Posted on 09/06/2003 12:43:15 PM PDT by fortheDeclaration
Spirit Wars: The New Age Confronts Christianity
Dr Peter Jones talks to Peter Hastie Australian Presbyterian: The Magazine of The Presbyterian Church of Australia The interview below was published in the Australian Presbyterian. It is reprinted here by permission. Feel free to print it for personal use. For other uses, please contact Peter Hastie.
Can you tell us about how you first became acquainted with the New Age movement, or what you refer to as Neo-Paganism? What sparked your academic interest in it? Certainly. As you've mentioned, I call it Neo-Paganism because that's the best term for it. "Paganism comes from the Latin word, paganus, "of the earth". Some people refer to neo-paganism as the New Age movement, but it has all the characteristics of paganism. So that's the term I use. It's more accurate. I think the apostle Paul gives us the best working-definition of a pagan when he refers to a person who "exchanges the truth of God for the lie and worships and serves the creation rather than the Creator " (Rom 1:25). Pagans worship nature.
I really became involved in thinking about it after spending eighteen years in France, where it's impolite to raise the issue of spirituality in public. When I returned to America I found that the USA had changed its religion. I realised that within the space of one generation a toxic, anti-Christian ideology had germinated in Christian America. It was actually paganism, but it was a paganism that sometimes took a similar form to Christianity in much the same way that Gnosticism did during the first few centuries of early Church history. It was a culture-shock for me to return to America and to see how neo-pagan religion, under the guise of spirituality, was gradually displacing Christianity.
Can you explain how neo-pagan religion is similar to Gnosticism?
Yes, but it's rather complex. Just as there is a bewildering diversity of ideas within the present neo-pagan religion, ancient Gnosticism was a kaleidoscopic mixture of a number of different religious traditions.
Kurt Randolph, a professor of the history of religions at Karl Marx University, Leipzig, wrote a very helpful book called Gnosis on this subject. He claimed that within the diversity of Gnosticism there were some common features which he called "the central myth". What Gnosticism taught about the world, redemption, Christ, God, sexuality and spiritual techniques provides us with a working definition of the main features of this system of thought.
Essentially, Gnosticism was a hostile belief-system to orthodox Christianity. As a religious system it was dedicated to overthrowing Christianity by teaching that the true God was an unknowable impersonal force; matter was essentially evil - the result of a "cosmic goof"; and redemption comes when Gnostic believers realise who they are - part of the divine, capable of anything and untrammeled by human traditions, creational structures and divine laws.
When we compare these features against neo-pagan teachings, the parallels are quite striking.
Norman Geisler has described the New Age movement as "the fastest growing alternative belief system today". It is said to be the third largest religious denomination in the USA. How big and pervasive is it, and what makes it so popular?
Neo-paganism is becoming increasingly widespread. That shouldn't surprise us really because it's an acceptable religious alternative to the unbeliever. It's like a "default" button if you find the truth unpalatable. Again, when I've said that it has developed into a movement in America, I should also add that the same could be said for the entire Western world. Paganism is being revived in Australia, and it's already widespread in Great Britain and Europe. For instance, I heard on the radio today that its influence is being felt in Iceland. Apparently, there's a revival of belief in the invisible little people who are supposed to inhabit rocks and trees. Scientifically-educated Icelandic engineers are now expected to make decisions on where roads will go according to where some of the "holy rocks" are found so as not to disturb "the little people."
In Britain, the pagan movement has been accepted as part of the Inter-Faith dialogue. It's not unusual to find Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists and pagan witches all in the same Inter-Faith groups. Here we find non-Christian paganism actually beginning to express itself as a Christian form of paganism in much the same way as happened in the ancient world. The early Christians discovered religious paganism in the Greco-Roman empire. But very soon the New Testament writers were opposing a Christian form of paganism within the church called Gnosticism. So the modern phenomenon is much broader than the so-called New Age Movement or specific forms of paganism - it's a manner of being religious or spiritual that can be identified in many different "Christian" movements as well as non-Christian religions. Western syncretism in the mainline churches as well as Buddhism and Hinduism can be included here. They all have the same pagan bent. It is best summarized, as I mentioned above, by the apostle Paul in Romans 1:25 where he refers to very sophisticated Greco-Roman citizens by saying:
"They exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator who is blessed forever".
