Some ideas are fundamental. They sit at the root of other ideas. Our belief that God is a trinity is one of them—without that, we can't get Jesus being God. Nor could the Holy Spirit be so powerful if he wasn't God too. Everything would change if God were a unity instead of a trinity. So God being a trinity is fundamental to our beliefs.

The Word of Faith understanding of metaphysics is one of these root ideas. This fancy word comes from meta, meaning beyond, and physical—beyond the physical. So we're dealing with the spiritual, and the relationship between the spiritual and the physical. 

There is a fundamental belief of the Word Faith system and that is the idea that to produce change in the physical world we need to start in the spiritual world. Put another way, what we do in the spiritual realm causes effects in the physical realm. Furthermore, they believe that this is not just something that might happen that way, but that this is exclusively the way to get things done.

So, you want to look for healing? Start praying for the sick. Somebody doesn't get healed? The healing has been done (in the spiritual realm), it's just coming—just have faith despite what you see with your eyes (your eyes can deceive you).

You want finances? Start warring in the spirit realm to loose what the Devil has stolen! Then it will start flowing in the physical.

You want a breakthrough? You need to know this spiritual law which says we name what we want, and then claim it. We confess positively, and renounce negativity, and we will have it. And we should believe that we do have it, despite what we see currently, because we have released it in the spirit realm. It's coming. The physical is just catching up.

Now, most Christians would agree that faith is not believing in the absence of evidence. Faith is believing because of evidence. You see the truth of God, and respond by reaching out. But, Word Faith teaches something much closer to a Star Wars force. Obi-Wan Kenobi was teaching Luke about the force, and said at one point that he should close his eyes, because “your eyes can deceive you.” The spirit realm is reality and our physical realm is but an illusion. Thus, for Word Faith followers, faith is believing promises of God despite what our senses see, hear and touch.

To use another movie, it's like the Matrix: the world we perceive with our senses is not the real world, it's a simulation. It's a computer program. The real world is accessed when we unplug from it and wake up—when we operate in the spirit world.

Now, according to this understanding, everything in the Universe is caused by vibrations. Therefore words are important because words are sound vibrations that have creative potential.

This belief impacts everything.

Word Faith beliefs affected by this metaphysics

Most of the core teachings and practices come out of or are at least affected by this fundamental belief.

Positive confession

Word Faith adherents believe what you sow is what you reap with your words. This is also known as the law of karma, or the law of attraction. What you confess with words—vibrations and energy—is what you will eventually get back. So if you confess positivity, you will reap positivity. And if you confess negativity, you will reap negativity.

I've noticed that many mainline Pentecostals will also believe in positive confession—but they don't necessarily hold to the rest of the Word Faith doctrines and beliefs.

Healing

Healing is to be done in the spirit first, and if it doesn't manifest physically, just wait: it will come. That's because of their belief that true reality is in the spirit, and the physical is playing catch-up to this reality.

Grace is added this healing doctrine, but the fundamentals do not change. So, many Word Faith teachers will graciously say that you can go to the doctors (many say you cannot), but to do so is to lack faith. When you grow in your faith, you will not need to use medical science or doctors. The physical is an effect, not causative, and an illusion, not real.

This is also the reason why Word Faith practitioners may not tell you if they're sick. They may 'confess' (positively) that they're well, believing that it's done in the spiritual realm. By calling this out with words, they seek to manifest it in the physical. However, if they were to agree with the doctors, they would be confessing negatively, and they would never see their healing. (Thankfully, some do call this as it really is, which is lying.)

Provision

Financial prosperity is to be sought by claim in the spirit. Either the devil has stolen what is rightfully yours, or, God is to be petitioned for provision since he owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

Hard work is not a core teaching of Word Faith adherents because the physical is an illusion and an effect. Favour will come by work in the spirit. This is not to say that they couldn't be hard workers, but that a good work ethic does not come from Word Faith principles.

There is a good dose of recognition that they ought to pray hard for opportunities—and that's a good thing—but no theological roots for drawing strength towards working hard. In practice this tends to manifest itself in long prayer times, like all night Friday prayers; but with regard to physical work, they tend towards interpreting difficulty with being against God's will or an attack of the Devil.

Salvation

Salvation is something to be claimed in the spirit. It's already done by Jesus' work on the cross. You just have to believe it and claim it.

Once you've claimed salvation, even if you don't feel it or perceive it physically, you just need to believe that you have received God, and that you are born again from above.

Most sermons are finished with an altar call where non-Christians will be asked to repeat a fairly rigid formulaic prayer. Even saying "pray this from your heart because it's not about the words" doesn't get around the fact that you just have to cover x and y and then you're saved. It's treated as a spiritual transaction even though they also believe that it's a start of a relationship.

Holiness

Some, from these same principles, teach that all sins—past, present and future—have been forgiven in Jesus already, so there is no need for Christians to confess it or repent of it (technically this is called Hyper Grace, and not strictly part of Word Faith—but it fits hand in glove and some do believe it also).

