A cursory survey of the final decades of evangelicalism displays the many strengths of this interdenominational movement. The institutions established by Carl Henry and other conservative Christians have left a legacy of doctrinal fidelity and evangelistic zeal. Nevertheless, the testimonies of countless ex-evangelicals have exposed a glaring weakness within this modern renewal movement—an underdeveloped approach to spiritual formation. The testimonies of many who leave these large evangelical churches follow a predictable pattern. These churches excel at finding ways to fill pews, but then struggle to grow these new converts into mature disciples. This spiritually anemic climate explains the phenomena of many evangelicals fleeing to Rome and Constantinople. These traditions—Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, respectively—appear to offer a more holistic, tactile approach to spiritual formation that incorporates trusted liturgical practices developed over centuries.
In light of these recent trends, is the only option for Christians looking for a deeper and more rooted spirituality to swim the Tiger? Matthrew Bingham, institutional leader and Phoenix Seminary professor, disagrees. Rather, he believes that evangelical Christians already have a Word-based, Spirit-filled piety grounded within their own tradition, and he invites readers to explore this forgotten heritage in his recent book, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation.
Summary
The eclecticism that defines the Christian counseling world is evident in its buffet-style approach to spiritual formation. The adjective “Christian” can define a wide variety of practices, from simple Bible reading to an explicit flirtation with practices rooted in Eastern mysticism. Your Christian counselor down the road may draw upon the Roman Catholic monastics, Moravian Pietists, or the latest evangelical fad for their clientele. If counseling approaches share with spiritual formation a vision for the Christian life and the means of achieving personal growth, then Reformed pastors and churches are entitled to know their counselors’ theological convictions.
A Heart Aflame for God provides Reformed pastors, counselors, and Christians with a helpful introduction to the “Reformation heritage that has long nourished evangelical Protestantism” (33). To aid readers, Bingham offers the following definition of spiritual formation:
“Spiritual formation is the conscious process by which we seek to heighten and satisfy our Spirit-given thirst for God (Ps. 42:1–2) through divinely appointed means and with a view toward “work[ing] out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:21) and becoming ‘mature in Christ’ (Col. 1:28).” (35)
The strength of this work is visible in Bingham’s command of Scripture and the primary sources of the Reformation. Throughout this book, Bingham weaves careful biblical exposition with theological precision and insights from theologians across the Reformed tradition, presenting a blueprint for spiritual growth into Christlikeness.
In contrast to a buffet-style approach to spiritual formation, Bingham argues that Reformed spirituality was broadly defined by three theological impulses. First, the heart of Reformed piety is the preeminence and priority of Scripture in the Christian life. He writes that “God’s people are most profoundly shaped and formed by God’s word” (71). Second, in contrast to the “smells and “bells” of the high church traditions, a Reformed approach to spirituality is marked by a biblical simplicity. The seemingly “bland” habits and practices of the Reformers did not result from a lack of creativity but an intentional conviction flowing the role of Scripture in regulating the Christian life as well as the spiritual dangers of deviating from these biblically prescribed practices. Third, Bingham argues that the Reformed tradition reflects the belief that “the ordinary God-ordained means for keeping the heart and cultivating God-honoring affections involve setting one’s mind on God’s truth” (80). In other words, the Reformers were committed to engaging the heart and inner man through engaging the mind. In contrast to the growing interest in embodied spiritual practices—whether through renewed interest in the desert monks or the latest secular therapy that reaches the inner self through the physical interventions—Bingham counters that “Reformed Christians have historically been skeptical of any proposal that seems to bypass the rational faculties in an attempt to more directly influence the heart” (84).
The body of this book is devoted to exploring the “Reformation Triangle” of Reformed Spirituality. The Reformed tradition has understood spiritual growth as dependent upon the three-legged stool of Scripture reading (Chapter 3), meditation (Chapter 4), and prayer (Chapter 5), the “heart” of “Reformed piety” (18). The work then transitions to discussing three tangential means of spiritual growth to this experiential foundation: self-examination (Chapter 6), the natural world (Chapter 7), and Christian relationships (Chapter 8). The book then concludes with two potential challenges to the implementation of this system of piety—questions concerning the role of the physical body (Chapter 9) as well as weakness and suffering (Chapter 10).
