Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 5 Number 2, August 2004
Special Issue: Jacques Derrida’s Indian Philosophical Subtext
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Waaijman,
Kees. Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods. Leuven: Peeters, 2002, pp. 968,
ISBN 90-429-1183-2, €45.
Reviewed
by
Gordon
College, Wenham, MA, USA
The
word “spirituality” became extremely fashionable in the 1980s when the
so-called New Age movement reached its peak. Consequently, “spirituality” and “esotericism” have
almost become synonymous. Nowadays, many larger and smaller religions try to
make use of the word’s popularity by putting their own spin on it. The
Boston-based Church of Christ, Scientist (i.e., Christian Science), which owns
the www.spirituality.com website, promotes
its version of spirituality. Bill Bright, the Founder of “Campus Crusade for
Christ,” encapsulated his evangelical faith in the enormously popular “Four
Spiritual Laws,” a booklet that was translated into more than 730 languages.
In recent decades, the World Council of Churches and the Catholic Church have
also emphasized the importance of spirituality.
Kees
Waaijman, a Carmelite friar, professor of spirituality, and director of the
Catholic Titus Brandsma Insititut in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, has written an
extensive and systematic scholarly study of the manifestations of spirituality.
Divided into three parts, Waaijman’s book addresses various forms of
spirituality, deals with methodological questions, and elaborates on four
distinct research methods.
Following
Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, the author identifies 54 different forms of
spirituality and divides them into three groups: lay spirituality, schools of
spirituality, and countermovements. Waaijman then looks at the historical
development of these expressions of spirituality within the Judaeo-Christian
context. He systematically explores the course of life and its spiritual
intersections. In the chapter on schools of spirituality the author also
discusses religious experiences in Buddhism and Islam, but the main focus
remains on Christianity, and particularly Catholicism. Unlike the earlier
chapters, his treatment of countermovements seems sporadic and random. With so
many to choose from, it is not quite clear why Waaijman selected the prophet
Elijah, Symeon of Emesa, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as examples of religious
antagonists.
The
second part of the book addresses fundamental characteristics of spiritualities,
“the basic categories which open up ‘the thing itself’ of a certain region
or being” (307). Waaijman then analyzes semantic manifestations of
spirituality in various contexts (biblical, Hellenistic, and modern). Finally,
he explains how spirituality can be approached methodologically. He identifies
the form-descriptive, hermeneutic, systematic, and mystagogic approaches as the
most appropriate methodologies.
In
the concluding part, the author concentrates on the strengths of the four
research strategies. Although his arguments in support of them are lucid, his
restrictions to these approaches is problematic. Particularly, when it comes to
interpreting spiritual texts, hermeneutic methodology can no longer be viewed as
the one and only legitimate perspective. Even though hermeneutics has always
been closely tied to scriptural interpretation, it suffers from limitations. In
recent decades, vital impulses from comparative literature, anthropology, and
philosophy have enhanced biblical scholarship. It is a pity that Waaijman
ignores these fruitful intersections and unnecessarily reduces the scope of his
important project by lapsing into ideological narrowness. His study would have
especially benefited from a familiarity with the discussions of contemporary
literary criticism.
The
strength of the book lies in its systematic phenomenological description of
spiritual experiences. Although he occasionally touches on non-biblical
spiritualities, Waaijman mainly explores Judaeo-Christian manifestations of
spirituality, while suggesting universal patterns. Jewish and Christian scholars
in particular will welcome this groundbreaking volume. When it comes to
interpreting spiritual texts from different perspectives, however, one may want
to consult more insightful works, such as A. K. M. Adam, ed., Handbook of
Postmodern Biblical Interpretation (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000) or David
Jobling, et al., eds., The Postmodern Bible Reader (Oxford: Blackwell,
2001).