So paganism is the worship of nature or the created order. While that's a rather broad claim, it manifests in many and various forms.
Would you like to comment on how the business world in the West has been helping the spread of New Age or neo-pagan ideas?
I like to trace the development of modern paganism, at least at the street level, from the social revolution in the 1960s. The sixties represented a distinct break with our Western past of Judeo-Christian civilisation. That is why you can call it a "revolution."
From that point on, there was a clear-cut rejection of concepts like authority and truth. The sixties marked the end of modernity and signalled the arrival of post-modern thought.
People adopted some incredible, revolutionary notions in the sixties. One of these was the search for a new spirituality with the hippies going East and the gurus coming West. What we see through this phenomenon was the West turning to the East for spirituality, having rejected its own religious roots. And what we got was pagan spirituality. Incidentally, the same phenomenon occurred during the reign of Alexander who sought to impose a political and religious unity on his empire. He brought the religion of the East back to the West.
Similarly, once Eastern spirituality was brought back to the West after the sixties, it was joined at that point with the Human Potential Movement. You've probably heard of Anthony Robbins. He's a leader of that movement. When these two movements came together, they formed a strange hybrid of Eastern and Western spirituality. The Eastern aspect of self-denial was forgotten but the essential divinity of the human being was retained. Then these ideas were joined to the notion of Western materialism, self-promotion and self-confidence
You've probably heard Shirley MacLaine say: "I am God". Because she thinks she's divine, she can shamelessly promote herself. That kind of thinking about the divinity of the human being has made a lot of money for promoters like Anthony Robbins. They are always promoting self-esteem and self-worth for essentially pagan reasons. Of course, it all stands to reason: you can't say anything greater about the human self than it's divine. Obviously, it's a teaching that has enormous commercial possibilities. I suppose that's why business finds neo-pagan spirituality so attractive. You can make a lot of money out of it. This has recently been labelled as a "new, emerging American wisdom tradition," that will bring the planet together. Once more American know-how comes to the rescue, but it is bereft of the Christian faith.
What does the New Age stand for? It seems to be a collection of pagan spiritualities. Is there a coherent agenda behind all the different elements in the movement?
In one of my books, Gospel Truths/Pagan Lies, I set out the five central themes of New Age teaching, or what I call "pagan monism". I certainly see neo-paganism as a coherent system even though it is the opposite of the truth. In its own way, it still has a coherence to it.
Perhaps the best way to gain an understanding of neo-paganism is to understand it as a belief in naturalism - the worship of nature. Paganism teaches that there is nothing outside of nature. It's a worship of the created order rather than the Creator. As Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, used to say: "Nature is all that there is, was, or ever shall be".
The worship of nature takes two forms. The first type is a rationalistic, a-spiritual form which is what much of Enlightenment liberalism was about. Alternatively you can have the other form, which is essentially a spiritual view of nature. This is the religious pagan option which has come into vogue in our post-modern world. So the coherence of neo-paganism is a fascinating feature because I believe it ties in deeply with the agenda of nature worship and globalism.
If you think of nature as a circle, everything is included within the circle. So the first point of neo-paganism is that "all is one and one is all". Of course, everything is within the "all". And that includes rocks, trees, animals, human beings and God. So you need to think of neo-paganism as a circle of existence. If that is true, then the second point follows: all humanity is one. And that's a wonderful paradigm for bringing everything on the globe together.
Likewise the third point follows: all religions are one. This is the case, so the argument goes, because they all seek the same unio-mystica, which according to many syncretists (those interested in bringing religions together) is the mystical experience of the discovery of oneself as divine.
The Buddhists call the discovery of oneself as 'Buddha'. The Gnostics describe it as 'gnosis'. Harold Bloom, a famous American gnostic, described his gnosis like this: " I am as old as God". This celebrated teacher of Shakespeare at Yale University sees himself as essentially uncreated. What a liberating idea for a creature! So that's the thesis: all religions have the one goal of seeking this mystical experience. They are all pieces of a pie and exist within this one circle. The more you get to the centre, it is argued, the more all religions are the same. So all religions are one.
