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Integral Christianity: The Spirit's Call to Evolve, by Paul Smith
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This book presents a model of Christianity that incorporates the insights of a Jesus-centered theology of biblical interpretation, integral philosophy, and over fifty years of pastoral experience in leading evolutionary change in the local church. The perspectives of integral theory and practice, articulated by Ken Wilber, help uncover the integral approach that Jesus advocated and demonstrated in the metaphors of his time and that traditional Christianity has largely been unable to see.
Smith incorporates elements of traditional, modern, and postmodern theological viewpoints, including progressive, New Thought, and emerging/emergent ones. However, he goes beyond all of them and moves to a Christianity that is devoted to following both the historical Jesus and the Risen Christ whose Spirit beckons to us from the future. Smith says, "The oldest thing you can say about God is that God is always doing something new. Jesus pushed his own religion to newness by including the best of its past, and transcending the worst of its present. He calls us to do the same, whatever our religion is today."
- Sales Rank: #434375 in Books
- Published on: 2012-08-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .84" w x 6.04" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 408 pages
Review
"Integral Christianity is an absolutely superb application of Integral Theory in all its dimensions to Christianity itself, resulting in a truly Integral Christianity. This book is highly recommended for not only individuals of any major religion, but also for agnostics and atheists looking to make sense of ultimate issues and absolute realities. The answers to many of your questions can be found here!" (Ken Wilber, The Integral Vision)
"Clarifying, honest, courageous, and genuinely helpful. All sincere believers and seekers should welcome this book." (Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, founder of the center for Action and Contemplation, author of Things Hidden)
"Paul Smith gives us a fine book on integral Christianity. It speaks directly to Christians as well as other religious persons everywhere. Highly recommended." (Allan Combs, author of Consciousness Explained Better and Radiance of Being)
"So far as I am aware, this is the first attempt to systematically apply Wilber's integral paradigm to Christian faith and practice. It works not only because he understands Wilber very well, but because he knows Christianity like the back of his hand...it's triply credible because of the joy and luminosity of his being that shines through on every page." (Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault, author of The Wisdom Jesus)
From the Inside Flap
THE EVOLUTION OF ALL RELIGIONS into deeper, wider, and higher dimensions is crucial to the evolution of human spirituality and consciousness. In this book, Paul Smith presents just such an inviting and expansive pathway for the Christian religion that is faithful to a Jesus-centered theology of biblical interpretation and illuminated by the emerging field of integral philosophy.
The perspectives of integral theory and practice articulated by Ken Wilber help uncover the integral approach that Jesus advocated and demonstrated in the metaphors of his time--and that traditional Christianity has largely been unable to see.
Smith incorporates elements of traditional, modern, and postmodern theological viewpoints, including progressive, New Thought, and emerging/emergent ones. However, he goes beyond them and moves to a Christianity that is devoted to following both the historical Jesus and the Risen Cosmic Christ whose Spirit beckons to us from the future.
Smith reminds us, "The oldest thing you can say about God is that God is always doing something new. Jesus pushed his own religion to newness by including the best of its past, and transcending the worst of its present. He calls us to do the same, whatever our religion is today. Jesus continues to be a prototype for all spiritual paths in their task of keeping up with the Spirit's evolutionary impulse to welcome the next transcendent stage."
From the Back Cover
"A lot of us were introduced to a take-it-or-leave-it approach to Christian faith: it was a tight, stiff, one-size-fits-all system that offered little room to grow. Many of us are now discovering that there's another approach...an expansive, adaptive approach that sees growth and development as inherent to faithfulness, for both individuals and traditions. In Integral Christianity, Paul Smith offers a helpful, readable, and inviting portal into this alternate approach." --Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christianity
"Clarifying, honest, courageous, and genuinely helpful, making the Gospel shine with a new brilliance and beauty. All sincere believers and seekers should welcome this book." --[Fr.] Richard Rohr, O.F.M. Center for Action and Contemplation and author of Things Hidden
"Integral Christianity is a wonderful guide for Christians seeking a personal and world-transforming spirituality." --Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, University of St. Thomas and author of Jesus Against Christianity: Reclaiming the Missing Jesus
"Paul Smith gives us a fine book on integral Christianity. It speaks directly to Christians as well as other religious persons everywhere. Highly recommended."
