Biola University
As of late, I’ve seen a lot of people trying to map-out, in differing ways, something called “the spiritual formation movement.” The problem is, there is no such thing, nor has there ever been such a thing.
Typically, what ends up happening, is that folks begin narrating the publishing agenda over the past 50 years about spiritual formation. It is true that you can exposit, broadly, a publishing blitz under the rubric of “spiritual formation” or “spiritual disciplines.” But to equate “spiritual formation” with what books have done well is a failure to attend to what has actually happened over the past 50 years.
Instead of a movement, there has been conversations and emphases developed in tandem that created trajectories and tributaries in vastly different directions. In one sector you might find spiritual formation topics merged with missional emphases. In others you might find highly therapeutic accounts. In another, you might still find historic retrieval.
In other words, there is not a movement, and to be honest, there isn’t much of a conversation either.
Instead, there is a shared conviction that the church and her scholars have failed to attend to what maturation actually looks like in the granular. In other words, there is a conviction that the church and her scholars often just assert ideals without narrating any actual way to attain those ideals. What is left behind is a sort of magic view of sanctification, where people just begin to think: I need to pray harder. I need to do more. I need better liturgy.
I was introduced into these circles at an early age and grew up in these conversations after high school. John Ortberg, one of my pastors growing up, is the one who first handed me Devotional Classics, which became my foray into this discussion. I had the opportunity to read and meet with Dallas Willard over the years, studying with several of his former students, and got to know Richard Foster and his wife when we went to church with them for a couple of years when we lived in Colorado.
My own vision of spiritual formation, however, was really instilled in me at the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot School of Theology where I studied as a master’s student (an institute I now serve as the director). It was here that I found a deeper integration than I had seen anywhere else, where instead of choosing between historical retrieval, philosophical and psychological integration, or biblical and theological depth, I saw it happen all at once.
Because of all of this, however, it is impossible to speak meaningfully about what “spiritual formation” means. Instead, I see at least three totally different things going on:
First, there is the outsiders’ perception that there is something called “spiritual formation,” that names a view of something. This is not even remotely true. There is no “view” called spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is the Spirit’s work to form us ever-increasingly into the likeness of Jesus. Like all theological claims, there are many views that have arisen based on beliefs about salvation, sin, personhood, etc.
Second, there are those who have bought into the publishing hype, and these folks have come to believe that spiritual formation is about something called spiritual disciplines. Typically, this is understood as the need to become a more serious Christian — often called a “disciple” — and the emphasis is almost entirely on practices. Often these folks love Willard but their views are not actually all that close to Dallas’.
Third, there is the emphasis that Dallas Willard taught, along with a handful of others who are lesser known, that was an integrated, holistic account of Christian theology and philosophy centered on becoming like Jesus.
I am fairly uninterested in the first two emphases, but was catechized in the third. John Coe, my longtime friend and mentor (and in my mind the most integrated thinker who has worked in this area), is the one who cast the vision I grabbed onto as a seminary student. The focus was not on spiritual formation as a reductive conversation about spiritual disciplines, but something much richer.
The focus is on how the nature of the Christian life — as a life in Christ by the Spirit — frames the processes of Christian maturation, which is what then guides and governs the imperatives of Christian obedience.
In other words, his focus (and I would also say Willard’s focus) was on doing spiritual theology.
This is why, at Talbot School of Theology, every student does at least a year (and most a year and a half) of spiritual theology. On this vision, spiritual theology is not just one aspect of the task of theology or the calling of the Christian, but is what makes sure that the seminary serves the church and not the academy.
Spiritual theology is the guiding dynamic of the Christian life because theology is, to use an older Reformed definition, the art of living unto God by Christ.
When I was a student at the Institute for Spiritual Formation, I remember John Coe once saying, “What we do here is exactly what Jonathan Edwards was doing during the revivals.” At the time, I remember that sounding so totally odd. Edwards?! I had never read Edwards, but I was intrigued, and not slightly confused. When I thought of Edwards I didn’t think of what we were learning.
So after I dropped my proposed dissertation topic as a first-year Ph.D. student in theology at the University of Aberdeen, and my supervisor asked me about studying Edwards, I remembered John’s comment. But I also remembered Willard’s advice to go back to the fountainheads of your own tradition and learn from them. As an evangelical, I knew that Edwards was one of those fountainheads. So I devoted myself to studying Protestant theology and eventually more Puritan theology for the sake of spiritual renewal.
The spiritual formation conversation, if we can call it that, has, unfortunately, never fully seen or grasped this vision. Willard is often quoted but rarely imitated. Methodologies are often reductive, tacking spiritual disciplines onto whatever is currently a hot cultural topic or pop-psychological construct, instead of undertaking a real spiritual theology.
At the same time, many theologians continue on doing their work as if narrating the lived-reality of the Christian is not in the purview of their calling. So you can have theologians mastering the tradition with no ability to shepherd a soul to her Lord. [A focus of Simeon Zahl’s fascinating book, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience.]
What many theologians argued in the twentieth century is that if our spirituality remains divorced from our theology, it will increasingly become superficial and sub-Christian. But also, they noted, if our theology remains divorced from our spirituality, it will increasingly become intellectually nuanced and distant from the lived reality of the church. Both are failures.
As John and I are writing a trilogy (Lord willing) of books on spiritual formation, our hope is that they reveal the depth of both spiritual theology and also a focus on the lived-reality of the Christian life. The last thing we need are articulations of the Christian life that are mere abstractions or ideals presented. We need people who can speak to the lived reality of life with God. That is our hope.
If you are new to my blog, see here for some talks I gave on the nature of spiritual formation. I hope these will help explain more what I am talking about here.
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