The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (review)

Buy this book. Or, if you are of a certain age and remember Abbie Hoffman, steal it. Or, play by the rules and acquire a desk copy. You will not be disappointed.

From the well-respected Blackwell Companions to Religion series, the Companion to Christian Spirituality is a book of well over 500 pages containing 30 essays and a concise, clear map to navigate the essays in the form of an introduction by the book's editor, Arthur Holder. Most of the essays deserve their own separate review, which is also to say that for the foreseeable future the discipline of the study of Christian spirituality will debate them, draw on them for new insight and direction, nuance them, and engage them in yet unanticipated ways as the discipline grows from young adulthood to maturity. For either neophytes or experienced devotees of the academic study of Christian spirituality, these essays will serve well as questing, questioning, hermeneutical partners in that "quiet or dramatic interaction between study and personal growth [that] is probably the most important aspect of the self-implicating character of spirituality" (Schneiders, 31).

Opening not with a definition of Christian spirituality per se, editor Arthur Holder's introduction presents rather a point of departure or reflection that he has suggested for each of the contributors as they structure their essay: the suggestion is of Christian spirituality as "the lived experience of Christian faith and discipleship" (1). Reading through the essays, it is clear that many contributors did not reflect overly long on this phrase. Nonetheless, each of the contributors do give at least a nod in the direction of the thorny issues of definition and methodology and, given the large number of essays and the short life to date of the discipline, it is to Holder's credit that the essays maintain a consistently high level of scholarship and focus.

Part of Holder's editorial success is grounded in the clear arrangement of the essays. Based in part on the protocol of the doctoral program in Christian Spirituality in which he teaches, the essays are divided into six sections that move organically from fundamental questions and issues in Christian spirituality to essays of a more topical, even experiential nature. Section One consists of a single essay on definition and method. Section Two contains essays on Christian spirituality in Scripture. Section Three relates Christian spirituality to history. Section Four is on the relations between theology and Christian spirituality. The essays in Section Five focus on Christian spirituality in dialogue with a variety of interdisciplinary partners (these include the social sciences, personality sciences, natural sciences, aesthetics, feminist studies, ritual studies, and theology of religions). Section Six is devoted to topics of current special interest (essays on experience, mysticism, interpretation, nature, practice, liberation, and the interfaith encounter). Holder ends his introduction with a cogent, concise summary of each essay.

Since its inception as an academic discipline, the most consistent, insistent, articulate and synthetic voice defining the tools and methods necessary for the study of Christian spirituality has been that of Sandra M. Schneiders. And so it is appropriate that the opening essay on approaches and methods is placed in her capable hands. Much of what she covers will be familiar territory to those working in the field, but this type of familiarity breeds respect. And though familiar, the material is essential reading for those wishing to grasp the full scope and texture of the essays to follow. In this essay the reader will find definitions of spirituality, experience, "text," and the essential qualities of Christian spirituality. Here, too, are discussions of three approaches to the study of Christian spirituality—the historical, the theological, and the anthropological—as well as her best sense of the particular academic settings in which each of these approaches might best flourish (given her scholarly credentials in the field and the inclusion of a section of essays devoted to the subject, the omission of Schneiders' reflections on the biblical approach to the study of Christian...