--Allan Combs, Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies and author of Consciousness Explained Better
"An impassioned book that helps chart a future course of development for the Christian church, showing how the integral philosophy of evolution can illuminate our quest to find God." --Steve McIntosh, author of Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
Most helpful customer reviews
51 of 52 people found the following review helpful.
Beyond the Self
By Tom
In a universe "...so constructed as to know itself..." what does it matter that the sun and stars no longer turn around the earth when the purpose of creation is unfolding within the evolution of consciousness. Integral Christianity is not a small theology existing within the cracks of the modern world view. It has the power and vision to once again fill the public square, to reintegrate the individual, culture, and the known world. It joins the inner space of mystics, the experience of God, and the frontiers of science. A new consciousness makes possible a new world. It portends the next great age of Christian renewal.
This is a book about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. A Christian book written by a Christian man, Paul Smith, a Minister of 40 plus years. It is also a deeply informed book about spiritual experience, the mystical traditions, spirit and evolution, a descended and transcended God, and above all else, human identity. It is prophetically engaged with the timeless past and the endless future, and the still evolving Christian Church. It is optimistic and promising. And there is something here to offend most everyone.
This is not so much a theological work as it is a description of the Christian church in its many different forms. The point of view is from the coming Integral Church. The work is almost entirely free of theological and scholarly cant. It is meant to be accessible. Still, it is not a simple work; it demands much of the reader. Smith is not participating in the usual conversation between competing versions of Christianity, the now so familiar contest between fundamentalism and the more modern versions of the faith; rather, he is trying to move forward a largely new conversation. Those who have held close and plunged the depths of their spiritual experience, who have some understanding of what Smith means by the "many faces of Jesus," will more readily understand his vision of the Christian future. For those who have no such experience the book will indeed be difficult. Supporters and critics will divide accordingly.
In many ways, Integral Christianity is as much a challenge to the progressive, more secular church as to the fundamentalist church. The rational can lead us to God, but can't join us to God. Still, this is not a book about high learning and religion that begins where reason ends, in the encounter of a meaningless universe, desperation, and man's calling out in the dark night for God. To transcend our separation we must transcend our identity, engage the true nature of consciousness, that is to say, we must evolve. Smith's discussion of the many faces of God, the human and divine Jesus, helps make this possible.
While fundamentalist will embrace Smith's personal God, little else will resonate. Between them, the ocean is wide and deep. Smith believes in science; fundamentalist don't. As many of us have, he seeks to integrate his faith with what science teaches; fundamentalist instead deny science. In this respect, the book acknowledges evolution as a fact. Evolution, though, in the manner of Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Bergson, and especially Ken Wilber, becomes the unfolding of spirit in the manifest world. This is not the blind evolution of Darwin, mere random mutation in the struggle for existence. Rather, as Wilber might say, it is the meaning and purpose of life in the largest sense, the quest of existence to know itself, for man to finally realize his true identity.
As with all things spiritual, what Smith presents must be experienced to be truly understood.
66 of 72 people found the following review helpful.
Integral Gnosticism
By David M Carter
Giving a book three stars can either mean you thought the whole thing was just OK, or that you have gone and got yourself into an intense love-hate relationship with it. As you may guess from the length of this review, I find myself in the latter situation.
"Integral Christianity" is an important book, not least because it's the highest-profile attempt so far to frame the world's numerically largest religion within today's best known full-spectrum philosophy of consciousness, Ken Wilber's integral theory. The author has nearly half a century of experience as pastor of the same church in Kansas City, so as you might expect, the emphasis is practical and experiential rather than academic. How well has he succeeded in proposing something that is both truly integral and authentically Christian?
The task Smith has set himself is not an easy one, because despite Wilber's model being the theoretical framework used in Centering Prayer, one of the two leading contemporary Western expressions of the Christian contemplative tradition, Wilber himself is a Buddhist, and draws much more on Eastern religion in his work. His book "Integral Spirituality", for example, only mentions Christianity in passing; a surprising silence, one might think, given that both Wilber himself and most of his readers live in cultures where Christianity is very much the dominant faith. One is entitled to wonder, then, whether an integral Christianity is even possible, and Smith's book is a valuable attempt to find out.
