The Psychology of Christian Character Formation

Joanna Collicutt

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780334051794
• eBook ISBN: 9780334051817
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The Psychology of Christian Character Formation offers clergy and those preparing for ministry some of the potential riches provided by rapidly developing branches of contemporary scientific psychology of which they might otherwise be unaware.

Part 1 The Nature of the Endeavour

1 The F Word: What is Formation?

My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.

Galatians 4.19

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3.17–18

The use of the word ‘formation’ to describe the Christian life is a bit like Marmite. It is beloved of some and loathed by others, so much so that its appearance in conversation can serve as an identity marker,1 indicating not only church tradition but also status; for it is part of the jargon of ‘spiritual professionals’. For this reason alone, one can see why some might treat it with suspicion.

Yet aversion to the word ‘formation’ can arise from more than this. It has about it a slightly concerning resonance with the work of the sausage machine, which minces and mixes up meat and then literally forces it into a uniform mould to suit the requirements of the production company. Here ‘formation’ means violence, restriction, blandness and objectification. Something similar to this troubling picture of formation is seen in descriptions of spiritual renewal that allude to a potter moulding his clay.2 Again there is a feeling of people being bashed about and broken before they are squeezed into a shape that is not of their choosing. Surely the Christian life isn’t like this?

Indeed it is not. The image of the potter and the clay is to be found in the Bible, but not in passages that speak of the way God works in the life of the Christian. Instead it appears in the oracles that warn of God’s judgement on Israel and of his wrath on the nations such as Assyria and Babylon (e.g. Ps. 2.9; Isa. 41.25; Jer. 18.6–7). The image is invoked by Paul in his letter to the Romans (Rom. 9.17–24) in the context of an argument about Jews and Gentiles, where he applies it to God’s power over Pharaoh, crucially talking here of ‘moulding’ (plassō)3 rather than ‘forming’ (morphoō). The image of the potter and the clay is used in each of these passages to assert the sovereignty and justice of the creator God in history, particularly in relation to corrupt and rapacious political regimes. It actually tells us little about Christian formation.

So if ‘formation’ isn’t about breaking, bashing, melting, mincing, squeezing and moulding, what is it? In this opening chapter we will consider seven key characteristics of Christian formation that are vitally important to a proper understanding, but that can also be easily overlooked or forgotten. We begin with its context.

Formation happens in the context of cosmic transformation

In the ancient world morphoō was used to describe the mysterious unfolding development of a foetus. Notice how Paul uses the metaphor of childbirth when talking of formation in the passage from Galatians 4 that opens this chapter. This is a much more complex and organic metaphor than that of the sausage machine or potter’s workshop, and it is the sort of image we should keep in mind when we think about ‘formation’.

In our second opening Pauline passage, this time from 2 Corinthians 3, we find the word ‘transformed’ (metamorphoomai). In both New Testament Greek and English this word is made by taking the shorter word (‘form’ or morph) and adding a prefix (‘trans’ or meta), thus placing it in a broader context. Formation happens in the context of transformation, a transformation that involves the whole created order (Rom. 8.19–21). There is a process of radical change afoot, and part of this process is the birthing and growing of something new.

The actual word ‘transformation’ doesn’t occur very often in the New Testament. Perhaps this is because it is so fundamental to its message, so deeply embedded, so woven into its narrative that it doesn’t need to be voiced explicitly. But the idea, if not the word, is everywhere. The message of the kingdom of God is one of radical transformation: the mustard seed, the yeast, being born again, the inversion of worldly values and priorities where the first are last and the last first. Moreover, the work of Jesus is in essence radical transformation: the turning of water into wine, of want into plenty, of disease into health, of social exclusion into welcome, of sinner into saint, above all of death into life. This work is continued by the Spirit, marked definitively by the radical transformation of a group of cowering wretches into articulate and bold witnesses to Jesus at the first Pentecost. This brings us to perhaps the most important point about formation.

Formation is a work of the Spirit

‘The Lord is Spirit’, writes Paul in our second opening passage, as he concludes a complex section of a letter to the Corinthians where references to ‘God’, ‘Christ’ and ‘the Spirit’ tumble over each other. At one point in this section he describes Christian believers as letters written by Christ using the Spirit of God as ink (2 Cor. 3.2). Paul is emphasizing that the process of transformation of which his readers are a part is a special work of the One we now know as the third person of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit. In this sense the formation of the Christian can be said to be ‘spiritual’.

