Life in the spirit :
Life in the spirit : spiritual formation in theological perspective / edited by Jeffrey P. Greenman and George Kalantzis. - Downers Grove, Ill. : IVP Academic, c2010. - 256 p. ; 23 cm.
The 2009 Wheaton Theology Conference sought to examine the biblical, theological and historical roots of the church’s calling to spiritual formation, as sketched in this book. This volume emerged from the conference’s dialogue about the theological shape of the contempo-rary discussion about spiritual formation, particularly within the evan-gelical Protestant community. While evangelicals have given renewed attention to this topic over the past two decades and have produced extensive literature that introduces spiritual disciplines to pastors and lay people, in-depth theological examination of what is involved in spiritual formation has remained less developed. Therefore, this vol-ume is not designed to instruct people in how to go about practicing spiritual disciplines. Instead, it focuses on fundamental biblical- theological questions about the purpose of spiritual formation, why we pursue it, where we should locate spiritual formation in doctrinal terms and what critical theological convictions must be made operative in order for spiritual formation to take place individually and corporately. Accordingly, this volume provides substantive theological engagement with core issues such as:
• What do we mean by commonly used but laden terms such as
spiritual formation, spiritual direction and spiritual theology?
• How does God bring about transformation into Christlikeness?
• How do our doctrines of God, salvation and the Holy Spirit inform our pursuit of godliness or the practices of piety? Does doctrine make a difference to devotion?
• What insights might we gain from a better awareness of some of the key traditions of the history of Christian spirituality?
• What theological convictions undergird some of the key “spiritual practices” or “spiritual disciplines” of the church?
This volume is divided into three major parts, followed by a reflection toward application. The first part, “Theological Contours,” explores some major doctrinal underpinnings of any authentic pursuit of spiritual formation. Jeffrey Greenman’s chapter sets the stage for the entire volume by offering a “theologically oriented” definition of spiritual formation: “Spiritual formation is our continuing response to the reality of God’s grace shaping us into the likeness of Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit, in the community of faith, for the sake of the world.” His chapter not only expounds this definition, but also reflects on some particular evangelical challenges for spiritual formation that follow from four distinctive evangelical emphases. This discussion serves to locate this volume’s discussions within the characteristic strengths (and limitations) of evangelicalism. Finally, Green-man offers a “spiritually oriented” definition of theology. Responding to the stereotypic idea that theology is nothing more than an arcane, abstract discussion of abstruse and impractical topics, he contends that theology, at its best, should be understood and practiced as “whole per-son formation for mission.”
Greenman’s essay is followed by Gordon Fee’s argument that con-temporary evangelical Christianity needs to give the Holy Spirit more prominence in our accounts of spirituality. He begins in the mode of lament, fixing our attention on the fuzziness of contemporary language of spirituality, the inadequacy of most English Bible translations of the key Greek words for spirit, spirituality and the Holy Spirit, and the church’s neglect of the Holy Spirit by opting instead for what he calls a “functionally binitarian” doctrine of God. Fee underscores the vital importance of the historic, orthodox doctrine of the triune God for spiritual formation, including a robust doctrine of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology). He argues from the New Testament that Christians are “Spirit people,” those who have been given new life by the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, “being saved” necessarily involves an utter dependence on the Spirit. Thus, says Fee: “Soteriologies that are insufficiently attentive to the decisive work of the Holy Spirit will be incapable of generating ‘spiritual formation’ in the Pauline sense.” Fee also suggests that our Christology needs to recognize that Jesus, as fully human, was the “Spirit person par excellence,” whose life and ministry were lived out in the power of the Holy Spirit. As we come to recognize Jesus’ dependence on the Spirit, we will then be able to understand the New Testament admonition to become like Christ through the indwelling, em-powering presence of the Holy Spirit.
The first part of the book concludes with a chapter by Dallas Willard, one of the most prolific and influential evangelicals currently writing in the area of spiritual formation. Willard explains and defends the provocative claim that there “is a prevailing understanding of salvation that poses almost insurmountable barriers to transformation of professing Christians into Christlikeness, which is the meaning of spiritual formation.” He argues that our typical way of understanding what it means to be “saved” actually “has no conceptual or practical connection with such a transformation.” Here the importance of the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) for spiritual formation moves front and center. Willard argues that spiritual formation, properly under-stood, is a “natural part” (that is, intrinsic component) of salvation, properly understood. What is needed, according to Willard, is a much greater emphasis on the Bible’s teaching that the gospel of salvation in Christ involves the gift of new life, and therefore our participation in the divine life (cf. 2 Pet 1:14) in the here and now, as opposed to a more limited and largely transactional model of salvation whereby forgive-ness is attained primarily as a “ticket to heaven” when we die.
