Prayer of the Saints - Lesson 13

Dr. James Houston

Prayer of the Saints

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John Calvin and Martin Luther

Lesson Transcript

We’re going to reflect in this lecture on the prayer lives and the teachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin. They lived a generation apart because Martin Luther was born in 1483, dying in 1546, while Calvin was born in 1509 and died in 1564. So they’re fairly close together. It’s appropriate, I think, when we reflect on these two great reformers to sing a hymn that is so expressive of their resolute spirit that we associate especially with Martin Luther.

A mighty fortress is our God,

A bulwark never failing;

Our helper He, amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing:

For still our ancient foe

Doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and power are great,

And, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.

And then, of course, he reminds us that we don’t confide in our own strength. Our striving would be losing. It’s God’s man at His right hand that is His choosing: it’s Jesus Christ. And so what a wonderful inspiration it is for us to reflect on the background of this hymn as we now meditate on the prayer life of these two amazing men.

Martin Luther was born on 10th November. We’re not quite sure whether it was 1482 or 1483, but it was somewhere in that time. And it was in the Silesian region of Mansfeld where his father was a copper miner. That’s the kind of territory that we think of in Sudbury in North Ontario, where our copper mines are in North America. He had nine brothers and sisters, though, of course, again, the mortality of that stage was such that he lost some of his siblings in their childhood. And then at the age of 14, he went to study at Magdeburg. It was a school that was run by the Brethren of the Common Life, the movement that we associate with Thomas à Kempis. It was a Flemish movement of urban traders, Dutch traders and this movement of devotion was, essentially, a movement of saying you can be at home: your home can be a monastery. And so many of these wealthy Dutch merchants had wives who lived a conventional life by doing so at home. It was a remarkable movement. And of course, we think of the great classic of that movement as being The Imitation of Christ that was written by Thomas à Kempis. That movement was also influential in Germany.

[00:03:50]

And so at 17, at the desire of his father, he moved from Magdeburg to study law. It’s rather like the same motive that prompted Calvin’s father. They were both ambitious that their son should get on better than they had and so they were both trained in law, both Luther and Calvin. And like so many fathers that get frustrated with their sons because they don’t want to follow the trail that their father has proscribed for them. They want to move in other directions. And so Martin defied his father’s wish to continue in his studies in law and instead entered one of the strictest monasteries, in Erfurt, which was called the Reform Congregation of the Eremitical Order of St Augustine. And because it was a mendicant house, the brothers were expected to beg for their own support, so you can imagine how crazy his father was that this is what he wanted to do. His father was outraged that he should choose this way of life—to embrace poverty and turn his back on the use of his mind. And it’s so obvious that sometimes the feeling of utter worthlessness is not only spiritual but emotional. Because, as later Erich Fromm is to describe, the young man Luther had this feeling of being utterly unworthy and so there was a sense in which Luther from his childhood had felt that he was alone with himself as the alone.

But he made bright progress and very soon he was allowed to start teaching the theology of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. This was a very influential text for theological students throughout the Middle Ages. But he lived in an age that was apocalyptic. We’ve mentioned on another occasion how the Black Death had left Europe feeling gripped by fear. And the times in which Luther lived were gripped by fear with the threat of the invasion of the Turks to Vienna. And so in that apocalyptic culture of doom and gloom, it was also reinforced by his own lifelong bouts of depression, what he called his anfechtungen. It’s like Winston Churchill, who used to call his depression the black dog that he used to have on a leash. And of course, like Calvin, who liked his wine, Luther liked his beer. There’s nothing like good wine or beer and table talk at breakfast that lasts like brunch over the whole morning. And later when he became a famous tutor, his shrewd wife, Kate, used to say I could make a fortune if I started charging tutorial fees for those who come to breakfast. And so there was this outward conviviality that was so much part of Luther’s life.

