Is the Bible Sufficient for Counselling?

Part Two of the series on mental health and biblical counselling

I took a deep breath and sat down for my first psychiatry appointment. Shame pulled my head down and angst made me feel sick to my stomach. I’m a failure. 

For my entire life up until then, I saw my mental illnesses as sins to kill and character flaws to fix. I had learned this from the people in my faith community and from studying biblical counseling. I viewed my phobia of vomiting as a childish fear I needed to get over. I considered my obsessive habits around exercise, eating, and structures for cleaning as idolatries to dethrone. I deemed my anxiety and panic attacks as a lack of trust in God’s sovereignty and goodness. I judged my self-hatred as prideful self-love to destroy. Due to bad theology that had become deeply rooted, I reckoned every one of these issues as spiritual problems rooted in sin. I thought since all believers are capable of counselling simply by being a born-again believer, I should be equipped to fix my problems. 

This resulted in seasons of tremendous stuffing of my emotions as I feared for my salvation. I convinced myself that these anxious tendencies meant I was living in unrepentant sin and therefore a nonbeliever. I stuffed as hard as I could until my emotions cried, “Enough!” and burst from their seams in down-spiraling seasons of extreme anxiety, depression, burnout, and anger. 

My debilitating phobia of vomiting brought me to this appointment. For as long as I can remember, the thought of throwing up draws me into extreme panic. As a child, I cycled in seasons of barely eating because of my fear. During my pregnancy with my twins, I developed extreme morning sickness, and spent my days in bed barely eating and engulfed in anxiety every waking and sleeping hour. When the doctors hospitalized me for the second time with dehydration, my obstetrician connected me with a psychiatrist who dealt with maternal mental health. 

I entered that first psychiatry appointment feeling like a failure. It meant that I couldn’t muster up enough faith or strength to kill my sins and change my character flaws, and that I wasn’t trusting in God’s sufficient Word to handle my mental health. Meanwhile, here I sat, allowing secular psychology to infiltrate my life with its “heresy.”

However, as I continued to attend my psychiatry appointments (and later secular counselling appointments as well), their advice and counsel started to actually… help. While I don’t believe any therapy, skill, or medication will completely cure mental illnesses, I started to find relief like I had never experienced before—and I didn’t need to compromise on my theology for the “false” teachings of therapy.

Doubt had already begun to sprout in my mind about biblical counselling, but at this point I truly started to question and undo the teachings of that movement. At that time, I faced the question of the sufficiency of Scripture head-on.

What Does the Sufficiency of Scripture Mean?

Was I truly compromising the sufficiency of Scripture in my life by believing and following the guidance of my therapists? Biblical counselling declared a resounding, “Yes!” in my life for many years. While not all biblical counsellors may agree with that, this is what their covenant (that they are required to sign to become certified) states:

Special revelation is recorded exclusively and completely in the Scriptures. It is an inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient rule for all of life and faith. Because counseling concerns matters of life and faith before God, Scripture is an inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient rule for the presuppositions, principles, and practices of counseling (2 Pet 1:3–21).

We deny that the findings of secular psychology make any essential contribution to biblical counseling.

God’s goodness allows that secular psychology may provide accurate research and make observations that are helpful in understanding counseling issues. Because unbelievers suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness the efforts of secular psychology at interpreting these observations lead to misunderstanding. Because their observations are distorted by a secular apprehension of life their efforts at counseling ministry will be in competition with biblical counseling. They cannot be integrated with the faith once for all delivered to the saints.¹

While they seem to acknowledge that common grace allows for some truth to strain through the sieve of secular psychology, they go on to deny that any of it can be integrated with the Christian faith and are instead in competition with biblical counselling. They allow no room to say secular psychology can be a helpful asset or guide in their counselling work. 

As one who values theology and holds a high view of God and Scripture, it terrified me to think that I could be compromising on the sufficiency of God’s Word. If I viewed the Bible as sufficient, I shouldn’t need secular counselling—according to biblical counselling, secular psychology will do more harm than good. For that reason I suffered in silence, believing that if I could just smash my idols, strengthen my trust, love myself less, and memorize enough Bible verses, I could fix it all. Scripture should be enough for me.

