heresy-january-february-1994 by Modern Reformation

ESIRING

This year the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology will explore the hunger of the human soul for God, focusing on corporate worship-who we worship, how we should worship, the ways in which we often fail to worship, and worship as the chief end of man. Seminars will address such related subjects as the place of music and the sacraments in worship, and the bane or blessing of the new "seeker sensitive" churches. In addition to the main conference, Dr. James Boice and the Reverend Michael Scott Horton will be offering a special pre-conference seminar for ministers and church workers on the state of "Christianity at the End of the Twentieth Century: The Death of Evangelicalism." The thrust of the seminar will be toward a new reforma tion. Join us for these timely and encouraging days!

Ft. Lauderdale

Chicago

Philadelphia

March 18-20, 1994

April 8-10, 1994

April 22-24, 1994

Group rates start at $30 per person!

Call 1·800·488·1888 for information or registration

Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Director of Publications Sara McReynolds Editor . Devron Byerly Art John Dearstyne Megan Giles John Newcombe Paul Swift CURE Board of Directors Douglas Abendroth John G. Beauman Cheryl Biehl Robert den Dulk Dr. W. Robert Godfrey Richard Hermes' Michael S. Horton Dr. Robert Preus Dr. Luder Whitlock

modernREFORMATION

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

HERESY

All About Heresy Michael Horton

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President Michael S. Horton Vice President Kim Riddlebarger Adininistrator Jo Horton Communication Sara McReynolds Development ,Dan Bach Media & Production Shane Rosenthal Mike De Fusco Products Brant Wilcox Correspondence Alan Maben Controller Micki Riddlebarger CURE is a non'profit educational foundation committed to communicating the insights of the 16th century Reformation to the 20th century church. For more information, call during business hours at: (714) 956, CURE, or write us at: CHRISTIANS UNITED for REFORMATION 2221 East Winston Road Suite K Anaheim, CA 92806

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800 956 2644

Gnosticism '

Alan Maben

Jesusas a Type of Chris'~?

Rick Ritchie

Mod~rn

MysticiSlll

Eric Casteel

Pelagianism Michael Horton

Charts Chronological and Background Charts of Church History Robert C. Walton

Zondervan Publishing House

Glossary Evangelical Dictionary of Theology Walter A. Elwell, Editor

Baker Book House

lJ1odernREFORMATION

All About Heresy

ITCH trials' in Salem. The Council of Toulouse in the 13th century, employing men whose sole purpose was to hunt out human kindling for the flames of the Inquisition. These are images evoked by that word, "heresy." A nasty word, it suggests more about the accuser, who is considered intolerant, bigoted,and ignorant, than about the accused. But while there have been historical events in Christian history to remind us of the dangers of heresy,hunting, very few Christians today realize the debt they owe to those who had the courage of their convictions to call heresy by its proper name, in spite of the repercussions.

The Concept of Heresy: Is It Biblical? Judaism began when the nation of Israel rejected the Messiah. After all, our Lord himself asserted that the whole of the Old Testament refers to him On 5:39). He scolded the religious leaders for not even knowing their own Scriptures (Mt 22:29). After his resurrection, Jesus taught the disciples the meaning of it all: "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerninghimself' (Lk 24:27). Philip took the same approach with an Ethiopian who was reading the Book"of Isaiah. He was reading the fifty, third chapter, concerning the Suffering Servant who would give himself as a sacrifice for many. "Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus," and immediately the Ethiopian was baptized (Acts 8:26-36). This is why I say that Judaism began in the first century, as the Jewish nation finally rejected Christ. It is not the case that Judaism adheres to the Old Testament, but Christians embrace both. Rather, Judaism rej ects the promises of the Old Testament and their fulfillment in Christ. Our Lord insisted that it was impossible to truly understand the meaning of the Old T e,stament apart from seeing him as the reference point. Stephen, in his bold defense of the faith before the leaders,

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rehearsed the history of their unfaithfulness to the truth. Why should they believe in Christ, Stephen asks, if they had a history of stoning the very prophets who pointed forward to him? "Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One" (Acts 7:51-52). We can even take the matter of heresy or apostasy back to the very beginning. Adam and Eve engaged in rebellion and plunged the race into rebellion because they embraced a heresy. Convinced by the serpent's sophistry, they actually believed that they could become gods themselves by spiritual enlightenment. (It is interesting that ancient pagan, Gnostic, and contemporary New Age groups, referring to this very event, make it their creed instead of recognizing it as heresy.) Down to the present, this Gnosticism pervades modern society, as scholars from diverse backgrounds have pointed out (Munich's Eric Voegelin, Yale's Harold Bloom, and Philip Lee). But the heresies didn't stop there. After all, it was Cain who murdered Abel over a point of theology. The question was, "What sacrifice does God require?" God showed what sacrifice pleases him when he rejected the plant covering that Adam and Eve had sewn together. Instead God sacrificed an animal and covered them with its skins. Abel placed his faith in the coming Messiah, who was promised to Eve in Genesis 3:15, by offering an animal sacrifice. But Cain brought plants as his sacrifice. Men and women have always been seeking to appease God themselves. Their consciences tell them that they are sinners and that God must judge sinners. But instead of turning to him for mercy, they set up their own righteousness and worship. Cain murdered Abel over the definition of the gospel; Cain became the father" of church persecutions throughout history. This is even clearer in Hebrews 11, where we are told that Abel was accepted because he trusted the promise by grace alone through faith alone. Throughout the Old Testament, truth was often in the minority, and it is clear from the canonical texts that the Jews often rejected the unambiguous

1710dernREFORMATION

teaching of their own scriptures. Even when Moses was receiving the Law of God, after the redemption ofIsrael from Egypt, the people below were worshiping the golden calf. World history is divided between those who will worship God in Spirit and in truth, and those who will invent a form of worship and a

Christ, they were baptized, both men and women" (v.12). Not content with his own level of spiritual power, Simon the Magician actually offered the apostles money for the ability to confer the Holy Spirit. Peter, the fisherman, apostle , replied, "May your money perish with you, because you thought you

What is heresy? Any teaching that directly contradicts the clear and direct witness of the Scriptures on a point of salvific importance. creed from their own imagination. And then we come to the final exile, when the nation itself, with many very notable exceptions, refuses the gospel and returns to its own methods ofsalvation. At this point, the Jewish people apostasized from Christianity. After all, as Jesus himself insisted, even the Old Testament consists of Christian writings. They have Christ as their reference point throughout and the only way that the ceremonial, sacrificial, and theocratic institutions of Israel make any sense is through their fulfillment 'in Christ-our prophet, priest, and king. So, one might say that Judaism was the fitst Christian heresy in the New Testament era. Like Unitarianism, Mormonism, or Islam, it contains pieces of the truth, but suppresses, distorts, and denies the saving truth of Christ as he is revealed in both testaments of Holy Scripture. It must also be said, however, that, just as Unitarians, Mormons, and Moslems can still be saved, so too, God is bringing many Jews to faith in Christ. Gentile believers are themselves only grafted into the vine of Israel by God's mercy. Furthermore, when I refer to "Jews" in this context, I am not thinking of ethnicity, but religion. Another heresy we find recorded in the Scriptures is described in Acts 8:9 and following. Simon the Magician had been performing signs and wonders, astonishing the crowds. When he saw and heard Philip as he was preaching and baptizing, he wanted to add this to his collection of power encounters: "And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw" (v.13). This is an important point, because heresy often is accompanied by signs and wonders. Even when the _ disciples performed signs and wonders, the record is not concerned with them, but with the fact that, "when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus 4

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could buy the gift of God with money!" And again, although miracles may have been performed, this record concludes, "When they had testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages" (v.2S). Heresy almost always creates and accents its own sensationalism, but the truth relies on proclamation of the gospel for its success. Greed often accompanies heresy as well, as Peter declared in 2 Peter 2:3. The early Church Fathers connected this same Simon historically to the religious syncretism that produced the Gnostic heresy of the second century, about which you will read in a very interesting article in this issue. Suffice it to say, in Scripture alone we have recorded the recurring heresies: Gnosticism (achieving deity or oneness with deity through spiritual enlightenment), Arianism (the denial of Christ's eternal deity), and Pelagianism (the goodness of human nature and salvation by self,effort). What Is Heresy? The first question proposed in the title of this article is, "What is heresy?" The answer is, Any teaching that directly contradicts the clear and direct witness of the Scriptures on a point of salvific importance. In other words, there may be teachings that are strange, such as Benny Hinn's suggestion that before the Fall, Adam could fly and remain for hours under water, or teachings that we may regard as clearly contrary to the biblical texts. But since they do not touch upon a key doctrine of G~d, human nature, Christ's person and work, the Holy Spirit, or salvation, they may be erroneous, but they are not heretical. For centuries, theologians have distinguished between formal heresy, which is the persistent and stubborn denial of a fundamental doctrine, even though one has been instructed in the truth, and material heresy, in which one embraces a doctrine

'node rnREFoRMATION that is itself heretical, but embraces it in ignorance. The Greek word hairesis literally means "that which is chosen by and for oneself," and Paul employs it concerning false teachers who bring division (1 Cor 11:19 and Gal 5:20). In other words, heresy brings with it not only error, but a particular spirit or attitude: arrogance, a rejection of all authority, and self,will. These have always been considered the vices of heresy, but in modern liberalism and evangelicalism the'y are often regarded as signs of special enlightenment or novel insights that have escaped the darkened wits of past generations. Anyone who denies the existence of such a thing as heresy denies the possibility of a religion having any boundaries. If a religion does not have any boundaries, distinguishing Christianity from Hinduism or atheism is meaningless. Who Decides? To the second question proposed in the title, "Who decides?", the answer is certain: the Scriptures. This topic requires serious reflection. We must realize that the Bible itself contains creeds that were used in weekly worship. In the Old Testament, we find the Shema: "Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one." Monotheism, that is, belief in one Almighty God, lies at the heart of both testaments. In the New Testament, we find passages that were used in the liturgy of the early church. Sometimes, these creeds were sung. (see Col 1:15Â 20.) Once we are convinced that the Bible is in fact the Word of God, it follows that it is the source and judge of all truth that it addresses. When Paul warned Timothy about heresy in the last days, his charge was to "continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make

prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage-with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths" (2 Tm chs. 3 and 4). h ere are a few things to note in this passage. First, Paul reminds Timothy of his catechetical training. In other words, children were brought up just as they had been in the synagogue, with regular doctrinal instruction in the home and in the church. Of cOllrse, Timothy had the advantage of having an apostle as a mentor in his later years, but as the NIV note observes, "A Jewish boy formally began to study the Old Testament when he was five years old. Timothy was taught at home by his mother and grandmother even before he reached this age." Therefore, Paul saw this rigorous catechetical instruction not as a damper on spiritual zeal-as many Christians today seem to view doctrinal instruction-but as the very thing that in later life Timothy is to rely on in refuting heresy as a minister of God. Second, Paul mentions that part of Timothy's confidence is that he realizes the authority of those from whom he learned this message (3: 14). Many Christians today think that they can refute heresy or teach the truth without any reference to teachers. "No creed but Christ," "I just believe the Bible." These are the naive assertions of brothers and sisters who fail to realize that they read the Bible with their own distorted, sinful prejudices and biases. Many modem Christians, especially in America, have a deep,seated distrust of authority and they assume that they go directly to the Bible, while "traditional religionists" refer to the wisdom and research of those

Men and women have always been seeking to appease God

themselves. But instead of turning to God for mercy, they set up

their own righteousness and worship.

you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." And then the familiar passage: "All Scripture is God,breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Because of this, "I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be

who have gone before them. But the fact is, no one goes directly to the Bible, if by that one means that it is possible to read any literary text without ignorance, bias, or presuppositional stubbornness. It took a lot of time and frustration before I finally gave in to the biblical doctrine of predestination. Why was it a difficult concession? Was the Bible unclear? The JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994.

