Picture a Christian who cares deeply about doctrine. What comes to mind? Probably someone with a thick book and a cold heart. Someone who’d rather diagram a sentence in Romans than enthuse over it.
Now picture a Christian who talks about encountering God, about a moment when heaven felt close and the room seemed to change. Warmer, surely. More alive.
That contrast is one of the most misleading in modern Christian life. The churches most often accused of being suspicious of experience have produced some of the most experience-soaked writing in Christian history. John Calvin wrote about the Spirit sealing the promise on the heart. John Owen wrote a long, tender book on enjoying the company of the Father, Son and Spirit. Jonathan Edwards argued religion that never stirs the affections isn’t religion at all. The Puritans had a name for the whole enterprise: experimental religion—faith you can actually taste, not merely file.
So our suspicion isn’t of experience. It’s of something narrower and more specific: experience treated as a fresh channel of revelation, answering to nothing outside itself. The question isn’t whether you felt something. The question is whether your feeling has been measured against Scripture.
First, What Do We Actually Mean by “Mysticism”?
Half the arguments on this subject are fights with a ghost. The word “mysticism” is doing at least six different jobs, and they’re not all equally troubling. Before anyone agrees or disagrees, it helps to know which one is on the table.
| SENSE OF THE WORD | WHAT IT MEANS | REPRESENTATIVE FIGURES OR WORKS |
|---|---|---|
| Contemplative mysticism | Deep, wordless prayer aimed at loving communion with God | Bernard of Clairvaux; Teresa of Ávila; The Cloud of Unknowing |
| Speculative mysticism | The soul has an uncreated “ground” that is one with God Himself | Meister Eckhart |
| Modern contemplative spirituality | Centring prayer, silence and emptying, popularised for evangelicals | Thomas Merton; Richard Foster; Thomas Keating |
| Revelatory experience | Impressions, prophetic words and inner promptings taken as messages from God | Much charismatic and prophetic practice |
| Popular devotional mysticism | Books that speak in the first-person voice of God to the reader | Jesus Calling and its many imitators |
| Syncretistic mysticism | Christian language poured into a non-Christian view of God and the self | Non-dualist, ashram and mindfulness-based spiritualities |
Here’s the point that changes the conversation. Some of these are the historic tradition’s near neighbours. Some are its opposites. Calvin quotes Bernard of Clairvaux warmly and often, more than almost any medieval writer. He would never have quoted Eckhart. The difference isn’t warmth. It’s what each one believes about God and the soul.
Why the Caution Grew: Four Centuries in Brief
The wariness did not come from nowhere. It was learned, painfully, from specific events.
1521–25: The Zwickau prophets and Thomas Müntzer. Men arrived in Wittenberg claiming they had direct revelation and therefore, had no need of the written text. Martin Luther mocked them as men who’d swallowed the Holy Spirit feathers and all. The first reflex of Protestant caution was born here.
1559: Calvin’s Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 9. Calvin answers those who abandon Scripture and fly to immediate revelation. His argument isn’t that the Spirit is quiet. It’s that the Spirit who inspired the written Word doesn’t now contradict it. Word and Spirit are bound together.
1637–38: The Anne Hutchinson crisis in New England. Hutchinson was intelligent, devout and popular, and she held gatherings in her Boston home to discuss the sermons. The trouble came when she began measuring the ministers by an inner light: she claimed God had spoken to her directly, apart from any text, and on that basis judged which preachers had the Spirit and which did not. At her trial she said so plainly, and that single admission decided the case. A young colony nearly split in two—not over whether God can be known personally, but over whether a private revelation may sit in judgement on public preaching.
1646: The Westminster Confession, Chapter 1, insists: Nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. The divines weren’t writing in a library. England was in the middle of a civil war, and pamphlets claiming fresh revelation were coming off the presses weekly. The sentence has two edges, and people usually notice only one: it refuses the additions of Rome and the additions of the enthusiast in the same breath. Scripture is not being fenced off from the Spirit. It is being protected from everyone who would speak in his name.
1741–46: Jonathan Edwards. The pivotal figure, and the one most often misquoted by both sides. Edwards was in the middle of a revival that was making people faint, weep and cry out in meetings. Half of New England said this proved God was moving; the other half said it proved nothing but hysteria. Edwards refused both verdicts. In The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741) he defended the awakening against the sceptics; in Religious Affections (1746) he took it apart with a scalpel and told his own supporters which of their favourite evidences proved nothing at all.
