Take 2: The First and Second Generation of Biblical Counseling
Adams prefers to focus on what we can ascertain with certainty because people’s lives hang in the balance. Powlison prefers to “push the envelope” and test theories of change continually expedited by CCEF’s “research and development department” that he is so proud of. This is necessary for purposes of finding more and more data as to why we should preach the gospel to ourselves and how that reductionist concept supposedly works in real life. Powlison has no qualms whatsoever in testing those theories on people’s lives.
We are not only in the second generation of biblical counseling, but we are also in the second gospel wave. The first gospel wave treated sanctification as unimportant and a distraction from “getting people saved.” The second gospel wave we are in now states that it is not only unimportant, but that it is completely irrelevant because it is really justification to begin with. Adams corrected the problems of the first wave and everyone agrees that it was a reformation and the beginning of the biblical counseling movement, but now the second generation wants to usher in another form of the first gospel wave while persecuting the cure to the former.
After yesterday’s post, I was still troubled in my spirit. I searched my heart, and I still think the issue is discouragement concerning the lax attitude toward truth in our present day. Maybe it’s me. I was haunted all of my adult life because I continually asked myself, “What is truth? Is there any?” I had that conversation with myself most of my life. I observed the seemingly worthless cycle: Born, play, go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, go to ballgames, retire, fish, die. Why?
Then I became a Christian. I found what I was looking for my whole life. Is that one reason that I hold it dear? And then I was never taught the best way to apply that wonderful truth to my life in the first ten years of my Christian life. Is that why the persecution of Jay Adams troubles me so? “Oh come now Paul, persecution? There you go again-exaggerating!” Sorry, calling someone a Pharisee is no trite matter to me. Nor is the suggestion that the counsel that turned my life around is/was bogus. I don’t appreciate that.
Special note to my volunteer editing committee: Sorry, this is therapy. This is the only excerpt from the book that I will be posting before it goes to print if the Lord wills. I will be anxiously awaiting your feedback. I owe you guys some additional manuscripts as well, and let me say that your input has been awesome and has encouraged me much. Layman can have people too! The following manuscript from chapter nine is a work in process and the footnotes are full-size.
Chapter 9: Understanding By Contrast: The Jay Adams Reformation
The thesis of this book is seven-fold. First, New Calvinism is an expression of antinomian reductionism; specifically, gospel reductionism. It reduces the believers role in God’s spiritual work and plan to the least common denominator—primarily gospel contemplationism.
Second, it reduces the gospel to the saving work of Christ only—eclipsing the Father and Holy Spirit.
Third, because the believer’s role is reduced to a point that is not according to Scripture, he/she is deprived of the abundant life in a way God wants us to experience it for His glory and their arousing of curiosity from those who don’t have the hope of the gospel.
Fourth: it reduces the Scriptures to a historical gospel narrative only—a tool for contemplation. While that prism is singular, the system needed to make it work is so complex that it relegates God’s people to a pope-like reliance on those who fancy themselves as masters of mega-narrative interpretation.
Fifth: while reductionist theologies seek to reduce the believer’s role to the least common denominator, supposedly to make much of God and little of man, the elements that attempt to make it seem plausible are often complex and ongoing. Therefore, instead of majoring on the application of what is learned from Scripture, believers are constantly clamoring about for some new angel that will give them a “deeper understanding” of the gospel that saved them.
Sixth: Christ and the apostles clearly warned that such doctrines would constantly trouble the church until the return of Christ, and in fact has been the primary nemesis of God’s people throughout redemptive history.
Seventh: All hope in contending against this doctrine is lost if one focuses on all of the theological systems and theories that attempt to make it plausible. This harkens back to lessons learned in contending against first century Gnosticism. For example, as mentioned in chapter five, New Covenant Theology alone has eighty elements. Presently, that is.
Therefore, the goal is to focus on the doctrines reductionist premise, and compare that with the truth of God’s word. The rest that pleads the doctrine’s case cannot be true if the premise isn’t true—regardless of its orthodox-like garb.
In this history section, some doctrine is being observed to show historical relevance, and that will be the case in this chapter as well. In chapter seven, we observed Sonship Theology’s historical connection to New Calvinism. In this chapter we will glean what there is to learn in a contrasting movement that took place during the rise of New Calvinism. Why did these two movements clash? If the other movement contradicted New Calvinism, and it certainly did, what can be learned about new Calvinism and its doctrine by contrast?
The contrary movement was what we will aptly call the “Doing Reformation.” It started with Dr. Jay Adams. Powlison commented on the movement in the aforementioned message at Piper’s church (chapter 8) and it will be borrowed again:
I think that in the first generation of biblical counseling, which would be initiated by Jay Adams, probably the landmark book, 1970, Competent to Counsel, that’s where the title of my dissertation came, that Adams had certain – Adams certainly articulated those three core commitments about the nature of the scripture, the nature of ministry, the nature of the church. And Adams says certain things that no one in the counseling world was saying, the notion that the Bible spoke and that God engaged all of life, the notion that God is our environment. We live in His world. History plays His themes, that whatever is going on with people always is touching, butting against, conforming to, arguing with God, either suppressing the knowledge of God, or delighting in the knowledge of God. That sense of a God who is sovereign and of a God whose word speaks into human life a great strength.
Adams had, and again, this is one of the distinctives of his system, real strong sense of what – and he took the language, Paul’s language of the putting off and the putting on, putting off with the old man, the old nature, the putting on of the new. And again, credit him in this. Instead of talking in generalities, he actually gave a counseling method, ask questions. Don’t just talk about sin. Find out where this couple that is in intense conflict, where are they struggling, what happens, when is it, what does he say to her, what does she say to him, what are the attitudes, where are the breakdowns happening. So those are – there was the initiation of some kind of counseling process that was put in there that invited a pastor, invited a Christian lay person, a chaplain, whoever, to actually have reason to talk for more than one hour with a person, get to know people, find out where they’re really at. Don’t just give them platitudes. Get to know them. Find out the information, and don’t just tell people, well, you should love your wife. Help a husband wrestle through how do I love – in the power of God, how am I to love this wife, the one I have? ‘Cause I know the way that my wife is loved is different from the way that Jack’s wife is loved, or the way that anyone else’s wife here is loved, and so forth and so on. Children are different, wives are different, husbands are different. And so wrestle through the specifics.
Though Powlison puts his own biased twist on this historical account, some of it is useful. Jay Adams is known as the father of the contemporary biblical counseling movement and rightfully so. In a nutshell, while New Calvinists like to talk about “intelligent repentance,” ie., a complex, deep introspection into the soul to find heart idols for the purpose of reorienting our desires, Adams was all about intelligent obedience.
No thanks to the first gospel wave started by Billy Graham in the fifties, diligent and intelligent application of God’s wisdom in sanctification was eclipsed by the supposed priority of getting people saved. Missing the simplicity of Christ’s mandate to the church, we began making “saved” people and not disciples.61 So obsessed was the church with making saved people, they would not pass on the opportunity to look for them among the saved, ignoring the second part of Christ’s mandate to “go.” Hence, the alter call. The primary goal of Sunday church was not “encouraging each other unto good works,”62 but seeing people walk forward to rededicate or give their lives to Christ. Psychology filled the void, leading to a pushback by Dave Hunt and his book The Seduction of Christianity. Hunt brought attention to the problem but offered no solution or alternative to the idea that Sigmund Freud was smarter than God. However, Adams did. Adams understood Christ’s mandate: make disciples—“teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.”
Powlison is right on this wise: Christians were trying to function on biblical “generalities.” But also, Adams has been known to comment that as he traveled about the country speaking in churches, people were shocked to hear that they could “do something” in the sanctification process; and concerning trouble in life as well in addition to praying about it. Adams devised a biblical counseling method, and as many pastors who ascribed to it will attest, when counselees were asked what they had done about their problem, it was almost always one of three responses: they had prayed about it only; nothing; or something other than biblical. Christianity en masse was ignorant in regard to thinking biblically, and certainly ignorant of right biblical doing if they were doing anything at all other than praying about it. And pray they did because it was the pastor’s replacement for counseling. The extent of counseling was the following advice: “Pray and go to the Psychologist.”
The church seemed tone-deaf to the fact that few people were willing to entrust their souls to a God that didn’t even know how to save their marriages. The Adams reformation changed that in a big way. In training centers across the United States, pastors who had been in the ministry for thirty-years were heard saying, “Where has this teaching been all of my life? Ok, this makes sense; the God who created us should certainly know how to fix us!” Adams brought theology down to real life; hence, many Calvinist were heard saying, “Oh, I get it; God is not only sovereign in salvation—he is sovereign in my life difficulties as well!” The organization that primarily advocated what Adams taught was the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors, or NANC. The astonishing revelation/news that Spirit filled believers could use the God-breathed Scriptures to help people spread fast—especially in the early nineties. The revival was on, but all was not well.