Reflections
As the survey above demonstrates, this book contains plenty of substance for pastors, elders, and church members to digest as they consider the state of their piety. The content of this book also overlaps significantly with the practice of biblical counseling, as Bingham comments, “The Christian life is a growing life” (333). Biblical counseling seeks to offer biblical solutions for Christians whose overall growth is stunted by sin and suffering. Therefore, A Heart Aflame for God provides biblical counselors with a Reformed framework for understanding the means God ordinarily uses to cultivate growth in the Christian life. This theological and historical survey of Christian piety also offers insightful commentary upon various debated topics within the biblical counseling movement. These topics include (1) the intellectual nature of Scripture and counseling, (2) the role of the body in counseling, and (3) the relationship between the truths of Scripture and nature.
The Intellectual Nature of Scripture and Counseling
First, Bingham confronts early and often the ever-present straw man for all biblically based ministries, including biblical counseling. By its nature, biblical counseling, like preaching and the other ministries of the Word, is an intellectual exercise. Biblical counseling centralizes the role of the Scriptures in addressing personal problems, leading to the potential accusation that biblical counselors believe that they can solve every problem with a Bible lesson. Notably, this type of concern was verbalized against the Reformers and their Word-centered piety. Roman Catholic polemicists likened Protestant worship—with its stripped-down church buildings and liturgy—to a school (103). Today, Bingham argues that “some continue to criticize Protestants for overemphasizing the divine word and the mind to the detriment of the heart and the whole person” (104).
Bingham responds to these complaints in several ways. In addition to surveying some misconceptions of Reformed piety, he concludes that the Reformers were not trying to minimize the emotions or the role of the body, envisioning church members as walking “brains-on-a-stick.” Rather, Bingham counters that early modern Protestants “believed that the God-ordained means of enflaming the heart for God was to fill the mind with God’s truth” (108). Personal growth and sanctification are primarily fueled by addressing and applying Scripture to all of life—a principle that the Reformers share with biblical counselors. Furthermore, those who take issue with the doctrinal nature of Reformed piety may rather have an issue with the testimony of Scripture itself. Reflecting upon John 17:17, “Sanctify them in your truth; your word is truth,” Puritan Thomas Watson observes that “the Word is the medium and method of sanctification, and we come to it not only to illuminate but to consecrate us.” Bingham’s conclusions are worth quoting at length:
If one wishes to overthrow the Reformation emphasis on God’s word standing at the center of a truly Christian approach to spiritual formation, then one needs to do more than simply celebrate the beauty of images and the richness of non-Protestant liturgical traditions. Rather, one must deal with the mountain of scriptural testimony that seems to suggest that a Reformation word-centered piety is actually at root simply biblical piety by another name. (110)
If the ministry of Reformers was defined by the conviction that man is a “kind of creature that is spiritually transformed through hearing, understanding, and appropriating the proclamation of God’s word” (284), it is not surprising to find the preaching and counseling of Scripture as central to our spiritual health.
The Role of the Body in Counseling
The priority of Word-based counseling ministry exposes another potentially overlooked area—the role of the body in counseling. This concern expresses itself in several ways. First, there is the proposed spiritual benefits of bodily expression within religious worship, including the ritualistic dance of liturgical practices including kneeling, moving arms, and facing a certain direction, an “arithmetical piety” (285). Then, there is the idea that Word-based piety overlooks the reality that men and women are holistic persons. In the works of James K. A. Smith, including You Are What You Love1, Smith argues that, at our core, human beings are not fundamentally thinkers but lovers, driven by our desires and loves (289). It follows, therefore, that humans are shaped best not through intellectual exercises but practices that address the heart, which Smith identifies as “embodied ritualistic practices” (289). Bingham concludes, “When Smith repeatedly stresses that ‘the way to the heart is through the body,’ he clearly implies that if you are not reaching the body, then you are not reaching the heart” (295).
