64 Sermon Illustrations on Heresy

The publishing world sees very few books reach blockbuster status, but William Paul Young’s “The Shack” has now exceeded even that. The book, originally self-published by Young and two friends, has now sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. It is now one of the best-selling paperback books of all time, and its readers are enthusiastic.

According to Young, the book was originally written for his own children. In essence, it can be described as a narrative theodicy -- an attempt to answer the question of evil and the character of God by means of a story. In this story, the main character is grieving the brutal kidnapping and murder of his 7-year-old daughter when he receives what turns out to be a summons from God to meet him in the very shack where the man’s daughter had been murdered.

In the shack, “Mack” meets the divine Trinity as “Papa,” an African-American woman; Jesus, a Jewish carpenter; and “Sarayu,” an Asian woman who is revealed to be the Holy Spirit. The book is mainly a series of dialogues between Mack, Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. Those conversations reveal God to be very different than the God of the Bible. “Papa” is absolutely non-judgmental, and seems most determined to affirm that all humanity is already redeemed.

The theology of The Shack is not incidental to the story. Indeed, at most points the narrative seems mainly to serve as a structure for the dialogues. And the dialogues reveal a theology that is unconventional at best, and undoubtedly heretical in certain respects.

While the literary device of an unconventional “trinity” of divine persons is itself sub-biblical and dangerous, the theological explanations are worse. “Papa” tells Mack of the time when the three persons of the Trinity “spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God.” Nowhere in the Bible is the Father or the Spirit described as taking on human existence. The Christology of the book is likewise confused. “Papa” tells Mack that, though Jesus is fully God, “he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being.” When Jesus healed the blind, “He did so only as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.”

While there is ample theological confusion to unpack there, suffice it to say that the Christian church has struggled for centuries to come to a faithful understanding of the Trinity in order to avoid just this kind of confusion -- understanding that the Christian faith is itself at stake.

Jesus tells Mack that He is “the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu.” Not the only way, but merely the best way.

In another chapter, “Papa” corrects Mack’s theology by asserting, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” Without doubt, God’s joy is in the atonement accomplished by the Son. Nevertheless, the Bible consistently reveals God to be the holy and righteous Judge, who will indeed punish sinners. The idea that sin is merely “its own punishment” fits the Eastern concept of karma, but not the Christian Gospel.

The relationship of the Father to the Son, revealed in a text like John 17, is rejected in favor of an absolute equality of authority among the persons of the Trinity. “Papa” explains that “we have no concept of final authority among us, only unity.” In one of the most bizarre paragraphs of the book, Jesus tells Mack: “Papa is as much submitted to me as I am to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.”

The theorized submission of the Trinity to a human being -- or to all human beings -- is a theological innovation of the most extreme and dangerous sort. The essence of idolatry is self-worship, and this notion of the Trinity submitted (in any sense) to humanity is inescapably idolatrous.

The most controversial aspects of The Shack’s message have revolved around questions of universalism, universal redemption, and ultimate reconciliation. Jesus tells Mack: “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.” Jesus adds, “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, my Beloved.”

Mack then asks the obvious question -- do all roads lead to Christ? Jesus responds, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Given the context, it is impossible not to draw essentially universalistic or inclusivistic conclusions about Young’s meaning. “Papa” chides Mack that he is now reconciled to the whole world. Mack retorts, “The whole world? You mean those who believe in you, right?” “Papa” responds, “The whole world, Mack.”

Put together, all this implies something very close to the doctrine of reconciliation proposed by Karl Barth. And, even as Young’s collaborator Wayne Jacobson has lamented the “self-appointed doctrine police” who have charged the book with teaching ultimate reconciliation, he acknowledges that the first editions of the manuscript were unduly influenced by Young’s “partiality at the time” to ultimate reconciliation -- the belief that the cross and resurrection of Christ accomplished then and there a unilateral reconciliation of all sinners (and even all creation) to God.