Inode rnREFORMATION problem for me was that it was entirely too clear. No, it was a case of being educated in the church to believe the very opposite, and, as a sinner, being naturally hostile to such a concept. Heretics often go "directly to the Bible." If Chris, tians are not familiar with the systematic teaching of the Scriptures on the essentials, from Genesis to Revelation (for which catechetical instruction is designed), they will 'be prey to a clever communicator who can isolate verses from their context and force them to say something that, in context and in relationship to the whole teaching of Scripture, they cannot be saying. So Paul says that the Bible, being God, breathed, is the only infallible authority for determining truth, and yet he adds that Timothy ought to remember his cat, echism, and his teachers. A friend of mine from Holland asked an American pastor what was the creed, confession, and cat, echism ofhis church. "Just the Bible," the pastor replied, to which my friend responded, "But it has so many pages." To be sure, the Bible is our sole rule for faith and practice, but "it has so many pages." Peter noted that Paul's letters "contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction" (2 Pt 3:16). It is not that the Bible, for its many pages, is unclear, nor that its writers are contradictory, but that it contains difficult passages, which lend themselves easily to distortion based on ignorance and instability. For nearly two millenia, creeds, confessions, and catechisms have provided the necessary constraints against ignorance and instability. For example, I think of the difficulty I had in a college Shakespeare course. The Tempest was so difficult to understand that I ended up reading a synopsis of the play in a guide to English literature. At last, I saw the big picture. Then I could go back to the play directly and understand the bits and 6

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pieces. In the same way, creeds and confessions no more add to the Scriptures than that synopsis added to The Tempest. Or, to use another example, think of the difficulty of finding an archaeological site in the middle of a forest. It is easy to become disoriented on the ground, but a satellite can pinpoint the target and direct the archaeologists to the site safely. Instead of competing for authority, creeds and confessions lead us by the hand to the God,breathed Word. That is why our confessions and catechisms ofthe Reformation have Scripture proofs for nearly every sentence. They point out that the Word of God is the authority, not the document's author. To ignore creeds and . . : . . .' ...: :".... ." .. :" :. ': : :. : :. : : :' : : confessions is the .'. :. :' height of modem ar,

: . . . : : .' . rogance. Simply be,

:. cause we have micro,

: : :. : i : : : : ; : i : : : : '. . : : : i .: i' : : waves and novocaine,

: " : :' : " : '. :: ': : .: : .::.:.; : we assume that ours is

:: : ; :: : . :: : :: :: : :: : .' .: : : : :: :: .: : ,! :: the wisest, most self, '..: . : . . ': , :'.: . :::: :.:: " : : . sufficient age in his,

. : :. . , : .; : . : : : : : .' . ;: .' . :' : : ; : : tory. And yet, techno,

. : : : . : : : :": : ': ,::: logical sophistication

: : : : : '. :; .: : .: : : : : does not equal wisdom;

. : . :: : :: ; know,how is not the

: . : : : :' : . . : ;. same as knowledge.

.'. . . . Christians have fallen . : , :. :' .: : : ... : into this modern arro' : ..: '. gance by assuming that they do not need the teachers that Paul 'commended to Timothy. Nor do they need catechetical instruction. "I just believe the Bible" is no defense against cults, superstitions, apostasy, and heresy, since nearly every sect for the last two thousand years has claimed the Bible for support. The answer is not to make the church's teachers infallible interpreters of Scripture, as in Rome, nor to ignore the church's teachers, as in contemporary evangeli, calism, but to have the humility to recognize that "iron sharpens iron" and that it takes the wisdom and insight of many interpreters over many centuries to help us to see our blind spots. Only a fool would ignore the accumulated wisdom of nearly twenty centuries.

re the creeds infallible? No, but the universal confession of the whole church since its beginning, despite other divisions, is that the Bible clearly teaches that the affirmations we find in the Apostles', N icene, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds are

Inode rnREFbRMATION

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essential for our salvation. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox believers are united in their commitment to these essentials. They are not true because the church says so; the church says so because they are true. The tradition of calling the universal church for a council began among the apostles themselves, with the Council ofJerusalem, to combat the Judaizing heresy. While councils may err and have erred to the ,point of even contradicting each other in the middle ages, the early ecumenical councils carry the assent of all Christians everywhere and have right up to the present. Why should we tolerate as shepherds among us anyone whose teaching fails to conform to the clear consensus of the whole Christian church from its earliest days? Are the Reformation declarations of faith infallible? Certainly not, as each confession explicitly states. Nevertheless, they go beyond the things that are essential to believe to be "catholic," (that is, creedal affirmations), to the things that are essential to believe in order to be considered "evangelical." The confessions of the Reformation clearly explain, from the Scriptures, where evangelicals must depart from Roman distortions. They set forth positively the biblical teachings concerning salvation that Rome had obscured and, on many points, finally denied. Are the catechisms-the question,and,answer manuals that teach the Scriptures to children and adult converts-infallible? Certainly they are no less fallible than modern Sunday school curricula. So then why do we have catechisms, since we already use Sunday school curricula in so many evangelical churches today? "Fallible" and "fallacious" are two different things: "Fallible" refers to the ability of something to contain errors, to which everything but Scripture is subject; "fallacious" refers to the actuality of that possibility. Along with many ministers today, I am often outraged by the Sunday school materials that make their way into our classrooms. There is so little discretion and discernment even in churches that claim to be heirs to Reformation Christianity. Very often I have seen Christian education directors and teachers purchase materials from Arminian sources which, instead of teaching the key questions and answers of Scripture concerning the great truths of the faith, inculcate moralism and entertain to death. Children, who in our churches today are pasting felt hats on the faces of paper pilgrims at Thanksgiving were, at the same age, just a few generations ago, learning the catechism that would prepare them to read the Scriptures intelligently, so

that, unlike "the ignorant and unstable" about whom Peter was so concerned, they would be prepared to give to everyone a defense for the hope that they had. The Reformation doctrine .of sola scriptura did not mean that each individual interprets the Bible for himself. "For that would mean," said Luther, "that each man would go to hell in his own way." Rather, the Reformation included the whole church, the laity as well as the clergy, in the discussion. Confessions and catechisms represent the common voice of the whole congregation, not just the dictates of a religious elite. The Reformation ideal, and the biblical ideal, is to learn the Scriptures together, as a church, and not by oneself. If the imagination is an idol,factory, then surely individualism is the gristmill of heresy.

reeds are the constraint for maintaining a "catholic" interpretation ofScripture, which is shared by Protestants, Rome, and Orthodoxy. Our Âˇ Reformation confessions keep our interpretations within the parameters of "evangelical" soundness, and our catechisms instruct us in the truths that have received assent from our particular churches. If one denies a fundamental "catholic" tenet, as the church has witnessed to it in the creeds, that person is not a Christian, but a heretic. If one denies a fundamental "evangelical" tenet, as the church has witnessed to it in the Reformation confessions, the line separating error from heresy becomes a bit more difficult to discern, but a formal denial of the cardinal doctrine ofevangelicalism-justification by grace alone through faith alone, is surely a fatal denial of the gospel. Lutherans and Calvinists may disagree with each other over important matters, but where they agree, that agreement defines the doctrinal parameters of "evangelical" Christianity. By defending these, we are in fact defending Scripture, and by employing them once more in our churches, we will be following Paul's counsel to Timothy to withstand those in every age who seek to gather teachers to tickle their ears and lead them from the truth they have known since they were children. May God preserve us from witch,hunts and from being bewitched. May we see a new crop ofAthanasian heroes to stand against the world, for the world and its salvation. t Michael Horton is the president and founder of CURE and the author of Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, Made in America, and The Law of Prefect Freedom, and is the editor of The Agony of Deceit , Power Religion, and Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

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Gnosticism

the ancient Gnostics faced by the early church, society today has adopted an escapist, ____anti,material, anti, intellectual, anti, institutional, anti,sacramental spirituality. This is as true for non,Christians, with New York business executives attending New Age seminars taught by Stanford instructors. Both the past and the future are perceived as irrelevant intrusions into the present moment ofwhat Schaeffer called "personal peace and affluence." People want to escape reality and create their own. This tendency has been evident both in the secular, Greek strain of Western history (Platonism, Neoplatonism, etc.) and in the religious adaptations of that strain (mysticism, much of monasticism, and the abundance of taboos designed to keep believers from the world). The early name for this mixture of Christianity and pagan, anti,material mysticism was "Gnosticism." According to Marylin Ferguson, a New Age guru, Gnosticism is the fountain of contemporary mysticism. 1 What on earth could Fundamentalism and the New Age movement have in common? There have been many New Age conspiracy theories floating about, trying to implicate nearly everyone. Isn't this stepping over the line of sanity just a bit? Not really. Let me explain. An early pseudepigraphal writing, states the recurring Gnostic disdain for the materialworld: "It is the spirit that raises the soul, but the body that kills it" (Apocryphon of James) . One finds this same mysticism in current New Age thinking. It is also the sentiment revived by many forms of Pentecostalism, with comments such as, "Don't focus on that body of yours....The problem is not your spirit; it's your mind and body."2 A recently published non,Pentecostal, evangelical study guide reads, "Our problems arise from living as redeemed spirits in unredeemed bodies."3 Dr. Eric Voegelin, a political scientist at the IKE

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University of Munich, regards our era as "the revival of Gnosticism," although he has politics and science more in mind than religion. "The world is no longer the ... Judeo,Christian world that God created and found good. Gnostic man no longer wishes to perceive in admiration the intrinsic order of the cosmos. For him the world has become a prison from which he wants to escape."3 This Gnostic revival draws many people into its wake-from the secularists who just want to make money to pay for things that will allow them to escape life's realities, to the fundamentalists who exchange earthly responsibility for speculations on the end,times.

