Spiritual Discipline, Discipline of Spirituality: Revisiting Questions of Definition and Method

As a professor of spirituality in a school of ministry, I am challenged daily by students for whom the idea of spirituality as an "academic discipline" is a hard sell. Why, they ask, should we study spirituality academically when what is really of interest is being spiritually transformed? While not every such complaint needs to be taken seriously, there is a nugget of genuine concern in these questions. Meanwhile, academic specialists in spirituality are far from settled concerning many fundamental questions of the discipline. "Exactly what is it that our discipline studies?" "Under what unique aspect do we study it?" "What methods are uniquely appropriate for this?" In this essay, I describe an approach that is designed to address questions raised by practitioners regarding concerns over the seeming conflict between academic study and spiritual transformation. Ultimately, I believe this approach may have an important contribution to make, not only in academia but on a larger scale as well. ¹

In perhaps the most important recent article reflecting on fundamental questions for this discipline, Sandra Schneiders defines the material object of the study of Christian spirituality (what is studied) as "lived Christian faith" and the formal object (the aspect under which it is studied) as "experience." ² I both agree and disagree with this definition. I agree that, on a practical level, what we study is lived, experiential spirituality. In this essay, in fact, I will make that assertion even more strongly than Schneiders does. I will also argue, however, that we need to think more carefully about what is involved in navigating between lived experience and disciplined study. An academic discipline that would name its object simply "experience" is in danger of becoming hopelessly mired in a morass of practical and philosophical problems. Since spirituality as an academic discipline is rooted in lived experience it cannot totally avoid that morass, but rather must strive all the harder to name its object in a way that makes it possible to navigate intelligently in this rather slippery terrain. To that end, I contend that any disciplined study of spirituality will need to draw on the resources and language of philosophy--despite the fact that, at times, these tools may seem alien to the life-concerns that are spirituality's focus.

As the metaphor of navigation indicates, it is also a question of method. According to Schneiders, the study of spirituality is "interdisciplinary by nature" and does not have a method of its own. What she then goes on to say about the necessity and specific character of interdisciplinary work in the field of spirituality is accurate and helpful. Yet, while there may not be a single "method," I think it is possible to name a "methodological principle" specific to spirituality as a discipline. To review my most significant conclusion: I will attempt to reclaim the notion of "interiority" as fundamental to both the object and the method of the discipline of spirituality. I will begin by offering a brief account of the path by which I have come to this conclusion.

"What Am I Doing When I Teach Spirituality?"

I learned from Bernard Lonergan (who probably learned it from Aristotle) that asking the right question is the motor of progress toward insight. Lonergan's almost childlike yet incredibly productive question was, "What are we doing when we are knowing?" A productive first question for my own search for insight is, "What am I doing when I teach spirituality?" The question is about "teaching" not because I have a purely practical (as opposed to theoretical or research-centered) interest in spirituality, but because, in my context, teaching is the concrete activity that mediates between my own spiritual living, and my academic research and writing within the discipline of spirituality.

I teach at Catholic Theological Union, a school of theology and ministry where essentially every class is "multicultural...