A Christian Counseling Model

The basic task of pastoring people is helping them to grow.  A major component of this then is counseling.  And both counseling and pastoring are tied closely to our view of sanctification, and our view of the human person.  There are several major schools of thought today that provide us an approach to helping people to grow:

“Christian Counseling.” The Christian Counseling movement is very integrationist in its philosophy.  The basic idea is to build on secular counseling insights and just insert Christian values without addressing the fundamental models. This school is best represented by Gary Collins and his book “Christian Counseling” There are several problems with this.  First  Secular Psychology and Christian psychology are based on very different premises. Starting with the existence of God, and working through the various facets of the human personality, traditional psychological models differ greatly from a Biblical view.   Secular counseling for example has no concept of “sin” and therefore no idea of “correction.”   Secondly, secular models are not static.  Contemporary psychology has great diversity and the reigning paradigms change every decade or two.

“Biblical Counseling” Also called “Nouthetic Counseling.” This is the movement started by Jay Adams with his seminal work “Competent to Counsel.”  Adams is a strong correction to integrationist approaches.  Looking at examples from his books, you could almost caricature his model as “Scriptural Rebuke.”   Basically this is the no nonsense, in your face, why didn’t you do the right thing approach, salted with a some Scripture verses.  Now, this is certainly better than secular counseling for sure, because you are getting responsibility back on the person instead of just validating them.

“Deliverance.” In the Charismatic church, if you have a problem you can’t beat we say that you have a demon.  The idea is that if we cast it out, you will be able to break the cycle.  This traditionally involves repentance of past sins, naming the spirit and commanding it to leave.  A new movement of “Inner Healing” has rounded out the deliverance approach   This has meant a greater focus on the “Father’s Heart,” and healing of past wounds.   Deliverance methods are great if the person you are working with has the anointing to just blast the devil off of you, but a lot of people end up frustrated trying to get free from their problems when the focus is on the devil alone.

“Discipleship Counseling” This is the name that Neal Anderson has chosen for his model, but I think a more descriptive name would be Christian Identity Counseling . Anderson’s model is kind of like Deliverance gone mainstream. He’s taken the concepts made them more palatable and consistent and give it his own twist, which has evolved over time. Anderson’s basic idea is that when you are not doing well it is because you are failing to recognize your identity in Christ. In addition, you may have demonic activity, which mainstream models essentially ignore.   I am most familiar with Anderson’s model because I have tried, used it, and built on its insights.   With time this has led me to identify what I see as flaws in the approach and move toward our own FCF approach.

Anderson, whether consciously or not, has much similarity with the “Word of Faith” movement.  He leans toward a once saved always saved model of salvation and with it an approach that if things are going wrong it is because you are not walking in your already fully established identity in Christ.    One sign of this is his use of the word “renounce” in several places where it would be natural to say “repent.”   This seems to stem from the idea that if you are already perfect in Christ, you are simply needing to “renounce” the problem rather than take ownership of it and repent.   The idea being that your spirit is perfect, but your flesh is not.   Your flesh sinned.   This can lead to the thinking that “it really wasn’t me it was my flesh.”

“Reality Counseling“  For now this is what I’m going to call our method.   It is NOT to be confused with secular “Reality Therapy.” First, we see “exposure” as a major facet of freedom.  Talking and bringing the problem fully out into the light is critical.   What are the roots?  How does it function?  What is your pattern?  Related to this, we see that most people  work very hard to “put up a front” for others to see.  It is critical that you tear down this idol of pleasing others and get real in order to be free.  As long as you are trying to be someone you are not, you are in works, and God’s grace will not function for you.   When you bring your real sins and real self before God only then through the blood of Christ can you be secure and accepted in his presence. If you are hiding like Adam and Eve were in the garden, you cannot experience the cleansing power of that blood.   This is the reality about yourself.

Second, in response to Anderson, we believe very much that you may not be saved, and that can lose your salvation.   In addition, we see “In Christ” as an important reality which applies subsequent to repentance, not as a proxy for repentance.   You must take full responsibility for having committed the sin, whether or not there was demonic involvement.  You must then repent and turn away from it at the point that if it were offered to you again, you would not take it because you would rather have Christ.     Then you can assert your identity in Christ, because you are now “in Christ” in this area.  Being in Christ is something that happens by faith, and happens progressively.   As you repent and excercise faith, you are more “in Christ.”   This is not from a perspective of your salvation, but it is from a perspetive of your ongoing experience of God and victory over sin.   This is the reality of your sin.

Connected with this is the issue of faith and works.   If you try to fight your sin without really repenting, or fight the devil without really removing, you will be in works.  You will be trying to please God by doing good things instead of accepting that God loves you regardless of your inability to do good things.  It is by abiding in this unconditional love, and by receiving forgiviness for your sins that results from repentance that you will have the power of God living inside of you.   When you try to get God to love you more by human effort, you are in works.   This is the Reality of God’s love.

After exposing, and taking real ownership of the issue including repentance, you can deal with the demonic power that is reinforcing the pattern.   We really see this as the devil’s role.  He’s like the iron padlock on the door of your sin.   He keeps reinforcing it by making it hard to do the right thing, and easy to the wrong thing.   He supercharges the evil, and fights you on the good.   He plays tapes in your head and until you accept them.  He’s an evil bully.    We will command him to go, but you must be ready to take back the ground one piece at a time.   We look for “total disfellowship” as the condition of his removal.  Every thing that causes you to “like” him being there must be gone.   But I don’t like the devil being there?   You like what he offers you on the front end, just not what you get on the back end.  You like the drinking but not the hangover.   When you stop liking the drinking, the devil’s days are numbered.   This is the reality about the devil.

