The Alpha Course by Chris
Hand
Is the popular Alpha Course leading people
astray?
Many people have been greatly impressed by the Alpha course.
Designed to be an introduction to the Christian faith through talks, video
presentations, small-group discussions and a special weekend-away, lots of
churches are now employing it as part of their outreach.
In the eyes of many it has been a run-away-success and its fame has
spread far beyond the UK, and Holy Trinity Brompton, the London church
where it originated.
It is no exaggeration to say it has spread right across the world
and is now finding friends in several continents. It has been adapted so
as to be accessible to young people and has also proved versatile enough
to be used in prisons, schools and places of work.
Churches in inner cities and rural areas have found it sufficiently
flexible for their needs. Future plans for expansion suggest that
Alpha is very much here to stay. What is more, many people claim to
have been helped through going on the Alpha course and believe it
has ought them an understanding of God and how to respond to Him.
Testimonies and accounts of wonderful things that have happened to
individuals abound; In the light of all this, surely there cannot be
anything wrong with it?
With so many in today's society gripped by materialism and atheism,
can Alpha be anything other than a good thing? As young people
become hopelessly enmeshed in a godless culture, should we not applaud the
efforts of Alpha and help make it a success?
We wished that the answers to these questions could be an emphatic
Yes. But closer examination of Alpha prevents such a clean
bill of health being given to it. Why this concern? There are six vital
reasons we would like to bring to your attention.
1. The God of Alpha is not the God of the Bible.
Alpha quotes from the Bible a lot. It cannot be faulted on that.
But for all this it does not present us with the God who has revealed
Himself in the Bible. There is much we could say about the God of the
Scriptures. He is the Creator of the universe and the one who upholds it
and maintains it. He is a great King and Sovereign over all He has made.
We are challenged to ponder:
" To whom then will you liken me. Or to whom shall I be equal?
says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created
these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by
name, By the greatness of his might and the strength of his power; Not
one is missing." (Isaiah 40:25-26)
He is high and holy. He dwells in heaven and is all-glorious.
Nothing impure can live in His presence. For those that fall short of His
glory and perfection, there is judgement that follows (Romans
6:23)
Now of course much more could be said. But you will have to search
hard and long in Alpha to find a God that resembles the One just
described. Nothing about Him as Creator, nothing about Him as a great
King. He is assumed rather than described. The Bible tells us "It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews
10:31). But we would not be any wiser of this from going on the
Alpha Course. It simply fails to tell us anything we need to know
about God.
2. The plight of man in Alpha is not as serious as in the
Bible.
Man's state until he is reconciled to God is not a happy one. Psalm
7:11 tells us God is a just judge, And - "God is angry with the wicked
every day". The gospel of John makes this abundantly plain: He who
believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36)
Man without God is subject to the wrath of God. We are not slightly
displeasing to Him. It is not that we have occasional faults and foibles
that surface. It is what we are by nature.
The apostle Paul explains that we are "by nature children of
wrath" (Ephesians 2:3). This is very strong language and leaves us in
no doubt. We have offended against God and broken His holy law. We are
sinners in His sight and deserve condemnation. It is as straightforward as
that.
By contrast, Alpha does not use strong terms and leaves us
rather unclear about where we stand. As one follows its argument, sin is
more to be seen in the way we have messed up our lives (Gumbel
1994: 44,47). It is an inward-looking description of man's state that
majors on his feelings of fearfulness (Gumbel 1994:22). It is a picture of
man predominated by his feelings of sadness and unhappiness (Gumbel
1994:12-22). sup1/sup.
Now of course these things are all true. This is what life is like
for sinners. It is a miserable life for them. Yet this is to major on the
consequences of sin rather than sin itself. These are the miseries that
follow inevitably because we are sinners. The problem, however, is more
serious than simply sin's consequences. Alpha fails to tell us that
ultimately we have offended God and courted His displeasure. We have
sinned against God and are justly under His judgement. We are people
"...having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12).
For all the gravity of sin, Alpha never allows us to feel too bad
about ourselves. It never permits us to see ourselves in God's sight. That
is a big omission.
3. The Jesus Christ of Alpha is not the Jesus Christ of the
Bible.
This may surprise us. Alpha appears to have quite a lot to
say about the Lord Jesus. It tells us what He did, what He said, the
claims He made about Himself and establishes beyond doubt that the
resurrection actually took place.
But despite having part of the course entitled 'Why did Jesus
die?', it is unable in the final analysis to answer this question.
This is a core issue.
Christ died because God's holy justice required it. Our lives were
forfeit. We had sinned and were helpless. Christ had to die in the place
of sinners who truly deserved to bear the penalty for their sin. Christ's
death propitiated or appeased the wrath of God (Romans 3:25,1 John 2:2).
Alpha has not described God to us and therefore has no meaningful
place for God's wrath. Christ's death ends up having to satisfy some
abstract principle of justice that has somehow become detached from God
Himself.
