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The Questioning Belief podcast explores objections to Christianity through in-depth discussions with experts. Drawing from her background as a former atheist and her experience in apologetics, Dr. Kathleen Noller invites you to explore thoughtful responses to serious questions about faith. Learn more.

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Welcome to the Kathleen Noller podcast brought to you by the CS Lewis Institute I'm your host, Dr Noller Join me today as we interrogate Christianity to see if it can withstand some of our toughest objections In the introduction to the book, we'll be discussing with author and professor Dr Matthew Bingham today, it begins with the following sentence, quote, you can learn a lot about the state of century evangelicalism.

Matthew Bingham: Thank you

Kathleen Noller: by talking to those who leave it So this is an apologetics podcast so I'm hoping that in this episode, we can speak to those who are either losing heart with Protestantism specifically or thinking about leaving Christianity altogether. We revolve every episode around an objection to Christianity as a whole, but today we're going to center our discussion on Reformed Protestantism, both what it uniquely offers and how its modern-day form can really be strengthened by hearkening back to its roots and its scripture-based spiritual practices

Kathleen Noller: So, a few objections that we'll discuss while this talk, and I'll just throw out there as a preview, they’re objections that I've heard from Protestants considering leaving the church are one, either evangelical are anti-intellectual reformed Protestants are over-intellectualizing the faith.

Matthew Bingham: you

Kathleen Noller: Two, that Protestants lack elements of bodily worship and traditional roots present in other Christian sects or even other religions, which hamper and reduce worship to a matter of the mind and three, sectarian conflicts within Christianity, such as Protestantism versus Catholicism versus Orthodoxy, really hamper our goals and our brotherhood is as Christians as a whole So, I think Dr Bingham's book is well poised to address these and more So let me introduce our speaker today Dr Matthew Bingham holds a PhD from Queen's University, Belfast He is the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Church History at Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is the author of Orthodox Radicals, Baptist Identity in the English Revolution, and has served as pastor in the US and in Northern Ireland He is also the author of newly released book, A Heart of Flame for God, in which Dr Bingham details his studies of God-ordained spiritual practices modeled by the century reformers. Primarily drawn from the Puritan tradition, he shows readers how to balance belief in salvation through faith with a responsibility for one's personal spiritual growth So welcome, Dr Bingham Thank you so much for joining us

Matthew Bingham: Thank you, Dr Knoll, it’s a pleasure to be here with you

Kathleen Noller: So, first, I'd like to go into a brief overview of what Reformed theology is and why you are drawing from Reformed and Puritan traditions in your book for those of us that are less familiar with perhaps church history and Protestant church history as a whole

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, thank you I mean, it is really the starting place for this book The subtitles, as you mentioned, is a reformed approach to spiritual formation So what are we even talking about there? And essentially, if we're talking about reformed Christianity or the reformed tradition, it it's slightly a variance with just a general reference to Reformation Christianity Reformation typically would take in the whole scope and sweep of the Protestant Reformation So all of those ah Christians within the Western church who broke away from the Bishop of Rome during the century and then typically that Reformation movement is broken down into ah three streams So there's a Lutheran stream, there's a so-called ah radical stream, which sort of includes a whole bunch of people who are difficult to categorize, and then there's a Reformed stream So the Reformed ah stream of the Protestant Reformation is those Christians who broke from Rome, originating in the churches in Switzerland, though quickly spreading out to other parts of Europe.

And typically the Reformed tradition is also associated with what's called the Magisterial Reformation, or that portion of the Reformation which had the backing, the protection, ah the endorsement of the civil magistrate, the kings and queens and princes and things so who gave backing to some but not all the streams of the Reformation So we're talking then historically about a strand of historic Christianity originating during the Protestant Reformation of the century, ah beginning in Switzerland, but then quickly spreading out to other parts of Europe and taking a real foothold in particularly in Britain-England and Scotland and parts of Ireland and Wales And that is where you also mentioned the Puritans ah who I draw on a lot in this book And so the Puritans represent a ah British expression of the reformed tradition And so they're coming in the latter half of the century and into the century and essentially they're largely English churchmen, ah lay people and clergy There are English theologians and pastors who thought a lot about the Christian life They did so from within this Reformed tradition, and they brought a particular set of emphases characteristic of the Reformed tradition to their understanding of not just theology, but really how do we live the Christian life? How do we grow as believers? What does piety look like? That would have been a word that they would have been quite fond of to describe that ah that warm-hearted devotion to God and growing in our in our love for Him. Thank you

Kathleen Noller: Thank you so much for explaining And so I was wondering, what are the core tenets of Reformed Protestantism that are particularly relevant or at play in reference to the spiritual practices we're going to discuss from your book?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, And I would say if we're talking about what are the distinctives of ah the reform tradition, you know, a lot of what we would say if we were to sit here and describe, okay, what makes up the reform tradition? A lot of what we would talk about would be things that ah would find great overlap with other strands of historic Christianity and a lot of overlap with other Reformation Protestant expressions. So for example, The five soles of the Reformation, ah sola scriptura and sola fide and so on and so forth Those five soles, those are really Reformation emphases and the reformed tradition sort of shares in those and takes those on and so at the heart of that, which the reformed tradition would have in common with the broader Protestant Reformation, we'd be thinking about those five soles we'd be thinking especially about a sola scriptura, commitment to the Bible alone as the ultimate rule of faith and practice It's not that you can't look to other things to think about life and even the Christian life, but ultimately the only source of revelation from God about who he is and how we ought to conduct ourselves, how we know him is found in in scripture alone And so that's a core tenet of the Reformation generally The Reformed tradition takes that and applies it in an especially rigorous way, which I think does have relevance to the whole spiritual formation conversation, because one of the emphases in the Reformed tradition over against Lutheranism, which would be the other sort of stream of the magisterial reformation, ah the Reformed were very keen to say that actually our worship and our piety and our approach to God is to be regulated by His Word, meaning we are only to do those things which God's Word ah gives to us, commands to us Whereas the Lutheran tradition in in corporate worship, for example, was happier to say Well, actually, we can, you know, as long as the thing isn't prohibited in Scripture, then at that point, it potentially could be included in our worship and in our piety

Kathleen Noller: Sure

Matthew Bingham: It doesn't mean it's a good idea still have to use wisdom and discernment

Kathleen Noller: more

Matthew Bingham: But they didn't have that strong, ah what's come to be known as the regulative principle of Reformed worship and so that would be ah certainly a characteristic, I think, relevant to this, which i would I would see that as essentially a sort of extension of sola scripture and then, of course, justification by faith alone is key to the Reformation and the Reformed tradition in particular, a strong sense that salvation is of the Lord now, that's just a scriptural phrase every Christian would agree with that phrase But for the Reformed, they're putting a special emphasis on that, on that sense that ah God is the agent in our salvation and that all we bring is our need

