SYNOPSIS

What does the word psychology mean? How does psychology interact with the Christian faith? How does Scripture’s view of human nature relate to modern social and behavioral sciences?

God’s view of what makes us tick (psychology) and His call for us to help each other through honest, loving conversation (psychotherapy) differ radically from the theories and therapies that dominated psychological discourse and practice in the twentieth century. Only a psychology that is loyal to the Christian faith will understand and cure the madness in our hearts and lives because these realities have to do with God. With a well-trained ability to think from faith’s point of view, Christians and Christian counselors can learn from, and interact appropriately with, other psychologies, other points of view, and other conversations.

Christians are called to become radical reformers within the institutional structures and cultural mindset of a psychologized society in which everything is explained by secular psychological principles. We are called to become well-tuned instruments of Christ’s grace to the out-of-control, the needy, and the confused. As we develop and hone faith’s distinctive message, methods, and institutional structures, faith’s psychology will again be seen as radical, satisfying, and true, and it will carry the day against its worldly competitors.

How do destructive people become constructive? How do out-of-control people become fruitfully self-controlled? How do rigid people become flexible? How do distracted people learn to focus? How do hopeless people grow in hope? How do angry people learn to make peace? Before we ask How, we must ask, Why are troubled people troubled? What is wrong with us?

I came to Christ while being a true believer in secular psychology. When I came to know the living God, my plan to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology while working in a psychiatric hospital was radically rerouted. As my faith grew, I realized that Christians have a profoundly different way of looking at the nature of people and their problems than does secular psychology—and that is through the lens of Scripture.¹

Here is the problem, however: modern society as a whole has largely ignored Scripture’s way of explaining and engaging people. What must we do to recover the centrality of Scripture for helping people to grow up into the image of Christ? How can we reconfigure face-to-face “helping” relationships to serve as instruments of the only enduring wisdom and the only true humanity? To recover the centrality of Scripture for the cure of souls demands two things: conviction backed up with content.

The conviction? Scripture is about understanding and helping people. The scope of Scripture’s sufficiency includes those face-to-face relationships that our Western culture labels counseling or psychotherapy.

The content? The problems, needs, and struggles of real people—right down to the details—must be rationally explained by the categories the Bible uses to help us understand human life: “lusts of the flesh” (e.g., fornication, greed, gluttony, jealousy, envy); “fear of man” (e.g., need for approval of others, self-esteem, self-pity, feelings of inadequacy); “desires of the mind” (e.g., power, control, domination, success, wealth, self-righteousness); “pride,” and others.

Conviction alone simply waves a flag and eventually degenerates into sloganeering, but comprehensive and penetrating conviction demonstrated in action edifies the teachable and persuades the skeptical. A key ingredient in such persuasion will be to parade the riches of Scripture for curing souls.²

Portraying the Christian faith’s psychology in detail lies far beyond the scope of this article, but in its briefest form, our psychology says the following: human beings live actively accountable to the true God who knows and weighs our desires, motives, and actions. We are innately, actively, and thoroughly worshipers, lovers, fearers, trusters, believers, obeyers, hopers, seekers, and desirers of one thing or another. The human heart and our responses are ruled: We heed either the true God or a host of identifiable lies, lusts, idols, voices, and pretenders.

Human beings are fundamentally depraved: morally bent, dark, insane, and unholy in relation to the God who made us. We are moral responders, but we do not live in a vacuum: significant forces affect us and to some degree constrain and shape us. These forces, however, only set the stage on which we live. They operate within God’s sovereign government and provide the context that reveals our hearts’ desires and our loyalties. Everything in our lives matters—the varied trials and temptations; the sufferings of being sinned against and the joys of being loved; the abilities and disabilities of genetic inheritance and physiological functioning; the blessings and curses of economic, political, and technological conditions; the opportunities and constraints of each historical moment; and so forth—but these forces do not control our fundamental direction. In the Bible’s view, such things can never be the ultimate cause of our soul’s pervasive moral insanity.

Human beings are not fundamentally deprived, as if the nature and/or nurture we received could explain the most significant things about us. We are active agents. We are not products of conditioned drives (behavioral psychology), physiological dysfunctions (biopsychiatry), unmet needs (humanistic psychology), or traumatized or conflicted instincts (psychodynamic psychology). We are not self-determined, whether responsible to ourselves (per philosophical psychologies, such as existential, logotherapeutic, rational-emotive, and cognitive) or responsible to society (per moralistic psychologies). The Bible teaches a God-centered view of both the outward influences on life and the inward springs of life.

Consistent Christianity rethinks the modern psychologies, looking at them through the lens of Scripture. When problems of person and situation are conceived in relation to God, then the only sufficient and logical solution is Christ, as the Bible presents Him. In faith’s view, biblical counseling is the fundamentally personalized, face-to-face ministry of this Christ within the context of His redeemed and redeeming community.³ Biblical counseling is not simply throwing Bible verses at counselees, though. Neither is it tacking verses of Scripture onto secular psychological principles. Biblical counseling involves understanding what Scripture teaches about the human heart’s motivations and then guiding others to this understanding. Out of this understanding come changed hearts, changed motivations, and changed lives—lives that are God-centered, not self-centered.

WHICH PSYCHOLOGY DO YOU MEAN?

The word psychology serves us in the same way that the words religion, philosophy, literature, and politics serve us. Big words label realms of ultimate concern: Who am I? What matters? What should be? What must change and how?

We hear generalizations such as “psychology’s research findings show…” or “psychology is able to teach us that….” What do such phrases mean? There is no unitary psychology. Whenever someone cites the teachings of “psychology,” we must always ask, “Which psychology do you mean?” There are many different psychologies (like there are many religions).

Many different meanings are attached to the word psychology and the potential to confuse them is high. In this article I will consider six slices of this semantic pie.

1. PSYCHOLOGY PER SE

The bedrock meaning, psychology per se, simply refers to the functioning of the human soul itself. People operate heart, soul, mind, and might in relation to everything under the sun and over the sun. Psychology is not the cancer ravaging your body, but your response to the cancer. It is not the social conditions that you experience, but how you interpret and respond to them. It is not the wrenching experiences you faced as a child, but how you live your life now. It is neither the Devil nor God. It is how you respond to the Devil’s sayings and doings and how you respond to God. It is how you embrace or evade truth. The core meaning of psychology is simply you.

Your psychology is what you are about—the functional aspects of your life: belief, memory, emotion, conscience, identity, will, attitude, action, speech, imagination, perception, desire, knowledge, self-deception, and anticipation as well as the various dynamics and interrelationships that exist within these. In addition, every context influences your heart, soul, mind, and might. What you interact with moment-by-moment is fair game for psychological interest. The soul’s functions are wedded to the body and include our heredity, social networks, culture, economics, politics, and language. Psychology is all about you in your world.

Like all the modern Western psychologies (and all world religions that substitute for psychology in non-Westernized places), the Christian faith is busy with psychology per se. Every believer ought to be a psychologist in the best sense of the word. We ought to study the soul. We ought to know people and understand what makes them tick. We ought to see God’s gaze after Him—God’s view of the human person and condition—if we are to proceed wisely to intervene to change those things that need changing in every nation, tribe, tongue, and people. We also ought to know ourselves as we actually are if we are ever to live wisely. Finally, while busy ministering to people, Christianity also ought to subject its psychological competitors to a radical critique.

2. PSYCHOLOGY AS KNOWLEDGE ABOUT HUMAN FUNCTIONING

Psychology as knowledge refers to many sorts of close observations and descriptions of human functioning. Case experience and research findings “ring bells” with readers. We understand the pain and confusion of a woman abused as a child and now abused by her husband. We sense the pain and anger of the constantly arguing couple locked in a seemingly hopeless power struggle.

This descriptive aspect of psychology intuitively seems to be the most objective, neutral, scientific, and informative. The potential always exists, however, to misinterpret and misuse these observations. The more important something is for understanding and influencing what makes people tick—the closer it gets to personality theory and applied psychology—the more potential there is for distorted interpretation. Christians and non-Christians both ring bells of experience with case-study details, but a world of difference exists between a “codependent’s wounded inner child”⁴ and a person whose “fear of man”⁵ has replaced fear of God. Wisdom—a biblical understanding of the human condition and an ability to address that condition constructively—will not be significantly altered by a new theory of brain processing or memory.

