Conversatio Divina

Part 3 of 19

Soaked: Understanding the Jesus Life through the Six Streams

Richard Foster in Conversation with Nathan Foster

Richard Foster & Nathan Foster
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Table of Contents

  1. 01.  Editors Note
  2. 02.  Interview

01.  Editors Note

Richard J. Foster originally published Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith in 1998. In this groundbreaking follow-up to Celebration of Discipline, he identified six traditions from the various movements in church history and categorized each according to their unique emphases in faith and practice.

Foster prefaced this discussion by making the argument that the essence of each of these major traditions is found in the person and practices of Jesus. Logically, since we are called to follow Christ, these traditions and practices should be part of the life of both the believer and the church.

It has been argued by some that these “streams” Foster identifies are so essential to nurture of the body of Christ that they can be considered as “food groups” from which a balanced diet can be found. Certainly, it seems that one of the marks of a mature faith is that it is sufficiently secure to engage with other Christian traditions and discover in them important ideas and practices which can be incorporated into one’s life. Streams of Living Water has provided food for thought and stimulated growth in Christ for almost 15 years.

When the editors of Conversations decided to build Issue 11.1 around the theme of celebrating the great traditions of Christian faith, our first thought was to have a conversation with Richard J. Foster. Our second thought was to let his son, Nathan Foster guide that conversation. We hope you enjoy listening in.

02.  Interview

Nathan Foster: Dad, I want to talk a little about the streams. Maybe you could start by telling us exactly what that term means, the “Streams”?

Richard Foster: “Streams of Living Water” is an idea that actually first came from a fax that was sent by a fellow up in Oregon who felt that he had been

given a vision of the throne of God and out from under the throne of God were these various streams that ended up coming together and flowing into a great river. I had already been thinking about the great traditions of the Christian faith, which we ended up calling “streams”.

NF: So, he was thinking of these streams as being those traditions?

RF: Well, he didn’t really have anything identified, but I very quickly was thinking that these great traditions all through the history of the Church, the idea of them flowing together in a great stream of the Spirit or a great river of the Spirit began to come forward in my mind.

NF: That is interesting. Were you thinking of the water analogy before that?

RF: Yes, I had the water analogy pretty early on. And, of course, his fax to me (he actually drew a little picture, which I still have) solidified or affirmed it. And, the idea, of course, was thinking of a new face for Christianity in our day as we enter a post-denominational era in which denominations no longer define who we are.

NF: That’s helpful. Well, lets go through each stream and briefly describe them.

RF: First the Contemplative stream. Now, that term is the larger term. A smaller term, or an entry-point term, is the Prayer-Filled Life. We were just trying to give a way of explaining how you would enter this. It’s a life of prayer, but the Contemplative stream involves more than just prayer. It’s this life of intimacy with God; it’s the “with God” life experience; it’s learning silence, solitude and walking with God day-by-day. That is the basic idea. Learning to pray, learning to voice our concerns, but also learning to listen to God’s voice in his wondrous, terrible, loving all-embracing silence.

NF: When you originally thought of the six different streams, were you looking at 2,000 years of Christendom and the different sects that had broken off, or were you working from the life of Jesus?

RF: Both. Certainly, the history of the Church is in my mind. Throughout history there would be various areas of neglect and a group would arise to try to address those areas. Those would be the rise of “denominations,” or in the Roman Catholic tradition it would be “orders.” Like the Franciscan order arose to bring together a Contemplative life with an Evangelical mission style. But, also you’re thinking of the Gospels and the life of Jesus, as I put it in the book,

“The Divine Paradigm by which we can conjugate all of the verbs of our existence.”

So, that’s why the opening chapter is the life of Jesus as we see it in the Gospels and how all of these streams are illustrated and brought to their completion in the life of Christ. Of course, I always have in the background of my thinking the long history of the Church. We look at various denominations, we look at various groups who have arisen to address a need, or problem, or neglect and because of what they stress, or emphasize, holding that up as a key to be something that we can give to the whole church. Every group has treasures that, for the most part, are loanable.

 

NF: “Loanable,” that’s a good term. Are you familiar with the work that the British Bible Society did to simplify the streams in Lyfe Series?

