Spiritual disciplines (Exercises)

Advocates for the “Spiritual Disciplines” claim the purpose of the Disciplines is to enable a person to experience ‘union with God’. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The Disciplines are a religious methodology devised by false teachers who distort a few verses of scripture to advance heretical ideas. Colossians 2:22-23 expressly puts down the reliance upon these types of disciplines saying: “Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” The Disciplines lead a person away from the true gospel and the true Christ (through which they could experience the new birth and escape the corruption of the sin nature) to a false gospel and a false Christ (thereby remaining subject to the sin nature and estranged from God). An examination of the writings of the two most significant contributors to the Disciplines, Richard Foster and Ignatius Loyola, reveals the errors they are drawing people into.

Richard Foster (1942- )

Richard Foster in his “Celebration of Discipline, the Path to Spiritual Growth” recommends that Christians can reach a deeper spirituality through the practice of “Spiritual Disciplines”. This book has become a modern classic on Christian spirituality used by Bible colleges/ seminaries throughout the world and across all denominations. The Disciplines Foster recommends include contemplative prayer, meditation/visualisation, fasting and study; which Foster calls the “Inward Disciplines.” He also offers “Outward Disciplines” of simplicity, solitude, submission and service; and “Corporate Disciplines” of confession, worship, guidance and celebration. Foster also advocates the use of rosaries and prayer wheels.

Foster grew up among the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends). His training was at George Fox College (a B.A.) and Fuller Theological Seminary (a D.Th.P).

Foster pastored Quaker churches, and taught theology at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and at George Fox College.

In most Quaker churches today, the major doctrines of sin, repentance and salvation are all denied. The Bible is viewed as one amongst many books of inspiration. Satan is said to be an imaginative figure and Jesus Christ just a very good man. Modern Quakers specialise in doing good works and encouraging peace initiatives. (An exception is the Evangelical Friends Church International which holds to the principal beliefs of the historical Protestant faith. Foster has ties with EFCI, but clearly has moved towards the liberal Quaker majority.)

George Fox, the founder of the Quakers said,

“I was glad that I was commanded to turn people to that inward light, spirit, and grace, by which all might know their salvation, and their way to God; even that divine Spirit which would lead them into all Truth, and which I infallibly knew would never deceive any”

(The Journal of George Fox, revised by John Nickalls, 1952, p. 35).

A Quaker’s spiritual life is influenced by the subjective “inner light”. This is the essence of Quakerism. And this belief, of an “inner light” in every person, as to be expected, is seen throughout Foster’s writings – the key element being naturally contemplative prayer by which a person experiences the “inner light”.

This foundational Quaker doctrine is rank heresy. It means that there is a divine guidance and therefore a divine presence in every person. Fox himself used the expression “that of God in everyone.” (Statement of 1656, The Works of George Fox, 1831). This is the heresy of pantheism – that ‘god’ is in everyone. This belief is invariably coupled with universalism – that everyone goes to heaven, irrespective of what they believe or do, and there is no such thing as hell (which is what Quaker’s in general believe).

Foster recommends being still and silent (i.e. passive) in order to receive guidance from the inner light. This is the method of contemplative prayer. In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Foster answers the question:

“What is the goal of Contemplative Prayer? To this question the old writers answer with one voice: union with God. Bonaventure, a follower of Saint Francis, says that our final goal is ‘union with God,’ which is a pure relationship where we see ‘nothing.'”

In Celebration of Discipline, Foster tells us “we must be willing to go down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation,” later saying that the “masters of meditation beckon us.” Throughout his writings over the years, Foster talks about and promotes these “masters of meditation”. Two of Foster’s books, Spiritual Classics and Devotional Classics essentially gather the writings of pantheists (god is in everyone), universalists (everyone goes to heaven irrespective of what they believe or do, there is no hell, ) and mystics (we can only experience god through mystical practices). These are all heretical ideas and totally opposed to the Bible’s teaching. Foster identifies more of these “masters of meditation” on his website in “100 Spiritual Classics.” The list includes mystics and pantheists like Meister Eckhart and Tilden Edwards.

Moreover, in Celebration of Discipline Foster advises:

“In your imagination allow your spiritual body, shining with light, to rise out of your physical body.…Reassure your body that you will return….Go deeper and deeper into outer space until there is nothing except the warm presence of the eternal Creator. Rest in his presence. Listen quietly [to] any instruction given” (p. 27).

