What is the purpose of theology? Put differently, what is doctrine for? I have found myself returning to that question after completing my first year of seminary and preparing to continue my theological education this fall at a new institution. As I anticipate another year of lectures, papers, books, and classroom discussions, I cannot help but wonder: What is all this theological education meant to produce?
Is the answer simply to acquire knowledge about God? Is it to prepare for ministry? Perhaps it is the more noble goal of interpreting the Scriptures correctly and defending the Christian faith against error? Or is it merely a rung on the ladder to earning further academic credentials, to become a better preacher or teacher, all the while satisfying our intellectual curiosity?
We can characterize the above responses to the opening question as partial answers. All of them are worthwhile aims. Theology certainly teaches us, equips us for ministry, guards us from error, and helps us to read and to interpret Scripture. But I would argue that none of these are theology’s highest end. Doctrine has a greater purpose: It is meant to cultivate piety—piety for the sake of God’s glory.
This is the position that John Calvin, the great sixteenth century Reformer, sets out in his magnum opus: Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin insists that any doctrine we study “must enter our hearts and pass into our daily living, and so transform us into itself that it may not be unfruitful for us.”1 In fact, as Ellen Charry, former Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, writes: “If we take doctrine and piety as belonging to two separate fields, one academic and the other pastoral, we will never understand John Calvin.”2 If Calvin’s understanding of the inseparability of doctrine and piety is correct, then every lecture attended, every commentary read, every doctrine learned is meant to shape a life of reverent love toward God.
Today, the word piety often carries negative connotations. It can evoke images of judgmental religiosity, hypocrisy, or hollow, performative virtue. Yet Calvin means something altogether different. For Calvin, piety is not equated to “pietism.” It is not hypocritical, excessively religious, or merely private spirituality. Calvin defines piety as:
that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces. For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him (I.2.1).
Calvin’s definition of piety is remarkably dense, so it will do us well to unpack it slowly. Calvin’s definition begins with reverence. Reverence is the fitting response to God’s majesty, holiness, sovereignty, and glory; and the more clearly we perceive his holiness, majesty, and authority, the more we are drawn toward humility, worship, and submission; and the less inclined we are to place ourselves at the center of reality.
Yet reverence alone is insufficient. Calvin immediately joins it to love. God is not only the sovereign Lord before whom we bow; he is also the gracious Father who has reconciled us to himself in Christ. “True godliness [pietas] consists in a sincere feeling which loves God as father as much as it fears and reverences him as Lord, embraces his righteousness, and dreads offending him worse than death.”3 Therefore, true piety is not coerced obedience born of fear but affectionate devotion born of grace.
The heart of Calvin’s definition of piety seems to be found in the phrase, “the knowledge of his benefits induces …” What does the knowledge of God’s benefits induce in fallen humanity? Reverence and love. In other words, piety is a grateful response. It is never self-generated. Humanity recognizes creation, providence, redemption, and every other good gift from God, and in return responds with grateful worship.
This understanding of piety puts up guardrails against legalism because it insists that God acts first and we act second. Our obedience, therefore, is not an attempt to earn God’s favor but a joyful response to the favor we have already received. As Calvin himself observes, only when we recognize that we owe everything to God will we “yield him willing service.”
Calvin’s last sentence, “unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him,” serves as the overlooked, beautifying phrase of his definition. Calvin is often caricatured as a cold theologian concerned only with divine sovereignty and predestination. But in this final sentence, Calvin sounds nearly Augustinian. The human heart is always searching for fulfillment. In Augustine’s most famous words, “our hearts are restless until they rest in [God].”4 For Calvin, piety reaches its fullness when we recognize that every created good ultimately points beyond itself to God, who alone can satisfy the deepest desires of the human heart. This is far richer than some abstract idea of duty. God is not simply the one we obey; he is the one whom we can joyfully and completely give ourselves to because he is the one in whom we delight.
The movement we find in Calvin’s definition of piety almost reads like a progression through the spiritual life. Knowledge of God’s goodness awakens gratitude; gratitude deepens into reverence and love; reverence and love express themselves in joyful obedience; and joyful obedience culminates in a heart that rests in God. Piety is not an emotion or a behavior. It is an entire orientation of life that begins with God’s gracious initiative and culminates in the believer’s wholehearted devotion.
Let’s get practical now. Why does doctrine produce piety? How does theology lead to devotion? To answer this question, we have to examine how Calvin understands “the knowledge of God.” Calvin’s understanding of the knowledge of God can be summarized as follows: To know God is to be changed by God. For the Reformer, knowledge is not the possession of correct information. True knowledge is relational and transformative; it changes the knower. Calvin presses the point with a rhetorical question:
For how can the thought of God penetrate your mind without your realizing immediately that, since you are his handiwork, you have been made over and bound to his command by right of creation, that you owe your life to him?—that whatever you undertake, whatever you do, ought to be ascribed to him?” (I.2.2).
Knowing God reveals something about ourselves. To behold the Creator is to recognize ourselves as creatures, wholly dependent upon him and therefore called to live for his glory. If you truly know God, you know you belong to him. You know you owe him everything. If you know Jesus, your whole life is transformed into one of worship. Doctrine, then, is never an end in itself. It leads us beyond understanding to joyful obedience, reverent worship, and a life lived before God.
Calvin’s insistence on the inseparability of doctrine and piety can be helpful for the Christian today. As I prepare to enter another year of theological education, Calvin’s vision is both encouraging and convicting. It reminds me that every lecture attended, every theological debate entered, every paper written, and every page read should, if received rightly, deepen my love for God and conformity to Christ. Of course, this warning is not exclusively for seminarians. It extends to every Christian seeking to know God more faithfully.
Regardless of our calling, we face the same temptation: to separate what God has joined together. We can mistake theological mastery for spiritual maturity, defend sound doctrine while neglecting holiness, or pursue religious experience without allowing Scripture to shape our minds. Theology is not an academic exercise detached from the Christian life, nor is piety an emotional spirituality unconcerned with truth. Right doctrine is meant to cultivate right worship, and true devotion is nourished by the truth of the Word of God.
The temptation seems to be thinking we can know God truly without being transformed by that knowledge. Calvin’s challenge is that every doctrine we confess should make us more humble, more grateful, more obedient, and more captivated by the God who has first loved us. Theology reaches its true end when our whole lives become, in Calvin’s words, “a sort of practice of piety” (III.19.2).
Notes
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, translated Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), III.7.4. Book, chapter, and paragraph hereafter cited in the text.
- Ellen Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 199.
- John Calvin, Catechism of 1538, section 2), trans. Ford Lewis Battles in I. John Hesselink, Calvin’s First Catechism: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 8.
- Augustine, Confessions, trans. F.J. Sheed (Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing, 2nd edition, 2006), I.1.1.