<!–[if !mso]> <! st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } –>

The basic task of pasturing people is helping them to grow. A major component of this then is counseling. And both counseling and pastoring are tied closely to our view of sanctification, and our view of the human person. There are several major schools of thought today that provide us an approach to helping people to grow:

“Christian Counseling.” The Christian Counseling movement is very integrationist in its philosophy. The basic idea is to build on secular counseling insights and just insert Christian values without addressing the fundamental models. This school is best represented by Gary Collins and his book “Christian Counseling” There are several problems with this. First Secular Psychology and Christian psychology are based on very different premises. Starting with the existence of God, and working through the various facets of the human personality, traditional psychological models differ greatly from a Biblical view. Secular counseling for example has no concept of “sin” and therefore no idea of “correction.” Secondly, secular models are not static. Contemporary psychology has great diversity and the reigning paradigms change every decade or two.

“Biblical Counseling” Also called “Nouthetic Counseling.” This is the movement started by Jay Adams with his seminal work “Competent to Counsel.” Adams is a strong correction to integrationist approaches. Looking at examples from his books, you could almost caricature his model as “Scriptural Rebuke.” Basically this is the no nonsense, in your face, why didn’t you do the right thing approach, salted with a some Scripture verses. Now, this is certainly better than secular counseling for sure, because you are getting responsibility back on the person instead of just validating them.

“Deliverance.” In the Charismatic church, if you have a problem you can’t beat we say that you have a demon. The idea is that if we cast it out, you will be able to break the cycle. This traditionally involves repentance of past sins, naming the spirit and commanding it to leave. A new movement of “Inner Healing” has rounded out the deliverance approach This has meant a greater focus on the “Father’s Heart,” and healing of past wounds.

“Discipleship Counseling” This is the name that Neal Anderson has chosen for his model, but I think a more descriptive name would be Christian Identity Counseling . Anderson’s model is kind of like Deliverance gone mainstream. He’s taken the concepts made them more palatable and consistent and give it his own twist, which has evolved over time. Anderson’s basic idea is that when you are not doing well it is because you are failing to recognize your identity in Christ. In addition, you may have demonic activity, which the other two models essentially ignore. Overall, Anderson’s I am most familiar with Anderson’s model because I have used it, and I see several weaknesses

New Perspective on Paul

It was asked in a comment what is the significance of the New Perspective on Paul.   First of all, I am not going to pretend to be an expert.  It’s a bit of a tricky subject that people will want to argue about.  If you want a more expert debriefing, check out one of the audios here.  Or you may want to look at John Piper’s book “The Future of Justification.”

The simple version is as follows.   Back in the 70s, a scholar named E.P. Sanders wrote a book called “Paul and Palestinian Judaism.”   It claimed that Paul was not arguing against Jewish legalism, he was just arguing against Jewish exclusivity.   It was based on research which Sanders believed showed the Pharisees and others to not be oriented toward salvation by works by to salvation by grace.

It seems like a minor argument, but it’s actually quite significant.  If Paul was not arguing against Jewish legalism then this affects the meaning of terms like “justification” and “works of the law.”   If Paul was not arguing against those who would seek salvation by human effort, then in effect things like the letter to the Romans are no longer about how to be saved.  They are about who gets to be in the church or not.

Sanders contended that Luther’s tortured conscience is really the source for our reading of these terms as dealing with legalism.  Ever since the Reformation we’ve been misunderstanding it.   In essence, this reading of Paul reverses the Reformation.   Out is the “old” Lutheran salvation by faith perspective and in is something about being part of God’s covenant people.  If Salvation is not by faith, then dare I say we labor in vain.

This argument was picked up by James D.G Dunn of the University of Durham in England and then N.T. Wright, who is now Bishop of Durham.  N.T. Wright is the main person influencing the average evangelical.  This is because he sees himself a kind of moderate evangelical, and has taken strong stands in the past against the crazy theological liberal ideas.   People that are otherwise very orthodox are drinking down his commentaries and books.   Certain ultra-Calvinist groups have also picked up on this as a basis for their views called the “Federal Vision” or “Auburn Avenue Theology,” which undermines salvation by faith too, but just in a more conservative way.

Now of course Wright is too slippery to show his cards and take these ideas to the logical conclusion.  If someone from the NPP were to show up and read this blog they would most likely claim that I had not really understood the New Perspective, or that I was making conclusions that the proponents themselves do not make.   I think Wright as an Anglican may see himself as trying to create a new path by de-emphasizing certain Reformation distinctives and thus build a bridge between Protestants and Catholics, but it’s not really a new path, it’s a new basis for the old path of salvation through the “church.”  It seems that ever since it’s founding Anglicanism is always fighting between the Puritan and High Church parties — see for example the “Oxford Movement” Regardless, it’s not a path we can take, because even if Wright and other proponents are unwilling to draw the conclusions, they will inevitably surface.

Pentecostal or Reformed?