James K. A. Smith’s works have been floating around the evangelical world for some time with his Cultural Liturgies trilogy attracting a wide readership that includes biblical counselors. Bingham offers a significant critique of Smith’s logical sleight of hand, acknowledging that while the first and second greatest commandments do not address what we “think” but what we “love”, this does not necessarily imply that embodied practices are superior to ministries that centralize reading and meditating upon Scripture. Bingham insightfully concludes that the needed critique of viewing Christians as more than walking computers allows Smith to rely upon an array of analogical moves, comparing the formative influence of learning to play piano, visiting a mall, and cheering for your team in a sports arena to spiritual formation (298–300). Nevertheless, Smith’s arguments fall victim to the fact that these analogies in themselves are insufficient to establish a relationship between embodied rituals and spiritual growth (300).
The central issue with Smith’s reasoning is the fact that embodied rituals fall victim to a number of counterexamples that end up undermining his entire argument. If novel embodied practices were sufficient in themselves to accomplish sanctification and deepen piety, one would expect to see lower rates of nominal parishioners within Catholic and Greek Orthodox congregations (301). Rather, the Scriptures themselves already point toward an approach to man that addresses the whole person and even includes two embodied practices that naturally intersect with a biblically grounded ministry, the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. Bingham’s engagement with Smith’s works includes insightful reflections for biblical counselors debating the role and significance of addressing the body in their counseling ministries.
The Relationship between the Truths of Scripture and Nature
In a book devoted to a biblical approach to personal growth, readers may be surprised to see the attention Bingham and the Reformers give to engagement with nature and the natural world. Far from neo-pagan spirituality, Bingham argues that the Reformers read their Bibles and concluded that, because nature is God’s creation, the natural world contains marvelous truths and reflections that can advance spiritual formation when approached from a biblical perspective. Bingham observes, along with leading scholars, that the Reformed tradition reflects a persistent “desire to carefully record and describe the glories of God’s good creation. If creation is a theater, or mirror, of God’s glory, one could do no better than study diligently the splendors God has placed there” (231). Thus, Bingham includes an entire chapter devoted to discussing how both the Reformers and Scripture envision the natural world reflecting God’s glory, teaching God’s truth, and aiding in spiritual formation.
Those familiar with biblical counseling are aware that many within the movement view the doctrines of creation and general revelation with great suspicion because of the secular ideas that are smuggled into churches under the banner of “All truth is God’s truth.” While being sensitive to the potential of misappropriating secular ideas through a general appeal to creation order, Scripture clearly teaches that this world we inhabit was created by God and originally created good. Therefore, it is dishonoring to our Creator collapse into one another the distinct categories of the noetic effects of sin and the wisdom, knowledge, and truth that God embedded within the creation order for man to discover as part of his calling to think God’s thoughts in the world after him and trace their connections. Bingham’s engagement with this idea is seen in the following quote:
We are thus in no way trying to establish—or even comment on—any sort of natural theology through which non-Christians might come to faith in the living and true God. In general, the Reformed tradition has been more pessimistic on the score than other Christian traditions, but that is not our concern here. Rather, we are interested in what good use spiritually minded believers, guided by Scripture, might make of observing the world around them. (235)
With the book of Scripture in hand, Bingham’s guided tour of the book of nature is a worthwhile journey for pastors, elders, and biblical counselors who desire to see the potential spiritual benefits of reflecting on the world around us.
Conclusion
Matthew Bingham’s recent work, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation, seeks to recover many forgotten elements of the Reformed tradition that can aid our spiritual development and growth in the Christian life. It is therefore not surprising to see this work topping many lists of the best books published in 2025. For this reason, I heartily recommend this book to our audience and any biblical counselor desiring to become more familiar with the nuances of a Reformed approach to Christian piety. Truly, Bingham’s proper balance between a Word-centered piety that respects the spiritual benefits gleaned from a Christian reflection upon nature is a fitting entryway into Reformed biblical counseling.
- James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2016). ↩︎
