Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters that the hero Ulysses had to sail past in a narrow strait in order to reach home. Western Christianity likewise has sought to navigate a journey between the two monsters of modernity and postmodernity—an insight that D. A. Carson chronicled in The Gagging of God.[1] On one side, the Scylla of modernity seeks to engulf Christians by saying that “1) reason is absolute and universal (2) that individuals are autonomous, … (3) [and] that universal principles and procedures are objective whereas preferences are subjective.”[2] On the other hand, the Charybdis of postmodernity denies these truths and rails against any absolute or objective truth. Can anyone make it home past these two monsters?
1. D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 136–137.
2. From Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Theology and the Condition of Postmodernity: A Report on Knowledge (of God),” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 8. The fact that postmodernism rejects any form of metanarrative, thus establishing its own grand story of reality, is the deepest irony of it as a thought system.
Of these two, postmodernism is the larger threat today, as seen by the astonishing diversity of worldviews and lifestyles juxtaposed with the remarkable acceptance of transgenderism and bizarre sexual practices (throuples, anyone?). The breaking of norms and the denial of objective truth was the academy’s domain decades ago, but now it has filtered down into the pew. At the risk of oversimplification, professing Christians in the West have responded to postmodernism in at least three ways—represented in different ships splitting the pass between these sea monsters. Some have drifted toward the Charybdis of postmodernism (progressive “Christianity”), some have backtracked and sailed away from it (fundamentalists),[3] and some exist somewhere in between (many evangelicals).[4]
But there is another ship that has charted their own strange course through the twin peaks of modernity and postmodernity. These are the Charismatics, those who stake a priority on the presence of God and miraculous encounters with him. Postmodernity seeks to make everything subjective, and Charismatics fill the void of doubt generated by postmodernism through experiences with God. In a strange way, they seek to sail right into Charybdis with the hope that this monster that prioritizes experience will actually help them make it home.
3. Carson lists three common responses to postmodernism in the religious arena: 1. Radical religious pluralism, which holds that no single religion can claim superiority over another religion; 2. Inclusivism, which holds to a confession of the truth of Christianity, but nonetheless in the backdoor lets in any other faith tradition or worldview via what they reckon as God’s “partial revelation”, even including salvific knowledge; and 3. Exclusivism, which holds to the exclusivity of the Christian faith as it pertains to absolute truth. The pursuit of exclusivism of the Christian faith is the right way to go, but it must be done in a way that is more nuanced than fundamentalism is ready to offer, which in general appears to take its epistemological positions for granted. See Carson, The Gagging of God, 26–27. See also Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company), 300.
4. Reformed theology of different stripes seems to be navigating the strait between mfodernism and postmodernism better, with its twin confessions of Sola Scriptura and Sola Gratia guiding the way. By this I mean the fact that the transcendent God alone has exhaustive knowledge, but that he does indeed in grace give us true knowledge in Scripture. The epistemological assumptions underlying much of Reformed theology are outside of the scope of this article, but needed mention as what to me seems a healthy response to the thoughts of our time, contra progressive Christianity and rigid fundamentalism.
I’ve seen this firsthand. I grew up in a city that is a mecca for Charismatics due to the presence of Bethel, a mega-church known for its zealous pursuit of “experiencing God” and the miraculous. I’ve had a unique opportunity to evaluate this phenomenon and its disastrous implications. Certainly, I’m the first to confess the biblical principle that God’s ways are not ours, and that Scripture itself testifies to profound and strange encounters with God. Jacob’s limping hip and Paul’s Damascus-road horse can surely testify to this!
But are such experiences a normal and expected part of the Christian’s weekly rhythm? This is precisely what many Charismatics believe. The idea of expecting experiences of God in profound and miraculous ways (as seen in the lives of many people in the Bible) has erroneously become a first principle; a norm-setting rule that is divorced from Scripture as its authority. Whereas the Reformers confessed Sola Scriptura, many Charismatics functionally cry Experientia Supremus—“experience is supreme!”—thereby foisting it into a position no less magisterial than Scripture itself.
