The Way to Love: Reimagining Christian Spiritual Growth as the Hopeful Path of Virtue

The Way to Love

Reimagining Christian Spiritual Growth as the Hopeful Path of Virtue

Matt Boswell

foreword by Arthur G. Holder

THE WAY TO LOVE

Reimagining Christian Spiritual Growth as the Hopeful Path of Virtue

Copyright © 2018 Matt Boswell. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4036-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4037-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4038-4

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Boswell, Matt | Holder, Arthur G. (foreword)

Title: The way to love : reimagining Christian spiritual growth as the hopeful path of virtue / by Matt Boswell; foreword by Arthur G. Holder

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-4036-0 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-4037-7 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-4038-4 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian life. | Love—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Christian ethics. | Virtue. | Spiritual formation.

Classification: lcc bv4511 b68 2018 (print) | lcc bv4511 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/10/18

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Introduction

Part One: Reimagining the Christian Life

Chapter 1: Spiritual Formation: The Limitations of Popular Approaches

Chapter 2: Spiritual Growth: The Life of Hope

Chapter 3: Love: The Goal of the Spiritual Life

Chapter 4: You and Me: The Self That Grows

Part Two: The Virtues of the Christian Life

Chapter 5: The Path: The What, Why, and How of Virtue

Chapter 6: Gratitude: The Gift of the Other

Chapter 7: Self-Care: Ready to Participate

Chapter 8: Justice: Taking Care of Others

Chapter 9: Kindness: Extravagance

Chapter 10: Hope: Making the Possible, Actual

Conclusion: The Road Ahead

Works Cited

To Joann, Clara, Renee, and Teddy, my ways to love.

Foreword

Arthur G. Holder

The Way to Love is the book that I have needed to read for a long time. As a parish pastor, a seminary professor, and a scholar of spirituality, I have tried to help Christian people—both as individuals and as communities—as they grow and mature in the life of faithful discipleship. But I have found that most writing about spiritual formation is either too theoretical to be of practical value, or else so focused on tactics and methods that we lose sight of the ultimate goal.

Matt Boswell has found the sweet spot where theory and practice meet on the path to love in action through the development of virtues. He reminds us that God doesn’t just want us to do good, but to be good as well. And to be good not just in one way, or two, but in all the different ways that human beings are made in the image and likeness of our Creator.

There is a winsome simplicity in Boswell’s creative approach to the work of spiritual formation. Over and over again, in straightforward language and with vivid examples drawn from Christian history and everyday life, he tells us that being a disciple of Jesus is all about love. What could be simpler than that?

Except that, as we all know, loving can be hard even when we know we ought to do it. Even when we are trying to do it well. Even when we have encouragement from our friends and family, and the support of a Christian community. As Boswell says, growing in love day after day, year after year, requires training, practice, patience, vision, time, and collaboration on our part, enveloped from beginning to end in divine grace.

This book speaks to a broadly ecumenical audience of evangelical and mainline Christian readers from an interdisciplinary perspective informed by some of the best current scholarship in theology, ethics, and the social sciences. Boswell’s approach draws on virtue ethics (both Protestant and Catholic) and the emerging field of positive psychology to develop a model of spiritual formation focused on five key virtues (gratitude, self-care, justice, kindness, and hope), with love as the ultimate goal.

His treatment of each virtue includes consideration of the theological and philosophical background, pertinent insights from social scientific research, and a case study presenting a prominent modern Christian individual as an exemplar of that particular virtue. Most importantly, we come to understand how all the virtues are connected to one another, and how they are rooted in the model and example of Jesus who is the paradigmatic lover of us all.

Readers of The Way to Love will be inspired by Boswell’s expansive, hopeful, and compassionate vision, but they will also be guided and supported in their efforts to develop practical programs of formation at various levels: personal, familial, and congregational. Much more than a how to book, this is a work of deep pastoral wisdom that gives us the why and what for and with whom of Christian spiritual growth. Read it for yourself—or even better, read it with some friends—and prepare to be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:2, NRSV).

