“The gospel is not enough to help someone with sexual addiction.” I could not believe those words came out of the mouth of a Christian counselor. Perhaps she was an extreme example. But this counselor was identified as an expert to a room of about forty pastors and church leaders. As soon as I heard her statement—which came on the heels of a PowerPoint presentation that apparently demonstrated that a large percentage of pastors were addicted to sexual immorality and needed more than the Bible to help them out of their sin—I texted two of my friends in the room. I asked them both, “Are you enjoying this?” One friend texted something along the lines of, “This is garbage.” The other friend said, “This is valuable stuff!” Though I always try to be kind in my conversation, I am more of the opinion of my first friend.

Like the Christian counselor above would say about sexual addiction, I have heard from many Christians and pastors over the years who say that there are many things that pastors are not equipped to handle in counseling. I assume many readers will respond to that and say, “Duh!” That would probably mean you are not a “Biblical Counselor.” As a Biblical Counselor, my reaction to “There are many things that pastors are not equipped to handle in counseling” is, “How could God’s Word not be able to address someone’s problems?” When Christians have such a wide range of responses to things like sexual addiction or what pastors can handle in counseling, I assume it is because we are speaking past each other on some level. I hope this essay can bring us closer together on the main issues regarding counseling.¹I assume every Christian counselor desires to counsel biblically. However, in this essay I will refer to those who identify with the camp known as Biblical Counseling as Biblical Counselors. I will refer to the camp/movement itself as BC.

David Powlison (1949–2019) can help us get there. I believe he had the right vision of counseling, mankind, and Scripture, and the way he addressed those issues can help different counseling camps understand each other better. My goal in this essay is to persuade you of the goodness of the BC approach that Powlison set forth. I am under no illusion that I could persuade everyone to embrace the BC approach, but I at least hope I can move people away from a dismissive attitude toward BC, which is what “Duh!” communicates. I hope if you can see BC’s goodness, it will encourage you to utilize some of its tools more often. Let me start with a brief background to Powlison’s place within the BC movement, lay out a definition for BC, and then give three implications of that definition that hopefully bring more light to the conversations between different camps.

My Flavor of Biblical Counseling

I first was introduced to BC as a Master of Divinity student at Southern Seminary back in 2006. At one point I was in lockstep with all the extreme Biblical Counselors you can think of (Jay Adams, John MacArthur, Heath Lambert, etc.). I have evolved over the years. I’d like to think I have matured, while at the same time I am genuinely grateful for the foundations of BC that the work of Jay Adams gave me.²I have also benefitted greatly from the ministries of MacArthur and Lambert. I am happy to say that I am a part of their “camp” when it comes to counseling even though I have some disagreements their respective approaches. Within my camp, Powlison’s approach captivated me early on, and I have only become more convinced over time. His work in the field of psychiatry before becoming a Christian gave him a rather unique and authoritative perspective as he entered the world of BC. In this essay, I hope to honor his view of BC—which I think has taken a lot of the rough edges off the nouthetic counseling movement.

Jay Adams (1929–2020) started the modern BC movement in the late 1960s. He spent much of his time arguing against modern psychiatry and psychotherapy, seeing them as incompatible with Christianity.³See Eric Johnson, ed., Psychology and Christianity: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 31–32. He exhorted Christians to reject Freudian and man-centered methods of counseling and founded the Christian Counseling Education Foundation (CCEF) in 1968 with a major emphasis on repentance from sin in counseling. In typical polemical style, he asserted, “Freudianism ought to be credited [with] the leading part it has played in the present collapse of responsibility in modern American society.”⁴Jay Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970), 4. He noticed too many people relieving themselves of responsibility when it came to matters he considered sin. He was known to have a rather “forceful, prophetic style,” which eventually put him at relative odds with fellow CCEF leaders like Powlison and Ed Welch.⁵Johnson, Five Views, 32. Welch is still one of the leading faculty members at CCEF. Adams left CCEF in the mid-1990s, marking a distinct shift in the flavor of BC at CCEF. In other words, BC is not a monolithic movement. If there are Biblical Counselors with whom you disagree, that is not a reason to reject the BC program wholesale.