It is important to be clear on this Christian meaning of the word ‘spiritual’ and also its close relative ‘spirituality’, for these words are, if anything, even more controversial and Marmite-like than ‘formation’. ‘Spirituality’ is a term that has found increasing favour in western secular thought in recent years (Collicutt 2011a). It is the subject of a good deal of research by social scientists, some of which we shall explore in the course of this book. In this social scientific context, spirituality is understood to refer to certain aspects of human life: a concern with self-transcendence, a search for meaning and a sense of the sacred (Collicutt 2011b).

In more everyday usage the word ‘spiritual’ is often taken to refer to the immaterial aspects of life that cannot be directly observed or measured by science, such as particular altered states of consciousness or even a purported supernatural realm. Here the spiritual is set against the physical and the mundane. Spirituality is also sometimes seen as a facet of personal identity, so that an individual might be said to have a type of spiritual identity in the same way that she might have a type of sexual or occupational identity expressed in certain spiritual, sexual and occupational preferences and practices. Used in yet another way, spirituality may refer to a kind of talent or skill, with some individuals described as ‘spiritual’ in the same way others might be described as ‘musical’. Finally, ‘spirituality’ can be a shorthand term for those aspects of religion that are perceived as positive (Pargament 1999; Selvam 2013).

Although this multiplicity of meanings can lead to some confusion, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of them; they each acknowledge important aspects of human lived experience. But that is the point. They are concerned with the human rather than the divine; and it is all too easy for this human-centred notion of spirituality to leach insidiously into Christian discourse.

While Christian spiritual formation may well involve self-transcendence, the finding of meaning and an increased sense of what is sacred or holy, these are not its primary aim. More importantly, Christian spirituality is not essentially experiential; not concerned exclusively with the immaterial aspects of life or a supernatural realm; not a set of preferences, practices or disciplines; and not the non-dogmatic, personal part of the Christian faith (McAfee Brown 1988, p. 25). Christian spirituality is simply what its name suggests: ‘life in God’s Spirit and a living relationship with God’s Spirit’ (Moltmann 1992, p. 83). Drawing on Paul (Rom. 12.1; 1 Cor. 6.9), Dallas Willard (1988, p. 31) rightly emphasizes the physicality of this relationship by describing it as one in which embodied human beings are alive to God in the material world here and now.

In summary therefore, Christian spiritual formation can be understood as the transforming work of the Spirit in every aspect of the life of the believer. This understanding leads to two interesting consequences. First, formation is seen to involve the whole of a person’s life – embodied thinking, feeling, acting and being in relationship.4 Second, as Paul asserts in our opening extract from 2 Corinthians, because of the nature of the Spirit, formation results in freedom.

Formation involves liberation and cooperation

Contrary to the repressive and restrictive images of the sausage machine and potter, the Holy Spirit is a liberator. This is something Jesus emphasizes as he reads from the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4.18). The work of the Spirit is not to change a person into something she is not, but to enable that person to be truly and fully herself. The Spirit is, after all, also the authentic Spirit of truth (John 14.17; 15.26; 16.13).

But what does it actually mean to be fully oneself? Here an understanding of human psychology can be of help in articulating the ways in which we can end up trapped in inauthentic and dysfunctional patterns of behaviour that do not do us full justice. Sometimes these behaviour patterns are extreme and dramatically destructive of self and others. More often there is simply a chronic low level of dissatisfaction, expressed in semi-conscious awareness that ‘this isn’t really me’ or ‘I am stuck’ or ‘there’s got to be more to my life than this’. Understanding ourselves better enables us to cooperate better with the Spirit’s work of personal transformation and liberation.

Cooperation is a key aspect of the birthing that is formation. While there is no scope for meat to cooperate with the sausage machine or clay to cooperate with the potter, the process of birthing is a different matter; it will go better if the mother works with the midwife. More importantly, the conception of the foetus is the result of an act of cooperation between man and woman where mutual consent should be the norm. Notice the lengths to which Luke goes to make it clear that Mary was a willing, actively cooperating participant with the Spirit in the birth of Jesus (Luke 1.35; 1.38; 11.27–28). We might think of our intentional cooperation with God in the process of formation as our ‘discipleship’: just as a student is someone who is being educated and cooperates with the process by engaging in study, a disciple is someone who is being formed and cooperates with the process by engaging in discipleship.

This idea of cooperation is expressed even more clearly by Paul in Romans 8 where he says ‘you did not receive a Spirit of slavery’ (v. 15) and goes on to talk of ‘the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits’ (v. 16).5 Here he brings together the idea of liberation with that of cooperation. By definition, those who are free c...

Table of contents

• The Psychology of Christian Character Formation
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 The Nature of the Endeavour
• Part 2 Insights from Psychology
• Part 3 Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit
• Bibliography
• Sources for Boxed Quotations