Tag Archives: experiential spirituality

Theology Thoughts

Experiential Spirituality: Peter Rollins (Part 7 of 7)

rollins book 2The post-modern pastor and theologian Peter Rollins (1973-Present) is the eleventh and final travel guide along this journey. Growing up in Northern Ireland during the post-Christendom shift of the late-20th century, Rollins embraced the mystical writings of Meister Eckhart and others [2012, xiv]. This led Rollins to promote having a sense of doubt, unknowing and uncertainty within the Christian walk as intellectual theology will never fully capture the Living God. Faith, to Rollins, is “analogous to the experience of an infant feeling the embrace and tender kiss of its mother” [2012, 1].

This does not mean that Rollins is against theology; rather he sees theology as “reflecting upon” the God who “grasps us” [2012, 1]. This embracement of the mystical experience of God all comes down to love. God is personally in love with humanity just as his followers are to be passionately in love with him and their fellow humans. This is a love that “cannot be worked up but is gained only as we give up” and let ourselves become a “dwelling place in which God can reside and from which God can flow” [2015, 75].

Rollins and Williams are fitting ends to this journey along the experiential spirituality path of the last five-hundred years. Both of them are helping the 21st century church retain and explore the value of experiencing the Living God within an intimate ongoing relationship. As St. Ignatius, St. Teresa, Blaise Pascal, Brother Lawrence, St. Thérèse, Martin Luther, John Calvin, George Herbert, and William Seymour taught before them, God is a living God who seeks a personal on-going relationship with his people. Rather than been content to believe a doctrine, however orthodox that doctrine is, or with having a  one-time born-again experience, the people of God are to follow the advice of St. James, the half-brother of Jesus of Nazareth, and “draw near to God” as he “will draw near to [them]” [Ja 4:8].

 

Bibliography

Rollins, Peter. 2012. How (Not) to Speak of God. Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press

Theology Thoughts

Experiential Spirituality: William Seymour and Don Williams (Part 6 of 7)

William J. Seymour
William J. Seymour

The focus on experiential spirituality dramatically increased within Protestantism at the beginning of the 20th century with the start of Pentecostalism through William J. Seymour.  The son of former slaves freed at the end of the Civil War within the United States of America, Seymour (1870-1922) passionately pursued God at an early age and “found his identity in Jesus Christ” [Liardon 1996, 141] in such a way that he oozed the Spirit of God. John G. Lake, an early Pentecostal leader, said that Seymour had “more of God in his life than any man I had ever met up to that time” [Liardon 1996, 154].

This passion for experiencing the Living God captured the hearts of thousands of people as Seymour lead the Azusa Street Revival (1906-1915). Early Pentecostal historian Frank J. Ewart, who was also an eyewitness to the revival in its later years, later wrote that Seymour’s ministry was “not built on a new system of doctrine, but on an eminent scriptural experience” [1975, 69]. The inmate ongoing relationship promoted by St. Thérèse and other mystics within the Roman Catholic Church had finally found a home within Protestantism.

The tenth travel guide along our experiential spirituality journey is Don Williams (1937-Present). Williams was a Presbyterian pastor who had a personal encounter with the Living God through the ministry of John Wimber, the leader of the Vineyard Movement, which challenged his Calvinist education that had taught him “not to expect any powerful work of the Holy Spirit after conversion” [Williams 2011, 5].

Building upon this experience, Williams went on to influence the direction of Christian worship and church practice towards experiential spirituality through his writings and leadership within the Vineyard Movement [Geraty 2014]. His message of “intimate communion” with Jesus [Williams 2004, 116] would help blend together the spiritual experience of the Pentecostal world started by William Seymour with the personal transformation Christianity of John Calvin to create a new paradigm Protestantism that has come to shape 21st century Christianity [Luhrmann 2012, xx].

To be continued….

 

Bibliography

Ewart, Frank J. 1975. The Phenomenon of Pentecost. Hazelwood, Missouri: Word Aflame Press.