Psychological theory never presents “just the facts.” A theory selects facts based on what it has determined to be significant. Secular psychological research does not see or report the most significant pieces of information about people, and it invariably misses the overall pattern of what is there. Only faith turns up the magnifying power without losing breadth: God’s point of view.

In a God-made, God-sustained, God-interpreted world, observational data expresses the distorting effect of secularity in any theory. Observations are always presented in a context of meanings, beliefs, values, priorities, and goals. Psychoanalyst Karen Horney, for example, sees people who pursue human approval, power, pleasure, and safety as having “neurotic needs,”⁶ not “lusts of the flesh.” Only the faith principle (God’s point of view) corrects this distortion. We as Christians must interact with secular knowledge with an intentional, self-conscious ambivalence, always thinking through what we hear in the light of what we already know in the faith. We must always expand our understanding of the scope of faith’s applicability to all of life.

Alfred Adler’s theory of “individual psychology,” for example, continues to exert a profound effect on modern psychologies, such as cognitive psychology, family systems, self-esteem theory, and intervention techniques in counseling. But how useful is Adler’s detailed portrayal of the “inferiority complex” in once-tiny people,⁷ compared with the biblical portrayal of the “desires of body and mind” complex that enslaves sinful people of any size (Eph. 2:3)? Did Adler teach things comparable to biblical truth? Yes. A theory would babble if it did not speak at least half-truths. Christians, nevertheless, must reinterpret everything through God’s gaze. Adler’s catalog of human depravity—vanity, jealousy, avarice, hate, and faint-heartedness—rings true, but his description of this condition is warped by his theory. He sees sin, but calls it something else.

Would Christians ever integrate Adler and Christian faith? No. A biblical gaze converts Adler’s gaze and changes his “facts.” God sees everything and controls it all for His own purposes. The Bible guides us into seeing things, more and more, from God’s point of view. Of course, we who profess the faith are not immune to distortions and fabrications, but God patiently teaches us—individually and corporately, over decades and centuries—how to see what we most need to see.

How should biblical counselors view psychological information? Bring it on! It is the stuff of life that only the Christian faith weighs properly. Bring on all sorts of documents, portrayals of life that also need interpretation through faith’s eyes: imaginative literature, history, cross-cultural studies, film, popular music, cultural anthropology, the daily newspaper, and lots of other things whose epistemological status is the same as modern psychologies. With a well-trained ability to think from faith’s point of view (Heb. 5:14), we can learn from, and interact with, anything.

3. PSYCHOLOGY AS COMPETING PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFEAND THEORIES OF HUMAN PERSONALITY

Modern psychology is a marketplace of differing popular philosophies of life. Each psychology’s interpretive system sets up categories and labels that map onto life. Norms and ideals set standards against which diagnoses are made. Therapies aspire to alter life.

Psychological professionals lament the seemingly irresolvable chaos in their field. Robert Coles wrote, “This is all in a ‘field’ all too prone toward ideological splits and antagonisms, if not outright internecine war.”⁸ No bridging theory reconciles conflicting views; instead, eclecticism is the order of the day. Eclecticism offers a pragmatic way to keep going, but it is an intellectual counsel of despair.

Other observers of modern psychological theorizing express skepticism. Thomas Kuhn considered psychology to be “pre-scientific” because it had never attained to any agreed-on paradigm.⁹ Karl Popper thought that Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Alfred Adler’s so-called “individual psychology” had more in common with primitive myths than with science.¹⁰ Gerald Grob called the search for the cause of troubled and troublesome people the “holy grail” of theory, but “the very concept of mental disease, for example, could not be separated from the deeper and more profound problem of explaining the nature of human beings in general and their behavior in particular.”¹¹ George Marsden spoke of the “obviously Herculean task of integrating the largely opposed assumptions of modern psychology and evangelical theology.”¹²

In the social sciences (and particularly in psychology, because it aims closest to the human heart), consensus is elusive and disagreement abounds. The secular psychologies chase a rainbow: an explanation that what is wrong with us is anything but sin against God, and a cure for the human condition that is anything but Christ. Biblical wisdom, however, says, “The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live” (Ecc. 9:3 NKJV). Sinners theorize sinfully about sinners.

Noting overtly incompatible points of view does not speak the final word. The Christian perspective does not rest on skepticism. Our point of view rests on the true explanation that subjects all other explanations of human life to the deepest possible criticism. An underlying falsehood unifies the seeming incompatible psychologies: All agree that human beings are autonomous, rather than responsible to an objective God who acts and speaks. All agree that the problem with people is anything but sin; problems can be explained in purely psychological terms. All agree in identifying some sort of determining factor that replaces choice either for or against God as the central, specific, and pervasive issue of human existence. All agree that both answers and power to change reside in either the individual, in human relationships, or in medical chemistry. All agree that anything but Jesus Christ and the ministry of the Word will be the answer to sin and misery (our dysfunctions, dysphorias, and syndromes). All busy themselves trying to prove that anything but the Christian view of things is true. In the most fundamental sense, all the varied psychologies are committed to being wrong in the same way. However striking their observations or their effects, they impart a false consciousness to their devotees. These devotees must be subjected to radical demythologizing by Christian presuppositions and invited to intelligent repentance.

We forget the following important things, however: First, faith is a “theory” whose view of human nature competes head-on with personality theories, and a “therapy” whose cure of souls competes head-on with modern psychotherapies.

Second, we who hold to the Christian faith face a problem of our own making: we truncate the scope and depth of the faith. We relegate it to “spiritual” matters, as a separate component of our lives. We view Scripture as a helpful “resource” to aid with problems that others define. We lose the detail, relevance, purposes, and breadth of God’s communication in the Bible. Scripture does not discuss our soul’s dynamics in the form of a psychology textbook, research study, or self-help book; it discusses us and addresses us in a better form.

Third, those who do not hold to the Christian faith view it not as a rational system, but as a form of superstition, moralism, and irrationalism. Our God-centered rational system is directly opposed by naturalistic rational systems. Secular theoreticians of the soul are among many moderns (including Christians!) who believe that the faith’s perspective on the psyche has little value for use in probing the psyche and alleviating its problems. Christians, instead, simply must say, “On the contrary….” The psyche, rationally understood, operates the way God says it does. It operates with respect to God. Any theory that explains the psyche’s essential operations as a self-contained entity, as a social role within a social system, as a phenomenon of biology, or as some combination of all three, is wrong—for rational reasons.

Granted, there has been a serious lack of fresh pastoral theological labor among Bible believers since the mid-nineteenth century. The church often has been an uneasy borrower from the achievements of those committed to erasing sin as the rational diagnosis and Christ as the rational cure. Christians have had relatively little of significance to say or do about those phenomena, problems, and conflicts that now bear the labels psychological, mental, social, emotional, behavioral, developmental, interpersonal, cross-cultural, temperament, or adjustment. Even a cursory reading of the Bible, however, shows a dominating concern for precisely those things. The modern psychologies have appropriated (or been granted) the heartland of the faith. We have deferred and referred to secular wisdoms and neglected to cultivate our own wisdom. Christians need to reclaim the faith’s heartland.

Adequate wisdom for counseling is not a present possession of the church, and such wisdom is not acquired easily. Our “theory,” however, does not need to be created out of nothing. A biblical psychology for the third millennium will break huge tracts of fresh ground, be consistent with belief, and extend the application of that belief.

4. PSYCHOLOGY AS PSYCHOTHERAPY

Counseling practices and strategies are designed to facilitate change in beliefs, behaviors, feelings, attitudes, values, and relationships. Theory guides this intervention. One cannot help another person change without an ideal for human functioning. An ideal declares criteria of good and evil (although most practitioners do not acknowledge the moral nature of their ideals). A practitioner identifies discrepancies between the ideal and problems, dysfunctions, illnesses, syndromes, and sins, and then makes a diagnosis. The ideal then serves as a beacon toward which their counseling conversations aim.

