The Arc of Spirituality: The Western Love Affair with God

By Robert P. Vande Kappelle

The Arc of Spirituality invites readers on a journey through Western history, a journey that begins with the pioneering concepts of ancient Israelites, who understood spirituality communally and covenantally. Continuing biblically with wisdom and apocalyptic conceptions, The Arc of Spirituality examines Western Christian spirituality as it developed historically through twelve phases, culminating in the modern period with ethical, ecumenical, pluralist, and ecological expressions, and most recently, with postmodern secular alternatives.
Having described his own journey in previous volumes, in this culminating book Vande Kappelle builds on earlier writings such as Response to the Other, The Second Journey, and The Church Alumni Association to tell the story of the Western world's unfolding love affair with God. The narrative, while continuously inspiring, necessarily takes us through dark alleys and down deep rabbit holes in spirituality's never-ending quest to know and experience the transcendence around us and within.
The goal of spirituality is always God, and while God makes the journey interesting, it is never easy, for there are no clear steps to follow or learn. While spirituality is more caught than taught, at some point we discover it is more about unlearning than learning, enriched more by subtraction than by addition. The Arc of Spirituality is useful for individual or group study. Each chapter concludes with questions for discussion or reflection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Oct 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666724677

Robert P. Vande Kappelle

Robert P. Vande Kappelle is professor emeritus of religious studies at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He is the author of forty books, including biblical commentaries, volumes on ethics and church history, and discussion guides on faith, theology, and spirituality. Recent titles include Holistic Happiness, Radical Discipleship, A Bible for Today, Christlikeness, and Soul Food: 106 Stories for Life’s Journey.

Book preview

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Introduction

Human existence is filled with mental and emotional tension, much of it caused by conflict and polarity. In fact, one cannot live without conflict, and the secret of life is learning to embrace and somehow reconcile one’s polarities. To do so successfully requires spirituality. Without spirituality, human beings find themselves trapped in cycles of boredom, irritation, and discontent. By spirituality, I don’t mean religion, though they are related.

In the past, people of faith rarely distinguished between being religious and being spiritual. Actually, they rarely used the terms spiritual or spirituality, collapsing them under the broader category of religion. What we call spirituality today they might have called piety, analogous to being religious. Today, the terms spiritual and spirituality are in vogue, as opposed to the term religious, which, like piety, is often used negatively or pejoratively as a synonym for religiosity.

In recent studies, religious pollsters in a number of countries have begun asking people whether they consider themselves "spiritual but not religious; religious but not spiritual; religious and spiritual; or not spiritual and not religious. The most surprising result is to the first option. In the United States, 30 percent of adults declared they were spiritual but not religious. In Canada, 40 percent selected this choice, and in England, as many as 51 percent understand themselves in this way. In 2009, Princeton Survey Research Associates found that only 9 percent of Americans considered themselves religious but not spiritual, while some 48 percent viewed themselves as religious and spiritual. The World Values Survey, associated with the University of Michigan, found that in many developed nations, as high as 70 percent of the population self-defined as generalized spirituality in contrast to traditional religions."¹ As these polls demonstrate, the word spiritual is far more appealing in post-Christian societies than the term religious.

In her seminars across the United States, American church historian Diana Bass discovered that only 6 percent of the attendees self-identify as religious only, 20 percent say they are spiritual but not religious, while 72 percent of those who claim affiliation with a religious denomination consider themselves spiritual and religious.²

While most Americans see themselves as both religious and spiritual, this has not always been the case. As recently as 1999, Gallup polled Americans asking whether they considered themselves to be spiritual or religious. At that time, 54 percent of the respondents answered religious only, while only 6 percent answered both spiritual and religious. Only ten years later, a Newsweek poll showed 9 percent answering religious only, while 48 percent answered both spiritual and religious. In both cases, the figures for spiritual only (30 percent) and neither spiritual nor religious (9 percent) remained the same.

In Christianity After Religion, Bass notes that for much of Western history, the words religious and spiritual meant roughly the same thing, namely, how humans relate with God through rituals, practices, and communal worship. However, the popular meaning of the words diverged during the twentieth century. The word spiritual gradually came to be associated with the private realm of thought and experience, while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in religious institutions, participation in formal ritual, and adherence to official denominational doctrines. In general, spirituality came to take a positive and attractive meaning, as somehow authentic, whereas religious took on a more negative connotation.

