“Even a quick review of Nouwen’s life history uncovers many causes for concern, beginning with the simple fact that he was a Catholic priest, a minister in a church that imposes on its followers an elaborate system of works righteousness on its followers in place of the Gospel of grace. It is easy to forget about Nouwen’s Catholic priesthood when reading his books or watching his videos. He rarely dressed like a priest, and even when he wrote about distinctly Catholic institutions such as the Eucharist, he did not use “Catholic-sounding” language. He was, nevertheless, a life-long devotee of Roman Catholicism with its false gospel, worship of the Eucharist and devotion to Mary.”
“The Master of Mystical Deceit is exposed in our new article called
Henri Nouwen: Exalting Self and Diminishing the Cross “~ Richard Bennett, Berean Beacon
Henri Nouwen: Exalting Self and Diminishing the Cross
By L. S. Ormiston
A spiritual writer who has recently come into vogue among evangelicals is former Dutch Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen. Nouwen, a prolific writer and speaker who passed away in 1996, has been quoted favorably by such notables as Chuck Swindoll,1 David Jeremiah2 and Ravi Zacharias.3 He was a deep thinker and an eloquent one, and any Christian coming into contact with only a small portion of his work could be forgiven for thinking him wonderfully profound. However, if one stops and looks a while longer, then what one sees is a great deal of sentiment and poetry and sympathy that lacks any substantive, Scriptural content concerning sin, salvation or the meaning of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. He is a writer without any clear conviction beyond the fact that humanity suffers and God exists to somehow ease us in this suffering.
The Wrong Foundations
Even a quick review of Nouwen’s life history uncovers many causes for concern, beginning with the simple fact that he was a Catholic priest, a minister in a church that imposes on its followers an elaborate system of works righteousness on its followers in place of the Gospel of grace. It is easy to forget about Nouwen’s Catholic priesthood when reading his books or watching his videos. He rarely dressed like a priest, and even when he wrote about distinctly Catholic institutions such as the Eucharist, he did not use “Catholic-sounding” language. He was, nevertheless, a life-long devotee of Roman Catholicism with its false gospel, worship of the Eucharist and devotion to Mary.
Moving beyond his priesthood, we see that he added to Catholic heresies the study of psychology. Psychology not only observes man’s behavior but speculates causes and cures that lie completely outside of the Bible’s simple answers of sin and redemption. To the psychologist, the ultimate goal of an individual’s life is not, as the Westminster Confession famously proclaims, to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” but rather to find satisfaction and meaning through self-glorification. Nouwen’s mentor in his study of the human psyche was Gordon Allport,4 the man who first introduced the idea of self-esteem to psychology.5 Nouwen’s writings reflect this person-centered thought process, and an emphasis on people’s feelings and insecurities and sense of self, rather than any emphasis on the character, work or glory of God.
In the 1970s, Nouwen went to spend some months with the Trappist monks in the Abbey of the Genessee, a Catholic monastery in New York state.6 The Trappists are well known for their emphasis on a simple, austere life, and on the disciplines of silence and contemplation. Many leading Catholic mystics came out of the Trappist order. Again, Nouwen would go on to write a great deal about mystical prayer and contemplation, so much so that he eventually would speak favorably of works by Eastern gurus and mystics, describing how helpful he found them in his personal spiritual life.7
According to the Henry Nouwen Society, in the 1970s he also became a fellow of the Ecumenical Institute in Collegeville, MN,8 or the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research which is attached to Saint John’s Abbey and University. According to this organization’s website, they exist primarily to encourage dialogue and understanding between various branches of the “Christian” faith, but they also welcome believers of any faith at all.9 They say, “participants are encouraged to articulate their theologies in the context of their life stories – what they have experienced and known to be true of God and the church.”10 To these ecumenicists, of which Henry Nouwen was one, truth is defined less by the Bible than by personal experience.11
Henry Nouwen’s writings appear as the reflection and result of all these influences. They are, quite frankly, a theological mush. He writes eloquently, poetically even, and it is easy to see why his books have gained such a widespread following. But the very fact that they can appeal to such disparate fans as Chuck Swindoll and Hillary Clinton 12 should serve as a warning flag in and of itself. The Gospel of Scripture is hard and unpleasant for the world. Those who have been truly saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone are “the savor of death unto death”13 to those that are perishing. The Savior furthermore says, “Woe to you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.”14
Henri Nouwen’s written works are far too many and extensive to be covered by this article, nor does this writer claim to have read all of them; but just as it takes only a sip to discern that the milk has soured, so a sampling of his writing should be enough to prove that he should be avoided, not emulated, by any Christian.
