https://churchandfamilylife.com/sermons/6952196ce386b6135c21f915
As regular readers of my websites will know, I am not a fan of Scott Brown and his Theonomic movement within Reformed Baptist circles.
I first encountered him around twenty years ago (or more) in connection with the question of family-integrated worship. I had already more or less developed convictions with regard to worship, and as a paedobaptist, I had wrestled with how to view Christian children. And so on that point, I actually go a good deal further than Brown and this also shaped my thinking in terms of worship. Sunday School for me had come up in the 1990's as I wrestled with ecclesiology and the regulative principle.
As I've often said, there's no issue with having a more specifically instructional or even interactive portion of the church gathering - but it's still worship, it's still a formal gathering of the Church and as such falls under its requirements and limitations. I suppose this would be even more confusing today as so many Evangelicals limit 'worship' to music and don't even seem to include Bible reading, preaching, or the sacraments in that category.
I personally know some who took Brown's teaching regarding Sunday School to an extreme and made it the gospel - something to divide over. As such, they basically found themselves with no place to go to church. They didn't and today they're functionally apostatized. But that's another story for another time.
Brown's wagon was informally hitched to Doug Phillips of Vision Forum who went down in a scandal around 2013. He had been involved in a long-time affair. Adultery is always abhorrent but given the way he had created a kind of cult of domesticity, it was particularly odious and no doubt shattering to many of his followers. Brown was never directly affiliated with Vision Forum (that I know of) and so his NCFIC (National Center for Family Integrated Churches) continued and later changed its name to Church and Family Life.
I always think of Brown and a few others when considering the way in which Theonomy has morphed and re-packaged itself in the 21st century. They don't broadcast what they are - Phillips was like that too and thus many embrace these men not fully understanding what they're all about. But if you listen, it comes out - you'll start hearing about Rushdoony and other such teachers along with their ideas. I would imagine as many more people are starting to figure out that Rushdoony was a racist and Holocaust denier and a key influence behind the growth of Kinism - some like Brown might want to but whisper his name at best.
In terms of family and marital dynamics, I am to the Right of most Complementarians and yet obviously I don't have a Right-wing political bone in my body as I remain hostile to the nationalism and capitalism and other Enlightenment values someone like Brown (inconsistently) champions. I say inconsistently because he champions Biblical authority and would condemn the influences of the Enlightenment, even while he embraces and promotes some of the more pernicious and Anti-Christian aspects and ideals born of that movement.
By saying I'm to the Right of Complementarians, I mean I do lean toward some Patriarchal positions - if we acquiesce to these not always helpful labels. My wife stays home and this is out of conviction, something we established before we were married nearly 30 years ago. Even with my kids grown, there are no plans for her to enter the workforce. I don't believe women should be teaching seminaries, teaching Sunday School (however it is meant), or be under the authority of other men. Unlike today's pro-feminist Evangelicals or even many Complementarians, I believe the Scriptures teach a concept of Biblical Womanhood that requires submission, shamefacedness, modesty, domesticity, and yes, even paternal authority before marriage. I will freely admit that many who seem to trumpet these concepts do so in an odious manner. They are (like all beliefs, convictions, and ideas) subject to distortion and abuse and there's plenty of it we can point to.
But unlike many in the Patriarchy movement, I don't think all women should submit to all men. I'm not a misogynist and have little patience for such views. I find Doug Wilson to be in error and many of his statements are vile, twisted, and represent a distortion of Biblical teaching and marriage dynamics. He takes things and warps them by filtering them through the Dominionist lens, interpreting all relationships (and even the marriage bed) in terms of power and domination. Nor I do not connect these dynamics to spheres of dominion or anything like it. I do not believe the Cultural Mandate to be in effect as it is so often understood.
I admit I do find it ridiculous that a wife would 'vote' contrary to her husband but it is to be expected in our culture which has absolutized individualism. As such the notion of franchise denial is extremely offensive to the mainstream - including mainstream Evangelicalism which has a relationship to culture akin to cancer in a metastatic state. For my part, my wife and I are offended at the societal tendency to treat marriage as a triviality and the fact that I can't speak for my wife and vice versa, or that she would have a (Ms. as opposed to Mrs.) relationship with society and the state apart from her husband and marriage. But so be it. This is an Enlightenment culture, not a Christian one.
Lest someone think me entirely inconsistent I simply point to conservative Anabaptists. They certainly fall (by the culture's estimation) under a Patriarchal-type category and yet they too reject all the Dominionist framings of Wilson, Brown, and others. And like them, the voting dilemma is moot. We're not supposed to vote or serve on juries. I don't care about women in the American Empire's military. As far as I'm concerned no Christians should be in the legions in any capacity. If the legions are filled with sodomites and feminists, what is that to me. Will it somehow make things better that the bombs are dropped by straight, White, Christ-hating Evangelical, Catholic, and Mormon males?
Likewise I don't care about women's sports and Title IX. An earlier generation of Christians would be shocked and horrified at the notion of virtuous Christian young women out there shouting, grunting, sweating, bouncing and swaying in a state of improper dress as they seek to catch, kick, throw a ball, or race across a goal line. There used to be concepts like decorum, propriety, and modesty which seem to no longer have any import or meaning in our culture. And again, the goalposts have been moved. Conservative Christians didn't support Title IX when it came out, and yet today in the face transgender-mutation politics it has become a battle cry. And so what victory is won? Abomination is defeated and replaced by what? Feminism? Indecorous conduct that undermines Christian and feminine character? That's no victory to celebrate.
I have wrestled with all these issues over the years and how many in those circles (like Brown and the Botkins) seem to be people with considerable wealth and thus have more options available to them and a greater ease in the maintenance of their bourgeois lifestyles. Call me inconsistent, but I have allowed my daughters to go out and work - but not because they seek to be career women. They don't. They want to get married and guide the house, but as they have been unable to find husbands, I believed it beneficial for them to experience some life - not in a 'spread your wings' kind of attitude. That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing - though it often is. Rather, I wanted them to know what it's like to work, to have some contact with the lives of people around us and understand the struggles, how they think, and what it's all like. I meet too many isolated and insulated Christian young people who are dysfunctional and inept and yet full of pride and judgment. And I can think of several that are in their dysfunction and social paralysis a terrible testimony to their parents and the Church. They get hired at a store or restaurant and yet cannot function and are incapable due to endless scruples and an inability to bend and think on their feet.
We have talked about the jobs, and the specific places of employment - some are better than others and many are unacceptable. It requires wisdom rather than a simple checklist.
For one daughter, the situation at the small town grocery store changed and she ended up leaving. A situation that was okay, suddenly wasn't. Also, there are different dynamics with supervisors and bosses. Some situations are acceptable, others are not. One daughter waitresses at a diner owned by an Evangelical and ironically it is the 'Christian' element that sometimes becomes the most frustrating for her. The workforce is a little on the 'nicer' side as the boss is careful in who he hires. The patrons are decent enough - some diners are nicer than others and small town outlets are different than the truck stops that often earn a bad reputation. Actually the worst patron that tends to get out of line with the waitresses is a local pastor. My daughter learned how to shut him down and he leaves her alone. I considered intervening - not with threats but rather with the weapon of admonition and shame - but I also wanted her to learn how to handle it. Strange as it may sound to the reader's ear, the overall experience was positive and led to a lot of good discussions about men and women, the nature of flirtation, hypocrisy, ethics, and the like.
I'm not sure I always get the wisdom (versus the checklist) approach when it comes to the likes of Brown, but I will grant them that at least they are thinking in these terms and are willing to buck the mainstream culture. Readers may be familiar with what I call the Accommodationist Triad - Feminism, Divorce, and Psychology. These once controversial paradigms are now cultural givens and have been almost universally embraced by the Church. If you take a hard stand in opposition to them, you will quickly empty your church.
