Identifying the New Theologyby Gene K. Smith
See New Theology and the New Age Movement
and excerpts from The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer
Neo-orthodoxy was founded by Karl Barth when he made a non-rational leap of faith (without an object) in the area of theology and divorced religion from rationalism.
Bifurcated Mind as in Platonism – Universals (eternal values) separated from particulars (real world details).
Truth is something that can't be stated in words (non propositional), but may be experienced only in the mind and the emotions (Neo-Platonism). Thus worship with its emphasis on the emotions is promoted rather than Bible study and the application of doctrine to the personal life, contrary to Jn. 4:24 and 8:32, 33.
No rationalism in the area of Universals (Francis Schaeffer’s “upper story”, e.g. God, sin, hell, heaven, judgment, salvation, etc.) so they can’t be discussed (Mysticism).
Religious terms are abstracts that have no content or meaning; they are just emotional “connotation words”. They do not have the same meaning as in orthodox or conservative Christianity.
Doesn't actively deny the truths of orthodox or conservative Christianity such as the virgin birth, divinity of Christ, the veracity of the Bible, sin, hell, etc. Rather, it just puts these issues into the bifurcated “upper story” where they cannot be discussed or defined rationally.
The Bible is not the Word of God, and there is no propositional truth (principles that can be stated in words) in the Bible, so there is no emphasis on doctrinal content.
The Bible only contains a human witness to the Word of God by men who heard His voice and met with Him. But it is a human witness, not a divine witness.
Rationally contradictory beliefs can be accepted in the “upper story” as “truth” in a mysterious “religious” sense.
Emphasis on particulars (“lower story”) – the doing of religious acts, e.g. social gospel, “following Jesus”, pop psychology etc., which provide existential experiences that give some kind of meaning to life (but which cannot be discussed).
“Spiritual” or “spirituality” is defined as anything that has to do with religious experiences of any kind, and embraces environmentalism, mother earth, Eastern religions, the occult, etc.
There is no difference between the Church and the World.
The “gospel” is essentially the man centered “social gospel” of old “modernism”.
Post Millennial view of eschatology: Man will by his own efforts (& social gospel) eliminate poverty, evil, war, etc. and eventually everyone will embrace the gospel, man will bring in the Kingdom, and then Christ will return.
No emphasis on personal salvation or a personal relationship with God because it is irrelevant.
The New Theology accommodates the occult and the New Age Movement, which appears to be preparing the world for Satan’s enthronement as the god of this world (2 Thes. 2:3-10) with its emphasis on self centeredness, sexuality, and emotionalism. This theology also influenced some of the modern Bible translations and paraphrases. (It seems particularly to have influenced Petersons’ The Message, which frequently drops out much of the doctrinal content of the passage.) New Theology ministers use the same religious words as conservative ministers, but they don’t mean the same thing, so most Christians are easily fooled. Few conservative Christian seminaries and Bible Schools paid attention to Dr. Francis Schaeffer’s warnings in the late 1960s about the infusion of humanism in every aspect of western culture. They also failed to heed his warnings about the New Theology in the mid 1980’s.
© 2006 by Gene K. Smith [goodrancher@frontiernet.net]
See Gene's bio at www.crossroad.to/articles2/006/smith/new_theology.htm#smith
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