What is Biblicism? Why is it dangerous? | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we are going to be explaining what Biblicism.

Is.

There's a lot of theological confusion and categories and systems and theologies that have been birthed out of Biblicism, and we're going to explain to you what it is, how to refrain from it, and how to spot it when you see it.

Stay tuned.

A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give.

Theocast Giveaway and the Book on Covenant Theology

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Today your hosts are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I am John Moffitt.

I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and it's good to be with you this morning. Justin, we had this conversation earlier. Often we think about what books we want to give away, and sometimes we think books are so good, we give them away twice.

This might even be our third time. I don't know. Who knows? I think it's the second time.

Who cares?

It's free.

If it's a good book and you're getting it for free, who cares, right?

That's right. We should probably have Renahan on the podcast, too.

Now that John's given it away, the air has been let out of the balloon.

He's written more than one book.

He has. That's true. So, given the subject matter of today's conversation, which we're going to set up here in just a moment, we're racking our brains as to a good resource to give to our selected winner.

Since we all know you already have a Bible, that would be our first recommendation.

There's only one must-read in history. It is the Scripture.

Give it away.

Sorry for that.

All right.

So, the giveaway book this week is, for the second time, I think, since we've started doing this, is by our friend Samuel Renahan. The book is entitled The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant, and His Kingdom.

Yeah, I think it will become obvious, perhaps, for the reasons why we're giving this away. Really good book on covenant theology, but he also does a lot of good stuff there on typology and just redemptive historical framework of the Bible.

Yeah, stuff that we find useful and helpful. And so, the winner this week, under the sovereignty of Almighty God and also via the mechanism of the Wheel of Names, is none other than Debbie Morrison. So, Debbie, we are excited to have you as an SR member partnering with Theocast and a newer member.

So, thank you, sister, for locking arms with us in that way, and we hope that this book is an encouragement to you. If you do not get a message from us about how to get your free book, then just shoot us an email or a message, and we'll happily get that book to you.

And if you're listening to this podcast and you're wondering how you could get a free copy of Sam Renahan's excellent book, you can do the following. You can go to any of our social media handles today on the day the podcast releases, which would be a Wednesday, so you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

And there will be instructions on how you could win the other free giveaway, which will be announced tomorrow, which is Thursday. So, hopefully that was clear enough. And I think we'll have a link in the show notes to Amazon or something like that or wherever one can buy Sam's book.

Unfortunately, it's not on Amazon.

I was going to say, I don't think it's on Amazon.

I wish you would do a Kindle version, but it's only at Founders, so.

Anyway, yeah, so third-party site. So, we'll have a link to it, I think, in the show notes, though, if you wanted to go buy the book for yourself. And I mean, given our pattern, we may be giving it away again in two months, so just stick around long enough.

You never know.

Maybe you'll get it that way.

Or we could take some book recommendations. Hey, anybody that wants us to review a book, we may not talk about it on the podcast, but you can send it to us. Our address is at theocast .org. And if you guys want to, anytime, if you want to send us anything, you know, anything, like hair product for Justin, any of that good stuff.

Yeah, I mean, mine's buzzed off, dude. I don't really need any. If you want to send me some good beard oil, I'll take that.

There you go. All righty. Well, today is a podcast. We probably have been needing to do it for a long time, and we reference it often, but.

We do.

We've even promised to do a podcast on it multiple times.

Yeah, I know. But the real estate on podcasts is very small, so we have to be choosy on what we pick. But today we're doing something fun.

And bottom line, we do what we feel like doing.

Yeah, I know. But what we get excited about, what I think our church, my church needs to hear, biblicism. Man, biblicism is a word. I saw someone use it the other day. I'm a biblicist, and I was like, oh, someone should tell him not to say that.

That's not, yeah, no, that's not a badge of honor. No, it's a negative thing. And we're going to explain to you why someone might think, well, why would Bible and ism be a bad thing? Typically, isms aren't good.

Not always the case. I mean, Calvinism isn't necessarily, I think, bad. It's gotten a bad rap, which I just did an introduction to that on Ask Theocast and go check that out. But to stay focused, biblicism, Justin, give us a quick definition of what it is.

And then we are going to work through about five or six examples of what happens when you don't use scripture properly or you're a biblicist. This is what it ends up producing. So what's a good definition, a simple definition for a listener of a biblicist?

So let me just define it in a simple way and even just use pop level accessible language to talk about this. You already alluded to it once when you said like a person would describe themselves as a Bible person.

Another way that you hear this commonly presented is people will say, well, you know, no creed but Christ or no confession but the Bible, where people will say that the only thing that we need to use is scripture and any kind of framework outside of the Bible or any tools outside of the Bible are not useful.

