The Divine Embrace | Robert E. Webber

Robert E. Webber. The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life. Baker, 2006. 288 pp.

CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY IS . . .

What is Christian spirituality? There is a great deal of confusion about Christian spirituality today. . . .

This book is about the Christian story of the divine embrace, the spirituality that proceeds from it, and how this spirituality may be recovered in a relativistic, postmodern world where spirituality is viewed as a common, contentless experience of otherness.

WHERE DO WE START?

The heart of biblical and ancient Christian spirituality is our mystical union with God accomplished by Jesus Christ through the Spirit. God unites with humanity in his saving incarnation, death, and resurrection. We unite with God as we receive his new life within us.

Christian spirituality then, simply put, is God’s passionate embrace of us; our passionate embrace of God. . . . On one side we find the divine initiative, referring to what God does to make us spiritual. On the other side we find our response. . . . These two sides of a single coin tell us that God makes us spiritual, and we live the spiritual life. But to understand these two aspects of spirituality, we must place them in the setting of God’s story of the world.

GOD’S STORY

What is God’s story? It is the story of God’s purposes for humanity and the world. God created us in his image and likeness, to live in union with himself, to be what he created us to be, and to do what he created us to do: take care of the world and make it the place of his glory.

But we failed both assignments. We rebelled against God and sought the meaning of life by following the course of evil in our personal choices, resulting in the world as a place of violence, greed, and lust.

We can’t change ourselves or the world. So God does it for us.

God’s story is the story of how God reversed the human condition, broke the hold of sin and death—which separates us from God, and restored us to the original vision of becoming the person God created us to be and making the world the place of God’s glory.

Christian spirituality, then, does not fall into . . . a contentless “transcendent experience” but is God’s gift of a redirected life in union with God’s purpose for life. Our spiritual life then, is union with God fulfilled in a life of contemplation and participation in God’s vision for life in this world. Contemplation and participation, it turns out, is our worship of God. . . .

THE SOURCE OF SPIRITUALITY

Story

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about storytelling as a prime form of communication. This emphasis on story is a result of the shift from modernity to postmodern times. In modern times people were much more interested in argument. The emphasis was on setting forth your premise, then developing the arguments that proved your case. . . .

But in the postmodern world, the way of knowing has changed. We now live in a world in which people have lost interest in argument and have taken to story, imagination, mystery, ambiguity, and vision. . . .

Mystical-Union

I don’t doubt that for many spirituality as union with God is a new insight. And that is because union with God has become lost in the twentieth century. Spirituality has been wrenched from its origins in the story of God and set adrift to become just about anything. In this free-float state, spirituality has been more influenced by culture than by God’s vision. Current spirituality, having asserted its independence from God’s vision for the world, is expressed more as “a journey into self” than “a journey into God.” . . .

Because this union is a mystical-union, I need to make clear how I am using the word mystical throughout this book. . . . I use the words mystical and mystery throughout this book to refer, not to an esoteric spiritual experience, but to the mystery of our union with God. . . .

THE ACTIONS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

The Way of Contemplation

In the spiritual life we choose to contemplate the mystery of the Triune God who creates and has entered into our history to reconcile the world through his mighty acts of salvation culminating in Jesus Christ. Contemplation is a prayerful pondering of the mystery, a wonder, a sense of astonishment and awe before the glory of it all. . . .

Our contemplation . . . is a real, genuine, internal delight in the story of God’s rescue of creatures and creation. This delight in God expresses itself in the worship of God translated as a love for the story, a love for life, a love for this world.

Delight is the hope that swells up within us because this is such a good story, such an incredible drama of how God overcomes evil and establishes his kingdom throughout all creation. This world is not doomed to always be as it now is. There is hope, and in this hope we take great delight. . . .

The Way of Participation

The spiritual life of contemplation on God’s story leads us to the second aspect of our spiritual life: choices we make to participate in God and God’s purposes for life in this world. . . . The focus is on God’s purposes for our life and the life of the world.

Participation in God affirms life. To worship God through participation means to live life intentionally, choosing to live God’s way in our personal life, in all of our relationships within the family, in the institutions of society, and in our vocations. This life in God in the world is shaped by an interior disposition—a heart that constantly wills to do what God desires for creatures and creation.

The Divine Embrace

Look in all the religions of the world and you will find no better story than this. God has come to us in Jesus so that we may come to God through Jesus. That is Christian spirituality. And living in that union, that divine embrace, that is the spiritual life.

Taken from pp. 15-23 of The Divine Embrace by Robert E. Webber. Used by permission of Robert E. Webber, copyright © 2006. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Robert E. Webber.

Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .