Post by Cindy on Apr 28, 2015 9:42:54 GMT -5
I was reading what John MacArthur wrote about the sufficiency of scripture and he included some info about psychology that I'd thought I'd share here:
It used to be that we could accept what the Bible said in sociological areas, whether it's homosexuality or the role of a woman. Now we're hearing that the Bible is rather unsophisticated and cannot comment on these contemporary sociological issues because of its lack of sophistication. And so there is an insufficiency in the Bible's ability to deal with contemporary sociological phenomena. This is coming on a wholesale level into the church, particularly marked in the area in the liberal church homosexuality, in the more evangelical church in the redefining of the role of women away from the traditional biblical teaching.
But perhaps as dominant or more dominant than any of these themes is this area of psychology. Psychology today is making inroads into the church that really are frightening. In fact, there is in the evangelical church what is fast becoming a wholesale exodus from the traditional land of biblical theology into the new promised land of psychology and psychotherapy. Churches that once and for always would hire pastors and evangelists and teachers are now hiring psychologists. Pastors that once would go to seminary and learn the Word of God or Bible college and master the Scripture are now going to schools of psychology to study human wisdom in dealing with the problems of mankind. This again is a subtle way of saying the Bible is insufficient. When coming to grips with these deep seeded emotional anxieties of man, we cannot expect the Bible to speak in any sophisticated way to those problems. Seminaries are changing their curriculum dramatically. For the first time in the history of the church, seminaries are hiring psychologists on their staff to teach, psychiatrists to teach, they're teaching psychology, they're adding more psychology courses in many places, diminishing the biblical content of their curriculum. Colleges are doing the same thing. Churches are doing it. It's a wholesale exodus.
And to this sort of encroaching mysticism and preoccupation with supernatural powers and science of the mind and visualization techniques and hypnosis and all of this self-image stuff comes this psychology and together it is creating the new God of the church. And I can look back to our own law suit where we were literally mocked for being so primitive as to assume that the Bible could give people help when they had severe problems. The world has been saying the Bible cannot help and now sad to say, the church is chiming in and agreeing that the Bible is inadequate to deal with psychological problems. In fact, I would go so far as to say there are many advocating today a psychological salvation in place of the new birth. There is nothing in this more than a pseudo-evangelical humanism. This preoccupation with self-esteem and self-love and self-fulfillment and self-actualization that psychology has brought into the church knows no biblical counterpart.
And just to put things in perspective, the church inevitably...inevitably, buys into these things and in fact, the world will more readily admit the error of these things often than we will. For example, in the Los Angeles Times on the eighteenth of this month, you perhaps read an interesting article about a recent convention of psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and psychologists in Phoenix, Arizona, the largest convention, 7,000 people apparently attended. And for the first time in the history of the world, the leading psychoanalyst, psychologist and psychiatrist of the world got together. Men like Carl(?) Rogers, Albert Ellis, R.D. Lang, Bruno Bettleheim(?), Joseph Walpi(?) and Thomas Szaz, those are the most famous names in the world in terms of techniques and methods of psychotherapy. They were all there.
And the article was really amazing. It said, for example, "The heroes were there to evaluate where psychotherapy has come in 100 years and where it might be going." Except, they really couldn't agree on either. Lang, one of the famous ones, known for his work on schizophrenia said, "He couldn't think of any fundamental insights into relations between human beings that had resulted from a century of psychotherapy." He couldn't think of any? The 7,000 practicing and student psychotherapist, psychiatrist and social workers who attended various sessions were undaunted by the debates and differences of opinion. Obtaining autographs was the priority for many.
One of these leading psychoanalysts said, "The best therapy he had found for his anxiety was to hum a tune." And the sad thing about that is that the church has bought into that as if it is the savior of man. Nobel prize winner Richard Fryman(?) said, quote: "Psychoanalysis is not a science." What did he mean by that? He meant that there are no rules to guide it, it's a whole lot of human opinion. New York University professor, Paul Veets(?) criticized Christianity and he criticized the Christian church for its tendency to do what he called "buying high and selling low" in regard to social science. He said, "The church is eager to adopt popular trends of thought at the very time the secular professionals are beginning to criticize them." In fact, he put it this way, "It is a matter of climbing on the bandwagon just about the time it's slowing down," end quote.
We tend to do that, to jump into movements that are just about dead because they have proven a washout even to the people in the world who started them. But here we have in our contemporary Christian church, these things making tremendous inroads. I am absolutely amazed at the inroads of mysticism, science of the mind, occultism, psychology and these other things into the church, the college, the seminary environment and the pooh-poohing of biblical theology and biblical sufficiency.
