“Antidotes to Idolatry” – Part 1

Pagan Poisons and Gospel Vaccinations:  The Creation Creed

By Dr. Jeffery J Ventrella

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth”^[1]

Man’s heart is “a perpetual forge of idols.”^[2]

“Nature is my god.”^[3]

Worship is an inescapable category.  Mankind, as a religious creature, cannot not worship.  The TruthXchange hermeneutic explains how this truth functions in Paul’s cosmology:  when the Truth is suppressed and then exchanged for the Lie, the response is theological, expressed in worshipping Creation instead of the Creator.  Idolatry flows from disordered worship and disordered worship arises because we blur Creator and Creation.  To repel this confusion requires robustly affirming the doctrine of Creation.  This is easier said than done in many cases.  Let’s get to the gist.

The Great Awakening rightly shook Christians to understand that individual conversion mattered – merely being a good-mannered “cultural Christian” who attended religious services did not equate to having been born from above by God.^[4]  American evangelistic zeal thereafter often set a priority of having people “get saved.”  Yet, in many cases in doing so, that agenda truncated the Gospel and the Christian worldview.  How so?

Many so-called “Gospel presentations” typically began (and ended) with man:  man’s problem, man’s sin, man’s separation from God, man’s benefit from salvation.  All true and well-intended, but unfortunately decontextualized from Biblical cosmology.

I think it was Anthony Bradley^[5] who pointed out to me that many Christians functionally embrace a “Genesis 3 to Revelation 20” truncated theology.  This move treats Creation as secondary or even optional to the Gospel and its redemption.  And, it is foreign to the scriptural narrative.

The Bible begins, not with redemption and reconciliation, but with God the Creator and His Creation.^[6]  And, when the Redeemer appears, He is first situated in Creation – initially as Mediator and then as God incarnate.^[7]  Redemption comes subsequently.  This is why Paul describes Jesus as mediator of Creation.^[8]  And, accordingly the Gospel itself presupposes God’s creational narrative. Stripping that narrative undermines redemption’s full meaning and vitality.^[9]

This is also why the great (and non-negotiable) ecumenical creeds that outline and summarize the Christian Faith commence with God the Creator, not the way of man’s salvation.^[10]  And, in wisdom, a key Reformed tool for introducing the Faith to covenant children begins in the same way:

Q. 1. Who made you?
A. God.

Q. 2. What else did God make?
A. God made all things.

Q. 3. Why did God make you and all things ?
A. For his own glory.^[11]

Creation is not “secondary” or optional in the Biblical narrative.  The Creator/Creature distinction^[12] is both foundational to the Faith as well as crucial to warding off pagan worship impulses.  On the one hand, Creation is important because Christ mediated it and is redeeming it; on the other hand, Creation may not be worshipped because only God the Creator deserves that devotion and allegiance.  Keeping these priorities clear erects barriers to various forms of nature worship.

In the Exodus, God the Creator acts as God the Redeemer, rescuing His people.  Following this liberation, He provides them Law^[13] so that they may live freely.  The Decalogue reinforces the Creator/Creation distinction, tying it to the risk and dangers of idol worship.

The 1^st Commandment reinforces the creational binary by directing unmitigated gaze to God.  We are to worship Him alone: “You shall have no other gods before me.”^[14]  This rescuing Creator God is to have no rivals; He deserves priority and preeminence.^[15]

The 2^nd and 3^rd Commandments link this theme to paganism’s many gods and worshipping the created order:

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.^[16]

The 4^th Commandment returns to the Creation which supplies the rationale undergirding Sabbath rest:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. . . . For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.^[17]

In articulating His law to a rescued people, God seamlessly toggles between Creation, True Worship, and False Worship.   This effort reminds them of true Cosmology and true worship’s object:  The true and living God, as contrasted with the pagan deities.^[18]

Pagan worship in contrast deifies the Creation, calling it “nature” – there is nothing unseen or other, let alone transcendent. Adherents who are self-consciously pagan, are quite adamant on this:

World Pantheism is probably the most clearly earth-focused of spiritual/religious organizations. Nature is the very heart of our spirituality, which is close to Deep Ecology, Gaia theory, Nature religion, or basic and direct Nature Worship. The simplest way to sum it up is in Michael Gorbachev’s phrase “Nature is my god.”

