Suffering, the Soul, and the Church's Theological Resources.
The contemporary conversation about mental health has reached the church, often in ways that import therapeutic frameworks wholesale and leave Christian theological resources unused. The result is a church that increasingly speaks the language of clinical psychology when its members are suffering and increasingly underuses the resources its own tradition has developed for naming, attending to, and walking alongside human pain.
This series works the question theologically. What does Scripture say about suffering, lament, the soul, and the body? What did the church do with these texts before the rise of the therapeutic? Where does Christian pastoral care belong in relation to clinical mental health care, and where do the two need to be carefully distinguished? The series does not dismiss the contribution of clinical work. It refuses the move that lets clinical categories replace theological ones.
The Series
A multi-episode arc on the long-form Thinking Christian podcast
In conversation with Benjamin Matthew, PhD, Professor of Counselor Education at Columbia International University. Each episode treats a single question at length: what suffering is, what lament does, how Scripture frames the body and the soul, and what faithful pastoral engagement with mental health looks like inside a Christian theological frame.
Bonus Conversations for Patreon Members
Two additional conversations with Benjamin Matthew, available to Thinking Christian Patreon supporters. The public series is complete on its own; the bonus episodes are extra conversations on the same questions, for the listener who wants the conversation to keep going.
About Benjamin Matthew
Benjamin Matthew is Professor of Counselor Education at Columbia International University, where he works at the intersection of Christian theology and the practice of counseling. He brings both clinical expertise and theological literacy to the series, which is what the question requires.