What is Gnosticism, Anyway? Gnosticism is not a tight, systematic body of beliefs, but an agglomeration of concepts easily integrated into other mutually exclusive belief systems. Common denominators usually include a dualism of spirit (good) vs. matter (evil), and a constantly developing access to direct, intuitive, divine knowledge that improves and liberates the spirit of the individual from its material and intellectual bonds. Another Gnostic writing, The Gospel of Truth states that "if one has knowledge, he receives what is his own, and draws it to himself." The individual is nearly exclusively interested in him or her self, and it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish this spiritual self,realization from mere subjectivism. F. F. Bruce, in The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament, points out that Gnosticism can be ascetic, such as the type attacked in Paul's letter to the Colossians; as well as antinomian, such as that opposed in the letter of Jude. Opposition to secret knowledge ofGod is apparent in other New Testament writings. Paul, for example, states in 1 Corinthians 15 that he passed on the saving knowledge he had received: objective historical events with theological meanings, not esoteric mysteries of the spirit,world known only to a spiritual elite. In the American culture we are vulnerable to the loose interpretive framework of Gnostic

111 ode rnREFORMATION

subjectivism-with more than a dash of Yankee pragmatism thrown in. A belief is true for me if it satisfies a personal need for security. Hence, non~ Christian influences, under the guise of spirituality, are welcomed uncritically into the Church. Again, it is a loose interpretive framework. Gnosticism is a collection of attitudes, beliefs, and criteria/that mix easily with nearly any belief. Its colored glass is the window through which many unwary Christians view their Christianity and the world. In this model, what can't be seen through the glass is either highly suspect, or unquestionably evil. Accepting this Gnostic subjectivism as a world~ interpreting window means that we lose our awareness of God, his character, W ord, and~~~~.--;:~ purposes, as existing ind~pendent of us. What's true of God and scripture is what benefits me sp iri tuall y, or confirms what I already want to believe about him. Truth, doctrine, and theology be~ come irrelevant. What matters is how I am progressing with my own personal, pri~ vate, spiritual agenda. It's wonderful when God's inter~ ests and my own coincide-but if they collide, statements in scripture can be dismissed as not being practical, or as being irrelevant to my daily walk. Among the more Gnostic strains of Evangelical spirituality, God is considered distant from our world. He is reluctantly involved, and intrudes only to do something vaguely prophetic in the Middle East. End~times prophecy becomes important since the rapture is the means of getting out of this world. Since many have dumped the doctrines of Creation and Providence, this focus on prophecy is the only way to be sure that God is concerned about this present world-aside from the non~material transformation of the spirit of each Christian. Others ignore the realities of this world by becoming involved, once more like the ancient Gnostics, in cosmic spiritual

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battles with demons in "power encounters." How easily we miss the point even of Paul's discussion of spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6, often the proof~text for such heavenly war~mongering. In that passage, Paul makes clear that the spiritual battle in heavenly places revolves around the truth of the gospel and its world~wide proclamation; it is not a blue~print for hand~to~hand combat with demons, but a metaphor for the urgency of gospel preaching. According to the end~times obsession, Christ is significant because, for the most part, he is coming to get us out of here and destroy this material world. After all, isn't Satan the god of this world? Let it be understood that Satan is the god of this world only in the sense that all in creation who oppose God proclaim loyalty to Satan by default. God's creationÂ including people . and their bodiesÂ is very good: In Genesis 1:31 God said so. C. S. Lewis once quipped, "God likes matter. He invented it." But like us, the material world is affected by the Fall in such a way that an odor of death lingers in it. The visible and invisible world is still God's world, and the devil is still under control. Paul writes, "The creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage to corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs at this time" (Rom 8:21-22). Our bodies, along with the rest of creation, will be physically resurrected as the finishing touch of the New Creation. How Does This Influence Us? The Gnosticism we see attaching itself to Christianity throughout its history often comes from a misdirected desire to protect true spirituality from intellectualization. However, rather than loving the Lord God with all our intellect, as Christ commands us (Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30), we seem to deny the JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1994.

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intellect's very existence because of a desire for personal comfort. Perhaps we fear that our understanding of Christianity won't cut it intellectually, fearful that others, Christians or not, might see that we really are not sure what we are talking about. It's safer to stick to personal experiences, since were often more certain of our own subjective experiences than we are of scripture. Refusal to view themselves and their culture through scripture is a -given for unbelievers. Unfortu, nately, too many Christians are guilty of the same sin when they refuse to protect Christian truth from worldly influences. Instead, we're likely to absorb these influences uncritically, and even to defend them as Christian. Christian Gnosti, cism causes us to reject our respon, sibility as stewards of Creation, and keeps us from ad, mitting that Christ is Lord over every part ofhis creation. If we do not admit him as Lord over all, how can we serve him? And where, if not in creation? Ironi, cally, this Gnostic disregard for stew, ardship is being done in the name of obedience! If anything, this dis,

obedient retreat from our God,given responsibilities

means Christians are ensuring that Jesus is denied as

Lord of creation.

It's obvious that this influence causes our stewardship over the ecological state of the environment to suffer. After all, the environment is material, and it is destined for extermination anyway. Stewardship in just government suffers as well, since no Christian should be involved in worldly pursuits. Talented artists are made to feel guilty if they give too much time to their "secular career"; honest workers and diligent homemakers feel as though they are not giving God their best if they don't have enough time in the week to give to a whole series of church meetings and activities. Secular work is divorced from spiritual service. Our calling in this world does 10

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not require spiritual justification to be honoring to God. The worldliness evident in anti,worldly Gnosticism is the net effect of attitudes and beliefs that see all matter in creation operating independently of God. Gnosticism disdains culture in general, including dancing, drinking, reading secular literature, or going to movies. Ironically, such concern for sin does not take sin seriously at all! Rather, this thinking limits sin to things external. It ignores our guilt for inwardly giving in to sinful desires. The Sermon on the Mount, and Mark 7:14-23 clearly present Jesus' position on this confusion of sin with the external world. Against the revival of Gnostic mysticism in his own day Calvin wrote, "The depravity and malice both of man and of the devil, or the sins that arise there, from, do not spring from nature, but rather from the corruption of na, ture." Therefore, "Let us not be ashamed to take pious delight in the works of God open and manifest in this most beau, tiful theater" (In' stitutes 1.14.20). Nor are other Christian truths safe from this mess. The sacraments of Communion and baptism suffer because they become merely movements of matter in this Gnostic understanding of Christianity. After all, how can spirituality be involved with matter? Imagine what happens to the Incarnation according to this model! After all, if we insist on the basis that they are material things, that the bread and wine in Communion cannot be means of grace, how can we say that "the Word became flesh" nearly two thousand years ago? Yet many Christians believe this. Believers may have differing views of the sacraments and their efficacy, but there is no doubt that denial of God's involvement with matter is heretical. Gnostics new and old may caricature the orthodox as dead, bound to the letter rather than the Spirit, devoted to head knowledge in stead of heart

1110dernREFORMATION

knowledge, "more interested in what the Lord did yesterday than what he's doing today," and so on. In doing so they are denying the only objective communication they have from God. Evangelism suffers as well. If we do not know the philosophies that shape our world,view, i~ is nearly impossible to communicate the gospel to others. Perhaps we don't want to be seen in the company of worldly people anyway. Serious Christians might question our spirituality if we know too much about the world. Besides, it might ruin our witness. How we understand ourselves is also affected. T elevangelistic Gnostics set the human spirit over the rest of the person in an attempt to rend asunder what God has joined together. A cycle of despair results. Believers start with emotional, psychological, relational, or moral struggles and they are told that such afflictions are the old things that have passed away upon conversion: Now they are to totally surrender and submit those things to God. Believers are to deny the reality of sin's dominion, which Paul teaches, and also to deny, with Paul, the reality of ongoing sinful affections and behavior. Christians are not, therefore, supposed to deal with these problems at all, for that would involve the flesh. They must simply let God fight those battles on their behalf. Immediately, they become aware of their inability to experience victory in these areas, and feel even more distant from God. At this point they either begin denying the reality of their fallenness, or they try harder not to try at all. A religion that is really a collection of Gnostic experiences becomes a commodity to be advertised

(disguised as evangelism), sold (disguised as acceptance, not necessarily conversion), compared (disguised as fellowship), and hoarded for one's own development (disguised as a personal relationship). Francis Schaeffer warned us of this new super, spirituality, which stands opposed to creation. We have become interested in saving souls, not people. We deny the Lordship of Christ over the world when we refuse to be involved with his creation. That includes employment and culture. God's gifts to us in creation, including intellect, psychology, relationships, social institutions, and nature, too often are seen as evil by Christians. Isaiah's warning still calls us to repentance in our disdain for this world: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil." t 1 M. Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1987) 2 K. Copeland, Believer's Voice of Victory 1982, v. 2 3 Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1968), p.9. For further reading: P. Lee, Against The Protestant Gnostics (Oxford, 1986)

Alan Maben is a staff writer for CURE and serves as CURE'S corresponding secretary, answering reader's theological questions. He is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach and Simon Greenleaf School of Law.

Ante-Nicene Heresy: Gnosticism Leading Teachers

H istorical Information

Simon Magus (1st century) Cerinthus (late 1st century) Basilides (early 2nd century) Saturninus (early 2nd century) Maricon (d. c. 160) Tatian (110,172)

Had its roots in pagan philosophy,

especially Platonism.

Was influenced by Oriental mysticism,

Had little appeal to masses; most

influential among church leaders.

Appeared throughout Empire.

Worship ranged from very simple to

very elaborate.

Forced church to formulate rules of

faith and New Testament canon.

Caused church to emphasize apostolic

succession as repository of truth.

Characteristic Teachings Thought themselves possessors of

unique higher insight (gnosis).

Thought themselves of spirit, other

people of soul or body.

Taught matter is evil.

Held to hierarchy of eons (pleroma).

Produced either sensuality or asceticism.

Was dualistic.

Generally rejected Old Testament and

Judaism.

Used allegorical interpretation.

Said world was created by Demiurge.

Believed Christ's body was an illusion.

Chronological and Background Charts of Church History by Robert C. Walton

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

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lnode rnREFORMATION

Jesus as a Type of Christ?

do pastors and Christian writers say that Jesus is? Some say a new Abraham, others a new Samson, and still others a new Moses or one of the prosecutors. When Jesus asked the question ofhis disciples, only Peter answered correctly. Jesus told him that his answer had been revealed to him from heaven. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. But Jesus is so often portrayed in sermons and Christian literature as a new Abraham, a forefather, a moral example. Look to Jesus and you will see one who models the life that you are called to live. Or Jesus is portrayed as a new Samson, a mighty Spirit~ filled man. If you tap into the power he possessed, you will defeat the Philistines in your life. Or finally, Jesus is presented as a new Moses. The first Law was not good enough, so Jesus taught a new and improved version. All of these Jesuses are preached in churches today, but one is conspicuously missing. Jesus is preached as a second Abraham, a second Samson, and a second Moses. What we need to hear about is Jesus the second Adam, whose gift of himself restores what the first Adam lost.

Jesus the New Abraham When pastors preach the New Testament they commonly make Jesus into a new Abraham. This is easy to do with the Gospels because in them we see how Jesus acts. Many pastors forget to ask, or perhaps they were not trained to ask, why Jesus' acts were recorded in the first place. We assume that since we are imperfect and Jesus is perfect, we can improve ourselves by imitating his performance. Sometimes we are told that living the Christian life could be difficult, but having a model makes it easy. Following Jesus, we are like a boy following his father through the snow. While the boy would be lost if he went his own way, it is easier if he places his shoes in his father's well~packed tracks.

Rick Ritchie 12

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JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1994

At other times, pastors admit the difficulty of the way ahead. We must die to ourselves, like Jesus did. But after every Good Friday comes an Easter Sunday. After death to self we can look forward to a resurrection. Each of these two ways of reading scripture might have some merit, but this approach neglects to ask what the original writer intended in penning his Gospel. Were the stories of Jesus primarily intended to teach us about our mission, or about the mission of Jesus? At the beginning of his Gospel, Luke said that he wrote so that his reader would know the certainty of what he had been taught (Lk 1:3-4). The apostles recorded Jesus' life so that we might be able to conclude that he was the prophesied Messiah. Because of this, it is natural to preach gospel passages as evidence for the messianic nature ofJesus. They show us who our Messiah is and what that means for us. Rather than preaching Jesus as a new Abraham, as a moral example, we ought to be instructed to follow in the footsteps of Abraham and trust Jesus as our Messiah. Scripture enjoins this: And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you." For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed (Gal 3:8-9).

