The apostle Paul says that the law of sin dwells “in [our] members” (Rom. 7:23) and further exhorts us not to let it reign in our mortal bodies (Rom. 6:12), suggesting that it is present there. If the principle of sin remains with us, and the term sin nature refers to this principle, then how can Neil Anderson maintain that Christians no longer have a sin nature?

Anderson gets into theological trouble because of his inadequate understanding of what the term nature means. Nature here refers to one’s disposition, inclination, or bent — the principle or law that governs one’s behavior. When Anderson writes that “no person can consistently behave in a way that is inconsistent with how he perceives himself,”¹ he fails to recognize that it is not one’s self-perception but rather one’s nature with which one cannot behave inconsistently. If Christians had only a Christlike nature they could only behave like Christ.

The reason Christians are capable of both righteousness and sin is that they have two natures from which to draw. Now, there is another, larger sense in which the term nature is used that refers to an entity’s collection of defining attributes. In this sense, all human beings have only one nature that includes one moral faculty that is capable of both good and evil. Using the narrower sense of the term nature (disposition determined by principle or law), this moral faculty takes the form of the sin nature when it is governed by evil and the new nature when it is governed by good.

In addition to the orientation around the interests of self that all mortals possess, Christians are given an additional orientation around the interests of God. The new orientation inclines them toward good and thus wages war with their original orientation, which inclines them toward evil. The New Testament clearly describes Christians in a state of inner conflict in which they must deny one set of natural inclinations or the other (see Gal. 5:16–17; Rom. 7:15–25; James 4:1–3; 1 Pet. 2:11).

It isn’t as though Christians start out with three-fourths of the original nature and one-fourth of the new and must work to decrease and increase the respective percentages. The old nature is still there in its full strength and ugliness — but they are no longer slaves to it. They can and must choose daily which orientation they are going to “clothe” themselves with or “put on” (Rom. 13:14; Eph. 4:22–24; Col 3:1–14). Sanctification consists of increasingly learning to live according to the new capacity, which is accomplished as the Word of God is applied to every area of one’s life² (e.g., Ps. 119:11, 105; James 1:22–27; Heb. 4:2; 5:12–14; 1 John 2:4–5).

The Bible calls the old nature sin or the flesh. The new nature is referred to as the spirit, and the individual as determined by these natures is identified either as the old man (self: NIV, NASB) or the new man. The spirit is the moral nature of Christ, just as the flesh is the moral nature of Adam after the Fall that he passed on to his descendants. Christ is the second man, the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:42–50). All human beings are identified with Adam by birth and thus do by nature the things that Adam would do. Those who are identified with Christ by faith and second birth have transferred from the headship of Adam to that of Christ (Rom. 5:12–21), and now, by the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ, have a second nature to do what He would do. In the next world, this will be the only possibility. But in this world, sin remains “in my members.” By this, Scripture is teaching that the very fact of human mortality carries with it not only physical corruptibility, but moral corruptibility as well.

It is because of the spiritual corruptibility that is inseparable from the mortal body that Paul cries, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24), and that believers, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, “groan inwardly” as they eagerly await the redemption of their bodies from mortality to immortality (Rom. 8:23). As long as we remain in our mortal state we will also remain vulnerable to the tendencies to corruption that define mortality.³ Anderson’s insistence that mortal believers no longer have a sin nature is therefore as much a non sequitur as the insistence of “faith” teachers that mortal believers should live perfectly free of sickness and physical deterioration.

This inextricable relationship of the sinful nature to our mortal bodies is why Paul calls the sin nature the “flesh.” It is human nature apart from the redeeming influence of the Spirit of God, and thus Paul can say, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:19). Since sin remains “right there with” every believer (Rom. 7:21), he or she must make a conscious choice to walk according to the new nature and mortify in his or her day-to-day life that which forensically and ultimately was put to death on the cross (Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:24; Col. 3:5).

1 John 1:8 specifically states, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Note that John speaks of having sin, not committing sin. The term sin in its singular form is frequently used in the New Testament to refer to a principle or law that results in acts of disobedience rather than specific acts of disobedience themselves (John 8:34; Acts 8:23; Rom. 5:12–21; 6:2, 6–7, 10–23; 7:7–27; 8:2; Gal. 3:22; Heb. 12:1, 4).

Anderson responds to this observation by arguing, “‘Having’ sin and ‘being’ sin are two totally different concepts.”⁴ Indeed, they are. But those who argue that Christians still have a sin nature do not claim that Christians are sin. If Christians were sin they would be incapable of anything but evil. But if they have sin it means that they possess a disposition toward evil that must be counteracted by the new disposition toward good they’ve received in Christ. Only if sinning is rooted in natures they will continue to possess for the rest of their lives does the apostle John’s statement make sense. If, as Anderson teaches, sin is merely rooted in conditioning that can be changed, it is theoretically possible to stop sinning permanently — which would contradict 1 John 1:8.

The Bible does generally call Christians saints and not sinners (believers are called sinners in 1 Timothy 1:15, James 4:1–9, 5:19–20, and Galatians 2:17) because the term sinner usually connotes someone whose life is characterized by unrepentant sin (e.g., 1 Tim. 1: 9; 1 Pet. 4:18). The apostle John referred to this kind of sin when he affirmed that someone who is born of God does not sin (1 John 3:9). But it is no more unbiblical for us to say we are sinners than it was for Paul in 1 Timothy 1:15,⁵ for “nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.”

Anderson makes a gallant attempt to reconcile his doctrine of sin to one of its most difficult biblical challenges — Romans 7: “Notice that there is only one player in these two verses [15-16] — the ‘I,’ mentioned nine times. Notice also that this person has a good heart; he agrees with the law of God. But this good-hearted Christian has a behavior problem….He agrees with God but ends up doing the very things he hates.” After quoting vv. 17–21 Anderson asks, “How many players are involved now? Two: sin and me. But sin is clearly not me; it’s only dwelling in me….Do these verses say that I am no good, that I am evil or that I am sin? Absolutely not. They say that I have something dwelling in me which is no good, evil and sinful, but it’s not me.”⁶

Paul’s dissociation of himself from the evil within him is not to deny that that evil is part of his own nature (see, e.g., vv. 14, 17, 18, 21). His point in Romans 7 is rather to illustrate the crisis the child of God eventually reaches where, even after his or her mind has become fully possessed by desire for the things of God, still he or she cannot break the shackles of sin (see, e.g., v. 18). Such experiences demonstrate the principle that sin is fused into his or her very mortality and, therefore, will power is insufficient to bring deliverance. Paul discusses the Christian’s only recourse in the larger context of Romans 6:1—8:4: to identify by faith with Christ. Because they have judicially been executed for their sin in the person of Christ and are therefore no longer under the law of God (which excites the sin nature into action), their lives need and should no longer be dominated by sin, but rather by the grace of God (Rom. 6:1—8:4). As Paul triumphantly concludes, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2).

In Victory Anderson never explains exactly who this second “player” that is not “me,” but dwells “in me,” is. His answer is provided in Released from Bondage:

I personally believe that the word sin in Romans 6:12 is personified, referring to the person of Satan . . . . Satan is sin: the epitome of evil, the prince of darkness, the father of lies. I would have a hard time understanding how only a principle (as opposed to an evil personal influence) would reign in my mortal body in such a way that I would have no control over it. Even more difficult to understand is how I could get a principle out of my body. Paul says, “I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good” (Romans 7:21). What is present in me is evil — the person, not the principle — and it is present in me because at some time I used my body as an instrument of unrighteousness. (emphases in original)⁷

When we examine the previously cited New Testament passages referring to sin in the singular, we see that it is implausible to interpret them as referring to Satan. In fact, the word sin is sometimes used interchangeably with the phrase law of sin, showing that the subject is a principle and not a person.

The fact that Anderson has a hard time understanding this is exactly the heart of his problem. Whether we are dealing with impersonal sin or the personal devil determines our response. If we are combating an inner disposition toward evil, we respond to it by identifying ourselves with the crucified and risen Christ and aligning ourselves with His will (Rom. 6:5–14). On the other hand, if we are combating an alien personality working within our very beings, we will focus our response directly on him — as does Anderson’s entire approach to spiritual warfare. But the former response is the biblical response, for although Satan uses the world and the flesh to tempt us, it is our own sinful choices that actually get us into trouble. Our own tendency toward sin therefore is what needs to be dealt with directly, not the devil. As will become painfully clear in Part Two, Anderson’s inadequate view of the flesh has led him to an exaggerated view of the devil.

It’s not that Anderson denies that sin can originate from the Christian’s own mind. But his definition of the flesh as merely the “residue of your negative conditioning”⁸ is inadequate to account for the gross evil Christians often encounter within themselves. To explain this, only the devil will do.⁹ In fact, Anderson reasons that it is harmful for Christians to attribute truly evil thoughts to themselves:

Assure the counselee that any thoughts which do not “joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man” (Romans 7:22) are from Satan.¹⁰

She replied, “Sometimes, when I go to church, I think these awful thoughts about God and dirty thoughts go through my mind.” “That’s not you,” I assured her. Half an hour later she understood the origin of those thoughts and Satan’s tactics; the thoughts were gone and so was her fear. If those thoughts had been her thoughts, then what could she have concluded about her nature? “How can I be a Christian and have those kinds of thoughts?” she reasoned, and so do millions of other well-meaning Christians.¹¹ (emphasis added)

Those who say a demon cannot influence [read: control] an area of a believer’s life have left us with only two possible culprits for the problems we face: ourselves or God. If we blame ourselves we feel hopeless because we can’t do anything to stop what we’re doing. If we blame God our confidence in Him as our benevolent Father is shattered. Either way, we have no chance to gain the victory which the Bible promises us.¹²

[A woman named Anne wrote to Anderson in the middle of one of his conferences:] “I didn’t know what it meant to take every thought captive. I tried to do this once, but I was unsuccessful because I blamed myself for all this stuff. I thought all those thoughts were mine and that I was the one who was doing it. There has always been a terrible cloud hanging over my head because of these issues. I never could accept the fact that I was really righteous because I didn’t feel like it. Praise God it was only Satan — not me. I have worth!”¹³

There is a biblical basis for saying some of our evil thoughts are provoked by Satan (e.g., 1 Chron. 21:1; Matt. 16:23; John 13:2; Acts 5:3), but there is no biblical basis for saying all of them do (James 1:14; 4:1; Rom. 8:7; 1 Pet. 2:11; Gal. 5:17). Anderson fails to recognize that evil can originate from ourselves (our flesh) and yet we can still gain victory over the power and guilt of sin through Christ’s cross and indwelling Spirit (see, e.g., Heb. 9:13–14; Gal. 5:16–25). His desire to protect us from responsibility for the evil in our hearts contradicts his own emphasis that we should take responsibility and not fall into a “devil made me do it” mentality.

This is a serious error. The biblical answer to what Anne was experiencing is first to agree with Paul that “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18) and then to see that her righteousness is entirely in Jesus Christ. Only after one reaches the point of utter self-despair that cries out with Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will set me free from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24) can one experience the deliverance that also proclaims with Paul, “Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25). So, Anderson inadvertently perpetuates the very bondage he wants to free people from by feeding rather than confronting that fleshly concern to feel worthy in and of oneself.

Christians can never stand before God with total confidence until they find their righteousness strictly outside of themselves, in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ ( Phil. 3:3–9; 1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 10:3–4). Only then will Christ’s imparted righteousness take shape in their lives (Gal. 6:14–15; Rom. 8:1–4). As soon as they begin to consider that imparted righteousness as their own righteousness they will find themselves walking after the flesh again (Gal. 1:18—2:14; 2 Cor. 3:5; 1 Cor. 10:12; Prov. 16:18; Rev. 3:17–18). Therefore, it really does not matter whether a thought originates from Satan or the Christian, because the Christian should not be making any claims to personal righteousness before God in the first place.

NOTES

1. Dr. Neil Anderson, Walking in the Light (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), 178–79.

2. This is primarily a spiritual exercise of faith and obedience rather than a psychological reconditioning process, as Anderson portrays sanctification (see accompanying article).

3. Nonetheless, in the true believer the new nature ultimately prevails over the old (e.g., 1 John 3:9; 5:18; Phil. 1:6).

4. Neil T. Anderson, Helping Others Find Freedom in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1995), 72.

5. Anderson argues that Paul “was referring to his nature before his conversion to Christ.” (Neil T. Anderson, Victory over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ [Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990], 72; emphasis in original.) Paul’s exact words, however, were “I am (Greek: eimi, present tense) the chief of sinners.” No doubt Paul’s preconversion sins qualified him to be chief among sinners, but it was his ongoing possession of a sin nature that qualified him to be presently ranked in that category.

6. Victory, 82–83.

7. Dr. Neil Anderson, Released from Bondage (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993), 123–24.

8. See, e.g., Victory, 167.

9. Ibid.

10. Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990), 227–28.

11. Released, 13–14.

12. Bondage Breaker, 174.

13. Released, 41.

Summary

Neil T. Anderson’s promotion of unverified demonic activities permeates his book The Bondage Breaker, which describes in vivid, gripping terms at least 75 different episodes of overtly demonic phenomena. Careful research by law enforcement officials, including the FBI, social scientists doing primary research, and investigative journalists has produced abundant evidence that his view of satanic activity is not true.

Neil T. Anderson and his Freedom in Christ Ministries promotes serious errors concerning satanic conspiracies and satanic ritual abuse (SRA) that impact many thousands of unsuspecting Christians. The problem is exacerbated by the numerous Christian luminaries who endorse him, including Campus Crusade for Christ founder and president Bill Bright, Dallas Theological Seminary president and author Chuck Swindoll, Josh McDowell, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Multnomah School of the Bible president Joe C. Aldrich, and Jack Hayford, pastor of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California.¹

Anderson draws on his academic roots and personal experience to encourage people to trust his teachings: “In more than 20 years of ministry as a pastor, counselor, seminary professor, and conference speaker, I have met and ministered to more Christians in bondage to the dark side of the spiritual world than you may believe.”²

Anderson’s objectivity is compromised by his reliance on unverified personal stories and his credulous acceptance of the reality of widespread, multigenerational, nearly invincible satanic conspiracies that routinely engage in torture, sexual abuse, and murder. Anderson’s books and materials are almost wholly bereft of objective research, but replete with undocumented,³ mostly sensational stories. Anderson refers for substantiation to the many stories he is told by those who attend his conferences or write him, or by those who are relating someone else’s story.⁴

ANDERSON’S ASSUMPTIONS

1. A Vast Satanic Conspiracy. Without any evidence, Anderson declares, “There are breeders⁵ out there. I will even encounter people who are doctors and lawyers and pastors who are Satanists, disguising themselves as ministers of righteousness.”⁶

Anderson’s teachings assume that what his counselees tell him is generally true, even though there is no objective verification for their stories, and the overwhelming consensus of research and evidence refutes the conspiracies he believes and promotes. That Anderson bases his beliefs on dubious sources is made painfully clear in his book The Bondage Breaker:

After I led Harry, the former high priest of Satanism, to Christ, I began to learn from talking with him more about the extent and organization of Satanism. He told me that he was not a priest in a local coven, but a member of the council of 50 in a worldwide coven. He shared with me that the organizational structure in Satanism corresponds to the four-level hierarchy of demonic rule under Satan mentioned in Ephesians 6:12. “Rulers” is linked to the royal court of Satanism. There are seven major covens in the world which are presented on the royal court. “Powers” corresponds to host-level priests, and “world forces” to legion-level priests. “Spiritual forces” identifies the circle covens or local covens. The Satanist organization is massive and extremely secretive. When you hear of satanic priests or rituals, you are hearing only about activities at the level of the circle coven. However, you need not concern yourself too much with what you see or hear, since the Satanist activity which you read about in the newspapers or which is recorded in most police reports is usually the activity of mere dabblers. It’s what you don’t see that is pulling the strings and arranging events in Satanism. I have counseled enough victims of Satanism to know that there are breeders (producing children expressly for sacrifice or for development into leaders) and infiltrators committed to infiltrating and disrupting Christian ministry. To illustrate how human and spiritual forces of wickedness work together, ask any group of committed Christians this question: “How many of you have been awakened for no apparent reason at 3:00 A.M.?”…Satanists meet from 12:00 to 3:00 A.M., and part of their ritual is to summon and send demons. Three in the morning is the prime time for demon activity, and if you have awakened at that time it may be that you have been targeted. I have been targeted by demons numerous times.⁷

This could be a phenomenal exposure of the intricate depths of spiritual warfare if it were true, but Anderson provides absolutely no evidence for the accuracy of “Harry’s” report. In fact, Anderson admits that Harry eventually dropped out and Anderson never heard from him again.⁸

Anderson’s promotion of the unverified activities of the demonic snakes through The Bondage Breaker, which describes in gripping terms at least 75 different episodes of overtly demonic phenomena. Careful research by law enforcement officials, including the FBI, social scientists doing primary research, and investigative journalists has produced abundant evidence that this view of satanic activity is not true.

2. Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD or Dissociative Personality Disorder, DID) and Satanic “Memories.” Anderson’s paradigm incorporates widely disputed theories of dissociative disorders, repression and recovery of memories (e.g., of childhood abuse), and satanic ritual abuse (SRA). Anderson at times appears to divorce his views of repression and revelation from the MPD/repression/therapeutic recovery paradigm. This seemingly protects him from having to defend theories that are disputed by a wealth of evidence and professional opinion, although it doesn’t exempt him from criticism by biblical and theological authorities. In truth, he doesn’t actually disavow the therapeutic paradigm. For example, he explains and then modifies the common assumptions regarding MPD in Lesson Eight of his Spiritual Conflicts and Counseling manual,⁹ concluding that through biblical counseling and therapeutic knowledge one can lead a suffering Christian into memory “retrieval” and freedom from demonic bondage. In his teaching videos he observes, “But boy, all across the country, the rise of victims of SRA are just appearing everywhere. They’re just loading up our hospitals and our clinics. How do we respond to this atrocity and how do we come to terms with the concept of spiritual conflict, but as well as the psychological dimension that comes because people disassociate?”¹⁰

Anderson’s credulousness is similar to that of many therapists. According to psychologist Paul Simpson, who once believed in and practiced repressed memory/abuse/SEA therapy, “An astounding 57 percent of therapists nationally report they do nothing at all to differentiate truth from fiction when working with hypnotic images of abuse.”¹¹

3. Demonization of Christians.¹² Some spiritual warfare teachers attribute any sinning by Christians to demonic power, but even teachers like Anderson who stress personal moral responsibility teach that “once a stronghold is established, you have lost the ability to control your behavior in that area.”¹³

The current term preferred over “demon possession” by Anderson and others is “demonization” and refers to a continuum of influence and/or control by demons.¹⁴ Arguments for “Christian demonization” is based on personal or clinical experience rather than on strong biblical exegesis.

The Anderson continuum model argues that the Christian is positionally or legally free from the bondage of sin, the world, and Satan through justification, but that since sanctification is an ongoing process, we are ontologically or in reality gradually coming out from the domination of sin, the world, and the devil in our maturing Christian life.¹⁵

Given Anderson’s belief that demonization of Christians is along a continuum, it is not surprising that he describes relief from demonic strongholds in gradual terms as well. Concerning the apparent recalcitrance of some demons to leave as commanded in the name of Jesus, Anderson says, “God may be bringing you through a growth process in which you are gradually dealing with all the entrances of Satan into your life. I (Neil) refer to this as the onion effect. The Lord is peeling off one layer at a time.”¹⁶

THE SATANIC CONSPIRACY DISMANTLED

Despite the tens of thousands of reports of satanic crime and abuse that have blanketed therapists’ couches, television talk show stages, tabloid front pages, and the pages of Anderson’s books, there has been no corroborative documentation that there is any widespread, multigenerational, multifamily, organized, nearly undetectable, almost invincible satanic conspiracy propagating murder, mutilation, cannibalism, and other criminal activities. Investigation by law enforcement agencies, mental health professionals, journalists, academic researchers, and historians here and abroad has conclusively shown that the satanic alarm of the l980s and 1990s was a hysterical myth, a genuine witch hunt.

Anderson’s lists of certain “symptoms” of demonic bondage or stronghold range from the universal foibles of human experience such as sleepiness, headaches, and thoughts of despair¹⁷ to explicit and alarmingly evil experiences, including willful participation in such occult practices as trying to contact the dead and worshipping Satan.¹⁸ His “shopping list” is nearly identical to lists developed by therapists who also find pseudoendorsement for their suspicions by spreading a net wide enough to include everyone, genuine victim or not. Simpson catalogs some of the characteristics commonly listed:

One of the most common is from E. Sue Blume’s book, Secret Survivors. Blume offers thirty-five categories, with over 180 “symptoms” a person can read through to discover if he or she has repressed memories. A few of them are: fearing the dark, having nightmares, not liking your body, having spontaneous vaginal infections, getting headaches, arthritis, wearing lots of clothes, preferring privacy when using the bathroom, being scared of different things needing to be invisible, not being funny, doing what others want, blocking out memories between the first and twelfth years of life, being in denial, not enjoying sex, not liking gynecological exams, avoiding mirrors, avoiding making noises, or stealing things…. You might also find yourself feeling guilty, shameful, valueless, worthless, abandoned, different, unhappy, crazy or wanting to change your name. You might abuse or not abuse drugs, think you’re perfectly good or perfectly bad, have constant anger or don’t get angry, can’t trust others or trust too much, take too many risks or don’t take risks, are controlling or fear losing control, feel real or feel unreal, don’t like particular sex acts or like particular sex acts, are seductive or not interested in sex, are sexually aggressive or not, or your relationships are ambivalent or they’re conflicted.¹⁹

Simpson concludes that it is so all-inclusive that “it literally predicts that everyone alive is the victim of abuse.”²⁰

There are few areas of contemporary psychology and psychiatry that are more contested than that of dissociative disorders, most commonly known for sensational publicized cases of “multiple personality disorder (MPD).”²¹ The definitive publicized cases that began this almost exclusively American phenomenon, Sybil and Michelle, have both been brought into serious disrepute by evidence gathered long after their stories became common knowledge.²² The accounts that fueled the Christian fascination with this have also been discredited, including sources cited for support by Anderson,²³ such as Lauren Stratford’s Satan’s Underground (Harvest House Publishers, 1989), which we carefully investigated and disproved shortly after it spawned stories from other Christians who became persuaded that whatever was wrong with them must have been caused by SRA.²⁴

The Courage to Heal remains the “Bible” of SRA therapists, victims, and support groups, Christian as well as non-Christian, and is also listed by Anderson for support.²⁵ It is tragic that Christians would embrace a book written by authors with no degrees in psychology, from a decidedly non-Christian perspective, a book that “promotes erotic regression theories, lesbian lifestyles, and the need to sustain and nurture one’s hatred and anger against parents.”²⁶ Christians such as Anderson should not trust a book that affirms: “At one point or another, many survivors have strong feelings of wanting to get back at the people who hurt them so terribly. You may dream of murder or castration. It can be pleasurable to fantasize such scenes in vivid detail. Wanting revenge is a natural impulse, a sane response. Let yourself imagine it to your heart’s content. Giving yourself permission to visualize revenge can be satisfying indeed.”²⁷

“Repressed memory” theory is comprehensively refuted by reality. As Dr. Paul Simpson notes, “Their theories don’t work in the real world. When we know that a traumatic event has occurred, we find that victims don’t repress their traumatic experiences. Instead they are plagued by recurring memories of their trauma, sometimes resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder.”²⁸ Simpson then recounts four notable studies that contradict repressed memory theories:

One study found that children who had witnessed the murder of a parent didn’t repress their memories; rather, they were pre-occupied with the murders and they were continually flooded with disturbing emotions. Of the dozens of children kidnapped in Chowchilla, California in 1976, none were found to have repressed their memories of the event. Paul McHugh, Director of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, has worked extensively with Cambodian refugees. Based on the theories of multiple personality we would expect to find some portion of these children having developed MPD. But despite experiencing the horrors of war as children [not to mention the horrific “Killing Fields” of the Khmer Rouge regime], McHugh has not found one case of repression or multiple-personality disorder (MPD). In another study, researchers interviewed seventy-eight Holocaust survivors forty years after the end of World War II. Though each of the people had experienced normal memory decay, none had repressed memories of their prison camp experience, and all but one quickly remembered forgotten details with simple prompting.²⁹

Anderson declines to say that he is providing “recovered memory therapy.” He throws some Bible verses into the mix, calls the mental dysfunction of repression God’s gift to protect young victims of trauma, and then credits God with “revealing” the memory once the victim is in a safe, supportive situation. After all, if it’s a miraculous intervention from God, many believe, one doesn’t need to have any evidence, research, or documentation. With such an unfalsifiable paradigm, Anderson can blithely recount “revealed” memories from people’s own birth experiences.³⁰ This flies in the face of contrary scientific evidence concerning preverbal memory retention and recall, and draws on irrational suppositions that must be adopted to believe one can actually remember one’s own prebirth, birth, or early infancy experiences.

Using an actual story involving “Gale’s” “memories” of her mother digitally raping her during her infancy, Simpson recites the incredible assumptions one must swallow to believe this is possible:

As an infant Gale would have to distinguish between someone changing her diaper, taking her temperature rectally, cleaning and washing her, a difficult bowel movement, and digital rape. After such an advanced sensory awareness, she would then need to transfer this short-term memory into long-term storage. But she won’t have a developed hippocampus, completed myelination process, or language to encode the event for the next couple of years. Next, she would need to go for several decades without rehearsing the memory and then bring it up pristine and perfect at the prompting of her regressionist, in defiance of all we know about forgetting.³¹

Anderson’s repression/recovery paradigm and the therapeutic version lack any credible evidence to support them, while they run up against substantial counter evidence. Simpson remarks, “There is no scientific or biblical technique that can safely and accurately unlock ‘repressed’ events. In fact, the hypnotic techniques that are promoted are consistently shown to create highly suggestible delusional states of mind in which clients have: 1) a decreased ability to accurately recall historical events, 2) increased experiential fantasy, and 3) increased levels of confidence in the accuracy of their recall, even though they have no reason for this.”³²

The general unreliability of memory has been demonstrated many times by sound research. Even preschool children can be induced to “remember” events that never happened.³³ Simpson recounts an experiment conducted on young adults at Emory University by Dr. Ulric Neisser. The day after the Challenger explosion in 1986, Neisser had 106 students write down their accounts of where, when, and how they saw or learned about the Challenger disaster. Three years later he was able to find nearly half of the students and had them repeat the assignment. When he compared the “fresh” memory records with the three year postevent memory records, he found that fully one-third were “wildly inaccurate” and yet, those same students, according to Simpson’s summary, “expressed as much certainty about the accuracy of their memories as those who were more correct,”³⁴ None of the students was completely correct, and many were seriously wrong, although not up to Neisser’s standard of “wildly inaccurate.”

Even those who believe that early childhood traumatic events, especially repeated and prolonged SRA, can be repressed and then recovered with valid content admit that error, misinterpretation, and fabrication abound. Psychologist Jim Hopper notes some of the issues that should be addressed: “Every instance of recall is a process of reconstruction, and therefore involves some, degree of distortion…. There is strong evidence that people can sincerely believe they have a recovered memory or memories of abuse by a particular person, but actually be mistaken. There is strong evidence that such memories have led to accusations about particular events that never happened and accusations of people who never committed such acts” (emphasis in original).³⁵

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect sponsored the definitive study on ritual abuse. The study was conducted by University of California at Davis psychology professors Gail S. Goodman and Phillip R. Shaver, in conjunction with Jianjian Qin of UC Davis and Bette L. Bottoms of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The study investigated more than 12,000 accusations and surveyed more than 11,000 psychiatric, social service, and law enforcement individuals and agencies.³⁶

The study found no evidence of the SRA scenario supported by credulous Christians such as Anderson and by naive and often biased therapists. The overwhelmingly convincing conclusions discounting the satanic scare are summarized by Simpson:

The researchers…noted, “Over the last decade, accusations of molesting by cults have been made in thousands of cases and in retrospective claims by adult patients in psychotherapy who say they were abused as children. Combined with sensationalistic press coverage, these lawsuits and other reports have led many people to believe that there is a nationwide network of satanic groups preying on the young.” The survey found occasional cases of lone abusers who used ritualistic trappings. There was “convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say they are involved with Satan or use the claim to intimidate victims.” But in the thousands of cases investigated, not a single case related to well-organized satanic rings was shown to be true. “After scouring the country, we found no evidence for large-scale cults that sexually abuse children.” The survey showed that “there was not a single case where there was clear corroborating evidence for the most common accusation, that there was a well-organized intergenerational satanic cult, who sexually molested and tortured children in their homes or schools for years and committed a series of murders.” (emphasis added)³⁷

Many of the criminal cases once heralded by the therapeutic and Christian communities have ended in acquittal for lack of evidence.³⁸ Others that resulted in convictions have been or are being reversed or overturned on appeal.³⁹

Numerous professional organizations have also evaluated “recovered memory therapy” and have warned of its unreliability. These include the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the British and the Australian Psychological Societies, the American Academy of Psychiatry, and the Canadian Psychiatric and Psychological Associations.⁴⁰

An investigation by a San Diego, California Grand Jury (1991-1992) was unable to find evidence proving several contemporary cases alleging SRA, saying, “There is no physical evidence of satanic ritual child abuse in San Diego County. There is evidence and considerable professional testimony that the existence of satanic ritual abuse is a contemporary myth perpetuated by a small number of social workers, therapists, and law enforcement members who have effected an influence that far belies their number. These ‘believers’ cannot be dissuaded by a lack of physical evidence.”⁴¹

The State of Washington ordered a study of ritual abuse cases that resulted in compensation from the state Crime Victims Compensation Program. The dismal statistics and strong doubts generated by the careful study led the state to exclude from payment any other victims who were involved in therapeutic services that focus on the recovery of repressed memories.⁴²

England’s most extensive child-abuse case was thoroughly investigated by the Nottinghamshire police and the director of social services. They produced a 600-page detailed report (unpublished) uncovering a bungled investigation and concluding that the ritual abuse never took place.⁴³

These are but a few of the studies that conclusively show the witch hunt nature of, and social hysteria foundation for, the SRA scare.⁴⁴ Twelve thousand reported accusations, and not one substantiated case of what Anderson claims is “everywhere”!

THE FACTS ABOUT DEMONIZATION OF CHRISTIANS

Most of the Christians who have contacted us believing that they were encountering the demonic had no expectations of particular forms of demonic activity until they had been led to expect them through their exposure to popular Christian literature, seminars, conferences, and speakers on spiritual warfare. This is consistent with how those who follow Anderson’s teachings also come to believe that they have repressed memories of early childhood abuse and SRA, and that they suffer from dissociative disorders.

During one videotaped counseling session, for example, Anderson prompts the woman he is trying to help, telling her that any distraction she may be experiencing is or may be a satanic block. When she says that she doesn’t remember any SRA from her childhood, Anderson assures her that absence of memories can be an indication of repression: “Almost everybody I’ve walked through this doesn’t recall it. Sometimes memories come up afterwards.” As they progress, he further assures her that “there is a possibility if there has been something dramatic there that some of that stuff may come back even as flashbacks just a little bit later on.”⁴⁵ With such leading, it is not surprising that many of those Anderson counsels come to interpret mental images as “revealed” memories of early childhood SRA.

How do Christians become so convinced that they are in demonic bondage? The power of suggestion can greatly influence what one experiences. People who are highly suggestible often respond to provide the initial examples of the expected behavior. They are then followed by others. Learning by example and trusting experience in spite of reason or Scripture are two of the most compelling factors drawing people into the spiritual warfare movement. They believe the authority figure, are given the parameters of the behavior expected of them, and then watch those they look to as role models in their own groups who seem to experience the same thing. They naively believe others and their own experiences rather than first testing everything by the Word of God (1 Thess. 5:21-22; Acts 17:11).

When we turn to the Bible on the issue of the demonization of Christians, we search in vain for clear scriptural support of the features of Anderson’s demonology. In fact, we see that in the passages where Jesus dealt with demonized individuals, there is no indication that they were genuine, spiritually regenerate believers before they were delivered.⁴⁶

Not only is there no positive evidence that Christians can be demonized, there is positive evidence that they cannot. When the Jews disputed about Jesus’ words and works, some said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad” (John 10:20). But the others, recognizing no possibility of a genuine believer “having” a demon, responded, “These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” (v. 21).

Anderson’s procedure is not the pattern we see when we survey biblical passages that show Christians in association with demonic activity or action.⁴⁷ In Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus provides us with an example of how we are to respond to demonic temptation: by a confident use of the Word of God in all of its power (Matt. 4:1-11; cf. Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13).

When Jesus instructed His disciples how to pray, he taught them to say, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matt. 6:13). His meaning is clear: temptation — not covert kidnapping or mind control — is the demonic modus operandi for exerting influence on humans.

In Matthew 15:19, Jesus does not attribute evil thoughts to demons or Satan, but to the individual’s moral alienation from God: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (cf. Mark 7:21-23). He expresses a parallel thought in Luke 6:45: “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.”

Throughout the New Testament, instead of finding a pattern of Christian demonization, we find a consistent pattern of protection for the Christian from direct invasion or control by demons. Scripture also posits a moral and spiritual division between Christians and non-Christians, characterized as the “kingdom of God” and the “kingdom of Satan.”

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in Matthew 12:43-45. Jesus compares unbelieving Israel to a demonized man, and then compares the man to a house:

When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of the man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation (emphasis added).

The word “unoccupied” leaps off the page. The demon could come back only if the man’s “house” was unoccupied. But the Christian’s “house” is occupied — by the Holy Spirit. This destroys the argument that the Christian is “owned” by God, but under the “control” of the demon. Not only is God the owner, He (the Holy Spirit) is the occupier as well.

If the Pharisees had watched Jesus’ ministry of healing and exorcism, they would have seen that the Lord God Almighty was glorified and the powers of the devil were broken in every case. Never was an exorcism or healing used as an excuse to bring glory to Satan. Jesus argues that if He were to cast out demons by the prince of demons in such a manner that the prince of demons would be put to shame, then the prince of demons would be “divided against himself.” In such a case, as the learned Pharisees knew, Satan’s kingdom cannot stand. Obviously then, unless Satan is self-destructive, he could not be giving Jesus the power to cast out his own servants.

There can be no compromise. One is either in covenant relationship with God, or in covenant relationship with Satan. One cannot make contradictory covenants without nullifying one or the other.