World Pantheism focuses on this Earth rather than an imaginary realm, on this life rather than an uncertain afterlife.^[19] 

If all of Creation is divine, then so too are humans.  As Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson quipped:

I am nothing! I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.^[20]

Once divinity is attributed to mankind, either individually – the Idol of Self, or collectively – the Idol of State – ethics lacks any true normative standard.^[21]    If only “nature” exists, then no standard exists to assess nature and its relationships. Justice becomes illusory.  Might makes right.  Jesus in contrast – when in court before Pilate – invokes the structure of reality, that is, its cosmology –- as the true source of State authority:

So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.”^[22]

Pilate’s political authority while legitimate, is fully derived from and delimited by God.  This is why earthly authorities can and should be held accountable – their authority is decidedly not inherent, autonomous, or self-generated:

Precisely why [Pilate] faced the prospect of divine judgment was because God-given authority carries responsibility.^[23]

False worship, however precipitates ethical consequences.  Again, Idols are never idle.

False worship is not merely sinful and thereby spiritually destructive eternally.  Worship in the nature of the case is also formational, and correlatively, false worship is deformational and impacts us temporally.  Idols arise from worshipping Creation.  Creation, however, is neither personal nor living.^[24]  Consequently, its idols are therefore inanimate and inert:

      Their idols are silver and gold,

            the work of human hands.

      They have mouths, but do not speak;

            eyes, but do not see.

      They have ears, but do not hear;

            noses, but do not smell.

      They have hands, but do not feel;

            feet, but do not walk;

            and they do not make a sound in their throat.^[25]

Nevertheless, when worshiped, these false gods transform those who bow down to them:

      Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.^[26]

This means worship produces temporal as well as eternal consequences, including serious political and personal consequences.

Allegiance to Christ means that cleavage will exist between honoring Him and the Creation.  Christ brings a relational sword, sometimes severing certain social relationships.^[27]  This includes establishing a priority for Christ that even precedes those good, natural, and most intimate relationships:

 “If anyone comes to me and does   not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own  life, he cannot be my disciple.^[28] 

Worship, that is, a theological response, also correlates with ethics or conduct.  Paul explicitly links these, explaining that “for this reason” conduct stemming from disordered worship becomes sexually deviant:  

because they exchanged the truth about God for [the]^[29] lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.^[30]

Worship disordered to the creation/creature produces vile and disordered sexuality.  Moreover, by abandoning the One True God of Creation, they -by default or by design – will worship the many pagan deities – this leads inexorably to permitting or pursuing – serially or simultaneously – many sexual partners.  As one pagan admitted:

You have to have one partner under this one-god system.  We maintained that for two thousand years, but now we have certain openness.  We’re coming up on a new pantheistic age. . . . I like all the gods and goddesses.^[31]

This neo-pagan impulse is becoming increasingly overt.  Rejecting the Triune Living God will not produce “secularity.”  Rather, it produces devotion to a panoply of pagan deities.  Note this prayerful petition by the official 2024 Olympic Committee:

“Apollo, God of sun, and the idea of light, send your rays and light the sacred torch for the hospitable city of Paris.  And you, Zeus, give peace to all peoples on earth and wreath the winners of the Sacred Race.”^[32]

As this pagan theological impulse seeps deeper into the culture, the ethics of sexual deviation will become more overt as it’s “mainstreamed.”  Many sexual partners reflects many pagan gods.  This is the world of the polycule^[33]

How they set boundaries, navigate jealousy, wingman their spouses and foster community.^[34]

People Magazine “helpfully” explains the rationale for entering such arrangements.  It boils down to selfish interest and treating others like commodities.  As Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey approvingly advocates:

“More people have recognized that you cannot get all your needs met by one person and are not willing to compromise on getting their needs met,” . . .

“You didn’t mind sharing your toys (even your favorite ones) as a child, you desire high levels of communication and interaction with people and you have found it difficult to be monogamous.”^[35]

This generates societal chaos:

[I]n biblical thought, sexual relationships can be used either to create community or to destroy community. . . .  Sexual order helps to create relational order and sexual disorder leads to relational disorder.^[36]

As the worship of Creation ascends, social sexual order will descend into ethical anarchy.  This is the natural result when “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”^[37]  Yet, it need not be this way.  

Mankind, as a Creature, is not, as John Locke taught, a tabla rasa, a blank slate.  Rather, mankind is Imago Dei, a truth known by special revelation that is situated in the Creation narrative, a narrative set forth by a loving and gracious Creator.  The antidote to Pagan Poisons is the vaccination that begins where the Bible begins:  affirming God as Creator and thus recognizing the metaphysically distinct Cosmos, including mankind, as the Creation.  Accordingly, we “believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth.”

