Christianity is often pejoratively referred to as “dirty rotten sinner” religion. Our detractors will often say something like this: “Christians tend to be so guilt-ridden. They feel that they have to go through life degrading themselves in order to win God’s approval. I find that very depressing. Instead, I want a spirituality that’s positive, freeing, and one that will make me feel good about myself.” This type of reaction is very understandable. We all want to be happy, and it might seem that the gospel is a one-way street into a medieval village where the Inquisition is diabolically entrenched, seeking to wipe away every smile. While it’s a hard sell merely to claim that the gospel will set us free from so many of life’s torments, a story might prove helpful. For the first few years that I was teaching Bible and theology at the New York School of the Bible, I was assailed by such intense feelings of unworthiness, shame, and self-contempt that they co-opted my thought life. Driven by such powerful feelings, my self-doubts seemed to speak with unassailable authority: “You teach? What type of Christian are you anyway? You think you really have faith? Look how selfish and self-absorbed you are. How are you going to help anyone? What a charlatan, posing in the front of the class as some type of authority! What do you think their reaction would be if they really knew you?” Devastated by these indictments, I wanted to disappear and to have the buildings of New York City implode over my head and swallow me up without a sign. Many times I thought of calling my school to say, “Find yourself someone else. I’m not your man.” But gradually, the gospel began to take root.

Good Christian. In my longstanding pre-Christian struggle to attain some sense of significance and value, I’d ward off the shame and self-contempt through positive affirmations: “I’m a good person; no, I’m a vastly superior person. I’m _____, _____, _____, and more. I’m a once-in-a-lifetime person!” There was no end to the superlatives. In fact, I was always inventing new ones-whatever I needed to tell myself to keep the shame at bay. However, these never sufficed, and so I always needed to up the superlatives in order to overcome the ubiquitous feelings of shame. As a Christian, I learned that it was wrong to engage in such self-stroking. But I had to do something about the poisonous arrows of my own demons. I needed to prove myself, and now I had a new vehicle with which to do it. I would excel at spirituality! I would prove, at least to myself, that I was worthy of God’s grace. I reassured myself that I was more deserving of salvation than others. I was more spiritual; I had chosen God because I wasn’t as carnal as most of the human race. I had the keenness of mind to recognize the surpassing value of the things of God, and I had a great destiny, not just in heaven, like all the other Christians, but I would also lead the way here. God loves us too much, however, to allow us to continue in our delusions. He closed my hand to all my dreams of spiritual accomplishment. Even more difficult to endure, I began to see my own poverty of spirit, my utter unworthiness. My levees were overwhelmed, and the demons of shame and self-contempt came roaring back. I feverishly sought to rebuild the levees with good works-anything that would tell me, “You’re OK!” However, in my torment, I began to read the Bible with new tear-filled eyes, hoping to find a God tucked within its pages who would be far more merciful than I had ever dared to hope for. Jesus told a parable about two men who entered the temple to pray. One was a self-assured Pharisee, the other a broken sinner who lacked the confidence even to look up to heaven (Luke 18:9-14). I had become that broken sinner, now defenseless against the internal raging. I had been stripped of confidence and any sense that there was something about me that would merit even a glance from a holy God. Paradoxically, this was the beginning of psychological freedom. I had been stripped bare of all my defenses, and for the first time in my life, I gradually found that I didn’t need them. I could finally let go of my miserable fig leaves, because I was beginning to know a God who wanted to clothe me with His forgiveness, His righteousness, and His sanctification (1 Cor. 1:29-30). I was beginning to learn that I was complete in Him (Col. 2:9-10), not because of who I am, but because of who He is. It took me a while to learn these lessons. The Bible was my thought life foundation, but it seemed to say such contradictory things. On the one hand, it assured me that salvation, along with everything else I needed, was absolutely free. But then I observed that other verses seemed to say that God’s “gifts” also required some labor on my part. These “contradictions” first needed to be resolved before I could decisively confront my demons. However slowly, that day did come. Now, when demons accuse me of my failures and unworthiness, I’m ready for them: “Satan, you’re right! I am totally unworthy to serve God, let alone to teach. I don’t deserve the slightest thing from Him. But I have an incredible God who is everything to me-my righteousness, my sanctification, and whatever else I need. He loves me with an undying love and will never leave me. It is He who has given me the privilege to serve Him by teaching. I’m so glad that I’ve been reminded of my unworthiness, because this just prompts me to be grateful, and makes me want to sing His praises.” Understanding the truths of Scripture becomes a wellspring of peace (Col. 2:1-4). I’m now rid of some baggage that had been too heavy to bear. As Jesus said, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32 NKJV). The truth has set me free-free from the need to defend myself, free from struggling to prove myself, free from shame and self-contempt, and free from the fear of failure. Well, not absolutely free, but free enough. This freedom would never have come without seeing the depths of my unworthiness. Had I not come to this crushing point, I would never have discovered true grace, and without receiving this incredible grace, I never would have found the confidence to lay aside all the inner struggles and finally to accept the fact that I’m an utter sinner saved by grace. Not everyone’s experience is as intense as mine was, but we all have a conscience that tells us things we don’t want to hear, and we all have attempted to beat it down one way or another (Rom. 1:18-21). We all yearn to prove ourselves and, to accomplish this, we resort to self-deception. This isn’t merely a biblical point of view; this is the prevailing view of psychology. Shelley Taylor writes, “As we have seen, people are positively biased in their assessments of themselves and of their ability to control what goes on around them, as well as in their views of the future. The widespread existence of these biases and the ease with which they can be documented suggests that they are normal.”¹ While for the successful and admired, these biases are easy to maintain, for the depressed, they require more effort than can be sustained. Ironically, the more successful we are at maintaining our comforting self-delusions, the more we sacrifice mental flexibility, freedom, and joy. As paradoxical as it might seem, the road to freedom compels us on a humbling journey through the “valley of the shadow of death” (Ps. 23:4 NKJV), where our old armor and defenses are stripped away so that we can be reclothed in splendor. No wonder Jesus tells us, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14 NKJV).

Blessed Assurance. How then do we come to this place of assurance of God’s grace in the face of our spiritual brokenness? It’s not possible on our own. Jesus had taught emphatically against the idea of self-salvation (Matt. 19:26; John 3:3; 6:44). He made it equally clear, however, that spiritual growth is also impossible without His involvement (John 15:4-5). Knowing this, we have to trust Him to perform for us the humanly impossible and to cry out for His intervention. Spiritual desperation is a lens that brings grace into focus. It’s this mourning that sharpens our eyes to the reality of grace (Matt. 5:3-4; Ps. 25:8-9; 14-15). But what if we don’t see our neediness? We have to embrace the prayer of David: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23-24 NIV). Trust Him in this. He has promised to reveal to us our spiritual deficiencies as He also did for the churches of the book of Revelation (chaps. 2-3). As Paul proclaimed: “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained” (Phil. 3:14-16 NIV). The more we grow into the assurance of the gift of His acceptance, the more we will grow into self-acceptance. With self-acceptance, we can begin to be transparent about our failures and inadequacies and even to laugh at ourselves. I used to think that in order to show Christ off to the world, I had to exhibit Christ-like perfection. Well, I’ve learned instead that I’m far from perfect, but I have a Savior who is perfect. I’m inadequate, but He is fully adequate. This has given me not only a freedom to be me, but also a lowliness and a confidence to draw other broken people to the One who can make all the difference. -Daniel Mann

Daniel Mann has taught at the New York School of Bible since 1992. He is the author of Embracing the Darkness: How a Jewish, Sixties, Berkeley Radical Learned to Live with Depression, God’s Way. He blogs at: www.MannsWord.blogspot. com.

NOTES

1 Shelley E. Taylor, Positive Illusions (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 46.

When I graduated from college in 1989, it looked like socialism was dead. The Soviet Union—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—was in its death throes. In comparison, the American economy was booming, and countries around the world were beginning to liberalize their markets. After a sophomoric flirtation with socialism, I had concluded that capitalism was probably the most workable economic model. I had not resolved my lingering suspicions, however, that capitalism was immoral and that socialism was still the Christian ideal.

Part of that impression came from biblical passages that seem to suggest as much: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.…There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:32–35 ESV).

Many who have read this passage have wondered if the early church was communist and the Christian ideal is communism. After all, this was the first church in Jerusalem. They were “filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31 NIV). If they didn’t get it right, who did?

On the surface, this looks like communism, but that’s a misreading. The details and context here are everything.

First of all, modern communism is based on Marx’s theory of class warfare, in which the workers revolt against the capitalists—the owners of the means of production—and forcibly take control of private property. After a while, Marx predicted, the socialist state would wither away and you’d get a communist utopia in which everyone lived in peace, harmony, and preternatural freedom. There’s none of this class warfare stuff in the early church in Jerusalem, nor is private property treated as immoral. These Christians are selling their possessions and sharing freely and spontaneously.

Second, the state is nowhere in sight. No Roman centurions are showing up with soldiers. No government is confiscating property and collectivizing industry. No one is being coerced. The church in Jerusalem was just that—the church, not the state. The church doesn’t act like the modern communist state. As Ron Sider notes, “Sharing was voluntary, not compulsory.”¹ In fact, sharing by definition is voluntary.

It’s easy to lose sight of this later in the text, though, when Peter condemns Ananias and Sapphira for keeping back some of the money they got from selling their land. If you don’t read it carefully, you might get the impression that he condemns them for failing to give everything to the collective:  “Ananias.…why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the lands? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to men but to God!” (Acts 5:3–4 ESV). But look closely at the text; Peter condemns them not for keeping part of the proceeds of the sale, but for lying about it. In fact, he takes for granted that the property was rightfully theirs, even after it was sold. So Peter isn’t condemning private property.

Third, the communal life of the early church in Jerusalem is never made the norm for all Christians everywhere. In fact, it’s not even described as the norm for the Jerusalem church. What Acts is describing is an unusual moment in the life of the early church, when the church was still very small. Remember, this is the beginning of the church in Jerusalem. Thousands of new Christians probably had come from a long distance to worship in Jerusalem at Pentecost. They would have had to return home soon after their conversion if not for the extreme measures taken by the newborn church to allow these Christians to stay and be properly discipled. Given the alternatives, a mutual sharing of possessions seemed to be the best course of action.

Compared to modern nation states, the Jerusalem church was a small community banding together against an otherwise hostile culture. The circumstances were peculiar. For all we know, this communal stage lasted six months before the church got too large. It’s unlikely that all these new Christians, many denizens of the far-flung Jewish Diaspora, stayed in Jerusalem for the rest of their lives. Many probably returned home at some point, and brought their new faith with them.

We know from the New Testament that other churches in other cities had quite different arrangements. For instance, Paul sternly warned the Thessalonian Christians, “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” and told them to “earn the bread they eat” (2 Thess. 3: 10, 12 NIV). Apparently some new Christians had begun to take advantage of the generosity of their new brothers in the faith. That’s not an especially surprising scenario, given the effects of the Fall. So it’s no surprise that the early communal life in Jerusalem was never held up as a model for how the entire church should order its life, let alone used to justify the state confiscating private property.

Communal living does have its place. Nuclear families live more or less communally. In functional families, however, someone is in charge, namely, the parents. So it’s not really a commune.

Many monasteries and religious orders are more or less communal to this day. These are highly disciplined, voluntary communities that are self-consciously separate from the ordinary life of family and commerce. Many of them survive for centuries—and in fact, the productivity of some early monasteries helped give rise to capitalism in medieval Europe.²

There have been other voluntary, nonmonastic groups that have tried to live communally. The American Amish and the Jesus People USA live in communal or semi-communal groups today. And there were lots of examples of Christian communes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The ones that survived very long were small, voluntary, and intensely disciplined.³

The Pilgrims and Communism. In fact, even most private, voluntary communal experiments fail. American children hear the story of William Bradford at Thanksgiving. Bradford was the architect of the Mayflower Compact and the leader of a small band of separatists who founded the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620. Most young students learn that the colony lost half its population during its first, harsh winter, but few know about the colony’s brief and tragic experiment with collective ownership. Because of an ill-conceived deal made with the investors who funded the expedition, the Pilgrims held their farmland communally rather than as private plots. They divided their food, work, and provisions evenly. This may sound nice, and the Pilgrims may have thought they were replicating the model of the early church in Jerusalem; but before long, conflicts arose among the colonists. Bradford reports in his journal what economists and common sense predict. In large groups, such an arrangement leads to perverse incentives, in which the lazier members “free ride,” taking advantage of the harder working. The other members grow more and more frustrated, and less and less productive. That’s just what happened in the early years of Plymouth Bay Colony.

To solve the problem, Bradford soon decided to divide the plots up to the individual families. Suddenly people had strong incentives to produce, and they did. Over the years, more and more of the land was privatized, and the colony eventually became a prosperous part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.⁴ If Bradford had not had the guts to divide the commune into private lots, our school children would not be making little cutouts of turkeys and Mayflowers every November, since there probably would have been few if any survivors.

The Early Christians Weren’t Communists—and We Shouldn’t Be, Either. The take-home lesson should be clear: neither the book of Acts nor historical experience commends communism. In fact, full-bodied communism is alien to the Christian worldview and had little to do with the arrangement of early Christians in Jerusalem. While there have been and still are small, atypical groups that manage to pull off some form of communal living, at least for a while, there’s no reason to think that communal living—let alone communism—ever has been the Christian ideal. —Jay W. Richards

 Jay W. Richards is the author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (Harper-One, 2009).

 NOTES

1. Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 1997), 78.
2. See Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York: Random House, 2005).
3. For a detailed history of communism/socialism, see Joshua Muravchik, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003).
4. Tom Bethell, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), 37–45.

Richard Dawkins has redefined himself again. Earlier, Dawkins transitioned from academic works of theoretical biology to his popular atheistic manifesto, The God Delusion. Now, Dawkins has moved on to the scientific education of youth. Combining lavish color illustrations by David McKean with his own supple and enthusiastic prose, Dawkins aims to inspire a new generation with the belief that naturalistic science is the only source both of knowledge and of true “magic”-the poetic wonder of discovery. The book would not be much of a problem if it stuck to data and theories. But throughout the text, Dawkins inserts fatherly asides to caution the reader against supernatural, superstitious nonsense-the enemy of true science. The procedure is to offer sober science and an atheistic worldview as a package deal. C. S. Lewis discerned a similar danger in the “Green Book,” ostensibly a work of English grammar, whose actual effect was to inculcate moral relativism: “The very power of [the book] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy…who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory which they put into his head, but an assumption, which ten years hence…will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.”¹ Dawkins’s approach is to mold impressionable minds with the presumption that all that really exists is a closed physical universe of pitiless indifference (p. 235). Pursuing the logic of natural selection, he concludes that a living creature is simply “a survival machine for genes. Next time you look in the mirror, just think: that is what you are too” (74-75). This means that the “poetic wonder” of scientific discovery has no ultimate significance. There are no valuable truths to discover, nor valuable people to discover them: we are lumbering robots in a meaningless world. Like the Green Book criticized by Lewis, Dawkins’s book will likely produce more people “without a chest,” closed to the transcendent realms of God’s moral law and saving work.

Propaganda. Throughout Dawkins’s entertaining text, which explores biology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, natural disasters, and alleged miracles, Dawkins seeks to discredit biblical revelation by citing its stories as myths alongside pagan myths and modern “urban legends.” Thus Genesis is presented with Norse mythology (34-35) and Dawkins repeats the old chestnut that since there are elements in common between the flood account in The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis flood, the latter is cultural borrowing (140-43). Although there are some similarities, many of these would be expected in any flood account, and there are also marked differences. Most importantly, Dawkins does not seriously consider the possibility that both accounts arise from an actual historical event. Worse, when archaeologists do find evidence of the historicity of a biblical event, Dawkins attributes it all to purely natural causes anyway (208-9). And he relies heavily on David Hume’s famous critique of miracles (254-65), with no reference to John Earman’s devastating critique, Hume’s Abject Failure (Oxford, 2000).

Invincible Ignorance. Evidently, Dawkins has adopted a position that makes it impossible for him to contact transcendent realities. Dawkins tells us he would never accept a supernatural explanation regardless of the evidence, “Because anything ‘super natural’ must by definition be beyond the reach of a natural explanation” (23). But refusing to allow supernatural explanations does not show they are false. And Dawkins continues to complain that “none of the myths gives any explanation for how the creator of the universe himself…came into existence” (163), refusing to allow the idea of a necessary being that has no origin. Interestingly, Dawkins never considers the possibility that theism might give a better explanation than materialism for the success of the science he prizes. Why does the world conform to orderly laws? Why should we expect our minds to be capable of discovering them? If he faced these questions without prejudice, Dawkins might begin to see that there is a deeper magic still.

-Angus Menuge

Angus Menuge, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy at Concordia University, Wisconsin.

NOTES

1 C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 16-17.

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Christianity Today recently had a cover story reporting on Christians who claim that human beings could not all have descended from a single human couple. That story was a symptom of a current trend: more and more Christians, even self-identified evangelicals, claim that Christians must make their peace with evolutionary theory. In recent years, scientists such as Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, Ken Miller, Darrell Falk, and others have written books defending theistic evolution or evolutionary creationism. The historical reality of Adam and Eve is obviously central to historic Christianity; but it is just one of many issues that, as Christians, we must consider when exploring the broader debate over God and evolution. Unfortunately, the debate is often marred by confusion and ambiguity. Though we can’t discuss every related issue here, let’s see what we can do to think more clearly about the subject.

CAN WE GET A DEFINITION?

I am often asked questions such as, “Can you believe in God and evolution?” and “Isn’t evolution just God’s way of creating?” I always respond: “That depends. What do you mean by ‘God’ and what do you mean by ‘evolution’?” That might seem like a dodge, but everything hinges on the definitions. Presumably, a theistic evolutionist claims that both theism in some sense and evolution in some sense are true, that both God and evolution somehow work together in explaining the world. But of course, all the real interest is hidden behind the phrase “in some sense.” So we have to get more specific.

“THEISM”

A theist believes that a transcendent God created the world and continues to conserve and interact in and with it. God can act directly in nature or indirectly through so-called secondary causes, such as physical laws or the actions of human beings. At all times, however, God oversees and providentially superintends His entire creation, even as He allows His creatures the freedom appropriate to their station. Nothing happens as the result of a purposeless process. This is a minimal definition of theism. If someone believes a transcendent God created the world but denies that God can and does act within nature, then at best, he’s a deist.

“EVOLUTION”

It’s a lot easier to define theism than to define evolution. It’s been called the ultimate weasel word. In an illuminating article called “The Meanings of Evolution,” Stephen Meyer and Michael Keas attempt to catch the weasel by distinguishing six different ways in which “evolution” is commonly used:

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature. 2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population. 3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor. 4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations. 5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor. 6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.¹

The first meaning is uncontroversial-even trivial. The most convinced young earth creationist agrees that things change over time-that the universe has a history.² Populations of animals wax and wane depending on changes in climate and the environment. At one time, certain flora and fauna prospered on the earth, but they later disappeared, leaving mere impressions in the rocks to mark their existence for future generations. There’s also cosmic “evolution,” the idea that the early universe started in a hot, dense state, and over billions of years, cooled off and spread out, formed stars, galaxies, planets, and so forth. This includes the idea of cosmic nucleosynthesis, which describes the production of heavy elements (everything heavier than helium) in the universe through a process of star birth, growth, and death. These events involve change over time, but they refer to the history of the inanimate physical universe rather than the history of life. Parts of this picture of cosmic evolution contradict young earth creationism, but the generic idea that one form of matter gives rise, under the influence of various natural laws and processes, to other forms of matter, does not contradict theism. Surely God could directly guide such a process in innumerable ways, could set up a series of secondary natural processes that could do the job, or could do some combination of both. In fact, to make a long story short, virtually no one denies the truth of “evolution” in senses 1, 2, or 3. And, pretty much everyone agrees that natural selection and mutations explain some things in biology (number 4). What about the fifth sense of evolution, universal common ancestry? This is the claim that all organisms on earth are descended from a single common ancestor that lived sometime in the distant past. Note that this is not the same as the mechanism of change. Universal common ancestry is compatible with all sorts of different mechanisms or sources for change, though the most popular mechanism is the broadly Darwinian one. It’s hard to square universal common descent with the biblical texts; nevertheless, it is logically compatible with theism. If God could turn dirt into a man, or a man’s rib into a woman, then presumably He could, if He so chose, turn a bacterium into a bonobo or a dinosaur into a deer. An unbroken evolutionary tree of life guided and intended by God, in which every organism descends from some original organism, sounds like a logical possibility.³ Besides the six senses mentioned by Meyer and Keas, there is also the metaphorical sense of evolution, in which Darwinian theory is used as a template to explain things other than nature, like the rise and fall of civilizations or sports careers. Finally, there’s evolution in the sense of progress or growth. Natural evolution has often been understood in this way, so that cosmic history is interpreted as a purposeful movement toward greater perfection, complexity, mind, or spirit. A pre-Darwinian understanding of evolution was the idea of a slow unfolding of something that existed in nascent form from the beginning, like an acorn slowly becoming a great oak tree. If anything, this sense of evolution tends toward theism rather than away from it, since it suggests a purposive plan. That’s why Darwin didn’t even use the word in early editions of his Origin of Species. It’s also why many contemporary evolutionists (such as the late Stephen Jay Gould) go out of their way to deny that evolution is progressive, and argue instead that cosmic history is not going anywhere in particular. It should now be clear that theism is compatible with many senses of evolution. In fact, for most of the senses of evolution we’ve considered, there’s little hint of contradiction. Of course, this is a logical point. It doesn’t tell us what is true-only what could be true.

SQUARE PEG IN A ROUND HOLE

But there’s one clear exception-the blind watchmaker thesis. Of all the senses of evolution, this one seems to fit with theism like oil with water. According to the blind watchmaker thesis, all the apparent design in life is just that-apparent. It’s really the result of natural selection working on random genetic mutations. (Darwin proposed “variation.” Neo-Darwinism attributes new variations to genetic mutations.) The word “random” in the blind watchmaker thesis carries a lot of metaphysical baggage. In Neo-Darwinian theory, random doesn’t mean uncaused; it means that the changes aren’t directed-they don’t happen for any purpose. Moreover, they aren’t predictable, like gravity, and don’t occur for the benefit of individual organisms, species, or eco-systems, even if, under the guidance of natural selection, an occasional mutation might enhance a species’ odds of survival. The blind watchmaker thesis is more or less the same as Neo-Darwinism as its leading advocates understand it. It is usually wedded to some materialistic origin of life scenario, which isn’t about biological evolution per se. This so-called chemical evolution is often combined with biological evolution as two parts of a single narrative. Unfortunately, the blind watchmaker thesis isn’t an eccentric definition of the word evolution. It’s textbook orthodoxy.⁴ For instance, Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson explained evolution by saying, “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”⁵ Darwin himself understood his theory this way: “There seems to be no more design,” he wrote, “in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the winds blow.”⁶ And here’s how the late Darwinist Ernst Mayr put it: “The real core of Darwinism, however, is the theory of natural selection. This theory is so important for the Darwinian because it permits the explanation of adaptation, the ‘design’ of the natural theologian, by natural means, instead of by divine intervention.”⁷ Notice that Mayr says, “instead of.” These are representative quotes from the literature. From the time of Darwin to the present, Darwinists have always contrasted their idea with the claim that biological forms are designed or created. That’s the whole point of the theory. Theists claim that the world, including the biological world, exists for a purpose; that it is, in some sense, designed. The blind watchmaker thesis denies this. So anyone wanting to reconcile strict Darwinian evolution with theism has a Grade A dilemma on his hands.

RESOLVING THE DILEMMA, SORT OF

One way out is to redefine the theistic part. For instance, one could defend deism, with God getting things started at the beginning but not knowing or superintending nature after that. Dissolving a dilemma, however, is not the same as resolving it. If the adjective theistic in theistic evolution is not to be a misnomer, it should include a theistic view of God. What about redefining it in the other direction? A theistic evolutionist could maintain that God sets up and guides nature so that it gives rise to everything from stars to starfish through a slowly developing process. Organisms perhaps share a common ancestor but reach their goal as intended by God. God works in nature, perhaps through cosmic initial conditions, physical laws, secondary processes, discrete acts, or some combination, to bring about His intended results, rather than creating everything from scratch. Whatever the details, on this view, the process of change and adaptation wouldn’t be random or purposeless. It would implement a plan, and would reflect God’s purposes. This would be a teleological version of evolution, and so would flatly reject the Darwinian blind watchmaker thesis. This was the view of some early theistic evolutionists such as Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of the concept of natural selection. Here the word evolution is being used in the pre-Darwinian, even anti-Darwinian sense. History is the unfolding of a purposeful plan. This is a logically possible view; it is not, however, the view of many of today’s theistic evolutionists, such as Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller. They seek to reconcile Christian theism with Darwinian evolution. They may affirm design in some broad sense at the cosmic level, but not in biology. How should we respond? There’s not much use in looking for evidence for this brand of theistic evolution, for the simple reason that it can’t be true. It’s not logically possible. It makes no sense to talk about a purposeful process that is nevertheless purposeless, or to talk about God directing an undirected process. To the degree that a view is Darwinian (as Darwinists understand it), it will not be theistic. And to the degree that it is theistic, it will not be Darwinian. If you understand that basic point, you’ll be much better equipped to navigate the current debate over theistic evolution.

Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute, editor of God and Evolution (Discovery Institute Press, 2010), and the author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (Harper One, 2009).

NOTES

1 In Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, ed. John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2004).

2 See the explanation for the meaning of “evolution” from the BioLogos Foundation, which seeks to give a Christian defense of evolution. The explanation begins with “change over time,” then goes on to fill out the definition with common descent and the Darwinian mechanism. But it quickly slips from defining the term to presenting the details as if they were uncontested facts. At: http://biologos.org/questions/what-is-evolution/.

3 I’m not saying this is true. I’m merely dealing with the logic of the ideas here. Since design is logically compatible with universal common descent, one could, strictly speaking, endorse both intelligent design and theistic evolution. Nevertheless, these days, ID and theistic evolution often describe people with different positions. See discussion of this point in the comments of Thomas Cudworth, “Olive Branch from Karl Giberson,” Uncommon Descent (April 15, 2010), at: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/olive-branch-from-karl-giberson/#more-13010.

4 For discussion, see Casey Luskin, “Smelling Blood in the Water: Why Theistic Evolution Won’t Appease the Atheists,” in God and Evolution, ed. Jay W. Richards (Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2010).

5 G. G. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man, rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), 345.

6 Francis Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1 (New York: Appleton, 1887), 280, 283-84, 278-79.

7 Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversy, with a foreword by Ernst Mayr (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1982), xi-xii. Quoted in ibid.

Apologetics is biblical. That’s why it should play a foundational role in the ministry of the local church. However, here are five additional reasons apologetics should be a staple in the life of the church.

First, it helps believers master the fundamentals of Christian doctrine so that they can effectively evangelize the lost (Titus 2:7-8). Second, it provides answers to objections leveled against truth (1 Pet. 3:15). Third, it inspires believers as well as nonbelievers to inquire more about the Christian faith (Acts 17:32-34; 26:28). Fourth, it teaches Christians to think critically through the philosophies of opposing worldviews (1 Tim. 1:3, 6-7). Finally, it can help the Christian who is experiencing a crisis of faith.¹

In short, apologetics is an essential component to help us grow in our faith and is therefore vital to the church in the twenty-first century. It is not vital to the church’s existence per se, but rather her quality of existence, that is, her effectiveness in engaging the culture for Christ (Matt. 5:13). Consider the words of Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton as they describe the infiltration of the church into the world: “We learn that until comparatively recent times, Christians have actively worked out the implications of their faith in all areas of life and scholarship-from philosophy to mathematics to physics to biology. Christian faith has not been a purely private matter. Nor has it been shut off in a separate part of life, as though it were relevant to worship but not to work.”² It is time we take our rightful stand in the world. The local church has been given an identity. She is the Lord’s mouthpiece and the world’s conscience. She is salt and God can use apologetics to shake her and the world up. Every church dedicated to the Lord’s mandate (Matt. 28:19-20) should be interested in evangelism. If evangelism deals with the spreading of the good news, then those who share it must be ready to articulate and defend the faith (1 Pet. 3:15).

Birth of an Apologetics Ministry. The ability to give a defense for the apostolic doctrine is at the core of the Christian faith (Acts 2:42). Any believer who constantly shares the good news will eventually meet someone who has a question about the Christian faith. This was my (Perseus’s) plight when we began witnessing in 1991. I just accepted Christ a year before and I had a zeal for witnessing. This burning desire to share Christ was also fueled by my close friends. They also loved the Lord and were willing to spread the gospel each Saturday. We met at the church at 11:00 a.m. for prayer and consecration. We would then walk the streets around the church sharing the gospel door to door. It was through this method of evangelism that our apologetics ministry was born. During one of our street witnessing ventures, we encountered two gentlemen. They were dressed in white shirts, black ties, and dark pants. They were very friendly and well informed. These two men professed to be believers in Jesus, the Bible, and the church. As our discussion progressed, however, we soon discovered their doctrinal belief was inconsistent with our biblical worldview. As a result, all the members of our witnessing group agreed to begin studying more about other faiths. We wanted to be able to articulate the Christian faith while effectively being able to give a defense for God’s word. This encounter compelled us to do more studying on the cults. In order to better understand the doctrines of the major cults, we made appointments to visit them. We were able to visit the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Nation of Islam mosque, and an orthodox Islam mosque. These experiences further buttressed the need for Christian apologetics. Our hearts were saddened from the experiences with the cults. We soon realized that if we were going to make an impact in our community, it would have to start with the church. As a result, we decided to approach our pastor about starting an apologetics ministry. Fortunately, we have a pastor who understands the word of God and he gave us permission to start the ministry. The St. Paul apologetics ministry started in 1992 at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, located in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, California. Under the leadership of Pastor Ephraim Williams, the church blossomed to a membership of about five thousand. According to a local survey, Oak Park had within its limits approximately one hundred churches. We were not aware that any of these churches had an apologetics ministry and so there were no models for us to follow, but Pastor Williams publicly gave us his vote of confidence from the pulpit and informed the congregation about the new apologetics ministry and its function. We met as a group once a month and engaged in systematic theology. Initially we averaged approximately eight people per meeting. We now have more than seventy members in this ministry. The early years were extremely difficult. Some church members did not understand the need for an apologetics ministry while other members strongly supported us. We pressed on, and eventually we became known as the ministry that answered biblical questions. We made it easily available for the congregation to obtain answers regarding their Christianity. We created a resource cabinet in the administrative wing of the church. The cabinet contained Christian Research Institute (CRI) perspectives, which are one-page statements on various issues. We were able to provide answers immediately to many questions through the aid of the CRI perspectives. In addition, we created an information box. The box was intended for church members to drop in their questions. Someone from our ministry contacted the church members to provide answers within two to three days of receiving a question in the box. We even received questions from various Sunday school teachers. Eventually the church started to understand the role of the apologetics ministry. Furthermore, the influence of this ministry has expanded outside the church walls. Since the inception of our apologetics forums in 1998, many other churches have expressed interest in apologetics training. We have been blessed to have individuals such as Phillip Johnson, Norman Geisler, J. P. Moreland, and Hank Hanegraaff speak at our forums. We also developed series on “Loving God with All of Your Mind,” “Let the Truth Be Told,” and “The Essentials of the Christian Faith.” The forums are intended to expose Christians to apologetics. In addition, our hope is for attendees to take the information back to their own churches. It is always a blessing to see different people from various nationalities and denominations talking about sound doctrine. My favorite part about the forum series is the question-and-answer period, where participants are welcome to question our speakers.

The Value of Apologetics in the Local Church. As a ministry, we find it helpful to have a church that believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. As a result, the ministry has become a vital component of the church. In an attempt to promote hermeneutics, we approached our new membership department. With the approval of our pastor, we created an apologetics class for all new members. It is essential that we give our new converts the purity of the major doctrines without contamination (1 Pet. 2:2). This was the purpose for incorporating an apologetics class into the new membership curriculum. By attending the apologetics class, many new members have been able to gain confidence in their knowledge and understanding of the Christian faith. The church has additionally utilized the apologetics ministry in terms of research. When St. Paul was working on opening a bookstore, church staff asked us to identify sound and heretical authors. The ministry accepted this awesome task and was able to recommend authors that adhered to sound doctrines. Our ministry is currently working on a youth apologetics class. According to David Wheaton, approximately fifty-one percent of Christian college enrollees deny their faith upon graduating.³ It is in light of these alarming statistics that we decided to develop apologetics training sessions for our youth. Since they share classrooms with atheists, naturalists, skeptics, and students with many other worldviews, it is important that they receive training in sharing and defending their faith. In order to train them, we conducted a workshop entitled, “Let the Truth Be Told.” It is also our hope that our youth will develop Christian clubs at their various schools. Ultimately, we hope to develop trained ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20). I understand that each church is different. I am also cognizant that resources vary from church to church. Despite obvious challenges, it is very important for every Bible-teaching church to have an apologetics ministry or curriculum woven into its programs. Failure to do so will ultimately create an atmosphere for erroneous doctrine. Developing a culture for apologetics will help churches root out unbiblical statements, lyrics, teachings, and traditions. Having an apologetics ministry has helped our church tremendously. Many of our members are now doctrinally sensitive. They search the scriptures for edification (Acts 17:11) and are willing to confront any aberrant views. The heartbeat of every church should be to develop an apologetics ministry dedicated to maintaining the integrity of sound doctrine. -Perseus Poku and Rodney Scott

Perseus Poku holds an A.A. in Education and a B.A. in History from California State University, Sacramento. Mr. Poku is currently working on his Masters in Christian Apologetics at Southern Evangelical Seminary, and serves as the full-time Staff Minister at St. Paul Baptist Church in Sacramento, California.

Rodney Scott holds a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Biola University and an M.A. in Philosophy from Talbot University. He serves as Director of Evangelism and Discipleship at Progressive Community Church in Stockton, California.

NOTES

1 When my Aunt Bennie died, my years of study on the evidence of the bodily resurrection of Jesus gave me assurance that she not only survived the death of her body, but that she would soon receive a new body at the resurrection.

2 Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), xiii.

3 David Wheaton, University of Destruction (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2005), 170.

This article first appeared in the Viewpoint column of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL, volume 34, number 06 (2011). For further information or to subscribe to the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL go to: http://www.equip.org

In 2008, a handful of notable pro-life evangelicals and Catholics threw their support behind a presidential candidate sworn to uphold elective abortion as a fundamental right. They argued that doing so constituted an enlightened pro-life vote that was morally superior to the narrow party politics of religious conservatives. Instead of passing laws against abortion, so the argument went, the candidate and his party would “reduce” it by addressing its underlying causes.¹ True, he was mistaken on abortion, but he was right on other, important “whole-of-life” issues such as opposition to war, concern for the poor, and care for the environment. The candidate’s political strategy was simple: shrink the significance of abortion so it was more or less equal with other issues.² It worked. Twice as many white evangelicals age eighteen through forty-four voted for Barack Obama in 2008 than voted for John Kerry in 2004. Catholics, meanwhile, supported Obama at fifty-four percent, up seven points from what they gave Kerry four years earlier. The candidate got just enough pro-life votes from these groups to tip the election his way.³ I submit that each of these alleged pro-life votes represents a profound misunderstanding of the pro-life position. The fundamental issue before us is not merely how to reduce abortion, but who counts as one of us. How we answer will determine whether embryos and fetuses enjoy the protection of law or remain candidates for the dumpster. As Francis Beckwith points out, a society that has fewer abortions but protects the legal killing of unborn humans is still deeply immoral.⁴ Given what’s at stake, it’s vital that pro-life Christians persuasively answer five key questions before the 2012 election:

1. Are pro-life advocates focused too narrowly on abortion? After all, informed voters consider many issues, not just one.

Of course abortion isn’t the only issue-any more than the treatment of slaves wasn’t the only issue in the 1860s or the treatment of Jews the only issue in the 1940s. But both were the dominant issues of their day. Thoughtful Christians attribute different importance to different issues, and give greater weight to fundamental moral questions. For example, if a man running for president told us that men had a right to beat their wives, most people would see that as reason enough to reject him, despite his expertise on foreign policy or economic reforms. The foundational principle of our republic is that all humans are equal in their fundamental dignity. What issue could be more important than that? You might as well blame politicians like Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for focusing too narrowly on defeating the Nazis, to the neglect of other issues. Given a choice, I’d rather pro-lifers focus on at least one great moral issue than waste their precious resources trying to fix all of them.⁵

2. Why don’t pro-life advocates care about social justice both here and in developing countries?

They do, which is why pro-life crisis pregnancy centers vastly outnumber abortion clinics in the U.S. and why committed evangelicals, most of whom are pro-life, give more than their secular counterparts.⁶ Nevertheless, pro-life Christians should reject the premise that because they oppose the intentional and unjustified killing of innocent human beings, they must therefore take responsibility for all of the world’s ills. Is the American Cancer Society wrong to focus on one deadly disease to the exclusion of others? It’s highly unfair to demand that local pro-life groups take their already scarce resources and spread them even thinner fighting every social injustice imaginable. This would be suicide for those opposed to abortion. As Frederick the Great once said, “He who attacks everywhere attacks nowhere.” True, as defenders of human dignity, we should care about the poor, clean water, and the rights of others everywhere. The U.S. government, however, is not going to solve those problems in developing countries the way it can solve abortion here. For example, our government can’t ban poverty or stop the sex trade of young girls in Thailand. That is the job of that nation’s citizens and government! However, the U.S. government can and should ban the killing of unborn humans within its own borders. That is why prudent pro-lifers have always sought both moral and political solutions to that problem. While poverty and the sex trade are evil, no one in America proposes legalizing them. Abortion is different. Far from reducing the practice, our government currently advocates it both here and abroad. For example, during his first week in office, President Obama restored funding to organizations that promote and perform abortion overseas. A year later, he signed a healthcare bill that subsidized insurance plans that fund it here in the U.S. At the same time, he rescinded federal regulations that protect doctors from forced participation in elective abortion and threatened to cut off Medicaid funding to any state that denied tax funding to healthcare entities that provide abortions.⁷ Finally, he nominated to the federal courts justices sympathetic to the abortion license whose rulings could set the pro-life cause back for decades to come. Because ours is a government of the people, Christians have a fundamental duty to work within the political system to limit evil and promote good. Shouldn’t social justice start in the womb?

3. Why don’t pro-lifers oppose war like they do abortion?

War can be a moral evil, but it isn’t always so. Careful thinkers make distinctions between intrinsic (absolute) moral evils and contingent ones. For example, the decision to wage war may or may not be wrong, depending on the circumstances. However, the decision to kill intentionally an unborn human being for socioeconomic reasons is an intrinsic evil and laws permitting it are scandalous. True, a general in a just war may foresee that innocent humans will die securing a lasting peace, but he does not intend their deaths. With elective abortion, the death of an innocent human fetus is not merely foreseen; it is intended. The problem is that many Catholics and left-leaning evangelicals are perfectly willing to support a political party that supports an intrinsic evil simply because its members promise to help us avoid contingent ones. This is bad moral thinking.

4. Instead of passing laws against abortion, shouldn’t pro-life Christians focus on reducing its underlying causes?

First and foremost, the abortion debate turns on the question of human equality. That is, in a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, do the unborn count as members of the human family? With that fundamental question in mind, it’s unreasonable for liberals to insist that pro-lifers surrender the legal fight to focus on underlying causes. As my colleague Steve Weimar points out, this is like saying the “underlying cause” of spousal abuse is psychological, so instead of making it illegal for husbands to beat their wives, the solution is to provide counseling for men. There are “underlying causes” for rape, murder, theft, and so on, but that in no way makes it misguided to have laws banning such actions.⁸ Moreover, why are liberals even concerned about reducing the number of abortions in the first place? If destroying a human fetus is morally no different than cutting one’s fingernails, then who cares how many abortions there are? The reason to reduce elective abortion is that human life is unjustly taken-but if that’s the case, then restricting the practice makes perfect sense. Imagine a nineteenth-century lawmaker who said that slavery was a bad idea and we ought to reduce it, but owning slaves should remain legal. If those in power adopted his thinking, would this be a good society? True, politics isn’t a sufficient answer to injustice, but it’s certainly a necessary one. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “The law can’t make the white man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me.”⁹ Frankly, if Christians don’t think the government-sanctioned killing of unborn children merits a political response, then they not only misunderstand the moral gravity of the situation, but also their mandate to love their neighbor as themselves.

