But you’re probably right – this is stuff which should be part of teaching for new believers (rather than pre-believers) – and that’s where Alpha (at least in the documentary) messed up. The ‘agnostics’ were not yet ‘filled with the holy spirit’/’saved’ so attempting tongues should have been out of the question.

And I suppose tongues (which I don’t have either and struggle with understanding) is a bit weird for non Christians you’re trying not to put off Christianity. But what about healing, miracles, prophecy, knowledge, etc. Jesus and the apostles were filled with the holy spirit and used these gifts. Why not celebrate these?

I suppose what I’m saying is that they appear to be part of the biblical Christian life and yet not part of the modern Presbyterian Christian life (where I also grew up – don’t take it personally). If we’re not living these gifts either then yes, there is no point in teaching them up front. But being filled with the spirit it should be part of what we’re striving for and teaching to believers at least.

And since you mentioned Calvin, isn’t it the HS who does all the hard work of convicting us and bringing us to God, not the evangelical course?!

(way off topic, but did you see the Robespierre drama/documentary on BBC2 at the weekend? i was gonna do a post but i feared that you’d do a better one! )

or maybe we’re all living in a matrix/truman type unreal-reality anyway.

do you think its possible that you, in your head have been hearing the voice of Allah or Ra calling to you, and you have deluded yourself into thinking that its the voice of the deity which happens to be be most believed in your society and hemisphere?

As long as you concede the point that it is evident that ‘at very least’ some christians are deluded when they think jesus is hearing/speaking/guiding them… then that’s all i was really asking.

Do you ever think that someone could have an encounter with the Holy Spirit or in other terms heard the prompting of the Triune God but deluded themselves into believing it was nothing but a hormonal imbalance that day or the mis-firing of neurons? If so, how could one discern what is delusion and what is not?

how do you go about deciding what is what? If Peter says the holy spirit came to him and over powered him and gave him a real sense of Christ, making him lie on the ground and kick and shout (or whatever) do you always think – lovely, i wish god would do that to me too?

If i lie on my back and mumble and shout, and say its the ghost of Elvis doing it, you might slap me across the cheeks and help me to snap out of it…. if i say its the holy spirit you might take me more seriously. why?

Are christians EVER deluded about mystical/spiritual goings-on? and if so how do you decide what is delusion and what’s not?

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Let me try and meet the challenge. My dear friend Andrew Smith emailed me straight after this post to call me to book for the same thing but he’s a crazy Charismatic so I just arrogantly discarded his views and retreated to my copy of Calvin’s Institutes.

If we are running an evangelistic course, I think we need to present “mere Christianity”. The core creedal stuff. The essentials. The non-negotiables. The “extraordinary” gifts of the Holy Spirit are certainly negotiable. Paul says so. Prophecy and tongues and so on are not given to everyone. And where they are shared, they are to be used in a certain way.

With serious respect to Alpha, I do disagree with the central role that these gifts have. It would be similar for me to Fisherwick Presbyterian or some prominent PCI course releasing a global evangelism project where on the fourth week we teach people who to put together a three point sermon. Some of us have that gift, and hey! we think its deadly when that gift is used well, but its hardly central to people catching on to the whole Triune grace thing.

I am not in anyway (anymore for I have repented!) hostile to charismatic and pentecostal churches and am eagerly awaiting the Spirit blessing me someday with such gifts (look how far I’ve come!) so please don’t hear me slate HTB or Alpha or charismata generally. But I still think that the focus on those gifts (at the expense of others even!) in Alpha is a problem (for us in MCC- we’re not looking for an Alpha re-write!)

I certainly didn’t find it pernicious. I think Ronson was trying to root the charismata down in a context for people outside the church and sadly, Toronto and its ilk is the most significant mass of land to drop anchor on in recent history. Countless brilliant little Vineyard churches wouldn’t have helped people understand this “weird” part of Christianity.

I thought the documentary made the whole concept of Alpha to be very unfairly pernicious. Inserting the Toronto blessing clips were unnecessary and unhelpful because they aren’t directly anything to do with Alpha. Surely there is a more balanced but still accurate presentation of the gospel that includes Spiritual gifts. I am not a charismaniac but I don’t think you can preach the gospel without them.