gnosticism-july-august-1995

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Editor-in.,t:hief Michael8orton

Managillg Editor Sara McReynolds

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layout/Design Shane Rosenthal

Contrib'"ding Scholars Dr. John Arcmstrong

Dr. SteveN\; ' Baugh

Dr. James :S'o ice

Dr. D. A., Carson

The Rev. Knox ChambUfi,

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Dr. 8ryan Chapell Dr. Daniel Doriani

The ~'Rev. J. Ligon Duncan

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Dr. Darryl C; Hart

Dr. Carl F. t~L blenry

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Dr. Robert Preus

Dr. R. C. Sproul

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Dr. Gene E. Veith

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CURE Board of Directors Douglas Abendroth

Michael E. Aldrich

John G. Beauman

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Dr: W. Robert Godfrey

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THE NEW GNOSTICISM

Michael Horton

13

GNOSTIC WORSHIP

Michael Horton

22 TRICHOTOMY: A BEACHHEAD for GNOSTIC INFLUENCES Kim Riddlebarger

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ARE YOUR HYMNS TOO SPIRITUAL?

Michael Horton

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THE PRIDE OF SIMPLICITY

Leonard Payton

In this Issue

Page 2

Letters To The Editor

Page 2

Gnostic Tendencies

Page 3

For Further Reading

Page 32

Tape Excerpt: Pat Robertson

Page 32

ABOUT THE COVER: G ianlorenzo Bernini's depiction of The Ecstasy of SL Theresa; a sa int of the Counter Reformation who had described how an ange l pierced he r heart with a flaming golden arrow; "The pain was so grea t that I screamed aloud; but at the same time I felt such infinite sweerness that [ wished the pain to last forever. It was not physica l but psychic pain, although it affected the body as well to some degree, It was the sweetest caress ing of the soul by GoeL"

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22 JUL Y/AUGUST 1995

In This Issue

by Michael Horton

MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, the greatest threats to ChristIan­ if9:' have come not from external, en~mies, but from internal chal­ l~'nges to r~shape the message to suit the suf rounding culture. No gre,ater exa!ilple of this can be foundt~~n in the an61ent hefe~y ~f GnQ~ticism. . ,

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Ih this iSSlr~"yve will ddfin~this movement of super.,, ·,.' spiritu~l mystici~in in an effdrt,t,o understand why so

many ~cholars, Christian andn6 n:"·Christian, seem to think that we are now in the mi491~ 6fa sweeping Gnostic revival. Yale's Harold Bloom,Jorinstance, himself a Jew~' .. ish Gnostic, argues tha(pearly every religious group in AmErica, how~ver diverse from its competitors)js a ~cde­ nomination'\vithin what he calls"theAmerican Religion: Gnosticism." In fact, he writes, "We think we are a Chris- , tian n~tion, but'we are not. We areAmericanized Gnostics, believers in a pre.;Christian tradition of individual divin­ ity. Americans believe that Go'd'knows and loves them in a personal way, and that something inside them, deeper even thatf a soul, is;.,a lready in cQntact with God." ,,0.:';' ' This is not simply"a church history study. Gnosti­ cism is a prevailing'i nfluence in our <;:,ulture, from the New Age movement, to the less obvious fonnsqf spiritu­ alitythat shape evangelical,and liberal theologY;'wo'rspip, and experience. Jesus is "11'ot so much a person as ' art ' expS1rience, apd this has had profound effects on ev~ry- ' thGig from preaching and evangelism, to wOhships~yles and our outlook on the world. We hope that you will , henefit from this issu'e on a timely and ,important topic that concerns us all. ~ . /,

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GNOSTIC TENDENCIES

Answering the question: What do Madonna, Pat Robertson, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Mary Baker Eddy, 6- The Beatles have in common?

Learn to despise this world of ouhvard things, and devote yourself to what lies within ...Christ is ready to come to you, with what kindess in his glance! But you must make room, deep in your heart, to entertain him as he deserves; it is for the inward eye, all the splendour and beauty of him ; deep in your heart is where he likes to be ... Up with you, then faithful soul, get your heart ready for the coming of this true Lover, or he will never consent to come and make his dwelling in you .. .If you love Jesus, if you love the truth, if you really direct your gaze inwards, and rid yourself of uncontrolled affections, then you can turn to God at will, lifted out of yourself by an impulse of the spirit, and rest in him contentedly.

Thomas a' Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, 1429

Without going out of my door, I can know all things on Earth . Without looking out of my window, I can know the ways of Heaven . The further one travels, the less one knows .. .the less one really knows .

The Beatles, The Inner Light, 1968

...A Christian is a Christian because he is rightly related to Christ; but 'he that is spiritual' is spiritual because he inightly related to the Spirit. ..The human , at best, could be no more than the channel, or instrument, for the divine outflow ... It is one of the supreme glories of this age that the child of God and citizen of heaven may live a superhuman life, in harmony with his heavenly calling, by an unbroken walk in the Spirit. The leading of the Spirit is not experienced by all in whom the Spirit dwells ...A Spirit-filled Christian [is distinguished ] by actualizing into celestial heart-ecstasy that which has been taken by faith concerning the positions and possessions in Christ. ..It follows, therefore, that true leading, in this dispen­ sation, will be more by an inner consciousness than by outward signs.

Lewis Sperry Chafer, (Founder of Dallas Seminary) He That Is Spiritual, 1918

Today is th e last day that I am using words . They've gone out, lost their meaning, don't function anymore . Traveling, leaving logic and reason .

Traveling, to the arms of unconsciousness. Let's get unconscious honey, let's get unconscious . Words are useless , especially sentences. They don 't stand for anything. How could they explain how I feel?

Madonna, Bedtime Stories, 1994

God is foolishly in love with us; it seems that He has forgotten heaven and earth and happiness and deity; His entire business seems to be with me alone, to give me everything to comfort me. ... Know then that God is bound to act, to pour Himself out [into thee ] as soon as ever He shall find thee ready.. .It is one flash the being ready and the pouring in: the instant spirit is ready, God enters without hesitation or delay. Thou needest not seek Him here or there, He is no furth er off than the door of thy heart; there He stands lingering, awaiting whoever is ready to open and let him in.

Meister Eckhart, Sermons, 1311 We should strive to reach the Horeb height where God is revealed; and the corner­ stone of all spiritual building is purity. The baptism of Spirit, washing the body of all the impurities of flesh, signifies that the pure in heart see God and are approaching Spiritual Life and its demonstration.

Mary Baker Eddy, (Founder of Christian Science) Science 6 Health, 1915 Listen to Jesus' words: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" (Mt 5:8). Check this closely, because too many read this text to mean, "Everybody who's perfect will arrive in heaven someday." But Jesus wasn'ttalking about purity in ritual terms. He was talking about the fundamental definition : Purity is "that which is undiluted by other substances." Now, join that to the place Jesus pointed at, to the heart of a man-that's where God seeks undiluted commitment.

So what does it all mean? The answer is in what Jesus did and didn 't say. He didn't say, "Blessed are the pure in mouth ...hands.. .mind .. .feet." No Christ calls you and me to come, candidly and with a heart fully opened in worship, into the privacy of His presence. Then something will happen: If we bring our whole heart, without restriction or reservation, we will see God! That, my brother, doesn't mean you or I will have a phantasmic vision ofheaven or see fleecy clouds with angels flying. It means we will become candidates for seeing God's nature take over our lives .. .Wewill see God. It's the priviledge ofthe purified, not earned by accomplished hoiness but realized through the total devotion of a man's heart at worship.

Jack Hayford, Seven Promises Of A Promise Keeper, 1994 Those who fast with pure motives will be drawn closer to the great heart of God and experience a quality of life in the Spirit that is not possible apart from fasting.

Bill Bright, The Coming Revival, 1995 Faith is deep in your spirit. But it's got to "come up" out of your being and go to God in order for it to work for you.

Oral Robers, Attack Your Lack, 1985

God knows all things. There are wonderful times when He shares a bit of His knowledge-a "word of knowledge" as the Apostle Paul called it-with His people. This is intelligence that comes from God without reliance on sight, sound, taste , touch , or smell.

Pat Robertson, Beyond Reason, 1985

The issue God cares about is the direction of the heart, not the content of theology .... Christians in the West need to become less materialistic and more spiritually Buddha-like.

Clark Pinnock, A Wideness In God's Mercy, 1992 Many people find it difficult to believe in Christianity. They picture Christianity as a creed, concerning which they have to decide whether or not it is credible...Let us put the case bluntly. Christianity is primaril y something to be done . It is not first of all a finished set of propositions and doctrines to be accepted; it is first of all an unfinished task to be completed .. .Every element in Jesus' teaching is livable. It can be tried out in life and it works in practice. Inner fellowship with God in the shrine of the spirit, and faith in the victory of righteousness-that is livable. Then let us not over-excite ourselves over controversial doctrinal points. Instead of asking, 'Is it credible?', let us ask, 'Can we ever in this world make Christianity come true?'

Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Secret ofVictorious Living, 1934 Because spirituality is generated from within the individual, inner motivation is crucial. We believe that mere ouhvard form does not constitute spirituality. .. .In recent years we have begun to shift the focus of our attention away from doctrine with its focus on propositional truth in favor of a renewed interest in what constitutes the uniquely evangelical vision of spirituality. Corresponding to this trend is a growing attempt to reformulate our evangelical self-consciousness away from the creed-based conceptions of the recent past toward an understanding based on the piety that lies deep in the broader evangelical heritage.

Stanley J. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, 1993 Christianity is not founded on dogmas. True Christianity is based on only two instructions: Love God with all your heart, soul, and intelligence; and love every other being as your own self.

Spyros Sathi (New Age Thinker), Common Boundary, July/August 1995 The Gospel is no theoretical system of doctrine or philosophy of the universe .

Rather, by treating of life eternal it teaches us how to lead our lives aright...Jesus never spoke of any other kind of'creed,' for he meant for us to confess our faith not in doctrines but by feeling and action. How great a departure from what Jesus thought is involved in putting a creed in the forefront ofthe Gospel, and in teaching that before a man can approach it he must learn to think rightly about Christ.

Adolf von Harnack (Pioneer of German Liberalism), What Is Christianity, 1900 Christianity is not a system of human philosophy nor a religious ritual nor a code of moral ethics-it is the impartation of divine life through Christ.

Chuck Swindoll, Growing Strong In The Seasons Of Life, 1983 You need to realize that you are not a spiritual schizophrenic - half-God and half-Satan-you are all-God. The problem area is not in your spirit; it lies in your mind and body."

Kenneth Copeland, Believer's Voice of Victory, 1982

JULY IAUGUST 1995

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BY MICHAEL HORTON

Is It The Age Of The Spirit,

Or The Spirit Of The Age?

nt@ rtainment Weekly is not exactly an evangelical houseorga ~, and yet, like many secular periodicals these days,

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it seems to observe more truth than a number of evan­ gelical magazines and journals. In its October 7, 1994 issue, Jeff Gordinier wrote, In a year when TV airwaves are aflutter with winged spirits, the bestseller lists are clogged with divine manu­ scripts and visions of the afterlife, and gangsta-rappers are elbowed aside on the pop charts for the hushed prayers of Benedictine monks, you don't have to look hard to find that pop culture is going gaga for spiritual­ ity. [However,] seekers ofthe dayareaptto peel away the tough theological stuff and pluck out the most dulcet elements offaith, coming up with a soothing sampler of Judeo-Christian imagery, Eastern meditation, self-help lingo, a vaguely conservative craving for 'virtue,' and a loopy New Age pursuit of 'peace.' This happy free-for­ al!, appealing to Baptists and stargazers alike, comes off more like Forrest Gump's ubiquitous 'boxa chocolates' than like any real system ofbelief. You never know what you're going to get.

There could hardly have been a better description of the dilemma in which the ancient church found itself, from the time of the apostles until the third century. It is a heresy that is constantly threatening the orthodoxy of the church and it is as old as Satan's lie, "You shall be as gods." It is called "Gnosticism." St. Paul called the Gnos­ tic prophets "super-apostles" who apparently knew more than God. They see into the heavenly secrets and offer techniques for escaping earthly existence. "Timothy:' the Apostle warned, "guard what has been entrusted to you.

Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is

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falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith" (2 Tm 6:20). "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Cor 10:5). The super-apostles had preached, he says, a different gospel and a different spirit. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel oflight" (2 Cor 11: 13). The reference here is to the Gnostic emphasis on the Angel of Light versus the Angel of Darkness.

Not far beneath the surface of much of the New Testament, especially the Gospel ofJohn and the Epistles, is a running polemic against the most dangerous heresy in church history. According to one of its early oppo­ nents, St. Clement of Alexandria, Gnosticism (from the Greek word gnosis, meaning "knowledge") consisted of the knowledge "of who we were or where we were placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth" (Excerpta ex Theodoto 78.2).

Knowledge of these secrets was considered redemptive.

The purpose of this article will be to explain the origins and identity of Gnosticism in an effort to establish the point that contemporaryAmerican religion, whether lib­ eral or conservative, evangelical or New Age, Mormon or Pentecostal, represents a revival of this ancient heresy.

The Old Gnosticism From a number of secondary sources we are able to gain a portrait which allows us to see the main features: 1. Eclectic and polymorphic. A "cut-and-paste" spiri­ tuality emerges from the Gnostic writings. As Philip Lee observes, "Gnostic syncretism ... believes everything in

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general for the purpose of avoiding a belief in something in particular. In the case of Christian gnosticism, what is being avoided is the particularity of the Gospel, that which is a 'stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gen­ tiles.'" 1 It is generally agreed that Gnosticism emerged as a form of mystical Christian spirituality blended to­ gether with Greek paganism. We recall Paul in Athens, in the Areopagus, where "people did nothing but discuss the latest ideas" (Acts 17:21), telling the Greeks that they were "very religious:' Gnosticism was an attempt to in­ corporate the seeker sp'irituality of the Greeks into Christianity.

In its very nature, itwas diverse and capable ofamal­ gamation and assimilation of various religious systems.

Biblical religion, by contrast, insisted upon the unique­ ness of divine self-disclosure in Scripture and in God's redemptive acts. There is one God (Yahweh) who is known in the written and Living Word. Many of the church fathers were simply exasperated by trying to fig­ ure out what the Gnostic texts actually meant, whereas Christianity held distinct, easily understood and well­ defined doctrinal convictions.

2. Individualistic and subjective. While the writings are extremely esoteric and mystical, there is an obvious thread of individualism and an inward focus character­ istic of mysticism. As in Greek Platonism, the subject (the knower) has priority over the object (the known), and the path to spiritualityis through inwardness,medi­ tation, and self-realization.

3. Immanence over transcendence. In terms of the individual's relation to God, the Gnostic stresses God's nearness over his distant holiness and sovereignty. In fact, the individual self is a "spark" of the One (God). As one scholar puts it, "The self is the indwelling of God:'2 There is a direct intimacy between the divine and the self that requires no mediation. In Gnostic literature, the relationship between "God" and the self is often de­ scribed in romantic and even erotic language.

4. Spirit over matter. Sometimes called in our day "mind over matter:' the Greek and Gnostic worldview is dualistic. That is, it divides the world into matter (evil) and spirit (good). Evil, suffering, illness and death are all attributed to the existence of matter and the "Fall" was not from innocence to rebellion (as in the biblical ac­ count), but from pure spirit to physical bodies.

Imprisoned in a material world, the self is alienated from its true home. This theme of a war between Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, the Divine Within and the World Outside, and the sense of alienation, despair, loneliness and abandonment in the physical world, is the recurring key to understanding Gnosticism. 3 In our day, Matthew Fox, repeating the warning of self-described Gnostic psychologist C. J. Jung, expresses this sentiment well: "One way to kill the soul is to worship a God outside

you" (Roof, p. 75).

5. Anti-institutional orientation. Associated with matter and the physical imprisonment of the self, insti­ tutions are viewed as spiritual enemies. The Outside God and the Outside Church are enemies of the soul, directing the self away from one's own inner experience to others and to formal structures of authority, creeds, doctrines, rituals and sacraments. St. Ignatius ofAntioch (d. 110 A.D.) charged, "They have no concern for love, none for the widow, the orphan, the afflicted, the pris­ oner, the hungry, the thirsty. They stay away from the Eucharist and prayer:'4 This did not mean, however, that they did not form communities, but these were ascetic sects that served to nurture individual rather than com­ munal concerns, and experiential rather than liturgical and doctrinal forms of public worship.

6. Anti-sacramental. Closely related to its suspicion of the church as an institution was Gnosticism's disre-

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gard for sacraments. If the self enjoyed a direct and im­ mediate relationship with God's Spirit, and knowledge came through a secret revelation of a mystical nature, surely the introduction of material means of grace-the printed word (accessible to everyone), water (in Bap­ tism), and bread and wine (the Eucharist)-actually become impediments to real fellowship with God. They are insufficiently "spiritual" for Gnostic piety, as rebirth (a prominent Gnostic theme) is by the Spirit in opposi­ tion to matter. Furthermore, the Gnosis (Revelation Knowledge) was based on the idea that only a few really knew the secrets, while Christianity's emphasis on Word

imprisoned souls in history, while the New Testament God (Jesus) was the God of Love. The Creator-God (Old Testament) and the Redeemer-God (New Testament) were viewed as opposites in Marcionism. In addition to the Old Testament, Luke's Gospel and Paul's epistles underwent radical revisions.

In the following century, Mani, a Persian evangelist whose ideas spread quickly to the West and were em­ braced by St. Augustine before his conversion, founded a powerful sect of Manichaeism. Once again, it was deeply dualistic (spirit vs. matter, Light vs. Darkness, etc.) and championed salvation chiefly in terms of secret knowl­ edge of the principles for overcoming the world, nature, and history through spiri­ tual ascent.

