Category Archives: Cultural Christianity

Christian Reductionism and the Fatalization of the Christian Life

Posted on by

Christian reductionism has probably produced more spiritual fatalities than anything else. The way I define Christian reductionism (CR) is in this way: Christian reductionism is when professing Christians come to think, typically subconsciously, that they have arrived. That they have come to experience the pinnacles of Christianity in their daily and mundane experiences, even as those might entail “mountain top experiences,” and extrapolate from there that there is nothing more. Often, subsequent to this type of reasoning, people attempt to live within the formalism of the way that Christianity has been snapshotted for them in their own experience, but ultimately come to lose interest in the Christian life (inwardly). This loss of interest, under the terms of CR that I am currently defining, pivots on the individual’s belief that they have already exhausted the depths and heights of Christianity, of the Gospel reality, at which point they see no more space for growth (even though they wouldn’t admit it). Following, a fatalistic attitude towards the Gospel comes to consume their lives, and they begin the process of compartmentalizing their Christian life into a banality of just one piece of their daily existences, knowing that they at least are probably on their way to Heaven, and simply settle-in for the long haul (or the shorter haul, as the case may be).

Sadly, they have believed a lie. For the CRs the broader society, the cultural upheavals and underheavals, daily life, the perceived wins and losses, simply become apiece with what they believe the Christian life to be; just one more aspect of what it means to be alive. Sadly, they have believed a lie. They have become participants in a Folk Religion, rather than in the faith of Christ. But I don’t think it is a stretch to say that this type of religion is the dominant undercurrent of what makes up most of Western Christianity today in the 21st century.

The Gospel is radical. And it requires effort, spiritual battle, recognition, a fight, and an unwillingness to allow oneself to reduce the Gospel to one’s own parochial rendition of it. The Gospel life is charged through with the energy of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ Himself. It surely has a sobriety to it, but the sobriety of a stately Lion laying around in his domain on the Masai Mara. PS. Of course, when I say it requires effort etc., what I’m referring to is living the Christian life, not becoming a Christian or coming into the family of God in Christ. Living the Christian life requires effort though.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. -I Corinthians 15.58

The 20th Century Swiss Evangelical Church in Concert with the 21st Century North American Evangelical Church

Posted on by

A Church in Basel, Switzerland

As an evangelical (at least that’s my pedigree from birth), here in the 21st century, things have become rather dire, in my opinion, with reference to finding sound so-called “evangelical churches.” This is no abstract thing for me, but an ongoing reality. We have literally been churchless for quite a while now (we watch a home church of ours back in Southern California online every Sunday morning, which isn’t ultimately sufficient; as far as real life in-person fellowship etc.) We have tried multitudes of “evangelical churches,” and not to be reductionistic, they are all almost exactly the same. They still have 1990s seeker sensitive programs ongoing—with 21st century technology—and/or personality cult driven pastorates that only stay viable until said pastor dies or retires (which such pastors rarely do). But the actuality of Christ is really nowhere to be found; in name only. Bibles are nowhere present, not in the hands of the people (some of that is tech related, but not really, I don’t think), and the sermons mostly mimic bad Ted Talks. The worship/music part of it appears to be something more like American Idol tryouts than it does actual leadership to worship of the triune God. Beyond that, and based on a relatively recent poll of evangelicals, most don’t even believe that or know if Jesus Christ is fully God. The sound doctrinal body of teaching is lacking to the point that it is non-existent; which then that vacuum only leaves room for bad doctrine. This is a lamentable thing.

And yet the aforementioned, unfortunately, isn’t unique to the 21st century evangelicals. Here is Karl Barth discussing his own experience of the “church” in his early to middle 20th century context in his native Switzerland:

It hardly needs to be said that we are dealing here with a point of view which has been most flagrantly neglected in modern Protestantism since the 18th century. From the visible standpoint our Protestant national Churches are little more than great unions, or communities of interest, of individuals who are Christian or are called Christian, individualists, each of whom—like the people of Israel in the time of the Judges—does that which is right in his own eyes, so that although some may act together in particular ecclesiolae [churches] called movements, we cannot inquire too closely what it really is that unites them. Even less can we inquire what these Churches are as a whole, a question which would yield the most gratuitous and to a large extent unconvincing answers. If we will and can and must maintain the form revealed in them, then we can only sigh: Kyrie eleison. Destroying as they do the relationship between the community and its members, they are hopelessly a-catholic Churches, hardly distinguishable, if at all, from heretical sects, or sects which verge on heresy, in the matter which now concerns us.

