Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the word ‘spirituality’ in English had not evolved into its modern usage. Indeed this article could be written in terms of its development, largely under French influence, from things pertaining to the clergy to the ‘interior’ life, the spiritual dispositions which control our relations both with God and the world. At the start of our period it was just beginning, in France, to gain its association with mysticism and prayer, although used pejoratively against the quietists. ‘La nouvelle spiritualité de Madame Guyon’ was criticized as leading to a Christian life in a spiritual stratosphere remote from material and human reality. In the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, ‘spiritualité’ came to refer, without reproach, to the practice of piety and asceticism; and so, gradually, into English parlance today, where it is one of those invaluable words of which the meaning seems obvious until one attempts to define it (Brooks, 1975, p. 205). But we may say that Christian spirituality is the theory and practice of Christian living, believed to be under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It will be best to treat the subject by surveying the various trends and schools in relation to their intellectual and social contexts, bearing in mind that in our world we are all neighbours but not all contemporaries. Some Christians today are ... log in or subscribe to read full text