The prevalence and pernicious influence of Psychology has gotten remarkably worse in recent years as the Materialist revolution continues to work itself out in all of society - and the Church. Everything is reduced to chemicals in the brain, hormones, adrenalin, and the like. Human being are simply evolved biological machines. And while Christians reject this on paper, the truth is the practical out-workings have fully infiltrated Christian thinking. I hear it all the time on Focus on the Family and other supposedly conservative programmes wherein everything from awe to anger is spoken of in terms of brain chemicals and physiological responses. They're simply following the world. Just the other day I listened to a BBC report about a tennis player having a meltdown and smashing her racket to bits. This was followed by a discussion of the addictive nature of anger and the way the brain chemicals are interacting, etc. There's no concept of the will, the spirit, or the effects of sin, because they do not exist. They are not valid concepts within a materialist epistemological framework. They are but metaphysical fictions or at best words we use to describe complex physiological processes. American Evangelicals are following close behind and the groundwork is already laid for a substantial shift in the nature of Christian anthropology and theology in general - one I think already under way. Barely a century after the rise of Fundamentalism, many of the great-grandchildren of the original movement are on a fast track to embrace the theological modernism their ancestors opposed.
Likewise Focus on the Family also promotes feminism on a regular basis. Just the other day an Evangelical woman was on there lamenting how she had gone from being under her father's authority to being a young bride fully dependent on her husband. She had always been under the control of a man - a feminist framing to be sure. Fifty years ago this would have been decried as Anti-Christian and radical - after all it was Gloria Steinem who was saying things like this. Today, it's par-for-the-course rhetoric in Evangelical circles. Because they keep moving the goalposts, they can now pass as conservatives simply because they oppose the latest gender-queer-looney tunes version of feminism.
Psychology has some insights as does philosophy but they are lost systems - humanistic attempts at explaining the world, its workings, and its problems. I am always struck at how psychologists and counsellors more or less function as clergy - for that's what they are, the clergy in a new humanist materialist religion that has been the de facto ideology of the West for almost a century, but has really come into its own over the past fifty years or so. And in that last period, it has infiltrated and largely overcome the Church.
And yet for Christians who are serious about Biblical authority and the Sufficiency of Scripture, we must reject the major assumptions of psychology. Certainly, behaviour can be studied and we can learn about stimuli and things like that. Sometimes terms are helpful in describing categories of behaviour but we fill them with a different content and are thus incompatible with the mainstream institutional approach. We don't see them in merely physiological or social terms. A key example would be something like addiction. For many years there was a debate over whether or not alcohol or drug use were addictions (focusing on the physiological dependency) or primarily moral failings that result in the behaviour which certainly has physiological implications. There can be a circularity wherein ailment and dependency drive and shape character. But to focus on the physical at the expense of the moral and spiritual is unchristian. Alcoholics may be addicts and yet their failing is moral and related to will and character - regardless of genetic disposition.
Now I know the Focus on the Family/Mainstream Evangelical types will likely agree and acknowledge the spiritual elements at work - though many struggle with the moral categories or the threat and implications continued moral downgrade implies in spiritual terms. This is often connected to their understanding of the gospel and grace - all too often cheap grace and a doctrine of assurance that is actually tantamount to presumption. And therefore the spiritual force of argument and confrontation is lessened. It's not a question of salvation but merely that of rewards or perhaps the satisfaction found in a 'good life'.
But when they turn to behaviour-methods, and even 'mindfulness' techniques, let alone psychosomatic medications, they demonstrate that not only is the Scripture non-authoritative in these realms of human struggle, but subordinate to humanistic (and often materialist) paradigms that drive these treatment regimens and the employment of these drugs.
For them, the Scriptures are not sufficient for the Christian life but the Church needs something more when it comes to not only worship and ecclesiology, but the day to day struggles with living in the world and the various wrestlings we experience with fear, anxiety, stress, guilt, forgiveness, patience, and the like. On all these topics, they turn to extra-Scriptural and often non-Christian sources. Further, the Bible is insufficient when it comes to how to parent, how to be a husband, and the like. The entire category and spectrum of thought related to these issues is outsourced and subjugated to supposed experts - and counterfeit shepherds how will dispense their 'wisdom' at a price.
For some, this touches on the question of Common Grace and its role in pursuing these questions and how the unbelieving world can contribute to the growth of the Kingdom - and thus indirectly to the Church. Others decry this entire theological trajectory as problematic and erroneous.
