches. In focusing on a particular Christian tradition, then, we are not attempting to recommend tradition for tradition’s sake. Reformation-minded Christians want to pursue a faith that takes the Bible alone as the ultimate authority for life and doctrine and do not wish to accept an idea simply because that is what has been taught before. We want to listen to and learn from those who went before us, and we should think long and hard before dismissing theological insights that have nurtured the faith of many, but ultimately, our doctrine must derive from Scripture.

Third, scanning the table of contents, readers might note what could appear to be a glaring omission: there is no chapter on the church. Though I talk about Christian relationships in chapter 8, this is not equivalent to a proper treatment of the local church’s role in our spiritual formation. Note that this omission is intentional and should not be taken to imply that the church is unimportant. In fact, the reality is precisely the opposite: the role of the church and the questions it raises in terms of polity, the sacraments, church discipline, the Lord’s Day, and the role of ordained ministers are, collectively, too deep and too wide for the current volume. Our focus here is on the individual Christian and how he or she ought to think about spiritual formation in light of the wisdom offered by our Reformation forebears. That should in no way diminish the significance of the local church, but it is to signal at the outset that this is not our purpose here. For a bit more on this topic, please see the appendix, “A Brief Note on Spiritual Formation, Individualism, and the Church.”

With those caveats out of the way, let’s briefly preview what’s to come and how it fits together. This book is divided into four main parts. In part 1, “Foundations,” we lay the groundwork for all that follows. If our overarching purpose is to set forth a “Reformed approach” to “spiritual formation,” consider the two chapters of part 1 as an attempt to unpack both of those key terms—chapter 1 considering what we mean by spiritual formation and then chapter 2 looking more specifically at how that concept fits with a commitment to Reformed theology. Part 2 presents what I am calling the “Reformation triangle,” a nexus of Scripture intake, meditation, and prayer that represents the heart of both Reformed piety and this book. In part 3, “Widening Our Scope,” we take the three Reformation triangle disciplines and apply them more broadly to three additional means of grace: self-examination, an appreciation of the natural world, and Christian relationships. Finally, part 4 addresses two challenging topics: the role of the body in spiritual formation and what to do when our pursuit of spiritual formation doesn’t proceed according to plan.

1  Brandon Showalter, “Why This Evangelical Couple Became Eastern Orthodox (Part 1),” Christian Post, October 24, 2020, https://www.christianpost.com/.

2  Francis X. Rocca, “Eastern Orthodoxy Gains New Followers in America,” Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/.

3  Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 13, 12.

4  Noll, Scandal, 13.

5  Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal, expanded ed. (1979; repr., Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), 232, 231.

6  John H. Coe and Kyle C. Strobel, “Introduction: Retrieving the Heart of the Christian Faith,” in Embracing Contemplation: Reclaiming a Christian Spiritual Practice, ed. John H. Coe and Kyle C. Strobel (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 2–3.

7  Kenneth J. Stewart, In Search of Ancient Roots: The Christian Past and the Evangelical Identity Crisis (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017).

8  George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000). The term Radical Reformation is widely used and generally understood. We should, however, mention in passing that the term is also deeply problematic because it lends a sense of unity and coherence to what was, in fact, a widely dispersed and ideologically variegated group of people who often had no real connections to one another. See Kat Hill, “The Power of Names: Radical Identities in the Reformation Era,” in Radicalism and Dissent in the World of Protestant Reform, ed. Bridget Heal and Anorthe Kremers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 53–68.

9  Given the extreme range of individuals comprehended under the label Radical Reformation, one would hesitate to state that absolutely all of them agreed about anything beyond, perhaps, their desire to break from the bishop of Rome. But with that caveat in place, the statement above stands as a useful general observation.

10  One classic work that introduces these distinctions well is Timothy George, The Theology of the Reformers, 25th anniversary ed. (1988; repr., Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013).

11  On Lutheranism as conservative, see Scott H. Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 95–96. On the meaning of radical, the word comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root.” To speak of “radical” change thus suggests change that goes all the way down to the very roots of an issue, the opposite of a change that was merely superficial or surface level.

