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Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian: Adult Development and Christian Faith
By James W. Fowler
San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1984, 154 pp. $13.95.

Maturing in the Christian Life: A Pastor's Guide
By Neill Q. Hamilton
Philadelphia, Geneva Press, 1984. 192 pp. $10.95.

The two books being reviewed here make a fascinating pair because both attempt to address the theological limitation of theories of faith and moral development. Hamilton, Professor of New Testament, School of Theology and Graduate School, Drew University, has attempted to provide a biblical theology of maturing in the Christian life as an alternative to developmental theories such as Fowler, Kohlberg, and Piaget. Fowler, Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University and Director of the Center for Faith Development, has written a revision of his theory of stages of faith in an effort to be more theologically adequate and thereby to meet the challenges of his many critics.

Hamilton's book is addressed primarily to pastors, but secondarily to all persons in the Christian life. His work with pastors has convinced him that by mid-life many are burned out, discouraged, spiritually bankrupt, and without hope. Their original vision of ministry has been broken by institutional realities and requirements. The problem is an inadequate and non-biblical view of maturing in the Christian life.

Hamilton believes that the various theories of adult development, particularly Gail Sheehy's Passages, Daniel Levinson's The Seasons of a Mans Life, and James Fowler's Stages of Faith provide attractive cultural myths of adulthood, but that today as in times past cultural myths must be challenged by a biblical understanding of human life. The New Testament does not give a fully elaborated theory of maturing in the Christian life, but enough is given to provide an alternative to current popular theories.

In Hamilton's view, Fowler's theory of faith development is "an existentialist version of redemptive history in which history is reduced to personal response while holding fast to a chronological framework. The final picture is of a religious self telling its beads of meaning on a rosary of time. This psychology of the pious self completely obscures the majesty of God."

In contrast to Fowler's "structural developmental" view, Hamilton proposes a "phased eschatological" view. Hamilton takes his clue for maturation in the Christian life from what happened to the disciples around Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels, John, and the Pauline letters agree

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that the disciples started following Jesus with an immature and largely misconceived understanding of the way of Christ. The crucifixion threw all the disciples into a crisis of faith. In that crisis, the Gospel writers agree, they received the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit, they were drawn together in the church and propelled out in mission. Mission matures as loving witness moves to concern for justice. The three phases of the Christian life are discipleship, transition in the Spirit, and participating in the church with a mission.

The biblical approach to the pastoral role, says Hamilton, is that of prophetic guide. Pastors can expect their lives to go through the crisis of the Spirit, and they can shape the functions of ministry by guiding people toward and through such crisis toward maturity of church life and mission. Soma groups, body of Christ groups. are the place where spiritual journeys can be shared and where God's direction can be rediscovered.

Hamilton's study relates the crisis of faith as described in the New Testament to the contemporary experience of the crisis of faith. I believe that the Pauline account of death-resurrection is constantly ongoing in human life. I am sure with Hamilton that it belongs to the mid-life crisis of everyone, including pastors. I am less sure that death-resurrection crisis of faith can be put primarily at the point of mid-life crisis. This is within here "phased eschatology" seems to go beyond the biblical account.

The neatness of the phases does not fit the biblical account. For example, the phase of status-oriented discipleship fits neither the admonition to make disciples of all people nor the theme that we are Christ's disciples if we do the will of God. Hamilton restricts the meaning of discipleship in an unbiblical way to find his phases of maturity.

In a similar way, the crisis of Spirit does not tidily come after a discipleship phase initiated by baptism. Baptism and Spirit are inseparable in the New Testament. Hamilton claims more biblical evidence for a phased approach than is warranted. The move from status oriented religion to the way of Christ, the losing and finding of self, is so basic to the gospel that Hamilton is right in centering upon it, right in applying it to mid-life crisis, and right in relating it to pastoral experience. Many pastors will find the book helpful.

Fowler's book is addressed to those interested in theories of adult development, but especially those with theological interest. Its primary purpose is to look at Fowler own theory of faith development in terms of its normative vision. to compare his normative vision with that of other developmentalists (Erikson, Gilligan, and Levinson), and to attempt a reformulation of his normative vision that is more theologically adequate. Fowler has heard the critics of his theory. has accepted many of their criticisms, and finds himself in a "career crisis" needing to extend his theory while remaining true to what is fundamentally a Christian theological commitment.

The critics of faith development whom Fowler takes most seriously

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are Moran, Loder, Dykstra, and Hauerwas. Moran objects that Fowler's stage six, universalizing faith, is too disconnected from the earlier five stages. One is reminded of the philosophical objections to Kohlberg's stage six as totally prescriptive and unempirical. Fowler's first five stages move in the direction of ever more inclusive world views (from egocentrism to the total community) and ever more inclusive value (from immediate relationships to fundamental human values). Moran objects that stage six calls for a radical self-negation and transvaluation that cannot be normative for most persons; it is too discontinuous, too mystical, too self-sacrificing. Fowler accepts the criticism and agrees that stage five offers a more adequate normative vision for the majority of persons.

Behind Moran is the criticism of Fowler by Dykstra, Loder, Parks, and Hauerwas that a stage development theory cannot do justice to the human story. More fundamental and more significant than stages with their wooden destiny and inevitable sequence is the importance of vision (Dykstra), imagination (Parks), transformational experience (Loder), and narrative (Hauerwas). Loder's criticism picks up the evangelical objection that Fowler does not do justice to conversion. We have just reviewed Hamilton's criticism that Fowler does not touch the biblical account of the crisis of selfhood in the face of a Holy God. I have myself objected that Fowler does not sufficiently distinguish maturity as an end state and maturity as a process, nor does he succeed in resolving the incompatibilities between ego theory (Erikson) and cognitive theory (Piaget). The stages of ego theory are inevitable and the stages of cognitive theory are not.

In view, of these criticisms, Fowler here makes a fundamental shift in his theory. He suggests that all faith stages occur within an ongoing encounter with God that can be picked up in the concept of vocation. The vocational dimension of life is expressed as a narrative. Each persons narrative is lived the community's "core story," central passion, affections, virtues, and ecology of vocations. The fundamental turn in Fowler's theory is away from stages of faith that may. simply serve the self, toward a narrative vocation of dialogue with the living God. That dialogue is with the Christian triune God-the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer-but persons of other faiths may also encounter the living God. His paradoxical thrust remains unresolved at that point.

The turn to narrative and vocational encounter with God is exactly parallel to Hamiltons crisis of Spirit. Hamilton's work is biblically exegetical and Fowler's work is culturally exegetical, although both writers attempt to do both types of exegesis. Fowler believes he can add this (new vocational dimension to his stages of faith without disturbing his earlier theory. I don't believe he does justice to the contradictory, and paradoxical character of the two approaches. Dialectic in Fowler's hands remains too easy, too continuous, in spite of the obvious pain of

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the formulation. But he is genuinely listening to his critics, and no person interested in faith development will want to miss his comments.

Donald E. Miller
Bethany Theological Seminary
Oak Brook, Illinois