I am not aware of any other book in the field of Christian spiritual formation that covers the same ground as Dr. Boswell’s work. While he directly engages well-known authors on spiritual formation such as Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and Robert Mulholland, providing both appreciation and critique of their work, Boswell’s project is rooted in a more sophisticated understanding of human development based in C. R. Snyder’s theory of hope. The approach throughout the book is positive, encouraging, and realistic, with many practical examples drawn from everyday life. The Way to Love would be an ideal textbook for the seminary classroom, but I can also envision it being used in congregational study groups or workshops for Christian pastors of any denomination.

Introduction

It’s All About Love, in Theory

Does living the Christian life make you a better person?

It should. And if doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong.

But what does better mean? In what sense does Christian spirituality make people better? Many who are not Christian have a rather wide range of images of Christians, from more to less flattering. It is not clear to the world at large that being Christian makes an individual better. And yet the Christian story reveals the secret to true betterment.

Love.

Love the Lord your God . . . and love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:37b–39, NRSV). Jesus plainly lays out with tantalizing simplicity the point of the spiritual life.

But what is love? And how do we do it?

Love is a frequently stated rallying cry for Christians. Whatever we mean by it, love is central to the Christian experience. The love of God for humans. The love of humans for God. Humans’ love for one another. Love, however, does not necessarily come naturally.

A member of the Quaker meeting I pastor recently lamented the lack of tolerance and inclusion she had been encountering through social media. She exclaimed in frustration: Why can’t people just love each other? I don’t get it, it’s so simple! While quiet empathy rather than verbal critique better fit the moment, I thought to myself: Because it is difficult to love!

Christian preachers err if they assume that simply reminding their parishioners to love will effectively create a love revolution. Love requires training, practice, patience, vision, time, and collaboration.

But attempt to love we must, because, as I will suggest in this book, the true Christian life is the movement toward love. So then, how do we move? And toward what do we move? These are questions of spiritual formation, though a survey of various approaches to Christian spiritual formation does not provide the kind of answers these questions demand.

In some cases, Christian spiritual formation seems aimless. Authorities on formation may emphasize the practices that form and/or the domains of the self that warrant formation. Yet by being either cautiously respectful of individual authenticity or hesitant to push Christians for various reasons, these leaders can neglect the pursuit of a shared spiritual goal or flat-out reject the quest as futile or imposing.

Goals are crucial in many domains of life, from workplace to education to personal health. Having a goal brings clarity about what to do, here and now. Often such goals reflect deeply held values. Many churches possess articulated goals such as Christlikeness or love.

And while the congregations (and authors who influence these congregations) prescribe various practices and programs as elements of a dynamic spiritual life, they hinder their formative efforts in two significant ways. Either they display an ambiguous or underdeveloped vision of love or Christlikeness (the goal) or they fail to place the cultivation of relevant virtues at the center of their visions of spiritual development (the path).

For example, these congregations and authors commonly promote worship, preaching, prayer, private Bible reading, collective action for justice, and classic spiritual disciplines as means of spiritual formation. These practices are potentially fabulous tools for spiritual growth—insofar as they are conducive to growth in virtue. Without love and its facilitative virtues at the center, such practices risk becoming commodities for spiritual consumption rather than transformative elements of a larger, love-centric spiritual project.

What This Book Is About

Four key concepts dominate this book: hope, love, virtue, and spiritual growth. If the vision of the spiritual life presented here is to take root, we need to understand and embrace these four concepts, perhaps reading them with new eyes to prevent our preconceptions from stifling new learning.

Hope. To actively pursue spiritual growth, you must hope. Hope facilitates spiritual growth. But hoping is not waiting. Hoping is not wishing. Hope is not dependence on external forces or other people. Hope is about the power of the future to transform the present. Hope is about growing into this future. Hope is about imagination. Hope is about goals and movement toward these goals. The spiritual life is a movement of hope. In fact, humans themselves are fundamentally hopers. But for what do we, as hopers, hope?