And there's certainly lots to like about it. It's engagingly and clearly written, the author comes across as a genuine and very likeable person, and for those coming from a Christian background it's mostly a good introduction to Wilber's system. Smith's discussion of the more bloodthirsty features of the Old Testament in terms of the development of its authors up through the tribal, warrior and traditional stages of consciousness makes a lot of sense, and there are certain aspects of the teachings and actions attributed to Jesus that fit well with the modern, post-modern and integral stages. Wilber's framework gives an excellent account of the evolution of spiritual traditions and individual believers through time, and Smith uses it to bring out many useful insights into the evolution of Judaism and then Christianity and where the latter might be headed today. The real strength of the book is the material on day-to-day spiritual practice, both for the individual and in suggesting how we might "do church" from an integral perspective. At the heart of Smith's spirituality is an emphasis on the first, second and third-person faces of God, or God as Inner, Intimate and Infinite. Keeping all three of these in view at once is something Christianity has historically not been very good at, and the way the author works this theme out is the best thing about the book for me. If I lived in Kansas City, I would definitely check Smith's church out.
Still, I'm not sure the book delivers what the two words of its title promise, if by "Christian" you mean most of what has passed for orthodoxy in any of the major traditions over the last two millennia. Integral it may be, but whenever there's a clash between the Bible and integral philosophy, it's always clear which way the author is going to jump. Nowhere in the book to we find any specific criticism of Wilber's work or any suggestion that it might not be able to account fully for what we find in Christianity. Smith skilfully delineates the difficulties and distortions that a belief in the inerrancy of the Bible leads one into, but he never addresses the possibility that assuming the inerrancy of Wilber, as he effectively does, might be equally problematic. This forces him into carrying out systematic Procrustean surgery on the corpus of the New Testament.
While acknowledging in passing the difficulty of knowing which, if any, passages in the gospels reflect things Jesus actually said and did, Smith's solution to the dilemma is in practice to assume that whichever teachings appear to be consistent with an integral perspective are authentic, while the others must be inventions by later writers who did not understand Jesus's message properly. Unsurprisingly, therefore, his conclusion is that "Jesus practiced integral philosophy" (p82). In just the same way, others, using similar methodologies but different presuppositions, have "discovered" a historical Jesus who was, respectively, a Cynic philosopher, a magician, an Orthodox rabbi and a revolutionary. The historical value of all this is unclear; whenever we carry out such an exercise, we risk making Jesus in our own image. It's far from obvious that Smith has avoided that trap, and it's doubly important that he should do so given the priority he explicitly assigns to the (supposed) words of Jesus over other parts of the Bible.
This partial approach to the content of Christianity is, in my view, the book's biggest failing. Roughly speaking, Smith's New Testament seems to consist of most of the descriptions of Jesus's ministry in the four canonical gospels and a few carefully chosen passages from Acts and the epistles, with the addition of the gospel of Thomas, for which, against the bulk of scholarly opinion, he assumes a very early date. All the rest is either rejected or, more often, simply ignored. Thus the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are never discussed beyond a passing dismissal (p246) of the idea that he might have died for our sins. Other major doctrines such as the ascension and the second coming are not mentioned either. Some attention is given to the fall (p204-5), but here, Smith sides with the Gnostics: the serpent was telling the truth, and "awakening to the knowledge of good and evil was exactly what needed to happened" (sic).
Smith does assent to the divinity of Jesus, but only in the sense that all of us are divine by virtue of carrying the image of God within us. To garner support for this equality of divinity from the text of the Bible, he has to resort to some rather dubious manoevres. He makes much (p209) of John 10:34, where Jesus responds to his opponents' accusations of blasphemy by quoting the words of Psalm 82, "You are gods". However, if one reads both passages in context, it is far from clear that they will support the interpretation he puts on them, and the rest of John's gospel continually emphasizes the special status of Jesus. Even more problematically, Smith quotes Hebrews 2:17 (p207) as saying "He was like us in every respect", which it does not; the Greek text literally says that "he had to be made like the brothers in all things", presupposing that initially he was not like them, and it then goes on to tell us that this was in order that he might make atonement for the sins of the people, which also requires his uniqueness, and which, as we have seen, is not a topic that Smith seems to want to discuss.
