cONTEMPLATIVE mOVEMENT rICHARD rOHR gETS IT rIGHT IN SOME iMPORTANT WAYS BUT hORRIFICALLY WRONG IN THE END

For some years I've been aware that there is a Contemplative movement going on in some parts of the Church but I haven't done much to find out about it, just hear about it here and there, usually from someone warning against it although I don't take much time to find out what's wrong with it.   Since I was first drawn to Christianity by the Catholic mystics you'd think I'd be more eager to check it out but I don't expect much from it just from what little I've heard so I don't.

A friend who is not a Christian says she has been enjoyuing a Christian teacher named Richard Rohr so I said I'd check him out.  I'd heard of him in connection with this Contemplative movement but couldn't remember much about him.  Well I probably hand't heard anything of his though I thought I had.  

He's interesting.  I'll have to listen again if I think it necessary beause there's a lot to absorb.  My first reaction is that I think I've never heard any presentation that is both so importantly true ahnd so damnably false at the same time.  He does say some very interestingly true things but he says them in a context that is so false at first it just managed to agitate and anger me.   I'm over that but now I have the job, have given myself the job, of gryint to say somethinhg about him that gets at what I think is good and bad about it.  

I'll atart out by saying that what attracticeted me in the Catholic Mystics is just not found in the Protestant Church and that has always been a disappointm,ent to me, because in spite of their theological erros there is a body of trutyh there that I think she should be trying to hold onto.   I find it mostlyu in A W Tozer and nowhere else these days, a genuine Protestant who never loses sight of the foundation of salvation but can also see that we are missing something with that as our exclyusive emphasis.  His book the Pursuit of God, but also The Knowledge of the Holy, both are reminders that God is offering Himself to us as a lover and our respo0nse to Him through regeneration is a passionate love in return.  Or it would be if it were encouraged, but mostly we are just endlessly redirected to the gospel of salvation and maybe some to the teachings for grpwtj om sanctification, but really n othing that would stir up that love in us.  

Scripture itself doesn't emphasisze this, though, and I've wondered about that.  We have Psalm forty two which desribes our panting after God and we have the Song of Sooloomon for two main references to loving God in experience.

There are books out there that by their titles make you think they might lead in this direction, Loving God, Knowing God and that sort of thing but they never evoke that passionate affection for God which is the whole point of it all,   But even the Westminster catechism sayhs it:

baiscally what is the purpose of life, but they say  What is the cheif end of man?  And the answer is To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Glorify Him, magnify Him, worship and adore Him, and enjoy Him forever.

And anyone who is feeling a lack of this might well be drawn to something called Contemplative Prayer although it would lead into theological heresy.  Too bad.  I don't knows if there's antything to be found in that direction if we could do it right, but something that allows us to pursue God in the sway Tozer has in mind is definitely needed.  his books are certainly a start.  

So Rohr does point to the God of Love and he says some true and good things about seeking this God while overall he has us dancing around the pit of Hell.  Quite a feat really.  

In the beginning of his talk, Contemplative Vision Presentation One,  he is talkinjg about God indwelling us and how this is a gift of God, it has nothing to do with moral worthiness.  Golly gosh does that sound Protestant.  But he doesn't seem to know that.  In fact you could say that the entire Protestant Reformation could be summed ug as the revelation that we can't earn anything from God, everythign is a Gift, our salvation is a gift, His indwelling is a girt.   it took Martin Luther some years of struggle before he recognized that theme in scripture and that was the foundation of the whole thing, the overthrowing of Catholicism's works righteousness, the teaching that we do indeed earn our salvation, must have that moral worthiness to be saved.  Yes, Richard Rohr, that is CATHOLIC, but the Protestant Reformation overthrew exactly that and revealed that Catholics ARE NOT SAVED and cannot be saved as long as they think they have to do somethimg to earn salvation.  The first thig that is needed in the recognition that salvation is a free gift.  Sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura, solus Christius.  

