ACBC exam, that is the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors exam, the theology exam. And so we're looking at question six tonight, which is, explain the doctrine of the noetic effects of sin relating the doctrine to the ability of secular psychologists to understand true information about the human condition. Sounds a little technical, but basically, it's noetic effects of sin is the effect of sin on the mind, the thinking, Really, the heart, even beyond that, is the heart and the mind are really one biblically, or at least virtually one biblically. The mind is the largest part, the leading part of the heart as the Bible presents it. So we're gonna talk about the effects of sin on the mind and therefore how we should look at the findings of secular psychology because secular psychologists are affected by sin. And so that's the question. How much value can we find and how do we look at the findings of secular psychology? What we're going to see is that biblical counseling believes that there is value there. It's just a matter of being wise and discerning and understanding about how much value we should expect and how careful we should be. So with that introduction, let's go ahead and let's pray and ask the Lord's blessing on our time. Father, we thank You for this opportunity to consider these important matters. We pray that You would help us to think Your thoughts after You, Lord. People who want to be like our Father, be like Christ, to have the mind of Christ. We pray that you would give us now understanding into these things, that we would see what you've said about these important matters, how the soul works, and how we're to understand our relationship to the world and the other truths that are in the world. So give us guidance by your Holy Spirit and through your Word, and help us, Lord, to be pleasing to you in all of our ways. We rejoice in the finished work of Christ on our behalf, and we pray in His name. Amen. Okay, so the handout, one of the things that, first thing that we talk about there in the introduction after the question is laid out is, you know, how do you understand the effects of sin on the mind, and then how we're going to relate to what secular psychology finds, and how we're going to look at that as it seeks to define the human condition. Well, one of the first things we need to remember is what we talked about last week, is we believe that what the Bible teaches about common grace. The Bible does teach that God shows grace to all men that's not a part of salvation, common grace. It's His grace, His kindness, His gifts to all people. And there are a number of ways He manifests that. He cares for people and physical bodies. He providentially governs the universe for our good. And He instructs the minds of people. He guides people into truth. so that unbelievers can experience truth through common grace. And we mentioned last time that's so important because if it wasn't for grace, we wouldn't know anything. Especially given that Satan is the god of this world who is a liar and who wants to blind our eyes to everything. Well, we believe the Bible teaches common grace, so we know there's going to be some truth out there. But we also believe what the Bible says about sin. and fallen humanity. And that is, we believe what the Bible teaches about the noetic effects of sin. Sin's effect on the mind. The reason it's called noetic effects is because of the Greek word nous. N-O-U-S is a word, the noun for the mind. Noeo is a verb which means, I think. I reason, and so the noetic effects of sin is the effects of sin on our thinking. I just happen to throw in there the word newthetic. Remember, newthetic counseling? Well, nous, tithami, together, is newthetic. That tithami means to place, so to place in the mind. So newthetic counseling is counseling which speaks to the mind and reproves the mind and places the mind in right order, that your thinking is corrected. That's newthetic counseling. So anyway, noose. No, it's just a fancy word for the doctrine of sin and its effects on the mind, the human mind. Noetic effects of sin. Okay, that said, now the doctrine stated, point number one, essentially what we understand is that sin has radically affected the human mind. Sin has radically affected the thinking of man. The Bible makes this abundantly clear. And there's three sub-points here that help us to unpack some of the teachings of Scripture about sin's effect on the mind. First of all, sin has darkened the mind. And so we want to look first at 1 Corinthians 2, 11 to 14. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us from God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. And here's the key verse, "...but a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised." A natural man, that is the person who's not been born again, and who's merely an unredeemed soul, a fallen sinner that has not been regenerated by the work of the Holy Spirit, that's the natural man. The natural man cannot comprehend the spiritual things of God. So it's like we're cut off from those realities. This is why one of the reasons that Jesus uses the Well, you have in John, really, his acted-out metaphor when he heals the man born blind, and he says, I'm the light of the world, before that, and I'm the... and, you know, the one who believes in me shall not walk in darkness, and he heals the man born blind, and what John is depicting that miracle up, tying together with Jesus, saying, I'm the light of the world, and saying, look, the reality is all of us are born blind spiritually. We cannot see the spiritual realities, the truths related to God. The most important truths in the universe that relate to us and God, we cannot see. And this is what 1 Corinthians 2.14 is saying. Not only that, turn over to Ephesians 4.18, Well, let's start off in verse 17. "'This I say, therefore,' Paul's writing to the Ephesian believers. This is the section right after what we've been looking at. 4.11-16 we've been looking at on Sunday mornings for the last eight weeks, basically. He said, "'This I