Methodist Devotion: The Spiritual Life in the Methodist Tradition, 1791-1945

This term ‘Christian Spirituality’ has become very fashionable, but requires definition. It derives from one of the classifications habitual to the Church of Rome, and formulated by M. l'Abbe Pourrat in his La Spiritualite Chretienne. He distinguishes between ‘Dogmatic, ’ ‘Moral, ’ and ‘Spiritual’ Theology, and the greatest of these is Spiritual Theology, which is based upon the others, but is ‘above them’ in so far as it is a branch of the science which deals, not with abstract statements of faith and objective laws of conduct but with the life in Christ itself, the reality of that union with Him, which all traditions in some form would assert as the meaning of our salvation. –From the Prefa