1970s onwards: The contemplative revival. Practices that had lived quietly in Catholic monasteries for centuries arrived in evangelical bookshops, and arrived without their original frame. Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline (1978) introduced a generation of Protestants to silence, solitude and contemplative prayer; the writings of Thomas Merton followed, and centring prayer as taught by Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington after that. Much of what came with them was a needed rebuke to a hurried, noisy Christianity. What also came, less noticed, was a method of prayer aimed at emptying rather than filling the mind—and a quiet assumption that the ordinary Christian’s Bible reading is a lower rung on a ladder.
1994 onwards: Toronto and the prophetic movements. What began in a small church near Toronto airport spread within months to Britain, Africa, Latin America and Asia, and the argument that followed was the old one in new clothes. Are unusual bodily manifestations evidence of the Spirit? Can a prophetic word direct a marriage, a move, a bank account? The question is no longer a Western debate about a single congregation. In much of the world today it’s the most practical question a young believer will face, and it hasn’t closed.
Notice the pattern. In every case the alarm was raised not because someone had an experience, but because an experience was being used to overrule, bypass or outrank the word God had already spoken.
Four Things That Are Really at Stake
Strip away the caricatures and the objection isn’t a blanket rejection. It is four precise concerns.
1. God is God, and we are not
The deepest problem with speculative mysticism isn’t that it goes too far in loving God. It’s that it dissolves the line between Creator and creature. If the soul has a spark that simply is God, then salvation becomes a discovery of what we already were rather than a rescue of what we could never be.
Yet the historic confessions aren’t shy about union with God. Calvin himself calls it that mystical union and says he assigns it the highest degree of importance. So the tradition owns the word. What it will not own is merger. Believers are joined to Christ really, personally and permanently by the Spirit—the way a branch is joined to a vine, not the way a drop is lost in the sea.
A fair note here: Eastern Orthodox teaching about sharing in the divine life, worked out by Gregory Palamas, is careful to say we share God’s energies and never His essence.
2. There is one ladder, and God came down it
Classic mystical schemes are usually ladders. Purge, then illumine, then unite. The problem is not that they ask for effort. It’s that they turn the way to God into a technique that some people master and most people don’t. Michael Horton has spent much of his career pressing this contrast: religion is either a story of our ascent to God or a story of God’s descent to us. Scripture is relentlessly the second. There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). The Word didn’t wait at the top of a staircase. He became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood of our need.
3. God has already said the decisive thing
The sufficiency of Scripture doesn’t mean God is silent. It means His speech has reached its climax. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). Once the Son has spoken, a private impression cannot carry the same weight—and the moment we treat it as though it can, we’ve quietly added a chapter to a finished book.
4. Biblical meditation fills the mind; it doesn’t empty it
This is perhaps the single most useful distinction in the whole debate. The Hebrew word behind “meditate” in Psalm 1:2 and Joshua 1:8 is hagah. It means to mutter, to growl, to chew something over out loud. It’s noisy, wordy work. We take a sentence God said and we turn it around like a stone in our hand until it gives up its light.
Contemplative emptying moves in the opposite direction: away from words, away from thought, into silence and absence of content. Both are called meditation in English. However, they’re not the same activity, and aren’t aimed at the same thing.
| BIBLICAL MEDITATION | CONTEMPLATIVE EMPTYING |
|---|---|
| Fills the mind with a specific text | Clears the mind of specific content |
| Talks back to God in words | Moves beyond words |
| Aims at obedience and delight | Aims at a state of union or stillness |
| Testable—we can say what we were meditating on | Largely untestable by another believer |
| Available to every Christian, at once | Claims to reward the practised adept |
Peter Saw the Glory—and Still Pointed to the Book
If any human being had grounds to build a ministry on a mystical encounter, it was Simon Peter. He stood on the mountain while the face of Jesus blazed, heard the voice from the cloud, and lived. Decades later he refers to it: we were eyewitnesses of His majesty (2 Peter 1:16).
Then he does something extraordinary. He ranks it. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place (2 Peter 1:19). Peter had the vision. He tells his readers the text is the surer thing.