The Biblical Gospel Passed Over
One of the reasons Nouwen appeals so strongly to people is that he is very frank about his own failings and struggles. He also seems to understand the struggles, insecurities and griefs that plague much of western society, so that people reading him think “This is someone who understands me.” Nouwen explains his concept of what is wrong with humanity in his book In the Name of Jesus:
Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world.15
All that may be true, and readers may relate to it strongly, but he never looks beyond that to find its ultimate and underlying cause: that is, sin. In failing to correctly diagnose the cause, he also fails to offer the Biblical and only solution: that is, the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross.
The more one reads of Nouwen’s beautifully empty prose, the more one becomes convinced that although he knows a great deal about human suffering, he neither understands what ultimately causes it, nor what the true solution is. In his book, Walk with Jesus: the Stations of the Cross,16 the chapter titled “Jesus Dies on the Cross” might seem remarkable for the words that are not used: sin, salvation, redemption, substitution, atonement, propitiation. Sometimes he seems to approach it: “The darkness in our hearts that makes us surrender to the power of death, the darkness in our society that makes us victims of violence, war, and destruction, has been dispelled by the light that shines forth from the One who gave his life as a complete gift to the God of life.” (76) Those are powerful sounding words, if only he could bring himself to give a name to that darkness, to call it what the Bible calls it—sin, rebellion against God. And how does the light of Jesus dispel such darkness? What does that mean? He never explains.
Elsewhere in this work, one ostensibly dedicated to meditating on Christ’s passion and death, you see the same thing. Always Nouwen dances around the subject of atonement and the precise meaning of what Christ accomplished. Every time he draws near, every time he makes a statement that makes you feel that he is on the very cusp of finally explaining it all, he veers away again. Ever and persistently, the reader’s attention is directed away from Jesus, and back onto the spectacle of humanity and its suffering which seems to so much fascinate Nouwen. “Jesus bore our suffering. The stripped body of Jesus reveals to us the immense degradation that human beings suffer all through the world, at all places in all times.”(64) “As we look at the dying Jesus, we see the dying world…. Jesus’ death reveals to us that we do not have to live pretending that death is not something that comes to all of us.” In the Concluding Prayer he says, “I look at you, and you open my eyes to the ways in which your passion, death and resurrection are happening among us every day.” (97) In this way, Christ’s death ceases (in his words) to be utterly unique and instead becomes typical of the whole human race—a picture, as it were, of what we all suffer.
Among all of this there is neither any talk of sin, nor of hell or the wrath of God, those terrible punishments from which Christ came to save us. You grasp the fact that the death of Christ is supposed to somehow give you hope in the midst of suffering, but the nature and reason for that hope is never elucidated.
This is more than just an aversion to theological language. This is a total lack of any theology, that is, knowledge of God, at all. If you are Christian reading Nouwen’s works from the perspective of the biblical Gospel—one that encompasses repentance from sin, and faith in the substitutionary death of Christ in our place—then you may find it easy to fit some of Nouwen’s words into that framework; but the fact is that although such ideas may exist in your mind, they form no part of his writings. If he did not talk about the substitutionary death of Christ in a chapter actually titled, “Jesus Dies on the Cross,” then when would he ever have occasion to speak of it? Jesus Christ did not allow His own flesh to be impaled on an instrument of torture as a mere gesture of solidarity with our human suffering. He was not playing the part of a pacifist or demonstrating the proper way to react to violence. He was accomplishing the salvation of souls by the payment of sin. He was drinking the cup of the perfect wrath of God because we cannot.
