This year, the Martin Institute and Dallas Willard Research Center’s workshop focused on the relationship between spiritual practices and virtue formation. This week, we present the two final sessions of the workshop, which address issues related to the scientific measurement of spiritual formation.
The first video features Brittany M. Tausen from Baylor University. Dr. Tausen and her Baylor colleague, Dr. Allison M. Alford, present a growing body of evidence showing that spiritual practices do not automatically generate Christlike virtue. Rather, certain conditions need to be in place for Christian practices to conduce to virtue development, such as understanding the meaning behind the practice. This research would help explain why it is that spiritual disciplines do not always change Christians and sometimes malform them (for example, legalism).
Broadening Drs. Tausen and Alford’s presentation, Dr. Jesse Fox (Stetson University), uncovers the fundamental meaning of Christian practices—what he calls “existential surrender.” Existential surrender is the notion of dying to one’s autonomous self or emptying oneself of the desire to be God. We might think that unless the spiritual discipline is ultimately a practice of dependence on God, it won’t encourage Christlike virtue formation because Christ’s way of virtue formation is the way of the cross.
Building off these presentations, the second video features Dr. Miguel Farias. Dr. Farias juxtaposes therapeutic models of meditative practice that prioritize personal self-enhancement (for example, inner peace) with Christian models of meditation that aim to transcend the human self in loving communion with God. By making this distinction between self-enhancement and self-transcendence, Dr. Farias helps draw attention to distinct ways of studying Christian meditation that do not always map onto self-enhancement. To connect Dr. Farias with Dr. Stetson, how do we measure whether persons are surrendering to God or enhancing themselves in their spiritual practices?
In the concluding contribution, Dr. Elizabeth Lewis Hall (Biola University) pulls much of the previous discussion together by presenting research and theory that Christian practices aim at cultivating interpersonal connection with God and that transformation of self occurs through that relationship. Dr. Hall makes the important point that in many Protestant groups this relational telos of intimacy with God can be bypassed in favor of personal growth for theological, cultural, and pastoral reasons.
Finally, we have included a special video featuring Dr. Jeff Schloss. Over the course of the workshop, several participants shared “testimonies of transformation” to personalize our theme. Dr. Schloss has taught biology at Westmont College for over forty years and recently retired as the T.B. Walker Professor of Natural and Behavioral Sciences Distinguished Professor of Biology. Jeff was recently diagnosed with a rare and terminal disease. In his testimony of transformation, you will hear a profound and yet somewhat characteristic refrain of how God’s people often turn to him most vulnerably when they suffer most deeply. Jeff’s testimony offers a humbling conclusion to the workshop’s somewhat heady topic.
In weeks to come, we will continue to expand and explore the content from this Martin Institute Christian Formation Workshop, and we hope you will as well. We are grateful to acknowledge that this workshop was partly funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. as part of their Science of Religious and Spiritual Exercises initiative.