In America, counseling conversation became associated with psychiatrists (1910s), clinical social workers (1920s), and clinical psychologists (1940s). Twentieth-century America saw an explosion of professionals claiming to help people by talking with them. Prior to that time, only pastors had any rationale for intentional interventive conversation. Between the Civil War and the 1920s, however, pastors lost their leadership role in counseling troubled people because “clergy analysis remained primitive” during the very time that powerful competing models and professions arose outside of the church.¹³

Psychotherapy is conversation. A “therapist” seeks to “heal” the “patient” through talking. The whole process is an “educative” experience under the leadership of an expert who strategically intervenes in another’s life.¹⁴ Representatives of any counseling school (e.g., cognitive, behavioral, existential, Adlerian, family systems, nouthetic), however, could say something similar. Even Carl Rogers ought to have said it, because his purportedly “nondirective” counseling actually did very directive things covertly.

To phrase this in words from the faith: all counseling attempts to be pastoral. Basic tools of all counseling are the same: “speak the truth in love,” using all the ingredients of any effective and ethical attempt to persuade another person. A message—some “truth” about what is wrong, what should be different, and how to get there—aims to restructure and reeducate the soul. Modern psychotherapy is simply the attempt to do face-to-face pastoral work in service to different gods (e.g., self, feelings, desires of the body or mind, pleasure), different ideals (e.g., the “good life,” wealth, entitlement), different diagnosis (e.g., addiction, dependency, poor self-esteem), and a different gospel (e.g., man is the center of all things, “I deserve it”).

Faith teaches us to make a searching criticism of psychological theories and psychotherapeutic activities. What should we think, however, about the instances of good sense and insight one finds scattered in psychology books, the caring and helpful things done in psychotherapies, the precisely accurate observations, and the winsome personal characteristics of individual psychologists? The most accurate way to put it is that these are not intrinsic to the logic of any secular psychological model. They arise not from what is distinctly secular psychology, but from God’s providential common grace that scatters blessings and restrains evils.

Again, consider Alfred Adler as a case in point, not because he is so unusual, but because he is so typical. He knew that love—“social feeling”—is better than hate, isolation, manipulation, and fear. Adler’s relative goodness unwittingly points to something better. His best insights and most pressing concerns come into their own only within the fuller model of the faith. God shouts clearly what others mumble. Adler’s relative goodness rebukes us who profess the faith. Where we are ignorant about people, remote from human need, and slow when it comes to helping others, God uses Adler’s example to reprove us—not so we would become Adlerians, but so we would grow more faithful to the faith.

5. PSYCHOLOGY AS A SYSTEM OF INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

Ideas and practices do not exist in a vacuum; they happen somewhere. Psychotherapeutic educational departments, accrediting boards, licensing laws and courts, patients, referral systems, publishers, drug companies, medical doctors, and health insurance companies all contribute to psychology as a “mental health system.” The various psychologies wield power in our society because theories and therapies have become institutionalized. Institutional structures quietly shape many assumptions that work against the faith. Biblical categories such as sin, God’s sovereignty, repentance, faith, obedience, and the Holy Spirit are inconspicuous in comparison to, for example, the labels of mental illness found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the bible of secular psychology.

Institutional structures are not givens of the natural order; they are functional. Faith critiques the working of the various forces—personal, social, professional, political, cultural, and economic—that create and sustain such structures. Faith has as much to say about normative institutional structures and professional roles as it does about theory of personality and counseling methodology. In Ephesians 3:14–5:2, the people of God are called to mobilize as a transformative countercultural community. When the church falls short of God’s will, the solution is not to change the goal and take recourse in autonomous mental health professionalism. Faith intends to exercise authority and oversight in the counseling field, both over the faith and practice of personal ministry (theory and therapy), and over the institutional arrangements that deliver care (education, accreditation, licensing, counseling, and supervision). An autonomous counseling profession ordained by the state is unconscionable. The church itself is called to counsel as an instrument of Christ’s grace and wisdom.

6. PSYCHOLOGY AS MASS ETHOS

Psychology in this final sense is the mindset of a therapeutic society. Whole categories of life experience have become “psychologized,” and because the modern psychologies borrow heavily from medical prestige and metaphors, they also have become “medicalized.” Existential and relational realities of life—pointedly addressed by the faith—are often interpreted as medical and therapeutic drama. Signposts to this phenomenon abound: terms such as alcoholism, dysfunctionality, victimization; a proliferation of syndromes; the explosion of Ritalin and Prozac use; and psychologized legal defenses. Life turns on whether we feel good, not on what God thinks of us. The spirit of the age is the pervasive foe of faith—a mass religion that has “no fear of God before its eyes” (Rom. 3:18).

Therapeutic language has infiltrated Christianity. It is not surprising to hear people in the church foyer talking about “dysfunctional family upbringing,” “victimization,” “self-esteem,” “needs not being met,” and how “antidepressants help.” People read their lives in terms of the therapeutic, rather than through God’s gaze on the same phenomena. Os Guinness called the modern psychologies “carriers of idolatry and heresy,” adding that the therapeutic is “a substitute theology designed to replace faith in God.”¹⁵ Sincere counselors may bridle at this point, but there is no question that psychology itself has become an ideology—a set of ideas that serves the interests of an entire industry.

Faith will eventually draw converts from among the multitude who imbibe psychology as ethos as well as from the more self-consciously psychologized. These converts need continual discipleship into the radically different thought forms and practices taught and modeled in Scripture. Much of the ongoing work of counseling and discipleship involves the progressive reshaping of psychologized people in biblical wisdom. Faith teaches us to focus on God in Christ instead of around the self with its feelings and desires.

notes

1. David Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition Through the Lens of Scripture (Phillipsburg, NJ: P and R, 2003).

2. David Powlison, “The Sufficiency of Scripture to Diagnose and Cure Souls,” Journal of Biblical Counseling 23, 3 (Summer 2005): 2–13.

3. Ephesians 3:14–5:2 offers a compact, 600-word summary of the faith’s psychology.

4. John Bradshaw, Homecoming (New York: Bantam, 1990).

5. Edward Welch, When People Are Big and God Is Small (Phillipsburg, NJ: P and R, 1997).

6. Karen Horney, Self-analysis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1942).

7. Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature, trans. Colin Brett (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1927).

8. Robert Coles, The Mind’s Fate: A Psychiatrist Looks at His Profession (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1995), xxv.

9. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), viii.

10. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Confutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper Row, 1965), 34.

11. Gerald Grob, “Psychiatry’s Holy Grail: The Search for Mechanisms of Mental Diseases,” Bulletin of History of Medicine 72, 2: 182–219.

12. George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1987), 238.

13. Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988), 299.

14. Sigmund Freud, “Some Character-types Met With in Psycho-analytic Work,” in On the History of the Psycho-analytic Movement, vol. 14. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (New York: Norton, 1976), 312.

15. Os Guiness, “America’s Last Men and Their Magnificent Talking Cure,” in No God but God, ed. Os Guiness and J. Seel (Chicago: Moody Press, 1992), 114.

Mention the concept of “forensic theology,” even among people who like to discuss theology, and you may hear a response of skepticism tinged with humor. The concept came to my attention through a report by former Sunday Times (London) journalist Stephen Grey in the November 2004 issue of Atlantic magazine.

On GetReligion.org, a weblog I edit about mass-media coverage of religion, two readers poked fun at the concept. Darrell Grizzle, a reader from Atlanta, wrote: “I can see the CSI team arriving at the scene of a murder: ‘This looks like the work of a pantheist.’ ‘No, the evidence suggests a team of theistic existentialists is responsible.’”

Anton Sherwood added to the fun: “We were meant to think it was a Fooist ceremony gone wrong, but the killer’s knowledge of Fooism was evidently shallow: these candle stubs are the wrong color for that date.”

