As the 500th anniversary of the Reformation draws closer (October 31, 1517), I have spent time in study on the five key doctrinal “alone(s)” of the period. That is: our final authority is scripture alone; we are saved by the merit of Christ alone; we are declared righteous by God through His grace alone and receive His gift of righteousness by faith alone, for all the glory belongs to God alone. If I had to pick one of the four it would be the last of which I am the least familiar, but its study has been rich.
In popular thinking the Reformation motto “for the glory of God alone” is sometimes reduced to a call for action. We believing Christians should pursue all activities for the glory of God as our supreme end. There is nothing untrue about this way thinking and a couple of biblical texts even make this point. But there seems to something imbalanced about focusing the motto exclusively upon Christians acting for God’s glory. The obvious result is that “for the glory of God alone” becomes centered on us! How we are to act and what end we are to pursue.
More often Scripture appeals to God’s glory as a way of describing God, especially as he manifests himself through the history of redemption in the Scriptures, especially in the Lord Jesus Christ, his Holy Spirit, and the new creation where Christ is now enthroned. This is an excellent reason to turn to an unexpected area of study: the glory of God in the theology of the Anglican divines in the mid-to later sixteenth century and lasting until the mid-eighteenth century and the evangelical revival (the Great Awakening to us colonials!). Although I will not attempt anything resembling a thorough study of this topic, this is a prayer email after all, but even a series of “pause for thought” should confirm that our Anglican heritage involves a rich and nuanced conception of God’s glory. These divines recognized the biblical point I made above: the glory of God is first and foremost about God himself and how he reveals his glory in the world. Yet they also recognized as a consequence of the first that God glorifies his people and enables them to reflect his glory through their worship and pursuit of holiness in the obedience of faith.