5. Should pastors challenge church members who support a political party sworn to protect elective abortion?

Yes and no. They should challenge believers and nonbelievers alike with the truth that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being-and that truth should impact which party we support. They shouldn’t claim that supporting a particular party or candidate saves us from God’s righteous wrath against sin (only the gospel does that!) or that members of the opposite party are not Christians. Nevertheless, in a nation where the people are the government, Christians have a duty to apply their biblical worldview in a way that limits evil and promotes the good insofar as possible given current political realities. At the legislative level in particular (House and Senate races), that usually means voting for the party that, though imperfect, will best protect unborn humans against one that sanctions killing them. The reason is simple: at the legislative level, political parties more than individuals determine which laws see the light of day. Consider the House of Representatives. If a party committed to elective abortion controls the chamber, it will squash pro-life bills and promote pro-abortion ones. Even if that pro-abortion party has a few pro-life members, those members will likely never get to vote on a pro-life bill unless their party is not in power! But it gets worse. These same pro-life members of that pro-abortion party almost always put party politics above moral principle when it comes to the most important vote they will cast-selection of the Speaker. Remember, the Speaker of the House ultimately determines the legislative agenda and if the party committed to elective abortion controls the chamber, its candidate for speaker will inevitably be pro-abortion. Nevertheless, these pro-life members vote for their party’s candidate for speaker, which all but guarantees that pro-life bills never see the light of day. In most cases, then, they aren’t reforming their party’s pro-abortion stance; they’re enabling it!¹⁰ If parties drive legislation, how should a pastor educate his flock on the relationship between politics and Christian morality? First, he should teach a biblical worldview affirming that all humans have value because they bear the image of their maker. Second, he should challenge church members to live out that biblical view in every area of their lives, including their political affiliations. Third, he should stress that while no political party is perfect, on the question of fundamental human value, some parties are more in line with biblical truth than others. Suppose, for example, that it’s 1860 and fifty percent of professing Christians in your church are members of a political party dedicated to the proposition that an entire class of human beings can be enslaved or killed to meet the needs of the white race. If you’re a pastor committed to applying a biblical worldview in all areas of life, is this OK? You might be sympathetic to new converts coming to grips with Christian teaching, but mature church members? Pastors can’t use church resources to endorse political candidates or parties, but they can (and must) teach that a biblical worldview informs our political behavior-including which parties we choose to empower with our vote. Saying so is not wrong-it’s leadership.

-Scott Klusendorf

Scott Klusendorf is president of Life Training Institute and holds an M.A. in Christian apologetics from Biola University.

Read Elliot Miller’s rebuttal Viewpoint article, “The Politics of Abortion: Should Christians Vote Straight Ticket?”

NOTES

1. For an evangelical example, see the interview with Donald Miller on August 25, 2008: http://burnsidewriterscollective.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-with-donald-miller.html. For a Catholic example, see Michael New, “Professors Robert George and Douglas Kmiec Debate Abortion, a Pro-Life Recap,” Life News, June 1, 2009.
2. Alex Spillius, “Barack Obama Doubles Support from Evangelical Christians,” The Telegraph, November 7, 2008.
3. “How the Faithful Voted,” Pew Research Forum, November 10, 2008.
4. Francis J. Beckwith, “Why Reducing the Number of Abortions Is Not Necessarily Pro-Life,” Moral Accountability, February 12, 2009. http://www.moralaccountability.com/2009/02/12/why-reducing-the-number-of-abortions-notnecessarily-prolife/%
5. See Randy Alcorn (EMP Blog, November 16, 2008) and Steve Hays (Triablogue, January 30, 2006) for more.
6. Helen Alvare et al., “The Lazy Slander of the Pro-Life Cause,” Public Discourse, January 17, 2011; Arthur C. Brooks, “A Nation of Givers,” The American (March/April 2008).
7. O. Carter Snead, “Protect the Weak and Vulnerable: The Primacy of the Life Issue,” Public Discourse, August 22, 2011.
8. Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 169.
9. Speech at Western Michigan University, December 18, 1963.
10. Though rare, there are exceptions to this general rule. A state representative recently explained that although he is pro-life, the political realities in his district are such that his constituents simply will not elect a member of the party that is more or less pro-life. To win, he must run as a member of the pro-abortion party, even though he always votes with the pro-life party on life issues. Given the pro-life party enjoys a commanding majority in the State House, his membership in the pro-abortion party does not put at risk the advancement of pro-life legislation.

Continuing my examination of Bart Ehrman’s “problems with the Bible,”¹ he is perplexed about the number of animals Noah took with him on the ark. As such, he poses the following question: “Does [Noah] take seven pairs of all the ‘clean’ animals, as Genesis 7:2 states, or just two pairs, as Genesis 7:9-10 indicates?”² First, I would like to pose a different question. Does it seem reasonable to suppose that an author capable of writing a masterpiece such as the Book of Genesis would get confused within the span of several sentences, or is it more likely that Ehrman is straining at gnats and swallowing a camel? Furthermore, is Ehrman’s question legitimate, or has he created a problem out of whole cloth? The answer to this latter question is that Ehrman has created a fictional problem. Genesis 7:9-10 does not say that Noah is to take “just two pairs.” Finally, if Ehrman really wants his question answered, all he need do is ask one of his “conservative” students-or simply read the context. Several verses back, God says to Noah, “You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female” (6:19). And in Genesis 7:2-3 God adds the following instruction: “Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.” Together these verses provide a sufficient answer.

What to Make of Ehrman’s All-Too-Convenient Cock-Crowing Conundrum? Another astonishingly easy-to-resolve “problem with the Bible” that perplexes Ehrman is the following: “In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him three times ‘before the cock crows twice.’ In Matthew’s Gospel he tells him that it will be ‘before the cock crows.’ Well, which is it-before the cock crows once or twice?”³ First, as his more attentive students have likely discovered, Professor Ehrman is engaged in a cocky game of slight of mind. Truth is that Matthew does not tell us how many times the rooster crowed-he simply tells us that the rooster crowed.⁴ As such, Ehrman is knocking down a straw man. Furthermore, only an extreme literalist bent on undermining Scripture would attempt to make the passage in question walk on all fours. In recounting past events or telling stories we obviously don’t all highlight the same details. In the case at hand, Mark simply provides a bit more detail than does Matthew.⁵ Finally, Ehrman has set up a rigged game in which it is impossible for him to lose. Since Matthew and Mark do not provide identical testimonies, he cries “contradiction!” Conversely, if they had, he could conveniently charge them with collusion. In sharp contrast to Ehrman’s methodology, credible scholarship looks for a reliable core set of facts in order to validate a historical account. In this case, Matthew and Mark merely provide complementary perspectives.

-Hank Hanegraaff

Hank Hanegraaff is president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast heard daily throughout the United States and Canada. For a list of stations airing the Bible Answer Man, or to listen online, log on to Equip.org.

NOTES

1 Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them) (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 6. I’ve addressed Ehrman’s criticisms of the Bible in recent installments of this column (see Christian Research Journal 32, 3; 32, 4; 32, 5; 33, 1; and 33, 2).

2 Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 10.

3 Ibid., 7.

4 See Matt. 26:74.

5 See Mark 14:30, 72.

“Novels about family, relationships, and love,” is how bestselling author Jodi Picoult describes her books.¹ While it’s true that Picoult’s works cover these topics, in doing so they also delve into many areas of interest such as ethics, theology, and apologetics. Picoult’s works are relevant beyond being simple and innocuous airport reads. Indeed, Picoult’s writings present and influence ideas, but they are also influenced by current events and contemporary topics. Nineteen Minutes (2007), for instance, is about a school shooting and the aftermath of those events, while her latest work, House Rules, turns to the topic of autism, and purportedly her next book will address homosexuality. Of particular interest to Christians are Picoult’s views of religion. “I really believe that the root of so many huge problems has been religion,” says Picoult, “and drawing the line in the sand between those who believe what you do and those who don’t-just look around the world to see the ramifications of what Irenaeus did by deciding what constituted Christian faith, and what didn’t.”² Having published seventeen novels to date, Picoult’s works have also made their way to television and the movie theater. Television adaptations include The Pact, Plain Truth, and The Tenth Circle, while Picoult’s 2004 book, My Sister’s Keeper, made it to the big screen in 2009. For the purposes of this review, two books were selected: Keeping Faith (1999) and Change of Heart (2008). The former is of particular interest given the current state of atheism that is openly hostile to Christianity, while the latter addresses ethical issues and questions regarding the New Testament Gospels in opposition to Gnostic writings. There is a connection between both books in that a main character from Keeping Faith, Ian Fletcher, is also featured in Change of Heart. Keeping Faith is about a little girl, Faith White, who begins to have visions of a “guard,” later referred to as God. There are several unusual circumstances regarding Faith’s visions and later stigmata, mainly the fact that neither Faith nor her family is Christian (Faith and her mother are Jewish) and that the figure who appears to Faith is female, raising questions regarding God being depicted as male or female. Of more interest to atheist character Ian Fletcher is debunking Faith’s claims, stigmata, and even alleged miraculous healings. Eager to boost the ratings of his television show, self-proclaimed “teleatheist” Fletcher takes a road trip to the quiet New Hampshire town of Canaan, where most of the events take place. Fletcher is a particularly interesting character, especially in light of the rise of the so-called new atheism. Raised a Baptist, Fletcher turns to atheism as an adult and is eager to debunk any religious claims he encounters. His default stance is that religion, Christianity in particular, is false and harmful. Consequently, Fletcher hardly has an open mind about religious claims, instead presupposing that metaphysical materialism is true. While Fletcher fancies himself an erudite debunker, his reasoning, like the reasoning of many contemporary atheist writers, is often flawed. For instance, Fletcher offers clever analogies meant to demonstrate the inferiority of faith, but in reality his analogies are false. He says, “Sure, lots of people believe in God. Lots of people used to believe the world was flat, too” (p. 29). Later we read, “Ian’s offhand comparison of devout Catholics to toddlers who believed that a Band-Aid itself cures the wound was hotly debated” (31). In both instances, however, Fletcher has committed the fallacy of the false analogy. In his first statement, he is arguing that simply because lots of people believe something does not make it true. This is a true statement. Majority does not decide what is true; truth exists as it is regardless of how many or how few hold to the true position. But to compare belief in God to belief in a flat world-an idea discarded on the basis of demonstrable truth-is false. It is one thing to prove the world is round, but quite another to make the case for or against the existence of God. The shape of the earth is a clearly scientific and empirical proof, while making the case for the existence of God is a matter of metaphysical and philosophical reasoning. Similarly, the character’s remark about Catholics being like toddlers who believe a bandage (religion) will cure them is false in that many intelligent, reasonable individuals adhere to Christian beliefs not because they are deceived or misunderstanding toddlers, but because they believe there is compelling and reasonable evidence to support the existence of God and the reality of Christ. This is hardly toddler-like blind faith or misunderstanding. Fletcher is also staunch in his belief in the so-called “God of the gaps” approach that some people take: “People believe in God because they don’t have any other explanation for things that happen” (33). But this is simply not true and, as is often the case, misrepresents the relationship between science and faith. Scientism is the belief that science can be applied to every area of knowledge, even philosophical and religious, and is the supreme approach to understanding. However, this is not true. Even if science were to set forth explanations of all the scientific questions regarding human life and the universe, it would still be unable to address rudimentary metaphysical questions such as the meaning of life. As to questions in Keeping Faith regarding the gender of God, some Christian characters are forthright in stating that God is beyond gender. Being noncorporeal, this is certainly true of God. Throughout the Bible, nevertheless, God has chosen to reveal Himself as Father and the Son, Jesus, was born as a male into a patriarchal culture. The main point of critics of the view of God as male in the book, such as the MotherGod Society, has to do with oppression of women and women’s rights. A cursory examination of Christianity and Christian history, however, reveals that Christians have always been at the forefront of championing equal rights for women, as well as elevating woman far beyond competing cultures and religions.³ Change of Heart shifts to ethical questions and matters regarding the advent of Christianity in light of competing ideas, particularly Gnosticism. On the ethical spectrum, the primary question in the book relates to organ donation. In this case, a murderer on death row, Shay Bourne, offers to donate his heart to the daughter of the people he killed. Of particular interest beyond ethical questions in Change of Heart are matters regarding Gnosticism and the Gospel of Thomas. One character, Ian Fletcher again, claims there were “52 gospels found in 1945 in Egypt” (314). Fletcher goes on to state of the Gnostics, “They had their own gospels…The New Testament-in particular, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John-were the ones that orthodoxy chose to uphold…the Orthodox Christian Church felt threatened by the Gnostics. They called their gospels heresy, and the Nag Hammadi texts were hidden for two thousand years” (315). Unfortunately, the statements made by the Fletcher character are far from accurate. Like The Da Vinci Code and its outlandish claims regarding Christianity, Change of Heart is full of misinformation regarding the Gnostic Gospels, with the likely source being Elaine Pagels, cited by Picoult as her main research resource on the subject. There were not fifty-two “gospels” competing for inclusion in the New Testament canon. Moreover, the Gospel of Thomas is hardly a gospel in the sense that it is not comparable to the style and structure of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Thomas is more a collection of sayings than anything, some orthodox and some quite unorthodox. In reality, Gnosticism is a corruption of Christianity, which, most scholars agree, existed prior to it. Regarding Christians “hiding” such material, the very reality of Irenaeus’ work Against Heresies should be enough to demonstrate that Christians were not systematically suppressing Gnostic ideas, since Irenaeus wrote about such ideas openly.⁴ In Picoult’s defense, the points cited in this review do highlight areas where there is tension with traditional Christianity. However, Picoult’s books generally offer a number of competing points of view from the perspectives of different characters. As creative license dictates, an author may in fact represent ideas the author does not necessarily agree with in order to create tension or craft more realistic characters. Picoult herself appears open to various religious and spiritual ideas, but is generally noncommittal, coming across as open to belief but something of an agnostic on the matter. “I still don’t have all the answers about God,” she explains. “I don’t think any of us will, until it’s too late for us to be able to share them.”⁵ This perspective, however, results in a deficient epistemology (theory of knowledge). The agnostic position on metaphysical knowledge is, at best, a temporary place for the sincere seeker. There is simply too much at stake to remain so noncommittal when it comes to ideas and their potentially monumental ramifications. Granted, Christians should not claim to “have all the answers about God,” but we do have many answers, particularly answers to the big questions of life. This is not because Christians are privy to any esoteric knowledge, such as the Gnostics claimed to have, but because God exists and has chosen to reveal Himself not only through human conscience and creation, but through His Word and His Son. As a bestselling author, Picoult’s words reach millions of readers. While it is at times refreshing to see such candid discussion and religious ideas set forth in Picoult’s writings, it is unfortunate that some of her works perpetuate false ideas about Christianity and the Gnostic writings. How do we respond to writings like those by Picoult and other bestselling authors? We respond, first of all, with “gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15), while at the same time setting forth truth to combat errors. It is necessary to move beyond merely stating that some idea is wrong or questionable and also offer evidence and reasons to support our perspective, otherwise literary caricatures of Christians as simpletons who take blind leaps of faith may indeed become more accurate than they should.

-Robert Velarde

Robert Velarde is author of The Wisdom of Pixar (InterVarsity Press), Conversations with C. S. Lewis (InterVarsity Press), The Heart of Narnia (NavPress), and Inside The Screwtape Letters (Baker, forthcoming). He received his M.A. from Southern Evangelical Seminary.

NOTES

1 Jodi Picoult Web site, http://www.jodipicoult.com/.

2 Picoult believes Irenaeus “was trying to codify the early Christian church by deciding what was ‘real’ gospel and what was heresy.” See http://www.jodipicoult.com/JodiPicoult.html#questions.

3 See, for instance, Alvin Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), chapter 4, and Douglas Groothuis, On Jesus (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003), chapter 7.

4 For a response to the Gospel of Thomas, see chapter 3 of Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008).

5 http://www.jodipicoult.com/keeping-faith-chat.html.

SYNOPSIS

There are at least six approaches people use in determining what they choose to believe:

1. The RELATIVISTIC FAITH PATH: Truth is what you make it. But relativism doesn’t work in any other area, so why trust it in the spiritual realm?

2. The TRADITIONAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve always been taught. What you were taught might be right-if your parents happened to be right. But you won’t know until you test your traditions.

3. The AUTHORITARIAN FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve been told to believe. Everyone has authorities in their lives, but before we keep submitting to them, we should examine their credentials and their message.

4. The INTUITIVE FAITH PATH: Truth is what you feel in your heart. The heart can be a source of insights, but it can also lead us down blind alleys.

5. The MYSTICAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you think God told you. God can still speak. But not everything that seems to be from God really is.

6. The EVIDENTIAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what logic and evidence point to. God gave us these two faculties for discovering what’s true. We need to help our friends employ these to discover spiritual truth, and ultimately to meet God through Jesus Christ.

It is important to understand how our friends come to their beliefs so we may better communicate the truth that God really is who He says He is and that His Word can be trusted.

EVERYONE HAS FAITH IN SOMETHING

Buddhists believe that enlightenment can be found through the eightfold path. Muslims follow the five pillars of Islam. Christians live their lives trusting that Jesus is the unique Son of God who died for their sins. We’re all convinced that what we believe is correct, and we stake our futures on it. But it’s faith just the same; none of us has absolute proof. This might surprise you, but atheists live by faith, too. They operate in the belief that there is no creator, no higher moral law, no divine judgment, and no afterlife. They can’t prove any of these things. In fact, most people in the world believe that denying them goes against the evidence as well as human experience, and therefore requires even higher levels of trust. So everybody lives by some kind of faith-that is, beliefs and actions that are based on something they consider trustworthy, even though they can’t fully prove it to be true-and usually their beliefs run pretty deep. Therefore, if we’re going to be effective in reaching them, we’ll need to do more than tell them what we believe or try to badger them into changing their minds. Rather, it’s important to first understand why our friends believe what they do-how they arrived at those beliefs. Then we’ll be in a better position to speak to them in ways they can understand, and to point them toward the many reasons they should consider putting their trust in Christ. Have you tried talking to friends about your faith, but felt like you were speaking a foreign language? Maybe you were! Perhaps the appeal you made didn’t appeal to them because they value and put their trust in different factors than you do. For example, many Christians speak out of their experience. “I asked Jesus into my life,” they say, “and He filled me with such peace and joy.” But their friend isn’t motivated by testimonies. He wants reasons to believe something is true. Or we may face the opposite situation. Perhaps we’ve read great books like Reasonable Faith, Scaling the Secular City, or The Case for Christ, and we try to convey a mountain of logic and evidence to a friend, but she’s not interested. “You can go on about all of that academic stuff, but I already know what I believe because my heart tells me what’s true.” If we don’t find out what criteria our friends are relying on and somehow address those, then we really might be, in effect, speaking a foreign language to them. The apostle Paul modeled the importance of knowing our audience so we can more effectively relate our faith to them. To Jewish people he deliberately communicated as a Jew “to win the Jews.” To “those under the law I became like one under the law…to those not having the law I became like one not having the law” and “to the weak I became weak, to win the weak.” Paul concludes by explaining, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:20-23¹). In this article we’re going to explore six primary ways people decide what to believe-what I call the six faith paths.² These are different approaches they use to reach what they consider to be trustworthy spiritual beliefs. Once we understand these approaches and identify which of them our friends currently are on, we’ll be better prepared to point those friends toward a biblical faith. Now, I know this can sound a bit academic-and most of our friends won’t use the word-but the issue we’re dealing with here is epistemology. That’s the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge and beliefs-or, as my late friend and mentor Bob Passantino used to put it, “how you know you know.” Lots of thick, dusty textbooks have been written about this subject, and the debates go back centuries-including the classic conflicts between the continental rationalists such as René Descartes (of “I think, therefore I am” fame) and the British empiricists, especially David Hume.³ But, as we’ll see, these issues are relevant for today and important to consider as we seek to be effective witnesses for Christ.

THE SIX FAITH PATHS

1. The RELATIVISTIC FAITH PATH: Truth is what you make it.The first of the six approaches people take to choosing their faith is the relativistic faith path. People in this view choose what to believe by deciding what they want to believe-and then thinking that somehow mystically, magically, reality conforms to those beliefs. It’s like they’ve got a private timeshare on truth. That’s why people who take this approach often say things like, “I’ve got my truth; you’ve got yours-let’s just get along.” I’m all for getting along-as Christians we need to be strong advocates of tolerance, in that we support people’s right to choose their own beliefs. But that doesn’t mean everybody is right. Tolerance and truth are two entirely different issues. I’ll support the rights of groups to say, for example, that Jesus was actually an exalted mushroom (people really do teach that)-but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. An important aspect of tolerance is the freedom to disagree and debate about spiritual ideas-and not pretend that everyone’s beliefs are equally valid. How can we reach out to our relativistic friends? Don’t just start throwing evidence for Christianity at them-they’ll just dismiss it as “your truth.” Instead, address their whole approach to truth. How? One way is by showing them that relativism doesn’t work in any other area of life-so why trust it in the spiritual realm? You could suggest, for example, that they go to Hollywood to try driving on Highway 101-as a relativist. Specifically, they should decide that the sign by the road that says “101″ is, for them, the speed limit. Then if they happen to meet a California highway patrolman they can simply explain, “My truth is that my speed limit is 101, so you should just let me be.” How do you think that will work out for them? Probably not so well. With incredulity the officer will reply, “Look, you can play word games with your friends, but when you’re out here on the highway there’s no ‘your truth/my truth’-just real truth. And the real truth is that the speed limit is 65, and you’re going to pay a hefty fine!” Or maybe your friends are in college-perhaps taking classes from relativistic professors. So next time they take a final exam encourage them to put down their own answers-their truth-instead of the answers their professors taught them, and see what happens. Needless to say, relativistic test taking won’t work out much better than relativistic highway driving-or relativistic dieting, relativistic dating, or relativistic anything. The truth is that in real life we need to discover and deal with…the real truth! It’s not what we want things to be or think they ought to be. Truth is what really is. Therefore our job-if we’re interested in survival-is to discover what really is, and adjust our lives accordingly. Imagining or wishing things were different has no effect on how things really are. That’s true in the physical world, but also in the spiritual world. If atheists are really right and there is no God, then our studying about God, praying to God, and worshiping God will not cause Him to suddenly appear-poof! On the other hand, if we’re right and there really is a God, then the denials and denunciations of the atheists are not going to get rid of Him. The real question is this: What reasons are there to believe or not believe in God? Relativism can’t answer that question; it can only lead one to choose a belief and to act as if it were really true. That’s a roll of dice I don’t want to take with my life-and one we should try to convince our friends that they don’t want to take with their lives, either. Instead, we need to urge them to find a more reliable faith path, one that will lead them to a trustworthy faith based on real facts. I’d especially recommend the sixth path, which we’ll discuss below.

2. The TRADITIONAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve always been taught.The second approach is the traditional faith path. This accepts beliefs as hand-me-downs. Your friend on this path might not ever even think about what he believes or why-he simply accepts what his parents and others taught as he was growing up. This person says, “My grandparents were Hindus, my parents were Hindus, and I’m a Hindu-and always will be one.” So what can we say to someone with this mindset? We can ask how they know their grandparents and parents were right, because they could have been wrong-mine could have been; yours could have been. Clearly someone’s parents were wrong-since they don’t all agree with each other. So how do we find out whose parents, and whose belief systems, are correct? Not by blindly clinging to traditions. You might encourage your friends to think of the last holiday they had with their wider family. Urge them to consider the people around the dinner table, especially the older ones, and to ask themselves: “Which of these relatives do I respect enough to entrust my eternity to?”-because that’s what they’re doing when they unthinkingly perpetuate hand-me-down beliefs and traditions. I love my relatives and enjoy being around them, but there is not a single one of them I’m going to let do my thinking for me, or decide on my behalf and on behalf of my children what we’re going to believe throughout future generations. Instead of supporting a blind journey down the traditional faith path, the Bible tells us to “test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil” (1 Thess. 5:21-22). And Jesus cautioned His listeners about the dangers of letting tradition stand in the way of obeying what God has said (Mark 7:5-13). The traditional path is a natural way to begin as children. But at some point we need to grow up spiritually and think for ourselves, examine the reasons behind the traditions we’ve been taught, and seek truth with God’s help until we’re confident we are on the right path. Jesus promised that if people will ask, seek, and knock then they will find not just truth, but the God of truth Himself (Luke 11:9-13). If you’re a Christian who has been relying on your upbringing to carry you through life, let me urge you to reinforce your faith with sound reasons and evidence. Paul warned that we must “no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching” (Eph. 4:14). You’ll never be mature or confident in your faith until you’ve studied it for yourself and know why you believe. Only then will you also be able, with conviction, “to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Pet. 3:15).

3. The AUTHORITARIAN FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve been told to believe.Similar to the last approach, the authoritarian faith path is also passive, but this one can come with much more force. It says: You WILL believe this! I saw this one day when I took a church group on a trip to a mosque. The imam, or teacher, had us all sit down so he could give us an overview of the tenets of Islam-and while he was at it he decided to teach us a few things about Christianity as well. He adamantly declared that “God is not divided; he does not have a son.” I knew Muslims also deny that Jesus died on the cross, and therefore reject claims about His resurrection, too. So I raised my hand and said, “I’m curious about something. Jesus’ followers walked and talked with Him for several years. They also reported that He repeatedly claimed to be the Son of God, that they watched Him die on the cross, and that three days later they saw and talked and ate with Him after He was resurrected. They wrote down detailed accounts of what they heard and saw. These have been preserved in thousands of manuscript documents. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but what Islam teaches us about Jesus seems to be based on the words of one man, Muhammad, who, six hundred years after the time of Christ, was sitting in a cave when, he claimed, an angel spoke to him and told him these things weren’t so. What I’m curious about is whether you have any historical or logical reasons for why we should accept that viewpoint over and against the actual historical record?” The imam glared at me and then declared, “I choose to believe the prophet!”-and the discussion was over. For him, the authority of his religion was all he needed. If he had deeper reasons backing up his faith, he chose not to share them. It’s interesting that the original meaning of the Arabic word “Islam” is “submission,” and it seems fair to say that many Muslims accept their faith primarily through the influence and authority of their parents, teachers, government, or society. They are boldly told that Allah is the true God, the Qur’an is his revelation, Muhammad is his messenger, and that they need to submit to these claims. This strong appeal to authority can be seen in a number of other religions and religious groups as well. What can we say to people who are on this faith path? First, we need to make it clear that we’re not antiauthority-we all will be influenced and led by authorities in our lives. But we need to emphasize the importance of making sure we submit to the right authorities. How? Here are two areas to check out: the credentials of the authority and the credibility of their message. First, the credentials. When my children get sick, I naturally want to take them to a doctor. But what kind of doctor should we go see? We could go to a medical doctor, or we can visit a witch doctor-both have “doctor” in their titles. Call me narrow-minded, but I have a strong preference for the one who has the certificates on the wall. I want to know that my kids’ doctor went to a great school that taught the best of medical practices, and that he or she showed up for class, got good grades, and graduated with the right degree. Similarly, if I’m going to follow a religious authority, I want it to be one who passes all the tests of character, moral integrity, truth-telling, accurate teaching, and consistency. Jesus has all of these, plus the fulfillment of ancient prophecies, miracles done in the presence of eyewitnesses, and He rose from the dead. All of this gives me confidence that He is the one with the real credentials, and therefore worth following wholeheartedly. And the credibility of the message? It needs to be based on facts, not fables. It needs to square with the real world, and not some make-believe place. (For example, when Jesus warns in John 16:33 that “in this world you will have trouble,” it’s a message that rings true, over and above the feel-good philosophers who say everything is beautiful, and evil is illusory.) It must also square with what we know to be true from God’s Word-so when Muhammad and his followers tell you that Jesus was a prophet but not the Son of God, we know from Scripture that this message fails the test. If anything is clear in the historical record of the New Testament, it’s that Jesus was the Son of God-and He demonstrated this through his life, teachings, insights, and miraculous powers.

4. The INTUITIVE FAITH PATH: Truth is what you feel in your heart.The fourth approach is the intuitive faith path, exhibited in the person who says, “Why do I need evidence when I have Oprah? She and her spiritual teachers say we should look within ourselves and listen to our spirit. So that’s how I figure out what to believe.” This one reminds me of the classic scene in Star Wars where Obi-Wan Kenobi is training his young apprentice, Luke Skywalker, how to use his light saber. Obi-Wan instructs Luke to stop using his senses. “Don’t trust your eyes. Your eyes will deceive you,” he said. Instead, he puts a hood over Luke’s face so he can’t see anything. Then he says, “Just feel the Force.” This all sounds so spiritual. But when you talk to your friends who think this way ask them if they’ve ever tried following their heart or trusting their feelings to guide them in making investments. They’d be broke in almost no time flat. Or ask them if they’ve attempted to drive to some side-street address in the heart of a major city based on instinct alone, without a road map. Sure, they might have gotten lucky and found their way on occasion, but usually they’ll become frustrated and begin to realize that their senses-and road maps-were created for a reason. God can and sometimes does give us an intuitive sense about things. We should pay attention to what our heart seems to be telling us or, as the saying goes, do occasional gut checks. But we, and our friends, need to be careful. The heart, according to the Bible, is deceitfully wicked and it can quickly lead us astray. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, warned us in Proverbs 14:12 (NLT), “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” Intuition is like a flashing yellow light in a dark intersection-it signals to pay attention, but it doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. You still need to look both ways, figure out what the real situation is, and act accordingly. Spiritual intuition is similar to that. It might give some clues, but you still need to search for solid truth and reliable evidence in order to be confident you’re really on the right track.

5. The MYSTICAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you think God told you.Friends who take this fifth approach, the mystical faith path, choose what they believe based on experiences they consider to be transcendent. They are therefore supremely confident in what they believe. “Why should I pay attention to you and your academic arguments,” they wonder, “when I already know what God has shown me?” I most commonly see this approach in Mormon people who testify that they know their beliefs are correct because they once prayed and asked God if the Book of Mormon was true-and they’re convinced He showed them that it is. So for them, it’s “case closed”-and they can’t understand why you’re so hesitant to become a Mormon as well. There’s an old saying, “It’s hard to argue with experience.” While that’s true, it’s also dangerous to form beliefs on experience alone. So what should we say to our friends who are on the mystical faith path? First, we shouldn’t deny that God can speak today. He didn’t lose His voice two thousand years ago! Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” So we should be open to God speaking, including in extraordinary ways, as we see Him doing occasionally in the pages of the Bible. But we must also be careful. The Bible warns in 1 John 4:1, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” And 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 cautions, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.” So the message of Scripture is, first, be open to hearing God’s voice, but, second, be careful about what you accept as being from God. How can we test such things? By applying the pattern in the Bible, which is to test alleged new revelations against what we already know to be from God. For example, Paul warned in Galatians 1:8, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” In other words, don’t automatically put stock in a message you receive through a mystical experience unless it passes the test and brings a message consistent with what you already know to be true from God’s previous revelations in the Bible. Mormonism? Its message that there are many gods contradicts the clear monotheistic teachings of both the Old and New Testaments. So if your Mormon friends say God told them it’s true, show them that according to the Bible they need to “test all things,” and not to believe every spirit-even if it’s an angel standing right in front of them-if it contradicts what God has already revealed.

6. The EVIDENTIAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what logic and evidence point to.The sixth approach, the evidential faith path, relies primarily on logic and evidence to show what should be believed. Even though logic and evidence can be ignored or misused, I believe these are two inescapable, God-given tools for determining what is true and trustworthy in the world around us. First, logic. We can’t think, evaluate ideas, or make decisions without it. Yes, some will claim that they don’t trust logic-but they use logic to try to make their point. When people tell you they don’t trust reason just ask them why-and they’ll start giving you reasons against reason. Or sometimes they’ll say that our use of logic is “Western,” and therefore not accepted by the other half of the world that lives in the East. But as Indian-born apologist Ravi Zacharias says, “Even in India if you step out in front of a bus it will kill you!” And need we argue for the importance of evidence, experienced through the five senses? All scientific research relies on it; it’s the foundational tool of our justice system; it’s what we use every day to figure out what is true. Logic and evidence are inescapable-so we might as well employ them with excellence. More than that, the Bible-which is itself supported by reason and evidence-tells us to test truth claims using these tools, as I’ve been illustrating throughout this article. Jesus often pointed to the evidence to verify His claims, including fulfilled prophecies, miracles, His consistent character and sinless life, His role as the Messiah and His nature as the unique Son of God, and ultimately the supernatural exclamation point of His resurrection from the dead. He also warned us to examine the words and work of others who claim to be prophets, to see whether the evidence substantiates their claims. Now, I’m not saying we can rely on our own intellects alone, or that humans have the capacity to figure out their way to God by themselves. God had to reveal Himself, and His Holy Spirit has to draw us to Him. Ultimately our faith and confidence needs to be in God and His wisdom-but logic and evidence help us and our friends in knowing which God to put our faith in and which book we can be confident is God’s revelation. Looking back over the other faith paths, it’s also this mix of logic and evidence that helps us to evaluate the relativistic faith path, determining it is faulty because truth needs to square with what is real. It provides the tools to test our traditions to determine which ones are worth holding onto, and to assess the credentials and messages of the authorities in our lives. It also helps us to size up our intuitive instincts, and to confirm or disconfirm our mystical encounters. More than that, it helps us to assemble an ensemble of reasons for accepting the Christian faith, as I and many other apologists have done in our books and articles.⁴ Studying these arguments will strengthen your own faith, and it will give you the confidence and compelling information you need to effectively communicate that faith to others-as we “become all things to all men…for the sake of the gospel.”

Mark Mittelberg is an international speaker and bestselling author of Choosing Your Faith … In a World of Spiritual Options (Tyndale); Faith Path: Helping Friends Find Their Way to Christ (David C. Cook), and coauthor with Lee Strobel of The Unexpected Adventure (Zondervan) and with Bill Hybels of Becoming a Contagious Christian (Zondervan).

NOTES

1. All Bible quotations are from the New International Version, except where otherwise noted.
2. I present these in detail in Mark Mittelberg with Foreword by Lee Strobel, Choosing Your Faith: In a World of Spiritual Options (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Publishing House, 2008), and in the complementary eight-week training course Mark Mittelberg, Faith Path: Helping Friends Find Their Way to Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2009).
3. For discussion of these topics and the philosophers who represented the various schools of thought, see Frederick Copleston, S. J., A History of Philosophy, especially volumes 4 and 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1994 [original copyrights: 1959-1960]).
4. See, for example, my sections on the twenty “Arrows of Truth” in chapters 9-11 of Choosing Your Faith, and in sessions 6-7 of the Faith Path study course. Also, every Christian should read classics such as Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ (Zondervan, 1998), William Lane Craig’s updated Reasonable Faith (Crossway, 2008), and J. P. Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City (Baker, 1987).

I caught your attention with my title, but the point of this editorial is not that we should always say no to Facebook and other social media. If that were my point, then I would be a hypocrite. I’ve had a Facebook account since January 2008 and, while I’m not a daily user of Facebook, there are spurts where I make heavy use of it.

For example, last night I used Facebook to make contact with someone whom I haven’t heard from in thirty-five years! This morning I also used Facebook to send condolences to second cousins of mine whose father died yesterday. I also scanned my Facebook “news feed” this morning to find out what is going on with my “friends” and what current events they think are worthy of discussion. Additionally, I hope to find the time soon to upload pictures from CRI’s Caribbean cruise for my Facebook friends to enjoy. Facebook has all these uses and more, including ministry and evangelistic ones, as Douglas Groothuis notes in this issue’s article, “Understanding Social Media” (p. 18).

The point of this editorial is rather that we should learn when to say no to Facebook and other social media. On an Internet page devoted to Facebook addiction, the following desperate posts attest to the deteriorating affects Facebook overuse can have on study and work habits (not to mention writing and spelling ability!):¹

Oh my goodness, i hope this works, i am seriosuly addicted, facebook is all i do these days. Sleep, eat and Facebook, which is terrible because i have so many exams that i need to be concentrating on.

I REALLY wannaa quit facebook, buti just can’t. I used to be a straight A student but now all i doo iss comee back from school, check facebook, sign on msn, sleep, then facebook again then dinner then bed time! Plus ivee got my IG exams this year and i think im failing. PLZ HELP MEE!

Im crazy addicted to facebook. it’s interfering with my job….i check it 6 times an hour i would say, and i think about checking it when i am in places where i cannot check it, and it feels so good to check it when I haven’t for a couple of hours….i check it first thing when i wake up….and i just realized how rediculous this is…i mean i really want to stop it. I don’t want to delete my account as i would lose touch with people, but i wish i could use it in a way that isn’t so obsessive. I have actually mentally stated that i will not check my facebook, and then without even realizing it….im typing facebook.com into my browser, and going DOH!!!!! It’s such a nasty little habit/addiction. If anyone has gone through this and is now got it under control email me please.

I’ve heard less extreme confessions of Facebook addiction from people I personally know. While I have not experienced a compulsion to log onto Facebook frequently, I do understand its allurement. Like the rest of the World Wide Web, Facebook is open-ended. There is no limit to information you can read, pictures you can view, fan pages you can visit, and so forth. Additionally, on Facebook you can be the star, adding as much information and uploading as many photos and videos about yourself as you please. It all may be trivial, but that can be part of its appeal, offering an escape from the drudgery and difficulties that may otherwise fill your day.

Now, I believe in the therapeutic value of occasional diversions-a time in the day or week where we can feel free to unwind and recharge with something fun or entertaining, such as fiction, music, or some outdoor activity. If someone uses Facebook or other social media wholesomely for that purpose, I see no problem with it. But when Facebook use starts spilling into time that should be reserved for more important ends, then there is a problem, and the first step to correcting a problem is recognizing it.

Scripture exhorts us to make the most of our time, “because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:16). It also admonishes us, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” (Col. 3:23). If we habitually say yes to Facebook or other trivial Internet pursuits at times when we should be tending to such responsibilities as work, study, devotions, church, ministry, quality time with family, and household maintenance, then we will eventually have to give account to God for our poor stewardship of the time and resources He has given us (2 Cor. 5:10). If we are prone to addictive or obsessive-compulsive behavior, we could find ourselves in a vicious circle of seeking relief through Facebook from an increasingly depressing situation created by overuse of Facebook, perhaps crying out to strangers on the Internet, “PLZ help me!”

Self-control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). It does not consist in isolating ourselves from all influences of the world, as the desert monks of the ancient church did, but rather in learning on a moment-by-moment basis when to say no to those influences. As the apostle Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians, God has given us the things of this world to use and enjoy, but at the same time He has given us to Christ (3:22-23), and so we are not our own (6:19). Therefore, the glory of God must be the key criteria for all our behavior (6:20; 10:31).

It’s a question of service: does our use of Facebook serve our best interests and those of the Kingdom and glory of God, or does it bring our minds and time under servitude to Facebook itself, at the expense of those higher interests? If you find the latter becoming the case, then I suggest going on a “Facebook fast” for as long as it takes to break its power over you. Only resume use for as long as you are able to retain your self-control. This is a guiding principle I have found effective in keeping my liberty to use the things of this world from deteriorating into a slavery to those things that compromises my true liberty in Christ. In this way we can stand in the good company of Paul, who declared: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Cor. 6:12).

-Elliot Miller

NOTES

1. See “How to Stop That Facebook Addiction,” All Facebook: The Unofficial Facebook Resource, http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/10/how-to-stop-thatfacebook-addiction/.

This article first appeared in Christian Research Journal, volume33, number2 (2010). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: http://www.equip.org

Avatar, the special effects extravaganza movie by James Cameron, has just recently become the number one box-office blockbuster of all time. But more importantly, we live in a global world, and Avatar is also number one in the worldwide box office, breaking $2.5 billion and passing up the previous reigning champion, Titanic-also by Cameron.

Because of its explicit religious worldview and political overtones, Avatar has drawn a flaming frenzy from news sites and blogs across the Internet. Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote of it as plagiarized political propaganda: “Cameron rips off Hollywood clichés to the point you could cut and paste dialogue from ‘Pocahontas’ or ‘Dances with Wolves’ into ‘Avatar’ without appreciably changing the story.”¹ Liberal writer Jay Michaels defended it as a legitimate attack on monotheism because the pantheistic worldview of the third world natives in the movie, “not old-school-theology, holds the ideological promise of a more sustainable future on our planet.”² Liberal film critic Roger Ebert likened his viewing of Avatar to his viewing of Star Wars in 1977, calling it “not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough…predestined to launch a cult.”

To be sure, the movie is a simplistic tale of Manichean morality without nuance, two-dimensional characters without complexity, and thinly veiled political propaganda without subtlety. But those who attack its faults are missing a much more important point: Avatar’s success cannot be dismissed. It is resonating with tens of millions of people around the planet. Regardless of Avatar’s faults, James Cameron knows storytelling better than his detractors. Ebert is right. It is not merely special effects entertainment; it is cult-like in its effect.

