Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I’m delighted to have with me Dr. Joel Beeke. He’s a Chancellor and Professor of Homiletics and Systematic and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He’s the Pastor of the Heritage Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Editor of Puritan Reformed Journal and Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth. He’s a Board Chairman of Reformation Heritage Books, a frequent speaker at Reformed conferences around the world, and a prolific author. Dr. Beeke, it’s always so good to be with you, brother, and I’m so grateful to allow our audience to hear you today on this topic. Thank you for being with us.
Joel Beeke: Thanks for having me, Dale.
Dale Johnson: Now we’re going to talk about the concept of being depressed and how the Puritans approached it. I can’t think of a better person to help us take Puritan thinking from the Scriptures and apply it so deeply to an issue that is so common to humanity. I want you to first talk about what the Puritans meant when they were approaching this concept of spiritual depression.
Joel Beeke: For the Puritans, spiritual depression was an important part of what they called melancholy, a sadness that overcame people. The word spiritual refers particularly, in their mind, to our relationship with God. A sense of divine desertion, a sense of not being able to find contact with God. My life isn’t what it used to be. It produces guilt, sorrow, and brings a person down. Richard Baxter actually gives, in his Christian Directory, 35 symptoms of spiritual depression.
Dale Johnson: So you mean he thought about it a lot.
Joel Beeke: Oh yes. He mentioned things like excessive fear, sadness, doubt, and even despair over one’s own salvation, a kind of confusion in the mind. What does God think of me? Intrusive thoughts can be there, even to the point, in severe cases, of hallucinations, auditory or even visual. But normal spiritual depression is discouragement, distress, sorrow of soul that cries out like the psalmist, “Where is God?” You’re trying to counsel yourself, hope in God, but you don’t know how to get there. Spiritual depression has its ups and downs. Baxter said that most of God’s people, at least once in their life or maybe more, will experience some form of spiritual depression for a variety of causes.
Dale Johnson: As you talk about this, I can’t help but notice that the categories you mentioned are what modern psychology attempts to categorize in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s interesting how observant men like Richard Baxter were in seeing these commonalities in humanity and connecting them to spiritual reality. You talked about spiritual desertion as a starting point that can lead toward despondency or despair, or being downcast, as Scripture describes. But the Puritans looked for the spiritual good, what the Lord was working for His people. Describe how the Puritans understood God using spiritual depression or desertion in the lives of His people.
Joel Beeke: The Puritans understood spiritual desertion within a paradigm established by Calvin, involving primary and secondary causation. We, being prone to selfishness and making a God out of our own feelings, tend to focus on secondary causation. We can bring a sense of spiritual desertion upon ourselves by our backsliding, by falling into sin, by pursuing low levels of obedience, etc. And through Satan attacking us in a variety of ways that discourage us, because he wants to destroy us in the worst way. But the Puritans went a step further and said the cause of spiritual depression, though it most commonly lies in us and our own lack of the means of grace, our own coldness, our own backslidings, or through the influences of Satan conjoining with that, there is also many good reasons why God would sometimes withdraw the light of His countenance from us. God oversees this as the primary causation factor; He oversees our spiritual desertion and works good out of it. They give many different reasons for good. And let me just mention a couple of them. First of all is that we learn to bow under the sovereignty of God and let Him be God. And that’s key in Puritan thinking. Puritans are keen on submission before God. And in their mind, submission is a four-step process.
Number one, when afflictions come that would tend to get you down, you say, “It is the Lord. So you acknowledge God. Number two, which goes a step deeper, you say, “It is right.” I don’t deserve anything better. In fact, this is less than what I deserve. So you justify God. Number three, you actually embrace the affliction and the pain because it is your Father’s will, and you approve of the Lord and say, “blessed be the name of the Lord, even though it’s hard for my flesh, I know He’ll bring good out of evil.” And then number four is you cling to the Lord. You cling to Him as your greatest friend, even when He seems to come against you as your greatest enemy. So that kind of bowing and submission of the sovereignty of God is one very good fruit that can come out of the sense of spiritual desertion. But there are more. One is God wants us to walk by faith and to strengthen our faith. And can you imagine having no afflictions in your life, nothing to bring you down? Everything went Dale Johnson’s way. Always. We’d be spoiled brats. We would be self-centered. We wouldn’t know what it means to walk by faith in the tunnel of darkness. And the Puritan said, “You actually bring more glory to God when you trust Him, when you’re in the tunnel of darkness and desertion and just hang upon Him with naked faith than when you’re brought out of the tunnel, and you believe in the midst of the sunshine of His grace.” Because faith grows best when we learn to trust God for who He is, when we can see no tangible signs around us. So it’s interesting when I just did a breakout session on this topic, I asked 300 people or so who were there. I asked them to raise their hand if the times they really were closest to God, as they look back in their life, were just the times when they were really afflicted and often felt deserted. And I think every hand in the whole place went up. So, God uses afflictions to strengthen our faith.
