Exactly 20 years ago to the month I
wrote the essay included in this document. It was a response to my reading of
the book Surprised By the Power of the
Spirit by Jack Deere. Deere started out as a reformed evangelical but as a
result of contact with John Wimber (and also I think the notorious Paul Cain) he
converted to charismatic evangelicalism; so, in some ways he is representative
of both sides of the logos
vs mythos dichotomy, a dichotomy
I explore further in the
essay referenced here.
This
essay really focuses on the contemporary vulnerability for what in the jargon
of today is an “encounter” expression of Christianity. Here’s a recent and very
typical example I came across:
“Pray for the Encountering God for all
of us. How we need so much more of the Holy Spirit and to truly encounter God
to be totally transformed”
Notice
the implicit valued judgement here; Viz that without these mystical encounters Christians are unlikely to be transformed.
This version of Christianity places a premium on deep intuitive and
indescribable experiences of the divine. Sometimes this includes what appear to
be altered states of consciousness: Viz Swoonings, trances and ecstasies. When these
experiences are formalized and articulated using doctrinal formulae such as
“Baptism of the Spirit” or “in the Spirit” and then used as identifying markers
for a kind of elite spirituality the whole thing starts to look very like
Gnosticism.
By
1997 evangelicalism, especially in its fundamentalist Reformed and Charismatic
manifestations, had lost a lot of my goodwill; as various evangelical sects
engaged in very human looking mutual slagging-off matches I was left wondering
what really identified Christianity as authentic. Adding fuel to my fire was
the rampant anti-science doctrines found amongst Christian fundamentalists in
both the reformed and charismatic traditions. If these Christian fundamentalists
could be so wrong about science what credit could be given to their highly affected
devotional language and their loud claims to be anointed into the Truth? Such
claims had become dubious. And it remains so today. As far as I’m concerned
these Christian subcultures have lost the right to be taken seriously and must
re-earn that right, although I don’t hold out much hope of that. In the final
analysis I will probably just have to accept that beyond the
Open Gospel partisan and
naive expressions of Christianity are very much the natural state of human affairs.
Reading through my essay of 20 years ago I feel that I’d be much more hard-cop if I wrote it today: The Christian community Deere represents have learnt very little about reciprocity; but then neither have the reformists.
Reading through my essay of 20 years ago I feel that I’d be much more hard-cop if I wrote it today: The Christian community Deere represents have learnt very little about reciprocity; but then neither have the reformists.
T. V. Reeves April 2017
