25AR30-29

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AR 30:29 - Spreading false teaching while attempting to debunk it

In this issue:

EASTERN (GREEK) ORTHODOXY - a fresh new Watchman Profile

NEOPAGANISM - signs pointing to "a restoration of the suppressed pagan imagination"

THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES - when "the glory of God is at stake"

Apologia Report 30:29 (1,718)
August 8, 2025

EASTERN (GREEK) ORTHODOXY

Watchman Fellowship continues its uniquely valuable resource publication via its "Profile" series with another great topic choice. The Eastern Orthodox Churches (which we'll abbreviate as EOC) are seldom well understood among evangelicals. 

   With the 2017 conversion of current Christian Research Institute's president Hank Hanegraaff to the EOC, <www.tinyurl.com/5n8ctzex> this topic is especially of interest to many evangelicals. This new fact sheet on the subject will likely be widely helpful. (Trivia: The above link to Christianity Today's response - still includes one embarrassing misspelling ["Hankegraaff"] - after all these years. For a bigger smile, just ask AR contributing editor, Paul Carden, about - my - cerial mispeling history.)

   This edition of the WF Profile series is the work of Brady Blevins, a senior apologist at Watchman Fellowship (Doctorate in Educational Ministries, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary). <www.tinyurl.com/24pxsypj>

   The Profile itself is a great example of why the series is a valuable resource. It begins with a comprehensive summary of EOC structure, terminology, and membership. The introduction addresses areas of confusion about the EOC which the fact sheet addresses. Further sections include history, doctrine, and Watchman Fellowship's Christian response. <www.watchman.org/profiles>

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NEOPAGANISM

"Pagan Signs" by Daniel Whyte IV <danielwhyteiv.com> (Mere Orthodoxy, May 22 '25) -- "In a 2009 report for The Guardian, <www.tinyurl.com/yuka7p7d> writer and broadcaster Cole Moreton speculated that paganism was 'beginning to look like' the UK's 'new national faith.' At the time, there were reportedly a quarter of a million people who identified as practicing pagans - more than the number of Buddhists and almost the same as the number of Jews. That's a massive jump from the 2001 census which recorded only 40,000 pagans in the country. Noting that many won't call themselves such in front of a government official, [in 1990] The Pagan Federation [claimed] upwards of 360,000 'committed, practising pagans,' making the group the country's fourth-largest religion.

   "Across the pond, a similar story of pagan growth is emerging. A 2014 [Pew Research] study put the number of 'practicing witches' in the U.S. at a possible high of 1.5 million, more than the number of mainline Presbyterians. <www.tinyurl.com/mpfrrhhw> Two decades after a 1990 [Trinity College] survey found only 8,000 Wicca adherents in the country, <www.tinyurl.com/4fsue6ya> the U.S. Census Bureau reported a rise to 342,000  Ten years on, the number of Wiccans has skyrocketed to nearly one million. ...

   Some regard paganism as "the broadest of churches, spanning witchcraft, Wicca (the organised witchcraft-based religion founded in the 1950s), shamanism, druidry, heathenry and a vast swathe of non-affiliated "eclectic" pagans.' (Henceforth, we'll use the term pagan in reference to all the above.)

   "Data supplies only a skeleton understanding of growing pagan sensibilities in mainstream Western culture. Just as significant are what Moreton calls the 'unofficial, instinctive pagans'....

   "Denise Cush, emeritus professor of religion and education at Bath Spa University, <www.tinyurl.com/32y3ym3s> chalks it up largely to the 'disenchantment' of the world, something sociologist Max Weber believed was wrought by modernity and the scientific and industrial revolutions.  ...

   "'They err who say the world is turning pagan again,' C.S. Lewis wrote to Fr. Giovanni Calabria. 'Would that it were!' The twentieth century Christian apologist feared that Christianity and the Christian-shaped culture that he lived in was moving away from, 'not only the Law of Christ, but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans.' Lewis knew that Christianity had quite a healthy track record of engaging and converting pagans, after all, and in his stark assessment, many men of his time had 'lost not only the supernatural light, but also the natural light which the pagans possessed.'"

   "The path out of a post-Christian world might well be marked by pagan signs. Christians would do well to understand that those signs are not as strange as they seem. ...

   "What does a renewed pagan sensibility bring to the world and what could such sensibilities bring to an understanding of Christianity's place in the world? ...

   "Arguments to restore 'Christian values' or bring about moral reform are entirely defensible, but those will not return Christianity to its prior normative status. ...