This lack appears even in Nouwen’s “best” books. The small volume of In the Name of Jesus subtitled “Reflections on Christian Leadership,” appears, at first reading, to be unexceptional. Nouwen offers many valid insights on the importance of avoiding certain traps of Christian ministry, as represented by relevancy, popularity and power. He sounds truly Christian, speaking of “the servant-leader Jesus, who came to give his life for the salvation of many,” (63) or proclaiming, “The task of future Christian leaders is… to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God’s people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom.” (87) “Christian leaders,” he says in another place, “cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance.” (45)
Even here, though, it is hard not to miss that which is absent. The book barely mentions the word sin, and never mentions the idea of atonement, much less as the focus of biblical preaching. Instead, it focuses on the Christian leader’s duty to rescue people from their own griefs and insecurities. At the end he says, “The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle and loving voice of God. A Christian leader is called to help people to hear that voice and so be comforted and consoled.” (90) Thus consolation, rather than salvation, becomes the purpose of ministry and even of the Gospel itself.
The Gospel as laid out in Scripture is clear. It is direct, rational and specific. When Paul talks about the atonement he talks in legal terms such as “justify” and “impute,” so that we can all understand that something real happened, something quantifiable and describable and certain. Nouwen, speaking like all mystics speak, avoids appealing much to the direct understanding. He uses phrases that evoke the reader’s imagination and sense of the mysterious, but which lack, especially where the cross of Christ is concerned, any clarity or certainty at all.
Redefining Spirituality
In an article commemorating Nouwen’s legacy, Catholic priest Ron Rolheiser said of him,
He was very instrumental in helping dispel the suspicion that had long existed in Protestant and Evangelical circles towards spirituality, which was identified in the popular mind as something more exclusively Roman Catholic and as something on the fringes of ordinary life. Both his teaching and his writing, helped make spirituality something mainstream within Roman Catholicism, within Christianity in general, and within secular society itself.17
Since Protestants and Evangelicals would doubtless be surprised to discover that they were ever suspicious of spirituality, we must ask just what Rolheiser means when he says “spirituality”—a spirituality common within the Roman Catholic Church, but not among Evangelicals; a “spirituality,” furthermore, that is accessible even to people who are not Christians, people who are members of “secular society.”
Part of the answer may be found in a book Nouwen published in 1992, only four years before his death. It is titled Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World.18 It is not a book addressed to Christians who seek to live holy lives in a sinful world, it is a book addressed to actually secular, non-religious people. The purpose of the book? Not to lead them to Christ, but to show them how they can practice “spiritual living” without having to come to Christ at all. He speaks of “[C]oncepts and images that for many centuries had nourished the spiritual life of Christians and Jews,” but which have for some people “lost their power to bring them into touch with their spiritual center.” (20) Both the Bible itself and its central image of propitiating sacrifice are conspicuously absent from this volume, making it apparent that Nouwen includes them among those now defunct spiritual concepts.
Nouwen begins by appropriating the words of approval which God the Father spoke to His sinless Son upon His baptism, “You are my beloved Son, on whom my favor rests,” and applying them liberally to all mankind, something the Bible never does. “‘You are my Beloved’ revealed the most intimate truth about all human beings, whether they belong to any particular tradition or not,” he says (30). He goes on to earnestly entreat his every reader to feel, believe, live the truth that they are the Beloved of God (upon whom His favor rests), through such means as gratitude and self-acceptance. God Himself is spoken of only in the most general terms, as the One who loves, and Jesus is spoken of not at all.
