The OPC, GRACE, Diane Langberg, and Critical Theory, Part 1: Critical Theory

February 18, 2022 at 10:37 am (Anthropology, Feminism, Racism)

Guest Post By Michael Grasso

Should the OPC hire GRACE to investigate potential instances of abuse in its churches?  This question came before the 87th General Assembly (GA) in the form of a motion to add a docket item called “Ministering to victims of abuse”.[1]  The motion needed a 2/3 majority to be added to the docket, and it failed to reach this threshold.  This motion did not come in a vacuum.  Aimee Byrd had called on the OPC to hire this organization on April 5, 2021.[2]  Following the GA’s decision not to take up the question of hiring GRACE, Aimee Byrd publicly condemned the decision of the GA in two blog posts on July 21[3] and 26[4] respectively.  A few months after GA, on October 8-9, the Presbytery of Philadelphia hosted a fall conference on the subject of spiritual abuse with Diane Langberg as the speaker.  Diane Langberg is the author of Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the church and is a former board member of GRACE.  The connection between the conference and the motion brought before the GA was made explicit by the bringer of the motion, Larry Westerveld, whose church hosted the fall conference.[5]  It seems clear from these actions that one of the goals of the conference was to move the denomination in the direction of hiring GRACE at a future GA.

While abuse is something the church must always take seriously, the thesis of these articles is that hiring GRACE would be a mistake, that the ideology driving all of these actions is Critical Theory, and that embracing this ideology, exemplified in Langberg’s book Redeeming Power, would not help abuse victims but remove God-ordained protections for them as well as move the church towards a new form of liberalism.  This will come in four parts.  In the first part I will give an overview of Critical Theory.  In the second and third parts I will review Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church to show the connection with Critical Theory.  Then in the last part, I will try to draw some connections between this ideology and the move to hire GRACE.

Critical Theory

Critical Theory is the ideology of the Frankfurt School established in the 20th century.  Corradetti gives a succinct history:

The Frankfurt School, known more appropriately as Critical Theory, is a philosophical and sociological movement spread across many universities around the world. It was originally located at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), an attached institute at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute was founded in 1923 thanks to a donation by Felix Weil with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany.[6]

Critical Theory is a Marxist ideology that makes use of Conflict Theory, a theory that separates people into two classes (oppressors and oppressed) and seeks to explain the problems of society in light of the systems controlled by the oppressors.  Critical Theory is called “critical” in the sense of being critical of existing authority structures. Pluckrose and Lindsay define Critical Theory as a theory that is “…chiefly concerned with revealing hidden biases and underexamined assumptions, usually by pointing out what have been termed ‘problematics,’ which are ways in which society and the systems that it operates upon are going wrong.”[7]

What is distinctive about Critical Theory is its expansion of Conflict Theory into other areas of life.  Marx applied conflict theory to class divisions.  Critical theorists apply the distinction to areas such as race, gender, and sexuality.  This broader application of Marx’s Conflict Theory is known as “cultural Marxism”.[8]  Critical Theory applied to race is Critical Race Theory, which posits “systemic racism” on the basis of “implicit bias”.  When applied to gender, Critical Theory manifests itself as feminism.  When applied to sexuality, it is the LGBTQ movement.  In each case the “oppressed class” (blacks, women, homosexuals) are abused by the system of power held by the “oppressing class” (whites, men, heterosexuals).  In popular thought, these movements are expressed under the name “Social Justice Movement”.  One who adheres to the movement is “woke”, that is, he has been awakened to the realities of systemic injustice understood on the basis of these categories, or intersectionalities.

There are three distinctive things that bind these movements together under the heading of Critical Theory: First, extreme skepticism about the use of authority, that is, the systems of power are corrupted and cannot be trusted; second, a Marxist view of oppression or abuse, often combining real forms of oppression with those that are unfalsifiable; and third, intersectionality, i.e., the process of dividing people on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, etc.  Intersectionality leads to seeing one’s intersectional identity, one’s relationship to the group, as the most significant thing about a person.  If a person is a woman, then she is automatically in an oppressed class even if wealthy, in a position of prestige, etc.  In this scheme a person’s success or failure in the world is determined not by individual choices, but by one’s adherence to a particular group. 

