Table of Contents

- PUBLICATION DETAILS

- COVER

- PREFACE

- INTRODUCTION

- GNOSTIC TEACHINGS – DEITY AS NARRATIVE

- GNOSTIC TEACHINGS – CENTRAL DOCTRINES

- GNOSTICISM AND THE SCRIPTURES

- GNOSTICISM IN OUR TIME

- THE TEACHING OF E. W. KENYON

- THE BEING OF GOD AND GENDER

- BODY, SOUL AND SPIRIT

- WHAT HAPPENED FROM THE CROSS TO THE THRONE?

- WHAT ABOUT FAITH?

- REVELATION

- REVELATION AND INTERPRETATION

- REVELATION AND HISTORIC FAITH

- APPENDIX – QUOTATIONS FROM EW KENYON

- BIBLIOGRAPHY

PUBLICATION DETAILS

The Spiritual Spider Web: Ancient and Contemporary Gnosticism

Derek Morphew Publications

84 Starke Road, Bergvliet, 7945, South Africa

www.derekmorphew.org

Email: derekmmin@gmail.com

ISBN: 978-0-9869724-1-6

Copyright © Derek J Morphew 2011

The scripture quotations in this publication are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Abbreviation

NIDNTT - The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

COVER

The Spiritual Spider Web tracks the "genealogy" of Gnosticism, from the incipient form which caused the New Testament writers to defend the faith against it, to the re-emergence of Gnosticism in contemporary forms of Christianity, "deviant" Christianity and some of the non-Christian expressions of our time.

Its primary aim is to equip evangelical Christians to discern where Gnosticism is present, to know how the New Testament writers addressed it, and therefore to know how to respond to it today.

PREFACE

Jesus said, ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’. We are living during a wonderfully exciting era in church history. God is pouring out his Spirit all over the world. New churches and new movements are springing up everywhere, and ancient biblical truths are being rediscovered. One needs only to mention such subjects as the kingdom of God, the charismatic gifts, healing, grace, body ministry, worship, faith, covenant relationships and so on to realize just how much biblical truth has been made alive to this generation. The positive, affirmative proclamation of the word cannot be too much of a priority.

Paul said, ‘I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard’ (Acts 20.2931). It is not enough to proclaim the truth. We also have to defend the truth and correct error. As soon as one mentions correcting error, many immediately wonder whether we are in for another heresy-hunting episode, another exercise in being negative. One has to admit that those who become preoccupied with heresy hunting are rather a pain, especially when they seem to have more energy for breaking down error than building up the truth.

We agree that finding a deception or ‘seduction’ behind every pulpit is not a healthy exercise. This book is about exposing an error. It is also an attempt to state positively the biblical truth that the particular error is distorting. The negative is followed by the positive. Furthermore, the error that will be revealed in what follows is not one of the favourite hobby horse errors. It is in fact one that is hardly ever heard of, apart from various ivory tower journals, and yet one which has done as much to rob the body of Christ of its power as any. This error is like a spider web. One can see a strand here, a strand there; one can follow a myriad of convoluted twists and turns, yet never find the spider. Its tentacles, to change the metaphor, turn up in all sorts of places and most of the time the people involved do not have the faintest idea that they are being entangled. It is more weird and confusing than any of the other heresies. It is like a mixed pot of potions, some poisonous, some almost harmless, but certainly varied. It always tastes good at first. Those who drink it usually become hooked and then think they are drinking the milk of the word. Where is this error most likely to emerge? This is the most insidious part of all. In any part of the Christian Church where people are either hungry for, or actually experiencing, real spirituality! It is the Achilles’ heel of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. It was the first heresy to trouble the church and yet the one heresy that seems to last to the very end.

The early church called it Gnosticism, or gnosis. Paul warned Timothy, ‘Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis), which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith’ (1 Timothy 6.20).

Gnosticism distorts the truth about the revelation of God. Its primary preoccupation is revelation. This is why it touches on the root of the concept of spirituality. Those who are spiritual receive revelation. This is why, once we have done with the exposing of the heresy, we shall have to give some positive attention to the biblical concept of revelation and spirituality. We are dealing with true and false spirituality, with being super-spiritual or biblically spiritual. We will seek to distinguish between the revelation of God and the deception and counterfeit of the revelation of God.

The New Testament has far more antiGnostic sections than most Christians are aware of. The two fundamental problems for the early church were legalism and Gnosticism. Paul’s defence of the doctrine of grace in the face of the circumcision party is fairly well known today. His letters to the Galatians and Romans can be linked to the outline of the story provided by Luke in the book of Acts. There is however, no clear historical reference to Gnosticism and in earlier times New Testament scholars did not have the background information to realize the extent of the problem. It is now evident that the following portions of the New Testament were addressed (in part at least) to a form of Gnosticism; the gospel of John, 1 John, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Timothy, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation 13. Technically, it is correct to speak of the problem addressed in these sections as incipient Gnosticism. The full-blown error only developed in the second century and thereafter. Incipient Gnosticism was nevertheless a real problem, and the apostolic answer to the incipient kind is given to us in order that we may deal with any kind.

If you are a Christian leader you may have had the kind of experience that I am about to describe. As you consider the congregation where you serve, you can think of those who really make a difference to the community in serving, loving, praying, caring. You can think of the ‘weak’, who Paul says we will always have with us. Both these types are easy to understand. Then you can think of another rather strange type, not at all numerous, perhaps two or three people, who seem to be in a category of their own. They never seem to actually do anything that has any concrete usefulness to God’s work, yet they seem to be more than adequately blessed with spirituality, or so it seems at first. This little group speaks much about prayer. In fact they speak even more frequently about things the Lord has said to them. God always seems to be speaking to them, revealing things to them. They seem to get more dreams and visions and revelations than most. They never do anything without receiving clear guidance through God speaking to them. They appear to be in frequent combat with the enemy. Deliverance is much on their agenda. They also discern things about other people, about the leaders in the church, and about you. They tend to get ‘words’ for other people. They are rather serious people and tend to disdain certain activities that occur in the ‘flesh’. Many things others feel are okay are in the flesh by their reckoning.

What worries you is not simply that all their spiritual activity never appears to bear much fruit, but that there are actually other things about them that simply do not add up. For one thing, whenever you have a serious conversation with them you come away feeling somehow less than they are. You begin to question your own spirituality, and wonder why you don’t have God speaking to you all the time in this kind of direct way. Yet other people, whom you really respect, make you feel exactly the opposite. When you come away from them you always feel so encouraged and reassured. Why the difference?

Then the various ‘words’ they get are not really accurate. At any rate, when they have drawn alongside you and shared very confidentially how they were praying for you and how the Lord ‘laid something on their heart’ you were not honestly able to corroborate the same experience in your life. Even this does not explain your concern. There are other little clues that would seem to indicate that this very spiritual circle can behave in ways that do not seem to add up. Gossip, anger, pride, and some indications of well-disguised problems in sexual fidelity or business ethics seem to lurk behind the appearance of this remarkable spirituality.

What really floors you is what happens when an attempt is made to correct them. At this point the leader is made to understand that those concerned have first to hear from God about the area of correction. Later one is told that the adjustment the leaders are looking for is unacceptable. Why then will they not submit to biblical church authority? Because there are things the leaders have not really grasped yet. Perhaps if they had the maturity they would understand, but alas, their growth into the depths of the things of the Spirit is still not quite there. The little circle has retreated onto infallible ground. After all, if God has not confirmed the line taken by the leaders, who dare question God? You protest that certain issues are clearly taught in scripture. They reply that they have not had the scriptures revealed to them quite that way. There are other things they have ‘seen in the word’ which you cannot really grasp as yet. Evidently normal rational discussion cannot resolve this problem.

May I share my own testimony in this regard, if that is the correct term. Perhaps I should speak of my eventual perception or awakening to a problem I had never been able to define or really understand. I had been in the ministry for about ten years and was beginning to move back from the Pentecostal stream to my evangelical roots. Terry Virgo, who is well known for his excellent teaching on the grace of God, in one of his addresses happened to mention that the two issues that Paul the apostle dealt with were legalism and Gnosticism. He was expounding on how the apostolic ministry is there to check on the foundations of church life, to build in the truth and correct error. I began to remember my university days and the various notes I had on Gnosticism. This started a train of thought. I realized how much of the New Testament is addressed to this problem. It then occurred to me that it would be strange if in the providence of God large sections of the New Testament were not relevant to a later time in history. Why was so much space given to this problem? It so happened that I had also been grappling with certain attitudes in the people of God that had become more and more of a perplexity to me. I had been working with my own little circle of ‘spiritual’ Christians. You will probably be able to relate to the experience of listening to a sermon and being apprehended by a comment in the message which was far from central to the subject matter, but which became central because God chose to make that one sentence or phrase a living word just for you. This is what happened to me. My mind got into gear and would not stop until the journey had ended. During the next few months I found myself going over familiar and new material and suddenly discovering that all sorts of things I had never been able to put my finger on now began to make sense. I was being ‘deGnosticised.’ It happened because the ancient truth of the word became contextualised against the background of the particular situation in the contemporary church. The synthesis of the two was initiated, I believe, by the enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The reader will find some of what follows really weird. Do not allow your attention to falter during the weird part. From the weird account of the Gnostic doctrine we will progress to the masterly refutation presented by the apostles of Christ. This will equip us to take a fresh look at much of what goes on in the contemporary church. At this point you will hopefully begin to make comments such as ‘Oh dear’, or ‘Now I see’, or perhaps ‘Help, they are everywhere’. Gnosticism is something the current church really needs to understand, or else the spider web will continue to be wound around our feet, and our hearts and heads will continue to suffer the poisonous effects of that strange brew.

The danger is that you will then overreact and find a Gnostic demon behind every pulpit and under every pew. This would be a mistake, and this is why we will have to give careful attention to the positive biblical concept of revelation and spirituality. The danger of super-spirituality is that it undermines true spirituality. We will merely play into the hands of the enemy if we so react to super-spirituality that we begin to lose our hunger for genuine spirituality. If we can begin to see a little more clearly when something is false we should guard against becoming merely cynical. The intention is not to debunk Gnosticism but to point towards the real mysteries of God.

INTRODUCTION

Gnosticism arose in the confused world into which the gospel was proclaimed. It was a time when the older religions were losing ground and new ones were gaining popularity. The Greek deities were basically nature gods. Jupiter was the god of the sky, Neptune the god of the sea, Pluto the god of the underworld and so on. These gods were in continual competition with one another and could easily stoop to immoral behavior. It is not surprising that the more thoughtful found them less than satisfying. The more sophisticated philosophical religions went a little further, and amongst them the Epicureans and the Stoics were foremost. However these tended to lead to the logical conclusion that life is governed by chance or fate, creating a sense of personal imprisonment and despair. Neither the older deities nor the philosophies could answer a deep need of the common man, namely the need for certainty, for assurance, for security.

This is where the mystery religions of the east found their appeal. Where the philosophies were social or intellectual, the mysteries were intensely personal. They provided for numerous personal ‘spiritual’ experiences. Their secret formulas and rituals conjured up dramatic experiences that were far more subjectively satisfying. People who felt that fate or magic or demons bound them, believed that these experiences were bringing them release, salvation and assurance. This is where the roots of Gnosticism are to be found. It is in many ways a particular kind of mystery religion.

However, Gnosticism has one other peculiar characteristic. It is an eclectic belief. It combines together a little bit of this and a little bit of that, much like the proverbial kitchen recipe. In this case it mixed together the ritual, drama and mystery of the eastern religions with a fundamental concept found in Greek philosophy, that of dualism. Plato taught a dualism of the ideal and the sensory. He divided the whole of reality into two antithetical spheres, the sphere of matter, or sensory experience (taste, touch and sight) and the sphere of ideas representing an ideal world of thought forms and concepts. He believed the sensory world was inferior to the ideal world, and that the human individual could escape from the world of matter through knowledge. Plotinus, following the religion of Persia, taught a dualism of light and darkness.

We have then two basic ideas: the world of mystery (magic formulae, secrets and rituals) and the concept of dualism. Mix these assumptions with Christianity and the stage is set for Gnosticism.

It became an observable religious movement in the second century. Scholars debate exactly how developed it was in the apostolic age, but what cannot be doubted is that an incipient kind of Gnosticism, or protoGnosticism, was already in the process of development. The movement gradually merged into the Manichean religion of the third century where it peaked and began to wane. Many of its ideas eventually landed up in Free-Masonry. Its ideas have never really died.

Apart from the two basic concepts already mentioned, Gnosticism borrowed ideas from a remarkable array of ancient beliefs; from Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Syrian, Greek, Jewish and Christian sources, and from categories of belief such as philosophy, mythology, astrology, cosmology and mystery, a mixed potion indeed.

Our knowledge of the movement comes from sources that have only become available since the development of archaeological and literary research into the ancient world, particularly the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt in 1945. Specific Gnostic documents are The Secret Teaching of John, The Gospel of Truth and The Gospel of Thomas. In addition there are numerous quotations by the early church fathers in their refutation of Gnosticism.

The primary Gnostic leaders were as follows.

Simon the sorcerer is usually taken to be the first Gnostic leader. Luke tells us that he ‘practised sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, ‘This man is the divine power known as the Great Power.’ They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic’ (Acts 8.910). This account established a number of elements found in the Gnostic heresy. Simon was involved in the counterfeit sense of the miraculous. His claims involved a great deal of spiritual pride and arrogance. He underwent a repentance which later turned out to be spurious (Acts 8.13, 2023). We will see John speaking later of those who ‘went out from us, but they did not really belong to us’ (1 John 2.19). He wished to use the Christian message as a means for financial gain. Obviously his offer to buy the power of the Holy Spirit was motivated by an intention to charge for the bestowal of this power upon others (Acts 8.1819). In fact Simon may not have been a Gnostic, because all the evidence of a group that supposedly followed him comes form the second century. However, this later group certainly believed that he was a kind of founding figure.

Two other first century Gnostics who operated in the same area were Menandes of Samaria and Satornitus of Antioch. Others were Cyrinthus of Ephesus, who taught around the turn of the century, Basilides of Alexandria (Egypt, AD 120140), Valentinus of Rome and Alexandria (Rome AD 136165, Alexandria AD 165 onwards) and Marcion of Sinope in Pontus and then Rome. Marcion died in AD 160. The last three were the most influential.

The church fathers who defended the faith against Gnosticism were Irenaeus or Lyon (France, AD 130200), Clement of Alexandria (AD 150215), Tertullian of Carthage  (AD 160220), Hippolytus of Rome (AD 170236) and Epiphanius of Salamis in Cyprus (AD 315403). Standard works on church history will outline how these fathers sought to refute the developed Gnostic heresy and how the movement affected the church. This story is not our particular concern although the reader would find interest in the later apologetic arguments. The aim here is to show how the biblical writers themselves dealt with the problem and how the scriptures give us all we need for ‘correction ... that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’ (2 Timothy 3.1617).

GNOSTIC TEACHINGS – DEITY AS NARRATIVE

In this and the next chapter the Gnostic belief system will be described twice over, but each time from a different point of view. In this chapter we will tell the story of the Gnostic narrative of the divine being from within the logic of the Gnostic worldview. There will be occasional comparisons with the biblical worldview, where points can only be understood through the contrast between the two. In the next chapter we will deliberately draw out the contrast between Gnostic beliefs and fundamental biblical doctrines. In this chapter we start with the Gnostic belief system. In the next chapter we structure our thought from the biblical doctrines to the equivalent Gnostic beliefs.

Fundamental Gnostic Ideas

Christians are accustomed to a Theistic worldview, where God is not identical with creation, but is transendent. Further, this transcendent God is immutable – unchanging. His name, Yahweh means he who was, and who is, and is to come. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever. The Gnostic worldview is on a different planet. God, or perhaps we should use the term “the divine being” is a story, a narrative, an ongoing process, a becoming. The divine being is in a process of evolution.

One of the primary reasons for the Gnostic fascination with this narrative of the divine stems from their preoccupation with the origin of evil (theodicy). As Christians, we do not conceive of evil as originating in God at all, since God is all loving and all good. But for the Gnostics, evil begins in the story of the divine being. As the divine being evolved, a disaster took place, called the abortion.

In order to project this rather bizarre explanation of the origin of evil, the Gnostics allowed their imaginations to get into overdrive. Their explanatory schemes described vast metaphysical fantasies that included universes, galaxies of stars, levels of stars, aeons (meaning both ages and levels of being), and levels of angels and arch-angels.

The motive for this grand narrative of the divine being was quite clear: to place man at the centre of the universe. There is a correlation between the universe “out there” and the universe “in here.” Later philophers and theologians who describe God as the “ground of our being” have very similar ideas. When I peer into the depths of what I am inside me, I simultaneously gaze at all of reality. Further, the resolution of the problem of evil can only be solved in the divine being through the resolution of the human story. This is the most radical form of humanism that one could imagine.

In the telling of the divine narrative, the Gnostic metaphysical imagination moves from a beginning of monism, to a fall into dualism, followed by a final return to monism, which resolves the problem of evil. These terms require a little definition.

Metaphysics basically means “being as such” or “the first causes of things” or “that which does not change.” Historically it arose from the name given to Aristotle’s total written works. A good simplification of the idea is to think of the theory of everything that exists. The Gnostic system is focused on a view of metaphysics. If one then asks, what is the nature of everything that exists, one comes to the next term.

Monism is the belief that ultimately there is only one reality. All the distinctions of being that seem to exist are really grounded in a more fundamental unity. Reality is a unified whole and all existing things can be ascribed to or described by a single concept or system. So one can speak of metaphysical monism. A belief that is one of the forms of monism is Pantheism, meaning that god is the universe and the universe is god. Or, put differently, God is not a transcendent creator or personal being. In Hinduism and Buddist thought therefore, god is in the river, the tree, the cow, and you and I. The Gnostics did not articulate Pantheism, but their ideas are quite similar.

Dualism is the belief that all of reality is divided into two realities, and in most such systems the two realities are antithetical to each other. So for instance, the ancient Persians believed in an eternal dualism of light and darkness. But here we must be careful, because there are a number of different beliefs in dualism that are quite different from one another. First, a dualism that is permanent can view two opposing realities as equally balanced and unchanging, like Persian Zoroastrianism. This is different from a dualism that can eventually be resolved. The biblical worldview has an ethical dualism of good versus evil, but good and evil are not eternally equal realities. Good will eventually vanquich evil. The biblical worldview is about eschatological dualism. There are two ages, this age (which is corrupt) and the coming age, when God’s kingdom will reing supreme. Gnosticm is not into any of these dualisms. The Gnostics, borrowing from the ancient Persians, saw all of reality falling into two antithetical realities of spirit and matter. However, the move from an original monad into the abortion that resulted in a dualism of spirit and matter will finally be resolved when matter is totally destroyed and all spiritual reality is resolved back into the orginal monad. The story or move from the monad into dualism and back to the monad is the very essence of the narrative of the divine being.

How then does the narrative evolve?

The Gnostic Deity as Narrative

The story begins with an original “nothingness.” From this nothingness the divine being begins to become conscious of itself, or to think. As this happens, the nothingness becomes a somethingness. This original beginning of the divine being is the source of the “all” or “everthing”. The Gnostics used the term pleroma to express this, a term we will find Paul using, probably for apologetic reasons. The original source of the pleroma was totally alien, or apart, totally spiritual, and existed in total silence and repose.

Because there are many Gnostic texts, the story is not always consistent. In some writings the original alien source of deity is conceived as being androgynous (both male and female). In some writings the source is male, as the divine Father. The view that fits the system more consistently is the androgynous one, which becomes evident when one discovers how this applies to humanity. As the divine being emerges from nothingness through self-consciousness, the Father, or male idea, comes first.

The way the deity evolves out of itself requires some explanation. In one sense, it occurs through a process of thought, or emerging self-consciousness. However, a key Gnostic idea is that of successive emanations. The one level of deity emanates a lower level of deity, which emantes a lower level of deity, and so on. I have thought about my biology classes at school where we learned about the amoeba, a creature that can ooze, or emanate another one out of istelf. In the Gnostic system these emanations are generally both male and female, so that they can beget the next level of emanations. Another metaphor is to think of a succession of cascading waterfalls, each one a little lower than the next.

The first emanation out of the Father deity was wisdom, or Sophia (the Greek word for wisdom or thought). This ties in with the idea that the divine being evolves through a process of gradual self-conscousness, or thought. Up to this point all was well within the divine being. But here is where the problem began. Sophia wanted to reflect on the depths of the Father level she had emerged from, to penetrate into the deep origin of the divine being. Her self-reflection became a desire, and then her quest to know (gnosis) the depths of the Father’s being became an overwhelming desire. Possibly influenced by Stoic thought, the story now describes the origin of evil, because any uncontrollable desire is not entirely virtuous. Sophia therefore “fell” into lower Sophia, or emanated an inferior “out of control” level of deity. This was a total disaster, an abortion.

The total Gnostic system has many levels of emanation, with many names of deity, but for our purpose the important aspect is where the emanations end. Lower Sophia, now corrupted and evil, then emanated the demiurge (the craftsman), the creator of matter. This level of divine being is the object of total disrespect and mockery, rather like a nobleman would look down on a mere artisan who makes furniture.

Here is where metaphysical dualism arrises. The original fount of deity (Bythos) is pure spirituality, and inherently good. The creator of matter is the result of the abortion. Therefore matter, material existence, is inherently evil, resulting in a dualism of spirit versus matter.

The next chapter will deal with the interface between Gnostic thought and biblical thought, and show how the biblical storyline is distorted and subverted. However, it is important to note at this point that since Yahweh is the creator of matter in the Genesis creation narrative, the Gnostics viewed Yahweh as the demiurge. The Old Testament creator God is the epitomy of evil, himself the result of an abortion, and a corruption of a female divine emanation. His maleness is as problematic as his being the creator of matter.

As noted, Gnosticism is radically humanistic. The narrative of the divine being sets the stage for their beliefs about humanity. Somewhere near the beginning of the divine emanations was the divine anthropos, the ideal, perfect man. In a sense therefore, man is the original divinity. When the abortion took place, sparks of divity were scattered abroad, landing in different proportions within humans. Such divine parks were good deposits of spirit now imprisoned in the evil physical bodies of humans. Man’s true origin therefore is from the original monad, which is spiritual, but humans are now a duality of good spirit inside evil physical bodies. The destiny of man is to have the good sparks somehow escape from the prison of the human body so as to return from whence they came.

At this point a further “mind game” takes place. The evolution from the nothingness to the somethingness was an event of consciousness. The desire of Sophia to penetrate the being of the Father was a mental desire. Now what occurs is a double forgetfulness. First, man has forgotten his divine origin, and does not know that there is a spark of divinity within. To escape the evil body, somehow an awakening of knowledge (gnosis) has to take place. Second, Yahweh, in a kind of divine amnesia, does not know that he was emanated from lower Sophia. He actually thinks that he is the supreme being, but holds this view in arrogance and ignorance. He is self-deceived.

How does man’s forgetfulness get resolved? The figure of Christ appears (a figure not at all like the biblical Christ) from the pleroma to give revelation (gnosis) of man’s true origin. The way of redemption then is all about recollection through revelation. It has nothing to do with sin or repentance, since evil arose within the narrative of the divine beign, and man is not at fault for being impisoned in these evil physical bodies. It follows that there is no need for atonement either.

If a human being can receive enough revelation and awakening, after death the escaped spirit or soul can return to the pleroma, so that all the sparks of divinity, spread abroad through the abortion, can be regathered into the original oneness of the monad. In this way the story of the divine being and the origin of evil can be finally resolved. Included in this resolution is an apocalyptic kind of event where all physical matter is totally destroyed. In the next chapter we will discover the details of how man’s journey back to the monad can be achieved.

The next step in the Gnostic narrative has led to the most dramatic historical implications. The total story of how the divine being emerges, falls into the abortion and then reabsorbs all its sparks into unity once more is the agonia. It is an agonia of monism, into dualism, back into monism. But here is the crucial point. When the sparks are eventually all reabsorbed, and matter is totally destroyed, and the divine being is back in unity and repose, the final state is better than the orginal state. The divine being has matured, progressed and developed. In this way the agonia is actually the divine romance. Not only so, but it follows that the agonia is necessary for the romance. Without the fall and redemption of the divine being there can be no movement forward towards greater divinity. The pain is needed for progress to take place.

Here is where this point of the story has its effect on world history. The place where the divine romance is worked out is in the story of humanity. Only as humans receive the revelation from the Christ and are awakened to their true origin can the sparks of divinity return into the monad. One could say, the divine being needs human beings to discover themselves in order to be saved.

Later developments in the history of Gnostic thought took the agonia/romance to its conclusion. Since man’s awakening is the way the divine destiny is worked out, man’s history is where it all happens. The movement from monad to dualism back to the monad is like a pendulum or dialectic of thesis (the orginal fount of divinity) to antithesis (dualistic agony) to a new synthesis (reconsituted monism). The agonia is played out through the history of nations in conflicts with one another, where those humans who have a higher sense of revelation (gnosis) or divine consciousness fight wars of subjugation against less enlightened nations so as to enable the march of the divine being in history. Therefore wars of subjugation are necessary. This final twist to the Gnostic tale can be traced through the history of philosophy: the orginal Gnostic teachings of Valeninus were recycled into modernity through the German mystic philosopher, Jacob Boehme. From there one can “join the dots” to the dialectical philosohy of Hegel, one of the Idealist philosophers, to a fork in the road, where one road leads into the Fascist idea of the superior (enlightened) race subduing inferior races, while the other road leads to the Marxist idea of the antithesis between the Bougoisie and the Proleteriat leading, through violent revolution, to the synthesis of the classless society.

In Boehme’s rendering, which is a legitimate reflection of select 2nd Century Gnostic sources, the tragedy of the divine fall or abortion is changed into a romance. The divine is filled with desire to evolve. To achieve this, fall and return is necessary, so that the end of divine being is greater than the beginning. The tragedy or pain of fall and return is therefore a virtuous cycle. In these later systems man becoming conscious of this divine destiny is how the divine being evolves through the agony of fall and return. This lies behind theories of racial conflict and the justification of violence.[1]

Another trajectory of Gnosticism leads into views of gender relationships. The demiurge/Yahweh, the Old Testament God of creation, filled with ignorance and arrogance, personifies what has gone wrong with the divine narrative. Behind this analysis is a fundamental tenet of all monistic philosophy and religion. If that which was totally pure was oneness, and that which is “fallen” is dualism, it follows that all distinctions of reality are problematic. The ultimate tragedy is found in the distinction between spirit and matter, but it follows that every other distinction of being is equally tragic: the distinction or differentiation between creator and creation (the false “belief” of Yahweh), the differentiation between male and female (the grand mistake of the heterosexual creation of Yahweh), the differentiation between good and evil (expressed in the legalistic system of Yahweh’ moral laws). The Patriarchal, heterosexual creator and lawgiver is a being that mankind needs to be delivered from.

How does this occur? In the Genesis narrative what the text says, and what actually happened are not quite the same. There is a subversive, revelatory reading of this text that tells the real story. The “cunning” of the serpent represents wisdom, speaking for Sophia, the goddess of wisdom, coming against the confused and self-deceived male God Yahweh. Through the serpent Sophia imparts wisdom to Eve, who was not the one who was deceived, but the one who received enlightenment, coming to the knowledge of good and evil (perhaps we should say, that there is no good and evil, but only forgetfulness and revelation).

Two implications follow from this narrative. The goddess principle is closer to the origin of divinity that the male God Yahweh, and androgyny is closer to the original fount of divinity that heterosexuality. It would follow that bi-sexuality is also closer to the divine than heterosexuality. Gnosticism therefore leads to the agenda of overthrowing Yahweh and replacing him with Sophia (or Isis, the Egyptian equivalent). In contemporary Gnosticism all the names of the goddess principle converge, Gaia the mother earth deity, Isis and Sophia, and the Kundalini idea of the uncoiling serpent from within the spine.

A number of times in this narrative the “mind game” has appeared. This finds its conclusion in one more mind game. If man is the centre of the story, and man’s enlightenment through gnosis is the critical factor, then it follows that it is within man’s ability to reimage the divine being. How mankind conceives of the deity, and lives this out in the march of history, actually determines the outcome, or forward movement of the divine being. The growth of goddess worship and religion has the power to change the divine being. Humans can make God in their image.

GNOSTIC TEACHINGS – CENTRAL DOCTRINES

In this chapter we will itimise the basic philosophical assumptions and then deal with Gnosticism in terms of the relevant doctrines of scripture, namely theology (doctrine of God), anthropology (doctrine of man), Christology, Soteriology (doctrine of salvation), Ecclesiology and ethics.

Philosophical assumptions

Gnosticism was mystical and rationalistic. These terms require a little explanation. There are various ways in which people attempt to arrive at the truth. Many accept truth as part of tradition, that is, on the authority of others. Other systems of truth operate from prior assumptions that are arbitrarily taken to be axiomatic (a priori reasoning). The biblical approach to truth is grounded in the revelation of God in history. God has acted in the redemptive history of his people through mighty acts and through a repeated process of promise and fulfilment. Biblical truth can be and has been objectively verified. This approach is similar to the empirical or scientific method because the object of study (God’s acts in history) can be assessed and verified (was the promise fulfilled?).

The mystical approach to truth discovers truth in the feeling and subjective experience of man and the rationalistic approach bases truth on the process of human reasoning. The two are very similar because they both start with the human subject, with man in his thinking and feeling. Gnosticism is focused completely on man.

From its original monism, Gnosticism posits a fundamental dualism. The Persians held to a dualism of light versus darkness. The whole of reality is either dominated by the power of light (goodness), or the power of darkness (evil). The two powers are basically equal. They have always been there and will always be there. Plato taught a dualism between the ideal and the material world. The material world is inferior to the ideal or spiritual world. The Gnostics, following both of these, taught a dualism between the spiritual and the material. The whole of reality is divided into two halves that stand in antithesis. This dualism then leads to a further step. All physical reality is said to be inherently and permanently evil, and all spiritual reality is said to be inherently and permanently good.

Here we should pause to consider the biblical teaching on good and evil. The scriptures teach that all reality, light and darkness, physical and spiritual was originally created good because God, who created it, is inherently good (Genesis 1.35, 31). Then, when Satan rebelled and beguiled man into rebellion, sin entered into both the physical and spiritual nature of man (Genesis 3). When Jesus came he redeemed man in a total sense. His sacrificial death involved both physical and spiritual suffering and his salvation reaches man’s physical and spiritual nature. It is not true that any spiritual reality must be good. Angels are good but demons are not. Neither is it true that all physical things are evil.

The Gnostic view allows for a fall of man in the ‘flesh’, but no such fall in his spirit. It allows for redemption of man, again in his spirit, but not in his body. Where the evil body has imprisoned the good spirit, with redemption the spirit is empowered to overcome the body. The Gnostic view of good and evil then determines the approach to the nature and destiny of man. Man they taught, is a spark of divinity imprisoned in an evil, physical body. His destiny is to experience the liberation of this good, spiritual spark of divinity out of this evil physical body.

How did man arrive in this predicament? How did it all begin? There was originally a great accident, or fall, or abortion. Matter (material, physical things) was never supposed to be created at all, but when the original accident occurred matter was created by mistake. When man is redeemed from the evil prison of the human body his spirit (the spark) will be reabsorbed into the spiritual world, or into the whole. Here Gnosticism merges with the Hindu concept of Nirvana. The whole, or the realm of spirit, is not personal. The fullness of god is the general (pantheistic) realm of spirit.

The Universe

Theology

It follows from the belief in dualism that there can be no real doctrine of creation, because creation is a positive thing. What occurred was an accident, an abortion, and whoever perpetrated this crime must have been evil. The creator of matter must have been an evil deity. The realm of spirit was never created. It has always been there as the only true and good reality. The realm of spirit is eternal and good. The supreme fount of deity is Bythos. Coming out of Bythos are successive emanations of divinity, descending in goodness until at the lower level the emanations eventually become evil. Finally an emanation occurred that was evil enough to create matter. This emanation is known as the ‘craftsman’ or ‘demiurge’, the creator of matter and the God of the Old Testament.

A key word for the Gnostics was pleroma, or ‘fullness’. The pleroma is the totality of all the emanations of divinity together, the fullness of God.

The emanations, also called aeons, are either male or female. Each pair of emanations or aeons begets the next pair. These aeons are equivalent to the planetary spheres known to the astrologers. Each planetary sphere is ruled by an emanation called a planetary ‘ruler’ (archones), and this ‘ruler’ is the equivalent of the biblical order of angels and archangels. The Gnostics would take Paul’s reference to the ‘authorities and powers and spiritual forces in the heavenly spheres’ to refer to these emanations or planetary rulers. An example of the accident of creation as taught by Valentinus will ‘clarify’ how this all works.

First there was Bythos, the fount of deity. Bythos begat or emanated Silence and Thought. Silence and Thought then begot Mind and Truth. Mind and Truth begat the Word of Life (the logos), who then begot five emanations, including Man and the Church. Man and the Church begat six aeons, including Sophia (wisdom). Then the disaster occurred. Sophia had an abortion. Limit was sent to attempt to hold back the disaster but failed, and Sophia in her abortion produced Enthymesis who was immediately sent into exile. There in exile she begat lower wisdom (Sophia), and lower wisdom begot the demiurge (craftsman) who is the God of the Old Testament. This craftsman, with evil intent, then created matter which is inherently evil. However, because the fullness of deity at its origin is purely spiritual, even this abortion of a creation could not avoid some good element, so now man’s nature contains matter, which is evil, plus the soul, which is neutral, and pneumatic substance which is good (spiritual). Christ is the one who comes to encourage the pneumatic (spiritual) side of man, but each man has a different amount of pneuma, or spark of divinity.

Anthropology

If humanism focuses on man, Gnosticism is totally preoccupied with man. Any other subject, be it astrology, creation or redemption is of interest only because it has something to say on the origin and destiny of man. In fact the Gnostics boasted that this was why their teaching was superior to any other. According to Valentinus,

it is not only baptism that frees (from the power of fate) but Gnosis, knowledge of what we were, why we came into being, where we are and at what point we have been placed (in the cosmos), whither we are hastening, from what we have been redeemed and what is birth and rebirth.[2]

Gnosticism is not therefore really interested in the knowledge of God. It can only be of interest in so far as it reveals something about man, and this knowledge man discovers within himself. Once he knows about the divinity within, he discovers the way of salvation. The good spark needs to be liberated from the prison of the human body. Redemption is not therefore a receiving of something from outside of oneself, but a liberation of that which is within.

Man is a stranger to the physical world. Deep down he knows that his destiny is to escape. The whole of the created order is what he, like some home sick angel, wishes to escape from, be it nature, history or the body. We were never supposed to have been here in the first place. The “accident” placed us here. We seek our true home outside this world.

These things are true of many men. However, this does not mean that all men are the same. When the sparks fell (during the abortion) they fell in unequal proportions, leaving three categories of humans. Those who received a big spark of divinity are the ‘spiritual’. They are saved by the knowledge of Christ. These are the members of the Gnostic movement. Those who received a small spark are the ‘psychic’. They are saved by knowledge plus obedience. These are normal Christians. Then there are the carnal or ‘hylic’ who received no spark at all. These cannot be saved. They are the remainder of the human race.

The teaching is therefore fundamentally elitist. The Gnostics are a special breed not only above the normal human being, but above the Christians as well. The salvation of Christ affects them in a special way that normal Christians cannot enjoy. Furthermore the elite are not required to do or receive anything to be the elite, all that is required is the knowledge (gnosis) that one is in fact a human being with a big spark. One must simply know the secret and then be initiated into the ranks of the elite.

Christology

We have noted how Gnosticism mixed together a potion of diverse religious approaches such as astrology, cosmology, mystery, philosophy and mythology. It is not surprising therefore that their view of Christ is mythological. It mattered not to them whether he was an actual historical figure or not. The ancient world was full of myths of nature gods who would die and rise again with the passing of each winter and summer. Christ was merely added to this complex of myths as a special case.

Most characteristic of the Gnostic view of Christ was its denial of the incarnation. If the human body is inherently evil, and the logos (word) is inherently good and spiritual, it is only natural to deduce that the incarnation of the logos into a human body is not only impossible but also unthinkable. Plato had already developed the idea of the logos as the mind or reason behind everything, the idea alone is reality, as opposed to the sensory world, which is transitory and illusory. That such a reality should enter into the world of the senses would be completely disastrous and contradictory. Dualism, be it platonic or Gnostic, lies behind the two earliest Christological heresies, namely Docetism and Adoptionism. ‘Docetism’ derives from the Greek word dokeo which means ‘to seem to be’. Docetism teaches that the logos only seemed to become incarnate in a human body and only seemed to die on the cross. Irenaeus summarizes the teaching of Basilides as follows;

The unoriginate and ineffable Father, seeing their disastrous plight, sent his firstborn Nous (mind) he is the one who is called the Christ to liberate those who believe in him from the power of those who made the world. To their (the angels) nations ‘he appeared’ on earth as a man and performed miracles. For the same reasons also he did not suffer but a certain Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry his cross for him: and this Simon was transformed by him (Jesus) so that he was thought to be Jesus himself, and was crucified through ignorance and error. Jesus, however, took the form of Simon, and stood by laughing at him.[3]

Another way of evading the union of the logos with an evil human body was the theory of temporary union, that is, that the logos came upon the human person of Jesus only to leave him again. Irenaeus explains the teaching of Cerinthus as follows.

A certain Cerinthus in Asia taught that the world was not made by the first God, but by a power which was widely separated and remote from that supreme power which is above the all, and did not know the God who is over all things. Jesus, he suggested, was not born of a virgin, for that seemed to him impossible, but was the son of Joseph and Mary, just like all the rest of man, but far beyond in justice and prudence and wisdom. After his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove, from the power that is over all things, and then he proclaimed the unknown Father and accomplished miracles. But at the end Christ separated again from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and was raised again, but Christ remained impassable, since he was pneumatic.’[4]

Having found the union of the logos or Christ with a human body so difficult or impossible to entertain, the Gnostics, not surprisingly, found the idea of a bodily resurrection even more ludicrous. If salvation involves an escape from the prison of the body, then surely a return to the body after liberation from it must constitute the reversal of salvation. They could accept that the Christ rose again in the ‘spirit’, but not in the body.

Soteriology

A basic assumption behind all Gnostic thinking was the Stoic belief in fate. The stars determined one’s fate. No freedom of choice was possible. When the sparks fell, they fell in different proportions and one was simply landed with a big spark, a small spark or no spark. There was no decision to be made. Repentance was irrelevant. The only important thing was correct diagnosis or discovery. It was all-important to know which category one belonged to. The sense of fate or determinism has been one of the most tenacious aspects of Gnosticism. It was a primary belief for the Manicheans, who were heirs to the Gnostic movement, and from here elements of determinism have been traced through Augustine (who was once a Manichean), to the reformers, particularly Calvin. This will obviously be hotly disputed and this is not the place to debate whether this allegation is true or false. We simply note that certain students of church history and theology have made this observation.

The emanations from the first and supreme fount of divinity, Bythos, are equated with the angels and planetary rulers. The succession of emanations gradually deteriorates. The way of salvation involves climbing back up this ladder of emanations or rulers/angels. Angels are therefore intermediaries of salvation, which is another Gnostic idea which has persisted in subsequent history. An Egyptian Gnostic myth which was added to the intermediary role of the angels included Mary in the ladder, which is where one can find the origin of the idea of the assumption of Mary to heaven.

How then does salvation take place? The Gnostic answer is clear: through knowledge. Instead of being invited to know God the Gnostic is invited to ‘know yourself.’ Discover to which category you belong. Find the spark within. This knowledge is the first in a succession of things one must ‘know’ or discover by revelation. After death, at which point one is delivered from the evil human body, the ladder of emanations/aeons stands between man and Bythos. The way up the ladder involves a series of passwords required by each ruler/angel/aeon. These passwords are highly secretive and are obtainable by special, private revelation received during the course of life in this world. The knowledge required is therefore specifically a secret, revelatory knowledge. The process begins with an initial crisis moment of illumination where the individual discovers the big spark within. This moment was said to be like that of a drunken man suddenly awakening out of his stupor, opening the way for a life long experience of personal revelation. Death was to be awaited as a moment of relief, and naturally no such disaster as the bodily resurrection could be anticipated. The release from the body initiated the journey of the soul, armed with an abundance of pass words, through every successive emanation until eventually one would be absorbed back into the whole.

Ecclesiology

The understanding of man and of salvation determined the view of the church. The Gnostic church was populated only by the elite, a ‘club of illuminati possessing secrets.’ [5] Evangelism was a meaningless concept. Who would want to gather the common herd of humanity who in any case had no hope of salvation, and who would want to mix too much with the unfortunate average Christian burdened down with the requirement of obedience and so sadly lacking in personal revelatory experiences? The illuminati had a further distinction. They were apparently the sole possessors of a secret apostolic tradition, which had been passed on only amongst their own kind. This gave them insight that the normal teaching authorities of the church could never possibly understand and of course, made it unnecessary for them to take such church teaching very seriously. Ptolemy, a disciple of Valentinus, wrote to a prospective member of the elite as follows:

You will learn the order and the begetting of all these (aeons) if you are deemed worthy of knowing the apostolic tradition which we have received from a succession, together with the confirmation of all our words by the teaching of the Saviour.[6]

One can imagine how this would work out when an elder attempted to correct the erroneous doctrine of a Gnostic ‘member’ of the local church.

Ethics and worldview

The Gnostic worldview is fundamentally negative, being antimatter, antiworld, antihistory and antireality. The biblical doctrine shows the affirmation of God concerning our humanity in the human nature of Jesus. His identification with ordinary employment (carpentry) shows his affirmation of ordinary life in this world. The biblical teaching on sin is worked out against the background of this prior affirmation. Where the Gnostic worldview is fundamentally negative the biblical worldview is fundamentally positive.

The most dangerous aspect of Gnosticism is the way its dualism works out in ethics. If the spirit is inherently good and the body is inherently evil, two possible conclusions must follow. Either one must subjugate, repudiate and flagellate the evil human body in order to liberate the spirit, or one is given licence to disregard the evil of the body because the spirit will remain good no matter what happens in the body. Both asceticism and libertarianism are the products of Gnostic dualism.

The ascetic tradition has been particularly persistent in Christian history. The ascetic is convinced that his body is the source of sin. He desires to purify his spirit by putting down the body, which leads to various forms of excessive selfdenial and to self-mutilation. Celibacy and vegetarianism are possible ascetic options. There are of course bizarre stories of how some of the monks tried to deal with their ‘evil’ bodies. One monk lived up a pole on a platform all his life, never washing, and without protection from the elements. Food would be passed up to him from time to time. His total selfdenial was supposed to advance his personal holiness. Another monk used to burn his fingertips in the flame of a candle whenever he found himself fantasizing about the wiles of women. The pain was supposed to occupy his mind more than the pretty girls would. These stories are bizarre, but there is no end to the ways in which Christians with ascetic tendencies against the body or normal human existence attempt to promote the purity of their spirits.

The libertarian has exactly the same disrespect for the human body. He however comes to ‘deliciously’ different conclusions. If your spirit is inherently good, no matter how evil the body may be, then you must actually let the body have all the evil it desires to reassure yourself, and others, that your spirit is permanently good. The wilder the parties, the more extreme the debauchery, the more confident you are of your spirituality.

The odd fact is that super-spirituality and immorality are therefore first cousins. In fact they can actually occur in the same person.

GNOSTICISM AND THE SCRIPTURES

Paul is one of the most able refuters of Gnosticism. However, Peter mentioned that ‘ignorant and unstable people distort’ some of the things which Paul wrote (2 Peter 3.16). Both legalists and Gnostics engaged in this distortion. Paul’s letters have often been the happy hunting ground of Gnostics. What they fail to understand is that Paul’s method is to refute the Gnostics by taking some of their terminology, turning it on its head, and then feeding it back to them. Sometimes he outGnostics the Gnostics, or out-illuminates the illuminati by showing that what they claim for themselves can really be found only in Christ. His refutation of Gnosticism will emerge later. The fact is that he made use of terms such as ‘fullness’, ‘gnosis’ and ‘epignosis’, ‘mystery’, ‘spiritual revelation’, ‘secret and hidden wisdom’, and above all ‘flesh and spirit’. Gnostics have therefore often elevated Paul’s letters to a canon within a canon. The first to do this was Marcion, who argued that the Old Testament and the nonPauline sections of the New Testament were not worthy of inclusion in the canon of scripture. Only Paul’s letters embody real revelation. As we shall see, this view has reappeared in the twentieth century and has affected an important section of the charismatic movement.

Broadly speaking, the method of the biblical writers is as follows: Where Gnostics deny fundamental truth, such as the humanity of Christ, or his bodily resurrection, they are met head on with open refutation. Where Gnostics claim for themselves truth which actually belongs to the gospel, albeit in a distorted way, the apostles do not over-react to the distortion. They do not throw the baby out with the bath water. For instance, the central preoccupation of the Gnostic is with spiritual revelation. An overreaction would be to soft peddle the biblical emphasis on revelation, but this the apostolic writers will not do. Instead they go to great lengths to show that true revelation actually belongs to the gospel. They even underline the importance of revelation. Yet at every point their definition of revelation distinguishes between the Gnostic and gospel usage of the concept. This is why we shall need to give serious attention to the whole subject of revelation once we have completed the negative critique.

In Greek philosophy knowledge as theory or concept was important. One can describe Greek philosophical thought as rationalistic. In eastern mystical circles, knowledge was understood subjectively as the insight or perception of the soul. Both these approaches, though different, had the common characteristic of being man centred and impractical, not related to real human behaviour. It is possible to have philosophical theory or mystical insight without this knowledge affecting one’s way of life.

By way of contrast, the Hebraic approach to knowledge was related to life. It had relational implications in terms of man’s relationship with God, man’s relationship with his fellow man, and man’s relationship with his environment. The NIDNTT summarizes the difference as follows”

While the Greeks were concerned with detached knowledge and a speculative interest in the metaphysical nature of things, the Old Testament regards knowledge as something which continually arises from personal encounter. When the Old Testament makes statements about God and creation, we should not regard them as ontological deductions, but as declarations of faith in response to God’s revelation. For knowledge of God is related to the revelation of God in the historic past and the promised future, in the earthly sphere in which God’s creatures have their being. As Israel continually enquired into God’s revelation in the past, present and future, she discerned the purpose and demands of God in worship and in conduct.[7]

A sample of biblical references will illustrate this point. The Hebrew way of describing sexual intercourse is an obvious case of ‘knowing’ as a relational reality. Joseph ‘had no union’ with Mary (Greek ‘knew not’) until she gave birth to Jesus (Matthew 1.25). Jesus says that he will say to some on the Day of Judgment, ‘I never knew you, away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7.23). This does not mean that he will not know all about them, since every idle word will be judged. What it does mean is that he found their conduct unacceptable and therefore they could have no relationship with him. The nation did not ‘recognize (know) John the Baptist as Elijah who is to come, therefore they have ‘done to him everything they wished’ (Matthew 17.12). Their lack of knowledge had relational connotations. Jesus is said to be one who ‘knew no sin’ (2 Corinthians 5.21). Again, this does not imply that Jesus did not know about sin. He knew all too well what was in man. It means that he had no personal relationship with sin in terms of guilt. When Paul speaks of arguments that set themselves against the ‘knowledge of God’ he describes how he will ‘take every thought captive to obey Christ’, and ‘punish every act of disobedience’ (2 Corinthians 10.5). Wrong knowledge or argument inevitably involves wrong action or disobedience. Paul prays for the Philippians, that they will ‘abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness’ (Philippians 1.911). True knowledge has to lead to righteous behaviour. His prayer for the Colossians is very similar (Colossians 1.914). If they are to be ‘filled with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding’, the reason is that they may ‘live a life worthy of the Lord’. As they bear fruit ‘in every good work’, they will grow ‘in the knowledge of God’. There is a correlation, or reciprocal relationship between knowledge of God and godly living. The more we know him the better we can live for him. The better we can live for him, the more deeply we can know him, and so on. The NIV translates Peter’s advice to the husbands, ‘be considerate as you live with your wives’. His language, literally, is ‘dwelling together according to knowledge’ (gnosin).

The impression is quite clear. In the mind of the biblical authors knowledge is never a speculative, theoretical, mystical, ‘spiritual’ thing unrelated to life. The most spiritual knowledge is the most liferelated knowledge.

Paul

1 Corinthians

We should remember that full-blown Gnosticism developed in the second century. Scholars still debate whether Gnosticism was a preChristian system at all, or whether it began when people began to mix the gospel with the religious ideas of the time. The mixing of ideas probably went on for some time before an observable coherent movement began to develop. It may well be true that Gnosticism first arose as an error within the church before it was expelled to continue outside the church. Earlier commentators tended to see the problems at Corinth in terms of Jewish legalism and Greek philosophy. However more recently the particular mix of the two, and the way in which the philosophical interest of the Corinthians seems to be orientated on gnosis has led scholars to see the Corinthian problem as some kind of Gnosticism, be it early or incipient Gnosticism. At any rate, Paul’s answers to the problems definitely answer Gnosticism.

The first four chapters of first Corinthians deal with the subject of different apostles in the church and how the believers should view them. It therefore deals with their message, where their message comes from, what it entails, and to whom they teach or reveal it. We hear Paul speaking of a ‘secret wisdom’ (2.7), revealed by the Spirit (2.10), to ‘spiritual men’ (2.13, margin), secrets which the unspiritual (carnal) cannot grasp (2.14). To repeat the important features of Gnosticism, we recall the secret knowledge of the apostles, kept amongst the elite class who alone can experience the secret revelations and the three grades of human beings, the spiritual, the soulish and the carnal. The subject is certainly the same. Was this where the Gnostics got their ideas from, or was Paul already dealing with a Gnostic problem? We may never know. What is vital is that we understand how Paul’s whole argument turns the Gnostic elitist idea of spiritual knowledge or revelation on its head. Paul not only acknowledges revelatory knowledge, he really goes to town about it. This secret wisdom has been hidden from before time began (2.7). It is about the ‘deep things of God’ (2.10), so deep that no ordinary human eye or mind has ever seen it (2.9). But to ‘us’ this wisdom has been revealed (2.10). Because ‘we’ have the Holy Spirit, we have the very mind of Christ (2.16). We understand God like a man understands his own thoughts, because in having the Spirit we have the inner mind of God (2.1112). We cannot share these things with just anyone, because these things are spiritually discerned (2.14). Only the mature can receive them (2.6). This kind of language must have brought no end of stimulation to the spiritual saliva of the Gnostic. Here we go, Paul is going to make us part of the initiated inner circle of illuminati!

How bitter the disappointment must have been when Paul went on to say that he could not really share any of this with the Corinthians. Why? Because they are all still babes, still carnal, still nowhere near qualifying for Paul’s deeper wisdom! They still need milk. They would not be able to digest solid food. They are not ready for it! (3.12). Why? Because they are lacking in practical, relational Christian living! They fight amongst themselves (3.3). They have petty rivalry (3.4). They are claiming different apostles for themselves like cultic lunatics looking for a spiritual guru. One can imagine the arguments. ‘My apostle is much more spiritual than yours is. My apostle has deep revelations.’ ‘My apostle speaks about high and lofty philosophical ideas, he’s a real orator.’ The motive was obvious to Paul. The next step is ‘because my apostle is more spiritual than yours, I am more spiritual than you are.’ ‘He has shared deep things with me which you would never understand.’ ‘I’ve got revelation brother, pity about you.’ So Paul, in typical biblical style makes practical interpersonal relationships the criterion of spirituality. If you cannot walk in love and humility with your brothers then you are disqualified.

What about the super gurus we are so keen to follow, so that we can ‘take pride in one man over against another’? (4.6). Sorry guys, the greater the apostle, the more he is entrusted with ‘the secret things of God’ (4.1), the more foolish and humiliated he has to appear to be, for Christ’s sake. Again Paul really emphasizes this. God has made ‘us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle ... we go hungry, we are in rags ... we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world’ (4.913). Can you hear the hopeful Gnostic sighing with despair? ‘This is not what I was looking for at all.’ Lest they think he has not discerned their real motives in this search for a guru, he tells them, ‘Already you have become rich! You have become kings and that without us!’ (4.8). You are the elite, but alas, only in your own eyes. ‘How I wish that you really had become kings’ (4.8).

To whom then does God reveal these deep, hidden secrets? How do we become the elite, apart from this uncomfortable priority on relationships? According to Paul, God likes to share his secrets with the kind of people many would be surprised that he would choose: the foolish, the weak, the lowly, the nonentities (‘the things that are not’ 1.2631). God chooses to relate to people on the basis of grace alone, where anything and everything we ever have in terms of wisdom is not of ourselves, but in Christ (1.3031). No boasting, no elite. And if Paul were to share the hidden secrets, what would it be about? Would it be about spiritual journeys into some hidden world? No, it would be about what happened when Jesus was crucified. If the rulers of the world had known anything about God’s hidden plan, they would not have ‘crucified the Lord of glory’ (2.78). ‘We preach Christ crucified’ (1.23).

