Letter to the Editor: Continuing Concern About Moody Bible Institute

LTRP Note: When we received the following note this past week from a reader, we were reminded again about Moody Bible Institute and some of its professors. Moody, which claims to be a Bible-based learning institution, has an obligation to its donors and students to not veer from biblical truth and to make sure the school only uses professors who adhere to this framework.

Dear Lighthouse Trails:

I trust you are being blessed mightily.

[Bryan Litfin] (link below) was listed in the “Add friend” area of my Facebook page. I assume the listed ones either visited my page or they were linked through others. He is a writer and a professor at Moody. He is obviously ecumenical and pro-Catholic theology. Sad days!

I thought you might be interested in his FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/bryan.litfin.3?__tn__=%2CdH-R-R&eid=ARBn07X8S7GBCH2j3TzOTpJvwpll3H9DcgvJm93dymxwTnD2PEV9UJQoxlEKMaLPIWJw5dWlVm8znhqV

Praise God for your investigative work which exposes today’s so-called Christian institutions.

V.L.

Below is an excerpt from an article Lighthouse Trails wrote 5 1/2 years ago. We believe it is still relevant to what is taking place at MBI and so many other Christian colleges, seminaries, and Bible schools today:

December 2013 – “Embracing Contemplative Shows Ill Effects at Moody Bible Institute in Ecumenical ‘Road to Rome’ Event”

By LT Editors

For over seven years now, Lighthouse Trails has followed Moody Bible Institute’s continued promotion of contemplative spirituality. Although the organization has denied that they are promoting contemplative, the evidence has consistently existed. Those who have a good understanding of contemplative spirituality are aware of the inevitable outcome for followers of contemplative. This outcome is a change in spiritual attitude that leads to the following – ecumenism (a joining together of all religious traditions, in particularly Catholicism first, then Islam),  interspirituality (all paths lead to God), panentheism (God is in all), and eventually universalism (all are saved, regardless of belief – thus no need for the Cross).

We had hoped that at some point leaders and professors at Moody would seriously examine the contemplative issue and come to the conclusion that they do not want to go in that direction. Sadly, the indications of that happening are non-existent, and the probability of the complete embracing of contemplative spirituality is fast increasing. A case in point occurred just this month [December 2013) when the school allowed an ecumenical/road to Rome  event to take place on campus, where it was reported that over 300 people showed up, most of them being MBI students.

On December 3rd, emerging church figure John Armstrong (a convert from traditional evangelicalism to emerging) and Catholic priest Father Robert Barron spoke at a gathering at Moody Bible Institute. The event was presented by the Moody Student Theological Society. It was not broadcasted, and Moody’s website doesn’t seem to show anything about it so we have had to gather information from various other sources, including the Moody Student Theological Society’s Facebook page, which carries information about the event, which was called the “Evangelical and Catholic Ecumenical Dialogue.”

We were first alerted to the ecumenical “dialogue” by a Lighthouse Trails reader, who stated:

Heads up to things stirring at Moody Bible Institute. (Also, please read this blog entry about it:  http://www.revangelicalblog.com/blog1/?currentPage=3 [link removed]  from Dec. 4, titled, “Can We Learn from Rome? Maybe… (A Reflection on Ecumenical Unity).” This is by that young man I have mentioned to you before, who rubs elbows with Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Jim Wallis, et. al.

The blog entry mentioned by the LT reader was written by a senior at Moody Bible Institute (MBI). . . .

The MBI student states:

As I myself have been in the process of rediscovering the beauty of the ancient Christian tradition [contemplative] offered to us via the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and even Anglican versions of faith, I have also felt a tugging and noticed a trend of millennial evangelicals to convert to Catholicism- returning to Rome, if you will.

It is not our intention to draw attention to or scrutinize this student. Our issue is with MBI’s leadership and professors. We believe this and other students at Moody who are being drawn to contemplative . . . and Roman Catholicism  . . .  are merely reflecting the sympathies they have witnessed at Moody from professors and others in leadership. For instance, on John Armstrong’s website, he talks about his invitation to the “Evangelical and Catholic Ecumenical Dialogue” and points to one of the MBI professors:

Our dialogue tomorrow will begin with a welcome by a Moody student leader which will be followed by an introduction given by our moderator, Dr. Bryan Litfin (Ph.D. in the field of ancient church history at the University of Virginia). Dr. Litfin is a professor of theology at Moody Bible Institute. Bryan is also a first-rate patristics scholar and has often encouraged Christian dialogue as a part of his teaching. He is the author of Getting to Know the Church Fathers–An Evangelical Introduction (Brazos, 2007). Fr. Barron and I will each speak for about ten minutes and then we will field questions from the students.

