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C.H. Spurgeon once said:
“We see, in many a land, the proudest dynasties and tyrannies still crushing, with their mountain weight, every free motion of the consciences and hearts of men. We see, on the other hand, the truest heroism for the right and the greatest devotion to the Truth in hearts that God has touched. We have a work to do, as great as our forefathers and, perhaps, far greater. The enemies of Truth are more numerous and subtle than ever and the needs of the Church are greater than at any preceding time. If we are not debtors to the present, then men were never debtors to their age and their time. Brethren, we are debtors to the hour in which we live. Oh, that we might stamp it with Truth and that God might help us to impress upon its wings some proof that it has not flown by neglected and unheeded.”
What is Truth? These words from the lips of Pontius Pilate who finally sealed Jesus’ death sentence when he asked the Jewish rabble: “I find in him no fault at all. But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the Passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber” have repetitiously and monotonously echoed throughout the ages. Has it ever occurred to you that it was a custom that swayed Pontius Pilate’s mind to have Jesus of Nazareth crucified? Customs and cultural traditions are part and parcel of man’s psyche but they are often cast up as barriers against the Truth. In our beloved Dutch Reformed Church, as in many other churches, the Truth has effectively been marginalised and even suppressed by the post modernists’ rallying cry: “In antiquity it was customary to believe this and that because it complimented their frame of mind and their particular culture. However, having studied the Bible for many years, post modern scholars, professors, preachers and teachers can no longer believe these so-called truths.” Professor Jurie le Roux of the DRC Seminary in Pretoria succinctly expressed this view as follows.
For the First Century Christians Jesus rose from the dead because it was part of their worldview; today we cannot understand it in that way any longer. (1)
Barabbas, a robber who has actually become a metaphor for today’s post modernists’ role in robbing unsuspecting church goers of the Truth, is being released like the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons. Like the Jewish rabble they too are crying with hoarse voices filled with animosity: “Release unto us NOT this Man who is the essence of Truth but a robber.” And now once again like precision clockwork, another post-modernist opts for the release of a “robber” in stead of the Truth under the guise of learnedness, scholarly expertise and higher education. His name is Dr. Chris Jones, Head of the Centre of Moral Leadership at the University of Stellenbosch. This is what he said in a recent article, “Difficult Faith Questions” in the Kerkbode, an online magazine of the DRC.
Theologians who think innovatively are often harshly criticized – especially by “normal” members in the church (the purpose of this choice of words is not to try and talk down to people). Naturally it is expedient to continuously welcome and promote members’ participation and conversation.
However, it is necessary to conduct these conversations in a spirit of integrity, profundity, tolerance and sensitivity to mention only a few values. The latter is important because you are often laid bare in your thoughts before your partners in conversation.
A number of members, believers and pastors are not only worried about innovative ideas amongst theologians but also become very upset when they hear and read in these conversations that certain “truths” are no longer fixed as they were believed to be in the past — they experience it as a kind of subversion of the purity of the church.
The innovative theological ideas referred to above, are without exception based on years of research, reflection and prayer. Can we therefore not communicate each other and each other’s good indentations more circumspectly?
His main concern, he says, is the well-known rhetoric that faith is heard and understood in a more unbiased way in the ordinary, simple inner circle and that the church must guard against the theological Scribes and their cunning whose aim it is to confuse people as well as against the false prophets with whom the people surround themselves because they preach and teach what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3). In this way, he continues, highly educated theologians are made suspect as if it were their intent to tamper with the truth in sinister ways. To illustrate his point Chris Jones quotes Christo Lombaard’s following examples “I am not a trained surgeon; I am just a normal person like you who’s concerned about your health; let me operate on you . . .” or “I am not a trained engineer; I am only a normal person like you who’s concerned about our transportation system; let me build a bridge over the high way . . .” Chris asks: “Why is the absurdity of this kind of argument tolerated when it comes to theology or faith? Of course “normal” people’s faith may have an admirable spiritual depth but when certain questionable religious convictions are elevated to an authoritarian position to the detriment of sound theology red lights begin to flicker.”
Indeed, It would be foolish to let anyone who is not a trained physician to operate on you or to appoint someone who is not an engineer to build a bridge over a highway. Nonetheless, can we apply Christo Lombaard’s sentiments to the realm of faith and spirituality? Unless the truth in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 is no longer valid in our post modern society, Lombaard’s assessment cannot be applied to matters pertaining to the Christian faith. In fact, Paul emphatically declares that God chose the foolish, the weak, and the despised to confound the wise and the mighty. Barnes explains verse 27 as follows:
But God hath chosen – The fact of their being in the church at all was the result of his choice. It was owing entirely to his grace.
