Practices called “spiritual
disciplines” that are deemed necessary for “spiritual
formation” have entered evangelicalism. Recent encounters
with this teaching narrated to me by friends caused me to
investigate these practices. The first experience involved
my friend and co-worker Ryan Habbena who went back to
seminary to finish his masters degree. Here is his
experience in his own words:
"I recently took a seminary
course on the book of Luke. It was a summer intensive
and was one of only two classes being offered at the
time. About midway through the week, while the class was
steeped in trying to discern the intent and significance
of the book of Luke, we began to hear the echoes of
mystic chanting coming through the walls. As it turned
out, the other class being offered was parked right next
to ours. The paper thin walls were carrying the choruses
of a class exploring the life and teachings of Catholic
mystic Henry Nouwen. We proceeded, trying to concentrate
on studying the Scriptures while tuning out the chants
that were carrying on next door. Perhaps what was more
unsettling though is the class studying Nouwen was chock
full, while there were plenty of empty seats next door
for anyone wanting to learn about the inspired book of
Luke."1
How can this be? A Baptist
seminary was favorably studying the teachings of this
Catholic mystic whose own biographers describe as having had
emotional problems and homosexual inclinations.2
Soon after talking to Ryan, I met a lady who attends a
Christian college. As part of her study program she was
required to take a course on spiritual formation at her
college. Spiritual formation in her class also concerned the
study of Roman Catholic mystics and the search for
techniques to help those who implement them feel closer to
God. This study also explored “spiritual disciplines” which
promised to make those who practiced them more Christ-like.
After she finished the class she shared her textbooks with
me. This article will focus on the claims of one of these
text books, The Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas
Willard.3
In our study we shall see that those promoting spiritual
disciplines in courses of study called “spiritual formation”
make claims that are unbiblical and dangerous.
Jesus’ “Yoke” as “Spiritual Disciplines”
Dallas Willard bases his entire
spiritual disciplines book on his understanding of Matthew
11:29, 30, which says, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn
from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall
find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load
is light.” Willard cites this passage at the beginning of a
chapter entitled “The Secret of the Easy Yoke,”4
... He claims
that the “yoke” is to try to emulate Jesus’ lifestyle in
every possible way.7
Willard interprets Jesus’ “yoke” as the practice of
spiritual disciplines like solitude, silence, and simple
living....
Willard is very critical of traditional Protestant doctrine
and practice, declaring it a massive failure.8
His remedy for this failure is to see the body and certain
ascetic practices using the body as the means of change:
“Looking back over our discussion to this point, we have
connected the reality of the easy yoke with the practice of
the spiritual disciplines. These in turn have led us to
the body’s role in redemption.”9
He claims that we have been misguided by being concerned
with the forgiveness of sins and “theories of the atonement.”
He says, “Salvation as conceived today is far removed from
what it was in the beginnings of Christianity and only by
correcting it can God’s grace in salvation be returned to
the concrete, embodied existence of our human personalities
walking with Jesus in his easy yoke.”10
According to this thinking, the yoke of Jesus involves using
the body in certain ways to accomplish changed lives:
"Although we call the
disciplines “spiritual”—and although they must never be
undertaken apart from a constant, inward interaction
with God and his gracious Kingdom—they never fail to
require specific acts and dispositions of our body as we
engage in them. We are finite and limited to our bodies.
So the disciplines cannot be carried out except as our
body and its parts are surrendered in precise ways and
definite actions to God."11
So evidently, rather than
concerning ourselves with the blood atonement, averting
God’s wrath against sin, salvation by faith through grace,
we should be practicing spiritual disciplines with our
bodies so that we could then be more like Jesus.
The concept of Jesus’ “yoke” being interpreted as an
invitation to practice His life-style is reiterated
throughout Willard’s book.... But the question is, “Is
this what Jesus meant in Matthew 11:29, 30?” Let us examine
the passage in context to see if teaches the spiritual
disciplines.
The
True Meaning of Jesus’ “Yoke”
If we want to understand Matthew
11:29, 30 it is essential that we understand the context,
particularly the meaning of verse 28. Jesus said, “Come to
Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you
rest.” (Matthew 11:28). We must understand Jesus’ offer of
rest in the context of His debates with the religious
leaders. Their “yoke” demanded the strict observance of
Sabbath rules and their oral tradition. Immediately after
Jesus’ offer of “rest” in Him, there ensued a Sabbath debate
with the religious leaders accusing Jesus and His disciples
of being Sabbath breakers (see Matthew 12). They plucked
grain on the Sabbath and Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Jesus
was offering true Sabbath rest and the Jewish leaders were
offering the yoke of the Law. Jesus’ yoke was different.
