Psychology and the Gospel: A Brief History

Again, it's a pleasure to be with you and, um, been blessed, um, guys myself and just hearing the different sessions and it's always good to be, uh, reminded of the things that, that I believe in and, and try to live out in my own ministry. You know, we live right now in a culture where, um, there are a lot of voices about.

Psychology, there are a lot of competing voices about what, what is, what is the dilemma of humanity? What is wrong with people mentally and emotionally? And there are very powerful voices. I, I know in the last session, uh, they discussed the medical model. In the medical model is a, is a very powerful voice and very powerful influence in our culture as to what is acceptable, what is not acceptable.

Uh, we live in a time where, at least in two states that I know of, um, California and New Jersey, if you are a licensed professional and you're a Christian and you offer a Christian counseling service, if you have someone under the age of 18 that comes to you for counseling because they're struggling with homosexual temptation.

And they want you to help them fight that temptation according to their consciousness, their consciences and their convictions. If as a licensed therapist you offer that kind of counsel to them, uh, you have just, uh, participated in illegal and unethical activity as a licensed professional in those states.

If you offer anything other than gay affirmative counseling, uh, then that is, that is deemed illegal. So we live in a culture where the voices that oppose the truths of scripture are getting louder and louder. And at least from where I sit, uh, as a professional, um, the tide is going in that direction. And there will probably be a, a day when not only New Jersey and California embrace those kind of laws, but we will see that as a law throughout our country.

And so what will the Christian do when that day comes? Who, uh, has depended on the outside professional? You know, so many wonderful things have been said in this conference about biblical counseling and biblical counseling's. Underlying belief is that true soul care should be located within the body of Christ as a professional counselor.

If I'm working with a church who has referred someone to me, um, I work with the church. I don't look at that person as one of my own counselees. I'm not that person's spiritual authority. And research shows us that counseling on a lay level within a church community is going to be far more effective and helpful to that person than them setting with me one hour per week.

So part of my mission as a professional is to encourage the Church of God to reinitiate her stand as the very focal point, an epicenter where soul care should be taking place. Because again, there's coming a day when guys like me and other Christians who have sought to do their best to offer biblical care in a professional setting, we may have to turn our licenses in, and at that point, We're gonna need the church more than ever.

In some ways it's as though God in his sovereignty is, is forcing the church back to the forefront of this kind of care. And so I think today's presentation, if not anything else, I want it to be an encouragement to you, the Christian, that you're not the outsider coming in to the world of psychology and soul care.

Soul care has belonged. To the people of God for as long as there has been a people of God. And I wanna just go through that story with you today and hopefully it will encourage you, uh, to continue in the much needed work of developing your own skills as a biblical counselor, to go back to your churches and encourage leadership within those churches, uh, to embrace this idea and not to be intimidated by the culture and not to be intimidated by.

Uh, people who would tell you that you're opening yourself up to liability and legal problems if you offer counseling. Um, there is a way to do that to protect yourself. If you were to enter into a psychology, uh, bachelor's level course or program, it would not be unlikely that somewhere in that program you would have to take a class on the history of psychology.

And in those classes, uh, they're asking the question, where did psychology and counseling originate? And where they typically will start, if you look at these, uh, textbooks, is they begin with the Western philosophers and they locate psychology's history as originating with men like Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates.

And then they'll move forward in the history and you find guys like, like Decart, who coined the phrase, I think therefore I am. And so he got into this idea that if I have the capacity to think, that somehow existentially that that proves that I am someone. And, and this sort of leads into some of the cognitive work that you have heard about today.

And then the textbook will typically, typically take you into the era of rationalism. Where we find names like Hume and Comped and John Locke. And John Locke is especially influential, even in our own day with his idea, uh, that he called the tabular rasa, the blank slate. And much of research even today is based on the premise that humanity is born in this neutral state, in this blank place.

And it is the difficulties and the, and the, and the blessings and, and. The challenges of life that write themselves up on the person's psychology and make the individual who they become so that at birth you're a blank slate, but through life experience, you develop your personhood. And that's goes all the way back to John Locke in that is still very much alive and well in our current debates, in, in, in psychology, and some of you may have heard of this debate, the nature versus nurture debate.

So the nature debate is gonna be, uh, proclaiming that everything that you do and all that you are is completely dependent upon genetics and brain development, physiology, a lot of that that you heard in the last session. Uh, the psychiatric community is gonna place a lot of weight in this area, that everything that's going on, um, mentally with an individual is due to brain pathology.

But on this other side, the nature debate, that's where lot comes in. You respond to life the way you respond to life. You struggle with the emotional struggles and mental struggles you have today, primarily because of the way that you were raised in the life experiences that you've had. Now as a biblical counselor, we give credence to both of those realms.

