Category Archives: Ministry

A consideration of Wayne Grudem’s Argument for Divorce on Grounds of Abuse

03 Tuesday Dec 2019

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Wayne Grudem has recently made an argument that abuse is permissible basis for divorce in accordance with 1 Corinthians 7:15. The issues of divorce is fraught with peril; and so, my arguments here are quite tentative and based upon a brief consideration. I am merely thinking out loud. But I do believe that Grudem’s argument is plausible and could be strengthened significantly.

Here experience as an attorney helps to understand what is happening with Paul’s legislation.

The argument made by Dr. Grudem is quite similar to the sort of interpretation which is faced routinely in litigation: A particular statute will include both a definite statement of some category and a list of examples. The particular section of his presentation at issue concerns the phrase “in such cases” found in 1 Corinthians 7:15:

But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

(ESV). Grudem’s argument hinges upon the plural use in the original:

1 Corinthians 7:15 (SBLGNT)

15 εἰ δὲ ὁ ἄπιστος χωρίζεται, χωριζέσθω· οὐ δεδούλωται ὁ ἀδελφὸς ἢ ἡ ἀδελφὴ ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις, ἐν δὲ εἰρήνῃ κέκληκεν ἡμᾶς ὁ θεός.

The structure is similar to that faced by the courts. The difficulty here lies with the nature of translation, particular when dealing with a grammatical connective (as opposed to the translation of a noun or verb which have a clearer reference in the physical world). The translation runs to either “in such cases” or “in such circumstances”.

Grudem gives a number of examples from other extra-biblical Greek texts where the phrase is used to introduce an open-ended list (as opposed to giving a restricted list: these items and no more). However, Grudem’s examples from other texts is insufficient to make a solid conclusion.

The interpretative question is whether Paul intends for his example to be read as an exhaustive list: “in this circumstance only”; or is it to be read as an example, “in circumstances like this”.  The plural could mean either any time an unbeliever separates (and thus multiple unbelievers) or it could mean circumstances similar to an unbeliever separating.

The phrase “in such circumstances/cases” is not a common phrase in statutory construction. But there are other quite similar phrases which could inform our analysis.

Perhaps the most common introductory comment is “includes”. For example, a case in Nebraska of an employee seeking benefits sustained by an injury turned upon whether the phrases following “high risk duty includes:” were an exhaustive list or an exemplary list. The court found that use of the word “include” introduces an expansive list:

We recognize that some courts have concluded that the word “include,” standing alone, is ambiguous whether the contracting parties meant for the word to be expansive or restrictive. But we are not persuaded by these cases. Concluding that the parties’ intent regarding a list is ambiguous if a list is preceded only by the verb “include” is contrary to its plain and ordinary meaning. The word “include” means “1. to contain, embrace, or comprise, as a whole does parts or any part or element … 2. to place in an aggregate, class, category, or the like. 3. to contain as a subordinate element; involve as a factor.” Contrary to the county’s argument, these definitions support the conclusion that enumerated items in a list preceded by the word “include” are normally a part of the whole—not that the parts restrict the whole. Particularly in legal contexts, the “participle including typically indicates a partial list,” and this meaning holds true whether or not the drafter(s) added emphatic language such as “ including but not limited to.” Obviously, interpretative aids cannot override the parties’ clear intent when a contract is considered as a whole. But the word “include” preceding a list does not indicate an exclusive list absent other language showing a contrary intent.

Timberlake v. Douglas Cnty., 865 N.W.2d 788, 797 (Neb. 2015). Prodigy Svcs. v. Johnson, 125 S.W.3d 413, 417 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2003) (A related phrase which is much easier to apply is “includes, but is not limited to:” “Following that line of argument the Commissioner finds expansive language in the statute, such as “transmission by or through any media” and “includes but is not limited to, all types of telecommunication transmissions.” See Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-6-102(31)(BC)(Supp. 2002).”)  Thus, if we read Paul’s “in such cases” as “includes”, we have a basis for reading abandonment as one example, not a complete list.

A related phrase connecting a general to a specific reference is “such as” – which is perhaps more similar to Paul’s construction. A Michigan case involving the scope of the phrase “earth movement” provides some useful analysis:

Relying on the doctrine of ejusdem generis, Andriacchi argues that the term “earth movement” is constricted by the words of limitation “such as.” Because the exclusion only identifies natural events—”earthquake, landslide or earth sinking, rising or shifting”—Andriacchi argues that the term “earth movement” is limited to naturally occurring events. Reliance on this doctrine is misplaced. Under the ejusdem generis doctrine, “when a general word or phrase follows a list of specifics, the general word or phrase will be interpreted to include only items of the same class as those listed.” Black’s Law Dictionary(10th ed.). But as the trial court recognized, that doctrine (or, for that matter, any other canon of statutory interpretation) does not apply where the language of the contract is clear, see, e.g., Utica State Savings Bank v. Village of Oak Park, 279 Mich. 568, 573, 273 N.W. 271 (1937), as is the case here. Further, the phrase “such as” conveys that the cited examples are not all-inclusive or restrictive in nature, and thus does not serve to narrow the types of earth movement excluded under the policy. Moreover, the cited examples of earth movement are not only caused by natural phenomena. For example, landslides can occur naturally or be caused by man, as can the “sinking, rising or shifting” of the earth.

Home-Owners Ins. Co. v. Andriacchi, 903 N.W.2d 197, 203-4 (Mich. Ct. App. 2017). Here we had a party arguing that “such as” acted as a limitation, and the court responding with the observation that here are examples where “such as” did not limit the general proposition. But something is important here: the canons of construction are not iron clad rules, they are helps to understanding: “But as the trial court recognized, that doctrine (or, for that matter, any other canon of statutory interpretation) does not apply where the language of the contract is clear”.

In a criminal case which hinged upon scope of the word “matter” in a jury instruction concerned the computer hardware or computer disk which held an image or the image itself.

The statute indicates that at a minimum, a “matter” must be capable of containing a visual depiction. See 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B). Although both the disks and the GIF files could be viewed as “containing” the visual depiction, we conclude the “matter” is the physical medium that contains the visual depiction — in this case, the hard drive of Lacy’s computer and the disks found in his apartment. This interpretation is supported by two principles of statutory interpretation, noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis. “The first means that a word is understood by the associated words, the second, that a general term following more specific terms means that the things embraced in the general term are of the same kind as those denoted by the specific terms.” United States v. Baird, 85 F.3d 450, 453 (9th Cir. 1996) (citing 2A Norman J. Singer, Sutherland-Statutory Construction §§ 47.16, 47.17 (5th ed. 1992)). Although canons of construction do not mandate how a phrase is to be read, they “describe what we usually mean by a particular manner of expression.” Longview Fibre Co. v. Rasmussen, 980 F.2d 1307, 1313 (9th Cir. 1992). Here, the word “matter” appears at the end of the list “books, magazines, periodicals, films, [and] video tapes,” all of which are physical media capable of containing images. See Baird, 85 F.3d at 453 (looking to list’s “theme” to determine the meaning of a general term).

United States v. Lacy, 119 F.3d 742, 748 (9th Cir. 1997). There are two elements of this argument which are useful here: the purpose of a list of examples is to help understand a particular term. There is always a bit of ambiguity in language; at times a list of examples can help to diminish the ambiguity. The second observation is that no “rule” can absolutely answer the question; it only helps when it comes to interpretation.

So here with we have additional help. What do not have is a conclusive answer.

As noted above, Grudem makes much of the use of the phrase in other extra-biblical Greek texts. His examples demonstrate that it is possible to read the phrase as introducing one example, rather than a restrictive list. But that is all his argument proves.

I do not believe his argument as it stands is sufficient to make the case. He merely notes that the grammatical structure could permit a broad reading; not that it must permit a broad reading. The answer to that question does not hinge upon the use of the particular, but upon the structure of the argument.

To understand Paul’s argument correctly, we must do more than atomistically look at phrase and then compare that phrase to other not necessarily parallel uses. That is not how language works. It is true that the phrase at least sometimes has the force of  “includes but not limited to”. But does it here?

If one looks at verse 15 alone, it is difficult to see how one could construct such an argument for the use of phrase. The plural could just mean “every time an unbeliever leaves a marriage”: or every unbeliever who leaves: “15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.”

To construct an “includes but is not limited to” argument, would have to first define a general category in which abandonment (“separates”) is a common not though exhaustive example.  The trouble is the verse does not provide us with any general category. In fact, looked at alone, the preceding reference for “in such cases” is the sole instance of an unbelieving spouse abandoning the marriage.

However, if we back up to verse 13 (verse 14 is merely explains the principle underlying the rule) we can see the following argument running from verse 13 through 15:

13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.  …. 15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

General rule: if an unbeliever “consents to live with”. The clause “consents to live with” is uncertain. What does it mean to “consent to live with”?

Verse 15 introduces an example: “If the unbelieving partner separates”.  Thus, abandoning the marriage would not be the sole instance of not consenting to live with but merely an example of one who does not consent to live with.

The counter argument would be that “pleased to dwell with” has only one opposite term, abandonment. But again, looked at from this angle, Grudem’s argument based upon the Greek seems more plausible: Is the only opposite of “pleased to dwell with” abandonment? Certainly, abandonment is one opposite term, but it does not seem to be the only opposite term.

Conclusion: I think Grudem has presented the beginning of a good argument. His argument would actually be much stronger if it were anchored in the structure of Paul’s argument and not in a narrow reading of the phrase.

