by Robert Gagnon of RobGagnon.net

The Exodus leadership of Clark Whitten, Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas are teaching believers to violate our Lord’s own instructions about how we are to pray. Jesus teaches us that when we pray to God, we should say words to this effect: “Forgive us our debts as [i.e., to the extent that] we ourselves also have forgiven our debtors.”

Yet Rev. Whitten writes, and Chambers and Thomas concur, “There is no biblical basis for believers to confess sins to God for forgiveness. To each other for healing, yes; but not to God for forgiveness. How much time will that free up!” (Pure Grace, p. 20). Mr. Thomas, the No. 3 person at Exodus, adds that believers who continue to pray to God “Forgive us our sins” engage in “a self-righteous ritual” and “deny the righteousness of Christ that is already present.”

Who are you going to believe? The Exodus leadership or Jesus?

This statement is just one of what I term “The Seven Pillars of Rev. Whitten’s Wisdom.” Whitten is the chair of the Exodus board and Chambers’ and Thomas’ pastor, whom they follow down the doctrinal line. Indeed, Chambers, the president of Exodus, has stated: “To say that I recommend [Whitten’s book Pure Grace] is the understatement of the century.” With Whitten’s book, Chambers says, “God has unveiled something that has been veiled for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

Whitten doesn’t identify in his book “seven pillars.” The enumeration is mine. Yet what I identify as the seven pillars are all quoted strong positions taken from Whitten’s book. They should alarm all Christians. What are the other six?

(1) “Listen, Jesus did not die to modify your behavior!”

(2) “My bad works don’t move God any more than my good works move Him. He simply isn’t moved by ‘works’ of any kind. If you are motivated to do a great work for God, good luck!”

(3) “We are free to [do anything, good or bad] … all without condemnation from God. … Our liberty isn’t negated by our sin.”

(4) The “anti-gospel” says: “God is pleased when you act right. When you don’t, He will clean your clock! [As a believer, it is foolish to think that you can do anything to] tick the Big Guy off.”

(5) The “anti-gospel” says: “Fear God and keep His commandments.”

(6) The “anti-gospel” says: “The Holy Spirit was given to you to empower you to act better and better and convict you of your sin when you stray.”

Every one of these principles contradicts the truth of the gospel (see previous critique,”Cheap Grace Masquerading as Pure Grace: The Unfortunate Gospel of Rev. Clark Whitten”). They epitomize what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (martyred near the end of Hitler’s reign) defined as “cheap grace” in his classic book The Cost of Discipleship (1937): “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession.”

That is exactly what Whitten, Chambers and Thomas teach: forgiveness without having to repent of grossly immoral behavior, an end to church discipline since all sin is equal and all believers sin regularly, and a view of confessing our sins to God for forgiveness after conversion as a waste of time. Bonhoeffer adds: “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”

I’m not suggesting that the Exodus leadership wants believers to experience grace without discipleship, dying to one’s self and letting Christ live in them. I am saying, though, that they assure self-professed believers (falsely) that the nature of grace is such that believers can have one without the other. Again, Bonhoeffer says cheap grace is the notion that “you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.” The Exodus leadership says that one shouldn’t, but they also assure Christians that one can.

Chambers now calls “evangelical” a “dirty word” that he no longer applies to Exodus or to himself (See “Guests in an Ever Changing Culture—Letter from Alan Chambers March 2013”). He complains that evangelicalism is too “black and white,” and he assures us that God is not “black and white,” which presumably means that God’s aim is to shade the light into gray. The story of Christ is now the story of gray breaking into the darkness.

Evangelicalism, Chambers complains, gives too much attention to “right and wrong” and requires one to “take a stand” on moral issues. Chambers cries: “Gone are the days of evangelizing through scare tactics, moral legislation and church discipline.”

So instead, the Exodus leadership prefers to assure self-professed Christians who engage in unrepentant homosexual practice that they are going to heaven, irrespective of whether they bring their life into line with a confession of Christ’s lordship. The Exodus leadership refuses to take a stand against “gay marriage” even as it takes public policy stances on issues that homosexual activists support. And the Exodus leadership categorically rejects church discipline despite the fact that it is commanded by Jesus and Paul.

Earlier this month, Chambers even went so far as to insert secretly the email address of Jeremy Hooper, an abrasive homosexual activist, into the middle of a private group email thread containing a number of pro-family leaders (including moi). This led to a number of misrepresentations online by homosexual activist sites and even Salon.com. This deceitful alignment with a person who maligns those who believe in a male-female foundation for marriage is not exactly a model for Christian conduct, certainly not for someone leading what is supposed to be a Christian ministry.

At the end of April, Thomas gushed over John Paulk’s repudiation of his previous books about coming out of a homosexual life and his flirtations with his homosexual past:

I told him that while I related to him more after his gay bar visit in 2000, I could relate to him even more now that he is genuinely questioning past actions and motivations. While I don’t agree with all of his conclusions he shared on the phone, I can say I agree with about 95% of what he shared including renouncing the term “ex-gay.’’ I love that he is pursuing the true meaning of God’s grace. … Listening to John and his apparent newfound depth of honesty made me happy for him. … He is … now more authentic than I have ever known him to be. … John, … I love that you are wrestling with various issues with humility and honesty. In His grip of grace, you are safe.

In an Exodus post a couple of weeks ago, Leslie Chambers affirmed her husband’s severance of the transformed life from genuine saving faith, saying that while obedience to God is preferred, it is not “required.” Neither Leslie nor Alan appears to realize that a necessary byproduct of true faith is a life lived for God.

Who ever thought we would reach the day when it would be necessary for faithful followers of Jesus to exodus out of Exodus?

SEE ALSO:

Pure Grace or Hyper-Grace: A Book Review of Pure Grace by Clark Whitten

Exodus International and Homosexual Attraction, the Bad Fruit of Hyper-Grace

At the heart of the Emerging movement is the worldview of postmodernism which teaches that truth is relative and subjective. This FREE book by Elliott Nesch, Hath God Said? – Emergent Church Theology, demonstrates how postmodernism is incompatible with a biblical worldview of absolute truth and the authority of the Scriptures on various topics including feminism, homosexuality, hell, mysticism, eschatology, Jesus Christ and the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and more.

In Hath God Said? – Emergent Church Theology, the teachings of the Emergent movement are exposed in light of Scripture. Also by comparing early Church writings with Emergent writings, it becomes evident that the Emerging Church is not preaching the faith once delivered to the saints.

by David Ravenhill of Charisma News

Someone wisely stated, “The church has suffered more from her exponents than from her opponents.” This is certainly the case today, as we are seeing an onslaught of dangerous teaching sweeping through the body of Christ like never before. We have the graphic and prophetic picture of the serpent in Revelation pouring water like a river out of his mouth in order to sweep away the woman (Rev. 12:15-16). This, to me, speaks of the false river the enemy is attempting to use to deceive the church in these last days. Thank God that He has promised, “When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard against him” (Is. 59:19, NKJV).

One of the enemy’s wiles is to take something that is inherently good and seek to make it appear better. The hyper-grace message is a prime example of this. What is more amazing than grace? Nothing sets Christianity apart more than the message of grace. None of us would ever know our magnificent Savior and Lord without His redeeming, reconciling grace. There is no sect, cult or religion that has any doctrine comparable to it. Grace is found in Christ alone!

Little wonder, then, that the enemy has sought to improve on this glorious message by appearing to make it even more glorious, while at the same time lacing it with his deadly poison of deception and distortion.

Consider how you would respond to a message exhorting you to guard your mind, stay sober, be obedient, don’t be conformed to your former lusts, be holy, conduct yourself in fear, obey the Word and put aside all malice, guile and hypocrisy? What if the message went on to tell you to love and read God’s Word, grow up, tell others about God’s goodness, avoid fleshly lusts, do good deeds, do right, don’t speak about evil, be zealous for what is good and sanctify Christ as Lord?