I have the clear impression that Paul is not only outGnosticising the Gnostics, not only turning their priorities upside down, but also engaging in a little sarcasm.

Chapters five to seven deal with issues of sexual morality. You will recall that when we were looking at Gnostic ethics we concluded that superspirituality is often the first cousin to immorality. The same disrespect for the human body leads one to absolutely deny the body, another to give it whatever it lusts for, and yet another to pretend to be doing the one while he in fact does the other. These chapters have to assume a similar dualistic premise amongst the Corinthians. There are problems of incest (5.1) and consorting with prostitutes (6.16). Yet in the same church there are others who think that being holy means abstaining altogether from intercourse with your wife because it takes place in the body (7.16). To add insult to injury, the Corinthian church is filled with spiritual pride. Paul says ‘Your boasting is not good’ (5.6), not only in the sense that all boasting is wrong, but in the sense that of all people you, the Corinthians, cannot afford to boast! The normal sickening result of spiritual pride is evident. They were so judgmental! When Paul had previously warned them about associating with immoral people, they had taken it to mean that they should be elitist, separated from any contact with ordinary worldly people. Paul asks them how they plan to do this; Will they ‘leave this world’ (5.10), that is, leave the planet? Subsequent Gnostics have of course attempted exactly this, by creating monastic Christian communities where the elite can attain to the spiritual heights they so desire, without having to mix with the poor, unspiritual, immoral of this world. Paul rebukes them for their judgmentalism. ‘What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?’ (5.12). He then has to rebuke them for taking one another to court (6.16). So often the superspiritual are the very ones with no grace whatsoever. They will happily say to another Christian, ‘See you in court.’

How does one deal with Gnostic dualistic ethics? The answer is that you teach about respect for the human body. One can indulge in sexual immorality without a troubled conscience if one disrespects the body. It was in this human body the Gnostic so disrespects that Christ experienced the resurrection. We will also be raised bodily (6.14). It is the body that is the temple of the Holy Spirit (6.19). There is a popular phrase coined by a prominent twentieth century Gnostic: ‘Man is a spirit, possesses a soul, and lives in a body.’ This implies that the spirit of man is where God dwells, because the real person is the spirit of man. The body is just the container. The biblical view is that God indwells the whole man, body, soul and spirit. ‘May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Thessalonians 5.23). This is part of a prayer, ‘May God himself  ...  sanctify you through and through’; that is, your whole being. You, including your body, were ‘bought with a price’ (1 Corinthians 6.20).

One can reject the legitimate, God given desires of the human body only if one disrespects it. Paul will not agree with abstinence from sex in marriage. By way of concession he agrees that a couple may occasionally abstain ‘for a time’ during some special focus on prayer, but this concession is not really what he believes should happen. Normal marriage is where each partner has surrendered his or her body to the other partner and no longer feels the right to withhold what belongs to another (7.4). Sex is not dirty, or evil, or even mildly sinful. It is part of the good, holy and beautiful body God originally created and which is redeemed in Christ. Sin does not dwell specifically in the body. Spiritual deception is a sin that begins in the mind or the spirit. Some sins do have their base in bodily desires, but that is not because the body is the only place where sin can take hold of us.

Further, the whole point of Paul’s logic is that what occurs in the body also occurs in the spirit and vice versa. ‘Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body?’ (6.16). The same person is one with Christ in spirit (6.17). This leads to the conclusion that the sinning believer is thereby taking part of Christ and joining that to a prostitute (6.15). The obvious assumption is that what happens in the body happens in the spirit and vice versa. Man is not made up of three neat, separable compartments, so that the one part can live one life and the other another life. We are one, complex being including body, soul and spirit.

Chapter eight deals with the pride that results from the sense of superior knowledge (gnosis). ‘We all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up’ (8.1). The context is informative. The early Christians disagreed amongst themselves about whether it was acceptable to buy meat at local markets because the animals had inevitably been sacrificed to some idol before landing on the shop floor. If one reads Romans 14 it becomes evident that Paul did not see this as a problem, because he ‘knew’ that such idols were figments of the imagination. Those who knew more knew they were free to partake. However, when your superior knowledge causes you to have no feeling for the brother whose conscience is not so enlightened, and to parade your liberty in front of him, then you show a total lack of love. Again we learn that biblical knowledge is always related to life, relational and practical. Any exalted knowledge that allows one to walk over other people is not knowledge at all, by biblical criteria. ‘The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know’ (8.2). Whenever someone boasts of spiritual knowledge or revelations or deeper insight in a way which makes other people feel uncomfortable, somehow less spiritual or stupid, then we are dealing with Gnostic knowledge, not biblical knowledge.

In chapter nine Paul talks about beating his body to make it his slave (9.27). The context, plus his statements elsewhere (Colossians 2.2023) make it plain that he is not referring to an ascetic mutilation or flagellation of the body. The context is of the athlete training to win the race, and speaks basically of bodily discipline.

In chapters 1214 he deals with the use of spiritual gifts. In the greeting Paul commends them for ‘not lacking in any spiritual gift’ (1.7). The problem at Corinth, despite the immorality, the asceticism, the immaturity and the carnality, was not a lack of spiritual gifts. This fact alone should teach us that spiritual gifts are not badges of great spirituality. They are bestowed by God’s grace. Great giftedness is not a guarantee of character or holiness. However the Corinthians were evidently of exactly this opinion, and their great zeal for the gifts (14.12) was motivated by the same desire as their quest for great guru apostles. They were bent on spiritual superiority because they were operating on a Gnostic assumption about the elite. The elite would be those who could operate in one of the gifts, and the elite of the elite would be those who could operate in the more dramatic gifts. It would seem that the meetings at Corinth were a veritable charismatic parade of gifts, each person seeking to outdo the other, each one speaking in tongues more loudly than the next. ‘So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?’ (14.23) The phrase ‘some who do not understand’ is interesting. It occurs in 14.16 as well.

In verse 23 the ‘unbeliever’ is linked with the ‘unlearned’ (idiotai, ‘him that is without gifts’) as having access to the Christian assembly. The very terminology, ‘unlearned’, suggests rather the vocabulary of Gnostic initiation.[8]

Those with gifts were probably regarded as in a different class to those without gifts. Is this problem relevant to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements? Are there churches today where gifts are viewed in an elitist sense? Are there Christians who see themselves as the elite because they operate in the gifts? I have the idea that I have met quite a few.

How does Paul deal with them? He teaches them, he scolds them, and sometimes he mocks them a little. Spiritual pride deserves a little mockery.

First of all, he goes to great lengths to show that although different people have different gifts and there is a great diversity of gifts, the unity of the body is of paramount importance. Gifts should not promote disunity, or superiority, but should be seen in the context of diversity in unity (12.711). The different members of the body are like the different parts of one human body. No one part of your body is superior to another, they just have different functions (12.1426). He uses the word ‘one’ seven times in chapter 12, in the context of ‘one body’, ‘one spirit’. Then he gives a whole chapter on the environment in which the gifts should function, namely love (13). The point is not to set love (fruit of the Spirit) in contrast to the gifts, but to teach that the gifts should operate out of a motive of love. In chapter 14 he lays down certain disciplinary guidelines. Don’t all speak at the same time (23). Prefer one another (30). Allow your gift to be judged by others (29). Let all things be done in order (40). Let ‘each one’ have a turn (26). Don’t try to have numerous prophetic utterances in each meeting (29).

Again, he puts the Corinthians in their place, as those who are still babes (14.20). They must grow up. They must not be so selfpreoccupied. The gifts are there to serve others, to bless the community, not to advertise their own spirituality (14.612). Far from the uninitiated being unimportant, Paul gives them the ruling that unless the uninitiated can understand and be blessed, the gift has no use (14.1318). True spirituality is inclusive. It has something for the simple. It is the reverse of elitism.

Modern charismatics who are inclined to think that the success or failure of a given church meeting depends on the number of gifts in evidence should be instructed by this passage. Not only are the gifts not the badge of spirituality, but neither are they the essential ingredient for a successful meeting. The Spirit blows as he wills. Some meetings will focus more on teaching and worship, others on worship and gifts, others on caring and sharing. We do not have to experience gifts in order to experience the presence of God. Naturally, if we never, or seldom, do then we have moved away from the biblical norm, but the expectation that every meeting should be a charismatic ‘blow out’ is not biblical either.

We have noted that the idea of a bodily resurrection was nonsensical to the Gnostics, whose whole aim was to escape from the body into the realm of the spirit. Gnostic Christians would have been hard pressed to deny the resurrection of Christ since it was at the very core of the gospel. However, those at Corinth opted for the strange compromise that although the bodily resurrection of Jesus may have been necessary, but that this did not require the bodily resurrection of the believer. They may have argued that Jesus had to ‘appear’ (dokeo) in the body to prove his victory over the principalities and powers, but that his redemption nevertheless liberates us from material existence altogether. Paul deals with this subject in chapter 15. His whole point is that you cannot have the one without the other. You cannot have the bodily resurrection of Jesus without the bodily resurrection of every believer. Jesus is the new Adam, the new prototype of the redeemed people of God. He is the first fruit. What happened to him will surely happen to those who are in him (15.1228). Every believer will be bodily resurrected.

One should note here that Gnosticism always tends to reinterpret the work of Christ in purely ‘spiritual’ terms. Either he did not really suffer, (the Christ left the human Jesus before the cross), or he only appeared to suffer (Docetism), or, as in twentieth century Gnosticism, his bodily suffering was unimportant. What happened between the cross and the resurrection, in the invisible ‘spirit realm’, is important. The resurrection is likewise reinterpreted in purely ‘spiritual terms’. The gospel however reveals that exactly the opposite is the truth. God entered into the realm of history. The word became flesh. The redemptive work of Christ occurred in the objective, verifiable, visible realm. That is why the phrase ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’ is in the creed. This thing did not happen in a corner (Acts 26.26). It happened in the realm of hard reality. Yes, it has all kinds of implications, in the invisible realm, in the cosmos in fact, but it happened in the world of the senses. Blood flowed, people wept, the earth shook, Jesus died. When he rose, seals were broken, the stone rolled away, soldiers took flight. Later, meals were eaten and a breakfast was made. Thomas was invited to touch and believe. Consequently Paul, at the beginning of the chapter, catalogues the historical testimony to the resurrection. Over five hundred people saw him at the same time (15.37). It was not a mere ‘spiritual’ revelation, but an objective historical fact.

The difficulty the Gnostics had with the human body created a problem of understanding for them. They could not grasp how a redeemed person, beyond this life, could have a body. What kind of a body could it possibly be? Paul turns the tables on them. Now it is the Gnostics who are the nonGnostics. They are actually a little dull. ‘But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish!’(15.35). He then proceeds to give them a kind of Sunday school lesson. Very simply and methodically he shows them that God can create all sorts of ‘bodies’ appropriate to their place and function in the cosmos (15.3642). Surely then, he can create a body appropriate for eternal life. Then follows the profound exposition of the nature of the resurrection body, a ‘spiritual body’ (15.44), both ‘spiritual’ and ‘body’ at the same time, a copy of the prototype body evidenced by Jesus during the forty days between his resurrection and his ascension (Philippians 3.2021). Notice here that the mortal is not swallowed up by the nonmaterial, but by the transformed, immortal body (15.4455). His last ‘dig’ is his reference to this bodily resurrection as a ‘mystery’, the favourite Gnostic word for hidden revelations about the nonmaterial world (15.51). Paul was never exactly diplomatic with the Gnostics.

Colossians

Much has been written on the Colossian heresy. What exactly was the nature of the error Paul was seeking to refute? Some think it was a fairly obvious case of Gnosticism. Others are not so certain. This is not the place to discuss the details of New Testament research, and we will probably never know how the error of the Colossians relates to the Gnostic phenomenon of later times. What is important is that the answers Paul gives to the Colossian heresy provides a suitable and authoritative answer to Gnostic teaching, be it in the second century or the twentieth century. In this sense the scriptures prove to have a relevance that reaches beyond the exact details of the historical context.

Reference has already been made to the correlation of knowledge and practise in the language of Colossians 1.910. ‘Spiritual wisdom and understanding’ would certainly have been understood to cover the special, revelatory kind of knowledge so prized by the Gnostics. From the very beginning Paul makes it clear that such knowledge must lead to worthy living, to fruit bearing, and that only such practical application would provide a basis for further knowledge.

Colossians 1.1520 is a passage often referred to as a description of the cosmic Christ. Here we see not the Christ of the incarnation, or even the Christ of the ascension, but the Christ of the cosmos, the one who holds the whole universe together. In him God was pleased to have all his ‘fullness’ dwell (1.19). The term pleroma is used. As we have seen, this was also used by the Gnostics to describe the series of emanations from the supreme deity. As applied to the Gnostic concept it would mean that all the emanations, from Bythos to the demiurge, were to be found in the Christ who created the cosmos. It would make nonsense of the idea that the creator of matter was a different deity to the supreme God of spiritual perfection. The passage also refutes all forms of metaphysical dualism, with its repeated stress on ‘all things’ being created and reconciled in him (1.16,20). Lest the reader fails to get the message, Paul hammers home what ‘all things’ means. It means that both sides of the supposed dualism are actually part of the one creation in Christ; heaven and earth, visible and invisible, including all the aeons and powers and emanations, ‘whether thrones or powers or authorities’ (1.1617). In fact, the whole unity of creation points to the centrality of Christ. It is equally true that both sides of the supposed dualism require redemption. It is not just physical things that need to be saved. ‘All things, whether things on earth or things in heaven’ are reconciled in him, which implies that the spirit of man is just as much in need of redemption as the body of man. Every part of man’s nature was part of the original perfect creation. Every part of man’s nature has been affected by sin. The blood of Christ affects every part of man’s nature. The notion that regeneration affects a man’s spirit, and then belatedly his soul and body, is specifically denied by this passage. Incidentally, what Paul is not driving at is the idea that the devil and his angels will eventually be reconciled as well. Such speculation can be drawn out of the text if one fails to understand the nature of the error Paul was seeking to refute. Colossians 1.1520 is then, the primary passage refuting metaphysical dualism.

Paul again uses Gnostic-type language in 2.23. He piles up terminology that would have appealed to the Gnostic preoccupation with secret, revelatory knowledge; ‘the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God ... in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (gnosis)’. The way he uses this terminology is however a total repudiation of Gnostic thinking, because all this deeper knowledge is found in a person, Jesus Christ, and to have him is to have it all. Who has him? ‘We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ’ (1.28). What the Gnostic believe their elite alone possess, every Christian possesses, because every Christian knows Christ and in Christ is ‘all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’.

We are not reading into Paul by taking the passage as a corrective of false, Gnostic-type teaching, because having made this point he immediately goes on to warn the believers about ‘deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world’ (2.8). The term he uses translated here as ‘basic principles’ (stoicheia) was used to describe the aeons and powers of the Gnostic worldview. It is used in Galatians 4.3,9 in association with the angelic powers. In 2 Peter 3.10,12 it is used to mean the elements of the universe. The RSV therefore translates it as ‘elemental spirits’. Bruce takes the evidence about the use of this word to conclude that ‘this supports the identification of the powers in question with the rulers of the planetary spheres.’[9]

Having warned about the philosophy of the planetary spheres, he then uses the Gnostic term for the complete list of emanations or aeons (the ‘fullness’) to state that ‘all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form’ in Christ, and that ‘you’ (the believer) ‘have been given fullness in him’ (2.910). This statement confronts Gnosticism head on. Against the belief that Christ is one of the emanations, Paul states that all of God’s fullness dwells in him. If there were thirty emanations, then all of them would need to be seen as dwelling in Christ. Furthermore, every believer has Jesus living in him, and he lives in Christ (2.67). Consequently, every believer has the fullness in him. This turns the whole elitist idea on its head. What the Gnostics believe their elite possess, every Christian possesses, and far more. Remember, the Gnostic believed he would return up the ladder of emanations after death and eventually be reabsorbed into the fullness of God. Paul declares that every believer has it all, now! As we shall see, this argument has implications for the way in which Pentecostals and charismatics teach the doctrine of subsequence (the baptism in the Holy Spirit). It rules out a view of this doctrine that gives the idea that there are different levels of Christians.

The type of protoGnosticism that troubled the early church seems to have been mixed with Jewish legalism, which is not difficult to understand because of its inherent disrespect for the human body. It tends to manifest itself in legalism, the ascetic wing of Gnosticism. We now see Paul dealing with ‘false humility’, ‘selfimposed worship’ and ‘harsh treatment of the body’ (2.18, 23). These ascetic ideas not only went hand in hand with legalism (‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’ 2.21) but with false superspirituality; those who go into ‘great detail about what they have seen’ (2.18, i.e. visions), those who are ‘puffed up’. What they perceive to be great spirituality Paul calls ‘unspiritual’. The real criterion of spirituality is one’s relationship with Jesus. But these people have a spirituality that can thrive without a deepening appreciation of Jesus ‘the Head of the body’ (2.19). This is a false spirituality. It looks very spiritual (‘the appearance of wisdom’) but in fact it ‘lacks any value in restraining sensual indulgence’ (2.23). Putting the body down and going for ascetic ‘spirituality’, far from curbing the lusts of the flesh simply inflames them, which is why immorality and superspirituality are often cousins. Wherever you find a preacher who seems preoccupied with legalistic, ascetic ideas, you can be sure the temptation or practise of immorality is somewhere there below the surface.

The Pastoral Letters

There is a strong body of biblical scholars who would deny that Paul wrote these letters. Their reasons have not been strong enough to dissuade conservative evangelical scholars of Pauline authorship. The following treatment will work on the traditional assumption, although I am not unaware of the issues involved.

From the outset we hear of false doctrine (1 Timothy 1.3). The context makes it plain that some sort of Jewish emphasis is involved. However, as we have seen with the Corinthians, there seemed to have been some connection between certain types of Jewish legalism and Gnosticism. Paul ends this letter with a warning about the ‘godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis)’ (6.20). Both the preoccupation with genealogies and legalism (1.4, 810 Jewish concepts) and the preoccupation with knowledge are part of the ‘meaningless talk’ (1.6). Those who have followed the false teaching have lost the voice of conscience (1.1920). As we shall see with 2 Peter and Jude, the licentious wing of Gnosticism led to the contradictory conclusion that a man could be right with God in his spirit and immoral in his body. Such a man would have to refuse the voice of conscience.

Against the elitist claim, Paul affirms that God wants ‘all men to be saved’ (2.4). In the same context he states that there is one mediator between God and man, rather than numerous emanations and aeons. The affirmation of the human body is made with the confession of the gospel in 3.16. The great mystery of our faith is that God appeared in a body. Later, Gnostics would distort this to mean that he did not actually take a human body but only ‘appeared’ to have one (dokeo to appear, hence Docetism). However, in context Paul is clearly stating the major stages of Christ’s redemptive work through incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.

The next section continues to warn against the error. In the future (‘later times’) it will manifest itself in further disrespect for the human body and its legitimate, God given desires for marriage (with sexual union) and food (4.15). This applies to the ascetic wing of Gnosticism, those who have rejected the voice of conscience. The positive attitude to the body is again repeated in the advice to Timothy about the profitability of good exercise (4.8).

In the second letter we find that the false teaching is again linked in some way to a rejection of the body. The talk that eats its way like gangrene is the talk that denies the future resurrection, holding that the resurrection is already past (2.18). If this was similar to the Corinthian error, then it would have been the idea that Christ’s bodily resurrection was real but that this should not imply a future bodily resurrection for believers. Believers have already received a ‘spiritual’ resurrection, which is complete. Such an error destroys faith.

Included with the false teachers were men of ‘depraved mind’ who manipulate weak willed women who are ‘loaded down with sins and swayed by all kinds of evil desires. An illustration of what Paul may have had in mind is provided by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies. A certain Gnostic called Marcus used to entice weak Christian women by his claim to special inspiration and his ability to impart the gift of prophecy. Marcus managed this by addressing them in such seductive words as these:

I am eager to make thee a partaker of my Charis (grace), since the Father of all doth continually behold thy angel before His face. Now the place of thy angel is among us: it behoves us to become one ... Receive first from me and by me the gift of Charis ... Behold Charis has descended upon thee; open thy mouth and prophecy’. On the women replying, ‘I have never at any time prophesied, nor do I know how to prophecy;’ then engaging, for the second time, in certain invocations, so as to astound his deluded victim, he says to her, ‘Open thy mouth, speak whatsoever occurs to thee, and thou shalt prophesy.’ She then, vainly puffed up and elated by these words ... reaches the requisite pitch of audacity ... utters some nonsense as it happens to occur to her, such as might be expected from one heated by an empty spirit ... Hence forth she reckons herself a prophetess, and expresses her thanks to Marcus for having imparted to her of his own Charis. She then makes the effort to reward him, not only by the gift of her possessions (in which way he has collected a very large fortune), but also by yielding up to him her person, desiring in every way to be united to him, that she may become altogether one with him.

Moreover, that this Marcus compounds philters and lovepotions, in order to insult the persons of some of these women, if not of all, those of them who have returned to the Church of God a thing which frequently occurs have acknowledged, confessing, too, that they have been defiled by him, and that they were filled with a burning passion towards him. [10]

The obvious question presented by such a story is how does such a charlatan draw Christians away in the first place? The answer is found in the exalted claim to elite spirituality. I can recall more than one case of a Pentecostal/charismatic preacher having a number of women at his disposal, while claiming to operate in a special way in various gifts of the Spirit. Superspirituality and immorality often go together, particularly where there is the dichotomy of spirit and body.

John

Once again I will proceed from an assumption common to conservative evangelical scholars, namely that the fourth gospel, plus the epistles and Revelation can be attributed to John, the disciple of Jesus. There may well have been a circle of his disciples, alluded to in John 21.24, who are responsible for the final shape of his writings, particularly the gospel, but the substance belongs to John. Again, I am aware of the arguments against this assumption, but hold that there is sufficient support for the traditional view.

As with Corinthians and Colossians, various writers have drawn attention to an antiGnostic theme in the gospel and the first letter of John, but there is little clarity as to what the Gnostic-type belief was like, how far it was developed, and to what extent it can be linked to the fully developed phenomenon of the second century. So obvious are the references to Gnostic type thinking that many scholars have argued that John was actually some kind of Gnostic himself (e.g. Bultmann). It is certainly true that the Gnostics made John their favourite gospel, especially in Egypt, but all the evidence indicates a use of John by later Gnostics, not a Gnostic in John himself. We shall probably have to remain in the dark about all such possibilities, simply because our knowledge of the background situation is incomplete. My concern at this point is not to enter into the critical debate, but to show how the teaching of the apostle in fact answers Gnostic thinking, be it protoGnostic or not.

The Gospel of John

There are two important lessons to be learned from the gospel. First, there is the prologue with its polemic against some form of dualist or Gnostic thinking. This links in with a similar polemic in the letters. Second, there is the special emphasis on knowledge and knowing found throughout the gospel and in the first letter.

The Prologue

The Gnostics believed an inferior being low down the ladder of emanations made the world. John affirmed that the Word of God, who was not only very near to God (‘with God’), but was also God, was the one through whom everything was made. Lest anyone not get the point and assume that this Word only made the spiritual world, John emphasizes that all things were made through him, and ‘without him nothing was made that was made’ (1.3). This is very similar to Paul’s statement in Colossians 1.16. Further, this Word of God is not just one of the emanations. In him is found the ‘fullness’ of grace (1.16). The entire pleroma is to be found in him, and becomes available to the Christian believer through him.

Most significant of all is the famous statement: ‘the Word became flesh.’ The eternal God took to himself a human body. The incarnation teaching of John repudiates all dualist rejection of the human body as evil. In his letters the confession of this truth becomes the touchstone of orthodox faith. Whoever will not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from the antiChrist (1 John 4.13; 2 John 711). We must face the full implication of this teaching. Various later heresies tried to divide up the mystery of the incarnation and advocated that the Christ was divine in his spirit. In other words the spirit of God in-dwelt a human body but the body did not become divine. This view is part and parcel of the formula that says ‘man is a spirit, who has a soul and lives in a body’. The church condemned such teaching as heresy. We may never understand the incarnation, but what we have to affirm is that the divinity and humanity of Christ did not make him a divided person. His divinity was not resident in one compartment of his being. As a total person he was fully human and fully divine. For all eternity he will continue to possess a glorified human body. He did not leave it behind when he ascended.

At the same time we have to say that there is a limit to this affirmation. Because the Word took to himself and thereby sanctified and glorified a human body, does not mean that humanity has been deified. There was no confusion, or mixing up of divinity and humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ. Born again believers who receive the divine nature do not become absorbed into divinity, as in Hindu thinking. For all eternity, God will be God and man will be man. Man will continue to be, simultaneously, a glorified creature and a glorified creature. These are not just theoretical statements. They are vital to our understanding of what it means to be a human being and a Christian. Our view of human nature is ultimately derived from our understanding of Jesus, the perfect man and Son of God. As we have already noticed, one’s view of human nature can make the difference between moral and immoral behaviour.

Knowledge

New Testament Greek has three words for knowledge. Gnosis is the common word for knowledge. Epignosis is a strengthened derivation of the same word, meaning full knowledge, or special knowledge, a word the Gnostics used a great deal. Linked to knowing is the idea of revelatory insight, or seeing. Here we have the word oida, to see, which can be used for physical or spiritual sight. John’s use of these words is significant. He completely avoids epignosis. This may reflect a desire to distance himself from the idea of elite, superknowledge. However, John places great emphasis on knowledge, which is evident from the frequent occurrence of the two other terms (ginosko 45 times; oida 73 times). How are they used?

John’s purpose is to testify of Jesus Christ. Jesus is therefore shown to be the ultimate knower, or Gnostic. He alone can claim eternal, spiritual, elite knowledge. He has a unique relationship with his Father. He knows the Father and the Father knows him. Jesus can say, ‘I know him because I am from him’ (7.29). This knowledge stands over against all others. ‘You do not know him, I know him’ (8.55). The knowledge is mutual. ‘The Father knows me and I know the Father’ (10.15). Because Jesus knows the Father, he alone can make the Father known to others. ‘Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them …’ (17.25).

The Gnostics speculated about where man came from and where he was going to. John reserves this kind of knowledge for Jesus alone. ‘I know where I came from and where am going’ (8.14). He knew ‘that he had come from God and was returning to God’ (13.3). He imparted this knowledge to his disciples. ‘You know the way to the place where I am going’ (14.4). It is not surprising therefore that Jesus has revelatory knowledge about events. He knew when the time had come for him to leave the world (13.1). He knew all that would befall him (18.4). He knew when all the things that had to occur in him had been fulfilled (19.28).

The Gnostics were more preoccupied with knowing man than with knowing God. John is most concerned with how man can know God. Having shown that Jesus is the only ultimate knower, John includes that Jesus alone knows man. He has all the answers about the origin and destiny of mankind, so that we can only find our destiny in knowing him, who knows us. Nathanael is surprised at how Jesus knows him before he meets him (1.48). ‘Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man’ (2.2425). He knew all about the paralyzed man at the pool (5.6). He knew his opponents more deeply than they knew themselves (5.42). He knew when his disciples were grumbling behind his back (6.61). He had known from the beginning which of his disciples did not believe and who would betray him (6.64; 13.11). He even knew what his disciples wanted to ask him before they asked him (16.19).

If one wants to discover truth, then one must realize that Jesus alone really knows the truth (4.22; 5.32; 7.15; 15.15). In fact, to make the point clear, Jesus knows everything. ‘Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions’ (16.30). He knows when Peter is going to betray him, and in restoring Peter he is again found to know ‘everything’ (21.17). Notice how one needs a revelation to know that Jesus knows everything. What the disciples once could not ‘see’ they can now ‘see’. The Christian has revelatory knowledge all right, but he has revelatory knowledge of just one person Jesus Christ. Knowing him is to know the one who has revelation about everything. To be a Christian is to be a Gnostic of one person, who himself is the ultimate Gnostic.

To be saved then, is to know Jesus. In John’s gospel this means to have revelatory knowledge of Jesus, to know him in a relationship that is similar to his relationship with the Father. From the very beginning, there are those who are acquainted with Jesus, but do not know him (1.10,26). He stands among them, but they do not know him. By this John means that they do not understand the significance of who Jesus really is, and they have no relationship with him based upon knowing who he really is.

In contrast, the woman at the well discovers who it is speaking to her. At first she does not know this (4.10). Then Jesus shows that he knows her more than she imagines (4.1719). He then reveals his true identity to her (4.26). She knew, from this moment on, what she did not know before, that Jesus is the Messiah (4.2829). Her knowledge began to spread in the village, so that many believed and also came to know what she knew. ‘We know that this man really is the Saviour of the world’ (4.42). The whole encounter takes place on the basis of mutual knowledge.

The sheep are those who know the shepherd, who recognize his voice (10.45). As Jesus reveals himself to his disciples they come to know the Father as well, because Jesus knows the Father (14.79; 15.15). This knowledge will increase after Jesus has ascended. ‘On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ (14.20). These statements build up to possibly the pivotal statement in the gospel. ‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ (17.3). Against the previous background it is evident that John is referring to a personal, relational knowledge of Jesus that is also a revelatory knowledge of Jesus. It is knowing his true identity, knowing that he is the ultimate knower of all things, knowing that he alone reveals the Father, knowing him as Saviour and Messiah.

In contrast to this true, saving knowledge of Jesus is a false knowledge whereby people think they know, but what they know is actually blindness. They are deceived. This is brilliantly illustrated in the story of the man who was born blind. Different, conflicting kinds of knowledge are unraveled through the story. The young man begins as physically blind and Jesus heals him. At that point he does not really know who Jesus is (9.12). Then, when being interrogated by the Pharisees, he takes a step forward in his knowledge of Jesus. He concludes that Jesus is a prophet (9.17). On further interrogation his knowledge grows a step further. ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see’ (9.25). He has not yet come to know Jesus in the full sense, but his faith in Jesus is becoming more affirmative. His new sight is beginning to take on deeper significance. He finds new courage to argue with the Pharisees. The more they try to dissuade him, the stronger his faith in Jesus grows, until he is thrown out of the synagogue. Then, finally, Jesus finds him, identifies himself as the Son of Man, and the man comes to full, saving, confessing faith; ‘Lord, I believe’ (9.38). Here is a man who sees more and more of Jesus, and comes to know Jesus more and more deeply.

His parents have knowledge, but only of the outward fact of the healing event. They know he is their son. They know he was born blind, but they do not know how he came to see (9.2021). This shows that a mere knowledge of the facts about the life, deeds and ministry of Jesus is not enough for salvation. One must know more deeply. One must know the significance and personal implications of these events. They have a surface knowledge, which theologians call fides historica (historical knowledge).

The Pharisees have a selfassured knowledge. ‘We know this man is a sinner’ (9.24). Their knowledge is the exact opposite of the truth. What they ‘know’ has therefore deceived them. ‘We know that God spoke through Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from’ (9.29). They think this statement denigrates Jesus, but John and his readers know that it really denigrates them. So blind are they that a man who has been blind all his life can argue with them and point out how inconsistent their knowledge really is (9.3032). This all builds up to the statement of Jesus about blindness and sight. ‘For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind’ (9.39). The Pharisees realise that Jesus is referring to them. When they inquire of this, Jesus makes the final judgment. Those who admit they are blind can always be given sight. It is those who say they can really see who are too blind to ever see (9.41). The theme of sight and blindness is repeated in various ways in the gospel (3.1011; 7.2628,49; 8.19,5255; 11.49; 15.21; 17.25).

The rather ‘spiritual’, or revelatory sense of knowledge in John should not be taken to mean that he has a Gnostic view of knowledge. John shows that true knowledge is found in Jesus. He shows that this is the most spiritual form of knowledge. However, as with all Hebrew thinking, it is a relational, practical, real life knowledge, leading to changed behaviour in the real world. To know Jesus is to obey him (7.17). If you know the truth in Jesus, then the truth sets you free (8.32). To know the light of Jesus is to walk in that light (12.35). To know Jesus is to know his commandments (12.4950). The theme is summarized in the pithy statement, ‘Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them’ (13.17). To know the truth about Jesus means that one testifies to others of this truth (19.35). To know Jesus is to know the scriptures in a new way (20.9).

1 John

The antiGnostic elements in John’s letters have been noticed by numerous scholars, again provided one refers to an incipient form of the later development. We take up the polemic of the prologue to the gospel with the emphasis on the fact that Jesus Christ ‘came in the flesh’ (2 John 7). The indication of an elitist attitude is suggested by the reference to those who ‘run ahead’ of the original teaching they received (9). Evidently this was a group which had once been part of the body, but had since withdrawn (1 John 2.19). They had received the gospel, but then been enticed to go ‘beyond’ it into Gnostic elitism. John tells the believers not to associate with them at all. There is some evidence to suggest that the particular form of Gnosticism John was refuting was that of Cerinthus. Irenaeus tells us that John’s opponent, Cerinthus, also lived at Ephesus, and that John would not bathe in the same bathhouse as that ‘enemy of the truth’ (3, III, 4). Cerinthus held that the Christ left Jesus before the cross, and therefore did not suffer. This may be why John emphasizes that Christ came, not only in the flesh, but also ‘by water and blood’ (1 John 5.68). In other words his death on the cross is redemptive because he died as the Christ, the anointed of God. The Gnostics were happy to give some spiritual significance to Christ, but could never accept that a physical act was redemptive. As we shall see, this is the particular error of twentieth century metaphysical Gnosticism.

John begins his first letter with a stress on the tangible reality of the incarnation. The revelation of God could be seen, looked upon and touched. It was available to the five senses (1.14). ‘Revelation knowledge’ for the apostles equalled sense knowledge. This will again be most relevant to the contemporary problem.

He then corrects the claim of some to have fellowship with God and yet walk in darkness, claiming to be without sin (1.58). Through a Gnostic dualism between the body and the spirit it is possible to claim that one’s spirit is with God, in his light, while ones body can sin in the darkness. The body sins, but the spirit is without sin. John’s answer to this is forthright: you lie! God is light, and his light will expose all darkness. No such double life can stand his gaze.

We notice the emphasis on knowing. ‘We know that we know him’ (2.3). This is the strongest claim to gnosis. How do we test this knowledge? By noticing ethical, behavioral change (2.36, obedience). A second test is relational (2.911). Any real spirituality will lead to an improvement in relationships between Christians and in particular, to a deeper love for the brothers. Amongst such loving brothers there is no elitism, but simply a family of children, fathers and young men (2.1214). John allows that there are levels of maturity, as in any family, but denies that there are levels of being separating God’s children.

The departure of the Gnostic Christians had evidently unsettled the believers that remained. This is always the case when people leave a local church. John reassures them that those who left were never really part of the family. Those who left probably went claiming deeper revelation and greater anointing. John tells the believers that they can have every confidence in the anointing they have received (2.2027). Gnostic-type Christians always make other Christians feel somehow less spiritual. Here is an important discerning principle. Whenever you find that being with someone makes you feel less spiritual and the other person more spiritual, whenever you feel somehow put down, and find yourself doubting your own experience of God in someone’s presence, you can be almost certain that some form of elitist superspirituality is involved. Truly holy people may make you aware of your shortcomings, but the predominant subjective sensation will be one of acceptance, love and encouragement. This is what John does. He tells the believers to have due regard for their own experiences of God, to have respect for the anointing on their own lives. Never let the spirituality of someone else make you disparage what you have received in God.

Linked to this is the fact that any form of spirituality that seeks to take you away from your first saving knowledge of Jesus is certain to be wrong (2.2427). Your point of conversion is not always linked to a great purity of doctrine, depending on the particular teacher that God used to reach you. However, to be truly regenerate a person has to accept Jesus Christ and in some sense understand the basic truth of forgiveness and justification. This is the foundation. All later growth in the faith will build on this foundation. Almost every serious error will in one way or another disparage this foundation.

As with 2 Peter and Jude, John corrects antinomianism, or the error of those who think they can ‘break the law’, or ‘keep on sinning’ while walking with God (3.710). Believers are not sinlessly perfect, but no regenerate believer continues to behave in the same way as he used to behave before he confessed Christ. Every true conversion leads to a moral change. The other test of true faith is the fellowship among believers. If you truly find yourself loving the family of God, then you can be assured that you really know God (3.1115). In both these tests John wants to assure the believers that they do really know God. They are real knower's, and they know they know because of two objective tests: change of behaviour, and love for the brothers. In other words their spirituality has to be seen in reality. It cannot exist purely in the world of spiritual, revelatory experiences.

One may be tempted to think that in reaction to superspirituality John might softpeddle subjective spiritual experiences. This danger will always be present when anyone is refuting Gnosticism. However, having laid the foundation of the two objective tests of knowing God, John then gives full place to the subjective test. We ‘know’ that he lives in us ‘by the Spirit’ (3.24). It is important to experience the presence of God through the Spirit. Again John gives a balancing factor. The real presence of God reveals truth. The Spirit leads into truth, particularly the truth that Jesus came in the flesh and gave his life to save us (4.111). This leads John to attack the Gnostics from another angle. They place all their emphasis on revelatory, invisible things, which Christians experience. The difference for John is that with the Christian the invisible is revealed in the visible. He who says he loves the invisible God must manifest this by loving his visible brothers; otherwise all his claims to revelations and spiritual experiences are void (4.1321).

Someone may misunderstand John and end up on a purely horizontal type of Christian faith, placing all the emphasis on relationships in the visible world and ignoring the vertical relationship with the invisible God. John therefore states the same truth the other way round. How do we know that we love the children of God? By loving God (5.2). The two relationships continually influence each other. The more you know God, the more you love your brother. The more you love your brother, the more you love God. This is balanced New Testament spirituality.

John ends his letter with a further reassurance about knowing God. If you believe in Jesus, the Son of God, then you can know that you have eternal life (5.13). We know that we are children of God (5.19). ‘We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding (knowledge), so that we may know him who is true’ (5.20). In this statement John says in effect that we know so that we can know so that we can know. He does not give gnosis over to the Gnostics. He claims it for the Christian in the most emphatic manner, after he has clearly taught what Christian gnosis is and what it is not. This is an important lesson. We must never react to superspirituality by backing off on true spirituality. We must never react to false revelatory experiences or emphasis by denying the importance of revelatory experiences and knowledge in our own lives.

2 Peter & Jude

The relationship between 2 Peter and Jude is not clear. There is so much material common to them that most writers think either that Peter used Jude, or Jude used Peter. Perhaps they both used the same source. As with many New Testament books, there are confident denials of traditional authorship and firm arguments supporting traditional authorship. Whatever view one takes, it is evident that 2 Peter and Jude have the same opponents in mind and that these opponents had some connection with antinomian teaching and behaviour. As we have learned, antinomianism is usually connected with a dualistic split between the body and the Spirit leading to a total disrespect for the body. The kind of protoGnosticism, or preGnostic thinking which we have found being refuted in Paul and John is likely to be the same problem here, although perhaps at a slightly later time. We should bear in mind that Gnostic dualism leads to both asceticism and antinomianism. The latter type has already appeared in some way in the pastoral letters, which are the latest of Paul’s letters. These letters probably come later than the pastorals. The New Testament therefore shows a development from the ascetic kind of Gnosticism (Colossians) towards a licentious kind of Gnosticism growing through the time of the pastoral letters to the time of these letters. The immorality at Corinth was an early example of the licentious kind. In general it seems that once Gnostic dualism has taken root asceticism is soon replaced by licentiousness. Once super-spirituality has set in, austerity and legalism will be manifest first, but it is only a matter of time before it develops into immorality. The recent history of Gnostic influence in Pentecostal/charismatic movements has shown this process time and time again.

Peter begins with a reference to knowledge. This does not refer not Gnostic secrets, but ‘knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord’ (1.2). The antiGnostic stage is immediately apparent. Christians have a ‘knowledge of him’ that gives them everything they need for life and godliness (1.3). The Gnostics claimed Christians had an inferior experience of spiritual things. Far from Christian spirituality leading to licentiousness, it leads one to ‘escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires’ (1.4). Knowledge is not an end in itself. It is not the end goal of faith, but part of the growth process, through goodness, knowledge, selfcontrol, perseverance, godliness, kindness and love (1.56). Peter places knowledge deliberately in an ethical and relational context. To fail in the whole growth process is to be blind (1.9). In other words, a gnosis that does not lead to ethical and relational change is actually blindness, or false knowledge.

The next major concern is to affirm the historicity and tangible reality of Christ’s incarnation, resurrection and Second Coming. The Gnostics loved to speculate about mythical journeys of the gods through various cycles of birth, death and rebirth. Peter takes the most revelatory moment of Christ’s ministry, when Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and the barrier between this world and the next seemed to have evaporated and makes the point that even this moment was nevertheless anchored in objective historical encounter. The transfiguration was not a ‘cleverly invented story’ (‘tales’ NASB; muthois Greek). It was something Peter had been eyewitness to (1.1618). It was not some ‘cloud cuckoo’ land of makebelieve spiritual experiences. The same people who escape into mythological spirituality ‘deny the Lord who bought them’ (2.1). In context, this denial probably amounted to a rejection of the incarnation or perhaps the bodily resurrection. They reject the incarnation and the Second Coming. They are part of the scoffing generation that repudiates the promise of his coming (3.34).

The heresies they teach are secretly introduced (2.1). This fits the esoteric, elitist Gnostic claim. The antinomian or licentious elements now emerge in Peter’s list of Old Testament incidents of God’s judgment of specifically licentious societies (with Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah 2.410). Because the Gnostics rejected the God of the Old Testament as the creator of matter, they adopted the novel theory that all the heroes of faith in the Old Testament are actually evil, while all those condemned as evil are actually heroes of faith and knowledge. They therefore deliberately exalted those the text actually condemns. In later Gnostic writings Cain, Korah and Balaam are made into heroes. Peter reverses this perversity and states that it was the judgment of the God and Father of Jesus that is revealed in these stories. Because the God of the Old Testament was said to be evil, his angels were said to be evil as well. Peter therefore repudiates their attitude towards the angels (2.1012). Then comes the attack on licentious behaviour, which was most dangerous because it sought to corrupt the love feast, or Lord’s table, into a wild party (2.1314). Balaam was not a hero. Heroes do not need donkeys to rebuke them (2.1516). The Gnostics are dangerous because they mislead young Christians into immorality with promises of a special kind of freedom, most probably linked to escape from the bondage of the body (2.1719). Their theory was that if your spirit is truly liberated it does not matter what you do with your body. To prove your spirituality you must allow your body all its basest desires, to demonstrate that your spirit is beyond contamination. The sad thing about Gnostically corrupted Christians is that their knowledge of Jesus is now their greatest liability. Peter understands that it is better never to have known the Lord than to know him, then deny him, and then seek to return to him (2.2022). He shows that knowledge is not always good. In this context, knowledge is a dangerous liability.

He ends his letter with numerous exhortations to holy living (3.1014) and a comment about Paul’s letters being distorted. It is likely that Paul’s teaching on grace was the object of this distortion. His concluding remarks place the whole letter once again in the antiGnostic context. He warns them against those who are lawless (antinomian), but will not allow the error to cause Christians to turn away from their own gnosis of Jesus Christ. They must grow in knowledge, but knowledge of the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (3.1718).

Having worked through 2 Peter there is not that much of special note for our subject in Jude, except to note the repetition of the same themes. Once again the Gnostics work in secrecy (4). They pervert the grace of God into license for immorality and deny (the incarnation of) Jesus Christ (4). The Gnostics pollute their bodies and reject authority. This probably refers to their superior stance towards all church authority (8). As we have noted, they make heroes of Cain, Balaam and Korah and pervert the scriptures (11). Once again, they pervert the love feast (12). They use flattery (16). It is worth noting that in my experience flattery is often used as the manipulative tool of superspiritual elitists. ‘Come with us’, they say, ‘and we will take you into depths of spirituality which all these other ordinary Christians will never understand’. These men ‘divide you’ (19). Barclay argues that a better translation would be, ‘set up divisions’ amongst you, and links this with the Gnostic idea of three classes of human being, of which the Gnostics were the elite. It fits into the context of flattery.

The Gnostic danger is like a fire that can burn away the faith of God’s people. The stronger believers are to snatch their brothers away from it, ‘hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh’, that is, having a healthy revulsion for licentious behaviour (2223).

GNOSTICISM IN OUR TIME

A full study of this subject would follow the development of Gnosticism from the first centuries to the present day. For instance, after Manicheanism Gnosticism eventually developed in Free Masonry, and there is much that could be said in this regard. One can also find the continuation of Gnostic ideas in the Roman church tradition. According to Louis Berkhof,

Some of its peculiarities were absorbed by the Church and in the course of time came to fruition in the Roman Catholic Church with its peculiar conception of the sacraments, its philosophy of a hidden God, who should be approached through intermediaries (saints, angels, Mary), its division of men into higher and lower orders and its emphasis on asceticism.[11]

Vows of poverty and celibacy form part of this tradition. However, our focus is on the present day and in particular on the Pentecostal and neoPentecostal movements. Various sectarian movements around the fringe of evangelical Christianity also illustrate how Gnostic thinking has continued to the present day. With all of these movements one can only speak, technically, of points of contact with Gnosticism. There is no exact or even close manifestation of the actual ancient heresy. Nevertheless, the modern counterparts have enough in common with the ancient phenomenon to warrant our serious attention, and the thorough way in which the apostles refuted the ancient heresy, or its precursor, make their writings the most authoritative antidote. In this sense the ancient text is still relevant.

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is such a widespread expression of the body of Christ that no generalizations can really be made. There are numerous Pentecostal leaders who are fully aware of the Gnostic error. It would therefore be totally unfair to suggest that Pentecostalism per se is Gnostic. What we will find is that certain traditions and emphases within Pentecostalism have definite links with Gnosticism, which is why all responsible Pentecostal leaders can and should be assisted by an honest assessment of the problem. As we noted in the preface, Gnostic thinking is the particular danger of any group that emphasizes spirituality and spiritual gifts. The Pentecostal movement has been one of the most successful missions movements of the Christian Church. Anything that undermines a genuine missions thrust must be faced and carefully examined. This is the spirit in which the following comments are to be taken. What follows will obviously be a caricature of reality because no single individual or community will manifest all these tendencies at the same time. The ‘extreme scenario’ is given for the sake of clear communication. Perhaps I should add at this point that I have had some ten years pastoral experience in a classical Pentecostal environment, have profound respect for what the movement has achieved and am very grateful for the experience gained during that period. None of what follows should be taken as a rejection of the positive elements in the Pentecostal and neoPentecostal traditions.

Elitism

A belief common to Pentecostals and neoPentecostals is the doctrine of subsequence, the conviction that regeneration by the Spirit and the ‘baptism in the Spirit’, or empowering for service, are not necessarily the same thing. The latter is often received by the believer subsequent to the former. My own conviction is that, correctly stated, subsequence is biblical. However, it is vital to be clear that subsequence does not create a concept of different classes of Christians, some qualitatively different from others. The problem with the classical Pentecostal position, as often stated, is the same as the problem with Wesleyan holiness teaching, which is historically one of the influences in early Pentecostalism. Wesley confused the NT teaching on empowering with its teaching on sanctification. He believed that the ‘second blessing’ is an experience of sanctification. This has to imply that those who have received the blessing are qualitatively different from those who have not. Consequently elitism is impossible to avoid. Where this confusion intrudes into Pentecostal teaching, the same elitism inevitably follows.

Dualism

We do not have to belabour the problems of the dualist worldview and its doctrine of man, which has been shown repeatedly in the biblical examination. It is difficult to trace exactly how or why dualism has emerged in contemporary movements. Many leaders have read Watchman Nee’s writings. While many of Nee’s works are very helpful[12] others advocate a clearly oriental dualism of body and spirit.[13] Others have made much use of the writings of EW Kenyon, which we will examine in due course. Whatever the origin, it is popular in some circles today to give series of bible studies on Body, Soul and Spirit whereby a fragmented view of human nature is develop. Linked to this is often an imprecise grasp of Paul’s teaching on flesh and spirit, which is more dualist than Hebraic. To anticipate a later section, Paul’s use of ‘flesh’ and ‘body’ does not amount to a rejection or devaluation of the human body. However, once Paul is misconstrued and linked to a fragmented dualism of body and spirit the result is a broadly Gnostic worldview. The misconstrued categories of ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ then become a criterion for judging almost everything. Everything has to be defined in the either/or of this dichotomy. The result is particularly severe when it is linked to a legalistic understanding of the gospel. Sport is in the flesh, so is secular art, literature and music. Prayer and bible study are in the ‘Spirit’.

Once the category ‘Spirit’ has been chosen, and most of the activities of ordinary life have been categorized as in the ‘flesh’, one arrives at a seriously reduced world that fits into the ‘Spirit’. In this reduced world of the ‘Spirit’, activities that appear to be more directly spiritual are particularly valued. Special attention is given to revelatory experiences such as dreams, visions and prophetic gifts. The reduced category of ‘Spirit’ therefore takes on an exaggerated value without the balance of the value of the whole of life as given by God for the benefit of mankind. This preoccupation is then worked out in a particular liturgical style or set of priorities where every meeting has to evidence a high level of revelatory content. The result is often a highly charged and manipulated series of contrived phenomena. Such meetings could do with a good dose of Quakerlike waiting in silence to recreate the sense of dependence on God, but alas, the worldview will never permit this. Such a liturgical and social context almost always leads to exhibitionism.

Sadly, the world of interpersonal relationships is often placed in the category of ‘flesh’. Pastors who attempt to develop a sense of family and teach ‘relationships’ in church life are accused of trying to make the church go ‘social’. A home meeting is acceptable as long as it meets to pray, but as soon as the people are encouraged to spend an evening focused on relating and caring the alarm is raised that ‘we are going into the flesh’. The ‘flesh’, ‘spirit’ dualism becomes a social framework at this point, resulting in a confused definition of worldliness and holiness. Worldliness becomes synonymous with a worldaffirming attitude, and holiness becomes synonymous with a worlddenying attitude. This is assisted by the pretribulation rapture theory, which tends to predominate in such circles. The Christian lives in a ‘spiritual’ world, within a ‘spiritual’ circle of elite ‘Spiritfilled’ Christians and waits for the rapture to rescue him from the carnal world around him. Attempts to teach on issues of social justice and social concern are easily evaded as carnal attempts to impose a worldly ethic. In such circles the disrespect for the body inherent in the worldview works its way out in specific dress codes. Modern or colourful clothes are said to be worldly and carnal. The more austere the clothing the more ‘holy’ the individual. Because, as Paul shows, severity to the body only inflames carnal desires, those who are imprisoned in this worldview often suffer from the suppression of their legitimate sexual drives and become preoccupied with a morbid fascination with all things sexual. In male preachers it can manifest itself in a repeated stress on sexual temptations. Some call this ‘Christian pornography’.

If the preoccupation with directly ‘spiritual’ experiences is severe enough, certain individuals will be sure to develop an exaggerated opinion of their own ability to receive ‘revelation’ from God, with the result that they lose respect for normal pastoral oversight. Pastors who have a fairly obvious gifting in the revelatory gifts enjoy respect, but those who do not, or whose gifting is less overt enjoy scant respect. The individuals concerned always know better than the leadership because they have ‘seen’ more.

A sometimes bizarre expression of the reductionistic world of ‘spirit’ is the esoteric allegorical interpretations of Old Testament texts. The hermeneutics involved really do require a ‘revelation’ to explain their meaning. The greater their ‘depth’, the more intricate and mysterious their nature, the more there is admiration for the revelatory creative genius of the speaker. Such interpretations are said to be the ‘meat’ of the Word, which less mature Christians, who are still on ‘milk’, cannot comprehend.

Dualistic ethics

The categories ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’, viewed in this neoGnostic manner eventually produce a moral framework as well. Sanctification becomes identified with the reduced world of directly ‘spiritual’ phenomena, with little relational content. The result is that a Christian begins to feel right with God as long as gifts are still in evidence. For whatever reason known to God alone, it is possible for people to continue manifesting ‘gifts’ while their moral standard continues to fall. Samuel in the Old Testament and the Corinthians in the New Testament are two obvious cases. Where other Christians would conclude that their lives are in serious crisis and that the peace of God has long since departed, those with a reduced definition of spirituality can dull their conscience and continue to believe they have the blessing of God because the gifts are still in evidence in their lives. There are numerous sad stories of evangelists who practise and evidence healing and prophetic gifts while they consort with different mistresses in each town they visit. My point is not that such a double life is found amongst only Pentecostals with gifts, but that such gifted people are open to worse deception, especially where their worldview is dualistic. If they have been grounded in the ‘body, soul, spirit’ teaching they can begin to rationalize that their sins are only occurring in their bodies while their ‘spirits’ continue to be in relation with God. I can recall a number of cases known to me where evangelists have explained away their behaviour in these terms once they have been ‘caught’ in their activity. Once again, super-spirituality and immorality are closely related.

