The Unpredictable Workings Of God

There is no doubt that there is a direct relationship between the arrival of the scientific movement in the 1600's, and a shift in the presentation of monastic practise. Patristic literature as well as early monastic discipline - both cenobitic and solitary - never presented themselves as formulaic with guaranteed results for those who assiduously carried out the correct disciplines in the correct order. However, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the development of a wave of religious exercises, theologies, dogmas, and catechisms whereby under carefully controlled conditions certain disciplines were efficiently worked out guaranteeing a precise kind of grace. Today you have all sorts of precise religious formulae set out by every church body so that adherents are able to obtain exactly that for which they are hoping. The lively interaction offered by God has devolved into methodology. Instead of a contrite conscience that has died to itself, people are trained to observe themselves in prayer. Without working to develop the inner soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love, concentration on an insane and tactless emphasis on rationalist discourse and praxis. This has dealt a fatal blow to genuine discipleship across denominations ever since. Because the genuine, historic, proto-Christian, direct experience of God served to draw out a deeper, less rationalistic attention that was not a matter of forcing any issues or getting what you wanted, but of learning the ways of the spirit and of grace, and of simply being ready and open to respond to the unpredictable workings of God in the world.