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“Many are saying to me, ‘There is no help for you in God.’
Selah
But you, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.” (Psalm 3:8)
Space. For several months now, “space” has been a defining part of this blog. To those who occasionally visit my blog- yet only to have found this extended “space,” may we now reflect on the spiritual meaning of “space.”
Space itself generally refers to the void, duration, or interval between two realities; or between two events; entities, or dialogues. We can define the space itself however, as a third reality. Therefore, the space can itself convey meaning, a message, even a story inherent within that space.
For instance, concerning the story of this blog: the absence of blog entries is itself part of the blog’s story, and thus its message. Should new entries emerge, the past lapse or future lapse of entries, may well contribute to the depth and meaning inherent within all future entries.
The Psalter’s call for space- selah
A biblical term that clarifies this discussion comes from the Psalms: the term selah. For many years now, I’ve been fascinated by this word that is spread throughout the Psalter. It’s meaning is ambiguous. But it’s often thought to be a musical term, perhaps signaling a crescendo, followed by a sustained interlude after a given psalm. So, assuming a liturgical background to a given psalm, the mention of selah is sometimes thought to suggest a pause after the singing. A moment of sustained pause prior to the next worship event. It might also mean a kind prayer after the psalm.
Whatever the precise meaning of selah, I’ve often thought that its purpose is to evoke a sustain pause, an interlude- a “space,” designed to orchestrate a sustained waiting upon the Lord, specifically to “see,” to hear, to perceive a dialogue with or from the Holy Spirit. Thus, a creative word of the Lord.
This brings us back to the other possible idea of selah: crescendo. For it’s also suggested that selah might be translated as, “to lift up” one’s eyes, hands, or voice; an in prayer. This gives the idea of a crescendo; an upward increase. Perhaps selah involves both ideas: a crescendo involving a lifting up, as well as a sustained pause- a space. Which would be the correct sequence: first, a crescendo followed by a sustained pause, or a sustained pause leading to a crescendo? If the crescendo comes first, then selah means that there comes a point in the progression, or procession of movement, wherein it’s best to step back and pause. This points us to the rhythmic principle of Sabbath.
Selah: God’s call to dream
“I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
It may be helpful to reflect on the emotive purpose of a musical crescendo. I tend to believe that crescendo ideally serves to indeed “lift up” one’s spirit, or imagination; to dream of things sublime, things that evoke in the sublime sense- beauty. So either way, a true crescendo often serves to inspire, in the sense of evoking one’s imagination towards the sublime. To cause one to dream. A crescendo is designed to elicit yearnings towards the sublime, even already existing, though embedded somewhere unknown in the human psyche.
“It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil;
for He gives sleep to his beloved.” (Ps 127:2)
“Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am!’” (Gen 31:11)
God built the Sabbath rhythm into creation, so that life as we now know it, cannot exist apart from that rhythm. Sleep forms part of the daily rhythm. On earth, sleep is a forced Sabbath, divinely orchestrated into higher forms of life. Particularly for humans, sleep serves a definitive spiritual purpose, which comes from God:
When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Selah” (Ps 4:4)
God’s purpose for sleep is that we may dream. God gives His beloved sleep, so that we may dream. Through dreams, God speaks: “When there are prophets among you, I the Lord make myself known to them in visions; I speak to them in dreams.” God “gives sleep to His beloved,” so that we can dream, so that through dreams God speaks to us: “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.” (Ps 3:5) The Spirit is poured out so that we may dream: “your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
Perhaps the greatest 20th century Christian influences upon corporate and business leadership was Robert Greenleaf, founder and catalyst prophet of the late 20th century servant-leadership movement. Greenleaf also thought of himself as a theologian, in that he knowingly sought to inculcate a biblical and theological understanding of leadership to the nonChristian realm of leadership; that was Greenleaf’s life calling.[1] Greenleaf’s conception of servant-leadership deeply reflected his own Quaker tradition. He demonstrates this through his thesis that a core competency a servant-leader should nurture, is the capacity of intuitively derive knowledge and direction from the rhythmic repose of sleep: in Quaker parlance- to “see” and “listen” to the inner light.
For Greenleaf, it is this openness to intuitive consciousness, which partly defines the spiritual nature of true leadership. What enables a servant-leader to lead others through the servant-leader paradigm, is not knowledge gained through techniques of coercive power and political manipulations. Rather, it is a knowledge that comes through the servant-leader’s “openness” to “inspiration” and “intuition.”[2] This capacity to apprehend “intuitive” knowledge,” is the servant-leader’s “strength” to lead.[3] This “intuitive insight,” is the “essential artistry” for the servant-leader’s leadership.[4]
Leadership therefore involves apprehending from “below the waterline” of human consciousness, a “dream.”[5] Greenleaf thus taught that sleep is “the rhythmic withdrawal, in which the vast unconscious mind can order itself to serve us.” The ability to at least be open towards engaging the dreams that emerge in this repose of sleep, should therefore be appreciated as another dimension to the human “reasoning apparatus.”[6]
So where does one begin? At the very least, nurturing dreams as a source of knowledge begins with just being aware that our “dream imagery,” are “below-the-waterline resources” which we can tap into. At the very least, we can acknowledge the existence of this kind of reasoning apparatus.[7] Therefore, we begin by faith in the reality of intuitive insights, and that somewhere behind their reality, is the Spirit of God. Eugene Peterson observes that our willingness to stop, pause, and wait, is partly what Scripture means by, the fear of the Lord.” Fearing God involves remembering that there are limitations to our human ingenuity. So we pull back, stop and “in sacred space, in sacred time, in the holy presence . . . . We become silent and still in order to listen and respond . . . . Plunged into mystery we become still, we fall silent all our senses alert. This is the fear-of-the-Lord.”[8]
What Greenleaf calls “below-the-waterline resources,” is what Jungian psychology suggests by the phrase, “collective unconsciousness.” The theory is that there lie deposited and genetically coded to humans, a vast unconscious memory, and thus reservoir, of human experiences, aspirations, ideals, and knowledge. Major components within the “collective unconsciousness” are archetypes. An archetype is often defined as an image which is virtually, universally common throughout human cultures and histories. Thus, a “type” that “arches” over the vast collective reservoir of human civilisation, culture, and consciousness. More specifically, archetypes refer to primordial images, oral or literary characters, patterns of circumstances, and symbols that seem to universally recur and span throughout countless cultures and human histories.