Consider how strange that is by modern instincts. We’d expect the apostle to say: I have seen, you have only read, so trust my seeing. He says almost the reverse. Your Bible is a lamp you can carry into the dark. My mountaintop was a moment.
Paul does something similar and stranger still. In 2 Corinthians 12 he describes a man caught up to the third heaven who heard things too holy to repeat. He tells the story reluctantly, in the third person, refuses to disclose the content, and lands the whole account on a thorn in the flesh and the words my power is made perfect in weakness. The greatest recorded ascent in the New Testament produces no technique, no seminar and no platform. It produces a mere limp.
And in Colossians 2 Paul meets an early version of the problem head on: people insisting on visions, self-denial and the worship of angels, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head (Colossians 2:18–19). That last phrase is the whole diagnosis in five words. Spirituality that loosens its grip on Christ has gone wrong no matter how humble it looks.
But Isn’t This Just Cold Religion With a Bible Verse?
It can be. That accusation is sometimes earned, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
There are congregations where the doctrine is precise yet the atmosphere is cold. JI Packer spent a career warning knowing about God isn’t the same as knowing God, and that a person can be a walking library and a spiritual pauper.
But notice where the cure comes from. It has never come from less Scripture. It has come from Scripture felt.
The Tradition’s Own Witnesses Against Coldness
- John Calvin: wrote knowledge of God is a matter of the heart far more than of the brain. It must sink into the heart to be of any use at all. Remember, this comes from the man whose name is a byword for cold logic. His personal emblem said the same thing without words: a hand holding out a flaming heart, above the motto cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere—my heart I offer to you, Lord, promptly and sincerely. Not my mind. Not my argument. My heart, and quickly.
- John Owen: wrote an entire volume on communion with the Father, Son and Spirit, and another on the sheer sweetness of a spiritually minded life. That’s fire, not cold.
- Jonathan Edwards: argued true religion consists in great part of holy affections—not moods, but the settled inclinations of a changed heart.
- Samuel Rutherford: wrote letters from prison so warm that people who reject every one of his doctrines still read them for comfort.
- Sinclair Ferguson: reminds a distracted generation that the Spirit works with the Word rather than around it. This isn’t a limit on the Spirit but the shape of His kindness.
So the choice isn’t between doctrine and feeling. It’s between feelings anchored to something and feelings adrift.
Six Questions to Ask of Any Spiritual Experience
This is the practical part. You had a dream, a strong impression, a moment in a meeting you cannot explain. What now? Not panic, and not automatic acceptance. Six questions.
- Content. Does it agree with what God has already said? If it contradicts Scripture, the matter is closed, however lovely the feeling (Galatians 1:8).
- Christ. Does it make Jesus larger, or the person who received it? The Spirit’s stated job is to glorify Christ (John 16:14).
- Fruit. What’s there 12 months later? Edwards insisted sustained Christian practice is the surest sign, because it’s the one that cannot be faked in an evening.
- Posture. Has it produced humility, or a quiet claim to authority over other believers?
- Accountability. Are you willing to submit it to mature Christians and to your church? Paul assumed even genuine prophecy would be weighed (1 Corinthians 14:29).
- Direction. Does it drive you towards the ordinary means—Scripture, prayer, preaching, the Lord’s Table, the fellowship of ordinary saints—or away from them as though they were milk for beginners?
What Proves Nothing Either Way
Jonathan Edwards made a point that has quietened a great many anxious consciences. The following aren’t evidence for a work of God, and they’re not evidence against one:
- Strong bodily effects—tears, trembling, collapse, laughter
- Great intensity or zeal
- A lot of religious talk about the experience
- Bible verses springing suddenly to mind
- The experience arriving without being sought
What they do tell us is something happened. They don’t tell us what happened or who did it. Rather than weighing the intensity of the experience, we’re better off asking the six questions listed above.
There is a pastoral reason this matters more than it may seem. If our assurance rests on our most recent encounter, it will rise and fall with our sleep, our health and our temperament. RC Sproul often commented Christians hunting for an inner voice usually neglect the clear commands already in front of them. And Kevin DeYoung has written a whole small book against the paralysis of waiting for a feeling before obeying an instruction God has already given. In plain words.
