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Zeitgeist: The Divine Requirement to Discern the Spirit of the Age
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is a German or Germanic term found in books going back to the 18th century. Within a translation of the German Philosophisches Journal in 1794, the English translation reads on page 302, “Zeitgeist also works on the national spirit. Every age has its own imagination.” Zeit is the German word for “time” and geist is the German word for “spirit.” Combined it means, “spirit of the time or age.” The Oxford Learner Dictionary defines zeitgeist:
the general mood or quality of a particular period of history, as shown by the ideas, beliefs, etc. common at the time
The term was popularized in philosophical usage by the German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. On August 27, 2020, Antje Allroggen writes in DW (Deutsche Welle), which is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster:
[I]t is generally agreed that Hegel was the first philosopher to recognize and address the dimension of change, which he termed “becoming” (“Werden“), in all its fullness. He believed everything in the world was in constant motion: every individual life, nature, history, society. This results in each epoch having its own particular zeitgeist, or general spirit. One historic epoch is not randomly followed by another; instead, there is a principle of logical evolution.
The concept of zeitgeist is a scriptural concept that is in fitting with the terminology, “this world” (touto aion) or “this present world.” Aion (“world”) is “age” or “epoch,” speaking of a characteristic period or time. That’s how zeitgeist fits into the “spirit of the time.” “This world” is found 38 times in the New Testament. “Present world” is found twice, but very representative of zeitgeist in those two instances. I would contend that the philosophical thinking that arose defining zeitgeist, started with the concept which was in scripture.
God’s Requirements
God requires man, and especially genuine believers, to understand or discern the spirit of the times or age, the zeitgeist. In order to obey God, follow Him, and represent Him according to His will, one must discern the zeitgeist. This is an implication or assumption of scripture. People can and should know this. I would contend that many do, but they embrace the spirit of the age. They lap it up and luxuriate in it rather than obey the God ordained relationship to it.
Jesus first uses “this world” in scripture in Matthew 13:22, when He says:
He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
The thorny ground is an unbeliever in this context of the parable of the soils. “The care of this world” chokes the word with this person. Instead of embracing God’s Word, he embraces the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist. Unsaved people choose the zeitgeist over God’s Word, will, and way.
The Opposite Happening
Many churches today offer the spirit of the age to their church goers or attenders. They lure people with the zeitgeist. They fill up a trough of the cares of this world for their church people to lap up. In church growth seminars, the leaders promote or offer to their audience this as a means of church growth. They give away thorn seed for thorny ground to ruin the soil and damn souls, all the while saying that this is God at work, deceiving these people. These church leaders promote this kingdom instead of the next and then call it the work of God.
In another parable in Luke 16:8, Jesus says:
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
Children and God of This World
The Lord Jesus distinguishes the children of light from “the children of this world.” These are the children characterized by the spirit of this age, something unfortunately and diabolically that churches promote today and yet call it “light.” Jesus says in John 8:23:
And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.
True believers, like Jesus, are not of this world. Those “of this world” are not believers. Instead of following Jesus, they follow the “god of this world,” who is not Jesus. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says:
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Be Not Conformed to this World
A classic passage in a pivotal context in Romans, the Apostle Paul commands in Romans 12:2:
And be not conformed to this world.
This is crucial. Someone conformed to the spirit of this age is not presenting himself a living sacrifice unto God. His sacrifice is at least rejected by God. He will not receive just any offering, just like He disrespected Cain’s offering in Genesis 4:5. God will not accept something that smacks of the spirit of this age.
To not conform to the spirit of the age requires knowing what is the spirit of the age, that is, what conforms to “this world.” Genuine believers should and will know the zeitgeist and reject it. Scripture assumes we can know this.
As the Gentiles Which Know Not God
Other phrases, texts, and contexts communicate the required discernment. Paul, writing to the church at Thessalonica in his first epistle, says (1 Thessalonians 4:5):
Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God
The Thessalonians and every other church are not to obtain their life’s partners “as the Gentiles which know not God.” There is a way that the world thinks and does things that is different than what the church or godly people do. It isn’t just doing something or having “the lust of concupiscence,” which is intense fleshly lust, but a way that corresponds to that. Believers acquire their spouses in sanctification and honor. That way is vastly different than “the Gentiles which know not God.” Those two ways cannot be the same, or even close. So what’s different?
Strange or Foreign
Scripture doesn’t say what is different, but the two ways have a nature, characteristics, or attributes that believers can and should discern. True believers through history have been doing this, discerning these differences. A word that characterizes “this world” in the Old Testament is “strange.” That is a King James Version word that means “foreign.” Sometimes something on your plate doesn’t look like part of the food served. It is foreign or strange, so you don’t eat it.
Whatever is “strange” in the Old Testament doesn’t fit with God’s people. Zephaniah 1:8 says:
And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.
What are these princes or king’s children doing in this verse that God will punish? They wear strange apparel or clothing. The passage doesn’t say what it is. It assumes that someone can and should know. God requires application of such principles. This assumes that God’s people can and should know.
The Application Required
“Strange apparel” is clothing that embraces or smacks of “the spirit of the age” or “this world.” Do believers know what this is? People who profess to believe have known this through the centuries. Professing believers seem to have become unable or ignorant for discernment of these differences or issues. God will still judge and punish. This principle is throughout scripture. It has not been renounced or rescinded like some of the dietary restrictions in the Old Testament.
Do you reader understand what I’m talking about in this post? Many churches don’t get it anymore. Why? Leaders don’t teach it. They act like the spirit of the age can’t be discerned. If it isn’t spelled out in exact language, then it is ‘beyond what it is written’ (cf. 1 Cor 4:6), which it isn’t. Scripture teaches this. Someone might “play dumb,” but that game isn’t true and it won’t work in the end. God requires the discernment of the spirit of the age and to act appropriately.