Many within the body of Christ today would cry out against such a message, claiming it to be nothing more than a religious spirit or legalism or even fleshly works. Grace, we are told, frees you from all these works and liberates you so that you are no longer under any obligation of any kind. Grace, they say, is the gift that comes to us with no strings attached. But is that really the message of grace? Has the enemy blinded our eyes through super-sizing the true message of grace—and thereby distorting it?

It may surprise you to know that all the exhortations I’ve listed above were taken directly from Peter’s first epistle. Now, here is a most amazing truth: Peter tells us in the closing verses of his epistle, “I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it!” (1 Pet. 5:12, NASB, emphasis added) . . . Continue Reading “Would You Recognize the Deception of Hyper-Grace?”>>

by David Bercot of Scroll Publishing

The three distinguishing marks of the early church were: separation from the world, unconditional love, and childlike obedience to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Separation From the World

No one can serve two masters,” declared Jesus to his disciples (Matt. 6:24). However, Christians have spent the greater portion of the past two millenniums apparently trying to prove Jesus wrong. We have told ourselves that we can indeed have both-the things of God and the things of this world. Many of us live our lives no differently than do conservative non-Christians, except for the fact that we attend church regularly each week. We watch the same entertainment. We share the same concerns about the problems of this world. And we are frequently just as involved in the world’s commercial and materialistic pursuits. Often, our being “not of this world” exists in theory more than in practice.

But the church was not originally like that. The first Christians lived under a completely different set of principles and values than the rest of mankind. They rejected the world’s entertainment, honors, and riches. They were already citizens of another kingdom, and they listened to the voice of a different Master. This was as true of the second century church as it was of the first.

The Letter to Diognetus, the work of an unknown author, written in about 130, describes Christians to the Romans as follows: “They dwell in their own countries simply as sojourners…. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time, they surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men but are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned. They are put to death, but [will be] restored to life. They are poor, yet they make many rich. They possess few things; yet, they abound in all. They are dishonored, but in their very dishonor are glorified…. And those who hate them are unable to give any reason for their hatred.” The Letter to Diognetus can be found in the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

Because the earth wasn’t their home, the early Christians could say without reservation, like Paul, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). Justin Martyr explained to the Romans, “Since our thoughts are not fixed on the present, we are not concerned when men put us to death. Death is a debt we must all pay anyway.”

A second-century elder exhorted his congregation, “Brothers, let us willingly leave our sojourn in this present world so we can do the will of Him who called us. And let us not fear to depart out of this world,… deeming the things of this world as not belonging to us, and not fixing our desires upon them…. The Lord declares, ‘No servant can serve two masters.’ If we desire, then, to serve both God and Money, it will be unprofitable for us. ‘For what will it profit if a man gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?’ This world and the next are two enemies…. We cannot therefore be the friends of both.”

Cyprian, the respected overseer of the church in Carthage, stressed a similar theme in a letter he wrote to a Christian friend: “The one peaceful and trustworthy tranquility, the one security that is solid, firm, and never changing, is this: for a man to withdraw from the distractions of this world, anchor himself to the firm ground of salvation, and lift his eyes from earth to heaven…. He who is actually greater than the world can crave nothing, can desire nothing, from this world. How stable, how unshakable is that safeguard, how heavenly is the protection in its never-ending blessings-to be free from the snares of this entangling world, to be purged from the dregs of earth, and fitted for the light of eternal immortality.”

The same themes run throughout all the writings of the early Christians, from Europe to North Africa: we can’t have both Christ and the world.

Lest we think that the early Christians were describing a lifestyle they didn’t really practice, we have the testimony of the Romans themselves. One pagan antagonist of the Christians remarked:

They despise the temples as houses of the dead. They reject the gods. They laugh at sacred things. Wretched, they pity our priests. Half-naked themselves, they despise honors and purple robes. What incredible audacity and foolishness! They are not afraid of present torments, but they fear those that are uncertain and future. While they do not fear to die for the present, they fear to die after death….

At least learn from your present situation, you wretched people, what actually awaits you after death. See, many of you-in fact, by your own admission, the majority of you-are in want, are cold, are hungry, and are laboring in hard work. Yet, your god allows it. He is either unwilling or unable to assist his people. So he is either weak or unjust…. Take notice! For you there are threats, punishments, tortures, and crosses…. Where is the god who is supposed to help you when you come back from the dead? He cannot even help you in this life! Do not the Romans, without any help from your god, govern, rule over, and have the enjoyment of the whole world, including dominion over you yourselves?

In the meantime, living in suspense and anxiety, you abstain from respectable pleasures. You do not attend sporting events. You have no interest in public amusements. You reject the public banquets, and abhor the sacred games…. Thus, wretched as you are, you will neither rise from the dead, nor enjoy life in the meanwhile. So, if you have any wisdom or sense, stop prying into the heavens and the destinies and secrets of the world…. Persons who are unable to understand civil matters are certainly unable to discuss divine ones.

When I first read the criticisms that the Romans leveled against the Christians, I painfully realized that no one would accuse Christians today of those same charges. We aren’t criticized for being totally absorbed in the interests of a heavenly kingdom, ignoring the things the world has to offer. In fact, Christians today are accused of just the opposite. We are accused of being money hungry and hypocritical in our devotion to God.

A Love Without Condition

At no other time in the history of Christianity did love so characterize the entire church as it did in the first three centuries. And Roman society took note. Tertullian reported that the Romans would exclaim, “See how they love one another!”

Justin Martyr sketched Christian love this way: “We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it. We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.”

Clement, describing the person who has come to know God, wrote, “He impoverishes himself out of love, so that he is certain he may never overlook a brother in need, especially if he knows he can bear poverty better than his brother. He likewise considers the pain of another as his own pain. And if he suffers any hardship because of having given out of his own poverty, he does not complain.”

When a devastating plague swept across the ancient world in the third century, Christians were the only ones who cared for the sick, which they did at the risk of contracting the plague themselves. Meanwhile, pagans were throwing infected members of their own families into the streets even before they died, in order to protect themselves from the disease.

Another example illustrates both the brotherly love of Christians and their uncompromising commitment to Jesus as Lord. A pagan actor became a Christian, but he realized he had to change his employment because most plays encouraged immorality and were steeped in pagan idolatry. Furthermore, the theater sometimes purposefully turned boys into homosexuals so they could better play the roles of women on stage. Since this newly-converted actor had no other job skills, he considered establishing an acting school to teach drama to non-Christian students. However, he first submitted his idea to the leaders of his church for their counsel.

The leaders told him that if acting was an immoral profession then it would be wrong to train others in it. Nevertheless, since this was a rather novel question, they wrote to Cyprian in nearby Carthage for his thoughts. Cyprian agreed that a profession unfit for a Christian to practice was also unfit for him to teach, even if this was his sole means of support.

How many of us would be so concerned about righteousness that we would submit our employment decisions to our body of elders or board of deacons? How many church leaders today would be so concerned about offending God that they would take such an uncompromising position?

But that isn’t the end of the story. Cyprian also told this neighboring church that they should be willing to support the actor if he had no other means of earning a living—just as they supported orphans, widows, and other needy persons. Going further, he wrote, “If your church is financially unable to support him, he may move over to us and here receive whatever he needs for food and clothing.” Cyprian and his church didn’t even know this actor, yet they were willing to support him because he was a fellow believer. As one Christian told the Romans, “We love one another with a mutual love because we do not know how to hate.” If Christians today made such a statement to the world, would the world believe it?