With the rise of contemporary Reformed thought, a number of Charismatic groups have also arisen which embrace Calvinism.  Perhaps the most important of these is “New Frontiers” a major church planting network from England.    A major concept for Charismatics in the 20th century was a dream of unifying the “Word and the Spirit.”  Ern Baxter, one of the major leaders of the Shepherding Movement, was one who held to this concept.    So was R.T. Kendall, who wrote a book by the same title with Paul Cain.   Smith Wigglesworth gave a major prophecy on this topic near the end of his life.   Baxter and Kendall saw this as a union between Calvinism and the Charismatic.  And there are many heirs of the Shepherding Movement today who hold to Calvinism.  C.J. Mahaney is perhaps the one with the highest profile.   So there has been, and continues to be a shift toward Calvinism among Charismatics.

This partly because of the logical connection between Charismatic ideas like hearing God speak, being refined by fire,  and waiting on God with the concept of a God who controls the details of our lives.   If you doubt that these ideas create problems or go together, look no father than the recent book written by the young Reformed pastor titled: Just Do Something

Now the reality is that few people hold a truly consistent theology.  Instead we tend to get our ideas out of a buffet of the current ideas of the time.   At the same time, even those who are expert in theology are not always consistent, because the consistency leads to uncomfortable conclusions.  Now to a certain extent, such tensions are inevitable – since the creator of the universe could never be reduced to a single idea.   On the other hand the recognition of tension does not mean that we have to live in confusion, contradiction or denial.   Every theology has a “center” that really determines the direction it will ultimately go, regardless of what beliefs specific individuals hold.

So for example, if you are a Calvinist and belief that God predestines people to salvation, you can of course be a very evangelistic person and belief in the urgency of mission.  However this is logically inconsistent.   If God has already predestined them, it takes a lot of the urgency of mission away.  Therefore with time – perhaps a couple of generations, the theology will tend toward it’s logical “center”  This is about where things stood in the days of William Carey, when he launched the missions movement almost singlehandedly against the Calvinistic bent of his day.   This idea of a God who is in control is the logical center of Calvinism.  Therefore I believe that a truly consistent Calvinism will ultimately always tend to be more focused on government of this world than evangelism.  There will also always be more Calvinist intellectuals than Arminian ones, because the logic focus on the need for man to “do” is decreased, and the logical need for him know the correct theology is increased.   Only when you look into history and trace what happens to an idea after it has been living in a church culture for a few generations do you really get the flavor of where it leads.

Arminian theology seems to thrive best as a response to Calvinism because it does not have as good of a theological “center” as Calvinism does.   A theology of “free will” alone can too easily lead to liberalism or humanism.   People crop up to call themselves “Arminian” basically only when the Calvinists start telling us that God is damning people.  Aside from that most Christians are glad to ignore the “systems” and just say that God wants people saved.    If Calvinism and Reformed though are not healthy centers, and Arminianism alone is not a viable center, long term, what is?

The reason I feel the need to address this topic is because I was listening to the Introductory lectures of the brilliant instructor Richard Pratt, on the RTS Itunes U.   His explanation of Reformed/Calvinistic thought as a tradition was compelling, and it led me to ask, do we have a tradition that can be as logically compelling as Reformed thought or are we just a protest movement?

In my last post I talked about a unifying idea for a truly Pentecostal/Charismatic theology:  Possibility in God.   This is a truly Arminian concept, yet it is also a God-centered concept.  I propose this as an alternative “theological center”   For Wesley this manifested in the sanctification idea.  He believe that holiness was possible in God.  150 years later, the holiness people were putting this into practice and seeing dramatic miracles (and yes, a good deal of legalism).   The Pentecostals took the holiness ideal to its logical conclusion and became a movement based around the possibility of walking as Jesus walked.   As long as we are reaching toward God as a people, we as a people will continue to move theologically and eschatologically toward Him.  As soon as we stop, we are off into error.

The Theology of the Possible

After years of study, I feel that I am finally starting to get a hold of an idea that has eluded me.  I did a long paper in Seminary so that I could clearly understand eschatology.  Separately, I’ve been trying to understand how Charismatic preaching and Bible interpretation works.   This leads ultimately to an examination of our Charismatic practice to find the “way forward.”

There are a lot of groups offering us a false “way forward” in the church right now.  The whole “Emergent” movement is capturing a generation with pseudo-Christianity.  The seeker friendly church is watering down the Gospel.  The New Perpsective on Paul is deceiving the scholars.  The Charismatic church is rife with abuse of money and power, and chasing after signs.   Meanwhile our culture is going down so fast we can’t keep up.  It’s discouraging out there.  We need revival.

Now this is not a post about revival, but it is a post about having a theology that can undergird a revival.   This is the theology fo the possible.

First, our view of the end times.   I have come to the conclusoin that although almost no Charismatic/Pentecostals who embrace amillennialism as a system, we are in fact amillennial by  nature!  Just to review, in a nutshell, the postmillennial view looks for taking over of institutions.  The premillennial view looks for Christ to return and take over.  The amillennial view says that we are in a spiritual millennium now.   This is why some theologians prefer the term “present millennialism” or “inaugurated millennialism.”  The reason why we are present millennial in nature is because we fundamentally are a movement about believing that you can have “more of God” than you have.   We are a movement that says you can “be like Jesus.” You can actually do the things he did, think like he thought.  You can have a ministry like the apostles had.   This is a basic hermeneutic of bringing a spiritual reality from heaven into earth.    This is present millennialism.