Jesus was not the forefather of a new people, but the savior of the people he had been calling out of the nations from before the time of Abraham. Rather than viewing Jesus as our example of morality, let us view Abraham as our example of faith in Jesus. Jesus the New Samson Jesus is often preached as a moral example by otherwise well~informed pastors who should know better. He is preached as a new Samson by pastors who are not Christian at all. Like Samson of old, Jesus is presented in many sermons as a Spirit~filled man who did mighty deeds when he yielded to the plan of God. The problem is that the new~Samson Jesus is

'node rnREFoRMATION not the Jesus of the Bible, for he is not God. J l

According to this teaching, Jesus was born a mortal human like you or me. Then a number ofyears later he was baptized in the river Jordan, and shazam! The Spirit descended upon him and he became the Christ. This view of Jesus is a popular one among televangelists and other trendy teachers who want to hawk an experience to their audience. "Why just look!" they say. "Before Jesus had this experience, he was virtually unknown. But afterwards, everyone had heard of him. And you can achieve the same results with spiritual power in your life. Just send in some money and we'll tell you how." Televangelists are probably the only people who embrace this view of Jesus wholeheartedly, but pastors and teach, ers risk conveying this whenever they down, play the uniqueness of the incarnation. Too often the incarnation is presented as if Jesus was called God because God sort of generally resided with him. The pastor forgets to ex, plain how God and man have become one person in Christ so that whatever Jesus says and does is said to be done by God. This kind of preaching robs Christians of comfort, for it makes them imagine that the character of Jesus is not the true character of God. The Son of God may love me, but what about the Father? To teach the incarnation properly, the pastor must carefully exposit Colossians 2:9, where we are told that "In Christ all the fulness of the deity dwells bodily." "All the fulness" means that there is nothing about God that you cannot find in the incarnate Son. True, neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit became incarnate, but all we know from Scripture that distinguishes them from the Son is that the Father is unbegotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Other than that, everything that can be said of God can be found in the incarnate Christ. This solves the problem of not knowing what God thinks of us. Christ is, as it were, a key to the heart

of God. With him secrets are unlocked. Christ did not merely tell the parable of the prodigal son to teach what God who is in heaven thinks of wayward sinners. Christ is God,in,the,flesh telling sinners that they are welcome to him. Pastors must stop presenting the teachings ofJesus as the teachings of a man who has access to God's thoughts, and start presenting them as the teachings and actions of God himself. Weare not dealing with general information and principles that just anyone could have presented. We are dealing with God's self revelation. Jesus was not a mighty Spirit,filled man who taught the principles of a Spirit,filled life, but the savior of a people who have failed to live that life from before the time of Samson. Rather than seeing Jesus as our example of empowerment, let us see Samson as our example of faith in Jesus. Jesus the New Moses The preaching of Jesus as a new Moses is both common and dangerous. A very plausible case can be made for this type of preaching when we look at the state of the church. Against the superficiality of external religion, pastors wish to preach a Jesus who demands an internal righteousness. They see how the Pharisees were able to outwardly obey the Mosaic Law while remaining cold, hearted, and conclude that the problem is with the Law itself. What we need is a Law that requires internal righteousness. And this is exactly what we find in the Sermon on the Mount. Doesn't this make sense? Jesus saw the same problem in his generation that we see in ours. And he offers a solution. Isn't this the reason he came? h e problem with this kind of teaching is that it rests on half, truths. On one hand, it recognizes the falsity of a righteousness that is merely outward. But on the other, it fails to recognize that the Mosaic Law required an inward righteousness. As Paul says "through the Law we become conscious of sin." The problem with Jesus' contemporaries is that the Law JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1994

â&#x20AC;˘

Inode rnREFORMATION was no longer doing its job of revealing sin. In order for these people to know how far they were from righteousness, Jesus read the Law to them anew, in all its rigor. The Sermon on the Mount is merely God's commentary on the Law of Moses. It is not a new Law, and it was not intended to save. It was intended to make us conscious of sin so that we might seek a savior. The Apostle Paul draws our attention to the opposite, yet complementary purposes of Moses and Christ when he says that the ministry of Moses was the ministry of condemnation, while the the ministry of Christ is the ministry of justification (2 Cor 3:7Â 9). God uses Moses to kill us before he makes us alive in Christ.

~en

we read the Sermon on the Mount as if it were intended to save, when we look atJesus' primary mission as the revelation of new ethical information to the human race, we make Christ into a new Moses. Martin Luther told the dangers of this in his Lectures on Galatians: "Paul sets Christ, the agent of righteousness who has fulfilled what Moses demanded through the Law, over against Moses. John 1: 17 does not pass over this fact in complete silence. 'The Law,' says John, 'was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,' as if he were saying: 'The Law, not grace and truth, comes through Moses. Therefore it is rather sin and transgression that have been given through him.' Accordingly, Christ is not a lawgiver: He is the Fulfiller of the Law."l To be sure, we need both Moses and Christ, but Moses' primary mission is to let us know how badly we need Christ. Jesus was not a new legislator who teaches the principles of a righteous life, but the savior of a people who have failed to live that life from before the time of Moses. Aside from his role as lawgiver, Moses was a sinner who needed a Messiah, and looked for his salvation not in the law he gave, but in the one who would save him from the penalty of the law. The author of Hebrews says: By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to share ill~ treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward (Heb 11:24-26).

Rather than viewing Jesus as our example of empowerment, let us view Moses as our example of steadfast faith in Jesus.

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JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1994

Jesus the Second Adam We have seen the dangers of presenting Jesus in the r~le of three Old Testament saints. A comparison to a fourth Old Testament figure will prove fruitful however. In the book of Romans, God compares himself to Adam when he says that Adam was the "type of the one to come," that is, Christ (Rom 5: 14). There is a difference, however, and this difference makes all the difference. When Scripture says that Adam is a type of Christ, that places Christ in the same role as Adam, but shows how differently Christ acted in that role. Both Adam and Christ performed acts that had universal effects. Adam's acts brought condemnation for all. Christ's acts brought righteousness for all. The universality of the two acts is the same. But, as the text says, "the free gift is not like the trespass" (Rom 5:15). Where one act brought death, the other brings life. The difference between preaching Christ as a second Adam, and making him into a second Abraham, Samson, or Moses is that in the case of Adam it is easy to draw the appropriate contrasts, in in the other cases it is not. Scripture itself compares Christ and Adam. Christ's act is analogous to Adam's but greater, and produces the opposite result. Because of the disparity between the two men, it is not easy to confuse them. Adam brought death. No Christian will be so confused as to think that this is Christ's mission. But when we compare, say, Christ to Moses, the distinctions are lost. Many people do think that Christ came just to be a greater Moses. But Scripture says that Moses' ministry was that of condemnation, Christ's ministry that of justification. Far better to compare Moses and Adam, if we must. Scripture repeatedly emphasizes Jesus' uniqueness. Jesus didn't come to earth merely to do a second time what was not accomplished through someone else the first time, unless that person be Adam. Let us hear Christ preached as a second Adam, and like Adam, look forward to Jesus who will offer us a free gift, cancelling the condemnation of our trespasses. t 1 Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians: 1519, vol. 27 in Luther's Works, American Edition, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Walter A . Hansen (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964), p. 226. Rick Ritchie is a staff writer for CURE and is a contributing editor to Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation . He is a graduate of Christ College Irvine and Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.

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MAJOR

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Pelagius Coelestius John Cassian Caesarius of ArIes

Donatus

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Caecilian Augustine of Hippo

Cyril of Alexandria Theodoret Leo I

Arius Athanasius Eusebius of Hosius Nicomedia Basil the Great Gregory of Nyssa Gregory of Nazianzus Au~ustine of Hippo

CHRISTOLOGICAL Apollinarius CONTROVERSY Nestorius Eutyches

TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY

CONTROVERSY

MAJOR

HERETICAL

LEADERS

Ephesus (431)

Orange (529)

Aries (314)

Constantinople (381) Ephesus (431) Ephesus (URobber Synod") (449) Chalcedon (451)

Nicea (325) Constantinople (381)

RELEVANT

COUNCILS

Semi-Augustinianism; sacra mental grace enables people to overcome their innate sinfulness.

"Outside the church there is no salvation.

Christ is ··one person in two natures, unmixed, unchanged, undivided, inseparable." Mary is Hthe Mother of God."

Christ is Hof same sub stance with the Father." Father, Son, and Spirit are Ucoeternal, consub stantial, and coequal.

ACCEPTED CONCLUSIONS

Major Ancient Church Doctrinal Controversies

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Theodore of Arabia Sergius Cyrus of Alexandria

Severus Julian of Halicarnassus Stephanus Niobes

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MAJOR

PROPONENTS

Christ had no human will, just the one divine will.

Christ had one nature (unwilling to accept impersonal human nature of Christ)

---;

The human nature of Christ was ab sorbed by the Logos.

The Logos indwelt the person of Jesus, making Christ a God-bear ing man rather than the God-Man. Affirmed merely mechanical rather than organic union of the person of Christ.

Christ had no human spirit. The Logos replaced it.

SUMMARY

Ancient Church Christological Heresies

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MOHARCHIANISM (Adoptionism)

HERESY

Macedonius

Basil of Ancyra Gregory of Laodicea

Arius Eusebius of Nicomedia Eudoxius Eunomius

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MAJOR

PROPONENTS

The Holy Spirit is a created being.

Christ is of similar essence with the

Father but is subordinate to Him.

Christ is the first created being.

One God reveals Himself in three ways.

Jesus became Christ at His baptism, was adopted by the Father after His death.

SUMMARY·

Ancient Church Trinitarian Heresies

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CONSTANTINOPLE 553

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CONSTANTINOPLE 381

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LOCATION

Eutychius

Leo I Dioscurus Eutyches

Cyril Nestorius

Meletius Gregory of , Nazianzus Gregory of Nyssa

Arius Alexander Eusebius of Nicomedia Eusebius of Caesarea Hosius Athanasius

Declared Nestorianism heretical. Accepted by implication Alexandrian Christology. Condemned Pelagius.

Confirmed results of Council of Nicea. Produced revised Nicene Creed. Ended Trinitarian Controversy. Affirmed deity of the Holy Spirit. Condemned Apollinarianism.

Declared Son homoousios · (coequal, consubstantial, and coeternal) with Father. Condemned Arius. Drafted original form of Nicene Creed.

MAJOR OUTCOMES

legitimate.

Declared veneration of Icons and statues

Rejected Monothelitism. Condemned Pope Honorius (d. 638) as heretical.

Condemned 44Three Chapters" to gain support of Monophysites. Affirmed Cyrillian interpretation of Chalcedon.

Declared Christ's two natures unmixed, unchanged, undivided, inseparable. Condemned Eutychianism.