Absolutely. We take very seriously that we are physical creatures. We take very seriously that the life experiences that we have all had in a fallen world have impacted us. But the difference that we find from a biblical perspective and the secular perspective is the secular realm looks at etiology or the causal core of who we are, what we do, and what we feel as as originating either from nature, our brain, or nurture the way we were raised.

Life experiences and biblical counseling, as you've heard today, looks at the causal core of human functioning as the heart because that's the way the Bible conceptualizes my heart is responding to my world. My heart is responding to my body. I remember when I was first, uh, getting into biblical counseling and teaching this idea that it's not our circumstances that cause our emotions and our responses.

It's the heart. And during that time, or right after I started studying this, uh, I was diagnosed with seven kidney stones at one time in both, both kidneys, and entered into literally a two year process of about every other week, being bedridden for several days, having to go to the ER every other weekend.

Lots of pain. And I remember one night sitting at home, one of those pains hit, I go to the ground. And I asked my wife, please bring me the pain medication. And she's just sort of taking her time, twiddling her thumbs, and I just, uh, very, very rudely and very aggressively yelled at her, bring those pain pills immediately, and she said, why are you yelling at me?

I'm yelling at you because I'm in pain and you're not bringing me what I need. So as a biblical counselor, I was totally going against my philosophy saying, I yelled at you because of my body. I'm in pain and I yelled at you because of my circumstances. You're not doing what I needed to do. And God actually used that moment as a time to say, Jeremy, you responded the way you responded.

Because in your pain and in your frustration, you allowed yourself to fall into the illusion that you're the God of the universe, and that even in that pain and struggle, you should respond to your wife, to my glory. And so that's where, uh, some of these older thinkers that go way back are still influencing us in our field today.

After you get through the guise of rationalism, you then finally land in the place of modernist psychology where you're introduced to names like Wilhelm wt, who is considered the father of psychology, says to have opened the first psychological laboratory in history. At least that's what. Uh, history, uh, proclaims, Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, Fritz Pearls, Albert Ellis.

And typically that is a basic overview. There would be a lot more to fill in the gaps, but that would be a basic overview of the history of counseling and psychology in our culture. But as Christians, we start at a very different place. We will begin at a time that far predates the renowned philosophers of the West.

We begin in the beginning, John Henderson in his, in his, uh, curriculum, equipped to counsel, says Godly or biblical counsel began in the Garden of Eden. God created Adam and then God counseled Adam Concerning the blessed course of life and the cursed one from any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat From it, you will surely die.

The counsel of God was truthful, his word for human life and loving his counsel revealed himself to Adam. And maintained a a and maintained a right relationship with Adam. Dr. J Adams said this many years ago, from the beginning, human change depended upon counseling. Man was created as a being whose very existence is derived from and depended upon a creator whom he must acknowledge as such, and from whom he must obtain wisdom and knowledge through revelation.

So when we seek to locate the origin of, of biblical counsel, of godly counsel, We don't start with Plato and Aristotle. We start in the Garden of Eden where there was a personal God who created man and woman, and out of his own kindness and goodness chose to speak into the universe that they could hear him and receive from his wise counsel.

And we, as we all know, Adam and Eve, gave way to the illusion of autonomy and rebelled against this council, and it fractured the entire universe. But the counsel of God doesn't stop there. We see this cadence of Godly counsel. God says all throughout the Old Testament, the Bible is a treasure trove of of case studies.

We see in the 10 Commandments. God giving his counsel to the Israelites, his wisdom to the Israelites for living, that would bring life. We see the counsel of Nathan confronting David with his sin, calling him two repentance. We see God warning Isaiah about the dangers of rebellion in Isaiah one. We see God giving hope with the promise of a redeemer in Isaiah seven through eight.

The Psalms are replete with wisdom. On how to deal with suffering, how to deal with difficulty, how to deal with accusers and, and people that are coming against us. The Proverbs are replete with wisdom on how to live for the glory of God and how to avoid folly. And so we began at the Garden of Eden and Genesis, and as you go throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, uh, every time that God speaks to his people, he's breathing wisdom into the universe, giving them counsel according to their, their way of living.

This pattern continues throughout the New Testament. Jesus and the Great Commission is actually one of the first places that God speak, that Christ Himself speaks into this world of one another ministry. Matthew 28, uh, 18 through 20. And Jesus came and spoke unto them saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and on in earth.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever. I have commanded you and Lo I am always, uh, I'm with you always, even to the end of the earth, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever. I have commanded you.

