Word of Faith: Prosperity Theology II

  So, until Wednesday night I had never been to a church that followed what is called the Word of Faith movement.  This is a movement that is followed in churches aligned with Oral Roberts and Kenneth Copeland, among others.  It is also closely linked with what is known as Prosperity Theology, which I have written on a couple of posts down.  But Word of Faith (WoF) is more than just Prosperity Theology.  WoF has several distinct and, to me, rather disturbing beliefs about how God works in the world. 

  In the particular sermon I heard (and here I have an aside:  I had known that sermons could be more than ten minutes long; but two hours was way too much!!) there was an allusion to a specific doctrine of God found within the WoF movement.  In the Wof movement, God has seceded some of His sovereignty to the believer; hence the doctrine known variously as “positive confession” or “say-it-and-claim-it.”  Apparently they trace this doctrine to God in Genesis “speaking” the world into existence.  What it works out to (as far as I can tell) is that if a person with enough faith prays aurally telling God to heal them, they will be healed.  So the man giving the sermon at the church said that believers who were asking for God’s will to be done were not actually praying for anything.  Apparently, the Lord’s Prayer is mistaken then in asking for this then.  There is something else to be noted about this doctrine that lies under a first viewing.  By claiming that one can use God’s covenant with Abraham to tell God to do something, the teachers of the WoF movement are making a strange claim that God has place Himself under the law of the created universe.  It appears to make the claim that God’s will is somewhat beneath the Law, rather than that the Law is a creation of God’s will.

  The WoF movement is also basing this claim on an almost heretical blending of God and man.  Some of the main leaders in this movement (and I will provide some links to sites maintaining listings and analysis of their more memorable sayings) have claimed that God has made man the equivalent of Himself.  This goes beyond the traditional teaching that humans may become more Christ-/God-like in blurring the ontological distinction between God and humankind.

 

  The traditional understanding is that we are creation and God is Creator.  This is a simple way of understanding that God and human beings are distinct in being from each other.  No matter how “great” a person becomes, no matter how much God works in us to make us more like Him; we will always be creation and not creator.  God is infinite and we are not; but in remaking God in their own image, WoF teachers are following the paths of many who wished to place their own sovereignty before God’s.

  Christ’s place in the economy of salvation is also changed in the WoF movement.  Instead of the Sacrifice being Christ taking our place on the cross, teachers of the WoF movement spiritualize it and place it either in the Garden or in Hell.  Some of these leaders have taught that Christ has not forgiven our sins by becoming the true sin offering on the cross; but rather Christ literally became sin, taking on a “satanic nature” and suffered because of this in Hell for three days.  This is quite different from the more traditional view that, where the Bible and the Creeds say that Christ descended to Hell or the dead, it means that Christ went to Sheol to bring His good news to the departed.  Hell is an entirely different “place” that what is meant in the traditional teachings even though there are a few different explanations for what Hell actually means, as I have tried to explain in my earlier post, To Deny Hell.  The WoF movement teaches this (I think, because it does not make any sense to me) because they say that Adam’s fall turned over ownership of the world to Satan, and that Christ had to take on Satan’s nature which had to be killed in Hell in order to restore to world to God’s position.

  As I was hearing the sermon, and as I have done research since; my first reaction is to sit open mouthed and dumb struck.  But I am not done researching this, so stay tuned…

Bryan

Comments

[Lillie Ammann]

Reading this, I am "open mouthed and dumb struck" as well. God is sovereign ... man may be created in His image but we are not divine.

[Diane R]

Sadly Copeland and others have carried Hagin's teaching to some extremes including the prosperity message. But if you read Hagin you will find that he constantly put the cross and what was done there as the very center of his theology. The church you went to perhaps didn't make this very clear. It isn't saying a verse over and over. It's meditating on God's word with an emphasis on our covenant through what Jesus did at the cross. That is what Hagin taught and actually Copeland used to also.