Totally Sufficient

The Bible and Christian Counseling

Howard Eyrich, Ed Hindson

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781781913833

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Is the Bible Really Enough?

Howard Eyrich, D.Min.

Ed Hindson, D.Phil.

There is a great debate raging in Christian counseling circles over the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture. While most Christian counselors profess belief in the inspiration of the Bible, many seem reluctant to trust the Scripture to speak authoritatively to their counseling profession.

Some prefer to view themselves as Christians who do counseling. Their approach and technique is essentially secular. They have little desire to make their counseling distinctively Christian. This may be because of the nature of their training or the setting in which they do their counseling. In addition, many Christians work for secular organizations that prefer to keep religion out of the counseling process.

Others feel very free to share their personal testimony and beliefs as part of their self-disclosure to their clients. But beyond this, they are reluctant to present their clients with a distinctively Christian view of their personal attitudes and behaviors.

Many Christian counselors today actively encourage the integration of psychology and theology as being essential to a more adequate approach to counseling that is genuinely Christian in nature. Some, like Dr Mark McMinn of Wheaton College, are also calling for a better understanding of the whole development of the spiritual life as a further aspect of effective integration. McMinn’s book Psychology, Theology and Spirituality¹ has certainly broken new and important ground in this regard.

Then there are those of us who prefer to position ourselves as “biblical counselors.” We strongly believe that theology (biblical truth) is the final determinant of the counseling process. We have often called for a more biblical and theological assessment of the validity or non-validity of psychological theories, practices, and techniques. No one has made this more clear than Jay Adams in his many works, including Competent to Counsel and More Than Redemption.²

Unfortunately, the posturing that took place in the early days of the Christian counseling movement tended to pit various proponents at such odds with one another that those on opposite sides of the debate often wrote one another off entirely. A person does not have to read many books on Christian counseling to discover that those who preferred a stronger biblical position were often viewed as less than credible in their approach to counseling.³

Complicating matters even further is the widespread and diverse nature of the current Christian counseling enterprise. A recent article in Christianity Today included a chart entitled “The Roots and Shoots of Christian Psychology,” which touched off a storm of criticism in the Letters to the Editor column in the subsequent issue.⁴ Almost half of the individuals whose names appeared in various categories on the chart wrote back to object to where and how they were included in the chart.

Ironically, the “Roots and Shoots” chart had secular psychology as the roots to the Christian psychology tree! The chart included some people who were grossly misplaced. But most telling of all were the omissions – such as Jay Adams, Tim LaHaye, Bill Gothard, biblical counselors in general, or Liberty University, which has the largest fully accredited counseling training program of any evangelical institution in the world!

WHY THE SUFFICIENCY DEBATE?

Psychology and theology have never been comfortable bedfellows. Their basic philosophical presuppositions are almost diametrically opposed to each other. Psychology rests upon a secular (humanistic or naturalistic) view of man’s problems and the solution to those problems, and theology rests upon a biblical view of man and his problems. The basic anthropology (view of man) of psychology and theology is at opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum.

In many ways, John MacArthur and Wayne Mack are correct when they refer to “Christian psychology” as an “oxymoron” and secular psychology as a “pseudo-science.”⁵ At the heart of the sufficiency debate are the claims of Scripture versus the claims of psychology. Both presume to speak to the fundamental human condition and to suggest a cure for the inner conflicts in the souls of men. The way a person differentiates between psychological and biblical analysis determines the assessment that person makes of people, their problems, and the solutions to those problems.

The term psychology literally means “the study of the soul.” Prior to Sigmund Freud’s influence, psychology was largely viewed as a spiritual discipline. But Freud recast and redefined psychology in secular terms of human behavior.

Concepts like right, wrong, morality, immorality, obedience, and disobedience were soon replaced by terms like repression, regression, and ego formation. Psychologists began probing the unconscious mind instead of conscious behavior. Patients began to be analyzed and categorized, while biblical analyses and categories were discarded as irrelevant at best and incorrect at worst.

