架空圣经的“类基督教”之兴起
根据2001年的人口普查，南非的基督徒比例达到百分之八十。从统计学家的立场看，这就是个基督教国家。数百年来一直有宣教士在南非工作。我自己所在的宗派于1794年就开始在开普敦服事。
不过数字是会骗人的。
一个基督教国家并不等于一个“福音化”国家，而“成功神学”在南非的繁荣则表明，我们这一代人或许正在见证“类基督教”的兴起，这是一种实际上架空圣经的基督教。
没听过福音的“基督徒”
我这个论断并不是基于统计数据。我没有采集数据，我收集的是人。有些人在知名大型教会参加聚会数年之后，不知怎么跑来我所服事的教会。接着，参加教会不久，他们告诉我们，对于在讲道和礼拜中常常听说他们是罪人感到十分吃惊。对他们而言，这是个全新的观点。
悲剧的是，他们说：在我们教会，觉得自己好像是第一次听到福音。他们开始为自己还在之前教会的朋友们担忧起来，接着甚至开始对那些教会感到愤怒。我可以理解这一点。
貌似基督教
为什么要称这种成功神学现象为“架空圣经的‘类基督教’”呢？当你停下脚步，仔细观察那些教会，你会听到貌似基督教的东西、看到貌似基督教的活动。
在那里，讲道也是有的。
不过，那种讲道通常只是激动人的演讲，是没有雨的云彩、被风飘荡，刺激人心却信息贫乏（犹1:12）。讲章不是建立在圣经神学的基础上，而是以一节不相干的经文为跳板，引向讲道者事先选定的论点。他们不是向人们指出按圣经所说、耶稣已经成就了的福音，而是号召人们负担起沉重艰难、他们必须如何行的“福音”。
当然，以圣经为根基的讲道理应带有刺激性，但我在这里所说的，是过分诉诸人心却不动用头脑的做法。人们遭遇到的是暗示和刺激，而不是通过与他们息息相关的圣道遇见永活的主耶稣基督。
在这样的教会里，也会谈论“罪”、“恩典”和“信心”。但这些词汇不再按照其在圣经中的范畴和上下文使用，相反，其涵义不是根据神学，而是根据心理学模糊地加以推定甚或灌输。例如，“罪”可能被描述为未能达到你的目标，而不是针对全能神的反叛。
一旦你重新定义了罪，接着马上就会重新定义拯救。拯救不再是通过耶稣消解忿怒的赎罪代死将人从神的忿怒之下解救出来；而成了解放人免除罪在现世的影响。耶稣会解救你脱离贫穷、抑郁、平庸，等等。
简单说来，这些教会有鼓动性的演讲，却没有解经讲道；强解经文为证，却没有圣经神学；有福音的应用，却没有福音；有道德性的改良，却没有悔改；号召社会正义和施舍，却不提福音化；强调社会地位，而不是可归责的教会成员制；奉迎溢美，而没有惩戒；教人努力忙碌，而非门徒训练；专业化，而非带领。
所有这些，造就出的是好人，而不是敬虔的人。他们不阅读、点划和学习圣经，他们学习自助。在神的道中，他们没有遇见神，而是遇见自己。圣经基本上成了一个道具，气氛取代了真正被救赎的团体，人们也不再紧紧抓住那既充满爱、又扎心的神的道。
按我的说法，这些教会就是架空圣经，他们的“基督教”只是某种“类基督教”。
一种神学和社会-经济的排列
对于以慕道友为中心的福音派教会，这样的描述可以适用于他们的成员吗？事实上，这构成了问题的一部分。
成功神学依神学和社会-经济排列有很大的差异。我所在的城市德班，与南非的整体情况一样，三个世界交织在一起。有世故的中产阶级和富人占据的郊区——在历史上是白人聚居的区域，但印度裔和非洲裔的新兴中产阶级人数也越来越多。有高密度、高犯罪率的环城带，称为“镇区”——历史上是黑人群体，远离郊区。还有极度贫穷、公共服务水平低下的农村地区，普遍的状况自然经济和严重的失业。当你在这三个世界之间穿行的时候，会发现不同流派的成功神学，从中产郊区以慕道友为中心、商业驱动型教会的轻度成功神学，一直到贫困区域明显异端性质的“三一广播网”（Trinity Broadcasting Network）以及辛班尼（Benny Hinn）的成功神学。
轻度成功神学向你和你的孩子们提供向往的工作和令人满意的婚姻。重度成功神学则许诺你的奶牛产奶、不孕的妇人生儿育女。
无论是轻度还是重度版本，这种架空圣经的类基督教正在南非蔓延。它精力充沛、不断增长，因而表面看来生机勃勃。但是这种福音是虚假的，个人敬虔可有可无，神学教育则遭到怀疑。我知道最终没有任何东西可以胜过耶稣的教会，阴间的权柄也做不到。但是现在在南非，在最糟糕的时候，我甚至觉得真教会的时代已经结束了。
反智主义和反权威主义
