Common Grace in Debate: A Response to Edward T. Welch’s “Common Grace, Knowing People, and the Biblical Counselor”

Can Non-Believers Discover True Things?
Almost twenty years ago, Jay Adams published “Is All Truth God’s Truth?” to examine the implications of this axiom regarding whether psychology is a source of God’s truth.¹Jay E. Adams, Is All Truth God’s Truth? (Memphis, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2004). Adams wrote, “The discoveries [through common grace] are distorted by man’s limitations and rebellion and are certainly not inerrant or inspired, as revelation always is… Revelation comes from God; discovery from man.”²Ibid., 140-1. Adams addressed the theological formulation of special revelation and general revelation for early integrationists and warned against justifying the use of secular sources as “general revelation” to be on the same plane as special revelation in one’s theology of soul care.³One of the most significant attempts to produce an integrative construct is that of Gary R. Collins, The Rebuilding of Psychology: An Integration of Psychology and Christianity (Eastbourne, Eng. : Wheaton, Ill: Coverdale House; Tyndale House, 1977). See also J. Roland Fleck and John D. Carter, eds., Psychology and Christianity: Integrative Readings (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981); Kirk E. Farnsworth, Wholehearted Integration: Harmonizing Psychology and Christianity through Word and Deed (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Book House, 1985); Stanton L. Jones and Richard E. Butman, Modern Psychotherapies: A Comprehensive Christian Approach, 2nd ed (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2011). For critiques of these integrationists’ efforts, see David A. Powlison, “Which Presuppositions? Secular Psychology and the Categories of Biblical Thought,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 12, 4 (December 1984): 270–78; Michael Scott Horton, ed., “Integration or Inundation?” in Power Religion: The Selling out of the Evangelical Church? (Chicago: Moody Pr, 1992); Jay E. Adams, A Call for Discernment: Distinguishing Truth from Error in Today’s Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Timeless Texts, 1999); Heath Lambert et al., Sufficiency: Historic Essays on the Sufficiency of Scripture (Glenside, PA: Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, 2016). Today, the doctrine of common grace has become the new theological category for incorporating and promoting trauma-informed care and evidence-based practices with Scripture in the biblical counseling movement.⁴The doctrine of common grace is now an issue that is debated in the biblical counseling movement. See Brad Hambrick, “Southeastern Theological Review: SEBTS Counseling Professors Roundtable: As It Is and As It Could Be,” Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary 15, 1 (Spring 2024); Nate Brooks et al., “What Is Redemptive Counseling / Clinically Informed Biblical Counseling?” (Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, July 8, 2024), https://www.sebts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/What-is-RCCIBC.pdf; Beth Broom, “Our Ministry Philosophy,” Christian Trauma Healing Network, accessed January 20, 2024, https://christiantraumahealingnetwork.org/about/; Robert W. Kellemen, “7 Reformed Theologians on ‘Common Grace,’” RPM Ministries, August 9, 2022, https://rpmministries.org/2022/08/7-reformed-theologians-on-common-grace/. In his article, Kellemen wrote, “In Reformed Christian theology, unregenerate persons are totally depraved, and all of their thinking is seen as under the noetic (mind) impact of sin and fallenness. Yet, also in Reformed thinking, the unregenerate/unsaved person can make valid contributions to society, culture, the arts, research, science, and more. How can these two truths be held together at one time? The Reformed doctrine of “common grace” explains this…and explains why it is possible for Christians to learn from non-Christians.” For examples of biblical
counselors who have addressed the misused of common grace in counseling, see Ernie Baker,“Presuppositionalism, Common Grace, and Trauma Theory,” Journal of Biblical Soul Care 8, 1 (Spring 2024), https://acbcdigitalresources.s3.us west2.amazonaws.com/resources/JBSC/Spring2024/JBSC+2024+Spring+Baker.pdf; Heath Lambert, Biblical Counseling and Common Grace (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherds Press, 2023); Heath Lambert, “Six Crucial Confusions of The New Integrationists,” First Baptist Church Jacksonville, First Thoughts (blog), May 20, 2024, https://fbcjax.com/first-thoughts/six-crucialconfusions-of-the-new-integrationists/; Heath Lambert, ed., A Call to Clarity: Critical Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling (Jacksonville, FL: First Baptist Church Jacksonville, 2024). The argument is that since believers have an ethical obligation to offer the best care possible, it makes sense that they would use secular discoveries, research, knowledge, and/or interventions to inform their practice of soul care. ⁵Hambrick, “Southeastern Theological Review: SEBTS Counseling Professors Roundtable: As It Is and As It Could Be,” 79. While a different theological doctrine lies at the forefront of biblical counseling debates today, the same question that Jay Adams sought to address remains— “Can non-believers discover true things?” If yes, what do we do with the knowledge of non-believers, as it relates to the counseling issues of men?⁶While the nature of counseling is spiritual/theological, and therefore, the care of souls belongs to the domain of God, the recent issue of neuroscience discoveries (i.e., effects of trauma on the brain and body) have brought a new dimension to the debate—what do we do with the knowledge of non-believers without undermining the sufficiency of Scripture? This author addresses the problems with Welch’s openness to utilize Bessel van der Kolk’s Body Keeps the Score and Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery later in this paper (see p. 26ff), but for now, the author will first address the intricacies of the doctrine of common grace.

