Paths in Spirituality

First edition published in 1972 in London by SCM Press, and in New York by Harper & Row.

“The only worship, prayer and spirituality, the only practice of religion I shall defend will be of the kind that has been rigorously subjected to the critique of religion, and I shall keep coming back to the critical questions throughout the book…

If worship prayer and spirituality are to be purged of the weaknesses exposed by the critique of religion and are, in strenghtened and renewed form, to make their unique contribution to the upbuilding of a truly human and personal existence, then we have to try to understand them in new ways. Yet I believe that in the Christian heritage, and especially the eucharistic heritage, there is a vast treasury of untapped resources, latent emphases and flexible forms on which we can draw for our contemporary spiritual needs.” — From the first chapter.

Macquarrie, now emeritus from Oxford University, is a profoundly satisfying theologian. This little bookon spirituality, first published in 1972, has recently been reissued with some additional essays. The text still smacks of the 1970s with its references to “religionless Christianity,” but is well worth reading. Macquarrie is an extremely accomplished theologian, a true person of the church, and unafraid of swimming against the tide. He sees the Christian life as founded on three pillars: doctrine, worship, and deed. Keeping those three in some kind of healthy tension is absolutely necessary if one is not to fly off into spiritual quagmires: deeds without worship end up as pious social work while worship without grounding in doctrine runs the risk of sentimentality.

At the heart of Christian spirituality (Macquarrie is in reaction against those who too exclusively root themselves in the Word) is the Eucharist, and Macquarrie has some fine words not only on the liturgy but also in defense of such “extensions” of the liturgy as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. His chapter on prayer is one of the finest in the book. For Macquarrie, prayer is a kind of “thinking”—a thinking which is passionate, compassionate, responsible, and thankful. The working out of those motifs is worth the price of the book.

At a time when there is so much psychobabble and Jungian sludge passing for spirituality it is comforting to see a genuine theologian turning his attention to the nexus between doctrine and praxis. Some of this book shows its age as well as its preoccupation with the life of Anglicanism (although Macquarrie is an authentically ecumenical thinker) but it contains much wisdom and well repays a close reading. — Laurence S. Cunningham, Commonweal, June 3, 1994