| Chapter 1: | Transformation and the Study of Christian Spirituality |
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question concerns methodology proper: the “how” of spirituality studies. A comprehensive examination of these issues is well beyond the scope of this study and is, moreover, not necessary to clarify the analytical framework employed here. A few general observations are, however, in order here concerning the object of interest in any examination of spirituality.
The Meaning of Spirit
The focus on the human “spirit” in this study implies a common recognition and affirmation that the “spiritual” is a fundamental dimension of the human person. This anthropological datum is interpreted in various ways but is generally indicative of that desire and capacity of the human person to seek ultimate meaning and value and to locate him or herself in responsive relationship to that meaning and value through a particular way of life or “spirituality.” In order to understand this latter term more fully, it is helpful to explore more fully the phenomenology of spirit itself.
Nelson Thayer has developed a synthetic approach to the phenomenology of Christian spirituality as it relates to pastoral care. His own functional understanding of the spirit is the “specifically human capacity to experience, be conscious of, and relate to a dimension of power and meaning transcendent to the world of sensory reality expressed in the particularities of a given historical and social context, and leading toward action congruent with this meaning.”3 Drawing on the work of Mircea Eliade, Paul Tillich, and Gerald May, Thayer observes that the human spirit is more than a capacity for responsiveness to transcendent meaning and power. He asserts that the human spirit is a capacity for union with the whole of Being.4 This is a dimension of spirituality that moves it decisively beyond the construction of ultimate meaning and relatedness to sacred value.
Thayer views this transcendent realm of meaning and power not only in terms of sacred meaning and value but as the Holy—a transpersonal or “numinous” power that is sui generis, apprehended by a state of mind and heart that is capable of transcending the rational and the moral level of consciousness. Thayer notes that historically, the disciplines of mysticism and the spiritual life were developed in order to enable the clearing away