The Classical View of Biblical Sufficiency

6 · Oswald reads and repeats the first portion of Westminster 1

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men. So that's the really firm, absolute understanding of the biblical doctrine of sufficiency. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, are either expressly set in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men.

7 · Oswald continues reading Westminster 1

And then it goes on into some nuances. There were some nuances already that we'll get to, but there's additional nuances coming. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as revealed in the Word, and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the Church common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.

8 · Oswald acknowledges the limitations of his treatment while positioning it as intermediate between lay-level simplification and academic depth, and he directs listeners to Hodge's commentary for further study

Now, I guarantee you that what I have prepared here is lacking in so many ways, but I wrote what I have here to help you. And if you want to dive further into this, I can point you to some things. I'll tell you right off the bat. Charles Hodge, a systematic theologian, Princeton president, I believe at one point, Hodge wrote a commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. That's a good place to go. But for us, I think that what I've got here is a little bit better than retail. You know, it's a little bit better than reduced completely. It's a little bit more nuanced than that without getting, you know, super into the weeds.

9 · Oswald previews the sermon's structure: three critical clarifications embedded in Westminster 1

So I love this definition because it provides three important clarifications in addition to its very firm statement about biblical sufficiency. And I think that these clarifications are sometimes lacking in more modern, more kind of off-the-cuff descriptions of biblical sufficiency. And so there would be three things I'd point you to in this statement from the Westminster Confession about sufficiency that are good.

10 · Oswald unpacks the first clarification: the confession acknowledges that God's counsel includes not only explicit scriptural statements but also doctrines necessarily deduced from Scripture, using the Trinity as the paradigmatic example

Number one, in addition to Scripture, there are principles derived from Scripture that are to be held as part of God's counsel. The confession refers to these principles as things deduced from Scripture that are both good and necessary implications. The easy explanation there would be something like the Trinity, where that word never appears. We have determined over the course of church history to use that word to refer to a doctrine we see in Scripture. And things can get more broad than that. I will include a link in the show notes to an article from Table Talk magazine that goes further into this idea of good and necessary implications.

11 · Oswald presents the second clarification: the confession explicitly affirms that understanding Scripture requires the Holy Spirit's illuminating work for both salvation and sanctification

But that's one thing I like about this definition that you won't hear from the most common sort of off-the-cuff explanations of this doctrine. Number two, I like that it reminds us that the Scripture depends on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. You have to have the Spirit to empower the revelation that occurs both for salvation and for sanctification.

12 · Oswald presents the third clarification: the confession permits the use of natural revelation and Christian prudence in certain practical matters of church life, provided such use remains subordinate to Scripture's general principles

And number three, I like that there is a very careful distinction made in the following sentence. There are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed. See, that's a very big qualifier to a very blunt and overly simplistic doctrine of biblical sufficiency.

13 · Oswald explains the theological framework of the two books of revelation—general (nature) and special (Scripture)—and clarifies that natural revelation must always be interpreted through scriptural principles

It's saying that there are things revealed in nature that we can and should use with Christian prudence and according to the principles of God's word. Things in nature, that is, things in God's first book, you could say, general revelation, and then they have to be used according to what God teaches us in his second book, which is special revelation, the Scriptures.

14 · Oswald signals a major structural shift from exposition of Westminster 1

Okay, so let's talk about this a little bit and understand that, yes, the classical description of sufficiency does allow for the introduction of what we would call science, you know, observations made of the natural order. Sure, it does allow for that, but you need to, if you're going to use this doctrine appropriately, you need to understand some things about the basic state of science.

15 · Oswald identifies the first problem with using science: the field is populated by individuals hostile to God's natural law who produce erroneous conclusions because corrupt institutional incentives allow them to remain influential despite their fundamental unfitness for the task

So three issues kind of came to mind as I was thinking through this. First, number one would be, there are many scientists who malign God's natural law. Like all endeavors, the sciences are filled with individuals who hate God's laws, including God's natural laws. Now, in an ideal marketplace setting, free of corruption and evil incentives, the scientists who hate God's natural law would quickly be out of business, because what science is most fundamentally is the discovery of God's natural laws, the discovery and submission to God's natural laws. So in an ideal marketplace, scientists who hate God's natural law would sort of be like swimmers who hate water, right? It'd just be like, what? Wait, what? But we don't live in that kind of world. We live in a corrupted world. And so from time to time, that corrupted world will incentivize and subsidize, you know, erroneous science, science that is actually not true, science that's actually not only not founded on God's natural law, but might even be sort of an imposter science that's seeking to overthrow God's natural law.

