Hilasmos
Puritan Board Freshman
Snap snot of Adam's view:
Ed Welch’s Critique of Adams
Adams’ Response to Welch
After reading Adams’ How to Help People Change and A Theology of Christian Counseling, his views of flesh and sanctification stood out the most; and, to be quite honest, were crucially helpful in dealing with sin issues in my life. Yet, as Welch comments in his critique, Adam’s view of the flesh is virtually unprecedented. So, of course, I don’t really want to hold to a wrong view of the flesh – despite its apparent usability in my own situation. So…
Question 1: Does Adams’ view of the flesh really lack all precedent. Or, does it have any “postcedent,” in that some PB members affirm this view after reading Adams?
For the sake of argument I began to read Romans 6-8 in light of Adam’s definition of flesh. Frankly, I see why he can make statements like it is “all-to-obvious” that this view of the flesh is right. I get it. Most talk of the “flesh” is often so ambiguous that after it is all done in said I am not any the clearer on what it actually is and is not; Adams’ view can actually make a lot of sense of flesh/spirit battle, but that is not a good criterion of truth no less. Romans 8 took on a new perspective for me. The emphasis on the “solution to Romans 7” as being the resurrection of the “mortal body” makes harmonious sense when the mortal body is the flesh, per Adams. If the problem of Romans 7 was the coexistence of the flesh with the “mind,” then why is the solution a physical resurrection?
Then I read Owen’s book on Mortification and Indwelling Sin, again very influential, and his views of the flesh contravene with Adams – and of course this isn’t minor, this is fundamental to discussions on sanctification. Ultimately Welch’s critique was unsatisfactory, in my opinion, as it maintains that Romans 7 is not talking about a new covenant believer (whether Paul or not) and that walking in the flesh just means living like a Judaizer. From what I gathered, the reason Welch lands on this type of view relates to him wanting to avoid the same thing Adams’ wants to avoid: believing in a duality of the soul. That is, the soul consists of a “sin nature” and a “new nature.” Or, to take Ezk. 36 literally, when God says he will give us a “heart of flesh,” it consists in removing the heart of stone. Adams wants to maintain that there is no duality in our heart; the heart of stone is removed not just added to (or set alongside our new heart).
Question 2: For those that hold that the flesh is immaterial (at least in some aspects), do you also hold to a certain level of duality of nature within the soul itself?
There is much I could say as it relates to Adams view of habituation and dehabituation and my own experience. Even if misplaced, it really helped me get over the notion that I am being hypocritical if I seek God even when I don’t feel like it. In the past my “not feeling like it” was equated to the “flesh.” And, likewise, the “flesh” is my nature, somehow related to my heart, therefore everything I did while not “feeling it” was doing it from a hypocritical heart, therefore it resulted in a sense of awkward theological passivity waiting for God to “change my heart” so I could obey from the heart. I attribute to Adams’ view of the flesh here as foundational to “getting over” that notion.
I went on a diet the other month to drop about 15 pounds. As anyone who has dieted can relate, there were certain foods I was habituated on. The immaterial mind/soul, being in some sense one with the body, is no less subject to these habits and the neurological firing that occurs. Dieting (or fasting) can create very real immaterial “sins,” such as anger, frustration, etc… Although flawed, I think this is instructive on just how much our body can afflict the soul. To put some “flesh on the bones” this is how I view Adams talk of habits, and how we still sin from the “heart,” but the locus of the problem is that my brain and flesh craves the sin it has lived with so long. So, to conclude, the objection that there are “sins that could only be done by the heart,” while no less true, doesn’t seem to negate what Adams is getting at.
---------- Post added at 01:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:59 PM ----------
And, here is a more extended quote of Adam's explaining his view from How to Help People Change, if you are interested in more context to the issue.
The believer especially comes to grips with his remaining sin as he struggles with sin in his body. Writer after writer tries to avoid the all-too-obvious fact that in chapters 6-8 Paul spoke about the struggle he had with his body. They say that when Paul used the word body he referred to the part as standing for the whole. Similarly, the word flesh is made over into sinful nature …instead of flesh.... And often they ignore the plain and unmistakable words about sin in the bodily members (Adams, Jay: How to Help People Change, pp. 186).
