Spiritual Formation—Hallmarks of Heresy
The Spiritual Formation movement of Richard Foster and Dallas Willard brazenly oppose basic Bible teaching, and do so in a way that shouldn’t fool a fool. You judge for yourself as you evaluate their own words.
Dallas Willard argues that the spiritual formation disciplines are essential to Christianity, not optional. Without any proof, Willard asserts that both Jesus and Paul used the spiritual disciplines. Did they?
No, neither one did.
Question: Jesus Used the Spiritual Disciplines?
In his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard tells us that the yoke Jesus offered in Matthew 11:28-30, the yoke that produces rest, refers to the spiritual disciplines Jesus exercised in his life.1 Willard’s assertion, however, is imported to the text and does not come from it.
There is no proof at all that Jesus practiced the “spiritual disciplines” in the way Willard defines them. Logic goes out the window when one’s presuppositions are one’s conclusions and all the supposed supporting evidence is omitted.
To impose the methods of monasticism and asceticism onto this passage is a suggestion forced in its method and false in its conclusion. Willard wishes; he doesn’t prove.
The context of this passage runs exactly counter to what Willard is saying. When Jesus said, “Come unto me,” he forever distinguished his voice from all others.
Our Lord said, “come,” but every other religion and every other philosophy—never seeing the futility of their approach—chorus in perfect harmony the word “do.” Do this or do that.
The imperative mood in their approach is incessant, relentless, and, on the face of it, worse than absurd. Because if human history demonstrates anything, it demonstrates the moral ineptitude of the entire human race. What Plutarch said of the Grecians—“They knew what was just but did it not”—is true of all of us. This “knew-but-didn’t-do” phenomenon is universal!
But for religion to tell man “do” is tantamount to telling an unaided paraplegic to run, or telling the comatose to calculate algebraic logarithms. Telling someone “do” when there is an avalanche of evidence testifying this person is utterly incapable of doing makes no sense.
Remember, Jesus’ words addressed those who are weak and heavy laden. So what does Dallas Willard say? Exactly what false religions say, do—do—do these spiritual disciplines! At best, these disciplines add on to the laws the people already had.
Willard’s failure to see this, and to say instead that Jesus was telling us to imitate his lifestyle is a return to liberalism 101. This notion that Jesus came to earth to give us an example of how to live was dispatched decades ago. But who goes to the dustbin of heretical ideas to bring it back? Dallas Willard!
Nobody has this view about Matthew 11, except Dallas Willard! Willard chose to be oblivious to the obvious, and then deliberately misrepresented Scripture to make a point that never came from Scripture.
This occurs again and again with Willard. What he asserts to be true is only true because he said it is. It’s as though Dallas Willard trolls Scripture to see where he can attach his preconceived view; and if he can’t find any, he’ll attach it anyway.
Question: Jesus Isn’t Needed for Salvation?
As for people being weak and lost, this isn’t how Dallas Willard thinks. True of him and Richard Foster is the contrary view that there is a light within everyone, saved or unsaved, that can be kindled by the “spiritual disciplines” to restore their soul.2
So the inability Jesus perceived, Willard and Foster do not perceive. It is more than a major fallacy in the spiritual formation movement—it is blasphemy, on two counts! One, Jesus isn’t a Savior. Two, you don’t need a savior.
It should be no surprise to learn that the spiritual disciplines Dallas Willard promotes are embraced by people of other religions and no religion.
Does this mean the formation of their souls will result in salvation, too?
Here’s how Dallas Willard answered this question in an interview:
I still struggle with how I should view those who have other beliefs. I’m not sure I am ready to condemn them as wrong. I know some very good Buddhists. What is their destiny?
Referencing Romans 2:6-10, Willard went on to say:
God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. What Paul is clearly saying is that if anyone is worthy of being saved, they will be saved.
But Paul is not “clearly” saying that! A well-known debate tactic is to use words such as clearly, obviously, and undoubtedly to ward off a scrutiny that will show the statement being made isn’t at all clear, obvious, and without doubt.
Willard would have us believe that the man who argued so strongly for justification by faith alone, and did so in this same book of Romans, is personally persuaded that a person could reject Jesus but still go to Heaven.
Actually, Dallas Willard says that! On his website, Willard makes this universalist’s statement: "It is possible for someone who does not know Jesus to be saved.”3
Father Brennan Manning, who shared the platform with Richard Foster and Dallas Willard in presenting mysticism to our generation, cited Matthew Fox with high commendation in two of his books, Lion and Lamb (p.135) and A Stranger to Self Hatred (pp.113, 124). The universalism Matthew Fox espoused is common to mysticism and is deeply embedded in the perspectives of Foster, Willard, and Manning. Fox writes:
Remember that 15 billion years of the universe loved you and brought you forward. And it loved you unconditionally ... We were loved before the beginning ... God is a great underground river, and there are many wells into that river. There's a Taoist well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, a Christian well, a Goddess well, the Native wells—many wells that humans have dug to get into that river, but friends, there's only one river; the living waters of wisdom.
In Streams of Living Water, Foster talks about “a vision of an all-inclusive people.” By this, Foster means more than race, gender, social-class distinctions, and denominational preferences.
Foster’s view is more along the lines of a man he quotes with much admiration, Henri Nouwen, who said this in his last book, Sabbatical Journey:
Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God.4
Whoa! Such a view obliterates gospel terms, obliterates the necessity and efficacy of the cross, obliterates the reliability of Scripture! While the first Christians were referred to derisively as people of “the way” (John 14:6), Willard and Foster tell us there is no the way.
Question: Paul Used the Spiritual Disciplines?
Dallas Willard’s claim that the Apostle Paul supported the disciplines promoted by the spiritual formation movement is worse than weak; it doesn’t exist! Dallas Willard made it up!
In his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Willard says of Paul, “he would feel no need to write a book on the disciplines for the spiritual life that explained systematically what he had in mind.”5
Never mind a book, Mr. Willard, never mind anything systematic; the fact is, Paul didn’t say anything like this!
Not one to let the facts get in the way, in the same book Willard pontificated:
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. There is nothing especially religious about it, though every religion of historical significance has accepted and inculcated it in one way or another.
Are you following what Willard is saying?
First, he claims the spiritual disciplines were very important to Paul, though Willard offers no proof of that.
Second, he says these ever-important principles were lost because Paul didn’t write them down (right, and my dog ate my homework, too).
Third, we are now assured by Dallas that these principles have been found.
Oh, don’t you love a mystery? Okay, I’ll play along. Where were the disciplines found, Dallas?
The answer is—are you ready for this? In “human experience,” and not “especially religious” experience as it turns out.
That’s how the story ends? Kind of ante-climactic, isn’t it?
So is there a certain number of spiritual disciplines? No, Willard admits, we can even make up our own.
And yet these spiritual disciplines are essential?
Kind of crazy, huh?
Notes:
1. Dallas, Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, (New York, Harper Collins, 1991), pp. 19, 91, 95, 99, 121, 235.
2. In his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton writes: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God…”
3. http://www.southernbaptistsermons.org/images/Is_Dallas_Willard_A_Universalist.pdf
4. Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey, (NY, New York, Crossroad, 1998), p.51.
5. Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Understanding How God Changes Lives, (HarperCollins: New York, 1991), p.99.
