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Jan 20, 2025

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Respectable Paganism:  Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche Walk into a Culture . . .

[Y]ou turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,[1]

You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.[2]

What do I imply then?  . . . [T]hat an idol is anything?[3]

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,

            but the LORD made the heavens.[4]

Little children, keep yourselves from idols.[5]

The Apostle John warns Christians to beware of three categories of temptation, all involving misplaced or disordered love:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—[1] the desires of the flesh and [2] the desires of the eyes and [3] pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.[6]

These categories all stem from the heart, rooted in crabbed desire.[7]  They correlate to sexual lust, envy and covetousness, as well as a craving for power.  And, they are not new, but history has seen them repeatedly repackaged, even made to look reputable among beard-stroking academics.  Yet, these modern make-overs do nothing to remedy their inherent idolatry.  Let’s get to the gist.

Cultural Currents: Past and Present

One short-hand way to understand these dangers is to acknowledge that they stem from wrongful worship; they therefore comprise idolatry.  The lust of the flesh reflects a worship of carnal pleasure.  The lust the eyes is as old as Paradise:  seeing and desiring something good, too much and untethered to God’s revelation.  Recall Eve’s experience:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.[8]

The pride of life often manifests itself in ascribing accomplishments to one’s own efforts and acumen, particularly when, like in politics, wielding worldly power.  Note Nebuchadnezzar’s haughty boastfulness, even after being warned:

All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you[9]

To the same effect, note the same error committed by Herod:

And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.

Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

But the word of God increased and multiplied.[10]

Both Herod and Nebuchadnezzar lacked self-control and instead, raged in anger.[11]

Moses, in his farewell speech, warned the people to be careful, especially during prosperous times, that is, times of material accomplishment:

Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,  . . .

Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the LORD your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the LORD makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.[12]

In the ancient world, these idolatries could be encapsulated under the headings of Mammon, Eros, and Mars.  Mammon reflects desiring and acquiring, Eros reflects fleshly desires, and Mars symbolizes power acquired and exercised with violence, if necessary.  They each are rooted in false worship and thus, the sins that flow from them are secondary to the real problem.  The real problem is that we attach ourselves to counterfeit gods.[13]

Modern Expressions of these Idolatries

What about in this modern, supposedly non-superstitious world?  Certainly, the pre-modern notions of Mammon, Eros, Mars have culturally sunset.  Not really.  In fact, Mammon, Eros, and Mars have become more mainstream because they have been legitimized by public intellectuals under the guise of “scientific” notions sounding in Economics, Psychology, and Philosophy. How so?

Consider Marx  

Though a train wreck wherever applied,[14] his views posit that reality involves contested economic class warfare: the oppressed battling the oppressor.  Money, or its “unjust” distribution, comprises all that is wrong with the world.[15]  His worldview tells a Creation – Fall – Redemption story.  The Creation is “materiality” all the way down.  The Fall consists in the advent of private property, in which the owners “exploit” the workers economically.  It’s a zero-sum game steeped in and actuated by envy.  Redemption occurs only by a forced redistribution of economic means via violent revolution.  Mammon, one way or another, explains all of reality according to Marxism.

Now consider Freud  

Freud, the pioneer of the now largely discredited “therapy” of psychoanalysis,[16] remains a legacy.  He reformulated human behavior psychologically around the axis of unconscious desires, particularly sexual ones.  While biblically humans are sexed creatures, Freud sexualized them, meaning that a person’s very identity and behavioral motivations stem from sexual desire, conscious and unconscious.  This shift in understanding anthropology provided a peg for destructive expressive individualism.[17]  And while psychoanalysis theory sounds “scientific” and thus respectable, the reality is that this theory is simply a fig leaf covering unchecked Eros – the lust of the flesh:  same idol, different name.[18]

Finally, consider Nietzche  

Nietzche was a philosopher with the courage of his convictions.  He understood that if God is “dead,” then all that remains is a will to power:  might makes right.  The male Superman (Übermensch) survives and then conquers.[19]  This comprises the idol of dominance, or popularly conceived, Mars:  the strength and will to impose and dominate.  This philosophy created the plausibility narrative which “granted permission” to national aggression as seen in Germany, Italy, and Spain in the 20th Century:  “We’re stronger and you’re weaker – tough beans, you lose.”[20]

Neither the Enlightenment nor the Modernism it birthed sunset these idols.  Mammon, Eros, and Mars in various forms and guises continue to enslave people and societies.  Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.[21]  How can the thinking Christian respond?  Let’s take our cues from the apostle Paul.