The concept of intersectionality also bears an important relationship to postmodernism.  In postmodern thought objective truth is impossible to attain.  It is a reaction to modernist thought which claimed that a person could reach objective truth by being detached and unbiased.  When people became disillusioned with the possibility of being detached and unbiased in the way Modernists claimed, the result was a denial of objective truth.  If objective truth depends on being “unbiased”, then it is impossible to attain because everyone has some sort of perspective that “colors” one’s view of a thing.  Schüssler-Fiorenza, a postmodern feminist, explains this posture: “This modern posture of value-detached inquiry in the interest of pure reason and its claims to universality has been thoroughly challenged by diverse (post)modern discourses such as philosophical hermeneutics, the sociology of knowledge, ideology critique, and Critical Theory.”[9]

Doing away with objective truth does not mean that truth of every kind is gone for postmodernists.  It means that objective truth is replaced by truth as it is received by a community.  Grenz notes, “The conviction that each person is embedded in a particular human community leads to a corporate understanding of truth.”[10]  This fits very well with the idea of intersectionality and makes the truth claims of the oppressed class unassailable by definition.  If those in the oppressed class feel oppressed, then this is truth for them and no data or objective reasoning can be brought to bear to show that they are not oppressed.  In fact, in postmodern thought, to try to do so is a form of oppression.  It is nothing more than the oppressing class imposing its biased view on the oppressed class.  This is why today on the issue of abortion, the pro-abortion side demands that women, not men, make the decision.  If a woman determines that an abortion is the correct decision for her, this is the truth for the oppressed class of women that must be defended in order to protect women from the oppression of men.  A man telling a woman that abortion is wrong is a form of oppression since his view is just as biased as hers.

The view of oppression is distinctive for another reason.  In Critical Theory the oppression is seen, not on an individual level, but on a societal level.  Oppression further becomes anything that promotes inequality of outcome.  Beisner links this view of equality to the French Revolution and notes the common slogan of the day: “Not only equality of right, but equality of fact, is the goal of the socialist art.”[11]  In this view equality as an outcome, i.e., “fact”, not equality in the sense of a person’s “rights”, is true justice.  The problem is that this form of justice is contrary to biblical justice and requires a perversion of justice to implement.  Justice in biblical terms entails giving to each person his due according to what he has done.[12]  Equality of outcome means giving the same to every person regardless of what he has done.

The promotion of this form of justice comes with a deceptive trick.  Very real examples of oppression and abuse are put forward, but then abuse and oppression are defined so broadly that many other things can be lumped into the category of abuse or oppression that are quite different. 

An example from Critical Race Theory may illustrate this point.  Slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow laws are defined as racist; however, racism is more than these.  It is any systemic injustice that keeps black people down.  Further, these systemic injustices may be invisible.  They may be implicit, unconscious biases of people who do not even know that they are racist or have not done a racist thing.  If a person does not stand with Black Lives Matter, even though its stated goals are neo-Marxist, anti-family, and anti-Christian, then a person is guilty of the same kind of racism that produced slavery, lynchings, etc.  One is a racist if one does not stand with the oppressed class in the neo-Marxist sense.

The purpose of this article is not to suggest that everyone who advocates for hiring GRACE is guilty of adopting Critical Theory in its entirety.  It is to suggest that this is the ideology that undergirds the mistrust in the authority structures of the OPC and that hiring GRACE would give a foothold to this ideology.  It is also to suggest that the view of “abuse” is taken from Marx’s Conflict Theory expressed in the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory.  It ought to be noted further that this ideology is very popular today even if many do not understand where it comes from.  For many, it is the air they breathe and the position accepted uncritically. 

This is one of the great dangers of the Social Justice Movement.  Ideas like “abuse” or “racism” or “oppression” are used to garner support.  Who does not want to oppose racism?  Who does not want to take down all oppression?  It is easy to sell ideas about liberation from oppression generally, but what is meant by “oppression” and “liberation” has been given Marxist content in the Social Justice Movement.  The goal of these articles is to draw out these connections so that the Scriptures might be applied faithfully to the situation.  In part 2 we will look at Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Love to see how it related to Critical Theory.

                [1] Minutes of the Eighty-Seventh General Assembly, July 7-13, 2021, item 214, The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Pennsylvania , USA.

                [2] Aimee Byrd, “An Open Letter to the OPC on Abuse,” Aimee Byrd, April, 5, 2021, https://aimeebyrd.com/2021/04/05/an-open-letter-to-the-opc-on-abuse/

                [3] Aimee Byrd, “Reflections on the OPC GA Meeting: Part 1, The Purpose of Church Order and the Vote on G.R.A.C.E.,” Aimee Byrd, July 21, 2021, https://aimeebyrd.com/2021/07/21/reflections-on-the-opc-ga-meeting-part-one-the-purpose-of-church-order-and-the-vote-on-g-r-a-c-e/

                [4] Aimee Byrd, “Reflections on the OP General Assembly, Part 2: Trauma-Informed Ministry and a Traumatizing Process,” Aimee Byrd, July 26, 2021, https://aimeebyrd.com/2021/07/26/reflections-on-the-op-general-assembly-part-2-trauma-informed-ministry-and-a-traumatizing-process/

                [5] Westerveld opened the conference by saying, “And you may have also heard that an attempt was made to engage the services of a third party, an independent party to help us in our diagnoses and so on.  That had very little traction.  What is less known, perhaps, is that another motion was made simply to add to our docket a chance to discuss ministry to abuse, victims of abuse, and that also failed, sadly, but the presbytery of Philadelphia believes these are discussions worth having… So we approved the planning and hosting of this conference for your benefit and the benefit of the whole church.”