I think Powlison was the best our camp has to offer. He led CCEF and many within the BC world “in a direction of increased sensitivity to human suffering, to the dynamics of motivation, to the centrality of the gospel in the daily life of the believer, the importance of the Body of Christ and to a more articulate engagement with secular culture.”⁶https://www.ccef.org/about/beliefs-and-history. He built off the work of Adams, but developed and improved it. This is an imperfect illustration, but perhaps this could help other camps to understand the BC movement a little better. Jay Adams was like the Martin Luther of our movement (like I said, it’s an imperfect illustration). David Powlison was like the John Calvin of our movement. I would not be a Protestant if not for the way God used Luther, yet I find more affinity with John Calvin in comparison with Martin Luther. I would not be a BC if not for Jay Adams, but I disagree with much of his approach. The fundamentals have not changed. But a distinct movement within a movement emerged with Powlison. Let me now define the inner movement.

Definitions

BC in general is the approach that affirms “the Bible to be sufficient for the spiritual needs of God’s people.”⁷Johnson, Five Views, 31. Johnson is not a Biblical Counselor but was summarizing the BC view, and I think he got the fundamental definition right. All stripes of BC would agree with that basic definition. When we say “sufficient,” we simply mean that nothing else is needed but Scripture. People often feel helped by things other than Scripture, but BC argues that the Bible is what truly helps. In contrast, David Myers has argued, “The discoveries of psychological science do challenge some traditional Christian understandings. An ever-reforming faith will always be open to learning from both the book of God’s Word and the book of God’s works.”⁸David G. Myers, “A Levels-of-Explanation View,” in Johnson, Five Views, 50. Myers’ argument is that the church will always be discovering more about human thinking and human behavior, and those discoveries are an essential part of counseling. Robert Roberts and P. J. Watson also disagree with BC, arguing that the best counselors are those who know the Bible and the Christian Tradition, and “who are familiar with contemporary psychology and can therefore sniff out a biblical psychology that effectively speaks to current circumstances.”⁹Robert C. Roberts and P.J. Watson, “A Christian Psychology View,” in Johnson, Five Views, 155. Once again, modern psychology is needed to truly help.

BC is not opposed to studying God’s works of providence, but we do not believe modern psychology is a part of the providence needed for counseling. Other Christian counselors believe the Bible to be a big help—even the main help—but not sufficient. The sufficiency of Scripture for helping people with spiritual needs is the main thing that distinguishes BC from other approaches. I will lay out three distinctive implications of that below, but before I do that it will also help to further define what BC means by “helping” people with their “spiritual needs.” In other words, what are the spiritual needs that BC looks to address, and how do we meet them?

Powlison once wrote that BC happens when “Truth mediates a Person, a working Redeemer.”¹⁰David Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003), 4. BC for Powlison was ministering God’s Word so that people can experience redemption through the person and work of Christ. It is gospel ministry, downstream from the preaching of the Word and administration of the sacraments. As such, BC is an effort to improve the relationship of the creature to his/her Creator.¹¹It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss whether Biblical Counselors should counsel non-Christians. Personally, I believe it is appropriate and would see counseling a non-Christian as both evangelistic and an attempt to help them enjoy more common grace. “To be human is to love a Savior, Father, Master, and Lord. Instead of ‘psychopathology’ and ‘syndromes,’ we see ‘sins’ against this Person, and we see sufferings that are ‘trials’ revealing our need for a true Deliverer.”¹²Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes, 4. Sin and suffering are the spiritual needs that must be addressed in counseling. One implication of this understanding of spiritual needs is that BC does not attempt to change a person’s medical condition. If a person suffers from true physiological problems that need medicine, the Biblical Counselor should only attempt to address the spiritual problems that may accompany the physiological problems. Our “turf” is sanctification, not medication.