9. Feminist. Ancient Gnosticism, as we have seen, divided the world into spirit and matter as columns of "good" and "bad."

They defined characteristics of femininity as love, freedom, affirmation, and nurture, and these were in the "good" column, while those of masculinity were defined as jus­ tice, law, wrath, and strength, and put in the "bad" column. This is in sharp contrast to the Christian God who, in both Testaments, is a good, gracious, loving and saving,aswellas just, holy and sovereign Father."Sophia;' the Greek word for "'w isdom;' after the goddess of wis­ dom, became the "God" of many Gnostics. The 13th-century mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote, "What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth;' and this image is replete in the mystical literature. <~ncient gnosticism;' Lee writes, "loathed the patriarchal and au­ thoritarian qualities of official Christianity. From the gnostic point of view, the structure and discipline of the Church stifled the spirit" (p. 158). The antipathy toward nature was reflected in the Gnostic celebration of the "androgynous [i.e., sexless] self."While the body may be either male or female, the spirit is "free."

One must beware of concluding that the "knowl­ edge" championed by the Gnostics was the same thing that we mean normally by the term. Lee observes:

Ch.tistianity's cardinal belief in salvation by God be(~oming flesh,and by his fleshly resurrection promising resurrection of our bodies, was anathema to Gnosti(~ism, as it was foolishness to G.teeks who generally sa\v spirit as good, and matteras evil. and sacrament, available to anyone who could read or eat, challenged this private, spiritual elitism.

7. Anti-historical. Lee notes, "Gnostic <knowledge' is unrelated in any vital sense either to nature or to history" (p. 102). As spirit is opposed to matter, and individual inwardness is opposed to an institutional church, eter­ nity is opposed to time. Salvation for the Gnostic is redemption from the body, institutions, and the grind­ ing process of history into which the pure self is mercilessly thrown.

In biblical religion, God not only created the world (material as well as spiritual), and pronounced it"good;' but also created matter and history in which to unfold his salvation. In fact, Christianity's cardinal belief in salva­ tion by God becoming flesh, and by his fleshly resurrection promising resurrection of our bodies, was anathema to Gnosticism, as it was foolishness to Greeks who generally saw spirit as good, and matter as evil. In Christianity, redemption does not take place in a super­ spiritual sphere above real human history, but within it.

Gnosticism, however, emphasizes instead the self's per­ sonal, direct encounter with God here and now, and has little or no place for the historical events of God's saving activity.

8. Anti-Jewish. While biblical religion focused on God's personal involvement with the world in creation and redemption, through the bloody sacrifices that an­ ticipated the Messiah, Gnosticism harbored a deep distrust of the Old Testament God. In fact, two Gnostic sects appear in this connection. Marcion (d. 160 A.D.) rejected the Old Testament entirely on the basis that it represented a wrathful Judge who created matter and

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The difference between orthodox knowledge and gnostic knowledge has been described as the difference between open revelation and secret revelation. Although it is true for both faiths that the Holy Spirit is at work to open the eyes ofthe believer that he may know the truth, within orthodox thought the Holy Spirit's work takes place in the presence of, and in terms of, given historical data and within the context ofthe Holy Catholic Church.

Thus, in the Apostles' Creed, the article affirming belief in the Holy Spirit is securely nestled between beliefin the person and work of Jesus Christ and a willingness to learn from the Holy Catholic Church" (p. 101).

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Gnostic "knowledge" is not only anti -historical and subjective; it is anti-intellectual and immediate. This is why St. Irenaeus called it "pseudo-knowledge" and Paul told Timothy it was "knowledge falsely called" (1 Tm 6:20). It preferred what we often call "heart knowledge" to "head knowledge;' although Christianity knew no such dichotomy.

Especially popular in Alexandria, Gnosticism threatened Christianity's very existence, not as an exter­ nal threat, but as an int~rnal rival. In other words, it attempted to reinterpret biblical religion and reshape it into something other than that which was announced by the prophets, fulfilled 'in Christ and proclaimed by the apostles. Even as Christianity officially condemned the heresy, and the ancient' fathers wrote voluminously on the subject, the philosophical influence of Greek Platonism continued to shape the medieval church. Nev­ ertheless, whenever the unadulterated Gnostic tenets would reappear, as in such medieval sects as the Albigensians, the Cathari (Pure Ones) and Bogemils, the church reasserted its apostolic and catholic condem­ nations. At the time of the Reformation, the Anabaptists revived Gnosticism, and a number of Renaissance hu­ manists, including Petrarch, had also embraced this revival.

A number of scholars, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, have argued that the Reformation repre­ sented not only a reaction against Pelagianism (the ancient heresy ofworks- righteousness), but also against Gnosticism. By charging that the church had allowed Greek philosophy priority in interpreting Scripture, the Reformers recovered the Bible's clear declarations on creation, redemption, worship, the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the church, Word and sacrament, and a host of related teachings.

The New Gnosticism Without offering a chronicle on Gnosticism throughout church history, our purpose here is simply to refer to that portion ofhistory that most directly bears on the current revival.

A trip to the local bookstore confirms that there is a revival of explicit Gnostic spirituality in American cul­ ture, with the New Age movement claiming direct descent. 5 Often passing for psychology, philosophy and religion, Gnosticism is now back with a vengeance and forms the broad parameters (if there are any) for the smorgasbord of American spirituality. After two world wars, Westerners have become disillusioned with the grand scheme of turning this world into Paradise Re­ stored. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Andre Malraux poured their energies into lamenting the sense of despair and alienation, and the theme of humanity being "thrown" into the world, imprisoned in evil mate­

rial structures is prominent in their work. The popular­ ity of existentialism blended with an older Transcendentalism that was always seething just beneath the surface of the American consciousness to produce a post-war generation of"seekers"who were ripe for Gnos­ tic spirituality. It is that older Transcendentalism that must be explained before we can understand the ways in which modern evangelicalism and liberalism represent sister "denominations" in what Harold Bloom calls "The American Religion: Gnosticism:' Mysticism has a long tradition within Christianity, and although it developed out ofthe same influences and centers as Gnosticism itself, it was deemed acceptable even by some who had opposed the heresy. The "ladder of spiritual ascent" and the dualism between spirit and matter, the inwardness and related themes, remind us that the difference is a matter of degree. In a sympathetic treatment, titled, Mysticism in the Wesleyan Tradition (Zondervan, 1989), United Methodist theologian Rob­ ert G. Tuttle, Jr. traces the influences ofGreek and Roman Catholic mysticism on John Wesley. Through the vari­ ous Holiness groups in America, evangelicalism was heavily influenced by a form ofspirituality that was con­ sidered by many, especially at Princeton Seminary, to be a rival to the historic Christianity recovered in the Refor­ mation. But there were other influences in the culture that contributed to the Gnostic awakening in America.

Just as the medieval church was unwittingly shaped

by Greek Platonic influences, modern American Chris­ tianity, both liberal and evangelical, is shaped by Romanticism-itself a revival of Greek and Gnostic influences.

The Romantics include such worthies as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) , who resigned his Boston

COMPA R E & CO N TR AS T We cannot communicate with God mentally, for Heis a Spirit.

But we can;reach Him with our Spirit, andit islhrough our Spirit that we come to know God .... This is ohereason God put teachers (those who are really called to teach) in the church­ to renew our minds. Many times those who teach do so with only a naipral knowledge that they have gain.e dfrom the Bible and other sources. ' .

Kenneth Hagin, Man on Three Dimensions, 1985

It is an illusory belief of the Enthusiasts that those who keep reading Scripture or hearing the Word are chilgren, as if no one were spiritual unless he scorned doctrine. In their pride, therefore, they despise the ministry of men and even Scripture itself, in order to' attain the Spirit. They then proudly try to peddle all the delusions that Satan suggests to them as secret revelations of the Spirit.

John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Thes 5;20, 1525

JUL Y IAUGU ST 1995

7

Unitarian pastorate in 1832 because he could no longer accept institutional religion and refused to serve "Com­ munion." (Since Unitarians do not have a genuine Communion, it is difficult to regard this as a major de­ parture.) After all, Emerson said, he was himself a spark of God and enjoyed direct access without an incarnate Mediator and the impediments of physical sacraments.

At Harvard, Emerson declared that orthodox Christian­ ity was dead, and the only way forward was to recover the "spiritual" dimension of religion. The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes was a great fan of Emerson's. Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was closely associated with Emerson and other "Transcendentalists;' as many of the American Romantics were now being called. The Westminster Dictionary of Church History defines Tran­ scendentalism as "an optimistic, mystic and naturalistic state ofmind rather than a system of thought:' which had "a wide influence on American literature, philosophy, and religion. Based on English romanticism (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle) and German philosophical ideal­ ism, it found Calvinistic orthodoxy too harsh and Unitarian liberalism too arid. It emphasized individual experience as sacred, unique, and authoritative."

The sense of alienation is apparent in Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Taking no root, I soon weary of any soil in which I may be temporarily deposited. The same impa­ tience I may feel, or conceive of, as regards this earthly life:'6If this feeling was true in the early 19th century, it is - certainly exacerbated by the influences ofmodernity: the rootlessness precipitated by rapid travel, mobility, dis­ placement of families, and technological advances that tend to dehumanize existence. As for the Gnostic preoc­ cupation with spirit, and the eternal over matter and time, Emerson declared, "I am to invite men drenched in "

How Do "New Agers" Trace Their Roots? " At first the traditions were transmitted ihtimately, by alchemists, Gnostics, : cabalists, and hermetics ..<Among the \·; bold and isolated voiCes were MeistecE:ckhart ..Giovanni Pico 4ella Mirandola ... andEmamiel Swederiborg. We are spiritually tree, they said, the stewards of our OWn evolution. Humankind , has a choice. We can 3;wakerito our true nature. Drawing fully ftbm our inner-resources we can achieve a new dhp.ension of mind; we can see mOl~;e. ~ : " The Trans.c endentalists supposed[y threatened the old order with their'~new ideas"; but the ide~s were not new... They s()ught understanding from ,liP any sources: experIence, intu:",· ition, the Quaker idea of the Inner Light, the Bh'(lgavad Gitq, the German Romantic Philosophers ..·.and the English mefa­ 'physical writers of the sev.enteenthcentury.. :.L\lthough they were charged with havingfontempt for history, they replied tnat humankin4 coutd be lih?rated from history." ' Marilyn 'Ferguson, The Aquarian Con~piracy, 1980 't

8

...

JUL Y I AUG US T 1 9 9 5

Time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air:'7Like the ancient Gnostics who, according to St. Ignatius, did not bother themselves with the physical needs of this world, Emerson's spiritual arrogance knew no bounds: "I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits ... They have no other watchman, or lover, or defender, but 1:'8 The recurring note in Romanticism, and especially in its American Transcendental variety, is personal expe­ rience: the self's transcendence of community, flesh, history, creed, doctrine, church, Word and sacraments, to ascend to the lofty heights ofdeity. Each individual self is "God" and requires no mediation for access to the divine.

We do not have to look very far to see the influence of this movement on 19th-century Protestantism. The re­ vivalistic evangelicals wanted to escape from this world by a personal experience of being born again, and suc­ cessive experiences: A second blessing or a rededication would revive the soul in its flight toward Deity and full surrender. Doctrine was considered an encumbrance, as were creeds, liturgies and sacraments, and the anti-intel­ lectual strain of Gnosticism reared its ugly head. In orthodox Christianity, grace redeems this world; in Gnosticism, it redeems the self from nature. Grace did not save nature, but provided a way ofescape.At the same time, "the liberals;' according to Philip Lee, "made ample room for nature on their stage by moving grace into the wings. There remained in both camps a gnostic separa­ tion ot Creation from Redemption" (p. 93).

At this point, psychology was born and took root quickly in America more than anywhere else. It offered an alternative to theolog y, as the study ofthe self and self­ consciousness replaced the study of God and his redemptive acts. George Ripley declared during this pe­ riod, "The time has come when a revision of theology is demanded. Let the study oftheology commence with the study of human consciousness:'9 But this psychological orientation not only demanded the first word, it ended up swallowing everything within reach and the stage was set for the therapeutic revolution of the 20th century, with peace ofmind and eventually self-esteem becoming more important than sin and grace. Narcissism (self­ worship) became legitimate and, in fact, the only religious duty. Although C. J. Jung, a father of modern psychology, was openly and self-described as a Gnostic, his mysticism is easily absorbed into the greater Gnostic ooze of contemporary pop-psychology and recovery movements.

The preaching also turned from the objective em­ phasis on God's saving work in Christ, to techniques for self- improvement, psychologically and morally con­ ceived. Considered too offensive for the immortal and innocent self, the Law was not suitable for preaching

modern R EFORMATION

unless it could be shown that it was somehow beneficial for personal transformation. Divine commands had to be seen as attainable and reasonable principles for self­ enhancement and universal love. Damnation was entirely out of place as a purpose for the Law, or for any sociable discourse. Similarly, the Gospel, hardly distin­ guishable now from the Gnostic law, became a secret formula (gnosis) for rebirth, self-realization, and the personal unmediated experience with the Divine. This was true equally for liberals and evangelicals, Unitarians and revivalists, as well as for the many Gnostic cults that were born in this environment (Christian Science, Unity, Adventism, etc.), however differently each may have stated it.

Horace Bushnell marks the departure from an evangelical Calvinism to an evangelical Ro­ manticism: "My heart wants the Father; my heart wants the Son; my heart wants the Holy Ghost. ... My heart says the Bible has a Trinity for me, and I mean to hold by my heart. I am glad a man can do it when there is no other mooring:'lo The Mor­ mon «testimony" is quite similar when its truth-claims are founded upon a "burning in the bosom:' Similarly, when evangelicals sing Romantic hymns such as, "He Lives;' with the line, «You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart;' they have little trouble accommo­ dating to the Romanticism of Schleiermacher, father of modern liberalism, when he said that the essence of Christianity is «the feeling ofabsolute dependence:' And when evangelicals eschew creeds, doctrines, liturgies, and sacraments over personal experience, how can they quibble with the liberal Adolf von Harnack, who be­ lieved that "the authentically spiritual is composed of those things that are inward, spontaneous and ethical as opposed to the outward, organized, ceremonial and dogmatic"?ll Gnosticism becomes the tie that binds.

At last, we come to our own century. A number of books have been published in recent years pointing up the «Gnosticization" of American religion, including Philip Lee's, Against The Protestant Gnostics (Oxford, 1987), and Harold Bloom's, The American Religion (Simon and Schuster, 1992). Although Bloom, a distin­ guished Yale professor, and the nation's leading literary critic, identifies himself as a Jewish Gnostic, he provides a provocative insight into the popularization of Gnosti­ cism . Other studies have pointed tangentially to this same condition, such as those of professors James D. Hunter (University ofVirginia ), Wade Clark Roof (Uni­ versity of California), and Robert Wuthnow (Princeton University). Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcis­ sism and Robert Bellah's Habits ofthe Heart also point in the same direction.

In spite of their rivalry, fundamentalism and liber­ alism "both essentially proclaim a Christ who does not

redeem;' but merely reveals, according to Lee (p. 107).

All of these writers point to the breakdown in the Reformation's orthodox stance in both conservative and liberal camps as opening the door to Transcendentalism and, finally, to the current orientation. Beyond the lib­ eral-evangelical split, Wade Clark Roof now says we cannot discern any real differences between New Age and evangelical spirituality on a number of counts. This new Gnosticism «celebrates experience rather than doc­ trine; the personal rather than the institutional; the

Both liberals and evangelicals disdain doctrine for personal experience, and objective t.'oth for pe.'sonal transformation,and in this sense, each is, in its own ,yay, Gnostic. mythic and dreamlike over the cognitive; people's reli­ gion over official religion; soft, caring images of deity over hard, impersonal images; the feminine and the an­ drogynous over the masculine" (Roof, p. 132). Although Roof does not make the point, these are clearly the tenets of ancient Gnosticism.

Note Lee's point on Christ as Revealer [Gnosis] over Christ as Redeemer: Another way to shed light on the American tendency to regard Christ as revealer only is, to observe the Ameri­ can fascination with technique. For the evangelicals, conversion is a technique, a necessary one, for salvation.

The history of Israel and the life of Jesus, which indeed were often spiritualized beyond recognition, were im­ portant only insofar as they could be employed to bring sinners to repentance (p. 109).

Lee says that the liberal approach to the Scriptures, "following its Transcendental heritage;' was to see them as «techniques for living the Christian life" and the Bible became «a rich source of those truths that we, in our hearts, already know" (p. Ill). But this is now precisely the same attitude often taken by evangelicals to the Scrip­ tures. Both liberals and evangelicals disdain doctrine for personal experience, and objective truth for personal transformation, and in this sense, each is, in its own way, Gnostic. The anti-intellectualism is understandable, ac­ cording to Lee. «If God is immanent, present within our psyche, if we already have the truth within, then why go through all the hassle of studying theology?" (p. Ill) .

Isn't this precisely the point of the division many of us grew up with between head knowledge and heart knowl­ edge? The former is intellectual, the latter spiritual-that is, gnosis. James D. Hunter observes, «The spiritual as­ pects of Evangelical life are increasingly approached by

JULY/AUGUST 1995

9

means of an interpreted in terms of 'principles,' 'rules: 'steps: 'laws: 'codes: 'guidelines: and the like:' 12 Wade Clark Roof adds, "Salvation as a theological doctrine ... becomes reduced to simple steps, easy proce­ dures, and formulas for psychological rewards. The approach to religious truth changes-away from anyob­ jective grounds on which it must be judged, to a more subjective, more instrumental understanding of what it does for the believer, and how it can do what it does most efficiently" (p. 195).

