Christian spirituality and the quest for identity: toward a spiritual-theological understanding of life in Christ (1): we live in a "spiritual" era. In a manner unprecedented is the late modern era, contemporary North American, appear to be open to the spiritual dimension of life. (2).

Hence, the word "spirituality," which seemed to have been banned from the vocabularies of people living in a scientific culture, is now not only common parlance but even fashionable. This is the case even among those who eschew organized religion.

In fact, a growing number of North Americans have concluded that spirituality is not necessarily dependent on adherence to religious beliefs or participation in religious practices. Many people today would likely agree with Peter Van Hess's assertion that "being spiritual is an attribute of the way one experiences the world and lives one's life." (3) The findings of several recent polls bear this out. It appears a mere 60 percent of Americans "think a person needs to believe in God to experience the sacred." (4) Eighty percent of the students in one professor's religion classes at the University of San Francisco consider themselves as "spiritual," even though the same percentage claim that they are "not religious." (5) Although less than 25 percent of adult Canadians attend church regularly, 82 percent see themselves as "somewhat" or "very spiritual," and about half report that their lives have become more spiritual in the last several years. (6) The readiness of people today to divorce spirituality from religious practice in general and Christianity in particular has lead many to claim that they have discovered spiritual meaning in non-religious activities. Proponents of this viewpoint, which is sometimes known as "secular spirituality," (7) routinely use terms that were once closely connected with the Christian tradition--such as "soul"--while purging from them the theological meanings they formerly carried. (8)

The current mushrooming of interest in spirituality, leading to what we might term a "secular spirituality," marks a grave challenge to the church. Above all, it issues a call to Christians to ask anew the question, What is spirituality? (9)

Evangelicals in general and Baptists in particular have generally understood spirituality either as merely another term for discipleship, which Donald Durnbaugh lists as one of the central characteristics of the believers' churches as a whole, (10) or in the context of the typical Reformed depiction of sanctification as the journey of the growth of the Christian that begins with conversion and climaxes in eschatological glorification. (11)

Although the traditional Baptist concerns for discipleship and "spiritual growth" are legitimate, spirituality cannot be reduced to either. On the contrary, the challenge posed by the contemporary interest in spirituality requires that we explore the intellectual framework within which the quest for the spiritual rightly transpires. Or, stated from the perspective of theology, spirituality can only be understood truly and fully, when it is viewed within a theological framework. Placing it within the purview of theology leads to an understanding of spirituality that is both wider and deeper than is engendered by the narrowing of the discussion to "practical Christianity" viewed as either discipleship or spiritual growth, as important as these are. In short, the contemporary quest for spirituality entails a call for a renewed theology of spirituality that can provide a robust understanding of the unique perspective that the Christian faith--and the particular Baptist vision of the faith--offers to people who are searching for fullness of life.

The goal of this article is to engage in this pressing discussion. What follows, then, is an exercise in spiritual theology. According to the Roman Catholic theologian Jordan Aumann, spiritual theology "defines the nature of the supernatural life, formulates directives for its growth and development, and explains the process by which souls advance from the beginning of the spiritual life to its full perfection." (12)

Rather than developing a spiritual theology in the complete sense that Aumann envisions, my purpose in these paragraphs is limited to the first item on his list. In the ensuing paragraphs, I attempt to set forth two central aspects endemic to a specifically Christian theological understanding of what stands as the meaning and telos of the spiritual quest so readily evident among people today. (13)

The Anthropological Connection to Christian Spirituality

If there is a near consensus among Christian thinkers regarding spirituality, it is that the term is essentially another way of speaking about what is generally termed "the Christian life." Baptist theologians comprise no exception to this consensus. Even in the second edition of his monumental Christian Theology published in 1998, Millard Erickson--to cite one example--had no section on spirituality as such, but offered a lengthy engagement with the topic of "the Christian life." (14)

Dallas M. Roark provided an even more illuminating example. This Baptist theological educator devoted an entire chapter of his one-volume delineation of The Christian Faith to "the Christian life" and treated under this rubric the topics of conversion, sanctification, and glorification. (15)