                [6] Claudio Corradetti, “The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d., https://iep.utm.edu/frankfur/#H2.

                [7] Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity-and Why This Harms Everybody, First Edition (Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 13-4.

                [8] Scott David Allen, Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice: An Urgent Appeal to Fellow Christians in a Time of Social Crisis (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Credo House Publishers, 2020), 51-2.

                [9] Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, “The Ethos of Interpretation: Biblical Studies in a Postmodern and Postcolonial Context,” in Theological Literacy for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 212.

                [10] Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1996), 14.

                [11] E. Calvin Beisner, Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001), 54.

                [12] Cf. Rom. 2:5-6.

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No Middle Ground

February 1, 2021 at 2:07 pm (Anthropology, Culture, Sex)

I just finished reading Carl Trueman’s amazing new book. I advise everyone in the church to read it. If you want to know how the West got to where a transgender statement like “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” came to have plausibility, you have to read this book. One of the most important things he said in the book is something I had already agreed with, but hadn’t put it nearly as clearly as he did. Observe:

“[I]t is hard to conceptualize a culture in which the rights of religious conservatives and the rights of those who identify as sexual minorities can both be accommodated. It is precisely because matters of basic identity, and therefore of what constitutes dignity and appropriate recognition, are at stake that makes a negotiated settlement impossible. To allow religious conservatives to be religious conservatives is to deny that people are defined by their sexual orientation, and to allow that people are defined by their sexual orientation is to assert that religious conservatism is irrational bigotry and dangerous to the unity of the commonwealth” (402).

I have long wondered why it is that the LGBTQ+ groups will not simply leave conservatives alone. Why do they have to go after us? The reason is simple: they have redefined human identity to center on their sexual orientation. As Trueman proves over and and over again, the reason LGBTQ+ groups hate conservatives is that, according to them, we are denying their humanity. Of course, that is not what we think we are doing. But for them, they do not have humanity unless they can force everyone else to acknowledge that their definition of humanity is correct.

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The Wrong Enemy

July 19, 2020 at 8:47 am (Anthropology, Church, Holy Spirit, Prayer)

I’m sure many readers have had the same experience I have had. This experience is to see a well-known doctrine in a new light. Yesterday, I was reading through Deuteronomy, and saw the command to annihilate the inhabitants of the promised land (which, of course, needs to have a post all its own as to why this doesn’t make God into a homicidal, genocidal maniac). The application to the Christian life is through spiritual warfare. It strikes me that the majority of Christians today can’t recognize the true enemy. We think our enemy is the person who wronged us, or called us names. We think the enemy is a political group. We think the enemy is human. We have our sights set on the wrong target, the wrong enemy.

Paul told us who the real enemy is in Ephesians 6. It is the realm of Satan and the demons. None of this should be new to Christians, though it sadly is to many. The thing that hit me, however, was this: we pray against the wrong enemy a lot of the time. Why aren’t we praying against Satan and the demons? Just because we can’t see it, and we don’t know much about it, therefore, we think that the battle is entirely in the visual spectrum. But the real battle is a spiritual one. When we see events happening today that we would rather not see, how are we praying? Are we praying for the simple reversal of Roe V. Wade? How about praying against the demonic influence that made that decision possible, and that continually seeks to deceive people into perpetuating the carnage? We see our freedoms being eroded. We tend to blame only humans. Humans are involved. Of course they are. Most of the time, however, that’s all we see. We are, all too often, more concerned with our eroded freedoms than we are with our eroded faith. The things that erode it are legion in America. And we let it happen.

In the Psalms, David prayed against human enemies as well as spiritual enemies. So it isn’t completely an either/or. However, in focusing too much on “THEM,” defined as human enemies, we have distorted the picture to the point that the real and full enemy is almost invisible. Why isn’t evangelism “working” like it should? We know we ought to pray about it so that God does the heavy lifting, but what about the demonic obstacles to evangelism? Why don’t we pray about that?

One practical result of this proposed shift in thinking is that we will have a great deal more compassion for the real, live human in front of us. That person may not be our enemy at all. They may be deceived and blinded. They need light and healing from God the Holy Spirit.

