Christian Spirituality in Africa

Biblical, Historical, and Cultural Perspectives from Kenya

Park

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781621895251
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Christian Spirituality in Africa holistically approaches the convergence of East/West, and Christian/Traditional African religions. Its theological, historical, and anthropological perspectives contribute to a balanced understanding of Christian spirituality/transformation in an African context.

1

The Subject of Spirituality

The subject of spirituality is vast, from Christian spirituality to New Age spirituality. Differences exist even within Christian spirituality, such as is displayed by the Catholic, Anglican, Reformed, and charismatic branches of Christianity. Increasingly, people are more interested in personal experience of their belief than in organized religions. Hence, spirituality as a personal experience of faith plays a significant role in people’s lives whether they are religious or not.

Dallas Willard defines spirituality as follows: Spirituality is simply the holistic quality of human life as it was meant to be, at the center of which is our relation to God.1 Francis Schaeffer states that “true spirituality” is a positive inward reality and outward results.2 Marie McCarthy’s definition of spirituality is in-depth and broad: “Spirituality is broader and more encompassing than any religion. It is an expression of one’s deepest values and commitments, one’s sense or experience of something larger than and beyond oneself.”3 To summarize the above definitions, the subject of spirituality is holistic. It encompasses the whole human experience with God in the center. It includes both inner life and outer manifestations. These elements of spirituality provide us with some initial ideas of spirituality. Our discussion of spirituality in this book is about Christian spirituality.

Etymology of Spirituality

The English word “spirituality” originated from the Latin term spiritualitas, an abstract word derived from the noun spiritus and the adjective spiritalis, as translations of the Greek pneuma and pneumatikos respectively. In medieval times, the Latin word spiritualitas gave rise to such forms as esperitalité, espirituauté, and espérituaulté in French, and spiritualty or spirituality in English.4

In Pauline theology, pneuma or spiritus are not contrasted with soma or corpus (body), but with sarx or caro (flesh). In other words, “Spirit” or “spiritual” are not antonyms of “physical” or “material,” but of “all that is opposed to the Spirit of God.” Therefore, the contrast is between two ways of life or attitudes to life. “The ‘spiritual’ is what is under the influence of or is a manifestation of the Spirit of God.”5 The “carnal” is what is opposed to the working and guidance of the Spirit of God.6 The Christian life is “life in the Spirit” (Gal 5:25).

Historical Development of Meaning

In the ninth century, a new meaning of spirituality was introduced by Fulda, most likely a monk, who used the word spiritualitas as opposed to corporalitas or materialitas (materiality), thereby changing the Pauline moral sense of the word to an entitative-psychological sense. This shift of meaning brought in the idea of disdain for the body and matter in the later movement related to spiritual life.7 Then, in the twelfthth century, scholasticism made a sharp distinction between spirit and matter. The word “spiritual” was applied to intelligent creation, that is, mankind, as opposed to non-rational creation. Losing its original Pauline moral sense, “spirituality” adopted a new meaning more radically opposed to corporeality or matter. However, the new meaning did not replace the old meaning completely, but rather the two meanings co-existed in the thirteenth century.8 For example, while in the majority of Thomas Aquinas’ texts the word spiritualitas is related to the Pauline idea of life, according to the Holy Spirit or what is highest in the human, in a good number of texts, it is still used as opposite to corporeality or matter.9 The thirteenth century was also the time that saw the split between theology and spirituality or between the reasoned expression of faith and its lived experience.10

In the seventeenth century the word “spiritualite” became established once again in France in reference to the spiritual life. It was used positively to express a personal, affective relationship with God. However, it was also used pejoratively of enthusiastic or quietistic movements11 and eventually disappeared from the vocabulary of Roman Catholics in the eighteenth century due to a suspicion of those movements. Free religious groups outside mainline churches were the main users of it in the nineteenth century. In the early decades of the twentieth century, “spirituality” appeared once again among Roman Catholics in France and passed into English through translations. The increased use of it in this period was related to the
attempts to distinguish dogma and the study of spiritual life as well as an
increasing emphasis on religious consciousness and the experiential
dimension of Christian life.12 Historian Philip Sheldrake points out that in recent decades there has been more emphasis on human experience in the general approach to theology, and this brought about a movement from the static “spiritual theology” to the more fluid “spirituality.”13 Among Protestants, the word “spirituality” came to be used from about 1960.14

Spiritual Theology vs. Spirituality

In the early patristic and early medieval periods, before the later split between it and theology, spirituality was the purpose of all study, both sacred and profane. Spirituality was lived theology and theology was articulate spirituality. In the High Middle Ages, however, this integrated approach was destroyed as theology moved from the monastery to the university and became a philosophically elaborated academic and scientific specialization. Mystical theology as an experiential knowledge, and wisdom of God acquired in prayer through scriptural meditation, became an exclusively monastic experience. Sheldrake explains the period as follows:

The period from the twelfth century onwards in the West saw a process of development in the approach to the spiritual life which may be characterised as one of separation and division. There was, first of all, a division of spirituality from theology, of affectivity from knowledge. Secondly, there was a gradual limitation of interest to interiority or subjective spiritual experience. In other words, spirituality became separated from social praxis and ethics. And finally, although it has been touched upon only indirectly, there was a separation of spirituality from liturgy, the personal from the communal, expressed most graphically by a new attention to the structures of personal prayer and meditation. Through these divisions and separations, an interest developed in specific experiences and activities: prayer, contemplation and mysticism.15

Protestant orthodoxy became suspicious of the word “mysticism” after the Re...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: The Subject of Spirituality
• Part 1: Biblical and Christian Traditional Spiritualities
• Part 2: Development of Christianity in Kenya
• Part 3: African Culture and Religion
• Bibliography