Recognizing And Successfully Averting The Word–Faith Threat To Evangelicalism

By Kirk R. MacGregor, Ph.D.

[Kirk R. MacGregor is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Northern Iowa.]

Judging by its extraordinary success in both the religious and secular marketplaces, the Word–Faith Movement is one of the fastest–growing and most influential ideologies claiming allegiance to the Christian tradition. This fact is evidenced, for example, by Church Report’s 2006 list of “50 Most Influential Christians in America,” which includes a total of eleven Word–Faith leaders, four of whom (Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, T. D. Jakes, and Paul Crouch) rank among the top ten.[1] It is also illustrated by Time Magazine’s 18 September 2006 cover story “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” focusing on the teachings of Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer, whom the piece identifies as “Protestant evangelists” and “within [the] ranks” of evangelicalism.[2] At least three ostensibly Christian television networks – TBN, ISPN, and Daystar Television – devote over three–quarters of their airtime to Faith programming. Moreover, some of these programs, especially Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, Joyce Meyer’s Enjoying Everyday Life, Kenneth Copeland’s Believer’s Voice of Victory, and Benny Hinn’s This Is Your Day, comprise regular staples in the secular market. The popularity of the Faith Movement has also grown through its publications, which are prevalent (and sometimes dominant) in Christian bookstores as well as the inspirational racks of secular bookstores. Thus Joel Osteen, pastor of Houston’s Lakewood Church, boasting to be America’s largest congregation with an average of over 30,000 worshipers weekly, reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller List with his 2004 Your Best Life Now.[3] This feat has been more than equaled by his prolific female counterpart Joyce Meyer, whom the Detroit News describes as “the country’s leading female evangelist” and “the top–selling female Christian author in America.”[4]

As a historian of Western religion in general and Christianity in particular, I find all of this quite disturbing, not so much for what is happening on the surface but what is happening below the surface. That is to say, as initially appalling as it may be, I am far less concerned with the “health and wealth” aspects of the movement, which historically are nothing new, as I am with the underlying theological infrastructure upon which the movement is based and from which its views on abundance are an outgrowth. Thus, while greed and faith–healing among professed Christians does not imply Word–Faith theology and could logically emanate from a plethora of belief–systems utterly distinct from the Faith one,[5] the Faith system does logically necessitate that its adherents are entitled to material and bodily prosperity. Despite its use of Christian vocabulary, this system of thought is radically different from historic Christian orthodoxy on, minimally, theology proper, anthropology, and soteriology.[6] For these reasons, if belonging to the Christian tradition is defined as subscription to essential Christian doctrine as encapsulated in the ecumenical confessions of the first five Christian centuries, then the Word–Faith Movement is not Christian but should instead be regarded as a new religious movement (NRM). Sadly, the average layperson is unable to see beyond the surface–level employment of traditional terms, such as “faith,” “being born again,” “image of God,” and “eternal life,” to the strikingly different meanings that Faith churches ascribe to them. These observations, in my judgment, disclose the ultimate danger of the Faith Movement. While it is very easy for laypeople to hear Faith broadcasts or read Faith books and believe they are encountering sound doctrine, they are, in fact, gradually being initiated into a new worldview, as they immediately observe its deceptively appealing fruits and then, once those fruits are embraced, they begin to seek out and gradually accept the proposed theological rationale for their production.

One can profitably compare the Faith proselytizing strategy to that of Mormonism. In its television advertising campaigns and evangelistic pamphlets, the LDS Church never explicitly presents its sine qua non doctrine of eternal progression – namely, that we, like God the Father, must follow the path of Mormonism to ourselves become gods who procreate spirit–children and eternally rule over our own worlds – as this would sound too bizarre. Hence the average layperson (and even some prominent scholars)[7] would never dream that such represents the theological rationale for the LDS teachings that are commonly presented, such as strong family values, peace with God, and enhanced knowledge of Christ. But when one decides to become a Mormon, one assimilates over time the proposed doctrinal causes for the effects one has come to cherish, without objecting to one’s overseers that since the alleged causes cannot be logically deduced from the effects, the latter furnish no guarantee of the former’s validity. Such would be analogous to questioning a physician’s explanation for the effectiveness of a prescribed drug after that medication has provided healing. Similarly, if the typical church attender were to watch a Lakewood Church or Enjoying Everyday Life broadcast, having never previously heard Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer, one would immediately understand the prosperity message (comprising at least 28 minutes of the half–hour) but would also hear one or two traditional doctrinal ideas (comprising a maximum of 2 minutes) discussed in contexts where they seem somewhat out of place; in other words, where their usage neither makes much sense nor appears particularly objectionable. Writing these off as at worst trivial mistakes that in no way detract from the overall message, analogous to those made by one’s local pastor every Sunday, one tries the so–called “name it and claim it” mechanism and, when desired events occur, one interprets this as proof of the Faith message. One then begins to watch the television program on a regular basis, naturally wishing to mature in one’s insight by discovering why the formula works and therefore paying more careful attention to the elements one previously found confusing. Over about a month’s time, one gradually sees the causal links between these threads of doctrine and the Faith formula as well as how the threads fit together, finally coming to apprehend the overall theological fabric. Like the Mormon convert, one will not be so presumptuous as to disbelieve the resulting construction; after all, how dare the pupil suggest that one’s instructors lack understanding of their own praxis? From this point forward, the person is on a path leading to divorce from biblical Christianity and initiation into a new religion devoid of salvific power.