Some may argue that Jesus mentions only one of the possible conditions of the man when the demon returns — his “house” is “unoccupied.” Some might say that one cannot argue anything about a “house” that is occupied, since Jesus simply doesn’t address such a condition. They would clarify that it is the condition of a man who is “occupied” by the Holy Spirit, but giving a “foothold” to Satan, that they are concerned with when they speak of demonization of a Christian.

This argument misses the entire context in which the analogy appears — that of the Kingdom of God overcoming the kingdom of Satan through Christ Himself. Although the “occupied” house is not addressed directly by Jesus, it is implicitly as strong as if He had, just as His rhetorical question to the unbelieving Pharisees (“By whom do your people drive them out?” v. 27) is answered implicitly (“Demons can be driven out only by the power of the Holy Spirit”). In the demon-occupied house analogy, Jesus allows only two alternatives, one addressed explicitly, one addressed implicitly. The empty house remains empty and is subsequently occupied by even more demons; or the empty house does not remain empty, but becomes occupied by the Holy Spirit, and cannot be reoccupied by one demon, much less seven or eight.

The two key concepts from this passage are: (1) in order for a house to be taken over, the “strong man” of the house must be bound first; and (2) a “strong man” can only return to a house that remains “unoccupied.” When we apply these two concepts to our question, “Can Christians be demonized?” we understand that (1) If the Holy Spirit is the “strong man” of our house, He cannot be bound, therefore an invading demon cannot come in (even though Jesus identifies the “strong man” as the devil, the principle applies equally to Christ or the Holy Spirit as “strong men”); and (2) If our “house” remains or becomes “occupied” by Jesus, reinvading demons (who could only have been “strong men” of non-Christian houses) cannot come back in to the now Christian “house” (Matt. 12:22-37, 43-45).

No Christian can be demon-possessed or invaded and controlled by a demon. This is not merely a legal or positional freedom or adoption — it is an actual freedom and adoption guaranteed by God, not by ourselves, We don’t need Anderson’s “seven steps to freedom in Christ” — we have been freed already by Christ’s one act of sacrifice on the cross (Rom, 6:18). We are not in bondage to sin, even though we sin; neither can we be in bondage to demons, even though they may attack us. Answers in Action researcher Michael Martin exhorts us to adopt this biblical concept:

Whatever adversity we may endure, or any encounter we may have with a power or principality that is opposed to God and our peace in his Son, they have been rendered powerless by his cross. This is a matter of authority. Jesus said to his disciples after he had risen from the dead, “All authority in heaven and in earth have been given unto me” (Matt. 28:18). Too many Christians are forgetting this truth and surrendering to a disarmed and defeated enemy. They regard the emotional weight of an experience to be more truthful than the word of God, and they stumble in their fear and confusion….The scriptures tell us that we are not our own, that we have been purchased with the blood of God’s own Son. If the creator of the heavens and the earth says you are free, you can discount any experience that might lead you to believe the opposite.⁴⁸

Neil Anderson’s approach fails to be credible when it is measured against the Scriptures, evidence, and rational inquiry. Popularity, persuasiveness, and earnest conviction do not justify poor work. Nevertheless, his lurid anecdotes, years of self-sacrifice to help those he designates as victims of spiritual warfare, and often novel interpretations of Scripture have produced unqualified support from Christian leaders as well as individuals who have been helped by his work. Some, such as his own publisher, have gone so far as to say that they are more concerned about Christian unity than about what’s right or wrong in this issue!⁴⁹ On the contrary, we must reject any unity that is based on what is false or wrong and that spawns the destructiveness we see from teachings such as Anderson’s.

Anderson’s approach lacks clear-cut evidence, violates proper hermeneutics (method of interpretation) regarding key Bible passages, gives far too much credit and power to the demonic, spawns an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, provides legitimacy for the often-heard criticism that Christians are credulous regarding the supernatural, and fails to do justice to Scripture’s underlying theme about occultism: Christ has destroyed the power of the devil by means of the cross (Col. 2:14).

We can be confident that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us (James 4:7); that greater is he who is in us (God the Holy Spirit) than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4); that Christ’s death on the cross made a mockery of Satan and his demons, actually triumphing over them through his sacrifice for our sin (Col. 2:10-14); and that in Christ we have the power to cast down the strongholds of spiritual opposition, and to refute every false argument contrary to Christ (2 Cor. 10:4-5).

Spiritual warfare is not the mumbo-jumbo incantation of spooky experience, but the Christian’s daily (and often rather mundane) battle to die to self and live for Christ (Rom. 12:1-2). Paul gave the Philippians the formulae for vanquishing the enemy: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-7).

The dangers of sensationalizing spiritual warfare beyond its biblical paradigm can devastate a person’s life — spiritually, emotionally, and, all too often, even physically. Scholar Sydney H. T. Page lists some of the most significant dangers: “First, given the susceptibility of some to the power of suggestion, one may unconsciously induce simulated possession. Second, one may encourage exaggerated views of the power of the demonic and an unhealthy paranoia. Third, one may provide those who are inclined to deny personal responsibility for their actions with a convenient scapegoat.”⁵⁰

Martin agrees, remarking,

Human moral depravity is not laid at the feet of unseen devils but in the human heart. If you belong to Christ, the devil can’t make you do anything you may not already be considering yourself. The apostle Paul says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 1O:5)….This is not an overnight remedy but a difficult transformation of one’s previous wicked nature into the image and likeness of Christ.⁵¹

When all is said and done, the contemporary spiritual warfare movement model promoted by Neil Anderson is committed to a paradigm that is vulnerable to unbiblical sensationalism, fear, superstition, and dependency. Biblical spiritual warfare, by contrast, endows us with power, confidence, submission to God’s will, and the certainty of the Lord’s protection. David Powlison summarizes the scriptural position nicely:

Reclaiming spiritual warfare means learning afresh how God pursues his glory in our lives. It means gaining an understanding of progressive sanctification in a Christian culture habituated to look for quick fixes. It means learning to see heroic dramas played out in tiny corners of life. It means becoming human, renewed in the image of Jesus Christ — the pioneer and perfecter of faith. It means learning how to become Christians…. As in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the country Galilean, so in spiritual warfare today: strength is subverted by weakness, worldly wisdom by truth, riches by poverty — and the powers of darkness are best felled by the small, weak words and works of faith and obedience.⁵²

NOTES

1. http://www.ficm.org/endorsement.htm

2. Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990, 1993), 10-11.

3. In a letter to Christian Research Institute (CRI) president Hank Hanegraaff, Anderson’s own publisher agreed that Anderson’s “evidence” of satanic ritual abuse “is anecdotal” (5 June 1996, on file at CRI).

4. “The Freedom in Christ Ministries” web site, for example, advertises for stories on its home page, noting, “Thank you for all of the responses we have received from our request for personal stories. We are now looking for personal testimonies of those who struggle or have struggled with perfectionism, control and Obsesive [sic] Compulsive Disorder (OCD)” (http://www.ficm.org). Stories recounted without documentation are found throughout his books, such as in Victory Over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your identity in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990, 168-69 and 175-78), The Bondage Breaker (22, 29-30, 41-42, 72-73, 86, 95-98, 101-2, 111, 116, 121, 148-51, 171-73, 220-21, 228-29, 232-35), and Stomping Out the Darkness (coauthored by Dave Park, Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1993, 152-53).

5. “Breeders” supposedly give birth to infants who are then sacrificed in satanic rituals.

6. Neil Anderson, Spiritual Conflict and Biblical Counseling (videotape on file at CRI). In fact, one wonders why, if Anderson has personally met (encountered) some of these sadistic, criminal abusers and murderers, he has not turned them in to the appropriate authorities.

7. Bondage Breaker, 101-2. Anderson promotes this “test” in other books, noting in one, “At least one-third of the audience will respond that they have. Chances are they are being targeted, as Satan sends demons to terrorize and harass.” (Neil T. Anderson and Charles Mylander, Seeing Your Church Free [Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1994], 233.) A familiarity with basic statistical, sociological, and psychological research data would enlighten Anderson to the fact that “night-tenors” are common and come, not from demons ordinarily, but as a physiopsychological by-product of sleep. (See, for example, information available from the National Sleep Foundation, 729-15th St. NW, 4th Floor, Washington D.C. 20005.)

8. Bondage Breaker, 114.

9. Neil T. Anderson, Spiritual Conflicts and Counseling (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1992).

10. Spiritual Conflicts and Biblical Counseling.

11. Paul Simpson, Second Thoughts: Understanding the False Memory Crisis and How It Could Affect You (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996), 17.

12. This subject was covered in Part Two by Elliot Miller, but it is treated briefly in this article since it is a cornerstone of Anderson’s view of satanic activity in the world and among Christians.

13. Bondage Breaker, 54.

14. C. Fred Dickason, Demon Possession and the Christian (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1987), 38.

15. Neil T. Anderson and Robert L. Saucy, The Common Made Holy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1997), 332.

16. http://www.ficm.org/questions/ques07.htm.

17. For example, he urges, “Consider the problem of falling asleep in a church service. Some people, of course, are so exhausted that they sleep any time they become quiet and relaxed. But others sleep only in church, not other settings. In these cases, it is not exhaustion at all, nor is it a boring sermon, but rather a deceitful ploy of the devil.” (Setting, 246.)

18. See, for example, Bondage Breaker, 173; Stomping, 148; Neil T. Anderson and Dave Park, Busting Free! Helping Youth Discover Their Identity in Christ (Ventura, CA: Gospel Light Publications, 1994), 7, 117, 119, 159-60.

19. Simpson, 94-95.

20. Ibid., 95.

21. Much of the available research and information regarding dissociative disorders goes beyond the main focus of this article. Comprehensive information is cited and/or referenced in many of the books listed in a research bibliography available from Answers in Action, P.O. Box 2067, Costa Mesa, CA 92628-2067.

22. The story of Sybil (Flora Rheta Schreiber [New York: Warner Books, 1973]) brought the term and the condition of MPD into American culture. Newfound tapes of the collaboration between the psychiatrist and the book author “suggest these personalities were actually created during therapy, through suggestions to a pliable young woman” (Associated Press, “Newfound Tapes Suggest Story of Sybil Was False,” 17 August 1998). The same is true of the story publicized in Michelle Remembers (Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder [New York: Congdon and Latles, 1980]), said to be the first person tale of a psychiatrist treating a young woman who had escaped from her multigenerational Satanism-practicing family.

23. In supporting documentation Anderson submitted to CRI through his publisher, on file at CRI.

24. See our article coauthored with Jon Troll, “Satan’s Sideshow,” Cornerstone (18:90), 24-28, our “The Hard Facts about Satanic Ritual Abuse,” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1992, 20-23, 32-34, and our “Satanic Ritual Abuse in Popular Christian Literature,” Journal of Psychology and Theology (1992:20:3), 299-305.

25. On file at CRI

26. Simpson, 27.

27. B. Bass and L. Davis, The Courage to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1928), 128.

28. Simpson, 45. Simpson discusses the evidence against ascribing posttraumatic stress disorder in cases of recovered memory therapy in pp. 64-65.

29. Ibid., 45-46.

30. Spiritual Conflicts and Biblical Counseling.

31. Simpson, 66.

32. Ibid., 52.

33. “False Memories Can Be Created in Preschoolers, Studies Find,” American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 16 June 1997 press release.

34. Simpson, 57.

35. Jim Hopper, “Preface,” Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse: Scientific Research and Scholarly Resources, http://www.jimhopper.com/memory, 16 September 1998.

36. A free summary is available from the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect at (800) 394-3366. The full report may be ordered for a small fee.

37. Simpson, 84-25.

38. The McMartin Preschool case is the most famous. It was the most expensive series of trials ($15 million of government money, not counting the costs to defendants and others) regarding early childhood satanic ritual abuse ever conducted and each jury returned verdicts of “not guilty” or were stalemated, unable to convict on any of the charges. Another case, also in Southern California, has seen most of those convicted freed by the courts with prosecutors declining to refile charges. (See, for example, Mark Sauer, “Mending a Broken Trust,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 17 December 1995.)

39. The most well-known was the Little Rascals Day Care in Edenton, North Carolina, which finally ended at the end of May 1997 with the prosecutor dropping oil charges. Previous convictions in the case were overturned.

40. http://www.religioustolerance.org/rmt_prof.htm

41. San Diego County Grand Jury (1991-1992), Child Sexual Abuse, Assault, and Molest Issues (San Diego: County Printing Office, 1992).

42. See “Outcome of Recovered Memory Therapy” at http://www.religioustolerance.org/rmt_outc.htm.

43. Although the report was never published, it is available on various Internet web sites. See, for example, http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,11209,00.html.

44. See, for example, the excellent information and referrals from The Ingram Organization, P.0. Box 7465, Spokane, WA 99207 (http://www.IngramOrg@aol.com) and the secular Religious Tolerance Organization (http://www.religioustolerance.org/rmt_outc.htm).

45. Spiritual Conflicts and Biblical Counseling.

46. See, for example, Matt 4:24; 8:28-34; 9:32-33; 12:22-23; 15:22-28; 17:14-2l; Mark 1:23-26, 32; 5:1-5; 16:9. Concerning Luke 13:10-18, see Elliot Miller’s comment in Part Two, n. 50. Also, being called an offspring of Abraham didn’t necessarily make someone a believer — frequently it merely meant someone who was a Jew, physically descended from Abraham.

47. In addition to arguments from these passages and those in Miller’s article, arguments can be derived from many other passages, including various verses in John 8.

48. Michael Martin, “Spiritual Warfare,” Answers in Action Journal, Spring 1996, 6.

49. Letter to Hank Hanegraaff from William T. Greig, Gospel Light Publications, 9 July 1996, on file at CRI.

50. Sydney H. T. Page, Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan and Demons (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995), 181. Psychologist Rodger K. Bufford adds, “More seriously, there is abundant evidence in medical and psychological research literature supporting the conclusion that nonspecific effects of the treatment process (such as receiving attention, the concern of others, or the arousal of hope) result in improvement in many cases. This is known as the placebo effect.” (Counseling and the Demonic [Waco, TX: Word Publishing, 1988], 146.)

51. Martin, 5.

52. David Powlison, Power Encounters: Reclaiming Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995), 151-52.

SUMMARY: The Problems at a Glance

Included among the problems with Neil T. Anderson’s spiritual warfare teachings are his overstatement of the devil’s authority, including his assertion that Satan has dominion over the earth and its creatures; his overstatement of the devil’s role in the believer’s life, including his claim that gaining victory over the devil requires learning how to verbally address and “bind” him.

Others of us are cowering in the corner pleading, “O God, please help us! The devil is roaring at us!” And God responds, “I’ve done all I’m going to do. I defeated and disarmed Satan at the cross. I conferred all authority on you in Christ. Now open your eyes. Realize who you are and start demonstrating the authority you already possess.” (emphasis added)¹

A lot of Christians I meet fear the dark side of the spiritual world. I’ve even had Talbot students tell me, “I’d like to take your class on spiritual conflicts, but I’m afraid to talk about demons.” …“Typically, after a group of students has completed the course, a few will say, “I used to be afraid of that stuff, but now I know who I am in Christ, and I’m not afraid anymore.” That’s exactly the perception we should have. (emphasis added)²

With statements such as these, Freedom in Christ Ministries founder Neil T. Anderson grounds his message on spiritual warfare in his distinctive teachings on sanctification emphasizing the believer’s identity in Christ (see Part One). At the same time, he comes across as an unusually biblical and balanced spiritual warfare teacher, encouraging confidence in Christ and personal responsibility while discouraging an unhealthy preoccupation with, or fear of, the devil.

A good deal of Anderson’s teaching on the subject is biblically sound and helpful. For example, he stresses that believers responsible for what happens to them when they are overpowered by old sin patterns, because they fail to “take a tempting thought captive when it first appear[s] at the threshold of [their minds].”³ He emphasizes that Satan’s power is in deception, and when his lies are brought into the light of truth his power is broken. He counsels that Christians should not enter into dialogues with evil spirits or believe what they have to say, but rather ignore them.⁴

Such sound advice leads many evangelicals to trust Anderson as an authority on dealing with the devil. Unfortunately, however, his writings on the subject present an odd mixture of mature biblical insight and naive, uncritical, illogical, and unbiblical ideas.⁵ As noted in Part One, his responsible sounding statements disarm his audience so that they are slow to recognize the depth of the problems underlying his approach.

OVERSTATING SATAN’S ROLE

As we also saw in Part One, Anderson’s belief that Christians do not have a sin nature leads him to overestimate the influence of Satan on their thought life (although he does recognize that sinful thoughts can come from other sources⁶). This can result in an attitude where the thoughts going on in one’s own mind can never confidently be claimed as one’s own: “Satan’s perpetual aim is to infiltrate your thoughts with his thoughts and to promote his lie in the face of God’s truth. He knows that if he can control your thoughts he can control your behavior….He can introduce his thoughts, tempting you to act independently of God, as if they were your own thoughts or even God’s thoughts”⁷

Anderson demands very little evidence before concluding that Satan is the source of a problem. For example: “The confusion in Frances’ mind [about whether the source of her personal problems was psychological, her own sin, or demonic] is a clear tip-off that her problem is the result of demonic influence.”⁸ ‘When people awake in a state of fear, Anderson automatically assumes they are under spiritual attack, if they find that they cannot speak, he concludes it is because they have not first submitted to God before resisting the devil — no neurophysiological explanation (e.g., not fully awakening out of REM sleep) is considered.⁹

After surveying 286 Christian high school students, Anderson arbitrarily tabulated the following “startling responses” as evidence of intrusion of the powers of darkness among our children”:

Forty-five percent said they have experienced a “presence” (seen or heard) in their room that scared them.