The widely-held consensus asserts as well that the Christian life which constitutes Christian spirituality is "life in Christ"--that is, being "indwelt by Christ" (16)--and, by extension, life in or being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Hence, Gordon S. Wakefield noted that the diverse varieties of Christian spirituality, which "have taken different forms and involved different techniques," may all be "comprehended in the Pauline `life in Christ' or the Holy Spirit." (17)

Likewise, Aumann defined Christian spirituality as "a participation in the mystery of Christ through the interior life of grace," which he added, in keeping with classical Roman Catholic thought, is "actuated" by the Christian virtues. (18)

Michael Downey, in turn, asserted uncompromisingly, "Christian spirituality is not just a dimension of the Christian life"; rather, it "is the Christian life itself lived in and through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit." (19)

A similar note is sounded in what may be one of the most helpful characterizations of Christian spirituality. John Tyson concluded that the term "describes the relationship, union, and conformity with God that Christians experiences through their reception of the grace of God, and a corresponding willingness to turn from sin and ... `to walk according to the Spirit.'" (20)

Here again, Baptist theologians have not been absent from the choir. The theme was sounded by E. Y. Mullins at the turn of the twentieth century, as is evident even by the choice of the title for a collection of his sermons: The Life in Christ. (21) Like many other Baptist thinkers, including his contemporary August Hopkins Strong, (22) Mullins focused on the biblical concept of union with Christ, but understood it as closely connected with the parallel Pauline image of being "in Christ." (23)

The description of the Christian journey as life in Christ (together with the related idea of union with Christ) rightly pinpoints the central theological theme of Christian spirituality. Yet, the concept of "life in Christ" can only be rightly understood when it is placed within the theological framework from which it draws its meaning. One crucial aspect of this framework is a particular understanding of the nature of the human person, that is, a specific anthropology.

The Quest for the Self

The anthropological component of the theology of Christian spirituality provides a link to the quest for the spiritual so readily evident in contemporary society. It connects the specifically Christian understanding of spirituality with the search for true humanness.

True humanness is, of course, an important concern for Christians. Lawrence O. Richards went so far as to define Christian spirituality as "living a human life in this world in union with God." (24) The search for authentic humanness is by no means the exclusive property of Christians. Rather, it is shared by adherents of many religious traditions or even no particular tradition.

In a book appropriately entitled The Human Core of Spirituality, psychologist Daniel Helminiak posits a link between one's understanding of spirituality and one's view of the nature of humanness: "Spirituality is supposed to relate to the deepest meaning of humanity. So what you think of spirituality actually depends on how you answer this question: What is a human being?" (25) Many people today, therefore, would agree with John Macquarrie that fundamentally spirituality entails "becoming a person in the fullest sense." (26)

What does it mean to be a person in the fullest sense? One reoccurring theme among contemporary proposals views spirituality as the quest for personal integration. Helminiak connected human flourishing with the integration of the individual as organism, psyche, and spirit. (27) In forging this link, Helminiak is no isolated example. On the basis of her study of the variety of pathways to spirituality, Sandra Schneiders concluded that all the various definitions of the concept suggest that it "has something to do with the unification of life by reference to something beyond the individual person."

Hence, in the broadest sense, spirituality refers to "the experience of consciously striving to integrate one's life in terms not of isolation and self-absorption but of self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives." (28) Similarly, Downey observed that one central constant running through the diverse contemporary approaches to spirituality is "a quest for personal integration in the face of forces of fragmentation and depersonalization." (29)

Studies such as these indicate how closely the contemporary understanding of true humanness is connected to the sense of personal identity and selfhood. Indeed, we might say that the current interest in spirituality is, at least in part, a quest for the self. The search for the spiritual is born out of the attempt to discover some semblance of personal identity in the form of a unified sense of selfhood. Viewing the matter from this perspective suggests why spirituality so readily becomes a watchword in the postmodern context, for one crucial characteristic of the postmodern condition is the loss of the centered self.

Although a full recounting of the rise and demise of the self is beyond the purview of this essay, (30) a short sketch is in order here. In the ancient world, the sense of identity or selfhood was closely linked to the place of humans in the cosmos. Thus, when contemplating the vastness and majesty of the universe the Hebrew psalmist declared in amazement, "what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" (Ps. 8:4 NIV ILE). The Psalmist responded to this question by placing humans in the context of creation and by speaking about the human vocation of exercising dominion over other living creatures.