Love. We hope for love. But what is love? How do you love? Is our love like God’s love? Why or why not? Is love fundamentally about me? About you? About both of us? Trying to keep our definitions of love spacious is admirable. Yet if love is the goal of the spiritual life, we have to know what we are talking about when we talk about love. This book will offer an energizing and inviting definition of Christian love and clarify the path toward such love—the path of virtue.

Virtue. The primary focus of Christian spiritual formation—spiritual training—ought to be the cultivation of virtue. But which virtues? What is virtue or a virtue? How do you know when you have a virtue? And why be concerned with my virtue when many others who suffer in a variety of ways would benefit from my attention? I will answer these questions by explaining the distinctives of virtue ethics and why your virtue and others’ well-being are inextricable. Simply put, virtues are the pathway to love. Traveling this path is the subject of spiritual growth.

Spiritual Growth. What does it mean to grow spiritually? How do you know when it is happening? What do you do to make it happen? What do others do? What does God do? I will examine common understanding of spiritual growth in chapter 1 and identify the way in which these approaches, despite their varied contributions, are ultimately inadequate.

This book highlights the inextricable relationship between virtues and love. It emphasizes that God’s grace and human effort to cultivate virtue are not opposed but complementary. It prioritizes social justice while underscoring the necessary undergirding of virtues for effective social change. It articulates an accessible virtue-centric vision of the Christian life that can inspire churches to focus their formative efforts on nurturing this virtuous life. Its vision of the spiritual life, if truly lived by you and me, will facilitate greater peace, greater joy, and greater freedom—for us as individuals and for the relationships and communities of which we are a part.

Two dialogue partners in this journey include virtue ethics and positive psychology—two distinct fields with differing methodologies yet united in their emphasis on the God-created and God-nurtured potentialities of the human person. A third dialogue partner is what you might call love theory, based on the work of theologians and psychologists alike.

Virtue Ethics: Character Over Rules and Choice

James Keenan has abridged Alasdair MacIntyre’s argument for the recovery of virtue ethics in three interrelated questions: Who am I? Who ought I to become? How ought I to get there?¹ These questions indicate the basic concerns of virtue ethics.

Who am I? Virtue ethics emphasizes human agency and the capacity for personal transformation, expressed in enduring character traits or good habits that enable a person to perform a virtuous act to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right end, and in the right way.² To be fully human is to be virtuous: to function rightly and harmoniously. Here, morality is not located in an elaborate system of rules or universal laws. Moral behavior is not done out of duty to divine commands or pure reason. Morality is also not a calculated assessment of the ripples of a possible action. Rather, morality is rooted in the characteristics of the human person and precedes or prepares one for particular moral dilemmas. To affirm my agency is to recognize a trajectory to my life formed both by external forces and my own choices: I effectively engage in ongoing self-creation, the development of my story. My individual acts are therefore better characterized not as right or wrong as though I have offended a lawgiver or betrayed a code but as helpful or harmful—either leading me toward or away from the person I feel called to become.

Who ought I to become? Virtue ethics has a forward-looking, teleological focus; it articulates an end goal toward which individuals and communities ought to strive (typically some form of flourishing or well-being). A strong sense of my telos or purposeful end clarifies the nature and purpose of my life, thus clarifying the kind of character that needs cultivating and the particular virtues that constitute this character. Knowing the end of my story—through reason or revelation (or both)—guides the way I live as an agent within that story. Such narrativity is both individual and shared—an important reminder that I am accountable for my actions not only because they impact my character but because my story interlocks with others’ stories.