CCEF (chapter 8) and NANC were seen as the two major biblical counseling organizations driving the movement. The organizations also shared board members—and different perspectives on the gospel. According to a source that will remain unnamed, Paul David Tripp complained that Adams was not “vertical enough.” That is a valuable statement because one of the major suppositions of this book is that a proper balance of the vertical (God’s work) and the horizontal (our work) is critical to the Christian life and testimony. Why? Because the primary conduit in consideration is the law. Christ did not even speak of those who openly indulge in sin so that grace can supposedly abound, he spoke of those who merely “relax(es)” the law and teach others to do the same,63 and that regarding the “least” of all His commandments. To say that Sonship Theology has a relaxed attitude towards the law would by a gargantuan understatement. The crux of the matter can be further ascertained from Powlison’s message at Piper’s church as mentioned before:
This might be quite a controversy, but I think it’s worth putting in. Adams had a tendency to make the cross be for conversion. And the Holy Spirit was for sanctification. And actually even came out and attacked my mentor, Jack Miller, my pastor that I’ve been speaking of through the day, for saying that Christians should preach the gospel to themselves. I think Jay was wrong on that. I – it’s one of those places where I read Ephesians. I read Galatians. I read Romans. I read the gospels themselves. I read the Psalms. And the grace of God is just at every turn, and these are written for Christians. I think it’s a place where Jay’s fear of pietism, like his fear of speculation, psychologically actually kept him from tapping into just a rich sense of the vertical dimension. And I think Biblical Counseling as a movement, capital B, capital C, has been on a trajectory where the filling in of some of these neglected parts of the puzzle has led to an approach to counseling that is more mature, more balanced. It’s wiser. It has more continuity with the church historically in its wisest pastoral exemplars.64
At the core of a longstanding contention between Jay Adams and the CCEF clan, and later NANC also because of CCEF influence, was disagreement on the gospel. The distinction cannot be clearer—Adams believes that the gospel is for salvation, and then we move on in making disciples by teaching them to observe the whole counsel of God. Powlison, according to Westminster’s version of the Forum’s centrality of the objective gospel which is Sonship Theology, believes the same gospel that saved us also sanctifies us. Powlison also mentioned the phrase that Miller coined that is the motto of contemporary New Calvinism: We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day. Powlison then shared why he thought Adams missed the boat on the right approach to helping people:
I think there’s been a huge growth in the movement in the understanding of the human heart, which is really a way of saying of the vertical dimension. And I had an interesting conversation with Jay Adams, probably 20 years ago when I said, why don’t you deal with the inner man? Where’s the conscience? Where’s the desires? Where’s the fears? Where’s the hopes? Why don’t you talk about those organizing, motivating patterns?
And his answer was actually quite interesting. He said, “when I started biblical counseling, I read every book I could from psychologists, liberals, liberal mainline pastoral theologians. There weren’t any conservatives to speak of who talked about counseling. And they all seemed so speculative about the area of motivation. I didn’t want to speculate, and so I didn’t want to say what I wasn’t sure was so.
One thing I knew, obviously there’s things going on inside people. What’s going on inside and what comes out are clearly connected cause it’s a whole person, so I focused on what I could see.”
In other words, if Powlison quoted him accurately, Adams didn’t want to try to help people with anything that was speculative. This is antithetical to Powlison’s approach. CCEF’s research and development department devises theories and then experiments with them in local churches. An example of this would be Paul David Tripp’s treatise on Powlison’s Dynamics of Biblical Change, How People Change. The material was tested in several churches to apparently ascertain response. In one church, the material was tested in a Sunday School class and the leader’s guide stated the following in “Acknowledgments”:
We want to offer a special word of appreciation to all the churches around the country that were willing to test this course. Your contribution is invaluable. You have challenged and encouraged us and helped sharpen the curriculum.65
Though the leadership of that church and the elder in particular that taught the class knew a certain ladies husband would disapprove of sanctification by justification, he allowed her into the class while her husband was in the middle of another study elsewhere. He knowingly taught her the material behind her husband’s back. This kind of arrogant mentality is commonplace in the movement—the elder assumed he knew what was best for the man’s wife. Also troubling is the idea that biblical truth must be tested as opposed to the belief that conclusive truth can be drawn from Scripture by proper exegesis. Powlison’s nebulous approach to truth can be seen in further comments he made concerning Adams in the same presentation:
And that notion that the active verbs with respect to God can do multiple duty for us, they not only call us to faith and love and refuge and hope, but they can turn on their heads and they become questions, what am I hoping in, where am I taking refuge, what am I loving that is not God, that that’s actually a hugely significant component, both of self-knowledge and then of repentance as well.
Emphasis on the positive side of the heart is the whole relationship with God. And I do think that’s a way where, in the first generation, it looks pretty behavioral, and the whole vividness of relationship with God.66
Throughout the presentation, Powlison refers to the “first generation” of biblical counseling as opposed to the second generation of which he fathered through his program that is the criteria for counseling training at Westminster seminary: The Dynamics of Biblical Change. What that program is based on couldn’t be clearer: gospel reductionist theology with its dual clarion calls of “We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day” and “The same gospel that saved you also sanctified you.” The basis of this theology can be seen clearly in how counseling is practiced by these two organizations; the primary thrust is to wow the counselee with the glory of the gospel. All change must come through the objective gospel outside of us and everything must be interpreted through that reality. That’s how Paul Tripp can present change of thinking as an outside-of-the-cup procedure—because the believer is initiating the change and all change must come through the observation of the outside gospel first. This is one of the tenets of New Covenant Theology as well as articulated by New Covenant Theology guru Chad Bresson. Point number one of his eighty tenets is the following:
New Covenant Theology insists on the priority of Jesus Christ over all things, including history, revelation, and redemption. New Covenant Theology presumes a Christocentricity to the understanding and meaning of all reality.
