What is "Affective Spirituality" anyway?

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In the DMIN program that I previously directed, our various cohorts generally present an affective or heart-based approach to Christian Formation and Discipleship. Many people have had questions about this thing called "affective spirituality." 

No, we didn't spell it wrong. And despite Grammarly constantly flagging the word and suggesting "effective," we use this word intentionally. Let me explain why this is.

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Western Christianity, taking seriously the mission of God, often focuses on effectiveness, measuring what we have accomplished quantitatively, asking questions such as — How many? How much? How long? Who best?

Yet the heart of God (manifested in Christ, revealed through the Word by the Spirit), from which his mission flows outward, is not centered on mere outward effectiveness or numerical expediency. Quite often, his plan is advanced counterintuitively. And refreshingly, in the Kingdom of Heaven, the end doesn’t justify the means.

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 on Unsplash

Contrary to conventional wisdom, God extends his redemptive mission using the most unlikely methods and unworthy messengers. He consistently chooses the youngest, the poorest, the exiled, and the culturally powerless. God delights to make his case through the humbled and transformed hearts of those whom the world might have labeled, marginalized, and dismissed as adulteresses (Tamar, Rahab, the Samaritan woman at the well), scandalized (Ruth, David, Mary Magdalene), "just women" (the first witnesses of Jesus' resurrection), as ignorant fishermen (several disciples), scoundrels (Jacob), even cheats and economic oppressors (Matthew/Levi). The Lord also transformed some of his most hostile enemies into great defenders of the faith (Naaman the Syrian, Nebuchadnezzar, and Saul of Tarsus), and he still does the same thing today. 

Our Triune God is more concerned about transforming our hearts by pouring his love into us by the Spirit (Rom. 5:5) than about how eloquent our sermon is, how much money we raise, or how many friends and followers we might have. Without what are our efforts ultimately judged to be ineffective, and our very person found to be empty?

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3)

The critique of our form of Christianity is not that we should do less, but that we should respond to his love more relationally than ever before. This critique is also found in the Book of Revelation, as Jesus wrote (via John) to the Ephesian church — a church committed to missional effectiveness and Stoic endurance in the face of opposition. Yet they failed to notice that they had missed something along the way.

“‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (Rev. 2:2-7 ESV, emphasis mine)

In the process of attempting to fulfill the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20), we can put it before the Great Commandment (Matt. 22:36-40). Our efforts at discipleship can become externally focused through sin-management initiatives in hopes that it will eventually be smuggled inside our hearts, instead of internal transformation in response to God's love that naturally works its way outward in our lives, changing everything in its path. For Jesus said, 
     “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: 
             just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 
  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, 
                                                  if you have        love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) 

Our love testifies clearly to whom or what we serve.

What do you mean by Affective Theology?

In the remainder of this article, Dr. Ron Frost offers an answer to the questions about affective theology, or as he prefers to call it, “affective spirituality,” which was originally posted on Dr. Frost's Spreading Goodness blog.

He writes…

“What do you mean by ‘affective theology?’ I’d never heard of it before I met you.”

It’s a fair question. I first found the label in Heiko Oberman’s The Dawn of the Reformation, where he wrote of fourteenth-century Christians whose “suspicion of speculation” led them away from prior theological streams. They preferred “an affective theology in its place’’ that, while not being anti-intellectual, was more heart-based. It reflected Franciscan reforms and “a new longing for a comprehensive system of thought” (pp. 7-8). Older traditions were broken: reform was needed. Oberman viewed this impulse as a continuing element in later reforms.

In taking up this reform, I also prefer the term “spirituality” rather than the more generic “theology” because the former underscores the Spirit’s role in the Spirit-to-spirit bond of regeneration. And the church today still needs a more comprehensive system of thought that receives the Bible as the guiding Christian resource for sound faith and practice.

Affective Spirituality has three prominent features. A simple Biblicism for one. In John chapter eight, Jesus called on those who are “truly my disciples” to “abide in my word” by embracing the truth he offers to a capsized world. Second is the recognition that hearts, rather than the human will or volition, explain every action. This dismisses the Greek-Stoic anthropology that makes autonomous choice—the “free will”—a basis for human identity. Third, the reality of God’s Triune relational existence is central: we have been born of the Father, Son, and Spirit, who pours out his inherent love “in our hearts” by the Spirit. So that a transforming love for God and neighbor is active in all who know him.

Let me touch on each of these very briefly.

