Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Foreword
Preface
1. Jonathan Edwards in our times
2. Revival is biblical
3. True experience of God is heart experience
4. We need to analyse new Christian movements by their ‘fruit’
5. The cause of modernism’s plight is its human-centredness
6. Secondary issues sometimes have primary importance
7. Effective leadership must be biblically intelligent leadership
8. Human leaders fail
9. Family life and effective ministry are reconcilable
10. The Edwards message

Extracts from ...
Chapter 4 - We need to analyse new Christian movements by their ‘fruit’

Those nice young men in suits and ties that come knocking at your door. ‘Elder’ the badge on the lapel says, despite the cheerful youthfulness of the smile. They say they believe in the Bible. They ask you to pray about the truth of what they are presenting. They wonder if you have read the Book of Mormon.

What makes you think they are wrong? After all, a lot of people believe. On a growth scale the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is doing quite nicely, thank you. Some (and they are not all from Utah) even think it is the fastest growing church in the world today. I expect most Christians reject Mormonism for the simple reason that it seems so strange. Yet on that basis alone one might not be too enamoured by the true gospel either. Whoever heard of God incarnate dying on a criminal cross to save the world?

If you cannot hit a barn door at point-blank range, you will not be much good when sniper skills are required. Likewise if we are unable to see the true nature of Mormonism clearly, heaven help us when it comes to more subtle delusions. Edwards teaches us biblical discernment in an age of multiple spiritual options.

Can you be critical without being judgmental?

The very idea of ‘analysing’ appears odd to some. Perhaps it feels judgmental. Why should I analyse a Christian movement? Is that not coming close to doing what Jesus commanded we not do, ‘Judge not that ye be not judged’ (Matthew 7:1, AV)? Or perhaps it appears the wrong way to assess. Even if we consider it right to make assessments of fads and fashions within the Christian community, ‘analysing’ them may seem far too cerebral. Would we not get a more accurate appraisal by what a new Christian movement feels like? If we feel the Spirit moving, or the atmosphere to be reverential, should we not resist any effort to analyse such a movement as an attempt to put out the Spirit’s fire? Who analyses fire?

There may be another set of concerns with this analytical approach to new Christian movements. Edwards has two items on his evaluative agenda. First he is concerned for a ‘sense’ of true experience. We looked at that in the last chapter. This sense is a ‘sense of the heart’ and we can think about it as the roots of spiritual experience. Now we consider Edwards’s analysis by the ‘fruit’ of spiritual experience, with its moral result or the character it produces. The concern here may be whether this is a sufficient criterion. What about doctrinal questions? What does Edwards say about those?

Not just doctrine

Although there was a doctrinal element to Edwards’s teaching, he never majored on doctrinal tests. Why did Edwards, such a biblical preacher, not stress sound doctrine as a test of spiritual experience? It was partly due to his historical context. Edwards lived in a predominantly rotestant and Puritan church culture. Doctrinal questions, while at times acute, were not as defining as in our day. Society in Edwards’s time had a widely accepted and tightly controlled doctrinal framework. Most people accepted these ideas at least ‘notionally’ or formally and mentally. Our context has widely diverse opinions about ideology and doctrine and we therefore rightly emphasize doctrinal standards as more definitive.

There is another reason, though, why Edwards did not focus upon the doctrinal, a reason with profound relevance to any age. The Bible does not only give doctrinal tests; it also provides other tests (Galatians 5:22–23). The Bible teaches us that just believing the right thing is not enough. James tells us that demons believe there is one God and shudder (James 2:19). Elsewhere the Bible discusses the merely formal or inadequate faith of some of the Israelites and even some on the fringes of the early Christian community (1 Corinthians 10:1–13). The Bible clearly assumes it is possible to have the right answers but not have the right heart (Matthew 7:24–27; Luke 6:43–45).

This being the case, more discernment is needed about new Christian movements than merely asking, ‘Can they sign this or that doctrinal statement?’ In our contemporary context people are increasingly willing to sign almost anything because they no longer believe in absolute truth and so do not feel restricted by a statement of truth. Edwards’s tests help us discern whether a new Christian movement has really appropriated the truth that it acknowledges as true, whether it has accepted and internalized it, whether it believes it in a personal and real sense, or whether it just says ‘well that’s true’, but is not changed by the truth.

Obviously churches and Christian organizations should have their doctrinal statements, but equally clearly that is not enough. You do not have to be an aficionado of church history to realize that sound, carefully written doctrinal statements are themselves an insufficient guard against spiritual error. There have been institutions that signed the same doctrinal statement but in reality believed and practised differently. ...

So doctrinal statements are not enough. One approach to these problems is to update our doctrinal statements continually to deal with emerging new challenges to the Christian faith, as church history shows churches have always done. It is important to do so, for it guards us against certain kinds of error.

But it is not enough to have the letter of orthodoxy yet not the spirit. It is not enough to honour the law but not love the Lord. Otherwise we end up with phylacteries wide but hearts narrow and bitter. If we just focus on the doctrinal, we become nothing more than Pharisees, or liberals, unwittingly swallowing the hook, line and sinker of a new error because we have not learnt to discern spiritually: we can discern only methodically and mechanically. We have, as one old Christian leader I knew bemoaned of the rising generation of Christian leaders, no ‘sense of smell’ about new Christian movements, fads, fashions or teaching.

Edwards aims to teach us this subtle, important matter of discerning spiritually. Of fundamental and foundational importance, it goes to the heart of how we know we are saved, how we know what we believe is true, and therefore how we know we are on track to heaven and not hell. Nothing could be more important. ...