Dale Johnson: That’s significant. And I want to make a point here because what you just did in describing some of these characteristics really flips the light on in the darkness of the modern world. Because one of the things that you described that the Puritans did very naturally is when an issue came up, the first order of business was to check themselves in relation to God. Was their thinking about God correct? That was the first order of business for them as they explored what could possibly be wrong. That’s so radically different in the world that we live in. When we experience something like a downcast emotion, we’re looking for all manner of explanations that are often distanced from that very prominent, necessary first order of relationship in relationship to the Lord.
That brings me to a second point to think about how we interpret things today. I hear this all the time, Dr. Beeke, where people will say, oh, how can you believe in taking the Scriptures and applying them to people’s lives? That just seems too simplistic. And prayer and the Holy Spirit, that’s good and helpful, but there’s no way it can meet some of the demands of life even today. So I want you to talk a little bit about the means of grace. Sometimes we act like we’ve graduated over those things, and then we need something else for self-improvement in relation to things like depression, despair, whatever. So, talk about how the Puritans taught that a prayerful, diligent use of the means of grace really could go a long way in a curative way in healing spiritual depression.
Joel Beeke: Let me answer that with an illustration. I had an elder in my church call me one day and say, “I’m totally distressed. I’m backslidden. I’m cold. My prayers are an abomination to God. I’m in a desperate condition. Can you come over and help me right away?” And I said, “Well, my bags are packed. I’m just leaving for a conference. I’ll come in three days. But are you spending time in the Word?” And he said, “Oh no, that would be an abomination to the Lord. I’m such a sinner. I don’t even dare open the Bible.” And I said, “Well, I’ll come over in three days, but those three days, I want you to spend 30 minutes alone with God, 10 minutes reading the Scripture, 10 minutes meditating, and 10 minutes in prayer.” He said, “I can’t do that.” I said, “You must do that.” “No,” he said, “it’d be an abomination to the Lord,” I said, “it’d be a double abomination if you don’t do it.” “Okay, I’ll try.” I come back home, walk into my study, and there’s a little note on my study chair that says, No need to visit elder so-and-so; all is well with his soul. And he just got back into the Word, you know, and that seems terribly simplistic, but you can’t expect to thrive in your relationship with God if you don’t use the means—this is the Puritan teaching the spiritual disciplines, or the means of grace, whatever you want to call it—you don’t use the means to stay close to God. It’d be like me saying, okay, I’m going to keep up a really close marriage with my wife, but I’m not going to talk to her at all, by the way. It’s crazy, right? So God has given us this wonderful means, and it’s not only reading the Word and meditating on it, but it’s also prayer going back to God. So the Puritans would say, communion with God is a two-way street. God comes to us through the Word; we go back to Him through meditation and prayer. And that’s key in the Christian life and generally speaking, I know there’s differences in personalities, and some are more prone to discouragement, all of that. But generally speaking, the Puritans said, if you want to increase your relationship with God, you increase the time and the quality of your communion with God through the means of grace. So they loved sermons, good solid sermons. They loved reading good books that could illuminate the Word. And as they would grow by using these means, as well as Scripture reading, meditation, and prayer, they felt a closer life with God, because they’re marinating their whole lives in the substance that comes to them through the means of grace, which really is God Himself. When you’re a sinner saved by grace, and you’re communing with a Father who loves you, and the Son who died for you, and the Spirit who indwells you, when those things are real, it’s pretty hard to be discouraged.
Dale Johnson: You talked about being marinated. I love that word, because I think that really classifies what the Puritans did really well, and why their mind was so prone to think directly about Christ. I alluded to this a little bit earlier, but it’s really interesting to me that when you read the Puritans, it’s hard to read them on any manner of practical subject at which Christ in consideration doesn’t come up. They’re always thinking through the lens of, what does this mean in my experience in life in relation to the truths about Christ, or the promises that He has provided, or the work that He has done? They’re thinking about Christ and considering Him. Let me add that it wasn’t just an addendum for them. It wasn’t just for a compartmentalized aspect of life. It was in their mind for the whole of life. So why did the Puritans say that just considering Christ could really be very, very helpful in this dealing with spiritual depression?
Joel Beeke: Yeah, they took it from Hebrews 3:1 and Hebrews 12:3, where the expression is literally used, consider Christ, in both cases. And they felt that Christ was the ultimate answer to lift God’s people up from discouragement. So here’s how they would do it: they would consider all kinds of aspects of Christ.