The most obvious example is the 1911 Constitution of the Evangelical Reformed Church of the City of Basel. It begins with a kind of hymnal introit to which a conscientious exegete could hardly give any but an Arian sense . . ..[1]

What is the common identifiable theme that holds Barth’s early to middle Evangelical Reformed church together with the North American evangelical church of today? Embedded in the passage from, where he notes, “It hardly needs to be said that we are dealing here with a point of view which has been most flagrantly neglected in modern Protestantism since the 18th century. . ..” It is the Enlightenment tentacles, and its anthropology of turn-to-the-subject that has helped to tie the whole modern and postmodern churches together (there are other factors, as well). A spirituality where individualism reigns prime, romanticist feelings cajole the heart-strings, and personal interest sublimates the interests of the living God. Kyrie eleison indeed!

Are there exceptions? Always. In fact, we are looking for an exception currently; so please keep that in prayer if you would. Note: I am not implying or presuming that we are looking for a “perfect church.” Nein. We are simply looking for the church in its local expression. An environ wherein the church is being the Church by genuinely bearing witness to her reality in Jesus Christ and the triune God.

I am remaining charitable in my language throughout this post. The so-called evangelical church has already gone right by the impasse, and she doesn’t even realize it. She indeed functions as a series of social clubs with the name of Jesus Christ splattered all over her programs and multimedia presentations. Good intentions, and smiles are not enough to gloss over the tragedy of it all. Only repentance, as if ancient Israel before God, will do. Kyrie eleison.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 §62 [521–22] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 195.

PS. I also work on call 24/7 which makes “church shopping” that much more difficult. But I know we will eventually find something.

The Privacy of the Christian Religion

Posted on by

Photo credit: The Atlantic

The privacy of the Christian religion, particularly as that obtains within the so-called evangelical churches of North America, might be one of the most deleterious things to have ever pierced its fabric. The individualism of a post-Enlightened secular world has penetrated the walls of evangelicalism in force. Evangelicals hold onto “me and my Jesus,” “me and my Bible,” and only when that serves their personal interests and feelings. This has been a century’s long problem, longer in fact, and it has destroyed the spirituality, or even the potential for a genuine Christian spirituality, en masse.

When a turn-to-the-subject posture gets applied to the Christian life what gets produced is North American evangelicalism, simpliciter. In my view, at least institutionally and collectivistically, the experiment of an evangelicalism ought to be abandoned (because it has already abandoned itself); and this, posthaste. Originally, in the early Protestant world, to be an evangelical meant to be a full blooded proponent of what came to be known as a sola Scriptura Christianity. To be an evangelical under this rubric was to literally put your life on the line. To be a sola fide Gospel proponent was to deny the authority of the known church (in the West), at the time. Now to be an evangelical means to be a moralistic therapeutic deist; to be a participant in a folk religion founded upon the ‘feels’ of the pastors and the laity, respectively.

I have been triggered, and this post is the result of that. There is a lot behind this trigger which will remain unstated. It should be said though: good intentions are no longer good enough (and never were). An empty piety, and its spirituality, does not reflect a genuinely Gospel formed Christianity. When churches are funded by said piety, all that we are left with, again, is a folk religion; not worth the time and energy of any committed Christian. Elks Lodge Christianity, country club Christianity, narthex Christianity, me and my Jesus Christianity have failed the people. There is no power there because the Holy Spirit is not there. There is no growth there because everything has been dumbed down to the feels of the people; indeed, this shaped by the secular culture that has penetrated the evangelical church to its core. But the pietism keeps the blinders on the peoples’ eyes all around. What an atrocious pitiful thing.