James B. DeYoung of Western Theological Seminary, a New Testament scholar who has known William Young for years, documents Young’s embrace of a form of “Christian universalism.” The Shack, he concludes, “rests on the foundation of universal reconciliation.”

Even as Wayne Jacobson and others complain of those who identify heresy within The Shack, the fact is that the Christian church has explicitly identified these teachings as just that -- heresy. The obvious question is this: How is it that so many evangelical Christians seem to be drawn not only to this story, but to the theology presented in the narrative -- a theology at so many points in conflict with evangelical convictions?

Evangelical observers have not been alone in asking this question. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Timothy Beal of Case Western University argues that the popularity of The Shack suggests that evangelicals might be shifting their theology. He cites the “nonbiblical metaphorical models of God” in the book, as well as its “nonhierarchical” model of the Trinity and, most importantly, “its theology of universal salvation.”

Beal asserts that none of this theology is part of “mainstream evangelical theology,” then explains: “In fact, all three are rooted in liberal and radical academic theological discourse from the 1970s and 80s -- work that has profoundly influenced contemporary feminist and liberation theology but, until now, had very little impact on the theological imaginations of nonacademics, especially within the religious mainstream.”

He then asks: “What are these progressive theological ideas doing in this evangelical pulp-fiction phenomenon?” He answers: “Unbeknownst to most of us, they have been present on the liberal margins of evangelical thought for decades.” Now, he explains, The Shack has introduced and popularized these liberal concepts even among mainstream evangelicals.

Timothy Beal cannot be dismissed as a conservative “heresy-hunter.” He is thrilled that these “progressive theological ideas” are now “trickling into popular culture by way of The Shack.”

Similarly, writing at Books & Culture, Katherine Jeffrey concludes that The Shack “offers a postmodern, post-biblical theodicy.” While her main concern is the book’s place “in a Christian literary landscape,” she cannot avoid dealing with its theological message.

In evaluating the book, it must be kept in mind that The Shack is a work of fiction. But it is also a sustained theological argument, and this simply cannot be denied. Any number of notable novels and works of literature have contained aberrant theology, and even heresy. The crucial question is whether the aberrant doctrines are features of the story or the message of the work. When it comes to The Shack, the really troubling fact is that so many readers are drawn to the theological message of the book, and fail to see how it conflicts with the Bible at so many crucial points.

All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals -- and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe.

The answer is not to ban The Shack or yank it out of the hands of readers. We need not fear books -- we must be ready to answer them. We desperately need a theological recovery that can only come from practicing biblical discernment. This will require us to identify the doctrinal dangers of The Shack, to be sure. But our real task is to reacquaint evangelicals with the Bible’s teachings on these very questions and to foster a doctrinal rearmament of Christian believers.

The Shack is a wake-up call for evangelical Christianity. An assessment like that offered by Timothy Beal is telling. The popularity of this book among evangelicals can only be explained by a lack of basic theological knowledge among us -- a failure even to understand the Gospel of Christ. The tragedy that evangelicals have lost the art of biblical discernment must be traced to a disastrous loss of biblical knowledge. Discernment cannot survive without doctrine.

________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This column first appeared at AlbertMohler.com. Mohler discussed The Shack on his radio program at http://www.albertmohler.com/2008/05/26/a-look-at-the-shack-2. Other resources:

Katherine Jeffrey, “‘I Am Not Who You Think I Am’ -- Situating The Shack in a Christian Literary Landscape,” Books & Culture (January/February 2010), pages 33-34. Online at http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2010/janfeb/iamnotwhoyouthinkiam.html

Tim Challies, “A Reader’s Review of The Shack,” http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/the-shack-by-william-p-young.php

James B. DeYoung, “Book Review: The Shack by William Paul Young.” (Online at http://theshackreview.com/content/TheShackReview2Page.pdf)

Wayne Jacobson, “Is The Shack Heresy?” Online at http://www.windblownmedia.com/about-wbm/is-the-shack-heresy.html)

Marcion of Sinope lived in the second century during some of the most formative years of the early church. The son of a bishop, he was also active as a teacher in the region of Asia Minor. In AD 144, Marcion parted ways with the Christian community by starting his own movement; by doing so, he encouraged thousands through his teachings to better appreciate the Bible.

