Mythology and the Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism

I’ve been listening to the Albert Mohler Internet radio program for several years now and have always gotten a lot out of it. Albert Mohler is the president of Southern Baptist Seminary and a staunch defender of biblical inerrancy. I enthusiastically agree with much that he says. Recently though he featured two apparently inconsistent broadcasts, one promoting biblical inerrancy and the other promoting Romanticism. I noticed the inconsistency because I listened to them closely together on my MP3 player:

• 7/31/09 Storytelling and a Child’s Imagination
Guest Host: Dr. Russell Moore
Guest: Andrew Peterson

• 9/04/09 The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism
Host: Dr. Albert Mohler
Guest: Dr. Gregory Beale

The one on storytelling is a celebration of mythology hosted by Dr. Russell Moore, the dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Seminary. Dr. Moore proudly explains how he incorporates the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien into his devotional times with his children. Unfortunately, I’m sure Dr. Moore doesn’t realize that what he’s giving to his children is mythology. Tolkien viewed it as mythology; Lewis viewed it as mythology; and both men considered mythology divine revelation.

Now, in the other program on the erosion of inerrancy in evangelicalism, Dr. Mohler bewails the intrusion of mythological thinking into current views of the Bible.

It seems apparent to me that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing in these two programs. Or perhaps the right hand doesn’t recognize that the left hand is holding something destructive in it and that this destructive element is an enchantment with mythology.

Apparently some of those theologians and Bible scholars who were raised with Lewis and Tolkien are now carrying that love of mythology into their work, ignoring the Scriptural warnings against the love of mythology, and passing it onto their children.


I’ve spent many years studying the issue of Romantic religion (for background, see my article "’Christian’ Romanticism, the Inklings, and the Elevation of Mythology”).

R. J. Reilly’s book Romantic Religion: A study of Barfield, Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien originally inspired me to begin studying this topic. Since then I've come to see how this Romantic religion is not evangelical Christianity and, as a matter of fact, is quite opposed to it. Yet this Romantic religion in the form of the writings of — especially — C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien has swept through the evangelical world and been uncritically accepted as almost universally authoritative in many prominent Christian venues. I have also come to believe that there is a very strong connection between the attitude toward the inerrancy of Scripture that Dr. Mohler is so concerned about and the teachings of this Romantic religion, especially as it appears in the works of C.S. Lewis.

I just got a book called C. S. Lewis on Scripture by Michael C. Christensen (1979). The book is an apologetic for Lewis’s attitude toward Scripture, including his belief in purgatory and that the penal substitution is just one of many theories that can be put aside if found troublesome. That attitude is exactly the one that is appearing among these new “evangelical” scholars that Dr. Mohler is so disturbed about.

The Drucker-driven, Murdoch-driven Church

A lot has been written about problems with the Purpose-driven Church movement, but when a friend asked me for information about those problems it seemed a shame not to share this research on this blog. This is by no means comprehensive, but I think it covers the basic major areas of concern. Even if you're familiar with the topic, you may learn something new below.

A word about using discernment ministries and apologetics

Just a word about the different types of discernment ministries that are out there, our own approach, and why we recommend the articles we do. It seems good to clarify that there are a variety of approaches to discernment and apologetics. Just because someone does have discernment about a problem doesn’t mean that the person’s theology is necessarily solid, but also, just because someone’s theology is unbiblical or unbalanced doesn’t mean that the person’s discernment of a situation is wrong. A good example is the book Faith Undone by Roger Oakland, which is very discerning about problems with the Emergent Church, but the man himself is rigidly dispensational in his theology. Lighthouse Trails also has a dispensationalist background, but their research is excellent and well documented, as is the material by the Leslies (mentioned below). We are neither dispensationalists nor fundamentalists, but we do believe that the Bible is inerrant and can recognize good research backed by facts.

Some people are wary about some of the discernment ministries because of the continuing repercussions in the Church today from the fundamentalist-modernist controversy that occurred in the U.S. in the early 1920s. It’s a complex issue, and there is a lot of stereotyping that goes on, both in pro-fundamentalist and anti-fundamentalist writings. But there are other groups of apologists who aren’t dispensational at all, like the Extreme Theology website, overseen by a conservative Lutheran. There are also critiques of Rick Warren through the White Horse Inn website, which is a radio talk show sponsored by a coalition of conservative Reformed (Calvinist) thinkers and conservative Lutherans with a very high level of theological education. So, it’s a very wise approach not to use stereotypes when dealing with theological controversies. (Incidentally, we don’t believe you’re going to hell if you don’t use the King James Version; we use the NIV.)