#rantover

Reflecting On Charles Taylor’s Social Imaginary and Buffered Self

Posted on by

I read through Charles Taylor’s tome, Secular Age, a few years ago; it took me a couple years to get through. I think his sociological analyses, peppered with theological riffs, represents some of the most profound observational insights available. While I was reading through it, I found some of his theological eloquence lacking, especially with reference to his reading of Calvinism. But ultimately that lacuna didn’t subtract from his overall cultural and sociological analysis. For me his most poignant themes remain his thinking on the social imaginary along with the buffered [secular] self. These two intellections, respectively, have been most applicable in my day-to-day existence out there in the big world. These themes have helped me keep the world in order so to speak. In other words, they have allowed me to have the critical valence and distanciation necessary to continuously place the various cultural-identity-posture expressions into some identifiable frame; indeed, expressions presented by the heathen, the religious, and the Christian alike.

On social imaginary: this has served as a helpful psychologizing factor, as far as realizing that all of humanity has various ideational categories that they are consciously or subconsciously drawing from in order to navigate their relative places in this ‘world system.’ It isn’t always easy to identify the various in-forming and out-forming pressures from whence the people are indeed formed. Even so, just knowing that there are clusters of various social imaginaries present in the world, an ordered filament, to one extent or another, an intellectual press that has a pedigree of development in the history of the world’s ideas, this helps me to approach people with an understanding that they aren’t as ‘naked’ or absolutely subjective as they think they might be. And of course, this sword doesn’t just cut on them ‘out there,’ but also on me, ‘in here,’ in my own spiritual and intellectual development.

On the buffered self: this dovetails with the social imaginary. People, whether conscious or not, use various belief-structures, social imaginaries, often-times, as coping mechanisms that allow them to navigate a world of other people who might present with competing social imaginaries. This is to say, the buffered self in the modern and postmodern periods, respectively, often-times and relativistically, picks the ideas and theories of life that they have inherited from the past, consciously or not, to keep the other competing social imaginaries, out there, at bay. That is to say, that in our highly individualistic world, people deploy mechanisms of ideation and belief in order to keep the world of the other ‘out there,’ in an attempt to keep a semblance of order internal to their own self-development and truths. The buffered self, I would contend, is simply representative of what might be identified as a modal collapse, an absolute immanentization of total reality, as perceived atomistically by each individual, into the turn-to-the-subject. That is, the buffered self, as the fallen self, vis-à-vis God, necessarily imbibes what it perceives to be the attributes of God into their own preponderances and activities in the world as human and individual agents. Thusly, the buffered self seeks a life of absolute autonomy, as monadic centers circumscribed purely by their own self-perception as gods among other gods; each god ostensibly capable of constructing their own worlds, their own truths.

The above, on a sketch, represents how it is that I have personally appropriated a couple of Taylor’s themes as critical mechanisms that allow me, in an attempt, to find some semblance of intellectual and sociological order, even whilst living in the midst of a world wherein each individual human agent believes themselves to be gods. From a biblically narratival vantage point what I have been describing, clearly, is a reference to the fall of humanity as that is described in Genesis 3.

The Christian Existence: Contra Systemic Dualisms

Posted on by

The right and left binary represents a dualism that genuine Christian theology rejects. Dualism generally says that there are equal and opposing forces, light versus dark, in a cyclical battle of yin and yang. The Kingdom of God is grounded in the reality of God become [hu]man. There is no dualism, no competitive relationship between the fallen and unfallen; all of reality is subsumed within the singular person of Jesus Christ. Thus, Christianity, the Gospel comes with different expectations. The Christian is not in a loggerhead with the darkness, per se; the Christian moves and breathes from within the atmosphere of the heavenly Zion. This reality is not of this world, and thus not of the dualisms that often frame this world system. We are emissaries of the living God in the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. In that sense we move differently than others, not being shaped by what the world optically presents to us as if it gets to determine reality by brute presence.

The aforementioned should have an impact on the Christian existence in this world. It should keep us moving towards and from the upward call in Christ Jesus. Politics, culture wars, and the like should never be defined by the whims and whams of the base person, the profane systems of thought progenerated by this world system; the evil age. Jesus is already reigning at the right hand of the Father (see 1 Cor 15), and will come once and for all riding on His white steed with the sword of God proceeding from His mouth. Maranatha