The foolish things – The things esteemed foolish among people. The expression here refers to those who were destitute of learning, rank, wealth, and power, and who were esteemed as fools, and were despised by the rich and the great.
To confound – To bring to shame; or that he might make them ashamed; that is, humble them by showing them how little he regarded their wisdom; and how little their wisdom contributed to the success of his cause. By thus overlooking them, and bestowing his favors on the humble and the poor; by choosing his people from the ranks which they despised, and bestowing on them the exalted privilege of being called the sons of God, he had poured dishonor on the rich and the great, and overwhelmed them, and their schemes of wisdom, with shame. It is also true, that those who are regarded as fools by the wise men of the world are able often to confound those who boast of their wisdom; and that the arguments of plain people, though unlearned except in the school of Christ; of people of sound common sense under the influence of Christian principles, have a force which the learning and talent of the people of this world cannot gainsay or resist. They have truth on their side; and truth, though dressed in a humble garb, is more mighty than error, though clothed with the brilliancy of imagination, the pomp of declamation, and the cunning of sophistry.
And the weak things – Those esteemed weak by the people of the world.
The mighty – The great; the noble; the learned.
If, as Chris Jones says, truths — and in particular Bible truths — are not fixed but wax and wane with the ebb and flow of each new society and culture, it implies that today’s truths will eventually be replaced with new truths within the next 2000 years. Today’s “truths” espoused by our highly esteemed and educated post modern theologians will be frowned upon by the next generation. Hence the spiritual journey on which the post modernists have embarked to wrestle with the complexities of life and to seek new truths that compliment these complexities is an endless journey to never-never land. The best they can do on this journey is to agree to disagree and gleefully continue on their road of never ever finding a solidly fixed truth. They have become like silly women who are laden with sins and ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:6-9). Here is what Chris Jones had to say about this journey to never-never land.
How do we manage it? For me it is important that we think anew and more intensely about who we are, what this life is all about and to which we are called in the midst or our diverse opinions. We ought to try and understand what it means to live and journey with Jesus.
It remains a journey — a departure rather than an arrival. It is a journey on which the inner circle must be prepared to set their sights from without. It is a journey of continued learning and unlearning [and] of pioneering new horizons.
It is a path everyone of us must journey with our entire humanness.
[It is a journey on which] certain thoughts should not be overrated because then it becomes like idols. And where the truth is made more veritable than what it is this journey becomes one to never-never land.
On this journey a person must experience the surprises of the the Spirit.
Whispering winds that come from and go to places of which we do not know or foresee. We must be free to embrace the rhythms of doing and rethinking, and especially innovative thinking.
These are indeed poetic thoughts and words but do they measure up to the standards of innovative thinking? Denials, abjurations and renunciations can hardly be reckoned as innovative thinking and a journey with no destination or goal in sight is completely unreliable and deceitful. And this journey on which we are supposed to embark with our entire humanness is replete with denials, abjurations and renunciations — vis-vis denials of the historicity and literalness of the Genesis narrative, denials of the virgin birth, denials of the deity of Jesus Christ, denials of his bodily resurrection, denials of a large portion of Jesus Christ’s words and sayings in the Bible, denials of the infallibility of the Bible, denials that the Bible is the Word of God, denials of the authorship of many Bible books, denials . . . denials . . . denials. Anyone who boasts that these denials are highly educated, scholarly and innovative thoughts are not only deceived but are misleading multitudes. In fact, their so-called “innovative” thoughts and ideas are as old as Satan’s lie in Genesis which in essence forms the basis of all denials — “Did God actually say . . .?”