Moreover, anchoring the argument in the overall structure of the Paul’s argument has the additional advantage of not trying to contend that abuse is a form of abandonment, but rather that abuse is inconsistent with “pleased to dwell” (1 Cor. 7:13, KJV).

In addition, (I don’t have the cite available), I recall reading (in Baxter’s Christian Directory?) that to stay in a marriage where one’s life was in danger is a violation of the 6th Commandment, because we don’t have a right to let others kill us. I’m surprised that Baxter’s argument has not received more traction: I think it a good argument and far simpler to apply than looking for grounds for divorce. Now, Baxter’s argument may not sufficient to anchor a remarriage (I just don’t know), but it certainly provides for separation for safety.

Physical abuse is a sin and a crime. Congregations have serious obligations to protect the safety of their members, and to utilize both the process of church discipline and the legal protections available. Failure to do these things has resulted in many congregations sinning against those who were most in need of protection.

A final important caution: the introduction of an example, even if only one in a series of other possible example, does form a kind of restriction. Only things which are the opposite of “pleased to dwell with” and similar to “separates” are included within Paul’s list. If we read the scope of permissible divorce as broader than abandonment, we must have some limiting mechanism to distinguish those instances which are plainly outside of Paul’s injunction.

 

Some basic biblical principles on communication and relationships

19 Monday Aug 2019

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Some very general rules about relationships and communication: something which is far easier to understand than it is follow:

First, there is the matter of communication. It is to be clear and direct, not manipulative. That is what Jesus meant by “let your yes be yes”; and what is behind the command in Matthew and James against swearing:

The theme of greater righteousness continues, but Jesus’ examples move outside the Decalogue. As with his teaching on divorce, he again forbids what the Old Testament permitted. “Do not break your oath” alludes to Lev 19:12 and Num 30:2 and would more commonly be translated “do not swear falsely” or “do not perjure yourself.” To “swear” (v. 34) does not mean to curse or use bad words but to affirm the truth of a statement while calling on God to judge oneself if it is in fact untrue. Again qualifications are implicit. There are oaths which are consistent with God’s character and demands even in the New Testament (e.g., 2 Cor 1:18; Gal 1:20), but given the casuistry (an elaborate hierarchy of laws) of first-century Judaism on oaths (cf. the entire Mishnaic tractate Shebuoth), Jesus declares that it would be best to avoid them altogether. The situation described is one in which many Jews viewed swearing by “heaven,” “earth,” “Jerusalem,” or “one’s head” as less binding than swearing “by God.” Jesus stresses that each of these items belongs to God in an important way (cf. Isa 66:1) so that the conventional Jewish distinctions are spurious. Even one’s head, which might be thought to be uniquely under an individual’s control, has divinely predetermined features, such as hair coloring (temporary dyeing is not in view here!). Rather, Jesus’ followers should be people whose words are so characterized by integrity that others need no formal assurance of their truthfulness in order to trust them.

Craig Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 112.

Communication is to be timely, build up the other (edify), and gives grace. Eph. 4:29

We will be judged for every careless word. Matt. 12:36

Second, there is general matter of behavior. Put simply we must act in a way which makes it easy for the other person to act properly before God and man.

The marriage relationship as the most basic (Gen. 2) and intimate, contains some basic elements of relationship which will be illustrative of other relationships.

For example: If a wife respects her husband, it makes easy for him to love her. If a husband loves his wife, it makes it easy for him to respect her. The duty of each is independent of what their spouse does (your bad behavior doesn’t excuse my sin): but if I make it hard you to be holy, if I tempt you to sin by my behavior, I am responsible for that also. It is causing a little one to stumble.

Phil. 2:3 Do not act in a way to promote yourself at the expense of others. Instead begin with humility and consider the other person as more important than me.

These basic elements of love, respect, humility are intrinsic to all relationships: even relationship of authority:

Matthew 20:24–28(ESV)

24 And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. 25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.26 It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant,27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave,28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The difficulty: These commands are difficult to fulfill, because our emotions get in the way. It will often cross our own desires and fears to do this.

First, the other person does not “deserve” this conduct. Kirkegaard gave a good illustration here. If I loan someone money, I can require that they repay that money by giving it to someone other than me. God has a right to make any demand upon us. He has the right to require that we show love to others who do not deserve it.

Second, we may not get what we want from the relationship. Again, we need to understand in relationship to God. We are not supposed to think of other persons as resources. We do not have the right to expect other people to do anything for us or to reward us. We are to do what God requires and look to God for the reward.

Third, we are afraid we will be hurt. Again, our task is to do what God commands to leave the result to God.

On this point: it is the case that when both parties do what they are required to do in relationships, we both get what we desire. We want the other person to show us love and respect; we get that by first showing love and respect.

This is very, very hard to do. And the more we do the opposite, the harder it becomes.

 

 

 

 

Lecture on Depression Part 2

16 Friday Aug 2019

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(Again, notes not text of a lecture. There would be a lot of fill-in between discrete notes)

IV       Causation

There are three potential types of causation for depression: physiological, environment, or spiritual. Often these three elements will affect one-another.

A         Physical Causes of Depression

There are number of physical diseases and physiological conditions which will either cause symptoms of depression or which are associated with depression.

The Mayo Clinic webpage makes the following statements respecting physical causes of depression:

It’s not known exactly what causes depression. As with many mental disorders, a variety of factors may be involved, such as:

Biological differences. People with depression appear to have physical changes in their brains. The significance of these changes is still uncertain, but may eventually help pinpoint causes.

Brain chemistry. Neurotransmitters are naturally occurring brain chemicals that likely play a role in depression. Recent research indicates that changes in the function and effect of these neurotransmitters and how they interact with neurocircuits involved in maintaining mood stability may play a significant role in depression and its treatment.

Hormones. Changes in the body’s balance of hormones may be involved in causing or triggering depression. Hormone changes can result with pregnancy and during the weeks or months after delivery (postpartum) and from thyroid problems, menopause or a number of other conditions.

Inherited traits. Depression is more common in people whose blood relatives also have this condition. Researchers are trying to find genes that may be involved in causing depression.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20356007

Since there are actual physical diseases which can cause depression symptoms (remember depression is a description of symptoms, not the diagnosis of a singular disease), it is appropriate to send someone to a medical doctor for a check-up. For instance, heart attack, stroke and thyroid disease are associated with depression.

Brain chemistry:

This is what most people think of as a physiological cause of depression. There have been theories about the relative levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin as a cause of depression. But there is no possible way to measure the relative levels of neurotransmitters, particularly between the salient neurons relative to a state of depression.

This “chemical imbalance” theory of depression has largely been set aside. As was explained in a Harvard Medical School article:

It’s often said that depression results from a chemical imbalance, but that figure of speech doesn’t capture how complex the disease is. Research suggests that depression doesn’t spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. Rather, there are many possible causes of depression, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, stressful life events, medications, and medical problems. It’s believed that several of these forces interact to bring on depression.

To be sure, chemicals are involved in this process, but it is not a simple matter of one chemical being too low and another too high. Rather, many chemicals are involved, working both inside and outside nerve cells. There are millions, even billions, of chemical reactions that make up the dynamic system that is responsible for your mood, perceptions, and how you experience life.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-depression

The article goes on to make a case for physiological elements of depression, but the point is that a simplistic “chemical imbalance” theory is simply inadequate.

B         Environmental causes

Depression can be a response to something in one’s environment. And again remember that depression can refer to sadness, fearfulness even anxiety of a sort.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 (ESV)

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

Here we have Paul explaining that death can lead to sorrow and that if not rightly understood can lead to a sorrow without hope.

One of the best tests for determining whether a depression is the result of a environmental cause is to ask when the depression began (learned of this test from Charles Hodges, M.D., excellent book, Good Mood Bad Mood). If you receive a response that the depression began shortly after my dad died, you have good evidence of a response to environment

C         Spiritual Depression

 

There are three types of spiritual depression

1          Depression for unrepentant sin

Ps. 32

2          Depression as a response to a corrective of God

2 Cor. 1:8-10 & 12.

3          Depression

Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes of spiritual depression which comes out a defective theology and thus a misunderstanding of the Christian life.

V         Responses to Depression

The response will be dependent upon the cause.

A         Physical disease

Where there is a diagnosable disease with a discrete treatment, then physical treatment is appropriate.

Aside on antidepressant medication

Antidepressant medication is typically medication meant to affect the “chemical imbalance” in the brain. In private conversation with a well-respected psychiatrist at a major university (he has since deceased), said over dinner, “Sometimes antidepressants work, sometimes they don’t; and we don’t know why.”

There many issues when it comes to antidepressants.

First, if the depression is not physical, then medication is inappropriate.

Second, feeling bad may be unpleasant but it is not necessarily bad. As noted in the citations above for spiritual depression, bad feelings may be means of correction or training.

Consider this passage from Paul:

Romans 5:1–5 (ESV)

5 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

At the end of verse two, Paul identifies the “hope of the glory of God” as the basis upon which we rejoice. The question then arises, who then do I increase hope? He goes on to explain that painful circumstances which could overwhelm us (as explained in 2 Corinthians) are used as a means to increase hope, in the end.

Third, antidepressants are subject to a substantial placebo effect. For mild to moderate depression, the placebo effect of antidepressant medication appears to be the principle benefit, “The combined effect of these and other biases suggests that the benefits of antidepressant drugs for mild to moderate depression (over and above the placebo effect) may not be clinically significant.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/doctor-you/201907/its-time-depression-make-friends-the-placebo

For those who suffer “severe” depression, the medical indications are different.