RF: Yes, indeed. That’s a good way to look at it. None of these ways of thinking are perfect. They’re just ways of helping us consider the history of the people of God and helping us learn from that, the life of Jesus in the gospels and the life in which Jesus continues to give to us today. Take the Book of Acts, for example. Acts continues on in the acts of Jesus through the Holy Spirit given to the people of God and that continues today.

NF: The Lyfe Group references the Contemplative stream as the Still Life. I find the titles of the streams sometimes can be, I don’t want to say confusing, but sometimes they are difficult. I thought Lyfe’s simplified version was interesting. I didn’t know if you had a thought on that?

RF: The point is if that can be helpful, good! I tried to stay with the classical terms of Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelical, Incarnational. I do know they are difficult terms for a lot of people and there can be many ways of trying to talk about it.

NF: Maybe difficult is not the right word, more like learning a new vocabulary. You say “classical” in the sense that these are the terms that have been used historically?

RF: Yes, all through the history of the Church. Throughout history, they knew what the Contemplative tradition was. But, I know that’s not as common today and we have to kind of help people. I don’t want to give up on the terms myself.

NF: Sure. You can stay pure with it!

(laughter)

NF: Okay, Holiness.

RF: Yes, the smaller term that I gave in the book was “the Virtuous Life.”

Both of those really are big terms, but in the Holiness tradition there have been groups that have emphasized holy living in particular ways through the history of the church, and they’ve been identified as holiness churches or holiness denominations or groups. But, the term “the Virtuous Life” really comes more out of studies in ethics and virtue ethics. So, that’s a whole study and philosophy of what makes a good life. So, I was pairing those together. What’s the term that James uses?

NF: The Lyfe term here is Real Life. I thought that was kind of clever.

RF: That’s a good term because holiness really means, “to function well.” We’re so accustomed to dysfunction in life that it’s good to think in terms of holiness or virtue as just functioning well.

NF: To me that kind of sets the norm as holiness being real life, real life that functions well. The cutline under the Holiness stream is, “In which our every act and word becomes expressive of God’s love.” How does that play out?

RF: It comes as people increasingly become formed. Now that’s a particular religious term, “formation.” It really draws off of Paul’s words to the Galatians, “I am in travail until Christ be formed in you.” So, we’re focusing on that forming of that character, that personality, that life. “Holiness” or the “Real Life,” the workable life, if you will, comes about as we begin to function, as dysfunction becomes less and less a part of who we are, and we experience real functionality; that is, a parent learning to function with their children, a husband learning to function with his wife, or vice versa, a worker in a business functioning well—we really have to bring it down to that kind of level. We learn from God what to say, what kind of attitude to have. These traditions all intertwine. That’s how the Contemplative tradition helps the Holiness tradition, because in prayer, we are asking for guidance in our work or in our relationships with our neighbor or whomever it is and that’s how holiness plays itself out.

NF: Do you think of the streams as categories that bleed into each other?

RF: Absolutely. The visual that I sometimes give is like the ocean waves that are distinct from one another, but always on top of one another. These traditions, or streams, all have interplay with one another. You can’t just have one; you experience them all in one way or another.

NF: Would you think they are a little bit like the disciplines, that they flow into each other as well?

RF: Absolutely. The disciplines stay separate only as we are analyzing them, or thinking about them, or writing about them. But in practice, they really flow into one another and the disciplines fit right into the streams. All of the spiritual disciplines are being worked out, in one form or another, through these various streams.

NF: In your work with Renovaré, you’ve divided up the disciplines corresponding with different streams, and the idea then is to have a well-balanced, holistic view of faith?

RF: Yes, you’ve got it exactly right. And today, if you got any dozen people together in any church or in any fellowship group, they are going to reflect these streams in one form or another. The day is gone when a group can be, for instance, contemplative people and not have any exposure to any of the others of these. That’s why I think this is a new form in which God is bringing His people together.

NF: So historically, you could kind of pin groups on one or two of the streams, which is no longer the case, in a post-denominational world?

RF: Yes we’re no longer getting our theology along the vertical bars of denominational loyalty, but across the horizontal bars of interdenominational and inter-life communication. There was a day when groups even used a word like holiness in their name; for example, “The Wesleyan Holiness” denomination or something like that. But today, you go to those kinds of denominations, and they reflect all of these streams in one way or another. We need them all. We need the balance.