This is problematic, because an unrestrained pursuit of spectacular experiences of God is a foolhardy attempt at domesticating One who cannot be domesticated. Can a man force the transcendent, infinite, sovereign God into the brass lamp of human experience by means of exuberant worship, “name-it-and-claim-it” prayer, or just a little more faith? To attempt this straddles the line of idolatry.
In this article, I want to show the destructive implications and the faulty theology that arises from putting miraculous experience of God as one’s first principle. I hope to highlight the primacy of Scripture alone as our first principle and to propose a possible way forward for both Charismatics and evangelicals as they confront postmodernism.
Unbalanced Expectations for the Miraculous Creates Theological Pressure Points
Several years ago, I met someone struggling with a chronic physical illness. But worse than his illness was his belief that God was withholding healing due to some internal spiritual deficiency—a common Charismatic teaching that arises from the belief that God always wants to heal.[5] The effects were damaging: each medical solution that failed to bring healing brought a worsening fear that this illness persisted due to some underlying spiritual condition. Instead of having a theology of suffering allowing for physical affliction to be a means of glorifying God and leading to greater conformity to Christ’s image (John 9:1–4; 2 Cor. 12:9), this stubborn illness was seen a chasm separating this Christian from the experience of God through miraculous healing. This wrong conviction came from his saturation in Bethel’s culture and teachings. Again, the first principle for much of Charismaticism is that signs, wonders, and miraculous experiences are always waiting for us on the other side of our faith-response.
5. Bill Johnson, the senior pastor of Bethel, has even said he can’t pray for healing with the preface of “if it’s your will” as it to him is a “prayer of unbelief” as God has already revealed it is his will to heal. See the interview entitled, “Bill Johnson: The Theology of Sickness and Healing: Rediscover Bethel.”
But what happens when a church is pregnant with expectation for the miraculous—and then the miraculous doesn’t transpire? The conclusion is that something must be amiss: some hindrance from man or the fallen angelic realm is keeping God from showing up. But Charismatics rarely if ever attribute a lack of healing to God’s benevolent will for an individual (as was the case with Paul’s thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10). Why? It’s the theological first principle at work again. Beyond this, the zealous expectation of the miraculous invites confirmation bias and can lead to spiritual counterfeits manufacturing a “miracle.”
This episode is not an isolated case. In another instance, a woman at Bethel had a vivid dream about Texas, and she interpreted this as the Lord telling her to uproot and move to that state. So she did—only to find that she couldn’t get a job, had no community, and that perhaps she had misinterpreted what God was saying. Instead of following the biblically commended ways of praying, fasting, and seeking wise counsel, this earnest young woman followed her perceived miraculous experience—the dream—and the whole ordeal turned into a nightmare.
These two scenarios are linked by the same faulty and fundamental presumption, namely, that perceived supernatural experiences with God hold sway over all else, even Scripture, as normative for the Christian life. And we see here how this error relates to the Charybdis of postmodernism. In seeking to overcome a faith-destabilizing postmodernism, Charismatics sought to sail directly into the belly of the monster itself. But apparently, you are what you gravitate towards. Postmodernism throws off objective norms in order to make subjective personal experience absolute, and Charismatics have followed suit.
In his book Fire from Heaven, Harvey Cox details the rapid growth of Pentecostalism over the last century alongside postmodernism. He enumerates what he sees as three forms of recovery that Pentecostalism articulates from the spiritual void created by postmodernity.[6] Cox details the growth of Pentecostalism amid the spiritual emptiness created by postmodernism, noting how Pentecostalism’s speaking in tongues, the pursuit of the supernatural, and the idea of a hastening new age all scratch a deep itch that postmodernity created.[7] The overlap with Charismaticism—a cousin of Pentecostalism—is easy to see.[8] While Cox does not share many evangelical convictions, his analysis substantiates the idea that misplacing experience as a first principle is done so because of the doubt created by postmodernism. In this vacuum, sensationalism and experience fill the void.
6. Cox, Harvey, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company), 81.
7. Cox, Fire from Heaven, 81–82.
8. Amos Yong in The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 18–19.
As the West takes an increasingly postmodern turn away from objective truth and towards subjective personal experience, the Charismatic seems to mistakenly find relief from this burden of doubt in spiritual experience instead of the Lord’s word.[9] But questions remain. Is spiritual experience a faithful guide home? And if not, what are the consequences of following its lead in the long run, and how do we fix our course?