Kathleen Noller: So, for the justification by faith alone, sola fide, how do we think about faith? Is that based on as some might stereotype reform theology, is that based on correct understanding of theology alone? And how do we treat maybe church fathers like Origen who have faith? Beliefs not entirely accepted today by, i would say, probably any branch of Christianity How do we reconcile incorrect understandings or differences in theology with this concept of faith?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, So essentially when we're thinking about faith and we're thinking about what we bring to the Christian life and how does that all work out, one of the animating sort of principles for Reformed theology would be this idea that regeneration or the new birth, John, Jesus says you must be born again, that notion of ah of a new spiritual birth, that that is something which precedes faith in the Reformed tradition So the sense would be that the reason that one puts, one looks to Christ with faith and repentance and trust is because actually one's had the heart of stone taken away and the heart of flesh put in one's been regenerated or born again to a living hope, as Peter puts it and so that new birth, then gives rise to that heart response of faith and trust and repentance so, in other words, then we really are in a reformed understanding We really are putting our faith and trust in Christ He's it's not him believing in himself It's us trusting in him, But the question from a reform perspective is why does one person put their faith in Christ, and another hears the same message and turns away? And is that something in the hearts of the two people? And if so, how does one's heart get changed? And so, we're reformed perspective would kind of want to press in is to say, well if anyone's going to turn in repentance and faith to Christ, it's because the spirit has already taken out that heart of stone, put in a heart of flesh, given the new birth. So, When we think about different traditions, that is one place where Reformed theology and Reformed soteriology or the doctrine of salvation takes a ah distinct sort of position and line And then that strong sense of regeneration and the place of regeneration and regeneration preceding faith and the idea that it's all, I mentioned before, salvation is of the Lord Again, that's a biblical phrase everyone would agree with, but for Reformed Christians, ah there's a particular emphasis there And that way of thinking about it then gives rise to, i think, a hey distinctively, or maybe not distinct in the sense that no one else says things like this, but at least a characteristically reformed way of thinking about spiritual formation and how we kind of then engage in spiritual practices and ah following after before some

Kathleen Noller: So, for the five Solas that you mentioned,

Matthew Bingham: Think,

Kathleen Noller: I think for Sola Scriptura, and maybe I'm betraying myself as a Reformed Protestant here, but of course we believe Scripture is God's word Why would we not exalt it? I think all Christians would agree with that, not only Reformed Protestants and but yet, how do we get to this Sola Scriptura principle without getting too circular?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, I mean, and that that is ah a question that was really at the heart of the Reformation, and it's one that I think continues to animate a lot of dialogue between Protestants and ah Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox ah folks today and think from a reformed perspective, we're thinking about Sola Scriptura We're starting with the sense, you know, Paul in Timothy, Second Timothy, he talks about scripture as breathed out by God and so, I think the Protestant question is, what do we have that is breathed out by God? If I want if I want God's words in in the strongest possible sense, where can I go? And the answer that the Protestants give, of course, is, well, we only have one place where you can find God breathed words, and that's scripture they weren't throwing away all of church history They weren't trying to say that that those who came before didn't have good and useful things to say, but they would always want to reroute and say, okay, well, those who came before had good things to say insofar as their comments, their statements, their theological and exegetical observations were actually organically arising from a faithful reading of Scripture and so they were saying, look, there isn't some secondary stream of tradition that is distinct from Scripture that we can hold on to the same level as scripture I mean, a lot of, for example, a lot of the ah the things that the reformers said no to that were, you know, theologically present in the late Middle Ages are not necessarily things that that contradict a particular passage of scripture outright. So, for example, you know, some of the doctrines about Mary, you know, the bodily assumption of Mary There is no passage in scripture that says Mary was not assumed into heaven. That's not in the Bible does not contradict in that explicit way that doctrine We have examples of people in the Bible who are taken up into heaven directly So it's not just looking at traditions and saying, do these explicitly contradict? It's done these add a thing that is not found in scripture. And so it's this sense that if God has breathed out some words, but not all words, if we're going to think about the Christian life, faith, and practice We need to root everything that we affirm, everything that we preach from the pulpit, everything that we say is right for godliness We need to root it in in scripture and not anywhere else.

Kathleen Noller: And thank you for bringing that up as well, because I personally know folks who are thinking about leaving Protestantism because they see they see reformed Protestantism as a reaction to Roman Catholicism, but they see it as one that, quote, threw the baby out with the bathwater by abandoning so many church traditions and ceremonies and so in your book, you've described some medieval Catholic practices that the reformers reacted against Can you give us a few of those examples and whether they're still in practice today or if the Reformation had any sort of effect on Roman Catholicism in reverse?

Matthew Bingham: To

Kathleen Noller: Yeah

Matthew Bingham: Oh, yeah, that's an interesting way to put it i mean And yeah, so there were all sorts of rather elaborate ah liturgical and religious practices that had become very popular and very common by the late Middle Ages and the reformers were essentially, it's not that they wanted to indiscriminately throw everything away, ah but they did want to hold everything up And particularly in the reform tradition, they did want to hold everything up to the bar of scripture and say, do we find warrant for this in the Bible? And if we don't, then we don't think it has a place in our, in our worship and our practice.

So, there's all sorts of examples of that, some more central than others, so you know, one example would be that our in Roman Catholicism and this, this yes, but pertaining, does it continue to today? This, this does that, you know, there are seven sacraments ah that the church observes, and Protestants said, well, we only see two of these sacraments, baptism and the Lord's supper or communion or the Eucharist We only see these two in scripture And so they dispensed with the others And what's interesting, and this sort of makes the point about Sola Scriptura, the other five sacraments were not necessarily things that the reformers thought were evil or wicked or to be dispensed with altogether So, for example, one of the sacraments in Roman Catholicism is marriage and the reformers certainly still embraced marriage as a God-given good ah But they said, we don't see a warrant for making it a sacrament and ah and a means of grace in this way that the medieval church had held to and the Roman Catholic Church still holds to today.

Instead, they said, well this is a creational reality, and we want to uphold it and embrace it and celebrate it and think about it biblically and rightly, but we don't see it in through this sacramental churchly lens. There are other things as well There's things like the medieval church had a very elaborate ah liturgical calendar And so you had feast days and saints’ days and fast days and all of these sorts of things and again, what's interesting is the reformers are not against ah feasting They're not against fasting They're not against thinking about saints who have gone before, although they define what constitutes a saint maybe slightly differently, but they're not opposed to any of these things what they're opposed to is the church speaking as the church in its authoritative voice as the church, ah handing down prescriptions for people and binding people's consciences in a way that Scripture does not so for example, on fasting, you know if you if you want to set aside a day to fast and this sort of thing, fine, the Reformers aren't opposed to it per se, but they don't like the idea that a church official in the official capacity would say to all the people, you must fast on this day for this duration because again, they're not finding that level of prescriptive authority in the Bible And then there are other issues as well, more central issues that they took objection to in terms of late medieval practice most importantly is the mass and the doctrine of transubstantiation, the understanding of well what's happening with the bread and the wine at the communion table or communion altar. They shipped it to a table There's lots of changes, but point being, all these things, in a sense, are rooted in that sola scriptura principle, where they are really trying to radically say, okay, what does the Bible teach? And in our authoritative capacity as the church pronouncing, we don't want to go beyond scripture We want to stop speaking ah where scripture stops speaking so

Kathleen Noller: So what would you say to folks who look at some of the, I don't know if we can even call them traditions in Protestantism, such as giving a sermon, where there's no prescription in the Bible as to how long the sermon is, what time of day the sermon has to be, just like there aren't prescriptions, like you said, regarding when someone has to fast or something like anointing with oil or laying on of the hands or other traditions in the New Testament.

Matthew Bingham: was saying in Scripture? So, of view Now, prescription in the Bible is to have on the surface, what time of day the surface must be.