On Being Churchless in the 21st Century: A Personal Tale

Posted on by

It is not easy to find a sound, healthy Bible teaching evangelical church in the 21st century. For example, we (my wife and I) have been without a stable church for quite some time. We have “church-shopped,” and that gets almost defeatist after a while. It isn’t that we’re looking for the “perfect church,” not at all. We are simply looking for a church where the Word of God is opened and exposited in a way where Christ is central; where the Gospel is central; where genuine Christian proclamation is taking place. Unfortunately, the MANY churches we have visited over these last many years are still more concerned with being “relevant,” and user-friendly than they are with being biblically faithful. But then you’ll visit a church that is ostensibly biblically and doctrinally focused, and all your generally left with are John MacArthur-like churches. Or you’ll visit a church that is either, in fact, a mega church, or aspires to be one. Or maybe, you’ll visit a church that has a bunch of satellite campuses, with one mothership campus that keeps the franchise steady. But in the main, most so-called evangelical churches out there in the 21st century, are indeed peddling what has been called a moralistic therapeutic deism; so not really even the Christian religion, but a folk religion. They literally have a Ted Talk for the sermon and a tryout for American Idol as “worship.” And this is pervasive.

On top of all of that, and at a personal level, my job doesn’t make things very easy either. I work on-call which in and of itself makes it prohibitive towards looking for a solid church. And then when it works out to try and do that, we end up wasting our time at the types of churches described previously. So, we are in a hard spot; and I don’t think we are alone. What we have been doing in lieu of being able to find a worthwhile church is live viewing a church online that used to be my parents church, and that we attended back in the day in Lakewood (Bellflower), CA. I am friends with the senior pastor, and they have something very unique going as far as churches go in the 21st century. But ultimately, while it is good to still get the Word taught, doing online church isn’t sustainable; as far as meeting bodily needs, such as fellowship, friendship, and an immediacy to one-another that Christians ideally ought to have; indeed, as the body of Christ meeting physically around the Word taught, and the Bread and Welch’s Grape Juice consumed (i.e., communion, “Lord’s supper” etc.)

So, as you think about it, please pray that we will finally be able to find a healthy sound Bible teaching church that we can settle into. Thank you.

Maximus and the Damascene Against Dualisms and the New Age

Posted on by

Au contraire! John of Damascus, Maximus the Confessor et al. countered the persistence of the dualists into their own time; indeed, as they stood as Christian theologians of the East in the 7th and 8th centuries. For Augustine, in his pagan days, he partook of an early dualistic religion, known as Manicheanism. This type of dualism, indeed, as it was imbibed by the Gnostics, and even some so-called Christian Gnostics, gained a foothold into the life of the Church, the world, that would perdure even into our present in the 21st century. For the Confessor and the Damascene, they were fighting some heir-apparents of the earlier formed Manicheanism and Gnosticism simpliciter. In their day, respectively, these folks were identified as the Paulicians, and latterly (after Maximus and John), the Bogomils. In nuce, these dualistic systems attempted to identify two competing principles within the world, within the principle of all reality; such that, when applied to God, they saw Light versus Darkness as two equidistant primordial combatants. As a result, they posited two principles largess, rather than just the one that Christian trinitarian monotheism thought from. Even so, these heretical dualistic groups had enough purchase among the people, that people like Maximus, in his respective time, and John of Damascus in his, felt the need to counter them through Christian and biblical theological reasoning (which also entailed some metaphysics).

Jaroslav Pelikan describes the competition this way:

While maintaining against Judaism that the Shema did not preclude the doctrine of the Trinity, but rather, when correctly understood, included it, orthodox Christian monotheism simultaneously opposed any effort to modify the singleness of the divine nature through the introduction of a double principle [ἀρχή]. The Trinity did not imply any compromise in the fundamental axiom that the divine principle was one, and in opposition to the Filioque this axiom was reinforced. To the dualists the orthodox declared: “For our part, we do not follow your godless ways, nor do we say that there are two principles which are to be separated according to location. But, declaring that there is one Creator of all things and a single principle of all things, we affirm the dogma . . . of the Father and the Son.” “The confession of two principles, an evil god and a good one” was understood by the orthodox to be the “first article” of the Paulician creed, taken over from the Manicheans. From the Manicheans and Paulicians the notion of a multiple principle had in turn been taken over by later dualist groups, particularly the Bogomils. Biblical justification for it was found in such passages as Matthew 7:18, which said that there were two different sources for the two different kinds of deeds, or 2 Corinthians 4:3–4, which spoke of “the god of this world.” Replying to such exegesis, the orthodox produced biblical evidence that the very rejection of the authority of God by the world was evidence for one principle rather than two; for Christ “came to his own home, and his own people received him not.”