And the problem, so neo-pagans claim, is that we don't realize this. This is the fourth point of paganism. They say that we suffer from metaphysical amnesia - we have forgotten who we really are, and so we make distinctions by dividing the circle up into categories of true and false, right and wrong, and male and female. According to neo-paganism, this is all wrong. They say we must get rid of distinctions and make everything one. We have to join opposites. This is where androgyny, the pagan sexual ideal, comes from. The pagan ideal is to obliterate maleness and femaleness as two distinct categories. Christians must not make the mistake of thinking that the modern attack on gender is simply an issue of civil rights; it's not. It's part of a deeply pagan religious agenda. And we can't respond to it properly unless we see it that way.
Does this mean that Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which is a parade featuring homosexuality and trans-sexuality, is basically a pagan religious celebration?
Absolutely. The confusion over sexual identity and sexual roles which comes to the fore in the Gay movement has definite pagan religious underpinnings. Neo-pagans like to remind us that the fundamental human problem is that we have forgotten that we are divine. They say that we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by the created order into believing that things like maleness and femaleness are separate and distinct. They claim they're not.
The fifth point of paganism is the pagan spiritual solution to the human problem. They say that to overcome distinctions and separateness, we must go within and experience ourselves as divine in a powerful religious experience. We can supposedly have this experience through some form of meditation or drug-taking. But the goal is ultimately to be liberated from the Creator's grasp. And once you do this - once you get outside of your mind/body in a mystical experience - you escape the realm of logic. This is what the Gnostics meant when they said that the goal is "silence the mind". Buddhists try to attain the same experience by imagining the sound of only on hand clapping. The idea is to suspend your thought-processes and reason and get into a mystical, trance-like state. Only then do you succeed in relativising all the distinctions and diversity in the world. Then you join all the opposites. That's why one of the symbols and powerful expressions of this new spirituality is homosexuality. We must not fail to see that in neo-pagan terms, homosexuality is a distinctly spiritual experience as well as a sexual one.
Christians need to remember that everything we see and identify in these radical movements today are all related at the deepest level. They are part of a pagan religious agenda that is driving much of what we see in our day in terms of radical leftist and globalist thinking.
How seriously do you rate the New Age movement as a threat to Christianity?
It is the greatest threat that our generation has ever seen, and perhaps the greatest threat to the church since the original attack of Gnosticism on the church in the first few centuries. And we will see the threat increase more and more. We must realize that neo-paganism is a globalist movement that seeks to extend the circle of monism as a unifying spiritual principle right across the planet.
If Christians believe that the spiritual conflict is tough today, I can only predict that it will become tougher in the days ahead. Neo-pagans are determined to join the planet together in a pagan religious sense. They are not going to give up easily. This happened to a limited event in the first-century in the Greco-Roman world. There was a totalitarian politico-religious structure, but it was not as far-reaching as world governments are today. We are reaching a position at the moment where control will be more absolute.
Personally, I believe that the church is about to face the greatest threat that it has ever known in it's 2000 years of existence. I don't want to be scare-mongering about this, but the threat of a coming persecution is very real. When I read some of the radical feminists like Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether, politicians like Al Gore (a Southern Baptist - Buddhist) and Michael Gorbachev and many UN leaders, I am concerned. They are all talking about planetary governance on a massive scale, and some are speaking of the eradication of opposition.
For instance, last September in New York, there was a world conference for all religious leaders. It took place at the United Nations building. Ted Turner, the billionaire who owns CNN, paid for it all.
Again, around the same time there was another world gathering for non-government organizations. This is where a lot of the groundwork and planning for planetary governance was done. Then the State of the World Forum was held. This was one of Gorbachev's initiatives where 1500 of the world's leaders in politics and business came together in New York at the same time. Then, finally, the Millennium Summit was held where all the world's leaders were brought together. None of this was done by chance. It was the result of deliberate planning.
Prior to all this the Parliament of World Religions was held in 1993 in Chicago. I attended it. Then you have other groups like the United Religions (a branch of the UN) and the World Council of Churches. An interesting feature of all these meetings is that one rarely hears a conservative Christian voice. I doubt whether evangelical Christians are invited. The usual speakers are Deepak Chopra, Shirley MacLaine and others who are the recognized New Age leaders. So I don't think I'm being too scare-mongering. When I see prominent people like Hilary Clinton devoting herself to a globalist vision of liberating women and children from the domain of the father, I think I have a reason to be concerned. Talk about a revolutionary ideal!