Kathleen Noller: So where it’s dispensing with someone because dispensing with a tradition because it was not prescribed in detail in scripture versus maintaining it, but allowing for flexibility ah on behalf of either the lady on behalf of the pastors within the church to sort of use their own discernment to figure out where it lies and where those boundaries lie within scripture?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, and that's a great question And so I think but with her

Kathleen Noller: Yeah

Matthew Bingham: yeah and that's a great question and so i think You know, the way that Reformed theologians would typically think about that, they would draw a distinction between ah elements of worship and circumstances and again, one might say that's a distinction without a difference, and that's the argument that that would that you know folks would have.

Kathleen Noller: Sure

Matthew Bingham: But at least to get inside the logic of it, they'll say, okay, there are elements In other words, there are things given in Scripture clearly that is to be present in worship for God's people New Testament worship gives us, for example, preaching You know, Paul says, Timothy, preach the word in season and out of season there's plenty of warrant for this idea that someone is going to get to the front and authoritatively ah teach the gathered congregation from God's word Now, As you say, how long does that go? What style is used? Does the person stand up or sit down? Do they stand behind a pulpit or lectern or sit on a stool? or you know There’s practical questions about how are we going to implement this thing called preaching?

And those have been labeled typically as circumstances and so the idea is that You know, the circumstances are, yeah, you're going to have to use wisdom and good judgment and prudence Circumstances might differ from cultural context one cultural context to another there are just certain practical things that have to be worked out in the context in which you're trying to ah do the you know the thing But that doesn't take away from the idea that there are some non-negotiables, elements of worship Now, again, if I am arguing against that idea if I'm from another tradition and I'm saying no to that, I'm going to try to find places where elements and circumstances blur, where maybe that distinction isn't so clear, where maybe I could try to find circumstances that start to feel more substantive.

You know, and those are the kinds of discussions that are had, as I mentioned, like the Lutheran tradition And much of the Anglican tradition, though not all, would, well, probably all, but anyway, Anglicanism, Lutheranism would push against that, even though they'd agree with the Reformed tradition on many respects So it's there's a discussion to be had, but that's the basic distinction. For me, I think it makes sense I have yet to find a real example that makes me think, okay, I need to abandon this idea i think that distinction between elements and circumstances holds, and I think it's a helpful one for differentiating between, you know, things that actually the Bible says, yeah, New Testament worship looks like this It includes this and there's something that you need to think about and use discretion for.

Kathleen Noller: Like you said, I think the circumstantial distinction helps as well to explain some of the many cross-cultural differences that we can see, even within Protestant churches in the modern day.

Matthew Bingham: I can see that

Kathleen Noller: Across various cultures, different countries, and sort of wrapping up our discussion on different sects, I often hear from either Protestants or Eastern Orthodox folks or Catholics that their sect of Christianity is correct because it's the closest version of Christianity to the early church right after Jesus' death

Matthew Bingham: like of Christ

Kathleen Noller: So, I'd like to ask you, is that our goal to replicate the practices of the apostles or the early church?

Matthew Bingham: So, I'd like to ask you, is that our goal to replicate the practices of the Apostles to the early church?

Kathleen Noller: And how do we let the Holy Spirit, if at all, guide the formation of the church in these different contexts?

Matthew Bingham: And how do we like the formation of the church in different contexts?

Kathleen Noller: What's the balance there, especially from a risk Reformed perspective?

Matthew Bingham: What's the balance there, especially from a Christian-born perspective?

Yeah, it is an interesting question I do think I often think there's a sort of unstated and sometimes stated assumption among lots of Christians, including a lot of Protestant evangelicals, that if we could get back to the practices of the early church, then that would sort of by default be the best possible way, and the best possible world, right? you know, if we could just find out with certainty, what were they doing in the second and third centuries in their worship services? Let's do that and we'll be doing it doing it better than we are now

Kathleen Noller: Yeah

Matthew Bingham: And you see throughout church history, there's often these movements to go back and recover that sort of early church spirit and there's a logic to that, right? I assume that part of that logic is, well, those believers were closer to the time of Jesus and the apostles and so therefore, they must be, you know, kind of more in touch with what Jesus would have would have wanted for his people to do And yeah, okay, there's logic to that But the other piece to that puzzle is that if we're talking about the early church, by which I'm not talking about necessarily the church in the book of Acts, I'm talking about the church in the those early centuries, kind of the second century, the third century, the fourth century Christians, we're also talking about people who have not had the benefit of centuries and centuries of reflection upon scripture. In some cases, in the early, early church, we're talking about people who didn't necessarily even have access to ah all of what God breathed out for his people in Scripture and so, I think it's an open question as to on any given issue whether Christian practice in the second century or the third century is, in fact, where we want to be or ought to be. We can also find a lot of diversity in the first centuries of the church So sometimes it's sort of presented as this simple thing of, well, let's do what the early church did Well, it's not quite that simple

Sometimes we don't know what the early church did for example, you know, one sort of chestnut in terms of early church history and always a vexing question is, you know, did when did infant baptism start and get going? Obviously, for if you're ah a Presbyterian, for example, believes in paedo-baptism, you say, well, infant baptism got going with the apostles, and they were doing that ah For our Baptist friends, they take a different view So there's a question where, ah in terms of exactly when that started and how it got started, there's some real ambiguity. We also have situations where we do know about early church practice and we can see variation, So I don't think an appeal to the early church really necessarily always gets us where we want to go and where the Reformed tradition and with the wider Reformation tradition has gone is to say, actually, there's only one place we can turn to answer these questions. Let's try to be as biblically grounded as we can and if people were doing a thing, whether it was in the third century or the 1st century that we actually don't find a good warrant for in scripture then we need to stop with that thing and whether it has a long pedigree or a short one if it's not biblical it's not for god's people because again we only have one source of god-breathed words to direct and to guide. So again, I think it we should study the early church There's much we can learn There's much we can learn from the medieval church and the Reformation church and every period of church history But I don't think we can ever take any period of church history and imagine, well, this is some sort of golden age where they were doing all the things exactly how we want to do them today. That's where I think the touchstone of scripture is the only reliable ah guide that that we have

Kathleen Noller: That's very helpful to point that out and connect that back to the Sola Scriptura principle for us as well

Matthew Bingham: so

Kathleen Noller: And just slightly related to that, I am very intellectually interested in where the veneration of saints practice came from

Matthew Bingham: So that's why I am very intellectually interested in where the Federation of Saints practice came from

Kathleen Noller: And so, I've looked back through the historical record and tried to find

Matthew Bingham: And so, the historical records and tried to find evidence of that in the church

Kathleen Noller: Evidence of that in the early church and of course you can you have records of narrative biblical artwork as early as you know AD in a house church in Syria

Matthew Bingham: And of course, even though the references there, the biblical early, you know, and the house church in Syria and then the Roman Catholic House, which wasn't a worship space that there was biblical artwork there.

Kathleen Noller: And then in the Roman catacombs, which wasn't a worship space, but there was biblical artwork there but then how do you prove that that was connected to a process of veneration and it's just so difficult if you look outside of the Bible sometimes.