It all harkens back to the sevenfold thesis of this book. Sonship theology is based on the Forum’s centrality of the objective gospel outside of us with the goal of reducing the believer’s role to the least common denominator. Powlison, who perhaps has never even heard of the Forum, applied that theological principle to counseling because the concept was passed on to him through John Miller’s Sonship Theology. Miller was infused with the concept because at the time of his tenure, Westminster was saturated with the doctrine (see chapter 6)—even to the point of the Westminster faculty inviting the Forum for a visit to Westminster (regardless of their SDA connections) while holding their noses and serving them pork at the behest of Jay Adams.
This brings us to point five of this book’s thesis:
While reductionist theologies seek to reduce the believer’s role to the least common denominator, supposedly to make much of God and little of man, the elements that attempt to make it seem plausible are often complex and ongoing.
Tripp’s How People Change is the articulation of how this overly vertical doctrine supposedly works in the real life of spiritual growth. Of course, it would seem that proponents argue that it is impossible to be overly vertical. But let there be no doubt: the crux of the contention between first generation biblical counseling and the second generation of the supposed same is a question of balance between the horizontal and the vertical. Adams prefers to focus on what we can ascertain with certainty because people’s lives hang in the balance. Powlison prefers to “push the envelope” and test theories of change continually expedited by CCEF’s “research and development department” that he is so proud of. This is necessary for purposes of finding more and more data as to why we should preach the gospel to ourselves and how that reductionist concept supposedly works in real life. Powlison has no qualms whatsoever in testing those theories on people’s lives.
We are not only in the second generation of biblical counseling, but we are also in the second gospel wave. The first gospel wave treated sanctification as unimportant and a distraction from “getting people saved.” The second gospel wave we are in now states that it is not only unimportant, but that it is completely irrelevant because it is really justification to begin with. Adams corrected the problems of the first wave and everyone agrees that it was a reformation and the beginning of the biblical counseling movement, but now the second generation wants to usher in another form of the first gospel wave while persecuting the cure to the latter.
And the result is not enough gospel for the lost. Too little questioning about the hope that is in us because we are still at the foot of Christ’s cross and not picking up our own and walking forward. Too much gospel in the wrong place.
The Difference Between “First Generation” Biblical Counseling and “Second Generation” Biblical Counseling is a False Gospel
Sigh. I’m going to have to pause here and get something off my chest. While researching for the history section of The Truth About New Calvinism, I stumbled onto an internet promotion regarding a forthcoming book written by a very suburban-looking Heath Lambert. The title of the book is, “The Biblical Counseling Movement after Jay Adams.”
Lambert is right about one thing, the biblical counseling movement has left Jay Adams behind (“….after Jay Adams”), and according to what we hear these days, that’s good because Jay was “first generation” and now we are in the “second generation” of this “biblical” movement. Lambert looks really young. I will give him thirty-five, maybe. So, that would make him approximately ten years old when God used a disciple of Jay Adams to save my life with first generation counseling. However, I must be careful here, the last time I said that to someone closely associated with CCEF, they mocked me. That’s funny you know, that anybody would think that first generation counseling saved anybody.
Furthermore, while listening to an mp3 one day, I heard a NANC Fellow say that the first generation counseling didn’t do much more than create a bunch of Pharisees. What did he mean by that? We get a clue from a seminar taught at John Piper’s church by David Powlison while Piper was on a sabbatical to eliminate several “species of heart idols.” I guess the idols were the eight-month type and the hunting went well because Piper was able to return to ministry in January of 2011. Anyway, according to Powlison, first generation counseling was “behavioral.”
So, like the Pharisees, first generation counseling only cleaned (past tense?) the outside of the cup—it was behavioristic. And I guess it still is since many churches still do first generation counseling, and Adams is still alive and….uh, wait a minute here—is Lambert saying first generation doesn’t count as being in the movement anymore? Hmmm, this brings up another question: do the first generation counselors who reject second generation counseling consider themselves in the movement? Or are there now two movements? Maybe Lambert clarifies that in his book.
Let me suggest another question: since first generation counseling (Hereafter FG) advocated biblical thinking, doesn’t that count for cleaning the inside of the cup? After all, Christ said the Pharisees were inside lawbreakers (Matt. 23:28). Nope. Paul David Tripp took care of that in How People Change on page 27. Apparently, aligning our thinking with the mind of Christ “omits the person and work of Christ as Savior.” Wow. So taking every thought captive and bringing it into obedience to Christ isn’t what the apostle Paul was really talking about. In fact, to do that is to deny the saving work of Christ! These second generation guys must be really, really advanced.
