Joseph Prince: Paul's Theology versus the New Testament

Every now and then, somebody says something that begs the obvious question, "Why didn't Jesus preach what Paul preached?" or alternatively, "Why don't we have a more direct link between Jesus' recorded words and the theological statements in Paul's letters?" (That last question is certainly more of a mouthful.)  This entry's inspiration is drawn from one of the less vitriolic criticisms of Joseph Prince.

Prince seems to quote the Gospels only occasionally, which gives me the impression he probably believes much of the teaching is not relevant to the church age because the Gospels were written before the Resurrection. This enables Prince (and typical hyperdispensationalists) to avoid dealing with the command for believers to take up their cross (Mark 8:34-36) and other such passages that demand high commitment.

I believe any teacher who is called to preach like Paul the apostle must preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), which means they need to include equally the Gospels and the epistles of John, Jude, Peter and James as well as the book of Hebrews and the Old Testament.

Joseph Mattera concedes that Prince has "enough good stuff" that warrants recommending his book for "certain Christians suffering from a performance trap in which they try to earn God’s favor and love by the things they do instead of through the merit of Christ’s finished work."  But to restate the quandary yet again, are we using the non-Pauline writings of the New Testament to understand Paul's revelation, or to undo it.  If the texts are contradicting Joseph Prince's theology are they prima facie contradicting Paul's theology--that is, without interpretation being forced to protect the axiom that the writings never contradict each other because they are all divinely inspired.  We should be wary of a forced syncretism of the NT writings that refuses to acknowledge what Paul was saying.

little gods: part 2

Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? 
  — Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing*

There is none other called God by the Scriptures except the Father of all, and the Son, and those who possess the adoption.
  — Iraeneus, Against Heresies IV*

Back to the "little gods" topic on whether it is sacrilegious/blasphemous/bad to think that human beings are in any sense beings that are similar to The Being, i.e. God.

While I try to make sure that quotes aren't being given different meanings outside their contexts, I am obviously not attempting to address every point brought up in each source.  What is often the case is that many people come to the same orthodox conclusion in contradictory ways, and if you believe something considered heterodox, you'll find that many critics agree with you on several key points.  What would you think if you wrote a mathematical proof and the only thing mathematicians agreed was wrong with it was your conclusion?  If the lemmas of your argument were not universally objectionable, maybe it's not the math that's wrong.

Why was it important for Jesus to show the idea of men being called God wasn’t new… ?  Why was Jesus arguing from that point of view?

So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.* 

For which of his works did they mean to attack him? For the work that challenged their authority. For which of his words, but the words that challenged their authority. Pilate knew that it was for envy that they sought to destroy him.

little gods: "ye are gods" what did Jesus mean?

If "hyper-grace" is the "deception of the 21st century" (isn't it a little early to tell?), what was the deception of the 20th?   Well, there are too many candidates for what the heresy hunters considered top game, but by the end of the 20th century, there was a lot of uproar over "ye are gods."

And there still is.  So blasphemous was this teaching considered, that when I think back to people affiliated with CRI protesting charismatic ministry conventions, it reminds me of the scene in Life of Brian where the old man is getting stoned for saying the pronouncing the Tetragrammaton. Charges of polytheism, idolatry, creating a pantheon, ... While there may be many versions of it, let's generalize here that the "little gods" doctrine is the belief that being made in the image of God implies something particularly innately godlike about humanity in general, and especially for those in whom the Holy Spirit perfects the image of God's Son.

This seems like too large a topic to cover in one post, overlapping as it does in other controversies, but I wanted to start by surveying what the critics say Jesus actually meant when he brought up the controversial verse in Psalm 82.  By critics, I mean the people that consider the "little gods" doctrine to be patently dangerous.  I wnat to point this out lest a reader say that I am quote-mining authors to show that they support the 'little gods' doctrine;they each obviously have more to say, but we have to start with what Jesus said and what he meant by what he said, before addressing people's interpretations.

this so frail a salvation

Unfortunately, the grace of God is completely secure except when it isn't.  Even though the Father has qualified us for an inheritance in the saints, no one who turns his back to the till is fit for, worthy of, the Kingdom.  No one who is unwilling to leave his family for the Kingdom of God is fit for it.  No one who does not take up his cross daily is fit for it.

Too bad there wasn't a word in Greek for pre-qualified.  The Father has pre-qualified you for grace, but unless you are better than the rich young ruler who was unable to leave everything behind, you are unfit though qualified. Grace is really more like those letters that tell you that there's a million dollars waiting for you; all you need to do is open the letter. Or so it would seem.

