Hyperspirituality - Glenn Conjurske
Hyperspirituality
Introduction
Next to carnality, I suppose the greatest enemy of true spirituality is hyperspirituality. In one sense, I suppose it is a greater enemy, for it is certainly more subtle. I have observed for years what seems to be a general pattern, that wherever a man rises out of the bogs and swamps of lukewarmness and carnal principles, instead of planting his feet upon solid earth, he seems to soar off into the fogs and mists of hyperspirituality. It is not that men become too spiritual—as if that were possible—but rather that they proceed beyond the realm of true spirituality into that which is false. Hyperspirituality may appear to be too much of a good thing, but too much of a good thing is a bad thing. As a number of old proverbs speak, “Every extremity is a fault,” “Extremity of right is wrong,” “Right overstrained turns to wrong,” and “Too far east is west.” Too far east is west indeed, and too far right is wrong indeed—and it often so happens that hyperspiritual principles lead people directly into carnal practices.
Definition of Hyperspirituality
But before proceeding any further, I must define what I mean by hyperspirituality. Hyperspirituality is being more spiritual than God is. It is adopting principles that are more spiritual than those laid down in the Scriptures. This generally consists of displacing the natural with the spiritual, as though God were not the author of both. It consists of equating the natural with the carnal and the evil. It often consists of ascribing to God a larger place than he ascribes to himself, and so of course a smaller place to the gifts of God, the creatures of God, and the means which God has ordained. It generally, in principle, replaces the gifts, creations, and ordinances of God with God himself—thus supposing to give the greater glory to God, and never perceiving that to slight the gifts and ordinances of God is in reality to slight the Creator and Giver of them.
This is pride and will-worship, which under the color of glorifying God actually impugns his wisdom and his ways. It slights everything natural, as well as everything human, including human responsibility, human exertion, human emotion, and human need. “Natural” and “carnal” become virtual synonyms, and to refuse that which is merely natural, or merely human, becomes the badge of spirituality. The God-implanted emotions and needs of mankind are equated with “sin that dwells in me,” and all are denied together. “Touch not, taste not, handle not”—injunctions entirely legitimate and necessary where sin is concerned—are applied to the very gifts of God. This is will-worship and voluntary humility, which under color of giving a larger place to God, actually gives him a smaller place, for it despises the gifts and ordinances of God, exalts itself above the wisdom which ordained and gave them, and calls that evil which God calls good—or, in a milder form, calls that needless which God has created for our good. Under color of affirming the all-sufficiency of God, it in reality proclaims the all-sufficiency of self, for, all oblivious to its own weakness and need, it thinks to do without the very things which God has made profitable or necessary to its own well-being.
Historical Roots of Hyperspirituality
It seems that hyperspirituality has plagued the church from its very inception. Paul wrote against hyperspiritual notions in several of his epistles. During the days of the church fathers, as they are called, hyperspirituality gained the ascendency and laid the foundation for a millennium of asceticism and monasticism. It was primarily the hyperspirituality of the church fathers that led them eventually to reject the Bible doctrine of premillennialism. Though it had been firmly held by the early church, there was really no way that premillennialism could survive in such an atmosphere. Everything earthly was supposed to be unspiritual. All that belonged to human life on the earth was despised, so that many of the early Christians thirsted for martyrdom. Ignatius, martyred in A.D. 110, while enroute to Rome to die, repeatedly admonished the Christians not to intercede for him to save his life. But all of this was as unspiritual as it was unnatural. We see no such wanton throwing away of life in the Scriptures, but just the reverse. Paul may have been in a strait betwixt the two, desiring to depart and to be with Christ, as well as to remain upon the earth to serve him, but he did nothing to throw away his life. When they watched the city in order to take him, he escaped in a basket over the wall. When the Jews swore to kill him, he sent a messenger to the governor to secure his protection.
Rejection of Earthly Gifts
Neither did Paul despise the things of this life, while this life lasted. To forbid their use, he calls “doctrines of devils,” specifically, “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which GOD HATH CREATED TO BE RECEIVED WITH THANKSGIVING of them which believe and know the truth. For EVERY CREATURE OF GOD IS GOOD, and NOTHING TO BE REFUSED if it be received with thanksgiving.” (I Tim. 4:3-4). Meats and marriage are natural things, and therefore regarded as carnal, unspiritual, or at best unnecessary, by the hyperspiritual. But in so regarding them, they set themselves against the wisdom of him who created them. They must, if they would but think so far as to be consistent with themselves, suppose that God was unspiritual when he created a natural, earthly paradise. They must suppose that Adam’s condition was unspiritual, when he freely ate of every tree in the garden, lived in the delights of the charms of Eve, and walked with God in the cool of the day.
Hyperspirituality and Food
The hyperspiritual, of course, cannot abstain altogether from meats, but what tightropes they have walked in the use of them! Augustine (church father of the fourth and fifth centuries) writes thus of his struggles: “But now the necessity [of eating] is sweet unto me, against which sweetness I fight, that I be not taken captive; and carry on a daily war by fastings….