There was just one problem.

In AD 144, Marcion was excommunicated from the church for heresy. What was his crime? Marcion taught his followers to reject the Old Testament entirely. His reason? Marcion thought that the Old Testament represented a god different from the New Testament. One cannot have two gods. Thus, Marcion and his followers read only selective books from the Bible and rejected the 39 books of the Old Testament entirely.

Is the cult of Marcionism still alive and active in our churches? It has become apparent to me over the last seven years of teaching Old Testament Survey that students come to my class with an under-appreciation for the text and history of the Old Testament. This stems from the fact that most of their exposure to the Bible, through teaching and preaching, has come largely from the New Testament. For many of my students, the stories of the Old Testament have served as illustration material and have rarely been allowed to speak theologically. This situation falls dangerously close to what the followers of Marcion practiced in the second century.

So what can pastors and teachers do to help their congregations and classrooms grow in their appreciation for the entire Bible?

First, ground your people in the truth that all Scripture is under the inspiration of God and beneficial for preaching, teaching, correction and spiritual growth (2 Timothy 3:16). For Paul and the other authors of the New Testament, the Bible of their day, the Bible that they read and used in the writing of the books of the New Testament, was the Old Testament.

Second, preach and teach from an entire book of the Old Testament and cover every verse. Will this require a few good commentaries and other resources that assist with understanding the culture, background and history of Israel? Yes, most definitely. But as you preach and teach the text and incorporate that information into what you say, you will make the Scriptures come alive for your people. You will also give them a context for reading the Old Testament on their own, with confidence, and with the ability to draw appropriate application for their lives.

Third, model life-changing application from the Old Testament in your teaching and preaching. While it is true that some things have changed over salvation history, the Old Testament still contains timeless truths that need to be incorporated into the life of the faithful.

Finally, inspire your flock with the simple but profound truth that God is always the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). The “old” of the Old Testament cannot mean that God is somehow “updated” in the pages of the New Testament. Help make the pages of the Old Testament come alive for your congregation as you focus on the gracious and loving God who has revealed Himself throughout the entire 66 books of the Bible.

Dr. John R. Rice related a gripping story about a family whose beloved dog Rex had strayed away from home. Both the children and parents were worried sick. The children were languishing around, not eating, bursting into tears at all hours of the day and night. They prayed for the pet’s safe return in their family devotions. Then one day the youngest boy shouted from the front porch, “Daddy, Mommy, everybody! It’s Rex! He’s come home!” Sure enough, when the family ran to the porch, at the edge of the clearing the familiar old dog was walking toward the house.

But suddenly, the father grimly commanded that not a member of the family move from his place. He stepped back into the house and quickly brought his shotgun, loaded it, and to the family’s horror, aimed and fired, dropping the beloved old dog dead in his tracks. Tears were streaming from his face as he fought to keep from sobbing with the grief-stricken children. “Why, Daddy? Why?” they kept saying as he embraced them and tried to soothe them. The fact is, in his wisdom he saw from the manner and the look of his old dog the unmistakable signs of hydrophobia. The dog was rabid, mad. As much as he loved the dog, he loved his family more!

When the household of faith is at stake, God’s man must be a faithful shepherd. The enemy, no matter how attractive, precious, or sentimental, must go. No matter how sweet, intelligent, appealing, dynamic, kind or heroic — our course of action is clear and unambiguous.

[A proposed new atheistic theology by the notorious Episcopal Bishop Spong]

In the 16th century the Christian Church, which had been the source of much of the stability of the western world, entered a period of internal and violent upheaval.