This is not meant to poke fun at the mystery at the center of such phrases as "eternal security" and "predestination", but rather expose a misunderstanding about grace and works.  Sometimes a grace-based understanding can be shallow, but the works-based mentality is necessarily shallow, because it tells us to lean confidently on a salvation that is as shaky as our fleshly ability to follow God.   

Being like Christ is occultic?

A short overview of themes that I plan to revisit in more detail:

When you become a born again Christian you grow to become more Christ-like, you DO NOT become like Christ or a Christ or anything Divine for that matter. However in Charismatic churches you do; you become a little god - ‘Faith’ becomes an actual force that you wield at your command as you speak things into existence. This is totally and utterly occult.

 The article that declares this is going out of its way to purge God's church from anything vaguely New Age.  The question remains whether they are also purging it of the New Covenant as well. 

To be fair, most sites that are trying to ensure that we steal none of Jesus' special glory don't state their position so poorly, but I think these words are worth looking at because they seem to express very directly the problem that many anti-heresy groups have with the Word of Faith influence on charismatic doctrine.

"New Age" faith?

Sure, you become Christ-like, but DO NOT THINK for a moment that you are anything like Christ...?  Huh?  I think this typifies the attitude of this particular anti-heresy "movement."  If God can't make me like Jesus, how can I be expected to become the least bit Christ-like?  The New Testament is filled with admonitions to be like Christ, to be like God -- how is that Christ-likeness any less miraculous or any less reliant on the power and grace of God.  In this kind of thinking, if you believe it's possible to do what Jesus said was within the power of any believer, you are stealing glory from God, and yet you are not anything like Christ when you are manifesting the fruit of the Spirit in the power of God?

Paul says that just like a physical body/organism is not just a single part/member, so is the Anointed/Christ.  That sounds suspiciously like saying that the Christ is not just Jesus Himself.  Throughout Paul's letters are references to the mystery that we being "one spirit with" Jesus and being in some sense "in him," we are part of the corporate Anointed, and collectively we are in some sense Christ.  Which is Paul's revelation beginning on the way to Damascus:

"Who are you, Lord?"
"I am Jesus, Who you are persecuting."

But Jesus wasn't around for Paul to persecute.  There was only the church...

It is a more lengthy discussion to explore why and how, as children of God, we are partakers of the Divine nature.  But let's look briefly at the second part of this anti-heresy statement:  

‘Faith’ becomes an actual force that you wield at your command as you speak things into existence. This is totally and utterly occult.

I think there is too much teaching about faith that leaves out the role of the Holy Spirit.  However, taking these statements (and the many similar statements out there) at face value, these same people would have to correct Jesus for giving unsound teaching at times.  The disciples marvel at the fig tree withering at Jesus command, and Jesus does something we should all find very odd.  He doesn't talk about how he can do these things because he is God, or even because he is the Messiah or the Son of God.  Jesus claims that when the meagerest faith is unencumbered with doubt, a believer could command the Mount of Olives to throw itself into the sea and it would obey.  If we look to the words of Jesus, He seems to be saying things that are "utterly occult."  There are teachings in the New Testament (and the Old Testament) that provide a relational context for faith--and those teachings appear as well in charismatic circles.

Many critics of the charismatic movement ridicule the distinction of revelation knowledge from mere mental knowledge, treating all scripture as immediately comprehensible, able to be taken at face value, and yet they are unable to take this scripture at face value.  Jesus doesn't talk about this sort of faith as a sign of an apostle.  This is something Jesus speaks of as being within the realm of possibility for any believer, and he doesn't qualify it in that passage at all.  He speaks of people's faith making them whole (what! more heresy!), rather than telling them that either he or the Father has made them whole, which seems like an odd choice of words, given how jealous God is of sharing His glory...  Where were these people 2000 years ago, when Jesus needed correction? 

Is there a way of understanding Jesus' words about faith that makes faith a less relational thing and a more operational thing like magic and spell-casting?  Sure.  And this is something that people in the Word of Faith movement has often failed to grasp.  But the larger truth of not being able to do anything of real eternal value, anything spiritual, apart from the power and grace of God is something that every denomination and movement has failed to completely embrace, and this is a much more insidious failure.   There have been numerous generations of Christians who are being "good" and "holy" in their own power, and they cover over this sin by seeing "real" heretical dangers everywhere but the foundation.  They strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.   

Michael Brown and the Deadly Deception

The title of "A Dangerous and Deadly Deception" has a catchy alliteration.  I almost expected "dastardly," but thankfully, Dr. Brown does try not to impugn motives.  Dr. Brown has in fact some refreshing takes on topics, and tends to be one of the less reactionary voices on controversial subjects.