我在位于德班郊外的教区服事了17年，我理解最为透彻的或许是那里的情况。在中产阶级聚居的郊区，突出的标志是反智主义和反权威主义。人们可以说是功能性的文盲：他们能阅读，但却不读。大概因为我们的天气实在太好了？！在这个城市，生活被休闲、运动和电视占满了，以至于它在国内旅游市场打出的口号就是“南非的游乐场！”
南非西部的人也学会了怀疑权威、定例和传统。在种族隔离时期，荷兰改革宗教会被视为种族隔离政府的神学叭儿狗，为政府政策提供道德指南和神学合法性。因此，种族隔离打破后，有组织的宗教声名狼藉，荷兰改革宗教会差点分崩离析。现在该教会已经在自由主义神学的道路上越走越远（至少在其培训机构是如此）。
反智主义与反权威主义这两种一胎所生的潮流共同塑造了我所在的城市以及这个国家欣欣向荣的各种教会。尽管某些大型灵恩派教会并不反对正规训练，但他们更偏好内部课程，提供的是含混不清、缺乏历史根基的土造神学。[2]
还有人认为正规神学教育是不必要的，甚至是有害的。从书本中学习关于神的知识在本质上被视为不够属灵。有一种错误的区分，就是将神成文的话语与先知性或传言的话语（即“话”（Rhema））加以区别。（事实上，这个名词恰是南非最大教会的名字，在约翰内斯堡。其名称来源与甘坚信传道会（Kenneth Hagin Ministries）有关，据称成员超过40000人。令人悲伤的是，该教会已经拜倒在成功神学裙下。）
四处蔓延的反智主义与难以遏制的反权威主义结合，就造成了一种以灵恩派独立教会为主的教会景观。他们的领袖无一例外地年轻、充满恩赐，是强有力的鼓动者，还能够领导时尚潮流。可是据我所知，这些人没有一个接受过任何的正规神学训练。
古代异端卷土重来？
当我观察这些潮流，禁不住要问，我们看到的是不是古代异端卷土重来。已经有人提出，现代灵恩运动的种种景观，就该运动对世界的二元理解而言，本质上是诺斯替主义。[3]
再加上成功神学领袖们半伯拉纠式的人论，我们就不难理解为什么他们教会的前成员会觉得在讲道中强调罪是一个新观点。
这里或许还有一种新的幻影说？在一世纪，柏拉图背景的幻影说是对基督道成肉身的一种贬低，认为神的道成为人、不属灵、有理智具有贬低之意。因此，这些教会就忽视公开朗读和传讲神的话。
圣子教义方面的谬误
我的判断是，这些成功神学教会带来的最大危险不仅是他们在有关圣灵工作的教义方面出了错（在这方面他们几乎始终如一）；同时，他们也搞错了有关圣子工作的教义。
在主日，如果你走进德班的许多教会，会受到一种诱惑，要使你相信可以通过在唱诗过程中获得的体验建立与神更近的亲密关系，而不是通过主耶稣基督在十字架上的死。尽管基本上这些教会领袖不会这样明说，但他们的聚会带给人的印象是，想要与神建立友好关系并非只有十字架一条道路。相反，敬拜带领者通过类似于祭司的工作，可以带领你进入与神的关系之中；敬拜带领者是一个有资格带领你进入全能神临在的人。
这当然是在暗示地否认希伯来书9:24：“因为基督并不是进了人手所造的圣所（这不过是真圣所的影像），乃是进了天堂，如今为我们显在神面前”。
制定确认和否认的信仰告白的时机？
到某个时候，南非的福音派教会或许不得不制定信条，以这样的方式更清楚地将自己与那些拒绝历史传承的信仰、持历史上异端立场的教会领袖区别开。
或许这意味着要召集一个南非改革宗福音派的大会，起草一份信仰告白或信条，不仅确认我们相信的内容，还要否认我们不相信的东西。
需要有传讲福音的教会
尽管一份清楚的信仰告白可以在宏观层面上有所帮助，但这不会对普通南非人造成多少冲击。正如我之前说的，南非是一个基督教国家并不意味着它是一个福音化的国家。
感谢神，这个问题的解决方法，新约已经向我们启示了。不是大型机构或者改革宗福音派宗派，尽管这些都有帮助。解决方法是传讲福音的地方教会。
这样，我们就必须祷告求神兴起更多以清晰传讲主耶稣基督的福音为中心、为要务的教会——愿主成就！愿神在南非如此行，愿神在整个世界如此行——正如他长久以来始终如此所行，并且在我们离世之后还要长久所行的那样！
[1] REACH SA：南非改革宗福音派圣公会（Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa），前身是南非英格兰教会。不要与更大的南非自由派圣公会混淆。
[2] 这一点观察是我的助理格拉汉·海斯洛普作出的，在此我表示对他的感谢。
[3] 例如，参见Victor Kuligin Ten Things I Wish Jesus Never Said (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006), 22-23.