In the modern era, however, the human person was pried loose from creation, which had by this time come to be understood as "nature." In contrast to the psalmist who thought of humans in terms of being at "home" within the created order, the modern response to the quest for an understanding of true humanness, and hence the sense of personal identity, came in the form of the construction of the self.

The seeds of this development lay in Augustine's turn inward, that is, in his search for God within the recesses of the interior realm. Yet, the impetus for the construction of personal identity through the sense of self-hood emerged in the wake of the Enlightenment, as philosophers declared that lying at the core of what it means to be human is reason or rationality, which was now understood as the ability to disengage from one's natural environment and social context so as to be able to objectify the world.

Disengagement from the objectified world formed the foundation for the modernist ideal: individual autonomy, in the sense of freedom to choose one's own purposes from within oneself apart from the controlling influence of natural and social forces. (31) The elevation of individual autonomy led, in turn, to an atomistic understanding of the social realm. Society came to be seen as a collection of autonomous, independent selves pursuing their own personally chosen ends. The result was the modern self: the self-created, self-sufficient, highly centered, "true inner person" who persists through time and who stands above the shifting relationships that characterize day-to-day living. This self was looked to as providing the "center" that can hold together even as the surrounding world disintegrates. (32)

Many thinkers now reject the notion of the centered self as a chimera, however; it is dismissed as having been nothing more than an illusion of the Enlightenment mind. Contemporary communitarians aver that rather than the disengaged, isolated observer who exists prior to the construction of society and thus forms the primary building block for the purely contractual social order, the human self is in some sense constituted by social relationships.

Postmodern thinkers routinely picture the socially constituted self as a position in a vast web, a nexus, a point of intersection, a bundle of fluctuating relationships and momentary preferences. This means, however, that the self can no longer be seen as standing apart from the vacillations of life. Moreover, the fast-changing world in which we now live exacerbates the fluidity of the self. As the French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard observed, "each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before." (33)

The result is a self that is not only impermanent but also highly unstable. The postmodern condition, therefore, entails the replacement of the stability and unity that characterized the self of the modern ideal with what Fredric Jameson calls "psychic fragmentation," (34) that is, the splintering of the self into multiple subjectivities. No wonder that in suggesting that Canada change its national motto to "Within one, many," Michael Adams quipped that his proposal "not only describes our society, but also the increasingly flexible multiple personalities of the 30 million of us who live in it." (35)

The Advent of the Narrative Self

The chaos of identity that marks the postmodern condition engenders a search for the personal integration that Downey and other observers have pinpointed. For this reason, the contemporary spiritual quest may be viewed as the chaotic self that emerged from the loss of the autonomous, self-positing, centered self of modernity, seeking some semblance of identity beyond the ever-fleeting "now" of existence, and this by finding its selfhood in relationships. Postmodern theorists take the matter of identity formation a step further, however. They conceive of the relationally-based, postmodern identity as having a narrative character.

According to contemporary theorists, identity emerges through the telling of a personal story by means of which people organize the diverse aspects of their lives into what they see as a meaningful whole. Each personal story revolves around a particular plot which facilitates the person in organizing the isolated events of his or her life into a lived history. Rather than being the creation of the individual, however, the plot in accordance with which a person tells this life-organizing story is borrowed. It is derived from the social group, from one's primary community of reference. (36) As Lyotard observed, "Even before he is born, if only by virtue of the name he is given, the human child is already positioned as the referent in the story recounted by those around him, in relation to which he will inevitably chart his course." (37)

This means that my sense of who I am is determined to a great extent by the group of which I am a member. (38) Moreover, my use of this particular plot or communal narrative marks my participation in, and forms the basis of my sense of personal identity as a member of, this specific community. This, in turn, provides me with at least a fleeting sense of "home."

Religion plays a crucial role in the community-based identity-forming process. The input from religion may at times be quite direct. Sociologist Thomas O'Dea explained the direct role that religious adherence can play: "Individuals, by their acceptance of the values involved in religion and the beliefs about human nature and destiny associated with them, develop important aspects of their own self-understanding and self-definition." (39) Similarly, Kingsley Davis theorized that a religious community facilitates identity formation by connecting the individual with something transcendent: "religion gives the individual a sense of identity with the distant past and the limitless future. It expands his ego by making his spirit significant for the universe and the universe significant for him." (40)

Other sociologists, such as Peter Berger, have pressed the point further. Berger asserted that regardless of whether or not a society is overtly religious, a transcendent vision lies at the foundation of every human community, and every such vision is for that reason in a sense religious. (41)

Berger's observation provides insight as to why people today rightly understand their search for identity as a spiritual quest. In seeking some reference point beyond their own fleeting selves from which to find meaning for their lives, they are "religious"--even though they may at the same time shun organized religion.