This is an occult technique known as astral projection and it is used by New Agers and shamans to contact their spirit guides.

Richard Foster’s blends New Age/ shamanism with Christian terminology. Falsehoods always find their way into the church by piggybacking truth concepts:

“You can actually encounter the living Christ in the event, be addressed by His voice and be touched by His healing power . . . Jesus Christ will actually come to you.” (pp. 20-29.)

“‘Let’s play a little game,’ I said. ‘Since we know Jesus is always with us. let’s imagine that He is sitting over in the chair across from us. He is waiting patiently for us to center our attention on Him.’” (p.37).

“Imagination opens the door to faith. If we can ’see’ in our mind’s eye a shattered marriage whole or a sick person well, it is only a short step to believing it will be so.” (p.36)

The ‘mind’s eye’ is the same concept as the ‘third-eye’ in occultism and Eastern religions.

Visualistion is a key element of Ignatius Loyola’s “Spiritual Exercises” (see below), for which Foster only had praise:

“Ignatius of Loyola in his spiritual exercises constantly encouraged his readers to visualise the gospel stories. Every contemplation he gave was designed to open the imagination. He even included a meditation entitled “application of the senses,” which is an attempt to help us utilise all five senses as we picture the gospel events. His thin volume of meditation exercises with its stress on the imagination and tremendous impact for good upon the sixteenth century.” (ibid p.22.)

The power of the imagination through fantasy and visualisation is one of the major themes of Foster’s best-selling book and incorporated in his Disciplines. This technique is entirely unscriptural. Foster advocates visualisation as a means of direct communication with ‘Jesus’, however, the ‘Jesus’ the practitioner encounters is a deceiving spirit.

Foster is a false teacher. A deceiver masquerading as a teacher of ‘truth’, leading people into a direct association with the kingdom of darkness, and away from God and the light of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556)

Ignatius Loyola was the founder and first superior general of the Catholic order of the Jesuits (also known as the Society of Jesus).

Loyola joined the army at age 17 wanting to become a famous military leader. However, at the age of 30 during battle a cannonball hit him in the legs, wounding his right leg and fracturing the left in multiple places. While rehabilitating from his injuries, Loyola read the legendary lives of certain Catholic saints and turned his ambition away from reaching fame through military service, to achieving it through religious service.

After he had recovered sufficiently to walk again, Loyola resolved to begin a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to engage in stricter ‘penances’ (i.e. the Catholic concept of religious acts to pay the penalty for one’s own sin). During a stay at the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, he had a vision of the ‘Virgin Mary’ (i.e. Catholic Mary – not the Mary of the Bible) and the ‘baby Jesus’. This experience prompted him to become absolutely devoted to ‘Mary’ and became an ascetic. At the pilgrimage site of Our Lady of Arantzazu in Spain he made a vow of chastity to her and entrusted himself to her protection and patronage. And, he spent an entire night venerating the Black Virgin at the Abbey of Montserrat and surrendered his sword and dagger to her.

Loyola’s asceticism was extreme. He lived for a year in a cave, wearing rags, never bathing, and begging for his food. All of this was an effort to do penance for his sins. He scourged and starved himself and slept very little. He taught that penance for sin requires “chastising the body by inflicting sensible pain on it” through “wearing hairshirts, cords, or iron chains on the body, or by scourging or wounding oneself, and by other kinds of austerities”. During this time he devised his “Spiritual Exercises”.

Ignatius assumed the name and office of ‘Knight of the Virgin Mary’, and wanted to start a new Catholic order, “The Society of Jesus” (more commonly known now as ‘the Jesuits’). He presented the idea to Pope Paul III. The Protestant Reformation was underway threatening the supremacy of the Pope’s power and with the offer by Ignatius to add a fourth vow (in addition to the regular poverty, chastity, and obedience), of “absolute subservience to the Pope”, The Society of Jesus was approved in 1540 with the papal bull “Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae” (To the Government of the Church Militant).

The Jesuits were used by the Pope to spearhead the “Counter Reformation” i.e. the Catholic Church’s attempt to overthrow the Protestant Reformation. They effectively became the military arm of the Catholic Church under the Pope’s direct authority. The members of Ignatius’ Society were willing to lie, steal, and kill for the pope and for their Jesuit superiors. The Jesuits plotted and often succeeded in the violent overthrow of governments and the assassination of non-Catholic leaders. (For their interference in politics the Jesuits were expelled from numerous countries including the Portuguese Empire (1759), France (1764), the Two Sicilies , Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire (1767) and Austria and Hungary (1782). Over the centuries Jesuits have been expelled from more than 80 countries.) They officiated over the notorious Inquisition.