As Grey reported, however, forensic theology is a real discipline in which, as the name implies, religion scholars help law enforcement investigate and prevent crime, and help the judicial system decide cases involving religious liberty. If you doubt the potential of forensic theology, consider the inferno that occurred when federal authorities invaded David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

As scholar Nancy Ammerman documents in her chapter of Armageddon in Waco, one problem with the standoff was authorities’ failure to understand the Branch Davidians in religious terms. Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms did not “consult with outside persons in religious studies, sociology of religion, or psychology of religion,” she writes. “There were, for instance, persons in the Baylor University Department of Religion who had studied this particular group for much of its history; they were not consulted.”

Ammerman told CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL that authorities should not necessarily consult theologians, who are trained to make arguments within a belief system. Religious-studies professors, who study many religions’ differing beliefs, are more likely to help authorities understand the theological dimensions of a group like the Branch Davidians.

Grey’s report concentrated on how forensic theologians have assisted investigators around the world in sorting out real Islamic terrorists from people who issue similar-sounding statements. Grey cites the example of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which translates sermons and mass media from throughout Islamic nations:

MEMRI’s analysts found that a supposed al-Qaeda statement issued on March 12, which claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombings the day before, deviated from Osama bin Laden’s scholarly Islamic style in several respects. Among other things, it termed the 9/11 attacks “events” rather than “raids” (a translation of the early-Islamic word ghazwah), and talked about foreign “agents” (a word common in the vocabulary of nationalist ideology), whereas bin Laden and his followers typically call their enemies “infidels.” It also referred to the Madrid attacks as “messages,” a word out of keeping with the way bin Laden casts his operations.

MEMRI’s work sometimes has attracted criticism from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper declined an interview request from the JOURNAL, but in 2002 he blasted MEMRI in an interview with Online Journalism Review. “They look for the absolute worst, most inflammatory rhetoric they can find in the Arabic press,” he told Tim Cavanaugh. “It’s kind of like if we translated Franklin Graham’s remarks [condemning Islam as a ‘wicked’ religion], and then went to the Arabic press and said ‘See, this is what they’re saying in America.’”

Yigal Carmon is a cofounder of MEMRI and former chief antiterrorism adviser to Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir. “The Arab press is indeed immersed in a lot of hatred for America that comes from Islamic religious leaders,” Carmon told the Washington Times in response to CAIR’s charges. “But what interests me most is the dissident voices, the moderate voices that are struggling to be heard from the margins of Arabic society. Islam must be reformed and there are many Muslims out there trying to do it. But the Saudi-financed news media keeps them shut out of the public discourse.” Grey’s Atlantic report described Carmon as a pioneer in the field of forensic theology.

For Frank Flinn of the University of Washington in St. Louis, being a forensic theologian has meant testifying in dozens of legal cases involving members of Sun Myung Moon’s Unificiation Church, Scientologists, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Hare Krishnas.

Flinn, a Roman Catholic, told the JOURNAL that his understanding of different religions led him to argue for their First Amendment rights. Flinn says that studying and defending minority religions has made him a strong believer in a strict separation of church and state.

Unlike some other fierce believers in the separation of church and state, Flinn argues less for a naked public square than for the government to leave religions alone, regardless of whether their beliefs are conventional or orthodox. Flinn says he first became involved in such discussions in the late 1960s, when he and a fellow scholar, Joseph O’Connell, began defending the International Society for Krishna Consciousness against charges of being a cult. Flinn said he and O’Connell wrote a letter defending the Krishnas as representing an ancient religion.

Flinn said he was once approached by a prosecutor who asked for advice on a case involving a Krishna practitioner who would not return any change on a $20 bill. Flinn said he would be happy to help if the prosecutor treated the case as a common theft; but if the prosecutor tried to argue that the Krishna stole the money because of his religious beliefs, Flinn warned him, he would face Flinn as a witness for the defense.

The prosecutor understood Flinn’s distinction, tried the case as a common theft, and won an easy conviction.

Flinn believes that so long as a group is truly a religion, which he says requires belief in a Supreme Being, it should enjoy the same religious freedom as established religions. He wonders whether America would have fewer problems today with violent polygamous offshoots of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints if the government had not outlawed polygamy. He believes U.S. v. Reynolds, the Supreme Court ruling that outlawed polygamy, will be challenged someday because of widespread polygamy among Muslim immigrants.

Flinn does draw a line, however: he recalls that he once declined a request from Satanists that he defend their rights. “Satan is not a Supreme Power,” Flinn says he told them. “He’s a counter-power.”

— Douglas LeBlanc

SYNOPSIS

Sigmund Freud despised religion, theism, and the Bible, and, although his goal was to eradicate the problem of guilt, he is ultimately responsible for confusing it. His primary motivation for psychoanalysis was to transform guilt into neurosis and sin into sickness. Freud believed that guilt must be eliminated through self-analysis and that our struggle to transcend the stifling codes of culture is inescapable unless we are willing to break out of our moral prison. Freud viewed himself as a destroyer of conventions whose purpose was to dissociate guilt from sin, making it a problem for science rather than faith.

A careful study of Freudian thought reminds us that as long as people continue to believe in a view that relegates the problem of guilt to biological determinism and ignores individual responsibility, Freud is with us. Secular thinkers, for better or worse, consider him an architect of the modern mind, whereas Christian critics name him an unholy builder of said modern mind, in the line of Marx and Darwin.

FREUDIAN GUILT: from either a dread of an external authority or dread of the demands and punish-ments of the superego, an internalized authority. It is through drive-repressing guilt and the resulting sublimations that civilization arose. Guilt also has a primeval source: the murder of the primal father.¹

Sigmund Freud wrote Civilization and Its Discontents in 1929 and it was first published under the German title of Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (“The Uneasiness in Culture”) in 1930. In the book, one of his most important and widely read, Freud espouses his view of the nature of the individual and the individual’s place in civilization.

Freud believed that as individuals we find ourselves struggling between a quest for freedom and culture’s attempts to have us conform. The urge to conform can inhibit our instinctual drives and leave us with a nagging sense of false guilt, an “uneasiness” of conscience.

A MESS OF POTTAGE

In the early 1960s, psychologist and one-time president of the American Psychological Association, O.Hobart Mowrer, confronted clients with the controversial idea that people who were labeled neurotic could be helped by confessing and taking responsibility for their deviant behavior. A non-Christian, Mowrer “challenged the entire field of psychiatry, declaring it a failure, and sought to refute its fundamental Freudian presuppositions. Boldly he threw down the gauntlet to conservative Christians as well. He asked: ‘Has Evangelical religion sold its birthright for a mess of psychological pottage?’”²

In his book The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion,³ Mowrer rejected the Medical Model of psychiatry (the patient as mentally ill or as victim suffering from poor mental health) and put forth a Moral Model (the patient as suffering from real guilt, not guilt feelings [false guilt]). He writes: “The basic irregularity is not emotional, but behavioral. [The patient] is not a victim of his conscience, but a violator of it. He must stop blaming others and accept responsibility for his own poor behavior. Problems may be solved, not by ventilation of feelings, but rather by confession of sin.”⁴

From his position of prominence within the Ivory Tower of the psychoanalytic culture, Mowrer realized that Freudian psychoanalysis turns out to be “an archeological expedition back into the past in which a search is made for others on whom to pin the blame for the patient’s behavior.”⁵

THE RISE OF “OPRAHFICATION”

There’s a popular neologism (“new word”) for the demise of the biblical approach to the problem of guilt and the exaltation of the morally neutral ventilator—the phenomenon of “Oprahfication.”⁶ Following an episode of Oprah in 2004, social critic Philip Terzian wrote:

You read a lot about the Oprahfication of American culture—the exaltation of victimhood, the no-fault moral universe, the abuse of public discourse for private therapy—and it pays to witness the phenomenon at Ground Zero. No one in American political life has claimed that mantle of victimhood, or reaped the benefits of fake sincerity, with as much success as Bill Clinton, and Oprah Winfrey is the national laureate of pop therapy. Sitting before a rapt audience of thirty-somethings, the former president recounted the childhood horrors of a negative body image and a drunken stepfather and the grown-up challenges of brutal Republicans and journalists who live to hurt politicians’ feelings. Oprah was, at all times, duly sympathetic and handled the subject of adultery with considerable skill: Scolding her guest with affectionate concern, she drew from her audience laughter and applause simultaneously. This enabled Mr. Clinton to smile in his trademark boyish fashion and pledge that marathon counseling had made him a better man, better husband, better father, better president and better guest on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show.’⁷

