Existential Theology

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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April 24, 2016

00:00: Continuing this morning in our study of overview of theological systems, my class is the systematic theology class, Mr.
00:10: Jack's class is the verse-by-verse Bible study class.
00:15: So in my class over the last six months or so we have been going through this book which is by Dr.
00:23: House, Charts of Theology and Doctrine.
00:27: And I encourage everybody to get a copy of it.
00:29: I know not everybody has one.
00:30: Of course obviously we have visitors today so not everyone will have the page that we're on.
00:34: So I did make copies.
00:36: So here you go, sir, for you.
00:39: And here's an actual one for y'all.
00:42: Would you like one? There you go.
00:47: There's one for each of you.
00:50: Hey Kelly, good morning.
00:54: Here you are.
00:57: We are looking today at somewhat of an odd subject.
01:06: And it's odd in the sense that a lot of people are unfamiliar with it, though they may know it by name or having heard the name before, they're unfamiliar with it by meaning.
01:19: In fact a lot of people have trouble defining what it is.
01:24: And the reason, again if you looked through the book you would see that the way that Dr.
01:30: House has outlined everything for us is he begins with different theological systems to help us understand the distinctions of the different systems.
01:40: We began many months ago looking at Roman Catholic theology.
01:45: We've looked at Natural Theology, Lutheran Theology, Anabaptist Theology, Reformed Theology, Arminian Theology, Wesleyan Theology.
01:54: In the last two weeks we looked at Liberal Theology.
01:59: Well out of Liberal Theology we have something called Existential Theology.
02:07: Existential Theology.
02:09: And as I'm probably, I'm going to take a venture to guess that not many of us have spent a lot of time looking into Existential Theology.
02:18: I thought today we would spend the lion's share of the time simply just trying to explain what it is.
02:25: And in the weeks to come we'll be going over what is taught, who are the major proponents of it, what kind of churches we would see this type of theology taught in, and simply be able to identify some of what has crept into even conservative churches out of the Existential Movement.
02:43: For instance, I'll give you an example and you all, I think, will be able to relate to this example.
02:51: There was a time in history where if you were concerned with a particular subject you might ask another person, what do you think about this subject? But in the modern vernacular we don't normally say what do you think, we say what do you feel about the subject, right? That very statement is birthed out of Existentialism.
03:24: It is more concerned with individual passions and feelings than it is with truth.
03:33: The idea of objective truth is foreign to Existentialism.
03:42: Existentialism gives rise to things like moral relativism.
03:46: The idea that what is true for you can be true while at the same time not being true for me.
03:55: And that has given rise to so much sinfulness in the church.
04:01: So we're gonna, again, we're gonna begin today with simply just an explanation.
04:05: We talked about Existentialism.
04:12: Existentialism is based on what root word? Yeah, the idea of existence.
04:20: The key phrase in Existentialism is this.
04:24: Existence precedes essence.
04:32: Existence precedes essence.
04:35: Now what does that mean? Sounds kind of silly.
04:38: Sounds like they're just using words for word's sake.
04:41: But what it's saying is this.
04:43: When you think about something that exists, oftentimes you think about its existence based on why it exists, its essence.
04:54: For instance, one atheistic writer in trying to describe Existentialism said this.
05:00: He said, if you think about a hammer, you know that before a hammer exists physically, it exists in essence in the mind of its creator.
05:13: Right? Before ever there was a hammer, somebody realized they needed a hammer.
05:20: They thought about the hammer.
05:22: They thought about how it should be made and how it should be formed.
05:26: And thus it existed in essence before it existed in actuality.
05:32: Make sense? That is how most of us think metaphysically, even about ourselves.
05:42: Before we existed physically, we existed essentially in the mind of God.
05:48: God knew us before we were created.
05:52: He thought about us before we ever existed.
05:57: Mankind has a nature, human nature, because God created humanity in his image.
06:07: Now that nature has been corrupted.
06:09: We now live this side of the fall.
06:12: But there is an essence in the same way where we might think of a hammer and then create a hammer.
06:18: God thought of a human and then created a human.
06:21: Now again I'm using anthropomorphic terms.
06:23: God doesn't think as we think.
06:25: But you understand, before we existed actually, we existed essentially in the mind of God.
06:32: Okay? Existentialists say, no that's not right.
06:37: Our existence precedes our essence.
06:41: Because in the existentialist mind, existence is everything.
06:47: You exist and that gives meaning to who you are, rather than God giving meaning to who you are and creating you.
