Are Spiritual Disciplines Biblical? #2 Book Review: Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and Don Whitney

The Origins of Spiritual Disciplines and Their Catholic Sources

Our Spiritual Disciplines Biblical Part Two. In this video, we are going to discuss the most popular writers of today, Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and Don Whitney, and they all have one thing in common.

Stay tuned to find out what that is. Hi, I'm Jon Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church and host of Theocast. This is Ask Theocast, where we answer your questions from a Reformed and pastoral perspective.

If you've not seen Part One yet, I would encourage you to go do so. We talk about the history of spiritual disciplines, where they came from, in comparison to the Reformers and the Confessions. We even talk about some Roman Catholic theology of where that slipped into, so I would encourage you to start there.

Now what we're doing is reviewing some of the most popular books that have introduced, reintroduced, us to the subject of spiritual disciplines. The books that we're about to review all have a lot in common because they've all been influenced by one movement.

Richard Foster and Dallas Willard are probably the ones who've influenced Don Whitney the most, so we're going to talk about how they all intermingle and really are saying the same thing. So, Richard Foster, who was really the one who sparked the Reformation as it would be as reintroducing spiritual disciplines, in his book Celebration of Discipline, he wrote, encouraging his readers in the forms of meditation, says, Seek to live the experience, remembering the encouragement of Ignatius of Loyola to apply our senses to our task.

Now, if you watched video one, you will know that Ignatius is not an evangelical. He's not a Christian. He has openly denied justification by faith alone. He is really a promoter of the Roman Catholic faith and started the Counter-Reformation.

If you know anything about the Counter-Reformation. So, you have Richard Foster encouraging as one of his main sources of examples of spiritual disciplines or spiritual formation. He says, Seek to live the experience, remembering the encouragement of Ignatius.

This is not the only time that he mentions him, but it's a clear point that he's telling us this man's writings are ones that we should look to, which I already mentioned before in the past in the last episode that Dallas Willard openly admitted that before you could have to go to Catholic resources to find the concept of spiritual disciplines.

You couldn't find it in the reformers writings. And even D .A. Carson made that same observation. So, a couple of other writers, which you will see that both Willard and Foster end up using, Thomas Merton is a Roman Catholic who influenced Foster.

He is from the 20th century, and he is a tapas monk that was in Gethsemane, Kentucky. Foster, in his attempt to encourage the concept of meditation again, he wrote this. This is Thomas Merton. So, he's quoting Thomas Merton.

The person who has meditated on the passion of Christ, but has not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and Auschwitz, has not fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time. So, first of all, he's quoting Thomas Merton.

Second of all, he's telling us that our true experience as a Christian cannot be found by meditating on Christ alone, but it has to be as well as an example meditating on the horrible crimes of Dachau and Auschwitz.

So, again, he is adding something to Scripture that is not seen, that we're not encouraged, we're not told to do that in Scripture. That's just another example of why the book I'm having a problem with, his sources, and not only his sources, but his encouragement.

And one other author he uses is Henry Nouwen, who probably was most famously known for teaching that everyone basically had God inside of them. He writes, the God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is the same as the one who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being, which you can see the quote there if you'd like to look in the notes below.

But Foster encourages his readers to partake in Nouwen's theology of meditation, and openly quoting his book, and this is what he says, without solitude, to quote Henry Nouwen, without solitude, it is virtually impossible to lead a spiritual life.

Why is this so? This is Foster, because in solitude, we are freed from our bondage to people and our inner compulsion, and we are freed to love God and know compassion for others. So, to truly love God, we must be in solitude, and that's where we are going to find the capacity or the spiritual ability to love God and love others because we'll be freed from some of our inner compulsions.

And we are not commanded in Scripture to deal with our issues with sin or even to be able to love God more in the concept of solitude. That is a Roman Catholic teaching. It's definitely not a biblical teaching that you're going to find, one, taught in history, and number two, taught in the Reformers.

That's Richard Foster, kind of a quick overview, some of the problems I found in his book. Second would be Dallas Willard, who had a very strong influence on Foster, and not only Foster, but Don Whitney.

