Here’s the latest video in my biblical counseling series. You can view the previous videos here.

The Eric Johnson article I refer to at the end of the video is here.

Blogs

What Sexual Theft Says About You
“You can begin to see adultery for what it is by grasping how antithetical it is to faith. The sin of adultery screams out to the world that you don’t really believe God. Perhaps it will be helpful to make this clear. If you are contemplating adultery, consider at least four probing questions about what you believe.”

With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit
“What happened so that so many more teens, in such a short period of time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit suicide? After scouring several large surveys of teens for clues, I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens’ lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone.” And Evidence mounts that laptops are terrible for students at lectures. Yet…..

The Most and Least Digital Jobs – and How Well They Pay
“The researchers broke occupations into high, medium, and low use of digital, and found that highly digital occupations made $73,000, on average. Medium occupations made $48,000 and low occupations made just $30,000. To some extent, that’s due to the fact that more digital jobs are held by more highly educated people. However, the researchers found that, even after controlling for educational requirements, more digital jobs paid better — and that this premium had increased over the past decade.”

A dose of nature: doctors prescribe a day in the park for anxiety
“The Huddle’s family physician wrote her a prescription that read: “Five times a week… spend 30 minutes at a park near your home.” Huddle’s treatment plan is part of a growing field of medicine called “ecotherapy” — nature-based programs and exercises that can help patients cope with mental and physical illnesses. Instead of prescriptions for more pills, doctors around the country are increasingly prescribing trips to the park for a range of conditions, including anxiety and depression, attention deficit disorder and chronic illness such as diabetes and high blood pressure.”

Personality Disorder: What Use Is This Label for a Counselor?
I link to this not because I agree with everything in it (I don’t), but because it shows how some biblical counselors approach these complex disorders:

“So what does a biblical counselor do with a personality disorder label? Do any of your counselees have this label from a psychotherapist? Do you suspect a counselee might fit the diagnosis? Does it even matter?”

Kindle Books

Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard Swenson $3.99.

The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent by John Piper $3.19.

Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room: Daily Family Devotions for Advent by Nancy Guthrie $0.99.

Uncensored: Daring to Embrace the Entire Bible by Brian Cosby $2.99.

Yesterday I highlighted my surprising recent discovery that ”the overwhelming majority of Puritan theologians were firm believers in the legitimacy of natural theology and evidentialism,” resulting in their embrace of extra-biblical sources of knowledge in their pastoral counseling of believers.

I had come across this in a few of their writings–Matthew Henry’s and John Owen’s for example. But I had never realized how much this was a common core of Puritan belief until I read Wallace Marshall’s book, Puritanism and Natural Theology. He goes on to demonstrate how the Puritans’ enthusiasm for natural theology “went hand in hand with their adamant insistence that ministers not only be trained in the Scriptures and in systematic theology but also have ‘humane learning,’ as they liked to call it—the study of logic, philosophy and the classics.”

Passion for Philosophy
For example, the Puritan Charles Chauncy, who served as president of Harvard from 1654 to 1672,  pointed out:

“The Bible itself quoted pagan authors favourably, that all truth came from God, whatever its origin, and that since there were many excellent and divine moral truths in Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Seneca, etc…to condemn all pel-mel will be a hard censure.”

Thomas Manton sounded the same note:

“We should not despise the help of human learning, neither should we despise grace, as if it did make men dull, and blunt the edge of their talents….Religion hath never lost more than when outward helps have been despised, which men do to hide their own ignorance.”

Passion for Science
One of the consequences of the Puritans’ commitment to natural theology was their unusual degree of interest in science. Instead of being opposed to it, the Puritans, says Marshall, were “markedly enthusiastic about the study of the natural world” and as a result they “befriended science.”

Thomas Adams, for example, hailed nature as “God’s epistle to the world.” Alexander Richardson wrote that since God was the Creator of all things, “this teacheth man thus much, that he is to seek out, and find this wisdom of God in the world, and not to be idle; for the world, and the creatures therein, are like a book wherein God’s wisdom is written, there we must seek it out.”