The second part, “Historical Approaches,” builds upon these theological arguments and attempts to put our contemporary concerns for spiritual formation into a larger historical context. In much the same spirit as the 2007 conference and its resulting volume, Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future,3 this section begins with a study of some influential traditions of spirituality found in the early church. George Kalantzis begins the section by focusing on the ascetical life and praxis of early Christians, paying particular attention to the move from prevailing classical Greco-Roman paradigms of philosophy as askesis and contemplation, to the late antique uniquely Christian redefinitions of spiritual formation and ascent, in what the Eastern Christian traditions call the process of anagoge—the process of being conformed to Christ. The “spirituality” early Christians inherited from both their Greco-Roman as well as their Jewish predecessors revolved around an understanding of materiality as incompatible with true spirituality, spiritual freedom and salvation, as the apostle Paul found out in his engagement with the Athenians on Mars Hill (Acts 17:16-34). Early Christian theologians and apologists such as Justin (Martyr) and Origen of Alexandria struggled to articulate a properly Christian understanding of the relationship between the “new life of/from the Spirit” and life in the body, especially as that relationship bears witness to Christ. Kalantzis also shows how, as the church moved from the margins of society to the center, and its relationships with the state changed from persecution to official acceptance, the definition of spirituality also changed, now being expressed more clearly by the monastic movements of the fourth and fifth centuries. In the process, Kalantzis raises some often-forgotten aspects of monastic spirituality that lead away from individualistic and disengaged practices and redirect us in active service to the poor and marginalized.
The annual Wheaton Theology Conference often has been an ecumenical occasion. Given the prominence of the Roman Catholic tradition of spiritual theology and the rising levels of evangelical engagement with Catholic spirituality, it was important to hear from a highly distinguished interpreter of Catholic theology, Lawrence Cunningham. In his chapter, “The Way and the Ways: Reflections on Catholic Spirituality,” Cunningham argues, referring to the teaching of Romans 8, that the Catholic tradition has held that “to live the Christian life is to live under the impulse of the Spirit, which converts us to the way of Christ.” His chapter explores the meaning of the “way of Christ”—Christ is the way (cf. Jn 14:6). Cunningham pro-vides an insightful treatment of the key features of varied Catholic “schools” of spirituality. These “schools” (such as the Franciscan, Dominican, Ignatian and others) are presented as diverse, valuable and alternative “ways of following the Way.” Concluding with some reflections on ecumenical relations, Cunningham points to the com-mon ground shared across confessional divides and offers some suggestions about how Catholics and Protestants can learn from each other in their shared pursuit of “life in the Spirit.”
Following Cunningham’s essay, Kelly Kapic examines the theology of “evangelical holiness” taught by an eminent Puritan divine, John Owen. Kapic not only corrects a variety of inaccurate stereotypes about Puritanism but also offers a detailed case study of a robust spiritual theology that is grace-centered, gift-oriented, Christ-centered, Spirit-enabled and nonmoralistic. The Christian life is depicted as focused on the believer’s participation in loving communion with the triune God. According to Kapic, Owen’s approach also provides a theological basis for a nuanced account of the imitation of Christ, a “real spirituality” that is “not fundamentally about self-improvement, but about an intimacy and communion with the triune God that transforms the believer’s life.” Kapic highlights how Owen’s thought illuminates some particularly important implications of christological, trinitarian and pneumatological orthodoxy for vibrant Christian life.
