Following Hermits And Mystics

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.Our topic for this first segment of our program is our continuing series on the Emerging Church Movement, a development within evangelical Christianity that’s having a major influence on young adults ages 18 to 30.Last week we addressed the roots of this widespread and growing movement that seems to indicate that it’s more than just a fad or trend among our young people.One underlying support for this movement, the EmergingChurch movement, is what’s called The Ancient-Future Faith, and former WheatonCollege professor Robert Webber, who died last year, is considered the father of this comment.Now, Dave, by support, I’m really talking about, this is not just something that is superficial and has kind of come along and then it’s going to blow away after a while.I think there are some foundations for it, some deeper roots that have, not only have sustenance but given its quote unquote, scholarly aspects, so it’s not just the youth fad, that’s what I’m kind of getting at here.

Dave:

It’s one support that the contemporary promoters, today’s promoters of it, use.

Tom:

Right.Some of them, to be honest with you, Dave, they are not even aware of it, but as you look to what’s been going on in the evangelical church for the last 30 years or more, you find these foundational ideas that they’re just kind of building on.So Webber writes in his book, Ancient-Future Faith:Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World, and I’m quoting him:“Currently, Western society is in a transition from the modern world to a postmodern world…shifting us toward the affirmation of new values…resulting in a whole new culture and raising new questions about the way a biblical Christianity is to be understood and communicated.”Now, I want you to comment on that, but let me add one other quote.This is from another book, he writes:“My argument is that the era of the early church (A.D. 100-500), and particularly the second century, contains insights which evangelicals need to recover.”So this is Ancient-Future Faith, we’ve got to go back to the 2^nd century, between the 2^nd century and the 6^th century to find things that are gems of treasures, things that really are going to help this new generation of evangelicals.

Dave:

Well, I guess I would have the same suggestion that I’ve given many times, why don’t we go back to the Bible?I would say that’s a little older than this stuff.If you want to get back to the beginning I would go back to what Paul would use in his day, and he faced many cultures.Why do we think that our post-modern, or whatever they want to call it, culture is so unique?The hearts of men are the same, the needs of men are the same, the Bible hasn’t changed.Of course we’ve got all kinds of people changing it, like Eugene Peterson rewriting it and calling it, The Message, and so forth.But I don’t see what could have happened, or what could happen.What are we going to do tomorrow, or next week when they come up with some new post-post-modern, or whatever?I thought the Bible was written for all people at all times.I think we ought to go there to find what God has to say about the situation.The gospel hasn’t changed, has it?I don’t think the gospel has changed and that’s the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.This was the message Paul preached.Paul preached Acts 20; it says everywhere he went he preached repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Tom:

Dave, this reminds me of the problem that Mel Gibson had when he was trying to put together his script.He was the writer of the script for “The Passion of the Christ.”Now, again, a very talented director, yet he had a problem, and the problem was he tried to go by the Bible.But when he went to the Bible, there wasn’t enough for a movie.He didn’t have details, he didn’t have descriptions, he didn’t have all of these kinds of things.And that’s similar to what we are hearing from Robert Webber and others.In other words, where are we going to find all kinds of liturgies?Where are we going to find the clerics, the clergy class versus the laity?Where are we going to find these mystical ideas?

Dave:

Not in the Bible, so I guess the Bible is deficient, from their way of looking at things.

Tom:

Well, Webber refers to this as “Classic Christianity” in which devotion, rituals, all of these things enhance, enrich the faith.

Dave:

Tom, I have a simple question for Mr. Webber, but he’s gone now, he’s in heaven, we trust.If we can’t find these things in the Bible that he apparently feels we need to embellish Christianity, maybe we don’t need it.Maybe we need to get back to the faith of Paul, the apostles of Jesus Christ, and presumably, of the early church, although he had to write epistles to correct the early church.But I think that’s the kind of correction we need, and help we need.How does he have the right to call this “Classic Christianity”?It’s the divergence from the Bible; I would call that classic Christianity.