[Lighthouse Trails editors] decided to spend $13.99 to buy an e-book copy of Litfin’s book, Getting to Know the Church Fathers – an Evangelical Introduction. A better title for this book might be Why Evangelicals Should Not Think Too Lowly of the Catholic Church. Litfin says that the benefit of studying the “church fathers” is to “help us get in touch with the general thrust of the Christian faith”  (Kindle Locations 389-390, Baker Publishing Group). But from Litfin’s book’s point of view, the benefit of studying the church fathers is to see some good in the Roman Catholic church. Here’s one example in Litfin’s book where he whitewashes and minimizes the heretical teachings of Roman Catholicism:

[M]any Catholic teachings must be understood as continuous historical developments out of earlier thought. For example, though the theology has changed from biblical times, the breaking of bread and drinking of wine in the Mass is an evolution of the love feasts of the early Christians, for whom the elements represented the Savior’s body and blood just as they still do for Catholics. Likewise, recitation of the Lord’s Prayer is an ancient habit still practiced today. And there are not a few doctrines held by the Roman Church which every orthodox Protestant would hold as well. (Endnote section, #20, (Kindle Locations 4084-4088).

The MBI student (mentioned above) goes on to say:

The Catholic Church offers much of what many millennial Protestants are longing for – liturgy, artistic expression, scholarship, ancient tradition, and a robust and deeply rooted theology [i.e., the Desert Fathers and contemplative spirituality]. Rome offers one, united Christian body with many stripes, styles, and theological variations contained within one communion. And with the Roman Catholic Churches recent moves for ecumenical unity with the Eastern  church and a number of Protestant traditions, it seems to me that perhaps a return to Rome may be in some millennial Evangelicals future.

The MBI student expresses his own hope for the future:

My hope and prayer is that in the coming years, Evangelicals, Mainliners, Catholics, and Orthodox will find more and more common ground on which we can work together to expand the Kingdom of God. My prayer is that God would continue to cause us to rethink, reform, and renew our faith traditions and in so doing help us refine them to reflect more clearly the face of Jesus Christ- our common Lord and Savior.

When you consider that Moody has been promoting the contemplative tradition for so long and the Catholic Church uses contemplative prayer as a catalyst to bring in new converts, it makes perfect sense that a student attending Moody for three and a half years could say something like this.

In 2007, Moody posted a response to LT criticisms that they were promoting contemplative. In that statement (which sat on their site for a number of years), they deny the allegations. But take a look at some of the related links we have provided below to see that indeed they have been promoting contemplative and continue to do so.

One person who would have been very upset about the recent “Evangelical and Catholic Ecumenical Dialogue” held at Moody is Harry Ironside, who was the pastor of the Moody Church (which also now promotes contemplative via its inclusion of sermons by contemplative/Spiritual Formation leader Larry Crabb [1]) from 1930-1948. Ironside stated:

Every Roman Catholic priest will tell you that all  the claims of the Church of Rome stand or fall with the doctrine of the real  presence of Christ in the Mass. If the bread and wine used in the Sacrament of  the Mass, when consecrated by the priest, are changed in some mysterious way  into the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ so that the  communicant receiving the bread actually takes into his mouth and eats and  digests the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ-if this is  true, then the Church of Rome is the true church of Christ and every one of us  should be members of it. But if it is false, if it is absolutely opposed to the  teaching of the Word of God, then the Church of Rome is an apostate church and  every faithful believer should come out of her in order that he might not be  held accountable for her sins.

It was because the great reformers of the sixteenth  century saw this clearly and were assured in their own hearts that the doctrine  of the Church of Rome in regard to the Eucharist or the Mass was absolutely  opposed to the Word of God and was not only blasphemous but idolatrous, that  they came out in protest against that apostate system and they won for us at  tremendous cost of Christian blood the liberty that we now possess. And yet we,  unworthy children of such worthy sires, are frittering away our liberty and we  are allowing our children to be ensnared again by this evil system from which  our fathers escaped with such tremendous effort. (From Ironside’s “The Mass Versus the Lord’s Supper”)

The Bible says in the last days there will be a harlot church. We are watching its formation right now; the tragedy is Christian leaders don’t even see it happening. And sadly, like so many other Christian campuses, Moody Bible Institute is falling into step with this apostasy.

Related Information/LT Coverage on Moody:

Moody Bible Institute—Trying to Hold on to a Biblical Heritage While Riding the Wave of the Emerging Church

What Would D. L. Moody Say Today to Moody Bible Institute About Mingling Truth and Error?

Concerns Grow as Moody Presses Forward Down Contemplative Path

Moody’s Pastors’ Conference Teaching Lectio Divina This Week – And Seven Years of Warning by Lighthouse Trails Go Unheeded

Moody Publishers Release Prayers for Today: A Yearlong Journey of Contemplative Prayer

An Epidemic of Apostasy – Christian Seminaries Must Incorporate “Spiritual Formation” to Become Accredited