The Rise of a Parallel, Post-Biblical Christianity
Eighty percent of South Africa is Christian, said the 2001 census. It is, from a statistician’s vantage point, a “churched” nation. There have been missionaries for hundreds of years. My own denomination started services in Cape Town 1794.[1]
Yet numbers can be deceiving.
A churched nation is not the same thing as a “gospeled” nation, and the massive growth of the so-called prosperity gospel in South Africa suggests that my generation may be observing the rise of “parallel Christianity,” a Christianity that is effectively post-Bible.
“CHRISTIANS” WHO DON’T KNOW THE GOSPEL
This claim isn’t based on statistics. I haven’t gathered those. I have gathered people. I have human beings who have attended the well-known bigger churches for years, and then somehow found their way into the church where I serve. Then, after attending for a little while, they tell us they are surprised to regularly hear in the preaching and the liturgy that they are sinners. It’s a new thought for them.
They tell us—tragically—that in our church they feel like they are hearing the gospel for the first time. They become anxious for their friends in their former churches. Then they even get angry at those churches. I understand.
CHRISTIAN-LIKE
Why refer to the prosperity gospel phenomenon as a “parallel, post-biblical Christianity”? When you stop to look inside these churches, you hear Christian-like things and you see Christian-like activities.
So there is preaching. But often the preaching is just motivational speaking, waterless clouds blown by the wind that offer inspiration without information (Jude 12). Sermons aren’t built on biblical theology, but employ an occasional verse to springboard toward the preacher’s pre-chosen point. They don’t point people to the biblical gospel of what Christ has done, but call them to the burdensome “gospel” of what they must do.
Surely, biblical preaching should be inspirational, but what I am speaking about here is the overplay of tugging the heart and a failure to engage the mind. People are confronted with suggestions and incentives, not the living Lord Jesus Christ through his ever-relevant word.
In such churches, there is talk of “sin,” “grace,” and “faith.” But these words are no longer used according to their biblical categories and context. Instead, their meanings are vaguely assumed, or are informed not by theology but psychology. For example, “sin” might be described as the failure to achieve your goals, not as rebellion against an Almighty God.
Once you have redefined sin, it’s a short step to redefine salvation. Salvation is no longer the rescue from God’s wrath by the wrath-absorbing, vicarious death of Jesus for the forgiveness of sin; it is the rescue from the temporal effects of sin. Jesus will rescue you from poverty, depression, mediocrity, and so on.
In short—and using the nine marks—these churches offer motivational talks, not biblical sermons; proof-texts, not biblical theology; applications of the gospel, not the gospel; moral improvement, not conversion; calls to social justice and giving, not evangelism; status in the community, not accountability-affording membership; flattery, not discipline; lessons in getting busy, not discipleship; professionalism, not leadership.
All this produces nice people instead of godly people. They don’t come to read, mark, and learn the Scriptures, they come to learn self-help. They don’t encounter God in his Word, they encounter themselves. The Bible is seldom more than a stage prop, and atmosphere takes the place of a real redeemed community, grappling with the loving and wounding word of God.
These churches, as I say, are post-biblical. Their “Christianity” is a parallel one.
A THEOLOGICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC SPECTRUM
Might these descriptions not fit any number of evangelical seeker-sensitive churches? In fact, that’s part of the problem.
Prosperity gospel churches vary considerably along the theological and socio-economic spectrum. My own city of Durban, like South Africa generally, offers three worlds in one. There are sophisticated middle class and wealthy suburban areas—historically white but with a growing Indian and African emerging middle class. There are high-density, high-crime peri-urban areas called “townships”—historically black, and far removed from the suburbs. And there are the abjectly poor, underserviced rural areas, where subsistence farming and unemployment dominate existence. As you move between these three worlds, you find different brands of prosperity gospel, ranging from a “lite” prosperity gospel in the seeker-sensitive business-driven churches in the middle class suburbs all the way over to a more blatantly heterodox Trinity Broadcasting Network and Benny Hinn prosperity in the poorer areas.
Prosperity-gospel lite offers fulfilling jobs and satisfying marriages for you and your children. Prosperity-gospel heavy promises that your cows will give milk and that your barren womb will open.
Whether in the lite or heavy versions, this parallel, post-biblical Christianity is spreading throughout South Africa. Superficially, it looks alive because it’s vibrant and growing.
But the gospel is assumed, personal godliness is optional, and theological education is held in suspicion. I know that nothing, not even the gates of Hades, will prevail against Jesus’ church in the end. But right now in South Africa, in my worst moments, I sometimes feel that the true church’s day is over.
