God in Everything – the Premise of Contemplative Spirituality

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God in Everything – the Premise of
Contemplative Spirituality

April 6, 2009

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The theological implications of this worldview put it
at direct odds with biblical Christianity for obvious
reasons. Only one true God exists, and His identity is
not in everyone.

It was Alice Bailey, the famous
occult prophetess who coined the term New Age, who made this
startling assertion:

“It is, of course, easy to
find many passages which link the way of the
Christian Knower with that of his brother in the East.
They bear witness to the same efficacy of method.”1

What did she mean by the term
“Christian Knower”? The answer is unmistakable! [O]ccultism
is awakening the mystical faculties to see God in
everything. In Hinduism, this is called reaching samadhi
or enlightenment. It is the final objective of yoga
meditation: God in everything–a force or power
flowing through all that exists. William Johnston believes
such an experience exists within the context of
Christianity. He explains:

“What I can safely say,
however, is that there is a Christian samadhi
that has always occupied an honored place in the
spirituality of the West. This, I believe, is the thing
that is nearest to Zen. It is this that I have called
Christian Zen.”2

The famous psychologist Carl
Jung predicted this system would be the yoga of the west.3

Christian Zen? Christian yoga? These seem to be oxymorons,
like military pacifism or alcoholic sobriety. Christians,
conservative ones at least, have always viewed these
concepts as heretical and anti-biblical. The word most
commonly used for it is pantheism–all is God. But
when one looks at the Christian Zen movement one discovers a
similar term, which for all practical purposes, means the
same thing. This term is called panentheism–God is
in all things.

A highly respected source, The Evangelical Dictionary of
Theology, defines panentheism as a worldview that
combines “the strengths of classic theism with the strengths
of classic pantheism.”4

With panentheism you still have a personal God (theism)
coupled with God’s pervasive presence in all creation
(pantheism). In other words, with panentheism God is both a
personality and an all encompassing substance as opposed to
God being an impersonal substance that incorporates all of
creation as found in pantheism.

The credibility of what I am saying rests on whether or not
panentheism has a legitimate place in orthodox Christianity.
This is a vital question because panentheism is the
foundational worldview among those who engage in mystical
prayer. Ken Kaisch, a Episcopal priest and a teacher of
mystical prayer, made this very clear in his book,
Finding God, where he noted:

“Meditation is a process
through which we quiet the mind and the emotions and
enter directly into the experience of the Divine.
…there is a deep connection between us … God is in
each of us.”5

Here lies the core of
panentheism:



God is in everything
and everything is in God. The only difference between
pantheism and panentheism is how God is in everything.

This position of the
panentheist is challenging to understand: Your outer
personality is not God, but God is still in you as your true
identity. This explains why mystics say, all is one. At the
mystical level, they experience this God-force that seems to
flow through everything and everybody. All creation has God
in it as a living, vital presence. It is just hidden.

The theological implications of this worldview put it at
direct odds with biblical Christianity for obvious reasons.
Only one true God exists, and His identity is not in
everyone. The fullness of God’s identity, in bodily
form, rests in Jesus Christ and Him only!

Scripture clearly teaches the only deity in man is Jesus
Christ who dwells in the heart of the believer. Further,
Jesus made it clear not everyone will be born again–having
God’s Spirit (John 3). Yet the panentheist perceives that
all people and everything have the identity of God within
them.

William Johnston again emphasizes, “For God is the core of
my being and the core of all beings.”6

This fundamentally eliminates faith in the Gospel as the
avenue to reconciliation with God, because God is already
there. It effectively leaves out the finished work of Christ
as the binding agent and is contrary to the following
verses:

“For the message of the
cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to
us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (I
Corinthians 1:18)

“Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine
of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the
doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son.” (II
John 9)

The Bible does reveal, though,
that God upholds all things by His powerful word, but He
does not do this by being the substance of all things. The
word of God says, “[F]or in Him [Christ] we live and move
and have our being …” (Acts 17:28). But this speaks of Him
as separate from us yet remaining present with us. The
belief that God indwells everything is heresy. God will not,
and cannot share His personal essence with anyone or
anything outside of the Trinity. Even Christians are only
partakers of the Divine Nature and not possessors of the
Divine Nature. 2 Peter 1:3-4 says:

“[A]s His divine power has
given to us all things that pertain to life and
godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by
glory and virtue, by which have been given to us
exceedingly great and precious promises, that through
these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having
escaped the corruption that is in the world through
lust.”

