Does Baucham Embrace Marriage as a Sacrament, or is it Just Another Rhetorical Trick?

I recently read a post at the Cry for Justice blog critiquing a sermon that Voddie Baucham delivered about the “Permanence of Marriage.” The blog explores the theme Pastor Jeff Crippen's book Cry for Justice:  How the evil of domestic abuse hides in your church. It's an excellent place to read if you're dealing with the issue of abuse or if you're trying to understand the behavior of an abuser. I've not yet read the book, because frankly, I find the subject of abuse to be a difficult topic. I begin to read and cannot concentrate because of the difficulty of the subject itself. I have, however, read selections of very good and helpful content on the Cry for Justice blog.

When the sermon came to my attention, I immediately thought of something I'd read in one of Baucham's books a couple of years ago. A reader contacted me and asked me to consider critiquing his book, What He Must Be... If He Wants to Marry My Daughter. It came highly recommended by a source they trusted at the time, and this reader became quite dismayed. They found the principles Baucham promoted and his twisting of Scripture in such an authoritative tone to be so troubling that they claimed that they'd actually begun to question Christianity. I relented and bought a used copy of the book, wondering what content could have been so troubling. I read only a third or so of it and stopped. I found it to be so full of bizarre that I quickly grew weary of it. I contacted the person via email and shared some general ideas about what I'd read before I gave up on the effort.

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Cognitive Dissonance and Bible Study Following Spiritual Abuse: Part II of V

How Do You Study the Bible After Someone Has Bludgeoned You With It?

See Part I HERE.

Feeling Alienated from My Connection to God through the Bible

After studying a year of Greek, I was very disappointed. I found no theophany. A year of Greek taught me how to use the Bible Study tools properly and key terms frequently used in basic doctrine, not much more. This was a disappointment, as it did strip away some of the mystique that I felt about Bible teachers. It introduced a new element of uncertainty, so the outcome of study did the opposite of what I had hoped. I wish that I’d understood something that I failed to grasp then, partly because I was still looking at the Gospel like a formula. (“Do A, B and C and you will get D, the higher life and anointing.” In homeschooling, you get perfect kids and eternal families.) I wish that I understood and appreciated the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer in concert with the study of the Word. The Spirit illuminates our study. But I was still working these things out in my own mind as I shifted from the vicarious faith that my mother gave me into a faith of my own on my own terms with God. Bible study was still, partially, a means to an end for me.

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Problems with Proper Context And Misreading the Bible

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the problems of context when an author uses a common term but applies and uses the term with a different definition than is commonly understood. Redefining a term and clearly communicating your new definition (without changing the term) does not constitute an informal logical fallacy in itself, but it does set one up for slipping into a linguistic booby trap and sets up a high probability for falling into an error of equivocation and ambiguity. The listener tends to slip back into a common understanding of the term. James Sire touches on this issue in his book "Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible," though Orthodox or Evangelical Christians with the highest view of Scripture can also fall prey to these same pitfalls and errors as well.

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“The Biblical Hook” (Using Nancy Campbell’s Ontological Subordination of Women as an Example of Sloppy Rhetoric)

From pages 41 -42 of “Scripture Twisting" by James Sire:

When Scripture is quoted, especially at the beginning of an argument which turns out to promote a cult doctrine or point of view, it may be that it is being used primarily as a hook to grasp the attention of readers or listeners. “The Bible says” gets the attention, but what follows the quotation may be far from traditional Christian teaching and far from the intention of the Bible itself.

We use shortcuts to help us sift through the tremendous amounts of information that we are bombarded with every day, and we do not have time to search out the truth about every fact. Cialdini’s book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” presents one of the best reviews and descriptions of this “rule of thumb” we use to help us get through daily life. For instance, when we see a person in a police uniform, we tend to assume that the person wearing the uniform is actually a policeman. This is a reasonable assumption to make, and we automatically respond to the person in the uniform as though they are with the police, but we may learn that they are only wearing the uniform as a costume or could be trying to be deceptive.

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Does The Bible Really Say That?

Often, doctrinal errors arise from inaccurate translations of the Bible, or sometimes merely because verses are misquoted or misapplied. This is actually a common and sometimes an easy error to make. Mixing up a word or two can form a whole new doctrine or an unrelated Scripture can be used to form a new doctrine, merely based on a bad quote or misapplication. Recently someone brought the verse “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” to my attention (Philippians 4:13), but they stated it as “Christ who strengthens me.” The first statement implies that doing things through Christ makes one stronger. The second misquote means that Christ gives strength first so that all things can be done, something not necessarily contingent on being “in Christ.” It’s a simple mistake that leads to serious doctrinal error. It might also be misapplied to state that Christ will strengthen a Believer as they commit a sin, for example.

