San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.
HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.
BY RICHARD J. FOSTER
Book Reviews by Joseph Ng[1]
June 2004
It’s the same experience lifting up the lives of millions around the globe. Eyes upturned, hands lifted, bodies and spirits in obvious rapture, hearts aflame and united, these devotees flock to temple, cathedral, and mosque in celebration of a higher reality known by various names. Is there a spiritual revival sweeping our world?
There used to be a time when the biblical gospel and the counterfeit gospel were clearly distinguishable. Today, the gospel we often hear is about feeling something warm and fuzzy. It is a Christianity that is subjective, experience-centred. The Ecumenical Movement over the last century has erased much of truth distinctions through joint meetings under the World Council of Churches (now succeeded by the Global Christian Forum), the doctrinal reformulations of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together documents, and the emotional manipulation of the Charismatic Movement. Ecumenism today reaches the Christian public in many ways, from citywide miracle crusades and dialogues to seminary spirituality or “spiritual formation” courses. It is the last of these that Richard Foster’s books have perhaps the greatest impact, preparing one generation of pastors after another for a feeling-oriented, doctrinally ecumenical ministry. His three books, Celebration of Discipline, Prayer, and Streams of Living Water document the trend among many Christian pastors today. While Foster’s writings make easy reading and do cover certain aspects of prayer legitimately, as will be mentioned in the review, Christians should be forewarned as to where they ultimately lead.
Celebration of Discipline, arranged in three parts of a total of 13 chapters, has been hailed as “the best modern book on Christian spirituality.” According to its inside flap:
Celebration of Discipline explores the “classic Disciplines,” or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith. Along the way, Foster shows that it is only by and through these practices that the true path to spiritual growth can be found. Dividing the Disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contribute to a balanced spiritual life. The inward Disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward Disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate Disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration bring us nearer to one another and to God.[2]
In his Foreword to Celebration, Quaker[3] theologian D. Elton Trueblood praises Foster for a “genuinely ecumenical” drawing from the Scriptures, devotional classics, secular thinkers, Quaker writers, and others:
The sources of insight are varied .... The purpose here is not sectarian but genuinely ecumenical, since important insights ought never to be limited to the group from which they arise. What we are given, accordingly, is an example of the catholicity of sharing. (pp. vii-viii)
Foster begins well, pointing out that “both objective and subjective righteousness” are a gift from God:
When we despair of gaining inner transformation through human powers of will and determination, we are open to a wonderful new realization: inner righteousness is a gift from God to be graciously received. The needed change within us is God’s work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. (p. 5)
The role of Disciplines, he argues, is “a means of receiving His grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that He can transform us” (p. 6). These Disciplines are a “narrow ledge” between the “heresy of moralism” on the one side and the “heresy of antinomianism” on the other (p. 7). He then warns against “turning the disciplines into laws,” which results in “the way of death”; but this can be avoided by hearing the voice of Jesus Christ, “the Heavenly Monitor” (pp. 8-9), which he does not elucidate. It appears, though, that what he is advocating is as a check on one’s internal, subjective response or experience is something that is just as internal and subjective. How can one be certain that the voice is that of the Heavenly Monitor’s rather than one’s errant urge to antinomianism or legalism, for instance?
Discussing the Discipline of meditation, Foster tries to differentiate pagan meditation (“Zen, Yoga, or TM”) from his prescribed practice simplistically: “Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind in order to fill it” (p. 15). However, Eastern mystics, if asked, might counter that they really do have some higher reality as their goal and deny that emptiness of mind is an end to itself.[4] Foster cites a hodgepodge of personalities—Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Madame Guyon, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Sales, George Fox—as Christian writers who “have spoken of a way of listening to God,” who speak “of this more excellent way” (p. 14; never mind, of course, that the “more excellent way” Paul speaks of is love, not “listening to God”). He proceeds to quote in favourable terms Thomas Merton (p. 17; a Roman Catholic priest of the 20th century), Meister Eckart (p. 17; a Medieval mystic condemned for heresy),[5] and Ignatius Loyola, (p. 23, the founder of the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order).[6] This last person, of course, was led by his mystical impulses to inflict torture and martyrdom upon countless Christians who refused to disobey God’s Word under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. Historian J.A. Wylie contrasts the fruit of Ignatius Loyola’s “meditation” with Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin’s:
How like, yet how unlike, are these two courses! In the one the penitent finds
a Savior on whom he leans; in the other he lays hold on a rule by which he
works, and works as methodically and regularly as a piece of machinery.
Beginning on a certain day, he finishes, like stroke of clock, duly as the
seventh sun of the fourth week is sinking below the horizon. We trace in the
one the action of the imagination, fostering one overmastering passion into
strength, till the person becomes capable of attempting the most daring
enterprises, and enduring the most dreadful sufferings. In the other we behold
the intervention of a Divine Agent, who plants in the soul a new principle, and
thence educes a new life.[7]
Who can forget the widespread murder and inquisitions of Bible-believing Christians that took place under Ignatius Loyola’s organisation? Yet Foster leads us down the Jesuit’s path with this verdict on Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises: “His thin volume of meditation exercise with its stress on the imagination had tremendous impact for good upon the sixteenth century” (p. 23)! Such praise of the unholy Jesuit legacy—well-known by its casuistic slogan “the ends justifies the means”—is sadly ironic: in this case neither the ends nor the means is justified in the light of history.
