Faith Frauds

05.31.10
J.A. Matteson

"If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it." John 14:14

These words of the Lord Jesus Christ express the delightful reality of God’s sovereign oversight and providential activity in bringing to pass the simple petitions of His people. But the saint needs to exercise vigilance while interpreting and applying this wonderful promise for there are in the twenty-first century faith frauds who grossly distort it for their own benefit, leading the simple astray.

It is fashionable these days in word-of-faith teaching (a.k.a. positive confession) to view faith as a “force” able to turn the universe in any direction one pleases. The key to this odd practice is to employ a faith formula, focusing attention on the words “in Jesus’ name,” repeating them ad nausm. Proponents of word-of-faith theology hold to and espouse a deficient Christology, failing to correctly understand what praying in the Savior’s name entails. In this dangerous system the sovereign Lord of creation becomes subservient to the desires of depraved fallen creatures, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” And characteristically the faith frauds make requests along the lines of the temporal, beseeching the Almighty for perfect health, abundant wealth, exalted position, and unbridled power. Often these petitions are cloaked in religious garb and often deceive the naïve’.

Central to this faith formula is the metaphysical application of positive confession whereby the fulfillment of petitions are viewed as an absolute certainty, regardless of their essence, if the one making the request does not waiver in belief that God will deliver what they have asked for. If the request does not come to pass it is due to the petitioner’s sin or lack of faith. Beloved, this interpretation and application of our blessed Lord’s words is a sinister warping of His intent and is in direct contradiction to the entirety of holy writ. This grave distortion does not represent biblical faith and is, in fact, not Christian; rather it finds its roots in metaphysics and is eerily similar to the faith practices of pagan cults worldwide.

To the charlatan word-of-faith teachers one must never utter a petition with the words, “Lord, if it be Your will”, for these words are viewed as a “negative confession”, sure to undermine the petition. But let us appeal to the Scripture, how does it instruct the believer to pray? Beginning with the Lord Jesus Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, we note a subservient attitude before His Father, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done" (Matt.26:42).

The Apostle’s followed the Lord’s example by placing their petitions in subjection to the perfect will of God, for Paul confesses before the church in Corinth, “But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant but their power” (1 Cor. 4:19). And he makes a similar statement of contrition to the elders at Ephesus, “but taking leave of them and saying, ‘I will return to you again if God wills,’ he set sail from Ephesus” (Acts 18:21). Again, speaking to the Corinthians he humbly states, “For I do not wish to see you now just in passing; for I hope to remain with you for some time, if the Lord permits” (1 Cor. 16:7). The Apostle James also exhibits the Lord’s model of subservience to the will of God in his petitions and teaching, “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that’” (Jas. 4:15). And then there is John who stated, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 Jn. 5:14). While dozens of other similar passages may be cited, believers may safely make four conclusions with regard to our Lord’s instruction in John 14:14.

First, biblical faith is in prayer is the assurance that God is able to answer our petitions as uttered, not that He always will grant them as uttered, in this regard the Lord Jesus instructs blind men seeking sight, “When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" They said to Him, "Yes, Lord" (Matt. 9:28).

Second, to submit your petitions to the will of God acknowledges His Lordship and absolute sovereignty over His creation, including your life. A submissive attitude is pleasing to your Heavenly Father who desires your complete dependence and trust in His wisdom concerning the variables that make up your life; this attitude of submissiveness to the will of the Lord is seen in Mary, the Lord’s mother, “And Mary said, "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her” (Lk. 1:38).

Third, to submit your petitions to the will of God is to acknowledge his omniscience in light of “working all things together for good” (Rom. 8:28). Believers do not have complete knowledge of the will of God concerning specific situations are wise to submit their requests to Him who knows all things perfectly. The Apostle Paul, knowing that God is able to do all things, was satisfied when his petitions regarding the thorn in the flesh was not answered as he had originally requested, “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Cor. 12:19).

Lastly, to pray according to the will of God is to confess your position as a servant to the One who is Lord of all, and Who knows all; Job models a contrite attitude and confession as an ignorant mortal man before the Almighty, “Then Job answered the LORD and said, ‘I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me. I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes’" (Job 42:1-6). Praying in Jesus’ name is to pray in accordance to His perfect will, and like Job believers do not know the perfect will of God; therefore, they are wise to follow his example by submitting their petitions before God who is perfectly righteous, just, merciful, long-suffering, and Whose lovingkindness endures forever. In the final analysis God’s will for our lives is far better than anything we might imagine ourselves, and so we are wise to submit our petitions to the Providence of God Who shed His blood as a ransom for our sin.

May the Church rise up against the faith frauds and rebuke them for their heresy that they might be restored to fellowship with God and His Church.

Copyright (c) 2010 Immutable Word Ministries ("...the word of our God stands forever." Isa. 40:8).

The Rationale of Hell

By John H. Gerstner

“Sin against God in God’s idea is infinite, and the punishment is infinite.”

The basic proof for hell is the Bible. We have shown in our “Jonathan Edwards and the Bible”1 how he argues that it is rational to believe that the Bible is the revelation of God. We need not re-examine the biblical evidence that hell is true since it is a part of our entire discussion above and below. Edwards also argued rationally that if there is a God he would reveal himself and that the Bible is the only such revelation. Likewise, if God intended to judge the world he would reveal that fact and so the Bible does.

The rationalization for hell is in terms of harmony or proportion. “According to thy fear (terribleness) so is thy wrath.”2 Because of this proportion the suffering of offenders must be infinite as is the majesty of the offended one. Even present suffering is in proportion to the manifestation of the divine majesty.

As God’s favour is infinitely desirable so it is a part of his infinite awful majesty that his displeasure is infinitely dreadful which it would not be if it were contrary to the perfection of his nature to punish eternally. If God’s majesty were not infinite and his displeasure were not infinitely dreadful he would be less glorious.3

An offense against an infinite being is greater than any finite degree of badness and is therefore an infinite degree of badness.4 If one adds greatness to a being he adds greatness to an offense against him. Thus he adds infinite badness since the offense is against an infinite being.

Here a criticism arises: a finite person does not have a complete idea of the infinite excellence and therefore cannot be guilty of infinite offense. Edwards answers that “eternal punishment is just in the same respects infinite as the crime, and in no other.” So, the crime is infinite though not in the one committing it; and the punishment is accordingly administered: “it is itself infinite, but is never suffered infinitely. Indeed if the soul was capable of having at once a full and complete idea of the eternity of misery, then it would properly be infinite suffering.” The soul being incapable of this, “eternity is suffered as an infinite God is offended, that is, according to the comprehension of the mind. . . . Sin against God in God’s idea is infinite, and the punishment is infinite no otherwise but in the idea of God. . . .”5

There are rational arguments for hell as well.6 Some lie in plain view — namely, the pain and suffering of men in this present world. This itself shows that God is “not averse to have them suffer.” If God were, Edwards seems to be supposing, he would not have so ordained. He could have prevented suffering and he could terminate it, if he pleased. Empirical facts settle one point indisputably: God and creature-pain are not mutually exclusive. The usual form of the problem of evil (evil proves that God is either not omnipotent or not good) is false. God is omnipotently good and he ordains evil. It is therefore good that there should be evil. This theodicy is a foundation for the possibility of hell, which, when justice and wisdom are added, becomes the necessity for hell.

