Christian Counseling Training: The Theology of the Incarnation

 Christian Counseling Training : The Theology of the Incarnation

Christian Counseling training should include a solid understanding of the Incarnation.  This way Christian Counselors can not only counsel but inform their spiritual children of the awesome nature of the Incarnation.  Through an understanding of it, one can appreciate the gift of Christ and his humble birth for our eventual salvation.

There are two aspects to the great mystery of the Incarnation of Christ.  First, one of soteriology and second, one of love.  Soteriology or the study of Redemption points out that after the sin of Adam, man a finite creature owed an infinite debt for sin.  Justice demanded this payment.  Until it was paid, man would be under the spell of Original sin and Lucifer.  This payment was a paradox though.  Man could not pay an infinite debt.  He was incapable.  The debt required a perfect sacrifice and victim but man had to offer it and he was far from perfect.  The answer was the Incarnation of the Logos.  God out of pure love and no obligation paid our debt for us.  He did this by becoming man.  The second person of the Divine Trinity, retaining his divine nature, took upon a human nature to redeem us.  In the Incarnation, a divine nature and a human nature become fused together without tainting the other.  Christ is both man and God; as man he becomes our representative high priest and as God offers the perfect sacrifice.   The second element of the Incarnation is love.  While many believe the Incarnation was merely a reaction to Adam’s sin, many also contend that the Incarnation regardless of sin was inevitable because of God’s love for us.  Because God is immutable, he cannot change or emotionally interact with us.  Through the human infusion into the Logos, Christ is also a human person who can love us as a fellow brother.  He can suffer with us, share emotions and love us.  God wanted to love us at every level and via the Incarnation he was able to accomplish this.

 Through the Incarnation we see a logical step to resolve a paradox but also an ultimate gift of love.  In it, we understand a very important dogma that the early councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon and Constantinople taught against the various heresies of Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism and Monothelitism—-namely that Christ through the Incarnation is fully God and fully human, a Divine intellect and a human soul and body.  In this way Christ is truly Emmanuel or “God among us”.  Christ is Born–Glorify Him

If you are interested in learning more about Christian Counseling Certifications or learning more about Christ, please review the program in Christian Counseling Training.

Mark Moran, MA

Christian Counseling Training: People to Die Unto Themselves

Christian Counseling Training: What is Dying Unto Oneself?

While the martyrs sacrificed their entire being to Christ through death, their initial death was interior.  The martyrdom was merely the fruits of their inner spiritual submission.  Christian Counseling can help many discover their own spiritual martyrdom through death for Christ via submission.
Many will never encounter the executioner’s blade, but many of us will encounter our own sins and lifestyles which can be as deadly as any weapon.  The saints and mystics all encountered themselves and overcame themselves, allowing their version of self to die and become martyred to the life of Christ.  The grace of the Holy Spirit overcame them and they became like Christ.  Through the entire submission of will, they became like the martyrs in all but physical and violent death.
Christian Counselors can help their spiritual children die and be reborn in Christ.  Obviously the sacraments and personal commitment to Christ make us all “reborn” but a true death of self involves more than sacramental grace and courageous proclamations.
A true death of self is putting one’s will, one’s desires, one’s sinful pleasures, one’s ideas and one’s joys second to Christ.  Christ’s will matters most.  The soul that has died for Christ has put on Christ and no longer lives for itself but only Christ.  This involves so much more than merely attending Church or proclaiming a Christian doctrine, but involves submission of the will.  This submission is far from general but a submission to everything that Christ wills.
Many feel these types of submissions are vocational on a macro level.  While this is part of it, it is far from all of it.  True submission and death for Christ involves the micro level as well.  This is where most of us fail and the saints succeed.  Complete submission involves doing things we do not want to do–that may even be entirely non-religiously related.  It involves biting one’s tongue when it is easier to speak gossip, it involves fighting a personal temptation that haunts us on a daily basis, it involves cleaning those dirty dishes you did not soil, it involves going to one’s mundane job because if you do not, the family will starve.
The sacrifice and submission puts our own ego away and accepts the crosses and martyrdom Christ has chosen for us.  How can one dare to proclaim a grand martyrdom when one cannot simply kneel for that extra second, or fast on that particular day?  It is the little things that matter because they are the things we do not choose.  Many choose to go to Church, or give to a charity, or help a friend in need, but it is when we do not choose, that we truly die for Christ.  These sacrifices may not be glamorous as great penances or huge religious rallies for whatever cause, but they are the one’s that are the hardest to submit to.
So unlike Peter, who promised to die for Christ, but could not even avow for him that same evening, let us submit and die for Christ in the smallest things–the things we do not choose.  Then we will truly embark on spiritual martyrdom.
(And of course, Peter later did die for the faith–and very heroically!)
If you are interested in Christian Counseling Courses, please review the program. Our Christian Counseling Training consists of core courses that the qualified professional must take to become certified in Christian Counseling Training.

