Defining the Role of the Bible in Spirituality: “Three Degrees of Spirituality” in American Culture

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam McClendon
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Christian Spirituality ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Objective Standard ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Church

Though the use of the word “spirituality” abounds, the meaning can vary greatly. Three increasingly narrow categories seem to cover the essence of “spirituality” within American culture: general, Christian, and biblical. General spirituality is broad and all-inclusive. Christian spirituality introduces the necessity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, but has been undermined to a degree by the elevation of personal subjectivism. As a result the need has arisen for a third category. Biblical spirituality emphasizes the Bible as the basis for shaping one's understanding of and experience with God, as well as determining what is and is not of the Spirit of God. The Bible is still relevant and should be the spiritual basis for determining what appropriate expressions of faith are, grounding spirituality in an objective standard. Biblical spirituality should be advocated today within the church in capturing the essence of New Testament spirituality.

scholarly journals Prayer, the encounter and participation, the experience: A Pauline exhortation towards a spirituality of prayer

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk G. Van der Merwe
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Christian Spirituality ◽  
Spiritual Experiences ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Daily Events ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

Numerous references to prayer occur throughout the Old Testament and New Testament. These prayers relate closely to particular circumstances and needs where the petitioner appeals to God, illustrating the importance of prayer as part of the dialogue and communication between God (in the image of a Father) and Israel and the Church (in the image of his children). This article investigates Paul’s contribution to this dialogue. In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Paul exhorts (using the imperative) the Thessalonians to pray ‘constantly’ (ἀδιαλείπτως), an exhortation located in the last pericope of the epistle, between two other exhortations (imperatives) indicating time (‘always’) and space (‘all circumstances’). Paul thus uses two more exhortations (surrounding the exhortation, ‘pray constantly’) to define what he means by ‘constant’ (without ceasing) prayer. His conviction of this necessity leads him to offer himself as an example of ‘praying constantly’ when he writes to the community in Thessalonica. Prayers in Paul’s epistles focus on the existential needs of daily living, to stand firm against evil and the spiritual need to live pure and blameless lives (complete sanctification) until the parousia. Conclusions arising from Pauline textual references on prayer include: the experience of God is not limited to extraordinary events, but subsists essentially in ordinary daily events; the understanding of God’s participation in the lives of believers is not always obvious and comprehensible; the Holy Spirit enables believers spiritually to see, hear and understand God’s daily involvement in their lives; and, prayer for the believer facilitates spiritual experiences which provide continuous transformation for the one who ‘prays without ceasing’. The result, for Paul, of this form of dialogue and communication between God and his Church, is that regular prayer constitutes joy and thankfulness.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This research relates to the disciplines of New Testament and Christian Spirituality. The focus is how to experiencing dialogue with the divine regularly every day. A specific mindset is needed to accomplish this; a mindset to see, hear and experience the divine in everyday life in the ordinary events in life.

scholarly journals The Living Word

Kairos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Monika Bajić
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Faith Community ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

The Bible, which is indisputable regarded as the inspired word of God, is written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Man, as an earthen vessel, was used by the Holy Spirit to pen the revelation of God’s truth in Jesus Christ. The Holy Scriptures are “God breathed” words to the Church and are key in interpreting and fulfilling God’s telos for creation. This write-up wishes to emphasize and survey the critical role of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Due to the inspiring role of the Spirit, the word of God is not a dead letter, rather a life-giving word that spills new life into the believer and the Church. Precisely this connection of Spirit and letter marks the Holy Scripture as living and active and conveys the desired transformative dimension for the individual believer and the faith community.

scholarly journals N. V. Gogol's eschatology

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.A. Voropaev
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Spiritual Growth ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Church

Eschatological issues were Gogol’s problems throughout his life. Almost all of his work, both artistic and journalistic, were imbued with Apocalyptic mood. Being an Orthodox, Gogol built his life in accordance to the church calendar which includes the annual charter of holidays and worship when the cycle of readings of the Gospel is repeated for the teachings of spiritual growth of a man. Gogol’s Eschatology rooted in apocalyptic New Testament and patristic heritage. His notes on the margins in the Bible testify his steadfast and abiding interest to eschatological matters of Scripture. The words "Even so, come, Lord Jesus" (Revelation 22: 20), carved on the tombstone of Gogol, express, without doubt, the most important thing in his life and work: the desire for the acquisition of the Holy Spirit and soul preparation for the meeting with the Lord.