say, therefore, and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer,' just as the Gentiles also walk, "'in the futility of their mind.'" Emptiness of their mind. Look what he says next, "'being darkened in their understanding.'" excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. So the mind is darkened. The ability to comprehend and understand is seriously impaired. That's the teaching of the Bible. So, that's the first thing. Now, the second thing, it's not just darkened, though. Scripture goes farther to define the way that the mind has been affected by sin. And the second word that we're using there is alienated. Familiar passage, Romans 1, 18 to 23, where the Apostle Paul is describing how the wrath of God is upon fallen man. And he says in verses 18 to 23, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." That is, that fallen men naturally suppress the truth. They hold it down. They don't want to see it. This was true of all of us. We came into the world with alienated minds that were alienated from God, and we did not want to understand the truth, especially those truths that relate to who God is and who we are in His image. So we suppress the truth in unrighteousness." Look what he goes on to say, "...because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened." So, the heart, again, another way of saying the mind, is darkened because man doesn't want to understand the truth about God. This is the anthropology, as it were. Remember, anthropology is the word for doctrine of man. The biblical doctrine of man, if we look at the world through the lens God has given us of Scripture, He says there is a fundamental problem with humanity that goes to the very core of our being. that we are darkened in our understanding and we are alienated from God so that we do not want to receive His truth. Another passage that shows this alienation is Colossians 1, verse 21. This is where the Apostle Paul is celebrating what's happened to them. He's about to talk about their reconciliation, and he says in Colossians 121, he reminds them of where they came from. He's talking to Christians who've been born again, and he says this, And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death. you were formerly alienated and hostile. And that alienation and hostility caused you to engage in evil deeds actively. Well, that leads us into the third point, hostile. You see, Colossians 121 spoke about alienation and hostility. It's not just that we're darkened and that we're alienated, which means disaffected, distanced from truth. We're actually actively hostile to the truth. and that hostility in mind that does not want to receive the truth and will not submit to the truth. Romans 8, 7 says, the mindset on the flesh is hostile to God and will not submit to the law of God, nor indeed can it. So this is saying that the mind that we come into the world with is opposed to God, doesn't want to see who He truly is, doesn't want to acknowledge Him for who He truly is, and therefore our minds have serious problems. To take that seriously, and let's think about this and the implications of this for the way we should look at truth in the world. We said that there's lots of wonderful truths that fallen men discover, and we see it all around us. You know, I mean, the fact that we can make an airplane fly, the fact that people can fly to other, you know, to the moon, all of these things, the medical science that we have nowadays, there are many wonderful truths that have come, but how do we understand this in light of what the Scripture's saying? And then how's that going to relate to our understanding about biblical counseling and its relationship to secular psychology? The next point is the general implications of this doctrine. And essentially, the way this works is, you have, you, mankind in his, in God's common grace to man and giving him knowledge, man's knowledge there's kinds of knowledge that are less affected by sin than others. Now, it's true that every man is tainted by sin in everything he sees, so he never sees things properly and perfectly. And it's true even of believers. We don't see anything perfectly and totally properly, even with a renewed mind by the Holy Spirit. But an unbeliever especially, everything's always tainted by sin because they're looking at it through a wrong grid. But the idea is, and it's made clear by theologians. Abraham Kuyper talks about this. He says, he was a Dutch theologian, late 19th century, and he said, essentially, that man has a quest for knowledge because he's made in the image of God, and he wants to know, but he has this fundamental heart problem, this fundamental aversion to God that is hindering him at every turn. So the result is, he said, that for instance, he says, for instance, as man looks at the natural world, He can learn amazing things about how, you know, an animal is designed, or how, you know, the cell operates. And he can discover all these wonderful things. But the closer he gets, like even studying about humanity, looking at the body of man, his knowledge is virtually unhindered. It's not totally unhindered. Please understand that. It's always tainted by sin. But relatively speaking, it's much less hindered by sin. But when man starts getting, looking at man even, okay? He's looking at humanity. He starts getting to the spiritual center of life. This is what Kuyper said. When he starts getting close to the spiritual center of life, as he gets closer to that, sin kicks in and distorts his ability to see it. As he looks at man as he really is, he's looking at image of God and he's hating that. And therefore, he is suppressing what he's seeing. You see, as he's getting closer to the center of what life's all about, He is more affected by sin. So that's what I'm talking about with some knowledge is less affected and some is more. Less affected is farther away from the center of life. The center of life is the doctrine of who God is and the doctrine of who we are in His image. And you see this in lots of different ways. I mean, you know, man makes incredible observations about astronomy and the movements of the galaxies and the planets and all of this. Incredible observations. But when they start then trying to reason back to origins, they are getting in, they're getting close to God again. And whenever they start getting close to God, it's like the blindness starts hitting. And this is true in every arena. Because as we saw, what does fallen man do according to Romans 1.18? Remember, that passage is really talking about how God has revealed Himself. And He says, "...