Matthew Bingham: But then how do you prove that that was connected to across the church outside the bible sometimes

Kathleen Noller: To use just church history and just our archaeological record or historical record to try to distinguish something like that, like biblical art as an accretion versus a tradition

Matthew Bingham: yeah, church just archeological record our historical record tries distinguishing something like that, like biblical art as an equation versus a tradition. So, I'd also like to go back to your introduction, you talked about what you have found to be insightful from those who have left evangelicalism.

Kathleen Noller: from those who have left evangelicalism and sort of what they have told you that has been informative of as they've moved either away from Christianity or towards Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy

Matthew Bingham: sort of what they have told you that has been informative as they've moved either away from Christianity or towards Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy

Kathleen Noller: And one of the things you mentioned is that a lack of clarity about how one should pursue the spiritual life is often coupled with this openness to spiritual techniques that can become problematic

Matthew Bingham: And one of the things you mentioned is that a lot of clarity about how one should pursue the spiritual life is that it coupled with its openness spiritual techniques that can become problematic, and then some evangelicals

Kathleen Noller: And that some evangelicals are very open to traditions apart from those endorsed by the Reformation or even by Christianity

Matthew Bingham: Door

Kathleen Noller: For those that are listening to and want to know what are some of these practices or what's a litmus test for such a practice?

Matthew Bingham: For those that are listening in and want to know what are some of these practices, what are the litmus test for such a practice, and why are they so problematic in the spiritual, but not religious, sort influenced evangelical world?

Kathleen Noller: And why are they so problematic in this spiritual but not religious sort of influenced evangelical world? It's an interesting dynamic And I think that one of the things that is so interesting to me about, you know, people who are evangelicals and then leave is that I think often they do show us, you know, blind spots

Matthew Bingham: I don't think necessarily blind spots in, certainly not in ah in a biblical Christianity or even the Reformed tradition per se, but blind spots in our in our evangelical practice

Kathleen Noller: Yeah

Matthew Bingham: And when I think about my own evangelical upbringing, ah my reflection is that there was a lot of encouragement to walk with the Lord, but there was less specific direction or discussion of what that looked like and what that entailed

Kathleen Noller: yeah

Matthew Bingham: And so I think when you have some of that vagueness, then when you encounter another Christian tradition, that is actually quite specific and quite concrete and here's some things you can do and here's some practices that are available to you that can be very attractive and again maybe one evaluates those things and decides you know what actually i want to become a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox believer. Well, that's a decision that many make and one can one can make that carefully and prayerfully before the Lord and But what I think I want to push against are those evangelicals who aren't necessarily consciously sort of making that choice, but rather they just kind of happen to fall into practices and ways of thinking about the spiritual life that are out of step with their own ah Reformation heritage. And they're doing so from a place of not really understanding or digging into that heritage in the first place You know, if you're going to reject that, again, that's between you and the Lord But do so with understanding and do so after having really given a fair shot to the Reformation tradition that that that you're already in

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: And so again, if we're thinking about litmus tests for what practices would be outside of a reformed approach, it really, it goes back again to Sola Scriptura. There is a simplicity is different than being simple in a derogatory way I think there's a simplicity to reformed piety and worship ah that mirrors that which we find in in the Bible itself

Kathleen Noller: yeah

Matthew Bingham: So it's very word based It's word based in two senses One is it's word based in the sense that anything that we are going to do to pursue God and to pursue conformity to ah Christ and to pursue greater zeal and devotion, anything we're going to do, any means we're going to take up must be derived from the Bible so it's word centered in that sense And that's kind of that regulative principle idea we were talking about, though now applied to personal piety

Kathleen Noller: you

Matthew Bingham: But it's also word-centered in the second sense It's word-centered in the sense that for the Reformed tradition, the Bible itself constitutes the means through which we commune with God

Kathleen Noller: great now that it is just most concern

Matthew Bingham: God has spoken to us in His Word We reflect on what He's told us We pray that back to Him And so you can find in the Reformed tradition very lofty statements about you know bringing into almost one-to-one equation communion with God and engagement with God's Word, as this is ah for those of us here embodied and created and fallen and redeemed. The way we the way we commune with God, ah this side of glory, is through His Word And so it's strongly word-centered then in those two senses. And the litmus test then becomes, for any practice that I might encounter, is this clearly ah derived from Scripture and rooted in Scripture?

And a lot of the practices that are on offer in other traditions are not and i you know in many cases, in most cases, I think, proponents of many of those things would be happy to say, yeah, no, this isn't explicitly found in the Bible, but in those traditions, I think the idea would be it doesn't need to be because we're not embracing that strong sola scriptura doctrine. So, a lot of these differences in sort of spiritual formation practices are downstream from these bigger theological commitments and one of my burdens in in the book is to just sort of underscore that and say, hey, you know, it's a big world out there you must walk with the Lord. But let's not imagine that these larger commitments don't impinge meaningfully upon the practices and let's not sort of speak as though we can just sort of jumble it all up in ah in the stew pot and we want to think carefully about these traditions because there's logic to them and ah and coherence to them.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, absolutely You have a quote somewhere in your book from the Puritan William Ames, and he says, theology is the doctrine or teaching of living to God

Matthew Bingham: the okay careful speak doctor and teaching number living to

Kathleen Noller: And I think that sort of, you know, sums that up very well that you perhaps Protestants think that they can sort of pick and choose from different theological principles or Christians in general might think that theology doesn't have necessarily strong downstream applications

Matthew Bingham: So, yeah, it's up to the floor

Kathleen Noller: Apart from the quote, salvation matters, but it's just, it's not really true and I think you show that really well in your book Another ah aspect of the evangelical culture that you mentioned, and I touched on a little bit in the beginning of the podcast, is sort of this perception that evangelicals are anti-intellectual, and that's been leveled at evangelicals in numerous articles But then there's this other objection that Reformed Protestants are too intellectual They're too much caught in their head They're too much focused on the mind and understanding and knowledge and rationality and so how did we get to these two completely opposite criticisms of very, very similar theologies how did our culture got here? And what should we be doing about it, if anything?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, it is an interesting thing It's something I've thought about a little bit just in terms of, yeah, because they do feel like sort of horses pulling in opposite directions The evangelicalism is anti-intellectual idea and then the at least reformed evangelicalism too intellectual in a sense, or at least too much concerned with the mind and that sort of thing at the expense of other things

Kathleen Noller: Yeah

Matthew Bingham: And yeah, there's a number of different ways I mean, i think Some who have approached the ah question, I think maybe more carefully than others, have drawn a distinction between certain strands of evangelicalism and the reformed tradition so, you know for example, I think a reference in the book, ah Richard Hofstetter's book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, you know, he talks, he lays a lot of, you know, he's talking about American culture generally as being anti-intellectual and he lays a lot of the blame for that at the feet of religious movements in the country, particularly evangelicalism

Kathleen Noller: who

Matthew Bingham: But he actually in the book is, is careful to differentiate whether he's correct or not And his analysis is another thing, but he does differentiate between the evangelical revivals of the century and then the second great awakening in the century And then the kind of puritan tradition that was present in you know the in the early century and onwards and there is a real intellectualism present in Protestantism and reformed Protestantism in the sense that ah Protestants are very much people of the book. And Protestantism has been described not you know totally and accurately as a religion of the book. And one of the criticisms when early in the century, when Catholics would be traveling to Protestant cities and reformed towns and they would go into reformed worship and they would sit in, they would say things like, this isn't a church, this is a school you know and they weren't totally off base in those remarks, just at the pure level of what, in their mind, a church, kind of what does what does a church look like? It's going to have elaborate you know stained glass windows and a certain kind of clothing on the on the person performing the service, the priest

