This document provides an overview and summary of Danny L. Kern's book "The Embodied Soul: Understanding Human Emotional Uniqueness for Better Lay Counseling Practices Through Theological Psychology". The book has four purposes: 1) Provide a historical account of the imago Dei and theological psychology 2) Assess common counseling issues regarding emotions and mental illness in the church 3) Argue for developing theologically robust psychology to properly engage with negative emotions in counseling 4) Include an appendix on affective neuroscience and Matthew LaPine's thoughts on anxiety. The document summarizes Kern's examination of topics like the imago Dei, historical perspectives, engaging negative emotions, and affective neuroscience.

1. The Embodied Soul:
Understanding Human Emotional Uniqueness for
Better Lay Counseling Practices Through
Theological Psychology
BY DANNY L. KERNS

2. INTRODUCTION
• This work is designed to be an intervention manual
for counseling in the church that is easily
understood and applicable for enabling holistic care
practices.
This project has four distinct purposes:
i. Fundamental and historical account of the imago Dei and
theological psychology.
ii. Assess the common issues for counseling emotions and
mental illness in the church.
iii. Argument for why lay counselors should work to develop
theologically robust psychology to engage negative
emotions in lay counseling properly.
iv. An appendix to provide interest in affective neuroscience
and Matthew LaPine’s concluding thoughts on anxiety.

3. THEOLOGICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
• This field of study affirms our relationship to the divine by being created
in the image of God (imago Dei). Genesis 1:26-27 states, Then God
said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens
and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping
thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His own image, in
the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
• Therefore, the inquiry of human experience begins with our Creator
(God) and Savior (Christ).
• According to Boice (1982), the three elements of the imago Dei are
personality, morality, and spirituality.
• Cameron (2005) suggests that we reflect God’s rule as we have been
given dominion to steward His good creation.
• If theological anthropology is only revealed truthfully as we understand
human beings in relationship to God, then we must view our humanness
through the person and work of Jesus; any attempts to glean
anthropology apart from this reality will be severely limited and
inadequate (Cortez, 2010).
• With Christ as the true imago Dei, we can see His emotions as
representing perfect humanity.

4. HISTORICAL IMAGO DEI &
THEOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
• Retracing beliefs, perspectives, and historical documents back to the Protestant Reformation serve as the
background of what needs to be added to theological anthropology to better the local church’s knowledge and
counsel.
• Anthony Hoekema and G.C. Berkouwer (LaPine, 2020) claimed that Scripture does not provide a
psychological anthropology as the Bible is not intended to provide explicit data on emotional states.
• Herman Bavinck proposed three points that psychology could benefit from Scripture (LaPine, 2020).
i. The Bible teaches us how man is and will always be in its origin, essence, and destiny.
ii. It gives insight into the soul, its changes from sin and grace, and its motives that cannot be obtained
elsewhere.
iii. It places people as worthy of each other’s consideration, with Christ being the highest among men, full of
grace and truth.
• Robert L. Dabney (1871/1985) concluded that our spirit communicates the imago Dei to our body by the act
of breathing, and this image comprises man’s spiritual and immortal soul in His holiness and dominion.
• The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647, p. 1368) question 17 states, “How did God create man? After God
had made all other creatures, He created man male and female; formed the body of man of the dust of the
ground, and the woman of the rib of the man, embued them living, reasonable, and immortal souls; made
them after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness; having the law of God written in their
hearts, and power to fulfill it, and dominion over the creatures, yet subject to fall.”
• Other historical documents, such as the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and the Belgic Confession (1561),
reflect these Biblical sentiments of being created in the image of God.
• John Calvin’s (Vorster, 2019) anthropology was significantly focused on Christ as the true imago Dei, and he
was cautious about combining both the body and soul as the imago Dei because only the soul proper mirrors
God’s glory.