In time this upheaval came to be called the Protestant Reformation, but during the violence itself, it was referred to by many less attractive adjectives. The institution that called itself the body of Christ broke first into debate, then acrimony, then violence and counter-violence and finally into open warfare between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians. It produced the Hundred Years War and the conflict between England and Spain that came to a climax in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. That destruction was widely interpreted as a defeat for the Catholic God of Spain at the hands of the Protestant God of England.

Yet, when looking at that ecclesiastical conflict from the vantage point of more than four hundred years, there is surprise at how insignificant were the theological issues dividing the two sides. Neither side was debating such core teachings of Christianity as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, Jesus as the incarnate son of God, the reality of heaven and hell, the place of the cross in the plan of salvation or the role of such sacraments as Baptism and Communion. These rather were faith assertions held in common.

Of course this conflict was not without theological issues, though they seem quite trivial in retrospect. Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians disagreed, for example, about whether salvation was achieved by faith alone, as Luther contended, or whether faith without works was dead as the Vatican, quoting the Epistle of James, argued. There was also debate over the proper use of scripture and the role of ordination. Despite the hostile appellations of “heretic” hurled at Protestants and “anti-Christ” hurled at Catholics, anyone viewing this debate from the vantage point of this century would see that, while an acrimonious and unpleasant fight, it was nonetheless a fight that pitted Christian believers against Christian believers. The Reformation was not an attempt to reformulate the Christian faith for a new era. It was rather a battle over issues of Church order. The time had not arrived in which Christians would be required to rethink the basic and identifying marks of Christianity itself.

It is my conviction that such a moment is facing the Christian world today. The very heart and soul of Christianity will be the content of this reformation. The debate which has been building for centuries has now erupted into public view. All the past ecclesiastical efforts to keep it at bay or deny its reality have surely failed and will continue to do so. The need for a new theological reformation began when Copernicus and Galileo removed this planet from its previous supposed location at the center of the universe, where human life was thought to bask under the constant attention of a humanly defined parental deity. That revolution in thought produced an angle of vision radically different from the one in which the Bible was written and through which the primary theological tenets of the Christian faith were formed.

Before that opening salvo of revolution had been absorbed, Sir Isaac Newton, who charted the mathematically fixed physical laws of the universe, weighed into the debate. After Newton the Church found itself in a world in which the concepts of magic, miracle, and divine intervention as explanations of anything, could no longer be offered with intellectual integrity. Once more people were forced to enter into and to embrace a reality vastly different from the one employed in the traditional language of their faith tradition.

Next came Charles Darwin who related human life to the world of biology more significantly than anyone had heretofore imagined. He also confronted the human consciousness with concepts diametrically opposed to the traditional Christian world view. The Bible began with the assumption that God had created a finished and perfect world from which human beings had fallen away in an act of cosmic rebellion. Original sin was the reality in which all life was presumed to live. Darwin postulated instead an unfinished and thus imperfect creation out of which human life was still evolving. Human beings did not fall from perfection into sin as the Church had taught for centuries; we were evolving, and indeed are still evolving, into higher levels of consciousness. Thus the basic myth of Christianity that interpreted Jesus as a divine emissary who came to rescue the victims of the fall from the results of their original sin became inoperative. So did the interpretation of the cross of Calvary as the moment of divine sacrifice when the ransom for sin was paid. Established Christianity clearly wobbled under the impact of Darwin’s insights, but Christian leaders pretended that if Darwin could not be defeated, he could at least be ignored. It was a vain hope.

Darwin was followed by Sigmund Freud who analyzed the symbols of Christianity and found in them manifestations of a deep-seated infantile neurosis. The God understood as a father figure, who guided ultimate personal decisions, answered our prayers, and promised rewards and punishment based upon our behavior was not designed to call anyone into maturity. This view of God issued rather into either a religious mentality of passive dependency or an aggressive secular rejection of all things religious. After Freud, it was not surprising to see Christianity degenerate into an increasingly shrill biblical fundamentalism where thinking was not encouraged and preconceived pious answers were readily given, but where neither genuine questions nor maturity were allowed or encouraged. As Christianity moved more and more in this direction, contemporary people, who think with modern minds, began to be repelled and to drop out of their faith commitments into the Church Alumni Association. Between these two poles of mindless fundamentalism and empty secularism are found the mainline churches of Christendom, both Catholic and Protestant. They are declining numerically, seem lost theologically, are concerned more about unity than truth, and are wondering why boredom is what people experience inside church walls. The renewal of Christianity will not come from fundamentalism, secularism or the irrelevant mainline tradition. If there is nothing more than this on the horizon then I see no future for the enterprise we call the Christian faith.

