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105 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Horton Dismantles the Alternative Gospel, October 28, 2008
It is no small thing to take upon oneself the name Christian. Though it was first used as a form of derision when unbelievers mocked the "little Christs," the name was embraced by the earliest believers. The term, even when used mockingly, nicely encapsulated what they sought to do, namely, to imitate their Lord and Savior. Sadly, in the centuries since then, the word has become far too ambiguous and now refers to any number of faiths that, in one way or another, honor or respect Christ or that have some historical connection to his teachings. Amazingly, some of those called by the name of Christ actually deny him--perhaps not his existence but at least his uniqueness and his divinity. In Christless Christianity Michael Horton argues that such denial of Christ may not be too far from home. More and more evangelical churches, he says, are now essentially Christless. "Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups." Many churches have tossed out Christ and continue on without him, sometimes not even realizing that he has been lost along the way.
This is not to say that American evangelicalism has already reached a point of no return or that every church has rejected Christ. "I am not arguing in this book that we have arrived at Christless Christianity," says Horton, "but that we are well on our way. ... My concern is that we are getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for `relevant' quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than known, worshiped and trusted; Jesus Christ is a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved from God's judgment by God himself; and the Holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can plug into for the power we need to be all that we can be." Jesus has become supplemental instead of instrumental to the church. As the church has focused on "deeds, not creeds" she has become increasingly irrelevant and unfaithful. Church has become just another area in which Americans can live out the American dream. "In my view, we are living out our creed, but that creed is closer to the American Dream than it is to the Christian faith. The claim I am laying out in this book is that the most dominant form of Christianity today reflects `a zeal for God' that is nevertheless without knowledge--particularly, as Paul himself specifies, the knowledge of God's justification of the wicked by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from works."
Amazingly, it is not theological liberalism that has drawn the church away from her creed, away from her biblical foundation. Instead, it is a kind of unbearable lightness--a faith that eschews biblical theology in favor of whatever happens to be the flavor of the day. Says Horton, "My argument in this book is not that evangelicalism is becoming theologically liberal but that it is becoming theologically vacuous. ... We come to church, it seems, less to be transformed by the Good News than to celebrate our own transformation and to receive fresh marching orders for transforming ourselves and our world. ... Just as you don't really need Jesus Christ in order to have T-shirts and coffee mugs, it is unclear to me why he is necessary for most of the things I hear a lot of pastors and Christians talking about in church these days."
Horton offers a description of this brand of "Christianity" that pervades so much of the evangelical scene these days. Following sociologist Christian Smith, he calls it moralistic, therapeutic deism. It offers this kind of working theology: God created the world; God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions; The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself; God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when needed to resolve a problem; Good people go to heaven when they die. Pause to consider much of the teaching you might find on your television on a Sunday morning and you'll see how apt a description this is. Horton traces this through Finney, through modern day Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism and into the pulpits of Joel Osteen and other popular smooth talking preachers. He describes the kind of can-do spirit that allows such preachers to thrive. "When looking for ultimate answers, we turn within ourselves, trusting our own experience rather than looking outside ourselves to God's external Word." And here is where the Osteen's of the world are so skilled--they simply reflect and direct human wisdom back at humans all the while pretending as if they gleaned this wisdom from the Word of God. He shows that such preachers, while appearing to perhaps teach a kind of freedom from the law, actually do the opposite, burdening people with a new kind of legalism. "One could easily come away from this type of message concluding that we are not saved by Christ's objective work for us but by our subjective personal relationship with Jesus through a series of works that we perform to secure his favor and blessing. God has set up all of these laws, and now it's up to us to follow them so we can be blessed." This kind of Christianity makes God merely a means to an end rather than an end in and of himself.
In an insightful chapter discussing "how we turn good news into good advice," Horton shows how Christians are prone to turn indicatives into imperatives. In other words, we take a statement of fact and turn it into an exhortation. This, too, drives people to a form of legalism in which they are ultimately responsible for their own salvation and sanctification, even without understanding or embracing the gospel message. "Across the board in contemporary American Christianity, that basic message seems to be some form of law (do this) without gospel (this is what has been done)." He deals well here with the constant exhortations in the church today to "be the gospel," amazed at the hubris of such a statement. "[Unbelievers] may not like our message anyway, but at least they might be relieved that we have stopped holding ourselves up as the way, the truth, and the life. If the message the church proclaims makes sense without conversion, if it does not offend even lifelong believers from time to time so that they too need to die more to themselves and live more to Christ, then it is not the gospel." St. Francis' exhortation to "Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary use words" has never offended a soul.