Dreams, says Foster, are “one good place to begin” the practice of meditation. “If we are convinced that dreams can be a key to unlocking the inner world,” he says, “we can specifically pray, inviting God to inform us through our dreams ... begin to record our dreams ... [and] interpret our dreams” (pp. 23-24). Something is true if we are somehow “convinced.” Foster is not unaware of the danger of following one’s dreams, but this does not stop him:
At the same time, it is wise to pray a prayer of protection, since to open ourselves to spiritual influence can be dangerous as well as profitable. We simply ask God to surround us with the light of His protection as He ministers to our spirit. (p. 23)
Interestingly, while misapplying James 4:2 (“You do not have, because you do not ask”) on asking God for the interpretation of dreams, Foster quotes “Benedict Pererius, a sixteenth-century Jesuit,” for the last word on who can best interpret a dream. What comes forth is a strange amalgam of worldliness, humanism, and mysticism:
... person with plenty of experience in the world and the affairs of humanity, with a wide interest in everything human, and who is open to the voice of God. (p. 24)
True to his Quaker background and in line with Gnostic mysticism, charismatic televangelistic protocols, and modern pop meditative exercises, Foster makes much about working up a quietness of mind and soul, what he calls “centering down.” “Specific exercises” are prescribed to “aid you in ‘centering down,’” “a time to become still, to enter into the recreating silence, to allow the fragmentation of our minds to become centered.” The first exercise he calls a “palms down, palms up” exercise. “Palms down” can be a prayer to “release my fear of my dentist appointment this morning,” and “palms up” is another prayer that follows, to receive “Your peace for the dentist appointment.” “Release it,” urges Foster. “You may even feel a certain sense of release in your hands” (p. 24).
In another meditating exercising that concentrates on breathing, the reader is told to “Inhale deeply, slowly tilting your head back as far as it will go,” praying inwardly, “Lord, I exhale my fear over my geometry exam” and exhaling “the matter into the arms of the Master” repeatedly and listening “to the inward living Christ.” Scripture does not overrated for the purposes of self-therapy. It is only after “some weeks with the two kinds of meditation listed above” that “you will want to add the meditation upon Scripture” (p. 25)
This “meditatio Scripturarum” begins innocuously enough on “a single event like the resurrection, or a parable, or a few verses, or even a single word.” Foster then reminds his readers of Ignatius Loyola’s advice and encourages them to take another Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation mystic Francis de Sales’ instruction to “represent to your imagination the whole of the mystery on which you desire to meditate as if it really passed in your presence. For example, if you wish to meditate on our Lord on the Cross, imagine that you are on Mount Calvary.” Whereas Mystic Francis qualifies the literalness of his teaching, Foster goes beyond, affirming that one can “enter the story, not as a passive observer but as an active participant” and erasing any distinction between imagination or speculation and gospel truth or reality:
Remember that since Jesus lives in the Eternal Now and is not bound by time, this event in the past is a living present-tense experience for Him. Hence, you can actually encounter the living Christ in the event, be addressed by His voice and be touched by His healing power. It can be more than an exercise of the imagination; it can be a genuine confrontation. Jesus Christ will actually come to you. (p. 26; italics original)
His foreshadowing of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ (2004), is uncanny but perhaps unsurprising, since both Foster and Gibson rely on Roman Catholic mystics as sources of truth and reality. One can only speculate the extent to which each has been impacted by visionary Mary of Agreda and Stigmatist (a mystic who claims to bear the nail wounds of Jesus physically) Anne Catherine Emmerich’s Dolorous Passion, the purported account of her entering the mystery of Jesus’ final hours before the crucifixion. These “visions” formed the basis for much of Mel Gibson’s scenes, such as the devil loitering in Gethsemane, the protracted scourging scene, the interaction between Pilate’s wife and Mary, Jesus gazing at the devil on the Via Dolorosa, and the flipping of the cross at Golgotha.