[00:08:16]

I can’t help but give you in parenthesis the many stories about Winston Churchill, but to help him through his depressions, he used to get drunk even in the House of Commons. And as he’s lurching home one evening drunk, Mrs Braddock, who was a very rough and tumble socialist member of Liverpool, said Mr Churchill, as usual you’re drunk tonight. Yes, he said, and you’re ugly. And tomorrow, I’ll be sober. So there was this kind of rough sort of rivalry that Martin Luther could equally have said.

Well, in the midst of it all, he gets a degree in theology as a doctor of theology at the University of Wittenberg in 1512. The privilege of being at Wittenberg is that it’s always been a Pietist university until modern times, in the Lower Rhineland. And there he starts his first teaching as a professor. And significantly, he starts, as Augustine himself spent so long, with the Psalms. And of course, he must have seen, as an Augustinian, that Augustine himself had so focused upon the Christology of the Psalms, but he wasn’t convinced emotionally and experientially about the value of the Psalms until he got to the Psalms in the 90s and there his whole life was changed. My dear friend Klaus Bockmuehl spent a whole sabbatical year as he traced when did Martin Luther begin to see Christ in the Psalter and he identifies it’s beginning with Palm 90 that he began to see the significance that Christ was there.

So he spent 18 months doing these lectures and then at Easter 1515 he began to lecture on the Epistle to the Romans. Well, when you’ve done the Psalms and then you go through the Epistle to the Romans and then you go through the Galatians, you’re really beginning to understand what is the doctrine of justification by faith through grace. And that’s what he came to. We never know when he actually lectured on the Epistle to the Romans for this particular document has been lost for 400 years. And then, all of a sudden, in 1941, it turns up in the Vatican Library. Of course, we know why it was there: because it was the Inquisition’s accusation against him. They kept a copy and, as you know, the people who’ll tell you the most details about the Mennonites in Russia are the KGB, or if you want to know about the inner lives of people in fascist Germany then, of course you look up the Nazi espionage bureaucracy. They’re the ones that keep the files. And this has been true of Luther as well.

[00:12:16]

One of the things that Luther began to do was no longer to lecture in Latin. He began to do something innovative: he began to speak in the vernacular. He broke the spell of the Vulgate, you might say. So his lectures became enormously popular because, for the first time, people could understand what he was talking about. And, as I say, the thing that he then began to focus on was his theology of the cross. In the Disputation that he made with some of the doctors in Heidelberg in April 1518, that was the beginning. And then followed the Ninety-five Theses that he nailed to the door of the church in Wittenberg that we’re going to celebrate 500 years later next year. And then his debates and his further debates with Erasmus on the bondage of the will. So in a period of about seven years, Luther had done a Copernican revolution theologically. He had turned the world upside down.

One of the helpful books on Luther is by Alister McGrath, who writes in Luther’s Theology of the Cross that it was Luther’s cross-centredness that became one of the most powerful and radical understandings of the nature of Christian theology that the Church had ever known. It was a huge statement and so profoundly true. Well, so ruthless was he that he was ruthlessly persecuted as well. And so Tetzel, who was his enemy number one, trying to ensnare him, accused Luther of being a wild boar in the vineyard of the Lord. Certainly in the vineyard of the Papacy, he was a wild boar. And even dear Erasmus, who was such a gentle, genteel, balanced kind of man, kindly as a scholar, who wanted to be the friend of Luther, was astonished at the volcanic outburst of Luther against him. Erasmus had admired Luther’s works. He thought that he was doing a good job for the Church. But when he turned with such savagery on Erasmus, Luther was really saying to Erasmus you’re in heresy. It’s not in eloquence that you’re speaking. The truth is greater than genius. We wonder whether, in fact, in all this outburst that Luther had against Erasmus, really Luther was jealous of Erasmus, jealous of his scholarship. And certainly, he was no gentleman towards him.

[00:15:47]

At the same time, one of the extraordinary things that we find again in the extravaganza of who Luther was, was he wanted to be utterly selfless for God. And so one of the curious psychological elements of Luther’s life was that this utter selflessness that he had towards God, was that neurotic, as well? You wonder. In other words, Luther was a man of extremities. You might consider him—perhaps this is not politically correct—the Donald Trump of the Reformation. Because like Trump, he did have an instinct for the common man and so the enormous appeal that Luther made, as we’ve said, in his pioneering in the vernacular was to speak to ordinary people.