Kathleen Noller: yes

Matthew Bingham: It's going to have a certain ceremonial aspect that they look at reform worship, and they say, hey, that's all gone That's been stripped away And so they're not wrong in that sense. I think the Reformed question is, well, what should Christian worship look like? And how do we know? And then they say, well, Christian worship should look like whatever the Bible says it should, and particularly what the New Testament says it should look like and they would say, when we go to the New Testament, we ah we don't see a lot of this elaborate ceremonial and ritual and other things And so around and around it goes But I think that word-centeredness gives rise to the objection that reformed Christianity is too heady and it's too focused on the mind at the expense of either you know the body or the heart and to that, I mean, in a nutshell, there's lots of things one could say, but I would say two responses One, A lot of the objections to sort of Protestantism ultimately seem to be based on this idea that that Protestants or Reform people or Puritans are very kind of, they're wanting to say no to all sorts of aspects of life and I think actually when you look into the Puritans in particular, what you find is they didn't say no to as much as people thought they did They said no to things in the particular context of Christian worship. So, for example, you know certain kinds of music, right? They didn't want elaborate sort of polyphonic chant in worship. And why? Because they see in the scripture, they don't see performative music as ah as a part of New Testament worship They see congregational singing and singing in a language that people can understand and that sort of thing. Singing, you know, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and in Ephesians

Kathleen Noller: Sure

Matthew Bingham: So, they're saying no to a certain kind of music in the context of worship, but that doesn't mean they're against ah music per se or even against elaborate art music in other contexts. They're just saying some things ah might be appropriate elsewhere, doesn't mean they're appropriate in the context of worship

Kathleen Noller: so

Matthew Bingham: And in a sense, I think all Christians kind of buy that in in one way, shape, or form You know you might like rollerblading, but it doesn't mean you should rollerblade down the aisle on Sunday morning

Kathleen Noller: Yeah

Matthew Bingham: you know So if you push it kind of to an absurd place, we all sort of get that

Kathleen Noller: yeah

Matthew Bingham: And I think that animates a lot of that sense that reformed people are always saying no, and they're just focusing on the mind The second thing, though, i I think is that we need to understand that the reformed tradition and the Puritan tradition within that wider reform category, very interested in in the heart, very interested in the affections, very interested in stirring up ah the affections and making people not just you know want to know things about God, but to love them those things. But their conviction is that for the person who is ah truly born again, the way that they're going to get to a heart that's on fire for the Lord and passionately convicted on certain things is through ah meditating on God's truth and God's word and so in a sense, ultimately, they're not interested in in filling up the head with thoughts just for the sake of it, but they believe that the way God has wired us up as human beings made in his image is that our hearts will be stirred through meditation and reflection on his truth and his word and again, one could disagree with that, but that is the, that's the logic of it So they're, they're not,  sort of putting opposition between the heart and the head or saying that the head is important and the heart is not. They're saying they are totally joined together and the way you, get the heart going is through the mind and through reflection on God's truth

Kathleen Noller: Yes, the Puritan phrase, keeping the heart, and we'll discuss in a little bit that you go into so well in the book

Matthew Bingham: Thank you

Kathleen Noller: Before we go into the concept of spiritual formation, which is sort of the meat and what I'd love to discuss next, we've talked a lot about you know how obviously in order to practice Sola Scriptura, you need to be able to hear scripture or read scripture yourself and so literacy is very important Distribution of the Bible is very important Translation is very important And so you go into this a little bit, but can you describe for our listeners, did the Reformed Protestants really take that seriously? And what have they done to help improve literacy and to help really spread the dissemination of the Bible to as many people as possible so Sola Scriptura can really become a reality?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, and it is i mean, that's if you are if you're starting with the premise that ah Christian piety is word-centered in the senses that we talked about, then you obviously have a very strong interest in helping people both to have the capacity to read and understand and also to think practically about the means of sort of disseminating that and what we see at the Reformation is that both kind of prongs really are gone after by the reformers So they are instituting schools. They are trying to teach people to read In Scotland, for example, they start schools in smaller, you more rural places where ordinarily you wouldn't need a school because if you think, why, if you're going to be in agriculture you know, why do you need to learn some of these things? You don’t need to learn how to, you know, do farming things. Right But they're saying, no, actually, we want people reading God's word and rooted in it So we're going to teach some of these things and press for literacy And historians have tried to get at that in different ways You know, historians who focus on early modern Europe, for example, have tried to look at literacy rates in Catholic universities.

David Price- villages and Protestant villages and have tried to compare them they've tried to see what you know what kinds of David Price- books would people have owned if they owned any of that kind of thing so there's different ways, I think, just as a matter of historical inquiry that you can try to substantiate that but Certainly in terms of the principles that they were operating on, getting people to read and then getting the Bible translated into the language, the vernacular language of people was at the center of the Reformation. And putting that in people's hands was at the center of the Reformation And, you know, it's helpful, I think, to make the caveat that You know, obviously lots of people, maybe most people, I don't know the numbers, but certainly a substantial number of people throughout the history of the church have not either had the means to read ah for themselves or would not have owned, you know, a copy of the scriptures in their own language So the reformers certainly wouldn't want to say that one cannot be a Christian if one cannot read or doesn't own a copy of the Bible.

Kathleen Noller: Thank you

Matthew Bingham: Certainly not you know, faith comes by hearing, says Paul in Romans So clearly hearing God's word is that also at the at the center of this but I think their position would have been, you know what? If you can own a copy of the scriptures for yourself, if you can take in God's word, is this going to help you do what Psalm says you should be doing, which is ah that making the delight of your heart the meditation on God's word day and night? And if it will help you to live more ah forcefully into that Psalm vision of godliness and flourishing, to have your own copy of the Bible in a language you can understand and the capacity to read it, well, then we're going to do everything we can to help you do that because we don't want people who are just sort of just getting by with the minim but we want to help people thrive and so I think really a lot of that emphasis, that Reformation emphasis on literacy, ah Bible translation, it really is about ah thriving spiritually. They certainly would have allowed illiterate people, people without the copy of scripture in their hand to be saved and that sort of thing We don't want to imagine otherwise but yeah, it was a priority for them, and it is borne out in the historical record

Kathleen Noller: Yes, I very much appreciate that example because sometimes I hear two objections leveled at Christianity the first is that Christianity or any organized religion, they don't want you to think for yourself and so they would want to keep you in the dark They wouldn't want to give you their your own Bible they would want to be the ones processing the information and then spitting it out to you, you know, looking at things like the slave Bible and everything that was at times true and a means of a means of control, but I think that's definitely not the Reformed Protestant approach, which is quite the opposite.