But Richard Rohr has somje very bizarre ideas about what salvation is, what reception is.  Some strange idea about the meaning of thte Cross.  I guess it is possible to read scripture and know it pretty well and miss the whole point.  Luther did too of course, it was a long struggle for him so there's nothing unusual in Rohr's getting it all wrong although once you do understand it it is hard to see how others miss it.

Rohr thinks we are born indwelt by God, that God is always and equally available to all of us etc etc etc.  He has no nothing whatever that we are born in sin, in fallennness and that isbn't a normal condition, it's what Jesus died to save us from.  We cannot be indwelt by God until we believe that Jesus has saved us from our sins by dying on the cross in our place.   He took our sins on Himself, into His own body and we are nailed to that cross with Him and that is how we are saved.  THAT is the only translformation we are to undergo.  Rohr has some peculiar idea of transformation as what Christ came to do, transform sin somewhoew or totherk which seems to be about being in "solidarity" with sin or with the woundedness of the world or some such incomprehesnsible idea.  What what what?  

If we are saved we know we are IN Chrixt, we known He dided in our place, and we are born again as a result of that recognition.  Regenerated.  We now have two natures, the fallen sin nature and the redeemed saved transformed nature indwelt by God, but until we believe that we do not have salvation or recemption or the indwelling of god and the Holy Spirit.  Rohr seems to have NO idea of any of that.  But then Catholics generally don't.  that was of course the whole point of the Protestant Reformation.

He does same some interesting things about the Trinity, but he thinkis that idea was arrived at by the Church Fathers contemplating the relationship of Jesus to the Father and doesn't seem to know that the Trinity is found in many versis in scr8ipture, verses that affirm that God is One and Yet that Father, Sonm and Holy Spirit are separate Persons, or personas as he rather predantically insisted we understand, and that each one is also GFod , possises all he characteristics of God.  All that is in scripture, we didn't need the Church Fathers to arrive at it by musing on some small part of the Bible.  You can find all this spelled out at Blue Letter Bible.

BUT.  i DO COME BACK TO THE FACT THAT THIS cONTEMPLATIVE MOVEMENT DOES WANT US TO APPRECIATE THAT gOD IS lOVE, AND gOD IS RELATIONSHNIP.  yES THE TRINITY DOES EXPRESS LOVING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE THREE, AND HIS TERM pARICHORESIS OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT IS ok TO EXPRESS THAT i THINK, A "CIRCLE DANCE" OR SOMETHING THAT EXPRESSES THE INTERPRRELATIONSHIPS OF LOVE AMOTN THE THREE.  

but YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY OF THIS WITHOUT BEING SAVED AND THAT'S THE GIGANTIC HOLD IN HIS THINKING.  wITHOUT THAT IT IS ALL IMPOSSIBLE AND THAT IS THE DANDINCING AROUND THE PIT OF hELL i WAS TALKING ABOUT.  yOU MUST BE SAVED AND then YOU CAN HAVE gOD.  yOU CANNOT HAVE gOD UNTIL YOU ARE SAVED.

but.   i DO CONTINUE TO LAMENT THAT THE ONLY PLACES WE ARE INVITED TO THE LOVE OF gOD THAT PANTS WITHIN US WITHOUT FULFILLMENT AS tOZER RECOGNIZED ....   LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT SORRY.    i LAMENT THAT THE ONLY PATHS i KNOW OF THAT TRY TO LEAD US THERE LEAD US TO hELL INSTEAD, NOT THROUGH THE INVITATION TO LOVE gOD BUT THROUGH THTE FACT THAT THE FOUNDATIONAL GRACE OF SALVATION IS ESSENTIAL TO IT.

i HATE ALL THE MISTAKES i KNOW ARE IN THIS.  aND NOW i HAVE TO STOP.  i THINK THERE'S A LOT MORE THAT COULD BE SAID BUT i'LL HAVE TO COME BACK TO IT IF SO.