From The New Reformation Review
courtesy of Dan Trotter
Printed with Permission
Vol. 8, No. 3 - September 2002
HOUSE CHURCH DIRTY DIAPERS CHRONICLES NUMBER FOUR
Mystic Madness
The tension between the Word and the Spirit is one that has tripped up many, not just those in the house church movement. One wag put in this way: no Spirit, you dry up, too much Spirit, you blow up, the Word and the Spirit, you grow up.
In this issue I plan to deal with one side of this delicate balance, antibiblical mysticism in the home church movement. But first I need to disassociate myself with the other extreme side of that balance, what Jonathan Lindvall has so aptly called "neodeism." A neodeist is one who believes the Holy Spirit has inspired the Scriptures long ago, and then retreated to heaven where He looks upon the affairs of the church with serene detachment, uninvolved with leading us, or doing miracles. The present-day Christian is then left with the Scriptures alone, which he rationalistically deciphers. Employing his own intelligence without the aid of the Holy Spirit, the Christian uses the Scriptures to try to figure out life. But the Holy Spirit is nowhere to be found in his life.
When the fervent heat of the mystic's inspiration dies (as it surely will), nothing is left behind but a cold, dead form, maintained only by custom, prejudice, and tradition.
Neodeism, of
course, is a ridiculous position, but unfortunately it seems like those who
attack the antibiblical mystics often seem to be launching their missiles from a
neodeist, rationalist base. I want to assure you that I am not doing that. I
agree with Jonathan Lindvall, who is a biblical house churcher well known in
home school circles. Jonathan expresses a sane balance when he says this:
"I DO believe
the scriptures are sufficient for all that God intends them to be used as--the
objective measure of what we believe and practice. [A] controversy has arisen
because some brothers who don't believe God speaks to His people today, are
offended at me for contending that the Holy Spirit does speak today, and that
Jesus' sheep hear His voice. This is not a denial of the sufficiency of
scripture. Jesus wasn't denying the sufficiency of scripture when He said (John
5:39), 'You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life;
and these are they which testify of Me.' The scriptures are NOT sufficient to
give us life--we need an actual relationship with the Living God (Jesus) for
that. There are some who see Christianity as primarily (or exclusively) an
intellectual assent to Biblical truths. It is possible to believe and obey the
scriptures at every point, but not truly know and love Jesus. My point is that
we must actually have relationship with Jesus, and that no amount of knowledge
of scripture is sufficient to replace this. As I said, [there are] those who...
are offended that I insist God still speaks today through the Holy Spirit. Like
them, I wholeheartedly agree that the Holy Spirit speaks through scripture.
Unlike them, I insist the Holy Spirit ALSO speaks directly to believers' hearts.
I go further in insisting that without an actual communion relationship with
Jesus in which He communicates with us through the Holy Spirit, we are not alive
in Christ. They perceive this as a rejection of the sufficiency of scripture. I
disagree, and find this contention tragic."
Call me a fundamentalist. Call me a rationalist. Call me cold and dead and sterile. I really don't care. Because I know the Jesus of the Scriptures....
But now lets deal with the subject of this issue, those mystic super-spiritualists who, if they refer to the Scriptures at all, they merely do so to find a proof text to corroborate their latest self-generated hallucination. These antibiblical mystics are closely allied to antibiblical pragmatists, in that both groups want to do church THEIR way, and not GOD's way as revealed by the Scripture.
This unfortunate mysticism is everywhere in the home church movement. It is especially prevalent among charismatic house churchers. I intend to devote a special issue to the issue of charismata in the home church, so I'll defer discussion of that till later. But it is interesting to me that you can find first-class mystics among those who have either publicly or privately criticized the charismatic movement. I think of one non-charismatic home church group, for example, who apparently don't meet together weekly, but just gather episodically "as the Spirit moves." I think also of a certain section of the house church movement who, in their insistence that the church is a "girl" (true enough), manage to seldom, if ever, consider the scriptural dimensions of the girl. I listened to tapes, and read books, by the leader of this group for years, and heard "the Bible" mentioned in perjorative contexts so many times that I began to wonder whether the man was neo-orthodox. I remember the gratitude I felt when I heard him say he did believe in the Bible, but unfortunately, his admission came under the pressure of an obnoxious questioner who was in his face about to bite his nose off.
I'm not going to waste my time trying to hallucinate in order to find out how to do church.
These mystics are in the same boat the pragmatists are. When their vision fails, they will do just what the pragmatists do when their schemes no longer "work." They have no guidance at all on how to do church, no more guidance than the institutional church does. So one may ask this question: how do the mystics have any right to criticize the institutional church? How many institutional church pastors have you heard talking about their "vision" for the church? Antibiblical mysticism leaves everyone free to do what's right in his own eyes when it comes to church. After all, megachurchers can dream dreams and have visions, too.
When the fervent heat of the mystic's inspiration dies (as it surely will), nothing is left behind but a cold, dead form, maintained only by custom, prejudice, and tradition. In fact, a mystic will produce exactly what he accuses the neodeist of producing: death. Me, I prefer the B-I-B-L-E, it's good enough for me. Call me a fundamentalist. Call me a rationalist. Call me cold and dead and sterile. I really don't care. Because I know the Jesus of the Scriptures, and I know the Jesus of the Scriptures loves the inspired text of the Bible. I know that Jesus said if you loved Him, you would keep his scriptural commandments. And I'm not going to waste my time trying to hallucinate in order to find out how to do church. I'm going to simply look in the Bible and see how Christ-commissioned apostles did it. I will ask the Holy Spirit to help me in the search, of course, but, on the other hand, I refuse to be ensnared by the house church movement's mystic madness.
-By Dan Trotter