There is a question bouncing around social media explicitly and implicitly, and it goes something like this: Can you believe in spiritual formation and remain theologically orthodox? Or, with a different focus: Is spiritual formation really evangelical? This is a great question, but it points to an issue we have to unearth to understand the problem.
I have been a part of the spiritual formation conversation for the better part of three decades, and this criticism ebbs and flows with the conversation, mostly because it has not been addressed well. Too often people try to articulate something called “spiritual formation” that is somehow segregated from their theology. Christianly, this is non-sensical.
We don’t separate our theology from our practice in the Christian faith, and when we do so, we need to name that failure rather than reject the conversation. But as someone who has a deep investment in this conversation, I must admit that too many have developed a vision of spiritual formation tossed by the waves of present impulses that isn’t deeply moored to a distinctively Christian (let alone a Protestant) vision of life with God.
I often define our own historical vision for evangelical spirituality as: a Word- centered, Spirit-empowered, whole-life spirituality that is distinctively Protestant in its theology and whose form is churchly. This is the focus of my own work. But, admittedly, that is not often what’s on offer under the banner of “spiritual formation.” Why is that?
There are several points I could raise here, like our failure to know our own theological and spiritual traditions, the divorce between academic theology and churchly theology, and so on, but the problem runs deeper than these issues I think. I grew up in an evangelicalism that often demeaned theology, replacing it with worldly systems and logics to try to advance the kingdom using worldly forms (and did so explicitly). Even though this is not the whole story of evangelicalism, and I know many who have a very different experience, this is still one of the realities we must face.
The early spiritual formation conversation was set in contrast to these systems, seeking to prophetically speak against them. Willard, for instance, offered a vision of the kingdom that was antithetical to the pragmatism on offer around him. His encouragement to folks was to go back to early evangelicalism and study the spirituality and theology that animated the movement, and, importantly, to memorize Scripture. Unfortunately, Willard is more often quoted than imitated in this regard.
But the spiritual formation discussion restarted by folks like Willard and Foster occurred in a day when pragmatism seemed to be working and where the church was exploding. Yet they were warning that if we wielded these pragmatics, we would one day reap what we sow (and what else is evangelicalism doing today than that?). But we are in a different context. Now, in the age dominated by self-help, life-hacks, and identity-construction, we do not see practices like spiritual disciplines as self-denial but as instruments to cultivate ourselves. Unmoored from our deep beliefs, spiritual formation inevitably becomes a generic, worldly spirituality of self-attainment.
Instead, our own evangelical tradition is filled with examples of theologically rich, gospel-centered, churchly vision of the life of faith. We don’t turn to something called “spiritual formation” apart from our theology, but we must ask our theology: What is the vision of life that this animates? How does our understanding of justification by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone fund a life of maturation? How does our vision of the atonement, grace, and “the growth that is from God” (Col. 2:19) help give an account of spiritual practices?
The evangelical tradition was always a whole-life spirituality that recognized the experiential and affective dynamics of life in the presence of God. It turns out that we don’t have to choose between good theology and deep spirituality because the reality is that we can’t have one without the other. The tragedy is that we continue to try.
