John Eldredge - An Example of Reductionism

I have a confession that is going to seriously wound my reputation as a curmudgeon to pop-Christianity. I have a certain liking for John Eldredge, you know, the man who is Wild at Heart, and says you should be too. I say that this will damage my reputation as a curmudgeon because the "Wild at Heart" movement is typical of movements that I have been critical of in the past.

The fact is that I agree with most of the negative reviews of his work, yet there is something about his ministry, and even "Wild at Heart" that I like. One of his intro comments was that the Christian male of today seems to think that the epitome of being a Christian man is to become a kind of Mr. Rogers type character - the meek and mild guy who wouldn't hurt a fly. Eldredge says that the William Wallace type of Braveheart, or the Maximus character in Gladiator is a better role model.

Come on guys, wouldn't you rather be Maximus than Mr. Rogers. In criticizing the meek and mild man he is in line with things that have been said by Leon Podles in his book The Church Impotent, and in this article in Touchstone, as well as some of the things I have said here and here.

Truthfully, a good deal of Eldredge's popularity is due to the fact that he has struck a responsive chord in the lives of many men. As I read the book, over and over again I found myself saying "yeah, that's me!" His thesis that every man needs a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue is very inspiring to say the least.

But the problem is that he has taken these three points, which have some validity if properly nuanced and carefully qualified, and constructed a whole world and life view around them. Furthermore, he has made these three points the controlling paradigm for the way in which he views God and interprets Scripture.

I thought of these things today when I got the latest issue of Christianity Today and saw his rugged mug on the cover. The feature article in this week's issue is about Eldredge and it's a pretty straightforward story about him and his ministry. Its not a critical analysis, except for a sidebar by Doug LeBlanc, where Doug brings up a few of the criticisms leveled by Rut Etheridge III in his lengthy article God in Man's Image.

I won't go into the criticisms leveled at Eldredge, you can read Etheridge's article above or Tim Challies (aka, The Blogdom of God's Best Book Reviewer), review here. But I would like to make a few comments about the way he has fashioned his worldview around his Wild At Heart theories.

Many years ago I heard someone ask John MacArthur what he thought about the ministry of Bill Gothard. MacArthur said that one of Gothard's main problems is that he generalizes from the particular. If you have ever been to a Gothard seminar or read his big red book you will see that he will often take a particular instance where a king or someone back in the Old Testament did something in a particular situation and make that an all encompassing principle for Christian living. This generalizing from the particular is a symptom of reductionism, where you take something that is very broad and and reduce it to a single principle or a limited number of items. So, for Gothard, it seems that all of life can be understood from an authority/submission paradigm based on a few verses of Scripture. For Eldredge, all of life (at least for men) can pretty well be summed up in the adventure/battle/rescue paradigm.

Eldredge is not the only one who does this - in fact we all do it, and this is the problem. This post is not intended as a broadside against Eldredge, just using him as an illustration of how we all do this. With Eldredge this leads him to making people like William Wallace, John Wayne, Maximus and others his heroes and examples of godly manhood. And, Jesus begins to get re-fashioned in their images. When you are made for adventure/battle/rescue sin is not your greatest problem, it is your woundedness that is your greatest problem. In Eldredge's book he talks much about the wound we all carry. Contra Romans 7, sin is a thing of the past for the Christian, according to Eldredge, the redeemed heart is a good heart. I could go on and on, but the point is that Eldredge has isolated three items and made them the controlling factors in his worldview. Noticed I said that the "adventure, battle, rescue" are "items" not "truths." It is debatable that you can prove from Scripture that these things constitute the essence of manhood. This doesn't mean that we can't profit from these ideas, because they are good counterpoints to the wimpiness that is so prevalent today. I just don't think we should give them the elevated place in Christendom that Eldredge wants to.

As I said, we all do this. I think that if Rick Warren had low-keyed the whole "purpose" thing and offered it as one helpful suggestion among many instead of building an entire ecclesiology around it, some of us who are critical would be less so. I also think of J. Gresham Machen. Although he was the intellectual leader of the fundamentalist movement back in the 1920's and 1930's he never adopted "the fundamentals of the faith" as his own statement of faith. He didn't think that the faith could be comprehended in a few statements. He much preferred the Westminster Confession of Faith.

But even the Westminster Confession of Faith is inadequate as an expression of our faith. I believe it is correct wherein it speaks, but it doesn't speak about all matters. It has thirty three chapters and you can't summarize the bible or the Christian faith in thirty-three points. We lovers of Westminster can be very reductionistic when we view the Confession as the final repository of all truth, and there are those who come perilously close to doing this. I think back to my early days as a "Calvinist." I, and many like me, tend to view all of Scripture and all of life through the lens of the five points. Whereas Spurgeon said that he makes a bee-line to the cross when reading any Scripture, we Calvinists tend to make a bee-line to one of the five points. This may help us prop up our theology but it reduces the beauty and breadth of the Scriptures.

So, I come back to where I started. Eldredge's "Wild at Heart" did minister to me in many ways and there are things he has to say that I can recommend to the one who listens to him with discernment. I for one have always been far too timid and meek and mild, so he helped open my eyes to the responsibility that Christians have to enter into battle for the truth. But it seems like he has allowed his three pronged paradism to run roughshod over his worldview where he should be letting a Christian worldview run roughshod over his paradigm.