Stephen Charnock “extolled the study of nature as one of the most satisfying human activities” and even saw it as a religious duty. “What a sweetness is there in knowing the secrets of nature, and the phenomena in the world,” he exclaimed, and went on:

“Study God in the creatures as well as in the Scriptures…The world is a sacred temple; man is introduced to contemplate it, and behold with praise the glory of God in the pieces of his art.”

He admitted that there was more clarity in the book of Scripture than in the book of nature, but because the Author of both has joined both together, we should not put it asunder. Charnock went on to say that it was a gross insult to God to pay so little attention to the things he had made and that “God must be read wherever he is legible.”

And here’s a thought-provoking idea to finish up. “Charnock though that since the complexity and richness of the created order could not possibly be exhausted by human beings in their brief lifetimes, this activity would continue in the world to come when the fountains of the depths of nature would be opened.”

Blogs

Pastor, Aim to Preach Simple Sermons
I could not agree more.

Relative to the amount of time preachers spend in critical study of a text, how much attention is given to attaining simplicity in preaching? I’ve come to believe that faithful preaching is marked by simplicity. And simple preaching best serves others by communicating the point of the passage in a clear and Christ-centered way.

How to Block All the Troubling Stories in Your Social Media Feeds
“Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to keep up with family and friends, and even a bare minimum of news, without being forced to see every dreadful thing that the Facebook sidebar throws in your face? Well, there is. It’s called Sadblock, a browser extension that will hide all the sad and troubling stories in your newsfeed.”

Withering Wives – Practical Theology for Women
“Today, husbands, I encourage you to look over at your wife and notice her. If she is withering, take the steps you need to stir up your own love and concern for her and then minister grace to her that will revive her. Christ in you equips you to minister this grace to her.”

Stop Acting Like Technology Holds You Hostage
“Never assume the newest invention is “inevitable.” Retain your humanity. Resist the robotic. You are free.”

The Pragmatic Benefits of God-Given Sexual Boundaries | Stand to Reason
“If God exists and He created us, He designed our sexuality. And if God is good, then He designed our sexuality for our benefit. Not only is this true, it has pragmatic benefits when we align our lives and behavior with our design. And recent sex scandals illustrate the destructive nature of doing things mainly because they give us pleasure rather than making wise choices that lead to our wellbeing.”

Remarkable Bible Memorization | Crossway Articles
Vern Poythress’s son with a beautiful testimony to his father:

“Eventually, I was able to goad out of Dad more precisely how much of the Bible he had memorized: the entire New Testament, the Psalter, the second half of Isaiah, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, all the Minor Prophets, Ruth, and other select portions of Old Testament narrative. That comes to around half the Bible, at least as far as direct memorization is concerned. I then discovered that in order to keep it from fading, he tries to make a daily practice (who knows where he finds this time) to review six chapters of memorized material, in addition to his daily review of Hebrew vocabulary flashcards.”

How Reading Cultivates Empathy in Leaders
“The most effective way to cultivate empathy, not surprisingly, is by interacting with people. Through the ups and downs of life, as we laugh and cry with our friends and family, we begin to empathize with our brothers and sisters. But there’s another surprising way we can cultivate empathy—through reading.”

Book Review: All That Is in God by James Dolezal
Keith Mathison’s review of James Dolezal’s book, All that is in God.

“Thousands of theological books are published every year, and it can be difficult to know which among these books deserve our time and attention. Dolezal’s book is one of those books that deserves attention. It is an important work. The contemporary departures from classical Christian theism are no minor matter. These doctrines are influencing the next generation of pastors who will, in turn, fill the pulpits of the church. This is why it is important that those in the pews of these churches be aware of what is going on and be able to recognize departures from historical biblical orthodoxy when they see it.

Here’s John Frame’s response to the book, followed by Mark Jones’s and Kevin DeYoung’s.

Kindle Books

The Unexpected Journey: Conversations with People Who Turned from Other Beliefs to Jesus by Thom S. Rainer $2.99.