Tom:

Yeah, but Dave, he’s turning to individuals, and again, Robert Webber is just one individual, although he has made a significant impact in this whole movement.But you could turn to Richard Foster, we’ll get into some of these individuals, but as I mentioned last week, I quoted a professor from BaylorUniversity who said that the hot ticket among evangelicals today is to go back and study patristics, meaning to go back and study the early church fathers.Now, Dave, as I mentioned last week, this is a mine field of heresy!Not that they were all heretics, but you know, when you begin to look at their lives and their teachings—I’ll give you some examples here.Well, first of all, who are these early church fathers?Origen, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clemet of Alexandria, Cyprian, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, and others.Well, what do they believe?Now again, these are the individuals whose lives and doctrines and teachings, writings that we’re going to mine, looking for gems.Well, Origen was a Universalist, and he taught that God’s going to save everyone in the end.He believed that Mary was a perpetual virgin.Irenaeus believed that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Jesus when consecrated, as did John Chrysostom and Cyril of Jerusalem.So, Dave, you know, I could go on with these guys, but let’s take Augustine.This would be somebody that, you know, even the Calvinists turned to Augustine as one of the heroes of the faith.

Dave:

Well, he was almost a foundation of what John Calvin taught.Every few pages you’ve got the name, Augustine:Augustine says, and, I rely on Augustine for this, and so forth.

Tom:

Right, so you reconcile this for me.He’s the principal architect, a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, the principal architect of Catholic dogma.Well dogma, what am I talking about?The doctrines, his support of purgatory, baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, mortal and venial sins, prayers to the dead, penance for sins, absolution from a priest, the sinlessness of, the Apocrypha for Scripture and on and on and on.

Dave:

Well Tom, that’s exactly what I pointed out in, What Love is This? and a Calvinist got very upset.

Tom:

But again, coming back to our point here, why would this be a hot ticket for evangelicals to go and search these men out, trying to find some gem within their writings, their teachings, when, as I said, this if a mind field of heresy.

Dave:

Why didn’t Webber and these others warn us about this?If they say, well, we’re going to go back, but why didn’t they say, well, we know that they had a lot of heresy but we’re going to find the gems that are mixed in there.They don’t even say that.Tom, you’ve read their books.I haven’t read their books, I’ve glanced at them.

Tom:

Again, because, as Christianity Today, we’ve been talking about the article from Christianity Today, the February 2008 cover story: “Lost Secrets of the AncientChurch” and how Christianity Today is promoting this idea.See, because they believe it’s a really good thing, that we are going to enrich the faith, enrich our, what’s called, “spiritual formation” by looking to these individuals.

Dave:

But no warning, no hint that these men were heretics?

Tom:

Certainly not in the Christianity Today article, and many of the books that I have read.We went through a book by Tony Jones that dealt with these mystical techniques, no warnings whatsoever.Dave, the EmergingChurch is into these church fathers, but I think it is actually worse, because we are also being directed, we being the evangelical church by Robert Weber, by Richard Foster and others.We’re being directed to the Desert Fathers, or the Catholic mystics.That’s whole other category altogether, because they are into mystical techniques.We’ve gone over that in prior programs, but let me give you some examples—

Dave:

Tom—

Tom:

Go ahead.

Dave:

Mystical techniques to what purpose?To get in touch with God, to get in touch with Jesus, to have Jesus become real by visualizing Him, and so forth, and they’ve got various chants.Tom, these people were recluses.Instead of going into all the world to preach the gospel, as Jesus said, they holed themselves in a cave, or whatever—

Tom:

A tomb.

Dave:

Yeah, some of them—to what end?It’s all self-centered so that they could, within themselves find this formation, that they wanted a spiritual formation, find this closeness with God.That’s not what we read in the Bible.Now, Paul said, Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.He said that twice in his epistles.This is not the life Jesus lived.Jesus didn’t go off in a cave somewhere.Jesus was with the common people.He went to weddings, He went to feasts, the Pharisee invites him to a feast in his home.He was there where He could have some interaction and some impact in society.Now, we’re going to follow these guys who did just the opposite, who did not follow Jesus?Tom, I’ve been aware of this for years, and we’ve written about it, but as you go over it again, it is shocking!

Tom:

Dave, for me, someone who has grown up in Roman Catholicism for 30 years of my life, who looked upon many of the men that we’ve mentioned, these saints as heroes of my faith then, to be delivered from that, and then to see it come into the evangelical church, I’m stunned, honestly!Now, let me give you some examples, because we’re speaking about these church fathers, particularly the Desert Fathers and Catholic mystics, in general terms.Let me give you an example or two.

Dave:

The Desert Fathers were a big inspiration for Richard Foster and his book, Celebration of Discipline.