Now all of this, I believe, is not some small problem. I believe it is a serious and sinful view of the Word of God. I believe it is the sin of the church to believe the Bible to be inadequate. J.I. Packer in his little book on the Word of God puts his finger on the problem in a paragraph that says this: quote: "Certainty about the great issues of Christian faith and conduct is lacking all along the line. The outside observer sees us as staggering on from a gimmick to gimmick and stunt to stunt like so many drunks in a fog, not knowing at all where we are or which way we should be going. Preaching is hazy. Heads are muddled, hearts fret, doubts drain strength, uncertainty paralyzes action. Unlike the first-century Christians who in three centuries won the Roman world and those later Christians who pioneered the Reformation and the Puritan awakening and the evangelical revival and the great missionary movement of the last century, we lack certainty," end quote.
And the reason we lack certainty is because we have a sinful view of Scripture. We do not any longer seem to believe that the Bible is sufficient for the life and conduct of the church. That is a sin...a sin of monstrous proportions, to deny the sufficiency of the Word of God.
...... We get ourselves into problems, we assume the problems are beyond the purview and the capability of the Word of God because we're really not into the daily application of the Word of God. Noble spirituality is tied to a daily study of the Word of God. That's where the strength comes to deal with life. And that's where the sufficiency lies. People sadly who are finding their sufficiency...chasing their sufficiency, not finding it, but chasing it in psychology and in this sort of science of the mind and mysticism and ecstatic experiences and the supernatural and in entertainment and management techniques for the church, all of that pursuit is running the wrong direction. And instead of bringing what they think they need and what they think they're going to get, it will bring them the very opposite...the very opposite......
.........As I pointed out last time, the almost wholesale move in the evangelical church to psychology as a means of solving man's problems, the search for methodology for church growth in the world's patterns of business and corporate structure, the demand for political power as the key to revival as some are saying, the cry for miracles and signs and wonders and new revelations and supernatural activities, the perversion of the simple gospel and the true Word of God into a sort of pop gospel of prosperity, indulgence, sensuality and success propagated by celebrities who are supposed to have a great ability to reach people that the simple Word could never reach all betray to me not only a horrifying worldliness in the church but a woefully weak view of Scripture.......
These quotes are from two sermons he gave about the sufficiency of scripture. They can be found here:
MacArthur about Psychology 1
MacArthur about Psychology 2
It used to be that we could accept what the Bible said in sociological areas, whether it's homosexuality or the role of a woman. Now we're hearing that the Bible is rather unsophisticated and cannot comment on these contemporary sociological issues because of its lack of sophistication. And so there is an insufficiency in the Bible's ability to deal with contemporary sociological phenomena. This is coming on a wholesale level into the church, particularly marked in the area in the liberal church homosexuality, in the more evangelical church in the redefining of the role of women away from the traditional biblical teaching.
But perhaps as dominant or more dominant than any of these themes is this area of psychology. Psychology today is making inroads into the church that really are frightening. In fact, there is in the evangelical church what is fast becoming a wholesale exodus from the traditional land of biblical theology into the new promised land of psychology and psychotherapy. Churches that once and for always would hire pastors and evangelists and teachers are now hiring psychologists. Pastors that once would go to seminary and learn the Word of God or Bible college and master the Scripture are now going to schools of psychology to study human wisdom in dealing with the problems of mankind. This again is a subtle way of saying the Bible is insufficient. When coming to grips with these deep seeded emotional anxieties of man, we cannot expect the Bible to speak in any sophisticated way to those problems. Seminaries are changing their curriculum dramatically. For the first time in the history of the church, seminaries are hiring psychologists on their staff to teach, psychiatrists to teach, they're teaching psychology, they're adding more psychology courses in many places, diminishing the biblical content of their curriculum. Colleges are doing the same thing. Churches are doing it. It's a wholesale exodus.
And to this sort of encroaching mysticism and preoccupation with supernatural powers and science of the mind and visualization techniques and hypnosis and all of this self-image stuff comes this psychology and together it is creating the new God of the church. And I can look back to our own law suit where we were literally mocked for being so primitive as to assume that the Bible could give people help when they had severe problems. The world has been saying the Bible cannot help and now sad to say, the church is chiming in and agreeing that the Bible is inadequate to deal with psychological problems. In fact, I would go so far as to say there are many advocating today a psychological salvation in place of the new birth. There is nothing in this more than a pseudo-evangelical humanism. This preoccupation with self-esteem and self-love and self-fulfillment and self-actualization that psychology has brought into the church knows no biblical counterpart.
