On March 29, 2020, Kenneth Copeland declared judgment on COVID-19. He said: “In the Name of Jesus, standing in the office of the prophet of God, I execute judgment on you COVID-19. I execute judgment on you, satan, you destroyer, you killer. You get out. I break your power. You get off this nation. I demand judgment on you.” On the website for Kenneth Copeland Ministries is a 23-minute video where Copeland taught about the force of faith he supposedly exercised here: “A spiritual force given by the Spirit of God that’s already in you.” But can Copeland (or anyone else for that matter), wield their faith as a force?
Kenneth Hagin also taught that faith was a spiritual force. He said it was a spiritual force that grows and develops in the heart or spirit of man. As we hear the written Word of God, it develops faith inside of us. The Word of God spoken in faith becomes the “rhema” Word. “Therefore, the rhema Word of God—the Word of God spoken—is a spiritual force.”
Copeland, Hagin and others are part of the Word of Faith, a modern Christian theological movement that Monergism said “emphasizes the power of spoken words, positive confession, and faith as a means of achieving health, wealth, and success.” It is also called the Prosperity Gospel, or the Health and Wealth Gospel. Word of Faith doctrine teaches that faith can be used to speak into existence a person’s desired outcomes, such as judgment on COVID-19. Monergism said it is widely regarded as heresy by historic Christian orthodoxy because of its distortion of biblical doctrines about faith, suffering, the nature of God and salvation. But before looking at how Word of Faith teachings distort Scripture, let’s investigate its historical roots.
The Origins of the Word of Faith Movement
Word of Faith beliefs are rooted in the New Thought movement of the 19th century, a metaphysical philosophy that reinterprets Christian concepts and views humans as inherently divine. Phineas Quimby (1802–66) was a key figure in the New Thought movement here in America, “who promoted the idea that positive thinking and mental attitudes can shape reality.” His emphasis on mind power influenced the later theological developments in Word of Faith teachers like Copeland and Hagin, who stressed the connection between thoughts, words, and physical outcomes.
In Happy Lies, Melissa Dougherty said Quimby claimed he healed himself of tuberculous through his mind. This led to his belief that that people are only sick because they or their doctors think they are sick. So, if you can change your thinking, you can receive healing. This belief in healing through inner faith aligned with the teachings of Emmanuel Swedonborg (1688-1772), who taught of the law of correspondence.
This law says that everything in the material world has a correspondence with something in the spiritual world. In other words, how someone thinks, speaks, feels, and acts connects directly to something in the spiritual world—a belief like gnosticism. This greatly influenced how Swedenborg and his followers interpreted the Bible. This framed Scripture as one long parable of spiritual revelation.
In this view, every physical object is a mere shadow of something real in the spiritual realm. What we experience in the natural world with five senses is a limited version of the ultimate truth or reality of a thing—including words. The words we speak and read are part of the natural world. They only find their true meaning and application in the spirit realm. This extends to words written in books, like the Bible.
Quimby thought when sickness was in the physical world, that meant something in the spiritual realm needed to be fixed. So, if you were physically sick, you had to fix your spiritual body so it could be manifested in the physical realm. This was done through correct thinking. “Prosperity and health are products of the mind.”
He studied spiritism, occultism, hypnosis, and other aspects of parapsychology and labeled his ideas the science of Christ. “He attempted to make witchcraft credible by the use of scientific language.” Mary Baker Eddy was allegedly healed by Quimby in 1862. Along with his theoretical formulations, Eddy borrowed the term Christian Science from Quimby, and founded her Mind Science cult.
He believed Jesus was the founder of what he called “spiritual science,” and thought that his healing methods were consistent with what Jesus and his disciples taught. Following from this, Quimby believed Jesus’ true mission and purpose was “to treat and heal the sick and convince us of our inner power to heal.” Dougherty said:
Today, we see the influence of Quimby’s teachings everywhere from TikTok trends to certain church teachings claiming we all have the power to do what Jesus did, especially to heal and manifest prosperity. All we need is faith and an understanding of our inner power to create reality.
Monergism said in the early 20th century New Thought thinking began to merge with aspects of faith healing and some forms of Pentecostalism, with individuals such as Aimee Semple McPherson and John G. Lake. These early Pentecostal preachers taught that Christian believers could experience divine healing through faith and prayer. Here we will focus on E. W. Kenyon, called the grandfather of the Word of Faith movement by some. For more information on Aimee Semple McPherson, see “Aimee Semple McPherson: Unauthorized.” For more information on John G. Lake, see “John G. Lake: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.”
Positive Confession
According to The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, E. W. Kenyon (1867-1948) was not Pentecostal or charismatic. In “Prosperity theology and the faith movement,” Robert Jackson pointed out Kenyon rejected speaking in tongues as too subjective an experience. But for the modern faith movement, speaking in tongues was a necessary sign of being baptized in the Spirit. Nevertheless, Kenyon’s writings had a broad acceptance in Word of Faith, positive confession, charismatic, and prosperity gospel movements. His theology and writings influenced individuals within historical Pentecostalism such as: F. F. Bosworth, T. L. Osborn, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Copeland.