Paul’s Timeless “Point of Contact”:  Informed Confrontation

The book of Acts sets forth not simply history – what happened – but a theological explication of WHY these things happened.  There, we see how the apostles, including Paul, engaged the extant culture with God’s central message:  God the Creator sent His Son, who lived, died, rose, and ascended to set things right as the true King and Lord of all.  Central to this over-arching theme are two key motifs:  God is Creator and the confrontation in culture occurs because of theological confrontation.  This latter point is why “things occur” in Acts frequently in and around temples.  Temples are where heaven and earth meet.[22]  And, they are also where idols manifest their mischief.

We see in chapter 1 the Ascension of the risen Christ – an event “installing” Christ at God’s right hand as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  This comprises a tremendous anti-Gnostic, anti-pagan statement.  The Ascension testifies not that Jesus’ soul “went to heaven” and so shall we. Rather, the very point Luke makes is 

[P]recisely about Jesus’ physical body – his resurrected body, yes, indeed, still recognizable by the marks of the nails, still able to walk and talk, and, as in verse 4, to sit at table and eat with friends.  The ascension is about this physical body now being in ‘heaven.’[23]

Why does this matter?  Because the extant culture had imbibed a number of idolatries which shaped their worldview.  For example, consider Epicureanism, which Paul encountered – and confronted – in Athens.  The Epicureans taught that reality consisted of a bifurcated two-story cosmology, meaning that “the gods lived in a totally different sphere from humans.”[24]  Consequently, there was the god-realm and the human realm, and they never overlapped.  

This view is the precursor to modern Deism:  God may exist but is utterly unconcerned and metaphysically uninvolved in the “real’ world – hence, man becomes God in all things.  Consequently, people are to live with an eye toward being as comfortable as possible – and thus, rational pleasure became the ultimate ethical principle.  Why?  Tomorrow you die and there is no afterlife:  eat, drink, and be merry!

Stoics championed another worldview Paul encountered.  The Stoics held essentially to pantheism:  all reality is divine; thus, they fully denied the Creator/Creature distinction that forms the foundation of Biblical cosmology.[25]  Stoicism also contrasted with “everyday” polytheistic paganism.  Wright explains:

Stoicism replaced the multiplicity of gods with the one divine force, in everything, around everything, animating everything and everyone.[26]

While this certainly sounds like Star Wars’ triumphant Force replete with good guys defeating bad guys, that’s hardly the case with real pantheism:

[T]he problem with pantheism is that it cannot critique evil.  In ordinary paganism, if bad things happen, it’s because some god is cross.  But if the one god of Stoic pantheism is in everything, then our perceptions of “good” and “bad” are just a trick of the light.[27]

So, if pantheism is true, a person has only two choices for how to live:  he must either (1) grit his teeth and “deal with it” or (2) he is “free to leave:  the noble suicide is a Stoic ideal.”[28]  Neither reflects a Christian ethic.

So, how did Paul counter the idols he faced as instantiated by Epicureanism, Stoicism, and as we will see, Platonism?  Head on!

To the Epicureans, who contended that the gods were far away and did not intervene in human affairs, Paul trumpeted the Creator God who is both personal and loving who created mankind FOR relationship with him.  The true and living God, to use theological categories, is simultaneously transcendent AND immanent.[29]  Accordingly, Paul tells his auditors[30] that

he is actually not far from each one of us, for

      “‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

            as even some of your own poets have said,

      “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’[31]

This point fundamentally challenged the grounding for Epicurean thought. Answering and confuting the Stoics, Paul affirms that God indeed is all around us, but that He is different from us – He is Creator.  Moreover, this Creator God also knows that the world under sin is not as it should be.  Evil does exist and evil will be addressed and vanquished:

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”[32]

Both points challenged the foundation of Stoic thought.

Also present in Athens were the Platonists.  The Platonists, representing the “traditional” view of things, realized that neither the Epicureans, nor the Stoics could provide satisfactory answers to life’s riddles. So, they embraced ignorance and skepticism relying on the older and more socially cohesive philosophies.  Paul rebutted this directly as well.  Wright describes it this way:

Paul, in a deft move, joins us his critique of that semi-skepticism with his comments about the unknown god.  Yes, he says (verse 30) there has indeed been a time of ignorance.  The full evidence is not yet in.  But now the one God – who to repeat was not a “foreign god” but was out and about, including in Athens – commands all people everywhere to repent, to turn back from their idolatry, in the light of the newly unveiled promise that he is going to call the whole world to account, to set the ancient wrong right at last.[33]