For traditionalists, the term spirituality suggests something vague or vacuous, lacking substance and consistency. Spirituality, however, is neither vague nor meaningless. While it lacks precision, the word spiritual is both a critique of institutional religion and a longing for meaningful correction. The following partial list helps distinguish these categories.

Based on these distinctions, we can begin treating the terms religion/religious and spirituality/spiritual as polarities, and we can analyze the topic of spirituality, as it developed historically, through the prism or lens of polarities. In other words, we can best describe a historical phase of spirituality by understanding the polarities emphasized by its practitioners. The following partial list helps distinguish these polarities.

Speaking of polarities, we need to distinguish this mindset from dualistic thinking, a feature in human consciousness manifested in conventional religious thought. Unlike polarities evident in logic and morality, dualistic thinking refers to a mindset that perceives reality as divided into opposing metaphysical entities such as good versus evil, spirit versus matter, and God versus Satan. Nondualist or holistic thinking does accept the existence of opposites or distinctions in nature, such as maleness and femaleness, lightness and darkness, active and passive, but they are viewed on a continuum and thus, as interrelated.

This ultimate relatedness of all things in the universe is best exemplified by the striking Eastern concept called the Tao (pronounced dhow), which speaks of the way of reality, the orderly movement of the natural world according to the principle of yin and yang. This is best depicted by the famous Chinese symbol of a circle divided by a backward or reverse S into light and dark (or red and yellow) areas. According to Taoist teaching, yin is the negative force in nature. Understood as passive, it is seen in darkness, coolness, dampness, and femaleness, and is represented by earth, specifically by the moon. Yang is the positive force in nature. Understood as active, it is seen in lightness, warmth, dryness, maleness, and is represented by heaven, specifically by the sun.

All things are on a continuum between yin and yang. For instance, all males have some yin, and all females some yang. These forces are not confined to humans, nor are they static. A rotting tree is said to be losing yang and becoming damp and therefore more yin. No value judgment is given to yin and yang, for neither is better than the other, and neither is solely good or solely evil. Except for a few objects, such as the sun and the earth, which in their totality are yin or yang, the rest of nature, and even events, are a combination. When the two forces work together in harmony, life is as it should be.

Because human brains are hardwired to think in binary or dualistic ways, religious scholar Cantwell Smith distinguished between conflict dualism and complementary dualism. In ancient Mesopotamia, as evident in Zoroastrianism and Manicheism, we find the ideology of conflict dualism, where opposites such as good and evil or God and Satan are locked in constant war. Such ideas influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, based on Greek and Western logic, in which opposites cannot be reconciled. Eastern logic, as exemplified in Taoism and certain forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, emphasizes complementary dualism (nondualist thinking).

The brilliant word, nonduality (advaita in Sanskrit), is used by many different traditions, both Eastern and Western, to distinguish from monism, a perspective that erases all diversity and difference, reducing all things to one sameness. Nondualism celebrates difference and affirms diversity. It simply refuses to see this diversity as anything other than the greater unity of a singular Reality.

When referring to nondualism, Cantwell Smith spoke of complementary dualism, but the underlying reality is the same. In nature, things appear as opposites, not to conflict with one another but rather to complement each other. In everything they see, think, and experience, nondualists find the dimension of the other.

C. S. Lewis seems to have had this in mind when he identified universal truths in concepts such as the Tao (the Way) in ancient China and rita (divine Law or Truth) in early Hinduism.³ In Hinduism, rita is the principle of natural order that regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything in it. Likewise the Chinese speak of the Tao as the essence of reality or the Way of the universe. The ancient Jews conceived of Torah as way, truth, and life. The author of the gospel of John seems to allude to this notion of a universal principle of natural order when he speaks of Jesus as the Logos (the divine Word) in John 1:1, 14 and as the Way, the Truth, and the Life in 14:6.

Spirituality: The Journey of Life

While we can define religion or theology with some degree of meaning and specificity, the word spirituality is often used traditionally with little or no clear meaning, or in a broad and vague manner. In antiquity, the word was not used, and when first introduced in the English-speaking world, it referred to the clergy, specifically to the ecclesiastical vocation, as distinct from secular or temporal vocations. From this sixteenth-century usage, the term came to describe spiritual as distinct from material things, including spirits, ghosts, or souls.