In the final chapter of this section, “Seeking True Religion: Early Evangelical Devotion and Catholic Spirituality,” Bruce Hindmarsh ex-amines the roots of the distinctive evangelical devotion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains that early evangelicalism, as a movement aimed at fostering “true religion,” drew extensively and eagerly on “a common core of classical Christian spirituality” represented primarily by Roman Catholic sources. Hindmarsh’s chapter complements Lawrence Cunningham’s, suggesting that early evangelicals were attempting to form a “school” of devotion, comparable in many ways to the Catholic “schools of spirituality” outlined by Cunningham. Hindmarsh provides a reception history of two key books. He shows that John and Charles Wesley, as well as George Whitefield, were deeply influenced by Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677), a work that itself transmitted the spiritual teachings of major Catholic mystical writers such as François Fenelon, Madame Guyon and Teresa of Avila. Hindmarsh also points out the pervasive and powerful role that Thomas à Kempis’sImitation of Christ played on key evangelical leaders. This text was the evangelical introduction to the Catholic ascetical tradition. These strands of continental Roman Catholic tradition were received and “naturalized” (not uncritically) by early evangelical leaders. Showing that, from its inception, evangelical Protestantism has been open to engaging the Roman Catholic sources of the classical Christian tradition of spirituality, Hindmarsh argues that today’s evangelical interest in learning from Catholic sources and spiritual traditions is not a new phenomenon and cannot be dismissed as somehow “unevangelical.”
The third part of this book, “Spiritual Practices,” addresses the need for theological ref lection on some of the most formative spiritual disci-plines, such as Bible reading, prayer, corporate worship, spiritual direc-tion and social action. Christopher Hall’s chapter, “Reading Christ into the Heart: The Theological Foundations of Lectio Divina,” ref lects on the author’s experience of meditating on the Sermon on the Mount (with the help of his iPod). Hall describes the nature and purpose of the slow, attentive, transformational practice of “divine reading” of the sa-cred Scriptures that has been part of the Christian heritage since the early church and that has been an especially important component of monastic spirituality. It is a way of reading the Bible that is, quoting Jean Leclercq, “entirely oriented toward life, and not toward abstract knowledge.” Hall explores the implications of his claim that “under-girding our reading of the [biblical] text is a fundamental theological proposition that is deeply trinitarian: the Eternal Word, sent by the Father, has become incarnate in Jesus Christ and continues to speak to us through the Holy Spirit.” Through divine reading of the written Word, we feed on Christ, the incarnate Word.
The chapter by Susan Phillips, who is an experienced spiritual director, suggests that the ancient Christian art of spiritual direction is a “navigational aid to sanctification.” Focused on listening, it is the practice of intentional spiritual “accompaniment” designed to help men and women walk according to the Spirit (Rom 8:4). Phillips writes that spiritual direction “helps people pay attention to God’s presence and call in their everyday lives, and it rests in a paradigm of prayer and discernment.” She explores how the doctrine of sanctification informs this practice, as men and women grow in grace (2 Pet 3:18) and become evermore rooted and grounded in love (Eph 3:17) through the church’s ministry of “piloting” in the process of transformation toward maturity in Christ.
The practice of prayer is undoubtedly central to spiritual formation in all Christian traditions. While a thorough study of prayer is a worthy topic for an entire Wheaton Theology Conference and subsequent volume—maybe in the future—this book features a case study of the theological dimensions of the practice of centering prayer by James Wilhoit. Wilhoit focuses on the approach expounded by Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk (b. 1923) who is widely considered the founder of the centering prayer movement in the contemporary church. Centering prayer is a controversial subject in evangelical circles. Wilhoit provides an evenhanded exposition of Keating’s methods of prayer, drawing attention to Keating’s belief that centering prayer builds upon the practice of lectio divina and is meant to be a way of deepening one’s relationship with Christ. Keating’s main focus is the importance of intention or “consent” wherein we consent to God’s presence and action within us and with “mental engagement” in prayer (fending off distracting thoughts). Wilhoit states that the origins of centering prayer are trinitarian, and that for Keating, “the present indwelling of Christ in each believer is his theological touchstone.” While Wilhoit finds that Keating’s approach is significantly shaped by psychotherapeutic assumptions and has an underdeveloped account of sin and salvation, he is cautiously optimistic about the evangelical appropriation of some aspects of centering prayer.
Cherith Fee Nordling’s chapter addresses one aspect of corporate worship, namely, congregational singing, as a spiritually formative experience. She explores the New Testament’s rich language of worship and formative significance of the church’s practice of singing psalms, hymns and songs of the Spirit (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16). She shows how such songs enable the Christian community to enter into, and experience afresh, the power of the gospel narrative. Nordling also strikes a chord of lament in her discussion of contemporary worship. She believes that the church’s theological confusion and spiritual lethargy can be traced, at least in part, to “countless repetitions of anemic hymns and heretical choruses.” She is especially worried whenever our human experience, not God, becomes the main subject of worship. Nordling focuses on the implications of a confident, healthy/orthodox Christology—most notably an affirmation of the real humanity of Jesus—for the transformative work of God in and through worship. Our “life in the Spirit” is a function of Jesus’ life in the Spirit, shared with us and made possible by his saving grace. Her chapter is a challenging yet inspirational reading for anyone concerned with leading worship in congregational settings.
