I have recently finished reading Richard Stearns best selling recent book, The Hole in Our Gospel. In case you are not familiar with Stearns, he is President of World Vision, an evangelical relief agency founded about sixty years ago.  During the past six decades it has grown into one of the largest relief agencies in the world. It has programs that sponsor children in poverty stricken countries, is instrumental in bringing clean water to the underdeveloped areas of the world where it never has been safe to drink the water, sponsors micro-loan funding to build sustainable economic growth among the poorest of the poor. World Vision has an impressive record and has proved itself an organization of impeccable financial accountability, and spends a modest 16.3% of worldwide revenues on administrative overhead and fundraising (as opposed to other well know organizations which spend up to 80% of income on fundraising and overhead!)

 Stearns resume is more than impressive in the corporate arena. He recounts his move from CEO of Lennox to President of World Vision in and intensely personal fashion relating the struggles that finally impelled him to leave the corporate world and refocus his life in ministry. His experience overseas observing particularly in Africa the desperate abject poverty that characterizes much of the continent fueled his passion compassion and vision.  It is out of his own personal transformation that he writes The Hole in Our Gospel.

The book itself is moving and having a significant impact. It has been followed by study books and an entire curriculum for churches to employ. Yet it has also significant criticism from some quarters as simply an endorsement of the social gospel, and as undermining the key Reformation articulation of the gospel as being grounded in the Pauline concept of justification by faith.  I return to these criticisms later, but first need to lay some groundwork.

Background

Before the dawn of the twentieth century the mission activity both domestic and foreign was holistic;holistic in the sense that the missionaries attended to both physical and spiritual needs of those to whom they ministered.  Western missionaries entered cultures and ministered to the physical needs of the people, often chronic medical needs, taught good agricultural practices, founded schools ant taught literacy, as well as doing Bible translation, church planting and evangelism.  Even at home in the US churches were active in both medicine and education, founding many hospitals that to this day retain the names of their denominational beginnings. The same is true in the field of education.

 But, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century the church’s vision became more “spiritually” focused on individual conversion “my personal relationship to the Lord.” The vision of Christ as the Lord of all of Creation and all of life was radically truncated.  The proclamation “Christ is Lord” was reduced to the question “Will you make Christ your Lord?” This new focus had profound effects on the influence of the church in the broader culture.  In short, across much of American Protestantism Christ was relegated to the realm of the “spiritual.” In a betrayal of the Reformation heritage the world began to be  viewed as secular and not a place in which Christians who were serious about their faith should be involved. The position of conservative Christians in broader American society shifted radically in the fifty year period from 1850 to 1900.  Conservative Christians  had gone from being a dominant force in American society to being a marginalized minority. The kingdom was at the turn of the 20^th century strictly regarded as future and any involvement in trying to improve things here and now was regarded as “polishing brass on a sinking ship,” since this world would be overturned in judgment at the return of Christ.

 During the latter part of the nineteenth century the US underwent a profound demographic shift.  It changed from a predominantly agrarian society to an urban society.  This had profound implications for the Church and the way that the gospel was conceived and communicated. In the agrarian culture with the accompanying revivalism Christianity  the gospel was conceived simply, individualistically.  If one believed in Christ and obeyed the teachings of Scripture, an individual could be a good consistent Christian. 

Walter Rauschenbusch, who had grown up in a conservative pietistic Baptist home and converted to Christ as a teenager, attended Rochester Theological Seminary and took a pastorate in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City, ministering among German speaking immigrants.  There he came face to face with rampant poverty, injustice and oppression in the social structures which the individualistic gospel (with which he had been raised) was powerless to address.  This experience led him to rethink the implications of the gospel and articulate “a theology for the social gospel” in a work by that name. His premise was:

the social gospel is the old message of salvation, but enlarged and intensified. The individualistic gospel has taught us to see the sinfulness of every human heart and has inspired us with faith in the willingness and power of God to save every soul that comes to him. But it has not given us an adequate understanding of the sinfulness of the social order and its share in the sins of all individuals within it. It has not evoked faith in the will and power of God to redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion. Both our sense of sin and our faith in salvation have fallen short of the realities under its teaching. The social gospel seeks to bring men under repentance for their collective sins and to create a more sensitive and more modern conscience. It calls for the faith of the old prophets who believed in the salvation of nations.[1]

While Rauschenbusch was relatively conservative in his theological outlook, those who took up his mantle saw the message of the gospel and the task of the church solely as working to end human suffering and establish social justice.

 As the Social Gospel took root it was wedded to the theological liberalism coming out of Germany which denied virtually all of the historic theological/doctrinal tenets of historic Christianity. During the first two decades of the twentieth century the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy consumed the attention of American Protestantism. Following in the footsteps of German liberal theologian Albrecht Ritschl modernists jettisoned the historic Christian understanding of the trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. The emphasis was the establishment of a moral-ethical kingdom following the example of the (only human) man Jesus who lived in perfect consciousness of God’s presence with him.

 The conservative Christians reacted viscerally to the growth of liberal Christianity and its takeover of the old main-line denominations, particularly the Northern Presbyterians (PCUSA), Methodists, and Northern Baptists (American Baptist Convention).  As a reaction to the advancing liberal influence the conservatives adopted a separationist mentality.  “If the Liberals are doing anything, we will have nothing to do with it.”  The net result was a rending of a holistic understanding of the gospel.  Northern Conservatives, who during the 19^th  century earlier had been involved in ministering to both material and spiritual needs (e.g. the Salvation Army) and had universally opposed slavery, largely withdrew from the material ministries because these ministries were associated with liberalism. 

 Theological liberalism found a natural ally in political liberalism and together they sunk their roots deep into the social consciousness of mainstream American culture.

The Situation At Hand Today

On the one hand, the church in America (both liberal and conservative) has largely abdicated its God-given responsibility to the state with its welfare system. While compassionate in its vision the law of unintended consequences has kicked in and created a permanent underclass that suffers from “learned helplessness.” While most churches do have a “benevolent fund” these funds deal with immediate acute needs. It by and large does not deal with helping the poor get out of their chronic poverty.

Underneath this phenomenon is an understanding of the gospel in Pauline terms of “justification by faith alone.” While justification by faith is certainly a major Pauline theme, even by Pauline standards it is not the gospel. According to Paul the Gospel has to do with the Incarnation, Death and resurrection of Jesus:

. . .the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved. . . For I passed on to you as of first importance  what I also received – that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised  on the third day according to the scriptures, . . .Whether then it was I or they, this is the way we preach and this is the way you believed. (1 Cor. 15:1-11 NET Bible)

None of the other NT writers speak of justification by faith alone, nor does Jesus himself in any of the Gospels.  Jesus himself speaks of the “Gospel of the Kingdom” and he identifies love and compassionate deeds as that which characterizes its members.