Obviously, archetypes can function in either constructive or very destructive ways upon the human psyche. Their influence upon human behaviour has thus been sometimes defined as “scripts;” scripts that have been handed down to successive generations of individuals through families, communities, societies, cultures and civilisations.[9] It is thus the existence of these archetypes within our collective unconsciousness, which makes symbols of any kind not just powerless symbols, but powerfully influential forces in human life. When a symbol resonates with a particularly active archetype, the symbol becomes highly evocative within a person’s psyche.
This subconscious power of archetypes over the human psyche, clarifies the powerful role of Scripture can and should play, towards nurturing within us a space to dream. For the believer, sleep, dreaming, and Scripture reading (along with work, play and worship) belong together in one symbiotic rhythm. We need dreams to read Scripture, and Scripture to nourish our dreams.
“I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.” (Ps 17:17)
One role therefore of Scripture, is to nourish our dreams with its world, its language, its imagery- with the archetypes of Scripture. Carl Jung argued that since archetypes “make up the groundwork of the human psyche,” we can only “live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols.” In a moment I’ll suggest the existence of biblical archetypes; their existence, which gives validity to Jung’s thesis. I suspect however, that there are demonically destructive archetypes. Yet this again clarifies a psychological role Scriptures should play in the believer’s life: We read Scripture so that its archetypical images can saturate both our conscious and subconscious psyche.[10]
The Scriptures are replete with archetypical symbols (e.g., hunger, thirst, garden, wilderness), metaphors, and story patterns (e.g., journey motifs, tragedy, redemption stories, etc). For this reason, and given the postmodern turn towards symbolic reasoning, I think that in our day and age, one indispensable resource for every preacher’s library is InterVarsity Press’ Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. I believe that it was through a satanic deception that believers came to read the Bible as a systematic data-bank and outline of proof texts. We do better to read Scripture as God’s fuel for the imagination; for through Scripture God shapes and thus sanctifies the human imagination (Phil 4:8). Scripture is thus a door opened to another world, a story so told that its world shapes our world; thus making our life part of the same story, because we’ve become transported into the biblical story.
So again, the Bible primarily communicates God’s redemptive story through a vast reservoir of human archetypical symbolism. The Holy Spirit uses this archetypical character of the biblical story world, to make the Gospel spiritually resonate with its hearers. Modern advertising similarly works through this same principle of resonance. Advertisements are choreographed to “resonate” with the beliefs and values their target audience. Moreover is that effective speakers are highly effective because of their ability to feel, and appropriately resonate with the temperament and mood of their listeners.[11] In a similar way, the Gospel story resonates with the hearer or reader of God’s Word when it connects with archetypes latently active within their worldview. In a similar fashion, the archetypical symbolism of Scripture can “feed” our subconscious, so that we can dream dreams, which the Holy Spirit gives.
Let’s for a moment relate this discussion on archetypes to the biblical purpose of typology. In his text, The Divine Embrace, Robert Webber sought to re-acquaint modern Evangelicals with the ancient hermeneutic of typology, as another primary medium through which Scripture conveys its story; through which the Bible’s two testaments are tied together. Webber offers a helpful definition of typology: “picture language.” Webber furthermore calls typology a “visionary way of reading the Bible.” Most important is that through typology, Scripture bridges the human need, “to see, to dream, to imagine . . . “[12]
“Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord . . . Have you not known? Have you not heard? . . . youths faint . . . but those who wait for the Lord . . . shall mount up with wings like eagles.”
Sleep provides a space- a pause wherein we can dream, and through dreaming, find inspiration derived from engaging our archetypical aspirations, meaning those aspirations long ago embedded by the Holy Spirit into the human psyche. If God’s purpose for giving us dreams is to raise our vision towards heaven, then perhaps, as Madeleine L’Engle suggests, that is why we sometimes in our dreams, find ourselves able to fly.[13] The CEO leadership model has somehow warped the minds of Christians into the belief that God gives one dream, one dream to one leader, and that the flock finds its rest through aligning their lives with the one man’s, or woman’s, dream. It’s true that a good leader is someone who has a dream. Yet the promise of Pentecost however, suggests even more so a very different relationship between a leader and the dreams that come from God. From the perspective of Pentecost, leadership involves raising the intuitive consciousness of the people, that they may receive dreams from the Lord. God gives sleep to His beloved, that we may dream.
So we dream that we may fly, that we may soar into the heavens like the eagle, and beyond. The experience of flight that is oftentimes dreamed, may well then archetypically symbolise our inherent aspiration towards things that are transcendent; things that God long ago imprinted into our “collective unconsciousness.” Finding ourselves flying over the earth during our dreams, may thus also signify as C.S. Lewis once observed, “our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside.”[14] Lewis calls this longing, a “symbol” of that transcendent reality which Scripture calls, “glory.”[15]
I believe that the most important typological event and image in all Scripture, is the Exodus Event. Just as it so did throughout Old Testament history, so also is it the Exodus that primarily shapes the New Testament portrayal of redemption through Christ. Now the Exodus event draws on the archetypes of redemption, and liberation; images of an oppressed people, “rising from the ashes.” Let’s apply this discussion to the historical emergence of Pentecostalism. Just as early Pentecostal preaching was highly typological, so the Exodus story once deeply shaped the whole story world of Pentecostal life, and of the Pentecostal preaching of the Gospel.[16] The practical historical result throughout the entire world was as Donald McGavran perennially observed, “redemption and lift.”[17] Not only spiritual, but social, educational, and economic lift has been the fruit of redemption through the Classic Pentecostal preaching and church ethos. Perhaps no doubt, because of the enduring influence that African-American spirituality and aspirations had upon the formative years of the movement, the typology of the Exodus event gave the Pentecostal ethos a strong emphasis upon liberation from every form of oppression.