06:58: Existentialism is at its heart atheistic, because it's individualistic.
07:04: Every person who exists, exists in the sense of their own reality and their own sort of microcosmic universe.
07:14: And you become very much a law unto yourself, because each of us exists in and of ourselves.
07:24: We're not bound to a God outside of ourselves and we're certainly not bound to any rules or standards.
07:30: So if we do that which is good, it's good because we believe it's good.
07:34: If we do that which is bad, well we may still believe it's good and the only thing that says it's bad is maybe society.
07:42: It's a very odd system.
07:45: Let me read to you, if you don't mind, I want to read the idea that I'm trying to get out here.
07:56: Traditionally, it was assumed to be the case that people believe that humans were created by God.
08:02: According to traditional Christian mythology, remember this is being written by an atheist, you say, why are we listening to an atheist? Well because I want to know what they believe.
08:08: And as I always say, before I can interact with someone on a meaningful level and really engage their argument, I have to understand at least somewhat of what they're saying.
08:18: It doesn't mean I have to understand everything, but I do need to understand at least a little bit.
08:23: And what he says is according to traditional Christian mythology, because of course they don't believe in Christ or the Bible, humanity was created by God through a deliberate act of the will and with specific ideas and purposes in mind.
08:34: God knew what was to be made before humans ever existed.
08:38: Thus in the context of Christianity, humans are like hammers and we used that example earlier, because the essence of humanity existed in the eternal mind of God before any actual humans existed in the world.
08:49: Even many atheists retain this basic premise despite the fact that they had dispensed with the accompanying premise of God.
08:57: They assume that human beings possess some special human nature with constrained what a person could or could not be.
09:04: Basically that they all possess some essence that preceded their existence.
09:09: Sartre, by the way, you've heard that name? Jean-Paul Sartre? Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the fathers of existentialism, goes a step further and rejects this idea entirely, arguing that such a step was necessary for anyone who was going to take atheism seriously.
09:25: It isn't enough to simply abandon the concept of God.
09:28: One has to also abandon any concepts which derive from and were dependent upon the idea of God.
09:33: No matter how comfortable or familiar they might have become over the centuries, Sartre draws two conclusions.
09:39: First, he argues that there is no given human nature common to everyone because there is no God to give it in the first place.
09:46: So according to existentialism, there is no human nature.
09:48: There's only you.
09:50: You are your own person.
09:51: You are your own nature and there is no human nature.
09:57: Second, Sartre argues that because the nature of every human being is dependent upon that person, this radical freedom is accompanied by an equally radical responsibility.
10:08: No one can say, it was my nature as an excuse for some behavior.
10:13: Whatever a person is or does is wholly dependent upon their own choices and commitments.
10:17: There's nothing else to fall back upon.
10:19: People have no one to blame or praise but themselves.
10:22: For what? For anything.
10:25: They have no one to blame and no one to praise but themselves for anything.
10:35: If it sounds like nonsense, there's a reason.
10:40: But it is the idea of what I would call hyper individualism, hyper freewillism.
10:53: Not only does God not exist, there is no natural existence either.
10:59: Thank you for using that word because that's exactly right.
11:05: It is a hyper view of man's autonomy.
11:10: What's interesting though is Sartre argues that we're still very responsible.
11:15: We're even more responsible.
11:19: Exactly.
11:20: There's no sense in it.
11:25: They do address, and I don't want to go too far, they do address later in this article that I that I that I drew from and part of my preparation, they do address the idea that we are responsible because we live in a society.
11:42: So because we're in a society, we're responsible.
11:49: So how can we be subject to society if we're not subject to anybody else and we're our own autonomy? If that doesn't make it, then society takes preference over us.
12:01: How can the good of everybody take precedence over us? Allow me to at least let them speak for themselves.
12:08: Let me read at least a little more if you don't mind.
12:11: Just at this moment of extreme individualism, Sartre steps back and reminds us that we aren't isolated individuals, but rather members of communities and of the human race.
12:21: There may be a universal human nature, or there may not be a universal human nature, but there are certainly a common human condition.
12:27: We are all in this together, we're all living in human society, and we're all faced with the same sorts of decisions.
12:33: All right, stop right there.
12:36: Out of this grows the modern ideas that we see going on all around us, causing so much foolishness in the world.
12:45: We can't tell someone they're wrong ever anymore, no matter how wrong a behavior is.
12:51: But what must we do? You can't not tell someone they're wrong.
12:56: You can't do that.
12:57: You can't say you're wrong.