The way Powlison would address spiritual needs was twofold: (1) “God’s voice speaks into real life to reveal the gaze and intentions of the Christ who pursues us” and (2) “understanding people amid their real life struggles: the pursuit of wise truth.”¹³Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes, 11–12, emphasis mine.Powlison studied God’s voice and God’s people. He attempted to understand what God’s Word had to say about human problems, and then studied counselees’ lives to be able to wisely help them pursue truth. Powlisonian BC can then be defined as understanding the sin and suffering of fellow image bearers and helping them hear, trust, and obey the Redeemer’s Word. The keen reader will notice that BC is one form of Christian discipleship—nothing more than helping God’s people grow in sanctification. One might object that makes counseling too narrow, and therefore, of course Scripture is all you need for that. Hopefully, the following distinctives can help address whether that makes counseling too narrow.

Three Further Distinctives of Biblical Counseling

Remember BC’s view of the sufficiency of Scripture for counseling is the main thing that distinguishes BC from other approaches. There are three implications that to help further distinguish BC from the rest.

Implication 1: Secular Psychology is an Opponent of Scripture

Why are Biblical Counselors so reticent to allow modern psychology into the counseling room? The Integrationist view of psychology helps to further establish the dividing lines between BC and all the rest. Integrationists believe:

that the Christian faith has something important to contribute to contemporary psychology and counseling. However, they also respect the scientific merit of psychology as it is today and, therefore, have concluded that the Christian faith and contemporary psychology ought to be related somehow.¹⁴Johnson, Five Views, 34.

All non-BC approaches appear to believe in the scientific merit of modern psychology on some level and integrate it into their counseling to some degree. BC believes modern psychology is a distinctively secular field of study. The roots of contemporary psychology can be traced to the logical positivists of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as to Darwinism.¹⁵Johnson, Five Views, 17–18. Logical positivists do not believe true knowledge can be obtained except through empirical research. Darwin’s evolutionary theories have influenced modern psychology’s determination to study animals to better understand humans. The desire of Integrationist counselors to give such prime of place to “psychology as it is today” is what separates BC from others. We do not believe modern psychology to be a neutral field of science but one that is fundamentally opposed to a Christian view of knowledge.¹⁶I acknowledge that the Logical Positivist and evolutionist roots of secular psychology do not necessarily mean the discipline still relies on those roots today. I simply believe that it is the case that there remain anti-biblical components in typical psychology circles.

We believe modern psychologists have made many good observations about human problems.¹⁷Yet, I would contend that theology affects even our observations of the world. However, modern psychology also appears to claim ultimate authority over the meaning of those observations, and over how to treat the problems.¹⁸Johnson, Five Views, 21. I would argue that observations are not a distinctive work of secular psychology, but rather the fruit of a genuine love of neighbor. The interpretations of observations, however, is where secular psychology has made its mark, and where I believe there lay a lot of incompatibility between modern psychology and Scripture. Integrationists then come along assuming the validity of both the Bible and modern psychology, and seeing tensions, attempt to integrate the two. What inevitably happens, though, is modern psychology speaks louder than the Bible. Stanton Jones has said that “we need to be realistic about the precision with which we can claim to know precisely what the Scriptures are teaching us about human nature.”¹⁹Stanton L. Jones, “An Integration View,” in Johnson, Five Views, 110. He went on to argue that the Bible is not very clear on what it means to be made in the image of God nor on whether the monist, dichotomist, or trichotomist view of man is correct, and it is these very ambiguities that leave “wide room for the utility of the discipline of psychology to enlarge and challenge our understandings about human experience.”²⁰Jones, “Integration,” 111. Integrationists see modern psychology as necessary because it fills the voids that they believe theology inevitably leaves behind.

