Brennan Manning

[Sing4Him]

Does Brennan Manning promote
Eastern mysticism and contemplative spirituality?
Read for yourself:
"Herein lies the secret, I believe, of the inner life of Jesus. Christ's communion with Abba in the inner sanctuary of His soul transformed His vision of reality, enabling Him to perceive God's love and care behind the complexities of life. Practicing the presence helps us to discern the providence of God at work especially in those dark hours when the signature of Jesus is being traced in our flesh. (You may wish to try it right now. Lower the book, center down, and offer yourself to the indwelling God.)" From Signature of Jesus - Brennan Manning


Abba's Child by Brennan Manning; page 125 - "If I find Christ, I will find my true self and if I find my true self, I will find Christ."

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/manning.htm

[Sing4Him]

The Biblical God Does Not Exist
Says Brennan Manning

In Discipleship Journal Issue 100 1997 page 78 in an interview, Brennan Manning recommends William Shannon's book, Silence on Fire and Thomas Keating's book on centering prayer, Open Mind, Open Heart. In Silence on Fire, 'Shannon blasts the Christian, Biblical God. Page 109, 110 "This is a typical patriarchal notion of God. He is the God of Noah who sees people deep in sin, repents that He made them and resolves to destroy them. He is the God of the desert who sends snakes to bite His people because they murmured against Him. He is the God of David who practically decimates a people ... He is the God who exacts the last drop of blood from His Son, so that His just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased. This God whose moods alternate between graciousness and fierce anger. This God does not exist." Please note Manning uses this quote nearly word for word in his book Above All [pg. 58] (foreword by Michael W. Smith)

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/manningbiblecross.htm


Manning's View of the Bible
"I am deeply distressed by what I only can call in our Christian culture the idolatry of the Scriptures. For many Christians, the Bible is not a pointer to God but God himself. In a word—bibliolatry. God cannot be confined within the covers of a leather-bound book. I develop a nasty rash around people who speak as if mere scrutiny of its pages will reveal precisely how God thinks and precisely what God wants."—Brennan Manning, Signature of Jesus, pp. 188-189

[Sing4Him]

The Ragamuffin Gospel

by Brennan Manning

Manning is a former Roman Catholic priest who left the priesthood to marry. He has recently divorced his wife. He is a recovering alcoholic who lapses every so often. He is a product of pop-psychology and Roman Catholic mystics rather than Scripture. He is on the cutting edge of the contemplation prayer movement which is steadily leading evangelicals toward Eastern mysticism. He is questionably a universalist who has nothing good to say about the church but adores AA. Yet somehow he is all the rage among many evangelicals. The Ragamuffin Gospel is praised and endorsed by Michael W. Smith, Rich Mullins, Max Lucado, Eugene Peterson and Philip Yancy. It is the testimony of a beat-up, knocked-down sinner being saved by the grace of God. That’s the good news; no doubt this message centering on the grace of God is the primary draw of the book. There is nothing wrong, actually there is everything right, about that message. It is in the details where Manning strays.


•The sources for his philosophy of life range from Catholic mystics to Paul Tillich to Norman Mailer to Carl Jung.


•His use of Scripture is scanty but when he attempts to support his views from the Bible he usually goes astray (e. g. pp. 37, 142, 166-7, 220).


•He confuses “loving sinners” with “accepting their sin” (p. 33) and believes that forgiveness precedes repentance (pp. 74, 167, 181). This leads to continuous hints of universalism (pp. 21, 29, 31, 33, 37, 74, 223, 232) although he never directly claims to be a universalist.


•He is heavily soaked in pop-psychology which taints all he says: accepting self (pp. 49, 152, 229); self-intimacy (p. 49); loving ourselves (pp. 50, 168); inner child (p. 64); forgiving yourself (p. 115); self-image (pp. 147-148); self-worth (p. 148).


•He accepts a postmodern worldview and calls for us to be open-minded about truth, reality and Christ (p. 65).


•He consistently presents a lopsided view of God. God is loving and forgiving but never a judge, disciplinarian or punisher (p. 75), contrary to the clear teaching of Scripture.


•God is not man’s enemy, contrary to Romans 5 that says we are the enemy of God if we are not saved (p. 76).


•We are told that God does not test us or promote pain (p. 76).


•He believes that God speaks today outside of Scripture (pp. 94, 117, 186-187, 229) and that the presence of God is a felt experience that we should seek (pp. 45, 46, 94, 162, 229).


Add all of this up and we have a book that makes some good points, especially about God’s grace, but distorts so much about God and truth as to render it worse than useless—it is downright dangerous.

reviewed by Gary E. Gilley, Pastor-Teacher
Southern View Chapel - Springfield, IL

http://www.svchapel.org/Resources/BookReviews/book_reviews.asp?ID=218

Bookstore • Resources • Sermons ©2007 SVC

[Lexie]

In the book in "Abba's child" Brennan Manning said Beatrice Bruteau was a "trustworty guide to contemplative consciousness" Which leads to the global brain cosmic christ and Ken Wilber, Marcus Borg, Alan Jones, Jay Gary, Matthew Fox, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Alice Bailey, Madame Blavatsky, and Ms Bruteau's husband James M. Somerville.