The Relational Telos of Spirituality

The foregoing detour through anthropology reveals the sense in which contemporary "secular spirituality" is not divested of the religious dimension, but may rightly be viewed as a spiritual quest. This form of spirituality may be described as the chaotic self seeking an identity in relationships with others as participants together in a social group that is the bearer of a paradigmatic, transcendent, and hence, fundamentally religious narrative.

This anthropological conclusion offers a bridge between the longing for a sense of personal identity indicative of postmodern people and the particularly Christian perspective on the nature of spirituality, a bridge that emerges through the advent of the narrative self. Yet to be denoted, however, is the actual character of this bridge: What can form the central point of the conversation between Christian spirituality and its seemingly secular counterpart?

The search for an answer requires that we bring to the surface a glaring deficiency evidenced in many articulations of contemporary spirituality. Such presentations often fail to provide a succinct delineation of the goal of the spiritual quest. One lucid example is the description penned by the Canadian philosopher Donald Evans. In his estimation:

   Spirituality consists primarily of a basic transformative process in which
   we uncover and let go of our narcissism so as to surrender into the Mystery
   out of which everything continually arises. In so far as such a surrender
   occurs, the Mystery lives as us without our resistance, and we are the
   Mystery expressed in human form. (42)

Despite repeated references to the Mystery that lies at the basis of his vision of spirituality, Evans offers no insight into the actual identity of the reality to which he advises us to surrender.

What is by necessity left nebulous in generic conceptions of spirituality, such as Evans's, is concretely identified in the Christian faith. The goal that all humans are seeking, Christians assert, is life in the one who stands at the center of the paradigmatic narrative of the Christian community, Jesus Christ. But what does "life in Christ" entail, when viewed as the answer to the postmodern quest for spirituality?

Life in Christ As Participation in the Divine Life

His own spiritual 6dyssey led Augustine to conclude, "Thou hast made us for thyself. Therefore, our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee, O God." (43) With these words, Augustine gave expression to the fundamental Christian belief that God is the telos of the human quest.

From the perspective of Christian theology, therefore, the contemporary quest for spirituality, reflecting as it does the desire for personal identity within the context of relationships, is ultimately the search for God. People long for an identity that only God can give through a relationality that only God can fulfill. We might suggest that the goal of the spiritual search is a "homecoming," a coming home to God, wherein lies our true personal identity or selfhood, and hence true humanness.

The concept of homecoming forms the context for understanding the idea of "life in Christ," insofar as being "in Christ" is what entails our coming home to God. The task of spiritual theology, in turn, involves setting forth an understanding of this central theme of Christian spirituality, a task that--as many Christian thinkers now agree--requires the articulation of a trinitarian theology of life in Christ. Fulfilling this challenge necessitates a rediscovery of the practical, as opposed to the merely speculative, character of the doctrine of the Trinity. So doing, leads to the conclusion that, in Downey's words, the Trinity "constitutes the heart and soul of Christian spirituality." (44)

The focus on the triune God emerges directly out of the biblical narrative, which depicts each of the three trinitarian persons as playing a crucial role in human salvation. Occupying center stage in the personal identity-conferring aspect of the biblical salvation drama is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the one who authors new, spiritual life in us and in this manner brings us through Jesus Christ into relationship with the one whom Jesus called "Father" (John 14:16-23).

The New Testament writers refer to this Spirit-led process as "regeneration" (Titus 3:5), a word that carries the metaphorical idea of being "born anew" or "born again" (John 3:1-16). As the agent of a spiritual birth, the Spirit mediates to us a special relationship with God. Through the Spirit, we become. God's spiritual offspring, God's children (John 1:12-13). This new status allows us to enjoy the most intimate fellowship possible. In fact, according to Paul, the indwelling Spirit brings us to address God with the same name of endearment that Jesus himself spoke, "Abba" (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). Consequently, in causing us to be born into God's family, the Spirit brings us to share in the relationship Jesus enjoyed with his heavenly Father. That is, through the Spirit we participate in Jesus' own sonship, for we are co-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17).