The final chapter in this section is by David Gushee, a prominent evangelical social activist, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights and a Christian ethicist. Too often neglected is the “outward discipline” of active commitment to compassionate service, especially practical care for the poor, needy and vulnerable. Gushee’s chapter, “Spiritual Formation and the Sanctity of Life,” argues that “a socially disengaged spirituality” is “inconceivable and inexcusable.” He defines and describes the doctrine of the sanctity of life, the conviction that “the human being, created, sustained and redeemed by God in Christ, is infinitely sacred in God’s sight.” Given, then, the sacredness of human life, “Christian spiritual formation must yield Christian disciples who are absolutely and stubbornly impervious to any temptation or enticement to sacrifice the sacredness of any group of neighbors for any private or public purpose, however compelling it may seem at the time.” For Gushee, a particularly important doctrinal consideration is the incarnation of Jesus Christ, which “forever elevates human bodiliness,” and therefore, “what hap-pens to human bodies (not just minds and spirits and souls, and not just the bodies of our friends but also our enemies) matters to God and must matter to us.” Gushee shows that the challenge of cultivating an active, compassionate concern for our neighbors is an indispensible, nonnegotiable aspect of becoming like Christ. He concludes his chapter by re-minding us that corporate worship has a crucial, irreplaceable role in forming disciples whose attitudes and instincts are attuned to the suffer-ing and exploitation of others, near and far: “Worship of God is the ul-timate origin of a true appreciation for life’s sanctity—if we remember what kind of God it is we truly worship.”
The book’s final section is an epilogue, “Theology, Spiritual Formation and Theological Education,” provided by Linda Cannell, one of the most incisive and creative theological educators in North America. Her chapter picks up from Jeffrey Greenman’s concern for understand-ing theology as formation in chapter one and from Dallas Willard’s critique in chapter three that most Christian institutions are failing to give sufficient emphasis to spiritual formation while choosing to be “doing something else.” She addresses directly and honestly a topic that lies barely behind the surface of many of the chapters in this book, namely, the nature of knowledge itself. Many of the authors at least hint that our rationalistic and reductionistic ways of viewing the hu-man mind and spirit, including our ways of reading Scripture and do-ing theology, have created obstacles to genuine Christian spirituality. Cannell traces the reasons why theology and spirituality are so commonly separated (even divorced from each other) in contemporary congregational and educational settings to the “rise of academic theology” and its institutionalization in “professionalized” theological colleges and seminaries. Cannell questions current assumptions about theological education from the “sapiential” standpoint, challenging the notion that what formation for ministry involves is “the nurture of the soul and growth toward wisdom.” She proposes that some major (and possibly uncomfortable) rethinking and decisive organizational changes will be required if we are serious about refocusing our institutional efforts at developing the next generation of Christian leaders in more formative, holistic and spiritually nurturing directions.
The cover art for this book is by the renowned contemporary Chinese Christian painter, He Qi. During the 2008 Wheaton Theology Conference we were privileged to hear him describe his understanding of the connections between visual art and Christian spirituality, and to host on campus an extensive show of his work.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Spiritual formation in theological perspective : classic issues, contemporary challenges / Jeffrey P. Greenman -- On getting the spirit back into spirituality / Gordon D. Fee -- Spiritual formation as a natural part of salvation / Dallas Willard -- From the porch to the cross : ancient Christian approaches to spiritual formation / George Kalantzis -- The way and the ways : reflections on Catholic spirituality / Lawrence S. Cunningham -- Evangelical holiness : assumptions in John Owen's theology of christian spirituality / Kelly M. Kapic -- Seeking true religion : early evangelical devotion and Catholic spirituality / D. Bruce Hindmarsh -- Reading Christ into the heart : the theological foundations of Lectio divina / Christopher A. Hall -- Spiritual direction as a navigational aid in sanctification / Susan S. Phillips -- Centering prayer / James C. Wilhoit -- "Renewed in knowledge in the image of our creator" through "psalms, hymns, and songs of the spirit" / Cherith Fee Nordling -- Spiritual formation and the sanctity of life / David P. Gushee -- Theology, spiritual formation and theological education : reflections toward application / Linda M. Cannell.