That brings us to the argument for hell from moral government. “Wicked men have no reason to doubt the truth of anything that is said in the word of God, concerning the future punishment of the ungodly, or to suspect whether it be true.”7 God made this world and must regulate it, as a moral creator would, according to some rule by which it must ultimately be judged and sentenced.8

While Edwards does not usually populate hell with named individuals, as Dante does, he is quite specific about Antiochus Epiphanes, who persecuted the Jewish church in the intertestamental period. Acting apparently on his own moral inclinations, Edwards would not have wanted Antiochus ever to be delivered from his endless, indescribable tortures of body and soul because of what he did to the bodies of men. Some of the brutal Roman Catholic persecutors seemed to Edwards to deserve endless suffering: “the extremity of hell torments don’t seem too much for them.”9 He defends himself: it is our insensitivity to sin that prevents our realizing how hell-deserving sin is. Our “devilish dispositions” make sin not appear “horrid.” Is Edwards speaking for himself? Does he really think and feel in his own heart that Antiochus and certain popes should endlessly suffer for sins that ended long ago, or is he unconsciously returning to his role as defender of the ways of God? We think that for Edwards these were one and the same.

If a righteous God must punish wicked men, Edwards argues, this punishment must be eternal. Sin, he says, is enmity against the giver of all being. It is rational to suppose that this would incur the hatred of this great Being, and this Being’s hatred and wrath would be as infinite as he is. The sermon on Romans 3:19 enters somewhat thoroughly into this difficult theme. We will summarize this preachment because it catches up in one statement virtually all the lines of Edwards’s reasoning that show the necessity of eternal punishment.

Sereno Dwight wrote that the discourses that, beyond any others Edwards preached, had an immediate saving effect were several from Romans 3:19.

The sermon . . . literally stops the mouth of every reader, and compels him, as he stands before his Judge, to admit, if he does not feel, the justice of his sentence. I know not where to find, in any language, a discourse so well adapted to strip the impenitent sinner of every excuse, to convince him of his guilt, and to bring him low before the justice and holiness of God. According to the estimate of Mr. Edwards, it was far the most powerful and effectual of his discourses, and we scarcely know of any other sermon which has been favoured with equal success.10

This is the only sermon on Romans which was published in Edwards’s lifetime11 (apart from those on Romans 4:5, which were, however, printed as the treatise on Justification by Faith). Its popular title is “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners.” Edwards’s actual doctrine is: “Tis just with God eternally to cast off, and destroy sinners.”12

The sermon begins with a review of the first part of the Epistle to the Romans. Edwards reminds us that his text was written to show that all men, Gentiles and Jews alike, stood condemned. The words of 3:19 sum it all up: “That every mouth may be stopped.” He moves to his doctrine which he develops by two considerations: man’s sinfulness and God’s sovereignty.

First, the “infinitely evil nature of all sin” is shown. This is argued by saying that “a crime is more or less heinous, according as we are under greater or lesser obligations to the contrary,”13 and the preacher maintains that “our obligation to love, honour, and obey any being, is in proportion to his loveliness, honourableness, and authority.”14 From this it is quickly apparent that there is an infinite obligation to obey God and that disobedience is infinitely heinous and, if infinitely heinous, deserves infinite punishment. In answer to an objection against such punishment on the ground of the certainty of sin, Edwards presents a principle that is a major thesis in his great work on The Freedom of the Will: “The light of nature teaches all mankind, that when an injury is voluntary, it is faulty, without any manner of consideration of what there might be previously to determine the futurition of that evil act of the will.”15

The sovereignty of God in the punishment of sinners is considered next.16 First, God’s sovereignty relieved God of any obligation to keep men from sinning17 in the first creation. Second, it was also God’s right to determine whether every man should be tried individually or by a representative.18 After the Fall, God had a sovereign right to redeem or not to redeem, and to redeem whom he pleased if he pleased.19 The rest of the sermon, approximately three times the length of the development, is given over to a probing application which, it is not surprising, found many out. Much of it is an unfolding of the doctrine that “tis just with God eternally to cast off and destroy you.”20 After showing how proper it would be for God to destroy them since they have despised his mercy, (“there is something peculiarly heinous in sin against the mercy of God more than his other attributes”),21 he also accuses them of being unwilling to come even if they could.22 Edwards ends pastorally with great encouragement to the redeemed, arguing that it was a much greater thing that Christ died than that all the world should burn in hell.23

If this is the rationale for hell, hell is the rationale for much of Edwards’s preaching, in spite of its appearing imprecatory. Speaking of the imprecations of the Bible, he observes:

We cannot think that those imprecations we find in the Psalms and Prophets, were out of their own hearts; for cursing is spoken of as a very dreadful sin in the Old Testament; and David, whom we hear oftener than any other praying for vengeance on his enemies, by the history of his life, was of a spirit very remote from spiteful and revengeful.... And some of the most terrible imprecations that we find in all the Old Testament, are in the New spoken of as prophetical, even those in the 109th Psalm; as in Acts 1:20. . . . They wish them ill, not as personal, but as public enemies to the church of God.

Apparently, therefore, although Edwards regarded himself as the spokesman of God in these sermons, he was still issuing warnings, in God’s name, of what would happen to the impenitent. He was not himself invoking judgment or issuing anathemas.

As a matter of fact, all the evidence tends to indicate that his fervent preaching of hell stemmed hardly more from his obedience to God than from his deep love to mankind. Believing in the reality of hell for the sinner, what would a benevolent man do but everything in his power to warn against such an awful retribution? Some of the exhortations of Edwards are the most drawn-out, pathetic appeals to the unconverted that can be found in the history of the Christian pulpit. This is not the spirit of sadism. Ironically, if Edwards, believing as he did, had been a sadist, he would never have said a word about perdition.

If it be granted that Edwards preached these minatory sermons because he believed that God appointed his preachers to warn men about perdition, we would still expect him to probe the purpose of God in this. And indeed he has much to say about the strategy of preaching perdition. In a word, his reasoning appears to be: hell is about all of spiritual reality that can affect most unconverted men. Self-interest, their motivating principle, would concern them to avoid such a doom. Natural men cannot see God’s excellency, but they can hear his thunders. One is reminded of a character in a Hemingway novel being asked if he ever thought of God and answering that he did sometimes when wakened in the middle of the night by a thunderstorm.

