One fundamental element of Christian discipleship is the pursuit of sacred knowledge. We might say that sacred knowledge is knowledge of God and His activity in the world and, in relation to those, of ourselves: of our lives and our purpose. One means to pursue sacred knowledge is direct, through mystical experience. The other is through various intellectual activities grounded in propositional knowledge, that is, study. Both are important, since either one without the other can lead to serious failures in the Christian life.
I have written about these two modes of knowing God in a prior essay. So while there may not be only one, precise way to get to know Jesus (God) and His ways, not every path toward God’s shining city upon the hill is equal. There are many who have gone before us in their pursuit of Christ, and some roads have been tried and tested, and tried again, and continue to lead in the right direction. There are others, unfortunately, that prove less trustworthy.
In this series, I am talking primarily about Christian study: about the life of the Christian mind. I am discussing four main areas of Christian study. They are: Biblical and Systematic Theology, Apologetics (Philosophical, Historical and Cultural), Church History, and now, the final area: Spiritual Formation. In this post, I will look at Spiritual Formation, which focuses on the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. This is a discipline that straddles both the mystic and the scholastic modes of sacred knowledge. In doing so, it is a powerful area of study and one that must be approached with maturity.
What is Spiritual Formation?
Of the four areas of Christian discipleship I’ve explored, the practice of Spiritual Formation is perhaps the trickiest and most elusive to define. Regardless, that there is a process of spiritual formation for the believer, i.e., a way of becoming like Christ, is not only passively assumed in Scripture, but actively commanded:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Matt 28:16-20
Christ’s command is rather clear. We are not just to lead people to Him for salvation, but also make them disciples, that is, make them learners of Jesus’ ways. Moreover, we cannot just tell people what those ways are and then be on about our business. The ways of Jesus are not just intellectual, although they must be grasped with the intellect. The ways of Jesus are also relational and practical. They must be carried out in the body and among other people. Consider, for example, going to a quiet place, so that you can pray. Well, you actually have to go to a quiet place, if you want to follow Jesus in this regard. Or consider giving someone who is thirsty a cup of cold water. You actually have to find a thirsty person and give them a nice, cool Powerade to quench their thirst.
Thus, we cannot simply remind ourselves over and over of the propositional truths of our faith, e.g. “Jesus is one with the Father,” “Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross makes atonement for my sins,” etc. While we should always be cognizant of propositional truths, especially those concerning our salvation and sanctification, we must also have some personal knowledge of the reality that lies behind these propositions. This is the reality beyond the words of our faith that actually causes transformation in our soul. It is this transformation in our inner life that in turn shapes our outward behavior. We must “practice” the truth, not just know it in a theoretical sense. The practice of the presence of God, as Brother Lawrence put it, is the lived experience of our faith. It is when the biblical truth is actualized in our mind and body and enacted out into the world.
Knowledge of God and Self
John Calvin opens his systematic theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by addressing two objects of knowledge any believer must pursue if they are to come into the fullness of the life of Christ: knowledge of God and knowledge of self.
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For in the first place no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, those blessings which unceasingly distil to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain…Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him.
Calvin, Institutes [emphasis added]
Calvin points out a profound dynamic between the knowledge of God in Himself, and the awareness of our own self as “selves.”. This is double-edged sword that must be carefully balanced when wielded. For, as Calvin points out later, to have too much knowledge of God, apart from how that knowledge relates to one’s self, can cause one to become sterile in their Christian life; or, worse, prideful. Knowledge of God is necessary, but head knowledge that fails to penetrate the soul, to shape our inner life, does little to draw us closer to Christ the Person, let alone display Him to others. As Paul says, this kind of knowledge, akin to that of the Pharisees, can “puff up” and make arrogant.
However, on the flip side, knowledge or awareness of the self without a proper knowledge of our Creator, and all the truths that relate to that Creator, can take us down a rabbit trail of self-exploration ending in self absorption (which is basically falling back into our original, sin-infested and rebellious state). To introspect without reference to “God knowledge,” is to attempt to perform sanctification without the tools needed to get us to the right goal, namely, to holiness.
True knowledge of God, as found in the Word of God, constrains us from thinking too much about ourselves (which usually will cause either pride or despair, depending on the personality type). True knowledge of God also guides our formation toward freedom in Christ and away from the bondage of remnant sinful desires, also known as concupiscience. In this sense, we need both Spiritual Theology and Personal Formation: knowledge of God, and knowledge of self.
