Disagreement and false teaching regarding God and Jesus Christ have created a theological problem whose practical implications affect prayer, worship, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue.
Many assert that some Christian groups have an erroneous conception of God and Christ that prevents their prayers and worship from being valid. The strongest charges of this sort often are made by Protestant Fundamentalists, many of whom are willing to classify every group besides their own as having a false God and a false Christ.
The concept of false gods and false Christs are attested in Scripture (Ps. 40:4; Jer. 14:22, 18:15; Bar. 6:59; Matt. 24:24; Mark. 13:22), but when it speaks of false gods it has in mind idols of imaginary deities (e.g., Marduk, Thoth, Ba’al). It does not have in mind false understandings of Yahweh, the true God. Similarly, when Scripture speaks of false Christs it has in mind individuals who claimed to be the Messiah even though they are not Jesus of Nazareth (e.g., Simon bar Kokhba in the A.D. 130s). It does not have in mind false understandings of Jesus.
A Key Passage
There is one verse that might provide a basis for the kind of language Fundamentalists use. In 2 Cor. 11:4, Paul castigates some of his readers, saying that “if some one comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough.”
Here it is not plausible to understand the reference to “another Jesus” as another individual with the name Jesus (though there were many in the first century). Other individuals named Jesus were not being preached in Christian churches. Clearly, Paul has a false understanding of Jesus of Nazareth in mind. This conclusion is strengthened by the references to receiving “a different spirit” (as opposed to receiving the Holy Spirit in Christian initiation) and accepting “a different gospel.”
The phrase “a different gospel” is taken by many as the key to understanding what constitutes “another Jesus.” It is argued that if someone preaches a different gospel it indicates that they have a false understanding of Jesus and thus are not worshiping the true Christ.
Protestants who are willing to call any deviation from their understanding of soteriology (the theology of salvation) a false gospel carry this argument to its furthest extreme. Hardcore Calvinists (who generally are not Fundamentalists) sometimes so identify their understanding of predestination with the gospel that they will state that those who disagree with any of the five points of Calvinism are technically heretics.
This is an extreme. Despite the claims of hardcore Calvinists, there is a broad recognition among Protestant theologians that not every element of soteriology is an essential whose absence falsifies the gospel. Even hardcore Calvinists tend to allow flexibility on soteriological points like supralapsarianism or infralapsarianism.
One also shouldn’t be too quick to identify having a false gospel with having “another Christ.” Christology often is divided into the study of the Person of Christ (as God the Son Incarnate) and the work of Christ (on the cross, saving us from our sins). The gospel concerns principally the latter. After all, God the Son could have become Incarnate even if man had never fallen into sin.
Even if one’s understanding of the gospel were wrong, it would mean only that one had a false understanding of the work of Christ, not his Person. If one was right on the Person of Christ, it would be difficult to say that one is worshiping an imaginary Christ. So while it is plausible to see an important link between having “a different gospel” and having “another Christ,” the connection is not so automatic that the latter can always be inferred from the former.
Implications for Prayer
What does it mean to have “another Christ”? Does it mean that the Christ one prays to is a non-existent entity such that whatever worship or prayer one directs toward him goes into a black hole? This is difficult to sustain. Paul’s discussion of individuals preaching “another Christ” is more likely understood in accord with our own usual idiom.
Suppose someone told me they had sent Karl Keating an e-mail that complained about a speech in which they heard him advocate sola scriptura. I might well respond, “That’s not the Karl Keating I know. That’s some other Karl Keating.”
I would mean that their understanding of Karl is false. They must have misheard, misunderstood, or encountered some kind of imposter. By this I wouldn’t mean their e-mail would be delivered to a different individual or simply vanish in cyberspace. Karl would still get their e-mail—and scratch his head wondering what they were talking about.
Paul’s phrase “another Christ” is to be understood as implying some had embraced a false understand of Christ, but not that their actions toward Christ go into a black hole. Just as we can receive e-mail from people with false ideas about us, Jesus can receive a prayer from someone who has a false understanding of him.
A moment’s thought shows that Christ regards as positive everything that is positive. The unrestricted infallibility he has as God prevents him from misjudging and taking a more positive or negative view of something than it deserves. As a result, to the extent someone’s prayers are good and wholesome, Christ regards them positively. To the extent they’re not, he doesn’t.
What will he do in response to them? This is a harder question. It depends on his free will, and you cannot unfailingly predict what God in his sovereignty will choose to allow or disallow. Christ may withhold the answers to some prayers of heretics or unbelievers in order to move them closer to the truth. Or he may grant them—again to move them closer to the truth. Or he may grant them out of sheer mercy (Matt. 5:45), even though it would not move them closer to the truth.
It cannot be shown that Christ will not answer the prayers of someone because of a false understanding of him. (Thank God, because even if our view of Christ is not heretical, most of us have an imperfect understanding of him—for instance, viewing him as harsher or more lenient than he actually is.)
What applies to Christ regarding answering prayers also applies to the Father and the Spirit. For in answering any person’s prayer, all three Persons of the Trinity cooperate, as they do in all their actions outside the Godhead.
Implications for Worship
Does God receive the worship of those who have incomplete or false ideas about him? The Bible indicates he may.
The ancient Hebrews tended to have a unitarian understanding of God because the doctrine of the Trinity had not yet been revealed. This did not stop God from receiving their worship. Even after revelation and definition of the Trinity, Christian tradition has always honored the fact that Jews worship the same God we do. They acknowledge true things about him—that he is the Creator of the world, that he spoke to Abraham, that he is both just and merciful. To the extent their worship (recognition of God’s greatness) is true, God knows it to be true, just as he knows when people are praying to him. To the extent their worship is not based on truth, he knows it to be false.
The same goes for others. In John 4:22, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “You [Samaritans] worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” Samaritans had a lesser understanding of God than the Jewish people, but still Jesus acknowledged that they worship God.
The Samaritans’ understanding of God was much more like the Jewish understanding than another group whose worship God received: the pagans imported into Samaria by the Assyrians. When they first entered the land, they didn’t worship God, so he sent lions, which killed some of them (2 Kgs. 17:25). As a result, the Assyrians sent back a priest to teach them how to worship God, who they perceived to be the god of the local land (vv. 26–28). Following this the lion attacks stopped (cf. v. 25), though they also worshiped other gods (vv. 29–41).
More striking is Paul’s declaration: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:22–23). These pagans had the true idea that there was some God they should be worshiping who they weren’t, and with only this scrap of truth on their side, Paul says they were worshiping God in ignorance.
Scripture speaks of people with very distorted understandings of God still being able to worship him. To worship is to recognize the greatness of God, and to the extent one recognizes this, one’s worship is valid. God’s omniscience ensures his awareness of the worship, and his infallibility ensures his recognizing the degree to which it is based on truth, as with prayer.
Thus it is not accurate to say that those who have erroneous understandings of God or Christ are simply sending their prayer and worship into a vacuum. If we follow the Bible’s recognition of the worship of various groups—as well as what we know about God’s omniscience, infallibility, and mercy—we have to extend recognition to those with incomplete or erroneous understandings of God, be they Jews, Muslims, or what have you. To the extent their worship is based on truth, God receives it.