A Framework for Christian Spiritual Formation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Christian spiritual formation (CSF) is typically defined as the process of becoming more like Christ. Most definitions and literature are Christocentric, describing what Christlikeness is and the disciplines and practices that help believers achieve it. However, the literature says little about the nature of the process itself. Arguing that CSF is essentially an educative process, I employ learning theory to craft a framework for CSF based on an educative paradigm. I explored the process of CSF through thirty-four semi-structured interviews during which research participants describe their most spiritually formative experiences, barriers to spiritual formation, outstanding “God moments,” and pivotal experiences. Their narratives identified CSF has three dimensions: mystical, educative, and communal. By mapping these dimensions into learning models, such as Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and Illeris’s 3-dimensional model of learning, I constructed an educative paradigm of CSF. The educative paradigm of CSF through its three formative dimensions shows how the imago Dei is restored to full effect and function as the believer is spiritually formed. Throughout that process, one adopts the posture of a learner, facilitating reflection and the pursuit of phronēsis or wisdom (knowing), sanctification or holiness (being), and praxis or right action (doing). Practical application of the framework for CSF is helpful to individuals making choices about the disciplines and practices that are most beneficial to their formation, and to local congregations and higher education institutions in the design of more balanced and spiritually formative curricula.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".