Winds of Doctrine: A Survey of Contemporary Theology
Published 2013
Contemporary
Theology is generally defined as a study of theology and
theological trends from post-World War I to the present. This
174-page book champions historical Christianity and the sufficiency of
Scripture against aberrant theologies of the modern day. It addresses:
Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, Neo-orthodoxy, Neo-Liberalism, Pentecostalism,
the Charismatic Movement, the Vineyard Movement, Post-Vatican II Catholicism,
Secular Theology, Theology of Hope, Liberation Theology, Process Theology, The Jesus Seminar, Feminist Theology,
Theologies of Success, Theologies of Eschatology, the New Age Movement,
Postmodernism, and the Emerging Church. The purpose of this small volume, which
was originally a series of lectures delivered at the Haiti Bible Institute in
October of 2013, is simply to introduce this subject matter, not be an
exhaustive treatment. Hopefully, it will both serve as a primer for those who
want only the basics and also serve as a solid foundation on which to build for
those who want to go deeper in such discerning studies. Special emphasis is
placed on the fact that most contemporary theologies have an extremely low view
of Scripture, which is repeatedly demonstrated in each topic of study.
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Contents
Introduction
T
|
HIS is a short book, far shorter than
other books on the subject. That characteristic, however, was a deliberate
choice. As will be made clear in a moment, the purpose of this
humble volume is simply to introduce this subject matter, not be an
exhaustive treatment. Hopefully, it will serve both as a primer for those who
want only the basics and also as a solid foundation on which to build for those
who want to go deeper in such discerning studies.
The Meaning of Contemporary Theology
Contemporary Theology is generally
defined as a study of theology and theological trends from post-World War I to
the present. Roughly covering the 20th-century to today, the major
categories typically addressed by contemporary theology include:
Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, Neo-orthodoxy, Pentecostalism, Neo-liberalism,
Post-Vatican II Catholicism, the Charismatic Movement, and a few others. In
addition to these larger categories, contemporary theology also deals with
specialized areas such as Liberation Theology, Process Theology, Feminist
Theology, and others.
Is a basic understanding
of contemporary theology really all that important for the Bible-believing
Christian? We believe it is for at least two reasons. First, it is important
because it traces the development of beliefs in recent history. Observing such
developments enables us to better understand where errors were made and what other
errors will likely be spawned from them.
Second,
and even more crucial, most contemporary theologies consistently (and quite
often radically) depart from historical, biblical, and orthodox Christian
theology. In fact, adhering to a Biblical Worldview—which we will detail in
chapter 1—is not the goal in most contemporary views of theology. Not only
that, but virtually all contemporary theologians have rejected ancient stories
recorded in the Bible, such as the creation of Adam and Eve and the Fall, as
literal events that occurred in a miraculous fashion. Many also reject beliefs
long held sacred by biblical Christianity, such as the existence of a literal
Heaven and Hell, as well as the biblical concepts of sin and salvation.
It is
that second reason that will be reiterated many times in our study and forms
the underlying theme of this book. What we will see over and over again is that most contemporary theologies have an extremely
low view of Scripture. Each is simply an illustration of the real
problem, which is why we don’t have to be exhaustive in dealing with every
contemporary theology now in vogue—in this regard they are all the same. The
Bible is, in fact, the number one target of any and every false teaching.
This, of course, must be, for one must first rid himself of what God says. Once
that is done, then literally anything is possible. Once we free ourselves from
that “pesky” revelation from God, we can say anything we want, which will be
just as valid as what anyone else says because there is no standard to which we
are obligated to compare it.
This
principle is so axiomatic, in fact, that when I study any teaching or
philosophy, all that is really necessary is to look at its attitude toward and view of Scripture. If that is faulty, I really don’t need to go any
further to determine its value or agenda. Everything either rises or falls
on one’s view of Scripture—period. The agenda, in fact, is always the same:
one must first weaken Scripture so he can then strengthen his own teaching.