12  For caution regarding the use of the term Calvinism, see Willem J. van Asselt, “Calvinism as a Problematic Concept in Historiography,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 74, no. 2 (2013): 144–50. Examples of recent scholarly literature making prominent use of the term include Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); D. G. Hart, Calvinism: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013); Crawford Gribben and Graeme Murdock, eds., Cultures of Calvinism in Early Modern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). Bruce Gordon and Carl Trueman strike a helpful balance by acknowledging both that Calvin was not “a singularly authoritative source for all that came after him” and that “he was, and remains, arguably first among equals as a source for Reformed thought.” Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman, “Introduction,” in TheOxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism, ed. Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 2.

13  Peter Opitz, “Huldrych Zwingli,” in The Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology, ed. Paul T. Nimmo and David A. S. Fergusson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 117.

14  For the complete text of these and many other Reformed confessions, see James T. Dennison, Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008–2014). Although in this book we will adopt a relatively broad understanding of what constitutes “the Reformed tradition,” we should note that the question of just how broadly the label should be applied has been a subject of some debate among scholars. For a range of views on this topic, see Matthew C. Bingham, Chris Caughey, R. Scott Clark, Crawford Gribben, and D. G. Hart, On Being Reformed: Debates over a Theological Identity, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

15  Paul T. Nimmo and David A. S. Fergusson, “Introduction,” in Nimmo and Fergusson, Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology, 4–5.

16  Sinclair B. Ferguson, “The Reformed View,” in Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, ed. Donald L. Alexander (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 47.

17  For that more general Calvinism, I’m thinking here of the contemporary religious subculture described in Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008); Flynn Cratty, “The New Calvinism,” in Gordon and Trueman, Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism, 641–55.

18  Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality: A Practical Theological Study from Our Reformed and Puritan Heritage (Darlington, UK: Evangelical Press, 2006), 289–94; Hart, Calvinism, 169–72.

19  Ashbel Green, Discourses Delivered in the College of New Jersey (Philadelphia: E. Littell, 1822), 317. For Edwards and spiritual growth, see John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006); Dane C. Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God, Theologians on the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014); George M. Marsden, An Infinite Fountain of Light: Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2023).

20  James M. Garretson, ed., Princeton and the Work of the Christian Ministry (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2012), 1:xix; see W. Andrew Hoffecker, Piety and the Princeton Theologians: Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, and Benjamin Warfield (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1981); Mark A. Noll, “Charles Hodge as an Expositor of the Spiritual Life,” in Charles Hodge Revisited: A Critical Appraisal of His Life and Work, ed. John W. Stewart and James H. Moorhead (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 181–216; Fred G. Zaspel, Warfield on the Christian Life: Living in Light of the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).

21  Patrick Collinson, “A Comment: Concerning the Name Puritan,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31, no. 4 (1980): 483–88, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900044791; John Coffey, “The Problem of ‘Scottish Puritanism,’ 1590–1638,” in Enforcing Reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700, ed. Elizabethanne Boran and Crawford Gribben (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Ian Hugh Clary, “Hot Protestants: A Taxonomy of English Puritanism,” Puritan Reformed Journal 2, no. 1 (2010): 41–66.

22  For a relatively brief and accessible historical introduction to Puritanism, see Francis J. Bremer, Puritanism: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions 212 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). For a wonderful treatment of Puritanism’s rich spirituality and theology, it is still hard to top J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990). For those looking for something more substantial, the best scholarly survey of Puritanism is David D. Hall, The Puritans: A Transatlantic History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).

23  This phrase comes from the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, a document through which Scottish and English leaders expressed their shared vision for church reform across the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland, “The Solemn League and Covenant (1643),” accessed May 15, 2024, https://www.rpcscotland.org/.

24  Although this book focuses primarily on Puritanism as it developed in England and North America, for Puritanism within Scottish, Welsh, and Irish contexts, see Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Crawford Gribben, “Puritanism in Ireland and Wales,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 159–73.