16 · Oswald illustrates the first problem with a contemporary example: scientists who deny biological gender distinctions should be immediately disqualified from scientific practice, but corrupt funding sources allow them to gain institutional power

So that would be one thing to remember when we're talking about using natural revelation is that there are so many scientists out there who actually hate God's natural law. This makes them terrible scientists, but various incentives from universities and drug companies and think tanks and so forth make it possible for these people who are like swimmers who hate water to continue to call themselves science and produce so-called scientific findings. A good example of this kind of thing would be all the confusion surrounding gender. In a more ideal world, any scientist that would deny the existence of two genders, each with their own observable distinctions and roles, would immediately be rejected as a man unqualified to do the basic job of science. But as we know, there are currently enough corrupt funding sources within the scientific community that not only allows these people to be employed, but also amplified.

17 · Oswald identifies the second problem with using science: even well-intentioned scientists frequently misidentify natural laws due to human fallenness, error, and cognitive limitations

So one of the issues, yes, we can admit science into the care for souls. We can't admit science into the care for Christian living. But one problem with that is, is that a lot of science is not science. Number two, there are also, there's also the problem of scientists who, they're not trying to malign God's natural laws. They just misidentify God's natural laws. Since we are fallen human beings, we will, even with the best intentions, make mistakes. The scientific world is full of false conclusions that stem not so much from hostility to God's law, but rather just plain old human error and limitations.

18 · Oswald illustrates the second problem with the cholesterol-heart disease case, where well-meaning scientists confused correlation with causation, compounded by drug company interests

The scientific data surrounding the role of cholesterol and heart disease is one example. In that case, there have been classic confusions over causality and correlation, and these combined with the interest of drug companies to create a momentum toward a particular set of treatments and an understanding of cholesterol that turned out not to be true.

19 · Oswald provides a second illustration of how sinful presuppositions cause well-meaning scientists to misinterpret real data—in this case, failing to recognize that gender dysphoria correlates with underlying neuroticism rather than transitioning preventing suicide

The real truth is, is that sin creates all sorts of potential misunderstandings of real data. Take, for instance, the data regarding suicidal ideation amongst people with gender dysphoria. For a number of years, that real data, there is data there, was used to defend the idea of transitioning children, as if the transitioning would cure the suicidal ideation. But in reality, certain sinful presuppositions kept scientists, even those who I think might have been well-meaning, from seeing that, by definition, a child with gender dysphoria is already extremely high in neuroticism, and therefore more likely across the board to experience suicidal ideations. It turns out, very clearly, we can see in the data that, you know, cutting off a boy's genitals is not going to keep him from committing suicide. That seems obvious now, but you have to understand that I'm using an extreme case, but think of all the cases where this is happening and we don't know about it in the scientific community.

20 · Oswald transitions from the second problem (misidentification) to the third problem (misapplication) of scientific findings

So not only do we have, like, bad actors, but we also just have people who just, for whatever reason, fail to see kind of the proper, like, truth in a particular data set. And that leads us to the third issue, which is, you know, there are scientists who misapply their findings.

21 · Oswald articulates the theological foundation for the third problem: even when scientists discover true data in natural revelation, the Holy Spirit's illumination is necessary to properly apply that data—moving from discovery to wise application requires spiritual insight beyond empirical observation

The classical Protestant position on epistemology, and epistemology is just the study of knowing, like how do we know what we know, does state that the Holy Spirit is needed to illuminate both God's books to sub-degree. In addition to needing the Holy Spirit to produce a saving and sanctifying understanding of the scriptures, the Holy Spirit is needed to properly apprehend and definitely to apply certain truths we discover in the natural world. It's one thing to discover real data in the natural world, and it's another thing to possess the wisdom necessary to know how to properly apply that data.