The presence of the triune God within the biblical narrative suggests that the ultimate context of "life in Christ" lies within the eternal dynamic of the divine life. The basis for the theological movement from God-in-the-narrative to God-in-eternity emerges from the widely-followed dictum set forth by Karl Rahner. "Rahner's rule" (45)--the principle that "[t]he `economic' Trinity is the `immanent' Trinity and the `immanent' Trinity is the `economic' Trinity" (46)--1eads to the conclusion that the interplay of the three trinitarian persons in salvation history offers a window into the eternal divine life.

Applied to the salvation story, Rahner's rule suggests that the basis for the dynamic that is evident in our salvation, understood as our participation in Jesus' relationship with his heavenly Father, can only be found in the eternal relationality that this temporal embodiment reveals. More specifically, our salvation is the outworking of the eternal perichoretic relationality of the trinitarian persons. The task of a trinitarian spiritual theology involves the explication of this crucial theological framework for the concept of life in Christ.

Since the patristic era, theologians have taught that at the heart of the eternal divine dynamic is the relationship between the first and second trinitarian persons. Throughout all eternity, the Father loves the Son, and the Son reciprocates the Father's love. Actually, this is the theological meaning of the language "Father" and "Son," for in ancient cultures, the son was the heir, the one on whom the father lavished all the wealth of the family.

The entire drama of creation, in turn, flows out of, or is the overflowing of, the eternal relationship the Father shares with the Son. More specifically, as is suggested by Jesus' remark in what is called his "high priestly prayer," God's purpose in creating the world arises out of the Son's desire that others see--that is, know experientially--"the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world" (John 17:24).

The Son desires that there be a host of coinheritors of the wealth his Father bestows on him eternally. This provides the clue as to why the new birth brings us to participate in the divine love-relationship in the position of the Son. Like the Son who eternally receives the Father's love, we too are the recipients of the unbounded love of God the Father. As a result, we are enabled to love God in return, after the pattern of the Son who reciprocates his Father's love. John the apostle puts it well: "We love ... because [God] first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

Taken by itself, the patristic description of the divine life as the love between the Father and the Son does not yet enfold the Spirit within a spiritual theology of "life in Christ." Hence, it must be augmented by an understanding of the place of the Spirit within the divine love-dynamic. Doing so leads, however, to the divisive filioque controversy. Although it cannot be defended here, one Augustinian insight into the divine life offers a helpful perspective from which to understand the role of the Spirit in constituting believers as those who are "in Christ."

As Augustine suggested, the love the Father shares with the Son is concretized in the Spirit, the third trinitarian person who "proceeds" eternally from the Father and the Son, or perhaps better stated, proceeds from the Father through the Son. The love binding the Father and the Son eternally, the Holy Spirit, in turn, is sent into the world to complete the divine plan.

The Spirit's goal is to bring us to share in the fellowship the Son enjoys with the Father. To this end, the Spirit places us "in Christ" (e.g., Rom. 8:1; 1 Cor. 1:2; 1:30; 2 Cor. 1:21; 5:17-19; 12:19; Eph. 1:13). As those who are "in Christ" (and hence "in the Son"), we come "home" to the divine life the Father intends for us in the Son, for in Christ, we are the recipients of the eternal love the Father pours out on the Son. In short, the Spirit is God at work, guiding us to our home within thee divine life the Father freely shares with us in the Son.

The indwelling Spirit is able to facilitate participation in the eternal relationship the Son enjoys with the Father, because this relationship is who the Spirit in fact is. The Spirit is the personal concretization of the love the Father showers on the Son and the Son reciprocates to the Father. For this reason, when the Spirit indwells us--when we are "in the Spirit"--we participate through the Spirit in the relationship the Son enjoys with the Father as corecipients with the Son of the Father's love for the Son. Because the Spirit draws us into the divine life precisely at the place of the eternal Son, that is, as those who are "in Christ" the Son, we truly are the beloved children of our heavenly Father. This identity, being God's beloved children and being named by God (Rev. 2:17; 3:12), that God freely bestows on us in the Son by the Spirit marks the fulfillment of our longing for identity and selfhood, and consequently, it comprises the telos of the human quest for "home."

