Biblical Counseling and Our Theology of Scripture

Introduction

Counseling is a theological discipline.

Most people think theology is what men preparing for ministry study in seminary without understanding that theology has a significant role in helping people with counseling problems.

Most people believe theology is for pastors and psychology is for counselors and have nothing to do with each other.

For the believer, our worldview is built upon, or should be built upon a biblical view of life.

That means that our theology informs all of life, including counseling.

We will understand this when we see what theology is, what counseling is, and what counseling requires.

The Nature of Theology

What is theology?

Theology is the topical and logical study of God’s revealed nature and purposes.

Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology: Knowing Ultimate Reality: The Living God, vol. 1, Integrative Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987), 23.

What is systematic theology?

Systematic theology is any study that answers the question, “What does the whole Bible teach us today?” about any given topic.

Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; Zondervan Pub. House, 2004), 21.

Systematic theology involves collecting and understanding all the relevant passages in the Bible on various topics and then summarizing their teachings clearly so that we know what to believe about each topic.

Scripture is carefully organized by topic

Those topics are studied to be seen to fit together in a consistent way.

Includes all ten major doctrinal topics of the Bible

Bibliology — Scripture

Theology Proper — God

Christology — Jesus

Pneumatology — Spirit

Ecclesiology — church

Anthropology — humanity

Soteriology — salvation

Hamartiology — sin

Angelology — angels

Eschatology — future

Good theology is concerned with doing careful interpretation of all the relevant texts in Scripture about a topic and then discerning carefully how those texts go together.

It concerns what the Bible teaches today!

Good theology must be contemporary.

Not developing NEW truth in each age...

Rather we seek to understand how the old truths in God’s Word apply to our contemporary settings.

The church is forced to confront new threats to the truth and we must take the ancient texts that are relevant and apply them in fresh ways.

Not only do we look at theology historically in regards to what the church has believed...

We also seek to understand what we must believe today in the midst of our contemporary threats.

The work of theology is to discover what God thinks about any given topic.

Paying careful attention to what God reveals in every text about a subject, provides us with the knowledge of what God thinks.

This course will seek to establish what God says about counseling.

The Nature of Counseling

What is counseling?

Counseling is a conversation where one party with questions, problems, and trouble seeks assistance from someone they believe has answers, solutions, and help.

Heath Lambert, A Theology of Biblical Counseling: The Doctrinal Foundations of Counseling Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 12-13.

Counseling conversations happen all the time.

Everyone does it.

Sitting with a licensed therapist discussing a diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder who then bills your insurance company...

Pastor talks with a husband or wife who is considering divorce and seeks advice about their options.

Boss calls an employee into the office to discuss a problem with job performance.

When your child talks to you about another child being a bully to them

When a friend calls another friend about some decision that needs to be made

Counseling does not have to be a formal setting of making an appointment, laying on a couch, and spilling your guts with expressive emotions.

All of us do it all the time.

No one person who group of people can lay claim or exclusive prerogative to be a counseling practitioner.

Defining counseling this way means one member of the counseling conversation has a dilemma.

Whether they acknowledge it as a dilemma is irrelevant.

A dilemma does not have to be extremely difficult.

A dilemma can simply be having to choose between equally good options and that person needs to hear another’s perspective on the two choices.

So we seek to offer a biblical perspective to the choices one can make.

Counseling occurs when the person with answers and solutions moves toward the one with the struggle and offers help.

What Counseling Requires

What counseling does not require.

Trappings of Professionalism

One does not need to be an expert to counsel.

teachers, bosses, parents, coworkers, friends, etc. don’t have formal training yet are involved in counseling conversations.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to do it well and hone our counseling skills. It simply means that most who do counseling do not have formal training.

Striving for Excellence

We want people who will provide correct answers, faithful solutions, and effective help, but sadly, many do not.

Mom counsels her child to divorce when they should not.

College student tells his friend not to stress about an overwhelming problem which is the very thing in his friend’s mind when he takes his life.

Counselors today tell men it is okay for them to be sexually attracted to other men.

Some will be harsh when they need to be kind.

Some will be flippant when they should be firm.

Some will counsel an abused woman to go back to the home where the abusive husband lives.

Sadly, there is no requirement for a person to be very good at counseling.

What counseling does require.

A counselor must articulate some vision of reality that understands the dilemma of the other person and offers a response to that dilemma.

We call this a worldview.

People may or may not be aware of it, or even label it, but every person has a vision about life, what it is, and how it works.

Anyone engaging in counseling (secular or biblical) has a view of who we are, what is wrong with us, what should be right with us, and how to fix it.

When counseling conversations occur, the one having the problem is articulating difficulty navigating life.

The one providing answers, solutions, and help, is articulating what it means to be human and experience life.

Explaining why life doesn’t appear to be working for them

Providing an understanding of what is the normative standard for that person

The normative standard is where the person departed from that brought the problem.

Offering some sense of how to help the person move towards a solution.

All Counseling is Theological

Both biblical and secular counselors have a worldview that is theological.

For the biblical counselor, God defines our reality.

God defines what it means to be human — Genesis 1:26–27 “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

God diagnoses what is wrong with us — Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

God prescribes the solution to our problems — 2 Corinthians 5:17–21 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

God authorizes a process of transformation and shows us what it looks like — Ephesians 4:22–24 “that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”

For the secular counselor, their worldview is shaped by humanistic schools of thought that remove God from reality.

That is still a theological commitment.

The atheist’s denial of God is a worldview made from a theological commitment.

All counseling by its very nature is theological because even though they do not acknowledge God, secular counselors still offer direction to people living before God in a fallen world.

Theology cannot be separated from counseling.

There is no other option but to have a theological vision of reality.

It can be a faithful theological vision

It can be an unfaithful theological vision

The Biblical counselor strives for a faithful vision.