The actual reality, however, has often been lost under the caricature of the efforts undertaken to try to discredit authentic, classical, apostolic Christian faith as it had been known from the time just after Jesus to the Enlightenment period in Europe .

It was always recognized in the Western intellectual tradition that mere appeals to authority or authorities to justify belief or practice were inadequate. There was from the time of Socrates in the Greek culture and from the time of the Prophets in the Jewish culture, recognition for a critical examination of and reflection upon things purporting to be true, upon things purporting to be from the gods or God. Logic was developed very early in the West to assist in this necessary exercise of critical examination and reflection. For example, the Socratic dialogue was given prominence by Plato to enable a reasonable and sound coming to knowledge of what was and is true as opposed to mere opinion. In the Jewish culture there developed the concept of the testing of spirits. Aristotle advanced the development of logic as a helpful tool. And in the early Church the early formulators of intellectual concepts to convey, express, and enable the passing on of the realities Christian faith had come to a realization of made use of the best of the Hellenistic and Jewish traditions in order to make these realities available to theirs and successive generations of humankind. The hard and unrelenting fact of the Western world and of reality is that this intellectual inheritance and tradition is still very much a part of how any academic inquiry or work can still be done whether it be in the modern sciences or in philosophy or in the arts, including theology. What is not also recognized, as it is not always disclosed, is that the so-called academic efforts which serve as a basis for trying to discredit the actual substance of classical, apostolic, biblical Christian faith, operates with a bias that is not fully justified by its proponents and wielders, and often what is done to seek the desired outcome of the antagonists to classical Christianity is that they short cut across real logic and make use of methods of investigation and analysis that are highly suspect, seriously flawed, and not any as straightforward as they are often given to seem to be.

Essentially what is at work in the post-Enlightenment intellectual phenomena whether it appears under the guise of liberalism, Reconstructionism, structuralism, foundationalism, cartesianism, deconstructionism, post-modernism, or revisionism, etc., is nothing more than the old classical skepticism given new dress in differing eras and ways since the Enlightenment.

In the eighteenth century, this Enlightenment skepticism and its resultant liberalism was successful finally in taking root in much of American academia, and especially in theological instruction, after having begun to cross the Atlantic with the first settlers of the "New World." Beginning with what is now called the "old liberalism" of Protestantism in America , the skepticism has continued to develop and to take on various permutations. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Episcopal Church in its theological training and understanding was fairly well divided between those who, in varying degrees, had imbued something of the liberalism, and those who still held to the classical, apostolic, biblical, and catholic faith that had once been the norm in the Church of England whether it existed in a high church, more catholic form for some, or in a low church, more evangelical, protestant, reformation form for others. By the end of the nineteenth century, in the Episcopal Church, unlike what was the case in the Church of England, the low church, more evangelical, protestant, reformation form was essentially lost [until at least the 1940s, and then to realize a new resurgence or come back in the 1970s]. Somehow the brightest minds of the evangelical part of the Episcopal Church were unable to effectively counter the inroads of liberalism then beginning to make a quest to dominate the Episcopal Church or they simply succumbed to the pernicious, fallacious, biased unexamined presuppositions of liberalism and found it intellectually appealing and simply embraced liberalism to various degrees. [1] Thus began the sad decline of the Episcopal Church with regard to its hold on the classical Christian inheritance it was thought by most still to represent. The path to dominating theological education and theological thought in the Episcopal Church was increasing made more and more open as less and less effective resistance was put up to this pernicious eroding of the Christian faith and the apostolic Gospel. The result was that by the 1970s, Enlightenment thought was the largely dominate ideology in theological education in the Episcopal Church and skepticism essentially ruled the day in theology, biblical studies, church history, pastoral psychology, etc. It is no wonder then that today's leadership in the Episcopal Church, the vast majority of the church's bishops, priests, and deacons, and many of its leading intellectual lay persons, are all in varying ways oriented to this new definition of religious belief. Even many who would claim to still be classical biblical and prayer book Christians, would still claim to be orthodox Christians, have largely been overtaken - through their lack of critical examination of the philosophical, scientific, and theological underpinnings of their own beliefs and methods - by this pervasive skeptical, anti-Christian ideology.