Living at a time when the metaphysical cults [like Christian Science] were growing rapidly, this was Kenyon’s ‘Christian’ response—a ‘Christianized’ metaphysical cult. The mainline churches were failing because they produced no signs and wonders and Kenyon was keen to redress an anti-supernatural tendency which was driving bored Christians into joining such people as Mrs Baker Eddy. He sought to establish a teaching which provided Christians with all the benefits of the metaphysical cults, while remaining within the Christian fold. The result was prosperity theology, which is, with a very few embellishments, the theology of the present-day faith movement!
Kenyon’s views on “positive confession” can be traced back to his attendance at Emerson College of Oratory in Boston, “a spawning ground for New Thought philosophical ideas. The major tenets of the New Thought movement are health or healing, abundance or prosperity, wealth, and happiness.”
‘Name it and claim it’ and ‘Believe it and receive it’ are pithy catchphrases of those who teach positive confession. The idea is after you find the right passage in the Bible, you sow it in your heart, and then claim what you wanted and what you believe it offers. “By behaving as if that which you have asked for has already been granted, you demonstrate the faith which will invariably be rewarded.”
Kenyon argued that God required a positive confession because Christians aren’t just clothed in the Righteousness of Christ, they are actually partakers of His Righteousness. He said that “When you confess your weakness and your disease you are openly confessing the Word of God is not true and that God has failed to make it good.” In other words, the believer who confesses sin and weakness builds weakness, failure, and sin into their consciousness.
Are Humans Little gods?
“From Quimby, William Branham, E. W. Kenyon, and John G. Lake, a view of God emerged that is currently espoused by Hagin, Copeland, Capps, and Price.” Succinctly, this is what is known as the “little gods” doctrine. John G. Lake said man was not a separate creation from God; “He is part of God Himself.” God intended us all to be gods. “The inner man is the real governor, the true man that Jesus said was a god.” Kenneth Copeland said:
You impart humanity into a child that’s born of you. Because you are a human, you have imparted the nature of humanity into that born child. That child wasn’t born a whale. It was born a human. Well, now, you don’t have a God in you. You are one.
The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements commented that the above quote from Copeland was derived from the words of the serpent in Genesis 3:4.
This emphasis in the Positive Confession movement, its critics contend, raises humankind to God’s level and thereby creates a false pride that generates the belief that humans can save themselves from disaster by claiming their “divine right.” The logical conclusion then is that we can purge the earth of sickness, sin, and even the “demon of poverty.” This theological claim has a universal appeal because of its promise of humanistic plans to change history. This form of godism appears to be the basis of faith for Positive Confession adherents who attempt to use their “divine right” to manipulate the Divine. “Now you live in the present tense.” “He is what he says he is, and you are what he says you are!” “His Word cannot lie, and you hold fast to that word in your confession.” E. W. Kenyon went beyond the scientific shamanism of the New Thought movement when he first taught “the positive confession of the Word of God.” But he did not go so far as to espouse that “faith is a confession,” therefore “what I confess, I possess,” or to assert that we can “create reality with the words of our mouths.” Such confession creates “now faith.”
The disciples of Kenyon speak of prosperity as a “divine right” and have formulated laws of prosperity to be rehearsed daily by persons seeking health and wealth. Positive Confessionism, according to its critics, is rooted in an “easy believism” with no grounding or fundamental point of reference. Its doctrinal formulations are rooted in a strained biblicism without an object of faith, often placing an undue stress upon gifts rather than on the fruit of a believer.
Attempting to Manipulate God
The Prosperity Gospel movement— including Kenneth Copeland, Fredrick Price and Charlie Capps—acknowledges Kenneth Hagin (1917-2003) to be their father. Robert Jackson said that while Hagin may be the father of the faith movement, he is not the author of its teachings. Hagin claimed he received the teachings personally from Jesus through a series of visions during the 1950s. But a side-by-side comparison of passages from the works of both Hagin and Kenyon led Jackson to conclude that Hagin plagiarized Kenyon. Remember, Kenyon died in 1948, and Hagin’s first books, Right and Wrong Thinking for Christians and What Faith Is weren’t published until 1966.
Jackson then quoted D. R. McConnell from A Different Gospel: The Cultic Nature of the Modern Faith Movement as saying:
Whereas Hagin appears to have copied only occasionally from sources other than Kenyon, he has plagiarized Kenyon both repeatedly and extensively. Actually, it would not be overstated to say that the very doctrines that have made Kenneth Hagin and the Faith movement such a distinctive and powerful force within the independent charismatic movement are all plagiarized from E. W. Kenyon.
Monergism said Hagin’s ministry grew throughout the 20th century, especially through his Bible schools, books, and radio and television broadcasts. He emphasized that words have power and Christians should “claim” God’s promises for prosperity and healing by speaking them into existence. The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements said the logical conclusion of this belief (similar to what is taught at Bethel Church in Redding California), is we can purge the earth of sickness, sin, and the demon of poverty. This supposedly “positive confession” is nothing less than an attempt to manipulate God.
In Happy Lies Melissa Dougherty said although the methods and terms of New Thought aren’t ancient, the lies behind them are. Claiming that humans are divine, that faith is a force within you, is a recycled deception from Satan in the Garden. “What better way to destroy God’s beloved image bearers than to turn them inward rather than upward?” We’ll examine how Word of Faith teachings distort Scripture in Part 2 of “Is Faith a Force?
