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True Spirituality

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

This book is a study of I Corinthians and started life as a sermon series preached at St Ebbe’s, Oxford, where the author is Rector. It also had an airing at Word Alive and the Keswick Convention. The book aims to explore and describe what it means to be “a truly spiritual Christian”, with a developed understanding of what it means to live by the Spirit in the church and the world today.

The book’s origins give a strong indication of the tradition from which the material is coming. It is therefore no surprise that it is wary of charismatic experience and theology and conservative on matters of sexuality, gender, marriage and headship (in the home and the church).

In the Epilogue to the book, Roberts challenges readers not to simply see what line he takes on the more contentious issues and “consign both it and the author to one of the boxes we have in our minds”.  However, this is a clear, conservative expository study of I Corinthians for an educated readership and, if that is what you want, that is what is offered and it is a good book of its type and genre.

There are some good chapters on the ‘non contentious’ issues and it would be a shame if readers glossed over these. I valued what he had to say about power, wisdom, knowledge and servant leadership.

Each chapter ends with a series of questions for individual and group study.  The same two questions appear at the end of each chapter: ‘What have you learned about true spirituality?’ and ‘What alternative thinking does this challenge?’ If taken as open rather than closed questions, they are not bad ones to ask!