Life in Christ As Participation in Community

Theologian Philip Sheldrake rightly noted: "a spirituality that is informed by belief in a Trinitarian God counters any tendency to reduce Christian living to a solitary spiritual quest or to individual ethical behaviour." (47) As Sheldrake's observation indicated, the trinitarian dimension of the framework for understanding "life in Christ" naturally coincides with another, namely, the ecclesiological. Although God is the telos of the quest for personal identity and selfhood, we do not come home to God alone. Rather, this dynamic is closely linked to participation in community, more specifically, in the fellowship of Christ's disciples-the church.

The claim that spirituality is a communal project is endemic to the perspective of nearly all Christian traditions, including the Reformed, which formed the cradle for many early Baptists. Hence, Howard Rice described not only the Reformed viewpoint but that shared by many Baptists as well, when he declared that authentic Reformed piety by necessity takes the whole community of faith seriously, for "we are redeemed as a community, and not merely as lone individuals." (48)

The introduction of ecclesiology into a spiritual theology of "life in Christ" is made difficult, however, by a prevalent misconception of the church that arose in tandem with the development of an individualistic depiction of the nature of human society. Many people, including many church members, mistake the church for an organization that a person can join at will, like a civic group or a country club. This modern perception treats the church in accordance with the understanding of human society mentioned in the first section of this essay. Like other societies, the church is reduced to being merely a conglomerate of self-contained individuals; the church comes to be seen as an aggregate of modern selves.

Rather than being immune from the onslaught of this post-Enlightenment philosophical outlook, Baptist theologians have often been party to the propagation of its ecclesiological counterpart. As participants in the wider believers' church movement, Baptists have been susceptible to the inroads of this aspect of modern individualism because of their emphasis on the individual nature of the human response to the gospel and their adherence to the pure church ideal. W. T. Conner represents a typical Baptist posture, when he asserts categorically, "church membership is always a voluntary matter," and then, rightly eschewing the idea that a person could be part of the church "by being born into a certain family or nation," he explained that every person "must hear, repent, believe, be baptized, and join the church himself. Becoming a Christian is a matter of personal choice, and so is every Christian duty." (49)

Of course, Conner's declaration, reflecting as it does the Baptist tradition as a whole, voices a legitimate concern. Nevertheless, a spiritual theology of life in Christ requires that we be careful lest we unwittingly be taken captive by the individualistic assumptions that all too often dominate Baptist (and evangelical) ecclesiology. Such a step away from soteriological individualism entails a recovery of an older emphasis that has been repeatedly articulated by Baptist theologians, even if it lay dormant within their systematic-theological pronouncements, namely, that "the Christian life is inescapably corporate," to cite Bruce Milne's words. (50)

Again here, the postmodern conception of the narrative self points toward the way forward, although the understanding to which it directs our attention is not at all foreign to Baptist sensitivities. The narrative character of personal identity formation leads to an understanding of the church that refuses to reduce the faith community to a mere voluntary society. Instead, this ecclesiology sees the church as the specifically Christian community of reference, which plays a crucial role in the fulfillment of our quest for personal identity and selfhood.

The narrative perspective suggests that being "in Christ" ought to be conceived in connection with the process by which we reinterpret our personal story in accordance with the narrative plot that arises from the community of Christ. Although the details vary from Christian to Christian, the basic plot of every Christian narrative is the same. Our stories speak about past failure and the reception of God's gracious salvation through Jesus Christ. In recounting our stories in this manner, we draw from the biblical language of the "old" and the "new" in keeping with Paul's statement, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cot. 5:17 NIV ILE). The centrality of this particular narrative plot indicates why Christians in general and Baptists in particular resonate so well with the words to the famous John Newton hymn, "Amazing Grace." The lyrics, "I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see," embody the essence of the salvation experience that Baptists have propagated at least since the great evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century, which left such a lasting impact on the Baptist ethos.

In the spiritual transformation I earlier referred to by means of the Johannine term "new birth," therefore, we come to see ourselves from a new vantage point, namely, from the vista of the biblical narrative of God's grace in Christ, a vantage point we share as participants in Christ's community. Reinterpreting our story in this manner entails our acceptance of the story of the Christian fellowship. As a consequence we have in fact become a part of this particular people.