My biggest surprise yet in reading the Puritans was discovering their use of extra-biblical sources of knowledge in their pastoral counseling of believers.

One of the privileges of working at a place like Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary is getting to know the Puritans and Reformers better and better. They constantly surprise me and frequently demolish the caricatures that have grown up about them over the years. Last week, I experienced perhaps my biggest surprise yet when reading Wallace Marshall’s book on Puritanism and Natural Theology, and especially what I learned about their use of extra-Biblical sources of knowledge in pastoral counseling.

Until Marshall’s research into this subject, the general scholarly consensus was that the Puritans weren’t interested in natural theology, evidentialism, science, and reason. No, they were “sufficiency of Scripture” men, men of The Book, and so on.

Marshall highlights a number of reputable scholars, including Richard Muller, who have advanced this anti-natural theology, anti-evidences, anti-reason, anti-science narrative about the Puritans. He quotes Mark Noll’s assertion that “Puritans expected divine revelation to provide the starting point for all forms of thought.”

But, after an exhaustive study of the primary sources, including over seventy Puritans, Marshall concludes that this view is “entirely mistaken.” He asserts:

“The overwhelming majority of Puritan theologians were firm believers in the legitimacy of natural theology and evidentialism. Even the small minority of dissenters did not categorically reject natural theology but merely expressed reservations about its usefulness.”

Definitions, Categories, and Sources
So, what is natural theology and evidentialism? Wallace defines natural theology as “all religious knowledge that is accessible through the use of reason, independently of supernatural revelation.” The four main categories of natural theology were the existence and attributes of God, divine providence, immortality, and natural law (especially the two great commandments). The four sources of this natural theology were the innate knowledge of God, conclusions derived from reason, contemplation of human existence, and consideration of the works of nature. The related discipline of evidentialism, is “the attempt to prove the divine origin of the Bible through rational arguments.”

“Puritans were persuaded that the existence and attributes of God, the creation of the world, the immortality of the soul, as well as the divine origin of the Scriptures, could be proved by rational arguments made without any a priori appeal to special revelation…The Puritans forged a firm consensus on the subjects of natural theology and evidentialism.”

So, why were the Puritans so interested in natural theology? What motivated them. Marshall answers: “Puritans did not simply embrace these rational arguments on a theological level but employed them in a surprising variety of pastoral, evangelical, and polemical contexts.”

Pastoral Counseling?
It was the pastoral counseling angle that surprised me most. I can understand natural religion and evidences being used evangelistically and apologetically, but pastorally? How so?

Perhaps the most common spiritual problem that the Puritans addressed in their writings was the existence of religious doubt among believers, or “practical atheism” as they often described it. They saw this in every Christian and found it frequently in themselves as well. So, how did they counsel such unbelieving believers? Here’s Marshall’s answer:

“For many Puritans, devotional exercises such as prayer and the reading of Scripture were only one half of the solution to this practical atheism. The other half was rational argumentation for the truths in question…By strengthening this foundational conviction, natural theology could prove a tremendous aid to holiness.”

And just in case we suspect that this paragraph slipped into the book by mistake, Marshall sums up his analysis of the Puritans again:

“Could natural theology be of any help in overcoming practical atheism, and could the rational evidences for Christianity be of parallel assistance in resolving a Christian’s doubts about its legitimacy? With a few exceptions, Puritans answered with a resounding affirmative.”

Powerful and Useful
Marshall provides numerous examples of the way the Puritans appealed to and used natural revelation for pastoral purposes. Some, like John Preston, Matthew Henry, and Increase Mather even went so far as to say that natural revelation was necessary, a vital foundation for revealed religion.

Baxter “believed not only that natural theology was a useful preparative to special revelation, but that failing to inculcate it in one’s parishioners was positively detrimental to faith in the Bible.” Their varied and frequent use of it “clearly shows that they believed them to be not only powerful but extremely useful.” It should also help us contextualize our reading of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which Marshall calls “that quintessential Puritan document.”

Tomorrow I’ll highlight how this commitment to natural theology expressed itself in the Puritans’ unusual interest in and appreciation for science.