Although the Holy Spirit indwells believers in Christ, nothing in God’s word teaches that within is a Divine Center or a Speaking Voice. The Holy Spirit is not comingled with the believer’s nature but is distinct from it. God’s voice is found in the Bible, a precious source of truth for all who seek guidance from it. Barton’s view is more akin to a Gnostic or New Age outlook, which seeks and values what arises during an inner experience. Does this fan the flames of spiritual elitism? 

In this first installment of a two-part series, we will look at two of Ruth Haley Barton’s books, Invitation to Silence and Solitude (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Books; 2nd ed, 2010) and Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Books, 2006). They are two key books in the burgeoning movement of contemplative practices in the church.
The extent of the issues in these two books is substantial, even for a two-part series. As a result, for the sake of time and space, almost as much will be left out as will be covered. The issues are addressed under four categories: Misuse of the Biblical Text, Reliance on Experience; Elitism; and Buddhist Influence. Many examples for the categories necessarily overlap. Quotes will be referenced by page number followed by the initials SR for Sacred Rhythms and SS for Invitation to Silence and Solitude. All Scripture is from the New American Standard 1995 unless otherwise stated.
Misuse of the Biblical Text
Invariably, the slide to false teaching begins with a misuse of the word of God. It also paves the way to introduce new, equally authoritative ways of knowing God.
Throughout Invitation to Silence and Solitude, Barton continuously cites the account of Elijah in First Kings chapter 19 as an illustration to support her points. In the preface, Barton writes that we are starved for quiet, to hear the sound of sheer silence that is the presence of God himself (19, SS).
The sheer silence is a reference to verse 12 in First Kings chapter 19, a phrase rendered in the New American Standard (1995) as a gentle blowing, in the KJV and NKJV as a still small voice, in the ESV a low whisper, while the CSB has a soft whisper.
In most languages, words have a range of meanings, and it is no different in Hebrew. Since there are different uses of this word, it cannot be established that Elijah heard an actual voice. A voice speaks words, and this does not appear to be a use of words. But immediately following this gentle blowing, there is a voice: a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (verse 13b).
This event is the third in a series for Elijah after he flees Jezebel. He first goes to a Juniper tree, where he asks God to let him die (verse 14). But the angel of the Lord brings food and urges him to eat (many believe the angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate Christ). He then travels forty days to Mt. Horeb, where Elijah again laments that Israel has abandoned God and God directs him to stand on the mountain. That is where Elijah witnesses a wind, earthquake, and a fire before the gentle blowing/stirring. When God speaks to Elijah, Elijah repeats that Israel has broken the covenant with God and killed God’s prophets. After this, God instructs Elijah to anoint two kings and a prophet, Elisha, who will be the successor to Elijah.
This is a narrative passage, not a prescriptive text. Although one learns about God in this passage and can draw important principles from it, it has nothing to do with, nor is it prescribing the practices Barton promotes.
Barton bases a number of her teachings on this account of Elijah, including entering a time of solitude (136, SS, and numerous other places) where Elijah acknowledged the truth about himself. Barton discusses Elijah as though he deliberately set out on a personal journey seeking silence and solitude as a way to hear from God, saying that he was hungry for an experience of divine Presence (87, SS), something found nowhere in the text. Elijah was a prophet and did not need to do anything to hear from God. God communicated with him often and directly, as God did with all his prophets. It appears that Barton was reading her own ideas into the text.
Barton has a section, “Moving from Head to Heart,” where she commits the logical fallacy of the false dilemma by making a distinction between head and heart. This distinction is a modern one, not a biblical one. She misuses Luke 10:27, where Jesus tells the lawyer to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. That Jesus says heart before mind, according to Barton, means that the mind comes a little further down the road in Jesus’ list (52, SR).
There is no evidence that Jesus listed these things in order of priority. In fact, the use of these terms together indicates an emphasis on loving God with one’s whole being, not with separate parts of the self. One cannot divide one’s mind from one’s heart or one’s will. They interact, work together, and overlap. I cannot say now I will love God with my heart, and later I will love God with my soul and later with my mind. In order to love God, one must know God, and one must use the mind to know and understand who God is. Loving God is not an emotion; it is an act of will and mind resulting from recognition of who God is and knowing God’s love through faith in Jesus Christ.