Another practical result is the increase of prayer warriors in the Christian church. We desperately need people to take up the thankless (read “unglamorous,” or “not puffing our own name up”) task of praying against Satan and his kingdom. While this won’t make the entire church in America vertebrate, it might grow one or two vertebrae in our midst. That would be a start.

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One Race or Many? A Note on Acts 17:26

June 24, 2020 at 2:40 pm (Acts, Anthropology, Racism)

Posted by R. Fowler White

In Luke’s record of Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus in Acts 17:22-34, we read that God “made from one man every nation of mankind” (Acts 17:26). From this passage and our current historical and socio-cultural context, some are drawing various inferences about the Bible’s use of the term race. For the purposes of this post, three points stand out to me.

First, in discussions about the term race and the Bible, the term itself is usually not defined, but, as talking and writing continue, it becomes reasonably clear from the term’s usage that it refers to distinct groupings of human beings based on inherited physical and behavioral differences, with those differences sometimes extending to include language, religion, or nationality. Turning to a Bible concordance, however, it doesn’t take long to realize that the Bible doesn’t use race in quite the way we do. That observation leads us to our next point.

Second, these days, some folks claim that the Bible speaks only about “the human race.” The Bible, however, does express the concept of “races” in its references to various subgroups (otherwise known as nations, peoples) descended from a common ancestor within the human race. Right there, in the trait of “descent from a common ancestor,” the Bible sharpens our understanding of the term races. What I mean is this: at the least, we have to acknowledge that God’s covenant-making acts with Abraham and his descendants created and preserved a specific group of descendants from Abraham through Jacob for His divine purpose (see, for example, Ezra 9:2; Acts 7:19; compare Rom 9:5; 11:14). Though God’s acts were certainly not motivated by any superiority of those particular Abrahamites, His acts did make Israel, as descendants from Abraham through Jacob, a race distinct from other races, such as those descended from Noah’s sons, from Lot, or from others (e.g., Mark 7:26). Of course, Bible believers who claim that it speaks only about “the human race” are trying to make the good point that, despite our ancestral differences, we are also united in the first man Adam. Still, it seems to me that denials that the Bible speaks of “races” amount to word games that don’t help us reach a common mind with others. We do better just to say what we mean: God our Creator made us all from one man, just as Paul said at the Areopagus.

Third, perhaps you’ve heard, as I have, the suggestion, implied or expressed, that the Jew/Gentile distinction in Scripture is an example of racism. Some would cite the narrative in Acts 10 to make their point. There, God met Peter with his (holy) desire to obey the (holy) laws of separation that He had formerly but temporarily established between Jews and Gentiles. In that teachable moment, God re-educated Peter as to how in Christ He had abolished those laws and had expanded the reach of the apostolic mission to include the formerly unclean Gentiles. Now it’s reasonable to imagine or infer that the corruption of the fallen human heart would have led some to interpret God’s laws in racist terms. My point, however, is that the Jew/Gentile distinction itself was not an example of racism, for it was God Himself, with whom there is no partiality (Acts 10:34-35), who had set up the distinction between the one holy race and the many other unholy races in the first place. Attempts, then, to find a modern parallel to racism in the distinction that God made between Jews and Gentiles are misguided and at odds with the teaching of Acts 10 and the rest of the Bible. In that light, we should reserve the “racist” label for corrupt interpretations of that distinction, born in the unholy phobias and prejudices of us sinners.

Well-intentioned but misinformed efforts to address racism from the Bible remind us how important “the whole counsel of God” is both to right interpretation and to right application of individual texts of Scripture. In our striving against injustice, let’s be sure to build parallels and lessons from the Bible to our day on the foundation of that counsel.

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Some Thoughts on Racism

May 29, 2020 at 11:38 am (Anthropology)

Racism hasn’t gone away like many people thought it had. Race hatred seems to be worse now than it was when I was growing up. Or maybe I just didn’t hear about it then, and it has always been this bad. Or, the powers that be have stoked the fires of race baiting. Whatever your explanation of how it has gotten to be this bad, it’s pretty bad right now. There is a list of things that black people can’t do with zero fear and white people can. There are the Native Americans who always seem to get ignored in the discussion. There is Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and many, many others. There’s a lot of outrage. And there are plenty of people who think that the outrage should not only continue, but should escalate until “things change.” Given that there are reams of books written on the subject, I do not pretend either to be an expert, or to have the answers in any kind of fulsome way. This post is not intended even to be comprehensive in what it addresses, let alone be adequate to the subject matter. It is just a few thoughts on racism.

