True Story! :)"Though Peale rarely spoke in clear theological terms, he did on occasion openly deny the Christian faith. In an interview with Phil Donahue in 1984, Peale said: “It’s not necessary to be born again. You have your way to God; I have mine. I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine. ... I’ve been to the Shinto shrines, and God is everywhere.” Donahue exclaimed, “But you’re a Christian minister; you’re supposed to tell me that Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Life, aren’t you?” Peale replied, “Christ is one of the ways! God is everywhere.” Peale told Donahue that when he got to “the Pearly Gates”, “St. Peter” would say, “I like Phil Donahue; let him in!” Mr. Peale gave comfort to some in the audience who believed that “just so we think good thoughts” and “just so we do good, we believe we’ll get to heaven” (Hugh Pyle, Sword of the Lord, Dec. 14, 1984)."
Apostle of Selling Books. Can’t limit your market to only Christians, don’cha know.
I posted this because, yesterday July 23rd, 2015, a prominent presidential candidate referenced Norman Vincent Peale as his pastor (of course from a while ago, since Peale passed on several years ago...)
True Story! :)Ping.
Jn 3:3: Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (KJV).
I always thought of Peale as promoting the golden rule.
The golden rule however, does not save anyone. It often makes your life better in many ways, but that isnt what saves a person.
I never regarded Peale as offering Christian advice. Secular moral advice from a golden rule refrence frame, but not Christian.
It was especially sad for me to see him contradict Christian teaching, for a personal reason. As a child, my mom was a big fan of his and had his Positive Thinking book. I read it, and by God’s grace, the only thing that made a huge impression on me from that book was his practice of praying silently for random strangers that he encountered.
For me, this was a gateway drug to being completely sold on following Jesus anywhere and being His hands and feet in the world, doing His work, and fighting out the life-and-death issues that are in the balance in every life.
Way back in the early 70s a local TV station carried his weekly sermons from Marble Collegiate Church in NYC. I was a thorough Fundamentalist Protestant back then and could only shake my head when I listened to him.
But I have a question for my friend wideawake: Is "transcendentalism" necessarily heretical? I know the New England Transcendentalists were certainly heretics from an orthodox chrstian perspective, but at the very root isn't "transcendentalism" merely a recognition of certain truths that "transcend" the facts of science and materialism?
A president’s theology has great repercussions, on who they nominate for the supreme court, how they stand on moral issues that matter so much to conservative Christians.
Trump, being a passionate follower of Norman Vincent Peale “theology,” if you could call it that, is bound to have great repercussions. Peale wasn’t even a Christian, for heavens sake, he didn’t believe Christ is the only way to God. Such considerations poses grave doubts in my mind about Trump.
Sounds like another mega church pastor in TX who smiles too much.
This betrays that the author does not know whereof he writes. For one thing, Peale was only helping to popularize a movement that had begun with the likes of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Emmett Curtis Hopkins, Thomas Troward, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. He took those ideas into a more explicitly Christian framework.
One of Dr. Peale's friends was Dr. Ernest Holmes, who had been preaching for many years in the Los Angeles area.
Further, there is solid basis for the "positive thinking" movement (although there is more to it than that.)
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
"It is done unto you as you believe."
Taht this aligns with some Eastern concepts is not a bad thing. Every religion has a version of the Golden Rule, for example. (I have in my files a sheet with the Golden Rule stated in at least a dozen different religions.)
"Humanism" is not a bad thing. Secularism arguably is a deficient philosophy, but as Dr. Russell Kirk wrote, paraphrasing one of his mentors, Irving Babbitt, "In the modern age, it is the task of the humanist to remind man of his spiritual reality."
Peale also was a promoter of the idea of “positive imaging” which has become popular in many charismatic circles.
Also known as visualization. This goes back to Plato and the idea that every form is preceded by an idea. You have to know what you want before you can claim it and claim it before you actually get it.
“There is a deep tendency in human nature ultimately to become precisely what you visualize yourself as being. If you see yourself as tense and nervous and frustrated, if that is your image of yourself, that assuredly is what you will be. If you see yourself as inferior in any way, and you hold that image in your conscious mind, it will presently by the process of intellectual osmosis sink into the unconscious, and you will be what you visualize.
“If, on the contrary, you see yourself as organized, controlled, studious, a thinker, a worker, believing in your talent and ability and yourself, over a period of time, that is what you will become.
“Now, you may believe that this is all theoretical. But I believe, and I’ve tested it out in so many cases that I’m sure of its validity, that if a person has a business and images that business at a certain level and fights off his doubts ... it will come out that way--all because of the power of the positive image”
Yes, exactly. (I'm putting this quote in my files.) I, too, have seen this principle work. See above, "As a man thinketh..."
This is a long-established principle, and science has shown that whatever you think about forms neural pathways, which form synapses, which lead to habitual thinking along the same lines (but you can change those pathways with some dedicated effort.)
And thought produces effects.
"Change your thinking, change your life."
Man, allegedly, has the power within himself, or the ability to tap into a higher power within himself, to accomplish whatever he desires by learning how to visualize it into reality.
Absolutely correct. As Dr. Holmes said, "There is a power in the Universe greater than you are, and you can use it."
Now, how are we supposed to use it? "It is the Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." God does not wish us to suffer, but to prosper, to thrive.
This is pretty much what Walt Disney called "imagineering."