The “war” was on! Non-Christian secular psychologists virtually declared war on religion. Freud labeled it a form of neurosis, calling himself “a completely godless Jew” and a “hopeless pagan.”⁶ In many ways, Freud became the Father of the Great Psychological Excuse.

The psychologizing of modern culture is now a reality. As a result, the victim motif is so entrenched in our national thinking that the most blatant crimes are often excused by blaming the bad behavior on the failure of the parents, friends, society, and even religion to meet the perpetrator’s inner personal needs. Individual behavior is viewed as incidental. Society is asked to focus on the consequences rather than the causes of its ills. Welfare has replaced human responsibility. We are told that we need more abortion clinics, more condom distribution, and more aid to dependent children. But we dare not raise the “politically incorrect” cry for repentance, abstinence, or morality.

THE EVANGELICAL LOVE AFFAIR WITH PSYCHOLOGY

Despite the glaring contradictions between secular psychology and biblical theology, the evangelical church has had a thirty year love affair with psychology. MacArthur observed that “evangelicalism is infatuated with psychotherapy. Emotional and psychological disorders supposedly requiring prolonged analysis have become almost fashionable.”⁷

Why has this shift occurred? First, we must blame the modern church itself. Alien and anti-Christian ideologies have come and gone for centuries. But today’s church is almost devoid of a clear-cut theology of any kind. Sermons are punctuated with a conglomeration of conflicting ideas regarding the very nature and task of the church itself. Christians in search of solutions for their problems have brought them into a theologically illiterate church that has accepted those insights unwittingly and uncritically.

Second, we must recognize the failure of the twenty-first-century church to make the Scripture relevant to the needs of individuals and families. It was not uncommon twenty to thirty years ago for people to attend church regularly but never hear a biblically relevant message on such issues as dating, marriage, family, divorce, singleness, or even personal spiritual growth. A number of popular Christian speakers and writers (such as Clyde Narramore, Henry Brandt, Tim LaHaye, Bill Gothard, and James Dobson) noticed this vacuum and began ministering to those in need. Soon terms like “Christian counselor” or “Christian psychologist” began to appear and found acceptability within Christian circles. Christianity Today recently observed that “popularizers such as authors James Dobson, Tim LaHaye and Larry Crabb convinced a whole generation of evangelicals that God cared about their psyches as well as their souls, opening the door for a marriage between theology and therapeutic thought.”⁸

As a result, the church became involved in a debate over methodology in counseling. Jay Adams called for theologically trained counselors to fill the vacuum. Larry Crabb replied that it would take more than theology to fix damaged psyches and argued for better psychological training. Paul Meier and Frank Minirth began popularizing Christian psychiatry. Eventually, addiction recovery models became popular in evangelical circles. More and more Christians began seeking professional licensure in order to guarantee third-party insurance payments for their counseling services. The Christian counseling movement exploded, with clinics popping up everywhere: Rapha, Alpha Care, Minirth-Meier, and so on. Christian call-in programs came to fill the radio dial. Myriad books have been written. Counseling advice became available everywhere.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS

But with this explosion came some nagging questions that remained unresolved:

– Were theology and psychology really compatible?

– Did psychological labels really help people understand their struggles or merely excuse them?

– Was all this counseling really helping change people?

– How could psychologically trained counselors receive adequate biblical and theological training?

– Without biblical and theological training, how could Christian psychological counselors adequately deal with issues such as marriage, divorce, or child-rearing?

In response to those questions, Dr Gary Collins, a leader in the Christian counseling movement, has admitted, “There are a number of people who have graduate school training in psychology, but Sunday school training in theology!”⁹

We recently received a letter from a graduate student, who explained that he had to “set aside” his “previous training” at an evangelical institution to focus on the issues of conversion and character formation with a counselee who simply needed to “come to Christ.” “That was one issue,” he said, “no one ever dealt with in all my counseling training!”

From the time the Christian counseling movement began on up through today, the basic issues in the sufficiency debate have remained the same: If the Bible is really sufficient to meet man’s needs, why do we need psychology? If psychology is sufficient, why do we need God or the Bible? Even so-called “integrationist” approaches – which profess to combine both the Bible and psychology – have not fully answered these basic questions.

