The Heart of Being Reformed

Funny thing, how a negative comment can be the best thing to get you thinking.

I'd noticed the other day that my rather-less-than-bestselling book on faith and the multiverse had gotten a couple more ratings on Goodreads.  The overall rating: a "3," which was where it had been for a while.  That had been based on a whopping one reader, who evidently felt sort of meh about it.  Now, two new folks had bothered rating it.

One had given it a five out of five.  Yay!

The other, a one out of five.  Boo!

And of course, the one written review on Goodreads?  It's from the person who hated it.  Figures.  Because those negative things are, of course, where we tend fix our attention.  Why don't they like me?  What's wrong with me?  Snif...

But it's still worth listening, to this human being in their particularity, telling you why they hated it.   In this case, they thought the book was going to put multiverse cosmology in the context of the Bible, but it didn't.  There was no science in it!  There was no bible in it!  Evidently, they didn't bother looking at the footnotes.  Or the..um..text.  Maybe I should have bolded the science parts and put the Bible parts in italics.  Or used #hashtags.  I don't know.  Whichever way, it didn't register.  And the whole book was, as far as they were concerned, just standard-issue namby-pamby liberal hoo-hah, in which every faith is the same.

Sigh.  At least they put in the effort to write something, eh?

What was illuminating, though, was a particular one of their other complaints, the one directed at me personally.  Here I am, a pastor from a reformed tradition.  And though I talk about the Bible, the Bible doesn't seem to be my focus in the book.  Oh, sure, I reference the Genesis stories.  And other Torah.  And the Prophets.  And the Writings.  And yeah, I talk about Jesus, and God, and what the Kingdom of God means, and about the Gospel, with extensive footnotes from the Bible.

But I don't quote scripture in every other sentence I write.  I write and tell stories for those who aren't already steeped in the in-group language of my faith.  You know, like Ol' Uncle Paul did, up on the Areopagus, when he wanted to connect to people.  You know that story, right?  Ahem.

Which, as far as my dear reviewer was concerned, meant that I wasn't really Reformed.  My faith has to be entirely based in the Bible and expressed in its terms, or I am not upholding the purpose of the Reformation.

This is a good and valid thing to raise, because it's an issue worth talking about.  The Reformation, as I understand it, was not primarily about replacing ecclesiastical inerrancy with biblical inerrancy.  That was not its purpose, not if it was a God-breathed movement.

Its purpose was to break the grasp of a system that had been corrupted by human power and human grasping.  How?  By getting those who follow Jesus to realize that they can stand in the same relationship to God that Jesus did.  That's the point of the Spirit, that ephemeral third person of our philosophically complex Trinitarian faith.

In point of fact, the only way one can legitimately read scripture is through the lenses of the Spirit.  Otherwise, you can bend it and shape it and mangle it any way you see fit.  You can focus on irrelevant details.  You can justify your own sociopolitical biases, or your own position in the power structure of a culture.

The texts themselves are not sufficient.  John Calvin himself was clear on this in his Institutes.  Without the Spirit at work in the heart of the believer, those texts have no more authority than the church does when it has God's life and breath crushed out from it.

And as I reflected on that, I found myself grateful to the soul that stirred that reflection.  It's a good reminder of what it means to be reformed, and why being Reformed matters so very much.

Mystery, Scripture, and the Need for Creation's Witness

As I walked through the steamy air of a late summer morning, I had John Calvin on my mind.

Lord help me.

It was a lovely morning, but for the burgeoning heat of what was to be an intensely swampy Southern day.  The sky was thick with clouds, the air was damp with the lingering wetness of evening storms.  Here and there, drops fell from the wet leaves above.

And I was thinking about Calvin.  More specifically, the thing that rose unbidden from my memories as I engaged with creation was a reflection on Calvin's Institutes, and one of the justifications for our Reformed focus on the Scriptures.

There were many reasons the Reformers felt that Christians should focus on the Bible.  First and foremost, being engaged with the texts of Scripture yourself meant that you were connected with them.  At that point in history, most Christians were illiterate, and the church made no meaningful effort to teach the meaning of the faith.  Going directly to the texts was a liberation, and a counterbalance on ecclesiastical overreaches.

But there were other reasons.  Among them was the argument from Creation.  The world around us was God's work, Calvin suggested.

"There are innumerable evidences both in heaven and on earth that declare his wonderful wisdom; not only those more recondite matters for the closer observation of which astronomy, medicine, and all natural science are intended, but also those which thrust themselves upon the sight of even the most untutored and ignorant persons, so that they cannot open their eyes without being compelled to witness them..." (Institutes, I.v.1)

But creation is also wildly and deeply inscrutable, a profound mystery that could confuse and distract us in our smallness.

"It is therefore in vain that so many burning lamps shine for us in the workmanship of the universe to show forth the glory of its Author.  Although they bathe us wholly in their radiance, yet they can of themselves in no ways lead us to the right path.  Surely they struck some sparks, but before their fuller light shines forth these are smothered." (Institutes, I.v.14)

Thus, the need for Scripture, because we're just too stubborn, stupid, and self-absorbed to grasp the unmediated self-expression of the Creator.   We need something more, something to help us integrate that awareness into a cohesive purpose.

And there, the teachings of the Tanakh and the Gospels and Epistles come into play.  They become the lens that helps us focus, to see our purpose clearly.

I get that.  I do.  It's helpful to have a framework.

On the other hand, the same thing that structures our thinking can also be spiritually dangerous, for reasons that are implicit in Calvin's own argumentation.  The Creator of the universe speaks directly through existence, all of which articulates the Divine Intent.

And sure, it tends to blow our minds a bit.

But shouldn't it?  I mean, really.  Looking at the scale and wild complexity of our space-time, and the potentially infinite depth of a yawning multiversal cosmos, we are, as Calvin put it, "whirled and twisted about" by our encounter with a power that so vastly exceeds our own that we can feel utterly lost.  (Institutes I.v.11)

That's certainly the reality encountered by modern science, which--after a brief and heady period when it thought it had it all worked out--is beginning to surface complexities so impossible that they seem profoundly beyond our capacity to grasp.

And that, it strikes me, is a necessary part of a robust and authentic faith.  Sure, we need a framework.  But we also need encounters that are unmediated by that framework, encounters that shatter and reform us.  We need something that tears us from our self-absorption, that gives us a sense of scale and mystery and God's transcendent, numinous power.

Contemplating creation, as it so happens, is really good at that.