What do you think?
Rate this book
Dissecting the Heart: Secular Psychology, Spiritual Warfare, and True Theology
Not yet published
Expected 30 Sep 26256 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication September 30, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Review of advance copy
4.5/5.
This book is a collection of David Powlison's lectures at Westminster Seminary on counseling, psychology, and spiritual warfare. The first few lectures were my favorite, in which Powlison expertly identifies how desperately we need the truth of God's Word applied to our lives in psychology, counseling, and therapy. If we're always living in relation to God in some way, either as covenant breakers or covenant keepers, if sin has truly marked our hearts in a way that really effects every lives, and if our greatest need is to be reconciled to the God we were made for, how can true, longterm healing occur without God's self-revelation in His Word?
Powlison has a few great ideas that drive this point home, one of them being the idea of a 'glass floor.' Just like a glass ceiling is an invisible peak you can't break through, a glass floor is the invisible limit to a secular person's ability to plumb the depths of the human heart. Because secular counselors don't have the categories of sin, salvation, redemption, atonement, and covenantal relationship to God, they can't actually peer into the depths of what's going on in human hearts... But the God who has spoken can. I also appreciated Powlison's experience in the psychiatric world, and his testimony that at best, secular therapists can give people ways to cope and manage symptoms... But never ways to truly heal and get to the root.
This isn't to say that Powlison is soft on the failures of Christian counseling. Powlison expertly dissects the problems with what often passes as Christian counseling in churches. In one of his lectures, Powlison walks through 5-6 weaknesses of the modern Christian counseling movement, and The 'pat answer, quick fix' reaction of many Christians who simply sticker a Bible verse on somebody in need and send them on their way. Powlison shows how real Christian counseling is rich, nuanced, and necessary, able to deal with the actual big issues of people's lives.
Because this was a collection of lectures, your mileage will vary, depending on your interest in the topic at hand. This was what kept it from being a 5 star for me. The first part was so strong, and exactly what I was looking for, while the middle section lost a little bit of steam for me. The disconnected nature of a collection of lectures makes it hard for it to feel like a 'perfect book.'
One last note: Pierce Taylor Hibbs' footnotes on Powlison's lectures were excellent, and did exactly what footnotes should do: providing context, clarity, and food for further thought. You could tell that this was a labor of love for Hibbs, who was deeply impacted by Powlison.
If you want to think more carefully about the intersection between Christianity and mental health, this would be a great book to read... Especially the first six chapters.
This book is a collection of David Powlison's lectures at Westminster Seminary on counseling, psychology, and spiritual warfare. The first few lectures were my favorite, in which Powlison expertly identifies how desperately we need the truth of God's Word applied to our lives in psychology, counseling, and therapy. If we're always living in relation to God in some way, either as covenant breakers or covenant keepers, if sin has truly marked our hearts in a way that really effects every lives, and if our greatest need is to be reconciled to the God we were made for, how can true, longterm healing occur without God's self-revelation in His Word?
Powlison has a few great ideas that drive this point home, one of them being the idea of a 'glass floor.' Just like a glass ceiling is an invisible peak you can't break through, a glass floor is the invisible limit to a secular person's ability to plumb the depths of the human heart. Because secular counselors don't have the categories of sin, salvation, redemption, atonement, and covenantal relationship to God, they can't actually peer into the depths of what's going on in human hearts... But the God who has spoken can. I also appreciated Powlison's experience in the psychiatric world, and his testimony that at best, secular therapists can give people ways to cope and manage symptoms... But never ways to truly heal and get to the root.
This isn't to say that Powlison is soft on the failures of Christian counseling. Powlison expertly dissects the problems with what often passes as Christian counseling in churches. In one of his lectures, Powlison walks through 5-6 weaknesses of the modern Christian counseling movement, and The 'pat answer, quick fix' reaction of many Christians who simply sticker a Bible verse on somebody in need and send them on their way. Powlison shows how real Christian counseling is rich, nuanced, and necessary, able to deal with the actual big issues of people's lives.
Because this was a collection of lectures, your mileage will vary, depending on your interest in the topic at hand. This was what kept it from being a 5 star for me. The first part was so strong, and exactly what I was looking for, while the middle section lost a little bit of steam for me. The disconnected nature of a collection of lectures makes it hard for it to feel like a 'perfect book.'
One last note: Pierce Taylor Hibbs' footnotes on Powlison's lectures were excellent, and did exactly what footnotes should do: providing context, clarity, and food for further thought. You could tell that this was a labor of love for Hibbs, who was deeply impacted by Powlison.
If you want to think more carefully about the intersection between Christianity and mental health, this would be a great book to read... Especially the first six chapters.
Displaying 1 of 1 review