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Douglas R. Groothuis
Name: Douglas R. Groothuis
Dates: b. 1957
Education: Ph.D. (Philosophy), University of Oregon; M.A. (Philosophy), University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Religious Affiliation: Evangelical Christian; denomination unknown.
Position: Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, Denver Seminary.
N.B. This is not an exhaustive bibliography. For a complete listing, see Groothuis' curriculum vitae.
Douglas R. Groothuis is considered by many to be among the foremost evangelical thinkers on the subject of the New Age, modern culture's loose collectivity of syncretic religion, instrumental spirituality, and often self-indulgent middle-class mysticism. According to Gordon Lewis, with Unmasking the New Age "Groothuis has clearly revealed the terminal disease at the heart of the New Age movement" (Lewis, in Groothuis 1986:9). In a curious turn of phrase, Lewis continues that "God will use Unmasking the New Age to deliver many pre-Christians from the futile quest for spirituality without the guidance of the biblical gospel" (Lewis, in Groothuis 1986:10; second emphasis added). In his forward to Confronting the New Age, the sequel to Unmasking, the late Walter Martin called Groothuis "a dedicated, philosophically oriented Christian scholar and apologist" (Martin, in Groothuis 1988:10). Evangelical novelist Frank Peretti describes Groothuis' Revealing the New Age Jesus as "an ideal resource for any open-minded seeker of truth" (Groothuis 1990: front cover), while D. James Kennedy dubs it "a brilliant and exhaustive analysis" (Groothuis 1990: back cover).
Fine words from respected colleagues. However, to establish a critical trajectory from the very beginning, it should be noted that, from the standpoint of a sociology of knowledge and in terms of evangelical Christian response to the New Age, Groothuis' work represents, as the old joke goes, both good news and bad. The good news is that of the hundreds of books, tracts, newsletters, tapes, etc. currently available on the New Age movement, his work is arguably among the best. The bad news is that of all the hundreds of books, tracts, newsletters, tapes, etc. currently available, his work is arguably among the best.
A campus minister for twelve years, and currently an associate professor of philosophy of religion and ethics at Denver Seminary, Groothuis was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Oregon. Like Bob Larson, he is something of a wunderkind in the countercult movement, publishing his first book, Unmasking the New Age through InterVarsity Press at the age of twenty-nine. He followed that two years later with Confronting the New Age, and two years after that with Revealing the New Age Jesus. He has continued to publish since then, his latest a critique of postmodernism, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism.
The problem when dealing with phenomena of the New Age type, which Groothuis faces no less than anyone else, is that despite countercult protestations to the contrary, the New Age movement is hardly a "movement" at all, at least in any unified sense. It is rather a loose collectivity of similarly intending individuals, groups (many of which could be classified under Stark and Bainbridge's categories of client- and audience cults; cf. Stark and Bainbridge 1985:26-9), and movements which fit under a no more coherent rubric than that. The most concrete example of the problem is that, often, groups which would in any other universe of discourse hardly be classified together find themselves phenomenological bedmates in the New Age, forced into a framework of interpretation which is so broadly defined that it serves few of its constituents adequately. For the purposes of discussion in almost any work that seeks to treat the New Age as a coherent phenomenon (as opposed to a collection of phenomena), Neopaganism, for example, from Nordic pagan revivalism1 to Wiccan faerie,2 is categorized along with self-improvement spiritualities ranging from Reiki3 to Feng Shui4 to the Hoffman Quadrinity Principle.5 To date, the only two researchers who have tried intentionally to separate Neopaganism from the New Age in discussion of new religious phenomena have been Wouter Hanegraaff (no relation to Hank; 1996:77-93) and Michael York 1995:145-77).
Unfortunately, any attempt to analyze this loose collection of phenomena forces the researcher to impose a cognitive structure by which the analysis might be carried out. Researchers are placed in the unenviable position of saying, on the one hand, that there is a wide diversity of phenomena within the spectrum of what we call the New Age, but that, on the other hand, all those phenomena have "X,Y,Z" (whatever "X,Y,Z" are) in common, and according to the principles of "X,Y,Z" may be described and analyzed. That is, definition and interpretation proceed according to correlates (aspects which may or may not be present in a particular thing) rather than attributes (aspects which are always present in that particular thing). While the specifics of "X,Y,Z" may vary according to the researcher, for Groothuis (following Francis A. Schaeffer,6 James Sire [cf. Sire 1976, 1988, 1997], and Gordon Lewis), they exist under the aegis of the overarching worldview of all New Age phenomena—pantheistic monism,7 a convenient conflation of the theory that God is everything8 and the concept that all reality is ultimately of one kind.
