By David Winfrey
The Christian counseling department of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which defined the role of pastoral counseling for generations of ministers and Christian counselors, will make a wholesale change by emphasizing “biblical counseling” over behavioral science.
The move is a departure from the previous integrative or “collaborative” approach, favored by many pastoral counseling professors and advocates, which teaches both behavioral sciences and biblical theology to minister to a person's needs.
The move drew unfavorable responses from several Christian counseling specialists who were students of Wayne Oates, the former Southern Seminary professor who established the school's “psychology of religion” department more than 50 years ago and who is considered a pioneer in the pastoral counseling field. (See letter on page 9.)
According to a report from the seminary's news office, the new vision for the department “is a wholesale change of emphasis built upon the view that Scripture is sufficient to answer comprehensively the deepest needs of the human heart.”
Seminary officials said the school's previous model prepared therapists for state licensure more than it did for ministry in the local church.
“We're very concerned with the way in which so many institutions are really being driven by licensure demands in the way that we really intentionally want to be driven by the needs of the churches,” said Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration.
Moore called the previous approach to integrate theology and psychology a “failed” model “because it is so naïve about the presuppositions behind secular psychologies.”
“I think we're seeing now that psychotherapy is not one vision of science,” he said. “You can't simply say you're going to integrate the science of psychotherapy with Scripture because there are only sciences and theories of psychotherapy that are contradictory and incoherent.”
Wade Rowatt, a former professor at Southern Seminary and a counselor at the St. Matthews Pastoral Counseling Center, said the same criticism of multiple and contradictory interpretations could be said of biblical theology, but ministers still learn and apply the Scriptures and integrate them with specific understandings of human personality.
“I don't want to pick a fight with Southern Seminary,” said Rowatt, whose counseling center is affiliated with St. Matthews Baptist Church. “I don't want to pick a fight with this other model. But I do want to speak a clear word of support for the model that has been terminated-that has been there 60-something years. It's a system that's produced chaplains' programs in hundreds of hospitals, that has trained hundreds of military chaplains, thousands of pastors to be effective care-givers in their congregations.”
In the seminary's news report, President Al Mohler said the program will emphasize teaching pastors and other church leaders how to apply Scripture comprehensively to the concerns and crises of everyday life.
But Vicki Hollon, executive director of the Wayne Oates Institute, said seminary officials are creating a false dichotomy “by implying that pastoral care and counseling is not and has not been biblical.”
Associated Baptist Press
David Winfrey is news director of Kentucky Baptists' Western Recorder.