The mind is not inferior to what Barton calls the heart, nor is the mind the enemy. But in contemplative, New Age, and Eastern spiritual teachings, the mind is a barrier or sometimes an enemy. Nothing in Scripture teaches that the mind needs to be silenced or put aside. Being vain about knowledge, and allowing the mind to follow worldly philosophies or false beliefs is condemned, but those are related to pride and truth issues, not with the mind itself.
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The church is his chosen instrument for showing the cosmic powers, good and evil, “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33). The reality and existence of the church—this seemingly unimpressive, lowly, ignoble, unwise, unwealthy, unaccomplished body of local Christians, covenanted to each other—his ragtag church, this otherwise unremarkable church shows Satan and his minions that their time is short.

The word priority refers to “precedence in time or rank.” A priority is the “thing regarded as more important than another or others.”
Interestingly, according to the Google Books Ngram, the use of the word priority in English spiked in use around 1940 (leading up to and during WWII), then plateaued in the fifties. Then usage rose again sharply in the sixties and seventies, and priority enjoyed its heyday in the eighties and nineties. Since around 2000, usage has declined precipitously and returned about to where it was in the 1960s. And I can’t help but wonder if our ability to prioritize well, or the energy and attention we give to prioritizing well, may have declined with the use of the word. (And how it relates to the advent of the Internet in the same twenty-five-year period!)
Priority can be a tricky concept. To prioritize one entity over another clearly means something, but it services a range of applications. And in this session of talking about the priority of the church, however theological we take it, this inevitably relates to our priorities, both as Christians, and in particular as pastors—since this is a pastors conference. It would be one thing to speak to the priority of the church in a local-church congregation—or imagine this, to a gathering of Christian lawyers or athletes. And we could. I hope we will.
But brothers, this is a pastors conference. This is a message for lead officers in local churches (variously called pastors, elders, overseers—three names for one lead office in the New Testament). And the applications here of “the priority of the church” are especially significant for those whose breadwinning vocation is leading and teaching the local church. I know there are nonvocational pastors in the room with other breadwinning jobs. But for the vocational guys, the full-time pastors, there is no vocational disconnect between Christ’s priority of his church and ours. If Christ’s priority is echoed practically and substantiated anywhere, where will that be if not first and foremost in the lead officers who are the church’s preachers and teachers?
Paul’s Pastoral Priority
And so, we come to Ephesians 3, and especially verse 10, which is not a complete sentence:
…so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
In chapter 2, the first half (verses 1–10) has celebrated our salvation in Christ by grace through faith, and then the second half has marveled at the stunning (horizontal) development of Gentile inclusion. For centuries, God focused publicly on the Jews. He prioritized Israel. By and large, Gentiles were separated from the true God, “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (2:12). They were “far off” (2:13, 17).
But now, amazingly, in Christ, even Gentiles “have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (2:13). Jesus “has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility [between Jews and Gentiles] by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two” (2:14–15).
This reality, this “one new man,” made up of believing Jews and Gentiles, Paul has already called “the church” in 1:22, and that’s the term he uses again in 3:10 (and then 3:21 and then six times in 5:23–32).
In 3:1, Paul starts moving toward a prayer. He writes, “For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles . . .” Then he breaks off and gives us the glorious aside of verses 2–13. He’ll come back to his prayer in verse 14, but first he wants to make sure we understand his special calling, and then the church’s. Paul’s is “the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you” (3:2). He then speaks about “the mystery of Christ”—which is not an unsolved mystery but one that now has been made known. Previously it was hidden, until Jesus came. Now, it’s revealed. What is this mystery, once unsolved, now made known? Verses 6–11:
This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I take it that our focus in this session is this: What is the priority of the church for Christians? And in particular, for pastors: What’s the priority of the church for us? That’s where we’re headed: “The Church Prioritized” in the hearts and habits of her members and her ministers.
But might we first get our bearings, and spend our best focus, on a far more important prioritizer? Ephesians 3 is not concerned with our prioritizing. Not yet. Rather, here we marvel at God’s prioritizing of the church. And not just God as one, but also God as three.
