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Is Meaningful Biblical Spirituality Possible?

Is Meaningful Biblical Spirituality Possible?

Last updated on: August 8, 2016 at 5:49 am by J. R. Daniel Kirk

Is Meaningful Biblical Spirituality Possible? 2016-08-08T05:49:39-08:00 J. R. Daniel Kirk

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This entire project of spirituality depends on a generalized description of the human condition and a generalized pursuit of the divine that finds little to no traction with the biblical story, concerned as it is with the particulars of the God of Israel and the expansion of that God’s reign upon the earth.

The 18th century German philosopher Gotthold Lessing spoke of an “ugly ditch” between historical events / rationality and spiritual or religious claims. Christians have found myriad ways to deny the chasm in word, but I wonder if our practice doesn’t, in fact, bear it out. 1403933029_5573f88994_z

When I was running off from seminary to do a Ph.D. in New Testament my career goal was to be a preacher in a nerdy college town or urban center. There was precedent for the Ph.D. pastor in my denomination and Bible was where my heart was.

It is still fascinating to me that one of my Old Testament professors, hearing of this plan, said that theologians tended to make better preachers than biblical scholars.

This all has me wondering: is there such a thing as a life-giving spirituality that is, in fact, deeply biblical—not just in the sense of culling from scripture what is common to all religious and philosophical traditions, but in the sense of being deeply rooted in the particulars of the God of Israel, the life of Jesus, and the coming Kingdom of God?

Or is the ditch too broad to jump, too ugly to stare down?

Flash Points

Where does the biblical story leave us with less (or at least other) than what spirituality would offer us?

Where spirituality is concerned about true self and false self, the biblical story (almost entirely disinterested in that personalized question) is concerned about true God and false gods.
When the New Testament does get into the idea of a true self, it is not some “true self” that has been there all along, but a new work of the Spirit of God that comes to us from without as a result of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Where spirituality is concerned with universal experiences of growth and maturity the New Testament speaks of the Spirit as a particular gift that comes at a particular time to persons or peoples who have joined themselves with God’s new-creation people.
More generally, what spirituality expresses as a universally accessible set of realities (“we are children of God,” for instance) the New Testament depicts as eschatological gifts for new humanity in Christ.
Where spirituality is concerned only to have us do away with “false selves,” the call to take up the cross and follow Jesus is a call to lay down the good of who we are as well as the bad in self-giving love for our fellow people.

Perhaps a commitment to a particular story is inherently deadly or anemic. If it’s not inherently a problem, it has been such a problem historically. A commitment to a particular story has been literally deadly as people have imposed their all-encompassing religious narratives on the world and conquered with sword or bomb those who disagreed. It has been spiritually anemic or deadly when the best we can come up with as faithful Christian practice is to have our quiet times and not have sex with the wrong people.

But as a New Testament scholar I hope for more. I long for more.

For some reason I keep expecting that one day I’ll pick up a book about our spiritual journey and it will not only be insightful into the human condition but will grow out of the particulars of the biblical story of Israel’s God and that God’s redemptive action in Christ.

Photo: © southernsir | flickr | cc 2.0

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