Pentecostalism represents an even greater depen­ dence on Gnostic tendencies. Lee writes, "Just as faith healing held an important place among the medieval gnostics of southern France, it has also been a significant element in the more extreme sects of Protestantism ... The Savior God is pitted against the natural God, and before millions of television viewers the Savior God prevails" (p. 119). Roman Catholic scholar Ronald Knox's work, Enthusiasm (Oxford, 1950) remains a classic study ofthis subject. Even the desire to speak in tongues, as if the biblical idea of tongues was a super-natural language unknown to mortals, shows the desire to escape even natural human language in a direct spiritual encounter of immediate ecstasy. Although the biblical writers were well aware of this practice of"ecstatic utterances" in pa­ gan religion, they did not use the Greek word for this practice, but instead chose glossai (lit., "languages"), leading us to conclude that tongues refers in the New Testament to known earthly speech.

The outer edges of Pentecostalism are especially bla­ tant in Gnostic emphases, as a number of works have shown, including The Agony of Deceit. 13 Salvation is knowledge- "Revelation Knowledge" (Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Paul Crouch and other "faith

the author himself applauds the Gnostic tendency.

Bloom concludes of this group, "To know also that one is completely free-the Emersonian Wildness-because one's solitude is shared with the Holy Spirit, carries the rapture to a Sublime elevation. And though Assemblies of God theology is officially trinitarian, in praxis the Pentecostal knows only Oneness, and calls the Holy Spirit by the name ofJesus, not the Jesus ofthe Gospels or even the Christ of Paul, but the American Jesus, a Pente­ costal like oneself." 14 (It is worth noting that the Assemblies of God were involved in a rift within Pentecostalism over this very point, siding with the or­ thodox doctrine of the Trinity over "Oneness Pentecostals.")

For those of us who were raised in fundamentalist, evangelical or pentecostal sects, the experience of "re­ birth" comes neither through the Word ofthe Gospel nor through the water of Baptism, but through a "Spirit Bap­ tism" that is direct and immediate. The Word is primarily seen as an instrument for coaxing the individual into accepting the new birth. The new birth, especially if one judges by the testimonies of converts, is not so much the result of hearing with human ears, in human words, a declaration of things that happened in human history. In short, it is not so much the preaching ofthe Cross, but the preaching of "my personal relationship with Jesus;' the day when "Jesus came into my heart;' that is central. Lee again: "Whereas classical Calvinism had held that the Christian's assurance of salvation was guaranteed only through Christ and his Church, with his means of grace, now assurance could be found only in the personal expe­ rience ofhaving been born again. This was a radical shift, for Calvin had considered any attempt to put'conversion in the power of man himself' to be gross popery:' In fact, "Rebirth in God is the exact opposite ofrebirth into a new and more acceptable self, as the self­ acclaimed born again Christians would see the event" (pp. 144,255).

Norman Vincent Peale exploited the "peace of mind" craze earlier this century, a movement that borrowed its capital from Tran­ scendentalism directly. Nevertheless, the liberal Peale was hailed as a great evangelist by evangelical Billy Graham and was asked to par­ ticipate in the crusades. Lee once again notes the tie that binds: "For both of them, Christianity is understood from a gnostic point ofview.... The real world with which religion has to do is the world within" (p.

199). This is not to suggest that Billy Graham is a liberal!

Rather, it is to argue that in our day Gnosticism unites more than orthodox Christianity divides.

Also in terms of their views of Christ, liberals and evangelicals reveal a common Gnostic tendency. While the liberals divided the Jesus of History (a normal Jew

Even the desire to speak in tongues, as if the biblical idea of tongues was asuper-natural language unknown to mortals, shows the desire to escape even natut'al human language in adirectj spiritu8,1 encounte,' of immediate ecstasy. teachers" use the upper case to distinguish this from mere written revelation). The Word that truly saves is not the written text of Scripture, proclaiming Christ the Re­ deemer, but is rather the "Rhema" Word that is spoken directly to the spirit by God's Spirit. Bloom writes, "Paul was arguing against Corinthian Enthusiasts or Gnostics, and yet I wonder why his strictures have not discouraged American Pentecostals more than they seem to have done... Pentecostalism is American shamanism;' although

10

JULY/AUGUST 1995

modern REFORMATION

who lived in first -century Palestine) from the Christ of Faith (resurrected God-Man), proclaiming that the Spirit of Christ lives and calls us into vital communion even though his body is not raised, evangelicals often seem to worship the spirit of Jesus apart from his hu­ manity. "Jesus in my heart;' at the end of the day, is more important for personal Christian experience, piety, and worship than Jesus in history. Although evangelicals in­ sist on a historical resurrection as a matter of official creed, in actual practice, one wonders why it is impor­ tant ifthe spirit of Jesus is in one's heart? After all, no one believes that Jesus takes up physical residence in one's heart, so what can we mean by "asking Jesus into our heart" other than inviting his spirit? Little is said of the biblical notion that it is~the Holy Spirit who unites us not to the spirit ofJesus in our hearts, but to the God-Man in heaven according to both his divine and human natures.

In Gnosticism, not only the object of faith (Christ), but the act of faith, becomes radically revised. In Chris­ tianity, faith is trust in God's specific promise ofsalvation through Christ. In Gnosticism, faith is magic. It is a technique for getting what we want by believing in it strongly enough. As C. Peter Wagner, an advocate of the Vineyard movement, puts it, "Empirical evidence also validates the absolute necessity of faith or whatever else you want to call it-possibility thinking or goal set­ ting-as a prerequisite for church growth:'15 Is faith really a synonym for possibility thinking and goal set­ ting? Then would not everyone possess faith? Or is faith a unique gift from God to trust in Christ, as in biblical teaching? The Second Helvetic Confession (a 16th cen­ tury Reformed statement) declares, "Christian faith is not an opinion or human conviction, but a most firm trust and a clear and steadfast assent of the mind, and then a most certain apprehension of the truth of God presented in the Scriptures and in the Apostles' Creed, and thus also of God himself, the greatest good, and especially of God's promise and of Christ who is the fulfillment of all promises."

But Wagner's worldview is also dominated by the Gnostic fascination with dualism between Light and Darkness, as spiritual warfare takes on an increasingly super-spiritual preoccupation. Like Frank Peretti's nov­ els, this popular view of spiritual warfare in which individual believers decide the outcome of battles be­ tween good angels and bad angels is too close to Manichaean Gnosticism for comfort.

The Gnostic revolution has been demonstrating its elasticity in recent years in the spirituality of the baby boomers, whose interest in the sacred has been cel­ ebrated in national periodicals, the study of which has become something of a cottage industry. Wade Clark Roof sampled a wide variety of seekers. For instance, Sonny D'Antonio, raised Roman Catholic, considers

himself "a believer, but not a belonger:' "The material parts of the church turned me off;' he says (p. 18). Mollie Stone, raised a Pentecostal, tried Native American spiri­ tuality, then Quakerism for its "inner peace;' and is "turned on" to Alcoholics Anonymous and other recov­ ery groups, although she is not herself an alcoholic or related to one. As for churches? "Creeds and doctrines divide people;' she says (p. 23). Roof observes, "The distinction between 'spirit' and 'institution' is of major

COMPARE & CONT<RAST Who can say, '[ have k'eptmy heart pure; [ amciean, a,11d without sin'? Prov 20:9

[At a Campus Crusade staff retreat] ·hundreds came forward to kneel and pray. Their lovk for Christ had prompted tl1em to join the staff in the first plate. Now they were demonstrating their desire to continue in their ministry with pure hearts, free ofsin, filled with th~ Holy Spirit.

The response was unanimous.

Bill Bright, The Coming Rt?pivai

ag~

Ana6~piists

Our own has certain who...feign thatJnB,aptism God's people are reborn into a pure and angelic life, unsullied by any carnal filth. But ifafter baptismanyone falls away, they leave him nothing but God's inexQrablejudgment. In short, to the sinner who has lapsed after receiving grace they hold out no hope of pardon, ; For they recognize no other forgiveness of sins than that by which they were first reborn.

John Calvin, The Institutes ofthe Christian Religion importance." Although Roof does not point to Gnosti­ cism' his studies mark undeniable parallels: "Spirit is the inner, experiential aspect of religion; institution is the outer, established form of religion. This distinction is increasingly pertinent because ofthe strong emphasis on self in contemporary culture and the related shift from objective to subjective ways of ordering experience" (p.

30). Religion is too restricting, but spirituality offers a way of plugging into the divine with the correct spiritual technology. Roof explains, ''As a computer programmer who happens to be an evangelical put it, without any prompting on our part: 'We all access God differently'" (p. 258).

The whole point ofChristianity, however, is that one cannot "access" God at all! He must come to us through a personal Word (God in flesh) and a written Word (Scripture), and when we do come to him it must be through Christ, and we come to Christ through the or­ dained means. It might offend the Gnostic and narcissistic individualism of our age, but we do not "all access God differentli' Roof refers to the Outer and Inner Worlds, the former suspect while the latter is always respected. "Di­ rect experience is always more trustworthy, iffor no other reason than because of its 'inwardness' and 'within­ ness' -two qualities that have come to be much

JULY/AUGUST

1995

11

appreciated in a highly expressive, narcissistic culture" (p. 67). But it is the surveys themselves that bear the greatest interest. Fifty-three percent of the Boomers said it was '«more important to be alone and to meditate' than to worship with others" (p. 70). But this was as true for many evangelicals as New Agers. Linda, one respondent,

In our day,Gnosticism unites more than orthodox Christianity divides. t,

an evangelical who likes James Dobson and believes that America is in moral trouble, tells us, "You don't have to go to church. I think the reason I do is because it helps me to grow. It's especially good for my family, to teach them the good and moral things" (p. 105). In other words, the church imparts knowledge, not of sin and salvation by Christ's atonement, but by practical techniques for Chris­ tian living. It is purely narcissistic and individualistic as well as moralistic. The church that will get the vote of the seeker, then, is the church that offers (and delivers) more gnosis-saving techniques and secret formulae-than others. In fact, according to Roof's surveys, 80 percent of Americans believe "an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any churches or synagogues" (p. 256). "Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, 'People have God within them, so churches aren't really necessary.' Right to the point, the question taps two views common to spiritual seekers: one, an immanent as opposed to a tran­ scendent view of God; and two, an anti-institutional stance toward religion:' The results? "Sixty percent of seekers view God in this mystical sense .. ." (p. 84). The mystical seekers' spirituality"is rooted more in their own biographies and experiences than in any grand religious narrative that purports to provide answers for all times and in all places:' and this blends easily with secular or pagan modes of thought (p. 85). In Christianity, it is Christ's crisis experience on a Roman scaffold outside center-city Jerusalem; in Gnosticism, it is Linda's crisis experience that counts.

If experience is most trustworthy, and the cognitive (intellectual) aspects of a religion are downplayed ("Heart Knowledge" over"Head Knowledge"), what is to keep us from another "Dark Ages" of gross superstition?

Belief in ESP, astrology and reincarnation is actually highest among college graduates, says Roof (p. 71). The "unknown God" of ancient Greece turns out to be not so distant from the spirituality of the nineties. As Roof puts it, even the "god" of evangelicals is amorphous and unde­ fined: "This God is thought of in very human terms: God, as it were, is created in one's own image:' and one might add, God is created in one's own experience. Even the evangelicals, Roof notes, "put a strong emphasis on

12

J U L Y/A U G U ST 1 995

the moral aspects of faith" over cognitive belief. The American Religion is united in its affirmation that, "It's not so much what you believe, or which religion you follow, it's how you live" (p. 186). Jesus is not as much a Savior as a moral Hero, Teacher and Guide for the gnostikoi- "those in the know:"'Not just dropouts, but many loyalists and returnees speak of Jesus in a way that is vague theologically, but morally uplifting .... Theologi­ cal language seems to have given way to psychological interpretations. If there is one theme throughout that characterizes the languages of boomer faith, it is the subjectivist character of the affirmations: 'I feel,' 'I have found,"I believe'" (p. 203) .

One thing that needs to be said before concluding this article is that the critique of Gnosticism should not (indeed, must not) down-play the necessity of a living, personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

However, it is given by the Holy Spirit, not attained by us.

We do not "appropriate" salvation and the gifts of the Spirit; the Spirit confers Christ and all of his blessings to the believer, in communion with the whole church.

While we focus on the objective content of the Faith (Christ and him crucified and raised for our salvation) , we must not, in reaction jettison the subjective applica­ tion of redemption. In any ase, we must always keep in mind that our friend ship with Go d (which is a wonder­ ful promise in the Go el) is expressed in joyful obedience, not in the nar -i_ i t ic pursuit of"intimacy" as an end in itself.

In the next article . I ,,'an to relate all of this back­ ground-much of i'" ' .i -'. :n the theoretical language and tedious descri ~ io~ - to th e practical issues of Christian life and wor ~ .. : I al 0 want to offer a way out of the Gnostic m aze . ~ °

•

Michael S. Horton is the pres ' e-: 2 ' ~ o :>" " ,s U ITED for REFORMATION. Educated at Biola University and Wa s' ' - 5'6' : - 'ca l Seminary, Michael is a Ph . D. candi­ date at Wycliffe Hall , Ox! rd a-:: ' - 6 ersily of Coventry and is the author/editor of eight books, including 7: e •;:;' - s $' Deceit, Made in America: The Shaping of American Evangelica lism , p.. :" .~ • -az'-;g Back Into Grace, and Beyond Culture Wars (1995 Gold Medalli - C .,,~' =. - 3~ 1< olthe Year for Christianity & Society).

0

'

5, Marylin Ferguson, The • ~ _E 'i~ '<:".:; '-a cy (New York: SI. Martin's, 1987), p. 120.

Claiming the Gnostics b na"""e. i's -; .~ o s~.a:es , "like that of the founding fathers and 01 the American Transcend ental' ts : ' oe - 'j, the dream of the Aquarian Conspiracy in America is a framewo rk lor n:o-- =..;: · - ": ex. - sion: autonomy, awakening, creativity-and reconciliation ." The move e " , ' " . a:: '()C eate hierarchical structures' and is "averse to dogma." She says , "By in egla 'r ; - 2; - a d sci ence , art and technology, it will succeed where all the king 's horses an a '''e · r . 5 men have failed."

6. Cited in Vernon L. Parn 9t: . e q ~~ - "c Re volution in America, vol. 2 of Main Currents 9race, 1959) , pp. 441-2 . in American Thought ( ew Y . a;;J .

7. Emerson, Journals, ed E, 'I , :O re 0 :1 . . 5, p. 288.

8. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 316.

9. Cited in Lee, p. 104.

10. Martin Marty, The Righteous Em;; ' " ( ew York : Dial, 1970), pp. 184-7 11. Cited in Lee , p. 155, 12. James D. Hunter, American E...-a !;E ca r." : Conservative Religion and the Quandry of Modernity (New Brunswick: Ru tg ers U . 'er 'ty Press , 1983), p. 75.

13. See The Agony of Deceit, ed . ',Aic ael Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991) 14. Harold Bloom, The American Re"g'on: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 77, 15. Cited in Lee, p. 210.

modern R EFORMATION

BY MICHAEL HORTON

icans are often accused by foreigners of expressing a sy familiarity;' even with people they have met for tLL~t time. Similarly, there is a greasy familiarity in­ herent to Gnosticism, based on the belief that we have direct and immediate access to God whenever and how­ ever we want. Whenever the children in the public school pray to whomever and however, God has to hear, and whenever sincere people gather in a building to worship according to their own personal tastes and opinions, '~gr

God is im pressed that we took the time and cared enough to worship from our hearts. It was real, and we were vulnerable, honest before God. Greasy familiarity.

Calvinism is the fundamental enemy of the Ameri­ can Religion. This is argued in nearly every recent work on the subject. Harold Bloom cites Swiss theologian Karl Barth and Presbyterian scholar J. Gresham Machen as two major antagonists of American Gnosticism. Simi­ larly, Anne Douglas, Philip Lee, and Wade Clark Roof, flanked by a host of historians, all argue that the repudiation of Calvinism led to the femi­ nization of religion and culture.

Ann Douglas, professor of English at Harvard and Columbia University, in her lat­ est book, on New York City in the 1920's, writes, Calvinism ... had suffered 'the most spec­ tacular defeat in the history of American religious life.' ...The Calvinists' liberal nine­ teenth-century descendants insisted that God was less a father than a mother, ... an 'indulgent Parent' (the term is that of the clergyman Noah Worcester) , offering love, forgiveness, and nurture to all who seek Him. The Connecticut theologian Horace Bushnell, known as the 'American Schleiermacher,' explained that true reli­ gious experience meant falling back 'into God's arms,' pressed to the divine breast, 'even as a child in the bosom of its mother.'

JULY IAUGUST 19 9 5

13

God, she says, became "well behaved, even domestic:'1 In her provocative book, The Feminization ofAmerican Culture, Douglas demonstrates that Calvinism was un­ seated by an Arminian and Gnostic tidal-wave that refused to believe any longer in the value of matter, the depravity of the self, helplessness in salvation, total de­ pendence on divine sovereignty, freedom, or mercy. Just as the mainline evangelicals failed to stand by J. Gresham Machen in his struggle for the Presbyterian Church dur­ ing the 20's, and only rose up in defiance when theological' error finally created moral compromises, many of to day's evangelicals are ready to attack the bla­ tant Gnosticism of "Sophia" worship in the mainline churches, while less obvious but equally disastrous forms of Gnosticism plague the evangelical world itself. 2

nique has shoved aside heavy truth, and where pragma­ tism, an intuitive, immediate "flash of insight" way of problem-solving, is valued over wisdom, an accumu­ lated wealth of insights from the family, the church, and books from those who have long since passed from this world. It is a lightness and rootlessness that is apparent in the replacement of neighborhoods with planned tracts of homogeneous, quickly erected, cheap homes with imitation marble, brick and other light and inexpensive replicas of heavy things. It is seen in the superficiality of our conversation, in the suspicion of tradition, institu­ tions and authority.

