The Occult Teachings of the New Testament

This article and this go to great lengths to reveal some of the occult teachings in the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and others. The intended audience is Christians who may "fall" for the spurious, heterodox teachings, presented in a way that would cause the unsuspecting, unarmed Christian to stumble.

Here is the letter I just e-mailed to the owners of the site, with a subject line the same as this post title:

Matthew 11:25
"At that time Jesus exclaimed, "I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever..."

Luke 10:23
"Then turning to his disciples he spoke to them in private..."

Ephesians 3:5
"This mystery that has now been revealed through the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets was unknown to any men in past generations."

Luke 18:34
"But this saying was hid from them; what he said was quite obscure to them, they had no idea what it meant."

Luke 10:45
"It was hidden from them so that they should not see the meaning of it."

John 12:36
"Having said this, Jesus left them and kept himself hidden."

Matthew 13:34
"In all this Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables; indeed, he would never speak to them except in parables."

So of course there are many hidden teachings: hidden because of hard hearts; hidden by the intentionally misleading or obfuscation of the speaker; hidden because of laziness; hidden because of dim wits. "Occult", the way you use it, conflates all these into a single, opaque bogey man - your first fallacy.

Your second fallacy is that of assuming the end of revelation from the spiritual worlds, and from God himself. Of course that is what practically defines you as a Christian, and what motivates or makes sense of the Christian fear of compromise, of "watered down" doctrine, of stepping outside the pale. But none of that fear determines the truth of the doctrine that revelation ended with the last book of the New Testament.

Your third fallacy - almost but not quite indistinguishable from the previous fallacy - is that human understanding, the human mind, human consciousness, has remained unchanged since at least the time of Christ, but really even before then.

Your fourth fallacy is that the reading of Scripture is an absolutely transparent process involving the reader and God, with no intermediary, whether that be human consciousness, received wisdom, the translation of ancient texts by human beings, etc..

The reductio ad absurdum is that eventually the scrutiny of texts such as those written by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, et al, must spread to all human-penned texts, which includes the gospels. Notice I didn't say "human inspired", but "human-penned", because unless they were automatons, there was something human going on in the minds of the gospel authors, whatever it may have been.