And with this proclamation, with this commission, Jesus is basically inviting every single believer that puts their faith in Jesus Christ into this world of biblical counseling. It's called discipleship. And every person you see, the culture says you're not qualified to do that. You don't have a license, you don't have training.

But the very creator of the universe who's called you to himself and who you've placed faith in, if you are a believer, has said to you, I call you to this work and I call you to make disciples for my kingdom. Jesus also, uh, reveals the location of human struggle. You have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery.

But I say unto you that whoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Matthew 5 27 28, Jesus lived in a society where, uh, it was considered that adultery was ultimately an outward act. If you engage in the physical act, then you've committed adultery.

Otherwise, you're, you're, you're clear. And Jesus came and in an iconoclastic form, uh, really revealed the desperation of humanity for a believer because he said, no, not, not. If you actually go do that, are you guilty? But if you lust in your heart, you have committed this sin. And there are many places where Jesus points to the heart as ultimately the focal point of human struggle.

But Jesus doesn't all only look at the heart. We've heard a lot this today about heart issues and desires and all, and thoughts and beliefs and all of that is extremely important to biblical counseling. But Jesus also called people to act, take heed to yourselves. If thy brother trespass against the rebuke him and if he repent, forgive him.

And if he trespass against the seven times in a day and seven times in a day, turn again to thee saying, I repent. Thou shalt forgive him. Jesus here is giving a beautiful divine restorative model for brothers and sisters in Christ to deal with their differences. Sometimes a rebuke will bring forth repentance in an offender.

Sometimes a rebuke will simply clear up a misunderstanding. And sometimes the rebuke doesn't produce repentance at all, but, but right after this, Jesus gives a parable and he says, once you've done everything I've told you to do, you walk away as an unworthy servant knowing that you've done your duty.

But God Christ is calling people to act. There is something that's very important to heart transformation in what we do. We can get lost in the introspection of looking at the heart. All that is important. But if people do not begin to obey behaviorally, do what God has called them to do even before it resonates completely within their hearts, then they may never truly experience a change.

I tell people all the time, if you come into me struggling with anxiety, And I give you a lot of biblical tools to deal with anxiety and your, your primary anxiety is you cannot, you feel, you cannot get on an elevator because you'll pass out. You're probably never gonna overcome that anxiety until you get on an elevator.

Go do, and then apply the things that God has called you to apply things that we've learned. And so Jesus calls his people to act. Paul's relational counsel. If it be possible, as much as it lieth in, you live peaceably with all men dearly beloved avenge, not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath.

For it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, sayeth the Lord. Therefore, in th if thy enemy is hungry, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink for. In so doing thou shal heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. That's profound. Counsel. That's counsel that is, is rooted in the glory of God.

That is counsel that has capacity to, uh, to function in a very powerful way for our own sanctification. When we feel like we're justified to take wrath, it reveals that if we do feel that we must take revenge, that we really don't trust a God who is just. Peter urged those suffering under unfair leadership to continue to do good one.

Peter two and three, James tackled the candid question, often relevant to marriage and friendships. Why are you fighting James four, one through eight, he diagnoses the root of the problem, coveting and evil desire, and he prescribes steps towards change, seeking humility, submitting to God, resisting the devil, and entering into passionate, humble repentance.

The writer of Hebrews provides counsel that brings divine context to the purposes of suffering. Yet he honestly admits that this process is often quite painful. I love the honesty of the writer of Hebrews, and he, he gives us, uh, existential purpose as to why endure hardship. And, and aligns it to the hand of God and his loving discipline for us, and tells us that if we persevere in that discipline, that it will produce a harvest of righteousness and peace as we are trained by it.

So when we simply look at the Bible and, and I just skim the surface, didn't even come close to, to hitting every example of council and scripture, but when we as believers look at our heritage, Our heritage dates back to the very first two people on this earth and a God, uh, who as Francis Schaeffer once wrote, he was there and he has spoken in his kindness that unleashed a heritage that you and I are part of of counseling.

And in that heritage, God doesn't leave us wondering, are we part of this counseling business or not? Jesus, when he was upon this earth, actually said, yes, I commission. You make disciples, teach people to effectively and artfully apply the truths of God's wisdom to the complex daily struggles they often face.

The early church fathers certainly understood this. When you read the writings of these men, they did not operate under this cultural milieu that counseling or soul care should be splintered away to some expert in some other field. When you read their writing, you can tell that they believe because they followed the writers of scripture that soul care was a part of the D n A of the spiritual life.

Soul Care was part of the DNA of the community of believers historian Morton Hunt. In his book on the history of psychology notes that when St. Augustine introduced his version of Biblical Soul Care, his ideas dominated the arena of psychology For eight centuries, Augustine wrote extensively on this issue.

