Living in the second half of the twentieth century, we must keep on saying what faith is, in the biblical sense. Christian faith is never faith in faith. Christian faith is never without content. Christian faith is never a jump in the dark. Christian faith is always believing what God has said. And Christian faith rests upon Christ's finished work on the cross.
The Bible insists that we live in reality in a supernatural universe. But if we remove the objective reality of the supernatural universe in any area, this great reality of Christ the bridegroom bringing forth fruit through us immediately falls to the floor, and all that Christianity is at such a point is a psychological and sociological aid, a mere tool. [...] In Julian Huxley's concept of romantic evolutionary humanism, religion has a place, not because there is any truth in it, but because in the strange evolutionary formation, man as he now is simply needs it. [...] We are merely shut up to anthropology, psychology, and sociology, and all that we say about religion in general--and Christianity specifically--falls to the ground except as it relates to a mere psychological mechanism. All the reality of Christianity rests upon the reality of the existence of a personal God, and the reality of the supernatural view of the total universe.
Here is true Christian mysticism. Christian mysticism is not the same as non-Christian mysticism, but I would insist that it is not a lesser mysticism. Indeed, eventually it is a deeper mysticism, for it is not based merely on contentless experience, but on historic, space-time reality--on propositional truth. One is not asked to deny reason, the intellect, in true Christian mysticism. And there is to be no loss of personality, no loss of the individual man. In Eastern mysticism--for which the West is searching so madly now that it has lost the sense of history, of content, and the truth of biblical facts--there is always finally a loss of the personality. You will remember the story of Shiva, who is one of the Hindu manifestations of the Everything. He came and loved a mortal woman. Shiva put his arms around the woman in his love, and immediately she disappeared, and he became neuter. This is Eastern mysticism. It is grounded in the loss of personality of the individual. Not so in Christian mysticism. Christian mysticism is communion with Christ. It is Christ bringing forth fruit through me, the Christian, with no loss of personality and without my being used as a stick or a stone, either.
If we forget the absolute uniqueness of Christ's death, we are in heresy. As soon as we set aside or minimize, as soon as we cut down in any way, as the liberals of all kinds do in their theology, on the uniqueness and substitutionary character of Christ's death, our teaching is no longer Christian. On the other hand, let us remember the other side of the matter. If we forget the relationship of this order (rejected, slain, raised) to us as Christians, then we have a sterile orthodoxy, and we have no true Christian life. Christian life will wither and die; spirituality in any true biblical sense will come to an end.