Several key issues are still at stake in this debate:

1. How can secular training be viewed as adequate for counseling and theological training viewed as inadequate?
2. Can Sunday school “theology” adequately prepare Christian professionals to make intelligent theological judgments?
3. Why should Christian counselors abandon the Bible when many secularists actually applaud the Bible?
4. Are we not undermining our evangelical belief in biblical inerrancy by denying the sufficiency of Scripture counseling?
5. How can we properly evaluate the challenges of multiculturalism and political correctness without a proper theological basis?
6. How does a person reconcile his own theology with competing theologies and remain consistent in his or her counseling?
7. Why should Christian counselors not offer to pray with their clients when many Christian doctors are now actively following this practice in the medical field?

THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN BELIEF AND PRACTICE

What has happened to the modern Christian professional? Whether in the counseling professions, the practice of medicine, or in research, ministry, or education, many Christian professionals have adopted the modern mindset of the world in which they live and have been trained. Theologian John Murray rightly observed that we need to “beware of the controlling framework of modern thinking lest its patterns and presuppositions become our own, and then, before we know it, we are carried away by a current of thought and attitudes that makes the sufficiency and finality of Scripture not only extraneous but akin to our way of thinking.”¹⁰

An interesting dichotomy has arisen in the church today. During the 1970s a very successful organization developed under the leadership of James Montgomery Boice and several others: the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. This organization produced a cohesive, scholarly, and distilled document that cogently states the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Shortly after the final document was issued, it became evident that evangelicals could not relax in their defense of the Bible because the battle soon shifted its focus to the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Today there is a dichotomy in the church on two levels. First, we have a church that professes to believe the Bible is inerrant, but it is not sufficient for matters of faith and life. It is not difficult to find evidence of this dichotomy. Survey, for example, the extracurricular offerings in many churches. On Sunday morning these churches uphold the Bible and its message of salvation through faith in Christ, but during the rest of the week there is a smorgasbord of self-help groups that meet to aid the Christian in his struggles with anything from worry to homosexuality. If you attend any of these self-help groups, you will discover that many offer advice that does not even come close to being biblical in nature. There is a dichotomy between the pulpit and the self-help groups, seminars, and classrooms within our own local churches.

Second, we have a church that professes to believe in an inerrant Bible that is sufficient for justification, but not for sanctification. Sid Galloway, who works closely with counselors in hospital settings, gave an example of this at a recent counseling convention. He reported about a conversation he had with one of his co-workers about the issue of biblical sufficiency. At one point Sid said, “I know you believe the Bible is sufficient for justification, but do you believe it is sufficient for sanctification?” After some discussion, the co-worker admitted that he did not believe that the Bible was sufficient for sanctification.

This dilemma is not true for all psychologists who are Christians. Psychologist Chris Thurman writes:

Obviously...God helps us by providing truth in the form of His Word, the Bible. We don’t have to wonder what the most important truths (true truth) in life are because God divinely inspired mortal man to write them down for our enlightenment and application. In a world where so much nonsense is passed off as wisdom, we don’t have to be confused or in the dark about what truth is. If people need the truth to be set free, the Bible is God’s way of giving us the truths we must believe for true freedom in life.¹¹

The focus among evangelicals has shifted from inerrancy to sufficiency, and this shift has created a dichotomy with profound effects. The logical implication of this dichotomy is the concept that the Bible is sufficient to gain passage into heaven, but it is insufficient to deal with life on this earth.

THE PSYCHOLOGIZING OF EVANGELICALISM

How has the evangelical community arrived at this point? There are a number of factors that have contributed to the current dilemma. It is not the purpose of this book to trace the historical development of our present crisis; however, there is one issue that is essential to consider. It is the issue of scientific methodology, which has been extremely beneficial to the human community. There is no one alive today who would voluntarily wish to return to the prescientific era. The technology available to us in the medical sciences alone is cause for us to rejoice that the Lord has allowed us to live in this day and age. But many have endeavored to adapt scientific methodology to the social sciences, bringing about an unfortunate side effect. These individuals have given psychology the aura of the exactness of biology, chemistry, and the other hard sciences. This supposed credibility has too often translated debatable findings into truth. Phenomenological observations have become laws. “It seems to be true that...” has become “it is true that...” Unfortunately, many times it has been Christians who have been more prone to “deify” these findings, and not the secular community.