[00:17:03]

And so his first prayer book, which he published in 1529, he also published a commentary on the Ten Commandments and his meditations on the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. So he saw this as a kind of triptych of devotion: the Lord’s Prayer with the Ten Commandments and his own citing of the Apostles’ Creed. In this, he established a tradition that any preacher, any well-known writer should have as his compendium. These three go together. And since then, there have been hundreds of commentaries on these three realties of what Luther saw was the triptych of devotion. And later, the Puritans were to take this up as being essential for the education of any Christian.

We have this moving letter by Augustine to Proba, in which he expounds on the Lord’s Prayer—well, she was a noble lady. But Luther also has a letter on the Lord’s Prayer, but it’s addressed to his barber as he’s sitting in the barber’s shop getting a haircut. And so we have this simple, classic commentary with this simple man having his face shaved and the barber is asking him over the conversation how do I pray? And so what he does is, for the barber, to write a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer. And then his protector, the Elector of Saxony, who, again, wanted to understand the reality of what he was saying, he writes to him in the same way. One of the problems that Luther had to face, however, was that geopolitically he was never safe. He lived in a Germany that was fragmented into small kingships or protectorships and so he had to navigate his way between those that were Catholic that would have destroyed him and those who were Protestant, like the Elector of Saxony. And of course, these leaders were themselves highly political in the way they were seeking their own independence. It was not the Reformation that they were using. They were exploiting the Reformation simply for their own governance.

[00:20:40]

And so, tragically, with the Peasant’s Revolt in 1524, we find that it became very risky for the Elector of Saxony to protect Luther. And so he was not concerned about the reform of his people, though Luther was trying to insist that what should be done is that there should be visitation of every parish to be able to teach the common man the simple truths of the Gospel. And so, unwillingly, the Elector, in 1527, allowed Luther to establish guidelines for pastoral visitation. And Luther himself joined one of the visiting teams and he was appalled by the ignorance of the peasants. And this is when he began to adopt what later Calvin is to do: plain speech. Plain speech is necessary to express the Word of God. ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘what wretchedness I have beheld. The common people, especially those who live in the country, have no idea whatever of Christian teaching and unfortunately many pastors are quite incompetent and totally unfitted for teaching.’ It sounds very familiar. Although the people are supposed to be Christian and are baptised and received the sacrament, they don’t know the Lord’s Prayer. They don’t know the Creed. They don’t know the Ten Commandments. They live as if they were pigs, irrational beasts. So the Gospel has to be restored. They have to master the fine arts of not abusing freedom. He was appalled.

And so Luther turns to the bishops of the Church and says, ‘How will you bishops answer for it before Christ that you have so shamefully neglected the people and paid no attention to the duties of your office? You would hold the cup in the Lord’s supper and insist on the observance of human laws, yet you do not take the slightest interest in teaching the people the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments, or indeed a single part of the Word of God.’ To these Lutherans he says, ‘Woe to you forever.’ Well, that’s Luther at his best. ‘I therefore beg of you, for God’s sake, my beloved brothers, who are preachers and teachers and pastors, that you take the duties of your office seriously, that you have pity on the people who entrusted to your care and that you help me to teach the catechism to the people, especially those who are still young.’ In other words, what Luther was beginning to see is that reformation can never be personal enough. It has to be the reform of family life. It has to be in domesticity that he had learned from the Devotio Moderna, that we have to have a focus on the hearth, which is a focus on the family. And then you will begin to understand what it is to have a Christian life.