How has our culture come to this place theologian David F. Wells labels “the bonfire of the self,”⁸ where people “have lost their capacity to think of themselves as moral beings,”⁹ where they make no room for a reality that transcends their experience and self-understanding? Of the paradox, Wells writes, “First, we now have no transcendent reference point outside of ourselves. Second, sin has become a conceptual impossibility. However, since we continue to sin, much of our life has become inexplicable to us. These losses in understanding are lethal to our discovery of who we are as human beings and so to our identity.”¹⁰

GUILT AS MAN’S BASIC PROBLEM

In the summer of 1997, exactly one-hundred years beyond Freud’s first intense interaction with religious phenomena and the beginning of his own self-analysis in 1897, after two weeks visiting Nazi Labor and death camps in Germany and Poland, I came by Eurail to the foot of the Heumoz mountains in the Swiss Alps. There I boarded an incline for a ride up into the heart of Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri Fellowship¹¹ for a time of intense study and the opportunity, I hoped, to get my mind off the absurdity of Hitler’s “final solution.”

I arrived at the cozy retreat to discover it was between student summer sessions and virtually abandoned. Alone in the Fellowship library, surrounded by hundreds of volumes of the thoughts of great thinkers, I came across a seventy-six-page book humbly titled Freud,¹² written by theologian Rousas J.Rushdoony.¹³ For the next few days, beginning very early in the morning and lasting long into the night, I explored his thesis that the central problem Freud confronted was the nature and character of guilt and the development of a method for its eradication.

As I write this article, a decade after that experience, I realize why I was so consumed by Rushdoony’s perspective. Five years prior to that trip to L’Abri, in 1992, I was an upstart professional freelance writer plying my trade for national magazines when I was commissioned by Harper’s magazine to do research on white supremacist groups in America. As I combed through stacks of their propaganda riddled with the rhetoric of hate and destruction, I was shocked when I came across a pamphlet blatantly denying that mass extermination of Jewish people had even occurred. I pledged right there and then to visit the sites of concentration camps myself one day, so that I could see it for myself.

At L’Abri, after fulfilling my pledge to wade through historical remnants of Nazi sewers of depravity, alone in that quiet place, my thoughts and experiences coalesced. I realized clearly the guilt of the white racist and the German fascist were cut from the same cloth, one denying the other fabricating a death machine responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women, boys, and girls. I saw in Rushdoony’s reasoning, how Freud’s desire to eradicate religion under the banner of illusion and eliminate guilt through the language of biological determinism let them both off the hook, with neither God to judge nor conscience to condemn them.

The Move from Sin to Dissociated Guilt

Freud’s theories, Rushdoony observed, were developed in self-analysis and in tandem with his fascination and exploration of religion and neurosis and confirmed in the psychoanalysis of others. “In himself Freud had discovered the dreams and desires for incest, parricide, and every other facet of his theory, and these discoveries were confirmed in his unconscious feelings with respect to his father, mother, and daughters,”¹⁴ writes Freudian scholar Ernest Jones. “This self-analysis continued, so that in 1910 he could write… ‘A part of homosexual cathexis [i.e., a concentration of psychological energy focused on homosexuality] has been withdrawn and made use of to enlarge my own ego.’”¹⁵

Why would Freud choose to explore such worlds? It was not the ’unconscious,’ for the doctrine of the unconscious was an old one when Freud was born. Neither was it ’sex,’ for in Freud’s day,”¹⁶ many scholars studied sex.¹⁷ Rushdoony adds that although sex was important to Freud’s theory, to make it central is to misunderstand the theory. He concludes, “What then was Freud’s central concern and the key to his theory? It was his concern with the feeling of guilt.”¹⁸

Freud’s close friend Ernest Jones recognized the essential nature of this concern in Freud’s study Civilization and its Discontents.¹⁹ In his biography of Freud, Jones writes, of Freud’s “intention to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the evolution of culture, and to convey that the price of progress in civilization is paid by forfeiting happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.”²⁰ Freud’s move from sin to dissociated guilt was his attempt to reckon with the idea of Christian guilt. As he saw it, regardless of advances in culture, a person struggling with guilt was rendered helpless. Freudian scholar, Egon Friedell, believes Freud alienated himself from other materialists by introducing “a religious premise into a godless world…an unheard of starting point for a man of science [but one that others saw] as the rebirth of the soul in Western culture.”²¹

Freud was a scientist not a theologian, more concerned with the psychology of religion than the nature of faith. “There was no reason why Freud should have been so engaged by the problem of religion—at least no obvious, psychoanalyzable reason. He had never gone through a phase of faith; no family pieties had stifled him so that he had to speak out,” writes Freudian scholar Philip Reiff. “His free-thinking father…raised his children in a secular atmosphere. After a childhood devoid of religious impulse and schooling, Freud was easily converted to the Darwinian gospel…”²² It was only natural, for Freud to address religious belief through anthropology, “instead of dealing with guilt in terms of God, creation, and man’s fall.”²³

A PRIMER ON FREUD’S PSYCHOLOGY

For Freud, naturalistic anthropology²⁴ had to be the basis for a proper psychology, such that he could say, “in the psychical field the biological factor is really the rock-bottom.”²⁵ By “biological factor”, he meant the evolutionary biology of the day. Let us examine briefly Freud’s concept of psychology in the context of his anthropology.

Id, Ego, and Superego

There are three major aspects of the human personality, according to Freud—the id, the ego, and the superego. An attempt to translate these terms into clear language will be helpful here.

Latin for “it,” the id is the psychological makeup of a person at birth, including instincts. Within the unconscious processes of the id resides a vast reservoir of psychological energy.

The pleasure principle governs the operations of the id, working to reduce any uncomfortable level of tension that might accumulate in the unconscious mind. Take for example a hungry person who has a mental picture of a cheeseburger in a dream. Freud says that this can’t really reduce the tension of being hungry because it is not possible to eat the “dream burger.” As this is the case, the id is going to require a new structure to help it bring unfulfilled desires to fruition. This is the ego.

The ego mediates for us between the id and the world outside. It can help the dreamer, for example, search out, discover, and take possession of the cheeseburger so that it can eradicate the tension from being hungry. “The ego is the executive of the personality, because it controls the gateways to action, selects the features of the environment to which it will respond, and decides which needs will be satisfied and in what order,” writes Freudian scholar, Vernon J.Nordby; “It has to try to integrate the conflicting demands of the id, the superego, and the external world.”²⁶

The reality principle governs the ego, and attempts to prevent the discharge of tension until it can be satisfied by its desired object—until, to stay with our example, the cheeseburger actually can be obtained and eaten, thus eliminating the hunger. The reality principle’s process works to eliminate any fantasy or hallucination put forth by the pleasure principle that might prove harmful to our psyches and to keep our attention focused on objects in reality that are actual and not potential; to effect reason and rationality over idealism and vain speculation. Freud called the process by which the reality principle compares fantasy with reality in order to determine which actually comes to pass reality testing.

The superego contains “the traditional values, ideals, and moral standards of society as interpreted to the child by his parents, and enforced by means of a system of rewards and punishments imposed upon the child.”²⁷ The superego pushes the child toward perfection and forces the child to treat any guilt he or she struggles with due to moral norms, in Freudian terms, as simply misplaced psychical energy or, in other words, unnecessary and unwarranted thoughts or feelings. One substructure of the superego generates in us a sense of guilt when we violate moral norms, and the other generates in us a sense of pride when we behave properly.

Will, Mind, and Conscience

These three systems that Freud says comprise the psyche and form the personality are familiar categories to the Western mind. Rushdoony, as has been typical among Christian scholars who explore Freudian theory, compared the id to the fallen will of humanity that we inherited from Adam, the ego to the human mind and its thought processes, and the superego to the active conscience.