An online dictionary defines the word “denial” as follows: “refusal to believe a doctrine, theory or the like.” Having said this and bearing in mind that the Bible is a doctrinal treatise on how to know God (to be saved) and how to live according to his dictates the innovative thinking of Chris Jones’ highly educated theologians is nothing but an outright refusal and rejection of God’s doctrines. No wonder their journey is a departure rather than an arrival, as Chris Jones so wonderfully succinctly put it — a departure from the Truth and an arrival at never-never land. And no wonder Paul said of them:
Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves]. (Romans 1:22)
Let’s for a brief moment consider Jones’ words with much respect and integrity: “The innovative theological ideas referred to above, are without exception based on years of research, reflection and prayer.” Ah! his pious claim that they had done their research with reflection and prayer immediately puts the stamp of approval on their new found truths which are, in any case, going to be renounced by the generations to come on the strength and convictions of their own prayers. Who can argue with prayer when it suggests that they had spoken to God about their new found truths and He has irrefutably shown them that their particular truths are the correct ones and not those of the first century apostles who supposedly did not receive the truth by prayer but by means of shamanic induced altered states of consciousness? Marcus Borg, one of the DRC’s (and the Emergent Church’s) blue-eyed boys and darlings has this to say about Jesus in his book “Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time:”
Spirit persons are known cross-culturally. They are people who have vivid and frequent subjective experiences of another level or dimension of reality. These experiences involve momentary entry into non-ordinary states of consciousness and take a number of different forms. Sometimes there is a vivid sense of momentarily seeing into another layer of reality; these are visionary experiences. Sometimes there is the experience of journeying into that other dimension of reality; this is the classic experience of the shaman. Sometimes there is a strong sense of another reality coming upon one, as in the ancient expression “the Spirit fell upon me.” Sometimes the experience is of nature or an object within nature momentarily transfigured by “the sacred” shining through it…. What all persons who have these experiences share is a strong sense of there being more to reality than the tangible world of our ordinary experience. They share a compelling sense of having experienced something “real.” They feel strongly that they know something they didn’t know before. Their experiences are noetic, involving not simply a feeling of ecstasy, but a knowing. What such persons know is the sacred. Spirit persons are people who experience the sacred frequently and vividly. They mediate the Spirit in various ways. Sometimes they speak the word or the will of God. Sometimes they mediate the power of God in the form of healings and/or exorcisms. Sometimes they function as game finders or rainmakers in hunting-and-gathering and early agricultural societies. Sometimes they become charismatic warriors and military leaders. What they all have in common is that they become funnels or conduits for the power or wisdom of God to enter into this world. Anthropologically speaking, they are delegates of the tribe to another layer of reality, mediators who connect their communities to the Spirit.
So there you have it: Jesus and his disciples received the truth through altered states of consciousness while today’s post modern super apostles whose innovative ideas are without exception based on years of research, reflection and prayer gained their new truths by speaking to God in prayer. But then again we should ask ourselves: If the apostles had received the truth of God through much prayer and reflection and similarly todays post modern innovative thinkers have also received their new truths through prayer and reflections, and assuming that the generations to come are going to receive new truths through much prayer and reflection, what kind of a God is the Father of Jesus Christ who chops and changes his opinion of the truth with every new culture and generation who claims to be in a state of much prayer and reflection? Yes indeed, our learned and prayerful friends would say, the disciples experienced Jesus’ metaphoric resurrection while they were in a shamanic states of altered consciousness and today’s post modern super apostles know this as a fact through much reflection and prayer. Once again, who can argue with that? Case closed! May God have mercy on their pitiful souls!
How Chris Jones can plead for an understanding of what it means to live and journey with Jesus when most of the post modern theologians’ so-called “innovative” thinking is nothing but denials of the doctrines of the Jesus with whom they claim to be on a journey, goes beyond normal reasoning. The only conclusion to make is that their Jesus with whom they are on a journey is not the Jesus of the Bible but another Jesus. Who is this Jesus? Well, his followers call him the Maitreya who invites them to go on a journey with him.
My task will be to take you on a journey into Truth, into the Blessed Country of Love, and there to show you to yourselves as God.
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The notion that past truths are no longer fixed, poses an immense problem with Jesus Christ’s claim in Hebrews 13:8 that He is the same yesterday, today and forever. If that were not the truth not a single truth in the Christian faith could have remained fixed which, of course, would naturally corroborate Chris Jones’ affirmation that certain truths in the Bible can no longer be seen to be fixed or unchangeable. If Jesus is the essence of truth and if his claim that He has remained unchanged and inflexible throughout the ages is true, then every single truth in the Christian faith has remained fixed and unchanged throughout the ages because He is the Word of God who was made flesh. Jesus Christ’s immutability is the irrefragable assurance that every single truth in the Bible is the unchangeable truth and has remained fixed throughout the ages.
(1) Paper delivered at the VCHO, 25 Augustus 2007 Pretoria: “The denial of Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead – A Theological background.” Ferdie Mulder. BTh 2004; MTh 2006 Pretoria.