Many narratives come into play here. For some Dominionists (influenced by the Kuyperian tradition and his Common Grace teachings), there is a positive view of cultural development and technology. And again, some on the basis of antithesis and separatism have rejected this - and Kuyper altogether.
But there's another strain out there of which there are many different versions and ways of framing the narrative. Retaining the broad strokes of Kuyperian/Dominionist thought and the commitment to cultural transformation, the other view I'm thinking of is often wed to an agrarian and sometimes Neo-Confederate revisionist reading of American (or Western) history. Again, there are many variations on this theme. Those in these camps embrace Common Grace with gusto when it comes to Western Civilisation as a whole, the rise of Capitalism etc. But they are dubious when it comes to certain aspects of industrial culture - as if this could be separated from the rise of market capitalism. They love Wall Street, its usury and its dividends, but don't want to see it or think about it too deeply - the context for its rise, and its national, cultural, and global implications. They are hostile to feminism and psychology because these emerged from the matrix of industrial society and Western cultural decline - the overturning of traditional norms. Of course, these norms have always existed in a dynamic and more could be said about the way all this played out in Protestant vs. Catholic societies. It's an investigation that should prove rather unsettling for those who champion these ideals and yet also wave the banners of the Magisterial Reformation.
As I've often argued the present 'mess' is in fact the result of the system so many conservative Christians champion. They have failed to make some crucial connections. James Dobson wanted to save the family but in his rabid promotion of capitalism, nationalism and thus the warfare state, he supported a system that drove women into the workforce. He surrendered this point but argued for more of the same - a paradigm that since the 1980's has wreaked economic chaos, which in turn destroys marriages, families, and contributes to the breakdown of society. It's a case of internal contradictions, dissonance, and the blind leading the blind. However one views it, the primary motivators in Dobson's thinking were extra-Biblical and thus he lost his way and led millions astray - and his organisation is still at it.
As the reader will note, I don't hold these Dominionists in high regard and yet I must admit that it is in these revisionist circles that I find some affinity in terms of anti-feminism and anti-psychology. Education also comes to mind. I fail to understand how any Christian in their right mind would even consider sending their children to a K-12 public school. That said, I too am in a dilemma as I consider many of the Christian schools to be unacceptable, many homeschool curricula ridiculous and harmful, and many private 'conservative' Christian colleges - propaganda mills that subvert Christian thinking and ethics. I have written elsewhere about my struggles over sending my kids to college, and whether it is inconsistent for them to attend secular state universities. As is so often the case, it's complicated.
I am genuinely sorry to say it, but I did find Brown's statements (in the linked sermon) to be somewhat refreshing. Given the foundation upon which he builds and how his understanding of Scripture is skewed and out of focus, I have some reservations. The subtle spectre of Dominionist distortion is always there just below the surface - and sometimes on the table. But taking it as a stand-alone statement, it's worthy of consideration, respect, and even accolade.
While reflecting on the Romans 15 passage in question and the connection of Ephesians 4 and gifts - I think a case could be made that the Evangelical approach to ecclesiology represents a low or even defective understanding of Christ's resurrection and triumph in the ascension. Given the confusion regarding the descent to Hades and the like, maybe this shouldn't surprise us. I have no idea where Brown falls on these questions but it's something that pressed on me as I listened to him.
Rome of course can argue on the basis of the Magisterium which (in choosing to embrace philosophical theology and Scholasticism) can argue for the inclusion of modern psychology. Or to put it another way, as they are (by their reckoning) in possession of the charism, the Holy Spirit can lead the Church to utilize and embrace psychology. Evangelicalism cannot make that argument and as such it is on these points of ecclesiology and the Christian life that their low views of Scriptural authority become rather pronounced.
