In my previous article in the light of Sam Allberry’s resignation from Immanuel, Nashville and TGC, I referred to the statement that TGC had made. It’s fairly short, so I’ll quote it in full here:
“TGC was informed yesterday by Sam Allberry about “an inappropriate relationship with another man a few years ago” and that an announcement would be made today at Immanuel Church regarding his resignation as a pastor. He then also resigned as a fellow of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Per TGC policy and procedures, we immediately began to remove all of Sam’s content from our website and other content channels, and we deferred this statement until the church membership was informed. We are heartbroken over this news, and we continue to pray for Sam, Immanuel Church, and everyone affected.”[1]
The question I initially wanted to ask was whether it was right for them to take down Allberry’s content. This feeds into a bigger question for all of us. If any of our leaders and teachers should fall, what are we to do with their teaching. Back in the 1990s,a prominent and significant Bible teacher, Roy Clements left his wife for a man. Clement s had written books and spoken at big conventions and festivals. Was his teaching now invalidated? More recently, we have had the scandals concerning Jonathan Fletcher, Mike Pillavachi and others. Or what about the case of Steve Chalke whose denial of Penal Substitution marked a decisive break with evangelical theology? Then there are all the examples of local church leadership from pastors down to small group leaders. I think of a preacher at the church I was a member of in my twenties who ended up denying core beliefs about Jesus and the Bible. In the same church, we had a children’s work leader who one night after leading the kids club walked out no his family. The question is not just about the technicalities of keeping some articles online or continuing to sell books. There’s the pastoral questions for believers who find their faith knocked when someone whose teaching they trusted falls.
When I initially put this question out to friends, I was helpfully reminded of two comments that John Piper had made. The first was following Eugene Peterson’s endorsement of same-sex marriage. Piper’s opinion was that
“First, in principle, a book that was once properly seen as true and helpful may remain true and helpful even if its author says things that are seriously untrue and unhelpful later on. The simplest way to show that this is true is to notice that King Solomon was the author of many of the proverbs. For example, Proverbs 1:1 says, “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.” He was also the author of the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon 1:1)…
Yet here’s what we read in 1 Kings: “For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (1 Kings 11:4–6). I conclude that, in principle, a book can remain true and helpful even if its author goes off the rails.”[2]
However, Piper also goes on to add:
“I used the phrase “in principle.” In principle, a book that was once properly seen as true and helpful may remain true and helpful. The reason I used the phrase “in principle” is to distinguish it from “in actuality.” In other words, a book never exists in principle alone — in abstract. It never exists isolated from connections with author, real and potential readers, churches, publisher, ministry, the fruit it bears, and the time in history when it served its purpose.
The point here is that the decision of what to do with the book isn’t based on the legitimacy of what it says alone, but also on its connections with people and churches and ministries and publishers and times. Any of these connections with the book might be very helpful or very harmful.
We need to weigh the issue of what our promotion or endorsement of a book may do in all of those connections. I’m thinking of the biblical principle of not causing your brother to stumble. Even in principle you may have freedom to do something, but other factors, when they’re drawn in, make that very act an unloving act (1 Corinthians 8; Romans 14).
Then in reaction to Mark Driscoll’s fall, Piper wrote:
“With regard to his books, whether they should sit in shelves in bookstores or churches or homes, that is a tough call. If he is disqualified from being an elder, should he still exercise the teaching office of an elder through his books? That is how one might ask the question.
But sooner or later, a book becomes detached from the personal life of an author and stands on its own merits as true and helpful or not. And I can see a temporary reaction to Mark stepping down by bookstores or churches where they pull those books back so as not to give any kind of public affirmation of mistakes that Mark may have made. However, maybe in years to come the books will emerge as helpful since I think most of what he has written has been true and helpful.
There’s wise counsel in Piper’s words. I like both his recognition of the principle that truth remains true and the observation that we cannot detach the principle from the actual situation. So how do we apply Piper’s approach to the situation in front of us regarding Sam Allberry? I think it’s worth making two observations here about how Allberry’s situation differs from Piper’s examples.