Christian scholars have recognized that no other modern thinker, apart from the obvious historical Christian tradition, has explored the guilt question as openly and passionately as did Freud: “Thus he faced the religious issue of guilt with a messianic faith in science’s ability, if not to dissolve guilt, at least to reduce it to biology and then to answer it with scientific understanding. Other psychologists have sought to ignore the religious implications of man’s personality. Freud recognized them and sought to dissolve and destroy them.”²⁸

The Instinct to Eradicate Guilt

There are two classes of instincts (or inborn psychological wishes to satisfy bodily needs)²⁹ for Freud. Life instincts such as hunger, thirst, and sex, promote survival and propagation. Death instincts promote the desire, which Freud saw as universal, to eradicate psychological struggle, such as guilt, through death or destruction. The ego’s life instinct of libido, or “the dynamic manifestation of sexuality,”³⁰ is responsible for fostering neuroses. As Nordby explains:

For Freud, “the forces of the neuroses originate in the sexual life.” And sexual life is burdened by guilt, coming in part from the Super-ego and the early, repressive training of the child, and from the id, where ancient taboos are equally strong impulses as are biological energies. As a result, man is torn between a desire to violate the taboo and a desire to obey the taboo, the result being a continual ambivalence, a “wish and counter-wish.”³¹

This conflict leads to the repression of the libido; this repression, in turn, produces anxiety. Freud’s concepts of neuroses and anxiety clearly result from his biological interpretation of guilt.

A MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY OF RELIGION

From the balcony of his biological worldview Freud boldly proclaimed to the progenitors of religion below, “I regard myself as one of the most dangerous enemies of religion,”³² and of God, he declared, “I stand in no awe whatever of the Almighty. If we were ever to meet I should have more reproaches to make to Him than He could make to me. I would ask Him why He hadn’t endowed me with better intellectual equipment, and He couldn’t complain that I have failed to make the best use of my so-called freedom.”³³

Christianity was merely a “myth” that Freud explained away with his anthropology. As a Jew, Freud was more in rebellion against Moses than against Jesus Christ. He saw himself as a guide to a new promised land and as a giver of a new law who “must be destructive of Moses.”³⁴ In his later work Moses and Monotheism, Freud set out to refashion Moses and to depose his Law and the guilt of breaking that Law. According to Freudian scholar David Bakan, Freud performed the “Messianic function of relieving guilt, the very same function he ascribes to Jesus.”³⁵ He continues, “The Devil in Jewish legend tempted Jews to apostasy, in a sense to the golden calf. Freud saw himself as Satan in this sense, as a deliverer, and remarked, ’Do you know that I am the Devil? All my life I have had to play the Devil, in order that others would be able to build the most beautiful cathedral with the materials that I produced.’”³⁶

Freud’s premise in Moses and Monotheism is that Moses was an Egyptian Gentile. He seeks (1) to usurp Moses’ claim as deliverer of the elect, (2) to expose Moses’ law as bondage and Moses as a false deliverer, and (3) to rewrite history in terms of his theory of the primal horde.³⁷ In this manner, Freud could maintain that, through their id and superego and on behalf of the people he represented Moses, as a father, gained his vengeance on the primal law of the Father God and, in turn, on “the archetype of God, the primeval Father, and his reincarnations.”³⁸

Freud believed that his conclusions freed humanity and reduced religion to a neurotic state of mind; in doing so, those conclusions demanded the abolition of religion, but, ironically, offered no answers to the problem of guilt itself.

Freud writes that “if guilt were the product of the Super-ego alone, then the free-thinking education of the child would remove guilt and repression. But the id itself is a will to death as well as a will to pleasure, so that the id carries not only guilt within its being, but a sentence of death on that guilt.”³⁹

There is an unresolved conflict in each of us that neither asceticism (in the denial of self) nor libertarianism (in the indulgence of self can eliminate. As Freud states, “One side in either event will remain unsatisfied,” because we are “a walking law or Torah of ancient taboos which govern [us] infallibly.”⁴⁰ In the end, Freud did not set out to be a reformer but an observer of culture, and in doing so, he condemned conventional morality: “what the world calls its code of morals demands more sacrifices than it is worth.”⁴¹ For Freud the “therapeutic effect of psycho-analysis” could only hope for the “substitution of something conscious for something unconscious.”⁴²

“GUTSY GUILT”

The closest he ever came to being fired from his position as preaching pastor of twenty-six years at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, John Piper recalls, occurred in the mid-1980s, when he penned an article for the church newsletter titled ”Missions and Masturbation.” He wrote the article after returning from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., where he had listened to speaker George Verwer, the head of Operation Mobilization.⁴³

Verwer spoke about his burden for the many young people who had gone from a period of radical obedience to the call of Christ to living a life of status quo, marked by a “gnawing sense of guilt and unworthiness” over their sexual failure, which “gradually gave way to spiritual powerlessness.”⁴⁴

This alarmed Piper, however, because in his estimation, no sexual failure, whether masturbation, pornography, or fornication, is in and of itself the great tragedy. The ability of failures such as these to strip followers of Christ of their radical obedience to His call upon their lives, and Satan’s efforts to capitalize on their guilt experience, was the greatest of tragedies. Piper writes: “I want to take out of the Devil’s hands the weapon that exploits our sin and makes your life a wasted, worldly success. Sooner or later, whether it’s that sin or another, you are going to fall. I want to help you deal with the guilt of failure so that Satan does not use it to produce another wasted life.”⁴⁵

Here, where Piper explores what a person who is struggling with guilt might encounter in an enemy that desires to destroy him or her, is also where the biological determinism of Freud—seeking to eradicate the Christian concept of guilt and redefine it as misplaced psychosexual energy—turns back on itself. For Freud, human nature is not only burdened with a sense of guilt (with no meaning or responsibility behind it), but it is also doomed to seek the eradication of that guilt, through masochism or self-inflicted punishment as a way of atonement, or through sadism as a way to lay the guilt on someone else, a reminiscence of the victim mentality mentioned earlier.

For Piper, guilt consists of either genuine or false guilt feelings, the former an established attitude consistent with God’s attitude and the latter an established attitude not consistent with God’s attitude. Genuine guilt feelings, Piper notes, are not “an end of themselves but rather a vehicle to drive us to see the prevailing beauty and efficacy of the righteousness of the Lamb who was slain.”⁴⁶

It is important to note the distinction between subjective feelings of guilt and the objective fact of guilt before God. Biblically, guilt is an objective reality that needs resolution on a level that transcends human feelings, and yet because of the effect of Freudian psychology on secular culture, and secular culture’s effect on the church, Christians often think unbiblically about guilt. Our real concern is objective guilt before God, not guilt feelings. When the believer truly understands the propitiation (satisfaction of divine wrath toward our sin) that God provided through Christ, he is able to understand “how much more…the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purif[ies] our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14 ESV). In such a promise, we find the only lasting solution to feelings of guilt, unworthiness, and condemnation.

Piper calls it “gutsy guilt” when a “believer admits that he has done wrong” but does “not surrender his hold on the truth that God is on his side,” even though God is placing him “in a condition of darkness and discipline.”⁴⁷ Piper anchors the believer’s proper confidence in this truth in Micah 7:8-9:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;when I fall, I shall rise;when I sit in darkness,the Lord will be a light to me.

I will bear the indignation of the Lordbecause I have sinned against him,until he pleads my causeand executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light;I shall look upon his vindication. (ESV)

“Yes, I am sitting in darkness,” Piper writes. “I feel miserable. I feel guilty. I am guilty. But that is not all that is true about me and my God. The same God who makes my darkness is a sustaining light to me in this very darkness. He will not forsake me.”⁴⁸

On the Edge of the Abyss

Freud fought hard to eliminate guilt by scientific inquiry, but can it be that in the end he only serves to highlight its existence all the more? As Rushdoony remarks, “Having denied sin, he had also denied salvation, for, in reducing guilt to biology, he had no way of enabling man to transcend his biology and hence transcend or escape his biological sense of guilt. His biological myth and anthropological myth had become the new dimensions of man’s hell.”⁴⁹

Freud places us at the edge of the chasm of the narcissistic self, unable to span the distance between who we are and what we’ve done, teetering on the edge of self-abasement and self-adulation, caught up in the throes of a perpetual “blame game.” Yet, being armed with biblical knowledge of God, Christ, and the Cross, we can decipher the cacophony of sounds we encounter there; between the rush of the chasm wind moaning a message of neuroses unresolved and the deafening roar of the rapids below, where the deadly rocks of real guilt from real sin are eternally surrendering themselves to the powerful flowing water of God’s amazing grace.