James M. Somerville is professor emeritus of philosophy from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was cofounder and executive editor of the International Philosophy Quarterly is widely published including The Mystical Sense of the Gospels (Crossroad, 1997) and Jesus: A Man for Others (Univ. of Scranton Press, 2004). He lives in North Carolina with his wife Beatrice Bruteau.

“The presence of the Goddess herself has never departed from her holy place in our consciousness, and now, as we enter what many feel to be a ‘new age’, we sense that the Goddess is somehow making her way back to us.” Beatrice Bruteau, ‘The Unknown Goddess’

http://www.theosophical.org/publications/questmagazine/mayjune05/somerville/index.php

Michael is a former fundamentalist pastor and has developed the Gospel According to Evolution. He calls this "sacred evolution." It goes beyond the reductionist scientific view that evolution is mindless, purposeless, and without direction. It also goes beyond Creationism or Intelligent Design, which he claims "trivializes" God. Inspired by "Evolution's Arrow" by John Stewart, he has put together a stunning presentation of the intrinsic progressive directionality of evolution. He sees the whole "universe story" as "God's revelation." "God" is the sacred name for the whole of reality, measurable and immeasurable. He and his science writer wife, Connie Barlow, have coined a new word "creatheist" suggesting that the whole of reality is creativity in a vested, directional sense. It means real-izing religious ideals.

He and Connie, along with Tom Attlee (one of the leaders in the "co-intelligence" movement), have convened two remarkable evolutionary salons. Check them out on their website at www.TheGreatstory.org. You will see that a small critical mass of leaders in a variety of fields are inspired by the understanding and opportunity for conscious evolution. I attended the first Salon and hope to be at many more. Michael tells me that they will hold evolutionary salons for key sectors of the Wheel of Cocreation (see at www.evolve.org) – journalists, artists, etc. to inform and inspire them with the evolutionary perspective. I suggested a salon on Evolutionary Politics. I met Michael and Connie recently at Mary Manin Morrissey's Miracle Mastery conference. Her ministry is called Evolving Life Ministry. Mary & I will work together to apply the advanced "Evolutionary Codes" that I have been working with to an advanced teaching for those who have been deeply practiced in New Thought and other spiritual paths. Meanwhile, Michael and Connie initiated a Web-Based Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Spirituality. They use Wiki software (e.g. the Wikipedia) to create an online, Open Source Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Spirituality, where people from around the world can cocreate and edit emerging theologies, rituals, songs, sacred writings, etc. of Evolutionary Buddhism, Evolutionary Islam, Evolutionary Christianity, Evolutionary Judaism, Evolutionary Humanism, Evolutionary Paganism, etc. I suggested that the evolutionary spirituality that springs from conscious evolution is a meta-religio; it draws from all paths but is taking into account science, technology and the new requirement of conscious participation in the process of creation.

http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/Public/AboutBarbara/Newsletters/index.cfm?emailID=26


A History of Evolutionary Spirituality
http://www.andrewcohen.org/teachings/history-evolutionary-spirituality.asp


Preachers of a New Pentecost
http://www.wie.org/j25/new-pentecost.asp

Emergent church Brian Mclaren, Jay Gary, Barbara Marx Hubbard
http://www.wnrf.org/cms/associates.shtml

Sufism :idunno
http://evolvingconsciousness.com/sufi6.html

[WhitemoonG]

Interesting stuff to ponder. I know this guy is frequently mentioned. Sounds worse than just misguided to me.

Seems he has little stock in fearing the Lord. Maybe he sees God ONLY as a harmless ragamuffin.

[Chris]

Interesting stuff to ponder. I know this guy is frequently mentioned. Sounds worse than just misguided to me.

Seems he has little stock in fearing the Lord. Maybe he sees God ONLY as a harmless ragamuffin.

Man has always tried to bring God down to his level, and as a result try to make God into some cosmic teddybear in that he is simply going to look the other way when it comes to judgment. Too many people as a result of the age of grace have gone on to try to come up with other ways to God than the one way he has provided to us. And they don't just stop there, they start changing all the other teachings fo the Bible as well. It's a shame but man and his free will get himself into alot of trouble. :ohno

There's a verse that says what seems right to men, leads to destruction and death. :shocked Although sometimes the means doesn't lead directly to death, it can be the indirect means of false teachings, mystic spiritualization, etc. that keeps people from having a personal relationship with God, and thereby some before they ever have a chance to get saved end up never having that required personal relationship with God. And that leads them to death and destruction. False teachings and apostate teachings are not good and they could cause rot in the body of Christ. This is why we need to continue to expose these that are heading down the wrong road. Especially when their reach and influence is what they are ,and why they are some of them are the more popular teachers. JMHO.

(Proverbs 14:12 KJV) "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."