Natural Religion Blog Series
Something I have been thinking a lot about recently is the effect that innate religious tendencies have on the church and its teaching. To be clear, I am not talking about Christian piety or any other thing that comes about through the Christian’s spiritual regeneration. Rather, it is interesting to note that most people have an understanding of religion that comes naturally to them that is in opposition to true Christian faith and practice. These tendencies are finding their way into Christian teaching and find a receptive ear precisely because they appeal to the innate, sinful religious part of us. I hope it will be helpful to look at some of the ideas that are affecting the church at the moment in the form of series.Idolatry and Superstition are the words classically used to define these things, but I want to steer away from these terms so that we can look at the impact they have without evoking the strong presuppositions that the terms imply. For the sake of this series I would like to use the phrase “Natural Religion”.Many of these things have been covered before and will be familiar, but there are trends within the church at the moment that are not as obvious and have certainly made huge gains. So much so, that you will hear the language of Natural Religion on the lips of many faithful believers, who - while not necessarily giving full expression to the lies in practice - are certainly influenced and weakened them.
Here's a quote from Calvin on the issue of superstition:
"It is easy to see how superstition, with its false glosses, mocks God, while it tries to please him. Usually fastening merely on things on which he has declared he sets no value, it either contemptuously overlooks, or even undisguisedly rejects, the things which he expressly enjoins, or in which we are assured that he takes pleasure."John Calvin, Institutes, Book I. Ch. 4. Section 3
Natural Religion leads us to things that have no value or are harmful and away from things that we are required to do and which please God. For the Reformers, the target was obvious and easy to identify. But we are to go on reforming so that we don't fall into old errors once more.
The superstitious understanding of “Faith” will be the first topic.