The love of the early Christians wasn’t limited simply to their fellow believers. Christians also lovingly helped non-believers: the poor, the orphans, the elderly, the sick, the shipwrecked—even their persecutors. Jesus had said, “Love your enemies … and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). The early Christians accepted this statement as a command from their Lord, rather than as an ideal that couldn’t be actually practiced in real life.

Lactantius wrote, “If we all derive our origin from one man, whom God created, we are plainly all of one family. Therefore it must be considered an abomination to hate another human, no matter how guilty he may be. For this reason, God has decreed that we should hate no one, but that we should eliminate hatred. So we can comfort our enemies by reminding them of our mutual relationship. For if we have all been given life from the same God, what else are we but brothers? … Because we are all brothers, God teaches us to never do evil to one another, but only good—giving aid to those who are oppressed and experiencing hardship, and giving food to the hungry.”

The Scriptures teach that a Christian shouldn’t take his brother to court. Rather, he should suffer fraud at the hands of his brother, if need be. (1 Cor. 6:7) However, as an attorney, I’ve seen that Christians today don’t hesitate to sue their brothers and sisters in Christ. A particularly disturbing case happened recently in the town where I live. A student at a local Christian school worked on campus in his spare time to help pay his tuition. One day he was overcome from the fumes of some insecticide he was spraying in the school building, and he was briefly hospitalized. The school’s method of applying the insecticide was apparently improper. The result? The parents sued the Christian school for more than half a million dollars. In contrast, early Christians not only refused to take their fellow Christians to court, most of them refused to take anyone to court, since they viewed every human as their brother or sister.

It’s no wonder that Christianity spread rapidly throughout the ancient world, even though there were few organized missionary or evangelism programs. The love they practiced drew the attention of the world, just as Jesus said it would.

A Childlike Trust in God

To the early Christian, trusting God meant more than a teary-eyed testimony about “the time I came to trust the Lord.” It meant believing that even if obedience to God entailed great suffering, God was trustworthy to bring a person through it.

“A person who does not do what God has commanded shows he really does not believe God,” Clement declared. To the early Christians, to claim to trust God while refusing to obey Him was a contradiction (1 John 2:4). Their Christianity was more than verbal. As one early Christian expressed it, “We don’t speak great things—we live them!”

One distinguishing mark of the early Christians was their childlike, literal obedience to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. They didn’t feel they had to understand the reason for a commandment before they would obey it. They just trusted that God’s way was always the best way. Clement asked, “Who then is so irreverent as to disbelieve God, and to demand explanations from God as from men?”

They trusted God because they lived in awe of His majesty and wisdom. Felix, a Christian lawyer in Rome and a contemporary of Tertullian, put it this way: “God is greater than all our perceptions—He is infinite, immense. Only He truly understands His true greatness; our hearts are too limited to really understand Him. We are making a worthy estimation of Him when we say that He is beyond estimation…. Anyone who thinks he knows the magnitude of God, diminishes His greatness.”

The supreme example of their absolute trust in God was their acceptance of persecution. From the time of the Emperor Trajan (around A.D. 100) until the Edict of Milan was issued in 313, the practice of Christianity was illegal within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Being a Christian was a crime punishable by death. But the Roman officials didn’t generally hunt out Christians. They ignored them unless someone formally accused a person of being a Christian. As a result, persecution was intermittent. Christians in one town would suffer horrible tortures and death while Christians in a nearby area would be untouched. It was totally unpredictable. Yet, every Christian lived daily with a death sentence hanging over his head.

The very fact that Christians were willing to suffer unspeakable horrors and to die rather than disown their God was, next to their lifestyle, their single most effective evangelistic tool. Few, if any, Romans would die for their gods. There had to be some substance to Christianity if it meant so much to those who practiced it. In fact, the Greek word for “witness” is martyr. Not surprisingly, this is also the Greek word for “martyr.” In many places where our Bibles use the word “witness,” the early Christians were reading “martyr.” For example, in our Bibles, Revelation 2:13 refers to “Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city.” The early Christians were understanding the passage to say, “Antipas, my faithful martyr.” Although most Christians tried to flee local persecution when possible, they rejected any mass exodus from the Roman Empire. Like little children, they believed their Master when He said His Church would be built on a rock and that the gates of Hades could not overpower it (Matt. 16:18).

They realized that thousands of them might die monstrous deaths, experience excruciating tortures, and suffer imprisonment. But they were absolutely convinced that their Father wouldn’t let the church be annihilated. Christians stood before the Romans with naked hands, letting them know that Christians would not use human means to try to preserve the church. They trusted God, and God alone, as their protector.

As Origen told the Romans: “When God gives the Tempter permission to persecute us, we suffer persecution. And when God wishes us to be free from suffering, even though surrounded by a world that hates us, we enjoy a wonderful peace. We trust in the protection of the One who said, ‘Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.’ And truly He has overcome the world. Therefore, the world prevails only as long as it is permitted to by Him who received power from the Father to overcome the world. From His victory we take courage. Even if He should again wish us to suffer and contend for our faith, let the enemy come against us. We will say to them, ‘I can do all things through Christ Jesus our Lord who strengthens me.’”

Origen had lost his father to persecution when he was a teenager, and he himself eventually died from torture and imprisonment at the hands of the Romans. Yet, with unshakable confidence he told the Romans, “Eventually, every form of worship will be destroyed except the religion of Christ, which alone will stand. In fact, it will one day triumph, for its teachings take hold of men’s minds more and more each day.”

An evening of scholarly dialogue on the origins, the transmission, and the reliability of the New Testament. Do we have the original manuscripts? Can we trust the copies passed down to us? How accurate is our New Testament today? These questions and more were discussed by two top-tier NT scholars. Both Dr. Ehrman and Dr. Wallace presented their respective positions before opening the floor for a time of Q&A.

The 2013/2014 conference circuit makes for some strange bedfellows. We’re trying not to get worked up about “guilt by association,” but at some point you just have to wonder how teachers of different “gospels” can find unity?

Saddleback’s Rick Warren is teaming up with Joel Osteen and “Bishop” T.D. Jakes for the Hillsong Conference in Sydney, Australia,London, New York and Los Angeles. Who is Hillsong? The premiere Word of Faith church in Sydney. Word of Faith, or Word-Faith, is the name-it-and-claim-it prosperity gospel, which is no Gospel at all.

The Hillsong Conference website says the event is about “being refreshed and inspired and finding great strength and unity amongst the diversity of the local church worldwide.”

The diversity is certainly represented in the speaker docket, uniting and melding Word of Faith (T.D. Jakes, the Osteens, Hillsong Church), Purpose Driven/Drucker-designed big business (Rick Warren), Craig Groeschel and Judah Smith.

“The Church is God’s solution for the earth. Jesus commissioned us to be builders of the Church, and the Church to be builders of people.”

Jesus – not the local church – is the solution for the sin of the world. But it would be great if the unified churches were united around preparing the Bride of Christ and equipping her for Him, rather than syncretizing all the trends of the last 30 years into one wide swath of relevance.

“Our prayer is that the twelve months leading into the twenty-thirteen Hillsong Conference gathering will be ‘crowned with His goodness and favor’ (Psalm 65) – and that the depth, breadth, reach and richness of true REVIVAL will be your portion.  Our prayer is that our magnificent 2013 guests will again unleash and water the potential within our collective lives.”

Collective? True revival happens individually when we hear the Word of God rightly preached, and we are convicted by the Holy Spirit to repent of our sins and trust only in Jesus’ shed blood on the cross for our full pardon of sin, and His resurrection.

So how about it, Church? Are we having those uncomfortable conversations yet with our elders and pastors about the dangers of forming unholy alliances?

