Why the Early Church Didn’t Practice Meditation (and why you don’t need to either)
This fact of the historical Christ brings a high degree of certainty and authority, but not full certainty and authority.
For, after all, if Jesus is only historical, it would be authority outside ourselves standing in history. No authority from without can be complete authority for us, unless it can become identified with our very selves, and can speak from within. The Christ of history must become the Christ within.
We cannot live upon a remembrance, however beautiful. We can only live upon a realization. But Jesus becomes that. He told his disciples that it was expedient for him to go away, so he went, but “he changed his presence for his omnipresence.” He came back more vital than before. Timid believers became irresistible apostles, for Christ had moved into their inmost souls. Life became merged: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; and yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,” cries the transformed Paul. Archimedes, after pondering a mathematical problem, suddenly finds the solution, and in his excitement rushes up the street crying, “Eureka, I’ve got it!” These men, pondering deeper problems, find a deeper solution, and cry from deeper depths: “We’ve got it.” Christ becomes self-evidencing. The historical passes into the experimental. They become witnesses.
It is often pointed out to us, as a defect, that the New Testament does not teach meditation, and it is claimed that Hinduism supplies this deficiency. It may be true that present-day Christianity lacks those depths that come out of meditation and quiet. But it is quite easy to see why there was little meditation in the New Testament. These men had found and realized. They were so filled with that finding and that realization that they had little time or disposition to spend in solitary, self-centered meditation. They hurried to put this cup of joy to the parched lips of the nations. They prayed, sometimes in prolonged seasons, not for their personal realization, but for courage to witness, and for the people to whom they were witnessing. Later, when the church lost this radiance, men attempted to regain it through the method of prolonged meditation and isolation. Meditation belongs to the period of striving to gain or regain spiritual certainty and realization. In the New Testament their meditation had turned into a mediation; they were joyously sharing.
How do we know that there is redemption in this history? Redemption comes out of it. The only test of light is that it shines, of a Revelation that it reveals, of a Redeemer that he redeems. How am I know to know that God has gone into this Historical Fact? By the test of whether he comes out of it. He does come out of it. He meets me here—meets me redemptively.
“Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest,
Cannot confound nor doubt Him nor deny:
Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.”
I challenge anyone to get into fellowship with this Christ of experience by repentance and self-surrender and obedience and then say, “This does not touch my soul’s inmost need, this is not life.” As Coleridge says: “Do not talk to me about the evidences of Christianity. Try it. It has been eighteen hundred years in existence and has any one individual left a record like the following:—‘I have given Christianity a fair trial. I was aware that its promises were made conditionally, but both outwardly and in my inward acts and affections I have performed the duties it enjoins, yet my assurances of its truth have received no increase. Its promises have not been fulfilled. I repent me of my delusion.’” These are not the words of those who come into touch with Christ…
Matthew Arnold was right when he said: “Jesus Christ and his precepts are found to hit the moral experience of mankind: to hit it in the critical points: to hit it lastingly: and when doubts are thrown upon their really hitting it, then to come out stronger than ever.” Jesus therefore needs no protection. He needs proclamation. He himself is his own witness.
– E. Stanley Jones, Christ at the Round Table
Yet every advantage that I had gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake. Yes, and I look upon everything as loss compared with the overwhelming gain of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For his sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of everything, but I considered it useless rubbish compared with being able to win Christ. For now my place is in him, and I am not dependent upon any of the self-achieved righteousness of the Law. God has given me that genuine righteousness which comes from faith in Christ. How changed are my ambitions! Now I long to know Christ and the power shown by his resurrection: now I long to share his sufferings, even to die as he died, so that I may perhaps attain as he did, the resurrection from the dead.
Yet, my brothers, I do not consider myself to have “arrived,” spiritually, nor do I consider myself already perfect. But I keep going on, grasping ever more firmly that purpose for which Christ grasped me. My brothers, I do not consider myself to have fully grasped it even now. But I do concentrate on this: I leave the past behind and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward the honour of being called by God in Christ.
– Philippians 3:7-14 (Phillips)
Artwork: “Portret of Carl Hohn,” Johannes Frederik Engelbert ten Klooster