And Thomas Aquinas, Dr. Rebecca Condi de Young notes that the ancients and Medieval sought this sort of self-knowledge as part of their ethical life as believers, as is clear from the inscription at Delphi, no thy self and the mission of Aquinas's Dominican Order, namely the Care of Souls and another church father John Cassian.

He says this. As is the case with the most skilled physicians who not only heal present ills, but also confront future ones with shrewd expertise and forestall them with prescriptions and salutary potions. So also these true physicians of theto soul destroy with a spiritual conference as with some heavenly medicine maladies of the heart, just as they are about to emerge, not allowing them to grow in the minds of young men, but disclosing to them both the causes of the passions that threaten them.

And the means of acquiring health for John Cassian. Soul Care was an imperative work. Becoming a sole physician was part of the Christian life. It was the way that that we lived out our Christian lives together as believers. This trend also continues through the history of the church in the reformers.

When I was coming into the world of biblical counseling, uh, I had a lot of questions and all of those questions were born outta my own ignorance and naivete. After reading all of these complex theories in psychology, Sigmund Freud, caller Rogers, all of these men had a view of human nature. All of these men had a view of human motivation and a, and a view of.

Methods to bring about change. And some of their models are profoundly complex, quite frankly. Uh, many of them difficult to understand, especially when you go back and, and read Freud. So it was very hard for me as I was, I was entertaining the possibility. Okay, the Bible maybe it, maybe the Bible can fill in the blanks for me.

In the Christian literature that I was reading at the time that I was getting at the Bible bookstores, it just wasn't filling in the gaps. It seemed very surface for me, very, very, uh, superficial. But then, uh, I was recommended by David Palon to read the book, um, the Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther.

And I remember purchasing that book and I had a, a little boy, uh, at the time. Uh, probably nine months old or so. Um, and before he would wake up in the morning, I would get up at 5:00 AM I would go, uh, sit at the Waffle House of all places and I would open up the bondage of the will and begin to read a theology of motivation that I have never, ever heard of before.

And what Martin Luther was doing, whether you agree with all of his premises in this book or not. What Martin Luther was doing is he was taking the theology of scripture and he was outlining an argument against someone else that the will is not just this neutral thing that's floating around freely, but that there are variables that influence the will and pull it in a very particular direction.

That the will at the end of the day is, is free to do what it desires most. And I was fascinated by this. Here was a, here was this historic figure who was entering really into the realm of psychology long before there was a psychology and he was trying to give mankind an understanding of human nature and how people function at a motivational level.

And he wrote in such a way that in my own mind, it, it definitely, uh, competed in complexity with the theories that I had read prior to ever reading Martin Luther. That just led me to, uh, Uh, wanting to read further in this tradition of men. And so I read the, not all of it, but I read a lot of the institutes of the Christian religion where John Calvin in many of the sections of the institutes is also talking about, um, the purpose of man, the nature of man, uh, how man functions, why men, humanity does what it does.

And Lutheran Calvin's conceptual frameworks of human nature and motivation included the impact of sin and depravity, something I had never seen in my life on the human estate, the subjection of the will to evil passions and desires, and even the devil. The essential need for grace to awaken and free the one enslaved by sin and the sovereign power of God actively at work in every aspect of the human experience.

Luther, Calvin, and others of their day tackled with a distinctively theological framework, the very questions in which psychology would become immersed centuries later.

This history continues with the Puritans. The Puritan leaders within this tradition developed highly sophisticated diagnostic case books, containing scores, and even hundreds of different personal problems and spiritual conditions. I read in a book comparing, uh, the rate of, of healing among the puritans when they would deal with people with severe maladies of the mind, and they kept records of these things.

And some researcher compared the, the rate of healing among those people and the rate of healing among people in modern mental hospitals. And it was staggering how far effective the Puritans were in Dre in treating severe maladies of the mind. And their methods were far different than admitting someone in a hospital and medicating them for a few days and then sending them on their way.

It was very much centered in ministry. And they felt the call that if someone in our community, a believer in Jesus Christ, one of our fellow brethren is struggling in this terrible way, then we as a community have to be willing to sacrifice our time, sacrifice, sleep, do whatever we need to do to stay by this person's side until healing comes, until God provides a way.

And I'm not saying every time that happened, but it was, it's impressive the kind of work that the Puritans were able to do. One of those Puritans later was Jonathan Edwards. Some say that he is the most intelligent mind born in American soil that could be argued, but he's definitely a highly regarded scholar and he authored a book called The Freedom of the Will.

