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

Spirituality of the Psalms 71
Psalms, 102 in contra-distinction to the individualism characteristic
of our times, thus fits well into this argument.
6. Taken Together
These four books contribute, no doubt, to breaking the relative
silence on biblical spirituality. 103 All the more so because, taken
together, these four works show some appealing parallels, but also
some notable differences.
Interestingly, none of these books are fully academic books in
the manner one would expect from a scholarly monograph. At the
same time, none is “unacademic”: an informed reader can detect
between the lines the exegetical work, the theories and the authors
underpinning what is being said. This approach, combined with, in
all four works, the simplicity of writing style, render them all
valuable educational tools.
More foundationally, all four publications taken in review here
stress the communal aspect of spirituality: the Christian faith has a
social conscience. However, the way in which this point is driven
home differs in noticeable ways. The liberal 104 Presbyterian
Brueggemann draws on social-scientific theory with which to
analyse both biblical text and modern context; the Catholic exegete
Stuhlmueller enriches the biblical text by thick referencing to other
biblical texts, thus building a directly Bible-based case; the
Catholic spiritualist Waaijman draws on existential thought to
place ordinary aspects of life in a wider, faith-full dimension; the
Baptist, former missionary, Old Testament scholar Firth draws on
vignettes from his personal experience to demonstrate the
102
Ibid., 12
103
Cf. Adam, Hearing God’s Words, 15.
104
“Liberal” should not be understood here in the classical sense, of the
rationalist and moralist exegesis of for instance nineteenth-century Europe, but
in the sense in which it is employed in American politics, which is mirrored
strongly in the fault lines of the American ecclesial geography.