Biblical Foundations of the Concept of Spirituality

David W. Perkins, Th.D.

david@davidwperkins.com

(Note: These are unedited notes from a lecture on this topic, delivered in various settings.)

Introduction

You have heard about the rural believer who said: I would rather hear someone say, "I seen," who has saw something, than to hear someone say, "I saw," who ain't seen anything.

Agreed, we all want to be able to say "I seen" when it comes to issues of spirituality and experience.

The most basic question of all: "What is spirituality?" My toughest challenge in preparing this lecture was to come up with a definition. However, before sharing that definition, let me state some assumptions.

1. God is spirit and dwells in a realm impervious to the five senses.

2. God involves Godself intimately in the physical world. Spirit and matter are not antithetical. The incarnation demonstrates that. A eucharistic theology affirms that.

3. Humans, like Jesus, are a unique and inseparable mix of matter and spirit. Humans experience both realms simultaneously. Spirituality is not some inner journey divorced from bodily experience. Rather, spirituality involves bodily experience (Note Jesus' teachings about fasting).

4. God seeks to relate to human beings, to draw us into a life more fully determined by the Spirit’s presence in the unseen realm. The initiative always is God’s.

But, man, the twofold creature, apprehends

The twofold manner, in and outwardly

And nothing in the world comes single to

him,

. . . . .

Earth's crammed with heaven,

and every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes--

The rest sit round it and pluck black-

berries,

And daub their natural faces unaware

More and more from the first similitude.

[Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Aurora Leigh,"

Bk VII, lines 760-785; 802-826.]

I looked for persons more competent and with more ability for help in defining spirituality. Dallas Willard speaks in terms with which I resonate.

“Our life is a bodily life, even though that life is one that can be fulfilled solely in union with God.

Spirituality in human terms is not an extra or 'superior' mode of existence. It's not a hidden stream of separate reality, a separate life running parallel to our bodily existence. It does not consist of special 'inward' acts even though it has an inner aspect. It is, rather, a relationship of our embodied selves to God that has the natural and irrepressible effect of making us alive to the Kingdom of God--here and now in the material world."

[Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (San Francisco: Harper, 1988), p. 31]

Again to cite Willard (p. 67):

“A 'spiritual life' consists in that range of activities in which people cooperatively interact with God--and with the spiritual order deriving from God's personality and action. And what is the result? A new overall quality of human existence with corresponding new powers.

A person is a 'spiritual person' to the degree that his or her life is correctly integrated into and dominated by God's spiritual Kingdom. Thus, as Gustavo Gutierrez explains, 'Spirituality, in the strict and profound sense of the word, is the dominion of the spirit.'/10/”

__________

/10/A Theology of Liberation, trans. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis, 1973), 203.

Word picture--"spirit" in Hebrew and Greek refers to wind, breeze, breath. See Jesus' play on words in John 3--wind and spirit. Jesus breathes on disciples in John 20 and gives them the Spirit, the breath of God.

I. Spirituality as Reflected in the Hebrew Bible

(NB Jer 18:18 for mention of three primary orientations of Hebrew Bible)

I am proposing four orientations to spirituality, but they are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are like four currents flowing through the Hebrew Scriptures. Jeremiah combines elements of covenant-Torah spirituality with prophetic spirituality. Ezekiel uniquely combines priestly and prophetic orientations.

A. Prophetic spirituality

1. Moses and the Shekinah--Exodus Ex 34:29-35.

2. Isaiah's, Jeremiah's, and Ezekiel are calling and experience (Isaiah 6; Jeremiah 1; Ezekiel 1)

3. Vision, ecstasy, dream. Direct experience with God that mediates the inspired word. The prophet is the link between God and people. (Joel 2). They focus on justice issues.

B. Priestly spirituality

1. Yom Kippur—the assumption is that humans unclean, God holy, cleansing and sacrifice necessary. In the Exile, traditions recast in terms of the realms of the clean and the unclean. NB ritual of scapegoat in Lev 17. Mosaic Covenant (Exodus 20-25) assumes this spirituality.

2. Centered in institutions of sanctuary and sacrifice.

3. Prophets criticized any understanding of spirituality and worship that did not factor into just living with neighbor. The danger of institutional, sacrificial orientation--degenerates into ritual without ethical outcomes in life. (The central theme of Amos)

4. Eighth-sixth century prophets redefined God's holiness, expanding it beyond concepts of power (NB Rudolf Otto's Idea of the Holy) to include justice, faithfulness, compassion, truthfulness. Any person worshipping God and not manifesting those behaviors in community came under the judgment of prophetic preaching.