                Although in later theologians the proof from Scripture took a more prominent role, in the polemics of John of Damascus such proof was heavily reinforced by logic and metaphysics. When the Manicheans contended that the two principles “have absolutely nothing in common,” he replied that if they both existed, they had to have at least existence in common. By their very use of the term “principle,” the Manicheans contradicted their own dualism, for a principle had to be single. As in mathematics the unit was the principle of every number, so it was in metaphysics. If there was an individual principle for each existing thing, then these many principles had in turn to have a single principle behind them. Otherwise there would not be only the two principles of God and matter, as the dualists taught, but a plurality of them throughout the universe. Not only was this an absurdity on the face of it, but it negated the meaning of the word “principle.” Good and evil were not to be explained on the basis of a dual principle, but rather “the good is both the principle and the goal of all things, even of those things that are evil.”[1]

Okay, that is all well and interesting. But what I want to do with this is to attempt to identify how this type of dualism is presently present within the 21st century world, whether that be in the sacred or secular.

My simple observation is this (and this is for Christian consumption, primarily): The devil himself loves nothing more than leading people into the delusion that in fact he is equiprimordial with the living and triune God. He likes to lead his kingdom of darkness, and even us Christians who are still, in principle, in it (but not of it), into the fantasy that his powers of darkness represent a real-life contradiction of God’s life and Light. It is easy, in our bodies of death as we are, to give into this satanic delusion; indeed, even as Christians. In this current world of chaos and disorder it might in fact appear that the devil and minions have an upper hand on God’s economy in the world in Jesus Christ. But just as the Paulicians and Bogomils logic of antiChrist proportions were defeated, indeed, imploded, by folks like Maximus and John of Damascus, in their own respective ways, that same theo-logic applies against the inherent dualisms of our day in the 21st century.

Hence, there is no absolute dualism between the living God, and the minions of darkness. As the Apostle Paul triumphantly declares: “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him” (Colossians 2:13–15). Jesus as the Theanthropos came and destroyed, not an abstract evil, but a concrete one as that has polluted the human being, from the inside/out. Even though evil and sin remain consequential things in this ‘evil age,’ they eschatologically have already been put to death by the Godman, Jesus Christ. He currently is reigning at the Right Hand of the Father, which so contraposes the so called god of darkness, that the apparent war can be said to have never even really gotten off of the ground for the satanic horde’s parasitic “nothingness” economy.

And so, our Lord, contra the dualistic-delusion exhorts: “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).” He has not left us as orphans, or as defeated ones. What can death do to us? The same thing it did to Jesus. Though we die, yet shall we live. The forces of this current world order have been defeated; death has been put to death; the scourge of sin has lost its power; and we in fact are the victorious ones as we stand in the Victor of God’s grace for the world in Jesus Christ. This doesn’t necessarily make our daily lives easier, per se, but it does let us know that even though we might feel like we are drowning in the scuz of this world system, even within our own bodies of death, we know as Christians that the power of God, the Gospel funds our lives in Christ by the Holy Spirit, to the point that we can stand in victory. Even if such victory, to the dark-system, looks like defeat (like weakness and foolishness).

Dualism is a wicked evil in our world. Most Westerners are caught in its clutches by their submission to New Age theatrics and demonism (this is ironic because New Ageism is based broadly in Eastern monism—I need to flesh this out more fully since New Age ostensibly denies dualisms::I don’t think they actually achieve that though). But as we have already visited, these types of dualistic movements have been present throughout the world order since at least Genesis 3. And yet, even before these fake-power-plays came into existence in the natural world order, God had already pre-destined Himself to be for the world, to not be God without, but with us in Jesus Christ. The Enemy, the darkness has never had an eschatological chance in hell to get beyond the boundary of hell God had always already determined for it in His free life as the Deus incarnandus (the God to be incarnate).

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600—1700), Volume 2 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 219–20.

