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

Gregor Thuswaldner

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).