Lost in the Mystical Myths

At a recent United Church of Christ conference titled “Health and Spirituality: The Abundant Life,” the “creation spirituality” theologian Matthew Fox led participants in a song and ritual dance drawn from native-American tribal traditions. More than 400 people danced around their tables, singing, “I walk with beauty before me, behind me, above me, below me, all around me.” Speakers told of finding inner healing through meditation techniques, or through repeating a word, phrase, or muscular activity while blithely disregarding all thoughts. They argued that “anyone can have mystical experiences by using the tools of ritual and gratitude.”

M. Scott Peck, noted psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Traveled, assured the conferees, “We have the technology to welcome God into our organizations. There is nothing magical about this technology. It follows the rules of love.”

The conference, one of many that might be mentioned, illustrates a striking phenomenon in both conservative and liberal Protestantism: Interest in spirituality is burgeoning. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have always made a prominent place for the cultivation of the spiritual life, but they too are being affected by the new emphasis.

What makes the current fascination with spirituality significant is that much of it reflects the largely secular flavor of our time rather than the Bible or church traditions. The renaissance in spirituality shows that established religion has been unable to assuage the anxieties that cripple people today. But the situation is akin to the breakdown of conventional morality and religion in the last phase of the Roman Empire, when people retreated into an introspective spirituality.

Spirituality has become for many a technique for tapping into the “reservoir” of unlimited power within us. We hear about centering—focusing attention on the inner core of the self in order to make contact with the “infinite ground of being.” Others tell us to rise above words and images until we are lost in an abyss of silence.

Many of these techniques and emphases are found in the mystical heritage of the church. What makes the current practice different is that climbing the ladder to heaven (a traditional mystical theme) is replaced by sinking into the pulsating depths of existence (Matthew Fox), a far cry from the biblical accent on prayer and supplication.

When Seminaries Go Spiritual

A sure sign of the change in theological climate is the high priority given to spiritual formation in theological seminaries—both liberal and conservative. Some seminaries are trying to reappropriate the spiritual wisdom of the fathers and doctors of the church, but there is also a disturbing tendency to accommodate culture’s demands for personal integration and fulfillment.

While spiritual classics such as Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ and Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God are still used in some schools—especially conservative ones—more attention is now given such texts as Jay McDaniel’s Earth, Sky, Gods & Mortals: Developing an Ecological Spirituality, Ernest Larkin’s Silent Presence: Discernment as Process and Problem, Eg McGaa’s Mother Earth Spirituality, Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing, and Morton Kelsey’s The Other Side of Silence.

These works stress divine immanence and religious inclusivity. McDaniel writes, for example, that “as long as the fruits of silence are a love of life and a commitment to shalom, there is no reason for Christians to insist that one type of spirituality is higher, deeper, or more revelatory than another.” Affirming Christ as the only way is condemned as a form of ethnocentrism, “arrogant and uncompassionate in a world of pluralism, a world in which there are many worthwhile religious ways.”

A growing interest in interfaith dialogue has also contributed to the current spiritual climate. While dogma allegedly divides, religious experience is said to allow various faith traditions to explore what they have in common. The symbols and rituals undergirding each faith are welcomed as aids by which we make contact with the depth of our own being, a crucial factor in the new spirituality’s subjectivism—or, to put it more bluntly, gross egocentricity. “To be in touch with ourselves,” we are told, “is to be in touch with the word of God that is ourselves.”

Earth Mother Mysticism

The much-publicized New Age movement is only one manifestation of the new spirituality, which is wider and deeper than any single group or movement. The roots of the new spirituality lie in the Renaissance and Enlightenment and even more in nineteenth-century Romanticism. Its mentors include Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Paul Tillich, Teilhard de Chardin, Nikos Kazantzakis (author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ), and Joseph Campbell (interviewed with much deference on public television by Bill Moyers).

The new spirituality represents a kind of naturalistic mysticism, a re-emergence of the ancient religion of the Earth Mother. In this view, all nature is seen to be alive, filled with divine energy. It is not simply the handiwork of God, but the very body of God. Reality is pictured as a verb rather than a noun, a process of becoming rather than a state of being.

The new mysticism does not emphasize self-denial, but self-affirmation and self-esteem. It prizes growth and change more than repentance and service. What matters more than the powerlessness of love is the power of creative imagination. Emerson expressed it well: “Man is weak to the extent that he looks outside himself for help. It is only as he throws himself unhesitatingly upon the God within himself that he learns his own power and works miracles.”

Our vocation is no longer to be pilgrims in a vale of tears, nor witnesses to what God has done for us in history. Instead, we are to be gods on earth. Spanish existentialist Miguel de Unamuno candidly admitted, “My longing is not to be submerged in the vast All … or in God” but “to become myself God, yet without ceasing to be I myself.” Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck likewise insists that “we are growing toward godhood. God is the goal of evolution. It is God who is the source of the evolutionary force and God who is the destination.”

New mystics commonly refer to God as “the Life Force,” “the Power of Creative Transformation,” “the Pool of Unlimited Power,” “the Divine Eros,” “the Womb of Being,” “the Creative Surge,” “the Cosmic Energy,” and “the Infinite Abyss.” Such descriptions patently conflict with the traditional mystical portrayal of God as “Absolute Being,” “the Self-Same,” “Being-Itself,” and “the Eternal Silence.” They are an even further cry from the biblical depiction of God as sovereign Lord and Creator, a living personal Subject who confronts us in an I-Thou encounter.

