Response to Peter Jones Confronting Neopaganism in the Culture and the Church I want to thank Peter for his insightful and informative paper. He has clearly established himself as an expert on neo-­‐paganism. I think I was first exposed to Peter’s work in his book responding to The Da Vinci Code, a novel which was a classic expression of neo-­‐pagan thought with its exaltation of a Gnostic world view and the worship of the sacred feminine. Excellent work on that! I do believe creeping pantheism is a clear and present danger to Christianity today and a biblical worldview. Many Christians are oblivious to its influence and how it is gradually changing the way our culture views reality. Whether it is the dualistic omnipresent “Force” of the Star Wars movies or the in-­‐your-­‐face nature worship of the movie Avatar, many Christians are gradually being enticed—if not brainwashed—into a worldview that is diametrically opposed to a biblical worldview. (1) So one strength of this paper is Peter’s clarion warning that pantheism is a dangerous and insidious worldview that is permeating our culture, our popular media and even our higher education. Peter does a great job of identifying the influence of pantheism in a variety of people and movements, from Eastern philosophies, to a revival of Gnosticism, to pagan mythology, to the new age movement. He has read widely and clearly knows of which he speaks. He also traces a great many interesting and important parallels and trajectories between movements and people. (2) A second great strength of Peter’s work is his clear delineation of two basic world views that are diametrically opposed to one another. Peter calls these Oneism and Two-­‐ism. By Oneism he means a pantheistic worldview that sees no distinction between the human and the divine. All is god and god is all. By Two-­‐ism he means the reality of a personal God, who is transcendent —wholly distinct from creation—but also imminent, both a personal being and personally involved with his creation. In contrast to Oneism, Two-­‐ism affirms we are not God and never will be God. God is eternally separate and distinct from his Creation. I could not agree more with Peter on this point. I often point out to my students that we tend to draw the line of reality between the physical world and the spiritual world, or the natural world and the supernatural world. This, however, is not a biblical distinction. In the biblical worldview the real distinction is between the Creator and the created. The Triune God is on one side and everything else is on the other, including angels, spirits, humans, animals, and the physical universe While I greatly appreciate Peter’s work, I do see certain limitations and weaknesses. Several of these can be categorized as reductionism of one sort or another, either reductionism (or oversimplification) on the question of worldviews, or reductionism in terms of the nature of the enemy. Some of those he cites are certainly dangerous and antithetical to a Christian worldview; others, however, though flawed in some respects, still provide important critiques and even correctives to our uniquely Western brand of cultural Christianity. So let me take on the first kind of reductionism first, the oversimplification of worldviews. At one point Peter makes the statement that there are really “only two kinds of ‘religiosity’”—Oneism and Twoism. This seems to me to oversimplify the diversity of religious expression in the world today. Pantheism is certainly an unbiblical and antiChrisitian worldview. But it is one among many. Consider the original sin of Adam and Eve. Their sin was not worshipping the earth. It was not pantheism. Nor was it denying the reality of a personal and transcendent God. Rather, their sin was rejecting God’s authority and claiming for themselves the prerogative of God. Satan said that if they ate the fruit, they would be like God. That is what they wanted. Romans 1:25 says that the fundamental or essential sin of humanity is to “worship and serve created things (ktisis) rather than Creator.” While this certainly includes pantheism, it goes beyond it. Secular humanism, for example, is one form of creature worship. Secular humanists claim that reason and the search for human fulfillment are the highest of all ethical values. They reject all religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision-­‐making. This philosophy is a far cry from the pantheism. For secular humanists, humans beings are at the top of the evolutionary ladder and the advancement of humanity is the highest of goals. Contrast this with pantheism that claims human beings are no more special than any other part of the cosmos. Their survival or extinction is of little significance in relation to the perpetuation of the divine cycle of life. This is a philosophy diametrically opposed to secular humanism. The same can be said for other worldviews. Consider Islam, for example. Muslims deny the Trinity—the Triune nature of God—perhaps the most fundamental tenet of the Christian faith. They deny both the deity of Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit. They believe salvation is through meritorious works. Yet they are clearly Two-­‐ists, not One-­‐ists. Does that mean Muslims and Christians have the same basic form of religiosity? Or take Mormonism. Mormons believe that as we are, God once was, and as God is, so we can become. In this sense Mormons breech that fundamental divide between Creator and the Creation. But Mormons are not One-­‐ist. They do not believe in the unity of all things. Humans Beings may become divine in Mormonism, but they are distinct from the rest of Creation, not part of it. That is not pantheism. So it seems there are not just two kinds of “religiosity,” as Peter suggests; there are many. While all other worldviews in some way or another exalt the creature over the Creator, all are certainly not Oneist. So I think the first weakness of Peter’s work is reducing the worldview conflict to just two options. The situation is far more complicated than that. A second form of reductionism that shows up in Peter’s work is an overly “US versus