For example, consider the sufferings of Christ. Well, He suffered far more than I will ever suffer, and He suffered to pay for my sins, and I deserve to suffer much more than I do, but He was willing to pay my price. He took the heavy end of the cross, the meritorious end. I take the non-meritorious end of the cross, the light end, and follow Him. Be encouraged, downcast soul! He has done it all for you! Then consider the prayers of Christ. My prayers are so poor. They’re so dry. They’re so distant sometimes. But I pour out my heart to Him and say, Lord Jesus, You’re intercessing for me in heavenly places right now every single moment. Doesn’t that lift you up? He’s remembering you in prayer. Consider the purpose of the afflictions of Christ in my life. It’s to conform me to His image, to make me a partaker of His holiness and righteousness. Why shouldn’t I be encouraged? So when you see Christ as the answer to every trial, every infirmity, every concern that you have— I like to look at it this way, Paul wrote to the Corinthians about seven that they had. And the answer to every single one of them ultimately was Jesus Christ. So He’s the answer, consider Him in His person, consider Him in His natures, consider Him in His offices, consider Him in His states of humiliation, exaltation—every step of those states. Meditate much on Christ, the Puritans would say. And you will find your soul warmed and lifted up and pulled out of the slough of despond. And you will say, Why should I be disquieted within me, hoping God through Jesus Christ, for He’s my God. He’s my salvation.
Dale Johnson: I love it. You know, I just cannot help but think when you talk about this. One of the reasons we see people today who are not searching for Christ as the answer really has much to do with how they define the problem in the beginning, is we’ve gone through this massive modern redefinition of human problems according to a secular philosophical disposition. And when we define problems that way, we don’t think Christ is the answer. But yet, when we can interpret the problem itself in the way that God describes our human experiences in the Word, it becomes very easy to see the beauty of the riches of Christ and the depths of which He’s provided for us that meets that every need wherever we are, including this issue of spiritual depression. So helpful. One of the things I want to ask you about here that I think is important, this wasn’t just one-on-one. They were very good at dissecting issues in people’s lives, as you’ve articulated here with depression. One of the things that I ask my students that I think is something we have to do better at in the counseling room, because counseling itself is a ministry of the Church under the authority, in my view, of the Church, because the Scriptures itself have been entrusted to the Church. I always ask my students, when you’re engaging with an individual, you need to think about how the Church can get involved in this process. I don’t mean breach confidentiality and that sort of thing, but you need to think about the resources of the Church, the fellowship of the body of Christ. There’s something unique about the way in which God uses his people in the normal processes of care for his people. The Puritans really valued that concept as well. Talk about the communion of the saints in the ways in which the Puritans thought would alleviate spiritual depression in their world.
Joel Beeke: Yeah, it’s interesting. If you know Puritan history very well, you will notice that they had a thing, especially among the ministers, called spiritual brotherhood. One minister was often used for the next minister’s conversion a generation later, and that minister was used for the conversion of a couple more younger men. But they bonded together, and they had spiritual fellowships as ministers that they often called different kinds of meetings for, prophesying meetings, where they would examine each other’s preaching, they’d talk, they’d become like soulmates and when God’s people do that in a congregation and really bond well, that’s a huge, huge means of grace, I call it, to relieve spiritual depression, because you’re not alone.
One Puritan tells the story of a brother in the Church who wasn’t attending church faithfully and said to the pastor, “I’m just going to stay at home.” He’s kind of a melancholy guy, and I’m kind of afraid of crowds. “I’ll just stay home and read a book. I can get as much out of that as your sermons.” Pastor said, “I’ll come over and talk with you about it, because you really do need fellowship. Being a solitary Christian is not being a real Christian.” So anyway, the pastor came over, and the man had a fireplace going in his living room. And strangely, the minister walked over, took some tongs, opened up the fireplace, took out one of the burning coals, went to set it on the mantel beside the man all by itself, put the tongs back, went and sat down. And the guy’s looking at the minister like, what in the world are you doing? And the minister just keeps staring at the one coal. And the coal, of course, burns out in 30 seconds. And the guy looks at the coal, looks at the minister, his wheels are going in his mind. And the minister said, “Do we need to talk?” And the guy said, “No, I got it. My spiritual life is going to cool off, and it’s not going to glow.” Because the Puritans often spoke of spiritual life as being a red-hot flame for the Lord, right? Just that one picture showed that man, you can’t do it on your own. We need each other. The Puritans would say, echoing Calvin, that God has not given all spiritual gifts that the church needs to one individual. So we all need each other, and we strengthen each other. Okay? Just me sitting across the table from you right here, and getting to know you much better in the last year or so, and just being with your fellowship, being with your people here. I’m going home today, just revived in my soul. I’m uplifted. And Christians ought to do that for each other. And so when iron sharpens iron, particularly when we get close friends who are more holy than we are, they uplift us, and we become more holy. As Thomas Watson said, association begets assimilation. So, it’s true, even of books I read, I become more like the authors of the books. They become my dead friends. But I also need living friends to do the same kind of thing for me.
Dale Johnson: I love it. And the way that you’ve expressed this, both in an individual way, but then also the beauty of the church and communion of the saints, I so appreciate. And it’s a missing element, we see that that’s the hunger of so many people. And the church really is the institution, by the word, to provide that level of fellowship, which is a comfort and a care to all of our souls. We all need it, as you mentioned. And brother, thank you for sharing this with us and the knowledge that the Lord has given you about the Puritans and the Word. What an encouragement to us. Thank you.