Foundations of Word–Faith Theology

If one watches Lakewood Church, Enjoying Everyday Life, Believer’s Voice of Victory, This Is Your Day, or any other Faith program for a month (which I have done as part of my research), then one will apprehend the basic Faith theological structure coupled with some extraneous beliefs unique to a particular teacher or set of teachers. Employing the criterion of multiple attestation to separate universally held tenets from ideas embraced by some but not all of the movement’s leaders, the following summation of essential Word–Faith doctrine emerges. In other words, the subsequent tenets constitute the metaphysical presuppositions to which all Faith teachers demonstrably subscribe.

First, God is a spirit, where a spirit is construed as the organ that produces the force of faith. It should be emphasized that the premise “God is a spirit” constitutes an identity statement, such that any further spirits which come into being will, by definition, be gods.[8] Faith, in turn, is understood as the most elemental substance of all matter and thus the raw substance out of which all material objects are created. To illustrate, the composition of a piece of paper consists of pulp, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and ultimately, faith. Moreover, words are the containers of faith and the instruments by which faith produces its material effects; therefore, by speaking faith–filled words, a god can create her or his own reality. Accordingly, God spoke the universe into being via words filled with faith, a notion which Faith teachers support by a woodenly literalistic reading of Genesis 1.[9]

Second, the imago Dei is understood as the imago Dei essentialis, or comprising the same species of being as God, and not, as historically affirmed by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox thought, the imago Dei accidentalis, defined positively as the freedoms of pleasure, counsel, and choice and negatively as the freedoms from misery, sin, and necessity.[10] Due to the equation of deity and spirituality, Adam and Eve, essentially speaking, were spirits and so “little gods,” whom God gave two accidental faculties for survival on Earth, namely, bodies for physical movement and souls for analytical thinking.[11] During the 1980s and 90s, Faith teachers frequently and unreservedly asserted that primal humans were “little gods,” which doctrine plus its corollaries met with sharp and widespread denunciation by evangelicals.[12] Therefore, in this decade they have generally but not entirely avoided the language of “little gods,” which has led some observers to claim that the movement has dropped this and similar concepts from its repertoire.[13] However, such changes are cosmetic rather than substantive, as the Faith Movement has retained exactly the same anthropology but recast it in theological vocabulary acceptable to most Christians. This new terminology either logically or contextually necessitates that original humanity is of the same species of being as God: examples of logical entailment include “having the (very) nature of God,”[14] “the nature of Jesus,”[15] “the life of God,” and “the God–kind of life,”[16] and examples of contextual entailment include “the champion in you,”[17] “the new nature,”[18] and “the champion God made you to be.”[19]

Third, the biblical notions of spiritual death and spiritual rebirth are construed literally as the death and revivification of the spirit, where in the interim the spirit does not cease to exist but lies dormant like a corpse, leaving the other two parts of the trichotomous anthropology intact. In the Fall, Adam and Eve suffered spiritual death, meaning their spirits died, such that they ceased to be little gods and degenerated to mere body–soul humans lacking the faculty to generate the force of faith and to speak things into being.[20] Owing to the Word–Faith traducian view of the Fall, every human is born with all three parts – body, soul, and spirit – but only the first two parts are alive while the spirit is nonfunctional. But by accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, we are born again, namely, our spirits are reborn or brought back to life, thus restoring us to our divinely intended status as little gods who have power to speak words of faith and create material blessings, including health, wealth, and prosperity. While John 10:34 and Ps. 82:6 are used as proof–texts for this position, to avoid controversy it has frequently been couched in Pauline nomenclature as our being “sons and daughters of God” and “joint–heirs with Jesus.”[21] These phrases Faith teachers interpret as our being the natural children of God, i.e., having the same nature as God, and conspicuously omit Paul’s insistence that we are instead children by adoption with a nature qualitatively distinct from, and ontologically lower than, God.