How ought I to get there? The ethical life, a quest-like movement of agents toward a goal, is marked by the ongoing development of habits of character—i.e., virtues—shaped by lived experience. MacIntyre defines virtues as those

dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations, and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good.³

Virtues deepen the quality and efficacy of our spiritual practices (and are simultaneously formed through such practices). Virtues strengthen our resistance to obstacles, deepen our self-understanding, and enable us to attain our most sacred goals. Virtues are not values, preferences, beliefs, or opinions, but embodied dispositions, the growth of which reshapes us and implicates our relationships with others, whether they be individuals, communities, structures, or the natural world. How particular virtues are named and connected will vary between communities, traditions, and theorists. Good models that propose a set of essential virtues tend to be comprehensive (have virtues to counter all ills and enhance all goods) and interrelated (operate in distinct but complementary domains). I will later examine how such constellations of virtues have been historically and uniquely constructed before ultimately making a case for a set of cardinal virtues that fits the model I propose in this book.

I am, of course, not the first to suggest that Christians make the cultivation of virtue central to their spirituality, as a survey of relatively recent literature reveals. N. T. Wright, an Anglican bishop, urges the formation of character as a means to Christian worship and mission.⁴ Gilbert Meilaender, a Lutheran, encourages Christians to cultivate virtues—traits of character that suit us for life, shape our vision of that life, play a corrective role, and aid us in actualizing our potential.⁵ Stanley Hauerwas, uniting virtue with Christian formation, writes that the Christian life is more a recognition and training of our senses and passions than a matter of choices and decisions.⁶ Jennifer Herdt, whose sketch of virtue acquisition is especially informed by Erasmus and the Jesuits, maintains that the imitation of Christ is not only about modeling oneself after an exemplar but also a divine action that grows our love for God and others.⁷ William Spohn argues that Christian spirituality ought to transform our character through deliberate spiritual practice (not simply spiritual experience).⁸

David Perrin accentuates virtues, clarifying that the spiritual practices of Christians are not meant solely to stabilize their lives as they are, or to affirm the way they view the world, themselves, or God but to transform and reform who they are.⁹ Richard Foster insists that we accentuate character formation in our formative efforts, which he believes is a remedy for widespread Christian tendencies toward a pessimistic anthropology, a lack of emphasis on the moral life, and busy church involvement that fills people’s time but leaves them untransformed.¹⁰ Despite some of its self-directed violent rhetoric, The Imitation of Christ does convey the urgency of dealing with deep-seated habits and attitudes and cultivating a richer life, a wider repertoire of responses to people and events.¹¹ The liberating spiritual vision of Gustavo Gutierrez underscores the social dimensions of virtue, challenges individualistic spirituality, and emphasizes community as both the joy of the Christian life and its primary laboratory that exposes and refines our greatest vices.¹²

In one sense, Christians should engage in spiritual practices because they are lovers, seeking means of realizing this love. In another sense, practices ought to be shapers of virtue, intended to stretch and challenge, for the sake of deepening one’s love and the efficacy of the practices. These two understandings of practice—the more MacIntyrian practice as collaborative endeavor for good and the more Fosterian approach of practice as discipline—will remain in dialogue throughout this book.

Positive Psychology: The Science of Goodness

Think of positive psychology as the more empirically minded twin to the philosophically minded virtue ethics. Positive psychology seeks to identify the emotions, characteristics, and practices that can enable individual, communal, and institutional flourishing. In most classic, therapeutically oriented psychologies, interventions focus on a deficit; the intervention reaches completion when the patient returns to an adequate level of functioning. Positive psychology interventions, in contrast, aim to move people to a more optimal level of functioning, whether they are experiencing depression, anxiety, etc., or are apparently functioning at an adequate level. The goal is to cultivate lasting positive emotions and habits rather than simply fixing the problem.

The core concerns and areas of research of the positive psychology movement are encapsulated in the acronym PERMA: positive emotions, engagement, (positive) relationships, meaning, and achievements.¹³ Positive emotions are an essential component and facilitator of human flourishing. Engagement indicates the utilizing and application of talents and strengths in a kind of self-forgetful experience—similar to some conceptions of vocation and comparable to what we mean by getting lost in something. Relationships emphasizes the benefits of healthy connections to others. Meaning is about participation in a self-transcending project—something greater than oneself. Achievement highlights the satisfaction of personal success.