Today there are two Gospels in competition for the allegiance of members of the Episcopal Church. One is the Gospel that has been received from Jesus through the apostles, through the tradition of the Church and Scripture, and which persists and is still intellectually respectable [despite the counter charges of the skeptics who are putting forth a different gospel] and which is understood to be the actual revelation of God to humankind and is understood to be true. The other "Gospel" is one that has been made to eliminate everything that was thought needing to be eliminated from the authentic, original Christian Gospel in light of the supposed enlightenment and insights of intellectuals and the supposed requirements of our living in a modern, scientific world.

In the traditional Gospel, God is conceived of and is recognized to be a Person though without a body, a Spirit Person. This God is eternal - always existence, without beginning or end. This God is complete and entire in the Person of God. This God brought into being, created by God's own command and will, the Universe of which we know ourselves to be a part. This same God sustains this Universe moment by moment and it remains in existence so long as God wills it to exist. Further, in the Christian revelation and understanding this God is triune, that is, Three Persons in One. These three persons have been traditionally identified as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of the three persons is entirely and completely God and yet there is a distinctiveness in the Godhead. In Christian understanding each of the three Persons had a role in bringing into being creation, the Universe. This God is identified as Love itself. As Love this God is understood to be beneficent toward the creation and the creatures and all those who occupy or make up creation. Humankind, the human creation, are said to be made in the image of this one and only God. In other words, human beings are likewise persons and share certain qualities with their Creator, with God, such as the capacity to love, to do good, to reason and to think, to know and to act, to be and to do, to enjoy communion and fellowship internally and externally. God is understood to care for the creation and has certain purposes for it which has existed from the time of its coming into being until it reaches the fulfillment of its purposes as intended by God. The creation has a linear direction and a goal to which it is aimed by God, and likewise the human creation is set on a linear path and a goal to which they travel.

In the traditional Gospel, a reality called sin has disrupted both creation and humankind from traveling directly to their goal and sin has hampered a direct pursuit of the linear path that was meant to be traveled. The reality called sin has sometimes broken up the path, sometimes led to pursuing the path in reverse, sometimes to abandoning the path altogether, etc. Sin has been variously described as rebellion, as desiring to be God in the place of God, selfishness/egoistic self-centeredness, rejection of the authentically ethical and virtuous, exploitation and use of others for one's own ends - including trying to manipulate and use God for the same, missing the mark - of what it means to be human, of the goal toward which one is aimed [such as true happiness and joy, authentic human being/existence, the beatific vision of God, etc.], and so forth. Sin can be described as the rejection of God and God's wisdom and guidance; it can be the rejection of the rightful claim of the benefactor and creator upon the beneficiary and creature, etc. But however variously understood in order to try to get as complete an understanding of sin as possible, sin is a disruption that needs correction, and the reality is that humankind cannot as individuals or a corporate body themselves effect the correction of sin and sin's effects. God's help is needed. And in the traditional Gospel, God has provided just this help.

The new "Gospel" of the majority of leaders in the Episcopal Church holds not to what is known in the philosophy of religion as "theism" [and the Christian form of theism was in part given just above], but hold instead to what is known as a "non-theistic" view of God. In this view God is not a Person or a Personal Being. God is not a Being at all. God is not even a Spirit in the usual accepted sense of "Spirit" or "spirit." God is more a force, or an influence, an energy or power that permeates everything and animates everything. It cannot even be said, if the non-theist is to be precise and consistent in their language and philosophy, that God is even alive. In the non-theistic view it is hard to distinguish God from the Universe itself. In fact, there really is no difference, except to speak of "God" somehow is not as impersonal as it would be to speak of the Universe as the source and ground of our being. To use "God-talk" takes some of the harsh edge off the reality that is really being talked about. Non-theists see talk of God as Person or Personal Being, etc., as simply projections of humankind and this is done they feel out of some neurotic need. This begs the question then, if non-theism is true, why engage in any "God-talk" at all unless it is, as just seen above, out of some neurotic need of humankind to soften the blunt realities of living in a Universe where the Universe is the only eternal reality and there is no Personal Being but just an impersonal world except for the world of personal human beings? [And what justifies thinking of human beings as personal in an otherwise impersonal world?] Is not the non-theist, in effect, playing into the same neurotic need he or she sees the theist supposedly playing into? And, in that case is not the theist more honest than the non-theist in that the non-theist would have us believe they do not play into human neurosis!