On the Death of Scott Adams and “His” Saving Faith

Posted on by

The creator of the Dilbert comic series, Scott Adams, just died today after a long battle with metastatic prostate cancer. He was also a popular author focusing on matters of daily life, and cultural commentary. I followed him on X. He had been publishing videos discussing his cancer, and the state he was in at that moment. Only a few weeks ago he said that he didn’t have much time left. Just a day or two ago he was placed into hospice care; and today he died. During these last few weeks, he said that he was considering becoming a Christian. His thinking sounded something like Pascal’s divine wager: i.e., if the Gospel is real then it will only be of great eternal benefit for the believer; if it isn’t real, then there was no loss. He wrote this a few weeks ago. But on his deathbed, he wrote the following:

I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, and I look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part about me not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. And I hope I am still qualified for entry.[1]

I’ve seen many responses to Scott’s admission from Christians stating that, unfortunately, they don’t think Scott was a real believer. They assert that he was simply using Jesus as a means to ensure that if God and Jesus are real, that he would end up in heaven. They don’t take this to be a saving, effectual faith. And yet, I would argue that it is most surely saving faith.

How many among us had all of the details, had some level of certain certitude that Christ was real, or that God’s grace in Christ could actually save us? We surely were placing our hope in Jesus for just that. But there was no level of certitude required in order to validate a real saving faith before God. In Scott’s final statement, noted above, he did what every single one of us have done, in order to come into a full relationship with the triune God. Some of us did that when we were young children (like me), others of us did that in our young adulthood, some later in life; and in Scott’s case (like the thief on the cross), on his deathbed. He didn’t go to the Buddha, or Mohammed, or the spirit god in the heavens; he didn’t go to the universal soul where atman is brahman for salvation. He had enough witness around him, and conviction of the Holy Spirit to know that if he were going to be eternally justified, saved before God, that it could only be through Jesus Christ.

In his above statement he ends it with, ‘And I hope I am still qualified for entry.’ He still didn’t fully grasp the freeness of the Gospel, and yet he thrust himself upon the very grace of the Gospel in his final hour. Of all people, genuine Christians ought to see this as a saving cry for mercy to the living God. Of all people, Christians should recognize Scott’s final plea, even entwined in much misunderstanding, as our own cry to the risen Christ. Scott waited till the very end to give his life to Christ. He didn’t have time to be fully discipled into the free grace he became participant with the second he said, ‘I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, and I look forward to spending an eternity with him. . ..’ If that isn’t a saving confession, just as Christ’s plea to the Father, ‘Father into thy hands I commit my spirit,’ then God forbid it: I am not saved either. It seems to me that many of the Christians who are claiming that Adams didn’t have saving faith don’t really understand the freeness of the Gospel themselves. If anyone ought to be concerned, it ought to be these folks. And yet, God’s grace and mercy, just as in Adams’ case is big enough to absorb such petty and childish and immature misunderstandings as well.

Furthermore, and this a theological note: Since there isn’t a threshold of faith, as if some type of feeling, or created quality we can manipulate, there is no abstract creaturely register that must be punched through which someone can be saved. Salvation is purely of God in Christ; indeed, that is the whole point of the Gospel. God in Christ assumed our humanity, and by his poverty for us, he made us rich through participation with Him, as He resurrected all of humanity, objectively (carnally), in his vicarious humanity, thereby making the way for all who would say Yes out of His Yes and Amen for us by the Holy Spirit, to become spiritually and subjectively participant with His risen and ascended humanity for us. This is what grounded and grounds Scott’s final placement of trust in Jesus Christ. Not some level of salvific knowledge. Not full awareness of the triunity of God. Just that he was a beggar in need of a big hand to save him out of the pit of despondency he found himself in in his hospice room. The Way for Adams to be saved, even at the last minute, was always already a reality insofar that God freely elected to become Scott, to become us, in order that by the grace of adoption, we might become Him; as co-heirs with Jesus Christ; thus participating and sharing in the glory that the Son has always and eternally shared with the Father in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Scott wasn’t aware of all of the mechanics, and neither are we, really. But he knew that if there was and is salvation to be had, then it had to be through Jesus Christ. And by God’s wisdom and mercy that is all that is required.

I look forward to fellowshipping with Scott Adams in the Eschaton someday soon! Maranatha

[1] source here.