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." And He goes on to say, "...for what is known about God is evident in them and around them everywhere." See, He's talking about the knowledge of God, the center of life. What happens is, people suppress that. So in every area, you had people studying and learning and learning, and then when they get closer and closer to the reality, the center of light, they start, you know, they don't know it, they think they're just, they're still making observations, they think they're being reasonable, but they're really being distorted by sin. By a willing, a willful rejection of God. And so that's the essential idea here of the general implications of this doctrine. Remember, the doctrine stated was sin has radically affected the human mind, the ability of the mind to understand. And therefore, then the general implication is that this is particularly seen as you get to understanding the real deep mysteries of life, God, man, His purpose, and His nature. When you start talking about soul issues, now so then, think about that. Now you want to talk about psychology secular Christian counseling that incorporates psychology into it. Doesn't it make sense that you would trust, based on the biblical anthropology we just talked about, that man is this way toward the things of God, doesn't it make sense that you can count on what a geologist says about the formation of a rock and how it's composed, and what more than you can about what someone says about the way the soul works? Yeah. You can trust the scientist, what he says, about the way the weather operates. You know, how rain happens, how snow happens, how lightning is formed. But when you get to issues about the human soul, which is made in the image of God, made for worship, we can expect that there's all kinds of suppression going on. Unconscious suppression. Willful, but unconscious. Not fully cognizant of what they're doing. So that's basically, that's the underlying philosophical, biblical undergirding of a biblical counseling view of how you would look at the findings of secular psychology. Psychiatry. Now, that's the general implications of this doctrine. I wanna talk about the specific implications now. We'll spend the rest of our time there. So let's take that bigger principle and apply it here in a little more care. How then would we look at the findings of secular psychology? There are a lot of people, a lot of Christian counselors who don't like biblical counseling, like where you're coming from, the ACBC sort of model, would say biblical counselors don't listen at all. They don't think there's anything of value out there in secular psychology. And we would say, no, some people may say that, but they're wrong. The guys that really, you know, Heath Lambert, Wayne Mack, all of our J. Adams from the beginning have always said there's value in secular psychology. It's just limited and you have to be very careful with it. But they never said there's not value there. Because the Bible teaches there would be. Because the scientist is made in the image of God, though he's a sinner. He's able to discover things because he's made in the image of God. But we understand that he is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, even as he acquires knowledge. So, Heath Lambert in his really helpful book, The Theology of Biblical Counseling has an excellent section on this, the way that secular psychology relates to biblical counseling. And he talks about there's three levels that we can think of of secular psychology, three levels of analysis that secular psychology does as they're seeking knowledge. Okay, there's three levels of analysis that they operate on. And what we're going to see is as we go from the top to the bottom, they become less and less trustworthy because they're getting closer and closer to the center of life. Even though the whole thing's pretty close, because we know we're talking about the human soul, right? So we're already a little wary, but the first is observation. The specific observations that psychiatrists or psychologists make as they just observe behavior. And these things can be very helpful. Because someone who's, for instance, counseled hundreds and hundreds of people with severe anxiety, they're going to learn some things through practice of seeing behaviors and patterns that would be of help to us. things like schizophrenia or other more complicated things. Psychiatrists that have treated hundreds of people like that, there's value in their observations. And so this is an area where some psychological studies and things are of great value. I say of maybe a great, maybe a little too strong of a word, of significant value. They can be helpful, but they're not necessary. So that doesn't mean you wouldn't use them. You see what I'm saying? You wouldn't have to have it to do what you need to do to help someone walk with God. But it doesn't mean that you might not look at it and use it, but you just don't put your trust in it. Anyway, observations. So that is the first thing. Now, one thing that we need to say, This is, again, applying our theology correctly, is there is no such thing, actually, as a perfectly objective observation. That is an impossibility for a human being. Because God made us to be interpreters. So you never just receive a bare fact. You're always categorizing it, putting it in what you already know. You're thinking about how it fits into what you already know, and you're interpreting it even as you observe it. John Frame says