Counseling at Southern
The headline (“A new way to counsel”) on page 7 of the March 3 Religious Herald is misleading. What Southern Seminary is planning to do with their counseling program is not new. In 1970 Jay Adams heralded a “counseling revolution” with his book, Competent to Counsel. His theory was that only Christians are truly competent to counsel because they use the Bible as their basis.
My understanding of Adams's theory is that one only need be a Christian in order to be competent to counsel others. His approach was “nouthetic,” i.e., “admonishment.” It pretty much boiled down to “God told me to tell you that what you are doing is wrong, so stop it.”
In response to the Herald article, I was not privileged to have Wayne Oates as a professor as I did my seminary training at Southwestern, but I was greatly influenced by his writings. Wayne Oates was a spiritual giant who used Scripture and every other means at his disposal to help thousands of others. The Bible says that we should pray for sick people and annoint them with oil that they may be healed. This was medicine at its best in the first century, but when I need brain surgery, I would like for the surgeon to have more than prayer and oil at his disposal.
Thank you for your good work and thanks for publishing Dr. Bagby's thoughtful response [Herald, March 3] to this nonsense at Southern.
Roberta M. Damon, Richmond
As a minister with two degrees from “the Oates Department” at Southern Seminary and as a former faculty member of that department, I was grieved to read last week's announced changes in Southern Seminary's approach to Christian counseling.
I appreciate the seminary's desire to provide thoroughly biblical training for the ministers being sent to the churches, and this is, in fact what Southern has always done. Of all the persons who have ever ministered at that place where Scripture and psyche meet, none has been so thoroughly biblical as Wayne Oates. Dr. Leigh Conver, chair of the department for more than a decade, has continued that integration with thoroughgoing orthodoxy and with consummate clinical skill.
Southern's dean of theology has been quoted in Baptist Press as faulting the department's previous efforts as “naïve about the presuppositions behind secular psychologies.” Yes, it does happen that efforts at Christian counseling sometimes bow down before a psychotherapeutic “Caesar,” but I know Leigh Conver well enough to know that this has never happened at Southern. Southern's naïveté actually lies in another direction.
I well remember the day that I decided to leave the faculty. I had participated in a group led by a professor from “the new regime” (not from the Oates Department), and I walked out of that room broken-hearted. I thought to myself, “These guys are producing spiritually arrogant and psychologically unaware pastors who are going to tear up churches faster than we can ever put them together again.” When the Reformers cried out “Sola Scriptura!” they did not mean what is meant by that today.
The announced change will not only silence one of the most creative and biblically faithful resources the churches have ever had for soul care, but seems quite likely to be a danger to our churches, as well.
Let the buyer beware.
David C. Stancil, Bristol