And so I spent a long time arduously working my way through this book. Very complicated book, but I was interested. In these men and, and seems like they're speaking on the same terrain as all of these other guys that I've studied, and in the freedom of the will. Jonathan Edwards says this, the author of the Human Nature has not only given affections to men, but has made them very much the spring of men's actions such as men's nature, that he is very inactive, any otherwise than he is influenced by some affection, either love or hatred, desire, hope, fear, or some other.

These affections we see to be the springs that set men a going in all the affairs of life and engage them in all their pursuits. These are the things that put men forward and carry them along in all their worldly business, and especially our men, excited and animated by these in all affairs wherein they are earnestly engaged and which they pursue with vigor.

We see the world of mankind to be exceeding busy and active, and the affections of men are the springs of the motion. And so Jeffers, uh, uh, Jonathan Edwards himself was coming to the human heart and answering from a distinctly theological perspective what motivates men,

the idea of the active heart of worship, vis-a-vis, uh, God was introduced, and it sounded a lot different than the needs-based theories that would emerge later through Abraham Maslow and some of those guys. Who said basically you're, you're operating out of unmet needs in your life.

Edwards would say, no. You're operating out of what you want. What affections drive your soul? As I said earlier this morning, uh, the words of Christ where your treasure is there, your heart will be Paul Tripp, uh, in one of his books, I think it's War of Words, has this little diagram where he starts with de, it's called the elevation of desire, and he starts with desire.

And he says, the heart of man is so deceitful and, and, and often so self-centered. That, that we allow ourselves to make that desire a demand. And then we, we, we don't stop there. We, we begin to believe, deceitful things and begin to think that that's not just simply a demand. I'm putting on some someone that is a need, and this is where our culture currently resides.

And then that need elevates itself to expectation and then expectation to disappointment and then punishment. And that's what John Jonathan Edwards and these guys were getting at. John Owen was another influential Puritan. Now, self healers or men that speak peace to themselves do commonly make haste.

They will not tear, they do not harken what God speaks, but on they will go to be healed, which is worse of all it amends, not the life. It heals, not the evil it cures, not the distemper. When God speaks peace, it guides and keeps the soul that it turned not again to folly. Psalm 85, 8. When we speak it ourselves, the heart is not taken off.

The evil nay is the readiest course in the world to bring a soul into a trade of backsliding. In God's speaking peace. There comes along so much sweetness and such a discovery of his love, as is a strong obligation on the soul. No more to deal perversely. Luke 2232. Sinclair Ferguson reminds us that quote, the puritans were pastors and physicians of the soul, but they understood that the basic counseling sessions of every Christian's life should take place in the context of the exposition of scripture.

J Packer points out that behind the studied simplicity of the Puritan Practical Books lies the care and competence of brilliant and deeply learned Theologians Eric Johnson adds that while our era outstrips theirs in terms of an understanding of the created mechanics of human development and soul change, ours is D is dwarfed by theirs with regard to the more important expertise of applying the Bible to the greatest needs of the soul.

So just in the brief time we've had so far, we, we've looked from Adam and Eve and just in a general way, all the way through history, through the Puritans, that counseling and soul care has been a part, uh, of God's people from the beginning. But unfortunately in our history, a changing tide did emerge. And there was a decline in this mindset that, uh, Christians and pastors should be employing biblical counsel to fellow brothers and sisters.

And it came about with the emergence of modernism. And in a very simple way, we can conceptualize modernism as a movement that put forth the idea that truth was only valid if it could be verified via the scientific method. So if there was a truth claim, that culture could accept as true for all people at all times.

The only way that we can ultimately make that assertion is if we go through the empirical method of the scientific methodology. And if we improve it, uh, through a, a research method and prove it under a microscope, then okay, we can accept it as true for all people at all times. And during the time when modernism was on the rise, There was a gentleman by the name of Anton Boon, who himself had experienced several nervous breakdowns, very serious, and when he had these nervous breakdowns, he went to several churches to find help, and he found none, and he found himself in a mental hospital, and it became Boon's goal after this experience.

To awaken the church, and Anton Boon said this. It seems truly an astounding situation that a group of sufferers larger than that to be found in all other hospitals put together a group whose difficulty seemed to lie, for the most part in the realm of character rather than in the organic disease should be so neglected by the church.

Not withstanding the fact that the church has always been interested in the care of the sick. And that the Protestant Churches of America have been supporting 380 or more hospitals. They are giving scarcely any attention to the maladies of the mine. And he was writing to a large part, uh, in, in, in context of the great surge of modernism where Freud had entered the scene and other men had entered the scene.

G Stanley Hall was a huge psychologist in America. A psychologist that was adamantly opposed to any form of spirituality as part of the human psychology. And the pastor was being told, you're not qualified to do this. This is a science. And the kind of psychology we do it, we are doing, uh, has has gone under the scrutiny of empirical investigation.

