¹⁸ ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD. Lev. 19:18, NASB

²¹ If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; ²² For you will heap burning coals on his head, And the LORD will reward you. Proverbs 25:21–22, NASB

I listened to part of a presentation today via podcast from Alpha & Omega Ministries’ The Dividing Line broadcast from 3 May 2012 by a young man claiming to be a “Christian Gay.” The definition of terms this young man used for “love,” for instance, was not Biblical, but was based in the same self-focused, narcissistic bent that all have who have not first become regenerate, that is, saved by grace through faith according to the mercy of God, and then learned to deny self under the sanctifying hand of God. His version of love was self-centered and all about self-fulfillment. That is not Christian love nor is it how any who are truly in Christ will operate in this world on a consistent basis. How did our Lord define it?  View article →

Apprising Ministries

In this new article you will see video clips of Jeremiah preaching on this year’s March 5 edition of TBN’s Praise-A-Thon fundraiser. Not only is he pitching for pledges, but this well-respected SBC statesman lavishes praise upon the heretical Paul Crouch. View article →

spark conversations about youth and children within a new kind of Christianity. They will talk about innovative practices, critical issues, and controversial topics like violence, racism, interfaith dialogue, and sexuality. They will embark on a journey together to engage in life-giving ministry with young people. And they will blaze a new trail for the 21st-century church. Source

At the Institute on Religion and Democracy, Barton Gingerich shares a synopsis of the event. Noting that “the speakers and much of the audience came from the Evangelical Left,” he writes:

Carl Stauffer, professor of Development and Justice Studies at Eastern Mennonite University, warned against the Bible’s “seemingly divinely ordained violence.” Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren similarly worried about how church-going parents can give their children “loaded guns” in the form of “texts of terror” condoning war and other violence. He wondered whether unfiltered Bible-reading could “leave them with the idea that God is violent.” And he warned: “Bible-preaching/teaching/reading people are the most dangerous in the world for Muslims.”

View article →

Though superficially similar to discipleship, spiritual formation is not merely concerned with biblical exhortation and instruction in orthodox doctrine, but also with the teaching of “many practices that opened [the believer] to the presence and direction of God, and nurtured the character traits of Christ into fruition”.1

The Renovaré website states:

Spiritual formation is a process, but it is also a journey through which we open our hearts to a deeper connection with God. We are not bystanders in our spiritual lives, we are active participants with God, who is ever inviting us into relationship with him.2

History

1974

William Menninger discovers the book, The Cloud of Unknowing:

In 1974, Father William Meninger, a Trappist monk and retreat master at St. Josephs Abbey in Spencer, Mass. found a dusty little book in the abbey library, The Cloud of Unknowing. As he read it he was delighted to discover that this anonymous 14th century book presented contemplative meditation as a teachable, spiritual process enabling the ordinary person to enter and receive a direct experience of union with God.3

Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington and others who were students of Menninger disseminate these teachings.4

1978

Richard Foster writes The Celebration of Discipline.

This book launched spiritual formation into mainstream evangelicalism, and continues to be used today.

In The Celebration of Discipline, Foster shares the practices of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches that originated with the Desert Mothers and Fathers.

The Celebration of Discipline presents spiritual formation as attainable through the “spiritual disciplines.”

These disciplines are seen as a means of growing in spiritual maturity and depth. “In fact, the implication was that without the use of these ancient contemplative methods true ‘spiritual formation’ was not possible.”5

1988

Dallas Willard, a close associate of Richard Foster, writes The Spirit of the Disciplines. This book “reveals how the key to self-transformation resides in the practice of the spiritual disciplines, and how their practice affirms human life to the fullest.”6

The Spirit of the Disciplines is based on Willard’s understanding of Matt. 11:29–30. Willard teaches that the “yoke” spoken of by Jesus in this passage is to attempt to emulate the life of Christ in every way possible. Willard teaches that this emulation occurs through the practice of the disciplines.7 (For a comprehensive teaching on this passage in Matthew, read or listen to Dr. John MacArthur’s sermon, Jesus’ Personal Invitation, Part 2.)

Richard Foster founds Renovaré. This organization seeks “to resource, fuel, model, and advocate more intentional living and spiritual formation among Christians and those wanting a deeper connection with God. A foundational presence in the spiritual formation movement for over 20 years, Renovaré is Christian in commitment, ecumenical in breadth, and international in scope.”8

Present

The ideas presented by Foster and Willard continue to be propagated through the works and teachings of others.

Spiritual formation is a primary teaching found in what has come to be known as the emerging church. Brian McLaren, a key leader in that movement, has acknowledged that both Foster and Willard are considered “key mentors for the emerging church.”9

Spiritual disciplines

According to proponents of spiritual formation, various “spiritual disciplines” must be practiced in order to experience true spiritual growth:

Christian spiritual formation is a God-ordained process that shapes our entire person so that we take on the character and being of Christ himself.