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First, the Bible comes to us as God’s gift of self-disclosure. And our hearts must respond to him for faith to exist. I’ll offer my own story to illustrate this. I grew up in a Christian home with sound church training. But it was simply moral and creedal content, and that didn’t move me. By the time I reached my middle teen years, I was ready to leave it all behind. Yet at the same time, I wanted to hear from God! So I finally tried reading the Bible despite my skepticism. Then, in reading the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the text came alive! I met Jesus there as a living voice speaking through the written words.

While conversion through immediate Bible reading isn’t normative, it is suggestive. Faith comes by hearing words about Christ, yet the same words can be barren for one reader and lively for another. And if we presume God—whose Spirit awakens the soul to “hear” the Scriptures in a life-giving way—isn’t being arbitrary, we’re left to locate the problem in “hard” and skeptical human hearts. And addressing that is another conversation!

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Second, we need to recognize the heart as God’s locale for communing with us, where His Spirit lives after our conversion. But despite the huge weight of heart-focused references in the Bible, the default view of the soul in most churches is that love is an act of our will rather than a response of the heart.

Listen, for instance, to the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing—an influential fourteenth-century guide to spirituality: “Will is the faculty by which we choose good after it has been approved by reason, and by which we love God … and ultimately dwell in God” (Penguin, 138). It sounds lovely, but it’s not what the Bible actually teaches. The truth is that none of us seeks after God like that.

The Bible says the opposite: we only love God because he first loved us. So here’s a bold challenge: read the entire Bible through in just a few weeks and mark each reference to the heart and to the will. See where the real weight lands.

Third, we have the Trinity: God’s singular being with his three eternal distinctions. And his eternal loving communion is the basis for both creation and redemption. Yet we won’t have a sound grasp of these two actions if we haven’t explored the Bible’s Trinitarian roots.

In my own experience, it was the seventeenth-century Puritan Richard Sibbes who turned on the lights for me—his fascination with the Trinity as explained by the early Church Fathers and as applied in the relational insights of Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin was invaluable. Michael Reeve’s lively summary, Delighting in the Trinity—or, in the UK, The Good God—is a good starter for filling in this blind spot.

If we summarize the whole we have this: affective spirituality is a faith that arises in those who are assured by the Spirit’s personal witness to our hearts of God’s Scriptural promises: he loves us personally and he’s invested in transforming us into the likeness of the Son in order to share God’s love with us through all the ages to come. And as Jesus prayed in John 17, love among believers will show a skeptical world that God is alive and well.

Finally, if you aren’t there already, I encourage you to open your heart to Christ’s affective ambitions. He looks for those who have a heart like his own.

"Mourning Has Broken": Living in the Blessed Sorrow and Joy of Jesus

As pastors and Christian workers, have we given the kingdom values of Jesus (as expressed in Matt. 5) that are often quite counter-cultural to both our communities and congregations? 

My doctoral cohort in cross-cultural engagement intentionally took an entire course to consider how to apply Jesus' beatitudes to our lives and larger ministry contexts. Here is a brief consideration of just one such kingdom value— mourning.

This post was originally an assigned response to “Blessed are those who mourn”—not those who are spiritually comfortable by Paul Louis Metzger.

Are you comfy?

The second beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted” continues Jesus’ highly counter-cultural teaching about the values of the kingdom of heaven. Unfortunately, this beatitude, according to Dr. Metzger, “often devolves in our present context to read, ‘Blessed are the comfortable, for they will never mourn.’ If we are honest, many of us—including me—are tempted to prize consumer comfort in the religious and secular domain over most anything.”

Cemetery on Mount of Olives
(Photo: Vikki Dueker)

So, what do we mourn as we follow Christ? Let me suggest at least four areas of mourning that might apply. We mourn...

• Human suffering and loss are being experienced personally and within our community.
• Sin—both our own sin and the sins of others. We are sorry to have been faithless in our relationship with God.
• How our own sin has impacted the lives of others at every level.
• Societal and systemic injustices in the world will grieve us deeply as we enter into the suffering of others.

These kinds of mourning are woven into the life of a disciple of Jesus. In fact, we are used to going to our own funerals. It is not like we are trying to be Tom Sawyer and attend our own funeral in order to hear what people say about us, but rather in order to say something about our Savior. Let me explain…

We die once in baptism. Baptism is like a funeral service for our "old nature," which died with Christ on the cross, and now in the sacrament of baptism, we are holding the funeral service as the "old nature" goes down into the water, symbolizing our burial with Christ (Romans 6:3-4; Colossians 2:11-15). In baptism, we are declaring that we are dead to sin and alive to Christ.  We are making public our decision to submit to Christ and to leave behind the sinful things of the past.  We are saying that we have determined that, because of Christ's work on the cross, we will no longer allow sin to reign over us but instead will submit our lives to Christ, actively living for him.