Declaration not Invitation

 On the whole, Stearns is right on a key point.  We have in our preaching and understanding turned the gospel into a transaction.  We for example may pray the prayer at the end of the four spiritual laws, with hardly any understanding of what we are saying, but by repeating the prayer, we are assured that our fire insurance is paid up (oops! I mean we are saved eternally).  This process smacks of pagan magic whereby we manipulate God by repeating the proper incantation.

At its base the Gospel is a Declaration not an Invitation!  It is declaration of reality.  It is something that is true, it is not something we make true by our response. It is a declaration of a new cosmic reality that has been instituted by the love and the humility of the Triune God who so values his creation and everything in it that he became incarnate in the person of Jesus the Messiah so to reconcile the entire cosmos to himself. He has re-established relationship with humanity according to Paul. “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them.. . .” (2 Cor 5:19)

 As D.A. Carson has said:

It was understood better in the past than it is today. It is this: one must distinguish between, on  the one hand, the gospel as what God has done and what is the message to be announced and, on the other, what is demanded by God or effected by the gospel in assorted human responses. If the gospel is the (good) news about what God has done in Christ Jesus, there is ample place for including under “the gospel” the ways in which the kingdom has dawned and is coming, for tying this kingdom to Jesus’ death and resurrection, for demonstrating that the purpose of what God has done is to reconcile sinners to himself and finally to bring under one head a renovated and transformed new heaven and new earth, for talking about God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, consequent upon Christ’s resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high, and above all for focusing attention on what Paul (and others—though the language I’m using here reflects Paul) sees as the matter “of first importance”: Christ crucified. All of this is what God has done; it is what we proclaim; it is the news, the great news, the good news.

 By contrast, the first two greatest commands—to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves—do not constitute the gospel, or any part of it. We may well argue that when the gospel is faithfully declared and rightly received, it will result in human beings more closely aligned to these two commands. But they are not the gospel. Similarly, the gospel is not receiving Christ or believing in him, or being converted, or joining a church; it is not the practice of discipleship. Once again, the gospel faithfully declared and rightly received will result in people receiving Christ, believing in Christ, being converted, and joining a local church; but such steps are not the gospel. The Bible can exhort those who trust the living God to be concerned with issues of social justice (Isa 2; Amos); it can tell new covenant believers to do good to all human beings, especially to those of the household of faith (Gal 6); it exhorts us to remember the poor and to ask, not “Who is my neighbor?” but “Whom am I serving as neighbor?” We may even argue that some such list of moral commitments is a necessary consequence of the gospel. But it is not the gospel.[2]

 What has all this to do with A Hole in Our Gospel? A lot really.  While many are heartily embracing Sterns’ message, many are reading Sterns and seeing him compromising the gospel of justification by faith and accommodating theological and political leftism a la Jim Wallis and Sojouners. 

To come back to Stearns, I believe he has correctly identified what is a pressing issue that we as 21^st century American conservative Christians must address head on.  On the other hand I find the biblical and theological justification for dealing with the issue to be naive and simplistic. Since he is a layman, without formal biblical and theological training I am willing to grant him a bit of slack here.  Because of this I resist the temptation to take him to task for his many misuses of scripture and unjustified and wrongheaded theological innuendo to shore up his argument.

He is one who has come face to face with the radically desperate issues of poverty in the world and sees that the resources are available.  He rightly sees that even those of us who are lower middle class are richer than kings of past.  He rightly summons us to examine our own priorities to see if indeed they are in harmony with the heart of Jesus and in line with the Kingdom, or whether we are smug, arrogant and self-satisfied. In short, does the American evangelical church self-sufficiently rely on its wealth and become spiritually complacent and self-satisfied in a sense that it deserves the rebuke of the Lord to the church of Laodicea in Rev. 3.

 My chief concern as I reflect on the book as a whole concerns his use of rhetoric especially early and late in the book.  He is so passionate about the implications of the gospel (and I largely agree with the implications he sets forth) that his rhetoric implies that failure to live up to Christ’s example imperils one’s salvation. 

Any time someone speaks of what God expects of us he is in dangerous territory.  The language of expectation steps into legalism which is spiritually deadening. The believer must be secure in his or her relationship with God before repentance (I am using the term “repentance”  in its proper sense—a radical change of perspective that is seen in a change in life).  As Calvin states: “A man cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God. But no one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he has first recognized God’s grace.”[3]  This recognition is not merely cognitive it is something that is felt deep in the soul. If we view God as a loving father who has unconditionally and freely accepted us, has embraced us as his children and who is disciplining (not punishing) us to bring us to maturity.  If we lack this prior assurance, calls to repentance will produce the fear of punishment, rejection and possible cutting off of relationship (loss of salvation).

The question here is one of law/rules vs. love and relationship.  So much of the teaching on our relationship to God is based upon performance rather than relationship. What is communicated is the lie that God grades us on our performance.  Such a mentality undermines the unconditional freeness of the gospel and ultimately makes salvation to be of works rather than grace.  Such an understanding is a one way ticket to defeat, self-condemnation and fear because it assumes punishment for failure.  Yet this flies directly in the face of  Paul’s unequivocal proclamation:  “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!”

[1] Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 5.

[2] D. A. Carson, Editorial, Themelios 34.1 (2009): 1-2

[3] Calvin. Institutes III.3.2

Last week Kay and I went to the memorial service for Brian Klemmer. A model of health and amazing activity, Brian died suddenly on April 7 at a very young 61 years of age. His company Klemmer and Associates, which he founded almost 20 years ago, is one of the world leaders in personal transformational training. Throughout his career Brian has touched millions of people, tens of thousands directly through the seminars, and millions through his books. His biggest seller was The Compassionate Samurai which was, for several months, number one on the New York Times business book bestseller list. He was a man driven by his passionate commitment first to Jesus Christ, and a mission: “To Create a World that Works for Everyone with No One Left Behind.” The key to accomplishing his mission: leadership by character rather than technique.  This is the message of the Compassionate Samurai.