Someone that studies the Tanakh or Old Testament as studiously as Dr. Brown has, appreciating the Judaic foundation of Christian beliefs, is bound to fear Marcionism rearing its ugly head.  In Marcion's defense, I don't think we have a very good answer to how the Israelites took Canaan away from the people.  If God is love and has always been love, it is difficult to imagine how God would order the slaughter of men, women, and children.  (If you were to go back in time, would you ask Paul to explain "god of this world" a little better, rather than leaving it up to interpretation?) While the use of this as an atheist or secularist foil assumes quite a bit, somehow, I think we'd feel much better about it now if a host of angels just instantly struck the Canaanite population dead.

Now I agree mostly with Dr. Brown's criticism of Marcion, after all, it's very clear that the Apostle Paul in his doctrine was articulating a continuity between the Tanakh and his experience of Christ, but then trying to use that to explain how God is harsh and exacting (i.e. holy) since He is unchanging has its own "dangerous and deadly" pitfalls.

I first encountered this in some fringe hyper-grace circles, where the reasoning goes like this: “I am a spirit, I have a soul and I live in a body. My spirit is born-again, redeemed and perfect in God’s sight. Therefore my spirit—which is the real me—is incapable of sinning, which means that if there is sin in my life, it’s not really me committing the sin.”

Wouldn't it be great to be so secure in Christ, like the apostles (besides Judas), that the Father had placed in Jesus hand and could not be taken from him?  Maybe some of us are like Judas, devils from the beginning?  Of course, those who want to dissuade us from "easy grace," from believing that He has already sanctified us and made us righteous before Him, even from believing that we are secure in our salvation and don't need to ceaseless worry that we have sinned our way out of His grace, need look no further than Jesus' own words.  Of course, very few of them know what to tell those who have remarried, even though Jesus seems to have sided with Shammai that this is living in adultery.

On the one hand, if we take the spirit-soul-body trichotomy so rigidly, what do we make of "all filthiness of the flesh and spirit"?  How are we affected by spiritual wickedness?  Why do we even still need advocacy with the Father?  On the other hand, is it really true that a believer who consistently suffered from some indulgence of pride his whole life is not born of God?  If "he that is born of God cannot make a practice of sin," as Brown interprets it, then he either never experienced a rebirth or was "unbirthed."

This reminds me of extremes in the Word of Faith camp where people were taught never to say they were sick, since they were already healed at the cross. Instead, they were told to say they were suffering from lying symptoms. (How much better it is to say, “I’m fighting some sickness but I confess that God is my Healer and that Jesus paid for my healing, so believe God with me for complete restoration now.”)

I agree with Brown here mostly.  The practice of never acknowledging sickness is turns oppressive and superstitious, even cultic.  A common criticism of the Word of Faith teaching is that it puts the believer in a terrible bind:  If I don't get healed, what am I doing wrong?   And certainly, we are at least as dependent on the Spirit for the manifestation of our paid-for sanctification as our paid-for healing.  And yet there are believers who never got healed and we can either tell them that they never really had faith or they get told it isn't always God's will to heal.  But is there no point to "calling those things that be not as though they were"?  Is there no sense in which a "kingdom reality" is laid hold of through confession of faith?  Is there no sense in which my own sinfulness truly is a "lying symptom" that goes against who I am in the Anointed and where I am seated in the Anointed?

Yes, I agree with Brown that it's not a good thing when faith is confused with denial.  The Holy Spirit illuminates problems in order to set us free from them and manifest our sanctification.  But some of the alarmist captions to these articles remind me of preachers that wanted you to always be worried that you might have committed the Unpardonable Sin.  Pride is deadly.  Division is deadly.  Gluttony is deadly.  But believing too much in the grace of God somehow became Deception #1 on Heaven's Most Wanted list for the 21st century.  Believing that there is some untouchable core, some incorruptible seed in me, INCORRUPTIBLE, a holy remnant of my spirit that God has reserved to Himself that will not bow to Baal, is not the problem.  I can believe that and still welcome the counsel of the Holy Spirit that reveals dangers that afflict my soul.

Some extreme hyper-grace adherents will take a biblical verse and stand it on its head. For example, John writes, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:9, ESV). But rather than understanding the plain meaning of the verse, namely that a truly born-again believer will not make a practice of sin, they conclude, “Even if it appears that I’m doing wrong things, I’m really not sinning, since God’s Word says that I can’t.” (I have read this with my own eyes.)