25  Hall, Puritans, 1–2.

26  Some historians have emphasized the discontinuity between Puritanism and evangelicalism, often stressing the theopolitical nature of Puritanism, pointing out that the Puritan dream was to reform the national church, something that was never on the Great Awakening’s agenda. This is, of course, correct as far as it goes. But when one views Puritanism from the perspective of the broader religious culture it fostered, its continuities with the subsequent evangelical movement become more obvious and compelling. On the case for continuity, see John Coffey, “Puritanism, Evangelicalism, and the Evangelical Protestant Tradition,” in The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (Nottingham, UK: Apollos, 2008), 252–77. On the case for discontinuity between Puritanism and evangelicalism, see Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys, vol. 1 in A History of Evangelicalism: People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 49.

27  It should be noted, though, that Wesley often edited Reformed authors, “chopping out the Calvinist bits.” Hall, Puritans, 347.

28  Coffey, “Evangelical Protestant Tradition,” 273.

29  Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), vii.

30  Dewey D. Wallace Jr., “Introduction,” in The Spirituality of the Later English Puritans: An Anthology, ed. Dewey D. Wallace Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), xii.

31  William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, ed. John Dykstra Eusden (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1997), 77.

32  Sinclair B. Ferguson, Some Pastors and Teachers: Reflecting a Biblical Vision of What Every Minister Is Called to Be (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2017), 167.

33  Packer, Quest for Godliness, 22.

34  Insightful recent attempts to explain the shallowness of modern evangelicalism include Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008); David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).

35  For a powerful analysis of our current cultural moment and how we got here, see Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020).

Part 1

Foundations

1

Spiritual Formation

A Simple Concept with a Complicated History

This book is about living the Christian life. And a basic biblical assumption about the Christian life is that it ought to be a growing life. When the Bible describes walking with God, the expectation is that it will never be a static, settled affair but rather a journey characterized by continual development, increase, and forward movement. The Christian “press[es] on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). Indeed, an expectation of growth is built into the very idea of being “born again” (John 3:3). Birth marks the beginning of new life, which will be characterized by subsequent maturation and growth. Thus we read that having been “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” Christians are like “newborn infants” who “long for the pure spiritual milk” of God’s word “that by it [they] may grow up into salvation” (1 Pet. 1:3; 2:2).

Such growth in Christ is, first and foremost, the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. When the apostle Paul writes that Christians are “being transformed . . . from one degree of glory to another,” he describes the transformation in passive terms, as something that is happening to the people of God as the gracious result of the Spirit’s work in their lives: “For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). And yet while the overarching transformation is God’s work in us and not ultimately our work in ourselves, the Bible also makes clear that growth in the Christian life involves our active, intentional effort and energy. Shortly after Paul attributes our spiritual growth to the Spirit’s work in us, he urges believers, without any embarrassment or sense of tension, to work for spiritual growth themselves: “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).

Clearly, then, the Bible portrays Christian growth as both God’s work and, in some lesser but no less real sense, our work. The question of how these two ideas relate to each other in harmony rather than contradiction has been the subject of much controversy throughout the history of the church, and in chapter 2, we examine more closely how Reformation-minded Protestants have understood that relationship. But for now, let’s simply note that the Bible puts both ideas forward and that in this book we are primarily concerned with the second idea, that believers must be actively involved in Spirit-wrought Christian growth.

In recent decades, the term spiritual formation has been adopted by many as a helpful way of referring to the active role we take in pursuing godliness. As we see in this chapter, the term has a somewhat complicated history and is not without its critics. Yet when properly contextualized, it’s a term that can still helpfully communicate what we are interested in here. What distinguishes our interest in spiritual formation from other books discussing the same is that here we are working to understand what spiritual formation sounds like when set in a distinctly Reformed-evangelical key.1 To do that, as mentioned in the introduction, we are drawing on the work of early modern (ca. 1500–1800) Protestant theologians, pastors, and devotional writers, looking to understand how they brought “holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1) so that we might better do the same today.