Fifty-nine percent said they’ve harbored bad thoughts about God.

Forty-three percent said they find it mentally hard to pray and read their Bible.

Sixty-nine percent reported hearing “voices” in their heads, like there was a subconscious voice talking to them.

Twenty-two percent said they frequently entertain thoughts of suicide.

Seventy-four percent think they are different than others (“It works for others but not for me”).¹⁰

While I would not dispute that Satan could have a hand in such experiences, so too might human imagination, sinfulness, and emotional/psychological maladjustment. Interestingly, in another survey 864 students who, unlike the above students, “checked ‘no’ on all inquiries regarding occult experiences” reported roughly the same frequency of these “demonic” experiences.¹¹ Instead of questioning his assumptions, Anderson speculates that these students were exposed to the demonic through other means not included in the survey questions (unforgiveness, generational sin, and worldly amusements and distractions).”¹²

Many of the problems Anderson attributes to spirits seem rather to be rooted in the emotional instability and weak egos (senses of identity) of those who seek his help (e.g., people who are suggestible and experience out-of-control thoughts). Although he acknowledges that some mental problems are chemically induced, in practice he consistently opts for a spiritual (demonic) explanation when people come to him claiming that they hear voices speaking to them. Says Anderson, “I have counseled hundreds who were hearing voices, and every one of the voices was demonic” (emphasis added).’¹³ He disparages the idea that chemical imbalances can produce “personal thoughts” (i.e., seemingly external voices speaking in one’s mind) or thoughts that people are seemingly opposed to thinking.¹⁴ Moreover, he promises that within a few hours his approach can eliminate mental struggles and voices tormenting all but a few out of hundreds.”¹⁵ Lack of long-term follow-up in many cases may mask the quick return of symptoms that would indicate a source and treatment other than those that Anderson proposes.

OVERSTATING SATAN’S AUTHORITY

One of the reasons Satan looms so large in Anderson’s worldview is his misunderstanding of biblical teaching that Satan is the “god” and “ruler” of this world:

God created Adam and gave him a significant, divine purpose for being here: to rule over all his creatures. Was Satan on the scene at creation? Yes. Was he the god of this world at that time? Not at all. Who had the dominion in the garden? Adam did, that is until Satan usurped his dominion through deception. That’s when Satan became the god of this world. Do you realize that the significant dominion Adam exercised before the fall has been restored to you as a Christian? That’s part of your inheritance in Christ. Satan has no authority over you, even though he will try to deceive you into believing that he has. Because of your position in Christ, you have, authority over him. It’s part of your identity.”¹⁶

During Jesus’ temptation, the devil offered “all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory” (Matthew 4:8) in exchange for His worship, Satan’s claim that the earth “has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish” (Luke 4:6) was no lie. He took authority when Adam abdicated the throne of rulership over God’s creation at the fall. Satan ruled from Adam until the Cross. The death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ secured forever the final authority for Jesus Himself (Matthew 28:18). That authority was extended to all believers in the Great Commission so that we may continue His work of destroying the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). All of us were born spiritually dead and subject to the ruler that Paul called “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). But when we received Christ, God “delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). Our citizenship was changed from earth to heaven (Philippians 3:20). Satan is the ruler of this world, but he is no longer our ruler, for Christ is our ruler. But as long as we live on the earth, we are still on Satan’s turf. He will try to rule our lives by deceiving us into believing that we still belong to him.¹⁷

Anderson’s exposition in the above quotations sounds close enough to what Christians commonly believe that it may not raise many eyebrows. Nonetheless, it contains several faulty interpretations that lead to an unbiblical view of both the authority of Satan and the authority of the believer:

1. Anderson states that Adam’s authority was transferred to Satan, but the popular conception that Satan took possession of the “title deed to the earth” is without biblical warrant. Adam’s rulership was over the natural world; Satan’s rulership is over the fallen angels and lost humanity. The Bible does not say — as Anderson represents — that Satan is ruler over the earth (Greek: ge), but rather over this world (Greek: kosmos) or age (Greek: aion). As a theologian, Anderson should know that these terms, when used in relation to Satan, refer to the present dark spiritual system in which humanity blindly participates (e.g., 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2; 6:12). If Satan’s offer to Jesus of the kingdoms of the world was genuine, it was because their rulers were under his behind-the-scenes direction (1 John 5:19). He could not, however, offer Him the physical earth, since that has always belonged to God (e.g., Exod. 19:5; Deut. 10:14; Ps. 24:1; 1 Cor. 10:26).

2. Anderson further equates the dominion given by God to Adam over the animals (Gen. 1:28) with the authority given by Christ to His disciples over evil spirits (Matt. 10:1; Luke 10:17-20), but there is no biblical reason to think they are the same authority. The “significant dominion Adam exercised before the fall” has not yet been restored to redeemed man (Heb. 2:8).

3. The idea that Satan has a legal claim to man is almost as difficult to prove biblically as the idea that he has a legal claim to the earth. It can be said that by inciting man to rebel against God’s authority, Satan tricked him into falling prisoner to the law of sin and death. Then, as man plunged into darkness, he became easily manipulated by the prince of darkness — but this would seem to be a rule by default. Although Scripture indicates that Satan’s authority over angels was once legitimate (Jude 8-9), it nowhere explicitly states that his rule over man is by legal right, and it is doubtful that it even implicitly does so.¹⁸

4. Although Jesus does say in Matthew 28:18 that all authority has been handed over to Him, He does not hand that authority carte blanche over to believers. Rather, on the basis of that authority, He commissions them to go and make disciples of all the nations, and for that work He delegates to them the authority to do a limited number of things (e.g., remit sins — John 20:21-23). Furthermore, 1 John 3:8 (“The Son of God appeared…to destroy the devil’s work”) does not speak of believers, as Anderson suggests. The devil’s work was destroyed once-and-for-all on the cross (John 12:31; Col. 2:15).

OVERSTATING THE BELIEVER’S AUTHORITY

Anderson’s entire approach to spiritual warfare is based on the authority of the believer over the devil. This is manifest particularly in his emphasis on “binding and loosing”:

God has granted us the authority to “bind what shall be bound in heaven” (Matthew 16:19; 18:18). In other words, we have the spiritual capacity to discern God’s will and then, confident in the finished work of Christ, proclaim it in the spiritual realm. We have authority over demons as long as we remain strong in the Lord and operate in His strength (see Ephesians 6:l0)….The effectiveness of binding the strongman (see Matthew 12:20 [sic]) is dependent upon the leading of the Holy Spirit and subject to the scope and limits of the written Word of God.’¹⁹

In his instruction on how to help others find freedom in Christ, Anderson writes that the goal:

is to avoid all demonic activity which would short-circuit their ability to participate in the process. With this in mind, I usually begin the steps to freedom with a prayer similar to this: Dear heavenly Father….I take my position with Christ, seated with Him in the heavenlies. Because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. I now claim that authority over all enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ in and around this room and especially (name). You have told us that where two or three are gathered in Your name You are in our midst, and that whatever is bound on earth is bound in heaven. We agree that every evil spirit that is in or around (name) be bound to silence. They cannot inflict any pain, speak to (names)’s mind, or prevent (names) from hearing, seeing, or speaking. Now in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command you, Satan, and all your hosts to release (names) and remain bound and gagged so that (names) will be able to obey God.²⁰

The biblical evidence suggesting that believers have been given direct authority over the demonic realm is scantier than is usually supposed. Anderson applies Matthew 12:29 (“first binds the strong man”) to believers,²¹ when it is obvious from the preceding seven verses that Jesus was referring to Himself alone. Matthew 18:18 (“bind” and “loose”) refers to church discipline, not spiritual warfare, as the larger context makes entirely clear, Anderson uses Ephesians 1:18-21 (Christ is seated above all authorities and powers) combined with Ephesians 2:5-6 (believers are seated with Him) as proof of the believer’s authority over the devil. But rather than dealing with spiritual warfare, these passages speak of Christ’s exaltation by the Father and the believer’s acceptance and exaltation before the Father in Christ.” One should therefore be careful not to infer too much from them.

Nowhere does Scripture state that believers have authority over Satan himself. Those biblical passages that do speak of believers’ authority over the demonic realm apply strictly to driving demons out of lost human beings (Matt. 10:1; Mark 6:7; Luke 10:19; Acts 8:7). They are never applied to pastoral counseling or the believer’s personal battle with the devil.

This does not mean Christians must accept defeat in spiritual warfare. Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus has won the victory over the devil and all authority has been given to Him (Matt. 28:18; Eph. 1:20-22; Col. 2:15; 1 Pet. 3:22; etc.). While believers do not have the prerogative to say, “I command you, Satan (to do this or not do that),” Jesus does. Believers are indeed positionally seated with Him in heavenly places and are thus made partakers in His victory. They therefore can be confident that if they resist the devil, he will flee from them (James 4:7).

Putting Satan In His Place

The question remains, Exactly what is involved in resisting the devil? For Anderson, it requires a vocal confrontation — prayers that involve speaking to Satan²² and even protracted speeches to the devi1.²³ He reasons that

the Word of God is the only offensive weapon mentioned in the list of armor. Since Paul used rhema instead of logos for “word” in Ephesians 6:17, I believe Paul is referring to the spoken Word of God instead of the Word of God personified in Jesus. We are to defend ourselves against the evil one by speaking aloud God’s truth. …You can communicate with God in your mind and spirit because He knows the thoughts and intents of your heart (Hebrews 4:12). Your unspoken communion with God is your private sanctuary; Satan cannot, eavesdrop on you. But by the same token, if you only tell Satan to leave with your thoughts, he won’t leave because he can’t hear you. You must defeat Satan by speaking out. The good news is that most attacks occur at night or when you are alone [strange good news!], so resisting Satan aloud seldom results in you having to explain to other people a vocal command instructing Satan to leave. However, there may be times when you will need to take a public stand against the enemy, which may include confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (Romans l0:9).²⁴ (emphases in original)

Anderson’s argument is disappointing, to say the least. First, the Greek word rhema in Ephesians 6:17 is clearly referring to the words that God spoke and therefore has no bearing on whether believers vocally or mentally repeat those words.

Second, Anderson’s argumentation leads to the astonishing conclusion that believers should be speaking to the devil aloud but should not exercise the same liberty when it comes to God — at least not when they are communicating sensitive information. This is implied by Anderson’s statement, “Your unspoken communion with God is your private sanctuary; Satan cannot eavesdrop on you.” It is further insinuated one paragraph down, where, in describing his response to a satanic attack, he recalls, “In the sanctuary of my heart, out of Satan’s earshot, I submitted to God by praying…” Then he addressed the devil out loud, and the attack was over.²⁵ Such biblically insupportable teaching inhibits a practice that has great biblical precedent and for many believers is the most comfortable and natural way to pray. Why not simply trust that God will not allow Satan to take advantage of something uttered to Him in the confidence of prayer?

On his web site Anderson attempts to provide further scriptural support for speaking to the devil: “In many New Testament examples, the confrontation between believers and Satan and his evil associates is verbal (see Matthew 4:10 and 17:18; Mark 5:2-8; Luke 9:42; Revelation 12:l0,11).”²⁶ Most of the passages Anderson cites, however, involve Jesus verbally confronting the demons afflicting possessed individuals. Matthew 4 involves Jesus addressing the devil, who had in some way visually appeared to him, a situation none of us can expect to experience (thank God). Revelation 12 does say that Christians overcame Satan by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony, but this is best understood as their witness to Christ, not as their verbally addressing Satan.

The critical point to be observed in all New Testament cases where Jesus or His followers address Satan or his demons is that they are speaking to visible manifestations, typically demons possessing human beings. Biblically, invisible creatures — whether angels, saints, or demons — are never spoken to in a manner resembling prayer. This is a form of address reserved for God alone.

The most obvious biblical refutation of the practice of verbally rebuking Satan is Jude 8-9: “In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said. ‘The Lord rebuke you!’” Anderson responds to this criticism directly in Helping Others Find Freedom in Christ (141-42):

Some have suggested that 2 Peter 2:10, 11 and Jude 8 teach that believers should not stand verbally against Satan or his spiritual forces. But a close look at the context of these passages reveals their true intent. The writers were referring to unbelievers trying to exert an independent authority over the demonic realm. They were like the seven sons of Sceva, who were also unbelievers trying to cast out demons in Jesus’ name, without His authority (see Acts 19:11-16)….

A look at the context of these passages does reveal their true intent. They are speaking against the behavior of a rebellious group of people who demonstrate their rebellion by slandering high-ranking angels. To demonstrate the utter unacceptability of this practice, Jude cites the example of Michael, an angelic authority himself who nonetheless did not dare rail against another angelic authority, despite the fact that that angel, Satan, is fallen and evil. The inclusion of the example of Michael should have prevented Anderson from misunderstanding Jude’s point. The practice of directly rebuking Satan is wrong regardless of who does it, save the Lord Himself.

As Anderson proceeds, he acknowledges the reference to Michael and responds to it in this manner:

Two important points about this passage: First, we are not pronouncing a “railing judgment” against anybody. Only God can judge, and we are commanded not to judge. Resisting the devil and renouncing our involvements with him is not pronouncing a railing judgment. Every believer has the right and responsibility to exercise his or her authority in Christ by resisting the devil. Second, look at the context of Jude 1:9 [sic]. The passage refers back to the time of Moses when Satan was not yet a defeated foe and the Church was not seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Believers are not being self-willed and despising authority when they obey the command to submit to God and choose to resist the devil, even in a verbal way (seeJas. 4:7)….

The example cited might have taken place prior to Satan’s defeat, but the people for whom it was cited lived after his defeat, and Jude still thought the example was relevant. Michael, it should be pointed out, is neither a sinful human being nor a member of the church, and so Satan’s defeat at the cross does not have the same application for him as it does for Christians. While believers do have the right and responsibility to resist the devil, Anderson begs the question if he wants us to accept that this is the same thing as verbally addressing Satan. What Anderson calls for is much more than simply resisting the devil and renouncing past involvement with him: it is a direct verbal rebuke that could indeed be considered a railing judgment. James 4:7 mentions nothing about verbally resisting the devil, so I am bewildered as to why Anderson would cite it as a proof text for that point. The larger context of James 4 clearly equates resisting the devil with the volitional acts of drawing near to God, denying oneself, and resisting temptation.

Scripture never instructs believers to speak to Satan, nor on the face of it does it seem a desirable or edifying practice. Instead of spiritual warfare being primarily a moral response to temptation that builds character, Anderson’s interpretation makes it primarily a ritualistic response to the tempter that feeds a magical world view (i.e., that the devil can be overcome with the correct verbal formula rather than the correct moral choices).²⁷ The silliness that will result when a believer feels constrained to rebuke Satan out loud in a public place is the logical result of the false, unbiblical premise that it is necessary for believers to address the devil.

To resist the devil by verbally “binding” him rather than by simply resisting his temptation contradicts the very premillennial perspective that Anderson and his coauthor, Robert L. Saucy, hold, that it is not the will of God for Satan to be bound until the return of Christ (Rev. 20:1-3). According to classic premillennialism and other end-times views as well, God has ordained both that Satan should be free to move about tempting Christians and that Christians can make him go away only by standing firm in obedience to Christ. Thus, Satan’s not being bound serves a divine purpose in the character development of Christians.

Delivering Oneself from the Devil

Anderson also confuses the authority Christ gave believers over demons inhabiting the lost with the freedom from sin’s dominion He won for them on the cross. This leads to an unbiblical method for dealing with sin and temptation (rebuking and binding Satan):

When we boldly and humbly exercise the authority Christ has conferred upon us over the spiritual realm, we experience the freedom from bondage which Christ promised (John 8:32).²⁸

Most Christians today who cannot control their lives in some area wallow in self-blame instead of acting responsibly to solve the problem. They berate themselves and punish themselves for not having the willpower to break a bad habit, when instead they should be resisting Satan in an area where he has obviously robbed them of control. Anything bad which you cannot stop doing, or anything good which you cannot make yourself do, could be an area of demonic control.²⁹

As we saw in Part One, Anderson’s denial that sin dwells in the believer forces him to resort to Satan as the primary explanation for failure, in the Christian life, resulting in a faulty solution. Scripture clearly teaches that believers can be overcome by sin (e.g., Rom. 7:14), and the solution to this is to “put off’ the sinful old man that was crucified with Christ and “put on” the righteous new man that is created in His image (e.g., Eph. 4:22-24). Sin as a principle that can overpower believers is very real, and Satan will use it to his advantage. But if they want to be free from that power they must directly confront sin itself through the power of the cross, not Satan.