Following are the major problems with Rick Warren’s approach that we have identified:

I. The Purpose-driven Church = The “Drucker-driven Church”

II. The Abandonment of Orthodox Theology

III. The Misuse of the Bible

IV. The Murdoch-driven Church

V. The use of pop psychology in the Purpose-driven Church movement

VI. Summary and Conclusion

______________________________________

I. The Purpose-driven Church =

The “Drucker Driven” Church

Management guru Peter Drucker is Warren’s mentor.

Rick Warren views Peter Drucker as his mentor.[1] Drucker’s vision for society combines government, business and the Church all under his master plan, which is a broad vision of social engineering. For an excellent and very comprehensive analysis of the problems with Druckerism and Rick Warren’s use of it, see “The Pied Pipers of Purpose” by Lynn D. Leslie, Sarah H. Leslie and Susan J. Conway.[2] According to this article, the latter part of Drucker’s life was devoted to targeting churches, parachurches and charities. Yet he left dealing with sin out of his calculations.

“Peter Drucker has exerted a considerable influence on Rick Warren. A December 24^th 2002 CNBC documentary about Peter Drucker (“Peter Drucker: An Intellectual Journey”) claimed that he is one of Rick Warren’s mentors and influenced the start and growth of Saddleback Church.”[3]

The Church is NOT a business.

Though this is too big an issue to go into in depth here, the Church is NOT a business—it’s Christ’s own Body and Christ’s means of salvation. To reduce it to a business model is to radically distort and debase it with human-centered techniques and teachings not based on the truth of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

“In my life, I've had at least three mentors: my father, Billy Graham, and Peter Drucker. They each taught me different things. Peter Drucker taught me about competence. I met him about 25 years ago. I was invited to a small seminar of CEOs, and Peter was there. As a young kid—I was about 25—began to call him up, write him, go see him. I still go sit at the feet of Peter Drucker on a regular basis. I could give you 100 one-liners that Peter has honed into me. One of them is that there's a difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Efficiency is doing things right, and effectiveness is doing the right thing. A lot of churches—not just churches, but businesses and other organizations—are efficient, but they are not effective.”[4]

This quote from “The Pied Pipers of Purpose” provides a solid overview of some basic problems with the way Warren has applied Drucker’s approach to the Church:

“All three of these men – Drucker, [David] Salamon and [LESTER] Hornbeck – have emphasized ‘human capital’ as foundational to the transformation of the private sector. Why would “human capital” be of relevance to the Purpose-Driven church?

II. This radical view of economic man is the chief cornerstone of all of Drucker’s management theories.

III. Drucker’s theories undergird the Purpose-Driven model.

IV. This philosophy has nothing in common with the traditional Christian doctrines about the nature of man.[55] The humanity of Man is markedly devalued.

V. These men believe that a man’s human worth and a church’s effectiveness can be “assessed” – measured by psycho-social instruments.

VI. Intangible matters of the spirit are codified into “results,” and “ineffective” ministries are cancelled (“abandoned”). This new criteria ensures that lost souls will begin to fall through the cracks.

VII. Profit-driven models are applied to matters of ministry of the Gospel, effectually degrading private acts of charity and compassion.

VIII. The Word of God becomes secondary to systems theory implementation.

IX. Disturbing questions are raised about those precious people in our lives who do not or can not possess ‘human capital’ or ‘knowledge capital’.”[5]

Some signs of Druckerism in the Purpose-driven church movement

1. The Church is viewed as a business model. The bottom line is that church growth means numbers. This is absolutely contrary to the Bible’s teaching. (See quote above.) See John 6, esp. vss. 60-66.

2. The movement “builds” churches with marketing surveys, e.g., “What music do people like?”

2 Timothy 4:3 NIV • “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound 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.”

3. The movement purports to get rid of anything that might interfere with the transition to the purpose-driven model, e.g., older members who don’t want to change. Numerous reports exist of this phenomenon. For one example, see the article “Spiritual Euthanasia,” which at the bottom lists numerous pastors and church members who were driven out by these changes, along with their phone numbers.[6]

4. Church leaders are viewed as “change agents” instead of as servant ministers of Christ. This fits in with Warren’s social engineering approach to the Church.

5. The movement constantly tests for results using humanistic psychological methods, e.g., Myers-Briggs, to fit people into slots (more on this in the section on psychology).

