How the prosperity gospel has driven Nigerian Christians away from Christ

ViaCrucis said:

Enthusiasm doesn't relate, per se, to anything miraculous. Enthusiasm, in its original sense meaning "god-within" is the notion that experience of God is purely immediate (literally, as in without mediation); the Lutheran confession is our experience of God is mediated through Word and Sacrament, through the Church; because Christ our Mediator is here with us in His Church, in Word and Sacrament.

A classic example Enthusiasm from the Reformation era would be Thomas Müntzer/Müntzerism. Essentially, the idea that I have direct, personal access to God through my own interior experience of God entirely apart from Scripture, apart from the preaching of the word, apart from the Sacraments--through immediate revelation and experience. One does not, properly, need Scripture, or need the external operations of the Church's ministry--one need only have direct immediate experience of God. Thus personal revelation through dreams or visions were equal, or even superior, to Scripture.

Where the miraculous comes into play here is the idea that alleged miracles, or "signs and wonders" provide evidence of doctrinal or theological truths entirely apart from the received faith. That is, to say that I can reject solid biblical exposition and teaching and the received confession of faith because "such and such" miracle, or sign, or wonder "proves" the "truth" of the alternative. This is precisely why, we Lutherans, would insist on why it is so important to test the spirits. It's also why Luther went so far as to say that if something claims to be God or from God, but is apart from God's own Self-giving of Himself in Word and Sacrament, then it's not God at all, but the devil. God would never lead us away from Word and Sacrament to something else, they are His precious Means of Grace, He is there, present in these Gifts for us. So a miracle that denies the truth is no miracle at all, but can only ever be a charlatan's trick or a diabolical delusion. What my Orthodox brethren would identify with prelest.

-CrypptoLutheran

Click to expand...

That is so beautifully expressed, and represents yet another area of Lutheran-Orthodox doctrinal convergence.

And I am aware of two alleged Marian apparitions that the Roman Catholic Church never officially sanctioned as worthy of belief, but in one case in particular, that of Ida Peerdeman’s claimed encounter with a spirit who referred to herself as “The Lady who was once Mary” who the most recent Archbishop of Amsterdam has distressingly been promoting (along with others in the Dutch Church), who in a manner completely out of character of all Marian apparitions that the Catholics and Orthodox agree are legitimate, as well as a few others, demanded that the church implement a “fifth dogma” declaring her to be co-redemptrix, which is something that would obviously preclude communion with the Orthodox on the basis of being neo-Collyridian, and behaved in a threatening manner.

Also only one person saw this supposed apparition, so assuming it was not a hallucination but an honest and accurate reporting of an experience, I am reminded of the threatening behavior attributed by Muhammed to the entity he claimed was Jibreel, that is, St. Gabriel the Archangel - that assuming that regarding his initial encounters Muhammed was telling the truth (there is some evidence that later on, he was making things up as he went along, such as the “Satanic Verses” controversy, a book about which resulted not just in a fatwa against Salman Rushdie but a recent attempt on his life that left him blind in one eye; it is typical according to the Orthodox fathers for demons to lead someone down the garden path and then abandon them*, which perhaps happened in that case, so I would not be surprised if Muhammed did encounter a demon, but unfortunately due to his lack of spiritual formation, having only encountered a heretic on the fringes of Christianity (the specific heresy being a matter of speculation by fathers such as St. John of Damascus; I myself tend to lean towards the opinion of some fathers that it was an Arian, since an Arian might in their anti-Trinitarianism have imparted to Muhammed the falsehood he believed, that the Trinity consisted of the Father, Son, and St. Mary, which is obviously wrong ).

And of course recently several groups have embraced supposed prophecies which are clearly prelest. I would cite the various Prosperity Gospel preachers as a classic example.

* In the case of some monks, mostly idiorythmic or solitary monks or near-solitaries living in sketes, according to various sources such as the Desert Fathers, they were persuaded they could fly due to their holiness, borne aloft by demons and then allowed to fall into the canyon below. In another case a monk had to be restrained from flinging himself to his death based on the same delusion.

FireDragon76 said:

I doubt the recipients of Project Angel Food would agree that Marianne Williamson's ethics are meaningless.

Just keep in mind Marianne Williamson was raised a nominal Jew, not a Christian.

Click to expand...

I am not saying that non-Christians cannot do very good things that are pleasing to God, but rather, that any system of ethics or morality that lacks a Christological reference is meaningless or dangerously misleading. For example, Utilitarianism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Humanism, and so on are all, if used in the absence of Christ, hollow.

And any system of ethics that depends in any way upon Nihilism is incompatible with the Christian faith.