Martin Marty's forward to Richard Foster's book raises an interesting challenge to modern-day Christians. How do we present a moored spirituality, rooted in truth to New Agers who create their own self-centered spirituality grounded completely in their own personal experiences? The book never really answers the question. Rather, Foster's anecdotal collection of Christian spirituality runs the gamut of doctrine and experience, meandering across the vast array of Christian experience, providing interesting tales of religious experience. As apology and polemic, it is merely postmodern experience sharing.
The opening chapter, "Imitatio: The Divine Paradigm" calls Christians to follow Christ by studying the Gospels to see how he lived. While the doctrine of salvation is not the point of the book in a narrow sense, it gets little reference, and the good news is described in mostly generic terms such as "God's kingdom of love."
That being said, congenial, warm Christian experience and sentiment are Foster's forte in this and his other books. The majority and balance of the book outlines six main streams of Christian experience: the contemplative tradition (the prayer-filled life), the holiness tradition (the virtuous life), the charismatic tradition (the spirit-empowered life), the social justice tradition (the compassionate life), the evangelical tradition (the word-centered life), and the incarnational tradition (the sacramental life).
As anecdotal encouragement to follow Christ in our lives with a brief analysis of the strengths and weaknesses found in each stream, this is an interesting book and a challenge to the complacency of many modern-day Christians who have placed themselves in often too limited a focus in their Christian living and experience. In the contemplative chapter, for example, Foster reminds us that our faith is more than just a "cerebral religion." The holiness tradition "gives us hope for genuine progress in character transformation" (87). The charismatic tradition "offers an ongoing correction to the impulse to domesticate God" (129). The social justice tradition calls us to "right ordering of society" (76). We are not to deny the poor and oppressed their fair place in this world.
The evangelical tradition section focuses primarily on the story of Billy Graham and his commitment to evangelizing the world, along with his conflicts with fundamentalists like John R. Rice. He does, toward the end of the chapter, spend several pages discussing Scripture and doctrine. "As the Protestant reformers put it, sola Scriptura, the Scripture alone. This important confession gives us a standard or a norm for discerning faith and practice" (222). He encourages us that it has primacy over everything else in that regard. Having read others of Foster's works, this is not a confession of his Calvinism, but rather a statement of his warm-hearted affinity for the Word.
The last chapter is the incarnational tradition, which Foster says "focuses upon making present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit" (237). Incarnation comes in corporate worship and liturgy, the latter of which he asserts occurs in all traditions. It also comes in the arena of everyday life, which he connects to the Reformation concept of "the priesthood of all believers" (266). It bears some resemblance to Herman Dooyeweerd's concept of sphere sovereignty. This chapter is the least clearly defined and developed.
The two appendices, over 100 pages, cover critical turning points in church history, and an alphabetical section of notable figures and significant movements. They seem unnecessary to the book.
This book is best perused as a purely devotional read. While Christians of all traditions will find sections they like, as well as those with which they will disagree, find ambiguous, or occasionally self-contradictory, this could be a useful book to drop in the lap of a Starbucks-sipping New Ager, or spiritually dead Gen-Xer or Boomer church member. There is probably something here that would motivate them, as well as those who have Christian faith, to evaluate their Christian experience or lack thereof.
This book is not recommended for clarifying theological issues, as that is not its purpose. Indeed, Foster tells us he has strong opinions on issues such as women in ministry and speaking in tongues, but never shares them. Such action would self-contradict his warm-hearted ecumenical spirit. I would, even as one against the ecumenical movement, agree with Foster on one point. We can learn from all true Christian traditions, even those with which we find significant theological disagreement. This is a pleasant, leisurely read that should not be taken as any kind of a theological statement. It could be described as Guideposts magazine-style writing for the more pensive.