9780830838790 (pbk. : alk. paper) 0830838791 (pbk. : alk. paper)
2009048955
Spiritual formation--Congresses.
BV4511 / .L54 2010
The 2009 Wheaton Theology Conference sought to examine the biblical, theological and historical roots of the church’s calling to spiritual formation, as sketched in this book. This volume emerged from the conference’s dialogue about the theological shape of the contempo-rary discussion about spiritual formation, particularly within the evan-gelical Protestant community. While evangelicals have given renewed attention to this topic over the past two decades and have produced extensive literature that introduces spiritual disciplines to pastors and lay people, in-depth theological examination of what is involved in spiritual formation has remained less developed. Therefore, this vol-ume is not designed to instruct people in how to go about practicing spiritual disciplines. Instead, it focuses on fundamental biblical- theological questions about the purpose of spiritual formation, why we pursue it, where we should locate spiritual formation in doctrinal terms and what critical theological convictions must be made operative in order for spiritual formation to take place individually and corporately. Accordingly, this volume provides substantive theological engagement with core issues such as:
• What do we mean by commonly used but laden terms such as
spiritual formation, spiritual direction and spiritual theology?
• How does God bring about transformation into Christlikeness?
• How do our doctrines of God, salvation and the Holy Spirit inform our pursuit of godliness or the practices of piety? Does doctrine make a difference to devotion?
• What insights might we gain from a better awareness of some of the key traditions of the history of Christian spirituality?
• What theological convictions undergird some of the key “spiritual practices” or “spiritual disciplines” of the church?
This volume is divided into three major parts, followed by a reflection toward application. The first part, “Theological Contours,” explores some major doctrinal underpinnings of any authentic pursuit of spiritual formation. Jeffrey Greenman’s chapter sets the stage for the entire volume by offering a “theologically oriented” definition of spiritual formation: “Spiritual formation is our continuing response to the reality of God’s grace shaping us into the likeness of Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit, in the community of faith, for the sake of the world.” His chapter not only expounds this definition, but also reflects on some particular evangelical challenges for spiritual formation that follow from four distinctive evangelical emphases. This discussion serves to locate this volume’s discussions within the characteristic strengths (and limitations) of evangelicalism. Finally, Green-man offers a “spiritually oriented” definition of theology. Responding to the stereotypic idea that theology is nothing more than an arcane, abstract discussion of abstruse and impractical topics, he contends that theology, at its best, should be understood and practiced as “whole per-son formation for mission.”
Greenman’s essay is followed by Gordon Fee’s argument that con-temporary evangelical Christianity needs to give the Holy Spirit more prominence in our accounts of spirituality. He begins in the mode of lament, fixing our attention on the fuzziness of contemporary language of spirituality, the inadequacy of most English Bible translations of the key Greek words for spirit, spirituality and the Holy Spirit, and the church’s neglect of the Holy Spirit by opting instead for what he calls a “functionally binitarian” doctrine of God. Fee underscores the vital importance of the historic, orthodox doctrine of the triune God for spiritual formation, including a robust doctrine of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology). He argues from the New Testament that Christians are “Spirit people,” those who have been given new life by the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, “being saved” necessarily involves an utter dependence on the Spirit. Thus, says Fee: “Soteriologies that are insufficiently attentive to the decisive work of the Holy Spirit will be incapable of generating ‘spiritual formation’ in the Pauline sense.” Fee also suggests that our Christology needs to recognize that Jesus, as fully human, was the “Spirit person par excellence,” whose life and ministry were lived out in the power of the Holy Spirit. As we come to recognize Jesus’ dependence on the Spirit, we will then be able to understand the New Testament admonition to become like Christ through the indwelling, em-powering presence of the Holy Spirit.
The first part of the book concludes with a chapter by Dallas Willard, one of the most prolific and influential evangelicals currently writing in the area of spiritual formation. Willard explains and defends the provocative claim that there “is a prevailing understanding of salvation that poses almost insurmountable barriers to transformation of professing Christians into Christlikeness, which is the meaning of spiritual formation.” He argues that our typical way of understanding what it means to be “saved” actually “has no conceptual or practical connection with such a transformation.” Here the importance of the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) for spiritual formation moves front and center. Willard argues that spiritual formation, properly under-stood, is a “natural part” (that is, intrinsic component) of salvation, properly understood. What is needed, according to Willard, is a much greater emphasis on the Bible’s teaching that the gospel of salvation in Christ involves the gift of new life, and therefore our participation in the divine life (cf. 2 Pet 1:14) in the here and now, as opposed to a more limited and largely transactional model of salvation whereby forgive-ness is attained primarily as a “ticket to heaven” when we die.
