Prosperity Theology: The Materialisation of Faith

Prosperity Theology contains a dirty little secret – that it possesses a kernel of truth. And this is an intuition that God cares – about our personal and material lives; which entails an active Divine opposition to everything that demeans our existence – in this case: illness and poverty.

Here it’s similar to another Twentieth Century theological development – Liberation Theology. Together, these re-introduced a ‘materialisation of faith’. While Prosperity Theology was individualistic and politically conservative, and Liberation Theology collectivist and left-wing, both highlighted the rediscovery of eschatology, specifically the doctrine of the Kingdom of God.

Traditionally, the Kingdom was seen as wholly ‘spiritual’ and ‘otherworldly’, applying to the inner experience of the believer, and to our final destination in the afterlife. Jesus, however, proclaimed the Kingdom as a present reality, breaking into the present, through his ministry; evidenced in miracles of healing and deliverance, and the preaching of good news to poor people (Mt. 11.4-6), thus combining the imperatives of both prosperity teaching and liberation theology.

This re-emphasis forms part of the reaction against Neo-Platonic and Gnostic theology, which denigrated the body in favour of, what Charles Taylor calls, a ‘discarnate’ spiritual life. Clearly, for Jesus, the Kingdom had not yet fully come; it is ‘now and not yet’. To think otherwise means succumbing to an ‘under-realised eschatology’, avoiding miracles; or an ‘over-realised eschatology’, which expects perfection now.

In responding to this unfinished nature of the Kingdom, I find helpful Trotsky’s dialectical approach to the ‘transitional demands’ which Marxists make before the final revolution. Some are ‘minimalists’, settling for what they can get now, while working for complete socialism. But some are ‘maximalists’, striving for as much as they can get in the meantime. Christians have similar choices during the overlap of the ages, between Christ’s first and final Coming.

Will we settle for the least, arguing the Kingdom hasn’t fully come; or will we push for more, knowing it’s not here completely, but pressing for as much as we can get? N. T. Wright, for example, advocates an approach he calls ‘participatory eschatology’; that is, although Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom, he invites us to join his Kingdom work now, in the power of the Spirit, while simultaneously acknowledging that its eventual realisation rests with the Father.

Other theological rationales could be derived from the work of Francis Schaeffer and Kenneth Leech, Opposing ‘super-spirituality’, Schaeffer stressed the doctrine of creation, which established a value for our bodied createdness. Meanwhile, Leech highlighted the Incarnation, whereby Christ valorised matter, through assuming our full humanity.

Together with the historical space-time crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, these doctrines make Christianity the most materialistic of world faiths: believing in the reality of the world and our bodies; as opposed to matter’s illusory nature, taught by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christian Science. This gives a foundation to our care for the body; whether through medicine, political action or deliverance prayer.

Prosperity Theology does make more extreme claims than these, but it nevertheless intuits faith’s radical relevance to our real lives.