IS ALL TRUTH GOD'S TRUTH?
"All Truth Is God's Truth"?*
So Says "Christian" Psychology
Psychology
pretends to be the study of the soul; in fact, it has become known as the cure
of souls. But is not the "cure of souls" the domain of the Bible? God
is the only One who can take care of man's spiritual problems, and in fact, He
has done so. The Bible claims that God has given to the believer "all
things that pertain unto life and godliness" (2 Pe. 2:3). We don't need
help from Freud,
et al..
"Christian"
psychology says that we do need such help, that the Bible doesn't have all
the answers we need, that prayer, repentance, being filled with the Holy Spirit,
and other Biblical remedies are not enough because there are psychological
problems that require something more. Does it not seem a bit odd that God has
apparently inspired the likes of Freud,
Jung, Maslow, Rogers, et al., with the "truths"
unknown to the apostles and prophets and all of the leaders in the entire
history of the Church? No, we are told reassuringly, this is not to be
considered strange at all. What we need to understand is that "All truth
is God's truth." This suspicious phrase is trotted out whenever
questions are raised, and is generally accepted without further thought.
But the question of what is meant by truth is seldom asked. Are we
talking about scientific facts involving the brain and body, or about God's
truth involving the soul and spirit? Jesus said, "Thy Word is truth"
(John 17:17), not part of the truth. Jesus said, "The world cannot
accept Him [the Spirit of truth], because it neither sees Him nor knows Him ...
But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth"
(John 14:17; 16:13). Therefore, it is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot
receive, that leads us into ALL truth. How, then, can a Freud, Rogers,
Maslow, Jung, et al., have any truth for believers? -- Are they not of
the world whom Jesus says cannot even receive truth, let alone lead us
into it? They cannot know anything about truth!
Christ also said, "If you continue in My Word, then you are My disciples
[not if you continue in Freud's word], and you will know the truth and the
truth will set you free" (John 8:31,32). What extrabiblical
"truth" ever set anyone free? One may get some facts of nature from
extrabiblical sources, but NOT the truth that sets you free.
{E=MC2} is a scientific "truth," most certainly, but it sets no one
free. Likewise, does God's truth include Freudian pronouncements of obsessive
neurosis or Jung's
structure of archetypes? Or is God's truth Roger's ideas on human love or the
behaviorism of B.F. Skinner? Or is God's truth "I'm OK; You're OK"?
Paul wrote, "... the things of God knoweth no man but by the Spirit of
God." It is clear in the context that he is not talking about scientific
discoveries made by atheists through an insight into nature or the witness of
moral conscience that God gives to all men. Paul is referring not to natural,
but to spiritual truths, which he specifically states are revealed by God
only to true believers. The Bible clearly claims to be written to those who
belong to the Lord, and the truth it communicates is called "the things of
the Spirit of God." We are told in unequivocal terms that "the natural
[unsaved] man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are
foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).
How, then, can "God's truth" be communicated to humanists who have
rejected even the witness of creation and conscience? Are such persons really
God's chosen vessels to reveal heretofore undiscovered spiritual truths to the
body of Christ? Unless born again of the Spirit of God through faith in Christ,
no man can even begin to understand the "things of God," precisely
because they have to be "spiritually discerned."
God's truth, says Paul, is only understood by the "spiritual man"
who has been born of God's Spirit into the family of God. It is only such men,
Paul declares, who have "the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16). To
the unsaved, Jesus said, "He that is of God heareth God's word; ye
therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God" (John 8:47). Yet we are
asked to believe that a part of God's truth heretofore unknown to those who are
of God, and who, therefore, have the mind of Christ, has lately been discovered
by those who are not of God, and that this new insight ought to be incorporated
by the Church into its understanding of the Word of God! Before we accept such
an unbiblical and illogical thesis, we need better justification than the plea:
"All truth is God's truth."
Since there is not one standardized "Christian" psychology, each
so-called "Christian" psychologist decides for himself which of the
many psychological opinions and methods constitute his ideas of "God's
truth." In so doing, the subjective observations and biased opinions of
mere mortals are placed on the same level as the inspired Word of God. Perhaps
they think that what has been observed in nature by the limited minds of men
equals God's truth. But the Bible contains the only pure truth of God. All else
is distorted by the limitations of human perception. Whatever else one can
discover about God's creation is only partial knowledge and partial
understanding. It cannot be equal to God's truth. (See piece
below on "General Revelation and the 'Discovery' of 'Truth'.")
Psychology pretends to deal with the soul and spirit (it actually claims
to be a science of mind), a subject upon which God has spoken with
finality and about which He claims to have communicated in His Word -- the whole
truth. There are no parts of this truth missing from the Bible and
left in limbo to be discovered by godless theorists floating about in the
secular world. To suggest that there are, is to contradict the clear testimony
of Scripture and the consistent teaching of the Church since the beginning until
Psychology's very recent introduction into secular society and from there into
Christianity -- a Church that got along very well without psychology, that
withstood the Roman arena and the Inquisition, and left the stamp of victorious
Christian living and the blood of her martyrs upon the pages of history.