And then somewhere along the line, this idea of, of the pastor is there for the spirit and the therapist is there for the soul emerged and, and pastors became, be, began to buy into this propaganda and they relinquished their responsibility at the same time. Um, it was during a time when seminaries were having to fight liberalism in the realm of theology.

And they were having to fight the great debates of the inerrancy of scripture and the infallibility of scripture and, and the inspiration of scripture. And so most seminaries had to give most of their energy to those debates and, and the debates that were surrounding the soul care fell through the cracks unintentionally, I would say, but it happened.

But from boon's call, a new movement began. And then found then was founded the Council for Clinical Pastoral Training, and that sounds great, but what happened is the liberal wing of the church grabbed onto boon's, call the liberal wing of the church, said, Hey, we hear you. We do need to be caring for the people who are struggling in the mind, and so we're going to come alongside you and surrounded by.

People of this mindset, a liberal mindset. The Council of Clinical Pastoral training was emerged. The problem was that the people and the, the pastors that were being trained through the, the, uh, council for Clinical Pastoral Training, they were being trained by psychologists and psychiatrist who were, uh, experts in Freudian psychology and later Rosa Rosa psychology.

So the paradigm of seminary training during this time was you go to your seminary, you get your, your theology straight, you, you learn the scriptures. But when it comes to counseling, we're gonna outsource you to a psychiatric hospital, where at you as a pastor will be trained under a secular psychiatrist or psychologist who embraces, uh, a worldview that is antithetical to everything you've learned in seminary.

Now, that wasn't stated, but that's what was happening. And so obviously pastors, not really, many of them didn't discern this, and, and they were learning these new techniques and it seeped into the church. E t Charri noted that during this time, liberal churches were psychologist with the creation of the field of pastoral counseling and soon theological education, followed by providing clinical pastoral education.

Bruce Nemore of Rosemead highlighted that during the infancy of pastoral counseling, quote, an approach that gave much attention to specific biblical teaching seems somehow suspect and unscientific in the minds of the intellectual liberals. Any strong reliance on scriptural teaching, smacked of authoritarianism and the fundamentalist mentality.

There was a crisis going on in the church. Where pastors were being, being intimidated that if you dare bring the word of God into this, something is wrong. Reflecting on this seismic historical shift, David Palon soberly concluded the Church of Christ lost her heartland. The understanding and cure of souls

modernism ultimately gave birth to what is known today as the science of psychology. The implications of this change meant that the spiritual became subservient to the scientific and reshaped a profoundly new orthodoxy for understanding the human soul. Gone were the days of interpreting the psychology of humankind through the lens of the Bible.

Men like Aquinas, Augustine, Luther, Edwards, and Owen were often redefined from being valued contributors to the understanding of people, to neurotic individuals in need of therapeutic analysis by the new practitioners of the day. The church was in a terrible place, and I, I appreciate how Paulison puts it.

We lost our heartland. We just read about that, or we just heard about that, the rich history that we've had and, and, and we allowed secularism to come in and drown out the voices, uh, of the scriptures in Christian soul care. But this history has an interesting twist and you can see the providence of God and the love that God has for his church and his people.

There is a, the A guy in 1952 who was the president of the American Psychological Association. He was a very renowned psychologist who leaned in the direction of behaviorism and did a lot of research in this area, and his name was O Hobart Mower. And when o Hobart Mower began to see these pastoral uh, students coming into his care and seeing the propaganda and the things that they were being fed and that they were embracing, he became very concerned.

He became concerned for the church. He became very concerned for pastors, and he said This, Has evangelical religion sold its birthright for a mess of psychological pot? In attempting to rectify their disastrous, early neglect of psychopathology, have the churches and seminaries assimilated a viewpoint and value system more destructive and deadly than the evil they were attempting to eliminate.

And primarily what he was talking about, there was not research. He was talking about the personality theorists, theorists who had come in with their dogma as though it was fact and began pushing it on the culture. Men like Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and their humanistic approaches.

So after this, Christians begin. Christians who were, uh, studying psychology began to take note that, hey, maybe we've taken a wrong turn. And well-intended Christians began to answer this crisis. I mean, the church had really never had to ask, Hey, does the Bible really impact psychology? What's going on here?

This was a new discipline. And so you had guys that, that came in and introduced, um, several different kinds of models. John Carter and Clyde Nemore, Gary Collins, they introduced a model that has come to be known as the two levels of knowing. So what they attempted to do as Christians, and I think well-intended Christians, They tried to make sense of this big, chaotic drama that was unfolding before them.

