The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality - International Voices in ...

What Is Biblical Spirituality? 117
anxious to learn how the story or stories concern us… [B]y
releasing God [i.e., through the act of interpreting the biblical
stories], we are able to find ourselves. 15
Interestingly, the givenness of the canon is to our good,
precisely because of the contradictions it contains, which militates
against singular or dictatorial spiritualities in any time and place. 16
It is the diversity of Old Testament presentations of God—as male
and female, for instance 17 —that feeds us. Covenant features as a
metaphor for the relationship between God and humans, with the
latter standing in fundamental relationships with other humans and
with nature too. 18 These and other themes—some of which relate
closely to traditional topics in spiritual writings: the image of God;
freedom; wisdom—are presented as invitations. In this way, most
of the literary genres in the Old Testament are covered, even
though some do lend themselves better than others to a
presentation as invitation.
As a general approach, Craghan chooses a theme for each
chapter of the book that is discussed in an applicatory introduction
and conclusion, which together sandwich an expository section.
The latter comprises mature exegetical-theological analyses of the
theme from different sections of the Old Testament primarily, but
often with brief references to New Testament passages, too. These
analyses draw unapologetically and, frankly, piously (though never
pietistically), on historical-critical studies, with the implicit
assumption that the reader is aware of the basic aspects of
historical methodology. The J and P sources of the Pentateuch, as
they were understood in the 1970s and 1980s, feature prominently
15
Craghan, Love and Thunder, 75
16
Ibid., 4–5.
17
Ibid., 7–15; cf. ix, 195–211. Here Craghan draws strongly on the works of
Phyllis Trible.
18
Ibid., 29–39, 17–27, passim.