Further contrasts between the new spirituality, classical mysticism, and biblical spirituality abound. The new secular spirituality represents a descent into worldliness under the guise of holiness. Classical mysticism is an ascent to a holiness beyond this world. Biblical or evangelical spirituality, by contrast, is a response to a holiness won for us by a divine incursion into this world.

Prayer in the new spirituality is a reflection on life and the world, culminating in creative action. Or it is reaching out to the possibilities of an unknown future. In classical mystical religion, prayer in its fullness is contemplative adoration. Although the more avowedly Christian mystics make a place for petitionary prayer in the beginning stages of the Christian life, in the highest stage petition is left behind. In biblical religion, on the other hand, the essence of prayer is humble supplication, pouring out our souls before God, crying out to God for help from the depths of our being (see Pss. 42:4; 57:1–2; 62:8; Isa. 26:16; Lam. 2:19). For biblical Christians, there are indeed other kinds of prayer besides petition—such as thanksgiving, confession, and praise—but the element of petition remains in all of these; we come before God as suppliants—even when we thank him for his kindnesses. We ask God to accept our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, and even when we do not do this verbally, the attitude of petition is nevertheless present.

Grounded In The Promises Of God

The word spirituality refers to living out our lives in relation to the Eternal, appropriating redeeming grace in trust and obedience. If revelation involved only objective truths, the religious affections would be quenched and the religious yearning suppressed. Christians are spiritual, as well as rational, beings, and this means being in contact with the Spirit of God as well as with truths revealed by God.

A true spirituality, however, will be grounded in the promises of God in holy Scripture. It will celebrate the glory of God, not the self-aggrandizement of the creature. In the midst of a rising tide of paganism and pseudo-spirituality, we need to recover the biblical pattern. This means not only immersing ourselves in the Bible itself, but also learning from the ongoing commentary on Scripture in the life of the church. It is especially important for us to rediscover the abiding insights of the sixteenth-century Reformers as well as of the Pietists and Puritans.

Peter T. Forsyth, who drew on all of these, is a worthy mentor for the age in which we live. In contrast to the activist, do-it-yourself mentality of our culture (which has also infiltrated much of today’s evangelicalism), Forsyth declared, “Christianity is not the sacrifice we make, but the sacrifice we trust; not the victory we win, but the victory we inherit.”

Another spiritual master we should heed is Jonathan Edwards. In this day when experientialism is in vogue, when signs and wonders figure more prominently than the redeeming mercy of God in Jesus Christ, Edwards sagaciously reminds us that “saints are ‘taken’ with the beauty of God, other religionists with ‘the beauty of their experiences of God.’ ”

Both John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola can help us in this respect. They are both associated with the motto Soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone), which points to a God-centered spirituality that places serving God over cultivating self-esteem and “finding our true selves.”

We can surely also learn from Martin Luther, who rediscovered the New Testament understanding of love as agap—the readiness to serve unconditionally as opposed to the Hellenistic eros—the desire to possess the highest good and thus to perfect the self. Luther saw that the point of departure in our spiritual quest must be the gospel itself, as did the New Testament writer: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10, NRSV).

Evangelicals must reaffirm with Luther and Calvin the apostolic message that our hope and righteousness lie outside ourselves in the living Christ. Evangelical piety is extrinsic rather than intrinsic. Our doctrine is certain, said Luther, because “it carrieth us out of ourselves, that we should not lean to our own strength, our own conscience, our own feeling, our own person, and our own works, but to that which is without us, that is to say, the promise and truth of God which cannot deceive us.”

In evangelical understanding, fellowship with God is based not on personal progress toward holiness but on the forgiveness of sins. The desire for a holy life is a fruit and evidence of our justification before a holy God. We are justified, moreover, on the basis of a righteousness not in any way our own, the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to all who believe. We cannot earn or merit God’s forgiveness, but we can proclaim and demonstrate it through deeds of self-giving love and discipleship under the Cross.

What Mysticism Can Teach Us

But can we also profit from a study of the great mystics of the church? We must not neglect this tradition; indeed, for the Reformers themselves drew upon the spiritual wisdom of the church fathers. Yet we must be cautious, for the mystics of Christian tradition synthesized biblical insights with classical or Hellenistic wisdom. Their spirituality proved to be not only God-centered, but also man-centered. They saw union with God as the pathway to human happiness, which sometimes became their overriding concern. At the same time, many key figures of Catholic mysticism—Augustine, Ambrose, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, and Teresa of Ávila, for example—emphasized scriptural authority and salvation by free grace. We can also mention Thérèse of Lisieux, who in modern times substituted for the mystical ladder to heaven the elevator—the lift of free grace in which God descends to us in order to raise us up to him. The only thing required of us is an act of simple faith.

While faith contains a mystical dimension, it cannot be reduced to a mystical experience. Faith in the biblical sense means entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Faith is not a mere feeling of dependence on God, but an awakening and empowering by the Spirit for commitment and service under the Cross.

In a time when the gospel is being reinterpreted to mean the availability of power to gain the goods of the world, we desperately need to recover the New Testament understanding that the gospel is the good news of grace through the vicarious, atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sin of the world. We also need to recover the imperative that accompanies the gospel—the call to take up our own cross and follow Christ into the dereliction and pain of the world. We are summoned to reclaim our holy vocation to be witnesses and heralds—not of our own works and accomplishments—but of Christ’s great work of reconciliation and redemption on our behalf.

Our mission is not to elevate ourselves or perfect ourselves, but to elevate him who died and rose again so we might live. With John the Baptist, our motto should be, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). When this attitude once again becomes rooted in the life and thought of the church, we will indeed witness the dawning of a true spirituality.

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