Christian Experience: A Misplaced Magisterium
Stephen Wellum helpfully distinguishes the primacy of Scripture as norm-setting for the Christian, pointing out that Scripture alone has the ultimate or “magisterial” authority for the purpose of formulating Christian doctrine. He goes on to discuss the place of Church history/tradition as having a “ministerial” capacity—it serves as an aid in interpretation of Scripture (and thus, formulation of doctrine), but it never overrules Scripture.[10]
9. Though Carl Trueman’s discussion in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self of the sexual revolution concerns a different downstream tributary (the radical change in sexual norms), the Charismatic who prioritizes experience over Scripture is a downstream effect flowing from a common head-water. Trueman identifies the radical shift in sexual ethics as due primarily to the “prioritization of the individual’s inner psychology—we might even say ‘feelings’ or ‘intuitions’—for our sense of who we are and what the purpose of our lives is.” Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 25. Though more specific is Trueman’s concern for the shifts in society’s opinions of what is normal sexually, there is similarity in that Charismatics seem to emphasize the internal principle of their experience and give this priority over the external principle of God’s revelation in Scripture. Their felt sense becomes the arbiter, and thus is an internal regulator, over the external authority of the Word.
10. Wellum, Stephen, God the Son Incarnate (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 93. Christian experience is not on the same level of authority as tradition/church history (especially on the level of the ecumenical creeds like Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, or the later confessional material). Rather, when experience is rooted in and in accordance with Scripture, experience serves to furnish our understanding of the Christian faith in a vital way and helps us comprehend what it truly means to be Christians abiding in Christ.
These are helpful categories in relation to Scripture and experience. Christian experience also functions ministerially under the magisterial, norm-setting rule of Scripture. That is, experience serves as an aid in helping us understand our faith, and in a very real sense it is the living out of that faith.
No Christian should deny that experiencing God is important for the Christian life. Many individuals in Scripture experienced God: Job, Isaiah, Paul, and John (Job 38–42; Isaiah 6; Acts 9; Revelation 1:9–20) each had powerful encounters with the Lord that served as ballast for their ministry and lives. But though these men had profound encounters with God, it is backwards and dangerous to pursue their miraculous experiences as the model for attaining communion with God.
Why? The first reason is because the biblical writers had their experience/revelation in order for them to inscripturate it and provide for us a clear picture of God. The supernatural experiences/revelation with God recorded in the Bible were not given in principle for us to emulate them on a one-to-one basis. Rather, God gave these gifts of experience/revelation to chosen men who wrote them down for the world to have as a sure and normative witness to God’s character, his acts, and how to have fellowship with him. We aren’t to use Scripture’s examples of how people received divine revelation as exact, replicable, cookie-cutter models for how we are to do the same to receive our own revelation (to do so invites false experience touted as genuine, and is the road to counterfeit). [11]
Scripture itself is the perfect record of God’s saving words and deeds. God’s revelatory words and deeds were written down for us that we might establish a relationship with him. His objective revelation stands for us so that we could have a true witness of God that moves us toward a loving and worshipful relationship (and experience!) with God. The order for us then is to come to God’s revelation in Scripture first, and then to allow it to guide us toward experiencing him in the means that God prescribes, rather than trying to order our relationship with God by our perceived experience of him first. Experiencing God is never logically prior to his gracious and clear revelation, which he gives in order to establish objective religion for subjective Christian experience to function upon.[12]
In contrast, Charismatic circles appear to prefer a perceived miraculous experience with God over and above experiencing God through his revealed word. This faulty preference holds no promise for truly finding God, but rather invites the risk of seizing something different: doubting one’s spiritual health, fleshly sensationalism, or worse, genuine spiritual encounters that are not actually from God (2 Cor. 11:14). While Charismatics may reluctantly confess to Scripture’s authority and sufficiency, this rings hollow when God is pursued primarily through other means—namely, mystical and profound experiences.
