The Evangelical Prayer Masters, or a Protestant reads the desert fathers

My aim in this post is two-fold:  explain how J.P. Moreland and Dallas Willard offered a way for Evangelicals to read the Desert Fathers and explain how Christ Church in Moscow, ID could better deal with a sex-offender.

Willard and Moreland

J.P. Moreland's Love your God with all Your Mind is somewhat legendary in the Evangelical Community.  He brought "discipleship training" to a hard-core intellectual level.  The book has few rivals.  He branched out in 2007 by showing that "intellectual formation" is only one "leg" of the Kingdom Triangle.  The other two are spiritual formation and kingdom power.

Spiritual formation isn't a new concept with evangelicals.   Since Richard Foster's (mostly good) Celebration of Discipline, Evangelicals have tried to incorporate spiritual disciplines beyond that of the daily "quiet time."  But what do you do when you read the practices of Desert Fathers?  It's hard for Protestants to really "connect" with monastic figures.  Protestants--at their best--are known for having the healthiest view of married sexuality (studies show this), have a vision for transforming culture, and the like.  None of this seems to match desert spirituality.

In Moreland's Kingdom Triangle and The Lost Virtue of Happiness he addresses several exercises for "calming the soul."  He was accused of New-Agey techniques.  He then responded that he is following neuroscientists.  I can take it a step further.  Many of Moreland's (and by extension, Willard's) suggestions are in some form related to the practices of the Desert Fathers.

Psychology

And this leads us to psychology.  I believe the Bible is sufficient for doctrine.   Stated another way: I believe the Bible is sufficient for the Bible's doctrine.  However, I don't believe the Bible is meant to solve every medical and neurological issue simply by chanting the Bible over the person.  And no, this doesn't make me a Freudian, so stop it.

Natural revelation is real.  Not every "method" is "touchy feely" psychology.  The Desert Fathers--without following them on some doctrinal specifics--probably knew what they were talking about on how to achieve stillness, detachment, and focus.  Of course, some issues might require medical counterbalances, so I will stop here.

And Demons

Doug Wilson is facing a storm right now because--to put it simply--he knowingly brought a pedophile into his church, married him to a girl in the church, and encouraged them to have babies.  Some will defend it saying "Grace" or "would you deny him marriage?"  Isn't marriage supposed to enable the man to grow in holiness?  Yes.  Other things being equal.

When you engage in depraved acts with an infant, you lose a lot of privileges.  Forever.  Sorry.  So what should he do?  What no one has said on either side is the obvious point:  the man is demonized.  We need to get clear on what daimonidzomai really means.  It doesn't necessarily mean (though it could include) the demon taking full control.  It could simply mean "demonized."  Part of getting rid of it is exorcism.  Another part is simply "starving the demons out."  Deny the passions.  And given how deep-rooted the demons are, you probably aren't going to get rid of them by listening to a sermon once a week.

Somebody on Doug's blog suggested what I had been thinking:  join a monastery.  There were the usual objections: "Protestants don't like that" or "Celibacy doesn't work."  I'll ignore the first one.  No, celibacy usually doesn't work.  However, he shouldn't join just any monastery.  He should go to the desert and live with some desert fathers for 30 years.  These are cranky old guys who smell like sweat and incense.  They have long beards. And they don't put up with nonsense. The whole "celibacy" thing really shouldn't be a problem.  You will starve the demons out.  You will have knowledge that you are protecting society.

The other option is to join the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit.

Protestant thoughts on EO spirituality

Not arguing for ultimate truth or falsity in this review.  I am helping an EO guy give the fairest contrast between EO and classic Protestantism. I truly wish him in the best.

In classic Western Christian theological thought, the nature of God is generally understood as absolute, transcendent and indivisible (that is, not divided into parts). This is the doctrine called “divine simplicity” or “divine unity”

Mostly yes.  However, ALL Christian traditions believe in divine simplicity.  Gregory Palamas is very firm on this point.  What the East rejects is the view of divine simplicity that identifies essence with attribute in a 1:1 correspondence.  Interestingly enough, 19th century American Reformed theologians rejected this view of divine simplicity. The author quotes William Craig as saying God has no real relations within himself.  This needs upacking.  The West (rightly or wrongly) says God has no ontological distinctions within himself (meaning an essential separation between attribute A and attribute B and essence C.   The West very firmly holds to logical and rational distinctions between the essence/attributes.

Following this theological premise, Western theologians in the Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Reformed traditions have concluded that since God is radically transcendent, God’s relations with humans – in order to protect God’s transcendence and indivisibility – can (then) only be experienced through created entities or means (through intermediaries like angels, an image, or a symbol, which signifies God but are not God). 

What about God's covenantal relations?  It's a thought.

According to the classic Western view, therefore, even “grace” itself – God’s action within the soul – is a “created” effect of God – (and) is not God working in the soul directly.

This is an excellent criticism of Roman Catholicism.  I'm not sure, however, why this sentence, assuming it is a fair representation of Protestantism, necessitates God's grace as created.   God's action within the soul, if that is indeed what grace is, is God himself, and so eternal.  Now the effect in the soul is created, but that's not a particularly controversial statement.

the Western Christian spiritual tradition affirms that there are (then) essentially only two ways to know God:

What Luther and the Reformed are saying is what Romans 10 is saying, "We don't ascend to God to know God.  God descends to us in his Word."  This is what Luther meant by denying the theology of glory.

The seat of the Image of God is not thought to be in the reasoning or intellective faculty of the human being, but rather in the “Nous”, sometimes translated incorrectly as “Mind”, but in the East understood as “heart.” This is not necessarily the physical “heart” but at the center of man’s being.

I like this statement.  If nous means heart, then this anthropology isn't that different from Reformed sources.  I understand that the EO will say that God's energies interact with the nous.  I know the Reformed do not take that view.  Fair enough.  I have reasons for not holding to the energies, but that's not the point of the post.

Carrying this line of thinking forward to its logical conclusion, the West has rejected as an authentic experience of God the Uncreated Light or Vision of God (theoria) of our hesychast, contemplative tradition in Eastern Christianity.

We reject hesychasm, but not the experiencing of the divine light.  Too many credible Western theologians and pastors have experienced the divine light for us to deny that it is real.  

I find that in Western Christianity because of the approaches we have been discussing, there tends to be a dichotomy between the realm of God and the realm of man. It tends to set-up, as Father Stephen Freeman puts it, a “two-storey universe”: God and the spiritual realm “up there, and us down here”.

It hinges upon how God promised to meet man.  We understand that God meets man covenantally through his Word.   We also see the covenant as the bridge between the two realms (though I fully agree with Allen's critique of Roman Catholicism).