We Aren’t the World: Dr. George Armstrong and a United Religion

on October 4, 2012
Jesus
Jesus was just a “prophet”, right?

by Nathaniel Torrey

Dr. George Armstrong, an Anglican priest from New Zealand, says that it’s time for Christianity to “get with it” and step down from its monopoly on truth. He writes:

If no one religion has a monopoly on truth, love and power, does that mean that religions have to readjust radically? In the case of Christianity, yes. Christianity will, for example, have to understand its central figure, Jesus, as one prophet amongst the many other prophets of human history, religious and secular. Jesus is still seen by unreflective Christianity as the one and only way. That is no longer tenable. It may be painful for Christians, liberal or conservative, to readjust themselves radically to this realisation.

Jesus is no longer the Son of God, “the Way and the Truth, and the Light” (John 14:6). He is just a “prophet” of whom there are apparently religious or non-religious. In essence, Christ is just another important person who had some good things to say. That next part where He says, “No comes through the Father except through me?” Well, times were different then they are now. If only us unreflective (read: stupid) Christians would just see that it is no longer tenable! If only the Son of God had been as wise as the religious leaders of today!

Dr. Armstrong apparently hasn’t done much reflecting himself on the huge differences between the various religions. He claims, “any decent religion will have love, humility, awe, justice, and peace at its center.” Religious belief is not simply a matter of the effects it has; it matters what the contents of it are. It matters that Jews and Muslims reject Christ as God or that Buddhists see grace as unnecessary for transcendence.

For the Christian, it is of the utmost importance what is in a man’s heart, not just how they act. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 2:29, “No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.” In other words it is not enough for a man to act in accordance with justice or to act humbly or act lovingly. A man could by all appearances look like a saint and be utterly rotten to the core if he is acting that way to gain praise and not to love the Lord. The point of Christianity is not to make a bunch of “nice” people to live out their days in relative peace and toleration: it is to offer them salvation and resurrection.

  1. Comment by Eric Lytle on October 4, 2012 at 6:49 pm

    He says it may be “painful for Christians, liberal or conservative, to readjust.” Not true for liberals! I’ve been hearing them trumpet their “many paths to God” message since the 1970s. And guess what happened? They lost members. A faith with no faith in itself just isn’t attractive. They threw away Satan, hell, and sin, and when there’s no sin, no need for a Savior, and with no Savior, no need for a church, unless they get excited on Sunday mornings about hearing a sermon about carbon footprints and the sinister plots of Christian fundamentalists.

  2. Comment by dover1952 on October 4, 2012 at 8:03 pm

    The interns said:

    “The point of Christianity is not to make a bunch of “nice” people to live out their days in relative peace and toleration: it is to offer them salvation and resurrection.”

    The interns need to stop for a moment and consider that this is a narrow, tunnel vision view of Christian fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. This view holds that the entirety of the Christian faith is about evangelism and nothing else. An emergency situation exists on the Earth. A perpetually angry, murderous, and insane God could show up to throw a destructive tantrum at any moment, and the interns are first responders and emergency workers acting in the sweat of heated desperation to save as many people as possible from the impending disaster—and I see it coming now—quick everyone—rush to the altar and repeat the magic words!!! One hears fat preachers in the background patting themselves heartily on the back and saying: “Man!!! Do you see that? My evangelism statistics in the convention are sure to go way up now, and I’ll soon be able to leave this church for a high-paying administrative job at denomination headquarters.”

    I prefer the wholistic “X” definition of Christianity provided by Jacques Ellul (1986):

    “First, the revelation and work of God accomplished in Jesus Christ, second, the being of the church as the body of Christ, and third, the faith and life of Christians in truth and love.”

    Gomer Pyle voice: “That ain’t what Garner Ted Armstrong, Oral Roberts, Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and Bill Bright says!!!”