Most wicked men that have heard of hell have these internal uneasinesses, arising from the thoughts of their unsafeness. . . . They don’t manifest it outwardly. . . . Though other men cannot perceive it yet he himself feels it. . . . The most bold, and daring of sinners, are the most fearful and timorous upon a death-bed. How do they fear and tremble. How do they shrink back. How do their proud hearts tremble at the sight of his ghastly visage.24

On the other hand, a principal means of being lost is thinking that there will be no punishment.25

Many of Edwards’s sermons illustrate his use of this doctrine in evangelistic preaching. The sermon on Jude 13 (1) is an example: “The wicked in another world shall eternally be over-whelmed with the most dismal and perfect gloominess of mind.”26 This theme is followed by a searching application, after which the preacher has his people asking, “What shall we do?” His answer is “You must be born again.”27 Unlike most modern evangelists, who would either let the matter rest once they had advised men to be born again or would assure them, in Arminian fashion, that they would be born again if they would believe, Edwards tells his hearers to repair to God for the sovereign gift of the new birth. “In order to that [new birth] you must seek it in the first place.”28 Our evangelist does not believe that faith is a potentiality of corrupt natures. Until God gives the disposition to believe, men remain unbelieving. There is, therefore, nothing that men can do to produce regeneration. But they can seek God (and Edwards always encourages them) in order that God may, if it is his sovereign pleasure, bestow this gift upon them.

On other occasions, Edwards does not proceed from the fear of hell to the topic of the new birth. Rather, he sometimes dilates on the necessity of fleeing the wrath that is to come. Of course, there is only one main end in fleeing, and that is being born again. But in some sermons the preacher is intent merely on having his people flee. No doubt they understood what was involved in fleeing and why they were advised to do it.

To those who protested against Edwards’s preaching in his own day he vindicated his “scare theology” in the following manner:

Some talk of it as an unreasonable thing to fright persons to heaven, but I think it is a reasonable thing to endeavour to fright persons away from hell. They stand upon its brink, and are just ready to fall into it, and are senseless of their danger. Is it not a reasonable thing to fright a person out of a house on fire?29

Edwards never entertained the notion that anyone could be scared into heaven (but only into thinking about it and “seeking” for it). Constantly he speaks as in the sermon on Job 14:5: “There is no promise in the whole Word of God that prayings and cries that arise merely from fear and an expectation of punishment shall be heard especially if they have been willfully negligent till then.”30 He goes further in the sermon on Luke 16:31, “Scripture Warnings Best Adapted to the Conversion of Sinners,”31 by pointing out that sinners are not scared into heaven but that total fear would make them all the more the children of hell. This is the reason he does not believe it would be salutary for men to have a preview of actual hell, as awakening as that might appear to be: “It would make them more like devils; and set them a blaspheming as the damned do. For while the hearts of men are filled with natural darkness, they cannot see the glory of the divine justice appearing in such extreme torments.”32

This remark about the inadvisability of showing a sinner the actual hell, reveals, incidentally, that Edwards sought to avoid engendering a wrong kind of fear. The sermon on Jeremiah 5:21-22 affords a good discussion of the two varieties of fear. The doctrine is that “tis a sottish and unreasonable thing for men not to fear God and tremble at his presence.”33 In the course of defining what this fear is, Edwards finds occasion to reflect that “those that have a sinful fear of God fear God as evil, but a right fear fears him as great and excellent.”34 Thus there is a right and wrong fear of God. This wrong fear of God, fearing him as an evil and dreadful being, drives men from God. “A sinful fear makes men afraid to come to God.”35

But, on the other hand, there is a proper fear of God, as the good and holy being that he is, and this right fear makes men afraid to go from him. If men fear God as they fear the devil, they flee from him, but if they fear him as the being he really is, they will flee to him. It is this wrong fear or “servile fear” which is cast out by love. But love does not cast out this dread of displeasing and offending God, for this holy fear does not only dread the fruits of God’s displeasure but the displeasure itself.

Putting the picture together, we get this Edwardsean rationale for the preaching of hell. First, God commands it and it is essential for a steward to be found faithful to his charge. But, second, God ordains such preaching because the sottish sinner is not interested in the fruits of the Spirit. Therefore, third, he must be shown the danger of his present condition and the impending doom that is hanging over his head. However, fourth, the actual sight of hell would be more than frail man could stand, so only the dim pictures found in the biblical warnings are suitable to awakening. But, fifth, awakening to a state of fear does not take a man out of his natural condition, and though he be desperately frightened, as the devils are, his most importunate prayers (if motivated merely by a sinful self-interest) still offend God, but not so much as their absence. Sixth, and this is the crucial point, in this awakened condition, operating only from self-interest, the sinner may (and the preacher encourages him) ask, “What must I do to be saved?” The answer to that question is not, “Be scared straight” but, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” But, finally, true faith in Christ is not a mere desperate or nominal acceptance of him, as a ticket out of hell, but a genuine, affectionate trust in him for the very loveliness and excellency of his being. This true faith, to be sure, is not in man’s present disposition, but he may and must seek for a new birth from above.

It would be a great mistake, we note in conclusion, to suppose that Edwards preached hell and nothing but hell to unawakened sinners. While he thought that this was the doctrine most likely to awaken them from their corruptions, he also appealed to their love of pleasure. All men want to cultivate pleasure as well as avoid pain. They can be appealed to from either angle. There is no doubt that Edwards believed there was more likelihood of success awakening sottish sinners to their danger from where they were going than from what they were missing.

Notes

1. Tenth: An Evangelical Quarterly 9, 4 (October, 1979), 2-71.
2. Ps. 90:11.
3. Mnn stresses the infinite dement of sin.
4. Mnn.
5. M44.
6. For example, somewhere Edwards observes that if one man’s sin could bring ruin to the whole world it is not inconceivable that a man’s sin could ruin himself eternally. Cf. also M572. Also in the sermon on Exod. 9:12-16 (3) Edwards uses such expressions as “not inconceivable,” “certainly true,” “rational.”
7. The conclusion of the sermon lecture on Rom. 1:20 (“The being and attributes of God are clearly to be seen by the works of creation” (p. 1) (June 1743, Aug. 1756) is interesting because it follows Edwards’s fullest rational demonstration of the existence of God and warns sinners that there is no rational foundation for their hoping to escape the eternal wrath threatened in the Bible.
8. Hickman, II, 485f.
9. M527. “when I read some instances of the monstrous and amazing cruelty of some popish persecutors, I have such a sense of the horridness of what they did that the extremity of hell torments don’t seem too much for them.”
10. Dwight, I, 141, 142.
11. Dissertation on Various Important Subjects (Boston; printed and sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1738), pp. l92f.
12. Ibid., p. 195.
13. Ibid., p. 196.
14. Ibid., p. 197.
15. Ibid., p. 199.
16. Ibid., pp. 201f.
17. Ibid., p. 201.
18. Ibid., p. 203.
19. Ibid., pp. 203, 204.
20. Ibid., pp. 204-43.
21. Ibid., p. 218.
22. Ibid., pp. 223f.
23. Ibid., p. 241.
24. Prov. 29:25, “They are safe that trust in God” (p. 2), before 1733, p. 12.
25. Ibid., pp. 12-14.
26. Jan. 1748-49, p. 2.
27. Ibid., p. 17.
28. Ibid.
29. Cf. Steps to Salvation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), chapter 3, pp. 24-34. Hos. 5:15 (1), “That tis God’s manner to make men sensible of their misery and unworthiness before he appears in his mercy and love to them,” nd., Hickman, II, 830f.
30. Job 14:5, “That God unalterably determines the limits of every man’s life” (p. 2), n.d., p. 15.
31. Luke 16:31, “The warnings of God’s Word are more fitted to obtain the ends of awakening sinners, and bringing them to repentance, than the rising of one from the dead to warn them,” nd., Hickman, 11,68.
32. Ibid., p. 70.
33. March 1738, p. 5.
34. Ibid., pp. 6, 7.
35. Ibid., p. 7.

