Abstract
Adrian van Kaam’s original and expansive thinking on formative spirituality has for decades been largely unknown to Protestants engaged in the ministry of spiritual formation or Christian psychologists committed to the integration of psychology and Christianity. Now for the first time, Rebecca Letterman and Susan Muto have made the genius of this always joyful and humble man of God available to readers in a single volume. 1 Van Kaam’s obscurity in the Protestant world is partly due to his paradigm being parceled out through over 40 volumes and scores of published articles.
I first encountered van Kaam as a graduate student studying the integration of Christianity and psychology with John Carter at Biola University’s Rosemead School of Psychology. Carter had his students read several of van Kaam’s books and they have structured my thinking on a Christian approach to psychology and spiritual formation for over 30 years. Many who have read widely in the literature of spiritual formation and the integration of Christianity and psychology agree that no one comes close to the comprehensiveness and depth of van Kaam’s corpus of writing.
Seeds of his model were planted during the Holocaust as he ministered to people who hid and suffered with him behind enemy lines during the Nazi occupation of his beloved Netherlands. His paradigm continued to develop as this Roman Catholic priest came to the United States, pursued a PhD in psychology from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and was invited to join the faculty of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh where he founded The Institute of Formative Spirituality. It is here that his seminal ideas grew and matured with the collaboration of Susan Muto, another faculty member at Duquesne. The Institute grew into a fully accredited program that bestowed a combination of masters and doctoral degrees on nearly 800 students from 26 countries. Van Kaam and Muto later founded the Epiphany Association, a non-profit center to advance their non-university ministerial work. They later resigned their full-time tenured professorships to “engage in research, publication, and dissemination of the findings of formative spirituality” (8) under the auspices of the Epiphany Association.
Van Kaam’s thinking integrates not only biblical knowledge and theology but also the works of ancient Christian writers, pre- and post-reformation authors, and contemporary Christian thinkers as noted in the book’s 11-page bibliography. Van Kaam’s body of work extends also into “fields of study from neuroscience and medicine to physics, from film and art to anthropology, and from music to psychology” (8). As Roman Catholics, van Kaam and Muto along with Rebecca Letterman as a Protestant seminary professor, have always been steadfast in their conviction that all their integrative work be biblically based and Bible compatible.
The reader must be prepared to encounter an uncommon depth of genius in van Kaam’s writing that will, at times, stretch the mind. Most of the concepts in this book can be incorporated with careful thought into established categories in the reader’s mind. At other times, van Kaam requires the reader to stretch one’s mind to accommodate to his paradigm with its new and enriched conceptual categories and metalanguage. When this happens, the reader will have to choose whether to pause and drill down into the material or to simply read on and return at a later time to digest that which was not readily grasped. Since this book warrants multiple readings, I recommend the latter approach for the initial read and the former for repeated visits. The extensive glossary will be helpful to those not familiar with van Kaam’s metalanguage.
This book is more than just a textbook on van Kaam’s paradigm of spiritual formation. The authors state in the conclusion of the introduction that “Adrian van Kaam exuded a passion to help individuals and groups to understand themselves and each other. Most of all, he wanted people to know that they were understood and loved by God” (8). This book is also a handbook to help readers gain clarity on how God has been intimately involved with forming them and transforming them as a unique story throughout their life’s journey. The authors’ goals for this book and the reflection questions at the end of each chapter are to help readers confirm what God has already formed in them and to help identify yet to be disclosed insights and findings on the journey. They want to help readers understand their story in all its richness as God works formatively in them to be epiphanies of his care and concern.
In chapter 1, the authors outline van Kaam’s “formation field model.” Van Kaam viewed a person as growing spiritually and psychologically within the context of a formation field consisting of four polarities with God at the center of the formation field. From the viewpoint of spiritual formation, van Kaam liked to think of God as a “Divine Forming Mystery.” Though referring to God as “the Mystery” might be unfamiliar to many readers, it is important to understand that van Kaam clearly understood the Mystery to be our personal triune God and how He works. Van Kaam would consider placing anything else other than our personal triune God at the center of the formation field as sub-biblical. If the formation field was configured as the face of a watch, there would be four spheres within the formation field placed at 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock, and 9 o’clock. These spheres of formation are the zones of relationship within which and through which God has a formative influence in a person’s life. These zones include the Intrasphere (relationship to oneself), Intersphere (one’s relationship with other people), Situational Sphere (relationship to one’s immediate life context), and the Extended World Sphere (one’s relationship to the wider world, the world at large, including aspects not initially perceived in our immediate awareness). Formation opportunities occur as we are open to the forming work of the Holy Spirit who works within us as we process our reactions and interactions within these spheres.