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AND ANTI-AUTHORITARIANISM
The suburban church-scape in Durban City is perhaps the context I understand best, having ministered there for 17 years now. These middle class suburbs are marked by anti-intellectualism and anti-authoritarianism. People are functionally illiterate: they can read, but don’t. Maybe it’s our gorgeous weather?! Leisure, sport, and television have won the day in the city that positions itself for the domestic tourism market with the tag-line, “The playground of South Africa!”
Western South Africans have also learned to be suspicious of authority, establishment, and tradition. Under apartheid the Dutch Reformed Church was considered to be the theological lap dog of the apartheid government, providing the moral compass and theological justification for its policies. This brought massive shame on organized religion in the aftermath of apartheid, with the DRC all but falling apart. It is now far down the track of theological liberalism (at least in its training institutions).
The twin attitudes of anti-intellectualism and anti-authoritarianism in turn shape the kinds of churches that thrive in my city and around the nation. While some of the larger charismatic churches aren’t against formal training, they prefer to offer in-house classes, providing vague and historically unmoored home-branded theology.[2]
Others take the view that formal theological education is unnecessary, even harmful. Learning about God from books is essentially seen as unspiritual. A false distinction is made between the written word of God and the prophetic or uttered word of God—the Rhema. (Indeed, Rhema is the name of the country’s biggest church in Johannesburg. Its name is taken from links with Kenneth Hagin Ministries and boasts a membership of over 40,000. Sadly, it has sold out to the prosperity gospel.)
Combine this pervasive anti-intellectualism with rabid anti-authoritarianism, and you have a churchscape dominated by independent charismatic churches. Their leaders are exceptionally gifted, invariably young and powerful motivators and predictably trendy. Yet I cannot think of one that I know of who has had any formal theological training.
A REVIVAL OF THE ANCIENT HERESIES?
As I’ve observed these trends, I have wondered if we are seeing the ancient heresies revived. Others have argued that aspects of the modern charismatic movement are essentially Gnostic in the movement’s dualistic understanding of the world.[3]
Add to that a basic anthropology among prosperity gospel’s leaders that is semi-Pelagian, and one understands why the former members of their congregations find that the sermonic emphasis on their sin is a new idea.
Perhaps there is a new form of Docetism here, too? If first-century Docetism was a Platonic embarrassment of the incarnation of Christ, there seems to be a tacit embarrassment of the written word of God as pedestrian, unspiritual, and intellectual. Hence these churches neglect publically reading and preaching God’s Word.
GETTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE SON WRONG
It is my conviction that the greatest danger posed by these prosperity gospel churches is not only that they get the doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit wrong, which they almost always do; they get the doctrine of the work of the Son wrong.
On any given Sunday in Durban in many churches, you will be tempted to believe that you can draw close to God in intimate relationship through an experience during the singing, rather than through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. While I would be surprised if any of these leaders would explicitly say this, their gatherings create the impression that the cross is not the only way to friendship with God. Instead, you can be ushered into relationship with God by the worship leader who effectively acts as a priest—one qualified to lead you into the presence of Almighty God.
Surely this is an implicit denial of Hebrews 9:24: “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”
TIME FOR A STATEMENT OF AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS?
At some point the evangelical churches in South Africa may need to state their credo in such a way that more clearly distances them from church leaders who deny the historic faith through these historic heresies.
Maybe that means calling together a council among reformed evangelical churches in South Africa in order to write a statement or a creed that doesn’t only affirm what we believe, but also denies what we don’t believe.
THE NEED FOR GOSPEL PREACHING CHURCHES
While a clear statement may help on a macro-level, it won’t much impact ordinary South Africans. As I said earlier, the fact that South Africa is a churched nation doesn’t mean it’s a gospeled nation.
Thankfully, the solution to that problem is revealed to us in the New Testament. It is not macro-organizations or reformed evangelical denominations, as helpful as those may be. It is gospel-preaching local churches.
Our prayer then must be that God would raise up more churches where the clear gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ remains front and center—come what may! May he do that in South Africa, and may he do that in the world—as he has always done, and will continue to do long after we are gone!
[1] REACH SA: Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa—formerly The Church of England in SA. This is not to be confused with the larger liberal Anglican Church of SA.
[2] I am grateful for this observation made by my assistant, Graham Heslop.
[3] See for example Victor Kuligin Ten Things I Wish Jesus Never Said (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006), 22-23.
作者：Grant Retief
作者是南非德班市郊乌姆赫兰镇基督教会牧区主任牧师。他和妻子育有三个孩子。
翻译肢体：徐震宇
用圣经视野和实用资源装备教会领袖
进而通过健康的教会向世界彰显神的荣耀
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