Tom:

Without a doubt.Among others, certainly it’s a major part, as I said, of the EmergingChurch movement.But let’s give a couple of examples.Anthony the Great—Now, he’s known as the Father of Christian Monasticism, you know, like monasteries and so on, and he’s the most revered of the Desert Fathers, so he would be a good example.Well, according to Athanasius, now Athanasius is looked upon as an apologist for the Catholic Church, or one of the heroes of the faith.Anyway, according to Athanasius, the devils fought Anthony the Great by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, phantoms of women, which he countered by becoming a hermit and isolating himself for years in the tomb.Now, he communicated with the outside world through a crevice that allowed him to receive food, and sort of give advice to people that came along.Supposedly, the devil, upset with his holiness, would come and beat him unmercifully.Now in weeks past you talked about men who went to Mount Athos, same things happening today among the Eastern Orthodox monks and priests.Well anyway, so that would be the biggest name in terms of the Desert Fathers, but later mystics were no less bizarre, and more critically, they were not biblical, as you pointed out.Benedictine nun Julian of Norwich—now she’s a favorite of evangelical mystic wannabes and also “Christian” feminists.She referred to God as Father/Mother God.But she believed in universal salvation, she was a pantheist, she believed that God was in everything, and she experienced many visions of heaven and hell and so on.Now, here is something interesting, particularly related to our past programs on “The Secret” the positive mental attitude approach to getting things that you want.Anyway, she said:“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Dave:

Well, Tom, it sounds like Émiel Coué now—“every day and every way I’m getting better and better.”What does she mean, “All shall be well”?

Tom:

Well, she was very positive, Dave, in some of her writings.

Dave:

Sounds like Norman Vincent Peale, or his chief disciple, Robert Schuller.

Tom:

Yeah, Dave, also like Anthony the Great, who spent years in the tomb, she had herself walled off from society, living for 20 years in a cell attached to her church, where she had a small window that she could access food, obviously.And then, she also had a view of the church altar and a view of the Eucharist.And Dave, we could go on and on.Theresa of Avilla, Padre Pio.We’ve mentioned some of these individuals in the past.Francis of Assisi.

Dave:

Well, Padre Pio is a contemporary.

Tom:

Yes.That’s what I’m saying.Later day.Well he was just sainted by the Catholic Church.He could levitate, supposedly, and then have the stigmata.

Dave:

But, he was in the 1900’s.

Tom:

Right.Theresa of Avilla, again, goes back to the Reformation times.

Dave:

Tom, can I just interrupt and say a word about Padre Pio?

Tom:

Sure.

Dave:

Because the late Pope John Paul II, he just thought he was the greatest of the Catholic Church honors him.Padre Pio said, well he had the stigmata about 45 years, I think,

Tom:

Also levitated, supposedly.

Dave:

Well, it could be seen, supposedly, by a number of different people in different places at the same time.He claimed that more spirits of the dead visited him in his cell in the monastery than living people, and the other monks said they heard multitudes of voices talking with him and he said that these people were coming from purgatory on their way to heaven thanking him for suffering for their sins to get them out of there.In fact, as a novice, he asked the superior, when he first became a monk, he asked him for permission to suffer for the sins of the world and he was granted permission.So, the stigmata was supposedly his suffering.The suffering of Christ was not sufficient but he had to add to it.

Tom:

Dave, these are, again, strange people.Not only is their theology, in many ways, so contrary to the Bible, rejecting, if they believe in purgatory, then they’re rejecting the Gospel, right?

Dave:

Tom, they’re having experiences, spiritual experiences that do not come from God.They either come from their imagination or from demonic beings.

Tom:

Right.Again, some of these experience, as I mentioned, levitation, trance states, out of body experiences, ecstatic visions, and visions of heaven, visions of hell.Now, and then you find out how they’re honored later.For example, let’s take St. Theresa of Avilla, lived in the 1500’s.

Dave:

It seems to me; didn’t I see a finger of hers in a church somewhere?

Tom:

You probably did.

Dave:

In Europe?

Tom:

Well, listen to this.Her best friend was Father Gratian.Now after she dies, they exhume her body and they find out it hasn’t corrupted at all.He cuts off her left hand, but takes a finger for himself where he wears around his neck for years.That’s where that ended up, Dave.But, they continue to bury her, exhume her body, cut off more parts for relics.Now, is this what the EmergingChurch wants?Is there where evangelicals need to go?Well, according to Richard Foster, according to many others, that’s what we’re seeing.And that’s what they’re encouraging.

Dave:

They are getting inspiration from the actions and teachings of these people and this is supposed to be a new era in Christianity, post-modern Christianity that is really going to recover the real Christianity for the church today.Well, Tom, I think the church is being led astray, badly, and that anyone would go for this is astonishing.