Author

Dr. John H. Gerstner was born in Tampa, Florida, and raised in Pennsylvania. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Dr. Gerstner pastored several churches before accepting a professorship at Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, where he taught church history for over 30 years. He served as a visiting professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and adjunct professor at Knox Theological Seminary in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Dr. Gerstner was also professor-at-large for Ligonier Ministries for many years, and recorded numerous lectures on audio and video for that organization.

Dr. Gerstner was a stalwart champion of the cause of reformed theology and, in particular, the teachings of Jonathan Edwards. This article is taken from his book, Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell, Baker Book House, 1980, pp. 79-90.

What is Darwinism?

Phillip E. Johnson
Professor of Law
University of California, Berkeley

This paper was originally delivered as a lecture at a symposium at Hillsdale College, in November 1992. Papers from the Symposium were published in the collection Man and Creation: Perspectives on Science and Theology (Bauman ed. 1993), by Hillsdale College Press, Hillsdale MI 49242.

There is a popular television game show called "Jeopardy," in which the usual order of things is reversed. Instead of being asked a question to which they must supply the answer, the contestants are given the answer and asked to provide the appropriate question. This format suggests an insight that is applicable to law, to science, and indeed to just about everything. The important thing is not necessarily to know all the answers, but rather to know what question is being asked.

That insight is the starting point for my inquiry into Darwinian evolution and its relationship to creation, because Darwinism is the answer to two very different kinds of questions. First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence. If a small population of birds happens to migrate to an isolated island, for example, a combination of inbreeding, mutation, and natural selection may cause this isolated population to develop different characteristics from those possessed by the ancestral population on the mainland. When the theory is understood in this limited sense, Darwinian evolution is uncontroversial, and has no important philosophical or theological implications.

Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place. The Darwinian answer to this second question is that the creative force that produced complex plants and animals from single-celled predecessors over long stretches of geological time is essentially the same as the mechanism that produces variations in flowers, insects, and domestic animals before our very eyes. In the words of Ernst Mayr, the dean of living Darwinists, "transspecific evolution [i.e., macroevolution] is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within populations and species." Neo-Darwinian evolution in this broad sense is a philosophical doctrine so lacking in empirical support that Mayr's successor at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould, once pronounced it in a reckless moment to be "effectively dead." Yet neo-Darwinism is far from dead; on the contrary, it is continually proclaimed in the textbooks and the media as unchallengeable fact. How does it happen that so many scientists and intellectuals, who pride themselves on their empiricism and open-mindedness, continue to accept an unempirical theory as scientific fact?

The answer to that question lies in the definition of five key terms. The terms are creationism, evolution, science, religion, and truth. Once we understand how these words are used in evolutionary discourse, the continued ascendancy of neo-Darwinism will be no mystery and we need no longer be deceived by claims that the theory is supported by "overwhelming evidence." I should warn at the outset, however, that using words clearly is not the innocent and peaceful activity most of us may have thought it to be. There are powerful vested interests in this area which can thrive only in the midst of ambiguity and confusion. Those who insist on defining terms precisely and using them consistently may find themselves regarded with suspicion and hostility, and even accused of being enemies of science. But let us accept that risk and proceed to the definitions.

The first word is creationism, which means simply a belief in creation. In Darwinist usage, which dominates not only the popular and profession scientific literature but also the media, a creationist is a person who takes the creation account in the Book of Genesis to be true in an very literal sense. The earth was created in a single week of six 24-hour days no more that 10,000 years ago; the major features of the geological were produced by Noah's flood; and there have been no major innovations in the forms of life since the beginning. It is a major theme of Darwinist propaganda that the only persons who have any doubts about Darwinism are young-earth creationists of this sort, who are always portrayed as rejecting the clear and convincing evidence of science to preserve a religious prejudice. The implication is that citizens of modern society are faced with a choice that is really no choice at all. Either they reject science altogether and retreat to a pre-modern worldview, or they believe everything the Darwinists tell them.

In a broader sense, however, a creationist is simply a person who believes in the existence of a creator, who brought about the existence of the world and its living inhabitants in furtherance of a purpose. Whether the process of creation took a single week or billions of years is relatively unimportant from a philosophical or theological standpoint. Creation by gradual processes over geological ages may create problems for Biblical interpretation, but it creates none for the basic principle of theistic religion. And creation in this broad sense, according to a 1991 Gallup poll, is the creed of 87 per cent of Americans. If God brought about our existence for a purpose, then the most important kind of knowledge to have is knowledge of God and of what He intends for us. Is creation in that broad sense consistent with evolution?

The answer is absolutely not, when "evolution" is understood in the Darwinian sense. To Darwinists evolution means naturalistic evolution, because they insist that science must assume that the cosmos is a closed system of material causes and effects, which can never be influenced by anything outside of material nature-by God, for example. In the beginning, an explosion of matter created the cosmos, and undirected, naturalistic evolution produced everything that followed. From this philosophical standpoint it follows deductively that from the beginning no intelligent purpose guided evolution. If intelligence exists today, that is only because it has itself evolved through purposeless material processes.

A materialistic theory of evolution must inherently invoke two kinds of processes. At bottom the theory must be based on chance, because that is what is left when we have ruled out everything involving intelligence or purpose. Theories which invoke only chance are not credible, however. One thing that everyone acknowledges is that living organisms are enormously complex-far more so than, say, a computer or an airplane. That such complex entities came into existence simply by chance is clearly less credible than that they were designed and constructed by a creator. To back up their claim that this appearance of intelligent design is an illusion, Darwinists need to provide some complexity-building force that is mindless and purposeless. Natural selection is by far the most plausible candidate.

If we assume that random genetic mutations provided the new genetic information needed, say, to give a small mammal a start towards wings, and if we assume that each tiny step in the process of wing-building gave the animal an increased chance of survival, then natural selection ensured that the favored creatures would thrive and reproduce. It follows as a matter of logic that wings can and will appear as if by the plan of a designer. Of course, if wings or other improvements do not appear, the theory explains their absence just as well. The needed mutations didn't arrive, or "developmental constraints" closed off certain possibilities, or natural selection favored something else. There is no requirement that any of this speculation be confirmed by either experimental or fossil evidence. To Darwinists just being able to imagine the process is sufficient to confirm that something like that must have happened.

Richard Dawkins calls the process of creation by mutation and selection "the blind watchmaker," by which label he means that a purposeless, materialistic designing force substitutes for the "watchmaker" deity of natural theology. The creative power of the blind watchmaker is supported only by very slight evidence, such as the famous example of a moth population in which the percentage of dark moths increased during a period when the birds were better able to see light moths against the smoke-darkened background trees. This may be taken to show that natural selection can do something, but not that it can create anything that was not already in existence. Even such slight evidence is more than sufficient, however, because evidence is not really necessary to prove something that is practically self-evident. The existence of a potent blind watchmaker follows deductively from the philosophical premise that nature had to do its own creating. There can be argument about the details, but if God was not in the picture something very much like Darwinism simply has to be true, regardless of the evidence.