When Paul speaks of the body as sinful, he does not conceive of the body as originally created by God as sinful (as if he were a Gnostic), but rather of the body plunged into sinful practices and habits as the result of Adams’ fall. There is no ultimate mind/body (flesh) dualism here, but the indwelling of the Spirit in a body habituated to do evil. This leads to an inner/outer struggle. This warfare increasingly is won by the Spirit, Who renews and activates the inner man, who helps the body to put off sinful patterns and to put on new biblical responses. Bodily members are to be yielded less and less to sin and more and more to God (Rom. 6:13, 16, 19). This is possible because Christ has given life not only to the believer’s soul (inner man), but also to his body (Rom. 7:24; 8:10, 11). (Adams, Jay: A Theology of Christian Counseling, pp.160)
Ed Welch’s Critique of Adams
Adams’ Response to Welch
After reading Adams’ How to Help People Change and A Theology of Christian Counseling, his views of flesh and sanctification stood out the most; and, to be quite honest, were crucially helpful in dealing with sin issues in my life. Yet, as Welch comments in his critique, Adam’s view of the flesh is virtually unprecedented. So, of course, I don’t really want to hold to a wrong view of the flesh – despite its apparent usability in my own situation. So…
Question 1: Does Adams’ view of the flesh really lack all precedent. Or, does it have any “postcedent,” in that some PB members affirm this view after reading Adams?
For the sake of argument I began to read Romans 6-8 in light of Adam’s definition of flesh. Frankly, I see why he can make statements like it is “all-to-obvious” that this view of the flesh is right. I get it. Most talk of the “flesh” is often so ambiguous that after it is all done in said I am not any the clearer on what it actually is and is not; Adams’ view can actually make a lot of sense of flesh/spirit battle, but that is not a good criterion of truth no less. Romans 8 took on a new perspective for me. The emphasis on the “solution to Romans 7” as being the resurrection of the “mortal body” makes harmonious sense when the mortal body is the flesh, per Adams. If the problem of Romans 7 was the coexistence of the flesh with the “mind,” then why is the solution a physical resurrection?
- 7:24: Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
- 8:11: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus[d] from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
- 8:23-24 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.
- 8:29: For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. [conformed to the first born, i.e. first resurrected)
Then I read Owen’s book on Mortification and Indwelling Sin, again very influential, and his views of the flesh contravene with Adams – and of course this isn’t minor, this is fundamental to discussions on sanctification. Ultimately Welch’s critique was unsatisfactory, in my opinion, as it maintains that Romans 7 is not talking about a new covenant believer (whether Paul or not) and that walking in the flesh just means living like a Judaizer. From what I gathered, the reason Welch lands on this type of view relates to him wanting to avoid the same thing Adams’ wants to avoid: believing in a duality of the soul. That is, the soul consists of a “sin nature” and a “new nature.” Or, to take Ezk. 36 literally, when God says he will give us a “heart of flesh,” it consists in removing the heart of stone. Adams wants to maintain that there is no duality in our heart; the heart of stone is removed not just added to (or set alongside our new heart).
Question 2: For those that hold that the flesh is immaterial (at least in some aspects), do you also hold to a certain level of duality of nature within the soul itself?
There is much I could say as it relates to Adams view of habituation and dehabituation and my own experience. Even if misplaced, it really helped me get over the notion that I am being hypocritical if I seek God even when I don’t feel like it. In the past my “not feeling like it” was equated to the “flesh.” And, likewise, the “flesh” is my nature, somehow related to my heart, therefore everything I did while not “feeling it” was doing it from a hypocritical heart, therefore it resulted in a sense of awkward theological passivity waiting for God to “change my heart” so I could obey from the heart. I attribute to Adams’ view of the flesh here as foundational to “getting over” that notion.
I went on a diet the other month to drop about 15 pounds. As anyone who has dieted can relate, there were certain foods I was habituated on. The immaterial mind/soul, being in some sense one with the body, is no less subject to these habits and the neurological firing that occurs. Dieting (or fasting) can create very real immaterial “sins,” such as anger, frustration, etc… Although flawed, I think this is instructive on just how much our body can afflict the soul. To put some “flesh on the bones” this is how I view Adams talk of habits, and how we still sin from the “heart,” but the locus of the problem is that my brain and flesh craves the sin it has lived with so long. So, to conclude, the objection that there are “sins that could only be done by the heart,” while no less true, doesn’t seem to negate what Adams is getting at.
