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Schneiders, S. M. (2000), ‘Scripture and Spirituality’, in B. McGinn, J. Meyendorff, and J. Leclercq (eds), Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth C. New York, NY: Crossroads, pp. 1-20.

This initial chapter in this volume sets out the delicate negotiations of the Christ event in human history: a Jewish Christ in the midst of a Greek Culture that evolved into a dominant Latin Church. Sandra Schneiders’ clarity in very few words is a great service to us.

p. 1: The Birth of Christian Spirituality

It was historical events, the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses and the covenant they made with Yahweh on Mount Sinai, that gave rise to and defined Jewish religious experience.

Likewise, it was an event, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, that inaugurated and shaped Christian spirituality. From the moment of that event, Christianity was distinct from Judaism even though it would be some sixty years (ca. 90 C.E.) before the break between the synagogue and the newly consolidated Christian community would be definitive.

Twenty centuries of exegesis and theology have not succeeded in fully elucidating that inaugural experience to which the disciples of the historical Jesus bore witness first by proclamation (e.g. Acts 2:22-24; 1Cor 15:3-8) and then by narratives in which they described, “seeing the Lord” (e.g. Luke 24:13-53; John 20:11-18, 19-23, 26-29).

Some of the first disciples, utterly disillusioned by the Roman execution of the one they had believed to be the Messiah who would liberate Israel, testified to their experience that the same Jesus whom they had followed, who had been killed and buried, was alive with God and in and among themselves, alive with an indestructible new life which the disciples experienced in themselves as the guarantee of their own eventual and full triumph over sin and death.

They began to live as participants in the paschal mystery, this is, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, whom they now acknowledge as Lord and Messiah. The felt themselves to be free of the Mosaic law (see Gal 3:23-27), no longer bound to struggle to please God through the performance of good works, but as graced children of God in Christ, empowered by his indwelling to the pattern that Jesus had given them during his life and described to them in the Beatitudes (Matt 5: 1-12).

Their joy and their mission were to proclaim the good news (the gospel) of salvation in Christ available to every person who believed in him, was baptized, and lived faithfully within the community of believers who soon came to be called “Christians” after the one to whom they had given their lives. This salvation was offered equally Jews and Gentiles, to men and women, to slaves and free people (see Gal 28).

The salvation that Jesus had announced and made available was the universal salvation that the most deeply religious of the ancient Israelites had dimly foreseen as characteristic of messianic times (e.g., Isaiah 60).

Christian spirituality, that is, personal participation in the mystery of Christ begun in faith sealed by baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, was nourished by sharing in the Lord’s Supper, which the community celebrated regularly in memory of him who was truly present wherever his followers gathered (see Matt 18:26), and was expressed by simple use of universal love that bore witness to life in the Spirit and attracted others to faith (see Acts 4:32-35); 1John 1; and elsewhere).

Within a very short time Jesus’ followers experienced the same persecution that had cost Jesus his life (see Acts 3:1-4; 31), and martyrdom, witness to the faith by the shedding of one’s blood, became the most coveted crown of Christian life (see Acts 6-7).