THEM” approach, which assumes that a diverse array of worldviews, ideas and perspectives are all one great conspiracy. At one point he says “All these movements are deeply related.” (p. 5). Another time he says, “Only one modernist metanarrative survives—bio-­‐spiritual evolution.” (p. 7). I’m not sure things are quite that black and white. On p. 9, Dr. Jones links together a bewildering array of different groups, including Evangelical theistic evolutionists, “progressive” Emergent Christian leaders, radical-­‐ post-­‐theistic Christian liberals, Christian non-­‐dual mystics, pro-­‐homosexual ministers, radical feminists, and recognized evolutionary scientists. This is an amazing catalogue of conspirators, which it seems to me have little in common with one another. They are certainly not all pantheists. What do Evangelical theistic evolutionists have to do with “radical feminists,” for example, or with non-­‐dual mystics, or with pro-­‐homosexual ministers. Very little, I would think, except for the fact that we might give them all that dreaded name, “Liberal.” Unfortunately, the word “liberal” is probably the least meaningful label we use, since it carries such little qualitative value. It generally means I don’t want to argue with you, so I will simply label you as a bad person, i.e., a liberal. I think we should ban the word from our evangelical vocabulary. But I won’t say that, since I would probably get labeled a “liberal.” Rather than labeling people, we need to critically engage their ideas, appropriate what is right and reject what is wrong. I know theistic evolutionists, for example, who are deeply committed Christians who would have virtually nothing in common with a pantheistic worldview. I have also learned a great deal from some emergent thinkers, a group that Peter appears connects to this great pantheistic conspiracy. For example, he assumes guilt by association because key emergent thinker Brian McLaren contributed an essay to the Vision Project, a movement with strong pantheistic elements. But the Vision Project invited hundreds of philosophers, intellectuals and activists to provide personal essays on the future of humanity and that is what McLaren contributed (incidentally, Kofi Annan, Secretary-­‐General UN, and Bono also wrote articles). I read McLaren’s article and saw nothing pantheistic about it. Dr. Jones obviously did. He quotes McLaren as saying "the beautiful whole that is as big as the cosmos, and bigger still, in which every particle is known, named, and loved. Can we even say something absurd? Can we say that this beautiful whole is even bigger than God..."[2] (Everything Must Change, p. 168). As I read this quote, it seems to be about the infinite magnitude of God and expressly identifies him as distinct from creation, not part of it. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t agree with everything McLaren writes. But I do find a great deal of insight and truth in his writings. The equation Emergent = One-­‐
ism or the claim that emergent ideas lead to Pantheism seems to me to be reductionistic. You could just as accurately say that, “Emergent ideas lead to a chastened and wiser Evangelicalism, which recognizes its own limitations and biases.” That, at least, has been my experience of the emergent movement. I try to encourage my students to listen and learn from their opponent before criticizing them. None of us has an absolute corner on all truth and all of us are blinded to a certain extent by our backgrounds and upbringing. So is there a grand conspiracy, a great convergence of pantheism that threatens to swallow up the Judeo-­‐Christian tradition? You can certainly find plenty of predictions of this among new age practitioners. Peter quotes many of them, predicting, for example, “a great convergence”, “a climatic synthesis” a “powerful crecendo” (p. 8), a “union of science and spirituality,” a convergence of “transcendent romanticism and rationalistic humanism.” (p. 9), a pax plannetarium, a “global empire of utopian pretensions” (p. 1). But these are not authentic prophecies. They are the wishful thinking of new age prophets and prognosticators. The Age of Aquarius did not arrive as predicted, and no amount of wishful thinking is going to bring it in. We need not fear such quackery. In closing let me just say that Peter is right. Pantheism is bad. Pantheism is wrong. Pantheism is unbiblical and Pantheism is unChristian. But here are two caveats. (1) First, let us not be reductionistic in terms of worldview. One-­‐ism is not the only enemy. It is rather one among many unbiblical worldviews. A Muslim worldview, that denies the Triune nature of God is just as wrong as Pantheism, even though it is philosophically Two-­‐ist rather than One-­‐ist. (2) Second, let us evaluate individual arguments and views accurately rather than living by labels or assuming guilt by association. Not everything a pantheist says is necessarily wrong (just like not everything a Mormon says is wrong, or nor everything a Muslim says). Furthermore, just because a particular view is sometimes associated with those who espouse pantheism does not make it wrong. Listening to some, you might think that anyone who espouses care for the environment, or supports human rights, or the rights of women, or the need for social justice, is by necessity a One-­‐ist and a pantheist. But I believe those who espouse such views are on the biblical and Christian side of these issues. Just as we might ally ourselves with Mormons or Moslems in a legislative battle against abortion or against same-­‐sex marriage, so we may find things that pantheists believe to be noble and good and worth defending. In conclusion, pantheists have always been with us and will always be with us. But the sky is not falling. Their worldview needs to be exposed. And I think Peter does a good job of doing that. But let’s not suppose either that pantheism is a monolithic entity or that everything that challenges our preconceptions is necessarily a One-­‐ist conspiracy. We need to have a much more robust and critically-­‐engaged apologetic if we are to face the challenges of our rapidly changing world.
