Ethics and Culture is a blog by Andrew J. Spencer. (@SpenceSpencer01)
Michael Rood of ‘Rood Awakening!’ ministries is careful to distance himself from Pharisaical traditions, but his teaching has more in common with the Judaizers Paul dealt harshly with throughout his life. His message is intended to lead them away from salvation.
Read MoreOne the central questions at the heart of debates over modern theological liberal Christianity and orthodox Christianity is the definition of the term Christian. The wide variance between the definitions tends to confound dialog because liberals (I will consistently use this term theologically, in a descriptive sense) have a radically different understanding of the word’s meaning than do orthodox believers.
There were, of course, points in the historic Christian faith at which boundary lines were drawn based on ongoing debates. Those early moments resulted in our statements of orthodoxy, such as the Nicene Creed, which contains the kernel (though not the totality) of orthodoxy.
These creedal statements that define Christian orthodoxy were often surrounded by heated debates as leaders and theologians parsed through Scripture with a critical mind. This has led some to conclude that they were arbitrary statements and that some sort of arbitrary (likely political) power was the determining factor in setting the boundaries of orthodoxy. That, of course, fuels much of contemporary theological revisionism, because Christian doctrine shifts from the faith once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) to oppressive imposition of the ideas of a bunch of patriarchal dead guys.
In this case, I tend to agree with Dorothy L. Sayers, the modern mystery writer and a significant mind of the first half of the 20th century. In her essay, “Creed or Chaos?,” she writes,
“Teachers and preachers never, I think, make it sufficiently clear that dogmas are not a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling. Most of them were hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity to provide an answer to heresy.”
Compare Sayers’s perspective with that of the so-called father of the social gospel, Walter Rauschenbusch, who argues in his book, A Theology for the Social Gospel,
“The dogmas and theological ideas of the early Church were those ideas which at that time were needed to hold the Church together, to rally its forces, and to give it victorious energy against antagonist powers. To-day many of those ideas are without present significance. Our reverence for them is a kind of ancestor worship.”
There is certainly some similarity between the two. Both Sayers and Rauschenbusch recognize that there was often drama when the doctrines of orthodoxy were outlined and that resolution was needed for cohesion. The difference comes in that Rauschenbusch has very little respect for the formulations arrived at by the councils, whereas Sayers understands them to have been largely successful at arriving at an expression of the truth. Thus, Sayers regularly called believers back to orthodox Christian belief, while Rauschenbusch associated doctrinal orthodoxy with a form of “ancestor worship.” Rauschenbusch is spiritual father of John Shelby Spong, who argued that Christianity must change or die.
Beneath this discussion is a radically different perspective on the ability of lay-people to grasp Christian doctrine. Both Rauschenbusch and Sayers recognize that many Christians are relatively uninformed about Christian doctrines, which results in doctrinal deviations.
According to Rauschenbusch, “When people have to be indoctrinated laboriously in order to understand theology at all, it becomes a dead burden.” This is a dubious statement, but it shapes the trajectory of Rauschenbusch’s attack on Christian orthodoxy.
This comes several pages after his assertion that,
“[The business of theology] is to make the essential facts and principles of Christianity so simple and clear, so adequate and mighty, that all who preach or teach the gospel, both ministers and laymen, can draw on its stores and deliver a complete and unclouded Christian message.”
The second statement is actually quite helpful. Theology certainly should be clear and simple as much as possible, but to eliminate teaching doctrine as a function of the church because some doctrines are complicated seems counter intuitive.
There is an implicit assault on the intelligence of laypeople in Rauschenbusch’s theology. He assumes that people are simply too intellectually dull to understand Christian doctrine. As a result, he argues, “If we seek to keep Christian doctrine unchanged, we shall ensure its abandonment.”
Rauschenbusch decided he would like to avoid the abandonment of Christian doctrine by changing it. I suppose that is one way of cutting out the middleman. No need to make the laypeople leave doctrine, when you can simply eliminate all the inconvenient parts that matter. This is a way of dumbing down the faith because you don’t think people are smart enough to understand doctrine.
Sayers, however, has a much more positive view of laypeople. She, too, recognizes that many laypeople are ignorant of Christian doctrines, but that is not entirely their fault.
She writes,
“It is not true at all that dogma is hopelessly irrelevant to the life and thought of the average man. What is true is that ministers of the Christian religion often assert that it is, present it for consideration is though it were, and, in fact, by their faulty exposition of it make it so.”
This is exactly what Rauschenbusch does and he encourages others to do the same.
Again, Sayers rejects the need to modify Christianity to make it relevant,
“If the average man is going to be interested in Christ at all, it is the dogma that will provide the interest. The trouble is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has never been offered the dogma. What he has been offered is a set of technical theological terms that nobody has taken the trouble to translate into language relevant to ordinary life.”
The Christian mind is shaped by the wonder of God’s goodness and the nature of the world he has made. One of the central elements of the Christian mind is an interest in those things outside of ourselves. Sayers understands the Christian mind, while Rauschenbusch did not.