It's not faithful. It's not responsible to use such things to understand the scripture. And so you end up getting this kind of situation where people will say, if the text does not say it explicitly, then we cannot preach it.

We cannot teach it.

And the reverse is true. The text explicitly said it, therefore, I'm going to preach it.

And what ends up happening, and we're going to give illustrations of this, like you said, broad categories and the like, what ends up happening is you make the Bible sound very schizophrenic because you just quote chapter and verse in isolation and you don't interpret that verse within its broader context, even maybe within the book that it's situated in, let alone within the epic of redemptive history that it's situated in, or let alone the entire Bible.

And so you end up kind of introducing mystery and tension into the scripture where it does not exist, and you end up introducing things that sound contradictory and just really confusing your listener when the Bible rightly understood on its own terms with appropriate theological systems in place is not contradictory.

It is not confusing. And there is going to be mystery, but we want to put the mystery in the right place. And so biblicism is dangerous on a number of levels because, as you're going to hear us talk about, there really are not hardly any key areas of doctrine that would not be compromised or confused by a biblicistic, I don't even know the right way to put that in that context.

If you're using biblicism and you're a biblicist, you're going to confuse most every major doctrinal categories.

Can I give an example here?

Yeah.

A simple one would be Colossians 115. He is the firstborn of all creation. You could conclude that Jesus is born or even a created being if you do not allow all of scripture to inform you about the nature of who Christ is, and I would even dare say the Trinity.

So many biblicists in the past have become heretical. Arian would be a great example of this, where they isolate text and they don't allow what would say the analogy of faith or all of scripture to speak into a theological position or a particular text.

And a good example of this is that there are many people even in the past, I'm sorry, even recent days who do not understand the nature of Jesus because they read individual texts and say, well, that's what it says.

I'm going to take it to be literally in the English without even using biblical language.

Sure.

That's exactly what it means in the English. That's exactly what it means. Therefore, that's what I believe.

So proof texting is an example of biblicism, where you cite chapter and verse in isolation to prove a point.

Right.

That's a common mistake that people make. And it's very interesting. I mean, maybe a humorous way to put this, too, is when you get people really worked up about these things and they will say, as I alluded to earlier, that I have no confession but the Bible and no creed but Christ as they wave their study Bible in your face.

And it's like, well, what do you think those study notes are other than an exercise in systematic theology and biblical theology and everything else that people seem allergic.

To?

So we did an episode a while back, John. I think something along the lines of, is your theological system any good? And that would be a useful episode, I think, for people to go back and listen to because we are going to contend today that the scriptures present to us certain frameworks and systems of theology that come up out of the text that we then can utilize to better understand the text.

And a couple of those are going to be the redemptive historical framework and for us as Reform guys, a covenantal framework of the Bible. And those things are really helpful. And a biblicist is going to press really, really hard against both of those things because they're going to say, wow, that's a system that you're imposing down on the Bible and we shouldn't do that.

And yeah, you're being irresponsible in the ways that you're understanding and interpreting the scripture. And hopefully we're going to demonstrate how, if anything, biblicism is the much more dangerous, irresponsible perspective.

Today, so yeah, yeah, biblicism. And I think, as you said, you know, proof texting is really, you know, I do a lot of Internet research for things. And recently I'm doing a series on Calvinism for Ask Theocast and just reading different arguments here and there.

And the proof texting on either side, the Calvinist or the, yeah, free will. I hate to say Arminian because there aren't any true Arminians.

Just to be very clear, I mean, there are people that could consider themselves to be reformed who do, who can be biblicists from time to time. And we want to, yes, I mean, and we want to be, you want to be fair.

And I mean, anybody can be a biblicist. And I mean, I'm sure you and I have been at certain points not meaning to be, you know, and, and so anyway.

So I think really what we're arguing is that being able to identify biblicist tendencies or, you know, passages that we may have interpreted in the past where we have not allowed what we would, what we're going to argue for is context and, and tried and true theological categories, right?

For instance, let me give you this one illustration. I think it's the most simple one that I've always used. When you read any text of scripture that has relation into God, the father, God, the son, or God, the Holy spirit, you do not read them.

If you are an evangelical, who's been trained in a good church, you never read those without understanding that that is one in three. Another way of saying that is you're reading it by a theological system called Trinitarianism and we, it's important that you do so because it helps you fully understand that this isn't one God working in opposition or in isolation to the other gods, because we're not polytheist, we're monotheist, meaning poly meaning multiple, mono meaning one.

