The Untenableness of Neo-Orthodox Theology Exposed

“The (neo-orthodox) theologians stand before the Bible in the expectation that through preaching the words of the Bible will become the word of God as the Bible’s audience encounters them in the written witness to Jesus Christ. Barth is famous for the syollogism, ‘The Word written: the Word preached: the Word revealed.’ In other words the written words of the Bible become the word of God to the Church through the preaching of Jesus Christ. As the Bible engenders faith in Jesus Christ, it becomes the Word of God. Surely it is important to combine Word and Spirit  to know God in Jesus Christ, but to restrict the revelation  of the word of God to the human encounter with God in that preaching locates the Bible’s authority in the Christian’s experience of revelation, not in the Bible’s  divine inspiration of that revelation. God’s Word is God’s Word whether or not it is recognized as such, just as a father and a mother are a child’s parents whether accepted or rejected by the child.

The neo-orthodox tend to distinguish between Jesus Christ as the Word of God and Scripture as a ‘witness’ to the Word of God. Barth grounded his dogmatic theology on an orthodox understanding of Jesus Christ as the embodiment of God and of God’s purpose for humankind, but regrettably not on the whole Bible, which he did not regard as inerrant. According to neo-orthodox theology, biblical statements that do not contribute to the witness to Jesus Christ are not necessarily true. This position is unstable because it exalts Christ by depreciating the text that bears witness to His exaltation. In other words according to the neo-orthodox, one hears the Word of God in the Bible as one hears music on a scratched record. In this way they tend to set up the canon of the message of Jesus Christ (i.e.– The music) as more valuable then the whole canon of Scripture (i.e. — the record); a canon within the canon. This dichotomy creates an unstable theology — evangelical and unorthodox regarding the authority of all of Scripture. A canon-within-a-canon theology ultimately places authority in the audience.”

Bruce Waltke 
An Old Testament Theology — pg. 75-76

A small beef with Waltke, in this otherwise fine quote, is his giving in to feminist theology as seen in his usage of “humankind,” as opposed to “mankind.”

Waltke’s Woolly Headed Thinking

The following quote is written by a Biblical theologian and it shows. Honestly, I think this is not well thought out.

“Biblical theologians differ from dogmaticians in three ways. First, Biblical theologians primarily think as exegetes. not as logicians.”

(So exegesis is done non logically?)

“Secondly, they derive their organizational principles from the Biblical blocks of writings themselves rather than factors external to the text.”

(This is the old “we just let the text speak for itself saw.”)

“Third, their thinking is diachronic — that is, they track the development of theological themes in various blocks of writings. Systematic theologians think more synchronically — that is, they invest their energies on the church’s doctrines, not on the development of religious ideas within the Bible.”

(“We’re more Biblical than you are .. nah nah nah nah nah.”)

Bruce K. Waltke
An OT Theology — pg. 64

I’m not sure many Biblical theologians realize how dependent they are on systematic categories before they even come to the text.

Biblical theologians would not seem to be able to be presuppositionalists. They seem to contend that they just observe the unfolding facts of redemptive history while then allowing a philosophy of fact to emerge. However, Van til was right when he offered that there is no fact without a philosophy of fact.  We need to reiterate again that “Biblical theology” still uses presuppositions and constructs to order their study just like systematic or dogmatic theologians.

Dr. Rev. Brian Lee on the Abortion Videos

“Paul likewise told Christians living in Rome (under Nero!) that the governing authorities were appointed by God, and they should be subject to them. The only exception is when the state tries to force you to actively violate God’s law (and no, taxpayer funding for abortion doesn’t seem to qualify).”

~ R2k disciple,
WSC grad, Dr. Brian Lee

Biblical Prejuidice

“So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”  

Galatians 6:10

“But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

I Timothy 5:8

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

I Peter 2:9

Over at this link,

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/22/177455764/What-Does-Modern-Prejudice-Look-Like

we learn that God’s command to be biblically prejudiced and rightly discriminatory is sinful. This is evidenced by a few quotes culled from the article. (There is also a interview that you can listen to linked in the article.)

“I think that kind of act of helping towards people with whom we have some shared group identity is really the modern way in which discrimination likely happens.”

