Challenge of New Age Teachings Faced Early Church, Speaker Asserts

by James Dotson                                                                                                Vol. XI, No. 5, May 1998

Christians confronting the New Age movement face many of the same challenges as their counterparts confronting various forms of paganism in the early church, an author and seminary professor told a group of interfaith witness leaders. "We have the capability through the gospel to impact individuals who have bought into the paganism of Greece and Rome, whether it be New Age paganism or materialistic paganism," said H. Wayne House, professor of Bible and theology at Michigan Theological Seminary and author of several books on world religions. "If you remember, the early churches dealt with the same things we are dealing with, and the gospel won."

House was one of the several speakers at the North American Mission Board's March 21-24 annual meeting for state interfaith witness evangelism coordinators. The conference this year focused on the New Age movement in Sedona, AZ — known worldwide as a center of New Age spirituality.

House noted one of the most significant characteristics of New Age belief is a subjective view of truth based on experience, which also makes it difficult to reach an adherent of New Age philosophy. When an individual views the world through the prism of New Age relativism, the logic of Christianity becomes secondary to personal experience. "When you recognize that truth is determined not by some statement of God, but it is what I know by my experience, then you have essentially capitulated to the New Age movement," House said, "You can't argue from anything but experience."

He suggested one of the reasons New Age beliefs have made headway into such areas as education, business and medicine is because of a false distinction between philosophy and religion. Philosophy becomes acceptable, whereas Christianity — because of its exclusivity — is not. "I would suggest that Christianity is a philosophy ... . Philosophy is not something different from religion," he said. "Religion is a manifestation of philosophy."

John Newport, distinguished professor emeritus of philosophy of religion at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, provided an overview of the movement based on his recently published book, "The Worldview Crisis and the New Age Movement" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI). In analyzing the impact of the New Age, he noted such areas as the modern feminist movement, which at its extremes has been fueled by ancient goddess religions that fostered the empowerment of women. Newport also examined how the most radical environmental and animal rights activists have as their basis the pantheistic and monistic worldview that everything is linked by a divine, universal energy force. Newport also pointed out one central aspect of New Age belief is the idea of "transformation," that man can through his own efforts achieve increasingly higher spiritual states.

"It's all based on the same idea that we can become divine — we do not need a Savior, we do not need the basic thing that is present in Christianity," he said.

House said this view of mankind also leads to an absence of any ethical framework. "If we are God, and if man and God are essentially the same thing with all of their realities, then you cannot argue ethics because there can be no right and wrong," he said. In the Christian worldview, meanwhile, God by his nature of creator has set an absolute standard. "Sin is a lack of conformity to the standard God has set based on who he is. ... It is not a shifting target," House said.

N.S.R.K. Ravi, an associate in the NAMB interfaith witness evangelism department, told of how so much of what is seen in the modern New Age movement can be traced directly to Hinduism in its various forms. And the New Age movement itself has influenced popular culture in ways that are not always immediately apparent. "Every move taken in the Star Wars story is taken from Hindu mythology," he said.

Hinduism by its nature includes such a broad range of beliefs that it tends to readily adapt to different cultures, Ravi said. Its concepts then can appear fresh when couched in the New Age terminology of the West. Hindu temples, for example, have become "churches" in some cases, and even the doctrine of Karma has been changed to negate the role of personal responsibility. "It is a religion that absorbs everything on its way, and reinterprets," he said. "So you do see the concepts coming in the form of New Age ... which are already there in Hinduism."

Several speakers noted elements of the New Age do have some truth in them, such as the beneficial effects of meditation or a holistic approach to medicine. The difference is the belief system behind the practices. If holistic medicine is focused on health maintenance and physiological stress reduction and not on realigning the "divine energy" flowing through everything on earth, for instance, it can be beneficial. And meditation, if done in the proper context, is scriptural. “You never coat error with a bitter pill; you put chocolate around it. You take every false concept and surround it with truth," House said in describing the subtle deception of New Age teachings.

"We need to meditate for the purpose of having fellowship with God, not for the purpose of merging with God," he said, adding the scriptural teachings on meditation are based on reason. "You don't empty your mind. You fill your mind. The Scripture tells us to be thinking people."

The interfaith witness state coordinators who attended the conference serve as liaisons with the NAMB interfaith witness evangelism team in coordinating seminars and workshops at local, state and regional levels on various cults, sects, and religious movements. More than 600 volunteer interfaith witness associates, trained and certified by NAMB, led most of the seminars.

More information on the New Age movement, including single copies of a NAMB Belief Bulletin outlining basic beliefs and biblical responses, is available through the NAMB interfaith witness evangelism team, 770- 410-6332. Larger quantities of the Belief Bulletin may be ordered through the Baptist Sunday School Board, 1-800-233-1123.