Shane Becker

Married to Ashley Quinn. Opinions are my own. Staff @WestminsterTS. Tweeting @David_Powlison quotes. Alum. @RefBibleCollege

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Check out my latest article on Desiring God:

A Guide to Reading David Powlison

[Desiring God @desiringGod]

If you want to bear another’s burden, if you want to love wisely and well, then consider learning from the multifaceted ministry of David Powlison.

Shane Becker offers a guided tour of 22 resources that trace the main contours of his writings. https://t.co/p5tVWznkXK

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

“A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it.” Martin Luther

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

@praximtheology Will do

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Biblical counselors across the spectrum may affirm David Powlison’s theological commitments while missing the nuances and implications of his thought.

Special revelation, saving grace, extra-biblical info, noetic effects of sin, general revelation, and common grace (among others things) are necessarily inter-related categories. A partial understanding of each will skew the whole and generate unfruitful conversation.

For example, GR is not synonymous w/ CG. GR is not a catch all for any and all extra-biblical info. Natural revelation is not natural theology. SR must open our eyes and ears to rightly interpret GR. Common grace has both positive and negative components. There is no such thing as neutral knowledge (the supposed positivist, objectivity of “science”)

Correctly defining and understanding how the parts necessarily inter-relate will protect us from many pitfalls, including some things we are witnessing in the BC landscape today.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

@sevier_nick Yes, we have a lot of agreement. Thanks for your time and help understanding your perspective; let me give it more thought. Pray the Lord grants you rest this Lord’s day

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Love of neighbor seeks to improve the conversation. It makes space for people to move at a human pace. It involves listening to understand before speaking to be understood. It means offering clarifications and definitions that help people talk with each other rather than past each other.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

There is no shift. I ask sincerely because we share the same commitment. God’s Word is the standard. His Word is the final arbiter because of the ontological supremacy of God a se. Yet, just like saying all truth is God’s truth, we run into an epistemological truism. The question is precisely, how do you weigh? How do you know you are right? Theology is the personal, human amen to the text, but theology is for us to do guided by the Spirit. The Church is ministerial, but in practice you can functionally make your private interpretation magisterial.

We share so much in common. You ask, how do you know if your judgements are true? That is what I am asking! You say weigh it against God’s Word. I affirm, yes let’s do that, but ask how do you, personally as Nick, do that? Theology is more than proof texts or slogans. Reading God’s Word includes the pneumatologocal pressure of the text pushing you and I both to ask “therefore” questions of good and logical consequence.

You ask for objective factors. Quarrelsomeness is a fact. It can be identified. It is what it is because God says it is constitutionally. It is juxtaposed with kindness. It has omission characteristics and commission. It only appears when rooted in some form of selfish motivation. However, as you noted, we cannot always accurately identify it in others by its effects on others. I’m not sure why you are inserting some artificial wedge of “subjectivity” on my part? I am trying to create epistemological infrastructure (theological articulation) to help subjective knowers discern quarrelsomeness to move toward objectivity because we do not have some magic Scriptural 8-ball.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

@sevier_nick Nick, how do you weigh your interpretation of God’s Word?

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Yes, your OP spoke of objective realities. You referenced motivation as the defining definitional characteristic between contending for the truth vs being quarrelsome. I affirm that motivational antithesis.

I commented that motivation was not the only characteristic difference that is worth mentioning given that 1) you can be self-deluded w/ your motives, prone to defensiveness and 2) the original OP referred to the preconditions for ministry which includes the social judgement of others of your potential quarrelsomeness which 3) you can expand to normal life in relationship to others since we are called to “one another” and we are all prone to quarrel.

Practically, for example, I could say, I often find you quarrelsome, Nick. Is that objective or subjective? Well, it depends on the metrics I use, hence I would need criteria such as set forth in the above taxonomy. If I can’t see your objective motives, and only your words or actions, how else do you qualify quarrelsome in others in a responsible manner for maximal objectivity?

Happy to chat more if interested.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Sure, here’s the working taxonomy:

1. Constitutive: What makes this what it is? E.g., what is quarrelsomeness?
2. Motivational: What moves someone to do it?
3. Diagnostic: What helps us recognize what it is? E.g., conduct, patterns, manner, posture, and other relevant evidence.
4. Consequential: What are its ripple effects?

Example: I can sincerely believe I’m defending truth for God’s glory while betraying that stated intention through my behavior. Others may rightly recognize this discrepancy, but their assessment does not constitute the moral nature of my conduct. Their judgment is an inference from evidence, not what makes the act what it is.
This is analogous to historiography: we evaluate competing explanations by their explanatory power, w/ criteria such as consistency, coherence, etc that fit’s inference to the best explanation. Our judgments can be warranted or mistaken without constituting the reality being judged.

