.. The
Vitality of
Reformation
Spirituality
.
by
Alister
McGrath
Light
is a symbol of hope. In the late summer of 1914,
it seemed to many Europeans that this light was
about to be extinguished as its greatest nations
stood poised on the brink of war. Viscount Grey,
then British Foreign Secretary, captured this
somber mood as he stood looking out of his
windows upon London’s Whitehall on 3 August
1914, and reflected upon the implications of
that summer’s grim events. The lamps are going
out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit
again in our lifetime. ’ A light flickering,
finally to go out, symbolized the end of an era
of hope as the shadows lengthened before the
darkness.
Precisely the opposite sentiment prevailed four
hundred years earlier. In the year 1535, after
many years of struggle for independence, the
city of Geneva finally gained its freedom from
the powerful Duchy of Savoy. The newly
independent city decided to make a break with
both the political and the religious past, and
align itself with a major new religious force
now sweeping through Europe - the Reformation.
During the following year, John Calvin would
arrive to give Genevan Evangelicalism a
much-needed sense of direction and purpose. As
early as 1535, however, the city council decided
to signal its decision to align itself with the
forces of the future. It chose a motto for the
city which would henceforth resonate throughout
history: post tenebras lux - after the
shadows, light! A new era of hope seemed to have
dawned.
Geneva’s decision to adopt the Reformation
followed a pattern set by the majority of the
great cities of northern Europe. Yet it was more
than a new political order that was dawning in
the cities of Europe at this time; a new
Christian spirituality was being created and
developed, faithful to Scripture and deeply
rooted in the Christian tradition on the one
hand, yet capable of meeting the needs and
opportunities of the modern age and its cities
on the other. It is this spirituality which is
the subject of the present book.
To study the spirituality of the Reformation is
not to luxuriate in romanticism. It is not to
look back in nostalgia, like some old-timer
hankering after the good old days when
everything was better than it is now. It is not
like the sentimental scrutiny of sepia-tinted
photographs, nor the wistful recollection of
days of lost innocence, a longing for a bygone
period and its security. Rather, it is a
hard-headed examination of past events,
individuals and ideas, with a view to exploiting
their present potential. It is to reach into our
Christian past, and recover some of its riches.
It is a critical awareness that not everything
in the Christian present is quite what it could
be, linked with a willingness to consider
alternative possibilities - an attitude with a
distinguished history of use within the
Christian tradition. The Reformation witnessed
the birth of classic Evangelical spirituality;
the modem period needs to know about and benefit
from it.
A Spirituality for the Modem
Age
Historians find it convenient to give names to
periods of history. The Reformation is generally
agreed to stand at the dawn of the ‘early modem
period’. Time and time again, the Reformation
marks the junction of the medieval and modem
eras. It represents a parting of the ways - the
dying world of the Middle Ages, and the emerging
world of modernity. Many religious, social,
political and economic developments which we
take for granted in the modem world owe their
origins to the European Reformation. Equally, of
course, there are many important developments
which took place much later than the sixteenth
century, tracing their origins to the
Enlightenment or the French Revolution. The
Reformation does not anticipate each and every
aspect of modem life.
Nevertheless, there are important and vital
points at which the Reformation makes contact
with our modem situation. Time after time, the
reformers are seen to link in with concerns,
anxieties and aspirations which we can recognize
as being our own. At point after point, there is
a surprisingly contemporary feel to the writings
of the period. Historically, this is precisely
what we should expect. The Reformation had to
develop forms of Christian thought and action
capable of relating to the new age which dawned
with the collapse of the Middle Ages. Medieval
forms of spirituality were, in general, simply
not capable of relating to the new needs and
concerns of the modem world. They had to be
replaced. The Reformation may be regarded as a
necessary, and perhaps an overdue, attempt to
relate the gospel to the new world of the
cities, in which the laity were increasingly
playing a dominant role.
In that seminal aspects of modem western society
trace their origins to Europe at this time, it
is to be expected that Reformation spirituality
- developed with the needs of this new social
order in mind - should prove capable of relating
directly to our own day and age. Modem western
society may have moved on far from its origins
in sixteenth-century Europe - but time after
time, the connections are seen to remain. To
study Reformation spirituality is to study forms
of spirituality which still connect up with the
social, personal and existential concerns of
modem western humanity. That they do not link up
with every aspect of modem life is only to be
expected; history has, after all, moved on. But
vital connections remain, awaiting discovery and
use by the believers of today.