So, before we get to us, as Christians and as pastors, let’s look at the priority of the church for God the Father, for God the Son, and for God the Spirit. (And hopefully this will be an exercise in proper prioritizing!) So, four truths about the priority of the church, with our hearts and habits coming last.
1. The Father prioritizes the church in his plan and purpose.
Verse 9 mentions his “plan”; verse 11, his “eternal purpose.” Let’s pick it up at verse 9:
[Paul’s calling is] to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things….This was according to the eternal purpose that [the Father] has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. (verses 9, 11)
Verse 11 mentions God’s “eternal purpose” (prothesin), and verse 9, “the plan [oikonomia] of the mystery hidden for ages [and now revealed] in God, who created all things.” It’s the same language Paul has already used in Ephesians 1:9–11. In the gospel, he says,
[God has made] known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan [oikonomian] for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose [prothesin] of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
God the Father has an eternal purpose, before creation, and he has a plan that he works out, in his perfect timing, in history—as Lord of creation and Lord of history.
What is this eternal purpose and plan? Now we need chapter 3, verse 10. Paul says he preaches to bright to light God’s plan,
that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
We have three parts here to verse 10 (working backward): (1) the rulers and authorities, (2) the manifold wisdom of God, and (3) how all that relates to the church.
Rulers and Authorities
In Ephesians 6:12, Paul will write—and this might be a helpful reminder in times when algorithms condition us for digital “culture war”—“We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” And we have “in the heavenly places” here in Ephesians 3:10 as well.
“The rulers and authorities” are minimally, or mainly, “spiritual forces of evil,” the devil and demons, “the cosmic powers over this present darkness.” They are not earthly creatures, but heavenly ones, in the upper register or another dimension (however it works). And we might assume that good angels are looking on as well, as Peter says of the good news of Jesus—of his sufferings and subsequent glories, of his grace and our salvation—these are “things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:12).
So, Ephesians 3:10 expands the audience. Previously, Paul has talked of (potentially) preaching “for everyone” (3:9) on earth, Jews and Gentiles, but now he says that also in view (presently) are “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
Manifold Wisdom of God
God’s wisdom is what lies behind and is revealed alongside this mystery long hidden and now revealed in Christ. Remember what we saw in verse 6: “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
God’s wisdom becomes evident in the great unveiling that is the preaching of Christ. And God’s wisdom is said to be manifold, many-sided, varied. The gospel may be a simple message, and yet the divine wisdom it reveals is no simple, basic, one-dimensional wisdom.
The gospel of Christ overturns and surpasses and puts to shame the wisdom of man, and does so over and over again. That God would become man, with an ignoble birth and childhood in a backwater; that he would live in obscurity for three decades, and be despised and rejected by his own people at the height of his influence, and be crucified (of all deaths!) as a slave; then, after rising from the dead, that he would ascend and be enthroned in heaven (not in Rome), and pour out his Spirit, and bring the far-off Gentiles near with believing Jews into his new-covenant church—this is stunning, multifaceted, many-sided wisdom!
In the simple gospel of Christ, the manifold wisdom of God is on display in turning upside down the world’s wisdom and strength and nobility. Christ crucified is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24).
And that phrase “both Jews and Greeks”—in one body, one new man from the two—is at the heart of what makes the wisdom of God so horrifying to “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (As Paul preached in Athens, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,” Acts 17:30.)
Which leads us to the last key phrase in verse 10: “through the church.”
Through the Church
How does God’s making known his manifold wisdom, to the hosts of angels and demons, relate to the church?
My prayer here, for us as pastors, is that God might be pleased to lift our eyes up from the ordinariness and the smallness and the annoyances and the frustrations of everyday practical church life—that we might see the church more like our God sees his church. In the immeasurable riches of his divine and Trinitarian fullness—infinitely happy, and overflowing in joy and creative energy and redeeming grace—our God, in the gospel of his Son, is making known his manifold wisdom to the spiritual forces of evil.