In this process, the church functions as our "community of reference." Its gospel message provides a new framework through which we view ourselves and the world. In addition, the Christian message embodies a new set of values, especially the values Jesus exemplified (e.g., peace, justice, patience, but above all love), which we now desire to live out in our attitudes and actions. This purpose not only marks each of us individually as a disciple of Jesus; it unites us with each other as the community of disciples who share the desire to live according to the values embedded in the gospel narrative itself.

Ultimately forging us into a people in relationship is the Spirit's doing. The Spirit is the one who brings us into relationship with God as our heavenly Father through Christ. This relationship is not a private matter; it is not something we possess as isolated persons. Instead, because through the Spirit each of us is a child of God, we are related to each other. We are sisters and brothers, a family, a people in relationship.

Further, in the process of our coming home to God, the Spirit draws us out of our alienation into a reconciled relationship with God. However, the biblical writers clearly teach that our sinful estrangement from God taints our relationships on the human level as well.

Reconciliation with God, therefore, sets in motion the Spirit's work in bringing about the healing of these relationships as well. In this process, the Spirit transforms us from a collection of individuals into a people or "one body," to use Paul's favorite language to refer to our communal identity. Hence, the church is far more than an aggregate of "saved" individuals. Rather, it is a people bound together by the Spirit, who is the unifying bond (Eph. 4:3).

Yet to be mentioned, however, is the central theological basis for the understanding of the relationship between the faith community and our identity, that I have outlined in these paragraphs. As the Triune One, God is love. God's goal for us, in turn, is that we be the image of God, i.e., that we reflect the divine nature (love).

According to the New Testament, the focus of this image-bearing function is humans-in-relationship, more specifically, the church as the foretaste of the new humanity. God wills that the church be a people who in the midst of the fallenness of the present show what God is like. God desires that in and by our relationships with each other we reflect God's own character and thus shine as the imago del. Effecting the imago del among us is the Spirit's work.

The attempt to understand this dynamic takes us back to the previous discussion of the trinitarian framework of "life in Christ." The Spirit brings us, as God's children, to share in the relationship the Son enjoys with the Father. In this manner, we participate in the love that lies at the heart of the triune God. Participation in God's eternal love, however, is not ours as individuals in isolation; it is a privilege we share. The Spirit's goal, in fact, is to mould us together into one people who participate jointly in the love of God and who by our loving relationships show God's great love to all.

Whatever else it may be, then, the church ii ultimately a community of believers who because they participate together in the Holy Spirit share together in the eternal communion between the Father and the Son. Ultimately this is why God calls us to be a people committed to each other. We are to be a community of divine love, a people bound together by the love present among us through God's Spirit.

Viewed from this perspective, John Fawcett's old hymn expresses well the essence of the communal spirituality Christians enjoy together:

   Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship
   of kindred minds is like to that above. (51)

This communal spirituality, arising as it does out of the dynamic of the trinitarian life, is what "living in Christ" ultimately entails. And "living in Christ," understood in connection with our participation in the dynamic of the triune God, comprises the final Christian response to the question, What is true spirituality? posed by the postmodern quest for identity and selfhood.

(1.) This essay is a revision, reworking, and expansion of the author's earlier published work, "Belonging to God: The Quest for a Communal Spirituality in the Postmodern World," which appeared in the Asbury Theological Journal 54, no. 2 (Fall 1999), as well as sections from the book, What Christians Really Believe ... and Why (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998). The author gratefully acknowledges the permission of the journal and the press for incorporating previously published materials into this essay. A slightly shorter and edited version of this essay was delivered as the Willson-Addis Lecture at Truett Seminary on February 6, 2002.

(2.) See, for example, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, Megatrends 2000: Ten New Directions for the 1990s (New York: Morrow, 1990).

(3.) Peter H. Van Ness, "Introduction: Spirituality and the Secular Quest," in Spirituality and the Secular Quest, ed. Peter H. Van Ness, vol 22 of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 2.

(4.) "The Search of the Sacred: America's Quest for Spiritual Meaning," Newsweek (November 28, 1994): 56.

(5.) Martin Wroe, "American Pie in the Sky," Third Way 18, no. 7 (September 1995): 13.

