A clergyman, whom I much respected but who is now sadly no longer with us, told me that he had a way of demonstrating that the Bible should never be treated as a textbook containing divinely given and inerrant facts all the way through.   To show this clearly, he would, with a study group, take the first nine chapters of Genesis and analyse them at depth.  A detailed scrutiny of these early Genesis chapters would quickly make any open-minded reader aware of an extensive list of anomalies that appear in the text.  These anomalies are there for all to see but are frequently missed by many readers who want to extract carefully selected sections but not attempt to place them in any sort of context.  Far too many have also adopted the habit of glossing over difficult sections of Scripture which do not easily support the assumption, widely presented in conservative churches, that we have a Bible totally devoid of error.  The questions that arise from taking seriously every verse of Genesis 1-9 are not only the sophisticated ones that can only be answered by a knowledge of Hebrew or years of university study.  No, the difficulties in the text which need some sort of explanation are often simple ones, as, for example, why do we have two versions of the story of Noah.  Why is there, in the text, an abrupt change of name to describe God?  Even in the first few verses of Genesis, there is one major anomaly which gets overlooked by most Christian readers.  I was reminded of this clear problem as it was read in church the other Sunday as part of the creation season.  Our common sense might well ask the question why the light, that God gives to the universe on the first day of creation, is apparently distinct from the light given by the sun and the moon to give light ‘upon the earth’.  These appear only on the fourth day.  A further question that arises for the conscientious reader of the first two chapters is the fact that the Bible contains two distinct creation accounts.  Human beings are created first in the second account in chapter two, while in the version in chapter one we have the creation of humanity right at the end of the creation process on the sixth day.

It would be easy, but perhaps not very profitable, for me to point out to my readers many other passages, even in these early passages of Genesis, that can present real problems to a reader who wants to study and understand the text as we have it in one or other of the many English translations.  Some of the explanations for the anomalies are highly technical while others are very simple.  When God is referred to as Yahweh or the Lord God (Genesis 2) this is material taken from a Hebrew source that used this name, Yahweh, to denote their God.  The sections of Genesis that speak of ’God’ (Genesis 1) are from another earlier tradition that used the name, Elohim, to refer to the supreme deity.  This describing of God using two quite different Hebrew words allows us to conclude that there is more than one source for the Hebrew versions of the creation story.  Needless to say, there is a lot more to say about these two traditions and the way they each understand the character of the divine.  These discussions are contained within countless studies, books, articles and research written by scholars over many decades of detailed study.  Few others will have the time or inclination even to begin to penetrate this material.  The theological training that is provided for clergy of the main denominations in the West should at least have given the clergy an awareness of this literature.  My experience of lay people in the pews over the years of my ministry has found that many are delighted to learn a little of the methods and findings of biblical scholarship.  Many of them are intrigued to learn about Hebrew words that are difficult to translate because their meaning has somehow been lost over the centuries.  They also warm to explanations of historical events which are illuminated by up to date archaeological or historical research.  Many, if not most, lay people are ready to move from the coercive preaching of the past that says, ‘this is what the Bible says’, and ‘this is how you must understand and follow the meaning that I, the preacher, give to it’.   In the Bible there is ambiguity and uncertainty even, but this makes it exciting and intriguing to study and discuss.

