Michael Scott Horton

Synopsis:
An examination and critique of the current state of Christianity in America, which shows the pervasive influences of Pelagianism and Gnosticism–these heresies are closer than you think.

Review:
Michael Horton had me at “Joel Osteen.” I was blown away by the incisiveness of Christless Christianity, a stunning work that made me so, so thankful to be attending a church deeply rooted in Reformation orthopraxis.

The first section of the book deals with the prosperity gospel, looking show more at Osteen and others of his ilk who preach that God wants good things for you, but who never mention Jesus or the cross in any of their sermons. Horton shows that the “easy” road that these teachers proclaim is actually just another form of legalism. All you have to do to live the good life is to follow God and be a good person. God helps those who help themselves. The onus of salvation rests squarely on our shoulders. God does not come down to us; we build a stairway to him. This is Pelagianism, which says that we must play a part in our own redemption. The reformers (Calvin and Luther, etcetera) countered this heresy by preaching that salvation is by grace alone–we do nothing.

The second section of the book delves into the Emergent church and public spokesmen like Jim Wallis and Rick Warren, those who preach that churches are to take up where Jesus left off, and continue to redeem the world. This is the “living gospel” or “deed without creed.” Horton explains how these teachings betray Gnostic tendencies that elevate human beings above God.

Even more important in this section was Horton’s depiction of the church as a place where believers come to be served by God through the sacraments and the Word. Too often the modern church becomes another workplace, with believers encouraged to throw themselves into ministry. In fact, church itself is hardly necessary at all. Just go and “live the gospel.” The sacraments become “means of commitment” rather than “means of grace.” Here again, we find a legalistic gospel that says that our works are the most important thing in the salvation equation.

Horton emphatically states that believers need to receive the Word and the sacraments, out of which will flow worship and service. Too many churches get it the wrong way round, saying that we need to get our hearts right with God on our own. He writes,

"The church has a very narrow commission. It is not called to be an alternative neighborhood, circle of friends, political action committee, or public service agency; it is called to deliver Christ so clearly and fully that believers are prepared to be salt and light in the worldly stations to which God has called them. Why should a person go through all the trouble of belonging to a church and showing up each Sunday if God is the passive receiver and we are the active giver?

…Not only once upon a time, on a hill far away, but each week the Son of God comes to serve us. We may protest. We may think that it is we who need to serve God rather than vice versa. Nevertheless, Jesus tells us as he told Peter that this is actually an insult, a form of pride. We are the ones who need to be bathed, clothed, and fed, not God.

…the main purpose of singing in church is not to express our inner experience, piety and zeal but to serve each other by making ‘the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16)… Pastors and teachers are not cruise director who provide venues for everyone to channel all of their gifts and energies to the church, but they are deliverers of the message of Christ."

So much good news here! show less

As one who enjoys reading, there are very few books that I genuinely loathe…“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand is one that comes immediately to mind. (And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy the story…it’s just that the train-wreck of John Galt’s 80-pages-plus “radio address” near the book’s end ruined it.) However, on VERY rare occasions, I discover a book that I simultaneously loathe and love. Horton’s “Beyond Culture Wars” falls into this purgatorial category.

I will begin show more with the main reason that I loved the book. First, I wholeheartedly agree with the book’s major premise that the American church, in both its mainline/liberal Protestant and conservative Evangelical expressions, has decidedly lost its way, trading in its theological identity for some sort of mushy socio-political alternative lifestyle. Many within the church have mistakenly identified particular political and economic agendas as theologically “orthodox” when the reality is that Scripture has very little, if anything, to say about it. Take, for example, the debate about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of capitalism versus socialism. If we were quite honest, the Bible says next to nothing that could be construed as “favoring” one over the other. Or, better, what the Bible does say about the nature of human solidarity stands as a burning critique of BOTH capitalism AND socialism’s sinful excesses. Yet, the Church has essentially allowed itself to be co-opted by proponents of particular economic philosophies which, in turn, has a) alienated those who do not share that economic philosophy from the message of the Gospel and b) has distracted the American church from her primary mission of evangelism and the salvation of souls.