   "The way I see it now, if Christianity is to reassert itself in the West, there must be symmetry between clear doctrine and the holy haze of mystery. The seeming chasm between a system of explanations and an experiential, mysterious, ever-living revelation maps almost precisely onto the heart of the Pagan-Christian divide. ...

   "Pagan signs exist because they are what mankind knows best. Attend to these signs and what accompanies them is an expanded comprehension of the earth as a divine cathedral via its aesthetic and mythic trappings and via its definition of the supernatural by the natural. In such a comprehension, doctrine and gospel become something more than dictates to be propounded and defended before a hostile world. They become a panoply of sources for enchantment, without which we cannot survive. ...

   "The modern pagan may be loath to admit that his worldview includes the tenor of spiritual realities spoken of in Christian scriptures: demigods and demons, invisible but intelligent forces of vice and virtue, 'principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings.'"

   Whyte concludes: "Many believers who lived closer to pre-Christian times didn't see the existence of paganism as a threat. They understood that divine light shines on all. Today, we seem to be witnessing a restoration of the suppressed pagan imagination. Perhaps some must be good pagans before they can be good Christians." <www.tinyurl.com/2n779u5p>

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THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES

"Dangers of Theological Controversy" by Nicholas Batzig (Feeding on Christ, May 17 '25) -- from a Reformed perspective, Batzig finds that "Debate in theological matters is necessary in a fallen world. God commands believers to 'contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints' (Jude 3). We are to be zealous for the defense and propagation of the whole counsel of God for His own glory and the building up of His people."

   And first, "There is a danger of infecting others with false teaching - even while trying to refute it." As an 1858 Presbyterian liturgy puts it: 'In confutation of false doctrines, he [i.e., the minister] is neither to raise an old heresy from the grave, nor to mention a blasphemous opinion unnecessarily: but, if the people be in danger of an error, he is to confute it soundly, and endeavor to satisfy their judgments and consciences against all objections.'"

   When Batzig <feedingonchrist.org/about> was a young Christian, a friend advised: "Whenever we start to enter into debate with those with whom we disagree we are in danger of getting closer to them and become more susceptible of being influenced by their beliefs. It is not guaranteed that this will happen, but it is certainly a very real danger." This unexpectedly ended up describing his future.

   "There are some who thrive on debating theological issues. This can be harmful to the members of a church because a) some members already have misguided beliefs, and b) some have a very small knowledge of doctrine. In the case of the first group, introducing old heresies can encourage more confusion. I have, time and time again, seen such individuals start to dabble with heresy because they already had misguided beliefs in their knowledge of Scripture. ... You don't study a counterfeit dollar bill to spot a counterfeit; you study the real dollar bill so that you will be able to spot the counterfeit." 

   Here are some pitfalls that Batzig recommends we watch for:

   "There is a danger of infecting believers with a hyper-critical spirit. ...

   "There is a danger of overreaction to an error and falling into an opposite error. ...

   "In his essay 'The World's Last Night,' <www.tinyurl.com/uyn9nkew> C.S. Lewis left us some important thoughts about the tendencies of men to over-react to some right position because of exaggerations and imbalanced emphases in theological controversies: 'For my own part I hate and distrust reactions not only in religion but in everything. Luther surely spoke very good sense when he compared humanity to a drunkard who, after falling off his horse on the right, falls off it next time on the left...A thing does not vanish - it is not even discredited - because someone has spoken of it with exaggeration. It remains exactly where it was. The only difference is that if it has recently been exaggerated, we must now take special care not to overlook it; for that is the side on which the drunk man is now most likely to fall off.' 

   "There is a danger of dumbing-down the severity of error on the opposite side of the debate." And "while many position themselves between what they perceive to be two polarizing positions, many tend to be softer on an error on one end of the spectrum as over against error on the other end. ...

   "The pendulum tends to move quickest from the cross based on our own sinful imbalance. This can come in reductionistic theological arguments or in highly refined theological explanations. ...

   "There is a danger of falling into a self-righteous spirit when combating an opponent's position."

   Batzig concludes: "Defending the truth is a necessary thing in a fallen world. When the people of God are threatened by error, the ministers of the Gospel have a responsibility to warn and instruct them. Above all, we must be prayerfully poring over the Scriptures so that we will be able to better expose error and defend truth for our own hearts and the hearts of those in the body. However, 'our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.' We must always have our eyes open to our own sinful weaknesses - both to infecting others, overreacting, dumbing-down the severity of error on the other end of the spectrum and self-righteous, condescending and angry spirit in the name of defending truth. The glory of God is at stake." <www.tinyurl.com/yvr6shdd>

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