22 · Oswald illustrates the third problem with two examples where accurate empirical observations about gender differences were misapplied due to lack of wisdom and fear of God, leading to morally monstrous conclusions about sexual violence and monogamy

Going back to our example with gender, a scientist might correctly discern the differences and notice, the differences in the genders, and notice that the average woman has about a third of the upper body strength of the average man. That is true data. But a lack of wisdom and a lack of the fear of the Lord could lead to that data being interpreted in various ways. I remember reading a paper that argued that the natural order of things strongly suggests that, how should I say this in a kid-free or kid-mindful way, that a man forcing himself on a woman is simply a law of nature. It's just the way that we evolved to function. Another example would be male monogamy. You see this one more often. That in some sense, there is a great deal of observable science that indicates men are not built for monogamy. But it's really not that. That's a misapplication of the data. In both examples, scientific failure emerges from a kind of failure to have the wisdom necessary to know what to do with the data that you have detected.

23 · Oswald synthesizes the three problems, concluding that while Westminster 1

So all this to say that while the understanding of biblical sufficiency through the Westminster Confession is broader than what you normally hear, there's a reason why you're getting the shorthand version from people when they talk about sufficiency. The truth is that the scientific world is full of all sorts of corruptions, and it makes it difficult to always know exactly how to use, whether to trust, first of all, and then how to use the so-called scientific data that's presented to you. And as I mentioned in a sermon, there are some fields that are more corrupt than others, and I don't think there's any field that is more corrupt than the field of psychology in all of these respects.

24 · Oswald extends his critique of psychology specifically, arguing that its low efficacy standards and pharmaceutical industry capture make the field particularly untrustworthy, which explains why lay teachers of sufficiency rightly oppose integration even though Westminster 1

It is really, in many respects, has the lowest standard for drug efficacy. It's really, in many respects, easy to see that the majority of the profession now, in particular, has sort of evolved around the process of selling drugs that have been developed, and so on and so forth. So it's easy to see why the average sort of lay-level teacher on the issue of sufficiency comes out really hard against it, because while the confession, the Westminster Confession, does give far more room for the role of natural law, a.k.a. science, it doesn't matter as much as you might think, because it's just so hard to sort through whether this or that scientific claim is true, whether it's being applied correctly, and so forth.

25 · Oswald signals a major structural shift from problem analysis to practical takeaways for counselors

So here's some key takeaways on all this.

26 · Oswald summarizes the first two takeaways: Westminster 1

First of all, the classical position on scriptural sufficiency does include a godly use of natural law. We see that in the confession. The main problem, key takeaway number two, the main problem with so-called integrationism is, in reality, not so much the use of external data as it is the three problems outlined above. That's the main issue with it. Not so much that the external data is being used, but simply it's just hard to sort through what can be trusted.

27 · Oswald uses Puritan preaching as a positive historical example of wise integration—Scripture-centered pastoral care that includes practical observations from nature (like sunlight) without compromising biblical authority

Regarding a healthy integration of both natural and special revelation, the Puritans are a really good example. In the average Puritan sermon or book, you will find true shepherding of souls that stands resolutely on the unique authority of the scriptures, while also utilizing basic principles discovered through observation that are known to support human flourishing. A good example of something you'd see in a Puritan sermon would be, right there amongst the exposition and application, you'd see maybe one application would be, go outside and get some fresh air and get some sunlight on your skin. Well, that's not, you know, there's not a Bible verse that commands that. It certainly can, though, be deduced from both the Bible and also from natural law that that's important.

28 · Oswald transitions from Puritan example to biblical warrant by citing Paul's counsel to Timothy, preparing to exegete the passage as a model for wise natural-law integration

You'll see the Puritans do something that Paul himself does in inspired scripture, 1 Timothy 5.23, where Paul tells Timothy to take a little wine for your stomach.

29 · Oswald explains how NOT to use 1 Timothy 5:23—it would be erroneous to treat Paul's counsel as a universal biblical prescription for stomach ailments rather than recognizing it as a specific application of longstanding natural-law wisdom to Timothy's particular situation

Now, what we would not want to do, this would be a clumsy use of sufficiency, is to say that the Bible prescribes people take wine when their stomach hurts. At best, we might say that there has been a longstanding understanding, a longstanding understanding, of the role that wine can potentially play, you know, in the gut, and that in modernity we may have lost a piece of wisdom that was well understood prior. So there could be something like that. But that's not actually the best way to apply this text, is to apply it as sort of an opening toward the use of natural law in the care for souls. It just needs to be wise. It needs to be careful. It needs to be sort of understood to be true and so forth. It needs to be properly vetted and so forth.