Properly employed…these disciplines help us attain increasing levels of spiritual maturity so that we respond to our life circumstances with the mind of Christ.10

In his book, The Celebration of Discipline, as well as on his Renovaré website, Richard Foster lists these disciplines as:11

meditation

Entering into a “listening silence” in order to “hear God’s voice.” Similar to the meditation of Eastern religions.

prayer

An “interactive conversation” with God. Practiced as contemplative prayer.

fasting

“The voluntary denial of an otherwise normal function for the sake of intense spiritual activity.”

study

“The mind taking on an order conforming to the order of whatever we concentrate upon.”

simplicity

“The joyful unconcern for possessions we experience as we truly ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness’ (Matt 6:33).”

solitude

A “state of mind” for one to be “found by God and freed from competing loyalties.”

submission

Letting “go of the burden of always needing to get our own way.”

service

“A pattern of service as a lifestyle…At the center is found a contentment in hiddenness, indiscriminancy.”

confession

Confession of sin to other professing believers.

worship

“Entering into the supra-natural experience of the Shekanyah, or glory, of God.”

guidance

Learning to “heed the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the teachings of Jesus.” “It is the perception that we have heard the Kol Yahweh, the voice of God.”

celebration

Celebrating God in all facets of life.

Since the disciplines are not defined in Scripture, no concrete, definitive list is available. Consequently, Willard notes that we should not “assume that our particular list will be right for others.”12 This confirms the subjective nature of these practices.

Dangers

Unbiblical origins

Despite assertions that the spiritual disciplines are “God-ordained,”13 they are in fact derived from the practices of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox mystics.14 These practices are contrary to the biblical theology fought for in the Reformation.

Gary Gilley asks:

Do we, as believers in Sola Scriptura, take our marching orders from the written Word, or do we look to the ‘white spaces’ in Scripture to determine how we live?15

In other words, are we to turn to mystical, subjective ascetic practices, or do we rely upon the objective truth of God’s Word?

Bob DeWaay contends:

The Bible nowhere describes an inward journey to explore the realm of the spirit. God chose to reveal the truth about spiritual reality through His ordained, Spirit-inspired, biblical writers.16

Unbiblical view of man’s condition

Spiritual formation teaches that man possesses innate goodness, but that his fallen state of sin is a result of “deprivation” or “spiritual starvation.” Thus, the disciplines help to feed, mature and grow man’s spirituality. In his Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard states:

The evil that we do in our present condition is a reflection of a weakness caused by spiritual starvation. When Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he was not just being generous to his killers; he was expressing the facts of the case. They really did not know what they were doing. As St. Augustine so clearly saw, the deranged condition of humankind is not, at bottom, a positive fact, but a deprivation. It is one that results in vast positive evils, of course, yet depravity is no less a horror because it stems from a deficiency, and people are no less responsible for it and its consequences.17

Rather than having an innate ability for good, Scripture teaches that, due to the Fall, man is innately depraved (Rom. 3:11–18, 23, 5:8; Eph. 2:1) and his heart is wicked (Jer. 17:9).

Invented practices made binding upon Christians

Spiritual disciplines are not commanded in Scripture. To impose practices not commanded in Scripture as necessary for spiritual maturity is to undermine and deny the sufficiency of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16–17).

In spite of the absence of an explicit command in Scripture to practice these disciplines, leaders like Dallas Willard continue to assert their necessity:

The disciplines are activities of mind and body purposefully undertaken, to bring our personality and total being into effective cooperation with the divine order. They enable us more and more to live in a power that is, strictly speaking, beyond us, deriving from the spiritual realm itself, as we “yield ourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God,” as Romans 6:13 puts it.

The necessity for such disciplines comes from the very nature of the self in the image of God, discussed earlier. Once the individual has through divine initiative become alive to God and his Kingdom, the extent of integration of his or her total being into that Kingdom order significantly depends upon the individual’s initiative.18

Though Dallas Willard admits that the Bible does not command that these disciplines be followed, he nevertheless argues that they were practiced among members of the early church. Bob DeWaay summarizes Willard’s argument regarding Paul’s silence as being that he “did not write about the spiritual disciplines because everyone was practicing them.”19 He further states:

Spiritual disciplines are man-made, amorphous, and not revealed in the Bible; they assume that one is saved by grace and perfected by works.”20

The Apostle Paul writes against such ascetic practices. In Col. 2:20–23, Paul rebukes the idea of relying on fleshly practices to grow in holiness. Gal. 3:3 reads: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected in the flesh?”

