The New Spirituality Meet the New Paganism…Same Old Paganism

Godless Commies!!!

The “Four Horsemen” of Atheism

Remember Her????

The New Age

New Age goes Mainstream

► “Significant elements of traditional religious belief and practice are passing away, but a new kind of religiosity is poised to take its place.” – Richard Grigg

► “Human beings undergo psychological development. At each level or stage of development, they will see the world in a different way. Hence, each level of development has, as it were, a different religious belief or worldview. This does not make God or Spirit the result of human development; it does, however, make the ways in which humans conceive of God or Spirit the result of development.” – Ken Wilbur

► “Change is inevitable and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it… Protestantism isn’t going to cease to be. It will give way to something new. Local congregations may go away… and you’re not going to stop it.” - Phyllis Tickle

C.S. Lewis on the “New” Spirituality ► “Pantheism is congenial to our minds not because it is the final stage in a slow process of enlightenment [as it often claims], but because it is almost as old as we are.”

Paganism

Hinduism in 19 th Century America

What is Paganism?

Independent Fundamentalist Baalists?!?!

Modern Day Isis Worshipers

Ancient Syncretism ► Combining gods and religious practices from different religions.

Philo of Alexandria ► 20 B.C. – 50 A.D. Allegorized the Old Testament in order to make it more compatible (syncretized) with Greek philosophy.

Modern Syncretism The view or belief that all religions are one or express the same essential truth or ultimately are differing forms of worshipping the same god.

The Unity of Religions ► “All religions are one” – William Blake (1795) ► “Belief in God is the cornerstone of all religions” – Mohandas Gandhi ► “The essential message of all religions is very much the same.” – the Dalai Lama ► “The Koran or the Zend-Avesta or the Bible is as much a sacred book as the Bhagavad Gita… Ahuramazda, Isvara, Allah, Jehovah are different names for one God.” – Swami Sivanda

James George Fraser

Huston Smith b. 1919

Aldous Huxley

Joseph Campbell

The Monomyth ► “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Comparative Mythology

“Resurrection Gods” MithrasAttisAdonisOsiris

Da Vinci Code

Nag Hammadi

The Gospel of Thomas

Elaine Pagels

Gnosticism Gnosticism - It is that divine knowledge (gnosis) that is unscriptural and is hidden in a mystery that is only given to an enlightened few people.

Moderns forms of Gnosticism

The Psychiatrist as Gnostic

Gnostic Revival

Dualism The idea that everything in the universe is reducible to two fundamental realities: good and evil, spirit and matter.

Docetism ‘Dokeo’ - “to seem or to appear” Docetists believed that Christ was purely a spirit and only APPREARED to be man.

Modern Docetism “But modern theology by divorcing the Christ of faith from the Jesus of history is in danger of initiating a new form of Docetism.” H.D. MacDonald

Divine Spark “You are your higher self, [a being on incredible power] on this planet to… conquer death, make choices, get rid of sickness… come into harmony with other planets and other realities and other dimensionalities… You’re worthy! And you have all the knowing. You’ll never need anything but what’s inside you. [Armed with knowledge of the self, disciples will] walk this Earth as gods.” – Chris Griscom

The Secret “There isn’t a single thing that you cannot do with this knowledge. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, The Secret can give you whatever you want.” - Rhonda Byrne

The Secret – Rhonda Byrne “You are God in physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet.”

The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there, for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you know the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life. And now you know The Secret.

The Gospel of Philip “Light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers to one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death.”

Pantheism pan (“all”) and theos (“God”) The view that everything in the universe is part of an all encompassing immanent God. Basically the universe (or nature) and God (or divinity) are the same thing. We are all one with one another, with the universe and with the divine.

Pantheistic Religions Pantheistic religions include Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Wiccans (witches)

Hollywood goes Pantheistic

Carl Jung and the Collective Unconscious

Eckhart Tolle

Tolle and ‘I Am’ ► “[The] ultimate truth of who you are is not ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’, but ‘I Am’.”

“Sexed Up Atheism” Unemotional Emotional

“when the messiah arrives (or after the revolution), there will be those singing god’s praises and others whistling a secular song, and neither need be out of tune.” Michael Lerner

Abraham Kuyper “Do not forget that the fundamental contrast has always been, is still, and always will be until the end: Christianity and Paganism… the idols or the living God.”

J Gresham Machen “… one attribute of God is absolutely fundamental in the Bible… That attribute is the awful transcendence of God. It is true, indeed, that not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him. But He is immanent in the world not because He is identified with the world, but because He is the free Creator and upholder of it. Between the creature and the Creator, a great gulf is fixed.”

They “changed the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:25) They “changed the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:25)

Christianity is not Syncretistic

Christianity is not Gnostic

Christianity is not Pantheistic