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A Twoist Model for Helping Your Utopian Neighbors
By Dr. Thaddeus Williams
How do we help our utopian neighbors, those around us who reject a biblical worldview, yet seek a better world? One common answer to this question is what we may call the chameleon strategy, which says that the church must take on the colors of the surrounding culture. We must alter basic hues of the Christian faith to blend in with dominant shades of our post-Christian context. We absorb the pigmentation of mainstream spirituality, emphasizing the mystical against the intellectual, the spiritual against the material, human power against divine power, an impersonal energy over a tripersonal God.
Although such adaptive tactics may seem like a promising method for helping our utopian neighbors, they often succeed only in rendering Christianity more irrelevant. I will briefly sketch a case for a better way to help our neighbors. In short, Christians are far more helpful to our utopian neighbors if we do not take on their colors. Believers who refuse to abandon what is utterly unique to the Christian worldview and who maintain distinctive biblical colors will be tremendously helpful to those beyond our worldview borders. We must show our neighbors, with a heavy dose of humility and love, the antithesis between the gospel and human-powered utopian systems. We must articulate the antithesis, and do so without arrogance or compromise.
In what follows I pinpoint five areas in which it is remarkably easy (and seriously unhelpful) to lose sight of the antithesis between the worldview of Twoism—in which the transcendent Creator exists over creation—and the worldview of Oneism—in which the creation is all there is.
1. Is Humanity Basically Good?
1.1 Anthropological Optimism
Christians are of no help to our utopian neighbors when we absorb the Oneist notion of “anthropological optimism.” Utopian systems tend to rest on a radical overestimation of human power, a view of man that says we are essentially good and/or God at our core. You are not a sinner who needs the grace of the God that comes from outside of yourself; rather, you are a super being who needs to recognize the greatness of the God who is your Self.
Let us briefly observe the tinges of anthropological optimism in secular thought. In the 18th century we meet the Genevan philosopher and composer Jean Jacques Rousseau. Jettisoning the Calvinism of his youth, Rousseau thought that, “there is no original perversity in the human heart… Man is naturally good… It is by our institutions alone that men become wicked.”[1] Your problems are not internal, but external. Evil is less an individual problem than an institutional problem. If we could only escape the corrupting influences of society’s institutions, then our innate goodness would shine through.
A similar anthropological optimism can be seen in the tragic tale of Marquis de Condorcet, one of Rousseau’s fellow architects of Enlightenment thought. Condorcet believed that, “There is no limit set to the perfecting of the powers of man; human perfectibility is in reality indefinite.”[2] In this explicitly utopian manifesto, Condorcet argues that there is no corrupt human nature thwarting our attempts to create heaven on earth. Rather our biggest obstacle is ignorance, which can be eliminated through education in the natural and social sciences In this modern echo of the ancient Greek doctrine of salvation from ignorance by education (rather than salvation from sin by grace), Condorcet anticipated that our knowledge-driven virtue would propel us beyond all divisions of class, religion, culture, and gender into an ever-expanding heaven-on-earth.[3] There is a sad irony to Condorcet’s optimistic appraisal of man’s intrinsic goodness. Writing during the French Revolution, Condorcet fell into disrepute with some of his fellow revolutionaries. He found himself in a Paris prison cell awaiting his turn at the guillotine. What was supposed to be a utopia dream—the age of reason and “the limitless perfectibility” of our species—became for Condorcet (and the tens of thousands who fell victim to the falling blade) a dystopian nightmare. Shortly after penning the words about our innate goodness and moral perfectability, Condorcet was killed in prison. Scholars disagree on whether the French optimist committed suicide or was murdered. In either case, Condorcet’s sad fate became a grim refutation of his own view of human nature.