In recent years we have found a further reason to wish to wean individuals off an over-literal understanding of Scripture.   Maintaining that there is only one meaning to a verse or chapter means that there will be situations when individual clergy or preachers will claim the authority of the bible to pursue an agenda of their own making.  Thus, they will quote passages from Scripture to subordinate women or persecute homosexuals.  They will also, by never addressing the issue, give the impression that they do not think that there is anything repulsive about genocide, the mass killing of enemies and the rape of the opponents’ womenfolk.  A detailed reading of the Hebrew Bible can also be used to justify a range of other outrageous behaviours with the justification that it is ‘biblical’.  A recent book by Adrian Thatcher explores the theme of an abusive theology and how it is to be found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.   A theological scholar like him cannot simply pretend that such difficult passages do not exist.  Thatcher’s book, Ending Abusive Theologies, is an attempt to understand what is being said about a God who appears, on occasion, to behave in a fickle, arbitrary and even immoral way.   The task is urgent because, to take but one notorious example, the abusive career of John Smyth was made possible by Smyth’s own distorted understanding of the place of pain and suffering as being part of the Christian route to holiness.  His understanding of the atonement as being a literal event involving divine anger against a child, created a  toxic, even dangerous, form of teaching.  The psychological domination he exerted over his victims was made possible by using the methods of biblical interpretation that he had learnt from those who taught him within the conservative evangelical traditions of the Church of England. 

This incontrovertible fact is that Smyth used Scripture, or his fundamentalist version of Scriptural interpretation, to achieve his dominance over his victims and justify his depraved actions.  This is a point that has never been fully owned up to by the Church.  The question that arises was whether this teaching was ever a legitimate reading of Scripture or whether Smyth was simply misusing the Bible text for his own deviant purposes.  Thatcher’s book takes the straightforward meaning of the biblical text and its insights seriously, so that he can see that actions of God directed at humankind and recorded in the Bible are, in fact, sometimes abusive, violent and cruel.  If we regard the avoidance of harm to individuals as being a core universal principle of ethical behaviour, it can be shown that this standard is not always maintained in the recorded actions of the God of the Bible.  Violence and abusive acts are found throughout Scripture, and some of these are ascribed to God or those claiming to follow him.  Also, rape culture or gender-based violence is commonly encountered in the Old Testament.  It is not surprising if women may find themselves feeing unsafe in a culture that at times appears to glorify misogyny and male dominance.

It is of course possible to want to read Scripture in a way that ignores the toxic and repudiates the violence conducted in God’s name, but this cannot always happen because, as Thatcher puts it, there is ‘excessive veneration of the biblical text in the churches’.  Such veneration makes it difficult for those conservatives wedded to this idea of inerrancy ever to contemplate the notion that some passages, which speak of God commanding abhorrent actions, might in fact be wrong or misguided.  The passage in Isaiah which speaks about the thoughts of God being ‘not your thoughts’ is one that sometimes allows or excuses blatantly cruel and malicious actions perpetrated by human beings because they are believed to represent the inscrutable will of God.  At this very moment the people of the West Bank are being persecuted, harassed and killed because this territory in Scripture was given by God to the Jewish nation.  Morality and the actual welfare of human beings is thus made subservient to the words ascribed to God, a God who appears in some settings and contexts to have abandoned the principles of justice and goodness.

The notion of ‘bad theology’ is one that will be disturbing and shocking to those who follow the principle of sola scriptura.  How can we in any way loosen our complete dependency on Scripture?  How else would we know what to believe or how to follow God’s will?   But, as Thatcher points out, the real core of the Christian biblical revelation is found, not in verbal statements, but in the person of Jesus.  He sums up this point when he says: ‘the self-communication of God is personal not propositional, a human being, not a book.’   The meat of his book is to explore afresh the insights of Scripture on this theme, to find a post-abusive theology and a post-abusive reading of Scripture while introducing the reader to some contemporary modern writers.  This basic Christian message is that, in Jesus, the creator God has chosen to make himself known and accessible to his creation.  Summarising this rich material is impossible without doing it an injustice, but I do commend the book to my readers.   They can then follow for themselves Thatcher’s fascinating journey of discovery to find again a God of love.  My purpose for writing an appreciation of this book is because it is the best I have encountered for helping us, the readers, to negotiate the conundrum of having a book possessing toxic content, which also points us to a God who invites to know him and be joined with him for all eternity.  To be a Christian believer does not make it inevitable that we must become biblical literalists.   I hope that some of my readers will buy the book to follow Thatcher’s remarkable exploration to see afresh what Christians understand when they say that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’.

