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

120 The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality
done may well be improved by including more recent approaches
(e.g. the religion-historical approach of Albertz 28 ), and by being
less introductory in presentation.
6. “Biblical Spirituality” in The Southern Baptist Journal of
Theology
The winter 2006 edition of The Southern Baptist Journal of
Theology is dedicated to the theme of “Biblical Spirituality.” From
the series of six articles, an Introduction and a Forum, 29 a picture
of Biblical Spirituality different from those mentioned above
emerges.
Starkly absent from the whole are two dimensions, the first of
which is a historical consciousness. Directly related to this is the
lack of a fundamental sense of self-awareness. The security of faith
one finds here would have been admirable, had it not been so
insular, that is, biblical spirituality seems to be understood here as
identical to the way the authors view matters; all else is unbiblical
and hence unacceptable. 30 There is something like “a true and
28
See R. Albertz, Religionsgeschichte Israels.
29
See S. Wellum, “Editorial: ‘Spirituality’—Caveat Emptor,” The Southern
Baptist Journal of Theology 10, no. 4 (2006): 2–3; R. Plummer, “Are the
Spiritual Disciplines of ‘Silence and Solitude’ Really Biblical?” SBJT 10, no. 4
(2006): 4–12; G. Goldsworthy, “A Biblical-Theological Perspective on Prayer,”
SBJT 10, no. 4 (2006): 14–25; P. Adam, “God’s Powerful Words: Five
Principles of Biblical Spirituality in Isaiah 55,” SBJT 10, no. 4 (2006): 28–37; S.
Wright, “The Reformation Piety of Theodore Beza,” SBJT 10, no. 4 (2006), 38–
53; M. Haykin, “‘Draw Nigh unto my Soul’: English Baptist Piety and the
Means of Grace in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” SBJT 10, no. 4
(2006): 54–73; P. Johnson, “What’s New with the New Age? Why Christians
Need to Remain on Guard against the Threat of New Age Spirituality,” SBJT 10,
no. 4 (2006): 74–83; “The SBJT Forum: Thinking about True Spirituality
(including interviews with D. A. Carson, Mark Coppenger, Joel Beeke and
Pierre Constant),” SBJT 10, no. 4 (2006): 84–96.
30
The order of the two “un”-words may equally be inversed here: these writers
seem to accept that such and such is the biblical way, and therefore it must be