Pentecostal Deviations

The major Pentecostal denominations are producing better-trained leaders with each decade and the dangers of Gnosticism will fade as this process continues. Some of the problems are therefore more directly evident in breakaway movements.

The Branhamites

William Branham was a Pentecostal evangelist with remarkable gifts of the Holy Spirit. The occurrence of dramatic healings and the accuracy of his ‘word of knowledge’ gifts have probably not been exceeded by anyone since. However, towards the end of his ministry he began to advocate heterodox doctrines and manifest more and more spiritistic tendencies. He distorted the doctrine of the Trinity into the ‘Jesus only’ teaching and began to operate through ‘angelic’ presences that would guide him in his meetings. Today a sect exists founded on his ministry. In this movement a great deal is made of rebaptism in the name of ‘Jesus only’. Elitist revelatory experiences are believed to coincide with the moment of baptism. People ‘see’ the name of Jesus written on the waters, and members of orthodox Pentecostal churches are proselytized through the attraction of deeper, elite spirituality. Much flattery takes place in such a process. Rational theological argument is impossible with sectarian members because their beliefs have been confirmed by ‘revelatory’ experiences. The movement tends to be parasitic on Pentecostal churches rather than evangelistic towards the world. Without articulating it in these terms, they work on a three tier system of ‘nonSpirit-filled’ Christians, then Pentecostal Christians, then Pentecostal Christians who have ‘seen’ the ‘truth’ of ‘Jesus only’ baptism.

The Church of the Living Word The Walk

John Robert Stevens was influenced by the Branham circle but then developed his own particular emphasis. He founded the Church of the Living Word in 1954, calling his centre ‘Shiloh’. He claimed that, ‘Shiloh is now the spiritual centre of the world, the beginning of God’s creation’. The ‘living word’ was the word spoken by Stevens. This was more inspired than scripture because it manifested the special sense of ‘revelation knowledge’ given to Stevens. Reading the literature one finds a repeated emphasis of ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ with dualist connotations. Much is made of the elite revelation found in the ‘walk’. Other churches are part of the ‘Babylon’ of established Christianity. An additional factor in these early Pentecostal deviations is the ‘manifested sons of God’ teaching. They believed a special class of elite Christians would emerge in the last generation before the Second Coming bearing the ‘Elijah’ anointing. These Christians would begin to participate in the ‘liberation’ of the sons of God Paul describes in Romans 8. In context the passage clearly refers to the final resurrection and glorification of the body. Stevens predicted he would enter into such a ‘manifest’ body and thus evade physical death. When he died many fell away from the ‘walk’. Linked to this is the idea that the regenerate Christian actually becomes deified.

We will notice this element again in the case of Kenyon. This tradition has much in common with Gnosticism but includes elements of Hindu and metaphysical thought. The link between Gnosticism and oriental philosophy has been shown in the analysis of ancient Gnosticism.

The Children of God

2 Peter and Jude addressed the licentious wing of Gnosticism. The contemporary equivalent of this error can be found in the teaching and lifestyle of David Berg. His origins are in the Californian ‘Jesus people’ revival of the sixties and early seventies. The ‘hippie’ element in this movement was antiestablishment and anticapitalist and was expressed in communal houses and farms that operated on a socialist basis. I owe some of my knowledge of this era to my late friend Lonnie Frisbee, who played a major part in the early revival and whose doctrine remained true to scripture. The dualist split between the spirit and the body and the consequent disrespect for the body, leading to licentious living had rather obvious expression in David Berg’s communities. The communes practised ‘free’ sex. The ‘love of God’ was to be expressed freely in every way. Young women would engage in a novel form of ‘evangelism’ called ‘flirty fishing’ or ‘Ffing’. They would attract young men to the community with more than bible verses and ‘win souls’. Group sex and wife swapping was practised.

The Way International

Paul Wierwille was initially a Presbyterian minister. In 1950 he experienced speaking in tongues and his wife was dramatically healed. He began to deviate from normal Presbyterian doctrine and founded his ‘Way International’. The dualist element is found in his teaching that the spirit of man cannot fall into sin. When Adam fell, sin occurred in the body and he lost his spirit completely. Through the ‘Pentecostal’ experience, man can once again receive a sinless spirit. He may still sin in the body, but will never sin in the spirit.

The ‘Latter Rain’

This is a Pentecostal deviation peculiar to South Africa. It began as a breakaway movement from one of the Pentecostal churches and soon developed characteristic features. The followers of the sect can be recognised by the blue dresses worn by the women. Their popular name is therefore blou rokkies (blue dresses). Two Gnostic elements can be noted. First, embarrassment with the human body is reflected in the idea that women must dress in blue, the colour of heaven, to cover their human ‘flesh’. Second, much emphasis is placed on the ministry of the ‘prophets’. There is a great emphasis on the ‘revelation’ of the prophets, whose words have special authority and who perpetuate the sense of elite spirituality.

The New and Old Apostolics

The history of this South African movement goes back to the charismatic revival led by Edward Irving in Scotland during the 1830s. The rediscovery of prophetic and healing gifts led Irving to deduce that God wished to restore the apostolic and prophetic ministries to the church during the last generation preceding the Second Coming. Twelve apostles were declared. As they died with no sign of the Second Coming, the Catholic Apostolic Church that they had founded began to disintegrate. However, a group broke away from the initial movement. The history of this movement can be traced through Germany to South Africa. There are obvious Gnostic elements in the current movement. Most notable of all is the ‘flesh’ ‘spirit’ dichotomy and the consequent belief that sin occurs in the body but not in the spirit. A person can be right with God in the spirit (through the ‘seal’ of the apostle) and continue to practise unethical behaviour in the body. This has created a popular religion that provides for a sense of social conformity and spiritual ‘righteousness’, with no cost of discipleship and no repentance.

It should be noted that all these deviant movements either continue to practise, or once practised speaking in tongues and prophetic gifts. The sense of the supernatural was especially important to Branham and Stevens. This underlines the fact that revelatory gifts and Christian maturity have no direct relationship.

The Charismatic Churches

NeoPentecostalism or the charismatic renewal springs from the entrance of the Pentecostal testimony into the historical churches during the seventies and eighties. There are numerous differences in theology and practise between the older and the younger movement. Generally, charismatic leaders remain committed to their theological roots but add the charismatic experience and a noncessationist openness to the gifts of the Spirit. Emerging from the renewal has been a new generation of ‘independent’ or autonomous charismatic churches, outside the historical church structures but unconnected to the classical Pentecostal denominations. One could describe it as the postcharismatic movement. Because of the stronger tradition of theology that leaders of the renewal and the postrenewal have to draw on, Gnostic elements have not emerged to the same extent. However, there is one emphasis that bears some resemblance to Gnostic thinking which we would do well to consider.

A Christian who has been ‘renewed in the Spirit’, or whatever term one prefers, normally discovers new dimensions of guidance. Prophetic pictures, dreams, ‘words’, messages in the Spirit and so on become at least understandable, if not frequent. This new world can be much more exciting than the previous dogged evangelical understanding of guidance. All of this should be welcomed. Who would not like to experience more of the revelation of God? The danger is that the believer becomes preoccupied with this new dimension and develops an intensity about hearing from God in everything, all the time. One para-church charismatic organization has placed a particularly heavy stress on revelatory guidance. The result is that the charismatic Christian feels almost duty bound to receive a rather direct sense of guidance on a very frequent basis. He may feel less ‘spiritual’ than his peers if he cannot speak of such guidance with as much conviction. Intensity sets in when he feels he is slipping from the ‘high’ he once knew and attempts to return to the same level of ‘hot line’ hearing from God. More dangerous still is the deception that one is actually hearing from God on an almost daily basis in a most direct way where a high percentage of the ‘revelation’ is self-induced. Such people can then impose their own sense of guidance on their friends and give the impression that those friends are disagreeing with God if they disagree with them. People with this problem become a real pain when they work on a team in the leadership of a local church. Normal rational discussion and decision making becomes impossible because they want to ‘hear from God’ about every detail. At this point guidance has become an end in itself and has taken priority over obedience. Spiritual pride and elitism are inevitable.

The problem is similar to the reduction of spirituality to the direct area of revelatory experiences but without the ‘flesh’ ‘spirit’ dichotomy. The need here is to have a balanced biblical view of guidance. It is not a biblical expectation to have ‘hot line’ revelatory guidance on a daily basis. When we read literature like the book of Acts, or many popular Christian books of testimony to the guidance of God, we forget that what took place over a few decades has been selected and narrated in one volume. We also forget that revelatory phenomena are linked to certain ministries, as for instance with the evangelist and the prophet. When such a ministry is actually engaged in preaching and serving in the dynamics of a given meeting there is a special sense of revelation through the word of knowledge or prophetic gifts. The same person does not operate like that back home when he plans his day or relates to his friends. Then there are seasons of renewal when every meeting is charged with a sense of the supernatural while at other times the meetings operate on a more ‘normal’ human level. A good picture of guidance in corporate decision making is found in the account of the ‘council’ of Jerusalem in Acts 15. First there was open debate and discussion. Peter had his say. Paul had his say. James had his say. Then consensus was reached and it was said of the decision that ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’ (15.28). The text never explains how the Holy Spirit guided. It goes to some length to describe the debate. Here is a realistic sense of the combination of rational debate and dependence on the Holy Spirit to direct the entire procedure.

While Christians should be encouraged to seek God in prayer, to wait for guidance and to be open to prophetic gifts, care must be taken not to reduce guidance to ‘hot line’ experiences, or to expect that God will give such guidance on a daily basis. The normal Spirit filled Christian experience will be of regular guidance through the normal process of bible reading and meditation, consultation with others, taking note of the inner peace of the Holy Spirit, faith in the sovereignty of God to ‘work all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purposes’ and often just basic common sense, as one finds in Proverbs. In and amongst such guidance there will be times of prayer where one senses certain things more concretely and waits for confirmation through the other channels of guidance. At significant points in our life God will give very clear, direct guidance. A prophet may speak a confirming word. A dream may give warning or confirmation of a course of events. A prophecy in the worshipping congregation may link in with guidance one has already received. Sometimes God will just speak directly through a rather dramatic ‘word’ into one’s consciousness. This will be the exception, not the norm. New Christians and newly ‘filled’ Christians will often have such experiences more frequently at first, as though God is concerned to get these Christians on the road and graciously takes them directly by the hand in the initial stages. However, later on he expects more orientation towards straightforward obedience to the commandments of scripture in witness, service, fellowship and mission. We do not require continual guidance for such things. If you tell your child to go to the local store and buy some bread, you do not expect him to return again and again to make certain that it was bread you wanted, and that you did want it from this particular store, and that he does have to turn left down the road to get there. The badge of the Spirit-filled Christian life is obedience and witness, not guidance per se.

EW Kenyon

What one means by the ‘charismatic movement’ can vary. Originally this term referred to a movement of the Spirit within the historical churches. However it was not long before a similar movement was occurring outside those churches as people left them, looking for more flexible structures. Eventually a plethora of new church movements emerged, born out of the original charismatic movement. In addition, the new energy of the charismatic movement influenced classical Pentecostal churches, leading to people also leaving these churches also in search of more flexible structures.  Eventually the term came to be used for the whole thing: historical church, independent and renewed Pentecostal. Under the latter definition, the ‘word of faith’ movement is part of the charismatic movement. Under the first definition, it is not.

Kenyon’s influence in the third grouping above is so profound, and through the influence of that movement’s influence, so pervasive, that a number of chapters will be devoted to it.

THE TEACHING OF E. W. KENYON

Historically Kenyon’s influence comes before the rise of the charismatic renewal, and those who have followed him in the socalled ‘faith’ movement emerged out of the classical Pentecostal environment in the American Bible Belt before the charismatic renewal. Kenyon’s influence is still so widespread that any critique of Kenyon is controversial. The issue is rather emotive for many, some discovering a champion in McConnell and others finding the devil in McConnell. McConnell’s work was first submitted as a Master’s thesis at Oral Roberts University, situated geographically and ecclesiastically in the middle of the Bible Belt.[14] It was the first serious attempt to deal with the theology of Kenyon. Amongst the many results of his research, the following may be regarded as beyond reasonable doubt.

•         Part of Kenyon’s adult education took place at a school of metaphysics.

•         Kenyon himself had no formal theological education.

•         Kenyon profoundly influenced Kenneth Hagin, so much so that he actually plagiarized whole sections of Kenyon’s writings, republishing them in his own name.

•         The influence of metaphysical thinking is evident the writings of Kenyon, Hagin, and many of Hagin’s disciples, especially Kenneth Copeland.

He has opened up a field of debate that is certain to continue for some time and has raised numerous important issues which the charismatic movement and the ‘faith’ movement need to take seriously. Many have found weaknesses in his work.[15] My aim at this point is not to comment specifically on McConnell. The one shortcoming of his work I do wish to note concerns communication with his intended readers. Most Christians who have been influenced by Kenyon will never study metaphysics but have read where Kenyon repeatedly repudiates metaphysics. They will be more inclined to believe Kenyon than his critic. What hopefully may influence them is evidence that clear teaching in the ‘word’ is in direct conflict with clear statements made repeatedly by Kenyon. For this reason the appendix provides an extensive section of direct quotations from Kenyon’s writings. Instead of reading numerous Kenyon books (I read seventeen) the interested reader can gain a fairly detailed knowledge of Kenyon’s peculiarities from this collection of Kenyon quotes. The aim is to help Kenyon followers, or followers of Kenyon followers, to read the facts themselves and then compare Kenyon’s actual teaching with the analysis of ancient Gnosticism and the refutation of the New Testament apostles provided in the previous section. If they can see the issues for themselves in the word, in some detail, my hope and prayer is that they will then be able to correct certain tendencies in their own perspective and teaching. For many preachers Kenyonism is now one influence amongst many. It would be grossly unfair to label them as Gnostics. What should be expected of them is openness to face up to issues of biblical truth. Surely this is what it means to be ‘word based’?

This whole subject has hardly anything to do with the support or denial of faith. Kenyon’s teaching is wrongly described if it is called a ‘faith’ message and the refutation of the errors in Kenyon will never undermine biblical faith. Further, the problem is not with most of what Kenyon writes. Almost half the space in his books is taken up with textual quotations. Of the other half, perhaps fifty percent amounts to normal evangelical Baptist teaching. The problem is in the remaining twenty-five percent. However it is a persistent and very influential twenty-five percent.

An Analysis of E.W. Kenyon

Having read the chapter on Gnosticism and then the chapter on the biblical teaching, anyone who works through the appendix should notice the points of contact.  There is much in Kenyon that makes contact with other errors. Two of the more evident ones are the ‘manifested sons of God’ doctrine of certain circles within Pentecostalism and the metaphysical cults. We have already noted the affinity between the ‘manifested sons of God’ idea and Gnosticism in the case of Stevens. Metaphysics is akin to oriental thinking in general. It is also monistic (everything is part of one reality). All the ideas have something in common. My comments on Kenyon will focus on the connections with Gnosticism but will also comment in passing on areas where his views are in obvious conflict with scripture.

First, and most fundamental of all, is Kenyon’s ontology. Ontology is the study of being or essence. The orthodox creeds use ontological language to express the relation of the Father to the Son. Christ is ‘of one substance with the Father, very God of very God’. This is because the early church was communicating in a world that was dominated by Greek philosophy. The biblical writings are not primarily ontological. Hebrew thinking is far more practical and down to earth. Its categories are more eschatological (the coming kingdom) than ontological, although one can draw ontological deductions from scripture, as the Church Fathers did. Eastern and Greek philosophy have an ontology of their own. For instance Hindu philosophy is monistic and pantheistic. Everything is part of the all. These nonbiblical philosophical ideas have permeated into Western thought through various channels including the metaphysical cults of New England during the time of Kenyon’s education. Kenyon is preoccupied with ontology, with essence or substance. These categories control the way he sees everything and run like a thread through his entire system.

Basically he does not see biblical truth in a relational sense. It is not enough for him that God has a relationship with man, or that man has a saving relationship with God in Christ. For Kenyon man must be part of (sharing essence with) either God or the devil. Essence or substance is transposed from one being to another so that the two no longer remain as distinct beings. A kind of ontological osmosis occurs which amounts to the communication of being. One being flows into another resulting in a change of substance. This is a category of thought he imposes on the entire biblical revelation, which he assumes to be true and never questions. It is the hermeneutical key to all his errors.

First, when God created man, man was made in the image of God yet remained a different being to God. In biblical teaching, God remains distinct as the creator and man remains distinct as the creature. Kenyon cannot rest with this fact. For Kenyon, God transposes his essence into man so that man is divinised. He is in the same ‘class’ as God. He has ontological equality with God.

Second, when man fell into sin, Satan then transposed his essence into man. Man underwent an ontological change and became ‘of one substance’ with the devil. Being thus absorbed by satanic essence, man ceased to be a distinct, responsible moral agent. Consequently Kenyon finds he cannot blame man for sin. Man is a helpless container either filled with divinity (righteousness) or the satanic (sinfulness).

Third, when Jesus identified with sinful humanity, he went beyond a special relationship with the sins of mankind (substitute and representative). He underwent an ontological change. The essence of his nature changed from divinity to the satanic.

Fourth, when Jesus had suffered in his satanic mode and released the control of the devil on man, he rose again to communicate his ‘born again’ essence to man. When a human being is born again divine nature is once again infused into man. Man and God become of ‘one substance’. They have ontological continuity and equality. It follows that born again humans are omnipotent and creative on a level with God. It is because of this ontological bias that Kenyon misconstrues the statement about believers becoming ‘partakers of the divine nature’. To put it very crudely, when I partake of a chocolate cake I do not become a chocolate cake. The word ‘partake’ should not necessarily be used in a strictly ontological sense. Kenyon reads ontological categories into the passage in 2 Peter.

Following his ontology and closely linked to it is his dualism. Both the ontology and the dualism form part of his metaphysic, or worldview.

His worldview is dualistic. Everything is either in the spiritual world, which is the real world, or in the sense world, which is of less significance and value. His thinking at this point bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Plato and NeoPlatonism.

His worldview determines his theory of knowledge. There are two kinds of knowledge: revelation knowledge, obtained through the Spirit, and senseknowledge, obtained through the five senses of the body.

His view of knowledge determines his approach to scripture. In almost identical fashion to Marcion, the early Gnostic leader, he creates a canon within a canon. The entire OT is said to be senseknowledge, because God dealt with Israel in a more sense orientated way. The four gospels and the Acts are sense knowledge, because they record the ‘earth walk’ of Jesus, when he was available to the senses. The early church described in Acts had not yet received the Pauline revelation. The real heart of the NT is the Pauline revelation, which is revelation knowledge, but here again there is a selection within the Pauline letters. Romans 18 is sense knowledge because it depends upon logical deduction. The sections of revelation knowledge are 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians and various passages here and there. 1 John is sense knowledge, especially 1.14. Hebrews is taken to be Pauline and is also revelation knowledge. 2 Peter 1.34 is Kenyon’s favourite verse and is presumably revelation knowledge. Any knowledge that involves logical deduction is sense knowledge. Revelation knowledge gives absolute certainty.

His view of knowledge determines his estimate of all other bible teachers. All the leaders of the church and all the theologians of the church are into sense knowledge, including Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and the Pentecostals. Kenyon’s theology reflects the revelation knowledge of Paul, and is therefore the most significant body of truth since the apostles. It is the teaching to prepare the church for the last days. Kenyon sincerely believed this about himself.

His dualism determines his criterion of significance. Because spiritual things are reality, and superior to material things, God, man, angels and demons are beings in the same class, who are part of reality. What happens in the sense realm is of less significance.

His criterion of significance determines his anthropology and his Christology. His anthropology is summed up in this definition: ‘Man is a spirit who possesses a soul and lives in a body’. The spirit man is the real man. This man is in the same class as God. Sin and salvation take place in the spirit realm, and not in the material realm.

While Kenyon holds to the doctrine of the divinity and humanity of Christ, his dualism leads him to regard the ‘earth walk’ of Jesus as of less importance than his spiritual work which occurred between his death and his resurrection. These three days are the real ministry of Jesus because they occurred in the realm of the spirit.

The fall of man was an act of high treason. Man was placed in authority over the physical world. He rebelled against God and handed the world over to the devil in a legal sense. The devil now has legal authority over the world, which God has to respect. When man surrendered to the devil, the devil’s nature was born within the spirit of man. Man has a satanic nature and can only be redeemed when Satan is somehow legally satisfied that he has to relinquish the legal rights handed over to him by man. Although man is now totally evil in his nature, the responsibility for the fall of man is actually with God. God created man in the face of the fact that he knew that man would make the wrong choice. God is therefore responsible for the fall of man, and has to act to redeem man to reestablish his credibility.

His dualism, which determines his criterion of significance, and therefore his Christology, also determines his view of the atonement. The physical sufferings of Christ have no atoning value. Strictly speaking, it is not the cross that saves us. When Jesus said ‘it is finished’ salvation had not even begun. He meant that the Old Covenant priesthood was now finished, or closed. When he left his body and went in the spirit into hell, then redemption took place. There he suffered at the devil’s hands as man’s substitute until the devil was satisfied with the offering and God could legally save man. Jesus then rose again and took his redemption to the right hand of God. His priestly ministry also occurred in the realm of the Spirit, and is therefore very important. However, even though he met with the disciples after he rose, their knowledge remained as sense knowledge. The early church did not have revelation knowledge. The disciples were born again at Pentecost, but only really understood revelation knowledge about the atonement and the three days from the Pauline revelation.

When redemption takes place in man, justification, regeneration and sanctification occur at the same time and are actually the same thing. The church has traditionally taught that legal justification is different from actual righteousness (the legal differs from the vital). Here they are mistaken. The great ‘truth’ taught by Kenyon is that man, by being born again, receives the nature of God in such a way that he becomes acceptable to God. He has a legal right to the new nature and because he has the new nature he has a legal right to stand before God without a sense of condemnation or inferiority. He is now in the same class as God. He is as much a Son of God as Jesus was. He shares in the same divine nature as God, just as Jesus does. The born again Christian is one with God like the bay is one with the ocean. Man’s nature is now essentially the same as God. He does not make requests to God when he prays. He walks boldly into the Father’s presence and makes requisitions. When Jesus says ‘in that day’ you may ‘ask’ of me anything in my name, the Greek word for ask actually means ‘command’. Man is now level with God.

This means that redeemed man is a superman, a total victor in every situation. If he knows his righteousness in Christ he can never think of such a thing as failure, or admit failure.

Failure or success depends upon confession. When we confess what the word says about us we experience what we confess. When we confess failure, we experience failure. This principle operates in the area of finances and healing. When we are sick, we should not behave like baby Christians and call for the elders of the church to pray for us because it shows lack of faith. We should get our healing on our own by confessing our healing in defiance of the circumstances. Because the realm of the spirit is reality, rather than the realm of sense experience, sickness actually occurs in the spirit realm. It is always from the devil. When we make the correct confession it has to go. People who are not healed are to blame for their own state, because their negative confession is the cause of their sickness.

The new man, redeemed in Christ, has created a new species of new creation folk that are found in the Anglo-Saxon nations. Because they have experienced the gospel the actual genes have changed, and children born to these nations are superior to nonChristian nations, which is proved by the fact that no inventions have occurred in third world or nonChristian nations. These new creation nations have a superior intelligence because of the renewal of the mind that follows when the spirit begins to dominate the mind and the body.

Within these nations there are different levels of Christianity. There are sense knowledge dominated Christians, or nominal Christians who are not really saved. Then there are born again Christians who have not had the renewal of the mind through revelation knowledge, and then there are the new brand of Christians who have received Kenyon’s books and who have revelation knowledge. These are triumphant Christians. Their duty is to start small groups amongst Christians everywhere and take the message of the Pauline revelation to everyone. The pastors and ministers of the churches do not have revelation knowledge because the theological colleges all teach sense knowledge. A Christian who has revelation knowledge can teach anyone, no matter how much they have been trained in sense knowledge theology.

The new nature of God that has been placed in every Christian is the love nature. Christians who are built up in the word operate completely in love. As they allow their recreated spirit to dominate their soul and body they will always walk in love.

Pentecostal Christians tend to be sense knowledge Christians because they base their walk upon feelings and experiences like speaking in tongues rather than purely on the word and right confession.

An Evaluation of E.W. Kenyon

A thorough evaluation of this teaching would have to go to some length. I will simply mention the more obvious issues.

While it may have been legitimate for the early church to use ontological categories to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son, it does not follow that one can use ontological categories to describe the relationship between God and man. The Father and the Son are one in divine nature but God and man are eternally distinct as creator and creature. This has always been the difference between biblical monotheism and all forms of pantheism. Usually pantheists are monists. Everything is part of one reality. Kenyon, oddly, is a pantheistic dualist. Everything is part of two realities. Once his basic category of thought is seen for what it is his teaching at every point has to be repudiated. It is not true that man is in the same class as God, ontologically. It is not true that man underwent an ontological change when he sinned, and therefore lost his moral responsibility. It is not true that Jesus took satanic nature to himself. It is not true that born again Christians become ‘partakers of the divine nature’ in an ontological sense, as inferred by Kenyon.

While Kenyon is not a total dualist, as the Gnostics were, his thinking tends towards a metaphysical dualism. In contrast, the scriptures teach a holistic worldview, not in the pantheistic sense, but in the sense that creation, fall and redemption includes the whole of reality at the same time. Kenyon is pantheistic where he should be monotheistic and dualistic where he should be a holist.

His view of scripture creates a canon within a canon, which in practise means that he does not submit to the authority of scripture. His canon is the same as that of Marcion, for the same motives. His whole concept of revelation is faulty. Most obvious of all is his rejection of the mind and of normal rational thinking. Where Paul would teach the distinction between the unregenerate and the regenerate mind, Kenyon teaches a distinction between the mind and the spirit. He fails to see that for Paul ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ are almost synonymous terms.

His Christology is faulty in the following areas.

•         The ‘spirit’ work of Jesus is more important than his incarnate work. This amounts to a depreciating of the incarnation and misses the whole point of John’s insistence on confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

•         He thinks that because Jesus is fully God and fully man, it is possible for the new man in Christ to become divine as well, which repudiates the Chalcedonian understanding of affirming that the divine and human nature in Jesus were not confused.

•         His Soteriology is fundamentally flawed. If the atonement only takes place in the ‘spirit’ realm then God has not really entered fully into our lost condition, and redemption does not effect the whole man. To construct this view he has to distort the scriptures (‘finished’ does not mean finished). It evades John’s insistence that Jesus came by water and blood.

•         He confuses justification and sanctification. The result is a concept of instantaneous inherent righteousness in the Christian, which is the root of the arrogance that his teaching produces. All the criticisms of the teaching of Christian perfection apply to Kenyon.

•         His new man is semideified. This idea is where his metaphysics comes to the fore. It was because of this tendency in liberal Protestantism that Karl Barth felt it necessary to stress the ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between God and man, the new man included.

•         Like the Gnostics, his church is elitist. His three classes are similar to the three classes of humanity taught by the ancient Gnostics. His elitism produces a sectarian spirit amongst those who have been influenced by his writings. Those who have ‘seen it’, who have this special kind of revelation knowledge, are the elite, the inner circle, the illuminati.

•         His anthropology is Gnostic and cannot but lead to a negative attitude towards the body. In ancient Gnosticism disrespect for the body led to the two errors of asceticism and licence, with serious moral consequences. Pastoral problems that have emerged with people who have been influenced by Kenyon show that the consequences are still the same. His view of healing is based on the same choice of the spirit realm over the material. Confession can overcome sickness because after all, sickness only really occurs in the senses. The rejection of medicine and various bizarre forms of behaviour in this area are also the result of his theology. Again there have been painful results in the lives of many people.

•         The teaching on ‘faith’ and ‘prosperity’ may be part of his theology, but it is the tip of the iceberg. It is not the main problem, and books that deal with this area have not even begun to deal with the roots of this theology.

THE BEING OF GOD AND GENDER

This chapter is an excerpt from Different but Equal,[16] written specifically on the question women in leadership in the church.

An introduction to this section will clarify the wider context of the book.

By “feminism” I am refering to contemporary feminism, as opposed to evangelical feminism, or the earlier form of liberal feminism that fought for the political emancipation and enfranchisement of women. All evangelical Christians, male or female, should be “feminists” in the sense of evangelical feminism, which champions the rights and dignity of women on the basis of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Most evangelical Christians would also embrace many of the views of classial liberalism, in its defence of the same rights. However, contemporary feminism should  be described as “radical feminism” because its worldview is fundamentally monististic. Instead of using the longer phrase “radical feminism” I have simply used the term “feminism”, always meaning “radical, contemporary feminism”.

In articulating what I believe to be the biblical position, I have found myself repudiating two views which represent extremes on either side. While I agree with some of the arguments of complementarians (on the creation story in particular) I do not agree with the conclusions they come to, because they are based on a subordinationist view of the Trinity, and therefore have an eternally heirarchical view of gender relationships. This section defends a view of the Trinity as eternally co-equal. My conclusions are more “evangelical feminist” and egalitarian than the conclusions of complementarians. This section is not about Gnosticism at all, but I have included it because it is important to place the section on radical feminism in its context. The section on contemporary feminism was written because I am concerned that some evangelicals are not discerning enough and do not see the dangers of neo-Gnostic monism. In making common cause with what they see as an issue of justice they have “swallowed a camel.” I therefore repudiate this postion as well, walking a path that is evangelical feminist while repudiating contemporary feminism.

Subordinationism

As already noted, Wimber took advice from Grudem. Grudem is one of a number of conservative scholars who have defended the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father in role, not essence. Therefore, they argue, women are equal to men in essence, but not in role, and this differentiation of roles continues into the coming age, because the Son continues to have this role distinction from the Father.

This is a large subject. Only a brief summary can be made here. Basically, I am in agreement with Giles and Webb rather than Grudem, although I see some weaknesses in their treatment of the subject.[17]

1.      The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Greek-Eastern) were subordinationist. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Tertullian began with the premise of monotheism, but were arguing against modalism (which denies the distinctions of persons). They therefore began with the three divine persons and then explained how they could be one. In doing so they view the Father as the source, or monarché, in relation to which the Son is second and the Spirit is third.

2.      The Cappadocians (Bazil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus), who were contemporaries of Athanasius, continued to speak of the Father as the monarché (source/arche of origin). They avoided the fuller subordinationism of the Ante-Nicene Fathers by affirming the unity of essence (ousia) of all three persons, and by stating that the three persons coinhere in one another.

3.      Modern Eastern Orthodox theology continues the language of the Father as the monarché, but then usually stresses the perichoretic unity (the three persons completely contain and interpenetrate one another) so as to rule out subordinationism. There is no chain of command in God in this view.

4.      The Arian controversy led to a clearer articulation of the Trinity, which also decisively dealt with subordinationism. Arius believed that, because the Father is the sole source of divine being, the Son had to have come into existence in time. He therefore denied Origen’s idea of the eternal generation of the Son, and affirmed “that there was a time when he was not”. He thereby denied the divinity of the Son and stated the ontological (being or essence – ousia) subordination of the Son. Athanasius was the champion of orthodoxy. Where the Ante-Nicene theologians tended to begin with the distinctions of persons, Athanasius began with the unity of God. He insisted on the Father and the Son being of one essence (homoousios), not likeness (homoiousios). God is eternally triune. There was never a time when God was a monad (one). While the Son is begotten of the Father, this does not make him subordinate or inferior.

5.      The Nicene Creed (381 AD) reflects the united confession of East and West in rejecting Arianism. It affirms that the Son is “begotten, not made, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, of one substance (homoousios) with the Father”. It also introduces concepts that were later defined as the distinction between the immanent (eternal) and economic Trinity: the Son, “because of our salvation came down and became incarnate”. The incarnation and temporal subordination of the Son to the Father has before it and after it the eternal equality of the Godhead. In this equality there is no hierarchy. In this tradition the Father never commands the Son. The difference between the immanent Trinity (intra-Trinitarian relations) and the economic Trinity (God in relation to man for his salvation) makes it easier to draw a line between the eternal equality of the Trinity and the submission of the Son during his redemptive work.

6.      The creed of Athanasius is clearer on this issue than the Nicene Creed, since the equality of the persons of the Trinity is unambiguously stated: “And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.”[18] Concerning the incarnation it states: “Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.”[19] Most Western reformed and evangelical movements subscribe to the Athenasian Creed, in addition to the Nicene Creed.

7.      A more recent theological development has rather complicated the story. Karl Barth’s theology gives great focus to revelation. Barth stressed that there is no hidden God, which we can speculate about, apart from the God who has made himself known to us in revelation. God in his revelation to us is not an appearance, or act, but truly God himself. Similarly the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner affirmed that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa.[20] If this principle is followed, the implications for gender relations can be argued either way. We can argue that even in his incarnation and in God’s work of salvation, there is no subordinationism, therefore gender equality is affirmed, but this would be a difficult position to defend from Scripture. Or we can argue, following Barth, that if what God is like in his redeeming work is really what God is like in himself, then perhaps obedience is something in the inner life of God.[21] This could be used to deduce that submission is therefore a permanent feature in gender relations. Barth is, in fact, fairly complicated on the gender issue. On the one hand, he undermines the idea that we can draw subordinationist conclusions from the Trinity by his insistence that God is God and man is man and so we cannot draw direct analogies of being from God to man (analogia entis). We can only make relational analogies (analogia relationis), or relative analogies.[22] On the other hand, he affirms leadership and submission language in gender relationships as part of the divine command in creation.[23]

The controversy emerges from what theologians have subsequently made of this history.

Giles

Giles is able to show a long history of those who have followed Athanasius in resolutely rejecting any form of subordinationism, in other words, who view the submission of the Son to the Father as purely related to the incarnation, including Augustine of Hippo, Calvin[24] and Thomas F. Torrance.[25] He also argues that the idea of eternal role subordination (as opposed to ontological) is a more recent, novel idea, which he believes coincides with those who want to find a reason for social conservatism on gender relationships.[26] He places Piper and Grudem, and generally the members of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, in this camp.[27] An additional exponent of this position is the Sydney Anglican Diocesan Doctrine Commission of 1999, the group that Giles is particularly at odds with. This happens to be the same group that attacked John Wimber from their cessationist position, thereby showing far greater confidence in their own theological expertise than they deserve.[28] Giles traces the roots of this idea in more recent history (i.e. apart from the Ante-Nicene Fathers) such as reformed theologians Charles Hodge and Louis Berkhof.[29]

This tradition leads to the suggestion by George Knight that, just as the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father in role but not in essence, so women are permanently in submission to men in role but not essence, endorsed by the Sydney diocese report.[30]

Giles’s major accusation then follows. Instead of beginning with the Trinity, and then drawing possible conclusions for gender relationships, modern evangelicals have begun with a preferred gender relationship of submission and projected that back into the Trinity. He believes this point is substantiated by the fact that those who have strongly refuted all forms of subordinationism, such as Athanasius, Augustine and Calvin, did so during times when gender views were clearly patriarchal. They could therefore not have used human relations as their starting point.[31]

The argument may be rather more complex and less clear cut than presented by Giles. He elicits Barth’s support on the Trinity, but disguises the fact that Barth’s position on gender differs from his. While Barth does not use Knight’s language of “roles”, his position on gender is not egalitarian.[32] He is not subordinationist on the Trinity, but is somewhat on gender. If we had to place Barth in one of the modern camps, it would be either complementarian or Webb’s soft patriarchy.

Grudem

In his reply, Grudem argues that the subordination of the Son is shown by many biblical texts to precede the incarnation. It is therefore eternal, not limited to the incarnation. The Son is destined to be the Redeemer before the foundation of the world (Romans 8:29; Ephesians 3:1–5; Revelation 3:8). The relation of priority was there eternally. The Father created through the Son (John 1:3). These texts show an eternal difference of role. After Christ returned to the Father, he continued to have a subordinate role, evident from the many texts that describe him as taking up his position at the right hand of the Father. In the ancient world, to sit at the king’s right hand indicated being alongside the king, not the king. The Scriptures never speak of the Father sitting at the Son’s right hand. Jesus continues to intercede for us. This implies a similar role in relation to the Father. This relationship continues in the eternal future (1 Corinthians 15:28).[33]

In direct opposition to Giles, Grudem maintains that such subordination of role, not essence, is the historic position of the church, and that it is less than honest to give a different impression.[34] The historic position is to oppose subordinationism, that the Son is less than the Father in essence or being, but to support subordination, that the Son is subject eternally to the Father in role. Giles and other egalitarians have merely caused confusion with words. Further, to speak of a mutual submission within the Trinity is the true novelty. This imposes a modern politically correct notion of equality onto the theology of the Trinity.[35]

Reviewing Grudem versus Giles

On reviewing Giles and Grudem, I came to the following conclusions.

Grudem locates the subordination of the Son in the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. He cites all the creedal statements that affirm the Son as “only begotten”. The Son is “of” or “from” the Father, as the fount of divinity; the Father is never “of” or “from” the Son. He then enlists the support of Hodge, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Warfield, Strong, Berkhof, Schaff, Kelly and Bromiley (his order) in support of deriving eternal subordination in role from these creedal statements.

Grudem’s use of his sources leaves much to be desired.[36] He quotes the Athenasian creed where it uses the term “begotten”. However, he never cites the sentence we have cited above, in the same creed, which says: “And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.”[37] If Athanasius thought eternal generation, or being “begotten” of the Father indicated what Grudem thinks it means, why would this later statement be made? Is this a case of only quoting language that agrees with him?

This troubling possibility emerges more obviously with his use of Warfield and Kelly. Warfield is important, first because he is highly regarded in reformed circles, and second because his chapter on the Trinity does exactly what Grudem praises. It is solidly based on biblical texts, rather than on later Trinitarian Fathers. It is truly “Bible based”.[38] Grudem criticizes Giles for basing his position on later orthodoxy, rather than on biblical texts.[39]

Grudem cites a passage where Warfield speaks of a “technical” subordination in the “modes of operation” (i.e. economic Trinity). He then places in a footnote the fact that Warfield goes on to speak somewhat differently.[40] Actually, Warfield has statements both before and after this citation which show precisely why we cannot argue from eternal generation to eternal subordination. Because this is such a crucial issue, I have quoted Warfield at some length, so that readers can judge for themselves whether Grudem has misused Warfield. The Grudem citation reads:

There is, of course, no question that in “modes of operation”, as it is technically called – that is to say, in the functions ascribed to the several persons of the Trinity in the redemptive process, and more broadly, in the entire dealing of God with the world – the principle of subordination is clearly expressed. The Father is first, the Son is second, the Spirit is third, in the operation of God as revealed to us in general, and very especially in those operations by which redemption is accomplished.[41]

Grudem highlights the words in italics above. What he should have highlighted was the careful qualifying language that I have underlined above. Warfield is locating subordination in the mission of God to the world, not in the immanent Trinity. This becomes obvious when we read the following explanation on the next page:

It may be natural to assume that subordination in modes of operation rests on subordination in modes of subsistence; that the reason why it is the Father that sends the Son and the Son that sends the Spirit is that the Son is subordinate to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son. But we are bound to bear in mind that these relations of subordination in modes of operation may just as well be due to a convention, an agreement, between the Persons of the Trinity – a “Covenant” as it is technically called – by virtue of which a distinct function in the work of redemption is voluntarily assumed by each.[42]

Notice that this is rather like the modern egalitarian argument Grudem believes to be an innovation. Warfield goes on to reject the possibility of Father and Son language relating only to the incarnation, strictly speaking, but then immediately makes this qualification:

But these terms, as we have seen, do not appear to imply relations of first and second, superiority and subordination, in modes of subsistence; and the fact of the humiliation of the Son of God for His earthly work does introduce a factor into the interpretation of the passages which import of subordination to the Father, which throws doubt upon the inference for them of an eternal relation of subordination in the Trinity itself. It must at least be said that in the presence of the great New Testament doctrine of the Covenant of Redemption on the one hand, and of the Humiliation of the Son of God for His work’s sake and of the Two Natures in the constitution of His Person as incarnated, on the other, the difficulty of interpreting subordinationist passages of eternal relations between the Father and Son becomes extreme. The question continually obtrudes itself, whether they do not rather find their full explanation in the facts embodied in the doctrines of the Covenant, the Humiliation of Christ, and the Two Natures of His incarnated Person.[43]

In the section prior to Grudem’s citation, Warfield has been providing a solid biblical foundation for the eternal equality of the Father and the Son.

It may be very natural to see in the designation “Son” an intimation of subordination and derivation of Being, and it may not be difficult to ascribe a similar connotation to the term “Spirit”. But it is quite certain that this was not the denotion of either term in the Semitic consciousness, which underlies the phraseology of Scripture; and it may even be thought doubtful whether it was included even in their remoter suggestions. What underlies the conception of sonship in Scriptural speech is just “likeness”; whatever the father is that the son is also. The emphatic application of the term “Son” to one of the Trinitarian Persons, accordingly, asserts rather His equality with the Father than his subordination to the Father; and if there is any implication of derivation in it, it would appear to be very distant. The adjuction of the adjective “only begotten” (Jn.1:14; 3:16–18; 1 Jn.4:9) need add only the idea of uniqueness, not of derivation … In like manner, the designation “Spirit of God” or “Spirit of Jehovah”, which meets us frequently in the Old Testament, certainly does not convey the idea there either of derivation or of subordination, but is just the executive name of God – the designation of God from the point of view of His activity – and imports accordingly identity with God.[44]

Clearly, Warfield draws exactly the opposite conclusion from the language of eternal generation to Grudem. It is mischievous for Grudem to hide this fact in a confusing little footnote and to enlist Warfield as a support by a citation taken out of context, which could cause us to read Warfield to mean the opposite of what he means.

There is a similarly misleading use of J.N.D. Kelly. He quotes Kelly as follows:

It is clearly Gregory’s doctrine that the Son acts as an agent, no doubt in subordination to the Father Who is the fountainhead of the Trinity, in the production of the Spirit … As stated by the Cappadocians, however, the idea of the twofold procession from Father through Son lacks all trace of subordination, for its setting is a wholehearted recognition of the homoousion of the Spirit.[45]

This citation is taken from the top and bottom of a long paragraph, almost giving the impression that subordination and non-subordination were two equal options among various Church Fathers. However, the section in between discusses Gregory’s views on the procession of the Spirit and leads directly into the second part of the sentence: “The same theory, with a strongly subordinationist flavour, reappears in his radical successors, such as Eusebius of Caesarea.” Kelly is showing that Gregory’s view is vulnerable to excess. In this chapter, Kelly has been tracing the development of the Trinity with respect to the Holy Spirit. The section on the Cappadocians is followed by a section on the Trinity in the West, which finds its “mature and final expression” in Augustine.[46] Here the problematical tendency towards subordination that the language of a “first”, “second” and “third” can lead to is rendered impossible because Augustine’s Trinitarian “conception of God as absolute being, simple and indivisible, transcending the categories, forms its ever-present background”.[47]

So in contrast to the tradition which made the Father its starting-point, he begins with the divine nature itself. It is this simple, immutable nature or essence … which is Trinity. The unity of the Trinity is thus set squarely in the foreground, subordinationism of every kind being rigorously excluded. Whatever is affirmed of God is affirmed equally of each of the three Persons. Since it is one and the same substance which constitutes each of Them, “not only is the Father not greater than the Son in respect of divinity, but the Father and the Son together are not greater than the Holy Spirit, and no single Person of the Three is less than the Trinity Itself”.[48]

Notice that the subject under discussion is the order (“first”) of Father as starting point, the entire basis of Grudem’s argument for eternal subordination.

Kelly then goes on to explain how careful Augustine was to define the concepts of begetting, being begotten and proceeding as concepts of “relation”, “relation in the sense that whatever each of Them is, He is in relation to one or both of the others.”[49] Clearly, Kelly and Augustine, whom he views as the mature end process of Trinitarian theology, do not see such “relations” implying subordination, which is exactly what Grudem argues for.

Grudem’s reading of Berkhof is accurate, namely supporting eternal subordination of “order”, as is his citation of Bromiley on eternal “superiority and subordination” of “order”.[50]

He thinks Erickson is somewhat confused on this subject.[51] Clearly Erickson completely disagrees with Grudem’s view. Erickson carefully describes first, eternal subordination, and then incarnational subordination, in order to clearly distinguish the two viewpoints.

The subordinationist view says that there is an eternal, asymmetrical relationship within the Trinity between the Father and the Son, and by extension, the Spirit as well. The references to the Father begetting or generating the Son are applied, not to the incarnational status of the Son, but to all eternity.[52]

Contrasted with this view is another, which argues for the eternal equality of the three persons of the Trinity and the symmetry of their relationship to one another in their essential status. The biblical statements about the Father begetting the Son are to be applied to the earthly incarnation, when the second person of the Trinity stepped down to earth and added humanity to his deity.[53]

Erickson adopts the second view.

On this latter view, there is not an asymmetrical relationship of generation. Not only do the Son and Spirit derive their being from the Father, but they also derive it from one another, as does the Father from each of them. Beyond that, this view claims that each member of the Trinity serves each of the others. There is a mutual subordination of each to the other.

It appears to me that there is more cogency in the arguments offered in support to this latter view than those presented to justify the former view … Further, the former view has difficulty preventing the subordination of the Son to the Father, since it is an eternal subordination, from lapsing into the inferiority of the Son, which would approximate the Arian view.[54]

He then goes on to work out the implications for human relationships. He never deals specifically with gender implications, but the direction of his thought is obvious.

Grudem is right on one point, however. No matter how we spin this subject, the Father and Son were simultaneously equal and not-equal during the incarnation and mission of the Son.[55] Therefore it must be possible for men and women to be simultaneously equal and not-equal. My view is that, just as this is located within the context of the mission of the Son, so it is located in what I call “first creation” for man and woman.

In conclusion, I do believe that the weight of biblical and Trinitarian theology is solidly on the eternal equality of the Trinity and that the direction of biblical revelation on gender is towards the eschatological goal, which is to be in God’s image, in equality.[56]

The Transcendent God and Feminism

While we have to fend off subordinationism in the Trinity on the one side, we have to fend off monism with equal vigour on the other side. We cannot address only one part of this discussion in isolation from the other. Monism is the end goal of contemporary[57] feminist theology.

It may be helpful to explain why a good deal of attention is given to this subject, both here and in the conclusion. A mental picture of the relationship between complementarians and egalitarians would be of complementarians ringing loud alarm bells with egalitarians in the same room wearing ear plugs. Egalitarians seem to think that because feminism has 19th-century liberal and evangelical roots, we can simply ignore the more recent turn that feminism has taken. However, this neo-feminism is so radically different that this reaction will simply not do. It will certainly not make complementarians feel that they are being heard and taken seriously. Further, it could indicate that egalitarians are uneasy about facing these issues because they are too vulnerable to their influence.[58]

Lest an obvious point be missed, feminist writers or the ideas found in contemporary feminism are not only written by women. In fact, a good case could be made that almost all the essential ideas have been developed by men.[59] Similarly, some of the most trenchant criticisms have been made by women.[60]

There is also a spectrum of feminist theologians and writers, which could warrant a distinction between feminist and radical feminist positions. There are both secular and religious feminists, early and later feminists.[61] The more recent ideas of the various kinds have development simultaneously, usually with an equivalent articulation in both contexts.[62] I will therefore simply refer to feminist thinking, which will always refer to contemporary feminism and assume that a spectrum of positions is included. I will use this differently from evangelical egalitarianism.[63] While this position also has various nuances, fundamentally its starting point is taken to be Scripture as authoritative and inspired, while contemporary feminism is a position that takes the present experiences of women as its starting point.[64]

Basically the end point of contemporary feminist theology is to replace the transcendent God of Scripture (theism) with the pantheistic (or panentheist) and monist being of Eastern religion and Gnosticism.[65]

There is a discernible narrative to this process.

Context

The contemporary feminism I will describe is the kind which has emerged primarily in North America from the 1960s to the 1990s. There are of course many antecedents, including the historic struggle for universal franchise (women’s right to vote) and equal rights[66] and the link between emancipation and the liberation of women in African-American history.[67] The recent movement can be traced to the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who was the lover of Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher.[68] De Beauvoir’s ideas were popularized by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique.[69] Matthew Fox is a primary influence on American feminism. His ideas are therefore given some space below. He was a Dominican priest who was eventually removed from his position at the instigation of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now Pope.[70] While he has a PhD in theology, he is a popular theologian rather than an academic. Mollenkott, as well as Fox, is influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a “transcendental” monist.[71]

While a host of authors could be cited, names that frequently emerge are: Suzanna Budapest, Mary Daly, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza; Naomi Goldenberg, Judith Plaskow, Rosemary Ruether, Charlene Spretnak and Starhawk.[72]

Social justice and liberation theology

Reference has been made to the gross injustices against women throughout history. The sense of justice denied is the starting point of this theology, but the point is taken further. A comprehensive analysis of the influence of the gospel on society would need to admit the continued abuse of women in and through the church and equally to show the liberating effect of the gospel for women, relative to most pre-Christian societies.[73] However, in this analysis the legacy of the church is almost entirely negative.[74] While special revulsion is reserved for the Roman Catholic system of Papal supremacy and male priesthood, the whole of the biblical narrative has been written by males, from a patriarchal perspective, to maintain male dominance. For Mary Daly, since God is male, the male is god.[75] In general society, the typical relation of male to female is one of rape and the subjugation of women as breeders, servants and cheap labour. For some, the institution of marriage is a male ploy to enslave women.

At its genesis, feminist theology makes common cause with liberation theology.[76] It therefore has the same methodology.[77] The starting point is the present experience of dominance by the oppressor. Sin is primarily structural, not personal, since it is inherent in the patriarchal power structure.[78] This then becomes the hermeneutical starting point from which the biblical narrative is interpreted.

Feminist causes

True to its liberation theology position, there is a cluster of interrelated causes. In some sort of logical progression, they include:

•         Gender equality: women’s rights.

•         The right of women to control their own bodies: abortion.

•         The right of women to be ordained.

•         The gender-inclusive reformulation of the biblical text and liturgical language.

•         Liberation from legalistic moral codes: the sexual expression of women and the defence of homosexual and lesbian sexuality – support for homosexual marriage and ordination.

•         Environmental causes.

•         Political liberation movements.[79]

Feminist methodology

As a liberation theology, feminism begins with the present experience of women. This leads to a rigorous hermeneutic.

First, the nature of revelation is redefined. Since the biblical text is so thoroughly patriarchal, it cannot be accepted as it stands.[80] Rather than being found in a static ancient text, once for all, revelation is an ongoing dynamic that continues today. What happens now is revelation. There should therefore be a new way of reading ancient texts which corrects them as we read them.[81] “It is like ‘Diving into the Wreck’ to find the treasure within the debris … in the spirit of turning old words into New Words [and so to] liberate theology.”[82]

Second, the primary purpose is to remove all patriarchal dominance. Fiorenza is perhaps best known for her hermeneutic of suspicion.[83] All biblical and creedal texts must be read on the basis of the fact that the original authors were males committed to their male dominance. In the wider context of hermeneutics, this is a postmodern deconstructionist or reader-response hermeneutic.[84]

Third, while the primary focus is male dominance, the method broadens to remove all hierarchies. This relates to the monist theology which we will discuss below.[85]

Some feminists believe Jesus taught an original egalitarian non-sexist approach to leadership which was then misconstrued and concealed by the apostles as a result of their social conditioning.[86]

Removing hierarchy and dualism

The male-female hierarchy, first expressed in the Genesis creation narrative, is part of a set of hierarchies and “dualisms”: God to the world (Theism), Creator to creature (God as lawgiver), man to nature, male to female, and right to wrong (dualistic ethics).[87] “Compulsory heterosexuality is the very backbone that holds patriarchy together.”[88] To overturn the primary adversarial dualism/hierarchy of gender distinctions, the entire system needs to be overturned or democratized.[89]

Monism and Gnosticism

A brief definition of terms will be helpful here. All of these terms relate to our total worldview, or metaphysic: how we view the universe and the totality of existence. There have always been two fundamental options: theism and monism. Since most theists are monotheists (only one God), effectively the choice is between monotheism and monism.

Monotheism affirms that there is a personal creator who transcends creation. This view is shared by the Judaeo-Christian tradition and Islam. God is present everywhere and sustains all of creation, but is not to be equated with it. There is therefore an ontological (being or essence) dualism between God and creation. God is both transcendent and immanent, but his immanence does not negate his transcendence.

Monism rejects such a dualism and affirms that there is only one reality, which includes God and the universe in one. All is one and one is all. Monism plays a crucial role in Gnosticism, which believes in a single monad at the origin of divine being.

Monism is closely associated with pantheism, the belief that there is an all-encompassing immanent abstract God in everything; or that the universe, or nature, and God are equivalent. Pantheism cannot therefore view God as a personal being, but as some sort of force, principle or mind in everything.