5. • The definition of emotions has a long history of debate that goes back through the ages to the
philosophers of Ancient Greece, and many complex theories have been offered (Barrett et al., 2016).
• Scripture does not offer a technical definition, though emotional experiences are portrayed throughout it.
However, Dr. Franklin Payne (1989, p. 2) has been bold enough to provide his definition of emotion as
“A momentary (acute) and ongoing (chronic, continuous) disturbance within the mind (soul, spirit)
caused by the discrepancy between perceived reality and one’s desires. Emotions are momentary in
that the immediate circumstances trigger various feelings.”
• Groves and Smith (2019) posit three ways our physiology potentially affects our emotions: too fast or too
slow, too long or too short, and too much or too little.
• We rarely consciously choose what we feel, especially in LaPine’s (2020) argument for church
counselors to account for embodied plasticity (neuroplasticity), which habituates our physical responses
to emotions. Plasticity refers to the brain’s ability to modify, change, and adapt structure and function
throughout life and in response to experience (Voss et al., 2007).
• Mental illness is a significant concern in North America, and too often, the church has unfortunately
forced discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice, leading to feelings of abandonment and shame
(Lehman et al., 2021).
• Research has shown that individuals with severe depression seeking help in the church received
negative social reactions and found themselves being displaced among the church, compounding their
suffering (Lloyd et al., 2022).
• These instances were promoted by ignorance of the powerful instinctual effect of emotional and mental
disorders and literal interpretations of Scripture that see mental illness as spiritual factors such as sin,
demons, and diminished faith (Lloyd, 2023).
ISSUES FOR LAY COUNSELING: EMOTIONS &
MENTAL ILLNESS

6. • William Whitney (2019) encourages lay counselors not to be fearful of engaging with empirical data,
scholarly articles, and psychological understandings because reality is an integrated whole through
the creation of a triune God.
• Whitney (2019, p.44) draws four conclusions in his article:
i. The goodness of the created realm establishes the investigation and exploration of human
nature through science and psychology.
ii. Human nature can be explored through psychology because God’s providential care allows a
particular order of creation to be preserved despite the reality of sin.
iii. God endows humanity with creative abilities to discover and develop the created realm and
culture through the science of psychology.
iv. God’s trinitarian relations with the world establish the theological basis for the social, embodied,
and relational aspects of human nature that can be discerned through the study of psychology.
• Efforts in developing a theological psychology should not forsake the sufficiency of Scripture.
• I am proposing theological psychology as a dedication to studying Scripture, challenging yourself to
see what modern psychology has to offer, and taking those concepts back to Scripture to see if we
are asking the right questions of the text for the care of souls.
• Jeremy Lelek (2021) suggests that the Biblical counselor should not ignore physical issues or
emotional data and examine psychological research and insights through the lens of Scripture.
THEOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY FROM AN
INFORMED TRINITARIAN ACCOUNT OF
CREATION

7. • Before engaging emotions, three questions should be asked (Groves & Smith,
2019):
i. What is the emotion communicating? In fear, it communicates that
something you care about is under threat as a potential loss.
ii. How does this emotion relate to others? It relates to others as it makes
you jump back from others or cling to them as if they were a life raft and
stems from our unwillingness to experience unpleasant feelings, which
causes us to recoil further from healing.
iii. How does this emotion motivate you? It motivates us to seek safety,
certainty, and control.
• To engage an emotion, it must be identified first (Groves & Smith, 2019).
Assess what physical symptoms are present. Are you frequently asking what-if
questions?
• Second, examine what contexts you experience the emotion. Is there a certain
time, place, or person that produces this emotion in you (Groves & Smith,
2019)? What are you doing in response to this?
• Third, evaluate your reaction to your emotion to uncover if it is godly and
constructive or sinful and destructive, as well as how likely the event will come
to pass (Groves & Smith, 2019).
• Finally, you act in response to your emotions. Fear can elicit negative
emotional memories that influence our behavior despite objective reasoning
capabilities (Stevens, 2021). Act by turning to God’s Word and in prayer as He
looks out for us, cares for us, and feels for us (Groves & Smith, 2019).
Practically focus on controlling your breathing as it is the bridge to the
parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming our body
down (Merlin, 2016).
ENGAGING NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

