Assessment

Participation 30% + Oral Presentation (15 minutes): 20% + Exegesis (750 words) 20% + Major essay (4000 words): 50%

Module Aims

This module covers aspects of spirituality within the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and explore some ways in which Christians have related to the Bible as a book of faith at various junctures in Church history. The module adopts a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing upon liturgical, historical and biblical studies approaches. The aim is to engage learners with key themes within spirituality across a range of biblical texts. The module also enables learners to consider methodological questions about the academic study of spirituality and explore variations in how the Bible functions in different time periods and faith traditions.

Indicative Syllabus

• Spirituality and the academy
• Biblical spirituality as an academic discipline
• Key biblical terms: e.g. chesed, ruach, pneuma, nephesh, psyche, teshuvah, metanoia, zedekah, shalom, agape, charis, pistis, koinonia.
• Covenant, solidarity and the spirituality of prophetic protest
• The Sermon on the Mount
• The spirituality of the psalms
• Divine presence, absence and divine-human encounter in different genres and corpora within the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
• The social and communal dimensions of spirituality in the Torah and Pauline corpus.
• Detailed exploration of some of the following:
• Sexuality and spirituality in the Song of Songs – ancient and modern readings
• Wisdom, creation and scriptural foundations for an eco-justice spirituality
• The spirituality of social justice in the Exodus and legal traditions and prophets
• Sacrifice, ritual and liturgy
• A spirituality of exile: grief, hope and amazement in the prophetic imagination
• Christian re-readings of Old Testament prophecy
• Covenant: hesed, solidarity, obedience, law and grace
• Faith journeys and call stories in Old and New Testaments
• Jeremiah’s confessions
• Suffering and meaning in the book of Job
• Praying with Scripture: lectio divina, biblical meditation and Gospel contemplation.
• The liturgical use of the Psalms
• The role of the Bible in Catholic, Protestant (Anglican and Reformed) and Pentecostal traditions
• Scripture-based devotional practices in various faith traditions and historical periods e.g. Irish High Crosses, sermons and homilies, religious art and iconography, medieval mystery plays, scripture memorisation, bible journaling.

Learning Outcomes

• — Upon successful completion of this seminar, students will be able to:
• — LO1. Engage critically with scholarship at the intersection of spirituality and biblical studies
• — LO2. Apply theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches from the academic study of spirituality as these pertain to biblical spirituality.
• — LO3. Analyse Christian spiritual praxis vis-à-vis Scripture across a range of historical and ecclesial contexts, paying attention to their transformative possibilities.
• — LO4. Synthesise insights from biblical scholarship and spirituality studies to develop nuanced interpretations of key biblical texts with a sensitivity to both continuity and discontinuity across genres and Testaments.
• — LO5. Apply insights from biblical spirituality to contemporary contexts and issues.
• — LO6. Communicate effectively, orally and in writing, themes and concepts within the field of biblical spirituality, employing a suitable academic register and using sources appropriately.

Bibliography

• — Anderson, Bradford A. and Jonathan Kearney (Eds), Ireland and the Reception of the Bible: Social and Cultural Perspectives, London: T&T Clark, 2018.
• — Bowe, Barbara Ellen, Biblical Foundations of Spirituality. Touching a Finger to the Flame, 2nd ed, Lanham MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.
• — Branch-Trevathan, George, The Sermon on the Mount and Spiritual Exercises: the making of the Matthean self, (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 50) Leiden: Brill.
• — Brueggemann, Walter, Spirituality of the Psalms, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002.
• — Brueggemann, Walter, Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic voices in exile, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1986.
• — Brueggemann, Walter, Sabbath as Resistance, Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.
• — Carr, David M., The Erotic Word. Sexuality, Spirituality and the Bible, Oxford University Press, 2005.
• — Dreyer, Elizabeth A and Mark S Burrows (Eds), Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2005.
• — Flanagan, Bernadette and Kerri Clough, The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies. Taylor and Francis, 2024.
• — Gillingham, S. E., ed., Jewish & Christian Approaches to the Psalms. Oxford: OUP, 2013. [223.206]
• — Gooder, Paula, Body: biblical spirituality for the whole person, London: SPCK, 2016.
• — Gorman, Michael J., Participating in Christ. Explorations in Paul’s theology and spirituality, Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2019
• — Lee, Hak Joon, “Political Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr.: Formation, Praxis, and Contribution,” The Journal of Religious Thought 60-63 (2008): 177-194.
• — Lincoln, A. T., et al., eds., The Bible and Spirituality. Exploratory Essays in Reading Scripture Spiritually. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013.
• — Lombaard, Christo, The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality: theoretical and practical essays from a South African perspective, Atlanta GA:SBL Press, 2012.
• — Lombaard, Christo, ‘Biblical Spirituality and transformation,’ In die Skriflig 49/2 (2015), Lombaard, Christo, http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ids.v49i2.19501
• — Lombaard, Christo, ‘Discernment and Biblical Spirituality – An Application: Discernment in the milieu and wake of Nehemiah 8,’ Journal for the Study of Religion 20/1 (2015): 81-99.
• — Lombaard, Christoffel, “Considering Mystagogy as method in biblical spirituality,” HTS Theologiese Studies 76/4. http://dx.doi.org.may.idm.oclc.org/10.4102/hts.v76i4.6094
• — Matera, Frank, The Spirituality of St Paul. A call to imitation, Paulist Press, 2017.
• — McGrath, Alistair, Christian Spirituality. An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1999.
• — Pennington, Jonathan, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing. A theological commentary. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2017.
• — Schneiders, Sandra M., “Biblical Spirituality,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, 56/2 (Apr 2002): 133-142.
• — Schneiders, Sandra M., ‘Spirituality in the Academy,’ Theological Studies 50/4 (1989): 676-697
• — Stuhlmueller, C., The Spirituality of the Psalms. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002.
• — West, Fritz, Scripture and Memory. The Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three Year Lectionaries, Collegeville MN:Liturgical Press, 1997.
• — Wink, Walter, The Bible in Human Transformation. Toward a New Paradigm for Biblical Study, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.
• — De Villiers, Pieter G.R., and George Marchinkowski, ‘Sabbath-keeping in the Bible from the perspective of biblical spirituality,’ Hervormde Teologiese Studies, Volume 77, Issue 2 (2021) http://dx.doi.org.may.idm.oclc.org/10.4102/hts.v77i2.6755
• — Waaiman, Kees, ‘Biblical spirituality: an “other” reading (allegoria),’ Acta Theologica Suppl 5 (2011) 10.4314/actat.v31i1S.2