It's interesting that on the turn of the millennium in the Mall in Washington, Bill and Hilary Clinton welcomed in the Third Millennium to the song "Imagine," written by my boyhood friend, John Lennon. If playing that song at such an auspicious moment isn't neo-paganism in your face, I don't know what is. The lyrics say it all: the world is one, no religion, no heaven or hell, and it all comes about by visualizing. But sadly, most people don't see it even when it is shoved so blatantly in front of them. There's a real agenda there if you have eyes to see it.
You have claimed that the New Age movement is a revival in the 21st Century of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. Some would say this is drawing a long bow. Is it? Should there be concerns here for the Church?
In some doctoral studies I once did at Harvard, I was introduced to Gnostic texts by Professor James Robinson. At the time I didn't see any great connection between ancient Gnosticism and the emerging new spirituality movement, but with the passing of time some of the parallels became clearer. I simply took elements of the old Gnosticism and found a remarkable resemblance between them and neo-pagan spiritual teaching on a number of key issues.
Then, the more I thought about ancient Gnosticism, the more I realised how insidiously it had infiltrated itself into the church. It promised fellowship with God in some sort of mystical experience. That's why Paul writes to the Corinthians about the dangers of these tendencies: "I do not want you to be participants with demons" (1 Cor 10:20). There you see the infiltration of these pagan ideas into the Christian church which ultimately became full-blown second-century Gnosticism. Here we discover the same basic goal: the experience of initiation of the self into the divine. The apostolic writings remind us that the attraction of pagan spirituality can be very strong and subtle.
What most Christians don't see is the ease with which Gnostic spirituality can penetrate the church. Take the New Testament scholar, Robert Funk, for example. He runs the Jesus Seminar. One of Funk's aims is to have some of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts made as canonical as the Gospels. Now what is that but infiltration of Gnosticism into the church? Gnosticism is merely the Christianized version of pagan spirituality.
What are the distinct ways in which Gnosticism appears in the church?
Let me remind you that it starts by the infiltration of pagan ideas into the Christian community. In the early Church, there was a sect called the Naasenes. It was a Gnostic sect that claimed to be Christian but worshiped the "naas" (Hebrew for "Serpent" in the book of Genesis). The early Christian apologist, Hippolytus, tells us that they attended the ceremonies of the goddess in order to understand the "universal mystery." Now here's the modern parallel: today I see modern liberal Christians claiming that we need to extend our ecumenical reach in order to experience the spirituality of other religions. This is exactly the same move as the members of the so-called Christian Naasene sect took when reaching towards the cult of the ancient goddess to uncover the universal mystery. This is how neo-paganism is penetrating mainline churches.
It is already manifesting itself in a variety of ways. For instance, many within the church now refuse to accept the uniqueness of Christianity: they espouse syncretism-the contemporary version of the "universal mystery"-as the true spirituality and regard Christianity only as one amongst many different attempts to reach God. However, what we have to realise is that Christianity does not fit within the pagan monistic paradigm. You cannot put Christianity into the pagan circle as one religion amongst the all. This is not bigotry or small-mindedness. It is a matter of fact. The Christian view of reality is entirely different.
Let me give you an example. Some time ago I was invited to speak at the University of California, Davis, east of San Francisco. One of the Christian groups on the campus asked me to go and speak at its "Earth-Day" Celebration. U C Davis has become well-known as a radical centre for pagan celebrations. Anyway, there was a big quadrangle where various groups were able to put their stalls and displays. Most of it was pagan stuff. A number of Christian groups had asked for tables. However, they were refused on the basis that they represented one point of view and therefore were only entitled to one table. Somebody in the Christian group should have said: "Well, you pagans are all the same, so you should have only one table too. In fact, there should only be two tables on the quad". But they didn't think of it at the time.