And then the second criticism I often hear leveled it at least modern-day Christians and often revolves around pro-life issues seems to be, well, you have this theoretical, very strong theoretical objection to something or commitment to something based on scripture, but how are you living it out? How is that coming into the world? How are you organizing your service activities around that? Is that something you're even concerned about? And so, I think, at least on the point of literacy here, we can see that that was very much a concern theologically and intellectually that played out into a practical reality of trying to disseminate the words

Matthew Bingham: So, you can feel quickly to have a click on into a practical reality of trying to disseminate the audience, but I wanted to touch on the concept of spiritual formation now

Kathleen Noller: But I would love to touch on the concept of spiritual formation now, so you spend a great deal of time defining this concept

Matthew Bingham: So, you've had a great time finding this concept because I've had the

Kathleen Noller: You cite many supporting Bible verses which detail that we grow up into salvation, we press onwards towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God and Christ Jesus and so on

Kathleen Noller: So how do you define spiritual formation and does your definition differ from what the modern Protestant might have already in their mind?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, it's interesting I surveyed a lot of different definitions of spiritual formation in writing this book, and there's a lot of overlap in them. I mean, even in even in spiritual formation books where I would have some disagreement with at least certain aspects, I don't want to overstate the distinctions to make them greater than they are

Kathleen Noller: Sure

Matthew Bingham: You know, there's a lot of overlap A lot of it, all the definitions, or at least the vast majority, revolve around this idea that somehow when we're talking about spiritual formation, we're talking about the active conscious part that we as Christian men and women play in ah pursuing God and striving to grow into the likeness of Christ and so the definition that I came to, I'll just read this from the book

Kathleen Noller: Sure

Matthew Bingham: It's on page in the book, of course? Spiritual formation is the conscious process by which we seek to heighten and satisfy our spirit-given thirst for God through divinely appointed means and with a view toward working out our own salvation with fear and trembling and becoming mature in Christ and yeah, there's any number of aspects of that that that we could unpack I think to me, a few that are that are worth bringing out are ah first spiritual formation is a conscious process I think that one of the things that sometimes gets confusing when we think about spiritual formation is you know, isn't it the case that ah the Holy Spirit is always at work to conform us to the image of Christ?

You know, Romans , all things work for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose And so if that's the case, then isn't everything ah part of our spiritual formation? and, you know, again, the term spiritual formation is not found in the Bible So if you want to make that label serve that purpose, you know, ah knock yourself out But to me, it's not the most helpful way to use that label, because if something accounts for everything, then in a sense, it accounts for nothing and it's just not useful anymore So I think it's helpful to differentiate and to say, yes, everything that happens to me in my life is ordained by God and is going to fit the purpose he has for me, which if I'm in Christ is to become more like Christ So yes, everything However, I think in terms of our lived experience, clearly we can differentiate between those things that we're consciously doing, taking a hold of, pursuing, and then all the various circumstances in which we find ourselves And so for me, and indeed, I think for most of the definitions that I encountered, there was got to be some emphasis on that conscious process, that working out your own salvation with fear and trembling that Paul talks about in Philippians

Secondly, one of the things I wanted to highlight in this in this definition that I don't think is always picked up is to me, spiritual formation has to be ah very much concerned with our with the desires of our heart And so that's why I put in there conscious process by which we seek to heighten and satisfy our spirit given thirst for God and where are we distinguishing here? Well, it's sometimes I think we talk about spiritual formation just in terms of how we behave and how we act and are we living virtuous lives? And of course, that's a huge part of the Christian life And that that certainly comes under the heading of, at least in Protestant ways of thinking and speaking, sanctification You know, I'm going to be, you know, sinning less, we hope and pray over time by the Spirit's work in my life But I think while spiritual formation certainly is including that to some extent, I think there's a lot about our spiritual formation that really has to do with the inward ah person, the hidden person, ah the person that only is known to me and even only partially known to me know David says, cleanse me from secret faults I want a heart that loves the things that God loves and hates the things that God hates And I think that a part of our interest in in spiritual formation is actually growing that sense of desire I want what God wants as the deer patent for the water, so my heart yearns after God

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: And that's the aim and the goal And I think that's conceptually distinct from, you know, am I living out a virtuous life? You know, am i am I loving my neighbor in thought, word, and deed?

Kathleen Noller: who

Matthew Bingham: So, to me, those things are almost the fruits of that heart that's being really turned and conformed and shaped to mirror and reflect God's own heart and if you think about it, the outward actions can be faked or mimicked. There's lots of motivation for me to maybe want to be seen or even in some sense be a good neighbor and Jesus has lots to say about that that gap that can enter in between the outward actions and the inward desires and motivations So think spiritual formation, and I tried to bring that other the definition, is certainly concerned with that, concerned with desire and then,  the, the last two parts that I really kind of draw out of that definition, one, or the idea of using divinely appointed means, I think we've already touched on that with sola scriptura,  you know, spiritual formation, i think biblically should be rooted in the word in those two senses that we discussed. And then the last part of that definition that's important, of course, is what is the goal of, of all this? And,  The definition that I put says with a view toward, and here quoting Philippians, and Colossians, working out our own salvation with fear and trembling and becoming mature in Christ again, we're not just pursuing spiritual formation because we are religiously minded people who are seeking spiritual experiences that are interesting or satisfying or enjoyable in some way

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: In fact, the Bible says that that ah that a lot of our spiritual formation and a lot of walking with the Lord is going to involve suffering and, denying oneself So our goal is, is not to chase spiritual highs, though I hope I trust and my own experience testifies there, there are a lot of wonderful moments along the way, but that's not the end goal The goal is to get somewhere and where we want to get is,  to be like Christ and to be with him and in fact, I mean, I think,  There's lots of wonderful things on the way, but it's the end in view I think CS Lewis has a very nice image of, you know, we we're trying to get back home and there are lots of inns along the way, some of which may be very pleasant, but however pleasant a particular inn might be, it's not home and it can't be home and we can't be so distracted by whatever pleasant things might be on offer in the inn that we forget that actually we're trying to get somewhere And this is a journey with an end point that the Bible gives us.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, very true i think folks listening to that might realize this tension between attributing our spiritual growth to the Holy Spirit and recognizing the influence of grace in our life, but also then striving ourselves to work towards a Christlike state So what is the interplay here in spiritual formation between our effort, our responsibility, and our merit? Versus that of the spirit? And is there even a balance between those? Or is it completely the Holy Spirit?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, in in some ways, again, that cluster of questions was also at the heart of the Reformation And, you know, the Reformation answer ah really was and is that to, you know, the Reformers distinguish between sort of two aspects of this concept of salvation and this is why the distinction for the Reformers between justification and sanctification was so important because they're going to affirm that I'm united with Christ and I get both justification and sanctification Calvin called it a duplex gratia, double grace and in justification, i am perfect because Christ is perfect and I'm in him and his righteousness is imputed to me And so in that sense, there's nothing I can add. There's nothing I need to add He's done it all And so they're holding that and saying this is a part of our salvation, but then they're also saying that a part of that larger concept of salvation is that actually the Holy Spirit is now working in me to bring about real transformation in in in me So Christ is perfect, and because I'm in Him, I'm counted as perfect But in myself, there remains much sin and corruption.

And this is where we get this sort of you know dual identity of the Christian almost i think it's reflected in a passage like Romans , where Paul says he does the things he doesn't want to do and ah he feels this tension in himself And that's the Christian life, this side of glory, in certainly in Reformation perspective And in terms of you know what does this mean then when we're thinking about, okay, yes, I'm perfect in Christ. His righteousness is mine, but then I'm called to be like him more and more And that involves my conscious acting and willing and saying yes to some things and saying no to other things and yet I'm also aware that it's God who has promised to complete the good work that he began in me And so there is this tension And, you know, I think no part of Scripture, no passage of Scripture gets at it more clearly more explicitly than the verse we already mentioned in that definition, Philippians, and, you know, where Paul says, continue to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling so can't get much more conscious You do it. Think about it Work at it It's going to be hard sometimes, but you press forward Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling but then he says, for it is God who works in you to will and to act to fulfill his good purpose.

