A modern, aberrant form of Christianity, popularized most visibly by North American tele-evangelists and preachers like Oral Roberts, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Kenneth Hagen and Robert Schuller, promising wealth and health for Christians who obey God. The movement is driven by the simplistic logic that 1) if no earthly father would wish to see his children poor or suffering, then surely our heavenly Father does not, 2) while earthly fathers are constrained by what they can do for their children, our heavenly Father is not, therefore 3) if we obey God will bless us with wealth and health.
While preachers of the prosperity gospel often claim that their teachings are founded in Scriptures, their claims fall apart on closer examination. The basis of prosperity gospel is built up of selective and wishful analogies from Scriptures interpreted within conceptual frameworks borrowed from New Age theologies and the positive thinking movement. Of their teaching, New Testament scholar Gordon Fee says, "The selectivity of these evangelists allows them not only to espouse a view not taught anywhere in the New Testament, but also carefully to avoid hundreds of texts that stand squarely in opposition to their teaching" (The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels, italic his). The line of argument used by preachers of the prosperity gospel, viewed objectively, belongs to the same category of arguments used once to support the false gospel of indulgences espoused by the medieval Church: a series of clever human ideas decorated with a few sprigs of heavily pruned twigs from Scriptures. Most classical heresies arose from teachers who made God after their own image. Proponents of the prosperity gospel didn't; instead they looked down into the wishing-wells of their hearts and came up with what they saw reflected from their shallow bottoms.
Biblical scholar Brent Strawn calls the Prosperity Gospel the "New Plastic Gospel of the Happiologists" (The Old Testament is Dying). In a summary of Straen's book, David B. Schreiner says, "the entire system assumed by the Prosperity Gospel is too simplistic and cannot possibly account for the variables in life or the depth of scripture. According to Strawn, Job and Ecclesiastes are to throw a wrench into the entire system! Thus, the Happiologists assume a language of scripture that . . . conveniently ignores the elements that would otherwise criticize their system. Yet what is most critical for the Happiologists, according to Strawn, is the reality that the Happiologists represent a creole, or new language, that is rivaling the original language. So, while the New Atheists and New Marcionites assume a pidgin of the Old, the Happiologists offer a new language under the guise of the old, authoritative language." (The Ashbury Journal 73/2 (2018): 14). In ignoring these other and many clear teachings of the Bible Prosperity Gospel clearly and defiantly contradicts Jesus's teaching that those "who seriously undertake to follow [Him] can do so only by divesting themselves of the baggage of material possessions and 'traveling light'" (J. R. Michaels, DJG, 133).
We may add two futher observations.
It is obvious that God our Father has not blessed all Christians who obey Him. This should itself be taken as a caution about the validity of Prosperity Gospel's teaching. The obverse side of this fact is that Prosperity Gospel may be interpreted as insulting God in His dispersement of His blessings: He understands the logic of being a good father less than those who preach the Prosperity Gospel.
Then, taking the same path of logic on which Prosperity Gospel is founded to its natural conclusion, and evidenced in the actual life of churches advocating the Prosperity Gospel, the teaching is a blatant justification of plutocratic church government, i.e., rule by the rich. Since wealth is the sign of God's blessing and approval of the person's obedience, only the rich can serve as leaders in the church, and only their voice matters. Would you have a person who is poor—by implication according to the central tenet of Properity Gospel, one who is not blessed by God and, therefore, very likely not living a life of obedience—serve as a leader? Should you listen to the counsel of one whom God has not chosen to bless? In such a church, even Peter and Paul would not have been thought to have obeyed God and so blessed, since they were never wealthy. Neither would Martin Luther or John Calvin. Nor would our Lord Jesus himself, He—of whom no disciple can be greater—who had "nowhere to lay his head" (Matt 8:20; Lk 9:58).
At its best Prosperity Gospel is simply an act of baptising materialism and of justifying a life of complacency, a distraction from the radical discipleship to which our Lord Jesus has called us. One of the wisest thing anyone who wants to be serious with Jesus can do is to stay clear of this deviant teaching.
Further Reading & Resources:
Paul Barker, "Blessed to be Rich? A Biblical Theology of Blessing (1),". The Gospel Coalition (Australia), 05/05/2015. This is the first of four postings on the biblical theology of blessings.
Martin Ocana, "The New Apostolic Reformation and the Theology of Properity: The 'Kingdom of God' as a Hermeneutical Key,". Lausanne Movement. html/pdf N
Atibaia Statement on Prosperity Theology. Lausanne Movement. 2014. html/pdf N
David J. Downs, "Giving for a Return in the Prosperity Gospel and the New Testament." Lausanne Movement. 2014. html/pdf N
Paul Freston, "Prosperity Theology: A (Largely) Sociological Assessment." Lausanne Movement. 2014. html/pdf N
C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell, "Can We Offer a Better Theology? Banking on the Kingdom." Lausanne Movement, 2014. html/pdf N
R. T. France, "God and Mammon," The Evangelical Quarterly 51.1 (Jan.-Mar. 1979): 3-21. html/pdf N
"Editorial: The Prosperity Gospel," Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology 20.1 (2001): 1-2.
Pdf N 5-6 (Open on Phone)
Gordon Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels. Rev ed.; London: Authentic Books, 2011.
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