I have the conviction- that as part of the planfulness and intention manifest in creation, human beings are genetically potentiated for partnership with God.--James Fowler

1. We are created to strive towards an ever deepening and evolving understanding and communion with the Divine.

2. We live with freedom of choice, thus this capacity for communion with God, may also be thwarted and used to draw our focus and actions away from Deity.

3. Our faith and identity is always formed within the context of our communities and their symbols, languages, rituals and liturgies.

4. Our faith evolves and emerges gradually through difficult sequences of developmental construction. We begin as creatures unconsiously embedded in and defined by the environments in which we dwell, only through time do we become conscious of our separate identities as beings with the capcity to differentiate.

In addition, Fowler states that faith is a construing of the conditions of existence. It is a special kind of construing, however, for it attempts to make sense of our mundane everyday experience in light of some accounting for the ultimate conditions of our existence.

The embodiment of faith involves three aspects.

1. Patterned Knowing: belief or systematic theology

2. Patterned Valuing: devotion, commitment or participation

3. Patterned Meaning: narrative story or liturgy

Following Robert Kegans six stages of human development, Fowler presents faith development in seven stages adding the addition with his final stage of the 'God-grounded self' of Universalizing faith. Please regard the table below for more information about these stages.