In the church, we see this lightness of being even in the architecture. The church growth movement, merg­ ing these Gnostic influences with marketing, rids churches of all of that heavy stuff. The build­ ing is designed for utility, not for worship.

The goal is to create an atmosphere of neu­ trality and comfort for the people, not to evoke a sense of divine transcendence for worshippers. After all, "It's just a building."

Gone, too, are the sharp lines, rough edges, carved wood and heavy furniture (especially the pulpit and communion table), for they cannot as easily be moved out of the way to make room on the stage for the performers. This lightness is further served by the church growth worship committee's deci­ sion to not only get rid of the rough, masculine edges of the architecture, and bathe the stage in warm mauve and turquoise light, but to get rid of the Word, sacraments and discipline- the very marks of a true church. In fact, Newsweek reported some months back, that a Lutheran Church in Phoenix had managed to pare the service down to twenty minutes simply by getting rid of the sermon and the sacraments!

Most contemporary evangelical churches do not go this far with the church growth emphasis, but the general trend is toward a different tone, a different content, and a different goal. Traditionally, the goal of the Protestant sermon was to afford an opportunity for God himself to address his people through the Law and the Gospel. The content, therefore, was driven by the divine command to preach the truth of God's Word, and to teach the people the great doctrines of Scripture. Therefore, the tone was dictated by the part of the divine address which the minister happened to be expounding. In contemporary preaching, the goal is to meet the felt needs of the self by providing spiritual technology, and the tone is always, therefore, congenial, happy, informal and-above all, friendly. It has not been improperly described as "church light;' and it is this lightness of being, the weightlessness of it all, that characterizes Gnosticism in every age.

Take the communion ware, for example. It is no coincidence that the traditional Protestant churches­

Regardless of the denomination, the American Religion is in\vard, deeply distrustful of institutions, mediated grace, the intellect;, theology,creeds, and the delnand to look outside of oneselffor salvation.

It would seem that the critics of modern American religion are basically on target in describing the entire religious landscape, from New Age or liberal, to evan­ - gelical and Pentecostal, as essentially Gnostic.

Regardless of the denomination, the American Religion is inward, deeply distrustful of institutions, mediated grace, the intellect, theology, creeds, and the demand to look outside of oneself for salvation. This, of course, has enormous implications for the Christian life and wor­ ship, as well as theology.

In this article we will first pursue the major Gnostic trends in Christian worship, then analyze these trends in the light of Scripture, concluding with suggestions for disentangling ourselves.

A Lightness afBeing Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) predicted that the "death ofGod" - that is, the end of any serious theologi­ cal consciousness in Western society, would lead to "a rain of gods;' a combination of nihilism (belief in noth­ ing' cynical despair) and "a new Buddhism." By turning from the external (God, the world, other selves, an ob­ jective and historical atonement, and resurrection) to the internal spirit, Americans especially have created an atmosphere of incredible "lightness;' an airy existence of anti-material, spirit-like existence. Jackson Lears speaks of the "weightlessness" of human existence in the mod­ ern world, and David Wells has effectively made this point. 3 We see this in the modern world, where light tech-

14

JULY IAUGUST 1995

modern REFORMATION

J

the ones with heavy brick, stone or wood, sharp edges architecturally, and a chancel instead of a stage-also tend to serve Communion in heavy chalices as part of a "common cup;' with real wine. Meanwhile, the contem­ porary churches that are given to lightness in other areas offer individual, light plastic cups to each person seated in the pew (or, more likely, theater seat). Even the large, heavy pulpit Bible, set aloft on the high, heavy pulpit, is substituted with the roaming "D. J.;' who would not think of interrupting his intimacy with the audience by referring to a Bible and written sermon notes.

Instead, we're going to talk about the historical saving acts of God, especially the saving life, atoning death, and justifying resurrection ofJesus Christ, and how the Holy Spirit applies these benefits through Word and sacra­ ment:, We have been so transformed by this world's way of thinking that the transformation of the mind by the Word will at first appear to be utterly unrecognizable.

M AR TIN

h ~'

In art, there is such a thing as German Expressionism. In painting, it is thick, bold (even garish) strokes of bright reds and blacks, depicting the nihilistic despair and an­ ger of existentialism. It is interesting, but quite noisy.

There is something similar in popular American culture. When Alexis de Tocqueville, a French commen­ tator, came to America in the early 19th century, he observed of Americans, "To escape from imposed sys­ tems" is their goal, and to "seek by themselves and in themselves for the only reason for things, looking to results without getting entangled in the means toward them ...So each man is narrowly shut up in himself, and from that basis makes the pretension to judge the world...Thus the Americans have needed no books to teach them philosophic method, having found it in themselves."4 When this Gnostic individualism and narcissism (self-worship) met 19th century Romanticism and Transcendentalism, the expressive selfwas center-stage.

After all, Emerson declared of himself, "I see all the currents of the universe being circulated through me; I am a part and parcel of God:' Walt Whitman added his narcissistic anthem, "The Song of Myself." But when Transcendentalism met the 20th century therapeutic revolution, nothing would ever be the same again. We see this in its most banal form in the TV talk-show, where self-expression is the goal of everyone, from the host to the guests, and the audience equally. Everyone believes that his or her own personal feelings on the subject are more valuable than the collective intellectual wisdom of the ages.

In many ways, the church is becoming patterned on this talk-show approach. Recovery and self-help groups, discipleship groups, and other small groups, are often more important than the worship service-which is un­ derstandable, if the regular service is simply a larger gathering of these small groups! We share our experi­ ences, or our personal testimony, and this often becomes the center of discourse. Imagine telling such a group, 'Tm sorry to interrupt the time of sharing and fellow­ ship, but we won't be having testimonies anymore.

TUE WORD & THE SPIRIT

",t

Narcissistic Expressivism

L8'T1-1 E RON:

......

"

1 exhort you to':be on your gtI~rd 'against those noxious spirits who say:! man~cquires the HQIYSpirit by sitting Tn (1, qorner, etc. A hundred thousand devilsyovwill acquire, and yqu will not come to God. God has always worked with something physicaL... Whenever He wanted to do something with 'us; He,~id it through th~Wordan4 matters physical. Nor can you givemeaniIlstance in which a pe'rsgt1::,,;'; was made a Christian and received the Holy Spirit without some- ,: thing external. Whence have our adversaries the knowledge that ' Christ 'is the Savior? Did they not:a'cquire this by reaclil1 g, by hearing? They certainly did not get it directly from heav~ll;.:tl:feygot it from the Scdpture and the Word~ , ,:\~ Sermf.}n on Luke 2:22, 1528 Observe how [Paul] extols and exalts Scripture and thewitness ofthe written Word by using and repeatingthe phrase 'accorctinglo the Scriptures.' ...He does so, in the first place, in order to restraiIlthe wild spirits who despise Scripture and public preaching and look for' other, private revelations instead. Nowadays such spiriisare foUnd' swarming everywhere, deranged by the devil, regarding Scripture a dead letter, extolling nothing Qut the spirit and yet keeping neither ,t he Word nor the spirit Bul' there you hear St. Paul adducing , ..Scripture as.his strongest witness and pointing out that there is ,nothihg stable to support our,goctrine and faith except the material otwritten Word, put down in'ktters and preached verbally by him and others; for it is clearly stated here: 'Scripture, Scripture.'

But Scripture is not pure spiri,t,.as,they sputter that the spirit alone must do it, that Scripture isa dead letter and can give no life.

But it is like thi$: Although the letter does not in and ;of itself give life, yet it must be there, must be heard and received, and the Holy Spirit mustwork throughjt in the heart, and in and through the Word the heart must keep itself in faith against the devil and all temptation, for if it wen~,to let the Word go;.ifwould soon entirely l.ose Christand the Spirit~,, :rherefore you had better not boast much ab0tltthe Spirit if youdoilPthave the visible, external Word; for it will surely nofbe a good spirit but the wretchedd~vil from hell.

Sermon on 1 Cor 15, 1533 ' 'Giveatten9ance to reading' (1 Tm 4:13). Why does he enjoin reading ifthe letter is a 'dead thing'? ...Listen to Christ: 'Neither,pra)'~;, .; I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me thropgh ' their word' Un 17:20). The "word" here certainly mean~ the spoken or the written Word, not the "inner" word. Therefore the Word should be heard andread above all else. It is a vehicle orthe Holy Spirit. When the Word is read, the Spirit is present.

Sermon on IJohn 5::13, 1527

JULY/AUGUST 1995

15

Like the Gnosticism of old, the "Song of Myself" and more exciting (1 Cor 1, 2). narcissism pervades modern thinking, including the We automatically assume that having a personal re­ thinking of the church. Since the church building itself is lationship with God is a good thing. We invite people not designed to make me comfortable, and the liturgy and so much to confess that they are helpless sinners, spiritu­ sermons are calculated to satisfy my "self:' and the songs ally dead and enemies ofGod, who need to turn from self are increasingly centered around my feelings, experi­ to rely on Christ alone for salvation, but instead we push ences and longings, it is not a very large step from there to them more to enter into a personal relationship with the expressivism that marks so much of contemporary God by experiencing a direct encounter of rebirth. In praise. Some approaches are more modest, insisting that Scripture, it is not always a good thing to be close to God. individual selves be allowed to express themselves in As early as Genesis 3, we find the first couple created their own un'ique (i.e., individual) way, being vulnerable in God's image, fleeing from God's presence. The last and honest before God. Others push this narcissistic thing they wanted was a personal relationship with God, expressivism to the limits, insisting that the expression of because their rebellion had placed them in a different joy means unplanned services of emotional release relation to God. Where he was before a close friend, now through laughter, roaring, clapping, dancing, or exhibit­ he was an angry judge. It was only when God caught up ing other personal emotions. Inhibitions are part of the to them, stripped them of their pretenses to righteous­ carnal stifling of the spirit (they say it stifles the Holy ness (the fig leaves), and clothed them with the bloody Spirit, but they really mean their own). Structured ser­ skins ofan animal sacrifice (pointing forward to Christ), vices are like physical structures and institutions, words, that they were no longer afraid of being close to God. sacraments, and doctrines in general. Each self must be Later, Cain and Abel disagreed over worship-styles. free to express its unique identity, and exhibit the ecstasy - Abel believed that it was dangerous to approach God in of intimate, immediate encounters with God. a way that was attractive, comfortable or reasonable to the seeker, and offered the first-born of his flock in sac­ Close Encounters ofthe Very Worst Kind rifice, as God commanded in anticipation of his offering Ifwe could simply recover the apostolic and Reformation of his only-begotten Son. Cain could not figure out why sense of divine sovereignty and transcendence, much of God would need a bloody sacrifice, so he decided to be contemporary Gnosticism would be recognized as he­ vulnerable, and honest, bringing God something better retical. But just as liberalism was known for its emphasis than that which he commanded. He brought flowers and on divine immanence (closeness) rather than his tran­ a fruit basket, probably not unlike an FTD floral ar­ scendence ("otherness"), evangelicalism has inherited rangement - "When you care enough to send the very that serious charge. best:' But it was not what God commanded, and Cain Essential to this Gnostic orientation is the imme­ was rejected by God. It was his jealousy for Abel's accep­ diacy of the divine-human relationship. At the time of tance by God that Cain became the first persecutor ofthe the Reformation, Martin Luther contrasted "the theol­ church, and Abel became its first martyr. ogy of glory" (held by Roman Catholics and At Mount Sinai, after God led his people out of Anabaptists) with "the theology ofthe cross" (held by the Egyptian bondage, the Law was given to Israel. God apostles and the reformers). Every person, Luther said, is chose Israel, not because of her righteousness, but be­ a mystic deep-down. We all want to climb a ladder into cause of his free mercy (Dt 9:4-6). No nation could own God's presence-whether it's a ladder of experience and Yahweh or be owned by him apart from a formal ar­ emotion, or a ladder of merit (If you do this, I'll do that, rangement-a covenant. It was hardly as if God was steps to victory, etc.), or a ladder of speculation (I'm everybody's friend and they just didn't know it yet! God going to figure God out apart from his public self-disclo­ was the enemy of the nations, and only befriended Israel sure in Scripture). Luther called this the human longing by means of a covenant, through earthly means of grace to see "the naked God." It is a theology of glory because it (Word and sacraments promising a coming Savior). despises the shameful humiliation of Christ's way of sav­ Even Israel could not approach God on its own terms, as ingsinners-both his own humiliation and ours. It is too we see at Mount Sinai. God instructed Moses that, as in high and lofty, too spiritual to be satisfied with a Re­ any covenant or treaty, a mediator was needed. God did deemer-God who became flesh, a true human being, not have a personal relationship with each Israelite, but suffered for our sins, and rose again for our justification, was the father of the nation. "You must be the people's leaving us with his Holy Spirit and nothing but a book, representative before God and bring their disputes to some water, and some bread and wine. But like Paul, him" (Ex 18: 19). Notice the legal, courtroom language Luther determined to know nothing but Christ and him here. The people cannot relate to God directly; they crucified even though the "super-apostles;' as Paul called need a lawyer, and Moses is that mediator. Finally, the the Gnostics in Corinth, insisted on something higher people were fully assembled at the foot of the Mount.

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modern R EFORMATION

We read the account from Exodus: On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trum pet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled.

Then Moses led the people out ofthe camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot ofthe mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD de­ scended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound ~fthetrumpetgrew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the Voice of God an­ swered him . The LORD descended to the top ofMount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up and the LORD said to him, 'Go down and warn the people 'so they do not force their way through to seethe LORD and many ofthem perish' (Ex 19:16-22).

proach me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored:» Aaron remained silent" (Lv 10:1-3). In this same text, God demands, "You must distinguish between the holy and the common:' while the mystical tendency is to regard everything as sacred.

The self, alone, meditating on heavenly things, is just as sacred as the public worship of God through Word and sacrament, according to Gnosticism. But Nadab and Abihu serve as lessons to us all. God did not make allow­ ances for sincerity. "But their heart was right:' was not a sufficient argument. We recall how God killed Uzzah, one of the bearers of the Ark of the Covenant, when he stretched out his hand to keep the Ark from falling (1 Chr 13:9-13).

One ofthe best examples ofthe theology ofthe cross versus the theology of glory is found in Genesis 28, "Jacob's Ladder:' Although in Sunday school we used to sing of this ladder as if we were climbing it, the text itself says the very opposite. In Jacob's dream, God is standing at the top, and angels are ascending and descending the ladder. God is making all of the promises, and all of the moves. Jacob's response when he awoke is instructive.

"He was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place!

After God delivered the Ten Commandments at the top of the mountain, Moses returned to the people be­ low. "When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die'" (Ex 20:18-19). First, we learn that staying at a distance because of People think: If I could hear God speaking in His own Person;,:! would run so fast fear is the normal reaction to being in the to hear Him that my feet would bleed ... .If in formertirries .~Omeone had said: I presence of God. Gnostics have no place know of a place in the world,Where God speaks,andwhenyou arrive there, you for fear, as Marcion declared the Old Testa­ hear God Himself talking; ,a nd if I had come there, had seen a poor preacher ment God unloving, and insufficiently baptize and preach, and pepple had said: .This is the place; there God is speaking warm and friendly. They want a direct en­ throughth¢ preacher:he is teaching'God',s Word-then I no doubt would have counter, and this kind of distance, ':" said: Ha! thave taken pains to com~.here: and I see only a minister! We<shQul~ requiring a mediator, is unbearable to , )ik,e to have God speak with us in HisMaje~ty; but I advise you: Do not gb:tl1ere: them. They want to be able to find God So experience certainly teaches. If He we'ret9 speak in His majesty, you would see what a running would begin, as therea{ MouniSirtai, where, after all, only directly, but here they are warned not to the angels spoke; yet the mountain smoked ancl .trembled. But now you have the "force their way through to see the LORD" Word of God in church, in books, in your home; an'dthi{is' as certainly God's lest"many of them perish:'The people were Word as if God Himself W,ere speaking. so conscious of the Creator-creature dis­ Sermon on John 4, 154.0 tinction, not to mention their own sinfulness in the presence of Absolute Ho­ liness, that they did not want a direct encounter! They This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate did not want a theology of glory. "You speak to us and we of heaven.»' Thus, he named the spot "Beth' El:' "The will listen, but do not have God speak to us or we will House of God:' When we come to the New Testament, die:' So much for, "He walks with me and talks with me"!

Jesus makes the bold announcement, '«You shall see Nadab and Abihu were Aaron's pride and joy. These greater things than that.' He then added, 'I tell you the two sons were consecrated to God's service, summa truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God grads from seminary, and their whole lives were devoted ascending and descending on the Son ofMan'" On 1:50­ to the pious worship of God as Israel's priests. One day, 51). Jesus was Jacob's ladder! He was Beth' El, the House they decided in their great zeal to offer a ceremony that of God, the temple that would be destroyed and then was not commanded. "So fire came out of the presence rebuilt (raised) after three days! Throughout the Scrip­ of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before tures, God is only approachable through a human the LORD. Moses then said to Aaron, 'This is what the mediator, and he only saves in human history, using LORD spoke of when he said, "Among those who ap­ human words, and physical earthly elements. Those who

·' MartinLuther on HearingJipdSpeak To Us

J U LY/AUG UST 19 95

17

attempt to worship God in their own way, find him as much a consuming fire in the New Testament as in the Old (Heb 12:29). "But that's the Old Testament!", Gnostics will say. Yes, but while much changes in the administration of the covenant between the two testa­ ments' one thing remains the same: The covenant of grace still requires a mediator. We cannot approach God directly. Just as God struck down Nadab and Abihu, so he killed Ananias and Saphira in his presence (Acts 5: 1-11).