Related articles

• Missional DiscipleSHIFTers: The next new thing
• Francis Chan at Saddleback
• Jesus Culture and Judah Smith to Join Piper, Moore, Chan and Others at Giglio’s Passion 2013
• Saying “No” to promoting blasphemous “The Bible” docudrama
• TD Jakes and Joel Osteen to Shut Down Dallas for MegaFest 2013
• Dear Joel Osteen: About that “hoax…”
• Greg Laurie Fills In for Rick Warren at Saddleback Church; Says America Needs to Turn Back to God (christianpost.com)
• Hillsong United tour lands in Indy in June (hoosierlujah.com)

Ideas Have Consequences by Bob Dewaay:

This article will reveal similarities between the philosophies prevalent in Germany that characterized fascism and those of postmodern thinkers today. I am not suggesting that because these similarities exist postmoderns would be in favor of a new Hitler. I am suggesting that ideas have consequences and that history ought to teach us how serious they can be. The key issue is the rejection of a transcendent God who has revealed moral law. The result of such a rejection will most certainly be some form of lawlessness.

Recently, radio host and friend Chris Rosebrough called me and insisted that I read Modern Fascism by Gene Veith. Chris suggested the book because it draws a parallel between the ideas popular in Germany between World Wars I and II and the ideas popular in America today. These ideas now are called “postmodern,” a term introduced by Martin Heidegger, a popular German philosopher who became a committed fascist. Veith’s Modern Fascism unpacks the philosophical ideas that led to fascism.

This review of Veith’s book will show that the postmodern/emergent ideas that are popular today are identical to those in vogue in post WWI Germany. [Note: I also use the term paraphrase in the title, because I quote extensively from Veith’s book and explain his ideas.] I do not claim that those who promote postmodern theology are guilty of promoting fascism, but I do claim that ideas have consequences. As we examine the ideas that led to fascism, we shall see why those ideas led to horrific consequences. Once we see the parallels between those times and today we can hope that today’s ideas will not lead to such consequences. But we have no guarantees that they won’t.

Back to Nature

Postmodernism is a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism (that reason alone will get us to truth) and the sense of alienation that came from urbanization. This sense of alienation included a desire to connect with nature. Germany after World War I was characterized by a desire to reconnect with nature that included a desire for pagan religious ideas that were linked to nature. Gene Veith explains: “Because of their Romanticism, fascists sought to overcome the alienation between the human being and nature. Again, the villain was modern civilization, with its scientific technology and polluting factories.”¹ This same sensibility characterizes postmodern thinking today which, as I have claimed in another work, is a resurrected version of Romanticism² . People want to be connected to nature and to react against the Enlightenment; to do so involves making decisions on a basis other than logic and rationality. Most people would be shocked to realize that their postmodern inclinations are those of fascist ideology which led to Hitler, but I’ll develop that connection later in the paper.

Veith explains: “Whereas the traditions of the Enlightenment sought to transcend nature, fascist ideology made nature central to human life. In the words of Adolf Hitler, ‘the folkish philosophy of life corresponds to the innermost will of Nature’” (Veith: 39). The draw to nature is a huge factor in our culture today as seen in everything from political ads to those of larger corporations. Everyone wants to be seen as being “green.” This mindset prevailed in Germany during the periods between WWI and WWII, a mindset that resulted in the belief that humans and Western civilization are the problem.

Humans, it is thought, have undertaken an onslaught against nature and ancient pagan thinking is seen as a better approach. Paganism has always seen religion as stemming from nature. The Judeo-Christian worldview believes in a transcendent God who has spoken, has created humans in His image, and has given them dominion over the rest of the creation (Genesis 1:26). So what in our view is good and from God is, in the postmodern view (that of the fascists and Emergents), very bad; a thing to be rejected.

My maternal grandfather, Fred Saupe, lived in the same time period as the rise of fascism in Germany. Grandpa Fred served in the United States Army in WWI, and though he was a great marksman, he was assigned to be a supply truck driver so that he wouldn’t have to kill Germans (he was of German descent). That assignment, incidentally, may have saved his life.

After the war, Grandpa Fred became a farmer in Iowa near where his father had homesteaded in the 19th century. On that farm, where I grew up, I learned from him that nature was likely to kill you unless you used all of your wits and available technology to prevail over it. Fred was a Christian man with a Biblical worldview. His beliefs were the polar opposite of those that prevailed in Germany after WWI.

The farm reflected the Biblical admonition for humans to rule over nature, and the reality that the Fall meant that with great labor man could live off of the land. Grandpa Fred fought against possible destruction all of his life. He lived through the Great Depression. He lived through the dust bowl of the 1930s. He lived through drought, windstorms, insect invasions, and fought weeds. When I was old enough to understand the farm that Fred turned over to my father, we had everything we needed to survive: a brooder house to raise little chicks, a chicken house for when they matured, dairy cows, pigs, and steer. We had cherry trees, pear trees and apple trees, raspberries, strawberries and many kinds of garden vegetables

Lack of water was the one persistent battle with nature that Fred fought every year. Nearly every August the several shallow wells on the farm would go dry and he would have to haul water from elsewhere for his animals. So turning to technology, in the 1940s he drilled a 400-foot well. We never ran out of water again. And herbicides and pesticides helped us declare war on other destroyers of the crops.

While all this was going on in America, Germany was taking the opposite approach—that technology and Western civilization are evil, that going back to nature was good, and that humans (at least certain ones) were the problem. So eugenics became important—the practice of selectively breeding humans so that only the best reproduced. Undesirable people were forcibly sterilized, and when that proved inefficient the Nazis began mass killing. It was a return to tribalism and ancient nature religions. Veith explains: “Nature and the community assume the mystical role they held in ancient mythological religions. Religious zeal is displaced from the transcendent onto the immanent: the land, the people, the blood, the will” (Veith: 17). The idea that nature was like a goddess who would care for humans replaced the idea that nature was fallen and that humans needed to use the sweat of their brow to overcome the natural tendency for thorns to choke out the garden (Genesis 3:17). Again Veith explains: “Fascists seek an organic, neomythological unity of nature, the community, and the self. The concepts of a God who is above nature and a moral law that is above society are rejected” (Veith: 17).

The postmodern ideals prevalent in America today are identical. The primary idol in our society is nature, and many people harbor the romantic view that nature is a “mother” who will nurture us. These postmoderns consider humans with technology to be the enemies who are a threat to the nature goddess. These inclinations drive the postmodern/emergent understanding of theology.

They reject the transcendence of God, who has spoken and given moral law and will in the end be the judge of all. In His place they posit community and a return to nature. Whether these advocates know that they are teaching ideas that at one time led to fascism is uncertain. But they did. For example consider this Emergent writer:

Perhaps interest in theologies of the kingdom of God is related to the contemporary quest for holism, integration, and a sense of interconnection. My colleague, Dr. Linda Bergquist, has suggested that renewed popularity of the “kingdom” language is related to the emerging global narrative of the deep ecology movement—a consciousness and awareness that everything matters and is somehow interdependent.³

The deep ecology movement sees traditional Christianity’s understanding of man’s uniqueness (as created in God’s image and given authority over the earth) as a terrible cause of the earth’s problems. Instead it derives its thinking from pagan sources and a decidedly pagan worldview that values the “interconnectedness of all things.” In its extreme, the deep ecology movement wants to see most of the humans on the earth eliminated and balance restored to nature. Veith points to Finnish deep ecology proponent, Pentti Linkola, as one who holds to fascist ideas: “Linkola, surveying the way humanity has ravaged nature, considers human beings to be an evolutionary mistake, a cancer of the earth” (Veith: 40).