And just to put things in perspective, the church inevitably...inevitably, buys into these things and in fact, the world will more readily admit the error of these things often than we will. For example, in the Los Angeles Times on the eighteenth of this month, you perhaps read an interesting article about a recent convention of psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and psychologists in Phoenix, Arizona, the largest convention, 7,000 people apparently attended. And for the first time in the history of the world, the leading psychoanalyst, psychologist and psychiatrist of the world got together. Men like Carl(?) Rogers, Albert Ellis, R.D. Lang, Bruno Bettleheim(?), Joseph Walpi(?) and Thomas Szaz, those are the most famous names in the world in terms of techniques and methods of psychotherapy. They were all there.
And the article was really amazing. It said, for example, "The heroes were there to evaluate where psychotherapy has come in 100 years and where it might be going." Except, they really couldn't agree on either. Lang, one of the famous ones, known for his work on schizophrenia said, "He couldn't think of any fundamental insights into relations between human beings that had resulted from a century of psychotherapy." He couldn't think of any? The 7,000 practicing and student psychotherapist, psychiatrist and social workers who attended various sessions were undaunted by the debates and differences of opinion. Obtaining autographs was the priority for many.
One of these leading psychoanalysts said, "The best therapy he had found for his anxiety was to hum a tune." And the sad thing about that is that the church has bought into that as if it is the savior of man. Nobel prize winner Richard Fryman(?) said, quote: "Psychoanalysis is not a science." What did he mean by that? He meant that there are no rules to guide it, it's a whole lot of human opinion. New York University professor, Paul Veets(?) criticized Christianity and he criticized the Christian church for its tendency to do what he called "buying high and selling low" in regard to social science. He said, "The church is eager to adopt popular trends of thought at the very time the secular professionals are beginning to criticize them." In fact, he put it this way, "It is a matter of climbing on the bandwagon just about the time it's slowing down," end quote.
We tend to do that, to jump into movements that are just about dead because they have proven a washout even to the people in the world who started them. But here we have in our contemporary Christian church, these things making tremendous inroads. I am absolutely amazed at the inroads of mysticism, science of the mind, occultism, psychology and these other things into the church, the college, the seminary environment and the pooh-poohing of biblical theology and biblical sufficiency.
Now all of this, I believe, is not some small problem. I believe it is a serious and sinful view of the Word of God. I believe it is the sin of the church to believe the Bible to be inadequate. J.I. Packer in his little book on the Word of God puts his finger on the problem in a paragraph that says this: quote: "Certainty about the great issues of Christian faith and conduct is lacking all along the line. The outside observer sees us as staggering on from a gimmick to gimmick and stunt to stunt like so many drunks in a fog, not knowing at all where we are or which way we should be going. Preaching is hazy. Heads are muddled, hearts fret, doubts drain strength, uncertainty paralyzes action. Unlike the first-century Christians who in three centuries won the Roman world and those later Christians who pioneered the Reformation and the Puritan awakening and the evangelical revival and the great missionary movement of the last century, we lack certainty," end quote.
And the reason we lack certainty is because we have a sinful view of Scripture. We do not any longer seem to believe that the Bible is sufficient for the life and conduct of the church. That is a sin...a sin of monstrous proportions, to deny the sufficiency of the Word of God.
...... We get ourselves into problems, we assume the problems are beyond the purview and the capability of the Word of God because we're really not into the daily application of the Word of God. Noble spirituality is tied to a daily study of the Word of God. That's where the strength comes to deal with life. And that's where the sufficiency lies. People sadly who are finding their sufficiency...chasing their sufficiency, not finding it, but chasing it in psychology and in this sort of science of the mind and mysticism and ecstatic experiences and the supernatural and in entertainment and management techniques for the church, all of that pursuit is running the wrong direction. And instead of bringing what they think they need and what they think they're going to get, it will bring them the very opposite...the very opposite......
.........As I pointed out last time, the almost wholesale move in the evangelical church to psychology as a means of solving man's problems, the search for methodology for church growth in the world's patterns of business and corporate structure, the demand for political power as the key to revival as some are saying, the cry for miracles and signs and wonders and new revelations and supernatural activities, the perversion of the simple gospel and the true Word of God into a sort of pop gospel of prosperity, indulgence, sensuality and success propagated by celebrities who are supposed to have a great ability to reach people that the simple Word could never reach all betray to me not only a horrifying worldliness in the church but a woefully weak view of Scripture.......
These quotes are from two sermons he gave about the sufficiency of scripture. They can be found here:
MacArthur about Psychology 1
MacArthur about Psychology 2
!!