As Jesus was "Jacob's ladder:' so he is the true "Ark of the Covenant:' but even the social rif- raf could say of him,"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we pro­ claim concerning the Word of life" (1 Jn 1: 1-2). Unlike Uzzah, they could touch him and live. John's epistle, written especially against the ancient Gnostics who de­ nied that God could actually become flesh (good Spirit vs. evil matter), announces that the God who could not be seen without the experience leading to the death ofthe viewer, was in fact heard, seen and touched- not by our spiritual ascent, but by God's physical descent. It is not by our escaping the earthly, physical, historical realm in an ascent to Glory, but by God's descent in flesh that many could see God and live! Even Moses could not see God and live! Furthermore, if Moses was a good mediator between God and Israel, though he was a sinner himself, surely someone who was himselfboth God (the offended judge) and man (the offending race) could perfectly and savingly represent sinners.

If God had been formed in Mary's virgin womb, without a fully human nature, Mary could not have sur­ vived the experience. If God the Son had not clothed himself in flesh, his glory would have instantly turned Pharisee and fisherman alike to ash. But instead, prosti­ tutes approach him; thieves repent, and sinners eat with him. In the Gospel of John, we see God playing the bar­ tender at a wedding reception On 2: 3), and screaming in outrage over the unnatural horror of death On 11:38­ 44). Gnostics would have read these texts in utter disgust.

First, Jesus was affirming the goodness of creation by turning water into wine at a party. This is hardly the ascetic spirituality that characterized Gnostic abhor­ rence of the world. Further, for the Gnostic, death was terrific because it meant the escape of the spirit from the prison -house of the body. It was hardly something to lament! The resurrection of the body was, for the Gnos­ tic, hell rather than heaven.

"He who has seen me:' Jesus declared, "has seen the Father" On 14:9). Israel was taught to seek God only in anticipation, by types and shadows, not by direct en­ counters. It was by the historical incarnation of God the Son that the world came to know God, and it is only as sinful creatures approach God through the mediation of

18

JULY IAUGUST 1995

this God-Man, through the prescribed means of grace (Word and sacrament), that they can expect a father rather than a judge. The "naked God" that Luther said inspired the mystics, was actually "the consuming fire" (Heb 12:28), and the only way of finding salvation in­ stead of judgment was through the "clothed God:' Jesus Christ. "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life:' Jesus declared in John 6, to the bewilder­ ment ofhis audience as well as John's (primarily Greeks).

What a crude, earthly religion! So much for ascending the heights through super-spiritual encounters! If one is to be saved, one must accept the death of individualism, inwardness, emotional and experiential ladders of ec­ stasy, merit and speculation. "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for [Gnostic] wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power ofGod and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:23).

The Way Out ofGnosticism Gnosticism became such a great threat to the ancient church because it appealed to the "felt needs" of a Greek culture, basically reinterpreting Christianity in the light of pagan philosophy. St. Augustine, and others who be­ came Christians in that time and place, repudiated the Gnosticism they had once whole- heartedly embraced, and for many of them, the influences continued to linger until their death. Similarly, we have reconstructed Chris­ tianity as a system of psychological well- being and moral uplift. The necessity of earthly means ofgrace (word and sacrament) has been rendered unintelligible by a mysti­ cal spirituality in which the self has direct, immediate access to God. Not only are words despised in our cul­ ture (and in our church-culture), the Word-Jesus Christ, the God Man, who mediates between the sinful creature and a holy God- is seen more as the Master, the Guide, the Example for the self's intimate relationship with and experience of God. Like those who gave up everything-including what they perceived as rel­ evance-in order to tell the truth, we too must repent of our worldliness, our accommodation to the spirit of the age.

To do this, we must first recapture the great battle­ cries of the Reformation. First, "Scripture Alone! "We do not find God in our hearts, in our experience, or in our ideas. He finds us, and the way he finds us is through printed speeches that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, become words of life, raising us from spiritual death.

This means that we have to study the Word of God, understand the great acts of God in history and their redemptive significance, and accept them as the only way of entering into a personal and communal relation­ ship with God. An exclusively subjective and inward

modern REFORMATION

focus should be regarded as a sin, just like adultery and murder, of which we must repent.

Second, "Christ Alone!" We must reject the Ameri­ can Religion, with its belief in "God" -a uniquely American deity who has no theological definition.

Whether worshipped by the liberals as the "Benevolent Spirit;' or by evangelicals as the mascot for America and moral virtue, or by charismatics as the power-source for higher spiritual experience, this idol must be pulled from every high place. When we say we believe in God, we (I mean, orthodox Chris­ tians) are talking about none other than the Trinitarian God who is known only in Jesus Christ. Apart from Christ, there is no intimacy

'-" ;=-

race. When Melanchthon, Luthees side-kick, became too introspective and inward, the great reformer would remind him, "Melanchthon, the Gospel is completely outside of you!" The greattruth of justification is that all of our righteousness before God is external-a iustitia alienum or "alien righteousness." It does not inhere

\Vemust reJe e(~t the itmericanRelioion, with its belief in "God" ~

auniquely AUlerican deity \vhohas notheological definition.

\Vhethel' \vorshipl)ed b'lI{,rthe liberals a,s the '~Benevolent Spirit," 01' b'II evanoelicals as the mascot for AUlerica andulol'al viI'tue, ~ or by charismatics as the power·sour(~e for higher spiritual • theISIed0I must bepuIIerom df every heIghpIa,ce. experience,· Y

with God, but only fear of judgment.

In his Harvard address, Emerson declared that one of the errors of Christianity is its "noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus:' The spirit of Jesus is clouded by an emphasis on his historical identity, he said. "The soul knows no such persons;' for Jesus taught "faith.. .in the infinitude of man:' As Roger Lundin observes, Emerson rejected Communion for this reason, since, as Emerson put it, it "tends to produce confusion in our views of the relation of the soul to God:' This focus on Christ places a second God between us and God. Jesus becomes our mediator, not in the sense that he commu­ nicates his saving work to us, but by communicating saving knowledge (gnosis), "in that only sense in which possibly any being can mediate between God and man-that is an Instructor ofman .He teaches us howto become like God:'5 We must reject this orientation.

Third, "Grace Alone!" As a rambunctious kid, I used to try to defythe escalator atthe mall by running up the "down" escalator, but as the saying goes, "the faster I went, the behinder I got." Jacob's Ladder is a one-way escalator, and it moves from God to us, not from us to God. We are not saved by being born again, by finding God, by making Jesus this or that, by finding the right techniques for conversion, or by surrender, but by Christ's surrender for us outside center-city Jerusalem so long ago. This is applied to us not by our pushing the right buttons, but by God graciously condescending to give us life, and all of Christ's benefits "while [we] were dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph 1:5).

Fourth, "Faith Alone! " We are justified-declared righteous-before God because of what Christ did for us and outside of us, not because of what we do, or even because ofwhat the Holy Spirit does within us. Matthew Fox, repeating C . J. Jung's warning, said, "one way to kill the soul is to worship a God outside you;'6 but Chris­ tianity insists that this was Satan's first lie to the human

within us, but is draped over us like a robe. Not only is God outside of us, all of our righteousness and holiness that makes us acceptable before God is outside of us as well. If we had been justified by love, by conversion, by being born again, by something that happens inside of us, we would have "something to boast about-but not before God" (Rom. 4:2). The self is sinfuL unholy and ungrateful, not innocent and needy. Salvation can only come by looking outside of ourselves. Many in our Ro­ mantic, Gnostic culture will say, "Deep down, so-and-so is a good person." What they mean is, "If you get down into the souL the self, the spirit of the person, there is good in everyone:' The "real Me" is good, whatever my actions might suggest otherwise.Yet the innocent self is a pagan myth. "But she has a good heart;'we often hear.

Our hearts, however, are more sinful than our bodies, for they have already committed sins that have not yet requi red the compliance of our hands (Jer 17:9 and Mk 10: 11).

The fifth battle-cry is "To God Alone Be Glory!"­ an exclamation of praise more than a battle-cry.

Gnosticism, as we have seen , is a powerful rival worldview to Christianity. The innocent self (the soul or spirit) was thrown into chaos (matter, history, time) , and salvation comes through learning the techniques, rules, steps and secrets for escaping this material world.

By contrast, Calvin declared, "The world is the theater of God's glori' While the Gnostics viewed salvation as a contest between the Good God of Spirit and the Bad God of Matter, Calvin warned, "The Manichees [medi­ eval Gnostics] made the devil almost the equal of God" (1.13.1), like a tug-of-war between God and the devil.

Although Luther had an acute sense of Satan's activity, he declared, "The devil is God's devil." Like the ancient fathers, the reformers would have seen today's spiritual warfare emphasis as a revival ofManichaean Gnosticism.

JUL Y/AUG U S T [ 995

19

Against Anabaptist and monastic escapism, Calvin called for worldly activity. Secular callings, considered sub-spiritual and less than God's best in the medieval worldview, were deemed noble and godly. God created the world, and upholds it by his sovereign power. If God is in charge, and this is his world, who are we to despise it?

Lee argues that Calvinism represents a "universal pro­ gram of serving a sovereign God" through worldly activity and this is reflected in its contribution to educa­ tion, the arts and humanities, business, law and human rights, and in the rise of modern science.

Through the Enlightenment, we lost our belief in God's sovereignty, and in his involvement in the daily affairs of natural existence. It was as if God went on holi­ day after creating the world, and hooked the universe up to a machine, something like "automatic pilot."

Pentecostalism, at least in part, represents a Gnostic reac­ tion to this worldview, but instead of proclaiming God's involvement with the natural world (i.e., providence), it has bet all of its chips on God's super-natural activity against the natural world (i.e., miracle, as they conceive it). We must recover the doctrine of providence and, with it, the sovereignty of God. Furthermore, if we are to truly repent of the idola­ tries, we must reform our worship accordingly, or, as the Baptist put it, "produce fruit in keeping with repentance" (Mt 3:8) .

First, like the ancient fathers and the reformers, we must reform the public worship of God according to the Word. St. Paul warned against the godlessness of the last days when "men will be lovers of themselves.. .having a form of religion but denying its power" (2 Tm 3:5). The power of true religion is the cross, and it must be the center of our worship again. But just as Gnosticism can create a form of religion while denying its power, it can have "power" (so-called) while denying its form. In Gnosticism, form (like matter, structure and institu­ tions) is earthly and unspiritual. Whenever we hear that the form of worship is merely a matter of taste or style, and is therefore neutral, it is the voice of Gnosticism.

Christianity not only prescribes the substance of reli­ gion' but its form. The first of the Ten Commandments requires us to worship the correct God; the second , that we worship this God correctly. The way we worship is not neutral, as Nadab and Abihu learned after their innova­ tive worship experience.

Word and sacrament must be recovered. Philip Lee pleads, "The unsettling truth is that no generation can simply inherit orthodoxy from a previous one. Ortho­ doxy must be consciously sought and achieved by a determined Church engaged in an active struggle with itself" (p. 218). Recent studies have shown that medieval Gnosticism prevailed in regions where the preaching was of the poorest quality. "What is required at present is

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nothing at all like a crusade or a witch hunt, for 'we are not contending against flesh and blood.' What could be more Protestant than to begin a new reformation with the preaching ofthe Word?" But this is not the preaching of"any '01 word:' but the Word of Law, judging our self­ righteousness, and the Word of Gospel, offering us Christ's righteousness: "The preaching within a Chris­ tian congregation, if it is to be the preaching ofgrace, will be liturgical preaching. That is, it will not be a lecture, an educational experience, a talking about the Gospel but rather a sermon (a word), a worshipful experience, a talking from the Gospel" (p. 224). The people will hear the Voice of God, as they did at Mount Sinai, but they will also hear his Voice from Mount Calvary.

Just as the word replaced the idea or image in the ancient Christian witness, and at the time of the Refor­ mation, we will have to recover the word at a time when our culture is increasingly illiterate and bored by words.

Jacques Ellul's, The Humiliation of the Word, and Neil Postman's, Amusing Ourselves To Death can help us think through these issues. Just as the Reformation refused to capitulate a religion of the Book to the image-based cul­ ture of the medieval world, and ended up, in the process, creating a print-oriented culture, a new Reformation must stick to its guns when it comes to the priority of the word, preached and read, come what may. Therein we will find healing for our souls.

If the Word is recovered, the sacraments must be as well. Calvin wanted the Lord's Supper to be celebrated "at least once a week:' and preferred that it be given "every time the Word is preached." It is, the reformers _said, following Augustine, "the visible Word:' and although we cannot see or touch God in the person 00esus Christ, as did the disciples, we can feed on his true body and blood through bread and wine. Communion is not, as Gnostics new and old have held, an unnecessary hin­ drance to spiritual worship, but its ordained means. Nor is it a mere memorial designed to move the emotions and excite the inner piety of the self. It is, in fact, not man's action, but God's. It is God giving his Son for the life of his people, the actual experience of the forgiveness of sins, the actual fellowship, or participation, in the true body and blood of Christ. Through it, with the Word and by his Spirit, he actually gives us what he promises in the Gospel. The same Jesus who said his flesh is true food, and his blood true drink (J n 6) also declared, in his institution of the Supper, "This is my body, broken for you. Take and eat:' Taking the cup, he said, "This is my blood of the new covenant" (Mt 26:28). Through Word and sacrament, the believer-in connection with the whole church of all ages-is linked to the same Mediator who walked on the shores of Galilee healing the sick, raising the dead, and forgiving sins.

Paul demanded of the Corinthians, who trampled

modern REFORMATION

on this sacred feast, "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participa­ tion in the body of Christ?" Drawing out the implications of this, Paul attacked the individualism and narcissism of Corinthian worship, influenced by the Gnostic, super-apostles: "Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor 10: 16-18). The Shepherd of Herrnas, an ancient church epistle, states that the Gnostics prefer a chair, while the orthodox Christians prefer a couch. Is the replacement of the pew with individual theater seats more than a coincidence? Do we really believe in "one holy, catholic and apostolic church" more than we be­ lieve in self? Are seeker#services drawing people away from self to Christ as a body of the redeemed? Or are they actually oriented to collecting individual selves­ consumers-for the purpose of private transformation?

Do we expect to meet with God in mystical, individual­ istic encounters and experiences, or in his appointed means of grace? Do we really believe that God mediates his saving grace through simple earthly elements ofwa­ ter' bread and wine, and that his Word and Spirit take these ordinary elements and make them miraculous en­ counters with God on his terms? Or are our spirits stifled by such things? Does history matter? Theology? The preaching of the Word as the only avenue of divine speech?

Next, we will have to recover a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It was he who was involved in Creation (Gn 1: 1­ 2), who brings divine judgment and salvation throughout redemptive history, and it was he who is sent by the Father and the Son to convince the world ofits sin, and to bring sinners to repentance and faith On 16:5­ 16). Ours is indeed the Age ofthe Spirit, but that is not in opposition to matter, institution, sacraments or Word.

It is through these means that the Spirit reigns in the hearts and bodies of men and women. He gives new life, preserves believers in that life, and sanctifies them. The reformers were careful in keeping Word and Spirit to­ gether, in an indissoluble bond, and we must recover that united emphasis. It is the Spirit who makes the means of grace effective, and apart from his work, the church, the Word, and the sacraments have no more effect than addressing corpses in a cemetery.

Finally, reformation will require not only the recov­ ery of Word and sacrament, but, as the reformers insisted, church discipline as well. Although the Lutherans did not emphasize this point as much as the Reformed, both traditions insisted on recovering a genuine sense ofwhat it means to be catholic. That does not mean Roman Catholic, but catholic in the sense that Calvin meant when he said, "We cannot become accept­ able to God without being united in one and the same

faith, that is, without being members of the Church:'7 Some evangelical groups are so suspicious ofinstitutions and structure that they do not even have church mem­ bership. People come and go as they please, and since Communion is just a time of meditation and self-reflec­ tion, there is no oversight of the Lord's Table, in spite of Paul's warning (1 Cor 10-11). Like Linda, in Roof's stud­ ies (p. 105), many evangelical boomers say that one does not have to go to church or derive one's beliefs within the church. The church is merely a resource for personal and moral development. "From the gnostic point of view;' Lee writes, "the structure and discipline of the Church stifled the spirit" (p. 158). Authority and structures can be abused by sinful pride and wrecklessness. However, the self is sinful as well, and checks and balances must be placed on us all. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that the independent, sectarian spirit in American evangelicalism has shown itself to be the most divisive and anti -catholic force in the history of Christianity. If we are to be biblical Christians, not only must we ap­ proach God correctly, we must approach him together.

If we come to the true God in his way, through the cross and not through glory, we will experience a rich­ ness and a depth of communion with God that is impossible through our towers of spiritual babel. Our Mount Sinai will, because of Mount Calvary, be turned to Mount Zion: You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded.... But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God ... , to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood ofAbel. ... Therefore, sincewe are receivingaking­ dom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptablywith reverence and awe, for our 'Godisaconsumingfire' (Heb 12:18-29). :f'-> 1. Anne Douglas, Terrible Honesty Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), p. 240.

2. See Peter Jones, The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992), for a helpful popular survey of the wider cultural influences of Gnosticism, particular in liberal cultural and ecclesiastical groups. For our purposes, we have focused on the Gnostic threat within evangelicalism.

