A Response to “Pagan Christianity?”

1. Introductory Remarks

Pagan Christianity? by Frank Viola and George Barna is an aggressively polemical book claiming to expose “the roots of our church practices”^[1] as fundamentally pagan, rather than biblical. The authors take aim at the entire spectrum of traditional Christian churches and denominations, which they collectively call “institutional Christianity”. Their belief is that the “institutional” church has done itself great harm by adopting practices from pagan culture that, we are told, “contradict the teachings of Jesus and the apostles” and therefore “should be discarded in favor of what they taught”.^[2] The book is intended to function as demolition ball, with the aim of obliterating the reader’s confidence and commitment to his local church. The reader, if he is to accept the book’s argumentation, is placed under a heavy burden of conscience to leave his church and to join what the authors call an “organic church”, which has no buildings, no set order of service, no traditional sermon, no hierarchy, and no formally trained or paid pastors (among other things). This “organic church” model is supposed to represent a wholistic return to the New Testament model of the church, but is not defended in any detail. The authors admit that this book is primarily concerned with deconstruction, with the constructive part of the argument reserved for a second book.

I am a servant of the Lord Jesus and a member of a small local congregation of Christians, standing broadly in the Particular Baptist (or Reformed Baptist) tradition, which I believe to be fundamentally good, true, and biblically faithful.^[3] Out of my love for the Christ’s church, I am jealous for her purity. I desire to see her healthy, thriving, and serving her Lord in faith and obedience. Like Viola and Barna, I see much in the many contemporary expressions of Christianity that falls far short of the biblical ideal. In this way, I can be sympathetic to their stated desire to identify and correct what they consider to be unbiblical errors. Indeed, there are many places where my concerns and theirs overlap. At the same time, I am convinced that the authors’ framework and methodology for critiquing the modern church is catastrophically flawed and has the potential to do immense damage. I have heard of this book on two separate occasions now from dear brethren within the context of Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Hoping to provide a helpful service to my congregation, I am setting out here to address some of the book’s errors. It seems to me that there are certain presuppositions, that are widespread in our circles, that make the arguments of Viola and Barna seem more plausible than they have any right to be. I hope to go some way to correct this. One reason I consider these arguments such a profound threat is that they are not unique to Pagan Christianity? Similar accusations have been levelled against the church by the very worst heretics, cults, and secular critics of Christianity for many hundreds of years.^[4] If we are vulnerable to the arguments of Viola and Barna, we may be vulnerable to those arguments as well. Addressing this book is a good opportunity not only to clearly address its specific claims, but also to immunise ourselves against this whole class of spurious argumentation.

In this series of articles, I hope to address some of the specific arguments and claims in the book. By necessity, I will not be comprehensive. I will focus only on the most serious and central arguments. I will make use of footnotes throughout, not only providing citations to my sources where relevant, but also providing clarification and pointing to resources that will allow the reader to further explore the issues under discussion. My first priority will be to lay out some foundational principles that will help us to think through these issues with clarity. I will then provide comments in response to each main chapter of the book.

Next Section: 2.1 The concept of tradition in Scripture

Table of Contents

[1] Viola, F., & Barna, G. (2012). Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices (revised edition). Tyndale Momentum.

[2] From Pagan Christianity?, Preface, Kindle location 184.

[3] I say “fundamentally” rather than “perfectly” because no sinful man, no assembly of sinful men, and hence no human tradition (apart from Divine inspiration), will ever be entirely without error in every particular. God’s word alone is infallible. I came to embrace my tradition on the basis of Holy Scripture and feel free to critique my own tradition (humbly and cautiously) on the same basis.

[4] Many doctrines that are definitional of orthodox Christianity have been (falsely) attributed to the unsavoury the influence of pagan ideas and Greek philosophy in the church, including: the Trinity, the hypostatic union, original sin, penal substitutionary atonement, predestination, the intermediate state of the soul, Sunday gatherings for worship, and more.