For any of you CCEF guys who may be reading this—that’s sarcasm. The real difference between FG and SG was plainly stated by Powlison during his shameful, despicable trouncing of Adams at Piper’s church:
Adams had a tendency to make the cross be for conversion. And the Holy Spirit was for sanctification. And actually even came out and attacked my mentor, Jack Miller, my pastor that I’ve been speaking of through the day, for saying that Christians should preach the gospel to themselves. I think Jay was wrong on that.
This doesn’t need much explaining. In that statement, Powlison clearly states the differences between the two generations. Sanctification by justification or not. Also, his “mentor,” who he spoke of “through the day” is the father of Sonship theology which had sanctification by justification as its premise. Not only that, probably about the time Lambert was also ten years old, the Sonship nomenclature was dropped for “gospel-this,” “gospel-that,” and “gospel you fill in the blank because conservative Presbyterian elders were banning Sonship theology from their churches—calling it “dangerous” and eerily similar to “antinomianism.” Oh, and by the way, the “attack” Powlison was talking about: Adams wrote a book in contention against Sonship theology in 1999. By “attack,” Powlison meant “book,” I think, anyway, maybe the book part slipped his mind. Oh well, I’m sure he gave Lambert a copy for his research since it is a part of the biblical counseling movement’s history.
That’s the difference between the two generations, a false gospel. But wait, I’m not speaking of the SG false gospel; I’m speaking to the fact that they say FG counselors teach a false gospel. Why do you think they resent FG so much? The SG camp makes it clear that if you start with the gospel and “move on to something else, you lose BOTH.” Both what? Justification and sanctification ( Michael Horton: Christless Chrsitianity p.62; also see John Piper’s Gospel in 6 Minutes). Last time I checked, no justification means no salvation. Come now, words mean things. Tripp stated that to even make an effort to change our thinking omits what? The works of Christ as what? “Savior.” What happens when you omit the works of Christ as savior?
I think Lambert’s book is about 200 pages. About what? Second generation biblical counselors think gospel contemplationism is the way to help people and first generation disagrees. Seems pretty simple to me.
paul
The 95 Theses Against New Calvinism pdf file
The 95 Theses Against New Calvinism
__________________________________
Part 1: Enabled? Paul’s Take
“What they don’t understand is the Spirit’s work and our work together is seamless. We appropriate the Spirit’s power and that leaves us without excuse because we can do all things through Him who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). Working hard while knowing by faith that the Spirit is working with us in accordance to God’s word, and not outside of it, is not ‘fruit hanging.’ I beg your pardon, but that’s a lie. It’s not either all us, or all of the Spirit, and I beg your pardon again, but that won’t always be experienced as a ‘natural flow.'”
I am on a sabbatical to get a major project done and I suppose it was bound to happen—I have allowed distraction. I saw a Facebook note the other day that read,
“Spiritual fruit is born from the inside—not applied to the outside.”
As anybody who knows me can attest, these churchy truisms drive me nuts. I tried to stay the course by having Susan do this piece for me, but per the usual, she doesn’t think EXACTLY like I do—an attribute of hers that has been known to annoy me more than once. However, I have entitled this post “Paul’s Take” in hopes that she will post on it as a second part for added perspective. Besides, I love the email I get telling me how much this blog needs her “sensitive” touch.
So, I can’t let it go. My initial response to the jingle was the following:
What does that mean exactly? How is fruit birthed from the inside out? Since Christ told us to put into practice “these words of mine,” how do we put them into practice WITHOUT “applying it to the outside.” ? So, in order to do what Christ wants us to, what’s the right approach according to your truism?
Depending on the answer I got, I could be continuing my work, but the answer I got contained the “E” word:
Gents, this is a quote I liked from an article I was reading. A small excerpt of it is in one of my facebook notes titled the same as above. Once you read it, it will be clear the author’s intent is that beautiful true and lasting fruit (natural outward words and deeds) flow from a heart stayed on God. This is opposed to false fruit such as outward appearance and acts that do not reflect the inner heart condition. These “fruits” are not intrinsic to the person, but mere ornamentation (such as tassels and phylacteries) meant to deceive men. These fruits only have earthly reward (worthless impressions of men) and do not last (perhaps even on earth and certainly not eternally). We can bear no true fruit without the enablement of the spirit. Once redeemed, we then have the power available to walk in righteousness, but we also can choose to disobey. Indeed, a Christian is making a conscious choice to sin each time they do. God’s sovereign will is worked out even in sin (of redeemed or unredeemed people). We are active agents in all we do, yet God remains in control.