Ending Abusive Theologies.  Beginning Again with Love, Adrian Thatcher, SCM Press 2026

 by Donald Payne 

My mother has always enjoyed having a hard copy of the Daily Telegraph newspaper delivered to her home. When visiting her from overseas in December 2019, I picked up the paper one morning to see a front-page article detailing allegations of inappropriate behaviour by the prominent Evangelical church leader, Jonathan Fletcher. While I was vaguely aware of Jonathan Fletcher, what captured my attention was a photograph of another man who seemed more familiar. This photo of John Smyth spoke to the memory of someone I had not thought about for many years.

I attended my first Iwerne camp, aged 15, in the summer of 1981. One of my closest friends from school was going and had invited me. I was interested in the church, having recently been confirmed as an Anglican, as was the conventional thing to do at the boarding school I went to. When offered the chance to spend ten days away from home during the summer holidays, with the promise of sport every day and an opportunity to learn more about Christianity, I was curious and willing.

The camp was fun. I played a lot of football and cricket, everyone was friendly and I enjoyed the bible teachings. As was standard practice towards the end of the camp, I accepted Jesus as my saviour and was born again. I don’t remember meeting Jonathan Fletcher. I do remember his brother, David, and did not warm to him. Over the last few days of the camp, my group was introduced to another man, who was spoken about with a combination of reverence and awe. This was John Smyth – charming, charismatic, warm and hugely likable. Someone who immediately made you feel special. He gave a talk one evening. While I do not recall the details, I do remember that it was captivating. When the camp was over, we took a minibus from Iwerne to a meeting point, where our parents were to pick us up. For some reason, our particular group took a detour to John Smyth’s house, before heading back to our own homes. At the time it felt like something of a reward. I enjoyed the warmth and hospitality, and the smug feeling that our group had been chosen for an opportunity that was not afforded to everybody. We were special.

The following summer I attended Iwerne again. I had encouraged another of my close friends to attend. Two things stand out about this second visit. One was that the novelty and the excitement that I had experienced the year before began to diminish. In the year between the camps, I had spent time exploring more about Christianity with one of my school chaplains. To my initial dismay, he did not share my obvious excitement surrounding the Iwerne experience. He introduced me to a number of Christian authors, two of whom, the Anglican priest, Martin Israel, and the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, quickly became my favourites. Looking back, it is no surprise that my attempt to celebrate my enthusiasm for these two particular writers did not go down as well as I expected with the Iwerne leaders.

The other striking memory from that second camp was the absence of John Smyth. We were told that he was very ill and therefore unable to attend that summer. We expressed our concern and sent our love and best wishes to his family. Undoubtedly, we would have prayed for him. As before, the camp was fun. It was summer, we were outdoors and there was a lot of sport. There was little further discussion about John Smyth.

A year later, in the summer of 1983, having done my ‘A’ levels, I was back at Iwerne again. I am not quite sure why I went for a third time. It might have been a way of using up time during a long summer holiday. Having been away at boarding school since the age of seven, I had no close friends who lived near me, so the prospect of two weeks away with people that I still got on with continued to hold some attraction. I had deepened my exploration of Martin Israel and Thomas Merton and had begun to experiment with mantra meditation as a form of prayer (popularised by John Main). However, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the views and practices of other Christian writers had no place within the particular form of theology promoted at Iwerne. During that third camp, my assigned mentor initiated a stern conversation with me about the heretical views that I was always keen to discuss. ‘It makes me question,’ he asked, ‘whether you really have been born again’. The atmosphere of warmth and friendship that I had experienced during my first camp had now noticeably cooled.

Fast forward to that December morning in my mother’s kitchen, seeing John Smyth‘s photograph in the paper. On reading the article, a multitude of memories began to resurface. I then embarked on an exhaustive and obsessive troll through the internet, discovering details of a Channel 4 documentary, the Rushton report, Bleeding for Jesus, Surviving Church and much more. I experienced surprise, disbelief and anger. And yet, I was not surprised. This felt familiar, recognisable. It was also accompanied by a huge sense of relief.

