…they are full of things from the east and of fortune-tellers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of foreigners. (Isaiah 2:6, ESV)

Neo-Reformed Contemplative Spirituality?

In recent posts such as Acts 29 Network And Reformed Counter Reformation Spirituality? and Acts 29 Pastor Matt Chandler On Being A Reformed Charismatic here at Apprising Ministries I’ve shared some concern about this New Calvinism as expressed e.g. by Matt Chandler and particularly Mark Driscoll, founder of Acts 29 Network.

There’s very good reason for concern as Acts 29, Chander, and Driscoll himself are growing in popularity and influence within the younger sector of the Reformed Camp; being blessed as they are by Dr. John Piper, who’s seen as a father of this New Calvinism. Now let’s consider that Darren Patrick is Vice President of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network as well as lead pastor of The Journey.

And Emerging Church luminary Andrew Jones, who blogs as Tall Skinny Kiwi, tells us that a couple of years ago:

Darrin Patrick spoke at Covenant Theological Seminary and put together a little history of the emerging church in USA (or at least two groups within it – Emergent Village and Acts 29) and its really quite good and fair… (Online source)

Jones then informs us that Patrick “comes up with three streams,” which would be:

1. Emerging Conversational, concerned with theological revision and Missio Dei. Emergent Village, bloggers, bi-vocational pastors, Seminary students. (Includes Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, etc)
2. Emerging Attractional, concerned with revising methods of church and in particular, the large group worship. This includes two groups:
a) neo-reformed (Mark Driscoll, Patrick, etc) who preach expositionally, and
b) non-reformed, neo-seeker (Erwin McManus, Andy Stanley, John Burke) who preach topically .
Both groups are risktakers and creative.
3. Emerging Incarnational, concerned with structural revision within the church. Downplay large group worship and like house church. Alan Hirsch, Lance Ford, Bob Hyatt, Neil Cole, Johnathon Cambell. (Online source, emphasis his)

And part of this “neo-reformed” New Calvinism involves their recommendation of the book Celebration of Discipline (CoD) by sinfully ecumenical Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster, the leading purveyor of corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), along with his spiritual twin and Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard. Willard’s role is to give this refried Roman Catholic Counter Reformation mysticism a kind of scholastic veneer; and as a result, people often don’t even realize that what Foster teaches, Willard himself also teaches regarding this spurious spirituality. 

This is why pastor Bob DeWaay of the excellent online apologetics and discernment ministry Critical Issues Commentary quite correctly lists them as “key proponents of mysticism.” [1] I’ve also told you that  Dr. Gary Gilley, who also has an fine online apologetics and discernment ministry called Think On These Things Ministries, calls CoD “an encyclopedia of theological error.” And yet CoD is essentially the textbook used to glean the ascetic-lite pietism Foster and Willard call “spiritual disciplines,” which through the influence of the neo-liberal cult of the Emerging Church spread as so-called Spiritual Formation.

In his The Dangers of Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Disciplines: A Critique of Dallas Willard and The Spirit of the Disciplines Bob DeWaay does an excellent job using the Bible to completely destroy Willard’s own classic book on these neo-pagan practices:

They have been borrowed from Medieval Rome and dressed up for evangelical consumption. We have examined the teachings of one of the visible leaders of this movement. Starting with a serious misinterpretation of Matthew 11:29, 30, Dallas Willard built his entire system on the idea that Jesus’ “yoke” consists of various spiritual disciplines. The issue in Matthew 11 was Messianic salvation—finding true Sabbath rest in Christ rather than following meticulous religious rules decreed by the Scribes and Pharisees. The idea of practicing spiritual disciplines was imported to the text, not found there. (Online source)

The truth is that the very core practice of this CSM is Contemplative/Centering Prayer, which is sometimes referred to as practicing “silence and solitude” or by the oxymoronic moniker “wordless prayer”; but it’s actually a type of meditation that’s virtually identical to that practiced in Eastern religions such as Zen Buddhism and the transcendental meditation of Hinduism. And yet this kind of spurious spiritual formation, so-called “Christian” mysticism, which really developed in the antibiblical monastic traditions of apostate Roman Catholicism is now showing up in more and more evangelical churches.

As I close this, for now, below I’ll show you what Martin Luther—one the leaders of the Protestant Reformation—thought about the skubalon that’s been revived by Richard Foster and Dallas Willard in these so-called spiritual disciplines, which are really simply a reimagined form of semi-pelagian (at best) pietism:

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. (Tabletalk, 1626 AD)

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Endnotes:

1. http://tinyurl.com/2ag3spk, accessed 5/28/10.

See also:

ACTS 29 NETWORK AND REFORMED COUNTER REFORMATION SPIRITUALITY? 

ACTS 29 PASTOR MATT CHANDLER ON BEING A REFORMED CHARISMATIC 

CALVINIST CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY/MYSTICISM? 

CONFUSION CONCERNING CALVINIST SPIRITUALITY? 

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

CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY OF RICHARD FOSTER ROOTED IN THE EASTERN DESERT AND THOMAS MERTON 

DALLAS WILLARD ENCOURAGES CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER