When it comes to spiritual formation, the Reformed tradition has deep cisterns from which to drink. While probably not too different from "discipleship" as traditionally practiced, "spiritual formation" evokes fertile images of growth, slow maturation, and gentle becoming. It is a focused attention upon the interior life, where our life in and with Christ stubbornly refuses to be measured by the amount of our Christian activity, however exemplary it may be. Spiritual formation is radical Christianity, yet it takes place in the most ordinary everydayness of our lives.

Even Calvin's polemical works breathe with this orientation towards spiritual formation. His Institutes of the Christian Religion gives forth wonderful gems when subjected to intense analysis. But like the Scriptures, there are more elusive pearls that can be found only when an entire book is read in one sitting. I'll never forget the experience of reading the book of Revelation quickly, where I saw the forest for the first time, rather than the trees. There are themes and nuances in Calvin's Institutes that may be hindered by intense analysis and scrutiny, where one does not breathe in the book as a whole, but only in fits and spurts. And perhaps for this reason the Institutes is rarely consulted for spiritual formation. Although it is obvious that I have never read the Institutes in a day, let alone a week (and not just because I have young children!), I would encourage its broad perusal for the nurturing of our interior lives. Calvin, at least, would approve.

For those who associate Calvin with dry dogmatics or rigid political regimes, it often comes as a surprise that Calvin's writings nearly dance with the spiritually formative theme of union with Christ. It functions less as a dogma to believe than a reality to discover. The "systematic" Calvin, who was later to be admired, is more of an anachronism, for he viewed doctrine not as the communication of beliefs about God but as a personal experience of the gospel. Over the centuries, various branches of Calvin's theological tree were hacked off and probed, often without reference to the whole. This could not help but skew Calvin's fairly balanced theology and undermine its devotional aim of communion with Christ—creating fear and trembling rather than a taste of the "fatherly favor of God."¹ It must not be forgotten that Calvin was first and foremost a pastor who was intent on forming a people for union with Christ. With this in mind, a reading of the Institutes quickly shows that union with God is not just for the end of our life, but is to be the heartbeat of our life now.

Calvin certainly is not the first to write as if union were our raison d'être. He is standing upon the shoulders of giants reaching back through medieval theologians, patristic fathers, and to the apostles. The Reformation itself grew out of the soil of the late Middle Ages that can be characterized by its bridal mysticism, emphasizing the soul's union with its heavenly lover. None less than Andreas Osiander—Calvin's theological opponent—wrote passionately about our union with God. But because of the centrality of this doctrine, Calvin refused to let union be an unsubstantial word, referring vaguely to a relationship with the transcendent. Instead, he reinvested it with its original grandeur—the Trinity. Here there is no room for speculation on the soul's ascent to God (as much of the medieval tradition had done), but only for God's gift of participating in himself—in Christ, by the Spirit, to the Father. This is our entry point into the spiritual formation embedded in the Institutes.

What a detailed analysis of the Institutes often overlooks is its very structure, and this structure gives us crucial clues for Calvin's vision of the spiritual life. He tinkered with the configuration for twenty-five years, finally writing, "although I did not regret the labor spent, I was never satisfied until the work had been arranged in the order now set forth."² Breaking with tradition, Calvin does not begin with a catechetical structure or ordo salutis. Instead, Calvin declares: all must begin with the Trinity. We were created to be children in communion with the Father. Before we even enter into the words on the first page, the Trinity gives shape to our understanding of where we have come from and where we are going. The Institutes shimmers with this unstated presence of the trinitarian, personal God who is above, before, ahead of, behind, and all around us—loving us, calling us, breathing life into our beings. This is no moralistic God, sitting upon his throne, sternly awaiting our repentance. Instead, it is the steady pursuit (Book I) of God the Father, who creates us for love and fellowship and who incarnates himself in (II) Jesus the true Son, who has come to show us what this fellowship is really like. The Spirit (III) continues this wooing, building the life of Jesus the Son into our broken lives, so that we can really be God's true children, who, as the church (IV), live a life responding to this triune God of grace.