Though proponents like Richard Foster and Dallas Willard claim that spiritual formation has been practiced since the early days of the church, Foster admits that the term “spiritual formation” did not appear in evangelical vocabulary until he ushered it into the mainstream in the 1970s with The Celebration of Discipline:

By now enough water has gone under the Christian Spiritual Formation bridge that we can give some assessment of where we have come and what yet needs to be done. When I first began writing in the field in the late 70s and early 80s the term “Spiritual Formation” was hardly known, except for highly specialized references in relation to the Catholic orders. Today it is a rare person who has not heard the term. Seminary courses in Spiritual Formation proliferate like baby rabbits. Huge numbers are seeking to become certified as Spiritual Directors to answer the cry of multiplied thousands for spiritual direction. And more.”21

Possibility of real spiritual experiences not from God

Richard Foster himself has offered warnings when it comes to practicing some of the disciplines. In regard to the practice of contemplative prayer, which is a type of meditation, Foster, in his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, writes:

I also want to give a word of precaution. In the silent contemplation of God we are entering deeply into the spiritual realm, and there is such a thing as a supernatural guidance. While the Bible does not give us a lot of information on that, there are various orders of spiritual beings, and some of them are definitely not in cooperation with God and his way!….

…But for now I want to encourage you to learn and practice prayers of protection.22

When seeking to “hear from God,” there is no biblical guidance as to how one may determine exactly who or what is communicating. Foster himself notes that not only could one be deceived by Satan, but one may also mistake one’s own imagination or “human voices” for the voice of God.

Learning to distinguish the voice of God…from just human voices within us…comes in much the same way that we learn any other voice. Satan pushes and condemns. God draws and encourages. And we can know the difference.23

Though Foster provides criteria for determining just who or what is speaking, there is no biblical support for the specifications he provides. He implies that God will always speak in a positive manner, yet there are multiple instances in Scripture when God speaks negatively to His people. About Foster’s comments in the above-referenced Be Still DVD, Pastor Larry DeBruyn writes:

Assuming that God speaks Soul to soul today, what if Foster’s paradigm for determining “the voice” were reversed; that the negative voice is God’s, and the positive is Satan’s? It happened that way in the Garden. God warned Adam and Eve that for disobedience to God, “you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17), but Satan reassuringly told Adam and Eve, “You surely shall not die!” (Genesis 3:4). The point is that when engaging meditative spirituality, the contemplator can never be certain who will speak, and as a consequence, the experience can become the spawning ground for myriads of flashy ideas based solely upon, “he heard this,” or “she heard that.” And at that juncture, Christians and the church will have turned aside “to myths” (2 Timothy 4:4).24

Deception is rampant, and unbiblical, mystical practices may offer people an actual spiritual experience, though not one that originates from the true and living God. To ignore the boundaries of Scripture is to open oneself up to danger.

Further reading

On Richard Foster

• Who Is Richard Foster?
• Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
• Living Spiritual Teacher Richard Foster

On Dallas Willard

• The Spiritual Disciplines of Dallas Willard Destroyed
• Delusions of Dallas Willard
• Book Review: Hearing God, by Dallas Willard

On sola scriptura

• The Nature and Sufficiency of Scripture
• The Sufficiency of Scripture, Part 1
• The Sufficiency of Scripture, Part 2
• Sola Scriptura

General resources

• Introduction to Mysticism
• Contemporary Christian Divination: The False Claims and Practices of Christian Mystics
• Understanding the New Spirituality: God Indwells Mankind

Footnotes

1. Bruce Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality (NavPress, 1999), 24.
2. “What is Spiritual Formation?,” Renovaré.
3. ContemplativePrayer.net.
4. Gary Gilley, Spiritual Formation. Dr. Gary Gilley is pastor of Southern View Chapel in Springfield, IL.
5. Gary Gilley, Spiritual Formation.
6. Renovaré.
7. Bob DeWaay, The Dangers of Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Disciplines. Bob DeWaay is a Christian apologist and founder of Critical Issues Commentary.
8. “Who We Are,” Renovaré.
9. Brian McLaren, “The Emergent Mystique,” Christianity Today, November 2004.
10. Richard J. Foster and Gayle D. Beebe, Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion (InterVarsity Press, 2009), 15, 16.
11. All quotations within these definitions are from “Practicing Like Jesus: Renovaré’s Practical Strategy for Spiritual Formation” and linked pages, Renovaré.
12. Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, 157.
13. Richard Foster, Renovaré Newsletter, May 2003.
14. Gary Gilley, Spiritual Formation.
15. Gary Gilley, Spiritual Formation.
16. Bob DeWaay, Richard Foster – Celebration of Deception.
17. Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, (HarperCollins, 1990), 63–64.
18. Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, (HarperCollins, 1990), 68.
19. Bob DeWaay, The Dangers of Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Disciplines.
20. Bob DeWaay, The Dangers of Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Disciplines.
21. Richard Foster, Spiritual Formation: A Pastoral Letter.
22. Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (HarperCollins, 1992), 157.
23. Richard Foster, Be Still, Fear of Silence (DVD © Twentieth Fox Home Entertainment LLC, 2006). Transcript courtesy of Larry DeBruyn, Who Goes There?
24. Larry DeBruyn, Who Goes There?