The meaning of a religious way of life, notably one’s piety or acts of religious devotion, came still later, although its use in Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises referred to the practice of piety and more specifically, techniques of devotion. When first used in the French-speaking world, the term spirituality was a term of reproach, associated with mystical or ascetic devotion such as used by pietists and related sects and movements not in the religious mainstream. In this respect, spirituality represented an excess of striving after the purely immaterial.

By the nineteenth century, the term was no longer one of reproach but simply a description of prayerful piety, with a view toward the practice of ascetics and mystics. At times spirituality came to be associated with the inner or interior life of humans in general. In the first half of the twentieth century, the terms spirituality and spiritual theology were applied to ascetic and mystical theology, as opposed to dogmatic and moral theology.

In nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant liberalism, with the advance of biblical criticism and widespread skepticism on matters of faith, pious people focused on religious practice (lex orandi) over against the vicissitudes of historical belief (lex credenti), and spirituality expressed what was sought. In the late twentieth century, the word spirituality found wide usage yet went undefined, having a vague association with living holistically, contemplatively, fully, and harmoniously with nature, others, and all of life. This latter perspective, that all life has a spiritual aspect, is associated widely with spirituality, and the term has become disengaged from theology in general or religion in particular.

Such lack of specificity, however, makes the concept so universal as to lack value. For our purposes, I reconnect the term with its root meaning, that is, with Spirit, or as the ancient Hebrews did, with the wind or breath of God. To be spiritual is to breathe deeply and harmoniously with Reality (Infinity). Spirituality, then, is a hopeful, creative, life-filled path, a Spirit-filled way of living. In using the term path, Taking a path is a different way of living from driving down a highway. Unlike highways, paths seem more personal. Unlike a highway, paths are not goal-oriented, for spirituality implies choice, uncertainty, and risk-taking. To quote Matthew Fox, spirituality is

the way itself, and every moment on the way is a holy moment; a sacred seeing takes place there. All who embark on a spiritual path need to be willing to learn and to let go; to know that none of us has all the answers, and yet that none of us is apart from deity . . . What is common to all paths that are spiritual is, of course, the Spirit—breath, life, energy. That is why all true paths are essentially one path—because there is only one Spirit, one breath, one life, one energy in the universe. It belongs to none of us and all of us. We all share it. Spirituality does not make us otherworldly; it renders us more fully alive. The path that spirituality takes is a path away from the superficial into the depths; away from the outer person into the inner person; away from the privatized and individualistic into the deeply communitarian.⁴

Spirituality, traditionally defined by Christians as life in the Spirit, encompasses the journey of life from a distinct perspective. Spirituality is the journey of life from God, to God, and with God. As a result, it is also a journey toward Self. In other words, the process of coming to know or to experience God is also the process of knowing oneself. Through this process, one comes to differentiate between one’s temporary or false self, which we call the ego, and one’s permanent or True Self, that part of us made in the image of God and made for ongoing or everlasting relationship with God. In the end, we discover that we know God by being known, much like one loves by being loved.

In his public lecture The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, the prominent Indian-American physician and philosopher Deepak Chopra defines success as the progressive realization of worthy goals. Humans are goal-seeking organisms. Because worthy goals involve the ability to love and be compassionate, harmful addictive behavior qualifies as unworthy. From this perspective, a requisite quality for goal-seeking is the ability to hear one’s inner voice, to be in touch with the Spirit within, one’s true self and creative center. Living out of one’s core, one’s innermost being, Chopra believes, is what humans mean by spirituality. Spirituality, simply defined, is Self-awareness. You will notice I capitalize the word Self, for this is both intentional and essential to a proper understanding of the concept.

Because it is easy to fall into a simplistic or merely humanistic view of spirituality, let me clarify what I mean. When I think of spirituality, I have in mind the account of Jesus healing a victim of blindness in Mark’s gospel. According to Mark 8:22–26, when Jesus healed a blind man in the town of Bethsaida, the healing occurred in three stages. First, the man was blind. Next, Jesus laid hands on him, using saliva to anoint the man’s eyes. At this stage, the man’s vision was blurry and indistinct. Lastly, Jesus again laid hands upon the blind man’s eyes, whereupon his sight was fully restored, enabling him to see everything clearly.

The same pattern can be applied to spirituality (its three stages also understood as three distinct types of spirituality):

1.self-consciousness. This stage of awareness—the first-half-of-life-phase—denotes self-awareness, a self-centered, egocentric state. In this stage, an immature and dream-like state, humans are in the dark, unaware, and self-deceived.