“At five o’clock every morning you get up and sit by your husband and pray for him. Believe that God is there by your husband’s side, actually present with you and with him. IMAGE YOUR HUSBAND AS A WHOLE MAN--happy, controlled, organized and well. Hold that thought intensely. Think of your prayers as reaching his unconscious mind. At that time in the morning his conscious mind is not resisting and YOU CAN GET AN IDEA INTO HIS UNCONSCIOUS. Visualize him as kindly, cooperative, happy, creative and enthusiastic”
This is what is known as "affirmative prayer" rather than beseeching prayer. The idea is to know "the Truth back of the condition" until that Truth manifests itself in form.
And since (in the words of Erwin Schrodinger) "consciousness is the singular for which there is no plural" and (in teh words of Amit Goswami) "consciousness is the ground of all being" (without it, there would be no being), then what is known anywhere in consciousness is known everywhere in consciousness.
“speaking into” another person’s unconscious mind and forcing it into reality through “holding the image,”
Again, the author reveals that he knows not whereof he writes. It has nothing to do with forcing anything or holding an idea. It's simply working on the subconscious to get it to accept a new idea fully.
Science tells us that everything is energy and information. Energy and information are the how of God expressing in the world.
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
An in Romans, we are told, "be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2) IOW, we are reborn (born again) by changing our thinking -- "change your thinking, change your life."
This is a universalistic view that man is not estranged from God and has God living within him.
Well, yes. How else could it be? If God id Omnipotent and Omnipresent, then God must be Infinite or there would be someplace to escape the power of God and the presence of God. So, we establish that God is Infinite.
Now, if God is Infinite (which means without boundary), then "there is no spot where God is not" -- which logically means that God is in all, as all, through all. It could not be any other way.
If that's true, then God's power is usable by everyone. If God's power isn't in everyone, then God is limited. And as we established above, a limited God cannot be Omnipotent and Omniscient.
It seems your God is too small.
There are not multiple ways of stating the gospel!
Actually, there are as many ways of stating it as there are teachers. None of us does it exactly the same way. And that's good. One way won't reach everyone. God shows up in the way in which we can most likely and easily accept His presence. If we do not have a personal, direct relationship with God, then what can God do and be in our lives?
"The highest God and the innermost God is one God."
Peale’s faith was mystical and metaphysical.
I would say that is a good description. Christianity has a long tradition of mystics, from St. Francis and Meister Eckhart to Julian of Norwich and Hidegard von Bingen, as well as a multitude of others. I regard mysticism as essential to effective faith.
pagan religions such as Hinduism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism
Once again, the author betrays his own biases and lack of knowledge. These religions are not Christianity, but they are not pagan. (Hinduism could be on the borderline, but ultimately, all the Hidu "gods" are aspects of the one god, Atman.) They are merely different expressions.
“... within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. ... there is no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins” (Emerson, The Over-Soul).
Again, if you cannot find the God within and establish an intimate relationship with the God within, how can you establish one with a God "out there"? The only God to which we can relate is the God within. "Out-there-ness" merely creates atheists.
To quote Dr. Holmes, "I thank the God that is that the God they told me about isn't."
“Peale speaks much of faith, but it is not faith in God, but ‘faith in faith,’ which means in your capacities."
Again, a misstatement. None of that would be possible without faith in God -- but not just faith in God, but the faith OF God.
As Jesus reminds us, with faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains.
"Of myself, I do nothing; it is the Father within who doeth the work."
The author himself details how well respected Peale is in teh evangelical community. Even Billy Graham treated him with the utmost respect. Yet somehow, this author seems to know better than all those people put together about what Peale taught and who he is.
it is strictly contrary to Christ’s exclusive claims as the only way to God
Which may or may not be waht Jesus actually said. Much that we find in the bible was added (or mistranscribed) and yet we take it as gospel (pun intended.) There are many very good books on this subject, showing how and where the translations we have today differ from teh earliest transcripts we have.
Further, those who wrote the Bible (in Greek) had to translate Jesus's words (which were in Aramaic.) Many words in Aramaic have multiple meanings and when the writers wrote them down, they had to make an editorial decision on which meaning to accept.
In Matthew, one of the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is quoted as saying not "I am the Light of the World", as in John, but "you are the light of the world." Could that be a more accurate rendering? (I think it likely is.)
Peale said, “The church should be in the forefront of everything that is related to human welfare because the church is supposed to be the spiritual home of mankind and it ought to take care of all of God’s children.”
Well, yes, and that i a very conservative/libertarian belief. Much better that religious institutions do it (and get the chance to talk to the people about faith) than that the government do it (and inefficiently, at that.) Would you not agree?
Or is the objection to the idea that "it ought to take care of all of God’s children”? If so, I'd say that that reflects poorly on your faith and your religious values. Whether or not we approve of a person's conduct, we are called to love and care for the person.
"Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil--but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I’ve got great faith in the essential fairness and decency--you may say goodness--of the human being.”
If we are "made in the image and likeness of God", then what else could we be?
In short, the author's biases and lack of understanding of the positive philosophy that Peale and many other taught (and teach) shows very clearly through the article.
In 1960 Peale said the election of a Catholic would endanger free speech and make the country open to takeover from the Pope. After that statement, Peale was condemned by many leading Protestant spokesmen as a bigot. Which he was.
“I find Paul appealing and Peale appalling”—Adlai Stevenson II (interestingly a Unitarian)
The Seduction of Christianity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay413nIUFFE
Uploaded on Aug 3, 2007
Dave Hunt & T.A. McMahon
FAITH - Discusses mind power, mind control, works, New Thought, getting answers to prayer, and more (30 minutes).
Peale preached “another gospel.” One that is in fact the opposite of Christianity. It exalts self, not God.
This is what Christianity looks like:
“Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
— Luke 9: 23
Peale, Schuller, Osteen. All from the same fabric. They are good to get you motivated to try again, but they don’t get anyone saved.