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After taking a somewhat unexpected hiatus from the blogorama, the writing bug has struck again!  Much could be said about the past several months:

• I finished my first course at a secular educational institution since I left sunny South Florida for the booming metropolis of Chicago (home to Moody Bible Institute).  This past spring I enrolled in a psychology class at the University of Louisville to see what all the hype was about.  The class (psycholinguistics) was everything I had expected: fascinating, stimulating, and educational.
• I became an uncle!  Sara’s brother and his wife became the proud parents of a little girl.  My little brother and his wife will be next (she’s due in August).
• Sara and I have joined a new church plant here in Louisville.  Grace Church of Louisville is a daughter church of Clifton Baptist Church and meets in the Crescent Hill neighborhood about a mile west of Clifton just off Frankfurt Ave.  Come visit us during our Sunday service at 11 AM.
• Sara and I are going to be home-owners!  My parents are moving to a different neighborhood, and we’re buying their old house.
• Almost immediately after the spring semester ended, summer classes began.  Sara is taking three classes (she’s already done two, and the third is next week), and I am taking two.  One of them, Contemporary Models of Counseling, will be taught by David Powlison, who is arguably the most influential person in the burgeoning biblical counseling movement.  Expect regular posts in the coming weeks regarding the content of this class…

That’s all for now, folks.

I came across an interesting section in a book called True Spirituality, by Francis Schaeffer.  It is an extended discussion about the hidden significance of psychological guilt.  He has some wise suggestions for dealing with guilt that is below the surface:

A very practical thing for ourselves and for those whom we would help is that it is not always possible to sort out true guilt from psychological guilt.  At this point the iceberg concept is a valid concept… We are constantly brought face to face with the concept of the subconscious, which is a realization that man is more than that which is on the surface.  All too often the evangelical Christian acts as though there is nothing to man except that which is above the surface of the water.

Since the fall man is divided from himself, and so since the fall there is that which I am which is below the surface.  We can think of it as the iceberg, one-tenth above, nine-tenths below, in psychological terms, the unconscious or the subconscious.  I am not to be surprised that there is something which I am which is deeper than that which is on the surface…  Who can know perfectly what he knows about himself, as man now is?  This is true even at our best moments, and it is doubly true when psychological problems and storms break over us as they surely will break over all people, including Christians.  When someone comes to you in a psychological storm, and he is really torn up, it is not only unreasonable but it is cruel to ask him, in every case, to sort out what is true guilt and what is psychological guilt.

We all have our problems, we all have our storms, but some of us have exceedingly deep storms.  In the midst of these storms that break over us, it is beautiful to know that we ourselves do not need, in every case, to sort out true guilt from psychological guilt.  We are not living before a mechanical universe, and we are not living just before ourselves; we are living before the infinite-personal God.  God does know the line between my true guilt and my guilt feelings.  My part is to function in that which is above the surface, and to ask God to help me to be honest.  My part is to cry to God for the part of the iceberg that is above the surface and confess whatever I know is true guilt there, bringing in under the infinite, finished work of Jesus Christ.  It is my opinion, and the experience of many of God’s children, that when one is as honest as one can be in dealing with what is above the surface, God applies this to the whole; and gradually the Holy Spirit helps one to see deeper into himself.

I’m not sure exactly what Schaeffer means by “psychological guilt”… perhaps he is thinking about feelings of guilt that one perceives that may or may not reflect genuine guilt.  If that’s the case, then he seems to be suggesting that we simply encourage people to confess the things they know they’re guilty of, and let the Spirit of God take care of the rest.

After a bit of reflection, I decided that some of my thoughts from my post about David Powlison’s critique of The Five Love Languages would benefit from some extra clarification.  First of all, let me state that I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Powlison in person, and would describe him as a gentle man with a kind and winsome demeanor.  I do not believe that he purposefully crafted his words so that they would result in intentional harm.

Second, I recognize that critiquing the tone of an article is a challenging task.  Tone is a more or less subjectively perceived quality that varies from person to person, and to subject it to criticism that aims at objectivity is notoriously difficult.  But we must nonetheless try, and in the case of this article, I believe that it is relatively simple.  Entire groups of conservative, evangelical Christians who are on the same team as Powlison, have been offended by words such as those used by Powlison in this article.  We’re not talking about Luther and Calvin railing against the evils of the Roman papacy… we’re talking about one conservative Christian who seems to vilify the ministry of another conservative Christian with his words.