II. The Abandonment of Orthodox Theology

A business guide

Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church is basically a business guide for pastors for growing the church numerically. He downplays the basics of true Christianity: the Cross, the wrath of God, the helplessness of humanity in the grip of sin and Satan; the devil; the atoning blood of Christ. These are God’s only way that we can be saved; and after we’re saved we still have to continually cope with the world, the sinful nature, and the devil, which we can only do by the continual recognition of the Gospel of grace—by grace we are saved, through faith in Christ alone (Ephesians 2).

“Deeds not creeds.”

Beware of Warren’s statements about a “new” Reformation of “deeds not creeds” for he totally ignores orthodox Christian theology, which countless Christians have died defending. Warren may claim to be loyal to the ancient creeds (the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicean Creed), but it doesn’t mean that in practice that’s what he preaches. For instance, he says that creeds (i.e., Christian doctrine) were important then but not now. Calling his approach a “new reformation” is sheer arrogance that matches that of one of his mentors, Robert Schuller. Schuller wrote a heretical book that he mailed out to pastors all over the U.S. called Self Esteem: The New Reformation.[7] Now Rick Warren has come out with his. But the Reformation has already taken place over 400 years ago, and the Bible holds true.

Abandonment of the true Reformation. Most people in the Church don’t realize how Warren’s approach is an abandonment of the good recovery of doctrine that took place in the Reformation during the 16^th century.

The Bible has both deeds and creeds (i.e., doctrine) as part of a balanced and powerful approach to living for Christ, whereas the idea of “deeds not creeds” is one of the main concepts in theological liberalism (Dr. Gresham Machen explains this well in his book, Christianity and Liberalism.)

A generic message

Warren shapes his message and his methods for “generic” religionists. His message could be given to Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and perhaps even Muslims. And as of now he is making common cause with Islam—not just working with Muslims but partnering with them. One example is how he calls a valid call to ministry being a nun. With just a nod he includes Roman Catholicism in his sweep, saying nothing about them having another gospel and that they worship Mary as the Queen of Heaven, etc.[8] This makes sense in view of his abandonment of the true Reformation that had to do with pulling out of the morass of the Roman Catholic Church and recovering the clear Gospel of grace.[9] Although its official doctrine denies justification by grace alone a person can attend the Roman Catholic Church and still be saved (though not by its doctrines). Roman Catholicism is a church gone astray, whereas Islam and Mormonism were never part of the Christian Church.

Quotes:

“There are purpose driven congregations in more than 200 different denominations and associations. Our desire is to work with denominations to strengthen their churches. Each church can maintain its own heritage of doctrinal convictions while cooperating with others on accomplishing the five purposes.”[10]

The same article quotes from USA Today: “Warren’s pastor training program welcomes Catholics, Methodists, Mormons, Jews, and ordained women.”

The same article also quotes Rick Warren when asked about the problems of training Mormons, among others. He said: “I’m not going to get into a debate over the non-essentials. I won’t try to change other denominations. Why be divisive?” But Mormonism is not just another Christian denomination; it’s another religion, a pagan religion with a Christian veneer that doesn’t have the same Christ. Warren isn’t discerning.

Syncretism / idolatry

Rick Warren is basically a syncretist, someone who combines contrary religious ideas and practices. The whole Old Testament testifies from beginning to end that syncretism is an abomination to God—spiritual adultery, also called idolatry. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be genuine fellowship between Christians of different denominations when the foundation in Christ and the orthodox doctrine of the Gospel are prominent.

Robert Schuller. Warren has enjoyed an intimate relationship with the heretical Robert Schuller and lied outright denying it.[11] Robert Schuller is the man who said that Christians have to stop preaching what he calls “negative stuff”—like sin, judgment, the cross, wrath—and to substitute building self-esteem. (See Schuller’s book: Self-esteem: The New Reformation.)

Obama. Warren has embraced Obama, who supports abortion, and called him his “friend.”[12] And he spoke at Obama’s inaugural address, evidence of more than a casual relationship and immensely disturbing to many evangelicals.[13]

III. The Misuse of the Bible

Isogesis not exegesis

Many books address Warren’s misuse of the Bible. From the point of view of biblical theology he is practicing “isogesis” (or “proof texting”) – that is, reading into the Bible his own previously held doctrines. He does not do exegesis, i.e., looking at what the Bible says and taking doctrine from that. In other words, he shapes it his own way. A big example is that he first took his purpose-driven system from Drucker; then he hunted through the Scriptures and numerous versions of the Bible and its paraphrases and tried to make them support his system. (More about this a little later.) Examples re The Message:

Examples of Warren misusing The Message

In The Purpose Driven Life Warren says, “The Bible warns…” and then quotes from The Message.[14] The way he depends upon paraphrases so much shows that he is unwilling or afraid to deal directly with the text of Scripture. The Message is full of many very subjective and psychology-driven interpretations. A paraphrase is really a commentary, and to quote from it as if it is a true translation is a poor or dishonest practice.

