Iron-Sharpening Iron
Yesterday, I enjoyed being a part of an interesting Twitter/X thread. It combined tweets by four different biblical counselors on common grace, the sufficiency of Scripture, the body, the soul, the embodied-soul, science/research, and biblical counseling.
Tweet #1: The Danger of “Reverse Integration”
First, Tyler Shores noted,
“We don’t talk enough about the problem of reverse integration in biblical counseling. Reverse integration occurs when spiritual solutions are offered and applied to a problem (or parts of a problem) that isn’t spiritual.”
Tweet #2: The Danger of Mistaking the Physical for “Integration”
Then Rusty Dawson replied,
“There is definitely a balance that is needed in recognizing what is a spiritual problem and what isn’t, while also recognizing that some physical problems can lead to spiritual problems and vice versa. I think a lot of BCs believe that if it is a physical problem then it needs to be addressed outside of the BC room. That’s where this imaginary line is being drawn and anyone seeking to look at the physical must be integrating.”
Tweet #3: The Danger of Reducing People to Souls
Then Brad Hambrick added,
“Interesting concept. If our commitment to biblical solutions causes us to reduce people to souls, and not see other factors contributing to their life struggles, then our commitment to Scripture would have made us a less accurate ambassador of God’s care.”
Tweet #4: The Danger of an Unbiblical Dichotomy Between Body and Soul
Then I chimed in,
“Over the past four years of studying the Bible and church history on common grace and embodied-souls, I’ve been saying: 1. The Bible is sufficient to equip us to engage with, evaluate, and potentially employ common grace information. 2. The Bible calls us to be soul physicians of embodied-souls.”
Tweet #5: The Danger of an Unbiblical Dichotomy Between the Sacred and Secular
I continued,
“And I would add, Everything is ‘spiritual.’ The body is ‘spiritual’ (‘whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God’). There is no dichotomy between the sacred and secular. The Bible teaches that God designed us as embodied-souls so that our body/soul interacts and is interconnected in a complex inter-relationship.
It is sacred to address the embodied-soul. Biblically, dealing with ‘matter’ (the body, the embodied-soul) is not ‘dealing with minor matters or focusing on fixing externals and ignoring the more important matters.’ Instead, matter matters to God. Everything matters to God.”
Further Reflections
Theologically, I think every biblical counselor would/should agree with the essence of this thread.
The Bible’s anthropology—theology of humanity—is not dualistic. The Bible teaches that we are embodied-souls.
We all say, “No biblical counselor minimizes the body.”
In practice, the question is, “What does this look like?”
This is why those who are hesitant about embodied-soul common grace-aware biblical counseling ask,
“Give us an example of a common grace embodied-soul practice that the Bible doesn’t already teach?”
And it is why those who are open to embodied-soul common grace-aware biblical counseling ask an almost identical question,
“You say you believe in good science; could you give an example where you use good common grace science concerning the embodied-soul?”
The Subtle Integration of a Secular, Dualistic, Western Worldview
The Twitter/X thread started with the concept of “reverse integration.” I would add, “the subtle integration of a secular, dualistic, Western worldview.”
We are as immersed in our secular, dualistic, Western worldview just like the proverbial frog in a kettle. We claim to be theologically-aware, but we fail to realize how much our thinking has been impacted by the secular Western world’s unbiblical dichotomy between body and soul.
It is the secular Western world that introduced the dualistic concept of separating the body and soul. It is the Bible that teaches that we are embodied-souls. See: 560 Biblical Passages on Embodied-Souls. It is the Bible that teaches that we are soul physicians of embodied-souls. See: 100 Free Resources for Counseling the Whole Person: Soul Physicians of Embodied-Souls. It is Jesus who models being the Soul Physician of embodied-souls.
Once the secular Western world fell into this false dichotomy between body and soul, then it was a quick step from false dualism to false monism.
- Darwin made everything about the body only.
- Descartes made everything about the mind only.
The Biblical Worldview: Wholistic Thinking and the Embodied-Soul
The Bible, on the other hand, along with Semitic thinking and Ancient Near-Eastern thinking, is wholistic. Old Testament scholar, Hans Walter Wolff, in his classic book, Anthropology of the Old Testament, speaks of biblical/Semitic thought in terms of “stereometric thinking.”
Biblical stereometric thinking views the body and soul as so united and intertwined that a part of the body could represent the soul, and the physical can represent the psychical. For example, in Old Testament anthropology, the “kidneys” or “reins” represent the emotive aspect of the person.