Geraty, Luke. 2014. Don Williams: Shaping the Theology, Praxis, and Culture of Worship in the Vineyard and Beyond. Master’s essay, University of Birmingham.

Liardon, Roberts. 1996. God’s Generals: Why They Succeeded and Why Some Failed. Tulsa, Oklahoma: Albury Publishing.

Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2012. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Williams, Don. 2011. Signs, Wonders, and the Kingdom of God: A Biblical Guide for the Reluctant Skeptic. Woodinville, Washington: Sunrise Reprints.

…………… 2004. 12 Steps with Jesus. How Filling the Spiritual Emptiness in Your Life Can Help You Break Free from Addiction. Ventura, California: Regal.

Theology Thoughts

Experiential Spirituality: John Calvin and George Herbert (Part 5 of 7)

calvin picJohn Calvin (1509-1564) was another Reformer who laid the foundation for people to experience the Living God in all areas of their lives. In the first chapter of his famous Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (a booklet containing a central part of his longer Institutes of the Christian Religion), Calvin expands on the danger of an external, purely rational faith. Rather than be content with an intellectual faith, Calvin encourages the followers of Jesus to allow God to transform every part of their lives:

“The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart…our religion will be unprofitable if it does not change our heart, pervade our manners, and transform us into new creatures.” [2008, 20-21]

In writing these words, Calvin was trying to get beyond the tendency of humanity to profess one thing with their mouth and another with their lives. However in doing so, Calvin also laid the foundation for a personal encounter with Jesus that goes beyond anything he would have anticipated.

The foundation laid by both Luther and Calvin for an experiential spirituality came together about a hundred years later within Anglicanism, which retained some of its Roman Catholic roots [Olson 1999,429-449]. The person most readily associated with this experiential mysticism is George Herbert, our eighth travel guide. Born into an aristocratic English family, Herbert (1593-1633) was an Anglican priest and poet who greatly influenced the soul of Anglicanism. His sense of connection and passion with Jesus is so powerful that a reader of his poems cannot but know that Herbert was “truly touched and amazed with the Majesty of God” as he encouraged all parsons and priests to be [1981, 60].

To be continued….

 

Bibliography

Calvin, John. 2008. Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life. Ed. Henry J. Van Andel. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books.

Herbert, George. 1981. George Herbert: The Country Parson, The Temple. Ed. John N. Wall, Jr. New York: Paulist Press.

Theology Thoughts

Experiential Spirituality: Martin Luther (Part 4 of 7)

LutherAn acute reader might notice that all of the travel guides until now have been members of the Roman Catholic Church. The reason for this is that the Roman Catholic Church had a head start on Protestantism when it came to seeking a personal experiential relationship with the Living God. This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t anyone promoting such a relationship; rather it means that the Protestant church had its hands full trying to survive rather than encouraging the mystics among them.  The reformers also tended to downplay the personal spiritual aspect of God as the Roman Catholic Church was using claims of “miracles and revelations as proof of their legitimacy” [Ruthven 2013, 10]. However if one were to look back through the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin, the two giants of the Protestant Reformation, one can see the foundation for an experiential spirituality that would come to light later on in history.

While Martin Luther (1483-1546), the sixth travel guide, didn’t embrace an experiential spirituality like his Roman Catholic contemporaries (St. Ignatius and St. Teresa), he did fight against a purely intellectual faith. Rather he recognized that “reason itself needs miraculous healing and renewal by the grace of God and the Holy Spirit in order to believe in God rightly” [Olson 1999, 354]. Once an individual’s mind, heart, spirit and soul were transformed by God’s grace, the person became a priest of the Almighty. This priesthood of all believers is a radical statement that opened up the throne room of God to the common people of the land. No longer were they cut off from a personal experience with the Living God, having to rely on the ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church. They could boldly enter “into the presence of God in the spirit of faith…and cry ‘Abba, Father!’” [Olson 1999, 392].