(See Ps. 40:6-8, cited in Hebrews 10; Micah 6:6-8)

(NB Micah 6:6, the key question addressed, "With what shall I come before the Lord?")

C. Torah spirituality (Post Exilic priestly orientation)

1. Mosaic covenant basic. Laws for covenant-keeping were essential. NB Neh 8. Ezra reads the Torah. (Evidence for the collection of these five scrolls by 400 BCE.) Priests codified the Torah in Exile as a result of the loss of cult and Temple. The Hebrew religion morphed into the Jewish religion with a new center in the documents.

3. NB 2 Kgs 23—the Book of the Law found in Temple renovation (Early ed. of Deut?), Evidence that Jeremiah did not share enthusiasm for central Temple—he remained silent during Josiah's reform but spoke out negatively during Zedekiah's reign. (Jer 22:1- 5)

2. Exilic rewriting of earlier traditions focused on the Mosaic covenant violations and idolatry as causes of Israel's distress.

(Note: Isaiah can refer to threat of Exile without mentioning the "Law of Moses." Jeremiah scarcely made such references. Not a concept central to the prophetic understanding of reasons for the Exile)

D. Wisdom spirituality

1. Assumes an ordered world and engages in the intellectual pursuit of order. See Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. How does one live in harmony with God's order in the world?

2. Task of wisdom--find those principles of God’s ordered world and live life accordingly. Practical wisdom.

3. Innocent suffering--Job. Speculative wisdom and theodicy—a second aspect of wisdom spirituality. Another approach to explaining the Captivity and Exilic suffering that takes account of the suffering of innocent, faithful ones in a way that Torah and Priestly theologies do not. In those theologies, retribution for disobedience is the explanation for the Exile.

4. NB Job 42:1-6--excellent summary of wisdom thinking. No real explanation for evil and suffering, especially of the innocent. However, wisdom affirms that God's purposes will be worked out in the world (v. 2) and that the innocent sufferer finds a knowledge of God via suffering (v. 5).

E. Illustration of the four spiritualities

1. Rewritings of Davidic covenant—Unconditional covenant in 2 Samuel 7:8-17

a. See 1 Kgs 9:5-9 which seems to revise this to a conditional covenant. This passage may have been added by the final deuteronomic editors after the exile and the details may reflect eyewitness accounts of the state of the temple site after Nebuchadnezzar's destruction.

b. Each Davidic king was YHWH's anointed, Ps 2, 18; 20; 110; 132. Several responses to the end of the dynasty in 587 BCE

* Revision of covenant in terms of Mosaic covenant--1 Kg 9:5ff; 2 Kgs 23:26-27

* Covenant unconditional. YHWH himself abrogated it. Ps 89:19-51. Jeremiah cast it in terms of a lawsuit--Jer 2:2-37; 5:1-25; 11:1-17--Israel deserved her fate.

* Davidic role reinterpreted in terms of perpetual priesthood (Hag 1-2; Zech 3-4; 1 Chron 13:17-17)

* Future royal prince would arise and restore the Davidic reign (Is 7, 9, 11; Ps 2, 110, etc.). Preserves the original note of an unconditional promise and defers it to the future (the traditional Christian understanding of Jesus as that future messianic prophet).

2. Explanations for the Exile

a. Prophetic--lack of faith in YHWH and involvement in political intrigue. Hardly any mention of Mosaic covenant in Isaiah and Jeremiah or Hosea. Prophets also condemned polytheism and syncretism but not on basis of Mosaic Law. The prophetic understanding was rather complex.

b. Priestly/Torah. Departure from covenant faithfulness and worship of idols. Exile a divine retribution for idolatry and breaking of Mosaic Law.

c. Wisdom--Job and Wisdom Psalms--innocent suffering possible in a world of chaos. Many innocents died in invasions of Assyrians and Babylonians and many went into Exile

II. Spirituality as Reflected in the Christian Scriptures

A. Jesus

1. Prophetic spirituality

a. Baptism--Spirit determines his life.

b. Prophetic style of life--ala Jeremiah.

2. Wisdom spirituality

a. Beatitudes (Matthew 5; Luke 6)

b. Focus on innocent suffering--John 9

3. Opposition from the representatives of two other

spiritualities

a. Pharisees--combination of Torah and Priestly

spiritualities

b. Sadducees and priestly parties--institutional

concerns of priestly spirituality (John 11—Jesus will

create disorder and the Romans will "take away our

place" (Temple)

4. Outpouring of Holy Spirit in Acts 2 marked Jesus' coming as a

renewed age of prophecy with ecstatic manifestations.