Prospective members of the Jesuits are required to undertake the “Spiritual Exercises” as devised by Loyola. Under the tutelage of a spiritual director, the candidate goes through a strict one month process of conditioning. Week One is a time of “purgation” and purifying through confession and asceticism. Week Two and Three is a time of “illumination” by meditating on Christ. Week Four is “unitive,” characterized by “intimate and habitual union with God.”

The process effectively strips the candidate of their independent will and makes them subservient to the commands of their superiors and ultimately the Pope:

“We must put aside all judgement of our own, and keep the mind ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church. We should praise sacramental confession … the frequent hearing of Mass … vows of religion … relics of the saints by venerating them … the regulations of the Church … images and veneration of them. … Finally, we must praise all the commandments of the Church, and be on the alert to find reasons to defend them, and by no means in order to criticize them. … If we wish to proceed securely in all things, we must hold fast to the following principle: what seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical church so defines”.

(The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Vintage Books edition, Rules, 352-362, 365, pp. 124-124).

In The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius promoted the repetitious ‘breath-prayer’, which he called “a measured rhythmical recitation.” He described this as follows:

“With each breath or respiration, one should pray mentally while saying a single word of the Our Father, or other prayer that is being recited, in such a way that from one breath to another a single word is said.”

(The Spiritual Exercises, “Three Methods of Prayer,” p. 258).

This is a contemplative prayer technique that puts the practitioner into an altered state of consciousness and communication with the (demonic) spirit realm.

Visualisation prayer was also a central part of Ignatius’ exercises. The practitioner is to spend four or five hours each day in this practice. He is to walk into biblical and extra-biblical historical scenes through the imagination and bring the scene to life by applying all five senses, seeing the events, hearing what people are saying, smelling, tasting, and touching things – all within the realm of pure imagination. He is even to put himself into the scene, talking to the people and serving them. Ignatius encourages practitioners, for example, to imagine themselves present at Jesus’ birth and crucifixion.

Visualisation prayer has become very popular and widespread within the modern contemplative prayer movement (see above Richard Foster), but it is heretical. It is never taught in scripture. Effectively, this type of prayer is a means of communication with demon spirits.

Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises are filled with Mary veneration. The practitioner is instructed to pray the Hail Mary many times and to ask Mary for grace:

“A colloquy should be addressed to our Lady, asking her to obtain for me from her Son and Lord the grace to be received under His standard…” (Second Week, 147).

Ignatius also recommended praying Hail Holy Queen (“Three Methods of Prayer,” p. 258). This blasphemous prayer addresses Mary as holy Queen, the Mother of Mercy, our life, our love, our hope, and most gracious advocate:

“Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.”

In The Spiritual Exercises,, Ignatius taught a ‘works gospel’, which is no gospel at all and condemned by God (Galatians 1:6-8). Loyola wrote it is “necessary for salvation…that as far as possible I so subject and humble myself as to obey the law of God our Lord in all things” (Week Two, “Three Kinds of Humility,” 165).

(Next to Ignatius’ tomb at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome, is a 16th century statue depicting Mary violently casting Protestant Reformers Martin Luther and John Huss out of heaven because of their doctrines of “scripture alone”, “faith alone” and “grace alone.” The statue’s title is “The Triumph of the Faith over Heresy”. It depicts official Catholic doctrine that was pronounced at the Council of Trent, which issued a curse against any person who believed the Protestant tenets that

the Bible alone was the standard for faith (apart from and to the exclusion of the official teaching and dogma of the Church),
salvation was by faith alone in the finished work of Christ accomplished at the cross (apart from works i.e. the Catholic sacraments),
salvation was a free gift through the grace of God alone (unmerited and unearned justification; a person did not have to pay for their own sin through penance and purgatory).

The Council of Trent has never been rescinded and was quoted authoritatively by the Vatican II Council in the 1960s. Therefore, the ecumenical push by Rome in recent decades is a deception. The Pope wants the Protestant churches to return, renouncing their ‘heresies’ and once again embracing the ‘truth’ as expressed only by the Roman Catholic Church. This was and remains the ultimate objective of the Jesuits – and the very first Jesuit Pope now heads the Catholic Church.)