However, Charismatic/Penteocstal groups have been everything but present millennial.  This is at least partly because the he Reformed/Calvinist guys who developed Amillennialism have a very boring conception of a spritual millennlum.  They would go bonkers if they heard we had adopted their view (and made it more optimistic), but the basic features of their system, how it reads the Bible, and where it puts events, is really the one that “fits” with Charismatic/ Pentecostalism.  It’s not just a “good option” for us.  It fits with our “more of God” view life.

You see, postmillennialism, which is popular in some Charismatic circles, like Bill Johnson or Bill Hamon, involves us ultimately “taking over.”  It’s definitely an attitude of the “possible” but it is not an attitude of the spiritually possible.  The more you get into taking over this world, the more you end up moving away from the Pentecostal/Charismatic idenity of having “more of God.”    Same thing with premillennialism.   When you get into this, you stop believe God about what you are and can become, and you start focusing on what is coming, and how you have a “last days” ministry.   Now that I see this, I would call John G. Lake a present millennialist.   His life passion was bringing the spiritual dominion of God into the Earth.   He rejected the premillennial dispensationalism that all of the Pentecostals of his day accepted, and although he had a “dominion” mindset, it was not about taking over governments.   His passion was the God kind of life.  That is my passion too.  And that is the same thing that George Warnock lays out in the Feast of Tabernacles.

Connect to this, The Latter Rain brought in a view of “Restored Truth” showing that the Church was moving progressively in a direction looking more like the early church.   The early rain had come, and now the “latter rain” is coming.   One step at a time, first Luther bringing back salvation by faith, then Wesley bringing back responsibility of man, then the Pentecostals bringing back the dynamic experience of the Holy Spirit, etc.   The church itself is on a trajectory of spiritual upward movement.   Each move of God takes us closer to be a glorious end time church.     This concept also fits with both the Charismatic worldview, and the present millennial system.

This leads to my third, related, observation.   The Charismatic hermeneutic is different from the traditional Reformed hermeneutic.  They believe all doctrine must originate from the Bible.  We believe that God is speaking now to highlight things in the Bible that we never corporately saw or practiced before.  Of course no one explicitly believes that, but in practice that is exactly what Charismatics believe.    For the Reformed people God “spoke.”  For us he “is speaking.”   It is a way of saying we believe in revelation.   We do not believe that prophets or a revival can create new doctrine, but because we believe God is restoring the church, we believe revival can reveal Biblical doctrine that has not been emphasized before — such as the 5 fold ministry.   It’s been there for 2 thousand years, but only since 1948 has anyone actually “tried” it.    That’s because we believe in the possible.  We believe that the church and the individual have the possibility to be more like God than they are and that is what God is taking us to, one step at a time.  Therefore when a “new revelation” is released, we instinctively receive it as part of taking us there.   This is actually not always good, but do you see how it ties together?   The “more of God” worldview means a present millennium, a view of the progressive restoration of the church,  and an openness to what God is saying “now” through the church.

This has been a missing piece — connecting our theory of what we are dong to what we are actually doing.   Normally we just dip into the evangelical bucket for “doctrine” add on a few Charismatic distinctives and keep doing our Charismatic thing.   It is inconsistent.   Part of what we’re missing is how you “validate” when God is bringing something forth, versus when it just sounds exciting, but isn’t a revelation.   Charismatics are very succeptible to hype.  If you hype it up, we might think the Spirit is moving.  And the Spirit moving is the hermeneutic of now.   If you are bringing more of God, you must be right, and you must have the doctrine we need.    No need to validate.   But if you wanted to validate, would you have the tools?  No.   That’s because evangelical hermeneutics do not provide the tools.   They just tell you how to be “safe” and avoid any possibility of error — which of course doesn’t work anyway.   But now things are changing.   Redemptive-Historical preaching and Biblical Theology are on the rise, and they are unlocking how the Bible itself works.  My theory is that this method of reading the Bible is more conducive to revelation.  It recognizes that how the Apostles themselves interpreted Scripture is how we should interpret it.  As Pentecostals, we go one step farther — they way they interpreted the OT, is the way we should interpret the NT and evaluate revelation.    Use of the apostolic method of hermeneutics is how we should validate what God is speaking to the church “now.”

For me this leads to a tight theology of the possible.   We are Arminian because we believe that the way things are is NOT the way things have to be.  We embrace a view of “Restored Truth” and are present millennial because we believe in greater possibilities for the church itself in history.    We use Apostolic Hermeneutics because we believe that we can do the same things that the apostles did,  including the way they interpreted the Bible, and even receiving revelation directly from God.   These are all deeply rooted in and connected by the single belief that we can and will have “more of God”!

The Feast of Tabernacles

I just finished reading The Feast of Tabernacles by George Warnock.  It is definitely one of the seminal books of the Charismatic movement, although very few contemporary Charismatics have heard of it.  Warnock was a key figure in the “Latter Rain” revival of 1948, and wrote the Tabernacles in 1951 in response to a prophecy.  He had this to say about the relationship between the Latter Rain and the Charismatic movement “It wasn’t long until the move of God began to infiltrate the large post-reformation churches, and some saw fit to give it a name that was more prestigious — The Charismatic Movement.”