Foster then graduates the reader into a serious level of meditation with a technique “to bring you into a deep inner communion with the Father where you look at Him and He looks at you.” It begins by imagining oneself on a forest path leading up to a grassy knoll and soaking up with the senses—transported and transplanted in one’s imagination—the beauty of the sights and sounds and smells. Then, it’s time to really take off:
After awhile [sic] there is a deep yearning within to go into the upper regions beyond the clouds. In your imagination allow your spiritual body, shining with light, to rise out of your physical body. Look back so that you can see yourself lying in the grass and reassure your body that you will return momentarily. Imagine your spiritual self, alive and vibrant, rising up through the clouds and into the stratosphere. Observe your physical body, the knoll, and the forest shrink as you leave the earth. Go deeper and deeper into outer space until there is nothing except the warm presence of the eternal Creator. Rest in His presence. Listen quietly, anticipating the unanticipated. Note carefully any instruction given. With time and experience you will be able to distinguish between mere human thought that may bubble up to the conscious mind and the True Spirit which inwardly moves upon the heart. ... When it is time to leave, audibly thank the Lord for His goodness and return to the meadow. Walk joyfully back along the path until you return home full of new life and energy. (pp. 27-28)
[In Foster’s footnote here: “Over the years ... some have asked if I am endorsing astro-travel or astral projection in this meditation exercise. My answer is, ‘No, decidedly not!’ This meditation is only an aid for our centering down, nothing more.” Then again, change a few names, and how different are Foster’s rituals from Eckankar’s “spiritual exercises” and soul travel?[8]]
On the corporate Discipline of worship, Foster declares his love for the Charismatic Movement:
The mightiest stirring of praise in the twentieth century has been the charismatic movement. Through it God has breathed new life and vitality into millions. In our day the church of Jesus Christ is coming into a greater awareness of how central praise is in bringing us into worship. (p. 146)
While claiming that “we can be indifferent to the question of a correct form for worship” and that “nowhere does the New Testament prescribe a particular form of worship” (p. 139), Foster sheds his irenic form and gets particularly caustic against those who reject “Standing, clapping, dancing, lifting the hands, lifting the head,” which he calls “postures consistent with the spirit of praise,” but would rather “sit still, looking dour” (p. 147):
Often our “reserved temperament” is little more than fear of what others will think of us, or perhaps unwillingness to humble ourselves before God and others. Of course people have different temperaments but that must never keep us from worshiping with our whole being.
We may of course do all the things I’ve described and never enter into worship, but they can provide avenues through which we are placed before God so that our inner spirit can be touched and freed. (p. 148)
Foster’s Celebration goes on to make a huge impact on the evangelical scene. Four years on, his book Prayer builds and expands on the rudimentary techniques he recommends in the first book.
Prayer, published in 1992, expands considerably on Foster’s notion of what praying involves or should be. It is arranged in three parts, comprising 21 chapters.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Coming Home: An Invitation to Prayer
Part One: Moving Inward: Seeking the Transformation We Need
Simple Prayer/ Prayer of the Forsaken/ The Prayer of the Examen/ The Prayer of Tears/ The Prayer of Relinquishment/ Formation Prayer/ Covenant Prayer
Part Two: Moving Upward: Seeking the Intimacy We Need
The Prayer of Adoration/ The Prayer of Rest/ Sacramental Prayer/ Unceasing Prayer/ The Prayer of the Heart/ Meditative Prayer/ Contemplative Prayer
Part Three: Moving Outward: Seeking the Ministry We Need
Praying the Ordinary/ Petitionary Prayer/ Intercessory Prayer/ Healing Prayer/ The Prayer of Suffering/ Authoritative Prayer/ Radical Prayer
Notes
Scripture Index
Subject Index
The words of Madame Guyon set the tone for more of Foster’s inner-voice techniques. In the opening of a chapter he entitles Prayer of Rest, Guyon recommends:
Rest. Rest. Rest in God’s love. The only work you are required now to do is to give your most intense attention to His still, small voice within. –Madame Jeanne Guyon (p. 93)
The “still, small voice,” appears to be her misidentification of God’s faithful people with some inner “voice.”[9]
Foster concedes that liturgical forms of prayer, such as The Book of Common Prayer, could become the kind of “‘vain repetition’ that Jesus criticizes so severely (Matt. 6:7, KJV). It is a valid concern. Sadly, I find that this is often what happens. Our delight for literary finesse can easily become a fetish. The beauty and precision of the worship service can supersede heartfelt yearning for God” (p. 109). Yet he goes on to prescribe another kind of repetitious prayer.
“Breath prayer” is defined as “a short, simple prayer of petition that can be spoken in one breath” (p. 122). It is “discovered more than created,” and Foster offers the following methodology of acquiring it:
Find some uninterrupted time and a quiet place and sit in silence, being held in God’s loving presence. After a few moments allow God to call you by name .... Next allow this question to surface: “What do you want?” Answer this question simply and directly. Maybe a single word will come to your conscious mind: “peace,” “faith,” “strength.” Perhaps it will be a phrase: “to understand your truth,” “to feel your love.” Next, connect this phrase with the most comfortable way you have of speaking about God: “blessed Savior,” “Abba,” “Immanuel,” “Holy Father,” “gracious Lord.” Finally, you will want to write out your breath prayer, staying within what is comfortable to say in one breath. (p. 123)
Foster does not explain why God requires our permission to call us by name, how things that surface in our silence might be attributed to God’s direction, or why our one-breath comfort is relevant to the act of praying. In all of this, he assumes the reasons to be self-evident. But the Scriptural basis is wanting.