In contrast, Powlison wrote, “Christian faith is a psychology.”²¹David Powlison, “A Biblical Counseling View” in Five Views, 245. Christianity is a full-orbed base of knowledge about human beings and human behavior. It knows how to address a “desperately sick” heart/inner man (Jer 17:9).²²All Scripture quotations are from the ESV. The Bible knows how to fight “passions and desires” (Gal 5:24) that are harmful. God can even “discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12). The problem is not that secular psychology claims to know better than the Bible. BC expects nothing less from the world. Our problem is it seems too many Christians accept secular psychology’s claims as surer footing than what the Creator specially reveals about man in Scripture.²³The Stanton Jones quote above about the bible’s precision on human nature is a great example. I believe the Bible is extremely precise and comprehensive when it comes to human will, affection, emotion, motivation, and the like. An Integrationist like Jones is on record as saying secular psychology is more precise about those kinds of things than the Bible. If Integrationists would look deeper into Christian theology, they would discover that secular psychology is incompatible with Scripture in many places.²⁴I would probably be able to find disagreements with secular psychology on almost every counseling issue. I’ll just give three examples from pastoral ministry cases I recall: 1) Secular psychology would advise me to move much slower, if at all, in certain church discipline cases because of fear that discipline could cause the one under discipline to depression, suicide, etc. 2) Secular psychology calls many drunkards “alcoholics,” and will speak of drunkenness as a disease, rather than a sin. 3) Secular psychology calls many cases of sexual immorality an addiction and believes physiological factors are causal in these cases.

Implication 2: Mind-Body Dualism Means We Aim for the Mind

A second implication of the sufficiency of Scripture is that we believe Scripture is sufficient for addressing whatever the Bible claims to address. One of things we believe Scripture addresses is the health of the mind. If a Biblical Counselor says the church can help people with mental health problems better than any secular psychologist can, a common retort is something along the lines of, “If someone is sick, you’re just going to read a Bible verse to them?” It seems secular psychology and Integrationist approaches equate mental health with medical health. BC does not. If anyone needs medical attention, Biblical Counselors will approach it like all other sane human beings: we say, “Get medical attention!” In that way, BC agrees with everyone that there is scientific merit to the field of medicine.

When it comes to the health of the mind, BC is thinking of spiritual health, or the sanctification of the mind. I think we would all agree that if a Christian has a sin struggle, we can give them Scripture to help.²⁵If I was counseling a non-Christian, I would still bring God’s Law to bear, and I would trust the traditional 2nd use of the Law (restraining sin) to still work. If someone needs surgery on a broken leg, an orthopedic surgeon can help. If someone has a faulty heart valve, a cardiologist can help (I think, you get the point). If someone has a physically sick brain, who helps? Biblical Counselors would say a neurologist, or any other kind of medical doctor with knowledge of brain function and/or knowledge of brain medicine. But a psychologist? For the muscle called the brain? We say “no.”

One of the foundational tenets of BC is the distinction between the brain and the mind. We do not believe you can ever separate the two, but distinguish we must. In the same way that Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matt 10:28), Biblical Counselors understand there is an outer man (body) and an inner man (soul). The brain is a part of the outer man. The mind is a part of the inner man. Powlison said, “What goes on in your body? Adrenaline surges…blood vessels dilate…muscular tension… What’s running through your mind? Remember… Rehearse… Second-guessing… Mental scenarios…” etc.²⁶Powlison, “A Biblical Counseling View,” 250-51. He believed brain (body) and mind (soul) work together, but there is a very clear distinction that helps us know how to minister better.

BC does not claim to be able to fix body/brain problems, but we do believe God’s Word can heal soul/mind problems. That means if someone has a spiritually “sick” mind, our first instinct is not to go to a medical doctor but to God’s Word, which can renew and enlighten the mind specifically (Rom 12:1–2; Eph 4:17–21). To be clear, we do not believe someone who has been diagnosed with, say, bi-polar disorder must choose between the Bible or doctors. It is so often both/and, not either/or. I was trained to never counsel anyone regarding medication. I have stuck to that. Any Biblical Counselor who counsels someone to get off medication is stepping out of their turf of Christian discipleship. However, BC believes the Bible and not secular psychology will help people’s minds. We believe psychologists also need to stay away from counseling people about medication. Psychology and the Bible both claim to address the soul of the person. BC believes Scripture addresses the soul/mind sufficiently.

Implication 3: True Counseling is Discipleship

BC believes, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him” (2 Pet 1:3). If someone has struggles with their heart, will, mind, affection, memories, pain, sorrow, anxiety, depression, anger, addiction, etc., we believe helping them know God through his Word will give them all the power they need to thrive in life and become godlier. That is discipleship. If that seems too narrow for some, it may be that many people have too constricted a view of the bible or discipleship.