Mahzarin Banaji
Harvard psychologist

“The insidious thing about favoritism is that it doesn’t feel icky in any way. We feel like a great friend when we give a buddy a foot in the door to a job interview at our workplace. We feel like good parents when we arrange a class trip for our daughter’s class to our place of work. We feel like generous people when we give our neighbors extra tickets to a sports game or a show.”

Mahzarin Banaji
Harvard psychologist

The article then provides this synopsis,

In each case, however, Banaji, Greenwald and DiTomaso might argue, we strengthen existing patterns of advantage and disadvantage because our friends, neighbors and children’s classmates are overwhelmingly likely to share our own racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds. When we help someone from one of these in-groups, we don’t stop to ask: Whom are we not helping?”

This article then is teaching that prioritized support for fellow believes in Christ or as unto family and friends is a variant and milder form of discrimination that is associated with racism. These, heretofore, natural loyalties, when prioritized, are now seen as to be examples of violation of the unspoken insistence that we must equally favor all men. This is a derivation of the idea of the Brotherhood of all men concept that has done such damage to our social order and culture. It is also a tributary of Egalitarianism. How dare we prioritize our faith, and our people, over others when we know that all relations are equal.

I would also contend that the kind of thinking, as exhibited in the article, is an attempt to undergird the whole specious idea of “white privilege,” that is bandied about so mindlessly. “How dare white people support one another with their subconscious discrimination,” would be one easy conclusion stemming from the article. This is especially so when we read the final two sentences of the article.

After reading Kaplan’s story, Banaji says, the woman decided to keep giving money to her alma mater, but to split the donation in half. She now gives half to her alma mater and half to the United Negro College Fund.

Note that neither prejudice nor discrimination has been eliminated. It has merely changed visages. Now, at the insistence of this kind of thinking, people are discriminating against their own. Favoritism has not gone away. It has merely changed from a favoritism from ones own orbit to favoritism to that which is alien. This article proves my point that familialism is an inescapable category. What is happening in the article is that the stranger and the alien are to be now considered and given the status of “family.” While family are to be treated as alien. Consequently, Familialism has not gone away for these people, it has merely rearranged matters and inverted God’s reality.

Darrell Dow has it right when he notes,

“These secular forms of universal ethics make moral demands that violate the proper boundedness and rootedness of human moral obligation. Part of the aim of Cultural Marxism is to undermine loyalty and attachment. Loyalty to family, church, ethnic group, nation, etc. as well as attachment to place are all undermined as a means of leaving the individual naked and unprotected before the state–and the elite who manipulates it. Ultimately it is a sideways attack on the church, but the church fails to recognize the nature of the threat.”

Ask The Pastor — Alienism’s Strange Blend

Dear Pastor,

Weren’t you saying something recently about how Alienism is a strange blend of Gnosticism (eschewing the physical in one sense) and Marxism (eschewing the spiritual in another sense)?

Habakkuk Mucklewrath 

Dear Habakkuk,

First, a little background before I try to answer your question.

Biblical theology includes the subcategory of Anthropology. Anthropology is incredibly important because if we get the doctrine of man wrong it means we have our doctrine of God wrong also since there can be no improper and errant doctrine of anything that does not begin with a errant doctrine of God.

In Biblical anthropology man is a bipartite being comprised of body and soul. Through the centuries some have argued that man is a tripartite being desiring to add that man is body, soul, and spirit. I think this is significant error but I don’t want to get into that right now.

When we say that man is body and soul we look to Genesis where the text teaches us that God formed man from the dust of the ground (body) and breathed into him the breath of life (soul). So, we do see these two parts of man. However, having established that it is not as if those two parts are not minutely integrated. Because we believe that there is the closest relationship possible to body and soul we speak of things like “mind-body relationship,” and we routinely recognize the effect that the mind has on the body and the body has on the mind.

Because this relationship is so intimate between mind and body some have eschewed the idea of “dichotomy” when speaking of man and have opted instead for the idea of “modified unichotomy.” When speaking this way there is the admission still that man is body and soul (mind) but what is added, by speaking of “unichotomy” is the intent to see the closest possible relationship between the body and soul in man.