Chapters 2 and 3 reveal van Kaam’s careful thought regarding the structure of human personality. He labeled these aspects of human personality structure as dimensions, each with their own dynamics and expressions. The dimensions of the human personality are the Sociohistorical dimension (consisting of our situatedness in time, tradition, culture, and family influence our personality), the Vital dimension (consisting of genetics, physicality, temperament, and emotionality), the Functional dimension (consisting of skills, talents, thoughts, choices, and managerial abilities), and the Transcendent dimension (consisting of our capacity to be in contact with God). This chapter promotes insight into how God works integratively and interactively through all these dimensions of our personality to promote Christian character formation.
Though many aspects of human personality are in constant flux, there are other aspects of the human personality that are more lasting and enduring despite the dynamic nature of our various life contexts. These insights help us understand how the core essence of who we are as humans can have differing manifestations in the home compared to how we manifest ourselves on the job or even in a church worship service. Perhaps one of the most helpful enduring structural forms of our personality is what van Kaam calls the Founding Life Form. Van Kaam seizes upon the idea that before God made the planet, he knew us (Ephesians 1:4, Jerimiah 1:5). Van Kaam views every person as having a unique design to their being. Each person was designed in the mind of God to be a unique example of the image of God. This unique design, though preformed in the mind of God, was deformed upon conception and entered the world as a deformed person. When a person experiences rebirth from above, a transformation process begins (Sanctification) which moves the Christian progressively into conformity with Christ. Though van Kaam would embrace the transformation process as a growth into Christ’s likeness, he preferred to think of the formation as a process with God as the potter who shapes human clay progressively into conformity to the unique original design that God intended that person to be. This he calls the Foundational Life Form and it is something that the person becomes and understands as his or her life unfolds over the course of one’s lifetime. I have found this concept of the Foundational Life Form to be one of the most helpful and exhilarating concepts for my Christian clients. It seems to motivate them to desire more growth in their spiritual life as they begin to trust God to be the potter who transforms their human clay.
In discussing obstacles to spiritual formation, van Kaam articulates his understanding of how pride has a deformative influence on the structures of being human. He conceptualized the “false self” as being a manifestation of pride. He sees pride as blinding us spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally and it steers us away from recognizing our Foundational Life Form and our calling in God. In his teaching on the structure of personality, we see how van Kaam was ahead of his time in his understanding of how formative and deformative experiences influence our neurological structures, our dispositions, and our behaviors.
Van Kaam further addresses the transformation of dispositions in chapter 4. He views spiritual transformation as largely the transformation of dispositions which are embedded and express themselves in all layers of our personality. Of the many dispositions or character traits of the Christian life, van Kaam considers the disposition of awe to be the primary Christian disposition, which he describes as the trait of “presence in ultimate reverence and wonder to the Mystery that gives form to life and world” (66).
The roots of chapter 5 trace back to van Kaam’s experience during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. For years after this experience of brutality and suffering, van Kaam sought answers to the question of why people do and live the way they do. As he sought answers to the formational dynamics that resulted in the behavior of Nazi soldiers, he concluded that cultural traditions had a profoundly formative influence on the way people live and their “propensity to rely on patterned, habitual ways of acting and reacting, of thinking and responding and choosing.” Van Kaam termed such habits and patterns of thinking and living as “formation traditions.” Thus, van Kaam insisted that the process of spiritual formation examine formative and deformative dynamics within a cultural tradition so that these dynamics can be opened up to God for transformation. The authors state, “Traditions require the focused attention of anyone who studies spiritual formation because they are not only powerful dynamics in the life of the spirit, but also the means by which we pass on to others, for better or worse, what we believe and how we live” (p. 83). Van Kaam resisted the tendency to equate spirituality merely with the interior life and he provides guidance to help the reader examine the formational influence of one’s cultural traditions. He encourages the reader to look at traditions both within one’s faith community as well as traditions within one’s secular cultural context.