We're a monotheist who will believe in a Trinitarian. I mean, it is a complicated system, but it's important to believe that because Jesus will say things like, I and my father are one, right? And these have to be read in a Trinitarian context.

So, I have met biblicists who will allow a Trinitarian context to be set on the text, but that's as far as they will go. They won't say, basically all other theological systems, they will not allow because it's not biblical, but yet you allow the Trinitarian system to guide you.

And it's not the only theological system in the Bible presented to us clearly in the text. We're going to argue a couple for a couple others here in just a minute. So, Justin, I'm going to throw that back to you because I know you have a comment.

Well, I'm ready to launch into some categories, man.

Good. Let's do it.

Okay.

Law and Gospel in the Ministry of Jesus

All right.

So, one of the categories that's most important that we are convinced, John and I, and we're not alone amongst the Reformed in seeing this, that biblicism really, really just botches is the distinction between law and gospel.

And there's a number of places we could go. I mean, I'm mindful of several examples in the life and ministry of Jesus where people will cite Christ, you know, in terms of chapter and verse, in terms of what God requires out from the lips of Jesus himself and say, see, there it is.

There's the road to salvation. That's the way of salvation. What Christ has just been saying when Jesus has in fact been actually speaking a message of law, like here is how you inherit the kingdom of God.

Here is what you need to do in order to be in right relationship with God. And people will say, well, that's somehow a part and parcel of the good news. One of the greatest examples of this is a large section of scripture called the Sermon on the Mount where people will say things like the Sermon on the Mount is gospel, to which we would say, okay, a much more careful reading of that text, a redemptive historical reading of that text, and a reading of that text with an eye for law and gospel distinction would actually lead you to conclude that that sermon is a sermon on the law, not the gospel in terms of what God does require of us, not just at the level of outward conformity, but at the level of the heart and the mind and the desires and everything else.

And I mean, I think that becomes quite clear as Jesus begins to discuss the law pointedly in Matthew 5, 17 and following. Here is what you've heard, but here is what it actually means for you. And he more or less damns everybody who hears him by saying, you think you've done okay, but you haven't.

You haven't kept the law. And this is what the Lord requires of you. And in fact, you need to be perfect, like your heavenly Father is perfect. And so that confusion of law and gospel in the life and ministry of Jesus is a big deal.

I want to reference a passage from one of the minor prophets in a second, John, because why not? But you can maybe jump in while I'm turning.

Right. So the gospel is the way in which the Bible presents it is a message, right? It's information, but it also is a theological category, meaning what is allowed to fit inside the word gospel. It's a very closed, tight knit bubble, like there's only so much that can be in there.

And if you add anything into it, you are now changing what the gospel is. And this is why Paul gets very upset. And he even says, hey, if anybody comes to you and starts teaching you anything other than what you've already been taught, adding to the gospel, Paul is arguing for the clarity.

And he's saying this is encapsulated and cannot be changed. It's been set forth in the moment you start altering it. And you have to read every passage of the Bible with a clear understanding of gospel, because if you don't, then you will get, as our good friend Pat Abendroth likes to call it, I don't know where, maybe he made it up, but you get glossable, you get the law and the gospel together.

So the gospel must be clarified. And if it's not, and this is because, Justin, there are times where people will be reading. Sermon on the Mount is a great example of this. I would also say the rich young ruler, which we use in the past as an example, right?

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus gives him what he needs to do if he wants to inherit it, like if he wants to receive it by earning.

And Jesus says, if you would be perfect, you need to do that.

That's not gospel. That's law. And when you understand gospel and you have the category of gospel and you're holding that lens in your mind and then you read Jesus, you go, oh, well, Jesus didn't give him gospel.

But what do we do? Biblicists will say, no, Jesus answered the question, therefore it's good news.

Jesus just told people what they need to do to inherit eternal life. So we need to go about the business of doing it.

Right.

We have to forsake everything. We need to sell all our possessions.

That's the conclusion of the biblicists when law and gospel are confused. Another great example from the Old Testament, if I can really quickly before we move forward, the prophet Micah, chapter six. So the context in the book of Micah for Micah six, the Lord begins that chapter by indicting his people.

I mean, they're guilty. They stand condemned before him. And then the prophet goes on in verse six and following of Micah six to write these.

Things.

He's kind of hypothetically sort of speaking for the people here. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? And since the sarcasm here, like, Lord, you're extreme. What do you require?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of.

Oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? And then Micah says, he has told you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

Now, what people do with that passage, John, is they read that and they say, see, here it is. The Lord is not satisfied with empty ritualistic religion. He is not interested in people's sacrifices. What he is interested in is the true religion of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly before him.

