A look at an ongoing shift in the theology of the Emerging Church toward panentheism, with a flawed theosis (deification of man) ala Eastern Orthodoxy, particularly evident with Brian McLaren.

 Lighthouse Trails Research offers chapter 11 of the book A “Wonderful” Deception by Warren Smith; more detail here.

Christianity Today Online is featuring what amounts to a promotional piece on “spiritual directors” that caught my attention. The article introduces the practice of using spiritual directors to evangelicals, most of whom have never heard of them. The piece details the author, Alice Fryling’s, warm and positive experiences with the spiritual director she encountered in a mainline church near the University of Wisconsin many years ago.

At first glance, who would argue with a ministry that supposedly puts people in touch with hearing and seeing God in their lives? But looking at it all a little more closely, problems emerge. Nowhere in the article is there a caution about the dangers of spiritual direction that takes you away from the truth of the Word of God. There is much in the piece about the author’s feelings spiritually and how the spiritual direction affected her emotionally, but never does she tell readers to be careful about the counsel they are receiving from these individuals who are giving spiritual guidance. Nowhere does she recommend asking, “to where am I being directed spiritually by this person?” or tell readers how to know if they are being directed into grave spiritual error.

The vast majority of “spiritual directors” operate within the Roman Catholic and Episcopal traditions. Other mainline churches (apostate) have followed with their own brand of spiritual direction. All of it is rooted in contemplative spirituality. It is easy to see why. The Reformation brought us the crucial emphasis on the authority of Scripture in the lives of believers. Contemplative spirituality removes that landmark and replaces it with subjective mystical experiences. That’s why a “spiritual director” is a key part of the contemplative spiritual package.

I remember reading Karen Mains’ book, Lonely No More, many years ago, long before there was much of any information available on contemplative spirituality within evangelicalism. At that time, the Mains’ program, Chapel of the Air, was on hundreds of stations nationwide. Formerly conservative evangelicals, Karen and her husband, David, converted to the Episcopal church, and the book detailed her new found enthusiasm for contemplative spirituality. She talks about going to visit a nun/spiritual director and Jungian psychotherapist who counseled her. She describes using her imagination to conjure up an image of Jesus Christ, sitting at a table as a bald, drooling idiot child, among other bizarre things detailed in her writing. She also describes her personal spirit guide who appears in her dreams numerous times,

He was tall … well formed and trim, somewhere in his early thirties … His fine, dark hair fell in a thick lock across his forehead … his blue-gray eyes looking earnestly into mine…You are everything I have ever wanted spiritually,’ he said before I started to drive away…

Karen Mains writes that this creature in her dreams had a “positively profound effect” on her that caused her to seek further spiritual direction. The clear cut Word of God was no longer enough for Karen, and the disturbing fruit of her mystical proclivities was all over her book. Unrepentant years later, she writes about the book here:

…Lonely No More looks those lies finally in the eye and begins to deal with them honestly. “If my marriage is as perfect as I say it is, why am I so lonely?” “What are these dreams, these painful emotions, these attractions pointing to?” This book was extremely controversial in certain sections of ultra-conservative Christianity so I warn you, read it carefully. I stand behind every word, despite the controversy. It may even shake the ground beneath your feet. I will probably never write anything this well again. But I have certainly paid for the effort to be excellent, to be lovingly truthful, to want God.

Source

After Chapel of the Air became a venue for promoting contemplative spirituality, VCY America removed it from our network. The program was removed from numerous other stations and ultimately went off the air. But within another 10-15 years, the contemplative spirituality Karen had embraced had been mainstreamed within evangelicalism. That’s why Christianity Today has been promoting “spiritual direction” without any qualms about controversy today. Most Christian radio stations today would have little problem with what Karen Mains was promoting back then. Lighthouse Trails Research includes this warning on spiritual direction:

A 2003 Christianity Today article, Got Your Spiritual Director Yet?, confirms two things, one that spiritual direction is contemplative, and two that it is becoming a part of evangelical Christendom. The article explains that popular Christian author Larry Crabb is changing his views. Once a believer in psychology he is switching to spiritual direction. The article credits contemplatives (mystics) such as John Cassian and Ignatius of Loyola for getting spiritual direction into the church and suggests that we can learn more about it from Richard Foster, Eugene Peterson, and Dallas Willard – with this we completely agree. As Rick Warren stated in his book, Purpose Driven Church, Foster and Willard are key players in the Spiritual Formation movement, but while Warren says that this movement is a vital wake up call for the church, we say it is a terrible seduction for the church.

Source

For a closer look at the contemplative spirituality we and others have been warning about, visit the Shalem Institute, an inter-spiritual organization dedicated to promoting spiritual formation through spiritual direction and all of contemplative spirituality. It is anything but rooted in the authoritative Word of God, and it is leading to a New Spirituality that runs counter to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

If Christianity Today is not intending to promote what the Shalem Institute is teaching, where are the warnings? Where is the counsel to be vigilant about those who are promoting a broad spiritual path in opposition to the Word of God? Before you jump on the contemplative/spiritual direction bandwagon, you need to answer that question.

It’s important you understand that mainstream evangelicalism continues moving further away from the certainty of Sola Scriptura in favor of highly subjective contemplative spirituality.

