As a pastor, I have had the opportunity to counsel scores of people on issues ranging from marital problems to criminal behavior. Having taken phsycology classes in pursuit of a Business Degree and taking classes for degrees in Pastoral Ministry, I want to look at both models over the next two days.

Biblical counseling is a popular evangelical approach to counseling that not only promotes its own program for resolving personal problems within a strict Bible based foundation, but also asserts that “psychology” or more specifically, “psychotherapy” is a completely incompatible with its approach. This rejection of psychology has a strong following among many conservative evangelicals. Oftentimes this approach is referred to as “biblical counseling” in distinction from “psychological counseling.” There are many Christian therapists who consider their counseling biblical in its approach, but the biblical counseling proponents reject any attempt to integrate psychology and a biblical approach.

Sometimes Martin and Deidre Bobgan are even broader in their denunciation of psychology as anti-Christian, as when they say,”Because psychology, which gives rise to psychotherapy is not science and has nor proven itself in either research ore reality, and because it has unnecessarily replaced religious cures, it would be appropriate to label it “psychoquakery” and to regard it as psychoheresey. Psychoquackery becomes psychoheresy when it is combined with Christian verbiage. Psychotherapy and its philosophical and practical implications and influence could very well be intrinsic to the great seduction in preparation for the antichrist.

The statement by the Bobgans is definitely a strong and maybe somewhat erroneous in its assumption that psychotherapy could have any implications regarding the antichrist. Through the eyes of biblical counseling advocates, biblical counseling and psychology, specifically, psychotherapy do not mix and must not try to be integrated.

The proponents of biblical counseling do not simply criticize psychology and Christian psychology. They also promote an alternative way of helping hurting people, most commonly referred to as “biblical counseling” as distinct from psychology. Various other names are given for this approach, including Jay Adams’s “nouthetic counseling” and the Bobgans’ “spiritual way.” The biblical counseling movement includes four foundational premises. The first maintains that every principle for personal fulfillment is contained in the Bible. Biblical counselors make the statement that the Bible is the only source for counseling principles. I count myself as being of this camp, believing that the Bible is the absolute and, complete source for counseling. Jay Adams, considered by many to be the “father” of the biblical counseling movement, places his exclusive focus within the wider context of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, saying, “since the Holy Spirit employs his Word as the principal means by which Christians may grow in sanctification, counseling cannot be effective (in a any biblical sense of that term) apart from the use of scriptures.” Second, biblical counseling assumes that all personal problems (if they are not organic, biological, and/or physical in nature) are spiritual problems. Third, biblical counseling frequently equates the resolution of personal problems with the experience of personal salvation and subsequent sanctification. For example, if you have a client whose goal is to overcome a fear of the dark, the biblical approach to take would be to counsel the client that Jesus is the “Light” as found in John 1:4-9, and that coming to repentance in Jesus will open doors to freedom and overcoming that fear. The fourth foundational principle is that the goal of biblical counseling is a saved individual who lives in obedience to God’s Word. By bringing the client to salvation in Christ and leading them to be obedient to Christ a fruitful life will in effect be produced. Adams states, “Satisfaction, like peace and joy, comes not when one pursues it, but unexpectedly and always as a by-product of faithful Christian living.”