The movie Avatar is a worldwide box-office success, not merely because it is a technological marvel of special effects, but because it is a religious myth on the level of ancient texts like The Epic of Gilgamesh. First, it is a postmodern multicultural critique of America and Western civilization, where the good guys are primitive natives who worship nature, and the bad guys are greedy multinational energy corporations protected by warmongering mercenary militia, facilitated by the scientific depersonalization of nature. Images and concepts of many religions, including Hinduism, Animism, and Christianity are integrated into its multicultural story creating global appeal. Second, it is a narrative incarnation of the pagan worldview of earth worship as described in the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory of planets as living organisms with consciousness. The notion of nature worship in opposition to the Judeo-Christian notion of man’s dominion over nature is an ancient theme that originates in Israel’s battle for the Promised Land with the pagan nature religion of the Canaanites. This same theme is at the heart of Avatar and it fuels environmental religion and hatred of the West in third world and socialist countries, resulting in a “battle of gods” over the future of the planet.

THE STORY

The hero of the story is Jake Sully, a crippled marine who arrives at a lush green planetary moon light-years from earth called Pandora. He replaces his deceased twin brother in a scientific experiment being headed by nature-loving scientist Grace Augustine. They have developed technology to splice human DNA with the DNA of the native inhabitants, called the Na’vi, ten feet-tall blue bipeds that dress, act, and worship like alien versions of historical Native Americans. This genetic engineering has led to the creation of Na’vi bodies without consciousness that can be remotely controlled like avatars in an online multi-player role-playing game. Jake gets in a tech pod that connects his consciousness to the Na’vi body, resulting in a remote virtual link, seeing and feeling through the avatar, similar to “jacking in” in The Matrix.

Jake soon discovers that his mission is to make contact with the Na’vi as “one of them,” for the purposes of a corporation that controls the project. That corporation is led by Parker Selfridge, a greedy capitalist fat cat who doesn’t care about the natives, but only wants to get them out of the way so he can exploit Pandora’s richest natural resource, “unobtainium.” The problem is that the Na’vi village is in a massive tree that sits over a massive deposit of that unobtainable resource.

Parker has hired a mercenary force of military men as security, led by the gritty, heartless, “take-no-prisoners” warmonger, Colonel Miles Quaritch. Quaritch enlists Jake to report secretly to him with military intel for nefarious purposes. Grace, the scientist, can’t stand either Parker or the natives and explore the natural and biological wonders of this world, in the manner of a Victorian naturalist.

We then follow Jake on his journey as he meets the Na’vi, who at first distrust him because they can smell his alien DNA, and don’t like anyone who speaks English. He wins their confidence, however, through Neytiri, a female Na’vi who rescues him in the forest. Neytiri is then commissioned to train Jake in all their Na’vi traditions.

He spends months learning how to hunt with a bow and arrow and ride the land beasts and flying dragons. He also enters into their religious views that seek to interact with the flow of energy that they believe unites all the life on the planet with Eywa, the Mother Goddess.

Just when Jake is falling in love with Neytiri and the Na’vi people, we see the monster-sized corporate machines clear-cutting the jungle on their way to blow up the Na’vi tree and scatter the Na’vi.

Jake escapes, but is rejected by the Na’vi because of his betrayal. But when he discovers that the military is on their way to blow up the sacred “Tree of Souls” that holds the souls of all the Na’vi ancestors, Jake switches sides and manages to regain the Na’vi’s trust and lead them in an all out battle against the “sky people” in their flying machines.

After Jake wins the day, he discovers that the sacred tree has the mystical power to transfer life from one organism to another. He decides to transfer his soul from his human body into the Na’vi avatar body he had been using, in order to permanently become a Na’vi and live the rest of his life with his love interest, Neytiri.

POSTMODERN MULTICULTURALISM

Avatar is a postmodern pagan myth of nature worship. It’s a condemnation of “Western imperialism” as racist scientific exploitation of the environment and a replacement of that worldview with the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory that asserts that the earth is a living organism, and humanity a servant unto it.

If you want to know what worldview a filmmaker is attacking, look at the villain. The villain is the bad guy who we root for the hero to overcome. The way the villain (or antagonist) thinks and lives is condemned by the storyteller through the villain’s failure to win. Cameron’s trio of antagonists in Avatar are all archetypes of Western civilization: the corporation, the military, and science.

According to the postmodern narrative, the biggest evil in civilization is the corporation, which only cares about money, not people, and will exploit third world natives without a concern for destroying their sacred spaces or their lives. Parker is clearly depicted this way as he throws out racist epithets against the Na’vi as “blue monkeys” and “fly-bitten savages.” At first, he wants to avoid public outrage by negotiating with the Na’vi to get them to move, only because “killing the indigenous people looks bad.” When Jake turns against his own people, he questions the benefits to the Na’vi of making a deal with the humans, “for what, lite beer and blue jeans?” In this story, there is no benefit to primitive natives from Western civilization, only the plundering of natural resources and product exploitation of the masses.

Next in line of Western villains for postmodern storytelling is the military class, who are not peacekeepers protecting the freedom and lives of a people, but tools of the corporation to protect financial interests through violence against “the other.” Thus Quaritch is a warmongering mercenary who can’t wait to kill the Na’vi and, drinking his coffee in battle, muses over his decimation of both environment and creatures as if it were a fun party. And all of Quaritch’s bad guy militia is white. The only one that isn’t is the sole minority female pilot who mutinies with Jake.

Cameron also makes a political allusion to the Bush administration’s War on Terror as being morally equivalent to this exploitation of Pandora. The human warmongers use phrases and slogans against the Na’vi reminiscent of Bush-era phrases such as “shock and awe,” “pre-emptive attack,” and “we will fight terror with terror.”³ The mercenary military is an obvious parallel of Blackwater, a Bush-era private security force employed in Iraq. RDA, the big energy corporation led by Parker, is an apparent analogy to Halliburton, the energy company attacked by Bush opponents for its alleged question able interests in the war. One of the good guys fighting with Jake against the corporate military onslaught refers to their impossible odds as “martyrdom,” a moral equivalency of freedom fighters with Islamic insurgents and terrorists in Iraq.

Last on the list of questionable characters in this postmodern narrative is the scientist, who depersonalizes nature in the name of materialistic explanation and helps create the very technology that exploits, indeed, “rapes” Mother Earth-or in this case, Mother Pandora. This is a more complex character because in the story, Grace begins as a begrudging tool of the corporation, with an impersonal interest in the alien biology, but ends up falling in love with the Na’vi and providing the scientific theory that supports their religious beliefs. Their religion of the oneness of all things in the Goddess (explained below) is described as an “electro-communication between the trees,” and all things. “It’s not pagan voodoo,” she proclaims, “it’s a biological global network.” The Na’vi’s religious mystical beliefs are supported by science.⁴

In one of the very few subtleties of the film, Western civilization is also linked with Christianity. The scientist’s name, Grace, happens to be the name of a defining doctrine of historic Christianity. The namesake of her surname, Augustine, is an ancient fourth-century church father who was considered one of the foremost influences on Western civilization. He taught the dominion mandate of Genesis for man to rule over creation, subduing it, as well as cultivating and keeping it.⁵

This depersonalization of nature and its subjugation to man was the philosophical foundation of science. The Enlightenment then dispensed with this Christian foundation and turned science into a materialistic pursuit of exploitation. Grace is shown in pictures on a refrigerator with the natives, teaching them and learning from them, a visual parallel to missionaries who are historically known for this kind of ministry to primitive peoples. Apparently, the scientist as the moral conscience of cross-cultural concern has replaced the Christian.

Another subtle reference is in the name “sky people,” given to the earthlings who have descended from the sky to Pandora. The sky father (god) and his patriarchal nomads killing and replacing the earth mother (goddess) and her matriarchal farmers is another narrative used against Christianity that was made popular by anthropologist James Frazer in his classic on comparative religions, The Golden Bough.⁶

The true global multicultural appeal of Avatar lies in its Matrix-like syncretism of many religions and cultures: Hinduism (powerful deities of Hinduism are blue like the Na’vi), Animism (Na’vi mirroring Native Americans and other primitive tribes), Judaism (Navi is the Hebrew word for prophet), Christianity and other Christ stories (the messianic anointing and journey of Jake), religious environmentalism (Gaia theory), and pantheism and panentheism (the oneness of all living things).

PANTHEISM/PANENTHEISM

If you want to know the worldview that a filmmaker is affirming, look at the good guys. Look at the hero and how he ends up seeing the world. In Avatar, the worldview of the good guys (the Na’vi) that the hero ends up embracing is a pagan religion of nature worship. The Na’vi are clearly the “oppressed” and exploited third world indigenous peoples of Pandora.

The Na’vi worship Eywa, the Great Mother goddess, who is described as “a network of energy that flows through all living things,” connecting them as carriers of the deity whose energy is “borrowed, and someday we will have to give it back.” This panentheist belief of a deity within all living things is further exegeted as a “oneness” or unity between those things. God is in all and all is part of God. Like Native American religion, the Na’vi kill animals for food, and then speak to their prey as a “brother whose spirit goes to Eywa, and the body to the earth.” Their sacred burial ground is the “Tree of Souls” that contains the souls of their dead ancestors to whom they petition. When they accept Jake into their community through ritual, they create a circle of interlocking hands connecting to each other, symbolizing their oneness in Eywa. The Na’vi are able to unite with horse-like beasts and flying dragons through an organic connection that allows the beast and rider to move symbiotically as one creature.

Jake turns out to be a multicultural messianic redeemer for the Na’vi, incarnate in their flesh, yet from the sky above. When he is first discovered by Neytiri, she mistrusts him until she sees a “sign from Eywa” that persuades her he may be an anointed one: Seeds that are pure in spirit from the Tree of Souls float down on him and bathe him in a transfiguration of mystical light. Later in the story, he becomes the warrior who will free their people by leading them in battle against the forces of darkness. And when he does so, it is through the “Great Mother” fighting back with him, as all the animals that once sought to eat each other now become a united army fighting the marauding militia of humans.

Samantha Smith, in her book Goddess Earth: Exposing the Pagan Agenda in the Environmental Movement, lays out three major principles of historic paganism, much of which is embedded within the worldview of Avatar:

Animism-the belief that everything is imbued with a soul;

Polytheism-the belief that many gods exist and each one has a function to preside over various aspects of nature and life;

Pantheism-the belief that all things, animate and inanimate, including the earth and humans, are manifestations of God; God is all.⁷

The pagan religious dogma of the interconnectedness of all life and the pantheistic deity that emerges to protect it is verified by the scientist as being a biological organic response of the planet seeking to maintain an equilibrium of life. There is a name on Earth for this theory, and that name is the Gaia Hypothesis.

THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS

In the 1960s, scientist James Lovelock formulated a theory related to his work detecting life on Mars for NASA. He hypothesized that the earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil was a complex entity, “constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life.”⁸ Earth is a self-regulating living organism with a consciousness. He called this the Gaia Hypothesis, based on the Greek goddess of the earth, Gaia. In later years, noted microbiologist Lynn Margulis collaborated with Lovelock to develop the theory, attracting both scientific and public attention.

On his Web site, Lovelock writes of a current Gaia movement to return to the ancient Greek notion of a symbiotic dance between religion and science: “In those days, science and theology were one and science, although less precise, had soul. As time passed this warm relationship faded and was replaced by the frigidity of the schoolmen…Now at last there are signs of a change. Science becomes holistic again and rediscovers soul.”⁹

Gaia theory is apparent in Avatar’s pantheistic “Great Mother” who, as Neytiri explains, “does not take sides” in the battle with earthlings, “She protects only the balance of life.” So Gaia comes alive when all the animals on Pandora unite as one force to protect the sacred Tree of Souls (the cerebral cortex of Pandora) from destruction by the marauding crusaders. The scientific justification of a pagan religious worldview that drives the Gaia Hypothesis is readily apparent throughout Avatar. Many of the religious beliefs of the Na’vi have natural biological explanations. The Na’vi’s have the ability to become one with other living things through their “neural queue,” a hair-like extension of their nervous system that has living tendrils.¹⁰ These tendrils look and operate exactly like fiber optic cables-the naturalistic explanation of a mystical belief. When Jake transfers his consciousness into the Na’vi body, the tendrils of the Tree of Souls (a neural network of fiber optic cables) connects to his cerebellum and relocates his soul like a computer upload of software from one hard drive to another. When Grace, the materialist scientist, is dying while connected to the Tree of Souls, even she converts and says to Jake, “The Great Mother, the All Mother, She’s real. I’m with her.” In the Gospel according to Avatar, Gaia is a personal emergent consciousness with scientific foundation and religious expression.

Although most scientists do not seek such explicit syncretism of religion with science, influential members of the environmentalist movement do. A seminal thinker in the origins of modern environmentalism was Lynn White, professor of history at Princeton, who wrote in 1967 of “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis”: “By destroying pagan animism [the belief that natural objects have souls], Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects…Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”¹¹

Nobel Prize-winning global spokesman for environmentalism Al Gore affirmed Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis of a living sacred earth entity in contrast with orthodox Christian doctrine of a desacralized nature and a unique image of God in human beings. He concluded that “it is the myriad slight strands from earth’s web of life-woven so distinctly into our essence…that reflects the image of God, faintly. By experiencing nature in its fullest-our own and that of all creation-with our senses and with our spiritual imagination, we can glimpse, ‘bright shining as the sun,’ an infinite image of God.”¹²

A CLOSER LOOK

Space does not permit a detailed critique of the philosophies of animism, panentheism, and pantheism that are embedded within Avatar. What I want to do is a brief deconstruction of the narrative of Avatar, illustrating its own internal contradictions and anomalies as a paradigm of political and religious prejudices.

First, as a postmodern multicultural narrative, Avatar suffers the condemnation of its own accusations. Its attack on Western civilization and elevation of primitivism through the journey of the hero is by its own multicultural standards, a “white savior” racist myth. It reinforces imperialist notions of scientifically ignorant primitives being saved from superior forces by a white man who is anointed above them (remember Jake’s transfiguration?), condescends to be one of them, and redeems them through his superior technological and cultural transcendence. As one political writer concluded, “The ethnic Na’vi, the film suggests, need the white man to save them because, as a less developed race, they lack the intelligence and fortitude to overcome their adversaries by themselves.”¹³

Second, Avatar is also an exaltation of the “noble savage” myth, made popular by eighteenth-century Romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau that imagines “an idealized concept of uncivilized man, who symbolizes the innate goodness of one not exposed to the corrupting influences of civilization.”¹⁴ This is a common Hollywood motif that shows up in movies such as Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves, which portray peace-loving indigenous peoples at one with nature-a politically constructed fiction that doesn’t bear out in historical reality. Depraved cultural traditions such as female circumcision, head hunting, cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery, and bloodthirsty warring are commonly present in indigenous tribes unaffected by Western civilization throughout history. It is not civilization, but human nature that is corrupt. The tragic reality of pagan culture is more like the bloodthirsty human sacrifice of Apocalypto than the oneness of all life of Avatar.

The other conceit of Avatar’s mythology of oneness with nature is in its moral condemnation of humanity and beatification of nature. Like the noble savage, this is another self-referential absurdity. If the “circle of life,” that is, the cycle of “eat or be eaten” is indeed a harmonious beauty, then humans cannot be condemned for consuming natural resources, which is in effect eating the life of others. Humans are just as much a part of nature as anything else, and moral condemnation of gluttonous excess and exploitation is arbitrary subjective manipulation by those being eaten. Blowing up trees, killing Na’vi, and consuming unobtainium is just as natural as Na’vi killing and eating viperwolves and Thanators killing and eating Na’vi.

According to the dominant global narrative of natural selection assumed in the film, the extinction of species is a natural process of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.”¹⁵ Richard Dawkins’s infamous description of natural selection as “blind, pitiless indifference” is exactly the description of Selfridge and Quaritch’s characters. No amount of rationalizing about “cooperation” and “group selection” can change the fact that the circle of life that is nature is in fact hostile, “nasty, brutish and short,” destructive, “red in tooth and claw,” and full of thorns and thistles-which brings us to the war of cultural narratives: Earth and nature worship versus man’s dominion stewardship.

ANCIENT/MODERN SACRED MYTHMAKING

I believe that the reason for Avatar’s success lies in James Cameron’s skill as a mythmaker. Avatar is essentially a postmodern pagan myth on the level of the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the Ugaritic Baal Cycle of ancient Mesopotamia. Like Avatar, these epic myths were tales of warring deities of nature embodying the claims of religious and political supremacy.

Despite our very scientific modern culture, mythology still connects with our human hearts because it appeals to transcendence, that is, a reality outside of the world that gives meaning and purpose to our existence within the world. Humanity, created as it is in the image of God, craves transcendence regardless of our technological advancement. Unfortunately, as the apostle Paul revealed, that craving for the transcendent God is suppressed out of moral guilt (Rom. 1:18-21) and results in pagan worship of the environment as the most primal natural instinct. Humanity exchanges the truth of God for a lie, and worships and serves the creature and creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25).

The battle between cultural narratives of worshipping Creator or creation is an ancient one. Augustine was right (the church father, not the fictional character): the creation narrative of Genesis 1 teaches man’s rulership over the environment with a corresponding need to bring it into subjection (Gen. 1:26-28).¹⁶ Critics of Judeo-Christianity are right when they suggest that the Bible desacralized nature by draining the deity out of it, but wrong when they conclude that such theology necessarily leads to destructive exploitation of the environment. Genesis also teaches man’s responsible stewardship over the earth (Gen. 2:15). In paganism, man is the earth’s servant, but in the Bible, man is the earth’s steward.

“Myths,” as Ronald Simkins writes, “are simply narrative elaborations of culturally shared perceptions of reality.”¹⁷ One of the purposes of mythic narratives in modern as well as ancient times is to encode literarily the religious and political overthrow of one culture by another. When new kings or kingdoms would rise to power in the ancient world, they would often displace the vassal culture’s creation stories with their own stories of how their deities triumphed over others to create the world in which they now lived. Ancient Near Eastern scholars call this battle “chaoskampf.” It denotes deity struggling over the forces of chaos to create order in the social and national lives of a people.¹⁸

The Enuma Elish tells the story of the Babylonian deity Marduk’s battle with Tiamat, the sea goddess of chaos, and his ascendancy to power in the Mesopotamian pantheon, giving literary mythical justification to the rise of Babylon as an ancient world power.¹⁹ The Baal Cycle of Ugarit tells the story of the storm god “Baal the Conqueror,” and his epiphany in becoming “Lord of the earth” in Canaan by defeating the god of chaos, Yamm (the Sea).²⁰

Even Moses, according to scholar Bruce Reichenbach, wrote Genesis 1 “as a theological-political document that describes how the Supreme Monarch establishes his kingdom and thereby justifies his claim to exclusive possession of everything in it.”²¹ God was preparing Israel to displace the pagan Canaanites and their gods both physically and literarily so He inspired Moses’ authorship of the creation account to express that ancient Near Eastern motif of establishing transcendent authority.²²

Avatar is a chaoskampf myth that incarnates the battle of worldviews and their gods, of Gaia overcoming the destructive forces of chaos (the Christian West) to establish order through earth and nature worship. It is a modern narrative of the most ancient conflict of worldviews.

A WAR OF NARRATIVES

Atheistic and secular humanistic texts of materialism are quaint myths, but ultimately inadequate in describing reality. Only a transcendent personal divinity will satisfy the hearts and imaginations of humanity. We are not in a culture war. We are in a war of gods, and the three dominant religions proclaiming the supremacy of their deity over the earth are Christianity (Jesus), Islam (Allah), and Paganism (Gaia).

Christian mythic narratives in movies such as Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have surely captured the imaginations of many. For the moment, Avatar, like a newly written Epic of Gilgamesh, heralds the rising influence of a pagan global religion of nature worship that posits humanity, not as a unique creature in God’s image ruling over nature and the earth as God’s vice regent, but as a common part of nature, serving the earth and its ruling authority over all energy and life. It’s not that Avatar is itself the game changer, but rather, that it is part of a cultural wave of ideas affecting all areas of global culture, from religion to entertainment to science to politics-promising pagan redemption, but providing subordination and slavery to nature.

Brian Godawa is the screenwriter of To End All Wars and the author of Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment (InterVarsity Press, 2009 updated), and Word Pictures: Knowing God through Story and Imagination (InterVarsity Press, 2009).

NOTES

1 http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTE4NTY2MTM0MDIzZDFiZDhlYTMwNDkyOTJjYzhmZWE=.

2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/the-meaning-of-avatareve_b_400912.html?view=screen.

3 Although fighting “terror with terror” is not a Bush administration phrase, it indicates Cameron’s interpretation of exactly what America was doing. In other words, the Iraq war is not just, it is the moral equivalence of terror.

4 Ironically, this reduction of religious beliefs to natural causes is normally used to demythologize religion, but in the face of Christian “dominion,” it magically morphs into a mysticism/science fusion against the West. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

5 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God XII, 24, Confessions, XIII, 23.

6 http://www.archive.org/stream/goldenboughstudy01frazuoft#page/n11/mode/2up.

7 Quoted in “The Pagan Roots of Environmentalism,” American Policy Center Web site: http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/thepaganroots.htm.

8 James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979, 1987, 1995, 2000), 10.

9 http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/what_is_Gaia.html.

10 http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Queue.

11 http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/lwhite.htm, quoted in Joseph Brean, “The Green Fervour,” National Post, Saturday, February 10, 2007: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=07407be3-1f9f-4f41-a16a-5a286a5b374c.

12 Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Rodale, 1992, 2006), 264-65.

13 Will Heaven, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100020488/james-cameronsavatar-is-a-stylish-film-marred-by-its-racist-subtext/.

14 “Noble Savage,” Encyclopedia Britannica online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/416988/noble-savage.

15 The subtitle of Charles Darwin’s game changing On the Origin of the Species.

16 The original Hebrew words for “rule over” and “subdue” are military and governmental words that include forceful power.

17 Ronald Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1994), 46.

18 Bernard F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 75-77.

19 Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1942, 1963), 14.

20 Michael David Coogan, trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press), 75-115.

21 Bruce R. Reichenbach, “Genesis 1 as a Theological-Political Narrative of Kingdom Establishment,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13, 1 (2003): 48.

22 This explanation of a theological-political purpose behind Genesis does not mean it is fictional or any less truthful as God’s Word.

Please tell us on Facebook: What do you think about the movie Avatar?

Avatar, the special effects extravaganza movie by James Cameron, has just recently become the number one box-office blockbuster of all time. But more importantly, we live in a global world, and Avatar is also number one in the worldwide box office, breaking $2.5 billion and passing up the previous reigning champion, Titanic-also by Cameron.

Because of its explicit religious worldview and political overtones, Avatar has drawn a flaming frenzy from news sites and blogs across the Internet. Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote of it as plagiarized political propaganda: “Cameron rips off Hollywood clichés to the point you could cut and paste dialogue from ‘Pocahontas’ or ‘Dances with Wolves’ into ‘Avatar’ without appreciably changing the story.”¹ Liberal writer Jay Michaels defended it as a legitimate attack on monotheism because the pantheistic worldview of the third world natives in the movie, “not old-school-theology, holds the ideological promise of a more sustainable future on our planet.”² Liberal film critic Roger Ebert likened his viewing of Avatar to his viewing of Star Wars in 1977, calling it “not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough…predestined to launch a cult.”

To be sure, the movie is a simplistic tale of Manichean morality without nuance, two-dimensional characters without complexity, and thinly veiled political propaganda without subtlety. But those who attack its faults are missing a much more important point: Avatar’s success cannot be dismissed. It is resonating with tens of millions of people around the planet. Regardless of Avatar’s faults, James Cameron knows storytelling better than his detractors. Ebert is right. It is not merely special effects entertainment; it is cult-like in its effect.

The movie Avatar is a worldwide box-office success, not merely because it is a technological marvel of special effects, but because it is a religious myth on the level of ancient texts like The Epic of Gilgamesh. First, it is a postmodern multicultural critique of America and Western civilization, where the good guys are primitive natives who worship nature, and the bad guys are greedy multinational energy corporations protected by warmongering mercenary militia, facilitated by the scientific depersonalization of nature. Images and concepts of many religions, including Hinduism, Animism, and Christianity are integrated into its multicultural story creating global appeal. Second, it is a narrative incarnation of the pagan worldview of earth worship as described in the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory of planets as living organisms with consciousness. The notion of nature worship in opposition to the Judeo-Christian notion of man’s dominion over nature is an ancient theme that originates in Israel’s battle for the Promised Land with the pagan nature religion of the Canaanites. This same theme is at the heart of Avatar and it fuels environmental religion and hatred of the West in third world and socialist countries, resulting in a “battle of gods” over the future of the planet.

THE STORY

The hero of the story is Jake Sully, a crippled marine who arrives at a lush green planetary moon light-years from earth called Pandora. He replaces his deceased twin brother in a scientific experiment being headed by nature-loving scientist Grace Augustine. They have developed technology to splice human DNA with the DNA of the native inhabitants, called the Na’vi, ten feet-tall blue bipeds that dress, act, and worship like alien versions of historical Native Americans. This genetic engineering has led to the creation of Na’vi bodies without consciousness that can be remotely controlled like avatars in an online multi-player role-playing game. Jake gets in a tech pod that connects his consciousness to the Na’vi body, resulting in a remote virtual link, seeing and feeling through the avatar, similar to “jacking in” in The Matrix.

Jake soon discovers that his mission is to make contact with the Na’vi as “one of them,” for the purposes of a corporation that controls the project. That corporation is led by Parker Selfridge, a greedy capitalist fat cat who doesn’t care about the natives, but only wants to get them out of the way so he can exploit Pandora’s richest natural resource, “unobtainium.” The problem is that the Na’vi village is in a massive tree that sits over a massive deposit of that unobtainable resource.

Parker has hired a mercenary force of military men as security, led by the gritty, heartless, “take-no-prisoners” warmonger, Colonel Miles Quaritch. Quaritch enlists Jake to report secretly to him with military intel for nefarious purposes. Grace, the scientist, can’t stand either Parker or the natives and explore the natural and biological wonders of this world, in the manner of a Victorian naturalist.

We then follow Jake on his journey as he meets the Na’vi, who at first distrust him because they can smell his alien DNA, and don’t like anyone who speaks English. He wins their confidence, however, through Neytiri, a female Na’vi who rescues him in the forest. Neytiri is then commissioned to train Jake in all their Na’vi traditions.

He spends months learning how to hunt with a bow and arrow and ride the land beasts and flying dragons. He also enters into their religious views that seek to interact with the flow of energy that they believe unites all the life on the planet with Eywa, the Mother Goddess.

Just when Jake is falling in love with Neytiri and the Na’vi people, we see the monster-sized corporate machines clear-cutting the jungle on their way to blow up the Na’vi tree and scatter the Na’vi.

Jake escapes, but is rejected by the Na’vi because of his betrayal. But when he discovers that the military is on their way to blow up the sacred “Tree of Souls” that holds the souls of all the Na’vi ancestors, Jake switches sides and manages to regain the Na’vi’s trust and lead them in an all out battle against the “sky people” in their flying machines.

After Jake wins the day, he discovers that the sacred tree has the mystical power to transfer life from one organism to another. He decides to transfer his soul from his human body into the Na’vi avatar body he had been using, in order to permanently become a Na’vi and live the rest of his life with his love interest, Neytiri.

POSTMODERN MULTICULTURALISM

Avatar is a postmodern pagan myth of nature worship. It’s a condemnation of “Western imperialism” as racist scientific exploitation of the environment and a replacement of that worldview with the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific theory that asserts that the earth is a living organism, and humanity a servant unto it.

If you want to know what worldview a filmmaker is attacking, look at the villain. The villain is the bad guy who we root for the hero to overcome. The way the villain (or antagonist) thinks and lives is condemned by the storyteller through the villain’s failure to win. Cameron’s trio of antagonists in Avatar are all archetypes of Western civilization: the corporation, the military, and science.

According to the postmodern narrative, the biggest evil in civilization is the corporation, which only cares about money, not people, and will exploit third world natives without a concern for destroying their sacred spaces or their lives. Parker is clearly depicted this way as he throws out racist epithets against the Na’vi as “blue monkeys” and “fly-bitten savages.” At first, he wants to avoid public outrage by negotiating with the Na’vi to get them to move, only because “killing the indigenous people looks bad.” When Jake turns against his own people, he questions the benefits to the Na’vi of making a deal with the humans, “for what, lite beer and blue jeans?” In this story, there is no benefit to primitive natives from Western civilization, only the plundering of natural resources and product exploitation of the masses.

Next in line of Western villains for postmodern storytelling is the military class, who are not peacekeepers protecting the freedom and lives of a people, but tools of the corporation to protect financial interests through violence against “the other.” Thus Quaritch is a warmongering mercenary who can’t wait to kill the Na’vi and, drinking his coffee in battle, muses over his decimation of both environment and creatures as if it were a fun party. And all of Quaritch’s bad guy militia is white. The only one that isn’t is the sole minority female pilot who mutinies with Jake.

Cameron also makes a political allusion to the Bush administration’s War on Terror as being morally equivalent to this exploitation of Pandora. The human warmongers use phrases and slogans against the Na’vi reminiscent of Bush-era phrases such as “shock and awe,” “pre-emptive attack,” and “we will fight terror with terror.”³ The mercenary military is an obvious parallel of Blackwater, a Bush-era private security force employed in Iraq. RDA, the big energy corporation led by Parker, is an apparent analogy to Halliburton, the energy company attacked by Bush opponents for its alleged question able interests in the war. One of the good guys fighting with Jake against the corporate military onslaught refers to their impossible odds as “martyrdom,” a moral equivalency of freedom fighters with Islamic insurgents and terrorists in Iraq.

Last on the list of questionable characters in this postmodern narrative is the scientist, who depersonalizes nature in the name of materialistic explanation and helps create the very technology that exploits, indeed, “rapes” Mother Earth-or in this case, Mother Pandora. This is a more complex character because in the story, Grace begins as a begrudging tool of the corporation, with an impersonal interest in the alien biology, but ends up falling in love with the Na’vi and providing the scientific theory that supports their religious beliefs. Their religion of the oneness of all things in the Goddess (explained below) is described as an “electro-communication between the trees,” and all things. “It’s not pagan voodoo,” she proclaims, “it’s a biological global network.” The Na’vi’s religious mystical beliefs are supported by science.⁴

In one of the very few subtleties of the film, Western civilization is also linked with Christianity. The scientist’s name, Grace, happens to be the name of a defining doctrine of historic Christianity. The namesake of her surname, Augustine, is an ancient fourth-century church father who was considered one of the foremost influences on Western civilization. He taught the dominion mandate of Genesis for man to rule over creation, subduing it, as well as cultivating and keeping it.⁵

This depersonalization of nature and its subjugation to man was the philosophical foundation of science. The Enlightenment then dispensed with this Christian foundation and turned science into a materialistic pursuit of exploitation. Grace is shown in pictures on a refrigerator with the natives, teaching them and learning from them, a visual parallel to missionaries who are historically known for this kind of ministry to primitive peoples. Apparently, the scientist as the moral conscience of cross-cultural concern has replaced the Christian.

Another subtle reference is in the name “sky people,” given to the earthlings who have descended from the sky to Pandora. The sky father (god) and his patriarchal nomads killing and replacing the earth mother (goddess) and her matriarchal farmers is another narrative used against Christianity that was made popular by anthropologist James Frazer in his classic on comparative religions, The Golden Bough.⁶

The true global multicultural appeal of Avatar lies in its Matrix-like syncretism of many religions and cultures: Hinduism (powerful deities of Hinduism are blue like the Na’vi), Animism (Na’vi mirroring Native Americans and other primitive tribes), Judaism (Navi is the Hebrew word for prophet), Christianity and other Christ stories (the messianic anointing and journey of Jake), religious environmentalism (Gaia theory), and pantheism and panentheism (the oneness of all living things).

PANTHEISM/PANENTHEISM

If you want to know the worldview that a filmmaker is affirming, look at the good guys. Look at the hero and how he ends up seeing the world. In Avatar, the worldview of the good guys (the Na’vi) that the hero ends up embracing is a pagan religion of nature worship. The Na’vi are clearly the “oppressed” and exploited third world indigenous peoples of Pandora.

The Na’vi worship Eywa, the Great Mother goddess, who is described as “a network of energy that flows through all living things,” connecting them as carriers of the deity whose energy is “borrowed, and someday we will have to give it back.” This panentheist belief of a deity within all living things is further exegeted as a “oneness” or unity between those things. God is in all and all is part of God. Like Native American religion, the Na’vi kill animals for food, and then speak to their prey as a “brother whose spirit goes to Eywa, and the body to the earth.” Their sacred burial ground is the “Tree of Souls” that contains the souls of their dead ancestors to whom they petition. When they accept Jake into their community through ritual, they create a circle of interlocking hands connecting to each other, symbolizing their oneness in Eywa. The Na’vi are able to unite with horse-like beasts and flying dragons through an organic connection that allows the beast and rider to move symbiotically as one creature.

Jake turns out to be a multicultural messianic redeemer for the Na’vi, incarnate in their flesh, yet from the sky above. When he is first discovered by Neytiri, she mistrusts him until she sees a “sign from Eywa” that persuades her he may be an anointed one: Seeds that are pure in spirit from the Tree of Souls float down on him and bathe him in a transfiguration of mystical light. Later in the story, he becomes the warrior who will free their people by leading them in battle against the forces of darkness. And when he does so, it is through the “Great Mother” fighting back with him, as all the animals that once sought to eat each other now become a united army fighting the marauding militia of humans.

Samantha Smith, in her book Goddess Earth: Exposing the Pagan Agenda in the Environmental Movement, lays out three major principles of historic paganism, much of which is embedded within the worldview of Avatar:

Animism-the belief that everything is imbued with a soul;

Polytheism-the belief that many gods exist and each one has a function to preside over various aspects of nature and life;

Pantheism-the belief that all things, animate and inanimate, including the earth and humans, are manifestations of God; God is all.⁷

The pagan religious dogma of the interconnectedness of all life and the pantheistic deity that emerges to protect it is verified by the scientist as being a biological organic response of the planet seeking to maintain an equilibrium of life. There is a name on Earth for this theory, and that name is the Gaia Hypothesis.

THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS

In the 1960s, scientist James Lovelock formulated a theory related to his work detecting life on Mars for NASA. He hypothesized that the earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil was a complex entity, “constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life.”⁸ Earth is a self-regulating living organism with a consciousness. He called this the Gaia Hypothesis, based on the Greek goddess of the earth, Gaia. In later years, noted microbiologist Lynn Margulis collaborated with Lovelock to develop the theory, attracting both scientific and public attention.

On his Web site, Lovelock writes of a current Gaia movement to return to the ancient Greek notion of a symbiotic dance between religion and science: “In those days, science and theology were one and science, although less precise, had soul. As time passed this warm relationship faded and was replaced by the frigidity of the schoolmen…Now at last there are signs of a change. Science becomes holistic again and rediscovers soul.”⁹

Gaia theory is apparent in Avatar’s pantheistic “Great Mother” who, as Neytiri explains, “does not take sides” in the battle with earthlings, “She protects only the balance of life.” So Gaia comes alive when all the animals on Pandora unite as one force to protect the sacred Tree of Souls (the cerebral cortex of Pandora) from destruction by the marauding crusaders. The scientific justification of a pagan religious worldview that drives the Gaia Hypothesis is readily apparent throughout Avatar. Many of the religious beliefs of the Na’vi have natural biological explanations. The Na’vi’s have the ability to become one with other living things through their “neural queue,” a hair-like extension of their nervous system that has living tendrils.¹⁰ These tendrils look and operate exactly like fiber optic cables-the naturalistic explanation of a mystical belief. When Jake transfers his consciousness into the Na’vi body, the tendrils of the Tree of Souls (a neural network of fiber optic cables) connects to his cerebellum and relocates his soul like a computer upload of software from one hard drive to another. When Grace, the materialist scientist, is dying while connected to the Tree of Souls, even she converts and says to Jake, “The Great Mother, the All Mother, She’s real. I’m with her.” In the Gospel according to Avatar, Gaia is a personal emergent consciousness with scientific foundation and religious expression.

Although most scientists do not seek such explicit syncretism of religion with science, influential members of the environmentalist movement do. A seminal thinker in the origins of modern environmentalism was Lynn White, professor of history at Princeton, who wrote in 1967 of “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis”: “By destroying pagan animism [the belief that natural objects have souls], Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects…Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”¹¹

Nobel Prize-winning global spokesman for environmentalism Al Gore affirmed Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis of a living sacred earth entity in contrast with orthodox Christian doctrine of a desacralized nature and a unique image of God in human beings. He concluded that “it is the myriad slight strands from earth’s web of life-woven so distinctly into our essence…that reflects the image of God, faintly. By experiencing nature in its fullest-our own and that of all creation-with our senses and with our spiritual imagination, we can glimpse, ‘bright shining as the sun,’ an infinite image of God.”¹²

A CLOSER LOOK

Space does not permit a detailed critique of the philosophies of animism, panentheism, and pantheism that are embedded within Avatar. What I want to do is a brief deconstruction of the narrative of Avatar, illustrating its own internal contradictions and anomalies as a paradigm of political and religious prejudices.

First, as a postmodern multicultural narrative, Avatar suffers the condemnation of its own accusations. Its attack on Western civilization and elevation of primitivism through the journey of the hero is by its own multicultural standards, a “white savior” racist myth. It reinforces imperialist notions of scientifically ignorant primitives being saved from superior forces by a white man who is anointed above them (remember Jake’s transfiguration?), condescends to be one of them, and redeems them through his superior technological and cultural transcendence. As one political writer concluded, “The ethnic Na’vi, the film suggests, need the white man to save them because, as a less developed race, they lack the intelligence and fortitude to overcome their adversaries by themselves.”¹³

Second, Avatar is also an exaltation of the “noble savage” myth, made popular by eighteenth-century Romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau that imagines “an idealized concept of uncivilized man, who symbolizes the innate goodness of one not exposed to the corrupting influences of civilization.”¹⁴ This is a common Hollywood motif that shows up in movies such as Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves, which portray peace-loving indigenous peoples at one with nature-a politically constructed fiction that doesn’t bear out in historical reality. Depraved cultural traditions such as female circumcision, head hunting, cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery, and bloodthirsty warring are commonly present in indigenous tribes unaffected by Western civilization throughout history. It is not civilization, but human nature that is corrupt. The tragic reality of pagan culture is more like the bloodthirsty human sacrifice of Apocalypto than the oneness of all life of Avatar.

The other conceit of Avatar’s mythology of oneness with nature is in its moral condemnation of humanity and beatification of nature. Like the noble savage, this is another self-referential absurdity. If the “circle of life,” that is, the cycle of “eat or be eaten” is indeed a harmonious beauty, then humans cannot be condemned for consuming natural resources, which is in effect eating the life of others. Humans are just as much a part of nature as anything else, and moral condemnation of gluttonous excess and exploitation is arbitrary subjective manipulation by those being eaten. Blowing up trees, killing Na’vi, and consuming unobtainium is just as natural as Na’vi killing and eating viperwolves and Thanators killing and eating Na’vi.

According to the dominant global narrative of natural selection assumed in the film, the extinction of species is a natural process of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.”¹⁵ Richard Dawkins’s infamous description of natural selection as “blind, pitiless indifference” is exactly the description of Selfridge and Quaritch’s characters. No amount of rationalizing about “cooperation” and “group selection” can change the fact that the circle of life that is nature is in fact hostile, “nasty, brutish and short,” destructive, “red in tooth and claw,” and full of thorns and thistles-which brings us to the war of cultural narratives: Earth and nature worship versus man’s dominion stewardship.

ANCIENT/MODERN SACRED MYTHMAKING

I believe that the reason for Avatar’s success lies in James Cameron’s skill as a mythmaker. Avatar is essentially a postmodern pagan myth on the level of the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the Ugaritic Baal Cycle of ancient Mesopotamia. Like Avatar, these epic myths were tales of warring deities of nature embodying the claims of religious and political supremacy.

Despite our very scientific modern culture, mythology still connects with our human hearts because it appeals to transcendence, that is, a reality outside of the world that gives meaning and purpose to our existence within the world. Humanity, created as it is in the image of God, craves transcendence regardless of our technological advancement. Unfortunately, as the apostle Paul revealed, that craving for the transcendent God is suppressed out of moral guilt (Rom. 1:18-21) and results in pagan worship of the environment as the most primal natural instinct. Humanity exchanges the truth of God for a lie, and worships and serves the creature and creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25).