The real reason I address Powlison’s tone is because it cannot help but inform our reception of the article’s message.  Since we are finite humans whose use of language is imperfect, we cannot expect all of our speech to be perceived exactly as we would wish, let alone our written words.  Only God can wield language with such sovereignty and control.  And when He is misunderstood, it is never His fault.  But when we humans speak (or write), a wide variety of factors influence the production of our speech, the words we choose, not to mention our reception of the words of others.  Because of the fall, it is humanly impossible to comprehensively take all of these things into account when making use of language.  But surely the solution is not to ignore these factors in the interest of attending to the “pure content” of what is said.  So Powlison’s article may be propositionally true, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that Jesus would have stated the argument in exactly the same way.

The question was raised in previous discussion of whether or not Powlison denies, by his tone, the love and truth he is trying to promote.  I personally do not believe that this is the case.  I believe that his tone denies the ideals of love and truth.  We need to remember that even though the tone in which we speak (or write) informs the message, it does not necessarily wield autonomous control over the message.  I can personally still give Powlison the benefit of the doubt that his pursuit is one of love and truth, in spite of his poor choice of words, because based on my personal interactions with him I can imagine that this is what he intended to communciate in his article.  Unfortunately, I can’t speak for others who may perhaps have less trust in his intentions.  And given his choice of words, I can’t say that I blame them.

So what exactly is science?  Dr. Albert Mohler interacts with Tom Krattenmaker of USA Today, who makes the typical naturalist claim that Christians should “let science be science, and let religion prevail in the vast areas where science has little or nothing to offer.”  Mohler helpfully points out that this is theoretically impossible, since all worldviews must somehow account for the question of origins.  NOMA (”non-overlapping magisteria”), as it is typically defended by self-described naturalists, is ultimately an incoherent model for interaction between religion and science because science and religion overlap in practice all the time.

It will be very interesting to see future interaction between Christian scientists and naturalistic scientists.  Modern practitioners of science are often criticized for practicing “scientism” instead of true science.  The claim is that much modern science is often practiced from the point of view of an out-of-date positivistic philosophy.  This produces, in the eyes of some, sloppy conclusions whose claims often overstep their bounds.  Secularists accuse Christians of “biblical” positivism, while many Christians accuse secularists of “naturalistic” positivism.  The issues are definitely complex.  It seems as though the tradition of modern science, while technologically advanced, could learn a lesson from its philosophical counterparts.  In addition, Christians who “do science” ought not to be ashamed of their Christian presuppositions, but should embrace them and allow them to exercise their proper authority.  Of course, this is quite often the crux of the debate: just how, exactly, does biblical authority function in the realm of “science”?  How do biblical presuppositions affect scientific conclusions?  I don’t have many answers here, and I’m not sure where to look for these answers.  It seems entirely possible that we simply don’t have them yet.  Perhaps we just have to wait and see how a tradition of science develops that is distinctly Christian, and yet scientifically rigorous.

Justin Taylor (of Between Two Worlds, a popular Christian blog) recently put in a plug for an article written by David Powlison several years ago that critiques the popular book by Christian counselor Gary Chapman entitled The Five Love Languages.  Published in the Fall 2002 edition of the Journal of Biblical Counseling, the article attempts to praise the book’s strengths, while drawing attention to its alleged weaknesses.  Given the wide influence of both David Powlison and Gary Chapman, not to mention Justin Taylor in bringing this to the attention of so many, I thought I would make a few (predictable) comments about this article.

To his credit, Powlison recognizes that the book “rings bells when it describes how people typically come wired,” and proceeds to note several specific examples of helpful observations Chapman provides.  Furthermore, he asserts that Five Love Languages “can be informative, correcting ignorance about how people differ from each other, and making you more aware of patterns of expectation that you and others bring to the table.  The exhortations to take the initiative in giving to others could make the world a better place through more thoughtful treatment of others…”  These statements, in a nutshell, accurately summarize the strengths of the book.

