Christian Spirituality (thoughts from Carson and Piper)

a)

I’ve been thinking this year quite a bit about “spirituality”. Lots of Christians trying different things to build in spirituality in their life (silence, fasting, Gregorian chant, yoga, hours of prayer*). What should we be doing?

I naturally think some of those things are weird, but that’s not too important. My great burden is that our spirituality should be Christian. That means having to do with accessing the triune God of Christianity through the (true) Gospel of Christianity and to the end of seeing Jesus Christ**.

An excellent article on the issue (in my opinion) is in The Gagging of God by DA Carson (the appendix). Unfortunately, I am an intellectual hobo and can’t give you a proper/careful summary of the article, but in general, Carson evaluates what people call spirituality, including its origins, and then calls Christians to have a Christian spirituality.

What Carson thinks (and of course, Adam agrees with):

Carson doesn’t give clear practices (don’t use candles, do use breathing exercises, etc.), but gives some very helpful considerations:

1. Spirituality must be thought of in connection with the gospel.

2. Christian reflection on spirituality must work outward from the center

3. (paraphrase) There is a healthy experiential/affectional side to Christian experience

4. (paraphrase) God’s primary means of grace for Christian sanctification (and everything) is the Word of God (more on that later***)

5. Our definition of Spirituality must be defined by the Word of God (as in the concept must be constructed by the Word, since the word “spirituality” isn’t actually in the Bible)

b)

The End and Means of Christian Spirituality

I’m reading God is the Gospel, by Dr. John Piper. He discusses at length this verse:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. - 2Co 3:18

To oversimplify and paraphrase Piper (again, a dubious enterprise considering my intellectual hobo-ness), one big point from this text is that Christian sanctification occurs through “beholding” Jesus Christ****. That’s what the Spirit’s job is to do (that last sentence): to help us see Jesus.

Isn’t that true? My most “spiritual” days are not ones where I simply have prayed a really long time or spent the most time in silence, etc., but when I have enjoyed clear meditation on Jesus Christ, especially in the Cross*****.

Surely this includes “Spirituality”. If “beholding the glory of the Lord” and “being transformed into the same image” is not what Spirituality is about, it’s not of much value.

Here is the test of Christian Spirituality. Does some author/pastor recommend a special kind of meditation or prayer? Where is the (true) Gospel in it? Is Christ the object of that meditation/prayer? If not, it’s by definition not Christian.

Here’s a smart guy, Carson (from that article mentioned in part a)),

If spirituality becomes an end in itself, detached from the core, and largely without biblical or theological norms to define it and anchor it in the objective gospel, then pursuit of spirituality, however nebulously defined, will degenerate into nothing more than the pursuit of certain kinds of experience. – Gagging of God 567

So, let’s have our whole lives, including our spirituality, be about preparing for the next life, where we will worship and sing “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain”. I think that would be a pleasing thing to God and to our souls.

*Some of those are good, some bad, some neutral. It’s just a list.

** In an interesting interview with Mark Dever, Professor Donald Whitney said (worst paraphrase in this whole thing) that a big problem with “spirituality” books is that they advocate access to God that is unmediated by the finished work of Christ, and that he is really working to teach how to build spiritual practices that flow out of the Cross. I’d like to think/read more about that in the future

***later means like five months from now, if I remember

**** But the whole book is about how beholding Christ is the ultimate end of sanctification. Consider Matthew 5:8. So, Beholding Christ leads to Sanctification, and Sanctification leads to Beholding more of Christ

***** Though certain practices might aid in meditation on the Gospel.