FoT is contains an elaborate and fascinating set of typologies.  Perhaps because of this, and because of the climate during the 20^th century which was hostile to typology he includes a section in the book where he explains and defends its use.  It may be the only book I’ve ever read which actually explains in some part the theory of hermeneutics that underlies it.   I was interested in the book because something of the Latter Rain has always captured my interest, especially since it is talked about so glowingly by certain ones who were “there” and at the same time an almost forgotten movement because so many who were involved dissolved in the Charismatic movement or got into cults.  So that leaves me with a question – what was it that was good about the LR that we should keep, and what was bad that caused the problems?  So reading the FoT is part of going to back to the source.

The basic theory of the book is simple.  There are 3 biblical feasts:  Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles.   Passover and Pentecost are explicitly fulfilled in the New Testament which leaves an open question about the Feast of Tabernacles.  That fulfillment is coming at the end of age – now – through the people of God.   The first part of the book is spent laying the backdrop of the other two feasts and seems fairly straightforward.  It begins to get interesting as he moves deeper into the Tabernacles concept and seeks Biblical justification in a variety of places.

Warnock looks at the various celebrations of the Feast of Tabernacles in the Bible as each showing us something about a final eschatological Feast of Tabernacles in the Church: Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, Nehemiah, Jesus visit to the Feast

Criticisms

First, let me deal with places where I had issues or disagreed.  My main and most consistent of the book is the thinly veiled elitism it contains.  In several places the implication is made either directly or through typology that if you are not with “us,” you are against God.   This same kind of elitism continues today in some heirs of the Latter Rain.  This is where the Charismatic idea of responding to critics as “Pharisees” seems to stem from.  Let me say up front, that the most Pharisee-like experience I’ve ever had was in a Charismatic church.

In addition the idea of rallying around a doctrine is derided, while at the same time new doctrines are advanced.  I definitely see the point that during a special revival visitation of Christ, doctrine becomes less important as the true people of God are called out from every place and called together, yet during the rest of time doctrine is an important part of building together.

Warnock has an unusual idea of there being different groups within the church.  In other words descriptions like “Sons,” “The Bride,” which we take to be metaphors for the church, he sees as parts of the church.  Here again is a problem.  Although he does not develop the idea here, others did, and it led to serious elitism.  What if I’m a manifested son and you’re not?  What if I’m the bride and you’re not?

Hermeneutics

First, I strongly believe in Warnock’s basic theory of approaching Scripture. Sixty years later the scholarly community seems to be slowly moving to the place where Warnock already was by revelation.  The Hermeneutical principles he lays out are:

1. We should use the same principles of hermeneutics that the apostles did
2. Typology is valid and important in interpreting Scripture
3. All of the Bible is applicable to us. (He identifies the church as spiritual Israel)
4. The Old Testament is the pattern of the New.  (1 Cor 15:46)

I was thrilled when I first read this because it follows the exact line I’ve been exploring through other channels.  It was a strong confirmation that the journey I’ve been on for Spirit-filled hermeneutics was heading the right direction.

We see Warnock applying these hermeneutics throughout the book.  In the end of the book he looks at Moses and Elijah appearing on the mountain and Peter offering to construct “tents” (tabernacles) there as a sign of a “Moses-Elijah Company” on the Earth.

In addition to applying the Feasts typology to history (Passover=Reformation, Pentecost=Pentecostalism, Tabernacles=Return of Christ), he applies the history of Israel as a pattern for the history of the church.  We already went through the “Babylonian Captivity” of the Dark Ages (this is in agreement with Luther).  Protestantism itself was a kind of “Second Temple,” but just like the second temple, it ended in a system of religion not glory.  The idea is that now in the post-Chistendom era, we are in the same place Spiritually as when Christ came the first time and he is preparing the house for his return.  This pattern may be more of a stretch, but it is interesting.  He then spends a chapter examining the restoration of the temple by Zerubabbel, Nehemiah, comparing their task of restoration of the Temple to our task of restoring the church.  This works, but it doesn’t exactly match the historical recapitulation scheme he set up.

He uses numerous other types and symbols as well.  He shows the significance of the number 2.  He looks briefly at the concept of redigging of wells, which was such a big deal recently in the Charismatic movement.  He uses the story of Jonathan winning a victory but being punished for eating the honey as a typological story of being punished for tasting the fruit of the spiritual “promised land.”  He also interprets Jacob’s ladder.  Really it’s a gold mine of typological interpretations.  Some very strong, some not as strong, but really an example I’d like to examine in more detail as an application of “Apostolic hermeneutics” to now.

Eschatology

Different Charismatic groups have built different eschatologies, but they all differ from the traditional Pentecostal dispensationalism, and this is due directly to the influence of the Latter Rain.   Warnock sees the “hope of the church” not as the return of Christ to the saints, but as the Glory of Christ filling the “Temple” of the church in the same way it did in Solomon’s dedication ceremony.

He has a big vision for what is possible in God.  In fact, you could say that his vision was very similar to that of the original Pentecostals.  He talks about speaking in foreign tongues (xenolalia), being translated, and doing all kinds of exploits.  It was definitely a vision of “unlimited Christianity” and read  a lot like a David Hogan story. (p181)  I got a kick out of this line “They shall poison his food but it shall be like adding vitamins to his diet.”   The emphasis here though is on living the very same kind of life that Jesus did.  This is a part of the Spirit filled promise that we should never lay aside.  In some ways that was what the Feast of Tabernacles book was all about – a kind of trumpet call to the church saying that we are entering and end time phase of history where as Christ begins to tabernacle more with his church, we shall increasingly reflect the glory and power of Christ.  I believe both of those things.