But people who are at all familiar with David Powlison will know that his assessment of Five Love Languages doesn’t end there.  In the rest of the article, he ruthlessly subjects the ideology behind Chapman’s book to a rigorous critique and finds it sorely wanting.  Now just for clarification, I do not intend to systematically evaluate Powlison’s arguments against Chapman here.  What I have to say has little to do with whether or not I am in rational agreement with Powlison’s concerns.  Instead, my concerns have more to do with the tone of Powlison’s critique:

At a very basic level, Powlison doesn’t seem to demonstrate a sufficient awareness of the value, and hence the significance, of the positive contributions of Chapman’s book.  Maybe he really does value the book for the reasons he gives, and recommends it to others as a source of much practical wisdom that can be a great help in a variety of circumstances.  On the other hand, maybe his assessment of the book’s strengths is not at all intended to convey the notion that he truly values the book.  If the former is the case, then I suspect that he could do more work to convince those like myself that he really does value Chapman’s work, both at a personal and professional level.  If the latter is the case, then his “positive” assessment really doesn’t mean that much, and can probably be safely ignored.

Powlison resorts to inflamatory language (”deplorable”, “apalling”, etc…) at various points throughout the course of his discussion.  Regardless of whether or not Powlison’s assessment of Chapman’s work is valid, objectively speaking, the nature of his accusations requires that we ask the question, “Is it appropriate for him to use these words?”  Of course, some might suggest that Powlison is here giving voice to what is commonly referred to as “righteous anger.”  But if this is the case, then others might in turn suggest that he actually may be violating James 1:20, which says that “the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”  It is not my intention here to pronounce judgment on Powlison’s internal motivations.  But I should acknowledge that I was offended by his words, and so I think that these are questions that, in all seriousness, we must ask ourselves.

For the record, I agree with many of Powlison’s theological concerns with The Five Love Languages.  But if agreeing with him rationally means that I have to state them the way he does, I want nothing of it.  To my thinking, the issue here is not merely whether or not one agrees with Powlison’s critique of Chapman.  That is a relatively simple issue to settle.  Quite frankly, I think one would be hard-pressed to find biblical reasons for why Powlison is barking up the wrong theological tree.  But surely we would all agree that as Christians, the tone of our discussion contributes just as much to the value of what we have to say as the content of our arguments.  Simply winning an argument is not a sufficient goal for Christian discussion.  Whether he intentionally does so or not, Powlison effectively brands Chapman as a second-rate theologian, and a bad Christian counselor in the process, by failing to demonstrate a true sense of heartfelt gratitude for the grace of God that is demonstrated in Chapman’s ministry.  Christian unity is sacrificed on the altar of “truth.”

In closing, I need to make it completely clear that I have personally benefitted greatly from Powlison’s many positive contributions to the issue of Christian counseling.  It is his negative contributions, such as this article, that I am opposed to.  Indeed, it is difficult to accurately describe the harmful nature of Powlison’s article without resorting to the same rhetoric that he himself uses, so I will refrain and simply suggest that perhaps the last word has yet to be heard.  Let us pray that as we attempt to relate to the traditions of other Christians while living before God within our own traditions, that we will become just as enamoured by the image of Christ reflected in our collective traditions as we are grieved by what we perceive as error in the traditions of others.

Here is an interesting excerpt from an article by Ken Myers entitled Christianity, Culture, and Common Grace:

We don’t hear much about the “insufficiency of Scripture.”  But it is an important point to keep in mind when thinking about Christianity and culture.  Scripture does not present itself as the only source of truth about all matters.  It does not even present itself as a source of some truth about everything.  It presents itself as the only authoritative source of truth about some things, and they are the most important things…

Many people insist on taking implicit statements from Scripture (or allegedly implicit statements) and deducing from them an entire theory.  This is often done in the name of a high view of Scripture, but it is rather to treat Scripture as a magic book.  It is a superstitious view of Scripture, not the view God has himself presented.  The belief that all the blueprints for all of life are in Scripture is in part derived from the notion that reason and general revelation are not to be trusted.

Myers goes on to talk about the importance of distinguishing between implications of scripture and inferences from scripture.  It’s definitely important to uncover the various implications of a text, but the task of application really begins when we attempt to derive practical inferences from it.  Of course, not all inferences are appropriate, and among those that are, some are more useful than others.  Myers continues:

How one chooses to draw inferences from Scripture will be shaped in large measure by what kind of book one believes the Bible to be.  If you believe that the Bible is the only source of truth about everything, that every human endeavor, every aspect of culture, must be based on the teaching of Scripture, then you will tend to see many more inferences in a given text than the person who believes that all of life is to be judged by Scripture, but that God did not intend that every human activity proceed with only the Bible as a source for information.