The battle between cultural narratives of worshipping Creator or creation is an ancient one. Augustine was right (the church father, not the fictional character): the creation narrative of Genesis 1 teaches man’s rulership over the environment with a corresponding need to bring it into subjection (Gen. 1:26-28).¹⁶ Critics of Judeo-Christianity are right when they suggest that the Bible desacralized nature by draining the deity out of it, but wrong when they conclude that such theology necessarily leads to destructive exploitation of the environment. Genesis also teaches man’s responsible stewardship over the earth (Gen. 2:15). In paganism, man is the earth’s servant, but in the Bible, man is the earth’s steward.

“Myths,” as Ronald Simkins writes, “are simply narrative elaborations of culturally shared perceptions of reality.”¹⁷ One of the purposes of mythic narratives in modern as well as ancient times is to encode literarily the religious and political overthrow of one culture by another. When new kings or kingdoms would rise to power in the ancient world, they would often displace the vassal culture’s creation stories with their own stories of how their deities triumphed over others to create the world in which they now lived. Ancient Near Eastern scholars call this battle “chaoskampf.” It denotes deity struggling over the forces of chaos to create order in the social and national lives of a people.¹⁸

The Enuma Elish tells the story of the Babylonian deity Marduk’s battle with Tiamat, the sea goddess of chaos, and his ascendancy to power in the Mesopotamian pantheon, giving literary mythical justification to the rise of Babylon as an ancient world power.¹⁹ The Baal Cycle of Ugarit tells the story of the storm god “Baal the Conqueror,” and his epiphany in becoming “Lord of the earth” in Canaan by defeating the god of chaos, Yamm (the Sea).²⁰

Even Moses, according to scholar Bruce Reichenbach, wrote Genesis 1 “as a theological-political document that describes how the Supreme Monarch establishes his kingdom and thereby justifies his claim to exclusive possession of everything in it.”²¹ God was preparing Israel to displace the pagan Canaanites and their gods both physically and literarily so He inspired Moses’ authorship of the creation account to express that ancient Near Eastern motif of establishing transcendent authority.²²

Avatar is a chaoskampf myth that incarnates the battle of worldviews and their gods, of Gaia overcoming the destructive forces of chaos (the Christian West) to establish order through earth and nature worship. It is a modern narrative of the most ancient conflict of worldviews.

A WAR OF NARRATIVES

Atheistic and secular humanistic texts of materialism are quaint myths, but ultimately inadequate in describing reality. Only a transcendent personal divinity will satisfy the hearts and imaginations of humanity. We are not in a culture war. We are in a war of gods, and the three dominant religions proclaiming the supremacy of their deity over the earth are Christianity (Jesus), Islam (Allah), and Paganism (Gaia).

Christian mythic narratives in movies such as Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have surely captured the imaginations of many. For the moment, Avatar, like a newly written Epic of Gilgamesh, heralds the rising influence of a pagan global religion of nature worship that posits humanity, not as a unique creature in God’s image ruling over nature and the earth as God’s vice regent, but as a common part of nature, serving the earth and its ruling authority over all energy and life. It’s not that Avatar is itself the game changer, but rather, that it is part of a cultural wave of ideas affecting all areas of global culture, from religion to entertainment to science to politics-promising pagan redemption, but providing subordination and slavery to nature.

Brian Godawa is the screenwriter of To End All Wars and the author of Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment (InterVarsity Press, 2009 updated), and Word Pictures: Knowing God through Story and Imagination (InterVarsity Press, 2009).

NOTES

1 http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTE4NTY2MTM0MDIzZDFiZDhlYTMwNDkyOTJjYzhmZWE=.

2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/the-meaning-of-avatareve_b_400912.html?view=screen.

3 Although fighting “terror with terror” is not a Bush administration phrase, it indicates Cameron’s interpretation of exactly what America was doing. In other words, the Iraq war is not just, it is the moral equivalence of terror.

4 Ironically, this reduction of religious beliefs to natural causes is normally used to demythologize religion, but in the face of Christian “dominion,” it magically morphs into a mysticism/science fusion against the West. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

5 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God XII, 24, Confessions, XIII, 23.

6 http://www.archive.org/stream/goldenboughstudy01frazuoft#page/n11/mode/2up.

7 Quoted in “The Pagan Roots of Environmentalism,” American Policy Center Web site: http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/thepaganroots.htm.

8 James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979, 1987, 1995, 2000), 10.

9 http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/what_is_Gaia.html.

10 http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Queue.

11 http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/lwhite.htm, quoted in Joseph Brean, “The Green Fervour,” National Post, Saturday, February 10, 2007: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=07407be3-1f9f-4f41-a16a-5a286a5b374c.

12 Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Rodale, 1992, 2006), 264-65.

13 Will Heaven, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100020488/james-cameronsavatar-is-a-stylish-film-marred-by-its-racist-subtext/.

14 “Noble Savage,” Encyclopedia Britannica online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/416988/noble-savage.

15 The subtitle of Charles Darwin’s game changing On the Origin of the Species.

16 The original Hebrew words for “rule over” and “subdue” are military and governmental words that include forceful power.

17 Ronald Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1994), 46.

18 Bernard F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 75-77.

19 Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1942, 1963), 14.

20 Michael David Coogan, trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press), 75-115.

21 Bruce R. Reichenbach, “Genesis 1 as a Theological-Political Narrative of Kingdom Establishment,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13, 1 (2003): 48.

22 This explanation of a theological-political purpose behind Genesis does not mean it is fictional or any less truthful as God’s Word.

Synopsis

Scientific materialists are not sure what to make of religion. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that religious faith is a mind virus that has parasitized brains selected for gullibility. Unfortunately, Dawkins’s evolutionary psychology is a universal acid. Were it true, it would undermine the credibility not only of religion, but also of science itself, including evolutionary psychology. Dawkins’s special pleading for science-science is immune from skepticism, because it is tested against reality-is not persuasive, because the scientific method relies on nonscientific principles that cannot themselves be tested. Dawkins fails to engage effectively the question of truth, but, presuming that faith is irrational, he offers an implausible reductionist explanation of it.

In their recent book, How God Changes Your Brain, neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman appear at first to be friendlier toward religion, arguing that thinking about God is good for the brain, our health, and our relationships. But while the techniques of meditation that they study do provide more evidence of the power of the mind over the body, they do not essentially involve faith or support any particular religion. And Newberg and Waldman also promote a spiritual indifferentism and pragmatism antithetical to any traditional religion, including orthodox Christianity.

Unlike Joel Osteen, who can offer only quasi-religious pop psychology, neuroscience has all the authority and prestige of a hard empirical science. This appeals directly to the dominant creed of scientism, which assumes that materialistic science alone is capable of producing knowledge. Yet among scientific materialists, there is significant disagreement about what to make of belief in God. For some, like Richard Dawkins, a neuroscientific account based on Darwinian principles allows us to explain away faith as a harmful delusion.¹ Others, like Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, appear friendlier to religion. These scientists provide experimental evidence that visualizing and thinking about God can be good for subjects’ brains, their mental health, and their relationships.² But is this sort of account really helpful to the cause of Christian apologetics? In what follows, I will first respond to Dawkins’s charge that God is a delusion, showing that his arguments are self-destructive and fallacious. Then, I will consider whether the “God is good for you” approach of Newberg and Waldman is really an improvement.

THE GOD DELUSION

According to Richard Dawkins, “Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip-side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses….The truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad.”³

In general, Dawkins argues, religion can be explained “as a by-product of normal psychological dispositions,”⁴ perhaps “a by-product of the irrationality mechanisms that were originally built into the brain by selection for falling in love,”⁵ and is a useful form of self-deception because it enables communities to cooperate under some shared goals and guidelines, thus promoting survival.

One major problem for Dawkins’s argument is that he attempts to apply a universal acid only selectively: by its nature, a truly universal acid will eat up everything, including the person applying it. If it is true that our brains are configured by evolution to slavishly trust our elders, and that we have no way of distinguishing good advice from bad, then this would have to include the advice of scientists, who most certainly function as the elders of modern technological societies saturated with scientism. In other words, if Dawkins’s account of our brains is correct, then we can have no good reason to believe it, since we are in no position to distinguish this truth from error.

The same point applies to Dawkins’s suggestion that religion be understood as a “mind-virus,” that is, a collection of “memes.” According to Dawkins, “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body…so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via…imitation.”⁶

However, as Alister McGrath has pointed out, “If all ideas are memes or the effects of memes, Dawkins is left in the decidedly uncomfortable position of having to accept that his own ideas must be recognized as the effects of memes. Scientific ideas would then become yet another example of memes replicating within the human mind.”⁷

As one might expect, Dawkins has attempted to evade this conclusion by claiming that scientific ideas are a special exception to the rule, because of the way they are tested against reality. But this response is epistemologically naïve, because it forgets that the scientific method depends on nonempirical principles (such as those of deductive, inductive, and abductive logic), and if our minds are as unreliable as he claims, we can have no good reason to trust these principles. Dawkins, blissfully unaware that he is propounding not science, but materialist philosophy, has blundered into the logical minefield exposed by Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga showed that if evolutionary naturalism were true, then it would make our minds too unreliable to trust anything, including evolutionary naturalism.⁸

What makes matters worse is that evolutionary psychologists have conceded this point without apparently realizing it. For example, Steven Pinker admits that on his view, “our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth.”⁹ And Lewis Wolpert claims that “our brains contain a belief generating machine, an engine that can produce beliefs with little relation to what is actually true.”¹⁰ With no sense of irony, Wolpert later claims that “science provides by far the most reliable method for determining whether one’s beliefs are valid.”¹¹ The problem, of course, is that if our belief-forming mechanism favors useful but largely false beliefs, this will also include our scientific beliefs. Even if natural selection could somehow hone beliefs relevant to our everyday survival so that they were mostly true, this still would not be good grounds to trust recent scientific theories, because they played no role in the survival of our ancestors. As Pinker says, “Our ancestors encountered certain problems for hundreds of thousands or millions of years-recognizing objects, making tools, learning the local language, finding a mate, predicting an animal’s movement, finding their way-and encountered certain other problems never-putting a man on the moon… proving Fermat’s last theorem.”¹²

Surviving lions and swamps has nothing to do with the developments of quantum mechanics-or of evolutionary psychology itself. Evolutionary psychology implies that our minds are too unreliable to accept any scientific theory, including evolutionary psychology. Thus Dawkins fails to show that scientific materialism is immune from the corrosive acid he unleashes on religion, leaving his preference for the former a matter of arbitrary intellectual imperialism. McGrath perceptively observes: “Anyone familiar with intellectual history will spot the pattern immediately. Everyone’s dogma is wrong except mine. My ideas are exempt from the general patterns I identify for other ideas, which allows me to explain them away, leaving my own to dominate the field.”¹³

There is a second and purely logical flaw in debunking accounts of religious (or moral) ideas, which was exposed long ago by C. S. Lewis in his essay, “Bulverism.” As Lewis notices, merely to offer an account that might “explain away” why someone has a belief simply bypasses the question of whether the content of the belief is true. This question requires us to examine the evidence for and against the beliefs themselves, evidence that exists outside of people’s minds and brains. So before the skeptic can claim that religious ideas derive from a tainted source, he must first show that they have no supporting evidence, or provide more compelling evidence against them.

“In other words, you must first show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.”¹⁴

Upon reflection, no one would take seriously the idea that applied mathematics is false because modern brain-scanning techniques have shown what is really going on in the brain when the mathematician solves differential equations. It is therefore only because Dawkins has assumed that religious claims are noncognitive sentiments unsupported by evidence that he spends so little effort looking into the matter.

When we consider the time Dawkins does devote to the truth question-evaluating arguments for the existence of God and the reliability of the New Testament documents-we find that he simply has not done his homework. Thus, Alvin Plantinga concludes, “You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.”¹⁵

Michael Ruse, an agnostic Darwinian philosopher, concurs: “Dawkins is brazen in his ignorance of philosophy and theology (not to mention the history of science). A major part of the book involves ripping into the chief arguments for the existence of God. I confess that it is the first time in my life that I have felt sorry for the ontological argument.”¹⁶

When it comes to the New Testament, Dawkins considers only the views of skeptical Bible scholars, ignoring mountains of first-rate work by such leading apologists as Craig Blomberg, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, John Warwick Montgomery, and N. T. Wright. A good scholar must refute the strongest case for the view that he opposes, not merely cite the chorus of those in his own choir.

The same general moral applies to a variety of other debunking strategies, such as the attempt to explain away religious experiences as a defect in the temporal lobes, the result of a “God gene” or of a misfiring “God spot” in the brain.¹⁷ All of them assume without argument that no religion is grounded in evidence. Yet the central Christian claims are about Christ’s saving work in history, and therefore can be investigated using secular, empirical methods.

THE GOD PLACEBO

After seeing one’s religious beliefs dismissed out of hand, it is initially comforting to read that some neuroscientists think that religion might have a more positive role. The title of Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman’s 2009 book seems encouraging: How God Changes Your Brain. But it turns out to be yet another contribution to the cottage industry of books that appear to be about God, but really are not.¹⁸ The authors admit early on that “neuroscience cannot tell you if God does or does not exist.” Instead, at most they are studying mental representations of God, “as an image, feeling or thought,” and they are not really interested in the question of truth, because they follow the same line of thought as other evolutionary psychologists, according to whom “most of the human brain does not even worry if the things we see are actually real. Instead, it only needs to know if they are useful for survival.”¹⁹ As a result, the authors completely bypass the questions of which religion’s portrait of God is closest to the truth, and instead focus on the pragmatic benefits of various spiritual ideas and feelings for people’s health.

When we look at the actual techniques of meditation presented in Newberg and Waldman’s book, it is not clear that even a vague, unitarian spirituality plays a role. The authors cite yoga, which, with its meditation and focused breathing, helps “improve memory and cognition” and “counters the effects of depression.”²⁰ But the techniques were tested on a construction worker-”Gus”-with no spiritual focus: “Our study shows that meditation can be separated from its religious roots and still remain a valuable tool for cognitive enhancement.”²¹ Again, they tell us that they “discovered that you could take God out of the ritual and still influence the brain.”²² And in fact, all of the techniques presented in the book can be practiced by secularists: “For the purpose of reaching the broadest audience, we have removed the religious inferences.”²³

Well, if God, religion, and spirituality play no essential role in any of these exercises, the logical conclusion is that the source of their efficacy lies elsewhere. The authors admit that driving Gus’s four-step plan to improve memory is “expectation,” which “is one of the underlying principles of optimism,” which “also governs the…’placebo effect.’”²⁴ So a perfectly reasonable conclusion, having nothing to do with spirituality, is that the human mind can exert a downward causal influence on the brain, precisely the conclusion of neuroscientists Jeff Schwartz²⁵ and Mario Beauregard.²⁶ Alas, Newberg and Waldman, who are thoroughly wedded to the scientific materialism conventional in their discipline, do not seriously pursue this line, probably because they do not really accept that the mind has any real causal power over and above that of the brain. They content themselves with saying that the power of expectation “is simply the brain doing what millions of years of evolution have led it to do,”²⁷ which confirms their materialist orthodoxy, but provides no explanation whatsoever. In my opinion, the real value of the book (more evidence that materialism is false because the mind has independent causal power²⁸) is buried by a smokescreen of talk about spirituality, which the authors admit is irrelevant to their actual results.

Along the way the authors make numerous, unrecognized assumptions that beg important questions. For example, they assert that “the benefits gleaned from prayer and meditation may have less to do with a specific theology than with the ritual techniques of breathing, staying relaxed, and focusing one’s attention on a concept that evokes comfort, compassion, or a spiritual sense of peace.”²⁹ But the benefits the authors are studying are health benefits, and most people are not praying for or meditating about their own health! For example, if a prayer is for someone else’s health and the prayer is granted, the important results are not in the brain of the person praying. More importantly, Christian believers are concerned with praying to the true God and conforming their will to His will: the whole pragmatic approach of the book suggests erroneously that the only reason to believe in God is for the benefits He may bring us, as if God is a kind of cosmic vending machine. This hardly matches Christ’s prayer to the Father in Gethsemane, “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36 NIV).

The underlying problem is that like Daniel Dennett,³⁰ Newberg and Waldman seek to study religion as a natural phenomenon, which leads them to make numerous category mistakes. Thus they have headings such as, “What part of the brain makes God real?” and “The chemical nature of God,”³¹ which reduce God to something like a secretion of our own brains. If God is real, and He made us, the language is quite absurd. If the topic had been scientific beliefs, would the authors have used the headings, “What part of the brain makes laws of physics real?” or “The chemical nature of physical laws”? They do, of course, note that some kinds of drugs (like psilocybin) make people more open to certain “feelings of unity, sacredness, intuitive knowledge, and ineffability,”³² but provide no criteria for distinguishing illusions from veridical experiences, and appear naively to assume that such spiritual experiences are necessarily positive, having no definite doctrine by which to test the spirits to see if they are of God (1 John 4). The fact that the authors find it unimportant to know any serious theology does not help.

Newberg and Waldman assume that everything real is best understood from the outside, studied as a specimen, but as C. S. Lewis argued, this discounts the possibility that there are some things best understood only from the inside. Just like a pain, a religious experience can be correlated with a neural event, but impersonal knowledge of this event does not tell us what it is like to have that experience. “It is perfectly easy to go on all your life giving explanations of religion, love, morality, honour, and the like, without having been inside any of them. And if you do that, you are simply playing with counters. You go on explaining a thing without knowing what it is.”³³

Further, Lewis pointed out, it must be a fallacy to suppose that all that is really going on in these experiences is the neural events, for then, “what about the cerebral physiologist’s own thought at that moment? A second physiologist, looking at it, could pronounce it only tiny physical movements in the first physiologist’s skull. Where is the rot to end?”³⁴

In fact, neuroscientists themselves continue to rely on subjective conscious states, both for their subjects’ reports and in their own observations. The renowned neuroscientist Benjamin Libet confirmed this: “The whole foundation of my experimental studies of the physiology of conscious experience…was that externally observable and manipulable brain processes and the related reportable subjective introspective experiences must be studied simultaneously, as independent categories, to understand their relationship.”³⁵

As for the question of whether an experience is an illusion or a genuine insight into reality, this can only be investigated by examining the world outside of people’s brains. No one would take seriously the idea that a formula of applied mathematics should not be used to build bridges because we now know what is going on in the engineer’s brain when he thinks of the formula. We would test the formula against objective reality. Newberg and Waldman never consider the idea that a religious claim could be tested against the objective facts of history, yet this is precisely what the Christian claim allows and even demands. As Paul tells us, if Christ was not raised as a matter of genuine, historical fact, then our faith is futile (1 Cor. 15: 17), and in defending the resurrection, Paul appeals to the public evidence reported by hundreds of living witnesses (1 Cor. 15: 3-8).

Despite their professed scientific neutrality, the authors in fact share a large collection of nonscientific prejudices about which religions are most “advanced.” They think that religions that are maximally inclusive, tolerant, and nonjudgmental are clearly superior. In one of their surveys, they were disappointed to discover that only thirty percent of respondents answered “yes” to the question, “Are other religions correct, even when they differ from my own?”³⁶ The authors have simply assumed that religion is a matter of subjective feeling with any confessional statements serving only as mantras, making their cognitive content irrelevant. Anyone who understands specific religions immediately sees the problem with accepting all religions as true-they make mutually exclusive claims about who or what God is and about how humans can be saved. For example, Christians claim God is triune, that God became man in Christ through whom alone we can be saved (John 14:6; Acts 4:12), but Muslims deny the Trinity and incarnation (and the crucifixion and resurrection) of Christ, and deny that we need Christ to be saved. It is not intolerance, but simple logic that leads the faithful Christian to think that Islam is not correct.

Further, the more inclusive, pluralist religion that Newberg and Waldman prefer is not really tolerant at all.³⁷ For it logically implies that all of the specific religions that make definitive claims about the nature of God and salvation are false. It is also clear that the authors have begged the question against any religion claiming that God has specially revealed Himself through scriptures, by assuming that all religious experiences are “generated” by the brain and that this explains “the great diversity of religious ideas and theologies.”³⁸ What if God revealed Himself by acting in ordinary history, and inspired authors to record what happened, as Christians claim? Then these ideas were not ultimately “generated by the brain” but derive from historical fact. The same presumption makes Newberg and Waldman talk of “the future of God,”³⁹ as if it were a matter of our constructing the most socially and genetically useful concept of God. Perhaps we should have a referendum and find out which god most people would like? Better yet, a “god of the month” club might be popular-for a while. Evidently, the authors can only conceive of theology from below: human attempts to reach up to the divine, which inevitably means making a false god in our image. The idea that we should humbly conform ourselves to the living and true God in whose image we are made is never considered.

While Newberg and Waldman see a lowest common denominator religion as a panacea, it is really only what Christian Smith and Melissa Denton have identified as “moralistic therapeutic deism,” a nondoctrinal spiritual pragmatism, devoted to being good and feeling good, with a distant god who is there if needed, but not involved in most of life. Such a religion provides us with no clear portrait of whom we should worship, and its god does nothing to solve our deepest problems-our moral failures and our mortality. As Lewis observed, “A minimal religion…has no power to touch any of the deepest chords in our nature….There is…nothing that can convince, convert or (in the higher sense) console; nothing, therefore, which can restore vitality to our civilization. It is not costly enough. It can never be a controller or even a rival to our natural sloth and greed. A flag, a song, an old school tie, is stronger than it; much more, the pagan religions.”⁴⁰

Ironically, Smith and Denton observe that the followers of this creed still find their life in particular places of worship with specific teachings. The minimal theism of moralistic therapeutic deism “appears to operate as a parasitic faith….This religion generally does not and cannot stand on its own, so its adherents must”-despite obvious contradictions-”be Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, Jewish Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, Mormon Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, and even nonreligious Moralistic Therapeutic Deists.”⁴¹

FAIR WARNING

A clear enemy is easier to defend against than a false friend. Those like Dawkins who attempt to explain faith away are obviously hostile. But when scientists proclaim themselves friendly to poorly defined notions of spirituality and religion, there is a danger that well-meaning Christians will uncritically embrace a Trojan horse. Although they claim to provide a neutral scientific account of religious experience and practice, Newberg and Waldman advocate a nebulous indifferentism that is flatly incompatible with Christian faith. It would be wise to beware of neuroscientists bearing gifts.

Angus Menuge, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy at Concordia University, Wisconsin.

NOTES

1 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

2 Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009).

3 Dawkins, 176.

4 Ibid., 177.

5 Ibid., 185.

6 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 192.

7 Alister McGrath, Dawkins’s God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 124.

8 Alvin Plantinga’s argument traces to C. S. Lewis’s argument in chapter 3 of his Miracles. Plantinga first stated the argument in “Is Naturalism Irrational?” chapter 12 of his Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). A later version of the same argument, including a technical correction and some helpful simplifications is presented in Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). More recently, Plantinga has responded at length to his critics in “Reply to Beilby’s Cohorts” in James Beilby, ed., Naturalism Defeated: Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). For a defense of Plantinga’s and Lewis’s argument, see my “Beyond Skinnerian Creatures: A Defense of the Lewis/Plantinga Critique of Evolutionary Naturalism,” Philosophia Christi 5, 1 (2003): 143-65.

9 Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 305.

10 Lewis Wolpert, Six Impossible Things before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 140.

11 Ibid., 216.

12 Pinker, 304.

13 McGrath, 124.

14 “Bulverism,” in Walter Hooper, ed., God in the Dock, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 273.

15 Alvin Plantinga, “The Dawkins Confusion,” 1 (http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/marapr/1.21.html).

16 Michael Ruse, review of The God Delusion, Isis, 98, 4 (December, 2007): 814-16.

17 For more on this topic, see Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’ Leary, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), which I reviewed in Christian Research Journal 32, 4 (2009): 54-55.

18 A similar work is Dean Hamer’s The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes (New York: Doubleday, 2004), a study of “self-transcendence,” which has nothing specifically to do with God. Locals near my home regularly achieve “self-transcendence” by immersing themselves in the Green Bay Packers. Self-help spirituality is also not really about God (or at any rate, not the true God), but about techniques of self-motivation that deny the full reality of sin and the necessity and sufficiency of Christ’s saving work. The best recent critique of this phenomenon is Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008).

19 Newberg and Waldman, 4-5.

20 Ibid., 27.

21 Ibid., 31.

22 Ibid., 44.

23 Ibid., 174.

24 Ibid., 34.

25 Jeff Schwartz and Sharon Begley, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (New York: HarperCollins, 2002).

26 Mario Beauregard, “Mind Does Really Matter: Evidence from Neuroimaging Studies of Emotional Self-Regulation, Psychotherapy and Placebo Effect,” Progress in Neurobiology 81, 4 (March 2007): 218-36.

27 Newberg and Waldman, 34.

28 For a recent defense of the downward causal power of the mind over the brain, see my article, “Is Downward Causation Possible?” Philosophia Christi 11, 1 (2009): 93-110.

29 Newberg and Waldman, 48.

30 Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Penguin, 2007).

31 Newberg and Waldman, 54-55.

32 Ibid., 58.

33 C. S. Lewis, “Meditation in a Toolshed,” in God in the Dock, 214.

34 Ibid., 215.

35 Benjamin Libet, “Do We Have Free Will?” in Anthony Freeman, Keith Sutherland, and Benjamin Libet, eds., The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will (Exeter, England: Imprint Academic, 2000), 55.

36 Newberg and Waldman, 70.

37 This point is well made by J. I. Packer in his “Paul against Pluralism,” in Tough-Minded Christianity: Honoring the Legacy of John Warwick Montgomery, ed. William Dembski and Thomas Schirrmacher (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2008), 2-19.

38 Newberg and Waldman, 79.

39 Ibid., 82.

40 C. S. Lewis, “Religion without Dogma?” in God in the Dock, 142-43.

41 Christian Smith and Melinda Lindquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 166.

SYNOPSIS

The definition of family has become one of Christianity’s most controversial doctrines. In a time of international revision of marriage and family roles, widespread acceptance of cohabitation and high divorce rates, believers express uncertainty about what does or does not constitute a family, hesitancy about the importance of the family concept, or unwillingness to recognize and honor that concept in their own lives. A general confusion seems to have grown, in both church and culture, regarding the meaning and importance of family. Adding to the confusion is the controversy stirred when an objective definition of family and marriage is commended. Since we cannot hold a specific view without directly or indirectly negating other views, we’re left considering whether to keep our views to ourselves or express them in hopes of productive dialogue. But to engage in such dialogue regarding family runs the risk of being viewed as judgmental, exclusionary, or even bigoted. Three primary questions are thereby raised. First, does Scripture offer a concise definition of the family? Second, is that definition critical as a doctrinal/moral issue within the church? And finally, are we called to promote and defend that definition outside the church? While the answer to all three seems clearly to be “yes,” we’re left with the challenge of implementing greater clarity within the church, and more reasoned boldness when addressing the culture.

IT IS A STRANGE THING THAT IF THE OLD EVANGELISTIC DOCTRINES SHOULD APPEAR FOR ONE MOMENT TO BE BEATEN IN DEBATE, THEY ALWAYS CONQUER IN RESULTS. CHARLES SPURGEON

In the 1993 movie Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams, disguised as a grandmotherly housekeeper, offers comfort to a child who fears her parents’ divorce means the end of her family: “There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. Some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. Some live in separate homes and neighborhoods in different areas of the country. They may not see each other for days, weeks, months, or even years at a time. But if there’s love, dear, those are the ties that bind. And you’ll have a family in your heart forever.”¹ It’s a common sentiment, growing in popularity and benign in tone-that love makes a family, so the people you love can become your family unit, one that’s determined primarily by emotion, less by blood, and barely (if at all) by objectively defined gender or function. Here the German poet Johann Schiller’s two hundred-year-old oft-quoted phrase, “It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons,”² finds new breath in contemporary parallel efforts such as Gigi Kaeser’s photographic campaign for gay/lesbian parenting titled Love Makes a Family³ and author/songwriter Carol Lynn Pearson’s lyrics, “But that’s not the thing that makes us want to sing/A family is more than that./And this is what I’m thinking of/A family’s really a family when it’s got love.”⁴ While this view rightfully salutes the bonding felt when love is shared between partners or members of a group, it’s also problematic for believers who hold the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of the family, a concept determined by objective elements like blood, gender, and/or clearly prescribed roles. After all, if it’s love that makes a family, then what are we to do with the traditional definition of marriage as being monogamous and male-female in form? For that matter, why bother with the institution at all? If love, rather than matrimony, lays the family foundation, then what’s a license got to do with it? Ditto for the allegedly unique roles fathers and mothers play in childrearing, because if love equals family, then children are just as effectively raised by nonrelatives, distant relatives, or relative strangers, so long as they’re loved. So if love’s the final arbiter, should our current understanding of family be preserved, or amended to flex with the times, or discarded altogether?

WHEN VAGUE IS IN VOGUE

Tensions rise whenever the merits of an objective (and exclusive) definition are weighed against a more inclusive, subjective one. To say, “There’s only one way,” can seem divisive, whereas the more egalitarian, “Whatever seems right to you is OK” approach gets the “nice” award. In polite conversation, it’s natural to favor subjectivity, avoiding, when possible, the social discomforts that come when an uncompromising position is taken. But the more crucial the topic, the clearer the mandate for defending objective exclusive truth. Here the arguments over the definition of family are much like modern debates over an exclusive versus inclusive concept of God. “I’m not religious; I’m spiritual,” many affirm today, claiming there are multiple paths to God, and many ways to conceptualize Him/Her/It. On this point the Christian can hardly agree, remembering that Jesus Himself said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 ESV), so believers now face the challenge of promoting an objective, specific definition of God and salvation in a time when subjectivity regarding both is in vogue. A similar challenge is posed when revisions of the family are called for. When “Love makes a family” is argued, we can hardly agree, remembering the precision with which the family is defined in Scripture, leaving us with the challenge of promoting an objective, specific definition of marriage and family when subjectivity regarding both is in vogue. Social tensions notwithstanding, this is a topic on which we can ill afford being coy. The ramifications for childrearing and cultural stability are many, the stakes enormous. A mutually agreed upon concept of family determines our nation’s approach to same-sex marriage, polygamy, couples living together apart from wedlock, transsexualism, adoption, custody of children, and divorce. In short, the “family” quarrel-the cultural debate over how it’s defined and preserved-is no small matter, requiring a clear and rational Christian response. Three primary questions are hereby raised: Does Scripture offer a concise definition of the family? Is that definition critical as a doctrinal/moral issue within the church? Are we called to promote and defend that definition outside the church?

THE FAMILY IS A CONCEPT

In response to the first question, we’ll begin by noting that a high view of Scripture yields a high view of family. Two parts of this are noteworthy: how the family is defined, and the honors heaped on it in both the Old and New Testaments. The definition of family springs from the first negative thing God said about man: he was inherently incomplete, indicating he was built to partner, commune, and reproduce (Gen. 1:18-23). His relationship with God and his surroundings were intact, but by God’s own design, Adam was wired for more. His union with Eve became the more, so an initial point we can make when defining family is that it was conceived in response to human need. A second observation concerns marriage, from which family life springs, and its original three-element design: heterosexual, monogamous, and built for permanence, as detailed in Genesis and reaffirmed by Christ (Gen. 2:24; Mark 10:6-9). On the heterosexual element of this design (which is currently the most controversial of the three), C. S. Lewis observes:

The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism-He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact, just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined.⁵

Created design dictates that two halves do not necessarily make a whole, and that the whole as a permanent and exclusive male-female complement constitutes marital union. By this standard a number of actions fall short. Homosexuality violates the gender contrast design; fornication (sexual relations before or apart from marriage) indulges erotic privilege without covenant responsibilities; polygamy and adultery violate the monogamous intent; and divorce aborts the permanent union that marriage was meant to provide. Scant biblical allowance is made for deviation, and where it exists, it’s notable for its brevity. Polygamy was practiced by a number of Old Testament patriarchs (Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon, for example), but serious consequences often followed, and while it was tolerated in Old Testament times, God’s displeasure with it is clarified both by Christ and Paul (Mark 10:8; 1 Tim. 3:2). Likewise, Jesus asserted that divorce, though granted under Mosaic law, is a tragic option only to be considered if a spouse has committed adultery (Matt. 5:31-32). The biological component regarding children isn’t rigid, in that the biblical definition of a family recognizes adoption or step-parenting (Moses in Exod. 1:15-22; Samuel in 1 Samuel 1, 2:1-11; and Esther in Esther 2:15). Single parenting is neither affirmed nor condemned, since circumstances beyond a mother or father’s control may necessitate it. And while it offers less than the two-parent ideal, it exists within the scope of the family concept. To be sure, marriage and children are options, not mandates. Nothing in Scripture indicates all people should marry or, for that matter, that all married people should reproduce. Any number of reasons-such as physical disabilities, life situation, or personal preferences-may validate a person’s singleness, or a couple’s childlessness. But when examining the biblical notion of family, we conclude that marriage is required to be monogamous and heterosexual and intended to be permanent, with limited allowance made for its termination. Children are ideally raised by both biological parents, but can also be reared by one parent, stepparents, or adoptive parents as well. These are the mechanics of family life prescribed in Genesis, the Law, the Gospels, and the Epistles. So important are these mechanics that their violation elicits at the least a sharp rebuke from Scripture; at most, severe consequence. Hebrew laws regulating duties between family members are explicitly detailed (Deut. chaps. 21-23, for one of many examples); neglect of parents is condemned by Christ (Mark 7:11) and cited by Paul as a denial of the faith (1 Tim. 5:16); honor toward parents is demanded in both Testaments (Exod. 20:12; Matt. 15:4); and the ability to properly lead within the home is seen as a prerequisite for leadership in the church (1 Tim. 3:4-5). The importance Scripture assigns to family relations would be hard to exaggerate. But the general honor afforded them is crucial as well, because it helps explain the subject’s importance. The family is both ordained and defined by God, sealing its importance in and of itself. But it holds symbolic importance as well, as it expresses His nature, and symbolizes His relationship to His people. This further elevates the family, from a critical and functional unit to a divine illustration. Numerous prophetic and instructive passages, for example, reference marriage as symbolic of God’s union with His own. Both Israel and the church enjoy this honor in being referred to as His betrothed, or His bride (Isa. 50:1; Eph. 5:23-33; Rev. 21:9). And while marital union may be the family relationship most often typifying divine principles, other family ties are utilized as well to represent God’s nature and commitment to us. The father-child relation is employed when God the Father is cited as gentle provider (Matt. 7:11); all-knowing caretaker (Matt. 5:32); disciplinarian (Heb. 12:7-8); and doting, compassionate parent (Ps. 103:13); while a mother’s nurturing qualities connote God’s watchful gentleness (Isa. 49:15). To understand the family is to better understand God; indeed, Jesus seemed to presume this when He utilized earthly fatherhood to boost His listeners’ understanding of their Heavenly Father (Matt. 7:7-11). There exists, then, a clear and objective definition of the family, which the Bible views as inherently important and divinely symbolic. No serious student of Scripture could deny that family matters.

THE FAMILY IS A CRITICAL CONCEPT

“Excommunication” is a painful last resort, defined by The Encyclopedia Britannica as a ‘form of ecclesiastical censure by which a person is excluded from the communion of believers, the rites or sacraments of a church, and the rights of church membership.”⁶ Noting its necessary severity, Jonathan Edwards remarked that excommunication is not designed by man for the destruction of the person, but for his correction, and so is of the nature of a castigatory punishment, at least so far as it is inflicted by men; yet it is in itself a great and dreadful calamity, and the most severe punishment that Christ hath appointed in the visible church. Although in it the church is to seek only the good of the person and his recovery from sin there appearing, upon proper trial, no reason to hope for his recovery by gentler means yet it is at God’s sovereign disposal, whether it shall issue in his humiliation and repentance, or in his dreadful and eternal destruction; as it always doth issue in the one or the other.⁷ So when answering our second question-Is family definition critical as a doctrinal/moral issue within the church?-we should recall that the first excommunication mentioned in the New Testament happened in response to a believer’s violation of family covenant, and his church’s cavalier response. Paul was alarmed when told of a Corinthian Christian’s openly incestuous relationship with his stepmother, and outraged over the church’s casual attitude. So in 1 Corinthians 5 he rebukes his readers for allowing a form of fornication “not so much as named among the Gentiles” (v. 1); for their smug self-satisfaction over their tolerance (v. 2); and for their seeming ignorance of a basic reason for Christian purity: our bodies don’t belong to us but are rather temples of the Holy Spirit (vv. 19-20). When ordering them to excommunicate the unrepentant fornicator, Paul makes two general appeals: Don’t you know? And if you know, why don’t you do? We could use another letter from Paul today! According to a 2003 poll conducted by George Barna, forty-nine percent of respondents who identified themselves as “born again” considered living together apart from marriage to be acceptable, thirty-three percent condoned abortion, thirty-five percent felt OK about sex before marriage, and twenty-eight percent saw no problem with pornography. In response, Barna noted, “Even most people associated with the Christian faith do not seem to have embraced biblical moral standards. Things are likely to get worse before they get better-and they are not likely to get better unless strong and appealing moral leadership emerges to challenge and redirect people’s thoughts and behavior. At the moment, such leadership is absent.”⁸ In the absence of such leadership, confusion over right versus wrong, plus a casual attitude towards wrong itself, thrives. What’s needed is clarity. After all, if the question of Francis Schaeffer’s book title How Then Shall We Live? gets no clear response from the pulpit, it should surprise no one when everyone does what’s right “in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6 ESV). Paul no doubt considered this when he told Corinth’s believers to distance themselves from any Christian who engaged in fornication (1 Cor. 5:11) and when he told the Ephesians to live in such a way that sexual immorality would never be named among them (Eph. 5:2). Add to this his comparison of the marriage union to that of Christ and His church (Eph. 5:32), his prescriptions for marital and parent-child roles (Eph. 5:22-6:4), and his insistence that a man’s fidelity to family responsibilities is in direct relation to his profession of faith (1 Tim. 5:8) and qualifications for leadership (1 Tim. 3:5), and it becomes ever clearer that the definition and value of the family is a critical concept over which three simple points need to be raised, loudly and regularly, from the pulpit: “This is what constitutes a family.” “These are the roles and responsibilities involved.” “This is why family matters.”

THE FAMILY IS A CRITICAL CONCEPT DESERVING CULTURAL PROMOTION

Our third question-Are we called to promote and defend the biblical definition of “family” outside the church?-is perhaps the trickiest. On the one hand, C. S. Lewis warned against imposing Christian marital standards on a secular society: “The Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives.”⁹ Paul himself, likewise, said that he was in no position to judge unbelievers who were guilty of sexual sin (1 Cor. 5:12), yet a promotion of a beneficial concept seems a far cry from placing judgment on people who reject that concept. Here Chuck Colson’s explanation of common grace seems applicable: “As agents of God’s common grace, we are called to help sustain and renew his creation, to uphold the created institutions of family and society, to pursue science and scholarship, to create works of art and beauty, and to heal and help those suffering from the results of the Fall.”¹⁰ If it can be shown that biblically commended family roles work best for believers and nonbelievers alike, then the biblical definition of the family is worth cultural promotion. A number of secular studies attest to the wisdom of the biblical definition of family, and to the benefits that children in particular reap when that definition is adhered to.

MARRIED COUPLES COUNT

After studying 174 primary school children, 58 of whom were being raised by heterosexual “cohabiting” (unmarried) couples, 58 by same sex couples, and 58 by married heterosexual couples, Sotorios Sarantakos, an Australian sociologist, offered this conclusion: “In this study, married couples seem to offer the best environment for a child’s social and educational development.”¹¹ Measuring the children’s functioning in several areas-language, math, sports, sociability, learning attitude, parent-school relation, gender role, school-related support and parental aspirations for the child’s achievement-children of the married couples did the best.¹²

FATHERS COUNT

When analyzing more than one hundred studies examining the impact of biological fathers on the children, Ronald Rohner and Robert Veneziano concluded, “Overall, father love appears to be as heavily implicated as mother love in offspring’s psychological well being and health.”¹³ Swedish researchers came to a similar conclusion when publishing their findings under the title, “Children Who Have an Active Father Figure Have Fewer Psychological and Behavioral Problems” in the February 2008 issue of Acta Paediatrica. After surveying reports on 22,300 sets of data from 16 studies comparing children raised with and without fathers, they remarked, “Children who lived with both a mother and father figure also had less behavioural problems than those who just lived with their mother. The review looked at 24 papers published between 1987 and 2007, covering 22,300 individual sets of data from 16 studies. 18 of the 24 papers also covered the social economic status of the families studied.”¹⁴ These findings aren’t unique. Studies cited by The National Center for Fathering¹⁵ and the NYU Child Study Center¹⁶ conclude that fathers contribute uniquely to their children’s development in ways that cannot be replicated or substituted.