Fourth, antidepressants have serious side effects. For instance:

In the latest and most comprehensive analysis, published last week in BMJ (the British Medical Journal),a group of researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen showed that pharmaceutical companies were not presenting the full extent of serious harm in clinical study reports, which are detailed documents sent to regulatory authorities such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) when applying for approval of a new drug. The researchers examined documents from 70 double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of two common types of antidepressants—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI)—and found that the occurrence of suicidal thoughts and aggressive behavior doubled in children and adolescents who used these medications.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hidden-harm-of-antidepressants/

Aside on electroshock

Electroshock therapy has returned as a therapy in cases of severe depression. In a recent conversation, a psychiatrist explained to me that the current theory is that the electroshock causes a “hard reset” of the neurotransmitters and shows some alleviation of depression symptoms following the treatment.  When I see her next, I’ll ask about her current opinion of the treatment.

B         Spiritual depression

Obviously, exploration of unrepentant sin is appropriate and repentance (Ps. 32 & 51) may be the necessary response to depression. A warning here: be careful of insisting on this point, because it could easily cause despondency in a troubled conscience.

Administration of Hope

Ps. 77 Gives a good example of how to perform this work:

Psalm 77:1–10 (ESV)

The first four verses describe a case of serious depression

1           I cry aloud to God,

aloud to God, and he will hear me.

2           In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;

in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;

my soul refuses to be comforted.

3           When I remember God, I moan;

when I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah

4           You hold my eyelids open;

I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

At this point, the Psalmist administers a series of questions which force him to realize that he has reason to hope:

5           I consider the days of old,

the years long ago.

6           I said, “Let me remember my song in the night;

let me meditate in my heart.”

Then my spirit made a diligent search:

7           “Will the Lord spurn forever,

and never again be favorable?

8           Has his steadfast love forever ceased?

Are his promises at an end for all time?

9           Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” Selah

10         Then I said, “I will appeal to this,

to the years of the right hand of the Most High.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, taking instruction from Psalm 42-43 explained that our trouble lies that we listen to ourselves rather than preach to ourselves. We allow our feelings to cloud and our judgment and we make our emotional state the truth of our condition. He explains that we must turn this on its head must take ourselves by the hand and tell ourselves the truth:

Psalm 42:5 (ESV)

5           Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my salvation

 

C         Environmental Depression

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 (ESV)

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

 

Understanding the matter correctly as a means of remedying the sorrow of loss.

Romans 8:28–29 (ESV)

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Note that “good” is defined in v. 29 as being conformed to the image of Christ (not in getting a new car or a better job or some other possible “good”).

Lecture on Depression, Part 1

15 Thursday Aug 2019

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(I was out of the country on a counseling conference in Chile.  Here is the first half of my notes from a lecture on depression)

Notes on Depression Lecture

 

Begin with Psalm 88

Psalm 88 (ESV)

I Cry Out Day and Night Before You
88 A SONG. A PSALM OF THE SONS OF KORAH. TO THE CHOIRMASTER: ACCORDING TO MAHALATH LEANNOTH. A MASKIL OF HEMAN THE EZRAHITE.

1  O LORD, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you.
2  Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!

3  For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4  I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5  like one set loose among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
6  You have put me in the depths of the pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7  Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah

8  You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9  my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call upon you, O LORD;
I spread out my hands to you.
10  Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11  Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12  Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

13  But I, O LORD, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14  O LORD, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15  Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16  Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17  They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
18  You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.dep

 

I          “Depression” is an Ambiguous Term.

 

A         It is ambiguous in terms of what we mean by depression.

 

1          It can refer to merely feeling down.

 

2          It can refer to extraordinary pain and inability to act

 

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.”

― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

 

3          Therefore, when someone uses the word “depressed”, it is necessary to fully define in fact of that particular person what is meant.

 

B         It is ambiguous in terms of causation

 

1          There are multiple physical conditions which are associated with depression

 

2          There are multiple environmental conditions which are associated with depression

 

3          The physiological and environmental aspects will often work in conjunction to create the condition

 

II        It is suffering

 

It suffering which afflicts us physically and emotionally. The most crushing things about depression is the loss of hope

 

“That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end.”

― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

 

“It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.”

― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

 

 

II        It is not uncommon

 

A         The “common cold” of psychiatry.

 

In 2009–2012, 7.6% of Americans aged 12 and over had depression (moderate or severe depressive symptoms in the past 2 weeks).

 

Figure 1. Percentage of persons aged 12 and over with depression, by age and sex: United States, 2009–2012

 

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db172.htm

 

 

B         It is common even among Christians.

 

1  Martin Luther suffered from serious physical problems and repeated depression

 

In a letter to his friend Melanchthon on August 2, 1527, Luther wrote:

 

I spent more than a week in death and hell. My entire body was in pain, and I still tremble. Completely abandoned by Christ, I labored under the vacillations and storms of desperation and blasphemy against God. But through the prayers of the saints (his friends), God began to have mercy on me and pulled my soul from the inferno below.

 

2          Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, Vol. 1, Lecture 11, The Minister’s Fainting Fits:

 

AS it is recorded that David, in the heat of battle, waxed faint, so may it be written of all the servants of the Lord. Fits of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy. There may be here and there men of iron, to whom wear and tear work no perceptible detriment, but surely the rust frets even these; and as for ordinary men, the Lord knows, and makes them to know, that they are but dust. Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in the light.

 

It is not necessary by quotations from the biographies of eminent ministers to prove that seasons of fearful prostration have fallen to the lot of most, if not all of them. The life of Luther might suffice to give a thousand instances, and he was by no means of the weaker sort. His great spirit was often in the seventh heaven of exultation, and as frequently on the borders of despair. His very death bed was not free from tempests, and he sobbed himself into his last sleep like a great wearied child. Instead of multiplying cases, let us dwell upon the reasons why these things are permitted; why it is that the children of light sometimes walk in the thick darkness; why the heralds of the daybreak find themselves at times in tenfold night.

 

3          It is reported in the Psalms

See, Psalms 42-43

4          It has been written about extensively by Christians

 

 

 

 

A Biblical Counseling Ministry in a Local Church: A Core Function

16 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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(These are notes for the final session of a Biblical Counseling conference which will be held in August in Chile. The previous posts for this conference are found here and here).

At this point, I you want to think more broadly about a biblical counseling ministry. Up until this point, we have been discussing biblical counseling as a response to a crisis. The person who comes to biblical counseling is someone who is suffering a significant trouble; whether a significant circumstance like a difficult marriage; or a significant sin which has led to trouble. This leads us to think that biblical counseling is unique in life of the church; it is somehow detached from the normal functioning of the church.

All that we have done so far and all that we will do next week may seem to support that idea: here you are going through serious sustained training on some very difficult subjects. I just spent a session telling you to be very careful whom you choose to be a counselor in your church.

At this point I want to adjust your thinking slightly. Biblical counseling is specialized, and it is part of the core function of a church.

Matthew 28 records the resurrection of our Lord. That chapter ends with the Lord’s instruction to the Church:

Matthew 28:18–20 (NASB95)

18        And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

19        “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

20        teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

 

The main verb in that sentence is to “make disciples”. We will do this as we go out into the world. We will baptize them and teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded. That is the job of the church. We are given no other commission, beyond making disciples of Christ.

So let’s turn the question around: We need to ask if Biblical Counseling fits into that job description for the Church. Is Biblical Counseling the work of making disciples? If the answer is “no”, then it has no place in the church. Yes, it might be a good work, like caring for the poor or bringing blankets to the cold.

On the other hand, if biblical counseling is included within the scope of making disciples, then it is a necessary function of the church.

So let’s consider what it means to give Biblical counsel. It simply means to tell someone what the Bible says about their circumstance. It means to teach someone what Christ has said. Moreover, as Jay Adams noted it includes giving instruction. Biblical Counseling is precisely the act of teaching one to obey all that Christ has said.

When the street evangelist speaks to someone on the corner about Christ tells them of sin and repentance, they are giving counsel from the Bible. When parent tells a child the importance of not lying or working diligently as onto the Lord, the parent is giving biblical counsel. When a pastor opens the Bible on Sunday morning and explains the text and applies the text, the pastor is giving biblical counsel.

In an essay in from Scripture and Counseling, Kevin DeYoung and Pat Quinn write:

The ministry of the preacher and the ministry of the counselor are not different kinds of ministry but rather the same ministry given in different settings.

When a pastor sits with dear saint who is on her death bed, and the pastor sets her gaze upon Christ; the pastor is giving biblical counsel.

What you need to understand is that front to back, beginning to end, the duty of the Church is to give biblical counsel. That counsel starts with evangelism, leads them to baptism, to the Lord’s Supper, to knowledge of how to renounce ungodliness, to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present evil age and to live in earnest expectation of the Lord’s return. That is all biblical counsel.

 Baptizing Them.

We fit the counsel to the person and the circumstance. The street evangelist does not debate the details of difficult doctrine involving last things or the order of the decrees of God. His message is fit to the circumstance: sin and repentance. We do not teach four-year-olds like we teach college students.

Some questions are very difficult. We refer tricky theology questions to the pastor. We send young mothers to older mothers to learn from their experience.

Already in all of your churches, you have made some divisions in the way in which discipleship instruction is taking place.