Applying Scripture is difficult for every individual, often as much because we fail to understand the significance of our own situation, the context in which we are applying it, as because we fail to understand the original, objective meaning of the text.  We live in complex patterns of need, of opportunity, and of sin.  The inference we really ought to draw is often the most difficult to see, because of the complexity of our lives and because of the sin in our lives.  This is why we need teachers and the fellowship of the saints.

It seems as though Myers is saying that misapplication of scripture is just as easily the result of a fundamental ignorance of one’s context as it is a misunderstanding of the biblical text itself.  It is possible to correctly grasp the intended meaning of scripture and still fail miserably at extending it into specific situations in a meaningfully appropriate manner.  What this means is that those who possess specialized acquaintance with a particular context have great potential to speak the gospel in a particularly meaningful way to others within that context.  This doesn’t threaten the sufficiency of scripture.  It is the sufficiency of scripture in practice.

Recently I ran across an interesting distinction in Kevin Vanhoozer’s book Is There a Meaning in This Text? In the chapter “Reforming the Reader: Interpretive Virtue, Spirituality, and Communicative Efficacy,” Vanhoozer describes how the twin tasks of understanding and overstanding can be legitimately practiced by readers. Specifically, he suggests that “overstanding the Bible is a responsible response insofar as it aims at uncovering the text’s significance” (403, emphasis his). By ‘overstanding,’ Vanhoozer is referring to the activity of extending the interpretted meaning of a text into a particular circumstance.

I thought I would relate this distinction to the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture. As Reformation Christians, we confess that scripture sufficiently communicates the gospel. In the words of John Piper, “the sufficiency of Scripture means that we don’t need any more special revelation. We don’t need any more inspired, inerrant words.” Before this he states that “the sufficiency of Scripture does not mean that the Scripture is all we need to live obediently.”

My hunch is that there is a big difference between the sufficiency of scripture as it relates to God’s communication of His gospel and the sufficiency of scripture as it relates to our understanding of His gospel. We know that only scripture can sufficiently communicate the gospel. But we also know that, being the finite creatures that we are, our understanding of the gospel is inherently limited — and always will be. God, in His grace, dispenses to His children — in a manner sufficient for salvation — the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of His Son, but this does not mean that we see all things clearly, including the gospel itself. Examining the various contexts upon which the light of the gospel shines will enable us to grow in our understanding of the significance of the gospel. In other words, our understanding of the significance of the gospel, and therefore, in some sense, the gospel itself, will be influenced by our capacity to know and understand the multitude of contexts within which it has meaning. For instance, the depth of our general understanding of the gospel as it relates to the universal condition of fallen mankind is directly related to how well we know and understand our own fallenness as sinful human beings. Likewise, our knowledge and understanding of a multitude of contexts will affect our ability to minister the truth of the gospel in meaningful ways to the people who inhabit those contexts. On the one hand, we confess the relevance of the gospel for all human circumstances, and on the other hand, we demonstrate the relevance of the gospel by relating it in specific ways to specific circumstances. Although it is necessary to emphasize the first task, it is important to see both as indispensable.

Now, to draw the connection to the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, it is inevitably necessary to overstand scripture to some degree in order to extend the divinely communicated meaning of scripture into contemporary situations. Part of living obediently as Christians is ministering the truths of the gospel in meaningful ways to the best of our ability. In other words, we need more than a knowledge of scripture to be obedient Christians.

Some reading this post may wonder why I am harping on this subject so much. I am merely concerned that in our fervent desire to be biblical in everything we do, we sometimes take a myopic stance towards the rest of the world. The common accusation of being “too heavenly-minded to be of much earthly good” could just as easily be restated as “too Bible-minded,” can it not? Obviously we must yearn for heaven and hide God’s Word in our hearts, but there’s more to being obedient Christians than these things.

More thoughts to come…

Unfortunately, I haven’t sufficiently recovered from the drama of the past semester to offer any profound thoughts of my own, so I will have to rely on the words of others.  I recently came across a thought-provoking description of wisdom that I decided to pass on.  In his book To Be Told, Dan Allender says that “wisdom ultimately isn’t a formula or a conclusion but a way of being in the world that leads to a more truthful and more beautiful good.”

