Renovare Spiritual formation bible and dallas willard and richard foster and harper study bible and harold lindsell and christianity today

In the previous essay I introduced the two major contributors to this Bible and the principles that are dear to each. I should start this essay by "full disclosure." I am a contributor to the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible. In fact, I wrote introductions and commentaries to six Biblical and Deuterocanonical books--at least as many books as any other contributor. I was honored to be chosen to make these contributions, and enjoyed doing the research and writing the commentaries and introductions, as well as oral collaboration on Baruch and Job with Glandion Carney, a Renovare Board Member and popular speaker in the area of spiritual formation. I have enjoyed getting to know some of the other contributors to the project. Indeed, I greatly admire the general editors as well as the publishers for putting out such an attractive product. It is with the implementation of each of the two themes or principles that I have some difficulties.

The "With-God" Life

The "with-God" life is Dallas Willard's way to explain how God has worked with individuals and the people of God to accomplish his purposes in history. With such an overarching principle, it is understandable if the overview essays only provide a "bird's-eye" view of the Biblical history. But here is my problem. Because he wants to see God's purposes working consistently throughout the biblical books, he is not able to point out nuance and even tension between themes developed in the Bible or various books of the Bible. The example that comes to mind most readily is his brief discussion of the Book of Job in his essay on "The People of God in Travail" (pp. 717-20). He treats the Book of Job as if it is a book that tries to understand the mystery of suffering and, consistent with his approach demonstrated in the previous essay, it is about the "deepening of our character" (717). But while the Book of Job unquestionably deals with suffering (I would say that it deals with the issue of disproportionate suffering and not suffering per se), it is best understood in the context of a debate within the Wisdom tradition regarding the value of obedience to God. That is, I see the Book of Job as questioning some of the central principles of Proverbs, laid down in 3:9-12. It would have been difficult, to be sure, for the general editors to have taken cognizance of each individual scholar's work in his or her introductions and commentaries of the individual books, but there is a tension that results when this isn't done.

The Spiritual Disciplines

A slightly different critique can be made of the emphasis on Spiritual Disciplines. I should be clear at the outset that I not only have been a practitioner of some of the disciplines over the years, but that my immersion in these disciplines was perhaps one of the most formative influences on my own faith development. But the central question that isn't fully resolved is whether the Spiritual Disciplines, as Foster understands them, are things that should be derived from the text or are practices that may have some support in the text but were articulated and refined elsewhere. That is, there is a "spiritual disciplines" index in the back of the RSFB, but it consists primarily of biblical quotations set under several heads, such as "prayer" or "service" or "submission" or "meditation." It is sort of a "Strong's Concordance" of a few words, with the entire verses rather than only a word or two quoted.

But, my understanding of the Spiritual Disciplines is that they are much more than simply than quotations of verses atttesting the presence of the phenomenon in the Scriptures. Wherever you have Spiritual Disciplines in the life of the church, you have an explanatory theory of the discipline, instruction on how to do it (i.e., what kinds of prayer are involved, what techniques one uses in prayer, etc), and then exhortation to make it a part of one's life. I was not expecting another Imitation of Christ (Thomas a Kempis) or Spiritual Exercises (Ignatius Loyola) at the end, but I am not sure what value a series of Scriptural verses on various themes, without comment, plays in the development of Spiritual Formation in the reader/student.

Conclusion

The ultimate value of a study Bible, it seems to me, is whether it helps people engage with the text of the Scriptures and make the text their own. If the commentaries and introductions unlock some of the mysteries of the Bible and encourage people to engage in a life of disciplined reading and submission to the text, the RSFB will have achieved its purpose. Only patient study of the text, with frequent reference to the notes, will determine if this goal is reached.

But there are other "helps" besides those mentioned (and critiqued) above. There are several character studies, called Profiles, scattered throughout the text, which may be among the most valuable contributions to the RSFB. For example, the treatment of Moses (pp. 105-106) begins by providing a very creditable summary of significant issues in Moses' life, then quotes from a life of Moses by the 4th century Cappadocian Father, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and then concludes with a few searching questions that try to probe the reader's understanding of who Moses was and how God might be speaking to them today.

I will close with a story about my own history with a particular "study Bible." I grew up on the "Harper Study Bible," which had notes by Harold Lindsell. Lindsell was an influential Evangelical of the last generation, having helped found both Fuller and Gordon-Conwell seminaries, the latter while he was editor of Christianity Today. Yet, Lindsell was no Biblical scholar. He was an intelligent man who loved the Bible but really had no time or interest to work through scholarly issues in his notes. Yet, I remember being very grateful for that Bible and even for the notes, many of which I now consider to be irrelevant or even misleading. It was the Bible that helped shape my understanding of faith in the crucial years of my early 20s. The RSFB stands head and shoulders above the "Harper Study Bible," and so that leads me to believe, and hope, that its impact on people will be that much greater.

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