The Evangelical movement that I knew back in the day has almost vanished. It was based on a belief that Christians should be guided by the Bible in their faith and practice. There were many articulate and thoughtful theologians in this movement who openly discussed their differences with other theologians in the hope that the better reason would prevail in the discussion (nonevangelical Christians also engaged in theological discussions though their approach was somewhat different, but that’s another matter).
The ancient Gnostics found their spiritual authority within themselves. They believed that they had discovered their true identities through a private, individual revelation. This spiritual experience had convinced them that they were aliens in a hostile universe. Nature and history were a prison from which they were escaping. Their real selves were divine and they not only owed nothing to their relationships with others in the evil world of time and space, they were determined to escape these relationships and flee to their true divine world beyond time and space.
While most of today’s “Evangelicals” have not disowned the elements of historic Christianity that survived the Reformation, they are increasingly detaching their personal spirituality and practice from those elements. They are falling into a Gnostic pattern of spirituality.
These contemporary “Evangelicals” profess to believe in the authority of an “inerrant” Bible, but their interpretation of the Bible reflects their own inner spiritual experience rather than any publicly usable hermeneutic. Their only warrant for holding to an interpretation is that it reflects their private spiritual experience. If you aren’t guided by the same experience then there’s nothing to talk about because the root of the matter is in a private spiritual experience. Because of this these “Evangelicals are drifting away from any discussion with anyone who doesn’t pledge allegiance to the same experience. The increasing fragmentation of the movement which we see today was predictable.
Things were different in the New Testament Church. James said that “the wisdom from above is…peace-loving considerate and open-minded” (3:17) REB. In Hebrews 13:17 the word translated”obey” is a form of the word “peitho” which means “persuade”.In the form used here it means something like “allow yourselves to be persuaded by”. Paul spends a lot of time and effort presenting to his churches the reasons why they should think or act in a certain way and he apparently expects them to yield to the better reason in the matter.
Some believe that the giving of authority to private experience is to be preferred because it allows the unintelligent and ill-informed to set forth a stance on what should be done or believed on a footing of complete equality with those who have prayerfully studied the matter. But the New Testament does not offer us this particular type of “equality”. Paul tells us than the ascended Christ “has given” to the Church “some pastors and teachers” (Eph.4:11) and the text we’ve glanced at in Hebrews (13:17) tells us that there are some in the Church who have a legitimate prior claim to be listened to. James (3:17) makes it clear that anyone whose experience has led them to be beyond any possible change of mind are the purveyors of a demonic rather than a heavenly wisdom.
For all of these reasons I conclude that today’s “Evangelicalism” is not really the Biblicist movement that it claims to be. It is instead another form of Gnosticism.
What do you think?
I completely agree.
But which “publicaly usable hermeneutic” would you propse everyone follow? I think a large part of the problem is the wide diversity in hermeneutical approaches to Scripture.
Thanks for the post. I see the landscape as more dynamic than a wholesale shift away from traditional Evangelicalism. To have a movement as large as the Evangelical movement, you will have a diversity of thought. There will be many leading voices in the movement.
The challenge for those with the mantle of leadership is to have the widest possible canopy of thought without destroying the fabric of its traditional dogma. The reason you want a wide canopy is because no one person will have the sum total of truth in their teaching. Even some of the basic tenets of the movement may be in error. So to have critical engagement of thought is paramount for the thriving of the movement.
That being said, outside voices having been shaping the movement. Those, like Oprah, that profess spirituality, even Christianity, but through a gnostic approach of inner enlightenment have cast a shadow on post modern Christian thought. It is hard to know where the outside influences have encroached. It resonates, on the one hand, with the Bible verse in 1 John that says,
“But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true–it is not a lie.”
Oddly enough, this passage is John combating the gnostic heresy. But the Holy Spirit was given to bring us into all Truth. So to have that deeply personal experience of the Holy Spirit’s leading combined with the outward experience of great teachers correctly teaching the Word of Truth – it is a tension that has never been truly balanced in any one generation… I would like to continue the discussion, what are your thoughts?
Ken, a lot of the problem lies in the tendency we all fall into to think in terms of such modern dyads as ‘doctrinal vs. experiential’ and ‘objective vs. subjective’. The hermeneutic we need can be found centuries ago in the exegetical work of the Eastern Fathers. Their hermeneutic was Christocentric, an approach which keeps us away from such dualisms as those inbto which we’ve fallen.
That’s a really well-expressed point, Valdez, and one that I have a great deal of sympathy with. However, don’t you agree that somewhere along the line, however we may want to soften the edges of dichotomies (and that’s the main tendency of my inclination to agree), we must opt for doctrine or sentiment, to use Newman’s preferred framing of the issue?
In other words, in orientation towards Jesus Christ, mustn’t a decision be taken at some stage to decide whether or not Christ wished to found “a Church,” or was he instead the Jesus that von Harnack preached in his rejection of the accretion of dogma?
PS
Put more clearly – my own instincts are clearly for the first option, because I believe that Christianity presents us with a challenge to strive for unity – authentic Church, visible and invisible. The challenge-aspect moderates this general inclination by recognising the dangers in placing unity, or indeed Church, before Christ himself, hence my enthusiasm for your pragmatic synthesis.
Inerrancy is actually very new and Fundamentalist’s reaction to modernism.This has nothing to do with orthodoxy or premodern notions. However, I agree with you that today’s evangelicals are more like the gnostics. Look at who they follow- Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer. Totally Gnostic.
Valdez, which Eastern Fathers work, would you recommend to understand a Christocentric hermeneutic?
The best place to start is with a book about this: “Christ in Eastern Christian Thought”. The most reader-friendly text to start with is “The Incarnation of the Word of God”{ by St. Athanasius”. The most powerful thought on Christology is that of St. Maximus the Confessor, but it’s not easy reading so I’d start with Meyendorff and Athanasius.
The Holy Spirit was to teach the disciples all things and bring to their remembrance all that Christ had said cf.
Not so much because they do in fact so provide, but because neoclassical orthodoxy, or any economic theory orthodoxy whatever, also fails to do so.