Proclaiming and empowering people conversely the bound and the marginalised towards the full fruit of redemption in all its complete spiritual, social and economic ramifications, comprises the prophetic calling of Historical, Classic Pentecostalism. Classic Pentecostalism thus inculcated within the believer’s psyche, what Walter Brueggemann calls the “prophetic imagination:” the intuitive ability to envision realities that challenge prevailing but oppressive perceptions of reality.[18]
The most thoughtful proponents of Pentecostalism have long foremost and unreservedly identified the movement, as a “prophetic movement.” This is because we have believed that the main purpose of Spirit-baptism is to empower believers with the Spirit of prophesy; that we may speak God’s Word by the power of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, nonPentecostals often struggle with the Pentecostal emphasis on tongues, when prophetic speech seems far more congruent regarding the manifestation of Spirit-baptism. But traditionally, Pentecostals have always possessed an intuitive confirmation that tongues is also prophetic speech, and simply serves as the core imagery for what prophesy is all about (e.g., Acts 2:1-21).
Tragically however, the prophetic spirit within Pentecostalism, has often degenerated into a misplaced and misguided emphasis upon “personal words of prophesy,” or into speculative foretelling, which often have no resonance with the authentic “spirit” and purpose of biblical prophesy. Historically speaking, I believe that whenever the ethos of Pentecostalism has been most nobly expressed, it has characteristically fulfilled the task of Brueggemann’s conception of “prophetic imagination and ministry,” which “is to bring to public expression those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply, that we no longer no there are there.”[19] Within Classic Pentecostalism, we have facilitated the experience of liberation for every believer, as biblically typified through the redemptive theme of Exodus, through accepting every Spirit-baptised believer as a viable voice and minister within the oral liturgy of the gathered community. So given its embryonic oral / narrative culture and theology, the very ethos of Pentecostalism classically gave socially marginalised people, a social as well as spiritual “Exodus.”[20]
Pentecostal “liturgy” may sound like an oxymoron. Yet at heart of Classic Pentecostalism has been an inherent oral liturgy within gathered worship times. For through both the courage and freedom to let go of the assured theological or performative correctness of all things fully scripted in print, the orality of Pentecostal liturgy possessed profound “social and revolutionary implications.” These implications were expressed through its empowerment of every believer into full immediate and vocalised participation within the gathered community, regardless of education, race, or social strata.[21] This has been foremost facilitated through the freedom to corporately speak and sing in tongues within the gathered worship event, accompanied by mutual expectancy for the Spirit’s ministry to manifest through any member of the gathered Church. Comprised of “churches of the poor,” people of all social and racial strata became reconciled into one community. This made Pentecostalism a spiritual and sociological “Vision of the Disinherited.”[22]
So perhaps one of the perennial strengths of Classic Pentecostalism was its capacity to empower its converts, particularly those converts coming from marginalised backgrounds, to dream. More specifically, to empower them with the intuitive capacity to dream of alternative futures, which wholly expressed the far-reaching implications of redemption (spiritually, socially, racially, economically, and politically), according to the biblical archetype of Exodus. When we have been at our best, the core fruit of what Pentecostalism has achieved, was that it empowered powerless individuals to receive from God- “dreams” of “new futures” so long denied.
Many thoughtful observers of today’s internet culture, have identified that contributing to the internet’s historical transformation into a globalised communicative platform, is that it has empowered millions of “voiceless” people with a platform to be “heard:”
“It’s about . . . pent up hopes and fears and dreams. . . This fervid desire for the Web, bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. . . . The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice.” [italics mine].[23]
Thomas L. Friedman argued that this experience or discovery of an “empowered voice,” made possible through all the technology associated with the free flow of information through the internet, is one of the major forces that has “flattened the world into 21st century globalisation. More important for this discussion however, is Friedman’s comment on the phenomena of “uploading;” “‘uploading’ responds to a very deep human longing for individuals to participate and make their voices heard.” (italics mine).[24]
The present phenomena of the internet (along with all its accompanied technology) as a popular medium of communal expression, provides us a modern parable- a metaphor of one of the most enduring and transcendent qualities of Classic Pentecostalism. For at its best, Pentecostalism has been what Steven Covey calls leadership at its best: an enabling, “empowering voice,” purposed towards enabling the “voiceless,” to find and express their own voice.[25] To reiterate, what we presently see transpiring all over the world through the global online empowering of ordinary people, is a metaphor and parable of the true calling of Pentecostalism: the enabling of people to dream. And with the capacity to dream, to then experience liberation from prevailing realities, that have barred people from entering into an empowered future indicative of God’s dreams for His people, and even all creation.
I would therefore say that in its early and formative years, even the Word of Faith movement, prior to its latter capitulation and assimilation into the modern culture of consumerism and self-actualisation, provided one authentic and viable “stream” of the Pentecostal vision for redemptive experience.[26] But the eventual failures and misguided directions of the Word of Faith movement, was really just an extreme manifestation of the greater malaise that plagues the contemporary Evangelical church world. The malaise I refer to, is the crisis of the modern Church’s capitulation into the world’s values of self-actualisation, numerical success, entertainment mores; all coinciding with a disillusionment towards the art of engaging theological reasoning and tradition. Also contributing to the malaise was abhorrence towards any critical reflection upon the inherent paradigmatic and philosophical premises shaping both the world’s cultures and the present existence of the Church within any given historical and cultural context. This disillusionment and repugnance towards critical reasoning further degenerated into even an arrogance encouraged by its own pastoral leaders, towards engaging any potential fruit- if even from a critical footing, from the greater ancestral and theological traditions of the Church.