Jesus perfectly kept the law so that all who would come to
him would enter into the true Sabbath rest that could never
be achieved by keeping the rules laid down by the religious
leaders.
Taking this understanding of the term “yoke” we can see what
Jesus meant in Matthew 11. His words came in the middle of a
dispute with Jewish leadership. He had pronounced woe upon
cities that did not repent (Matthew 11:20-24). He uttered
this prayer:
"At that time Jesus answered and said, 'I praise Thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these
things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them
to babes. Yes, Father, for thus it was well-pleasing in Thy
sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father;
and no one knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone
know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son
wills to reveal Him.'”
(Matthew 11:25-27)
The wise and intelligent were
the Jewish Scribes and Pharisees who accused Jesus of being
a Sabbath breaker and who refused to repent when they
witnessed His miracles. They rejected both Jesus and John
the Baptist in a most fickle manner
(Matthew 11:16-19).
They refused to come to God on His terms, but demanded that
God the Son obey them on their terms! So Jesus pronounced
the judgment of hardening on them and chose instead to
reveal Himself to babes.
When Jesus said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest”
(Matthew 11:28), He was
offering them what the Jewish leadership rejected—Messianic
salvation. True Sabbath rest is only found in Christ
(see Hebrews 4:1-9).
Ironically, the people who accused Jesus of being a Sabbath
breaker were the ultimate Sabbath breakers because they
rejected the only one who could give true rest. They put the
yoke of law-keeping on the people but kept them from the one
true Law keeper, Christ who died for their sins. Therefore,
no matter how scrupulous and religious a person is, if he or
she does not come to Christ by faith, that person is under
the yoke of bondage rather than the Sabbath rest for the
people of God.
There are other places in the New Testament where the term
“yoke” is used in the sense of the requirement of law
keeping. Two of them are very pertinent to interpreting
Matthew 11:28-30. In Acts 15 the apostles gathered in
Jerusalem to determine whether the new Gentile converts
would be required to keep the Law. The three most prominent
laws that marked off the Jews as unique were the food laws,
Sabbath, and circumcision. Peter’s speech convinced the
apostles that the Gentiles were not obliged to follow
such Jewish laws:
“Brethren, you know that in
the early days God made a choice among you, that by my
mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel
and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness
to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also
did to us; and He made no distinction between us and
them, cleansing their hearts by faith. Now therefore why
do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of
the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we
have been able to bear? But we believe that we
are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in
the same way as they also are.” (Acts 15:7-11)
The “yoke” was being under the
Law.
Now consider how Paul used the same term: “It was for
freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing
firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery”
(Galatians 5:1).
The Judaizers wanted to put Christians under obligation to
be circumcised and Paul called this “a yoke of slavery.”
So Jesus’ yoke is in stark contrast to the “yoke” that the
religious leaders put on the people. He is offering
salvation to all who come to Him by faith....
Jesus’ Yoke is to Practice Spiritual Disciplines?
...in Matthew 11 Jesus was
offering salvation to all who come to Him. Now let us
examine Willard’s claim that Jesus was telling people to try
to emulate His life-style. Willard claims that we are
failing to practice the disciplines that would make us able
to live better lives.... He further states that the solution
is that we practice spiritual disciplines that are based on
Jesus’ lifestyle and supplemented by practices of the
Medieval Catholic Church. So he sees Jesus’ “yoke”
as an offer to take up a life-style that will make us
better people, rather than an offer of true Sabbath rest
through Christ’s finished work on the cross. This is
tantamount to substituting works for grace, and
making Jesus an ethical teacher whose example can be
followed rather than the unique Son of God who alone always
does the things that please the Father. Willard offers no
exegetical analysis of the passage in Matthew to defend his
interpretation....
Does the Bible Prescribe the Spiritual Disciplines?
The spiritual disciplines are
not taught in Matthew 11:29, 30 (Willard’s primary proof
test), and even Willard admits they cannot be found
elsewhere in scripture.... But he is nevertheless
enthusiastic about the recent rediscovery of the
disciplines.