While it has been amply demonstrated that such beliefs (as well as further deviations from historic Christian orthodoxy) are embraced by veteran Faith teachers like Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn,[22] many people would find it shocking and therefore dispute that newer and more popular teachers, such as Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen, truly subscribe to the aforementioned system. To definitively settle the issue, I will allow these teachers to speak for themselves with excerpts from their recent oratory. Addressing the loaded and admittedly controversial topic of “who you are in Christ” in 2003, Joyce Meyer makes explicit the convictions that she usually leaves implicit in her preaching, even citing John 10:34 and Ps. 82:6 as support.

You know, why do people have such a fit about God calling his creation, his man (not his whole creation, but his man), little gods? If he’s God, what’s he going to call them but the God kind? I mean, if you as a human being have a baby, you call it a human kind. If cattle has another cattle, they call it cattle kind. So, I mean, what’s God supposed to call us? Doesn’t the Bible say we’re created in his image?. .. The Bible says right here, John 10:34, let’s read this again: “And Jesus answered, Is it not written in your law, I said, you are gods,” little “g”? So men are called gods by the law, men to whom God’s message came, and the Scripture cannot be set aside or cancelled or broken or annulled. Now if this is true, “Do you say of the one whom the Father consecrated and dedicated and set apart for himself and sent into the world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God?” See, when he began to say, “I am the Son of God,” then they began to yell, “Blasphemy.” Well, how many of you know that we are sons and daughters of Almighty God? He has birthed us, we are born again, new creatures in Christ Jesus.. .. You ought to study Psalm 82. God stands in the assembly of the representatives of God. That’s us, you know? See, I am a representative of God. The Bible says here that God stands in the midst of those representatives. In the midst of the magistrates or the judges he gives judgment as among the gods, little “g.” Verse 6, “I said, you are gods, since you judge on my behalf as my representatives, indeed, all of you are children of the Most High.” It is important that we know who we are and that we walk with that power–consciousness.[23]

Notice that for Meyer, we are sons and daughters of God in exactly the same way that Jesus was, a notion expressed by more brazen Faith teachers as “being every bit as much an incarnation of God as was Jesus of Nazareth,” thus making Jesus “no longer the only begotten Son of God.”[24] In his 2005 sermon “Receiving God’s Mercy,” Joel Osteen echoes this sentiment, denigrating “religion” (obviously historic Christianity) for its doctrine of sin and ascribing to the born–again believer the language formerly reserved by the Nicene and Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creeds for Jesus.[25]

I want to talk to you today about learning to receive the good things that God has in store. And really, God has already done everything he’s going to do. It says in Ephesians that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing – past tense, he’s already done it. I know when I first started ministering, before I would come out to speak, I would pray and pray, “God, please give me your anointing; God, please help me, please, God.” But one day I found in the Bible that God has already anointed us. He’s already given us his power and ability. You don’t have to beg God for that; you’ve simply got to start acting on it. Now before I come out, I just boldly declare, “I am anointed. I am well able to do what God has called me to do.” See, I don’t have to pray about that, I don’t have to beg God for that. I just have to rise up and receive it by faith. And really, begging God doesn’t get his attention.. .. And I don’t mean this to sound wrong, but many times this goes against everything that religion has taught us. You will never rise up in your authority as long as you have some kind of feeling of inferiority. One time I was praying at this big event here in town and there were several other ministers there with me and the man that went right before me, he is a very well–respected leader in the community and a very fine gentleman. But he prayed about the most depressing prayer that I think I have ever heard. He said, “God, you know how unworthy I am to even stand up here before you. God, you know what a wretched sinner I am, and I don’t deserve your goodness, and God, how could you even use anybody like me,” on and on. Man, by the time he got finished, I felt like I needed to go repent. I felt like I was about that tall. I just wanted to hang my head in shame.. .. I wanted to ask him afterwards, “Did you really mean what you prayed? You said you were weak, you were defeated, you were an old sinner, you were unworthy.” Listen, I’m not going to declare that kind of junk over my life. I’m going to put on my robe of righteousness. I know God approves me. I know God is pleased with me. I know that I have been accepted; I have been made worthy. Well, you say, “Joel, we are just all old sinners saved by grace.” No, the truth is, we were old sinners, but when we came to Christ, we are not sinners anymore; we are sons and daughters of the Most High God. We have been changed. We’ve been born into a new family. We are new creatures and, sure, we may sin every once in a while; you may make some mistakes. But that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.[26]