First things first, then, there is still racism out there. It doesn’t do us any good to deny it. One does not have to engage in “guiltier than thou” hand-wringing to acknowledge this. While we should be cautious in jumping to conclusions on any particular case, there is still racial hatred out there. And this racial hatred is not all unidirectional. There is plenty of racial hatred of whites by blacks, too. Many people would seek to justify this part of the equation by saying that it is payback. Since when is revenge a healthy, godly thing? The Count of Monte Cristo ought to have taught us better than that. All racially motivated hatred is evil. Period. It doesn’t matter which race is hating which other race for being different, that is wrong. But on what basis is it wrong? Here I want to discuss where I think the beginnings of the solution lie. This is important: the basis for claiming that all racially-based hatred is evil has to be part of the solution to that same hatred. Or, to put it another way, I believe that proper theology (in the broader sense, which would include anthropology) has the beginnings of the solution.

So how can we say that all racially-based hatred is evil? A study of Genesis 1-11 reveals that all human beings come from Adam and Eve, and all human beings come from Noah and his wife. That is the plain intent of the text. Ultimately, there is only the human race. I have been using “race” in the more popular sense in this post up to this point, because it is familiar, but here I have to raise a big caveat to such usage. Most discussions I have seen that come from the critical race theory (CRT) standpoint completely ignore the unity of the human race. The differences are the more important consideration. In contrast to this usage, I use the phrase “human race” to emphasize that all humans have far more in common with each other than we have differences. This is plainly seen when contrasting the human race with, say, snakes (not an animal I chose accidentally). So, one of the global questions in the discussion is this: are the differences or similarities more important when dealing with questions of ethnicity (and here I now substitute my preferred term, instead of “race”)? The Bible suggests that it is the similarities that are more important. Here is the second vitally important point I wish to make: the biological unity of the human race is true even apart from salvation in Christ Jesus! Now, ethnic backgrounds of Jew versus Gentile were a big deal in the Bible. Ethnic mixing of Jew and Gentile was forbidden in the Old Testament, though not for the reason of ethnicity by itself. The mixing was forbidden because of faith reasons: Gentiles were pagans. It wasn’t simply because they were Gentiles that they were rejected. After all, several books of the Old Testament tell us of Gentiles who became Jews (e.g., Ruth). As Paul would say, Jews were so internally, not externally.

If creation and the unity of the human race give us one huge reason to condemn ethnic hatred, the gospel gives us the other. The gospel is not itself the solving of the ethnic question. The gospel is what Jesus did so that sinners might be forgiven, and brought into a right relationship with God. It is first and foremost a vertical story. It is not directly about ethnic questions, but one does not have to go far into the New Testament to realize just how whopping the implications are for the ethnic question. Ephesians comes to mind, particularly. The Jew-Gentile barrier, which was the fundamental ethnic barrier the Bible addresses, is eliminated by the gospel. In Christ, the ethnic barriers are, in principle, removed. When people are brought close to God, they are simultaneously brought close together.

Conversion and regeneration, however, do not eliminate all sin. We still tend to have thoughts of the other as being alien to us. What we need is to focus on, expound, and preach from all the Scriptures the creation, fall, redemption, and glorification narrative of Scripture as it culminates in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is the larger story that can engulf and drown ethnically based hatreds in its own baptism by immersion.

There will be those who think that this analysis is hopelessly naive and simplistic. I would counter: I believe the Bible says it is supposed to be just this simple. If we are making it so much more complicated (a good example is the whole discussion about micro-aggressions), then that is our problem, not the Scripture’s. It is human beings who are making the issues so complicated that good old fashioned Matthew 18 reconciliation is no longer possible.

What about justice? What is justice, who decides, and what should it look like? Justice, by its very nature, must always be incomplete in this life. We are not omniscient. We do not know the motivations of the human heart. We may think we do, but we don’t. It is time we acknowledged this in the ethnically charged environment of today. It is time to stop making assumptions about each other. It is time to recognize the image of God in every human being, and treat that image with respect. It is time to follow the rule of law and hold criminals accountable for crime (whether citizen or police officer), and not create lynch mobs to attack people not responsible. It is time to recognize that there is no earthly way that justice can be completed in this life. God will have to be the one to make all things right, and He will. This fact should not be an excuse to prevent us from doing all we can to accomplish justice in this life. But it should prevent us from becoming so frothed at the mouth with outrage that we can no longer listen to reason and wisdom. God will make sure that all wrongs are righted. Surely every Christian must, at this point, cry out, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus!”