That brings me to my third term, science. We have already seen that Darwinists assume as a matter of first principle that the history of the cosmos and its life forms is fully explicable on naturalistic principles. This reflects a philosophical doctrine called scientific naturalism, which is said to be a necessary consequence of the inherent limitations of science. What scientific naturalism does, however, is to transform the limitations of science into limitations upon reality, in the interest of maximizing the explanatory power of science and its practitioners. It is, of course, entirely possible to study organisms scientifically on the premise that they were all created by God, just as scientists study airplanes and even works of art without denying that these objects are intelligently designed. The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science. For scientists who want to be able to explain everything-and "theories of everything" are now openly anticipated in the scientific literature-this is an intolerable possibility.

The second feature of scientific naturalism that is important for our purpose is its set of rules governing the criticism and replacement of a paradigm. A paradigm is a general theory, like the Darwinian theory of evolution, which has achieved general acceptance in the scientific community. The paradigm unifies the various specialties that make up the research community, and guides research in all of them. Thus, zoologists, botanists, geneticists, molecular biologists, and paleontologists all see their research as aimed at filling out the details of the Darwinian paradigm. If molecular biologists see a pattern of apparently neutral mutations, which have no apparent effect on an organism's fitness, they must find a way to reconcile their findings with the paradigm's requirement that natural selection guides evolution. This they can do by postulating a sufficient quantity of invisible adaptive mutations, which are deemed to be accumulated by natural selection. Similarly, if paleontologists see new fossil species appearing suddenly in the fossil record, and remaining basically unchanged thereafter, they must perform whatever contortions are necessary to force this recalcitrant evidence into a model of incremental change through the accumulation of micromutations.

Supporting the paradigm may even require what in other contexts would be called deception. As Niles Eldredge candidly admitted, "We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports [the story of gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing it does not."[ 1] Eldredge explained that this pattern of misrepresentation occurred because of "the certainty so characteristic of evolutionary ranks since the late 1940s, the utter assurance not only that natural selection operates in nature, but that we know precisely how it works." This certainty produced a degree of dogmatism that Eldredge says resulted in the relegation to the "lunatic fringe" of paleontologists who reported that "they saw something out of kilter between contemporary evolutionary theory, on the one hand, and patterns of change in the fossil record on the other."[ 2] Under the circumstances, prudent paleontologists understandably swallowed their doubts and supported the ruling ideology. To abandon the paradigm would be to abandon the scientific community; to ignore the paradigm and just gather the facts would be to earn the demeaning label of "stamp collector."

As many philosophers of science have observed, the research community does not abandon a paradigm in the absence of a suitable replacement. This means that negative criticism of Darwinism, however devastating it may appear to be, is essentially irrelevant to the professional researchers. The critic may point out, for example, that the evidence that natural selection has any creative power is somewhere between weak and non-existent. That is perfectly true, but to Darwinists the more important point is this: If natural selection did not do the creating, what did? "God" is obviously unacceptable, because such a being is unknown to science. "We don't know" is equally unacceptable, because to admit ignorance would be to leave science adrift without a guiding principle. To put the problem in the most practical terms: it is impossible to write or evaluate a grant proposal without a generally accepted theoretical framework.

The paradigm rule explains why Gould's acknowledgment that neo-Darwinism is "effectively dead" had no significant effect on the Darwinist faithful, or even on Gould himself. Gould made that statement in a paper predicting the emergence of a new general theory of evolution, one based on the macromutational speculations of the Berkeley geneticist Richard Goldschmidt.[ 3] When the new theory did not arrive as anticipated, the alternatives were either to stick with Ernst Mayr's version of neo-Darwinism, or to concede that biologists do not after all know of a naturalistic mechanism that can produce biological complexity. That was no choice at all. Gould had to beat a hasty retreat back to classical Darwinism to avoid giving aid and comfort to the enemies of scientific naturalism, including those disgusting creationists.

Having to defend a dead theory tooth and nail can hardly be a satisfying activity, and it is no wonder that Gould lashes out with fury at people such as myself, who calls attention to his predicament.[ 4] I do not mean to ridicule Gould, however, because I have a genuinely high regard for the man as one of the few Darwinists who has recognized the major problems with the theory and reported them honestly. His tragedy is that he cannot admit the clear implications of his own thought without effectively resigning from science.

The continuing survival of Darwinist orthodoxy illustrates Thomas Kuhn's famous point that the accumulation of anomalies never in itself falsifies a paradigm, because "To reject one paradigm without substituting another is to reject science itself."[ 5] This practice may be appropriate as a way of carrying on the professional enterprise called science, but it can be grossly misleading when it is imposed upon persons who are asking questions other than the ones scientific naturalists want to ask. Suppose, for example, that I want to know whether God really had something to do with creating living organisms. A typical Darwinian response is that there is no reason to invoke supernatural action because Darwinian selection was capable of performing the job. To evaluate that response, I need to know whether natural selection really has the fantastic creative power attributed to it. It is not a sufficient answer to say that scientists have nothing better to offer. The fact that scientists don't like to say "we don't know" tells me nothing about what they really do know.

I am not suggesting that scientists have to change their rules about retaining and discarding paradigms. All I want them to do is to be candid about the disconfirming evidence and admit, if it is the case, that they are hanging on to Darwinism only because they prefer a shaky theory to having no theory at all. What they insist upon doing, however, is to present Darwinian evolution to the public as a fact that every rational person is expected to accept. If there are reasonable grounds to doubt the theory such dogmatism is ridiculous, whether or not the doubters have a better theory to propose.

To believers in creation, the Darwinists seem thoroughly intolerant and dogmatic when they insist that their own philosophy must have a monopoly in the schools and the media. The Darwinists do not see themselves that way, of course. On the contrary, they often feel aggrieved when creationists (in either the broad or narrow sense) ask to have their own arguments heard in public and fairly considered. To insist that schoolchildren be taught that Darwinian evolution is a fact is in their minds merely to protect the integrity of science education; to present the other side of the case would be to allow fanatics to force their opinions on others. Even college professors have been forbidden to express their doubts about Darwinian evolution in the classroom, and it seems to be widely believed that the Constitution not only permits but actually requires such restrictions on academic freedom. To explain this bizarre situation, we must define our fourth term: religion.

Suppose that a skeptic argues that evidence for biological creation by natural selection is obviously lacking, and that in the circumstances we ought to give serious consideration to the possibility that the development of life required some input from a pre-existing, purposeful creator. To scientific naturalists this suggestion is "creationist" and therefore unacceptable in principle, because it invokes an entity unknown to science. What is worse, it suggests the possibility that this creator may have communicated in some way with humans. In that case there could be real prophets-persons with a genuine knowledge of God who are neither frauds nor dreamers. Such persons could conceivably be dangerous rivals for the scientists as cultural authorities.