3. For the best exposition of the loss of transcendence in evangelical faith and practice, see David F. Wells, God In The Wasteland (Grand Rapids : Eerdmans, 1994). He offers surveys of evangelical clergy demonstrating widely-held beliefs in the innocence of the self and an inward, experiential orientation.

4. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, trans. and ed. by J. P. Mayer and G. Lawrence (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 429.

5. Roger Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993). This is a superb treatment of Romanticism and literary theory from a Christian perspective.

6. Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 75.

7. John Calvin, commentary on Isaiah, vol. 2, p. 45.

JULY/AUGUST 1995

21

A Beachhead for Gnostic Influences

BY KIM RIDDLEBARGER

ne 0 t e most difficult problems any theological tradi­ tion faces is that there are often fundamental differences Qntical points between the "official doctrine" af­ firmed by the divines and academics of that tradition, and those doctrines actually believed and practiced on a popular level by the rank and file. There is, perhaps, no greater illustration of this than the popular notion of trichotomy. Rejected by virtually all major theolo­ gians in all streams of the Christian tradition as a speculative Greek philosophical notion rather than a Biblical conception, trichotomy is very likely the reign­ ing notion of human nature in American Evangelical circles today. With few exceptions, the Christian church has affirmed, with one voice, that human nature is two­ fold. As men and women, we are necessarily a body-the physical element of our nature, and we are also a soul-spirit-an immaterial aspect described in the Bible as either soul or spirit. These two are united together as one person; as a psychosomatic unity. This is simply known as dichotomy. Trichotomists, how­ ever, contend that human nature is tri-partite, that is, as men and women we are body, soul and spirit. But while the theologians of Evangelicalism, following the his­

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toric precedence, overwhelmingly reject the notion of trichotomy, the popular teaching and literature of Evangelicalism abounds with trichotomistic views of human nature in one form or another.

It is also no accident that the Gnostic impulse, now so rampant in the quest for spirituality, finds a ready­ made beachhead into Evangelical circles through the trichotomist view of human nature. If the Gnostic im­ pulse is defined as a quest for secret knowledge (gnosis) , and a disparaging of matter, including an aversion to things physical and intellectual, coupled to the notion that religion is essentially a quest for a vaguely defined spirituality attained via a mystical ascent into the heavenlies to encounter God apart from means and a mediator, then the notion that humans are essentially spiritual beings rather than a body-soul unity, opens the door to a host of serious theological errors and interesting paradoxes. While on the one hand Evangelicals work feverishly to oppose the New Age Movement as it attempts to secretly infiltrate the church, on the other, the same Evangelicals can be quite unwittingly seduced by the same dualistic sepa­ ration of reality into a spirit -matter dichotomy that has spawned fads like the New Age movement in the first place. For ifwe are essentially spirit rather than flesh, as the trichotomists propose, then, in effect, we establish the same kind of dualistic hierarchy associated with classic Gnosticism, in which the spirit is exalted above both soul and body. Whether we intend to do so or not, we have opened the door wide to the essence of Gnos­ ticism, namely, that matter is evil and spirit is good. If we adopt the trichotomist understanding of human nature, we inevitably set up the same dualistic concep­ tion of reality in which the Gnostic impulse thrives, and which we immediately recognize in the New Age movement, but fail to see when it comes from the lips or pens of certain popular Evangelical figures, because it is couched in Biblical rather than philosophical terms.

Therefore, it is important to set out the Biblical evi­ dence for dichotomy, and then evaluate the arguments raised by defenders of trichotomy. It is also important to evaluate how trichotomy, and its theological cousin,

modern R EFORMATION

the so-called "Carnal Christian" notion of sanctifica­ tion, provides an unwitting justification for the Gnostic impulse. As we will see, it is surprising how effectively a trichotomistic understanding of essential human nature enables such a pagan ideology to estab­ lish a significant bridgehead in the hearts and spirits of countless Evangelicals.

Historically, Christians have argued that di­ chotomy is clearly taught throughout Scripture. There is no doubt that the Scriptures not only teach a material aspect that is essential to human nature, the same Scriptures preclude any notion of the Gnostic ten­ dency to depreciation ofthe body because it is material.

God created our bodies first, and only then did God breathe life into the body he had made (Gn 2:7) . The creation account is unmistakably clear; God pro­ nounced everything that he had made to be "good" (Gn 1:31), including the human body. We are, in one sense, dust, and therefore material (Gn 3:17), but as John Murray notes, "the reason for [Adam's] return to dust is not that he is dust, but that he has sinned:'l In addition to the creation account, there are other vital considerations proving the importance of this material aspect of being human. First, in the Incarna­ tion, Jesus Christ, as the second person of the Holy Trinity, assumed to himself a true human nature (Gal 4:4). It is the Gnostic impulse that is condemned as the "spirit of Antichrist" because this spirit emphatically denies that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh (1 Jn 4:2,3).

It is the docetic heresy which teaches a truly divine Jesus who only appears in human form, rather than a divine Logos who takes on a true human nature, as taught in the prologue to John's Gospel. A second, equally important, consideration is that of the Resur­ rection. Jesus' resurrection is a bodily one (1 Cor 15:3-8; Lk 24:40-43), and his resurrection is itself the basis for the bodily resurrection of those who are in Christ (1 Cor 15:35-58). We will not spend eternity as spirits with harps, floating weightlessly on the clouds, but instead as redeemed persons in resurrected and glorified bodies, forever rejoined to our soul-spirit, as Jesus Christ through his own bodily resurrection and glorification has undone the penalty of sin, which is death and separation of body from soul. It is with this in mind, that Murray reminds us of the dangers of the Gnostic impulse to the Christian.

The body is not an appendage. The notion that the body is the prison-house ofthe soul and that the soul is incar­ cerated in the body is pagan in origin and anti-biblical; it is Platonic, and has no resemblance to the Biblical conception. The Bible throughout represents the disso­ lution of the body and separation of body and spirit as

an evil, as the retribution and wages of sin, and, there­ fore, as a disruption of that integrity which God established at creation. 2

The fact that we have an immaterial element (called "soul" or "spirit" in Scripture), in addition to our bod­ ies, is equally clear in Scripture. It is our Lord who taught us that we are "body and soul" (Mt 10:28), and in Matthew 26:41, Jesus likewise contrasts "flesh and spirit:' The terms seem to be used interchangeably. A "spirit" is immaterial (Lk24:39); it is "within us" (1 Cor 2: 11), and sanctification is spoken of as purifying our­ selves from «everything that contaminates body and spirit" (1 Cor 7: 1). James tells us that a body without a spirit is "dead" (2:26), for at death the spirit leaves the body (Mt27:50;Lk23:46;Jn 19:30 and Acts 7:59). The term soul is used in various ways throughout Scripture as referring to "life constituted in the body" (Mt 6:25; 10:39; 16:25-26; 20:28; Lk 14:26; Jn 10:11-18; Acts 15:26; 20:10; Phil 2:30; 1 Jn 3:16).3 Soul certainly appears to be synonymous with spirit, in addition to serving as a synonym for the person themselves (Mt 12: 18; Lk 12: 19; Acts 2:27,41,43,3:23; Rom 2:9; 3: 11; Heb 10:38; Jas 1:21; 5:20; 1 Pt 1:9; 2:25). In light of this evidence, Murray concludes, "the thesis is simply that, with sufficient frequency, <soul' as <spirit' is used to des­ ignate the distinguishing component in the human person:'4 A doctrine is not necessarily false simply because it has a dubious pedigree, but it is important to remem­ ber that a doctrine's pedigree is often times a very good clue as to its source and its ultimate consequences. And when viewed from the perspective of Christian reflec­ tion across the ages, there is no doubt that trichotomy has a very dubious pedigree. With its roots in Plato's distinction between body and soul, and Aristotle's fur­ ther division of soul into "animal" and "rational" elements, the trichotomist notion of human nature as tri-partite is unmistakably Greek and pagan, rather than Hebrew and biblical. As Louis Berkhof notes, "the most familiar but also the crudest form oftrichotomy is that which takes the body for the material part of man's nature, the soul as the principle of animal life, and the spirit as the God-related rational and immortal ele­ ment in man:'s Whether the Gnostic impulse is a cause or an ef­ fect, the trichotomist structure of human nature has served gnostically inclined Evangelicals quite well by appearing to cover several Biblical bases. Trichotomy allows for a doctrine ofdepravity- the body is bad and makes us sin. Furthermore, since we are spiritually dead, the miraculous work that God performs upon us when we are born again, is that he gives to us a new

J U L Y / AU G U S T I 99 5

23

spirit, or as some would prefer, he creates a spirit within us. Thus, as Christians, we have new life, which the non-Christian does not possess. B. B. Warfield, the great Princeton theologian, astutely noted that such schemes fail to see the obvious and fatal theological flaw associated with trichotomy, namely... that thus the man is not saved at all; a different newly created man is substituted for him. When the old man is got rid of--and that the old man has to be ultimately got rid of [we.do] not doubt-the saved man that is left is not at all the old man that was to be saved, but a new man that has never needed any saving.6

In addition, the trichotomist scheme also allows for a doctrine of free will, since the body,as flesh, tends toward evil, and we are said to be spiritually dead; never the less, the soul retains the ability (with suffi­ cient enticements, of course) to make a decision to accept Christ as Savior. This enables the trichotomist to attempt to take seriously those Biblical passages describing the fallen human condition, and yet still allows for the typically American idol, namely the con­ ception that the human will, and not the grace of God, is the ultimate factor in determining just where, ex­ actly, we will spend our eternity.

Another significant impact ofthe trichotomist un­ derstanding of human nature, is that it provides much of the theological justification for the rapid growth of Pentecostalism. In this case, trichotomy allows Pente­ costals to argue that because the spirit is the higher

are tri-partite, having a body, a soul and a spirit. But such analogies are not drawn directly from the Biblical data itself; they come only byway ofcrude inference. In addition, there are two texts that have been used to supposedly prove trichotomy to be the Biblical anthro­ pology. Several early Christian writers, such as Origen, found a kind of confirmation to these Greek categories in the words of Paul, recorded in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

Paul's words, «may your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless;' are interpreted to mean that Paul en­ dorsed the tri -partite distinction of body, soul and spirit. But as the late Anthony Hoekema has pointed out, when viewed in the light of the rest of the Biblical data, which teaches otherwise, there must be some other intention on Paul's part.

When Paul prays for the Thessalonians that the spirit, soul, and body ofeach ofthem may be preserved or kept, he is obviously not trying to split man into three parts, any more than Jesus intended to split man into four parts when he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" (Luke 10:27). This passage therefore also provides no ground for the trichotomic view of the constitution of man. 7

In Hebrews 4: 12, it is argued that the author makes a clear division between soul and spirit, implying that they cannot be synonymous. But John Murray con­ tends that the verb used here-translated as «dividing" in the NIV-is never used elsewhere in Scripture in the sense of distinguishing between two different things, but is always used when distributing and dividing up various aspects of the same thing (see Heb 2:4; Lk 11: 17 -18; Mt 27:35; Jn 19:24).8 The point is not that the Word sepa­ rates two distinct things-soul from spirit-but that «The Word of God judges the thoughts and attitude of the heart" (Heb 4: 12).

The Word does not divide soul from spirit, as though these were two distinct entities, but the Word does divide soul and spirit in the sense of penetrating into our inner most parts.

Every doctrine we affirm has consequences which will inevitably effect our lives as Christians, and tri­ chotomy is no exception. There are many notable instances among influential Evangelicals wherein tri­ chotomy' and the related Carnal Christian teaching, has led to a foothold for the Gnostic impulse, with all of its associated doctrinal fall-out. There are several clear examples of this which are important to consider be­ cause they so powerfully illustrate how pervasive this tendency can be, and how easily it slips into what are otherwise effective Christian ministries. There are al­

There are many not.able instances among influential Evangelicals wherein trichotomy, and the related Carnal Christian tea,ching,has led to afootllold for t.he Gnostic impulse. element of human nature, «speaking in tongues" is the divinely appointed means ofby-passing the lower ele­ ments ofhuman nature, such as the rationality ofmind and soul. In the Pentecostal scheme, we can commune with God directly, without the hindrances of the lower elements of human nature and language. Indeed, in such schemes, we can commune with God directly, apart from any means at all. Trichotomy conveniently provides the means for a host of neo-gnostically in­ clined Pentecostal practices.

The notion of trichotomy has been defended in a number ofways. In popular literature and preaching, it is often asserted that since God is a Trinity, and since as humans we are created in God's image, humans, too,

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modern REFORMATION

ways direct consequences in the life of the church whenever Gnosticism makes its influence known.

Calvary Chapel founder and pastor, Chuck Smith, is a prime example of one whose trichotomist leanings have produced serious doctrinal and ideological con"­ sequences. In commenting upon 1 Thessalonians 5:23 , one of two key trichotomist proof-texts, Smith asserts, "we meet God in the realm of our spirit."9 In his treat­ ment of 1 Corinthians 2-3, Smith affirms the classic Carnal Christian teaching. We read that "many of the Corinthian Christians hadn't entered the spiritual di­ mension yet;' and that the "Holy Spirit gives us knowledge beyond our experience:' 10 The Gnostic im­ pulse associated with trichotomy is at its height when Smith declares that "our problem arises from living as redeemed spirits in unredeemed bodies. We desire to be delivered from these bodies of flesh so that we can enjoy the full, rich, overflowing life in the spirif'll In Smith's conception, God does not meet us as Protestants have historically affirmed-through means such as the Word and Sacrament-but instead, God meets us immediately "in the realm of our spirif' Because this is the case, not all Christians have "entered into the spirituar' According to Smith, we now have two categories ofChristians, the "carnal" and the "spiri­ tuaI;' when the Bible knows only of one category, "Christians:' This is a classic case of the Gnostic impulse estab­ lishing a major beachhead in the very heart of Evangelicalism. If this is true, what then is the likely source of this Gnostic influence? No, Chuck Smith has probably not been going to New Age seminars or study­ ing the works of Plot in us. But Chuck Smith is an ardent supporter of the dispensational system of annotations found in the famous Scofield Reference Bible, at first glance an unlikely source for Gnostic influences. When one considers, however, several of the notes advocat­ ing trichotomy contained in the Scofield Reference Bible, the reader is immediately intrigued, for example, by the affinities between the notes on 1 Corinthians 2: 14, and the mystical and speculative philosophy of Plotinus.A simple comparison will suffice. The Scofield Bible asserts: Paul divides men into three classes: (1) psuchikos, mean­ ing of the senses, sensous, 0 as 3: 15; Jude 19), natural, i. e. the Adamic man, un renewed through the new-birth On 3:3,5); (2) pneumatikos, meaning spiritual, i.e., the renewed man as Spirit-filled and walking in the Spirit in full communion with God (Eph 5:18-20); and (3) sarkikos, meaning carnal, fleshly, i.e. the renewed man who, walking "after the flesh ," remains a babe in Christ (1 Cor 3: 1-4). The natural man may be learned, gentle, eloquent, fascinating, but the spiritual content ofScrip­

ture is absolutely hidden from him; and the fleshly or

carnal Christian is able to comprehend only its simplest

truths, "milk" (1 Cor 3:2).12

Plotinus, in but one example that may be cited, affirms an amazingly similar tri-partite structure: All men, from birth onward, live more by sensation

than by thought, forced as they are by necessity to give

heed to sense impressions. Some stayin the sensate their

whole life long. For them, sense is the beginning and the

end of everything. Good and evil are the pleasures of

sense and the pains ofsense; it is enough to chase the one

and flee the other. Those of them who philosophize say

that therein wisdom lies .... Others do lift themselves, a

little above the earth. Their higher part transports them

out ofthe pleasurable into the honorable. But, unable to

perceive anything higher and with nowhere to set them­

selves, they fall back in virtue's name-on the activities

and "options" of that lower realm they had thought to

escape. But there is another, a third class of men-men

godlike in the greatness of their strength and the acuity

of their perceptions. They see clearly the splendors that

shine out from on high. Thither, out ofthe mist and fogs

of the earth, they lift themselves. There they stay, seeing

from above what is here below, taking their pleasure in

truth. 13

Note that the first level of men, the so-called "sen­ sate" of Plotinus corresponds directly to the natural man of Scofield. Then in the second class, there are those who lift themselves above the earth, but are not able to perceive anything higher. In Plotinus' concep­ tion, this corresponds well to Scofield's "Carnal Christian" who can only comprehend the simplest truth, the "milk" of Scripture. Scofield's "Spirit-filled Christian;' who is said to have full communion with God, mirrors Plotinus' third class of men, those who attain the highest level above the fog and mist. Thus, one may not have to look to the mystery religions ofthe Middle East, or to the New Age Movement here in America to be influenced by Gnosticism. One may be unwittingly taken in merely by adopting the trichotomist anthropology, or "Carnal Christian" un­ derstanding of sanctification, so often associated with the Keswick or "higher-life" teachings that have be­ come part and parcel of fundamentalist theology-a theology from which Chuck Smith has drawn deeply.

While Calvary Chapel has done great things in terms of evangelism, and in giving many of us our first exposure to serious Bible study-there are indeed ele­ ments of the true Evangel present-it is no accident that Calvary Chapel, under Chuck Smith's leadership, has also pioneered the experience-based form of wor­ ship known as "Praise and Worship" associated with Maranatha Music. While in many cases, there has been

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25

a commendable emphasis upon the singing of Scrip­ ture, a historic Reformed practice, Calvary Chapel's now ubiquitous "praise songs" have opened the door to a seemingly endless stream of praise and worship cho­ ruses specifically aimed at arousing the subjective emotions of the worshipping subject, thereby enabling the worshipper to escape the natural, and enter into the spirit above the mists. Content-laden hymns, and lit­ urgy based upon biblical texts, can only hinder such a quest. Yes, our doctrines do have consequences, even for our worship.