NF: Do you think that people gravitate to one or the other personality-wise or temperament?

RF: Yes. However, we must never use that as an excuse to stay away from the other streams; these are not personality-based traditions, they are life traditions. But, of course, there are some people who will really like the Charismatic stream, but they also really need the Contemplative experience. Usually the area that we are least drawn to is the area that we need the most.

(laughter)

NF: This can push us, challenging us a little bit.

RF: This is the value of, as the Bible puts it, the “body of Christ,” that we stay connected with other people because they bring strength that we don’t have. Somebody who’s passion is social justice might draw a person who is more focused on a contemplative life to recognize that this has to flow out into life with the needy and vice versa. The charismatic-type of personality might need the help of someone from the Incarnational stream to have a more liturgical structure maybe and vice versa. You help each other. That is the reason why we have a community of faith.

NF: Now the Charismatic stream.

RF: Yes. The word, “charismatic,” isn’t perfect, but the sub-term that I use there is the “Spirit-empowered Life.” “Charismatic” is used in the 21st century in specific ways, but it is a good term. It comes from the Bible, charism or “gifting” of the Spirit.

NF: You are using a derivative of that word?

RF: Oh yes. charism, that’s where we get the word, “charismatic,” and it just means “gift.” The charisms of the Spirit, or the giftings of the Spirit. You can find all through history groups that have been particularly given to that kind of “spirit-empowered” living that helps the rest of us. I’m part of the Quakers and they were one of the early Charismatic groups in the 17th century. They were deeply dependent upon the Spirit.

NF: I read or heard you say at some point that all Christians are Charismatic. What did you mean by that?

RF: Yes. I mean that there are no non-Charismatic Christians. That is we are Trinitarian. We believe in the work of the Spirit. I say that because particularly in the early part of the 20th century there were divisions and people would say, “Well, I’m not Charismatic.”

NF: Meaning they didn’t speak in tongues or something like that.

RF: That’s right, or some specific expression. The truth of the matter is that if we’re Christian, then we are Charismatic because we depend upon the work of the Spirit.

NF: What would you say to people who maybe aren’t comfortable with some of the expressions you would see in Charismatic churches?

RF: I would say, “Relax.”

(laughter)

RF: “God is not trying to get you to do something that is not within the whole comfort zone of your life.” The work of the Spirit can happen in many different ways. It doesn’t have to be in tongue-speaking, for example, which is probably one of the 20th century issues. It can come out in many other ways. The Spirit is always highly personalized and never leads somebody into doing things that doesn’t fit who he or she is.

NF: The British Bible Society references that one as the Spirit Life.

RF: That sounds good to me.

NF: Ok, now the Social Justice, or Compassionate Life.

RF: That term “Social Justice” is a 20th century term. I suppose the older writers would use “Social Righteousness.” That is, they focused upon the righteousness of life in the kingdom of God in its social dimensions. Social Justice is an effort to try to help groups that have become very pietistic and self-absorbed to realize the social dimensions in terms of justice, in terms of God’s care for the poor and for the bruised and broken, the outcast and the marginalized. The Bible is full of that.

NF: Good. In that you are thinking of caring for people who are marginalized, charity work: the widows and orphans.

RF: All of that, plus there is an institutional aspect to it that is justice in social structures. We all know how certain structures of a society can marginalize people. The reason that the Bible talks about widows and orphans is because in that patriarchal society, those were the ones left destitute. We need to think today who are the kids of people that are left marginalized.

NF: Who do you think that would be? What would that look like for today in America?

RF: I could name groups of people. For example, Native American peoples in the United States are deeply marginalized. You know in the political campaigns there is never any discussion of that. Why? Well, they don’t have political clout. And, of course again, children very easily, in any culture, become marginalized simply because their voice often isn’t heard. People who do not have access to the structures of say, influence or money, that are needed to sustain life. We can think of

this globally, easily, of countries or groups that are not very interesting politically. Those are the marginalized. If you’re in a country that doesn’t have oil, or whatever, you lose clout. So, the Christian should specifically be concerned about those areas that are not so interesting in the general culture and look for the marginalized person.