These three ancient idolatries appear today via Marx/Mammon, Freud/Eros, and Nietzsche/Mars.  Our approach to reaching the culture and those lost in it consists not of a “new” vibe born of judgment-eschewingh “common ground” nor blunt macho-masculinity.  The correct response must be rooted in proclaiming without dilution that there is a true and living God, the Creator, who alone must be worshipped.  This God sent His Son, who lived, died, rose, and ascended, cementing that this Creator God will via Israel’s Messiah make all things right.  This was Paul’s burden and it must be our burden.  When the truth is exchanged for the lie, there only exists one life-giving message:  turn from your idols in repentance through the power of the resurrected Son of God:

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead,Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.[34]


[1] 1 Thess 1:9

[2] 1 Cor. 12:2

[3] 1 Cor. 10:19

[4] Ps. 96:5

[5] 1 John. 5:21

[6] 1 John 2:15, 16

[7] As Jesus taught: that which defiles a man comes from his heart.  Mark 7:1-23.  Compare Proverbs 4:23.  This is another reason the doctrine of concupiscence misses the mark – an evil desire itself comprise sin.  See, e.g., Col 3:5

[8] Gen. 3:6

[9] Dan. 4:28-31

[10] Acts 12:19-24

[11] The works or fruit of the flesh include “fits of anger;” the fruit of the Spirit in contrast includes self-control.  (Gal. 5:19-23).  Nebuchadnezzar became “angry and very furious.”  (Dan. 2:12)

[12] Deut. 8:11-14, 17-20

[13] Timohty Keller, Counterfeit Gods:  The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (2011)

[14] Examples include Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Cambodia, China, and various Latin American nations.

[15] Compare Paul’s analysis:  it’s not money per se but the love of it – a disordered desire – that forms the taproots for various evils.  “It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith.”  1 Tim. 6:10

[16] See, e.g., https://psynso.com/psychoanalysis-criticism/

[17] See, Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self:  Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (2020)

[18] Changing the names of idols is also nothing new:  The Romans embraced the Greek gods, but with different names:  Aries becomes Mars, Poseidon becomes Neptune, Cronus becomes Saturn, Zeus becomes Jupiter, Hades becomes Pluto, Aphrodite becomes Venus, Hermes becomes Mercury, Artemis becomes Diana, but strangely, Apollo remains Apollo in both systems.

[19] Sadly, much of the neo-masculinity pundits with their sophomoric tropes – like the Ogden boys, Sauve and Conn – comprise a watered-down less sophisticated version of Nietzsche.  As one writer in essence put it:  This social media effort is simply the seeker sensitive strategy for immature men.  Don’t be conned by these theologasters. Yet, the rising tide of antisemitism and Kinism frequently adjacent to this neo-masculinity social media cacophony exists because the root of it all is a Martian Nietzsche-lite idolatry largely channeling the thoroughly pagan “Bronze Age Mindset.”  See., e.g., P. Andrew Sandlin, The Old Bronze Age Mindset Meets the New “Christian Vitalism.”  https://docsandlin.com/2023/10/25/the-old-bronze-age-mindset-meets-the-new-christian-vitalism/

[20] The connection between Nietzsche, antisemitism, and nazi fascism is well documented.  See, e.g.,https://bigthink.com/thinking/how-the-nazis-hijacked-nietzsche-and-how-it-can-happen-to-anybody/

[21] John Stonestreet, The Victims of Bad Ideas, https://breakpoint.org/bp-this-week-the-victims-of-bad-ideas/

[22] The Garden, the Tabernacle, and the Temple make this point, and then we see the New Covenant continuing this theme during the Nativity when God’s glory and the host surround shepherds – heaven coming to earth – and when the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus at His baptism, and then at Pentecost, filling the disciples.  Paul writing to Christians in Corinth, a pagan city littered with temples, includes many explicit references to idols and temples in his correctives to them, including the notion that Christians’ bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19).  And at the consummation, heaven comes to earth and God, as a temple, dwells with His people. (Rev. 21: 9-27)

[23] N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Acts – Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is (2024), 11

[24] Id.

[25] This fundamental binary, often noted as “Twoism” by Dr. Jones, forms the foundation for Paul’s cosmology set forth and explicated in Romans 1:18-32.  Idolatry arises when the creation is worshipped instead of the Creator (v. 25).  

[26] Id. note 23 at 112

[27] Id.

[28] Id.

[29] John M. Frame, God and Biblical Language:  Transcendence and Immanencehttps://frame-poythress.org/god-and-biblical-language-transcendence-and-immanence/

[30] Actually, the Areopagus was not a polite “debating society” as commonly conceived, but rather a court that considered and weighed charges against those “seized or arrested” (epilambano) – the ESV translates this as “took him and brought him (v. 19).  N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Acts – Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is (2024), 102

[31] Acts 17:27, 28

[32] Acts 17:30, 31

[33] Id. at 113

[34] 1 Thess. 1:9-10

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