Appreciating Sproul’s Consequences of Ideas for Clinically Informed Biblical Counseling

Our current culture does not exist in a vacuum and has not been formed in isolation from the rest of history. Great thinkers have come before us and have attempted to understand the dilemma of humanity and the effects of sin on humanity. Though these thinkers did not always and openly acknowledge sin and its effects, there was still a desire to understand humans and the world in which humans interacted with other humans and their environment. R.C. Sproul’s book, The Consequences of Ideas, attempts to succinctly summarize, as best as possible, approximately 2600 years of thinkers, starting with Thales of Miletus, born around 625 BC, to modern-day influencers, like Darwin and Freud.

Though we cannot definitively assume that ancient philosophers never encountered the writing of Jewish Old Testament scriptures, if they did, the consequences of ideas go as far back as Moses and the creation story, inspired by the Holy Spirit. After the writers of the Old and New Testament, there were a few early church thinkers who began to wrestle with the theological implications of the Fall, its effects on humanity, and the redemption that Christ offered humanity through his life, death, and resurrection. However, it was Augustine and Aquinas who were able to synthesize ancient thought with biblical thought. These two Christian theologians give biblical psychology a hope and vision to help Christians synthesize all forms of knowledge that give witness to a God who creates.

Sproul highlights Western civilization’s early influencers, called philosophers, who attempted to identify the “first principles or basic truths” of humanity (Sproul, 2000, p. 9). Unfortunately, many of these thinkers formed their ideas without acknowledging the God of the Bible. They encapsulated their ideas in acceptance or rejection of the Greek and Roman gods of their respective cultures and time periods. However, many inevitably rejected any form of deity, false or not. However, because God is still the God of unbelievers and pagan philosophers, regardless of their acknowledgment of Him, we can still learn from them and understand their thoughts, as well as evaluate the implications of their thoughts on and in the world around us.

Exploring ancient philosophers, Sproul allows the reader to see that new ideas were built on previous ideas. What is fascinating about ancient thought is that the divide between philosophy, science, and theology was not separated into distinct categories of exploration, as it is today. According to Sproul, the words of science and philosophy are close relatives, with the etymology of the word ‘science’ meaning “knowledge” and the word ‘philosophy’ meaning the “love of wisdom” (Sproul, 2000). This knowledge and love of wisdom sought to explain and explore the ultimate reality of life. This reality attempted to “transcend the proximate and commonplace and define and explain the data of everyday experience” (Sproul, 2000). Interestingly, the initial philosophers attempted to make sense of the chaos, seek unity despite diversity of thought, and attempt to understand man’s authority over humanity (Sproul, 2000).

Without the wisdom and knowledge of the God of the Bible, their attempts to understand and explain their thoughts and ideas were futile, but not necessarily irrelevant. Though much can be learned from ancient thought, it can never be fully understood without a biblical worldview or biblical psychology for that matter. Sproul’s attempt to explain the futility of the great thinkers of history that he categorizes and describes in his book can be summed up with, “There were purposes without purpose and truths without truth” (Sproul, 2000). Sproul acknowledges that Western civilization’s thinkers sometimes caused radical ideas to erupt from previous ideas once held. Inevitably, people will continue to find themselves having to choose between accepting an idea that claims to be true and one that is true. Furthermore, accepting truth does not have to come at the expense of exploring what the world around us tells us about itself and its Creator.

Aside from Augustine and Aquinas, much of Western thought fails to understand humanity from a Biblical psychology. Sproul writes that “if Western Civilization was saved from disintegrating into barbarianism by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,” (2000, p. 51), then it can be said that Christ and Christianity had a more profound and lasting effect worldwide. Augustine was the first Christian philosopher who affirmed that divine external revelation from God was necessary for any or all knowledge (Sproul, 2000). However, he did not just affirm special revelation, found in the Old and New Testaments, as man’s only source of knowledge. Rather, he also considered general revelation, which can be found in scientific ideas and other sources of knowledge that point to God’s truth.

Augustine viewed the act of self-awareness or self-consciousness as an act that can point one to God (Sproul, 2000). He believed that the knowledge of the self and the knowledge of God are the twin goals of philosophy, which John Calvin would later affirm (Sproul, 2000). Creationism was a Biblical concept that needed to be assumed, and per Augustine, evil was the negation of goodness. Aquinas, a Roman Catholic monk and given the title “Doctor Angelicus” (Sproul, 2000), was considered a “supreme force of scholastic philosophy and theology” who attempted to explain the distinction between nature and grace, body and soul. Aquinas believed that philosophy and theology complemented each other and that grace fulfills nature in a comprehensive way (Sproul, 2000).

Augustine was able to merge/synthesize Platonic philosophy and Christian theology in the same way that Aquinas could merge/synthesize Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology (Sproul, 2000). These two historical Christian philosophical thinkers set the stage for Christian and Biblical Psychology to exist, which plays a significant role in the merging and synthesizing of knowledge from both special revelation and general revelation for the formation of a clinically informed biblical counseling model to help and equip Christians thinkers understand how humans interact with other humans and most importnatnly, how humans interact with God.

Christianity should not ignore the field or discipline of psychology simply because modern secular psychology has choked out the God of the Bible and the doctrine of creationism from its presuppositions or “first truths.” Like Augustine and Aquinas, Christian or Biblical Psychology can seek knowledge from general revelation, like neuroscience findings on how the brain works, to understand various mental health concerns. Learning about the nature of mental health and brain functioning does not erase the truth that God created man or that sin exists because of the Fall. Combining and synthesizing these areas of study, Christian Psychology, Biblical Psychology, and neuroscience findings, can only increase our self-awareness and help us become more self-conscious that we need to be more dependent on God, who created us, and less dependent on ourselves.

Sproul, R. C. (2018). The consequences of ideas: Understanding the concepts that shaped our world. Crossway Books.