As I arrived home I had a question about some detail of Brian’s life (nothing big- I can’t even remember what it was.) I went online and Googled  “Brian Klemmer.”  Just below the top three or four websites which were associated with Brian and Klemmer and Associates, there were a host of sites claiming that Brian and his organization were Scientologists.  As someone who knew Brian as an acquaintance for several years, and someone who has read his books and listened to him speak, I shook my head in disbelief.  Brian was an individual who was personally sold out to Jesus Christ.  But he was one of those rare believers who could work with people who did not share his commitments.  He was not afraid of the world outside professing Christendom.

He was aware of how stuck we are in our own structures of understanding, our own belief systems, and how these structures, these preunderstandings, warp our reality and even obscure the truth from us.as it did for those who made ridiculous charges about Brian being a Scientologist.

This is a theme that is often mentioned but seldom grasped. 

C.S. Lewis, and the Dwarves in The Last Battle.

I was first introduced to the Chronicles of Narnia in an English literature course when I was in college. Before that time I had only known Lewis through his work Mere Christianity. Several years later I purchased a boxed copy of the entire set of the Chronicles of Narnia and over a period of several weeks read all seven volumes. I was utterly captivated. Although billed as children's stories, Narnia captured my imagination as a young adult. (And it has continued to capture the imagination of many adults throughout the succeeding decades. In fact many Lewis scholars see the Narnia tales as a crucial part if not the key to the understanding of the Lewis canon.) In The Last Battle, the final volume of the Chronicles of Narnia, we see the final battle between good and evil, between the forces of Aslan and those of the demon god Tash and the end of Narnia. In the middle of the battle the Dwarfs (note: Lewis spelled it Dwarfs—Tolkien loudly protested insisting that it should be dwarves, but to no avail) come to recognize that they have been deceived. As a result they become cynical and distrusting anything unfamiliar to them. They refused to take sides in this great battle between good and evil. Their mantra: "the Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs." As things develop we find that this is more than a slogan. It becomes a way of seeing.

In the last battle the Dwarfs refuse to choose sides. Neither do they remain neutral. They become the third Army which wars with both the Narnians and the invading army from Calormen. The Dwarfs are captured by Calormen soldiers, bound and thrown through the door to the stable beyond which is thought to lay the angry Calormen god, Tash whose presence means certain death.

Later in the battle the heroes too are captured and cast into the stable. But through the stable door they find not Tash, not a filthy stable; but green grass, bright blue sky and delicious fruit on the trees. The stable door is the door into Aslan’s country. And here our heroes, the Kings and Queens of Narnia, find the Dwarfs not wandering around in wonder at the beauty of Aslan's country. Rather,

They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans Lucy and Tirian and were almost near enough to touch them. Then the dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn't see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening.

"Look out!" said one of them in a surly voice. "Mind where you're going. Don't walk into our faces!"

"All right!" said Eustace indignantly. "We're not blind. We've got eyes in our heads."

"They must be darned good ones if you can see in here," said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.

"In where?" asked Edmund.

"Why you bonehead, in here of course," said Diggle. "In the pitch black, pokey, smelly little hole of a stable."

"Are you blind?" said Tirian.

"Ain't we all blind in the dark!" said Diggle.

"But it isn't dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs," said Lucy. "Can't you see? Look up! Look around! Can't you see the sky and the trees and flowers? Can't you see me?”

“How in the name of all Humbug can I see what is there? And how can I see you anymore than you can see me in this pitch blackness?”

"But I can see you," said Lucy. . . .

"Oh those poor things! This is dreadful," said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stooped and picked some wildflowers. "Listen Dwarf," she said. Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?" She leaned across and held the fresh damp flowers to Diggle's ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.

"None of that!" He shouted. "How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. . . “

Shortly hereafter Aslan comes on the scene.

"Aslan," said Lucy. . . "could you— will you — do something for these poor Dwarfs?"

"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarves and gave a low growl: low but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again.

Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the dwarfs knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in the stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of turnip and a third said he found a raw cabbage leaf. They raised  goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a  donkey’s been at! Never thought we'd come to this." . . .

"Well at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.

"You see," said Aslan "they will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. . . ”[1]

Lewis clearly saw that in addition to what we have been taught, we can and do choose what we believe based on fears, our reactions to disappointments and betrayal, our own group interests, or even our own self-interests.  To put it another way our reality is not based solely upon objective “truth” but also on our heart condition and commitments.  This has profound implications in every area of our lives. But in this discussion I want to focus on our theological understandings.

Theologian Michael Bauman, addressing the idea of theological paradox develops the idea of “the fortress mentality” in theology, mirroring from a bit different perspective the point Lewis has made in the section quoted above…

Theological paradox is a mirage. When we see it—or think we do—we may be assured that somewhere along the theological path we have taken at least one wrong turn. Things theological begin to look like things paradoxical only because we have led ourselves into a hall of mirrors.

We have a very good excuse for our distorted perceptions: we ourselves are distorted. (italics and bolding added) When a theologian tells me that certain theological propositions appear paradoxical to us because we operate with a fallen intellect, that theologian is right. In that light the theologian, not theology itself, leads us into the cul-de-sac. And the theologian had better get us out, or at least try. Therefore, I admire those theologians who, once they reach a dead end, back up the bus and try another route. Those theologians may find themselves in a dead end once again, or they may find the one route that leads out of the maze. That route does exist. God, at any rate, seems to have found it. While it may be that we never will, we ought to continue to try. Some theologians, however, being either unable or unwilling to pursue their quarry any further, become entrenched in paradox. They learn to tolerate unremedied paradox when unremedied paradox should be shunned. Perhaps they do so because to them the prospect of going back (perhaps even to the beginning) is too unsettling and too daunting. Rather than striking out in a new direction, or pioneering uncharted territories in search of the doctrinal Northwest Passage, they hunker down and plant settlements in comfortable valleys, having decided at last that they will never reach the sea, or even continue to try. They have forgotten that, in this case, it is better to travel hopefully and never to arrive than to settle prematurely. To that extent, then, their theological settlements are a failure of nerve. Fatigue and uncertainty have made it seem more desirable to plant roots than to look around one more doctrinal bend or to climb up and peer over one more theological hill. The spirit of pioneering thus gives way to the spirit of dogmatism.