Spiritual Theology & Formation
While these two categories may be a bit artificial, Christians who specialize in this area of discipleship, usually begin with Spiritual Theology. Spiritual Theology relates to how the Holy Spirit works in the world and the heart of the individual. Spiritual Theologians often referenced in the history of this way of reflecting on the Christian life are men like St. John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi, Brother Lawrence, A.W. Tozer and Dallas Willard; and women like Theresa of Avila, Hildegard von Bingen and Julian of Norwich.
Jordan Aumann, a Catholic theologian, gives a concise definition of Spiritual Theology in his book of the same title:
Christian spirituality is therefore a participation in the mystery of Christ through the interior life of grace, actuated by faith, charity, and the other Christian virtues. The life that the individual receives through the participation in Christ is the same life that animated the God-man, the life that the Incarnate Word shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit; it is, therefore, the life of God in the august mystery of the Trinity. Through Christ, the spiritual life of the Christian is eminently Trinitarian.
This definition of spiritual theology should be acceptable to any Evangelical Protestants. It is thoroughly ecumenical. However, as Evangelicals, we must be cautious. There may be aspects of some types of Spiritual Theology that need be appropriately scrutinized before they are practiced. As always, all things of God must be subjected to the clearest teachings of the canonical Scriptures.
Some Cautions for Evangelicals
Although Spiritual Theology is related to, albeit different than, ascetic and mystical theology, and while none of these are, in themselves, foreign to an orthodox Christian life, still one must have some cautions in place. If the Scripture itself can be mishandled, so too can any practice or approach to Scripture. Ascetic, mystical or spiritual theology not anchored in both the Word of God and the Church’s long history of orthodox doctrine, can open one up to false teachings, or even deceitful experiences, that might lead one astray from the truth of the Christian faith.
Just as with any part of our faith, we must be wise about Spiritual Theology. Good spiritual theology will never abandon the total reliance on God’s grace, the primacy of faith over works and the centrality (and exclusivity) of the divine person and atoning work of Jesus Christ. Further, we must realize that much spiritual theology has been done within the confession of the Roman Catholic Church. As such, while there is much to glean from Roman Catholics who have written on Spiritual Theology, there may also be theological doctrines of the Roman Catholic church entailed in some spiritual theologian’s views that might contradict our Evangelical understanding of Scripture and its ultimate authority.
In sum, for the Evangelical Christian to engage in Spiritual Theology is to focus on the work and presence of the Holy Spirit as we read Scripture, to repent of our sins, to give God adoration and praise, to entreaty God for help and assistance to be more holy, and to thank Him for all we have, and all we do not have. As one great, contemporary spiritual theologian, J.I. Packer, put it, Spiritual Theology is essentially about God’s power toward us and our “keeping in step” with that power.
Some Theologians that all Christians can readily embrace, at least in part, are: St. John of the Cross, Brother Lawrence, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas a’ Kempis, and Hans Urs von Balthasaar (who called Spiritual Theology “kneeling theology”), Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oswald Chambers, A.W. Tozer, J.I. Packer and Dallas Willard.
Formation is an Organic Process, Entirely Subject to God
However, this is not something mechanistic or simplistic, nor is it a one-time event. Spiritual formation is not something we can access when and how we want. There is no magic formula are fixed doctrine of rules that guarantees us God’s power and presence. God is personal, to know and partake of His power is only possible through the quality of our personal relationship with Him. And that means desiring to be with God, so that we can be more like Jesus. It means also desiring to be with God even when we don’t understand Him or His ways in the way we might want to understand something: as in understanding how a problem of arithmetic works, or a chemical formula compounds.
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 is a powerful reminder of what it feels like to want to be filled with God’s personal presence:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:14-21
Clearly Paul’s words here point to the reality of God and our experience of that reality in a non-verbal way. Many medieval theologians imagined our ultimate telos as human creatures in the idea of a “beatific vision,” or the eternal gazing upon the Trinity. In contrast to the not quite “all-seeing-eye” of the dark lord Sauron in LOTR, which seeks out all life in order to dominate it, the genuinely “All-Seeing-Eye” of God Almighty is what allows us to not only be seen on the one hand, in the way that our heart most deeply desires, but also to see clearly the God of Love and Beauty, whose excellences are, for the most part, still quite hidden from us.
Only the human being still tainted with sin would think of this as boring. But, that too is part of the mystery of revelation. For what does it mean for a finite creature to “be filled with all the fullness of [an infinite] God!” And so our spiritual formation is both personal and it is dynamic, meaning, it occurs intermittently over periods of time and through various events in our lives. In fact, given God’s infinite nature, the process of transformation has really only just begun. It will continue literally forever.