The Point Was Never to Feel Less
Christianity isn’t a philosophy of the mildly interested. Peter describes believers rejoicing with a joy that’s inexpressible and filled with glory—about someone they’ve never seen. Paul prays his readers would know a love that surpasses knowledge, which is a strange and wonderful thing for a careful theologian to ask for.
So feel deeply. Weep in the singing. Rejoice in the fact that God knows your name.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Is centring prayer the same as Christian meditation?
No, and the shared word causes real confusion. Centring prayer, as developed by Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington, uses a sacred word to release thoughts and rest beneath them in wordless presence. Biblical meditation does the opposite: it takes a specific sentence God has spoken and works it over in the mind until the heart moves. One reduces content deliberately; the other multiplies it. A Christian who wants quiet before God has a far better path available—slow, unhurried, prayerful reading of a passage, which was the ordinary practice of the church long before anyone marketed a technique.
Can I read Teresa of Ávila or John of the Cross without being led astray?
With discernment, yes, and many careful Christians have profited from them. Unlike Meister Eckhart, both are explicitly Trinitarian and centred on Christ, and John of the Cross’s writing on spiritual dryness has comforted believers who assumed something had gone wrong with them. The concerns are about method and authority rather than heresy: an ascent structure that can imply advanced and beginner Christians, and an appeal to private experience that another believer cannot weigh. Read them the way you would read any devotional writer outside your own tradition—gratefully, and with Scripture open beside them.
Is Jesus Calling safe to read?
The problem is not the sentiments, many of which are gentle and true. The problem is the device: the book speaks in the first-person voice of Jesus, so the reader receives ordinary human counsel wearing the clothing of divine speech. That is a serious thing to do, and it trains a reader to expect God’s voice in a register the Bible never authorises. Sarah Young’s own account of how the material came to her makes the difficulty sharper rather than softer. If the content is good, it can be said in the third person; if it can only land in the first person, that is a warning rather than a recommendation.
What about Muslims who come to Christ through dreams and visions?
These accounts are widespread and shouldn’t be waved away. Notice the pattern in the credible ones: the dream almost never delivers doctrine. It unsettles a person, or points them towards a believer, a church or a Bible—and the actual gospel arrives through a human messenger and a text, exactly as it does in Acts 10 with Cornelius. God is free to providentially arrange an encounter without adding to Scripture. So we can rejoice in such stories without concluding that revelation is open again, and we should still ask what the person believes now, not merely what they saw then.
Is mindfulness compatible with Christian faith?
It depends entirely on what we mean by mindfulness. Stripped to a clinical technique for slowing the breath and noticing anxious thoughts, it is roughly on the level of physiotherapy and carries no more theology than a stretching exercise. Practised as it functions in its Buddhist frame, it teaches that the self is finally an illusion to be seen through—which is not a neighbouring idea to Christianity but a rival account of reality. The Christian alternative is not agitation; it is a mind set on things above, and a peace that comes from a person rather than from an emptied attention.
Is speaking in tongues a form of mysticism?
Not automatically, and Christians who agree on everything in this article still disagree about the gift itself. The question this article asks is about authority, not about which gifts continue. Paul places tongues firmly under order: he wants interpretation, limits the number of speakers, and insists the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets, because God is not a God of confusion (1 Corinthians 14). Tongues become a problem in the way mysticism does when they are used to mark a superior class of Christian or to place a message beyond examination.
Does “Be still, and know that I am God” teach silent contemplative prayer?
It’s one of the most affectionately misused verses in the Bible. Psalm 46 isn’t a quiet room; it’s a war scene, with mountains falling into the sea, nations raging and God breaking bows and burning chariots. The command in Verse 10 is addressed to the tumult—stop, cease, drop your weapons and recognise who actually rules. It is closer to “put down your arms” than to “close your eyes and empty your mind”. The comfort in it is real and enormous, but it is the comfort of a God who is unshakeable while everything else shakes, not an instruction in technique.
Related Reads
- What Are Spiritual Gifts and How Do I Find Mine? A Biblical Guide
- Does God Still Talk Directly To His People?
- 1 John 4:1: What Does ‘Test Every Spirit’ Mean?
- Solo, Prima and Sola Scriptura: Which Do We Affirm and Why?
- The Holy Spirit Then and Now: What Changed at Pentecost?
- ‘Can’t God Raise Up Apostles Even Today?’: The Bible’s Answer