I have continued to follow the story although, more than forty years on, the world now makes more sense to me without God. I maintain a soft spot for Thomas Merton and have, more recently, immersed myself in the music and musings of Nick Cave. And yet I remain fascinated by this episode in my life. The trick that David Fletcher and his colleagues managed to play on us for so long was to target a group of vulnerable, impressionable young men, who had spent many years spent living in total institutions, away from family and all things familiar. The Iwerne hierarchy sold us a vision and a solution to our anxieties. They offered us meaning and, providing we embraced the whole package, a wonderful, liberating experience. Wonderful, that is, until we began to ask questions, to display curiosity and to wonder aloud about the occasional inconsistency in the teaching; until we began to express doubt. Initially, doubt was praised and encouraged. In the Iwerne playbook, transient doubt was a necessary part of the process towards faith. However, doubt that persisted was evidence of a fault – not in the teaching but in the boy. The kindness and encouragement that was experienced in abundance early on continued to be on offer, providing we accepted the message wholeheartedly. But if not, the mood began to change. There could be no discussion about the authenticity and validity of the message; no question that the teaching might not hold up to analysis. This was biblical teaching and the bible is God’s word. For those sinners who, like me, expressed ongoing curiosity and doubt, the fault was ours. At that point, the warmth and fellowship disappeared and was replaced, abruptly, with cold, callous rejection. That camp in 1983 was my last.

This cruel version of the Christian message allows flawed men to flourish. It provides a perfect environment for a charming, charismatic, monstrous man, one who makes you feel special, to hide in plain sight. I am intrigued by the knowledge that there are people, with whom I grew up and knew well in my adolescence, who continue to follow these teachings. There are others who do not just follow the teachings but have made them the source of their livelihood. And it is not just within the Evangelical world that such cruelty lurks. I think of Bishop Peter Ball, who attended services in the chapel at my school, preaching on Sundays and officiating at confirmation. A man who was held up to us as an example of kindness, humility and obedience. There but for the grace of God, go I.

by Janet Fife

Have you ever been told by a Christian leader that all your problems –
depression, mental illness, addiction – were due to your own sin? Have you
ever told a pastor of your abusive childhood or marriage, only to be told you
need to repent? Have you gone to a vicar for counselling, only to have a
Bible passage read to you, and informed that the solution is for you to put
those verses into practice in your own life? If so, chances are your leader has
been influenced by Jay E. Adams and what he termed nouthetic counselling
(from the Greek noutheteo, to admonish).

Adams (30 January, 1929 – 14 November 2020) was an American Reformed
theologian and pastor. His PhD was in effective communication and
preaching and he taught homiletics (the study of preaching) part-time at the
reputable conservative Westminster Theological Seminary. Eventually,
however, he was asked to teach pastoral counselling – although he seems to
have had little or no background in psychology or psychiatry. Adams was a
biblical theologian, so he developed his own method of counselling based on
expounding the Bible: if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, ‘Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and
like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?’ (Jer .23:29). When the Bible is
used as a hammer on the vulnerable, the results can be further damage.
Adams was convinced that secular psychology and psychiatry undermined
Christianity. In 1970 Adams’ book Competent to Counsel was published, in
which he propounded a counselling method based on confrontation and
rebuke employing Bible passages. The book became enduringly popular and
has been used in theological training; generations of clergy and church
leaders have based their pastoral practice on it. Dozens of other books
followed, but Competent to Counsel is the one for which Adams is best
known. It might be thought that a book published in 1970 would be no
longer relevant, but Adams also founded the National Association of
Nouthetic Counselors (now the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors),
which still trains pastors in Adams’ techniques. It is a global operation,
based on the convictions that ‘God’s Word is sufficient, and that all believers
can be equipped to counsel one another’ (https://biblicalcounseling.com/).
There are a further three organisations based on the same theories and
practice. They offer certification in biblical counselling, but these counsellors
need not have any clinical training or awareness at all. They are not licensed
or certified to offer any kind of psychotherapy, and are not qualified to
diagnose or treat mental illness or trauma.

