Word of Faith, Theology, and Jesus

The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

-Deuteronomy 29:29

I’ve been wanting to do a blog on Word of Faith teaching, because I occasionally come across it, and it frankly makes me uncomfortable. I assume that my readers are familiar with it. In summary, it stresses that God is completely and inherently good; and prosperity, health, and well-being are the will of God for all people, especially Christians. The reason that we do not attain to his will is because of lack of faith and negative speech and attitudes. My difficulty with Faith teaching is that God becomes passive, a force whose goodness can be tapped by human effort. The times that I have tried it created more stress for me than peace.

I think of faith, not as a metaphysical force, but as trust (which is included in the Greek pistis). I also believe what to Faith teachers is a heresy: that there is a purpose for suffering in the Christian’s life. Trying to write about such emotional and deeply personal commitments on the part of some Christians is difficult. If I try to deal with the teaching itself, I will simply get on the hamster wheel of an endless argument that exists because there are deeper issues that have to be faced before we can get off the wheel. What is really at stake here is not how we can get things from God, but how we view Him. So allow me to indulge in some Systematic Theology before going any further.

When theologians talk about God, particularly God as Trinity, they first distinguish between the “economic” Trinity and the “essential” Trinity. “Economic” is not in this case a reference to finance. It comes from the Greek word for “house” or “household,” and refers to a self-contained system of order, the cosmos, or the world. My mother would have said it is a “high-fallutin’ word” for existence as we know it. When theologians speak of the economic Trinity, therefore, they mean God as he relates to mankind in judgment, redemption, and salvation. It has to do with the Trinity and its operations as they are revealed to us at our level of understanding. The “essential” Trinity, however, refers to God as He exists in Himself, shrouded in cloud and mystery, His “secret” self beyond our capacity to conceive or reason. Because God in His essence defies our understanding, we never contemplate the essential Trinity without confronting a paradox.

When the early church began to struggle with heretical definitions of the Godhead and produced the Nicene Creed, it presented us with an inevitable paradox. The Trinity is not three gods; it is not one God in three modes. The Trinity is three Persons in One Essence. No one has ever improved on the Nicene formula. If you can do better, you are wrong. Notice that Nicaea produced a creed, or a confession, but not an explanation. It was to be confessed, not understood. That is because it was a confrontation with the essential Trinity.

Likewise, Chalcedon produced a creed that dealt with the God-man nature of Christ. It confessed that Christ was fully man, fully God, without confusion of the natures, and yet existing as One Person. Again, a paradox, and a confession, not an explanation. Let me say this again: our understanding is necessary when facing God as judge and redeemer, but it fails us when facing God as God in His own inscrutable being. Additionally, we are required by truth to maintain the integrity of a divine paradox by refusing to choose either of its opposites at the expense of the other. Nicaea dealt with the paradox of the One and the Many, and Chalcedon with that of the human and the divine. In both cases orthodoxy required a balance, while heresy flourished at the extremes.

Systematic Theology may be no more than a continuation of the Norman plot to impose Latin words on us poor Anglo-Saxons. So let me state the above in short words, and paraphrase CS Lewis: divine paradoxes are like the ends of strings, and the two separate strings that we see hanging down before our eyes are actually the ends of the same string looped in the cloud above us, but we can’t see the loop. If we pull one end, the other disappears. It is safer to hold to both at once.

I think I started with some comments about the Word of Faith movement, so I should probably get back there. One theme runs through the teaching of the movement: it is always the will of God to see us healthy and wealthy. It should be evident now that as soon as an attribute as high and mysterious as the will of God is mentioned, we are back in the realm of the essential Trinity, and if so, we should expect to find a paradox; and that is exactly what we find. On one hand, if God wills something, that something will occur because God is God, but that something may not be what we classify as “good.” On the other hand, if God is good, and only wills the good, then the fact that the “good” does not always occur in our lives means that some other forces are at work to frustrate his will. Theology would call this the paradox of God’s Sovereignty and God’s Goodness.

As with other divine paradoxes, the dangers are at the extremes. Some Calvinists take sovereignty to such a degree that it become dour fatalism, and at its worst is callous and indifferent to human suffering. Goodness is redefined as whatever God chooses to do. Word of Faith teaching is at the other end. Because God wills the good, and it does not occur, then God is thwarted, and sovereignty passes from his hands into the hands of the believer who learns how to tap into the will of God. I believe both are errors.

I have now gone as far as Systematic Theology can carry us. It is after all, systematic. It can define how God relates to us, but is not itself relational. It can define the Persons of the Trinity, but is not personal. It can describe divine mysteries, but is not in the least mysterious. So since we are Christians, it might be a good idea to turn to Christ. And there we find something transcendent. Jesus apparently lived in what to us are paradoxes with no stress or difficulty at all. Take a look at this:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:29-31)

Do you see that? Sovereignty and goodness at rest. No stress, no quest for balance, just peace. Jesus bundled up these attributes of God that perplex us into one word: “Father.” With that word, everything falls into place. What we treat as concepts are really aspects of a whole and intact Personality, and therefore we need fellowship with the Father more than we need answers (see 1 John 1: 1-4). In His presence fear of His purpose and my need to control Him both vanish.

But there is more. Christ not only pointed to the Father as the resolution of all paradoxes. He Himself became the resolution of all perceived contradictions. When He prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done,” sovereign predestination and redemptive goodness were united, all history paused at their union, and those things that we call extremes were absorbed into the great Center of the cross. Fatalism and our desire to manipulate God both died there.

My friends and I used to joke that the answer to every question we were asked in Sunday School was, “Jesus.” Maybe we really were not so far from the truth.