Once a pioneer becomes a settler, he starts to build fences. Fences are soon replaced by walls and walls by forts. The pilgrimage has become a settlement, and those within the walls become suspicious of those without. Outsiders think differently, talk differently, act differently. To justify their suspicions, settlement theologians begin to think that they belong in doctrinal fortresses. They develop what I call the "Ebenezer doctrine." “Was it not the map of God—our Bibles—that led us here?" they ask. In one sense, of course, they are right. The Bible did in fact lead them this far. But not the Bible only. (italics and bolding added) Their misreading of it is what led them into the valley of paradox. Their lack of strength and their insecurity led them to settle there and to build a fort. In despair of ever finding their way to the sea, and discouraged by the prospect of going back, they traded their theological tents for creedal tenements and their doctrinal backpacks for dogmatic bungalows. Traveling mercies were exchanged for staying mercies. That is because fortress theologians interpret the intellectual security they have erected for themselves as the blessing of God. The perceived blessing of God becomes to them the perceived will of God. "Hitherto the Lord has led us" becomes not only their reason for staying, but also for fighting. They become the victims of a besieged mentality nurtured on autointoxication. Those who settle elsewhere or not at all are perceived to militate against the truth of God. They must be stopped, the fortress dwellers believe. If the settlers had their way, none of us would reach the golden sea. Only there, on that distant shore, should we plant our flag, with an entire continent of theological exploration behind us and the ocean of infinity throwing waves at our feet. Only after we've seen the sun setting beyond a watery horizon, only after we've awoken to the smell of salt air and the sight and sound of sea otters playing on wet rocks, can we cease our theological quest. Lewis and Clark did not gain fame for quitting in St. Louis. Columbus did not turn back at the Canary Islands. Theologians who settle in the valley of paradox do not deserve acclaim.

Nor ought they to be dogmatic. Any theology that lives comfortably with paradox cannot be labeled "the whole counsel of God." Those that advertise their systems in this way—I could cite examples—give evidence by doing so that they are settlers now, and pioneers no longer.

I believe such theological premature closure is due not only to the emotional weaknesses to which we theologians are subject as fallen people, but also to the systems of thought we adopt. Before I say anything else, I want to say that although I am aware that every theological traveler must proceed according to some method, or some system, I am wary of systems. They are necessary for controlled navigation. In that way they are good. But theological systems also tend not to accommodate the unexpected, the exceptional, and the untimely-things that can be crucial to our continued theological progress. That is, rather than facing an odd fact in all its rigid wildness, they domesticate it; they tame it; they shave it down and plant it foursquare in the middle of their mental settlement. By assimilating an odd and unruly fact in this deplorable fashion, these systems have made that fact something other than itself. Theologically speaking, one of the worst possible things that could happen has happened: the road signs have been changed to fit the route as it exists in the head of the traveler, rather than vice versa. Mental maps ought to be shaped by the landscape, not the other way round. By such "faith" some systematicians have been saying to this mountain, "Be thou removed, and be thou tossed into the sea," and it has been done, all by divine promise, they flatter themselves to think. But such a topographical rearrangement of the theological terrain was not included in the divine intention that we should have dominion over the earth and subdue it. We ought to abandon our theological earth movers, get out our compasses once again, and rediscover magnetic north.

Fortress theologians are dangerous because they are trying to do the inadvisable, if not the impossible. They are trying to reduce the multifarious complexities of God and his universe to the truncated confines of their own mental paradigm, despite the fact that the world and its Architect resolutely resist that sort of reduction. Fortress theologians want to be mapmakers before they have truly been explorers. Nevertheless, exploration precedes cartography. Cartographers need to know the lay of the land before they try to reduce it to scale for drawing. In the same way, exegesis precedes systematics. In that light, fortress theologians offer a prefabricated structure in which to place one's theological beliefs, but they offer no viable method whereby one could actually do good theology. Their pedagogy says that about them. So long as they reduce training in doctrine to indoctrination they shall remain, and continue to produce, fortress theologians who are unable to extend the frontiers of theological truth. In the meantime, theological endeavor suffers because we do not need more or stronger doctrinal fortresses; we need more viable theological procedures.

Put another way, I fear the theological system that has a life and mind of its own. No theological system ought to be allowed to do the work of exegesis, for example. But they do. Hard data are not explained, just explained away. (italics and bolding added) Rather than the theologian having a theology, the theology has him. Such systems, rather than being supple and pliable, become omnivorous. They do not take the shape of the data's mold into which they ought to fit. Rather, in what looks like a feeding frenzy of cognitive dissonance, they devour every uncomfortable bit of external opposition. They beat them, grind them, and soften them until they are sufficiently palatable, and then they eat them. Theological systems, if they are not kept perpetually humble, will become incurably expansionistic. Theological systems, if not held in check, if not continually made receptive and teachable, will become imperialistic. They will colonize every fact, compatible or not, that presents itself. Left uncontrolled, they operate like cancer.

The surest sign that a theology is out of control occurs when that theological system itself becomes the theological method, which is the hallmark of fortress theology. In such cases, that system usurps many prerogatives not rightly its own. That system not only colonizes biblical exegesis, it becomes its own measure of truth. What does not fit cannot be fact. If it does not fit and fortress theologians want it to fit, they make it fit. I say it fearfully: the worst thing about such theological methods is that they are almost always implemented unwittingly. Few theologians, if any, would either admit to the practice or endorse it. Most theologians, however, if not all, do it—me included. When we do so we fail. We must not allow our theology to be turned into a hermeneutic. We have things exactly backwards when we make external reality subject to our own particular brand of theology. [2]

Bauman suggests wisely that rather than conceive of our theology as a fortress, it should be likened to a backpack (I would add coupled with a compass) to nourish and guide us on our journeys and explorations.

Our precommitments, our systems, our paradigms of understanding on the one hand give order and sense to our world, but on the other hand limit our growth and discovery of anything new, anything beyond our mental categories.  They also give us a false sense of safety and security.  This is a phenomenon that I, having  grown up in the fundamental and evangelical community, have both experienced and witnessed firsthand.

I recently read an essay by the late evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm (d. 1992) in the book How Karl Barth Changed My Mind. He too, addresses this same issue from a more personal perspective. He speaks of becoming a Christian in the latter years of the fundamentalist-modernist controversies that characterize American Protestantism during most of the first half of the 20th century. Contemporary evangelicalism arose out of fundamentalism beginning in the 1950s. But it continued to carry the baggage of fundamentalism: particularly being defensive, and protective of its received theology and suspicious of any deviation. Ramm confesses that he too held these attitudes "I did fear open-doors and open windows. It was a great temptation to live one's theological life within the confines of a very small fort with very high walls." (Bernard Ramm, "Helps from Karl Barth." How Karl Barth Changed My Mind, ed. Donald McKim [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1998], 121.) Ramm tells us that despite this fear and defensiveness he spent the academic year of 1957 – 1958 in Basel, Switzerland listening to Karl Barth lecture. One day Barth made an offhanded comment saying that "if we truly believe that we had the truth of God in the Holy Scripture we should be fearless and opening any doors or any window in pursuit of our theological craft."