Adams questioned the very concept of mental illness; alcoholism,
depression, neurosis, psychosis, and homosexuality were all classed as sin.
The people he met in psychiatric hospitals ‘were there because of their
unforgiven and unaltered sinful behavior’. For him the purpose of counselling
was not to help the counsellee attain self-realisation, but to change their
personality. This was achieved by confronting the person with their sin: ‘the
more directive I became…the more people were helped. Spelling out and
getting commitments to biblical patterns of behavior after an
acknowledgement of and repentance for sin seemed to bring relief and
results.’

Larry Crabb, another proponent of ‘biblical counselling’, wrote in the
foreword to a book for sexual abuse survivors that a biblical approach to
counselling
‘must insist that our sinfulness, not how we’ve been sinned against,
is our biggest problem; that forgiveness, not wholeness, is our
greatest need; that repentance, not insight, is the dynamic in all real
change.’

As a sexual abuse survivor I’ve been on the receiving end of this approach
and it definitely did not bring either relief or results. In fact, it increased my
sense of unworthiness and shame and of my distance from God and other
people. Worse, it left me vulnerable to exploitation and abuse from others,
since it was hard to believe I deserved any better.

Rosemary Green, wife of the late Anglican evangelist Michael Green, was a
proponent of what she called ‘prayer counselling’ – nouthetic counselling
combined with ‘inner healing’ and deliverance ministry. In her 1991 book
God’s Catalyst Green describes her technique:
‘It is sometimes good to ask [the client] whether he knows any part
of Scripture he thinks is relevant. More often you will choose it, find
it while he is still talking, and pass the Bible to him…Then ask him
to read it aloud…One day [a client] read aloud some verses I
suggested from Hebrews chapter 12, then promptly slammed the
Bible shut. I asked her to open it again. She refused. I told her that
if she was not willing to see what God might be wanting to say to
her, there was nothing I could do to help her. I then left the room,
telling her she could find me in the kitchen if she wanted.’
The Greens spent years teaching this technique to ordinands and clergy in
the UK and Canada.

What exactly is wrong with this counselling approach?
Firstly, it assumes that the same answer will solve all human problems:
repent of your sin. This is like an A&E doctor treating every patient, no matter
what their injury or illness, by telling them their diet is to blame and ordering
them to change it, without offering further treatment. Or a police detective
telling every crime victim their driving is at fault. Most of us could improve
our diet and most have committed a traffic violation at some time, but that is
not necessarily at the root of our present dilemma. Many charismatic
practitioners, such as Green, will also assume that if the client doesn’t
respond ‘well’, in the counsellor’s terms, they must need deliverance
ministry. This shows a remarkable ignorance of psychological processes,
and is potentially dangerous in the case of people who are traumatised or
mentally unstable.

Second, biblical counselling is wrong because it fails pay attention to the
person who is seeking help. A pastor who has made up his/her mind at the
outset that the root problem must be sin isn’t listening. A counsellor who
riffles through the Bible while their client is still speaking isn’t listening.
Worse, they are making it very clear they aren’t listening. And it is the
listening itself which is healing. When we engage in deep listening to another
person we are making space for them – and that space is where God works
and they can begin to become whole. It is not for nothing that the name
Jesus can be translated ‘the one who makes space for’. Abuse of all kinds
overrides our personal boundaries and stunts the growth of our psyche.
Growth can only be resumed when those boundaries are restored and
maintained, and the person is free to explore who they really are when they
are not being limited or dictated to. A counsellor who imposes their own
choice of scripture on the counsellee, together with its interpretation and
application, is merely compounding the harm done by previous abuses.
Third, biblical counselling removes agency from the client and locates all the
power with the counsellor. I suspect this is a large part of the appeal for
many practitioners; it makes the pastor feel powerful and avoids the
vulnerability of opening up to someone else’s pain and sitting with them in
the darkness. It’s much easier to riffle through your Bible looking for a
favourite passage of your own, than to set your own agenda aside and really
hear someone else’s dilemma or anguish. Listening may raise questions that
challenge the counsellor’s own faith, and it will certainly entail sharing the
burden of the one who has come to us. But sharing each other’s burdens is
exactly what we are called to do: and in doing it we are not only lightening
the burden for them; we are opening ourselves to having our spiritual
horizons widened.