Mark Moran, MA

Christian Counseling Training: Christian Answers on Prayer and Process Theology

Christian Counseling Training: Is Prayer Useful if God Knows the Future Anyways?

Some say if God knows what will happen, then why even pray for the outcome.
These so-called academics are merely being critical since most have little faith in God or do not believe in him at all.  They merely pose a riddle for Christians to decipher-usually young college students who are not well versed in theology to defend their faith.
The reality is prayer is useful and important and relevant.  There are four purposes of prayer.  The first simply involves adoration.  The second revolves around thanksgiving and the third involves contrition.  The final element of prayer is petition.  Petition is the element where a person asks God for a particular favor.  This obviously is the least reason we should pray but ironically the one most people find themselves using prayer for.  When things are good,  many people do not think about praying to God or adoring him, but the moment a family member becomes sick or a tragedy befalls them, people begin to pray.
While God, as a loving father, does not discourage us from asking him various favors, it is important to use prayer not as a way to get things but as a tool of communication to develop and foster a better spiritual life.
With this said, some people when in crisis will pray, but their prayer is based on a sick faith that seeks contract instead of covenant.  This form of praying hopes to bargain with God for a price.  This is the exact opposite of how Christ taught us to pray in the “Our Father” and again how he set those words to example in the garden where he offered his will to the Father.
Ultimately, during petition, while we must lay out our wishes and desires, we must also conform our will to God and accept his law.  Whether suffering or crosses result, one’s prayer should be to conform to whatever is God’s end purpose for one.  God’s ultimate end is blessings of a spiritual nature and will always answer prayers that seek spiritual growth, however, physical blessings are depended upon the will of God.  Yes, a cure is wonderful, or a material gain is a blessing, but they are not the most important things in the overall existence of oneself-and in some cases, they can be false goods that can lead to one’s own eventual downfall. Christian Counselors should emphasize this point to people.

Prayer and the Future

With an understanding of prayer and its elements, we can now move forward and answer the challenge of non-believers.  To the Christian, prayer for petition does not contradict an Omniscient God who knows the future.  Just because God knows the end result of any petition or favor I may ask, it does not mean I do not play a role in that final decision, even though already preordained in the mind of God.

Christian theology and philosophy teaches that God exists outside of time.  Time is not co-eternal with God but is a creation of God at the moment the universe came into existence.  So before the clock even ticked, there was an eternal God, the Alpha and the Omega.  With this understood, time as an existence and part of our fabric of time and space, did not co-exist with the Creator with no beginning but actually started the moment God created or released the first bit of energy that would transform the universe.
Hence, if God exists outside of time, as an Eternal and All-Knowing Being, he then sees everything in an all present prism.  The moment creation started, so did God witness the end of it.  This may seem impossible to finite beings trapped in time, but is well within the understanding of God’s being.
So when someone prays, God actually sees the prayer of the person and the eventual outcome.  He can choose to apply the petition or choose his own will over ours.  In this way, there is hardly a contradiction or an idea of fate.  The reality is that people play a role in their fate even though God knows the final end; God just merely views the process and the end at the same time.

What Is Process Theology?

While on the interesting topic of time, I would like to delve into a particular philosophy which attempts to pose as Christian but is repugnant to all orthodox theology regarding God.  Process Theology pioneered by Alfred Whitehead found the problem of prayer and fate to be incompatible.  Process Theology rejected the classical metaphysic notion that God created outside of time but that God and time were co-equals because God is a being and hence must exist in a past, present and future paradigm.
Rejecting the wisdom of Aquinas and the idea that God is greater than any force, even time, the Process Theologians created a new metaphysical philosophy.  This new philosophy taught that God as a being existing in time did not know the future since it did not happen yet.  As one can see, this was totally in competition with what Scripture taught about God knowing the future.
The true mask of this heresy was exposed when it even proclaimed that God does not act in the historical and temporal reality of man but answers prayers through inner workings and inspirations.  It was clear from that moment, that Process Theology was a merely a form of Neo-Modernism with all its attempt to “demytholoize Scripture”.
Yet, these “Christians” felt they had done metaphysics a great favor.  Now, one could pray to God and sincerely ask for his aid and help.  With God being a fellow traveler in time, he did not know the outcome and could freely bestow or withdraw his graces from the situation the prayer was involved with.
Obviously, as Christians, we understand that prayer and God’s omniscience is not a contradiction but merely a lack of understanding by temporal beings.
If you are interested in taking courses in Christian Spiritual Counseling for certification, please review the program.  Our Christian Counseling Training can help prepare for you this ministry.

Mark Moran, MA, GC-C, SCC-C