MOTHERS COUNT

Just as research confirms the unique role of fathers in child raising, it predictably has similar points to make regarding motherhood. For example, the Early Child Care Research Network found that nonmaternal care of babies and preschool children, as opposed to early bonding with their biological mothers, has been linked to behavioral problems at older ages.¹⁷ In addition to the emotional and behavioral losses incurred in a mother’s absence, her parenting style is complementary to, but distinct from, a father’s, which led the NYU Child Study Center to remark, “In summary, proponents of the essential-father point of view see the parenting contributions of mothers and fathers as linked to their sex, with mothers generally emphasizing connection, relatedness, safety and care, and fathers emphasizing autonomy, action, risk-taking and following rules.”¹⁸ All of which led David Popenoe to conclude, regarding the importance of both parents, “We should disavow the notion that ‘mommies can make good daddies,’ just as we should disavow the notion of radical feminists that ‘daddies can make good mommies’-The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary-culturally and biologically-for the optimal development of a human being.”¹⁹

BIOLOGY COUNTS

When examining the ties between biological parents and their offspring, the results are also clear and unsurprising: where childrearing is concerned, biology counts. A Child Trends Research brief noted, for example: “An extensive body of research tells us that children do best when they grow up with both biological parents in a low-conflict marriage…. Thus, it is not simply the presence of two parents, as some have assumed, but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support child development.”²⁰ Similarly, a brief for the Center for Law and Social Policy claimed that “children do better when raised by two married, biological parents who have low conflict relationships.”²¹ Judy Jones, director of the nonprofit organization Help Stop Parental Alienation Syndrome, concurred: “Children that are deprived of frequent contact with both their mother and their father have a greater risk of drug abuse, dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, and many other behavioral and emotional problems.” The inescapable conclusion one draws from these studies was articulated nicely by David Blankenhorn, president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and a self-defined “liberal Democrat,” who nevertheless criticizes the rush to revamp our definition of marriage and family when he notes:

Marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood-biological, social, and legal-into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and father, accountable to the child and to each other.²²

If the traditional family unit provides the best framework for emotional and mental development, then the stable children raised within that framework will become the stable adults most likely to provide a similar framework for the next generation. The ripple effect cannot help but produce cultural stability, testifying to a design explained in Genesis and confirmed in 2010 and beyond. None of this negates the good that’s reaped by adults and children in less traditional settings. Here we agree in part with Mrs. Doubtfire, in that any combination of people who truly care for each other will benefit all involved. So the family quarrel isn’t an either/or proposition. The question isn’t whether nontraditional groupings provide any benefit-they do; they will. But which grouping provides maximum benefit? What’s functional may not be destructive, but neither is it the ideal. And when discussing a culture’s productivity and future, nothing less than the ideal should be striven for. The family was conceived by the Creator in response to His creation’s needs and as an earthly, tangible representation of His nature. Its members, when combined, provide a mosaic in which the observer notes elements male and female, gentle and authoritative, innocent, knowing, and inexpressibly creative. God is both honored and represented when family ties are in place. But to be in place they first have to be defined and understood, so clearer, more comprehensive teaching on the subject within our churches is called for. Likewise, fidelity to what we’re taught in Scripture about chastity, monogamy, and family responsibilities is tragically lacking, and until sufficient attention is paid to the disconnect between what we preach and what we live, we can hardly expect the culture to take us seriously when we promote standards we’re not applying to ourselves. But the definition of the family, when understood and lived out, can then be promoted with integrity to a world grappling with questions of intimacy, emotional need, and the complexities of human sexuality. The answers we provide will no doubt raise hackles-just consider what happens whenever a public figure confesses to a traditional understanding of marriage and family! But they’ll raise awareness as well, and can become a vehicle through which people hungry for love and security can find answers. Episcopal Bishop William Frey alluded to this when he recalled the early church’s impact on Greco-Roman society, an impact made in part by its understanding and promotion of family values: “One of the most attractive features of the early Christian communities…was their radical sexual ethic and their deep commitment to family values. These things…drew many people to them who were disillusioned by the promiscuous excesses of what proved to be a declining culture. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for our Church to find such countercultural courage today?”²³ Wonderful, yes. And, more importantly, entirely possible.

Joe Dallas is the program director of Genesis Counseling in Tustin, California, a Christian counseling service to men dealing with sexual addiction, homosexuality, and other sexual/relational problems. He is a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors and is the author of three books on human sexuality, including Desires in Conflict (Harvest House, 1991) and A Strong Delusion (Harvest House, 1996).

NOTES

1 “Mrs. Doubtfire Script Transcription,” http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/m/mrsdoubtfire-script-transcript.html.

2 As quoted in “Deconstruction and Reconstruction: The Family Experience,” Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, http://www.mofa.fsu.edu/pages/learning/resources/familyexperience.pdf.

3 Cited in University of Massachusetts Press, http://www.umass.edu/umpress/author/k.html.

4 Carol Lynn Pearson and Newell Dayley, “What Makes a Family?” Ensign (March 1978), 48 (http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=8189d0640b96b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1).

5 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2002), 61.

6 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/197846/excommunication.

7 Jonathan Edwards, “The Nature and End of Excommunication,” http://www.jonathanedwards.org/Excommunication.html.

8 “Morality Continues to Decay,” The Barna Group (November 3, 2003), http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/129.

9 Lewis, 112.

10 Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1999), xii.

11 Sortirios Sarantakos, “Children in Three Contexts: Family, Education, and Social Development,” Children Australia 21, 3 (1996): 23; cited in Getting I Straight: What the Research Shows about Homosexuality, ed. Peter Spriggs and Timothy Dailey (Washington, D.C.: Family Research Council, 2004), 109-10.

12 Ibid.

13 Ronald Rohner and Robert Veneziano, “The Importance of Father Love: History and Contemporary Evidence,” Review of General Psychology 5, 4 (2001): 382-405; cited in Glenn T. Stanton and Kjersten Oligney, “Refuting Points No One is Making,” http://www.citizenlink.org/pdfs/fosi/marriage/AAP_Analysis.pdf.

14 “Children Who Have an Active Father Figure Have Fewer Psychological And Behavioral Problems,” ScienceDaily, February 15, 2008, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080212095450.htm.

15 Blair and Craig Brooke-Weiss, “Father Love: Keeping Families Connected,” http://www.fatherlove.com/articles/riskfactors.html.

16 http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Ref_Many_Meanings_Family/.

17 Jay Belsky et al., “Are There Long-Term Effects of Early Child Care?” Child Development 78, 2 (2007): 681-701.

18 http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Ref_Many_Meanings_Family/.

19 Cited in Stanton and Oligney.

20 Kristin Anderson Moore et al., “Marriage from a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It?” Child Trends Research Brief (June 2002), cited in Stanton and Oligney, 12.

21 Mary Park, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?” Center for Law and Social Policy brief (May 2003), cited in Stanton and Oligney, 12.

22 Judy Jones, “Children Missing Contact with Both Biological Parents at Risk,” 24/7 Press Release (June 22, 2005), http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=6509.

23 “Protecting Marriage to Protect Children,” op-ed, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2008.

24 Richard Ostling, “What Does God Really Think about Sex?” Time, June 24, 1991, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973264,00.html.

In fact, the article compels me to alert my Christian brothers and sisters to the false notions Buddhist leaders teach their followers about Christ. These misconceptions can seriously impede Christian attempts to evangelize Buddhist people with the saving power of the gospel.

What makes presenting the uniqueness of the person and work of Jesus Christ especially difficult is that these Buddhist leaders express nothing but praise and admiration for Jesus. Rev. Ronald Y. Nakasone, the author of this article,¹ describes Jesus as “remarkable,” “enlightened,” “spiritually gifted,” and even “close to Buddhahood.”

Nakasone says the purpose of his message is to promote the spirit of ecumenism between Buddhists and Christians. He claims that both the Buddha and Jesus advocated the same things — such as justice, living joyfully, and being uncompromisingly honest and sincere — and that their lives personified the same noble ideal. Anyone who responds critically to his assertions is made to sound narrow-minded and intolerant — the prevailing perception non-Christians have of Christians. Meanwhile, Nakasone appears tolerant and sensible — a reputation Buddhists have cleverly fostered about themselves in the West.

Nakasone’s message is specifically addressed to Jodo-Shinshu Buddhists, who are primarily Japanese Americans. He is not speaking directly to Christians or to anyone else outside his religious group. In fact, his ostensible hope is that his people will develop a better understanding and appreciation of the central figure of the Christian faith.

Yet what Nakasone purports as the accurate portrayal of Jesus Christ is actually an attempt to undermine the foundation of the Christian faith. No matter how much he lauds Jesus, he still rejects the biblical testimony of who Jesus is and what He did. Instead, he tells his people that the Bible is the creation of later generations of Christians, who adopted a Jewish teacher from Nazareth and created a myth about him.

Nakasone did not draw his conclusions about Jesus from thin air. Rather, he based his comments on the recent academic work of Burton L. Mack,² whom he describes as an eminent biblical scholar whose insights are supported by the preceding century’s unquestioned academic research. For Nakasone, Mack’s views about Jesus are not only authoritative, but also far more erudite than those of conservative biblical scholars.

According to Nakasone, Mack demonstrates that the true source for the biographical account of Jesus of Nazareth is a document known as “The Book of Q” (Q from Quelle, German for source). Nakasone asserts that Mack has reconstructed the original gospel of Jesus, which was a collection of sayings recorded during His lifetime by His earliest disciples. Although these sayings indicate that Jesus was extraordinary as a teacher and social crusader, “nowhere,” says Nakasone, “does the Book of Q speak of Jesus’ divinity, his resurrection, the redemption, the Trinity, or any of the other doctrines normally associated with Christianity.” Nakasone then quotes Mack as saying, “The remarkable thing about the people of Q is that they were not Christians. They did not think of Jesus as a messiah or the Christ.”³

Nakasone also teaches his Buddhist community that the four Gospel writers not only used The Book of Q as the source for their respective accounts, but also amplified their Gospels by including bogus materials in order to form a legend around Jesus as a godlike savior. Moreover, the letters of Paul took the worship of Jesus a step further by articulating a doctrine that helped establish “a cult of the Christ.”

With seeming magnanimity, Nakasone concludes that Buddhists actually have no problems with the “historical Jesus” and “his true teachings.” “I am certain,” he states, “that the Buddha and Buddhists can accept much of, if not all, of what the Jesus movement proposed.”⁴ According to Nakasone, both Jesus and the Buddha called for social justice and advocated a more equitable society. “Jesus and Buddha,” he says, “believed in the essential dignity of all humanity.”⁵

Nakasone’s attempt to make Jesus more palatable to Buddhists affects Buddhists in several ways. First, they receive a false picture of Jesus. Whereas before they probably knew little, if anything, about Jesus, now they come to believe He was an outstanding champion for social justice and personal integrity, but certainly not incarnate deity on a mission to save humanity through His death and resurrection.

Second, they wrongly presume to have a far better understanding of Jesus than we evangelical Christians do. Since Nakasone frequently quotes such a “renowned” biblical scholar as Professor Mack, Buddhists tend to accept their leader’s message without question. If Burton Mack has “proven” beyond a doubt that Jesus never claimed to be the Christ, then the biblical account of Jesus is more fable than fact. When we proclaim the good news about Jesus to them, they think to themselves, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” They smile condescendingly and casually dismiss whatever we say about Jesus.

Third, their confidence in the superiority of their own religion becomes even more ingrained. If Jesus essentially taught what the Buddha taught several centuries after the Buddha had attained enlightenment, then in a sense Jesus was a follower of the Buddha. Therefore, why abandon the best and highest truth for a religion that only imperfectly reflects and even warps that truth? To most Buddhists the answer is obvious.

Nakasone is not alone in expressing this perception of Jesus. Other Buddhist leaders have adopted the views of liberal scholars like Mack and paraded this inoffensive Jesus among their flocks. It is imperative, then, that we understand the problems that may arise when we share our faith in Christ with our Buddhist friends.

Our initial approach is crucial. If we assume that we are engaged in a battle of doctrines or in a philosophical debate, we will not gain a serious hearing. In fact, having known many Japanese-American Buddhists throughout my life, I also know that most of them understand less about the central teachings of the Buddha than nominal Christians know about Jesus. This is understandable because our culture is much more expressive of Christianity than of Buddhism. Consequently, to ask them to articulate the doctrines of their faith or share their personal comprehension of the Buddhist dharma (truth) would serve no purpose beyond having a brief conversation. Of course, this is not necessarily true of other Buddhist groups in our society.

We should keep in mind that most of these Buddhists — both practicing and nonpracticing — are Buddhists because of tradition and habit, and because it’s their cultural identity. If we think we must dismantle the pillars of the Buddhist philosophy, we will not get very far in retaining their attention, no matter how astute our insights might be. For example, Nakasone says, “The Jesus movement’s call for a more inclusive vision of the human family, echoes the Buddha’s acceptance of outcasts and women into the Sangha [Buddhist community of saints].”⁶ Nakasone’s audience undoubtedly accepts this as fact, and even Nakasone probably believes what he said. The truth is that the Buddha had a low view of women, which Buddhist scholars will admit. The Buddha lived in a caste society where women had no value, and, although he accepted people from all castes and women into his community, he permitted the inclusion of women only after setting up a strict code that placed the nuns in roles far inferior to the monks. This point can be brought up to your Buddhist friends, but what good would it do other than to make them feel defensive?

I am certainly not advocating that Christians remain silent on these issues. Eventually it might be quite illuminating to a Buddhist woman for you to contrast the Buddha’s statements about women with the Bible’s treatment of women. Yet this sort of discussion should only occur once mutual trust has been established. Initially, we need to be kind, cordial, and sincerely interested in them as persons first and Buddhists second.

The other major obstacle we must overcome is their attitude toward us. Though we should not immediately challenge their religion, we should defend our own faith, correcting any misconceptions they may have about Jesus. Nakasone’s and Mack’s assaults on biblical Christianity demand a response. We should make it clear that Burton Mack’s statements reflect only one stream of thought in biblical scholarship. We can say that some of the Gospel writers might have used an earlier “Q” document as an aid to forming their own accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings, but that Mack’s interpretation of what was contained in the Q document is only conjecture, most likely influenced by his personal antitraditional view of Scriptures. The fact is that any talk about “Q” is conjecture, since no such document has ever been found. The primary sources for the life of Jesus are the four Gospels. And the authors of those Gospels were themselves either eyewitnesses of the events they record, or they interviewed such eyewitnesses in compiling their accounts. Thus their portrayal of Jesus as a divine Savior is not a later distortion but represents rather the devout understanding of His earliest disciples.

Once we demonstrate that biblical Christianity is defensible, we should note that the common elements that Nakasone finds between Buddhism and Christianity, though important, are actually secondary to their central doctrines. While avoiding the appearance of saying Christianity is right and Buddhism is wrong, we can simply point out the glaring differences between the two religions. For example, we believe that Jesus is God, who died so that we might be cleansed of our sins and enjoy eternal fellowship with God in His heavenly kingdom. Most Japanese-American Buddhists believe in living an egoless life so that they might be reborn in a temporary paradise until they experience total extinction.

To sum up, we should emphasize that the biblical account of Jesus is reliable and that there is no agreement in the primary doctrines of the Buddhist and Christian faiths. Once we establish these two points, and once a mutual respect has been established, we can discuss the merits of the teachings of the Buddha and of Jesus Christ.

We might commend Nakasone and other Buddhists like him who want to tell people of their admiration for Jesus as a good man. Indeed, Nakasone began his sermonlike article with a beautiful Buddhist poem describing a good man, whom he relates to Jesus. But Jesus was not merely a good man; He is the almighty Lord and Savior. Unless we bow before Him and worship Him as the Son of God and as the one true Redeemer, none of our poetic praises of Jesus will draw us any closer to God and His salvation.

NOTES

¹ Ronald Y. Nakasone, “The Authentic Life: Reflections on Jesus of Nazareth,” The Dharma (newsletter of the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin), February 1995, 2-5. ² See Burton L. Mack, The Last Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco: Harper, 1993). ³ Nakasone, 3. ⁴ Ibid. ⁵ Ibid. ⁶ Ibid.

Bahai Faith- BAHA’IS AND THE NATURE OF GOD

Although Baha’is teach that God is unknowable in his essence, they believe that God does reveal something of himself to man, especially through his “manifestations” (i.e., Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Baha’u'llah, et. al.).⁴ For those familiar with the conflicting doctrines of the major world religions associated with these “manifestations,” however, it is rather apparent that they cannot all be true (see Table). Yet this is exactly what the Baha’is maintain, namely, that each of these religious leaders was a manifestation of God for his own era and therefore spoke some truth about God’s nature.

The fact that the various alleged manifestations of God represented God in contradictory ways implies either that manifestations of God can contradict one another or that God’s own nature is contradictory. If the manifestations are allowed to contradict one another, then there is no way to separate false manifestations from true ones or to discover if any of them really speaks for the true and living God. Yet the Baha’is obviously do not accept every person who claims to be a manifestation of God (e.g., Jim Jones, founder of Jonestown). If, on the other hand, God’s own nature is said to be contradictory, that is, that God is both one God and many gods, that God is both able and not able to have a Son, both personal and impersonal, etc., then the Baha’i concept of God is reduced to meaninglessness.

Bahai Faith- Can Christian Doctrines Withstand Scrutiny?

As I noted earlier, Steven McConnell has asked whether the Christian concept of God could measure up to this sort of scrutiny. He asserts, “Subjected to the glossy examination you give the Baha’i God, the paradox of Jesus being fully human and fully divine as well as the paradox of the unity and individuality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would be mere contradictions!” He then asks, “So why are Christianity’s paradoxes (contradictions) more virtuous than Baha’i's?”⁷ Several comments are in order. First, Christian thinkers take an entirely different attitude toward their problematic doctrines than the Baha’is. For example, many Christian philosophers and theologians have spent much time trying to explain these doctrines in a way that is coherent and philosophically sound.⁸ Christians believe that these problematic doctrines are logically reconcilable because they are in fact ultimately noncontradictory. On the other hand, the Baha’is do not seem particularly concerned about whether their doctrine of God is internally consistent. Second, the paradoxes inherent in the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity are not comparable to the contradictions inherent in the Baha’i concept of God. When the Bible asserts both the humanity and the deity of Jesus it is not asserting something that is self-contradictory by definition. Christians do not believe that Jesus was both God and not-God, but rather that Jesus was both God and man. In other words, when Christians assert that God became man they are not asserting that God became merely man (although He was fully man), but rather that the Son of God took on a human nature in addition to His divine nature. Although we may not fully comprehend how the divine and human natures interacted in the person of Jesus, this is not the same thing as saying that the concept of a God-man is self-contradictory. Likewise, the doctrine of the Trinity, although paradoxical, is not self-contradictory. The doctrine of the Trinity asserts that three divine persons share the same substance or essence (i.e., the three persons are one and the same God). It does not assert that there are three individual substances which are one substance or that there are three gods which are also one god, either of which would be contradictory. That is, Christians are not saying that God is both one substance and not-one-substance, but rather that God is both one substance and three persons. Even if God’s triunity cannot be fully comprehended by man, at least the Christian is not involved in a contradiction when he asserts that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God. On the other hand, the Baha’i is required to accept that blatantly contradictory concepts of God were all infallibly revealed by God through his “manifestations.” For instance, monotheism (what Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad taught) and polytheism (what Confucius and Zoroaster taught) cannot both be true, since it is contradictory to say both that there is only one god and that there is more than one god. Therefore, unlike the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity, the Baha’i view of God implies mutually exclusive concepts of God.

Bahai Faith- BAHA’IS AND BIBLICAL PROPHECY

The Baha’is claim that Baha’u'llah is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecies of the return of Christ.⁹ Taken literally, of course, the biblical prophecies of Christ’s return do not fit Baha’u'llah. The Bible speaks of Jesus Himself returning in the skies before the entire world in a cataclysmic fashion to judge the living and the dead (e.g., Matt. 24). By contrast, Baha’is recognized as the “Christ” another person (Baha’u'llah) who came into the world in relative obscurity through natural means (i.e., conception and birth).¹⁰ How, then, can the Baha’is claim that Bah’u'llah fulfills the biblical prophecies of Christ’s return? They can do this only by insisting that the literal meaning is to be ignored. According to Baha’i doctrine, Jesus’ description of His second coming in the Bible should be understood spiritually rather than literally. That is, the text of the Bible is said to have some symbolic meaning which is contrary to the ordinary meaning of the words used.

Bahai Faith- Literal and Symbolic

The Baha’is do not, however, follow this line of interpretation consistently in their reading of the Bible. Whenever they find a biblical passage that clearly states that Jesus will return at the end of the world in a way contrary to Baha’u'llah’s arrival, the Baha’is simply assert that we should not take that passage literally. No reason for this assertion is ever produced from the text of the Bible itself. However, on other occasions where a literal interpretation might seem to the Baha’is to support their views (e.g., Dan. 8:13-17),¹¹ they do not consider interpreting the passage nonliterally. This sort of clip-and-paste view of biblical interpretation proves very little. After all, by the same rationale one could “prove” that any number of different individuals was Christ returned. Accepting as literal only those texts which seem to fit one’s doctrinal views while pleading for a nonliteral interpretation for passages which contradict one’s position is a favorite tactic of pseudo-Christian groups. For example, this interpretive technique is employed by the Unification Church to show that Sun Myung Moon is the Messiah.¹² With this method of interpreting biblical prophecy Baha’is employ circular reasoning (in which the arguer assumes what he or she is trying to prove). Because the Baha’i accepts Baha’u'llah’s claim to fulfill Christ’s second coming, he (or she) thinks he is justified in interpreting biblical prophecies symbolically which, if taken literally, would disprove Baha’u'llah’s claim, but if taken nonliterally can be used to prove it.¹³ Thus, probably without even realizing it, the Baha’i is assuming the very point that he is trying to prove in his citing of biblical prophecy.

Bahai Faith- Jews, Christians, and Baha’is

In this article’s introductory comments I mentioned Robert Stockman’s assertion that just as the Jews were mistaken about Jesus’ fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (that is, the Jews as a nation; many individual Jews accepted Jesus), the Christians of today are mistaken about Baha’u'llah’s fulfillment of New Testament prophecy. There are two ways of understanding this argument. Perhaps it is meant to be a proof that Baha’u'llah fulfills biblical prophecy, in which case the argument might be stated more formally in the following manner:

1. The Jews thought that Jesus was not the Messiah, and they were wrong. 2. Christians today think that Baha’u'llah was not the Messiah (or Christ returned). 3. Therefore, Christians are wrong to reject Baha’u'llah.

Such an argument, if that is what Robert Stockman intended, would certainly be another case of faulty reasoning. By this reasoning Christians and Baha’is alike would be wrong to reject Jim Jones as a manifestation of God, or Sun Myung Moon as the second coming of Christ. Clearly, the mere fact that the Jewish rejection of Jesus was unjustified does not prove that the Christian rejection of Baha’u'llah is also unjustified. There is another way of interpreting Robert Stockman’s argument, however, that is not so obviously fallacious. Perhaps he is intending to argue only that the Christian rejection of Baha’u'llah is based on the same sort of error that led the Jews to reject Jesus. Baha’is generally argue that in both cases the error that led to the rejection of the “manifestation” was an overly literal interpretation of biblical prophecies. Such an argument would take the following form:

1. The Jews rejected Jesus because they interpreted the Bible too literally.

2. Christians today reject Baha’u'llah because they interpret the Bible too literally.

3. Therefore, Christians are wrong to reject Baha’u'llah on the basis of their literal interpretation of the Bible.

This argument, unlike the one discussed previously, has some logical value. If its premises go unchallenged, they lend strong support to its conclusion. However, both of the premises of this argument do invite challenge. In the case of the second premise, for Baha’u'llah one could substitute any of the other modern religious leaders claiming to be a manifestation of God or a fulfillment of the Second Coming of Christ. A follower of Sun Myung Moon could argue with equal validity as follows:

1. The Jews rejected Jesus because they interpreted the Bible too literally. 2. Christians today reject Rev. Moon because they interpret the Bible too literally. 3. Therefore, Christians are wrong to reject Rev. Moon on the basis of their literal interpretation of the Bible.

In other words, the second premise is really immaterial. It amounts to saying that if the actual words of the Bible are ignored, anyone at all can be claimed to be a fulfillment of the Bible’s “spiritual” or symbolic meaning. As for the first premise, as a matter of historical fact it is simply false. The fact of the matter is that the Jews rejected Jesus as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy not because they interpreted it too literally, but because they did not interpret it literally enough. The Bible clearly predicted that the Messiah would be God (Ps. 45:6; Isa. 7:14; 9:6), but the Jews found Jesus’ claim to be God scandalous and blasphemous in the extreme. The Bible also clearly announced that the Messiah would suffer and be killed as an atonement for Israel’s sins (Isa. 53; Dan. 9:26), but the Jews regarded Jesus’ crucifixion as proof that He was not the Messiah. Not every Old Testament passage applied to Jesus in the New Testament was understood by first-century Jews as referring to the Messiah. However, there were a fair number of Old Testament prophecies which Jewish leaders and scholars in the first century did regard as literal predictions concerning the Messiah and which were fulfilled literally by Jesus.¹⁴ Since Jesus fulfilled these prophecies, what caused most of His contemporaries not to recognize this? The answer is that the Jews allowed their assumptions about the Messiah to color and even distort their reading of the biblical text. Specifically, it was their expectation of a conquering political Messiah which led first-century Jews to reject the literal meaning of the text, which presents the Messiah as both suffering and conquering.¹⁵ Consequently, they had a concept of the Messiah which Jesus could not fit. Their desire for a political Messiah incited them to ignore or twist biblical passages predicting a suffering Messiah that were literally fulfilled in Jesus. Similarly, the assumption made by the Baha’is that Baha’u'llah is God’s manifestation for this age leads to distortions in their reading of the New Testament. (At least the Jews had some warrant in the biblical text for their view of the Messiah; the Baha’is have none.) They too are forced to ignore or twist biblical passages concerning Christ (in this case those concerning His return), which they do in order to apply them to Baha’u'llah. Ironically, then, it turns out that Robert Stockman’s argument actually has things turned around. The truth is that the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah for much the same sort of reason that Baha’is accept Baha’u'llah (which, in effect, is also rejecting Jesus): in both cases, religious assumptions about the Messiah interfered with a plain reading of the text. Like the Jews in Jesus’ day, the Baha’is fail to interpret the Bible literally enough. Also like the Jews, Baha’is are forced to explain why the Old Testament presents both a suffering and a conquering Messiah. The Baha’i answer is that the Old Testament really predicts two “Messiahs”: Jesus was the suffering Messiah and Baha’u'llah the conquering one.¹⁶ This interpretation ignores the critical fact that both descriptions of the Messiah can be found within the same passages and are obviously referring to one person. For example, Daniel 9:25 calls the Messiah a “Prince” and 9:26 states that he will be “cut off,” that is, killed.¹⁷ Jesus fulfilled in detail those prophecies referring to the Messiah’s place of birth (Mic. 5:2), time of ministry (Dan. 9:24-27), death (Dan. 9:26; Isa. 53; Ps. 22), and resurrection (Ps. 16:10), as well as a number of others.¹⁸ Therefore, we should accept Jesus’ claim (e.g., Matt. 24-25) and the teaching of the rest of the New Testament (e.g., Luke 1:33; Acts 1:9-11; 1 Thess. 4:14-17; Rev. 1:7; 22:16-21) that He will personally return to fulfill the remaining prophecies which describe a conquering Messiah. Certainly there is no reason to accept Baha’u'llah’s claim to be that Messiah. He failed to fulfill any of the biblical prophecies concerning Christ’s second coming,¹⁹ and Baha’i's cannot produce a single text from the Bible that suggests that Jesus will not Himself fulfill those prophecies. The preceding discussion of the interpretation of biblical prophecy should be understood in the light of a more general appreciation of proper biblical interpretation.²⁰ In contrasting “literal” with “symbolic” interpretations, I am not suggesting that biblical symbolism should not be interpreted as such. Rather, I am simply saying that what is understood as symbolic and what is taken more literally should be based on the text itself (as when Daniel interprets his visions as symbols, or when Jesus interprets His parables as earthly illustrations of spiritual truths). Where the Baha’is go wrong is in reading into the Bible doctrines that are totally foreign to its text and can only be justified by assuming their truth.

Bahai Faith- BAHA’IS AND RELIGIOUS UNITY

The third Baha’i argument against Christianity that I wish to address is the claim that Baha’ism must be God’s true religion for this age because, unlike Christianity, it has not suffered any schisms. One Baha’i writer takes this so far as to proclaim boldly that “there are not Baha’i sects. There never can be.”²¹ There are two problems with this argument: (1) It rests on a false premise — Baha’ism has in fact suffered divisions. (2) The conclusion does not follow — an undivided religion is not necessarily the true religion.

Bahai Faith- Division in Baha’ism

First, the fact is that Baha’ism has suffered several divisions, from its early days to the present. One group, known as the Free Baha’is, has published a book denouncing Shoghi Effendi (who took over leadership of the Baha’i World Faith after Baha’u'llah’s son ‘Abdu’l-Baha died).²² Another group, the Orthodox Baha’i Faith, was formed after Shoghi Effendi died, and recognizes Jason Remey as Effendi’s successor.²³ Yet another group, Baha’is Under the Provision of the Covenant (BUPC), is led by Montana chiropractor Dr. Leland Jensen. Though it has “Baha’i” in its name, it is not endorsed or recognized by the main body “as a legitimate Baha’i organization.”²⁴ As Vernon Elvin Johnson concludes in his Baylor University dissertation on the history of Baha’ism, “obvious schism has occurred in the Baha’i religion, for various factions each claiming to belong to the Baha’i religion have existed in the course of the faith’s history.”²⁵ Some Baha’is may be tempted to counter that anyone who breaks off from the Baha’i World Faith is automatically not a Baha’i and therefore no schism has really occurred. Such an argument is circular in nature and commits what Antony Flew calls the “no-true-Scotsman” fallacy (“No Scotsman would do such a thing….Well, no true Scotsman would”).²⁶ As Johnson points out, the Catholic and Mormon churches have used similar reasoning to defend their claim to be the one true church²⁷ (although the Catholic church no longer tends to take such an exclusive stance).

Bahai Faith- Division and Truth

Second, it simply does not follow that a religion that is undivided must be the true religion, or that a religion that is divided cannot be the true religion. For the Baha’i argument to be persuasive it must be shown, and not simply assumed, that the true religion must be unified organizationally. This is not a biblical teaching: unity of the faith is presented in the Bible as a goal for the church to reach, not a prerequisite for the church to be God’s people (Eph. 4:11-16). Since on independent grounds we know that Christianity is true (for example, the evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus,²⁸ which Baha’is deny²⁹), we may justifiably conclude that organizational unity is not a requirement for a religion to be true. The argument can be stated more formally as follows:

1. Either the true religion is unified or it is not. 2. Christianity is the true religion and it is not unified. 3. Therefore, the true religion is not unified.

The truth of Christianity is independent of whether its adherents congregate under the same organizational banner. Its truth depends rather on the truth of the Bible’s teachings concerning the person, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is not to deny that Christians have an obligation to exhibit unity and love as a testimony to the world of the truth of Jesus Christ (John 13:34-35; 17:21-23). To our shame we confess that although Christianity is true, Christians have not always been true to Christ. Nevertheless, this does not alter the fact that Jesus Christ is the only Savior from sin and God’s last word to man prior to the consummation of history (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Heb. 1:1-3; 13:8). On this basis Christianity stands vindicated as true and Baha’ism stands condemned as a rejection of God’s truth as revealed in Jesus Christ.

NOTES

¹ The only book-length Christian critiques of Baha’ism in print are Francis J. Beckwith, Baha’i (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1985), which focuses on doctrine, and William McElwee Miller, The Baha’i Faith: Its History and Teachings (South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library Publications, 1984), which focuses on history. ² This is the current list of the manifestations. The Baha’is have altered the list over the years. See Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan: The Book of Certitude, 2d ed., trans. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, IL: Baha’i Publishing Trust [hereafter "BPT"], 1950), 7-65; `Abdu’l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, trans. Laura Clifford Barney (BPT. 1930), 189; and a current Baha’i tract, One Universal Faith (BPT, n.d.), 5. <sup>3</sup> Personal letter from Steven McConnell, 1 June 1987. <sup>4</sup> See Beckwith, 8, and works cited there. <sup>5</sup> This table is based on Beckwith, 17. <sup>6</sup> Concerning God’s relation to the universe, Baha’i writer J. E. Esslemont writes, “Baha’u'llah teaches that the universe is without beginning in time. It is a perpetual emanation from the Great First Cause.” J. E. Esslemont, Baha’u'llah and the New Era, 3d ed. (BPT, 1970), 204. It should be noted that it is untenable both philosophically and scientifically to maintain that the universe is without a beginning. See J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 18-42, and works cited there; and Francis J. Beckwith, David Hume’s Argument Against Miracles: A Critical Analysis (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), chapter 5. <sup>7</sup> McConnell, 2. <sup>8</sup> For example, Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). <sup>9</sup> See `Abdu’l-Baha, 110-12. ¹⁰ Esslemont, 214. ¹¹ On this and other so-called Baha’i biblical prophecies, see Beckwith, Baha’i, 28-39. ¹² See James Bjornstad, Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1984), 19-52. ¹³ See, for example, Esslemont, 222-26; `Abdu’l-Baha, 110-12. ¹⁴ See Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), 340-41; Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, rev. ed. (San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, 1979), 141-77. ¹⁵ See Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Jesus Was a Jew (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 1981), 23-64. ¹⁶ For example, see Esslemont, 214-16; see also Beckwith, Baha’i, 35-37. ¹⁷ See for further reading, Fruchtenbaum, 23-24; Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), 160-80. ¹⁸ See n. 14. ¹⁹ See Beckwith, Baha’i, 23-25. ²⁰ See especially James Sire, Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1980). ²¹ David Hofman, The Renewal of Civilization, Talisman Books (London: George Ronald, 1960), 110. ²² Hermann Zimmer, A Fraudulent Testament Devalues the Bahai Religion into Political Shoghism, trans. Jeannine Blackwell, rev. Karen Gasser and Gordon Campbell (Waiblingen/Stuttgart: World Union for Universal Religion and Universal Peace — Free Bahais, 1973). ²³ Vernon Elvin Johnson, An Historical Analysis of Critical Transformations in the Evolution of the Baha’i World Faith (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1974), 362-80. ²⁴ Joel Bjorling, “Leland Jensen: The Prophet Who Cried ‘Wolf,’” Understanding Cults and Spiritual Movements 1, 3 (1985):6. ²⁵ Johnson, 410. ²⁶ Antony Flew, Thinking Straight (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1975), 47. ²⁷ Johnson, 412. ²⁸ On the evidence for the resurrection, see especially William Lane Craig, Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 1988), and Gary Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980). ²⁹ See Beckwith, Baha’i, 14, 25-26.

Many Christian and Jewish groups accept a teaching today, first taught by Franz Rosenzweig earlier this century, that there are two separate but equal covenants or ways to God. The New Testament rejects this, asserting that the gospel of Jesus Christ is for all people. The apostle Paul summarized this in his letter to the Romans: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Rom. 1:16). The quintessential form of anti-Semitism is refusing to share the gospel with Jewish people.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans the apostle paints for us a graphic visual picture. Imagine for a moment seeing millions and millions of people, standing in a long line. They are of different ages, male and female, some very young and others very old.

As we look at them, we see that they are all carrying Bibles under their arms or in their hands. Many of these Bibles evidently are well read, marked and worn from usage. In fact, an incalculable number of these people have large portions of their Bibles memorized, some entire sections or books.

Imagine also that these people are very faithful in attending church, worshiping regularly and tithing, and are active not only in their churches but also in their communities. Many, if not most of these individuals, live exemplary lives. And then, imagine seeing all these people — in a line that goes on and on as far as the eye can see — walking into the eternal flames of hell with Bibles in their hands!

This image conveys an idea of what Paul was experiencing as he wrote to the church in Rome. In an extremely personal and moving section, he spoke of his fellow Israelites, the Jewish people, in these words: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel…Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (Rom. 9:2–4; 10:1).

QUESTIONS RELATING TO PAUL’S MESSAGE

Numerous questions exist today in the field of comparative religions and missiology. This is especially true when it comes to discussions concerning Christianity and Judaism.

Many Christian theologians today, as well as many different and disparate Christian denominations, question the need to share the gospel with Jewish people. In fact, many consider attempts at Jewish evangelization to be insensitive and judgmental. For example, in a publication of the Lutheran Council in the USA, distributed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Eric Gritsch states:

There really is no need for any Christian mission to the Jews. They are and remain the people of God, even if they do not accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah. Why this is so only God knows. Christians should concentrate their missionary activities on those who do not yet belong to the people of God, and they should court them with a holistic witness in word and deed rather than with polemical argument and cultural legislation. The long history of Christian anti-Semitism calls for repentance, not triumphalist claims of spiritual superiority.¹

The claim that the Jewish people do not need to know and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior, as their Messiah, is an extraordinary one that invites a critical response. Yet, before criticizing those who make such a claim, we should at least be conversant with what they are saying and why they are saying it. Thus, while the purpose of this article is to present the biblical basis for sharing the gospel with the Jewish people, we will begin with an overview of what this “two covenant” theology is, its historical roots, and the reasons why many Jewish and Christian groups accept this view today.

Franz Rosenzweig and the Origins of Two Covenant Theology

In virtually every historical work examining the factors that have influenced modern Jewish-Christian relations, the person of Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) is prominent. Rosenzweig’s tenets were like the proverbial boulder that began an avalanche. The boulder was an idea, a hypothesis, that has created an avalanche in the history of ideas, particularly in the history of religion. Just as avalanches begin slowly, picking up speed, energy, and mass — so too with Rosenzweig’s “two covenant” theory of atonement.

Franz Rosenzweig first put forth the two covenant theory, as it is commonly referred to, shortly after the First World War in a work entitled The Star of Redemption. His theology of the two covenants came about through a long series of discussions with a friend of his, a Hebrew Christian philosopher of religion, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.

At one point, Rosenzweig was on the verge of becoming a convert to Christianity. Raised in Cassel, Germany in a largely assimilated Jewish household, he decided to attend a Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) service in Berlin first, determining that “he would enter Christianity through Judaism. Like the earliest Christians, he would only enter as a Jew and not as a pagan.”²

Instead of becoming a Christian, Rosenzweig became fascinated with his religious roots. Concerning this, Nahum Glatzer writes: “What the day [Yom Kippur] conveyed to him was that essential as a mediator may be in the Christian experience, the Jew stands in no need of mediation. God is near to man and desires his undeviated devotion.”³

The two covenant theory of salvation, which Rosenzweig would subsequently develop, basically states that God has established two different but equally valid covenants, one with His people Israel and the other with the Gentiles. The Covenant in Moses and the Covenant in Jesus are complementary to each other. Glatzer quotes Rosenzweig on this as follows:

Christianity acknowledges the God of the Jews, not as God but as “the Father of Jesus Christ.” Christianity itself cleaves to the “Lord” because it knows that the Father can be reached only through him….We are all wholly agreed as to what Christ and his church mean to the world: no one can reach the Father save through him. No one can reach the Father! But the situation is quite different for one who does not have to reach the Father because he is already with him. And this is true of the people of Israel (though not of individual Jews).⁴

And so there are two ways of salvation, one for the Jewish people and another one for the Gentiles.

