Christian Psychology is more commonly called "Biblical Psychology.' While it is true that the Bible was not written as a text - book on psychology, it nowhere sets forth any complete psychology. We shall see that we are correct in formulating a system of psychology more than of ethics, theology or any other science. Every subject of the Word of God grows throughout the Book as the Holy Spirit adds details, here by a type, there by the recounting of some historical dealing of God with the sinner or saint, sometimes by explicit command at others by way of illustration, until the growing picture is complete in ethics, orality, philosophy of life and so in psychology.
We go to the Bible to study True Psychology and find there, the pure revelation of the psychology of man, unadulterated by the vague guesses and tainted imaginations of unregenerated professors. The Bible many times in one verse will reveal to us more true psychology than all the text - books on psychology - analysis and psycho - pathology ever written. That is the hidden reason for all of man's emotional instability, fear complexes, insecurity, evil fixations, immoral and unethical behavior, frustrations and distractions and disintegrations. THEREFORE we are just as correct in studying Biblical or Christian Psychology as we are of studying Christian Ethics, Christian Theology and Christian Dogma.
Certainly since we believe that the Bible is the very Word of God and inspired verbally, fully and infallible as given in the original, that it speaks not with guesses, suppositions and errors as man - made sciences; but it speaks with the very wisdom of the God Who made man, "And needs not that any should testify of man for He knew what was in man." When it speaks of sin as the underlying cause of all maladjustments and disorganization of personality, it speaks with pattern. (And it doesn't have to resort to white rats to do it.) If Psychology is both the study of man's mental and emotional makeup as well as the study of human behavior, then there is no other source with any comparable degree of authority as the Word of God to unmask the heart and mind of man and to tell him the why of his darkened mind and evil hardened heart. This is to say naught of the Bible as the source - book to explain the natural consecrated men psychologically. (See how all the uninspired minds of even consecrated men have erred in the tripartite makeup of man..)
Where else can the real permanent total cure be found, psychologically, for all the personality ills of mankind? The psychologists say, "Is man back into harmony and fellowship with God?"
So this is a course in BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY or Christian Psychology. We shall endeavor to make use of any valid findings of scientific psychology but we shall let the Scriptures give their own particular shades of meaning to the psychological terms it uses rather than to do as most Biblical Psychologists have done in the past; to read into the Biblical terms the modern meanings. Paul was not a psychologist but a Spirit - filled, Spirit - controlled, Spirit-engraced man.
The definition of Psychology is from the Greek word "psuche" or soul and Logos or discourse or study. Biblical Psychology is the description and explanation of man's spiritual and physical constitution, by creation; the fall and redemption from the Holy Scriptures.
That is, what he was in the original creation, what he is by reason of the fall or the presence of sin in his members and what God makes of him in regeneration. It should be very patent, at least, to the Bible Scholar, that there can be no understanding of the science of Nan's spiritual and psychical makeup, no real understanding of why he thinks and acts as he does, no real understanding of the emotional and mental crack ups and enslavement to all kinds of evil and immoral habits, without taking into consideration the fact of his fallen nature. To the Christian it Is clear that there can be no permanent complete cure for man's psychological ills outside of the "new creation" in Christ Jesus. All man - made cures are but panacreas, which treat symptoms and leave the original disease to carry on its dread plague.