The hard lessons learned from the guillotines of the French Enlightenment were also learned in the gulags of Russian Communism (another secular system that believed “man is basically good and capable of being master of his own destiny.”[4]). Tens of millions have perished over the last two centuries on the altar of systems built on man’s intrinsic goodness. Human evil runs deeper than any purely external diagnosis.[5]
Peter Jones has argued that Western culture has moved beyond the secular age of scientific materialism into a more “post-secular” age of mystical spirutualism. In this transition, the worldview orientation moves from the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and the empirical world to Carl Jung’s focus on the mystical and the invisible world. What remains intact through the transition, however, is the belief in man’s intrinsic goodness. For a secularist like W. K. Clifford, “Our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth and his eyes, and says, ‘before Jehovah was, I am.’” From the voices of post-secular thought, though more pantheistic than atheistic, we hear the same theme of human deification: “Heaven lies within himself,” says Vivekananda. “We are as Gods and might as well get good at it,” echoes Swami Muktananda . George Leonard adds that, “we are like a God, omnipotent and omniscient.” The secular theme of man’s good-ness achieves its logical conclusion in the post-secular doctrine of man’s God-ness. Anthropology finally becomes Theology as Oneism erases the distinction between the creature and the Creator.
1.2 The Pelagian Captivity of the Church
The radical self-exaltation we find in secular and post-secular forms of Oneism has made its way into the church world. Historically, we can trace the theme of man’s staggering moral abilities from Pelagius in the fourth century, to Erasmus in the 16th century, Charles Finney in the 19th century, and many Christian pastors in our day. In Pelagian thought, “human nature is uncorrupted, and the natural will competent to all good… and salvation is essentially a work of man.”[6] For Erasmus, “it is in the power of every man to keep what is commanded.”[7] For Finney, “men have power or ability to do all their duty.”[8] In today’s church world, we can get a sense for how widespread such anthropological optimism has become in the wild popularity of Joel Osteen. Here is a sampling of Osteen’s optimistic anthropology from his bestseller, Becoming a Better You:
Have confidence in yourself… You can choose to change… I don’t do wrong on purpose… I know my heart is right. To the best of my ability, I’m doing what pleases Him… When we believe we have what it takes, we focus on our possibilities…[9]
Just like Rousseau and Condorcet, Osteen views humanity as essentially good at our core, with tremendous internal capacity to achieve greatness. Osteen is far from alone in this conviction. The widespread belief that we are basically good has been described accurately by R.C. Sproul as “the Pelagian captivity of the church.”[10] You could attend thousands of churches across America and walk away having never heard about sin as an internal heart problem. You may hear Rousseau in many pulpits talking about the evils out there in society. You may hear Condorcet in pulpits speaking about tapping into your own limitless potential. You may even hear Swami Muktananda’s claim that “we are as Gods” from pulpits that proclaim , “You are god.”[11] Vivekenanda declared that, “The Hindu refuses to call you sinners .” We can add that much of the Christian world today refuses to call you sinners.
Once we embrace the mainstream notion that we are basically good, that “we have what it takes” (Osteen), we no longer need Christ as a Savior who can take us from depraved to saved. Jesus becomes a life coach who can take us from good to great. Our Lord becomes Dr. Phil (with more hair). The more we view ourselves as morally competent in our anthropology the more superfluous Jesus becomes to our soteriology. Our ecclesiology also suffers. Self-empowerment pep talks replace the gospel message. Sin problems are defined out of existence and, as the internal enemy goes unopposed, widespread hypocrisy ensues.
1.3 The Biblical Antithesis to Anthropological Optimism
It may seem helpful to our neighbors to swap the doctrine of humanity’s lethal sin problem for culture’s doctrine that we are basically good. But does it help a dying cancer patient to tell him he’s basically healthy, sending him for more vitamins when he should see an oncologist? We cannot expect our neighbors to see any need for the radical remedy of the gospel unless we humbly share with them the Bible’s diagnosis of the human condition. We must lovingly articulate the antithesis to anthropological optimism found in Jeremiah’s sobering words, “The heart of man is desperately sick and more deceitful than all else .” We need to articulate the realistic and pride-leveling anthropology of Solomon when he says, “The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives” (Eccl. 9:3b). We need to rediscover Paul’s insight about human “deadness in sin,” the reality of how flatlined we really are to the things of God and our need for the defibrillator of divine grace to jolt life into our spiritual corpses.