12:58: But what must you do? You must affirm whatever their ideals are.
13:06: Again, this all grows out of this because we're responsible, we live in a society, and certainly you wouldn't want to make someone feel bad.
13:14: Certainly you wouldn't want to make someone feel like they're less important than they should feel.
13:19: So not only must you not tell someone they're wrong, but you must affirm that no matter what someone believes, they're right.
13:30: Oh, I'm not trying to argue.
13:33: I'm telling you how do we get to a point, and I don't want to get all political and all nonsense, but how do we get to a point where it's even a question as to whether or not men should use women's restrooms? I don't mean to pull from the headlines, but you understand.
13:47: How do we get to this point? Because of the radical individualism that not only must be accepted, but must be affirmed.
13:57: See, existentialism has made its way into the very core fabric of who we are, and here's the scary part.
14:07: Here's the scary part.
14:09: Existentialism, and we haven't even got to existential theology.
14:12: I'm explaining what existentialism is at its base, because existential theology tries to bring God into this, and it becomes ridiculous.
14:25: Well, here's the thing.
14:31: You are familiar with Friedrich Nietzsche.
14:34: Really? You're familiar with Friedrich Nietzsche? No? Okay, okay.
14:47: Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the fathers of modern existentialism, and his whole idea was a concept called nihilism.
15:06: Nihilism.
15:07: Nihilism means nothingness.
15:12: Nothingness.
15:16: The idea of nihilism is this.
15:19: You came from nothing, and when you die, you go back to being nothing.
15:30: And thus, this life means nothing.
15:38: Well, to them, yeah.
15:39: No, no.
15:40: That's right.
15:41: To them, I mean, to anybody who isn't in Christ, and if this is all you get, then what would it mean? Here's the thing, though.
15:51: While nihilism and Nietzschean philosophy is well accepted in the atheistic community, we came from nothing.
16:01: You listen to Stephen Hawking.
16:03: Stephen Hawking believes that the universe came from nothing, even though he can't explain how nothing creates something.
16:12: As I've made the point before, ex nihilo nihil fit, that's a Latin phrase that means, out of nothing, nothing comes.
16:20: If you take a jar full of nothing and you put it on a shelf for a billion years, and when you come back a billion years later and you open the jar, it's still going to have nothing in it, because nothing comes from nothing.
16:31: You must have something to produce something.
16:35: Ex nihilo nihil fit is one of the reasons why we are theists and not atheists, because we believe in the eternal being.
16:43: We believe that something has always existed, because for anything to exist, something must have always existed.
16:50: But Stephen Hawking, one of the most renowned scientists in the world, says, no, that's not true.
16:54: There was a time when there was nothing.
16:55: So he makes the scientific argument, unscientifically, might I add, he makes a scientific argument that something comes from nothing.
17:04: And then you hear him try to explain it.
17:05: You know what he proves in his argument? That nothing is something.
17:12: Isn't it dumb? Sounds like nonsense, because if you listen to him argue what is nothing, Richard Dawkins, same thing, famous atheist, biologist, he argues that something is in the nothing.
17:27: Then it's not nothing.
17:29: It's so nonsensical.
17:31: But Nietzsche was at least consistent.
17:33: He said we came from nothing and we're going back to nothing.
17:38: And so the meaning of life is nothing.
17:43: And thus there is no meaning.
17:45: The only meaning in life is what you give it.
17:49: And thus existentialism is born, because you create your own meaning.
17:55: You create your own purpose.
17:57: You are not responsible to anyone other than yourself and the society out of which you were birthed, because of course you're responsible to that society as well, because that is what gave rise to your something.
18:09: But you're going back to nothing.
18:13: This is a lot to think about, and I know you want to keep interjecting, but go ahead.
18:18: If we came from nothing, and life is nothing, then there can be no meaning.
18:25: Hey, hey, and Nietzsche would say, yes, you are right.
18:34: You're not wrong.
18:35: But then you can't say the meaning of your life or the purpose of your life is anything.
18:39: Nothing.
18:40: So you would not be guilty of sending him back to nothing by shooting him dead.
18:47: Exactly.
18:48: Exactly.
18:48: Out of this, there are, and here's what the one word which Nietzscheanism, as a philosophy, the one word which is drawn out, and it's in their books and things like this, and the one word that tends to rise up is the word dread.
19:08: Because what if life is nothing? But what if that were true, and you realize that this life means nothing? In fact, one of the, at least one, said the only thing to contemplate at this point is suicide.
