Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Welzen’s 2017 volume “Biblical Spirituality: Contours of a Discipline” makes a strong contribution to one of the newer disciplines within Theology, Biblical Spirituality. Following on the 2012 “The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality” by the present author, Welzen’s 2017 contribution is now the leading publication in the field. In this paper, Welzen’s new volume is taken into review, keeping a particular eye on the two essential legs on which this young discipline stands: the historical-exegetical and the contemporary-phenomenological, in both cases with a keen sense of the transformative experience of faith which is spirituality. Combining the detailed specifics of exegetical methodologies in Bible scholarship with the more vaguely-descriptive and almost intuitive refined methodologies in Spirituality Studies is namely no easy matter. Welzen’s religious and intellectual biographies, placed within the internationally leading research centre for Spirituality Studies, the Titus Brandsma Institute at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, are taken as contextualising beacons for characterising Welzen’s contribution. The outlooks he provides are indicated, and the new vistas he enables are briefly explored.