I PARTICIPANTS KEY I

The Ecumenical Councils of the Early Church

Inode rnREFORMATION

Modern Mysticism

one of the greatest sermons on the centrality of God's Word occurs in what is also one of greatest pieces of music from the nineteenth century: Brahms's A German Requiem. From a musical standpoint, no other piece matches the ethereal contrast of the heavy, somber instrumentation with the yearning, hopeful vocal lines. Unlike other requiems, which use the liturgy from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, Brahms used only scriptural passages that he chose. One finds all the passages one would expect to find in a requiem; passages denying the power ofdeath: "Where, o Death, is your sting?" (1 Cor 15:55), "Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord" (Rv 14: 13); passages glorifying God: "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power... " (Rv 4:11); and passages eschewing self: "Lord, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days ... "(Ps 39:4). Most importantly, implicit in the very nature of a requiem based on biblical texts, and explicit in many of the passages chosen by Brahms, is the central theme of the objectivity and centrality of God's Word. Brahms's message to his listener is simple: It is in God's Word alone that we find our hope: "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever" (1 Pt 1:24-25a). The music to which Brahms set this text is astonishing. It is the central motif in the funeral man;:h, the second movement of the requiem, and it carries, even supports, the concept on which Brahms set his requiem: ultimately, man's only consolation is God's Word. Considering this, I find myself as baffled as Antonin Dvorak was when he said of Brahms: "Such a great man, such a great soul, but he believes nothing!" Brahms was an agnostic. More baffling than this, however, are professing

ERHAPS

Eric Casteel 20

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JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1994

Christians who don't believe in the objectivity of God's Word. To them, God's Word is not the place to which the Christian turns, along with the sacraments, in order to find hope amidst despair, or meaning in times of uncertainty. To them the Word is merely a manual for finding out what they must do in order to keep their "personal relationship with Jesus" going. Instead of reading scripture for comfort in declarative passages such as "You have been reconciled," they look for "If you will abide," and they go out and try really hard to abide. Bottom line? A well~concealed form of works~righteousness that can only lead to further despair once they run out of energy trying to abide. Not long after Jesus' "If you will abide" statement, Peter went out and denied him. But we also know that Peter was forgiven for this. Since we can safely say that Peter was not "abiding" in Christ when he denied Christ, we can also conclude that Peter's "personal relationship" depended not on his abiding, but on the shed blood of Christ. What are we to say, then, to the likes of Charles Stanley who says that the believer who wants to live the "Spirit~filled life" must learn to abide in Christ?l In his book The WonderfulSpirit~FilledLife, Stanley attempts to address the needs of believers who are struggling, carnal, or fleshly.2 He summarizes the problem thus: "To an outsider looking in, there is often little or no difference between the life~style, thought~life and habits of the Christian and those of his 'uninformed' heathen neighbor."3 I am not going to argue with Stanley's belief that the Church needs to provide comfort for its struggling members and g~idance for the "carnal" or "fleshly" members. We constantly see Christ, Paul and the other New Testament writers doing this. However, my agreement with Stanley ends there. I contend that Stanley's prescription for these classes of believers departs from the biblical witness and from any type of historic Protestant orthodoxy-Lutheran or Reformed. In fact, as we shall see, his position is more akin to the

1110dernREFORMATION

Roman position and, at times, borders on mysticism. It is indeed a paradoxical position that embodies a kind of neo,nomianism and anti,nomianism. That is, he creates a new law-yielding-and replaces God's law-perfection. . Stanley's book is essentially a book about sanctification. As such, it focuses on li~ing a life led by the Holy Spirit. Stanley rightly insists that living a perfectly righteous and holy life is an impossibility for the Christian. 'H e then states that the Holy Spirit was sent in order to be our helper in righteous living. In a certain context, this could be true, but in the context of Stanley's book, it has two problems. First is Stanley's implication of what God's will actually is for the believer. Second is his definition of what the Holy Spirit's role. I will discuss each of these in turn.

is looking for imperfect men and women who have learned to walk in moment,by,moment dependence on the Holy Spirit. Christians who have come to terms with their inadequacies, fears and failures. Believers who have become discontent with "surviving" and have taken the time to investigate everything God has to offer in this life. God's method for reaching this generation, and every generation, is not preachers and sermons. It is Christians whose lifestyles are empowered and directed by the Holy Spirit."s

I suppose Romans 1:16, in light of this view, should read something more like, "the lifestyles of imperfect men and women are the power ofGod unto salvation." The Reformation would answer that, yes, it is sinful people who evangelize, but God's method for reaching this generation, and every generation, is his perfect word: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has God's Will for Any Life faith, to the Jew first and also According to Stanley, "God is to the Greek. For in it the looking for imperfect men righteousness of God is and women who have 4ai~~' revealed through faith for learned to walk in moment' faith; as it is written, 'The by,moment dependence on one who is righteous will the Holy Spirit."4 Imperfect live by faith'" (Rom 1: 16Â men and women? What 17). Remember Brahms's about, "For I tell you, unless text? Brahms quoted Peter, your righteousness exceeds that who was quoting Isaiah. of the scribes and Pharisees, you The full passage reads: will never enter the kingdom of ~~~'~~I "All people are like grass, heaven" (Mt 5:20)? What about, "Be their constancy is like the perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is flower of the field. The grass perfect"(Mt 5:48)? What about, "Since we withers, the flower fades, have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse when the breath of the Lord ourselves from every defilement of body and of blows upon it; surely the people spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear ofGod" are grass. The grass withers, the (2 Cor 7:1)? Perhaps this writer is missing flower fades, but the word of our something, but nowhere in scripture can I find any God will stand forever" (Is hint that God is looking for imperfect men and 40:6-8). "People wither, women. To be sure, he has found them, but he is God's Word endures," looking for perfect righteousness. says Brahms the agnos, Now, a reader of Stanley's book might accuse me tic. But Stanley spends of taking this sentence out of context by printing it much of the remain, alone. My first answer to this is that there is no der of the book de' context in which this statement would ever be true. scribing his experiences as a young pastor, using these My second response would be that even in context as examples for teaching his readers how to be the sentence is just as bad-if not worse. Here is the imperfect but Spirit, led men or women who will win entire passage: their "uninformed heathen neighbors" to Christ. Sermons are not God's primary method for reaching people. People are his method for reaching people. What This is evangelism by saying "What a good boy am kind of people? Men and women whose lives and life,styles I." It is a type of evangelism that attempts to attract people to a well,adjusted, family,values,affirming have been deeply affected by the truths of scripture, people who have discovered the wonderful Spirit,filled life. God bourgeois existence. Mormons do this. Except at least JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

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Mormons know that God requires perfection. It is a notion all too present amongst American Evangelicals that God has lowered his standards for New Testament believers. They may not say this explicitly, but I have heard many echo Stanley's implication that God doesn't require perfect righteousness-you just have to love Jesus. In the Old Testament (they think), God required a works righteousness, but in this dispensation, all we have to

distinction in his book, although he tries to back away from it by refusing to give the experience a name (that is, "second blessing"). He says he doesn't want Christians to be divided into groups of "haves and have,nots." Good. But then he states "I believe there is a definite distinction between being baptized by the Spirit and filled with the Spirit. ...The filling ofthe Spirit is something that takes place in accordance with our willingness to surrender to the influence of

When justification is properly understood, there can be no distinction among Christians, because all believers are credited ·with Christ's perfect .life. do is say we believe. As long as we profess faith, walk down the aisle, or love Jesus, we're okay in spite of our imperfections. But with this system what do we do with all those New Testament passages about holiness? Why do some people look like they're doing better than others at being Christian? And why don't I look like one?

Gospel Plus ••• "Gospel plus ...", the teaching of Lewis Sperry Chafer and R. A. Torrey, makes a distinction between believers who have "yielded" to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and those who are merely trusting Christ. This teaching is largely a result of a faulty doctrine of justification that does not teach that Christ's righteousness is credited to the believer. When justification is properly understood, there can be no such distinction among Christians, because all believers are credited with Christ's perfect life; Who can be more spiritual than Christ? The Reformation answer to the New Testament call for holiness is that it's the . same call for holiness that God has always issued. It is a call to perfection after which we are to strive. But we will inevitably be reminded by scripture and our failures that we are not perfect and we cannot live up to God's Law. We must, at that point, run back to the gospel, which freely offers Christ's perfection to us. All Christians are always in this loop. Take a look at Romans 7. When we find ourselves against a wall, we do harm to ourselves to try harder to abide. Christ is ou! only hope. Weare sinners, and yet we have been justified-simul justus et peccator. All Christians are spiritual and carnal. An empirical distinction between "spiritual" and "carnal" Christians is totally unbiblical. Stanley, however, obliquely makes this either/or 22

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the Spirit."6 He simply replaces the haves and have, nots with the willings and willing,nots, or surrenderers and surrender,nots. The type of inward focus which this teaching inevitably creates (Have I surrendered? Am I willing? How's my yieldedness level?) is a high,water mark of mysticism. It's looking for a warm feeling of peace or escape that Christ never promised us-at least not as any type of permanent feeling, as if once we are believers, we no longer have to spend time in this world, living with pain. Luther's view was quite the opposite: "That may be called the Christian life that is never at perfect rest, and has not so far as attained as to feel no sin, provided that sin be felt, indeed, but not favored....While flesh and blood continue, so long sin remains; wherefore it is ever to be struggled against. Whoever has not learned this by his own experience, must not boast that he is a Christian. "7

Particular statements of Christ's wreak havoc on evangelicals of this persuasion: "I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world" On 16:33). Christ says that he gives peace, but that we still face tribulation. This is because the peace that he promised was not an empirical one: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives" (J n 14:27). Weare not told to seek an experience of peace. We are, in fact, told that our experience will be quite the opposite: we will face all sorts of trouble. But nevertheless, we are assured that real peace has been established. But it is not a peace with ourselves, our inner child, or our neighbor. It is peace with God whose anger at sinful humanity has been dealt with by the Cross.

'node rnREFoRMATION The peace we have with God is a declaration of peace. It is explained specifically in Romans 5: "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ... " (Rom 5:1). But he didn't promise that we'd feel it all i l ' " (R om Âˇ " ... we al th e time: so b oast'In our sunenngs... 5:3 ) . To go looking, then, for some type of mystical experience of filling or peace militates against the very gospel of Christ. To be sure, Christians will sometimes experience a feeling of peace, but to look for assurance of right standing with God in an experience is antithetical to the gospel. Luther assured Melanchthon that the entirety of the gospel is outside us.

The Spirit-filled Life The inevitable question will be asked, "If the filling of the Spirit isn't some type of experience, what does Paul mean when he uses the phrase?" That's a fair question, and the answer, I think, is so straightforward that it's easy to miss. In the New Testament, there are nine occurrences of the phrase "filled with the Spirit." They occur in Luke {1:15,41,67}, Acts (2:4; 4:8, 31; 9:17; 13:9), and Ephesians 5:18. In every case in Luke and Acts, the phrase is associated with speaking God's Word. For instance, in Luke we read: "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb ..."'(1:41-42}. She's filled with the Spirit, she prophesies. The same thing happens with Zechariah, and similar things happen with the apostles in Acts. Being filled with the Spirit is consistently associated with prophecy or an exhortation.