When we bring in biblical counseling to the congregation, we are doing nothing new. Rather, we are doing what we should always be doing: teaching people to observe all that Christ has commanded.

We are merely saying that we have too often restricted Christ’s counsel. We have said that Scripture has something to say about repentance, but nothing to say about depression, anxiety, sorrow, loneliness, shame, conflict, laborious work, fear. We are saying that Scripture has nothing to say about all the troubles which came into the world with sin; well, nothing other than you need to leave the world.

When we restrict the scope of the Scripture’s counsel, the people in our congregation are going to get counsel. However, they are going to get it from someone other than the Lord.

I want you to imagine that your congregation has many well-trained counselors who know how to speak of difficult marriage problems. They can speak with sympathy and wisdom from the Scripture and give hope to trouble marriages.

I want you to imagine that your church once a week gives free marriage counseling to people in your area: unbelievers who are desperate for something that will work. Your counselor sits down with this frightened desperate couple and explains that their troubles with communication and selfishness and anger all have a cause: human beings don’t work correctly because we are estranged from the source of the one who speaks with perfect clarity, the God who loves and gives from an endless fountain of grace, that the love of the perfect God drives out fear and calls us in as children.

I want you to imagine that you have unbelievers who come to your church to hear the hope of the Gospel because the pain of sin has become too great to bear. When unbelievers hear sin, they often think you simply don’t like them. But when their pain is great and you explain that sin is not your dislike of them, but rather the cause of their sorrow; that sin is irrationality that ruins human life; and that there is an answer to that sin: an answer which will relieve of us the guilt and power of sin and that we can learn to live differently; when you can say that in a way that the one who is now lost can understand: you are putting the Gospel to work.

As Dr. Baker said, If unbeliever think you can help them with their marriage, they will line up to hear the Gospel.

And so these people who had “without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12), are brought into the Church. They are baptized. They entered into membership; and now comes the task of teaching them to observe all that Christ as commanded.

Teach them to Observe

Imagine a brand-new Christian who comes to your church. While this person is in true faith, they are far from mature. They need to be taught and admonished so that they may be presented complete in Christ. Col. 1:28. Certainly the normal work of the Church, preaching, teaching, singing, praying, receiving the Lord’s Supper in the assembly of believers will have a real and profound affect of people.

But two hours on Sunday when weighed against the entire pressure of the world for all of the other hours of the day and week will hamper our growth. Moreover, it is a truncated understanding of Christianity. There is an entire aspect of the life of a Christian which goes beyond Sunday.

Please do not hear that I am in any manner making light of Sunday worship: it is the apex of our week. But if try to box our Christian life into just that time, we fail to honor the life of the Church:

Colossians 3:16 (NASB95)

  16      Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms andhymns andspiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

The work of teaching and admonishing is a work of everyone to everyone. The Christian life is public worship but is also life together. In Acts 2 it describes the life of the very earliest Church:

 

Acts 2:42–47 (NASB95)

            42        They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

            43       Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

            44        And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common;

            45        and they beganselling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.

            46        Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart,

            47        praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Without going through the elements of that passage, you can see that there was substantial life together.

Now let’s think again about discipleship: to be discipled is to be trained to a manner of life. Everything in your life and everyone with whom you interact is busy discipling you. You are discipling others.

There is a meaning which takes place when you try to limit one’s Christian life to merely Sunday morning. That Sunday-only Christianity means something different than a Christianity which entails one’s entire life.

One of the reasons that we have so much “crisis counseling” in the Christian church is due to the fact that we are not doing a better job discipling the people within the church.

Here is an example: When a couple comes in for marriage counseling, you will work them through what the Scripture teaches about marriage. A faithful pastor in the pulpit who is working through the Scripture will preach through the Gospel of Mark and have maybe a sermon or two which even touches on marriage.

The failure there is not because the pastor has failed, it is because the congregation has failed:

Titus 2:3–5 (NASB95)

            3          Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good,

            4          so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,

            5          to besensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

Did you hear that? The Holy Spirit has delegated to the older women in the congregation the task of teaching the younger women the work of being a wife and mother. How many marriages would be in better shape today in our churches if the older women were continuously teaching the younger women godliness in marriage and motherhood?

But instead, we wait until there is a crisis and the wreck of a marriage shows up in need of help.

Imagine a young husband who comes to you because he has hurt his wife by not loving and caring for her? What if there had been a man in your congregation who had been weekly meeting with this man, asking him questions about his marriage (and other things)? What if the questions had revealed two years ago that the marriage was suffering? How much easier would it have been to help this family two years ago, when the problems were less, when the pain was less, when the bad habits were not so firmly put into place?

What I want you to see is that giving counsel from the Bible is something which needs to be built into the fabric of our church, so that the work of discipleship is done.

Where then is the pastor in this process?

Ephesians 4:11–16 (NASB95)

  11      And He gave some asapostles, and some asprophets, and some asevangelists, and some aspastors and teachers,

  12      for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;

  13      until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

  14      As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;

  15      but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspectsinto Him who is the head, evenChrist,

  16      from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Look at verse 12: the head teachers in the church have the job of equipping others for ministry. Those who have the most knowledge are to pass on that knowledge to others in the church.

Those others, under the direction of their pastors, are busy equipping still others: the work of the ministry is spread out through the church.

There are people in the church who are masters at caring physically for others. Those people must know how needs help and how to give that help. Some are especially gifted at hospitality. Others at teaching. Some at preaching. Some are more proficient at evangelism. Some people are quite good at answering questions. There are mothers and fathers to help give wisdom. There are employers who can help employees learn how to work well; and employees who can help employers learn to be not abusive or unfairly demanding.

And now I want to return to our question of training counselors. Not every person in the congregation needs to be a preacher; not every person needs to be fully trained to handle depression and severe anxiety. Some people need to know how to ask questions, give encouragement, and provide basic instruction about the daily life of a Christian.

Think of the entire church as all having a role in the work of discipleship. You can think of the training you give in giving biblical counsel as something which moves from the most general and basic to the most particular and difficult.

If you have small groups, you train the small group leaders in a level of counseling so that they can give accurate instruction on daily life, know how ask questions and also know when they come across a marriage which needs substantial help.

When I oversaw a counseling ministry in a church, I learned that there were people who were especially fit for various tasks. Some people needed a great deal of intense structure. Some young men needed very direct rebuke and unquestioning follow-through. Others were discouraged and needed help and encouragement and support. I had people in the congregation who were fit for all sorts of tasks.

Think of your congregation as an army and the battle being, the World, the Flesh and Devil. The Holy Spirit has given you many, many weapons in this fight: all of the people in your congregation. And now think of how few weapons we use. Do we really deploy our congregations to serve in building up the body of Christ?

In most congregations, very few people do most of the work. And since the needs are great, we do not always use people to the best of their gifts. Imagine you have a tremendous evangelist whom you are using to keep the church clean. There is nothing wrong with cleaning the church; it must be done. The way we use the misuse the people in our church is sort of like using a racecar to pull a plow across a field. It might work, but it is not the best way to use the racecar.

Counseling training is more than just training a counselor who looks exactly like you. Your congregation has been called to be a counseling center: a place where people are taught to observe all that Christ has commanded.

And when the entire congregation is busy in this work, it frees up those who have been fully trained to be able to help unbelievers and believers at other churches. You create capacity for everyone to work at their full potential.

This model also takes enormous burdens off of the church leaders so that they can do their work. Too often we expect the pastors to do all of the visiting and preaching and counseling and caring and evangelism. When we do this, we crush our pastors under enormous burdens.

Now this is only introducing you to this idea: it is not a full-fledged plan with all of the details.

 

[ask for questions]

 

A Biblical Counseling Ministry in a Local Church: Whom to Train

09 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Ministry, Uncategorized

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(More notes for an upcoming conference on establishing a biblical counseling ministry in a local church; all notes subject to revision):

Whom Should you Choose to Train

The Church is an organic unity from the time of the Apostles until the present. We are here today because others passed along the faith. We learn how to minister from those who have ministered. We have learned preaching from those who preached.

Counseling is learned from those who counsel.  This is the nature of discipleship: teaching someone else what we know.

As you know, counseling is something which cannot be learned in an afternoon. Not only must one be taught formally – such as we are doing here – one must also learn from experience. It is one thing to know biblical principles, such as all things work together for good. Rom. 8:28 It is quite another to realize that the good described in 8:29 is to be conformed to the image of Christ, who was also known as a “man of sorrow and acquainted with grief”. Is. 53:3. It takes born of experience to know when to “Alegrense on los que estan alegres, lloren con los que lloran” Rom. 12:15. It takes experience to know when to rebuke, encourage, support. 1 Thes. 5:14.

The only way such wisdom can be gained is from experience. And such experience can only be gained in the counseling relationship.

This means that as soon as you begin to counsel is good to have other whom you are beginning to train. The sooner someone is learning to counsel; the sooner they will be able to counsel without your help.

Before I go on, I know at one of you is thinking: I don’t know enough to be able to train anyone else to counsel.

Let’s think about that: First, you at least know more than the one who is being trained. Second, there is no better way to come to understand a topic than to teach it.  The act of restating what you have learned will cause you to learn that subject better than you could have ever known it on your own.

Third, it is true you that very few if any of you have had thousands of hours of pastoral counseling experience. That can only come with time. Another person in the counseling room will be a benefit to you and to the fellow Christian you are trying to help.