A mediating position between monotheism and pantheism is panentheism. It is essentially a combination of theism (God is the Supreme Being) and pantheism (God is everything). While pantheism says that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe and that the universe is contained within God.[90]

At this point, ideas become nuanced and complex. There are a number of types of panentheism, and this is where the essential dividing lines are to be found.

One of the oldest forms of panentheism is found in Greek philosophy, particularly Neo-Platonism. For Plotinus there is an original unknown and unknowable deity and everything that exists has emanated from him. This belief was then absorbed and developed by the Gnostics.

The Greek early Church Fathers rejected Neo-Platonism and particularly its Gnostic development, but were nevertheless influenced by the general world of Greek philosophy. Creation is not part of God, and the Godhead is still distinct from creation; however, God is within all creation, hence we can use the term pan-entheism (God is in everything), provided we know what that means. Their view of the relationship between the omnipotent, eternal, and constant God and his creation bears surface similarities with Greek panentheism, but maintains a critical distinction. Their view can be described as a form of panentheism with a difference.

God’s energies maintain all things and all beings, even if those beings have explicitly rejected Him. His love of creation is such that he will not withdraw His presence, which would be the ultimate form of slaughter, not merely imposing death but ending existence, altogether. By this token, the entirety of creation is sanctified, and thus no part of creation can be considered innately evil. This does not deny the existence of evil in a fallen universe, only that it is not an innate property of creation.[91]

Panentheism of yet another kind emerges with process theology, as articulated by A.N. Whitehead and followed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.[92] Their views are closer to the Neo-Platonic and Gnostic definition.[93]

The dividing line between the so-called Panentheism of the Greek Fathers and these other forms becomes apparent when we examine the way the biblical text is misused by the latter. If a writer habitually “uses” Scripture like monists do, their subtle distinction between pantheism and panentheism is merely a device to appear to be biblical when, in fact, the writer is subverting the biblical narrative.[94]

Matthew Fox

This background is important to understand a primary mind behind much feminist theology, namely Matthew Fox. For instance, the structure of Charlene Spretnak’s thought closely follows that of Fox.[95] He is not without considerable self-confidence, quoting an admirer at a conference who described him as “the Martin Luther of our time”.[96]

Fox is a prime example of monist panentheist reinterpretation of Scripture. In The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, he attempts to locate his beliefs in the orthodox tradition of Old Testament wisdom literature and New Testament teaching on the cosmic Christ (texts like John 1; Philippians 2:1–14; Colossians 1:15–20).[97] He elicits the support of the panentheism of the Greek Fathers, but from then on his genealogy of ideas swerves off into heterodox and mystical thinkers. His attempt to enlist Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas in his argument is less than convincing, to say the least.[98] Then a list of pantheist or panentheist thinkers leads him through Meister Eckhart[99] and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,[100] both Dominicans like Fox. After that he draws on various Buddhist and Hindu thinkers, and repeatedly quotes Carl Jung, who is widely known to have strongly Gnostic tendencies.[101] He never acknowledges indebtedness to the Gnostic system, probably due to his antipathy to all forms of dualism, but his ideas and approach to Scripture otherwise mirror Gnostic thinking.

Cyril O’Regan, a specialist on the reintroduction of Valentinian Gnosticism in Jacob Boehme, gives helpful tools to understand the general methodology of people like Fox.[102] Using narrative grammar, O’Regan describes “derangement” as a grammar where “one discourse (biblical) is deregulated by another and submitted to new rules of organization (essentially a different narrative grammar)”.[103] Following Irenaeus, the greatest anti-Gnostic Father, he further defines this grammar as “a disfiguration and refiguration of the biblical narrative. Moreover, this disfiguration-refiguration is a function of a hermeneutical program that is broadly transgressive in nature.”[104] In simple terms, biblical teaching is deliberately and systematically made to tell a totally different story.

1.      Fox continually reiterates monist panentheistic ideas, trying to enlist Christian theology for this purpose. Mysticism is all about the interconnectivity of all things.[105] The cosmic Christ is the “pattern that connects”.[106] Panentheism means “God is in all things and all things are in God” so “the separation between the human and the divine is broken”.[107] As Gandhi says: “To become divine is to become attuned to the whole creation.”[108] “God is not outside of us. We are in God and God is in us” like “when a drop is merged into the ocean.”[109] Our soul is the world.[110] All humans are divine; all are anointed ones, or cosmic Christs.[111] God is one with all humans and one with all creation: “The sacred everything. The sacred creation: stars, galaxies, whales, soil, water, trees, humans, thoughts, bodies, images. The holy omnipresence of the Divine One in all things.”[112] The cosmic Christ is mother earth.

Lest we think this is the classic biblical doctrine of God’s omnipresence, the implications are consistently pantheistic. The whole of the biblical story is reworked.

2.      God is a becoming. Quoting Otto Rank, he says: “God was born from a ‘creative urge that is no longer satisfied with self-reproduction, but must proceed to create an entire cosmos as the setting of that self.’ In such an act the human becomes transformed ‘from creature to creator’.”[113] Fox therefore identifies with process theology.[114] “Even in Jesus the cosmic Christ has yet to come to full birth.” It is “yet to be born”.[115] Just as God is becoming, since God is not distinct from creation, the “creator is constantly creating and the universe is constantly being created”. Where in particular is this taking place? “In the human depth and imagination.”[116] Therefore, when human beings go within, they discover the “ground of being” which is the cosmic Christ.[117] In fact, humans deep within are not space/time limited creatures, but eternal being.[118] When humans have sex, it is therefore a cosmic experience.[119]

3.      The wisdom literature of the Old Testament (with its feminine personification of wisdom – Proverbs 8) is actually borrowed from goddess worship in Egypt.[120] Instead of the fall-redemption theology of the West, we need an original-blessing-self-discovery theology.[121] Instead of the linear salvation-history view, we need to see a continual cycle of rebirth, death and resurrection.[122] We should not be focused on the quest for the historical Jesus, but the quest for the cosmic Christ.[123]

4.      The incarnation of God in Jesus is not unique, but merely the highest principle or example of what has and can occur many times, since the cosmic Christ can be reincarnated many times,[124] as for instance in Gandhi or Martin Luther King.[125] God is incarnate here and now in us, “just as much as in a human being long ago”.[126] It is “a perpetual Cosmic and personal experience”.[127] The death and resurrection of Jesus is therefore not a once-for-all redemptive event, but the enactment of the pain and renewal of mother earth.[128] “The experience of God as integral to human history is the experience of the suffering, the pathos, the anguish, and the anger of God who suffers when innocent victims suffer from injustice.”[129] The cross shows that the particular event in time and history of the prophet dying was a moment when he was “trying to usher in the cosmic compassion of the Christ”.[130] The “paschal story” is actually “the mystery of the divine cycle of death and rebirth”.[131] Mother earth is currently dying from ecological disaster, but a new consciousness is about to be born, which will be the “second coming”.[132]

5.      Eschatology is about the going forth of the Spirit for a “second coming” of the cosmic Christ as a new stage in human consciousness.[133]

6.      When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are in fact partaking of the life of the cosmos, of mother earth.[134] Therefore we are celebrating our own bodies as part of mother earth. We should have worship that celebrates different human body parts and sing songs to that end. So we could have an “ode to a liver”.[135] It follows that we should join in worship with other religions that celebrate from the same mystical monist understanding: American Indian, Hindu and Buddhist. This is “deep ecumenism”.[136]

7.      The monist removal of all dualisms and distinctions means the end of all hierarchies: God and the world, male and female (i.e. androgyny), heterosexual and homosexual.[137] All “fascist” “fundamentalist” patriarchy, the ideology of “power-over” is to be removed.[138] The cause of the rights of gays and lesbians places them in the same category as the biblical anawim (poor).[139]

Whether following Fox or other thinkers, affirmations of monism or panentheism are fairly frequent in feminist literature.

The Goddess is not separate from the world – She is the world, and all things in it: moon, sun, earth, star, stone, seed, flowing river, wind, wave, leaf and branch, bud and blossom, fang and claw, woman and man … flesh and spirit are one.[140]

Finding the Goddess, exorcising the Father

If one motive for embracing monism is the removal of all hierarchies, an equal motive is found in the choice of a female deity to replace the adversarial male deity. If the cause of the oppression of women is male dominance through a dominant male deity, the resolution of that injustice is found in the female goddess. There are two parts to this choice.

First, the male deity must be removed and exorcised. God and our view of God must be liberated. Many of the sentiments expressed are intended to shock.

That old God – the “neurotic father” of Christianity – does not work for me, and I gather it doesn’t work for a lot of you either.”[141]

It is in the nature of our idol to be intolerant of ambiguity. His first and only love is Himself. He is an impassible unflappable character who represents the headship of a universal family in which men are best and women least. He is the keeper of an ethical scorecard on which “reason” gets good marks and “relation” fails. He is a master plan-maker who maps out and, by remote control, directs our journeys before we have learned to walk. His narcissism is unquenchable. He demands that he be loved. The cold deity is the legitimating construct of the patriarchal desire to dominate and control the world. He is the eternal King, the chairman of the board, the President of the institution … the Judge of the court, the Master of the universe … He is our superior, never our friend. He is a rapist, never a lover, of women and of anyone else beneath him. He is the first and final icon of evil in history.[142]

Second, a female deity that affirms women is chosen, with equally compelling language.

A woman who echoes [this statement] “I found God in myself and I loved her fiercely” is saying “Female power is strong and creative.” She is saying that the divine principle, the saving and sustaining power, is in herself, that she will no longer look to men or male figures as saviours.[143]

The primary candidate for the replacement of Yahweh is Sophia.

Sophia herself is the connectedness of all things; she is the eternal Self of God’s infinite, omnipresent Consciousness that is extended and expressed in the existence of every human being born into the world. She is not disembodied because she is embodied in every body.[144]

Following the liberation theology hermeneutic, biblical and creedal texts must be reviewed and reformulated and non-biblical texts which affirm the goddess are to be favourably reviewed.[145] Therefore ancient goddess worship and more recent expressions, including Wicca spirituality should be included under the concept of ecumenical dialogue and pluralism.[146]

Gnostic monism

Gnosticism and how it evolved from monism is a large subject. However, modern feminism has repeated the particular Gnostic version of monism in a number of ways. It is therefore important to outline at least some aspects of ancient and later Gnosticism.[147]

Gnosticism is generally known for its radical dualism between the deity and the physical universe, which is viewed as inherently evil. However, this dualism of spirit and matter is part of a larger, all-encompassing monism of the “all” (pleroma). Rather like Neo-Platonism, the original fount of deity is viewed as an unknown and unknowable monad. The Gnostics took this further. The original monad is totally alien and begins as a nothing, or non-existence in total silence and repose. From that point the deity begins to evolve. The divine is therefore a narrative, a story, a becoming: certainly not a transcendent, stable and unchanging supreme being.[148]

There were many forms of Gnosticism, but Valentinus, the most articulate of ancient Gnostic thinkers, presents the most intricate version of the divine narrative. The divine being begins to unfold from the monad towards greater and greater multiplicity, to a Trinity, then a Quadrupy, then eight, 16 and 32 emanations or progressions from the origin. This process moves from original androgyny towards sexuality. From the alien androgynous being there first evolves the Father (male), then the mind of the Father (wisdom). Since Sophia (wisdom in Greek) is feminine, the Father emanates a female mind. This mind then wants to delve into the depths of the Father and the original monad, but fails to do so. Sophia is therefore consumed with desire and emanates a lower Sophia, who in her desire goes beyond the limit of the “all”. This leads to an abortion or fall, because lower Sophia then emanates the demiurge (craftsman) or creator who, now corrupted by fallen desire, creates the physical universe. The physical universe therefore arose out of evil and is the cause of all evil. However, this is not the end of the story. There is also a story of redemption and reintegration. The divine being will eventually rid itself of matter and draw itself back into the original monad and find repose once more.

This is where the whole narrative focuses on man. In fact, the entire speculative system is really about and for man. Among the first emanations, one was archetypal man. When the fall occurred, sparks of divinity were distributed among humans, some of whom received a large spark, some a small spark, and some no spark. Man is not lost in sin (since the fall occurred in the divine evolution), but in forgetfulness.[149] What man needs is a moment of revelation or recollection, to discover the spark of divinity within. This gnosis is the beginning of the redemptive story. Through revelatory knowledge (enlightenment), man can achieve knowledge of passwords for the journey of the soul after death. The journey then takes the spark of divinity through the entire hierarchy of divine emanations back towards the unfallen Sophia, then the Father, and finally the androgynous monad. When all the sparks have been recovered and physical matter has been burned, the redemptive story is complete. This is the crucial point: only through man remembering his divine origin and finding gnosis of his true inner divinity can the return and eventual reintegration of divinity be realized. The spiritual illumination of man is therefore the key to the salvation of the divine being. Worship of the divine being and worship of self coincide.[150]

The story of the divine being and the story of the inner life of man are therefore one and the same. The journey of illumination within is the journey of the divine being. Ultimate spirituality is therefore closely related to the inner thoughts, imagination and self-discovery of man. The original urge of Sophia to delve into the depths of the original Father causes the fall of the divine being, but is then satisfied through the reintegration of the divine being in the coming to consciousness of man. Through man’s evolving consciousness, the divine becomes conscious of itself and resolves itself.[151]

This highly imaginative metaphysical system was then used to re-read the biblical narrative (deconstruct), with a particular emphasis on the Genesis record, which is more or less totally inverted. The male creator is Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. This deity was emanated by lower Sophia, but exists in ignorance of its origin. Yahweh thinks he is the only divine being. Since what he creates is evil, various details of his creation are evil, or at least of a lower level or existence. Because he thinks he is the only deity, he is a proud dispenser of laws. He is also the creator of male and female, or heterosexuality. But Sophia, who is closer to Eve than Adam, can instruct Eve through the serpent, who is not evil, but a revealer of wisdom. Through revelation from Sophia man can therefore discover his superiority over Yahweh and rise above matter into spirituality.[152]

Therefore all evil hierarchies can be overturned. The Lordship of Yahweh the patriarchal-heterosexual creator and lawgiver can be superseded. The dualism of spirit and matter will finally be resolved in the return to the monad. The dualism of gender will finally be resolved in the return to androgyny.[153]

Feminism and Gnosticism therefore share certain fundamentals:

•         Man did not fall into sin. The inner core of the human person is divine.[154] So humans do not need to receive anything from God (forgiveness and regeneration), but to discover or remember that they are already divine,[155] and then to help the divine being find itself.[156]

•         The removal of all dualisms and hierarchies back into a reconstituted monad.

•         The overturning of the lesser male-dominant divine being.

•         The rejection of the laws (legalism) of the male-dominant divine being.

•         Transcendence over heterosexual determination and male dominance created by the male-dominant divine being.

•         The redemption of the divine being through human evolution of consciousness: re-imaging the divine.

•         The deliberate re-reading of the biblical texts through the lens of this metaphysical system.

Feminist theology

While many features of ancient Gnosticism have been retained, others have been adapted. Like the New Age movement, it stands at the end of the long process of religious and philosophical development that has brought us to our era. Where the ancient Gnostics posed a radical dualism of spirit and matter, feminism places more emphasis on the underlying monism or panentheist unity of all things. Humans share union with the ground of being, with the womb of the earth, with the goddess. This results in the embrace of various forms of witchcraft, because the union with the earth enables women to get in touch with the energy of the goddess. The calling up of this energy and its release forms the basis of neo-Wicca liturgical expressions.[157]

Gnosticism was primarily reintroduced into modernity by Jacob Boehme, the German occultist philosopher. From Boehme, various threads of ideas can be traced, including Carl Jung’s fascination with Gnosticism. In this thread, Gnosticism is psychologized, so that spirituality is really a form of human consciousness, or psychology. The whole web of ideas can be reduced to a number of implications.

1.      God is not “out there” as a transcendent creator, but found within.[158] To use Spretnak’s language, rather than a “sky-god” up there, we have “the sense that the natural world is alive and that we are inherently connected with that life force”.[159] “The divine is immanent, not concentrated in some distant seat of power, a transcendent sky-god.”[160]

2.      There is no fall in man. We do not need the fall-sin-redemption narrative of orthodox Christianity, but the creation-coming-to-consciousness-reintegration narrative. However, sin is to be found in oppressive structures: in patriarchal dominance.[161]

3.      Rejection of the fall-sin-redemption narrative has as its counterpart the rejection or relativization of the incarnation of Christ as unique and the once-for-all redemptive significance of his saving work.[162] Such an event is at worst “a deification of maleness standing in direct opposition to the prohibition against graven images” (i.e. idolatrous), or at best, needs to be reconstructed to be the general symbol of recreation.[163] Such recreation takes place in the coming to consciousness or “re-imaging” that feminists can participate in.

4.      Heterosexuality is relative. It can be viewed as the imposition of the male dominant deity. It can be defined as a socially determined construct. Sexuality and gender can be distinguished from biological sex, with the former viewed as socially learned habits and constructs, which can therefore be altered outside biologically determined sex.[164] It can be defined as part of an evolutionary process towards its transcendence. We do not have to be defined by it. We can define ourselves, since through coming to consciousness we can re-image the divine.[165]

5.      Since ultimate spirituality or reality is androgynous, bisexuals and homosexuals should be affirmed, not legislated against. In the logic of the system, they are closer to divinity than heterosexuality.[166]

6.      Systems of moral law that legislate on heterosexual behaviour, or which reveal the despotic will of the patriarchal deity, or which suppress sexual expression, are to be resisted. Therefore extramarital sexual freedom, homosexual marriage and the ordination of those with such preferences are not to be denied.

7.      The coming to consciousness of man includes illumination into the fundamental unity of all things. It therefore follows that humanity must find a new unity with nature, or the environment. Holism (monism) is the basis of planetary integration.

8.      Women played a prominent place in ancient Gnosticism. Elaine Pagels has argued that the conflict between the Church Fathers and the Gnostics was largely determined by the politics of power between males and females.[167] In feminism, while men can be included in the coming to consciousness of humanity and the re-imaging of the divine being, women are prominently involved because their femininity allows them to connect with the goddess and the calling forth of the energies of nature and the cosmos. In both, women are either prominent or dominant in the process of revelation.

A range of conclusions

There are a number of conclusions in the feminist worldview, which some will share and others not. We should remember that there is a spectrum of opinions in this worldview.

•         Stereotypical gender roles and the institution of the traditional family associated with such roles are designed to entrench heteropatriarchy. Such values are “toxic to human equality and human fulfillment”.[168]

•         Motherhood as an institution is one of the structures of male-dominant society. Woman should replace the institution but continue to be mothers on the basis of having control over when and how they become a mother and having the right of choice to terminate pregnancy.[169]

•         The act of sex is inherently corrupt, because it maintains the power relations of men over women.[170] Male physical anatomy has enabled men to dominate women.[171]

•         A legitimate women’s right is to experience liberation from male dominance by rejecting heterosexual relations and choosing lesbian relationships to define themselves as woman-identified women.[172]

Trinitarian theologians’ reply

Moves to retranslate the biblical text and the liturgical language of historic churches have been partly successful.[173] Traditional Christian symbols presented God as “He”, or King, Lord and Judge. The new creation is described as the “new man in Christ”. Should this language be changed because feminists are offended by it? Some options for the Trinity are “Creator, Liberator and Comforter”. Terms for God are Yahweh or Abba or “Father (and mother)” or “God/she”. The Son might be called “Human One”, or “Child of God”. In their reply, a group of Trinitarian theologians deal with some fundamental issues relating to feminism.[174]

Here are some of the significant points.

1.      It is widely understood among biblical scholars and the Fathers of the church that the God of the Bible has no sexuality.[175]

References to God as Father do not indicate male sexuality, either in the Bible or in the central Christian and Jewish traditions, although similar language did indicate divine sexuality (both male and female) in ancient pagan and Gnostic religions.[176]

The Mosaic command against idolatry could not be clearer.

Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female (Deuteronomy 4:15–16).

Athanasius sets forth the particular metaphorical way in which we use the term Father. I have highlighted certain words.

Accordingly, as in saying “offspring,” we have no human thoughts, and, though we know God to be a Father, we entertain no material ideas concerning Him, but while we listen to these illustrations and terms, we think suitably of God, for He is not as man, so in like manner, when we hear of “coessential,” we ought to transcend all sense, and, according to the Proverb, “understand by the understanding what is set before us” (Proverbs xxiii. 1); so as to know, that not by will, but in truth, is He genuine from the Father, as Life from Fountain, and Radiance from Light.[177]

Hilary of Poitiers describes how he found the truth of the one true God. He first describes all the “absurdity, the foulness, the impiety” of the various pagan views of God. “Some of these teachers brought forward large households of dubious deities, and under the persuasion that there is a sexual activity in divine beings narrated births and lineages from god to god … some made their gods dwell within images of men or of beasts, tame or wild, of birds or of snakes, and confined the Lord of the universe and Father of infinity within these narrow prisons of metal or stone or wood,” all of which distracted his soul before he found the true knowledge of God. This significant statement then follows:

It could not hold that neglect of a world created by Himself was worthily to be attributed to God, or that deities endowed with sex, and lines of begetters and begotten, were compatible with the pure and mighty nature of the Godhead. Nay, rather, it was sure that that which is Divine and eternal must be one without distinction of sex.[178]

The Fathers often stressed that God has accommodated himself to us by using our human speech as a vehicle of his revelation. To quote Augustine: “The super-eminence of the Godhead surpasses the power of customary speech.”[179]

2.      Feminists argue that since biblical language about God as Father is metaphorical, we can change our metaphors.[180] The wrong assumption behind this is that our language about God is a projection from human language. If that were the case, we could change our metaphors. However, the nature of the particularity of the biblical revelation is that God has chosen a certain way to speak to us, in his Son (Hebrews 1:1–3). These are deliberately chosen and defined metaphors.

3.      There is a vital difference between a simile and a metaphor. “Both involve some degree of resemblance or analogy between one ‘thing’ and another, but the presentations differ markedly … Simile differs from metaphor in that it merely states resemblance, while metaphor boldly transfers the representation … it declares that one thing is the other.”[181] A simile is when we say one thing is like another. To “cry out like a woman in travail” is not to be a woman in travail. The Scripture says of man that “we are like water spilt on the ground” (2 Samuel 14:14). That is a simile. But when it says: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19), that is a metaphor. In a metaphor, identity between the subject and the thing compared is assumed. Whereas similes compare, metaphors directly predicate, identify or name. God is the Father of Jesus.[182] Jesus is the good shepherd. “The metaphor ‘carries a word or phrase far beyond its ordinary lexical meaning so as to provide a fuller and more direct understanding of the subject.’ Language is stretched to its limit, beyond ordinary usage, to provide new understanding.”[183]

4.      The few instances that use feminine language for God are similes, while metaphor is used for God as the Father of Jesus. This shows that, while God is not a Father as we think of in human parenting, he is actually the Father of Jesus Christ. In the particularity of the incarnation, that is the way God has chosen to reveal himself. We use the term literally when we speak of the relation of the Father to the Son. Here “personal names of God are those that refer not to the agential interaction of the triune God with creatures, but to the internal relations of the persons. They refer to what is true of God independent of the existence of creaturely reality and describe the intimate, eternal reality of the three persons”.[184] We know that the first person is the Father because the Son calls him by that name. It is the Son’s personal way of speaking of the Father. In this context the meaning of the names “Father” and “Son” cannot be limited or confined to their meaning when used to refer to creatures.[185]

5.      Female language for God has been greatly exaggerated. There are, in fact, only four unequivocal feminine texts, all found in Isaiah (42:14; 45:10; 49:15; 66:13). “God is very rarely compared to a mother. And he is never called Mother or addressed as Mother in either Testament.”[186] This kind of language was found in the Gnostic teachings. “One can find in these Gnostic schemes much that is far closer to modern feminist theology than to any of the conceptions in the early church.”[187]

6.      There is a striking difference between the two Testaments. God is only designated as Father 11 times in the Old Testament, and never invoked as such in prayer. Those texts that do address God as Father are prophetic of the future kingdom. In the New Testament there are over 170 references, while God is referred to as creator only 14 times. The Father is almost always invoked as such in prayer. In addition the intimate Abba is used and passed on by Jesus to his disciples. This shows that it is only with the coming of the true Son that God can begin to be called Father. “There is a father because there is a family, and not the reverse.”[188] “Until Jesus arrives on the scene, the God of Israel is known only in his undifferentiated oneness, addressed principally by the ineffable name of Yahweh.”[189] The Father-Son language is defined by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. We have only come to use this language of God because of God in Jesus Christ. We do not move from some general idea of Fatherhood and Sonship. Rather, we move from the historical revelation of God in Christ and define the meaning of these names from there. “The Father is the Father of Jesus, and Jesus is the Son of the Father.”[190] The reason is that “kinship terms, when used in direct invocation and discourse, have unique reference and thus ‘behave like proper nouns’ … Within the circle of my family, the vocative ‘Daddy’ personally identifies me to my children and established me in a specific kind of relationship with them and them with me … On the lips of Jesus, Wolfhard Pannenberg states, ‘Father became a proper name for God. It thus ceased to be one designation among others.’ ”[191] Therefore, when we use this Trinitarian language about God, we are using personal names for God. God is personal, not a force or principle.

7.      The Judaeo-Christian faith is a fundamentally historical faith, which proclaims the revelation of God in history. This history is focused on the particularity of the incarnation.

We have to do with revelation in time, through historical particularity. We have to do with a Jew in first-century Palestine who called God his Father and who has invited us to pray on his warrant to God as our Father … There is no exhaustively necessary reason we can cite to show why Jesus should have used this language. The fact is simply that he did.[192]

We cannot therefore accept a methodology where the past is incidental and is only drawn on in so far as it seems appropriate to the present.[193] The problem with all such theologies is that of projection. This is the core problem of what Karl Barth called natural theology. Barth insisted that the only way we can know God is through the way God has chosen to reveal himself to us, as the Father of Jesus Christ.[194] Far from being a projection from man to God, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the basis of all true understanding of Fatherhood. The other problem with natural theology is its arrogance.

Both the new lenses and the privileged concepts are culturally determined. The assumption is that we know how to define emancipation, that we know what transformation would look or feel like, that we know what mutuality is, that we know what ethical behaviour is appropriate to God, that we can conceive God. The assumption is that we know how to distinguish good from evil.[195]

We should never forget the Nazi move to change the offensive Jewish Jesus into a blue-eyed Germanic type. That is what happens when man arrogates to himself the freedom to change the particular way in which God became man in Jesus of Nazareth.

8.      “The triune God has named himself, and he likes his name.”[196] “Father, Son and Holy Spirit is our deity’s proper name.”[197] The moment we move away from this specific language, we begin to form a general and vague view of God. “Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier” does not specify what God we are talking about. “All putative deities presumably create, redeem, and sanctify, as well as do numerous other things.”[198]

9.      Why has God chosen to reveal himself in this way? The biblical masculine language for God found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is in striking contrast to world religion in general. The answer is closely related to the difference between theism and monism. The God of the Bible is transcendent. Before the world was created, there was the word. The world may pass away, but God will not pass away. In contrast to this, in most world religions some form of monism, pantheism or panentheism is assumed. The world and the deity are not differentiated. “It is precisely the introduction of female language for God that opens the door to such identification of God with the world, however. If God is portrayed in feminine language, the figures of carrying in the womb, of giving birth, and of suckling immediately come into play.”[199] “The logic of the female deity is the logic of pantheism.”[200] “The language of Father/mother introduces a range of sexual images into the Christian conception of the deity that the Bible and the tradition scrupulously resisted.”[201]

10.  Because God is above nature, he is not subject to its cycles. He therefore can determine destiny in the linear progression of his purpose. Cyclical views of human history result in meaninglessness. Therefore in India the goal of life is to escape the cycle of history into the timeless realm of nirvana. Female language for God will almost always lead to such meaninglessness. Such language leads to the logical conclusion of witchcraft, as is demonstrated by the writings of Ruether and Starhawk. “If female language for the deity is used, such beliefs are its logical conclusion.” This includes the claim to embody the deity within themselves.[202]

11.  The identification of God with nature and history leads to ridiculous conclusions. Because everything is in God and all is one, there can be no dualism of good and evil. Therefore there can be no explanation for evil. But there is real evil in the real world:

To the contrary … in a world where human torture is the rule in most prisons, where a person on a subway platform … can push a woman in front of an oncoming train ‘just for the hell of it,’ and where little children in a nursery school can be tied up and sexually abused … [this] is a naïve understanding indeed.[203]

12.  Feminists seem to believe in a bygone golden age of feminist deities which produced a just society.[204] There were indeed many female deities in ancient pagan society, but the result was certainly not a more humane treatment of women, or in fact of men. “They did not liberate women.”[205] Women were not viewed as full persons. Further, the biblical writers were not at all naïve about such belief systems. They were surrounded by them and therefore, because they knew what they produced, intentionally repudiated them. “Far from being unable to conceive of worshiping female deities, the ancient Jewish and Christian authors of our Bible were more aware than we of the range and implications of polytheistic alternatives … It was not that the prophets could not imagine God as female: they were surrounded by people who so imagined their deities.”[206]

In conclusion, therefore, if popular ideas about male language for God have mistakenly led to the idea that God is male, the answer is not to adopt female language for God, but to teach the doctrine of the Trinity accurately and remove such misconceptions.

Monism as a philosophy

While monism is enduring and widespread as a worldview, it has major problems. Here are some of them.

1.      If there is no moral fall into sin involving creatures (Satan or man), why is there evil in the world? Monists either see evil as part of a process of agony and resolution within the divine being/cosmos, or describe evil as an illusion. Gnostics opted for the former. Mollenkott, for instance, opts for the latter. For her, though things seem to be going wrong with human society, or “Nature is replete with phenomena that seem disastrous to the untrained eye … we know that behind the scenes everything is working out as it should.”[207] In other words, evil is not totally real.

2.      Monism is unable to provide a basis for the one and the many and so tends to the conclusion that the many only appear to exist. This point has a long history in philosophy, and would require far more detail to expound adequately. This leads to the loss of the individual and personal. Therefore social systems where monism is the controlling worldview do not respect individual human rights and tend towards social engineering and totalitarianism.[208]

3.      There are at least three diabolical social systems produced by monist or pantheistic worldviews: the Indian caste system, National Socialism (Nazi-Fascism) and Marxism.[209] Far from liberating human beings, monism produces exactly the opposite, whereas Trinitarian monotheism has been a major contributor to the traditions of Western liberty so prized (and abused) by feminists.[210]

4.      From a Christian perspective, monism is deeply dissatisfying. If God is not a personal being, then ultimate salvation is to be reabsorbed into the universe, or into being, which is to cease to exist as a person.

5.      Worship, as we understand it, is not really possible because there is no encounter with a holy God (totally “other” or transcendent), but merely different levels of reflection and self-discovery. There is no forgiveness and no mercy, and therefore no real thanksgiving.

6.      Monism inevitably leads to elitism. Since there are different levels of enlightenment or coming to consciousness, those who have more enlightenment are more developed than those with less. The elite can be the Brahmin over the untouchables, or the philosophers of the Idealist State, or the Nazis, or the Marxist working class intelligensia, but the idea is the same.

The Trinity and Gender

The above should have made it clear that the way we view God has a profound impact on how we view humanity, since man is made in the image of God. The way we view the relation of the Father to the Son influences our view of man to woman. The way we view the transcendence of God influences the way we view sexuality and the deity and therefore how we view male to female. As we will see, the ultimate destiny of mankind is to be taken up into the Trinity in some profound sense. The fundamental criterion for gender relations is eschatology, when we finally see God and we will finally be like him.

All this shows that there is a reciprocal relationship between systematic theology and biblical interpretation. We all come to the text with assumptions and presuppositions. If those presuppositions include faulty systematic theology, we will impose a false interpretation onto the text. Conversely, biblical theology is the foundation of systematic theology. We have to begin with biblical exegesis and build from there towards our systematic conclusions, since it is the word of God in Scripture that is inspired, not the subsequent history of theology. This leads to a carefully balanced hermeneutic. In the cycle from systematic theology to particular texts and vice versa, we develop a sense of the whole of Scripture and of the heart of Scripture, or the spirit of the text. Most faulty ideas about gender arise from a failure to see the heart of Scripture and to balance carefully systematic and biblical theology.

BODY, SOUL AND SPIRIT

It is quite likely that one question will remain unresolved for many readers. In examining Gnosticism we have made a strong case for a holistic view of man. Does this mean that we evade biblical references to man having a body and soul, or a body and soul and spirit? Are these references not important, and are we not perhaps throwing away some important truths in our concern for repudiating Gnosticism?

These questions must be faced. However, at the outset we should understand that the great majority of evangelical teachers and scholars who have really examined the subject tend very strongly to the view that places the basic emphasis on the unity of the human person. Those who emphasize the tripartite or dual distinctions in man are clearly swimming up stream. In fact, if anything current thinking represents an overemphasis on the unity of man. Further, this emphasis comes from real students of the word, a fact that should temper the sense of confidence behind the body/soul/spirit emphasis.

I will use ‘man’ and ‘his’ rather than ‘him and/or her’ as the most convenient and least cumbersome grammatical way of describing the human species, rather than the male gender.

As a general approach to the subject we must understand the issue of language and worldview.

Hebrew and Greek thinking

In the providence of God the biblical documents were written in Hebrew and Greek. Since God sent his son in the ‘fullness of time’ we should regard this as more than coincidental. In other words God chose these two languages to communicate his revelation to man. Although the New Testament is written in Greek, those who wrote it were basically Hebrews translating their thoughts into a Greek environment. Even Paul, who uses clearly Greek terminology, was Paul the Rabbi before he was Paul the apostle to the Gentiles. Even where New Testament writers use Greek concepts and terms, their basic thought patterns are Hebraic.  Hebrew thought tended to view man as a whole, while the Greeks tended to categorize and divide man up into compartments. The predominance of Hebrew thought patterns therefore means that the wholeness or unity of man predominates over the distinctions within man. This will become apparent again and again as we observe how the very texts that use the language of distinctions within man usually do so to make a point about the wholeness of man.

The classic case is 1 Thessalonians 5.23, ‘May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Paul’s point is the sanctification of the whole man, in every part. To take this verse as a way of stressing the tripartite nature of man is to misunderstand it completely. A very similar case is the saying of Jesus, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ (Matthew 22.37). Jesus is saying something about loving God with your whole being. If we begin to dissect man into the various parts Jesus mentions then we face the problem that Matthew has heart, soul and mind, while Mark has soul and mind and Luke has soul and strength (Mark 12.30; Luke 10.27). Does man have two or three parts to him? If three, then is the third mind or strength, or are there perhaps four parts? How do these two or three or four parts relate to the three mentioned by Paul? Such questions reveal the stupidity of the whole exercise. The point made by both Jesus and Paul is one about man loving God with his whole being, or being sanctified by God in his whole being. The same can be said of the passage in Hebrews about the dividing of soul and spirit (Hebrews 4.12). The point is that no part of man can be hidden from the searching gaze of the word. Each and every hidden part of man is revealed and laid bare. The writer mentions various divisions to make his point: soul/spirit, joints/marrow and thoughts/attitudes. Should this lead us to a doctrine about the ‘joints’ part of human nature as opposed to the ‘marrow’ part, so that we find evil lurking in joints and not marrow, or are we missing the point? Surely Hebrews is simply saying that God’s word delves down into the depths of our being behind every facade and complexity we may possess. It is again the whole man that is in view, being wholly or completely unmasked by the word. Those who use these passages for an emphasis on the compartments in man show a woeful lack of ability to grasp the intended meaning of scripture so that they end up making scripture say precisely what it does not say.

Let me illustrate what I mean from modern terminology in relation to first century terminology. Jesus spoke into a basically Hebrew culture that had been influenced in some measure for a few centuries by Greek thought. In that context people spoke the language of heart, mind and soul. Paul spoke into a culture that was deeply influenced by Greek thought. In that context people spoke the language of body, soul and spirit. In today’s world people can speak the language of the conscious and unconscious, of the ego and id, of physiology and psychology, of body, mind and spirit. The great commandment could be expressed as follows: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and body, with all your conscious and unconscious, with your entire ego and id, with all your physiology and psychology.’ Modern man would understand this as an extreme statement about loving God with your whole being. The statement certainly does not mean to convey a belief in Jungian psychology or any other particular view. I simply wish to communicate about the whole man, using the psychological coinage of the day.

The Biblical Approach

Before noting the details of various texts, allow me to present the basic position adopted here?

The fact that the bible uses terms such as body, soul, spirit, heart, mind, intellect and flesh does not mean that it presents a psychological or anthropological theory about man that is intended to make us examine these terms as though they represented a particular compartment. There is no biblical emphasis on man’s subdivisions or parts. Each of these terms is neutral in itself. In others words there is no particular term that conveys something inherently good or bad, better or worse. Each term takes the connotation of its context as it applies to man as first created, or fallen and depraved, or redeemed and sanctified, or glorified.

With each term its usage in scripture reflects an overlap, or gray area where it merges into other terms. Soul can mean body, and soul can mean spirit. Spirit can mean mind, and spirit can mean heart, and so on. They are definitely not used as watertight categories or compartments, and the use of each term is remarkably fluid. This is particularly true of the term ‘flesh’.

There is no clear indication of some of the terms referring to a higher or lower part of man, as though the higher, better part needs to get victory over, or control the lower, inferior part. There is no ‘mind over matter’ teaching, for instance. There is never an inner, psychological contradiction within man, as though his various parts were inherently at odds with each other. The scriptures certainly speak of inner tensions and contradictions within man, but these are in a salvationhistory, eschatological context and refer to man as lost or found, before conversion or after conversion, obeying or disobeying, growing in sanctification or not. It is man in relationship with God that comes into focus, not man in relationship with his inner parts.

Flesh

Flesh is probably the most crucial term because misconceptions usually arise here. Kenyon is confident that flesh = the senses. This is a gross reduction of the biblical term. The best treatment I have found so far comes from Anthony Thiselton in the NIDNTT. The following section relies partly upon him. Sarx is found in the translation of various Hebrew terms in the Old Testament LXX but is used most frequently to translate the Hebrew basar.

1.      First, and most simply of all, flesh can be used in the most literal sense as in ‘meat’ (Exodus 22.31; Leviticus 4.11; Numbers 11.4).

2.      Flesh also refers to being a creature. ‘All flesh’ is ‘all living created beings’ and so can mean ‘all men’ (Genesis 7.15; 8.17; Joel 2.28; 1 Corinthians 15.39). From this comes the idea of ‘my flesh’ as another way of saying ‘me’. If I with my flesh feel something then I as a total person feel it (Psalm 63.1; 84.2; 119.120). Notice the combination of soul, heart and flesh in Psalm 84.2 to mean ‘the whole of me’.

3.      Flesh refers to man’s creatureliness and frailty, to his inability (Isaiah 40.68; 1 Peter 1.24; Hebrews 2.14; Ephesians 6.12; 2 Corinthians 10.3; Matthew 26.41). This makes him vulnerable to forces of nature, psychological pressures and invisible foes. It means that one can never place too much hope or confidence in man. He is too weak and fallible (Jeremiah 17.5; Philippians 3.3) even as Christian man (Galatians 2.20; 2 Corinthians 10.3).

Man is particularly weak and frail before God. ‘Flesh and blood’ cannot get into the kingdom of God and is deeply in need of the power of the Holy Spirit (Genesis 6.3; Job  10.4; Daniel 2.11; 1 Corinthians 15.50; John 1.13; 3.6; 6.63). God knows that man is but flesh, which is why he has compassion towards him (Psalm 78.38,39). If one is oppressed by men, one can encourage oneself by the knowledge that they are but flesh (2 Chronicles 32.8; Psalm 56.4; Isaiah 31.3).

4.      Flesh refers quite simply to the physical part of man, without negative evaluation (Galatians 4.13; 1 Corinthians 15.39). This nonemotive, nonjudgemental sense of flesh is important and explains why scripture can speak of Jesus becoming flesh (John 1.14; 1 John 4.2; 1 Peter 4.1; 1 Timothy 3.16). Life in the flesh, in this sense, is useful to God. The scripture never undervalues an activity for God merely because it occurs in the physical body (2 Corinthians 4.10; Philippians 1.24; Colossians 1.24). In fact, what happens in the flesh in this sense happens in the realm of objective reality, and is greatly valued (1 Peter 3.18; 4.1).

5.      Flesh refers to a way of seeing things that is purely human or natural, completely ordinary. It is limited because it leaves out the other half of reality (Matthew 16.17; 1 Corinthians 1.26; John 8.15; 2 Corinthians 5.16; Colossians 3.22). It is a way of judging things by appearances (Romans 2.28). It is the natural human mind, unenlightened by the Holy Spirit.

6.      In a significantly different manner, flesh refers to an attitude that is orientated towards the self, to man as a selfsufficient being independent from God. This is not just man, but man on his own, as though he does not need God (Romans 8.58). He boasts in himself instead of the cross (Galatians 6.14). It includes the desire to establish righteousness independently of grace (Galatians 3.3; Philippians 3.39; Galatians 34; Romans 8.59, 1213). Fleshly man places himself at the centre of things, religion included.

Flesh in this sense is contradictory, because it also includes the lawless attitude of man the sinner. The works of the flesh are listed in Galatians 5.1921. The list makes it clear that under this definition flesh is not related to being in the body per se (1 Corinthians 3.34). The connotation of the term becomes associated with death (Romans 8.13; Galatians 6.8).

The nearest that we can go towards finding a ‘general’ meaning for this particular category is to say that fleshly life is life lived in pursuit of one’s own ends, in independence of God or of the law of God, in contrast to living in accordance with the direction of the Holy Spirit. This can take as many different concrete forms as being ‘selfish’ or ‘selfcentred.[211]

It should now be evident that Kenyon’s ‘sense’ orientation has its origin in Plato rather than scripture. Flesh certainly cannot be equated, simplistically, with the body, or sensory reality.

Body

The Old Testament use of terms illustrates the fluidity of biblical thinking. Sometimes ‘body’ in our English translations reflects the Hebrew basar (flesh Isaiah 10.18; Ezekiel 10.12). Sometimes it reflects the Hebrew nephesh (soul Leviticus 21.11; Numbers 6.6). Other terms meaning body are belly (Deuteronomy 28.4), back (Job  13.12; Genesis 47.18), that which is tangible (Daniel 3.27; 7.11), carcass (Deuteronomy 21.23), bone (Exodus 24.10), thigh (Judges 8.30) and sheath (Daniel 7.15). Some texts link two terms together (Isaiah 10.18 soul with flesh; Proverbs 5.11 flesh with thickness). Daniel 7.15 is an interesting case because while indicating some distinction between spirit and body (literally ‘my spirit in the midst of my sheath’), the parallelism links spirit with mind.

The New Testament does indicate a distinction between two parts of man in the sense of the inner and outer man (2 Corinthians 4.16). Body then becomes synonymous with the outer man. It is the temple of the Holy Spirit (John 2.21; 1 Corinthians 6.15). Without the inner life the body is less than the whole man. Those who can kill the body should not be feared as much as the one who can send body and soul to hell (Matthew 10.28). The body without the spirit is dead (James 2.26). Some texts may tempt us to think of the separation of the body and the soul/spirit, as when Paul is not certain whether he was in or out of the body (2 Corinthians 12.23). He debates about being absent from the body (Philippians 1.2024; 2 Corinthians 5.14). Yet there is never the idea that the future life is an escape from the body. We put off this earthly tent to put on a heavenly one. The mortal is replaced by the immortal, which is a spiritual body as much as it is a spiritual body (2 Corinthians 5.14; 1 Corinthians 15.4044; Romans 8.23). Man is not a soul who has a body. He is a soul with a body, now and forever.

Further, just because the body is the outer man does not mean that it has no spiritual significance. Far from it! It was by offering his body as a holy sacrifice that Jesus saved us (Hebrews 10.10). To offer the body to God is part of our spiritual worship (Romans 12.1). Worship in the Spirit includes the use of hands, feet and posture (bowing, kneeling and lying prostrate). Because the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit it is a holy object. It is so one with the spirit that to contaminate the body is to contaminate the spirit (1 Corinthians 6.1520).

This use of body must be distinguished from another use where it becomes synonymous with fallen humanity. Here the multiple meaning of the term ‘body’ follows the same lines as the multiple use of the term ‘flesh’. The body can be viewed as the form of existence in which man sins and is described as the ‘body of sin’ (Romans 6.6; 7.24; Colossians 2.11; Philippians 3.21). What Paul means is explained by him speaking of sin reigning in our mortal bodies (6.12). It is not that the body is sinful in itself, but that sin finds the body to be an object it can rule (James 3.6). It is this sense of ‘body’ that we must put to death (8.13). Through the work of Christ it has already become dead to us (8.10). Evidently Paul was using ‘body’ in a specific sense in Romans 68 which does not infer that the actual physical body is being discussed in abstraction from the human person. The same can be said for Christ’s statements about ‘cutting off’ certain members of the body (Matthew 5.29f). The body is the expression of the entire life of the human being. When ‘I’ do something with a certain member of my body ‘I’ do it. The sin is not resident in the part of the body by itself, but in the will of the person who sins through the body.

It should be obvious that if one fails to understand the way in which Paul is using the word body in these various contexts one will end up making the scripture contradict itself.

Soul

Soul, nephesh is derived from the Hebrew for throat, or breath. The soul is the breath or life that is in man as a result of creation (Genesis 2.7). When he breathes this out for the last time he dies. Rachel ‘breathed her last’ (literally ‘as her soul departed’) and died (Genesis 35.18). Soul therefore means, quite simply, human life. My soul is my life. A soul is a living human being. The number of souls at a certain time or place is the same as the number of human beings present at a time and place (Genesis 46.25; Exodus 1.5; Acts 2.41). Rather than referring to a certain part, or subsection of man, soul therefore refers to the whole person and everything he or she does. A soul (person) eats or refrains from eating (Leviticus 7.18). A soul (person) touches (Leviticus 22.6). A soul (person) does or does not like the taste of manna (Numbers 21.5). A soul longs to eat meat (Deuteronomy 12.20) or drink strong drink (Deuteronomy 14.26). Imagine an invisible amount of human breath attempting all these things without the whole man (with body) being available. When we separate these biblical terms from the context of the whole man they become ridiculous.

This is the context of biblical statements about human responsibility. When a soul is responsible for an act of obedience or disobedience the person is meant (Ezekiel 18.4). To keep my mouth is to keep my soul (Proverbs 21.23). When the leaders watch over my soul they watch over my life (Hebrews 13.17). Equally, when someone seeks my life, he seeks my soul (Psalm 86.14; Jeremiah 18.20). To lose my soul is to lose my life (Luke 12.20; Matthew 16.26). To shed blood is to take a soul (Ezekiel 22.27; Jeremiah 2.34). When I pour out my soul it means that I give my life (Isaiah 53.12). He does not give his breath as a separate entity, but his whole being as a sacrifice.

The holistic sense of soul is underlined by the number of times soul is combined with another term to convey the idea of the whole person. Hebrew expressions tend to be repetitive or parallel. In other words when a statement is made twice, or with two terms, the two are meant to convey the same thought rather than two separate thoughts. We have ‘all your heart and all your soul’ (Deuteronomy 4.29; 10.12; 26.16; 30.2, 6, 10; 1 Kings 2.4; 2 Kings 23.3, 25; Jeremiah 32.41). We have soul with bones (Proverbs 16.24), and soul with flesh (Psalm 63.1). It is entirely correct for modern translations therefore to use ‘life’ for most cases of nephesh.

It is also true to say that the soul/life of man is something within him as well. To be depressed is to have one’s soul cast down within (Psalm 42.6). To find inner peace is to have the soul return to rest (Psalm 116.7). My life/soul is me, as a whole being, body and flesh and at the same time, the inner part of me. Man is simultaneously a whole being and a complex being. The whole complex being continues after this life. When John saw the ‘souls’ under the altar it does not imply that he saw disembodied amounts of breath (Revelation 6.9). He saw the lives of people in the presence of God. Exactly how the person who dies continues to exist in the next life between now and the final resurrection will be discussed later (the intermediate state). At this point we should note that there is no clear biblical justification for the soul having immortality without the body. There is the existence of the soul after physical death in the sense that there is life after death (soul = life), but biblical usage of the word soul does not stress the idea of disembodied life after death. We will have to examine this when we turn to the term ‘spirit’.

Heart

No other term expresses the idea of the whole man more comprehensively than heart. The heart is the essential being of man from which all his thoughts, attitudes, feelings, desires and intentions proceed. It is the ‘wellspring of life’ (Proverbs 4.23). It is the hidden man behind every appearance of man (1 Peter 3.4; 1 Samuel 16.7). From the heart come all the thoughts and words of men (Matthew 15.1719; 12.3435).

The heart is very frequently identified or associated with the mind. A man thinks in his heart (Genesis 8.21; Exodus 35.35; 1 Kings 3.12; Psalm 19.14; 33.11; 49.3; 140.2; Proverbs 16.9; Jeremiah 11.8; 23.20; Isaiah 1.5; 6.10; 10.7; Daniel 2.30; Matthew 9.4; Mark 2.6; Luke 2.35; Luke 24.25,38; John 12.40; Acts 8.22; 28.27; Romans 1.21). In view of these references it is not surprising that heart and mind can be paired together (1 Samuel 2.35; Philippians 4.7).

Closely linked to this is the idea that a man purposes in his heart. It is where his intentions are to be found, where his will is hard or soft, obstinate or obedient (Exodus 4.21; Exodus 35.5; Proverbs 16.9; Deuteronomy 2.30; 1 Kings 8.17; Acts 7.23; 11.23; 2 Corinthians 9.7). Equally, the heart is the seat of the emotions of joy (Judges 16.25; Ruth 3.7), fear (1 Samuel 28.5), bravery (2 Samuel 17.10), hurt (Psalm 109.22), discouragement (Deuteronomy 1.28; Proverbs 25.20), anguish (2 Corinthians 2.4; Lam.1.22), sorrow (John 16.6) and concern (Romans 9.2; 2 Corinthians 8.16). Desires spring from the heart (Proverbs 6.25; Psalm 81.12; 21.2; Judges 19.5) and this is why a man’s heart can deceive him (Jeremiah 17.9; Job 31.27; Ezekiel 14.3; Obadiah 3; Romans 1.24). Pride and humility reside there (Psalm 51.17; Obadiah 3; Psalm 101.5; Matthew 11.29). The conscience is a function of the heart (1 Samuel 24.5; Hebrews 10.22; 1 John 3.20). If God changes man, he changes his heart (Ezekiel 11.19; 1 Samuel 10.9).

While we speak of the heart as the inner man, the ‘outer man’ is as much a part of the heart as any other part of man. The heart can be hungry for food (Judges 19.5; Psalm 104.15). There is no contradiction between the heart and the flesh. Notice that the heart can be the source of either rebellion against God or faith toward God (Hebrews 3.12). It is not a division of man that is inherently one way or the other.

Mind

The popular idea that the mind and intellect are somehow opposed to the heart, soul and spirit of man has already been undermined by the close connection between heart and mind. The mind is as much a part of the ‘inner’ being of man as any other. Antimind, antireason and antiintellect attitudes are brought to scripture, not derived from it. This becomes clear as one follows the references to mind (nous), understanding (synesis) and intelligence (phronesis).

In Greek thought nous is the higher part of the soul that is the embodiment of the divine. This sense makes it correspond to the term ‘spirit’. The term itself (and its derivatives) is neutral and can be used either positively or negatively.

Synesis is used in the sense of having or not having insight into the things of God (Mark 6.52; 7.18; 8.17, 21; Luke 18.34; 2.47, 50; Romans 1.21; Colossians 2.2f). The faculty itself is neutral; it all depends on whether God has given insight or not.

With phronesis it all depends on the prefix, which indicates in which way the word is being used. Intelligence itself is neutral, but the prefix (and context) clarifies whether it is good intelligence or evil. In Romans 8 it is used in the context of ‘setting the mind on’ either the flesh or the Spirit. It all depends on where the mind is aimed (Colossians 3.2; Philippians 2.5). It can be used in the sense of wisdom in contrast to foolishness (Matthew 7.24; 25.1; 24.45; Luke 16.8), or spiritual wisdom (Ephesians 1.9), following the LXX use in the wisdom literature. The term is also used in the sense of willing to do or not do something and therefore overlaps with the idea of will (Mark 8.33).

The unity of man, or the overlap and interrelation between all these terms, becomes immediately apparent when one attempts to examine the Old Testament witness. Terms for mind are used to translate a number of Hebrew terms such as leb/lebab (heart 1 Samuel 9.20; Isaiah 46.8), nephesh (soul Deuteronomy 18.6; 2 Kings 9.15) and ruach (spirit Proverbs 29.11; Ezekiel 11.5). In these references the sense of the text corresponds to what we mean by mind. Notice that mind is linked to terms about the inner man.