There doesn't appear to be any mention of God's Word, here. (Except for that part about singing psalms. Hmm. Those are God's Word.) Pushing a little further, however, we can compare this verse to Colossians 3:16-17, which is similar: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the LordJesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." From these two verses, it seems as if the filling of the Spirit and the Word of Christ were achieving the same thing, which would be consistent with the filling of the Spirit in Luke and Acts. The filling of the Spirit, in every case, is associated with the Word of God. Associations like these are one of the reasons why Protestant orthodoxy insists that the Spirit always works with the Word, and is present when the Word is preached. The Spirit,filled life is one that depends on the Word of God and nothing else. 8 Protestant orthodoxy also insists that a right understanding of the Holy Spirit's work starts with what Christ said of his mission. The Holy Spirit works in and with the Word to get out the good news that God reconciled the world to himself in Christ (2 Cor 5:19). Christ himself tells us most clearly what the Holy Spirit's job is in John 14-16: "[He] will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned" On 16:8-11}. Also, Christ said, " ... the Spirit of truth

When we find ourselves against a wall, we do harm to ourselves to try h arder to abide. Christ is our only hope. We are sinners, and yet we have been justified. In the case ofEphesians, however, this relationship is somewhat harder to discern. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be a direct association between the Spirit and God's Word: Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and fOf everything in the name of OUf Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 5:18-20).

comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf' On 15:26b}. The ministry of the Holy Spirit begins here. This is where Jesus tells us exactly what to expect of the Holy Spirit. Other passages, such as Acts 1:4-8, should be interpreted in light of Christ's description. When that is done, we see Acts quite plainly as a mandate for evangelism-the starter's pistol ready to send the Apostles running off the blocks. The Holy Spirit in Acts was not sent merely to help the apostles live good, moral lives. He was JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

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Inode rnREFORMATION sent to do God's work-proving the world wrong about sin, righteousness and judgment-through the medium of the apostles' preaching. Acts 1:4-8 is not to be interpreted as the prerequisite for victorious Christian living, as Stanley seems to interpret it. 9 Earlier I stated that I find it astonishing how many professing believers don't believe in the objectivity of God's Word. To be fair, this accusation doesn't exactly appear to fit Stanley. Toward the end of his book, he states: "Of all the ways the Holy Spirit reveals himself, [the Bible] is the most objective and, for that reason, the most valuable. ...The Bible is the Holy Spirit's most objective way of communicating with his people. It is the only way to know anything about him."Io It would seem that my accusation is misdi~ rected. However, there is something suspect about Stanley's state~ ment-suspect in its content and in its position in the book.

Lex orandi est lex credendi According to Stanley, the exclusive work the Holy Spirit seeks to accomplish in scripture is to provide direction for the believer's life. Stanley covers situations such as divorce, premarital sex, marital happiness, and successful family relation~ ships. In short, the Holy Spirit reveals "principles for holy living" in scripture. But what about sin and righteousness and judgment as in John 16:8? Christ didn't say anything about principles for holy living. Weare not made holy because we follow rules. We are holy because Christ is our holiness (1 Cor 1:30). Weare holy because we are vines that have been grafted into the branch that is Christ. (And The Holy Spirit is not the "sap," as Stanley says. II I'm not sure that statements like this even qualify as good mysticism.) When Lutherans (and, presumably, the Reformed) speak of the objectivity of God's Word, we are specifically referring to the fact that the 24

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scripture carries (tells, proclaims) the message of justification. God's Word is always speaking to usÂ not in us-so that we may take comfort in the good news. The Holy Spirit, through scripture, tells the believer that God requires perfect righteousness from him and then tells him that Christ has provided that righteousness. Weare not to take comfort in our feelings. The Holy Spirit is working in scripture to condemn the ungodly-law-and to assure the same ungodly of God's grace-gospel (Rom 5:6-8). It is not the Holy Spirit's work to help people make them~ selves better. Never once in the section on scrip~ ture in his book does Stanley refer to the Holy Spirit's work as that of illuminat~ ing Christ (J n 15:26). Stanley doesn't seem to believe that scrip~ ture is objective in terms of reveal~ ing God's grace, but he does be~ lieve in the objec~ tivity of the prin~ ciples in the Bible. He doesn't see scripture as being the way the Holy Spirit is always working to assure the sinner of his right standing with a just, holy and perfect God, because of the just, holy and perfect Christ. But he does see scripture as the timeless rules for living by which imperfect men and women gauge themselves and make their own paths straight. Now, Stanley would never say this explicitly. In fact, he would, I hope, probably deny it. But the problem lies in the way that Stanley presents his information. Scripture is listed as third in a list of four "markers" of the Holy Spirit. (It comes in behind "peace" and "conscience.") The concept of scripture isn't even presented as a major issue until the end of the book. If scripture is as important as Stanley says it is, why doesn't he present it first in this list? Better yet, why isn't it the first thing in the book? And it is here that concern with Stanley's book is best expressed. Stanley does indeed say many things that could be constructive for his reader. But the problem lies in the fact that never is the Spirit~filled life rooted in

Inode rnREFORMATION justification, as it must always be. Justification, in fact, is never covered in the book, which reveals an age old problem in Protestantism, which is that while justification is seen as God's work, sanctification is what we do. This is patently wrong. Sanctification is entirely dependent on justification, and cannot occur without justification. When the two are separated, the sinner in us will naturally gravitate towards the sanctification part, because it appears to involve us. We want something to do. We think that what we do will be as good as what God did in Christ. But how can we be like God? Adam and Eve tried that and got us all where we are. To pursue sanctification without rooting it in justification is to follow our sinful nature. here is an ancient saying in the church that correctly identifies how we shape our beliefs: lex orandi est lex credendi. Literally translated, it says, "the law of prayer is the law of belief." Loosely translated if means that the way a church worships defines how it believes. A pastor might be able to give all the right answers to a quiz on justification, but when the choir sings about "pressing into the kingdom by force," it reveals a congregation steeped in works righteousness; not because they have an Arminian confession, but because their worship is oriented this way. This is the reason why people in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions "split hairs" over words: they make all the difference! This is why people in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions get touchy about the music in their churches: it makes all the difference! When people from these traditions encounter a work like Stanley's, they should recognize immediately that, however good his intentions, Stanley has directed his reader to seek what amounts to a mystical experience. (Am I Filled? Have I yielded?) He spends a book talking about leading, guiding, yielding, surrendering, listening and only a few pages on scripture, where the Spirit is really to be found. And even then, scripture is not the place where the Spirit is guaranteed to be really working, but merely the place to find a few rules. (I have said all of this and not even mentioned the sacraments which, not surprisingly, are entirely absent from Stanley's book.) Quasi,mystical experience is inserted in place of assurance of God's grace, and rules for living in place of Christ's righteousness .. It is an ironic day for evangelicalism when Christians who are honestly seeking a deeper understanding of God (Father, Son or Holy Spirit) are better advised to put down the books of some of their most noted pastors, stop listening for the "still

small voice," and begin listening to Brahms. t All scripture quotations from The New Revised Standard Version Charles Stanley, The Wonderful Spirit,filled Life, Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 1993. p. 63. 2 Ibid., p. ix. 3 Ibid., p. 3. 4 Ibid., p. 5. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 35. 7 Martin Luther, Commentary on Peter and]ude, p. 119. 8 I am not here trying to construct an entire thesis regarding what the filling of the Spirit is, and I realize that my analysis is far too brief and hasty. I wanted, however, to draw the reader's attention to this simple fact about these passages and point out that Stanley never mentions the connection. Considering how much Stanley tells his charismata, inclined readers to read things in context, I ' find it interesting that he managed to overlook one of the obvious contexts in which the phrase "filled with the Spirit" is set. 9 Stanley, op. cit., p. 9-10. 10 Ibid., p. 203,207. 11 Ibid., p. 56. 1

Eric Casteel is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach. He is a communicant in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. He is employed by Celebration Christian Books and is a professional musician. Suggested Reading Alexander, Donald, ed. Christian Spirituality,Five Views of Sanctification. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988. Both Forde's and Ferguson's articles are excellent in this book, but it is in their responses to the other views that the keen criticism is found. Horden, William. Living By Grace. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975. This fantastic book is, unfortunately, out of print. It is eye opening in its display of how sanctification, as defined by American Evangelicals, works against justification by grace through faith. Senkbeil, Harold. Santification: Christ inAction. Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1989. This book contains a lengthy analysis of Chuck Swindoll's view of sanctification. Matzat, Don. Truly Transformed. Bend, OR: Harvest House, 1992. Matzat uses one of the same verses that Stanley uses as his starting point (Gal 2:22), but prescribes a different course than Stanley simply by keeping sanctification within the bounds of Law and Gospel. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

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Pelagianistn

ICERO observed of his own civilization that people thank the gods for their material prosperity, but never for their virtue, for this is their own doing. Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield considered Pelagianism "the rehabilitation of that heathen view of the world," and concluded with characteristic clarity, "There are fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, and that salvation is from ourselves. The former is the doctrine of common Christianity; the latter is the doctrine of universal heathenism."l But W atfield's sharp criticisms are consistent with the witness of the church ever since Pelagius and his disciples championed the heresy. St. Jerome, the fourth century Latin father, called it "the heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno," as in general paganism rested on the fundamental conviction that human beings have it within their power to save themselves. What, then, was Pelagianism and how did it get started? First, this heresy originated with the first human couple, as we shall see soon. It was actually defined and labelled in the fifth century, when a British monk came to Rome. Immediately, Pelagius was deeply impressed with the immorality of this center of Christendom, and he set out to reform the morals of clergy and laity alike. This moral campaign required a great deal of energy and Pelagius found many supporters and admirers for his cause. The only thing that seemed to stand in his way was the emphasis that emanated particularly from the influential African bishop, Augustine. Augustine taught that human beings, because they are born in original sin, are incapable of saving themselves. Apart from God's grace, it is impossible for a person to obey or even to seek God. Representing the entire race, Adam sinned against God. This resulted in the total corruption of every human being since, so that our very wills are in bondage to our sinful condition.

Michael Horton 26

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Only God's grace, which he bestows freely as he pleases upon his elect, is credited with the salvation of human beings. In sharp contrast, Pelagius was driven by moral concerns and his theology was calculated to provide the most fuel for moral and social improvement. He was convinced that Augustine's emphasis on human helplessness and divine grace would surely paralyze the pursuit of moral improvement, since people could sin with impunity, fatalistically concluding, "I couldn't help it; I'm a sinner." So Pelagius countered by rejecting original sin. According to Pelagius, Adam was merely a bad example, not the father of our sinful condition, we are sinners because we sin: rather than vice versa. Consequently, of course, the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, was a good example. Salvation is a matter chiefly of following Christ instead of Adam, rather than being transferred from the condemnation and corruption of Adam's race and placed "in Christ," clothed in his righteousness and made alive by his gracious gift. What men and women need is moral direction, not a new birth; therefore, Pelagius saw salvation in purely naturalistic terms-the progress of human nature from sinful behavior to holy behavior, by following the example of Christ. In his Commentary on Romans, Pelagius thought of grace as God's revelation in the Old and New Testaments, which enlightens us and serves to promote our holiness by providing explicit instruction in godliness and many worthy examples to imitate. So human nature is not conceived in sin. After all, the will is not bound by the sinful condition and its affections; choices determine whether one will obey God, and thus be saved. In 411, Paulinus of Milan came up with a list of six heretical points in the Pelagian message. (1) Adam was created mortal and would have died whether he had sinned or not; (2) the sin of Adam injured himself alone, not the whole human race; (3) newborn children are in the same state in which

1110dern REFORMATION Adam was before his fall; (4) neither by the death and sin of Adam does the whole human race die, nor will it rise because of the resurrection of Christ; (5) the law as well as the gospel offers entrance . to the Kingdom of Heaven; and (6) even before the coming of Christ, there were men wholly without sin. 2 Further, Pelagius and his followers denied unconditional predestination.

