Spiritual Formation: A Close Examination

Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, Brad East, and James Wood trace the evangelical spiritual formation movement from Richard Foster through Dallas Willard to John Mark Comer. They explore why disciplines resonate today amid technological distraction and desire for embodied faith, while navigating tensions between individual and communal formation, liturgy's role, and concerns about practices becoming self-optimization divorced from gospel foundations.

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Chapters

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 01:06 – Tracing the Spiritual Formation Movement
• 08:35 – Why Spiritual Disciplines Resonate Today
• 19:45 – Technology, Attention, and the Appeal of Forms
• 25:00 – Critiques: Self-Optimization and Theological Drift
• 33:12 – The Role of Set Prayers and Liturgy
• 44:50 – Inhabiting Forms vs. Formalism
• 53:00 – Suffering as Spiritual Formation
• 58:47 – The Danger of Christian Elitism
• 01:12:54 – The Parable of the Three Bricklayers

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Lexim Press, who publishes books that love the word, love the faith, and love the church. Leximpress was recently acquired by Baker Publishing Group, and there will be more news to follow. Our February book of the month is 30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity, inspiring true stories from the early church around the world. You can receive a 30% discount on this title and all previous books of the month by visiting BakerBookhouse.com backslash pages backslash mere fidelity. You can find that link in our show notes to get 30% off our book of the month from Lexim Press. Alistair Roberts, good to see you. Good to be here. Brad East and James Wood.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

The joke is Alistair's screen is off, so nobody's seeing him. But uh it it is it is good to it is good to be recording with you guys today and thinking about things. What I want to do is uh this morning just get into the issue of spiritual formation. I know it seems weird for a Presbyterian to bring up, but I have heard this phrase before. I've heard this idea before that the kids are talking about it, the hip kids are reading books on it. Um, I'm I'm joking. I, you know, the the conversation, as I recall, uh has been prominent for years now. Uh when I was coming up in seminary, it was Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, the Renovare crew, spiritual spirit of the disciplines, spiritual disciplines, all the disciplines. Um, but that never really stopped. But it does seem like there's been another recent wave of conversation around these things. You've got John Mark Comer, you've got some other recent books coming out, and and um while it didn't go away, it seems to be going through kind of a renewal phase, but there's there's always been intense kind of uh disputes around what seems to be a fairly straightforward concept, which is like, yes, we should grow spiritually and we should do things to try to grow spiritually. But um, what I want to do is pitch it to James and ask you like, what is that scene looking like right now? What why what are the challenges around spiritual formation today, um conversationally, uh, that you've seen and that uh people should be aware of and and kind of what's what just set the scene for us? Because I know you're teaching a class on that right now and you've been working through the literature. Um what what is what is different about spiritual formation today, or at least what is different about the way we're thinking about it?

SPEAKER_04 2:51

Well, one of the questions I I have maybe we'll come back to, you said a lot of people are talking about spiritual formation. I do wonder how much people are actually doing it. Um but uh but I do, yeah, I want to trace maybe the conversation and then kind of get to maybe some of our responses of how we're um experiencing this, how you know, how it's landing ground with our people, with our students, with our friends. So yeah, you you traced a little bit of it. I mean, with evangelical, you know, spiritual formation is kind of having a hot half century. Basically, with evangelicals, it it picks up steam uh as a motif uh with the 1978 work by Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, which many people kind of view this as kind of the symbolic launch point for this kind of renewed emphasis on spiritual formation for evangelicals. Also at that around that same time, uh Richard Loveless wrote his uh famous book, uh famous largely Tim Keller, it's one of the influ big influences on Tim Keller. So now I've got my Tim Keller reference in for the day. I think I'm done. Um but uh what's his book called? I I have it on my desk somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Uh Dynamics of Spiritual Renewics of Spiritual Life.

SPEAKER_04 4:00

Yeah, really, just a weird book. It's so fascinating. I I I like I I it was very formative on me, actually, uh, and I still like to go back to it. But it's just like impossible to categorize them, what is this thing? But he coined a term, uh the sanctification gap in that work that has been very influential in the spiritual formation literature, kind of tracing how uh evangelicals, who in many ways are the kind of mixed legacy of kind of Reformation theology, but also revivalism, which which which includes kind of an over-reaction, a hyper-Calvinist conversion uh emphasis and how it conceived of conversion, uh, but also then a kind of reaction with Arminianism and all these things. Levelist coins the term sanctification gap is like one of the things that results from this is um uh a comfort in our conversion for certain revivalist uh heirs uh without an emphasis on uh sanctification. Well, okay, piggybacking on that, then you get something like Dallas Willard. And Dallas Willard starts writing a ton. So you had the Renovare thing that you mentioned earlier, the Renovare movement, which Willard was kind of roped into, largely by Foster, uh kind of an eclect, you know, uh retrieving kind of devotional literature. The the famous book is devotional classics. You'll see this everywhere. Tons of evangelicals have it. It's kind of a grab bag eclectic mixture of you know excerpts from devotional literature across the Christian tradition. And that's really kind of one of the key books in the Renovari movement, but it's much more than that. But Breeler gets involved. He starts writing a lot of books. His most famous book, his two most famous books. Uh, one would be The Great Omission, uh, which is you know what the what's been omitted uh in our discipleship is discipleship, is uh a commandment, uh uh, the emphasis on growth and spiritual life and and following Christ. And the other one is divine conspiracy, which I kind of consider his best book. Uh, but you know, Willard and the the idea of the divine conspiracy is the idea that uh kingdom life is available to you now here here on this earth. Jesus came preaching the kingdom, he brought the kingdom, and it's found by following Jesus as king. And he and Willard will often use the language of rabbi. What it means to be a Christian is to be a Christ follower, to follow Rabbi Jesus in the kingdom life now. Okay. Willard writes a bunch of books in that vein, helping you grow practically. Um, and his most famous disciple today, so that's in the 90s and early 2000s, and I got exposed to a ton of that literature in my early Christian days. He was very popular in the parish world. Uh, hadn't really seen him much, hadn't thought about him much until John Mark Comer comes on the scene. And he's the most popular author on spiritual formation today. He has critics, but he's really a willard disciple and popularizer, and particularly emphasizing this theme of the rule of life that you need to understand how you are being formed already with the regular habits uh that you engage in, uh, and then be more intentionable about kind of constructing a more intentional pursuit of growth and holiness through a rule of life. And he has critics, we'll come back to those in a minute. But the other figure that I have to mention before we move on from laying the groundwork of kind of tracing the story is Jamie Smith. Uh Jamie Smith is also very, very relevant in this. Uh, he had a number of books. Uh his most famous now, the most or most popular, is You Are What You Love, which is a distillation of his cultural liturgies series, which was a trilogy. And what Jamie really tried to offer in that, in those works was a challenge to kind of reformed intellectualism, kind of this very cognitivist approach to Christian life, where it's just uh ascent to doctrines and kind of think growing by theologizing. He wants to emphasize habits, he wants to emphasize your body, he wants to emphasize narrative. Uh he just he wants to push back against reformed worldviewism. But how do we engage our body, our imagination, through liturgies and stories, through embrace of forms, uh, but getting to not just thinking about we're brains on a stick, but getting to actual heart change, not just through our heads, but also through our hands. And then that pairs up really well with John Mark Comer uh and the rule of life thing. So that's but then there's been some pushback. And so before I kind of just pause on this intro again, there's been some pushback on this stuff, at least um uh on both Comer and Smith, um, especially from um uh Michael Horton recently just challenged uh Comer. He thinks that Comer uh kind of conflates the gospel with discipleship or the gospel with sanctification. He thinks that's a problem. Wide Graham has critiqued his theology uh proper, his doctrine of God. But then also the best book I think that's offered some pushback recently. This is by Heart of Flame by Matthew Bingham, who tries to retrieve a thickly reformed approach to spiritual formation. But I don't want to get into summarizing all those things, but I just wanted to ask, you know, does that my narration of how we is that accurate? Would you add anything to that?