    That is the other thing that troubles me about Christian fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. It seriously believes buffoons such as these will one day take their rightful place in the history books beside St Francis, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and the other great “legitimate church” theologians and leaders of the past 2,000 years. If they do, I suspect that the people of that time will discern, as many in the wider Christian community have already done in our own day, that they are reading a comic book rather than a history book.

    Christian fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism have an image problem in the world today. This image problem has nothing to do with rejection of God the Father, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit. It has everything to do with the low-brow, hayseed, lowly uneducated, Neanderthal, backwoods country mentality of these religious traditions and their repackaging into a gaudy retail box, crowned by a local news anchor’s wig and labeled as the “Christian lifestyle.” The mainline churches such as mine may have been losing members for years, as you folks love to point out in your hatred for us, but this Gomer Pyle church culture of yours is stampeding people into the arms of atheism and disbelief at an alarming rate. I would also remind you that baptism statistics are way down in the Southern Baptist Convention and that your own churches are in trouble, particularly the Christian fundamentalist churches where their own often repeated statistics lament that 88 percent of the children raised in their churches leave their belief system at about 18 years of age and never return to it.

    Now, I am not trying to be mean or trollish with you folks. This is honestly how I feel about the matter and how other people on the street see you. I am just holding up a mirror in hopes that some of you might see yourselves as others outside your own circles see you—and make some changes. I have been positively heartened by comments about my feelings that have been made in recent months in the Nashville area. Local Christians have told me, more or less, the following:

    “I guess we had no real idea that many people see our church culture and our beliefs in this way. We just thought that most people see us the way we see ourselves. Thank you for offering insight that can help us to be more appealing and not runaway those who need Jesus.”

    I wonder if anyone here will be that kind?

  3. Comment by Donnie on October 5, 2012 at 9:17 am

    I’m so thankful the liberals are so full of love and tolerance. Whatever would we do without them? But hey, I have a ” low-brow, hayseed, lowly uneducated, Neanderthal, backwoods country mentality” to quote your comment, so what do I know?

  4. Comment by Marco Bell on October 10, 2012 at 8:56 pm

    To: Dover1952…Well said!
    What you said is what my wife has been trying to describe for the last dozen years.
    Well stated my friend!

  5. Comment by Eric Lytle on October 5, 2012 at 12:17 pm

    Donnie, a bit of friendly advice from a fellow believer: the best response to someone trying to get a rise out of you is, don’t let them get a rise out of you. I enjoy this website and find a lot of interesting comments posted, but I’ve learned to “leapfrog” over some familiar names which are always posting some variant of the same drivel.

  6. Comment by Donnie on October 5, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    Eric,

    You’re right. I sometimes forget my own advice of “don’t feed the trolls” and do it myself.

  7. Pingback by Anglican priest opposing Christianity’s exclusive truth claims. « Phil's Weblog on October 11, 2012 at 2:51 am

    […] We Aren’t the World: Dr. George Armstrong and a United Religion. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this. […]

  8. Comment by eMatters on October 11, 2012 at 10:49 am

    The Liberals who try to dismiss John 14:6 are not Christians. They don’t even know the Bible well enough to know that that is just one passage out of 100+. Just skim the NT, such as a book like Ephesians, and ask if any of it would make sense if Jesus wasn’t the only way to salvation.

    Here are just a few others:

    Acts 4:11-12 He is “‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
    Acts 16:30-31 He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”
    1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
    1 John 2:23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
    1 John 5:11-12 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
    Luke 10:16 “He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
    Luke 12:8-9 “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God.
    John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
    John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”
    John 8:24 I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”
    John 10:7-8 Therefore Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.

  9. Comment by Leia on October 12, 2012 at 3:54 am

    In reply to Dover 1952, if you read what Jesus had to say about today’s church in Revelation 3:14-22, he had absolutely nothing positive to say either.

    But the bible teaches us we Christians should be united and love one another, so if we have any grievances we should sort them out privately and not lambaste one another publically (i.e. on the internet).

The work of IRD is made possible by your generous contributions.

Receive expert analysis in your inbox.