Glatzer continues, explaining Rosenzweig’s thought with the following quotation from him: “The synagogue, which is immortal but stands with broken staff and bound eyes, must renounce all this work in the world, and muster all her strength to preserve her life and keep herself untainted by life. And so she leaves the work in the world to the church and recognizes the church as the salvation for all heathens in all time.”⁵ Concerning this, Rabbi Jakob J. Petuchowski stated, “Rosenzweig conceded more than any Jew, while remaining a Jew, had conceded before him. He admitted the truth of John 14:6.” This is immediately qualified, though, by the assertion that “the Jew does not have to come to the Father. He has been with the Father ever since Sinai.”⁶

Jewish Writers on the Two Covenant Theory

Space will not allow for a thorough survey of Jewish writers on this. It is sufficient to say that this belief in two separate covenants is widely held by many Jewish people today. Arthur Gilbert states: “Judaism allows for religious pluralism and does not consider it scandalous….We do not believe that God’s plan for salvation requires your conversion to Judaism nor mine to Christianity. But it does require our cooperation, our concern for, our joint effort to repair the world.”⁷

Leon Klenicki, formerly the associate director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Department of Interfaith Affairs, expands on this in an essay discussing Jewish-Christian dialogue: “The dialogue involves a process of meeting and recognition between two faith communities, two experiences of God: Christianity and Judaism. It is an encounter of subjects, not faith, not objects of contempt, two equal testimonies to God. For each partner it means the recognition of the other as a constituent in God’s design, the acceptance of a different approach to the Eternal, a different though not conflicting spirituality.”⁸

Renowned Orthodox rabbi Pinchas Lapide summarizes this new view of co-equal and complementary faiths, living side by side together: “We Jews and Christians are joined in brotherhood at the deepest level….We are brothers in a manifold ‘elective affinity.’”⁹

Christians and the Two Covenant Theory

Just as with Jewish writers, there are numerous Christians who believe in a theology of two covenants. Such views usually come from certain mainline denominations, none of which have retained belief in the full inerrancy and authority of the Bible. For example, Carl Braaten writes: “Christianity is the Judaizing of the pagans. The task of Christianity is to preach the gospel among the Gentiles….The task of Judaism meanwhile is to remind Christianity of its original biblical roots.”¹⁰

Similarly, many Roman Catholic theologians have taken the pronouncements of Vatican II and Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio (1991) to their logical conclusion, viz., that religious dialogue with members of other religions is to replace actual missionary efforts: “Former Christian considerations of Judaism (as well as of other religions) encouraged proselytism. That is, Christians believed it not only legitimate but praiseworthy to exert economic, psychological, or spiritual pressure on non-Christians in order to gain new members for the Church. The dialogical position, however, is one in which the parties accept one another as mutually equal partners.”¹¹

This position, however, is also increasingly being found among Christians who accept and believe in the Bible as the Word of God. For example, George Sheridan, who at the time was the East Coast Regional Director for the Southern Baptist department of Interfaith Witness, asserted that God’s bond with the Jewish people was never superseded with the coming of Jesus: “The Jews of today, as ever, receive salvation through their having been chosen by God in covenant with Abraham, Moses, and the prophets….My position is that the Jews do not require evangelization.”¹²

A BIBLICAL ANALYSIS

At this point, it is essential to return to Scripture and see if there is any biblical foundation for a theology of two separate but equal covenants. I believe even a brief examination will show us that there is not. In doing this, we will look at Jesus’ example, the practice of the apostles, and the practice of Paul.

Before looking at these, however, perhaps the best place to begin our examination of two covenant theology is with Paul’s opening declaration in Romans 1:16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”

Many wonder why Paul would begin his message with an assertion that he was not ashamed of the gospel. Different answers have been given, the most cogent, in my opinion, being that proposed by former Concordia Seminary professor Martin H. Franzmann: “Why should Paul speak, even negatively, of being ashamed of the Gospel, which gives his life its content, purpose and direction? He is probably recalling Jesus’ words of warning, ‘Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when he comes in glory’ (Luke 9:26).”¹³ Concerning this, in his letter to young Timothy the apostle Paul writes: “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner” (2 Tim. 1:7–8).

But what did Paul mean when he stated that the gospel was the power of God “for the salvation of everyone who believes”? Perhaps an illustration will help us understand more fully. A number of years ago an evangelical attempt at piquing people’s curiosity, and thus enabling Christians to share the gospel message with non-Christians, was developed by putting bumper stickers on cars that said, “I Found It!” When people saw this, they were supposed to ask what it was the driver had “found.” In response to this, some Jewish groups countered with their own bumper sticker, which stated, “We Never Lost It!”

This is the crux of the problem. Who is Jesus, and how is one “saved”? I believe for many, if not most, Christians today the entire concept of salvation has dulled. It is almost as if we take salvation for granted. The urgency of our salvation and the unspeakable eternal consequences of being cut off from God are obscurred in our minds.

This was not so with Paul’s readers, as Franzmann makes clear: “The word ‘salvation’ is for us a worn coin; for Paul and his readers, fresh from their Old Testament, it still had a sharp image and a clear superscription. It meant radical deliverance out of a desperate situation. What Israel had experienced at the Red Sea, when all help was cut off before and behind and only a vertical miracle from on high could save, that was salvation.”¹⁴

The apostle tells us that this salvation message was “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Rom. 1:16). There have been two main understandings or interpretations of what Paul meant here by the term proton (English: first). The first understanding or interpretation is that Paul was merely referring to first in a chronological sense. Concerning the usage of first and whether this meant that the Jews have a “special preference in salvation,” Swedish theologian Anders Nygren writes, “Does this after all mean that the Jew has special preference in salvation? That cannot be what Paul means. The word may refer to Israel’s special history. In that case their priority is now abolished with the coming of Christ. ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek.’ All are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28)….Thus the priority of the Jew is abolished.”¹⁵

The great theologian Charles Hodge echoes this, saying that Paul’s usage of first in this verse “must have reference to time, ‘To the Jew in the first instance, and then to the Greek.’”¹⁶

The second understanding or interpretation of what Paul means here is that first has reference not only chronologically but also in the sense of a priority. C. E. B. Cranfield’s commentary on Romans explains this as a tension between the equality all Christians have in common, and yet a special calling or place for the Jew in God’s church: “The word te…is suggestive of the fundamental equality of Jew and Gentile in the face of the gospel (the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for believing Jew and believing Gentile alike), while the word proton indicates that within the framework of this basic equality there is a certain undeniable priority of the Jew. In view of chapters nine to eleven it is hardly admissible to explain this proton as referring merely to the historical fact that the gospel was preached to the Jews before it was preached to the Gentiles.”¹⁷ Of great import here, Cranfield asserts, is Romans 11:29: “For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”

Along with this verse, the theologians who believe that proton refers to a priority will usually cite two other passages, Romans 2:9 and Acts 13:46. In Romans 2:9, Paul was referring to the coming judgment, stating, “There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first [proton] for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” I do not know of any commentators who exegete first here in a temporal sense.

This exegesis is supported further when one looks at a number of passages, especially Acts 13:13–52. In this account, Paul and Barnabas entered the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, where Paul eloquently shared the gospel with the people gathered there (13:13ff.). When the Jewish people eventually rejected the gospel, Paul and Barnabas responded very forthrightly: “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles” (v. 46; here and in subsequent Scripture quotations, the emphases are added).

Christianity’s Core

As the entire New Testament demonstrates, Christianity is — at its very core — a missionary faith. The Christian’s command from the very beginning was to go and “make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). Indeed, this is seen in Jesus’ very last words to His disciples, as He departed into heaven: “And you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

After Pentecost this command was taken literally, as the early church turned Jerusalem upside-down. Concerning this, David Bosch writes, “Mass conversions of the Jews are again and again reported, particularly of Jews in Jerusalem…in Acts 2:41, three thousand Jews are converted; in 4:4 there are five thousand; in 5:14 ‘multitudes of both men and women’ are added; in 6:7 the number of the disciples in Jerusalem has ‘multiplied greatly’; in 21:20 Paul is informed about ‘many thousands’…of believing Jews.”¹⁸

Jesus and the Jewish People

In Jesus’ ministry we see numerous situations in which He came “to the Jew first.” At the very beginning of John’s Gospel account, we are told that Jesus “came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). He ministered to and among the Jewish people (e.g., Matt. 4:23–25; 9:35).

It was only in unusual circumstances that Jesus ministered to non-Jewish people (e.g., the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7 and the Roman centurion’s servant in Matthew 8). The primary principle was to go first to the people of Israel. Thus, when Jesus sent out the twelve apostles, He told them, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 10:5–6).

This command to go to the Jewish people is seen likewise in our Lord’s commands after His resurrection. As before, the apostles are to go out among the Jewish people with the message of salvation in Jesus the Messiah. But a new note is added; that is, they also are to spread this message beyond the confines of the Jewish people and take it to the Gentiles as well. Their command was, “beginning at Jerusalem” to take the message out to all people and to all nations, both to the Jew and to the Greek (i.e., the Gentiles; cf., Matt. 28:18–20; Luke 24:46–47; Acts 1:8).

The Apostles and the Jewish People

I believe we see in the practice of the apostles a paradigm of missions for the entire church. In the very first preaching of the gospel after Jesus’ departure, we find the apostle Peter boldly proclaiming the good news of salvation in the midst of a Jewish audience. Acts 2:5 tells us that there were “Jews from every nation” present. In fact, he addressed his message specifically to the Jewish people: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem…” and “Men of Israel, listen to this” (2:14, 22). Furthermore, he concluded his message with the bold and challenging words: “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (2:36). Apparently, according to our modern sensitivities, Peter was unaware that he was being offensive to some of the Jewish people by telling them that they needed to repent and receive Jesus as their Lord and Messiah.

This same pattern of preaching to the Jewish people is followed consistently throughout the Book of Acts (e.g., the apostles with Jewish people in the Temple in 3:11–26; the apostles before the “rulers, elders and teachers of the law” in 4:5ff., with a special emphasis on vv. 10–12 [cf., John 14:6]; the apostles before the full Sanhedrin in 5:27ff.; Stephen before the Sanhedrin in ch. 7). It is not until Acts 10 that we find any attempt to begin taking the gospel to anyone other than Jewish people, and this took several miraculous interventions from God before it occurred. In fact, immediately after Peter brought the gospel to Cornelius and his household, he was criticized for sharing the message of salvation with Gentiles (Acts 11:1–2)!

It was only very slowly and reluctantly that the early church began fulfilling Jesus’ command to bring the gospel to people other than Jews. Finally, after the great council of Jerusalem reported in Acts 15, Paul, Barnabas, Judas, and Silas were sent out with instructions for the Gentile believers (vv. 19–21).

Paul and the Jewish People

Ironically, perhaps the supreme New Testament example of an apostle bringing the news of Jesus Christ to Jewish people is from the “apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul (Rom. 11:13). We saw above the account of Paul and Barnabas entering into the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch and sharing the gospel with the Jewish people there (Acts 13). As we noted, the Jews rejected Jesus, not considering themselves “worthy of eternal life” (13:46).

Yet it remained the apostle’s normal methodology to bring the gospel to the Jewish people first, before continuing on with the Gentiles. Thus we find in Acts 14:1 that “at Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual to the Jewish synagogue.” Moreover, we are told that they “spent considerable time there” (v.3).

From the very beginning Paul did take the gospel to the Jewish people first (e.g., Acts 9:20–22, 26–29). This pattern continued throughout his lifetime of ministry.

This is evident throughout Paul’s writings. First, he emphasized that apart from knowing their Messiah, the Jewish people were cut off from God and from their covenant with Him. For example, in his second letter to the Corinthians, he writes:

We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. (2 Cor. 3:13–16)

Second, Paul continually asked that prayers be offered up for the Jewish people, that they might repent and be brought back into a relationship with God — that is, that they might receive Jesus as their Lord and God, as their long-awaited Messiah.

This is especially evident in Romans 9–11. In Romans 9:1–5, Paul eloquently wrote of how the Jewish people were elected by God in the past, and yet the adoption, the covenants, the Law, the temple worship, and the promises were all to no avail — for they rejected their own Messiah.

Apparently unaware of any “two covenant” theory, Paul again urged that prayers be made for them: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge” (Rom. 10:1–2).

He concluded that although the Jewish people are cut off for now, God has not totally rejected them. God still has plans for them, and they would yet receive Jesus (Rom. 11).

Much more could be said concerning this, but it is sufficient for our purposes to see that throughout the New Testament the Jewish people are always referred to as people who need to know and receive Jesus Christ. In this concern they are no different than any of the Gentiles.

Quintessential Anti-Semitism

As much as one might like to agree with those promulgating a theology of two covenants, it simply is not a biblical doctrine. Quite to the contrary, it goes against everything that we find in the New Testament relating to missions. In fact, this is the quintessential form of anti-Semitism, for in promoting this false doctrine the only way of salvation is closed to the Jewish person (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Nothing could be more dangerous, racist, or pernicious than this.

As we’ve seen, the apostle Paul boldly affirmed, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). We are not to be ashamed of sharing the good news of the gospel with anyone. In that this good news came through the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and in that “salvation is from the Jews” (John. 4:22), this message was “for the Jew first.”

It seems that this is almost completely forgotten today. The gospel of Jesus Christ was first and foremost to go to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles. Christians owe a great debt to the Jews, for our entire spiritual heritage is derived from them. Indeed, we have been grafted into the olive tree of Israel, not the reverse (Rom. 11:11ff.).

Two Unanswered Questions: A Hypothesis

I close with two unanswered questions concerning the two covenant theory, at least unanswered for those who believe in the authority of God’s Word. I place them in the form of a hypothesis.

If the apostles and early church were called by God to bring the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ to the people of Israel — to share the person and work of the Jewish Messiah with the Jews, then when was this call abrogated? And how do we know that it was abrogated; that is, by what authority was this call to preach and evangelize terminated?

As far as I know, these two questions remain unanswered by proponents of this theology, or at least unanswered from a biblical perspective. Stephen Neill eloquently sums up the task Christians face in reaching out to the Jewish people with the good news of Jesus Christ:

Franz Rosenzweig suggested that the church has need of the synagogue, if it is to be true to its vocation. The Christian must ask for liberty to suggest to the Jew that the synagogue has need of the church, if it is to find its own true fulfillment. The suggestion must be made with the utmost humility, with a full sense both of the wrongs for which the church has been responsible in the past, and of the admiration due to the amazing faithfulness with which the Jew has clung to the God who has chosen him. All that he dare ask is that the Jew will look again at Jesus Christ, without hate and without prejudice, and consider whether there may not be things in the picture that he has so far missed.¹⁹

Sanford Mills, a Hebrew believer, eloquently summarizes the other half of the problem we are facing today in attempting to reach Jewish people with the gospel. “The sad part of it is this, that many sincere Christians who do not believe that the Gospel is to the Jew first, do not believe that the Gospel is for the Jew at all!”²⁰

Joseph P. Gudel is a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and is currently a doctoral candidate at Concordia Theological Seminary.

NOTES

¹Eric W. Gritsch, “Luther and the Jews: Toward a Judgment of History,” in Luther and the Jews (n.p.: Lutheran Council in the USA, 1995), 9.²Arnold Betz, “Franz Rosenzweig: Essay and Exhibit”(AOL:www.library.vanderbilt.edu/divinity/rosenzw/rosenbib.html: 1997), 3.³Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 162.⁴Franz Rosenzweig, in Glatzer, 341.⁵Ibid., 342.⁶Jakob J. Petuchowski, “The Christian-Jewish Dialog: A Jewish View,” Lutheran World, October 1963, 383.⁷Arthur Gilbert, “The Mission of the Jewish People in History and in the Modern World,” Lutheran World, July 1964, 308.⁸Leon Klenicki, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in A Dictionary of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue, ed. Leon Klenicki and Geoffrey Wigoder (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 101-2.⁹Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983), 2.¹⁰Carl E. Braaten, “The Resurrection in Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in Lapide, 19.¹¹Celia Deutsch, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in Klenicki and Wigoder, 103.¹²George Sheridan, in Mitch Glasser, “Critique of the Two Covenant Theory,” Mishkan: A Theological Forum on Jewish Evangelism 11 (1989): 2, 45. Shortly after making this comment, Sheridan was removed from his position by Rev. Larry Lewis, the President of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board. Lewis explained Sheridan’s dismissal by saying, “We must believe in Jesus Christ and accept Him as our Lord and Savior. Someone who doesn’t hold that position shouldn’t be in an evangelistic position for the Home Mission Board” (Glasser, 68).¹³Martin H. Franzmann, Concordia Commentary: Romans (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1968), 32.¹⁴Ibid., 33.¹⁵Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, trans. Carl C. Rasmussen (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1949), 73.¹⁶Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1882), 43.¹⁷C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 91.¹⁸David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (New York: Orbis Books, 1991), 96.¹⁹Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 55.²⁰Sanford Mills, A Hebrew Christian Looks at Romans (New York: ABMJ Press, 1971), 37.

The next time you have an opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ, think about this: There is no example in the New Testament of a “personal testimony” being used in an evangelistic setting. Does that seem surprising? The personal testimony has become such an integral part of evangelistic training that it is assumed to be explicitly described, even mandated, in the Bible; but it isn’t.

What about Paul’s testimony to the Philippians about his former life as a Pharisee who persecuted Christians, of which he said, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung” (Phil. 3:8)?1 This is indeed a personal testimony about how Jesus changed Paul’s life, but it is found in a letter to fellow Christians, in which Paul compared himself to the “evil workers” (Phil. 3:2) who were opposing him. Paul was not witnessing to his faith as an evangelist but was illustrating for vulnerable believers the contrast between himself and those who were preaching false doctrine.

What we call “apologetics” was, in fact, what the apostolic church would have called “evangelism.” Early missionary preaching testified to the historical realities upon which the Christian faith was grounded and called for repentance on those grounds. Consider Peter’s speech to the crowd in Jerusalem at Pentecost (Acts 2:22–25):

Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved.

Peter did not testify how Jesus had changed his life or about how he “felt clean” now that his sins were washed away; rather, he appealed to three matters of historical record: the miracles done by Jesus (as well as the sign of speaking in other tongues, witnessed by the crowd), the resurrection of Jesus and His empty tomb, and the fulfillment by Jesus of Old Testament prophecy. It is on the basis of these three facts that Peter called on his hearers to repent. Their repentance was an expected reaction in light of the historical reality of God’s vindication of Jesus.

Throughout Acts we see the same appeals made in evangelistic settings (3:12–26; 4:10–12; 10:34–43), but not a single instance of a modern “personal testimony.”² Why? The answer is found in an unlikely place: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jer. 13:23). Jeremiah expressed an ancient, proverbial belief that people never change their ways. A radical change in behavior was extremely unusual and was viewed with suspicion. This is why, even after Paul became a Christian, the disciples “were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple” (Acts 9:26). They were suspect of such a radical change. In the ancient world, therefore, a personal testimony would have been an ineffective witnessing tool.

Does this mean that we should abandon personal testimonies as a form of witnessing? Of course not. Personal testimony is itself a form of evidence, and a changed life can make a deep impression on others, especially those who want their own lives to change. The apostles’ example, however, shows that evangelism and apologetics are not mutually exclusive. We need to be familiar with the factual basis for our faith in order to “be ready always to give an answer” to any person who asks (1 Pet. 3:15). A basic familiarity with fundamental apologetics is essential to following the apostles’ example.

The spirit of our age admittedly makes our task more difficult. Personal testimonies appeal to our individualism and our feelings, and can be much more interesting than arguments based on ancient history. Appealing to the miracles of Jesus as evidence will not be as straightforward today as it was to those who themselves had seen, or heard eyewitness testimony to, the miracles. Modern arrogance dismisses ancient history (especially religious history and accounts of miracles) as the fabrication of primitive minds. Skeptics may assume that miracles are impossible. Our witness to them may therefore have to begin by addressing the philosophical premises of naturalism (i.e., that there is no supernatural God who can perform miracles). Those who believe miracles are possible may still reject the New Testament miracles as nothing more than copies of pagan miracles. They may say that Jesus was no more special than other holy men who performed miraculous feats. The wide circulation of information about other religions today has made an evidential appeal to the miracles of Jesus a much more complex task than the apostles could have ever imagined.

Appealing to Jesus’ fulfillment of Messianic prophecy can also be difficult to use in evangelism. Enlightenment-era, literalist critics like Thomas Paine argued that the New Testament writers misused Old Testament prophecy and applied it to Jesus illicitly. Modern skeptics continue to use Paine’s arguments. Critics charge, for example, that Matthew misuses Hosea 11:1 — “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” — by saying this was fulfilled by Jesus when his family returned from Egypt (Matt. 2:15). Research into ancient Jewish methods of exegesis, however, shows that the New Testament writers did not use the Old Testament any differently than their contemporaries.³ Matthew’s exegesis of Hosea is an example of midrash, a Jewish technique of interpretation in which phrases in the Old Testament were isolated from their context and applied to a new situation. Jesus was understood as fulfilling Hosea 11:1 because He reenacted the theme of a return from Egypt.

The appeal to the empty tomb of Jesus is the apostolic argument most commonly used today. Christian apologists and scholars have convincingly shown that the Resurrection is the only alternative consistent with the data. Theories that the apostles stole Jesus’ body, or that the apostles went to the wrong tomb, collapse under the weight of inconsistencies and impossibilities. Other explanations for Jesus’ empty tomb take on a hue of desperation. Some would prefer to believe Jesus was an alien from outer space who was restored by advanced technology rather than accept that He was the Lord of life who was resurrected by the power of Almighty God. The explanation that Jesus survived the crucifixion and went to live in India or Japan resurfaces periodically — an alternative that indirectly testifies to the fact that the tomb was empty.

Rampant cynicism, ignorance, and skepticism has made our task more difficult, but that does not mean it has become impossible. Believers who can communicate the basis for their faith can be far more convincing and make a far greater impression with their personal testimony. If we are unable to answer unbelievers’ questions about Christianity, however, we leave ourselves open to the charge of being uncritical and not caring to examine our faith. Paul, in fact, advised the Thessalonians to “prove all things” (1 Thess. 5:21). The Bible does not encourage a blind faith.

No believer, not even a scholarly believer, can hope to master every conceivable apologetic issue; nor is it necessary. A few basic areas, however, are all that Christians need to study in depth to be more effective witnesses. Materials on life in Bible times can be especially helpful and will often bring more light to passages that seem obscure.⁴ Authors who examine and compare social values in the biblical world to those in the modern world can bring an exciting new perspective and understanding to the text.⁵ A book on the literary genres and interpretation of the biblical text is also essential.⁶ Once the basics are mastered, one may choose to study specialty fields such as archaeology, literature, textual criticism, or eschatology. A network of informed Christians can trade information as needs arise in their own efforts. With the ready access of electronic mail and informational resources both in print and online, the answers to even the most difficult questions can literally be at our fingertips.

If we profess to love God, it is only consistent with our profession that we should desire to learn more about Him and His Word. Apologetics should not be regarded as alien to our personal testimony but should become an integral part of it. A man who said he loved his wife but could tell an inquirer almost nothing about her would be rightly regarded with suspicion. We owe no less loyalty to our Lord than to show our love for Him (1 Pet. 3:15) by learning all we can about Him and His message — the “faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3).

NOTES

1. All Bible quotations are from the King James Version.

2. Resemblance to a modern personal testimony in Paul’s speech before Agrippa (Acts 26) is incidental. Paul is offering a defense against charges that he violated Jewish laws and was a “mover of sedition among all the Jews” (Acts 24:5–6). He first recounts his former life to show that he was previously a zealous believer in Judaism. He then trumps the charges by arguing that his Christian faith is consistent with Jewish beliefs in the resurrection of the dead (26:6–7; cf. 23:6), so that not only was he a sincere Jew in his former life; he remained one, even as a Christian! Paul’s purpose was to show that he could not have been a “mover of sedition,” disloyal to Jewish sensibilities, for he himself was still a loyal Jew, “believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets” (24:14) and finding what was written there fulfilled in Christ. He does not follow the pattern of a modern personal testimony, for he does not appeal to the changes in his life as a reason for Agrippa to become a Christian.

3. See Richard Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

4. E.g., Victor Matthews, The Social World of Ancient Israel, 1250–587 B.C.E. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993); James Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999).

5. E.g., Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1993); David deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kingship and Purity (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000).

6. E.g., D. Brent Sandy and Ronald L. Giese, Cracking Bible Codes: A Guide to Interpreting Old Testament Literary Forms (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1995); Robert H. Stein, Playing by the Rules: A Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997).

Let me ask you a question. Are you absolutely certain that one day those who have died in Christ will be resurrected to eternal life in heaven? If you are, then you can be just as sure that unbelievers will be resurrected to eternal torment in hell.

While myriad jokes have surrounded the subject of hell, it is not a laughing matter. There is literally nothing more ghastly and grim than the biblical language used to describe hell. It is variously described as “darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12); as a “fiery furnace” (Matt. 13:42); and as a “lake of burning sulfur” (Rev. 20:10). Its torment is said to be continuous (2 Thess. 1:9), unquenchable (Matt. 3:12), and eternal (Jude 7).

Although many words describing hell are symbolic, they signify an even more suffocating reality. As Dr. R. C. Sproul explains, we find no relief in them: “A breath of relief is usually heard when someone declares, ‘Hell is a symbol for separation from God.’ To be separated from God for eternity is no great threat to the impenitent person. The ungodly want nothing more than to be separated from God. Their problem in Hell will not be separation from God, it will be the presence of God that will torment them. In Hell, God will be present in the fullness of His divine wrath.”²

Sproul goes on to say that the most horrifying aspect of hell is its eternality. The most excruciating pain can be endured, if we know that it will end. In hell, no such hope exists. In the words of Dante, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”³

The horrors of hell are such that they cause us to recoil instinctively in disbelief and doubt. Nevertheless, there are compelling reasons that should erase such doubt from our minds. The first and foremost of such reasons is that Christ, the Creator of the cosmos, clearly communicated hell’s irrevocable reality. “Do not be amazed at this,” He said, “for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out — those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:28–29).⁴

Christ. As has often been accurately noted, Christ spent more time talking about hell than He did about heaven. In the Sermon on the Mount alone, He explicitly warned His followers about the dangers of hell a half dozen or more times.⁵ Using hyperbole, He drove home the urgency of his message: “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt. 5:29–30).

Furthermore, in the Olivet Discourse, Christ repeatedly warned His followers of the judgment to come:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left….Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”…Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life (Matt. 25:31-33, 41, 46).

Lastly, in His famous story of the rich man and Lazarus, Christ portrayed the finality of eternal torment in hell:

In hell, where [the rich man] was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.” But Abraham replied, “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us” (Luke 16:23–26).

Choice. As with these compelling words from the lips of Christ, the concept of choice demands that we believe in hell. Without hell there is no choice. Moreover, without choice, heaven would not be heaven but rather hell. The righteous would inherit a counterfeit heaven, and the unrighteous would be incarcerated in heaven against their will, which would be a torture worse than hell. As Dr. Norman Geisler explains, the alternative to hell “would rob human beings of freedom and dignity by forcing them into heaven against their free choice. That would be ‘hell’ since they do not fit in a place where everything is loving and praising the Person they want most to avoid.”⁶

We should note that without eternal separation for the wicked, the very nature of heaven is polluted. “Evil is contagious (1 Cor. 5:6) and must be quarantined. Like a deadly plague, if it is not contained it will continue to contaminate and corrupt. If God did not eventually separate the tares from the wheat, the tares would choke out the wheat. The only way to preserve an eternal place of good is to eternally separate all evil from it. The only way to have an eternal heaven is to have an eternal hell.”⁷

It is also crucial to recognize that not all existence in hell is equal. We may safely conclude that the torment of Hitler’s hell will greatly exceed the torment experienced by a garden-variety pagan. God is perfectly just, and each person who spurns His grace will suffer exactly what he or she deserves (Luke 12:47-48; Rev. 20:12-13). Those who reject the gospel will be judged more severely than those who never heard it (see Matt. 11:20–24).

Common Sense. Like choice, common sense dictates that there must be a hell. Without hell, the wrongs of Hitler’s Holocaust will never be righted. Justice will be impugned if, after slaughtering six million Jews, Hitler merely died in the arms of his mistress with no eternal consequences. Common sense told the Psalmist Asaph that for a time it may seem as though the wicked prosper despite their deeds, but in the end justice will be served (Ps. 73).

Furthermore, common sense dictates that a God of love and justice does not arbitrarily rub out the crowning jewels of His creation. As noted by Drs. J. P. Moreland and Gary Habermas, “It would be wrong to destroy something of such value just because it has chosen a life it was not intended to live. Thus, one way God can respect persons is to sustain them in existence and not annihilate them.”⁸

Finally, and most importantly, common sense dictates that without a hell there is no need for a Savior. Little needs to be said about the absurdity of suggesting that the Creator should suffer more than the cumulative sufferings of all humanity if there were no hell to save us from. As much as we may wish to think that everyone will be saved, common sense precludes that possibility. C. S. Lewis put it well, “I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully, ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts, ‘without their will, or with it?’ If I say ‘Without their will’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be in-voluntary? If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies ‘How if they will not give in?’” (emphasis in original).⁹ Ultimately, “there are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’” (emphasis in original).¹⁰

NOTES

1. Adapted from Hank Hanegraaff, Resurrection (Nashville: Word, 2000), chapter 7.

2. R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 286.

3. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto III: 7.

4. This passage teaches the physical resurrection of both believers and unbelievers. The biblical arguments for the continuity and physicality of the believer’s resurrected body apply to the unbeliever as well; thus, even those in hell will have imperishable physical bodies. (See chapter 6 of Resurrection for a discussion of the nature of the resurrection body.)

5. See Matt. 5:22, 29, 30; 7:13, 19, 23. To these explicit warnings about hell, Christ added many implicit warnings in His Sermon on the Mount. See Matt. 5:13, 19, 20, 22, 26; 6:15; 7:27. Cf. Matt. 5:18; 6:30.

6. Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999), 313.

7. Ibid., 313–14.

8. Gary R. Habermas and J. P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 296.

9. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 118–19.

10. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Collier Books, 1946), 72, quoted in Geisler, 311.

John Hagee is a New York Times best-selling author, prominent televangelist on Trinity Broadcasting Network, and pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. In his latest book he argues that Christians are obligated to support the political state of Israel (pp.84-85). He demands that we support Israel in anything it does, because we as Christians have “a biblical mandate to stand in absolute solidarity with Israel” (84, emphasis added). His book In Defense of Israel is virtually a hagiography (or overly idealizing presentation) of Jews and Judaism that borders on Judeolatry.

Hagee rebukes Christianity for anti-Semitism while he himself extols Judaism, declaring Jerusalem his “spiritual home” (12), speaking of Jews as his “spiritual brothers” (36, 173), even worshiping with them (144), and stating that they are “quite literally God’s children” (51, emphasis in original) whom “we are commanded to love unconditionally” (2).

In Defense of Israel is a study in relentless confusion and massive inaccuracy, containing nearly as many errors as pages. The following addresses the most glaring of these.

Hagee’s Historical Confusion. He states that Acts 11:26 occurred “forty years after the crucifixion” (93), around AD 70, but it actually occurred in the early 40s during “the reign of Claudius,” according to Acts 11:28.¹

He states that Jesus went to His first Passover “at the end of his twelfth year” (95), but instead He did so “when He became twelve” (Luke 2:42). He thinks Paul “wrote most of the New Testament” (98), although Luke did, in terms of volume, writing twenty-five percent of it.

Hagee believes, incredibly, that as a child Jesus studied the Mishnah (a collection of Jewish traditions and scriptural interpretations) and the rest of the Talmud (96). The Mishnah was compiled around AD 200, however, and the Talmud 200 years later. On page 97, he speaks of “the creation of the world in seven days,” whereas it happened in six days (Gen. 1; Exod. 20:11; 31:17). He states that Caiaphas “was appointed by Herod” (127), but he was appointed by Valerius Gratus, more than twenty years after Herod died.

Hagee’s Theological Errors. Hagee also appears to have some theological confusion-for example, he confuses the virgin birth with the immaculate conception of Mary (93). This leads to serious doctrinal errors, which I list below.

1. Hagee claims that Jesus did not come to be the Messiah. He writes, “not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament…says Jesus came to be the Messiah” (136; cf. 137, 140, 145). Jesus is called “Christ” (Messiah) throughout the New Testament, however. Peter declares, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt.16:15-16), as do Martha (John 11:27) and Jesus Himself (John 10:24-25), and John writes his gospel “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ” (John 20:30-31). In Matthew 26:63-64 the high priest demands, “tell us whether You are the Christ.” Jesus responds, “You have said it yourself.” Also, Paul set about “confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 9:22).

2. Hagee maintains that “the Jews did not reject Jesus as Messiah” (132), since “Jesus had to live to be the Messiah” (135). Early in John’s gospel, however, we read that “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). At the end of His ministry Jesus weeps: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often I wanted to gather your children together…and you were unwilling” (Matt. 23:37, emphasis added). Clearly then, Hagee is wrong for declaring that the Jews did not reject Jesus. Furthermore, Christ did come to die, for Paul busied himself “explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ’” (Acts 17:3; cf. 3:18; 26:23).

3. Hagee teaches that the Jews did not kill Jesus. He vigorously argues that this is “one of those deadly New Testament myths” and that “no justification can be found in the New Testament to support this lie” (125; cf. 122). Peter, however, preaches, “Men of Israel….this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:22-23, emphasis added.” Stephen declares that the same Jews were the “betrayers and murderers” of “the Righteous One” (Acts 7:52). Paul charges that “the Jews…both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets” (1 Thess. 2:15; see also Acts 2:36; 3:13-15; 4:10; 5:28, 30; 10:39; 13:27-29; 26:10).

4. Hagee argues that “the Old Covenant is not dead” (158). Paul, however, writes that the Old Covenant’s glory was fading even when Moses gave it (2 Cor. 3:7, 13) and “has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it” in the New Covenant (2 Cor. 3:10). Hebrews 8:13 thus notes that “when He said, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.”

Lamentably, the fact that Hagee is a best-selling author reminds us anew that, as God proclaimed, “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6).

NOTES

1. All Bible quotations are from the New American Standard Bible.

First, even if the theist could not muster good arguments for God’s existence, atheism still would not be shown to be true.³ The outspoken atheist Kai Nielsen recognizes this: “To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false…. All the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists.”⁴

Second, the “presumption of atheism” demonstrates a rigging of the rules of philosophical debate in order to play into the hands of the atheist, who himself makes a truth claim. Alvin Plantinga correctly argues that the atheist does not treat the statements “God exists” and “God does not exist” in the same manner.⁵ The atheist assumes that if one has no evidence for God’s existence, then one is obligated to believe that God does not exist — whether or not one has evidence against God’s existence. What the atheist fails to see is that atheism is just as much a claim to know something (“God does not exist”) as theism (“God exists”). Therefore, the atheist’s denial of God’s existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist’s claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God’s existence.

Third, in the absence of evidence for God’s existence, agnosticism, not atheism, is the logical presumption. Even if arguments for God’s existence do not persuade, atheism should not be presumed because atheism is not neutral; pure agnosticism is. Atheism is justified only if there is sufficient evidence against God’s existence.

Fourth, to place belief in Santa Claus or mermaids and belief in God on the same level is mistaken. The issue is not that we have no good evidence for these mythical entities; rather, we have strong evidence that they do not exist. Absence of evidence is not at all the same as evidence of absence, which some atheists fail to see.

Moreover, the theist can muster credible reasons for belief in God. For example, one can argue that the contingency of the universe — in light of Big Bang cosmology, the expanding universe, and the second law of thermodynamics (which implies that the universe has been “wound up” and will eventually die a heat death) — demonstrates that the cosmos has not always been here. It could not have popped into existence uncaused, out of absolutely nothing, because we know that whatever begins to exist has a cause. A powerful First Cause like the God of theism plausibly answers the question of the universe’s origin. Also, the fine-tunedness of the universe — with complexly balanced conditions that seem tailored for life — points to the existence of an intelligent Designer.

The existence of objective morality provides further evidence for belief in God. If widow-burning or genocide is really wrong and not just cultural, then it is difficult to account for this universally binding morality, with its sense of “oughtness,” on strictly naturalistic terms. (Most people can be convinced that the difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa is not simply cultural.) These and other reasons demonstrate that the believer is being quite rational — not presumptuous — in embracing belief in God.Paul Copan is a Ph. D. candidate in philosophy at Marquette University and editor of the forthcoming Who Was Jesus? A Jewish-Christian Discussion (Word, 1997).

NOTES

¹Antony Flew, The Presumption of Atheism (London: Pemberton, 1976), 14. ²Michael Scriven, Primary Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 103. ³It is important to remember that we are trying to give arguments or good reasons for God’s existence — not “proofs,” which imply a mathematical certainty. All too often the atheist’s criteria of acceptability are unreasonably high. One who is genuinely seeking plausible reasons to believe in God can certainly find them. ⁴Kai Nielsen, Reason and Practice (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 143-44. ⁵Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 27.

summary: the problems at a glance

Further problems with Neil T. Anderson’s spiritual warfare teachings include his emphasis on his seven “steps to freedom” to the extent that they become a virtual “second work of grace”; his assertion that satanic curses and “assignments” have real power that must be warded off with repeated formulaic prayers; his insistence that it is necessary to remember and renounce every instance of certain kinds of sin in order to cancel Satan’s influence in one’s life; and his further insistence that such satanic strongholds can be passed on generationally and thus to be free one may also need to identify and renounce the sins of one’s ancestors.

“Many Christians have said that after going through the Steps to Freedom they felt just like they did when they first received Christ, and they earnestly desire to maintain their freedom. As with new Christians, these renewed Christians need a place where they can be nurtured. It’s difficult to overemphasize the value of a small group discipleship experience to establish them in truth and freedom”¹

“Going through the Steps must be a personal choice, and people should not be coerced into it. Those who have found freedom will often want their spouses or friends to experience the same joy. But taking people through the Steps because others want them to do it is usually not advisable…. Therefore, we encourage those who have been freed to pray for their loved ones and allow the Holy Spirit to prepare their hearts for “an appointment.”²

“One church put together a ‘freedom ministry’ after I had conducted a conference in its facilities. A year and a half later, they had led more than 500 people to freedom in Christ, and 95 percent of it was done by lay people.”³

In Parts One and Two of this series we examined two critical components of the message and method of Freedom in Christ Ministries founder Neil T. Anderson: his teachings on the believer’s identity in Christ and his strategy for dealing with the devil that he labels the “truth encounter.” As central as these emphases are to Anderson’s ministry, they only support and supplement what he apparently views as his most significant contribution to the body of Christ at large. This contribution — conveyed not only in his books but also in conferences held around the globe — is his approach to spiritual conflict resolution called the steps to freedom.

“SECOND BLESSING” THEOLOGY

As can be seen in Anderson’s pronouncements quoted above, the steps to freedom are described in the same kind of language most evangelicals reserve for salvation, or as some Christian traditions use for a “second work of grace” (e.g., sanctification or the baptism in the Holy Spirit). Anderson even compares the effect in the spiritual realm that transpires when someone sincerely recites the printed prayers of the steps with that which transpires when one prays to accept Christ as Savior.⁴

The steps to freedom have therefore become a Second Blessing essential to victorious Christian living, yet never quite formulated until Anderson came along. As Anderson states in Released from Bondage, Christ purchased our victory on the cross, but only as we walk through the seven steps can that freedom be realized.⁵ In his various books, Anderson repeatedly advises his readers that they should also read several of his other books so that they will be fully equipped to walk effectively through the steps.⁶ He seldom recommends books by other authors. Thus, although Anderson is not given to making boastful claims about himself,⁷ the implications of what he does say about the steps to freedom and his own books certainly do cast his ministry in a uniquely important role in the historical and contemporary church.⁸ He would have us believe that he has recovered and explicitly outlined the steps to freedom that were only implicitly revealed in Scripture — steps necessary for Victorious Christian living.

VALIDATION THROUGH TESTIMONY?

Anderson’s books are laden with testimonials of people who have applied his teachings and found freedom in Christ. The reactions from his counselees and conference participants included in his books always conform to and confirm his theology and expectations.⁹ He clearly thinks that these testimonies go a long way toward validating his ministry.

The value of some of these testimonies immediately seems questionable. For example, one woman proclaims: “I suffered from unexplainable rashes, hives, and welts all over my body. I lost my joy and closeness to the Lord. I could no longer sing or quote Scripture. I turned to food as my comfort and security. The demons attacked my sense of right and wrong, and I became involved in immorality in my search for identity and love. But that all ended yesterday when I renounced Satan’s control in my life” (emphasis added).¹⁰ In another place, Anderson recounts that a college student who had been threatening to kill him came to his apartment and Anderson “walked him through the Steps. He left being free in Christ.”¹¹ While we rejoice if the changes in these people’s lives were authentic, experience abundantly teaches that it is unwise to print such testimonies before they’ve stood the test of time.

No doubt some people have been helped because they have applied the biblical components of Anderson’s teaching noted elsewhere in this article and series. The question remains whether even these positive aspects of his ministry might not lead to a greater negative effect in the long run. For instance, if people conclude that because Anderson’s teachings helped them to deal with negative thoughts, everything he has to say about demons must be true, they might spend the rest of their lives in bondage to a ritualistic, legalistic, and superstitious approach to spiritual warfare that could have more negative consequences than they would have experienced from their negative thoughts — which they might have eventually learned to deal with apart from Anderson. Of course, we might not expect Anderson to look for, let alone include, testimonials of people who have been hurt through his teachings, but we have such testimonials in our files.

Anderson’s stories have fairly consistent characteristics: (1) they include wild or highly unusual and unsubstantiated supernatural events or human behaviors that support his views; (2) the protagonists in the stories are well-intentioned but have done, or had done to them, terrible things; (3) his approach always fits the situation and provides the answer.

WALKING THROUGH THE SEVEN STEPS

The steps to freedom are usually completed in one appointment that takes from three to five hours. The process is typically facilitated by a “committed Christian” (in the company of a “prayer partner”) who has gone through the steps himself (or herself) and has been trained by Anderson’s book Helping Others Find Freedom in Christ and/or advanced workshops provided at Freedom in Christ events. The leader walks the Christian seeking freedom through a series of personal inventories and prescribed prayers and declarations in which Satan’s lies are renounced and God’s truth is announced. Anderson considers such renunciation and annunciation key to finding freedom.