In non-theism, there is no creator God, no benefactor, no God to be in fellowship with, to ascribe appropriate worth to, etc., etc. God in the non-theistic point of view can be described only very vaguely if at all. Yet, the non-theist wants to still use God-talk while emptying it of any real referential meaning. "God" essentially becomes a verbal and written symbol that stands in substitution for the Universe. Why not just worship the impersonal Universe which does not care one whit about our existence or our lives?

Yet, non-theism is pervasive among the leadership and intellectuals of the Episcopal Church. The articulate proponents of non-theism, in varying types, which have had profound influence on the thinking and orientation of the leadership and intellectuals of the Episcopal Church, are: Donald Cupitt, Michael Goulder, John Shelby Spong, and John Macquarrie, among others lesser known.

The advantage of non-theism with its God-talk is that it permits a bishop or priest or intellectual Episcopalian who has rejected the traditional Gospel to still sound like a Christian. One can use all the old terminology but mean something radically different and most people - who are uninformed about theology and what has happened intellectually in the Church - won't catch on. Only a few of the non-theists are as brave as Don Cupitt and John Spong and actually spell out what they mean and don't mean and risk being rejected for their denial of traditional Christianity, and even fewer are as brave as was Michael Goulder and admit he was no longer a Christian and simply leave the Church [of England]. One way to test a non-theist is ask him or her to define their view of theism, and most will duck the question [as did recently the Episcopal Bishop of Florida]. Most non-theists, unlike their theist counter-parts won't openly admit to very many their real views, while at the same time declining to embrace theism but not owning it either. Why do believing Episcopalians put up with this slippery, Teflon approach and answer on the part of their bishops, priest, deacons, and the intelligentsia among us? And why, especially if we do know the facts regarding what has happened theologically?

In the non-theistic view of God and the Universe, there is also no place for a concept or reality such as sin. How can one have rebelled against a personal God that does not exist, against a creator that never created, against a personal will that never existed and never willed anything personal, ethical or otherwise? There is for the non-theist no objective ethic or morality, as there simply cannot be. Ethics or morality, and ethics is preferred over morality by most non-theists, is simply a matter of calculation of happiness for the greatest numbers [what in philosophy is known as Utilitarianism], or "situational ethics" which is highly subjective and without any real referent for making a decision except for one's very biased, enmeshed in the situation clouded judgment, or merely a cultural development which can just as easily be changed by the same cultural forces that created the set of ethical rules in the first place: ethics by democratic vote or the whim of the people in charge and with influence and say. Thus there is no need for God to intervene in the world or to care for the world and the world is headed in no particular direction. And, there is no God to intervene, so it's fortunate not to have a need for a God to do so. Salvation is reduced to heightened or enlightened consciousness; whatever that is suppose to be.

From this non-theistic approach, follow a host of other implications for theology, church history, biblical study and interpretation, biblical authority, etc., as well as daily practice as a member of the church. All of these implications depart radically from the classical Christian faith, and all of this is so to such an extent it is hard to see how one can authentically any longer call it Christian, except that for the non-theist anything can be called Christian just by calling it Christian. In this approach, what is Christian today does not have to have any real connection to the Christianity or what was Christian that preceded it. One is totally free in the present day to completely rewrite Christianity, Jesus Christ, the Bible, etc, just as the current Bishop of Pennsylvania delights in doing regularly. For Bishop Bennison the Bible is free to be rewritten any way we would like to rewrite it as we [Christians] wrote it in the first place. Jesus can be said to be "soft on sin" and not really all that concerned about sin as Bishop Bennison recently said, because we don't really know anything about the real Jesus, the only Jesus we have is the one the church made up in the first place. One can ordain gays and lesbians and make this an acceptable "Christian" lifestyle despite two thousand years of Christian tradition which said this was not permitted. One may ordain homosexual persons to the priesthood and the episcopate because we are free to write whatever ethical rules we want to write and which seem right to us for our day - which is what many bishops and priests of the Episcopal Church are now saying from the Presiding Bishop on down and without any real sanction coming form supposedly orthodox bishops like the current Bishop of Florida.

