When Spiritual Theology becomes Self Help

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

Those of you who know me, or have been reading along for a while, know that I am a spiritual theologian. My original background was in Bible and philosophy (I was planning on either doing a PhD in New Testament or in Biblical Theology) until I went on to do a PhD in systematic theology.

But one of the greatest gifts I have received vocationally is that after doing my PhD in systematics, my position at Talbot did not allow me to teach our typical theology classes. I was hired by Talbot Seminary to teach spiritual theology. At Talbot every student has to do 3-classes in spiritual theology, and these are the main classes I teach. The reason this was such a gift is that it did not allow me to think about theology as a mere theoretical or academic discipline. Theology is for life with God.

We can easily become tempted to focus our time making sure we get our theology right, without ever revealing how it shapes a life (we should focus on right theology, but we need to recognize that a theology’s rightness goes beyond the letters on a page). But there is another temptation for the folks who work in the area of spiritual formation. For these folks, they can be tempted to talk about things like experience, discernment, and spiritual disciplines as if these are somehow removed from theology, as if talking about these things is doing something other than theology.

Instead, claims about the Trinity, the God-world relation, Christ, salvation, and ecclesiology should all apply significant pressure to shaping a view of spiritual formation. The reason we emphasize the fact that we do spiritual theology at Talbot, and not only spiritual formation, is because we see how often spiritual formation is articulated by folks who are well-meaning but theologically illiterate.

The problem with spiritual formation is that many people think they can talk about it with mere common sense. These are folks who are focused on life-hacks and pragmatic solutions to ministry, devotion, and service. These are the folks Paul worries about when he writes that people, in the flesh, create self-made religion, that has the appearance of wisdom, but no ability to actually deal with the flesh (Col. 2:23).

This self-made religion that has the appearance of wisdom often talks about spiritual practices and discipline (what Paul here calls “asceticism of the body), and yet does so without understanding what a distinctively Christian vision of formation entails.

Driven by a consumer market, spiritual theology digresses into self-help.

When this happens, practices are suggested without understanding why those practices were embraced in the first place. Orphaned from their context, these disciplines become another means of the flesh to cultivate a life.

Colossians 2, which is by far the most sustained argument in the New Testament against fleshly spirituality, argues that Christians turn to spiritual discipline precisely to let go of Christ. Even though this is the case, we often find books, conferences, and curriculum leading with spiritual practices as if there was no danger at all. Too often we buy into the lie that we are simply called to grow ourselves.

The fantasy, in all of this, is the belief that quick qualifications like, “This is not legalism,” or “This is not Pelagianism” will somehow be meaningful (let alone true). Instead of recognizing with Colossians 2 or Galatians 3 that these are always temptations of the flesh, we give people what they want - a path of self-help.

In the 20th century a group of theologians began to lament how theology and spirituality were divorced in the Enlightenment. Both die when this happens, and they were weighing the disaster that has occurred because of this: theology sequesters itself in the academy to impress other academics, and spirituality is taken over by well-meaning but secularizing philosophies of self-advancement.

If spiritual formation requires that we address the nature, processes, and directives of Christian growth (go to my podcast for more on this), then we have to consider how the Trinity, salvation, and life in the Spirit function in relation to our discipline. We need to understand the context of our formation is grace and the means of grace. It is not enough to do more. The flesh longs to just do more. We have to draw near in Son and Spirit to bear the fruit of God’s life in our own.

When we assume that spiritual formation is merely talking about spiritual disciplines, praying in esoteric ways, or cultivating life-hacks, we have abandoned the proper ground of our formation.

I worry that in the spiritual formation conversation, instead of wisdom, pragmatics reigns, without depth or discernment, advancing marketing plans and platform building, but providing the church nothing distinctly Christian to actually embrace.

There is a much deeper way that goes beyond merely quoting random insights from the Christian tradition, but actually goes on to do the work they did. But it won’t be as easy as just doing spiritual practices, but will be a call into discernment in the Spirit and learning to walk with God in this present evil age.