Taken together the terms indicate that the mind can be the seat of either evil or good, carnality or spirituality. Fallen man is dead in the desires of flesh and mind (Ephesians 2.3; Colossians 2.18; 2 Timothy 3.8; Romans 1.28) yet when Paul speaks of that part of man that stands over against the flesh he speaks of the mind (Romans 7.25). In this context nous is synonymous with ‘inner man’. ‘Spirit’ and ‘mind’ are used in almost synonymous ways in Ephesians 4.23. Spiritual renewal takes place in the mind (Romans 12.2). In the New Covenant God writes his law in our minds (Hebrews 8.10). Yet one can find as many references to the depravity and blindness of man’s mind. Mind itself is neutral; it depends on how the mind relates to God or whether it is therefore depraved or sanctified.

1 Corinthians 14.1315 is an interesting passage. Prayer or song in tongues is with the spirit while the mind is ‘unfruitful’. Paul concludes that one should do both, namely pray with the spirit and pray with the mind. The point here is not to contrast mind and spirit as though one were more valuable than the other. Both modes of human expression are used in prayer and prayer is a spiritual exercise. The point is that speaking in tongues operates as a suprarational experience. The speaker does not understand what is being said as the words are given directly by the spirit. It is interesting to note that in terms of modern psychological usage tongues occurs through the unconscious rather than the conscious. This is the thesis of Morton Kelsey.[212] In other words it is one part of the mind rather than another. This confirms the close association of mind and spirit in biblical terminology. Charismatic scholar Howard Ervin comments that, ‘The contrast is between the rational and the suprarational (certainly not the irrational).’[213]

Spirit

The use of this term is the most significant issue when it comes to Gnosticism. On the one hand texts which indicate that the spirit of man can also be corrupt rule out the Gnostic definition of the spirit as inherently good. This links in with the general biblical tendency to make every faculty or mode of being in man neutral in itself but available to either good or evil. On the other hand the use of this term does present us with a mode of existence that can continue without the body. Those who want to overdo the oneness of man find these texts difficult to handle and tend to resort to special pleading. However, we must take the whole biblical witness. While the balance of scripture focuses on the oneness of man, these texts do give the impression of a duality or complexity in man and provided we have taken note of the balance of scripture we should allow this element to determine our overall view.

The overlapping of biblical terms is obvious from the Old Testament use of ruach in reference to man. Numerous texts use spirit in exactly the same way as nephesh (Genesis 45.27; 1 Samuel 30.12; 1 Kings 21.5; Job 34.14; Proverbs 16.18; Ecclesiastes 12.7; Isaiah 26.9). Other texts use it in the same way as heart (Ezekiel 26.36; Proverbs 15.13; Psalm 77.3) and others are used to mean mind (Job 20.3; Psalm 77.6). The reference in Ecclesiastes 12.7 to death as the dust (body) returning to the ground and the spirit returning to God anticipates New Testament references.

In the New Testament, being in the Spirit - or walking in the Spirit - stands opposed to being in the flesh. These texts refer more to being under the power and influence of the Holy Spirit than a particular activity of the human spirit (Romans 8.1, 4, 13; Galatians 3.3; 5.16). Spirit can also be used in the sense of attitude of mind (Matthew 5.13; 1 Corinthians 4.21; Philippians 1.27; 2 Timothy 1.7). Then there are references to the spirit of man requiring redemption or sanctification, revealing that the spirit of man is not inherently good (Luke 9.55; 1 Corinthians 7.34; 2 Corinthians 7.1; 1 Thessalonians 5.23; 2 Thessalonians 2.13).

Testimony to a duality (not dualism) in man is found in texts about death. When Jesus died he surrendered his spirit to the Father (Luke 23.46). So did Stephen (Acts 7.59). Paul wants to have a man disciplined so that while the sinful nature (flesh) is destroyed his spirit will be saved on the day of judgment (1 Corinthians 5.5). This refers more to the separation of sinful nature from redeemed nature than to body and spirit, although it is the spirit that is associated with the afterlife. Similarly Hebrews 12.23 refers to the spirits of just men made perfect.

The way in which the NIDNTT comments on some of Paul’s statements illustrates my initial reference to an overemphasis in current thinking on the oneness of man.

It is possible that Paul also thought of man as able, while still in this life, to leave his body temporarily and to project himself through the spiritual realm into the presence of others (1 Corinthians 5.3; Colossians 2.5) or into heaven (2 Corinthians 12.24); but the two former passages may simply be earnest expressions of empathetic concern and fellow feeling, and in the latter Paul evidently did not know how to understand the experience himself.[214]

One wonders, with this statement, whether the biblical evidence is beginning to perplex the observer. This seems to be the case in comment on Christ’s ‘intermediate state’ between death and resurrection recorded in 1 Peter 3.18ff; 4.6. Modern commentators often go to some length to deny the plain meaning of the text. One of the most thorough treatments of this passage will be found in the work of E.G. Selwyn, on the first epistle of Peter.[215] Selwyn examines the language against the first century worldview concerning the underworld and the place of the departed. Taken in its historical context, the language of Peter plainly refers to a mode of existence for Jesus, between his death and his resurrection, when his body lay dead in the tomb. It confirms the fact that the New Testament gives place to the idea of existence outside of the body (see also Acts 2.27; Ephesians 4.9). The ‘intermediate state’ for Jesus is therefore crucial in any understanding of the ‘intermediate state’ of the believer. It means in effect that one cannot push the oneness view of man to an extreme.

On the other hand none of these texts create the impression that man escapes from the body at death, as though escaping from a prison, or that the intermediate state is permanent or desired. Paul resists any desire to be ‘unclothed’ from the body (2 Corinthians 5.4) and looks forward to the heavenly dwelling (glorified body). The intermediate state is intermediate, transitional. It in no way repudiates the human body as the permanent and eternal state with a spiritual, glorified body, both for Christ, our ‘firstfruit’ or prototype, and for the Christian. Yet the intermediate state stands there as a barrier to the imposition of the modern set of monist philosophical assumptions which are as alien to scripture as metaphysical dualism.

Having given this balancing factor, one still has to return to the overall impression of the various biblical terms. Clearly the emphasis is on the Hebraic approach to the whole man. Equally clear is the blurring or overlap of all these terms, plus the fact that no category or mode of being is regarded as inherently good or evil, superior or inferior to any other category or mode. The biblical writers do not focus on the distinctions within man, but on man’s relationship with God that determines the state of whatever category is mentioned. There is certainly no justification in scripture for the idea that the spirit of regenerate man is the real person, apart from the rest, or that the spirit of man is deified.

Being spiritual, or walking in the Spirit, as against being in the flesh, is the description of a relational dynamic. Being in the flesh means relying on oneself, operating on the purely human level of intelligence, feeling or religious activity without depending on God and the operation of his grace. Being in the Spirit means being in living relationship with the presence of God in body, mind, heart, soul and spirit. It involves having a perspective that is determined by that relationship. So much of the life of the church can go on by itself without the empowering of the Holy Spirit. It is humanistic rather than Christian and definitely in the flesh. Paul rightly stresses the radical difference between these two ways of relating and living. The context for the spirit/flesh distinction is eschatological. The powers of the age to come have penetrated and transcended the powers of this age. It is a statement about man living in the dimension of the kingdom of God, not about a special focus on man’s inner parts or the relationship between these inner parts. This subject is given more attention in my Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom.[216]

Our conclusion is that a series of bible studies or teachings on body, soul and spirit, with a special focus on each, is not a biblical exercise. It will have to be a Greek philosophical kind of exercise, rather than a biblical one. The danger with this kind of teaching is not just that the scriptures will be reduced to simplistic categories but that the effect will be psychologically damaging. The moment one encourages people to look within themselves for inner categories the result is always a favouring of one category (spirit) over the others (body and mind) and the negation, or subtle repudiation of the latter will inevitably lead to an unhealthy complex or anxiety. One can only feel a sense of compassion for those who have picked up the language of ‘my spirit man’ and so on. If this is more than mere terminology it must reflect an inner turmoil. Biblical teaching on sanctification and the inner life always places the stress on the relationship with God and the old life/new life polarity in the context of past, present and future, on total transformation. The focus is on what I used to be, what I am now, and on becoming in the future what I am in Christ already. The total person is being changed through a relationship with God, not a relationship among his parts.

Having said this, we have to simultaneously take issue with the current monist emphasis in theology. To establish the biblical position one has to fight on two fronts at the same time. This has been mentioned in passing on a number of occasions. Here one plunges into fairly complicated terminology. What has been strongly repudiated throughout is metaphysical dualism. At this point I must explain that there is more than one form of dualism. The dualism that has been repudiated is that of Plato, which may be described as metaphysical dualism. The whole of reality is divided into two antithetical realities. Opposite this stands metaphysical monism; that all reality is ultimately one. Hindu and New Age philosophy are a case of the latter. Biblical thinking is supportive of neither metaphysical monism nor dualism. This is first because Hebrew thought is practical and functional. It does not specialise in ontology (the nature of being), as is the case with Greek philosophy. Further, biblical anthropology is a blend of both monist (oneness) and dualist thinking. The view that I support has been thoroughly stated by John W. Cooper.[217] He defines the biblical view as one of functional monism plus anthropological dualism.

There are numerous texts, in both Testaments, which support the intermediate state. After death and prior to the Second Coming and final resurrection man neither ceases to exist nor experiences immediate bodily resurrection. He lives in the presence of God in some tangible form. Attempts to explain these texts in other ways never do justice to their obvious meaning (1 Peter 3.1920; Hebrews 12.23; Luke 23.46; 24.3739; Revelation 6.911; Matthew 10.28; Luke 20.38; 9.2836; 16.1931; 23.4243; Acts 2.27; Acts 23.68 with 1 Thessalonians 4.1318; 1 Corinthians 15; 2 Corinthians 5.110; 12.14; Philippians 1.2124). The crucial issue is what state Jesus was in between his death and his resurrection. If he was active in some way during this period in the realm of the dead then we have to admit the reality of the intermediate state.

The reality of the intermediate state then has to have implications for our view of man. If he can continue to live without his body, then body and life/soul cannot be exactly the same thing, even though they are completely interrelated in this life and will be again in the age to come. This implies some kind of dualism, but not metaphysical or Platonic dualism.

The reaction to the latter and its influence on the church is now so severe and so ‘in vogue’ amongst some theologians that they seem to want to throw the baby out with the bath water (the soul out with Plato). Such a reaction is often encouraged by an underlying commitment to a monist philosophy of some kind and is certainly not the historic position of the Christian Church. My analysis of Gnosticism should not be identified with this reaction.

WHAT HAPPENED FROM THE CROSS TO THE THRONE?

This is the title of one of Kenyon’s books. It has become the title of subsequent sermons by ‘faith’ preachers who have either been influenced by Kenyon or by Hagin and Copeland. The tendency is to follow Kenyon almost exactly on the essential argument. As we have seen, it is one of the most controversial elements in Kenyon’s teaching and one where his followers have most offended more orthodox evangelical Christians. We have already summarized the essentials of his teaching and noted its unacceptability on this point. However, very few contemporary bible teachers and theologians venture into the actual issue. Most prefer to leave the subject in the category of the mysterious and unknown, or hide behind the various conflicting theories. This will not do. If a central tenet of Kenyonite theology focuses on this point we will need to do more than simply protest. A positive, biblical alternative must be stated.

Unfortunately it is not possible to rely upon an historic evangelical consensus. The relevant article of the creed states that Jesus ‘descended into hell’. Reformed and Lutheran theologians have never agreed on this article. The former take it as a symbolic way of describing Christ’s total identification with man in death, while the latter take the article literally and believe that Christ descended into hell to proclaim his triumph. Anglicans stand more with the Lutherans than with the Calvinists. The Roman tradition holds that Christ descended into the place of waiting for OT saints to bring them liberation. Theologians do not seem to be sure whether to take the article of the creed as a part of Christ’s humiliation or glorification. With such disagreement no statement on the subject can afford to be dogmatic and it is certainly not a matter of orthodox faith to believe or deny one of the positions held by the various traditions. What is clear is that the Kenyonite view cannot be placed in the same category as the various options within orthodox teaching. It stands on its own in a precarious position, to say the least. My own view will follow. You will notice that it tends to the Lutheran understanding.

The other difficulty is that there is no definitive passage that actually addresses the subject. There are many texts that are relevant to the subject, but the statements are usually incidental to the main point. We therefore have to combine texts from various contexts to obtain a comprehensive picture. As a guiding principle we should remember that it is unbiblical to separate material and spiritual reality. While Jesus suffered on the cross, powerful things were occurring in the invisible, spiritual realm. His suffering was both physical and spiritual at the same time. Further, there are texts whose meaning is plain, and we should always move from clear passages of scripture to obscure ones. Armed with these principles and provisos, we approach the subject.

It Is Finished!

Kenyon’s theory demands that what occurred during Christ’s physical sufferings is less significant than what occurred in the ‘spirit’ realm, which as we have seen, is because of his indebtedness to Platonic philosophy. He therefore maintains that Jesus was declaring the Old Testament dispensation closed and that his real redemptive work had hardly begun. This is a great distortion of scripture.

Tetelestai (John 19.30) means ‘it is accomplished’ or ‘it is consummated’. Christ was declaring his sacrificial work to be completed, a meaning which is confirmed by the other gospels. Previously Jesus had known separation from the Father, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’ (Mark 15.34). Mark explains that this separation was followed by the separation between God and man being torn from top to bottom (15.38). Hebrews expounds on the new and living way to the Father that was opened in the tearing of the curtain which was actually the body of Jesus (10.20). All this would be meaningless if the redemptive work of Christ had not yet begun. It is evident that the separation between Jesus and the Father was over by the time he finally died because when he died he was able to address his Father again with confidence, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Luke 23.46).

The background events add weight to the plain meaning of these statements. It is evident that the spiritual sufferings of Christ had already begun in the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus felt sorrowful to the point of death. He knew that his anguished experience was the beginning of the ‘hour when darkness reigns’ (Luke 22.53). The darkness caused by the eclipse of the sun was more profound than the mere solar event. The quaking of the earth and the darkening of the sun were part of the prophetic prediction of the pangs of the end of the world (Joel 2.2832; Acts 2.1721). Jesus revealed that the day of judgement was to occur as he was lifted up on the cross (John 12.3132). All this confirms that Jesus experienced ‘hell’ while he hung on the cross. Hell is being judged by God to utter separation and condemnation. The judgement of God upon the sin of the human race actually took place in those hours as Jesus was crucified, when the darkness fell, the earth shook and the powers of darkness were active. Paul explains that Jesus triumphed over the powers of darkness ‘by the cross’ (Colossians 2.15). It was not after the cross that he defeated them, but by the cross, on the cross, before he said ‘it is finished.’

To conclude this section, one is only blind to these clear statements of scripture if one makes a Platonic assumption about physical events as having little value. In the biblical picture physical and spiritual things go hand in hand. As his body was hanging there, his entire being, body, soul and spirit was undergoing the ultimate in divine judgement. All the spiritual work was completed by the time he gave that final cry. The sting of death as defined in scripture is separation and judgment. We affirm therefore that Jesus experienced all that is involved in death, including spiritual death, by the time he gave up his spirit. This is why the veil could be rent. If Kenyon’s theory is correct then the veil could only have been rent after the three days in the grave.

One more word from the cross fits into the whole picture. Jesus said to the thief, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23.43).’ Kenyon realized that this one verse destroyed his whole scheme. If Jesus was to suffer in hell for three days he could never offer the thief paradise ‘today’. He therefore resorted to a retranslation of the text, a ploy usually reserved for the cults. By moving the comma Jesus is made to say, ‘I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise (i.e. in the future).’ It is strange that no single authoritative translation takes ‘today’ with ‘I tell you’ and that if one follows the use of semeron through Luke it signifies the ‘now’ reality of the time of salvation (2.11; 4.21; 5.26; 19.11). The text confirms that Jesus could promise the thief paradise ‘today’ because he knew his work would be accomplished by the time he died.

What happened to Jesus after that? We know that his body lay in the tomb during the three days. Was he then lifeless? This is where anthropological monists who deny the intermediate state for Jesus and therefore for Christians, face serious problems. It is difficult to entertain the thought of the divine Son of God being innate and lifeless for this period. It is also impossible to maintain that his humanity went one way and his divinity another, as this would deny the unity of his person. Was there no life at all for the Son of God, fully God and fully man, while his body lay dead in the tomb?

The Three Days

The relevant texts are as follows: In Acts 2.2531, where Peter quotes Psalm 16.811, the Greek text of verse 27 reads, ‘you will not leave my soul in Hades.’ In Ephesians 4.9 Paul explains that the Jesus who ascended is the one who had already descended ‘to the lower depths of the earth’. In 1 Peter 3.18 we learn that having been put to death in the body, Jesus was ‘made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison’. Although one must be careful about building doctrine on parables, the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16.1931) raises the question of the way in which Jesus saw things. Here the realm of the dead is divided into two parts, the one being Abraham’s bosom and the other being a place where fire torments its victims. Then one should add the fact that Hebrews explains that Old Testament saints who died in faith could not be made ‘perfect’ or complete without ‘us’ (11.40), that is New Testament believers. It was such OT ‘holy people who had died’ who ‘went into the holy city and appeared to many people’ after the resurrection (Matthew 27.53). Many of these texts are capable of being taken in more than one way, hence the lack of consensus amongst theologians.

Acts 2. 2531

The Greek text of verse 27 has psyche mou eis haden (my soul in Hades). Unfortunately the KJV has ‘my soul in hell’. Hell normally translates the Greek gehenna, rather than hades. Hades is the NT term that normally translates the Hebrew Sheol, the place of the departed who await their ultimate destiny. Gehenna on the other hand is hell is the classical sense of a place of eternal fire and damnation. The textual origin for Kenyon’s teaching is therefore based upon the imprecise translation of the KJV. Nowhere does the New Testament teach that Jesus suffered in hell during his three days of death. This text does imply that Jesus was in the realm of the dead (sheol/hades). Other texts explain what he was doing there. This text merely affirms, following David’s Psalm, that it was impossible for the Son of God to stay in the realm of the departed. Any further deductions are speculative.

Ephesians 4. 810

At issue here is the translation of katotepa mere tes ges; ‘lower, earthly regions’ (NIV), ‘the lower parts of the earth’ (RSV/NASB). Does this refer merely to the earth, and therefore to Christ’s incarnation, or to the underworld, and therefore to his descent into the realm of the dead? The use of this phrase elsewhere will be determinant. What would such language have referred to in Paul’s linguistic context? Here one will notice that most Reformed commentators tend to favour the former because it fits their doctrinal position.[218] However even Hendriksen, who is Reformed, and who will not take the text to its logical implication admits that the phrase refers to more than the earth. His translation has ‘regions lower than the earth’[219] Selwyn gathers considerable evidence to show that the language, as used at the time, refers to the underworld.[220] Bruce is aware of the arguments in favour of this translation, but maintains the Reformed interpretation, to my mind, despite the evidence.[221] His discussion of Paul’s pesher use of Psalm 68 is helpful and shows why we cannot determine Paul’s meaning from the Old Testament Psalm in its own context. Again, any details as to exactly what Christ was doing there are not given. What can be deduced is that Christ’s identification with man is complete. He descended as low down as was necessary for man’s redemption, and then exalted man to the highest place. One can perhaps deduce something about the result of his descent. Paul uses Psalm 68.18 with some freedom to show that Christ ascended with liberated captives in his train (4.8). It would be logical to deduce that these captives had been liberated during the moment of descent, that is, from the underworld or realm of the dead even though the text does not say this explicitly. If other texts affirm the above then this passage can be used for confirmation.

1 Peter 3.1822; 4.6

Once again there are two possible ways of translating the passage. As it is found in the NIV 3.18 can be taken simply to refer to the fact that while Jesus died in the body he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament Greek has no capitals for ‘spirit’ even when the Holy Spirit is referred to, so we have no way of being sure whether the Holy Spirit or Christ’s human spirit is being referred to. Following this translation Reformed commentators then deduce that it was through the Holy Spirit that Christ preached to the ‘spirits in prison’ during the times of Noah. In other words it was the same Holy Spirit who spoke through the Old Testament prophets that raised Jesus from the dead.[222]  There is no reference to an actual preaching by Christ during the three days but a reference to an Old Testament event now fulfilled in the work of Christ. These commentators then tend to argue from the obscurity of the language about the times of Noah. Were those who were imprisoned fallen angels or sinful men or what?

Admittedly the status of those who were contemporaries with Noah is obscure and there are a number of possibilities. However, this does not obscure what to me is the rather plain meaning of verse 18. The NIV obscures the fact that the Greek text contrasts what occurred in the flesh with what occurred in the spirit; men sarki (‘in the flesh on the one hand’) with de pneumati (‘in the spirit on the other hand’). The body/spirit contrast again occurs in 4.6 (men ... de), where even the NIV takes ‘spirit’ to refer to the human spirit as opposed to the body. Just because the body/spirit dualism is unpopular today in certain philosophical circles gives us no liberty to evade the grammatical meaning of the text. Further, there has to be some connection between 3.18 and 4.6 where the same contrast occurs. The first text refers to Christ, the second to men. This indicates that what we affirm about Christ’s intermediate state has a real connection with what we affirm about man’s intermediate state. Our Christology forms the basis of our anthropology and not vice versa. Whoever the spirits in prison were, Peter tells us that Christ went, without his body, but in his spirit and preached to them, after his crucifixion.

Notice the clear sense of time progression. Thanatothes is a perfect participle. ‘The perfect conveys the double notion of an action terminated in past time, and of its effect existing in the present.’[223]  NASB and RSV therefore correctly translate, ‘Having been put to death in the flesh’. First Christ completed the work of atonement, and then he went and ‘preached’ (ekeruxen from kerygma, proclamation, announcement) to the imprisoned spirits. Aside from the obscurity of the text about Noah, the language implies that these imprisoned spirits (angels or men) had disobeyed and were not amongst the eight who were saved. It would seem then that the content of Christ’s proclamation was to announce the finality of the judgment on sin in the cross. He was already triumphant. He had already said ‘it is finished.’ His spirit was already safe in the hands of the Father, to whom he had committed it. The separation between God and man was already removed. He went to the realm of the dead to make this fact plain there as well. If, as Selwyn has argued, the spirits in prison were fallen angels, the text becomes more obvious.[224] In this case Christ was announcing in the realm of the dead, which is the realm of the devil’s power (Hebrews 2.14) the fact that death had been vanquished and that Satan and his hosts were now finally defeated. This is truly the harrowing of hell. Since then all demons have to confess, ‘Jesus I know’ (Acts 19.15), not only in his identity as the holy one of God (Mark 1.24) but in his identity as the conquering Lord. His triumph has been publicized amongst them.

It is possible to take 4.6 in one of two ways. One possibility is that the gospel is said to have been preached to those who are ‘now dead’ (i.e. while they were still alive). The other possibility is that ‘the dead’ refers to those who were in the place of the departed when they heard the preaching. If one follows the latter it is most obvious to link this statement with Christ’s activity in the spirit after his death in the body. Here there can be no thought of judgement, since they are said to have heard the good news. The two statements taken together then fit very well into the world view of the Rabbis (and of Jesus it seems) at the time. Hades was taken to have two compartments, one, namely Abraham’s bosom, containing all those who had died in faith but who could not be ‘made perfect’ (Hebrews 11.40) or complete without ‘us’ NT believers and another containing those who had died in unbelief and who were already experiencing torment (Luke 16.23). The former Christ liberated, the latter he finally judged, together with the evil spirits.

What would be the result of the faithful dead hearing the good news? This is where Ephesians 4.8 and Matthew 27.5253 become helpful. They were liberated from Hades and became part of Christ’s triumphal procession to the Father’s right hand. Many of them appeared in Jerusalem as a sign that the resurrection of Jesus was a corporate event. He rose and they rose ‘in him’.

Luke 16.1931

One must never base doctrine on parables! This is true, if one means that parables are not meant to be taken as systematic, logical argument, but as metaphorical ways of making one or two major points. What we must examine here, if it is a parable, is not the main point (which is clearly about materialistic values) but the extent to which the language Jesus uses places him within commonly held views of the afterlife at the time. Marshall takes the text to refer to the intermediate state of the dead and recognizes that the parable draws on ideas current in Judaism at the time.[225] This is really all we require to make use of this text in our general picture. If the place of the righteous and the place of the wicked in death were somehow thought to be within shouting distance, even though the language is metaphorical, it follows that sheol/hades was awaiting the final judgement. Since Christ descended into the lower regions such a situation no longer exists. The righteous dead no longer wait for his coming. They have been taken with him. Now, for a Christian to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ (Philippians 1.23). Believers now share in the fact that the New Jerusalem already exists prior to its full manifestation at the end (Hebrews 12.2224; Revelation 21.10). The kingdom has already come, even though it is yet to come.

Matthew 27.5153

There is one obvious point made by this remarkable passage. The disturbing of the place of the dead (righteous dead) was initiated the moment the curtain in the temple was torn. In other words the efficacy of the work of Christ became apparent from that moment. The language is quite plain. ‘At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn ... the earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open ...’ If Christ had not yet completed his redemptive work and still had to suffer redemptively for us in hell this event would have been impossible. It simply underlines the fact that all that was needed for our redemption, including the resurrection of the body, was fully accomplished the moment Jesus gave his cry with a ‘loud voice’ (Matthew 27.50). This text alone is enough to destroy Kenyon’s whole scheme. It reveals the inseparability of material and spiritual factors in the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. Jesus entered Hades already triumphant!

To summarize, between the cross and the throne Jesus took his triumphant and final redemptive work accomplished on the cross and carried its effect into the realm of the dead. To the devil and his angels and to those who died in unbelief, he announced that the day of judgement had occurred. To those who had died in faith he proclaimed his liberating power and took them with him in his ascending glory. He suffered in ‘hell’ while hanging on the cross in the sense that he took everything upon himself that has to do with separation from God as a result of sin. This was the ‘hell’ of bearing the iniquity of men and absorbing the wrath of God the judge. He never suffered at the mercy of the devil, not only because the NT text affirms the opposite but because God has never owed the devil anything. Satisfaction had to be rendered to God, not the devil. To make Christ suffer at the mercy of the devil is to make the devil God. This is truly blasphemous. The devil is a liar. When he claims that the world belongs to him he claims the place of God (Matthew 4.89). It may well be that the world system has fallen into his lap because it has gone his way (1 John 5.19), but this in no way implies that he owns it legitimately or deserves payment to be made to him. Who buys back an article from a thief? Any theology that affirms this is radically confused.

How Serious is the Error?

Enough has been said to indicate the error in Kenyon’s teaching on the atonement. What remains is to determine how serious the error is, what implications it has for personal salvation and how we should respond to it at the pastoral level.

Firstly, we should note that the extent of an error, or heresy, would depend on the area of Christian doctrine it distorts. When it comes to all the differing views on eschatology, those who strongly oppose certain views will, nevertheless, usually admit that one can afford to agree to disagree. Similar latitude can be given to issues of ethics. Here we have an error that touches the very heart of the gospel, namely the nature of the atonement. It was for similar reasons that apartheid was defined as a heresy. It undermined the efficacy of Christ’s blood by limiting the possibility of Christian unity that flows from it. We have to say therefore that Kenyon’s teaching is a serious error because it distorts a central, redemptive truth. I would agree with McConnell when he defines it as a material heresy, that is, one which may not be deliberate but which is real nevertheless. Those who continue to propagate it should take note of the fact that the Christian Church in general will never soften its antagonism to the teaching. The voices of protest will probably get louder and more widespread. Describing them as a few ‘negative heresy hunters’ will not make them go away! Nothing that follows should be taken to dilute this statement.

Secondly, we have to consider whether individuals who have been taught this ‘atonement’ have their salvation jeopardized. Here we should note that practically speaking most ‘faith’ churches do not teach the Kenyonite ‘atonement’ either regularly or consistently. If one were to take a census of the congregational members I would suspect that very few would be clear about their belief and many would also confess orthodox faith in the saving power of Christ’s physical atoning blood. Those who have gone through Bible Schools where Kenyon has been taught may be different. However, most of the preachers would not in fact be aware that Kenyon denied the efficacy of the physical atonement. Kenyon himself is not consistent on this point. Most of the propagators of the doctrine are not theologically trained (formally) and do not clearly understand the dualistic premise of Kenyon’s theology and how widely it differs from the biblical teaching. They often preach normal evangelical views on the atonement without realizing that it contradicts what they have preached at another time. The damaging effects of the heresy are therefore watered down in practise.

These balancing factors are even more apparent in the ‘faith’ movement in South Africa. In fact the dilution of Kenyon has undergone a number of stages. First, from Kenyon to Hagin a certain amount of dilution took place. Although Hagin republished Kenyon’s booklets, as McConnell has shown, Hagin was also influenced strongly by Pentecostal leaders such as Smith Wigglesworth and others. Second, it is widely recognized that some of Hagin’s followers are ‘into’ Kenyon (e.g. Copeland) while others are not (e.g. Savell). Third, South African leaders such as Rae MacCauley, while strongly influenced by Hagin were also influenced by many other balanced Pentecostal and evangelical leaders. Fourth, since the beginning of his ministry Rae has consistently moved away from the extremes of the ‘faith’ doctrine resulting in a reformation of the movement from within. Thus, while some South Africans continue to reflect Kenyon quite faithfully, the more prominent leaders do not. Fifth, Rae moved still further by the following public statements made in response to frequent queries.

The Incarnation

I believe that Jesus Christ alone is Godman, I believe that born again Christians are indwelled by God, but that they are not God’s incarnate. Christ has redeemed us but he does not deify us. I believe that we can be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3.19) and that ‘in him dwelleth all the fullness of Godhead bodily’ and that ‘we are complete in him’ (Colossians 2.910), but that does not make us gods incarnate. We are humans. We have the Lord Jesus living in us. We are indwelled by Christ. As such we are not ‘little gods’ rather we are humans who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

The Atonement

I believe that ‘Christ died for our sins’ and that he totally redeemed us through ‘the blood of the New Testament which he shed for many for the remission of sins’ (Matthew 26.28). I believe that Jesus ‘bore in his own body our sins on the tree’

(1 Peter 2.24).

I believe that when Jesus died on the cross and declared ‘it is finished’ he had made total atonement for us. Through the sacrifice of himself on the cross he completely redeemed us, ‘for by one offering he has perfected forever them that are sanctified’ (Hebrews 10.14). Jesus redeemed us through the offering of the sacrifice of his own body and the shedding of his precious blood. I believe that on the cross ‘Jesus who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him’ (2 Corinthians 5.21).

His redemption on the cross was complete and total. Man is redeemed by what Jesus did on the cross alone. Man can add nothing to it.

Repent and renounce

I acknowledge that I did in the past say that ‘while on the cross, he (Jesus) was going to have to take Satan as his stepfather’. I have since come to a deeper understanding of what actually took place at the cross, have repented of that statement and have renounced that teaching. I have also withdrawn it from all our Rhema Bible Training Centre notes.

I believe that the bible, the word of God, is the final authority for all that we believe. I believe that the Holy Spirit is leading us into all truth on the basis of the word.

This statement is fully supported by the leadership of the International Fellowship of Christian Churches and is dispatched to you from the IFCC office (dated 17 November, 1990).

In view of such statements one has to tread very carefully when placing the IFCC churches in the caricature of ‘faith’ teaching. It confirms my perception that Rae and other prominent IFCC leaders are engaged in an internal reformation of the movement, at least in its South African expression. I would think that similar reformations have taken place in other ‘Word of Faith’ movements in other countries. It is actually very difficult to assess to what extent the general ethos of Kenyon’s teaching remains and no such reformation can be instant in its effect. Nevertheless, those who make sweeping statements about the South African movement may be guilty of misrepresentation. This is particularly relevant to criticisms of Rodney HowardBrown, who was associated with the Rhema Bible School for some time.

But we must inquire as to the soteriological position of an individual who fully understands and believes Kenyon’s ‘atonement’. This is still relevant because there are some groups who continue to teach Kenyon with little alteration.  Here it must be affirmed that mental cognition can be exaggerated in the regeneration/justification dynamic. After all, we are born of the Spirit, through a sovereign act of grace. Most people do not have a clear understanding of the gospel when they are born again. Notice how Paul preaches the gospel to the converted in Romans. The repentant sinner obviously must believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for his or her sins and that faith in Jesus is the only way to obtain justification before God. All this can occur through and despite the false ‘atonement’ of Kenyon. Regeneration can occur, and sanctification can continue, through and despite this teaching. If however this ‘atonement’ is preached along with Kenyon’s circumventing of repentance, and the whole Kenyonite system is placed together and enforced, one may well doubt the possibility of the Holy Spirit making use of such human words for regeneration. This is perhaps why many churches that taught a large proportion of Kenyon in the beginning attracted large numbers of ‘hangers on’ who enjoyed the ‘hype’ but never stuck as disciples. We have noted however that most ‘faith’ churches do not in fact preach Kenyon either totally or consistently.

Where then is the damage? Here we must affirm, with equal gravity, that Kenyon’s ‘atonement’ seriously reduces the power of the gospel to a purely ‘spiritual’ event. Jesus died in the spiritual realm to redeem men who are spirits, who have a soul and live in a body. This is not the whole gospel to the whole man. It is not the redemption of the whole Christ (fully God and fully man, body, soul and spirit). It cannot therefore be the salvation of the whole person. From this reduction all sorts of psychological and social implications will follow. Not least will be a tendency to evade the material and social implications of the gospel for Christian ethics. Where true ‘faith’ preachers happen to get things right they do so despite this doctrine.

Pastors who receive Christians from such a background can assume that the individual is truly regenerate, unless of course there is evidence to the contrary. What will be required is a teaching of the gospel to the converted and the re-laying of the gospel foundation. This should take place in the context of warm acceptance rather than Gestapo-like interrogation or suspicion. Such Christians truly love Jesus and often have zeal for God that cannot be questioned.

WHAT ABOUT FAITH?

One of the great fears of any ‘faith’ person is that the critique of Kenyon or his followers will evaporate faith and change the mood of the church from the ‘positive’ to the ‘negative’. McConnell has traced Kenyon’s emphasis on positive confession to metaphysics and ‘New Thought’. We have noted the emphasis on this in Kenyon and its links with his dualism of spirit/mind over the material. One may be tempted therefore to disregard the stress on the positive as simply another legacy of faulty thinking. This would not be an adequate analysis or response. Why?

In the history of the Christian church errors often amount to the overstatement of truth. Any biblical theme taken to an extreme can become an error. It so happens that much of what the ‘faith’ movement has discovered, while perhaps stemming from Kenyon, has continued and been further shaped by biblical material. Whether for sound reasons or not, those who have been influenced by Kenyon have latched onto those biblical texts where faith is understood as risk. Furthermore, texts which base the courage to take risk on the integrity of the God of promise have been accentuated through the use of the ‘faith’ hermeneutic. Such texts can be found in both Testaments in abundance. Hebrews 11 is an obvious case, but many others could be referred to, not least of which is the teaching of Jesus on ‘speaking to the mountain’ to move into the sea. This is not a volume on the nature of faith, but certain comments will bring clarification to the subject at hand.

In terms of the biblical tradition, faith is the response of man to the initiative of God. The God of promise and fulfilment, the God who acts and does mighty deeds, the God who sent his Son into the world and raised him from the dead, this God of grace calls from within man a response of faith. Faith in this sense means trust. It is grounded on the character and activity of the living God. To have faith in God is to honour his name, or integrity. This definition would reflect the traditional Reformed and Godcentred concept of faith.

Standing over against this, as an extreme caricature, would be a mancentred definition going beyond Arminian or even Pelagian thinking, to a ‘faith’ person, equally as divine as Jesus, having divine-like creative powers and speaking authoritatively to circumstances, the weather, disease, finances and even God himself.

Somewhere in between is the actual existential ‘faith’ position of those who defend an orthodox Godcentred view but in practise live in monotonous passivity. Somehow in the discrepancy between theology and practise, ‘faith’ people often come closer to orthodoxy than many imagine and many ‘orthodox’ Christians relate to the ‘unmoved mover’ of Greek philosophy rather than to the living God. ‘Faith’ people are often to be found doing the works that Jesus commanded us to do, preaching in the streets, praying for the sick, feeding the hungry, casting out demons and planting churches. ‘Orthodox’ people are often nowhere to be found. Their theology is more orthodox but their practise is less orthodox. How do we explain this?

Let ‘faith’ people face the fact that there has often been an ungodly arrogance and elitism amongst them, that it stems directly from a faulty theology where people imagine themselves to be semideified, and that proselytizing existing members of the church to a ‘deeper revelation’ cannot be equated with evangelism. Conversely, let the ‘orthodox’ part of the church face the fact that there has often been something seriously lacking in the level of zeal and commitment amongst their people which compares embarrassingly with ‘faith’ people.

To explain the phenomenon we must look to other dynamics, some sociological, some spiritual. Secular society in the last century has tended towards despair. Witness the influence of existentialist philosophy in post-war Europe and what Francis Schaeffer has described as the ‘line if despair’ reflected in philosophy, art, literature, music, films and general culture. This general mood has spread beyond Europe and moved beyond secular culture to affect the mood of the church as well.  Many evangelical and even Pentecostal Christians expect very little. They dutifully serve Christ in worship, prayer and occasional witness but seldom emerge from a generally negative, passive mode. Evangelical awakenings normally flow on the creative energy of ‘enthusiasm’. The charismatic renewal is one such ‘enthusiastic’ movement. Even where it has not been influenced by the ‘faith’ message it brings a generally more positive, energetic, optimistic mode to the people of God. People in the faith movement have entered into the flow of the charismatic movement. They sing the same songs and share many of the same values. Most of them are totally unaware of the fact that they have simultaneously absorbed another theology.

Inherent in the renewal are three significant theological emphases which have been ‘restored’ to the church. The first is a belief in the present intervention of God through signs and wonders. Kingdom theology and the repudiation of cessationism undergird this conviction. The second is a stress on the position of the believer in Christ. In a world that tends to dehumanize people the message of new dignity and ‘rights’ in Christ comes as fresh hope to the despairing. The third is a shift in eschatology away from dispensational rapturism towards Puritan amillennialism or even postmillennialism. Here again a despairing culture is challenged by a sense of triumphalism. ‘Faith’ people have engaged all three of these developments without actually being conscious of the theological issues involved. They are charismatic Kenyonites, not Kenyonites per se. They affirm the dignity of the Christian from a metaphysical base, but touch the raw nerve of lost humanity nevertheless. They actually adhere to dispensational rapturism but absorb the mood of the shift in eschatology because of Kenyon’s triumphalism. In other words they have landed on certain crucial truths, which form part of the current awakening of the church but from the wrong angle and for the wrong reasons. They have the right answers but got there by mistake. If they manage to reform their theology from within they will continue to enjoy great success to the utter confusion of those who perceive their error but have less success than they do because they do not perceive the other elements involved.

In short, it is possible for an overemphasis to correct an under-emphasis. What Kenyon and Hagin mean by ‘faith’ is hopelessly confused and mixed but what they have inculcated into their people often ends up being more biblical than they deserve credit for because of the general evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic environment. Their people tend to believe that God can do anything and that he can do anything through them. They may have come to this for all the wrong reasons, but they are often far more effective than orthodox Christians who believe all these things doctrinally but never believe them in practise.

The message to the ‘faith’ people is, stay positive, but try to be positive for the right reasons!

REVELATION

We must not, in reaction to Gnosticism, throw out the baby with the bath water. The Christian church lives on this particular baby. Without revelation from God we cannot know God. It is therefore of vital importance to define, positively, what biblical revelation is and to include a real appreciation of and openness to direct revelatory phenomena.

I feel at this point that some personal testimony will be helpful. Some readers may have concluded by now that I am somehow ‘anti’ revelation. This would be a total misunderstanding. For a moment I will speak like a ‘fool’, to follow Paul’s example. I do this because I do not want readers to be able to evade the substance of this book because they pigeon-hole me into an ‘anti’ or purely critical category. Pardon me therefore for the sudden shift to autobiographical details. I not only believe in revelation, but also can testify to the grace of God in this regard.

First let me speak of my wife and daughter. I got married through ‘revelation’. When we hardly knew each other, Karin had a dream one night where she had married me and certain details of our life together were in the dream. That same day I was at a prayer meeting where I felt a strong impulse to visit her at her school. Up to this point we had only exchanged one or two sentences, very formally. As she stepped out of her school classroom that day I was standing there. I took her for a drive and announced my conviction that we should be married. Sheer madness you say. Perhaps it was. We have now been married for over twenty five years and I have grown to appreciate, many times, the calibre of my wife’s commitment to the call of God on our lives. I do not advocate getting married like this. I can also recall disaster stories of socalled romantic ‘revelations’. The fact is that I have to believe in revelation because I live with the result every day.

My youngest daughter seems to have inherited a sensitivity to such things from her mother. When she was ten she had a dream. She was playing somewhere and found that all the other inhabitants of the world had been taken by the devil. She alone was left. A ladder appeared to her from heaven, with angels on it beckoning to her to use it. She did not want to and continued playing. Then she found that she had bumped into the ladder, and was almost forced to use it. She climbed up into heaven where she found a group of children playing happily. She loved to play. Then, standing before her were two trees, each bearing fruit. She ate of the one tree and the Lord told her that it was the tree to life. Then she ate of the other fruit and the Lord told her it was the tree to death, which would lead to hell. She was warned to eat only of the tree of life. My daughter is not given to creating such stories. I have no doubt that she did have such a dream. Psychologists may have other explanations but I have no difficulty believing that God was speaking to her. The symbolism is quite profound. Perhaps I am a biased parent. I believe in revelation.

I have had one such revelatory dream. It concerned a situation of painful conflict in a certain professional relationship that caused much anxiety for me. The dream reassured me of the outcome of the story through a particular kind of process. The story worked out in exactly the manner suggested by the dream. I can recall a youth camp where there was a special sense of the Holy Spirit moving through prophetic words. During the time of prayer I had a vivid mental picture of hell, so vivid in fact that I still remember it some twenty years later. Some years later I had a word of knowledge about a case of adultery where I just knew what was happening despite frequent denials. Eventually the truth came out. Although I do not operate in this area as often as some of my friends, I can recall a number of incidents of words of knowledge about particular circumstances in people’s lives that have been accurate. One incident was where I had that clear sense of knowing something but failed to do anything about it because of too much selfdoubt. I learned later that I could have helped to avert much misery if I had acted on what I had received. Then during 19945 our church was ‘hit’ by the renewal of the Holy Spirit popularly known as the ‘Toronto Blessing’. Both my daughters were immediately overcome by the power of the Spirit and their father spent months being overcome in various ways. Our ministry as a local church has been attended by prophecies, various phenomena of the Holy Spirit such as falling, or resting in the Spirit, revelations, weeping and laughter, words of knowledge linked to prayer for physical healing, deliverance from demons and so on. This book has not been written out of scepticism about such phenomena. My concern is that we should experience reality rather than Gnostic fantasy. Helpful volumes on this theme have been written by Mike Bickle,[226] Wayne Grudem,[227] and James Ryle.[228]

Understanding revelation means we have to begin with scripture. Viewed as an overall subject, scripture has both general and special revelation. We will begin with these fundamental categories of revelation and move towards the more direct subjective revelatory phenomena.

General Revelation

When we speak of general revelation we speak of that vague knowledge of God available to all men through creation, providence and conscience. The study of world religions will show that all men everywhere have an inner knowledge of God. The bible reveals that this knowledge of God cannot lead to salvation. It cannot produce a true knowledge of God that leads to a personal relationship with him. What then is the value of this general revelation?

First, it can provide a point of contact for evangelism. This was Paul’s method when he addressed the philosophers at Athens (Acts 17.1634). They acknowledged their blindness by their altar to the unknown God. The point of contact was the knowledge of deity. The blindness in their knowledge was evident in the fact that they did not know this God. Paul moved in on the contact. He used the existing knowledge of their philosophers. They knew that somehow all human beings are related to God and that he is not far from us. They knew that all nations came from God, somehow. They were a religious people. Yet their religious knowledge could never save them. From their dull ‘feeling towards’ God Paul moved them to hear about the living God who had revealed himself in Jesus Christ primarily in the act of raising Jesus from the dead.

Second, it shows that God cares for all men, lost humanity included, in the sense that he sends the rain and sun and the seasons for the common good (Acts 14.1420). Through the law of conscience written on the heart of unredeemed man he provides a basic sense of right and wrong to prevail amongst men and so protects them from ultimate self destruction (Romans 2.1415). This is how his common grace can be expressed in institutions like marriage and civil government. They apply to all men, redeemed and unredeemed alike (Romans 13.17). Because the Word of God is the creator and the redeemer, he has a relationship with unredeemed man through creation before he enters into a saving relationship with them through redemption. The Word that made all things was also the ‘light of men’ (John 1.4).

Third, we learn that general revelation is real to men because they have been made in the image of God. Even though the fall has affected every part of man’s nature it has not eradicated that sense in man that he should be more than he is. Men look up at the stars and recognize that there must be a creator (Psalm 19). God has put ‘eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end’ (Ecclesiastes 3.11).

Despite the fact that God speaks to men through creation and conscience, and despite the fact that man continually searches for a true knowledge of God and is therefore incurably religious, none of this knowledge can ever lead him to salvation. In fact all it can do is to lead man into condemnation, which is the whole point of Paul’s argument in Romans 1. Although all men know that there is a deity, and cannot plead ignorance about God, none of them respond correctly to what they know about God. They suppress the truth they have and exchange the glory of the living God for their own fantasies and images. The fall of man has affected his highest religious aspirations so that the light he has only plunges him into guilt and judgment. If they could be totally blind they would have a better excuse but because they can see God through creation and conscience they cannot plead ignorance. So they incur God’s just condemnation. Their position is identical to that of the Pharisees. Because they say they can see, their guilt remains (John 9.41). This is the argument Paul uses in Romans 2. He shows that the Jews, who had the law, are no better off. They had an even more accurate knowledge and revelation of God, but instead of leading them to a true relationship with God they became filled with arrogance and hypocrisy. Their very knowledge condemned them. For both groups, knowledge of God brought responsibility and responsibility brought guilt.

The knowledge of unredeemed man, both pagan man and man under the law is an awful kind of blindness. Their very knowledge is blindness. In one sense they know God (Romans 1.21). In another sense they do not know God at all (1 Thessalonians 4.5). They are in bondage because they have no saving knowledge of God (Galatians 4.8). They are ignorant of God (Ephesians 4.1820). The greatest wisdom of the world can never discover God (1 Corinthians 1.20). Though the Word was the light of men, when he came to men they ‘knew him not’ (John 1.10). This is why we can never confuse general revelation with what is known as natural theology, as propounded by Thomas Aquinas and the Church of Rome. Unsaved man can never, through philosophical argument, arrive at a true knowledge of God. His mind has been darkened and he cannot know God (Romans 1.21). He desperately needs the special revelation of God.

Special Revelation

Where general revelation works through creation and conscience, special revelation is purely of grace. Because man is blind, even the point of contact cannot help him to remove his own blindness. He is as a man who sees people as walking trees. He sees dull shapes but cannot describe what he is seeing. Unless someone does an operation on his eyes he will never see. This cannot come from himself; it has to come from God. Special revelation is like a tall man stooping down to a little child and lowering himself upon his knee, so that the child may look into his face. Until God stoops down to us we can never come to know him, yet through general revelation we all know that he is there and we long to see him.

Revelation through Jesus Christ

God has revealed himself to man in his son Jesus Christ. This revelation of God was given in preparation in the Old Testament and in recollection in the New Testament, but supremely in Jesus Christ. God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us through his son (Hebrews 1). Everything God has to say to man he has said in his Son. Having spoken in him he has nothing more to say. Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus is God speaking. Therefore Jesus is God. The Old Testament looks forward to his coming and the New Testament looks back at his coming, but God’s Word to us is supremely revealed in Jesus.

Revelation in history

How do we come to know God’s revelation of himself to us in Jesus? First we need to understand that God revealed himself through his son in history. This is what separates the JudeoChristian faith from all world religions. God revealed himself by coming down into man’s world and acting in history. He intervened in the Exodus. He intervened again and again in the history of Israel. He spoke through promise and fulfilment, proclaiming before the time what he would do and then doing it. He revealed himself through his mighty deeds, giving Israel victory in battle, using wind and fire and earthquake. Supremely in Jesus he spoke through mighty deeds, healings, deliverance, authority over the storm, and most of all, through his death and resurrection. This is all part of the truth that the word became flesh. God entered into the real, tangible world of men so that they could hear, touch and behold him (1 John 1.14). He has continued to reveal himself in this way in the history of revivals. All other world religions elevate mystical experiences and philosophical ideas. Only the living God speaks through earthquake and fire, through death and resurrection. No image can be made of him. He can never be the projection of the fantasy and imagination of man. Biblical revelation is objective, historical revelation. Pentecostals and charismatics that are infected by Gnostic elements are in great need of hearing this. Their preference for purely subjective religious and spiritual experiences is closer to liberalism than biblical Christianity. If the revelation of God in history cannot be verified then we can give no ultimate meaning to our experiences. If Christ be not raised, in historical fact, then we are still in our sin (1 Corinthians 15).

Revelation through the prophets

God did not reveal himself in pure events of history. Man is so blind that an historical revelation of God can occur in front of his eyes and he will remain blind. People saw Jesus with their physical eyes but remained blind to the revelation of God. The mystery is that even when God reveals himself he remains hidden in his revelation until he opens our eyes to see him. The two men walking to Emmaeus ‘saw’ Jesus but did not see him until they saw him. He has therefore always provided an interpretation of his mighty deeds through the prophets. His Word comes through the work of the Spirit as it comes through the historical events. To the prophets, God reveals himself in dreams and visions. They have revelatory experiences and begin to explain the meaning of the events. A prophet is someone who can see behind the surface of events and perceive the meaning behind them in the purpose of God. God made his promises through the prophets, then fulfilled those promises through mighty deeds, and then explained what he had done, again through the prophets and apostles.

The Old Testament is the record of prophets. Jesus was a prophet. The New Testament is the record of apostles and prophets. The entire biblical revelation is prophetic. God speaks through word and deed, words explaining deeds, and deeds revealing words, so that words become deeds. The event of God speaking his word is an event as much as events in the purpose of God are words spoken by God. Word and deed come together in Jesus Christ. When he spoke, things happened. What he did was God speaking. He is the WordEvent of God’s revelation to man.

Revelation in Scripture

We were not there when this WordEvent happened. How then does God speak to us through Jesus? God has provided, in his sovereign rule, witnesses to this event or series of events; Old Testament events leading up to one event in Jesus, and then New Testament events following the event of Jesus. The prophetic and apostolic witness to this revelation of God is found in scripture. Just as God’s original revelation of himself was made through events seen and interpreted by men, and just as he spoke through Jesus, who as fully human spoke in human words and as fully God spoke as the full revelation of God, so scripture has the unique quality of being human and prophetic. Scripture is breathed out by God. Holy men of God were moved by the Spirit. Therefore scripture too is the Word and revelation of God.

Revelation through the Preached Word

When most men read the scriptures a veil lies over their eyes, and they still cannot see (2 Corinthians 3). How is the veil removed: so that we can hear God speaking to us in the scriptures and in them hear God speaking to us in Jesus Christ? God speaks to us through the proclamation of the gospel. Faith comes by hearing the preached word of God (Romans 10.1415). Jesus came preaching the kingdom and when he preached, the kingdom event happened. He commissioned his disciples to proclaim the kingdom. When they did so, the event of the kingdom occurred in their preaching. Jesus left this commission with his church. He gave the commission with a promise that the same Holy Spirit who had given revelation to the prophets and apostles would attest to the proclaimed word of the gospel. This is why the gospel is the power of God. Its content is the act of revelation which God accomplished in Jesus Christ. Its attestation is the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. When this gospel is preached it becomes, through human words, the divine Word of God. God comes down in the message and becomes that tall man stooping down to the little boy. The event of proclamation becomes a moment of disclosure where blind eyes are opened. This also is special revelation. Scripture describes it as the moment of enlightenment where light shines into darkness. When Jesus was born the ‘day star’ appeared (Luke 1.7879). Jesus is the light of the world (John 8.12). The gospel preacher is commissioned to turn the Gentiles from darkness to light (Acts 26.13). As they hear the gospel it is the moment when God says, ‘Let there be light’ (2 Corinthians 4.46). Those who once knew Jesus but could not see him now see the light of the glory of God on his face. The converts are no longer in darkness (1 Thessalonians 5.4). They have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2.9). The veil falls from their eyes through the freedom of the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3).