Dallas Willard is excited to tell us that finally, through
the lead of people like Richard Foster, we are having
a revival of the use of spiritual disciplines. Writes
Willard: “Today, for the first time in our history as a
nation, we are being presented with a characteristic range
of human behaviors such as fasting, meditation, simple
living, and submission to a spiritual overseer, in an
attractive light.”13
He claims that ordinary means such as Bible study,
prayer, fellowship, and evangelism are inadequate and
having failed, have left most Christians as failures.... He
writes, “All pleasing and doctrinally sound schemes of
Christian education, church growth, and spiritual renewal
came around at last to this disappointing result. But whose
fault was this failure?”14
The “failure,” according to Willard is that, “. . . the
gospel preached and the instruction and example given these
faithful ones simply do not do justice to the nature of
human personality, as embodied, incarnate.”15
... It means that we have failed because our gospel had too
little to do with our bodies.
The spiritual disciplines are supposed to remedy this
deficiency. Willard says, “By contrast, the secret of the
standard, historically proven spiritual disciplines is
precisely that they do respect and count on the bodily
nature of human personality.”16
Willard claims that Paul understood the need for such
practices but that they were lost: “Paul’s teaching,
especially when added to his practices, strongly suggest
that he understood and practiced something vital about the
Christian life that we have lost—and that we must do our
best to recover.”17
Of course, had Paul bothered to write about these “lost”
disciplines in his epistles, they would not have been
lost....
Where do we find this “wisdom” that Paul failed to write
about? Says Willard, “This is not something St. Paul had to
prove or even explicitly state to his readers—but it also
was not something he overlooked, leaving it to be thought up
by crazed monks in the Dark Ages. It is, rather, a wisdom
gleaned from millennia of collective human experience.”20
So the disciplines we need to be more like Christ cannot be
found in the Bible, but they can be gleaned from religious
history. Willard tells us, “But thoughtful and religiously
devout people of the classical and Hellenistic world,
from the Ganges to the Tiber, knew that the mind and
body of the human being had to be rigorously disciplined to
achieve a decent individual and social existence.”21
...if this type of logic is valid, we could claim that we
need Ouija Boards as part of our spiritual practice and that
Paul and other early Christians must have been using them so
regularly there was no need to write about them. ...
To hear evangelicals like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster
tell us that we need practices that were never spelled out
in the Bible to become more like Christ or to get closer to
God is astonishing. What is more astonishing is that
evangelical colleges and seminaries are requiring their
students to study practices that are relics of Medieval
Rome, not found in the Bible, and closely akin to the
practices of many pagan societies.
The
False Gospel of Human Ability
As with most unbiblical
approaches, the spiritual disciplines are based on
the idea of innate human powers that can be harnessed for
good. Holding a false concept of sin as a
“disruption of that higher [spiritual] life,”22
Willard looks for a solution through finding our true
potential, individually and corporately, through spiritual
disciplines that will enable us to reconstruct the rule of
God now. Willard says, “The evil that we do in our present
condition is a reflection of a weakness caused by spiritual
starvation.”23
Rather than wicked rebels abiding under God’s wrath,
humans are bundles of huge potential who have lost their way
through “disruption of the higher powers.”...
Willard gives this
interpretation of 1John 3:2: “Because of his personal
experience with spiritual powers brought to him in
Christ, John sensed unimaginable greatness in our destiny.”25
So how do we tap into this great human potential? He
says we must tap into the spiritual dimension using
spiritual disciplines. Willard shares his definition of
“spirit”: “If the missing element in the present human order
is that of the spirit, what then is spirit? Very simply,
spirit is unembodied personal power.”26
His idea is that “spirit” is the missing nutrient that we
need to realize our full potential. The ideas of total
depravity, the wrath of God against sin, the blood
atonement, and the cross are either absent or distorted in
Willard’s theology. What replaces these truths is the
hope that we will realize our potential through
tapping into the spiritual kingdom of God. This is to be
done by the use of spiritual disciplines to obtain the
necessary power to transform the world. The terminology that
Willard uses is strange and unbiblical. For example, he
writes,
“When the human organism is
brought into willing, personal relationship with the
spiritual Kingdom of God, ‘sucking in orderliness’
from that particular part of the human environment, it
becomes pervasively transformed, as a corn stalk
in drought is transformed by the onset of drenching
rain—the contact with the water transforms the plant
inwardly and then extends it outwardly. In the same way,
people are transformed by contact with God.”27
These ideas are more akin to
Eastern Religion than Biblical Christianity. Our problem
is not the need to suck in more “unembodied personal power”
by techniques to contact God. We are dead sinners facing
God’s wrath unless we repent and believe the gospel.
