Spiritual Wisdom and the Intellectual Apostolate
Continuing his discussion from last time of what “Receptive Ecumenism” means for Evangelicals in their encounter with the Catholic tradition, Gordon Smith writes:
3. Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Direction: the means by which we are formed in the faith.
As Evangelicals, we have been more inclined to emphasize that God’s work is dramatic, simple and immediate. Transformation is immediate when you trust in God for your salvation. Or, in my own tradition, we emphasized that sanctification was an immediate experience when you received the gift of the Spirit.
Well, I do believe in the possibilities of grace. And yet, Catholic perspectives have helped me appreciate the slow, incremental and steady work of God, over time, potentially over a long time — what Eugene Petersen has spoken of as “a long obedience in the same direction.”
And in this regard, while as Evangelicals, we have been inclined to emphasize the importance of prayer and Bible study for young Christians, the Catholic perspective has brought to many of us an appreciation of a whole host of spiritual practices that we now view as indispensable to the Christian life.
A Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster was rather revolutionary for Evangelical Christians. For Roman Catholics this call to spiritual practice was all rather obvious: virtue and faith is formed in us through practices that are to us a means of grace. Disciplines, practices, routines are essential to our capacity to live in and know the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit.
But my main point here is that these practices — reflecting a routine and rhythm to the Christian life, an ordered life — arise out of a conviction that for most of us the Spirit’s work in our lives is slow, gradual and incremental: subtle, but no less effective and no less transformative. In fact I would say that from Catholics I have learned that the deep work of transformation comes slowly, incrementally … over time. There are no quick fixes. There is no assumption that if it is quick, it is somehow more miraculous or more amazing. There is no cheap grace. Rather, there is a deep commitment to the long haul: the slow, incremental, gradual and life-long journey of growing in faith, hope and love.
As a side note, here, I would note also that the Catholic tradition has provided a reminder to many of us that prayer is more than intercession — that, indeed, in prayer we are in “real-time” communion with the risen and ascended Christ. And, of course, in the language of 2 Corinthians 3, this is a transformative encounter with Christ. But the crucial piece remains: substantive change in our lives comes slowly and incrementally, over time.
Which leads me naturally to this next point.
4. Ancient Sources for Christian Spiritual Wisdom.
As a young man in my 20s, I was reading A.W.Tozer, a writer within my own Tradition: a Christian & Missionary Alliance pastor who had pastored in Chicago and then in Toronto. I was struck in reading him by two things: he wrote with depth, power and insight — profound spiritual wisdom. But also this: he was consistently quoting authors I had never heard of, ancient sources: Bernard of Clairvaux and other pre-16th century voices that I had never heard of in my seminary studies, and had never heard of in my church as a teen-ager. Who were these people?
At one point Tozer stresses the value of reading them. So I went looking for these authors and their books. But I was not going to find them in a local, so called, “Christian” bookstore which typically meant and still means an Evangelical bookstore. I had to go further down the street to the bookstore attached to the Roman Catholic cathedral.
These were not Catholic sources per se; but what essentially happened is that the Protestant Reformation seemed to cut so many Evangelical Christians off from these voices — these spiritual writers. Now, with these gifts that have been kept alive for the church by Catholic publishers, I cannot conceive of my own life without them. They are my spiritual friends, masters of the spiritual life for me and for many Evangelicals: Catherine of Siena. Bernard of Clairvaux. Francis of Assisi. Thomas a Kempis and The Imitation of Christ. Julian of Norwich.
And then also post Reformation voices such as Frances de Sales. And I could go on.
My point is more this: that most of these voices and sources of spiritual wisdom are not Catholic per se — in that they are pre-Reformation; and yet, they are voices that come to us now from this tradition and have been kept present to the church through the faithfulness of this tradition that appreciated their continuing value for the contemporary church.
5. The vital place of the Intellectual Life and Christian Scholarship in the Mission of God.
My spiritual heritage as an Evangelical has a huge and fulsome emphasis on the need for us to know the salvation of God, to meet Christ at the Cross, and then with all the energy within us to let others know about this good news so that they too would know the salvation of God. And this is all rather simple and not complicated; and, for certain, this means that scholarship, and learning and libraries and the intellectual life are all a bit suspect.
Thus Mark Noll could write a book, as an Evangelical, entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: a scathing critique of our failure to appreciate the pivotal place of scholarship, universities, the intellectual life and critical thought to the purposes of God in the church and in the world. As Gordon Fee loved to put it (a New Testament scholar at Regent College when I was the Dean there): “I am a Pentecostal scholar” . . . offered with a gracious chuckle, in that for many within his own tradition this would be, as he put it, an oxymoron.
Well, no one is going to publish a book on the “Scandal of the Catholic mind” … or the “Scandal of the Jesuit mind.” For me, actually, it is the Jesuits who more than any other order or movement demonstrated the vital place of scholarship and learning and the intellectual life in the mission of God.
Now perhaps another book could be written, “the Scandal of the Catholic … whatever”: you fill in the blank. My point here is that this was a particular gift of the Catholic world to my own tradition: a corrective.
And we are learning. I am the president of a university; and we have some brilliant and capable young scholars on our faculty — I emphasize those who are young only to highlight and celebrate those younger women and men who are recognizing scholarship as a calling, a vocation, a means of bringing glory to God in life and work.
What I long to see, of course, is how critical theological reflection can inform not only the university but the life of the church: that we come to recognize that scholars, theologians, philosophers and scientists are vital to our Christian identity (and just saying that now is a reminder to me of how far we still need to go on this score).
It was the Jesuits who helped me to see that education is mission, not merely preparation for mission, but actual mission. Education is apostolic service; educators — in higher education, the work of scholars and researchers in libraries — are doing critical kingdom work. Scholars are vital, absolutely essential, for the missional purposes of God. We will not reach a post-Christian, secular or pluralist society without attention to the life of the mind.
