What the American church really needs.
The harmony between the writings of St. John and Michael Horton.
I’ve recently come to the conclusion that there are two books that the church of modernity needs to read and study anew — those being the first New Testament letter of St. John and Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity. I don’t mean to suggest that these books are in equal standing with each other. One is obviously inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, and the other is inspired by the needs of the age. Nevertheless, St. John and Dr. Horton are both intent on dismantling a common enemy, one that has wreaked havoc on Jesus’s church since its inception. For John, this foe was the nascent antichristian movement we would reckon as Gnosticism. Horton’s foe is much the same, though it goes by a new name: the American gospel. While these religious philosophies might begin at different poles, they both culminate in the same basic fundamental religious methodology, one which is utterly devoid of Christ.
John’s first epistle is a pastoral polemic of sorts, aimed at dousing his beloved congregants in the certain knowledge they can have and are afforded in the gospel of Christ. From beginning to end, the “disciple whom Jesus loved” writes with conviction that his message is unequivocally true and trustworthy (1 John 1:1–4). He is writing to a congregation whose knowledge of their standing and identity in the Beloved had recently been thrown into question. The eloquence of gnostic teachers, likely spearheaded by one named Cerinthus, was difficult to silence. What was being promoted was, in effect, a dismantling of the sure and certain knowledge sinners could have in Christ by the articulation of heightened spiritual illumination and experiences that were being cast as “necessary” to know if one is saved. This, in a nutshell, is why John writes with such urgency, reminding his dear readers, “You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:20–21).
According to John, this church was already in possession of all knowledge necessary for salvation because they were in possession of the glad tidings of God’s redemption through the person and work of God’s only Son. The apostle’s insistence revolves around just how concrete their assurance was and is because of the Life made manifest for them. Throughout, John tethers the hope and confidence of the “children of God” to the One who is the embodiment of God’s love for them and for the world (1 John 3:1, 5, 8; cf. John 3:16). Because of Christ, the Word made flesh, “we are God’s children now” (1 John 3:2). No other additional performance or experience is required. All the gnostics had accomplished, you see, was to steer the attentions of Christ’s church off of Christ and onto themselves. Notwithstanding all the flash their “new doctrines” and “new experiences” might’ve carried, they were nothing but empty myths manufactured by self-absorbed men. Which, if you think about it, is apropos to the current state of the church as well.
In his 2008 book Christless Christianity — which is just as relevant and resonant as ever — Horton blends the counterfeit gospels of Pelagianism and Gnosticism to great effect, demonstrating how both are trumped-up doctrines that ultimately lose all sense of salvation because they nullify the indispensability of a Savior. He writes:
Pelagiansim leads to Christless Christianity because we do not need a Savior but a good example. Gnosticism’s route to Christless Christianity is by turning the story of a good Creator, a fall into sin, and redemption through the incarnation, bloody death, and bodily resurrection of the Son into a myth of an evil creator, a fall into matter, and redemption by inner enlightenment. While the gospel calls us to look outside ourselves for salvation, Pelagianism and Gnosticism combine to keep us looking to ourselves and within ourselves. Together, they have created the perfect storm: the American religion. No one has to teach us a gospel of salvation by inner enlightenment and moral self-improvement; rather, the Word of God has to break our addiction to this glory story by telling us the truth about what God’s law really demands and his gospel really gives. (165–66)
The “American religion” is, in effect, what’s in the crosshairs not only of Horton’s writing but John’s oeuvre as well. In contradistinction to the notion that something else is necessary for “true religion” to be had, the declarations of St. John and Dr. Horton make it clear that we have all we need in the Word and the sacraments. To append anything else as being requisite for the faith is to slip into the antichristian drivel for which John has little patience or interest in entertaining (1 John 2:18–23). In this extended excerpt, Horton identifies what this sort of gnostic theology looks like today:
Our practices reveal that we are focused on ourselves and our activity more than on God and his saving work among us. Across the board, from conservative to liberal, Roman Catholic to Anabaptist, New Age to Southern Baptist, the “search for the sacred” in America is largely oriented to what happens inside of us, in our own personal experience, rather than in what God has done for us in history. Even baptism and the Supper are described as “means of commitment” rather than “means of grace” in a host of contemporary systematic theologies by conservative as well as progressive evangelicals.
Rather than letting “the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16), the purpose of singing (the “worship time”) seems today more focused on our opportunity to express our own individual piety, experience, and commitment. 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 the world. Rather than being swept into God’s new world, we come to church to find out how we can make God relevant to the “real world” that the New Testament identifies as the one that is actually fading away . . .
Discipleship, spiritual disciplines, life transformation, culture-transformation, relationships, marriage and family, stress, the spiritual gifts, financial gifts, radical experiences of conversion, end-times curiosities that seem to have less to do with Christ’s bodily return than with matching verses to newspaper headlines, and accounts of overcoming significant obstacles through the power of faith. This is the steady diet we’re getting today, and it is bound to burn us out because it’s all about us and our work rather than about Christ and his work. Even important biblical exhortations and commands become dislocated from their indicative, gospel habitat. Instead of the gospel giving us new thoughts, experiences, and a motivation for grateful obedience, we lodge the power of God in our own piety and programs. (18–19, 26–27)
Accordingly, what the American church really needs is nothing less than the message that Jesus’s beloved disciple was so determined to proclaim — namely, that the very Word of the Father has taken on flesh in order to dwell with us and die for us, thereby securing our pardon. We need nothing more or less than the continued proclamation that the Son of God has done everything necessary to reclaim our lost and sinful souls. It is his blood that covers our sins, reconciling us to the Father. It is through the repeated announcement of his finished work that hearts and lives are solidified in the knowledge that they belong to Christ. May God continue to raise up preachers to deliver this redolent message.
Grace and peace to you, friends.
Works cited:
Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008).