The Slippery Slope of Spiritual Formation

Contemplative spirituality, spiritual formation and spiritual disciplines are buzzwords popular within Evangelicalism today. What is far less popular is exposing the truth behind the "buzz" of these pursuits that are rooted in Roman Catholic and Eastern mysticism.

Recently, Apprising Ministries has provoked strong, emotional responses from individuals who defend their investments and feelings on the subject.

From seminaries to denominations, these practices are viewed as harmless, static expressions of worship. For those who are willing to corroborate the evidence as Pastor Ken Silva and many others have done, the facts reveal an unbiblical foundation and dynamic spiritual seduction in these mystical pursuits.

Pastor John Piper, in his 1998 address to the Evangelical Theological Society, had this to say about the spread of spiritual formation training in seminaries:

"...you can't take it for granted that students or pastors or missionaries or teachers know God better than they know anything and find more satisfaction in him than in anything else in their lives. You can't assume that. The foundation simply isn't there.

The evidence for this is the emergence of the spiritual formation movement. It would not have occurred to anyone to add courses in spiritual formation if students were walking out of their Biblical classes aflame with a passion for the glory of God standing forth in the exegesis of his Word. It would not have occurred to anyone to add courses in spiritual formation if students were coming out of systematic theology and church history with their minds amazed at the majesty of God and their hearts burning within them like the men on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:32).

In 1905, J. Gresham Machen experienced something in Germany that almost swept him away from orthodox Christianity. He wrote home from Germany about the incredible impact of Wilhelm Hermann, the systematic theologian at Marburg. Hermann represented the modernism that Machen would later oppose with all his might. But that wasn't all. Machen wrote:

"My chief feeling with reference to him is already one of the deepest reverence. . . . I have been thrown all into confusion by what he says - so much deeper is his devotion to Christ than anything I have known in myself during the past few years. . . . He believes that Jesus is the one thing in all the world that inspires absolute confidence, and an absolute, joyful subjection; that through Jesus we come into communion with the living God and are made free from the world... His trust in Christ is (practically, if anything, even more truly than theoretically) unbounded."

It simply would have been unintelligible to Machen if someone had said: What the seminaries need is courses in spiritual formation so that students can experience communion with God and learn about unbounded trust in Jesus and see examples of absolute, joyful submission to the purposes of Christ. Machen would have simply said, "You don't need special courses. Just take systematic theology with Wilhelm Hermann." If that could be said of a course from the likes of Hermann, what should be said of ours who esteem the Scriptures so much more highly? The spiritual formation movement in our day is a symptom of failure...

Be a Berean and do you own homework...find out for yourself why popular notions of contemplative spirituality, spiritual formation and spiritual disciplines are not Biblical.

Dare to start your research here. See the growing list of Christian colleges teaching contemplative spiritualism at Lighthouse Trails Research.