16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful and convicting, September 14, 2000
Horton assembles a powerful indictment of the modern church for her dalliances with the ancient heresy of gnosticism. Oftentimes I see certain practices -- particularly in charismatic circles -- that I find quite discomfiting, though until now I didn't know why. Horton compares and contrasts the Biblical model of spiritual intimacy with the self-centered "feeling" approach too many in the church follow. More importantly, he outlines the dangers of those approaches.
This book will force you to seriously think about how you worship and how you view your relationship with God. It will also encourage you to listen a bit more closely to the message you hear from the Christianity-lite/group-therapy churches.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is an incredible book., August 17, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: In the Face of God (Hardcover)
I have read many books in the 22 years that I have been a Christian. But I have never read one that has so effectively challenged some of the Christian beliefs that I have been brought up with in the evangelical churches I have been involved with. This book affected me so much that I often had to set it down and ask the Lord to give me wisdom and understanding to discern the truth or falsity of the author's assertions. By the end of the book, I was fairly convinced that much of what Michael Horton has to say in this book is true today. When the church puts a greater emphasis on the theory of glory as opposed to the theory of the cross, you get Christians who are more focused on themselves and their own spirituality (subjective feelings) instead of Christians who need to look outside of themselves to the grace and saving work of Jesus Christ (objective knowledge, or the written Word of God). This book has literally changed my life. The evidence being that I now understand in a much greater way what Jesus Christ did for mankind when he went to the cross for our sins. I highly recommend that you read this book.
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27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A valuable corrective, yet not beyond correction itself, May 21, 2001
This review is from: In the Face of God (Hardcover)
Horton, coming from a conservative reformed standpoint, seeks to expose the fleshly and man-centred nature of much of what occurs under the name of spirituality and worship in contemporary evangelicalism. He contrasts modern mysticism and religious experience, which entails a personal seeking after the immediate manifestation of God's glory, with the way of the cross, as mediated through word and sacrament. I am neither 'reformed' (if by that you mean Horton's own type of Calvinism) nor cessationist as Horton passionately is, and yet in this I recognised much of contemporary evangelicalism (particularly the charismatic/Pentecostal movement of which I am a part) and also saw the validity of his warnings. He pinpoints something that has been niggling me for a long time, namely, the legalism and man-centredness of the modern mystical approach to God. The sort of approach that Pentecostals and charismatics have inherited from 19th-century religion (holiness, revivalism etc.) has bred a new religion in which the 'breakthrough', 'living in victory' and 'surrender' have become new targets to aim for as a way of gauging personal success in God. Horton's criticisms of contemporary worship are pertinent, and he highlights well the demise of the objective work of Christ's atonement on the cross and the rise of immediate mystical experience in the language of our hymns.
Yet his treatment of some individuals is unfair. For example, though he is generally on target with his criticisms of Torrey's 'steps to receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit', some of his inferences are petty and misrepresentative, eg. on the seventh step, 'faith', Horton comments: 'Faith? At the end? Until then everything the believer has done presumably has been accomplished without faith...' I suspect Horton has presumed wrongly, and faith is at the very centre of Torrey's eight steps, even if they can be criticised on other grounds. Also, I feel Horton somewhat misrepresents Wesley. He credits him with introducing William Law's mystical 'holiness' into the church, and yet in fact Wesley passionately rejected Law's approach after his conversion, and condemned that type of mysticism that that tried to lead people into 'holiness' without justification. Some of his comments about contemporary songs and singers are also out of place, eg. '...one should be far less worried about [Eric] Clapton than about Carman...ironically, Clapton at least has a song, 'Lord Have Mercy,' while Carman advocates the prosperity gospel and a curious Star Wars theology.' One might easily think that Carman never sings about God's mercy or the cross. Whilst there are legitimate criticisms to be made, jibes like these are just shallow and misleading.
He fails to explain adequately how the apostles and the early church were able to lay claim to signs and wonders, and what appear to be experiences of a more mystical nature than Horton seems prepared to allow. He to want to say that all such experiences are inherently tied up with a 'theology of glory', and yet it seems that the early church were able to get away with it unaffected. Horton ignores a major element of New Testament teaching by dismissing the possibility of 'experiences' of God.
Having said all this, however, the general thrust of Horton's book is clear. God is a holy God who is to be approached with reverence and fear through the one way he has made available to man - through the blood of Christ. Contemporary evangelicalism in many respects forgets this and pursues 'superior' experiences, experiences that are more 'direct', more 'intimate' and more 'fulfilling'. In the days of 'God-Chasing' (which this reviewer, at least, sees as just another brand of plain old mysticism that dispenses with the need for Scripture and sacrament), Horton's warning must be taken seriously.
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