that there's no such thing as a brute fact. Now, we believe in objective truth, absolutely. We just believe that as human beings it's impossible for us to be completely a hundred percent objective. You can be more or less, and with the help of God you can trust with certainty that you know these things to be true, but at the same time there's a humility that says, yeah, we are always interpreting, and this is the way God made us. An example of this would be, like you watched today, just the news reporting, for instance. Or just in this charged political environment, how one thing happens and you have such radically different takes on a fact of something that happened. Think about that. If you flip back and forth from different news channels, same event, being reported, radically different reporting of it. What you see is there's really no such thing as reporting as there is interpretation. And that's part of who we are as humans. Now, the reality is we are supposed to try to be objective. And we should try to be as truthful and objective as we can be, but the reality is that now for the psychiatry-psychology discussion, this means that an unbeliever who doesn't even fully understand his hatred of God, every brute fact he receives in is being interpreted through a grid. He's seeing it through a grid. And so he's missing obvious things and seeing things he wants to see. This is the way that we can't get beyond that. And we need to understand, especially when an unbeliever's looking at things, they're looking at things with a radically different filter than we look at them. You know, we're trying to interpret as redeemed worshipers of God, look at a fact in relation to God, knowing that God interprets that fact. He's the one that defines what that is. They're looking at it as there is no God, man is the greatest thing, and they're looking at it through a grid of hating God, the God of the Bible. So even observations, we have to be aware. But that's still the most usable information. Does that make sense? I'm not trying to say that it's still very helpful to look at these studies, but realize that, again, they may have missed some of the obvious things because they saw what they wanted to see at some level. interpretations is when they're actually trying to put an interpretation on it and explain it. Here's some observations, a study that we've done, and this is what we've concluded, that this particular thing leads to that, or this is always a symptom associated with that, this is the cause of that, this is the reason for that. Interpretations, those are really going to be skewed because they're coming at it with a naturalistic materialism worldview. You know, if you really believe that man is just a biological animal, and that there is no invisible soul, then you're going to try to explain everything in terms of biochemistry, environment, things that have happened to your brain, You see, but if you believe, like we do, that man is a union of body and soul, that the soul is the inner man, the real you is invisible, it's your heart, it's your spirit, it's your soul, it's your mind, biblically, not your brain only, but something immaterial, then that's gonna radically affect the way we see things versus the way they see things. This is why it's so surprising to me that Bible-believing Christians really put that much stock in the findings of secular psychology. and act like that you should, you know, that if you're, they'll act like, because we don't use some studies or things that, findings that they have, that we don't believe in common grace. No, we believe in common grace, but we also believe, the problem is not that we don't believe in common grace, the problem is, to our brothers and sisters who are arguing this way, you don't believe in the noetic effects of sin enough. You're disbelieving what the Bible says about sin. Because you're overestimating what an unbeliever can give you when it comes to how the soul works. I mean, we're not talking about geology or medical science, physiology. We're talking about why a person does the things that they do. The Bible says that's the heart. That's the inner man. So this is why this is such an important thing for us to understand, is because this is an area of real controversy, even in solid Bible teaching churches. I mean, the seminary I went to, for instance, Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, that seminary is kind of now, there's a little bit of a battle going on within it, because it's a pretty good seminary, but over biblical counseling. They have historically been integrated, integrationists, that is, really trying to take, they would say, the best of secular psychology and the Bible, and meld them together, and care for people's souls. And they would emphasize things like, all truth is God's truth, common grace, there's lots of things out there that are of value, and biblical counseling, now what's happened, when I was in seminary way back, that's all they had was integrationist stuff. And now Charlotte, you remember Jim Neuheiser, our guy on the videos, IBCD. They just hired him two or three years ago to head up the biblical counseling department at RTS Charlotte, which I was thrilled because they've always been integrationist. were Larry Crabb and sort of beyond, and now this, I'm like, maybe the chip is turning. Well, I've had some opportunities to talk to some people, and it's like, there's sort of a, there's a battle right now, you know, it's good versus evil, no. There's a battle, well, I guess in a sense it is, but anyway, believers who love the Lord, but have different positions, and we would certainly side clearly with biblical counseling. But, It's exciting to see this happening, that there's a movement. But there you have brothers who disagree so stridently in this area, and it comes down to, do you really believe all the Bible has to say about this issue? And when we look at it carefully, Scripture would tell us that we should be careful about the observations of unbelievers when it comes to spiritual matters. What can