Final chapters look to "your own personal Jesus" and the resurgence of Gnosticism and to "delivering Christ," examining the relationship between the message and the medium. Horton notes that men like Barna and so many others are advocating a wholesale abandonment of the institutional church. "Instead of churching the unchurched," he laments, "we are well on our way to even unchurching the churched." Here he speaks of the critical importance of the local church and says "the faithful ministry of Word, sacrament, and discipline is the mission" of the church. "A genuinely evangelical church will be an evangelistic church: a place where the gospel is delivered through Word and sacrament and a people who witness to it in the world." He calls for the church to narrow its commission from fixing all of the world's ills to simply returning to the basics. "The church as people--scattered as salt and light through the week--has many different callings, but the church as place (gathered publicly by God's summons each Lord's Day) has one calling: to deliver (and receive) Christ through preaching and sacrament." Of course Christians, the church as people, should pursue justice and peace, but this ought to be done through common grace institutions along side non-Christians rather than through the church as a place. The church needs to mind its own business and get its own house in order.
In the final chapter, Horton calls for resistance. "What is called for in these days, as in any other time, is a church that is a genuine covenantal community defined by the gospel rather than a service provider defined by laws of the market, political ideologies, ethnic distinctives, or other alternatives to the catholic community that the Father is creating by his Spirit in his Son. For this, we need nothing less than a new Christian where the only demographic that matters is in Christ."
Through all of this I'd suggest the most important statement in the book may just be this: "It is not heresy as much as silliness that is killing us softly." This is where the book may be most useful for the conservative Christians who are the audience most likely to read it. All of us can fall into silliness without tossing aside the gospel. We can hold fast to Christian theology, even while allowing silliness and levity to pervade the very fabric of our church. A once-serious institution can become overrun by programs and purposes that slowly erode the gravity and simplicity of the church's unique calling. This book is a call for the church to return to its biblical foundations and to remain true to those convictions. It is a clarion call and one that Christians would do well to heed. Christless Christianity is an excellent and timely book and one I would not hesitate to recommend to any Christian.
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44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vital & Accurate Critique of American Christianity, October 28, 2008
Horton is a prolific Christian advocate for historic Christianity which is catholic (universal) and relevant for any culture, any time. This he finds increasingly being blurred and almost to the point of taking Christ completely out of the church for many in America.
He correctly builds the case that this slippage is towards not any new heresy, but towards old heresies with new names and slogans and personalities: "When our churches assume the gospel, reduce it to slogans, or confuse it with moralism and hype, it is not surprising that the type of spirituality we fall back on is moralistic, therapeutic deism. In a therapeutic worldview, the self is always sovereign. Accommodating this false religion is not love--either of God or neighbor--but sloth, depriving human beings of genuine liberation and depriving God of the glory that is his due." n Dangerous to attach Christ directly, these anti-Christs then believe falsely they can change the Gospel, but in doing so, change the Christ even to the point of taking Him out of the picture. (see the dustcover shot)
Tendencies of American bred Christianity which is more attuned to sola cultura rather than sola Scriptura evidences itself in confusion of law and gospel, importing of unbiblical methods and paradigms from marketing, management, etc. in Church Growth movement, unbiblical ecclessiology, more focus on the Christian rather than on the Christ, and a fear of the scandal of particularity which the pure gospel preached and the Sacraments properly instituted as mandated are well documented in this work. As he writes: "the Good News concerning Christ is not a stepping-stone to something greater and more relevant."
The excellent wordsmithing is a joy to read, but don't let the smooth and creative turning of the words deceive the reader, Horton has researched his points well and thought through them and thus presents a solid, growing amount of evidence for these charges. Just but one example: "a moralistic religion of self-salvation is our default setting as fallen creatures. If we are not explicitly and regularly taught out of it, we will always turn the message of God's rescue operation into a message of self-help."