This post talks about some of the growing consequences and provides a link back to what Jesus thinks of Scripture. And one has no business calling themselves a Christian and not having the same view as God’s Word as the Master.

This in-depth article examines some teaching by Emergent Church theologian Leonard Sweet showing a shift in Emerging Church theology concerning the nature of God Himself. You’ll see this new emergence is moving closer to the New Age movement than to anything resembling orthodox Christianity.

Another article exposing the contemplative spirituality of lectio divina and contemplative prayer openly taught in a Southern Baptist church.

As a way to further demonstrate the infiltration of contemplative spirituality now coming into all of mainstream evangelicalism we show you an SBC source paper available through state conventions which praises Richard Foster and introduces us to the practice of Lectio Divina through Tony Jones of the emerging church.

Embracing contemplative spirituality will only lead evangelicalism right into the very same denominational wars currently dividing e.g. in the Episcopal Church and the ECLA.

A short post showing how it appears that contemplative spirituality keeps showing up in all the wrong places.

An important in-depth article examining the fruit produced by the contemplative spirituality teachings of this Quaker mystic and how the Emerging Church is now helping spread his influence throughout mainstream evangelicalism.

This article is a summary of critical concerns now that mainstream evangelicalism has all but surrendered Sola Scriptura in favor of contemplative spirituality, which is its antithesis.

Pastor Bob DeWaay’s latest article at his CIC is very timely. DeWaay begins:

In February 2008, Christianity Today ran a glowing cover story about Evangelicalism’s recent embrace of medieval Roman Catholic mysticism entitled The Future lies in the Past… The article views Foster as one who continues to guide the movement…

In this article I will show that Foster’s “journey inward” is unbiblical and dangerous. I will show that most of the spiritual disciplines that he calls “means of grace” are no means of grace at all—but a means of putting oneself under spiritual deception…

Some further comment on an earlier Slice piece by Larry DeBruyn.

A brief quote from this Church Reformer concerning corrupt contemplative spirituality and the emerging church idea of finding God in “the Other” religions.

With a link right off their main website this morning to its Christian History site Christianity Today, “a magazine of evangelical conviction,” continues leading the way back into the dark ages as they present this ode to a classic of corrupt contemplative spirituality The Cloud of Unknowing, which begins:

Sometime during the last half of the 14th century, somewhere in England’s East Midland area, some anonymous Carthusian monk (or priest) created one of the most enduring how-to books on prayer—The Cloud of Unknowing. His intentional anonymity illustrates his main message: Christ must become more visible as his followers grow kinder and humbler. Anonymous wants readers “sincere in their intentions to follow Christ” in love. A series of letters written by this master teacher to his student, the Cloud represents the ancient tradition of Christian contemplative wisdom. This tradition began with the third-century Desert Mothers and Fathers who practiced a life of prayer in Egypt’s Scete desert, followed by the earliest Benedictines who dedicated themselves daily to regular times of lectio divina—the “sacred reading” of Scripture done in a deliberately prayerful manner.

For the first 16 centuries of the church, all Christians engaged in this silent form of prayer. Both then and today, contemplative prayer is practiced in the orthodox context of communal Christian worship and intense Bible study. Since it acknowledges the inadequacy of language to describe God, contemplative prayer is often called the via negativa (“negative way”). In the 16th century, John of the Cross embraced this prayer, saying that it purifies us and prepares us to love. Teresa of Avila taught that this “prayer of quiet” revives a “desolate and very dry” soul, creating an intimacy with God that is like “rain coming down abundantly from heaven to soak and saturate” the gardens of our hearts. Christians of all backgrounds are returning to this simple Jesus-centric prayer to grow their souls and learn to love in an increasingly complex post-modern world…

Lighthouse Trails Research, who has done much helpful work in the field of refuting contemplative spirituality, has more about this book of mysticism in A Popular Contemplative Book.

This article concerning contemplative spirituality-lite, which is right now moving mainstream evangelicals away from this critical doctrine, shows why things as in the Slice post “Christian” Father Promotes Son’s Reincarnation as WW2 Pilot will be increasing.

In his latest article at Christian Issues Commentary, which is a must read, pastor Bob DeWaay weighs in on “spiritual disciplines” as it concerns Donald Whitney and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

DeWaay notes the close similarity between Whitney’s teachings and those of Richard Foster, which DeWaay correctly points out:

underscores the problem with “spiritual disciplines” such as taught by Donald Whitney. Since only some of them are commanded in Scripture, and the list of practices is amorphous, they are not based on faith but on syncretism…

Whitney’s syncretistic, man-made “spiritual disciplines” are replacements for scriptural means of grace as can be seen by his own statement: “The Spiritual Disciplines then are also like channels of God’s transforming grace” (Whitney: 19). Whitney’s “means of grace” are largely discovered by mystical spiritual innovators like Richard Foster, not defined by God in Scripture…

I am very alarmed about Donald Whitney bringing spiritual disciplines and implied human ability into Reformed theology. If the trend for syncretistic spiritual disciplines and spiritual formation takes over the Reformed versions of evangelical education there will be very few options for young people who want an education grounded in the solas of the Reformation. Scripture alone and grace alone are compromised—if not rejected outright—when spiritual disciplines are adopted…