Warnock sees overcomers as coming to a place where they speak “with such power and authority that the very nations themselves will have to bow in submission.”  This sounds postmillennial on the surface, but I actually see his ideas a more of a modified amillennialism, because they do not focus on cultural transformation, they focus on spiritual transformation and victory.  He acknowledges a Great Tribulation, but he sees these overcomers as having remarkable authority in the midst of it, including prayers that cut it short, and in general a ministry to those who are oppressed and persecuted during it.   The concept here is of a deep intimacy with God and protection during the judgment as Noah was protected in the Ark.  Our covenant must end in “glory and victory” because it is a ministry of life, where as the Mosiac covenant was a ministry of death. This is a pattern of “Spiritual Victory,” as opposed to postmillennial ideas of physical dominion, or premillennial ideas of awaiting the king, or evangelizing to save as many before he comes.

On the one hand, I want to dream big, on the other hand, it seems that if you get focused on being “powerful” you don’t be come powerful, you become arrogant.  I’m not sure how to resolve this at the level of personal spirituality yet.

Covenant Theology

After demolishing dispensationalism, I heard a great Bible teacher say that covenant theology was the answer to the problem.   This guy was such a great Bible teacher that I was intrigued.   I recently spent a good amount of time looking into Covenant theology and I have a few things to say about it.

First, covenant theology is NOT just a listing of the covenants in the Bible.  Covenant theology is a theory about a relationship of all of the covenants into a overarching structure of covenants.  Normally these three covenants are the covenant of redemption, covenant of works, and the covenant of grace.   The covenants in the Bible are categorized or placed into this overarching scheme.   Therefore, when we are talking about covenant theology what we are really talking about is a view of redemptive history.   The fact that there a series of covenants in the Bible, no one can dispute.   The issue is in what way do they relate to one another, to specific eras, and to the overall history of humanity?

Secondly, although this is considered a “classic” position, there is much disagreement and variety with the viewpoint.   If you start reading in the topic, you do not end up just reading one “definitive” statement and many sub-views, you end up reading about a series of thinkers, many of whom were not Puritans, but were Reformed thinkers on the Continent.   Modern renovators of covenant theology have even more disagreement among themselves.

The basically outline of Covenant theology is as follows:

1. The Covenant of Redemption.  This is an agreement within the trinity to save mankind.  This is invented to deal with Calvinist problem of “decrees.”
2. The Covenant of Works. This is when God gives man a covenant which he must obey in order to live.   Most covenant theologians only look at the relationship with Adam in the garden as being a Covenant of Works.  Some call it the “covenant of life” pointing out that eternal life, even in the Garden was not by works, it was simply there for the offering, and Adam blew it (J. Rodman Williams).   Others call it the “covenant of creation” (Michael Horton).
3. The Covenant of Grace. Since man failed in the covenant of works, God followed up with a series of grace-based covenants begininning with Noah, and ending with the New Covenant set up by Christ.

There is disagreement over what to do with the Sinai Covenant.   Herman Witsius, one of the classic Reformation covenant thinkers said it was a “mixed” covenant, because it had both elements of grace and of works.   Obviously then arguments could be made for it being a works or a grace based relationship.

The advantage of covenant theology as a view of redemptive history is that it promotes a sense of continuity between the testaments and therefore helps us understand and apply the Old Testament.  The disadvantage is the same — the tendency is so much in the direction of unity that Charles Hodge actually intimates that the Old Testament believers really did believe in Christ — even though He is not talked about in the OT, there are other things which the pharisees knew that aren’t in the OT, and therefore it must have just been commonly understood.  This is what I might call “radical continuity.”  This kind of “radical continuity” forms a rationale for theonomists and other classic Puritans who bring the Old Testament directly into the present.

For the past century dispensationalism has been the alternative to covenant theology.  It proposes a kind of “radical discontinuity.”  God deals with man in different eras.  This leads quickly to us looking at the Old Testament and saying”why read it, it was for another people at another time.”   Or if we do read it, we have to figure out how to read it by using statements like “well they were under law.”   This also fails.   What is needed is an approach which promotes integration between the Testaments without confusing them.

An interesting observation in this area is that the terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” are misleading.  The word “testament” is a synonym for “covenant” but the Old Covenant spoken of by Paul was not that made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, or David.  It is specifically the covenant made with Moses.  Paul reaffirms the promises made to Abraham. The book of Genesis then is not really in the Old Testament    By the same token, Jesus performed his ministry under the Old Covenant, so the gospels are not really part of the New Testament.  Chew on that!

Covenant theology also makes an interesting reversal.   Instead of asking “Why the Gentiles” you end up asking “Why Israel”?  In other words, why interrupt the plan of redemption with 1500 years of law, symbols and types to lead to Christ?   Why not just send Christ to the world?  It’s a fascinating question which I cannot answer yet (I heard Wayne Grudem say on a tape that he couldn’t either so I’m not feeling too bad about it), but I think it’s a valid one.

My wife complains that the covenant theology system is to Aristotlean.  That is, it is too much of an imposition of a system on the text.   I see her point.  If they can’t figure out what the Sinai Covenant is — grace or works — that’s a pretty big piece of data to not be able to interpret.  And you can also see how Reformation salvation concerns are read into the scheme — Works vs. Grace.

