DOWN WITH SOLA SCRIPTURA! 

 

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 their to a classic of corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism 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… (Online source)

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. Following is what Martin Luther, who had forgotten more about these so-called “spiritual disciplines” than, for example, egregiously ecumenical Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster will ever know, had to say on the subject so foolishly romaticized above:

Idolatry is all manner of seeming holiness and worshipping, let these counterfeit spiritualities shine outwardly as glorious and fair as they may; in a word, all manner of devotion in those that we would serve God without Christ the Mediator, his Word and command. In popedom it was held a work of the greatest sanctity for the monks to sit in their cells and meditate of God, [solitude] and of his wonderful works; to be kindled with zeal, kneeling on their knees, praying, and having their imaginary contemplations of celestial objects, with such supposed devotion, that they wept for joy. In these their conceits, they banished all desires and thoughts of women, and what else is temporal and evanescent. They seemed to meditate only of God, and of his wonderful works.

Yet all these seeming holy actions of devotion, which the wit and wisdom of man holds to be angelical sanctity, are nothing else but works of the flesh. All manner of religion, where people serve God without his Word and command, is simply idolatry, and the more holy and spiritual such a religion seems, the more hurtful and venomous it is; for it leads people away from the faith of Christ, and makes them rely and depend upon their own strength, works, and righteousness. In like manner, all kinds of orders of monks, fasts, prayers, hairy shirts, the austerities of the Capuchins, who in popedome are held to be the most holy of all, are mere works of the flesh; for the monks hold they are holy, and shall be saved, not through Christ, whom they view as a severe and angry judge, but through the rules of their order. (Table Talk AD 1626)

See also:

LATEST FAD OF REPACKAGED “CHRISTIAN” MYSTICISM AKA “SPIRITUAL FORMATION” FINDS ROOT IN CHURCH GROWTH MOVEMENT

MOVE OVER PASTORS FOR SPIRITUAL DIRECTORS/GURUS

BOB DEWAAY ON DONALD WHITNEY AND SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES

THE TERMINOLOGY TRAP OF “SPIRITUAL FORMATION”

RICHARD FOSTER’S LEGACY ENDURES: CHRISTIAN LEADERS HELP TO MAKE IT SO

“CELEBRATION OF DISCIPLINE” BY RICHARD FOSTER AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGICAL ERROR

GARY GILLEY REVIEWS: THE ATTENTIVE LIFE, DISCERNING GOD’S PRESENCE IN ALL THINGS BY LEIGHTON FORD