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Or there's a lot of that. I think I probably would have, from what I've read, foregrounded a lot of the retrieval of that, those practices with foster and and uh I mean, that's what that was one of the big things that I was introduced to early in my Christian walk. Also, if you hear crying children, this is not my own children screaming. There is a Bible study happening at our church thereby, and there's the nurses right next to the case. This is a pretty good We're a pro-natalist podcast, and so that that's the Lord working right there in that child's life. Um but uh but so I would have I would have said that that kind of whole aspect of of of following Jesus, like actually learning the transformative practices that still the soul, that quiet. So that I I was in, I I had largely the same experience. And you know, I I never paid attention to Coleman until a couple years ago just because when I saw his book that came out, I was like, this is this is Willard with Rob Belfont. Okay, that's fine if you want to do that. Um and then and then later recently, the more actual theological, you know, hey, is there union? Is there what's this doctrine of God, all that kind of stuff? Okay, caught my attention. But but the will the other stuff is like, this is just Willard Light, which is fine. I Willard was helpful and Divine Conspiracy is is fine as far as it goes. So I I think that's like a really accurate thing. I guess one of the other questions that might we might ask is like, why did it hit? Like, why did it hit so seeing that like why did it grab? Why is it why is it a hook? Why is it like as Brad has written, why is John Mark Comer the only guy that his students are reading? Um you just need a hand of more books, Brad, uh, if that's the only thing your students are reading. But but um, like why did it hit is is the other question I'd ask you guys. And Brad, you had your finger up, so I'm I'm seeing you out of thought. So maybe, maybe you want to speak to that and then James will loop you loop you back in.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, James, that was a really that was a really nice um sort of mini, mini genealogy there. I'm gonna add a couple sort of nodes in the web or branches on the tree. And and I think Hauerwas and Aristotle have a have a role here where Hauerwas is in his own way popularizing both a kind of Catholic and Thomistic approach to virtue as well as a kind of radical politics sourced in someone like uh on the philosophical side, McIntyre, on the on the theological side or biblical side, Yoder. And what as I heard you, I so I have a few comments about this. One, when I heard you describing, James, describing um Willard, he has a kind of inaugurated eschatology, but instead of it being political, a la Yoder and Howard, it's personal and individual. Um, and I don't mean that that's uh not I'm not even I'm not that's not pejorative as individualistic. It's just that like the inaugurated availability of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom is for me in my daily life. Um, and so that's one that's one way of putting it. But I think someone like Howard Wass is crucial here, both in his direct influence and as an indirect influence. So he influences people like urban monastics. But what are the urban monastics doing? They're drawing on the tradition and on monasticism for lay or secular life, and it's both tinged radical on the political side, but it's also tinged very intentional and in terms of disciplines on the personal side. And the one other name I'd want to mention is uh Alex Alexander Schmayman, um, who that all of this is linked up, I think, with um Protestants and in particular evangelicals who grow up in either a revivalist or a biblicist low church environment, being drawn, not necessarily always to theological tradition or doctrinal tradition pre-modern, but they are interested in the sacraments. In as much as they are drawn to disciplines, habituated, embodied disciplines, the sacraments are just sitting there. And they may have grown up in a church that celebrated the Eucharist once a year or four times a year, and kind of offstage or, you know, out of sight, so to speak. Um, and so you put all that together, and this is to to your question, Derek, I'll just give one answer. For evangelicals who grew up loving God and having a personal relationship with Jesus, that could be either sort of very private and in their head, or it could be disembodied. And habits and disciplines gave you something to do, but not if it was done right, not in a works righteousness mode. Now I have to earn something. But for me, like I actually remember in this very building, I'm an alumnus of Abilene Christian. The by I got my degree in biblical text and spring of my senior year, so this is uh fall of 07 and then spring of 08. Uh someone gave me Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline. I read it and I literally changed it changed my life because every day I was now giving uh sp time set aside for silence and solitude, meditation and prayer. And that opened up a whole world of practices, both ancient and contemporary, to me, that were just literally missing in my life. Nobody had given me the Jesus prayer, nobody had given me silence or solitude, nobody had given me not the blueprint of the monastics, but simply using it as a template or a point of departure for thinking about my own life and relationship to God as opening up space to invite the spirit uh to work in my life. And so, and I think, and it sounds like y'all had similar experiences. I think that is part of the perennial or e ever a new generational appeal of spiritual disciplines.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

