Why So Many Denominations?

It is very common for supposed "Calvinists" to be charged with "arrogance" in their defense of the historic Reformed Christian faith. It is almost a certainty that this accusation would come from those who purport to hold to a "Bible only" paradigm of theology, piety, and practice. In their biblicism, these folks, however, fail to realize that it is actually within their position that hubris is intrinsic, and upon the fetid cesspool of their self-styled, isolated interpretations of Scripture that the multiplicity of cults and sects flourish.

Unwittingly, though seemingly defending the tenet of Sola Scriptura, these earnest souls have, in reality, bought into the serpentine lie of the Garden of Eden and have gorged themselves on the apple of Gnosticism. Allergic to tradition, they have looked within themselves for the answers, and like the first couple, have been found naked, wandering, and destined for demise.

"Whenever we think of the gospel merely in terms of some vague religious feeling, rather than the record of the work of God in real history, we're thinking in a Gnostic direction. Whenever we display indifference to or suspicion of the physical world, we're betraying a kind of Gnosticism. Whenever we think of our salvation as a way to escape the limitations of human nature (including the limitations of our embodiment) instead of a pilgrimage of faithfulness within the good limits of our createdness, we're thinking like Gnostics. Whenever we think that true faith is just a matter of spiritual insights and sensations, or something that addresses only our motives, and not a matter of evoking specific works of love and obedience in the real world of space and time, of matter and history, we're thinking like Gnostics.

Today, Gnosticism among contemporary Americans takes a slightly different form. Some of us may not be convinced that it's evil to have a body, but we are suspicious of our embodiment in the sense that to be embodied means to live in history, it means to live in a particular community, and it means to live in creation. Roger Lundin again has said that the form of our contemporary Gnosticism is to embrace the idea that the individual self can know truth immediately without any reference to the created order that Solomon himself relied on to know truth; without any reference to the community of faith that we're a part of, which is the church; without any reference to the tradition that we're a part of, which would be the theological tradition of the church. I think that's one of the reasons why denominations and sects have flourished in America; we have something like twenty-thousand denominations in this country-some outrageous number like that-because of the fact that we've been instilled with this idea that each individual has the capacity to know truth apart from any tradition, apart from history, apart from what God has done in the church or in nature" (Kenneth A. Myers, 'More than Meets the Mouth Or, the Meaning of Meals,' Modern Reformation, July/August, Vol. 18 No. 4 2009, pp. 19-24).

Evangelical/Gnostic Voyeurism

Martin Luther has said that every human being is intrinsically a mystic. The claim is indicative of the proverbial "vacuum" that every man longs to fill with God (or notions of God); and yet it is also "human" to want to "get into" this God through means other than that which He has prescribed in His Word. It is a desire to peer into, as Luther calls it, "the naked God."

This Gnostic voyeurism is very much apparent in the many mutations of modern Evangelicalism. From the hyper-faith, hyper-supernaturalism, and experientialism of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, to the extrabiblical, pragmatic, pietistic, and individualist "innovations" of the church-growth, purpose-driven, megachurch movement (interestingly, the Emergent Church movement merely gave the megachurch movement a "cooler" face, with essentially the same brain behind the operations), Gnosticism is alive and well.

The dangerously false assumption behind all this is that God is a God who can be approached, as Air Supply would put it, "Just As I Am." Yet the biblical account teems with examples of God meting out swift and final judgment on those who failed to approach Him, sincere or otherwise, in the means that He has prescribed. In the OT, we have Nadab and Abihu, beloved sons of Aaron, incinerated, and Uzzah struck dead. Especially in the case of the latter, sincerity and a desire to serve God were not, and will never be, mitigating factors. In the NT, we have Ananias and Saphira, the couple of deceit, snuffed of life by the same transgression. Fervent affection and devotion matters nil if recognition of the "otherness" of God, which is the reality behind God's use of physical and temporal means to interface with man, is rejected.

The Gospel is that God, through His Son Jesus Christ, became flesh, to the consternation of the Gnostics. Just as no Israelite could approach God unmediated by either Moses or the priesthood, so is it that only though the mediation of the God-Man, Christ, can anyone come into the presence of God without suffering the same fate as those sincere enthusiasts who gave no thought to God's prescribed means but thought of Him as like unto themselves. But then, even in the appropriation of Christ's merits, Gnosticism and Evangelicalism walk hand-in-hand in seeking out a private, personal Jesus who is accessible through techniques, methods, and devices, rather than the historical, objective, and enfleshed Christ who takes the initiative to reveal Himself to those whom the Father has chosen. It is "me and my God-ness" uniting with God, not God in His holiness and transcendence condescending to elect, justify, sanctify and eventually glorify me, all because of what Christ has done that is external to myself.

There are a host of other instances wherein this voyeurism is obvious. Suffice it to say that the only remedy to this insidious malady is the recovery of the great truths of the Reformation.