Warren grasps onto translations that say what he wants them to say, which shows that he is stretching the translations to reinforce his Drucker-generated theories. The book Who’s Driving the Purpose Driven Church[15] deals with this in detail.

IV. The Murdoch-driven Church

Rupert Murdoch

Warren allows this obviously sinful and unrepentant worldly and wealthy person to support him and to be a member of his congregation without publicly correcting him. Murdoch is widely known in many countries as the world’s biggest pornographer. (See “Purpose-Driven Pornography.”[16]) Murdoch owns Zondervan Publishing as well many trashy newspapers and the Fox Channel. Murdoch has contributed millions to Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. Plan and backed his books in a major way, a support that Warren covets. (Zondervan is also a big supporter of the Emergent Church gurus, such as Brian MacLaren, etc.)

When challenged about having this active pornographer in his congregation at Saddleback, Warren said only that he could work with anyone on common good goals. In other words, he didn’t want to deal with the fact that a member of his congregation and a personal supporter was sinning mightily against the Lord. You might almost say that it appears that Warren is in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket.

V. The use of Pop Psychology in the

Purpose-driven Church movement

This is too large a subject for our purposes, although it needs to be addressed. Unfortunately it isn’t unique to Saddleback for we live in a society focused on therapy and self-help. Propagating a “gospel of psychology” is a growing phenomenon in all mainline churches and in what used to be called evangelical churches. (If you want to know more about this, we can deal with it in another “brief” analysis.) The Leslies’ article points out how Warren believes that psychosocial instruments can assess a man’s human worth and a church’s effectiveness.

VI. Summary and Conclusion

Rick Warren is moving the evangelical church in a very negative direction, a direction that strongly resembles the way liberalism swept into the evangelical churches in the early 1900s. This had the devastating result of tremendously weakening them and making them extremely vulnerable to Marxism and all kinds of vain philosophies so they could not stand against abortion, the elevation of the homosexual lifestyle, and leftist politics that emerged later.

As someone who has worked with thousands of mental patients over the years, I (Richard) have to say that I think Warren exhibits a grandiosity that seems terribly inappropriate for a Christian minister. For one thing, he claims that he will unite two billion Christians around his plan to deal with the “giants” of poverty, etc., but somehow he doesn’t include the giants of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Nor does he mention salvation through Christ. Where’s humility? Where’s the Gospel? Where’s the Cross? Where’s the Lordship of Christ?

The above are only a few of the numerous reasons why many Christians today have a problem with Rick Warren. We are among them because, in addition to the above, we have personally been in churches where the purpose-driven approach has swept through and wreaked havoc.

¹⁸For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

²⁰Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²²Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

1 Corinthians 1:18–25 (NIV)

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[1] See Time magazine article (first paragraph) at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1830147-2,00.html

[2] http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/04/pied_pipers_of_purpose.htm

[3] Leslies, et al., Section 1.4.

[4] Quote from Rick Warren at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/03/21/8254830/index.htm

[5] Section 5, “The Pied Pipers of Purpose.”

[6] See http://www.cephas-library.com/purposedriven/purposedriven_spirutal_euthanasia.html

[7] http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue18.htm

[8] The Purpose Driven Life, 229.

[9] If you’re interested in this subject, Richard can point you to some books.

[10] From “Rick Warren ‘Works with’ and ‘Strengthens’ Mormon Churches and other non-Christian sects” at www.alittleleaven.com/2007/05/Rick_Warren_wor.html

[11] For details about his relationship with Schuller, see Lighthouse Trails research Website.

[12] A friend of an abortion promoter: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20090407/rick-warren-clarifies-relationship-with-obama/index.html

[13] “Why is Obama’s evil in Rick Warren’s pulpit?” by Kevin McCullough, Nov. 17, 2006. World Net Daily at http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID+52998

[14] P. 77.

