The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality

Abstract

About the Author various colonialisms-on the receiving end, that is.By the time the full implications of historical criticism reached the highly active broader theological community of scholars on the southern-most tip of Africa, much of the modernist assumptions that had initially underpinned it implicitly had been appreciated and pointed out.Bible scholars who cared to do so could thus fully employ such exegetical approaches without losing the faith, which is ever the great fear in church and some academic circles in South Africa.It is thus not all that surprising that, to my knowledge, the first professorial chair in Biblical Spirituality has been established at a South African university, namely at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein.The incumbent, Pieter de Villiers, and my recently retired colleague for Christian Spirituality at the University of South Africa, Celia Kourie, both initially New Testament scholars, have been instrumental in establishing the broader discipline of Christian Spirituality and the narrower discipline of Biblical Spirituality within the country and outside its borders.In acknowledgement of their giant efforts in this regard, I dedicate this volume to them.These South African initiatives found much international nourishment from the Titus Brandsma Institute for Spirituality at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in particular from Kees Waaijman, Jos Huls and Huub Welzen there, and from such eminent figures in the field as David Perrin in Canada (and through him the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality) and Sandra Schneiders in the United States of America.At different times and in different ways, words of interest and encouragement on their part have meant-in a somewhat more literal way than is the customary use of this phrase-the world to us, as we develop these disciplines in South Africa.

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