Everyone is a Theologian, Even the aTheologians

Posted on by

Friedrich Nietzsche

I don’t think most know this: but every decision a person makes in this life is informed by theology. That doesn’t mean it is being informed by a genuinely Christian theology, but theology just the same. Many people presume that they aren’t religious, and thus further presume that they simply live a-theological lives. But the problem with that, one anyways, is that in a world that is contingent upon God’s Word, His eternal Logos, Jesus Christ, for its ongoing existence, everything in such a world necessarily becomes theological (“religious” even). If this is true (and be sure, it is!), it behooves the Christian and the non-Christian alike to work at having the good theology; indeed, as that is delivered afresh anew as Jesus Christ at the Father’s Right Hand, in-breaks into this world by the Holy Spirit into each one of our lives on the daily (second-by-second). You might think you’re free from this, oh dearest self-proclaimed “non-religious” person. Jesus makes clear that the Holy Spirit comes convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come. And so, this invites each and every one of us to live the repentant life. The life that Christ first lived for us every step, every breath He took for us as He lived here among us some two-thousand years ago. It is the life of the cross; we are called to take up the cross of Christ daily and follow Him. To be sure, He has already done that first for us. Hence, He has called us, and is calling us, and is calling you to walk in the power of His might, who is the Holy Spirit of the living God.

We are all theologians in this world, whether we might like it or not. Even if you think you’re an a-theologian (think atheist or agnostic, or “non-religious”), even so, you make “theological” decisions every day of your life. It is impossible not to whilst we inhabit a world that has been graciously created and recreated by the triune God; in a world where every single human life is held and made in the image of God, who is the image of Christ.

Barth’s Engagement with Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science: A Quasi Critique of the New Age

Posted on by

Mary Baker Eddy

The following represents something that I found rather surprising in Barth’s Church Dogmatics. In a context where Barth is discussing the strength and weakness of the human body, he goes into a small-print excursus on Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy. As I have been reading through the CD what I have found is that many of the themes Barth is known for, while present, only really represent a fraction of his overall corpus. Indeed, those themes (election etc.) are contextually conditioning for all of his work, even his thinking on the human body and physicality. But still, Barth is far more interesting than many folks might imagine, within their caricatured and reductionistic picture of him.

For the remainder of this post, I am going to quote Barth’s full excursus on Christian Science, if nothing else to illustrate the types of exposures Barth had to the broader world of ideas in his 20th century Swiss milieu. Ironically, here Barth is engaging with a fringe American “thinker,” in the person of Mary Baker Eddy.

The tenet that sickness is an illusion is the basic negative proposition which in the seventies of the last century the American Mary Baker Eddy said that she did not lay down but “discovered” through the authoritative inspiration of a book now regarded as canonical, namely, Christian Science. What was at first a small group of adherents has since spread to all parts of the world in the form of religious societies which are particularly popular among the upper and middle classes and more especially among women. Karl Holl has depicted and done it almost too much justice in a careful study entitled “Scientismus” Ges. Aufs. Z. Kgsch. III, 1928, 460 f.). The positive basis of this teaching is that God is the only reality, that he is Spirit and that the whole creation is only a reflection of his spiritual essence. Apart from God there are only powers, which in reality are only thoughts. All matter as such represents a mere appearance, and the same is true of all such associated features as sin, sickness, evil and death. Man as the image of God always was and is and shall be perfect. Everything that contradicts this perfection is in reality only an illusion and misunderstanding rooted in the forgetfulness of God, which in turn evokes fear. And fear is the true basis of all illness; indeed, it is actually illness itself. For fear creates a picture of illness which then falls externally upon the body. “You maintain that an ulcer is painful; but that is impossible, for matter without mind is no painful. The ulcer merely reveals by inflammation and swelling an appearance of pain, and this appearance is called an ulcer.” The true and psychical man is not touched by it. He is only as it were enveloped in a mist and has disappeared from consciousness. Evil is unreal. “Take away fear, and at the same time you have also removed the soil on which sickness thrives.” Jesus was and is the embodiment of truth which scatters and breaks through the mist of these false appearances. The power bestowed and the task presented by Him consist in recognising that God is Spirit. It thus consists in freeing oneself from the false appearances of sin (which even Mrs. Eddy regards as particularly evil, is replaced by “mind-reading,” which is possible at a great distance and in which the thought images which only be a matter of acknowledging the cure already effected by God, of understanding His completed work and of initiating it in the patient. The “healer”—the name given to the active members of the Christian Science Association—is not then to rouse and fortify the will of others through his own, but simply to make a free path in the sufferer for the divine operation. “Call to mind the presence of health and the fact of harmonious existence, until the body corresponds to the normal condition of health and harmony.”