The excerpt he is referring to is the following:
Imagine that the fruit you desired was the edible variety, so you went out into your yard and planted an apple tree. Just suppose that one day, while you were waiting for the apples to begin growing on your tree, you caught a glimpse of a neighbor’s apple tree. You noticed in admiration that its branches were laden with big, luscious apples. What would you do? Would you run to the produce market to buy some apples, then go home, and in the dead of night, tie them onto your tree? If you did, the sight of your tree might really impress your neighbors. But that is not what you would do. You would likely go to the neighbor and ask how he cared for and fertilized his tree to produce such fruit. It is the same with our children – luscious fruit will be born from what we put into them – not from what we tie onto them. As a matter of fact, in no time, the fruit that we put onto our children will rot and fall off
The excerpt was taken from an article by Reb Bradley who produces gospel-centered (the antinomian concept of “the same gospel that saved you also sanctifies you, ie., sanctification by justification) teaching materials for the homeschool subculture. The article was reposted by New Calvinist/gospel centered guru Joshua Harris on his blog resulting in 107 comments (http://goo.gl/zuNzE0).
Is the author’s excerpt “clear”? Hardly. Why is it important? Because the New Testament teaches that the age marked by the ascension of Christ in its beginning, till His return marking its end, is a unique age identified predominantly with d-e-c-e-p-t-i-o-n. Look at the New Testament. Apart from the historical books, all but maybe two books were written for the sole purpose of addressing error—in the church. That’s in the first century; the kingdom of darkness has had 2000 years since then to hone its craft. More than ever it’s important to teach truth with biblical words.
So, does the Holy Spirit lead believers to obey in a way that isn’t what we will call fruit stapling through “enablement”? No, and the whole fruit stapling/”fruit hanging” thesis is a false premise. We will address that prism/illustration first and then address “enablement.”
Though the facebooker’s answer is not totally objectionable, the excerpt is based on antinomian reductionist theology propagated by Reb Bradley, Paul David Tripp in “Age of Opportunity” and the Priestess of Contemporary Antinomianism, Elyse Fitzpatrick, in her new book, “Give Them Grace.” Elyse wrote an article recently denying that there is any such thing as antinomianism, even stating that in her many years of counseling she has never met one. Well, I have news for Elyse, Sigmund Freud never met one either. Learning through specific biblical words in our day is vital, and Fitzpatrick’s claim that there is no such thing as an antinomian is a great example.
The word “anomia” which is the Greek word for what English speaking folks refer to as “antinomianism” occurs in the New Testament twenty-five times. It’s almost surreal that those who are revered as the premier teachers of our day can commit these first-degree theological felonies in broad daylight and get away with it. This is important because Jesus Christ framed the judgment in the last days in context of antinomianism:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers! (Matthew 7:21-23 NIV).
The word for “evildoers” is “anomia.” The passage rightfully reads: “Away from me, you antinomians!” The word anomia means “lawless” or “without the law” and speaks to any devaluing of obedience to God’s word as final authority (Matthew 5:17-20). Hence, in Matthew 7:21-23, the ESV rightfully translates “evildoers” as “lawlessness” which is much closer to the real meaning.
One stands aghast when they realize that “Give Them Grace” is a parenting book and the article she wrote, “Dear Mr. Antinomian” was applauded by the who’s who of New Calvinism (http://goo.gl/61oYZ). Likewise, Harris did not repost Bradley’s piece for pastime. Also note Harris’ disingenuous comment in introducing the piece that he was “challenged” by it when his ministry has been saturated with such teachings for years, and the full article is nothing more than a regurgitation of gospel-centered Sonship Theology as propogated by Tripp’s Age of Opportunity and Fitzpatrick’s Give Them Grace.
That’s the introduction; now let’s look at the illustration first.
It is the same with our children – luscious fruit will be born from what we put into them – not from what we tie onto them. As a matter of fact, in no time, the fruit that we put onto our children will rot and fall off.
This is an erroneous illustration that leads astray because it creates an unbiblical dichotomy between “natural” obedience and obedience in our own efforts. This is how my fellow Facebooker understood the article saying,
Once you read it, it will be clear the author’s intent is that beautiful true and lasting fruit (natural outward words and deeds) flow from a heart stayed on God. This is opposed to false fruit such as outward appearance and acts that do not reflect the inner heart condition. These “fruits” are not intrinsic to the person, but mere ornamentation (such as tassels and phylacteries) meant to deceive men.
Notice that his understanding of the article is correct: “true” obedience is a “natural….flow” from a “heart condition….intrinsic to the person.” Just prior to the fruit tree illustration in the article, Bradley stated the following:
Preoccupation with results often leads to emphasis on outward form. When we are preoccupied with achieving results it is natural to admire the results others seem to have achieved with their children. We like the way the pastor’s kids sit reverently in the front pew and take notes of their father’s sermon, so we go home and begin to teach our children to sit reverently and to take notes. What we don’t know is that the pastor’s kids conduct themselves with reverence and attentiveness not because he “cleaned the outside of the cup” and simply drilled them to do so—he lived a genuine love for Jesus that was contagious, and watched as the fruit was born (Matt 23:26). Parents are destined for disappointment when they admire fruit in others and seek to emulate merely that expression of fruit in their own children. Fruit is born from the inside—not applied to the outside.
