Boulton, Matthew Myer, Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology.

Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.

Part Two

This segment is clearly the heart of the volume and it offers readers an opportunity to get what might well be called a birds eye view of the Institutes. Not because Boulton summarizes the Institutes but because he interacts, brilliantly, with the major themes of Calvins best known work. So, he here investigates and interacts with such topics as the knowledge of God, Providence, Total Depravity (about which he has quite an interesting take- but more on that shortly), Scripture, Christ the Mediator, the Church Universal and the Church Particular (my terms not his), and finally, Prayer (which held such a central place for Calvin). Boultons analysis is the best Ive read since Karl Barths unutterably astonishing go at Calvin in his lectures on the great man. Boulton gives readers not simply a taste of Calvin as though he had merely dipped the tip of his finger in the sea of the mans mind and let it drip into our mouths- but a feast. So, for instance, Boulton notes, quoting and then expositing Calvin, man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon Gods face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself (p. 63). All, Boulton insists, for the purpose of spiritual formation. Indeed, if one over-arching fact can be gleaned from Boultons work it is this: Calvin wrote with the purpose of spiritual formation in mind first, most importantly, and consciously. Spiritual formation isnt a secondary goal for Calvin, it is his only goal. Unbelief, then, or in Calvins terminology, impietas, shows that mankind is too faithless to believe, too dull to notice, too ignorant to care, and too forgetful to follow the restorative way of life God sets before us every day (p. 65). The curative for impiety is trust, vigilance, learning and remembering. Mankind is, however, depraved and corrupt. And here is precisely where Boulton offers a flash of insight very much worth considering. I.e., that, for Calvin

 another major concept frames, specifies, and organizes his portrait of human sin in the Institutios opening that humans are dull, blind, forgetful, ungrateful, insensible, dim in a word, oblivious. For Calvin, the whole world without remainder is actually radiant with the majesty, presence, and grace of God, and yet, mired in sin, human beings are too dull, too blind, too senseless to see it (p. 84). Brilliant! To be sure, Boulton recognizes that depravity and oblivious may be seen as simply the same thing described by different words but the encirclement of depravity by the outer crust of obliviousness (his idea, my phrasing) is a fantastic clarification and a genuinely constructive new way to think of the subject. Man, in this condition, needs redemption! And so Gods Word becomes flesh. Twice-over without God, we are both malformed and miserable, and so God comes to us precisely as Immanuel, God with us, the fully divine, fully human being Jesus Christ (p. 117). With that sort of aid from God and that sort of regeneration, Scripture comes to life, as it were. Or as Boulton suggests scriptural texts are ultimately corrective spectacles through which they see the world, Christ is their cosmic schoolmaster, too (p. 136). All, again, in the service of spiritual formation. When it comes to the always thorny issue of Predestination, Boulton informs us that Calvin is trying to sketch an intellectual framework meant to serve the formation of a particular kind of human life. Or, more precisely, he is trying to sketch his understanding of the heavenly doctrine revealed in Scripture, a doctrine meant to serve the formation of fully human beings in Christs image: humble, grateful, doxological human beings, living in God, enrolled in the church, pilgrims on the way to paradise (p. 147). Here Boultons insistence that Calvin is questing for spiritual formation is the lens through which he interprets even the subject of predestination. And, strangely, it works. Certainly it nevertheless remains true that trying to pigeon-hole a mind like Calvins is an impossible task. There is no single purpose in Calvins work unless that single purpose be understood as the glorification of God. But if spiritual formation glorifies God then it can surely be understood as a corollary purpose for Calvins massive efforts.

So, curiously, yet unsurprisingly, the strength of Boultons view (that Calvin is concerned primarily with spiritual formation) is also its weakness. Calvin was surely interested in spiritual formation. There is no doubt about that. But that is not the center of his interest. That center lies not in humanity but in God. Calvin is theocentric. So is his work. Anthropocentrism was an impossibility for him and should, when the final sentence is written, be an impossibility for his students and interpreters as well. Next, were on to Part Three, where Boulton seeks to reform Calvin.

Jim West Quartz Hill School of Theology