Christian counseling is distinct from secular counseling. According to the International Association of Biblical Counselors, Biblical counseling "seeks to carefully discover those areas in which a Christian may be disobedient to the principles and commands of Scripture and to help him learn how to lovingly submit to God's will." Christian counselors, therefore, approach psychology through the lens of the Bible. They see the Bible as the source of all truth.
History
Christian counseling began between the late 1960s and early 1970s with the Biblical Counseling Movement directed by Jay E. Adams. Adams's 1970 book Competent to Counsel advocated a Christian-based approach which differed from the psychological and psychiatric solutions of the time. As a devout Protestant, Adams believed that it was the job of the church to heal people who he believed were morally corrupt, but labeled by society as mentally ill. He rejected other models of counseling, such as the medical model, which gave clients a medical diagnosis based on a list of their behaviors or actions. Adams believed the lists of maladaptive behaviors listed under each diagnostic category were actually behaviors emanating from our volitional nature, rather than an illness. Maladaptive behaviors, he maintained, are a matter of sin and therefore subject to confrontation and education in God's word, exhorting the client to choose behavior that is obedient to God's word, thus removing the sin in their life. Adams disagreed with any attempt to reclassify behavior that removed people from complete responsibility for their choices.
Adams gained converts but also lost popularity among people as well. Adams' model of Nouthetic counseling identifies many scriptures that a counselor may use to exhort clients to change their behavior and come into obedience and away from sin. The term "nouthetic" derives from the Greek word noutheteo, meaning "to admonish".
Prior to this movement, counseling had become something more secular and not associated with the church. Charles Darwin questioned the book of Genesis and how life began in his book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859. This caused panic in religious traditions which hold a literalist view of the Genesis creation narrative because it called into question everything that they believed. In a similar vein, Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), known as the "father of experimental psychology", sought to explain psychological phenomena in naturalistic terms through careful observation and introspection. He sought to develop psychology into an experimental science that did not simply accept theistic explanations for phenomena. He was one of the main drivers behind psychology being considered a science rather than a nonscientific philosophy. In addition to Wundt, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) believed that the belief in God stems from an individual's experiences with their own father. He stated that an individual's relationship with God is often similar to their relationship with their own father, whether good or bad, and can develop over an individual's lifespan in similar ways to their relationship with their father. He also believed that the relationship between father and son, mediated by an early Oedipus complex, could lead to a "father complex" and subsequent belief in the existence of an exalted and glorified father figure. He developed psychotherapy apart from the church. These were driving factors behind why the responsibility of counseling was moved away from the church and began to be secularized. The church began to fall behind the ever-changing scientific field that seemed to blossom quickly. When Adams did come along he brought the attention back to the church but his influence faded in the 1980s only to be continued by David Powlison. Powlison converted to Christianity in his adult life and became extremely influential in this movement, publishing a journal, the Journal of Biblical Counseling, which made his beliefs known. Because of his work, Biblical counselors reflected on their movement and began to seek ways that it could improve which had never really been called into question before. Powlison aimed to advance what Adams had started.