[00:24:53]

As we’ve said, one of the enduring documents that he produced was the short or what he calls the Small Catechism. And it was originally to be published as posters that in public places people could see it and read it. And then the Large Catechism was a revision of some of the sermons that he had preached catechetically between 1528–29. And so the children were to learn to memorise the Small Catechism. And of course, I remember myself as a child being quizzed what is man’s chief end? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s when you start teaching a small child, that I was taught when I was a small child. And so, says Luther, ‘Let all Christians exercise themselves in the catechism daily and constantly put it into practice, guarding themselves with the greatest care and diligence against the poisonous infection of such security of vanity. Let them continue to read, to teach, to learn and meditate and ponder. Let them never stop until they have proved by experience that they have taught the devil to death and have become wiser than all his saints.’ Have you ever thought of teaching the devil to death? It’s a phrase that became very popular with Luther.

If then we want to summarise what is Luther’s prayer life, well, it’s catechetical. It’s teaching others the simple elements of a Reform faith and constantly putting into action day by day in the family. But then, of course, Luther too was interested in the Psalms and so he used to, when he was asked about his own devotional life, he says when I feel depressed, I take my little Psalter and hurry to my room, or if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself the Ten Commandments and the Creed. And then he says and then I recite some Psalms, just as a small child might do. It’s good to pray in the first business of the morning and last thing at night. And so when you wake up pray, when you go to sleep pray, and you guard yourself throughout the day, reminding yourselves of the words of the Lord’s Prayer or of the Psalms.

[00:28:11]

And so, practically, he realises that so often we’re prayerless because we’re just lazy. We’re just too lax. And so he prays, ‘O Heavenly Father, Dear God, I’m a poor, unworthy sinner. I do not deserve to raise my eyes or hands towards You or to pray, but because You commanded us all to pray and have promised to hear us and through Your dear Son, Jesus Christ, have taught us both how and what to pray, I come to You in obedience to Your Word, trusting in your gracious promises. I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus together with all your saints and Christians on Earth and as he taught us.’ And then, with this prelude, he would ask them to recite and close with the Lord’s Prayer.

Well, it’s very different with John Calvin. Of course, John was a very different man altogether. He was a man of much more privileged circumstance. He was far more highly educated, as we talked about in another course on the identity of Calvin. And, as we’ve seen, he was privileged to have both a legal training as well a theological training. And he was also privileged to become the friend of the rector of the University of Paris and to complete other Renaissance studies. So he was highly prepared for the task that he had to face when he went to Geneva. And one of the things that Calvin had that Luther knew nothing about was that he had a strong scholarly understanding of the Fathers of the Church, of the Patristic Fathers, as we’ve communicated elsewhere.

[00:30:41]

And as we’ve referred to on other occasions, the four volumes of his Institutes are really his theological text. And it’s a summary of all his teaching, not catechetically, but now voluminously—rather like Barth’s Church Dogmatics, so are Calvin’s Institutes. But they’re all reflective of a Trinitarian spirituality. Volume one is about the character of God and His Kingdom. Volume two is about the work of Christ and the life of redemption. Volume three is on the Christian life as the manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit. And so Father, Son and Holy Spirit form a triptych in these first three volumes. And then volume four is expressive of his ecclesiology, that the Church is the fruit of the work of the Triune God of grace. And if you want then to read Calvin’s understanding of prayer, you’ll find it all in book three of the Institutes and especially chapter 20, which really a text on the whole understanding of what Calvin reflects upon in the life of prayer.

[00:32:27]

So what is prayer for John Calvin? It’s the essence; it’s the verification of the Christian faith. Everything about your prayer life is simply your understanding of the Gospel, of its communication and its expression in your life. And so in the Institutes volume 3, chapter 20, he spells out four rules for prayer. The first rule is that the mind should be disengaged from all carnal solicitudes and what he calls cogitations. In other words, the most important thing to be a pray-er is to collect your thoughts, not to get distracted. Concentrate and give your entire attention to the exercise of prayer.

Secondly, let the believer be penetrated with the feeling that what he is asking for corresponds to the reality of God’s world, of God’s truth. We’re praying in God’s name. Prayer then has to be focused on a definite need and not be infused with a kind of scattered emotional attitude. And that praying is at all times, so it’s not dependent on your moods. It’s not just when you’re happy and prosperous, but it’s all the time. And of course, it’s when you’re happy and prosperous you neglect it. And so the Christian has to have prayer as incessant prayer.