I never had the opportunity to study under Ramm, but, one of my most respected seminary professors also spent a year studying under Barth about the same time as did Ramm. It was something that he believed he had to do, but it was also something which frightened him greatly. He was afraid that going to Basel and studying under Barth would make him a liberal. And he requested several of his fellow professors to pray for him that he would remain true to the faith even when studying from someone of a very different perspective than his own. The tradition in which he and Ramm were trained, and which I was trained was one of the “fortress mentality.” It produced an “all or nothing” mentality.  It is a mentality that breeds a spirit of conflict with those who do not agree with us on all points and discourages further exploration and discovery. This spirit of exploration and learning is I am convinced a key aspect of the theologian’s job description.  To say or imply otherwise is to imply that we have transcended our finitude and fully comprehended the not only created reality but the mind of God as well.

 As I have stated elsewhere:

Theologians/explorers discover new territory and relate it to the known world. They begin with the backpack of received truth and strike out beyond the pale with a burning desire to extend their horizons in search of new knowledge. They will discover fantastic new things that have to be incorporated into their structure of reality. They may even change the world. While they remain close to home, their discoveries will generally be of the curiosity variety, the “Oh, isn’t that interesting?” type of discovery that adds color and depth to their intellectual and spiritual world. But as they venture into areas uncharted by their community, as they “boldly go where no one has gone before,” their vision of reality itself will go through radical readjustment. The old vision of what reality was cannot contain what has been discovered. This is the phenomenon of paradigm shift articulated by Thomas Kuhn in his landmark work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Explorers are going beyond the theological and ecclesiastical fortress out into the world of broader general revelation, a world their discipline and training in exegesis has often left them unprepared to meet and incorporate into their understanding of reality.

A telling example of this phenomenon was a series of articles in Christianity Today during the mid-1980s on how quantum physics was revolutionizing the concept of the nature of reality. To those with no previous exposure, the subject of the discussion was in some cases quite unnerving. The telling point here is not primarily in the articles themselves, but in the reactions that appeared in the letters to the editor in the following issues. One pastor wrote: “Mass that exists, then becomes non-existent in transit, then exists again according to our will? I don’t have to listen to this! Beam me up, Lord!” A layman complained: “How do the three articles discussing the New Physics apply to evangelical conviction? I wonder how many subscribers put their magazine down with disappointment and dismay because they lacked the knowledge and interest to cope with the far-out ideas.”

 But perhaps most disturbing was the example the author of the original article cited in his opening paragraph: “A few weeks ago an acquaintance of ours, a theologian, remarked in the course of a stimulating dinner conversation that he considered quantum mechanics the greatest contemporary threat to Christianity. In fact, he said if some of the results of this theory were really true, his own personal faith in God would be shattered.” Those responding to the new ideas reacted strongly to having their view of creation challenged with the new paradigm because, I suspect, their own faith and understanding of God himself were tied in an almost absolute way to their view of the nature of the created order, the physical world. To assent to the truth of quantum physics would be to destroy God himself. These reactions did not just come from lay people. They came from pastors and theologians as well, and therein lies the problem.[3]

I am convinced that in a very real sense many individuals, particularly within the fundamentalist/ evangelical tradition believe at a gut level that if they give up the absolute certainty of their beliefs that reality itself will come unglued.  To put it another way: it is our beliefs that hold reality together. If we dare to admit that even a small piece of our understanding of reality is not true, we can have no knowledge at all.

On one level we might ask, Is not this a sort of intellectual/spiritual megalomania, a substituting of my understanding of reality for reality itself? On another level it looks like an attitude grounded in deep-seated fear and insecurity.

The Enlightenment mentality, of which we are heirs, saw truth as objective and the same for all people at all times.  It denied historical contingency or the validity of multiple perspectives. As heirs of the Enlightenment we have forced reality to into two dimensional grids.  While these grids may be helpful and even a necessary starting point their very nature precludes understanding or even the validity of information that does not conform to the grid.

This perspective made certainty an idol.  However we define it, if some purported truth does not measure up to our standard of certainty the purported truth is rejected in toto.

This mentality operates on the formal theological level and is passed down to the semi-academic and the lay level. Witness the proliferation of extreme theological partisanship among wannabe theologians. The attitude here seems to be “take no prisoners.”

If we look at the gospels we see numerous instances of theological precommitments overriding evidence and causing individuals (particularly the scribes and Pharisees and other religious leaders) to reject out of hand the person of Jesus as Messiah and the message of the kingdom. Even in the face of miracles which they could not deny, they would not believe. They locked themselves in the filthy stables of their mind rather than even examining the possibility that they might have misunderstood something.

“Jesus casts out demons? It must be through the power of Satan.” “He raises the dead? Let's kill him."

When it comes to the ministry of the apostle Paul we see the same reactions. He comes to the Jews to their synagogues and the reaction is persecution, imprisonment, and even stoning. Reactions to his teaching incited riots. The one exception is among the Bereans. Rather than driving out the messenger, they went home and searched the Scriptures to see if Paul's message was indeed to be found there.

For us today the issue is similar.  It involves as Bauman suggests not allowing our theological system (pre-understandings) to become our theological method.  Only in this way can we remain open to learn and grow.

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Harper Collins, 1984) 164-169. Bold and italics added.

[2] Michael C. Bauman, Pilgrim Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 21-23. Italics and bolding added.

[3] M. James Sawyer, The Survivor’s Guide to Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 52-53

In Daniel 8 we find an apocalyptic prophecy of the goat and the ram.  The prophecy foretells the fall of Media-Persia at the hands of Greece through the person of Alexander the Great, and of the division of the empire into areas signified by the four points of the compass.  Greece conquers the world!

 While Greece unquestionably conquered the ancient world through the political conquests of Alexander,  the effects of that ancient conquest did not end in the ancient world.  They  remain today through the legacy of the Greek philosophers and worldview that was imparted. 

