Lutheran Response to NAR: Faith

I want to return again to a part of a conversation we kind of touched on, but let's go a little further on the nuanced description of it, which is the understanding of what faith is.

So both the Prosperity Gospel Movement, the NAR movement, and confessional Lutheran theology, they uphold the centrality of faith in theology, but they come to very different conclusions then about what the role of faith is.

Here is some of the ways that the NAR movement thinks about faith.

In part, it's a force, a force.

Kate Bowler, who has a book on the Prosperity Gospel Movement, summarizes it this way, "...faith, spoken aloud, loosed spiritual forces." its evangelist developed an understanding of faith as a tool to activate spiritual power that draw blessings into the believer's life.

In so doing, the prosperity gospel sanctified a message of more, more faith, more happiness, more health, and more goods to enjoy what God had in store.

So in this paradigm, faith is faith because it achieved results that you could measure.

So I can say it again.

Faith is faith because it achieved health and wealth, an experience of health and wealth.

Here's a sermon from a notable NAR church, a sermon given during the global pandemic, COVID-19 pandemic experience.

Here's a quote from the sermon.

As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.

So if you think you're going to be destroyed, guess what? You might be destroyed.

If you think I'm going to get sick, I'm going to get sick if I go outside, guess what? You might get sick.

But if you declare to yourself that my God is a God who redeems my life from destruction, you're going to come out of this thing winning.

You're going to come out of this thing excelling.

You're going to come out of this thing having learned so much.

This mentality then says, This mentality leads many Christians to really sing about the performance of faith.

You think about worship songs that release faith, that speak faith, that declare faith.

The sense that faith operates as a kind of law by which we draw the blessings from God.

There's one other example from a notable NAR church where it was also during the pandemic experience.

where the preacher said, I see a thermometer, and the faith of God's people is getting stronger and stronger, and it's because he's seeing your faith in him that he's going to make a breakthrough in our experience of the pandemic.

So Kip or Bob, any comments about that idea of faith and its ability to achieve a marked result?