Some people might claim that this refusal to quote Scripture or use its terminology is necessary to appeal to those who do not like or understand the Bible, but that is nonsense. It is the Word of God which is the sword of the Spirit, not the word of man. No passage of time, no cultural trend, no amount of cynicism can blunt the blade that “pierc[es] even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”19
Compare these words of Nouwen in this book to the Scriptures:
Nouwen: “Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is… self-rejection.” (31) The Bible: “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man [self], which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.”20
Nouwen: “I had to be in touch with my own goodness…” (64) The Bible: “there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”21
Nouwen: “[T]he real ‘work’ of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.” (75-56) The Bible: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”22
These quotations are not aberrant phrases; they typify the entire book. The “spirituality” which Henri Nouwen sought to introduce to Protestants, Evangelicals and the secular world was a spirituality that had next to nothing to do with God, and everything to do with the self. Sin is a foreign concept to Nouwen; there is only self-doubt, suffering, anger, resentment, loss—none of which apparently offends God or requires punishment or atonement. No, God, as represented in these writings, is concerned not with satisfying His own righteousness and bringing glory to Himself (“I am the Lord: that is My name, and My glory will I not give to another.”23), but in making sinners feel better. Jesus, as He appears, when He appears (in Nouwen’s words, that is), shows us an example of how to live a life of love and how to cope with the sufferings and frailty of humanity, but His identity as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is eradicated.
It is ironic, really. As Nouwen waxes eloquent on the subject of God’s love, he yet misses it entirely. How can anyone possibly explain the love of God without explaining the one who embodied it – Jesus the Christ – or explaining His cross, love’s ultimate sacrifice and gift? Although Nouwen may, when he chooses, be able to write and speak to a Christian audience in a way that pleases them, one that speaks of Jesus and the Bible in sufficiently moving terms, it is here, in his admonishments to a dying world—“having no hope, and without God in the world”24—that he reveals his true universalism, and his true concern, which is not all for the glory of Christ and the Gospel, but for the glorification and exaltation of man.
Redefining Prayer
Again, in speaking of prayer, Nouwen admonishes, “It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover there the small intimate voice saying: ‘You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests.’ Still, if we dare to embrace our solitude and befriend our silence, we will come to know that voice.” (77) He tells his secular reader to look within for God, and without qualification or concern over sin. Proverbs, on the other hand, tells us, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord; but the prayer of the upright is His delight.”25
Much has already been written by authors like Ray Yungen26 on the movement towards contemplative, mystical, Eastern-originated spirituality which has recently engulfed much of evangelicalism. It is not this article’s objective to re-say all of that, but to briefly point out that Nouwen gives away his own part in this movement when he says, in Life of the Beloved, “The Hindu spiritual writer Eknath Easwaran showed me the great value of learning a sacred text by heart and repeating it slowly in the mind, word by word, sentence by sentence.” (78)
In his much-quoted work on prayer, Way of the Heart, he notably states, “[Solitude] it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born.”27 He does not say that conversion happens through reading the Word, through faith, through repentance, through the cross, through Christ, nor through any of the clear, objective means of grace and salvation which the Bible lays out for us—no, it is through solitude; through some vague, mystical process in which you turn inward on yourself and somehow find within yourself the intrinsic goodness and godliness you have always wanted and, unknowingly, possessed.
The Bible never tells any person to look to himself, his nature or his heart, for truth. In fact the Biblical position is that the heart is corrupted and incapable of feeling or desiring anything good at all apart from the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” says Genesis.28 “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” warns Jeremiah sternly: “who can know it?”29 Any notion any person may put forward of “inner truth” is only likely to lead to inner deception instead. The way to avoid deception is to rely on that which is external and objective: the holy, inspired, infallible Word of the Living God.
Nor does Scripture gives us any indication that God is concerned with making us feel better about ourselves. On the contrary, it condemns sin in the strongest possible terms. “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded,” enjoins James. “Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”30 “But to this man will I look,” declares the Lord, “even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.”31 The only way to be reconciled to God and to find His approval is to grieve over your sins, to recognize your own worthlessness, and to throw yourself on His mercy.
The Danger of Quoting
For an example of just how misleading short quotes of an author, especially this author, can be, look no further than page 44 of Nouwen’s book Wounded Healer. It says, “For we are redeemed once and for all. The Christian leader is called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the dirty curtain of our painful symptoms there is something great to be seen: the face of Him in whose image we are shaped.” It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It sounds like an affirmation of the security of the believer.