 Is that really on its head?   Like I said, I think there is often sins that believers never realize a victory over.  According to Brown, presumably, these are not "new creatures in Christ." They have been uncreatured or never were new creatures.  In at least one Brown and another commentator argued that many scholars agree with this translation of a Greek phrase that would as easily be "produce sin."  They seemed to think this was the clear meaning as opposed to the understanding of the man who replied that other scholars think differently.  Which scholars will you believe?  Brown believes that his interpretation avoids the blatant contradiction with the 1st chapter of 1 John, that states that if we say we have no sin we are being untruthful.    
In work.  More to be written...

nature of error-correcting in the church

I find myself surprisingly disheartened by all the Christians correcting each other's "error."  It's not they are disagreeing with each other, but it's that the battle over the "soul of Christianity" rests on getting all the particular meanings right in words written two thousand years ago, or more, in another language.  And, they tell you, we live in constant danger of getting it wrong. There is no shortage of opinions on how to get it wrong.   Why, where you spend eternity will depend on you getting it right, so you better pay attention!

Wouldn't it all have been simpler if about two thousand years ago, Peter would have got up and prophesied that the New Testament canon would be complete and what it would consist of?  We're never even told precisely what the Old Testament canon should consist of; Catholics, Jews, and Protestants disagree.  Before a state church imposed its will, different groups had different NT canons.  Wouldn't have been simpler if Wouldn't it have been simpler if Jesus, verified by 4 different gospel writers each in their own words--not repeating another gospel writer's words-- if Jesus had said, "I need to go to the Father so that you may have a complete Bible, and so the Holy Spirit will come up select men in this select generation so that they may have , and the Holy Spirit will help you tease meanings from those written words, and only the elect shall find the words of life within."  It would have been easier, because then the church would've known what to expect.

I can tell you one thing.  The writings in the New Testament canon could have been a lot more clear, with the passages that leave room for argument unnecessarily.   After hearing one person go on, whether patiently or condescendingly, about what the text must mean, based on making the meaning coherent with other scripture and consistent with theology, it leaves me wondering, "Well, why leave so much room for interpretation in the writing?  All of that could have been written down."  Instead, we have so many people loudly and proudly declaring what the verses (verses? like in poetry?) of people's letters "plainly mean."  "Why, the truth's just there for anyone to see it, and if you were as humble and Spirit-led as me you would see it for yourself!" Or perhaps less arrogantly: "I humbly beseech you by the love of Christ to read the scripture the right way since I don't want you to be lose your salvation, dear brother."  Thank you, dear brother, but you'll have to get in line behind all the other concerned brothers who want me to give their obviously right interpretations a fair shake lest I be set on fire of hell and lead others to perdition or grave error or danger.

Most of these people would be surprised to know that I sympathize with them over the "culture war," as secular and materialist forces out there seek to replace the role of religion in community mores with various man-made platitudes and mores, so-called relativists imposing their moral absolutes on the religionists they despise.  People naturally take refuge in their own absolutes, and if they can't just open up The Bible and divine the words of life, what then?  Well, then anything goes, I guess.

I honestly understand what a relief it is for people outside Christianity to chuck the whole thing as a tangled mess.  What a relief to not wonder whether you have to be baptized or whether you have to accept the Apostles' Creed or whether you have to give all you have to the poor or whether you have to work out your salvation constantly for fear that Jesus will say "he never knew you" when you get to pearly gates or whether you must never "deny" Jesus or whether you have just the right ideas or whether Jesus will disown you because you didn't visit someone in prison... Many within Christianity would tend to take this offputting as a sign that we all need to get orthodox and believe the same thing.  Isn't it obvious that our unity as the Church is suffering, and how will the world know we are God's church without our unity?   I think that all this concern over believing everything in just the right way is really us just making things rest on our human understanding and exalting our human understanding.

"Oh, but if they reject the voice of the Spirit, they are rejecting the Gospel."  Maybe they're rejecting your version of the Gospel, and maybe that's not what the Spirit is reaching out to them.  Maybe you're pushing them further away from the Kingdom of God because you not only won't enter into His rest, but you won't let anyone enter by walking in an understanding that isn't yours?  But that can't be it, can it?

It seems ironic that many of the error-correcters in the church tar-brush various attempts to spiritually discern (i.e. going beyond the natural mind to listen to the Spirit) truth in the New Testament as Gnosticism.  This is a slippery term, and I think they mostly gravitate to this term because they think that believers are talking about some state of "enlightenment" in the sense of some privileged arcane knowledge.  As though to enter the mind of Christ one doesn't need personal revelation from the Holy Spirit but can rely on human common sense about what is "plainly written."  Yeah, it's all so obvious, isn't it?  Putting the mystery into the capable "hands" of the fleshly mind sounds to me more like the Gnostic spirit than the opposite.

I find myself more disheartened by the more reasonable souls this way than by the nastier, ridiculous people crusading for truth.  It's the more subtle, somewhat more meek versions of this that have me feeling discouraged.