Likewise Greek philosophical concepts have also ruled Christianity, particularly Latin Christianity, till this day through the Augustinian synthesis, a synthesis of Christian theology and Neo-Platonic Philosophy which became the foundation for the medieval worldview.  It is not too much to say that the only reason that Neoplatonism is even remembered today is because of Augustine’s self-conscious bringing it together  and synthesizing it with Christian orthodoxy. While most Christians are thoroughly unaware of the profound influence of Neoplatonism on Christianity, this is a fact that has been well known to theologians, philosophers and historians for over a thousand years.  For example, John Gregory comments,

 In their combination of a sophisticated philosophy with religious aspiration the pagan Neoplatonists had only one serious rival,- Christianity, and anti-Christian though they were,  it was the incorporation of their ideas into Christian theology that has ensured their permanent influence on European culture.[1]

 n the Latin speaking west the development of theological understanding fell under the dominance of the Neoplatonism,  a mystical/spiritual reworking of Platonic, Aristotelian and  Stoic concepts by  Plotinus, a third century philosopher from Egypt. Plotinus published his conclusions in a work entitled The Enneads. His deeply rooted dualistic perspective is revealed by his biographer Porphyry who opens this biography saying:

 Plotinus, the philosopher our contemporary, seemed ashamed of being in the body.

So deeply rooted was this feeling that he could never be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or his birthplace.

He showed, too, an unconquerable reluctance to sit for a painter or a sculptor, and when Amelius persisted in urging him to allow of a portrait being made he asked him, 'Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you really think I must also consent to leave, as a desired spectacle to posterity, an image of the image?'[2]

 Augustine is universally recognized as  the most important figure in Latin (Western) Christianity.  His brilliance set the course for all Western theology to this day.  But Augustine besides being a devout and dedicated believer, bishop, monk and scholar was a dedicated Neoplationist philosopher.

 Intellectually, Augustine represents the most influential adaptation of the ancient Platonic tradition with Christian ideas that ever occurred in the Latin Christian world. Augustine received the Platonic past in a far more limited and diluted way than did many of his Greek-speaking contemporaries, but his writings were so widely read and imitated throughout Latin Christendom that his particular synthesis of Christian, Roman, and Platonic traditions defined the terms for much later tradition and debate. Both modern Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity owe much to Augustine . . .[3]

Augustine had grown up in a Christian home, but had rejected the rather naïve faith of his mother. On an intellectual and spiritual level he wrestled with the problem of evil. This led him to join Manichaeanism (a dualistic religion which amalgamated Persian and Gnostic ideas).  He remained a member for nine years. The Manichaeans claimed to have an answer to the problem of evil. They taught that there were two eternal principles of light and the dark and these were equally balanced. The light was good the dark was evil. As an adherent Augustine still had significant questions which the members of the sect were unable to answer. So after nine years he left Manichaeism and turned to Neoplatonism. Rather than seeing any eternal good and evil dualism, Neoplatonism sought evil as non-being or privation. After several years, Augustine converted to Christianity and ultimately became the greatest theologian and architect of all Western theological understanding both Catholic and Protestant. He was a devoted student of Scripture as well as being a profound thinker. And in his biblical interpretation he was careful not to let Neoplatonic teachings trump the Bible's teachings (as Origen had two centuries earlier). But on a deeper level his worldview was Neoplatonic and he brought to the Scriptures neo-Platonic ideas about who God is and how we relate to him.

 He became the greatest theologian that the West has ever seen. His work became a comprehensive synthesis of Christianity and Neoplatonic philosophy, a worldview that dominated the West until the time of Thomas Aquinas.

 As Augustine lay dying in A.D.430 the Empire was increasingly falling into chaos and shambles. The barbarian hordes were sweeping through the Italian peninsula and wreaking havoc throughout the empire. The cities were in disarray through rampant economic inflation. The infrastructure of the empire as well as its centers of learning were being destroyed. Europe entered the dark ages. Learning all but disappeared. The works of Plato and Aristotle were destroyed. The center of civilization moved to the east and with the rise of Islam there was the birth of the Ottoman Empire. It was in the Ottoman Empire that learning flourished. And it was in the Muslim Ottoman Empire that Aristotle reigned as the philosopher.

 While it is not generally known except by scholars and historians, the Islamic worldview that brought forth the flowering of Islamic society in the middle ages is based upon Greek philosophy.

 Plato, and even Aristotle, came into Moslem ken chiefly in Neoplatonic form: Plato in Porphyry’s interpretation, and Aristotle discolored by an apocryphal Theology of Aristotle written by a Neoplatonist of the fifth or sixth century, and translated into Arabic . . . The works of Plato and Aristotle were almost completely translated, though with many inaccuracies; but as the Moslem scholars sought to reconcile Greek philosophy with the Koran, they took more readily to Neoplatonist interpretations of them than to the original books themselves[4]

While the works of Aristotle were lost to the west with the fall of the Roman Empire, those works became fundamental to the science and mathematics of Islam.

 The Greek philosophers were reintroduced in the West through Muslim philosophers in Spain who translated them into Latin in the 12th century. Thomas Aquinas took the Platonic Augustinian Synthesis  which had ruled Western theology since the sixth century and synthesized Augustinianism with the insights and Aristotle and gave birth to what is called Thomistic theology, or Thomism.

 Both syntheses, that of Augustine and of Thomas Aquinas, incorporate Greek philosophy with many of its pagan assumptions into their world views.

 The Greeks understood that both God and matter were eternal. God was not so much the creator as he was the architect of the created order. And there was a separation between the two. It is interesting that the idea of the eternality of matter continued in the sciences until the mid-20th century when the hard data of the universe’s beginning gave birth to the Big Bang theory. Even Albert Einstein whose work was so revolutionary in breaking down the dualistic view of reality disliked intensely the implication that there was a beginning to creation.

 The effect of Neo-Platonism on Western Culture, Theology and the Church.

I have used the term dualism on several occasions.  One of the chief features of Greek philosophy is its dualistic nature. This is the key problem that Greek philosophy has introduced into Christian understanding.  We think in terms of reality as being dualistic.  To give a simple explanation, dualism is “a theory in interpretation that explains a given situation . . . in terms of two opposing factors or principles. In general, dualisms are twofold classifications that admit of [sic] no intermediate degrees.” [5] The variety of dualism that characterizes us is “metaphysical dualism” which claims that “the facts of the universe are best explained in terms of mutually irreducible elements.”  The classic philosophical dualism is spirit-matter. These are conceived of as two qualitatively different orders of reality. By definition dualism involves separateness.

Dualism and Holism. 

Dualism in many forms has characterized Western thinking since the early medieval period. It was in fact dualistic thinking that informed the Enlightenment and brought some of the core teachings of Christianity such as the incarnation and miracles into disrepute. This dualism has had a profound effect on Christianity. It was not until the early 20th century and the reality changing work of Albert Einstein and that a thoroughgoing dualism which characterized even scientific endeavors since the time of Newton, was repudiated. In the sciences holism (or union, i.e. the interconnectedness of everything) has supplanted dualism as a basic category.