My sense is that history has come to a point where only one thing will save this venerable faith tradition at this critical time in Christian history, and that is a new Reformation far more radical than Christianity has ever before known and that this Reformation must deal with the very substance of that faith. This Reformation will recognize that the pre-modern concepts in which Christianity has traditionally been carried will never again speak to the post-modern world we now inhabit. This Reformation will be about the very life and death of Christianity. Because it goes to the heart of how Christianity is to be understood, it will dwarf in intensity the Reformation of the 16th century. It will not be concerned about authority, ecclesiastical polity, valid ordinations and valid sacraments. It will be rather a Reformation that will examine the very nature of the Christian faith itself. It will ask whether or not this ancient religious system can be refocused and re-articulated so as to continue living in this increasingly non-religious world.

Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th century by nailing to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 the 95 Theses that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these:

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

12. All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

So I set these theses today before the Christian world and I stand ready to debate each of them as we prepare to enter the third millennium.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20922]

A spiritual battle is raging inside churches today, between biblical orthodoxy and a New Age spirituality that seeks to confuse the faithful and destroy the faith. Unfortunately, many people who call themselves Christians are in fact embracing pagan beliefs. Christians who are truly following Christ need to confront heresy and take a stand for truth to bring about much-needed healing in the church.

Here’s how you can understand and respond to the destructive theology that has invaded churches today:

Be aware that some “churches” aren’t Christian, despite their names. Realize that some congregations who label themselves as Christian churches have rejected some of the foundational aspects of Christianity, such as Christ’s incarnation and redemptive work on the cross. Moreover, they have rejected biblical ethics and eschew the pursuit of holiness to condone any type of lifestyle. When searching for a church, do your research so you can discern whether or not a particular church is biblical.

Recognize the far-reaching implications of the spiritual battle being waged. Understand that those who undermine the faith aren’t just trying to take over church life; they’re trying to change society, and ultimately, the entire planet. Pagans want to transform the minds and hearts of people worldwide, and many people caught up in their beliefs are being led farther and farther away from the truth. Take heresy seriously, knowing it has a powerful effect on the future and it’s crucial for faithful Christians to stem the tide of destruction.

Understand the basic beliefs of this destructive spirituality called “Monism.” There are five basic principles to this theology, that can be expressed in many forms (such as Gnosticism, goddess worship, relativism, witchcraft, and Christian liberalism):

• All is one and one is all, means that the universe is a mass of undifferentiated, related energy. God is simply a part of creation, not a separate, distinct Creator.

• Humanity is one, means that people are part of a divine, cosmic whole and thus can create their own reality. Each person is a source of truth, and since everybody’s truth is different, truth is relative and tolerance is the highest virtue.

• All religions are one, means that no religion can claim to have an exclusive claim to the truth, and all creeds are interchangeable. All religions should blend into a global, unified system.

• There is one problem, means that the world’s main problem is that reality has been divided into opposing camps. There should be no distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and error, God and Satan, human and animal, male and female, homosexual and heterosexual, pagan and Christian, heresy and orthodoxy, reason and irrationality.

• There is one means of escape, means that the only way to salvation is spiritual understanding that’s acquired through intuition and meditation. When people experience a liberating paradigm shift, they can redeem themselves and help redeem the planet.

