Images representing transcendent union with the divine, variously termed salvation, redemption, sanctification, freedom, victory, deliverance and many other English descriptors possibly originate in the conceptual simplicity of the Hebrew yāšaʿ  (יָשַׁע), a root indicating broadening, enlarging, and ample spaciousness.

While some scholars dispute this linguistic origin, its etymological possibility remains instructive when considering the conceptual foundation of any salvation image to its underlying theme. Understood in light of such an originating concept, images evocative of an ascendant process of enlargement, broadening—such as the Jesuit magis (the more), and the Benedictine dilatato corde (dilated heart)—are particularly effective metaphors for grounding understanding and practice of salvation in conceptions of an ongoing and continual process of conversion and deliverance from one’s former experience of a diminished less toward the presencing of an ever-expanding more.

[Read more…]

 

Matters of spiritual praxis, perhaps unexpectedly, are of fundamental concern to theological inquiry.

 

While this assertion needs much development to begin adequate address, I will suggest reinvigoration of simple, venerable spiritual practices that anchor learning in an unsurpassed—and often unexpected—depth of intellectual, spiritual, and embodied engagement, no matter what doctrinal beliefs an individual holds. While that assertion would require manifold reams of multidisciplinary discussion, I will simply offer anecdotal considerations to support my bold claim.

Soberly recognizing that theological education often bears the confessional mark of its particular institution, I find the broad horizon of theological inquiry itself as an existential universal that all human beings experience (including the most unsuspecting twenty-something undergraduate), though its native process is most often unreflective and frequently goes unnoticed. [Read more…]