How sweet the sound!

notes

1. Visit “Psychoanalysis, Their Weird Theories: A Glossary of Freudian Terms,” at http://skeptically.org/minther/id6.html for a definitive glossary of Freudian terms.

2. Jay E. Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970), xvi.

3. O. Hobart Mowrer, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand Company, 1961), 60.

4. Ibid.

5. Adams, xvii.

6. For an excellent critique of Winfrey’s spiritual path away from the “narrow way” of her grandmother’s biblical Christianity to the “broad way” of the New Age, see Kate Maver, “Oprah Winfrey and Her Self-Help Saviors: Making the New Age Normal,” Christian Research Journal 23, 4 (2001): 12 (http://www.equip.org/DN403), and, in the From the Editor column of that issue, Elliot Miller, “Oprah Spirituality,” Christian Research Journal 23, 4 (2001): 2.

7. Philip Terzian, “The Love Tour: When You Hear Bill Clinton Tell It, You Almost Want To Weep over His Story,” The Opinion Journal, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, Friday, June 25, 2004, http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110005268.

8. David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans , 1998), 117.

9. Ibid., 119.

10. Ibid., 123.

11. L’Abri is a French word that means “shelter.” The first L’Abri community was founded in Switzerland in 1955 by Francis Schaeffer and his wife, Edith. Schaeffer was a Christian theologian and philosopher who also authored a number of books on theology, philosophy, general culture, and the arts. Visit the L’Abri Web Site at http://www.labri.org/.

12. Rousas J. Rushdoony, Freud, from the series An International Library of Philosophy and Theology, Modern Thinkers Series (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1977).

13. Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) was a Calvinist philosopher, historian, and theologian widely credited as the father of Christian Reconstructionism. My reference throughout this article to his masterfully written essay on Freud is not, however, an endorsement of Christian Reconstructionism.

14. Ernest Jones, The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books); vol. 1, 1953: The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries, 1856–1953; vol. 2, 1955: Years of Maturity, 1901–1919; vol. 3, 1957: The Last Phase, 1919–1939.

15. Jones, vol. 2, 83.

16. Rushdoony, 19–20.

17. These included Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890), Henry Havelock Ellis 1859–1939), Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), and Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910).

18. Rushdoony, 19–20.

19. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1961).

20. Jones, The Last Phase, 342.

21. Egon Friedell, A Cultural History of the Modern Age, vol. 3, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1933), 483.

22. Philip Reiff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973), 57–58.

23. Rushdoony, 20.

24. Freud’s anthropology, while exploring religious themes, was actually naturalistic. He was a disciple of William Robertson Smith (1846–1894), whose book The Religion of the Semites, Freud wholeheartedly endorsed. Every culture, Freud believed, gives the holy or taboo a double meaning—it is both sacred, or consecrated, and forbidden and unclean. This dual meaning results in an ambivalence of emotions and a crisis of conscience.

25. Sigmund Freud, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1937), in Collected Papers, vol. 5, 357.

26. Vernon J. Nordby, A Guide to Psychologists and Their Concepts (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1974), 46.

27. Ibid., 46.

28. Rushdoony, 31.

29. Nordby, 47.

30. Sigmund Freud, “The Libido Theory” (1922), Collected Papers, vol. 5, 131. In five volumes, Collected Papers, authorized translation under the supervision of Joan Riviere (New York: Basic Books, 1959). These papers, because they deal with specific and limited subjects, often are the best indices to Freud’s thought.

31. Sigmund Freud, “Totem and Taboo,” in Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. with an introduction by A. A. Brill (New York: Modern Library, 1938), 835.

32. Jones, vol. 3; cf. 192.

33. Letters of Sigmund Freud, selected and edited by Ernst L. Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern (New York: Basic Books, 1960), 307.

34. Jones, vol. 2, 19.

35. David Bakan, “Moses in the Thought of Freud, an Ambivalent Interpretation,” in Commentary, 26, 4 (October 1958): 331.

36. David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1958), 181.

37. The primal horde is the “original primitive grouping of humanity headed by a father-authority who forbad incestuous acting-out among younger men, who, to gain their sexual freedom, eventually overpowered and cannibalized him and thereby discovered the powers and benefits of community.” Definition provided by “Psychoanalysis, Their Weird Theories: A Glossary of Freudian Terms.”

38. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage Books, 1939), 16.

39. Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, trans. Joan Riviere (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, 1938), 375–77.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. John Piper, “Gutsy Guilt: Don’t Let Shame over Sexual Sin Destroy You,” Christianity Today, October 2007, 73–76.

44. Ibid., 73.

45. Ibid., 74.

46. Noted in Erik Raymond, “Dealing with Guilt,” blog entry, October 6, 2007, Irish Calvinist, http://www.irishcalvinist.com/?p=995.

47. Piper, “Gutsy Guilt,” 75.

48. Ibid.

49. Rushdoony, 50.

SYNOPSIS

Much “cognitive science of religion” (CSR) research asserts that religious belief can be “biologized” as well as psychoanalyzed. Like secularists in previous centuries, contemporary CSR researchers claim that humans have biological hard-wiring and certain psychological tendencies that encourage the creation of religion, or the “God idea.” If such “scientific” authors are correct that belief in God is nothing more than genetic hard-wiring reenforced by social pressure and traditions, and that humans are merely physical beings, the implications are immense. Besides the existence of God, the existence of the soul is also at stake, and the suggestion that our choices, moral behavior, and ability to reason and seek truth are physically determined is hard to escape. Christians can respond to these ideas in many ways. They can acknowledge, for example, that certain soulish capacities can be affected by physical conditions, but that such a correlation does not warrant the soul’s reduction to a physical entity. They also can affirm that the origins of belief in God should not undermine the rationality of belief in God, since His existence is independent of those origins. They, finally, can assert that it makes sense that humans would be hard-wired with God-ward inclinations, since God has placed eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11); such processes merely may indicate that our minds and brains are functioning as God intended.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins suggests that our “extraordinary predisposition” to “insist on believing in God” is that we, like computers, tend to do what we’re told. Young minds are susceptible to “infection” and mental “viruses” especially when they latch on to the bad or worthless religious ideas of charismatic preachers and other adults.¹ Anthropologist Pascal Boyer believes that the latest “scientific” developments reveal that our “central metaphysical urge”—an “irredeemable human propensity toward superstition, myth and faith, or a special emotion that only religion provides”² stands at the root of all religion. Author Matthew Alper considers humans to be religious animals whose brains are hard-wired for “God,” though no God exists, and maintains that the “spiritual” is really the “scientific.”³

Sound vaguely familiar? It’s Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud revisited. They psychologized religion as abnormal and irrational. Philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach believed that theology (the study of God) is really anthropology (the study of humankind), and that humans make God in their image, not vice versa. Impressed by Feuerbach, Karl Marx called religion “the opium [or opiate] of the people,” the “sigh of the oppressed creature.” Sigmund Freud believed that religious ideas arise in the face of daunting natural forces; that God is an illusory hope—a pathetic, infantile notion.

“LOCATING GOD” IN THE BRAIN

Within the past fifteen years or so, such arguments have gotten a second wind⁴ from evolutionary psychologists who claim that the “God idea” originates in the human brain, and believe that humans are somehow evolutionarily “hard-wired” to believe in God. Much “cognitive science of religion” (CSR) research asserts that religious belief not only can be psychoanalyzed, but “biologized.” Religion professor Todd Tremlin, for example, insists on a natural connection between gods and minds, since supernatural beings are mental conceptions that human brains acquire, represent, and transmit. To understand the mind’s operations is to understand the religious mind’s operations. As the natural products of human evolutionary psychology, “gods” can be explained scientifically as successful ideas.⁵

What is the scientific evidence for the human brain’s hard-wiring for God? How does this square with the traditional Christian understanding of the human soul and personal identity? How should the Christian respond to the “findings” of CSR? I will explore these questions below.