This doctrine has several features which remind us of the message of the New Testament, and which are of course derived from it: the recognition of fear as the basic evil in man’s relation to God; an unconditional trust in the efficacy of prayer; and bold reference to a work already completed by God. But these are all devalued by the fact that they are related to a view which has nothing to do with that of the New Testament but in the light of it can only be described as utterly false. The fact that Christian Science can undoubtedly point to successes in healing—as well as disastrous failures—cannot of itself commend it to Christians. As is well-known, the magicians of Pharaoh could do quite a number of things. And the concession that Karl Holl (loc. cit., p. 477) is willing to make, namely, that its positive presupposition at least is correct, is one which cannot really be made to it. God is indeed the basis of all reality. But He is not the only reality. As Creator and Redeemer He loves a reality which different from Himself, which depends upon Him, yet which is not merely a reflection nor the sum of His powers and thoughts, but which has in face of Him an independent and distinctive nature and is the subject of is own history, participating in its own perfection and subjected to its own weakness. As the coming kingdom, the incarnation of the Word and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in His true humanity are not just an appearance, so it is with man in general, whether in his nature of perversion, in his psychical being or his physical, in his divine likeness or his sin and transgression. It is because Mrs. Eddy did not understand this that sin, evil and death—in conquest of which Jesus Christ did not “disappear from our level of consciousness” but actually died on the cross—are for her mere “appearances” of human thinking, and redemption is only the act of man in which he submerges himself in God and leads a life submerged in God in order that God may work in him, putting an end to those “appearances” or thought images and bringing to light the perfection of psychical essence which was never lost, the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being. On this point we can only say that both the Old and New Testaments regard not only God and man, not only sin, evil and death and their conquest, but also sickness in a different light. They certainly do not see it as an illusion, and its conquest as the dispelling of this illusion. Whether Christian Science is really “science” need to occupy us here. But there can be no doubt that it is not “Christian” science.[1]

As Barth describes Christian Science vis-à-vis Holler, what we get is a type of pantheistic, Eastern monistic, neo-Gnostic mind cult, that today, and in a broad sense, fits well with the New Age ideology that is almost absolutely pervasive; even among professing Christians (Yoga, “Best Life Now,” self-actualization, therapeuticism etc. etc.). Surely, there are still Christian Science centers here and there, but they are mostly dilapidated signs of a past long been surpassed; except, ideologically. The New Age seeks to liberate and control the mind by abdicating it to the universal soul, the universal mind, the ancient secrets of the forever cosmos. And so that remains the universal thread that attaches something like a Christian Science with the New Age, as a broader category of the same thing.

What I found interesting about this engagement with Barth is that he felt compelled to engage it at all. But I’m glad he did. What this ought to help illustrate is that, indeed, there really is “nothing new under the sun.” Ideas and their ideologies are cycled and re-cycled over and over again; just in newer shinier packaging. Underneath it is the same old jalopy. Christian beware! As noted, these types of psychical mind cults represent the precise thing Christ came to save us from; our inward curved selves (homo incurvatus in se). There is no inner-salvation latent in our supposed Caspar-like-ghosts; the universe has no soul; there is no Word of God from within. There is only God extra nos (outside of us), and His iustitia aliena (alien righteousness) in Christ pro nobis (for us). Without Him in-breaking and disrupting our lives with His ‘militant Grace,’ we are simply enslaved in bondage to the hooks of our own thoughts and intellects and hearts. We might attempt to construct a way of salvation within the tempests of our own self-possessed cathedrals of grey matter, as Mrs. Eddy attempted to systemize in her own self-deluded way. But in the end without the transposition of our ‘bodies of death,’ into the grave with the body of death Christ took for us, and then our transposition of new life and resurrection with Christ’s elect body of ascension, we are of all people the most to be pitied.  

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4 §55 [364-5] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 39-41.