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Loaded Terms

From Page 20 in James Sire in "Scripture Twisting":

Unfortunately, there is one loaded word that I cannot conveniently avoid. The word cult itself is heavy with negative connotations. Imagine a friend you haven’t seen for a while greeting you and saying, “Oh, by the way. Last week, I joined a cult. Would you like to hear about it?”

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How Does Heresy Happen?

Christians who believe that the Bible is God’s inspired and infallible Word of God believe that the instruction in the Bible is sufficient for all of our human needs and has the ability to transcend our times and culture. The difficulty presents when we try to diligently and faithfully apply the proper meaning of Scripture to the specifics of our lives today. 

At this point, without a wise, clear, broad and well-informed perspective, we could easily fall into error. How can we keep from branching off from what God teaches us in the Word into error, be it misguided, false teachings or heresy, especially concerning central and critical doctrine.

Harold O. J. Brown has this to say in Heresies (pg 150):

“The spiritual contrast between these variant views and what we now call orthodoxy lay first of all in the goal that each sought to accomplish: the heretical positions had in common a desire to understand the mystery of God; the orthodox sought to preserve the salvation Christians find in Christ.”

Intent has a great deal to do with whether we descend into heresy. If our goal is to develop and formulate a clear doctrine about a mystery, then we are branching off into dangerous territory. Intent to meet a goal dominates and governs our actions. If our approach however concerns intent to clearly discern what the Word of God teaches us about a particular issue, then we are less likely to fall into error or predispose ourselves to error. Our primary commitment must be to the preservation of the integrity of the Word of God, following a sound hermeneutic.


Paul Elliot, in Christianity and Neo-Liberalism points out several pitfalls resulting from departure from sound hermeneutics into ones that are poorly informed or very narrow in understanding. 

“First, it is not a fixed set of principles or a defined methodology for the interpretation of Scripture.” 

In our postmodern world, truth is determined by experience and meaning is imparted by the person who deems a thing truthful, so it is not an objective measure of truth. Concerning the group that Elliot discusses in his book, these religious leaders stated that as long as their group agreed on the basics of the creeds, they were willing to tolerate the inconsistencies on other levels, sacrificing objective truth in favor of what Elliot calls “artificial confessional unity.” (Pg 248-249)

“Second, notice that the primary focus of the hermeneutic of trust is not on correctly interpreting the words of Scripture at all. It focuses instead on interpreting the words of the church’s confessional standards, and on construing them in ways that are elastic enough to permit the OPC to fit diverging doctrinal views under one big confessional tent… So the hermeneutic of trust is at least one step removed from Scripture. It focuses not on the Scripture itself but on human perspectives on Scripture… It is not only significant that the hermeneutic of trust draws attention away from Scripture, but also that it draws attention to something called the “animus imponentis”, or the intention of the imposing body.” (pg 249)

Elliot goes on to point out an example where Charles Hodge (a mid 19th century seminary instructor at Princeton) argues for the use of “animus imponentis” to maintain denominational unity and prevent a type of pluralism. Elliot says

“But with all due respect to Hodge, to use the animus impotentis as the fundamental guiding principle in establishing conformity to sound doctrine is to adopt a fatally flawed benchmark… By this logic, Rome’s doctrine of justification and the Protestant doctrine of justification have equal standing. In fact, any competing doctrines that bear the stamp of approval of their respective “imposing bodies” would have equal standing. Each imposing body is after all, its own ‘community of interpretation.’” The problem with this method is that the standards will change over time.” (pg 250-252)

Elliot concludes this section stating:

“[A]t the end of the day, what is important is not what men say the Bible says, but what the Bible actually says. For that reason, our starting point in sound doctrine must never be the secondary standards of the church, but always Scripture. It is Scripture that gives meaning to the words of the confessional standards, not vice versa. The hermeneutic of trust perverts this fundamental order." (pg 254)

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More About Hermeneutics: The Grammatico-Historical Method

So how does one go about all of this?

I prefer the grammatico-historical method (also called the grammatical-historical method, depending on whom you ask) over a literal interpretation of text. 

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