II. EXEGESIS
I. SPIRITUALITY
I begin with a singular and passionate conviction: that the proper aim of all true theology is doxology. Theology that does not begin and end in worship is not biblical at all, but is rather the product of western philosophy. In the same way, I want to insist that the ultimate aim of all true exegesis is spirituality, in some form or another. And I insist on this because of my conviction that only when exegesis is so understood has the exegetical task been done in a way that is faithful to the intent of the text itself.
So let me address myself at the outset to the most difficult task of all — to offer a definition of “spirituality.” As the result of my work on the pneuma (“Spirit”) word group in the letters of Paul, I have found myself becoming more and more distressed by our translating the adjective pneumatikos with a small-case letter, “spiritual.” Indeed, the word “spiritual” is an “accordion” word; its meaning pretty much has to do with how much air you pump in or out of it. The point that needs to be made is that the word pneumatikos, a distinctively Pauline word in the New Testament, has the Holy Spirit as its primary referent. Paul never uses it as an adjective referring to the human spirit; and whatever else, it is not an adjective that sets some unseen reality in contrast, for example, to something material, secular, ritual, or tangible.
In the New Testament, therefore, spirituality is defined altogether in terms of the Spirit of God (or Christ). One is spiritual to the degree that one lives in and walks by the Spirit; in Scripture the word has no other meaning, and no other measurement. Thus, when Paul says that “the Law is spiritual,” he means that the Law belongs to the sphere of the Spirit (inspired of the Spirit as it is), not to the sphere of flesh. And this, despite how the flesh has taken advantage of the Law, since, even though the Law came through the Spirit, it was not accompanied by the gift of the Spirit so as to make it work in the hearts of God’s people. So also, when Paul says to the Corinthians (14:27), “if any of you thinks he or she is spiritual,” he means, “if any of you think of yourselves as a Spirit person, a person living the life of the Spirit.” And when he says to the Galatians (6:1) that “those who are spiritual should restore one who has been overtaken in a transgression,” he is not referring to some special or elitist group in the church, but to the rest of the believing community, who both began their life in the Spirit and come to completion by the same Spirit who produces his own fruit in their lives.
Thus in the New Testament, Christian existence is Trinitarian at its very roots. At the beginning and end of all things is the eternal God himself, to whom both Jews and Christians refer over and again as the Living God. God’s purposes in creating beings like ourselves, fashioned in his image, was for the purposes of relationship — that we might live in fellowship with the Living God, as those who both bear his likeness and carry out his purposes on earth. From even before the fall, we are told that God had set about his purpose to redeem the fallen so as to reshape their now misshapen vision of God and thus to restore them into the fellowship from which they fell in their rebellion. God has brought this about, we are told, by himself coming among us in the person of his Son, who at one point in our human history effected our redemption and reconciliation with the Living God, through a humiliating death and glorious resurrection. But he has not left us on our own to make a go of it; he has purposed to come to our aid — and this is the reason for his coming to us and among us by his Holy Spirit.
Thus God’s aim in our lives is “Spiritual” in this sense, that we, redeemed by the death of Christ, might be empowered by his Spirit both “to will and to do for the sake of his own pleasure.” True spirituality, therefore, is nothing more nor less than life by the Spirit. “Having been brought to life by the Spirit,” Paul tells the Galatians, “let us behave in ways that are in keeping with the Spirit.”
Hence the aim of exegesis: to produce in our lives and the lives of others true Spirituality, in which God’s people live in fellowship with the eternal and living God, and thus in keeping with God’s own purposes in the world. But in order to do that effectively, true “Spirituality” must precede exegesis as well as flow from it.
Thus, I regularly tell students: Have the touch of God on your life. Live in fellowship with him; be among those who cry out with the Psalmist, “my soul and my flesh long for you”; “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you; my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” If those who teach and preach God’s Word, which preaching must be based on solid exegesis of the text, do not themselves yearn for God, live constantly in God’s presence, hunger and thirst after God — then how can they possibly bring off the ultimate goal of exegesis, to help to fashion God’s people into genuine Spirituality?
Indeed, I don’t much care what you call it — this touch of God on your life — but have it. Because without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, all else is mere exercise — mere beating the air. To be a good exegete, and consequently a good theologian, one must know the fullness of the Spirit; and that includes a life of prayer (“praying in the Spirit,” Paul calls it) and obedience.
A great danger lurks here, you understand, especially for those who have been called of God to serve the church in pastoral and teaching roles. The danger is to become a professional (in the pejorative sense of that word): to analyze texts and to talk about God, but slowly to let the fire of passion for God run low, so that one does not spend much time talking with God. I fear for students the day when exegesis becomes easy; or when exegesis is what one does primarily for the sake of others. Because all too often such exegesis is no longer accompanied with a burning heart, so that one no longer lets the texts speak to them. If the biblical text does not grip or possess one’s own soul, it will likely do very little for those who hear.
All of this to say, then, that the first place that exegesis and Spirituality interface is in the exegete’s own soul — that the aim of exegesis is Spirituality, which must be what the exegete brings to the exegetical task, as well as being the ultimate aim of the task itself. Such an understanding, I would argue, must belong to the exegetical task itself, to which we now turn.