While there are aspects of New Age phenomena which could be described as "monistic,"9 with little or no supporting data, and no differentiation between the different philosophical positions which could variously be described as "monistic," Groothuis insists on reducing all New Age phenomena— "from holistic health to the new physics, from politics to transpersonal psychology, from Eastern religions to the occult" (1986:18)—to this essential monism. In this reductionist fashion, Groothuis continues: "Monism, then, is the belief that all that is, is one. All is interrelated, interdependent, and interpenetrating. Ultimately there is no difference between God, a person, a carrot or a rock. They are all part of one continuous reality that has no boundaries, no ultimate divisions" (1986:18).
Despite his assertion of the panpermeation of monism within the New Age movement, Groothuis chooses to illustrate his definition with a description of the Jim Henson children's film, The Dark Crystal, which he calls "a fairy tale of monism" (1986:19). As the film's story unfolds, two races of beings—the Mystics and the Skecsees, the light and the dark, the good and the evil—are reunited by the power of the Dark Crystal "into one unified group of beings" (Groothuis 1986:19). From this, Groothuis concludes: "Good and evil are transcended and cosmic unity is restored. We are told in no uncertain terms that good does not overcome evil; good and evil are really one and the same . . .ultimate reality is beyond good and evil" (1986:19).
Here, once again, is the patent reductionism of Groothuis' worldview. To say that a unified being has a dark side, or that ultimate reality transcends the perceptual categories of good and evil, is hardly the same thing as saying "good and evil are really one and the same thing."
He concludes from this whole discussion that "[monism], the basic premise of the New Age movement, is radically at odds with a Christian view of reality" (Groothuis 1986:19). The next element in Groothuis' New Age equation is that "[once] we admit that all is one, including god, then it is a short step to admitting that 'all is god.' This is pantheism" (1986:20). From here, Groothuis' theological calculus extends with a predictable certainty: All is one; all is God; therefore, humanity is God.
Gordon H. Clark, however, argues that the issue is not nearly so easily defined as Groothuis wold have his readers believe. In Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy, he notes:
This history of monistic discussion within Christianity notwithstanding, Both Sire and Groothuis locate their theological difficulty with "pantheistic monism" in the east (recalling Herman Hesse, Sire titles his chapter on the subject "Journey to the East" [Sire 1988:136-55, 1997:118-35]); and, since it is the influx of so-called Eastern religious influences into the North American religious economy which Groothuis wishes to bring to light, this makes good sense. However, what neither seems to realise is that the dispute over pantheism and monism is a western philosophical debate which has been going on since the Enlightenment. Indeed, Groothuis and Sire place themselves in precisely the position of German academics and clergy who felt themselves obliged to vilify the views of Spinoza in order to validate their own orthodoxy. As Frederick Beiser notes, the "pantheism controversy completely changed the intellectual map of eighteenth-century Germany; and it continued to preoccupy thinkers well into the nineteenth century" (1987:44; cf. 44-108). Indeed, Beiser continues, "[until] the middle of the eighteenth century it was de rigueur for every professor and cleric to prove his orthodoxy before taking office; and proving one's orthodoxy often demanded denouncing Spinoza as a heretic" (1987:48).
Like many of the countercult apologists, Groothuis reacts less than graciously when the integrity of his own scholarship is questioned. Such questioning breaches his proximate threshold of instability just as surely as does the rise of a new religious movement. For example, in a public email communication, he castigates religious studies scholar Irving Hexham and anthropologist Karla Poewe for their apparent inability to discriminate between countercult apologists who are above reproach (like himself) and those who deserve what criticism may come their way. He complains that, "in 'New Religions as Global Cultures' (Harper, 1997) Irving Hexam [sic] and Karla Poewe slam numerous evangelical authors in their first chapter, including Doug Groothuis, Walter Martin, Elliot Miller, Norm Geisler, David Clark, and other people who really deserve it more, such as Dave Hunt. Somebody needs to take them to task for all this. They make some very irresponsible claims" (Groothuis 1997a). In another public communication, Groothuis writes: "[James R.] Lewis unfairly bashed one of my books a few years ago and did not respond to a detailed letter I wrote pointing out his errors. Anyone who endorses CUT [Church Universal and Triumphant] has the spiritual discernment of a dead slug (at best)" (1997b).