And so now you need to be a true religion, an old time religion kind of person who is characterized by the doing of justice, the loving of kindness, and the walking humbly before your God, and the Lord will be pleased with you.

Again, that's biblicism, right? That the prophet there is not giving people a message of gospel either. He's telling folks a better understanding of what the Lord requires actually is this heart level reality.

It's not external conformity to a written code, but it's a heart level reality of doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly before your God. Nobody's ever done it well enough.

That's the thing, right?

And so this is where you go to that verse. Micah 6, 8 is often posited as sort of kind of an Old Testament presentation of the gospel. And I'm like, it's not, it's not. It's an Old Testament presentation of the law, very similar to how Jesus presents it in the Sermon on the Mount and other places in his ministry.

You know, learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, et cetera.

It's right. Yeah.

I believe with all my heart that God blesses righteousness.

Amen, dude.

He does not lie. It reflects who he is. It's just, Paul tells us there is none righteous and our good works, according to Jeremiah, are compared to really disgusting, you know, filthy rags. And those, those are important.

They're, they're not opposition to each other.

So, so you just beautifully segue to another category. You, I mean, you're just giving me the thumbs up because John, it's like you're a professional. So the next category is massive. So law and gospel is massive.

This one is at least as important and it is the confusion between faith and works. And so biblicism is notorious for muddling this up to the high heavens. How is it that we're justified? How is it that we're finally saved even?

Is it by faith or is it by our works? And the classic text for me, I could go to a number, John, but Romans two. And kind of in the context, Romans two to three is really, really illustrative, I think.

And so Romans two begins, Paul has already indicted all the brilliant Gentiles at the end of Romans one. And then he begins in at the beginning of Romans two to talk to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, because we all pass judgment on other people for not meeting our own standards.

And if people can't, they don't meet our standards and we pass judgment on them, we need to realize that we don't meet our own standards and thereby we condemn ourselves with our judging. And it's like, if we haven't even met our own standards, how much less so have we met God's standard, right?

And so we misunderstand God's kindness, not understanding that it's meant to lead men toward repentance. And then Paul goes in Romans two, six and following. And as the reformed theologian, Robert Haldane once said, you either leave Romans two, six and following a Protestant or a Romanist, and I think he's right.

There's no middle ground here in terms of how you can interpret it. And let me say this kindly, but sincerely, there are a lot of people, like if you pick up a Romans commentary, there are a lot of guys who otherwise are pretty reasonable, who absolutely lose their minds when it comes to Romans two, six through like 13.

So let's just read a few of these verses and talk about what biblicalists do with it, and then talk about how we should understand it, even in the context of Romans, Romans two, six, this is true about God, he will render to each one according to his works, to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life, but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality.

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law, for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

Okay.

So what you hear people say, again, otherwise pretty orthodox, like sound teachers, Protestants say, they come to Romans two, six through 13, and they'll go, okay, we know that we are justified by faith, but somehow, somehow, you can see it right here, it's in the text.

They just start quoting chapter and verse. Somehow our works will factor into our final salvation because it says so right here that God will render to each one according to his works. Those who do good, he's going to reward with eternal life.

Those who do evil, he's going to punish with wrath and fury. And we would say, okay, no, I mean, that's not the way to interpret that passage, somehow, mysteriously, our works factor into our final salvation because the question has to be asked in the broader context of Romans, what is Paul doing?

He is arguing, there's a flow of his thought that's going to culminate in Romans three and verse 21. He's arguing that everybody has judged themselves and judged others. We don't meet our own standard, let alone God's.

God is an impartial, righteous judge who rewards those who do good and punishes those who do evil. The problem though, is that nobody's good, right? Because he's going to go there in Romans three, nine and following.

Nobody is good. No, there's not one righteous. No, not one, right? So we should be thinking like, oh, dear Lord, we are all damned. How can anyone be saved? Which is why he says in verse 21 and following, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

He's concluded that whole section of his argument in verses 19 and 20, where he says that the law condemns everyone, Romans three, 19 and verse 20, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight because the law only crushes people.

But yet we go in a biblicism kind of way. We go to Romans two, six, and we go to Romans two, 13, and we quote it and say, ah, but guys, we've got to work for this. We got to do something. Even though we're saved by faith, somehow our works factor in, and that's just an irresponsible presentation.

And what does it do, John? It confuses the nature of the gospel itself and robs the saints of assurance.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

Yeah, this is another way of saying this. Understanding the nature of man and understanding the gospel is two categories we have to hold in both hands as we read every text. So we know from scripture that we are in Adam, meaning that we have received the curse of Adam, which is that our spiritual nature, the capacity to love and obey and please God, to trust in Him, has been cursed unto death.