In addition, Luther was also a pastor who deeply cared for people and wanted them to experience the love and grace of the Living God. This part of Luther comes out best in the various letters he wrote to friends and love ones. For example, when his mother was sick Luther encouraged her to cling to Jesus knowing that we do not have to “fear him but approach him with all assurance and call him our dear Savior, our sweet Comforter, the true Bishop of our souls” [2003, 35]. At another time, Luther wrote to a friend imprisoned for his faith telling him that he was not suffering alone, but that Jesus was there in prison with him. Neither Jesus nor Luther would “desert” him; rather he was to be of “good courage” and Jesus would “strengthen [his] heart” [2003, 198]. In all these pastoral letters, there is an assumption that each person could experience the presence of Jesus in their lives. This was a faith that went beyond simply knowing about the Scripture into the realm of experiencing the touch of God in one’s personal life.

To be continued….

 

Bibliography

Luther, Martin. 2003. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel. Trans. and ed. Theodore G. Tappert. Vancouver, British Columbia: Regent College Publishing.

Olson, Roger E. 1999. The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press.

Ruthven, Jon Mark. 2013. What’s Wrong with Protestant Theology? Traditional Religion vs. Biblical Emphasis. Tulsa, Oklahoma: Word & Spirit Press.

Theology Thoughts

Experiential Spirituality: Brother Lawrence and St. Thérèse (Part 3 of 7)

Brother LawrenceThe fourth travel guide is a contemporary of Pascal who lived in a Carmelite monastery in Paris. Brother Lawrence (c. 1614-1691) was an obscure monk who worked in the kitchen with no fanfare or fame. After his death, one of his friends would compile a short book full of conversations and letters from Brother Lawrence. This book provides travelers with a widow into the mystical life of Brother Lawrence where menial chores became an avenue to experience the Living God. Every day was filled with the “Divine Companionship” of the Living God [2003, 70]. This “Presence of God” was to him “an applying of our spirit to God, or a realization of God as present, which is borne home to us either by the imagination or by the understanding”  [2003, 77]. While the manner may have been different than what Apostle John experienced, the Living God “took shape before” [1 Jn 1:2, The Message] Brother Lawrence in everyday life.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) is another travel guide along the experiential spirituality path that had an increasingly personal relationship with the Living God. Starting from a very young age, St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus met and spoke with the Living Creator as an intimate and personal friend. In remembering her first communion at age 11, St. Thérèse writes the following:

“Oh! How sweet was the first kiss of Jesus on my soul!…It was a kiss of love. I felt myself loved, and I also said, ‘I love You, I give myself to You forever.’ There were no demands, no struggles, no sacrifices. For a long time Jesus and poor little Thérèse had been looking at each other and understanding each other…That day it was no longer a look, but a fusion” [2006, 77-78, emphasis in the original].

This intimacy with Jesus continued throughout her life. Jesus was her first and only friend whom alone she loved and pursued [2006, 221.] No one and nothing else mattered to St. Thérèse, just Jesus. It is because of this single minded focus on experiencing God that she became saint with the Roman Catholic Church a mere twenty-eight years after her death.

To be continued….

Bibliography

Brother Lawrence. 2003. The Practice of the Presence of God with Spiritual Maxims. Grand Rapids: Spire Books.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux. 2006. The Story of a Soul. Trans. and ed. Robert J. Edmonson. Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press.

Theology Thoughts

Experiential Spirituality: St. Ignatius, St. Teresa and Blaise Pascal (Part 2 of 7)

The first travel guide along this journey is St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491- 1556) who founded the Society of Jesus or Jesuits, a religious order within the Roman Catholic Church. Writing in the early part of the 16th century, St. Ignatius’ booklet Spiritual Exercises recorded various prayer and meditation practices that he found helpful in experiencing the Living God. These practices placed a “great emphasis on discerning God’s presence in the everyday activities of ordinary life” [Jones 2015]. Similar to St. Paul who saw the Lord as filling “everything in every way” [Ep 1:23, NIV], St. Ignatius refused to embrace the sacred/secular divided that permeated Christian thought then and now.