You’ll make mistakes: you will misunderstand statements, you will speak when you should have been silent, and will be silent when you needed to speak. You will miss important details, and will misapply a biblical principle. You will make mistakes; that is unavoidable. Another person in the counseling room will be able to see situations and mistakes which you will miss.

Another person counseling with you will help you.  None of us will ever come to the point that we will never error. We can always do better.

Therefore, bringing someone else into training with you to counsel should begin as soon as possible. The question is not when should you start training someone else: the question is who should you train, and how much training do they need?

Again: there are two separate questions: Whom should you train? How much training does this other person need?  There are actually levels of counseling and levels of training. You here are aiming for the highest levels of training: the work which is done by pastors and elders, and the most highly trained women in the church. Not everyone in your congregation needs to know how to respond to threats of suicide or how to show care to someone who has suffered serious abuse.  We will talk about the level of training question in the end.

For right now, our question is Whom should you train?

Greg Cook and Jack Delk (Launching a Biblical Counseling Ministry) explain

A biblical counseling ministry is not a “y’all come” [that is an American expression which means all of you come over, it is a very friendly and informal phrase] ministry. There should be a careful selection and screening process for bringing in potential new counselors…A lay-led counseling ministry tends to attract people with mixed motive and agendas as well as wolves in sheep’s clothing (1 Tim. 5:3; Thess. 3:11). [220]

It is actually easier to train the right, willing person than it is to select the right person.

 

Someone who is willing:

In 1 Timothy 3:1, Paul gives qualifications for an overseer. He begins with the statement that if someone desires the work of an overseer. The translators render this verb in various ways, but the word at heart means to strive for something, to want something.

And while a counselor is not necessarily an elder or overseer, the principle remains the same. It is a great deal of work to become and be a counselor. There are many hours of training and then experience, and then training. And all of the work is for purpose of doing work. Hard, often painful, work.

If someone does not desire the work, they will never complete the work.

 

But not everyone one who is willing

And here is where the difficult part comes: selectivity. You must choose one person and not another. You must only choose people are who are willing, who desire the work. But you must not choose everyone who desires the work. And unfortunately, counseling seems to attract many people who should not be in the position as counselor.

Often these are people who think they personally have a great deal of wisdom. They know very much how other people should order their lives. They like telling people what to do, and they are quite certain of their rightness in doing so. Often, these people do not think they need training.

I know that I just said not to choose someone unless they are willing; but I also say, there is a kind of eagerness which is dangerous. You could say, these are people are too willing.

 

What to look for

The New Testament gives us various lists of what to look for those who lead in a church. Counseling is a kind of leadership position: I am not saying that a counselor is the pastor or an overseer. But by providing very direct teaching to people in the congregation, you are engaged in an aspect of spiritual leadership.

The qualities we look for in a church leader should be present in the counselor.

 

  1. Don’t Choose Someone Abuses Leadership

Throughout the New Testament, there are various sections of instruction given on the quality of Church leaders. But there is only quality which is repeated by Jesus, Paul, Peter and John: do not use a position of leadership to control or abuse others. The image is of a shepherd leading and protecting a flock of sheep, not a butcher driving cattle into a slaughterhouse.

I know a man who grew up in Greece as a shepherd. His father and uncle were shepherds. He said, I like what I could get from the sheep. But by father and his brother loved the sheep. Many people get into leadership because of what they want to get from the sheep.

Jesus in Mark 11:41-45 says that the leader must be the servant of all. Don’t be like the “rulers of the Gentiles” who “lord it over” others. Paul says an overseer must not be pugnacious, a fighter; but gentle and peaceable. 1 Tim. 3:3. In Titus 1:7, Paul says the overseer must not be “self-willed or quick tempered.” In 1 Peter 5:3 Peter says an elder must not  lord it over the flock. In 3 John, John condemns Diotrephes who “loves to be first” and who will not take instruction from John.

A counseling relationship has great potential for abuse. A counselor is giving instructions to another person in a position of trust; often a person who is quite vulnerable. The potential for abuse is high.

If you permit someone who has a tendency to lord it over others to become a counselor, you endanger your congregation.

  1. Above Reproach

The counseling relationship is difficult and dangerous for the counselor. Counselee’s can make accusations. People outside the relationship can gossip.

Let us say you have someone who gained a reputation for being sexually immoral; say a man who has committed adultery in the past. This man may have repented and may have come to a very different life. If you put this man into a counseling role, you are exposing both him and the people he counsels to accusation – even if it is false accusation.

Am I saying that no one can every outlive their past? No. But it will take wisdom here.

If the reputation is a current reputation, then such a person should not become a counselor.

  1. Prudent

There needs to wisdom in the counselor on how to conduct himself. He will need prudence in the way he deals with others whom he counsels, but also in his own life. Paul says an overseer must be able to manage his own household well. If a man lacks all practical wisdom in conducting his own life, he should not be seeking to give other people sustained counsel.

  1. Careful with the tongue

The Bible says a great deal about the tongue. There is much which should be said, but we will have to settle for 1 Peter 2:1, “Therefore, putting away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.”

One must not only be careful in how we speak to some-one, we must be careful how we speak about some-one.

Someone will come to the counselor and will divulge very private information about their own heart, about their home, their family. You will learn details about others finances about their sexual relations and their children. This is very dangerous information.

I have seen people publicly attack others by using private information gained because they were in a position of pastoral confidence. I have seen pastors gossip to their wives about private information.

I know others who were attacked publicly and did not respond by disclosing private information gained because they were a pastor. I have seen people lie about what they supposedly knew so as to hurt others.

Our Lord was falsely accused. Paul was slandered. Revelation says all liars will be in the lake of fire. Rev. 21:8. The famous missionary St. Patrick of Ireland wrote his confession because someone had betrayed a very private confidence in an effort to discredit Patrick’s work.

In the life of the church, there is very little which is more destructive than gossip and slander. Counseling makes such sins especially possible.

Here is something from the great English Preacher Charles Spurgeon:

There are some brethren with whom it is ill for us to associate, lest they do us hurt, and it is ill for them that we associate with them, lest we seem to assist them in their evil deeds. Especially is this so in the case of brethren of the class that he is about to describe—mischief makers, troublers, people that can always tell you the gossip of a congregation, that can tear a neighbour’s character to pieces, that are able to perceive spots on the sun; people who delight in parading the faults of God’s own children, and are never so happy as when they are making others unhappy by what they have to retail. These are the kind of people to whom you should give a wide berth.

 

  1. H. Spurgeon, “A Challenge and War-Charge,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 51 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1905), 167. If you should stay away from gossips generally, it applies triple for counselors.

You must never trust a gossip to be a counselor. There is perhaps nothing as dangerous and disqualifying for a counselor as having a gossiping, slanderous tongue. If you catch a counselor gossiping, fire them on the spot.

  1. Able to Teach

Paul gives this as a qualification for an overseer in both Timothy and Titus. This is a critical characteristic. If you cannot teach, you cannot counsel. Maybe you are not a good public speaker; that is a particular skill. But you must be able to understand and then explain the Scripture clearly and usefully when you are counseling. If you cannot teach, you cannot counsel. Dr. John Street calls biblical counseling expositional counseling. A counselor exposits the Scripture like a good preacher exposits the scripture. You open the Bible and make it plain and powerful.

It is not a moral fault or a character fault to be unable to teach. But it is a fatal fault in a counselor to be unable to teach. In the end, counseling is teaching. If you can’t teach, you can’t teach. That merely means that God has work for you elsewhere in the church.

Ron Allchin and Tim Allchin in their essay, Equipping Biblical Counselors for Your Church give the follow lists of whom you should choose and whom you should avoid when it comes to counselors. They use the text of Colossians 3:12-17 as the basis for their list:

  1. A potential counselor sees people as a priority.
  2. Experiences peace with God through the Gospel
  3. Have a passion for the Word of God.
  4. They demonstrate practical wisdom
  5. They live out a passionate praise for God.

On this last people I just want to say that one way to understand sin is as a worship defect (I owe this observation to Dr. Ernie Baker). That means that the counselor is a worship leader, of sorts.

The Allchins then give a list of whom to avoid. Those who

  1. Lack a proper balance of grace and truth. They are neither legalists nor do they indulge sin.
  2. Have more zeal than knowledge. These people will find you. They may really want to help; but if their zeal exceeds their knowledge, they will do far more harm than good.
  3. They manipulate and control others.
  4. They are people pleasers. They change to make other people like them.
  5. They rely on their personal experience, their common sense rather than the Word of God.

Conclusion

At this point, you may think: Okay, no one is qualified in my congregation. I’m probably not qualified.

Paul writes to the Corinthian church:

2 Corinthians 3:5 (NASB95)

5          Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as comingfrom ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,

That realization that I am not able to do this work is perfect. God uses imperfect instruments, us, to do his work. The sufficiency of our counsel is not in us, but in the Word of God. If we had confidence in ourselves, then would not leave room for God’s work.