Yeah, I I think for for for an evangelical kid who grew up in the youth group and whatever, I I my I read Willard right around the same time. I started reading like all theology, so like NT Right and whatever, and all that. So all the kingdom stuff. And um But it the the the spiritual disciplines, it was like what's the next thing after, okay, you've mastered doing a quiet time. Is that it? Um and is there more? And so depending on the student, the the way you receive that is like, okay, you've got your quiet times, but this is getting too far into critique already, but like if you really, if you, if this, if this really wants to hit, if you really want to level up Jesus-wise, we're gonna try silence and solitude, and you're also gonna do fasting. And it it was the it was the fuller expansion of of like what a real disciple really looks like, uh, that you weren't told. So there some of the there's a there's a novelty of like some some people just really haven't been inducted or instructed in how to tend to their inner world and spiritual life and whatever. And so, so there's just that, but then there's also the like, hey, there's a whole nother thing up here, it's a new thing to do. Um I'll save my critique for later about the way we how the this relates to maximal self-improvement culture. Um, but but Alistair, I I was wondering, you know, you you've got thoughts here, so why don't you jump in with how what you'd add to Brad and and James's picture.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Might be worth reflecting upon the degree to which these traditions of spirituality have an eclecticism that exceeds that of the typical theology that people will be engaged with. So you have the traditional theology that you're formed within, but then in addition, you have these models of spirituality that part of it may be that these aren't provided within the traditions that people are raised within, so they cast their net wider. Part of it might be simply the wisdom of the broader Christian tradition and sometimes even beyond the Christian tradition, will be used as a source for um spirituality. And people drawing upon those and trying to integrate them in various ways with the more theological tradition with which they were raised. I wonder whether another aspect is the role of mistagogy, the sense that you have the sacraments and the sacraments are important, but somehow you need to be guided into an inhabiting of these. What does it mean to actually I mean, you believe in scripture, you read your Bible every day? What does it actually mean to make that text formative for your life? To read it in a way that is spiritual? And what does it mean to practice the supper in a way that is not just going through motions, but in a way that truly inhabits and engages with it? Now there's a certain type, I think, of reformed theology that is not always the best for equipping people in that regard. I've struggled with that at various points in my own formation. The question of how to go beyond the sort of very cognitive engagement with scripture and with the sacraments thinking about things to actually inhabiting it on a deeper, maybe even bodily level. You can think about the way that the sacraments address the word of God to our body and that aspect, or the degree to which scripture is something to be meditated upon and chewed over, not merely in a cognitive way, but something to be internalized, as we see in the Psalms. The Psalms are not primarily teaching us doctrine. There's doctrine within them, but they're primarily uh an indwelling of the Word of God. And so the sorts of practices that the historic church in its various forms offers us and the even certain disciplines that you find further afield of meditation maybe help us to gain mastery over a aspects of ourselves, bodily existence, of the processes of attention and um avoiding certain distractions. And I think that's another aspect of it, that within the current context, our horizons of attention are so saturated, particularly with social media. Derek noted in the comments that I had to say something about technology. And here's the thing. Here is a question of technology. Attention is saturated at the moment, and so spiritual disciplines make a lot more sense for us in the current context as a way of resisting those things that we're experiencing.

SPEAKER_04 19:49

On that point, Alistair, uh this isn't a book I haven't actually, I've only read Comer's Practicing the Way, which is the big his famous one for spiritual formation. But on the technology point, I think it's worth flagging that his other really popular book is titled The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. And I think it's it's it's connecting there with I think the that that title even just resonates, I think, with a lot of young folks of just how distracted they know they are. But they also feel crippled. They a lot of our young folks feel like, I don't know what to do. And I think that's part of the draw for this of just like there there is a I think a paradox or a tension right now with regard to like authenticity. I I think young people still want to be authentic, uh, but they also are are tired of it. They're tired of its rootlessness. They're tired of and but I'm I I'm not saying they're all ready to jump in in obedience and following. I'm not saying that. I think there's a tension here. Uh I think they do feel the frustration or maybe not fully ready to give themselves over to forms, but there's an appeal to the forms. I think at least there's a it's attractive. When they hear it, it sparks their interest. Even that's where I started my comments earlier. Like a lot of people are talking about spiritual formation, how many people are doing it. I think there's an appeal to it, um, even just at the cognitive level, it's interesting. And I think there's something there. One one of the things I wanted to bring up for later, and maybe you guys can comment on that and what is said there, but uh is I also think um when these conversations emerge, like when I think about Jamie Smith, for instance, uh, you know, I'm still I'm not a I think Jamie actually combines a lot of things Brad was talking about earlier, right? The the Hower Wass with the the Willard, you know, if you kind of look at that, like he almost combines that, the the social with the liturgical, uh, et cetera, et cetera. And I I still have a great appreciation for those works by Jamie. I know that makes me unpopular in some circles. But I also think like I read someone, I think it depends on how you read these works as well. Um, when I read like his criticisms of the reform tradition in its you know hyper cognitivist, too rationalist, worldviewism, whatever, I don't view it as a full rejection of those things. I don't I view it as like, hey, this. There's a nice partner, a compliment in the conversation. And I think people get really worked up when these internal critiques are brought up and they think it's going to baby out with the bathwater. You're totally rejecting it. I think it depends on how you read it. I think it's also though fascinating that now I'll concede some of the criticisms of I think people that are critical of some of this, especially the eclecticism of the spiritual formation literature, of just like it's grab bag kind of across all the traditions. It doesn't often provide a kind of a coherent framework and it often draws people away from their traditions, especially, you know, especially into higher uh liturgical, higher sacramental traditions. And I think what's really fascinating, one of the things I've observed, and Bingham brought this up in an interview where he was talking about his book, is uh it's really fascinating how evangelicals go to and inhabit these other traditions, is that they carry forward with them their thick, word-centered piety, their high regard for scripture, and then they add to that this kind of higher liturgical, you know, ritualistic in a way that the cradles of those traditions don't also have that. And so then they come into this new tradition, benefiting from their prior evangelical formation and having this the best comp combination without, but then sometimes as they go into those new traditions, dump on their old one.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Yeah. Nobody believes nobody believes as hard a new thing as an evangelical convert because of the way they've been structured and formed in some of the some of those ways. Um one of the things that uh hit me while while you were talking, um, the Jamie Smith thing about the the self-critique internally, that that's that's a good word. With him, I think there was also the thing there was the prior assumption with his engagement in postmodernity. And so like knocking on rationality and knocking on cognitivism takes on a different flavor there as well. But but part of the challenge is there is a whole swath, like you're you're you're fighting a stream, like reformed spirituality and reformed views are often fighting a broader stream within evangelicalism that is like subcognitive, right? It's it's hyper-emotionalist, it's hyper uh, you know, pe people wanting to move beyond the word, inhabit the word, all that sort of thing. I want you to pay attention to the word first, right? And then inhabit it and whatever. And so there's a danger of, in a sense, introducing some of those things first. It's like, hey, let's get you to meditate, let's get you to be silent. Also, have you ever read Galatians? Oh, no, you haven't. Okay. So what are you meditating on? Like that element of let's get you to start doing all these advanced forms when you don't actually have the foundation first of a basic, you know, orthodoxy, basic doctrine, basic whatever that that will root you. Um, what are you meditating on? Right? What what are you growing in? What do you so that was one thing that that you know, coming from within the tradition, and I know you guys, I don't think you would disagree, is somebody who starts, you know, your your early Christian life and you start in on that, it's like, okay, I'm gonna focus in on fasting, I'm gonna focus in on on silence, I'm gonna focus in on these things like, okay, but have you have you made it through a catechism course? No, okay, so let's let's let's get some basics down first before you start doing that, because without that, absent the framework, I think this starts to get us into the criticism of some of the some of the criticism I've seen of Comer and others of like absent a theology of union, absent a theology of like justification of the objective accomplishment of what you what life you're being invited into, it is very, very easy for this stuff to turn into um a sec like a spiritualized version of secular self-optimization routines, or b moralism and you know, anxious, anxiety-inducing works, uh, and whatever. It's gonna make me sound super Lutheran. But I just know myself there's that level of like, hey, this is the thing the real spiritual people do, right? Do you not do that? Oh, you don't? Oh, that's you're a cognitivist, whatever it is. Okay, that that level of that that kind of thing still just does does worry me. And I I say this as somebody who has been in my pastoral council with students. I'm like now at the point I'm like, hey man, what time do you wake up in the morning? Like, do you have a basic schedule? Let's talk about let's talk about basic because I do think that that that that element with our students, they feel bound, they feel helpless. Oftentimes they don't feel like they they can put their lives together. So that idea of a rule of life is attractive. So I'm not I'm not anti-pastoral guidance there. They need that. But it has to have like a a a foundational framework first of grace, uh, an understanding of the gospel. And if that part's fuzzy, then the rule of life as the gospel is not good news. It's it's it's binding. Brad, push back on me being super reformed and presbyterian on this. Um and then I'll correct you.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Okay, yeah. And then you'll get the last word. I'll say a few things. One, I mean, I I of course agre w I think we're all gonna agree at the at the meta-level. Like we want, we want whatever spiritual formation we're talking about to be Christian, to be substantively Christian for Christians. But number one, I'm not persuaded about the order being normative for everyone, right? Someone might live or or fast or pray or worship their way into faith uh as much as others might believe and understand their way into um fasting and praying and worshiping. I think, I think these things happen just in the same way that like a child, uh like my children pray the Lord memorized the Lord's prayer uh long before they understood it or even quote unquote believed it. Um so I I I don't have any sense of there being a normative ordering this way. Um second, uh, I re- James, I really appreciate your emphasis on uh hermeneutics here, hermeneutics in a different differently than we often mean with the Bible. Just a hermeneutics of charity. In my experience of controversies over these things, they are unintelligible to 99% of the people who engage these books. Um, and that's okay because some of us are like trained theological writers, teachers, thinkers, pastors, and we do need to hash out um sort of what's beneath um the surface, uh, what's holding everything together. And the any these are all it's valid to ask theological questions about the sort of substructure or what's the invisible um scaffolding of um a work of an author like Comer or Willard or Smith or we haven't mentioned mentioned like Tish Harrison Warren. Um these are all authors who I'm just gonna say, I just think all of these authors, without exception, are doing good work, have have blessed the church, and uh if you if we want to bundle them together, any trend can become a fad, and any fad can go off the rails or at least be can be taken off the rails by individual readers or groups. But I just think I just think these um these writers, the the broad movement of spiritual disciplines, of learning from the tradition, uh renewing, uh renewing an emphasis on the sacraments, that these are salutary things. And of course, I also want to get doctrine right. I want to get the doctrine of God right. I want them to hear and to know the word of God. I want all these things, and these are all nodes in a web, and people uh find themselves entering at a certain point and then navigating around in different sequence and order. Um and yes, we all know, we all know the convert or quasi-convert, the evangelical who like discovered sacraments for the first time, like the high schooler who discovered the Beatles, right? Like we all know that person, and they can, just like we talked about last year, the four of us, about can you leave, can you leave well, right? Can you join another tradition well and can you do it poorly? And you can do it well and you can do it poorly. There are there is a kind of, in my view, a good eclecticism, which I'm really glad, Alistair, you mentioned that. And there's a bad version. The good version says, this is the inheritance of the saints for all of us. And the bad version is, oh man, they really cracked the code by about 1330, and then just nothing but failure and fall since then. And if only we could, if only we could return in all caps with the V, then we'll be great. Um, and yeah, that that's it, that's the bad version, but there's a good version. And so I'm I'm here for a lot of this, and where readers can go wrong or normies in the pews can go wrong, then I want to walk alongside them and do my best to help them.

