14AR19-21

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Apologia Report 19:21 (1,204)

July 10, 2014

Subject: "Really Bad Charismatic Doctrines"

In this issue:

MORMONISM - "What Other Christians Can Learn from the LDS"?

PENTECOSTALISM - Charisma magazine on "Really Bad Charismatic Doctrines"

YOGA - fresh secular insight on "a basic polarity in world religions"

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MORMONISM

Writing for Christianity Today (May '14, web-only), Paul Louis Metzger reviews Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints, by Stephen H. Webb [1]. Red flags anyone? It turns out that Metzger (Professor of Christian Theology, Multnomah University) impressively disputes what Webb has to say in this short presentation. "What can traditional Christians learn from Latter-day Saints? This provocative question receives rigorous consideration [from Webb] - a formerly evangelical, now Roman Catholic scholar - [who] advances an ongoing dialogue between historic Christianity and Mormonism, which has been building momentum for several years. ...

"Webb hopes that fresh consideration of Mormonism will provide a helpful challenge to many Christian minds and imaginations.

"The distinctive feature of Webb's ecumenical effort is his emphasis on metaphysics (meaning 'big ideas'). Webb's thesis is that 'Mormons have an original, fascinating, and provocative metaphysics.' What is so provocative - and appealing - about Mormon metaphysics? It is the notion of God's eternal-material embodiment. As he writes near the outset of the volume, 'Much of this book is nothing more than an attempt to take seriously the possibility that God has a form or shape that is something like what we call a body.' For Webb, this perspective bears on the whole range of Mormon thought and practice." Some specifics follow.

However, Metzger responds: "There is also more to God than an embodied deity. The Mormon idea that Jesus is embodied prior to his birth in Bethlehem takes away from the utter uniqueness of the Incarnation." Metzger makes a point that we too seldom hear: "There is far more to Jesus than what a Mormon perspective offers," adding that "I don't believe we need to abandon concern for cultivating dialogue with Mormonism (though I believe we should take care to distinguish this from the dialogue between branches of historic Christendom)." <www.ow.ly/yPYPd>

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PENTECOSTALISM

"6 Really Bad Charismatic Doctrines We Should Retire" by J. Lee Grady, former editor of Charisma magazine -- admits that "since the charismatic movement began in the 1960s, people have misused the gifts of the Spirit and twisted God’s Word to promote strange doctrines or practices." Stop right there. This fact is too rarely acknowledged and even less often detailed by celebrities in this camp. What more horrifying counterfeit is there than a corrupt manifestation of holiness? Many take it too lightly. Perhaps Grady senses this?

Writing as a longtime leader in the charismatic movement, Grady believes "we have reached a crossroads. We must clean up our act. We must jettison any weird doctrine we might have believed or practiced...." Might have? He lists "a few" here that "have circulated in our movement in the past season." They are:

1) "Touch not My anointed" (asserting indisputable authority, creating fear)

2) The Dual Covenant (Jews don't need faith in Jesus for salvation)

3) Inaccessible leadership (aloof, stage-presence-only pastors)

4) Armor-bearers (preachers surrounding themselves with an entourage of servants)

5) The hundredfold return (giving that guarantees a kick-back from God)

6) Money cometh (exhibitionistic offerings in worship services)

Let’s hope he expands the list in future columns. Charisma News, May 8 '14, <www.ow.ly/yPTL5>

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YOGA

"Is Yoga a Religion? Yoga probably is not a religion - it is too diffuse and under-organized to fit under this concept. But a more important question is, can religious themes be separated from practice?" by Peter Berger -- a fascinating secular response to a brief story on yoga in Iran featured in the May 17-23 issue of The Economist (which Berger calls the best general news magazine in the world). That piece reports: "there are 200 yoga centers in Iran, the biggest number located in Tehran." This drives Berger to ask the larger question: "Given its undoubted roots in a Hindu worldview, is yoga intrinsically antagonistic to the worldview of the 'Abrahamic' religions? ... The yoga teacher around the corner ... will say that the discipline she teaches is simply a practice conducive to good health, and is no more anti-Islamic than brushing one’s teeth and controlling one’s weight. ...

"However, the practice is rooted in basic conceptions that fit more easily into a Hindu than a Biblical understanding of human nature and destiny. ... yoga looks inside the individual’s consciousness to find the ultimate reality of the self and the world.

"Conservative Christians understand this better than their more liberal coreligionists. ... Could one say the Lord’s Prayer while sitting in the lotus position? Conversely, could one seek 'emptiness' while receiving communion? The short answer is: One could, but it would be awkward.

"What I have just done is suggesting a basic polarity in world religions, between the traditions originating in, respectively, west and south Asia.... The ultimate unity of self and divinity is a core motif of Indian spirituality; when this motif invades a Muslim region, the guardians of tradition ... react vehemently. ...

"The most succinct contradiction of this approach to reality is already found in the first sentence of the Hebrew Bible, about the God who created the universe (including the human self), and who cannot be discovered in the putative depths of that self.

"The year 1893 was pivotal for the arrival of yoga in America. That was the date of the World Parliament of Religion, which met within the program of the Chicago World Exhibition. A key figure at this event was an Indian holy man, who had adopted the name Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) and who was probably first to introduce yoga to America. He must have been a very scintillating personality. He was born in Calcutta into a Bengali aristocratic family as Narendra Datta. Calcutta was at that time at the center of a Hindu revival movement, which sought to strip Hinduism of its 'superstitious' elements so as to make it an inspiration for a modern morality and a political project to free India from colonial rule. ... [Vivekananda] saw the possibility of blending tradition and modernity in a version of Hinduism that would speak to the West. ... He was introduced as representing 'India, the Mother of Religions'.

"He addressed the audience as “sisters and brothers of America” and assured them he did not want to convert them to Hinduism, only wanted them to become better Christians, Muslims and so forth. ... He founded the Vedanta Society, which provided a philosophical rationale for the mental and physical exercises of yoga. Thus yoga was understood as realizing in experience the Vedanta proposition that 'each soul is potentially divine'. ...

"The British sociologist Colin Campbell has given a rather full description of these developments in his book The Easternization of the West [2]." Berger concludes that "yoga does bring with it ideas and experiences that connect with the religious traditions that came out of India (and which, mainly through Buddhism, decisively helped shape the cultures of eastern Asia). Campbell used the term 'metaphysical monism' to describe this - and that is indeed in tension with the religious traditions that came out of western Asia." The American Interest, May 28 '14, <www.ow.ly/yPWG7>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints, by Stephen H. Webb (Oxford Univ Prs, 2013, hardcover, 232 pages) <www.ow.ly/yPYhR>

2 - The Easternization of the West: A Thematic Account of Cultural Change in the Modern Era, by Colin Campbell (Paradigm, 2008, paperback, 448 pages) <www.ow.ly/z15YV>

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