Naturalistic philosophy has worked out a strategy to prevent this problem from arising: it labels naturalism as science and theism as religion. The former is then classified as knowledge, and the latter as merebelief. The distinction is of critical importance, because only knowledge can be objectively valid for everyone; belief is valid only for the believer, and should never be passed off as knowledge. The student who thinks that 2 and 2 make 5, or that water is not made up of hydrogen and oxygen, or that the theory of evolution is not true, is not expressing a minority viewpoint. He or she is ignorant, and the job of education is to cure that ignorance and to replace it with knowledge. Students in the public schools are thus to be taught at an early age that "evolution is a fact," and as time goes by they will gradually learn that evolution means naturalism.

In short, the proposition that God was in any way involved in our creation is effectively outlawed, and implicitly negated. This is because naturalistic evolution is by definition in the category of scientific knowledge. What contradicts knowledge is implicitly false, or imaginary. That is why it is possible for scientific naturalists in good faith to claim on the one hand that their science says nothing about God, and on the other to claim that they have said everything that can be said about God. In naturalistic philosophy both propositions are at bottom the same. All that needs to be said about God is that there is nothing to be said of God, because on that subject we can have no knowledge.

Our fifth and final term is truth. Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy. The reason for this is that "truth" suggests an unchanging absolute, whereas scientific knowledge is a dynamic concept. Like life, knowledge evolves and grows into superior forms. What was knowledge in the past is not knowledge today, and the knowledge of the future will surely be far superior to what we have now. Only naturalism itself and the unique validity of science as the path to knowledge are absolutes. There can be no criterion for truth outside of scientific knowledge, no mind of God to which we have access.

This way of understanding things persists even when scientific naturalists employ religious-sounding language. For example, the physicist Stephen Hawking ended his famous book A Brief History of Time with the prediction that man might one day "know the mind of God." This phrasing cause some friends of mine to form the mistaken impression that he had some attraction to theistic religion. In context Hawking was not referring to a supernatural eternal being, however, but to the possibility that scientific knowledge will eventually become complete and all-encompassing because it will have explained the movements of material particles in all circumstances.

The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true. They will gladly concede that the theory is incomplete, and that further research into the mechanisms of evolution is needed. At any given point in time, however, the reigning theory of naturalistic evolution represents the state of scientific knowledge about how we came into existence. Scientific knowledge is by definition the closest approximation of absolute truth available to us. To ask whether this knowledge is true is therefore to miss the point, and to betray a misunderstanding of "how science works."

So far I have described the metaphysical categories by which scientific naturalists have excluded the topic of God from rational discussion, and thus ensured that Darwinism's fully naturalistic creation story is effectively true by definition. There is no need to explain why atheists find this system of thought control congenial. What is a little more difficult to understand, at least at first, is the strong support Darwinism continues to receive in the Christian academic world. Attempts to investigate the credibility of the Darwinist evolution story are regarded with little enthusiasm by many leading Christian professors of science and philosophy, even at institutions which are generally regarded as conservative in theology. Given that Darwinism is inherently naturalistic and therefore antagonistic to the idea that God had anything to do with the history of life, and that it plays the central role in ensuring agnostic domination of the intellectual culture, one might have supposed that Christian intellectuals (along with religious Jews) would be eager to find its weak spots.

Instead, the prevailing view among Christian professors has been that Darwinism-or "evolution," as they tend to call it-is unbeatable, and that it can be interpreted to be consistent with Christian belief. And in fact Darwinism is unbeatable as long as one accepts the thought categories of scientific naturalism that I have been describing. The problem is that those same thought categories make Christian theism, or any other theism, absolutely untenable. If science has exclusive authority to tell us how life was created, and if science is committed to naturalism, and if science never discards a paradigm until it is presented with an acceptable naturalistic alternative, then Darwinism's position is impregnable within science. The same reasoning that makes Darwinism inevitable, however, also bans God from taking any action within the history of the Cosmos, which means that it makes theism illusory. Theistic naturalism is self-contradictory.

Some hope to avoid the contradiction by asserting that naturalism rules only within the realm of science, and that there is a separate realm called "religion" in which theism can flourish. The problem with this arrangement, as we have already seen, is that in a naturalistic culture scientific conclusions are considered to be knowledge, or even fact. What is outside of fact is fantasy, or at best subjective belief. Theists who accommodate with scientific naturalism therefore may never affirm that their God is real in the same sense that evolution is real. This rule is essential to the entire mindset that produced Darwinism in the first place. If God exists He could certainly work through mutation and selection if that is what He wanted to do, but He could also create by some means totally outside the ken of our science. Once we put God into the picture, however, there is no good reason to attribute the creation of biological complexity to random mutation and natural selection. Direct evidence that these mechanisms have substantial creative power is not to be found in nature, the laboratory, or the fossil record. An essential step in the reasoning that establishes that Darwinian selection created the wonders of biology, therefore, is that nothing else was available. Theism is by definition the doctrine that something else was available.

Perhaps the contradiction is hard to see when it is stated at an abstract level, so I will give a more concrete example. Persons who advocate the compromise position called "theistic evolution" are in my experience always vague about what they mean by "evolution." They have good reason to be vague. As we have seen, Darwinian evolution is by definition unguided and purposeless, and such evolution cannot in any meaningful sense be theistic. For evolution to be genuinely theistic it must be guided by God, whether this means that God programmed the process in advance or stepped in from time to time to give it a push in the right direction. To Darwinists evolution guided by God is a soft form of creationism, which is to say it is not evolution at all. To repeat, this understanding goes to the very heart of Darwinist thinking. Allow a preexisting supernatural intelligence to guide evolution, and this omnipotent being can do a whole lot more than that.

Of course, theists can think of evolution as God-guided whether naturalistic Darwinists like it or not. The trouble with having a private definition for theists, however, is that the scientific naturalists have the power to decide what that term "evolution" means in public discourse, including the science classes in the public schools. If theistic evolutionists broadcast the message that evolution as they understand it is harmless to theistic religion, they are misleading their constituents unless they add a clear warning that the version of evolution advocated by the entire body of mainstream science is something else altogether. That warning is never clearly delivered, however, because the main point of theistic evolution is to preserve peace with the mainstream scientific community. The theistic evolutionists therefore unwitting serve the purposes of the scientific naturalists, by helping persuade the religious community to lower its guard against the incursion of naturalism.

We are now in a position to answer the question with which this lecture began. What is Darwinism? Darwinism is a theory of empirical science only at the level of microevolution, where it provides a framework for explaining such things as the diversity that arises when small populations become reproductively isolated from the main body of the species. As a general theory of biological creation Darwinism is not empirical at all. Rather, it is a necessary implication of a philosophical doctrine called scientific naturalism, which is based on the a priori assumption that God was always absent from the realm of nature. As such evolution in the Darwinian sense is inherently antithetical to theism, although evolution in some entirely different and non-naturalistic sense could conceivably have been God's chosen method of creation.