In Part 1 of this series, author Gaylene Goodroad discusses quantum mysticism in the church, especially in the context of evangelical author Tom Horn’s recent book, God’s Ghostbusters. View article →

Part 2 of the series examines cosmic cryptology in the church. This article briefly examines Chuck Missler’s Cosmic Codes: Hidden Messages from the Edge of Eternity. Goodread refutes the notion that the Bible contains hidden codes that must be deciphered and notes,

Contradicting the idea of God communicating in “cosmic codes” is the fact that Lord Jesus Christ, The Word, (though on occasion He spoke in parables), spoke openly and not in hidden, encrypted language (Jn. 1:1; 18:20).

View article →

Apprising Ministries

Here in this post you’ll see the video interview and hear Fallwell, Jr., president and chancellor of LU, make this statement himself. View article →

After speaking to Harvest Bible Chapel Grayslake, Christian Research Network has confirmed that this church has been “removed from Harvest Bible Fellowship by the leadership.” HBC Grayslake declined to provide additional details at this time. Source

HBC Grayslake reportedly shared this information with their congregation in the Sunday service on 6 May, however their statement was not available to the public. The decision by Harvest Bible Fellowship (HBF) to remove HBC Grayslake appeared to be a result of discussions surrounding the controversy of the Elephant Room 2 (ER2) conference. Now, HBC Grayslake has provided additional information through the sermon delivered this past Sunday. In the middle of a sermon on 2 Cor. 4:7–15, Senior Pastor Mike Bryant shared the following:

There is hope amidst the suffering. Loved ones, we have hope. And for our church, as I am studying this passage, I am amazed at the pertinence of God’s Word. Can I just tell you that? I am amazed that God sees what we are going through, and a year in advance knew that we would be in this passage. And with the suffering that we are going through as a church – if you were here last week, you heard about the sufferings that our church is enduring. That we have a sign out there that says, Harvest Bible Chapel. And did you know that we are no longer a Harvest Bible Chapel? Because our denomination decided they wanted to kick us out. And why did they want to kick us out? Because they wanted to choose to embrace, to invite and affirm somebody who teaches false doctrines about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about the Trinity. And so because of that loved ones, I don’t know about you, but I’m perplexed right now at this situation. I’m confused. I’m discouraged. And I’m grieving over this. I’m perplexed at the reality that the men—for some of us in this room, we’ve served with them for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 plus, I’ve been a part of Harvest Bible Chapel for 23 years now! And guess what, I cannot believe that these men have embraced this false teacher. I can’t understand how they have done that. I’m perplexed about that. And you’re probably perplexed as well, like I am. I’m perplexed about the reality that they would invite and they would affirm this man and they would embrace him and share fellowship with him, while kicking those of us who have been with them and supported them and built God’s Kingdom through the work of Harvest Bible Chapel for 20 plus years, and to kick us to the side. I’m perplexed by that, as I’m sure you are perplexed by that this morning. I’m perplexed that when brothers came, when our elders went to them and spoke truth to them and said, “Hey, the things were seeing, I don’t think this is good.” And when we spoke truth to them and said, “This is wrong according to what Scripture says. Why are we doing this? We need to go in a different way.” And they attacked us instead! I’m perplexed by that. I don’t get that. It discourages my heart and it grieves my heart.1

It is important to note that Pastor Bryant has been preaching through the book of 2 Corinthians for some time, and the preaching calendar was set well in advance of these recent events. The full sermon was, as intended, an exposition of the text. As such, it cannot be claimed that this sermon was written specifically for the purpose of decrying the behavior of Harvest Bible Fellowship. Rather, Pastor Bryant had the opportunity to use these events as a very relevant illustration.

From the statements made by Pastor Bryant, it seems that the inference can be made that the removal of HBC Grayslake from Harvest Bible Fellowship was due to disagreements surrounding the invitation of prosperity preacher T.D. Jakes to January’s ER2 conference. To date, three additional churches have voluntarily left Harvest Bible Fellowship in the wake of the Elephant Room 2 conference. Harvest Bible Church, Detroit West, Cornerstone Church of Lincolnway (formerly Harvest Bible Chapel New Lenox), and Harvest Bible Church in Prescott, AZ, each decided earlier this year to dissociate from HBF due to concerns surrounding the ER2 event. Statements from each of these three churches are available on their respective websites.

Footnotes

1. CRN thanks Scott Bryant of Blood Stained Ink for bringing this to our attention and for providing the transcript. The full sermon may be heard at the website of Harvest Bible Chapel Grayslake. Transcript begins at 35:32.