Saint Teresa of Ávila by Peter Paul Rubens
Saint Teresa of Ávila by Peter Paul Rubens

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) is the second travel guide drawing travelers into an experiential spirituality of the Living Creator. A proponent of the contemplative life, her book The Interior Castle is an allegory of a soul on a journey through seven mansions within itself to find the Lord. When the soul enters into the seventh and last spiritual mansion, St. Teresa writes about how the Living God will come and dwell within the soul of the pilgrim.

“Oh, God help me! What a difference there is between hearing and believing these words and being led in this way to realize how true they are! Each day this soul wonders more, for she feels that they have never left her, and perceives quite clearly, in the way I have described, that They are in the interior of her heart – in the most interior place of all and in its greatest depths. So although, not being a learned person, she cannot say how this is, she feels within herself this Divine companionship” [2008, 129]

There can be no greater expression of experiential spirituality than to feel the everlasting companionship of the Living Creator.

Living about a hundred years later, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is the third travel guide along the experiential spirituality journey. Known primarily for his advances in mathematics, physics, and philosophy, Pascal may seem like an odd travel guided into the mystical realm of a personal experience with the Living God. However rather than being a hindrance, it was Pascal’s philosophical mind that led him to the understanding that God was seeking a personal relationship with him. “If we submit everything to reason,” Pascal says, “Our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element” [1958, 78]. Building upon this understanding, he declares that “it is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason” [1958, 78].

To be continued….

 

Bibliography

Jones, Lorna. 2015. A Brief Introduction to Ignatian Spirituality. Ignatian Spiritual Formation III class handout, St. Stephen’s University, St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, October 5.

Pascal, Blaise. 1958. Pascal’s Pensees. Trans. T.S. Eliot. New York: E.P. Dutton.

St. Teresa of Avila. 2008. Interior Castle. Trans. E. Allison Peers. Radford, Virginia: Wilder Publications.

 

Theology Thoughts

Experiential Spirituality: An Introduction to Eleven Travel Guides within the Past Five Hundred Years (Part 1 of 7)

IMG_0890The danger of all religions is that the participants will cease to pursue a personal spirituality and rather choose to become content to blindly follow the traditions and rules established by their authority figures. While this decision is encouraged and promoted by some religions, it is antithetical to the Christianity promoted by the early followers of Jesus. Building upon the legacy of Abraham, Moses, and the Jewish Prophets of old, Jesus “quite deliberately remodeled first-century Jewish expectations around himself” [Wright 2011, 117] with an emphasis on relationship with the Living Creator. No longer were the people of God to be called “servants,” rather they would be “friends” of the Creator King [Jn 15:15, NIV].

Writing near the end of his life, the Apostle John pens a letter to the second and third generations of Jesus followers reminding them of their status change.

 “From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.

“We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!” [1 Jn 1:1-4, The Message]

Through the incarnation, the Creator King revealed his desire to walk among his people in a very personal way that goes beyond anything ever known in the ancient world.  No longer was the Creator of Heaven and Earth a distant deity removed from the daily lives of his people. Rather he is a deity who is actively seeking an intimate ongoing personal relationship with each individual, adopting us as sons and daughters [Ga 3:26-4:7] and placing his Spirit into our hearts as a “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” [Ep 1:14, NIV].

While Christianity has for the most part emphasized the need for personal salvation, the “experiential awareness of God’s presence that we see reflected in the New Testament has certainly not always characterized Christian life since” [Thiessen 2015, 1]. However there have always been those within the Christian community who have promoted such an experiential spirituality. This paper will seek draw out examples of experiential spirituality being promoted within Christianity over the past five hundred years (16th to 21st century). The goal of reviewing these examples is to remind readers of the value of experiential spirituality while introducing them to eleven travel guides who have walked the path before them.

To be continued….

 

Bibliography

 

Thiessen, Walter. 2015. Inner Healing Prayer. Module notes, St. Stephen’s University, St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada.

Wright, N.T. 2011. Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, And Why He Matters. New York: HaperOne.