[The defenses to this heresy]

• Embrace universal truth. Know that Christianity isn’t simply one option among many equally valid religions. Embrace the fact that God created the universe to work on the principle of absolute truth, and that Christ embodies that truth. Understand that relativism’s claim that absolute truth is absolutely not true doesn’t make sense. Moreover, realize that the world operates on the basis of the absolute principles God used to design it.

• Learn about church history. Recognize that the New Age is actually an old lie. Understand how the current spiritual battles have been fought in ages past so you can more effectively fight for the truth today.

• Protect God’s Word. Realize that pagans will often change the Bible to suit their own desires – either adding heretical texts to canonical ones or deleting passages that bother them. Don’t settle for any version of the Bible that’s been deconstructed by those who don’t want to accept its pure, full message.

• Ask God to guide you as you study the Bible. Test the spirits when you interpret Scripture. Pray for the Holy Spirit to fill you as you read and give you the wisdom to correctly interpret the Bible. Research the writer’s intent instead of relying on your own experience or feelings of what particular passages mean to you. Don’t pick and choose selected verses to justify your own desires, but take them in their full context to help discover what God truly wants for you.

• Understand the goal of pagan religious experience. Realize that pagans attempt to create heaven on earth themselves by trying to experience a utopia and gain the knowledge and power to create their own destinies without fear. Know that they will always be doomed to fail in this quest because only God can bring about true transformation.

• Choose truth over experience. Understand that simply having a spiritual experience doesn’t necessarily mean that you encountered God. Remember that Satan and other evil spirits masquerade as “angels of light” and that Christians can ask the Holy Spirit to give them the wisdom they need to properly discern situations. Rely on the truth of God’s Word, and know that if an experience contradicts what the Bible says, that experience is spiritually counterfeit.

• Communicate the gospel message to those around you. Make evangelism a priority. Develop caring relationships with people around you, show them God’s love, and communicate God’s truth to them.

John Hick is one of the leading advocates of religious pluralism today, and identifies himself as a Christian. In his book THE METAPHOR OF GOD INCARNATE: CHRISTOLOGY IN A PLURALISTIC AGE, he sets out to criticize the following tenets of traditional Christianity, expressed above all in the Chalcedonian ecumenical council, established in 451 CE, which is for most the essential expression of Christian Christology.

For one to uphold the doctrines of Christian pluralism as Hick does, one cannot simultaneously hold to the traditional understanding of Christ. He explains: “If he was indeed God incarnate, [then] Christianity is the only religion founded by God in person, and must as such be uniquely superior to all other religions” (ix). As one who does not believe Christianity is superior to all other religions, Hick must justify his pluralism by a reconsideration of the doctrine of the incarnation. In a nutshell, for him it is not a metaphysical reality, but a metaphor which depicts the God-centered life of Christ.

In this book Hick criticizes 6 sets of ideas common to Christianity, traditionally understood, and puts forward an alternative for a Christianity of a pluralistic age. He avers that:

(1) Jesus himself did not teach what was to become the orthodox Christian understanding of him;

(2) that the dogma of Jesus' two natures, one human and one divine, has proved be incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way;

(3) that historically the traditional dogma has been used to justify great human evils;

(4) that the idea of divine incarnation is better understood as metaphorical rather than as literal;

(5) that we can rightly take Jesus, so understood, as our Lord, the one who has made God real to us and whose life and teachings challenge us to live in God's presence; and

(6) that a non-traditional Christianity based upon this understanding of Jesus can see itself as one among a number of different human responses to the ultimate transcendent Reality that we call God, and can better serve the development of world community and world peace than a Christianity which continues to see itself as the locus of final revelation and purveyor of the only salvation possible for all human beings (ix).

*

As the BBC reports, some church leaders in the Netherlands want to transform their small nation into a laboratory for rethinking Christianity — “experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith.”

Religious Affairs Correspondent Robert Pigott tells of Rev. Klaas Hendrikse, a minister of the PKN, the mainstream Protestant denomination in the Netherlands. Pastor Hendrikse doesn’t believe in life after death, nor even in God as a supernatural being. He told the BBC that he has “no talent” for believing historic and orthodox doctrines. “God is not a being at all,” he says, but just an experience.