What Is Keeping the Heart?

When we think specifically of the active role that believers are called to play in their own spiritual growth, one of the Bible’s loveliest exhortations comes from Proverbs 4:23:

Keep your heart with all vigilance,

for from it flow the springs of life.

This verse was a favorite of the English Puritans, who used it during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to capture and communicate a sense of the Christian’s overarching spiritual task. If you are a Christian, your main business before God and other people is to “keep your heart” in and through all life’s varying circumstances. The Puritan pastor John Flavel expounded this verse at some length in his work A Saint Indeed: or, The Great Work of a Christian, Opened and Pressed (1668). “The greatest difficulty in conversion,” wrote Flavel, “is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion is to keep the heart with God.” He described keeping the heart as “the very pinch and stress of religion” and “the great business of a Christian’s life.”2 Flavel’s writing on this theme is perhaps the best known, but other Puritan authors such as Stephen Marshall (ca.1594–1655) and Richard Alleine (1610–1681) appealed to the verse as well, finding in it a pleasing distillation of the Bible’s approach to godliness and growth.3 Marshall, for example, suggested that “there is not one Pearl of greater price, one sentence of more divine use than” Proverbs 4:23.4 The English Puritan theologian John Owen insisted that “watching or keeping of the heart” is that “which above all keepings we are obliged unto.” Elsewhere, appealing directly to Proverbs 4:23, Owen stressed that among a person’s various “keepings” or concerns—for family, for possessions, for reputation—one must “attend to that of the heart” above all else. “There is no safety without it,” wrote Owen, for if you “save all other things and lose the heart, . . . all is lost.”5

But what exactly does it mean to keep the heart, and why did these early modern pastors find it such a helpful concept? Flavel explained it like this:

To keep the heart . . . is nothing else but this constant care and diligence of such a renewed man, to preserve his soul in that holy frame to which grace hath reduced it [i.e., led it back to], and daily strives to hold it. . . . [T]o keep the heart is carefully to preserve it from sin, which disorders it; and maintain that spiritual and gracious frame, which fits it for a life of communion with God.6

The idea here is that the “renewed man” (i.e., the regenerate or born-again believer) has been powerfully changed by the Holy Spirit in a basic, fundamental way—“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17)—and yet he must now, with God’s help, actively press after a greater, more thorough realization of that new life that is already his—“Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Eph. 4:1).

This involves battling sin, of course, but beyond that, the idea of keeping the heart also suggests a positive cultivation, an active maintenance, and a daily “fight for joy.”7 To keep the heart is not just saying no to sin but actively saying yes to God and the things of God. As a Christian strives to keep her heart “with all vigilance,” she will be aware of a nagging tendency for her heart to drift toward false gods of every description, and her active attention will return again and again to how she might untangle herself from idols and instead, as Flavel put it, “maintain that spiritual and gracious frame, which fits it for a life of communion with God.”8 Thankfully, God gives us means or tools to use in this struggle, and the burden of this book’s later chapters is to examine those as they were taken up by our Reformation-minded fathers and mothers in the faith.

One chief attraction of the phrase keeping the heart is the way it nicely captures the biblical sense that our Christian walk is holistic, encompassing all that we are and all that we do. This is primarily because in the conceptual world of the Bible, “the heart” is an all-encompassing term, and thus to “keep it” implies an all-around self-watch. When David says, “My heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices,” the parallelism of the psalm suggests an equivalence between his “heart” and his “whole being” (Ps. 16:9)—as David’s “heart” goes, so goes David. Likewise, when he laments, "My heart is in anguish within me” (Ps. 55:4), this clearly means that David himself is in anguish. Elsewhere, David’s request to God “Unite my heart to fear your name” (Ps. 86:11–12) suggests a desire to see a comprehensive reordering of his entire person, an integration in which “the lines meet at a point beyond himself, the fear of the Lord.”9 When the Old Testament prophets celebrated the wholesale renewal of the human person that would accompany God’s new covenant, they employed this same heart language, with God promising, “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26; cf. Jer.