More to Come
The Regular History of Clever New Interpretations, Teachings, or Takes on and from Scripture: Socinianism
One way to get a Nobel prize in something, you’ve got to break some new ground or discover something no one has ever seen. In the world, the making of a printing press or light bulb changes everything. People still try to invent a better mousetrap. It happens. The phone replaced the telegraph and now our mobile devices, the phone.
Everyone can learn something new from scripture. You might even change or tweak a doctrine you’ve always believed. On the whole, you don’t want to teach from the Bible what no one has ever heard before. The goal is the original intent and understanding of the Author.
From the left comes progressivism. The U. S. Constitution, just over two hundred years old, means something different than when it was written. Loosely constructed, it has a flexible interpretation into which new meanings arise. Hegelian dialectics say a new thesis comes from synthesis of antithesis and a former thesis. Everything can be improved.
Early after the inspiration and then propagation of the Bible, men found new things no one ever saw in scripture. Many of these “finds” started a new movement. People have their fathers, the father of this or that teaching, contradictory to the other, causing division and new factions and denominations. Some of these changes become quite significant, a majority supplanting the constituents of the original teaching.
At the time of the Reformation, it was as if the world first found sole fide and sole scriptura. Men often call justification the Reformation doctrine of justification. This opened a large, proverbial can of worms. Many could read their own Bible in their own language. Others now dug into their own copy of the original languages of scripture. Skepticism grew. “If we didn’t know this before, what else did they not tell us?” It became a time ripe for religious shysters and this practice hasn’t stopped since then.
Socinus
The Italian, Laelius Socinus, was born in 1525 into a distinguished family of lawyers. Early his attention turned from law to scripture research. He doubted the teachings of Roman Catholicism. Socinus moved in 1548 to Zurich to study Greek and Hebrew. He still questioned established doctrine and challenged the Reformers. Laelius wrote his own confession of faith, which introduced different, conflicting beliefs. They took hold of his nephew, Faustus Socinus, born in 1539.
Faustus rejected orthodox Roman Catholic doctrines. The Inquisition denounced him in 1559, so he fled to Zurich in 1562. There he acquired his uncle’s writings. His doubt of Catholicism turned anti-Trinitarian. The Reformation did not go far enough for Socinus. His first published work in 1562 on the prologue of John rejected the essential deity of Jesus Christ.
Socinus’s journeys ended in Poland, where he became leader of the Minor Reformed Church, the Polish Brethren. His writings in the form of the Racovian Catechism survived through the press of the Racovian Academy of Rakow, Poland. His beliefs took the name, Socinianism, now also a catch-all for any type of dissenting doctrine.
Socinianism held that Jesus did not exist until his physical conception. God adopted Him as Son at His conception and became Son of God when the Holy Spirit conceived Him in Mary, a Gnostic view called “adoptionism.” It rejected the doctrine of original sin.
Socianism denied the omniscience of God. It introduced the first well developed concept of “open theism,” which said that man couldn’t have free will under a traditional (and scriptural) understanding of omniscience.
Socinianism also taught the moral example theory of atonement, teaching that Jesus sacrificed himself to motivate people to repent and believe. His death gave men the ability to be saved by their own works, who weren’t sinners by nature anyway.
Unitarians
The work of Socinus lived on in the belief of early English Unitarians, Henry Hedworth and John Biddle. Socinian belief was helped along also by its position of conscientious objection, a practice of refusing to perform military service. This principle was very popular with many and made Socinianism much more attractive to potential adherents. The First Unitarian Church, which followed Socianism as passed down through its leaders in England, was started in 1774 on Essex Street in London, where British Unitarian headquarters are still today.
As the Puritans of colonial America apostatized through various means, Unitarianism, a modern iteration of Socinianism took hold in the Congregational Church in America. After 1820, Congregationalists took Unitarianism as their established doctrine. The doctrine of Christ diminished to Jesus a good man and perhaps a prophet of God and in a sense the Son of God, but not God Himself.
Spirit of Skepticism
I write as an example of the diversity in the history of Christian doctrine and why it takes place. When you read the beliefs of Socinians, you easily see them in modern liberal Christianity. They influence on religious cults that deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
A limited amount of skepticism wards away the acceptance of false doctrine. Better is a Berean attitude (Acts 17:11), searching the scripture to see if these things are so, and what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, proving all things, holding fast to that which is good.
As I grew up among fundamentalists and independent Baptists, I witnessed regular desire to find something new in the Bible. Many sermons espoused interpretations I had never heard and didn’t see in the text. A preacher often said, “God gave it to me.” You should know God used the man because no one had seen such insights into scripture.
The same spirit of doctrinal novelty continues today in many evangelical churches. The same practice led Joseph Smith in his founding of Mormonism. Many cults arose in 19th century America under the same spirit of skepticism of established historical doctrines.
The Temptation of Novel Teaching
The temptation of novel teaching preys on anyone. Faustus Socinus accepted many orthodox doctrines of his day. He rejected Christ as fully God and fully human because it was contrary to sound reason (ratio sana). This steered Socinians toward Enlightenment thinking, where human reason took the highest role as arbiter of truth.
Warren Wiersbe wrote that H.A. Ironside, longtime pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church, said, “If it’s new, it’s not true, and if it’s true, it’s not new.” Elsewhere I read that Spurgeon first said that. I don’t know. Clever new interpretations, teachings, and takes on and from scripture corrupt and overturn scriptural, saving doctrines in the hearts of men. They condemn them through all eternity.
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