As soon as the door was opened for the "truths" of psychology to
shed further light upon Scripture, a subtle process began. If "All truth is
God's truth," and psychology is part of that truth, then it has to be given
at least equal authority with the Bible. Of course, "Christian"
psychologists deny that they do this. In all sincerity, they assure us that no
psychological theory will be accepted that contradicts the Bible; but in actual
practice, "psychological truth" is imposed upon the Bible and becomes
the new grid through which the Bible is to be interpreted.
Imperceptibly, but inevitably, psychological theory by this process gains
authority over the Bible and the Church, and anyone not trained in the new
"truths" of psychology is deemed unqualified to question the new interpretations.
"Christian" universities and seminaries develop large and growing
psychology departments in order to keep up with "current trends." No
church staff of any size is any longer complete without at least one
psychologist. Pastors begin to believe that they are not competent to counsel
from the Bible without going back to seminary for an advanced degree in
psychology. They are competent to preach or to teach the Word of
God if they have a degree in theology, but incompetent to counsel from
the Word of God without a degree in psychology. This new state of affairs is
accepted almost without question; and those of us who do question it as
unbiblical are accused of causing division or of speaking from ignorance,
because we presumably don't know enough about psychology.
So-called "Christian" psychology could almost be described as a
cult inside our churches. It has its own vocabulary, an endless new category of
problems tagged with labels not found in the Bible and unknown to the Church in
its entire history. These strange new phrases now roll glibly off the tongues of
pastors who are trying to be "relevant" and to "communicate"
in modern terms. In short, this cult has its own gospel, its own religious
rituals administered by its own class of priests -- the "Christian"
psychologists, who have gained authority over those who only counsel from the
Word of God, but have been judged unqualified to do so because they have not yet
been initiated into psychology's inner academic circle. Nor can anyone appeal to
the Scriptures as a means of correcting this new priestly class, because they
alone hold the keys to a vital part of "God's truth," which allows for
a new interpretation of the Bible and a new Christianity. It is a masterstroke
of genius from the great mastermind of deception himself. And it is all being
carried on in the name of the Lord and for the supposed good of His Church.
The Christian life is not a grit-your-teeth and hold-your-breath
roller-coaster ride. It is Christ living His resurrection life in those who have
trusted in Him. To suggest that psychotherapeutic techniques lately discovered
by Freud, et al., are now necessary in order for today's Christian to
experience the abundant life in Christ is destructive of the very faith that the
proponents of this teaching say they are trying to enhance. Such is the
inevitable result of interpreting the Bible on the basis of the predetermined
outside opinions of men. We desperately need a return to Biblical Christianity (Jer.
17:9,10; 2 Tim. 3:15-17; 2 Pe. 1:3).
General Revelation and the "Discovery" of "Truth"
General revelation is an important theological concept.
Conservative theologians have used the term general revelation to
identify a very narrow category of truth that God has made powerfully evident
(thus the word revelation) to every rational human being (thus the word general),
according to the way He fashioned the moral and physical universe. Romans 1 and
2, the most important New Testament discussion of general revelation, states
unequivocally that the revelation God has set before all men, through the
infinitely mysterious, complicated physical universe and through the moral
consciousness of all human beings, renders all humans without excuse when they
reject that truth.
Lately, however, the important theological category of
general revelation has been broadened to include all truth-claims made as a
result of human efforts to understand the many aspects of the created order.
Those who have broadened the category argue that the Scriptures are indeed the
"special" revelation which God has left to us and that, because God is
the Author of the entire created order, whenever men discover "truth"
in that order, we can refer to that humanly discovered "truth" as
"general revelation."
Doug Bookman, in a paper titled "In Defense of Biblical
Counseling," identifies the very dangerous ramifications of the
argument that replaces the Biblical doctrine of general revelation:
First ... by defining general revelation as that body of truth which is gained by human investigation and discovery, the argument is guilty of neglecting the element of non-discoverability which is intrinsic to the biblical notion of revelation and supplanting that notion with its exact antithesis. Further, the approach is dangerous in that it attributes to the truth-claims of men an authority which they do not and cannot possess, and renders it virtually impossible to bring those truth-claims under the authority of the one standard by which God demands that they be measured.
Second, the argument ... is confused in its definition of the term "general." By mistakenly taking that term to refer to the content of the category (rather than to the audience to which the revelation thus denominated is available), the apologists who employ this argument commit two fallacies which are destructive of orthodox theology: first, they expand the category to include all manner of truth-claims which have no right to be thus honored; and second, they eviscerate the character of revelation by including in the category truth-claims which are admittedly lesser than the truths of Scripture, which demand that finite and fallen men measure them to determine their validity, and which at best can possibly issue in a higher level of insight into the demands of living (italics in original).