I t is worth noting that Pelagianism was condemned by more church councils than any other heresy in history. In412, Pelagius's disciple Coelestius was excommunicated at the Synod of Carthage; the Councils ofCarthage and Milevis condemned Pe~ ' I lagius' De libero arbitrioÂ

On the Freedom ofthe Will; Pope Innocent I excom~ municated both Pelagius /and Coelestius, as did Pope Zosimus. Eastern emperor Theodosius II banished the Pelagians from the East as well in AD 430. The heresy was repeatedly condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431 and the Second Council of Orange in529. In fact, the Council of Orange condemned even Semi~ Pelagian ism, which maintains that grace is necessary, but that the will is free by nature to choose whether to coop~ erate with the grace of~ fered. The Council of Orange even condemned those who thought that salvation could be conferred by the saying of a prayer, affirming instead (with abundant biblical references) that God must awaken the sinner and grant the gift of faith before a person can even seek God. Anything that falls short of acknowledging original sin, the bondage of the will, and the need for grace to even accept the gift of eternal life, much less to pursue righteousness, is considered by the whole church to be heresy. The heresy described here is called "Pelagianism."

Pelagianism in the Bible Cain murdered Abel because Cain sought to offer God his own sacrifice. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that Abel offered his sacrifice in anticipation of the final sacrifice, the Lamb of God, and did so by faith rather than by works (Heb. 11). However, Cain sought to be justified by his own works. When God accepted Abel instead, Cain became jealous. His hatred for Abel was probably due in part to his own hatred of God for refusing to accept his righteousness. This pattern had already emerged with the contrast between the fig leaves that Adam and Eve sewed to cover their nakedness. Running from God's judg~ ment, covering up the shame that resulted from sin-these are the charac~ ~...,......,..,~-:'"'T"'"" teristics of human nature ever since the fall. "There

nearer God comes to us, the greater sense.we have of our own unworthiness, so we hide from him and try to cover up our shame with our own clever masks. At the Tower of Babel, the attitude expressed is clearly Pelagian: "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves." In fact, they were certain that such a united human project could ensure that nothing would be impossible for them (Gen 11 :4-6). But God came down, just as they were building upward toward the heavens. "So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city" (v.8). This is the pattern: God provides the sacrifice, and judges those who offer their own sacrifices to appease God. God comes down to dwell with us, we do not climb up to him; God finds us. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994

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Inode rnREFORMATION The people of Israel regularly found themselves reverting to the pagan way of thinking. God had to remind them, '''Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord....But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.'" Jeremiah responds, "The heart is deceitful

'unclean'" (Mt 15:10-20). Later, Jesus scolded the Pharisees with these harsh words: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self, indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you,

We possess neither the ability, free will, power, nor the righteousness to repair ourselves and escape the wrath of God. It must all be God's work, Christ's work, or there is no salvation. above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? ...Heal me, 0 Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise" (Jer 17:5,7,9,15). Jonah learned the hard way that God saves whomever he wants to save. Just as soon as he declared, "Salvation comes from the Lord," we read: "And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land" (Jon 2:9-10). The Babylonian king N ebuchadnezzar faced a similar confrontation, when his self, confidence was turned to humiliation by God. He finally raised his eyes toward heaven and confessed, "All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: 'What have you done'" (On 4:35). The clear message: God saves freely, by his own choice and action, to his own praise and glory. We find Pelagianism among the Pharisees in the New Testament. Remember, the foundation of Pelagianism is the belief that we do not inherit Adam's sinful condition. We are born morally neutral, capable of choosing which way we will turn. Sin is something that affects us from the outside, so that if a good person sins, it must be due to some external influence. This is why it is so important, according to this wai of thinking, to avoid bad company and evil influences: It will corrupt an otherwise good person. This Pelagian mentality pervaded the thinking of the Pharisees, as when they asked Jesus why they he did not follow the Jewish rituals. "Jesus called the crowd to him and said, 'Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean. '" This theological orientation was so unfamiliar to the disciples that Jesus had to restate the point: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man 28

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teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness" (Mt 23:25-28). Therefore, Jesus told them that they must be "born from above" (In 3:5). The Pharisees believed that God had given them his grace by giving them the law, and if they merely followed the law and the traditions of the elders, they would remain in God's favor. But Jesus said that they were unbelievers who needed to be regenerated, not good people who. needed to be guided. "No man can even come to me unless my Father who sent me draws him" (Jn 6:44), for we must be born again, "not of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God" (In 1:13). "Apart from me you can do nothing....You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last" (In 15:5, 16). This message was at the center of the apostolic message, as Paul defended the grace of God against the Judaizing heresy that sought to turn Jesus into merely another Moses. Centering on the person and work of Christ, Paul and the other apostles denied any place for self,confidence before God. Instead, they knew that we possess neither the ability, free will, power, nor the righteousness to repair ourselves and escape the wrath of God. It must all be God's work, Christ's work, or there is no salvation at all. Surely the Judaizing heresy that troubled the apostles was larger than the issue of Pelagianism, but self, righteousness and self,salvation lay at the bottom of it. As such, the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15, was the first church council to actually condemn this heresy in the New Testament era.

1J1odern REFo'RMATION

Pelagianism in Church History Every dark age in church history was due to the creeping influence of the human,centered gospel of "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps." Whenever God is seen as the sole author and finisher of salvation, there is health and vitality. To the degree that human beings are seen as agents of their own salvation, the church loses its power, since the gospel is "the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes" (Rom 1:16). Throughout the period that is popularly known as the "dark ages," Pelagianism was never officially endorsed, but it was certainly common and perhaps even the most popular and widespread tendency among the masses. That should come as no surprise, since thinking good of our nature and of possibilities for its improvement is the tendency of our sinful condition. Weare all Pelagians by nature. There were debates, for.instance, in the eighth century, but these did not end well for those who defended a strict Augustinian point of view. Since Pelagianism had been condemned by councils, no one dared defend a view as "Pelagian," but Semi,Pelagianism was acceptable, since the canons of the Council of Orange, which condemned Semi,Pelagianism, had been lost and were not recovered until after the closing of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. On the eve of the Reformation, there were fresh debates over free will and grace and the reformers benefitted from something of a renaissance of Augustinianism. In the fourtenth century, two Oxford lecturers, Robert Holcot and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine, became leading antagonists in this battle. Two centuries before the Reformation, Bradwardine wrote The Case of God Against the New Pelagians, but, "Holcot and a host of later interpreters found Bradwardine's defense of the

theologians discussing this matter [of grace and free will], and the school of Pelagius seemed to me nearest the truth. .. .In the philosophical faculty I seldom heard a reference to grace, except for some ambiguous remarks. What I heard day in and day out was that we are masters of our own free acts, that ours is the choice to act well or badly, to have virtues or sins and much more along this line. Therefore, Every time I listened to the Epistle reading in church and heard how Paul magnified grace and belittled free willÂ as is the case in Romans 9, 'It is obviously not a question of human will and effort, but of divine mercy,' and its many parallels-grace displeased me, ungrateful as I was. But later, things changed: However, even before I transferred to the faculty of theology, the text mentioned came to me as a beam of grace and, captured by a vision of the truth, it seemed I saw from afar how the grace of God precedes all good works with a temporal priority, God as Savior through predestination, and natural precedence . ...That is why I express my gratitude to Him who has given me this grace as a free gift. Bradwardine begins his treatise, "The Pelagians now oppose our whole presentation of predestination and reprobation, attempting either to eliminate them completely or, at least, to show that they are dependent on personal merits."4 These are important references, since many think of the emphasis of Luther in The Bondage of the Will and of Calvin in his many writings on the subj~ct as extreme, when in actual fact, they were in the mainstream of Augustinian revival. In fact, Luther's mentor, Johann von Staupitz, was himself a defender of Augustinian orthodoxy against the new tide of Pelagianism, and contributed his own treatise, On Man's Eternal Predestination. "God has covenanted to save the elect. Not only is Christ sent as a substitute for the believer's sins, he also makes certain that this

To the degree that h uman beings are seen as agents of their own salvation, the church loses its power, since the gospel is "the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes" (Rom 1:16). 'case of God' Âˇ was at the expense of the dignity of man."3 If that sounds familiar, it should, since the truth and its corresponding objections never change. The archbishop's own story gives us some insight to the place of this debate: Idle and a fool in God's wisdom, I was misled by an unorthodox error at the time when I was pursuing philosophical studies. Sometimes I went to listen to the

redemption is applied. This happens at the moment when the sinner's eyes are opened again by the grace of God, so that he is able to know the true God by faith. Then his heart is set afire so that God becomes pleasing to him. Both of these are nothing but grace, and flow from the merits of Christ. ..Our works do not, nor can they, bring us to this state, since man's nature is not capable of knowing or wanting or doing JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1994

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Inode rnREFORMATION good. For this barren man God is sheer fear." But for the believer, "the Christian is just through the righteousness of Christ," and Staupitz even goes so far as to say, that this suffering of Christ "is sufficient for all, though it ~as not for all, but for many that his blood was poured out."5 This was not an extreme statement, as it is often considered today, but was the most common way of talking about the atonement's effect: sufficient for everyone, efficient for the elect alone. To be sure, these precursors of the Reformation were not yet articulating a clear doctrine of justifi,c a, tion by the imputation of Christ's righteousness, but the official position of the Roman Catholic Church even before the Reformation was that grace is necessary for even the will to believe and to live the Christian life. This is not far enough for evangelicals, but to fall short of this affirmation is to lose touch with even the "catho, lic" witness shared at least on paper by Protestants and Roman Catholics.