One might ask how human beings can become anti-human. In Nazi Germany the answer is that they become only “anti-some humans” – those who are not the elite, not the right race, or not fit to reproduce. It may shock many to realize that the ultimate brutality of fascism was led, not by uneducated savages, but by the educated elite. As Veith points out, “Thus fascism attracted students, artists, intellectuals, and the avant-garde. Fascists sought first of all to demolish Western civilization, so that it could be replaced with a new, organic, holistic culture” (Veith: 40). The Judeo-Christian idea that humans were created in God’s image and given dominion over the rest of the creation was seen as an enemy to the natural, organic whole. Fascists hated Jews because they were seen as the “inventors” of a transcendent Creator God who gave moral laws like “you shall not murder” that made human life something that must be protected.

Martin Heidegger the Fascist

The existential philosopher, Martin Heidegger, was a key thinker who embraced fascism, and his mortal enemy was Western civilization. Veith explains:

Heidegger’s attack on the West is repeated over and over again by his followers today, who perhaps do not realize its original Nazi context. Heidegger opposed democracy and continued to do so even after the collapse of the Third Reich. Heidegger was also an important environmental theorist, whose critique of technology—though rooted in National Socialist organicism—has been enormously influential (Veith: 41).

Neo-orthodoxy is a religious version of existential philosophy such as that of Heidegger and postmodern/Emergent theology is nearly identical to it. Its enemies are the same: the Enlightenment, Western civilization, technology, a transcendent God who has given binding moral laws, individuals as important in their own right, and humans having dominion over nature. I was amazed that ideas expressed by the postmoderns/Emergent are identical to those of the fascists. It’s sobering to think about where these ideas will lead.

One of Heidegger’s ideas very popular with the Emergent movement is the challenge against objective truth. Heidegger was influenced by Nietzsche who famously declared the death of God. Heidegger (who invoked Nietzsche in a famous address) realized the implications as explained by Veith: “If God is dead, there is no longer a transcendent authority of reference point for objective truth” (Veith: 85). Here is Veith’s analysis of such thinking:

Heidegger’s conclusion has become accepted to the point of becoming a commonplace of contemporary thought, that knowledge is a matter of process, not content. With the death of God, there is no longer a set of absolutes or abstract ideas by which existence must be ordered. Such “essentialism” is an illusion; knowledge in the sense of objective, absolute truth must be challenged. The scholar is not the one who knows or searches for some absolute truth, but the one who questions everything that pretends to be truth. (Veith: 85)

This is precisely the Emergent idea: we cannot know, but we can rebuke those who claim to have knowledge. Consider this Emergent statement: “We live in a post-Neitzschean world of faith and spirituality. Nietzsche’s declaration that God is dead still holds true, since interest in all things spiritual does not necessarily translate to a belief in a metaphysical God or the tenets and dogmas of a particular faith.”⁴ The new “god” who replaced the “dead” one is only immanent and has never revealed absolute truth that can be known. To find out that Emergent ideas are those of fascists is quite shocking.

So now knowledge has been replaced by questioning as it was in the philosophy of the fascist Martin Heidegger. This comes with some horrible consequences such as the end of academic freedom. Veith explains:

In the same address in which he asserts that “questioning itself becomes the highest form of knowing,” Heidegger goes on to advocate expelling academic freedom from the university: “To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the university.” (Veith 86)

This may explain something I recently experienced. In debating a professor from a Baptist university about the promotion of Zen mediation to their students, I pointed out that present at the symposium were two Zen Buddhists and one Christian who believed in Zen style meditation. There was not a single traditional Christian who defended the Biblical definition of prayer and meditation. I asked why no conservative Christian had a seat at the table (I have asked that of other Christian educators) and received no answer. But there is an answer, and it is the one Heidegger explained: academic freedom must go. Once the idea about certainty concerning the knowledge of the truth is rejected, then the freedom of those who want to express the knowledge of the truth as revealed by God must be squelched. Everyone’s idea is valid except that of conservative Christians.

Heidegger’s idea of giving oneself the law meant that morals derive from the human will. Veith explains the implication: “The concept that there are no absolute truths means that human beings can impose their truth upon an essentially meaningless world” (Veith: 86). But that would apparently mean chaos with no guidance for deciding things collectively as in society. The answer to that problem is “the will to power” as understood by Nietzsche. The will to power can and does become a collective will. Heidegger spoke of “willing the essence” (Veith: 90). But he was speaking of a collective will. The “essence” is not some pre-existing transcendent truth revealed by God but something people will into existence themselves. Once it is willed, it becomes the guidance of “authentic” life. In other words, when a collection of people commonly wills something, and if they then live in conformity with that common will, they are living valid, authentic lives. Whatever is thus willed cannot be judged to be good or bad by any transcendent moral law revealed by God.

Veith cites Adolf Hitler repeating the theme of the collective will-power (Veith: 90, 91). According to Hitler, the “dominating preacher” could win the masses over to a new will, the collective one of his national socialism. Hitler’s mass rallies were aimed at that. With the moral will of a transcendent God removed, the collective will of the German society became the new moral law. If that will meant the killing of millions of people, there was no higher law above the collective will to say that anything was wrong.

Veith cites the fascist film The Triumph of the Will as a significant example of this idea. The title of the film was provided by Hitler himself (Veith: 91). The collective will of the German people is portrayed as having great mythical qualities to be lived by. Morality is to be judged by the collective will of the German people that was being clearly manipulated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. The God of the Bible, who has spoken, had been declared dead by the earlier Nietzsche and replaced by the collective will of the people. Thus these people were unleashed to do whatever they deemed correct—with no sense of guilt.

Veith makes two points about this. One is the practice of abortion in America being justified because of a “choice” (Veith: 37). The Judeo-Christian ethic of “you shall not kill” is set aside by the rationale that a collective culture has decided to make choice a moral value. This is fully in accord with the ideas of Nietzsche and Heidegger that contributed to fascism. Another is to point out the irony that the fascist slogan of the triumph of the will is the total reversal of Martin Luther’s great work The Bondage of the Will: “In simultaneously alluding to Luther and contradicting him, The Triumph of the Will invests Hitler with Luther’s mantle and replaces German Protestantism with the new fascist spirituality” (Veith: 92).

What consequences will come when the human will (viewed collectively) becomes the new source of morals for a society? The answer is that it could be just about anything, but it will be evil. Veith comments on Luther’s view and validates it:

If the human will is unleashed, with no external or internal restraints, Luther would expect not authenticity, not self-actualization or humanistic fulfillment, but an evil approaching the demonic. In this respect, at least, those who celebrated triumph of the will proved him right. (Veith: 93)

Whatever becomes of our current society will be revealed as history unfolds, now that the moral law revealed by the transcendent God of the Bible has been rejected. But we can expect it will be a version of evil that approaches the demonic.

The Rejection of the Value of the Individual

One facet of fascism was a characteristic called volkisch which is a German term for which no single English word has the same range of meaning. It is usually translated “folkish” but includes ideas of ethnic, folklore, populist, and romanticism. The way it functioned in fascism was a rejection of individualism. A person’s identity was found in a communal experience and communal consciousness. As Veith explains: “The individual human being is ‘nothing more than the vehicle of forces generated by the community’” (Veith: 36, 37 citing Zeev Sternhell). This is a precursor to what is now called “socially constructed reality” as used by postmodern theologians such as Grenz and Franke⁵ . Individuals themselves cannot read historical documents (because of language games that are communal) and understand meaning. This cuts individuals off from meaning, which is considered socially and culturally determined. They must find their meaning from being a part of the “folkish” group.