DEMONIZATION OF CHRISTIANS

When Anderson teaches that Christians can be controlled by demons, he places himself in a teaching lineage that can be traced from the turn-of-the-century Welsh revival writer Jessie Penn-Lewis to the late Dallas Seminary theologian Merrill F. Unger (What Demons Can Do to Saints, Moody Press, 1977) and Moody Bible Institute professor C. Fred Dickason (Demon Possession and the Christian: A New Perspective, Moody Press, 1987). In fact, Anderson calls Penn-Lewis’s War on the Saints (The Overcomer Literature Trust, n.d.) a “Christian classic,”³⁰ and he approvingly quotes Dickason and Unger on the subject of Christian demonization and deliverance.³¹ Teaching this doctrine also puts Anderson in company with such controversial Pentecostal/charismatic teachers as Don Basham (Can a Christian Have a Demon? Whitaker Books, 1971), Frank and Ida Mae Hammond (Pigs in the Parlor, Impact Books, 1973), John Wimber (the recently deceased spiritual leader of the Vineyard “Third Wave” charismatic movement), and Bob Larson (In the Name of Satan, Thomas Nelson, 1996).³²

The term demonized (Greek: daimonizomai; usually translated “demon possessed” and used interchangeably in Scripture with the phrase, “have a demon”) can be succinctly defined as the condition of being indwelt and controlled by an evil spirit. That Anderson believes Christians can he controlled by demons is evident not only from the quote cited above but throughout his works. One of his frequent refrains is, “If Satan can get you to believe a lie, he can control your life.”³³ Furthermore, Anderson explicitly endorses the belief that Christians can be demonized, and he makes clear that by this he means not only control but also indwelling.³⁴

“Truth Encounters”

Anderson sends mixed messages about whether he accepts some of the more far out teachings that are common in deliverance circles.³⁵ What does differentiate him from the majority of deliverance teachers is not his ideas on demonization but rather his ideas on deliverance. The standard model for deliverance — what John Wimber termed the “power encounter” — is based on the Gospels and the Book of Acts, where Jesus and His disciples directly confronted the demons in possessed individuals and commanded them to depart. Drawing on the epistles rather than the Gospels for his model, Anderson advocates a different approach: “Since Satan’s primary weapon is the lie, your defense against him is the truth. Dealing with Satan is not a power encounter; it’s a truth encounter. When you expose Satan’s lie with God’s truth, his power is broken.”³⁶ Anderson explains the effect that this concept has had on his counseling:

Previously when I exposed a demon influence in a counseling situation it would turn into a power encounter. Counselees would become catatonic, run out of the room, or become suddenly disoriented and I would attempt to take authority over the demon. My first approach was to get the demon to expose itself, then I would command it to leave. This exchange often resulted in a great deal of trauma for the counselee. Although progress was made, the episode would usually have to be repeated. But I have learned from the Scriptures and my experience that truth is the liberating agent. The power of Satan is in the lie, and the power of the believer is in knowing the truth. We are to pursue truth, not power. Furthermore, persons in bondage are not liberated by what I do as the pastor/counselor, but what they do with my help. It’s not what I believe that breaks the bonds, it’s what they believe, confess, renounce, and forgive.³⁷

Anderson is to be commended for instructing believers that they are responsible for resisting the devil — no one else can do it for them. Furthermore, he is correct that Satan’s only power where believers are concerned is in deception, and they can overcome him with truth (although there is more to the Christian’s defense than just this — see Ephesians 6:11-18). He is to be criticized, however, for framing this battle in the context of demonization and deliverance. Biblically, deliverance from demonization is a “power encounter.” In the rare cases where it would occur today, it would simply and exclusively involve a Christian exercising the authority of Jesus’ name to cast a demon out of someone who is not a Christian and therefore is not capable of conducting a “truth encounter.”

To better understand Anderson’s reasoning, and the errors therein, it will help to see how he answers one of the key arguments of those who reject demonization and deliverance for Christians: “One of the common objections to the ministry of setting captives free performed by Jesus and the apostles is the apparent lack of instruction on the subject in the epistles. Let me offer another perspective which may help clarify the issue….”³⁸ He proceeds to explain that prior to the Atonement of Christ on the cross divinely appointed agents such as Jesus and the apostles were needed to take authority over and expel demons. But after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the demonic rulers and authorities were disarmed (Col. 2:15), and all authority was given to Jesus (Matt. 28:18). According to Ephesians 2:5-6, every believer is now seated with Christ in the heavenlies far above all rule and authority, and thus

you no longer need an outside agent to effect authority for you…. In order to resist the devil, you need to understand and appropriate your position and authority in Christ…. When Satan harasses you, you may be prone to…cry out for God to deliver you, like Jesus miraculously and instantaneously delivered the demonized people in the Gospels. But when you read through the epistles it is obvious that your deliverance has already been accomplished in Christ’s work on the cross and His resurrection.³⁹

There are at least three problems with this argument: First, it fails to make the critical distinction between the severe affliction of demonization (demon possession) that is always dealt with by deliverance, and the harassment of the devil experienced by every believer that is always dealt with by personal resistance. Anderson consistently blurs these two biblically distinct phenomena together until they become gradations in a continuum; that is, varying degrees of the same affliction.⁴⁰

It is true, as Anderson and Saucy argue in The Common Made Holy,⁴¹ that there are degrees of severity in demonization cases. Nonetheless, in Scripture it is always a malady that involves an inhabiting demon that can only be expelled by an external agent. Instead of seeing that the saved and the unsaved are in two different categories, with their own distinctive spectrums of possible demonic influence, Anderson treats all demonic assaults on humans as one spectrum. Thus, according to Anderson, Christians who allow themselves to be influenced by the devil long enough could potentially wind up in a state like the Gadarene demoniac!⁴²

The second problem with Anderson’s argument is that instances of demonization are also recorded in the Book of Acts, and, as in the Gospels, they are dealt with by interventions from God’s authorized agents — despite the fact that Christ’s death and resurrection had already occurred (Acts 5:l6; 8:5-7; 16:18; 19:12). This contravening fact should have discouraged Anderson from advancing such an argument in the first place.

Third, Anderson assumes that the subject of deliverance is often believers, both before and after the cross. In fact, a strong case can be made that the subject of deliverance is always nonbelievers, both before and after the cross.⁴³ Since believers cannot be demonized, the subject does not come up when they are instructed on how to resist the devil in the epistles. Rather, it quite naturally appears in the narrative accounts of the Gospels and Acts, where unbelievers are encountered in evangelistic situations.

To derive one’s theology on demonization in the church age from the epistles is to assume that the epistles are discussing demonization. A thoughtful inventory of the Gospels and Acts would show, however, that the phenomenon of demonization described in those books is a separate activity of demons altogether from what the epistles describe as spiritual warfare waged against believers. Anderson inconsistently derives the concept of demonization from the Gospels (since it is not mentioned in the epistles) but then partially defines it by what the epistles do say about the devil’s assault on believers. As primary as the epistles may be for doing theology, it is nothing more than an evasion tactic to dismiss the narrative portions of Scripture when they seem to contradict one’s preferred view, for “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching…” (2Tim. 3:16).

Later in the same book,⁴⁴ Anderson does acknowledge that there are examples of demonic expulsion in the Book of Acts, but argues that Acts records “the period of transition between the cross and the completion of the canon of Scripture. There is a great deal of disagreement among Christians about how much method and theology we should extract from this important book. Therefore I stress caution in translating examples of demonic expulsion from Acts into doctrinal absolutes.”

The statement that Acts records the transition between the cross and the completion of Scripture is meaningless. There is no transition between the two events relevant to demonization and deliverance. Acts does record some transition in terms of the church’s break from Judaism and acceptance of the Gentiles into its fold, but this has no bearing on the proper method for dealing with demons. The examples of demonic expulsion in Acts are clearly presented as signs of the power of God with not only the apostles but also ordinary disciples (Acts 8:5-7), not as an obsolete practice that the church was slow in giving up.

By arguing in this fashion Anderson effectively removes from consideration all biblical examples of deliverance, including those that occurred after the cross (i.e., those that would refute his very argument). Acts clearly shows Jesus’ style of deliverance continues in the church age. The “disarming” of the rulers and authorities at the cross (Col. 2:15) does not mean that believers are now able to deliver themselves from demons, since, as a result of that disarming, they can’t be possessed by demons in the first place! It rather refers to Christ’s providing believers with a firm basis for victory in spiritual warfare, since he canceled the claims of the Law against them (v. 14) and thus rendered powerless “him who holds the power of death” (Heb. 2:14).

Buried in Anderson’s arguments is the assumption that there is no essential difference between dealing with demons afflicting unbelievers and those attacking believers. Yet these very verses illustrate what that difference is — hence, he begs the question. As a direct consequence of his failure to distinguish between the two in his interpretation of Scripture, Anderson inappropriately merges them (incorporating elements of exorcism and traditional spiritual warfare) in his teaching and practice as well. The result of this error is that believers are left feeling vulnerable to invasion and control by evil spirits.

Semantic Smoke Screens

It might seem self-evident that such invasion and control is equivalent to possession. But like a host of deliverance teachers before him, Anderson has found a way to deny that Christians can be demon possessed even while affirming that whatever happen to people whom our Bibles call “demon possessed” can happen to Christians:

Can believers be demon “possessed”? The simple answer to the question as asked is “no.” But the relationship of believers to the demonic is not that simple. In the original language, “demon possession” is only one word. Some have suggested that it would have been better to have transliterated it as “demonized.” If we did, then a demonized person could be defined as “one who is under the influence of one or more demons.”… The answer also hinges on how you define “possessed.” We have a tendency to think that if we possess something, we own it (as in “possession is nine-tenths of the law”). With that understanding of the word, the question becomes “Can a Christian be owned by the evil one?” The answer: Absolutely not! Every Christian has been bought by the blood of the Lamb (1 Peter l:l8, 19)….Despite what some of our critics charge, I (Neil) have never taught that believers can be “demon possessed.”⁴⁵

This clarification that demons cannot own Christians is nothing more than a red herring. Few if any critics of the doctrine that Christians can be demon possessed understand “possession” to mean ownership, but rather control⁴⁶ — something Anderson clearly teaches.

On another occasion Anderson answered the question, “Can believers be demon ‘possessed?’” with unequivocal equivocation: “Even though Christ has secured our victory over our spiritual enemies (see Colossians 2:15), please don’t conclude that Christians can’t have spiritual problems. Some believers seem to think they are immune to spiritual attack, but the Bible clearly teaches that Satan’s primary attack has always been on God’s people, hoping to thwart God’s plan. The Bible clearly teaches that temptation, accusation and deception are constant possibilities for believers.”⁴⁷ That’s true enough, but no one who argues against Christians being demonized denies that Christians have spiritual problems, nor that Satan attacks them through temptation, accusation, and deception.

Furthermore, no one denies that believers can yield themselves to sin and thus come under the influence of Satan. But influence and control are not synonymous. The American Heritage Dictionary defines influence in its verbal form first as, “To produce an effect on by imperceptible or intangible means; sway,” and second as, “To affect the nature, development, or condition of; modify.” Its definition of control includes the meaning of influence, but takes it much further: “To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over; direct,” and, “To hold in restraint; check.” The word check, in turn, means, “To deprive of freedom.” Anderson’s interchangeable use of influence and control clouds the distinctions between them and allows him to smuggle in the controversial implications of control under cover of the noncontroversial implications of influence.⁴⁸

Biblically, demonization or demon possession = demonic control of a lost soul from within = no ability to resist. Thus, deliverance for the possessed can only come from intervention by an outside agent. On the other hand, spiritual warfare = demonic attack (influence) on a believer from without = ability to resist. Thus, lasting victory for the Christian can only come when he or she assumes responsibility to stand against the onslaught of the devil.⁴⁹

Proof Texts for Demonization of Christians

Anderson, of course, would like to prove that Scripture does not maintain such clear distinctions. He brings out his arsenal of proof texts for demonization of Christians in Bondage Breaker, pages 175-79. In almost every case he reads the word control into the text where influence (or assault or afflict⁵⁰) is much better suited to explain what is being described.

Space will not allow us to examine each example, but it will be instructive to consider his treatment of what he considers to be “perhaps the most definitive passage on Satan’s ability to control believers.”⁵¹ In Acts 5:1-11, the apostle Peter confronts a disciple (I agree with Anderson he was probably a true believer) who had lied about the percentage of the proceeds from the sale of his property that he had given to the church. Peter said to him, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit…?” Anderson comments: “Ananias’ problem was that he had allowed Satan’s deception to fill (control) his heart, The word ‘filled’ in Acts 5:3 (pleroõ) is the same word used in Ephesians 5:18: ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ It is possible for the believer to be filled with satanic deception or filled by the Spirit. To whichever source you yield, by that source you shall be filled and controlled.”⁵²

Anderson is correct that Acts 5:3 is the most important verse used by advocates of the view that Christians can have demons. And this very fact underscores how weak the scriptural support for this view is. Peter in no way states that Ananias is either inhabited or controlled by Satan. By citing the corresponding usage of the word pleroõ (“fill”), Anderson proves too much. There is a consistent distinction between the New Testament usage of the words indwell and fill when speaking of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to believers. When Scripture speaks of the indwelling of the Spirit, it refers to the sealing of the believer unto salvation as God’s own possession. When it speaks of the filling of the Spirit, or the Spirit coming upon the believer, it speaks of the Holy Spirit’s influence on, or empowerment of, the believer for service to God. Scripture never indicates that believers are coercively directed by the Spirit. Rather, they are led by Him. Thus, the use of the word control is inappropriate.

Like others that teach that Christians can have demons, Anderson takes Scriptures that seem to state categorically that Christians are protected from demonic invasion and applies them only to spiritual Christians:

When we put on Christ we take ourselves out of the realm of the flesh, where we are vulnerable to attack, and we place ourselves within the dominion of Christ, where the evil one cannot touch us. Satan has nothing in Christ (John 14:30), and to the extent that we put on Christ, the evil one cannot touch us (1 John 5:18). He can only touch that which is on his own level. That’s why we are commanded, “Make no provision for the flesh” (Romans 13:14), meaning “Don’t live on Satan’s level.”⁵³

This protection [in the face of demonic attack] is not something you can take for granted irrespective of how you behave. God’s protection is conditional on your willingness to respond to God’s provision. In Romans 13:14 we are instructed to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” But what if we do make provision for the flesh by giving Satan an opportunity in our life through sin? Do we have blanket immunity from Satan’s invasion? No, that protection is conditional on our responsible participation in Gods plan for our protection.⁵⁴

At first, Anderson’s reasoning may seem convincing. Certainly, God’s promise of protection for believers does not license them to live a life of sin. The more a believer sins, the more he or she is open to Satan’s influence. But Anderson sneaks the conclusion he wants us to accept into the premise of his argument; that is, he begs the question or argues in a circle by using the word invasion (synonymous with demonization) to describe that influence. Once again he assumes without proving that passages dealing with spiritual warfare in the life of the believer and passages dealing with demon possession are part of a continuum, thus glossing over the critical differences that actually can be found between them. If believers persist in sin, they definitely increase their vulnerability to Satan’s deception and oppression, but not to his inhabitation and control, because these are things that cannot happen to believers. The presence of the Holy Spirit within believers — which is not conditioned on their obedience — guarantees this (2 Cor. 6:14-18; cf. Matt. 12:43-45; 1 John 4:4; 5:18).

In response to the argument that “believers are indwelt by the Spirit, who, by virtue of His holiness, cannot share residence with a sinful demon,” Anderson and Saucy first reply: “This objection, however, is undermined when we realize that the Spirit lives with our own human spirit, which can still commit grievous sins that bring deep grief and hurt to the Holy Spirit, but not His departure (see Ephesians 4:30).”⁵⁵ Anderson’s own definition of believers as “saints who occasionally sin” should cause him to see that this argument misses the mark. Whether or not Christians have a sin nature, it seems we all can agree there is a qualitative difference between a demon and a Christian — one is an enemy of God and the other is His friend, child, and possession. Furthermore, the sin of believers is covered by the blood of Christ. These differences are decisive when it comes to the question at hand.

Anderson and Saucy offer a second response to this objection: “Demons need not be conceived as dwelling in the same place and in the same way as the Holy Spirit. Even in cases where a demon takes control of a person’s body and uses it to express his own will, the demon need not be seen as residing in the very center of the person.”⁵⁶ To this I reply that Scripture defines the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as inhabitation of the human body (e.g., 1 Cor. 6:19). Under Anderson’s view we would still have demons and the Holy Spirit cohabiting the same body. Any further distinctions are scripturally irrelevant.

Ironically, Anderson agrees that, no matter what sins they become entangled in, true believers are assured that they can never again become lost and experience the condemnation of the lost (i.e., he believes in eternal security),⁵⁷ but he denies that sinning believers have similar protection from the worst ravages inflicted by the devil on the most lost people recorded in the Bible (i.e., he believes in temporal insecurity). Once more, Anderson’s promise that his message brings freedom in Christ is rendered hollow, for if these terrible things can happen to believers they must always live with a measure of insecurity and fear. Even if they think they’ve done everything right, there could always be some part of the armor of God they forgot to don, or some past sin they never knew they needed to renounce. Furthermore, if believers grant Anderson his premises, how do they know his seven steps to freedom are exhaustive? Was he inspired when he laid them out? They could be doing everything he says, but still be missing some preventive measure against the invasion of the enemy.

Finally, although Anderson’s emphasis that Christians can and must resist the devil is a refreshing departure from typical deliverance teaching, the manner in which he teaches them to resist presents additional causes for concern. These include his unbiblical emphasis on believing in one’s own identity (see Part One) and the superstitious formulae for dealing with the devil embodied in his steps to freedom (see Part Three).

In Parts Three and Four: The Seven Steps to Freedom and Satanic Ritual Abuse.

NOTES

1. Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990), 67-68.