What many heresies throughout Church History have done is to overturn this Biblical anthropology. This was the problem with many of the Christological debates in Church History.  Apollonarianism, for example, wanted to deny that Jesus had a human soul, insisting that instead of a soul that Jesus, the man, was indwelt by the eternal Logos. Likewise, different forms of Gnosticism went the other direction and insisted that Christ was not really incarnated because it was not possible for the Divine to take on human flesh.

This anthropological error finds itself in many quarters today. For example in Marxism, with its materialism, there is the conviction that man has no soul but is just matter in motion. On the other end of the spectrum we see a Gnosticism that, while not well thought out, still suggests that the only really important aspect of man is his spiritual or soul-ish component.  This Gnostic Christianity, for example, is outraged whenever any Christian theologian speaks of man in terms of his material and corporeal realities, seemingly insisting that in Christ Jesus corporeality is sloughed off.  In this modern Gnostic Christianity there seems to be some kind of consensus that when the Scripture teaches,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

The old that is “gone” is man in his God-given corporeality so that man now no longer is to be considered in his manishness with all the attendant DNA and familial God-givenness. Seemingly, once man is in Christ, man as a “new creation” no longer is man but is now a “Spiritual being.” This is just a updated version of Gnosticism where man’s corporeality and materiality is denied in favor of a super-spirituality.

This brings us to the term “Alienism.” It is the term that has been landed on to describe these types of Gnostics. Other terms might be used. One that has been banded about is “Oikophobia,” which literally means “fear of home or household.” Alienism and Oikophobia are attempts to communicate the tendency in these kinds of Gnostics described to so identify with their Spiritual-ness that they no longer see that they bear any significant relationship to who God has made them to be in their corporeal reality. For the Alienist any talk of family, land, place, ethnicity, nation, tribe, clan, race, is verboten since who we are in Christ has erased those categories and made them insignificant.

Now, to your question, I do think that in Alienism (as a form of Gnosticism) and in Marxism, where the only reality is the material, there is a common core. My theory is, is because each have lost their ability to make distinctions in this matter (i.e. — Marxism = all is material, Gnosticism = all is Spiritual) they therefore have a great deal in common even though they give the weight of reality to opposite ends of the spectrum.

For the Marxist, if all is material then even the spiritual is material and so monism. For the Gnostic if all is spiritual then even the material is spiritual and so monism from the other direction. The Marxist pours all the spiritual into the material and so all is one. The Gnostic pours all the material into the Spiritual and so all is one.

At the end of the day they really can be theoretical allies, since each is chasing one-ness. And when you throw in the bad anthropology factor of the Alienist Christians, it is not a wonder that they don’t see that they, at times, are chasing one-ness (Monism) from the opposite directions. It is also interesting that both Marxism and Christian theonomic Alienism also both pursue a type of Egalitarianism. If indeed all reality is monistic then it, by necessity, must be the case that egalitarianism must be prized.

This makes for some strange alliances. You will find, at times, the most ardent Materialist and the most ardent Christian theonomic Gnostic Alienist both supporting the idea that realities like ethnic distinction don’t exist or are superfluous. This can happen because each have embraced the presupposition of Monism at some foundational level. Now, the good Alienist Christian theologians would never admit this but when their doctrines begin to play out their concrete cash value is a kind of Egalitarianism.

Indeed, I’m so convinced about this that I would wager good money that within a generation the Christian Alienists will be embracing the idea that gender is a social construct. Their Gnosticism pushes them in that direction.

In the end the Biblical Christian embraces a Unichotomy in their Biblical anthropology because the Biblical Christian understands that body and soul are not to be separated or divorced. Christ is our great King and Spiritually provides the basis of unity for all those who claim Christ. However, these Spiritual realities as who we are in Christ do no negate creational categories as those pertain to who we are in our humanity in terms of our God-given corporeality.

The fact that God takes our corporeality serious even after conversion is seen in our Covenant theology. God makes a promise to us and to our children. Grace, by God’s ordination, does run in familial lines, and that not because of our blood but only because God is faithful to the generations. Family matters to God. When a man ceases to care about the creational categories of home, lineage, and place man has given up basic covenant theology and has become an Alienist.

Whether such a man remains Christian, when embracing this kind of Gnosticism, only God can say.

Thank you for your question Habakkuk. You probably got more of answer then you thought you might receive.