Forming a Biblical Counseling Ministry in a Local Church

30 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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(I have been preparing to give a conference on how to start a biblical counseling ministry at a local church. So I’ve spent the last week writing this. Here is the first draft of one section of that conference):

DEVELOPING A BIBLICAL COUNSELING MINISTRY

Our plan will begin with you as an individual member of your local church. And since there is only one of you, it makes little sense to start our instruction with the ways to organize a fifty-member team at a 10,000-person church (although I know someone who is doing that now). We will move from you as an individual and go to describe a counseling ministry which will involve many members of your local church, no matter the size of your congregation. A ministry which will permit you to not only respond to crisis, but develop Christians who are deeply involved in one-another’s life. I want to give you a vision of what a church can be; and what a church should be. I am not going to ask you to change your doctrines, or reorganize your leadership structure. No one is going to take authority away from the pastors in your congregation.
I want you to understand how to utilize the resources you already have inside your own churches.
Imagine you had some money in your pocket. But also imagine that you have a box of rocks at home; rocks you picked up here and there when you were out hiking. You’re having a hard time paying your bills; you are careful with you money; you work hard at your job; but money is always tight. And then one day a friend comes by and you show him your rocks. Your friend, you has different training from you explains that it is not a box of rocks, but it is a box of gem stones: you have sapphires and rubies. You didn’t realize it, but you had great wealth.
That is how I hope to bring you to understand your congregation.

Two Objections

When the question of counseling does come-up, there are two basic deflections or objections to the proposal of a counseling ministry. First, there is the argument of psychological professionalism. Second, there is an argument of preaching.
Psychological professionalism: This argument says that counseling issues, beyond simple issues of be nice to your wife, or “spiritual” issues, about the doctrine of repentance, are simply not properly matters for the Church. I will not deny that there is a great deal of bad and even harmful counsel that comes from well-meaning Christians. Training is a must. Moreover, the question of “psychology” and psychiatry involve a great many things. A full answer to this objection lies well-beyond the scope of this seminar.
The training over the next week will respond to much of this criticism. However, there are some additional issues concerning psychology which I have dealt with a pair of journal articles which we have made available to you.
Preaching: A second argument is that the only counseling which a church needs comes from the pulpit. Some pastors think a counseling ministry is either unnecessary or an attack upon their pulpit. A good example of this is found in J.C. Ryle’s book on Christian leaders in 18th Century England. There was a fine and useful preacher name William Romaine. Of this man, Ryle writes, ““It was not uncommon for him to tell those who came to him with Cases of conscience [a counseling issue] and questions of spiritual concern, that he said all he had to say in the pulpit.” And while Romaine may have eventually said something which answered to that particular person’s concern, I can’t say that Romaine’s decision was correct.
The Apostle Paul in Acts 20 explains that he taught publicly and from house to house. Paul wrote letters of personal encouragement to Philemon, Titus, and Timothy. Paul answered specific questions of the Corinthian church. James 5:16 instructs us to confess our sins to one-another. Colossians 3:16 says that we are to admonish one-another.
It has been the considered counsel of the best pastors to engage in private counsel. Richard Baxter in his work on pastoral ministry, The Reformed Pastor writes:

“We must be ready to give advice to inquirers, who come to us with cases of conscience; especially the great case which the Jews put to Peter, and the gaoler to Paul and Silas, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ A minister is not to be merely a public preacher, but to be known as a counsellor for their souls, as the physician is for their bodies, and the lawyer for their estates: so that each man who is in doubts and straits, may bring his case to him for resolution; as Nicodemus came to Christ, and as it was usual with the people of old to go to the priest, ‘whose lips must keep knowledge, and at whose mouth they must ask the law, because he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.’ But as the people have become unacquainted with this office of the ministry, and with their own duty and necessity in this respect, it belongeth to us to acquaint them with it, and publicly to press them to come to us for advice about the great concerns of their souls. We must not only be willing to take the trouble, but should draw[…]”

I could say far more, but at this point leave it with: private counsel is a necessary element of ministry. There is an element of ministry which cannot be met by means of public preaching –as essential as preaching is. But private and public go together. I have learned that the better the preaching, the greater the need for private counsel. The best preaching cuts the heart, stirs the conscience, creates desire for a knowledge of God and a greater knowledge of God. The Word of God rightly preached stirs up the questions which need answer.
1. Know the Bible
Some counseling will be merely Bible Questions, such as why does God permit Satan to trouble Job. And at this point I give you my first instruction: Know the Bible. I will have a list of instructions below, but this is a point which cannot be overstated: Know the Bible.
The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to create and form the People of God. If you want a brief defense of Biblical Counseling, here it is:
Galatians 5:22–23 (NASB95)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

And the argument is as follows: I want you to imagine any counseling trouble. I then want you to image the outflowing of the Fruit of the Spirit in one’s life. What trouble is left?

2. Work With Church Leadership
You will need the cooperation and support of the church leadership. If you are lay member of the congregation do not start a ministry within your church without the knowledge and support of the leadership. You need gain the understanding and confidence of the leadership. First, the counseling ministry exists to help with the overall work of the church. Second, we do not want anyone to think of biblical counseling as a scourge upon the Church. It must be a blessing and support.
But the support must be more than a shrug and go ahead and see what you can do. You will want the full-hearted support of the leadership when trouble arises. And, unfortunately, counseling ministry attract trouble.
Counseling concerns the people in the congregation who are suffering the greatest degree of trouble, of sorrow, and need. When you are dealing with people under enormous stress, with terrible problems, often with financial and legal complications, it is very difficult to avoid trouble. The counselees may respond, with threats, slander, legal action, personal destruction.
If there is any dissension between you and the leadership, you will be hurt when trouble comes. The damage you suffer can be far worse than you can imagine. The congregation may be torn apart. But if the leadership understands your work and has confidence in you and supports the work, you and the congregation can withstand the attacks.
I do know that other counselors are of the opinion that you can begin as long as you have the support of just the pastor (or the senior most pastor) and that you can bring the others along as they see you ministry.
There is no chapter and verse which answers this question: there is only wisdom. If you have authority to go ahead, but there is a conflict in the leadership, be prepared: you very well may find yourself in a very difficult place. I can tell you that conflict within the church can be sinful and nasty in ways that exceed conflict in secular situations. A conflict within a congregation can become like a conflict within a family.
This is not the place to go on about Church conflict. That is a topic to itself. But understand that anything which you can to avoid conflict must be considered.

3. Remain under the authority of your local church
Make sure your counseling ministry is under the authority of your local church. You are not stand-alone independent resources, like a paid clinical psychologist. If counseling is an integral ministry of the Church, then it must operate under the authority of the church.
Counseling, when do correctly, is expositional: it is like a sermon. You take the Word of God, explain the Word of God, apply the Word of God. It is similar to a sermon, only the audience size is smaller. You are seeking to create thought, affections and conduct which flows from and aligns with the Word of God. You are seeking to create Bible-shaped people.
Since this is a teaching ministry, you are delivering doctrine. A teaching ministry must be conducted in accordance with the teaching positions of your church. We have people from different backgrounds here: there are Presbyterians and Baptists here. While we will agree on the matters which we are addressing here as to counseling, there will be other issues which may arise in counseling over which we may differ.
For instance, Jay Adams was an Amillennialist; I am a Pre-millennialist. Adams makes a counseling argument on an issue about the Devil’s work based upon his millennial position. While I agree with much of his argument, I disagree with him on the manner in which he supports that argument. You need to understand these issues and teach in accordance with the doctrinal distinctives of your congregation. If you teach counter to your church’s doctrinal positions, you will at the least create confusion in your counselees.
In addition, the confidence your leadership will have in your work will depend upon your integrity and transparency in counseling.
Your leaders are given to watch over the congregation as a whole. Even though you are in a position to help with that oversight, you must not usurp that oversight.
Finally, you need the oversight. Even if you are the head pastor of your congregation, you need someone who knows what you are doing in your counseling session. While some privacy is necessary; absolutely privacy is dangerous.

4. Training, Mentors, Colleagues
Training: Conference training is good, but it is not enough. The minimal training for an ACBC certification is the bare minimum; but it is not nearly enough to make you proficient in all that you will be called upon to do.
Much of the most difficult counseling I have had to undertake has involved counseling someone who has received poor counseling from another well-meaning Christian. At times, the poor counseling has come from a pastor – who was trained to preach, but did not know how to counsel. The reason, I think, comes from preachers often not understanding how application works. When you counsel, you have to watch how your application works and whether it profits. So, being a counselor makes you a better preacher.
The degree of your training depends upon the nature of your ministry. If your counseling ministry will be you alone with mentors and colleagues. You will need one level of training. If you plain on becoming a counseling center which provides training and development of other counselors, you will need significantly more training. We will discuss that, below.
You will need a mentors and colleagues. There will always be counseling matters which exceed your knowledge and experience. I have often had to work through counseling matters with other men and women who have had more or different experience than me.
Many of you will find yourself as the sole counselor, or perhaps one of two, in your congregation. That means you are going to need to have relationships with counselors who attend other congregations. Take time to meet others; make relationships.

5. Have a Time-Management Plan
There are two time-management issues: (1) Creating a Triage Plan. (2) Creating a plan to limit the time you counsel.
Triage
If you have ever been around an emergency room, you know that the hospital staff have a plan on who treat. One comes in with a broken arm, another comes in with a fever, a third comes in with a bleeding wound. If the staff takes the broken arm before the heart attack, someone will die. This is called a triage plan.
While not as time sensitive as an emergency room, your time as a counselor is limited. You will more requests upon your time than you will have time to counsel.
Someone here may be thinking, we have no demand for counseling at all in our congregation. I can’t imagine that we will have more demands for counseling than we can fulfill. Here is my answer: you have an unending demand for counsel.
We human beings need and give counsel to one-another every day. Someone is providing counsel to the members of your congregation. They may very well not be providing and receiving counsel from the Bible or even consistent with the Bible.
Christians do want to live in accordance with the Word of God. Christians want to know God’s will for their lives. But often they do not know what God requires or where to find that will in the Word of God. If they are not told how to use the Bible correctly, they will seek it from problematic sources.
In addition, the Word of God creates a desire for the Word of God. When people in your congregation learn counsel is available, your time will be full.
So who gets your time? Members of your congregation or people from outside your church? Do you give time to from those outside your church if the problem is sufficiently serious? And know, that seeing people who attend other congregations has its own complications.