[15] Who’s Driving the Purpose-driven Church: A documentary on the teachings of Rick Warren by James Sundquist (Bible Belt Publishing, Oklahoma City, 2004). Sundquist is obviously very much in the fundamentalist camp, but he is only documenting what he has observed. Appendix C of his book contains a very good article by Rev. Ed Hurd (Anglican minister), “Carl Jung, Neo-Gnosticism, and the (MBTI).” [Meyers-Briggs Temperament Indicator]

[16] See “Purpose-driven Pornography” at http://www.extremetheology.com/2007/05/purposedriven_p.html

Tares in Protestantism: Rosicrucianism and Evangelicalism

I once thought that Rosicrucianism was confined to those fringy ads in magazines advertising hidden power and knowledge, but after studying it extensively, I’m seeing that it’s like tares sown among the wheat of Protestantism. More and more amazing connections are emerging between the ideas of Rosicrucianism and hermeticism and the intellectual life of contemporary evangelicalism.

One example is Charles Williams, one of the Inklings and the dear friend of C. S. Lewis, whom Lewis called the most holy man he ever knew. Williams was a member for a while of the hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in England, which was just a variation of Rosicrucianism. The notorious Satanist Aleister Crowley led it for a long time. Rosicrucianism is basically alchemy that is expressed through literary symbolism, and it integrates all sorts of bizarre, occultic themes, such as the Cabala, the hermetic teachings, neo-Platonism, astrology, alchemy, mystery religions, Egyptian-Babylonian religions—you name it.

Unfortunately, most Christian apologists, in order to maintain the image of C. S. Lewis and the Inklings as wonderful Christian intellectuals, ignore or rationalize these weird aspects of their thinking and personalities. John Warwick Montgomery, for example, spends a lot of time defending Tarot cards as useful for Christians because Charles Williams thought Tarot cards were a symbolic avenue to the divine. We spent years immersed in studying and using the Tarot cards and other forms of divination when we were in the occult, and they have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus Christ, the Bible, or any biblical or godly truth. Charles Williams’ book The Greater Trumps, is like a trip into an occult hell, and reading it is to experience once again immersion into that weird world of the occult from which Jesus rescued us. Sadly, Regent College in Vancouver, B.C. is republishing Williams’ books. And—no surprise—Regent is a graduate school in the Anglican stream.

Speaking of Regent College evokes memories of our trip there over 15 years ago when we were exploring the possibility of attending. What we experienced was like a scene out of a novel. First we met with a professor and his wife who seemed like they were up to their eyeballs in Tolkien. We also met with the founder, John Huston, who treated us in a totally impersonal manner and who, after we explained our ministry of many years, dismissed it and told us that what we were really looking for was spiritual formation (his big focus). Then we met J. I. Packer, who staunchly defended psychology as a means of sanctification. So in a way it is not surprising that Regent College would be republishing Charles Williams’ novels. (By the way, we were so repelled by what we encountered at Regent that we decided not to attend.)

Years ago these odd kinds of syncretism and occultism remained more confined within the Anglican Church, with some overflow into the Roman Catholic Church, but now, through the Emergent Church movement, this syncretistic or imaginative Romantic evangelicalism has spread throughout the denominations to the extent that you would be hard put to find any denominations without it, except perhaps a fundamentalist Baptist church. However, interestingly enough, the original Bob Jones of Bob Jones University was very positive about C. S. Lewis.

The only writings about Lewis by well-known church leaders I’ve ever encountered that were critical of his work were by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Dr. Cornelius Van Til.

So, the beat goes on.

The Hidden Triumph of Romantic or Imaginative Religion

I was very disturbed to learn recently that Dr. Peter Jones is apparently quite enamored with Lewis and the other Inklings.

While listening to various speakers at a recent conference about Romanticism that his website offers as MP3s, I was amazed at the contrast between some of the speakers. One speaker was followed by another who extolled the opposite of what the previous speaker was warning against, without any apparent awareness of the problem by either. One speaker from South Africa did a wonderful job of elucidating Gnosticism; yet another speaker—I think originally from Britain—extolled Robert Webber’s book, Ancient and Future Faith, which is one of the foundational books of the Emergent Church. Another speaker, apparently with Jones’ total support, extolled Lewis and the Inklings as leading the way in showing how Christians can do cultural apologetics through stories.

This situation is terribly discouraging because I felt that Peter Jones was really very aware and balanced in his exposure of neo-paganism. How can one expose neo-paganism and not recognize what is perhaps the major form in which it is entering the Church?

But in one way, it’s not a surprise because Dr. Jones is connected with other Christian leaders who are well-known apologists and who also are enamored with Lewis, such as John Warwick Montgomery and Michael Horton—and even apparently R. C. Sproul.

What a mystery this is.

Unfortunately, this is all very familiar from our years of experience in the Anglican/Episcopal Church. We’ve already encountered everything I’ve heard about in the Emergent Church years ago in the Anglican/Episcopal Church. And all the syncretistic writers whom I saw exalted in the Episcopal Church are now being exalted in the Evangelical and even in the Reform churches.