30 · Oswald contextualizes Paul's counsel by reading it against Timothy's broader pastoral struggles, concluding that Paul's primary treatment is spiritual exhortation with practical natural-law measures playing a minor supporting role—establishing the proper proportion between spiritual and material care

And you could see that this advice that Paul gives is not in a vacuum. It is pretty clear to me that Timothy's getting the tar beat out of him. He's taking on a tremendous battle. He's not the most courageous guy, has some timidity, needs to be charged repeatedly to stand his ground and to rebuke with all authority and so on and so forth. And it's pretty clear to me that, you know, in this case, Paul is adding a practical measure to what is most broadly just good old-fashioned spiritual exhortation. Right? He's not saying all of your problems will go away if you take a little wine for your stomach. Now, the majority of his treatment is spiritual. There are pieces of the practical imported from the natural law that are added to the care of a human soul, but it's not the main story. So on the one hand, I think that first tells us, yes, there's some role that natural law and the sciences can play in the care for souls, but it also says, like, and once you get to the point where it's only the material, it's only the chemical, it's only the psychological prescription, well, then you've gone far away from what the Bible is actually teaching.

31 · Oswald articulates the bidirectional relationship between soul and body affirmed by both Scripture and psychosomatic science, concluding that holistic pastoral care addresses both spiritual and physical dimensions while maintaining spiritual primacy

The Bible's teaching an extreme emphasis on the spiritual, even as it affects the physical, which we've made so much ground just in the role of psychosomatic science. Just understanding psychosomatic just means, you know, the connection somehow between, you know, our soul and our body. We've made so much progress there that it is reasonable to care for people in both spiritual ways, expecting spiritual truth to have an effect on the body, and also to do some care for the body that will have some effect on the soul. So that's some key takeaways.

32 · Oswald transitions to practical pastoral guidance by acknowledging that wisdom in integration requires discernment beyond mere rule-following, framing the upcoming antidotes as aids to cultivating that discernment

Now, let's talk about some antidotes that can be used to avoid harmful integrationism, because I think what's going on when we see these more flattened definitions is it's all so messy. It's hard to teach people kind of a set of rules that keep them on the straight and narrow, as it were. And to be honest, that's just a feature of God's Word. It's not a flaw. This is true so often. The winner is almost always the wise, right? That's why we are commanded to seek wisdom, because wisdom is not entirely rule-based. It's discernment-based. It uses existing rules to make inferences, to sort of figure out how to behave in this or that situation.

33 · Oswald prescribes the first antidote to harmful integrationism: cultivating deep reverential awe for Scripture's majesty as exemplified in Psalm 119, arguing that integrationist errors stem primarily from attitude deficiency rather than skill deficiency—counselors who view Scripture as less than cosmic in scope inevitably drift into harmful integration

Anyway, the first antidote I would prescribe to someone who's going to go into counseling and wants to avoid harmful, the negative effects of integrationism, of bad integrationism, would be you need to make sure you have a reverential respect for the majesty of God's Word. Every counselor just needs to embrace these with essential gratitude and honor the Bible. And really, Psalm 119 is your guide there. If you can't read that and say, He's right, He's right, He's right, He's right, then you don't have a reverential respect for the majesty of God's Word. The majority of integrationist errors don't stem from so much a skill issue as an attitude issue toward the Scriptures themselves. They view them as less than what they really are. And what they really are is massive and glorious and mountains upon mountains. They are more than Everest. They are more than the Mariana Trench. They're massive. And what you'll typically see with integrationism that goes wrong is, at the heart, a lack of trust, an embarrassment of, or a low view of the Scriptures in general. So if you want to avoid the errors of integrationism, which I think is what everybody's going for in this discussion of sufficiency, the first thing you do is you just really need to have a real reverence for God's Word.

34 · Oswald prescribes the second antidote: comprehensive biblical knowledge, arguing that integrationists' ignorance of Scripture's breadth causes them to falsely assume the Bible does not address their counseling issues, leading them to prescribe inferior solutions while neglecting God's superior prescriptions

Second, you need a clear understanding of God's Word. The average integrationist, while well-meaning, is often tragically limited in the amount of Bible they know and understand. And this ignorance often manifests itself in an under-reliance on Scripture. When God has indeed provided great guidance on topics, the integrationist simply does not know about His guidance. Too often, we find integrationists making assumptions that the Scriptures do not speak to a particular issue when they do. And so the consequence of that kind of thing is just a neglect of God's best prescription for a problem and the issuance of something far less powerful and effective.