19:37: He got to that point, he said, the only thing to contemplate at this point is suicide.
19:44: Because that's, all we have left is nothing.
19:52: Look at the sexual revolution.
19:56: What is the sexual revolution if not an expression of do everything you can in this life to satisfy every base desire you have, because tomorrow we die, and their God is their belly.
20:14: That's right.
20:17: Yeah.
20:18: We of all men are most to be pitied.
20:22: Exactly.
20:27: So out of this, I simply explained this, this gave rise to theological ideas in Christianity.
20:36: This made its way into Harvard, Princeton Theological Seminary, once one of the greatest theological seminaries in the world.
20:47: Men like Hobbes, one of the greatest teachers, rose out of that seminary, buried in their cemetery.
20:56: And now there's more deadness in the seminary than there is in the cemetery.
21:01: There's better theology in the cemetery at Princeton than there is in the seminary, because this gave rise to a change in theological ideas.
21:16: Yeah, and it does, it has found its way down there too.
21:21: Yeah, yeah.
21:22: We are taught that we are advanced apes, that we have no more...
21:28: Yeah, I always say, why are you mad when you, when your children act like monkeys, when you've told them from birth that's what they are? Go ahead.
21:36: This all stems from man's desire to suppress the knowledge of God.
21:41: Absolutely.
21:42: That's what it all stems from.
21:44: They're going to bend over backwards, they're gonna rack their mind and figure out anything they can to, because God is there, and they know he's there deep down, and they're gonna do anything to come up with some sort of formula to disprove him, and then have other people believe it too, so they can have company, and affirmation of their beliefs.
22:06: Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, man is a useless passion.
22:12: And what does that mean? Well, he was writing from the existential idea that we are passionate about life, we are passionate about love, we're passionate about our desires, we're passionate about our careers, we're passionate about our families, we're even passionate about our hobbies.
22:31: I've seen people that paint themselves blue and orange, and go watch a football game.
22:36: They were passionate about everything, but according to Sartre, it was a useless passion.
22:42: Meaningless.
22:44: But you understand though, I'm simply trying to help you understand the point, and so now I want you to look at the sheet that I gave you, because I want you to see sort of what this gives rise to in Christian thinking, and I want to, when I say Christian thinking, maybe I should have used quotes, because existential theology is not Christian.
23:16: I shudder to even call it theology, because theology is the study of God, and the first thing we see when we look at existential theology is that it's an attempt to what they call demythologize scripture.
23:35: What is mythology? Mythology is the creating of something that is false for the purpose of establishing a narrative which isn't real, right? If I tell you a myth, I'm telling you something that's false, and it's a narrative of something that is not real.
23:54: When I talk about Apollos, you know, the gods of Greece and Rome, we understand, we call it Greek mythology, we call it Roman mythology, and the pantheon of the gods.
24:08: Well, the existentialists would say Christianity is no different than Greece or Rome.
24:16: They have created, instead of a pantheon of gods, Christianity has created a singular God with three heads.
24:25: That's not the way the Trinity should be understood, mind you, but that's the way it's often described, a sort of a three-headed God, and out of that three-headed God comes all of these things that we should jettison.
24:37: Existential theology is based on the idea that there should be no form or ritual in our religion, that our religion is purely individualistic.
24:45: Again, existentialism is based on the individual.
24:49: It's all about individualism.
24:51: So why go to church and worship the way someone else worships? I can worship the way I want to.
24:56: How many people have you heard say that? How many people have you heard say, I don't need to be in church, I don't need to be around those hypocrites, I can do it my way.
25:06: What is that song? There's no sadder song to hear at a funeral.
25:14: I've done several funerals over the years.
25:17: To hear the song, I did it my way.
25:22: They play it at funerals because it's the existential hero who says, I lived it my way.
25:35: I can't tell you how many people write eulogies and this is in the eulogy.
25:39: He lived life his way.
25:45: Oh it's so true, it's absolutely true.
25:49: But it's the heart of the problem.
25:52: Go ahead, Gene.
25:54: It is.
26:24: Amen, absolutely.
26:28: So if you look at the first block and we're gonna look at the rest next week because what time is it getting to be? My time.
26:34: Is it not that late? Do we got plenty? Well I got ten whole minutes.
26:38: I do want to look at a verse of Scripture today.
26:41: I want to look at one of the Psalms but let's look here first at this square.
26:46: Existential theologians claim that we have to demythologize Scripture.
26:52: To demythologize Scripture is to reject not Scripture or the Christian message but the worldview of a past epic.