Substantial, emerging data support the human capacity for flourishing or happiness. Such happiness is not trivial or fleeting but a stable, enduring sense of meaning and well-being, echoing Aristotle’s eudaimonia. And while much of the work being done is descriptive, some of it is also prescriptive: positive psychologists tend to not only affirm the capacity of persons for emotional, cognitive, and behavioral change but enthusiastically offer practical guidance toward this end. While its goals include self-improvement, positive psychology holistically approaches human flourishing, ultimately taking us outside of ourselves and turning us toward others.¹⁴

Two voices from the field of positive psychology ring loudest in this book. The primary voice is that of the late C. R. Snyder, arguably the leading theorist on the topic of hope among positive psychologists and a central influence on the model of the spiritual life presented in this book. While hope theologians have offered compelling future-oriented theological narratives, I believe that Snyder’s model of hope—with its emphasis on the human capacity to set and pursue self-transforming goals—can fruitfully ground this theology in the form of a model of spiritual development. I will devote much of chapter 2 to expanding on this point.

A secondary voice is that of Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification—the foundational piece of literature on virtue in positive psychology. Their classification is the social science equivalent of virtue ethics, using the scientific method to inform philosophical pronouncements about the traits of a good person.¹⁵ In the CSV classification, six core virtues provide the structure for twenty-four character strengths.¹⁶ Their classification also introduces a wide range of psychological research on the virtues, making it an excellent starting point for further research. Their taxonomy does have its limitations: its definitions occasionally disappoint, its overarching goals are somewhat contradictory, and it lacks a coherent theory of virtue that addresses how virtues interact with one another.¹⁷ A more comprehensive approach to virtues that considers their interrelation and posits a theological or philosophical narrative that clarifies which virtues are important and why would enhance or extend their project. This is, of course, my objective here.

In short, I will use the resources of virtue ethics and positive psychology to construct a model of Christian spiritual development where the goal of love is realized through the increasing presence in the individual Christian of virtues of gratitude, self-care, justice, kindness, and hope.

What Is Love? The Challenge and Necessity of a Theory of Love

Two objections may arise to deeming love the goal of the Christian life: love may seem too platitudinous to be a useful goal, or too spacious to be defined in a way that is helpful without being reductive of a wide range of experiences and cultures. I sympathize with these concerns and so respond with a definition of love that is accessible but demanding. Yet I also make a case for a particular understanding of love. I do this with the confidence demanded by real participation in a living tradition but with the humility appropriate to a pluralistic context with competing metanarratives that recognize themselves as extended, embodied arguments¹⁸ rather than overconfident and oppressive truth claims.

Love is one of the most ubiquitous Christian, even religious, ideals. While its flavor may change (e.g., relationship with God, oneness with all beings, justice for all, selflessness, etc.), there is a common undercurrent linking these seemingly disparate aims together. Love is also a relatively palatable religious goal. It lacks the theological baggage and ambiguity of heaven as a goal. It overcomes the overly cognitive nature of the goal of mature, reasonable faith. It counters the isolationist tendencies of authentic self. It eschews the agenda-laden nature of the self-replicating disciple-maker. Even if definitions diverge, love is a good starting point for identifying what the Christian narrative suggests that truly spiritual development ought to entail: the increasing presence of love for God, for others, for the world, for the self.

I offer a clear and specific definition of love—not to limit it but expand it. Such clarity is intended to aid persons in assessing their own movement toward love, like the articulation of clear learning outcomes in the classroom as a means of guiding pedagogical practices. What are called pathways to love in this model—i.e., virtues—are both means to love and love themselves; this differentiates them from practices. For example, one might suggest that reading the Bible leads to love but would not say it is love in itself; however, justice (a pathway or virtue) both leads to love and is an expression of love. You move toward the goal by living out the goal in real, tangible ways.

The Christian journey therefore becomes an integrated movement toward