Fourth Way: Thomas Hooker on Union with Christ

The Fourth Way is a school of Christianity. Of reality. It is the spiritual warfare and development of being of a Christian eschatologically with Christ in Heaven while yet in the midst of the fallen creation until the return of the King.

The pure spring for the ideas, practices, and goals of the Fourth Way are Ouspensky's books: Fourth Way, Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, and In Search of the Miraculous. Thomas Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State comes closest, as an on-the-mark work of biblical doctrine, to giving direct insight into Work teaching from the Christian foundation of it. Berkhof's Manual of Christian Doctrine and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress as well. The Homeric epics embody, foundationally, the teaching in higher visual language. The Word of God, pure and whole (AV 1611, i.e. the King James Version) is obviously necessary for regeneration - which is, of course, the main thing - and the necessary armor of God for the spiritual battlefield. Without regeneration you won't value or understand Work teaching (or Calvinist, Reformed doctrine for that matter). The Work language and Christian language can't be mixed, thus it is easy to mock Work language from a shallow Christian point-of-view. The two languages are intentionally not meant to be mixed. This requires discipline and understanding. The Work is not for everybody, but it's available to anybody. Shallow Christian environments are shallow because of pervasive man-fearing. Fear God alone, and not man, it is the beginning of wisdom.

1.17.2008

Thomas Hooker on Union with Christ

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