SPEAKER_04 30:58

Let me add one more thing about the one more other piece that evidences, even in the reformed evangelical community, a draw towards this that I we forgot to mention. Is you remember years ago, I wonder if it's still popular, but man, that Valley of Vision prayer book, it's like the Puritan version of the book of common prayer. It's like, okay, well, we can't do the BCP, but like, well, the Puritans did something, so we can do it too, uh, was also evidence, I think. But I I think like one of my critiques, I love the Bingham book. I think it's very good. And and and I think it's a good conversation.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

You have a good review of it, uh that world, right?

SPEAKER_04 31:32

Yeah, it's another node, it's not the final word. I have my disagreements, and one of them being, I still think there's an allergy to forms in in Bingham's work, which I think there are the the the Bible itself pushes us towards practical forms. Uh for instance, uh Brad brought up the Lord's Prayer. Jesus, yeah, you know, his disciples asked him, How do we pray? Pray like this. And yes, you can use that as a framework. You can also use it as a form. And I think there's, and or you can think of the Psalter. Uh Dutch Reform folks are, it's like the one ritual we're they're really good at. Uh uh, and that it becomes a form that we think is formative, that is actually nor is actually given by scripture. And I think even in Bingham's book, that the thing that would still frustrate me is I uh because I think that's part of the draw to spiritual formation that I think is off is legitimate and think is good, is like, hey, give me some, not in a works righteousness ways, but give me some paths to go on that actually free me uh from some works righteousness, even doctrinal works righteousness, or overly pious more uh repentance works righteousness, where I've got to really think about my sin really hard and really do the idol hunting, but the sin beneath the sin and all that. And it's like, hey, can somebody just give me some practical pathways to yes, confess my sin, but also to dwell and bask in the goodness of God and to do that every day in a way that over a lifetime might actually really change me.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

And James, it frees you from cognitism and it can free you from emotionalism where you're like, I no longer have to feel the burden of feeling all the right things because I can just pray God's God's own prayer that he gave to me in incarnate form. I can pray and I know this is a good prayer to pray. This is God pleasing. It came from the Lord's own lips, and I don't have to come up with the profound and eloquent prayer, but I know I'm not supposed to be eloquent, so it's got to be plain, right? Like you can just get in your head with the gymnastics, and the forms can release you from that burden.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Father, father, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