2. Ibid., 71.

3. Neil T. Anderson, Victory over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990), 164.

4. Bondage Breaker, 109.

5. No Christian teacher is above criticism, but the extent and seriousness of the flaws in Anderson’s teaching make it impossible for the Christian Research Institute to recommend him even to the mature and discerning reader.

6. Neil T. Anderson and Steve Russo, The Seduction of Our Children (Eugene,OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1991), 9.

7. Bondage Breaker, 53.

8. Ibid., 76.

9. Neil T. Anderson, Helping Others Find Freedom in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1995), 52.

10. Sedactinn, 33.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., 36-38.

13. Ibid., 25. See also Dr. Neil Anderson, Released from Bondage (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. 1993), 12-13; Helping, 44-45, 47.

14. Neil T. Anderson and Robert L. Saucy, The Common Made Holy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1997), 64-67, 170.

15. Helping, 47.

16. Victory, 26-27.

17. Bondage Breaker, 98-99.

18. The teaching that Satan has a legal claim to man seems to be rooted in the ancient and long-discarded ransom-to-Satan theory of the Atonement, which held that Christ’s death was a payment to Satan necessary to free man from his grasp. Although there are several contemporary views of the Atonement, evangelical theologians generally hold that Christ’s death was a ransom that satisfied man’s debt to God’s law and holiness.

19. “Twenty-Five Most Popular Questions,” Freedom in Christ web site, http//www.ficm.org.

20. Bondage Breaker, 227.

21. See also ibid., 88-9l. Anderson teaches that evangelism will be ineffective if we do not first “bind the strong man.”

22. See, e.g., Seduction, 209.

23. See. e.g., Bondage Breaker, 144.

24. Ibid., 84-85.

25. Ibid., 85.

26. “Twenty-Five Most Popular Questions.”

27. See e.g., Bondage Breaker, 193-94.

28. Ibid., 72.

29. Ibid., 180.

30. Victory, 101.

31. Bondage Breaker, 31, 88-89, 173, 181.

32. See the sidebar for more background on the development and variations of this teaching. For a biblical critique see Brent Grimsley and Elliot Miller, “Can a Christian Be ‘Demonized’?” Christian Research Journal, Summer 1993, 16-19, 37-38. (Photocopies available on request from CRI.)

33. Victory, 169.

34. Bondage Breaker, 228.

35. For example: after stating that he does not believe “in a specific demon of homosexuality,” he proceeds to indicate that he allows for such a possibility. (Released, 126.) After making noncommittal statements about the concept of “demonic transference” (the transmission of demonic influence from one person to another), he makes it clear that he subscribes to that biblically unsupported idea after all. (Bondage Breaker, 137; cf. 149.)

36. Victory, 170.

37. Bondage Breaker, 23.

38. Ibid., 24.

39. Ibid., 25-26.

40. See, e.g., Helping, 116; Bondage Breaker., 103-4;107.

41. Common, 349-50.

42. Bondage Breaker, 108.

43. See Grimsley and Miller, 16-19, 37-38.

44. Bondage Breaker, 217,

45. “Twenty-Five Most Popular Questions.”

46. See Grimsley and Miller, 17.

47. “Twenty-Five Most Popular Questions.”

48. For a further example see Bondage Breaker, 174,

49. In ibid., 99, he writes: “If we give in to [Satan’s accusations, temptations, and deceptions], we can be influenced by Satan’s wishes (Galatians 5:1). And if we remain under his influence long enough, we can lose control. Yes, believers can be controlled by Satan if they fail to stand against him.” What Anderson fails to recognize is that if people are truly controlled by Satan they are incapable of standing against him — they could only be delivered by an outside agent. He also wrongly applies Galatians 5:1 to demonic bondage when it is clearly referring only to legalistic bondage.

50. Anderson asserts that the woman bent over double in Luke 13:10-18 was under “demonic control” (ibid., 175), whereas Scripture only describes her as being physically (not behaviorally) afflicted by the devil.

51. Ibid., 178.

52. Ibid., 179.

53. Ibid., 79.

54. Ibid., 180-81.

55. Common, 350.

56. Ibid.

SUMMARY: The Problems at a Glance

Through his influential ministry, Freedom in Christ, Neil T. Anderson brings his so-called captive-freeing message on sanctification and spiritual warfare to Christians worldwide. Although some of his teachings are helpful, many others would be more aptly described as bondage making than as bondage breaking. These are some of the troubling teachings that will be documented in this series:

· Christians no longer possess a sin nature.

· The believer’s correct understanding of his or her identity in Christ is the critical issue in Christian sanctification. Christians continue to sin not so much for moral reasons as perceptual: they view themselves as sinners rather than as saints.

· Christians can be and often are demonized (indwelt and controlled by demons).

· In order to have victory over the devil, Christians must learn to address him directly, and to do so out loud (since he can’t read their minds) — even in public places. By the same token, Christians should be careful about what they say to God out loud, since Satan is listening and could use that information against them.

· Every time one commits certain kinds of sin (e.g., sexual), Satan may gain entrance into one’s life. A general repentance of that sin may bring forgiveness, but it will not break any Satanic stronghold. In order to get Satan out of one’s life, every instance of that sin must be identified and vocally renounced.

· The need to identify and renounce past sins to be free of them is not limited to one’s own life but extends back to one’s ancestors, which makes adopted children especially vulnerable to demonic strongholds. Anderson assures us, however, that “even an adopted child can become a new creation in Christ.”

· Satanic ritual abuse and multiple personality disorder are common problems caused by a vast satanic conspiracy. Anderson claims to have first-hand knowledge that our churches have been infiltrated: “There are breeders out there. We’ve encountered people who are doctors and lawyers and pastors who are Satanists.”

· Satan is so enraged by Anderson’s ministry that he has launched fantastic physical attacks against him, such as biting Anderson on the hand and scrawling a message on his bathroom mirror.

· Although in the Bible curses are strictly the prerogative of God, Anderson attributes real power to satanic curses and teaches they must be canceled through formulaic prayers.

· Among many additional unbiblical, sensational, and fear-instilling ideas found in his books, he teaches that (1) evil spirits often attach themselves to the spaces and furnishings of a home, (2) parents should warn their children that the monsters they fear in their rooms at night are not only real but are demons that must be rebuked in the name of Jesus, and (3) the medieval belief in spirits that have sexual relations with humans (incubi and sucubi) is not only valid but an experience common enough to be included in the first of his seven “steps of freedom” as a possible past sin to be renounced.

By the authority I have in Jesus Christ, I now command every familiar spirit and every enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ that is in or around me to leave my presence. (emphasis added)¹

Can a Christian have a demon? In 1993 I coauthored an article for the Christian Research Journal that hoped to answer this question once and for all in the negative.² It set forth a positive case for the protection of Christians from demonic invasion and answered several of the best arguments for the demonization of Christians advanced by such deliverance teachers as C. Fred Dickason, Jack Deere, and Mark Bubeck.

The article did not address the teachings of Neil T. Anderson, whose ministry — called Freedom in Christ — had been launched only a few years before. While sharing some common assumptions with other deliverance teachers, Anderson took a unique approach to dealing with demons that would have made it difficult to include him in that article. As in the prayer reproduced above (taken from one of his seven “steps to freedom”), Anderson teaches that Christians can have demons, but he also stresses that demonized believers have the authority and responsibility to resist the devil personally rather than relying on other Christians to cast the demons out of them. If Freedom in Christ continued to grow, we recognized that one day we would need to devote an entire article or more to Anderson’s teachings and approach.

That day has come — with a vengeance. Anderson has become one of evangelicalism’s most popular and influential teachers on spiritual warfare. His many books sell briskly in Christian book stores, and at some time in the past few years your local Christian community has likely hosted at least one of his conferences.

While equipping Christians to have victory over the devil is a central goal of Anderson’s teaching, it is far from the only goal. The focus of his ministry is discipleship and pastoral counseling.³ He succinctly sums up the emphases of his message in the following statement: “Exposing the lie [of Satan] and understanding the battle [with Satan] for the mind is to win half the battle. The other half is having a true knowledge of God and knowing who you are as a child of God.”⁴

In many ways Neil Anderson is a respectable personality and teacher. Formerly the chairman of the Practical Theology department at Talbot School of Theology, he holds doctorates in ministry and education and served as a church pastor for 15 years prior to joining the Talbot faculty. His books — including his foundational works, Victory over the Darkness and The Bondage Breaker — contain much sound theology, spiritual insight, and practical wisdom. In some respects they have no doubt benefited many who have read them. Nonetheless, as we shall see in this and the two subsequent installments of this series, they also are riddled with seriously flawed assumptions that can lead uncritical Christians into various kinds of bondage — an ironic effect for a ministry whose purpose is to set Christians free.

Anderson’s interest in helping Christians find freedom in Christ was stimulated as he encountered spiritually troubled students at Talbot. In well-attended classes on spiritual conflict resolution he explored the subjects of spiritual warfare and the believer’s identity in Christ. Having developed his ideas and approach in that academic setting, Anderson founded Freedom in Christ Ministries in 1989 to reach a wider public with his message.

FREEDOM IN CHRIST MINISTRIES

The mission of Freedom in Christ is “to boldly and strategically resource leaders world-wide to establish the Church free in Christ. Since its inception, Freedom in Christ Ministries has had the privilege of seeing thousands of changed lives around the world. Priority is given to resourcing pastors, church leaders, missionaries, and those in parachurch ministry in all parts of the world so they may be able to teach others. Churches, mission groups, ministries, Bible colleges, and entire denominations have been equipped and encouraged.”⁵

Freedom in Christ has made especially deep inroads into Campus Crusade for Christ and the Conservative Baptists, but their conferences are hosted by churches across the evangelical spectrum, including both Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal. In 1998 conferences are being held throughout North and South America as well as in several locations in Asia and Europe.

On their Web site, 19 staff members are pictured for their international office, and there are regional offices and resource centers throughout the U.S. and in Canada, Australia, England, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific that distribute Anderson’s books, study guides, and audio and videotaped conferences. There are also people pictured who head “Youth Ministries,” “Young Adult Ministries,” and “Recovery Ministries.”

Anderson is at the head of what he calls “a captive-freeing movement of God which is beginning to grow in the church.”⁶ He is clearly intent on institutionalizing his distinctive approach to sanctification (growth in holiness) and spiritual warfare into the life of the evangelical church at large — with all the accompanying resource materials, including his books and study guides.⁷ To the extent his mission succeeds he will also bring serious polarization and division, since many of his teachings are unconventional and controversial within evangelical circles.

THE NATURE OF THE CONTROVERSY

Controversial components in Anderson’s message include not only his teaching that Christians can have demons but also his belief that Christians should speak to the devil, that they must specifically identify and renounce past sins in order to be free of them, that they do not possess a sin nature, that correct self-perception is the key to sanctified living, and that satanic ritual abuse and multiple personality disorder are common problems caused by a vast satanic conspiracy. Also subject to criticism are his methods for finding scriptural, historical, and contemporary support for his claims. This three-part series will address these concerns and will consider both the negative practical consequences of his ministry and positive alternative approaches to dealing with spiritual conflicts.

Anderson is bound to provoke controversy wherever he goes because he combines in one person numerous conflicting elements in today’s Christianity. He has one foot planted firmly in conservative Protestant theology, with the other just as firmly planted in the sensationalism, speculation, and subjectivism that have come to characterize significant sectors of the evangelical church. In the same church, therefore, some members likely will be attracted to his message while others probably will be repelled by it.

This mixture of multifarious contemporary Christian components also helps explain Anderson’s appeal: there is something in his message for almost everyone. Furthermore, he has charted virtually the entire spiritual life, making it intellectually apprehendable and laying out practical steps to victory over a wide range of psychospiritual problems. This appeals to pastors as well as to struggling Christians, for they don’t have to sit there feeling helpless when confronted with a difficult counseling situation — they can lead the counselee through the steps to freedom. Add to this the fact that Anderson appears to be balanced: recognizing the reality and role of the supernatural in today’s world without abdicating personal responsibility for one’s actions; recognizing the truths uncovered by modern psychology without abdicating a biblical frame of reference.

Those mainstream evangelicals who resonate with these and other aspects of his message tend to overlook, rationalize, or minimize the elements that conflict with their traditional views. Thus many Christian leaders have endorsed his message without fully understanding its controversial dimensions.

Anderson himself is a master at perpetuating this uncritical attitude. Not only do the many good things he has to say tend to create the impression that he is a reliable teacher, but he also preempts criticism by frequently speaking against the very excesses that might be linked to him. For example, since he warns his readers to avoid fear of, or preoccupation with, demons, ⁸ it is easy to assume he must not be a promoter of that very error. It is not enough to warn against an excess in one place, however, if in another place one’s teachings naturally lead to that excess, and in this case his do.⁹ Although Anderson persuasively projects the image of a responsible, balanced teacher, he often does not deliver on the substance of the same.

I do not mean to suggest that Anderson deliberately lulls his audience into a state of passive acceptance and then slips in his controversial teachings. The root problem with his teaching appears rather to be logical inconsistency. In other words, it seems that, to his credit, he has a sense for what balanced theology should look like and sincerely tries to stay within those parameters, thus inspiring confidence in his hearers. Unfortunately, he then proceeds to engage in logical fallacies, such as equivocation and question-begging,¹⁰ that cause him to contradict his professions of balance in ways that neither he nor many of his audience apparently recognize. Anderson thus provides an object lesson that even when a teacher introduces a subject by saying all the right things, it remains important to keep one’s critical faculties in gear.

The problems with Anderson’s message and method are not merely extraneous but fundamental; they are not isolated but show up frequently in each of his books. His message is essentially comprised of his teachings on sanctification (as originally set forth in Victory over the Darkness) and spiritual warfare (as originally set forth in The Bondage Breaker). The two theologies are logically related and interdependent. Flawed assumptions lie at the heart of both.

Anderson’s teaching on sanctification (the subject of this installment) centers on the believer’s identity in Christ. It is unusual and troubling in two respects: (1) it denies that the Christian still possesses a sin nature; (2) it teaches that correct self-perception is the critical issue for holy and victorious Christian living.

SAINTS WHO OCCASIONALLY SIN

Anderson’s most foundational teaching is that Christians are “saints who occasionally sin”: “Many Christians refer to themselves as sinners saved by grace. But are you really a sinner? Is that your scriptural identity? Not at all. God doesn’t call you a sinner, He calls you a saint — a holy one.”¹¹ If Christians are saints rather than sinners, does that mean they do not have a sin nature? Anderson answers yes:

The moment you said yes to Christ your old self was gone.¹²

I have been spiritually circumcised. My old unregenerate nature has been removed” (Col. 2:11).¹³

When you came into spiritual union with God through your new birth, you didn’t add a new, divine nature to your old, sinful nature. You exchanged natures. (emphases in original)¹⁴

At salvation God changed our very essence; we became “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust” (2 Peter 1:4).¹⁵

Anderson takes forensic (legal) language from Romans 6 and related passages (the crucifixion of the “old man” with Christ) as describing the literal abolishing of the believer’s sin nature: “As a child of God, a saint, you are no longer under the authority of your old Old Man [sic]. He is dead, buried, gone forever…. When you were born again, your old self died and your new self came to life, and you were made a partaker of Christ’s divine nature.”¹⁶ He also interprets New Testament references to Christians as saints (holy ones) more as referring to an imparted (actual) holiness than to an imputed (legally transferred from Christ’s account) holiness: “A saint is literally a holy person….You were ‘sanctified in Christ’ — made a saint by participating in the life of the only true holy one, Jesus Christ” (emphasis added).¹⁷

One almost feels one is reading a Roman Catholic writer at times because of the lack of emphasis on the legal or positional basis for believers being called saints or holy. In Walking in the Light he writes: “It isn’t what we do for God externally that gets us into heaven. It’s what God has done for us internally.”¹⁸ In Victory he explicitly states that “the inner change, justification, is effected at the moment of salvation,” and then adds that “the progressive work of sanctification is only fully effective when the radical, inner transformation of justification is realized and appropriated by faith” (emphases added).¹⁹ In these and other places,²⁰ he seems to fuse the extrinsic act of God called justification (on which the Christian’s relationship with God is based) with the intrinsic act of God called regeneration (in which the Christian’s relationship with God is empirically established). This allows him to reason that since Christians are declared to be perfectly righteous in God’s sight they must actually be perfectly righteous in their true nature.²¹

Like many Catholics, Anderson seems to believe that one’s inner transformation adds to one’s justification before God: “The reason Satan’s accusations [of unworthiness] are groundless is because God has solved the problem of our filthy garments….God has not only declared us righteous, but He has removed our filthy garments of unrighteousness and clothed us with His righteousness….In ourselves we don’t have any garments of righteousness to put on that will satisfy God. He must change us in response to our submission to Him in faith” (emphases added).²²

The Flesh: Sinful or Sin-Trained?