Yet at the same time, the continuity promoted by the basic covenant approach has merit.  The “covenant of works” for example, I find a much better way of explaining the guilt of man than “Adam blew it for you.”   Instead, we can say that Adam was in a covenant, and he failed in that covenant, which is still in force down until now.   You cannot go back into the garden and re-make the choice, but Jesus did.  He took the penalty for Adam’s eating of the wrong tree, and became a “tree of life” that you can partake of.   Christianity is the second garden.

The point of covenant theology then stands.   How you relate the covenants to one another is the key to redemptive history.  Not relating them as in dispenationalism has been tried and found wanting.   The traditional scheme has insights but seems to also have issues too.  What is needed is an enhanced or modified version that addresses and explains the progressive nature of each of the covenants, this includes a satisfying explanation of “why Israel” and a basis for a healthy relationship between the old and the new .    The concept of works and grace I think is a valid one and part of the answer, but maybe not “the answer” itself.

Deliverance versus Repentance

Since coming to Cincinnati we have been working with guys who are in recovery from various serious serious issues including substance abuse.   Our initial approach centered on having a deliverance “encounter” with each person when they arrive.   This would last for at least 4 hours.  These sessions have been very effective in breaking the “first wave” of issues that people bring.  This includes deep wounds from the past, unconfessed sins, anger with God, etc.  Exposing these things has enabled people to receive healing for the issues that underlie their actual problems.

What we noticed however, is that after that initial session, the follow-on sessions were not as effective.  This is not because every demonic influence in a person’s life has been removed.  It is because the ones that remain are deeply enmeshed in their personality.   How do you address these?   Can you cast them out?  Mainstream deliverance ministries would have you think so.    I believe that you can cast out any Spirit, but you can’t cast out a person’s character — and usually with this “second level” of issues, you’re talking about the two things working together.   In fact, what we have begun to see is that people who have been floating around the charismatic community will tend to do things which are actually counter-productive:

1. Blame their character problems on the devil.

2. Talk about problems being in their “soul.”

In both cases, you end up with the problem being somewhere else other than with you.   “Yeah, that spirit of accusation came on me,” is a convenient way of blaming the devil for you accusing someone.  In this sense, the devil doesn’t mind being blamed.   As long as you keep blaming him, you’ll never get rid of him! You are responsible to repent when a demonic spirit comes on you, you are also responsible not to obey it.  So it is you we need to talk about, not the devil.   When you are no longer friends with him, he’s easy to remove.

Secondly, the “soul realm” may be a nice apologetic to explain to Christians why they can have a demon, but it is not helpful in getting rid of them.   People start thinking that they have no responsibility becaues it is in their “soul realm,” while their spirit man is perfect.  I do not believe this is a Biblical teaching.  The Bible teaches that we are sinners, and we need to repent, not just to come to Christ, but to stay clean.  Don’t talk to me about the devil is operating in your soul realm, talk to me about how you sinned, and you are ready to repent.  In order to be free you need to take responsibility and you need to start rejecting your sin BEFORE the consequences come in, not just after they happen.

The process becomes not one primarily of “deliverance” but of teaching and repentance.   The devil likes us to dance around the problem when he is working through someone else.  He wants us to avoid the person with anger, and to lie to the person who is pressuring us, etc.  That way the person is never confronted with their own problem — and their demon is never confronted either.  He has a nice “perimeter” from which to operate and stay hidden.  The loving but firm confrontation is what actually helps to separate the person from the devil.   They need to see what they are doing, and then they can disfellowship with it.   After this correction, the “casting out” is not a big deal.

The Canonical Exegesis Movement

The “Canonical Exegesis Movement” is not a term in use by anyone, but it is a description of something real that is going on in our time.   For most of the 20th century, dispensationalism reigned supreme among evangelicals.  This led to a lot of problems with our hermeneutics — because it was “hyper-literal” and because it wrote off the Old Testament as being “under Law” and therefore not applicable.    The more academic types mixed this with higher critical assumptions about the books of the Bible being independent units which had to be read atomistically.

By the early part of the century, most of the evangelical options for Seminary education had disappeared as the “modernists” or liberals took over the denominations.   This happened at almost the exact same time as the rise of dispensationalism.   It was like a double tidal wave erasing our heritage and leaving us with a shell of the remainder.    With time the fundamentalists and later the evangelicals regrouped and founded their own seminaries.   You can find the present list of evangelical seminaries here. You can see that there are now many of them an always new ones forming.   However, most of them are relatively young.   Not to overstate Westminster Theological Seminary may in some ways be the only direct connection we have with earlier heritage of Christian thought in our country going back to the Puritans.  It was founded by J. Gresham Machen in protest over over the liberal slide of Princeton, and in preserved for us a non-dispensational heritage. Perhaps this is why people associated with it and its daughter seminaries (WTS California, and Redeemer) are among the leaders in bringing back the “old ways”  Among these is the procedure of looking at the whole Bible for truth, including a careful use of images and types.

Two major shifts happened over in the liberal world which also signaled an open door for evangelicals to pursue this avenue — Robert Alter did literary analysis which obseleted some of the old JEPD theory stuff, and Brevard Childs of Yale changed the discussion about Biblical Theology among some liberals to be about what is actually in the Bible.   The generation of scholars just coming of age now are riding on these developments.   On their shelves however are the classic books by Geerhardus Vos (Biblical Theology), Patrick Fairbairn (Typology), and Meredith Kline (Kingdom Prologue) which do not look through the dispensational lens.