Because Classic Pentecostalism became so deeply embedded within the narrative of modern Evangelicalism, the present waning of the Pentecostal movement largely reflects the present crisis of Evangelicalism. At the heart of this crisis was its failed attempt to wed and define Christian spirituality through varied expressions of the world’s culture, such narcissistic aspirations towards self-actualisation, modern consumerism, sensate entertainment, pragmatism, and managerial and business science.[27] Consequently, all in the interest of relevance, the language- particularly of Evangelical churches, have become assimilated into the language of this prevailing world’s culture.
This assimilation into the world’s “language,” all no doubt with the original intent to contextualise and freely use the “God-given ness” of truth, has now unfortunately, vastly displaced the language, symbols, and imagery indicative of the biblical story world. Ironically, much of this came about through a sincere but non-critical appropriation of “truth;” an appropriation that virtually lost all appreciation towards the biblical theme of wisdom, which involves submitting even a God-given truth to the “fear of the Lord.” The fear of the Lord: giving space to the reality that as a check to the pride of human ingenuity, the Lord may at times work- and want us to work, in ways radically contrary to every natural law or truth perceived through the apparatus of human knowledge, ingenuity and innovation.
I believe therefore that the journey towards spiritual renewal will indeed reflect George Linbeck’s plea that the Church re-evaluate how far its language and symbolic consciousness has strayed from the biblical story of redemption. This means that Pentecostalism, like its sister movement of modern Evangelicalism, will only find its redemption from this crisis, through a “return to Israel’s story” as “the template” by which we shape our narrative.[28] This means we allow our story to be definitively shaped by the story of Israel’s calling into God’s redemption. This is not easily achieved. The challenge is hindered by the political and emotional influence dispensational theology has had upon the eschatology within particularly conservative Evangelical churches and ministries. A second obstruction are weak hermeneutical methods which tend to flatten all biblical texts into equally authoritative texts upon Christian doctrine and spirituality- without recognising the Christ event as the one definitive hermeneutic towards reading the Scriptures.
Consequently, Evangelicals are often not aware of what the “minors” and “majors” are, when it comes to appropriating the biblical language, metaphors, and symbols upon the Church life and ministry. I should say that not all biblical metaphors are of equal weight! When we say that “all Scripture is inspired and useful” (I Tim 3:16), this does not mean that all Scripture is of equal authority. Some Bible texts and themes are of greater authority than other texts and themes. For the believer, the Gospels are our highest authority within the biblical canon.
Now one strange enough example of this malady, the failure to rightly appropriate the Bible metaphors and imageries upon the life of the Church, has been the tendency of Christians to interpret, talk, and identify the Christian identity and mission according to the more “warfare” oriented metaphors of Scriptures, obviously which are primarily drawn from Old Testament texts. Our innate connection with the more militant, “warrior” imageries of Scriptures may in fact mirror many of our attendant and contemporary “resonance” with world’s language of power, achievement, and success. Our ease and quickness to use “warfare” imagery for shaping how we “do” and define “church” may reflect how deeply we are captivated by the world’s spirit of goal-driven quest for power, quantitative success, domination, and “lording,” which Jesus so warned against when the disciples jostled for power over amongst themselves (Matt 20:25-26). Another major hindrance to ensuring that the Church’s story is “shaped” by the story of Israel, is our reading of “Bible prophesy” into every event associated with the political nation-state of modern Israel. I will address this matter further along, in my discussion on art and creation as two other avenues for intuitive reception of God’s creative word.
Therefore, it is imperative that we discern the weightier composition within the biblical narrative that is to shape and must shape the language of the Church. Again, I am referring specifically to the story of Israel’s redemption into God’s counter-cultural and pilgrim people, foremost illustrated and biblically narrated via the typology of Exodus, “as the template by which the Church” should shape its own identity and history.[29] The Church must realise that if she is to allow the story-world of Scripture to shape our life story, then the language of the Church, and its culture, and symbols, will inevitably shape our life as a visible counter-cultural community.[30]
Allowing our life to be shaped according to the major typological themes which narrate the Biblical story-world will indeed establish clear demarcations towards any aspirations of relevance- even resonance, to many of the questions, concerns and mindsets that define the cultures of the world. Yet the good news is that what comes to the Church that is primarily shaped by the biblical story-world of God’s redemptive drama, is that the believer’s collective unconsciousness is fed not primarily by the world’s symbols, but by the archetypical symbols indicative of God’s story. Only then can the Bible serve its purpose towards empowering the believer with the intuitive capacity to dream. For with the intuitive capacity to dream- which is parcel to the promise of Pentecost, comes the capacity to envision futures, realities, prophesies and creative words of the Lord, which point beyond this present age.
The evocative purpose of selah
“One thing I asked of the Lord . . . to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)
“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.” (Psalm 50:2)
Now to focus again more specifically on the evocative purpose of the selah within the Psalter. The purpose of the selah is evocative; to evoke within us, a sustained pause. I suggest that this purpose of the selah arises from the Psalms’ existence as art. For every psalm in the Scriptures, by virtue of its existence as either a poem or a musical composition- is a work of art. For both good poetic and musical compositions are art in the truest sense of the word. If truly aesthetic in their nature, both are often mathematically balanced in a way that simply eludes beauty.