Willard’s concepts are foreign to the Bible....
What results are in store for the church when we take action
to tap into this spiritual dimension to realize our full
potential? The church will be the incarnation of Christ and
the kingdom of God will come through us, now, before
Christ’s bodily return. Rejecting the pre-millennial
doctrine, Willard says, “Often, we are told that the rule of
God upon the earth will be fulfilled in a great act of
violence, in which multitudes of people are slain by God,
followed by a totalitarian government of literally infinite
proportions, headquartered in Jerusalem.”31
He fails to mention that this “totalitarian” rule is the
rule of Christ Himself as promised in the Bible. What is
Willard’s alternative? – “I believe, to the contrary, that
the coming rule of God is to be a government by grace and
truth meditated through personalities mature in Christ.”32
It is amazing that he would consider Christ Himself reigning
as “totalitarian” and us reigning as “grace and truth.”
For Willard, Christ is not coming for the church but in the
church: “The real presence of Christ as a world-governing
force will come solely as his called out people occupy their
stations in the holiness and power characteristic of him, as
they demonstrate to the world the way to live that is best
in every respect.”33
We gain the ability to reign over the world for Christ
through spiritual disciplines.
Since these disciplines were the order of the day for Rome
at a period where her goal was to rule over the world, I
wonder why the result was the Dark Ages? What kind of glib
optimism would make us think that if we try them again, this
time we will have a better outcome? Whenever theology turns
to human potential and human ability aided by some type of
spiritual infusion, the result is utopian dreaming. ...
According to Willard’s theology, just like Christ coming at
the fullness of time during the first advent, the church
will be the answer (not Christ’s bodily return) for the
coming kingdom. We, not Jesus, will be the new incarnation:
“...As a response to this world’s problems, the gospel of
the Kingdom will never make sense except as it is
incarnated—we say ‘fleshed out’—in ordinary human beings in
all ordinary conditions of human life.”35
By downplaying the doctrine of total depravity and the sin
nature, Willard makes it seem plausible that we can be
infused by divine power and establish the kingdom now. The
Bible, however, predicts apostasy and the revealing of the
man of lawlessness just before Christ returns in judgment (2
Thessalonians 2:3-8)....
Signs of
the times
Which Spiritual Disciplines?
The spiritual disciplines that
are supposedly necessary for spiritual formation are not
defined in the Bible... Willard says, [W]e need not
try to come up with a complete list of disciplines. Nor
should we assume that our particular list will be right for
others.”36
The practices are gleaned from various sources and the
individual has to decide which ones work the best. Willard
lists the following: voluntary exile, night vigil of
rejecting sleep, journaling, OT Sabbath keeping, physical
labor, solitude, fasting, study, and prayer.37
Willard then lists “disciplines of abstinence” (solitude,
silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, sacrifice)
and “disciplines of engagement” (study, worship,
celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession,
submission).38
Willard offers a discussion of each of these, citing people
like
Thomas Merton, Thomas a Kempis, Henri Nouwen, and other
mystics....
Willard tells us that the list of disciplines he provides is
not exhaustive.... The walk with Christ certainly is one
that leaves room for and even calls for individual
creativity and an experimental attitude in such
matters.”40
However, there is a serious problem with Willard’s logic
here. ...
Willard had admitted that there is no clear list of the
disciplines and that each person might choose different
practices through pragmatic means. This does not give
sufficient ground for rejecting such practices as
self-flagellation....
He cannot have it both ways.
Either God’s Word determines both how we come to God and how
we grow in grace, or humans determine these things by
pragmatic means. Willard has chosen the later. But then he
steps in and tells us that some practices are wrong, even
though they fit his own criteria for validity. If a person
feels that sleeping in a tiny stone crevice with all the
heat being sucked out of his body makes him more spiritually
disciplined, then who is to say that is wrong? Had he been
willing to submit to the authority of Scripture, Willard
could have refuted these practices based on Colossians
2:21-23....
"Therefore, if you died
with Christ from the basic principles of the world,
why, as though living in the world, do you subject
yourselves to regulations— 'Do not touch, do not taste,
do not handle,' which all concern things which perish
with the using— baccording to the commandments and
doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance
of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and
neglect of the body, but are of no value against the
indulgence of the flesh."