I like this description of wisdom for a couple of reasons.  First, it demonstrates a healthy appreciation for the pursuit of wisdom.  And secondly, it places wisdom in the context of aesthetics and virtue, and not just epistemology.  Wisdom cannot be reduced to a set of propositions that merely need to be committed to memory in order to be exercised.  Wisdom is an acquired knowledge that is the result of a gathered body of lived experiences.  In the end, there really is no substitute for experiential knowledge as a grounds for wisdom.  Specifically, the experience of knowing Christ is the foundation of Christ-centered wisdom.

I had a professor in my undergrad years who taught me many things I wouldn’t have known if it were not for him.  Actually, I really only took one class with him, and it was during my first semester of college.  But I was able to spend a lot of time with him because he was also the director of the choir I was a part of.  When I think about Dr. H. E. Singley, one of the things that I remember most is his desire that we learn more than how to sing the songs we were supposed to learn for our traveling tours.  It was not uncommon for him to talk about a particular topic that was on his mind… sometimes right in the middle of rehearsal.  I know I gleaned a lot of wisdom from those times, not to mention the hours spent on the 50-passenger bus traveling from city to city during our holiday breaks.  He instilled in me the need for the church to recover its sense of awe during times of corporate worship.  He always made sure that we stopped at old church buildings on our choir trips (and there were several in Ireland and Scotland, where we toured one year) in order to gain a deeper appreciation for the saints who have gone before us.  Although we sang in several revivalist Baptist churches, he also made sure that we experienced firsthand the beauty of Anglican liturgy, the strength of Presbyterian/Reformed theology, and the importance of maintaining our ties with the traditions of the past.

At the same time, one of the things that has stuck out the most in the intervening years has been a particular insight about culture that he passed on to us.  In spite of all the emphasis he placed on the “sacred things” of our faith, he was always careful to not disdain the “secular things” of earthly life.  He often pointed out to us that the opposite of “sacred” isn’t “secular”, but “profane.”  There’s a difference between something being merely secular and something that is actually profane, and we bring undue dishonor on the secular when we treat it as though it were profane.  So what’s the difference between the two?  I’m not sure I know exactly… I guess I just wanted to toss the thought out there and see what happens!

Here is the long-awaited interview with Larry Crabb that  he was gracious enough to grant to me at the Society for Christian Psychology conference a few weeks ago.  It was conducted in a coffee shop, so it took a while to sort through all the miscellaneous noises.

Nate: I’ve heard people refer to the early Larry Crabb and the later Larry Crabb… the old Crabb and the new Crabb. Has there been development in your thinking throughout your career, and if so, how would you describe it?