So the "Earth-Day" celebration came and they put up their table with Christian literature on it. Then, after a little time, who should come along but the "Karma Patrol". The Karma Patrol then told them they were not permitted to give out Christian literature because it was producing "bad karma" on the campus. Is that a snapshot of what the pagans mean by world peace? It is peace on pagan terms. I wrote this up in one of my books and gave it the title: "The Monistic Circle on a University Quadrangle". The point that I'm making here is simple: when you see pagans taking power, it's total. They don't want to share it. On that quadrangle, they insisted on having a complete, uninterrupted monistic circle. So there was no place for Christians in it. Is this scare-mongering or simple realism?
What are the main ideas in the new paganism that should be of great concern to Christians?
There are five basic ideas that characterize the new paganism and I have outlined them in my book Gospel Truth/Pagan Lies. But the fundamental one that Christians ought to be aware of is what we have called in Presbyterian and Reformed circles the "Creator/creature" distinction. In other words, in the Christian view of reality there is always the transcendent God who must not be identified with the things He has made. Paganism, on the other hand, wants to identify God with the things He has made and call them one. However, the Christian faith insists that God's identity must be kept separate. Christians believe that the creation will never become divine and that God will always be God, what J. Gresham Machen called "the awful transcendence of God."
Now there are incredible implications for this notion of the Creator/creature distinction. The Bible begins with the tremendous line: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" The rest of the Bible is commentary on that line. Here we have a theistic world-view. It's not a monistic world-view where "all is one and one is all" such as in pantheism. Incidentally, Isaiah has a fascinating insight on this in Isaiah 40:22 where he says, having surely seen Lion King's "circle of life," or something quite like it in the ancient pagan world: "The Lord sits enthroned above the circle of the earth". Here Isaiah is denouncing pagan idolatry in the earlier verses of the chapter. I think it is a luminous statement in the light of what I have said about the pagan circle of existence where God is regarded as part of the "all" or nature. Notice that Isaiah is quite explicit: God sits above the circle of the earth. He is a true theist. He will have nothing to do with pagan monism, whether ancient Babylonian or Hollywood modern.
So Christians should be most concerned about the loss of the Creator/creature distinction in the new paganism. We must always affirm that "the Lord sits enthroned above the circle of the earth".
Are many Christians alert to the fact that neo-paganism is a new and more potent expression of Gnosticism? Is there much evidence of its penetration of the church?
Most Christians are not aware of the connections. Indeed, many have never heard of Gnosticism. But when I go around speaking at many groups, as soon as I put it in these terms, the lights seem to go on. People immediately understand. They make comments like: "Oh, now I can see it. That explains why I didn't like this idea". So I find that Christians on the whole are uneasy about what's going on but they find it hard to identify it. Personally, I think it is absolutely essential to give Christians the means to be able to identify it. The aim of my books is to outline the agenda of the new paganism so that Christians can see clearly how it is impossible to fit their faith with it. They have to see that paganism is the very antithesis of Christianity.
They must also be brought to realise that the gospel of theism is the only solution to the human problem. Paganism, as you know, teaches that the human being is divine and saves himself - I know it sounds crazy that we create and redeem ourselves, but that's what they teach. If we don't give the church, and especially the younger generation, some idea of what's happening - then people will fall for the lie of paganism. After all, it's pushed with all the promotion and glitz of Hollywood.
How has the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts been used by some biblical scholars to push the influence of gnosticism in the church?
Interestingly, I was caught up unsuspectingly in the web of this movement quite early on in my career. I was a pre-doctoral student at Harvard under Helmut Koester who was working with James Robinson, the director and Editor of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic library. Both had been students of Bultmann who promoted a deep Gnostic connection for much of the New Testament. Koester would give us xeroxed copies of these recently-found Gnostic texts to read. Elaine Pagels was also a fellow student at the time. I was rather naive about where all this was heading because I wasn't in the inner circles.
I only really grasped their strategy eighteen years later when I returned from France. Robinson, by the way, was the son of a famous Presbyterian evangelical family in the South. He was raised on the Westminster Confession and the singing of Psalms. Nevertheless, after he studied under Bultmann, he turned away from the faith. A couple of years ago, he gave the annual lecture at the Society for Biblical Literature. It was called "The Coming of Age of American New Testament Scholarship". So what was the coming of age? According to Robinson it was the successful promotion in the biblical guild of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas as on a par with the four canonical Gospels of the Christian Bible. Robinson's strategy is simple: he wants to provide those Gnostic texts as valid spiritual texts for the church of tomorrow.