Brian McLaren uses this postmodern approach as he rejects the importance of the individual:

How do “I” know the Bible is always right? And if “I” am sophisticated enough to realize that I know nothing of the Bible without my own involvement via interpretation, I’ll also ask how I know which school, method, or technique of biblical interpretation is right. What makes a “good” interpretation good? And if an appeal is made to a written standard (book, doctrinal statement, etc.) or to common sense or to “scholarly principles of interpretation,” the same pesky “I” who liberated us from the authority of the church will ask, “Who sets the standard? Whose common sense? Which scholars and why? Don’t all these appeals to authorities and principles outside the Bible actually undermine the claim of ultimate biblical authority? Aren’t they just the new pope? ⁶

The rejection of the individual (“I”) is a reiteration of the postmodernism of Heidegger and other fascist thinkers. Veith comments on postmodern ideas: “Postmoderns ‘deconstruct the subject’ by attempting to show that human consciousness itself is constituted by social forces and structures of power embodied in language. The self cannot escape the ‘prison-house of language,’ through which the culture encodes itself and determines the very structure of what one is able to think” (Veith: 37). McLaren’s attack on the individual being able to understand the Bible is very much postmodern. It is also very fascist (though he would not call himself that).

The unimportance of the individual and the rejection of individual rights led to horrific consequences in Nazi Germany. Individuals who were deemed unfit to contribute to the “folkish” community were eliminated. The older understanding of “humanism” (not secular humanism) was that individuals were important and had been given rights by their creator (as articulated in the Declaration of Independence). This sort of humanism was attacked by the fascists. Veith explains: “Just as the postmoderns attack ‘humanism’ on these grounds, the fascists also attacked human-centered values, including the concept of individual rights. Since the culture determines the individual, the needs of the culture must have priority” (Veith: 37). To implement the idea of the priority of the volkisch, Aryan, identity in community Hitler held mass rallies: “The mass rallies, uniforms, and parades so favored by the early fascist parties were all mechanisms for creating group identity, giving people the experience of losing themselves by becoming part of a larger collective existence” (Veith: 37).

The ideals of the United States (at least as the U.S. used to be) are the polar opposite of those of fascism. Fascists hated Western civilization, the Enlightenment, and Judeo-Christian values. So do postmoderns of today. Immigrants to America have typically come to escape oppressive circumstances in their own cultures and to find a new identity. Thus identity here was not volkisch, but based on ideas such as expressed in our Constitution. Veith writes, “Democratic nations were based not on a cultural identity, nor on ethnicity, but upon a rational plan—such as the United States Constitution” (Veith: 38). Individuals, not certain cultures, were given rights. But fascism and National Socialism were based on different ideas: “Hitler’s racism was part of his Darwinism and his Romanticism, his desire to ground culture in what he saw as the natural order” (Veith: 38).

One consequence of fascist ideas was that once the individual had no particular rights and was important only in the context of the “folkish” culture, individuals were expendable. Genocide and euthanasia were the result. The return to paganism meant the return to tribalism. Tribalism has always meant killing in tribal warfare. Veith also comments on this:

The contemporary stress upon cultural identity is accompanied by sustained critiques of “Western Civilization” in favor of cultural and ethnic consciousness. Primitive or tribal cultures are presented as being more virtuous those “contaminated by Western civilization” and modern technology. American culture becomes guilty of “cultural imperialism,” it is argued, by seeking to destroy the cultural identity of other groups by making them assimilate to democratic values. (Veith: 39)

But individual rights granted by a constitution as well as democratic values that make it possible for various immigrants to coexist without tribal warfare has been the hallmark of America. Postmodernism was the hallmark of fascism in Italy and Germany. Now that postmodernism is the prevalent thinking in our institutions of higher learning, what do we think will happen? Whatever the consequences will be, they will not be good ones. Tribalism is a bad outcome. The “noble savage” is a myth.

Veith claims that through the mass media, the creation of a mass culture can contribute to the world becoming more tribal: “Individual differences become homogenized. The world becomes ‘retribalized’” (Veith: 149). He also says, “The goal of fascism was the creation of an organic, mass community” (Veith: 148). The idea was to surround the individual with masses with the same opinion. The masses with a same opinion, charged emotionally through mass rallies, can come to assert a mass will that becomes the new morality whatever it is. Veith insightfully writes: “Mobs tend to be governed less by reason than by emotion, less by moral restrictions and more by irrational impulses. That is why Hitler loved them” (Veith: 152). By embracing the postmodern philosophy that fueled fascism in Germany, we are setting the stage for a similar horrific outcome, whatever it turns out to be.

It is ironic that most current postmodern theologians and teachers are promoting something akin to the social gospel to make the world a better place. They would be horrified to think they are promoting ideas that led to Nazi Germany. But they are. Hitler intended to make the world a better place through eugenics (the selective breeding of humans). Margaret Sanger had similar ideas in America as cited by Veith: “Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, summarized her goals accordingly: ‘More children from the fit, less from the unfit—That is the chief aim of birth control” (Veith: 108). The connection with Hitler and Sanger goes beyond merely an ideological one: “Margaret Sanger invited Eugen Fischer, Hitler’s advisor on race hygiene, for a speaking engagement in the United States” (Veith: 108). Ideas indeed have consequences.

The End of Transcendence

A key doctrine of Christianity is that God is both transcendent and immanent (above and beyond the creation but also engaged with it). This passage asserts this truth: “For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, ‘I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isaiah 57:15). In theological terms this means that God is transcendent ontologically, but immanent relationally. God is not contingent upon anything within the creation and totally transcends as the eternal One who created the world out of nothing. But God does providentially rule His own creation and has spoken to us through inerrant and authoritative spokespersons (the Biblical writers). God relates to us in a saving way if we are contrite (repentant) and trust in His Son, who died for sins.

Fascism is based on a complete rejection and denial of transcendence. Veith says that one of the key reasons for Nazi hatred of the Jews was that they “invented” the transcendent God of the Bible who gave moral laws. It is ironic that Hitler and his philosophical supporters understood that Western civilization sprang from the Jews, whereas nowadays most textbooks on the subject have forgotten that fact. The problem was that Hitler believed Western civilization to be an evil thing to be done away with. So do most postmoderns today.

The Bible claims that God came to Mount Sinai and audibly spoke “You shall not murder” to the Jewish nation (Exodus 20:13). That meant that the transcendent, Creator God spoke a moral absolute that applied to every individual. Fascism was inimical to any such thing: “A ‘collective and organic’ society must be based on different principles than the ‘individualist and atomistic’ ideals injected into Western culture by the Jews” (Veith: 49). The consequent of wanting to rid society of Western civilization was the intention of ridding society of the Jews:

For those who reject transcendent moral absolutes—such as “Thou shalt not kill”—there was nothing to prevent the gas chamber. There was no higher authority than the “collective and organic” society, which sought to rid itself both the Jewish people and of their ideas. (Veith: 49)

If Christianity held to the transcendent revealed moral truth that it inherited from the Jews, it became Hitler’s enemy as well. But, sadly, many during that era joined the “German Christian” movement which gained control of the institutional church in Germany (Veith: 55). Veith aptly comments: “Christianity could be reinvented, that is to say, repaganized; it only had to be drained of its Biblical and Hebraic content” (Veith: 55). There was a remnant, the “Confessing Christians” who were persecuted and killed by Hitler. The confessing Christians refused to give up the idea of a transcendent God who issued moral truth that was not dependent on the culture (Veith: 56).

Veith has an entire chapter about the church in fascist Germany (Chapter 4: “Two Masters”) that chronicles the difference between the German Church and the Confessing Church. The issue was whether or not the church would confess the truths that had been revealed by the transcendent God of the Bible. The German Christians were able to take control of the state church (Veith: 57). Veith writes: “What this meant can be seen in a research institute established by the new church government: The Institute for the Study of Jewish Influence on German Church Life” (Veith: 58). The Jews with their transcendent, law-giving God could not be allowed to influence the German church. The counter movement, theConfessing Church issued a declaration affirming Reformation ideas such as Christ alone and scripture alone (Veith: 60).