And how does he do it? Verse 10 says “through the church”—not armies, not technology, not sports, not entertainment, not political maneuvering—but “through the church the manifold wisdom of God [is] now be[ing] made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
The church is his chosen instrument for showing the cosmic powers, good and evil, “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33). The reality and existence of the church—this seemingly unimpressive, lowly, ignoble, unwise, unwealthy, unaccomplished body of local Christians, covenanted to each other—his ragtag church, this otherwise unremarkable church shows Satan and his minions that their time is short. In effect: “You see the church, believing Gentiles joining with the Jews as one body? Checkmate.”
How does that work? God the Son takes human flesh and lives a lowly life in obscurity for thirty years. Then, just when he really begins to turn heads, Jews and Gentiles conspire to cut him down and end the story. The crucifixion looks like utter folly, not manifold wisdom. Then he rises again! But forty days later, he ascends to heaven and is gone. Now what? From heaven’s throne, the risen Christ pours out his Spirit, his gospel spreads through faith and repentance, and the church begins to grow and increase and multiply, and not only among Jews, but also Gentiles.
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Written by Peter J. Gurry and John D. Meade |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
The Bible has such a rich history because so many have given their energy, their ingenuity, and even their lives so that we have it today. When we peel away the fabrications, we find a story that inspires Christians to read it, to love it, and to live it. One thing the Bible’s history teaches us never to do is take it for granted.

History’s Most Important Book
When it comes to books, none is more famous than the Bible. It’s the most sold, most translated, and arguably the most influential book in history. As a result, it occupies a vaulted place in our shared cultural conscience. When American presidents want to raise their rhetoric or filmmakers want to add gravitas, they reach for a biblical reference. Even today, as the Bible’s cultural authority waxes in the West, everyone knows something about the Bible.
As with anything of historical importance, the Bible has accumulated its share of mythical distortions in the popular mind. Many of these swirl around its origins. Maybe this is because the Bible’s origins span such a long time or because our culture is primed to distrust authority. Whatever the cause, these are five myths found both inside and outside the church about the history of history’s most important book.
Myth #1: The books were chosen by a church council.
This first myth may originate as far back as the 17th century, but it took hold of contemporary minds when it became a plot point in The Da Vinci Code. Whether it takes the form of the Council of Nicaea voting on the books in 325 AD or emperor Constantine himself hand-picking them, the common thread in this myth is that the Bible was finally settled by a one-time act of fiat. While it makes for a tidy explanation, there is no historical warrant for it. There was no vote on the canon at Nicaea, and Constantine never decreed what books belonged in the Bible.
What did happen, in brief, is that Christians relied heavily on Jewish precedent for the Old Testament and apostolic authority for the New Testament. If a book was used by the Jews or came with apostolic authority, it was accepted. In both cases, a large core of books was accepted widely and early with debates lingering for other books at the edges. For the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish writers, and the New Testament itself suggest a core canon of Pentateuch, Prophets, Psalms, and Proverbs by the end of the first century. Books like Esther and Ecclesiastes took a bit longer to be recognized. For the New Testament, the four Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters (including Hebrews), and most of the so-called Catholic Epistles (James through Jude) were fairly settled by the end of the third century with the shorter Catholic Letters (2 Peter, 2–3 John, and Jude) and Revelation taking longer. Other books like The Shepherd were eventually rejected, despite their popularity, as being written too late to have an apostle’s authority attached. By the fourth century, with Athanasius, we find a canon list that looks very similar to the modern Protestant Bible.
What was not fully decided in this period, at least in the Western church, was the question of the Apocryphal (or Deuterocanonical) books. The issue with these would not be resolved until the Reformation when the Reformers followed Jerome in rejecting them because they were never part of the Jewish canon, and the Roman Catholic church accepting them on the basis of their long use by Christians. Those decisions are still reflected today in the difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic Bibles.
Myth #2: The original text is lost.
If it took centuries for the canon to settle, the time it took to copy the Bible was even longer. Today, many think this long period was so haphazard and uncontrolled that we no longer know what the biblical authors said. The Dilbert cartoon creator Scott Adams summed up his understanding, saying that “among the document experts, no one has a clue what the original books of the Bible said. The first copies no longer exist.”
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