Foster attempts a biblical defence of “unceasing [repetitious] prayer” by saying that Jesus’ condemnation applies to “a public display ... of their [the Pharisees’] piety by reciting their prayers in the marketplace. This prayer was not only vain but also filled with vanity.” This is nothing but a bait and switch tactic: Matthew 6 plainly makes it clear that Jesus is talking about two different sets of prayers—the hypocrites’ (vv. 5 – 6), and the pagans’ (vv. 7 – 8). The conflation of the two is disingenuous, and his defence of mantra “praying” falls.
Foster continues to justify saying or “breathing” prayers over and again, for “It is not repetition itself but the repetition that views prayer as a magical incantation that is the problem. The notion that we can say just the right combination of words in just the right sequence and thereby get God to espouse our cause is the repetition that the Bible rejects” (p. 128).
Having promoted self-composed “Christian” mantras, Foster goes on to advocate what must seem like “Christian” chakra exercises.[10] Under the section on Prayer of the Heart, Foster tells how he heard out the “dark night of the soul” of a successful pastor. Somehow, while listening, he “knew it was a holy moment”:
Finally, I got up and stood at his left shoulder, placing one hand on his back and the other over his heart. He laid his head on my chest and began weeping quietly with deep sighs. I prayed over him for fifteen minutes or more, mostly in silence, but interspersed with a few words now and again. As I prayed, I gradually became aware of how extremely warm my hand on his chest was becoming. When we sensed that the work God wanted to do had been completed, we began visiting a little. I asked him if he noticed how warm my hand had become as we were praying. “Oh, yes!” he replied. “It could not have been any warmer if you had rubbed your hand hard over my bare skin.” As he spoke, I placed my hand over his heart, and immediately it grew extremely warm, almost hot, once again. I held my hand there as we talked on, both of us amazed at what was transpiring. ...
Suddenly I realized the connection between what was happening to us and the message that had come to me that morning while I was in bed. ... God’s desire to warm the hearts of his people was for the congregation, to be sure, but it was most specifically for this good pastor.
As we stood there, God was warming his heart, and the physical manifestation of heat was a gracious indication to us of a much deeper work of healing love and grace-filled mercy that was going on inside. (p. 133)
Still on Prayer of the Heart, which is “very simply, the Holy Spirit praying within us” (p. 136), Foster reveals his descent into Charismatism, from a quiet Pentecostalistlike openness to full-blown “holy laughter”:
Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, is another expression of the Prayer of the Heart. This experience is quite common and has not (p. 137) been confined to the twentieth century. Nearly all generations and all groups have experienced this charism of the Spirit in some measure from the first century to the present. ...
My first introduction to a “prayer language,” as some call it, was quite commonplace. ... I was with a trusted friend whom I had asked to teach me more about heart prayer. His main method of teaching was by praying, and so we sat quietly—listening to the Lord, he explained. Soon I was aware of a gentle murmuring of worship and adoration arising from my friend—syllables that made no sense to the conscious mind but that made perfect sense to the spirit.
...
I spoke nothing audible at that time, but something had been released in my spirit that afternoon, and in the days that followed the charism of glossolalia came forth quite naturally as an ordinary part of my ongoing prayer life.
Another expression of the Prayer of the Heart ... is the experience of being taken up by the Spirit’s power in such a way that the individual loses consciousness for a time. Some enter a trancelike state; others lie quietly on the ground or floor.
To my knowledge, when this experience is uncontrived (and there are plenty of charlatans in this realm), it always seems to have beneficial results. Most report a penetrating interior communion and an increase of holy love. Some experience profound inner healing. (p. 138) While I have not personally been privileged to receive this grace, I have watched many who have ... It is as if the Shalom of God settles upon them. ...
“Holy laughter” is still another expression of the Prayer of the Heart. The joy of the Spirit seems to simply well up ... That is as it should be, for laughter is, after all a communal experience. To the uninitiated it might appear that these people are drunk, and so they are—with the Spirit. The experience can be stopped, I suppose, but who would want to? ... (p. 139)
On Meditative Prayer, Foster introduces “lectio divina (divine reading)” (p. 149) as “a kind of reading in which the mind descends into the heart, and both are drawn into the love and goodness of God.” To bolster his point, Foster cites, tellingly for us, modern Roman Catholic mystic Henri Nouwen and the Father of Neo-Orthodoxy Karl Barth:
Henri Nouwen once pointed to a lovely picture hanging in his apartment and said to me, “That is lectio divina.” It depicted a woman with an open Bible in her lap, but her eyes were lifted upward. Do you get the idea? We are doing more than reading words; we are seeking “the Word exposed in the words,” to use the phrase of Karl Barth. We are listening with the heart to the Holy within. This prayerful reading, as we might call it, edifies us and strengthens us. (p. 150).
Karl Barth, of course, as the founder of Neo-Orthodoxy, embraced the vocabulary of biblical Christianity but denying the reality thereof.[11] And Foster’s embrace here of Barth’s phrase may be more than a little suggestive of his own view to the Scriptures.