We die daily…as Jesus' followers in many different ways as we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11; 1 Cor 15:31). We "overcome" by living a crucified life, not by living a comfortable and self-confident life.

We enter into the heart of mourning, the emotional suffering of Christ, for lost and hurting people. Each time the world rejects the love of Christ offered through us, we mourn for their sake, for their loss. They may even celebrate when our lives and ministries are ended [I am reminded of the passage in Revelation 11 where the world celebrates the death of the two witnesses], but even as we mourn their missed opportunities we trust the loving plan of God, and it is there that we find lasting comfort (2 Cor. 1:5).

Jesus the Messiah was "a man of sorrows" (Isaiah 53:3), for he saw the human condition more completely than anyone else ever has. Yet, he is also described as one anointed with "the oil of gladness" more than all his brothers (Psalm 45:7; Hebrews 1:9). How can this be? It is possible because he was in perfect union with his Heavenly Father. Those early morning conversations he had alone with the Father, and filled with the Holy Spirit, charged him with joy unspeakable which spilled over into unmatched gladness.

Just as Jesus could reverse the normal flow of uncleanness, touching even the lepers and healing them, so too he could touch the world, dwelling in our midst, and mourn over our stubborn blindness, our pain, and even death itself, without becoming morose. His pervasive good humor and full humanity reverse the flow and bring healing and comfort to those who mourn—even today. His very message is one of gladness (Isaiah 61:3) to those who mourn. 

Our own comfort, true comfort, is not found in avoiding the suffering and grief-filled world, but in joining Jesus as he engages with it. As Dr. Metzger noted in his original post, “The rest Jesus promises is the rest of sharing in his burden, carrying his yoke. It is indeed rest, for when Christ is Lord in their place, he bears the brunt of the burden (See Matthew 11:28-30).”

Photo: Greg Dueker

If I may finish by borrowing a metaphor or two, there are times when mourning seems to break forth in overwhelming waves—a tsunami of sorrow—that seem to turn our respective worlds upside-down. Yet, in the very midst of grief, when we come to the end of our own resources, we get a glimpse of eternity and see that in the suffering of Christ, mourning has broken. 

There is a morning after our mourning.

Hope for Tomorrow

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)

Spirituality in the Word

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The following post was originally published by Dr. Ron Frost on his A Spreading Goodness blog. It is reprinted here with his permission...

I’m reading and rereading books on Christian spirituality these days. It comes with my prepping to teach on the subject. With that as context, I’ll offer a brief reflection on two widely appreciated works that promote spiritual transformation.

One, Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, lists disciplines under the headings of Inward, Outward, and Corporate. The second, the late Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines, endorsed Foster but added his own emphasis on the human body as the proper focus of change. Willard saw the actions of Jesus—his nights of prayer and his long fast in the wilderness—as models for we should follow in bringing about life change.

The strength of both works is their shared call for real change: both insist that change starts with reformed behaviors. In their critique and invitation, they challenge habits of offering glittering doctrines and Christian principles that don’t really make a difference. Ideas that tickle ears and stir minds on a Sunday … but that don’t make a difference on Mondays … need to be replaced. Amen and amen!

Yet as much we can say a hearty amen to the goal of life-change, the means for getting there—human initiative—is more than suspect. We may cheer the old Nike slogan “Just do it” or the cute sketch by Bob Newhart, “Stop it!” But the reality of life is that pulling our bootstraps for all we’re worth will never get us airborne. And building a “discipline” to reshape our spiritual profile is always an effort in bootstrap pulling. It just doesn’t work. Not, at least, if the Bible is any measure.

The true key to spiritual transformation is the Spirit. He does any and all changing—both in the Old Testament and the New. And we change as we respond to his work in us.

This was a lesson lost on Nicodemus when he met with Jesus in John chapter three. The Pharisee leader was already “the teacher of Israel”—as Jesus labeled him—and would have been rich with the disciplines of the Pharisaical lifestyle, but he was still as dead spiritually as a forest is still when there isn’t a breeze to stir it. He needed a work “from above” and not more effort from below. Faith is always a response and not a responsibility: with Christ’s words and works in focus rather than our duties and efforts.