Further, in his audio abridgement of his 2004 bestseller Your Best Life Now, Osteen draws the Word–Faith consequences of our having “the very nature of God”:

Just as it is imperative that we see ourselves as God sees us and think about ourselves as God regards us, it is equally important that we say about ourselves what God says about us. Our words are vital in bringing our dreams to pass. It’s not enough to simply see it by faith or in your imagination. You have to begin speaking words of faith over your life. Your words have enormous creative power. The moment you speak something out, you give birth to it. This is a spiritual principle, and it works whether what you are saying is good or bad, positive or negative.. .. Our words become self–fulfilling prophecies.. .. The Bible clearly tells us to speak to our mountains. Maybe your mountain is a sickness; perhaps your mountain is a troubled relationship; maybe your mountain is a floundering business. Whatever it is, you must do more than think about it, more than pray about it; you must speak to that obstacle. The Bible says, “Let the weak say I’m strong. Let the oppressed say I’m free. Let the sick say I’m healed.” Start calling yourself happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous. Stop talking to God about how big your mountains are, and start talking to your mountains about how big your God is![27]

Both of these quotes disclose the ultimate objective of Faith theology, namely, a deistic view of God from the advent of one’s spiritual life to the grave. That is to say, while God’s transformative power is necessary for our regeneration and for providing everlasting life upon death, during our time on earth God simply provides us with a source of objective morality and companionship – he cannot be relied upon in the midst of our deepest problems. Rather, God has already done everything for us that he will ever do – namely, turned us into little gods with the same ability to generate faith that he has – and now expects us to use that ability to solve our own problems. By coming to God in prayer and asking him to solve our problems, we are, on the Faith view, actually spitting in his face, every bit as much as a person who is given a new car by a friend does by refusing to drive it but begging the friend for transportation. Kenneth Copeland makes these points with chilling clarity in a 2005 sermon.

Now, just in a nutshell, let me give you God’s plan, why Jesus was born in Bethlehem. God said to Adam, “Go into all the world, subdue it, replenish it; have authority over everything that walks, flies, crawls, swims, and creeps.” Now that’s the will of God. Adam gave it away. Jesus came to get it back. He got it back. And in the 28[28] chapter of Matthew, moments after he was raised from the dead, he said, “All authority has been given unto me both in heaven and in earth, both in heaven and in earth.” And then he immediately, the first thing he did with that God–given authority was exactly the same thing that Father did in the Garden of Eden. He said, “Therefore, you go in my name into all the earth.” Now what he has authorized or given us authority to do, he will not do for you. He said, “Whatever you bind on earth, I’ll back it. Whatever you loose on earth, I’ll back it.” Now let me tell you what he did not say; sometimes you can learn as much by what he didn’t say as by what he did. He did not say, “Boys, I’m going into all the earth. I’m going to preach the Gospel. I’m going to lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover. I’m going to speak with new tongues, and I’m going to cast out the devil. If I drink any deadly thing, it will not harm me. I’m going; you boys, come follow me.” He did not say that! What did he say? “You go into all the world. You preach the Gospel to every creature. You lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover. You bind the devil. You cast him out. You drink any deadly thing, it will not harm you.” Now you try to get him out of the boundaries of that will of God, and he won’t go. “Oh, Jesus, if you’d just come lay your hand on my fevered brow. If you’d just send an angel, it would be alright with me.” You say, “Oh. .. oh, brother Copeland, I just don’t have that kind of authority, I just need Jesus to come do it for me, I’m just waiting on the Lord.” He’s not going to get out of God’s will for you or me or anybody else – no. I’ve had the Lord say this to me: “Get up from there, you big baby, and take authority! I gave you the authority.”[29]

It is perhaps the greatest irony of the Faith Movement that a system of thought which arguably focuses more on supernaturalism than any other actually yields a more dangerous humanism than those who profess the appellation, since the supernatural power one relies upon is not God, but one’s own. This seemingly furnishes an advantage over secular humanism, which forces one to persevere through life via only one’s natural power.