And they expand, you they expand the lexic, your own lexicon for prayer. This is one of the things I try to introduce my students to generally is uh there should be formal and informal. There should be, you know, uh uh uh you know uh spontaneous and givenness. And and that but I do think my lexicon for prayer is expanded by inheriting and practicing some of the formal prayers that have been given to me, especially the simple ones. If they get extreme and too long, it become it does become wordy and distracting. But this especially like in the book, for instance, in the book of common prayer, the colics, you know, just they're short and simple, but they they give you the architecture of how a good prayer, the form of a good prayer, uh, and and I think those types of things can be very generative, even for a better spontaneous uh spirituality.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

I do think the opposition between formal and informal can sometimes lead us awry. There is something that we're looking for here that is formed, but is not um formalism. And so that distinction between formed and formalism is maybe the one I would try and push. There are all sorts of forms that we have. We have the form of scripture, we have the form of our hymns, we have the form of our worship, we have the form of the sacraments, we have the form of our doctrine, and yet there is a way of approaching these things that's akin to thinking that a house is primarily the architectural structure, and somehow people need to be taught how to live within the house well, in a way that makes it a home. And often you have the form there, but people are not taught how to inhabit it in a way that is good. And the forms themselves are underdetermined. There's a great discussion of some of the ways that this can go awry in Schmerman's work on Introduction to Liturgical Theology, where he talks about what he describes as a coefficient of refraction in regard to all liturgies. So there are the liturgies, there are the practices of the church and the sacraments, but then there are also the ways that people understand this in terms of a liturgical piety, as he puts it. So there are times when, for instance, within the early church, he describes the consistency of the practice, but a transformation of the liturgical piety, as what was formerly practiced in terms of the earliest church's understanding, became a substitute for a more pagan um uh piety that people had, and then they converted to Christianity, and Christianity filled the space that pagan rituals once filled, and so it became a sacralizing religion. And so people came to the same practices, the same forms, but they were looking for some, they were inhabiting them in different ways. They were bringing the habits that they had from their own pagan practices and pagan days and inhabiting Christian practices as if they were the same sort of thing. Now that's a fairly extreme case, but a lot of what we need, it seems to me, is training in how to inhabit certain doctrines. Again, this happens with broader aspects of Christian practice. It's not just about the liturgy or the sacraments or scripture. You can think about the way that certain doctrines, let's say the relationship between men and women as it should be understood, that requires primarily teaching at the level of inhabiting the doctrine. There can be all sorts of agreement at the level of the doctrinal structure and yet profoundly inhospitable ways of indwelling that doctrine. And so I think a lot of what is needed is a move beyond a sort of doctrinal or liturgical or um sacramental formalism to equip people to inhabit those forms well. And the forms help you, you need the forms, but part of what you need to do is to understand the forms as means by which you can live well, and that requires generally someone to guide you by the hand into them. And so the practice of spiritual guidance should be a training in indwelling the forms that we have been given. And the sort of informality that people have, a sort of spirituality detached from forms, is a real danger. But then one of the things that we're dealing with on the other side is a sort of doctrinal or liturgical or sacramental formalism that gives little provision for thinking about how you actually inhabit it.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

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SPEAKER_03 40:34

So one thing I've one question I've had here. So we we we moved into okay, we've got spiritual disciplines in general to like a defensive liturgy, to a defensive structured prayers, which is, you know, fine. I I like structured prayers and that's good. And then Alistair corrected the form formalism uh distinction entirely. Um I one of the things I wrestle with is it seems to be that there is a there is a communal-shaped, more liturgical variety of this. And then there's also a little bit more of a f a free-range uh you know, autonomous individual, expressive individual, like I'm grab bag. So the eclecticism is an eclecticism of practice, it's an eclecticism of theology, and it's there is a there is a hyper-individualist form of this stuff uh as well. So like, you know, defending it as set prayers, okay, that's fine, set prayers fine. But the the one of the things I see with this is is actually like a sub-eclesial form of of of engaging with spirituality that is fairly easily washed into um all the other practices that are that are being offered to people to order their disordered lives and connect and and and and and all that kind of thing that just generalized wellness without apart from the life of the church, you know, outside of the ecclesia. And so that's one question I have is some of this stuff just doesn't it just fits in the general trend of hey, give me my own little my own little rule of life that I came up with for me because it fits me and my vibe and my relationship with Jesus and my you know so so there's that, like there's the the controls on it. Um and this is where I do come back to the the the doctrinal forms, like how do you inhabit the doctrines, how do you inhabit these forms? Um I don't know where I'm I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't know how to articulate this well. Um I just have a I I have a very I have a very strong allergy to some of this that I'm I'm struggling to articulate in that it is just so easy for this thing to turn into into um another hustle, another grind, another your your weight your your your diet program, your weightlifting program, your thing. This is your program that you get back on that you fail that you get that you gotta get back on that you and um that is where I I do worry without without fairly strong doc doctrinal guardrails on this. It just it just it just becomes a part of it's like a church version. It's a church version of our general culture's desire and and cult of self self-optimization uh for like a self-optimized life, and we we have just come up with a spiritualized version of it, and that's where some of the hunger is. I don't know if that's just me being cranky.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Let's say that let's say that the movement, the spiritual disciplines movement as a whole for the last 50 years is susceptible to that. Um I suppose my question for you is do you th is your criticism stronger than that? That it is like right, uh uh abuses non tolit usum, like we're all on board with that. So I so I I I I wrestle with that.