 A dualistic understanding of reality cannot accept the fact that the creator can become a part of the creation. Nor can it accept the fact that a human being who was crucified, resurrected and ascended now sits at the right hand of the father—still  fully human.

 Dualisms in Western Christianity

The Greek philosophers starting from within themselves, employing the damaged mind and soul inherited from Adam, did the best job they could in articulating their understanding of God. In fact Plato is the first individual to ever give us a logical rational justification for belief in God.  But, from their damaged starting point they could not reason their way to Yahweh who had disclosed himself in history to his chosen people—the Jews.

 Plato and the early Greek philosophers constructed a God concept that is radically monotheistic, this in a world that was thoroughly polytheistic.  In itself this is no small accomplishment.  But  this God of the philosophers is pure spirit who is the architect and artificer of the material world (from eternal matter that is depraved and contrary to spirit) through a series of emanations.  He does not touch the depraved matter directly.  This God has no relationship. He is absolute unity, and alone. He is transcendent and most perfect. He is impersonal and unknowable.  He can only be described by what He is not, not by what He is. Virtue, truth and beauty inhere in God. He is immutable, eternal, and impassible.

 As we move to Neo-Platonism specifically we find that God is a perfect sphere of light, single, alone, distant white unapproachable, all pervading, ever present all-knowing ever still. All the while contemplating Himself in perfect thought. God alone is good, beautiful  and eternal perfection. God is silent. This single alone perfect God is the infinite judge who cannot look on sin.

 What is important for our immediate purpose is that there is no relationship in this God.  In some sense He is the infinite narcissistic naval-gazer.

Separation

Any understanding of Greek philosophy reveals that the fundamental dualism of reality leads to separation.  There is no higher unity or coming together in union.  Some of the more prominent dualisms that emerge are:

• Spirit-matter
• Soul-body
• Heaven-earth
• Circular heavenly movement-rectilinear earthly motion
• Heaven (presence of God)—Hell (absence of God)
• Theoretical-empirical
• Divine-mortal
• Eternal- temporal[6]

Splitting reality dualistically denies union and the possibility of distinction in union.

Cosmological dualism separates God from the world.  This is seen both in the Greco-Roman worldview as well as in the Newtonian-deistic understanding. Epistemological dualism posits a radical disjuncture between the human knower and the thing to be known.  Under the influence of epistemological dualism (articulated by Immanuel Kant [A.D. 1724-1804] and the basis of the modern worldview) we cannot know “the thing in itself.” We can only know the thing as it appears.  We are cut off from reality. [7]

The understanding of God as being omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., actually enters Christian theological conceptions from Augustine.  Heretofore these had been Greek philosophical categories derived from Plato’s teaching on the Forms, i.e. from Greek philosophy/theology.  These concepts are articulated by the Greek philosophers before they ever show up in Christian in descriptions of God. 

It was not until the fusion of Platonic and Aristotelian theology with Christianity that the concepts of strict omnipotence, omniscience, or benevolence became commonplace.

The Platonic concept of Forms had an enormous influence on Hellenic Christian views of God. In those philosophies, Forms were the ideals of every object in the physical world, and objects in the physical world were merely shadows of those perfect forms. Platonic philosophers were able to theorize about the forms by looking at objects in the material world, and imagining what the "Perfect" tree, or "Perfect" man would be. The Aristotelian view of God grew from these Platonic roots, arguing that God was the Infinite, or the "Unmoved Mover."

Hellenic Christians and their medieval successors then applied this Form-based philosophy to the Christian God. Philosophers took all the things that they considered Good -- Power, Love, Knowledge, Size, and posited that God was "infinite" in all these respects. They then concluded that God was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and benevolent. Further, since God was perfect, any change would make him less than perfect, so they asserted that God was unchanging, or immutable.[8]

While not blatantly in error, the way these categories were conceptualized and expounded contributed to the loss of an understanding of God as a dynamic tri-personal being of love and activity.  These discussions led inevitably to the idea that to really know/grasp who God is we have to go behind the Trinity and delve into God’s essence and attributes. In so doing the Western Church has marginalized the knowledge of God, personal and experiential, and instead opted for knowledge about God, rational and propositional.

The idea that God is so holy that he can’t look on sin is another Greek philosophical concept that has made its way into Christianity. It is deeply embedded in the Christian consciousness of both Catholics and Protestants. I have heard this all my life.  If even as a Christian I sin, God will turn his back on me until I confess and repent. Yet Paul tells us that “Christ became sin for us.” He also tells us that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not counting their sins against them.”[9] 

Neoplatonic spirituality proclaimed that if you turn and repent, by righteous and holy living you can attain mystical out-of-body union with God. The depravity of our material body and the goodness of our mind or spirit is so basic to Greek dualistic thinking, that what is needed for spirituality is to escape our bodies and attain mystical union in an out-of-body experience with God in worship. Plotinus who put the system together and so had several out-of-body mystical experiences. He  based his theology on these out-of-body experiences. To put this another way—in true worship we must escape who we are. 

The Greeks could not come to grips with Christianity since in their minds God could not become incarnate because matter was depraved.  While we are not as radical as the Greeks in our spirit-body dualism, western Christianity still clings to a spirituality that has split our bodies from our souls/spirits. This is because we still buy into key fundamental categories of Greek thought. I would argue that we in the West we have subtly but effectively denied the truth of the concrete down and dirty reality of incarnation while continuing to pay lip service to it. We somehow believe that Jesus’ humanity was different than ours despite the overwhelming testimony of the scriptures to the contrary.  The second person of the trinity created us and became one of us.  He lived life as we do; the eternal God had all of the same bodily functions we do.  God declared our material state “very good” in Genesis 1.  If it were not, would he have taken it on himself? Eternally?

The Neoplatonic spiritual “path was by repentance. You had to turn away from the physical and turn to the mind/spirit. You had to get it right in your head. In stark c contrast, Christianity is not about getting the head right it is about meeting a person”[10] –it is about meeting a person Jesus. Jesus meets us relationally and holistically not just in our minds or our spirits. From a biblical perspective:

• you don't have to repent for being human
• you don't have to be uncomfortable with your sexuality

(Many of our ideas about  "what a good Christian looks like"  come from the Victorian English politeness/prudery rather than from Scriptures.)