Word–Faith leaders know full well that a straightforward presentation of their teachings would prove incredibly offensive to the average Christian. Herein lies the danger of the Word–Faith appeal: by clearly, and seemingly presenting from Scripture, only the “bait” of prosperity, when laypeople bite they are “hooked” by metaphysical commitments which fly in the face of biblical truth. Since a great deal of ink has already been spilt over refuting these commitments, no time will be lost here rearticulating such critiques.[30] However, virtually nothing has been said by way of helping pastors and other Christian leaders eliminate people’s motivation to take this bait – namely, the idea that health and wealth constitute entitlements of the covenant the believer has with God. Until people are rationally persuaded that this idea is false, generic denunciations of the movement’s greed and self–centeredness from the pulpit will prove counterproductive: not only will it be seen as rock–throwing, but it will convince people of the Faith teachers’ frequent charge that their opposition is “watering down the promises of God” based on “tradition” and “religious brainwashing.”[31] Therefore, we must present to our congregations and church groups an apologetic showing that the Faith bait is biblically impossible, the formulation of which will occupy the remainder of this presentation. Our apologetic will proceed in two steps: first, by supplying the necessary background information; and second, by employing that information to refute the alluring bait. In this way, we shall cut the Faith Movement off at the pass and rescue our sisters and brothers in Christ from embracing its errors.

Demonstrating the Faith “Bait” as Biblically Impossible

We shall begin by adopting the Apostle Paul’s assessment of God’s covenantal work with Israel. For Paul, the various bĕrîthim (covenant–related promises) from the time of the Patriarchs to the Jews’ return from the Babylonian Exile may be summarized as the outworking of two distinct covenants: the Abrahamic Covenant, initiated in Genesis 12 and 15; and the Mosaic Covenant, foreshadowed with Abraham in Genesis 17 but implemented on Mount Sinai (Galatians 3; Roman 4). We may profitably employ this Pauline dichotomy as an interpretive framework for shedding light on the Old Testament historical data. The Abrahamic Covenant, as David J. A. Clines points out, may be subdivided into three divine promises: to give Abraham an heir and nation; to bestow the Promised Land upon this nation; and to enter into a saving relationship with anyone who places faith in Yahweh.[32] While promises one and two are unconditional and concern the Jewish community, the final promise is conditional, non–ethnic, and individual in nature, made between God and the believer.[33] It is this third aspect of the Abrahamic covenant, which Clines helpfully styles the “relational covenant,” that concerns our purposes here.[34] Unlike the relational covenant, the Mosaic Covenant is God’s communal pact between himself and the totality of biblical Israel as a tribal confederation or nation.[35]

As reciprocal dealings between various persons and God, the relational and Mosaic covenants not only possess distinct beneficiaries (the individual believer regardless of ethnicity vis–à–vis the ethnic Jewish community) but also contain separate terms and consequences for either adhering to or violating those terms. Hence these covenants feature differing mutually contingent human obligations and divine obligations. For the relational covenant, the human terms comprise personal commitment to and trust in God as the sovereign ruler of all earthly affairs (Gen. 15:6; Gal. 3:6–9; Rom. 4:3–5, 17); in response, God promises to accompany the individual throughout life as one’s guide and friend who can be relied upon amidst all earthly tragedies (Gen. 26:24; 28:15) and to protect the individual in the hereafter, assuring the individual’s dwelling “in the house of Yahweh forever” (Ps. 23:6). With the advent of the general resurrection model between the eighth and sixth centuries b.c., the previously vague assurance of protection in the afterlife was given substance: at death, the soul or spirit of the believer would temporarily inhabit a penultimate state, called Paradise or “Abraham’s bosom,” until being rejoined with its transfigured resurrection body on the Day of Yahweh, at which point the complete person, body and soul, would reside in the transfigured physical universe or “new heaven and new earth” (Isa. 65:17; 66:22).[36] Interpreting the Genesis references to “blessing” (12:2–3) and “seed” (12:7; 13:15) Christologically, Paul terms the promises of the relational covenant “the blessing of Abraham” (Gal. 3:14). The basis for this covenant, insists Paul, is the imputed righteousness that God graciously credits to the believer upon faith in him (Rom. 4:1–12), defined not as a intellectual adherence to certain facts about God, but rather as entrance into a “spiritual marriage” with God the Husband marked by the personal commitment and trust of a bride (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 3:14, 20; Ezek. 16:32; Hos. 2:16; 2 Cor. 11:2).[37]