“‘Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. . . . Then the word of the Lord came to me . . . ‘Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.’” (Jeremiah 18:2-4)
The selah thus serves to ignite the artistic purpose of the Psalter. As art, this means the Psalms are in fact highly spiritual pieces of art, or art-works that are highly spiritual in purpose and meaning. Art, “is that which invites us into contemplation, a “pausing;” for “art arrests attention.”[31] I’ve drawn this link between the selah of the Psalms and art, from reflecting on a recent reading of L’Engle’s work, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. L’Engle argues that “all true art is incarnational.” Her thesis is that if true art inherently evokes the human psyche towards the sublime, then true art is inherently spiritual in both nature and purpose. The reality of art is thus a God-given; God granted humankind the capacity to produce art, as a tool for facilitating human consciousness towards Himself. So according to L’Engle, when an unbelieving artist, even an atheistic artist, produces an art that genuinely evokes beauty, that artist becomes “a servant of the glory which he does not recognise;” for “unknown to himself there is ‘something divine’ about his work.”
L’Engle’s reflection on this incarnational role of true art reflects the Jewish belief in the exiled shekhinah: “God’s glory,” otherwise often called by Jewish mystics, the “sparks of the divine,” exiled within all things, especially within the soul of man. While refraining from embracing the Jewish idea of the exiled shekhinah as a Christian doctrine, we can find its imagery a useful metaphor for clarifying the inherent sacredness of God’s creation, and God’s redemptive purpose towards the present created order. In other words, the exiled shekhinah provides us a metaphor we can appreciate not as a theological maximum, but as a metaphor of the sacralistic worldview- as existing within its early “Jewishness,” which the Church has lost through its historic evolvement out of Judaism.
A digression is needful here, on appreciating the Jewish origins of Christianity. I am not touching on matters of political ideology or speculations on Bible prophesy regarding the present nation of Israel, or even commenting on how Israel and the Church are theologically connected. I am simply suggesting that the Bible is a Jewish writing, and reflects a worldview that in many ways parallels an outlook we still find reflected in Jewish mysticism and recent Jewish thinkers such as Martin Buber and Abraham J. Heschel. There is a “Jewishness” to the biblical worldview, which was historically lost through the Church’s early movement into the European world. But which if recovered, this long lost “Jewishness” can help us even better connect with the postmodern world.[32]
I think it also relevant to mention here however, that if the modern Church is to recover its symbolic consciousness with the biblical story of redemption, as typologically told in Scripture through the imagery of the Exodus event, then we need to recover our identity as one people of God within God’s election of Israel. A vast segment within modern Evangelicalism has tended to believe that God has two different peoples and “callings” or “elections.” First is the calling of Israel, and then the calling of the Church. The calling of Israel is often wholly identified with the political nation of Israel, as a direct expression of God’s election of Israel. Roman Catholic teachings and mainline oriented or liberal Christians have tended however, to believe that the Church has displaced Israel, as the “new Israel. “
I believe that there is a third and more accurate understanding than either of the two common doctrines. This third view is that rather than understanding the Church as “displacing” Israel,” the Church is nonetheless, an “enlarging” of Israel.[33] In other words, having as Paul says, “been grafted into” the lineage of Israel as a people (Rom 9-11), the Gentile Church exists in complete “continuity with Israel as the one people of God.” In other words, the Gentile segment of the Church, has through God’s mercy, been adapted into the covenantal calling made with the racial family of the Jewish people; we now wholly share in Israel’s calling and election.
Therefore, neither the election of Israel occurred for sake of creating the Church, nor has the Church ever displaced Israel as a temporal arrangement. But rather, both comprise God’s eternal calling forth of a people, one people before creation, which since the coming of Christ is now called the Church.”[34] It is based on the reality that before creation, God ordained only one people- now called the Church, which Paul speaks of a second “grafting.” The first “grafting” was of the Gentile believers presently becoming “grafted into” the ancestral lineage and election of Israel (Rom 11:17). The second “grafting,” occurs however, when the Jew turns to Christ: “even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again” (Rom 11:23).
Recognising that the Church is not a displacing of Israel, nor a people distinctively of a different election from God’s election of Israel, thus clarifies the meaning of Paul’s argument that all down through redemptive history, there has been such a thing as a “spiritual” Jew: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart- it is spiritual and not literal” (Rom 2:28-29).With then every Jew who turns to Christ, Thus Paul says, we are “one people;” we are both “Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:28-29).
This discussion has obviously steered towards a theological direction. Yet my reasoning and need to do so, is to reiterate why it’s imperative we insure that the language and symbolic consciousness of the Church, particularly in settings of gathered worship, reflects, dramatises, and expresses the biblical story-world; most importantly with reference to the greater biblical themes of our spiritual redemption. For again, appreciating the spiritual evocative purpose of our dreams, of art, and of creation, reflects an early Hebraic perspective towards creation, which is not without biblical teaching and precedence.
The language and metaphor of the exiled shekhinah helps us appreciate Christian spirituality, as a messianic spirituality. This is a worldview that reflects our Jewish ancestry as believers engrafted into the people of Israel, and sharing in their Exodus and redemption out of Egypt, now in pilgrimage towards the Promised Land. Yet now also we live in the Age of the Spirit, sustained by the Spirit’s presence as ‘streams in the desert,” with our hearts and imaginations intuitively postured towards the Spirit’s Word, that is breaking out through all the entire and present “groaning” of creation.[35]
“The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God . . . the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay . . . the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” (Romans 8:19- 22)
So to return to the evocative purpose of art: It is through the exiled shekhinah that God qualifies man and ordains man as His co-partner in creation. The exiled shekhinah is the “creative spark” exiled within the soul of all men.[36] So actually, the creative work of art symbolises the inherent artistry of the human spirit. Human creativity, especially via artistic creativity, thus reflects the Creator’s imprint upon the human soul. The exiled shekhinah, the “sparks of the divine,” may well comprise God’s image in us- the imago dei. The exiled shekhinah may be that which lies behind Augustine’s prayer, “You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”[37]
Listen to Martin Buber’s reflections on the shekhinah: Because of the Fall, God’s glory, the shekhinah which is in exile and thus imprisoned in all things, is “tied at the bottom of every thing.”[38] To be created in God’s image, foremost signifies then, that mankind is God’s partner in creation. We’ve been commissioned as God’s partner in His ongoing work of creation. When therefore a human deed truly manifests God’s glory, it is in itself, a release, a liberation of the shekhinah in exile.[39] Releasing the creative spark thus began when God gave Adam the task of naming all the creatures (Gen 2:19-20). Creation itself points to the creative artistry of God; creation is God’s poetry. God is the potter, we are the clay. When we cooperate with God’s creative work, His shekhinah imprisoned within us, is further liberated; redeemed from the imprisonment of sin. This signifies the redemption not only of humankind, but of the entire cosmos. Man’s capacity to create art is thus a parable of God’s calling of man to be His partner in the ongoing work of creation and recreation- the redemption of creation from its own exile.
