Thread: Mysticism?

The Lord recently brought along my path a younger Christian whose church backround is that of eastern orthodoxy. God has been graciously teaching him critical points of doctrine which he was previously ignorant of- such as justification, it's relationship to sanctification, and the TULIP. I'm blessed to see his progress, but at the same time, he's been really influenced by the "Jesus prayer" type monastic, inward spirituality, and I'm not finding very many resources on the subject. I'm not cold and desirous of quenching any fire he has, but I simply want to help him see the errors in going to unbiblical extremism. What's hard is, as I've encouraged him to continue on with his inclination to read Luther, he's stumbled upon the fact that Luther loved the theologia germanica- which seems to be very (overly?) mystical- and is fascinated by it! Anybody know any good resources dealing with "river of fire" by Alexander Kalamiros, the theologia germanica, or anything else helpful on extreme mysticism?

Originally Posted by TKarrer

The Lord recently brought along my path a younger Christian whose church backround is that of eastern orthodoxy. God has been graciously teaching him critical points of doctrine which he was previously ignorant of- such as justification, it's relationship to sanctification, and the TULIP. I'm blessed to see his progress, but at the same time, he's been really influenced by the "Jesus prayer" type monastic, inward spirituality, and I'm not finding very many resources on the subject. I'm not cold and desirous of quenching any fire he has, but I simply want to help him see the errors in going to unbiblical extremism. What's hard is, as I've encouraged him to continue on with his inclination to read Luther, he's stumbled upon the fact that Luther loved the theologia germanica- which seems to be very (overly?) mystical- and is fascinated by it! Anybody know any good resources dealing with "river of fire" by Alexander Kalamiros, the theologia germanica, or anything else helpful on extreme mysticism?

Was it not the pre-95 theses Luther who endorsed the Theologia Germanica?The later Luther was quite suspicious of Mysticism. Before my conversion, I too was fascinated with the Theologia Germanica, Meister Eckhart and others. When I came to understand that all Truth is propositional, I lost all interest in mysticism. I would recommend the books of Gordon Clark to your friend.

-----Added 10/15/2009 at 08:29:52 EST-----

Trinity Foundation: Explaining God, man, Bible, salvation, philosophy, theology.http://http://www.trinityfoundation.org/

If he already likes Luther, point him to Luther on John 14-16 (it's volume 24 of the 55 volume American edition of Luther's works). That should help to set Christ in his word at the forefront of his thinking.

I doubt it's likely he would enjoy Gordon Clark, and I doubt it's likely that Clark is the remedy to mysticism.