Suddenly we’re seeing a whole new set of things going on.  We have dictionaries such as the “New Dictionary of Biblical Theology” and the “Dictionary of Biblical Imagery” which are designed to look at themes as they develop in the Bible.   We also have a major series of theology books released by IVP on Biblical Theology topics.   There is also a major commentary now on the use of the old testament in the new, headed by perhaps the leading evangelical scholar in this area — Greg Beale.   Beale said it rightly that his recent move to Westminster was a kind of coming home theologically.   Westminster has never been a place just about “Calvinism” or I wouldn’t even pay attention to it.  It’s a place about continuing the tradition of Reformed thought in all areas.   Reformed Arminians like myself need to listen when these guys talk about stuff other than the TULIP.   After all Calvinists get to spend their lives thinking while we Arminians feel compelled to actually do something

The point however though is that a quiet revolution is taking place in Biblical Exegesis.  The dry commentaries we’ve all gotten used to are going to be on the out, and the deeper, richer, Matthew Henry type stuff is going to come back in.  It goes under different names “intertextuality,” “Canonical exegesis,” “Biblical Theology,”  “Imagery,” “Typology,” but really all of these things are related — they are looking at how the Bible interprets itself from front to back.

As Charismatics we can get a smile out of this since George Warnock layed it all out in his seminal work “Feast of Tabernacles” where he basically explained that we needed to follow the types, and connect the testaments, and do what the apostles did if we wanted to get the real meaning of the Bible out.   All of the Charismatic preaching and teaching goes back to this simple insight that others have then built on.   This was all taking place while the rest of the evangelical and pentecostal world was doing the dry dispensational thing.   No one has been able to articulate clearly the theory under which Charismatic practice rested, however.   You just kind of hear it, watch it, do it.   And some are more interesting than others.  A bunch of Reformed guys who don’t even believe in the Charismatic are about give us a basis for what we do.   By showing how the apostles exegeted the Old Testament text, they will show us how to exegete New Testament text and apply it to now.     For those of you who think this is an esoteric topic, it’s not.  The entirety of Church practice rests on how we read the Scriptures.   Reopening the Scriptures, except this time with significant academic firepower behind it is going to be an awesome thing.   When we start reading the Scriptures the right way, hold on to your hats.

I’m back

After 6 months of good ministry here in Cincinnati, we’ve hit a little bit of a breather, and I have felt the call to begin thinking again.   More specifically, I am getting a sense of a definite call to use my life to develop certain “reformational messages” in the church.   This is because I believe I have discovered a basic principle of the world’s epistemology:  the truth is almost never what the mainstream believes, and it is almost never what those who are reacting against the mainstream believe.  It’s somewhere in the hard to find middle.   Some have called this the “radical middle.”   I find this to be true both in Christian theology/life as well as in secular life.   I believe it is a result of the devil’s tactics to hide the truth from humanity.

Ultimately it is about idolatry.   Men are prone to worship something.    Some idols are made of wood, some are other people,  some are images of ourselves.  Some idols are actually ideologies. They are beliefs which cause us to feel more significant or more secure or otherwise minister to us something that God Himself is the only true solution for.  This creates the phenomenon of people exalting an ideology that is false.   Some people who are succeptible to the same kind of idolatry will follow it.     Everyone else will experience a kind of “blackout” where they know that the idea idol is false, but they can not find a way to an alternative…. and every time they look for one they are punished by the conformers.   This leads some people to rebel, which creates the reactionairies who are usually equally wrong.   To find your way out of the maze you must refuse to believe the commonly held truth, but you must also refuse to become a reactionary.    You may end up walking a very lonely road idealogically speaking!

After years of study to find the truth with the basic rubric above, I find myself there in many areas.  First, I left the background of my youth in the mainline denominations, then I left the more mainstream evangelicals.  So simply being a charismatic/pentecostal is itself a choice to leave the mainstream.   But within that group I now find myself swimming against the tide.   I am an Arminian, which moves directly against the Calvinistic current of our time.  I am an Amillennial which moves against the prevailing premillennial and postmillennial movements of our time.   I am a Reformation traditionalist in an “Emergent” generation that is becoming enamored with the New Perspective on Paul.   I embrace canonical exegesis and typology in a sea of grammatico-historical Bible interpreters.    I believe in demonic deliverance, but not in casting out the “spirit of python.”   I believe that the Word of Faith movement has insights, but is largely in error.  I am a strong Charismatic, but I believe in using the mind.    I reject the Fundamentalist approach to life, but love Fundamentalist preachers.    I embrace the Latter Rain revival, but part with some key ideals.   The list could go on.

In all of this, I have a sense of mission — to light a new way.  Or if you will, relight an old way.  I don’t see anytihng particularly innovative in what I think.  It has just been a rediculously difficult process to find my way out of the maze of popular thinking and to something that “solves the puzzle.”  As I see the church moving in directions I think are counter-productive, I want to raise a standard for these truths.  But that is going to take a lot of work.    So I am repurposing this blog a little.   I am going to put more notes and things on here related to solving these puzzles.   Some of the posts may be less readable, but If you want to come along you’re welcomed.