Radical Spirituality - Conclusion

Excerpt from Convivencia Radical: Espiritualidad para el siglo xvi, Ediciones Kairós, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007, by John Driver. Translated by John Driver.

In the face of the great variety of Christian Spiritualities that we have noted, some of which are frankly inadequate and even deformed, it is absolutely indispensable that we return to our roots in Jesus and the Community inspired by his Spirit in the First Century in order to re-orient our own Spiritualities.

In marked contrast to many of our traditional Spiritualities, the Bible does not allow those distinctions we make between the inner and the outer, between the spiritual and the material, between believing and doing. The Community in which Mother Theresa of Calcutta participated is an example of a Christian Spirituality that can claim authenticity. To touch the untouchables was, for her and her sisters, to touch the Body of Christ. To love in her utterly unselfish way was, for her, to pray. She did not stop praying to serve, nor did she stop serving to pray. Authentic Spirituality is all embracing.

The cross of Jesus is the clearest model for a Spirituality that is authentically Christian. It is, at once, a sign of absolute identification with the God and of solidarity with humanity. In the cross, the Spirit of Jesus is reflected most clearly. This is the Spirituality that his disciples are called to assume. The cross is at one and the same time the most eloquent prayer of intercession to the Father on behalf of humanity, and the clearest and the most powerful response of God to the powers of evil. Therefore, in the cross of Jesus, and in that of his followers, we find reflected the very essence of our Christian Spirituality.

A truly authentic Christian Spirituality will not be amorphous. It takes forms that are truly palpable and salvific. It can be defined as the process of following Jesus Christ under the inspiration of the Spirit in the context of communion within the Messianic Community. For this reason, Christian Spirituality is Trinitarian: it is lived in absolute dependence on God, the Father, oriented in following Jesus, and lived under the impulse and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

A fully Christian Spirituality, like that which we see reflected in the primitive Messianic Community, is, above all else, rooted in God's grace and concretely expressed in the following of Jesus. This will mean that our entire life is lived in the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ Himself. An authentic Christian Spirituality will be nourished and shared in the context of the Community of the Living Christ. The very idea of a "solitary saint" is an anomaly from the Biblical perspective. Finally, a fully Christian Spirituality will be incarnated in mission, in God's mission in the world carried out with unique clarity and power by Jesus of Nazareth, as he lived under the impulse and inspiration of God's Spirit.

For those of us who share the radical Anabaptist tradition, it is especially interesting to note the points of coincidence between the Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists and the Spirituality of the Primitive Christian Community in the First Century. The same could be said of the heirs of other Christian traditions, equally radical in their Spirituality rooted in Jesus Christ and in the First-Century Messianic Community.

The Spirituality that characterized the Anabaptist Movement depended on the powerful intervention of the Spirit of the risen Christ. But what distinguished the Anabaptists most from other traditions was undoubtedly their ecclesiological understandings and practices. Participation in the Christian Community was of fundamental importance. The richness and variety of the dimensions of this participation were reflected in the four symbols of community that marked their essentially corporate Spirituality.

In baptism the Anabaptists committed themselves to following Christ, to "walk in the resurrection" and to live in "the obedience of faith", as they themselves confessed. But furthermore, they saw themselves as fully commissioned to participate in God's mission in the world. And in marked contrast with other traditions, this was the privilege of all, not simply of the clergy. In baptism, Anabaptists also committed themselves to receive and to offer fraternal counsel according to "the rule of Christ" (Mt 18:15-20), and to help one another with their needs, material as well as spiritual. In their celebration of the Lord's Supper Anabaptists renewed their vows to follow Jesus, even to the point of laying down their very life for their fellow humans, just as Jesus had done.

In their Christology, they confessed that Jesus was not only to be revered as a "Savior who dies" or as the "coming Judge", but also as the "Lord to be followed" in their daily life. Their Spirituality was marked by this vision. Their participation in the Reign of God, in which Jesus was already Lord, led the Anabaptists to adopt a Spirituality characterized by justice and peace, just as these had been proclaimed and practiced by Jesus. All of this led the Anabaptists to embrace, to a remarkable degree for their time, a Spirituality marked by the missional vocation implied in their understanding of baptism.

The spiritual heirs of the Anabaptists of the Sixteenth-Century Radical Reformation certainly have no monopoly on this kind of Spirituality. All who form part of the Lord's vineyard have contributions to make toward a recovery of the kind of Christian Spirituality that we saw reflected in the life of the Primitive Community in the First Century. Neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy is automatically passed on from one generation to another. Therefore every new generation is given the opportunity and the responsibility to again engage in mutual dialogue in their search for the new forms that an authentically Christian Spirituality will take in their midst.

In the sense that Christian Spirituality consists of following Jesus of Nazareth under the impulse of the Spirit, there is just one Spirituality. However, in the sense that Christians seek to follow Jesus, each in his or her own particular historical context, there can be a diversity of Christian Spiritualities. These differences are found in the variety of historical, geographical and cultural settings in which their discipleship is practiced.

The Spiritualities of all, without exception, can be enriched, thank God, through the contributions of brothers and sisters who participate in other traditions. Undoubtedly, the essential elements of authentic Spirituality that we have noted in Jesus and in the primitive community will be of lasting validity. Among other things they will include: a vital pneumatology, a corporate communal ecclesiology that is truly transforming, a Christology and soteriology that are truly saving - reconciling us with God and with our fellow humans, even our adversaries -, communal relationships marked by the justice and peace that characterize life under God's Reign. This is the restored communion of the new creation that we proclaim in both deed and in word in the missional vocation that we share.