Perhaps the comic effect was unintended, but Foster indulges in a little mindreading himself. In concluding that “even the desire to experience the living voice of God is a divine work upon the heart,” he appears to take his task too seriously when prophesies the following upon the reader:
The desire has been given to you, I know; otherwise, you would not be reading these words. Further graces will come as they are needed. (p. 153)
Foster’s approach to Intercessory Prayer is the same for the others—be quiet, listen within, and note whatever bubbles up:
After prayer for my immediate family, I wait quietly until individuals or situations spontaneously rise to my awareness. I then offer these to God, listening to see if any special discernment comes to guide the content of the prayer. Next I speak forth what seems most appropriate in full confidence that God hears and answers. After spoken intercession I may remain for a while, inviting the Spirit to pray through me “with sights too deep for words.” I will stay with any given individual or situation until I feel released from the prayer concern. Throughout the time I may jot down brief notes in a small prayer journal as I sense the Spirit giving instruction. These notes are often extremely helpful, for over time a pattern sometimes emerges that holds the key to the person’s need. This then informs the direction of future intercession. (p. 200)
For Healing Prayer, the prescription involves “four straightforward steps.” The first step is “we listen,” and Foster associates “a rise within us, an ‘inner yes,’” as “a divine invitation to prayer.” God’s answer “sometimes comes by direct revelation, and sometimes by hearing the words beneath the words, and sometimes by a combination of both.” He gives the example of a friend who, listening to a female psychiatric patient, receives “rising within him the counsel, ‘Tell her her sins are forgiven her.’” That phrase, said over and again until the woman stops talking about her problems and breaks into tears, “was the breakthrough that was needed and the key to substantial healing” (pp. 210-11)
In illustrating the second step of Healing Prayer, subtitled “we ask,” Foster gives testimony of his prayer for something a young boy and he did not dare ask: healing from the boy’s deteriorating eye condition. This seems pretty orthodox and biblically acceptable. Not so, however, Foster’s third step, “we believe,” in which he gives an emergency room “crash course on Healing Prayer. ‘The brain is bleeding and swelling from the impact of the injury,’ I went on to explain. ‘So our initial prayer efforts must focus on seeing the injured capillaries in the brain begin to heal and for the swelling of the brain to slow down’” (p. 213). Foster holds up his disciples who followed this procedure as being “filled with faith, hope, and love” (p. 214). But those who prayed, “We place Maria into your hands; there is nothing else we can do” and “Lord, help Maria get well, if it be thy will,” are judged “completely wrong,” “for there is a great deal we could do in bringing the healing light of Christ to Maria.” He also characterises those who pray such prayers as lacking in faith (p. 213).
For the last step of Healing Prayer, “we give thanks,” Foster testifies that an elderly woman in England gave thanks for her “godly history with many pastors and other relatives who truly loved and served God” and the next morning “discovered her [polio-stricken] leg completely healed—the result of a heart of gratitude” (pp. 214-15).
In discussing the Prayer of Suffering, Foster advocates “repenting on behalf of others.” “Each of us must turn for ourselves in heart sorrow for our offences to Divine Mercy. But—and here is the wonder—our repenting prayers on behalf of others somehow seems to make it easier, more possible for them to turn on their own. How this works I do not know. That it does work I am quite certain” (p. 225). He may not have a shred of Scriptural support here, but at least he is candid.
On Authoritative Prayer, Foster shares the visit of his friend “Derek” with a friend who was dying:
[Derek] felt no prompting to pray at all. It seemed best simply to visit with his friend.
So Derek went over to his friend ... and said, “Good morning. I just came by to visit with you a bit.”
Derek’s friend responded weakly but gratefully, “Oh, I’m so glad. Everyone has been coming in and laying their hands on me and trying to make me well, and all I want to do is go home to heaven. And I was hoping someone would come by and just visit with me.” Therefore we must be both wise and sensitive so that we speak for the command of faith only when it is right and good. (p. 233)
In his closing, it is difficult to distinguish Foster’s spirituality with the claims of out-and-out Charismatic teachings of the vein of Oral Roberts, David Yonggi Cho, and Benny Hinn:
Whether the curse is physical, emotional, or spiritual, we break it in the name and by the authority of Jesus.
How do we do it? We do it by taking authority over the sickness of mind and body and spirit. ... We speak balance into phobic and neurotic personalities. We rebuke fevers and choke off the blood supply to cancer cells. We call for wholeness and well-being to come sweeping into the lives of people. ...
All these and much more are the work of Authoritative Prayer. It is work that throughout is done in the spirit of deepest prayer and greatest humility, for we are trusting in the power of God, not our cleverness. (p. 241)
Yet the greatest danger is not past. Six years on, Foster publishes a volume that attempts to contextualise (hence legitimise) his Ecumenical, Charismatic philosophy in historic Christianity.
Streams of Living Water, published in 1998, attempts to place Foster’s brand of mysticism in the larger context of Christendom and church history. The book has seven chapters tracing the same number of “great historical movements.”
