Quote: These two studies corrected erroneous thinking that I had somehow received as "mainstream christian thought"

I had a post typed up but I will not post it as there's a far more pressing need... While I was looking at the articles you posted I checked out other teachings of James Fowler.

James Fowler “No independent self” An Attempt at Clarification
references Norman P. Grubb

Norman P. Grubb - It was mainly through the writings of Boehme that Mr. Grubb came to the belief that the entire universe consists of God's myriad forms of Self-manifestation.

Pantheism sees God AS the universe itself. He is not the creator of the universe, He IS the universe. Thus the universe is a manifestation of God, everything is a manifestation of God because everything IS God.

Please go back to the "mainstream christian thought"

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Colin Murray

Colin,

Fowler does not believe in Pantheism. And neither does Grubb.

This was a question asked to Grubb (who is on SermonIndex).

May-June 1981 Union Life Magazine

Q. Are you a Pantheist?

A. Again the answer depends on how we define pantheism. From the Greek I had in my English schooling, I remember that “pan” is the neuter case in Greek for “everything,” and of course theism relates to “Theo” (God).

In that sense it is ridiculous that any reader of a Union Life article could think that we who so totally center all in the Living Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we know the Father by the Spirit, could conceive of God as a thing, or as “everything!” Surely we give no grounds for any such suspicion. Rather we would actually say that by this definition of pantheism, every human not born again is a pantheist. Before we enter into a living relationship with the Father through the Son, our “god” is some kind of “thing,” whether that “thing” is our own fallen selves, or some earthly god, or possibly even our “religion.” All the unredeemed are pantheists, for some thing is god to them, some form of the “everything.”

But some people get nervous and even call us “pantheists” because we do believe in God as Spirit (John 11:24) as the Invisible One manifested by His visible forms (Rom. 1:20), as He who “fills heaven and earth” (Jer. 23:24), and as finally known by His universe as “All in all” (and thus known now by faith in His eternal changelessness). These are the terms commonly used of Him: omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. He is love, light, power, and thus He must be everywhere. So in those realities we see Him and speak about Him as manifested in all His forms: the “Beyond in the midst,” the transcendent in the Immanent, the Vine expressed through the branches, the Head expressed through the body. The “whole human race lives and moves and has its being in God” (Acts 17:28). The pantheists would see Him as the forms; we see Him in them. We therefore come under the category of being “panentheists,” the all-important little Greek preposition en in that phrase meaning in. He in everything, not He everything.

A simple illustration is our human selves. We as persons are “spirits” contained in our bodies. No one mistakes us for our bodies! But because of our strong emphasis on God being manifested in all His creation, and because we call ourselves “see-throughers” rather than “see-aters,” it is inevitable that some non-understanding people will falsely label us as pantheists. Indeed we are in such union with Him that we are called by Jesus “the light of the world.” But He is that light in our form.

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Colin, we were all made in the image of God. I have no problem with how Grubb tries to define what he believes. I probably would not go that far and I certainly would not let it prevent me from reading some articles. But that's just me.

The author of the book "Rees Howells Intercessor" is Norman Grubb, the former secretary of of WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade) and the son-in-law of C. T. Studd its founder. But regardless of Grubb's accomplishments, why would anything that you perceive he might have believed dissuade you from reading a couple of articles I sent you?

So, don't get spooked at people falsely labeling these brothers and please take a look at those articles.

Pilgrim

Hi Colin,

Here is a short excerpt from Fowler who readily says there are some in the Union Life Movement who go to the other extreme of "No Independent Self". Fowler, in many of his articles comes out against Pantheism and Panentheism. I have not read that much regarding Grubb's writings. I will also say that I have not found any writer perfect, but have learned a lot from many, nevertheless. So read this to see how strong Fowler comes out against such things.

The False Thinking of Human Annihilation and/or Deification

Ever the extremist, willing to take any truth and transform it into a lie, the deceiving tempter has another falsity up his sleeve. If he cannot enslave people with the humanistic thought of human potential or Christian ability, he will push in the other direction toward pantheistic thought.

There are some in the "union life movement" who affirmed the "no independent self" of human potential and the "no independent self" of Christian ability, but proceeded to claim there is "no independent self" because "union with Christ" constitutes such a oneness with the divine that the human "self" is annihilated by absorption into God. Relational union with Christ is falsely equated with essential oneness with Christ, and that to the point of monistic merging into equivalence with Christ.

When the idea of "no independent self" is pushed to the extreme of advocating "no independent personhood" because there is "only one Person in the universe," the distinction between God and man, Creator and creature, that is intrinsic to Christian thought (as noted previously) is denied. Claiming to be so "one with Christ" that they are "no longer human," some have accepted this false thinking of human annihilation as the ultimate expression of "union life." Humanity is depersonalized or dehumanized by the alleged obliteration of one's independent human self, as it is replaced by Himself as myself. "I am He, and He is me," in the consubstantial equivalence of essential oneness, is the claim of these deceived monists. They try to hide their monistic pantheism behind the curtain of "panentheism," but their false colors are exposed.