Revelation to the Individual

At this point objective revelation in Jesus Christ, the witness to that revelation in scripture and the proclamation of that revelation through the gospel moves into the one who hears and becomes personal, subjective revelation. It becomes an encounter with God, where men respond in repentance and faith. They hear God and they say yes to God. We can truly say that without revelation no one can be saved. We can say with John, ‘this is eternal life, to know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent’. Such knowledge of God is not general revelation. It is special revelation, in Jesus Christ, through the Word, by the Spirit, applied to the heart of man. From that moment on the Christian lives by revelation. His bread is every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. The NT bears witness to continued moments of deeper and deeper revelation. Every step deeper into the Christian life comes from seeing more and more of the glory of God in the face of Jesus. Certain terms are used to describe this growing revelatory experience. John speaks of the ‘revelation’ (apokalypses) of Jesus. Paul speaks of the ‘mystery’ that becomes known through wisdom. This occurs through the process of growth to maturity. While there is no clear chronological order and some of these truths can come to a person at the same time as others, one can isolate a number of important milestones in the revelatory process. Here I believe it will be helpful to explain what I mean in personal terms. Discussions about how God reveals himself to people have little meaning in a purely theoretical framework.

Seeing the identity of Jesus

When Peter said, ‘You are the Christ’ Jesus told him that he had come to this through a revelation of the Father. John the Baptist recognized who Jesus was because he saw the Holy Spirit descend on him. The first step to salvation is to know who Jesus really is. Many people grow up with a nominal knowledge of Jesus. They can recite articles of the creed and pass a history test on the basic facts of his life but they have never seen him as the Saviour of their own lives. The recognition of the real identity of Jesus coincides with the revelation of one’s own sinfulness through the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I can well remember, at the point of my conversion, Michael Cassidy giving the ABC of commitment. A – something to acknowledge, that I am a sinner and need forgiveness. B – something to believe, that Jesus Christ is the answer to my need. C – something to confess, that from this night forward Jesus will be the Lord of my life. The A and the B were coincidental and real to me. That night I saw Jesus as I had never seen him. The blindness was lifted.

The Revelation of the Cross

At first all I knew was that Jesus had legitimate claims as Lord of my life, that I was a sinner, and that I needed his forgiveness. I had no clear idea as to just how or why he could forgive me. When John had the revelation of the identity of Jesus he also saw what Jesus had come to do: ‘behold the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.’ I can remember reading Romans a day or two after my conversion. I had never understood it although I had previously read it. Suddenly my eyes seemed to fall on the section about justification through faith and the truth of Christ dying in my place. The truth of legal acquittal dawned on me. With it came the sense of grace instead of merit. I can remember the sheer exhilaration of that discovery and the wonderment of our school chaplain at Michaelhouse when he heard me holding forth in a small group discussion about justification through faith. ‘Where did you get that from?’ he asked. I did not know then that great names stood behind the discovery of this truth such as Augustine, Martin Luther and John Wesley. There was I, a mere matric student at boarding school, making the same discovery. Flesh and blood were not involved. The discovery that such things could leap at one out of the bible was equally amazing to me.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit has to bring known truth back into a fresh sense of revelation. A few years later, at Rhodes, studying theology, I can recall a time when I was being continually drawn to the Sermon on the Mount. I read Martin Lloyd Jones and William Barclay. The combination was quite something. What came through was the nature of being ‘poor in spirit’ and not trusting in self-righteousness. Once again I found the principle of grace overwhelming me in my times of prayer. After some ten to twelve years of ministry the doctrine of grace became the basis of a fresh season of discovery linked to particular circumstances in the life of the church at the time. This time it was as though I was discovering the same truth with fresh insight, now set against the full background of law and modern day legalism. The sad thing is that there are Christians who do not live in the benefit of this revelation. Like the Galatians they have begun in the Spirit only to continue under the law. Such scriptural truth lies dead before us until the Holy Spirit graciously imparts it to us.

The Power of the Resurrection

I had flu, a sore throat and a headache and I was sitting in the middle of an Easter weekend of highly charged meetings in Port Elizabeth. I was still studying at Rhodes. We were singing and people were praying. I began to ‘see’ something. The section in Ephesians 1 about the power that raised Jesus to the highest place, above every power and every name, began to somehow come alive. I suddenly began to feel better. My sore throat cleared up and the remainder of the weekend was far more enjoyable. It may have been coincidental. Nevertheless, a process began in my thinking about the power of the resurrection that continued into the first year of my preaching ministry. During this time I made the connection, for the first time, between the nature of the resurrected body of Christ manifest during the forty days and the nature of our future, glorified bodies (1 Corinthians 15). His body is a prototype of the full harvest. This then began to make sense in terms of certain phenomena of the Spirit I had witnessed when people were experiencing the power of God on their bodies. I perceived that these phenomena were connected to the down payment of the Spirit as a deposit of our future inheritance. Space does not permit a discussion of this wonderful subject. For me it came as a fresh realisation. Paul describes it as a ‘mystery’. My conviction is that this is one of those truths that has to be made real through the Holy Spirit.

The Redemptive Plan of God

During my second year in the ministry, as a definitely inexperienced preacher, I embarked on the great journey of preaching through the book of Ephesians. The poor congregation had to endure sermons that sometimes took over an hour. They seldom complained because I used to get so excited that my excitement prevented boredom. During this time I was gripped by the introductory statement of Paul about the ‘mystery of his will’ which God has ‘made known to us in all wisdom and understanding’. The mystery is that the whole plan and purpose of God for the human race should be summed up in Christ (Ephesians 1.812). It was as though the panoramic view of the plan of salvation began to unfold before me. Romans 911 came into view. The truth of the cross as the centre point of time and the way in which the once-and-for-all event of the cross (Hebrews) reaches backwards and forwards in time, to all nations and all people all this began to make sense for the first time. By ‘mystery’ Paul refers to something hidden from the Old Testament prophets but now revealed in the New, an open secret, revealed to believers. It was during this time that the passage in 2 Corinthians also became relevant to me. The secret things of God are about the purpose of God fulfilled in the cross. Now I saw how the cross is the key to the meaning of the entire course of human history. Once again the cross was the source of revelation, this time in a totally new dimension.

The Kingdom of God

Jesus spoke of the mystery, or secret of the kingdom, which those ‘outside’ could not understand but which he explained to his disciples. This became the basis of another period of discovery. I had then been preaching for six or seven years, mostly from the Pauline epistles. It began to worry me that I somehow could not get hold of the gospels. A group of friends in the ministry at the time gathered around the subject of the kingdom of God. It was as though I had been totally blind for years to the central theme of scripture. No matter where I turned I found something about the kingdom of God. Someone discovered George Ladd’s work on the Kingdom.[229] The circle of friends began to read Ladd and share their perspectives. The sense of fresh revelation was almost alarming. Had I ever known Jesus before? Now I saw him against his own context, with a strongly eschatological message and for the first time I began to grasp that the future age had broken into the present in Jesus. In him the kingdom has come, and yet the kingdom that came in him is yet to come. Through him the powers of the age to come broke through into this age with violent, revolutionary force. I was gradually seeing more of the glory of God in the face of Jesus. This period of discovery is reflected in Breakthrough, Discovering the Kingdom.

The Cross and the Powers

The political conflict in South Africa began to accelerate in 1986, with riots on a scale we had not seen before. Racial conflict emerged with all its horror. Conservative evangelicals are not given to political radicalism. They would rather, by in large, retreat into contemplative prayer. Pentecostal and charismatic Christians can have even more reason for this retreat. During my time at Rhodes I had found myself in regular conflict with theological liberalism, which made me cautious of any attempt to translate the vertical into the horizontal, man’s relationship with God into man’s relationship with his fellow man. Yet before 1986 I had been working through Ephesians once more and this time the importance of the new humanity came into view, reconciled through the tearing down of the dividing wall. I had not ‘seen’, with sufficient clarity, that the perpetuation of any divisions in the church robbed the church of its essential witness to the world powers, both visible and invisible, and compromised the atoning power of Christ’s blood. I began to read literature on Apartheid with a new eye. I am convinced that most South African Christians require a type of brain surgery based on Ephesians 23. Once again it was the cross of Christ from a fresh angle. Paul speaks of a mystery, once hidden, but now revealed through the Spirit. It has to be made known through the Spirit. Much of this learning process is reflected in South Africa, the Powers Behind.[230]

The Mystery of the Incarnation

To confess that you read Karl Barth during your devotions can be dangerous in some circles. Is it a way of doing theological oneupmanship or perhaps a sign of mental imbalance? Whatever the diagnosis, I have to confess that his description of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ has given me yet another view of Jesus. The sheer profundity and mystery of the full humanity and divinity of Jesus and the way in which God has disclosed himself and yet hidden himself in his disclosure has made me feel that there is a whole aspect to ‘knowing’ Jesus that I have still to discover.

The Reality of the Risen Christ

Mention has been made of the renewal of the Holy Spirit that began in 1994. The Christian and secular press gave much focus on the phenomena of the Spirit experienced through this renewal, particularly the laughter, the ‘roaring’ and the jerking. Strange as these experiences were, what occurred inwardly at the time was of far greater significance. I became aware, as never before, of the sovereignty of God and of the present Lordship of Christ over his church. In meeting after meeting I could sense him arriving in a manifest sense at a particular point and taking over. His presence created not only a wonderful sense of visitation, but also experiences in person after person of the overwhelming love of God. People spoke of being embraced by God. The sense of covenant renewal was profound, the sense of God’s holy zeal for his church and her affections and of the mutual delight between the bridegroom and the bride was tangible. Worship was remarkably magnified, often leading to a sense of sheer ecstasy in his presence. All these fresh discoveries of Christ were part of the sense of his risen presence, not just as the historic risen Lord, but as the present risen Lord. A whole series of texts came to life and took on new meaning: the revelation of the one standing amongst the seven lamp stands in Revelation 1, the one who appeared to Daniel and to Ezekiel who had the appearance of the son of man (Ezekiel 1, Daniel 7; 10), and the various manifestations of the presence of God during the time of Moses (the theophanies). It was as if I had never really known the present, risen Christ.

When will this process end? Will there ever be a time when fresh revelation of the glory of God shining from the face of Jesus ceases to be given afresh? I think not. All these experiences are why I believe in the importance of revelation. Yet this is but one aspect of the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian’s life. In all this I see no evidence of a Gnostic dualism between body and spirit, of a disjunction between revelatory guidance and normal rational decision making, or a tendency to elitist categories amongst Christians. It is possible to be completely open to the Spirit and steer clear of Gnosticism.

We must never deny the critical importance of revelation; historic, scriptural, prophetic and apostolic, by proclamation, through conversion, during the entire process of sanctification, and as manifest in charismatic gifts. We need to withstand Gnosticism at every point.

May real revelation bring reality in life!

REVELATION AND INTERPRETATION

In this chapter I will use the term ‘revelation’ to refer to the subjective element in the broader concept of revelation we have just examined; hearing from God, the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, dreams, visions etc. By ‘interpretation’ I mean taking the biblical text and submitting to the rigour of hermeneutical principles and disciplines, using commentaries, dictionaries, Lexicons and ancillary literature, in other words doing some hard work in interpretation.

My approach here is to show that these two should not be opposed to one another. In practise, receiving revelation from God will be closely linked, especially for the preacher, to the way he handles and meditates on scripture. The relationship between revelation and interpretation is therefore vital. H D MacDonald wrote two books entitled Ideas of Revelation and Theories of Revelation in which he analysed this subject through the last few centuries.[231] His thesis is that there were four basic views.

•         Those who were committed to the Word, interpreted through the Spirit.

•         Those who were committed to the revelation of the Spirit, but anchored to the Word.

•         Those who were committed to the Word, but not actually open to the Spirit, a position which amounted to dead orthodoxy.

•         Those who were committed to the Spirit, without a real submission to the Word, which led to fanaticism.

The sense of balance has been summed up as follows:

•         If we have the Word without the Spirit, we dry up.

•         If we have the Spirit, without the Word, we blow up.

•         If we have the Spirit and the Word, we grow up.

Conservative evangelicalism tends to the first danger and the Pentecostal/ charismatic tradition tends to the second. Can we find the balance, and ‘grow up’? These two emphases are both found within the scriptures themselves, and it is important that we are well grounded in the two biblical themes.

The Revelatory Element in Scripture

The following remarks state, very briefly, the general flow of the biblical record. In the Old Testament we have the phenomenon of prophecy, beginning with the patriarchal experiences of the angel of the Lord, and with dreams and visions. We have Moses at the burning bush and the Sinai experience of the glory of God, the cleft of the rock and so on. Joshua and the Judges had similar experiences. Both Elijah and Elisha were ‘seers’. Elijah had visions of the invisible dimension behind Israel’s battles, and predicted the drought and the rain.

Elisha ‘saw’ Elijah being taken up into heaven. With the Major Prophets we find the formula for prophetic revelation in the statement, ‘The word of the Lord, which the prophet so and so saw, in such and such a year, concerning Israel’ (Isaiah 1.1; Amos 1.1; Micah 1.1; Nahum 1.1). The Word comes through a revelatory experience. Jeremiah sees a basket of figs. Isaiah sees the Lord on his throne. Ezekiel sees the chariot with many wheels. Joel sees an army of locusts. This element is accentuated in the apocalyptic tradition, beginning with Daniel and Zechariah and then growing in the intertestamental literature. Depending on one’s view of scripture, one sees the slide from actual revelatory experiences to pseudonymous writing either in the biblical books or thereafter.

Moving to the New Testament we find both John the Baptist and Jesus to be prophets in the full Old Testament sense of the word. John sees a vision of the Holy Spirit descending. The infancy narratives testify to a resurgence of revelatory experiences before and after the birth of the two cousins. One has only to mention the names of Zechariah, Anna, Simeon, the shepherds, Joseph, and of course Mary, to recall all these experiences. Then in the ministry of Jesus we find a strong sense of hearing from the Father. He ‘sees’ Satan fall from heaven. He knows what people are thinking. He begins his ministry with a profound experience of satanic deceit through ‘revelation’. On the Mount of Transfiguration, not only Jesus, but Peter, James and John as well, have unforgettable revelatory experiences. Peter’s confession comes through revelation.

Moving to the book of Acts the record intensifies. Paul’s conversion and subsequent calling includes blinding revelation, dreams and visions. The same is true of Peter’s experience with the Gentiles. Agabus ‘sees’ things that are still to occur, as do Philip’s daughters. The leaders at Antioch send off the apostles because the Holy Spirit told them to do so. Paul has his vision of the man from Macedonia. Then there are all the references to the revelatory ministry of the Spirit through the charismata, especially in 1 Corinthians. And what can we say of the Revelation of John? The record is clear. It is the expectation of scripture that God speaks to man in clear, revelatory experiences. The definition of a prophet given by Moses can be a fitting summary of this theme.

When a prophet of the Lord is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? (Numbers 12.68)

This initial glance at the biblical witness only covers half the relevant material. In the previous chapter we saw that there was a deeper understanding of revelation concerning the work of the Holy Spirit which enables a human being to grasp the inner meaning of historical events and of biblical texts. As we noted, to be a prophet is to be an interpreter of events. There is a prophetic view of history and of reality which includes the ability to grasp the nature and being of the God who stands behind the phenomena of the Spirit. Moses experienced this when he asked about the meaning of the Divine name. The answer he was given enabled him to interpret the events of the Exodus in terms of the covenant.

The New Testament has two significant themes in this regard. The first is found in the Johannine texts about the role of the Spirit in relation to truth. The second is found in the Pauline texts about the ‘mystery’ made known by revelation.

The Role of the Spirit in John

The Spirit will speak of Jesus. He will lead into all truth. This raises the profound area of intraTrinitarian theology. The revelation of God is Jesus Christ. Jesus is what God has to say (Hebrews 1.13). He is the exegesis of the Father (John 1.18). He who has seen him has seen the Father. To see and grasp who Jesus is, and what he has come to do, and what has come in and through him, is to have revelation from God. Yet man cannot know this truth without the work of the Holy Spirit. The Johannine ‘bolt out of the blue’ in the Synoptics is that no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and the one to whom the Son chooses to reveal himself (Matthew 11.27). God reveals God through God. Only God the Holy Spirit can reveal God the Son who is the revelation of God the Father. Only God can disclose himself to man.

The ‘Mystery’ Revealed in Paul

New Testament scholars have discovered a real connection between the Qumran literature (Dead Sea Scrolls), the Jewish tradition of Midrash (creative commentaries on the Old Testament), the role of the Maskilim (‘inspired’ interpreters of scripture), and terms used by Paul in his concept of revelation. These have been the subject of some helpful research by Earle Ellis on the exhortatory role of the early Christian prophets.

Many of the ideas begin in Daniel, a prophet in the wisdom tradition (1.4,17; 2.21f) who understood dreams and visions (2.2730; 5.12) and was inspired by God to ‘make known the mystery’ (2.47) and to interpret (pesher) the inner meaning of scripture (9.2,22f i.e. Jeremiah). As prophecy proper died out, a revelatory, or inspired interpretation of scripture increasingly replaced prophecy. The Qumran community believed that their inspired interpreters (maskilim) were ‘recipients and transmitters of divine mysteries, possessors of wisdom, interpreters of knowledge, guides to a mature life, and discerners of spirits.’[232] Another significant element in their way of interpreting the Old Testament was their belief that its prophetic anticipations were presently being fulfilled in their community. They believed the end of the age was beginning to take place amongst them.

When we hear Paul speaking about the ‘mystery made known by revelation’ (Ephesians 3.3), we are hearing something within a well-established and defined tradition of Judaism. Paul the apostle was also Paul the Rabbi. Within this tradition, understanding the ‘mystery’ has to do with the interpretation of already authoritative biblical material. In Paul’s case this was the tradition about the historical Jesus handed down to him by the first apostles (Galatians 2.110; 1 Corinthians 15.13). The revelation given to Paul did not involve the creation of new truth, because the truth was already revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ. What Paul experienced was an enlightenment of the Holy Spirit to read and understand the given ‘text’ (gospel tradition) correctly. The Pauline revelation does not add to the gospel tradition, it merely interprets (pesher) it.

Paul was supremely aware of the direct inspiration of the Spirit. What had been hidden to OT prophets was now ‘revealed’ through the Spirit (Ephesians 3.26). This revelation involved a special insight into the ‘economy’ of the plan and purpose of God (Ephesians 1.18). As we learn from Romans 911, it also involved an insight into the way God has dealt with the Jewish nation and the Gentile nations, and how in the end there is found to be total justice on God’s part. When he exclaims how wonderful the wisdom of God really is in his conclusion (Romans 11.3336), he is really marvelling at the sense of God’s wisdom plus his own sense of revelation. He is ‘seeing’ things he had never seen before. This is the focus of 1 Corinthians 12, where he speaks about things hidden from natural understanding, but revealed to the spiritual man, the hidden wisdom of God (2.7f). There is a special sense of suddenly understanding the plan and purpose in the mind of God that stands behind the actual events of redemptive history. It is not just that God has acted, but that these acts have a particular and profound meaning.

If Paul was experiencing this profound sense of revelation in these passages, every believer has the same experience of ‘revelation’ throughout his Christian walk. The first confession of the Lordship of Christ is a recognition only given by the Spirit. Every step of deeper understanding into the meaning of the cross, the ‘mystery’ of the kingdom (‘already’ and ‘not yet’), the ‘mystery’ of the glorified body, and the ‘mystery’ of the true nature of the church, comes by the same enlightenment of the Spirit. We literally live by revelation. The ‘text’ was there before we saw it. All the events, and their attestation in scripture, were there before we ever saw them. We even had an historical knowledge of them before we really saw them. Then one day, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, we saw, in what we already knew, what we had never seen before. This was revelation. Furthermore, it is the testimony of so many that when we experience the renewal of the Spirit we began to see things with an even sharper focus. This too is revelation.

The Rule of Faith

Balanced against this sense of revelation, epitomized in Paul’s statement about not having received the gospel from man, but from God alone (Galatians 1.12) we find a number of statements about being faithful to authoritative apostolic testimony. The same Paul who says he received nothing from man then proceeds to tell us a few verses later that he went to check out with the senior apostles whether what he was preaching was in line or not (Galatians 2.110). The authoritative apostolic teaching is what Paul means by the ‘tradition’ handed down from the beginning (1 Corinthians 15.3; 2 Thessalonians 2.15; 3.6) and what Jude means by the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). There are texts that describe the passing on of authoritative truth to the leaders and elders of the churches (Acts 20.1735; 2 Timothy 2.12; 1 Timothy 3.16; 6.20; Titus 1.59). Vincent of Lerins commented on 1 Timothy 6.20 as follows:

What is meant by the deposit? That which is committed to thee, not that which is invented by thee; that which thou hast received, not that which thou hast devised; a thing not of wit, but of learning, not of private assumption, but of public tradition; a thing brought to thee, not brought forth of thee; wherein thou must not be an author but a keeper; not a leader, but a follower. Keep the deposit. Preserve the talent of the Catholic faith safe and undiminished; let that which is committed to thee remain with thee, and that deliver. Thou hast received gold, render gold.[233]

Not only is the New Testament apostolic testimony treated with great respect, but so is the Old Testament. The Jesus who could say, ‘you have heard it was said to the men of old ... but I say to you,’ could also say ‘no scripture can be broken.’ The sense of fresh revelation, even with Jesus, in no way undermined the authority of the given text that was before him. It was not a case of altering scripture, but a correct understanding of its real, or eschatological meaning in the light of the act of God in Jesus Christ. The same Paul who speaks of the fact that the Old Testament prophets never saw what New Testament prophets have seen, can also uphold the complete authority of the Old Testament, as he does to Timothy (2 Timothy 3.16).

Being powerfully aware of personal, subjective revelation in no way undermined the sense of obedience to authoritative Old Testament or New Testament canonical witness. The maskilim did not see themselves as standing above scripture for one moment. Neither did Paul. It was always the Word, by the Spirit, and the Spirit, from the Word. Never the Word without the Spirit, or the Spirit without the Word!

Paul’s language about ‘secret revelation’ and ‘hidden mysteries’ finds its true context in the Jewish tradition of the maskilim. Taken out of this context it became the happy hunting ground of the Gnostics, who delighted in puffing themselves up with visions, and things they had ‘seen’ (Colossians 2.18).

This sense of balance was reflected in the Reformational principle of the authority of the Word linked to the inner witness of the Spirit. Again it was the Word and the Spirit. The early Pentecostals lived at a time when the church had become materialistic and dry. They also rediscovered the sense of revelation by the Spirit. They were, mostly, totally committed to the authority and infallibility of scripture, but they emphasized that the scripture has to be revealed by the Spirit. Because they were a poor class movement and few of them were educated, they tended to rely too much on the Spirit and too little on careful interpretation of the Word, but they were committed to both.

It is really with some elements within Pentecostalism, particularly in the ‘manifested sons of God’ concept and in later Pentecostal and neoPentecostal groups influenced by Kenyon that things began to go wrong.  As with the Gnostics, Paul’s maskilim class hermeneutic is distorted for a Gnostic purpose. It is taken out of its Hebrew context and dragged into a Greek philosophical mould. Kenyon has absolutely no respect for the truth as handed down by faithful brethren. He disdains the Reformers and all that have gone before him as those who never saw what he saw. This is the Spirit without the Word, which in effect is another Spirit, imposed on the Word.

We learn two things from the two themes of scripture.

•         There is a rich tradition of revelatory experiences and revelatory insight into the meaning of redemptive events.

•         There is a clear tradition of submitting to authoritative teaching handed down, whether from Moses to Israel, or from the apostles to the early church.

The two biblical themes are never opposed to one another. What does this mean in practise?

Hearing from God

All of us want to preach as the ‘oracles of God’. If we are going to be obedient to these two themes in scripture then we have to make sure that we can receive enlightenment from the Spirit and that we have really received what was handed down to us. You can hear when a preacher has heard nothing for a long time. His message is dry. One suspects, or knows, that he is repeating old material. It lacks two distinct elements: conviction and clarity. This is why it is vital to have fresh bread. How do we get this?

•         By reading the scriptures as literature.

•         Through cultivating the habit of meditation.

•         Through the special technique of conversational prayer.

•         Through incarnational involvement in the needs of the human race. This should include both real pastoral contact and real contact with secular humanity.

•         Through hearing the preaching of others.

•         Through prophetic pictures that come in moments of corporate worship or private prayer.

•         Through flash moments of insight that come when your mind is turning something over, almost unconsciously.

•         Through the reading of books with real substance.

•         Through the pain and devastation of life’s crises, when we call out to God and find him, or turn from God and he finds us.

•         Through the chemistry of fellowship with other men and women of the Word.

Being obedient to what we have received

Whether we like it or not, what Paul describes is a kind of tradition: authoritative apostolic and evangelical tradition. The first and ultimate tradition is the one found in the canon of scripture. Since then, there is ecumenical, evangelical tradition, reflected in Creeds and Confession, in the writings of the church Fathers, the Reformers, the leaders of evangelical awakenings, and the respected body of God fearing scholars and preachers who have impacted the Christian church the most. When you read a commentary, or theological textbook, you are really coming into contact with the tradition of the gospel as it has been handed down. The important thing here is to drink from the deepest and purest wells.

If you are a preacher, consider the following suggestions.

•         Try to read primary literature. Buy major textbooks. Stick to major, respected writers, rather than popular writers of current trends. Read as widely as possible on current affairs, modern literature, music, history, philosophy and culture.

•         Develop a technique of exposition. Get a biblical book and read it over and over again, as literature. Make mental or written notes on what strikes you. Take a commentary and read its introduction. Consult a theological dictionary or textbook on certain major themes that emerge from your reading.

•         Take a text (pericope) and begin. Read, meditate, and discover its structure. This includes the flow of the argument, the subsections of the passage, a kind of road map or diagram of its flow of thought. Take each part you have unravelled and begin to grapple with what it means. Look over what you have and summarize your findings. Apply what you have found to your context. Look for illustrations.

•         Break away from your work and engage in prayer. Wait for clarity and insight. Allow the text to grab you and give you a sense of passion.

•         Keep a record of your preparation and preaching. As it grows over the years you will develop a body of material that comes from your conversations with God and his Word. It will serve you well in years to come.

Finally, notice this. There is actually a total circle between the revelatory element and the interpretative element. The more you read and do your homework, the more you will ‘see’ through revelation. The more you see, the more you will be driven, sometimes almost frantically, to check it out with your sources. The Word leads to the Spirit and the Spirit sends you back to the word. This is how you hear from God.

REVELATION AND HISTORIC FAITH

One of the great dangers of Gnostic spirituality is that it tempts people to take their own sense of revelation too seriously. While it is necessary to affirm the positive content of divine revelation and the various ways in which it comes, it is also necessary to affirm that such revelation to the contemporary Christian must be taken in the context of historic truth. Our revelatory experiences must be subject to scripture. Another way of saying this is that the church must be committed to the doctrine of the apostles (Acts 2.42). It must be one, holy, catholic and apostolic! Some understanding of apostolicity should therefore be part of any understanding of revelation from God.

Apostles and Prophets in the New Testament

The NT makes it clear that the twelve men chosen by Jesus were a unique, foundational group never to be repeated again. They had to be with Jesus from the baptism of John until his ascension. This included being witnesses of his resurrection (Acts 1.2122; 4.33; 5.2932). The twelve are said to be part of the foundation of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21.14).

Paul has a unique position that falls more within the category of the twelve than amongst subsequent apostles. He was not a witness to the earthly ministry of Jesus, but he did have an experience of the risen Lord, which placed him alongside the apostles (1 Corinthians 15.111; Acts 9.19). The leading apostles recognized his unique calling (Galatians 1.182.10). Then the brothers of Jesus, James and Jude, were accorded a unique place of recognition and authority (James 1.1; Jude 1).

God used the twelve, plus Paul, plus the brothers, in a unique way to write the scriptures or to give the essential testimony behind the scriptures. The criterion the early church used for including a book in the New Testament was apostolic authority. Whether it was Mark’s association with Peter, or Luke’s association with the family of Jesus and with Paul, or whether it was the association of the circle of disciples with John the apostle (the ‘we’ of John 21.24), all the NT books can be traced back to apostolic authority, with the exception of Hebrews. If we could unravel a bit of early church history we might be able to find who was behind Hebrews. This unique authority involved a special anointing of the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus (John 16.1315) and described by Paul (Ephesians 3.113) and Peter (2 Peter 1.1621). There are numerous clues that indicate a special sense of inspiration (Revelation 1.13; 22.1819; 1 Corinthians 14.37). It is not that subsequent Christians do not have the revelation of the Holy Spirit. The point is that, in the providence of God, the first witnesses were set apart and given what we now know as canonical status.

The word ‘canon’ (from the Greek kanon) originally meant a level or rule used for building purposes, what we call a straightedge today. From this it developed the sense of measurement or straightness to determine deviations and hence the authoritative measure of all doctrine namely, the inspired books of the bible.

Jesus gave the great commission (Matthew 28.18) to the twelve. Inherent in the commission was the authority to bind and loose, to discipline and restore (John 20.2123); Matthew 16.1320), an authority which included both moral and doctrinal matters. The doctrinal authority was fixed in a special way with the New Testament scriptural witness (the canon), but the moral authority, and the doctrinal authority ‘under’ the New Testament witness, has now been placed with the plurality of local elders, also known as the presbytery. There are texts that describe the passing on of authority to elders (Acts 20.1735; 2 Timothy 2.12; 1 Timothy 3.16; Titus 1.59). This authoritative apostolic teaching is what Paul means by the ‘tradition’ handed down from the beginning (1 Corinthians 15.3; 2 Thessalonians 2.15; 3.6), and what Jude means by the faith one delivered to the saints (Jude 3).

It is vital to see that no contemporary revelatory experience can ever usurp the authority of the canonical scriptures deposited within the plurality of local elders. The moment we compromise this position there is no consistent halt before we arrive at total subjectivity and error.

This is the essential meaning of the statement in the creed which all orthodox traditions and movements within the Christian Church accept: We believe in ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.’

Every Christian has direct access to the New Testament. However, there have been many heresies and errors in the history of the church which have been propounded by those who had the scriptures as their guide, which is testimony to the fact that sinful human beings can distort the scriptures to their own destruction. The problem began during the times of the apostles themselves (2 Peter 3.1418). In each generation there have been those who have fought for truth and those who have distorted truth. All those who have fought for the truth have developed into a long line of orthodox, evangelical defenders of the faith and at various times what they have believed has been summarized in creedal and confessional statements. These do not have equal authority with scripture, but they do have authority as signposts and rules of how to rightly interpret the scriptures. Peter was concerned that ‘no scripture’ should be ‘a matter of one’s own interpretation’ (2 Peter 1.20). Paul taught that we can only grasp the length, breadth, depth and height of the truth ‘with all the saints’ (Ephesians 3.18). Because this body of truth has developed through history as the church has fought off the heresies of every age, we can now speak of ‘historic, evangelical truth’. In practise, submitting to the scriptures means handling them according to certain rules of interpretation that are established by the well-worn practise of great Christian leaders through the centuries. One of them, the special emphasis of Martin Luther, is that Jesus Christ is the central focus of scripture. Others, found in textbooks on hermeneutics (the rules of interpretation) could be mentioned. The correct approach to interpreting scripture or the correct handling of the word of truth (2 Timothy 2.15) is reflected in historic statements which demand special respect. Some of those that demand special respect are:

•         the ‘Apostles’ creed,

•         the Nicene creed,

•         the Athenasian creed,

•         the Council of Chalcedon, and

•         the confessional statements of the various Reformed churches. One of the best known is the Westminster Confession.

Many evangelical movements have similar statements of faith. None of these can be given too much weight, but taken together with the writings of the church Fathers, the Reformers and the leaders of the great evangelical awakenings (e.g. Wesley, Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards), there does exist what we call an ecumenical body of historic evangelical truth. People who want to show scant regard for this normally slip into some emphasis or error along the way. A helpful way of understanding the historic evangelical tradition of truth is to break it down into the major periods of church history. One church historian has described Pentecostalism as the ‘third arm of Christendom’, implying than Catholicism represents the first arm and Protestantism the second arm.

Church History

Catholicism the First ‘Arm’ of Christendom

The spiritual vigour of the early church led to Christianity being planted and firmly established in the Roman Empire and thereafter in the cradle of the Western nations. We often take for granted what we have as a result of this foundation. Bear in mind that the word ‘catholic’ means ‘universal’ rather than Roman. We are the heirs of what was established during the first wave of ‘catholic’ Christianity.

1.      The canon of scripture was recognized and received. Contemporary Protestants and Pentecostals are often ignorant of the various controversies and church councils that preceded the establishing of the recognized books of the bible. The bible did not simply fall from heaven. Through a long process, where godly leaders of spiritual discernment prevailed over heretics, the church came to recognize and receive those books that were truly inspired by the Holy Spirit.

2.      The doctrine of the Trinity plus the divinity and humanity of Christ were carefully and laboriously established and are now enshrined in the Apostle’s creed, the Nicene Creed and the confessional statement of the Council of Chalcedon. Again, heretics and men of discernment and insight fought great doctrinal battles of which we are beneficiaries. We cannot afford to reinvent the wheel and tamper with such established pillars of the faith.

3.      The doctrine of the atonement was established. Athanasius (AD 297373), who wrote De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (The Incarnation of the Word of God) gave to us the first historic theology of the atonement. He showed that it was vital that the eternal Word should become fully man in order to bear the sin of mankind and that it was equally vital that he should remain fully divine so as to atone for our sin. His work is perhaps the greatest statement of the full divinity and humanity of Christ worked out in terms of the doctrine of the atonement. Possibly equal in value is Cur Deus Homo, the work of Anselm of Cantebury (10331109). He showed that because of the eternal consequences of sin and because of the total justice of God, complete satisfaction had to be made to fulfil the justice of God. Only the death of the morally sinless and divine Son of God could make this satisfaction.

4.      The first historic period or ‘arm’ revealed how deeply the gospel can and must soak into the soil of nations and their entire culture and value system. The gospel sowed itself into music, art, literature, education, agriculture, government, philosophy, medicine etc., a point which Latourette makes repeatedly in his monumental seven volume work on church history. We now know that the entire medieval system became corrupt. The sin of man will always work to destroy the influence of the gospel. Yet we must not allow the memory of the corruption to cause us to overlook the great truth of the leaven, salt and light of the gospel. There is a relationship between missions and nation building. We are called to ‘disciple the nations’, not just atomic individuals (Matthew 28.19). We are not into a merely pietistic search for ‘souls’. We are to proclaim the kingdom of God and all that it implies.

Protestantism the Second ‘Arm’ of Christendom

If we are Catholics we are Protestants no less. We are also heirs of the second historic era.

1.      If the early church worked out the doctrine of scripture, of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ, the Protestant movement worked out the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. First proclaimed as the protest of Martin Luther the doctrine of justification through faith was expounded and developed by Luther, Calvin and many others.

2.      The Protestants also clarified the relationship between scripture and church councils, confessions and authorities. They raised the former above the latter to be the sole, final authority in all matters of faith and doctrine.

3.      The Anabaptist wing of the Reformation established a further fundamental principle. Because of their rediscovery of believer’s baptism, they repudiated the possibility of the church consisting of a mixture of regenerate and unregenerate people, a reality which may be denied by those who advocate infant baptism, but which nevertheless normally follows.

4.      The great Puritan thrust of world missions emerged out of this arm. The spread of the gospel was linked to the spreading influence of the Western nations. Here again, we can now bewail the disastrous effects of linking missions to colonization and miss the fact that God did use this development, despite the fact that man messed it up. Evangelical Protestantism established the fact that the ‘world is our parish’ (Wesley).

5.      Historically Protestantism gave rise to Capitalism. Much can be debated about the exact nature of the relationship and once again we can bewail the effects of Capitalism in its rampant form. Nevertheless, something inherent in Protestant Christianity releases a sense of calling, industry, thrift and entrepreneurial skill. The wealthiest nations are mostly Protestant, or those founded on the value system of such nations (e.g. Japan, following a democratic, free enterprise system). Protestantism established the fact that the blessing of Abraham to ‘inherit the world’ and ‘bless every family on earth’ is more than a purely spiritual matter. There is a valid doctrine of prosperity inherent in Abrahamic faith.

Pentecostalism the Third ‘Arm’ of Christendom

The charismatic movement is basically Pentecostalism moving into the middle or upper middle class. It is also Pentecostalism moving back into the older movements, the third arm flowing back into the second and first arm. Flowing from the charismatic movement we have the ‘third wave’, that is, conservative evangelical churches that have opened up to the spiritual dynamic of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements without abandoning their theological moorings. Within the overall flow of church history, Pentecostalism, the charismatic movement and the ‘third wave’ have to be considered as a whole.

1.      If the first arm established the doctrine of the Trinity and of Christ, and the second the doctrine of salvation and missions, then we have to say that the third arm has come to establish the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. As the gifts and ministries of the Spirit dried out, the church developed the ‘cop out’ doctrine of cessationism. Pentecostalism has effectively overthrown cessationism. Today those who want to deny the continued presence of both the gifts and ministries of the Spirit until the Second Coming are having to fight a rearguard action against the evident power and growth of the ‘third arm’ of the church. The people of God are voting against cessationism with their feet.

According to the Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, Pentecostal, charismatic and ‘third wave’ movements, amounted to 6.2% of the global Christian population in 1970, 11.8% in 1980, 23.3% in 1990 and were projected to reach about 30% by the year 2000.[234] The rapid growth of the newer movement contrasts with the declining numbers in most historic denominations and projected into this century will result in ‘third arm’ Christianity replacing the older form as the norm. The global trends are particularly evident in Latin America and Africa. Simultaneously, theologians from this sector of the church are systematically destroying the attempt to justify cessationism from scripture.

2.      The work of the Spirit involves more than rejecting cessationism. The Protestant reformation, while advancing truth on so many fronts, reduced the truth on another front by absorbing the entire work of the Spirit into the doctrine of salvation. The third arm introduced the doctrine of subsequence (baptism in the Spirit subsequent to conversion) so as to insist that regeneration by the Spirit is not the end of what a Christian may expect from God. Christian initiation is not complete until someone has experienced the outpouring of the Spirit in power. We may debate the merits and details of the doctrine of subsequence and certainly charismatics would not insist on the classical Pentecostal concept of initial evidence (you must speak in tongues to ‘get’ it). Nevertheless, we must not go soft on the empowering work of the Holy Spirit. If we blur the biblical teaching we will inevitably slide away from the experience of the Spirit as well.

3.      The reformation established the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer, in theory. However in the New Testament the concept of ‘body ministry’ is inseparably linked to the gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, the actual restoration of body ministry had to await the Pentecostal, charismatic and third wave movements. The New Testament understanding of the church has, in practise, only been revived in the third arm. There can be little believerpriest ministry without the operation of the charismatic gifts.

4.      If the first arm covered what we now know as the first world the second arm has predominantly evangelized what we can call the second world. The third arm is most effective in the third world. Although this is somewhat of an oversimplification, in God’s strategy each people group has been reached. The three arms of Christendom represent three movements of the gospel, each one reaching beyond the previous one.

It will probably be missions from third arm churches in third world nations that will mop up the missionizing of the last people groups still resistant to the gospel. So all nations will receive the gospel and Jesus will come. Maranatha!

My own sense of spiritual lineage is as follows. As a Vineyard pastor I tell our people that we are heirs of the whole. Our position within the body of Christ is as follows. We are Catholics (part of the one, historic, universal Church). We are Protestants (committed to justification through faith and sola scriptura). We are Baptists (part of the radical reformation, particularly with reference to church membership), evangelicals (as understood in terms of the great ‘evangelical awakenings’), Pentecostals (in the specific sense that we are noncessationist as to the gifts and empowering of the Holy Spirit), and ‘third wave’ (part of the postcharismatic movement, the most recent wave of the Spirit which has reached back into evangelical churches).

In summary, we are called to be kingdom people! A contemporary revelatory experience, especially one that is used to propagate doctrine, must be received and digested within this historic context. The problem with Gnostic spirituality and especially the kind which flows from the influence of Kenyon is that people take themselves too seriously and tend to ‘absolutize’ their own sense of revelation. Such arrogance fails to appreciate that many others have passed this way before, often with far more discernment than we have.

APPENDIX – QUOTATIONS FROM EW KENYON

Kenyon’s views on his major doctrines are organized in terms of my own analysis of the major issues presented by his theology. First the reference is given and then his statement follows. Sometimes the text or subject he is commenting on is stated, followed by a hyphen, followed by his comments. Apart therefore from what comes before the hyphen, or is in the heading of the section, all the words are his. The quotations cover the following subjects.

Dualism, Knowledge, The Canon, His writings and Christianity, Man, The Fall, Christ, The Atonement, Justification, Righteousness, Repentance, Sons/Servants, The New man, Triumphalism, Healing, Prosperity, Confession, Faith, Prayer, Elitism, The Resurrection, God and the Church.

Bibliographical Code

A = The Bible in the light of Our Redemption

B = Advanced Bible Course

C = The Father and His Family

D = What Happened from the Cross to the Throne

E = The Hidden Man

F = In His Presence

G = The Two Kinds of Life

H = Two Kinds of Righteousness

I = Two Kinds of Faith

Dualism

There exists, according to the Scriptures, a spiritual realm as well as a physical. The Father, the Holy Spirit, the Angels, Satan and Demons, are all Spirit Beings. Our physical senses do not contact this spiritual realm. A18

The real powers today are spiritual. God is a spirit (John 4.24). Satan is a spirit (Ephesians 6.12). Man is a spirit (1Thessalonians 5.23). Man, as creation in the image of God, a higher being, is dependent upon a higher power than he for his spiritual life. He must partake either of God’s nature or of Satan’s nature. A28

We know that spiritual things are superior to physical things, for God, a spirit, created physical things. AI53

Let it be understood that spiritual forces are greater than physical. A Spirit created material substance, such as the world with all its minerals, metals and chemicals. This was brought into being by God, and God is a Spirit. A154

You see, the natural man’s mind receives all those impulses and knowledge from the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. They are all connected with his body, and his body is mortal, Satanruled. B247

Man is a spirit being. He is in God’s class. He is in Satan’s class. Satan is a spirit, as God and man are spirits. E150

Knowledge

The fact that there are two kinds of knowledge is one of the basic truths underlying the faith walk. A299300

We did not know that it solved the problem of Biblical interpretation. We did not know that it was the solution for the condition of the modern church. C13

Romans 8 - We have here the contrasting of two walks the walk by the flesh (senses) and the walk in the spirit ... ‘But you are not in the flesh (physical), but in the spirit .… For a long time I could not understand the Spirit’s using the term ‘flesh’, but now in the light of the two kinds of knowledge I can understand it. The man who has not been Born Again lives purely in the realm of the physical senses.C13

But we who have been Born Again have come back into our rightful realm, the normal realm ... It is the realm of the spirit the realm of Omnipotence; for man’s spirit is one with Him and the realm of faith, where words filled with Omnipotence call the things that are not as though they were and they become. A301

The mind of the old creation lives by sense evidence; the mind of the new, by the Word. A303

The word ‘flesh’, should have been translated ‘senses’. Then we could have understood it. You see the five senses seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and tasting are all physical doors that lead to the brain ... What we call the sins of the flesh are sins of the senses. They are sins connected with the physical body, and this body of ours is the laboratory where we have learned all we know of secular knowledge. B63

We have a new kind of knowledge Revelation knowledge. It is spiritual knowledge. It is knowledge that has come to us through the recreated spirit by acting on the Word and living in it. B64

Knowledge of what He has done; knowledge of what He is to do in us; knowledge of what we were; knowledge of what we may do with His ability. B97

You know that scripture is yours. You know that God is for you. You know that He is your Father ... you know that He has given us His own Nature ... You know who you are, what you are. You know Who is backing you up ...  B1745

The Greek word ‘epignosis’ is translated by Thayer ‘correct’, or ‘precise knowledge’. Young translates it ‘full knowledge’. That means exact, complete, correct, precise knowledge. E167

We call this ‘Revelation Knowledge’. It is obtained through our recreated spirits from the Word of God … So God, in His desire for man to know Him, has formulated His inner thoughts and purposes into words, which man can see with his sense of sight, and hear read or expound, with his sense of hearing. A2

Sense knowledge has taken the place of the Word of God in our lives. Jesus Christ has been manifested to man’s physical senses. 1 John  1.1,2 ‘That which we have handled concerning the Word of Life’. Jesus Christ took upon Himself a human body through which He was manifested to man. Man’s mind derives its knowledge through the sense of the physical body. The Father has never been manifested to these senses, as He is a Spirit being; therefore man’s mind can form no mental picture of him. A14

When a man has been born again, past sense knowledge of the life of Jesus Christ has taken the place that the Father should have had in his life. Because man could form a mental picture of Christ, he has developed the habit of praying to Christ, praising and worshipping Him alone. The renewing of the man’s mind by the Word of God, brings a consciousness of the Father to him that revolutionizes his life. A15

The senses bring the material to the mind, and reason draws its own conclusions from the material of sensation. Faith has died, the supernatural is lost, and Reason in born… In other words, Reason, the product of man’s senses, has always been enmity toward the knowledge of God, Faith, or any act that is above the realm of human ability. Civilization becomes a cultivation of the arts which please the senses. A35

Man knows nothing about Reality except that which he has gained through these senses. A290

We do know that man’s five senses limit him only to the knowledge of matter… It is because of this fact that materialism and atheism have developed. Man has said that there is nothing in the universe but matter and its properties… The source of man’s knowledge is the central nervous system of his physical body, and its limitations are the physical universe and matter alone… Thinking does not arise out of sense perception. Man has capacities for thinking, reasoning, reflecting and memorizing that are not based upon sense perception; yet man’s mental powers and reasoning faculties have only the material of sensation from which to draw their conclusions. D292

This senseruled mind is the companion of a recreated spirit, but the mind has never been renewed, so there is no real fellowship between the recreated spirit and the mind that is in contact with the world and largely ruled by it. B61

John 20.2429 gives us a picture of the senseruled Thomas… He was a sense knowledge believer. He had to see in order to believe… Now God in His great grace came down into the realm of the senses in the person of Christ. Then Christ arose from the dead and appeared among the disciples let them see Him, hear Him, and feel Him.B62

1 John 1.13 - This is sense knowledge. That was all right in the early church. During the first fifteen years, the early church lived largely in the realm of sense knowledge faith. We have many today that cannot believe beyond what their sense register… God let them see signs and wonders on the Day of Pentecost because they were babes, just newborn. They new nothing of the finished work of Christ. None of them believed or knew about His substitutionary work. That was to come later through the Pauline Revelation. B62

Although we could never prove that our senses are telling the truth, we do not for a moment question the fact. As Mr. R.A. Armstrong has said, ‘There are precisely analogous reasons for doubting whether there is any external world at all, whether there are any tables or chairs, any great cities and green fields, any wide waters and mighty mountains ... Although we could never prove that our senses do give us a true picture of reality ... we believe in the external world, because to do so works… We can apply this same test to this revelation that we have from God. Does it work? A298

The Creator has understood man’s need and has given to him a revelation of Himself. He has brought that Revelation down to the level of man’s senses that spiritually dead man might contact this revelation and through it come to a knowledge of his Creator the Bible. A295

Not only does the Scripture fail to teach that tongues is the evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but to make tongues the evidence of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling would be contrary to the law of God’s dealing with the New Creation… The speaking in tongues is a physical manifestation. It is an evidence to the senses of man. God has nowhere put a premium upon sense evidence or ever permitted us to trust it. He is a Faith God. The law of His dealings with man and with the New Creation is the Faith law. A263

Faith is not a creation of the intellect but of the human spirit: and when He says, ‘Believe in thy heart’, He means that our spirits act upon the Word. B35

The Canon

The Mosaic covenant had to do only with the senses. B63

We have seen in previous lessons that no man could actually be Born Again of the Spirit of God until the FatherGod had a legal right to impart His nature to spiritually dead man. God did not have a legal right to impart His Life to those Covenant people…. We have seen that natural man is limited in his knowledge to that which he gains through the five senses of his physical body. God must manifest Himself to Israel; His presence can be known to them only through their physical senses. A93

Exodus 19.925 gives to us the manifestation of God to His people. We notice that this manifestation of Himself was again on the level of their physical senses. They could see the smoke and fire and hear the voice of the trumpet which waxed loud. A98

Exodus 25.8 - His Presence must be manifested to their physical senses. A100

He requests the spirituallydead Israel to build Him a Tabernacle that He might dwell in their midst. A121

The spirituallydead Israelites could not Fellowship with God without first a covering being provided for them. A122

It is vitally important that we understand that the Ten Commandments were not written for Christians, the New Creation; neither is the law of the New Covenant written for men outside of Christ. B85

The problem that confronts the church now is, what is its relationship to the Old Covenant? It has no relationship ... No, the ten commandments were given to unrecreated man. They do not fit into the believer's life. D134

The rules for our daily walk are found in Jesus teachings and in Paul’s revelation… You are to walk, not as the sons of Abraham walked in the realm of the senses, but as a New Creation man you are to walk in the spirit. B86

1 John 1.12 - Man saw with his physical eyes Christ and His deeds… The knowledge that man possessed of Christ during His life on earth was gained purely by his physical senses… Matthew 16.1517 - It had come as a revelation from the Father. However, it was only a temporary Revelation, for when Peter saw with his sense of sight the death of Christ and perhaps His lifeless body, all hope fled from his heart. A162

The disciples knew the meaning of the Crucifixion of Christ, His Burial, and His Resurrection, only through their physical senses… They saw the stone rolled away from the tomb and the resurrected body of Christ. They saw Him ascend into Heaven. This physical knowledge, however, gave to them no insight into the meaning of the spiritual significance of Christ’s death, burial, and Resurrection. In the crucifixion of Christ, they saw only His physical suffering. They knew nothing of the spiritual suffering of Christ as His spirit was made sin. They knew not where Christ’s spirit was or what He was doing during the time His physical body lay in the tomb… This Revelation that was needed could not be given until after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to guide them into all truth. A163

In the four Gospels there is no substitutionary sacrifice taught. Had it been taught, no one would have understood it. Nowhere do any of the Gospels speak of Jesus’ being made sin on our behalf. The disciples ... they had only Sense Knowledge faith in Jesus… After the resurrection and His talk with them, they did not yet grasp the significance of His substitutionary sacrifice. Why? Because they were spiritually dead… No one could stand in the upper room and tell that group of 120 that Christ had died for their sins according to the scriptures, and that He had risen again for their justification. B110111

Jesus did not tell the disciples anything, so far as we know, about what was going to happen in the Upper Room. Neither did He tell them how to prepare themselves for it. D77

Paul - He dared to say  ... that God had prepared him, Paul, to be the instrument of God’s grace to unveil what He did in Christ from the time that He was made sin on the Cross until He sat down on God’s Right Hand. B115

No one knew the Father until Jesus introduced Him; no one knew Jesus until the Father had introduced Him. This introduction is given to us in Paul’s revelation. B117

But you say ‘What about that sentence in Luke where Jesus breathed on them and said ‘Receive ye the Holy Spirit’? … When he breathed on them, he touched their minds, just as they did under the First Covenant. It was not in any sense their receiving the Holy Spirit as you and I receive Him today, or as they received Him on the Day of Pentecost… No one knew anything about Eternal Life. John’s Gospel had not yet been written. B225

The first fifteen years of the early Church was lived in the Sense realm altogether. They didn’t have the written Word. They only had what was spoken by the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. B211

But we remember that no man was saved by Jesus’ teaching. No one ever really knew the Father through His unveiling and introducing the Father ... The fact is, there is almost nothing taught about the New Creation. B278

The miracles of Jesus were all performed in the Sense Realm. The Disciples and followers of Jesus believed only in the things that they saw, heard, felt, or experienced in the physical realm. D111

Don’t misunderstand me. You cannot be guided by the teaching of John the Baptist and of Jesus as recorded in the four Gospels in regard to any experience, unless that teaching of the four Gospels is confirmed, explained, elucidated in the Pauline Revelation, or with Peter’s and John’s unveiling in their Epistles. E91

I question if Jesus had any other revelation of the Father. His revelation was not any greater or any clearer than that given to the sons and daughters of God in the Pauline Revelation. E105

To Paul was given the Revelation of the Substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ ... John’s Gospel wasn’t written until after 110 AD, so that all the revelation that John had was not known until after the Gospel of John had been written. B223

John and Peter and James give practically no new material. They all grew out of the teachings of Jesus in His earth walk… But when we read the Pauline Revelation, we get no such consciousness of that. We are wading into new material Revelation Knowledge. B245

The Pauline Revelation will forever stand as the most marvelous document ever put into print. There are more than one hundred distinct teachings that no one had ever dreamed of before. D118

John had a Sense Knowledge conception of Jesus. God had given to Paul a Revelation of Jesus. D116

The first eight chapters of Romans are written in the realm of Sense Knowledge, so that Sense Knowledge man can know how to become a child of God. But he cannot understand Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, which were written that we, as Believers, should be led into all the knowledge of our rights and privileges in Christ. E169

His writings and Christianity

Should have been written 400 years ago. D Title Page

The Biological Miracle of the Age. The Solution of the Social and Economic Problems Facing the Nation. G Title Page

We believe that this book has the solution of the individual problem, the national problem, and the world problem ... It has the solution of the problems which the Church is facing today. G1

One said who read the manuscript, ‘That book should be read by the leaders of our Nation’. D203

This book will blaze a new path in constructive interpretation of the Pauline Revelation. It uncovers many new veins of primary truths long covered by sense knowledge interpretation of the Word.