Claiming to be the "ministry of balance:' Calvary Chapel is characterized by a marked imbalance in what it opposes: Sacraments as means ofgrace, liturgy in any form, Reformation theology .(especially the doctrines of election, justification by an imputed righteousness, and a clear Law-Gospel distinction), an educated clergy, denominationalism and any form oftradition. It is important to notice that the things which are con­ demned are the very things that Protestants have historically thought quite important, if not essential.

The things that are condemned are clearly fruit of the Gnostic impulse, brought into the movement by means of a trichotomist anthropology, and "Carnal Christian" conception of the Christian life.

But the Gnostic impulse does not always make a frontal assault. Another important illustration of the way in which the Gnostic impulse operates in evangeli­ cal circles, is seen in the work of Charles Ryrie, former professor of Dallas Theological Seminary, and whose name appears on a rather popular evangelical study Bible. While Ryrie whole-heartedly rejects tri­ chotomy, 14 he nevertheless affirms, in slightly modified form, the "Carnal Christian" teaching associated with Lewis Sperry Chafer,I 5 founder of Dallas Theological Seminary. In Ryrie's system, the front door is deliber­ ately slammed to the Gnostic impulse. Men and women are not tri-partite, but dichotomous. For this we should be glad. The problem is, however, the back door is left wide open. For once it is argued that there are two-levels of the Christian life (the Carnal and the Spiritual), a hierarchy is re-introduced that once again has the prac­ tical consequences of making the "Spiritual Christian" operate on a higher plain than the "Carnal Christian:' who has merely trusted Jesus as Savior but, as ofyet, has not fully surrendered to Christ's Lordship. If the "Natu­ ral Man" is not a Christian, and the "Carnal Christian" is a Christian but not yet a disciple, the question natu­ rally arises, "What must one do to move on to the next level-the spirituallevel?"Thus, another Gnostic prin­ ciple is unintentionally re-introduced back into the discussion, and that is the notion that religion is a kind of mystical ascent to the divine. Whether Ryrie intends 26

JULY IAUGUST 1995

to or not, once we have offered a bifurcated notion of sanctification, we have set up a system in which climb­ ing the ladder to the next spiritual level is the norm, and we feed the Gnostic impulse yet again . We move pro­ gressively from Natural Man, to Carnal Man, to Spiritual Man. And it is no wonder then, that so many, who will not hear Ryrie's rejection of trichotomy, will instead hear his natural, carnal and spiritual categories through a trichotomist grid.

Once again, we see the importance of recovering and articulating the biblical concept of human nature as a dichotomy of body and soul-spirit, as well as re­ taining the conclusions of historic Christian reflection on these issues. If our doctrines do have conse­ quences-and they certainly do-there is no doubt that trichotomy will lead down some very predictable and problematic roads. Any scheme which depreciates the body and the mind, and which correspondingly elevates the spiritual without due regard to the fact that God the Holy Spirit works through the means that God Himselfhas created, is in fact, deeply influenced by the Gnostic impulse. There is always a real danger in di­ vorcing what God has joined together (body and soul).

No matter how well intended we are, and no matter how fashionable spirituality may be, the Gnostic im­ pulse lurks behind every attempt to build a ladder to heaven, and we must be very careful to avoid its de­ structive influence. We need to be ever mindful of how easy it is to allow our minds to be captured by "hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends up~n hu­ man tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ" (Col 2:8). ~ The Rev . Kim Riddlebarger is a graduate of California State University in Fullerton, Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and is presently a Ph. D. candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the dean of the CURE Academy and a co-host of The White Horse Inn radio program. He is a contributing scholar to Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation (Baker Book House) , Power Religion : The Selling out of the Evangelical Church (Moody Press) and Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Unites & Divides Us (Moody Press) .

1. John Murray, "The Nature of Man," in Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol. 2 (Carlisle : Banner of Truth , 1977), p. 14.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid ., p. 21 .

4. Ibid.

5. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: William B, Eerdmans, 1986), pp.

191 If. 6. B. B. Warfield, "Review of He That Is Spiritual, by Lewis Sperry Chafer," reprinted in Mike Horton , ed., Christ The Lord (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), pp. 211­ 218 .

7. Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God's Image (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 204 If; John Murray , "Trichotomy," in Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol. 2, pp . 23-33.

8. John Murray, "Trichotomy," pp . 30-31 .

9. Chuck Smith , New Testament Study Guide (Costa Mesa: The Word for Today, 1982), p.113.

10. Ibid., p. 78 .

11. Ibid ., p. 193.

12 . The New Scofield Reference Bible, note on 1 Corinthians 2:14, p. 1234.

13. Plotinus, "The Intelligence, the Ideas and Being," in The Essential Plotinus, Elmer 0' Brien (Indianapolis: Hacket Publications, 1964), pp. 46-47.

14. Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1988), pp . 195-196.

15. See for example the notes in, The Ryrie Study Bible, especially notes on 1 Cor 2:10 If. See also Ryrie, Basic Theology, pp. 338-339; and So Great a Salvation (Wheaton : Victor Books, 1992).

modern REFORMATION

6)

BY MICHAEL HORTON

•

1]

e average Christian will learn more from hymns than from any systematic theology. Hymns chart progression from classic hymns of the 17th and 18th centuries (especially those of Charles Wesley, Augustus Toplady, John Newton and William Cowper) to the Romantic "songs and choruses" of the 19th and 20th centuries. They reflect the shift from Reformation categories (God, sin and grace, Christ's saving work, the Word, church, sacraments, etc.) to Romantic indi­ vidualism. We sing, "I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses. And the voice I hear, singing in my ear, the voice of God is calling. And he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own:' Or, "He touched me:' The number of 19th century hymns that talk about the objective truth of Scripture, and that which God has done outside of my personal experience, is overwhelmed by the num­ ber of hymns that focus on my personal experience. It is my heart, not God and his saving work, that receives top billing.

If that was true of the 19th century, the 20th cen­ tury only exacerbated this emphasis, and the style of the commercial Broadway musical was imitated in

tered and Gnostic tendency, but often contain outright heresy--probably not intentionally, but as a result of sloppy theology. In our day, sloppy theology usually means some form of Gnosticism. Below are some clas­ sic hymns to contrast with examples that I dragged out of a very (happily) dusty box of music books many of us grew up with in fundamentalist and evangelical churches.

Classic Hymns "All People That On Earth Do Dwell;' to the tune ofthe Doxology, is the "Old Hundredth" (Psalm 100), com­ posed by Louis Bourgeois, Calvin's church composer, in 1551. The music actually says the same thing as the words, moving reverently and majestically through this God-centered psalm. The Trinity Hymnal, a hallmark ofReformed worship, is a great source ofPsalms (Phila­ delphia: Great Commission Publications). . Who can forget John Newton's "Amazing Grace"?

But he also wrote, "Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spo­ ken;' with the third verse reading, "Blest inhabitants of Zion, washed in the Redeemer's blood, Jesus, whom their souls rely on, makes them kings and priests to God. 'Tis his love his people raises over ~Iaranatha self to reign as kings; and as priests, his solemn praises each for a thank-offering brings:' Like the warm orthodoxy of 18th century Lutheran hymns, the Calvinistic hymns of the same period reflect the har­ mony of awe and joy, thoughtful reflection, and jubilant emotion. One ac­ tually feels like expressing emotion when the great lines from redemptive history Gnosth~ism. are sung! It is not'i\lleluia" or some banal Q! "Wow Jesus, you're so neat" chorus. For songs that elevated personal experience and happiness instance, Newton sings, "Could we bear from one an­ above God and his glory. Today, the vast majority of other what he daily bears from us? Yet this glorious entries in the Maranatha, Vineyard, and related praise Friend and Brother loves us though we treat him thus: songbooks are not only burdened with this self-cen- Though for good we render ill, he accounts us brethren

Today, the vast)majority of entJries f.'om and the Vineya.'d are not only burdened \vith this self-centered and Gnostic tendency, but often contain outright heresy- p,'obably not intentionally, but as a result of sloppy theology. In our day, sloppy theology usuallv means some form of

JULY/AUGUST 1995

27

still." One of my favorites is Cowper's "Let Us Love And Sing And Wonder": "Let us love, and sing, and wonder, let us praise the Savior's Name! He has hushed the Law's loud thunder. He has quenched Mount Sinai's flame: He has washed us with his blood. He has brought us nigh to God... Let uswonder; grace and justice join,and point to mercy's store; when through grace in Christ our trust is, justice smiles and asks no more:' These classic hymns, a sampling of the riches of hymnals that are now quite difficult to locate except in used theologi­ cal book shops, are hardly stiff, cold, and formal. The passion is linked to truth. There is content, without which the great hymn-writers believed there could be no legitim~te, godly, emotional response.

The 19th Century Romantic Hymn or "Song' "When I'm With Him" is a far cry from "Crown Him With Many Crowns:' The former reads, "When I'm with Him, ... when I'm with Him, ... The fairest pleasures ofthe world grow dim; ... And in my heart I feel the thrill of glory, When I'm with Him, when I'm with Him:' "Since Jesus Came Into My Heart" is typical of the Romantic hymns in that it is a musical "testimony" of the hymn-writer's own personal experience that is set forth as normative for the worshipper. Victory, perfect peace, perfect joy, and perfect surrender are prominent themes in these songs, heavily influenced not only by Romanticism but by the Keswick "Higher Life" move­ ment, which B. B. Warfield characterized as "Protestant mysticism" in Perfectionism (Oxford University Press).

The God and the Christ outside of us (the Reformation emphasis) is replaced with God and the Christ within the individual's heart (the medieval and gnostic em­ phasis). "Open Your Heart To Jesus" is representative of this sort of hymn.

The Gnostic disdain for human aspects (body, pas­ sions, etc.) appears again and again as we "Fight manfully onward, dark passions to subdue:' Heaven is a major theme, but it is seen more in terms of romantic sentimentalism and escape from nature than as glorifi­ cation and perfect communion with Christ. "Sinner, why not come and join us on our trip to the sky?" one hymn-writer querries. ''I'll Do The Best That I Can" was a popular hymn written by the Stamps Quartet. In "Climbing The Stairway of Love;' we read, "I now am climbing the stairway that leads to heav'n above. Each step is guided by God's great hand of love. I'm moving higher and nearerthathome up in the sky, and ifbyfaith I keep climbing I'll reach it by and bi' Here are some other examples: "Higher yet and higher, out of clouds and night, nearer yet and nearer rising to the light,­ Light serene and holy, where my soul may rest, purified and lowly, sanctified and blesf' 28

J U L Y / AUG U S T I 99 5

In the "Living Above" songs and choruses, the first entry is, "I Want To Rise Above the World": "I want to live up in the highest heights where Heaven's radiance glows." Another exults, "I've been on the mountain top and seen His face ... Lifted in His arms to heights I tho't could ne'er be mine:' The theme of seeing God's face and experiencing that direct encounter is what Luther meant by the "theology of glory": the desire to see "the naked God" in his majesty. While Newton was singing about the "glorious things" that are spoken of Zion, God's holy church, Ellen Goreh writes ofbeing"In the Secret of His Presence:' "Would you like to know the sweetness of the secret of the Lord? Go and hide be­ neath His shadow: this shall then be your reward; and when -e' er you leave the silence of the happy meeting place, you must mind and bear the image of the Master in your face, of the Master in your face:' Oswald J. Smith's "Deeper and Deeper" expresses a similar idea: "Into the heart of Jesus, deeper and deeper I go .. .Into the will ofJesus, deeper and deeper I go .. .Into the cross ofJesus, deeper and deeper I go .. .Into the joy.. .Into the 10ve... Rising with soul enraptured far from the world below:' Even the mention of the cross here is not a reference to the same cross that stood outside of center­ city Jerusalem in 33 A.D., but a metaphor or allegory for one's own personal experience of intimacy with Jesus.

The mystical intimacy between the soul and Jesus (i.e., his Spirit) is represented in, "The Touch of His Hand On Mine:' "There are days so dark that I seek in vain for the face of my Friend Divine; but tho' darkness hide, He is there to guide by the touch of His hand on mine:' While such authors are often men, most men I know would feel somewhat uncomfortable singing "love songs" to another man, even ifhe is Jesus Christ.

The mystic's love for Jesus is romantic; the orthodox believer's love for Jesus is filial and is always linked to his saving work. We do not love Jesus "just for who you are;' for apart from his saving acts we do not have any reason to love him any more than we love any other historical figure.

This theme of the "namelessness" of God is replete in Gnostic as well as mystical literature: God cannot be described, or, ifhe can at all, it is by negation-that is, by saying what he is not. Similarly, the Gaithers write, "There's Just Something About That Name:'Well, what?

All of the names for God and for Jesus Christ are preg­ nantwith theological meaning, but unless one unpacks that truth, we are left with "just something about that name:' Nobody seems to know quite what that "some­ thing" happens to be. It is actually the thing someone says when one does not really know. For instance, when we vaguely remember a name on a wedding invitation:

modern REFORMATION

"I can't remember exactly who that is, but there's just something about that name."

Many of the Gaither songs, in fact, are deeply Ro­ mantic in their orientation. Jesus seems to be conceived of exclusively as a friend and as someone who lives inside of us. Individual experience is key. One finds very little objective, redemptive, doctrinal content in their works and if that is true for the Gaithers, it is even a greater problem with the Maranatha Songbook and the Vineyard songbooks. Let us limit the discussion to the latter, although we CQuid use a great deal of space on the Maranatha Songbook.

Remarkably, written by a husband and wife team, "By Your Side" goes like this:"By your side I would stay, in your arms I would lay. Jesus love of my soul, nothing from you I with-hold:' John Barnett writes, "There is a season for faith beyond reason, there is a time for lovers to cri' As we have seen, the "theology ofglory" charac­ teristic of Gnosticism and mysticism in general, has as its goal the ascent into the presence of God to touch him and to see him in all of his glory, even though he has said that no one can see him and live. "Draw me closer, Lord;' goes another Vineyard song. "Draw me closer, dear Lord, so that I might touch You , so that I might touch You, Lord I want to touch You. Your glory and Your love, Your glory and Your love, Your glory and Your love, and Your majesti' This is an invitation to disaster, for apart from Christ (who is nowhere to be found in this song), "our God is a consuming fire" and to see him or touch him is to be turned to ash (Heb 12:29). ''I'm In-Love With You" is another "love song to Jesus:' Since the rest of the song does not say much more than the title, we need not quote the entire piece.

A little later in the song book we are encouraged to "turn t'ward to kiss Your face:' It is difficult to find a single song in the Vineyard song books that actually presents us with a Christ-centered, cross-centered, doctrinally sound, and thoughtful exposition ofbibli­ cal teaching for use in praise. Clearly, the one praising is more central than the one praised: "I Bless You;' "I Have Found;"'I Just Want To Praise You;"'I Only Want To Love You;' ''I'll Seek After You;' and on and on we could go. "Spirit of God" reads, "I can almost see Your holiness as I look around this place. With my hands raised up to receive Your love, I can see You on each face. Spirit of God, lift me up, Spirit of God lift me up, fill me again with Your love sweet Spirit ofGod:'Notice the "theology ofglory": The worshipper is expected to sing, "I can almost see Your holiness as I look around this place:' Really? Isaiah, when he saw God's holiness, immediately recognized, "I am an unclean man and dwell among a people of unclean lips" (Is 6). Further,

"With my hands raised up to receive Your love"? Rather than hands raised out to receive the earthly elements of bread and wine, or to turn the pages of Scripture, it is the hands raised up to the air that become receptacles of divine love for the soul. Finally, can the people really "see [C od] em each face"? At best, it is sentimental mysticism; at worst, it is Gnostic pantheism. Emerson and Thoreau would have appreciated the "spark of di­ vinity" on each face, but it is certainly sub- C hristian by any measure.

The famous "Spirit Song;'written by John Wimber, reads, "Oh let the Son of God enfold you with His Spirit and His love." Now, how would thatfirst line be rewrit­ ten in a more classical Christian vein? "0h trust the Son of God to redeem you by His flesh and His blood:' It even rhymes with the original version.

The "Inside God" is proclaimed throughout the Promise Keepers album, A Life That Shows. For ex­ ample, in the song, "I Want To Be Just Like You;' a father prays for his son: "Help me be a living Bible, Lord that my little boy can read ..." turning from the external Word to "the self' The song then continues, ".. .I know that he'll learn from the things that he sees, And the Jesus he finds will be the Jesus in me:' So not only are we missing an "external Word;' now we're not even left with an "external Christ:' Compare this with secular song-writer Joan Osborne, who asks the question, "What if God was one of us ... just a stranger on a bus trying to make his way home." While Christians are seemingly obsessed with the Inside God, it seems there is interest in the external, historical, objective, "Out­ side God" after all.

Conclusion This is not written in order to provoke reaction, but to help us recognize the extent to which popular forms of worship have come to be dominated by Gnostic influ­ ences. These influences are not calculated by the song-writers, who are, no doubt, sincere and devoted believers. Nor is it to suggest that those who write (or sing) them are heretics, even though some of the con­ tent is at least heterodox, and in a few cases heretical.

One must persist in heresy and refuse correction in order to be an enemy of the Faith, but ignorance is a serious problem that cripples the Church and easily accommodates departures from clear biblical teach­ ing. May God grant us a new generation of Bachs, Handels, Newtons and Topladys who can tune their harps to sing God's praises in a way that sacrifices nei­ ther truth nor love. ~

J U L Y I AUG U S T 1 99 5

29

The Pride of Simplicity

BY LEONARD PAYTON

galitar'ian movements almost always spawn new breeds ofelitism. George Orwell showed this bit­ ter irony in Animal Farm. And Christians should find nothing surprising in such an assertion since all rebellions against any alleged elitism are tantamount to saying, "If I were Adam, I wouldn't have sinned in the first place:' The Church falls prey to egalitarian ideas periodically. Ours is such a time. I will call its chief symptom "the pride of simplicity:' This pride has pro­ found implication for the aesthetics and ethics of the church.