Rauschenbusch’s assumption was that his disinterest in orthodox Christian doctrine and inability explain it to others did not subvert the value of it. The wonder and mystery of a wholly other God whose existence and work are unlike our daily experience makes Christianity so much more relevant and exciting.
Sayers gets at the heart of the problem: ignorance and lazy teaching. Laypeople are not stupid; they have often simply never had teachers who took the time to explain Christian doctrine in terms that they understood. Teaching is a bridging strategy to make truth plain.
Instead of creating heresy as we give way to boredom, faithful Christian teachers need to explain the most exciting story that ever was: Christianity. That story is carried by the doctrines that modernists think people too bored, lazy, or stupid to understand.
The role of theologians and pastors is not to reshape Christianity into something that we find interesting, but to uncover the exciting truths within orthodox Christian theology. Once that happens, based on my experience, the doctrine sells itself.
This transient event was a reminder that there is order in the universe. There is design. Care was taken by a mind to create something that is wonder-full. And, if we’re willing to take a little of our time, we’re likely to get a glimpse of the transcendent even in this world of banal imminence. These moments are gifts from God to draw us out of the ordinary into a sense of awe at his nature. That is something no human mind can deny.
Michael Rood of ‘Rood Awakening!’ ministries is careful to distance himself from Pharisaical traditions, but his teaching has more in common with the Judaizers Paul dealt harshly with throughout his life. His message is intended to lead them away from salvation.
For those who love reading and thinking about reading, this book is a delight. Perhaps it will not change the world, but it did enrich my soul.
In both books, Anderson notes that “distinguishing between good and bad questions is like distinguishing good and bad music.” He also highlights the “‘touch’ that separates great pianists from good ones” (Questions, 158; cf. Exploring, 164–65). There is an intangible quality, an eye, or a feel that differentiates the good from the great in every discipline. You can’t checklist your way to the Hall of Fame in a sport, to musical greatness, or to academic excellence. On the other hands, you can often checklist your way to adequacy. And adequacy is a precursor to excellence.
In a culture that tends to see so many things in terms of quantitative production rather than qualitative excellence, even a dose of what Newport prescribes can be beneficial. Knowledge workers that reconsider their harried lives through his unhurried lens will find plenty of things to reevaluate, especially for those of use who recognize a purpose beyond income and self-gratification in our work.
Everyone has stories. As the Moth authors write, “You are a multitude of stories. Every joy and heartbreak, every disappointment and dizzying high––each has contributed to the complex, one-of-a-kind person that you are today” (3). That’s part of their motivation in telling stories, in coaching storytellers for their show, and in producing their book about storytelling.
When Paul warns servants to do their work “as for the Lord” (Col 3:23) he is getting at this why. Obviously, we’ve got to work so we keep a job in order to eat (or for slaves, so they didn’t get punished), but that’s not enough. We have to focus on the next deeper question to have success. We have to see God as the final object of our efforts if they are going to have real merit. And, I think, we are more likely to have new habits or behaviors stick if we make God’s glory the animating purpose of our actions.
The brevity and fragility of life is exactly what makes the Puritans different from our contemporary “entrenched intellectualists,” who “present themselves as rigid, argumentative, critical Christians, champions of God’s truth for whom orthodoxy is all” (31). Truth and life were altogether too important to waste with argumentative posturing and saber rattling, The Puritans certainly battled many things in culture and in print, but in their writings, those always seem to be penultimate goals—the ultimate goal was increasing love and knowledge of the God of the universe.
How and How Not to Be Happy is an exercise in asking questions and reasoning through options for the source of happiness with the aim of explaining to a broad audience where true happiness can be found.
Last weekend I heard the prosperity gospel, in a soft version, preached from the pulpit. We were visiting a church and the pastor declared (I paraphrase), "If you follow God's plan, you will prosper." It was toward the end of the sermon, when he was tacking on some duties that the congregation should perform (pray more, witness more, etc.). He certainly wasn't going full prosperity gospel, but it reflected the notion that if you do the right things, then God's got your back and will make everything work out.
That formula is an easy one to slip into, but it is so very dangerous.
God doesn't usually make it easy for his most faithful servants, at least not according to what Scripture tells us. In fact, there is a regular pattern in Scripture that those whom God uses most suffer the most deeply.
Our hearts long for ease, but our usefulness to God requires a constant striving, which inevitably entails struggle. There is danger of a soft prosperity gospel in our lives each day because, in reality, we all want it to be true.
The problem with the prosperity gospel is that it teaches us that only when we are comfortable are we being blessed by God. That teaching can lead to despair when things aren't going our way.
The soft prosperity gospel is a constant danger to most believers, particularly American Christians, but there is a bigger, darker problem that has arisen in the heart of the wealth of America. That problem is the full-fledged, all-out prosperity gospel.
