Campolo, Catholicism & The Crystal Cathedral Connection

Dedicated to The Virginia Baptist Mission Board, who is bringing Tony Campolo to speak to the 185th BGAV Meeting in November...

What does Tony Campolo have in common with Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton and Robert Schuller? This Apprising Ministry investigation reveals a love triangle of self:

Schuller:

Label it a “negative self-image,” but do not say that the central core of the human soul is wickedness. If this were so, then truly, the human being is totally depraved. But positive Christianity does not hold to human depravity, but to human inability. I am humanly unable to correct my negative self-image until I encounter a life-changing experience with nonjudgmental love bestowed upon me by a Person whom I admire so much that to be unconditionally accepted by him is to be born again.

Merton:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our mind or the brutalities of our own will.

And lest you think that I’m using guilt-by-association in order to make a frivolous comparison between Campolo and Schuller here’s more from Partly Right where Tony Campolo lavishes his praise upon the heretical Robert Schuller under the heading “A Christian Understanding of Human Nature”; and the fact is that Campolo is *ahem* partly right, the following actually is a wrong understanding of human nature advanced by these contemplative Christians:

A great deal of criticism has been leveled at the popular television preacher, Dr. Robert Schuller. He has been accused of distorting the gospel and making it into a Pollyanna religion filled with smiles and opinion. Personally, I think most of the critics are jealous of his gifts. I have listened to Schuller speak on numerous occasions. He never lets us forget that we have a divinity about us and that as sons and daughters of God we are capable of great things…

Isn’t God’s message to sinful humanity that He sees in each of us a divine nature of such worth that He sacrificed His own Son so that our divine potentialities might be realized? … Erich Fromm, one of the most popular psychoanalysts of our time, recognized the diabolical social consequences that can come about when a person loses sight of his/her own divinity. (107, 108, emphasis mine)

Get the rest of the facts here at Apprising Ministries.