By contrast, the terms of the Mosaic Covenant are communal obedience to the Decalogue plus the 613 other mitzvoth, which include circumcision, animal sacrifices, kashrut or dietary laws, a yearly calendar of festivals, and a host of detailed regulations fostering a national identity as God’s “set–apart” or holy people (Ex. 20:1–23:19; all of Leviticus; Deut. 4–27). In exchange for obedience, God would furnish the Israelite community with protection, stability, and prosperity in the realms of politics, economics, finance, and health (Deut. 28–30). These rewards had nothing whatsoever to do with the afterlife but were strictly concerned with the earthly maintenance and success of the Israelite nation.[38] At this point we must emphasize the fact that the Mosaic Covenant never promised these benefits to any individual Israelite obedient to Torah, but to the community as a unit if obedient to Torah. The Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 28–29 makes this fact explicit, as it addresses God’s “holy people” (28:9) and “all the Israelites” (29:2) with the second–person singular pronoun ’atth and second–person singular verbs rather than with the second–person plural ’attem and second–person plural verbs, thereby making the promises applicable to the group at large and not each member within the group. Moreover, as the Prophets remind us, the Mosaic Covenant was an all–or–nothing agreement, where, within certain self–disciplinary limits by which Israel could “purge the evil from among” themselves (Deut. 13:5; 17:7; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21, 24; 24:7), 100% of Israel was either inside or outside the covenant depending on whether there existed full communal obedience to its mitzvoth. If Israel were outside the covenant, then the extensive curses listed in Deut. 28:15–68 would befall the nation irrespective of the piety of any particular Israelite, the sum total of which curses Paul styles “the curse of the Law” (Gal. 3:13). However, such exclusion from the Mosaic Covenant due to the sins of the community did nothing to exclude the pious Israelite from the relational covenant, as evident by the Prophets who were often simultaneously under the Mosaic curse but enjoyed a personal relationship with God, and were thus recipients of ultimate salvation, under the Abrahamic relational blessing.

Paul’s argument in Galatians is directly addressed to a congregation, during a time when the “Way” or primitive church was still a sect of Judaism (c. a.d. 56),[39] under pressure from Pharisaic believers in Jesus, the so–called “Judaizers,” to submit to the terms of the Mosaic Covenant. Far from divorcing the Way from Judaism, Paul insists that belonging to the Way constitutes the only path to truly being Jewish, as the Way, alone of all the sects of Judaism, teaches the only path to salvation by which anyone in history has ever been saved, including Abraham.[40] Thus Paul can write to the Romans in the same decade, “A person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code” (Rom. 2:27–28). But if the Way is Judaism in its purest expression, the question arises, how can its adherents fail to keep Torah without falling under its curses? Paul responds that the original Abrahamic Covenant represented God’s overarching vehicle for relations with humanity and was in no way set aside by the Mosaic Covenant, which God installed as a temporary measure to block sin among the Israelites until the coming of Messiah (Gal. 3:19–25). Upon Jesus’ inauguration of the Kingdom of God, the divine purpose of Torah was completed;[41] however, since God cannot lie, its curses still had to be borne. According to Paul, this assumption of the curse was performed by Jesus at the cross; by becoming a curse for us, Jesus neutralized “the curse of the Law” for all believers, such that the Mosaic Covenant in its entirety – terms, blessings, and curses alike – has been annulled, leaving the Abrahamic Covenant, brought into dramatically sharp focus by God’s self–revelation in Jesus,[42] as the sole means of divine–human relations for both Jews and Gentiles.

In sum, Paul informs this Way Jewish assembly, comprised of ethnic Jews and Gentiles, that Christ has brought an end to the Mosaic Covenant. Because of this fact, and also because the community is not keeping the prerequisite mitzvoth, it is doubly impossible for the Way to receive the earthly blessings in Deut. 28:1–14. Hence for Paul the foil of “the curse of the Law” is not “the blessing of the Law,” as the Law has been taken out of the way; rather, its foil is the qualitatively better “blessing of Abraham,” as it ensures their intimate communion with God the Trinity in time and eternity. As F. F. Bruce pointed out in his 1982 essay “The Curse of the Law,” this conclusion is guaranteed by the fact that the two hina clauses of Gal. 3:14 – hina eis ta ethnē hē eulogia tou Abraam genētai (in order that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles) and hina tēn epangelian tou pneumatos labōmen dia tēs pisteōs (in order that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith) – are coordinate to each other, such that “the ‘blessing of Abraham’ which Gentiles receive ‘in Christ Jesus’ is incomparably greater than the sum of all the blessings which in Deut. 28:1–14 are set over against the curses of the preceding chapter; it is their reception of the Spirit through faith.”[43]

Despite Paul’s distinction, Word–Faith teachers are notorious for their confusion and subsequent conflation of these two covenants. This strategy allows them to combine favorable aspects and delete unfavorable aspects of both covenants into a sort of “revisionary covenant” considerably different from either of its two constituent elements in terms of its scope, terms, and rewards. Regarding the scope of the revisionary covenant, it is individual in nature, pro relational, and not merely applicable to a larger group, pace Mosaic. Regarding its terms, Faith teachers nominally take from the relational covenant faith in God as focused upon Christ, where faith itself is not spiritual commitment or marriage but a spiritual force, and disregard the Mosaic stipulation of keeping the over 600 mitzvoth. Regarding its rewards, Faith teachers combine the relational benefits in the afterlife with the Mosaic material benefits in the earthly life. Thus from the historian’s perspective, the Faith Movement not only falsifies the relational aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant by invalidating biblical faith (as has been copiously argued elsewhere), but also takes a series of blessings never given to an individual but to a nation conditioned upon obedience to an extensive list of commands and turns it into a series of blessings made to individuals conditioned by no such obedience. In sum, the Faith understanding of the covenant between God and the believer is extraordinarily bad history and therefore biblically invalid.