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on Unsplash

Here’s why I grieve in reading the overlapped discipline lists in the books I mentioned. They promise ladders that lead to heaven—with the disciplines of abstinence and engagement as rungs along the way. So that solitude, fasting, frugality, study, service, confession, prayer—and more—promise to bring us ever closer to union with God. But the ladders never reach heaven.

The approach, in other words, ignores the guidance Jesus and his Apostles offer in the Bible. And it misses the true transforming power: “God’s love has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Ro. 5:5). Paul, for one, spoke of this love as the one effective motivation in ministry in 2 Corinthians 5:14— “For the love of Christ controls us.…”

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The starting point for true spirituality is always from above, birthed in God’s paternity. Jesus made this clear to some erstwhile believers who in the end tried to kill him (in John 8:30-59): “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here.” And the first indicator of life-change is a bold appetite for Jesus and his words. Self-driven faith, on the other hand, reduces him to a sidebar. Why? “It is because you cannot bear to hear my word” (8:43).

Jesus was all about spiritual transformation but he had his own way of doing it: always from the inside out. He starts with hearts. The so-called Rich Young Man in Mark 10:17-22 was a ladder-climbing genius but when Jesus asked him to come and be with him the man balked. The real pathos in the text is in verse 21: “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him…”

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The Bible is a love story. Jesus uses the metaphor of a branch-and-vine bond (John 15) to describe the basis for true spiritual formation—Jesus calls it “fruit”—by calling for us to share his life: “Abide in me and I in you.” And with this, we are to let “my words abide in you” and, collectively: “Abide in my love.”

So, if we need a counter analogy to this love story, consider a loveless marriage. Where the partners have lost their first love and are now driven by duties—by the “disciplines of marriage.” I’m a lifelong bachelor and even I know the answer to this notion: “Go find a marriage counselor, quick!”

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Let’s take up, instead, the pursuit of Jesus, who loves us and gave up his life for us. His heart is a transforming center that brings the sort of joy and peace only a living relationship offers.

A Bridge over (In)Tolerant Waters

Are We Bridge-Builders or Culture Warriors?

The question asked in my subtitle, “Are we bridge-builders or culture warriors?” is important to those of us who serve in Christian ministry. I would contend that if we are to be faithful and fruitful in the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18) we will need to engage relationally as ambassadors more than either issuing edicts as cultural dictators, or cutting ties with the world outside our spiritual stockade.

AP Photo 2012

Yet it seems to be culturally acceptable to cut ties with others, blowing up our relational bridges because they don't meet our expectations. It is hard work to seek understanding and work towards reconciliation with those who have offended us or whom we have offended. We can unfriend/unfollow someone on social media with the click of a button. We end marriage through easy access to divorce for almost no reason at all. Many people are estranged from their family because one party or both are unwilling to seek forgiveness. This relational brokenness is a contributing factor to both economic and relational poverty. 

As pastors and Christian leaders, we should not contribute to further brokenness but participate in God's mission to "rebind the broken cosmos." However, sometimes our efforts are tragically flawed by our own self-assurance that we even know what the problem is, and our unilateral efforts to fix things because we are the ones who know/have the solution.

If you are interested in exploring this question, I am including links to three articles I wrote a few years ago for an academic cultural engagement blog, Compelled2.blogspot.com.

Bridge-building in a Chaotic World

How do we intentionally reach out to engage, to build bridges of understanding and respect, on behalf of the common good? The steps to building a physical bridge offer surprising insights into the process of building and maintaining relational/cultural bridges.

Bridge-building #2: Start with Listening

So many of our conflicts arise, or are exacerbated, by our failure to really listen. Just as large construction projects must include an environmental impact study, any effort at relational bridge-building must begin with serious listening. As the church looks for a ministry paradigm for an increasingly diverse yet hyper-connected world, the ambassador approach to cross-cultural engagement is vital!

Bridge-Building #3: Tolerances & Tighteners, Gaps & Grips

KGW News Photo

This article began as an assigned response to Paul Louis Metzger’s prompt entitled “Beyond Tolerance to Tenacious Love.” In this post I revisit what physical bridge-building teaches us about the tricky subject of tolerance and intolerance. Everyone loves a good object lesson…right?

While these posts don’t provide all the answers, perhaps they will help us to start asking the right questions. If these posts are helpful to you and your ministry, I would love it if you would let me know.