It should be noted that, in terms of a sociology of knowledge and their own subjective construction of reality, the difference between apologists such as Dave Hunt, Ed Decker, and Bob Larson, for whom sensationalism and carefully measured half-truths are stock-in-trade, and those named by Groothuis above, while perhaps more educated and more erudite, is a difference of degree only; it is not one of kind. Groothuis' subjective construction of Christian reality, the arguments on which he relies to support that construction, and the zeal with which he challenges those who would threaten it are little different than other countercult apologists.
Groothuis' chosen method of universe-maintenance is that of nihilation.
In order to effect this nihilation, he quilts together dogmatic interpretation of biblical texts, his own subjectively configured understanding of what constitutes Christian orthodoxy, and an unassailable belief that if the worldview of his opponent can be demonstrated absurd, unsound, or untenable in some way, his own worldview will thereby have been validated. All of Groothuis' published works demonstrate this fallacy of asymmetric proof.
In his treatment of the case of Betty Eadie, for example, a woman who claims to have had a series of near-death experiences and has written about those experiences in Embraced by the Light (1992), Groothuis spends an entire book (1995) dismantling her argument, using as his touchstone the question: "Are her new views genuinely biblical?" (1995:20). This, in fact, is always the crux of Groothuis' contention: Is it biblical? Which means does it measure up to Groothuis' particular interpretation and understanding of the biblical message? And, to be fair, Groothuis (and others who challenge the New Age either on the grounds of biblical compatibility, or on those of internal logical consistency and coherence) may very well be able to raze a story like Betty Eadie's; he may very well be able to demonstrate her as a crackpot or a fraud. But, and this is the crucial point which is missed in all of Groothuis' writing, a demonstration that Eadie's subjective construction of reality is wrong (according to whatever criteria are applied) is not thereby a demonstration that Groothuis' is correct. Even though he writes that the reader must "keep in mind that Eadie is not offering her opinions or commentary on the Bible or on any other religious book" (1995:22), Groothuis still insists that "we test Eadie's testimony against Scripture," and that "we should hold her accountable to her own words" (1995:22).
The tension here is easily defined. What Eadie claims as her experience of God, heaven, and the protocols of the afterlife challenge the cognitive boundary markers of Groothuis' subjective reality; that is, they breach the walls of his constructed universe, his understanding of God, heaven, and the protocols of the afterlife. For Groothuis, if she is even partially accurate in her worldview, then the possibility exists that there is something inaccurate in his. Her views threaten the stability of his belief in the congruency between his subjective reality-as-it-is-constructed and objective reality-as-it-is. Therefore, the cognitive machinery of universe-maintenance which he employs must effect nihilation of the offending worldview.
What Groothuis believes in regard to the afterlife is clear: "Those who embrace Christ as Savior will live forever with him; those who continue to rebel against God will suffer eternal punishment" (1988:98). In response to Betty Eadie, Groothuis writes, "The unbridgeable chasm between heaven and hell reflects the divide between God's holiness and human sinfulness—a divide that cannot be bridged through NDEs or human efforts at 'being good,' but only through God's offer of forgiveness through Jesus Christ's death and resurrection" (1995:83).