35 · Oswald offers his own pastoral practice as an illustration of safe integration—his interest in medical studies and biohacking has not corrupted his ministry because his foundational reverence for Scripture and lifelong commitment to biblical study provides the necessary ballast against integrationist drift

You see, one of my kind of redeeming qualities, I suppose you might say, and all glory to God for this, is I think from my first year of Bible college at age 18, I just became convinced that the Word of God is bigger than the whole cosmos itself and that it's just this marvelous, powerful, glorious thing. But you know me, I like to read medical studies, and I'm all about biohacking and things like that. And I love science, and I love a lot of science. It's very interesting to me. I read about it. I cite it in sermons and so forth. Well, what has kept me from becoming an evil integrationist in this is I think not so much that I follow a set of interpretive rules perfectly, but that just generally I have a great reverence for God's Word, and I have devoted my life to understanding it. And so I think that sometimes these flattened versions of sufficiency are really just trying to keep people who have not made these deeper commitments to God's Word from entering into error.

36 · Oswald issues a direct pastoral charge: anyone lacking deep love for and devotion to Scripture should not enter counseling ministry regardless of their methodological commitments, because even radical integrationists must acknowledge Scripture's unparalleled power to transform human lives

But my feeling is if you don't have these feelings toward God's Word, you shouldn't be a counselor, just in general, whatever your method. If you don't love it like that, if you don't study it like that, you probably just shouldn't be a counselor. Because even if you were a full-blown integrationist, even if you were full-blown, you know, psychology is awesome, you would have to acknowledge the supreme world-building, people-shaping power of the Bible is unparalleled with anything else that's ever been developed. So even a full-blown integrationist would have to at least, to be a good counselor, acknowledge this one thing has been far more effective in changing lives than literally anything else that's been developed, and it's not even close.

37 · Oswald prescribes the third antidote: vigilance against wrongfully binding consciences by treating non-biblical prescriptions as biblically mandated, using Gospel Coalition's COVID mask arguments as a negative example of misusing Westminster's good-and-necessary category to create false moral obligations

And the third antidote to avoiding harmful integration would be to just be careful that you understand that you could accidentally bind a conscience toward something that God would not have their conscience bound toward. You remember during COVID, there was all this work done by the Gospel Coalition, fluffs regarding this, you know, if you're a good neighbor, you'll wear a mask, and so on and so forth. And what they were attempting to do there was to make an argument out of the good and necessary category in the Westminster Confession. They do, we are supposed to love our neighbors, we are supposed to not put our needs before theirs, and so forth, therefore we should wear masks. And it sounds like it's biblical, it's not, and I won't get into why, but it's not. But what you really saw there was a binding of consciences, so that this is the way you must act.

38 · Oswald provides a second illustration of conscience-binding: pronoun hospitality advocates used the same biblical love-your-neighbor framework to create false moral obligations around transgender pronouns

Another example that's completely fallen out of favor, just about as quickly as it fell into favor, was this idea of so-called pronoun hospitality. The same arguments, the same foundational scriptures were used by advocates of pronoun hospitality to tell people that it is the good neighborly thing to do to use the pronoun, the preferred pronoun of the individual you're speaking to.

39 · Oswald articulates the underlying mechanism of conscience-binding error: integrationists (which includes nearly all pastoral caregivers to some degree) risk using extra-biblical content dressed in biblical rhetoric to manufacture false biblical authority for their prescriptions

So one of the things that integrationists have to be careful of, if you're doing any integration, which I would argue basically everybody who actually cares for souls is doing some integration, by the way. What you have to be careful of is that you're not using extra biblical ideas coupled with biblical language to create a sort of biblical authority to prescribe X, Y, or Z behavior.

40 · Oswald illustrates conscience-binding in marriage counseling: an integrationist imports love languages framework (general revelation), then uses Ephesians 5's command to love to judge the husband's failure to speak the wife's love language as biblical disobedience—creating false moral obligation through rhetorical sleight of hand

I think a classic example of this comes up often in marriage counseling. In a marriage counseling situation with an integrationist, with someone who's not even like trying to be a sufficientist, you would pretty quickly see something like this. The wife says that she has words of affirmation as her love language. And they took this little test, and that's what it found. And so what we're doing right there is we're using human wisdom. We're importing potentially scientific, potentially not, data from general revelation, and we're importing that into the conversation. That in and of itself is not necessarily a problem, except when you say, well, Susie's love language is words of affirmation, and Carl, you consistently refuse to do that, and therefore you're failing to fulfill the obligations of Ephesians 5, which says you should love your wife. You see how it just gets so slippery and weird pretty quickly? That's what you've got to watch out for.