The Method of this Book
While somewhat reworked
for the present volume, this material was originally a series of lectures delivered at the Haiti
Bible Institute in October of 2013,
where I have had the honor of teaching several times. Founded in 2009 by On Target Ministry,[1] it is the first of its kind in that dark,
pagan country. Its sole purpose is to train men to be biblical pastors and graduated
its first class of 17 men in November of 2012. As a tribute to each of
those men, who worked hard to earn his degree, I list them here: Moise Fely
Mardochee; Berthony Desrose; Muscadin Jean Illrick; Pyram Pierre Richard;
Mercidieu Evrard; Predestin Pierre Herard; Woody Salomon; Dorival Fanes; Savin
Lestin; Nicolas Eddy; Edmant Mylien; Jean Djovenson; Longchamp Friken; Romain
Johnny; Millias Lucner; Simeon Frantz; and Wallenson Nobert (who was valedictorian
and my translator).
It was, therefore, because of my background in
theology and history that I was asked to teach this course (“Current Trends in
Theology”) as part of an advanced program designed for those who qualified from
the above 2012 class. I was actually a little leery at first because of the
weight of the material, unsure how well the students could grasp some of the
more difficult concepts through the language barrier (French) and cultural
differences. But my doubts were soon assuaged as
those godly pastors scribbled in their notebooks, asked their own questions,
and responded positively to the challenge I gave them about discernment. So
critical is the latter, in fact, that I assigned a research paper on
discernment, which they were required to send via email and comprised one-third
of their final grade.
The Message of this Book
The message of this book flows from Ephesians
4:14: That we henceforth be no more children,
tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning
craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.[2]
Here is probably the most graphic description
in Scripture of the immature, unguided, undiscerning Christian. As the command henceforth be no more indicates, the Ephesian
believers had obviously been manifesting the characteristics of children
when it came to questionable doctrine, so the first thing Paul says is that
this must cease. His analogy provides us with several characteristics of
children that apply to the spiritually immature, undiscerning Christian.
First, children are ignorant. The
Greek for children is nēpios, which is a combination of nē (“not”) and epos (“word”), so the literal idea is
“one who cannot speak, that is, an infant.” Metaphorically, it pictures one who
is “unlearned, unenlightened, simple, innocent,”[3] and even “foolish.” When the
ancient Greek philosophers wished to dismiss someone who was foolish in his
views, they would use nēpios with biting sarcasm.[4] Writing to Christians in Greek
society, Paul challenged the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I spake as a
child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man,
I put away childish things” (1 Cor. 13:11).
This
point is, indeed, profound. After becoming a father, I often found myself
thinking, “This child ought to know something, but he doesn’t; we have
to teach him everything.” And children will believe anything.
They will believe there is a
Santa Clause because we tell them there is (which perhaps ought to rebuke us,
should it not?). They will also try
anything. They will try to see what small objects will fit into an electrical
outlet, run into the street, eat the family dog’s food, and other things we
wouldn’t believe unless we saw them—and that is precisely Paul’s point.
The immature Christian knows either nothing at all or so little that he constantly
gets himself into trouble.
Second, children are impulsive;
they are tossed to and fro. This phrase is a single word in the Greek,
an old nautical term “meaning to be tossed by the waves.”[5] Children
have a short attention span. They bounce from one thing to another. Babies are
drawn to a moving object one moment and a shiny one the next. Toddlers will
play with a toy one moment and the box it came in the next. Likewise, immature
Christians bounce from one opinion to another, one teaching to another, with no
discernment of which is better or even right. They will just grab onto anything
and run with it.
Third, children are impressionable;
they are carried
about with every wind of doctrine (which is the origin of this
book’s title). The Greek peripherō (carried
about) pictures being carried around in circles, that is, being
directionless, just driven here and there with no guidance. As Greek text expositor John Eadie
puts it, “The billow does not swell and fall on the same spot, but it is
carried about by the wind, driven hither and thither before it—the sport of the
tempest.”[6] William Hendriksen also
observes:
While [Paul] was writing this, the trip which had brought him to his present Roman imprisonment must have been before him in all its vivid terror (Acts 27:14–44). But to be tossed to and fro and whirled around “by every gust of doctrine” is even worse than to experience the dangers of the sea.[7]
It
is also significant that the definite article (the) appears before doctrine
(tēs didaskalias)—“every wind of the doctrine”—showing that false teachers are
very deliberate; they don’t have a general doctrine, rather a definite,
calculated, and well formulated doctrine to teach. Most cults illustrate this
vividly; as wrong as the doctrine is, it is nonetheless systemized, organized,
and well devised. The same is true of most of the contemporary theologies we
will examine. As a result, whatever the false teacher’s doctrine is, the
immature, undiscerning Christian is just carried along by it until the next
teaching blows in and carries him somewhere else.