Anderson gives each of the seven steps a title that counterposes the desirable quality or condition into which he is seeking to lead his followers against the unbiblical quality or condition from which he is seeking to free them. The goal is for the counselee to identify his or her personal struggles and sins openly and to recite the various prayers and declarations from the heart, resulting in a life-changing transaction with the spiritual realm. In the process, it is not uncommon for emotional upheavals, bizarre behaviors, and shocking outbursts to occur. The latter two manifestations are considered forms of “demonic interference” with the deliverance process that can be overcome by a “truth encounter” with the Enemy (see Part Two).

Step One: Counterfeit vs. Real

The first step to freedom involves renouncing “your previous or current involvements with satanically inspired occultic practices or false religions.”¹² Central to Anderson’s concept of renunciation is the idea that once one engages in a forbidden practice, Satan gains a foothold in one’s life that will never be broken until that sin is identified and rejected:

What right did Satan have to control Janelle as he did? Only the right that she gave him by yielding to his lies….once Janelle renounced her involvement with sin and Satan, his hold on her was canceled, and he had to leave.¹³

Write down everything God brings to mind. After you are sure your list is complete, pray the following for each practice, religion, and teacher: “Lord, I confess that I have participated in ________. I ask your forgiveness and I renounce ________ as a counterfeit to true Christianity.”¹⁴

This principle of renunciation is so absolute for Anderson that he would rather be safe than sorry, even if it means renouncing sins one has not actually committed: “Some hesitate to complete the inventory because they don’t believe they actually participated in these activities. But if anyone in your family was involved, you may want to put it on your list of activities to renounce just in case you unknowingly gave Satan a foothold.”¹⁵

Step Two: Deception vs. Truth

Step two involves “acknowledging the truth in the inner self.”¹⁶ In his explanation of this rather vague step, Anderson states that Christians previously lived their lives in deception as a defense mechanism arising from having to live independent of God, but now that they are alive in Him and forgiven, they can afford to face the truth. This again illustrates his fundamentally nonmoral understanding of fallenness and redemption (See Part One). For Anderson, sin is not the essence of fallenness (which he defines solely as separation from God) but rather a survival response to it, which is no longer necessary after fellowship with God is restored.¹⁷

Step Three: Bitterness vs. Forgiveness

The general proposition that learning how to forgive the sins of others is a step to experiencing freedom in Christ is not a claim I wish to dispute. Unfortunately, in step three Anderson takes this basic biblical truth and develops it in biblically unwarranted ways:

The major decision you are making in forgiveness is to bear the penalty of the other person’s sin. All forgiveness is efficacious, if we are to forgive as Christ forgave us, how then did He forgive? He took the sins of the world on Himself; He suffered the consequences of our sin. When we forgive the sin of another, we are agreeing to live with the consequences of his or her sin. You say, “That’s not fair!” Well, the fact is that you will have to anyway, whether you forgive or not. Everybody is living with the consequences of somebody else’s sin…. The only real choice is whether we will do it in the freedom of forgiveness or the bondage of bitterness.¹⁸

While Anderson says that forgiveness is required regardless of the attitude of the offending party,¹⁹ the Bible teaches that forgiveness is predicated on the repentance of the offender, even as God’s forgiveness of sinners is predicated on their repentance (Luke l7:3-4). There is, however, a degree of truth in what Anderson is saying: rather than remaining angry or becoming bitter when offending parties fail to repent, Christians should bless them and release their fate into the hands of God (Eph. 4:26; Rom. 12:14, 17-21). But Anderson’s teaching on the substitutionary, efficacious value of forgiveness takes Christ’s suffering for sin, which is unique, and without biblical basis extends it to all Christians. This confusing emphasis raises questions about whether the Christian’s own suffering has atoning value and, consequently, whether there is something lacking in the atonement of Christ. Since Anderson seemingly would not make such a claim, this odd emphasis is unfortunate.

Anderson writes: “You say, ‘You don’t understand how much this person hurt me!’ But don’t you see, they are still hurting you! How do you stop the pain? You don’t forgive someone for their sake; you do it for your sake, so you can be free” (emphasis in original).²⁰ It may be true that unforgiveness generally hurts the one holding on to it more than it does the one who is its object. Nonetheless, forgiveness from such a self-centered motive sounds a lot more like pop psychology than anything found in the Bible. The only reasons Scripture ever supplies for forgiving others is either to receive God’s forgiveness or because God’s forgiveness has been received (e.g., Matt. 6:12-15; Mark 11:25; Luke 6:37; Eph. 4:32; Col 3:13). In other words, forgiving others is the morally appropriate thing to do, given that God has made provision to forgive one’s own sins (which generally turn out to be greater than the sins one is being called onto forgive; Matt. 18:21-35).

After defining forgiveness as “agreeing to live with the consequences of another person’s sin” (emphasis added),²¹ Anderson contradictorily goes on to teach that it is important that we learn to forgive both God and ourselves! “Once the counselee has prayed the prayer in Step 3, record the names of the people that God brings to his or her mind. If he doesn’t mention himself or God, I will ask him if those names need to be on his list. He usually agrees.”²²

Step Four: Rebellion vs. Submission

Step four seeks to cancel all satanic ground gained in an individual’s life by a rebellious attitude toward God and human authorities, for “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft” (1 Sam. 15:23). It contains a prayer of repentance and submission.

Step Five: Pride vs. Humility

Step five is similar to step four, only it addresses the related sin of pride. “I now renounce the self-life and by so doing cancel all the ground that has been gained in my members by the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ.”²³

Step Six: Bondage vs. Freedom

Step six seeks freedom from the bondage of habitual sin through confession and accountability to God and sometimes to a mature Christian as well. The principle set forth here is certainly sound, and the formulae prayer Anderson provides for this step is basically biblical, except for the statement, “I have transgressed your holy law and given the enemy an opportunity to wage war in my members (Romans 5:12, 13; James 4:1; 1 Peter 5:8).”²⁴ The first two passages cited actually speak about sin or lust waging war in a Christian’s members. The third mentions the devil prowling around like a roaring lion, but says nothing about him operating within the believer. Through such illegitimate proof texting Anderson once again derives from Scripture something it never actually teaches (see Parts One and Two). But how many Christians reading his books take the time to check such references? Many no doubt simply assume that with all these proof texts he must have plenty of biblical support for what he teaches.

Anderson maintains that Satan’s entrance into people’s “members” through sexual sin can only be reversed as they renounce every sin.

I have found it necessary for all sexual sins to be renounced. I usually have such people pray, asking the Lord to reveal to their minds all the sexual sins and partners with whom they have been involved, whether they were the victim or the perpetrator.²⁵

If you are in sexual bondage, what can you do?… ask the Lord to reveal to your mind every time you used your body as an instrument of unrighteousness, including all sexual sins….verbally respond to each offense as it is recalled by saying, “I confess (whatever the sin was), and I renounce that use of my body.”…If you think this process might take too long, try not doing it and see how long the rest of your life will seem as you drag on in defeat!²⁶

Anderson instructs his followers, “After you have confessed all known sin, pray: ‘I now confess these sins to You and claim through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ my forgiveness and cleansing. I cancel all ground that evil spirits have gained through my willful involvement in sin.”²⁷ While forgiveness is certainly obtained instantaneously through repentant confession, it is presumptuous to think that after having willfully indulged in sin over a long period of time, the believer can, through a verbal proclamation, instantly cancel all ground that the enemy gained (properly understood as external influence and not internal presence or control). According to Scripture, deliverance from the power of sin and restoration to a right relationship with God essentially take place in the realm of the heart (e.g., Prov. 4:23; Isa. 29:13; Joel 2:12-13; Matt. 15:19). Deliverance and restoration involve a transaction between the believer and God, not Satan (see, e.g., Ps. 51) — a turning of the will prompted by His Spirit (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2; John 16:8) that is deepened and confirmed over time (e.g., Phil. 2:12; 1 Pet. 5:8-10; 2 Pet. 1:3-1l). Anderson’s instantaneous verbal solution amounts to magical thinking, a defect in his approach that becomes even more apparent in step seven.

Step Seven: Acquiescence vs. Renunciation

Following the lead of many other spiritual warfare teachers, Anderson not only believes in territorial spirits,²⁸ but in generational spirits as well:

The last step to freedom is to renounce the sins of your ancestors and any curses which may have been placed on you. In giving the Ten Commandments, God said: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:4, 5).

Familiar spirits can be passed on from one generation to the next if not renounced and your new spiritual heritage in Christ is not proclaimed. You are not guilty for the sin of any ancestor, but because of their sin, Satan has gained access to your family…In addition, deceived people may try to curse you, or Satanic groups may try to target you.²⁹

Some Christian leaders respond negatively to the teaching that we can inherit spiritual problems from our ancestors. Let me respond by saying that we are not guilty for our parents’ sins, but because they sinned we are vulnerable to their areas of weakness. Jeremiah 32 offers more insight: “Ah Lord God!… who showest lovingkindness to thousands, but repayest the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after them…” (emphasis in original)³⁰

This last Step to Freedom…is a crucial turning point for those people who come from dysfunctional families or families involved in cults or the occult. It is breaking the final links of bondage that have chained them to their past.³¹

The fact that demonic strongholds can be passed on from one generation to the next is well-attested by those who counsel the afflicted.³²

This experiential “validation” must be the true basis for Anderson’s doctrine, for it is difficult to imagine that he came to this belief from a serious study of the Scripture passages he quotes. One need only examine the wording of Exodus 20:4-5 to note its complete lack of reference to evil spirits. The natural interpretation is that God would visit circumstantial punishments (not evil spirits) on those who hate Him. In the same sense, just because Jeremiah said the Lord would repay the parents’ iniquities “into the bosom” of their children, it does not follow that the parents’ areas of moral weakness would be passed on to their children. Rather, this phrase is simply an idiomatic way of saying that the punishment of the parents would be visited on the children (note the word “repay”), if the children do not repent of their parents’ sins.³³ By confusing the punishment for sin with the sin itself, Anderson makes God the transmitter of sin from one generation to the next.

Carrying this unbiblical teaching to its logical conclusion, Anderson makes an astounding statement: “Adopted children can be especially subject to demonic strongholds because of their natural parentage. But even an adopted child can become a new creation in Christ, and must actively renounce old strongholds and embrace his or her inheritance as God’s child” (emphasis added).³⁴ Adopted children who do not know their genealogical history are at a disadvantage when it comes to anticipating inherited physical vulnerabilities. But Anderson has needlessly burdened them with additional concern about inherited demonic vulnerabilities, in a sense making them second-class citizens spiritually and thus adding to the prejudice with which they already have to deal.

As a partial consequence of his incorrect view that Satan once had ownership over the earth (see Part Two), Anderson’s demonology has taken a decidedly magical turn:

I here and now reject and disown all the sins of my ancestors. As one who has been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, I cancel out all demonic working that may have been passed on to me from my ancestors…I renounce all satanic assignments that are directed toward me and my ministry, and I cancel every curse that Satan and his workers have put on me. I announce to Satan and all his forces that Christ became a curse for me…. I reject any and every way in which Satan may claim ownership of me. I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, who purchased me with His own blood. I reject all of the blood sacrifices whereby Satan may claim ownership of me. I declare myself to be eternally and completely signed over and committed to the Lord Jesus Christ.³⁵

Contrary to Anderson, there is absolutely no relationship between superstitious occult curses and the very real curse of God that was laid on Christ for our sins. There is therefore no point in even making a comparison between them. In fact, in the Bible curses are strictly the prerogative of God and so there is no scriptural validation whatsoever for the pagan belief that there is real power in satanic curses, “assignments,” and blood sacrifices. Furthermore, the idea that by reciting prescribed prayers believers can cancel the workings of evil spirits is far more reminiscent of traditional magic doctrine, which holds that humans can control the spirit world through correct verbal formulae and ritual, than anything found in the Bible. Christians are already the property of the Lord Jesus Christ and do not need to declare themselves to be so for this reality to take effect (see below).

THE ROLE OF RENUNCIATION

Our brief survey of the seven steps makes it clear that renunciation plays a central role in Anderson’s approach to obtaining freedom from spiritual bondages. For Anderson, it is absolutely essential to confess and renounce past sins if one wants to be free of them. He describes renunciation as

a greater concept of repentance. The problem is, “Oh, I’ve confessed it.” Well, that deals with your relationship with God but it doesn’t deal with the entrapment of sin. It really doesn’t. Now, that’s not to put down confession, that’s an honest agreement before God, but all that’s in terms of reality isn’t there [sic]. You haven’t dealt with the entrapment of sin. Repentance is a broader concept. I renounce that, I accept this. And we found the necessity to do that with every lie we exposed.³⁶

Anderson finds legitimation for this practice in church history: “The early church included in its public declaration of faith, ‘I renounce you, Satan, all your works and ways.’ The Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and many other liturgical churches still require this renunciation as part of confirmation. For some reason it has disappeared from most evangelical churches. You must not only choose the truth but disavow Satan and his lies.”³⁷ Anderson stresses that “all [Satan’s] works and all his ways need to be renounced as God brings them to our memory” (emphasis in original).³⁸

It is no mystery that most evangelical churches have not retained this rite, since — unlike baptism or communion — it cannot be derived from Scripture alone. But even the traditions that do ritually practice renunciation do not hold that every past sin must be specifically named and renounced.

Clearly, it is Anderson’s counseling experience that provides the true basis for this teaching: “To be completely free from the past, we have found it necessary for each person to specifically renounce every false religion, false teacher, false practice and every means of false guidance that he or she has participated in” (emphasis added).³⁹ We are supposed to accept this practice, then, on the basis of Anderson’s experience — even though there is no biblical warrant for it, there are (as we shall see) biblical reasons to question it, and the experiences of other counselors do not lead to Anderson’s conclusion.

The Bible does make a place for disowning past involvements in forbidden activities (Acts 19:18-20). If those activities remain a factor in one’s life, renunciation can be a way of closing doors that had previously been opened. What gives a legalistic, ritualistic, and even magical character to Anderson’s understanding of renunciation is the principle that every past involvement (not only of oneself but also of one’s ancestors) must be identified and renounced for one to be free.

Rather than seeing a past involvement in occultism as a possible problem in the present because some of the beliefs or practices may be retained (e.g.,. an ongoing curiosity about horoscopes), Anderson sees it as a definite problem in the present. He insists that Satan gained a foothold in the individual’s life through that involvement that will not be released until the sin is specifically identified and renounced. This belief undermines the efficacy of one’s conversion: the initial general repentance from a life of sin and the cleansing of that sin through the blood of Christ are not good enough to free the believer from the power of Satan.

Anderson answers this objection by arguing that although through Christ’s cross, resurrection, and ascension new believers automatically receive all the forgiveness, life, and authority they need, Romans 12:2 tells us that their minds are not automatically renewed.⁴⁰ This is true (properly understood), but the point of renunciation as Anderson teaches it is not so much mind renewal as breaking down Satan’s strongholds, something his critics would maintain was accomplished at the Cross (Col. 2:14-15; John 12:31; Heb. 2:14). Thus, he has not truly answered their concern.

This is one of many ironies in Anderson’s teaching. His doctrine that Christians no longer have a sin nature is an overstatement of their newness in Christ. But his emphasis that they cannot “break the links of bondage that have chained them to the past” without revisiting and renouncing every sin (at least of certain kinds) actually binds them to their old selves ongoingly. For who can exhaust all the sins of their past, let alone those of their ancestors? An additional irony is that the entire mission of Anderson’s ministry is to set Christians free, and yet, as we’ve seen, he instead binds them to a superstitious worldview where Satan is not only present on every front,⁴¹ but he must repeatedly be renounced on each and every one of those fronts or he will control them.

STEPPING BACK FURTHER INTO BONDAGE

After laying out his seven steps, Anderson suggests a series of prayers and affirmations that are intended to help his followers maintain their freedom in Christ, but that actually lead them a step further into superstition and fear. His belief that the curses and spells of occultism have real power that can harm Christians plays no small role in this. In his prayer for “Cleansing Home/Apartment,” Anderson instructs his adherents to pray: “We claim this home for our family as a place of spiritual safety and protection from all the attacks of the enemy. As children of God seated with Christ in the heavenly realm, we command every evil spirit, claiming ground in the structures and furnishings of this place based on the activities of previous occupants to leave and never to return. We renounce all curses and spells utilized against this place.”⁴²

In Anderson’s worldview, spirits are everywhere. If you have the misfortune of living in a home occupied by nonbelievers, watch out! It’s not just the worldly influence such nonbelievers might exert, but, as he makes clear in the above prayer and in his prayer for “Living in a Non-Christian Environment,”⁴³ spirits may have seized the opening provided by nonbelievers to attach themselves to the very spaces and objects of the home. You may be their victim if you don’t use prayers like those Anderson suggests to cleanse the home of their influence.

What about when you stay in a hotel where thousands of people with thousands of spiritual histories have slept before you? Anderson observes the following formulae:

When I rent a room in a hotel, it is under my stewardship. I have no idea what occurred in that room before I rent it, so I renounce any previous use of the room that would not please my heavenly Father….Next, I commit the room and all that is in it to the Lord and command Satan and all his evil workers to leave the room in the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, I ask for the Lord’s protection while I sleep.⁴⁴

If Anderson cannot even stay in a hotel room without taking such magical and paranoid precautions, how much more superstitious can we expect his less mature and less stable followers to be?

Even in his own home, Anderson is apparently not safe from frightening demonic attacks. One morning when he was getting ready to “expose the strategies of Satan” in a chapel service, Anderson stepped out of the shower to notice “several strange symbols traced on the fogged-up mirror.” Suspicious that this was a diabolical attempt to dissuade him from delivering his chapel message, he went down to eat breakfast alone. “Suddenly I felt a slight pain on my hand that made me flinch. I looked down to see what appeared to be two little bite-marks on my hand. ‘Is that your best shot?’ I said aloud to the powers of darkness attacking me. ‘Do you think symbols on the mirror and a little bite are going keep me from giving my message in chapel today? Get out of here.’ The nuisance left, and my message in chapel went off without a hitch.”⁴⁵ I think it would be fair to say that many of us have had strange experiences that for a moment seemed to be supernatural manifestations of evil. But in the cold light of day, how many of us would print them in a book discussing what Christians might expect to encounter in spiritual warfare?

Anderson also teaches without biblical basis that the medieval Catholic and pagan belief in spirits having sexual relations with humans (incubi and sucubi) is valid, and, as if it were a common occurrence, he includes it in step one on his check list of possible past sins to be renounced. Showing no concern for the power of suggestion, he encourages his followers to check “sexual spirits” on the list even if they only recall “vivid sexual dreams or fantasies” (who has not at some time had these?).⁴⁶ He instructs his counselors, “Let the Holy Spirit bring those thoughts to their minds, and as He does, let them note the thoughts on the page.”⁴⁷ By assuming that the Holy Spirit is supporting his program, he is more likely to accept the product of his counselees’ imaginations as the work of the Spirit.

Although Anderson says his teachings are an antidote to fear,⁴⁸ one of the most frequent complaints the Christian Research Institute and similar ministries have received about his ministry is that it instills fear in Christians where none existed before. Many of us have had to reassure Christians terrified of being demonized or molested by spirits while they sleep.

Even some of Anderson’s recommended prayers for protection from demonic attack suggest frightening possibilities. In his “Bedtime Prayer,” for instance, Anderson has his adherents reciting, “I commit myself to You for Your protection from every attempt of Satan or his emissaries to attack me during sleep.”⁴⁹

He assures his readers that Satanists meet from 12:00-3:00 a.m., and “part of their ritual is to summon and send demons. Three in the morning is prime time for demon activity, and if you have awakened at that time it may be that you have been targeted….You are only vulnerable when you are walking by sight instead of by faith or walking in the flesh instead of in the Spirit.”⁵⁰ Rather than focusing Christians’ attention on Christ and His finished work. Anderson directs them to make a subjective and therefore uncertain judgment as to the quality of their faith and spiritual walk. This only serves to leave them feeling vulnerable to these frightening attacks. Anderson even warns that Christians whose motives are impure for entering into spiritual service can end up demonized?⁵¹

Anderson solemnly advises parents that the creatures their children imagine in their rooms at night are real: “I have traced the origin of many adult problems to childhood fantasies, imaginary friends, games, the occult and abuses. It is not enough to warn our children about the stranger in the street. What about the one who may appear in their room? Our research indicates that half of our professing Christian teenagers have had some experience in their room that frightened them” (emphasis added).⁵² To the frustrated mother who checked under the bed and in the closet and found nothing, Anderson answers that something real was there nonetheless.⁵³ “Most of my students at seminary have had such an experience,” he affirms, “and by the time they complete my class on resolving spiritual conflicts, several tell about having such an experience that semester” (emphasis added).⁵⁴ Once again, the power he exerts through his own suggestions seems to elude Anderson’s notice.

As we’ve seen, much of the fear and superstition engen­dered by Anderson’s teachings is related to his central emphasis on renunciation. One additional manifestation of this is the subject of our final installment of this series (which will appear in the next Christian Research Journal). Because the counselee cannot become free in Christ until he or she has renounced every past instance of unforgiveness, involvement in occultism, sexual sin, and so forth, Anderson’s counseling approach invariably leads to a pursuit of lost or repressed memories.⁵⁵ This pursuit of repressed memories has in turn led Anderson down the rabbit hole into a world where things do indeed become “curiouser and curiouser.” It is a world teeming with satanic conspirators who infiltrate churches, ritually abuse children, breed other children for human sacrifice, breed still others to create a satanic “super race,” and — let us not forget — send demons to attack Christians at 3:00 a.m.

NOTES

1. Neil T. Anderson, Helping Others Find Freedom in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1995), 247.

2. Ibid., 122.

3. Ibid., 248.

4. Ibid., 143.

5. Dr. Neil Anderson, Released from Bondage (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993), 232.

6. Not to the exclusion of Bible study, of course.

7. For example, Anderson states: “It’s not ‘Neil’s method,’ It is simply God working through the truth of His Word to release people. Thousands of pastors and lay men and women around the world are using the Steps to Freedom to do just that.” (Released, 184.) If it’s not ‘Neil’s method.’ where in the Bible or in prior church history do we find the seven steps to freedom identified and laid out?

8. See, e.g., ibid., 10.

9. On the contrary, over the past three decades (as the director of a Christian counseling center and then as a church pastor and a researcher at Christian Research Institute), I have counseled hundreds of Christians experiencing spiritual conflicts without finding corroboration for Anderson’s more controversial methods and claims. Even if we accept that Anderson has accurately reported these stories, we must still ask to what extent his overtly or subtly conveyed expectations condition his counselees’ responses (see Part Four).

10. Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990), 172.

11. Helping, 115-16.

12. Bondage Breaker, 188.

13. Ibid., 150-51.

14. Ibid., 189.

15. Ibid., 100.

16. Released, 236.

17. For example: “Now that you are alive in Christ and forgiven, you never have to live a lie or defend yourself. Christ is your defense.” (Ibid., 237.)

18. Ibid., 49-50. See also Neil T. Anderson, Victory over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990), 204.

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

20. Released, 242.

21. Bondage Breaker, 196.

22. Ibid., 230.

23. Released, 246.

24. Ibid., 247.

25. lbid., 112.

26. Ibid., 127.

27. Ibid., 250.

28. “These spirits may take territorial rights and associate with certain geographical locations which have been used for satanic purposes.” (Bondage Breaker, 103.)

29. Released, 250-51.

30. Helping, 231.

31. Ibid., 229.

32. Bondage Breaker, 205-6.

33. In every passage cited by Anderson, the punishment is passed on only if the children perpetuate their parents’ sin. In Jeremiah 32 we find the clarification that God rewards “everyone according to his conduct and as his deeds deserve” (v. 19; emphases added). This truth is explicitly and exhaustively explained in Ezekiel ch. 18.

34. Bondage Breaker, 207.

35. Ibid., 207-8.

36. Neil Anderson, Spiritual Conflicts and Biblical Counseling (videotape on file at Christian Research Institute).

37. Bondage Breaker, 188.

38. Released, 70.

39. Helping, 140.

40. Ibid.

41. This is not to say that belief in Satan itself is superstitious. Superstition can be defined as irrationally attributing supernatural causes to events that have natural explanations, and this is what Anderson does through his exaggerated view of Satan’s activity (see Part Two).

42. Bondage Breaker, 211-12.

43. Ibid., 212.

44. Helping, 110.

45. Bondage Breaker, 85-86.

46. Ibid., 144-45.

47. Ibid., 145.

48. Dr. Neil Anderson, Walking in the Light (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), ch. 5.

49. Bondage Breaker, 211.

50. Ibid., 102.

51. Walking, 164.

52. Released, 69.

53. Helping, 49.

54. Neil T. Anderson and Steve Russo, The Seduction of Our Children (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1991), 27.

55. See, e.g., Helping, 98.

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.

A common refrain sung by those determined to demolish the biblical Jesus in the court of public opinion is that His death, burial, and resurrection are myths borrowed from ancient pagan mystery religions. Once reverberating primarily through the bastions of private academia, this refrain is now also commonly heard in public arenas. A classic case in point is the following conversation between ABC News’s Peter Jennings and Jesus Seminar fellow Marvin Meyer:

Peter Jennings: Some scholars think the resurrection stories were borrowed from eastern pagan cults popular throughout the Roman world at the time, called mystery religions.

Professor Marvin Meyer: The conviction was in the mysteries that there is death and resurrection, just as crops go into the ground and die and come back again for a new season in a wonderful kind of way. So also in human life we go through a kind of death and resurrection.

Peter Jennings: Now hold it. You’re saying that the mystery cults had an influence on the Jesus story because people who wrote the Jesus story took an earlier story and passed it on via Jesus?

Professor Marvin Meyer: I believe so. One of the greatest difficulties that early Christians had if they were going to cope with the reality of the crucifixion of Jesus is what do you do with that? I mean, how do you keep the movement going? How do you have some hope in the face of this kind of shameful and horrible death? And one of the things I believe that early Christians did is they took the model of the mystery religions; they took that story and retold that story as the story of Jesus.1

Within days of this television conversation, calls, letters and e-mails began arriving at the offices of the Christian Research Institute. Christians worldwide wanted to know how to respond to such prime time propaganda. Initially, we referred people to an article by Dr. Ronald Nash featured in the Christian Research Journal.2 As requests for information continued to flood into CRI’s offices, however, I realized the need for an easy-to-remember response. I’ve thus organized Nash’s scholarly material around the memorable acronym F-A-L-S-E.

“F” in the acronym FALSE represents the fallacy of false cause. As Nash aptly notes, “Arguments offered to ‘prove’ a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.”3 Far from being dependent on mystery religions, Christianity can be correctly traced back to the life of a real flesh and bone person named Jesus4 as well as to Old Testament Judaism. By way of illustration, the Lord’s Supper initiated by Christ has its historical roots firmly planted in the Jewish rite of Passover.

“A” will serve to remind you of alleged similarities. A prevailing myth widely circulated is that the similarities between Christianity and the mystery religions are striking. Purveyors of this mythology employ biblical language and then go to great lengths to concoct commonalities. Take, for example, the alleged similarities between Christianity and the cult of Isis. The god Osiris is supposedly murdered by his brother and buried in the Nile. The goddess Isis recovers the cadaver, only to lose it once again to her brother-in-law who cuts the body into fourteen pieces and scatters them around the world. After finding the parts, Isis “baptizes” each piece in the Nile River and Osiris is “resurrected.” Alleged similarities as well as the terminology used to communicate them are greatly exaggerated. Parallels between the “resurrection” of Osiris and the resurrection of Christ are an obvious stretch. Likewise, Nash notes that “the fate of Osiris’s coffin in the Nile is as relevant to baptism as the sinking of Atlantis.”5 Sadly for the mysteries, this is as good as it gets. As Nash elaborates in his book The Gospel And The Greeks,6 other parallels cited by liberal scholars are even more far-fetched.

“L” represents liberal revisionism. Suffice it to say that liberal scholars are frequently guilty of employing historical revisionism in an effort to parallel Christianity with the mystery religions. Take, for example, Mithraism, in which Mithra was deemed to be a powerful mediator between humanity and the forces of darkness. As Nash observes, “The flowering of Mithraism occurred after the close of the New Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything that appears in the New Testament. Moreover, no monuments for the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90–100, and even this dating requires us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions. Chronological difficulties, then, make the possibility of Mithraic influence on early Christianity extremely improbable.”7 Additionally, as Bruce Metzger explains, “It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction.”8

“S” will serve to remind us of syncretism. The mystery religions were syncretistic in that adherents not only worshipped various pagan deities but also frequently embraced aspects of competing mystery religions while continuing to worship within their own cultic constructs. Not so in Christianity. Converts to Christ singularly placed their faith in the One who said, “I am the way and the truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Says J. Gresham Machen, “A man could become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ….Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone.”9

“E” represents esotericism. The mystery religions reduced reality to a personal experience of enlightenment. Through secret ceremonies initiates experienced an esoteric transformation of consciousness that led them to believe that they were entering into a higher realm of reality. While followers of Christ were committed to essential Christian doctrines, devotees of the mysteries worked themselves into altered states of consciousness. They were committed to the notion that experience is a better teacher than words. In fact, the reason mystery religions are so named is that they directly involve secret esoteric practices and initiation rites. Far from being rooted in history and evidence, the mysteries reveled in hype and emotionalism.

Please remember that it is not enough to use the acronym F-A-L-S-E to explode the myth that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are pagan myths borrowed from mystery religions. Apologetics — the defense of the faith — has a dual purpose. On the one hand, it involves pre-evangelism. We should thus pray that God uses our well-reasoned answers as an opportunity to share the good news that Jesus can become more real to people like Jennings and the fellows of the Jesus Seminar than the very flesh upon their bones. On the other hand, apologetics involves postevangelism. During an age in which Jesus is being demeaned in both private academia and the public arena, knowing how to defend his historicity serves to strengthen our faith.

–Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1. Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus, ABC News, 26 June 2000.

2. Ronald Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994, 8–15, retrieved from www.equip.org, 3 August 2000.

3. Ibid., 14.

4. For a defense of the historicity of Jesus’ death and bodily resurrection, see Hank Hanegraaff, Resurrection (Dallas: Word Publishing, 2000).

5. Nash., 11.

6. Ronald H. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Richardson, TX: Probe Books, 1992).

7. Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” 12–13. Remember that the belief in the deity and bodily resurrection of Jesus can be traced through purely historical analysis to within just a few years of Jesus’ death in the early 30s A.D. (see Hanegraaff, 38–43).

8. Bruce M. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 11; as quoted in Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” 15.

9. J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 234–35; as quoted in Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” 14.

One of the reasons I love the game of golf is that it puts me in touch with people whose worldviews are radically different from mine. One such person is Matt (Matt is not his real name). This year, Matt and I teamed up as partners in a golf tournament. While driving to the tournament, we transitioned from talking about golf to talking about God.

Matt, a lawyer by profession, was convinced that humans are mere material beings. In his way of thinking, if we were to die during our drive, we would simply cease to exist. For Matt, the notion of a soul that exists beyond the grave was absolutely absurd.

Like so many others in our culture, he was firmly committed to the creed of the late scientist Carl Sagan — “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” In addition, he had embraced the mantra of a Madonna song — “I am a material girl living in a material world.”

From his perspective, human beings are merely material brains and bodies. As we rolled on down the road, I attempted to convince Matt that there are compelling reasons to believe human beings have an immaterial aspect to their being that transcends the material.

Argument One: Thoughts Go Beyond the Brain

I pointed out that from the perspective of logic, we can demonstrate that the mind is not identical to the brain. Indeed, the mind and brain have different properties: “The feeling of pain, the experience of sound, the awareness of color are all different from anything that is simply physical. If the world were only made of matter, these subjective aspects of consciousness would not exist. But they do exist! So there must be more to the world than matter.”² An obvious example concerns color. A moment’s reflection is enough to convince a person that the experience of color involves more than mere wavelengths of light.³

Argument Two: The Body Vanishes Every Seven Years

I went on to argue that from a legal perspective, if human beings were merely material, they could not be held accountable this year for a crime committed last year, simply because physical identity changes over time. Physically, we are not the same person today that we were yesterday. Every day, we lose multiplied millions of microscopic particles. In fact, every seven years, virtually every part of our material anatomy, apart from aspects of our neurological system, changes.⁴ Therefore, from a purely material perspective, “The self who did the crime in the past is not literally the same self who is present at the time of punishment.”⁵ Appealing to Matt’s legal background, I suggested that a criminal who attempted to use this line of reasoning as a defense would not get very far. Legally and intuitively, we recognize a sameness of soul that establishes personal identity over time.⁶

Argument Three: Free Will Exists

As we were nearing the golf course, I quickly moved on to an argument based on freedom. If we are merely material beings, then freedom of the will does not exist. Instead, we are fatalistically relegated to a world in which everything is determined by mechanistic material processes.⁷ Realizing at this point that Matt might have begun thinking about the golf tournament, I used a golf illustration to make sure I had his attention.

The distance a golf ball flies is fatalistically predetermined by such factors as clubhead speed, angle of impact, ball velocity, and spin rate. In concert with Newton’s laws of motion, the precise distance the ball will travel is fatalistically determined by the physical processes involved. Likewise, if I am merely material, my “choices” are nothing more than a function of such factors as genetic make-up and brain chemistry. Therefore, my decisions are not free; they’re fatalistically determined.

I pointed out that the implications of such a notion are profound. In a worldview that embraces fatalistic determinism, I cannot be held morally accountable for my actions, since reward and punishment make sense only if we have freedom of the will. In a solely material world, reason itself is reduced to the status of a conditioned reflex. Moreover, even the very concept of love is rendered meaningless. Rather than being an act of the will, love is relegated to a robotic procedure that is fatalistically determined by physical processes. If Madonna is merely a material girl living in a material world, then she really has no freedom of choice.

Three Compelling Reasons We Have a Soul

In short, I presented Matt with three compelling reasons to believe human beings have a soul that continues to exist apart from the body. First, logically and intuitively, we recognize nonphysical aspects of humanity, such as ego. Furthermore, even though our physical identity changes from year to year, we recognize a sameness of soul that legally establishes personal identity. Finally, freedom of the will presupposes that we are more than mere material robots.

Together, these three reasons give us warrant to conclude that human beings have an immaterial nature that transcends the material body. In the Christian worldview, this immaterial aspect of humanity is called the soul.⁸ Because the human soul is not dependent on material processes for its existence, it can survive the death of the physical body.⁹

However, Matt was not yet convinced of life beyond the grave. And so during the course of the next few hours, I presented additional arguments supporting the overwhelming evidence for a Creator¹⁰ and for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.¹¹

By the time I had finished telling Matt about the resurrection, we were pulling into his driveway. While we continued to talk, I told him how some 20 years ago someone had explained to me what I was now explaining to him. I described how after I had examined the evidence, the Creator of the cosmos had become the Lord and Savior of my soul, and today, He is more real to me than the very flesh on my bones.

While I would like to tell you that Matt yielded his life to Christ in the driveway that evening, I can’t. Although Matt has asked to hear more, he remains a skeptic. As I write, Matt has not yet yielded his life to the Creator of his soul — but then again, the whole story has not yet been told.

^NOTES

1 Adapted from chapter 10 of Hank Hanegraaff’s Resurrection (Nashville: Word, 2000). Available through CRI.

2 Gary R. Habermas and J.P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 52.

3 Habermas and Moreland explain: “Mental events are feelings of pain, episodes of thoughts, or sensory experiences. Physical events are happenings in the brain and central nervous system that can be described exhaustively using terms from chemistry and physics. However, physical events and their properties do not have the same features as do mental events and their properties… An experiment will help you see the difference. Picture a pink elephant in your mind. Now, close your eyes and look at the image. In your mind, you will see a pink property (a sense datum or sensory way of experiencing). There will be no pink elephant outside you, but there will be a pink image of one in your mind. However, there will be no pink entity in your brain; no neurophysiologist could open your brain and see a pink entity while you are having the sense image. The sensory event has a property — pink — that no brain event has. Therefore, they cannot be identical. The sense image is a mental entity, not a physical one” (Beyond Death, 49).

4 Ibid., 58.

5 Ibid., 59.

6 Habermas and Moreland write, “Physicalists [who hold that the mind is identical to the brain] and property dualists [who hold that the mind, while distinct from the brain, is a property or attribute of the brain and the mind depends on the brain for its existence] have no alternative but to hold that personal identity through change is not absolute” (Beyond Death, 58). In essence, they are relegated to the unenviable task of trying to rationalize what are called “person-stages”; the “self” is really a contiguous series through time of closely resembling but not identical “selves.” Continuity of self can be accounted for only by positing an immaterial self, i.e., a soul. (See ibid., 57-60).

7 See ibid., 60-62.

8 For a discussion of the nature of the soul, see ibid., chapter 3.

9 While biblically we continue to exist in a conscious state after the death of our physical bodies, we are not complete until we are reunited with our resurrected bodies at the second coming of Christ (see John 5:28-29; 2 Cor. 5:1-10; Phil. 1:22-24; 1 Thes. 4:16; Rev. 6:9). The sum substance of the self is a psyche/soma — a soul/body.

10 See Hank Hanegraaff, The FACE that Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution (Nashville: Word, 1998).

11 See Resurrection, Part 1.

Many Christian and Jewish groups accept a teaching today, first taught by Franz Rosenzweig earlier this century, that there are two separate but equal covenants or ways to God. The New Testament rejects this, asserting that the gospel of Jesus Christ is for all people. The apostle Paul summarized this in his letter to the Romans: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Rom. 1:16). The quintessential form of anti-Semitism is refusing to share the gospel with Jewish people.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans the apostle paints for us a graphic visual picture. Imagine for a moment seeing millions and millions of people, standing in a long line. They are of different ages, male and female, some very young and others very old.

As we look at them, we see that they are all carrying Bibles under their arms or in their hands. Many of these Bibles evidently are well read, marked and worn from usage. In fact, an incalculable number of these people have large portions of their Bibles memorized, some entire sections or books.

Imagine also that these people are very faithful in attending church, worshiping regularly and tithing, and are active not only in their churches but also in their communities. Many, if not most of these individuals, live exemplary lives. And then, imagine seeing all these people — in a line that goes on and on as far as the eye can see — walking into the eternal flames of hell with Bibles in their hands!

This image conveys an idea of what Paul was experiencing as he wrote to the church in Rome. In an extremely personal and moving section, he spoke of his fellow Israelites, the Jewish people, in these words: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel…Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (Rom. 9:2–4; 10:1).

QUESTIONS RELATING TO PAUL’S MESSAGE

Numerous questions exist today in the field of comparative religions and missiology. This is especially true when it comes to discussions concerning Christianity and Judaism.

Many Christian theologians today, as well as many different and disparate Christian denominations, question the need to share the gospel with Jewish people. In fact, many consider attempts at Jewish evangelization to be insensitive and judgmental. For example, in a publication of the Lutheran Council in the USA, distributed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Eric Gritsch states:

There really is no need for any Christian mission to the Jews. They are and remain the people of God, even if they do not accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah. Why this is so only God knows. Christians should concentrate their missionary activities on those who do not yet belong to the people of God, and they should court them with a holistic witness in word and deed rather than with polemical argument and cultural legislation. The long history of Christian anti-Semitism calls for repentance, not triumphalist claims of spiritual superiority.¹

The claim that the Jewish people do not need to know and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior, as their Messiah, is an extraordinary one that invites a critical response. Yet, before criticizing those who make such a claim, we should at least be conversant with what they are saying and why they are saying it. Thus, while the purpose of this article is to present the biblical basis for sharing the gospel with the Jewish people, we will begin with an overview of what this “two covenant” theology is, its historical roots, and the reasons why many Jewish and Christian groups accept this view today.

Franz Rosenzweig and the Origins of Two Covenant Theology

In virtually every historical work examining the factors that have influenced modern Jewish-Christian relations, the person of Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) is prominent. Rosenzweig’s tenets were like the proverbial boulder that began an avalanche. The boulder was an idea, a hypothesis, that has created an avalanche in the history of ideas, particularly in the history of religion. Just as avalanches begin slowly, picking up speed, energy, and mass — so too with Rosenzweig’s “two covenant” theory of atonement.

Franz Rosenzweig first put forth the two covenant theory, as it is commonly referred to, shortly after the First World War in a work entitled The Star of Redemption. His theology of the two covenants came about through a long series of discussions with a friend of his, a Hebrew Christian philosopher of religion, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.