SPEAKER_03 43:57

I go back and forth because there is that uh obvious. You see, like obviously any movement can go bad. Obviously, you know, Presbyterianism can go bad, all these sorts of things. And also the fact that for some reason there seems to be a tendency in that movement to produce folks who then also start taking shots at the theological tradition that was part of the grounding of it. So whatever. He's the most recent version, but Comer taking shots at penal substitution, revising the doctrine of God fairly heavily, things like that. Whatever. And it's like, okay, not everybody has to do penal substitution. Oh, we might not go into that. We've talked about that. We've talked about that. But but um the doctrine of God thing's kind of screwy. Um that that's a thing. But then even going back to Dallas Willard, I have like I have several books on my shelf. I can show you the photo right now. But then I go back to I go back to even Divine Conspiracy and I and I go back with 20 eyes, 20 years older, and his criticism of the evangelical theology that came before is like I can't remember who he was hitting at. Was MacArthur or somebody. But basically, like the the the kind of theology of of heaven and hell and and and and not having any impact on your life, whatever. And it the the taking the shots at kind of forensicism of any sort, or uh, you know, works, whatever, there's this tendency, I think, I have seen in some of these circles to consistently then produce not just like as an addition, but like, no, that whole way of doing things and thinking about things, it it's it actually just starts to produce uh doctrinal weirdness. Um because the I don't know, justification by faith or the objectivity of grace or that sort of thing, it it seems to take the pressure off of the in their mind, off of the need to become a disciple, to be formed, or whatever it is. And so there is there's like a theological drive there in some circles of it that actually just militates against kind of reformation emphases because you start going back, you're like, well, no, Ignatius, well no, uh so and so. And and some of that spirituality, some of those disciplines, they're coming from a different theological world, right? You can't just you can't always totally abstract Ignatius's spiritual disciplines from counter-reformational impulses, right? You you can't. So, so that's that is a that is a there needs to be controlled on it, and that's just me being the cautious guy because all you guys are agreeing. I I this is once again, Derek disagrees with his friends, and I feel like I have to. But but I also think there's a substantive point that like the people who are worried about that, it's not it's it's not just abuses. There is some of the some of the threads you're pulling on really are coming from coming from different theological streams. You start picking up the Jesus prayer, right? And hesychasm and you know the the essence energies distinctions, and and are are we really gonna pick up the the Jesus prayer with Greg with Palamas's theology of theosis and divination and all that? I I don't know that those two are easily extricable, right? And so thoughts on that, push back. I I've I just I have questions there.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

I'm curious, I I really want to hear what James has to say. I I want to say, I want to add two one or two thoughts because I think you put your finger on the right thing here, and it points in two directions. One is uh reformed um and magisterial Protestant thinkers, pastors, and theologians, I think what's worth sort of stepping back and realizing here is are often eavesdropping on other evangelical and Protestant groups' internal writings. And so it's not so you're you're at the it's a kind of recognition that like the the way that in America we often collapse these distinctions to like you are a Protestant or at least a conservative Protestant or maybe a Protestant evangelical. You're actually not part of the same family, or you live in opposite wings of the very, very large mansion. And just to go back to Comer, you know, right, uh he he's representative of an entirely different strand of charismatic, non-reformed, more holiness, more Wesleyan. And you're right, much more open, especially to Eastern Orthodox theology and practice. And that's not a bug, that's a feature. And if you are coming from a reformed or again a magisterial Protestant view, you could be Lutheran or something else, and you say, wait, wait, you've gone off, you've gone off the rails. The the person is gonna respond. No, this is actually baked into like I didn't like add this. This is actually quite integrated. Like we had prior disagreements before I quoted Palamus or or whomever. So that's that's one thing. And then second, it does raise the question of the kind of um Protestants or Protestant evangelicals who are and those who are not committed to a kind of thick resource maw maintenance of the kind of normative Protestant theological vision. And uh, and if you're someone who, right, you, Derek, you've referenced, you know, justify justification by faith, and you say, I don't really see that here, a lot of these authors are going to say, yeah, it's not that I, it's not that I reject it wholesale, it's not that I don't think justification is important, but you're right to sense that there is something different going on here. And I think the question for not just the four of us, but for any pastor, those responsible for souls, is do you think that that is sort of acceptable within the big tent, or do you want to close ranks because you're concerned? James, what do you say?

SPEAKER_04 50:10

I don't know. I mean, I uh there's so many threads to pull on. Is um I think a lot, it's hard for me to engage the spiritual formation discourse at a meta level because I just feel like so much of this is going to cash out at how you're shepherding your congregation, your P how you're leading your students in your ministry, how you're pairing this stuff with your thick theological concerns, and also what are the general proclivities of the people. Uh, and even at the individual level, what are your struggles? Like, what do you it's for me, I this I've I've never written much about this. I've got a few essays, I think, coming out with Gospel Collision on this, inspired from my first couple lectures, trying to lay the front the foundations for what I think a healthy approach to spiritual formation would be, um, which is not necessarily going to be anything majorly new. I guess maybe one thing I would add to this, well, the the two essays that I want to start with, one is is the basically applying to define what spiritual form Christian spiritual formation is, using Aristotle's four causes, I think actually uh is a really helpful kind of weigh in to that. And so I that's my first little short essay that I'm gonna use. Okay, so what are we talking about? Verses beginning with, hey, we should use practices. What's a random arrangement of practices we can use? Let's actually define kind of what we're aiming at as normed by scripture. Um, and I think maybe on that point, I'll say one thing, as I agree with Alistair too here. One of my critiques of a lot of Eastern Orthodox theology, which I very much love, I've published on. I I I have a great especially uh appreciation for Schmaimon, is the whole liturgical uh theologia prima, the, the, that the liturgy is the primary theology. I think there's something true to that, but there is a real danger here. This is where my Protestant solo scripturus just still does come in, of just there's not enough resources then to be able to govern or critique the practices. I think that's really lacking. Um, and I think this is even a critique of a fair critique of Jamie Smith, by the way, that that others, even like critical leftist people offered of him of like, well, okay, uh, so like um uh the cross and the lynching tree or whatever, you know, like you know, the earth the church I'll come back to this. There was a critique of of Smith that um of a sort of liturgical determinism, right? Like that the forms just produce these things, but they don't. Uh and so I think there needs to be other resources there. But the other thing that I I'll just throw in here, it's not really relevant to what anybody said. But one of one of my favorite topics related to formation is what I uh uh taught on in the third lecture yesterday, which is, I think, very missing in the spiritual formation literature, but something I'm extremely convinced by, is one of the most important elements of formation is suffering. Um, and and and how your suffering will form you in profound ways that you cannot control, but you must receive and apply the medicine of God's grace of the gospel to you in your life. And one of the, and I I'm inspired by this from 2 Corinthians, from Paul's. So Paul's basically most robust definition, exposition of ministry comes in 2 Corinthians 1 through 5. Uh, and but and in there he lit begins with suffering, of how he's been comforted in his afflictions, and that shaped the type of ministry he can offer to others. And then it comes and kind of gets rounded out in 2 Corinthians 12, where he talks about his thorn in the flesh and how that shapes his ministry. And I just I love thinking about one of the ways I've summarized this of how this is related to your formation and for preparation for future ministry, is that I've been in ministry long enough and I've I've I've thought about it and observed it in other people's lives, that often your most profound and most meaningful ministry will flow out of the places of your deepest suffering. Uh, and that's a and I so this is where I get thickly the I want to get thickly theological in our formation rather than what exactly what Derek is saying, where it's just it's purely on the human level of DIY life hacking. But accept, you know, having a thick theology of like, okay, how does God form people? And how do I need to align myself with that program? And I think suffering actually is one of the angles in of where you let go of some of your self-improvement uh kind of life hack.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