Actually, Robinson's proposal is just a re-run of what the Gnostics tried to do in the early church. The early church had no truck with them and drew up the Muratorian Canon to distinguish true biblical texts from false ones. When it referred to the Gnostic texts, it said: "What relationship is there between gall and honey?'. Naturally, it excluded the Gnostic texts. So the early church saw the issues clearly.
However, Robinson is not happy about this. He thinks the early church was narrow-minded and short-sighted. He says that they were obsessed with heresy-hunting. But, as I said, his aim is to push the Gospel of Thomas into the New Testament. However, when you study the Gospel of Thomas, you will find it's pretty noxious heresy. For example, most people have no idea how anti-creation its theology is. Take the last logion, number 114, for instance. As the last, we could assume that it represents the goal of this Gospel's teaching. It holds out for the believer the attainment of an androgynous or sexless state.
"Simon Peter said: Let Mary go away from us, for women are not worthy of life". Jesus said: "Lo, I shall lead her, so that I may make her a male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself a male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven".
Actually, this is the Gnostic notion of the overturning of creation and sexuality. So to overturn creation, the first thing that you do is deny the male/female distinction. Incidentally, this is not just a macho thing that Mary become a man. It's that Mary should no longer be a woman because womanhood and childbirth in the Gnostic texts is the trap of the evil Creator to keep us under His control . So here in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas you have the rejection of motherhood and child-bearing. And that's what paganism is doing today. It's telling women to reject their roles because they are intrinsically dehumanizing.
The early Christian apologist, Hippolytus, described Gnostics as a "generation without a king". How does Gnosticism, as well as neo-paganism, constitute a threat to the idea of a personal Creator who established creation structures such as maleness, femaleness and marriage?
Because Gnosticism, like ancient and neo-paganism generally, teaches that the physical world is impermanent and illusory and that the true self is within and is the Buddha, or divine. So all the different expressions of paganism that we see today, in a variety of different movements or schools, are simply an attempt to eliminate the Creator. Hence, my great concern today is to get Christians to review "The doctrine of Creation". This is where the enemy is attacking. Paganism, you see, is aiming directly at God the Creator in order to eliminate Him. And tragically, so many evangelicals are preaching a truncated Gospel. They've given up defending or have hardly any notion of the biblical teaching on creation.
So Christians need to develop a strong apologetic for Creation?
Yes! Yes! So much simplified Gospel-preaching in America is that Jesus will zap you out of this world. But this is totally inadequate. It means that Christians become unconcerned about creation. We must ask the question: Who is the Jesus that saves us? And the resounding answer of the new Testament is: "He's the Creator!" (John 1:1; Col 1:16,17; Heb 1:2) Now if the Creator is the Redeemer as well, we cannot separate what God has joined together. We cannot dismiss the issues that arise out of the doctrine of creation as many so-called "egalitarian" evangelicals want to do. We must not obliterate the distinction between male and female. Christians who want to do that are simply following the Gnostic line. The male/female distinction is important because it reminds us that we are created beings and that we belong to the Creator.
Incidentally, that's why the defence of creation by people in the "intelligent design" school, such as Phillip Johnson, J P Moreland and William Dembski, is so important. Along with others, their work establishes a strong apologetic base for the doctrine of creation. But how many people in the church today are aware of the importance of creation? Too many, I fear, are only interested in "Jesus loves me". This is true, but what that also means is that God, the Creator of heaven and earth loves me.
Some critics of neo-paganism have said that its Gnostic influence has been the driving force behind the sexual revolution of the last few decades - especially feminism, gay and lesbian rights and bisexuality. Is there any truth in this, or is it a bit far-fetched?
It's absolutely true as far as I can see. Let me try to prove it to you. The early sixties were marked by a rejection of authority and sexual boundaries. The period was also an espousal of Eastern paganism. All these things happened at the same time. The sixties was eventually a period of deconstruction of normative sexuality in the sexual liberation of the time.