Thirdly, all those who present themselves to God in prayer must divest themselves of all fantasy about their own glory. If you’re proud—and we’ve heard this before—you can’t pray. If you’re vainglorious, you can’t pray. So you beg God that He will keep you humble, that God will keep you frank and honest in the confession of your faults because prayer is at the throne of God’s mercy. The fourth disposition is about the disposition of the heart, is that you offer your prayer in a spirit of complete trust in God and trusting in the fulfilment of His promises. As he says, ‘It is requisite that the prayer of the faithful should proceed from that double affection and contain and represent both of them.’ That is to say, he sighs about his present evils, he’s anxious about those that may still fall upon him, but nevertheless, he puts his trust in God, not doubting that He’s able to hold him safe. In other words, what is at the heart of Calvin’s understanding of prayer is that there’s no prayer when there’s no faith. No prayer, no faith. So a key verse that he emphasises is Matthew 21:22, if you believe you will receive whatever you ask for in faith.

[00:36:27]

But then, Calvin is asking how do we exercise our faith. How do we deepen it? How are we educated in it if faith is the principal exercise for prayer? So he says faith is the bond of union between Christ and his people. Faith enables us to partake of the life through the death and resurrection of Christ. Faith unites us to Christ, enables us to enjoy Christ. And of course, the measure and the depth of our union with Christ is because of the benefit of Christ. This phrase ‘the benefit of Christ’, as an aside, is what stirred up the Reformation in Italy. It never could be called Calvinism, but there were scores of books that were written from the free press of Venice during the 1540s and 50s called Il Beneficio de Cristo. That was a slogan. It was the benefit of Christ movement, you might call it. And so people like Juan de Valdes, who then, through other friends like Cardinal Contarini, who was actually in the Vatican, became devout Calvinists, even though he was a cardinal. And so it was at Regensburg in 1543 that there was a council of meeting the Reformers with the leadership of Cardinal Contarini. We don’t know that story, but you see how penetrative is the work of reformation in places that we never imagined were taking place. And it’s all because of the awareness of the imputed righteousness that we have through grace.

And so being fully justified by His grace, sanctification is then the process. It’s the gift. How stupid it was for John Wesley not to understand this. What a confusion he added in the 18th century to the teaching that these early Reformers in Italy as well as in Geneva were progressively showing. Because the process of sanctification, argues Calvin, is also vivification. The more I’m dying in my body to the Lord Jesus, the more the vivification of my life is in Christ Jesus. So that, in summary, is really what Calvin is saying: that prayer is the exercise of faith.

[00:39:55]

But he’s also saying that prayer is controlled and informed and inspired by the Word of God. That the more saturated you are in the Word of God, the more will be the efficacy of the prayer of the righteous. It’s having a right relatedness to God. And so he recognises in his commentary on Psalm 119: 38, where he says the sole and legitimate use of prayer is that we may reap the fruits of God’s promises. If you want to give body to the prayers of Calvin, it’s again, like Augustine, you don’t just focus on your conscious teaching, but you’re actually being transformed in your life by Him. And of course, the consequence is you pray boldly. You have great confidence. And you find that instead of despairing, as you might do in your natural emotions, they’re overcome by being emboldened by a Biblical prayer life. It corrects the emotions.

Then again, fourthly, Calvin sees that prayer must be constantly related to our human need. It must come as a genuine cry for our human circumstances, especially in times of affliction. But the more intense they are, the more we’re blessed by prayer. And then he says, fifthly, prayer is the expression of the heart of God. And so in his commentary on Isaiah 63:16, Calvin stresses that prayer is the disburdening of the heart before God. It’s a pouring out of the soul. It’s pouring it all into the bosom of the Father. We’re not allowing sorrow to smoulder. We’re not allowing resentfulness to lie buried or an unforgiving spirit to be like a fire of a peat bog that never goes out. This underground smouldering can be a huge barrier to our prayer life. The important thing is to know that we open our hearts, for God opens His heart to us. Opening our heart to the heart of God—what a wonderful phrase that is.