For further study:

• G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship (2008)

• Benjamin Wiker, Worshipping the State:  How Liberalism Became Our State Religion (2013)

• P. Andrew Sandlin, Creational Worldview:  An Introduction (2020)

• Boot, Sandlin, Ventrella, et al, Covenant Sexuality:  Essays on Religion, Sexuality, and Identity (2024)

^[1] Apostles Creed, Article I

^[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:11:45

^[3] World Pantheism, https://pantheism.net/earth/ 

^[4] John 3:3. And, yet pragmatically – for the common good – having “Cultural Christianity” is preferable to having “Cultural Paganism” as even the vitriolic anti-God atheist Richard Dawkins admits.  https://www.foxnews.com/media/famous-atheist-says-identifies-cultural-christian-horrified-promotion-islamic-holiday

^[5] https://www.acton.org/about/staff/anthony-b-bradley

^[6] Gen. 1:1

^[7] John 1:1

^[8] Col. 1:15-17

^[9] P. Andrew Sandlin, Creational Worldview:  An Introduction (2020)

^[10] See, e.g., The Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed.  These are derived from the Scriptures by godly counsel and prayerful reflection.  They are not above the Scriptures, but they are above any individual’s private interpretation of the Scriptures in the sense that contradicting these creeds places one outside of Christian orthodoxy. See,  https://www.christianitytoday.com/biblestudies/articles/churchhomeleadership/nicene-apostles-creeds.html. 

^[11] The Children’s Catechism, https://reformed.org/historic-confessions/the-childrens-catechism/

^[12] Dr. Jones often labels this the primary Binary or Twoism.

^[13] Note the redemptive preface to the Decalogue: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (Ex. 20:2).  Note further that the Lord did not liberate them and then leave them to autonomously figure out by “naked reason” how to live via natural revelation or natural law.  Given the noetic effects of sin, the Lord in His love and care provided them specific precepts and structures for living freely, justly, and societally:  The Decalogue and the Law of the Covenant (Ex. 20 and 21-23).

^[14] Ex. 20:3

^[15] Paul makes this same claim of Christ, after situating Him as both the mediator of Creation and Redemption: “[T]hat in everything [Christ] might be preeminent.”  (Col. 1:18). 

^[16] Ex. 20:4-7

^[17] Ex. 20:8-11; in republishing the Decalogue, God adds another rationale for the Sabbath, rooted in God’s liberation of them from Eqyptian servitude.  (Deut. 5:15).  Thus, Creation and Redemption should work hand in hand in the minds of God’s people.

^[18] “Pagan” derives from the Latin “paganus” which meant rustic or rural or more generally “of the earth” – thus, a pagan orientation is one that is earthy that came to mean rooted in devotion to the Creation, instead of the true Creator.

^[19] World Pantheism, https://pantheism.net/history-of-pantheism/.  Marxism proceeds on the same premise.

^[20] World Pantheism, https://pantheism.net/history-of-pantheism/

^[21] Jeffery J. Ventrella, Christ, Caesar, and Self – A Pauline Proposal for Understanding          the Paradoxical Call for Statist Coercion and Unfettered Autonomy (2016).

^[22] Jn. 19:10-11

^[23] Wright and Bird, Jesus and the Powers, (2024), 110

^[24] Contrast this reality with the false pagan narrative associated with Gaia worship in which the material world is deemed a “living being.”  This pagan thesis has been “dressed up” by the theories of James Lovelock: see, e.g., The Earth as a Living Organism, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219276/

^[25] Ps. 115:4-7

^[26] Ps. 115:8. Psalm 135 conveys these same points by juxtaposing God’s total providential control over Creation with the effects of idolatry.  See, verses 5-7 and 15-18

^[27] “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  Matt. 10:34b.

^[28] Luke 14:26. The point here is that devotion to Christ must take first place; even the godly family can become an idol.

^[29] The Greek is ho pseudos, THE lie – for some inexplicable reason, most English versions mistranslate this; the NKJV renders it correctly.

^[30] Rom. 12:25-27

^[31] Quoted in Nathan Harden, Sex and God at Yale:  Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad, (2012), 279.

^[32] Official Olympic Games post @Paris 2014, accessed April 20, 2024.

^[33] “A polycule, in the polyamory and BDSM communities, is a word that refers to all the people in a network of non-monogamous relationships (not being committed to one person at a time). Polycule can also refer to diagrams of these relationship networks.”       https://www.dictionary.com/e/gender-sexuality/polycule/

^[34] The New York Times Magazine, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/15/magazine/polycule-polyamory-boston.html; the media nudges these arrangements in an attempt to normalize them and their efforts are increasing.  See, e.g., What Does Polycule Actually Look Like? The Cut, https://www.thecut.com/article/polycule-polyamourous-relationship-meaning.html

What Is a Polycule?  Understanding Polyamory Relationship Structures, https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/polycule-relationship-structures, The Polycule User Manual:  A Personal Polyamory Guide, (2020)

^[35]People April 21, 2024,  https://people.com/what-is-a-throuple-how-to-know-when-the-relationship-type-is-right-for-you-expert-8636145

^[36] Jonathan Burnside, God, Justice, and Society:  Aspects of Law and Legality, (2010), 328

^[37] Judges 21:25