renovare spiritual formation bible and richard foster and dallas willard and celebration of discipline and the divine conspiracy

After five years of a remarkably intense effort to put together a study Bible that not only is attentive to the spiritual needs of the 21st century reader but also to the present-day scholarly thinking on the Bible, HarperSanFrancisco released the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible ("RSFB") in May 2005. The publication of this study Bible shows that the Evangelical movement has matured in this country in an noteworthy fashion, but it also indicates how difficult it is to put together a Bible that bridges the gap that often exists between the biblical scholar and the disciple of Jesus Chirst.

The People Behind the Bible

The two individuals whose ideas set the tone for the entire project are Richard Foster and Dallas Willard. Foster, a Quaker of mixed Anglo-Native American descent, broke into national prominence in the late 1970s through his best-selling Celebration of Discipline, in which he argued for the importance of attuning our personal rhythms to those of the traditional Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian faith rather than by the demands of the "market," or American culture in general. The notion of recapturing the Spiritual Disciplines and using the history of the Church as a laboratory to understand these disciplines has been a passion of Foster since that time. When he founded RENOVARE in the late 1980s, he did so in order to help the Church--Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox--rediscover the Spiritual Disciplines as central to their life of faith. In this regard, Foster's commitment to the larger Church is evident in the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books (which Protestants have historically called "The Apocrypha") in the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible. Yet, he makes it clear in the introduction that these books do not partake in the same authority as do the traditional 66 books of the Protestant canon. The "Spiritual Formation" emphasis of this Bible is derived, then, from Foster's passion.

Quite different are the interests of Dallas Willard. If Foster is the "heart" behind the project, Willard is the "head," though it would be unfair to characterize either of them as fully one or the other. Willard, born in 1934, has been a professor in the School of Philosophy at USC since the 1960s. For the first few decades of his career, he appeared to focus primarily on things that many academic philosophers do in order to get promotion and tenure--translating significant German philosophers, publishing in technical philosophical journals and engaging in debates with other philosophers on a variety of arcane subjects. For example, much of his early work was on the 19th-20th century German phenomenologist Husserl, a person whose prose is nearly impenetrable in every language. But then, in the 1980s, he began to speak and publish widely on issues of Christian faith. His book The Divine Conspiracy in the late 1990s brought him to the attention of many Evangelical thinkers. Even though his interests are compatible with those of Foster, his focus is quite different: in a nutshell, he wants to look at the whole scope of history of God's dealing with people as evidence of the development (or lack thereof) of character. Thus, while Foster's concern fits most comfortably into the classic role of spiritual director, Willard speaks and writes more as a moral philosopher. Foster is interested in formation; Willard in choice. Foster is concerned with practice; Willard with history; Foster is interested in encouraging small groups; Willard is interested in systematic understanding.

The Two Guiding Principles of the RSFB

It is not as if these two interests of Foster and Willard are necessarily opposed to each other. Indeed, one might look at character and spiritual formation as two sides of the same coin. Yet, their different emphases contribute to the development of the two major principles behind the Bible, principles which are, when you look at them real closely, in some tension with each other and even with themselves. Let me illustrate by first presenting these two principles briefly.

1. The "With-God" Life. The "Immanuel Principle," or the "with God" life leaps off nearly every page of the introduction. The editors say in one place: "Indeed, the unity of the Bible is discovered in the development of life 'with God' as a reality on earth, centered in the person of Jesus" (p. xxvii, Italics in text). This is Dallas Willard at his best. He sets down a thesis and then will proceed to show in a number of essays how the "with God" principle is articulated and developed in the sweep of biblical history. He will first begin with Adam and Eve, making their Fall an issue of character: "Adam and Eve 'fell' because, though innocent, they lacked character." "To develp Adam's and Eve's character--and ours too--God has to be 'absent' as well as present in human life" (p. xxxvii). Then, he will isolate at least fifteen or so other "periods" of God's interactions with humans that show how this "with-God" life is defined and refined. This is a comprehensive, systematic, intellectual approach, Germanic in its methodology and scope.

2. Nurturing the Intention. Though Willard's explanation of the "with-God" life in the "General Introduction" only gets three pages, Foster's section on the heart or the intention gets eight. The tone changes on p. xxviii, and we are no longer in the comprehensive and systematic world of the "with-God" life in history but the life of the Spiritual Disciplines. "Reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating upon Scripture have always been the foundation of the Christian disciplines" (p. xxviii). "Our practice of the the Spiritual Disciplines is kept on course by our immersion in the Scriptures" (ibid.). Thus, we are in a different world, as if we have just driven from the Bonneville Salt Flats and the Great Salt Lake Desert in Western Utah to the dry basin and towering peaks of Eastern Nevada. The rest of the introduction emphasizes how to read the Scripture and how to hear its nuances. While Willard was concerned to establish an overall understanding of the "flow" of the text, Foster is interested in using traditional spiritual disciplines to deepen our understanding of God and our task in the world.

So far, so good. We have two individuals with two different emphases. Nothing revolutionary here. But when you read their contributions in practice as you leaf through the Bible, you see lines of tension or even inconsistency peering out at you. The next essay will consider some of these.

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