Gospels competing with the authentic Gospel of Jesus, the apostles, the New Testament, and the early church and the apostolic tradition is nothing new. Jesus and the first apostles recognized there would be other gospels, false gospels. The malevolent forces at work in reality that are opposed to God and what God is seeking to do for the good of the Universe and humankind and the rest of creation, will oppose in whatever way they can those efforts and the truth of the Gospel, Good News, of Jesus.

In John's Gospel one of the reasons Jesus says he will sent the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Comforter, to be with those who genuinely believe and receive Jesus and his Good News and are entering into the Kingdom of God he is opening up to humankind, is that they would be led into all truth. Jesus could not be physically present with every believer then or to come, given the limitations of a human, physical body, in addition to going and being with the Father, so he would send one to be with every believer and who would join with the believer in prayer and in opening the Word and the Gospel to them and to the Christian community, the Church. The presence of this Holy Spirit would safeguard true believers, the Church present in the world, from error, and for nearly two thousand years this is what the Spirit has been doing and is doing still.

Yet, from the beginning, the Church experienced the intrusion of other gospels, false gospels. In one of the instances of this recorded for us in the New Testament itself involves the Apostle Paul and the Galatian Christians. Paul, in addressing this reality says:

I am astonished to find you turning away so quickly from him

who called you by grace, and following a different gospel. Not

that it is in fact another gospel; only there are some who

unsettle your minds by trying to distort the gospel of Christ.

But should anyone, even I myself or an angel from heaven,

preach a gospel other than the gospel I preached to you,

let him be banned! [Galatians 1:6-9, Revised English Bible]

Paul is preaching a gospel of grace, the gospel Jesus preached and enacted by his life, death, resurrection and ascension. Paul outlines a lot of the content of this gospel in this letter to the Galatians and most fully in his letter to the Romans. It is consistent with the Gospel Jesus is recorded as proclaiming and enacting in the four canonical Gospels and the Gospel we find in the Fathers of the early church [e.g. Ignatius, Origen, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc.] of the first four centuries [during which time the Church, Christians, formulated the Gospel in means for expressing it using the tools spoken of above and early in this essay].

Yet these Galatian Christians, some of them have already turned away, not from Paul, but from Jesus and the Holy Spirit who have called them by grace, to this gospel. And, Paul says it's not really another gospel, because it's no gospel - there is only one gospel. But other proclamations will try to pass themselves off as Gospels by distorting the gospel of Christ. The so-called Gospel of the non-theists in the contemporary church of our day is doing the same thing. The result is they proclaim a "gospel" that appears to have a connection with the Gospel of Christ but this is only accomplished by distorting the original. And, for Paul it does not matter who would preach a false gospel, even if it was himself, he should be rejected and banned! This is how seriously Paul takes the situation.

The Gospel Paul proclaims, just as the Gospel Jesus proclaimed and enacted, and the apostles and the early church fathers all proclaimed, is not of Paul's or human writing. It comes not from human beings [and so cannot be rewritten by human beings]. It comes from God and God alone in Christ Jesus:

I must make it clear to you, my friends, that the gospel

you heard me preach is not of human origin. I did

not take it from anyone; no one taught it to me; I

received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

[Galatians 1:11,12, Revised English Bible]

For Paul, it is only this Gospel that has the power to deal with the realities of our human existence in creation, in the Universe. We need grace, and not a gospel of works - which

essentially is what the "gospel" of the non-theists amounts to. Their so-called "gospel" is all human effort, and while there is a place for human effort in the real gospel of Jesus, more is needed that just human effort - human effort alone won't get us to where we need to go. This goes, of course, against much of our human willfulness, self-sufficiency, pull us up by our own boot straps mentality. It goes against our wanting to be in control and against our not wanting to be seen being differential to another. But if we persist in such willful self-destruction and going it aloneness, there will be no salvation or real transformation for us, we will miss what it means to be authentically and fully human as God intended for us to be, and as we see Jesus was able to be.