41 · Oswald articulates three risks of imprudent integration: distraction from better biblical solutions, dilution of biblical power, and wrongful judgment of counselees according to non-biblical standards, concluding that counselors must not elevate prudential matters to the level of divine command

If you're going to use some sort of technique or method or data set or something in your counseling, well, you need to understand that that could potentially be a distraction from something much better than God has. It could dilute something that God has, but you could also wind up in a situation where you're judging a counselee in a way that God himself would not judge them. You know, if Carl doesn't follow Susie's love languages, is God angry that Carl didn't, you know, follow the love languages? No, like that's not what's happening there. It may be prudent for a man who wants to love his wife to think about love languages. It may be prudent for him to think about it in a different way. That's not up to you and I to prescribe at that level.

42 · Oswald synthesizes the three antidotes into a compressed summary: reverence, knowledge, and discernment of boundaries between biblical mandate and prudential application

So those are some antidotes to harmful integrationism. You need to have deep reverence for God's Word, a clear understanding for God's Word, and a clear sense of what is God's Word and what isn't when you begin to prescribe actions.

43 · Oswald pivots from addressing integrationist errors to addressing sufficiency errors, identifying the primary problem as inappropriate hostility toward natural law that deviates from classical confessional positions

Now, what about some antidotes to harmful sufficiency? There certainly are people who have, I think, an unhelpful definition of sufficiency. The main problem we'll run into there is that they will simply manifest an inappropriate, not classically derived hostility toward the use of natural law in counseling.

44 · Oswald contextualizes biblical sufficiency historically as a reactive doctrine forged in opposition to Roman Catholic tradition-inflation, making the doctrine's strong anti-tradition posture understandable as a necessary correction to Catholic authority-abuse

Now, this is understandable to some degree. You need to understand the history of this doctrine. As with many doctrines, the doctrine of sufficiency is a reactive doctrine, a doctrine articulated in its current form in reaction to something. And initially, as you might guess, the doctrine was outlined as a reaction to Roman Catholicism, most broadly speaking. And so you can see why the sufficiency doctrine was so important, an extension of sola scriptura, for responding to the heavily traditioned and nuanced Byzantine kind of structural levels of Catholicism. It's like, no, you can't call all of that God's will. The Bible is God's will. And so you can see where sufficiency came from, right? And when it came from this sort of reforming moment, it was coming in reaction to a wide abuse of spiritual authority and a watering down of God's Word into something that was much broader than the Scriptures themselves.

45 · Oswald draws a structural parallel between contemporary psychology and Roman Catholicism—both systems establish human mediators with secret wisdom standing between the individual and ultimate authority—justifying the contemporary resurgence of sufficiency doctrine as an appropriate reaction to this new form of the same error

And you can also see how, in many respects, now the doctrine of sufficiency is used in a similar way as a reaction to the significant sin and corruption within the psychological community. And the thing to just remember is, is there's nothing wrong with reactive doctrine, because that's really how most doctrine gets formed. We need the error to encourage our theologians to, you know, get together and figure out, okay, how do we talk about this in a way that handles these particular errors? So it's no problem. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the renewal of sufficiency is coming on the heels of what I would consider a second iteration of Catholicism. I think that all psychological therapy is, is just a secularized version of Roman Catholicism. The therapist takes the role of priest, he has secret wisdom, and through the secret wisdom he mediates between the person and the person's God, which in humanism would be the ideal self.

46 · Oswald warns that reactive doctrine risks overreaction, advocating for Westminster Confession's more measured formulation as a safeguard against the extremism that often characterizes informal doctrinal explanations responding to contemporary errors

Anyway, you can see how, like, yeah, you need the sufficiency doctrine to respond to these sorts of Catholicism, Roman Catholicism slash, you know, therapeutic model problems. You just need to understand that whenever you've got reaction, you may have overreaction. I think that's just, it's just common sense. It just makes sense to understand that, yeah, like, I definitely want to stick to something as well formulated as the Westminster Confession for my understanding of sufficiency, because it has been thoughtful, it is to some degree reactive, but it's reactive in a more careful and measured way than we will likely to do when we're just explaining sufficiency to a friend or, you know, in a class or something.