5. Paradigmatic confrontation of spiritualities--John 8:1ff.

Priestly-Torah orientation called for retribution upon unclean and

disobedient. Jesus' prophetic/wisdom orientation gave room for

turning to YHWH and deflected their retributive spirit in true

wisdom fashion.

B. Paul--primarily a prophetic spirituality

1. Reference to Moses in 2 Cor 3. Personal transformation by

direct, unmediated experience with God.

2. Ecstatic dimension--Gal 3:1-6; 1 Cor 3; 12.

3. Interesting that only two references to forgiveness in Paul (Eph

1 and Col 1), both of which epistles are disputed as genuinely

Pauline.

C. A note of priestly spirituality in John. Jesus dies at the moment the

Paschal lambs are slain (3 pm. on Nissan 14). He is portrayed as the lamb of

God who effects cleansing and displaces the Temple.

D. Hebrews--priestly spirituality (NB Hebrews 7-10 with the focus on

cleansing and forgiveness.)

E. James--wisdom spirituality

F. A summary statement on Paul's teaching on the Spirit. I state these in the

order of importance as I see it from Paul. (I oscillate between placing ethical

fourth or fifth.)

1. Christological - Brings presence of Christ to us [Rom 8] 1 Cor 12:1-3;

2 Cor 3:17

2. Eschatological - Spirit is the power of the new age Col 3:1ff; Rom 8;

2 Cor 2:21-22; Eph 1:13-14

3. Soteriological - Holy Spirit delivers us from the powers of darkness

Rom 8:2, 11; Gal 5:16-21; 2 Cor 3:17

4. Ecclesiastical - 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19-20; 12:13; Eph 2:19-22 - Spirit

produces community (Eph 4--"unity of Spirit") and works in and

through Christian community to unify, transform, and equip believers.

5. Ethical - main test of genuineness is whether love and other fruit of

the Spirit is produced in those experiencing the Spirit--in all believers

Gal 5 - fruit of Spirit; 1 Cor 13; 2 Cor 10:1ff - meekness and gentleness of

Christ

6. Ecstatic - Spirit produces ecstatic gifts in some believers, but not in

all. Also, ecstatic experience is not the norm. Rather, the norm is daily

living in two realms--seeking to remain open to the Spirit and to live out

of human weakness and frailty (See 2 Cor 11-12)

Conclusion

No one orientation suffices. A full-orbed spirituality drinks from each font because each contains something of the truth.

Anglican liturgy reflects a healthy combination of elements of more than one orientation. After the entrance rites, the liturgy continues with the Liturgy of the Word, reading from and expounding on the Scriptures. The homily can involve wisdom teaching--applying biblical teachings to daily life—or prophetic teaching.

Nicene Creed, our response of commitment to prophetic and

wisdom words. Prayers of the people--priestly response of a believing people—to stand in the gap and pray for the world as a priestly community. Continues with confession and absolution--priestly understanding of need for cleansing. Following the readings and preaching--our response to God's word and presence is to acknowledge our need for God. Passing of the peace--God creating community in which persons live together in wholeness. Community created by God's word and our response. Also, forgiveness leads to interpersonal reconciliation and community. Ends with celebration of Christ our paschal sacrifice.

The question of the relation between Spirit and spirit is usually answered by the metaphorical statement that the divine Spirit dwells and works in the human spirit. In this context, the word "in" implies all the problems of the relation of the divine to the human, of the unconditional to the conditioned, and the creative ground to creaturely existence. If the divine Spirit breaks into the human spirit, this does not mean that it rests there, but that it drives the human spirit out of itself. The 'in' of the divine Spirit is an 'out' for the human spirit. The spirit, a dimension of finite life, is driven into a successful self-transcendence; it is grasped by something ultimate and unconditional. It is still the human spirit; it remains what it is, but at the same time, it goes out of itself under the impact of the divine Spirit. 'Ecstasy' is the classical term for this state of being grasped by the Spiritual Presence. It describes the human situation under the Spiritual Presence exactly.

[Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957, 1963), 3:111-112.

Works Cited

Barry Bandstra, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Wadsworth, 1995.

Paul D. Hanson, The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible. Harper, 1986.

John MacQuarrie, Paths in Spirituality. Harper, 1972.

Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957, 1963.

Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. Harper, 1988.

©David W. Perkins, Th.D.

www.davidwperkins.com

david@davidwperkins.com

(Revised 4/2008)