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| a Kid-Free Movie Night - May 2019 |
So, here it is. I hope you find it helpful.
Contemplative Spirituality, Contemplative Prayer and the Church
Sean Oman
Lately, many in the church have been expressing the benefits of mindfulness, contemplative spirituality and contemplative prayer. Several prominent pastors have written books discussing the subject at length, including Peter Scazzero in “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality”, and Richard J. Foster in “Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home”. Scazzero presents what he calls an “antidote that turns our spiritual lives right side up”, that is, “emotional health and contemplative spirituality” (Scazzero, 40). He goes on to describe contemplative spirituality as “practicing silence, solitude, and a life of unceasing prayer” and “adapting historic spiritual practices of spirituality that are applicable today” (Scazzero, 45-46). Richard Foster describes how contemplative prayer “immerses us into the silence of God” and states how “desperately we in the modern world need this.” (Foster, 281) On the surface, what the authors are urging each and every Christian to practice sounds all well and good, but Christ followers are commanded to not blinding follow teachings just because they come from a trustworthy source. It is the duty of every Christ follower to judge all teachings in light of Scripture. Following Scazzero’s and Foster’s definition of contemplative spirituality reveals a practice rooted in Roman Catholic mysticism that encourages personal experience over theology, feelings over truth, and personal revelation over the revelations in Scripture. Shining the light of Scripture on the lives of the mystics reveals just how dangerous the practice is to the Biblical theology of the Christ follower.
The practice of contemplative spirituality as described by Foster and Scazzero does indeed have a long and storied history with the Church, but is it not the duty of every Christian to put the preeminence of Scripture over the teachings and traditions of a man or even of a church? Jesus and his apostles clearly warned all Christ followers to be on the lookout for false teachings, as is recorded in God’s Word:
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. (Matthew 7:15-16)
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. (Colossians 2:18)
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve. (2 Corinthians 11:14-15)
Of course, it is hard to judge contemplative spirituality without first defining it in the author’s own words. According to Scazzero, the core of contemplative spirituality is the regular practice of the Daily Office (Scazzero, 159 - 162), a practice started by Benedict around 525 AD. Scazzero describes the central elements of the Daily Office as:
1. Stopping: “We stop our activity and pause to be with the living God”
2. Centering: “I often spend five minutes centering down” and “When you find your mind wandering, let your breathing bring you back.”
3. Silence: “Silence is the practice of quieting every inner and outer voice to attend to God”
4. Scripture: “The psalms are the foundation of almost any Daily Office book”
5. “Other rich spiritual practices”: “lectio divina (meditation on Scripture), centering prayer...”
Similarly, Foster advocates regular contemplative prayer, which he describes as a series of three steps (293 - 302):
1. “...recollecting of ourselves until we are unified or whole. Basil Pennington uses the phrase centering prayer”
2. “what Theresa of Avila calls ‘the prayer of the quiet’” where “we experience an inward attentiveness to divine motions”
3. “spiritual ecstasy”, which is “a work God does upon us” and “Contemplative Prayer taken to the nth degree”
Scazzero and Foster’s teachings on contemplative spirituality are nothing new. Throughout their writings they reference a number of Christian mystics, such as Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and Theresa of Avila, to support their teachings. They use the experiences of these mystics to argue that the end result of contemplative prayer is oneness with God. However, the only way to truly evaluate where contemplative prayer came from and where its practice leads to is to evaluate the “fruit” of these earlier mystics in light of God’s Word.
Scazzero and Foster repeatedly reference the teachings of two notable Trappist monks, Fr. Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington. Keating is the founder of a very popular ministry called the “Contemplative Outreach”, whose website (www.contemplativeoutreach.org) is full of information about contemplative prayer, lectio divina, and other contemplative practices. One of their pamphlets contains very detailed information about the practice of the centering prayer. This prayer method draws heavily from an earlier work called “The Cloud of Unknowing”, which was written by an anonymous 14th century monk. This work forms the foundation of contemplative spirituality in the Roman Catholic Church.