In chapter 6, van Kaam addresses the spiritual formation of one’s conscience and consciousness. The authors outline six facets that have a formational impact upon the development of one’s conscience. As a psychologist, van Kaam was well aware of the history of personality theories and their varying views on human consciousness. In this chapter, the authors also articulate van Kaam’s holistic theory of consciousness and the importance of staying alert and attentive to the formative influence of the Holy Spirit upon the multiple layers of human consciousness and their interforming influences on each other. Before chapter 6 concludes, the authors briefly address van Kaam’s view of spiritual transformation of the transcendent mind and will, the functional mind and will, and one’s memory, imagination, and anticipation. The authors also articulate van Kaam’s helpful distinction between a transformative approach he called transcendent self-presence which he encouraged, in contrast to what is commonly called self-introspection.
In chapter 7, the authors outline van Kaam’s “appraisal process” (discernment) by which a Christian, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, can recognize a formation opportunity, identify the human fleshly resistance to this formation opportunity, resonate or surrender to the formation opportunity, and then abandon oneself to the Mystery for God’s direct (immediate versus mediated) transformational touch. Thus, as the Christian lives in a posture of “abiding in awe filled attentiveness” one is able to experience “just noticeable differences” as God brings about gradual change in character structure.
Before concluding the book, the authors address van Kaam’s view of spiritual direction in chapter 8. He outlines obstacles to and facilitating conditions for spiritual self-direction, direction in common, and one on one direction. An entire chapter (9) is given over to helping the reader understand what van Kaam calls a transcendence crisis. These are crises in which we find ourselves overwhelmed with a sense that our way of living is no longer adequate and it is impossible to ignore this inadequacy. Van Kaam describes a transcendence crisis as a time when such disruption does occur in the normal course of our lives. The dissonance it creates signals that the way we were accustomed to being and doing may be breaking apart or collapsing altogether. Lacking answers for what is happening, we experience a crisis, though, at the moment we do not yet understand where it might take us. All we know is that life has taken an unexpected turn. We have lost our way. We are unsure of ourselves. (150)
I offer eight tips for reading this book: Don’t read this book when you are tired. This is an intellectually and spiritually challenging book. Van Kaam has developed a complex but very helpful metalanguage for his paradigm and it requires a freshness of mind to appreciate this aspect of his work. This book is more of a textbook than a devotional read. Van Kaam himself acknowledged that his work was complex and he encourages his readers to think through his metatheory, learn to apply it to their own lives, and then restructure the vocabulary so it more easily fits into their lives and work. Have fun playing with the concepts. Work with what is readily understandable and applicable to your own life and, upon multiple readings, more of it will integrate as you playfully work with one or two aspects of his theory at a time and derive the benefits from doing so. Try to read this book with your heart as well as your head. Though it is a challenge intellectually, the concepts have immediate application to one’s Christian heart at the core of one’s personality. It is important to not let this book be a read that remains at the intellectual level of interest only. Take a pause for awe. These concepts are profound and at times they touch upon spiritual ideas with spiritual words articulating a profundity that evokes awe. Attend to these moments and allow them to raise your heart and mind into the presence of God with worship and thanksgiving. Incorporate van Kaam’s metalanguage into your prayer life. His metalanguage reveals a precision of understanding that easily expresses complex depth with brevity of expression for one’s conversation with God. Take time to work through the reflection questions at the end of each chapter. These questions and the related exercises are deep and there is no need to race through the work of spirit-guided reflection in response to these directives. For those who would like to learn more about van Kaam’s model, purchasing and listening to the six-part DVD series entitled, “Becoming Spiritually Mature” might be the next step. Van Kaam and Muto recorded six 45-minute conversational lectures that would be helpful companions to reading this book and for teaching the paradigm to others. This is available through the Epiphany Association, www.ephiphanyacademyofformativespirituality.org.
In summary, this book is a gift to readers willing to engage their intellect to grasp this comprehensive model, abandon themselves to the Mystery of God’s direct formative touch, and radiate God’s care and concern for others. The book is filled with practical principles and practices that are biblically sound and psychologically astute. There is wisdom here interweaving writings by ancient Christian masters of the spiritual life, pre- and post-reformation spiritual writers, and contemporary Christian thinkers. The van Kaamian model has been the core of an elective course I teach to psychiatry residents on the integration of Christianity and psychiatry. Most consider van Kaam’s paradigm to be unsurpassed in the spiritual formation literature. I highly recommend this book and I consider it required reading for anyone engaged in the integration of Christianity and psychology or a ministry of spiritual formation.