What about systemic racism? That is one of the most burning questions of the hour. Is there a system in place to keep minorities “in their place?” That is disputed, even among black people. If we look at the Native American, it would seem to me that reservations are one huge system to keep Native Americans “in their place.” Why have we quarantined them for so many decades? It has not done them many favors, as far as I can see. I do not claim any expertise on this question, but that is what I see at the moment. In some contexts, I see that blacks cannot do certain things without fear that whites can do. In certain other contexts, the reverse is true. In some white communities, blacks don’t feel welcome. In some black communities, whites are not welcome. In colleges and hiring practices, there are many quota-based systems. In such a scenario, a black may be hired because he or she is black, and not because they are qualified (many blacks are perfectly qualified, by the way). Does it really help the black person to hire them because they are black and not because they are qualified? This has always bothered me. Doesn’t it put them in a situation that may make them miserable just so the consciences of the employer/recruiter can be salved? Couldn’t this be seen as using the black person for the sake of image?

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How do we choose?

February 6, 2019 at 10:33 am (Anthropology, Quotes)

Jonathan Edwards has this to say on the human will:

The choice of the mind never departs from that which, at that time, and with respect to the direct and immediate objects of that decision of the mind, appears most agreeable and pleasing, all things considered (Freedom of the Will, in the Yale Edwards, volume 1, p. 147).

​What follows from this is that the believer needs to take care that what he finds most agreeable and pleasing is God’s will. We must love what God loves and hate what God hates.

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Male and Female Souls?

February 18, 2018 at 5:38 am (Anthropology, Apologetics, Church, Historical Theology, Instructing the Body, Interpretation, Sex, Theological Encyclopedia, Uncategorized, Women)
Tags: , , , ,

Posted by Paige (Yes, I’m still around sometimes!)

Here is a set of crowdsourcing theological research questions for my scholarly minded brethren:

Are you familiar with the teaching that men and women have gendered souls? That is, the idea that the differences between us (and perhaps the roles we are to play) are so essential that they are located originally in our souls as well as in our biology?

Can anyone give me the historical pedigree of this idea? What religions or sects have emphasized this teaching since ancient times? (Googling it brought up kabbalist and New Age spiritism, but I’d like to go deeper than blog posts if anyone knows of a decent resource.)

How have Christians historically interacted with this teaching? How does it comport with generally orthodox Christian teaching on the imago Dei, gender, and gender roles? What Christian thinkers, if any, have engaged or taught this idea?

Finally, how do you personally react to the idea that men and women have distinctly gendered souls as well as bodies? Do you think this is compatible with an orthodox anthropology? Would you teach this to your congregation? What would be your biblical supports?

I have encountered this idea in Christian teaching only recently, so I am not familiar with how it fits into the historical context of biblical and Reformed thought. I’m presently doubtful that it does, and I wanted to see if I could locate the idea in the history of theology and other religions in order to understand it better. 

Thanks abundantly in advance for your thoughts and any resources you can point me toward.

137 Comments

Self-Esteem

July 28, 2017 at 5:23 pm (Anthropology)

The problem of self-esteem seems to be evergreen. There are those on the left who, like a broken record, will claim that almost all our problems are due to a low self-esteem. The solution seems to be that everyone should find a way to raise their own self-esteem, feel good about themselves, such that they will no longer feel depressed.

On the other hand, there are those who are in favor of such inward self-loathing that the image of God seems to disappear. There don’t appear to be very many of these kinds of people around today, but I have no doubt that there are some, especially among the more suicidal types.

As is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between. However, in order to see the truth about self-esteem, we need to nuance the discussion. It is not a matter of whether we should have high or low self-esteem. Instead, it is a question of which way (or concerning what) we should have self-esteem, and which way we should not.

One reason for having a proper and relatively high self-esteem is that the image of God resides in us. Any view of self-esteem that refuses to recognize this runs the risk of degrading God Himself. Some conservative reactions to the whole self-esteem movement seem to have fallen into this over-reaction. I was one of these once upon a time. A right estimation of ourselves cannot leave the image of God out of the picture. The image of God requires respect, both in ourselves and in others. We must not let the opposite extremes of the self-esteem movement blind us to the fact that many people loathe the image of God that is in themselves, and wrongly so.

The more common mistake, of course, is to press self-esteem so far upon us all that no problems are even to be mentioned. Sin is ignored. The distortion of the image of God that is here by way of the Fall is ignored. This is the main failure of the self-esteem crowd. Are we to esteem that which is not estimable? Are we to esteem that which the Bible calls despicable?

The Bible commends self-loathing if it is connected to the rightly loathsome thing (namely, our sin). See Ezekiel 6:9, for instance. The right balance here is to esteem highly the image of God in us, and to loathe the distortion that sin brings.