Similar remarks could be made about the other passages Smith cites on this topic; yes, they do teach that all of us are "participants in the divine nature" as 2 Peter puts it, but that does not at all erase the clear distinctions that the same authors repeatedly make between Jesus and the rest of humanity. Context is everything, because as the saying goes, a text without a context is a pretext.
One consequence of this selectivity is that Smith has a hard time knowing what to do with most of what's in the epistles. He asserts, rather bizarrely, that "the rest of the New Testament [after the gospels] is important because it is the interpretation of Jesus' life and teachings that came to dominate in the three centuries after Jesus." How can this possibly be, when the epistles contain no explicit references at all to anything that the gospels record Jesus as having taught, nor to his miracles, nor indeed to anything the gospels report him as doing prior to the week of his crucifixion? Their teaching about Jesus focuses on other matters altogether, but those are, more or less, the topics listed above that Smith prefers not to deal with.
Despite these radical departures from any traditional version of the faith, Smith's "integral Christianity" still comes across as distinctively Protestant. The closest he comes to acknowledging anything of value that is specific to Catholicism is that the Mass can be of value "if one is already practiced in moving to an elevated inwards state of consciousness". The Reformation was "brilliant" in the way that it "used the Bible to wrestle control of Christianity from the Roman Catholic hierarchy", but it "did not go far enough" (p236). Any consideration that something might have been lost as well as gained in the process is altogether absent. So much for all the centuries of Catholic tradition, reflection and theology. Indeed, "tradition" for Smith is, when it comes down to it, a decidedly negative word; traditional Christianity, with its preoccupations with awkward matters such as sin, the fall, the atonement and physical resurrection, is located only halfway up the ladder of consciousness, and now we have integral philosophy, we can leave such things behind, focus on the future rather than the past, and move on up to more "evolved" levels (p236). This unrelenting optimism has its attractive qualities, but I did miss any discussion of the realities of suffering, poverty and impending ecological disaster. One of the things that makes me most cautious about Smith's brand of Christianity, and the integral movement in general, is that its appeal tends to be overwhelmingly to affluent, educated, healthy, cosmopolitan Westerners. It's easy enough to be "world centric" when you can hop on a plane to visit any part of the world you choose to; harder, perhaps, if you're a factory worker in Indonesia or a resident of a Latin American slum.
The ironic thing, though, is that Smith's highly selective approach to the New Testament and to later Christian tradition is repeatedly justified by what amounts to a fundamental misunderstanding of one of Wilber's key ideas. For Wilber, the way we are supposed to move up from one level of consciousness to the next is to "transcend and include" the lower stage within the higher. We disidentify fully from the lower, but then we include it fully, rather than rejecting bits of it. That's hard to do, because it involves a real struggle between opposites which can lead to a kind of ego death; Smith himself quotes Wilber (p229) as saying that "authentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the death of the believer". But short cutting the process by simply rejecting what's hard to integrate leads to all kinds of problems, not least the possibility of failing to move up properly to the new level at all.
Smith appears not to understand this, which is very surprising given his familiarity with integral theory and his excellent chapter on dealing with our shadow side. He talks constantly about transcending and including, but by "transcend" he appears to mean something very close to "throw out". On page 88, for example, he tells us that "Jesus moved his religion up to a new level, transcending parts of it and including other parts. This is a model for all of us in any of the historic religious traditions", while on page 75 we are told that the distinctive feature of an evolutionary approach is that in it, each stage builds on the one below it by including parts of it but "transcends or rejects" other parts. In other words, we include what we can figure out how to reinterpret to our satisfaction, and throw out the rest. This is the exact opposite of what Wilber means by "transcend and include". On page 245, Smith quotes another author as saying "The degree of our transcendence is determined by the scope of our inclusion". That's absolutely right, but the correlation is meant to be positive, and when one looks at the very limited scope of the parts of the New Testament Smith has included in his version of Christianity, one has to wonder how much transcendence has genuinely taken place.