Alpha's own illustrations and attempts to explain get us no
closer to the heart of the matter (Gumbel 1994:19-20;47-48). Christ's
death upon the cross becomes an act of love but without any real
connection with the reality of judgement and God's wrath. All we are left
with is the impression that Christ has sacrificed Himself to rescue us
from the consequences of sin because that was required by some impersonal
and rather arbitrary justice system. It is all rather mysterious. This is
not the Christ of Scripture.
4. The love of God in Alpha is not the love of the God of
the Bible. The Bible is clear that 'God is love' (1 John 4:8). Alpha tells
us this too. There is a difference, however. In Alpha God is love
and little else. There is not much else that He can be as the course has
missed all the aspects of His great character that refer to His holiness
and glory. We are left with love.
The God of the Bible is love but it is love that is seen in His
willingness to save sinners. We are told, "For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
Why did the Lord come? To save sinners. What moved God to do this?
His love. This is what makes His love so special and wonderful. It is that
such a holy and glorious God should save sinners. This is clear from
Romans 5:8 as well, But God demonstrates his own love towards us, in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God's love is
evident in that He acted to save sinners. Here we see the glory of
Christ's love. But without the context of God's holiness and absolute
perfection, the meaning of that love is lost to us. Instead God merely
becomes an emotional being of unconditional love divorced from any true
understanding of His true nature and being. Alpha's God will give
us an emotional high and make us feel special. The God of the Bible will
give us eternal life. There is a big difference between the two.
5. The Holy Spirit of Alpha is not the Holy Spirit of the
Bible.
There is more space in Alpha devoted to the Holy Spirit than
to the Lord Jesus. This is surprising given what Scripture says about the
Holy Spirit (John 16:13-14). Why does Alpha do this? It is because
Alpha's 'Holy Spirit' is the agent for giving to people an
'experience' that is going to make God real to them.
The main focus for this is the 'Holy Spirit Weekend-Away'. People
doing Alpha are told to expect all manner of things might happen to
them. We are told, Sometimes, when people are filled, they shake like a
leaf in the wind. Others find themselves breathing deeply as if almost
physically breathing in the Spirit. (Gumbel 1994:136). It is not
restricted to this, however.
Physical heat sometimes accompanies the filling of the Spirit
and people experience it in their hands or some other part of their
bodies. One person described a feeling of 'glowing all over'. Another
said she experienced 'liquid heat'. Still another described 'burning in
my arms when I was not hot'. (Gumbel 1994:136)
This is all very interesting but it has nothing to do with the Holy
Spirit as known through the pages of Scripture. Nowhere are any phenomena
such as these attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. Alpha's
'Spirit' appears to work in ways that lie outside the confines of
Scripture. Whoever it is that people are 'introduced' to at the
Alpha Weekend, it is not the Holy Spirit. But whoever the
mysterious guest is, he is equally at home among the ecstatic gatherings
of New Age enthusiasts and non-Christian religions alike.
6. Conversions in Alpha are not like conversions in the
Bible.
On the Day of Pentecost, Peter's hearers were '...cut to the
heart...'(Acts 2:37). The Philippian jailer asked urgently 'Sirs,
what must I do to be saved?' (Acts 16:30). They understood that they
were sinners. They realised that they needed mercy. It was clear to them
as it was to the believers in Thessalonica that the gospel was '...in
truth, the word of God...' (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
Conversions in Alpha come differently from this. More often
than not it is an emotional experience about the love of God but without
any understanding of holiness or the need to be saved from our
sins. There is no recognition of the need to repent and to turn to God as
a matter of life and death. People feel forgiven but do not seem to have
realised the depth of their sinfulness or repented of their sin. People
feel cleansed without having consciously put their faith in Christ. Often
this happens when people are in some ecstatic state. Alpha may
regard this as conversion but it is not what we find in the Bible.
For all its efforts, Alpha does not help us to know God. It
does not describe the true and living God for us. It does not diagnose
man's condition accurately enough. It is unable to adequately account for
Christ's death and substitutes an unbiblical view of God's love and God's
Holy Spirit in its place. To cap it all, the whole issue of conversion is
grievously misunderstood. By sparing us the 'bad news' about ourselves, it
is unable to supply us with the 'good news'.
The needs of our souls for biblical and life-saving truth are far
too precious and important to be ought down to this level. It needs the
unvarnished truth of the Scriptures. We may merely succeed in adding
people to our churches who have never been converted. That will be no help
to them and no help to our churches either. To leave someone believing
they are converted when they are not is an awful prospect. Yet that is
what we are risking using defective tools such as Alpha, 'having a form
of godliness but denying its power' (2 Timothy 3:5). We must do
better. Failure is too high a price to pay.
Visit the Christian Research Network website: The Christian Research
Network
Chris Hand has recently completed a book biblically assessing
the Alpha Course in more detail. It is hoped will be published by the
summer
Nicky Gumbel quotes in this article taken from "Questions of
Life", Kingsway, Eastbourne, 1994
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