Dallas Willard and the Psychologically Testable Way to Conform to Christ

But Dallas Willard, in his book, which is The Spirit of Disciplines in 1988, I mentioned this before, but I'm going to read it again because I think it's helpful. He says this, today for the first time in our history as a nation, we are being presented with a characteristic range of human behavior such as fasting, meditation, simple living, and submission to a spiritual overseer in an attractive light.

So he's saying for the first time in the 80s, this is about 10 years after what Richard Foster wrote, he's saying it's attractive. You always have to stop and say, why is it now attractive and why was it rejected before?

Though still regarded by too few as essentials of the Christian living, such practices are widely studied as possibly one important aid to being an effective Christian. So he's pointing us to Catholic teaching and Catholic theology of saying that it's an effective for us in our Christian life.

He also writes this, I want to explain with some precision and detailed fullness how activities such as solitude, silence, fasting, prayer, service, celebration, disciplines for life in the spiritual kingdom of God and activities in which Jesus deeply immersed himself, which that's an overstatement probably, are essential to the deliverance of human beings from the concrete power of sin and how they can make the experience of the ease of yoke a reality in life.

So just before I keep reading the paragraph, he's saying we must be practicing these if we are going to be delivered from the concrete power of sin. So solitude, silence, fasting, service, celebration.

Again, I would love to see us look to Scripture and argue from Scripture that this is the promise that we are given, but it's not. He goes on to say, by focusing on the whole of Christ's life and the lives of many who have best succeeded in following him, I will outline a psychologically and theologically sound testable way to meet grace and fully conform to him.

So he's saying the way in which that we can receive grace and conform into the image of Christ is done by this psychologically and theological testable way, which are his spiritual disciplines. His list, again, is not the same as Foster, and it's even very different from Don Whitney.

So whose list is right? And you can't, again, because there's disagreement, there's a problem here. If Scripture is very clear on how we grow, which we are going to talk about in video three, so stay tuned for that, then why is there so much disagreement?

I do want to read one last quote. This one's from his website, not necessarily his book, but his active website you can still go to today. It says, sometimes we think of spiritual formation as formation by the Holy Spirit.

Once again, that's essential, but now I have to say something that may be challenging for you to think about. Spiritual formation is not only by the Holy Spirit. We have to recognize that spiritual formation in us is something that also is done to us by those around us, by ourselves, and by activities which we voluntarily undertake.

There has to be method. If his explanation to that paragraph was the ordinary means that we can see from Scripture, the preaching of God's word, the sacraments and prayer, I would agree with him, but he doesn't.

He gives us a list of things that you just cannot say one plus one equals two. He is saying his method is a guarantee that we will be transformed in the image of Christ. That is kind of an overview of Willard.

Don Whitney, the Only Road to Christian Maturity, and Means of Grace

Don Whitney makes use of both Foster and Willard and openly talks about how they've influenced him. In the opening pages of his book on spiritual disciplines, he says this, the only road to Christian maturity and godliness passes through the practice of spiritual disciplines.

That's a really, really bold statement to say that the only way that you can become a mature Christian is by practicing spiritual disciplines. Of course, I want to know then, and I will say probably the most famous writer of today is Don Whitney, and he's at Southern Seminary.

A lot of people in the conservative and reform camp will use this book. If this is true, he goes on to explain what he thinks are spiritual disciplines. The book examines spiritual disciplines of Bible intake, prayer, worship, evangelism, service, stewardship, fasting, silence, solitude, journaling, and learning.

This is by no means, however, an exhaustive list of disciplines of Christian living. A survey of other literature of this subject would reveal that confession, accountability, simplicity, submission, spiritual direction, celebration, affirmation, sacrifice, watching, and more also qualify as spiritual disciplines.

Think about what he said in his opening statement, that the road to maturity and godliness only passes through practice of spiritual disciplines. To be godly, he's giving you a list, and it's not even an exhaustive list, a full list.