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Narcissism in Ministry

January 30, 2015 at 11:25 am (Anthropology, Sanctification)

I have been doing a little bit of reading on narcissism recently for various reasons, including a realization that I have some characteristics of this mental condition. There are many ways of defining narcissism, but probably the easiest way to define it is to remember the ancient myth from which the condition gets its name: Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in the pool. Words like “ingrown,” “egotistical,” “selfishness” will readily come to mind in defining this condition. Being wrapped up in oneself might be the best single description we could use. Another definition I have seen goes something like this: the primary characteristic of narcissism is an inappropriate lack of boundaries between the narcissist and the other person, whom he will attempt to use in some way. The narcissist sees the other person as an extension of himself. So, the other person exists to fulfill the narcissist’s needs.

One of the things that has been interesting in the literature so far is that the authors I have read agree that our culture encourages narcissism. It is a respectable sin. We give huge amounts of both criticism and idol-worship to the rich and famous, and both of these things encourage narcissism. The fact of the matter is that pastors get this at both ends as well. We have people who love to encourage us, and we have people who love to criticize us. It is just as easy to get self-complacent with the adulation as it is to get defensive about the criticism. Without the grace of God, pastors will VERY often allow this two-pronged engine to drive us into full pathological narcissism. The ministry is all about the minister at that point. The minister usurps the place of Jesus Christ. He becomes the personal lord and savior of his flock. You know that your minister has a big problem with this if he both flares up at the criticism and practically fawns over those people who praise him. What is interesting about this mental condition is that the situation is usually encouraged, while the word describing the situation is feared.

However, it can actually be a relief to know that there is a name for this kind of malady. A lot of people cringe mightily when they hear the term “narcissism.” However, the term (in the literature) is used to describe a range of symptoms. Some people, like myself, have some but not all of the symptoms. It might therefore be more accurate to say that such a person has narcissistic tendencies.

For the pastor who has this, the hardest part is admitting it. Once it is admitted, however, in a very real sense, half the battle is over. Most pastors know from counseling others what needs to happen for people to become less wrapped up in themselves: things like attending the means of grace, service to others, evangelism, and simply making up one’s mind that they will be interested in other people’s lives for the sake of the other person, and not for what he can get out of it.

How do you know if you or someone you know is a narcissist? Here are some clues. 1. The person cannot receive criticism of any kind, no matter how gently phrased. Typically, the narcissist will turn the criticism back on the person offering it. The narcissist gets so good at this kind of deflection that the one trying to offer criticism will be made to feel extremely guilty. 2. The narcissist turns every conversation into something about himself. 3. The narcissist cannot converse on topics that do not immediately interest him. 4. The narcissist cannot understand why anyone cannot drop everything and do something for him.

What can a congregation do if their pastor is a narcissist? First of all, and most importantly, pray, pray, and pray some more. Constantly keep your pastor in prayer, especially about this issue, if it is known that he has a problem with it. Secondly, be very careful about how criticism and praise come to the pastor. Encouragement is very important to a pastor, so we cannot go to a position where the congregation decides it will never encourage the pastor, lest he “get a big head.” The Bible itself commands us to encourage and pray for our church leaders. So, this is not an option. The question is this: how do we do this in a way that will both build him up and not feed the narcissism? My suggestion is this: phrase the encouragement in terms of praising the Lord for how He has used the pastor instrumentally. That way the pastor knows that his labor is not in vain, but he is also reminded that God provides the growth and gets the glory. Start the sentence by saying, “The Lord has been using you to…”

Criticism can feed narcissism just as thoroughly as inordinate praise can. There will be times when a pastor needs to be brought up short. However, there is a way to do this and a way not to do this. Most of the time, when a criticism comes the way of the pastor, the congregant simply lashes out without any kind of thinking whatsoever. They are angry and upset, and so they just blast the pastor. The congregant needs to make a distinction in his mind between two things. Firstly, is the hurt caused by a difference in perspective about what the ministry is about? Or is it caused by a genuine offense? These are two very different things. No congregant should ever blast the pastor because they see ministry differently. Instead, they should take up the difference of perspective in a calm, reasonable conversation about it. If the hurt is caused by a genuine offense, then the proper course is to tell the pastor in as calm a voice as possible, what the particular action (or lack thereof) made them feel. Do not turn the pastor’s offense into an offense right back at him. This is done so often these days. The offended person escalates the conflict because they want to make the offender hurt as much as they do. The goal of talking about it is reconciliation. Nothing is accomplished by lashing back. Nothing is gained by attacking the personal character of the pastor because of just one offense. Remember to aim with a rifle, not a shotgun. Concentrate on the one issue at hand, and do not ever broaden the scope of the discussion beyond the one single issue. Oftentimes, when a congregant has a problem, they “pile on.” Everything they dislike about their minister comes out in one unhealthy deluge. This is not healthy, and will usually put a pastor on the defensive, which is best avoided at all costs, especially if the pastor is tempted to narcissism.