Claiming to have the "single eye" that sees "God only," some have blasphemously declared, "When I see me, I see God. I see Christ. I am the third person of the Trinity." Should anyone "see" otherwise, they are regarded as not having the advanced spiritual sight to "see through" to God. To "see" them and what they do as anything other than a manifestation of God is identified as "seeing an illusion." Those who are not regarded as spiritual "knowers" and "see-ers" are seeing only the "illusion of humanness," "the illusion of carnality," or "the illusion of sin."

Enamored with their alleged essential oneness with God's Being, these spiritualists have little concern for the consistency of divine character in their behavior. Despising the word "sin," they often deny all possibility of expressing "self-for-self" character. "What I do is what He does. All I do is Christ in action as me, despite how it might appear." Even blatantly selfish and sinful behavior is regarded to be "God's expression as me" - another blasphemous indictment of God's character, that appears to be the apostasy of calling evil "good." Such a view of the mechanical inevitability of divine expression, claiming, "I am Christ, and Christ does not sin," is a form of perfectionism that presumes an integration into oneness with the Independent Self of the universe, to the extent that they function as God.

Whereas "law" served a purpose for revealing the fallacies of "human potential" and "Christian ability," it serves no purpose in this fallacy of equivalence with God. Convinced that they can do all things "as God," they are a "law unto themselves," flaunting their carnality and lawlessness with no regard for the character of God.

Though they use the phraseology of "no independent self," they have invested it with an entirely different meaning, believing they have progressed beyond being a dependent human self to operate as the Independent Self of the Godhead. This thesis entails a subtle denial of the distinctive objective realities of God and man - that God is the only Independent Self, and man always functions as a dependent self. Denying their human creatureliness, they claim to be co-creators and co-gods with God, impinging on the singularity of God's functioning only as Himself - What God is, only God is! At the same time they reject man's function as a "dependent self," having an intense disdain for the concept of "derivative man" wherein man always derives character from one spirit-source or the other, God or Satan. "God does not mean for man to have faith," they assert, for they seek to deny the necessity of the human choice of dependence in "receptivity of His activity." Satan's original lie that man could be "like God" in human potential has now become the delusion that "you are God" in the essentialism of divinization.

And he comes out strongly against Pantheism and Panentheism in the following:

Universalism: It's Forms and Fallacies
http://www.christinyou.net/pages/universalism.html

Blessings,
Pilgrim

Pilgrim my advice to you is this

Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your soul. Jer 6:16

Fowler is promoting the very same doctrine as Norman Grubb.

Norman Grubb quote: The basis of our total truth, which we are taking to the whole church in the whole world, is that the human self has no nature of its own.

What about Christ? Where did he go? Why would such a thing be Norman Grubb’s “basis of our total truth” why would you have to take it to the whole world and what is this truth? “the human self has no nature of its own”……… ......Pilgrim you have swallowed the hook…

Fowler quote, No Independent Self "An Attempt at Clarification": "God is the essential cause of all things"

Fowler may say he is a Christian but his teaching points to Hinduism and Gnosticism..

Hinduism: Brahman is proclaimed to be the reality behind everything in this universe, the cause which sustains the effect.

Gnosticism: believies that the true God is separate from the physical universe however, there are aspects of the true God in the physical universe as well. Thus, "All-In-God"

Fowler is promoting the very same thing as Norman Grubb.

Norman Grubb is a typical example of countless others, who for whatever reason, struggled 
to walk by faith and unfortunately turned to Hindu/Gnostic ideas (mysticism) to experience a sense of spirituality and a feeling of belonging to God.

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Colin Murray

murrcolr,

You are taking quotes out of context and you defame brothers by doing this.

Fowler frequently writes against gnosticism, pantheism, panentheism, etc.

I have swallowed no hook, but thanks for your concern. If you don't want to read the articles I mentioned that is fine.

https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=15

Blessings,
Pilgrim

I'd focus on Romans 6:6 and stay with it - studying it and if needs be - look at several Scholars take on that one verse - especially those that major in Greek exegesis.
Seems to be a life or death verse.

O Pilgrim, guard and keep the deposit entrusted (to you)! Turn away from the irreverent babble and godless chatter, with the vain and empty and worldly phrases, and the subtleties and the contradictions in what is falsely called knowledge and spiritual illumination for by professing it some have swerved from the faith 1 Tim 6:20-21.

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Colin Murray

"O Pilgrim, guard and keep the deposit entrusted (to you)! Turn away from the irreverent babble and godless chatter, with the vain and empty and worldly phrases, and the subtleties and the contradictions in what is falsely called knowledge and spiritual illumination for by professing it some have swerved from the faith 1 Tim 6:20-21."

Hello Colin,

From which translation is that quote taken? Certainly cuts to the core, eh?

Thanks for posting,
ws

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Janice

From the Amplified Bible

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Colin Murray