He said there's more that can be things like watching and celebration and spiritual direction. It's very confusing because it's hard to see how scripture gives us an okay on accepting what he's saying.

In the forward to Don Whitney's newest book, there's a quote by J .I. Packer, and this is what he writes promoting the book. Ever since Richard Foster, the one that I reviewed first, rang the bell with his celebration of discipline in 1978, discussing the various spiritual disciplines has become a staple element of conservative Christian talk in North America.

This is a happy thing. Again, I find this widely confusing. One, where Foster finds his material and encourages his readers. You can see how Willard is using the same type of concept, and now Don Whitney, who did adjust his first book.

In his second book, there was a lot of quotes that he ended up taking out, but he's still promoting the same concept and the same conclusion that spiritual disciplines leads to godliness. There's one last quote I want to read to you, and again, I'm just trying to show you kind of the conclusions from their writings.

So, to back up, he's saying, the only road to Christian maturity and godliness passes through the practice of spiritual disciplines, and in the heart of his book, he writes this. Again, this is Don Whitney.

And so, the urgent question every Christian asks is, how then shall I pursue holiness, the holiness without which I will not see the Lord? This is in reference to Hebrews. How can I become more like Jesus?

We find a clear answer in 1 Timothy 4 -7. Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. In other words, if your purpose is godliness, and godliness is your purpose, if you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, for he makes godliness your purpose, then how do you pursue that purpose?

According to this verse, you discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Now, let's make a logical conclusion. When he's quoting here Hebrews 12 -14, without godliness, no one will see the Lord, and then he jumps over to 1 Timothy 4 -7 and basically says, if you're not disciplining yourself for the purpose of godliness, then you won't see the Lord.

The question has to be asked, how much godliness? According to the writer of Hebrews, it has to be perfection, because who is the writer of Hebrews pointing to? He's pointing to Jesus. So, they want to go back to the law.

They want to go back to trusting the Mosaic law in order to be accepted before God, and he's saying, well, unless your righteousness is that of perfection, you won't see God, and he's always saying Christ is better than Moses, Christ is better than the law, Christ is better than all of the ceremonies, so he's making a confusion here, and I find it confusing to say you need godliness in order to see God, and then he points to 1 Timothy 4 -7, which I don't disagree with, that we should discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness, which we're going to talk about in video three, but I don't think this is what Paul meant when he wrote this in Ephesians, or I'm sorry, 1 Timothy 4, and then compare that to say that without godliness, you will not see God.

My question always has to be, is how much godliness? Who has the list? This is how disciplined you need to be in order to know for sure you're going to see God. That is Catholicism, and that is very dangerous, and that's why spiritual disciplines has always been tied to Catholicism, because we are always justified.

We are always saved by faith in Christ's obedience on our behalf. It's Christ's godliness that saves us, not our own. One other book that has been mentioned to me in recent years is by David Mathis. It's probably the most recent book.

He, at the time that wrote it, was the executive editor for Desiring God Ministries, and in his book, he states that he's not writing anything new, and that he can basically thank the work of Don Whitney, and he's really simplifying his work down, and he really simplifies it down to three disciplines.

I would say there's a lot of things that he writes in that are good, but he isn't really encouraging a reform perspective, and he would even use the word spiritual disciplines interchangeably with means of grace, which they're not.

Historically speaking, spiritual disciplines have been a Catholic teaching, and means of grace have always been a reformed understanding of scripture. So, that's the overview, a quick overview of those three books.

Closing Appeal for Video Three and Further Resources

I wish I could give you more, but that's all the time I have now. If you want to hear compared to a biblical understanding and a historical understanding from the Reformed faith, then stay tuned for video three next week.

If you found this helpful or informative at all, please hit that like button, and then subscribe and hit the notification bell, so you can find out next week when our video comes out. And I have a lot of resources down below, articles I've written, links to all of the references that I made here, so you can go look up all the quotes that I made.

And then there's also a couple of episodes and lectures that I've done. You can see all that in the notes below. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week.