And, and they didn't wanna minimize psychology and they didn't wanna minimize theology. So they came up with this idea of this two levels of knowing where they would say, you know what? Theology speaks, uh, to depression and despair, but it's coming from one level and psychology's coming from another level.

Let's not really mingle the two. Let's just take the two perspectives and see how they can work somehow collaboratively. Um, then you had Larry Krab who came in and he was, I think I mentioned this morning, one of the first guys that really pushed the idea of integration, called it spoiling the Egyptians, um, where he wanted to try and take what filtered through the scriptures.

If you remember this morning, you take the theory, you pour it through the scriptures, like a filter, and what you're left with is fair game to use in psychology. Their rationale for trying these things was that all truth is God. Truth is God's truth. The Bible and psychology are allies. Psychology serves to bring understanding to human functioning and greater knowledge of the psychological literature prepares Christians to our articulate their potential opposing positions.

Effectively, the vast body of research and psychology may lend to a more efficient work in Christian ministry, and that psychology must come under the authority of scripture. And you might read through some of those rationales and say, okay, this, this makes sense to me. It seems like some of the things that they're purporting there, uh, would work.

But if you talk to the guys that I talk to today that are in the world of Christian psychology, if you talk to the, the integrationists, the old, the, the old school guys, like the ones I just mentioned and others. They will tell you that their attempts at integration were, uh, they were unsuccessful. That it was, it was a pretty, it was a new, um, endeavor and it was pretty sloppy.

And as I mentioned to you guys this morning, often psychology began to usurp the scriptures in that scripture began to become interpreted through what psychology was telling us. And the example I gave this morning is the passage where, Jesus said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbors yourself.

There's two commands, but there are integrationist books out there from the old days that said, there's actually a third command. You have to love yourself. Jesus said that. And so things like that really put a stain on much of the old integration and as, as a movement. Um, It. It wasn't a sufficient answer to the crisis that was going on,

and here's how you just see the hand of God on his church, what I'm about to read to you. So here's this President of the American Psychological Association, o Hobart Mower. He's training students. He's very concerned about what's going on. And in 1965 as part of his own seminary training, A young man named Jay Adams began working in two state mental institutions with none other than o Hobart mower, who vigorously opposed the emerging trends of a morality.

He was witnessing in psychology under the guidance of mower who demanded his clients take responsibility for their actions. Adam's suspicions of psychology and the medical model were emboldened. And in 1970 when Competent to Counsel was published, he shared that he became engrossed in the project of developing a true biblical counseling.

And Jay Adams said this, and when compromises talk about all truth as God's truth, they call it common grace. They abuse this concept too. They mean by such use that God revealed true through Rogers, Freud, Skinner, et cetera. God does not, of course, restrain God does, of course, restrain sin, allow people to discover facts about his creation, et cetera in common grace help given to saved and unsaved alike.

But God never sets up rival systems competitive to the Bible. And Adams was right. And you know, I, I came into the world of biblical counseling embracing a massive caricature about new fe counseling in Jay Adams. And it was an unfair caricature. We have to go back to what the time when Adams was writing.

This was in 1970. There really was no such thing as a, a formal biblical counseling model. Psychology was on the rise. Psychiatry was on the rise. Pastors were taking a step back in great intimidation and fear that they better not touch the, the realms of psychology or, or a person's mental struggles because that was off limits.

And so the early works of Jay Adams, he had to be polemical. I mean, he was speaking into space that folks had never heard of before. And he was having to build a case that what we are doing as a church is destroying our church. We're allowing rival systems that are antithetical in their philosophy to become the driving voices that guide our council.

And so I don't know your location in this journey. But if you, if you have a character of Jay Adams, I thoroughly encourage you, go read Competent to Counsel. Make no judgements of this man until you read that book or read a Theology of Christian Counseling because Jay was, he, he was doing something, uh, that we had lost since the days of the Puritans for the most part.

And he was formalizing this for the pastor so that the pastor could become more equipped to do the, the work that God had called him to do.

Soon after, uh, Adams uh, model emerged the national, uh, association of New. Counselors was developed and the Christian Counseling education and, uh, and education Foundation was developed. And then you just had these new emerging leaders come onto the scene and you had guys like David Paulison and Ed Welch and Paul Tripp, who, and John Butler, I would say, who at least in this, in, in this vein of history, Were profoundly instrumental in taking what Jay Adams had created as a foundation for biblical care, and they just began to develop that.

And it is from their work that in many ways, they took us back to Jonathan Edwards. They took us back to Martin Luther. They took us back to the institutes of the Christian religion and began to, to formulate a, a, a better understanding of the dynamics of the human heart. What's going on inside of us?