I found the work of someone like Mark Searle, a Roman Catholic liturgical theologian who's since past very helpful in thinking through some of these questions. He talks about pastoral liturgical theology and the need to um equip people to inhabit the practices of the church. And so you're not just coming up with these practices that are detached from the life of the church. There's a wider context within which you're doing these things. The problem is that I think in many reform contexts we have an urge to tell and we struggle to show. I mean, one of the great principles if you're making a film or writing a book, you show don't tell. You give people the information through subtext, through careful placing of images within a scene that get the message across that this person is down on their luck, they're struggling in their marriage, whatever it is, and they are at the bottom at the moment. You don't actually have to spell that out for the viewer. And actually, it's more powerful when it's not spelled out. When we're celebrating the sacraments in many reform contexts, it needs to be explicitly spelled out. This is not that, this is not the other, this is not something that um uh that is a sanct it that is a um justifying ordinance or whatever people say. This is uh an approach that positions us relative to those practices in a very cognitive way, and yet there's a sort of engagement with these practices that enables us to engage with the word of God encountered in different forms. It matters that God speaks to our bodies, and we need to equip people to hear that. It matters, for instance, that the worship service arrives not just at extra words, but at a celebration of the supper, and that enables the word to cross over certain thresholds of understanding and to arrive at a deeper level. And I've always found that we have all these forms and people just don't know what to do with them. People talk about reading set prayers. You don't read set prayers, you praise set prayers, but you need to learn how to use the form in order to do that. And so much of the reform struggle, I think, is that urge to tell and the inability, I think, to inhabit forms in a way that recognizes the word of God in manifold um guises, the way in which, for instance, God speaks to us in a different way in the supper than he does within the sermon. And yet there's an integrity between the two. It's in the same way as if you constantly are teaching your children in a verbal form and yet never having a meal time with them, you're teaching them something. You're addressing them in a certain way in your failure to address them in that way, they're not hearing a crucial word that will help them to understand everything else. And it seems to me that a lot of what we need is a form of uh engagement with the actual forms that we have. For instance, the treasure that we have in the Psalms, and yet the paucity of our engagement with them, it's an indictment upon the church. It's not that we need to get to these bespoke forms of private spirituality. We need to find better ways of inhabiting the common forms that we're given. That's one of the benefits, for instance, of having something like the Book of Common Prayer. All of us share this book, but there also needs to be training in how to use it, how to inhabit it, how to make it your own. So it's not just a matter of praying someone else's words. You might think about the difference between one thing I've enjoyed doing is watching the difference between pure beginner actors given a scene and asked to play out that scene, then of someone who's maybe been an amateur actor for a year, then someone who's a semi-professional, and then someone who's an Oscar winner. And they're all performing the same scene. They're all given the same words. And yet, as you go through and see them performing it one by one, the Oscar winner actor inhabits those words in a way that's remarkable. That, it seems to me, is what we're looking for in spiritual practices. The ability to inhabit the words and the forms that God has given us in a way that they don't feel like we're not feeling like David dressing up in Saul's armor and it hanging loosely over his body. It actually is our own. And we've broken it in. It's something that we feel we can fully move within, and it's become part of our repertoire. Now that's the purpose of good spiritual formation, it seems to me. And it's not a conflict between form and informality or um the public practice of the church and the common practice of the church and private, bespoke spirituality. It brings all those things together.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:12

So I mean Alistair, what what that was, I think was a stirring defense of liturgy uh and and the the the the formative practice of liturgy, the formative power. Part I part I think what's interesting is we keep going toggling back and forth between, I think in my mind, some of the more personal rule of life, highly personalized, highly individualized uh practices that are often given as spiritual disciplines and then the more corporate liturgical shared shaping uh practices that you're you're kind of focused on, which is fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

There's also common practice. Like the book of common prayer is not merely about um the more liturgical context within which these prayers are being performed, but also many more private contexts where people are still engaging in a common form of worship.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:18

Um it's interesting. Uh I'm gonna give an opposite um example to what I gave earlier about how evangelicals will often go into higher church traditions and kind of uh not realize how they've benefited from even that evangelical Bible-centric formation and kind of end up getting the best of both worlds, but sometimes dumping on their past. Um it's fascinating how my wife has the complete opposite experience. And I actually try to help her acclimate to this and appreciate what she grew up with. So she she grew up in the Episcopal Church. Um, and her dad's an uh, she's a PK, her dad's an Episcopal priest. So as I've grown in my walk uh with God and trying to lead our family, and I've you know, over the years gotten even more and more liturgical, et cetera, my wife still has the built-in allergy of just like, no, this is dead, uh, whatever. And it's funny because I just don't have that baggage, you know. So this to me, like I'm combining it again, like I said, that experience. But uh, one of the things that's fascinating to me that I share with her um is she had her faith really come alive in like young life in high school. Awesome. Love young life. I love high school ministries, thank the Lord for them. Um, especially when if they come in humbly, realizing that they're building on oftentimes a prior foundation rather than be uh and and for her, but it's almost as if the kindling was set. You know, the pieces were put together, and then that high school, kind of more emotional, direct, kind of quote unquote authentic kind of Christianity fanned that into flame. Uh, but the pe in many ways the pieces were there. And her dad would often say this, like she'd like, you know, later in life, she'd be like, Well, dad, how come you didn't explain the gospel? And he didn't have the best answer. I love, I love him, and we we debate these things all the time. But he's like, Well, the gospel is there every week, it's in the liturgy, you know? Okay. And so her, she has an allergy, just like Eric, Derek is concerned about, of just like it's just pure formalistic. It's not attentive, and it's not explaining maybe what Alistair's talking about. But it's fascinating to me, like what I share with her, is I do think that that still was not lost, that wasn't fruitless. Um, that she has in her bones, in her DNA, theological instincts that she can't even articulate, repeating the Nicene Creed every week, et cetera. Like she can just sense something's off with some a theologian or something, even if she's not studied theology properly. And I so I think it still was of benefit. And so I it's like I think what a lot of us are trying to figure out in a lot of our writing on this topic, or our what we're trying to critique in other people's writings, is it just is there a way to pair these two things together? And often we are battling our own experiences, battling the errors, the overreaction on this side. And and I think that the dilemma is just how do we harmonize these? And I think they can. And oftentimes I think we're all, you know, kind of fighting the opposite error that other other groups are fighting.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:21