I think we also have a celebration of paganism as a religious option in homosexuality. Now if adulterous heterosexual is heresy, homosexuality is apostasy. It is the absolute overturning of God's design, whereas heterosexual adultery is only a misuse of the good things that God has given us. We need to remember that in the homosexual act the male gets to be both male and female so it is profoundly androgynous - that is the blending of both male and female .
Emily Culpepper, an ex-Southern Baptist, now a self-confessed lesbian pagan witch, sees gays and lesbians as "shamans for a future age". Virginia Mollenkott, an ex-evangelical, wrote a book called "Sensuous Spirituality". She now calls herself an "evangelical, lesbian feminist". Rosemary Radford Ruether speaks about the ideal of sexuality as "androgynous". I am not making this up. All these people who are saying this have been involved with the church. But now they are pushing the new paganism which seeks to destroy the doctrine of creation by collapsing the distinction. It's all quite simple: you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what's going on.
Feminists claim that their agenda is simply one of civil rights - equality in the political, social and economic realms. However, their critics insist that ideological feminism has clear pagan roots. Who's right?
I think radical feminism is the tail wagging the pagan dog. Everyone is a sexual being and sexuality interests all of us. God declares at the beginning of the creation of man that humankind is sexual. The Bible says: "He created them male and female." That's striking. I mean, the Bible could have said: "He made them rational beings." But it says: He made them male and female."
In my research I have studied pagan worship and spirituality over three thousand years of history and all around the world. I have found that in so many pagan groupings the shaman or priest is a homosexual. So I believe that sexuality is deeply tied to theology and religion. And the kind of theology you have will have a major bearing on the way you express your sexuality.
Now, of course, because we're all sinful, there are matters to be redressed amongst the sexes. Males have used their God-given responsibility to oppress and harass women. They have failed to be Christ-like. There is some redressing to be done.
But do you abolish something simply because it is abused? Take the legal system, for instance. Do you abolish it if it is not serving the people well? No, you reform it. We need the law. In the same way, we need the sexual distinctions that the Creator has established. We may need to reform behaviour, but we cannot do without the distinctions.
The problem today is that those who argue for sexual egalitarianism in the church, want to get rid of the whole structure of sexual difference in the name of the new creation. What they don't realise is that they are being far too Gnostic and radical. The solution is to reform what God the Creator has given as a beautiful gift for our present, earthly existence - not to abolish the gift as itself.
Should our evangelistic strategy take more notice of the widespread nature of neo-paganism in our culture today?
Yes. It must. I think a good way to do evangelism today is to take the pagan agenda and answer it. That seems to make a lot more sense than telling ourselves what we already know and assume the non-Christian world knows it too. I think evangelicals today ought to take a leaf out of the book of the early apologists like Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius and Augustine, who labored hard and long to understand Gnosticism, both to warn the church and to make the Gospel clear in their time. This is our task at the beginning of the Third Millennium. We have to understand the new paganism and its weaknesses in order to declare the uniqueness and power of the Gospel. In our own time, we have to declare what Paul declared to the Greco-Roman pagan empire: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). But notice this. His declaration of the Gospel immediately leads to an exposition and rejection of paganism (Romans 1:18-32). Paul is still "the apostle to the Pagans" (Romans 11:13), so, in a pagan world like ours, this methodology must surely also be ours.
This interview was conducted by the Rev Peter Hastie, Issues Editor of Australian Presbyterian, with Dr Peter Jones, Professor of New Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary, Escondido, California on 7th February 2001. Dr Jones holds a MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, a ThM from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in New Testament from Princeton Theological Seminary. He was a close boyhood friend of John Lennon, with whom he used to play music. Dr Jones still enjoys playing jazz piano. Prior to his appointment to Westminster Theological Seminary, he served as a missionary theological educator in France. Dr Jones is the author of The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back, and Spirit Wars,with a third book to come — The Return of the Rabbi. A good introductory book is Gospel Truth, Pagan Lies. The copyright for this interview is held by Ausralian Presbyterian.
Copyright 2001 - Peter Jones - info@spirit-wars.com Site by Nolan Design
Check out his website, there are other articles.
Also I would highly recommend his work 'Spirit Wars'.
HA-TU...............Brutus?
/sarcasm
Thanks for the article!
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