47 · Oswald introduces a final complicating factor—deeper epistemological debates between presuppositionalism and Thomism underlie the sufficiency discussion, though he acknowledges this exceeds the sermon's primary scope

One last issue, and I'll let you go. It's outside the scope of this conversation to some degree, but I think you need to understand that there's some deeper theological disagreements at play underneath this discussion. It's tangled up with a longstanding disagreement in the church regarding epistemology. The two sides of this debate are typically referred to as the presuppositionalists versus the Thomistic thinkers or the classical apologist thinkers.

48 · Oswald sketches the two epistemological camps: presuppositionalists emphasize human fallenness to the point of requiring the Spirit for all truth-perception including natural law, while Thomists affirm that human reason retains sufficient capacity to discern basic truths from nature despite the Fall

And I just would tell you that both sides have legitimate perspectives. The presuppositionalist believes that all human perception of truth is ultimately dependent on the Holy Spirit. They believe that man's nature is so corrupted by sin that science itself becomes untenable without spiritual sight provided by the Spirit. And that's an over, that's an over, it's a reductionist definition that I'm giving you there. But it's something like there's a deep suspicion amongst presuppositionalists to the human being's ability to rightly perceive truth without supernatural intervention. And on the Thomistic side, I'm just going to go for another reductionist argument, or reductionist definition here. They would argue, this comes from Thomas Aquinas, that man's fallenness is not so total as to prevent him from reasoning out certain basic concepts communicated through nature.

49 · Oswald positions himself between the two camps, arguing that both fail when taken to extremes and that ordinary Christian intuition often better reflects biblical epistemology than either academic position, while acknowledging these debates shape the sufficiency discussion at leadership levels

And I think you could say that when pressed to their most extreme applications, both presuppositionalism and Thomism fail to adequately explain the totality of biblical data on the subject. The truth, I think, truly does lie somewhere in the middle. I think the average Christian is more intuitively in touch with the truth of epistemology than all of this academic stuff. But you need to understand that in this conversation about biblical sufficiency, there are other things happening in the background amongst the thought leaders that are dealing with this issue.

50 · Oswald maps the epistemological positions onto the sufficiency debate: presuppositionalism tends toward rigid sufficiency and theonomic applications (citing Rushdoony, North, Boot, Wilson), while Thomism tends toward undervaluing Scripture's uniqueness (citing Stephen Wolfe), with Oswald expressing qualified sympathy for the presuppositionalist trajectory

In general, presuppositionalism can tend to fuel an overly rigid doctrine of biblical sufficiency. Again, not to get into this here, but if you want to understand where theonomy comes from and the various ways that that is manifested through Rush Dooney and Gary North and in a very different way to some extent amongst someone like Joseph Boot or Douglas Wilson, they're all presuppositionalists to some degree or another. And so they are going to really lean on the Word of God to do everything, including the construction of civil government and so forth. And I have a lot of sympathies toward them in that respect. Thomism, on the other hand, can tend to fuel an underappreciation for the necessity or specialness of Scripture. And there's people that are prominent in that world as well. Some even very notable Protestants. If you've read Stephen Wolf's The Case for Christian Nationalism, he's a Thomist, and he has a very different view of the way that human beings perceive information and the accuracy that is afforded to them through their natural facilities and so forth.

51 · Oswald concludes the epistemological section by returning to his methodological commitment: historic confessions like Westminster provide the best foundation because they synthesize competing perspectives with wisdom that transcends contemporary partisan debates

All that to say that when there's something like the sufficiency debate, if you're just exposed to it, you might not understand all the layers of reaction, of debate that are happening behind that. And again, that's why I love going to these really old documents and saying, well, what was the sort of agreed-upon take on this doctrine hundreds of years ago? Why has it stood the test of time? Why are Christians still uniting around these things? And I think, again, this particular definition from Westminster Confession is really unsurpassed in the way that it outlines some of these issues.

52 · Oswald closes by synthesizing the entire sermon into a simple pastoral vision: biblical counseling at Providence requires counselors who love, live, and know Scripture deeply, and this foundation will produce flourishing ministry despite the complexities discussed

All right, well, that was probably way more than you wanted to know, but that's some thoughts on biblical sufficiency. The big picture is we need people who love God's Word, who live God's Word, and who know God's Word to spend time with people who are trying to solve problems with God's Word. And if we could just keep doing that, we're going to see lots of great things happen through Providence Community Church. All right, that's enough for today. God bless and farewell.