What does the scriptures reveal that are the motivational components to the human being? And they begin to develop, uh, a very robust model of care, uh, that, that thrust biblical counseling into the forefront. And I think a lot of what we're experiencing today, uh, was, was birthed out of Jay Adams, but uh, was definitely pushed down the road by.

Uh, these four men, j uh, John Butler, David Palon, uh, ed Welch and Paul Tripp. And now we find ourselves in a flow of history where all of these different silos of biblical counselors are now coming together in a, in a, a new way. We're gaining our bearings, so to speak, and a new movement has been born and it's exciting to see.

What Bob Jones University is doing as part of that movement. What's happened today and last night is a major part of that movement. And it is a movement that we must all join in from our respective ministries where there, whether it's a, a seminary, uh, an association, a church, We all are going to need to join in, in this movement because the voices of secularism are not getting any quieter, and the challenges that we are going to face as believers are not going away.

When you read the secular literature, it's astounding how, uh, the case is closed. The spiritual is non-existent. Not long ago I was in Fort Worth and I was debating, I was in a public debate, and these debates scare me to death. But I do them because I simply, I wanna get the truth out there. And, um, I was debating a, a psychologist professor.

And

the, the hostility that I received during the q and a from the people, I mean, usually in these kind of settings, I was told, Hey, the opposing atheistic views, they, they respect you because you get up here and you, you, you give your position to the best of your ability and you make yourself vulnerable to tough questions.

And they're, they're, they're usually quite respectful, respectful of that, not that night. When you start talking about mental struggles and emotional struggles, when you start talking about the issue of homosexuality. And you dare bring the sacred word of God into that conversation. You have just put yourself, uh, in a very exclusive camp as far as that culture's concerned.

And that night, I, I remember this was back in October, I think, or uh, yeah, I think, and I remember leaving that event saying, I thought I was in touch with culture. I live in a bubble. Because if these people had the freedom, they would probably, some of them come up on stage and physically assaulted me.

This is our culture.

But God has been gracious and faithful to his church and every time I, I, I rethink, man, God put Jay Adams under this guy and emboldened a man who in my opinion is. The father of the modern movement, how faithful is God and how faithful will he be to us as we continue the journey that Adam started in 1970?

And you guys, every person in this room, you're a critical part of that movement. And it's not a movement about our way of doing things, it's a movement about the kingdom of God. It's a movement. That is bringing the only hope for all emotional turmoil into the forefront of the conversation. And it's not a model.

It's not a method, it's a person. His name is Jesus Christ. And so I pray that as you leave this event today, that as you've heard this history, that you will be emboldened. We're not outsiders coming in. We, we are the inner circle and we had outsiders come in. And try to rob what God rightfully gave to us through his word.

I want to end with just, uh, an encouragement from Dr. David Palon from one of his articles, and I pray this will, this will embolden you to continue the work. And, you know, our work is not always easy guys. Um, we set with, we set with a lot of pain. We sit with a lot of brokenness. We, we have to witness the, the impact of sin on families, on lives.

We see homes broken because of rebellion. I mean, you sit, you sit for a year, every week with a person. Struggling with such profound oppression that they just want to end it that day, and we're called to do that again and again and again. And the people need our message. The hurting people need Christ, and they're not gonna get it in any other, in any other realm in terms of psychology than from what Biblical counseling purports.

Let us be ruthless to root out theoretical structures that view people as psychological or socio psychological abstractions. The phenomena observed are not ego defense mechanisms, but are pride's, offensive, defensive, and dece deceptive strategies. And let us also for swear that the therapeutic assumptions that are consequent to the theory, they are poor and deceptive substitutes for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If, and it is a large, if biblical categories control, we can revel in the descriptive acuity and case study riches of psychologies of the psychologies with biblical categories. We ourselves will mature as psychologists in the best sense of the word acute, of observers of human life experienced in cases and case studies consistently wise in our counseling methods.

We will know people deeply enough to know exactly how they need Jesus Christ. We will remember that Christianity is a third way. The alternative to moralism is not psychologist. The alternative is Christianity. Let me pray.

Father, as we, as we have reflected on your activity and your people since the beginning, It's humbling. It's humbling how detailed and how persistent and how faithful you have been to speak to your people over and over and over and over, often in the, the face of them rebelling against you and denying you and refusing you.

But in your faithfulness, you have continued to pursue your people. And we thank you and I pray for every person in this room. That Father, as they seek your word for wisdom, as they seek to develop in their own capacity as a biblical counselor, may your spirit guide them. May your spirit grant them discernment.

May your spirit grant them to see the riches of your word and give them the capacity to apply those riches in a way that are relevant to the hurting of our day, and may all of us continue in this journey. For one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is for your glory. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.s