We feel like the need to expose the roots of this movement, especially among young people, is becoming an urgent necessity and call on our lives. And this call is growing as the Emergent Church rises more and more into dominance.

It’s so alarming to see people getting sucked into the kind of evil and darkness that the Lord Jesus Christ rescued us from. Fellow Christians are becoming enamored with the terrible distortions of the San Francisco LSD movement, the siren music of rebellion, and the love of paganism and the occult. Although it seems like it’s the intellectuals who are most vulnerable to this deception, it's spreading through the culture like a dark spiritual tsunami because Oprah and various other media personalities and programs are popularizing these ideas. This malignancy focuses especially upon the children.

God help us.

"Mere Anglicanism"

Legitimized syncretism under the guise of Christian unity: This phrase describes what is happening today among evangelicals, and it is a key to understanding the destruction that C. S. Lewis has brought to Biblical Christianity.

The Gospel is the ONE Gospel—it’s not one of many. Under the guise of Christian unity, Lewis has brought in syncretism—many gospels. For instance, he believed in purgatory (a Roman Catholic invention), which necessarily follows from another gospel—a form of Pelagianism. This view holds that one must be purified to come into the presence of the living God, but purgatory is not by the righteousness of Christ. That is another gospel, but Lewis doesn’t have any problem holding and promoting that view. That’s one reason why people who follow Lewis can blithely become Roman Catholics (e.g. Peter Kreeft, Sheldon Vanauken, Thomas Howard, Joseph Pearce) and can become syncretists with Eastern religions (e.g. Dom Griffiths).

Lewis also preaches that God speaks through myths and that pagan myths are actually precursors to the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ. He believes in universal revelation. And he extols George MacDonald, whom he called his “master,” who believed that eventually all will be saved—even Satan.

The gospel that C. S. Lewis preached was not the same Gospel that Paul preached. This is why I consider C. S. Lewis so dangerous for Biblical Christianity.

Nancy Pearcey and Chuck Colson

A friend recently was asking me about problems with the thinking of Nancy Pearcey and Chuck Colson, so I wrote the following.

Nancy Pearcey and Charles Colson are both part of a stream of Evangelicalism that has a history and that is much broader than their individual influence.

Chuck Colson

Let’s look at Chuck Colson first. His conversion, he says, came through reading Mere Christianity, and his theological perspective now seems to reflect that foundation. The problem with Mere Christianity is its lack of clarity about the Gospel. C.S. Lewis says in the book that if you don’t understand the substitutionary atonement or have problems with it, just don’t worry about it. So, right off, the clarity of the Gospel is lost within a syncretistic context.

Another problem with Chuck Colson’s thinking is connected to the fact that he is married to a Roman Catholic. I believe that as a result of that and Lewis’s influence, he has been led to try to make coalitions between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. This is especially expressed in the movement Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which he and Richard John Neuhaus (a Roman Catholic) formed together. It's very influential today. Neuhaus is a RC convert from Lutheranism. Among other things, Colson has been teaching that the conflict of the Reformation was more a misunderstanding about words than a real basic conflict about truth. This is a total distortion of church history, and trying to say that somehow the preaching of the Gospel today in Evangelicalism can be harmoniously linked with Roman Catholicism is nothing more than false teaching. Any gospel that would fit into that would have to be a false gospel. (Romans 3 clearly lays out the true Gospel.)

It is a matter of fact that the Council of Trent (1600s), called by the RC Church as a counter-movement to the Reformation, declared that to hold justification by faith alone is a heresy that leads to anathema or eternal damnation. The Roman Catholic Church has never rescinded this declaration and still promotes it today. A council like the Council of Trent is supposed to be infallible according to the Roman Catholic Church. Officially, Roman Catholics still accept that as part of the teaching authority of the Church (the Magisterium). And official Roman Catholic doctrine today is that justification is by both faith and works.

In order to make an alliance or coalition of these extremely different views—Roman Catholicism and Evangelicalism—one obviously has to sacrifice truth. Luther called the doctrine of justification by faith alone the cardinal doctrine of the Church upon which the truth of the Church stands. Luther was willing to be burned alive rather than repudiate that doctrine. If you’re wrong on this point, any doctrines following it will also be wrong.

