The Interdisciplinary Study of Christian Spirituality
My Review of
The Study of Christianity
Spirituality:
Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline
by Sandra M Schneiders
Christian Spirituality Bulletin: Journal of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, Volume 6, #1, Spring 1998, p. 1,3-12.
This article is a common starting point for discussing spirituality? What is it? How do we study it? What is its relationship to various disciplines? Why is it important?
The Subject Matter of the Discipline of Spirituality
Schneiders asserts that most scholars would agree that:
“what we study, is lived Christian faith.”
However, she offers a more specific definition.
“Spirituality … is the experience of the conscious involvement
in the project of life-integration through self-transcendence
toward the ultimate value one perceives.”
She would apply this definition to all forms of spirituality including those that are not Christian or even theistic. Christianity supplies the content for Christian spirituality.
Schneider further specifies the study of spirituality by
“its focus upon experience. It does not seek to deducefrom revelation what Christian spirituality must be,or prescribe theologically its shape, …it seeks to understand it as it actuality occurs,as it actually transforms it subject toward the fullness of life in Christ,that is, toward self-transcending life-integrationwith the Christian community of faith.”
Christian spirituality defined as the study of lived Christian faith as it is actually experienced is very acceptable to most social scientists. However, most would see “a project of life-integration through self- transcendence” as imposing a too limiting theoretical perspective on the field.
Spirituality: Interdisciplinary or Multidisciplinary?
Schneider asserts that study of Christian experience as experience does not have any particular method. Rather because
“transformative Christian experience is multi-faceted… the academic discipline is intrinsically and irreducibly interdisciplinary.”
However, she claims this interdisciplinary discipline has a specific structure composed of two types of disciplines, the constitutive and the problematic.
Two constitutive disciplines supply the positive data of Christian religious experience as well as its norm and interpretative context. They are Scripture and the History of Christianity.
The remaining problematic disciplines are those that are needed for any particular study. “In other words, as Scripture and history of Christianity come into play because the experience being studied is Christian, the problematic disciplines come into play because the object of study is experience as such.”
However the Spirit forms us as Christians personally in the depths of our being and socially as members of a community. The data of Christian experience is personal and social as well as cultural. Christian life is composed of saints and communities not just words.