Fourth and finally, children are indulgent.
If there is one thing that characterizes a child more than anything else, it is
that he wants to play, wants to be entertained, wants to have fun, and is
self-absorbed. And that is not only true of the immature Christian today but
most of the Church as a whole. The seeker-sensitive approach has inevitably led
to entertainment as the driving force of church “ministry” today. This started
decades ago with just child and youth ministries that kept the kids entertained,
but now it defines the whole Church.
There is literally every form of entertainment in the Church that is found in
the world: all genres of music concerts, dramas, movies, standup comedy,
dances, sports, and even—I’m not making this up—gambling and strippers.
Worse,
this has now affected underlying doctrine in the Church. Quite literally,
anything goes nowadays, from the “flexibility” of Modern Evangelicalism, to the
“social gospel” and “inclusivism”
of Neo-Evangelicalism, to the vague “existential encounter” with Jesus in
Neo-Orthodoxy, to the claims of “new revelation” in all three “waves” of charismatic
teaching, to the “name and claim it” hedonism of the Prosperity Movement, to
the “truth is in the eye of the beholder” axiom of Postmodernism and the
Emerging Church.
But
Paul is not done yet! He adds that such false doctrine comes in three ways:
First, it comes by the sleight of men.
Here is a fascinating term. The word sleight is by far the best
translation of the Greek kubeia, from kubos (English “cube”) and appears only
here in the New Testament. The Greek literally means “playing dice” and the
translation sleight graphically pictures the implication of the
gambling, trickery, and fraud that is involved. We can picture this easily by
thinking of the old scam, Three-Card Monte, in which the expert con man
lays three cards on the table, one of which is a queen, shuffles them back and
forth, and then asks you to “find the lady.” You will win at first, but when
the bet increases, you will lose because of a sleight of hand trick. The dealer
picks up two cards with his right hand, the upper card between his thumb and
his forefinger and the lower card between his thumb and his middle finger, with
a small gap between both cards. According to common sense and is, in fact, what
he did before, the dealer should drop the lower card first, but this time his
forefinger smoothly and slyly ejects the upper card first, which causes you to
lose track of the queen. This is especially difficult to see if the dealer’s
hand makes a sweeping move from his left side to his right side while he drops
the cards. The moral of the story is: you are going to lose.
That is the false teacher. By “slight
of mouth” he tricks the unwary without their even knowing it because they are
gullible and over-confident in their knowledge. Pride gets the Three Card Monte
victim every time; he is confident he can follow the Queen, but he can’t because
of the sleight of hand—the hand is quicker than the eye. Likewise,
immature Christians are over-confident in their supposed knowledge and are easy
prey for the false teacher. This is precisely why Paul warned the Ephesian
elders in Miletus that “grievous wolves [will] enter in among you, not sparing
the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things,
to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30).
Second, false doctrine comes by cunning
craftiness, which is one word in the Greek, panourgia, a compound of two roots, pan (“all”) and erg (“work”), yielding the meaning
“capable of all work,” or as Aristotle viewed it, “an unprincipled [capability]
to do anything.”[8] Again, that is the false teacher. He will do anything, stoop to any level
needed to manipulate error, to make something look like Truth and thereby lead
others away from Truth. Paul also uses this word in 2 Corinthians 4:2, where
believers are commanded to “[renounce] the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking
in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation
of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of
God.” From the Jehovah’s Witness—who deceitfully alters John 1:1 to read, “In
[the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a
god”[9]—to books such as Your Best Life Now (Joel
Osteen), which are based on a total perversion of Scripture, men will do
anything to make their teaching look like Truth when it is, in reality, the
very opposite.