---------- Post added at 01:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:59 PM ----------
And, here is a more extended quote of Adam's explaining his view from How to Help People Change, if you are interested in more context to the issue.
“We have seen that a believer is reckoned perfect in Christ. And it is abundantly clear both from Scripture and from experience (1 John 1:8, 10) that he is not perfect in daily life. We have also seen that all he is in Christ he is commanded to be also in daily living. Moreover, we are told that he is equipped with everything necessary to grow into the stature of Christ (Heb. 13:20-21).
But how can believer, who are “new creations” [2 Cor. 5:17] and have new hearts of flesh that replace the hearts of stone (Ezek. 36:26), yet sin? ...
The believer especially comes to grips with his remaining sin as he struggles with sin in his body. Writer after writer tries to avoid the all-too-obvious fact that in chapters 6-8 Paul spoke about the struggle he had with his body. They say that when Paul used the word body he referred to the part as standing for the whole. Similarly, the word flesh is made over into sinful nature …instead of flesh.... And often they ignore the plain and unmistakable words about sin in the bodily members. Speaking about the same experience we all know, Paul was describing a body that often acts contrary to one’s mind. Failure to recognize that has kept counselors from helping many people with what is a universal problem.
“But,” you may wonder, “if Paul is speaking about the body, doesn’t that involve Christianity in the errors of Greek mind-body dualism?” Not at all. The body is never considered sinful in itself in the Scriptures as it was in Greek philosophy, which called it the prison house of the soul. The body, and not something else, is to take the words at their face value. Paul was not speaking of the body as sinful in itself. But the body is the locus of a problem.
Before Paul became a Christian, he habituated his body to sinful patterns of living by yielding its members to sin, which led to more sin, and taught the body (including the brain) the very sinful responses he later came to deplore (to return evil for evil, for instance). Because he indulged the body’s desires in various sinful ways, it became habituated to them so that after conversion it was inclined to do what it had always done before. Paul was reaping the fruit of what he had sown in his body. It had been organized against what he as a Christian wanted to do. He was struggling against his own programming (both his conscious sin and others into which he drifted, as do all sinners).
But the great truth is that the Holy Spirit has come to repattern and remold that body as well as the soul. It is an important though neglected truth that the body is being sanctified, as well as the soul (see I Thess. 5:23; 1 Cor. 6:20). And it is most instructive to learn that the members of the body can be yielded to Righteousness, the new master to whom the redeeming belong.
So this struggle of Paul in Romans 7 does not always end in defeat; victory over bodily temptation and rebellion is always possible. That is what we are being told throughout. The wonderful fact is that the habituation of the brain and the rest of the body which it controls can be changed now that there is a new impulse in the soul and there is life for understanding, believing, and desiring what God’s Word requires. Romans 8 tells that happier story.
To walk in the flesh is to walk in the old ways (the old man = the old lifestyle). This body is so organized by sinful patterning that it is like carrying around a weight, dead to the things of God. That is why Paul called it a “body of death” (7:24). Moreover, he repeated this in Romans 8:10, where he said that the body is dead (spiritually) because of sin. But, as Calvin rightly teaches, concerning verse 11, Paul rejoiced that the Spirit of God gives life to those “mortal bodies” as well:
We hence conclude, that he speaks not of the last resurrection, which shall be in a moment, but of the continued working of the Spirit.
That is why Paul continued, writing in verse 13, “But if by the Spirit you put to death your bodily practices, you will live.” Thus, the new heart in man, enlightened and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, who dwells within, is in the process of changing and remaking the whole man – including this body, which so stubbornly reacts against what we want to do. There is great hope for change, then, because there is hope even for the change of the habituated body. Though at times it seems a body of death, that death itself can be put to death so that the body begins to live for and serve Righteousness. This happens as one yields his members to Righteousness. (Adams, Jay: How to Help People Change, pp. 186-189)