After finishing the book, it struck me that actually what Smith is offering us is not an integral Christianity, in the sense of a true reframing of Christian orthodoxy, but an integral Gnosticism. "Gnostic" has long been a very negative term in many Christian circles, but I don't at all intend it that way; the Gnostics had much to offer, with their emphasis on coming to know our true nature, their egalitarianism, and their openness to ongoing revelation that so upset the representatives of the developing "official" Christianity of the second century -- the winners who wrote what now passes for history. Yet for all that, Gnosticism is a very different spirituality, one that primarily has to do with knowledge, insight and truth, rather than sin, forgiveness, atonement and love. Surely we should strive for all those things, not value one set over the other. But my real complaint about Smith's book is not that he offers us integral Gnosticism -- which in itself is a wonderful thing -- but that he does so in the guise of something else. He is, in reality, asking his more traditionally-minded readers not just to step upwards in consciousness, but to step sideways as well, and many will be put off attempting the former by sensing the presence of the latter.
So is an Integral Christianity really possible? I hope and believe so. Christianity will always be expressed within one world view or another, and some resulting distortion is inevitable. But Wilber's framework offers exciting possibilities in the way it explicitly allows for levels of consciousness above rational modernity and insists that religion can express the transrational as well as the irrational. Much better to have an integral Christianity, then, than one that is boxed in by the artificial ceiling of rationalism or an embarrassingly literal interpretation of myth.
And despite its failings, Smith's book provides some useful insights into how such a project might be taken forward. To his credit, he is clear that the integral world view is just another stage; levels above and beyond the integral already exist, and will open up further in due course. To put a positive spin on the book's limitations, they do at least make clear the places where integral theory can, at its current stage of development, perhaps only account for many central features of Christianity by categorizing them as subrational myth. This is, according to integral theory itself, what a mindset occupying one level always does with material coming from a higher one. Thus scientific materialism dismisses mysticism as pure subjectivity, the traditional mindset can only see rational scepticism as a wilful refusal to believe, and so on. It is hard not to suspect that some very high level truths are undergoing a similar fate in this book.
Be that as it may, a truly integral Christianity will have to involve a lot more real transcendence and inclusion than what is on offer here. In particular, it will have to do something constructive with those central New Testament themes of sin, the fall, forgiveness, and the death, resurrection and the uniqueness of Christ. They may not mean quite what traditional Christianity has meant by them, but they must still mean something vital, otherwise what we're left with won't really qualify as Christianity. The best effort I am aware of in this direction is the anonymous "Meditations on the Tarot: a Journey into Christian Hermeticism", an extraordinary book written from a Catholic perspective half a century ago that explores much of the same transrational territory as Wilber but from a radically different perspective. That, along with a thorough immersion in the writings of the Christian mystics down the centuries, which "Meditations" draws on but which both Smith and Wilber pay little attention to, opens up exciting possibilities for forging a Christianity that can reach the heights and depths of human consciousness while remaining true to the impulse that began it and has sustained it down the centuries.
29 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
evolving spiritually, a continuing journey, keep on seeking
By Don
I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, that Spirit will guide you into all truth. I think Jesus had this book in mind when those words were spoken, these were the first words that came to my awareness when I set down to write this review. If you think they are too strong in referencing a book, I encourage you to read Integral Christianity, then you will see where I am coming from.
For the last several years, I have sensed the Spirit giving me thoughts that have been beyond my previous biblical interpretations and understandings. As those now differ with many of my long-term soul mates, Integral Christianity has given an acceptance to me. I trust it would be the same for anyone who has "opened the box" in their seeking and may feel "alone". But, the book is not just about having a right theology. It also offers helpful suggestions to having direct spiritual experiences with God! In so doing it helps me to see who I really am in the very center of my being.
Also, I am so impressed with the emphasis within the book to see with loving acceptance, the validity of all those who are on different paths. One may be in what is considered to be a very fundamental church or in the most far-out community there is. But all are to be seen as part of the same body with each having its own valuable contribution.
Wow, a book that is focused on following Jesus while it gives acceptance as it encourages seeking, learning, growing, experiencing. Along with living in inclusiveness, now this is SOME book.
Don, a seeker
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