It is important to stress here however, that not everything, which might be call art, is in L’Engle’s perception, true art. True art- art that reflects the reality of God, will reveal “cosmos in chaos;” “all art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos.” A false masquerade of art however- only reveals “chaos.” L’Engle infers that chaos only points to the demonic reality also lurking within creation. It serves no evocative purpose, insofar as to evoke a sustained pause for a creative word of the Spirit.
The cosmic selah
“The heavens are telling the glory of God . . . Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.” (Psalm 19:1)
L’Engle’s analysis of true art as an incarnational expression of “cosmos in chaos,” inherently designed to elicit from us a sustained pause, points to the grander aesthetic purpose of creation itself. Jesus in fact encourages us to “consider” the “lilies of the field,” in all their “splendor,” that we may perceive spiritual truths from contemplating their beauty.[40] We thus live in a symbolic universe. To say that creation is symbolic does not mean that it’s not real, but rather that the reality of creation is deeply animated with spiritual realities. This is a sacramental meaning of the term “symbolic. For the very “realness” and goodness of creation, is as Lewis explains, a “transposition” of God’s yet to be finished creation; for this “lower reality,” is presently “drawn into the higher,” and “part of it.” Yet as accurate and real as God’s present world is, it is only a sketch; a real sketch, but still not a complete representation. For there are yet even still more “colours,” lines, and shades presently being filled into creation.[41]
Creation animated with the reality of God
“‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 23:24)
“In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 18:28)
“In him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17)
He sustains all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3)
The extent of God’s presence goes all the way in and through the very molecular structure of the universe. As the Scripture says, it is He who “sustains all things” in their place. “No atomic particle is so small that God is not fully present to it . . . no space is without the divine presence.[42] Yet God is the “Wholly Other,” than anything He has created, and He is “Wholly Other” than the very space He set aside for creation to exist before Him.
In this symbolic universe, the divine purpose of whatever is good, is that it would stir the sublime already resident within our human psyche- towards a consciousness of God. Creation does this by evoking our imagination. And by posturing our imagination towards creation, we can discern the sacred in and through it.[43] So if creation is inherently symbolic, then the purpose of beauty is to evoke spiritual realities. That’s why the Psalm reads, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” The reason is that creation is animated with the reality of God, and conscious of God’s reality. The Psalmist suggests that living creatures “seek their food from God” (Ps 104:21, 27), and live by the Spirit of God (Ps 104:29-30). It may well be that at least living things, possess some kind of “God consciousness.”
Now modern Christians, particularly Evangelicals, generally display an indifference towards personification in the Bible. They also find little “relevance” or a certain paganism reflected in so much of the Church’s ancient traditions regarding the sacredness of creation. But the ancient Hebrews, were perfectly comfortable with directing their speech towards created things, even enjoining both inanimate and animate entities, whether on earth or in the heavens, to join them in praise to God. We can appreciate St Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures, where he describes the sun, moon, earth and air, fire and water, life and death, as “vehicles of the divine.”[44] For like Francis of Assisi, the Psalmist speaks to creation, and calls creation to praise the Lord:
“Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!” (Psalm 148:2-10)
God’s Spirit animates the whole created order. Creation pulsates with the Spirit’s life. The same wind of God, which created the earth, which parted the waters at the Red Sea, was observed to be the same wind, which comes out of living creatures as breath; that is blown through forest trees, that drives the dust through the desert that wreaks havoc through the storm. That wind, is God’s Spirit.[45]
Around the turn of the 20th century, Rudolf Otto (Idea of the Holy) observed that a spiritual phenomena or event often shared amongst people regardless of religious persuasion or even a lack thereof, is what he called an aesthetic encounter with a mysterium tremendum. Creation itself evokes spirituality amongst all peoples; this is not a Christian spirituality. To say that creation is animated with God’s presence does not imply that it leads to a spirituality rooted in the biblical story of God’s redemptive drama. Neither does acknowledging the spiritual dimension of creation imply a natural theology; meaning a revelation which can lead people back to the Triune God. Yet beauty and sacredness of creation has the inherent power to evoke within people, an aesthetic encounter with a mysterium tremendum. And there have occasionally been people who became Christians because they encountered the Lord Jesus, without any contact with the Church!
It is the aesthetic quality of creation itself, which makes spirituality an innate part of human culture. And even more so, a part of human intuitiveness towards spiritual realities. As Webber observes, It is entirely possible for an atheist, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a New Ager to be “taken by the beauty of a sunset . . . overwhelmed by the wonder, majesty, and beauty of the Grand Canyon and then to experience a mystery that lies beyond the seen world. . . . Anyone can have this kind of ineffable, numinous experience.”[46] We can say therefore that the encounter with God’s divinity in creation is real; while not necessarily redemptive.