The second part, “Historical Approaches,” builds upon these theological arguments and attempts to put our contemporary concerns for spiritual formation into a larger historical context. In much the same spirit as the 2007 conference and its resulting volume, Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future,3 this section begins with a study of some influential traditions of spirituality found in the early church. George Kalantzis begins the section by focusing on the ascetical life and praxis of early Christians, paying particular attention to the move from prevailing classical Greco-Roman paradigms of philosophy as askesis and contemplation, to the late antique uniquely Christian redefinitions of spiritual formation and ascent, in what the Eastern Christian traditions call the process of anagoge—the process of being conformed to Christ. The “spirituality” early Christians inherited from both their Greco-Roman as well as their Jewish predecessors revolved around an understanding of materiality as incompatible with true spirituality, spiritual freedom and salvation, as the apostle Paul found out in his engagement with the Athenians on Mars Hill (Acts 17:16-34). Early Christian theologians and apologists such as Justin (Martyr) and Origen of Alexandria struggled to articulate a properly Christian understanding of the relationship between the “new life of/from the Spirit” and life in the body, especially as that relationship bears witness to Christ. Kalantzis also shows how, as the church moved from the margins of society to the center, and its relationships with the state changed from persecution to official acceptance, the definition of spirituality also changed, now being expressed more clearly by the monastic movements of the fourth and fifth centuries. In the process, Kalantzis raises some often-forgotten aspects of monastic spirituality that lead away from individualistic and disengaged practices and redirect us in active service to the poor and marginalized.
The annual Wheaton Theology Conference often has been an ecumenical occasion. Given the prominence of the Roman Catholic tradition of spiritual theology and the rising levels of evangelical engagement with Catholic spirituality, it was important to hear from a highly distinguished interpreter of Catholic theology, Lawrence Cunningham. In his chapter, “The Way and the Ways: Reflections on Catholic Spirituality,” Cunningham argues, referring to the teaching of Romans 8, that the Catholic tradition has held that “to live the Christian life is to live under the impulse of the Spirit, which converts us to the way of Christ.” His chapter explores the meaning of the “way of Christ”—Christ is the way (cf. Jn 14:6). Cunningham pro-vides an insightful treatment of the key features of varied Catholic “schools” of spirituality. These “schools” (such as the Franciscan, Dominican, Ignatian and others) are presented as diverse, valuable and alternative “ways of following the Way.” Concluding with some reflections on ecumenical relations, Cunningham points to the com-mon ground shared across confessional divides and offers some suggestions about how Catholics and Protestants can learn from each other in their shared pursuit of “life in the Spirit.”
Following Cunningham’s essay, Kelly Kapic examines the theology of “evangelical holiness” taught by an eminent Puritan divine, John Owen. Kapic not only corrects a variety of inaccurate stereotypes about Puritanism but also offers a detailed case study of a robust spiritual theology that is grace-centered, gift-oriented, Christ-centered, Spirit-enabled and nonmoralistic. The Christian life is depicted as focused on the believer’s participation in loving communion with the triune God. According to Kapic, Owen’s approach also provides a theological basis for a nuanced account of the imitation of Christ, a “real spirituality” that is “not fundamentally about self-improvement, but about an intimacy and communion with the triune God that transforms the believer’s life.” Kapic highlights how Owen’s thought illuminates some particularly important implications of christological, trinitarian and pneumatological orthodoxy for vibrant Christian life.
In the final chapter of this section, “Seeking True Religion: Early Evangelical Devotion and Catholic Spirituality,” Bruce Hindmarsh ex-amines the roots of the distinctive evangelical devotion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains that early evangelicalism, as a movement aimed at fostering “true religion,” drew extensively and eagerly on “a common core of classical Christian spirituality” represented primarily by Roman Catholic sources. Hindmarsh’s chapter complements Lawrence Cunningham’s, suggesting that early evangelicals were attempting to form a “school” of devotion, comparable in many ways to the Catholic “schools of spirituality” outlined by Cunningham. Hindmarsh provides a reception history of two key books. He shows that John and Charles Wesley, as well as George Whitefield, were deeply influenced by Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677), a work that itself transmitted the spiritual teachings of major Catholic mystical writers such as François Fenelon, Madame Guyon and Teresa of Avila. Hindmarsh also points out the pervasive and powerful role that Thomas à Kempis’sImitation of Christ played on key evangelical leaders. This text was the evangelical introduction to the Catholic ascetical tradition. These strands of continental Roman Catholic tradition were received and “naturalized” (not uncritically) by early evangelical leaders. Showing that, from its inception, evangelical Protestantism has been open to engaging the Roman Catholic sources of the classical Christian tradition of spirituality, Hindmarsh argues that today’s evangelical interest in learning from Catholic sources and spiritual traditions is not a new phenomenon and cannot be dismissed as somehow “unevangelical.”