Time Limitations
You are finite being. You cannot do everything. God does not need your help. The Church survived the death of the Apostles. The Church survived the death of Athanasius and Augustine, Calvin and Luther; the Church will survive you not over-working yourself.
Create limitations on your time before you find someone seeking more time than you can give. You need to decide how much time you will spend a week on counseling.
While a Biblical Counseling session may entail an hour of actual meeting, that hour is not the whole of your counseling. Done properly, you will need to prepare for the counseling studying and praying. You will often have interaction outside of the particular counseling session.
There will also be time need after the counseling for prayer and reflection.
While professional psychological counseling depends upon a “clinical” distance, biblical counseling is very different. The commands which apply to one-another interactions within the church apply to you as a counselor.
You must prefer one-another in love, you must bear one-another’s burdens, contribute to the needs of the saints, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. You must love the people with whom you are meeting – not merely provide information.
This work is enormously taxing.
It is not merely the time spent in counseling, but the time to process the counseling.
Ten hours of intensively counseling over the course of the week can be enormously taxing; and at times emotionally draining, because you cannot keep a “clinical” distance from the person with whom you are counseling.
In the United States, I am a lawyer. When I give counsel as a lawyer, my involvement begins and ends with providing information. If my client accepts my counsel or does not accept my counsel is up to him. If he does something and suffers or it, I am not supposed to care. If I become emotionally involve, I lose the ability to be objective. You cannot be detached if you are a biblical counselor.
When you initially create rules for your time begin cautiously. Talk with other counselors; consult your experience as to what you can reasonably do (in light of your other time obligations and your ability to bear burdens without burn out).

6. Have an intake system.

Have a clear procedure for how someone in your congregation begins a counseling relationship. If there is a woman in your congregation who is severely depressed and wants to receive biblical counsel, what should she do? Where should she go? Does she come to you, directly? Does she call the office? If there three people at once who seek counsel, who decides who is counseled and who waits?
I know people who had a system and then ignored it for this one particular situation. Ignoring the system resulted in trouble.
You create procedures to protect and sustain the ministry. Ignoring the system results in trouble. Create a system and stick to the system.

7. Use Forms – Have Procedures

We have provided you with two forms and a written policy. The first form is a counseling intake form. There may be cultural aspects of this form which do not translate well into a Chilean context. You may need to adopt it. From what I have seen, Chile and California are not all that different. But there be subtle things about how a question is phrased or how people answer. Feel free to adjust the form as need be.
The purpose of this form is for you to understand the person who is coming in to see you.

[At this point, walk through the form and make observations.]

A bit of practical advice: not everyone tells the whole story when they first enter into counseling. Sometimes the counselee is trying to hide information out of fear or shame. Sometimes the counselee simply does not know the truth.
For the counselee who deliberately keeps back some information, the best way to overcome the problem is to develop a relationship of trust and respect. Someone is giving you very painful, private information. They must know that you can be trusted to use that information to help not hurt. Be someone they can trust and someone they can respect.
The person who does not know the truth present a different problem. Here is an illustration from a friend which I think will help. I want you to imagine a house with a leaking roof. There is a small hole in the roof and the rain finds its way into the structure. But we usually have a structure beneath the roof which holds up the roof. Underneath that structure of crossing beams is a ceiling. So that we look up we see the ceiling and not the cross-beams or the roof to the outside.
When the water comes inside the house it hits the crossbeams and travels along until it seeps out through the ceiling. When you go to discover the hole in the roof, you cannot look straight up from the place you see the water on your ceiling. The water may have traveled several feet from the hole in the roof until it seeps out through the ceiling.
Counseling problems will often be like that. Someone will come for one issue and you will discover that their “real” problem is something else. Someone may come in because of a conflict with a family member and you’ll discover that they have another more fundamental problem which is leading to their conflict.
So use these a form to gain some initial information from you counselee, but do not think it tells the whole story.

Second, use a form to explain the counseling process to the counselee. Conflict happens when one’s expectation conflicts with reality. Let us say that tomorrow you go to a restaurant. The waiter brings you a piece of cake. There is nothing wrong with cake, you might often want to receive cake. But you didn’t order cake; you ordered eggs. You are unhappy because what you received contradicted what you ordered. You expected one thing and got another.
Someone comes into counseling. They are expecting you to be a psychologist who was trained in the manner of Rogers. Rogers would say that human beings are good and the counselor needs to bring that goodness out of the patient. But you start telling the counselee about sin and repentance. You read them from Romans that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You will have a conflict.
At the very outset we need to make plain what we do, what we will not do, and why we will do so. You need to explain that we are not priests who keep secrets no matter what. I do not know the law here, but in California if counselee tells you that they intend to hurt themselves or someone else, you must tell the authorities.

[walk through the counseling consent form – remove the section on waiver of jury trial, because it irrelevant. Keep the section on waiver of bringing legal action. Even if it is not enforceable in Chile, it is the proper way to resolve disputes according to the Scripture]

8. Have a policy on maintaining records

When you counsel with someone, you will keep some sort of record of your work. You will keep records of what you observed, what homework you gave, et cetera. These notes will often include very private information about someone else. The potential for misusing this information is great.
Because the information is so important, there may be others who want to use the information. I have been involved in situations where someone in a legal action, such as a divorce action, wanted to get copies of the counselor’s notes to use against the counselee.
I do not know how privacy laws work in Chile. In California, a pastor’s notes are not private. In Florida, a pastor’s notes are private. You will need to find out the answer to that question under Chilean law. Then you will need to have a policy about what you will do with notes.
When I oversaw a counseling ministry in a church, we kept the counseling consent form on file in the church office. The counselors kept their own notes. They were kept separate from the church records. I kept very few notes on a counselee and would not keep the notes after the counseling relationship was over, because I knew that I could not maintain privacy for the information if something came up in the future.
But there may be a reason to keep notes after the relationship is over.
So have a policy; make sure your policy is good for both the counselor and the counselee. In addition, make sure that you have exceptions to your general rule.
This a matter of wisdom; be prepared to change your rules as learn more.

9. Have a policy for dealing with allegations of physical and sexual abuse.

We have provided you with a draft of a policy I have worked on. It is based upon both biblical principles and seeks to comport with general law in the United States. You may need to make certain adjustments to this policy to comport with Chilean law.
There are two basic principles which must be in place. First, you must have policies which protect those who are being hurt from further injury. You cannot protect those who are hurting people in your church, because you want to protect a leader in the church or someone who is a friend. We cannot tolerate sin to continue. This is especially true when someone is hurting children.
You have seen the worldwide revulsion against the Roman Catholic church when it was discovered that bishops were protecting priests who were hurting children. It is certainly not confined to Roman Catholics. There was a major story about Baptists churches protecting abusers.
Second, you must have a policy in place to protect against false allegations. There are wildly varying estimates as to the percentage of false allegations. But whether it is 10 percent or 40 percent really does not matter. A false allegation can destroy someone’s life and will tear apart a church.
[walk through the plan]

10. Have a place to counsel
If need be you can be creative. But as a general rule, you should have a regular place to counsel which provides privacy for your counselees. The privacy will be what they have said. But you also want to provide privacy as to the counseling relationship.
Let us say that you are meeting with a married couple. They probably do not want everyone in the congregation knowing that they are coming in for marital counsel.
So you have two levels of privacy: the fact of the counseling relationship and the information conveyed in the counseling.
This means that you probably should not be counseling in a public place. Opening a Bible, discussing deeply personal matters, praying openly: these are things that are often not possible in a coffee shop.
Now if these were the only things to consider, you would pick some place absolutely private. But that can cause a problem.
You need accountability: both to protect you from sin, but also to protect you from accusations of sin.
Let me explain. Let us say a pastor is meeting with a woman in his congregation who is married to a cruel husband. The pastor is kind and understanding; he is everything she wished her husband would be. I know of more than one pastor who ended up in an adulterous relationship with someone in his congregation.
And even if the pastor does nothing wrong, there is the potential for gossip or false allegations. People become angry and lie. Someone learns of the counseling relationship and starts a rumor.
The best circumstance is to have the same sex counseling relationships: women counseling women; men counseling men. If a pastor simply does not have a woman counselor available, then have a woman with you when you counsel.
But same sex counseling relationship will not solve every problem. You have circumstances where you are counseling someone whose besetting sin is same sex relationships. You again need protection from gossip and sin.
And sexual problems are not the only forms of potential accusation or sin. There is the problem of using your authority to hurt someone; I don’t know what it is called here, but in the States people use the phrase “spiritual abuse”. They mean someone in ministry using their ministry position to hurt people.
This is a grave sin. You may be tempted to sin in this manner. You may be accused of sinning in this manner. And again, the best way to protect against this is to not have a perfect seal of privacy.
One of the very best ways to maintain privacy and accountability is to always have someone with you who is training to be a counselor. We will discuss training new counselors a bit later. But for now, now that training new counselors is a fine way to maintain privacy and accountability.

