Transformational Theology

Satiated with consumerism, technological gizmos, and frenetic activity, people of all stripes are exploring the mystical realm. We
all resonate with moments of elevated wonder triggered by a beautiful sunset, rapturous music, or the birth of a baby. In a depersonalized age, image bearers are searching for relationship with something or Someone larger than themselves that will ease
the dullness of daily life and energize the soul. Christians, in particular, hunger for more intimate experience of Jesus Christ and
greater awareness of the Spirit’s ministry within.

From where inside are you reading these words right now? If you are reading from your thinking mind alone, then what you
see will be run through the sieve of your mind’s refl ective categories and conditioning. What you see will also be affected by the
mind’s “ego coating,” its often unconscious way of skewing the words’ meanings to fi t its protective desire for the familiar and
the securing.

Knowledge—not faith, mere true belief, or one’s tradition—is what gives people the right to act and teach responsibly and with authority. We give dentists, not accountants, the right to fix our teeth because we take them to have the relevant knowledge. We receive the ideas of Willard, Foster, and Nouwen because we take them to know what they are talking about. When contributors to this journal share their spiritual experiences, we readers take them to know at least what their experiences actually were. Without such an assumption, we would have no confidence in their descriptions of their own
experiences. Imagine a writer saying that he did not know what his own experience of forgiveness
was like, but he was going to describe it to us anyway!

My childhood home was a row house (what we would now call a townhome) with seven people—five children and two parents—with five bedrooms and one bathroom. Our living quarters were full. One would not expect such an already crowded home to welcome guests, and certainly not overnight visitors. But it did.

I liked the idea better when it was only talked about in the leadership meeting. Putting it into action was difficult. That idea, the “three-minute guideline,” suggested that in the last three minutes before the church service began and in the first three minutes after it ended, leaders would greet only people we didn’t know. While I’ve always felt empathetic toward newcomers, I found I really just wanted to talk to the people I knew. It was . . . easier, more fun.

The 2008 American Religious Affiliation Survey made headlines (and the cover of Newsweek) with the announcement that the single fastest-growing category of American religious life is “no affiliation.” In less than twenty years, the percentage of people who listed “none” as their faith identity nearly doubled, from 8% to 15%.  This category has grown so quickly that it now outnumbers all but two Christian denominations. The percentage of people who call themselves Christian has dropped 11% in the same period. Meanwhile, affiliation with virtually every major Christian denomination plunged.  The “nones” appear to be beating the “nuns,” noted author Stephen Prothero, although he demurred somewhat from the conclusions generally drawn from the survey.

To anyone who knows me even superficially, my writing an article on contemplative prayer might seem ludicrous. By temperament I am far from being a natural contemplative. I am active (often impulsive), restless, and non-reflective. And anyone who knows my spiritual life well knows also that I have always struggled with disciplined prayer, in fact, with spiritual disciplines of any sort. How, then, could I be one who dares to offer others anything about this seemingly most advanced of all forms of prayer?

After graduating from high school, James Finley did something unusual. He became a monk. For the next six years, he lived at the Abbey of Gethsemane and learned from one of the great contemporary spiritual figures, Thomas Merton. Now married and the father of two, Finley has built a career as a teacher, clinical psychologist, writer, and speaker. He is the author of Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, The Awakening Call, The Contemplative Heart, and Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God.

The mysterious triunity of God is the ontological foundation for unity and diversity, mutual communication, and loving interpersonal communion. As God’s image bearers, we are fundamentally relational beings who were created for the summum bonum of an intimate relationship with the living and personal Lord of all visible and invisible things. No other person, possession, or position could ever satisfy the longings of the human heart, since God implanted eternity within the inner fabric of our being (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

The weekly bulletin of our Evangelical Presbyterian church indicated that a three-person renewal team from the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver would begin an eight-week education course the following Sunday. When my wife, Elsie, suggested that we attend this unexpected class offering together, I demurred, responding that as an evangelical seminary professor, I was uncomfortable with some of Rome’s beliefs. Since our tradition possesses the correct theology, the last thing I needed was to be instructed by a Jesuit priest. I had even taught an entire seminary course on Roman theology, pointing out what I judged to be the theological and ecclesial pitfalls of Catholicism.