This gospel God announced beforehand in sacred scriptures

through his prophets. It is about his Son: on the human level

he was a descendent of David, but on the level of the spirit -

the Holy Spirit - he was proclaimed Son of God by an act

of power that raised him from the dead: it is about Jesus

Christ our Lord. ... I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the

saving power of God for everyone who has faith - the Jew

first, but the Greek also - because in it the righteousness

of God is seen at work, beginning in faith and ending in

faith, as scripture say, 'Whoever is justified through faith

shall gain life.' [Paul, Romans 1:2-4, 16-17, Revised

English Bible ].

The "Gospel" of most of the leadership of the Episcopal Church removes Scripture from having any authority other than as a historical document, a historical curiosity, which at best may witness to something of humankind's religious experiences over the course of human history, but this narrative is by no means normative for most of the leadership of the Episcopal Church.

As the Apostle Peter himself recognized, apostles such as Paul were already being recognized in the early church, in the era the New Testament witnesses so, as being given inspired wisdom by God. [2] And while the early Christians recognized the Hebrew Scriptures [the Old Testament] as the Word of God written, it would make sense and be a logical development, given this recognition of the endowment of God bestowed on one like Paul [and this recognized by Peter or the community closely associated with the Apostle Peter], to extend what Paul said to Timothy of the Old Testament, to the New Testament, when it finally came to be produced and accepted by the tradition of the Church.

All inspired scripture has its use for teaching the truth and

refuting error, or for reformation of manners and discipline

in right living, so that the man of God may be capable

and equipped for good work of every kind. [2 Timothy

3:16,17, Revised English Bible ]

Scripture, which is 'God-breathed,' the meaning of "inspired" literally, has a place for teaching truth and refuting error. A primary reason for either diminishing the authority of scripture or rubbishing its place as authority in the church is usually first of all an ethical and philosophical one: the truth is not wanted to be known, error is not wanted to be corrected, and one would prefer to be left to live as one decides matters of ethics and morals for oneself rather than have to measure one's conduct against the standard of God. The contemporary church known as the Episcopal Church has largely taken this critical and important role away from Scripture. Thus it also makes sense that the kind of life envisioned by Paul, and spoken of to Timothy earlier in the same chapter, about the final age of the world, seems consistent with a lot of what we now find in the Episcopal Church and much of the American culture [which honors God in word but not in reality]:

Remember, the final age of this world is to be a time of

turmoil. People will love nothing but self and money;

they will be boastful, arrogant, abusive; disobedient

to parents, devoid of gratitude, piety and natural

affection; they will be implacable in their hatreds,

scandal-mongers, uncontrolled and violent, hostile

to all goodness, perfidious, foolhardy, swollen with

self-importance. They will love their pleasures more

than their God. While preserving the outward form of

religion, they are a standing denial of its power.

Keep clear of them. [2 Timothy 3:1-5, Revised English

Bible ]

Not only is Timothy, and the people of his church, to keep clear of such people, he is reminded that standing for the truth will often result in persecution [and often this from within what might be presumed to be the church, from fellow Christians], and he is to stay grounded in Christ Jesus, hold to the truth, and hold to the guidance and teaching of Scripture:

Their successes will be short-lived. ... But you, my son,

have observed closely my teaching and manner of life,

my resolution, my faithfulness, patience, and spirit of

love, and my fortitude under persecution and suffering

... persecution will indeed come to everyone who wants

to live a godly life as a follower of Christ Jesus, whereas

evildoers and charlatans will progress from bad to worse,

deceiving and being deceived. But for your part, stand

by the truths you have learned and are assured of.

Remember that from early childhood you have been

familiar with the sacred writings which have power

to make you wise and lead you to salvation through

faith in Christ Jesus. [2 Timothy 3:9a, 10-11a, 12-15,

Revised English Bible]

Last Paul reminds Timothy why he is to use all the intellectual skills and the spiritual skills with which he has been endowed to put forward the claims to be made for the truth of the authentic Gospel. Such will be all the more necessary Paul says given what will happen with people over time as they move further and further away from the hearing and first embrace of the Gospel, and by extension as civilization and human history move further and further away in time from the constituting, defining and seminal events that are the authentic Gospel.