1. Imitatio: The Divine Paradigm
2. Contemplative Tradition: Discovering The Prayer-Filled Life
3. Holiness Tradition: Discovering the Virtuous Life
4. Charismatic Tradition: Discovering the Spirit Empowered Life
5. Social Justice Tradition: Discovering the Compassionate Life
6. Evangelical Tradition: Discovering the Word-Centered Life
7. Incarnational Tradition: Discovering the Sacramental Life.
Afterword
Appendix A: Critical Turning Points in Church History
Appendix B: Notable Figures and Significant Movements in Church History
Foster’s approach is alluring. He begins by placing what might be called a “patron saint” at the top of each of these seven “Traditions” before linking selected individuals he views as exhibiting certain traits downstream, all the way from the first century to the present.
He starts off by “Seeking a Biblical Paradigm” for the Contemplative Tradition. For the “patron saint”: John the Apostle. Others on this list: Antony of Egypt, Catherine of Sienna, Brother Lawrence, Madame Guyon, Nikolaus Count Zinzendorf, Theresa of Lisieux, Thomas Kelly, Thomas Merton, and Henri Nouwen. With one swoop of St. John’s blessing (whether or not by his permission, one can only wonder!), the practice of withdrawing from society and living as monastics and ascetics is sanctioned. It matters little what denominational or theological background—Coptic, Roman Catholic, Moravian—the “Contemplative Tradition” is the first to be ushered in as Christian and historic and, by implication, genuine and legitimate.
The Holiness Tradition is next, with James the Apostle as “patron saint.” A strange list of adherants follows: Hermas, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas a Kempis, Girolamo Savonarola, Ignatius of Loyola, Menno Simons, Teresa of Avila, John Wesley, Francis Asbury, Phoebe Palmer, E. Stanley Jones, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It matters little if the killer of Christians Ignatius Loyola shares the same cell with pacifist Menno Simons, or that Evangelical evangelists John Wesley and Francis Asbury sit next to Roman Catholic mystic Teresa of Avila. Why, they share the same concern for holiness and therefore must be children of the same God, or so it seems.
This one takes the cake. Incredibly, it is Paul the Apostle who is made to grace the Charismatic Tradition, he who so strenuously argued against everything it represents in 1 Corinthians 12 – 14. The list is just a bizarre: Montanus, Perpetua, Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, George Fox, Charles Wesley, Pastor Hsi, William Seymour, Sundar Singh, Aimee Semple McPherson, David du Plessis, Kathryn Kuhlman, Demos Shakarian, Oral Roberts, John Wimber, and David Yonggi Cho. Here is Foster’s most direct endorsement of the modern Charismatic movement and its who’s-who list.[12]
Although one of two Traditions lacking apostolic association (the other being the Incarnational), the Social Justice Tradition nevertheless is beatified by “Deacons,” those Seven appointed in Acts 6:1-7. Here, the odd mixture of Christians and others continues: Helena, Robert Raikes, William Wilberforce, Elizabeth Fry, David Livingstone, Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, William and Catherine Booth, Albert Schweitzer, Toyohiko Kagawa, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Paul Jewett, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Desmond Tutu. Whereas Raikes, Wilberforce, and the Booths preached the biblical gospel, Schweitzer and Mother Teresa preached their own.[13] But it all does not seem to matter too much to Foster, who considers everyone on this strand part of a great “Christian tradition.”
Finally, we get to the Evangelical Tradition, where those who stand for sola scriptura, the inerrancy of Scripture, are relegated. Sola scriptura refers to the idea that the Bible alone is our sufficient guide for matters pertaining to salvation, doctrines, and “every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15 – 17), a rallying cry of the Reformers as they sought to shake off the shackles of Roman Catholic mysticism and magisterial control. Although Peter the Apostle gets to head this “stream of living water” up, the list that follows is, no longer surprising to me, dubious: Athanasius, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Francis Xavier, John Calvin, George Whitfield, William Carey, Charles Finney, C.H. Spurgeon, D.L. Moody, Mary Slessor, Billy Sunday, C.S. Lewis, and Billy Graham. Reformers Wycliffe, Zwingli, and Calvin interrupted by Jesuit Missionary Francis Xavier? Not a ripple, not anymore. By now, whatever sensitivity to theological purity and truth would have been dulled under the grand scheme of Foster’s seven Streams of Living Water.
The Incarnational Tradition covers primarily laypeople who “lived out” their faith, distinguishing themselves in the arts and sciences. The list is headed by Flavia Domitilla, whose husband was martyred under Emperor Domitian and who herself was tortured and exiled for the faith. The list that follows is at least interesting, bringing to mind the achievements of Western civilisation from the fourth century to the present: Origen, Monica, Caedmon, Alfred the Great, Geoffrey Chaucer, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolas Copernicus, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, John Milton, Isaac Newton, Susanna Wesley, J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Coleridge, John Henry Newman, F. Dostoyevsky, James Hudson Taylor, T.S. Eliot, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
The impact of this third book, therefore, is to rewrite the boundaries—instead of being determined by fidelity to the Scriptures—according to seven manmade categories, with the result of conflating Charismatics, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and others into one big Ecumenical parade.