It is important to clarify that Anderson does not deny the ongoing reality of sin in the life of the believer: “The New Testament clearly states that we are saints who sin. Any child of God who says he doesn’t sin is called a liar (1 John 1:8). But we are not to focus on one another’s sins. Instead we are called to perceive the Christlike nature in each other, believe in each other as saints and build each other up.”²³

To explain how there can be sin where there is only a Christlike nature, Anderson makes a distinction between the concepts of the sin nature and the flesh:

Where does sin mount its attack to keep me from doing what I really want to do? My flesh, my learned independence, continues to promote rebellion against God (Jas. 4:1). (emphasis added)²⁴

Some have equated the terms “old nature” and “flesh.” The New International Version (NIV) sometimes translates the word for flesh (sarx) as “old nature,” then footnotes the literal translation as “flesh.” I understand why the translators have done this, since flesh describes how I used to behave as a natural person. And since the flesh remains after salvation, it seems logical that the old nature also remains. But I am no longer a natural person. I am a spiritual person in Christ. That is my true nature. When I choose to walk according to the old way in which I was trained before conversion, such behavior violates my new nature…. If you want to refer to your flesh as your old nature, I won’t wrangle with you over terms. But I will contend for the biblical truth that the residual effects of who I was in Adam are no longer part of my true identity in Christ (emphases added).²⁵

Your flesh, that part of you which was trained to live independently of God before you met Christ, did not die either. You still have memories, habits, conditioned responses, and thought patterns ingrained in your brain which prompt you to focus on your own interests. You are no longer in the flesh as your old self was; you are now in Christ. But you can still choose to walk according to the flesh (Romans 8:12, 13), complying with those old urges to serve yourself instead of God. It is your responsibility to crucify the flesh (Romans 8:13) on a daily basis by learning to walk according to the Spirit (Galatians 5:16) and by repatterning your old thoughts by allowing your mind to be renewed (Romans 12:2). Even though you are dead to sin, sin’s strong appeal may still cause you to struggle with feeling that you are more alive to sin than you are to Christ. (emphases in original)²⁶

Anderson employs language never found in Scripture when he writes of the fleshly man indulging “his physical appetites at the whim of his sin-trained flesh” (emphasis added),²⁷ and later comments that the new Christian “is still the unwitting victim of a thoroughly-trained flesh which only knows how to operate independent of God” (emphasis added).²⁸ If the flesh is merely a part of our brains that has been trained to live independently from God, then we are left with the prospect that the flesh is redeemable: that same part of our brains could and should be Spirit-trained to live according to God’s will. Scripture, however, tells us that the flesh is inherently hostile to God and the things of the Spirit (Gal. 5:17; Rom. 8:7). The flesh is sinful, not sin-trained. Given Anderson’s definition of the flesh, it is no wonder that in teaching on sanctification his central emphasis is the “renewing of the mind” (see below). Despite his verbal assent to crucifying the flesh, he does not truly call for crucifying it but rather reforming (i.e., reprogramming) it.

When Anderson refers to the “residual” effects of the bygone Adamic nature and optimistically states that saints only occasionally sin, he demonstrates a surprising lack of appreciation for the scope of sin (it includes the thoughts of the heart as well as deeds; acts of omission as well as commission; indeed, anything that falls short of God’s perfect holiness — Gen. 6:5; Matt. 5:21–22, 27–28; 15:18–20; James 4:17; Rom. 3:23), its depth — even within the Christian’s heart, and the frequency with which it manifests itself (e.g., Rom. 7:21; James 3:2). Certainly, a mere residual mindset and lifestyle from the past is insufficient to account for the intractable bent toward corruption with which not only the apostle Paul in Romans 7 but I daresay every Christian on the face of the earth contends (in one form or another).

Despite such minimizing statements on sin’s place and power in the Christian’s life, Anderson turns around and acknowledges that sin has a “strong appeal.” In a chart on “The Fleshly Person,” he cites Romans 8:8 and says of the flesh: “The ingrained habit patterns still appeal to the mind to live independent of God.”²⁹ If Christians only had a Christlike nature, however, there would be nothing to which those ingrained habit patterns could appeal (see sidebar).

What Happened at the Fall?

At a more fundamental level, the defect in Anderson’s doctrines of man and sin lies in his understanding of what happened to human nature at the Fall. According to Anderson,³⁰ the result of Adam’s sin was that he died spiritually. This spiritual condition was passed on to his descendants, and so each human being is born separated from God. Lacking the presence and wisdom of God in their lives, humans must learn to live and meet their legitimate needs independent of Him. They seek to find purpose and meaning in the natural world because that’s all they have, and as a result their minds are programmed by it. Furthermore, their necessary preoccupation with the interests of self (how else can they survive?) conditions them to be self-centered. Sinfulness is thus a behavior man learns as a result of the condition (separation from God) into which he is born.

Notice how Anderson describes the difference between the old and the new self: “Your old self — the sinner — and your old nature — characterized by the sin which was inevitable since you were separated from God — are gone forever because you are no longer separated from God.”³¹ Later he adds that “sin is living our lives independent of God.”³² Throughout his books, this is the way he prefers to describe sin, rather than describing it, say, as lawlessness (1 John 3:4) or unrighteousness (1 John 5:17). According to Anderson, all desires are inherently good (even the desire for knowledge and power that drives occultism³³), but evil emerges when people look to the wrong resource to meet those needs. He doesn’t seem to recognize that some desires are inherently evil (e.g., prideful ambition and the desires to sexually exploit, have power over, or harm others).

If the sin nature is understood in terms of depravity (inclination toward evil), then by this view not only does the Christian lack a sin nature — so does fallen man! Anderson takes one aspect of man’s fallen nature, separation from God, and makes it the sole defining feature. As a result fallen man is primarily deprived rather than depraved.³⁴ He is not positively evil to begin with; he lacks a relationship with God, and things just keep going downhill from there. Scripture, however, teaches the inherent depravity — the positive evil — of the human heart from the moment of conception (Gen. 6:5; 8:21; Ps. 51:5; Eccl. 9:3; Jer. 17:9³⁵; Eph. 2:3).

“Be Transformed by the Reprogramming of Your Minds”

Anderson’s simplistic understanding of the old and new natures (relationship with God or lack thereof being the only essential features) explains why he believes that Christians no longer have sin natures — they now have a relationship with God. They must only contend with the “residue” of their old sin natures: the ingrained patterns of thought and behavior he identifies as the flesh. Thus his most central answer to the problem of the flesh is to “renew the mind.” Given his belief that sinful behavior is rooted in conditioning,³⁶ the extrabiblical, computer-age concept of programming (which appeals to him as a former aerospace engineer³⁷) becomes the essence of sanctification:

Paul…admonishes us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds ([Rom.]12:2) because, before we came to Christ, our minds were programmed to live independent of God. In progressive sanctification, we have to assume our responsibility to reprogram our minds to the truth of God’s Word. Like a computer, our brains record the experiences we have in life. Newborn babies come into this world with a clean slate. The only world they know is what they can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. Nothing has been programmed into their computer….They have neither the presence of God in their lives nor the knowledge of His ways. So during their early and formative years, they learn to live independent of God. In later years, when these individuals come to Christ, their minds are still programmed to live independent of God. There is no “delete” or “clear” button, that can be pushed to get rid of old thinking patterns; hence, the need to renew (reprogram) their minds.³⁸

If the strongholds in your mind are the result of conditioning, then you can be reconditioned by the renewing of your mind. Anything that has been learned can be unlearned. Certainly this is the major path of renewal in the New Testament. Through the preaching of God’s Word, Bible study and personal discipleship you stop being conformed to this world and experience the transformation of the renewing of your mind (Rom. 12:2). (emphasis added)³⁹

The problem with Anderson’s view is not his emphasis on internalizing Scripture, which certainly does play a critical role in Christian sanctification (see Scriptures cited in the sidebar; also John 17:17; 1 Pet. 2:2). The problem is rather that it is a simplistic view of sanctification, derived from his simplistic view of the Fall. If the flesh is not merely residual conditioning but an ongoing natural, powerful drive toward evil, then renewing the mind with positive scriptural affirmations — as Anderson teaches — will eventually prove inadequate. If one does not recognize the depth of one’s problem one cannot be expected to overcome it. The biblical answer to the flesh is far more radical: it needs to be put to death (see sidebar).

CORRECT SELF-PERCEPTION

Having laid the foundation that Christians are not sinners but saints who occasionally sin, Anderson proceeds to build his ministry on that premise. His key emphasis is that believers need to understand who they really are in Christ. Correct self-perception is the linchpin of Anderson’s approach to sanctification: “I believe wholeheartedly that your hope for growth, meaning and fulfillment as a Christian is based on understanding who you are — specifically your identity in Christ as a child of God. Your understanding of who you are is the critical foundation for your belief structure and your behavior patterns as a Christian.”⁴⁰

Indeed, Anderson has introduced a new essential into the core objects of Christian faith. Again and again, one’s own identity is listed right alongside the character of God or the saving work of Jesus Christ.⁴¹ In his system, self-perception becomes the central problem in the spiritual life. Spiritual warfare is primarily engaged over this subject.⁴² The good news is on that point.⁴³ Thus, self-interest lies at the core of his theology.

Why should self-perception be so important? In Victory, Anderson lays out his theory in great detail:

Understanding your identity in Christ is absolutely essential to your success at living the Christian life. No person can consistently behave in a way that’s inconsistent with the way he perceives himself. If you think you’re a no-good bum, you’ll probably live like a no-good bum. But if you see yourself as a child of God who is spiritually alive in Christ, you’ll begin to live in victory and freedom as He lived. Next to a knowledge of God, a knowledge of who you are is by far the most important truth you can possess…. Satan’s deception concerning your identity is his major weapon against your growth and maturity in Christ.⁴⁴

You must see yourself as a child of God in order to live like a child of God.⁴⁵

If you see yourself as a sinner you will sin; what would you expect a sinner to do?…We become saints at the moment of salvation (justification) and live as saints in our daily experience (sanctification) as we continue to believe what God has done and as we continue to affirm who we really are in Christ.⁴⁶

Anderson does believe that sanctification is a supernatural work of God. But, despite occasional attempts to bring balance,⁴⁷ his emphasis on self-perception could allow the skeptic to argue that the power of positive thinking (or “positive believing,” as he puts it⁴⁸) is sufficient to explain the changes in Christians’ lives. Whether or not one is a child of God could seem immaterial — if one believes this to be the case, his or her behavior will conform to that belief.⁴⁹

Anderson would no doubt respond that if Christians did not have a new nature, no amount of positive thinking could change their behavior. But this reply would raise an additional concern. Although I do not mean to suggest that Anderson is a New Ager, his view of self-perception is uncomfortably similar to New Age philosophy. For New Agers, each person is a god or perfect by nature, but he or she is blocked from experiencing the benefits of that fact by ignorance. For Anderson, each Christian is a saint or holy by nature, but he or she is blocked from experiencing the benefits of that fact by ignorance. For both, correct self-perception is the answer — a cognitive rather than a volitional (moral) solution.

“I’m Special”

Not only does Anderson believe that self-perception determines one’s behavior, he also maintains that one’s perception of others greatly determines their behavior: “If we see people as losers we will begin to believe that they are losers. And if we believe they are losers we will treat them like losers and they will mirror our behavior and act like losers. But if we perceive our brothers and sisters in Christ as redeemed, righteous saints, we will treat them as saints and they will be greatly helped in behaving as saints.”⁵⁰ Again, psychological reinforcement is made to sound more important than moral appeal.

“Once accepted and affirmed, people will make themselves accountable to authority,” Anderson assures us.⁵¹ At times he is reminiscent of Robert Schuller, who teaches that “by nature we are fearful, not bad.”⁵² Anderson’s emphasis on identity is basically a self-esteem emphasis, as is Schuller’s. When he preaches self-esteem based on being a Christian (“You’re beginning to think you’re someone special as a Christian, you’re thinking right — you are special!”⁵³), Anderson sounds like Robert Schuller with a more biblical orientation. But is placing such a premium on self-esteem — which began with the theories of humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May — itself biblical?

Anderson, of course, would answer yes. He provides a series of positive self-affirmations based on Scripture to boost the believer’s self-image and feelings of worth (e.g., “I am the light of the world….I am a child of God….I am a joint heir with Christ, sharing His inheritance with Him….I am chosen of God, holy and dearly loved”⁵⁴). Clearly, Anderson has no qualms about incorporating into Christian discipleship pop psychology’s debatable proposition that repeating positive affirmations improves self-image and confidence:

One of the greatest ways to help yourself grow into maturity in Christ is to continually remind yourself who you are in Him. In my conferences we do this by reading the Who Am I? list aloud together. I suggest that you go back and read it aloud to yourself right now. Read the list once or twice a day for a week or two. Read it when you think that Satan is trying to deceive you into believing you are a worthless failure. The more you reaffirm who you are in Christ, the more your behavior will begin to reflect your true identity.⁵⁵

No doubt one’s perception of oneself or others will to some extent influence behavior, and there is a place for affirming one’s own identity in Christ (properly understood) and being affirmative with others. But the Bible appeals much more to one’s conscience (sense of obligation to do what is right in God’s sight) and spiritual need as incentives for behavioral change (e.g., Eph. 4:17—5:17; 1 Thess. 4:1–12; Titus 3:14; 2 Pet. 1:3–11). Under the rationale of providing a balanced, holistic approach to Christian development that takes into consideration both natural and supernatural factors (“all truth is God’s truth”), Anderson has to a large extent psychologized the Christian life. His emphases on mental conditioning (i.e., programming), self-perception, self-esteem, affirmations, and so forth all employ a twentieth century psychological grid for interpreting biblical teaching on sanctification and discipleship.

The field of psychology offers some valid insights into human behavior, but its grid is fundamentally different from biblical teaching on the spiritual life.⁵⁶ It’s a matter of emphasis. Anderson repeatedly puts the cognitive ahead of the volitional and thus ends up doing to the gospel something not unlike what Schuller⁵⁷ and Norman Vincent Peale did before him, even if in doing so he more strictly employs evangelical terminology and motifs.

In Search of a Good Proof Text

Anderson’s “Who Am I?” and “Since I Am in Christ” lists convey many helpful truths about God and His covenant relationship with His people. But his emphasis on the believer’s identity — as though that is the key aspect — orientates everything around a subjective, self-centered perspective. This leads to a distorted understanding of the Christian’s relationship with God.

He writes,

Being “in Christ” is the core theological foundation for discipleship and counseling…. Because human life is lived according to what we believe, this essential truth of who we are in Christ is tremendously important. Our attitudes, responses and reactions to the circumstances of life are determined by our conscious or subconscious self-perceptions. No one can consistently behave in a way that is inconsistent with how he or she perceives himself to be. If Christians are no different inwardly from non-Christians, or if they perceive themselves to be no different, then life will be lived at best in a mediocre manner, with very little distinction between Christians and non-Christians. (emphasis in original)⁵⁸

Anderson is correct that being “in Christ” is the core theological foundation for discipleship and counseling. For Paul, however, this phrase does not so much speak about who we are as who we are in. Self-perception is not the key issue, but rather relationship. Anderson takes this truth and slants it so that it becomes a “biblical” form of self-esteem psychology.

As a logical extension of Anderson’s theology, simple Christian discipleship becomes a psychotherapeutic task: “Paul explains why [the carnal Christians in 1 Corinthians 3:1–3] could not receive [the solid food of the Word of God]. They were getting their identities from men and walking like mere men with conflicts of jealousies and strifes. Until we help people resolve these conflicts and establish their identities in Christ, they will not be able to receive solid food no matter how well we preach or teach” (emphases added).⁵⁹

Almost invariably, the biblical proof texts (e.g., Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:16; Col. 1:27; Eph. 1:18–19) that Anderson cites in support of the importance of the believer’s identity⁶⁰ actually refer to the believer’s relationship with Christ — he shifts the Bible’s emphasis on God or Christ to an emphasis on self. After quoting 2 Peter 1:3–10 he comments, “According to Peter, they have forgotten who they are. They are out of touch with their true identity and purpose in Christ.”⁶¹ Actually, Peter says the problem with these individuals is that they’ve forgotten what God has done for them in cleansing their past sins (v. 9).

He seemingly comes closer to finding a proof text for his view in 1 John ch. 3. Concerning v. 3, “Every one who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure,”⁶² Anderson comments: “No person can consistently behave in a way that is inconsistent with how he perceives himself.” ⁶³ Although he fails to note it, the previous two verses do speak about believers’ identities as children of God. Nonetheless, this verse also fails to establish Anderson’s case. It does not state that believers are moved to purity through the correct perception of their saintly identities in the here and now but rather through the confident hope that they will partake in Christ’s perfect moral nature in the future. Although John does speak about the believer’s identity as a child of God, he simply does not give this fact the psychological application on which Anderson has built his entire ministry.

Not only do Anderson’s proof texts fail to show that seeing oneself as a sinner produces sinful behavior, but many other Bible passages pointedly contradict such a notion. Both in the Old and New Testaments, great saints often expressed an acute consciousness of being great sinners (especially on those clarity-producing occasions when they came face-to-face with the Holy One of Israel):

Job: “I am unworthy — how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.”(Job 40:4)

Isaiah: “Woe to me!”…”I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Isa. 6:5)

Peter: “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8)

Paul: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?’ (Rom. 7:24)“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst”(1 Tim. 1:15)

Almost 100 years ago, theologian A. H. Strong offered an explanation for this arresting phenomenon that might seem disconcerting at the present time, when the siren song of self-esteem psychology is so alluring that even the church is not immune. Nonetheless, it has the ring of biblical and experiential truth: “It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all.”⁶⁴

I do not mean to imply that Neil Anderson is a “slave of sin.” But I do mean to warn that those who embrace his teaching on the believer’s identity risk developing a dangerous dullness to their true spiritual condition.

Next issue, in Part Two: Spiritual Warfare and the Seven Steps to Freedom.