Yeah, James, I would add to that, you know, I've been uh 10 out of 10 pro this stuff so far, this conversation. But I will add my my two cents, and this was my sort of modest, but maybe more than modest criticism at the end of my review of Comer a couple years back, is the danger that I agree with Derek that I uh the danger I see is that Christianity seems to become, or at least threatens to become the elite Navy SEALs operation of God's 1% elite. Um, you know, the the the the the vanguard and not not not the rest of the fleet. Um and uh James, you know, I th I just think I just think God works in many ways. The spirit works in many ways. Like some people, they they quote unquote go through the motions going growing up and then say, wow, it was so dead. And then they they they you know it fans into flame. And there are people who grow up evangelical, and the motions are what rescues them from leaving. And you can you can just mix that up, right? Um, in in a thousand different variations. Like, right, like we're all in my view, we are we all are, or at least we all should be trying to bring those two things together to find the right spirit led balance um between formalism and informalism, between spontaneity and ritual, uh, personal and public, collective, all of it. Um but uh the the one thing I'm always advising my students who do uh find a lot of life in these kinds of things is Their first instinct is to judge the normies uh at their local church who quote unquote just go to church, just say the prayers, just believe, just have 10 minutes of quiet time in the morning. Um, and maybe are just uh uh unspectacular Christians, or in Nicholas Healy's phrase, criticizing Harawas, unsatisfactory Christians or unsatisfactory churches. And this is where I I am gonna hop on board um the the Derek Rishmaui Ordinary Means of Grace train and just say like the church and the gospel are for sinners and therefore unspectacular, unsatisfying, deplorable sinners, um, like all four people on this podcast. Um yeah, and Derek reminds me about Matt's line, Mediocre Christians. And yes, I I'm I'm a mediocre Christian. I belong to a church of mediocre Christians. And the very moment that I think I have joined the Navy SEALs, and the Navy SEALs is actually the inner ring of quote unquote real Christians, then something has gone terribly awry. I'm willing to defend all of these authors, every one of them, as they are not writing that. I don't think they are teaching that. I think they are doing what Jesus does. Jesus lets the rich man walk away sad. Jesus makes extraordinary demands on people. Don't bury your father your father, let the dead bury their dead, come and follow me. Um, so I think that they are extending the call of Jesus to ordinary mediocre Christians to say this is what this is the life that Jesus, that Jesus is offering you. That's it's found in the gospels, it's found in the Sermon on the Mount, so on and so forth. But uh without saying, and if you don't do it, you're damned, or if you don't do it, you're not real like the rest of us. You don't have the capital C Christian, right? Um So that that is the thing that I am always on the lookout for, always wary of, and trying to advise um students and friends about.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:02

One of the things that comes to mind with James's remarks is maybe the experience of learning uh some skill or sport, some musical instrument, perhaps. And the person who's training you, or your coach or instructor, maybe going through this practice that you have to do again and again and again, and it's tedious, you don't see the point. It's about a particular way of holding your hand or some particular um motion that you have to go through again and again and again, and it you don't see the logic of it. And what you want is to understand the deeper logic, and then maybe you might do something, but there's an inability to see how this fits into something larger. It seems to me that if you're going to do this well, there needs to be an integration of that sort of formation, the sort of formation in inhabit where you don't necessarily understand while you're why you're doing it. But there may come a point where suddenly you realize you've done something instinctively that you've not really thought about, but that instinctive thing is incredibly important. You may realize that there are words that have come unbidden to your lips that are the right words for the situation, and you never thought about it, but they're there. And in the same way, there should be something about Christian formation that is um bringing together that sort of formation of habit, but it's not just mindless habit, it's accompanied by some of the more um careful um instruction in understanding. So there's always this, on the one hand, the formation in habit, meeting with the sort of education in why we're doing some of these things. And over time you begin to understand we're not just doing these things because we're told to, but because we understand the reason for them. And that bringing together of those two aspects, I think, uh enlivens the habit habitual elements. You're doing it not just because it's a habit, you're doing it for that reason, but you're also doing it because you understand why. There is a certain um practice or ritual or um some sort of exercise here that equips you in all these other respects. And so the description that you give of your wife's experience, James, I think will resonate with many people who have grown up within a more liturgical context, for instance. And I'm all for that, but it seems that often that liturgical context has not been complemented sufficiently with the sort of just basic formation in the gospel, and sometimes allowing the sparks to fly across. Why do we go to the supper? Why do we celebrate the supper every week? In part because we want people to receive assurance of welcome at God's table, that they have knowledge of their justification and they have it on a gut, existential level, not merely in a theoretical level. And so it's actually serving, on the one hand, their understanding of justification by faith, but not just as a theoretical doctrinal construct, but as a lived reality. And those two things meeting, I think, is incredibly powerful. But often neither side is engaging sufficiently with the other, whether it's the doctrinal teaching not engaging enough with the form that really gives it a real bite in a person's experience, or the liturgical form not actually being explicated and finding itself yielding the epiphany that it should do when you recognize that God has forgiven you and He's now sitting you at His table. And the celebration of the sacrament is the doctrine of justification in motion.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:09

Well, before we go, I I need to share one illustration on this, um, very short, is uh on on your point about needing to explain or at least provide a framework to understand that in a sense benefits the practice. Uh, I think actually, I I can't remember if I actually heard this first from Howerwas or someone else actually making this argument for practices. But uh about the parable of the three bricklayers, I'm sure you're familiar with. Uh it's uh there's a the parable goes this way that a man comes and he observes these bricklayers and and asks them, you know, what they're doing. Uh uh there uh and the first bricklayer responds, uh, I'm a bricklayer, I'm working hard to lay bricks for my family, feed my family. The second bricklayer responds, I'm a builder, I'm building a wall. But the third bricklayer is the most productive of the three, and really the future leader of the group. And when when asked the question, What are you doing? he responds with a gleam in his eye, I'm building a a great cathedral, a great cathedral to the Almighty. And so that as the parable goes, uh, why it's relevant is that perspective, that broader perspective, what's understanding what I'm contributing to, what I'm participating in, uh, what it's all, what it all means, actually informs a more fulsome uh inhabitation of the practice and excitement about it. So I it's just confirming your point.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:31

There are so many threads that I wish we could keep pulling on here. Um I I have more critical thoughts, affirming thoughts. I I am I am definitely the Debbie Downer here in the group today. Uh I feel like I have to be. But um I don't think any of us disagree that we do need to be formed uh by the Spirit through the Word among the people of God, uh, devotionally, corporately, liturgically, all these different ways. Uh I do think that there's just the question of the contemporary moments, formation of it, and and the theological underpinnings for some of these things hits us all. But um guys, this has been a helpful discussion, clarifying discussion, confusing discussion uh for for some of us, but that's a classic, classic Mere Fidelity thing. If you have listened thus far, thank you for listening. Thank you for joining us. If you found any of this helpful, feel free to share that, share the episode, rate, review us on iTunes, uh, Spotify. But for now, this has been Mere Fidelity.