In Unmasking the New Age, Groothuis sets out what he considers to be the "Christian Essentials," his "kerygma," as it were. Attributively, according to Groothuis, the Christian worldview is:
Quite correctly, he recognizes that, with respect to the differences between the New Age and Christianity (however either is conceived), "these issues come down to a clash of worldviews" (Groothuis 1986:165). He continues that "[as] Christians we must reject any practice or belief that contradicts our faith" (Groothuis 1986:165). Fair enough as far as it goes. One would hardly expect an observant Jew to accept the practice of eating pork, or an observant Muslim the practice of eating anything before sundown during Ramadan, or an observant Buddhist the practice of killing a sentient being in order to eat at all. Where Groothuis' understanding differs from these is that, for him, not only must Christians reject the practices he considers contradictory to faith (and it is always his assessment that matters), everyone must so reject them. If not, the very future of Christian culture may be at stake. Writing of the possibility of a New Age apocalypse, a planetary "cleansing" allegedly prophesied by some of those involved in the New Age, Groothuis concludes that "[these] kinds of predictions have led some Christians to believe that New Agers have a secret plan to eradicate Christians and other obstinate monotheists" (1988:204-5).10
While he does not give it categorical primacy in his list of Christian essentials, Groothuis' belief in the Bible as the inerrant, infallible, and insuperable revelation of the Divine to humankind is evident throughout his writing. Indeed, it is precisely here that his own logical circularity displays itself most prominently. In a serious misuse of the notion of "objectivity" (i.e., one grounded in his subjective construction of reality), Groothuis writes:
Along with being holistic, Christianity is also objective, providing a standard beyond and above the created world by which to evaluate one's life. Truth is not based on subjective experience but on God’s revelation of himself in the Bible and through Christ.
While the New Age worldview seeks to be holistic, it has no objective grounding because it has no personal and morally perfect God that transcends the creation . . . the God of the Bible has given us an objective operating manual for the planet, that we may be equipped to obey him in every area of life and thought (2 Tim 3:16). (Groothuis 1986:170).
The patent absurdity of the Bible as "an operating manual for the planet" notwithstanding, what Groothuis consistently fails to recognize in assertions such as these is that nothing he has said is verifiable apart from his experience of God and his faith in God; that is, nothing is verifiable apart from his belief that these things are already verified. He has made the classic mistake of confusing a statement of faith (however tenaciously held) with a statement of fact. The faith which he places in Divine revelation in order to call such revelation objective is itself subjective; it is itself both a result of and open to interpretation; and it is subject to the exigencies of worldview, the subjective construction of reality, and the generational transmission of Christian "recipe knowledge."
Groothuis uses what Jesuit philosopher Bernard J.F. Lonergan called "absolute objectivity" to describe his position. That is, as Lonergand wrote: "Because the content of the judgement is an absolute, it is withdrawn from relativity to the subject that utters it, the place in which he utters it, the time at which he utters it. Caesar's crossing the Rubicon was a contingent event occurring at a particular place and time. But a true affirmation of that event is an eternal, immutable, definitive validity. For if it is true that he did cross, then no one whatever at any place or time can truly deny that he did" (Lonergan 1958:378).
Perhaps the clearest statement of the problem of practical life to which Groothuis is responding is given in Confronting the New Age:
There is every possibility that if the people of God do not rise up in the Spirit's power and the New Age movement does not disillusion its followers with its superstition, unfulfilled promises and exotic irrationality, it will assume an increasingly potent and sinister form marked by hostility toward its opponents and more openly demonic forms of spiritual experience such as Lucifer/serpent worship and black magic. (Groothuis 1986:206)
1According to York, "Odinists and Norse Pagans are also among the most polytheistic of the Neo-pagans. Though their rituals are frequently less elaborate than those of Wicca, their gods serve as examples and models—'inspirations and self-aware personifications of natural forces'" (1995:125; cf. 124-7). See also Hopman and Bond 1996:92-7.
2According to Hopman and Bond, "people in every culture and in every region of the world had their tales of 'the little people,' 'the good people.' The Irish had their sidh, the Scottish their wee folk, the Germans their dwarves, and Scandinavian countries their Tomtems. indeed, many believe that these were races that accepted and lived by the ways of magic as easily as we now accept the 'realities' of computers and air travel (1996:64; for interviews with practitioners of the Faerie faith, see Hopman and Bond 1996:64-91; De Grandis 1998; Vallee 1988).
3"The work [sic] Reiki is made of two Japanese words - Rei and Ki. Rei means supernatural force of spiritual intelligence, Ki means life energy. Thus, Reiki is spiritually guided life force energy. Reiki is given by the laying-on of hands. A standard treatment includes placing the hands on positions around the head, shoulders, stomach and feet. in addition, the practitioner may use other positions for specific conditions that the client may have. Each position is held for a short period of time, and the entire treatment lasts approximately 45 minutes. A treatment creates a wonderful glowing radiance that is deeply relaxing and includes many beneficial affects [sic] for both client and practitioner" (What is Rieki?; accessed June 10, 1998). In other contexts, both mainstream Christian and New Age, this phenomenon is known as "Healing Touch," or "Therapeutic Touch" (cf., for example, Bye 1994; Cowens and Monte 1996; MacRae 1988; Smith 2000; Thomas 1994).
