TOTALLY SUFFICIENT: THE BIBLE AND CHRISTIAN COUNSELLING

Written by Ed Hinson & Howard Eyrich (Eds), Reviewed By Steve Timmis

I have to confess to a growing dislike for the word ‘counselling’. It conjures up so many unhelpful images. I heard of one church leader who refused to go to a training session on counselling because he did not want his church meetings to become ‘therapy sessions’. The more popular or fashionable counselling becomes, the more the word will be unhelpful. I am increasingly inclined to use the term ‘evangelism’ because it seems to me that is precisely what our task is: it is to evangelise one another with the gospel; to help one another understand and believe the gospel more and more in terms of its impact upon every aspect of our lives.

Some people might find such a perspective simplistic. But before it is dismissed, this book should be read and its main thesis considered very carefully indeed. It is a serious and timely engagement with a pressing, contemporary issue, namely the evangelical doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. Totally Sufficient is written by a range of contributors (all from the US) and all involved in a variety of counselling ministries. At the heart of the book is the simple conviction that the Bible is totally sufficient when it comes to counselling people with so-called ‘psychological’ problems: ‘Biblical truth is the ultimate truth. It is the propositional revelation of God’s will for our lives. Without hesitation the Bible proclaims its total sufficiency to provide ‘everything pertaining to life and godliness’ (2 Pet. 1:3). Scriptures speaks to every area of personal and practical living. It is God’s blueprint for our lives. Yes, it tells us how to get to heaven, but it also tells us how to make the journey until we get there’ (245). Totally Sufficient covers a range of related issues such as biomedical research, pastoral ministry and even considers aspects of brain research. This is not a superficial book by any means, and a number of the chapters are excellent: ‘Does Biblical Counselling Really Work’ by David Powlison; ‘Is There A Psychiatrist In The House’ by Gray Almy; ‘What’s The Brain Got To Do With It’ by Ed Welch to name but three.

The chapter by Powlison helpfully engages with the so-called Integrationist approach in Counselling. This attempts to brings together Biblical wisdom and insights from the disciplines of psychology and psychotherapy. He asks two fundamental questions by way of assessment, which to this reviewer, get to the very heart of the issue: what is at the bottom of the heart of man? arthropology: how do we know what is true? (epistemology). For example, he applies these questions to the well-known writer Larry Crabb. He acknowledges that for Crabb, ‘exegesis of Scripture is the avowed starting point’. But Powlison then goes on to question that if this is the case, how does Crabb identify yearnings for relational love and significant accomplishment as legitimate and core human needs? ‘These ideas are explicit betrayals of Crabb’s stated epistemological goal because they are exegetically and theologically insupportable’ (73–74).

There are, I think, two weaknesses of the book. First, not all the chapters are of equal weight. No doubt this is inevitable in a book with no fewer than 13 contributors, but one or two of the chapters did disappoint. But perhaps that is only because some of the chapters were so insightful? Secondly, there did not seem to be a uniformity in terms of a commitment to the principle of biblical sufficiency. For example, the chapter entitled True Confessions Of A Professional Counsellor sounded strangely similar to Powlison’s critique of Crabb: ‘We all want to know who we are and that we matter … The matter of worth is of monumental importance in counselling … Do we need to know our identity and have an appropriate sense of worth? Yes.’ (96–97). However, the editors did flag this up in the opening chapters and suggest that we as the readers might even ‘welcome the useful insights of those Christian writers who may still be struggling with a commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture’ (24).

All in all, it is an excellent book. Read it with discernment and engagement, and use the many insights it offers to equip you to evangelise one another better.


Steve Timmis

Sheffield