NF: A couple of groups that just popped into my mind are people with disabilities or mental illness, racial prejudice, and then looking globally at slavery, the sex trade, and those types of things.

RF: Right. And sex trafficking. All those are descriptions of marginalized people. In many cultures, women are marginalized as a group of people. There are whole classes of people that the Christian needs to give special attention to.

NF: The term used by the British Bible Society was The Just Life.

RF: Yes, that is a good one.

NF: Now the “Evangelical” or “Word-centered Life.” This one confuses me a little bit.

RF: Well, “evangelical” simply means “the bringing of good news.” It has a very distinctly, evangelistic emphasis that we are bringing the “evangels” or “good news” to people. We do have the subhead of “the Word-centered Life,” and that’s because the bringing of the “evangel,” the “good news,” is the bringing of a specific word about God and what God has revealed, which of course leads us to the Bible.

God has superintended the bringing to us the Bible in such a way that it can lead us forward. Well, God does the leading, but using the Bible to lead us forward into a life that is knowledgeable of God. Now it isn’t the Bible that we are focused on, but the life, and so the evangelical tradition will always focus on the life.

When I use “the Word-centered Life” in thinking in three ways. First, the word of God, the debhar Yahweh, that is the living word that God speaks which brings life, as Scripture itself says that word is sharper than any two-edged sword. That is the living voice of God. The second, though, is Jesus who is the Word made flesh. And then the third way that we speak of the word is Scripture itself. That is the word of God written. So, the word of God spoken, the word of God living—which is Jesus—and the word of God written, which would be the Bible.

NF: So, in the debhar Yahweh, you’re not referencing Scripture at that point?

RF: That’s correct. The debhar Yahweh came before the Bible was ever around.

NF: So, when you think of the Evangelical or the Word-Centered Life stream, you’re talking about the Living Word, Jesus and the written word, yet also evangelical efforts, mission efforts. How do those fit?

RF: Well, because the Living Word of God, Jesus’ life among the people of God, and the written word both call us forth to bring the good news of God’s love for everybody. The Bible itself as the word of God written gives us a picture of how God has worked all through history with people. Again, it’s focused on life. It isn’t just that I have a book. It is that the book tells me a story. That story is of how God is with people in all different ways, and the point of it is for how God is with me and how I live, how God is with us, and how we live together. That is, say a family, how they are to live and how they’re to live with God. The Bible is full of that.

So, we need it not to get some ammunition to beat everybody else up, but to learn how God has been with people; how God was with Moses and how God was with David and how God was with Mary and so forth. And it’s to help us to learn how God is with us and how we can be with God in life, not in any other way, in our lives. Does that make sense?

 

NF: It does, but let me back up a little and help me understand more, because typically when I hear the word “evangelical,” I think of Evangelical Americans and they tend to be very focused on Scripture. Is that coincidence?

RF: Well, there are particular historical reasons why in the last century that the American expression of evangelicalism has tended to be focused on the Bible sometimes to the exclusion of the other aspects of being “evangelical.” But “evangelical” is much bigger than just the focus on the Bible. What we see today came out of some battles in the early part of the 20th century between folks that were concerned about the fundamentals of Scripture—the term was “fundamentalist”— and liberal groups that tended to disregard the Bible. There was an emphasis on the importance of the Bible and the authority of the Bible, and that is good. But we need to see it in a bigger picture. That is the reason in the book, Streams, I used St. Augustine of Hippo as a historical example of the Evangelical stream because I wanted people to understand that this tradition goes way

back and focuses very much upon the life of God with us, the spoken word of God, of Jesus who lives among his people, and the importance of Scripture to guide, to give a layout of what life could be like with God. So, the particular thing that you and so many others feel is just kind of a historical issue that came up, but it’s not the whole picture.

NF: So, there is a lot in this particular stream.

RF: Yes. It’s a very rich tradition.

NF: The term from the British Bible Society is simply Word Life. But, that doesn’t really sum it up, does it?

RF: No, it doesn’t. That is fine, but that is why I like to stay with these classical, larger terms, and the Evangelical Tradition is a good term. The 20th and 21st centuries have only understood that term partially, but if you go back historically, you’ll see it’s a very large and rich tradition.