And then, sixthly, prayer he says is expressive of thanksgiving. We’ve seen how Paul the Apostle, how Augustine, sees that the apex of prayer is always thanksgiving. And so, in his commentary on Psalm 50:28, he says thanksgiving is the chief exercise of godliness in which we’re engaged throughout the whole of our life. People have been asking me what’s the secret of living old. I’ve said it’s thanksgiving. It’s gratitude. You wake up with thanksgiving every morning, as His mercies and His life is given to us day by day. And then the Holy Spirit is what he says is the seventh observation about prayer. Do we take initiative about our prayers? No. It’s the Holy Spirit that prompts us to pray. And so the Holy Spirit is keeping reminding us of our prayer life and the more we’re indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the more we’re enlarged in an ardour for the reception of the Holy Spirit.

[00:44:37]

Eight. It’s also the prayer of intercession. We can never be self-focused. It’s not an egocentric affair. We’re thinking of others. And today we are thinking about all the refugees in the Middle East. We’re thinking about those who are being bombed and dispossessed. We have to do it in empathy and compassion, kindness and benevolence. We’re interceding for others all the time. And then number nine, Calvin says prayer is grounded in the character of God. And the character of God: He’s a healer; He’s an answerer of prayer; He’s Emmanuel; He’s God with us. And you see how often the prayer life of Calvin is in the Psalms. And so in Psalm 145:19, Calvin recites that God will gratify the desires of all those who fear Him and draw near to Him. And, like James, he would cite draw near to God and God will draw near to you.

[00:46:06]

So in summary, what Calvin is saying is that, profoundly, prayer is intrinsic to God’s own character. We’re simply expressing who He is. So our celebration and exercise of prayer is the celebration of God’s character. And so finally, Calvin reminds us that therefore there should be perseverance. As we mention elsewhere, Jacques Ellul, who is very Barthian in his prayer life—he sees that Barth is his great master in this regard—is also, in a sense, reciting what Calvin already is saying, is that there must be perseverance. It’s hard work. It’s a struggle sometimes. It demands discipline. But he’s saying that it’s worth it.

And so as we close in our meditation on these two great men, let us close with a prayer of Calvin. He says, ‘May the Lord grant that we may be engaged in the mysteries of His heavenly wisdom with a true increase of piety for His glory and for our edification.’ And as he closed in prayer, he always acknowledged that whatever skills we have, like Solomon dedicating the temple, ‘Of thine own have we given thee.’ God is the source of all our abilities. And so it is in that spirit that we continue to pray and we acknowledge that all we have done is what He’s given to us.

[00:48:16]

Well, as you reflect upon these two men, great men as they were, let us ask what we might do for our group discussions. And some of you might be asked why is it you’re drawn to Luther and his prayer life, or why is it you’re drawn to Calvin and his prayer life. Is this perhaps a mirror of who you are? And so we realise that the wonderful thing that we have in this course is we have many teachers. And by God’s grace, there’s one of them that really most touches us. So it may be the rawness of our emotions that make us more like Luther. It may be the scholarly interest that we have in Apostolic doctrine that draws us to the prayer life of Calvin. But God uses them all.

The second question, which is so necessary for many of us who are getting old, but we still struggle when we’re young, is the perseverance of a life of prayer. Because it’s the perseverance of being a Christian as well as the perseverance of our devotional life. It’s not easy. We are often like the youths that faint and are weary and we feel like utterly giving up. And so yes, the perseverance of the saints is one of the great teachings of Calvin.

I think perhaps the third question that you could focus on is how imbibed is Calvin in his prayer life in his meditation on the Psalms. In this regard, he is very much like Augustine. But it’s a wonderful exploration to actually, as there is already, a devotional that you can read for every day of the year on Calvin’s meditations on the Psalter. That would be a lovely source of prayerful devotion that all of us could cultivate.

So again, thank you very much.