NOTES

1. Neil T. Anderson, Helping Others Find Freedom in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1995), 234–35.

2. Brent Grimsley and Elliot Miller, “Can a Christian Be ‘Demonized’?” Christian Research Journal, Summer 1993, 16–19, 37–38. (Photocopies available on request from CRI.)

3. Neil T. Anderson, Victory over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990), 10.

4. Dr. Neil Anderson, Released from Bondage (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993), 14.

5. “About Freedom in Christ Ministries,” Freedom in Christ web site, http://www.freedominchrist.com.

6. Released, 10.

7. Anderson discusses this goal in Helping, 247–48.

8. As he does in, e.g., The Bondage Breaker (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990), 71, 77.

9. Examples of Anderson inciting fear of demons will be found in Part Two and especially in Part Three.

10. Examples will be provided throughout this series.

11. Victory, 44-45.

12. Ibid., 42-43.

13. Ibid., 59. This is the 22d among 29 otherwise perfectly biblical affirmations.

14. Ibid., 73.

15. Bondage Breaker, 45.

16. Victory, 79-80.

17. Ibid., 44.

18. Dr. Neil Anderson, Walking in the Light (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), 48.

19. Victory, 71-72.

20. See, e.g., ibid., 84-85.

21. An unambiguous statement of forensic justification is set forth in his The Common Made Holy. ([Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1997], 64–67.) But since the book is coauthored with theologian Robert L. Saucy (who may well be responsible for the improved theology), and since the problematic statements noted in Anderson’s other books have not been revised, Anderson’s teaching on justification remains a cause for concern.

22. Bondage Breaker, 144.

23. Victory, 63-64.

24. Ibid., 83-84.

25. Ibid., 75.

26. Bondage Breaker, 45–46.

27. Victory, 95.

28. Ibid., 98.

29. Ibid., 94.

30. Documentation for the assertions made in this paragraph can be found in Bondage Breaker, 43; Walking, 72; Common, 327; Helping, 68.

31. Victory, 77.

32. Ibid., 81.

33. Bondage Breaker, 114.

34. In Walking (90), Anderson attempts to clarify his position: “Do I believe in the depravity of man? I certainly do. I believe I was utterly dead in my trespasses and sins, separated from God, and there was nothing I could do about it.” Note however that his definition of depravity does not include the essential characteristic of a positive inclination toward evil, but is rather basically characterized as “separation from God.” This only underscores my point that, for Anderson, fallenness is essentially a state of deprivation and not depravity.

35. In Common, Anderson and Saucy acknowledge this verse in a discussion of the human heart. Although their comments sound more like the traditional view of human depravity than do Anderson’s other works, they are ambiguous enough to be compatible with those works. They still affirm that the heart “has been conditioned, from the time of birth, by the deceitfulness of a fallen world rather than by the truth of God’s Word.” (79; emphasis added.)

36. Scripture teaches instead that it is rooted in the human heart (e.g., Mark 7:21–23), and thus its primary solution is a new heart (Ezek. 36:26–27; Heb. 8:10) rather than a program of mental reconditioning.

37. Anderson admitted as much in a January 1998 teaching on “Mental Strongholds” at a “Teaching Directors Conference” (tape on file).

38. Common, 150–51.

39. Victory, 166–67.

40. Ibid., 18.

41. See, e.g., Bondage Breaker, 83; Neil T. Anderson and Steve Russo, The Seduction of Our Children (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1991), 123.

42. Victory, 71. See also Bondage Breaker, 42.

43. See, e.g., Bondage Breaker, 153–54.

44. Victory, 43–44.

45. Ibid., 50.

46. Bondage Breaker, 44.

47. E.g., ibid., 192.

48. Victory, ch. 6.

49. Another good example of teaching that could be construed this way is found in Seduction, 20.

50. Ibid., 63.

51. Ibid., 234–35.

52. Robert H. Schuller, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1982), 66.

53. Victory, 49.

54. Ibid., 45-47.

55. Ibid., 47-48.

56. See the four-part series by Bob and Gretchen Passantino, “Psychology and the Church,” that appeared in the Christian Research Journal (Winter 1993–Fall 1995).

57. See Joseph P. Gudel, “A New Reformation? The Faulty Gospel of Robert Schuller,” Forward, Spring 1985, 16–25. (Photocopies available on request from CRI.)

58. Helping, 71.

59. Ibid., 112.

60. Ibid., 14, 17.

61. Victory, 144.

62. Scripture quotations in this article and sidebar are taken either from the New International Version or the New American Standard Bible.

63. Walking, 178.

64. Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D. LL D., Systematic Theology (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1907), 576.

SIDEBAR: How to Win the War Within

The apostle Paul says that the law of sin dwells “in [our] members” (Rom. 7:23) and further exhorts us not to let it reign in our mortal bodies (Rom. 6:12), suggesting that it is present there. If the principle of sin remains with us, and the term sin nature refers to this principle, then how can Neil Anderson maintain that Christians no longer have a sin nature?

Anderson gets into theological trouble because of his inadequate understanding of what the term nature means. Nature here refers to one’s disposition, inclination, or bent — the principle or law that governs one’s behavior. When Anderson writes that “no person can consistently behave in a way that is inconsistent with how he perceives himself,”¹ he fails to recognize that it is not one’s self-perception but rather one’s nature with which one cannot behave inconsistently. If Christians had only a Christlike nature they could only behave like Christ.

The reason Christians are capable of both righteousness and sin is that they have two natures from which to draw. Now, there is another, larger sense in which the term nature is used that refers to an entity’s collection of defining attributes. In this sense, all human beings have only one nature that includes one moral faculty that is capable of both good and evil. Using the narrower sense of the term nature (disposition determined by principle or law), this moral faculty takes the form of the sin nature when it is governed by evil and the new nature when it is governed by good.

In addition to the orientation around the interests of self that all mortals possess, Christians are given an additional orientation around the interests of God. The new orientation inclines them toward good and thus wages war with their original orientation, which inclines them toward evil. The New Testament clearly describes Christians in a state of inner conflict in which they must deny one set of natural inclinations or the other (see Gal. 5:16–17; Rom. 7:15–25; James 4:1–3; 1 Pet. 2:11).

It isn’t as though Christians start out with three-fourths of the original nature and one-fourth of the new and must work to decrease and increase the respective percentages. The old nature is still there in its full strength and ugliness — but they are no longer slaves to it. They can and must choose daily which orientation they are going to “clothe” themselves with or “put on” (Rom. 13:14; Eph. 4:22–24; Col 3:1–14). Sanctification consists of increasingly learning to live according to the new capacity, which is accomplished as the Word of God is applied to every area of one’s life² (e.g., Ps. 119:11, 105; James 1:22–27; Heb. 4:2; 5:12–14; 1 John 2:4–5).

The Bible calls the old nature sin or the flesh. The new nature is referred to as the spirit, and the individual as determined by these natures is identified either as the old man (self: NIV, NASB) or the new man. The spirit is the moral nature of Christ, just as the flesh is the moral nature of Adam after the Fall that he passed on to his descendants. Christ is the second man, the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:42–50). All human beings are identified with Adam by birth and thus do by nature the things that Adam would do. Those who are identified with Christ by faith and second birth have transferred from the headship of Adam to that of Christ (Rom. 5:12–21), and now, by the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ, have a second nature to do what He would do. In the next world, this will be the only possibility. But in this world, sin remains “in my members.” By this, Scripture is teaching that the very fact of human mortality carries with it not only physical corruptibility, but moral corruptibility as well.

It is because of the spiritual corruptibility that is inseparable from the mortal body that Paul cries, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24), and that believers, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, “groan inwardly” as they eagerly await the redemption of their bodies from mortality to immortality (Rom. 8:23). As long as we remain in our mortal state we will also remain vulnerable to the tendencies to corruption that define mortality.³ Anderson’s insistence that mortal believers no longer have a sin nature is therefore as much a non sequitur as the insistence of “faith” teachers that mortal believers should live perfectly free of sickness and physical deterioration.

This inextricable relationship of the sinful nature to our mortal bodies is why Paul calls the sin nature the “flesh.” It is human nature apart from the redeeming influence of the Spirit of God, and thus Paul can say, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:19). Since sin remains “right there with” every believer (Rom. 7:21), he or she must make a conscious choice to walk according to the new nature and mortify in his or her day-to-day life that which forensically and ultimately was put to death on the cross (Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:24; Col. 3:5).

1 John 1:8 specifically states, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Note that John speaks of having sin, not committing sin. The term sin in its singular form is frequently used in the New Testament to refer to a principle or law that results in acts of disobedience rather than specific acts of disobedience themselves (John 8:34; Acts 8:23; Rom. 5:12–21; 6:2, 6–7, 10–23; 7:7–27; 8:2; Gal. 3:22; Heb. 12:1, 4).

Anderson responds to this observation by arguing, “‘Having’ sin and ‘being’ sin are two totally different concepts.”⁴ Indeed, they are. But those who argue that Christians still have a sin nature do not claim that Christians are sin. If Christians were sin they would be incapable of anything but evil. But if they have sin it means that they possess a disposition toward evil that must be counteracted by the new disposition toward good they’ve received in Christ. Only if sinning is rooted in natures they will continue to possess for the rest of their lives does the apostle John’s statement make sense. If, as Anderson teaches, sin is merely rooted in conditioning that can be changed, it is theoretically possible to stop sinning permanently — which would contradict 1 John 1:8.

The Bible does generally call Christians saints and not sinners (believers are called sinners in 1 Timothy 1:15, James 4:1–9, 5:19–20, and Galatians 2:17) because the term sinner usually connotes someone whose life is characterized by unrepentant sin (e.g., 1 Tim. 1: 9; 1 Pet. 4:18). The apostle John referred to this kind of sin when he affirmed that someone who is born of God does not sin (1 John 3:9). But it is no more unbiblical for us to say we are sinners than it was for Paul in 1 Timothy 1:15,⁵ for “nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.”

Anderson makes a gallant attempt to reconcile his doctrine of sin to one of its most difficult biblical challenges — Romans 7: “Notice that there is only one player in these two verses [15-16] — the ‘I,’ mentioned nine times. Notice also that this person has a good heart; he agrees with the law of God. But this good-hearted Christian has a behavior problem….He agrees with God but ends up doing the very things he hates.” After quoting vv. 17–21 Anderson asks, “How many players are involved now? Two: sin and me. But sin is clearly not me; it’s only dwelling in me….Do these verses say that I am no good, that I am evil or that I am sin? Absolutely not. They say that I have something dwelling in me which is no good, evil and sinful, but it’s not me.”⁶

Paul’s dissociation of himself from the evil within him is not to deny that that evil is part of his own nature (see, e.g., vv. 14, 17, 18, 21). His point in Romans 7 is rather to illustrate the crisis the child of God eventually reaches where, even after his or her mind has become fully possessed by desire for the things of God, still he or she cannot break the shackles of sin (see, e.g., v. 18). Such experiences demonstrate the principle that sin is fused into his or her very mortality and, therefore, will power is insufficient to bring deliverance. Paul discusses the Christian’s only recourse in the larger context of Romans 6:1—8:4: to identify by faith with Christ. Because they have judicially been executed for their sin in the person of Christ and are therefore no longer under the law of God (which excites the sin nature into action), their lives need and should no longer be dominated by sin, but rather by the grace of God (Rom. 6:1—8:4). As Paul triumphantly concludes, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2).

In Victory Anderson never explains exactly who this second “player” that is not “me,” but dwells “in me,” is. His answer is provided in Released from Bondage:

I personally believe that the word sin in Romans 6:12 is personified, referring to the person of Satan . . . . Satan is sin: the epitome of evil, the prince of darkness, the father of lies. I would have a hard time understanding how only a principle (as opposed to an evil personal influence) would reign in my mortal body in such a way that I would have no control over it. Even more difficult to understand is how I could get a principle out of my body. Paul says, “I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good” (Romans 7:21). What is present in me is evil — the person, not the principle — and it is present in me because at some time I used my body as an instrument of unrighteousness. (emphases in original)⁷

When we examine the previously cited New Testament passages referring to sin in the singular, we see that it is implausible to interpret them as referring to Satan. In fact, the word sin is sometimes used interchangeably with the phrase law of sin, showing that the subject is a principle and not a person.

The fact that Anderson has a hard time understanding this is exactly the heart of his problem. Whether we are dealing with impersonal sin or the personal devil determines our response. If we are combating an inner disposition toward evil, we respond to it by identifying ourselves with the crucified and risen Christ and aligning ourselves with His will (Rom. 6:5–14). On the other hand, if we are combating an alien personality working within our very beings, we will focus our response directly on him — as does Anderson’s entire approach to spiritual warfare. But the former response is the biblical response, for although Satan uses the world and the flesh to tempt us, it is our own sinful choices that actually get us into trouble. Our own tendency toward sin therefore is what needs to be dealt with directly, not the devil. As will become painfully clear in Part Two, Anderson’s inadequate view of the flesh has led him to an exaggerated view of the devil.

It’s not that Anderson denies that sin can originate from the Christian’s own mind. But his definition of the flesh as merely the “residue of your negative conditioning”⁸ is inadequate to account for the gross evil Christians often encounter within themselves. To explain this, only the devil will do.⁹ In fact, Anderson reasons that it is harmful for Christians to attribute truly evil thoughts to themselves:

Assure the counselee that any thoughts which do not “joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man” (Romans 7:22) are from Satan.¹⁰

She replied, “Sometimes, when I go to church, I think these awful thoughts about God and dirty thoughts go through my mind.” “That’s not you,” I assured her. Half an hour later she understood the origin of those thoughts and Satan’s tactics; the thoughts were gone and so was her fear. If those thoughts had been her thoughts, then what could she have concluded about her nature? “How can I be a Christian and have those kinds of thoughts?” she reasoned, and so do millions of other well-meaning Christians.¹¹ (emphasis added)

Those who say a demon cannot influence [read: control] an area of a believer’s life have left us with only two possible culprits for the problems we face: ourselves or God. If we blame ourselves we feel hopeless because we can’t do anything to stop what we’re doing. If we blame God our confidence in Him as our benevolent Father is shattered. Either way, we have no chance to gain the victory which the Bible promises us.¹²

[A woman named Anne wrote to Anderson in the middle of one of his conferences:] “I didn’t know what it meant to take every thought captive. I tried to do this once, but I was unsuccessful because I blamed myself for all this stuff. I thought all those thoughts were mine and that I was the one who was doing it. There has always been a terrible cloud hanging over my head because of these issues. I never could accept the fact that I was really righteous because I didn’t feel like it. Praise God it was only Satan — not me. I have worth!”¹³

There is a biblical basis for saying some of our evil thoughts are provoked by Satan (e.g., 1 Chron. 21:1; Matt. 16:23; John 13:2; Acts 5:3), but there is no biblical basis for saying all of them do (James 1:14; 4:1; Rom. 8:7; 1 Pet. 2:11; Gal. 5:17). Anderson fails to recognize that evil can originate from ourselves (our flesh) and yet we can still gain victory over the power and guilt of sin through Christ’s cross and indwelling Spirit (see, e.g., Heb. 9:13–14; Gal. 5:16–25). His desire to protect us from responsibility for the evil in our hearts contradicts his own emphasis that we should take responsibility and not fall into a “devil made me do it” mentality.

This is a serious error. The biblical answer to what Anne was experiencing is first to agree with Paul that “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18) and then to see that her righteousness is entirely in Jesus Christ. Only after one reaches the point of utter self-despair that cries out with Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will set me free from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24) can one experience the deliverance that also proclaims with Paul, “Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25). So, Anderson inadvertently perpetuates the very bondage he wants to free people from by feeding rather than confronting that fleshly concern to feel worthy in and of oneself.

Christians can never stand before God with total confidence until they find their righteousness strictly outside of themselves, in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ ( Phil. 3:3–9; 1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 10:3–4). Only then will Christ’s imparted righteousness take shape in their lives (Gal. 6:14–15; Rom. 8:1–4). As soon as they begin to consider that imparted righteousness as their own righteousness they will find themselves walking after the flesh again (Gal. 1:18—2:14; 2 Cor. 3:5; 1 Cor. 10:12; Prov. 16:18; Rev. 3:17–18). Therefore, it really does not matter whether a thought originates from Satan or the Christian, because the Christian should not be making any claims to personal righteousness before God in the first place.

NOTES

1. Dr. Neil Anderson, Walking in the Light (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), 178–79.

2. This is primarily a spiritual exercise of faith and obedience rather than a psychological reconditioning process, as Anderson portrays sanctification (see accompanying article).

3. Nonetheless, in the true believer the new nature ultimately prevails over the old (e.g., 1 John 3:9; 5:18; Phil. 1:6).

4. Neil T. Anderson, Helping Others Find Freedom in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1995), 72.

5. Anderson argues that Paul “was referring to his nature before his conversion to Christ.” (Neil T. Anderson, Victory over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ [Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990], 72; emphasis in original.) Paul’s exact words, however, were “I am (Greek: eimi, present tense) the chief of sinners.” No doubt Paul’s preconversion sins qualified him to be chief among sinners, but it was his ongoing possession of a sin nature that qualified him to be presently ranked in that category.

6. Victory, 82–83.

7. Dr. Neil Anderson, Released from Bondage (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993), 123–24.

8. See, e.g., Victory, 167.

9. Ibid.

10. Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990), 227–28.

11. Released, 13–14.

12. Bondage Breaker, 174.

13. Released, 41.