Is the need to feel something, experience something, so great that the sufficiency of Scripture must be compromised? And what can be said about the sufficiency of the Christ of Scripture—is there something more that we are to expect? Without limiting God’s capability and sovereignty in delivering certain phenomena to some, what can we say of believers in ages past who may have had nothing more to cling on than just God’s Word of promise—no ecstatic vision, no glossolalia, no polio healings, no “Holy Spirit” chakra heat? For them, and contra Roman Catholic and mystic tradition, the motto rang clear: sola scriptura (Scripture alone), solus Christus (Christ alone)!
And not just the Reformers of the seventeenth century, but the saints of old, with nary more than certain propositions given them by God simply believed Him and marched ahead. Would any of them be worthy of our emulation, who did not quench the fury of flames or receive their dead back to life again, but rather “were tortured and refused to be released ... were stoned ... sawed in two ... put to death by the sword ... went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated ... wandered in caves and holes in the ground” (Hebrews 11:32 – 38 seems to honour both, even those without any desired rapture or deliverance)? Do we remember how many widows experienced Elijah’s healing ministry, or how many lepers got cleansed in Elisha’s presence, or did the rest not have sufficient faith or “spiritual discipline” (Luke 4:25 – 27)? Or might we have forgotten the whole point of faith, that it is not about getting something out of Christianity but about simply taking God at His Word, come what may?
Foster’s books will indubitably appeal to people insisting on a deeper spiritual experience rather than always submitting to the demands of Scripture and biblical separation. Rather it will break down the walls of biblical truth and unite them in a supra-religious ecumenical experience, one in which people of any creed may affirm one another’s feelings and encounters. They will not be required to ask questions about the validity of teachings, experiences, and practices—even the obviously bizarre ones—as long as these have been held by professing “Christians,” and sometimes not. They will not have to face the embarrassment and difficulty of judging between Liberal, Feminist, New Age, Neo-Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Evangelical theology—all they will need to do, which is what many want anyway, is to look inward, hear something, release something, and feel the better for it.
Jesus’ attitude is not naive towards false prophets; He resists the temptation of sorting everybody uncritically into seven Streams of Living Water when He warns in Matthew 7:
21"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' 23Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
Bible.ca. “Hindu Gurus and Pentecostal Preachers Are Identical!” http://www.bible.ca/tongues-kundalini-shakers-charismastics.htm
Carson, Donald A. The Gagging of God. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002. (reviewed elsewhere on this site)
Fairchild, Mary. “An Insider’s Account of Willow Creek’s Deepening Apostasy: Excerpts from ‘Protestant No More: Willow Creek Infiltrated by Quaker Mystic Movement Called Renovare.” http://christianunplugged.com/wc_insider.htm
Godfrey, W Robert. “What is Sola Scriptura?” http://www.sola-scriptura.ca/whatis.htm
Horton, Michael. “Are We Justified by Faith Alone?” http://christianity.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID307086|CHID560462|CIID1415590,00.html
Kjos, Berit. “From Father God to Mother Earth: The Effect of Deconstructing Christian Faith on Sexuality.” http://www.theologymatters.com/TMIssues/Sepoct97.pdf
MacArthur, John. Charismatic Chaos. http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/CHAOS1.HTM
MacArthur, John. “Hearing Voices.” http://www.opc.org/new_horizons/NH02/01b.html
Stanford, Miles, J. “Renovaré: Navigators sans Compass.” http://withchrist.org/MJS/renovare.htm
Taylor, Paul S. “Sola Scriptura: Biblical or Manmade?” http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/sola-scriptura1.html
White, James, versus Patrick Madrid. “Does the Bible Teach Sola Scriptura?” A debate. http://www.aomin.org/SANTRAN.html
[1] The author
acknowledges the many thoughtful insights and helpful comments from Missionary Neil
Bulloch and other friends who read an earlier draft of this review, responsibility for errors being the author’s alone.
[2] Quoted in http://www.bookfinder.us/review6/0060628391.html
[3] The Quakers, otherwise known as the Religious Society of Friends, started in 1652 as a reaction against the formality of Anglican worship and gave attention to the “Inner Light,” which they identify with the voice of God and believe everyone is born with. To them “the Bible was written by men under the influence of the Spirit rather than by God himself as a final statement” (http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/quak.html). Quaker “religion does not consist of accepting specific beliefs or of engaging in certain practices; it involves each person's direct experience of God” (http://www.religioustolerance.org/quaker.htm). Out of Quakerism arose Shakerism in 1747, which went further in sidelining the position of the Bible and exalting charismatic experience, culminating in the recognition of their leader Mother Ann as “the Second Coming of Christ, the vital female component of God the Father-Mother” (http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Shakers.html).