For the time will come when people will not stand

for sound teaching, but each will follow his own

whim and gather a crowd of teachers to tickle his

fancy. They will stop their ears to the truth and

turn to fables. But you must keep your head

whatever happens; put up with hardship, work

to spread the gospel, discharge all the duties of

your calling. [2 Timothy 4:3-5, Revised English

Bible ]

The Apostle Peter foresaw the same situation with regards to teachers in the church. It will be no different he observes than what was the case with Israel .

In the past there were also false prophets among

the people, just as you also will have false teachers

among you. They will introduce their destructive

views, disowning the very Master who redeemed

them, and bringing swift destruction on their own

heads. They will gain many adherents to their

dissolute practices, through whom the way of

truth will be brought into disrepute. In their greed

for money they will trade on your credulity with

sheer fabrications. But judgment has long been

in preparation for them; destruction waits for them

with unsleeping eyes. God did spare the angels

who sinned...above all he will punish those who

follow their abominable lusts and flout authority.

[2 Peter 2:1-4a, 10a, Revised English Bible]

And, the concern is expressed elsewhere throughout the New Testament. Consider on your own, if you like, such sample passages as 2 Thessalonians 2, or 2 Corinthians 13, or 1 John 4:1, among many others. The Church's authentic Gospel has always been under attack. The difference today is that in the Episcopal Church the authentic Gospel is now being expressed by a smaller and smaller minority of leaders. There is a parallel in church history to a time when the bishops of the church, the vast majority were nearly all Arians, that is, followers of a heresy that denied full divinity to Jesus Christ. It was the faithful witness of a few bishops who were not Arian and the witness and practice and demands of lay Christians that Arianism was finally trumped and the Church came to embrace the full divinity of Jesus Christ alongside his full humanity as the apostolic tradition required to be developed and articulated by the Church, this truth latent within the apostolic heritage. It becomes a matter of whether lay people will actively and powerfully resist from within the structures of one denomination, and all the more pressing an issue today in that it cannot be said of the Episcopal Church that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church can only be found with her, given such an identity is also being rapidly lost by her and will be lost if the current trends continue, and as they continue to speed up and become increasingly more and more rapid that further the Episcopal Church moves away from its roots in the unified Church of Europe and the West of the sixteenth century and seems increasingly today impacted by the down sides of the reality of the English Reformation [given her abandonment increasingly of the upsides there were with the same Reformation].

Two Gospels, but following Paul, one is not a gospel at all. This false gospel cannot be compromised with or simply lived alongside of. Paul was very clear to Timothy, just as Peter and others were, including Jesus himself, one does not compromise the truth with the false. One cannot embrace those who are intent on maintaining the false and one cannot even over sympathize with those who think they cannot still embrace the radical and persistently entranced and committed to a self-destructive falsehood and not themselves be contaminated by the same. The intellectual thinking of this false gospel is not only fallacious, unwarranted, ultimately intellectually and rationally indefensible as anything remotely authentically Christian, it is pervasive in its attempts to undermine clear, rational thought and the work of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of God in both the living and the written Word so that, like with some of the bright evangelical Episcopal minds of the late nineteenth century Episcopal Church, they were themselves overcome by liberalism and helped to contribute to the apostasy we are seeing currently being reaped in the contemporary Episcopal Church.

Copyright 2005, Bruce A. Flickinger

--The Revd Bruce A. Flickinger, BA, MDiv, is a presbyter of the Episcopal Church USA and canonically resident in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida. Recently he completed five years of service at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Welaka, FL. He attended both Seabury Western Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, and Trinity College, Bristol, England. He has also done post graduate study at Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary, Saint Paul, MN., and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis , MN. He has taught philosophy at the College of Saint Catherine, Saint Paul, MN., and is a member of the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion/USA [EFAC/USA].

[1] See, Standing Against the Whirlwind, Diana Hochstedt Butler, Oxford University Press.

[2] 2 Peter 3:15