What’s usually encountered is not God in Christ, the triune God, but only a shadow of His glory; the vestiges of God’s presence in all things- the shekhinah in exile, the same shekhinah which is foremost manifest in and through humankind, is at the same time “exiled” throughout all creation. It can become manifest in the most simplest of things, as “it whispers to us in the course of every ordinary day.”[47] Again, all of creation is a faint through very real and good foretaste, of “that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.”[48]
In Eastern Orthodox theology, these “vestiges” of God, which Jewish tradition calls the exiled shekhinah, are called God’s “energies,” which exist “within everything and outside everything.” But these “divine energies” are not God’s essence.[49] They are what God told Moses, His “backside,” not His “face” (Exodus 33:23). This is why Paul says that creation “groans as if in the pangs of childbirth.” (Rom 8:22) It is God’s shekhinah, hidden within all the elements of creation, which sustains life itself. In his sermon, “The Weight of Glory,” C. S. Lewis suggested that every element we take in for our physical sustenance is itself a vestige of God:
“At present, if we are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives directly on God, but the mind and, still more, the body receives life from Him at thousand removes- through our ancestors, through our food, through the elements. The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures . . . . What would it be to taste the at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy.”[50]
So to recap, the encounter of God’s mystery through nature- which can often be attested by people of all religious or spiritual traditions, or of no spiritual tradition, is testimony to the symbolic nature of creation, which provides us a mirror reflecting God’s existence. This universal experience simply points to the evocative purpose behind the aesthetic beauty of creation: to create in us a pause, that we might step back and intuitively connect with what the Holy Spirit is saying: to receive from the Spirit of creative word. The Spirit does this through a symbolic and animated universe that speaks to us at both a conscious and subconscious level. Within the trinity, it is primarily the Holy Spirit’s role to evoke our imagination towards eternal realities. This helps us understand the archetypical nature of so many metaphors of the Spirit we find in the Scriptures, such as “blowing wind, pulsing breath, trickling oil, raging fire, pouring water, beating wings and (we may add) the streaming of light.” All these images serve as “archetypical symbols which cause us to go underground, deep below the surface of life; they awaken an awareness of areas that we sometimes call intuitive”[51] When the Spirit awakens our intuitive consciousness, He speaks into us His creative Word.
Coming back to the defining art as “cosmos in chaos:” to say that art is “cosmos in chaos” means also that art- even the beauty of creation, will engage the theme of tragedy. To reflect on tragedy is not a reflection on chaos. The beauty of creation can sometimes be haunting. For the reality of tragedy clarifies the beauty of redemption. The tragedy of creation may also serve the evocative purpose of eliciting from us a sustained pause. For again, God’s glory- the shekhinah, though because it is in exile, is nonetheless, “tied at the bottom of every thing.” So L’Engle prays:
“Slow me down, Lord. . . . I will never understand . . . if I do not slow down and listen to what the Spirit is telling me, telling of the death of trees, the death of planets, of people, and what all these deaths mean in the light of love of the Creator.”
L’Engle calls this kind of “listening,” a “questioning.” And, “This questioning of the meaning of being, and dying . . . of the singing of melodies . . . and “the death of green autumn,” is also “part of the deepest longing of the human psyche, a recurrent ache in the hearts of all of God’s creatures.” L’Engle concludes: “The Holy Spirit does not hesitate to use any method at hand to make a point to us reluctant creatures.” With reflection upon Psalm 19, L’Engle then quotes the poet E.E. Cummings:
“Now the ears of my ears are awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.”
Epilogue
There are divine selahs- places of space, wherein we creatures are divinely prompted to step back and pause, which God has for the fertility of our imaginative spirit, choreographed throughout the movements of creation. I’ve here explored at length how these selahs are orchestrated in dreams, art, and creation. There is also the archetypical imagery in our dreams, the aesthetic quality of art in its manifold expressions, the existence of both inanimate and animate entities that comprise creation, including its present rhythm of death and birth. All these exist by the will and presence of God’s Spirit, which He choreographs for the evocative and spiritual purpose of opening our intuitive consciousness towards the creative Word of the Spirit. A more simpler and biblical way of saying this, is that the Holy Spirit uses dreams, art, and creation to speak spiritual realities into our spirit. Dreams, art in all its many expressions, and creation itself, are three major avenues through which the Holy Spirit speaks a creative word to us.
Here are two or three simple suggestions for reflection. How should we respond to our dreams? First, perhaps this begins with simply acknowledging that the capacity to dream is a gift of the Spirit. Also, metaphors and imagery naturally call not for preciseness in meaning but open-ended possibilities. Dreams are comprised of symbolic imageries and metaphors. So rather than approaching our dreams, with the resolve to interpret them, particularly with the idea that they have a singular purpose or meaning, we can simply concede that they are there. We can then reflect on those dreams, and process them within our spirit for many years hence.[52] Third, dreams are not without dangers; our “subconscious memory” is darkened from the reality of sin. There’s a lot there- which when it emerges from our dreams, certainly does not reflect the dream God gives.
Yet finally, the subconscious power of archetypes clarifies even more why we need to cultivate the symbiotic rhythm of sleep, dreaming, and Scripture reading. We need to nourish our capacity to dream with the Scripture’s story-world, with it’s language, its imagery- with the archetypes of Scripture. When that happens, they may then resonate with those more noble archetypes long hidden embedded within our collective unconscious- that again are, but another manifestation of the “divine sparks.”
With regards to art and creation: their evocative purpose was long ago widely embraced and taught, all the way from the second century, through the very best of spiritual renewal movements during the medieval age, the teachings of Calvin, the Puritan movement, and in sacramental traditions. We within the free church tradition, and particularly we Pentecostals, have historically cultivated an aversion towards any redemptive purpose within the arts and creation. There are understandable reasons for this, which are not necessarily without good reason; it was because of our eschatological “urgency” and hope towards a better world, which fueled our missionary proclamation, that we neglected what we thought were lesser priorities.