Third, false doctrine comes by delusion
and deception (they lie in wait to deceive). The Greek behind lie in
wait (methodeia, English “method”) does not appear
in Greek literature prior to the New Testament,[10] where it means “to investigate by
settled plan” or “a deliberate planning or system.”[11] There is, therefore, a settled
plan, an elaborate system, a deliberate scheme behind those who teach false
doctrine. Their desire is to deceive, Paul says, which translates planē, “a wandering out of the right way”
and, therefore, figuratively refers to delusion and error. First Thessalonians
2:10–11 speaks of the lost multitude that will believe the Antichrist, and for
that very reason God will “send them strong delusion, that they should believe
a lie.” While that day is not yet here, delusion, error, and seduction are everywhere.
All this underscores that discernment has all
but vanished in much of the Church today. As we will detail in the Conclusion,
one of the purposes of this little volume is to call the Church today to
discernment, to sift through all the verbiage we hear and throw out that which
is tainting the purity of God’s Truth. As noted earlier, this book is far from
exhaustive on the aberrant theologies that exist today. The principles and
examples we will address, however, are more than enough colors to paint a very
distressing picture.
If I may also interject a procedure I have
practiced for several years. Of any teaching I always ask three questions:
Where did it come from? What does it teach compared with Scripture? What will
be its end result? That procedure has never failed to tell me all I needed to
know. As we will see as we continue, we can apply these to every movement we
encounter.
We should also note that the names of many
teachers and leaders appear throughout this study. While some Christians feel
that “naming names” is divisive and even unloving, the Apostle Paul did not
agree. He mentioned false teachers by name (Hymenaeus and Alexander) in 1 Timothy
1:18–20 simply because of the seriousness of their error. He named Hymenaeus
again, this time along with Philetus, in 2 Timothy 2:16–18. Since he was
writing to a pastor, he was instructing that pastor to do the same. The
specific heresy was a denial of the resurrection, an error that is, in fact, repeated
by many today. As Paul wrote elsewhere (1 Cor. 15:13–14, 17), denying this
doctrine compromises Christianity itself, so Paul clearly implies that such
teachers are not true believers, and we again see the same professions
repeatedly in contemporary theologies. Paul went so far as to tell another
pastor to “rebuke” false teachers “sharply” (Titus 1:13). We, therefore, endeavor
throughout this study to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) and never
compromise one for the other. Besides, should not our love for Christ and His
Truth be the real driving force?
Finally, I am indebted to the labors
of several researchers and writers for their first rate
reporting on the various theologies we will examine; their research greatly complemented
my own. It is my humble opinion, however, that some such works suffer from
two shortcomings: First, some are more than 20 years old and in serious need of
updating (as will the present book in a few years no doubt). Second, some are
also at times too soft on false teaching, seeing “good” in various movements
that are clearly not good when tested by Scripture. (Who would root
around in a garbage can looking for a sandwich?) At the very least, in fact,
there is often so much bad in many of these movements that if you were to use a
set of old fashioned balancing scales, the “good” side would be so light that
it would be rendered completely irrelevant, the bad side slamming down so hard
that the scales would shatter. We will note a few such instances as we continue.
I pray that this humble
little work will bring glory to God and His Word and be used by Him to
encourage today’s Church to be ever vigilant in discerning truth from error.
[1] “On Target
Ministry: Serving God Through International Education”
(www.ontargetministry.org/).
[2] This
exposition is abbreviated from the author’s, The Christian’s Wealth and
Walk: An Expository Commentary on Ephesians, which is scheduled for release
in 2015 from Sola Scriptura Publications.
[3] Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: NT,
entry #3516.
[4] Colin Brown, NIDONTT, Vol. 1, 281.
[5] Kenneth
Wuest, Ephesians and Colossians in the Greek New Testament, comment on
Eph. 4:14. John Eadie comments: “tossed about as a surge” (Commentary on the
Greek Text of the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, 315).
[6] Eadie, ibid.
[7] William
Hendriksen, NT Commentary: Ephesians, comment on Eph. 4:14.
[8]Colin Brown, NIDONTT,
Vol. 1, 412.
[9] Where does The
New World Translation get this rendering? Supposedly, it is based on the
“oldest manuscripts,” which is patently and easily shown to be false. Also, it
was translated thusly from the German by Johannes Greber in 1937, a former
Catholic priest turned spiritist who claimed the translation came from God’s
spirits.
[10] Colin
Brown, NIDONTT, Vol. 3, 943.
[11] Joseph
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon and Kenneth Wuest respectively.
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