Many believe that this message is a forerunner of a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit with a revival such as the nation has never known. D9

This new order of Life, this new type of Christianity that has unveiled to us the truth about sense knowledge and has made us Masters in the Name of Jesus over the forces that have held us in bondage all our lives, has become a Living Reality. E93

There is room for a new psychology, but it will not be called psychology it would be Spiritology. It is knowledge of the activities and operations of the recreated human spirit in its relation to the renewed mind. E94

Did the pioneers like Luther, Calvin, Arminius and the Wesley’s have the whole truth? … Here is a new approach to the heart of Redemption… We believe that the age of sense knowledge doctrines is past… When I discovered that the apostles who were in close companionship with the Master knew nothing of the real mission of the man, I was staggered… They did not know what happened on the cross, or during the three days and nights before His resurrection, but we must know of these three days, for this is the thing that will build faith in us. The mystery is hidden in these three days. D1112

As I have studied Calvinism, I have seen with amazement that it is but a sense knowledge philosophy that seeks to cover itself with scriptural quotations. Arminianism is the same. E90

It is not a desirable task to array one’s self against the common teachings of the Church, especially of those who are among the most devout and deeply zealous of all the Family of God, and I know that my readers recognize that I do not come to these great experimental teachings of the Church with the spirit of resentment or hostility, but as a fellowmember of the body of Christ, who believes he has an answer to these problems that have agitated the Church during the last hundred years. C159

He has given us through Christ the ministry of reconciliation; not the ministry of condemnation which we have had for the last hundred years ... We have kept them conscious of their weakness and failings. We have preached sin instead of Eternal Life. B286

The failure of Christianity is not the failure of the nature of God in man, but it is because man has substituted church organization for the New Creation. Sense knowledge has gained the supremacy in the church, and Jesus is no longer Lord or Head of the Church. Worldlyminded men rule most of the churches. B89

Thinking men and women of this age have been rebelling against the orthodox interpretation of the Bible as presented in denominational creeds… There is almost no coherence of doctrine in any of our great denominational bodies. C9

James 1.56 - This is the babe in Christ… You go to our orthodox churches and you will hear these babes crying for faith, for wisdom, and praying for deliverance, for their healing, for this and for that. What is the matter with them? They have never read the Pauline Revelation. They do not know anything much about it. B161

God is Love ... man is to be filled with ‘agape’. It has never been taught. The church has never majored it in its teachings or creeds. B165

The church is under bondage today to the blend of Hinduism, Grecian philosophy, and the Christianity that we find during the Middle Ages. All that Luther saw was justification by Faith. He had no clear conception of a New Birth, or righteousness, of God as a Father, or of our place as sons and daughters of God. B291

The Churches are simply orphan asylums of fatherless children who are seeking blindly to get into heaven, and while they stay on earth they try to get Him to bless and help ... They have imbibed the servant spirit, and they talk about being servants of God, but never about being sons. And whenever they speak of the New Birth, they speak of it as adoption not as birth. They have not partaken of the divine nature ...  C183

If I am a Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or if I belong to the Pentecostal folk, I can only teach the message that their creed permits. Anything outside of that is questionable.

The old line denominations that have creeds, written or unwritten, have not admitted a new truth in fifty years. They have nothing but the things that their forefathers gave them. E171

Man

Man belongs to God’s class. He is an eternal personality. Before he committed sin, he had Dominion over all angels and demons. C34

In other words, when man was created he was made as near like Deity as it was possible for Deity to create him. C32

In order to partake of God’s life, he must be in God’s class, in God’s realm. He must be made in the image and likeness of his Creator. He must be created as near like Deity as possible, in order to be God’s child and heir… I Thessalonians 5.23 - Paul in his revelation disclosed the fact that man is a triune being, consisting of a spirit, soul and body. The spirit is the real man, created in the image of God. The soul includes the reasoning faculties. The FatherGod created man in His own image, a spirit being, with a soul and body. Man’s soul and body fit him for life upon this material universe which has been created for him… The real man is spirit. Man was to walk in fellowship with the FatherGod in His realm, which is the realm of the spirit… Your body is not you. Your mind is not you. You have a mind which you use. You possess a body which you use. Your mind and body are merely the instruments of your spirit, the real YOU. A1718

The physical body is not the man, it is the temporary dwelling place for the man. E12

Man is a spirit and possesses a soul and has a body. C45

His soul and spirit constitute his personality. Above this soul is he, himself, spirit. This is the real man. This spirit operates through the soul, and it in turn operates through the physical body. The man and his soul live in a body. At death the Man and his Soul leave that body and go to their home. C46

Man is a spirit, and there must be an eternal spirit home for man. A42

We conclude that man is primarily a spirit being, created to walk with the FatherGod on his level. We realize that when He created man, God had no body; yet man’s fellowship was perfect and complete with Him… This reveals that man’s body was subordinate to his spirit, and that his spirit was to dominate. Man’s spirit was to rule his mind and his body. The spirit operates through the soul or intellect, and these in turn operate through the physical body… At death the man and his soul leave the body. When man has left his body, the body has no reason for existing; therefore, dissolution and disintegration set in at once. A19

Man was an eternal spirit being in God’s class, with an eternal human body. Man was created as nearly like the FatherGod as was possible. A20

If he were but a physical being he could not receive God’s nature. If he were but a mental being, he could not receive God’s nature. He had to be a spirit being, an eternal being who would live as long as God lives. Man had to be in God’s class. E7

His spirit was being made the prisoner of his five senses. The Psalmist cried, ‘Bring my soul out of prison’ (Psalm 142.7). The Hebrew word should have been translated ‘spirit’ instead of ‘soul’. E8

Hebrews 1.3 gives to us a suggestion as to the way Adam ruled God’s creation. Jesus now upholds all things by the Word of His power. Adam ruled creation by his word. His voice was like the voice of his Creator in its dominion over creation. Adam possessed such complete authority over creation that he had in his hands the legal right to confer that dominion to another being. A21

A low conception of the creation in Adam has given to us a low conception of the new creation in Christ. A22

Before the fall - Hitherto man had walked in the Spirit realm of his Creator. His spirit had dominated and ruled. It had been the Faith realm, the realm of Omnipotent power where faith spoke words into being and substance (Romans 4.17).  It was the realm of Him who called the things that are not, as though they were. Adam had walked as the underruler of the One who had framed the worlds out of the things which are not, by faith in His word (Hebrews 11.3). A34

Man had been created so nearly like God that it was possible for God and man to become united eternally in one individual. It was possible that God and man become united.

If the Incarnation is a fact, Christianity is supernatural. Every man who has been born again is an Incarnation. The believer is as much an Incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth. God can now eradicate Spiritual Death from the spirit of man and give man His Life, because the claims of Justice have been met in Christ. A151

Today, man still hungers for an Incarnation… Certain modern cults that teach that man is Divine and that God by nature dwells in man and is awaiting man’s recognition of the fact, receive a great following from the more intellectual and educated classes. A155

Theosophy tries to make us believe that all men have the nature of Deity ... That the socalled ‘Spark of Divinity’ dwells in all men, that the New Birth is simply the awakening, the blowingintoaflame, of this spark of Divinity… The entire New Testament contradicts this. C99

Psychology has called this inward man of the heart a subconscious mind. They have recognized that ‘conscience’ was a voice from an inward personality… This subconscious mind is the real man. This real man, the spirit, is like God. It never grows old. It is neither mortal nor immortal. It is eternal… The body is mortal and will become immortal at the coming of the Lord Jesus. The senses that convey all knowledge to the human reason belong to the body and they will grow old with the body… It is evident that before man fell in the Garden, his spirit dominated his reasoning faculties. After he fell, the senses gained the ascendancy. B181

The word ‘heart’ is used simultaneously with the word ‘spirit’. B182

You understand that the human spirit can be developed as spiritualists have developed it; as it has been developed in many Christian Scientists and teachers of the occult. The human spirit is capable of marvelous development before it is recreated as well as after… It is a strange fact that the church has never sought to develop the human spirit, the recreated human spirit. It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on developing the mind that receives all its impulses and knowledge from the senses; and it has spent vast fortunes of money in developing the physical body; but the real man, this ‘hidden man of the heart’ has never been developed. B183

We discover that there are three kinds of spirit development… Natural man can develop his spirit until it becomes a force in him. We see this in Christian Science, Unity, Spiritualism and other psychological religions. This is the natural, unregenerated human spirit being cultivated… Then there are demonized spirits, men who are controlled by evil spirits… The third kind of Spirituality is that of the New Creation spirit, for a man becomes a New Creation by receiving the Life and nature of God. E26

The Fall and Satan

Deity must assume the liability of the Fall of humanity. God must have known that man would Fall when He created him. Man was created in the face of that fact. Universal humanity has demanded that Deity assume the liability for the Fall. A Substitute must be provided, actually taking man’s place ... Only then could God be vindicated. D21

Deity must suffer for man. God had created a man in the face of the fact that He knew he would fall. The responsibility of such a creation rested on the FatherGod. He must provide a Redemption. The only way for humanity to be given Righteousness is the Incarnation of God’s own son. A45

God stands acquitted before the tribunal of universal human consciousness in that He did not leave man after his treason without means of salvation… Second, God is just to the Devil; nowhere does God take advantage of the Devil ...  C113

What was the nature of man’s original sin? … It could not have been broken law, for there had been no law given, as we understand the term, from its connection with the law of Moses… Having found that man was invested with such far reaching authority, that he possesses an intellect of such calibre as to be the companion of Deity, and that he had in his hands the joy or sorrows of God, we can understand now the nature of the sin he committed. A25

The sin of Adam was the crime of High Treason… Adam turned this legal dominion over into the hands of God’s enemy, Satan. This sin is unpardonable ... Adam’s transgression was done in the white light of absolute knowledge. He was not deceived by Satan. He understood the steps that led to the crime. His wife, Eve, was deceived, but Adam became the Benedict Arnold of Eternity… It is thought by some that the serpent originally moved upright like a man, and that it was beautiful to look upon, and perhaps possessed organs of speech. To certain extents naturalists confirm this… We have come to one of the most interesting features of the Plan of Redemption. Satan’s dominion over Creation. A26

When Adam committed High Treason against God and turned this dominion and authority over into the hands of Satan, Satan took Adam’s lease, and consequently Satan’s dominion will last as long as Adam’s would have lasted had he not sinned. C70

... it was a legal transference. It was so legal that God was obliged to recognize its legality ...  C57

Adam evidently had a legal right to transfer this dominion and authority into the hands of the enemy. God has been obliged through the long period of human history to recognize Satan’s legal standing, and legal right and authority, and on this ground and this only, can we understand the legal side of the Plan of Redemption. C38

He has become a partaker of the Satanic nature, for Paul tells us that ‘we are by nature children of wrath’. ..That nature was breathed into his spirit by the Devil, and man became a subject of Satan. C41

Man becomes deathdoomed, Satan’s servant. He is born again. C37

Luke 4.67 - Satan said, ‘It hath been delivered unto me’. We know that this authority was not given to Satan by God. A27

Most of our teaching in regard to the Fall of man has centred in the entrance of Physical Death. We have seen in our last lesson that the real man is the spirit, and that he was to walk in fellowship with God, a spirit being. It was into this spirit of man, created in the image of God, that Death entered. By the term, ‘Spiritual Death’, we do not mean that man ceased to be a spirit being. A28

Sin basically is a spiritual thing, so it must be dealt with in the spirit realm. D47

There is no understanding in our minds of the condition and problem of humanity without our knowing that Spiritual Death, the nature of Satan, reigns in the spiritual man. It is very clear that when Spiritual Death entered the life of Adam, his spirit underwent a complete change. Man was actually born again when he sinned. He was born of Satan. He became a partaker of satanic nature. He became a child of Satan. Read 1 John 3.12; John 5.24; 1 John 3.1415 & Ephesians 2.15. A30

Satan’s nature breathed into his spirit A33

Satan desired to rule this world. He desires the position man held. He gained it by becoming man’s ruler. He became man’s ruler by imparting his nature to man and becoming to man what God should have been, his father (Genesis 2.1517; 3.124). A218

Spiritual Death caused man to cease walking in the realm of his spirit. A34

All human suffering is the result of Satan’s lordship over humanity. Human suffering may be caused by the cruelty and selfishness of others, by our own sins, by sickness, by circumstances, yet it may all be traced to the reign of Satan. A226

Christ

Christ’s ministry necessitated His becoming man in order to legally take man’s place. Therefore, He was revealed to the physical senses of man… 1John 1.12 - Christ as a man could be seen and touched by man ...  A252

For the same reason, the body of Christ was not mortal ... Therefore as He walked this earth His body was not subject to death. The Body of this Incarnate One was neither mortal nor immortal. He possessed a perfect eternal human body, the kind of body that Adam had before he died spiritually… When He was made to be sin (2 Corinthians 5.21) for us, His spirit underwent a change. Spiritual death was laid upon it, and His body became mortal as did Adam’s when he died spiritually. A159

Christ has no contact with the world today except through His Body. He cannot work independently of it. If our lives are not filled with the Holy Spirit so that He can work freely through us, we tie the hands of Deity… The implication is that His life cannot be made complete except as it finds expression through us. There is something lacking in it except as it works through our lives. A269

We note here that the Holy Spirit does not reveal the earthly Christ to man ... It is the glorified Christ at the Father’s right hand whom the Holy Spirit reveals… He has revealed to us all of Christ’s ministry that could not be disclosed to the senses of man. He is the One who gave to Paul the tremendous revelation of the substitutionary sacrifices of Christ, His conquering of Satan in Hell, His entrance into the Holy of Holies with His own blood, having obtained Eternal Redemption for man, and His present ministry at the Father’s right hand. A271

The Atonement

God has vindicated Himself and stands acquitted before the human race because He did not leave man in this condition, but provided a Redemption which man could enjoy through faith in Jesus Christ, that would answer man’s every need. A41

When man sinned, he became a partaker of Satan’s nature; and, as a result of his transgression, he must be incarcerated in Hell. Someone must go there and pay his penalty so that man can be given Eternal Life and a standing before God as though he had never sinned. A43

Man must be given authority by which he can meet Satan and conquer him in honorable combat. A44

This man must then act as man’s substitute. Man’s sin, spiritual death itself, must be laid upon this man. Then the judgement of Satan must fall upon Him. He must meet the demands of Justice. In order to do this, He must go to Hell. He must remain there, under judgment, until every legal requirement of Justice has been fully satisfied against the human race. A45

If we could understand that the physical suffering of Jesus didn’t touch the sin problem, that His earth walk didn’t touch the sin problem, that His teaching didn’t touch the sin problem. B278

If Jesus paid the penalty of Sin on the cross, then Sin is but a physical act. If His death paid it, then every man could die for himself… When Jesus died, His spirit was taken by the Adversary, and carried to the place where the sinner’s spirit goes when he dies. D47

What was the nature of His suffering? Was it mental, physical, or in some inexplicable way, spiritual? It could not have been mental, because He and the Father planned it… It could not be physical, because sin is not a physical thing ... You see, man deals only in the sense knowledge realm. God deals in the spiritual realm. D59

We have sung ‘Nearer the Cross’, and we have prayed that we might be nearer the cross; but the cross has no salvation in it. It is a place of failure, a place of death, a place where Jesus was made sin, a place where God forsook Jesus, turned His back upon Him after He had made Him sin ... So for us to sing, ‘Jesus, keep me near the cross’, is for us to be kept near failure and defeat. B279

Therefore, His identification with the spirit nature was during His Crucifixion, when the time came for Him to fulfil the purpose for which He had come into the world… He not only bore our sins, but the sinnature itself was laid upon Him, until He became all that spiritual death had made man. A165

He cried, ‘It is finished’, and yields up His Spirit. He does not mean that His substitutionary work is finished ... It did mean that as a man, and a Jew, He had fulfilled the Mosaic Law. C135

When He cried ‘It is finished’, it was the end of the Abrahamic Covenant. D48

When this happened, spiritual death, the nature of Satan, took possession of His Spirit. D20

Christ did not have sin reckoned to Him. He was made to be sin ... We have righteousness imparted to us… His spirit absolutely became impregnated with the sin nature of the world. D63

As His spirit left His physical body and went into Hell we were identified with Him… He did not say, ‘I will be with you in Paradise today’, but, ‘I am telling you today, I will meet you in Paradise’. A170

Ps 88 gives to us the picture of a righteous man in Hell upon whom all the wrath of God lay hard. The wrath of God lay hard upon Him, because He was one with us in identification. A166

The word for Hell in the Hebrew is Sheol. C75

... you don’t see sin put away. That comes after He has left His body and goes to the place where the wicked should go and will go if they reject Him. There, for seventy two hours, or three days and three nights, He suffered until the claims of justice were full met. B280

So, after Christ had been declared righteous in His spirit, because our penalty was paid, He was made alive… Our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection in reality means this. It is as though Adam had gone to Hell, suffered the judgment that was due him and had been released, freed from the bondage of spiritual death, legally acquitted from his crime of high treason, and given the right to receive Eternal Life and walk in fellowship with God. A171

The first creation was brought forth in a paradise, fresh from the hands of the Creator. The New Creation in Christ was brought forth in Hell. Hell had been prepared for Satan and his hosts, and in this dread place the Son of God suffered until the claims of justice had been paid. Then He was made alive out of death and we were legally made alive with Him. A180181

Jesus was born into the New Covenant in Hades. D89

After Christ had been released from Satan’s authority, the next step was to put off from Himself the forces of Satan. A173

After Christ’s spirit had been freed from Hell, He entered His body, raised it to immortality. A174

His soul was not left in Hell. Ac 2.27, ‘Because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hell’. A181

He had died spiritually. He had partaken of Satan’s nature that we had… Then he was recreated, became the firstborn out of death the Head of the New Creation and we are His workmanship, created that morning down in that dread place made New Creations in Jesus Christ. B150

He left Satan, as far as the believer is concerned, a paralytic. B151

He was made alive twice, in spirit and in His body. His spirit was made alive and His body immortal. He was the first person that was ever Born Again, the only One who has Immortality now. B281

Justification/Sanctification/The New Man

The reckoned righteousness becomes real righteousness the moment we receive Eternal Life and become God’s sons and daughters. B154

‘I am come that they might have life and have it abundantly’. The word ‘life’ is from the Greek word ‘Zoe’. It means God’s Divine Nature… The instant you believe you become a possessor of the Father’s nature. You become as much a child of God as Jesus was in His earth waLuke  B31

II Pet 1.4 says that he made us ‘partakers of the Divine Nature’. B45

Redemption must be the giving of a New Nature, a New Life to man. Redemption meant a New Creation in the spirit of man. Man’s need can only be met by his receiving the Nature of God within his spirit. First, spiritual death must be absolutely destroyed in the life of man. The nature of Satan must be completely eradicated from man’s nature, so that he can stand as free from Satanic authority as though he had never died spiritually. A38

The man who has been born again stands before the Father as Christ stood in His earthwalk, and has the same freedom from Satanic dominion and ability to please the Father, as Christ had. Read John 17.1418,2223; 1 Corinthians 1.30. A39

Man’s need can only be met by his receiving Eternal Life, the Nature of God ... Therefore, as the FatherGod undertakes the redemption of man, independent of man’s own works, the first problem He faces is man’s need of Righteousness. A41

Second, God must act towards Satan on grounds of absolute justice. God must redeem man from his authority on legal grounds. A42

God, in restoring righteousness to man, must not take advantage of Satan. Adam’s sin of High Treason gave Satan a legal right to rule creation, and made man his legal subject and slave. God, in His omnipotence, is stronger that Satan, but He must strip him of his authority in such a way that he is dealt with justly. A43

Then God must take man’s sinnature, ... and the wrath and indignation of Eternal Justice must be meted out toward Him. A46

As far as the New Creation is concerned, Satan has no existence. A182

We have seen that an actual New Creation takes place within his spirit when he receives Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Spiritual death is eradicated from his spirit, and he is taken completely out of Satan’s dominion of death. Then eternal life, the nature of God, is imparted to his spirit. This is the New Creation that takes place. His spirit is begotten of God… Being blessed with every spiritual blessing means union with Deity, being brought back into the realm of Deity, the realm of Omnipotence. This results in every need of man being met, whether it be a mental, physical, or material need. A185

Vine illustration - The branch is just as much a part of the Vine as the Vine is a part of the branch. B56

You cannot separate God’s nature from His ability, so when He imparted His nature to us, He expected that we would let that nature loose in us. It would then govern our entire intellectual processes, and our minds would be renewed in Him. B57

He is a possessor of the very Nature of the Father, and that Nature has given him righteousness, so he lives and walks in fearless quietness. B231

You can walk into the Father’s presence any time with boldness. B233

Righteousness

We become partakers of the Divine Nature; so that we are righteous by nature and righteous by faith. H17

The only righteousness the church has known has been the Calvinistic type that made an unworthy man righteous… This is not a legal righteousness, nor a reckoned righteousness, but the actual impartation of God’s own righteous nature. H27

You know that the secret of Jesus dominion over demons, over the laws of nature, over the works of the Adversary, was because He was Righteous. Now you have become Righteous with His Righteousness ...  B39

Righteousness, or the ability to stand in the Fathers’s presence without a sense of guilt or inferiority stand there without condemnation or the sense of sin consciousness. B 41, 72, 104, 130, 142, 177, 217, 229, 255, 299, 304, 305, 311; C 219; D 152; E 115, 124, 173, 206; F 16, 41, 44, 83, 105, 207;  G 139; H 9, 21, 28, 31, 45, 52; I 26, 68, 101, 113

Righteousness gives him the sense of equality and of relationship with the Father. D129

If He had sons and daughters with whom He could not fellowship on terms of equality, there would be no satisfaction in it ...  I101

You have become partakers of the divine nature. D 152; E 10, 173, 194, 200; F 37, 38, 44, 61, 129, 154, 170, 180, 196, 197; G 101, H 17

The believer has the very Nature of God. F201

We are partakers of His Nature, of His very substance and Being. F206

... the very essence and substance of Deity. G82

You are one with Him just as that bay is one with the ocean, because the tides flow into the bay. You are linked with God. God and you are identified. G18

The Son, by taking a human body, forever linked humanity with Deity, proving that Deity can partake of humanity just as much as humanity can partake of Deity… If Jesus is the union of Deity and humanity the two forms of life mingling and becoming one then man can partake of God’s Nature, God’s very Substance and Being and become one in relationship with God. G3738

Fellowship is based upon Righteousness. Fellowship means ‘sharing together’. Marriage is a good illustration. It is partnership ... It is an equal exchange, both giving of their best. F85

God and you are working together in carrying out His dream for the Redemption for the world. He can’t get along without you, any more than you can get along without Him. F185

We know that we have a right to associate and fellowship with the Father on terms of utter equality, because Jesus is our Righteousness ...  G17

Eternal Life makes man Righteous. G16

There is no such thing as growth in Righteousness. There is growth in the knowledge of what Righteousness means. There is growth in acting as though we were Righteous. There is growth in faith in our Righteousness. H62

We are Righteous from the time we are Born Again. H63

Righteousness here means the ability to live in the Father’s presence as I live in the presence of people here in the office, without any sense of inferiority or condemnation or guilt. B118

The moment that the unsaved man says, ‘I take Jesus as my Saviour and as my Lord’, he is made a New Creation. Not only is righteousness reckoned to him, but he has the righteousness of God. B120

... by his New Birth he becomes the Righteousness of God in Christ… We have made sanctification a hobby and a doctrine and a part of our creeds, and we have said that sanctification was something that we obtained because we prayed and surrendered and consecrated ourselves until God was able to sanctify us. That is Sense Knowledge interpretation. We can’t do anything; neither did God ask you to do anything to make you worthy. B121

If you have Eternal Life, you have the nature of God. If you have the Nature of God, you have Righteousness. If you have righteousness, you have sanctification. B122

Repentance

Man’s part is to confess the Lordship of Christ. This is the highest order of repentance. Repentance is not weeping or crying over sins committed in the past. A man may be sorry for the way in which he has lived; although the reign of sin is the result of Satan’s lordship over his life… Repentance is deeper than that. Repentance is to turn from Satan’s rule, from following him, to the Lordship of Christ. A227

God does not condemn a man because of what he does, but because of what he is, and convicts him of only one sin, the sin of rejecting Christ, the choosing to remain a child of Satan. A266

That transgression must be punished, and if man is restored to God, it must be upon grounds that will not pauperize man nor rob him of his self respect; but it must be upon legal grounds that will perfectly justify man in the sight of God and give him as good a standing as though he never had sinned. C115

Our preaching to the unsaved to believe and believe is unwise… Don’t mention ‘believe’ or ‘believing’ to him. If you do, you confuse him. You understand what God means by believing, but he doesn’t. B123

All that Jesus did in His Substitutionary Sacrifice is the private property of the individual for whom Jesus did it. The sinner does not need to beg God to save him. I59

He does not even ask us to be sorry that we were sinners. Why? We were not to blame for being sinners. Is a man to blame for being born in a certain country? No. He had nothing to do with it. We had nothing to do with our sin condition. We could not even help committing the sins we committed. They were the outgrowth of a condition of sin in our nature. I9293

The unsaved man does not need to ask for Jesus as a Savior. Jesus belongs to the unsaved man. I114

Servants/Sons

First covenant - They were redeemed as servants; we are redeemed as sons. B43

I notice that nowhere in the Pauline Revelation is man called a servant of God but once. And that is an interpolation. It should be ‘a servant of Jesus Christ’. Let me give you a new translation that perfectly fits the thing. ‘Paul a love slave of Jesus Christ’. D153

You are not a servant. You are not a slave. You are a son. You are taking Jesus’ place, acting in His stead, doing the Father’s will. F31

The New Man as Super Man

Of the Recreated Human Spirit - This phase of teaching has never been majored by our theological thinkers. It is the crux of the whole Pauline Revelation, the ultimate toward which all of God’s plans move. B285

Man’s physical body is not Born Again. Man’s spirit is the real man. It is the part that is Born Again. B226

Christianity is ... union with Deity… What is Eternal Life? It is the Nature of God. Well, if I have the Nature of God, why can’t I do God’s works? B136

John 17.21 - You and Jesus are utterly one ... identified. B146

You and He are one; and He is the greater part of that one. F50

The new creation man is a partaker of God’s nature. He is really an Incarnation. He has received the nature and life of God ... If this doesn’t constitute a superman, then I don’t know what a superman is. F61

You are as much His child as Jesus was. B241

Jesus had no better Righteousness that we have, because God is our Righteousness. Jesus had no better fellowship that we have, because our fellowship has been wrought by God, Himself. F75

The more that I study the life of Jesus, I am convinced that He did not exercise divine power in excess of what every intelligent child of God possesses today. The difference is that Jesus knew what belonged to Him and Jesus used his rights. F21

He was the Son of God. You are a son of God. He was Deity. You are a partaker of the Divine Nature, that is Deity. He had the Holy Spirit dwelling in Him. You have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you. The difference is that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit right of way in a sense of which we have never yet learned. He took advantage of the Godlife within Him in a way that we have never been able to take advantage of the Godlife within ... and that the hour is coming before the Lord’s return in which a remnant of the body will rise and walk before God the Father in the fullness of the New Creation Life. Disease will not be able to lay hold upon us. F223

He is just as much a part of God as Jesus was a part of God, just as much a part of God as the branch is a part of the vine. E207

We are as much a part of Jesus as He and the Father are a part of each other. His very substance and being is in us. D150

His Life and your life are blended into one. You have received His nature. D174

It puts them over into the same class with Jesus as conquerors… You are a recreated son of God, a master of demons. In the mind of the Father you are utterly one with Jesus. B310

When you received Eternal Life you received the very thing that makes Jesus what He is. You received of the Father His very Nature; so if you have received into your spirit that which makes God what He is, you are like him… Jesus and Paul spoke the Father’s words. That is what made Jesus Omnipotent. The same Omnipotence is in the Pauline Revelation for us. B311

The New Creation is a Godman, born of heaven. B288

He has granted us ... that we have become partakers of His very Nature. That nature is called Eternal Life ...  That life is the substance and being of God. Who knows what that might mean if it could be harnessed, utilized by every man who has received it? The creative ability manifested in creation has been granted to us… Heathen nations do not have it. That is the reason there have been no creative inventions in any of the heathen countries until Christ has been revealed to the people, until they have received the Nature of God. The German, Scandinavian, and AngloSaxon peoples were not creative until this Nature of God was given to them. B93

We know that inspirations like poetry are not the product of cold reason. Poetry comes leaping, thrillingly touching our whole being. Where does it come from? Out of our spirits ... our recreated spirits are the mothers of every Invention… And we have the background for a supermind a superman. You have perfect knowledge. The Greek word, ‘Epignosis’, means more than knowledge. It is a perfect, exact, and complete knowledge and spiritual wisdom that God gives us, so that we can understand how to use the elements around us to advantage. Here is a new realm for serious men and women. We are really become supermen. B95

When you know that you are tied up with Him and that He is back of you, it gives you a sense of superiority. B38

You may not know it, but His ability is our ability; and we know this: that no country where the Bible has not gone has ever had a patent law. They do not need one, for they have never created anything. But we New Creation folks have the mind of Christ, and the ability of Christ (2 Corinthians 2.16). B56

We show the world that we are absolutely masters in Christ. B77

It is sin for us to be commonplace. It is wrong for us to be weak. It is a lack of wisdom for us to depend longer upon simple Sense Knowledge when we have the ability of God to put us over… What is He going to teach us? All things. That would include mechanics and mathematics. That would include mineralogy, the treasures hidden in the earth. We become masters of the mysteries that surround us. B97

We don’t have to have prayer for wisdom as James tell us; but as we meditate in the Word, this revelation is the wisdom of God. B118

He healed them all. Jesus was a Superman. B134

Not only was He a Superman in His earth walk, but He is the head of the ‘superrace’. B135

Jesus was the Master of the law of Nature. He intended that the believers should be the master of the law of Nature… His words on your lips make you a master of demons. That is a superman! B139

Jesus - He was utterly unconscious of the need of anything ... He had no sense of fear or sin, no sense of need of any kind ... He was unconsciously the Master of every circumstance. He ruled the forces of Nature like God ... All of Nature recognized Him as Master. B141

You will find that the people through whom Satan persecutes you for righteousness’ sake will suffer. You will outlive them. It will be a bitter thing to you to see them go down one after another, but they cannot touch you ... You stand invincible. You are the righteousness of God in Christ ... You are a partaker of His Divine Nature. B155

But you say, ‘That doesn’t agree with modern teaching. For instance, believers are struggling with their sin nature… They figure that they are onehalf alive, onehalf recreated, but that they are under the dominion of their old nature. B159

Many believe that when a man is born again he receives Eternal Life but that the old nature is not removed, and that these natures war with each other in the new creation. C153

If man is not a New Creation but simply receives a New Nature plus the old Nature, we are led into a strange dilemma. We know that the old nature is Satanic Nature, Spiritual Death, then the man who has received this New Nature has two Natures, the Nature of God and the Nature of the Devil ... One is Doctor Jekyll, and the other is Mr.Hyde ... To follow this out logically, one half of man can go to Hell, and the other half, to Heaven… The New Birth is a hybrid, a bitter failure. C157

Sin does not dwell in the believer. C154

There is in the world today an abundance of sickness. There is the very fullness of Satan. It is so apparent everywhere. Men are filled with the devil. A new order is coming, however. Man is to be filled with God, filled with His Nature, His Life, His Being to be like Him, swayed by Him, ruled by Him. B165

Jesus is thrilled by your conduct toward men, and I can hear Him whisper, ‘Father, aren’t we glad that we made the sacrifice?’ B169

I have found this true, that a believer can so develop his spirit that in every crisis of his life his spirit can get the will of the Father instantly; and if he follows the leading of his spirit instead of his reasoning faculties, he never makes a mistake in the investment of his money or in the choosing of his companions. He would practically never step out of the Love Walk and the Love Realm. B184

The problem of sanctification in the New Testament is a problem of the body. C208

Sin operates altogether through the members of our bodies. By ‘members’ Paul and Jesus and James mean the tongue, the eyes, the ears, the hands, the feet, and the other organs of our bodies… The body itself is not wrong; there is no evil in it. It is only that you submit it to practises that are wrong. C207

If our spirits can gain the ascendancy over our bodies, they will keep our minds from ageing, and our bodies in a vigorous, healthy, youthful condition. B287

The old nature is driven out, and we are New Creations in spirit, just as Adam was a physical new creation in the Garden… The old nature of failure, of sin consciousness, that was ruled by the adversary and was a part of the adversary, has stopped being. A New Nature has taken its place. B254

The great achievements of our modern man are the product of Eternal Life in the spirit of man… The sons of clergymen and of outstanding Christians have been the great leaders of all the great moral, intellectual, and spiritual forces of our nation… We have learned that natural man in the heathen state, where he hasn’t contacted Christianity, has no love. He has sexattraction, and he has the same care for his children that wild animals have for their offspring until they are able to care for themselves, but he does not love. B294

We have found that Eternal Life is the creative ability in man ... Atomic power is an example of Divine genius ... It was Divine ability that taught us the secret of nuclear energy. This ability was not found in heathen lands, nor in countries of stateruled churches. E73

They have two children. Then they receive Eternal Life. Several children are born to them. As the children grow up, you can see a vast difference in them. The first two lack some element of fineness of spirit ... The other children respond ... There is refinement and culture in their spirits that the others do not have, though they are born of the same parents. G4

This is not a theory. This is an absolute fact. It is the most revolutionary fact connected with biology… It is the solution of the labor and capital problem. The capitalist who has received Eternal Life and walks in the Word can never take advantage of his employee. It would end the labor strikes and strife. G89

You will find in the majority of cases that those with creative ability have received Eternal Life or else have parents or grandparents who had it. G10

India, Japan, and China naturally have as fine intellects as the AngloSaxons; and yet they have never invented or created a new thing for thousands of years until Christianity has been carried to them. The same fact applies to the Germanic, AngloSaxon, and Scandinavian peoples. They never invented, they never created anything until they received Eternal Life… Aristotle and other philosophers of Greece did not give to the world a civilization. They did not give to the world a great educational system nor an age of electricity or mechanics. They didn’t discover. They never created. G7

Triumphalism

We have never realized that the tenses are often ruled by the senses. Most of our popular hymns are in the future or in the past tense. D103

When I read it, it is His present tense message to my heart, for the Word is always Now. The Father is always Now. D105

If you have Him in you, everything that you need is there on tap ready for use. D104

This righteousness makes a man actually one with Christ. It has given to man a creative ability, a dominating spirit. He is an overcomer. He is a master ... He has become an actual Jesus man. He takes Jesus’ place on earth. D15

Numbers - However, we do not give the books in this form of typology. Israel was spirituallydead, and tested by its wilderness experiences, utterly failed. This cannot be used as a type of the victorious walk and life of the man who has become a New Creation in Christ Jesus, who has passed absolutely from the realm and authority of Satan, into the realm of Life and Christ Jesus. A137

Because of our unrenewed minds and Satanic persecution, we sometimes sin and cause our fellowship to be broken. A206

The Lordship of Christ over a man’s life means that sin and disease are no longer issues. To the man who knows what the Lordship of Christ means, sin and disease are no longer problems at all. A229

There need be no more struggles with sin, no more battles with the Adversary, just an acting upon the Word of God… The dark period has had its influence upon the period from the Reformation to the present, so that it has been difficult for the church to see a complete Redemption. By reading any book on the experience of famous Christians in the past, we can see how the sin and weakness problem was majored in their lives, and how little they understood Redemption. The message of this Revelation is that God is clearly showing us that the sin problem is settled. A233

God shows us that the New Creation is freed from even the consciousness of sin. Hebrews 10.13… He had freed the New Creation from even the consciousness of sin. A234

You can’t be a failure, for His wisdom is your wisdom; His ability in every department of life is your ability. All you need is to study the Word ... Then He will give you the ability to use that knowledge to make your life a success. B55

You are another Jesus man or woman. You are not struggling to be righteous, you are not struggling to have faith. You have faith; you have the Word, and faith comes by the Word. The unsaved man may have to struggle to get faith, but you do not. B83

This inward man never grows old; and if we learn to take advantage of our rights in Christ there is no doubt that we would live to a great age. B185

There is offered to us an abundance of the Nature of God imparted to our spirits so that they will utterly dominate our mortal bodies. That would suggest a perfect physical body with no disease, Satan’s power and influence over it eliminated. What a wonderful thing it would be if there could be groups of believers who would develop this hidden man of the heart until it actually dominated the physical, the mortality would be swallowed up by life, God’s Life. B186

The old things of weakness and failure, or doubt and fear, have passed into forgetfulness. We take our place and enjoy our rights ... I have no sense of guilt or sin. D129

We bear about in our bodies the resurrection power of Jesus; the life of Jesus. D166

You can live from now on in the wonder land of the supernatural… There is no doubt but what God planned that the church should be composed of supermen and women. D168169

I did not have to struggle to get Wisdom because it was there on tap. D184

All you need to do is to touch the button  ... The ability of God is at your disposal. It is there with you. E1378

Colossians 2122 ‘to present you holy’ … This is not after we die, but today… This is a photo of our present walk in Christ. H38

Healing

Before we are able to understand healing we must understand the origin of disease, sickness and death. We have seen that as a result of Adam’s crime of High Treason Spiritual Death gained an entrance into the spirit of man… When Satan became the god of this world one of the results of his reign was the peopling of the air with disease germs so that from then to the present time disease microbes too small to be seen with the naked eye have been one of the greatest enemies of man. D210

Then we confidently believe that there is no such thing as separating sin from the disease problem. B262

A believer says this, ‘By His stripes I am healed’. The disease may be manifest in his body, yet he is acting upon the Word  which declares that by His stripes he is healed. It may be that after he had been prayed for, he has witnessed no healing; yet he says, ‘I am healed, because the Word declares that in Christ’s Name they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.’ A196

Your confession of your healing is imperative. B264

Sickness has come to the believer because of his lack of appreciation of what God has wrought for him in Christ. B265

Three classes of healing - For the unsaved (Mark 16.1720); For the babe (James 5.14); For the mature (1 Peter 2.24) … He does not ask anyone to pray for him. He knows that if he should ask anyone to pray for him he is repudiating the Word that Christ wrought for him. He knows that he is repudiating the Word ...  B265266

Doctors tell us that 95 percent of all hospital cases are women. A58

Today there exist at least three different attitudes toward healing among the Christians. One group teaches that healing is not for us today… Another group teaches that God heals today in answer to special prayer or a special prayer or a special act of faith, and that according to His own will in the matter… A third group teaches that healing for the body is the legal right of every child of God, and that he receives healing for his physical body upon the same grounds that he receives remission of sin for his spirit. A209

How many believers, because the Word does not prevail in them, live as common men? Disease and sickness prevail over them because they do not walk in the light of the Word … As long as sickness prevails over you, you are walking in darkness. You mentally assent to the Word, but you do not act upon it. As long as you walk in poverty, and your testimony is of your needs and your lack, the Word has not prevailed in your life. B19

James gives us the picture of the babe in Christ who needs the elder to pray for him and he does. But the fullgrown believer knows he is perfectly healed by the finished work of Christ. B75

James 5.14 - These babes in Christ were sick. They needed to see the Elder, feel the anointing oil upon their heads, hear the prayer, and feel the hands that were laid upon them. They lived in the realm of the senses. B50

It is not necessary to call for the elders or anyone else. All one needs to do is to turn to John  14.1314 ... The word ‘ask’ is better translated ‘demand’. All you need to do is to demand that Satan leave you, that he take with him the disease that he brought to you. B51

We require no physical evidence to prove that we are healed. When he says, ‘Surely He hath borne our sicknesses ...’ that settles it for us, for we are governed by the Word not by the five senses. B66

It may startle you if I tell you that you need not pray for your healing, but sick folks spend most of their time praying for their healing. Why should we not pray for it? (Isaiah 53.45) B102

Someone says ‘But your prayer is not answered’. The fever is still there, or the bill is still unpaid. You drive the birds away. You refuse to let them alight upon the Word and destroy it. B126

But you say, ‘Would it not be untrue for me to say that I am healed, when I am not?’. No you see there are two kinds of truth. There is Revelation Truth, the Bible, especially the Pauline Epistles, with which we are dealing, and then, there is sense knowledge truth. D109

The believer does not need to ask the Father to heal him when he is sick ... (Isaiah 53.10) ... All we need to do is to rebuke the enemy in Jesus’ Name, order him to leave our bodies, and thank the Father for perfect healing. D I60

Prosperity

That is God coming into your life, into your home, and becoming one with you. Do you think that he likes to live in a home of poverty and want, in a house that is not properly heated, where children are not properly fed or clothed? Never … It is not the prosperity of the senses, which thinks that gold and political favor is prosperity. No, it is the ability to use the ability of God to help humanity. B59

Confession

The Name of Jesus - During the period of almost two thousand years that He has been at the Father’s right hand, has He used it or had need of it? The Scriptures give to us no inkling of the fact that Jesus Himself had used His Name or had needed it. He rules the creation with His Word. A189

The Name of Jesus takes the place of Jesus in performing miracles, delivering from Satan’s authority and brings God upon the scene. A190

While Christ was here in the flesh, He was limited by His human body, He could only be in one place at a time ... but now each child of God will be able to do locally what Jesus could do locally…The reason for this is the authority of the Name. A191

I knew that by looking into the Word and acting on it I brought Jesus on the scene instantly…You may have all the promises ... but if you do not act on the Word, God is impotent in you … It is the word on my lips that counts ... Your word becomes God’s word ...  Remember, it is the Word on your lips that heals and saves. It is the Word on your lips when you speak to the Father that gives you the answer to your petition. B13

The word takes the place of the unseen Christ. B80

God honors the human language by calling Jesus the Word. The whole universe was brought into being by words. B15

This Pauline Revelation takes the place of the absent Christ and we act upon the Word as Jesus acted upon the Word of his Father. B77

And when you quote Jesus’ word, it is exactly as if He were speaking it Himself. B53

Your word, then, in Jesus Name, makes things come into being, or come to pass B128

If we confess our fears, they will rule us. If we confess the dominion of disease, it asserts its lordship over our bodies more fully ... We do not ask for Redemption; we thank Him for it. D157

God is under obligation to stand by and care for His own. He cannot fail us … Confession heals, or confession keeps you sick. By your confession, you are saved or lost. By your confession, you have plenty, or you lack. By your confession, you are weak, or you are strong. You are what you confess with your lips, and what you believe in your heart. D159

It may not harmonize with Sense Knowledge. Don’t try to make it. Sense knowledge calls it presumption or fanaticism, but God calls it faith and honors it. D1601

This is not psychology or metaphysics. This is absolute fact ... This continual confession will eventually give our spirit control of our reasoning faculties. E137

Faith

Hebrews 11.3 - Faithfilled words brought the universe into being, and faithfilled words are ruling that universe today. I20

Woodworth had faith ... Ford had faith. Faith is the greatest element in advanced civilization. I19

Regardless of circumstances, of appearances, or sense evidence, he rests his case absolutely on the Word. I25

You see, Jesus never intimated a need of Faith. Why? Because He had the Father’s Words. B19

Acting on the Word is letting Christ act through you. Acting on the Word, then, gives God an opportunity. B21

You understand that there are two kinds of faith: Sense Knowledge faith that demands physical evidence to satisfy the senses before he can see that he is healed or that he has the thing for which he prayed; and the other kind of faith that depends upon the Word alone. B77

We cast down reason based on the senses. B78

A prayer for faith would be a prayer of unbelief ... So, the believers prayer for faith is an insult to Christ and the Father. B101

Mark 11.23 - This scripture is not to a believer, a child of God. It was a Message to God’s Covenant People. B102

Prayer

You have a legal ground for prayer. Prayer is not based upon sufferance or pity but upon the Word of God. B79

It is of vital importance that after we have prayed we never go back on our prayers. Many repudiate the Word by the confession of a doubt or admission of a doubt into their consciousness. B125

John 14.1315 - This is not prayer. The word ‘ask’ here can be translated ‘demand’. ‘And whatsoever ye shall demand in my name that will I do’. B198

John 15.7 - Then He says, ‘Ye shall ask what ye will’. One translator says, ‘demand your rights’ ... I am taking Jesus place in His absence ...  I am not worrying about his will. I know it. D180

It is going into the presence of the Father and Jesus in an executive meeting, laying our needs before them and making our requisitions for ability ... we are making a demand upon Him. F8

It is a business meeting. The highest order of prayer is dialogue; you and He conversing about His work ... You and He have gone into business together ... You realize that He cannot work without human aid ...  F188

Elitism

This new order of Life, this new type of Christianity that has unveiled to us the truth about sense knowledge and has made us Masters in the Name of Jesus over the forces that have held us in bondage all our lives, has become a Living Reality. E93

That is the law of faith. He was giving it to the Jews that could not understand it any more than the modern Christian can. But you can. B81

There are two kinds of wisdom. One ... comes from the senses…1 Corinthians 1.30 wisdom - Now that wisdom will unveil to us the sacred secrets that are hidden in the Pauline Revelation of Christ. B283

Then Paul has another division: the Natural man, the Carnal man, and the Spiritual man. The natural man is the one who has never yet passed out of death into life ... The carnal man is the New Creation in Christ who has never developed or grown ... He is governed by his senses, rather than by his spirit. The spiritual man is the one who has developed in divine things. His spirit has gained the ascendancy over his intellectual processes, and his spirit has gained the ascendancy over his senses. God governs him through the Word. D121

Only in later years has the Spirit made this word clear to our minds. In some scriptures it is translated ‘Carnal’ and in others ‘fleshly’. It really means the man who is governed by the Senses. D124

Most or our leaders of the church today are Sense Knowledge men. They are not spiritually developed, but ruled by the senses. D122

We are not common folk. This lifts us out of the common place into the superrealm. You are the real supermen and superwomen. You have gone outside of the realm of the senses, outside the realm of sense knowledge, and you have passed over into the realm of God, the spirit realm. E158

The message that John Wesley brought was truth, but it was only part of the truth. Calvin had only a little of the light … Don’t you think it is time that we passed out of the swaddling clothes period into the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus? … This will make us partners with Him. We will be in that prized innercircle with Him, one of the trusted ones. When He has a difficult mission, He will call on us ... Take your place! Enjoy your rights! F24

The Resurrection

After Jesus’ resurrection - Jesus was then enabled to go to Paradise and proclaim to the awaiting saints of the Old Covenant that He had made a perfect redemption, He had cashed every one of the promissory notes of Atonement. D72

When man was created, he was made a perfect human being. His body was eternal. It would seem as though God’s original scheme was for man to live eternally as a physical being. C211

Man has no desire to be a disembodied spirit floating through space; he wants his physical body, eternally…He has been connected with the physical body, and when you take the physical body away you have robbed him of the first asset of life. C213

God and the Church

God cannot touch the human today except through the Church. It is His only mediator, and if the Church fails to assume its obligation then the hand of God is powerless. It staggers one to realize that God has limited Himself to our prayer life, and when we refuse to assume the obligations of prayer, God’s hands are paralyzed. C194

God’s hands are tied until He can use ours ... God is limited to our Faith, our obedience. God is as small in the world as we make Him ... We are the body of Christ; the Head is powerless without our hands and feet. Oh, men, can’t you see how helpless God is until we let Him live omnipotently in our acts? C199

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Select Bibliography

The full bibliography includes works that relate to Gnosticism itself, and the related topic of feminism. The select bibliography lists those works that specifically descibe Gnosticism, so assist readers who want to know: “where should I read next”. I would prioritize them as follows: Roukema, Filoramo, Jonas, Churton, Simon, Grant, Rudolph.

The Gnostic texts themselves are available in one volume:

James M. Robinson, editor, The Nag Hammadi Library, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990.

Works about Gnosticism:

Grant R.M, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, New York: Columbia Press, 1959.

Tobias Churton, The Gnostics, London: Weidenfelt & Nicolson, 1987.

Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

Reimer Roukema, Gnosis and Faith in Early Christianity, Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1999.

Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, The Nature and History of Gnosticism, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987.

Bernard Simon, The Essence of the Gnostics, Royston: Eagle Editions, 2004.

Works about the New Age and Contemporary Gnosticsm:

Chandler R, Understanding the New Age, Dallas, Word, 1988.

Peter Jones, Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America, Escondido: Wine Press, 1997.

Full Bibliography

Analytical Greek Lexicon, London, Bagster and Sons, 1971.

Denise Ackermann, “Liberation as Practical Theology: A Feminist Perspective on Ministry”, Journal of Theology in South Africa 52 (10,85) 30–41.

Richard Acworth, “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin”, Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, ed. Philip Hughes, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969.

Eva Aeschlimann, The Liberated Marriage, Cape Town: Struik, 1989.

Ronald & Beverly Allen, Liberated Traditionalism: Men & Women in Balance, Portland: Multnomah Press, 1985.

Anon, “Women and Priestly Ministry: The NT Evidence”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (4,79) 608–613.

Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, editors A. Roberts & J. Donaldson, Vol.1, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1987.

Athanasius, Select Works & Letters, ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1892. Online version: Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, trans. & ed. Wantage, C.S.M.V, London: Mowbray & Co., 1970,  http://www.ccel.org/ccel/athanasius/incarnation.html

Anne Atkins, Split Image, Sevenoaks: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987.

Augustine, On the Trinity: Doctrinal Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff, New York: Christian Literature Library Publishing, 1890.

S. Scott Barchy, “Power, Submission and Sexual Identity Among the Early Christians”, Essays on NT Christianity, ed. Robert Wentzel, Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1978.

Barklay W, The Letters of John and Jude, Edinburgh, Saint Andrew Press, 1965; The Letters of Timothy, Titus and Philemon, Edinburgh, Saint Andrew Press, 1965.

Barrett C.K, The Gospel according to St John, London, 1955; A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Harper’s New Testament Commentaries, New York, Harper & Row, 1968.

Paul Barnett, I Corinthians: Holiness and Hope of a Rescued People, Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2000.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume I.1, 2, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1936; Volume III. 2, “Humanity as Likeness and Hope”, pp. 285–324; Volume III.4, “Freedom in Fellowship”, pp. 116–323, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960; Protestant Theology in the 19th Century: Its Background and History, London: SCM Press, 1972.

S.C. Barton, “Paul’s Sense of Place: An Anthropological Approach to Community Formation in Corinth”, New Testament Studies, 32, 1986, 225–246.

N. Baumert, Woman and Man in Paul: Overcoming a Misunderstanding, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996.

Evelyn Bence, Leaving Home: The Making of an Independent Woman, Wheaton: Tyndale, 1986.

James R. Beck, editor, Two Views on Women in Ministry, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.

Berkhof L, The History of Christian Doctrines, London, Banner of Truth, 1969.

Berkhouwer G.C, Man: The Image of God, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1962; General Revelation: Studies in Dogmatics, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1955.

Bickle, Mike, Growing in the Prophetic, Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1995.

Bigg C, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St Peter and St Jude, The International Critical Commentary, Edinburgh, T.& T. Clark, 1902.

G. Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles: A Guide for the Study of Female Roles in the Bible, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985.

E. Black, “Why Women Cannot Be Ordained: Biblical Arguments”, HomPastRev 80 (5,80) 21–31.

W.P. Blitchington, Sex Roles & the Christian Family, Wheaton: Tyndale, 1980.

D. G. Bloesch, Is the Bible Sexist? Beyond Feminism and Patriarchalism, Westminster: Crossway Books, 1982.

R. & J. Boldrey, Chauvinist or Feminist? Paul’s View of Women, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976.

Jill Briscoe, Queen of Hearts: The Role of Today’s Woman, Based on Proverbs 31, Old Tappan: Flemming Revell, 1984.

G.W. Bromiley, “Eternal Generation”, ed. Walter E. Elwell, The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001.

Tal Brooke, When the World Will Be As One: The Coming New World Order, Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 1989.

Bruce F.F, The Epistle to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1984.

Cairns E.E, Christianity Through the Centuries, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1981.

Calvin, John, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1965; Hebrews and I and II Peter, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1963.

Carey G, I Believe in Man, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1979.

Denise L. Carmody, Feminism & Christianity: A Two-way Reflection, Nashville: Abingdon, 1982.

Sir Frederick Catherwood, At the Cutting Edge: A Lifetime of Politics, Industry and Faith, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966; The Christian in Contemporary Society, London: Tyndale, 1966; The Christian Citizen, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974; A Better Way: The Case for a Christian Social Order, Leicester: IVP, 1975; First Things First: The Practice of Principles in Modern Society, Oxford: Lion, 1979; The Christian in Industrial Society, Leicester: IVP, 1980; First Things First: The Ten Commandments in the 20th Century, Leicester: IVP, 1981; On the Job: The Christian 9 to 5, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983; God’s Time, God’s Money, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990; The Creation of Wealth: Recovering a Christian Understanding of Money, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2002.