4"Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art of placement, used to bring balance and harmony into your life" (Bowie 1998:16).
5"The Hoffman Quadrinity Principle is based on the principle that the persistent negative behaviors, moods, and attitudes we experience as adults have their roots in the experiences and conditioning of childhood. Until this original pain from childhood is resolved, it continues to dominate our adult lives (thoughts, emotions, and actions) whether we are aware of it or not. The Hoffman Process is designed to heal and transform these negative, self-defeating patterns and bring about a powerful realignment and integration of the four fundamental dimensions of our being - the Quadrinity of intellect, emotions, body, and spirit" (Hoffman Quadrinity Process: An Overview; accessed November 2, 2000).
6In a contribution to an electronic discussion group on anticult apologetics, Groothuis writes: "Although we never met, Francis Schaeffer was my first intellectual mentor. Reading The God Who is There a few months after my conversion in 1976 sparked in me a grand vision for ministry that has never dimmed. Schaeffer argued that Christianity is objectively true and rational and that it uniquely provides hope and meaning that secular culture desperately needs. Christians should outthink the world for the sake of Christ's Kingdom! As a college student majoring in philosophy at a secular university, I devoured Schaeffer's many books. Although they didn't answer all my questions, they gave me a framework for keeping both my intellectual integrity and biblical orthodoxy" (Groothuis 1998).
7"Often," wrote Schaeffer, "this answer—of beginning with the impersonal—is called pantheism. The new mystical thought is almost always some form of pantheism—and almost all the modern liberal theology is pantheistic as well" ([1972] 1982:283). However, Schaeffer also argued that, in the case of Buddhism and Hinduism, the word pantheism is misused since it implied a divine personality to which neither religion subscribe. "Somewhere along the way I try to make the point that it is not really pantheism, with its semantic illusion of personality, but pan-everythingism" (Schaeffer [1972] 1982:283). According to Sire, pantheistic monism (which "is distinguished from other related Eastern worldviews by its monism [the notion that only one impersonal element constitutes reality])"; is the root worldview which underlies the Hindu Advaita Vedanta system of Shankara, the Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, [and] much of the Upanishads" (1997:121; cf. 1997:118-35). In his foreword to Groothuis' book, Lewis writes: "This volume shows how important it is to keep monism from becoming dominant in schools, homes, businesses, governments and churches. Its ounce of prevention in time can be worth a ton of corrective cures!" (Lewis, in Groothuis 1986:10). Wouter Hanegraaff, on the other hand, argues that there is an inherent tension in the New Age movement between a monistic understanding of reality and an idealistic understanding. The former begins with matter and seeks the salvation of spirit; the latter finds its origin in spirit but must explain the existence of matter (cf. Hanegraff 1996:180-1).
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9For example, York lists "Transcendental Meditation, est, Scientology, even Krishna Consciousness"; as monistic movements of a technical or instrumental kind, "Meher Baba, Guru Maharaj-ji, [and] Healthy-Happy-Holy Organization 3HO)" as examples of charismatic monistic groups (1995:290-1).
10In an endnote to this passage, Groothuis writes: "Texe Marrs documents these kinds of claims in his book, Dark Secrets of the New Age . . . pp.136-65" (Groothuis 1988:215 n.16). As far as Marrs is concerned, "documents" seriously overstates the case. The chapters to which Groothuis refers are entitled "The Dark Secret: What Will Happen to the Christians?" and "New Age Zeal...New Age Aggression." The former begins: "Only one thing stands in the way of Satan and his Plan today: the true Church of Jesus Christ. Up to now God has not allowed Satan to move aggressively to destroy the earth's Christian believers. But leaders of the New Age see their coming triumph over traditional Christianity as inevitable" (Marrs 1987:136). In the latter, Marrs writes: "New Age leaders tell the average New Age believer that it is only the negativity of devout Christians and Jews that prevents the world from being magically transformed into the New Age Kingdom. the New Age believer is told, 'You could be a god in the next instant if only those horrible Christians weren't around with their poisonous attitudes" (1987:153). As a result of this, Marrs believes that world can expect the "wholesale slaughter of Christians" (1987:158).