And so there you have the other side of the coin Salvation is of the Lord God has started a good work in you, and he's going to bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus, and so we've moved forward confident in that, but we also don't let that take away from the reality that today i might be faced with some hard decisions and God calls me to walk worthy of the calling to which I've been called, as Paul says in Ephesians. So I think that tension is there in a sense between the already and the and the not yet is sometimes how a lot of those themes are woven together in a handy form of words I think that tension is there But I think it's not a tension that the biblical authors shy away from think they present it throughout without embarrassment And in cases like Philippians ,  and , they actually explicitly state it and bring both of those sides of the coin into close proximity.

Kathleen Noller: So this is going to be maybe a little bit of a sideline question, but as you were speaking, i was thinking that a question that I often get asked is related to that, and it's related to how do you look at someone who is not a Christian, who rejects the teachings of Jesus, but who acts in a very, and this is a deceptive phrase again, in a very Christ-like manner, who appears to have a good and kind heart, how do you handle someone like that? is that sort of Is that person acting in accordance with scriptural tenets because the Holy Spirit has done something to them or because of God's grace towards them, even though they have not been justified? How does the non-believer look at Christians who are bad versus non-Christians who are good And that's such a silly way to phrase it, and bad and good have such complex meanings But I just, I get that a lot And so I would love to hear your take on it, especially from the Reformed perspective and explaining it in in those terms for us.

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, well, I think it was certainly a question on the minds of many of the reformers, because one thing that's interesting about the Reformation, just as a historical movement, is it's connected to ah the Renaissance and Renaissance humanism and this rediscovery of antiquity and ah sources coming from the ancient world and the richness of the ancient world is being recovered and rediscovered and represented and so there's some interesting confluences there You know, what do the reformers want to do? They want to get back to the original Greek text Well, in in a sense, that's ah it's a Christian kind of recovery of the riches of antiquity. So, they had a lot of respect for and interest in Rome and Greece and so they're seeing some of these noble lives celebrated from past eras

Kathleen Noller: who

Matthew Bingham: And obviously these people are pre-Christian

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: And so, what do they do with, you know, the phrase that you sometimes see is virtuous pagans

Kathleen Noller: who

Matthew Bingham: And so, again, this is a question I think that they were very much aware of and wrestled with yeah And it's an interesting one And I think that there's, I mean, there's so many directions one could take, but at the end of the day, what we see is that every human being, Christian or not Christian, every human being is made in God's image and is living in God's world and the fall has not completely erased or obliterated that, though it has defaced and marred that that image And so wherever we look, we see people who are seeing a lot of true things about themselves and about the world around them and from a Christian perspective, I think it's not so much are they seeing true things and sometimes even living out true things and seeing the good, for example You know, I think you don't need to be a Christian to see the goodness that flows from faithful marriage between a man and a woman I don't think you need to be a Christian to see that And I think all around the world, we see people who get glimpses of that We see people who lament when that standard is deviated from the question isn't, are we seeing these things and are we often living out aspects of our humanity that are that are good and God-given? It's, are we able to consistently put the pieces together? And the Christian claim is that if you're not, adhering to a scriptural way of seeing and thinking about the world, you're always going to have things that that don't align.

You're always going to have things that don't add up You're always going to have inconsistencies And, I mean, i would imagine that some of that is what you explore quite a bit on in this podcast space And, So again, when we think about men and women who are not Christian, but who are living outwardly and in ways that at least to some extent are in conformity with kind of Christian moral teaching, I think we shouldn't be surprised by that because, again, they're made in God's image and they live in God's world. And these laws are written on the on the human heart Yes, the fall has effaced that and made it difficult. So, I think in a sense we shouldn't be surprised by that and though, where the differentiation really comes into play is at the less visible, less obvious level offended heart and does a person have a heart that loves the things that that God loves and wants to know the triune God of scripture and wants to ah grow in that? And that's where I think at that heart level, the Christian claim would be whatever outward good deeds are being performed, the that at that heart level, the motivations are misaligned and not directed towards glorifying God and enjoying Him forever and indeed, when we think about Jesus' polemic in the in the gospel accounts, ah He's often taking aim at the religious leaders of His day who I am sure, you know, these were men who were doing a lot of good deeds and really kind of toeing the line in certain respects and what does he do? He takes them back to the Ten Commandments and he says, look, you know what? Thou shalt not murder, but if you've hated your brother in your heart, you've committed murder

Kathleen Noller: who

Matthew Bingham: And he says, you can live your whole life without, you know, physically murdering someone but what’s going on under the surface? It is just as important in terms of who you are and where sin does or does not reign in your mind and heart

Kathleen Noller: That's such an important distinction And so I'd like to touch back on the Puritan phrase, keeping the heart So I think nowadays, and at least in our modern world, we think about mind, soul, body, heart, what is heart? How does it relate to the other components of a human? And how did the Puritans understand it?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, so that phrase, keeping the heart, was a favorite of of the Puritans They would often use that to describe, essentially, one's life, you know, holistically trying to walk with the Lord and trying to keep that sense of the century reformed theologian, John Murray, talks about a sense of God consciousness, and keeping God making, you know, God is God looming large on my kind of mental horizon, or is actually God diminished and diminished and other things are looming large and that connects to the whole question of idolatry and what do we really love and all these things kind of swirl around together and for the Puritans, that phrase keeping the heart kind of captured a lot of those ideas and drew them together in in a nice short compass and they're getting that from Proverbs, you know, keep your heart with all vi vigilance for from it flows the springs of life. And so, what is the heart? How does it relate to other things? So, I saw sense, they viewed the heart holistically as sort of, you know, one's true self, you know, you your truest part If your heart is hard towards God, You know, that means your heart towards God And if your heart is warm towards him, you're warm towards him It's this holistic sense of my inner being, my truest self, the me that ultimately matters most and is in most sort of continuity with my sense of who I am and what I'm about. And that's what they're getting when they talk about keeping the heart They're saying, I want more My truest self, my deepest sense of reality and priority and impetus I want it to be directed toward God and the things of God glorifying him and enjoying him forever

Kathleen Noller: And that's a really beautiful description as well I think, I don't know folks have who are listening have read anything by Puritan authors, but I think you might be surprised given their cold stereotypes in modern media, how incredibly beautiful their writing is and how they focus on the heart I don't think that's something that a lot of folks who are really not familiar with Christianity might be able to discern And so I'd love to talk about your Reformation Triangle, your three practices for keeping the heart as engaging with scripture, meditation, and prayer

Matthew Bingham: Thank you

Kathleen Noller: And so, when you selected those three, we've talked a lot about the first one, but the last two, meditation and prayer, i think those are components of every Christian's life, at least I would hope.

