When I first began writing about spiritual formation many years ago, in Celebration of Discipline and other works, the soul hunger in people was so very obvious and the resources so very meager. Since that time a publishing avalanche has occurred on the subject—some of it genuinely helpful, some less than helpful.
Throughout, there has remained a huge gap—a gap that, if not filled, will seriously undermine all the gains that have been made. This gap is a thoughtful attempt at looking at the Bible through the lens of Christian spiritual formation. The desperate need today is for a richer, fuller understanding of the relevance of Scripture for daily living.
For many years, we with RENOVARÉ sought to develop substantive resource materials that would help fill this gap. More than once we commissioned one of our team members to write something, but each time we found that we were not producing what was really needed, and so would halt the project. Finally, we determined to wait quietly on the Lord for guidance.
Then, five years ago, Steve Hanselman, then Vice President and Publisher for HarperCollins, sat down with our team and proposed to us the development and publication of a unique Bible that would work with Scripture through the lens of spiritual formation.
I had been approached about specialty Bibles before and I had always refused. I turned them down because what people really wanted was little more than a “Hallmark Bible”—nice pictures and quotations that will reach a specialized consumer market. “Sorry,” I would say, “I am not interested in producing a niche Bible.”
I was not especially warm to Mr. Hanselman’s idea when he first began. But I did listen. For two days we vigorously discussed this Bible project idea:
• Dreaming of a Bible project that might bring together the best of biblical scholarship with the best of devotional thinking.
• Dreaming of a Bible project that was for ordinary men and women who are serious about their faith.
• Dreaming of a Bible project that would recover Scripture for the purposes of Christian spiritual formation for people in the press of real life.
After two days I could see that this was a serious proposal. There was a commitment to do what needed to be done if we were really going to be helpful to people. Mr. Hanselman was prepared to get the muscle of HarperCollins behind this effort. That put me into a writing task that has taken five years and involved over fifty theologians, pastors, and other folk from all walks of life. The task will be complete this spring with the release of The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible.
Entering into this project five years ago we, the General Editors (myself, Gayle Beebe, Lynda Graybeal, Tom Oden, and Dallas Willard), learned quickly that we are not in charge of our interactions with Scripture; God is in charge. It is not up to us to control what comes out of the Bible. We cannot “tilt” Scripture this way or that, rather we must give it complete freedom to “tilt” us as it will.
We came to understand that the Bible is about human life “with God.” It is about how God made this “with” life possible and will bring it to pass. In fact, the name Immanuel, meaning “God with us,” is the title given to the one and only Redeemer because it refers to God’s everlasting intent for human life, namely that we should be in every aspect a dwelling place of God. Indeed, we came to see that 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.
We quickly came to the realization that we cannot simply add this “with-God life” into our little lives, picking and choosing what we want. No, if we want to receive from the Bible the life “with-God” that is portrayed in the Bible, we must be prepared to have our dearest and most fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our associations called into question. It requires that we give up our lives and accept the divine invitation to participate in God’s great Life, which, paradoxically, will give us our true lives.
We learned that we must come to Scripture humbly and in a constant attitude of repentance. Only in this way could we gain a thorough and practical grasp of the spiritual riches that God has made available to all humanity in his written word. We came to understand that the proper outcome of studying the Bible is growth in the supernatural power of love: love of God and of all people. And so much more.
The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with God himself at the very center of this community as its prime Sustainer and most glorious Inhabitant. Scripture traces the formation of this community from the creation in the garden all the way to the new heaven and the new earth. And God is extending an invitation to you and to me to come on in, to gather into the Life of this blessed community.
-by Richard J. Foster. A Quaker author and Director of RENOVARE, he is planning an international conference in June. Participants will wrestle seriously with many of the themes in Scripture in a process foundational to Christian spiritual formation.