Paul describes it as being dead because we've had to go from death to life. Obviously, we are not physically dead. He is speaking about the cursed nature that we have. So you cannot demand a cursed dead nature to do that, which it has no capacity to do, which is obey God.

This is even in James, the classic quote, right? Faith that works is dead. And we really needle down into that. And if I am looking at someone who says to me, I'm a Christian, and yet they don't see the necessity of producing good fruit in keeping with repentance and obedience, I don't need to do that.

I just need to say a prayer and I'm good. Well, I would agree that they are confused. And James is even getting it out in the context, saying, okay, look, you're saying you're a follower of Jesus, but the way that you are acting is contrary to that, and if you're unwilling to repent of that, then the faith you were claiming is a dead faith.

At that moment, you don't call someone to do something they can't do, because at that moment you go, okay, you don't understand the gospel. This isn't a works issue. This is a gospel issue because those who have saving faith are going to obey.

It's a gospel issue and it's a union with Christ issue. It's a regeneration issue, right? Like if you have been born again, and if you are not just giving some kind of mental assent to some truth about Jesus, but you are trusting him, if you're hoping in him, that only occurs via the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

And you have now been united to Christ and you will bear fruit. That's what the scriptures say. But yeah, to confuse that, to invert that, to proof text it and say, man, faith without works is dead, and all these kinds of things, like show me your faith by your works, to then conclude, well, we need to go about telling people to do good work so that they know they're saved.

Wrong.

That's not the conclusion that we draw. We go about preaching Christ. We tell people to trust Christ and through their union with him, fruit will be produced. You can't invert that relationship. But biblicism confuses that relationship to no end.

And I will say, well, I'll just reference this here for two reasons. One, we already have a podcast on it. Two, we have a podcast coming. One, repentance, biblicism. We did really a needle down focused in on that a couple of weeks ago.

If you want to go back and listen to what is repentance, we really kind of unfold that from what biblicism is. And I want to also say Lordship Salvation falls into this, where a lot of the arguments that you will see again in the next coming weeks, we're going to give you some more examples on this, but I'll just say this now, I think Lordship Salvation is built upon a biblicism platform.

It completely is in that there's a collapsing of law and gospel. There's a confusion of faith and works.

And faithfulness. That's right.

Right.

Repentance. And there's really a different definition of faith that is given in the Lordship camp, where obedience and repentance and like a sincere desire to obey and all those kinds of things are woven into the definition of faith.

And that is something that historically Protestants have been very careful to not.

Do.

And we'll talk about that in some subsequent episodes.

As one example, that's kind of like a precursor to that, is when you, as a Reformed and even Calvinist, when you understand the depravity of man and the sovereign election of God, as it relates to our salvation, the biblicism of Lordship doesn't seem to work.

I would agree with the fact that when Jesus saves me and brings me to new life, I am now owned by him. And I am gladly thankful that he is my Lord, but I don't have the capacity to make that change within myself or determine that.

That is handed to me. It's not something that is given to me as if there's something I must do in order.

To be a child of God. And the bottom line, too, is that when you have been united to Christ by faith, you now, Romans 6, 17, have become obedient from the heart.

Right.

You actually do desire to obey God. But the desire to obey is not a piece of faith itself.

Right.

The new birth that is worked by God produces faith. And then the fruits of regeneration and faith are a desire to obey amongst a whole host of other things. But you can't confuse that. And we're going to talk more about that in coming weeks.

And I'm excited for those conversations. So if you're interested in hearing those, stay tuned. Coming your way soon.

Well, you can go back and listen to the one on repentance.

Totally.

I think in two weeks, you'll hear the one on Lordship.

Christ in the Old Testament: Types, Shadows, and the Temple

And so now, maybe the last big category, or maybe one of the last couple big categories in the regular portion of the podcast, is also a reference back to an episode we did. I think it would have been the one released last week, potentially, on typology and types and shadows and all those kinds of things.

Like, is the whole Bible really about Jesus?

Right.

And so, just to briefly pick back up on this and to help explain how biblicism is unhelpful here, we talk regularly about how the whole Bible really is about Christ, that it's about the plan of redemption that God has had since before the foundation of the world, that centers on Christ, that's accomplished through Him, that's then applied to us by the work of the Holy Spirit, all to the praise of God's glorious grace.

And so we interpret every passage of scripture in light of that main message, in light of that main point. And we realize that the way that God has revealed His plan of redemption by farther steps through history and in the pages of scripture, there are all of these things that serve as types of something greater to come.