We see similar Old Testament, Semitic thinking in the phrase, “bowels of compassion.” This brings together the inner physical person and the inner psychical/spiritual/emotive person. Deep compassion is experienced not only in the soul, but also in the body. (Note: For my development of these concepts, see my Th.M. Thesis from 1985, Hebrew Anthropological Terms as a Foundation for a Biblical Counseling Model of Man.)
The Apostle Paul, as a biblical, Semitic thinker, communicates this wholistic understanding of personhood when he says,
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1).
For Paul,
- We worship God with our bodies,
- Our bodies are spiritual,
- The physical is spiritual,
- The body is representative of the whole person—the embodied-soul.
Unbiblical Thinking Caused by Integrating Secular Dualism
Because of the “frog in the kettle” phenomena, without realizing it, we integrate the Western, dualistic, secular worldview into our biblical interpretation. A classic example of this is the misinterpretation of 2 Corinthians 4:16 about the “inner man and outer man.” Even in our biblical counseling world we tend to mistakenly identify the “outer man” with focusing on the body, and the “inner man” with focusing on the soul. That’s secular Western dualism, not biblical theological anthropology.
Calvin, interpreting this passage correctly, notes that Chrysostom and others “improperly and ignorantly confound” the inner man and the outer man and “restrict the outer man entirely to the body; but it is a mistake, for the Apostle intended to comprehend, under this term outer man, everything that relates to the present life. As he here sets before us two men, so you must place before your view two kinds of life—the earthly and the heavenly.”
Inner and outer man are not the soul versus the body. Instead, the outer man is a picture of the carnal person who takes his embodied-soul and lives this temporal life with a temporal focus. The inner man is a picture of the mature Christian who takes his embodied-soul and lives this temporal life with an eternal focus.
The Bible does not make the body unspiritual and the soul spiritual. The Bible says that we are a spiritual embodied-soul.”
Unbiblical Counseling Caused by Integrating Secular Dualism
Wrong thinking leads to wrong counseling. Wrong theology leads to wrong methodology.
What does secular dualism integrated into biblical counseling look like in practice?
- Secular dualism says, “Biblical counselors treat the inner man, and they refer outer man issues to physicians.”
However, as we just noted, 1 Corinthians 10:31; Romans 12:1; 2 Corinthians 4:16-18; and at least 557 additional biblical passages teach that the inner man/outer man is not contrasting soul versus body, because we are always embodied-souls—and the embodied-soul is spiritual, sacred. As we said, “matter matters to God.” Biblical counselors minister to the whole person—to the embodied-soul. We are not physicians of the body; we are soul physicians of the embodied-soul.
What does secular dualism integrated into biblical counseling look like in practice?
- Secular dualism says, “Biblical counselors treat the soul; physicians treat the body.”
Actually, good physicians of the body treat the embodied-soul—the whole person. Biblically, no one has ever counseled a disembodied-soul. We seek to understand what the Bible says about the comprehensive, complex interconnected, inter-workings of the embodied-soul. We seek to minister biblically to the embodied-soul—to the whole person.
What does secular dualism integrated into biblical counseling look like in practice?
- Secular dualism says, “When biblical counselors address the body, they are dealing with symptom management, not with true biblical sanctification.”
That mindset is a worldly mindset. That secular mindset goes counter to Paul saying that we offer our bodies to God as a living sacrifice of spiritual worship. That dualistic mindset goes against Paul saying that his personal sanctification included disciplining his body (1 Corinthians 9:27). That Western mindset goes against Paul saying that even the most seemingly “mundane” things like eating and drinking are actually spiritual acts of worship which either glorify God or glorify self.
In Summary
Greg Ellison, in Embodied: Living as Whole People in a Fractured World, summarizes well the contrast between biblical anthropology and secular anthropology.
“The church has been infected with the disease of Gnosticism and neo-Gnosticism. The church elevates spiritual and immaterial matters and minimizes or even denigrates physical and material matters. The church is held captive to anti-body sentiments. As a result, a holistic sanctification—a full-orbed process of maturing as wholly developed Christians that includes making progress as embodied believers—is rarely envisioned and pursued” (127).
We are never more God-dependent than when we surrender out embodied-souls to Christ. As biblical counselors, we must understand the sacredness of the body—of the embodied-soul.
As biblical counselors, we are soul physicians of embodied-souls. We build our methodology of biblical counseling on a biblical theology of embodied-souls.