Horton is at his best when he is attacking the American civil religion that has disguised itself in Judeo-Christian robes. This leads him to positions that many I know would find surprising and perhaps offensive. For example, Horton does not wish for a return of prayer in the public schools, not because he doesn’t believe in prayer but because the prayer that is offered in such circumstances is not nor could it ever be prayer offered to Jesus Christ. Instead, the nation offers up prayers to a generic “god” who would best be named the American Dream and those who join the prayer intercede not for the coming of the heavenly Kingdom but for the success of the national self-interest.

However, when it came to providing answers, I found that I largely HATED Horton’s solutions. First, Horton annoyingly tries to lay the blame for this current “identity crisis” that has infected American Christianity on 19th and early 20th-century revivalism, especially in its involvement with emancipation, women’s suffrage, and prohibition. Having been raised in one of those disparaged “revival” movements (i.e., Pentecostalism), I felt that Horton’s analysis of the impact of revivalism in America fell flat. In reality, it was an attack that, in my opinion, was driven more by his disagreements with Charles Finney’s hamartiological views than with any careful analysis of the actual effects of the various revival movements. Furthermore, it could be argued that these high levels of religious movement’s broader social engagement that are responsible for American religious vitality compared to, say, Europe.

I also struggled with Horton’s commitment to the “Two Kingdoms” ideology of Luther and the later Reformation. He purposely avoids, it seems to me, discussing the ways in which Calvin attempted to use the civil government in Geneva to enforce theological orthodoxy, especially in his burning of Michael Servetus. I would think that, given Calvin’s clear heroic status in Horton’s mind, he would have taken time to address this tragic event, especially because it speaks directly to his claim about the key troubles of our own times. There is a significant history lesson here but, since it would come at Calvin’s expense, Horton would rather avoid it.

At the end of the day, while I agreed largely with Horton’s diagnosis of the issue, I’m not altogether convinced by his proposed cure, steeped as it is a Reformed theology that I find almost repugnant in some respects. For me, the most fascinating part of reading Horton’s book was recalling that it was published in 1993…just over 25 YEARS ago in those long-forgotten halcyon days of the Clinton administration. Reading Horton’s warnings in the midst of Trump’s ascendancy demonstrated how little the American church has actually learned. The problems Horton identifies have magnified ten-fold. Instead of backing down, religious leaders have chosen to double down on doomed-to-fail attempts to attain and retain worldly power. The questions Horton raises in this work are even MORE valuable analytical tools in our own world. show less

A Presbyterian paean of praise to the ordinary life. There’s a good bit of winsome and accessible wisdom here encouraging Christians to pull back from the flashy and exhausting (not to mention disillusioning) drive to Change The World, and to reorient ourselves to minding our own business, working with our hands, and living quiet lives of responsibility and love within the spheres God’s given us. This is a good antidote to the voices within and without the church that beat on us with the show more incessant reminder that we’re wasting our lives if we’re not Changing The World, which is such a joy-killing message when most of us are ordinary people just trying to get through our ordinary lives without making too much of a mess of it.

As a bonus for me, while reading the prefatory material, I had the thought that the powerful closing lines of Eliot’s “Middlemarch” would be a fitting epitaph for this book, only to find these very words opening the main content. Hooray for the classics! show less

Synopsis:
An in-depth explanation of the Christian gospel, intended to teach believers what they believe and why the believe it.

Review:
The Gospel-Driven Life is a companion piece to Michael Horton’s paradigm-shifting Christless Christianity. Where the latter offers a critique of the sorry state of nominally Christian churches, The Gospel-Driven Life gives believers the meat and potatoes of real, saving faith in Christ.

I deeply heart Michael Horton. I am an obsessive listener of his podcast, show more The White Horse Inn, and just subscribed to his magazine, Modern Reformation. He and his colleagues are doing good work teaching Christians that the good news is not “Jesus lives in my heart and makes me a better person,” but that God intervened in history to provide a way of salvation through the life and death of Christ. I would go into more detail but fear I would end up just typing out the whole book for you. I dogeared so many great passages! I’ll be coming back to this book many times in my life. show less