11. This discussion has more nuance than space permits. While prayer for the overtly miraculous is enjoined in James 5:17–18, it suffices to say that the Christian shouldn’t understand every positive miraculous encounter between God and a person in Scripture as a valid example for how a Christian can and should pursue relationship with him.
12. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 1: 34.
Conclusion: Where Do we Sail from Here?
My aim in this article was to show how Charismatics have embraced a first principle of experience—in response to postmodernity—instead of having Scripture as their first principle. My prayer is that such an assessment would lead those involved in such theology and practice closer to Scripture—and thus, closer to God. In the final analysis, there are several things that evangelicals—including Charismatics—can do from here. First, we all must affirm Scripture as the Church’s only first principle (John 16:12–15). Whatever our affiliation, we ought have a Psalm 119 yearning for God’s revealed word beating in our hearts. We must cherish the Scripture that God himself has breathed out (2 Tim. 3:16).
Second, I would encourage both evangelicals and Charismatics to cultivate a greater theology of suffering. By this I mean that they should not seek to shortcut the road God has decreed as prerequisite for attaining the riches that wait at its end. Suffering before glory runs across the entire corpus of Scripture, and it figures prominently in the New Testament (this is in fact part of the main point of 1 Peter; see 1 Pet. 1:11; 2:21; 3:14, 18; 4:1, 13; 5:1, 9–10). Charismatics largely lack a category for suffering—including sickness—that God benevolently intends to grow Christlikeness (1 Pet. 2:21; Rom. 5:3–5; 8:28–29; 1 Pet. 4:1; Jas 1:2–4), to bring about conversion (Col. 1:24; 2 Cor 4:8–12), or to create a greater longing for the next life (Rom. 8:18f; 2 Cor 5:4; 1 Pet. 4:13). All of these realities are far more valuable than full physical health, and more, some are only mediated through suffering and pain. The crucible of Golgotha must precede the pleasure of the marriage supper of the Lamb—for Christ, and for every Charismatic or evangelical who follows him.
I give the final words of application to Carson’s The Gagging of God, where he helpfully sets priorities for Christians navigating the nebulous haze of spirituality (a shorthand for experiencing God). Carson rightly says that spirituality must always be considered (and pursued) in connection to the gospel. It must work outward from core (Scriptural) principles. Spirituality is no end of itself, but is only genuine if emerging from, and governed by, biblical and theological norms. Balancing this, we should rightly question sterile, systematic forms/expressions of Christianity that “demand faith, allegiance, and obedience, but do not engage the affections. . . . [or] foster an active sense of the presence of God.” However, this necessarily includes spiritual fruit: holiness, conformity to Christ, growth in understanding his Word, and so on. Further, Christians must reclaim the means of grace that is the Word, the very Word that Jesus prayed would sanctify us (John 17:17).[13] We must remember that spirituality and experience are both theological constructs that must be brought before the tribunal of Scripture. Any spiritual practice or experience must be appraised for its legitimacy (or lack thereof) by Scripture, and constantly be subject to reformation by Scripture. We must foster this by submitting ourselves and our experiences to Scripture, so as to bring every thought—and every expression of our faith—captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).[14]
13. “The best of evangelical heritage has always emphasized . . . ‘the spirituality of the word.’” Carson, The Gagging of God, 569.
14. This summary is my distillation of Carson’s thoughts. See Carson, The Gagging of God, 566ff for his full discussion of setting priorities for Christian spirituality.
If Scripture is our guide, then there is no sea monster that can shipwreck us. And if God is for us, then he will ordain means in order to conform us more and more into the glorious image of Christ (Rom. 8:28–29). God in his sovereignty has not barricaded these monsters from filling our world’s ideological landscape. And since this is undoubtedly so, it only remains to be seen how we as Christians will respond. In times of peril like today, we must never forget this. But we must also hold fast to the ultimate weapon of our warfare, the mighty sword of God’s Spirit, the Word of God that he graciously breathed out for us. This weapon is sharp enough to divide asunder any dark passage flanked by Scylla and Charybdis or otherwise. We must trust in God, knowing that though the journey may be marked by suffering and sickness, his Word is able to bring us all—both evangelicals and Charismatics alike—safely home.
