Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has performed a valuable service in posting papers presented at meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society. The library appears to represent meetings from 2001 to 2005 only, but that still represents hundreds of papers on topics ranging from systematic theology to biblical exegesis to church history to christian counseling and more. As a pastor I am concerned with making disciples at Beaver Baptist Church, and I am interested in the relationship between spiritual formation and the disciple-making ministry of the church. It turns out that there is a spiritual formation interest group in ETS, and the site has 12 papers on the subject of spiritual formation (the site says 15, but some are double-counted).
One of the papers that I have found to be helpful is “New Wine in Old Wineskins? The Relationship of Evangelical Thinking on Spiritual Formation and Theological Models of Sanctification” (html, or download the .pdf file here), by Steven Roy, who teaches practical theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In this paper, Roy compares the approaches to spiritual formation of two evangelical scholars: Dallas Willard as described in his book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, and Bruce Demarest, represented by his book, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality. These approaches (which turn out to be fairly similar) are compared to three evangelical models of sanctification: (1) The Reformed or progressive model, which holds that progress in sanctification occurs over the course of the believer’s life, and which is never complete in this life; (2) the Wesleyan model, which holds that entire sanctification is possible, coming through a crisis experience, subsequent to regeneration; and (3) the Keswick model, which holds that the believer, through a crisis experience, comes to surrender to the work of the Spirit, resulting in a breakthrough, or turning point in sanctification, although entire sanctification is not the result. Roy observes that there is an affinity between the spiritual formation view approach (of both Willard and Demarest), and the Reformed model of sanctification, because there is a common emphasis on lifelong, gradual progress, and because they both are synergistic, that is, they both emphasize cooperation with the grace of God. Roy assesses strengths and weakness in each author’s approach to spiritual formation, and in general is quite positive about benefits of spiritual formation movement in evangelicalism. He concludes:
Spiritual formation and sanctification need each other. Sanctification is not an old wineskin that must be discarded in order to profit from the new wine of spiritual formation. Neither is spiritual formation a new and weird departure from tried and true discussion of sanctification. No, both spiritual formation and sanctification need each other. So, to quote the words of Jesus from another context, What God has joined together, let no one separate.