Caricatures die hard, and perhaps one of the
most influential caricatures of Christian
history lies in the nineteenth-century
suggestion that the Reformation and its
inheritance were devoid of any spirituality. The
very phrase ‘Reformation spirituality’ was
alleged to be an oxymoron, a blatant
self-contradiction. It is a pleasure to be able
to write this book in the knowledge that this
crude stereotype is in what one hopes to be
irreversible decline. Recent scholarship has
revealed many of the leading figures of the
Reformation as individuals with a passionate
concern for the pastoral, spiritual and social
well-being of their people - men who were
concerned to ground their theologies firmly in
the usually humdrum, yet occasionally
terrifying, realities of everyday life. Their
search for an authentically Christian
spirituality was grounded in their belief that
true knowledge of God was transformative,
capable of deeply changing the mental,
experiential and social worlds of those who
grasped it. In undertaking that same quest for a
renewed and authentic Christian spirituality
today, we could do far worse than engage in
dialogue with such figures as Luther and Calvin.
Furthermore, recent scholarship has largely
discarded the obsolete polemics of earlier
periods. For example, Roman Catholic writers are
increasingly viewing the reformers as writers
and preachers concerned with the creative
restatement and application of the Christian
faith in a period of exceptional difficulty and
instability. There is growing sympathy for the
suggestion that it was not so much the
reformers, but rather political and social
currents in the late Renaissance, which split
the medieval church asunder, destroying its
unity. The rise of nationalism and increasing
trends towards political absolutism in Europe
are among the more obvious currents of this
type. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the
Reformation provided a vital check upon the
scope of such developments, by preventing the
secularization of the church being extended to
the secularization of the Christian faith
itself.
There is now an increasing willingness on all
sides to regard the reformers as individuals who
were passionately and responsibly committed to
the well-being of the church; as people who were
obliged to break with the church of their day
not because their ideas were heretical, but on
account of the obstinacy of the late medieval
church. The old wineskins could not cope with
this potent new wine. With the welcome benefit
of hindsight, we are increasingly viewing the
reformers as individuals who developed new ideas
and reclaimed old ideas which the church
desperately needed to hear and act upon if it
was to meet the new challenges and opportunities
of the period.That the Reformation ended up
dividing the Christian church is a fact of
history; it is equally a fact of history that
the reformers did not intend this to take place,
and took no pleasure in seeing it happen. One of
the greatest tragedies of the sixteenth century
is that individuals and groups, possessed of a
vision to renew and revitalize the church from
within, were forced out of that church largely,
it seems, by sheer intransigence and a lack of
vision on the part of its leaders. The
distinguished Luther scholar Heinrich Bornkamm
has brilliantly described the dilemma in which
Luther found himself, as his pleas for renewal
of the church seemed to fall on deaf ears:
Luther was excluded from his church
because of his criticism of the theology and
the ecclesiastical conditions of his time. It
was his church from which he was excluded, for
it was for no other church that he uttered his
fervent pleadings and prayers, and his painful
laments and angry indictments. Everything he
did and said and wrote was not against it, but
for it, for its sake, not in order to
establish a new church. It was because his
church, the Roman church of that time,
excluded him that an inner reform, which had
often taken place before, became something
new, outside of the existing church.
The
Reformation, which was primarily conceived as a
renewal of the church from within, thus ended up
becoming something significantly different.
Recognition of this point goes some way towards
explaining why there is currently renewed
interest in and sympathy towards Evangelical
spirituality within the modem Roman Catholic
church. To make use of this classical
Evangelical spirituality does not necessarily
entail ceasing to be a Roman Catholic. The early
sixteenth century bears witness to countless
individuals within the Catholic church in Italy,
Spain and France who adopted Evangelical
spiritualities, yet remained within the Catholic
church - often in very senior positions.
Polarisation of the situation made it impossible
to be both a Catholic and an Evangelical,
forcing those unfortunate Catholic Evangelicals
to make some very difficult decisions. But those
days are firmly behind us. There is every
indication that Evangelicalism is becoming
increasingly acceptable and influential within
the modem Roman Catholic church, recognized as a
legitimate, workable and exciting option for the
modem church. This need not be seen as an
abandoning of Catholicism; rather, it should be
seen as an overdue reclaiming of a classic form
of Christian spirituality which the political
atmosphere of the sixteenth century made a
practical impossibility for Catholics.
Evangelical spirituality is not divisive; it
only became so on account of the power politics
of a bygone age.
