Prosperity Christianity Part 1

Bill and Brenda Johnson with prosperity teacher Benny Hinn.  Hinn has recently recanted
of his long time association with prosperity teaching.  Hinn's lieutenant Rodney Howard-Browne 
was an influence on Randy Clark who initiated the Toronto blessing. Johnson acknowledges his
debt to the Toronto culture. 

Bill Johnson, the Redding based supremo of the "Bethel" church-chain, is thought by some to be the natural successor of John Wimber's "Signs and Wonders ministry". But Wimber, who died of cancer in 1997, was in my opinion of an entirely different frame of mind to Johnson: Wimber attracted traditional evangelical scholars like Wayne Grudem and  Jack Deere, people who would likely to have otherwise cold shouldered Charismatic Christianity. Wimber was a thoughtful man of conciliation and reconciliation. This is why Wimber's Wiki page can say this of him: 

Wimber strongly espoused Kingdom theology, and this approach to the charismatic differed from many of his peers and predecessors. Wimber's embrace of this new approach led a friend, C. Peter Wagner, to coin the phrase, "The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit" to describe the concept he taught. The Third Wave differed from classic Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement, foremost, in their approach to speaking in tongues. Whereas the previous groups had emphasized the gift of tongues as the only evidence for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Wimber and those he influenced emphasized that this was just one of the many spiritual gifts available to believers, as taught in the Bible.

His teaching revolutionized what was a major theological stumbling block to some mainstream Evangelicals, and normalized the demonstration of "signs and wonders" in current times.[11] Wimber held influence with a number of them, most famously Jack Deere, C. Peter Wagner, and Wayne Grudem.

Services led by Wimber often included activities, described as Holy Spirit manifestations, where congregants appeared to be drunk, dazed, or uncoordinated.[12] But in the mid-1990s he led the Vineyard movement to split from the Toronto Blessing church primarily on the issue of bizarre manifestations and the church's extreme latitude for them.[13]

Wimber also differed from contemporaries in his rejection of the Word of Faith movement, and the associated doctrines and showiness. The pursuit of authenticity was at the core of Wimber's idea of church, and this was reflected in the worship as well.

I myself was generally left with a favourable impression of Wimber whenever I read him. However, the fact is his Third Wave of the Holy Spirit, a wave which was hoped would unite "holy spirit" charismatics and traditional "Word" based evangelicals failed to return the spiritual revolution hoped for. In my opinion this was because Wimber and scholars like Jack Deere failed to break a dualistic mold which was inclined to give an exalted place to direct inner light "touches of God" & mystical intuitive encounters with the divine and set them over and against Christians whose experiential joy & encounter with God was largely mediated through an intellectual engagement with the Word. This is the criticism I leveled against Jack Deere in his defence of Wimber. So, even someone like Wimber was unable to take on-board the idea that some Christians simply don't experience divine-gnosis events; in the "Third Wave" such personal events were still regarded as the acme of Christian experience. In consequence Wimber's Third Wave never really fixed the fault line between so-called "holy spirit" Christians and Word Christians. Its failure is evidence that the holy-spirit vs logos division isn't founded on a mandated one-size-fits-all blessing being resisted by Word Christians, but instead represents a combination of differences in Christian culture and personality types. After all, apart from these inner light epiphanies "holy spirit" Christians have trouble pointing to any other fundamental difference between themselves and devout logos Christians. Moreover, they are seldom able to point to miracles absent of evidential ambiguity.which authenticate their claim to have an exclusive spiritual superiority.

However, in spite of all that Wimber can nevertheless be credited for his gallant attempt to walk a conciliatory third path between "holy spirit" charismatics and traditional "logos" loving evangelicals. Not so Bill Johnson. Johnson epitomises the failure of the Third Wave to bring evangelical harmony  and he's turned the clock back to the bad old divisive days of the "holy spirit" vs "logos" war; tough on you if you are one of the latter.  Moreover, Johnson has been accused of teaching a prosperity gospel; Johnson's Wiki page says:

Johnson was featured in the 2018 documentary 'American Gospel: Christ Alone' as a prominent figure in the prosperity gospel movement, emphasizing supernatural miracles as evidence of salvation. Johnson has also the been the subject of criticism.

The prosperity gospel is sometimes referred to as "health and wealth" teaching and this is an acknowledgement that prosperity teaching often comes with two components; that is, the spiritually superior Christian is thought to prosper both in health and wealth: This is the teaching that one-time prosperity teacher Benny Hinn now disowns (See Pride and Prosperity, Premier Christianity, Oct 2019). But to be fair to Johnson I myself haven't heard him extolling the role of wealth as a mark of spiritual superiority (although he may have done). He has, nevertheless, been pretty heavy on the subject of health and healing. In fact in the February 2018 edition of Premier Christianity magazine, in article entitled "When God Doesn't Heal" Wes Sutton director of Acorn Christian Healing Foundation says this of Johnson:

Three years ago in Premier Christianity Magazine (Jan 2015), US church leader Bill Johnson said that he did not have a theology of suffering because "I refuse to have a theology for something that shouldn't exist". There is much in Bethel's ministry that is helpful, but I find his statement a little disingenuous as he clearly  does have way of pastorally ordering the world  when his prayers have not been answered. .....we are not yet seeing everyone healed (or saved) and we need a way of understanding this tension.

When faced with suffering, whether due to bad health or poverty etc, does Johnson back off and offer no spiritual consolation or explanation? Doesn't "it shouldn't exist" itself cloak an underlying theology? The cornerstone of the Christian faith is the suffering of Christ and yet does Johnson refuse to have a theology of salvation and atonement? In the garden of Gethsemane there is a schism in the God-head typical of human life as different levels of goal-seeking compete with one another: On one level Jesus didn't want to go through with the suffering before him and yet on another level He knew it was the will of his Father. At once the God-head both wanted and didn't want the ordeal before them. But the high level objectives entailed by the incarnation required it (Philippians 1:1-11).

For hundreds of years Christians have grappled with the problem of suffering & evil (which includes illness) and it is at the heart of the Gospel. But Johnson in his pastoral arrogance can confidently put a didactic red line through all that and erase the consolation many have found in theodicy.  And what is the Book of Job but a theology of suffering? When Johnson is faced with suffering that hangs around and as one who is inclined toward prosperity teaching we find that he is tempted to explain it all away in terms of the spiritual failings by someone somewhere and thereby actually introducing his own theology of suffering whether he admits it or not!

Johnson is a didactarian with a vengeance, much more so than John Wimber ever was. In part II of this series I will look back at the Premier Christianity article quoted by Wes Sutton. This article took the form of an interview with Johnson and is very revealing. Johnson tends to speak in indirect, coded & connotative terms, but with sufficient experience his words can be decoded and the article thereby provides an insight into Johnson's didactic persona..... and his theology.