A Very Slippery Slope
A Very Slippery Slope
More than a century ago, the Church in England was warned that it was "going downhill at breakneck speed"! That prophetic alarm was ignored and the decline has continued unabated and in earnest. The present-day charismatic and pentecostal drift into extra-biblical mysticism is its latest manifestation (and casualty).
In 1887, the Baptist "prince of preachers", Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), vigorously cautioned Christians that the Church was on a "downgrade", being "enamoured with worldly wisdom more than zeal for truth", and preferring "the husks of theological speculations...to the wholesome bread of Gospel truth".
(C.H. Spurgeon began his London ministry at the age of 20...eventually building up a congregation of 6000, which met at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. His preaching motto was, "I take my text and make a beeline to the Cross.")
The "foe" as he saw it, was "liberal theology", then beginning to be expressed (for the most part) by scholars in German theological schools. Many of these men were "children" of the 1700s Enlightenment...a philosophical movement which optimistically attached unbounded importance to and confidence in the power of the human mind. Man's capacity to reason became godlike, and everything (including the Bible) was set beneath its bar and sway. Overnight a revolution occurred. The Scriptures, which for millennia had been the tutor and the judge of the human race, became the object of humanity's judgement.
"As for the person who hears My words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects Me and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day." (John 12.47-48)
"But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does." (James 1.25)
This revolution led to a "christian" creed described by the post-liberal theologian, Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) as, "A God without wrath, (brings) man without sin, into a kingdom without judgement, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."
One hundred years earlier, Charles Spurgeon, had discerned the early leanings into this nose-dive. He received no applause from his peers...rather their scorn and rejection. Those closest to him believed the agony and stress of this "downgrade" controversy led to his untimely death. But throughout his final, lonely and tear-soaked years on earth, he unequivocally and intelligently expounded from his pulpit his complete confidence in the inspiration and given-ness of the whole Bible, the sovereignty of God in salvation, the full deity of Jesus Christ, and the power and efficacy of His Atonement through the Cross.
"Our want of faith has done more mischief to us than all the devils in hell, and all the heretics on earth. Some cry out against the Pope, and others against agnostics; but it is our own unbelief which is our worst enemy," Spurgeon said.
"Oh! Spirit of God, being back Thy Church to a belief in the Gospel! Bring back her ministers to preach it once again with the Holy Ghost, and not striving after wit and learning. Then shall we see Thine arm made bare, O God, in the eyes of all the people, and the myriads shall be brought to rally round the throne of God and the Lamb," he prayed.
"Liberal theology" has continued its unrelenting colonisation of the Church through to today. But in this essay, I am more concerned to identify its impact upon those parts of the Christian Community which would automatically think of themselves as being doctrinally traditional, conservative, orthodox...in other words, Bible-believing.
Friedrich Schleiemacher (1768-1834) is generally considered the "father" of "liberal theology". In his writings he was concerned to emphasise the following:
* That the essence of religion is not "revelation outside of the self", but "feeling inside of the self".
* That "internal religious experience" is more important than "defining external religious truth".
This thinking contains the seeds of modern, spiritual subjectivism, which is now moving like wildfire through the tinder-dry imaginations and ambitions of Believers earnestly seeking to dwell on the cutting-edge of God's redeeming work in the world today.
A sincere desire for national revival is surely very close to the heart of the Saviour at this hour...the last hour of the last day of the Last Days. But that desire when unbridled by God's objective revelation of the truth, the Bible, and awash in the uncertain brew of subjectivism, becomes toxic and destructive.
Such disorder moved Jessie Penn-Lewis to replace Scripture-ordained water baptism with flag-waving over converts. It was what led the great apostle of healing, Alexander Dowie, to end his days holding court attired as an Old Testament high priest. It propelled the decline of William Branham into the conviction that he was a "reincarnation" of the prophet Elijah. Great and mighty 20th C saints each one, whose days ended in a "murkwood" of confusion (even deception) when the voice within smothered and quenched the voice without.
"When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquired of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn" (Isaiah 8.19-20)
"Believe God, that plainly (unmistakably, obviously, clearly) speaketh in His Word. And further than the Word teacheth you, you shall neither believe the one nor the other. The Word of God is plain in itself, and if there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, which is never contrarious to Himself, explains the same more clearly in other places." (John Knox, Scotland 1505-72)
I want you to notice here particularly, the contrast drawn by both Isaiah the Prophet and John Knox the Scottish Reformer. For both of these extraordinary scholar-prophets, God's objective Word is out-in-the-open...clear, intelligible. The "spiritual" words of those other than the Lord are murky, cryptic, ambiguous. These speakers announce one thing, and then later say that they meant something else. They exaggerate and obfuscate, and are casual with true truth. They appear willing even to negate the truth of the Bible...and in so doing, seem to be quite unaware, or even worse, not to care.
The object of this message is not to speak disparagingly of friends whose views concerning the inspiration of Scripture (intuition, illumination, dynamic, verbal, dictation?) are different or "lower" than my own. Nor is my goal to appear to disdain other friends who seem to be headed into the dangerous currents of extra-biblical mysticism. (See Postscript)
There is a mysticism which is holy and healthy. And there is a mysticism which is not.
"What you heard from me (the Apostle), keep as the pattern of sound (healthy) teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 1.13)
"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound (healthy) doctrine. Instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4.3-4 and Titus 1.9, 2.1)
Bernard of Clairvaux (France, 1090-1153) is one of the Church's greatest mystical (charismatic) scholars. The contemplative (prayer) movement he reformed, still thrives today. Even today's "driest" Evangelicals would most likely be astonished (abashed?) at his dependence upon and abundant use of Scripture in the 300 sermons of his which are still in circulation.
"Liberal" theology asks that the Bible be brought to the bar of human reason, so that all which seems irrational or unthinkable contained therein can be discarded as "myth" or mistake!
The wisdom of God summons us to the bar of the "plain" truth of the Bible. There we are invited to discard everything (especially beliefs and spiritual revelations and experiences) which are not in unambiguous harmony with its clear, straightforward Light.
"How priceless is Your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings...For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light." (Psalm 36.7-9)
POSTSCRIPT: "There subsists an essential and vital connection between the eternal Word of God...and that written Word which testifies of Him...for He is the centre and kernel of the inspired record.
"It appears like reasoning in a circle when we say we receive the Bible because of Christ, and we receive Christ through the Bible...The difficulty disappears when we remember...that the same Spirit of God convinces us of the supremacy of Christ and of the supremacy of Scripture.
And, accordingly, we find that as the hearts of men are attracted by Jesus Christ...their minds are filled with reverence and love for the Scripture.
"For higher than the Bible, is - not reason, not the Church, not the Christian consciousness - but, the Holy Ghost, Who reveals Christ in the written Word, so that it becomes to us what it truly is, the Word of God, the voice of the Beloved." (Dr Adolph Saphir, 1831-91)