To apply the issues of postmodern, fascist Germany to today, we have to see the gravity of the choices before us. Will we deny transcendence as postmodern theology does and place “truth” in the hands of the culture (socially constructed reality), or will we confess the transcendent, revealed truths of the Bible? Much of the church has fallen asleep on this matter. The denial of the transcendence of the God of the Bible who has spoken led to horrific consequences in Nazi Germany. Now that the same concept of transcendence is being denied in most “Christian” educational institutions in favor of all things postmodern, why do we think we shall escape the logical consequences? Do we really believe that contemporary people are “good” and can be trusted to do “good” even if they no longer have a transcendent source of true goodness or a revelation of what good really is from the Creator God? Adopting postmodernity is naïveté at its worst. One definition of insanity sometimes offered is of doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result.

To repeat: ideas have consequences. Veith traces a number of fascist ideas back to the earlier Nietzsche. He cites Nietzsche and then comments:

“A table of the good hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of their overcomings; behold, it is the voice of their will to power.” Moral principles are not transcendent truths (as in the Judeo-Christian tradition), but expressions of power. Change comes when new tablets are imposed upon the people, and this is done by the artists. (Veith: 119)

When I visited an Emergent convention last fall, art was emphasized. As I attended the first session, an artist was creating a drawing during the session. A video camera was trained on her so we could see the process as we listened to the speakers. There were other works of art hung in the auditorium. It all looked rather strange to me until I realized there was a theme. There was something in each picture emerging, even though what it was seemed unclear. They were using art to reinforce the postmodern idea of God’s immanence in the creation causing something good to emerge from it.

But what contemporary postmodern/emergent thinkers overlook is the sin nature. To deny God’s transcendence and then look for goodness to emerge from a process overseen by the collective community assumes that goodness will come from a collective of sinners willing as they see fit. There is no moral law that guides them to even give a reasonable definition of “good.” The Bible has been silenced through the neo-orthodox idea that the reader determines the meaning. What is to keep this group, which is creating a socially constructed “reality,” from unleashing a ruthlessly evil reality like Nazi Germany? Nothing. For now they live off of the borrowed capital of the Judeo-Christian worldview that they have rejected. The capital will soon be exhausted.

Anti-Semitism

The most well known aspect of German fascism is anti-Semitism. Veith mentions two of the key reasons the Jews were so hated: 1) their association with “banking capitalism” and 2) their worldview (Veith: 43). Yes there was racial hatred as history records. But Hitler was committed to paganism, and the Jewish (and Jewish inspired Christian) Bible is the polar opposite of paganism. The Church in Germany had already largely been stripped of an authoritative Bible by liberalism and then neo-orthodoxy, so the church could be made safe for fascism (other than the confessing Christians). But the Jews were seen as intractable. They had to be eliminated. They were never going to give up their monotheism.

The fascists viewed the Jews as cerebral and detached from nature and the rich polytheistic world of ancient paganism (Veith: 44). Veith describes a popular fascist and what he had to say: “According to poet and fascist propagandist Ezra Pound, the Jewish religion began when Moses, ‘having to keep a troublesome rabble in order’ scared them by inventing ‘a disagreeable bogie, which he . . . [called] a god’” (Veith: 44). According to fascist thinking, the Jews ruined the world by inventing one transcendent, monotheistic God who was opposed to the immanent, polytheistic gods of the pagans. Veith explains how they saw the problem:

Jewish monotheism led to the decline of the mythological consciousness in which religion, nature, and the community were unified. Fascism sought to restore the values of primitive cultures, with their social solidarity, oneness with nature, and psychic integration. The iconoclasm, antipaganism, and moralism of the Judeo-Christian tradition must be eradicated so that a more holistic spirituality could emerge. (Veith: 44, 45)

The similarities with many contemporary, postmodern ideas are striking.

The Jews with their monotheism and moral laws were intolerable. They were the enemies of the re-paganization of society. Veith comments: “In other words, the Jews with their absolute morality invented intolerance; therefore they shall not be tolerated” (Veith: 46). Veith astutely understands the Old Testament dynamic that kings who did evil were to be denounced by God’s prophets—and they were. The sort of view revealed in Deuteronomy 17 that the king is under and not above God’s revealed law is the foundation for ideas cherished in the West and embodied in such documents as the United States Constitution. The Nazis wanted to be rid of such ideas, so they sought to be rid of the Jews who first articulated them. I agree with this great statement by Veith: “That a prophet could come into the presence of a king and denounce him for oppression and bloodshed on the higher authority of the ‘word of God’ was a conceptual development of the profoundest importance for Western society” (Veith: 47).

What a sorry thing it is that today the authority of Scripture is being diminished in our churches and that our society is thereby adopting the sensibilities of fascists, if not their politics. If we do not accept the moral law of God as true and binding, by what authority can we rebuke “kings”? The new morality becomes the morality of the Biblically illiterate masses who are drawn to their pagan roots. “Good” can no longer be defined.

Veith articulately describes the results in fascist Germany:

For those who reject transcendent moral absolute—such as “Thou shalt not kill”—there was nothing to prevent the gas chambers. There was no higher authority than the “collective and organic” society, which sought to rid itself of the Jewish people and of their ideas. (Veith: 49).

Christianity resists such things only if it retains the Bible as authoritative because it was inspired by the transcendent, Creator God. But Hitler found a cure for that problem: “If Christianity could not be eliminated, it could be changed. Cured of its ‘Hebrew disease’ Christianity could be repaganized” (Veith 50). Thinking about how applicable this is to what is happening today gives one chills. We think we can be repaganized by going back to the ideas and practices of a paganized version of medieval Catholicism, rejecting the solas of the Reformation, reconnecting to nature as if it were a goddess, satisfying fallen humanity’s pagan urges, and do so in the name of God—but not get any of the results that attended fascism’s return to nature religion.

The Real Problem

I agree with Veith: “The problem is not alienation from nature, but alienation from God through the rebellion of sin” (Veith: 51). The longing for a return to nature has never been stronger in American society than I see today. The term “natural” is deemed synonymous with “good” and “unnatural” with “bad.” This ignores the problems that nature is fallen, that nature is impersonal, and that nature, therefore, is not a goddess who wishes to care for us. The deification of nature common today places many contemporary Americans in a philosophical league with the Nazis. They are blinded to that fact. Our problem is not alienation from nature, but from God.

The firewall we have against postmodernism (which is a fancy name for paganism) is an inerrant, authoritative Bible. Our sin problem finds its remedy through the gospel that is revealed in the Bible. We find morals and restraint from our sinful tendencies through the law of God revealed by God through the Biblical writers. Western civilization used to be based on such ideas. That is why Hitler hated the Jews and the West. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He came in fulfillment of prophecies found in the Old Testament in such places as Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. If the Christian church confesses Christ and the authority of Scripture, she shall put herself in opposition to Modern Fascism as Veith describes it. We will thus be seen as the enemies of society.

We need to do that. We need to stand on the solas of the Reformation and say “no” to postmodernity. We need to say “no” to neo-paganism and nature worship. We need to say “no” to the type of socialism that characterized Nazi Germany. The socialism of the Marxist Soviet Union was not the polar opposite to that of Germany, but a first cousin of it (Veith: 34-36). In both cases millions died. Hitler saw capitalism as a grave evil of the West, with the Jews as its bankers. We need to say “no” to every pastor in America who refuses to purely preach God’s Word from the pulpit. Those who do not are complicit in contemporary postmodern ideas just as the German Christians of Hitler’s day were complicit in the postmodern ideas that undergirded fascism. When we fail to confess what God has revealed, we fail. Period.