Col 2:20-23
Spiritual disciplines are man-made, amorphous, and not
revealed in the Bible; they assume that one is saved by
grace and perfected by works. Paul wrote, “Are you so
foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being
perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3)....
Elsewhere he suggests that
growth comes through human will power: “The entire question
of discipline, therefore, is how to apply acts of the
will at our disposal in such a way that the proper
course of action, which cannot always be realized by direct
and untrained effort, will nevertheless be carried out when
needed.”46
It is hard to see how this is anything other than “being
perfected by the flesh” which Paul said was impossible.
The Reformation understanding of means of grace was that
they were God’s gracious means of working in a person of
faith’s life. What ever is not of faith is sin.
The
Spiritual Disciplines as Presumption
The spiritual disciplines, as we
have seen, are bodily activities that we engage in hoping to
become more Christ-like. So we decide what discipline we
need, perhaps with the help of a “spiritual director.” Since
we have established (and Willard admits) that most of these
disciplines are not prescribed in the Bible, we have
to decide which ones will work for us. The problem is
that this is the very opposite of what the Bible says about
discipline: “and you have forgotten the exhortation which is
addressed to you as sons, ‘My son, do not regard lightly the
discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by
Him; For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He
scourges every son whom He receives’”
(Hebrews 12:5, 6). God,
not man, determines what each of us needs because only God
knows exactly what each of us needs.
For example, consider Paul’s thorn in the flesh described in
2 Corinthians 12: “And because of the surpassing greatness
of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from
exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a
messenger of Satan to buffet me-- to keep me from exalting
myself!” (2Corinthians 12:7) Paul did not determine he
needed this, God did. When Paul asked for it to be removed,
this was the result: “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is
sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’
Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me”
(2 Corinthians 12:9)....
God disciplines us in ways we could never imagine or never
arrange. The Bible tells us, “And we know that God causes
all things to work together for good to those who love God,
to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans
8:28). Obviously everything in the universe is at His
disposal. Do we think He is unable to discipline us
according to His infinite wisdom?...
Conclusion
We began this discussion with a description of strange
teachings and practices entering evangelical Bible Colleges
and seminaries. They have been borrowed from Medieval Rome
and dressed up for evangelical consumption. We have examined
the teachings of one of the visible leaders of this
movement. Starting with a serious misinterpretation of
Matthew 11:29, 30, Dallas Willard built his entire system on
the idea that Jesus’ “yoke” consists of various spiritual
disciplines. The issue in Matthew 11 was Messianic
salvation—finding true Sabbath rest in Christ rather than
following meticulous religious rules decreed by the Scribes
and Pharisees. The idea of practicing spiritual disciplines
was imported to the text, not found there.
We live in an age of mysticism. People lust for spiritual
reality and spiritual experiences. The danger is that
unbiblical practices will give people a real spiritual
experience, but not from God. Deception is the likely
outcome....
If we ignore the boundary set by
Biblical guidelines, there is no telling were we will end
up. If however, we come to God on His terms, knowing
that we have a High Priest who is at the right hand of God,
and that we have access through His blood into the holiest
place, we can be assured we cannot be any closer to God this
side of heaven.
“Let us therefore draw near
with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may
receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of
need.” (Hebrews 4:16)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End Notes
1. This happened during the summer of 2005 at Bethel
Theological Seminary in Arden Hills, MN.
Michael Ford, Wounded Prophet (Image: New York, 1999); for a
review:
http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/newsh/items/bookreview/item_1589.html
Dallas Willard, The
Spirit of the Disciplines, Understanding How God Changes
Lives, (HarperCollins: New York, 1991)
Find the
rest of this message -- along with all the endnotes and references -- at
http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue91.htm
Copyright © 1992-2005 Twin City
Fellowship
Other articles by Bob DeWaay:
True and False
Unity
|
Redefining the Church
Faulty Premises
of the Church Growth Movement
“Church Health
Award” from Rick Warren or Jesus Christ?
Bob DeWaay is
the Pastor of
Twin City Fellowship, a
non-denominational evangelical Church in Minneapolis, MN:
"We are a
body of believers who attempt to live our Christian
faith according to Acts 2:42 by devoting ourselves to
prayer, fellowship, searching the Scriptures, and the
Lord’s Supper. Our mission is to equip the saints for the work of
ministry and to reach the lost with the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. We do this through expository preaching, study
of the Scriptures, publications, our website and
neighborhood outreaches."