Bookman concludes that:
... as described in Scripture, general revelation is truth which is manifestly set forth before all men (Rom. 1:17-19; 2:14,15); it is truth so clear and irrefutable as to be known intuitively by all rational men (Ps. 19:1-6; Rom. 1: 19); it is truth so authoritative and manifest that when men, by reason of willful rebellion, reject that truth, they do so at the cost of their own eternal damnation (Rom. 1:20; 2:1,15). For this seamless, flawless and majestic tapestry of God-given truth is substituted a patchwork of "lesser" truths, of truth which "is obtainable at least in part," truths which "are not delineated for us by God" but are "discovered by fallible humans." ... Surely such a concept of general revelation represents a ravaging of the biblical concept.
General revelation includes the proposition that "fallen
man retains the ability and propensity to deduce truth from the created world
and thus to arrive at conclusions which are as authoritative as the Scriptures
themselves." The "All truth is God's truth"-ers defend such a
proposition, not by any exegetical consideration of relevant Biblical passages,
but rather by pointing out that the sage in the book of Proverbs explicitly says
he learned some things by observing the natural order and that those things are
recorded in Scripture, concluding that if it could be done by the Biblical sage,
it can be done by any human being. However, such a parallel is illegitimate. The
conclusions drawn from the supposed parallel are wrong and dangerous.
More central to the issue is that the argument involves a
denial of the Biblical insistence that divine truth is foolishness to the
natural man (1 Cor. 2:14); that apart from regeneration, man’s understanding is
darkened and alienated from the life of God (Eph. 4:17); that all men are enemies
in their minds until God transforms them through the work of salvation (Col.
1:13); and that from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no
soundness in fallen man (Isa. 1:5). Further, even regenerated man is crippled by
the continuing corruption of sin, as well as by the reality of his own
finiteness (Isa. 55:8,9; 1 Cor. 2:16).
Thus, for any man, saved or lost, to suppose that his
thoughts ought to be regarded as certain and/or as authoritative as those of
God—let alone the notion that all human truth-claims deserve such respect,
simply because the sage of the Old Testament sometimes related his articulation
of truth to observations he had made in the natural order—is to deny what the
Bible says so often and so clearly about the real fallenness and finiteness of
man and about the infinite wisdom and matchless authority of God.
The question is whether the Bible is fully God-breathed or
includes information discovered by the human intellect. The "All truth is God's
truth"-ers are convinced that the knowledge possessed by the sage in
Proverbs and recorded by him in Scripture was discovered by the sage alone, with
no dependence upon God, yet this perceived parallel between the ministry
of the Old Testament sage and the work of the modern "social scientist" simply does not
exist.
The issue here relates very directly to the character of
inspired Scripture. Wisdom literature, such as that which is represented by the
sage in the book of Proverbs, is one of many precious and profitable genres of Biblical
literature. But the recorded message of the sage, no less than that of the
prophet, the Gospelist, or the writer of a New Testament epistle, is
authoritative and dependable simply and only because it was breathed out by
God (2 Tim. 3:16). The prophets received their messages by means of dreams
(Num. 12:6); that doesn’t suggest that the dreams of men today are just as
authoritative as those of the prophets. The sage normally received his message
by means of observation; it is erroneous to conclude that, therefore, the
observations of any man are as authoritative and/or dependable as those
observations of the sage which are recorded in the pages of sacred Scripture.
Note carefully that the debate here is not whether any of the observations made
by human beings might be true. Rather, the debate is whether the observations of
men today ought to be regarded as possessing the absolute certainty and/or
normative authority which the Bible possesses in all of its parts. The words of
the sage are not certain and authoritative because they were discovered
by observation, any more than the words of Jude are certain and authoritative because
he cites them from the apocryphal book of Enoch (Jude 14). The words of all Biblical
writers are authoritative because the recording of them was done under the
careful supervision of the Holy Spirit, which is known as
"inspiration." To regard the words of men as possessing the same
sublime dignity and ultimate authority that the words of the Bible possess is
remarkably dangerous.
In summary, the "All truth is God's truth"-er
understanding of general revelation is all-encompassing but erroneous. In one
fell swoop they even reduce sections of Scripture to less than God-breathed in
their attempt to show that God’s revelation refers to that which can be
discovered through observation and natural reason. The word revelation refers
to an unveiling, a revealing of something that could not be otherwise discovered
or known. What mankind gleans through observation, reason, and logic is not
revelation, but discovery. These discoveries can be very helpful to mankind,
such as the discovery of electricity. The kind of psychology the "All truth
is God's truth"-ers defend may include some discovery about the superficial
aspects of man through observation, reason, and logic, but these kinds of
theories include highly subjective, speculative imaginations about the depths of
man, and that (the depths of man) is the sole province of Scripture. [Return
to Text]
* Adapted and/or excerpted from Beyond Seduction; pp. 137-145;
PsychoHeresy, pp. 32-35;
and from an article by the same name ["General Revelation and the
'Discovery' of 'Truth'"] in the March-April 2001 issue of PsychoHeresy
Awareness Letter (the latter two by permission of PsychoHeresy
Awareness Ministries, 4137 Primavera Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93110).