2.God-consciousness. This phase, a transitional phase, constitutes institutional allegiance, attachment to ethical and man-made religious belief systems. This phase of spirituality, evident historically in salvation-by-effort approaches, can be likened to sleepwalking. In this stage participants strive to make progress, yet are still in the dark. They are serving external requirements, pleasing an authoritarian deity.

3.Self-consciousness. This stage of awareness—the second-half-of-life phase—is entered through realization, by awakening. Those thus connected to their soul or core being are now in the light, connected finally to their higher power. Such awareness—such living and thinking—is a gift of grace. This state of awareness cannot be earned, but, like the biblical Pearl of Great Price (see Matt 13:45–46), it can be found through love and by letting go, more by subtraction than by addition.

These stages represent the journey from darkness to light, illustrated in nature by the three phases of the twenty-four-hour day: night, twilight/dawn, and day.

The central defining characteristic of spirituality is an individual’s sense of connection to a greater whole. At its heart, spirituality involves an emotional experience of awe and reverence. Such experience is highly desired, fervently sought, endlessly disagreed upon, and thoroughly fascinating. Why did our ancestors have such a wonderful idea of God? Because they lived in an awesome world. They wondered at the magnificence of whatever it was that brought the world into being. This led to a sense of adoration. This adoration, this gratitude, we call religion. Now, as the outer world is diminished, our inner world is drying up. The task of spirituality is to help us regain our sense of awe and reverence, beginning with a profound commitment to nature and continuing with an equal commitment to the whole of humanity and every living creature. If we do not love what is visible around us, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? (1 John 4:19–20).

Overview

Despite new chapters and themes, this book has many things in common with my earlier books, The Second Journey and The Church Alumni Association. While these works are companion volumes, Arc is best read as a sequel, for it borrows freely from Second Journey while following a broader and less nuanced understanding of spirituality. In Ark, I think of spirituality as a love affair with God, a relationship that, while described religiously and theologically, can also be described holistically and naturally, for in my estimation, how one relates to God is how one relates to others, nature, and oneself.

The Arc of Spirituality examines Western Christian spirituality as it developed historically through twelve phases, beginning with the spirituality of ancient Israel and postexilic Judaism and culminating in the present with secular spirituality. While these phases are not necessarily progressive in nature, they can be seen to summarize or typify particular eras or epochs of Western history. In presenting twelve phases of spirituality, my intent is not to provide detailed analysis on ways of being spiritual, but rather to offer historical and literary perspective on the distinct spiritual ethos of a cultural or historical period, often by examining the life and thought of representative personalities. As readers will notice, my approach is more evocative than analytical, suggestive rather than descriptive. My goal in this project is to present each phase of spirituality as a stage in a journey, with the understanding that somehow the journey is the goal.

This book is not a handbook on spirituality, not a step-by-step instruction manual on how to be more spiritual. Spirituality is the journey of a lifetime. While spirituality requires effort, it is also effortless, in that it requires letting go. In the journey of spirituality, progress is expected; there are steps forward, certainly, but also many more backward. The goal of spirituality is always God, and while God makes the journey interesting, it is never easy. Orthodox or traditional spirituality—called first-half-of-life spirituality—is formulaic and instructional; in other words, it can be taught. Second-half-of-life spirituality is more caught than taught, for there are no clear steps to follow or learn.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

1.What are some polarities in your life that cause you tension and conflict, and how does spirituality help you reconcile your polarities?

2.Using Diana Bass’s analysis, describe the difference between the terms religious and spiritual. If you were asked to choose between them, which would you select? Why?

3.Explain the difference between dualistic and nondualistic thinking. Do nondualists accept polarities? If so, how do they do so differently from dualist thinkers? How do the Eastern concept of the Tao and the principle of yin and yang contribute to your understanding of holistic living?

4.In one sentence, define spirituality.

5.Explain and assess Matthew Fox’s idea that spirituality does not make us otherworldly but rather renders us more fully alive.

6.Assess Deepak Chopra’s definition of spirituality as Self awareness. Explain the three stages of spiritual awareness described in this chapter. What, for you, is the difference between self-consciousness and Self-consciousness? In your estimation, is God-consciousness a transitional or a terminal phase in spirituality? Explain your answer.