11. This is not everything
This is not a complete list of things you need to know practically to maintain a counseling ministry. But these are likely the most pressing matters you will face.

PART TWO

EXPANDING THE MINISTRY

We are going to look at two levels of counseling ministry expansion. First, we are going to look at the way in which you will add new counselors who will be doing the work you do: deliberate, intensive counseling. Second, we are going to look at expanding the concept of counseling as a matter of Christian discipleship and how the entire congregation has a role to play.
TRAINING NEW “FORMAL” COUNSELORS

Children’s Ministry circa 1720: We need better teachers, and we need to give “Children’s” ministers more respect

10 Monday Jun 2019

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James Saurin was a pastor in The Hague. He died in 1730. In his sermon “The Perfection of Christian Knowledge” (published in English in 1784), he laments that those who teach the children are too often the least skilled:

The carelessness that prevails in our choice of the first sort of teachers, cannot be sufficiently lamented. The care of instructing our children is commended to people more fit for disciples than masters, and the meanest talents are thought more than sufficient to teach the first principles of religion. The narrowest and dullest genius is not ashamed to profess himself a divine and a catechist.

And yet what capacity does it not require to lay the first foundations of the edifice of salvation! What address to take the different forms necessary to insinuate into the minds of catechumens and to conciliation their attention and love! What dexterity to proportion instruction to the different ages and different characters of learners! How much knowledge, and how many accomplishments are necessary to discern what is fundamental to a child of twelve years of age and what is fundamental to a youth of fifteen years of age! What one child of superior talents cannot be ignorant of without danger, and what another of inferior talents may remain innocently unacquainted with!

Heads of families, this article concerns you in a particular manner. What account can you render to God of the children with whom he hath instructed you, if, while you take such pains and are at so much experience ot them them the liberal arts, are at so much negligence in teaching them the knowledge of salvation? Not only in the a future state ought you to fear the punishment of so criminal a conduct; you will be punished in this present world. Children ignorant of religion will but little understand their duty to their parents. They will become the cross, as they will be the shame and infamy of your life. They will shake off your yoke as soon as they have passed their childhood, they will abandon you to the weakness, infirmities and disquietudes of old age, when you arrive at that distasteful period of life, which be rendered agreeable only with the care, tenderness, and assiduity of a well-bred son.

Let us all unite in endeavors, my dear brethren, to remove this evil. Let us honor an employment, which nothing but the licentiousness of the age could have rendered contemptible. Let us consider that, as one of the most important truths of the state, one of the most respectable posts of society, which is appointed to seminate religious principles in our children, to inspire them with  piety, to guard them against the snare that they meet with in the world, and, these, by means, to render them dutiful in childhood, faithful in conjugal life, tender parents, good citizens and able magistrates.

James Saurin, “The Perfection of Christian Knowledge,” in Attributes of God: Volume I, 2nd ed., trans. Robert Robinson (London: E. Fawcett, Black Friars, 1784), 70-71.

The limits of church leadership

22 Wednesday May 2019

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Proper leaders are marked by allegiance to God’s revealed word, which includes exhibit the holiness it enjoins. A claim to, or even possession of, a leadership role does not in itself invest authority. As we have seen elsewhere, pastor have significant authority; but this authority extends only so far as they conduct themselves in accord with Scripture. When leaders run counter to Scripture, church members must oppose them. Christ rules his church and does by means of Word taught and applied by church leaders.

Ray F. Van Neste, “The Church in the General Epistle,” in The Community of Jesus: A Theology of the Church, ed. Kendell H. Easley and Christopher W. Morgan (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013), 148.

The Conclusion of the Apology of Theophilus of Antioch

18 Saturday May 2019

Posted by in Ante-Nicene, Apologetics, Church History, Uncategorized

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The previous post in this series may be found here. 

Theophilus concludes his defense and advocacy of Christianity by an appeal to (1) its historical veracity; and (2) its antiquity.

He begins this section of the argument as follows:

But I wish now to give you a more accurate demonstration, God helping me, of the historical periods, that you may see that our doctrine is not modern nor fabulous, but more ancient and true than all poets and authors who have written in uncertainty. For some, maintaining that the world was uncreated, went into infinity;1 and others, asserting that it was created, said that already 153, 075 years had passed.

1 i.e., tracing back its history through an infinate duration.

 Theophilus of Antioch, “Theophilus to Autolycus,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 116.

Theophilus then works through the then-current theories on the age of the earth, and various events (he spends much time comparing various understandings of the time of the Flood and also the Israelites in Egypt).  In each case, he contends that the Biblical understanding of the time period and events is correct.

First, he goes the basis for the biblical positions:

It behoved, therefore, that he should the rather become a scholar of God in this matter of legislation, as he himself confessed that in no other way could he gain accurate information than by God’s teaching him through the law. And did not the poets Homer and Hesiod and Orpheus profess that they themselves had been instructed by Divine Providence? Moreover, it is said that among your writers there were prophets and prognosticators, and that those wrote accurately: who were informed by them. How much more, then, shall we know the truth who are instructed by the holy prophets, who were possessed by the Holy Spirit of God! On this account all the prophets spoke harmoniously and in agreement with one another, and foretold the things that would come to pass in all the world.

Theophilus of Antioch,  116. That is, since they demonstrated the divine nature of their speech by means of predictive prophecy and coherence in doctrine, they should be trusted when they speak of other things which are far more debated (the ancient history of the world).

He compares the biblical accounts with the accounts of poets and philosophers; for instance:

From what has already been said, it is evident that they who wrote such things and philosophized to so little purpose are miserable, and very profane and senseless persons. But Moses, our prophet and the servant of God, in giving an account of the genesis of the world, related in what manner the flood came upon the earth, telling us, besides, how the details of the flood came about, and relating no fable of Pyrrha nor of Deucalion or Clymenus; nor, forsooth, that only the plains were submerged, and that those only who escaped to the mountains were saved.

Theophilus of Antioch,  116. He then compares the ages of the events set forth in the Bible with the dates for various Greek law givers and poets; and notes that the Biblical account begins before Greek history. This is a relative sort of argument. He does not try to argue that the Biblical accounts go earlier than every other potential account — just earlier than the Greek accounts:

These periods, then, and all the above-mentioned facts, being viewed collectively, one can see the antiquity of the prophetical writings and the divinity of our doctrine, that the doctrine is not recent, nor our tenets mythical and false, as some think, but very ancient and true.

 Theophilus of Antioch,  120. He concludes thus

But the Greeks make no mention of the histories which give the truth: first, because they themselves only recently became partakers of the knowledge of letters; and they themselves own it, alleging that letters were invented, some say among the Chaldæans, and others with the Egyptians, and others again say that they are derived from the Phœnicians. And secondly, because they sinned, and still sin, in not making mention of God, but of vain and useless matters. For thus they most heartily celebrate Homer and Hesiod, and the rest of the poets, but the glory of the incorruptible and only God they not only omit to mention, but blaspheme; yes, and they persecuted, and do daily persecute, those who worship Him. And not only so, but they even bestow prizes and honours on those who in harmonious language insult God; but of those who are zealous in the pursuit of virtue and practise a holy life, some they stoned, some they put to death, and up to the present time they subject them to savage tortures. Wherefore such men have necessarily lost the wisdom of God, and have not found the truth.

Theophilus of Antioch, 121. The relative argument is appropriate here, because he is merely contending against a particular man in a particular place. He is not attempting to respond to every possible argument, but he is responding to a particular argument. Why would anyone abandon Helenic Religion and Philosophy for Christianity:

Since, then, my friend, you have assailed me with empty words, boasting of your gods of wood and stone, hammered and cast, carved and graven, which neither see nor hear, for they are idols, and the works of men’s hands; and since, besides, you call me a Christian, as if this were a damning name to bear, I, for my part, avow that I am a Christian,1 and bear this name beloved of God, hoping to be serviceable2 to God. For it is not the case, as you suppose, that the name of God is hard to bear; but possibly you entertain this opinion of God, because you are yourself yet unserviceable to Him.

Theophilus of Antioch, 89. His argument has been to clarify what Christians do believe; and to demonstrate the immorality and absurdity of Greek thought; the elevation of Biblical thought; its morality and antiquity. This argument was antiquity was important in apologetics for the early church. For instance, Clement of Alexandria makes a detailed argument based upon the antiquity of Christianity:

On the plagiarizing of the dogmas of the philosophers from the Hebrews, we shall treat a little afterwards. But first, as due order demands, we must now speak of the epoch of Moses, by which the philosophy of the Hebrews will be demonstrated beyond all contradiction to be the most ancient of all wisdom.

 Clement of Alexandria, “The Stromata, or Miscellanies,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 324.   The idea that the Bible explains the antiquity of original revelation — and a corruption of that revelation as it spreads throughout human history is not merely an argument of the early church, but is a matter of current concern:

In arguing for a revelatory ‘single-source’ theory as to both the theological and historical origin of religion and the religions, does the Urgeschichte provide us with any more detail or explanatory ‘mechanism’ as to the pattern of religion that begins with an original divine disclosure but that, due to human sin, and without divine preservation, ends in a derivative religious degeneration and decay as God ‘gives people over’ to idolatry?

Strange, Daniel. Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (pp. 121-122). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. Tracing out that argument is well beyond this post. For now, we only note that the argument from antiquity — with an implicit element of corruption/derivation (Clement’s “plagiarizing”) is still a current concern.