Dr. Crabb: I have been widely viewed as being very anthropocentric and very need-driven, because I used words that I wish I hadn’t used, words that miscommunicate, such as “needs” for ideas like “security” and “significance.” And then when I realized that people were hearing me in my earlier days, when I talked about needs… Well, I remember when I was teaching at a seminary and someone said to me, “Well, your problem is that you’re man-centered, you’re anthropocentric.” I said, “What are you talking about?! I think I’m God-centered. What do you mean?” And she said that I talked about how God is there to meet needs, and how it’s all about “me” and not about God. And when I realized that’s how I was being heard – and that’s not what I believe at all, and never have – I changed my semantics so I could communicate better. I talked about longings instead of needs, because I can’t imagine that anybody would argue that the human soul isn’t filled with longings and yearnings. Paul talked about how he was looking forward to the day when he would get to heaven. He would rather be there and not here. He’s using the language of longing for something that only God provides. My commitment from my earlier years on has been that whatever the deepest longings of the human heart really are, they really have to do with knowing God in a way that glorifies Him. I don’t see that as anthropocentric at all. But I changed my semantics to words like “longings” and “relationship” and “impact,” thinking that would be less offensive and more communicative… and that still didn’t work, because my earlier years are still viewed as being very anthropocentric, and I don’t think that I was, although in my less mature days – hopefully I’m a little more mature now – I can see how I might have been heard that way. 
   The shift that most people seem to think about when they think about “late Crabb” – which is not as big a shift as people tend to discern – began with Connecting. When I quit private practice – and this was in the middle 80’s – to teach in a seminary, my commitment was that counseling belongs in the local church. And I believed that after 10 years of private practice. And I thought that what I was offering people is what the Church ought to be offering people, because it’s what Christianity itself offers people. It’s not some technical thing called “psychotherapy.”
   So that was early Crabb, and that’s also late Crabb, and I still believe that, so it’s not a shift at all. If there’s been a shift at all, it began with the book Connecting where I began to understand, I think, a little more clearly that the real power that does sometimes take place in the counseling setting has entirely to do with the quality and the nature of the relationship that’s offered, and the wisdom upon which it’s founded, and not upon techniques or psychological knowledge. At that point I got really involved in Trinitarian theology, and began to realize that at the core of biblical reality, and therefore final reality, there is relationality. I knew that I wanted to offer that kind of relationship in my counseling. And that made me more convinced than ever that community is the only place where real change takes place that glorifies God, and is not anthropocentric change, but is theocentric change. Change takes place in a certain kind of community.
   And so that has become my focus over the last several years, and I think that there are two major theological inputs that have driven my later thinking. The first is Trinitarian theology, because it defines the nature of relationality, and defines what I want to see happening to somebody in counseling, therapy, spiritual direction, friendship, call it what you want… it’s all relationality. I want to answer the question, “What is a good relationship?” And we have our only model in the relationships among the trinity. I don’t fully understand that, and so I need to explore that and ponder that so that we become an answer to our Lord’s prayer, that we become one as they are one. The closer I come to that reality, the more power I have as a husband, counselor, father, etc. And the second theological stream that really got me going was new covenant theology… and I think I’m pretty balanced in that. I see a continuity in the covenants, in the sense that God’s character never changes, and that the law never changes, but only changes location: from the stone to the heart. And now the demands of God that are as strong and as absolute as they ever were, are now the desires of the regenerate heart. And so when I’m counseling people, my point is to not primarily hold people accountable, although there is a place for that, but to primarily release what God has already put within them for His glory.
   So I think I’ve probably felt in earlier days a little more open to professionalism, and in my later days I’m much more communal. I really think this may be rather extreme, but I wonder if counseling should have ever been professionalized. I mean, is friendship professionalized? I think plumbing can be professionalized. I want my plumber to have a certificate of sorts that shows that he’s a professional plumber, and that he knows how to fix a leaky pipe. I want my surgeon to be professionalized because professionalism is legitimate where there is a body of knowledge that you can be adequately trained in that results in certain skills that can make a difference. And I don’t think that counseling is that way. I don’t think that there’s a body of knowledge… because with a body of knowledge, my lands, look at the field of psychology! The body of knowledge is contradictory with 300 different theories. That’s not a body of knowledge; that’s a body of confusion! So I don’t think it’s as much a body of knowledge that I can master, and become skillful in so that when you come and see me and I have a certificate on the wall that says that I’m a licensed therapist, or whatever I may be, that you can be certain that this body of knowledge is going to be skillfully applied to your needs. That works with dentists, plumbers, electricians, but not counselors. So I want to see counseling as belonging to the body of Christ in a very organic way. And that’s an emphasis that was in seminal form in my early days, but I think it’s become clearer, and I think the clarity is what people see as a shift.

Nate: In my context at Southern Seminary a lot of discussion has taken place about the nature of Christian counseling. Much of this has been cordial, but some of it hasn’t. How would you describe your contribution to discussions like this?