The anonymous monk's basis for the contemplative life and the emphasis of internal reflection over outward works stems entirely from the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42. The monk claims that Mary represents the contemplative life, as she is sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him, and the Lord commends her as having chosen that which is better after Martha complains that Mary is not helping out with the chores. The author believes that Mary’s “contemplation” at the feet of Jesus is superior to Martha’s “doing.” He goes on to claim that external acts of service to God are inferior to internal acts of contemplation.
The main premise of this work is that man’s thoughts, feelings, and passions create a wall between himself and God, a “cloud of unknowing”, and in order to achieve perfect union with God, man must let go of all thoughts and desires, pushing them into the “cloud of forgetting.” Once all thoughts have been silenced, the believer is then ready to pray, not with a multitude of words, but with the true prayer that pierces heaven. This prayer is the prayer of a single word, preferably a single syllable, spoken with the full conviction of the heart. This method of prayer stands in stark contrast to the method of prayer Jesus gave his disciples in Matthew 6:9-13, or Jesus’ impassioned prayer for himself and his disciples in John 17 on the eve of his Crucifixion. In fact, it also directly contradicts Christ’s command in Matthew 6:7, where we are taught to pray with both our mind and our spirit, not babble on like pagans.
The anonymous monk also claims that Christ’s blood on the cross was insufficient for the forgiveness of sins. He claims that salvation comes only through works, and the life of the contemplative is the fastest way to achieve perfection and the forgiveness of sins.
That by Virtue of this work a sinner truly turned and called to contemplation cometh sooner to perfection than by any other work; and by it soonest may get of God forgiveness of sins. (Cloud of Unknowing, 41)
The anonymous monk even goes as far to claim that the contemplative man becomes as God:
Above thyself thou art: for why, thou attainest to come thither by grace, whither thou mayest
not come by nature. That is to say, to be oned to God, in spirit, and in love, and in accordance of will. Beneath thy God thou art: for why, although it may be said in manner, that in this time God and thou be not two but one in spirit—insomuch that thou or another, for such onehead that feeleth the perfection of this work, may soothfastly by witness of Scripture be called a God—nevertheless yet thou art beneath Him. For why, He is God by nature without beginning; and thou, that sometime wert nought in substance, and thereto after when thou wert by His might and His love made ought, wilfully with sin madest thyself worse than nought, only by His mercy without thy desert are made a God in grace, oned with Him in spirit without departing, both here and in bliss of heaven without any end. So that, although thou be all one with Him in grace, yet thou art full far beneath Him in nature. (Cloud of Unknowing, 100)
In essence, the author claims that if the Christian strives towards the perfection of this work, that is, the work of contemplation, then he or she shall be made “a God in grace.” This sounds dangerously close to the original deception that ensnared Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where they were promised by the crafty serpent that they would become like God if they ate the forbidden fruit.
Defenders of "The Cloud of Unknowing" point to the fact that it is a well-established church tradition and is supported by Scripture, often citing Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God” as proof. Notwithstanding the fact that they have taken this Psalm out of context (read Groothuis’ “Be Still and Know: Contemplative Prayer and Psalm 46:10” for more information), the “Cloud Of Unknowing” clearly preaches a different gospel than what the apostles preached and promotes a method of prayer vastly different than that taught by Christ, a method of prayer that parallels the Hindu mantra.
What the proponents of “The Cloud of Unknowing” fail to recognize is that mankind has repeatedly reached the same deceptions no matter which culture they are in. "The Cloud of Unknowing" claims that the best prayer is a prayer of a single syllable word, perhaps a special name for God, that one gently comes back to whenever other thoughts come up. Hindu mantra prayers, or “spells” as some have put it, are short, single word or multiple word prayers. The Hindu believer ritualistically repeats these mantras in order to invoke protection, power, and prosperity from the gods around him or her. This practice is nothing short of witchcraft and has no place in the life of the Christ follower.