The third part of this book, “Spiritual Practices,” addresses the need for theological ref lection on some of the most formative spiritual disci-plines, such as Bible reading, prayer, corporate worship, spiritual direc-tion and social action. Christopher Hall’s chapter, “Reading Christ into the Heart: The Theological Foundations of Lectio Divina,” ref lects on the author’s experience of meditating on the Sermon on the Mount (with the help of his iPod). Hall describes the nature and purpose of the slow, attentive, transformational practice of “divine reading” of the sa-cred Scriptures that has been part of the Christian heritage since the early church and that has been an especially important component of monastic spirituality. It is a way of reading the Bible that is, quoting Jean Leclercq, “entirely oriented toward life, and not toward abstract knowledge.” Hall explores the implications of his claim that “under-girding our reading of the [biblical] text is a fundamental theological proposition that is deeply trinitarian: the Eternal Word, sent by the Father, has become incarnate in Jesus Christ and continues to speak to us through the Holy Spirit.” Through divine reading of the written Word, we feed on Christ, the incarnate Word.
The chapter by Susan Phillips, who is an experienced spiritual director, suggests that the ancient Christian art of spiritual direction is a “navigational aid to sanctification.” Focused on listening, it is the practice of intentional spiritual “accompaniment” designed to help men and women walk according to the Spirit (Rom 8:4). Phillips writes that spiritual direction “helps people pay attention to God’s presence and call in their everyday lives, and it rests in a paradigm of prayer and discernment.” She explores how the doctrine of sanctification informs this practice, as men and women grow in grace (2 Pet 3:18) and become evermore rooted and grounded in love (Eph 3:17) through the church’s ministry of “piloting” in the process of transformation toward maturity in Christ.
The practice of prayer is undoubtedly central to spiritual formation in all Christian traditions. While a thorough study of prayer is a worthy topic for an entire Wheaton Theology Conference and subsequent volume—maybe in the future—this book features a case study of the theological dimensions of the practice of centering prayer by James Wilhoit. Wilhoit focuses on the approach expounded by Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk (b. 1923) who is widely considered the founder of the centering prayer movement in the contemporary church. Centering prayer is a controversial subject in evangelical circles. Wilhoit provides an evenhanded exposition of Keating’s methods of prayer, drawing attention to Keating’s belief that centering prayer builds upon the practice of lectio divina and is meant to be a way of deepening one’s relationship with Christ. Keating’s main focus is the importance of intention or “consent” wherein we consent to God’s presence and action within us and with “mental engagement” in prayer (fending off distracting thoughts). Wilhoit states that the origins of centering prayer are trinitarian, and that for Keating, “the present indwelling of Christ in each believer is his theological touchstone.” While Wilhoit finds that Keating’s approach is significantly shaped by psychotherapeutic assumptions and has an underdeveloped account of sin and salvation, he is cautiously optimistic about the evangelical appropriation of some aspects of centering prayer.
Cherith Fee Nordling’s chapter addresses one aspect of corporate worship, namely, congregational singing, as a spiritually formative experience. She explores the New Testament’s rich language of worship and formative significance of the church’s practice of singing psalms, hymns and songs of the Spirit (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16). She shows how such songs enable the Christian community to enter into, and experience afresh, the power of the gospel narrative. Nordling also strikes a chord of lament in her discussion of contemporary worship. She believes that the church’s theological confusion and spiritual lethargy can be traced, at least in part, to “countless repetitions of anemic hymns and heretical choruses.” She is especially worried whenever our human experience, not God, becomes the main subject of worship. Nordling focuses on the implications of a confident, healthy/orthodox Christology—most notably an affirmation of the real humanity of Jesus—for the transformative work of God in and through worship. Our “life in the Spirit” is a function of Jesus’ life in the Spirit, shared with us and made possible by his saving grace. Her chapter is a challenging yet inspirational reading for anyone concerned with leading worship in congregational settings.