Orwell's critique was directed toward Soviet -style socialism. However, his parable transcends that period of history, which, thankfully (perhaps), appears to be behind us. In Orwell's story, oppressed animals threw off the shackles of their human tyrants. They chanted, "Four legs good, two legs bad!;' and "All animals are equal:' Soon, however, the pigs began to emerge in a leadership role, gradually assuming human traits. The slogan migrated to "Some animals are more equal than others:' Eventually, the pigs moved into the farm house, donned human apparel, walked on their hind legs, ate and drank like men, and exercised tyranny easily equal to that of the humans. Once again the slogan mutated: "Four legs good-two legs, better:'Tragically, pigs made even worse humans than the humans themselves.

A number of swirling ideas inside and outside the church have fueled a similar egalitarianism, ideas such as, ''I'm OK, you're OK;' the emphasis on civil liberties, the individualism of "what Jesus means to me;' multiculturalism, diversity, and the notion that doc­ trine divides and is therefore bad. This last point is especially ominous because it equates any earnest pur­ suit of the truth with elitism.

These ideas have combined to form pride of sim­ plicity. Gone away is Reverend Williams: here to stay is Pastor Bob. The drive for "seeker sensitivity"has aimed all aspects ofthe church at the lowest common denomi­ nator. Instead of naming our congregations "Grace Baptist" or "Our Redeemer's Presbyterian;' we name them after valleys, trees, and streams. All of this is done in the interest ofchurch growth. There is even a congre­ gation in California called simply "The Coastlands:' 30

JULY IAUGUST 1995

Barry Liesch tells of a church in Los Angeles with a Coke machine in the back of the sanctuary. 1 The pride of simplicity has been bubbling up in all aspects of the visible church. However, this trend has affected worship music more than any other trend in church life. We disdain our hymnals because they pre­ sumablyspeak to the head and not to the heart. (Notice the implicit accusation of intellectual elitism here.) We replace those hymnals with songs which can be per­ formed while the eyes are closed. We reduce our lyric vocabulary to a bare minimum, and take special care not to touch anyone's hot buttons with language which might sound too doctrinal. Here again, we see an attack on implied doctrinal elitism. And of course, the ac­ companiment instrument ofchoice becomes the guitar with its ubiquitous eight chords in fixed inversions which, by default, cast out any sense of good voice leading. As Chuck Kraft says, "a guitar gives the impres­ sion that anyone can learn to play it:'2 Where has costly worship gone?

Once in a while we sing historic hymns with mist in our eyes, but it is little more than sentimentality. We are so glad to be a part of the family of God that we,lose all sense of sacred worship space. We clap our hands on beats two and four just like we would at a Beach Boys concert. What a shock it would be if we viscerally saw that King to whom we were singing Hosanna!

We are lured into such irreverence by the apparent demands of evangelism, "becoming all things to all men:'We quickly transform this principle into the prac­ tice of finding the least common denominator, which in our time is popular culture. Those embracing such a philosophy of ministry often claim, "I just want to see people come to Christ;' but this philosophy implies that unless we each take the same approach we some­ how do not care to see people come to Christ. Notice the emerging new elitism! Paul never said, "To the he­ donist I became a hedonist:' Unfortunately, this ethos of mandatory simplicity soon begets a kind of comfort which, when violated, is characterized as un-spirit-filled. This is a catastrophe for Christian growth, since many of God's attributes are disquieting. To ignore those attributes is to worship

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a god not seen in the Bible, in short, to violate the first and second commandments. Many of the experiences our living Heavenly Father designs for our growth are unpleasant as well. And yet, when we insist on likable, or "seeker friendly" music, we inadvertently despise the chastening of the Lord.

I had a surprise collision with that comfort a few years ago as I contemplated a praise chorus much loved by my congregation. The text focused on the cuddly attributes of God. It pO,r trayed God as the one who meets my needs. One can find such texts under every bush. They sell well. The texts dealing with those other less savory attributes of God are strapped together in that perfunctory, omnjbus song, "Our God is an Awe­ some God;' in which "awesome" covers all those leftover, unnamed (and probably unwanted) at­ tributes.

The musician in me winced at the cuddly praise chorus. It was truly banal music, especially because it arrogated to itself some of the surface features of high art music, yet with no understanding of high art form.

It employed Brahmsian contrapuntal voice leading in a torturously predictable sixteen measure form com­ prised of eight-measure antecedent and consequent phrases. The obligatory seventeenth century decora­ tion hauling us into the half cadence in measure eight was especially painful since one could feel it coming already in measure five.

Previous generations in the church have produced equally unimaginative music. One need only think of the gratuitous use of secondary dominant chords pre­ dictably and copiously placed throughout much church music composed from the late nineteenth cen­ tury right up to our '60's, when, sensing the triteness of our society both inside and outside the church, we desired transcendence and authenticity. We swept away those vapid tunes so often called "good old hymns" and replaced them with equally vapid contemporary Christian music sprinkled with the holy water of sur­ face features commandeered from high art music. But a Volkswagen with a Rolls Royce grill is still a Volkswagen. Moreover, it is better without the grill because it is not pretentious. Is the Beatles"'Yesterday" high art because it is accompanied by a string quartet?

Is contemporary Christian music orchestrated with woodwinds in pairs, harp and four horns transcendent?

Still, an appetite for such music was the starting point for my congregation. In it I was faced with what I believed to be two inadequacies, one being theologi­ cal, the other, aesthetic. As a church musician, I concluded that the former inadequacy presented the \ more pressing problem. For that reason, I superim­ posed a different set of words over the well-loved

melody, those words being, "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth."3 This seems to be a mild text, as it does not mention God's jealousy or His wrath. Nevertheless, the move was a gross miscalculation on my part. The new words "didn't feel right" to many in my congregation. And since I did not experience the same feelings toward the tune, I had wandered into a mine field.

On a couple of other occasions, I unwittingly rep­ licated my mistake. They were different tunes and different texts, but I nevertheless received the same vehement reaction. Finally, I began to see the porten­ tous implications of my little experiments. Each time I altered the text, I was improving on a piece of popular culture. What I discovered was that the musical style was unable to carry the text. It was like replacing an Edsel's engine with a nuclear reactor.

This brings me to my main point: All styles are not equal. This is obvious to anyone who has given any serious thought to aesthetics. However, the problem before me was an ethical one. All styles are not ethically equal. And since style is an issue of aesthetics, it there­ fore appears that there is no clear dividing line between ethics and aesthetics in worship music. From this truth we can derive the following principle: Any style not able to carry a text rightfully belonging in Christian worship is a style unsuited for Christian worship. And since the forms are, the more disastrous the marriage.

Since ours is a time in which musically illiterate people produce most of the music we hear, the musical forms have all the imagination of Hallmark card poetry or pulp novels. These are very simple forms with very little flexibility. And as mounting Christian egalitarianism has succumbed to the pride of simplicity, these forms have been accepted into the heady realm of the "anointed:' Indeed, I have even read straight-faced ad­ vertisements for "anointed guitar solos!"

As Christians we must put more pressure on musical form. Congratulating "diversity" or "multi­ culturalism" may seem peaceable, but truthfully, it is a tired capitulation to sloth and ease. And in the end, such a stance will only serve further to enervate Chris­ tian worship. ''I'm OK, you're OK" must be replaced with, ''I'm a sinner, you're a sinner; let's grow in the Lord with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength." :f-t.., Dr. Leonard Payton is a graduate of the University of Southern California and the University of California in San Diego. He is the music director at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Yuba City , California, where he also teaches music theory and conducts an elementary school band. This article was previously published in Crossroads, a quarterly publication of Ars Nova, 1. Barry Leisch , People in the Presence of God. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), p, 27, 2. Chuck Kraft, "Organ/Guitar preference reflects view of God" Worship Leader. (April/May 1993), p. 7.

3. Westminster Shorter Catechism, question #4.

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31

TAPE

EXCERPT

Editor's Note: The following excerpts are offered as an example of the serious departure from classical Christian categories to the new Gnosticism which is sweeping many of our evangelical churches.

Pat Robertson: The Holy Spirit in Your Life • KurtRudolph, Gnosis: TheNature & History ofGnosticism (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1987) . This is the standard introduction to Gnosticism as a distinct histori­ cal-religious system. A good introdution.

• Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). A fascinating look at how an incipient Gnosticism has affected much of Protestant theol­ ogy and practice. A very important and interesting work.

Highly recommended.

• Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992). This is one ofthose books that hurts to read, because it is written by a "Gnostic Jew" who takes a rather penetrating look at American Evangelicalism, and much ofhis criticism is right on the money.

• Edwin Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of Proposed Evidences, rev. ed (Grand Rapids: Baker House, 1983). Yamauchi argues that there is very little evidence for a "pre-Christian" Gnosticism, and that Gnosticism does not bloom until the fertile soil of Christianity is present.

• A. M. Renwick, "Gnosticism," in The New International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, ed., Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1982). One of the best introductions to the subject, it covers the history, Biblical background and theological controversy associated with the rise of Gnosticism. You can find this in most any public li­ brary.

• Edwin Yamauchi, "Gnosis, Gnosticism," in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993). An excellent introduction to the possible influence of Gnostic systems of thought in the background of several of Paul's letters, i.e., Colossians and Philippians.

• Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979). The mas­ terpiece treatment of Gnosticism, by the best theologian of the early church. Much ofwhat we know about ancient Gnos­ ticism comes through the pen of Irenaeus. Highly recommended.

• Peter Jones, The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back, (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992). A good introduction to Gnosticism in the wider culture. ~

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L Y I AUG U S T 1995

The visible doesn't have near the power that the invisible has. Well., now, faith is what reaches along the dividing line between the visible and the invisible . Faith reaches heaven and.lays hold of the promises of God. It brings aboutthe control of the invisible, beca.use the invisible is infinitely more powerful than the visible.

In another instance, when he wa$ on the Mount of T ransfigu ration, ...Jesus came down from wher~ . he had been 'bathed in the glory of God. He had entered across the divide into the invisible world, where he had tasted the ppwer of the world of the spirit. And now he came to this scene of human need and desperation. Butmore than that, he came upon his own people who refused to seeth~ . power afthe other World.

Now, there is what is called a "Rhema" in Greek, which triggers faith in us. The Rhema of God-somehow that timeless, changeless, eternal word of our Heavenly Father-takes life and it comes into us through a spoken word, Rhema.

And it seizes our being, and faith rises from that word.

God could t~ke a 1O-~yea r-old child who had just been saved and let that child have a glimpse of the supernatural world . He could let him have a perception, an understanding of the unseen world that would be greater than his father ~h9 grandfather. And would give him such ability to reach into that world that almost instantaneously at a point of time, he could reach across the dividing line between visible and invisible and bring forth miracles from the invisible world.

Now, thisi.s supernatural faith as spoken of in the gifts of the Holy Spirit..

A person can go along normally, day by day, and he has to believe God for the. expenses of his family, his wife, his children, his automobile, his insurance, his payments, and whatever he's got, he's got to believe God for. Maybe it's ten thousand, fifteen, twenty, twenty five thousand, whatever his income level is or more. He has to believe for that; that's normal. But then one day, he is either faced with a crisis, or he is challenged where he must believe for a million dollars.

And he can} do it, he tries to do it; he has nothing in his experience. Possibly if he lived 20 years and had his faith tested, a million dollars would be nothing to him, but now he can't believe. But he has to believe because the need is desperate. And suddenly something comes upon him . Suddenly he i.s LJshered into the throne room of God. He looks to the Father and he says, "Father; I must have a million dollars. The need is great upon me. You have given me a job and a task to do. I must have it, Father. " And something wells up inside of him that is beyond him. There 's a faith beyond anything he's experienced. He . has touched the invisible in a way he's never touched it before. And within days, the million dollars comes. That, ladies and gentlemen, is supernatural faith : the gift of faith.

Someonecan be out in the woods in a camping trip, and he has learned to set up a tent and build a fire and fish and do the things that people do in thattype of environment. But suddenly one night, a huge grizzly bear breaks through the camp area, rips his tent open, and there he is lumbering above him-.8.pr 9 feet high, ten feet, massive creature intent on destroying him. And the man looks in terror and desperation, and then he calls out to the Father, and he says, "Father, send angels, send help now!" And suddenly sL!pernatural beings stand between that man ;;lnd the bear, and the bear becomes tame as a dog and turns around and ambles off from the camp and harms nothing. That's supernatural fa,it~ . .:' You can focus your mind and soul on the Word of God. You can pray earnestly . that God will fi II you with supernatu ral faith. But when the actual event happens, it is the moment of crisis, when someth i ng beyond you takes hold of you and you reach into a dimension yet unknown to you , God wa,nts us to live in that world, that we would focus our attention on it, that we wo'uld understand it. That we would say, as the apostle: "I am seated in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus." You see, Jesus lived in this realm constantly. He flowed with supernatural faith. When there was protection needed, the faith wa~ there. When it was necessary to feed the loaves and the fishes to the multitudes, the faith was there. He saw a city that had foundations whose builder and maker was God .. ..That's supernatural faith.

Faith to move mountains. Faith beyond the comprehension of the average person. Believe that such a world exists.

modern REFORMATION

2 SEMINARS ON CASSETTE TAPE! ~

featuring Bible teacher James Montgomery Boice Developing a Christian Mind

Standing on the Rock

Learn how to think and act biblically

Biblical Authority in a Secular Age

Discover how to live as a Christian in a confused, hurting world:

An invigorating study for Christians who want to under­ stand the power of God's Word and live biblical lives.

• Gain confidence in God's Word • Learn sound principles for interpreting the Bible • Clarify why we believe the Bible is God's Word • Explore the sufficiency of God's Word in all areas When it comes to trusting God in his Word, Christians are pressed from all sides to disregard its power. Those on the outside tell us it's not reliabe. It's not historical. It's only mythology. Some on the inside tell us it's not enough: we need the Bible plus!

But when you take God at his Word and trust his promises-you'll find the Bible to be everything it claims to be. Knowing its teachings, learning how to study it and being prepared to defend it will result in living a life that pleases God, and is a light in a very dark world.

Order this cassette tape series (four messages in an album) with a study notebook or paperback book and learn what it means to stand on the rock of God's unchanging Word.

C-SOR, 4 tape series with study guide, $27.00 C-SOR-N, Extra study guides, $4.00 B-SOR Paperback, $9.00

• Enrich and improve your worship • Deepen your faith • Grow closer to God Sometimes it's hard not to be conformed to the thinking of this world. Our culture says happiness is everything. Truth is what you want it to be. God is a myth for week minds. But the Bible speaks a different message. And when you learn how to think and act biblically, not only will your thinking be transformed, but you'll know God better. You'll-understand God's perspective, so you'll be able to make decisions according to his will. ~

C-DCM 4 tape series with notebook in an album, $27.00 C-DCM-N Extra notebooks, $4.00

C-DCM, Developing a Christian Mind tape series with notebook

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C-SOR, Standing on the Rock tape series with study guide

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Words to Winners of Souls

Apologetics to the Glory of God

Words to Winners of Souls

John M. Frame

Horatius Bonar

Frame unveils the richness of a biblical apologetic in its many forms, including proof (presenting a rational basis for faith), defense (answering ob­ jections), and offense (expos­ ing the folly of unbelief).

He clarifies the relation­ ships of reason, proofs, and evidences to faith, biblical au­ thority, and the lordship of Christ. Frame also offers a fresh look at probability argu­ ments and the problem of evil. Particularly helpful are his extensive use of Scripture and his presentation of spe­ cific lines of argument, in­ cluding a model dialogue in the closing chapter.

This timeless classic offers heart-searching counsel and a gripping challenge to put aside all that interferes with the ministry of the gospel.

Drawing from Owen, Baxter, McCheyne, Edwards, and oth­ ers, Bonar summons us to faith, zeal, and love for lost souls. He warns of "the tragedy of a barren ministry" and gives special attention to the need for ministerial con­ .­ fession of sin. Though written over a century ago, these words are as timely, convict­ ing, and inspiring today as when first delivered.

0-87552-164-9, paper $3.99 72 pages

0-87552-243-2, paper $14.99 279 pages

Institutes of

Elenctic Theology,

Vol. 2

Francis Turretin The arrival of the first com­ plete English translation of Turretin's Institutes has been applauded by J. I. Packer, Richard A. Muller, Paul D. Feinberg, John M. Frame, and many others. In this volume Turretin treats God's law, the covenant of grace, the person and state of Christ, the media­ torial office of Christ, calling and faith, justification, and sanctification and good works.

"If ever a great theological work has been unjustly ne­ glected it has been Francis Turretin's masterful volumes. ... Let's all knock off a month from our regular work and study Turretin!"

-James M. Boice

Lord and Christ Ernest C. Reisinger Can a person have Jesus as Savior and not as Lord? W!­ happens to the central doc- ~ trines of Scripture when Christ's lordship is viewed as optional? How does the non­ lordship view impact practical matters such as evangelism, preaching, counsel, growth in -grace, and assurance? Ernest C. Reisinger discusses these and other crucial issues to show the implications of the "lordship controversy" for theology and life .

"Like a master diagnosti­ cian, Reisinger subjects the whole controversy to an in­ criminating doctrinal exami­ nation."

-Thomas K. Ascol 0-87552-388-9, paper $8.99 198 pages

0-87552-452-4, cloth $39.95 748 pages -

You can find these titles at your local Christian bookstore or caII1-800~631-0094.

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