Chadwick H, The Early Church, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1969.

Chandler R, Understanding the New Age, Dallas, Word, 1988.

J. Chittister, “Yesterdays Dangerous Vision – Christian Feminism in the Catholic Church”, Sojourners (7,87) 18–21.

Winnie Christensen, Women Who Achieved for God, Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Publisher, 2001.

Paula M. Cooey, William R. Eakin & Jay B. McDaniel, After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions, New York: Orbis, 1994.

Cochrane C.N, Christianity and Classical Culture, New York, Oxford University Press, 1957.

Paula M. Cooey, William R. Eakin & Jay B. McDaniel, editors, After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions, New York: Orbis Books, 1994.

Cooper J. W, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting, Biblical Anthropology and the MonismDualism Debate, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1980.

Coptic Gnostic Library, Nag Hammadi Codices III, 2 and IV, 2, edited by A. Bohlig and F.Wisse, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1975.

Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father, Boston: Beacon Press, 1973; The Church and the Second Sex, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968; Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage, Containing Recollections from My Logbook of a Radical Feminist Philosopher, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

D. Day-Lower, “Her Shattered Dream: A Look at Women and Unemployment”, Sojourners (3,86) 20–24.

de Arteaga, William, Quenching the Spirit, Examining Centuries of Opposition to the Moving of the Holy Spirit, Florida, Creation House, 1992.

James Dobson, “A New Look at Masculinity & Femininity”, Moody Monthly, June 1982.

Dodd C.H, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1953; The Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1963.

W.R. Domers, “Biblical Perspectives on the Role of Women”, Journal of Theology in South Africa 55 (86) 58–61.

Susan Dowell & Linda Hurcombe, Dispossessed Daughters of Eve, London: SPCK, 1987.

Marsha Drake, The Proverbs 31 Lady, And Other Impossible Dreams, Minneapolis: Bethany, 1984.

Ellis E.E, Prophecy and Hermeneutic in Early Christianity, Tubingen, Mohr, 1978.

Jaak Ellul, “Moralism”, The Subversion of Christianity, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.

Millard J. Erickson, Making Sense of the Trinity: Three Crucial Questions, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.

Ervin H.M, These Are Not Drunken As Ye Suppose, Plainfield, Logos, 1968.

M. J. Evans, Women in the Bible, London: IVP, 1983.

Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

C.H. Felder, “The Bible, Black Women and Ministry”, JournRelThought 41 (2,84–85) 47–58.

P.S. Fiddes, “Woman’s Head is Man: A Doctrinal Reflection upon a Pauline Test”, BaptistQuarterly 31 (8,86) 370–383.

Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Schussler E. Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, New York: Crossroad, 1983; Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation, Boston: Beacon Press, 1984; “Emerging Issues in Feminist Biblical Interpretation”, Christian Feminism: Visions of a New Humanity, ed. Judith L. Weidman, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984, pp. 47–54.

Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case of Feminist Revolution, New York: William Morrow, 1970.

Susan T. Foh, “What is the Woman’s Desire?” Westminster Theological Journal 37 (Spring 75) 380–381; Women and the Word of God: A Response to Biblical Feminism, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980; “The Head of the Woman is the Man”, in Adam & Eve: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Readings of Genesis and Gender, eds. Kristen E. Evam, Linda S. Schearing & Valerie H. Ziegler, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Anne B. Follis, I’m Not a Woman’s Libber, But … and Other Confessions of a Christian Feminist, Nashville: Abingdon, 1981.

Richard & Fay Forster, “Is Leadership Male? A Response to David Pawson”.

Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988.

Frend W.H.C, The Early Church, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1965.

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, New York: Dell, 1974.

M. Furlong, ed., Feminine in the Church, London: SPCK, 1984.

K.O. Gangel, “Biblical Feminism and Church Leadership”, Bibliotheca Sacra 140 (3,83) 55–63.

Kevin Giles, The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God & the Contemporary Gender Debate, London: IVP, 2002.

Gittens C.L, A Theological Evaluation of Certain of the Doctrines of the ‘FaithTeaching’ Movement, Masters Thesis, Systematic Theology, Pretoria, Unisa, 1990.

J. Goldingay, “The Bible and Sexuality”, Scottish Journal of Theology 39 (2,86) 175–188.

Grant R.M, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, New York: Columbia Press, 1959.

Green M, Evangelism in the Early Church, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1969.

Grosheide F.W, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1953.

Grudem, Wayne, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today, Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1988; Systematic Theology, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994; “Should We Move Beyond the New Testament to a Better Ethic: An Analysis of William J. Webb, ‘Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis’”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, June 2004, 47, 2, pp. 299–346; Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth: An Analysis of 118 Disputed Questions, Leicester: IVP, 2004.

Patricia Gundry, Woman Be Free!, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977; Heirs Together: Mutual Submission in Marriage, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980; The Complete Woman, New York: Doubleday, 1981; Neither Slave Nor Free: Helping Women Answer the Call to Church Leadership, New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

Stanley N. Gunry & James R. Beck, eds., Two View on Women in Ministry, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.

B. Hargrove, “A Place in the Church: The Challenge of Ordained Protestant Women”, Sojourners (7,87) 14–17.

Jannette Hassey, No Time for Silence: Evangelical Women in Public Ministry Around the Turn of the Century, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986.

M. Hayter, The New Eve in Christ: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in the Debate about Women in the Church, London: SPCK, 1987.

Charles W. Hendrick and Robert Hudgson, editors, Nag Hammadi Gnosticism and Early Christianity: Fourteen leading scholars discuss the current issues in gnostic studies, Peabody: Hendrickson, 1986.

S. Heine, Women and Early Christianity: A Reappraisal, trans. J.Bowden, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988.

Hendriksen W, A Commentary on the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, A Geneva Series Commentary, London, Banner of Truth, 1957; New Testament Commentary: Ephesians, Edinburgh, Banner of Truth, 1972.

Hendry C.F.H, editor, Revelation and the Bible: Contemporary Evangelical Thought, Grand Rapids, Baker, 1958.

R. Hesthenes & Lois Curley, eds., Women and the Ministries of Christ, Pasadena: Fuller Theological Seminary, 1979.

Hillary of Poitiers, Select Works, ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1898.

Horton M, editor, The Agony of Deceit: What Some TV Preachers are Really Teaching, Vereeniging, Christian Art Publishers, 1990.

H.W. House, “A Biblical View of Women in the Ministry. Part 1: Neither Male nor Female … in Jesus Christ”, Bibliotheca Sacra 145, (577,88) 47–56; “A Biblical View of Women in the Ministry. Part 2: Should a Woman Prophesy or Preach before Men?”  Bibliotheca Sacra 145 (578,88) 141–161; “Paul, Women, and Contemporary Evangelical Feminism”, Bibliotheca Sacra 136 (3,79) 41–42.

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J.K. Howard, “Neither Male nor Female: An Examination of the Status of Women in the NT”, Evangelical Quarterly 55 (1,83) 31–42.

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G.G. Hull, Equal to Serve, London: Scripture Union, 1989.

J. Hurley, Man and Women in Biblical Perspective, London: IVP, 1981.

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Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol.1, Eerdmans, Michigan, 1987.

Dee Jepsen, Women: Beyond Equal Rights, Waco: Word, 1984.

Paul K. Jewett, Man as Male and Female: A Study in Sexual Relationships from a Theological Point of View, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975; The Ordination of Women, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980.

Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

Peter Jones, Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America, Escondido: Wine Press, 1997.

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Kathy Keay, Women to Women, Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1988.

Craig Keener, Paul, Women and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul, Peabody: Hendrikson, 2004.

J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968.

Kelsey, M.T, Speaking in Tongues; An Experiment in Spiritual Experience, London, Epworth, 1964; Encounter with God: A Theology of Christian Experience, Minneapolis, Bethany, 1972; Christianity and Healing: In Ancient Thought and Modern Times, New York, Harper and Row, 1973; The Christian and the Supernatural, London, Search Press, 1976.

V. Kemper, “Poor and Getting Poorer – Women Struggle for Survival”, Sojourners (3,86) 15–18.

Kenyon E.W, The Father and His Family, 1964; The Wonderful Name of Jesus, 1964; Kenyon’s Living Poems, 1965; Two Kinds of Righteousness, 1965; Jesus the Healer, 1968; The Bible in the Light of Our Redemption, 1969; In His Presence, 1969; The New Kind of Love, 1969; What Happened from the Cross to the Throne, 1969; Two Kinds of Faith, 1969; Advanced Bible Course, 1970;  The Hidden Man, 1970; The Two Kinds of Life, 1971; Kenyon’s Personal Evangelism Course, no date; Child Evangelism, all published by Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society, USA.

Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, London: Tyndale, 1971.

Alvin F. Kimel, ed., Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992.

George. W Knight, “Authenteo in Reference to Women in 1 Timothy 2:12”, New Testament Studies 30 (1,84) 143–157; The Role Relationship of Men and Women, NT Teaching,, Chicago: Moody, 1985; “The Ordination of Women. No”, Christianity Today 25 (4,81) 60–263; The New International Greek Testament Commentary, Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1992.

A.J. Köstenberger, “Ascertaining Women’s God-Ordained Roles: An Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:15”, Bulletin for Biblical Research 7 (1997), 107–144.

A.J. Köstenberger, Thomas R. Schreiner & H. Scott Baldwin, eds., Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9–15, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995.

R.C. Kroeger & C.C. Kroeger, Women Elders … Sinners or Saints? New York: United Presbyterian Church, 1981; “I Suffer Not a Woman: Rethinking 1 Timothy 2:11–15”, Light of Ancient Evidence, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992.

Ladd G.E, The Presence of the Future, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1974; A Theology of the New Testament, London, Lutterworth, 1975.

Beverly LaHaye, Who But a Woman? Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984.

Kenneth LaTourette, The History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 vols, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970.

Shirley Lees, ed., The Role of Women, Leicester: IVP, 1984.

Walter L. Liefeld, Douglas Moo & P.B. Payne, eds., What Does Scripture Teach about the Ordination of Women?, Minneapolis: Evangelical Free Church of America, 1986.

Walter L. Liefeld & Ruth Tucker, Daughters of the Church: Women and Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986.

W.C. Linss, “St Paul and Women”, Dialogue 24 (1,85) 36–40.

A.D. Litfin, “Evangelical Feminism: Why Traditionalists Reject It”, Bibliotheca Sacra 136 (543,79) 258–271; “A Biblical View of the Marital Roles: Seeking a Balance”, Bibliotheca Sacra 133 (10,76) 330–337.

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D.K. Lowery, “The Head Covering and the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:2–34”, Bibliotheca Sacra 143 (570,86) 155–163.

MacDonald H.D, Ideas of Revelation, New York, MacMillan, 1959; Theories of Revelation, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1963.

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Kari T. Malcolm, Women at the Crossroads: A Path Beyond Feminism and Traditionalism, Downers Grove: IVP, 1982.

Martin W, The Kingdom of the Cults, Minneapolis, Bethany, 1982; The New Cults, Santa Ana, Vision House, 1980.

I. Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, The International Critical Commentary, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999, pp. 438–441; The Epistles of John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1978; The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary, Exeter, Paternoster, 1978.

McConnell D, A Different Gospel, Peabody MA, Hendricksen, 1988.

Killian McDonnell, O.S.B, “Feminist Mariologies: Heteronomy/Subordination and the Scandal of Christology”, Theological Studies, 66, 2005, pp. 527–567.

Means P, The Mystical Maze: A Guidebook Through the Minefields of Eastern Mysticism, USA, Campus Crusade for Christ, 1976.

A. Michelson, Women, Authority and the Bible, Downers Grove: IVP, 1986; Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1987.

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female, New York: Crossroad, 1983; Sensuous Spirituality: Out from Fundamentalism, New York: Crossroad, 1992.

F.L. Moloney, Women: First Among the Faithful: A NT Study, London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1985.

Montgomery J.W, The Shape of the Past: A Christian Response to Secular Philosophies of History, Minneapolis, Bethany, 1975; Where is History Going?, Minneapolis, Bethany, 1969; Principalities and Powers: The World of the Occult, Minneapolis, Bethany, 1973.

Douglas J. Moo, “1 Timothy 2:11–15: Meaning and Significance”, Trinity Journal 1, 1980, 62–83; “The Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11–15: A Rejoinder”, Trinity Journal 2, 1981, 198–222.

Derek Morphew, A Critical Investigation of the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels According to Matthew and Luke, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cape Town, 1984; South African and the Powers Behind, Cape Town: Vineyard International Publishing, E-Publications; with Quinton Howitt, The Kingdom, Human Dignity and the Poor, unpublished manuscript; Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom, Cape Town: Vineyard International Publishing, 2006; Different but Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian/Egalitarian Debate, Cape Town: Vineyard International Publishing, 2009.

Morris L, The Gospel According to John, The New London Commentary on the New Testament, London, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1971.

William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, Word Biblical Commentary, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000.

W. Munro, “Women, Text and the Canon: The Strange Case of 1 Corinthians 14.33–35”, Biblical Theological Bulletin 18 (1,88) 26–31.

C. Murphy-O’Connor, “The non-Pauline Character of 1 Corinthians 11:2–16?”, Journal of Biblical Literature 95 (12,76) 615–621.

Rich Nathan, “Women in Leadership: How to Decide What the Bible Teaches” Vineyard Church Columbus: In house article, 2006.

Nee W, The Normal Christian Life, London, Victory Press, 1965; The Spiritual Man, New York, Christian Fellowship Publishers, 1968; Release of the Spirit, Bombay, Gospel Literature Service, 1972.

Needham D.C, Birthright, Portland, Multnomah, 1978.

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C. Niccum, “The Voice of the Manuscripts on the Silence of Women: The External Evidence for 1 Corinthians 14:34–35”, New Testament Studies 43, 1997, 242–255.

D.W. Odell-Scott, “Let the Women Speak in Church. An Egalitarian Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14:33b–36”, Biblical Theological Bulletin 13 (3,83) 90–93; “In Defence of an Egalitarian Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14:34–36. A Reply to Murphy-O’Connor’s Critique”, Biblical Theological Bulletin 17 (3,87) 100–103.

Della Olson, A Woman of Her Times, Minneapolis: Free Church Press, 1977.

James Olthuis, I Pledge You My Troth, New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

R.L. Omanson, “The Role of Women in the NT Church”, Review and Expositor 83, (1,86) 15–25.

Cyril O’Regan, Gnostic Return in Modernity, New York: State University of New York Press, 2001; Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative, New York: State University of New York Press, 2002; The Heterodox Hegel, Sunny Series in Hegelian Studies, New York: State University of New York Press, 1994.

A. Padgett, “Feminism in First Corinthians. A Dialogue with Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza”, Evangelical Quarterly 58 (2,86) 121–132.

Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, New York: Random House, 1988; The Gnostic Gospels, New York: Random House, 1979.

Dorothy Pape, God and Women, Oxford: Mowbray, 1978.

M.B. Paull, “St Paul as Egalitarian: A Response to Wilhelm Linss”, Dialogue 24 (3.85) 226–228.

David Pawson, Leadership Is Male, Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1987.

P.B. Payne, Man & Woman, One in Christ, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999; “Fuldensis, Sigla for Variants in Vaticanus, and 1 Cor 14:34–35”, New Testament Studies 41, 1995, 240–262; “Libertarian Women in Ephesus: A Response to Douglas J. Moo’s Article, ‘1 Timothy 2:11–15: Meaning and Significance’ Trinity Journal, 2, 169–197 and ‘The Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11–15: A Rejoinder’”, eds. A.J.Kostenberger, Thomas R. Schreiner & H. Scott Baldwin, Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9–15, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995, pp. 96–115.

Ronald W. Pierce & Rebecca Merill Groothuis, eds. Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, Leister: IVP, 2004.

John Piper & Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Wheaton: Crossway, 1991.

Alix Pirani, ed., The Absent Mother: Restoring the Goddess to Judaism and Christianity, London: Harper Collins, 1991.

R. Quere, “Naming God Father”, CurrTheolMiss 12 (1,85) 5–14.

Jerome D. Quinn & William C. Wacker, The First and Second Letters to Timothy, Critical Eerdmans Commentary, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

Robertson A & A. Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians, International Critical Commentary, Edinburgh, T.& T. Clark, 1953.

J. Roloff, Der Erste Brief van Timotheus, Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentary zum Neuen Testament, Zurich: Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1988.

J.M. Ross, “Floating Words: Their Significance or Textual Criticism”, New Testament Studies 38, 1992, 153–156.

Rosemary Radford Ruether, Liberation Theology: Human Hope Confronts Christian History and American Power, New York: Paulist Press; Womanguides: Readings Toward a Feminist Theology, Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.

Reimer Roukema, Gnosis and Faith in Early Christianity, Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1999.

Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, The Nature and History of Gnosticism, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987.

L.M. Russel, Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985.

Ryle, James, A Dream Come True, a Biblical Look at how God Speaks Through Dreams and Visions, Harper Collins, Glasgow, 1995.

Charles C. Ryrie, The Role of Women in the Church, Chicago: Moody, 1958.

Letha Scanzoni & Nancy Hardesty, All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, Waco: Word, 1974.

T.P. Schoemaker, “Unveiling of Equality: 1 Corinthians 11:2–16”, Biblical Theological Bulletin 17 (2,87) 60–63.

D.M. Scholer, “Women’s Adornment: Some Historical and Hermeneutical Observations on the New Testament Passages”, Daughters of Sarah 6:1, 1980, pp. 3–6.

S.M. Schneiders, Women and the Word: The Gender of God in the NT and the Spirituality of Women, New York: Paulist Press, 1986.

Robert A. Segal, editor, The Allure of Gnosticism: The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture, Chicago: Open Court, 1995.

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Bernard Simon, The Essence of the Gnostics, Royston: Eagle Editions, 2004.

Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.

A.B. Spencer, Beyond the Curse: Women Called to Ministry, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1985.

Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age, Reclaiming the Core Teachings and Practises of the Great Wisdom Traditions for the Well-Being of the Earth Community, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.

John G. Stackhouse, Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender, Why Both Sides Are Wrong – and Right, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

Starhawk, “Witchcraft as Goddess Religion”, The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement, ed. Charlene Spretnak, New York: Anchor, 1982.

Elaine Stedman, A Woman’s Worth, Waco: Word, 1980.

Donn Steichen, Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991.

Rudolf Steiner, The Mystery of the Trinity and the Mission of the Spirit, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1991.

Elaine Storkey, What’s Right with Feminism?, London: SPCK, 1985.

A.H. Stouffer, “The Ordination of Women. Yes”, Christianity Today 25 (4,81) 256–259.

Beverly J. Stratton, Out of Eden: Reading, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Genesis 2–3, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995.

Swaggart J, The New Gnosticism, Louisiana, Jimmy Swaggart Ministry, 1981.

Willard Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women, Scottdale: Herald Press, 1983.

The New Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, London, InterVarsity Press, 1962, Gnosticism.

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L. Cross, London, Oxford University Press, 1958, articles on Gnosticism, Valentinus, Basilides, Manichus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hyppolytus.

Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Greek Testament Commentary, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

L. van der Broek, “Women and the Church: Approaching Difficult Passages”, Reformational Review 38 (3,85) 225–231.

Wendy Virgo, Leading Ladies, Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1985.

Wimber J, Healing Seminar, Yorba Linda, The Association of Vineyard Churches, Anaheim, no date; Power Healing, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1986.

W.O. Walker, “1 Corinthians 11:2–16 and Paul’s Views Regarding Women”, Journal of Biblical Literature 94 (3,75) 109.

B.K. Waltke, “1 Corinthians 11:2–16: An Interpretation”, Bibliotheca Sacra 135 (3,78) 46–57.

Benjamin Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity”, Biblical and Theological Studies, Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1952.

Marjorie Warkentin, Ordination: A Biblical-Historical View, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982.

William Webb, Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis, London: InterVarsity Press, 2001.

J. L. Weidman, ed., Women Ministers, New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 1, Waco: Word Books, 1985.

A. West, “Sex and Salvation: A Christian Feminist Study of 1 Corinthians 6:1–7:39”, Modern Church 29 (3,87) 17–24.

Don Williams, The Apostle Paul and Women in the Church, Van Nuys: BIM Pub, 1977.

Walter Wink, Cracking the Gnostic Code: The Powers in Gnosticism, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993.

Ben Witherington III, Women in the Earliest Churches, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 59, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God, London: SPCK, 2003.

Yamauchi E.M, PreChristian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evidences, 1973.

Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume Two, edited by M. C. Tenney, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1975, article on ‘Gnosticism’.

[1] The best analysis of Boehme that I am aware of is found in the works of Cyril O’Regan, Gnostic Apocalype, Jacob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002 and Gnostic Return in Modernity, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.

[2]  W.H.C.Frend, The Early Church, (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1965), p 61.

[3] Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1978), p 18.

[4] Marshall, The Epistles of John, p 1718.

[5] New Bible Dictionary, article on Gnosticism.

[6] Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume Two, edited by M.C.Tenney, (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1975), article on Gnosticism, p 737.

[7] New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, edited by Colin Brown, (Exeter, Paternoster, 1975), Vol. 2, p 398.

[8] Ervin H.M, These Are Not Drunken As Ye Suppose, (Plainfield, Logos, 1968), p 205.

[9] NICNT, Vol. 2, p 231.

[10] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1, XIII, 15.

[11] Berkhof L, The History of Christian Doctrines, (London, Banner of Truth, 1969), p 49.

[12] Nee W, The Normal Christian Life, London, Victory Press, 1965.

[13] The Spiritual Man, New York, Christian Fellowship Publishers, 1968; Release of the Spirit, Bombay, Gospel Literature Service, 1972.

[14] McConnell D, A Different Gospel, Peabody MA, Hendricksen, 1988.

[15] See especially William de Arteaga, Quenching the Spirit, Examining Centuries of Opposition to the Moving of the Holy Spirit, Florida, Creation House, 1992.

[16] Derek Morphew, Different but Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian/Egalitarian Debate, Cape Town: Vineyard International Publishing, 2009 and Amazon Kindle publication, 2009.

[17] One of the most telling elements of Grudem’s critique of Webb is to show that Webb has confused ideas in order to confuse the argument (I would say, perhaps not deliberately). When the New Testament writers command slaves to be submissive to masters, or citizens to kings, it does not follow that the text is endorsing these exact structures, but simply that it is teaching Christians how to behave within that context (JETS, p. 314). The Bible describes slavery and monarchy, but it never uses those institutions as the basis of a universal or permanent system. “The Bible never says, ‘Support monarchy as the best system of government because God is a heavenly king’ or ‘Support slavery as an institution because God is the ultimate slave owner in heaven’ or ‘It is better to be right-handed because Christ sits at God’s right hand.’ So Webb’s examples are not parallel to the example of Paul’s statement [in Ephesians 5:23–25]” (JETS, p. 321). “The Bible never says, ‘All families should give a double portion of inheritance to the first-born son, because Adam was formed first, then Eve” (JETS, p. 328). Webb does in fact “shame” these ideas and then convey the idea that, if you argue for other elements in the creation narrative as non-cultural, you have taken such requirements on board. His logic is flawed here, and Grudem has found a weakness in his position.

On the other hand, Grudem uses this argument to evade a far more significant point. While Paul never actually commands slavery, he does command slaves to submit to their masters. He does not merely explain the context of submission. Therefore Grudem’s neat division between a “command” and a “regulation” (Evangelical Feminism, p. 341) does evade the point. The fact is that submission language for women is used in the same context as submission language for slaves, both being command language.

[18] http://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html, Articles 25–26.

[19] Ibid., Article 33.

[20] Giles, p. 29.

[21] Giles quoting Barth, pp. 88–89.

[22] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2, p. 324: “Quite obviously we do not have here more than an analogy, i.e., similarity in dissimilarity. We merely repeat that there can be no question of an analogy of being, but of relationship.”

[23] Barth’s position will be described at length below, based on Church Dogmatics, III.4, pp. 172–176 and III.2, pp. 285–324. He makes four points: Man or woman and man and woman derive from the command of God (1); from the command of God [the voice of law is heard here] (2); therefore man is shown to be fully human in gender distinctions [not to be divinized] (3); only by being man under God is man able to be truly free (4) (pp. 120–121). Yet even though he speaks of these as the commands of creation, he stresses that we can only view creation through redemption, or through Christology (pp. 3–46). There should be no independent theology of creation, or natural theology.

[24] Giles pp. 15, 52–58.

[25] Ibid., p. 34.

[26] Ibid., p. 17. We should note that a careful reading of Barth would place him among those who view male and female as equal in humanity but the male as the leader, head and superior in the relationship. I am therefore not convinced by Giles’ attempt to make this view so recent. We can play with words. Barth did not use the term “role”, but he used other terms that mean something very similar.

[27] Ibid., p. 23, note 8.

[28] I have dealt with this subject and their position at greater length in Renewal Apologetics, Vineyard Position Paper 6, VBI course and VIP E-Publication. The previous five position papers deal with the subject too.

[29] Giles, pp. 71–75.

[30] George Knight, New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977, p. 56, and Giles pp. 78–79. Note my earlier comments on the so-called novelty of this idea.

[31] Giles, p. 111.

[32] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, pp. 116–240. For his discussion of the “submission” of women in the divine “order” of creation, see pp. 168–183.

[33] Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth, pp. 405–414.

[34] Ibid., pp. 414–429.

[35] Ibid., pp. 429–441.

[36] It seems that he asked a research student to find the word “subordination” in a number of texts, namely Mark Stevenson, ibid., p. 418, note 21. I have checked his citations of Athanasius, Warfield, Kelly, Berkhof and Bromiley and his comments on Erickson. What I have found in these cases leads me to suspect that a similarly careless use of the other authorities might emerge if we had the time to examine them as well.

[37] http://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html, Articles 25–26.

[38] Benjamin Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity”, Biblical and Theological Studies, Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1952, pp. 22–59. I would highly recommended Warfield’s treatment for anyone who wants a solid base for the Trinity in biblical language.

[39] Grudem, Evangelical Feminism, p. 426.

[40] Ibid., p. 420 and note 27.

[41] Warfield, p. 53.

[42] Ibid., p. 54.

[43] Ibid., p. 55, my italics.

[44] Ibid., p. 52, my italics.

[45] J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968, p. 261.

[46] Ibid., p. 271.

[47] Ibid., p. 272.

[48] Ibid., p. 273, I have inserted the italics highlights.

[49] Ibid., p. 275.

[50] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, London: Banner of Truth, 1969, pp. 88–89. “There is a certain order in the ontological Trinity. In personal subsistence the Father is first, the Son second, and the Holy Spirit third. It need hardly be said that this order does not pertain to any priority of time or of essential dignity, but only to the logical order of derivation … Generation and procession take place within the Divine Being, and imply a certain subordination as to the manner of personal subsistence, but no subordination as far as the possession of the divine essence is concerned. This ontological Trinity and its inherent order is the metaphysical basis of the economical Trinity.” G.W. Bromiley, in Walter E. Elwell, ed., The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001: “… between these persons there is a superiority and subordination of order. ‘Eternal’ reinforces the fact that the generation is not merely economic (i.e. for the purpose of human salvation as in the incarnation) but essential, and that as such it cannot be construed in the categories of natural or human generation” (p. 236). Bromiley therefore directly contradicts Warfield and Erickson.

[51] Grudem, Evangelical Feminism, pp. 427–429.

[52] Millard J. Erickson, Making Sense of the Trinity: Three Crucial Question, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000, p. 85.

[53] Ibid., p. 85.

[54] Ibid., pp. 86–87.

[55] Grudem, Evangelical Feminism, pp. 423–425.

[56] In his JETS article, Grudem simply assumes an eternal subordination of the Son to the Father as the basis of women submitting to men, with no qualification about the context of the incarnation or the larger framework of eschatology. “Paul says there is a parallel between the eternal relationship of the Son to the Father and the relationship of a wife to her husband. And if Paul is correct that there is such a parallel, then the headship of a husband with respect to his wife is surely transcultural” (p. 331). I have italicized the two assumptions of eternal Trinitarian subordination and the implication he draws. His fuller explanation in Evangelical Feminism explains this set of assumptions.

[57] From this point onwards what I mean by feminism is contemporary feminism, which should be distinguished from earlier forms of 19th-century liberal and evangelical feminism.

[58] I therefore find that Stackhouse’s dismissal of what he calls “secular feminism” by reference to the earlier history of feminism, does not face the issue, pp. 84–85. One problem, for instance, is that what he calls secular feminism is articulated by many who are trained in theology, are or have been members of the church, probe deeply into the biblical text, and yet operate from a monist worldview. We cannot naïvely say that this literature is not influencing the debate, including evangelical egalitarians. As noted before, no one does theology in a cultural vacuum.

[59] An ad hoc list in chronological order would include Valentinus, Mani, Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Jacob Boehme, Aleister Crowley, Carl Jung, Ralf Waldo Emerson, Rudolf Steiner, with only Madame Helena Blavatsky as a notable female exception.

[60] Notably Steichen and Kassian.

[61] For a description of various kinds of feminism, liberal and radical, see Beverly J. Stratton, Out of Eden: Reading, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Genesis 2–3, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995, pp. 67–70, or Julia Mason and Karen Mason, “Feminism and Abortion” in Discovering Biblical Equality, pp. 427–428 where the classifications of “liberal, psychoanalytic, Marxist and radical” are cited from Rebecca Groothuis, Women Caught in the Conflict: The Culture War Between Traditionalism and Feminism, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.

[62] The parallel development is shown consistently by Kassian, e.g. pp. 10 and 185–195 with 218–226, 237–246.

[63] My use of terms is therefore quite different from those used by Stackhouse. For him “feminist” and “evangelical egalitarian” are synonymous. He writes: “The noun feminist can mean several things, but this is what I mean by it: someone who champions the dignity, rights, responsibilities, and glories of women as equal in importance to those of men, and who therefore refuses discrimination against women. Thus, in this book, feminist and egalitarian are synonyms” (p. 17). On this definition, I would be a committed feminist. His confusion of the two positions means that two totally different worldviews, theologies, methodologies and agendas are conflated into one and serious challenges to the Christian faith caused by the clash of worldviews are ignored.

[64] Mollenkott describes her hermeneutic as being based in democratic pluralism, pp. 68–70. See also Steichen, p. 182.

[65] Stephen M. Smith, “Worldview” in Speaking the Christian God discerns that the fundamental issue with feminism is monism, pp. 260–264. He analyses the Episcopalian Bishop Spong and Sallie McFague, showing how their monist assumptions lead to their ethical conclusions.

[66] The earlier cause for the equality of women should probably be defined as a part of classic 19th-century liberalism. A crucial text is John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, published in 1869, now available from various sources, Book Jungle, 2007, ISBN-10: 1594625328, ISBN-13: 978-1594625329. This early form of feminism included the witness of evangelical Christians. Stackhouse comments: “It is also a matter of historical record that many of the early feminists were churchgoing Christians who articulated their cause precisely in biblical terms” (p. 56, note 18). He goes on to cite the works of Donald W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1976 and Nancy A. Hardesty, Women Called to Witness: Evangelical Feminism in the Nineteenth Century, Nashville: Abingdon, 1984.

[67] Craig Keener points out that African Americans were arguing for egalitarianism long before modern feminism, pp. 184–211. See particularly his references to La Roy Sunderland (1935). This history could as easily be regarded as the antecedent of evangelical egalitarianism. However, my view is that there is something unique about the recent feminist phenomenon which sets it apart from its earlier roots.

[68] As noted by Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, pp. 155, 161–163 and Kassian, pp. 18–19. It is worth noting that there is a real connection between existentialism and Gnosticism, mediated through Jacob Boehme, who reintroduced Valentinian Gnosticism.

The public release of De Beauvoir’s private correspondence in January 2008, published in French newspapers, revealed that she seduced a number of young women over a period of time and then introduced them to Sartre. The correspondence shows a rather cynical, cold and manipulative “use” of these young women as sex objects by De Beauvoir and Sartre.

[69] Kassian, p. 19.

[70] This occurred in 1988, Steichen, p. 238.

[71] Mollenkott, pp. 23, 78. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the son of a Unitarian minister, was influenced by German idealist philosophy and the Bhagavad-Gita and taught a philosophy of “non-dualism” or monism.

[72] http://www.starhawk.org/. Beverly J. Stratton provides a recent academic survey of feminism and various approaches to Scripture, Out of Eden: Reading, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Genesis 2–3, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995.

[73] One of the most comprehensive treatments will be found in Kenneth LaTourette, The History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 Volumes, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970, in which his method includes the effect of Christianity on society in every era and context.

[74] In 1968 Mary Daly charged the Christian religion with the oppression of women. The church was guilty of causing women’s legal oppression and deceiving women into enforced passivity; teaching women’s inferiority in its doctrine; harming women through its moral teaching; excluding women from church leadership roles, Kassian, pp. 42–43.

[75] Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father, Boston: Beacon Press, 1973, p. 19: “I have already suggested that if God is male, then the male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination.” Daly is aware of the fact that most Christian theologians do not literally believe that God is male (p. 17 on “sophisticated thinkers”). However, she believes this has become the popular and prevailing image of God in patriarchal society. “Thus one can speak of God as spirit and at the same time imagine ‘him’ as belonging to the male sex” (pp. 17–18).

[76] For my analysis of liberation theology, see South African and the Powers Behind, Vineyard International Publishing, E-Publications. On liberation theology and feminism, see Kassian, pp. 62–69.

[77] Spretnak acknowledges the contribution of liberation theology, pp. 171–186.

[78] Kassian, p. 27, credits Kate Millet with establishing the term “patriarchy” as the “name” of the offending system: from pater – father and arche – rule.

[79] For Steichen’s list of causes, see p. 194.

[80] Ruether, Womanguides, p. ix.

[81] Daly, The Church and the Second Sex, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968, pp. 184–185 and Kassian, p. 108, quoting Ruether.

[82] Mollenkott, p. 50, see also Ruether, Womanguides, p. xi.

[83] Fiorenza enunciated four principles: the hermeneutic of suspicion (we should not simply accept and affirm biblical texts, but examine them for patriarchal bias); the hermeneutic of proclamation (patriarchal texts cannot be regarded as inspired, but feminist-leaning texts are); the hermeneutic of remembrance (texts that describe the suffering of women are retold); the hermeneutic of creative actualization (feminist theologians read into texts and tell new stories from them), Kassian, pp. 131–136.

[84] On feminist hermeneutics, see Kassian, pp. 129–139, or Mollenkott, pp. 167–187.

[85] Spretnak links dualistic thinking, by which she means the transcendence of the creator, to male thought patterns. She has a fairly incisive understanding of the philosophical implications of modernism versus postmodernism. She opts for her own meta-narrative to provide meaning and rejects the amoral implications of deconstructionism postmodernism. For her discussion, see her two appendices, pp. 233–244 and pp. 245–261.

[86] Steichen, p. 144.

[87] On the ethical dualism, see Ruether, Liberation Theology: Human Hope Confronts Christian History and American Power, New York: Paulist Press, p. 16, and Kassian, p. 65.

[88] Mollenkott, p. 12.

[89] Paula M. Cooey begins her chapter by noting the “sharply dualistic” nature of the Christian past, “The Redemption of the Body: Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Inherited Christian Doctrine”, After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions, Paula M. Cooey; William R. Eakin, Jay B. McDaniel, eds., New York: Orbis, 1994, pp. 106–107. She goes on to define incarnation as “an immanent, ongoing divine creation, preservation, and regeneration of life” where humans “participate in this creative activity” (p. 107).

[90] For a helpful summary of the worldview issues, see Stephen M. Smith, “Worldviews”, Speaking the Christian God, pp. 260–264.

[91] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism.

[92] For a helpful article on De Chardin, see Richard Acworth, “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin”, Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, Philip Hughes, ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969, pp. 407–445.

[93] Steichen, pp. 202–203.

[94] If not a device, then there is confusion. So for instance Mollenkott wants it both ways: “I believe that there is One Ultimate Interrelational Being who undergirds all personhood and relationships, One Consciousness that flows through all consciousness … My name for this Cosmic Energy or Consciousness is God” (pp. 10–11). In one sentence she begins with Trinitarian concepts and ends with monist ones, seemingly happy to move from one worldview to another. On her statements on panentheism, pp. 63, 92–94.

[95] Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. She acknowledges Fox, pp. 290 note 7, but should probably have credited him with a formative influence, judging by the close parallels in their systems of thought. Spretnak is another post-Catholic, p. 7.

[96] Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1940, p. 238.

[97] See Derek Morphew, unpublished manuscript, Jesus the One and Only.

[98] Fox, pp. 112–116.

[99] Ibid., pp. 120–123, 137, 140. The Dominican priest, Johannes Eckhart (1260–1357) was first repudiated by various Catholic authorities for holding pantheistic ideas, but late in life he repudiated the elements in his teaching that were offensive to the church and was reconciled. According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia “from the pulpit of the Dominican church in Cologne, Eckhart repudiated the unorthodox sense in which some of his utterances could be interpreted, retracted all possible errors, and submitted to the Holy See. His profession of faith, repudiation of error, and submission to the Holy See were declared by Pope John XXII in the Bull “Dolentes referimus” (27 March 1329), by which the pontiff condemned seventeen of Eckhart’s propositions as heretical, and eleven as ill-sounding, rash, and suspected of heresy (Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 428 sqq.; Hartzheim, Conc. Germ., IV, 631)”, http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia.

[100] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) is a major influence on Fox, who more or less repeats his theology in more popular language. De Chardin is widely known for his pantheist tendencies. As noted, an excellent appraisal can be found in the article by Richard Acworth, “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin”, Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, Philip Hughes, ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969, pp. 407–445.

[101] Kabir, p. 48; Hinduism, p. 230; Buddhism, p. 231; Paul Tillich, another Western pantheist, p. 235; Sufism, p. 230; Jung, see pp. 53, 138, 143.

[102] Cyril O’Regan, Gnostic Return in Modernity, New York: State University of New York Press, 2001; Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative, New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. Notice Ruether’s respect for Boehme, Womanguides, p. 7.

[103] O’Regan, Return, p. 12.

[104] Ibid., p. 17.

[105] Fox, p. 19.

[106] Ibid., p. 221.

[107] Ibid., p. 50.

[108] Ibid., p. 51.

[109] Ibid., p. 50. We know this is the Hindu idea because he is quoting Kabir.

[110] Ibid., p. 211, quoting Eckhart.

[111] Ibid., p. 137.

[112] Ibid., p. 8.

[113] Ibid., p. 214.

[114] As in A.N. Whitehead, ibid., pp. 24, 30. Mary Daly follows this theme when she describes a static view of God, Second Sex, pp. 183–184. Spretnak similarly draws on Whitehead, p. 19.

[115] Ibid., p. 136.

[116] Ibid., p. 122.

[117] Ibid., pp. 56, 65.

[118] Ibid., p. 197, following Eckhart. The implication is that eternal life does not require redemption.

[119] Ibid., pp. 172, 177.

[120] Ibid., p. 43.

[121] Ibid., pp. 38, 8.

[122] Ibid., pp. 52, 53.

[123] Ibid., pp. 78, 147, 161.

[124] Ibid., p. 201.

[125] Ibid., pp. 234–235.

[126] Ibid., p. 122.

[127] Ibid., p. 137, quoting Evelyn Underhill.

[128] Ibid., p. 149.

[129] Ibid., p. 85.

[130] Ibid., p. 161, my italics.

[131] Ibid., pp. 163, 88, 145.

[132] These ideas are echoed in Mary Daly, Second Sex, pp. 184–185.

[133] Ibid., p. 106.

[134] Ibid., p. 214.

[135] Ibid., pp. 223–224.

[136] Ibid., pp. 230–231, 241.

[137] Ibid., pp. 7, 136.

[138] Ibid., p. 38.

[139] Ibid., pp. 164, 206–208.

[140] Starhawk, “Witchcraft as Goddess Religion”, The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement, Charlene Spretnak, ed., New York: Anchor, 1982, p. 50 and Kassian, p. 187.

[141] Steichen, p. 199, quoting Weaver.

[142] J. A. DiNoia, “Knowing and Naming the Triune God”, Speaking the Christian God, p. 167, note 8, quoting Carter Heyward.

[143] Carol Christ, quoted by Kassian, p. 186.

[144] Mollenkott, p. 51.

[145] Kassian, pp. 159–173.

[146] Steichen quotes Mary Jo Weaver as follows: “We sift the history of witchcraft and goddess religion, tarot, the new physics, Eastern and American Indian religion, looking for spirituality, for a divine being who respects our identity. If our system gains support, the walls of the old paradigm collapse” (p. 201). See also Kassian, pp. 176–184. Wicca is a nature-based religion first popularized in 1954 by Geral Gardner, a retired British civil servant. He claimed that the religion, of which he was an initiate, was a modern survival of an old witchcraft religion which had existed in secret for hundreds of years, originating in the pre-Christian paganism of Europe.

[147] I will not fill this section with citations. The reader should refer to the above publication for details.

[148] Mary Daly rejects the idea of a static, omnipotent, immutable divine being. Such notions create social paralysis and do not permit women to reconceptualize doctrine. “Among the misleading and harmful notions about God which the modern ‘de-hellenizing’ theologians have in mind are certain concepts which occur in connection with ‘divine omnipotence’, ‘divine immutability’, and ‘divine providence’. If God is immutable, it leads to despair. Why should we try to improve out lot?” The Church and the Second Sex, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968, p. 182. See also Kassian, pp. 46–47.

[149] Mollenkott speaks of remembering our union with God, Kassian, p. 219.

[150] For similar ideas in feminism, see for instance Budapest, as quoted by Kassian, p. 188: “Those who didn’t share the experiences wondered why intelligent women would want to ‘worship the goddess’. They missed the crucial meaning: It is self worship.”

[151] It was this element, reintroduced by Jacob Boehme and taken further by Hegel, which led to the idea of history as the march of God towards self-realization, which then led to Nazism.

[152] Similar views are regularly expressed by feminists. “In the ancient world, images of the snake were always associated with the goddess of fertility, the goddess of life … The banishing of the snake is the banishing of the goddess and, symbolically, of Eve’s free and autonomous expression of her sexuality … It’s not just the triumph of the ‘One true God’ over the fertility goddesses and the cults. It is a clear condemnation by Yahweh of female sexuality exercised freely and autonomously,” Scheichen, p. 149 quoting Kolbenschlag. “It is women above all who are in the process of reversing Genesis, turning the myth on its head by validating and freeing their sexuality … True daughters and sons of Eve will, in increasing numbers, reach for the Tree of Life and the fruits of knowledge and power, seeing godlikeness,” Scheichen, pp. 150–151, quoting Kolbenschlag.

[153] On androgyny being the original form of humanity, see Mollenkott, pp. 61, 66. Kassian traces the initial process in feminism during the 1960s to the idea that gender differences are learned and conditioned by culture rather than set by nature, p. 36.

[154] Mollenkott is transformed from a guilt-ridden fundamentalist “into a person who knows she is an innocent spiritual being who is temporarily having human experiences … like my Elder Brother, Jesus, I am a sinless Self travelling though eternity and temporarily having human experiences in a body … Perhaps my Self has been on earth before in other bodies, perhaps not” (p. 16). “The pure and eternal core of one’s being” (p. 21). This is Neo-Platonist and Gnostic thinking.

[155] “And when I remember my never-broken oneness with my divine Source”, Mollenkott, p. 17.

[156] A variation on the theme is Mollenkott’s idea that Mary did not “find favour with God” and “submit” to the “rape” of the male God, because “Mary’s being is already infused with God, full of God … Mary had long ago found God in herself, and had ‘loved Her/had loved Her fiercely’.” This was because “in reality God is in everyone” (p. 37). For a comprehensive survey of feminist literature on Mary, mother of Jesus, see Killian McDonnell, O.S.B, “Feminist Mariologies: Heteronomy/Subordination and the Scandal of Christology”, Theological Studies, 66, 2005, pp. 527–567.

[157] Steichen notes the idea of the Eucharist as connecting the womb to the waters of the cosmos, p. 183. Alternatively, the blood of Christ is linked to the cosmic body of the universe, p. 236. On such spiritual connections, see Kassian, pp. 182–183, and on the rituals involved see Kassian, p. 192.

[158] “God is experienced not so much as a separate Being, but God is sensed as the deepest dimension of our own being. What we find is not God but ourselves … The process of self-knowledge is the process of knowing God,” Steichen, p. 291, quoting Elaine Prevallet.

[159] Spretnak, p. 18.

[160] Ibid., p. 136.

[161] Note Steichen’s comments, p. 150.

[162] We have noted this in the case of Matthew Fox. This is a fairly frequent theme in feminist literature. For instance, Cooey argues that the doctrine of the incarnation presents difficulties for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, who would only find meaning in it so long as it is not unique, p. 116.

[163] Cooey, p. 121.

[164] Mollenkott, pp. 73–77.

[165] In The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone argued that biology determined social order, creating a class distinction, as in Marxist social analysis concerning the division of labour, Kassian, pp. 51–52, while Juliet Mitchell argued the stereotyped sex roles were created by the socializing of children, Kassian, p. 53.

[166] Mollenkott, p. 61: “the movement of creation away from a single androgyne into a human race of … male and female.”

[167] Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, pp. 34, 40, 46, 60–61.

[168] Mollenkott, p. 81.

[169] Kassian, pp. 94–95.

[170] Ibid., p. 54.

[171] Ibid., p. 54.

[172] Ibid., p. 99.

[173] For developments in Presbyterian, Lutheran and World Council of Churches circles, see Kassian, p. 160.

[174] Alvin F. Kimel, ed., Speaking the Christian God.

[175] Elizabeth Achtemeier, “Exchanging God for ‘No Gods’”, Speaking the Christian God, p. 4.

[176] Roland M. Frye, “Language for God and Feminist Language”, Speaking the Christian God, p. 20.

[177] Athanasius, Select Works and Letters, New York: Christian Literature Publishing, 1892, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf204.html, “De Synodis,” 42, p. 977.

[178] Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1898, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf209.html, pp. 180–181.

[179] Augustine, On the Trinity, 7.4.7, p. 109.

[180] For instance Ruether, Womanguides, p. 8.

[181] Roland M. Frye, “Language”, p. 37.

[182] Both in terms of eternal generation (John 1) and human conception (the virgin birth).

[183] Achtemeier, “Exchanging”, p. 5.

[184] DiNoia, “Knowing”, p. 184.

[185] Mollenkott, reminding us of her 39 years of teaching English language, disagrees, saying the Bible uses both similes and metaphors to depict God’s nature in female and male terms. However, she cites no texts, relying on the work of Phyllis Trible, pp. 91–92. At issue here are both the general rules of grammar, and the particular grammar of the biblical writers. Mollenkott is not strong on the latter. For instance, she follows Douglas-Klotz with the idea that we can go behind the Greek text of the New Testament to the Aramaic words of Jesus to discover a totally different theology, which is closer to mysticism, pp. 26–27. This is not the kind of thing a New Testament scholar can do without very careful historical, exegetical and linguistic technical skill (i.e. someone like Joachim Jeremias). This is also recourse to desperation. If we cannot make a metaphysical teacher out of the Jesus of the New Testament, we must create one somehow, either by projecting a speculative Aramaic meaning, or redating the biblical books to create a “cynic sage” as with the Jesus Seminar.

[186] Roland M. Frye, “Language”, p. 29.

[187] Ibid., p. 30.

[188] Janet Martin Soskice, “Can a Feminist Call God ‘Father’?”, Speaking the Christian God, p. 90, quoting Paul Ricoeur.

[189] Kimel, “The God Who Likes His Name”, Speaking the Christian God, p. 199.

[190] Ibid., p. 199.

[191] Ibid., p. 204.

[192] Gerhard O. Forde, “Naming the One Who Is above Us”, Speaking the Christian God, p. 118.

[193] Blanche A. Jenson, “The Movement and the Story”, Speaking the Christian God, pp. 282–283.

[194] Colin Gunton, “Proteus and Procrustes”, Speaking the Christian God, pp. 68–69.

[195] Jenson, “The Movement”, p. 286.

[196] Alvin F. Kimel, “The God Who Likes His Name”, p. 188.

[197] Ibid., p. 191.

[198] Ibid., p. 194.

[199] Achtemeier, “Exchanging”, pp. 8–12.

[200] Gunton, “Proteus”, p. 76.

[201] DiNoia, “Knowing and Naming the Triune God”, p. 182.

[202] Achtemeier, “Exchanging”, p. 13.

[203] Ibid., p. 15.

[204] For instance Mollenkott, p. 73, following Riane Eisler, and Ruether, Womanguides, pp. x, 4–7. Spretnak has a particular theory extrapolated from pre-Olympian early Greek society and pre-Indo-European religion, where goddess worship was combined with an egalitarian society, pp. 127–132.

[205] Roland M. Frye, “Language”, p. 27.

[206] Ibid., p. 27.

[207] Mollenkott, p. 24.

[208] The point is made in more detail in Quinton Howitt and Derek Morphew, The Kingdom, Human Dignity and the Poor, VBI course.

[209] For a detailed analysis of how idealist state philosophy (Hegel and Fichte) led to both Fascism and Marxism, see Derek Morphew, South Africa and the Powers Behind, Cape Town: Struik, 1989, now available from Vineyard International Publishing, E-Publications and The Spiritual Spider Web: Ancient and Contemporary Gnosticism, Vineyard International Publishing, E-Publications, 2008. Idealism in turn arose out of the ideas of Jacob Boehme, who reintroduced Valentinian Gnosticism. This genealogy has been carefully analysed by Cyril O’Regan, Gnostic Return in Modernity, New York: State University of New York Press, 2001; Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative, New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. I have not yet obtained a copy of The Heterodox Hegel, Sunny Series in Hegelian Studies, New York: State University of New York Press, 1994. The advertising editorial substantiates the theme however: “O’Regan shows us in textual detail how Hegel borrowed freely from the ideas of Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme and other well-known quasi-Gnostic Christian mystics.”

[210] See Derek Morphew, The Kingdom, Human Dignity and the Poor, VBI course.

[211] NIDNTT, Vol.1, p 681.

[212] Kelsey, M.T, Speaking in Tongues; An Experiment in Spiritual Experience, London, Epworth, 1964.

[213] Ervin H.M, These Are Not Drunken As Ye Suppose, (Plainfield, Logos, 1968), p 119.

[214] NIDNNT, Vol.3, p 694.

[215] Selwyn E.G, The First Epistle of Peter, London, MacMillan, 1947.

[216] Derek Morphew, Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom, Vineyard International Publishers, Cape Town, 1998.

[217] Cooper J.W, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting, Biblical Anthropology and the MonismDualism Debate, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1980.

[218] Calvin, John, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1965, p 176.

[219] Hendriksen W, New Testament Commentary: Ephesians, (Edinburgh, Banner of Truth, 1972), p 189193, see note 111.

[220] Selwyn, Commentary on the First Epistle of Peter, p. 314362 and notes on text.

[221] NICNT, p. 343344, note 56.

[222] Following John Calvin, Hebrews and I and II Peter, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1963), p 292294.

[223] Analytical Greek Lexicon, (Bagster and Sons, London, 1971), p xlii.

[224] Commentary on the First Epistle of Peter, p 314362.

[225] Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary, (Exeter, Paternoster, 1978), p 632639.

[226] Bickle, Mike, Growing in the Prophetic, Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1995.

[227] Grudem, Wayne, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today, Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1988.

[228] Ryle, James, A Dream Come True, a Biblical Look at how God Speaks Through Dreams and Visions, Harper Collins, Glasgow, 1995.

[229] Ladd G.E, The Presence of the Future, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1974; A Theology of the New Testament, London, Lutterworth, 1975.

[230] Derek Morphew, South Africa, the Powers Behind, Struik, Cape Town, 1989.

[231] MacDonald H.D, Ideas of Revelation, New York, MacMillan, 1959; Theories of Revelation, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1963.

[232] Ellis E.E, Prophecy and Hermeneutic in Early Christianity, (Tubingen, Mohr, 1978), p 58.

[233] Barklay W, The Letters of Timothy, Titus and Philemon, (Edinburgh, Saint Andrew Press, 1965) p 160161.

[234] Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, (Zondervan, 1988), p 812813, 820.

Table of Contents

PUBLICATION DETAILS

COVER

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

GNOSTIC TEACHINGS – DEITY AS NARRATIVE

GNOSTIC TEACHINGS – CENTRAL DOCTRINES

GNOSTICISM AND THE SCRIPTURES

GNOSTICISM IN OUR TIME

THE TEACHING OF E. W. KENYON

THE BEING OF GOD AND GENDER

BODY, SOUL AND SPIRIT

WHAT HAPPENED FROM THE CROSS TO THE THRONE?

WHAT ABOUT FAITH?

REVELATION

REVELATION AND INTERPRETATION

REVELATION AND HISTORIC FAITH

APPENDIX – QUOTATIONS FROM EW KENYON

BIBLIOGRAPHY