[4] Some Buddhist scriptures suggest that the emptying of the mind fills it with a heightened awareness, e.g. “If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both,” and “When delusions are absent, the mind is the land of buddhas. When delusions are present, the mind is hell” (http://www.digiserve.com/mystic/Buddhist/Bodhidharma/no_thing.html). The Sai Babas would agree: “When I am conscious of my human personality I have limitations, but as soon as I change my consciousness to the soul sphere I see everything just as if it were a motion picture. ... Concentrate on Matter and you see everything in terms of matter. But as soon as you lift up your consciousness to the stat[e] of divine awareness, you see the oceanic current of God's light flowing behind all matter. You see everything in terms of spirit” (S. Iyer, http://www.saibaba.org/newsletter4-48.html).
[5] His extreme pursuit for a “deeper understanding” of God got him into trouble with his superiors: “whereas the Bible teaches that love is the greatest thing, Eckhart taught that solitude is, because in solitude one can force God down into one's own soul.” http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/DAILYF/2003/03/daily-03-27-2003.shtml
[6] As leader of the Counter-Reformation, Ignatius endeavoured to reinstate loyalty in the Roman Catholic Church and forms of prayer that employ various unbiblical “rules” or “spiritual exercises. “It is necessary,” he says about the making of career choices, “that everything about which we want to make an election should be indifferent, or good, in itself, and should be allowed within our Holy Mother the hierarchical Church, and not bad nor opposed to her.” On meditative prayer, “The first Rule is that he will be an hour on the whole OUR FATHER in the manner already mentioned. Which finished, he will say a HAIL MARY, CREED, SOUL OF CHRIST, and HAIL, HOLY QUEEN, vocally or mentally, according to the usual way.” He taught his agents as their First Rule for “true sentiment ... in the church militant”: “All judgment laid aside, we ought to have our mind ready and prompt to obey, in all, the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, which is our holy Mother the Church Hierarchical.” The Sixth Rule reads: “To praise relics of the Saints, giving veneration to them and praying to the Saints; and to praise Stations, pilgrimages, Indulgences, pardons, Cruzadas, and candles lighted in the churches” (http://ccel.org/i/ignatius/exercises/exercises1.0.html).
[7] http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/History.Protestant.v2.b15.html; while a few of the Reformers themselves also bore the sword, they never claimed infallibility for themselves or their churches, nor even approached the scale of violence by the Jesuits. Rather, today’s Protestants, through allegiance to and conviction by the Scriptures alone, universally acknowledge and renounce the errors of their forebears, e.g. in the case of the burning of Servetus: http://www.servetus.org/en/michael-servetus/image-gallery/iconography/ico4.htm#0 and http://www.sgunion.fsnet.co.uk/pubs/pt/pt3-03.htm
[8] Founded by Paul Twitchell (http://www.carm.org/list/eckankar.htm), this occultic group advises its devotees to go into a deeper spirituality, to “find a quiet place to sit or lie down. Relax and think about a spiritual quotation or someone you love. Close your eyes. Sing HU silently or aloud for a few minutes, and then listen quietly. You may experience the Holy Spirit. Or you may gain a new insight into your life.” http://www.eckankar.org/soultravel.html
[9] The Old and New Testaments seem to identify the gentle blowing Elijah barely heard as the remnant 7,000 who refused to bow to Baal (http://www.tmccc.ca/english/Archive/2003/031026_ESCM_REFORMATION.htm).
[10] Spontaneous heating has been explained by practitioners in a number of ways, including:
Most likely, however, is that the "alarming amount of heat" was because the energies of both triple warmer and heart meridian share the same element, which is "fire." (http://www.innersource.net/energy_medicine_faq/energy_medicine_QA_heart_chakra.htm)
More specifically, this energy has been identified as Kundalini “fire” or prana energy that is released through certain mystical disciplines, so powerful that it is alleged sometimes to cause spontaneous human combustion:
In the end we are, however minutely subdivided, a special pattern of dynamic energy. Esoteric Hindu, Vedic, and Tantric texts say the body's subtle energy system is composed of prana. Prana is the biological quasielectromagnetic fuel that energizes every tissue and cell. This vital, fundamental energy that is the real "you" has many names: prana, chi, ki, qi, the Holy Spirit, bioplasma . . . and a score more, depending on the culture describing it. (http://www.uri-geller.com/shc11.htm)
[11] Neo-Orthodox theologians reject the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scriptures, claiming instead that the Bible only “contains” the Word of God and only “becomes” the Word of God as it is apprehended by the reader (http://www.bible.org/docs/theology/biblio/theorins.htm).
[12] Many of the usual suspects are found here: http://www.isitso.org/guide/whoiswho.html
[13] Schweitzer believed that Jesus died as a martyr and never rose again, and Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic ecumenist who believed that “we are all His children—Hindu, Muslim, or Christian” (http://www.tmccc.ca/english/Libs/2004/bookreview_SimplePath_Teresa.htm).