7.In your own words, explain the meaning of the statement, While spirituality requires effort, it is also effortless.

1

. Bass, Christianity After Religion,

66

.

2

. Bass, Christianity After Religion,

92

.

3

. Lewis, Abolition of Man,

27–29

. In an appendix, Illustrations of the Tao, Lewis examines eight examples of the Natural Law found in legal and religious texts across cultures of antiquity,

95–121

.

4

. Fox, Creation Spirituality,

12

.

2

Covenant Spirituality

Ancient Israelite Piety

If by spirituality we mean the spiritual life of individuals, rather than the corporate expression of religious practice better classified as liturgy, then we find that much of our study of spirituality in the Old Testament is extremely limited. While the Bible introduces numerous noteworthy individuals, the emphasis is not on individualism but on corporate personality. The Bible portrays Israel as God’s people, not simply as a collection of individuals but as a divine company (a priestly kingdom and a holy nation; Exod 19:6; 1 Pet 2:9). Out of families, clans, and tribes God forms a nation, with a corporate personality: When one person suffers, everyone suffers; when one person is blessed, the people enjoy the benefits; when one person sins, the whole nation participates in the judgment; when one person receives a promise, he or she does so on behalf of the nation.

Americans today live in a pluralistic society, with diverse cultures, religions, and societal values, and we are taught to be tolerant. Ancient societies were quite the opposite; they were homogeneous, with little tolerance or diversity, and with no such thing as freedom of religion. The concept of corporate personality provided Israel with stability, solidarity, and unity during the period of its ascendency. These qualities enabled Israelites to maintain social and religious cohesion in a sea of paganism. Their laws, rituals, and values provided them with a distinctive way of life, which has preserved them to this day.

God’s Love for All Humanity: The Call of Abraham

To understand the biblical concept of community, we must go back to the story of Abraham: God started with one family, declaring a promise so wondrous yet absurd as to engender laughter, creating something in Sarah’s womb when she was unable to conceive: Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? (Gen 18:14). From Isaac came Jacob, and from him the twelve tribes of Israel. They took his name, his personality, his style of life, and the covenant he had with God. They called themselves "bene Israel," sons of Israel. The doctrine of election reminded them that they were beloved, God’s intentional creation. They were not one nation out of many, but one nation for many. In such unity there is resolve, resilience, and strength.

In the Bible, the prototypical model for the journey of faith is found in the patriarchal stories of Genesis 12–50, starting with the story of Abraham. For Jewish readers and listeners gathered for worship in synagogues to hear these accounts, the underlying significance of chapters 12–50 is not the accounts of the individual patriarchs and matriarchs but the story of Israel’s self-understanding. At the time this material is put into writing, the main question is not, Who are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph? but Who is Israel? Israel is grappling with her identity, her self-understanding as a people called by God. The theological answer is found in the doctrine of election, the notion that the people of Israel are chosen by God.

But what does election mean? Is God racist, favoring some people over others? The Bible answers this question with a resounding No. The covenant God establishes with Israel should not be regarded as an expression of divine preference for Jews over others, or as divine commission for one group to rule others, or as reward for good conduct on Israel’s part. As the history of Israel demonstrates, the establishment of the covenant is not followed by good conduct. Moreover, the Bible portrays the covenant people as sinful, stiff-necked, stubborn, and singularly inept at learning from their experiences. In fact, in the Bible the Israelites are punished repeatedly, and more severely than others are. Nevertheless, God does not nullify the contract or make it void. The biblical answer to election is given in the portrayal of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, patriarchs whose lives are characterized by the following traits:

1.They live by faith in God. In Abraham, Israel understands something about herself, that she has been called into existence by God himself, that she has been created by God’s initiative and preserved by God’s grace.

2.They are called to be a servant people. Election does not mean that some people are chosen because they are better than others, but rather that they are called to spread God’s grace. God’s purpose is seen in Genesis 12:3 (in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed); it is a universal purpose, one that moves from particulars to universals, from individuals to communities and nations. In Abraham, God brings one person of faith into existence in order that God’s blessing might be extended to all humanity. This is the Bible’s stress on election, that when God calls a people, they are called to service, and the rest of the Old Testament, and then the gospels and epistles, show what it means to be a servant people. In the Bible, the election of a people becomes the basis for good news, what the New Testament calls gospel. This is the message