Note the author redefines biblical obedience as outward only. He is saying, like Tripp and Fitzpatrick, that the only way to our children’s heart is to speak grace into it by modeling a genuine love for Jesus that is “contagious.” However, Christ modeled Himself in front of the disciples for three years, and at the end of the day, it wasn’t pretty. But the point here is that Bradley propagates the same, worn out antinomian teaching that obedience only concerns the outward, and he does this by only teaching half of Christ’s cup and tomb illustration.
Christ’s indictment of the Pharisees was not only a concern for outward lawlessness, but inside lawlessness. The Pharisees were guilty of inside disobedience as well as outside disobedience. True, Christ said inside obedience comes first—inside thinking dictates outside behavior, but that is not the way Bradley frames it in his article. The biblical model of outside obedience following inside obedience is clearly replaced with wowing our children with the love of Christ and letting the outside behavior flow naturally from the inside because we are motivated by love and not fear:
….he lived a genuine love for Jesus that was contagious, and watched as the fruit was born (Matt 23:26).
It’s about having a real faith in God, and expressing it in a real relationship with a real person—not about methods and self-working principles. God intends that the side-effect of loving Jesus and enjoying the grace of the gospel will be that all people—including our children—will be touched by the Savior in us [observe the statement carefully. Really, it boils down to this illustration: http://wp.me/pmd7S-U4 ].
What about Christ’s true indictment of the Pharisees? This is the model Christ presented when the other half of the cup and tomb illustration that Bradley left out is considered:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:25-28 ESV).
Inside lawlessness was the issue, not a mere modeling of “grace” and Christ’s love that supposedly leads to a “natural flow” that we are to sit back and observe like a motion picture so that we can give God all the glory. Notice Christ said that they were full of “lawlessness” on the inside. We are to instruct our children how to think inwardly according to Scripture. We are to instruct our children how to pray, and we are to instruct our children how to behave. And yes, we are to set the right example, but then we are to instruct them to follow that example! Christ did not call a mismatched outward and inward obedience “fruit hanging,” He called it “hypocrisy.” This model of obedient thinking, obedient praying, and obedient doing can be clearly seen in Philippians 4:2-9. Also, the very reason God judged the world was because mankind’s “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). The apostle Paul made it clear that our spiritual warfare entails taking every thought captive and bringing it into obedience to Jesus Christ (2Corinthians 10:5,6).
We are to teach our children that if they will judge themselves according to God’s word—they will not endure God’s discipline because those who are his children he will discipline if necessary (1Corinthians 11:31,32). If anything is “clear”, Bradley’s article excludes the complete teaching of Christ’s cup and tomb illustration and replaces it with musings about going to the store to buy fruit and hanging it on a tree—this makes a mockery of God’s word. Furthermore, Christ’s primary contention was not the Pharisees’ method, but contrary to Bradley, Tripp, and Fitzpatrick, His primary contention was they were making the law void by mixing it with their tradition (Matthew 15:6). To make the law void is to be antinomian. Obviously.
Bradley’s article is a mere rewriting of Fitzpatrick’s Give Them Grace, and one mother had apt comments accordingly on Fitzpatrick’s book:
*Sigh* I get that burying your kids under a pile of rules can set up the expectation that holiness is completely predicated on one’s behavior rather than grace and one’s heart attitude. But what’s wrong with having compliant children? Can’t we teach them manners and good behavior, AND teach them that manners and good behavior don’t save them?
Because I can just hear it across churches and the blogosphere now: My kids are terrors, but I’m a “grace-based parent” and therefore better than you because you make your kids obey the rules like a good little Pharisee.
Please tell me the book addresses potential misinterpretations of its point, like I’m bringing out here.
But, the Pharisees didn’t obey God’s word, they were antinomians par excellence and “lawless” on the outside as well as the inside. That is why Jesus told the people that their righteousness needed to surpass that of the Pharisees—they were lawless inside and out. In addition, also regarding the above comment—these “teachers” aren’t talking about salvation, they’re talking about sanctification. What they don’t understand is the Spirit’s work and our work together is seamless. We appropriate the Spirit’s power and that leaves us without excuse because we can do all things through Him who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). Working hard while knowing by faith that the Spirit is working with us in accordance to God’s word, and not outside of it, is not “fruit hanging.” I beg your pardon, but that’s a lie. It’s not either all us, or all of the Spirit, and I beg your pardon again, but that won’t always be experienced as a “natural flow.”
In fact, that will undoubtedly be the fruit of this doctrine in due time. Especially since this doctrine considers obedient thinking to be an outside work regardless of the fact that Christ called it an inside consideration that was efficacious to outside behavior. For example, Paul David Tripp refers to our efforts in aligning our thinking/attitudes with the Bible as omitting the “person and work of Christ as Savior” (How People Change p.27). Got that? It’s either all of Christ and His grace, or us omitting Him completely—even as Savior!
