There needs to be a dynamic tension between theology and spirituality
rather than a separation of the two or the promotion of one over the
other, according to a leading American professor of Christian
spirituality.
Professor Arthur Holder, who is Dean at Berkeley University in California, made his comments to CatholicIreland.net
before he delivered the third Dr William Johnston SJ Memorial lecture
in spirituality at All Hallows College in Dublin recently.
His talk was attended by 240 students, academics and members of the public.
Entitled ‘Faces of Spirituality: Experience and Text’, the lecture
explored the relationship of religious experience to sacred text and
looked at when experience becomes a challenge to the authority of the
text.
Ahead of his lecture, Professor Holder told CatholicIreland.net that he wouldn’t go along with the “very common separation of spirituality and theology or spirituality and religion.”
He said “spirituality without theology is just raw emotion while
theology without spirituality is not the knowledge of God – it is just
dead words on a page.”
Referring to the spirituality movements of the last 50 years since
Vatican II, he said what they had done was to crack open the shells that
have been built around the theology and they had allowed people to ask
questions afresh.
Of the new awareness of the global connectedness of people throughout
the world, he said this gave believers an added responsibility. “We
have to be accountable for our brothers and sisters in the wider family
than we were when we didn’t have the internet and therefore didn’t have
to think about them.”
A sense of openness and connectedness can lay the foundation for a refreshment, he commented.
“That is the challenge for every generation: what is the word today,”
and he added, “It is spirituality, as I understand it, which makes that
possible because the study of spirituality is to be attentive to what
is happening in the world and the need to be aware of where people are
hurting; where the challenges are in the world – all the kinds of things
that people in their daily lives deal with every day.”
“I think theology is very important but it should not just be about
shouting words down to people and telling them what to do. There needs
to be a real dialogue. I would hope that is the direction that we are
going in.”
Elsewhere, discussing the nature of freedom, Professor Holder suggested that it is only meaningful within a structure.
“So freedom is not the opposite of structure; it is, as Dante says at
the end of the Paradiso, ‘In his will is our peace.’ It is finding your
place in the universe – your place in God’s plan. It is where you are
meant to be – that is freedom.”
“Freedom is not the possibility of doing what I want; that is just
the possibility of freedom because I haven’t done anything yet. I need
to make a choice. Real freedom comes from choosing in harmony with God’s
will for me and God’s will for the Universe.”
The Anglican priest, who is an expert on Bede told CatholicIreland.net
that he grew up as a Methodist in the southern part of the United
States in Atlanta, Georgia but joined the Episcopal Church after
university where he had been a member of to “an intentional Christian
community that would in some ways fall under the rubric that we now call
New Monasticism.”
Of Bede, he said he greatly appreciated the manner in which the
medieval scholar reads a biblical text. “He sees multiple meanings and I
love this.” Citing Bede’s commentary on the Song of Songs, Professor
Holder said he takes a particular verse and examines a number of
possible ways to interpret it and its richness of meanings.
“He believes that every verse has the potential to have many
meanings. What is the proper interpretation of scripture – it is the one
which leads to love. And if it leads to love, then that is the right
interpretation. And if it doesn’t leave to love, no matter how
scientific and how much it might be based on the linguistic
interpretation, it is wrong if it doesn’t lead to love.”
He also praised Bede’s appreciation for the contributions of
different language groups, different cultural groups, different
theological perspectives of his time and he suggested that this was
something that was “very pertinent to our world today as we are becoming
more and more cosmopolitan and as we realise that the world is
everywhere.”
In his lecture at Woodlock Hall in All Hallows College, Professor
Holder addressed the packed hall on religious experience beyond the
sacred text.
In his address, he said that if experience as sacred text has
sometimes been controversial in the history of Christian spirituality,
then this was even more true of experience beyond the text.
The fear has been that religious experience will lead people into
beliefs and practices contrary to scripture, or to the denial of the
authority of scripture itself.
He cited four different ways in which experience might be said to go
beyond the text and one of these referred to the kind of experience
untutored persons are afforded through mystical visions or revelations
giving them insight into the things of God even without the benefit of
Holy Scripture.
He said that at first glance this might seem to be the case with
Juliana of Cornillon, a thirteenth-century French beguine best known as
the originator of the Feast of Corpus Christi.
According to the Latin hagiography which is a reworking of a lost
French version by her friend Eve of Liège, Juliana had rapturous visions
of Christ and the Trinity in which she understood “all the articles
pertaining to the Catholic faith . . . , she had no need to consult
masters or books about them.”
But he underlined that the hagiographer also tells us that Juliana
had studied the Bible in both French and Latin, and was familiar with
the writings of Augustine and Bernard.
“Many supposedly untutored recipients of divine revelation, both
women and men, turn out to have had varying degrees of instruction in
the sacred text,” he said.