The Relevance of God-Concepts to Spiritual Well-Being: A Study of Christian Spiritual Directors’ Perspectives

This study explores Christian spiritual directors’ understandings of the relationship between God-concepts and spiritual well-being. Taking participants’ own conceptualization of spiritual well-being as the basis, the study explores how they understand God-concepts (their own and those of their directees) to inform, facilitate, or otherwise relate to spiritual well-being so conceived. An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology was used, which involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with six Christian spiritual directors from a range of traditions. Analysis resulted in four group experiential themes: ‘experience of God over an intellectual view of God’; ‘an apophatic approach to understanding God’; ‘growing in spiritual well-being involves growing out of concepts of God’; and; ‘divine love, presence, and availability as relationship anchors’. The findings of the study have potentially wide-ranging implications, informing discussions in philosophy, theology, pastoral care, and psychology.