NF: Then the last stream is the Incarnational.

RF: Yes. It took a very long time to come up with that term because I was trying to deal with the way by which God uses the physical world and the realities of matter, the stuff of the physical world, to mediate His grace, and that’s why I came up with the term, “Incarnational,” because I didn’t want to just think about those groups who focus on particular liturgies and so on.

NF: Okay. The subtitle you use is “The Sacramental Life.”

RF: Right. But, remember it is a sacramental life that we are talking about. I’m not speaking of particular sacraments that various traditions might have. I am referring to a life that is made sacred by the work of God within us. So, an artist is part of the Incarnational expression. A poet, a person who labors with their hands, a person who builds things, people who write music, for example, are all a part of the Incarnational tradition.

Now, there is a specific religious dimension, and that religious dimension is usually thought of as a liturgical expression. But even there, we must understand that there are many, many liturgical expressions. It isn’t like it’s just the high Church group that has the liturgical tradition. No, low Church groups have that too.

(laughter)

RF: We all have a liturgy, but we can choose which we want to have. It is very broad.

NF: The idea in there is that this is an activity in the physical world that is representative of more?

RF: In which God is mediating, that is bringing us, His grace to us through the physical world.

NF: So then the artist, the poet, the musician, that becomes another expression of God bringing His grace?

RF: Exactly. A person who tinkers with cars can do this to the glory of God, as well as a person who builds birdhouses.

NF: Then that becomes a spiritual act that God is intimately involved in.

RF: Yes. It’s the idea of God using the material, physical world to “mediate” His grace to us. Now we know what a mediator is, a go-between. So, God takes the physical world as kind of a go-between to show forth His life and the human beings and their creativity are, as the term Tolkien used, sub-creators. The writer is the sub-creator, the artist is the sub-creator and is working with God in creating life and the reality of this life with God. They “incarnate” a life. That people and their life, the goodness of their life, are maybe the finest expression. And we must not just think of it in just a religious content. Think of people who’ve been through a hard time, broken people, there is something about them that the life of God shines through. That’s Incarnational.

NF: So the life of God shines through in trees? Would you say that fits?

RF: Exactly. That’s one of the reasons that we love the natural world. We like to go into the woods. We love to see a sunset. Why? Well, because God is mediating His reality through whatever it is; the sunset, the animals, you see all of these things are Incarnational, that is mediated, we see something of God. That’s not pantheism, that’s just recognition that when we see a tree, we see something of the beauty of God.

NF: Then practicing this stream could be spending time in nature or encountering a broken person and finding the beauty of God in their life.

RF: Exactly. Finding the beauty of God in that life even though they might be very dysfunctional in a lot of other ways, but there is something beautiful in them.

NF: You mentioned to me in passing that Dallas Willard thought this was the most important work of your career. Is that accurate?

RF: Yes, he did say that. And I would agree that it is the major work that I’ve done. Now, it isn’t the most popular and that’s okay.

NF: Obviously the disciplines fit into that. Would you see the disciplines as being part of the streams or would you see them as different?

RF: They’re a little bit different because with the streams, I was focusing upon great movements in the history of the Church. With the disciplines, we were thinking upon ways that individuals and communities bring who they are and placing who they are before God in order to receive grace to be formed in character. They certainly interact with each other a lot.

NF: Essentially when you started Renovaré, that was the idea, to take these streams to people.

RF: Right. And it does give a historical context for the actual functioning of individual spiritual disciplines.

NF: Very nice. Dad, thank you for your time.

RF: Good to talk with you, Nate.

Footnotes

Richard J. Foster is best known as an author. He has written six acclaimed books, including Celebration of Discipline, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, and Streams of Living Water, and is the editor of The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible. Richard founded Renovaré, an effort working for the renewal of the church of Jesus Christ in all her multifaceted expressions. Renovaré holds national and international conferences and retreats, bringing together Christians across denominational lines for renewal.

Nathan Foster is an assistant professor of social work at Spring Arbor University and director of teaching ministries for Renovaré U.S. He is the author of the IVP book Wisdom Chaser. He is the bassist for the band Christy & the Professors. He lives in Michigan with his wife and two kids.

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