Dr. Crabb: I don’t understand why I’ve become a lightening rod. In some circles I have. But let me talk about the lighting rod in my contributions to the discussion, to the mess, to the confusion. I think that because I am a licensed clinical psychologist, the assumption is made that I don’t see the Bible as authoritative, and the assumption is made that I am smuggling the Trojan horse of secularism into the church. I’ve heard that said, and I think that’s entirely wrong. I don’t agree with that at all. For one thing, it’s not what I want to do. I don’t merely want to be biblical, I am determined to be biblical. I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture defined in a particular way. But I think my contribution to the discussion is to suggest that we begin with the Bible and stay with the Bible and end with the Bible in dealing with all non-organic problems—organic-problems need medicine, and I don’t really care whether my physician is a believer or a non-believer; I care that he’s a competent physician. I pray he becomes a Christian if he’s not, but in surgery I don’t really care about his theology. I care about his medical skill.
   But I think my essential contribution to the counseling discussion is in hermeneutics. You can’t go to the Bible and find verses about anorexia, and as a result, people who want to stay biblical—and I do— but who have a limited hermeneutic, become very narrow when they find some application of the Bible to deal with problems the Bible doesn’t seem to directly address. I think that if we have a rich anthropology, a rich hamartiology, a rich pneumatology, and all these fancy words we have, then we will know how to “hermeneute.” We will know how to interpret scriptures so that we discover ways of thinking, and categories for understanding. When I deal with a homosexual, my concern is not only to say homosexuality is sinful, so stop it, and let me hold you accountable until you don’t do it anymore. Certainly that must be said; it’s a sin, so it shouldn’t continue, any more than adultery should, or pornography, or any thing else that is obviously sin. But they aren’t the root sin.
   So my concern is to say to the homosexual, “What did God have in mind when he created them man and female, and let’s explore the essence of masculinity. Let’s find where your terror of not feeling alive as a man has resulted in your clenched fisted determination to find some kind of satisfaction as a man without taking the risk of manhood, which then makes you vulnerable to homosexuality.” Let’s explore these deeper issues, which in my mind is not “psychology,” but are very biblical, because God made them male and female. And God wants us to unpack scripture and to interpret scripture in a way that doesn’t result in a proof-text, and not in a bunch of principles—do this, and don’t do that—but an enriched, deep understanding of what is happening in the human soul that has gone profoundly wrong that results in all these difficult and sinful problems. You can apply it to homosexuality, eating disorders, panic attacks, or whatever else. What is going on in the human soul, and how does the bible give us categories for understanding this?
   So I think my major contribution is a hermeneutic that allows me to develop categories for understanding that don’t come across as proof-texting or merely exhortational, but come across as liberating and releasing. I want to say to the homosexual, “If you give into homosexuality, you are missing out on the incredible wonder of the design that God had in mind in making you a man.” And I’m appealing to the fact that God’s plan is perfect, and God’s plan is wonderful. God is good, and for the homosexual to pursue satisfaction by looking at God and saying, “the dickens with you,” that is sin. The essential matter is not just the fact that a man is doing things with a man that are inappropriate and wrong and sinful. That’s sinful, but the core sin is turning to God and saying, “You are not the source of joy, you are not the essence of goodness. There’s a greater good than you.” This is the sin of Adam and Eve, who decided that there was a greater good than God. So we have to get down to the essential sin in dealing with of all these problems, and I think my hermeneutic, which is very non-linear and categorical, allows for a richer understanding of the human condition, and remains biblical, but in the minds of some looks like it’s forgetting the Bible and going towards psychology. But my understanding of homosexuality, of anorexia, of multiple personality is all dependent on biblical categories and not upon psychological research, even though I find secular research to be very analytic and the secular thinkers to be very provocative. They make me think and ask questions that I wouldn’t otherwise ask, but never would I regard them as authoritative.

Nate: The biblical counseling movement often emphasizes the doctrine of sufficiency of scripture, often charging those who disagree with them of compromising it in some way. Could you please sketch in how you would formulate this doctrine?