Here the apostle Peter is
writing to Christians, not to the world. He acknowledges the
participation of the believer in conjunction with the work
of the Holy Spirit. The word partaker is taken from the
Greek word koinonos, which means a sharer (associate),
companion, or fellowship partner. In other words, the
Christian shares in the promises of the purifying work of
the Holy Spirit, being called out and set apart from the
corruption of an evil world. Moreover, a partaker or
participant is one who has been born again through faith. A
possessor, on the other hand, is one who is already in
possession of something. In the case of the panentheist and
pantheist, the possession they are claiming is God. They
do not believe a fundamental change is needed, just an
awareness of what is already there.

This conclusion becomes quite obvious when we examine such
passages as Isaiah 42:8: “I am the LORD, that is my name;
and My glory I will not give to another.” Creation can
reflect God’s glory (Isaiah 6:3), but it can never possess
God’s glory. For that to happen would mean God was indeed
giving His glory to another.

This concept is made crystal clear in author William
Shannon’s book, Silence on Fire. Shannon, a Roman
Catholic priest, relates the account of a theological
discussion he once had with an atheist groom for whom he was
performing a wedding ceremony. He told the skeptical young
man:

“You will never find God by
looking outside yourself. You will only find God within.
It will only be when you have come to experience God in
your own heart and let God into the corridors of your
heart (or rather found God there) that you will be able
to ‘know’ that there is indeed a God and that you are
not separate from God.”7

This advice is no different from
what any New Age teacher would impart to someone who held an
atheistic point of view. You want God? Meditate! God is just
waiting for you to open up. Based on Shannon’s own mystical
beliefs, he knew this was the right approach. He alluded to
this by explaining that the young man would find
enlightenment if he would look in the right place or use the
right method.

Those who support this heresy draw the same conclusion of
mystical panentheism that author Willigis Jager articulated
when he said:

“The physical world, human
beings, and everything that is are all forms of the
Ultimate Reality, all expressions of God, all “one with
the Father.”8

He means not all Christians but
all people. This is nothing less than Hindu samadhi
with Christian spray paint. Those in this movement who are
honest have no qualms about acknowledging this–as one
adherent did so aptly when he confessed, “The meditation of
advanced occultists is identical with the prayer of advanced
mystics.”9
(For more information and documentation on contemplative
spirituality, read

A Time of Departing.)


Notes:
1. Alice Bailey, From Intellect to Intuition (New
York, NY: Lucis Publishing Co., 1987, 13th printing), p.
193.
2. William Johnston, Lord, Teach Us to Pray (New
York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), p. 54.
3. Ibid., p. 58.
4. Walter A. Elwel, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984), p. 818.
5. Ken Kaisch, Finding God: A Handbook of Christian
Meditation (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1994), p. 283.
6. William Johnson, The Mystical Way (New York, NY:
Harper Collins, 1993), p. 224.
7. William Shannon, Silence on Fire (New York, NY:
The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), p. 99.
8. Willigis Jager, Contemplation: A Christian Path (Ligouri,
MO: Triumph Books, 1994), p. 93.
9. Richard Kirby, The Mission of Mysticism, op. cit.,
p. 7.

For other articles by Ray Yungen,

click here.

Source article:



http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=174

See also

Recovering the Scandal of Liberalism:
Disdaining the Cross and

Deceived by a counterfeit “Jesus” – The
twisted “truths” of The Shack & A Course in Miracles