Our responsibility as evangelicals is not to just repeat our own tradition, of course. But as sola scriptura Protestants, we are called to articulate and live a robustly Word- centered, Spirit-empowered, whole-life spirituality. To be faithful, this spirituality will always be richly theological, as we see in folks most recently like J. I. Packer, but more broadly found in our own spiritual tradition.
We don’t need to leave evangelicalism or Protestantism to find spiritual depth, but we do have to understand our traditions. Unfortunately, it is easier to reject traditions we haven’t been a part of, disregard theologians we have never read, and deride doctrines we haven’t bothered to understand—failing to honor father and mother in the faith—than it is to patiently attend to the rich spiritual and theological tradition we are a part of. Humility and depth require more of us.
Spiritual formation is the work of the Spirit to form us ever-increasingly into the likeness of Jesus. This means that spiritual formation is not an option for Christians. There are not some Christians who believe in spiritual formation and others who don’t. Rather, there are some Christians who have failed to specify what spiritual formation is and how it happens, and there are others who have, for better or for worse. Too often, unfortunately, both fail to integrate their theology and spirituality into a coherent whole. This is why holiness is often ignored in accounts of spiritual formation and is replaced with generic accounts of spiritual practices or why discussions of developmental spirituality are seen as superfluous, allowing our people to assume that, as long as if they show up to church, they will grow.
The heart of the spiritual formation conversation was always the heart of evangelicalism: We are called in Christ to a whole-life spirituality. This is not a spirituality outsourced to the spiritual elite (think monks) but is the spirituality of the “common” Christian, who is called to a profoundly uncommon life. We live out our seemingly mundane lives before the face of God in Christ, and as such, we live as those justified, sanctified, and redeemed in him (1 Cor. 1:30). This is what a distinctively evangelical vision of spiritual formation will specify, and this is why we are desperate to take seriously both our theology and our spiritual formation.
Yes, of course, this approach includes a robust commitment to doctrine and theology—how could we think otherwise? But also, we must avoid an overreaction to pragmatism and once again fail to apply the theological truths that are so deeply forming. We must not focus on a vision of formation or practices unmoored from biblical fidelity but should follow in the footsteps of the Puritans and faithful Christians before us, trusting that we live spiritually formed lives because of the truths in Scripture, and not in spite of them.
So what is our call now? Our call is to cultivate a richly-theological, gospel-centered, and church-oriented vision of the Christian life. To protect from being tossed by the waves of this present age, we should do so moored to our own theological tradition, not because it is somehow inerrant, but because, as C.S. Lewis would remind us, our blind spots are not theirs. We should not simply repeat our tradition but, guided by the Word of God, we should do the kind of work they did.