One other problem with Colson’s views is that he has confused civil religion, which is basically the religion of the state in U.S. history, with Biblical Christianity. In civil religion, one can have the Ten Commandments, but the Gospel is not there. Therefore, you can make alliances with anyone who is conservative and believes in moral principles (such as Mormons and perhaps even Muslims). In a recent conference leading Evangelicals, including Richard Mouw (president of Fuller Seminary) and Ravi Zacharias (an apologist), came together with Mormon leaders to proclaim their commonality and to pray together. This is one of the obvious evil fruits of this syncretistic approach to conservative religion in the United States. The idea is let’s get together on the moral issues and deal with the great enemy—secularism—and leave those sticky doctrinal issues aside. So it really turns into a battle between secularism and supernatural religion—not necessarily Bible-based Christianity.

A good example of the intellectual alliance that both Pearcey and Colson are associated with is the Veritas Forum (www.veritas.org). This forum brings speakers to college campuses to talk about truth. However, the speakers are a real mixed bag. They include such as Madeline L’Engle (a New Age writer blindly extolled by many Christians), Ravi Zacharias (mentioned earlier), several Roman Catholics, and Dallas Willard. Willard is known as one of the “fathers” of the Emergent Church, along with Richard Foster. The forum isn’t all bad, but it’s very syncretistic, and, again, the main worldview expressed is supernatural vs. secular or materialistic. The hope of the Gospel is not the centerpiece. Instead, the centerpiece is having a “Christian worldview,” which ends up being more of a religious or theistic worldview and not necessarily a Christian one.

Nancy Pearcey

I’m not as well acquainted with Nancy Pearcey, but from what I’ve read of her books, she was strongly influenced by Francis Schaeffer. I believe Schaeffer was very aware of the dangers of syncretism in the Church, and he certainly was very wary of any kind of alliance with Roman Catholicism. He emphasized a Christian worldview based on the Bible, and with his Reformed background had great clarity on the Gospel. But Nancy Pearcey appears to have taken Schaeffer’s worldview and combined it with what I call the Anglican-Lewisian worldview (described below), which I believe Schaeffer definitely would not have favored. In fact, Schaeffer’s book The Great Evangelical Disaster warns about just this type of syncretism.

This type of syncretism is like a strategy in a war that doesn’t come down from the General but rather is done by some lower-level commanders who think they know best but who are making grave errors—especially in forming wrong alliances, which the Bible warns against over and over.

In some sense, the Anglican Church is probably the most compromising church there is. And if you know the history of Anglicanism, which I have studied in great detail, you can see the effect of this. They desperately try to keep everything under a big tent, so there are streams in Anglicanism that are totally contrary but which continue to exist side by side. Now, there are also very good things, especially in Evangelical Anglicanism. However, that compromising spirit pervades even that stream of Anglicanism. A good example is J. I. Packer, who has stood for Reformed Theology and yet will make alliances with those who actually reject Reformed Theology, and somehow rationalize it as if there’s nothing wrong with it at all!

Another example is—and this is a major one—C. S. Lewis and his satellites. This is a big topic, having to do with a major stream called Romantic Religion, of which Lewis is a part. (I've written about this extensively in other blog entries.) This stream stems from movements in both England and Germany during the 1800s, which moved away from Word-centered to image-centered religion and left the Gospel way behind. It actually preaches a form of Pelagianism, that is the belief that man really saves himself.

And yet, modern-day Evangelicals can write a book, for instance, like Life Essential: The Hope of the Gospel (Harold Shaw, 1974, edited by Rolland Hein, Prof. Emeritus, Wheaton College). This book is a compilation of the writings of George MacDonald, who rejected the Gospel and was thrown out of his church for preaching such things as the eventual salvation of Satan. Yet Lewis calls MacDonald his “master.” To say that the influence of such Romantic religion is huge today is an understatement. It permeates a great deal of popular Christianity, including Evangelicalism.

Here’s a quote from George MacDonald revealing his view of the Gospel: “I well remember feeling as a child that I did not care for God to love me if he did not love everybody: The kind of love I needed was the love that all men needed, the love that belonged to their nature as children of the father, a love he could not give me except he gave it all men” (p. 9).

You see, the point is, MacDonald is saying that all people are already children of God. They’re not made children of God by God's sacrifice; they’re already His children. Even though MacDonald wasn’t an Anglican, this kind of preaching was perfectly in line with a type of Anglicanism that said, “We won’t send missionaries because Christ is already present in people of all religions.” They even used the term “the hidden Christ in all religions.”