Yet, given that knowledge puffs up and we are curved in on ourselves—we should be mindful of our capacity for self-deception. This is also a reason God has given us one another: however we have the burden of interpreting responsibly (our ethical standard) when we offer accountability.

Conversely, someone can speak firmly, cause offense, and still act faithfully. The person’s motive may be rightly ordered, the conduct itself may be appropriate, and the mob’s condemnation may be mistaken. This is another reason why sample taxonomies above can be helpful.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

@sevier_nick There are constitutive, motivational, diagnostic consequential characteristics. The salient point is a characteristic that defines a thing is not necessarily the same as a characteristic that helps us recognize it.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Briefly, there are two challenges facing the contemporary Biblical Counseling Movement (BCM).

First, the problem of retrieval (i.e., the past). This involves neglecting, misunderstanding, or failing to steward what has already been done. The temptations we face include unnecessary redundancy, selectivity, inaccurate representations, the Dunning–Kruger effect, and stunted doctrinal development.

There are many reasons BC has not gained greater influence in broader Protestant culture. What will not help attract new learners is ahistoricism or biased and unfaithful selectivity. We need to raise the baseline of shared knowledge to strengthen confessionalism—not to be confused with rigid doctrinalism, sacerdotalism, or professionalization. The question is how the movement can advance most faithfully and fruitfully.

Practically, without sufficient breadth and depth of knowledge of the field—for example, Powlison’s corpus as a whole and its Westminsterian roots, much of which remains behind a paywall—we risk attempting to reinvent what earlier figures such as the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, Calvin, Turretin, and Bavinck accomplished in their respective contexts. We have a foundation of affirmations and denials. We need to coalesce and build on this w/ care, patience, and rigor.

Second, we face the problem of corporate vision and leadership (i.e., the future). The fact that certain voices are currently the loudest (whether CIBC or ACBC or CCEF) does not automatically mean they are necessarily the right voices for this moment, or that the emphases and content of their message represent the best way forward. This is not a pejorative observation, or with any particular person or org in mind, but a general principle of movement advancement. We need the body to form a conscience to hold us accountable.

We need the corporate vision and will to restate, afresh, our priorities and what we are positively for. We need the vision and will to assess our threats and define our perimeter—not so that we might merely engage in polemics, but so that we might engage flesh-and-blood image-bearers more effectively. And we need a vision capable of forming us in both content and character, teaching us how to relate and preserve the mutually important and necessary characteristics of biblical counseling while not ignoring the incessant opportunities to learn. The aim is not merely to preserve the movement, but to cultivate an ever-reforming biblical counseling that blossoms into a sweet aroma pleasing to the Lord and wins our neighbors.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

David Powlison was a gift. God gave him to help the church articulate our theological amen to God’s Word. But if you selectively mine his corpus for ammunition to defend your preferred emphasis, you risk missing what made him, and what can make you, a mature counselor and thought-leader.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

We believe in corporate sanctification. Therefore, everyone in the biblical counseling movement has something to learn from our moment (CCEF, ACBC, IRBC, ABC, etc). If you are—or sound—biblicistic, you have room to grow. If you uncritically adopt—or sound syncretistic, you have room to grow. If you are uncharitable, setting up your best against another’s worst, you have room to grow. If you are overly-obsessed with tone, prone to avoid critiques from anyone, anywhere, at anytime, you have room to grow.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Claiming a particular view does not mean you have self-consciousness about how you arrived there. Nor does a claim to history or to a figure mean history was right or that you can prove your interpretation was right. The best of academic ambition, that serves neighbor, shows your math.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

Biblical counseling is an endeavor in wisdom, by design, which is why you’ll see a range of representation. For proponents, be very careful to faithfully represent the best form of what the BCM has already articulated. For onlookers, be very careful not to confuse its mature expressions with its worst.

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

@NeilShenvi @NeilShenvi just read Powlison’s JBC articles to save you time and emotional energy. He asked and satisfactorily answered all your Q’s. Twitter represents the worst of BC. No need to reinvent the wheel

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

“It does not take much to make us realize what fools we are, but the little it takes is long in coming.” Flannery O’Connor

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

@jared_poulton BC is under practical theology proper and at the same time occupies a unique place under pastoral theology/ministry/poimenics (which is also under PT). BC is informed by & dependent on other subsidiary disciplines but not formally located anywhere else

[Shane Becker @imshanebecker]

C. S. Lewis’s rules for writing: