24 拜偶像——神要求全然的效忠Idolatry - God demands totalallegiance
《简明神学》Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs，巴刻（J. I. Packer）著/張麟至译，更新传道会，2007年。
24 拜偶像——神要求全然的效忠
Idolatry - God demands total allegiance
[我必追讨他素日给诸巴力烧香的罪；那时他佩带耳环和别样装饰，随从他所爱的，却忘记我。]这是耶和华说的。（何2:13）
虽然圣经教导只有一位神，也只有一种真的信仰，但是我们所处的背道世界中（罗1:18-25），却总是充满着各式各样的宗教。而且自古以来，人类倾向宗教融合——将一种宗教的某方面融入另一种宗教，从而改变了两者的本质，这种趋势今日依然盛行不衰。而在我们的世代里，透过崭新面貌的学术界锲而不舍地追求诸宗教的合一，和近代东西方思想混合而成的新世界运动之流行，使这种潮流更是大行其道。
这种压力并不是今日才有。以色列人自从占领了迦南地以后，就常受诱惑，要将迦南人土地公、土地婆的敬拜，纳入了耶和华的敬拜内，并为耶和华立像——这两种取向皆为律法所禁止（出20:3-6）。此处所涉及的属灵问题：以色列人是否记得，与他们立约的神——耶和华——具有足够的恩典，他们也因为肯向神宣告，要单单向祂效忠，以至拜任何其他神祗都等于犯了属灵的淫乱罪（耶3章；结16章；何2章）。而对于这个考验，以色列国大半时候都失败了。
在第一世纪的罗马帝国中，多神思想猖獗，各种异端兴盛，宗教融合不但是准许的，并且颇为广传。基督教教师们努力奋战，以持守真道不被吸入诺斯底主义（一种神智学，认为人不必靠基督的道成肉身和救赎，因为他们看人的问题是因出于无知，而非出于罪）和后来的新柏拉图主义（neoplatonism）和摩尼教（manichaeism）（两者和诺斯底主义一样，认为救恩主要是指脱离物质世界的事）里去。这些争战的结果相当成功，正统三位一体和道成肉身的信条说法，正是他们留下永久遗产的一部分。
圣经对拜偶像的罪恶，要求十分严峻地处理。偶像虽被讥讽为迷惑人的虚无之物（诗115：4-7；赛44:9-20），但是它们却能以盲目的迷信辖制它们的崇拜者（赛44:20），使他们对神不忠贞（耶2章）。保罗更进一步说，鬼魔就是透过偶像运作，使它们变成真的具有属灵的威胁力；与偶像接触就不得不沾染污秽（林前8:4-6；10:19-21）。后基督教的西方文化对宗教融合、巫术和神秘经验颇具好感，正准备用这些东西来填补人们所感受到的属灵真空。在此种文化里，圣经对拜偶像所发出的警告，我们得留心听（参林前10:14；约一5:19-21）。
IDOLATRY
GOD DEMANDS TOTAL ALLEGIANCE
“I
will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked
herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,”
declares the LORD. HOSEA 2:13
Though
there is only one God and only one true faith, namely that taught in the Bible,
our apostate world (Rom. 1:18-25) has always been full of religions, and the
age-old urging toward syncretism, whereby aspects of one religion are
assimilated into another thus changing both, is still with us. Indeed, it has
been startlingly revived in our time through the renewed academic quest for a
transcendent unity of religions and the flowering of the popular amalgam of
Eastern and Western ideas that calls itself the New Age.
The
pressure here is not new. Having occupied Canaan, Israel was constantly tempted
to absorb Canaanite worship of fertility gods and goddesses into the worship of
Yahweh, and to make images of Yahweh himself—both of which moves the law
forbade (Exod. 20:3-6). The spiritual issue was whether the Israelites would
remember that Yahweh, their covenant God, was all-sufficient for them, and
moreover claimed their exclusive allegiance, so that worshiping other gods was
spiritual adultery (Jer. 3; Ezek. 16; Hos. 2). This was a test the nation
largely failed.
Syncretism
was similarly widespread and approved in the first-century Roman empire, where
polytheism was rife and all sorts of cults flourished. Christian teachers
fought hard to keep the faith from being assimilated to Gnosticism (a kind of
theosophy that had no use for incarnation and atonement, since it saw man’s
problem as one of ignorance, not sin), and later to Neoplatonism and
Manichaeism, both of which, like Gnosticism, saw salvation as mainly a matter
of getting detached from the physical world. These conflicts were relatively
successful, and the classic creedal formulations of the Trinity and the
Incarnation are part of their permanent legacy.
Scripture
is stern about the evil of practicing idolatry. Idols are mocked as delusive
nonentities (Ps. 115:4-7; Isa. 44:9-20), but they enslave their worshippers in
blind superstition (Isa. 44:20) which is infidelity towards God (Jer. 2), and
Paul adds that demons operate through idols, making them a positive spiritual
menace, contact with which cannot but corrupt (1 Cor. 8:4-6; 10:19-21). In our
post-Christian Western culture, which is prepared to fill the spiritual vacuum
that people feel by looking kindly on syncretism, witchcraft, and experiments
with the occult, the biblical warnings against idolatry need to be taken to
heart (cf. 1 Cor. 10:14; 1 John 5:19-21).