Conclusion

Gene Edward Veith’s book is more needed now than when it was published in 1993. I thank God for His providence that led me to it. The world around us and much of the church is being shaped by the very ideas that led to fascism and the Nazi party. “Ideas have consequences” (Veith: 78, 79). We are fools if we think there will be no consequences this time. I do not know what they will be. But they will be bad. Here is Veith’s description of the consequences in Nazi Germany:

If Judeo-Christian transcendent ethics place restrictions on individual behavior, they also liberate the individual socially and politically. The fascist’s ethics of immanence did the reverse—they unleashed the animal impulses, while enslaving the population. (Veith: 50)

We need to fight against these ideas using the Scripture.

Our young people are being indoctrinated into postmodern thinking in most of our colleges, be they secular or Christian. Their parents have no clue that the ideas they are being taught are the very ideas of the Hitler youth movement. The only difference is that there is no particular ethnicity that is claimed to be superior. That may save us from National Socialism, but it will not save us from some other version of it. But the idea that we need to be saved from alienation from nature caused by human enterprise rather than saved from our alienation from God caused by sin is spiritually fatal. It will lead only to neo-paganism and moral disaster.

End Notes

1. DGene Edward Veith; Modern Fascism – The Threat to the Judeo-Christian Worldview; (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1993) 39. All future citations from this book will have bracketed references with this article.
2.  Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church – Undefining Christianity (Minneapolis, Bob DeWaay, 2009) 204.
3.  Mark Scandrette, “Growing Pains – The Messy and Fertile Process of Becoming,” in An Emergent Manifesto of HopeDoug Pagitt and Tony Jones editors (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007) 27.
4.  Barry Taylor, “Converting Christianity The End and Beginning of Faith,” in Emergent Manifesto of Hope 164.
5.  Stanley Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism – Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).
6.  Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, (Youth Specialties: El Cajon, CA, 2004; published by Zondervan) 133.

See also:

Rob Bell Emerges Out of the Closet . . . and the Wool (Again)

While Exodus says that “any sexual expression outside of a monogamous marriage between one man and one woman falls outside of God’s creative intent for human sexual expression and is sinful,” they fail to classify homosexual lust as sin. They state:

We do not believe that same-sex attractions are sinful in and of themselves but rather one type of struggle and temptation among the millions that impact each and every human being. (Source)

Aside from the Bible’s clear declaration of homosexuality as sinful behavior, Jesus warned that even heterosexual lusts would send a person to hell apart from repentance, forgiveness and new life in Him. Jesus said, “That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” (Matthew 5:28-30) How much more weighty the warning about homosexual lust? Yet Exodus concludes:

Homosexuality is no greater or less a sin than any other and is not the determining factor for a relationship with Jesus Christ. (Source)

But the Apostle Paul tells us that homosexuality is a determining factor for relationship with Jesus Christ. ”Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9,10).

Leslie Chambers admits that her husband Alan Chambers, the President of Exodus, has homosexual attractions. Yet she defends her husband’s attraction to men and wouldn’t point her husband toward heterosexual attraction because she claims it may tend toward “poor choices.” This is utter non-sense! Heterosexuals who have made sinful choices in fornication or adultery in no way justifies homosexual attraction and lust. Mr. Chambers should be attracted to his wife and love her as Christ loves the church. Mrs. Chambers writes:

It literally astounds me that there are some who would still point Alan, or other same-sex attracted people, towards “heterosexuality”. Heterosexuality by definition is “sexual relations or attractions between opposite sexes”. Alan has openly admitted his same-sex attractions. As his wife, I can honestly say that the last thing I want him to pursue is heterosexuality. Why, you ask? How am I not threatened by my husband’s same sex attractions? If he pursued heterosexuality, wouldn’t I be more fulfilled in my marriage? Truthfully, I know plenty of marriages where “heterosexual” men and women have made very poor choices as they endeavored to fulfill their heterosexual desires. I do not want Alan to be more attracted to people of the opposite sex. (Source)

How does hyper-grace relate? For one thing, Clark Whitten, the hyper-grace pastor and author of Pure Grace, is the Chairman on the Board of Directors of Exodus International (Source). Certainly this is the bad fruit of his hyper-grace teaching. Leslie Chambers completely evades the idea of hyper-grace being a false teaching and says rather:

While we are talking about our marriage, there is a consensus between two polarized groups of people as to the probability of the demise of our marriage. Their differences lie in what will cause that demise. Some say it will be the inevitability of Alan’s inability to repress his “true gay identity”. Of these folks, some have pitied me. Some say the demise will come as a result of a “hyper-grace” mentality and at any moment Alan will take advantage of God’s good grace and sin all over the place. Of these folks, some have said that I must be on the verge of a total breakdown. . . .

As for “hyper-grace,” how can being in awe of God’s grace destroy my marriage? It is the hope for my marriage. (Source)

She goes on to give her own spin on grace and say that there is nothing hyper about her understandings. She says:

I do not need my children’s desperate pleas for forgiveness in order to forgive them. I do not require them to fix anything they break in order for them to be in right standing with me. Do I want them to recognize when they have done wrong. Yes. Is it good for them to apologize? Yes. Is it good for them to try to fix things they have broken? Yes. Is it good for them to change their minds, learn from their mistakes in hopes of not making them again? YES!! All the while, none of that is required for them to be my children. (Source)

As I mentioned in the Pure Grace book review, biblical grace is unmerited but not unconditional. God does have requirements for us to be His children and to continue being His children. These conditions could be summed up in love, faith and obedience. Granted, God is a gracious, merciful, forgiving, longsuffering Father. But His grace and forgiveness are not unconditional as hyper-grace teachers preach. Forgiveness is conditional based upon our forgiveness of others (Matthew 6:12,14,15; 18:15; Mark 11:25,26) and confession of our sins (1 John 1:9). Likewise, grace is conditional as Paul exhorted Christians “to continue in the grace of God” (Acts 13:43), not to “receive the grace of God in vain.” (2 Corinthians 6:1), not to “insult the Spirit of Grace” (Hebrews 10:29) so that no one “falls short of the grace of God” (Hebrews 12:5). Biblical grace is available as enabling power, even for Mr. Chambers, to overcome sin, even homosexual lust (See Romans 5:17; 6:14).

In conclusion, ex-gay leader Andrew Comiskey, founder and current leader of Desert Stream Ministries (Living Waters), has posted a public criticism of Exodus President Alan Chambers available here. He demonstrates the undeniable connection between hyper-grace teacher Clark Whitten and Exodus President Alan Chambers:

That brings us to the suspicion cast upon a book Pure Grace, written by Clark Whitten, who is the chairperson of the Exodus Board and pastor to Alan Chambers (Exodus president.) Some Exodus members are concerned that such ‘pure grace’ will actually contaminate the offering of Exodus by making the narrow way broad and inclusive of practicing gay Christians. (Alan recently addressed such a group and referenced their common destination of heaven.)

Whitten insists that grace alone, simply received, covers and overcomes one’s sin and renders any human effort worldly, a work of the flesh. Like many Christian authors, he overstates his case, using Scripture selectively. He is convinced that the biggest problem facing Christians is legalism, heavy-handed religion that would be overcome simply by resting in what God has done for us. He also appears to believe that this is the Truth which will usher in a new reformation. Like many in his neo-Baptist, evangelical tradition, he believes in ‘once saved, always saved’, thus Alan’s belief in the possibility of heaven for practicing gays who are ‘saved’.

Whitten should be free to have his emphasis, minus the grandiosity. (A new reformation? Really?) His book could be helpful for those bound by legalism. What surprised me is how familiar I (Andrew) found the message. Over my 36 years of faith, I have read this same book, slightly modified, in the tracts and testimonies of dozens of Christians who appear to have found an easy way to live the Christian life. ‘Do nothing. Receive. Don’t strive. Rest in the finished work.’