What About Today? Ever since the Enlightenment, the Protestant churches have been influenced by successive waves of rationalism and moralism that have made the Pelagian heresy attractive. It is fascinating, if frustrating, to read the great architects of modem liberalism as they triumphantly announce their project. They sound as if it were a new theological enterprise to say that human nature is basically good, history is marked by progress, that social and moral improvement will create happiness, peace, and justice. Really, it is merely a revival of that age, old religion of human nature. The rationalistic phase ofliberalism saw religion not as a plan of salvation, but as a method of morality. The older views concerning human sinfulness and dependence on divine mercy were thought by modern theologians to stand in the way of the Enlightenment project of building a new 30

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world, a tower reaching to heaven, just as Pelagius viewed Augustinian teaching as impeding his project of moral reform. Instead of defining Christianity in terms of an announcement of God's saving work in Jesus Christ, Schleiermacher and the liberal theologians redefined it as a "feeling." Ironically, the Arminian revivals shared with the Enlightenment a confidence in human ability. This Pelagian spirit pervaded the frontier revivals as much as the New England academy. Although poets such as William Henley might put it in more sophisticated language ("I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul"), evangelicals out on the frontier began adapting this triumph ofPelagian ism to the wider culture. Heavily influenced by the New Ha, ven theology and the Sec' ond Great Awakening, Charles Finney was ..: nearly the nineteenth, century rein, carnation of Pelagius. Finney denied original sin. "Moral de' pravity is sin itself, and not the cause of sin,"6 and he explicitly rejects original sin in his criticism of the Westminster Confession, 7 referring to the notion of a sinful nature as "anti,scriptural and nonsensical dogma."8 According to Finney, we are all born mor, ally neutral, capable either of choosing good or evil. Finney argues throughout by employing the same arguments as the German rationalists, and yet be' cause he was such a successful revivalist and "soul, winner," evangelicals call him their own. Finney held that our choices make us either good or sinful. Here Finney stands closer to the Pharisees than to Christ, who declared that the tree produced the fruit rather than vice versa. Finney's denial of the substitutionary atonement follows this denial of original sin. After all, according to Pelagius, if Adam can be said to be our agent of condemnation for no other reason than that we follow his poor example, then Christ is said to be our agent of redemption because we follow his good example. This is precisely what Finney argues:

lJ1oc/ernREFORMATION

"Example is the highest moral influence that can be exerted...If the benevolence manifested in the atone' ment does not subdue the selfishness of sinners, their case is hopeless."9 But how can there be a "benevo, lence manifested in the atonement" if the atonement does not atone? For those of us who need an atonement that not only subdues our selfishness, but covers the penalty for our selfishness, Finney's "gos, pel," like Pelagius's, is hardly good news.

According to Finney, Christ could not have fulfilled the obedience we owed to God, since it would not be rational that one man could atone for the sins of anyone besides himself. Furthermore, "If he obeyed the law as our substitute, then why should our own return to personal obedience be insisted upon as 'the sine qua non of our salvation?"10 One wonders if Finney was actually borrowing directly from Pelagius' writings. Many assume "that the atonement was a literal payment of a debt, which we have seen does not consist with the nature of the atonement... .It is objected that, if the atonement was not the payment of the debt of sinners, but general in its nature, as we have maintained, it secures the salvation of no one. It is true, that the atonement, of itself, does not secure the salvation of any one."ll Furthermore, Finney denies that regeneration depends on the supernatural gift of God. It is not a change produced from the outside. "If it were, sinners could not be required to effect it....No such change is needed, as the sinner has all the faculties and natural attributes requisite to render perfect obedience to God."12 Therefore, "... regeneration consists in the sinner changing his ultimate choice, intention, preference." Those who insist that sinners depend on the mercy of God proclaim "the most abominable and ruinous of all falsehoods. It is to mock ,[the sinner's] intelligence!"13 Of the doctrine of justification, Finney declared it to be "another gospel," since "for sinners to be forensically pronounced just, is impossible and absurd. ...As has already been said, there can be no justification in a legal or forensic sense, but upon the ground of universal, perfect, and uninterupted obedience to law ... The doctrine of an imputed righteousness, or that Christ's obedience to the law was accounted as our obedience, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption" and "representing the atonement as the ground of the sinner's justification has been a sad occasion of stumbling to many."14

From Finney and the Arminian revivalists, evangelicalism inherited as great a debt to Pelagian ism as modem liberalism received from the Enlightenment version directly. When evangelists appeal to the unbeliever as though it was his choice that determines his destiny, they are not only operating on Arminian assumptions, but Pelagian assumptions that are rejected even by the official position of the Roman Catholic Church as a denial of grace. Whenever it is maintained that an unbeliever is capable by nature of choosing God, or that men and wOhlen are capable of not sinning or of reaching a state of moral perfection, that's Pelagianism. Finney even preached a sermon titled, "Sinners Bound To Change Their Own Hearts." When preachers attack those who insist that the human problem is sinfulness and the wickedness of the human heart-that's Pelagianism. When one hears the argument, whether from the Enlightenment (Kant's "ought implies can"), or from Wesley, Finney, or modern teachers, that "God would never have commanded the impossible,"ls they are echoing the very words of Pelagius. Those who deny that faith is the gift of God are not merely Arminians or Semi, Pelagians, but Pelagians. Even the Council of Trent (condemning the reformers) anathematized such a denial as Pelagianism. When evangelicals and fundamentalists assume that infants are pure until they reach an "age of accountability," or that sin is something outside-in the world or in the sinful environment or in sinful company that corrupts the individual-they are practicing Pelagians. That which in contemporary evangelicalism is often considered "Calvinism" is really "Augustinianism," which embraces orthodox Roman Catholics and Lutherans as well. And that which in our circles today is often considered "Arminianism" is really Pelagianism.

Tt.e fact that recent polls indicate that ;7% of the evangelicals today believe that human, beings are basically good and 84% of these conservative Protestants believe that in salvation "God helps those who help themselves" demonstrates incontrovertably that contemporary Christianity is in a serious crisis. No longer can conservative, "Bible, believing" evangelicals smugly hurl insults at mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics for doctrinal treason. It is evangelicals today, every bit as much as anyone else, who have embraced the assumptions of the Pelagian heresy. It is this heresy that lies at the bottom of much of popular psychology (human nature, basically good, is warped by its environment), JANUARYfFEBRUARY 1994

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political crusades (we are going to bring about salvation and revival through this campaign), and evangelism and church growth (seeing conversion as a natural process, just like changing from one brand of -soap to another, and seeing the evangelist or entrepreneurial pastor as the one who actually adds to the church those to be saved). At . its root, the Reformation was · an attack on Pelagianism and its rising influence, as it choked out the life of Christ in the world. It asserted that "salvation is of the Lord" (Jon 2:9), and that "it therefore does not depend on the decision or effort of man, but on the mercy of God" (Rom 9:16). If that message is recovered, and Pelagianism is once more confronted with the the Word of God, the glory of God will again fill the earth. t 1 B. B.Warfield, The Plan of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Eerd~ans, reprinted 1980), p. 33 2 Taken from the entry on Pelagianism in the Westminster Dictionary of Church History 3 Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), p.134 4 ibid., pp. 151,162

ibid., pp. 175,200 Charles Finney, Finney's Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1976), p. 172 7 p.177; 8 p. 179 9 p. 209 10 p. 206 11 p. 213 12 p.221 13 p.226 14 pp. 319,323 15 B. R. Rees, ed., The Letters ofPelagius and His Followers (Woodbridge, England: The Boydell Press, 1991), p.169 5 6

Michael Horton is the president and founder of CuRE and the author of Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, Made in America, and The Law of Prefect Freedom, and is the editor of The Agony of Deceit, Power Religion, and Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation. In the last issue of MR, Mike Horton incorrectly referred to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod ("Wisconsin Synod") as adhering exclusively to the King James Version of the Bible. We regret the error.

The Pelagian Controversy

POSITION

MAJOR PROPONENTS

SUMMARY

PELAGIANISM

Pelaglus Julian of Eclanum Coelestius

Man is born essentially good and ca pable of doing what is necessary for salvation.

AUGUSTINIANISM

Augustine of Hippo

Man Is dead In sin; salvation is total ly by the grace of God, which is given only to the elect.

SEMI-PELAGIANISM

John Cassian

The grace of God and the will of man work. together in salvation, in which man must take the initiative.

SEMI-AUGUSTINIANISM

Caesarius of ArIes

The grace of God comes to all, enabling a person to choose and perform what is necessary for salvation.

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Glosssary ofTerms

Agnosticism A term generally used for the view that we do not know either in practice or in principle if there is a God. Although the term is applicable to ~any kind of skepticism, T. H. Huxley coined the term to signify religious skepticism. Huxley first used the term in 1869 at a meeting of what later became the Metaphysical Society. Adoptionism Adoptionism is the theory that Jesus was in nature a man who became God by adoption. The new Gnostics assert that Jesus was born again in hell, where as "the first born,again man," He opened the way for us to be adopted just as He was. The Councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381) condemned this view insisting that Christ is "of the same substance with the Father" unlike we who are adopted into God's family. Antinomianism The word comes from the Greek anti (against) and nomos (law), and refers to the doctrine that it is not necessary for Christians to preach and/or obey the moral law of the Old Testament. Atonement Atonement means "to avert punishment, especially the divine anger, by the payment of a ransom, which may be of life." Throughout the Old Testament sin is serious; it will be punished unless atonement is sought in the way God has provided. This truth is repeated in the New Testament. There it is made clear that all men are sinners (Rom 3:23) and that hell awaits them (Mk 9:43, Lk 12:5). But it is just as clear that God wills to bring salvation and that he has brought it in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of his Son. Christ has taken our place, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

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Atheism The Greek word atheos, "without God," is found in the New Testament. (Eph 2:12) There it is used in the plural form to designate the condition of being without the true God. It refers to the deepest state of heathen misery. (cf. Rom 1:28) Epistemology The branch of philosophy that is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It is an inquiry into the nature and source of knowledge, the bounds of knowledge, and the justification of claims to knowledge.. Gnosticism The name Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis meaning knowledge which refers to the cult's claim to a higher knowledge than mere rational apprehension. Understanding "with the spirit" was set against merely understanding "with human reason." The most serious of Gnosticism's errors is its belief that the believer is to recognize his "oneness" with God, becoming absorbed in "the One." Human beings can actually share in God's "Godhood." Gnosticism fails to make a fundamental distinction between the Creator and His creatures. Salvation is found in taking on God's nature, not in acknowledging the sinfulness of our spirit and the need for God's grace. Because the body is evil, the incarnation of Christ, as well as his and the believers' resurrections, is also denied. Heresy Heresy is a deliberate denial of revealed truth coupled with the acceptance of error. It comes from the Greek word hairesis (2 Pt 2:1). Pelaganism Pelagianism is that teaching, originating in the late fourth century, which stresses man's ability to take the initial steps toward salvation by his own efforts, apart from special grace. Pelagius, a British monk, was troubled by St. Augustine's emphasis on God's sovreignity and grace. He believed that if salvation was dependant on what God does there would be no motivation for holiness, evangelism, and devotion. Tritheism One heresy settled by the ancient church involved the belief that there were three separate Gods. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were "one" only in purpose. Tritheism, therefore, denies the belief that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are "one in essence, three in person," which was the orthodox conclusion of Nicea (325) and the Council of Constantinople (381). Tritheism is a fundamental denial of the doctrine of the Trinity. It is now the majority position within the "Word of Faith" movement, the basis of which is Dake's Annotated Study Bible.

, It is now illegal to post the Ten Command ments on the walls of a public school classroom. But this is not the real problem. The real problem is that the Command ments have also vanished from the interior walls of our hearts. Among professing Christians immoral ity, divorce, and abortion are running rampant. We're playing without rules. Without direction. Without purpose. And it's beginning to show. Where can we go to find help and meaning? Back to the Ten Commandments. In The Law of Perfect Freedom, Michael S. Horton shows how the Ten Commandments must become a dynamic force for change in the life of the individual Christian and the church as a whole. While avoiding the traps of legalism and Dominion Theology, he contends that the Commandments are not merely relevant for today, but necessary. They are not a roadblock to spiritual freedom but a highway toward it. So pick up a copy today for yourself or someone you know. Play by God's rules and see Him transform you into all He created you to be. Available at your favorite bookstore or by calling 1r 1-800-621-5111.

MOODY

The Name You Can Trust