This is where the doctrine of common grace is at the crossroads of utilizing extra-biblical information while attempting to maintain the sufficiency of Scripture in a believer’s counseling system. Ed Welch’s essay “Common Grace, Knowing People, and the Biblical Counselor” is an example of misapplying this biblical doctrine to that end.⁷Edward T. Welch, “Common Grace, Knowing People, and the Biblical Counselor,” Journal of Biblical Soul Care 8, no. 1 (Spring 2024). Welch’s essay was first submitted at the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) colloquium held in the summer of 2023. The colloquium was an invitation-only event where experts and leaders in the Biblical Counseling movement were invited to present on the topic of common grace as well as field questions and feedback about their papers.

According to Welch, the doctrine of common grace offers a common epistemological ground for the unregenerate and the regenerate, and among other things, promotes the general helpfulness of observations and descriptions about people and their behaviors from secularists that biblical counselors can utilize to shape soul care methodology. Welch begins his essay with “Biblical counselors always bring extrabiblical information to their care and counsel,” and then proceeds to claim, “given that my own ‘looking’ and knowing people has been useful. I expect that unbelievers will make worthy observations too. Biblical counselors read broadly, not simply to critique the work of unbelievers but also to take away a provocative idea or a methodological trinket that will be reshaped and incorporated into our growing store of wisdom.”⁸Welch, “Common Grace, Knowing People, and the Biblical Counselor,” 24, 38. It is worth noting that Welch contradicts himself by saying, “When secular theories are incorporated into our counsel, the doctrine of sin is the first one to suffer, and when the doctrine of sin is minimized, the gospel of Jesus Christ is lost” (25). Welch cautions against absorbing eclectic pieces of information, yet, his view of common grace results in “[taking] away a provocative idea or a methodological trinket that will be reshaped and incorporated into our growing store of wisdom.” In fact, the utility of extra-biblical information that arises from man’s natural reasoning is one of the reasons some have argued that the rightful place of common grace is found traditionally among Roman Catholics and Arminian thinkers. Both traditions have accented to what all men have in common: the correct use of the rational faculty, the empirical observation of human experience and natural phenomena, and the common comprehension on the part of all men of general and natural revelation. See William D. Dennison, “Van Til and Common Grace,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 9, 2 (1993): 226; David Engelsma, Common Grace Revisited: A Response to Richard J. Mouw’s He Shines in All That’s Fair, RightlyDividing the Word of Truth (Grandville, MI: Reformed Free Pub. Association, 2003), 14;
Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 2. ed, In Defense of Biblical Christianity 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publ. Co, 1967).

In response to Welch’s position, this essay will first address the theological and methodological inconsistencies in Welch’s articulation of common grace. Second, this essay will argue that common grace should be 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 (i.e., physical blessings in the sphere of creation, man’s intellect, and physical abilities) for the providential preservation of the world.⁹“Temporal” in the sense that they do not have any spiritual or eternal value, and these gifts are given to mankind on this side of heaven as an expression of God’s universal benevolence and kindness.

In other words, common grace is a preservative act of God and should not be understood as a positive contribution of unregenerate men. It is not the discoveries, insights, or “good deeds” resulting from the restraint of sin or the use of temporal gifts. A correct understanding of common grace maintains the epistemological and ethical antithesis between the regenerate and the unregenerate, most clearly seen in Romans 1:18-32, without providing biblical counselors with the license to embrace either the content or methodology of secular psychologies. Put simply, mankind benefits from common grace but does not participate in generating it. So, common grace should not be used as a category of knowledge accessed by both the unregenerate and the regenerate because Scripture offers us a comprehensive counseling system, and there will not be any necessary insights from unregenerate men.

To keep reading this essay by Francine Tan in the Journal of Biblical Soul Care Fall Edition 2024, click here.