An unbearable lightness

Tim Challies provides a good review of Michael Horton's new book, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church. A "good review" meaning one that makes the book seem very much worth reading. Challies says that "the most important statement in the book may just be this: 'It is not heresy as much as silliness that is killing us softly.'" Some excerpts from the review:

Amazingly, some of those called by the name of Christ actually deny him - perhaps not his existence but at least his uniqueness and his divinity. In Christless Christianity Michael Horton argues that such denial of Christ may not be too far from home. More and more evangelical churches, he says, are now essentially Christless. "Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups." Many churches have tossed out Christ and continue on without him, sometimes not even realizing that he has been lost along the way....

"I am not arguing in this book that we have arrived at Christless Christianity," says Horton, "but that we are well on our way. ... My concern is that we are getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for 'relevant' quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than known, worshiped and trusted; Jesus Christ is a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved from God's judgment by God himself; and the Holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can plug into for the power we need to be all that we can be." ....

Amazingly, it is not theological liberalism that has drawn the church away from her creed, away from her biblical foundation. Instead, it is a kind of unbearable lightness - a faith that eschews biblical theology in favor of whatever happens to be the flavor of the day. Says Horton, "My argument in this book is not that evangelicalism is becoming theologically liberal but that it is becoming theologically vacuous. ... We come to church, it seems, less to be transformed by the Good News than to celebrate our own transformation and to receive fresh marching orders for transforming ourselves and our world. ... Just as you don't really need Jesus Christ in order to have T-shirts and coffee mugs, it is unclear to me why he is necessary for most of the things I hear a lot of pastors and Christians talking about in church these days." [more]

Christless Christianity by Michael Horton : A Discerning Reader Review