However, if you will back up only a single sentence, you may see this quote in a different light altogether.
It is not the task of the Christian leader to go around nervously trying to redeem people, to save them at the last minute, to put them on the right track. For we are redeemed once and for all. The Christian leader is called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the dirty curtain of our painful symptoms there is something great to be seen: the face of Him in whose image we are shaped.32
The fact is that this is not an affirmation of the believer’s security, but of the unbeliever’s as well. Nouwen is saying that people—all people, any people—do not have to be saved because they already are, and all we have to do is make sure they know it. Is this the Christian gospel? Is the reason the apostle Peter pleaded with the Jews at Pentecost, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation,”33 while exhorting them to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ? Is this what missionaries go the ends of the earth to proclaim—that God is already there, in their hearts, and they don’t need Jesus to get to Him? Of course not! Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”34
In the same way, though you may happen to read some passage or quote from Nouwen that sounds profound, moving and Christian, do not deceived by it. His words only appear that way when they are taken out of their proper context—that is, a philosophy and religion in which the glory of God and the Resurrection have no place whatsoever.35 He would be less dangerous if he hadn’t written anything that was true, but he did. He mixed a few valid insights—perhaps many valid insights—with poetic language and moving descriptions of his own and others’ suffering, while talking of God or Jesus and even quoting Scripture, yet skipping around, avoiding or outright denying the most important tenants of Christianity itself.
Henri Nouwen was not, as some evangelical leaders have claimed, one of the greatest saints in recent Christian history. He is not a saint at all, by the Biblical definition. He was the purveyor of a spiritual mysticism designed to appeal to people of any belief system at all. He often borrowed the language and imagery of the Bible, but eschewed its primary doctrines and teachings for a self-centered, indulgent, esoteric ideology. He was not a Christian; and he did not teach Christianity. No matter how thought-provoking some of his observations appear to be, his writings have no place in any organization that claims to teach Biblical doctrine.
Nouwen unscrupulously equated the true God with “the god within.” He thought to divest himself of God Himself by turning to inward self-realization and enlightenment. His values were founded on personal inner feelings incapable of reasoned explanation and he did not evaluate truthfully the depths of human wickedness. The Gospel is the exact opposite; it is the historical message of the Cross of Jesus Christ for a lost world. The Gospel proclaims Christ Himself, and the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, who in His love gave His Son to die for sinners. By nature we are sinners and in practice, rebels against the All-Holy God. We are justly exposed to the curse of the Law. Yet, the love of the heavenly Father, in the In the same way, though you may happen to read some passage or quote from Nouwen that sounds profound, moving and Christian, do not deceived by it. His words only appear that way when they are taken out of their proper context—that is, a philosophy and religion in which the glory of God and the Resurrection have no place whatsoever.35
He would be less dangerous if he hadn’t written anything that was true, but he did. He mixed a few valid insights—perhaps many valid insights—with poetic language and moving descriptions of his own and others’ suffering, while talking of God or Jesus and even quoting Scripture, yet skipping around, avoiding or outright denying the most important tenants of Christianity itself.
Henri Nouwen was not, as some evangelical leaders have claimed, one of the greatest saints in recent Christian history. He is not a saint at all, by the Biblical definition. He was the purveyor of a spiritual mysticism designed to appeal to people of any belief system at all. He often borrowed the language and imagery of the Bible, but eschewed its primary doctrines and teachings for a self-centered, indulgent, esoteric ideology. He was not a Christian; and he did not teach Christianity. No matter how thought-provoking some of his observations appear to be, his writings have no place in any organization that claims to teach Biblical doctrine.