In addition to the teachings of the contemplative, the life of the contemplative reveals much about whether this teaching is from God. One such contemplative referenced repeatedly by Foster and Scazzero is the Catholic Saint, Teresa of Avila. She was a prominent mystic and leader of the Carmelite monastery during the Counter-Reformation and was so influential in the realm of Catholicism that she was posthumously given the title, “Doctor of the Church.” Yet the fruit of her life is rather troubling. In one of her most famous works, “The Interior Castle”, she writes about a vision she supposedly received from Jesus detailing how the soul progresses towards union with God. This “Interior Castle” contains seven rooms that an individual must move through on their path to union, and the start of this journey begins with “lower” forms of prayer, e.g. rote prayer, and progresses from there to contemplative prayer. In the fourth dwelling she places the “Prayer of the Quiet,” where the soul sits in silence before God and waits for Him to speak. As the soul moves through the dwelling places and gets closer to being ready for union with God, she describes increasingly intense experiences of God (72-74):
“The favour acts so strongly upon the spirit that it is consumed by desires yet knows not what to ask, for it realizes clearly that its God is with it. You may inquire, if it realizes this so clearly, what more does it desire and why is it pained? What greater good can it seek? I cannot tell: I know that this suffering seems to pierce the very heart, and when He Who wounded it draws out the dart He seems to draw the heart out too, so deep is the love it feels.... when the soul is ready to take fire, the little spark suddenly dies out, leaving the heart longing to suffer anew its loving pangs...Any one who has received this favour from our Lord will understand my meaning on reading this: let her thank Him fervently...there appears no cause here for fear, but rather for receiving it with thanksgiving.
Through the course of her life, as she dove deeper and deeper into contemplative prayer and “mental” prayers, she was faced with several alarming afflictions and events, supposedly from God to strengthen her faith and purge her of sin to purify and prepare her for her holy Union/Marriage to God. These events included:
Ÿ Visions of “divine things”
Ÿ Inner voices
Ÿ A period of rapture, where a voice told her, “I will not have you hold conversation with men, but with angels”
Ÿ Levitations while praying
Ÿ An angel came to her during her mystical Marriage to God and pierced her with a spear several times, causing extreme pain and joy at the same time, pain so severe she let out several moans
Ÿ A very real vision of hell accompanied by extreme physical pain
Ÿ Trances
Ÿ Out-of-body experiences
Ÿ Ecstasies
She treated the personal revelations she received during her contemplative sessions as truth revealed to her from God, and rather than compare her revelations with the truth in Scripture, she put her revelations on par with Scripture. In doing so, she willingly accepted deceptive theology and opened herself up to demonic oppression.
The legions of ancient Rome believed
that how you trained determined how you fought, and this approach to training
applies equally well to the life of the Christ follower. While the Christ
follower doesn’t battle against flesh and blood, he or she fights against the
devil every time they enter into prayer. The well-equipped Christ follower, as
commanded in Ephesians 6:10-18, enters prayer with the belt of truth and the
sword of Spirit, that is, the Word of God. Contemplative prayer, rather, trains
the Christ follower to seek personal revelation from God rather than revelation
from His Word. The danger is clear. Contemplative prayer encourages the Christ
follower to abandon the belt of truth and the sword of the Spirit, leaving them
ill-equipped to defend against the devil and his schemes.
Bibliography
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Thomas Keating. “The Method Of Centering Prayer: The Prayer Of Consent.” https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/sites/default/files/private/method_cp_eng-2016-06_0.pdf. Accessed 8/5/2017.
“Contemplative Outreach”. https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/. Accessed 8/5/2017.
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Rocha, Tomas. “The Dark Knight of the Soul.” The Atlantic, 25, June, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/. Accessed 8/5/2017.
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Anonymous. The Cloud of Unknowning. https://www.catholicspiritualdirection.org/cloudunknowing.pdf. Accessed 8/5/2017.
Caddock, John. “What is Contemplative Spirituality and Why Is It Dangerous? - A Review of Brennan Manning’s The Signature of Jesus.”, Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society, Autumn 1997, Volume 10:19, https://faithalone.org/journal/1997ii/Caddock.html. Accessed 8/5/2017.
The Unknown Author. “Praying Wisely.”, Renovare, 14 Sep 2016, https://renovare.org/articles/praying-wisely. Accessed 8/5/2017.
Foster, Richard J. Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home. Harper Collins Publishers, 1992.
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Keller, Timothy. Prayer - Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. Penguin Books, 2016.
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Jukic, Rosilind. “6 Reasons This Popular Meditation Trend Is Dangerous for Christians”, Charisma News, 18 Jul 2016. http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/58612-6-reasons-this-popular-meditation-trend-is-dangerous-for-christians. Accessed 8/5/2017
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