Neoplatonism said that in order to attain salvation/eternal bliss you have to:

• have humility,
• acknowledge sin,
• confess
• renounce,
• repent,
• be converted,

If you ever heard anything like this before?  I have had hours upon hours of long conversations with earnest devout Christians who insist that if we sin we lose our salvation, which is only secured again by confession, renouncing, repentance, and living without sin in the future.  Of course they do sin again and are caught on an endless loop of seeking to regain what was lost when they sinned.  Dr. Earl Radmacher, the former president of Western Seminary where I taught for 18 years tells of growing up in the Foursquare Church in Los Angeles.  Every Sunday night he would go down the aisle at Angeles Temple to get saved—because he had lost his salvation during the week by sinning.

But Christianity is not a twelve-step program, or a seven-step program. In Christianity we are meeting a person.  The eternal second person of the Trinity who has united himself to us before we knew [Him], a person who has taken us into his own life, given us his own life killed us off in his crucifixion, raised us, and ascended us.[13] All these ideas are a part of the Pauline teaching of being “in Christ.”

Most astonishingly the idea of conversion in the sense we understand it comes from Greek philosophy:

Above all, we can learn from Greek philosophy the paramount importance of what we call the personality and  they call the soul. It was just because the Greeks realized that this genuinely Hellenic idea of conversion played so great a part in their thinking and in their lives. That, above all, is the lesson they have to teach, and  that is why the writings of their great philosophers have still the power to convert the souls of all that receive their teaching with humility.[14]

Christianity is not about getting your head right i.e. having right theology. It's not about being converted in the sense that we have been taught. Your head, your beliefs, may change.  But that is still not the point. Christianity is about the engagement with, about the meeting of a person; a person who became flesh.  

It’s not about getting your beliefs straight so that you can climb a ladder to heaven hand over hand, and  “acknowledge, confess, renounce, repent, to get your sins fixed up. Because Jesus is the Lamb of God who has taken care of your sins.”[15]  As I noted above, this thinking is so deeply engrained in Christianity that many believe that if someone dies with any sin unconfessed that s/he will go to hell.  This thinking is not Christian: it is pagan. Pagan philosophy and religion insist on holiness before relationship—Christianity insists that relationship produces holiness. To reverse the process makes salvation based on human effort rather than divine grace.

We're not saying when we meet Jesus and see who we are that there won't be a change. But that change is not a series of hoops, or rungs on a ladder that you have to jump through or climb to gain acceptance by God. According to the apostle Paul, we are already reconciled to God.

In the Reformation Protestants dethroned the Pope from having the authority over the individual soul and substituted the conscience as that which measures whether we are getting to heaven properly. But what our ancestors did not do is break up the Platonic foundation of thought that had been introduced so many centuries earlier.  They did not dismantle the dualism; they did not undo Neoplatonism.   The rebuilt leaving the fatally flawed substructure intact. When the Reformation came, some escaped but the majority continued and what survived through the Reformation was again Neoplatonism woven together with Protestantism.[16]

Is our God a community of persons; a community of Father, Word/Son and Spirit; a community of love and life? Or is the GOD deep in our inner soul the Neoplatonic god: perfect light, single, alone, distant, unapproachable, all pervading, ever present all-knowing ever still? Is He is silent and all the while contemplates Himself in perfect thought; the one who alone is good, beautiful and eternal perfection? Is he the single alone perfect God who is the infinite judge that cannot look on sin?

Most of us have elements of both in our inner soul.  We have both of these two who have been put together and blended, but don't go together. It is our feelings that govern to which G/god we relate. On a good day when things are going well the Father loves me. On a bad day when you a bounced check; when someone runs into your car in the parking lot; when you and your wife have had a fight;  you recognize the other GOD, the impersonal judge who is looking for an excuse to condemn you.

If we need to repent, this is where we need to start our repentance.  I am speaking of repentance in the truest sense of the term.  The Greek term which we translate “repent” is metanoia. It speaks of a radical change of mind with actions that follow.  In its most basic sense repentance is not saying you are sorry for something; it is not promising not to do some sin again.  It is a tearing off the blinders and embracing the reality of who God is, as he has shown himself to be.  When Jesus spoke of the role of the Holy Spirit of convicting the world of sin righteousness and judgment—the point was not that their consciences would be stricken because they had done bad things (i.e. acts of sin).  Rather it is that humanity has not believed/trusted in God as he really has made himself known in the person of Jesus Christ.

What we have been saying should not be understood as a blanket condemnation of Greek philosophy or a philosophy in general. With reference to Greek philosophy there are some areas of study in which dualistic thinking necessary. We need to take things apart in order to classify them and understand them. It is the presupposition that everything is to be understood in a dualistic manner that becomes problematic. Particularly we need to self-consciously repent of those aspects of Greek philosophy which is blinded us to who God is as he has revealed itself to us.

We must ask ourselves the question, “in my most basic understanding of God, am I operating from Greek philosophical presuppositions or from biblical revelation?”

We must to get behind these Neoplatonic philosophical/religious ideas and back to Jesus Christ. He is the one that reveals to us the true identity of the Father. We must take our stand against pagan philosophical and religious ideas unwittingly baptized and accepted as biblical and return to the revelation given to us by Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul in Romans 12 tells us not be conformed to the world but have your minds renewed. In Colossians 2 he warned us about a taken captive by vain philosophy. In this most basic area we as Christians have been taken captive by vain philosophy. We are locked up in Greek thought. We live as Christian fish in a Greek sea. We swim in it daily and do not recognize its presence—it is just the way things are.

I say again: we need to get behind these Neoplatonic philosophical/religious ideas and back to Jesus Christ. He is the one that reveals to us the true identity of the Father and brings us into a relationship with Him.

[1] John Gregory .The Neoplatonists (London: Routledge,  1991) viii.

[2] Porphyry: On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Work Stephen McKenna (tr.), http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/enn001.htm Accessed August 27, 2010.

[3] Augustine, St. Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite (2010 ed)

[4] Will Durant, The Age of Faith (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950) , 239. (see 239-245 for larger discussion).

[5] Elwell, W. A. (2001). Evangelical dictionary of theology: Second Edition (357). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

[6] See T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1980), 15-43.

[7] Elmer Colyer, How to Read T.F. Torrance (Downers Grove: IVP, 2001), 58-59. 

[8] Wikipedia, s.v.“ Hellenistic philosophy and Christianity,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_philosophy_and_Christianity accessed September 10, 2010.

[9] See 2 Cor 5:19-21.

[10] Bruce Wauchope, Dare to Trust lecture 3, (Jackson Ms: Perichoresis, nd)

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] R.W. Livingston (ed), The Legacy of Greece (BiblioBazaar, 2007), 94. Italics added.

[15] Bruce Wauchope, Dare to Trust, lecture 3, (Jackson MS: Perichoresis, nd)

[16] Ibid