The final chapter in this section is by David Gushee, a prominent evangelical social activist, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights and a Christian ethicist. Too often neglected is the “outward discipline” of active commitment to compassionate service, especially practical care for the poor, needy and vulnerable. Gushee’s chapter, “Spiritual Formation and the Sanctity of Life,” argues that “a socially disengaged spirituality” is “inconceivable and inexcusable.” He defines and describes the doctrine of the sanctity of life, the conviction that “the human being, created, sustained and redeemed by God in Christ, is infinitely sacred in God’s sight.” Given, then, the sacredness of human life, “Christian spiritual formation must yield Christian disciples who are absolutely and stubbornly impervious to any temptation or enticement to sacrifice the sacredness of any group of neighbors for any private or public purpose, however compelling it may seem at the time.” For Gushee, a particularly important doctrinal consideration is the incarnation of Jesus Christ, which “forever elevates human bodiliness,” and therefore, “what hap-pens to human bodies (not just minds and spirits and souls, and not just the bodies of our friends but also our enemies) matters to God and must matter to us.” Gushee shows that the challenge of cultivating an active, compassionate concern for our neighbors is an indispensible, nonnegotiable aspect of becoming like Christ. He concludes his chapter by re-minding us that corporate worship has a crucial, irreplaceable role in forming disciples whose attitudes and instincts are attuned to the suffer-ing and exploitation of others, near and far: “Worship of God is the ul-timate origin of a true appreciation for life’s sanctity—if we remember what kind of God it is we truly worship.”
The book’s final section is an epilogue, “Theology, Spiritual Formation and Theological Education,” provided by Linda Cannell, one of the most incisive and creative theological educators in North America. Her chapter picks up from Jeffrey Greenman’s concern for understand-ing theology as formation in chapter one and from Dallas Willard’s critique in chapter three that most Christian institutions are failing to give sufficient emphasis to spiritual formation while choosing to be “doing something else.” She addresses directly and honestly a topic that lies barely behind the surface of many of the chapters in this book, namely, the nature of knowledge itself. Many of the authors at least hint that our rationalistic and reductionistic ways of viewing the hu-man mind and spirit, including our ways of reading Scripture and do-ing theology, have created obstacles to genuine Christian spirituality. Cannell traces the reasons why theology and spirituality are so commonly separated (even divorced from each other) in contemporary congregational and educational settings to the “rise of academic theology” and its institutionalization in “professionalized” theological colleges and seminaries. Cannell questions current assumptions about theological education from the “sapiential” standpoint, challenging the notion that what formation for ministry involves is “the nurture of the soul and growth toward wisdom.” She proposes that some major (and possibly uncomfortable) rethinking and decisive organizational changes will be required if we are serious about refocusing our institutional efforts at developing the next generation of Christian leaders in more formative, holistic and spiritually nurturing directions.
The cover art for this book is by the renowned contemporary Chinese Christian painter, He Qi. During the 2008 Wheaton Theology Conference we were privileged to hear him describe his understanding of the connections between visual art and Christian spirituality, and to host on campus an extensive show of his work.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Spiritual formation in theological perspective : classic issues, contemporary challenges / Jeffrey P. Greenman -- On getting the spirit back into spirituality / Gordon D. Fee -- Spiritual formation as a natural part of salvation / Dallas Willard -- From the porch to the cross : ancient Christian approaches to spiritual formation / George Kalantzis -- The way and the ways : reflections on Catholic spirituality / Lawrence S. Cunningham -- Evangelical holiness : assumptions in John Owen's theology of christian spirituality / Kelly M. Kapic -- Seeking true religion : early evangelical devotion and Catholic spirituality / D. Bruce Hindmarsh -- Reading Christ into the heart : the theological foundations of Lectio divina / Christopher A. Hall -- Spiritual direction as a navigational aid in sanctification / Susan S. Phillips -- Centering prayer / James C. Wilhoit -- "Renewed in knowledge in the image of our creator" through "psalms, hymns, and songs of the spirit" / Cherith Fee Nordling -- Spiritual formation and the sanctity of life / David P. Gushee -- Theology, spiritual formation and theological education : reflections toward application / Linda M. Cannell.
9780830838790 (pbk. : alk. paper) 0830838791 (pbk. : alk. paper)
2009048955
Spiritual formation--Congresses.
BV4511 / .L54 2010