Longview Bridge
Photo: Greg K. Dueker

Don’t Isolate—Engage!

We have all dealt with people who just want to do things their own way, expressing their opinions unfiltered by any increased understanding. As it is written,

“Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire;
    he breaks out against all sound judgment.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
    but only in expressing his opinion.” (Prov. 18:1-2)

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

But the challenge for us, is to not become this person, by neither allowing our understanding to ossify though overindulging in our opinion nor becoming brittle through our stubbornness. Isolation is insidious. It can arise when we feel rejected by others in some way but also when we feel superior to or independent of, others.

There is an example of this kind of foolish behavior among the parables of Jesus,

And [Jesus] told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ (Luke 12:16-19)

Kenneth E. Bailey, in Jesus Through Middle-eastern Eyes, points out that in the culture of 1^st Century Palestine, it would have been unthinkably foolish to make important decisions without wise counsel. Some decisions are too important to be made alone. The Rich Fool doesn’t consult anyone…he is satisfied with his own internal dialogue instead of consulting the advice of others, or more importantly, seeking to ask God what he should do. This is the trifecta of foolishness:

1. thinking he needed no other human counsel or input; 
2. completely failing to involve the Lord in his decision-making process; 
3. assuming that all he had been blessed with was for his own use—to enjoy at his leisure.  

We do well to remember that God is the ultimate source of any true blessing we enjoy, yet even so, it is not intended as a terminal blessing—one that ends with us—but one that can only truly be received and enjoyed when it is shared with others. The Abrahamic blessing was no different. The blessing given to one man would ultimately be extended into a blessing for all the families on earth (Gen. 12:1-3). This should prompt us to consider how what we have received participates in the shared goodness of God. Secondly, we cannot participate in the wonderfully redemptive plan of God if we isolate our individual selves from others or insulate our local congregations from engaging with other groups in our community.

One thing is certain: when we engage with others, we can’t just express our opinion without listening to other viewpoints and potentially corrective reasoning, not to mention caring relationships, that might restrain us from doing stupid and hurtful things.

Unfortunately, too many consider social media outbursts to be engagement. While significant conversation can be facilitated across great distances by various digital platforms (I currently use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn in addition to blogging) we may be shielded by our digital avatars and emboldened, or “disinhibited”, to attack or bully others and thus “breaking out against all sound judgment.”

Photo: Greg Dueker

Are we followers of Jesus Christ? We should remember that while he consistently confronted the sin of the religious leaders (usually in person), of him it could also be said,

“He will not quarrel or cry aloud,
    nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets;
a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smoldering wick he will not quench,
until he brings justice to victory;
     and in his name the Gentiles will hope.” 

(Matthew 12:19-21, citing Isaiah 42:2-4)

If we represent him, then our approach should not be one of obnoxious tirades and trolling launched from an insulating distance where our ego can easily dismiss opposing voices as “ignorant idiots.” We would do well to draw nearer to others than ever before—to hear their stories, to celebrate their triumphs, and sit with them in their pain and brokenness. Such relational engagement has mutual benefits (See my pastoral post on "Talking to Strangers"). Others might experience healing and deliverance through our participation in relational gospel ministry, but we will be changed as well! We benefit from having our paradigms challenged, our pet perspectives turned upside down, and our cardboard concepts enfleshed by the Spirit working through the unexpected. Sometimes it is hard to face reality through relationships with less-than-perfect people, but the alternative is that I might never be set free from the prison of my own opinions. 

My application of this passage admonishes me, saying, 

• Don't isolate yourself to pamper your opinions. 
• Don't make major decisions independent of wise counsel. 
• Don't do stupid stuff because you don't have anyone you would allow to change your mind. 
• Do let the Scriptures, taken in context, be the filter on your affections, thoughts, and speech. 

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

So, what does this anti-isolation message mean for the way we prepare for roles as pastors, chaplains, missionaries, and other avenues of service? Are we passionate about ministering but self-trained, or tend to form our beliefs in isolation? Maybe we earned a degree years ago and launched out on our own, but now wonder how best to minister to a post-everything culture?

If any of these are the case, I encourage you to become more Biblically orthodox while also becoming more of a bridge-building ambassador than ever before! Find cohort-based learning communities from well-respected seminaries that are designed for those currently serving in ministry roles and leverage the advantages of both classroom engagement and online flexibility. I am pretty certain that your ideas will be challenged, your faith will be strengthened, and your ministry refocused and readied in anticipation of new seasons of fruitfulness!