Here we begin to see that, for Calvin, the Trinity is not merely a test of orthodoxy or a mathematical conundrum that we must believe by faith. Instead, the Trinity is to be entered into. The Trinity is our clue and access to our spiritual formation as both its means and end. What makes Calvin's theology of union so striking and so similar to that of the early fathers of the church is that it is not a union with an undifferentiated God, some vague joining of human and divine. No, our union with God takes the shape of Christ's union to the Father: we are joined as children to his Father. This is radical spiritual formation, where our formation takes on the relational pattern laid down by Christ in his life with the Father. It is formation as relation—as being first and foremost children of God.

This is not for the faint of heart. In an era of doing, of activity, of busyness, of measurable ministry, "being" can be one's personal hell. Having daily devotions, leading youth work, memorizing Scripture—all are good things, but relatively easy by comparison (in the sense that they are straightforward, accomplishable, measurable). Calvin challenges us to situate ourselves squarely in the love of God—the concrete love of a Father, Son, and Spirit—and to allow that to transform all our notions about ourselves and our response to God. Spiritual formation that involves being, not taking on new practices, is the stuff that Calvin is talking about, at least as the entry point for the spiritual life. It is a radical orientation of our interior lives to the love of God and forcing ourselves to stay there until we really, truly believe it. Henri Nouwen— then professor at Yale—spent a six-month sabbatical with a monastic community in New York and arrived at a similar conclusion. His journal entry on October 27, 1976, reads:

To respond to God's love is a great act of faith. . . . This is the great adventure of the monk: to really believe that God loves you, to really give yourself to God in trust, even while you are aware of your sinfulness, weaknesses, and miseries. I suddenly see much better than before that one of the greatest temptations of a monk is to doubt God's love. Those who enter a contemplative monastery with the intention of staying there for life must be very much aware of their own brokenness and need for redemption. . . . (Genesee Diary)

Calvin jumps headlong into this world of God's love, and our being caught up in it, by use of one word: adoption. Although he is best known for his formulation of justification, I believe his insistence upon "adoption" best captures the big picture of his theology. Historically, justification has been used in a limited way, primarily having to do with the event of Christ on the cross. By use of the word adoption, Calvin can communicate not only the miracle of our justification but also that for which we have been saved. Spiritual formation begins with this question: for what (and for whom) have we been saved? And Calvin is quite explicit that we have been saved not only from sin but also for a life of trust, joy, and intimacy as God's own children. What is more, Calvin takes his cues for this life on earth from the hypostatic union: Jesus' own intimacy with God, by the Spirit. The remarkable thing is that Calvin sees Jesus' sonship—his life of intimacy with his Father—as being offered to us through the Spirit. It is not a nice "picture" for us to strive after. Instead, it is the reality into which we, unsuspecting, have been inserted.³

Spiritual formation is all about entering this Father-Son relationship, about living out the truth of our adoption. It is the hard work of laying tasks aside in order to contemplate and receive the words, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). Only when we hear that word can our tasks have any meaning at all. Quiet times, Scripture memorization, fasting, prayer—all the traditional disciplines—are to serve this one primary business of the Christian life, which is to live more and more deeply into being children of God.

The reality of our adoption is not one we can force. For those of us who would charge into claiming our "adoption" as yet another thing to accomplish, the good news is that adoption is under the Holy Spirit's jurisdiction. Our adoption—God welcoming us into his relationship with his Son—is brought about by the Spirit, "without whom no one can taste either the fatherly favor of God or the beneficence of Christ."⁴ All too often we see the Holy Spirit as the giver and empowerer of tasks rather than as the giver of our identity. The Holy Spirit ushers us into adoption, not workaholism: he tells us not so much what to do but who we are. Calvin insists, "Paul teaches that God is called 'Father' by us at the bidding of the Spirit, who alone can 'witness to our spirit that we are children of God. . . .'"⁵ This is the Spirit's ministry to us. He is "witness of [our] adoption."⁶ It is an identity-forming ministry, calling us to trust in God's fatherly goodness and allowing us to cease from perfectionism and performance. Even here he meets us in our need, for we do not often truly believe in God's fatherly benevolence. But, "in fact, he supplies the very words so that we may fearlessly cry, 'Abba Father!'"⁷