In 1874, the great Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge asked the question I have asked: What is Darwinism? After a careful and thoroughly fair-minded evaluation of the doctrine, his answer was unequivocal: "It is Atheism." Another way to state the proposition is to say that Darwinism is the answer to a specific question that grows out of philosophical naturalism. To return to the game of "Jeopardy" with which we started, let us say that Darwinism is the answer. What, then, is the question? The question is: "How must creation have occurred if we assume that God had nothing to do with it?" Theistic evolutionists accomplish very little by trying to Christianize the answer to a question that comes straight out of the agenda of scientific naturalism. What we need to do instead is to challenge the assumption that the only questions worth asking are the ones that assume that naturalism is true.
Notes

1. Niles Eldredge, Time Frames (Heinemann, 1986), 144.

2. Ibid., 93.

3. Stephen Jay Gould, "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?" Paleobiology, 6 (1980), 119-130, reprinted in Maynard Smith, ed., Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin (W. H. Freeman, 1982).

4. See Stephen Jay Gould, "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge," Scientific American, (July 1992), 118-122. Scientific American refused to publish my response to this attack, but the response did appear in the March 1993 issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, the journal of the American Scientific Affiliation.

5. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2d ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 79.

Copyright © 1996 Phillip E. Johnson. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
File Date: 8.31.96

[ Previous Page ] [ Return to Phillip Johnson On-line Articles ] [ Phillip Johnson Page ] [ ARN Home Page ]

This data file may be reproduced in its entirety for non-commercial use.

www.arn.org/docs/johnson/wid.htm

Why Moralism Is Not the Gospel — And Why So Many Christians Think It Is

Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr.
2009

One of the most amazing statements by the Apostle Paul is his indictment of the Galatian Christians for abandoning the Gospel. “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel,” Paul declared. As he stated so emphatically, the Galatians had failed in the crucial test of discerning the authentic Gospel from its counterfeits.

His words could not be more clear: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed!” [Gal. 1:6-7]

This warning from the Apostle Paul, expressed in the language of the Apostle’s shock and grief, is addressed not only to the church in Galatia, but to every congregation in every age. In our own day — and in our own churches — we desperately need to hear and to heed this warning. In our own time, we face false gospels no less subversive and seductive than those encountered and embraced by the Galatians.

In our own context, one of the most seductive false gospels is moralism. This false gospel can take many forms and can emerge from any number of political and cultural impulses. Nevertheless, the basic structure of moralism comes down to this — the belief that the Gospel can be reduced to improvements in behavior.

Sadly, this false gospel is particularly attractive to those who believe themselves to be evangelicals motivated by a biblical impulse. Far too many believers and their churches succumb to the logic of moralism and reduce the Gospel to a message of moral improvement. In other words, we communicate to lost persons the message that what God desires for them and demands of them is to get their lives straight.

In one sense, we are born to be moralists. Created in God’s image, we have been given the moral capacity of conscience. From our earliest days our conscience cries out to us the knowledge of our guilt, shortcomings, and misbehaviors. In other words, our conscience communicates our sinfulness.

Add to this the fact that the process of parenting and child rearing tends to inculcate moralism from our earliest years. Very quickly we learn that our parents are concerned with our behavior. Well behaved children are rewarded with parental approval, while misbehavior brings parental sanction. This message is reinforced by other authorities in young lives and pervades the culture at large.

Writing about his own childhood in rural Georgia, the novelist Ferrol Sams described the deeply-ingrained tradition of being “raised right.” As he explained, the child who is “raised right” pleases his parents and other adults by adhering to moral conventions and social etiquette. A young person who is “raised right” emerges as an adult who obeys the laws, respects his neighbors, gives at least lip service to religious expectations, and stays away from scandal. The point is clear — this is what parents expect, the culture affirms, and many churches celebrate. But our communities are filled with people who have been “raised right” but are headed for hell.

The seduction of moralism is the essence of its power. We are so easily seduced into believing that we actually can gain all the approval we need by our behavior. Of course, in order to participate in this seduction, we must negotiate a moral code that defines acceptable behavior with innumerable loopholes. Most moralists would not claim to be without sin, but merely beyond scandal. That is considered sufficient.

Moralists can be categorized as both liberal and conservative. In each case, a specific set of moral concerns frames the moral expectation. As a generalization, it is often true that liberals focus on a set of moral expectations related to social ethics while conservatives tend to focus on personal ethics. The essence of moralism is apparent in both — the belief that we can achieve righteousness by means of proper behavior.

The theological temptation of moralism is one many Christians and churches find it difficult to resist. The danger is that the church will communicate by both direct and indirect means that what God expects of fallen humanity is moral improvement. In so doing, the church subverts the Gospel and communicates a false gospel to a fallen world.

Christ’s Church has no option but to teach the Word of God, and the Bible faithfully reveals the law of God and a comprehensive moral code. Christians understand that God has revealed Himself throughout creation in such a way that He has gifted all humanity with the restraining power of the law. Furthermore, He has spoken to us in His word with the gift of specific commands and comprehensive moral instruction. The faithful Church of the Lord Jesus Christ must contend for the righteousness of these commands and the grace given to us in the knowledge of what is good and what is evil. We also have a responsibility to bear witness of this knowledge of good and evil to our neighbors. The restraining power of the law is essential to human community and to civilization.

Just as parents rightly teach their children to obey moral instruction, the church also bears responsibility to teach its own the moral commands of God and to bear witness to the larger society of what God has declared to be right and good for His human creatures.

But these impulses, right and necessary as they are, are not the Gospel. Indeed, one of the most insidious false gospels is a moralism that promises the favor of God and the satisfaction of God’s righteousness to sinners if they will only behave and commit themselves to moral improvement.

The moralist impulse in the church reduces the Bible to a codebook for human behavior and substitutes moral instruction for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Far too many evangelical pulpits are given over to moralistic messages rather than the preaching of the Gospel.

The corrective to moralism comes directly from the Apostle Paul when he insists that “a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus.” Salvation comes to those who are “justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.” [Gal. 2:16]

We sin against Christ and we misrepresent the Gospel when we suggest to sinners that what God demands of them is moral improvement in accordance with the Law. Moralism makes sense to sinners, for it is but an expansion of what we have been taught from our earliest days. But moralism is not the Gospel, and it will not save. The only gospel that saves is the Gospel of Christ. As Paul reminded the Galatians, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” [Gal. 4:4-5]

We are justified by faith alone, saved by grace alone, and redeemed from our sin by Christ alone. Moralism produces sinners who are (potentially) better behaved. The Gospel of Christ transforms sinners into the adopted sons and daughters of God.

The Church must never evade, accommodate, revise, or hide the law of God. Indeed, it is the Law that shows us our sin and makes clear our inadequacy and our total lack of righteousness. The Law cannot impart life but, as Paul insists, it “has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” [Gal. 3:24]

The deadly danger of moralism has been a constant temptation to the church and an ever-convenient substitute for the Gospel. Clearly, millions of our neighbors believe that moralism is our message. Nothing less than the boldest preaching of the Gospel will suffice to correct this impression and to lead sinners to salvation in Christ.

Hell will be highly populated with those who were “raised right.” The citizens of heaven will be those who, by the sheer grace and mercy of God, are there solely because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Moralism is not the gospel.

Is A 'Generous Orthodoxy' Truly Orthodox?

By R. Albert Mohler Jr.
Mar 8, 2005

The book's title looks both promising and inspiring. Brian D. McLaren's new book, "A Generous Orthodoxy," is sure to get attention, and its title grabs both heart and mind. Who wouldn't want to embrace an orthodoxy of generosity? On the other hand, the title raises an unavoidable question: Just how "generous" can orthodoxy be?