It's done in the spirit, so there's no need to strive in our flesh against sin. All such striving is putting ourselves under the law again, and Pharisaical. Any call to repentance, therefore, is condemnation and wrong, because there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

This is different from the Wesleyan emphasis on "entire sanctification"—the belief that Christians can reach sinless perfection on earth. That at least was based on the commands of the Bible such as "be perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Since Pentecostalism came from a Wesleyan/Methodist history, and Word Faith from Pentecostal, there are more than a few Word Faith adherents who believe in this Wesleyan holiness theology.

Spiritual warfare

Pentecostals in general emphasise spiritual warfare above all other methodologies for getting things done. Rightly pursued, it is about petitioning God to save, heal and deliver, as well as to get God's will, but New Age influence suggests that this is where the real work gets done, and the physical reality will catch up to what's done in the spirit.

Whereas the Conservative might pray for healing and then go to the doctors, the Word Faith practitioner may just pray for an hour solid, skipping the doctors altogether. That's because they believe the problem is in the spiritual realm, and the physical experiences they have are just symptoms of whatever is going on in the spirit. There is little recognition that God can use the physical to get things done—that would just be the result of what happens in the spirit.

Emphasis

Since the spiritual realm is where real work gets done, most of the Word Faith emphasis is on spiritual matters.

When the Bible is preached from, the emphasis is on what happens in the spiritual realm—angels, demons, prayer, miracles, prophecies, and spiritual gifts. Getting the historical and physical context is not important to them, so you won't hear exegetical preaching from them. (Conversely, it's not good practice to essentially ignore the spiritual things, like many otherwise good Conservative churches do.)

Behavioural skills and practices rarely get mentioned, and if they do, the most common teaching in this area is to ask the Spirit to give us more of the Spirit's fruit (the Fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23). (Again legitimate, but incomplete.)

The topics of spiritual warfare, healing, provision and salvation—in the particular manner described above—are by far the most emphasised issues.

The New Age connection

Before we get into the detail, I wanted to give a big picture overview of where I see the Word Faith understanding of several aspects of knowledge. Note the similarities and differences.

As I've often noted, what I see in practice is that Word Faith practitioners will hold a mix of pure Word Faith beliefs together with something more biblical.

What we want to develop is an ability to perceive the New Age aspects of our beliefs, so that we can remove them from our midst.

What I'm concerned about

I'm concerned here that Word Faith Pentecostals draw from a non-biblical worldview. That what they emphasise are the same things that New Agers emphasise. That what they believe is in essence that same things that New Agers believe. This then flows down to the practices, some of which we've already talked about.

This understanding that true reality is spiritual explains their animus against using their intellect. Our intellect is worldly and physical, so can't be trusted. But, there is a Pharasaical use of the intellect, and a godly use of the intellect too.

For the moment, though, we will park these concerns as we continue to understand what Word Faith theology says.

Word Faith theology, verse by verse

There are plenty of proof texts we can appeal to that appear to back up this belief. (Proof texting is where you have an idea first, and then search around to find a verse to back it up, as opposed to having the ideas come out from Scripture in the first instance. It's considered bad practice, because the texts found are usually saying something completely different when read in context.)

Paul teaches "we live by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). This is taken to mean that we cannot trust our senses or the physical world in general.

Regarding healing, we read in Isaiah:

The interpretation that this healing is physical is found in Matthew 8:17.

So all that's left for us to do, Word Faith adherents say, is to take that promise—that we are healed—and confess it over our lives. Then our healing will be made manifest in the physical.

Another is in Psalms:

Often I hear of Word Faith practitioners counseling "the healing will come in the night", if there is not immediate healing at their praying. The idea is the same—the healing has occurred in the spiritual realm but will take some time to come to us.

Kenneth Copeland uses Hosea 4:6, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge...", to argue that God's people would not be destroyed if they but had knowledge about God's will for them to be completely whole in every way. It's available for them in the spirit—they just have to activate their faith to receive it. We are healed (Isaiah 53:5)—so therefore whatever we may see and feel in the physical is irrelevant (we live by faith, not by sight). We need to believe and confess this 'promise'.

Daniel's prayer and fasting for twenty-one days shows a similar view. The angel describes that his words were heard on the first day and was sent in response to them, but, he was resisted by the prince of the Persian kingdom for twenty-one days (Daniel 10). So that's why his answer in the physical realm took so long to get to him. The angel was delayed in the spiritual realm.

We also see another principle which is that the physical works against the spiritual—supporting the lie that the physical realm is an illusion.

Taken in this mindset, Romans seems to support this opposition:

Our physical body should be presumed dead:

And our spiritual body should be the one we live in:

Furthermore, our fight is in the spirit:

But if we were to stop there, we'd be ignoring and downplaying a host of other verses. We'd be committing confirmation bias—just seeing what we want to see.

In the next section, I bring many other passages to the fore that need to be wrestled with.