At one point, Rosenzweig was on the verge of becoming a convert to Christianity. Raised in Cassel, Germany in a largely assimilated Jewish household, he decided to attend a Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) service in Berlin first, determining that “he would enter Christianity through Judaism. Like the earliest Christians, he would only enter as a Jew and not as a pagan.”²

Instead of becoming a Christian, Rosenzweig became fascinated with his religious roots. Concerning this, Nahum Glatzer writes: “What the day [Yom Kippur] conveyed to him was that essential as a mediator may be in the Christian experience, the Jew stands in no need of mediation. God is near to man and desires his undeviated devotion.”³

The two covenant theory of salvation, which Rosenzweig would subsequently develop, basically states that God has established two different but equally valid covenants, one with His people Israel and the other with the Gentiles. The Covenant in Moses and the Covenant in Jesus are complementary to each other. Glatzer quotes Rosenzweig on this as follows:

Christianity acknowledges the God of the Jews, not as God but as “the Father of Jesus Christ.” Christianity itself cleaves to the “Lord” because it knows that the Father can be reached only through him….We are all wholly agreed as to what Christ and his church mean to the world: no one can reach the Father save through him. No one can reach the Father! But the situation is quite different for one who does not have to reach the Father because he is already with him. And this is true of the people of Israel (though not of individual Jews).⁴

And so there are two ways of salvation, one for the Jewish people and another one for the Gentiles.

Glatzer continues, explaining Rosenzweig’s thought with the following quotation from him: “The synagogue, which is immortal but stands with broken staff and bound eyes, must renounce all this work in the world, and muster all her strength to preserve her life and keep herself untainted by life. And so she leaves the work in the world to the church and recognizes the church as the salvation for all heathens in all time.”⁵ Concerning this, Rabbi Jakob J. Petuchowski stated, “Rosenzweig conceded more than any Jew, while remaining a Jew, had conceded before him. He admitted the truth of John 14:6.” This is immediately qualified, though, by the assertion that “the Jew does not have to come to the Father. He has been with the Father ever since Sinai.”⁶

Jewish Writers on the Two Covenant Theory

Space will not allow for a thorough survey of Jewish writers on this. It is sufficient to say that this belief in two separate covenants is widely held by many Jewish people today. Arthur Gilbert states: “Judaism allows for religious pluralism and does not consider it scandalous….We do not believe that God’s plan for salvation requires your conversion to Judaism nor mine to Christianity. But it does require our cooperation, our concern for, our joint effort to repair the world.”⁷

Leon Klenicki, formerly the associate director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Department of Interfaith Affairs, expands on this in an essay discussing Jewish-Christian dialogue: “The dialogue involves a process of meeting and recognition between two faith communities, two experiences of God: Christianity and Judaism. It is an encounter of subjects, not faith, not objects of contempt, two equal testimonies to God. For each partner it means the recognition of the other as a constituent in God’s design, the acceptance of a different approach to the Eternal, a different though not conflicting spirituality.”⁸

Renowned Orthodox rabbi Pinchas Lapide summarizes this new view of co-equal and complementary faiths, living side by side together: “We Jews and Christians are joined in brotherhood at the deepest level….We are brothers in a manifold ‘elective affinity.’”⁹

Christians and the Two Covenant Theory

Just as with Jewish writers, there are numerous Christians who believe in a theology of two covenants. Such views usually come from certain mainline denominations, none of which have retained belief in the full inerrancy and authority of the Bible. For example, Carl Braaten writes: “Christianity is the Judaizing of the pagans. The task of Christianity is to preach the gospel among the Gentiles….The task of Judaism meanwhile is to remind Christianity of its original biblical roots.”¹⁰

Similarly, many Roman Catholic theologians have taken the pronouncements of Vatican II and Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio (1991) to their logical conclusion, viz., that religious dialogue with members of other religions is to replace actual missionary efforts: “Former Christian considerations of Judaism (as well as of other religions) encouraged proselytism. That is, Christians believed it not only legitimate but praiseworthy to exert economic, psychological, or spiritual pressure on non-Christians in order to gain new members for the Church. The dialogical position, however, is one in which the parties accept one another as mutually equal partners.”¹¹

This position, however, is also increasingly being found among Christians who accept and believe in the Bible as the Word of God. For example, George Sheridan, who at the time was the East Coast Regional Director for the Southern Baptist department of Interfaith Witness, asserted that God’s bond with the Jewish people was never superseded with the coming of Jesus: “The Jews of today, as ever, receive salvation through their having been chosen by God in covenant with Abraham, Moses, and the prophets….My position is that the Jews do not require evangelization.”¹²

A BIBLICAL ANALYSIS

At this point, it is essential to return to Scripture and see if there is any biblical foundation for a theology of two separate but equal covenants. I believe even a brief examination will show us that there is not. In doing this, we will look at Jesus’ example, the practice of the apostles, and the practice of Paul.

Before looking at these, however, perhaps the best place to begin our examination of two covenant theology is with Paul’s opening declaration in Romans 1:16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”

Many wonder why Paul would begin his message with an assertion that he was not ashamed of the gospel. Different answers have been given, the most cogent, in my opinion, being that proposed by former Concordia Seminary professor Martin H. Franzmann: “Why should Paul speak, even negatively, of being ashamed of the Gospel, which gives his life its content, purpose and direction? He is probably recalling Jesus’ words of warning, ‘Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when he comes in glory’ (Luke 9:26).”¹³ Concerning this, in his letter to young Timothy the apostle Paul writes: “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner” (2 Tim. 1:7–8).

But what did Paul mean when he stated that the gospel was the power of God “for the salvation of everyone who believes”? Perhaps an illustration will help us understand more fully. A number of years ago an evangelical attempt at piquing people’s curiosity, and thus enabling Christians to share the gospel message with non-Christians, was developed by putting bumper stickers on cars that said, “I Found It!” When people saw this, they were supposed to ask what it was the driver had “found.” In response to this, some Jewish groups countered with their own bumper sticker, which stated, “We Never Lost It!”

This is the crux of the problem. Who is Jesus, and how is one “saved”? I believe for many, if not most, Christians today the entire concept of salvation has dulled. It is almost as if we take salvation for granted. The urgency of our salvation and the unspeakable eternal consequences of being cut off from God are obscurred in our minds.

This was not so with Paul’s readers, as Franzmann makes clear: “The word ‘salvation’ is for us a worn coin; for Paul and his readers, fresh from their Old Testament, it still had a sharp image and a clear superscription. It meant radical deliverance out of a desperate situation. What Israel had experienced at the Red Sea, when all help was cut off before and behind and only a vertical miracle from on high could save, that was salvation.”¹⁴

The apostle tells us that this salvation message was “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Rom. 1:16). There have been two main understandings or interpretations of what Paul meant here by the term proton (English: first). The first understanding or interpretation is that Paul was merely referring to first in a chronological sense. Concerning the usage of first and whether this meant that the Jews have a “special preference in salvation,” Swedish theologian Anders Nygren writes, “Does this after all mean that the Jew has special preference in salvation? That cannot be what Paul means. The word may refer to Israel’s special history. In that case their priority is now abolished with the coming of Christ. ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek.’ All are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28)….Thus the priority of the Jew is abolished.”¹⁵

The great theologian Charles Hodge echoes this, saying that Paul’s usage of first in this verse “must have reference to time, ‘To the Jew in the first instance, and then to the Greek.’”¹⁶

The second understanding or interpretation of what Paul means here is that first has reference not only chronologically but also in the sense of a priority. C. E. B. Cranfield’s commentary on Romans explains this as a tension between the equality all Christians have in common, and yet a special calling or place for the Jew in God’s church: “The word te…is suggestive of the fundamental equality of Jew and Gentile in the face of the gospel (the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for believing Jew and believing Gentile alike), while the word proton indicates that within the framework of this basic equality there is a certain undeniable priority of the Jew. In view of chapters nine to eleven it is hardly admissible to explain this proton as referring merely to the historical fact that the gospel was preached to the Jews before it was preached to the Gentiles.”¹⁷ Of great import here, Cranfield asserts, is Romans 11:29: “For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”

Along with this verse, the theologians who believe that proton refers to a priority will usually cite two other passages, Romans 2:9 and Acts 13:46. In Romans 2:9, Paul was referring to the coming judgment, stating, “There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first [proton] for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” I do not know of any commentators who exegete first here in a temporal sense.

This exegesis is supported further when one looks at a number of passages, especially Acts 13:13–52. In this account, Paul and Barnabas entered the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, where Paul eloquently shared the gospel with the people gathered there (13:13ff.). When the Jewish people eventually rejected the gospel, Paul and Barnabas responded very forthrightly: “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles” (v. 46; here and in subsequent Scripture quotations, the emphases are added).

Christianity’s Core

As the entire New Testament demonstrates, Christianity is — at its very core — a missionary faith. The Christian’s command from the very beginning was to go and “make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). Indeed, this is seen in Jesus’ very last words to His disciples, as He departed into heaven: “And you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

After Pentecost this command was taken literally, as the early church turned Jerusalem upside-down. Concerning this, David Bosch writes, “Mass conversions of the Jews are again and again reported, particularly of Jews in Jerusalem…in Acts 2:41, three thousand Jews are converted; in 4:4 there are five thousand; in 5:14 ‘multitudes of both men and women’ are added; in 6:7 the number of the disciples in Jerusalem has ‘multiplied greatly’; in 21:20 Paul is informed about ‘many thousands’…of believing Jews.”¹⁸

Jesus and the Jewish People

In Jesus’ ministry we see numerous situations in which He came “to the Jew first.” At the very beginning of John’s Gospel account, we are told that Jesus “came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). He ministered to and among the Jewish people (e.g., Matt. 4:23–25; 9:35).

It was only in unusual circumstances that Jesus ministered to non-Jewish people (e.g., the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7 and the Roman centurion’s servant in Matthew 8). The primary principle was to go first to the people of Israel. Thus, when Jesus sent out the twelve apostles, He told them, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 10:5–6).

This command to go to the Jewish people is seen likewise in our Lord’s commands after His resurrection. As before, the apostles are to go out among the Jewish people with the message of salvation in Jesus the Messiah. But a new note is added; that is, they also are to spread this message beyond the confines of the Jewish people and take it to the Gentiles as well. Their command was, “beginning at Jerusalem” to take the message out to all people and to all nations, both to the Jew and to the Greek (i.e., the Gentiles; cf., Matt. 28:18–20; Luke 24:46–47; Acts 1:8).

The Apostles and the Jewish People

I believe we see in the practice of the apostles a paradigm of missions for the entire church. In the very first preaching of the gospel after Jesus’ departure, we find the apostle Peter boldly proclaiming the good news of salvation in the midst of a Jewish audience. Acts 2:5 tells us that there were “Jews from every nation” present. In fact, he addressed his message specifically to the Jewish people: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem…” and “Men of Israel, listen to this” (2:14, 22). Furthermore, he concluded his message with the bold and challenging words: “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (2:36). Apparently, according to our modern sensitivities, Peter was unaware that he was being offensive to some of the Jewish people by telling them that they needed to repent and receive Jesus as their Lord and Messiah.

This same pattern of preaching to the Jewish people is followed consistently throughout the Book of Acts (e.g., the apostles with Jewish people in the Temple in 3:11–26; the apostles before the “rulers, elders and teachers of the law” in 4:5ff., with a special emphasis on vv. 10–12 [cf., John 14:6]; the apostles before the full Sanhedrin in 5:27ff.; Stephen before the Sanhedrin in ch. 7). It is not until Acts 10 that we find any attempt to begin taking the gospel to anyone other than Jewish people, and this took several miraculous interventions from God before it occurred. In fact, immediately after Peter brought the gospel to Cornelius and his household, he was criticized for sharing the message of salvation with Gentiles (Acts 11:1–2)!

It was only very slowly and reluctantly that the early church began fulfilling Jesus’ command to bring the gospel to people other than Jews. Finally, after the great council of Jerusalem reported in Acts 15, Paul, Barnabas, Judas, and Silas were sent out with instructions for the Gentile believers (vv. 19–21).

Paul and the Jewish People

Ironically, perhaps the supreme New Testament example of an apostle bringing the news of Jesus Christ to Jewish people is from the “apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul (Rom. 11:13). We saw above the account of Paul and Barnabas entering into the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch and sharing the gospel with the Jewish people there (Acts 13). As we noted, the Jews rejected Jesus, not considering themselves “worthy of eternal life” (13:46).

Yet it remained the apostle’s normal methodology to bring the gospel to the Jewish people first, before continuing on with the Gentiles. Thus we find in Acts 14:1 that “at Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual to the Jewish synagogue.” Moreover, we are told that they “spent considerable time there” (v.3).

From the very beginning Paul did take the gospel to the Jewish people first (e.g., Acts 9:20–22, 26–29). This pattern continued throughout his lifetime of ministry.

This is evident throughout Paul’s writings. First, he emphasized that apart from knowing their Messiah, the Jewish people were cut off from God and from their covenant with Him. For example, in his second letter to the Corinthians, he writes:

We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. (2 Cor. 3:13–16)

Second, Paul continually asked that prayers be offered up for the Jewish people, that they might repent and be brought back into a relationship with God — that is, that they might receive Jesus as their Lord and God, as their long-awaited Messiah.

This is especially evident in Romans 9–11. In Romans 9:1–5, Paul eloquently wrote of how the Jewish people were elected by God in the past, and yet the adoption, the covenants, the Law, the temple worship, and the promises were all to no avail — for they rejected their own Messiah.

Apparently unaware of any “two covenant” theory, Paul again urged that prayers be made for them: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge” (Rom. 10:1–2).

He concluded that although the Jewish people are cut off for now, God has not totally rejected them. God still has plans for them, and they would yet receive Jesus (Rom. 11).

Much more could be said concerning this, but it is sufficient for our purposes to see that throughout the New Testament the Jewish people are always referred to as people who need to know and receive Jesus Christ. In this concern they are no different than any of the Gentiles.

Quintessential Anti-Semitism

As much as one might like to agree with those promulgating a theology of two covenants, it simply is not a biblical doctrine. Quite to the contrary, it goes against everything that we find in the New Testament relating to missions. In fact, this is the quintessential form of anti-Semitism, for in promoting this false doctrine the only way of salvation is closed to the Jewish person (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Nothing could be more dangerous, racist, or pernicious than this.

As we’ve seen, the apostle Paul boldly affirmed, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). We are not to be ashamed of sharing the good news of the gospel with anyone. In that this good news came through the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and in that “salvation is from the Jews” (John. 4:22), this message was “for the Jew first.”

It seems that this is almost completely forgotten today. The gospel of Jesus Christ was first and foremost to go to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles. Christians owe a great debt to the Jews, for our entire spiritual heritage is derived from them. Indeed, we have been grafted into the olive tree of Israel, not the reverse (Rom. 11:11ff.).

Two Unanswered Questions: A Hypothesis

I close with two unanswered questions concerning the two covenant theory, at least unanswered for those who believe in the authority of God’s Word. I place them in the form of a hypothesis.

If the apostles and early church were called by God to bring the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ to the people of Israel — to share the person and work of the Jewish Messiah with the Jews, then when was this call abrogated? And how do we know that it was abrogated; that is, by what authority was this call to preach and evangelize terminated?

As far as I know, these two questions remain unanswered by proponents of this theology, or at least unanswered from a biblical perspective. Stephen Neill eloquently sums up the task Christians face in reaching out to the Jewish people with the good news of Jesus Christ:

Franz Rosenzweig suggested that the church has need of the synagogue, if it is to be true to its vocation. The Christian must ask for liberty to suggest to the Jew that the synagogue has need of the church, if it is to find its own true fulfillment. The suggestion must be made with the utmost humility, with a full sense both of the wrongs for which the church has been responsible in the past, and of the admiration due to the amazing faithfulness with which the Jew has clung to the God who has chosen him. All that he dare ask is that the Jew will look again at Jesus Christ, without hate and without prejudice, and consider whether there may not be things in the picture that he has so far missed.¹⁹

Sanford Mills, a Hebrew believer, eloquently summarizes the other half of the problem we are facing today in attempting to reach Jewish people with the gospel. “The sad part of it is this, that many sincere Christians who do not believe that the Gospel is to the Jew first, do not believe that the Gospel is for the Jew at all!”²⁰

Joseph P. Gudel is a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and is currently a doctoral candidate at Concordia Theological Seminary.

NOTES

¹Eric W. Gritsch, “Luther and the Jews: Toward a Judgment of History,” in Luther and the Jews (n.p.: Lutheran Council in the USA, 1995), 9.²Arnold Betz, “Franz Rosenzweig: Essay and Exhibit”(AOL:www.library.vanderbilt.edu/divinity/rosenzw/rosenbib.html: 1997), 3.³Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 162.⁴Franz Rosenzweig, in Glatzer, 341.⁵Ibid., 342.⁶Jakob J. Petuchowski, “The Christian-Jewish Dialog: A Jewish View,” Lutheran World, October 1963, 383.⁷Arthur Gilbert, “The Mission of the Jewish People in History and in the Modern World,” Lutheran World, July 1964, 308.⁸Leon Klenicki, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in A Dictionary of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue, ed. Leon Klenicki and Geoffrey Wigoder (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 101-2.⁹Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983), 2.¹⁰Carl E. Braaten, “The Resurrection in Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in Lapide, 19.¹¹Celia Deutsch, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in Klenicki and Wigoder, 103.¹²George Sheridan, in Mitch Glasser, “Critique of the Two Covenant Theory,” Mishkan: A Theological Forum on Jewish Evangelism 11 (1989): 2, 45. Shortly after making this comment, Sheridan was removed from his position by Rev. Larry Lewis, the President of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board. Lewis explained Sheridan’s dismissal by saying, “We must believe in Jesus Christ and accept Him as our Lord and Savior. Someone who doesn’t hold that position shouldn’t be in an evangelistic position for the Home Mission Board” (Glasser, 68).¹³Martin H. Franzmann, Concordia Commentary: Romans (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1968), 32.¹⁴Ibid., 33.¹⁵Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, trans. Carl C. Rasmussen (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1949), 73.¹⁶Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1882), 43.¹⁷C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 91.¹⁸David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (New York: Orbis Books, 1991), 96.¹⁹Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 55.²⁰Sanford Mills, A Hebrew Christian Looks at Romans (New York: ABMJ Press, 1971), 37.

In light of the fact that both science and Scripture corroborate the view that abortion is the painful killing of an innocent human being, it is incumbent upon Christians to do everything in their power to halt the spread of this enormous evil. There are indeed many fronts on which our battle must be waged. Ultimately, however, lasting change only comes when the hearts of people are transformed. For when the heart is transformed, a person’s behavior is revolutionized as well. Because of the transcendent importance of this issue, I’ve developed the acronym A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N as a memorable tool to help believers annihilate abortion arguments.

Remember, however, the goal is not to win an argument but rather to use well-reasoned answers to the arguments of abortion advocates as springboards or opportunities to share a message of life and light.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- A = AD HOMINEM

Attacking people rather than arguing principles, ad hominem arguments are a trick designed to distract attention from the real issue — namely, that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being. Comedienne Whoopi Goldberg used this tactic when she suggested that abortion rights advocates would take pro-lifers more seriously if they were willing to adopt babies slated for abortion.¹³

What this ad hominem argument is really saying is, “If you won’t adopt my babies, don’t tell me I can’t kill them!” That, of course, makes as much sense as forbidding me from intervening when I see my neighbor physically abusing a child unless I am willing to adopt that child.

The “adoption argument” completely evades the basic morality or immorality of abortion. Instead, it is an attempt to attack character in order to avoid the case against abortion.

Another common ad hominem attack involves the media portrayal of pro-lifers as wild-eyed fanatics. For instance, the death of abortionist Dr. David Gunn has been widely-used to stereotype those who believe in the sanctity of life as “social terrorists.” Senator Edward M. Kennedy has gone so far as to say, “Attacks on clinics are not isolated incidents and health care providers are living in fear for their lives…No doctors should be forced to go to work in a bullet-proof vest.¹⁴ Senator Barbara Boxer exudes, “American women have seen their doctors’ offices transformed from safety zones into war zones.¹⁵

A final ad hominem attack worth mentioning is the fallacy that pro-lifers are inconsistent because they denounce abortion while supporting capital punishment. In fact, many pro-lifers do not support capital punishment. But for the many others that do, this argument still falls on many counts. The most obvious rebuttal is that abortion involves the killing of an innocent human being while capital punishment involves the killing of someone who has been found guilty of a capital crime.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- B = BIBLICAL PRETEXTS

Using biblical texts out of context as a pretext for abortion, pro-abortionists seek to retain some semblance of religiosity while at the same time espousing the radical planks of the pro-abortion movement. The most common argument in this area is that Scripture nowhere specifically condemns abortion or identifies it as the killing of an innocent human being. Such an argument, however, obscures the fact that the Bible depicts preborn children as living beings who are fully human (see, e.g., Ps. 139:13-16). Furthermore, Scripture clearly denounces the killing of an innocent human being as murder. Thus, abortion is a violation of the Sixth Commandment (Exod. 20:13).

Ironically, one of the most commonly used biblical pretexts for abortion is found only one chapter after God’s explicit command, “Thou shall not murder”: “If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined…But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” (Exod. 21:22-25; NASB). The argument goes something like this: If a man strikes a pregnant woman and causes her to have a spontaneous abortion, the penalty is merely a fine. However, if the woman dies, the penalty is death. Thus, no life was taken, according to Exodus 21, unless the woman died.

Thus interpreted, this passage is not being used but abused to support abortion. Let’s take a closer look at what the Hebrew text (as correctly translated by the NIV) really says: “If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury [the implication here is that no death is involved], the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life [in other words, if the woman or child should die, the appropriate punishment is death].”

Another biblical pretext, typically referred to as the “argument from breath,” involves Genesis 2:7: “The Lord God formed man from dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.”

The “argument from breath” is frequently presented in the following manner: God did not consider Adam to be a “living soul” until He had breathed the “breath of life” into him. Thus a child does not become a human being until he or she begins to breathe.

Dispensing with this argument is a simple matter. Adam was inanimate before God breathed the breath of life into him. Conversely, as science demonstrates, the conceptus or preborn child is alive from the very moment of conception. It is important to note that the breath of life exists in the preborn child from the moment of conception. In reality, it is the form, not the fact, of oxygen transfer (breath) that changes at birth.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- O = OPIUM

As opium dulls the senses chemically, so the term-twisting tactics of pro-abortionists deaden the perception of the human carnage caused by abortion. In 1844, Karl Marx wrote, “Religion … is the opium of the people.¹⁶ While history has demonstrated that true religion doesn’t deaden but rather brings life, it may well be said that the terminology of pro-abortionists is specifically designed to mentally dull the senses of an unquestioning public. For example, pro-abortion is called pro-choice; babies are demoted to the status of POCs or products of conception; killing unwanted children is repositioned as exercising freedom of choice; and committed pro-lifers are tagged as political extremists or even social terrorists.

The list of camouflaged terms employed by pro-abortionists is seemingly endless. Unless we learn to unmask the language of the pro-abortion lobby, millions will continue to become morally numb on the opium of clever code words.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- R = RAPE AND INCEST

An emotional appeal designed to avoid the serious consideration of the pro-life platform, rape and incest are the hard-case “what-ifs” pro-abortionists raise in almost every public forum: “How can you deny a hurting young girl safe medical care and freedom from the terror of rape or incest by forcing her to maintain a pregnancy resulting from the cruel and criminal invasion of her body?” The emotion of this argument often deflects serious examination of its merits and is commonly used as a pretext for abortion on demand.

It is important to note that the incidence of pregnancy as a result of rape is extremely small (one study put it at 0.6 percent).¹⁷ As philosopher Francis Beckwith astutely points out, “To argue for abortion on demand from the hard cases of rape and incest is like trying to argue for the elimination of traffic laws from the fact that one might have to violate some of them in rare instances, such as when one’s spouse or child needs to be rushed to the hospital.”¹⁸ If we had legislation restricting abortion for all reasons other than rape or incest, we would save the vast majority of the 1.8 million preborn babies who die annually in America through abortion.

Furthermore, one does not obviate the real pain of rape or incest by compounding it with the murder of an innocent preborn child; two wrongs obviously do not make a right. The very thing that makes rape evil also makes abortion evil. In both cases, an innocent human being is brutally dehumanized. The real question that must be answered is whether or not preborn children are indeed fully human. As has been already documented, the answer is a resounding Yes.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- T = TOLERATION

Serving as the “great commandment” of the pro-abortion movement, the argument from toleration is perhaps the most common argument pro-abortionists level against their opponents. For example: “We’re not making you have an abortion, so why can’t you be tolerant of those who choose to?” Translated: “Don’t impose your antiquated morals on me!” At first blush this argument may seem reasonable, but on closer examination its inherent weakness becomes readily apparent. Imagine applying this line of reasoning to the issue of rape by saying, “Don’t like rape? Don’t rape anyone. Just don’t impose your morality on me!”

This false standard of tolerance is frequently supported by an appeal to religious pluralism. In this context, pro-abortionists argue that government should not take one theory of life and impose it on others. The obvious problem with this line of argumentation is that not only is the pro-abortion position forced on Christians, but they are required to fund it as well. Incredibly, pro-abortionists fail to perceive their violation of this ridiculous standard: they’re intolerant of those who think tolerance is less important than preserving innocent human lives!

Yet every society has the obligation to universally impose morals on its citizens. Toleration works in the world of expressing opinions, not in a crowded movie theater when someone chooses to yell “Fire!” We may be tolerant of one’s religious views, but not if they include enslaving grandmothers or cannibalizing teenagers.

Separation between church and state does not extend to divorcing all moral values from the state. If this were the case, we would need to eliminate all legislation that has anything in common with a religious point of view — including the very idea of social law itself.

Remember, tolerance when it comes to personal relationships is a virtue, but tolerance when it comes to truth is a travesty.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- I = INEQUALITY

Inequality between the sexes is one of the most bizarre arguments put forth by the pro-abortion movement. “Women who are forced to be pregnant,” it is said, “can’t compete in employment with men and so cannot be truly equal unless they have an escape from unwanted pregnancy.” Translated, this is like saying, “Women can’t be equal to men without reconstructive surgery”! How much more sexist can an argument become?

Imagine, however, applying this standard to children outside the womb. Following this “logic” would mean that women should be permitted to abandon their children whenever they pose a threat to the mother’s opportunities for advancement.

Another form of the “inequality argument” is graphically portrayed through the image of a rusty coat hanger. Prior to Roe v. Wade, pro-abortionists claimed that because of financial inequality, women who could not afford to fly to another country to get an abortion were condemned to performing abortions on themselves with rusty coat hangers. To add credibility to this assertion, statistics ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 deaths per year due to illegal abortions continue to be widely circulated.¹⁹

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former leader of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), had this to say about these preposterous statistics: “I confess I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too . . . But in the ‘morality’ of the revolution, it was a useful figure” (emphasis added).²⁰

According to the U. S. Bureau of Vital Statistics, the true figure of the women who died from illegal abortions in 1972 — the year prior to Roe v. Wade — is 39. It is also questionable whether any one of these 39 women died as a result of using a coat hanger. As unpleasant as it may be, consider for a moment the dexterity needed to dislodge a conceptus from a uterine wall using a crude tool like a coat hanger. The truth of the matter is that the pro-abortion argument from inequality is not only illogical, but deliberately deceptive as well.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- O = OPERATION RESCUE

The no. 1 straw-man argument of the pro-abortion lobby, Operation Rescue has been unfairly condemned for using the same lines of argumentation and social protest popularized by the civil rights movement — a movement pro-abortion advocates usually extol. Furthermore, Operation Rescue has been grossly misrepresented, presumably to dismiss all pro-life activities as “extremist.” The truth, however, is that just as abolitionists harbored escaped slaves in defiance of the laws before the Civil War, compassionate Europeans hid Jews from the legally sanctioned extermination of the Nazis, and civil rights marchers violated segregation laws, so Operation Rescue members believe their nonviolent, peaceful interventions to protect preborn children are obeying God rather than man (see Acts 4:19). Nonetheless, it needs to be recognized that many of the mainstream pro-life groups do not approve of using civil disobedience and do not identify with Operation Rescue. Thus pro-abortionists cannot fairly cite Operation Rescue as a reason for rejecting the entire pro-life movement.

While it might be argued that the tactics of Operation Rescue are not the most effective means of stemming the tide of abortion, it is patently false to caricature members of Operation Rescue as social terrorists or worse. Any unbiased evaluation of the principles and procedures employed by the leadership of this organization must conclude that they have consistently advocated nonviolent civil disobedience. It is therefore inexcusable when pro-abortionists attempt to tie Operation Rescue and pro-lifers generally to the few tragic instances in which pro-life extremists have resorted to violence and murder.

On a personal note, I am grateful to God for the documented evidence of lives that have been saved through the self-sacrifice of dedicated men, women, and children involved in this movement.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- N = NONPERSONHOOD

The emerging embryo may not have a fully developed personality, but it does have complete personhood. Nonpersonhood is perhaps the trickiest of the contemporary pro-abortion arguments. Pro-abortionists once argued that the preborn baby was not fully human. Now, however, advances in science have forced most people to concede that the “product of conception” is truly human. As a result, a new version of this argument goes something like this: “The preborn child may be a human life, but it does not possess personhood.”

Dr. Francis Beckwith exploded the latest version of this myth when he wrote, “From a strictly scientific point of view, there is no doubt that the development of an individual human life begins at conception. Consequently, it is vital that the reader understand that she did not come from a zygote, she once was a zygote; she did not come from an embryo, she once was an embryo; she did not come from a fetus, she once was a fetus; she did not come from an adolescent, she once was an adolescent.”²¹

The abortion epidemic ravaging America today is the tragic consequence of a decadent society that no longer values the individual human worth of each member; that worships the idol of “Selfism”; and that replaces the objective Word of God with subjective preferences and social morés.

One-third of the children conceived in America this year will be savagely slaughtered before they are born. Yet this horrifying holocaust can be halted if those who value human life, worship the true God, and obey His Word will become informed, committed, and involved.

NOTES

¹Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” reprinted in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, 5 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1982), 5:293.²Quoted in Policy Review, Spring 1985, 15. This, along with the following four quotes, can be found in Francis J. Beckwith, Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 174.³Debate with Francis J. Beckwith on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, December 1989. ⁴Quoted in Robert Marshall and Charles Donovan, Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991), 182.⁵Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (New York: Brentano’s, 1920), 63.⁶AMA Prism, May 1993, 2.⁷See James C. Dobson, Focus on the Family newsletter, July 1993.⁸Ibid.⁹Ibid., 2.¹⁰The Human Life Bill , S. 158, Report Together with Additional and Minority Views to the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, made by its Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, 97th Congress, 1st Session (1981), 11; quoted in Beckwith, 43.¹¹The Human Life Bill, Hearings on S. 158 before the Subcommittee on Separation of Powers of the Senate Judiciary Committee, 97th Congress, 1st Session (1981), as quoted in Norman L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 149; cited in Beckwith, 42.¹²The Human Life Bill, S. 158, Report, 9; quoted in Beckwith, 42.¹³See Beckwith, 88.¹⁴Quoted in Michael Ross, “Senate Bans Use of Force against Abortion Clinics,” Los Angeles Times, 17 November 1993, A1.¹⁵Ibid., A1, A22.¹⁶From Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843-44).¹⁷Charles R. Hayman, M.D., and Charlene Lanza, “Sexual Assault in Women and Girls,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 109 (1971): 480-86; cited in Beckwith, 241 n. 69.¹⁸Beckwith, 69.¹⁹Bernard Nathanson, M.D., Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 193; quoted in Beckwith, 55.²⁰Ibid.²¹Beckwith, 43.

Those who defend the gradualist thesis, such as Daniel Callahan and Robert Wennberg,²⁹ argue that the unborn entity increases in value as it develops physically. Unlike the theories critiqued above, in this view there is no one decisive moment at which the unborn entity moves from nonperson to person. For example, the one-celled zygote has less value than the three-month fetus while the three-month fetus has a lesser right-to-life than the eight-month fetus. There have been a number of critiques of this position which space does not permit me to articulate here.³⁰ However, our critique of the major decisive-moment theories in Parts Three and Four of this series is sufficient to refute gradualism. That is to say, since none of the decisive moments we have already gone over can be shown to eradicate the full humanness of the unborn entity at any stage of her development, it follows that there are no philosophical, scientific, or moral grounds by which to say that the unborn gradually becomes fully human. For she would still need to achieve full humanness at some decisive moment. That is, someone who is fully human cannot gradually become more fully human. Certainly it is true that the unborn human physically develops gradually, as is true of humans at later stages (e.g., infancy, childhood, adolescence). But it does not follow from this fact that the unborn human is any less human than the infant, the child, or the adolescent. They are nonetheless fully human although they are gradually developing.

Anti-Abortion Arguments- COMMON QUESTIONS

In my critique of the decisive moment theories, I dealt with a number of objections to the pro-life position. However, there are other common objections which should be answered. In this final section, I will briefly respond to five common questions asked about the pro-life position. 1. Why don’t sperm and ova have a right to life since they are also genetically human? Sperm and ova do not have a right to life because they are not individual genetic human beings, but are merely parts of individual genetic human beings. They are only genetically human insofar as they share the genetic codes of their owners, but this is also true of their owners’ other parts (e.g., hands, feet, kidneys, etc.). Sperm and ova cease to exist at conception when the zygote, an individual genetic human being, comes into existence. 2. Doesn’t this view “absolutize” biological human life? Not at all. Although the pro-life advocate believes that biological human life is important, he or she certainly does not believe that it is absolute. For biological human life without the natural inherent capacity to function as a person is probably not fully human. And it is questionable whether the taking of such a life or the permitting of such a life to die can be classified as homicide. For example, I do not think it is homicide to pull the plug on a respirator that is biologically sustaining a brain-dead patient. Such a patient’s natural capacity for personal acts is simply not present. Of course, other questions surrounding the problem of the withdrawal of certain forms of health care are much more complex and fall outside the scope of this series.³¹ In any event, the pro-life advocate does not absolutize biological human life and is willing to apply his principles critically and to think reflectively in morally challenging situations. 3. Aren’t you absolutizing the unborn’s right to life? No, for there could be times at which abortion is justified. The pro-lifer is fully cognizant of the fact that we live in a world in which moral conflicts can occur. Take, for example, the case in which it is highly likely that a woman’s pregnancy will result in her death, as with a tubal pregnancy. Because it is a greater good that one human should live rather than two die, the pro-lifer believes that in this case abortion is justified, since otherwise both unborn and mother would die. However, as I argued elsewhere in this series, abortion is not justified by appeals to reasons such as financial burden or the child’s potential handicap, because if the unborn entity is fully human, one must respect her life as one respects the lives of those who are already born. 4. Wouldn’t your position mean that some forms of artificial birth control result in homicide? Yes. For example, forms of birth control that result in the death of the conceptus, such as the IUD and the “morning-after” pill (RU-486), would logically entail homicide if the pro-life position is correct. However, not every form of birth control results in the death of the conceptus. For example, the condom, diaphragm, some forms of the Pill, spermicides, and sterilization would not logically entail homicide if the pro-life position is correct, for they merely prevent conception. This is why the pro-life advocate makes a distinction between contraception and birth control. Contraception literally means “to prevent conception.” Therefore, all contraception is a form of birth control, since it prevents birth. But not all forms of birth control are contraceptive, since some forms — such as the ones cited above — prevent birth by killing the conceptus after conception. Hence, the pro-life advocate as such finds no problem with contraception as a form of family planning. 5. Isn’t it true that some zygotes do not have forty-six chromosomes? Yes. Although the normal number of chromosomes is 46, some people are born with less (e.g., people with Turner’s syndrome have 45) and some people are born with more (e.g., people with Down’s syndrome have 47). But don’t forget that my case for the unborn’s humanness does not rest necessarily on the number of chromosomes an individual may have, but on the fact that the entity in question has a human genetic structure. Consequently, a human genetic structure can still subsist in an abnormal number of chromosomes (genes are contained in the chromosomes within the nuclei of a person’s cells). That is to say, the Down’s or Turner’s syndrome child with human genes and an abnormal number of chromosomes is no more nonhuman than a child with an abnormal number of more obvious parts. For example, a person born with six fingers is human, as is a person born with one arm or one leg.

Anti-Abortion Arguments- SUMMING IT UP

In this four-part series I critiqued four basic types of arguments that have been put forth in defense of both liberal and moderate positions on abortion rights: (1) arguments from pity (Parts One and Two); (2) arguments from tolerance (Part Two); (3) ad hominem arguments (Part Two); and (4) arguments from decisive moments (Parts Three and Four). In the process of critiquing these arguments I gave a defense of the pro-life position that full humanness begins at conception (Parts Three and Four), which included a detailed presentation of fetal development (Part Three). Despite the number of arguments covered in this series, some readers will be disappointed that I did not deal with some theological arguments³² or lesser known philosophical arguments.³³ But since even a four-part series has its limitations and since Justice Harry Blackmun (who wrote the majority decision in Roe v. Wade [1973]) has argued that the morality of abortion is completely contingent on the full humanness of the unborn,³⁴ what has been covered in this series is more than sufficient. For this series has clearly established the following conclusions: (1) the popular arguments for abortion rights either beg the question as to the full humanness of the unborn or ignore the question altogether; and (2) both sound philosophical and scientific reasoning clearly establish the full humanness of the unborn from the moment of conception.

NOTES

¹ Baruch Brody, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophical View (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1975). ² Ibid., 102. ³ Andrew Varga, The Main Issues in Bioethics, 2d ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 61-62. ⁴ Ibid., 62. ⁵ Brody, 113-14. ⁶ A. Chadwick Ray, “Humanity, Personhood, and Abortion,” International Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1985):238. ⁷ Ibid. ⁸ Ibid. ⁹ Varga, 62-63. ¹⁰ Ibid., 63. ¹¹ Jane English, “Abortion and the Concept of a Person,” in Biomedical Ethics, ed. Thomas A. Mappes and Jane S. Zembatty (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 430. ¹² Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) in United States Law Week 57 (July 1989):5040. ¹³ For a defense of this view, see Richard Werner, “Abortion: The Ontological and Moral Status of the Unborn,” Social Policy and Practice 3 (1974):201-22. ¹⁴ See Joel Feinberg, “Grounds For Coercion,” in Ethical Theory and Social Issues, ed. David Theo Goldberg (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1989), 307-15. ¹⁵ Ray, 240. ¹⁶ Peter Kreeft, “Human Personhood Begins at Conception,” in Journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine 4 (Winter 1990):11. ¹⁷ Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). ¹⁸ Mary Anne warren, “On the Moral and Legal status of Abortion,” in Biomedical Ethics, 417-23. ¹⁹ James Rachels, The End of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). For a critical analysis of this book, see J. P. Moreland’s review in The Thomist 53 (Oct. 1989):714-22. ²⁰ Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, “Reproducive Choice: Basic to Justice for Women,” Christian Scholar’s Review 17 (March 1988):286-93. ²¹ See Tooley. ²² Mollenkott, 291. ²³ Tooley, 167. In rebuttal, see David Clark, “An Evaluation of the Quality of Life Argument for Infanticide,” Simon Greenleaf Law Review 5 (1985-86):104-8; and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., How Brave a New World? Dilemmas in Bioethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1981), 157-59. ²⁴ English, 429. ²⁵ Ibid., 430. ²⁶ Some philosophers, such as Tooley (Abortion & Infanticide), “bite the bullet” and say that infanticide is not a form of murder since the newborn is not a person. ²⁷ John Jefferson Davis, Abortion and the Christian (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1984), 57. ²⁸ Ray, 240-41. ²⁹ Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality (New York: Macmillan, 1970); and Robert Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy (Grand Rapids, MI: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985). ³⁰ Philip Devine, The Ethics of Homicide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979); Robert E. Joyce, “Personhood and the Conception Event,” The New Scholasticism 52 (Winter 1978):104-9; J. P. Moreland and Norman L. Geisler, The Life and Death Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time (Westport, CT: Praeger Books, 1990), 31-34. ³¹ See Moreland and Geisler, The Life and Death Debate; and Francis J. Beckwith and Norman L. Geisler, Matters of Life and Death: Calm Answers to Tough Questions about Abortion and Euthanasia (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), part 2. ³² See my “A Critical Appraisal of the Theological Arguments for Abortion Rights,” Bibliotheca Sacra (July/September 1991). ³³ Judith Jarvis Thomson, for example, argues that abortion is morally justified even if the unborn are fully human. I critique this argument in “Personal Bodily Rights, Abortion, and Unplugging the Violinist: A Critical Analysis,” International Philosophical Quarterly (March 1992) (forthcoming). ³⁴ Justice Harry Blackmun, in “The 1973 Supreme Court Decisions on State Abortion Laws: Excerpts from Opinion in Roe v. Wade,” in The Problem of Abortion, 2d ed., ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), 195.