Rob Bell full quote: “We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life. Legal metaphors for faith don't deliver a way of life. We grew up in churches where people knew the nine verses why we don't speak in tongues, but had never experienced the overwhelming presence of God." Vision
McLaren article
"Something wonderful is trying to happen." Those words strike me as both true and inspiring. They also
strike me as courageous, because to affirm them requires of us a furious resistance … resistance against the
fear and domination of a thousand terrible and ugly things that are simultaneously trying to happen.
We resist the domination and fear, I believe, by having a vision of something greater and more powerful
and more real than the threats that so easily paralyze us in anxious cycles of reactivity. For me, that vision
is evoked by some very old words from a familiar and frequently underestimated source.
“The kingdom of God is at hand,” Jesus said. “Rethink everything and believe this good news.”
To us, today, the word kingdom evokes anachronism, and along with it, fading hierarchies and
undemocratic systems of oppression. But in Jesus’ day, the term would have had a very different feel. It
would have suggested broader realities … resonant more with contemporary constructions like “way of
life,” or “social reality” or “system of relationships,” or “socio-economic web” or perhaps even
“ecosystem.”
If the term doesn’t evoke anachronism, it probably evokes religiosity. But again, Jesus didn’t say, “A new
religion is at hand,” or “A new religious movement is at hand,” or “A new religious system is at hand.” He
deliberately chose a word that was bigger than religion (bearing in mind that even the term “religion” in his
day was bigger than it is in our day).
So how do we understand the vision that Jesus’ term “kingdom of God” evoked in its original hearers? One
phrase has been echoing in my imagination lately: “beautiful whole.”
Jesus constantly called people of his day to think bigger. They had their little boxes – Pharisees and priests
in the “good guys” box, prostitutes and tax collectors in the “bad guys” box. Jews in one box, Gentiles in
another. Healthy here, sick over there. Men and adults, women and children – each to their own boxes.
Rich in a nice box, poor in a shabby one. But Jesus broke down the walls of all their boxes. He called
people to see themselves as part of a beautiful whole in which all were included, all were equal, none boxed
in.
But this beautiful whole wasn’t just for human beings. He spoke of the Creator’s love for sparrows and
crows, wildflowers and weeds. He looked at human society as a fragment of this larger reality … the reality
of “beloved creation” – the beautiful whole that is as big as the cosmos, and bigger still, in which every
particle is known, named, and loved. Can we even say something absurd? Can we say that this beautiful
whole is even bigger than God, because it begins with God in all God’s infinite fullness, and then adds
creation? Isn’t that the most beautiful whole imaginable?
This is, to me, the vision that our world needs. To believe in this vision is to make the beautiful whole
absolute, and to relativize every other box (or human construction) in its presence. It truly is a call to
“rethink everything.”
Colonialism was a form of absolutism that absolutized a box – the box of white, western, Euro-centric
culture. Americanism is another absolutized box. Even religions - they tend to absolutize their own
systems, their own structures, their own cardboard walls, floors, and tops. Secularism tries to avoid the
danger of religious boxes – but then creates new and sometimes equally inhumane boxes in their place.
Even relativism presents a kind of absolutism … by claiming that absolutely nothing has priority over
anything else.
But Jesus’ vision strikes me as being bigger and more beautiful than all of these: it asks us to believe
something that we can’t fully see or fully comprehend … something that is at once coming (trying to
happen) and here (among us), something which nobody owns, nobody except the Creator, but something to
which everybody including the Creator belongs. And the Creator – the kingdom’s King, Jesus taught equally loves both “us” and “our enemies,” and calls us all, in embracing the beautiful whole, to do the
same.
That, to me, is what is trying to happen. It’s the vision that inspires me – the vision of a beautiful
whole. Believing it as good news, I lose my fear of all the less-than-good things that are trying to happen.
Believing it as good news, I find hope, because it’s still happening, still emerging, even as you read this
unfinished sentence and