Conclusion

It is my sincere hope that the aforementioned apologetic may be rapidly disseminated from pulpits and, in turn, propagated by laypeople and clergy alike in their relationships with fellow travelers on the path of following Jesus and in their evangelistic encounters with non–Christians. Once laypeople are equipped with this comprehension of Paul’s evaluation of the Hebrew Biblical covenants, the appeal or “plausibility structure”[44] of Word–Faith theology collapses. As an added benefit, it will enable people to better understand the Bible, God, and the nature of his salvific work. In this way, we can thwart the rapid growth of this new religious movement and, through persistence, excise it from the popular perception of evangelicalism while replacing it with one predicated on advancing the Kingdom of God.

Notes

1. “50 Most Influential Christians in America,” The Church Report (Scottsdale, AZ: Christy Media), [Online], available: http://www.thechurchreport.com/mag_article.php?mid=643&type=year [13 April 2007].
2. David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” Time, 18 September 2006.
3. Lois Romano, “The ‘Smiling Preacher’ Builds on Large Following,” The Washington Post, 30 January 2005.
4. Kimberly Hayes Taylor, “Her Ministry Reaches Millions,” The Detroit News, 12 September 2003.
5. As, for example, these aims emanated from much of sixteenth–century Spiritualism, including the Zwickau prophets and the peasant forces led by Thomas Muntzer in the 1524–25 Peasants’ War, who certainly had no theological affinities to Word–Faith thought.
6. D. R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 185.
7. I am here referring to Richard Mouw’s outlandish but highly publicized allegation that the pivotal LDS doctrine of essential identity between God and humanity has become passé in Mormon theology, which allegation Ronald V. Huggins has decisively refuted in “Lorenzo Snow’s Couplet: ‘As Man Now Is, God Once Was; As God Now Is, Man May Be’: ‘No Functioning Place in Present–Day Mormon Doctrine?’ A Response to Richard Mouw,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49.3 (2006): 549–68.
8. Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church (TBN, 5 November 2006); Joyce Meyer, Enjoying Everyday Life (INSP, 20 November 2006); Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (TBN, 26 November 2006); Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day (INSP, 9 November 2006); cf. McConnell, Different Gospel, 116–21.
9. Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church (TBN, 8 November 2006); Joyce Meyer, Enjoying Everyday Life (INSP, 1 November 2006); Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (TBN, 19 November 2006); Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day (INSP, 10 November 2006); cf. Robert M. Bowman, Jr., The Word–Faith Controversy: Understanding the Health and Wealth Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001), 105–14.
10. Kirk R. MacGregor, A Central European Synthesis of Radical and Magisterial Reform (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), 44–46; Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1985), 143–45.
11. Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 97–104.
12. Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1997), 107–20; McConnell, Different Gospel, 122–23; John F. MacArthur, Jr., Charismatic Chaos (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 331–36.
13. Ted Rouse, Understanding the Grace and Covenant of God (Huntsville, AL: MileStones International, 2005), 47.
14. Kenneth Copeland, Now Are We In Christ Jesus (Fort Worth: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1999), 6; Joel Osteen, “Receiving God’s Mercy,” CD #JC0262 (Houston: Joel Osteen, 17 April 2005).
15. Joyce Meyer, “Me and My Big Mouth”: Your Answer Is Right Under Your Nose (New York: Warner Faith, 1997), 230–31.
16. Benny Hinn, “The Glorious and Eternal Power of the Blood of Jesus” audiotape (Irving, TX: Benny Hinn Ministries, 2001).
17. The motto of Osteen’s Lakewood Church, displayed on the church’s website as well as during the introduction of every Lakewood Church telecast.
18. Meyer, “Me and My Big Mouth,” 229.
19. Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now (New York: Warner Faith, 2004), 64.
20. Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church (TBN, 19 November 2006); Joyce Meyer, Enjoying Everyday Life (INSP, 13 November 2006); Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (TBN, 7 November 2006); Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day (INSP, 28 November 2006); cf. Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 137–45.
21. Copeland, In Christ Jesus, 2, 8; Osteen, “Receiving God’s Mercy,” CD #JC0262; Joyce Meyer, “Authority and Opposition,” audiotape #1236 (Fenton, MO.: Joyce Meyer Ministries, 2003).
22. See, for example, Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy and Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis.
23. Meyer, “Authority and Opposition,” audiotape #1236.
24. Kenneth E. Hagin, “The Incarnation,” The Word of Faith (December 1980): 14; Copeland, In Christ Jesus, 8.