Most proponents of the prosperity gospel have learned to mask their message carefully, at least in public forums, since there has been a tendency among orthodox theologians and pastors to call them out. However, recently Creflo Dollar made the mistake of being open about his understanding of Christianity on Twitter.
He, or someone who has the keys to his account, posted a Tweet that read, "Jesus bled and died for us so that we can lay claim to the promise of financial prosperity. #ProsperityInChrist #WealthyLiving"
Dollar deleted the Tweet after being bombarded by negative comments. This screen capture was taken in anticipation of that on 8 Oct 2015.
The tweet was retweeted by many, responded to by numerous critics, and generally drew a negative reaction from orthodox Christians on Twitter. As a result, Dollar deleted the tweet. Thankfully screen captures last forever. (Which is a warning for those who use social media to vent.)
Sometimes people delete tweets because they are ambiguous and can be misinterpreted. Sometimes they are deleted because of typos or because they have a dead link in them.
Dollar, or someone on his team, deleted this tweet because it was not sufficiently ambiguous. The veil was drawn back on the prosperity gospel. The message was made more clear than simply a promise of living "your best life now" and the true belief system was brought to the surface.
Deleting this tweet was an admission of guilt on the part of Creflo Dollar.
The purpose of this post is to point out the potential error and to point toward some resources for understanding and dealing with the theology of the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel, in many forms, is alive and well; we need to kill it in our hearts and help others to see what it really is.
Here are some helpful resources for understanding and confronting the prosperity gospel in your own heart and in the world around you.
What is the Prosperity Gospel, by Andrew Spencer.
Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblically Sound, by Andrew Spencer.
The Importance of Rejecting the Prosperity Gospel, by Andrew Spencer.
Errors of the Prosperity Gospel, by David W. Jones.
The Prosperity Gospel in My Own Heart, by David W. Jones.
The Poverty of the Prosperity Gospel, by Vaneetha Rendall.
Six Keys to Detecting the Prosperity Gospel, by John Piper.
The Prosperity Gospel: Decietful and Deadly, by John Piper.
Why I Abominate the Prosperity Gospel, by John Piper. (Video)
How to Help Friends Escape the Prosperity Gospel, by John Piper.
Whenever someone writes a blog in opposition to the prosperity gospel (assuming anyone reads it), a backlash always comes from supporters of the individual criticized or the movement as a whole. Accusations are launched something to the effect that "Christians shouldn't attack other Christians," or "Have you followed Matthew 18?" The irony of commenters on blogs posting questions about Matthew 18 is often overlooked.
True enough, I haven't approached Creflo Dollar in person to confront him with his sin. However, he posted it on Twitter, which means that he put his thoughts out there for public critique.
For the first point, Christians should critique other people who claim to be Christians when they preach false doctrines. And when they do so publicly, that critique needs to be public. Paul (who was way more sanctified than I am) seems to have done just that to Peter when he was in error (Gal 2:11-13) with the hope of helping Peter and the believers that were caught in the theological error.
Frankly, this latest tweet by Dollar is only a recent proclamation of what he has previously clearly stated in his sermons and books. In other words, this tweet isn't the issue; it's the broader theological movement. (A more sustained critique of Dollar and the prosperity gospel movement can be found in David W. Jones' book, Health, Wealth, and Happiness.).
shai linne's song "Fal$e Teacher$" from his newest album, "Lyrical Theology Part 1: Theology".
The move toward defensiveness of a person or a movement is natural for those deceived by the prosperity gospel (or any other false teaching). Dollar is a charismatic preacher and he offers hope of wealth to many that strongly desire it. But it is a hope built on false doctrine, so it isn't a true hope.
However, maintaining doctrinal orthodoxy is vital to the health of the church. There is a reason that liberal denominations a dying. It's because their theology lacks the nutrients necessary to sustain them. Unfortunately, the prosperity gospel continues to flourish because of continued spiritual blindness by its adherents and much more careful (except with this tweet) presentation of the true nature of their message. However, it remains a mushroom religion--kept in the dark and fed on manure--that can't survive when trials come.
Ultimately, the reason we should confront the prosperity gospel movement is not to win points on the internet, but because it is a false gospel. It presents the idea that Jesus came to make us wealthy. In reality, he came so that we could become holy. To lose that message is to lose the essence of God's gracious hope for the world.
This is all the reason we should need to publicly and openly oppose this movement of false teaching. It reflects true neighbor love to those trapped in the movement or susceptible to its clutches.
The hope of Christians for creation is not that we will be able to make things entirely correct through our efforts. Rather, we work with the knowledge that we have been given a ministry of reconciliation, which includes all of creation (cf., Col 1:20; 2 Cor 5:16–18). We work toward reconciliation in hope, but recognize that hope will not be fulfilled until Christ comes again. Creation exists in futility in the present age because of God’s curse on creation. (Gen 3:17–19) Our task is to till the ground in hope, making our living, (Gen 3:20) looking forward to the moment when God supernaturally sets everything right.