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Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year

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Robert Webber has written an inspiring guide especially for Christians who are learning to appropriate the practice of observing the Christian Liturgical Calendar. He does a good job in explaining how this ancient-future discipline is a great aid to spiritual formation and lays out the full Calendar of seasons from Advent to Pentecost and the special festive days such as Baptism of the Lord, Transfiguration, Good Shepherd, Christ the King Sundays. By reflecting on the themes of these special days and seasons, he helps us enter more deeply into the celebration. He also suggests the peculiar disciplines such as fasting, baptism, giving and cake-cutting (!) that go with the respective festivals as well as questions for our group/individual study and reflections. To be sure, it can be pretty exhausting trying to read it from cover to cover. It is better to be used as a reference as we move through the liturgical seasons like trekking the himalayas with a good map and an experienced Sherpa. I have found this approach to be extremely nourishing and formative. Webber is a wise guide in the area of spiritual formation and he writes with clarity and unusual eloquence. I thank God for his invaluable and lasting legacy.

P/S: For readers who have reservations about festive observance as a valid Christian discipline in view of texts like Col 2:16-17 and Gal 4:10, they should take heart that these texts have more to do with clinging back to the now, from the Christian POV, obsolete Jewish festivals which were a shadow of Christ, not the reality. Clearly the issue is not with the observance of seasons and times per se (which the early Church evidently practised such as the Lord's Day and plausibly Easter) but the failure to recognize the *Time* of God's inbreaking kingdom in Jesus the Christ. Further, Rom 14:5-10 gives at the minimum the freedom to observe sacred days as one is so persuaded in his own heart. And it certainly should be done in the spirit and context of Christian liberty and spiritual formation, than as a legalistic thing. Hope this helps!

This book is written in the same vein and format of Webber's other ancient-future books: Christ is victor over the powers and Christians are now to live in terms of that victory. Webber takes that theme and applies it to the Christian year. In short, he argues for a return to the Christian calendar as a guide to spiritual formation.

Content:
The Christian year is thus: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, // Lent, Triduum, Easter. The two cycles mirror each other: Anticipation (Advent, Lent), Fulfillment (Christmas, Triduum), and Proclamation (Epiphany, Easter). The Christian is to anticipate the coming of Christ/the cross of Christ; The Christian is to celebrate the fulfillment of the Story (Incarnation) and the defeat of the powers (Easter). Afterwards, the Christian is to celebrate the proclamation.

The book is not hard reading but it is unusual for most Western Christians (be they of any tradition). We are not used to thinking like this so the book forces us re-read certain parts. And it raises some questions it didn't intend.

Conclusion:
I did enjoy the book and to my ability plan to incorporate its spiritual formation. It wasn't on the same level as his Ancient-Future Worship, but it does provide much meat for the interested one. I appreciated his discussions on Christus Victor and his warning not to let apologetics eclipse the Easter message. I have one question that I would like to see someone in this model answer: Colossians 2 warns against Jewish festivals and asceticisms. While I love the idea of festival in AFT, how do we maintain festival without falling into the warning of Colossians 2? I am willing to be convinced.

Grown up in Evangelical church and seminary, I was never taught about the necessity of the Christian Calendar. All and all, evangelicalism are more about preaching of God's word. The most favorite lectures for students are preaching and preaching. Yet in a world that demands a more holistic approach to shape Christian life, an auditory-focused Christian formation needs to be reevaluated. Without undermining the Word as sole foundation of Christian life, Christians particularly those who are in Evangelical wing needs to realize the shaping of spiritual life throughout the year.

A senior theologian as Bob Webber has changed the take-it-for-granted paradigm. Webber has been known for making dialogues with Catholic and Orthodox traditions. He moves a step further! Bringing back the long "buried" tradition of liturgy year for most Protestants, he makes it alive for the spiritual life of contemporary Christians. A must read for spiritual leaders, pastors and serious lay people! Particularly you who are engaged in Evangelical churches.

No one book out there seems to have it all with respect to organizing one's personal spiritual growth around the liturgical year, but this book is one I would highly recommend to be part of the necessary collection. Each chapter includes nice summaries at the end which are good to refresh one's memory as well as questions to ponder about the readings. The book primarily covers just the major portions of the church calendar, but provides very thoughtful and helpful devotional ideas to consider during each of those seasons. At least a little bit of coverage of lesser feast days as well as perhaps some basic templates for personal prayer/reading would be nice but there are other books out there which focus more specifically on these subjects. Also, I expected there would be more history of the church calendar presented but there wasn't much. In spite of omissions, this is an excellent and useful book to make part of any collection on the practical, personal use of the church year for spiritual growth and discipline.

This book is more about forming spirituality (as the subtitle says) than it is about the order of service. Webber does have plenty of books that cover the order of service, but this book is more about the meaning of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. Webber does a good job with this subject and give good sermon material for each of these. If you need to be sold on the Church calendar or just want to go deeper into its meaing then get this book.