I believe that this issue is under-addressed in seminaries, and is certainly under-addressed by Christian authors. I did not find a single Christian book on narcissism. They are all written by secular psychologists. This is a very intriguing fact to me. Can it be that narcissism is so much winked at in our society (and even encouraged!) that the Christian church does not even see it as a problem? I believe, on the contrary, that it is a far more widespread problem than any of us imagine.

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PCRT Seminar: Major Approaches to Creation, Part 1 (Derek Thomas)

April 22, 2013 at 10:17 pm (Anthropology, Apologetics, Creation, Inerrancy, OT-Genesis, Theology)

(Posted by Paige)

[I owe this to Lane in return for a delicious Italian meal, good company, and the privilege of hearing him sing “And Can It Be” – just amazing. Sorry this one wasn’t live; I still don’t know how he does that, even after watching!]

I chose Derek Thomas’s seminar because I’d just finished reading his Job commentary with my 14-year-old, and I only belatedly realized I’d assigned myself to write up what Thomas dubbed a particularly “complex, difficult, divisive issue.” (That is a short “i” in the middle there; he’s Welsh.) So, here goes. Please don’t shoot the messenger. Please do read everything with a Welsh accent.

There was a lot of content in this presentation, so this will take two parts.

To begin with his endpoint: as the PCA study committee also affirmed, there are several views of creation that can be held without threat to inerrancy. While Thomas would personally subscribe to about 1.5 of the views he presented (on which see part two), he acknowledged that several other views were the convictions of scholars he respects. That said, there are lines in the sand past which inerrancy is no longer viable. The three non-negotiables he mentioned were creation ex nihilo, the special creation of man, and the historical, biblical individual named Adam. (I suspect there may have been more examples in his mind, but he didn’t get to them before Q&A time.)

Before describing any particular views of creation, Thomas dwelt on the tension that exists between biblical and scientific worldviews regarding the nature of the universe. He noted that evolution was not really a scientific theory, but rather “a philosophy, a worldview, an epistemology that affects ethics, morals, and standards.” Even the Big Bang theory moves beyond science and into theology when it tries to address origins (i.e., what happened before this singularity?). “Theologians should get antsy when scientists do theology – generally they do it pretty badly.”

Still, as the church we don’t want to commit another embarrassing error along the lines of geocentrism; it may be healthy to be skeptical of science, but “not to the extent we look foolish.” Thomas acknowledges that we trust science for many things (e.g., “If they’re going to cut me open and remove bits of me, I am going to have to trust the science”). Yet there is no way to reconcile even a generous 7-Day-Creation age of the universe (50,000 years ago? 200,000?) with scientific claims – 13.77 billion years – without doing something radical to the biblical account. And this we may not do.

In any case, “we need a degree of modesty when talking about these issues.” Science may be wrong; it is changing, not a constant. And theology may be wrong – the Bible is inerrant, but its interpreters are not.

Thomas also cautioned us to remember that there is a distinction between the Neo-Darwinian viewpoint (represented by Richard Dawkins) and the worldview of Darwin himself. Darwin’s deism was “ungodly, he had no gospel”; and yet he posited that God creates a few primal forms and always assumed a fixity of species (i.e., he did not advocate trans-species evolution). “That is 13.77 billion years away from Neo-Darwinism,” which has no fixed point of origin and traces “an unbroken line from mollusk to man.” This view is now the most dominant philosophy in modern thought…and it introduces the absorbing question, What might man ultimately become??

Speaking of evolution, we must remember that any so-called Christian view of creation that calls into question the historical, biblical Adam has dropped away from inerrancy. Thomas stresses the adjective biblical here because there are those who suggest that “there was a [historical] dude called Adam that God singled out from other hominids” to endow with the divine image. He referenced Dennis Alexander [dates??] who believed that hominids were around for a couple hundred thousand years (and had acquired language!) before any one of them was singled out by God for homo divinus status. John Stott unfortunately adopted this view. It introduces the conundrum of whether Adam & Eve’s parents were human – or a source of food. (And what happened to all those other hominids? What did they become? Hmmm.)

Closer to home we have Peter Enns asserting that Paul’s endorsement of the historical, biblical Adam can be disregarded because Paul was an ancient man, a product of his times…and we know so much better now about human origins. In Derek Thomas’ wry assessment, “That isn’t just a slippery slope – that’s an Alpine slope!”

Stay tuned for part two…

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