Naming Our Captivity

Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism

BetterHelp.com

approximately $1.03 billion in revenue in 2024 with over

34,000 licensed therapists and roughly

400,000 paying users as of late 2024

What does this tell us?

People have problems that they feel they cannot figure out or handle on their own.

People want relief from these problems to the extent that they are willing to pay someone to assist them to figure it all out.

It has been documented over the past 20 years

Christianity in America, including what we might call evangelicalism is less interested in truth than in therapy.

So, we might conclude that people’s understanding of their problems, from which they want relief, is somehow in their minds outside the realm of truth. To put it another way, many professing Christians do not believe there is a connection between relief from their problems (pain) and the truth.

Now the phrase “Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism” was the way Sociologist Christian Smith of Notre Dame described the spirituality of America. Smith led a team in a study on teen spirituality in America from 2001-05. Smith observed that most teens (keep in mind these teens are in their 30s now) including those reared in evangelical churches who said their faith was “very important” and makes a big difference in their lives are stunningly inarticulate concerning the actual content of that faith. Again, Smith describes this kind of spirituality of moralistic, therapeutic, deism. So, what is that?

Here’s Smith’s description:

God created the world

God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught in the Bible, and most world religions.

The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

God does not need to be particularly in one’s life except when needed to resolve the problem.

Good people go to heaven when they die.

Rom 3:23-24; Eph. 2:8-9; 1 John 2:15-17

Romans 3:23–24 ESV

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

1 John 2:15–17 ESV

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

How do these passages challenge a self-centered, therapeutic view of faith?

A Theological Diagnosis

Pelagianism

Denies original sin

Sin is not a universal condition but a choice that each person makes.

Our free will enables us to choose to follow either Adam’s bad example or the good example of Jesus.

Ultimately condemned by the church

The author of Christless Christianity says that this is our most natural theology. Why is this?

Semi-Pelagianism

People possess the ability to choose good or bad (sin or righteousness) and thereby merit eternal life.

People need some divine assistance to possess favor from the Lord

Arminianism

One step removed from semi-pelagianism

A response to and rejection of Calvinism

Like semi-pelagianism, affirms the necessity of grace

Believes that salvation is a cooperative effort of God and human beings.

Charles Finney: A modern-day example of Pelagianism

Taught we are only guilty and corrupt when we choose to sin (denied original sin).

Christ’s work on the cross did not pay for our sin, but only served as a moral example and influence to persuade us to repent.

The atonement is simply an incentive to virtue.

It is true, that the atonement, of itself, does not secure the salvation of any one. Charles Finney

Finney believed that justification by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is not only absurd, but undermines all motivation for personal holiness.

He also taught that the new birth is not a divine gift but the result of a rational choice to turn from sin to obedience.

Christians can perfectly obey God in this life if they choose, and only in this way are they justified.

To quote Charles Finney from his systematic theology

As has already been said, there can be no justification in a legal or forensic sense, but upon the ground of universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to the law… The doctrine of an imputed righteousness, or that Christ’s obedience to the law was accounted as our obedience, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption, for Christ’s righteousness could do no more than justify Himself. It can never be imputed to us… It was naturally impossible, then, for Him to obey on our behalf. Representing the atonement as the ground of the sinner’s justification has been a sad occasion of stumbling to many. Charles Finney, “Systematic Theology”.

Responses to Finney’s theology

It is not clear what use for God there is in this system of thought.

Salvation and moral improvement are in the hands of of the evangelist and the convert.

Salvation by works

No need for s Savior

No divine intervention is necessary

Now this may seem somewhat removed from our experience today. We may be able to believe that such theology is at work today, but what we should know is that many church leaders believe and practice Pelagianism without knowing that’s what they are doing.

See picture on phone of a page from Christless Christianity

The Infiltration of the Sacred by the Secular

Max Weber’s Secularization Theory

Religion is privatized

The truth claims of the Bible become subjective

“Jesus is alive” & “Jesus is Lord” are not regarded as objective truth claims based on historical events but become references to one’s personal experience.

Think about a familiar hymn: You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart.

Jesus is Lord can become based upon one’s decision to make Him Lord and Savior of one’s life.

But saving faith is based upon objective truth and historical events.

2 Peter 2:16; 1 John 1:1-3; Acts 10:39-41; Luke 1:1-2; 1 Cor 15:3-8

2 Peter 2:16 ESV

16 but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

Acts 10:39–41 ESV

39 And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

1 Corinthians 15:3–8 ESV

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Religion is relativized

Truth becomes your truth

For something to be true is contingent on a claim be meaningful, useful and transformative to the individual.

…Precisely because American religion has long cherished its opposition to more traditional forms of Christianity in favor of the sovereign inner experience of the individual, it not only survives but thrives in the atmosphere of this secularizing process.

The Impact on Church leadership

If Christianity is reduced to personal experience, then its leadership will consist of the most successful entrepreneurs and managers of extraordinary staged events.

But if Christianity is about public truth delivered through an external Word, then ministry and evangelism require educated leaders who can expound and apply that truth for the benefit of those under their care.

2 Timothy 4:1–2 ESV

1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

There is more to being a pastor than this, but this is fundamental to pastoral ministry. And there is no more effective way of pastoring people than through faithful exposition of the word of God.

It seems to me though that Pelagianism and Semi-Pelaginism ignore, or at best, marginalize the importance of the ministry of the word.

Our Natural Heresy

The default setting of the human heart

The religion of self-salvation

Much of Christianity in America and elsewhere in the world stop short of being fully Pelagian. Many Christians would stop short of saying their moral effort alone is sufficient for the securing of their salvation. I think most professing Christians would acknowledge their need for some divine assistance, though there would most likely be much confusion about how this all works.

Within this framework, the grace of God is primarily for assistance in moral transformation rather than for our rescue from our sin.

Eph 2:1-3

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Only the grace of God can rescue people from this state. This is a radical transformation and not a mere course correction that people may need from time to time.

Look out for Semi-Pelagianism!

Salvation is the result of the Cooperative efforts of God and humans.

Synergism

The technical term for this is synergism. Salvation is through both grace and free will.

Our clarity on this has significant implications for how we approach our own faith.

This will define our understanding of salvation and sanctification. Sinners require divine resurrection from their rebellious and dead state. Christians cannot manufacture true spiritual maturity as a result of their moral compulsions.

This means that no matter how much human ingenuity we might employ to make our ministry feel more relevant to people, our witness will fall on deaf ears unless God graciously intervenes.

Consider Jesus’ lament

Matthew 11:16–19 ESV

16 “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, 17 “ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ 18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

What Jesus is doing here is lamenting that the religious leaders of His day were like children playing games with funerals and marriage.

But what they failed to do is mourn over their sins when John the Baptist came who called people to repent because the KOG had drawn near.

And they failed to celebrate at the arrival of Jesus but instead rejected Him.

And this is how people often respond to preaching that does not shy away from the desperation of people for the grace of God because of their sin, but also the arrival of Jesus Christ who has defeated sin and death and is offered as the one, true Savior.