He slaps these driftings not onto any one end of the theological range of conservative or liberal, not any one denomination or family of theological inheritance, but finds this cancerous invasion branching out throughout the theological spectrum. His findings indict likely targets such as the Osteen's, Hybels, R. Warren's, Barna's etc., as well what have been more classical, orthodox Christian streams of the Reformation such as us Lutherans. He well provides evidence from their writings, and one can easily pursue this evidence as this reviewer has in the referenced and quoted works and find these charges in abundance unfortunately.
He provides resistance strategy as well that is focused on fixing the problems, which is properly correcting the increasing tendency to make "mission" the overarching dominant in the church, with little effort to make the "message" the "mission" which it should be. This comes with proper practice of the means of grace, rather than means of commitment, and the restoration of the office of the public ministry to be the proclamation of the pure gospel, even in spite of cultural offense and resistance.
I can emphatically recommend this book to be read, digested, discussed and spread. It is much necessary, and will bless the church if heeded.
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39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
America Evangelicalism's Jesus: MIA?, November 3, 2008
Is God perhaps a supporting character in your life movie, however strong and important a character he may be, or have you been rewritten as a new character in God's drama of redemption? If the former, then the focus is on us and our activity rather than on God and his work in Jesus Christ. "Us and out activities" may be all very fine things. Perhaps we're fixing our marriages, becoming relevant to the culture, making disciples, doing what Jesus would do, overcoming addictions, even blogging and destroying apostate thought in all its forms. We have a "purpose driven life," and "purpose driven churches." We are putting biblical principles in action and seeing "success" in our lives. Better kids, better marriages, and we even make it to every church function in the calendar year. Awesome worship music, and even "awesomer" preaching (they even say "Dude"), all of course ever so "relevant" to our culture. Shoot, this aint your daddy's Christianity, our kid's pagan friends actually have fun at our churches. We're doing just fine, thank you. Oh, by the way, where's Jesus Christ in all of this?
Judging by the tremendous "commercial, political, and media success, the evangelical movement seems to be booming. But is it still Christian?", asks Mike Horton in his latest book, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church. Of course we still say we believe in Jesus, salvation by grace, the Bible, and the resurrection. That's not in question. But when our teaching and practice is analyzed, what does that say we believe? Horton thinks "that the church in America is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps even well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs." The regular diet the sheep are fed in many of today's churches is, "Do more, try harder." Horton's concern "is that we're getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for `relevant' quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than known, worshiped, and trusted; Jesus is a coach with a good plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved from God's judgment by God himself; and the holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can plug into for the power we need to be all we can be."
Horton doesn't deny that there are some churches, pastors, evangelists, and distinguished laypeople who are proclaiming Christ and fulfilling their vocations with integrity. He's not addressing them, and thinks they would join him in his worries. He is also not saying that we have arrived at a Christless Christianity, just that we are well on our way. He is not questioning American Christianity at the level of zeal either. But it's a zeal without knowledge. It's not that we have our doctrine but are not living it. Rather it's that we are living out our distorted doctrine quite well. Our creed is closer to the American dream than to the historic Christian faith, says Horton.
In Christless Christianity Horton offers a massive amount of statistics showing that those raised in "Bible believing churches know as little of the Bible`s actual content as their unchurched neighbors." But despite this, Christ is everywhere in this subculture, "but more as an adjective than as a proper name." We are swarmed by "Christian things" while Christ has been reduced to mascot of that subculture. We take Christ's name in vain for our own personal crusades and talking points, we trivialize his word in countless ways, and then express moral indignation when a movie trivializes Christ. We like to pretend we are persecuted by evil Hollywood and the Democrats. "But if we ever were really persecuted, would it be because of our offensive posturing and self-righteousness or because we would not weaken the offense of the cross?" Horton contends that his and other's experience has shown that "believers who challenge the human-centered process of trivializing the faith are more likely to be persecuted--or at least viewed as troublesome--by their church." Horton's bigger concern is not that God is taken lightly in American culture, but more-so that he's not taken seriously in the faith and practice of believers.