Those who have had their agency curtailed by upbringing, circumstances,
social frameworks, or the actions of others need to have that agency
restored if they are to experience full liberation in Christ. It is the counsellor’s
task to respect the client’s autonomy and dignity and give them real choices,
not to force on them a point of view, a presupposition of sin, or a given Bible
interpretation.

Fourth, ‘biblical’ counselling is not really biblical at all. It is certainly not the
pattern I see in Jesus’ dealings with those who came to him for help or
healing. The most obvious feature of those encounters is that Jesus did not
have one technique which he applied to everyone: each person was an
individual who received individual treatment. Notably, he seldom spoke to
those in need about their sin – he saved that for the wealthy, the powerful,
and those who were confident of their own righteousness. When the
disciples asked about a blind man, ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?,’ Jesus replied, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned;
he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him’ (Jn 9:2-3).
Jesus often healed people without mentioning sin or repentance at all;
sometimes he simply told people their sins were forgiven without either he or
they needing to voice what those sins were. Sometimes he asked people
what they wanted of him, or whether they wanted to be healed. Sometimes
he challenged people in order to bring out their faith. But he did not say, ‘You
must admit to your sins before I will heal you.’ He explicitly refused to
condemn the woman caught in adultery, though the gospels do not record
any expression of penitence on her part. I doubt if he would have been so
popular down at the tavern with tax collectors and sinners, if he had insisted
on pressing all those outcasts to admit to their sins.

When Jesus spoke of his purpose on earth he didn’t speak solely in terms of
forgiveness of sin. His mission statement in Lk 4:16-21 does not refer to sin
at all:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
Significantly, the Hebrew and Greek words translated ‘salvation’ denote
safety, deliverance from danger, and freedom from restriction. Sin is only one
of the things that restrict us. Fear, shame, despair, self-loathing, poor
decision-making, and the actions of others hamper us; these and
psychological limitations such as the inability to set boundaries or trust one’s
own perceptions are properly a part of the work of salvation. They are
therefore the proper work of all pastors – including those not ordained. It’s no
accident that Christian movements of spiritual renewal have so often resulted
in action to right wrongs and further the well-being of others. From ancient
Rome to early medieval Britain, Christians bought slaves in order to set them
free. In the 18th and 19th centuries Christians in Britain and the USA
campaigned against the slave trade; in the 20th and 21st centuries
Christians have worked for racial integration and ecumenical harmony.
Victorian Christians worked for better conditions in factories, the end of child
labour, and prison reform. The list is endless: as sadly is also the list of those
claiming to follow Christ who have worked against all these endeavours to
set people free.

Many of these people mean well, but they have oversimplified the gospel
message. They believe that the main – or even the only – thing that
Christianity has to offer is the forgiveness of sins, and (often) that forgiveness
can only be obtained after a suitable period in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus
did preach the need for repentance (in Greek metanoia). But metanoia means
a change of direction, not necessarily a guilt trip. For the vulnerable and
downtrodden; for those who believe they are unloveable, worthless, or bad,
metanoia involves an acknowledgment that they are made in the image of
God, and there is much in them that is good. For those who are comfortable,
metanoia means bettering the conditions of those in need, and sitting with
the pain of those in darkness. Repentance means curbing our urge to offer
quick and easy solutions, saying there is peace where there is no peace.