Powlison was careful to say that we are biblical counselors, not biblicist counselors. The BC approach to counseling does not come “ready-made” in the Bible, but rather is “one outworking of biblical faith into the particulars of our time, place, problems, and persons.”²⁷Powlison, “A Biblical Counseling View,” 245. In other words, there is no such faithful counseling that says, “Here’s a Bible verse, now go in peace.” Counseling takes time, patience, and effort. It takes time to understand a person’s personal history, personality, actions and reactions, and current situations. It takes a lot of love for neighbor to listen and listen patiently in whatever adversity a person goes through (Prov. 17:17). It takes patience to know that sanctification is progressive (Phil. 1:6). It takes effort to think deeply about what the Bible says about a person’s problems, understand and teach certain Scriptures (Jas. 3:1), show how they apply to their lives today, and speak it in such a way that they will want to listen (Eph. 4:15). However, if done faithfully, Scripture is sufficient to address all true counseling needs.

What this all requires is deep study. One way in which Biblical Counselors can misstep is to speak as if any Christian is “Competent to Counsel.”²⁸That is the title of Adams’ classic work, and I think it would be a misunderstanding of what he meant to say any Christian can be a BC. Just as you should not allow just anyone to teach a Bible study, it takes training and dedication to learn how to be a good Biblical Counselor. What distinguishes BC and Integrationist approaches is what we believe a person must study in order to counsel well. We do not believe in the need to study secular works on mental health because we believe the health of the mind is a matter of discipleship. We believe the Bible addresses mental health sufficiently and authoritatively.

Our main contention is not that Scripture can heal the physiological aspects that may or may not be associated with PTSD. Our main contention is that Scripture has the authoritative answers to help someone through the trials of PTSD. In most cases, I would contend BC can actually relieve someone of their experience of PTSD. If someone has experienced trauma and is now distressed because of it, there may or may not be physiological issues that person now deals with, but whatever “the Bible says about people will never be destroyed by any neurological or genetic finding.”²⁹Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes, 244. We can address the trauma of “languishing…greatly troubled…moaning…weeping” people (Ps. 6:2–6). We can address how to get “relief when I was in distress” (Ps. 4:1). In other words, the Bible can help with the middle two letters of PTSD and there is no reason to think any other scientific field of knowledge needs to be integrated in counseling.

Again, a psychologist is not a medical doctor. Psychologists appear to address the exact same things Biblical Counselors claim to address—issues of the mind. Integrationists tend to not see the Bible addressing counseling issues sufficiently and then allow secular psychology to speak into those places. Biblical Counselors believe that is allowing modern psychology to have a hand in discipling God’s people.

Conclusion: Help from a Napkin

Based on all the above, BC always has something to offer people who desire counseling. I had the great pleasure of spending time with Powlison back in 2017, and three comments he made have stuck with me ever since. First, his book, How Does Sanctification Work? (2017), the last book he ever published, had just come out and I said, “I’m so glad you finally wrote a book on sanctification!” And he responded, “Well, they’ve all been on sanctification.” Touche! Whatever BC aims to accomplish, it should always be related to conformity to Christ, or we are stepping out of our turf. Second, when I asked him about how to think about PTSD, bi-polar, etc., he said, “If someone has a broken leg, we can’t fix the leg, but we can still help them with whatever heart struggles may come with that suffering.” In other words, even if some mental health problems also include medical problems, all mental health problems involve many issues we must address—issues of the heart. I, personally, do not call everything secular psychology calls mental health, “mental health.” They have too large an umbrella, referring to both Alzheimer’s and alcoholism as mental health issues. Biblical Counselors, however, do not have to battle labels with everyone. We can help the Alzheimer patient and family with discipleship issues and pray for medical doctors to give medical relief as well. We also can by God’s grace disciple the alcoholic completely out of drunkenness and even minister to spiritual needs in the midst of dealing with potential withdrawal symptoms. No matter what, we have something to offer.