Kathleen Noller: How does a Christian go about understanding the guidelines of meditation and prayer? How do they pick a technique? And what would you advise? Is it about technique at all, or is it more just about regular inclusion of those practices?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, for me, calling it the Reformation Triangle and the benefit of using that language is really to draw our attention to the fact that though we can conceptually distinguish, certainly, between scripture intake, meditation, and prayer as three distinct things, there's also a sense in which they're really just one thing this This is communion with the living God And the Reformed approach, and again, I would argue the biblical approach, that's certainly where the Reformed folks imagine they're getting this way of thinking, you know states that, yeah, when you're if you're if you're coming to the Lord and you're communing with Him and you're growing in that sense of living relationship, it's going to be through this triangulated relationship between scripture intake, meditation, and prayer and I think the way to see that relational dimension and the interconnectedness is to think about, okay, well, what are those three things? Scripture really is our hearing from God in his word to us and again, that soul of scripture conviction is this is the only place where we can go for ah divine revelation

Kathleen Noller: Thank you

Matthew Bingham: So we're hearing from God in scripture meditation is the one that doesn't get talked about quite as much, at least that's my experience in evangelical churches, you don't hear as much about that but essentially for the Puritans, for whom it was a very important concept, that means intentionally thinking about what God has said to us in his word and thinking not just in a sort of bare way, like, okay, I got to think how this, you know, but actually thinking in ah in a sense that you're taking the ideas, the promises of God, the descriptions of God, the commands in Scripture, and you're chewing on them, and you're letting them sink in, and you're asking, how do these intersect with my own lived reality?

And so, you’re you know they compared it to digestion, so they would have these great metaphors where they'd say, well, look, if you're reading scripture and you're just sort of doing a bare reading, that's like taking food into your mouth and chewing it but if you just spit the food out, it's not going to nourish you You're not going to grow you're not going to build new tissue So you actually have to swallow it and digest it And so meditation is actually where that food that you've taken in actually becomes, and it's you know it's quite a vivid memory metaphor because it's nourishing you and it's becoming absorbed into you and becoming a part of you and that's how they saw meditation You're kind of thinking it over, turning it over, applying it to yourself And then what do you want to do with that? If that's really taken hold and taken root, and They saw meditation as the as the kind of bridge from head to heart, if we can speak that way They saw it as you're taking in information, you're then you're stirring up the affections through meditation

Kathleen Noller: Sure

Matthew Bingham: And if you've done that, then what is the natural response of the Christian, the Christian heart who feels love for God, hatred for sin? Well, you want to speak that back to God in prayer And so that is sort of the that completes the triangle So I’m now speaking God's promises back to him in a sense And I'm saying, you know, let it be to me as it is in your word let You know, yes, I want the things that you want make it all the more true for me And then that takes you back to scripture and so it's really, to me, the value of that triangle language is just to draw attention to the fact that these are three distinct things, conceptually distinct, that are actually one thing in terms of how it's lived out in the in the life of the believer and the lines between I'm reading scripture, I'm meditating on scripture, I'm praying scripture back, the lines for the person actually doing that are very blurry indeed You know, when does my reading become my meditation? And when does my meditation, thinking in my head, oh yeah, okay, the godly man, the godly woman looks like this Oh, I want to be like that Oh Lord, make me more like that.

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: You know, those lines are very blurry, and I think by design and so when we talk about, you talked about techniques and are there techniques we want to pursue? I think the language of technique is somewhat problematic because it suggests a step-by-step guide that if you do these things, you'll get the result and I think that works for, you know, baking cookies, but it doesn't work for things like spiritual formation.

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: Why? Because spiritual formation is inherently relational That's our claim, right? That that actually ah the believer doesn't just know about God, but the believer knows God and is known by God. And for relational things, there's complexity and there's nuance And we can't boil it down to a step one, step two, step three, step three, a step three, B, And so what we find is that the reformers and especially the Puritans, though they push for scripture reading, meditation and prayer, what they get away from a little bit is the kind of elaborate prescriptions for meditation Here's the steps you take Here's the program you follow these prescriptions do really characterize other traditions and for the Puritans, they didn't want to be so prescriptive one, because of the whole Sola Scriptura dynamic that we discussed already They don't want to bind the conscience of their hearer or their reader with things that the Bible doesn't bind with

Kathleen Noller: Sure

Matthew Bingham: But then secondly, I think they saw themselves as describing a real relational dynamic that cannot be reduced to steps you've been pretty clear in your book about, like you said, the purpose of this Reformation Triangle is not to turn us inwardly to ourself and capture us with sort of a self-focus It's to unite us with Christ

Kathleen Noller: And can also have downstream consequences in our in our created world as well as we're thinking about spiritual formation, which is our first and highest priority, how do we move out from building the church? And do you think strong individual spiritual practice will naturally beget a stronger church or a stronger community?

Matthew Bingham: Yeah, that's a great thought And I think that ah there's no way that if we have churches full of men and women who are pursuing God in God's prescribed manner, ah there's no way that that can have a positive impact on our churches

Kathleen Noller: you

Matthew Bingham: And I think that those two, though, are reciprocal I certainly wouldn't want to see it as, you know, this this book is very focused on the individual and individual piety And I mentioned in there, i think that the church is sort of not included in its own chapter, not because I think it's so small a thing, but because it's so big a thing

Matthew Bingham: It needs its own book

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: And so, I wouldn't want to suggest that our role is to go become ah a really on fire Christian on your own So then you can come back and then we'll have a great church

Kathleen Noller: yeah

Matthew Bingham: You know, the church is, ah you know, the church is building saints, and the church is, you know, in in a sense, when the pastor is preaching, he's modeling publicly and sort of meditating on scripture in and for and with the congregation and he's doing the things that the Puritans are saying you can do in private with your private meditation He's doing it publicly and on behalf of everyone and with them

Kathleen Noller: Yes

Matthew Bingham: And so, there's also means of grace in church that we don't get at home as individuals So, for example, certainly in Reformation reform perspective, ah the Lord's Supper is something that is for the church and it is given by church officers for ministers and elders to oversee.

Kathleen Noller: yeah

Matthew Bingham: It's not something that I just do on my own, So the church is central the church, in a real sense, is the primary place, in fact, where a lot of this is happening, However, when we go out after, you know, we gather together as the people God, then we go out into the world You know, we want to be like the godly person in Psalm  whose meditation is on God's word all the day and I think that extends to everywhere I go because that's the kind of person if I'm if I'm born again, pursuing God and things like god that's the kind of person I am and so, yes, I think that there's a reciprocal relationship between the Christian pursuing piety individually and the Christian as someone who is being fed by and contributing to the life of God's people I think those are reinforcing and then about society Yes, and then the people God are sent out to be salt and light in the world And that raises all sorts of interesting questions about well what do we make of when we but don't see that happening but certainly, I think the ah Christian claim is that for Christians sent out into the world, following God, growing in their faith, yes, they will have ah have an impact that's positive. It might not always be as dramatic and it as transformative as we might hope or like or wish but I do believe as ah as a matter of faith and conviction that yes, there will be an impact when you have Christians going out into their place of work, into their communities, etc.

Kathleen Noller: Yes, very well said Thank you so much for such a thoughtful discussion today i really hope that for our listeners, this if you're if you're not involved in Christianity at all, or if you are whatever sect you're involved in, that this creates a curiosity about Reformed Protestantism and all of the richness it offers in terms of its ability to help you with your own spiritual formation So thank you so much, Dr Bingham I really, really appreciate your time today

Matthew Bingham: Thank you very much It's been a pleasure

Kathleen Noller: Thank you for joining us This has been the Kathleen Noller podcast at the CS Lewis Institute Talk to you next time.