In summary, there are tremendous conflicting movements operating within Evangelicalism today. Some, in the guise of trying to help the spread of the Gospel, are actually doing just the opposite and basically spreading another gospel—not that about which Paul said, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:8-9)

It is essential to discern carefully the influences in all teachings. John MacArthur’s new book The Truth War powerfully addresses these issues, although I’m not sure if he is aware of the great influence of Romantic religion in Evangelicalism.

Emerging from the Emerging Church

I’m going through a worldview shake up.

A great image, a great icon that I have cherished, is being torn down before my eyes—the image of C. S. Lewis as the premier modern, intellectual Christian. I don’t think C. S. Lewis created this image, but the difference between how he appears to many Christians and what he actually was, taught, wrote, and spoke about is very great—and seldom mentioned.

Consider the fact that during his argument about education in his little book The Abolition of Man, Lewis defines the ground of all truth as the Tao, the Chinese concept of impersonal truth. This effectively makes Christianity a subset and the God of creation a subset of the Tao. If you find this hard to believe, look at pages 27 to 29 in Macmillan’s 1978 paperback edition. How can the “greatest Christian apologist of the 20^th century”—as he is often called—write things like this? Here’s a quote from part of this section:

“This conception (A view of the reality of truth) in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth referred to for brevity simply as ‘the Tao.’”

You might be asking yourself as I’m asking myself: How can this be? How can it be that evangelical scholars and leaders look to various famous modern philosophers and writers and accept and propagate their teachings when they so obviously conflict with what the Bible teaches?

I’ve gotten a clue while studying the history of Christianity about what may be going on today, for this same process has happened before. In fact, it occurred several times in different periods since the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. It has been both disturbing and enlightening to discover how much various philosophies from the unbelieving world have been accepted within the Church. This process still continues, and I call it:

Evangelicals in the philosophers den

You may ask, “What has philosophy got to do with C. S. Lewis who was a literary critic, a scholar, and a writer of both fiction and nonfiction?”

Lewis was steeped in philosophy in his education, with a special emphasis on German philosophy of the 1700s and 1800s. He even taught philosophy. If you read his book Pilgrim’s Regress, which is almost impossible to read unless you know a lot about philosophy (and hard to read even if you do), you’ll find an allegory of his spiritual and philosophical journey from the dregs of Calvinism through various philosophies until he arrived at a philosophical version of Christianity. In this process the Bible does not enter in as a major factor.

What does this have to do with the Emerging Church? The connection is, as I am beginning to see, that the same bondages from the philosophies of Modernism are shaping and controlling the theology and practice of what is called the Emergent Church. Brian MacLaren and other Emergent Church leaders are claiming to be rediscovering valuable parts of church traditions that have been neglected or rejected by conservative evangelicalism. In this process they are also incorporating traditions and philosophies from non-Christian and occultic religions.

As a result of my background in being rescued from occultic/New Age religion, I am very sensitive to the kind of syncretism that was rife in that demonic stew. However, due to my passive hero worship and acceptance of people like C. S. Lewis who are actually doing the same thing, I blinded myself and was blinded to the similarity of syncretism in modern evangelicalism. I believe that the Holy Spirit is pointing out these kinds of things to me, and I’m in the process of emerging from the distorted view that it is merely a new stage in evangelicalism—a more enlightened evangelicalism—as people in the Emergent Church are now propagating. I believe this is really false and deceptive and that it’s a sinking rather than an emerging—a sinking by God’s people into an old version of bondage to the world the flesh and the devil.

True Unity in the Holy Spirit

In all this talk about “mere syncretism,” I don’t want to forget about true unity in the Holy Spirit.

I’ve been reading Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, one of the places where the Bible talks about such unity. Chapter 4:1–5 (NIV) says:

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were call—one Lord, what faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Lewis and many others are seeking the unity of the Spirit, but they’re seeking unity in ways not based on scriptural truth. I believe that often their motives are good, but their principles and practices are in error. We need to tell the difference between these errors and truth.

There are practical outworkings of this confusion between false unity and true unity:

• The true gospel is not preached, and false gospels are often preached.
• Christians are unable to differentiate between good and evil; they call good evil and evil good.
• Christians don’t recognize the difference between magic and faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.
• Christians are willing to take part in fantasy games and read fantasy literature without realizing the evil that operates in some of those types of thinking.

I know from personal experience and from observing those around me that these things are happening all the time and in ever-increasing ways because of the intensity of the spiritual war in our present time. I work in a mental institution that is staffed mainly by pagans who think of therapy as Buddhism and occultism blended together with secular humanism along with a few people who call themselves Christians who are as tangled into those problems as the ones who call themselves pagans.

May God grant us grace to know the difference.