Dr. Crabb: I personally believe in the authority and, defined well, the inerrancy of scripture. Whatever the bible says is what God says. I have a very high view of Scripture, and I don’t see how it could be higher. Probably in my early thirties I began to take seriously and began to understand the debate about the sufficiency of Scripture. I think the sufficiency of scripture is a crucial doctrine for counseling, provided that it’s very carefully understood and defined. For some people, the sufficiency of scripture seems to imply that you can arrive at the worldview teachings of scripture and knowledge of the human soul, without digging for it, and without careful thought. You can’t just memorize verses, you just can’t come up with your creed or your doctrinal statements to do that. You can start there, but you can’t stop there. So the sufficiency of scripture has really become reductionistic. One of the things I don’t like is these Bibles that have these lists of every problem known to man, and then ten verses for every problem. That’s not biblical sufficiency, that’s biblical perversion. I think a lot of biblical perversion has taken place in the name of biblical sufficiency.
   Biblical sufficiency to me is to assume that the Bible contains everything you need to know to glorify God in this world, and that’s the summum bonum, the greatest good. The greatest good is not that I feel wonderful, and have great self-esteem, and not even that I have a great marriage, have wonderful kids and make a lot of money… that’s the goods that all of us are living for, but that’s wrong. The greatest good in life is to glorify God, and—I’m a John Piper fan—the greatest good in life is to glorify God, not “and enjoy him forever,” but “by enjoying him forever.” So if in fact the greatest good is to glorify God – and that’s the whole reason for everything He created – and if we glorify God by becoming like Jesus, and if that results in everything we were destined for, then in becoming like Jesus, we enter into the Trinitarian relationship. When I become like Jesus, then I experience the love of the Father the way Jesus did, and I experience love for the Father the way Jesus did, and this is final reality… this is what life is… this is John 17 where Jesus said, “This is life, that they may know God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” So the whole point of life is to enter into the Father-Son relationship through the power of the Spirit.
   So if I understand that as a big category – and I believe that the Bible directs us to that – then no longer does biblical sufficiency become merely a moral lifestyle, merely a bunch of verses that help me stop having affairs, or help me be more honest, or help me get over my problem of procrastination, or lying, or sexual addiction… all those things will become fruits of becoming like Jesus, but the real summum bonum is not just a moral lifestyle, because pagans can pull that off without Jesus. I really like the Chesterton quote that I mentioned last night, that Satan’s masterpiece is not the drunk, it’s the Pharissee, it’s the elder in the church who never looks at pornography and is really proud of it, and keeps his wife under control, and keeps his kids from doing bad things. And he’s the “good” Christian, and I think, “No, you’re a failure because you’re not entering into the Father-Son relationship of the Trinity. So biblical sufficiency to me is just a rich understanding of the text that addresses the core issues of the human soul. Who is this human being sitting across from me who bears the image of God? If it’s a man, what does that mean? If it’s a woman, what does that mean? What’s gone wrong? What’s my hamartiology, my theology of sin? Piper defines sin in a personal letter to me as a treasonous pursuit of satisfaction apart from God. Now is that anthropocentric, because he’s still pursuing his satisfaction? It’s a little tricky there, because I don’t think that the goal is my satisfaction. The goal is God’s glory. But when I live for his glory, I’m a winner, because I get everything He has to give, because He is a self-communicating and loving God. And when you live for His glory, it’s like a kid who lives for the pleasure of his wonderful dad. The more you live for the pleasure of your wonderful Dad, the more you’re the winner, because your Dad is pouring His love into you the entire time. So biblical sufficiency to me is a matter of categories; theological categories that allow me to understand the human condition and help me follow the Spirit in healing individuals.
   Let me say one more thing, and I’m not sure how I want to say this here. I think there’s a great deal of prejudice, if prejudice could be defined as “prejudgment,” in the whole arena of what form of counseling really honors the scriptures. I think there’s a lot of really good people who are saying, “We want with all our hearts to honor scripture, and to honor Christ, to honor the necessity of the Holy Spirit, and to honor the glory of the Father.” But we make so many assumptions without dialogue. And that’s prejudice. It’s no different from racial prejudice. It’s hideous. I think that before we have any basis for criticizing, we need to be in dialogue and discover what the real heart of the other person is. We need to recognize that a lot of what results in prejudice and prejudgment really becomes a matter of pride and not matter of living for the Lord. Lewis talks to a graduating class of Cambridge about how we can create an inner ring, where he said the greatest danger in our Christian spiritual journey is the desire to be in the inner ring, to find something that makes us “in” so that we can exclude others. We will be in and others will be out and we will take joy in that. And that’s illegitimate. Whatever inner ring we belong to, there should be a humble desire for others to join the party that we’re enjoying, as opposed to, “Well I’m right and you’re wrong,” or “Well that person ought to go to hell for the way they’re living,” or “Well that person’s a bit wrong in their theology.” If it’s said with that kind of an attitude, it’s certainly not of the Lord. Now there’s nothing wrong with holy anger. We need to point out sin clearly and boldly, but with a burden for the sinner. Yes, of course it’s wrong, and of course there’s right and wrong. I’m not so clearly postmodern that there’s not right and wrong. But I would like to see an attitude that’s more irenic without compromising our concern for scripture, and the only way I know to achieve that is to engage in a lot of dialogue and to recognize that the motivation behind many of our customs often has less to do with our commitment to the authority of scripture and more to do with our pride.