McLaren is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Baltimore, and he has become a leading figure -- if not the single most influential figure -- in what is now known as the "Emergent" church. In "A Generous Orthodoxy," he offers what amounts to a manifesto for the Emergent movement, even as he claims to have established a position that combines the strengths of both liberalism and evangelicalism, the charismatic and the contemplative, the mystical and the poetic.

McLaren defines orthodoxy as "straight thinking" or "right opinion." He sets the mood of his book right at the start: "The last thing I want is to get into nauseating arguments about why this or that form of theology (dispensational, covenant, charismatic, whatever) or methodology (cell church, megachurch, liturgical church, seeker church, blah, blah, blah) is right (meaning approaching or achieving timeless technical perfection)" Still following?

Since he is determined to transcend all those difficult questions of who is right and who is wrong, McLaren wants to qualify his brand of orthodoxy as "generous orthodoxy." He credits the term to Dr. Stanley Grenz, a prominent revisionist evangelical theologian who, in his book "Renewing the Center," quotes the late Yale theologian Hans Frei as the inventor of the phrase.

McLaren intends to be provocative, explaining that this reflects his "belief that clarity is sometimes overrated, and that shock, obscurity, playfulness, and intrigue (carefully articulated) often stimulate more thought than clarity."

McLaren is also honest about the fact that he lacks any formal theological education. As a matter of fact, he seems rather proud of this fact, insinuating that formal theological education is likely to trap persons in a habit of trying to determine right belief.

This author's purpose is transparent and consistent. Embracing the worldview of the postmodern age, he embraces relativism at the cost of clarity in matters of truth and intends to redefine Christianity for this new age, largely in terms of an eccentric mixture of elements he would take from virtually every theological position and variant.

He claims to uphold "consistently, unequivocally, and unapologetically" the historic creeds of the church, specifically the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. At the same time, however, he denies that truth should be articulated in propositional form, and thus undercuts his own "unequivocal" affirmation.

McLaren doesn't like answering questions either. Even though he would be more appropriately categorized as a "post-evangelical," McLaren was listed as one of 25 influential evangelicals in the February 7, 2005 edition of TIME magazine. In its profile, TIME referred to a conference last spring at which McLaren was addressed with a question related to same-sex "marriage." "You know what," McLaren responded, "The thing that breaks my heart is that there's no way I can answer it without hurting someone on either side." TIME referred to this as "a kinder and gentler brand of religion." Others would be less charitable, for McLaren's "nonanswer" is itself an answer. This is a man who doesn't want to offend anyone on any side of any argument. That's why it's hard to find the orthodoxy in "A Generous Orthodoxy."

As McLaren admits, "People who try to label me an exclusivist, inclusivist, or universalist on the issue of hell will find here only more reasons for frustration." In other words, McLaren simply refuses to answer the question as to whether there will be anyone in hell. He refers to these questions -- evangelical hang-ups for the doctrinally moribund -- as "weapons of mass distraction."

McLaren effectively ransacks the Christian tradition, picking and choosing among theological options without any particular concern for consistency. He rejects the traditional understanding of doctrine as statements of biblical truth and instead presents a variant of postmodernism -- effectively arguing that doctrines form a language that is meaningful to Christians, even if not objectively true. He claims to be arguing for "a generous third way beyond the conservative and liberal versions of Christianity so dominant in the Western world."

Incredibly, McLaren simply asserts that concern for the propositional truthfulness of the text is an artifact of the modern age, "modern-Western-moderately-educated desires." As a postmodernist, he considers himself free from any concern for propositional truthfulness, and simply wants the Christian community to embrace a pluriform understanding of truth as a way out of doctrinal conflict and impasse.

What about other belief systems? McLaren suggests that we should embrace the existence of different faiths, "willingly, not begrudgingly." What would this mean? Well, a complete reconsideration of Christian missions, for one thing. McLaren claims to affirm that Christians should give witness to their faith in Jesus Christ. But, before you assume this means an affirmation of Christian missions, consider this statement: "I must add, though, that I don't believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all?) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts. This will be hard, you say, and I agree. But frankly, it's not at all easy to be a follower of Jesus in many 'Christian' religious contexts, either."

Citing missiologist David Bosch, McLaren affirms that we have no assurance that salvation is found outside the work of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, he believes that we cannot jump from this to a claim that there is no salvation outside belief in Jesus Christ.

The Bible, McLaren argues, is intended to equip God's people for good works. He rejects words such as authority, inerrancy and infallibility as unnecessary and distracting. In a previous work, McLaren had argued that the Bible is "a unique collection of literary artifacts that together support the telling of an amazing and essential story." His thinking shows the influence of the so-called "Yale School" of theologians who have argued for Scripture as the record and substance of Christianity as a "cultural-linguistic system," to be interpreted as narrative and not as propositional truth.

The Emergent movement represents a significant challenge to biblical Christianity. Unwilling to affirm that the Bible contains propositional truths that form the framework for Christian belief, this movement argues that we can have Christian symbolism and substance without those thorny questions of truthfulness that have so vexed the modern mind. The worldview of postmodernism -- complete with an epistemology that denies the possibility of or need for propositional truth -- affords the movement an opportunity to hop, skip and jump throughout the Bible and the history of Christian thought in order to take whatever pieces they want from one theology and attach them, like doctrinal post-it notes, to whatever picture they would want to draw.

When it comes to issues such as the exclusivity of the Gospel, the identity of Jesus Christ as both fully human and fully divine, the authoritative character of Scripture as written revelation, and the clear teachings of Scripture concerning issues such as homosexuality, this movement simply refuses to answer the questions.

McLaren attributes this to humility. "A generous orthodoxy," he explains, "in contrast to the tense, narrow, controlling, or critical orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble; it doesn't claim too much; it admits it walks with a limp." In other words, it is so humble that it will not answer some questions that will not rest without an answer. In this case, a nonanswer is an answer. A responsible theological argument must acknowledge that difficult questions demand to be answered. We are not faced with an endless array of doctrinal variants from which we can pick and choose. Homosexuality either will or will not be embraced as normative. The church either will or will not accept a radical revisioning of the missionary task. We will either see those who have not come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as persons to whom we should extend a clear Gospel message and a call for decision, or we will simply come alongside them to tell our story as they tell their own.

The problem with "A Generous Orthodoxy," as the author must surely recognize, is that this orthodoxy bears virtually no resemblance to orthodoxy as it has been known and affirmed by the church throughout the centuries. Honest Christians know that disagreements over issues of biblical truth are inevitable. But we owe each other at least the honesty of taking a position, arguing for that position from Scripture, and facing the consequences of our theological convictions.

Orthodoxy must be generous, but it cannot be so generous that it ceases to be orthodox. Inevitably, Christianity asserts truths that, to the postmodern mind, will appear decidedly ungenerous. Nevertheless, this is the truth that leads to everlasting life. The Gospel simply is not up for renegotiation in the 21st century. A true Christian generosity recognizes the infinitely generous nature of the truth that genuinely saves. Accept no substitutes.