Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 16:2 (Fall 2025)
Article: “I Never Reconcile Friends”: The Complementarity of Scripture and Common Grace for Counseling
Author: Nate Brooks

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“I Never Reconcile Friends”: The Complementarity of Scripture and Common Grace for Counseling

Nate Brooks

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Abstract: The doctrine of common grace has been a point of controversy within the field of biblical counseling. This article employs Herman Bavinck’s organic motif as a historical guide for rightly ordering the relationship between God’s special revelation and his revelation via common grace. Each mode of revelation provides essential information from God to humanity for the practice of counseling. Historic approaches to Christian counseling have overemphasized one method of revelation. Integrationism overemphasizes revelation via common grace to the functional eclipse of Scripture. Traditional biblical counseling overemphasizes Scripture to the functional eclipse of common grace interventions. A healthy approach to counseling that provides the most help to clients will make use of all that God has given to humanity, through both common grace and special revelation.

Key Words: Bavinck, biblical counseling, integration, organicism, organic motif, neo-calvinism

Charles Spurgeon selected the difficult text of Rom 9:15 for his 239th sermon at New Park Street Chapel in London. Like many reformed preachers before him, Spurgeon sought to untangle the complex dance found in the words, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” When pressed by an imaginary interlocutor as to how he might reconcile human responsibility and divine election, Spurgeon responded, “I never reconcile two friends, never. These two doctrines are friends with one another; for they are both in God’s Word, and I shall not attempt to reconcile them. If you show me that they are enemies, then I will reconcile them.”1 Spurgeon’s words serve as a helpful way of framing the contemporary

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discussion in counseling regarding the interplay of common grace and Scripture.

My goal in this essay is to present a theological vision for rapprochement between common grace and the Scriptures as relevant to counseling via Herman Bavinck’s organic motif. I will accomplish this in four movements. First, I will discuss the unity-in-diversity concept central to organicism. Second, I will discuss how Bavinck’s organicism allows for truth identified by secular psychology to be understood as a product of divine grace vis-à-vis the doctrine of common grace. Third, I will highlight deficiencies in traditional integrationist and biblical counseling models that are elucidated by the organic motif. Fourth, I will conclude b...