Personal Participation and The Forming of the Spirit
How our theology affects our inner life and ultimately our outward behavior can be called spiritual formation. This is, simply put, another way to speak about sanctification. But sanctification has often seemed to be the more nebulous part of our life in Christ, in contrast to our salvation in Him. The reason for this is that sanctification has to do with moral and psychological character, or as Dallas Willard put it:
The human spirit is an inescapable, fundamental aspect of every human being; and it takes on whichever character it has from the experiences and the choices that we have lived through or made in our past. That is what is means to be ‘formed.’
Ultimately our Master is Jesus and we must learn from Scripture what He taught us. We do this so that we can be formed by both the Word and the Spirit, and not just by our life choices and experiences. Ultimately, the Divine Agent that does the work of forming our soul is the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity. But, there is a cooperative (or concursive) action that occurs in this forming process. So, while God is always the person who enables and brings about any real change in the soul, it is attested both in creation and Scripture that God also allows us to participate in that same work of transformation.
In this participatory act of opening ourselves up to God’s Spirit, we practice the Spiritual Disciplines so that we can experience God’s work in our life. In doing this, we inevitably begin engaging in the cultivation of certain spiritual virtues. It is in virtue of these virtues that we become like Christ: Christ, Who is the summum bonum of the moral life, and the ultimate goal of all hard-fought journeys. Paul speaks of this process in terms of the athlete:
24 Don’t you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize. 25 Now everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything. However, they do it to receive a crown that will fade away, but we a crown that will never fade away. 26 Therefore I do not run like one who runs aimlessly or box like one beating the air. 27 Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.
1 Cor 9:24-26
Willard goes on to highlight the importance of allowing our souls to be cultivated by the Holy Spirit:
In today’s world, famine, war, and epidemic are almost totally the outcome of human choices, which are expressions of the human spirit…[and] Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as important as our responses to them, which come from the ‘spiritual’ side. A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying ‘Why?’
What Willard is essentially saying is that a well-formed soul, one formed by the work of the Holy Spirit, will not only not be the source of war, strife, pain and suffering in the world, but will also be able to display the fruits of the Spirit, that is the life of Christ, in the midst of war, strife, pain and suffering. This is done in such a way as to show the non-believing world that stands clueless before evil and suffering like a child who Jesus Christ really is and why He is worth knowing. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright sums up spiritual formation this way:
Likewise, the qualities of character which Jesus and his first followers insist on as the vital signs of healthy Christian life don’t come about automatically. You have to develop them. You have to work at them. You have to think about it, to make conscious choices to allow the Holy Spirit to form your character in ways that, to begin with, seem awkward and ‘unnatural.’ Only in that way can you become the sort of ‘character’ who will react instantly to sudden challenges with wisdom and good judgment…When you’re suddenly put to the test and don’t have time to think about how you’re coming across, your real nature will come out. That’s why character needs to go all the way through: whatever fills you will spill out. And it’s up to you to do something about it.”
N.T. Wright, “Why Christian Character Matters,” in All Things Hold Together in Christ, 158
In other words, when the world smacks us in the face, will we return the favor, or will we bleed the blood of true righteousness, like Christ did?
Conclusion: A Necessary, but Tricky Area of Knowledge
Spiritual Formation is necessary to the life of the believer. It is where we come to know God intimately as He relates to our own personal life– our own story. Without spiritual growth we stagnate in our emotional maturity, and in the kinds of virtues God has called us to live into (see Galatians 5:22-26); as well as avoiding the vices that are common to our flesh (see Galatians 5:19-21).
However, Spiritual Theology and Formation, like any other Christian discipline or pursuit, has its pitfalls, its “gray areas,” of which we must be aware. Spiritual theology not rooted in Scripture can devolve into syncretism or personal mysticism. This is to be avoided. As such we must be wise about our engagement in spiritual theology, and the spiritual disciplines that coordinate with it.
Nevertheless, there are many resources for us to grow in this area. Great men and women of Christ have paved much of the way for us to learn and grow in our personal knowledge of Christ. Good spiritual theology accompanied by a passionate and persistent desire for prayer and virtue can not only help us break out of sinful habits, and aid in our efforts to react Christ-like to the attacks of the world, but can also open us up to a greater understanding and more profound experience of the Lord our God.
I have now carefully considered the four areas that Christians should study to grow in faith and knowledge of God: Theology, Apologetics, Church History and Spiritual Formation.
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