Horton's argument in the book is "not that evangelicalism is becoming theologically liberal but that it is becoming theologically vacuous." Today it is becoming more and more common to see Christianity as about "spiritual and moral makeovers" than about "death and resurrection--radical judgment and radical grace." The Word is a resource for how to get what we've already decided we need, rather than a "criticism of our religion, morality, and pious experience." God's word is something we use to make our life story more exciting. And so "Jesus has been dressed up as a corporate CEO, life coach, culture-warrior, political revolutionary, philosopher, copilot, cosufferer, moral example, and partner in fulfilling our personal and social dreams. But in all these ways we are reducing the central character I the drama of redemption to a prop for our own play." Liberals, conservatives, Arminian, Calvinist. Those labels cease to matter when the message is "What would Jesus do," rather than "What has Jesus done." And so Horton's "aim is not to target any particular wing, movement, person, or group. We are all victims and accomplices in our own captivity." Horton then is "writing about `us'--all of us who profess the name of Christ..."
The above illness is defined by sociologist Christian Smith as "Therapeutic Moral Deism." Horton follows Smith in this diagnosis. After a "remarkable" study of teen spirituality in America, Smith observed that most teens said that their faith is "very important" to them, yet they are "stunningly inarticulate" about the content of that faith. The separation of deeds from creeds of course moves everything into the inner person. Moralistic, therapeutic deism is defined by Smith as: (i) God created the world; (ii) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other; (iii) the central goal in life is to be happy and feel good about oneself; (iv) God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when needed to solve a problem; (v) people go to heaven when they die. Horton shows through persuasive, detailed, and ubiquitous analysis that the above has infected the American church. He identifies one main cause as our "default setting": (semi-) Pelagianism. Horton contends that the gospel of Jesus Christ is unnatural to our Adamic ears. It is easily forgotten. All too often we treat God as giving us that initial "oomph" and then we go out and accomplish the rest, treating our religion as a do-it-yourself guide for personal satisfaction. God saves us and then we go our and save our cars by placing Jesus bumper stickers on them. Or perhaps we're more ambitious and we go out and "take back America for Jesus!", sanctifying the unjustified. The good news becomes good advice.
As default (semi-) Pelagians, we often turn the good news into good advice. Horton lists main ways of how we do this, the most prominent is to confuse law and gospel. Briefly, the law is "do this" and the gospel is "done." Of course this isn't to deny sanctification, or "doing" things. But Horton's critiquing our emphasis and focus. One way in which we can see the gospel turned into law is in the popular saying, "Living the gospel." The gospel is something done by Jesus in history and announced to us, not something we do. Emergent church leader Dan Kimball is on record as saying, "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary use words." Kimball says "Our lives will preach better than anything we can say." Horton rightly points out that "this is just more bad news, not only because of the statistics we have already seen, which evidence no real difference between Christians and non-Christians, but because in spite of my best intentions, I am not an exemplary creature. The best examples and instructions--even the best doctrines--will not relieve me of the battle with indwelling sin until I draw my last breath. Find me on my best day--and attitudes--and I will always provide fodder for the hypocrisy charge and will let down those who would become Christians because they think I and my fellow Christians are the gospel. ... I am not the gospel; Jesus Christ alone is the gospel. ... We do not preach ourselves, but Christ. The more we talk about Christ as the Bible's unfolding mystery and less about our own transformation, the more likely we are to be actually transformed rather than either self-righteous or despairing."
This reminds me of the very last SCCCS conference. On the last day a movie was played where a nice, white, all-American man threw a birthday party for a prostitute at a diner. She never had anyone do anything "nice" for her, and most people treated her as trash. But this man did what other's had not done. Of course the man was supposed to be a "Christian," but he may just as well have well been a Mormon missionary. The movie ended with the girl walking out of the diner and we see a Catholic church off in the distance. After the movie one of the speakers, a PCA pastor, stood up and said, "I would have no problem playing that for the sermon on Sunday morning, because that was the gospel." Look's like Horton's worries are confirmed, even among (what are supposed to be) "Reformed" ministers of the gospel.
One of the dangers that lead to the above is what is called "the assumed gospel." We all "get" the gospel, we're just not living it. Of course Horton decimates this idea with his massive stock pile of...
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by G. K. Beale
by Michael Scott Horton