This brings us to “enablement.” Does the Bible teach that the Holy Spirit enables us? Again, we must be careful to use biblical words. The person who posted the article originally commented in reply:
We can bear no true fruit without the enablement of the Spirit. Once redeemed, we then have the power available to walk in righteousness, but we also can choose to disobey. Indeed, a Christian is making a conscious choice to sin each time they do.
Again, the fellow Facebooker’s comment is not totally objectionable, but much qualification is needed when we say that we are “enabled” by the Spirit—especially when set against the article he is endorsing. Their version of enablement would have to be, in essence, the Holy Spirit obeying for us, or the Holy Spirit enabling with each act of obedience. The disconnect is huge and just plain ambiguous. The enablement issue will be covered in part 2.
paul
New Calvinists Don’t Play Well With Others
For some time, this blog has been harassed by a New Covenant theologian from Costa Rica. He has not only harassed me which I am accustomed to anyway, but he has also harassed my readers with endless circular arguments that are typical of New Calvinists. He has also showed hostility towards those who disagree with him which is also part of the New Calvinist mode of operation.
This post is sort of an apology as well to my readers. I am a layman and not much of an IT guy, so between working/writing/husbanding/fathering and not knowing all the ends and outs of web stuff—it took me awhile to figure out how to blacklist him from the site. I know, moderating mode is easy, but that’s also TIME that I don’t have. We will see if my new tweaking of the blog settings will work.
However, this all brings back to mind how hostile, condescending, and elitist New Calvinists are in general. This comes from two sources: One; New Calvinists think they are completing the original Reformation. In their minds, literally, today’s gospel narrative in the “ongoing redemptive drama” is the same as it was during the great Reformation. They are Luther’s children and I will give you three wild guesses as to who we are. Secondly; they resent the fact that evangelicals have supposedly led myriads into hell because of the separation of justification and sanctification; specifically, some of their own relatives. When they talk about “justification by faith,” let me give you a heads-up fellow evangelical—they are talking about sanctification also: “The same gospel that saves us also sanctifies us.” What do you think they are saying when they say that? Please, words mean things—start listening to them and stop assuming you know what they are saying!
Look, this mentality came directly from the Australian Forum. Everything is either Rome or the Reformers—the subjective gospel or the objective gospel. Listen to the contemporary NC crowd carefully and you will hear them say it all the time. Piper said it while commenting on Goldsworthy’s lecture at Southern seminary. On the one hand, they’re Reformers that will go down in church history, on the other, Roman Catholicism is behind every bush. It’s visions of grandeur on steroids.
This mentality is driving the hostile takeover of many ministries, ie, Coral Ridge as one example, and rampant elder abuse of parishioners. Parishioners in New Calvinist churches may rape pillage and steel, but don’t you dare question doctrine. In one particular case in a well-known NC church , a parishioner sent a letter to an excommunicated individual (same church) who questioned doctrine; the parishioner stated that she knew why he was targeted, and that she was not only a member in good standing, but living with her boyfriend out of wedlock under the full knowledge of the elders. I saw the letter. After all, we are all totally depraved anyway, right?
This mentality can be seen among their leaders on a national level. The wagons have been circled around CJ Mahaney for the exact aforementioned abuse I am talking about. It is my understanding from people who follow that venue that the website SGM Survivors . Com has been up for four years while John MacArthur, Al Mohler, and others clamor to hold events with him. His heavy handed squashing of detractors is irrelevant; “He has the gospel right.” Not that it mattered that much as I had only been there three times in about four years, and that at the behest of others, the Pyro blog blacklisted me for pointing out that Piper often flip-flops between justification and sanctification in his messages without any transitions. Frank Turk, a Pyro contributor, rebuked me for daring to “slander” Piper and said “to know Piper is to grasp Piper.” He also aped the often used you can’t criticize a NC unless you have read everything they have written routine. Of course, that would exclude any criticism of Piper because he has written about 600 books—all concerning the eternal depths of joy and proofs that God is a happy God which is supposedly a primary theme of Scripture as opposed to discussion about His holiness. The author of the blog, the insufferable Phil Johnson, bemoaned the fact that women had the audacity to criticize a teacher of “Piper’s stature” rather than being in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant.
I was in a Christian bookstore the other day and it occurred to me that other people telling Spirit filled Christians what God is saying to them is big business. The New Calvinists are making big bucks selling the idea that they are the new Reformers here to finish what Luther started (by the way, Luther’s contention with Rome was on a moral issue, [indulgences] not salvation by grace alone). And you’re either with them, or you are with the Romans. Character doesn’t matter, if CJ draws a crowd, CJ is too big to fail. Follow the money.
Enough is enough—Christians need to take the church back from New Calvinism. And by the way, Christ said, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” So, sometimes I wonder about this whole “Reformation” motif to begin with. Had Rome temporarily prevailed against God’s church? Don’t know, but I can tell you that I don’t believe it because a bunch of men say it’s true. And the “new” Reformation? Well, that’s definitely a stretch.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
5 comments