25. Particularly Osteen’s unwitting evocation of the phrases “very God of very God” and “one in nature with the Father” in his provocative depiction of believers as possessing “the very nature of God.”
26. Osteen, “Receiving God’s Mercy,” CD #JC0262.
27. Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now (New York: Time Warner Audiobooks, 2004), CD 3.
28. Kenneth Copeland, “The Believer’s Voice of Victory” program on TBN, 1 May 2005.
29. For thorough critiques see Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 97–228, McConnell, Different Gospel, 101–220, Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, 59–276, and MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos, 322–53.
30. Kenneth E. Hagin, “How Jesus Obtained His Name” (Tulsa: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1989), tape #44H01.
31. David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch, JSOTSup 10 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978), 26.
32. Paul R. House explains that this aspect of the covenant “amounts to one friend’s trust of another friend’s promises. Because of his faith, God considers [Abraham] righteous, or rightly related to God, and thus secure in the Lord.. .. Paul concludes that Jesus fulfills the promise of international blessing, for Jesus is the offspring of Abraham who mediates salvation to all persons” (Old Testament Theology [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998], 74, 76); cf. Andrew E. Hill and John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 74.
33. Clines, Theme of the Pentateuch, 26–27.
34. An understanding reinforced by George Mendenhall’s demonstration that the Mosaic Covenant is cast in the form of a Suzerainty–Vassal treaty, which Ancient Near Eastern kings made only with redeemed or conquered nations and never with individuals (Law and Covenant in Israel [Pittsburgh: Biblical Colloquium, 1955], 11–12).
35. Jay A. Holstein, The Jewish Experience, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Burgess, 1990), 169, 306–07.
36. Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice–Hall, 1998), 276–81; House, Old Testament Theology, 291–92.
37. Hill and Walton, Survey of the Old Testament, 140–41; House, Old Testament Theology, 191–92.
38. Although Galatians could be dated as early as 48 (if sent to South Galatian rather than North Galatian churches), the religio–historical context of the epistle would remain the same in any case; for a thorough discussion of the chronological issues see Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, 4th rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 465–81.
39. Oskar Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 171–75; cf. Acts 22:1–16; 24:14.
40. This is not to suggest, however, that believers are exempt from natural law, or the moral law that Paul insists in Romans 2:12–16 is written on the heart of every human being regardless of culture or spatio–temporal location (many aspects of which law appear in the Decalogue), for its requirements are amply attested outside the Mosaic Covenant as universal ethical imperatives for all humanity in both Testaments of Scripture (for a handful of illustrations see Prov. 6:16–19; Ps. 94:1–6; Isa. 33:15; Jer. 7:5–10; Mt. 15:19; Mk. 7:20–23; 12:29–31; Gal. 5:19–21; 1 Cor. 6:9–10; 1 Tim. 1:9–11). Rather, Paul argues that regulations based exclusively on the Mosaic Law – namely, those which were socio–culturally particular to biblical Israel – need no longer be kept. (Hebrews 7:11–10:18 would push the argument one step further by insisting that they should no longer be kept since their symbolism has now been definitively realized in the time–space order by Jesus.)
41. That the covenant announced by Jesus was both a continuation and extension of the Abrahamic Covenant is the reason why the two form–critically earliest oral traditions reporting the Last Supper, the pre–Markan passion narrative and the Eucharistic creed (both formulated in the a.d. 30s), respectively depict the cup as “my blood of the covenant” (Mk. 14:24) and “the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25); for a thorough analysis of these traditions see Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1977), 2:21, 364–77 and Joachim Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, tr. Norman Perrin (London: SCM, 1966), 101–05. As E. J. Carnell aptly summarizes: “Abraham is a blessing to all nations because Jesus Christ is the true offspring of Abraham. There is one covenant; it unites both economies in the Bible” (The Case for Orthodox Theology [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959], 18).
42. F. F. Bruce, “The Curse of the Law,” in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honor of C. K. Barrett, eds. M. D. Hooker and S. G. Wilson (London: SPCK, 1982), 33.
43. Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 197–99; McConnell, Different Gospel, 132–46; Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, 65–71.
44. I borrow this phrase from Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 45.