27:01: That means to explain everything supernatural as myth.
27:06: The important part of the Christian faith consequently becomes a subjective experience rather than an objective truth.
27:13: The Bible, when demythologized, does not talk about God but about man.
27:20: So let me give you an example and some of you been in my class for a while you've heard me use this example before.
27:27: I can't think of a better one and maybe one day I'll get a better one.
27:31: But there was a teacher, John Dominic Crossom.
27:36: John Dominic Crossom is one of the leading liberal theologians of the modern age.
27:45: He was very instrumental in something called the Jesus Seminar.
27:50: The Jesus Seminar was a group of scholars.
27:53: They were scholars.
27:54: They were men who had PhDs and doctorates and things.
27:57: They had gathered together to search for the real Jesus.
28:04: That was their that was their moniker.
28:07: The Jesus Seminar.
28:09: And so the first and most important thing that they thought to do was to find in the scripture the parts that were not true.
28:19: So it was automatically to say there is no inerrancy.
28:26: Exactly.
28:39: Oh yeah.
28:44: And that same ideal, the Jeffersonian idea of removing the mysterious, removing the supernatural, it leaves you with a very simplistic view of who Jesus was.
28:59: And that's really the idea.
29:00: I mean if you hear John Dominic Crossom teach, he'll tell you Jesus was, you know, he did die but he was buried in a tomb and his bones were eaten by dogs.
29:08: I mean this is the way he describes the Jesus of how life would have been at that time.
29:13: And the idea that he was born in a or put in a tomb and that he rose three days, not even an option.
29:21: And he is invited to speak at seminaries.
29:24: He's invited to speak.
29:25: I used to get invitations to things.
29:30: I guess they quit sending them, you know.
29:32: But there was a local Disciples of Christ Church was having him in to speak.
29:42: And I thought, you know, this is a obviously the Disciples of Christ, very liberal church.
29:47: But it just amazes me that he has an audience, and such a large audience to boot.
29:54: He can find an audience to spew his nonsense.
29:59: But this is the example, and then we get around to the example.
30:00: The example that he gives, the feeding of the 5,000.
30:05: He says that the feeding of the 5,000 was not a miracle of multiplication.
30:15: Jesus did not take five loaves and two fish and feed 5,000 people.
30:25: What Jesus did was he looked at 5,000 people that was a mixed multitude of rich and poor, and he encouraged those who had to share with those who had not.
30:44: And in the sharing of those who had with those who had not, we have the great miracle of selflessness.
30:54: The miracle of sharing.
30:59: It's socialism.
31:01: It absolutely is.
31:02: And that's why I say we have the miracle of socialism right there.
31:05: But you see, he says that story was never intended to be taken literally.
31:10: It was always intended to be taken parabolically.
31:13: The whole life of Jesus is, to John Dominic Crossom, a parable.
31:18: And if you hear him teach, he'll say, it's a parable dummy.
31:21: That's his favorite phrase.
31:22: It's a parable dummy.
31:23: He's not calling the audience dummy.
31:25: He's talking sort of in inner monologue.
31:31: No, no, no, no, no, no.
31:33: So that seeing they cannot see and hearing they will not understand.
31:36: Certainly not.
31:38: Huh? Again, this is the essence of the problem.
31:53: Yeah, I'm going to look at that together.
31:54: We're going to go to Psalms anyway.
31:56: Let's look at Psalm 2 first, and then we'll go to Psalm.
31:59: First three verses speaks of man's faults.
32:03: And then there's that answer of God in verse number four.
32:08: Okay, let's just together look at that.
32:20: You said beginning at verse four? Start with verse one, two, and three.
32:33: Okay.
32:33: Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst their bond apart and cast away their cords from us.
32:49: He who sits in the heavens laughs and the Lord holds them in derision.
32:58: Amen.
33:08: But God just laughs.
33:11: It's a good sermon.
33:12: Oh yeah.
33:14: Well turn over to, oh yeah, turn over to chapter 8 and let's finish, get ready to draw to a close here.
33:23: I always feel like I never have enough time, but it's fine.
33:25: I like for us to look at things for, let you guys digest what we talked about today, and then the weeks to come we'll break down more of this.
33:32: Because I want to show you guys in the end, I hope to show you how this is infiltrated even the most conservative of churches.
33:39: How do Bible studies work now? Well what do you feel about that passage? Who cares what you feel about the passage? Letting everyone share their own individual.
33:57: Yeah yeah absolutely.
33:59: Yeah that's true.