Another illustration clarifies this biblical antithesis. Picture humanity as a tree with bad fruit. The utopian assumes that it must be a soil problem. Perhaps if the tree is no longer in the toxic soil of organized religion, the fruit will be good. But bad fruit grows in secular soil. Perhaps the human tree will thrive in the soil of a bigger government. Yet bad fruit persists. Then it must be the bad soil of our impersonal, commercialized, consumer, technology-ridden culture. Yet when we take our mass exodus from the plastic culture, we find bad fruit spreading on hippie communes too. The hippies of the 70’s become the yuppies of the 80’s, who replant the human tree in the rich soil of the corporate world. Yet bad fruit persists. The words of Jesus in Matthew 7:18 cause us to rethink utopianism’s futile gardening tactics. “A bad tree cannot produce good fruit,” says Jesus. The reason utopianism brings about hell-on-earth in its efforts to usher in heaven-on-earth—the reason bad fruit persists wherever the human tree is planted—is that the tree is sick at its very roots. With sick roots our tree bears bad fruit no matter what soil nourishes it.
Why does the church so seldom tell the truth about sin?[12] On one level, it is our tendency to play the chameleon, our desire to blend in and not be the bearer of bad news (without which of course there’s no real good news). But on a deeper level, I believe that the lack of a serious doctrine of sin has everything to do with an inadequate appreciation for the holiness of God. Without a clear biblical vision of God’s transcendent moral splendor, it is far easier to call darkness light. If we lived underground, with no radiant sun in view, we would call a flickering candle ‘bright’ compared to a spark, and a spark ‘bright’ compared to a shadow. If we were to emerge from our dim caves at high noon on a clear day, however, the word “Bright” would take an entirely new meaning.
This is what happened to Isaiah when he encountered the “holy, holy, holy” God in his temple. Isaiah’s anthropological optimism was incinerated in the beams of true holiness: “Woe to me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lip] !” Those are the words of a humbled Twoist Only with the transcendent reference point of the holy, holy, holy God of can we accurately assess ourselves. Oneism tells us that the answers are within. We need the honesty to say that the problem is within, and that the Creator alone can redeem the beyond-self-repair brokenness of his creatures. Sugarcoating the bitter reality of sin causes the good news of Christ’s saving work to ring hollow and meaningless.
[1] Jean Jacques Rousseau, il n’y a point de perversité originelle dans le cœur humain Émile, ou De l’éducation/Édition 1852/Livre II; Letters to Malesherbes, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 5, ed. Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters, and Peter G. Stillman, trans. Christopher Kelly (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1995), 575; Oeuvres Complètes, vol. I, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris:
Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959–1995, 1136.
[2] Marquis de Condercet, History of the Progress of the Human Spirit, 1796.
[3] For analysis see David Williams, Condorcet and Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Keith Michael Baker, “On Condorcet’s ‘Sketch’” in Daedalus (Summer 2004) 133 (3): 56–64.
[4] Harry Shaefer, The Soviet System on Theory and Practice, 1965.
[5] In the lyrics of musician, Dustin Kensrue, “We can’t medicate man to perfection again we can’t legislate peace in our hearts, we can’t educate sin from our souls its been there from the start.”
[6] Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 815. For similar analysis of Pelagius’ thought, see Richard Flathman, Political Obligation (Taylor & Francis, 1973), 36.
[7] Erasmus, Diatribe Concerning Free Will (Cited in Luther, Bondage of the Will, 171).
[8] Charles Finney, Finney’s Systematic Theology, 3rd ed., ed. Dennis Carroll (1878; Minneapolis: Bethany, 1994), 307.
[9] Joel Osteen, Becoming a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day (New York: Free Press, 2007), 56, 87, 91, 129.
[10] See R.C. Sproul, “The Pelagian Captivity of the Church,” Modern Reformation 10 (2001) 3: 22-29.
[11] Benny Hinn.
I think Christianity is spot on about original sin—how could one think otherwise, when the world’s most civilized and advanced people (the people of Beethoven, Goethe, Kant) embraced that slime-ball Hitler and participated in the Holocaust? I think Saint Paul and the great Christian philosophers had real insights into sin and freedom and responsibility, and I want to build on this rather than turn from it.
We hear the biblical antithesis from the pen of Michael Ruse with more clarity than we do from many of our own pulpits.