First, in the case of Peterson, he had specifically moved towards a different teaching position. He was now advocating for same-sex marriage, contra Scripture. There would have been two issues with continuing to promote Peterson’s work. The first concern would be that we would need to do due diligence to the question of whether the roots of his error were seen in his earlier work. This should of course include how we handles relevant texts in his bible paraphrase, the Message. Secondly, we need to be careful not to give the impression that we are endorsing a person’s current teaching.
Secondly, I think that Piper is a little too generous to Driscoll in terms of the connection between his teaching in books, talks and correspondence and his fall. There were already significant question marks about Driscoll and those concerns came through in what he wrote. In that sense, the roots were already more visible.
Now, this brings us on to the case of Sam Allberry. We have been told that he has been cooperative, humble and repentant. There is one concern to be alert to which is that according to some reports, the church were initially aware of the issue back in 2024 but that more information came to light which changed their perspective on how to respond. I would just observe on this that caution and patience is vital when seeking to restore. We have to work on the basis that we do not know the whole story at first. However, in general, what we are not seeing is someone who has shifted their teaching position in order to justify defiance. There would be no question that continue to share articles and books by Allberry amounted to an endorsement of his sin. Indeed, Allberry’s teaching would be clear that this was sin with consequences.
In the past, Christian organisations have been criticised for continuing to platform authors and speakers following scandal, particularly and specifically where there were accusations of abuse. In such cases, the concern was that this amounted to a minimising of the suffering experienced by victims. As far as we are aware, there is no suggestion of such here.
What there is, as I reported in my initial article, is some controversy around the particular stance that Allberry took on the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behaviour. Readers may remember that about 18 months ago, I engaged with the wider debate on this. The question is as to whether our desires and therefore temptation itself is sin or not. The dispute revolves around James 1:12-15 which says:
“12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Some Christians have argued that because we are tempted by our own desire, this proves that our desires are evil and therefore sinful in and of themselves. However, I would argue that this misses the purpose of that passage which is simply to remind us that it not God who tempts us, rather, temptation tends to come from within. James does not say that temptation or desire are sin but rather that “desire gives birth to sin.” Notice that we’ve been told in verse 12 that it is possible to “remain steadfast”, to be faithful under trial and testing. It is difficult to see how this would be possible if the trial itself were sin.
If you want to dig deeper into the specific debate, you can read my articles here. My concern at this stage is that given some people have been swift to treat Allberry’s case as a Gotcha moment, the sudden removal of articles by him could be seen as primarily a distancing from him and secondly as lending wait to the claims of those arguing that this disproves his teaching position. TGC need to be careful in this case to ensure that they are not seen to be doing that.
Now, I think there are other considerations to bear in mind. Should Allberry, if disqualified by benefiting still from a teaching position. I don’t think we can simply erase his past teaching. After all, that would require us to have the ability to erase memories. However, it is arguable that he should not gain financially from further book sales at the moment. There is a case for putting those sales on hold. There are differences of opinion about whether or not someone can and should be restored into ministry after this kind of fall. My view is that because pastoral ministry requires a level of trust and because it creates opportunities for future temptation that people should not be put back into pastoral ministry. However, that is different from future opportunities to write and teach. We may well have much to learn from Sam the other side of this. So, I don’t think a pause should necessarily become permanent. Now, the other question reflected our heart response to past teaching. Is everything that we heard from a brother who fell invalidated? The answer has to be “no” as per Piper’s advice. What was objectively true then, is objectively true now. When the teacher falls though, it should be a challenge and a reminder to us not to rely on the person. We should have been checking what they said back to Scripture, we should have been listening to a plurality of voices before the scandal happened. If our confidence in the teaching itself is knocked then this should challenge us as to why we trusted it. Did we put our trust in a person? Was it their persuasiveness that won us over. I should not throw away the teaching, though if we have not done so yet, this should be a prompt for us to do some further checking against Scripture, listening to the input of others.
[1] Sam Allberry Resigns from Church and Keller Center
[2] Popular Author Stumbles — What Should We Do With His Books? | Desiring God
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