In an era when we are inclined to limit the Spirit to an impersonal power, enabling our tasks, we need to take Calvin's hand and allow him to lead us beside the living streams. More often than not, the Trinity in which we believe looks more like divine bargaining: God the Demander, Jesus the Pleaser, and the Holy Spirit as Empowerer-to-please. Instead, it is essential that we allow God's revelation of himself to inform our idea of the Trinity. We speak of the fact that God is love, but how do we keep love from being a mere platitude or sentimental notion? God's love can only be understood when we realize that his love is not an abstract force but is located in the rich life shared between Father, Son, and Spirit. It is this life of divine communion that defines "love," and is the very life into which we have been adopted. Its proof is that we have the very words that the Son prayed placed into our fearful mouths, so that praying "Abba" becomes a confirmation and cry of relationship rather than of simple distress. The Spirit's work is to make God's fatherhood concrete: he helps us participate in Jesus' humanly experienced relationship with God, as child and Father.⁸

Calvin's first and foremost emphasis is on the work of the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and minds to look away from what we are in ourselves to who we are in Jesus the Son, as sons and daughters. One might say that his primary role in our lives is that of spiritual formation—spiritually forming us to live as children of God. Only then does Calvin speak of the Holy Spirit's second work of bearing fruit in our lives, and even so, it is subsumed under sonship as evidence of it.⁹ Traditional disciplines in the Christian life are the fruit of our participating in this Father-child relationship, and, as such, we have tremendous freedom and can live large and grand before God without wavering. Christian freedom comes not as a command but as a benefit of sonship—it is a "spiritual thing. Its whole force consists in quieting frightened consciences before God."¹⁰ Christian freedom allows us to come before God, not as servants who appear only when they have exactly fulfilled their task but rather as

sons, who are more generously and candidly treated by their fathers [and who] do not hesitate to offer them incomplete and half-done and even defective works, trusting that their obedience and readiness of mind will be accepted by their fathers, even though they have not quite achieved what their fathers intended.¹¹

Even our freedom as Christians rests in our experience of the Trinity. Our confidence is in our standing as sons, not in our perfection. Freedom is dashed where consciences are worried as to "how to render God favorable."¹³ Freedom is perfect where we have entered, by the Spirit, into Christ's relationship with the Father.¹⁴

Although Calvin used union with Christ as his theological key, he also did so for polemical reasons. For anyone familiar with the Institutes, they are soon acquainted with Calvin's utter disregard (to put it mildly) for a flamboyant theologian, Andreas Osiander. Osiander felt that the Reformation was headed in a direction that compromised union with Christ, so he was determined to bring this doctrine to the fore again. Despite his profound theological thinking, he was addicted to controversy and loved pushing both theological boundaries and his opponents' theological buttons. Osiander's efforts were passionate but flawed and ended up undercutting the very thing—union with Christ—that he wanted to secure. Calvin, having been lumped together with Osiander and his theology from time to time, was highly motivated to make his distance from Osiander absolutely clear.

This distancing-act of Calvin, however, has been quite a source of confusion in Reformed theology. Over the years, Protestants continued to denounce Osiander and his theology—but it is unclear whether they are denouncing Osiander's flawed doctrine of union or union altogether. Even if they have never heard of Osiander, many born into the Reformed tradition have a knee-jerk reaction against words like "mystic" and even the ever-increasingly popular "spirituality" (and for good cause: these words have been much abused over the years and can take on just about any shape). Yet, as we have seen, the very structure of the Institutes invites spiritual formation and encourages a mystical adoption—mystical because it is the realm of the Spirit. Calvin's answer to Osiander's non-trinitarian union was a union so rich you could stand a spoon straight up in it. He writes:

Now, lest Osiander deceive the unlearned by his cavils, I confess that we are deprived of this utterly incomparable good [righteousness] until Christ is made ours. Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body—in short because he deigns to make us one with him.¹⁵

Calvin did not shy away from "mystical union" because Osiander had so twisted it. Instead, he reappropriated it, grounded it in the Trinity, and handed it back to us as the concrete movement of adoption: by the Spirit, in the Son, to the Father. Calvin's followers, however, have not been so bold as their founder and seem to have a fear of wading into "Osiandrian" territory. Instead of offering adoption as the antidote to Osiander's union-mysticism, they have emphasized justification.