That led David to his third comment, which he drew out on a napkin for me (which I have since lost, but it’s still in my head). He drew a circle with the words “heart/soul/mind” in it, then three concentric circles outside of it, labeling each circle. He explained that our heart is at the center of who we are, but that we are also (referring to the three labels) “physically-embodied, socially-embedded, and spiritually-embattled.” And outside of the circles he wrote “God over all.” It was a great lesson to me on the complexity of human beings, yet as we talked through each concentric circle, I realized how the Bible addresses physical manifestations like anxiety and trembling, social pressures that come from economic or biographical factors, and spiritual battles because the devil is always prowling around. And of course, God is sovereign over all of it, and our job as Biblical Counselors is to connect the person’s heart to their Maker in whatever way we can and allow God to redeem as we sift through the different complexities of life with them. In other words, the gospel is enough.

[1] I assume every Christian counselor desires to counsel biblically. However, in this essay I will refer to those who identify with the camp known as Biblical Counseling as Biblical Counselors. I will refer to the camp/movement itself as BC.

[2] I have also benefitted greatly from the ministries of MacArthur and Lambert. I am happy to say that I am a part of their “camp” when it comes to counseling even though I have some disagreements their respective approaches.

[3] See Eric Johnson, ed., Psychology and Christianity: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 31–32.

[4] Jay Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970), 4.

[5] Johnson, Five Views, 32. Welch is still one of the leading faculty members at CCEF.

[6] https://www.ccef.org/about/beliefs-and-history.

[7] Johnson, Five Views, 31. Johnson is not a Biblical Counselor but was summarizing the BC view, and I think he got the fundamental definition right.

[8] David G. Myers, “A Levels-of-Explanation View,” in Johnson, Five Views, 50.

[9] Robert C. Roberts and P.J. Watson, “A Christian Psychology View,” in Johnson, Five Views, 155.

[10] David Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003), 4.

[11] It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss whether Biblical Counselors should counsel non-Christians. Personally, I believe it is appropriate and would see counseling a non-Christian as both evangelistic and an attempt to help them enjoy more common grace.

[12] Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes, 4.

[13] Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes, 11–12, emphasis mine.

[14] Johnson, Five Views, 34.

[15] Johnson, Five Views, 17–18. Logical positivists do not believe true knowledge can be obtained except through empirical research. Darwin’s evolutionary theories have influenced modern psychology’s determination to study animals to better understand humans.

[16] I acknowledge that the Logical Positivist and evolutionist roots of secular psychology do not necessarily mean the discipline still relies on those roots today. I simply believe that it is the case that there remain anti-biblical components in typical psychology circles.

[17] Yet, I would contend that theology affects even our observations of the world.

[18] Johnson, Five Views, 21. I would argue that observations are not a distinctive work of secular psychology, but rather the fruit of a genuine love of neighbor. The interpretations of observations, however, is where secular psychology has made its mark, and where I believe there lay a lot of incompatibility between modern psychology and Scripture.

[19] Stanton L. Jones, “An Integration View,” in Johnson, Five Views, 110.

[20] Jones, “Integration,” 111.

[21] David Powlison, “A Biblical Counseling View” in Five Views, 245.

[22] All Scripture quotations are from the ESV.

[23] The Stanton Jones quote above about the bible’s precision on human nature is a great example. I believe the Bible is extremely precise and comprehensive when it comes to human will, affection, emotion, motivation, and the like. An Integrationist like Jones is on record as saying secular psychology is more precise about those kinds of things than the Bible.

[24] I would probably be able to find disagreements with secular psychology on almost every counseling issue. I’ll just give three examples from pastoral ministry cases I recall: 1) Secular psychology would advise me to move much slower, if at all, in certain church discipline cases because of fear that discipline could cause the one under discipline to depression, suicide, etc. 2) Secular psychology calls many drunkards “alcoholics,” and will speak of drunkenness as a disease, rather than a sin. 3) Secular psychology calls many cases of sexual immorality an addiction and believes physiological factors are causal in these cases.

[25] If I was counseling a non-Christian, I would still bring God’s Law to bear, and I would trust the traditional 2nd use of the Law (restraining sin) to still work.

[26] Powlison, “A Biblical Counseling View,” 250-51.

[27] Powlison, “A Biblical Counseling View,” 245.

[28] That is the title of Adams’ classic work, and I think it would be a misunderstanding of what he meant to say any Christian can be a BC.

[29] Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes, 244.