Some who are more classically Reformed or Lutheran might take exception at the way in which Brown emphasizes the priesthood of all believers or rather the way he connects it to handling the Word. I more or less agree with him and yet I would certainly hold to a much higher view of the Sacraments than he does. If Counselling is Word-handling (as it were) and authoritative, some argue that 'formal' counselling is something restricted to elders and bishops - more akin to discipline (and yet not always punitive). Lay-people (as they say) can counsel but in a limited capacity, while Brown seems to open this up to everyone, a corporate role and function within the Church. But I doubt he would extend such Word-handling functions to preaching, teaching, and the administration of sacraments. And so, there is a bit of a discrepancy here - or at least a potential one.
Brown rightly brings up the legacy of Jay Adams (1929-2020) who in the 1970's challenged the growing tendency to embrace psychological counselling. His Nouthetic Counselling rightly focused on the effects of sin on the mind and thus (for a time) took Christian counselling in another direction - corrective and admonishing, as opposed to a therapeutic approach. I would argue that has been significantly subverted in recent years and his legacy is in danger.
The psychological/psychiatric revolution has been so profound in our culture that few can even conceive of how hostile many Churches were to it in the 1970's. Even in the wider culture, 'seeing a shrink' still carried a stigma into the 1980's and even beyond. We used to laugh at Al Franken's Stuart Smalley skit on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990's - and yet today I hear Stuart Smalley-like preachers on Evangelical radio all the time. We used to howl at his repeated line - I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!, and yet, I've heard these same humanistic sentiments re-packaged and taught by people like Chip Ingram and by numerous guests on shows like Focus on the Family.
Since capitalist culture tends to 'professionalize' so many sectors of society, it's no surprise counselling also went this direction - despite the fact that a lot of the 'medicine' behind it is dubious and yes, often qualifies as quackery. But as one must have a 'professional' certification to counsel, it's no surprise that the Church also embraced this way of thinking and has (in many quarters) removed the authority to teach and admonish from elders and placed it in the hands of these extra-ecclesiastically certified for-hire 'professionals' - removing true counsel from some how can't pay the bill. It's a scandal, or should be, but most have embraced it without thinking in the same way they (without thinking) embrace 501c3 registration with the state and all its requirements, market investments, usury, the attitudes and values of the insurance industry, institutional values when it comes to law, property, investment, and things like background checks, security, and in some cases outside auditing and extra-ecclesiastical arbitration. The Church functions like a business or an education and services institution within society. This egregious trajectory leads (ultimately) to apostasy as the Church loses its unique identity and purpose. Brown has (I would argue) embraced some of these values, but on the question of psychology and counselling, he remains pretty steadfast.
And to cut to the chase - the psychologizing of society has made everyone crazy. In the current context of cultural decadence, the inward turn has made people profoundly unsettled and unhappy. Rather than produce stability and inward peace, it has revealed man's depravity and inward poverty apart from Christ. Even Bonhoeffer (who was far from orthodox) saw psychology for the nonsense it is nearly a century ago.
Self-esteem doesn't help people to feel better about themselves. It makes them self destruct. No one needs to be taught to esteem themselves. The last thing a child needs is to have self-esteem pounded into them. It needs to be driven out of them. Due to our fallen natures we're already handed over to self-esteem and the tendency toward self-idolatry. That's what humanism is. Depressed people are already self-obsessed. They need to quit thinking about themselves and turn their attention to the outside and to others. It is better to give than to receive and it's not because giving releases a chemical in our brain that makes us feel better about ourselves. God help these madmen and fools.
I would additionally argue that modern psychology has arisen in the context of Western Individualism - and now is this individualism gone to seed, one of many forms wherein it has imploded and become self-destructive. It has become absolutized and is now caught in a cycle of self-destruction. I also believe it to be Providential Judgment on this culture and the fact that so much of the Church has embraced it - that's judgment too.
As Christians we know wisdom begins and end with the Word of God - which reveals Christ. The Church has forgotten this and sought solace in other quarters. Or is the problem more profound? Is it really just unbelief and a situation in which the bulk of the Church finds the message unsatisfying and unfathomable? It does not soothe their fears or give them peace. They find no joy in reconciliation with God because they're not reconciled with Him, but deceived and thus handed over to idolatry and insanity.
See also:
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-thanksgiving-model-that-must-be.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-counsels-of-mammon-i.html
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2025/05/recent-discussion-of-salem-witch-trials.html