My suspicion is that Calvin's scuffle with Osiander is largely to blame for our Reformed emphasis on justification to the exclusion (or downgrading) of adoption as spiritual union. Although Alister McGrath notes, "Calvin is actually concerned not so much with justification, as with incorporation into Christ," it seems as if Reformed theology traded this full-bodied trinitarianism for a narrower (though vital) christocentrism. Out of fear of Osiander's (and others') focus on union unaccompanied by an appropriate role for the cross, we have compensated by limiting union to the cross—the method by which we are saved. With this move, however, we are no longer asking the questions that Calvin was asking: we suddenly are left with questions about how we are saved, from what we are saved, and what we should do now that we have received this salvation. They tend to be the questions that quench rather than nourish spiritual formation because they are stunted. Calvin's questions always centered around God (not ourselves, or even our salvation) and about the glory of God—questions that are not stunted because they open themselves up to a reality much larger than themselves and do not approach this reality with a (frankly consumerist) how-can-I-get-salvation mentality or a (primarily functional) what-should-I-do-now mentality. Calvin's questions took their cues from God in his trinitarian fullness and his inexplicable desire to bring us into this fullness. In distancing himself from Osiander, Calvin was not necessarily less radical than Osiander in his vision of union with God, he was just relentlessly trinitarian. Union, when explained as justification or friendship or even fellowship with God, doesn't quite meet Calvin's standards. "Not only," Calvin says, "does Christ cleave to us by an indivisible bond of fellowship (societatis), but, with a wonderful communion (communione), day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us until he becomes completely one with us." It seems that Calvin himself is arguing for something more than fellowship: "not only fellowship but communion, becoming one with us." What does this mean? I believe it is Calvin's desire to push us deeper, through the glory of being reconciled to God by justification, into a life of being spiritually formed by the Trinity itself (himself!). Adoption is Calvin's answer to both Osiander's non-trinitarian union and the sometimes-diluted "union" that we in the Reformed tradition have unconsciously embraced.

While researching this summer at Calvin College, I ran across no less than six PhD theses—all written in the last ten years—that covered some aspect of Calvin and union with Christ. On close examination, I found every thesis to focus upon the "technicalities" of union (how it happens, Christ's role in the process) or upon its role as a dogma that differentiates Reformed theology from Luther, Osiander, and others. These are important differences that need to be pursued, but they can also be stumbling blocks if they do not situate the technicalities in the greater light of that which I feel Calvin was actually attempting to foster: the lived reality and transformation of this union upon the Christian. Union with Christ as adoption, living as children with a benevolent Father, an invitation to participate in the trinitarian life—none of this seemed to be integral to Calvin, or at least to these authors' understanding of Calvin.

Although theologians constantly refer to union for theological purposes, we need to be careful that that is not its only purpose. It is not just doctrine, but it is meant to be received. For what good will a solid Reformed doctrine of union do if we do not enter its reality, being spiritually formed by it? The good news is that union with Christ is not something left for us to achieve, with Christ waiting up in heaven for us to "unite" ourselves to him—our union is in Christ, not just to Christ. It is joining up by his Spirit in his relationship with the Father and being transformed by that friendship. It is allowing our adoption to really take hold of all of our thoughts—about ourselves, our purpose, our intimacy with God—and beginning to live from this radically different center. Imagine if we discipled our youth into grasping, truly grasping, that they are children of God, invited to partake in Christ's intimacy with God? Then perhaps they would grasp that the alternatives of life are not that between sinner and saint but between pharisee and child.

Yesterday my two-year-old son and I were walking home from the market, to the light of a glorious sunset. I excitedly pointed it out to him, but he nonchalantly responded, "Yes mama, it is talking to me." A bit taken aback, I asked him exactly what the sunset was saying. Without missing a beat, he answered, "I love me." (Pronouns are not his forte.) I was stunned by his response. His predominant experience of the universe is one of being loved, wholly loved, and by a God by whom he is beginning to feel pursued, even at this young age. Calvin's Institutes likewise invite us to remember the trinitarian God by whom we were created for a life of adoption into his very trinitarian life of love. It reminds us that our lives are to be spiritually formed by this God, who would have us first and foremost live as children before him. As Kathryn Tanner says, "In the final analysis, God does not so much want something of us as want to be with us." This being-with-God by adoption into his own loving existence is the ground for everything we do. It is the ground we must never take for granted but continually be nurtured and nourished by and receive for our identities.