Furthermore, as Pigott reports, “Mr. Hendrikse describes the Bible’s account of Jesus’s life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.”

By any normative definition of Christian belief, Klass Hendrikse is an unbeliever, but in the largest Dutch denomination, he is considered a minister in good standing. As a matter of fact, he is not even unusual. A study undertaken by the Free University of Amsterdam determined that about one of every six Protestant ministers is either agnostic or atheist.

Hendrikse is very open about his views. In fact, he published a book in recent years entitled, Believing in a Non-Existent God. Conservative church leaders demanded a heresy trial for the pastor, but the denomination decided that Hendrikse’s views are too commonly held to be considered out of bounds.

In other words, the church has embraced a straightforward form of atheism within its own ranks — and among its own ministers.

The BBC report also introduces Rev. Kirsten Slettenaar, another minister of the church, who openly rejects the divinity of Christ. She refers to “Son of God” as a mere title. “I don’t think he was a god or a half god,” she says. “I think he was a man, but he was a special man because he was very good in living from out of love, from out of the spirit of God he found within himself.”

The Dutch ministers featured in this report dismiss the doctrines of biblical Christianity as “outside of people” and “rigid things you can’t touch any more.” Like the liberal theologians of the last two centuries, they insist that the “real meaning” of Christianity can survive, even if its central truth claims are denied.

One layperson cited in the report celebrated the liberation of Christianity from truth claims, allowing her to recreate the faith “to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing.”

Professor Hijme Stoffels of the Free University of Amsterdam called the new approach to Christianity in the Netherlands “somethingism.” The majority of Dutch citizens, he explains, desire some form of spirituality, but not the God of the Bible. “There must be something between heaven and earth, but to call it ‘God’ and even ‘a personal God’, for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.”

Professor Stoffels went on to argue that Christian churches in the Netherlands are “in a market situation.” As he explained, “They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some other kind of religion.”

Another pastor argued for using the words of traditional Christianity, but meaning “something totally different.”

All this is familiar, at least in general terms, to anyone who has been observing mainline Protestantism — in either the United States or Europe — for the last half-century or more. The central doctrines of Christianity are first sidelined and hardly mentioned, then revised, and finally rejected.

Behind that process is the argument that the world has changed, and that Christianity must change with it. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the most influential leaders in American Protestant liberalism, argued that the modern world has simply rendered traditional Christian doctrines unintelligible to the modern man and woman. John Shelby Spong, the retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey, put the issue bluntly: “Christianity must change or die.”

Well, as even some conservatives left in the Dutch church recognize, if the church changes in the way the Dutch liberals are changing it, it is spiritually and theologically dead already. There is a new religion of “somethingism” in the Netherlands, and it is not a new form of Christianity. It is a new religion meeting in historic Christian church structures.

All this in a country that was once pervasively Christian. Theologian and conservative church leader Abraham Kuyper was the nation’s Prime Minister from 1901 to 1905. The Dutch once claimed to model a Christian culture. All that is now in ruins.

The radical experimentation of the Dutch churches may well be a response to market pressure, as Professor Stoffels explains, but it is the substitution of a new religion in place of Christianity. Christianity stands or falls on its central truth claims. Without the knowledge of the full deity and humanity of Christ, there is no Gospel and no salvation of sinners.

Of course, if you no longer believe in a personal God, or any existent deity of any sort, then you will not be worried about salvation from sin.

A church that lacks the doctrinal conviction and courage necessary to prosecute an atheist pastor for heresy is a church that lost its Christian identity — a long time ago. The doctrinal experimentation embraced by these Dutch churches is hardly limited to the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the Dutch situation makes one point transparently clear — this is a laboratory for the destruction of Christianity.

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Robert Pigott, “Dutch Rethink Christianity for a Doubtful World,” The British Broadcasting Corporation/BBC, Friday, August 5, 2011.