Eating with penitence: An essay on the local church eating responsibly

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-463
Author(s):  
David W. Priddy
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Specific Program ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Local Congregations ◽  
Ecological Concern ◽  
The Church

In this essay, I pose the question, “How might local congregations participate in food reform and agricultural renewal?” Given the problems of industrial agriculture and the wider ecological concern, this question is pressing. Instead of advocating a specific program, I focus on how the Church might address this question while keeping its commitment to being a repentant Church. First, I discuss the significance of attention and particularly the habit of attending to the Word and Sacrament. This posture, I argue, maintains the Church’s integrity, preventing it from merely branding itself or relying on its own resources. Second, I briefly explore the association of eating with the mission of the Church in the New Testament, highlighting the repeated theme of judgment and call to humility in the context of eating. Third, I draw out the importance of continual remorse over sin. This attitude is essential to the Church’s vocation and rightly appears in many historic liturgies. I argue that this posture should extend to the question of eating responsibly. Penitence demonstrates the Church’s relationship to the wider world and testifies to the source of the Church’s own life, the Holy Spirit, who does the work of renewal.

scholarly journals O Espírito Santo estrutura a Igreja (II parte)

1998 ◽  
Vol 58 (230) ◽  
pp. 275-310
Author(s):  
Medoro de Oliveira Souza Neto
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Espírito Santo ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Ordained Ministry ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Espirito Santo ◽  
The Church

O Espírito Santo engendra uma dinâmica comunional na Igreja, mediante os carismas, que instauram uma estrutura permanente carismático-ministerial-alterativa, que é comum às diversas comunidades neotestamentárias, não obstante modelos organizacionais diferentes. Isso permite superar a dicotomia clero/laicato, sem prejuízo para o ministério ordenado e, ao mesmo tempo, fundamentando o protagonismo dos leigos na missão e sua co-participação nas decisões da Igreja. Abstract: Through the Charismas, the Holy Spirit engenders a dynamic communion in the Church which establishes a permanent and articulate structure between charisma and ministries, which is usual to the diverse New Testament communities, though with dijferent organizaiional models. This fact overcomes the dichotomy clergy-laity, without damage to the ordained ministry, and at the same time laying the foundation for the lead of the lay people in the mission and its co-participation in the decisions of the church.

scholarly journals Leitourgia: The Missing Link in Evangelii Gaudium

2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Peter John McGregor
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Lumen Gentium ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Church ◽  
Missing Element

Some especially insightful and challenging passages in Evangelii Gaudium are those on the importance of a personal encounter with Jesus, the evangelizing power of popular piety, person to person witness, and the need for the power of the Holy Spirit. However, in order to do full justice to the mission of the Church, the document requires more on the priestly aspect of this mission. This element is substantially absent, in part, because of Francis’s veneration of Evangelii Nuntiandi. However, this absent element can be obtained from the missiology of Lumen Gentium, John Paul II, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Based on an analysis of the meaning of leitourgia in the New Testament, this article concludes that this missing element can serve as a link between Pope Francis’s kerygma and diakonia, enabling a harmony which has been missing, to greater or lesser degrees, from the Church’s mission in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Authority of the Holy Spirit

1967 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-197
Author(s):  
H. F. Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Constitutive Principle ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Inner Light ◽  
The Church

What is the ultimate seat of authority to which Christian theology makes its appeal?' Dr Whale in posing this question says that answers fall into three great and distinctive types. ‘The first type emphasises the authority of the Church’ while ‘the second type emphasises the sole authority of the Bible’ and ‘the third type may be loosely described as mystical—its constitutive principle is the “Inner Light”'.1

“Born of the Virgin Mary”: Toward a Sprachregelung on a Delicate Point of Doctrine

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Frans Josef van Beeck
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Infancy Narratives ◽  
The Church

This essay offers an interpretation of the traditional catholic teaching that “Jesus Christ, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, was born of the Virgin Mary”. The author reviews recent exegesis and theology, then revisits the tradition of the church, then discusses the contrast between the physiological “facts” involved in human conception as they were understood in the classical periods — and thus at the place and time of the composition of the infancy narratives — and the accepted modern, scientific account of the same “facts”. He argues that neither the New Testament nor the Church teaches that Jesus' virginal conception is a cosmological miracle: rather this is a conclusion of the data of the faith, not an article of faith in and of itself. This should guide our speech in ministry.

Spiritual Meaning and Experimental Piety in the Exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Stievermann ◽  
Ryan P. Hoselton
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
Cotton Mather ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
Historical Issues

Jan Stievermann and Ryan P. Hoselton consider the role of experiential piety in the exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. Both were deeply engaged in the new critical questions of their day, and both were also committed to nurturing religious piety—though they differed somewhat in how they handled these concerns. Although Mather was profoundly interested in the philological and historical issues in the Bible, he prioritized devotional and contemplative engagement with Scripture. Edwards, Stievermann and Hoselton argue, drew on the experimental language and philosophy of the Enlightenment to construct a case for the supernatural authority of the Bible against increasingly naturalistic arguments. Edwards held that one gains spiritual understanding as the Holy Spirit harmonizes the believer’s internal senses with the Word; this reconstruction affected Edwards’ approach to the emotive element in Scripture, the dynamism of typology, and the nature of the regenerate interpreter of the Bible.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document