As his writings of the period 1513-19 make
abundantly clear, Luther had no intention of
founding a separate church. He had no thought of
founding ‘Lutheranism’ as a body apart from the
universal body of Christ. His aspiration was to
recall the one church, of which he was a member,
to renew its Christian vision and vocation from
within. The idea of anyone calling themselves
‘Lutheran’ was anathema to him.
I haven’t been crucified for anyone! .
. . How can I - poor, wretched corpse that I
am - come to allow people to call the children
of Christ by a name derived from my worthless
name? No! No! No! My dear friends, let us call
ourselves Christians, after the one whose
teachings we hold fast to.
Reformation
spirituality is nothing other than Christian
spirituality, forged into new forms appropriate
for the needs of the new age then dawning in
western culture.
This reforging was urgently needed, if
Christianity was to continue as a living option
in modem Europe. During the Middle Ages, it had
become as increasingly isolated from ordinary
people as it had become increasingly firmly
wedded to the fading medieval world. Ernst
Curtius is one of the many scholars who have
emphasised that it is a conveniently neglected
matter of historical fact that much of what we
refer to as ‘medieval Christianity’ or ‘medieval
spirituality’ is actually virtually totally
monastic in its character and origins.
Sadly, historical realism dictates that we
recognize that these medieval forms of
spirituality had a strictly limited impact
outside the monasteries – even upon the clergy.
The everyday life of the laity was often left
virtually totally untouched by the spiritual
riches being developed behind monastic walls.
Monastic spirituality was fashioned with the
monastic situation in mind, envisaging a
lifestyle and outlook quite alien to lay people.
With the Reformation, the formative centers of
spirituality gradually shifted from the
monasteries to the market place, as the great
cities of Europe became the cradle and crucible
of new ways of Christian thinking and acting.
Spirituality was not merely brought to the
people; new forms of the spiritual life were
created, with their needs and situations firmly
in view.
Mirrored in this shift may be seen the
political, social, economic and religious
changes which lie at the heart of the formation
of modem western culture. From its outset,
Reformation spirituality represented ideas with
a future, possessing a high coefficient of
relevance to the emerging needs of modem western
society. The waning of the Middle Ages
inevitably entailed a diminishing of the
potential of medieval forms of spirituality,
which were generally linked with specifically
medieval ideas and institutions. With the birth
of the new era in human history which historians
now designate the ‘early modem period’, it was
essential that new ways of conceiving and acting
out the Christian life should develop, unless
Christianity were to be seen as moribund, linked
to the dying world of the Middle Ages. The old
religion was simply not capable of coping with
the unprecedented pressures and challenges of
the new age.
The Reformation represented a sustained attempt
to relate the Christian faith to the conditions
and lifestyles of this new era. The spirituality
of the Reformation was so deeply rooted in the
Christian tradition that it can justly be
described as ‘classic’ - yet it was sufficiently
responsive to the new situations then developing
that it can equally be described as ‘modem’.
Mingling the classic and the modem, the
Reformation is thus well placed to address the
needs of our own day and age, where a
consciousness of modernity is often tempered
with an awareness of the need for stability and
continuity with the past - a point which merits
consideration in more detail.
[Excerpt from Roots That Refresh: A
Celebration of Reformation Spirituality,
chapter 1, pages 7-11, © 1991 Alister E.
McGrath, first published in Great Britain by
Hodder & Stoughton. Used with Permission.]
 Alister E.
McGrath, born in Belfast, Northern
Ireland, holds the Chair in Theology,
Ministry and Education at King’s College
London. He was previously Professor of
Historical Theology at Oxford University
and Director of the Oxford Center for
Christian Apologetics.
Originally a student of science, in 1977
McGrath was awarded a PhD in Biochemistry
from Oxford University for his work on
molecular biophysics. Following his
conversion from atheism to Christianity,
he studied divinity at St. John's College
at Cambridge (1978-80). It was during this
time that he studied for ordination in the
Church of England. McGrath was elected
University Research Lecturer in Theology
at Oxford University in 1993, and also
served as research professor of theology
at Regent College, Vancouver, from 1993-9.
He earned an Oxford Doctorate of Divinity
in 2001 for his research on historical and
systematic theology.
McGrath has written many books on the
interaction of science and faith and is
the producer of the 'Scientific Theology'
project, encouraging a dialogue between
the natural sciences and Christian
theology. McGrath is a strong critic of
Richard Dawkins, Oxford biology professor
and one of the most outspoken atheists. He
has addressed Dawkins' criticism of
religion in several of his books, most
notably in Dawkins Delusion published in
2007 by SPCK and IVP.
More
information on his websites: http://alistermcgrath.weebly.com/
and Professor
Alister McGrath
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