they know? And certainly when it comes to their interpretations, where now they're actually drawing conclusions and reasoning from observation about how the soul operates. And then interventions is the third thing. This is the therapies that they use. you know, psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, all the various therapies that are used out there, these are interventions. And these are things that man has tried from his observations and interpretations to figure out how can we help people. And this is one of the areas where I don't understand, too, why our brothers and sisters put so much stock in psychiatry, because the interventions of psychiatry and psychology just don't work. You read studies like people that are depressed, if you give them a drug, then a certain amount of them will be better. If they do therapy, a certain amount of them will be better. If you do nothing, the same amount of them will be better as the drug and the therapy. There's just no answers. Man doesn't have answers for the soul. The Bible is the book that has answers for the soul. Heath Lambert writes this, talking about interventions. He says, Christians should always be suspicious of the counseling interventions of unbelieving therapists. Such suspicions should not be unique to biblical counselors, but to anyone who understands the importance of worldview commitments on our thinking. The counseling techniques of unbelievers are developed after processing their own observation through the grid of an unbelieving worldview. The counseling interventions of unbelievers will be a collage of observations, some true, others untrue, and an atheistic worldview." It's a collage. I like that image. It's things that, some things are true, And there's all these untrue things about their beliefs, and it's from their atheistic worldview. And you put it all together, and now you have an intervention. That's what it really is. The best it is, is a collage with a few true things mixed in. And the farther you go away from observation to intervention, the more distorted it gets. Because there's more operation of the unredeemed human mind, the darkened, alienated, and hostile human mind at work in the process. So how should we respond? Well, I mean, it's appropriate for us to look for it. We can be informed by the observations of good research, research studies. you know, medical knowledge. Doctors do have a lot to say about how the body works that we don't have. The Bible doesn't explain to us how the body works. It's more about the soul. I mean, it tells us some things about the body, but it's not primarily focused with that. It's focused on the inner man. So, it's always good to have our counselees, you know, see physicians and have relationship with physicians is helpful. but we have to see the limitation of those things as well. So, basically, the way to wrap it all up, if we take our doctrine seriously, we take the Bible seriously, then we understand that there really is valuable knowledge out there But that when it comes to knowledge related to the center of life, who man is in the image of God, what his soul is made to be, and there's gonna be fundamental problems with everything secular psychology has to say. Because they define man radically differently than God does. The problem with man for secular psychology is gonna be determined in a way that does not put God at the center. Biblically, the problem, the ultimate problems of man are we're made in the image of God, we're made to reflect God's glory, we're made to be like Him, His image and likeness, and we have become rebels, and we are darkened in our minds, we're alienated from Him, we're of our children, we're children of our father, the devil. I mean, the problems are are just so great, and the only hope is Christ. And then once we repent and place our faith in Jesus, who has died for our sins, then by His Spirit we're born again, and now what's happening is we have a new heart and a new mind, and yet it's still inside of this old nature, And the call is to be changing our thinking and changing our values and changing our actions to be more and more like our Father, more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the call of the Christian life. That's really the goal of counseling for us, is not to help somebody just like you think about when people come with problems, say it's, you know, it's depression, or it's some sexual sin, or it's anger, whatever it is, marital problems, broken marriage, whatever it is, the way we think, even as believers, we want relief. And secular psychology would basically agree that's what we want too, we want relief. But the Christian worldview says, no, it's not, I mean, yeah, we don't want people to be in pain unnecessarily. It's not that we're not sadistic in any way. That's not God. But the main priority is not trying to help someone feel better quickly. The main priority is to lead them to Christ and to help them be like him. So it's like fundamentally different. thought processes. How can you join... What fellowship has light with darkness? You see, that's the basic issue here of integration versus biblical counseling. That's where we're coming from. So that's all we have time for tonight. We need to break for... We're going to pray and then break for our groups. So let's pray together. Father, we thank you for... Lord, just the... clarity of your word that you have given us everything that's necessary to know about who we are, why we're here, and that knowing that, that when you know the truth, it sets you free. When you know the truth of what we're made to be, when you know the truth of what's wrong with us, and when you know the truth of what God has done, and the provision that He's made in the gift of His Son, that is freedom. Let us, Lord, be people of the truth, who love the truth, who speak the truth, who walk in truth. And help us be wise about how to use truth in the world, but in a way that brings everything, every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ. And we pray in His name, amen.