8. • Francis L. Stevens (2021) found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) lacked in effectively caring for his
patients and did not adequately enable them to change their feelings through their thoughts. Affective
neuroscience was the missing link in his practice.
• This term refers to how the brain processes and responds to emotions (Stevens, 2021). He learned that an
emphasis on accepting and engaging emotions in psychotherapy garnered better outcomes for his patients as
they are more concerned with how they feel as opposed to their thoughts and behaviors (Stevens, 2021).
• Looking at the emotional brain (limbic system), the components focused on are the insula, amygdala, and
hippocampus.
• The insula is associated with perceiving and displaying disgust, the amygdala is known for processing the
experience and expression of fear and anxiety, and the hippocampus is closely related to our memory for
encoding and reconstructing memories (Stevens, 2021).
• Matthew LaPine (2020) argues for his version of a holistic tiered psychology based on Thomas Aquinas’ work and
accounting for embodied plasticity. He disagrees with the current understanding of emotions and how Christian
counseling approaches their physicality in the body (LaPine, 2020).
• LaPine (2020, p. 327) suggests that the reality of anxiety in the kingdom of God is “Marked by a tension between
flourishing and suffering that leads us to expect not total psychological tranquility, but a growing embodiment of
the peace of God with groaning.”
• Lay counselors need to understand that anxiety may not dissipate instantly through prayer and thanksgiving
(LaPine, 2020. Still, we are to minister the comfort of Christ, entering empathetically into the sufferer’s anxiety
and absorbing some of the emotional burden (LaPine, 2020).
• Neuroplasticity enables us to be transformed by engaging the whole experience of anxiety, which builds stronger
neural pathways that potentially cultivate improved responses to our struggles (LaPine, 2020).
AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE & ANXIETY

9. Barrett, L. F., Lewis, M., & Haviland-Jones, J. M. (2016). Handbook of emotions (4th ed., pp. 3–37). The Guilford Press.
Boice, J. M. (1982). Genesis: An expositional commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 75–198). Zondervan Publishing Company.
Charles Allan Cameron. (2005). An introduction to “theological anthropology.” Evangel, 23(2), 53–61.
Cortez, M. (2010). Theological anthropology: A guide for the perplexed. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Dabney, R. L. (1985). Syllabus and notes of the course of systematic and polemic theology taught in Union theological seminary, Virginia (2nd ed., pp. 292–293). Presbyterian Publishing
Company of St. Louis. (Original work published 1871)
English Standard Version Bible. (2019). ESV Bible, creeds and confessions edition. Crossway. (Original work published 2001)
Groves, J. A., & Smith, W. T. (2019). Untangling emotions. Crossway.
LaPine, M. A. (2020). The logic of the body: Retrieving theological psychology. Lexham Press.
Lehmann, C. S., Whitney, W. B., Un, J., Payne, J. S., Simanjuntak, M., Hamilton, S., Worku, T., & Fernandez, N. A. (2021). Hospitality towards people with mental illness in the church: A
cross-cultural qualitative study. Pastoral Psychology, 71, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-021-00982-1
Lelek, J. (2021). The sufficiency of scripture and holistic care: A cursory introduction. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 49(3), 268–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/00916471211011600
Lloyd, C. E. M. (2023). “Prayer is fine, but don’t then quickly move on, as if you’re done and dusted”: How can the evangelical church better support those with mental illness?. Journal of
Disability & Religion, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/23312521.2023.2173712
Lloyd, C. E. M., Mengistu, B. S., & Reid, G. (2022). “His main problem was not being in a relationship with God”: Perceptions of depression, help-seeking, and treatment in evangelical
Christianity. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.831534
REFERENCES

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