“This hast Thou taught me, that I should set myself to take food as medicine. But while I am passing from the discomfort of emptiness to the content of replenishing, in the very passage the snare of concupiscence besets me. For this very passage is pleasure, nor is there any other way to pass thither, to which necessity obliges us. And health being the cause of eating and drinking, there joineth itself as an attendant a dangerous pleasure.”
All of this struggle, of course, assumes that physical pleasure is sinful—calls the enjoyment of food “concupiscence”—assumes that those natural appetites, and the means of satisfying them, which God created and pronounced “very good,” are in fact evil. Augustine imputes that evil to God, for according to his notions, what God has made necessary to our being is in fact a snare to our well-being. But one word of Paul scatters all of this chaff to the winds, for Paul says that God “giveth us richly all things TO ENJOY.” Richly. Not stintingly, or as a medicine. All things. All things which he has created, that is. “Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused.” And all of this TO ENJOY. The appetites with which we are created, the capacities for enjoyment, and the means by which those capacities are to be satisfied, are all “very good.” (Gen. 1:31). To think anything otherwise of them is the quintessence of hyperspirituality. All of God’s creatures may be abused, but use and abuse are two things, and the evil uses to which men put the gifts of God do not make those gifts evil.
Hyperspirituality in Marriage
And as hyperspiritual notions have done with meats, so they have done with marriage also, only to a far greater extent. Meats are necessary to our being, marriage only to our well-being. Marriage, therefore, may be dispensed with altogether, where meats are only slighted. It was very early in the history of the church that virginity—or abstinence at any rate—began to be equated with spirituality. Tertullian (who lived about the years 150-230) has a great deal to say on the subject, and all of it hyperspiritual. He says, “The will of God is our sanctification, for He wishes His image'—us—to become likewise His likeness;’ that we may be holy' just as Himself is holy.‘ That good—sanctification, I mean—I distribute into several species….The first species is, virginity from one’s birth: the second, virginity from one’s second birth, that is, from the [baptismal] font; which [second virginity] either in the marriage state keeps [its subject] pure by mutual compact, or else perseveres in widowhood from choice: a third grade remains, monogamy, when, after the interception of a marriage once contracted, there is thereafter a renunciation of” physical connection.
Sanctification, then, in Tertullian’s view, is abstinence. Of the “mutual compact,” by which couples are kept “pure” in the bonds of marriage, Tertullian says elsewhere, “Accordingly, the apostle added [the recommendation of] a temporary abstinence for the sake of adding an efficacy to prayers, that we might know that what is profitable `for a time’ should be always practised by us, that it may be always profitable. Daily, every moment, prayer is necessary to men; of course, continence [is so] too, since prayer is necessary. Prayer proceeds from conscience. If the conscience blush, prayer blushes.”
Paul says we might separate “for a time,” and “come together again.” (I Cor. 7:5). Tertullian says, what is good for a time must be good always. We must abstain, or blush! This, and all he says on the subject, is born of his own false notion that the physical contact of man and wife is defiling. Yet God says, “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.”
Hyperspirituality and Modern Views on Marriage
Those who quote Tertullian to establish the position of the early church against remarriage after divorce will understand how worthless his testimony is in such a matter, when they understand that he called a second marriage after the death of a spouse “fornication,” and advocated celibacy in marriage. He held all physical contact to be evil. In writing against a second marriage, and putting it on the same footing with fornication, he continues, “Then,' says [some one], are you by this time destroying first—that is, single—marriage too?’ And not without reason [if I am]; inasmuch as it, too, consists of that which is the essence of fornication.”
Conclusion: The Dangers of Hyperspirituality
But I trust the reader has had quite enough of this, especially since we live in a day when there is not very much danger of this kind of hyperspirituality. Yet marriage suffers still from the ravages of hyperspirituality, for while almost all Evangelicals accept the physical part of marriage as “honorable” and “undefiled”—and will even grant that it is necessary “to avoid fornication”—there are yet many of them who despise and contemn the emotional part of marriage, and regard that as frivolous and unnecessary. Love they will of course allow, but not romantic love. That they regard as something carnal, foolish, frivolous, or at best, unnecessary.
Such hyperspirituality is of long standing in the church. George Whitefield, in 1740, wrote a marriage proposal to a young lady, in which he said, “I think I can call the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to witness that I desire to take you, my sister, to wife, not for lust, but uprightly; . . . The passionate expressions which carnal courtiers use, I think, ought to be avoided by those that would marry in the Lord.” Whoever wrote the Song of Songs evidently did not know this—but then that book has been so often spiritualized that perhaps Whitefield would not have acknowledged that it pertained to marriage at all.
But what is this, but to trample upon the deepest need of a woman’s nature?—to tell her that it matters not to him whether she accepts or rejects his proposals, for he has no love for her? What a vast difference between this cold letter, and that which Adoniram Judson handed to Emily (his third wife):
“I hand you, dearest one, a charmed watch. It always comes back to me, and brings its wearer with it. I gave it to Ann when a hemisphere divided us, and it brought her safely and surely to my arms. I gave it to Sarah during her husband’s life-time (not then aware of the secret), and the charm, though slow in its operation, was true at last.”