This broadcast of The White Horse Inn is just as pertinent today as ever. Too many Christians look to a mystical, ecstatic religious experience instead of looking to the objective work of Christ on the cross 2,000 years ago. Many Evangelicals and Pentecostal/Charismatics today derogatorily call this "head knowledge" or "dead orthodoxy". They emphasize the emotional side of the human being or human nature above all else. Indirectly what they are saying is that knowledge and understanding of Holy Scripture is irrelevant and only a direct encounter or intuition of the divine is all that matters. John Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed when he heard Luther's introduction to the Epistle to the Romans read at Aldersgate Chapel in 1738. (See Wesley's Aldersgate Experience). What folks miss is that Wesley was "thinking" about what he had heard read. In short, it was both an intellectual event and an emotional event. The propositional truth claims made by Luther in his introduction to Romans so captured Wesley's mind that he was moved both cognitively and emotionally to understand that he could never perfectly keep the moral law of God. Unfortunately, Wesley was inconsistent logically. As the late Gordon H. Clark once said, "If Arminians were more logical they wouldn't be Arminians!"
To place all the emphasis on the emotions or ecstatic religion is to be led astray. The Mormons, who teach doctrines diametrically opposed to orthodox Christianity, emphasize the emotions and having the heart warmed. I suspect they got that from Wesley. The New Age movement, Wicca, paganism, and Sufi Islam all emphasize mystical experiences with the divine. But are they true religions? No. Only a religion that draws its doctrines straight from God's Word written in the Holy Scriptures can claim to be theologically true and logically consistent. (2 Timothy 3:15, 16, 17; 2 Peter 1:19, 20, 21).
May God's peace be yours today! (Romans 5:1-2)
Charlie
Faith and ExperienceSunday, January 29, 2012
Which is more important, Christ's objective work on the cross 2,000 years ago, or my subjective experience of God today? The good news that the Apostles announced concerned Christ's death, burial and resurrection, and the announcement of that objective fact creates faith and a rich experience of thankfulness and gratitude. But what happens if we preach experience itself, rather than the objective work of Christ? On this special edition of the program recorded live at Grace Lutheran Church in San Diego, Michael Horton and Rod Rosenbladt unpack the relationship between faith and experience.
To hear this edition of The White Horse Inn, click here: Dr. Michael Horton - Faith & Experience - Listen to Free Online White Horse Inn Christian Radio Broadcasts
Addendum: Rod Rosenbladt's definition of saving faith as knowledge, assent, and trust has been refuted by Gordon H. Clark in his doctrine of saving faith as belief. Clark said that the word for faith in the Greek New Testament is one word. (See Strongs Concordance: Faith). The idea that Scripture teaches three aspects of faith is wrong since believing is synonymous with knowledge, assent, and trust. Faith is all three in one and that one word means "believe". See Clark: What is Saving Faith? The short of it is that these psychological categories or faculty psychology are not in the New Testament text.
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