Free Resource: Common Grace and Biblical Counseling

Your Free Gift from Bob

To download a free copy of my 84-page, 32,500-word PDF document on common grace and biblical counseling, go here:

Common Grace and Biblical Counseling: Wisdom from Reformed Theologians: PDF Document.

To read the 32,500-word blog post on common grace and biblical counseling, go here:

Common Grace and Biblical Counseling: Wisdom from Reformed Theologians: Blog Edition.

Some Recent History and Some Classic History 

In 2022, I began sharing posts where I collated quotes from Reformed theologians regarding common grace—and how it relates to biblical counseling. I’ve wanted to collate those quotes into one document and one blog post. Two years later I’ve accomplished that goal. Here are links to the original posts in the blog series:

1. What Is Common Grace?
2. 7 Reformed Theologians on “Common Grace.”
3. John Calvin on Common Grace.
4. John Calvin: “Integrationist?”
5. Herman Bavinck on “Common Grace,” Part 1.
6. Herman Bavinck on “Common Grace,” Part 2.
7. Abraham Kuyper on Common Grace.
8. Every Square Inch of Human Existence: Kuyper on God’s All-Encompassing Common Grace.
9. Van Til, Kuyper, Bavinck, and Biblical Counselors: An Assessment.
10. Cornelius Van Til on Common Grace: In His Own Words.
11. Cornelius Van Til: “Zombie-Infected”?
12. David Powlison on Common Grace, Biblical Counseling and Secular Psychology
13. John Frame on Common Grace, Biblical Counseling, and Christian Integrative Counseling.
14. Common Grace and Biblical Counseling: Wisdom from Reformed Theologians. 

Please note that each author wrote comprehensively on common grace. Even in a lengthy document, I am only able to provide samplers from each theologian.

Here’s the order in which you’ll find the quotes in the collated blog post and in the PDF document:

1. John Calvin
2. Herman Bavinck
3. Abraham Kuyper
4. Cornelius Van Til
5. David Powlison
6. John Frame
7. Charles Hodge
8. John Murray
9. Tim Keller
10. R .C. Sproul 

Why Common Grace? 

But why expend so much time and energy collating what Reformed theologians have taught about common grace? I’ve done this because common grace has become a major topic of discussion in the modern biblical counseling world. Some biblical counselors are seeking to minimize or even change how the historic Reformed doctrine of common grace has been understood and applied.

For example, Francine Tan, in her article in the ACBC’s Journal of Biblical Soul Care, Fall 2024, Vol 8 #2, “Common Grace in Debate,” suggested a major reworking and significant minimizing of the historic Reformed doctrine of common grace. Tan states,

“Thus, I propose that biblical counselors ought to revisit how we define CG and make a few qualifications to the traditional Reformed view of CG. When CG is defined as God’s non-salvific yet kind posture towards all mankind, displayed in the delay of final judgment, the restraint of sin’s full impact on the earth, and the bestowal of temporal gifts for the providential preservation of the world, the doctrine distinctly remains an expression of God’s communicable attributes of kindness and goodness. CG should not be understood as the positive contributions made by unregenerate men through discoveries, insights, or ‘good deeds’” (83).

This significant limiting of the Reformed doctrine of common grace is in opposition to Calvin (here and here), Bavinck (here and here), Kuyper (here and here), Van Til (here and here), Frame (here) and Powlison (here), to name just a few leading Reformed theologians and one leading Reformed biblical counselor.

To relate common grace to biblical counseling, we first need to see, in a comprehensive way, how Reformed theologians have defined common grace. By comprehensive, first, I first mean a collation that gives voice to those Reformed authors known as having developed classic statements on common grace.

Second, by comprehensive, I mean quoting them on what they said about common grace, instead of quoting them primarily or only on what they said about total depravity. As these quotes will document, Reformed theologians developed their biblical thinking on common grace because they recognized both the Bible’s teaching on the noetic effect of sin, and the Bible’s teaching on God’s gifts to non-Christians. You’ll see this focus repeatedly in the primary quotations contained in this document. To relate common grace to biblical counseling, we also need to ask and answer a very specific question:

How have Reformed theologians applied the doctrine of common grace in relationship to the use of extra-biblical resources from non-Christians?

We can’t simply quote the Reformers on total depravity. We can’t simply quote Reform theologians on common grace. If we want to relate common grace to biblical counseling, then we must quote Reformed theologians on what they said about their actual beliefs and practices concerning the Christian use of non-Christian common grace resources. This document does that repeatedly. It provides you with the first-hand, primary source material to make your own informed decisions about how Reformed theologians applied common grace resources in their ministries.