Yet this isn’t what the sufficiency of Scripture means. In my previous article, I discussed how mental illnesses aren’t simply spiritual issues. This means that to look elsewhere for help isn’t a denial of the sufficiency of Scripture. Michael Horton, a well respected Reformed theologian who likewise holds to the sufficiency of Scripture, writes,

The scope of Scripture, then, is God’s commands and promises—law and gospel—centering on the unfolding plan of redemption in Jesus Christ. It is crucial to recognize this point, because we can easily turn the Bible into a “handbook for life,” an answer book or manual of supernatural information on anything that interests us. When we go back to the Bible with our questions, demanding that it speak to whatever we find important or relevant, we force it to speak about things that it does not actually address. As Calvin observed, Moses was not an astronomer and the Pentateuch is not a science textbook … So we must allow Scripture itself to identify its scope and purpose. We come to Scripture with humility, allowing it to give us its own questions as well as answers.²

We can declare the Bible as sufficient and secular psychology as beneficial too. Scripture can encourage us with gospel hope of our identity in Christ (not in our mental illnesses) and eternal life (where all mental illnesses will finally be done away with). The Bible reminds us to set our minds on things above when scary and negative thoughts assail us. God’s Word can comfort us with the love God the Father has for us even when we fall apart or struggle.

However, we must remember that the Bible is sufficient in its scope of law and gospel—not medical diagnosis. Just as we wouldn’t turn to the Bible to help us with diabetes, we shouldn’t expect it to be a sufficient manual for mental health either. God never intended that. Rather, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17 ESV, emphasis mine), not to heal us physically, mentally, and emotionally.

The Gift of Common Grace—Even in Secular Psychology

God, in his goodness, provided common grace. Common grace is the doctrine that tells us God, in the Noahic Covenant, decided to sustain and care for the earth and every living creature rather than allowing it to become completely corrupt and collapse on itself. He allows rain and sun to come on the righteous and the evil (Matt. 5:44–46). By common grace, God allows people who don’t know him or love him to understand the truth about his created world and how it functions. John Calvin expounds on this truth profoundly:

Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver. How, then, can we deny that truth must have beamed on those ancient lawgivers who arranged civil order and discipline with so much equity? Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skilful description of nature, were blind? Shall we deny the possession of intellect to those who drew up rules for discourse, and taught us to speak in accordance with reason? Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art, expended their industry in our behalf were only raving? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold.³

He goes on to say that to deny truth in these secular fields shows ingratitude towards God, the author and giver of all truth. To declare all secular psychology as in competition to biblical counselling and as non-integratable with our faith is an act of ungratefulness to our merciful and loving God who gave us those truths. 

I lived in such ingratitude. I refused to see a psychiatrist or professional counsellor for my mental illnesses because the truth couldn’t possibly be found in their offices. I suffered from ailments of the mind and called them sins, believing that truth could only be found within biblical counselling. I pridefully believed that my meager qualifications⁴ I had earned through ACBC made me qualified and competent to counsel my own mental health issues and the ones of others. I demanded answers from the Bible it never promised to give and twisted Bible verses to fit into my worldview. All the while under the guise that I upheld truth, God’s law, and the sufficiency of his Word. 

Receiving proper counselling led to humility and healing. It taught me gratitude. I’m finally receiving the help I desperately needed for years. It’s caused me to better understand the doctrines of the sufficiency of Scripture and common grace than I did before.

1. “Membership Covenant,” Association of Biblical Counselors, November 28, 2020, https://biblicalcounseling.com/about/beliefs/positions/membership-covenant/ (emphasis mine).

2. Michael Horton, Pilgrim Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 60–61.

3. The Institutes, 2; 2; 15.

4. “Certification,” The Association of Biblical Counselors, November 28, 2020, https://biblicalcounseling.com/training/certification/.