It is not uncommon today to hear Christians substantiating the concepts of psychology. Many Christians accept these concepts without any comprehension of whether they are biblically valid. For example, it is quite common to hear a Christian say, “I am a recovering alcoholic,” or “I am co-dependent.” They accept these conditions as having the same credibility as the substitutionary atonement of Christ. In doing so, these Christians embrace symptoms as conditions and end up locking themselves into living with these symptoms for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, they never learn to deal with the root problem of their symptoms, which is sin.

IS INTEGRATION DESIRABLE?

One popular writer has advocated “spoiling the Egyptians.”¹² By this he means that Christians should take from the social sciences whatever “truth” has been discovered and bring it into their schema of Christian counseling. No doubt this writer intended to simply use this figure of speech in an allegorical sense. However, the allegory fails to do justice to the clear meaning of the biblical text from which the concept is taken. In the biblical text (Exodus 12:35-36), this spoiling of the Egyptians was clearly a matter of borrowing material things, not socio-cultural concepts. In fact, when the Israelites did borrow such concepts they built a golden calf and an idol, and God punished them for it.

Several years ago, apologist and theologian Cornelius Van Til astutely anticipating the sufficiency debate, drew from the Scripture an illustration that is consistent with sound biblical exegesis and warned against turning to the world for any basis of knowledge. He wrote:

To illustrate our attitude to modern science and its methodology we call to mind the story of Solomon and the Phoenicians. Solomon wished to build a temple to the covenant God. Did he ask those who were not of the covenant to make a blueprint for him? No, he got his blueprint from God. ...But was there nothing useful to do for those who were not of the covenant? Not at all. The Phoenicians were even recognized as being far more skillful than the covenant people in fashioning and trimming the timbers... Solomon used the Phoenicians as his servants, not his architects. Something similar to this should be our attitude to science. We gladly recognize the detail work of many scientists (yes, even social scientists) as being highly valuable... But we cannot use modern science and their methods as the architects of our structures of Christian interpretation.¹³

When Van Til speaks of Christian interpretation, he is not talking about the interpretation of Scripture, though his premise also applies there, but rather about the Christian interpretation of life. All the sciences, especially the social sciences, are very much involved in the interpretation of life. When Carl Rogers worked with a client from the viewpoint that the client had within him the answer(s) to his problems, he was interpreting life. When Maslow set before us the goal of self-actualizing, he was interpreting life. When Aaron Beck and a host of other cognitive-behavioral therapists saw the change of cognitive structure and structured behavioural change as the key solution to life problems, they were interpreting life.

Van Til’s position becomes poignant when we begin to realize that the adoption and adaption of the non-Christian conceptions of life, whether derived philosophically or through scientific methodology, is placing this interpretation of life on the same level as revelation.¹⁴ Yet Scripture indicates that it alone is capable of making the person of God adequate (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Only the Bible can fully equip a Christian and enable him to perform every good work (that includes conducting one’s life and profession within acceptable limits – the limits of Christlike character).

As we were doing research for this chapter, we observed an interesting phenomenon. When the church was dealing with the issues of inerrancy and authority, a number of Christian writers who took an integrationist stance wrote convincingly that the Scriptures take precedence over all scientific data. There are dozens of volumes available on the inerrancy debate. But ever since the church’s focus shifted from inerrancy to sufficiency...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• About the Editors
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1. Is the Bible Really Enough?
• 2. What is Biblical Counseling?
• 3. Does Biblical Counseling Really Work?
• 4. True Confessions of a Professional Psychologist
• 5. What’s the Brain Got to Do with It?
• 6. What About Biomedical Research?
• 7. Marriage and Family Counseling
• 8. The Bible and Family Practice
• 9. The Bible and the Mission of the Church
• 10. The Biblical Basis of Pastoral Ministry
• 11. Total Sufficiency and Biblical Truth
• Contributors
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Christian Focus