Nouwen unscrupulously equated the true God with “the god within.” He thought to divest himself of God Himself by turning to inward self-realization and enlightenment. His values were founded on personal inner feelings incapable of reasoned explanation and he did not evaluate truthfully the depths of human wickedness. The Gospel is the exact opposite; it is the historical message of the Cross of Jesus Christ for a lost world. The Gospel proclaims Christ Himself, and the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, who in His love gave His Son to die for sinners. By nature we are sinners and in practice, rebels against the All-Holy God. We are justly exposed to the curse of the Law. Yet, the love of the heavenly Father, in the Gospel of grace, rescued us from His fiery indignation. By His grace, we turn to Him in faith alone, for the salvation that He alone gives, by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, based on Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection for His people, and believe on Jesus Christ the Lord alone. As the Scripture proclaims, “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved).”36 This grace and love melts our hearts in adoring gratitude as we proclaim, “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”37
1 Charles R. Swindoll, “Servant Hearted,” http://www.insight.org/library/devotionals/servant-hearted.html 5/25/2012
2 “Today’s Turning Point with David Jeremiah,” April 16, 2008 http://wcdevotionals.blogspot.com/2008/04/todays-turning-point-with-david_16.html 5/25/2012
3 “September 11, 2001: Was God Present or Absent?” by Ravi Zacharias http://www.rzim.org/justthinkingfv/tabid/602/articleid/6613/cbmoduleid/881/default.aspx 5/25/2012
4 http://www.henrinouwen.org/About_Henri/His_Life/Menninger.aspx 6/5/2012
5 http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/misc/Allporttalk.html 6/5/20120
6 http://www.henrinouwen.org/About_Henri/About_Henri.aspx 6/11/2012
7 Life of the Beloved, p 78; also Ray Yungen in A Time of Departing, p 62 says he endorsed Eknath Easwaran’s book Meditation: “On the back cover, Nouwen stated, ‘This book has helped me a great deal.’”
8 http://www.henrinouwen.org/About_Henri/His_Life/Teaching_Years.aspx 6/11/2012
9 http://www.collegevilleinstitute.org/about 6/11/2012
10 http://www.collegevilleinstitute.org/first-person-method 6/11/2012 Bolding in any quotation indicates emphasis added in this paper.
11 For Catholics, such an experienced based position on truth is acceptable under the corrupted authority base of Catholic Church dogma. That authority base is a mixture of “Holy Tradition,” as defined by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, and Scripture. See Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) Para. 81, 82.
12 http://www.henrinouwen.org/News/2011/articles/The_gift_that_was_Henri_Nouwen.aspx 6/11/2012
13 II Corinthians 2:15-16
14 Luke 6:26
15 Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989) p. 33
16 Henri J. M. Nouwen, Walk with Jesus: the Stations of the Cross (New York: Orbis Books, 1990)
17 “The Gift that Was Henri Nouwen,” http://www.henrinouwen.org/News/2011/articles/The_gift_that_was_Henri_Nouwen.aspx 6/11/2012
18 Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992)
19 Hebrews 4:12
20 Ephesians 4:22
21 Romans 3:12
22 Job 42:5-6
23 Isaiah 42:8
24 Ephesians 2:12
25 Proverbs 15:8
26 Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing (Silverton, OR: Lighthouse Trails Publishing, 2006)
27 P. 17, quoted at http://timsuttle.blogspot.com/2008/03/way-of-heart-by-henri-nouwen.html 6/11/2012
28 Genesis 6:5
29 Jeremiah 17:9
30 James 4:9-10
31 Isaiah 66:2
32 Quoted at http://www.christiandiscernment.com/Christian%20Discernment/CD%20PDF/General/04%20Nouwen.pdf
33 Acts 2:38-40
34 John 14:6
36 Ephesians 2:4-5
37 Romans 11:36
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Crazy Love Fest with Henri Nouwen
Filed under: Henri Nouwen, New Age Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism | Tagged: Berean Beacon, contemplative spirituality, Dutch Catholic Priest Henri Nouwen, Eastern Mysticism, ecumenicalism, In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, mystical experiences, mysticism in the church, Roman Catholic Mysticism, spiritual disciplines, Spiritual Formation, spiritual mysticism, universalism, Wounded Healer | Comments Off