The modern Evangelical Church removed these long embraced, and really- Scripturally ordained roles within Christian spirituality when, it slid towards modern pragmatism, and a revived platonic mindset that saw tradition and the material realm as hindrances to the “move of the Spirit.” In doing so, it ironically displaced as “nonEvangelical,” all forms of symbol, metaphor, art, wonder, mystery, and imagination, with marketing techniques, entertainment-driven worship services, and cerebrally-oriented preaching and teaching.[53]
We are now slowly realising that in doing so, we’ve stripped from the Church its collective soul; the depth of spiritual mass that was built through centuries of spiritual formation- the soul through which the Holy Spirit speaks into the spirit of the Church. To restore their role within the life and worship of the Church, is to let run back within the Church, a deep river that feeds our soul that we may dream again. Art and creation have long been acknowledged as God-given arenas for spiritual meditation, complementing the more formal arenas of “spiritual formation” through prayer and Scripture reading. [54] Along with our dreams, these form essential dimensions to authentic Christian spirituality, wherein we can pause, and in that pause, see and hear a creative word form the Lord, that comprises a “new future” and fulfilling of someone’s dream.
“Now the ears of my ears are awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.”
[1] Robert Greenleaf, “Leadership and the Individual: The Dartmouth Lectures,” in On Becoming a Servant-Leader, eds. Don M. Frick and Larry C. Spears (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996), 336.[2] Greenleaf, Servant-Leadership (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1977), 15, 23.
[3] Greenleaf, “The Ethic of Strength: Manuscript for a Book,” in On Becoming a Servant-Leader, 32-36.
[4] Greenleaf, “Business, Ethics, and Manipulation,” in On Becoming a Servant-Leader, 321-336.
[5] Greenleaf, “Leadership and the Individual: The Dartmouth Lectures,” in On Becoming a Servant-Leader, 321-336.
[6] Greenleaf, “The Ethic of Strength: Manuscript for a Book,” in On Becoming a Servant-Leader, 35.
[7] Greenleaf, “The Ethic of Strength: Manuscript for a Book,” in On Becoming a Servant-Leader, 71.
[8] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2005), 41.
[9] Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, HarperSanFranscisco, 1990), 36.
[10] Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, Tremper Longman III, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 2000), xvii.
[11] Del Tarr, “The Role of the Holy Spirit in Interpersonal Relations,” in Theology & Theory, vol 1 of The Holy Spirit & Counselling, eds Marvin G. Gilbert and Raymond T. Brock (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1985), 21-22.
[12] Robert E. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 127-129.
[13] Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press; Crosswicks, Ltd, 1980), 111.
[14] C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory, and other Addresses (New York, NY: HarperSanFransico; HarperCollins Publishers, 1949, 1980), 42.
[15] Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” 34-42.
[16] Allan H. Anderson, “Global Pentecostalism in the New Millennium,” in Allan H. Anderson, and Walter J. Hollenweger, eds. Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 210-218f.
[17] Murray A. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Peterson, Called and Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1991), 113, 150; Donald A. McGavran, Understanding Church Growth. 3rd ed. ed. C. Peter Wagner (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 209-220.
[18] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress; Fortress Press, 2001), 39-40.
[19] Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 65.
[20] Anderson, “Global Pentecostalism in the New Millennium,” 210-218f.
[21] Anderson, “The Pentecostal Gospel and Third World Cultures.” http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/anderson/Publications/pentecostal_gospel_.htm (12/23/2004), 1; Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Develoopments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 269-275.
[22] Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979); Anderson, “The Pentecostal Gospel and Third World Cultures,” http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/anderson/Publications/pentecostal_gospel_.htm (12/23/2004), 1-2; Walter J. Hollenweger, “Pentecostalisms,”(www.epcra.ch), 12.
[23] Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and Dvid Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto (Cambridge, Ma: Perseus Books Publishing, 2000), 36, 39; quoted in Steven R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (New York, NY: Free Press; Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2004), 6.
[24] Thomas L. Friedman, “The Ten Forces that Flattened the World,” in The World is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2006), 124.
[25] Covey, The 8th Habit, 5-6, 26, 31, 100.
[26] Derek E. Vreeland, “Reconstructing Word of Faith Theology: A Defense, Analysis and Refinement of the Theology of the Word of Faith Movement,” Presented at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. The Pneuma Foundation (www.pneumafoundation.org), 18-20.
[27] Webber, The Divine Embrace, 221-222, 229.
[28] George Linbeck, “The Story-Shaped Church: Critical Exegesis and Theological Interpretation,” in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 50.
[29] Linbeck, “The Story-Shaped Church,” 50.
[30] Webber, The Divine Embrace, 224.
[31] Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life (New York, NY: HarperPerrinial; HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), 286.
[32] Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, “The God of Israel and the Renewal of Christianity,” in The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 105-133; for a discussion on how the Hellenistic worldview eventually displaced the Jewishness of the Church, see: Clark H. Pinnock, “Overcoming a Pagan Inheritance,” in Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness Carlisle, UK; Paternoster Press; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 65-111.
[33] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 164-165.
[34] Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic; InterVarsity Press, 2006), 23-25.
[35] Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, 128-129.
[36] Martin Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1967) 43, 48.
[37] Augustine, Confessions, trans. by Henry Chadwick (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3 (Book I, 1.1). 3.
[38] Buber, On Judaism, 106.
[39] Buber, On Judaism, 48.
[40] Ryken, Wilhoit, Longman III, “Beauty,” in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 83.
[41] Lewis, “Transposition,” in The Weight of Glory, 103, 113.
[42] Thomas C. Oden, The Living God, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 (New York, NY: HarperSanFransicso; HarperCollins Publishers, 1987), 67.
[43] Moore, Care of the Soul, 289.
[44] Webber, The Divine Embrace, 179.
[45] Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, KY: 2000), 256.
[46] Webber, The Divine Embrace, 109.
[47] Buber, On Judaism, 6, 85, 106.
[48] Lewis, “Weight of Glory,” 43.
[49] Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge & London, UK: James Clarke & Co., 1957), 74, 89.
[50] Lewis, “Weight of Glory,” 44.
[51] Fiddes, Participating in God, 263.
[52] Moore, Care of the Soul, 292.
[53] Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books; Baker Book House), 67-68.
[54] Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998),180-185.
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