(6.) Sharon Doyle Driedger, "On a Higher Plane," Maclean's (December 25, 1995-January 1, 1996): 23.

(7.) For a variety of treatments of the roots and variety of contemporary expressions of secular spirituality, see the essays in Spirituality and the Secular Quest.

(8.) See, for example, Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life (New York: HarperCotlins, 1992).

(9.) For a statement delineating the amorphous character of the term as it is used today, as well as a short depiction of the etymological roots of the word, see Kenneth J. Collins, "Introduction," Exploring Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Reader, ed. Kenneth J. Collins (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 10.

(10.) Donald F. Durnbaugh, The Believers' Church: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 210-12.

(11.) For an example of a Baptist statement of this perspective, see Bruce Milne, Know the Truth: A Handbook of Christian Belief, 2nd ed. (Leicester, England: InterVarsity, 1998), 240-43.

(12.) Jordan Aumann, Spiritual Theology (London: Sheed and Ward, 1980), 22.

(13.) For a helpful enumeration of a variety of theological themes present in Christian spirituality, see John R. Tyson, "Introduction," in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, ed. John R. Tyson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4-45.

(14.) Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 986-95.

(15.) Dallas M. Roark, The Christian Faith (Nashville: Broadman, 1969), 228-50.

(16.) For the suggestion that this outlook has been at the heart of Reformed spirituality throughout much of its history, see Howard L. Rice, Reformed Spirituality: An Introduction for Believers (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 27.

(17.) Gordon S. Wakefield, "Spirituality, forms of," in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, ed. Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason, and Hugh Pyper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 685. 18. Aumann, Spiritual Theology, 18.

(19.) Michael Downey, Understanding Christian Spirituality (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1997), 45. 20. Tyson, "Introduction," 1.

(21.) Edgar Young Mullins, The Life in Christ (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1917).

(22.) Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology, (Philadelphia: Griffith and Rowland, 1909), 3:795-97.

(23.) Edgar Young Mullins, The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression (Philadelphia: Roger Williams Press, 1917), 409-10.

(24.) Lawrence O. Richards, A Practical Theology of Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), 50.

(25.) Daniel A. Helminiak, The Human Core of Spirituality: Mind as Psyche and Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 5.

(26.) John Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 40.

(27.) Helminiak, Human Core of Spirituality, 24, 201-22.

(28.) Sandra M. Schneiders, "Theology and Spirituality: Strangers, Rivals, or Partners," Horizons 13, no. 2 (1986): 266.

(29.) Downey, Understanding Christian Spirituality, 14.

(30.) For the author's fuller treatment of this development, see Stanley J. Grenz, The Soc/al God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Anthropology of the Imago Dei (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 58-137.

(31.) Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 4.

(32.) Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after freud (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 5.

(33.) Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 15.

(34.) Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), 90.

(35.) Michael Adams, "Looking for Leadership," Maclean's 112, no. 4 (January 25, 1999): 53.

(36.) See, for example, Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 221.

(37.) Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 15.

(38.) See, for example, Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 81.

(39.) Thomas F. O'Dea, The Sociology of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 15.

(40.) Kingsley Davis, Human Society (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 531,532-33.

(41.) E.g., Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Anchor Books ed. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1969), 3-51.

(42.) Donald Evans, Spirituality and Human Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 4.

(43.) Augustine, Confessions 1.1, trans. Vernon J. Bourke, vol. 21 of The Fathers of the Church, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, 81 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 4.

(44.) Downey, Understanding Christian Spirituality, 44.

(45.) For this designation, see Ted Peters, "Trinity Talk," Dialog 26, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 44-48 and 26, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 133-38. Peters attributes the designation to Roger E. Olson. See Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in the Divine Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 213, fn. 33.

(46) Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Seabury Press, 1970, 1997), 22.

(47.) Philip Sheldrake, Spirituality and Theology: Christian Living and the Doctrine of God (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999), 82.

(48.) Rice, Reformed Spirituality, 53.

(49.) W. T. Conner, Christian Doctrine (Nashville: Broadman, 1937), 262.

(50.) Milne, Know the Truth, 242.

(51.) John Fawcett, "Blest Be the Tie that Binds."

Stanley J. Grenz is Pioneer McDonald Professor of Theology and Ethics, Carey Theological College and Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.