The Development of Religious Belief

According to CSR, there are three basic aspects to the development of religious belief. These include genetic wiring, evolutionary psychology, and memetics or ideological transmission.

Genetic Wiring. In a hospital laboratory, CSR researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili received signals from Robert, a Tibetan Buddhist, when his “meditative state” approached a “transcendent peak.” They monitored the distinctive brain activity of eight other Buddhist meditators and several praying Franciscan nuns, concluding that “mystical experience is biologically, observably, and scientifically real.”⁶ With science writer Vince Rause, they noted that widespread religious experiences of all kinds throughout the ages can be “attributed to the brain’s activity,” and that “neurotheology” suggests a “biological origin for specific religious beliefs.”⁷

Religious belief can help alleviate stress and depression, give a sense of meaning and purpose, and create a hope for life after death—all of which are good and healthy. Humans don’t deliberately invent God, but they “discover” God by means of how their brains are wired, which these authors call “mystical encounters.”⁸

Newberg and colleague Mark Robert Waldman restate our “biological need” for meaning, spirituality, and truth in a book based on close observation of religious adherents (from Pentecostals to Buddhists).⁹ They note that the more one focuses on a certain belief, the more real it ultimately may feel. They then assert that this sense of “realness” is “based on the stimulation of specific neural circuits in the brain,” adding that perhaps someday researchers will be able to connect the everyday reality “created by the brain” and the “fundamental reality.”¹⁰

What about an actual God outside the mind? The brain may be wired for self-transcendence, but Newberg and D’Aquili still leave room for a vague “higher God”—however we choose to define the “concept.” Religions are “siblings,” they believe, but no one of them is exclusively true (“all faiths become true”).¹¹ Researcher Rhawn Joseph likewise claims that humans are naturally “wired for god” and possess a “sixth sense” or the capacity to receive a revelation from “god.” Joseph sees the hyperactivated limbic system as key to spiritual experience—a “transmitter to god” that opens up paths to “alternate realities” that typically are hidden from view.¹² By combining these factors with one’s own personal experience, the hyperactivated brain can enhance and deepen one’s religious experience. Joseph, while appearing close to reducing God to brain function, genetics, and environmental factors, doesn’t close the door on a spiritual realm itself; however, he strongly opposes a biblical God who creates out of nothing, demeaning Big Bang cosmology as “mythology.” He refers vaguely to a “Guiding Spirit” or to “gods, spirits, and demons.” He believes that the brain is capable, under certain conditions, to perceive “other” or “alternate realities” and to generate “myriad spiritual states.”¹³

Other CSR researchers express indifference to, or even disapproval of, the idea of God.¹⁴ Boyer, who thinks there is no “special neural network that handles God-related thoughts,” believes that the still-sketchy results of neuropsychological research may yet connect religious experience to cortical areas that are related to intuitive psychology (thinking about other people’s thoughts) and “that create emotional responses to people’s presence.”¹⁵ That, in his view, is the essence of “religion.”

Evolutionary Psychology: Creating Supernatural Agents? Given the biological hard-wiring of our human brains, we have certain psychological tendencies that encourage the creation of the “God idea.” Philosopher Daniel Dennett claims that just as he can “reverse engineer” (i.e., track the naturalistic, step-by-step development) unfolding life forms or morality, so, too, can he with religious belief. We have a psychological tendency to create religion—from sensing agency in many natural elements like trees and rivers (simple animism) to worshiping one supernatural agent (more sophisticated monotheism).¹⁶

Boyer likewise thinks that humans tend to anthropomorphize their experiences—that is, to project “humanlike and personlike features onto nonhuman and nonpersonlike aspects of the environment”; thus, he believes, they often concoct nonexistent agents—demons, ghosts, God, angels. According to evolutionary understanding (think “predator and prey”), humans have the capacity to detect agents around them, even if those agents aren’t there. Humans project agency if they hear a strange noise in the forest, for example, even though it may be due only to tree branches scraping against each other in the wind.¹⁷ Similarly, humans easily jump to religious conclusions—including beliefs in souls, spirits, and supernatural agents.¹⁸ Of course, such claims are unfalsifiable: there are no conditions that would show that these projected agents don’t exist. The tendency, then, Boyer believes, is for people to store these religious conclusions in their memory and then pass them on to the next generation so that they become embedded in human minds: “Information about gods and spirits mainly comes from other people.”¹⁹

Memetics: Passing on Religion? Not only are humans hard-wired and thus psychologically prepared to believe in God, they pass on such religious ideas to others in the form of religions and rituals. Dennett writes that although there is no “God gene”²⁰ that is responsible for human inclination toward spirituality, the idea of God, like the idea of chocolate, triggers a certain reaction in the human brain. The idea that religion is good for people is a very Darwinistic concept. Like language-learning or good manners, these religious ideas can be spread nongenetically to the next generation. They are the result of overactive dispositions and sensitivities within many human beings. These ideas or convictions are known as “memes” (“cultural symbionts”).²¹ So there is an interplay between genetic and memetic evolution. Dennett claims that he himself is moved by various religious rituals, music, and art, but is “utterly unpersuaded by the doctrines.”²² Religious ideas also can have a toxic effect, as with David Koresh’s community.

Boyer notes the parallel between the process of religious adoption and that of language-learning. People believe what they “shouldn’t” because they have active minds that readily construct novel ideas—including religious ones. These eventually become transmitted from one generation to the next—a process that includes holy writings, places of worship, and religious educational institutions.²³ People do not start from scratch with religion; they adopt what they find in their environment and then transmit it like they do language.²⁴

Furthermore, Boyer states that, statistically, human minds will more likely pass on what is more counterintuitive and apparently supernatural (like a dog on the other side of a cement block fence that passes through it) than what is commonsensical and uninteresting (like a dog on the other side of the fence that simply barks—and stays there). Likewise, God, according to Boyer, is just the kind of counterintuitive entity that will be believed in and promoted from one generation to another, and children (who often have imaginary friends) are the most likely to latch on to an invisible, all-powerful, all-knowing God “idea.”

Reinforcing transmitted religious ideas involves a social component—the desirable cultural feature of social stability. Social stability is created through mutually beneficial coalitions and networks. Social control or dominance is maintained through certain social hierarchies involving shamans, priests, and pastors—a system that punishes cheaters and excommunicates the uncooperative.²⁵

The backdrop to the transmission of religious ideas, then, according to thinkers such as Boyer, is noncultural (i.e., the brain’s configuration). Despite the biological coupled with the cultural—the genetic with the epigenetic—there is still no guarantee of a universal commonality of certain religious ideas, such as interest in an eternal Creator or in the world’s origin.²⁶ (Many suggest that moral code is the common element among all religions.)²⁷ Boyer seems quite disdainful of religious believers, stating that they don’t think critically, don’t check out evidence, and believe what can’t be falsified.²⁸ He adds that Christians seem particularly gullible, and can’t think correctly. (Boyer has the “irrational” doctrine of the Trinity in mind, which Boyer himself isn’t thinking correctly about: he presents a doctrine that no orthodox Christian believes—“that three persons are one person”²⁹—as opposed to three necessarily inseparable persons who share one nature and substance.)

What, then, of the differences between the awe-inspiring experiences of traditional religionists and those of secularists? According to zoologist Robert Hinde, there aren’t any. What differs is the interpretation placed upon these experiences.³⁰ The Christian may be inspired by majestic mountains or the starry heavens, interpreting these as a reflection of God’s glory. The secularist likewise may be awed by nature, but he does not view these as the creation of a supernatural Being.³¹

VIEWING THE SOUL AS EMBODIED, NONEXISTENT, OR DISTINCT

Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson boldly proclaim that a major discovery of cognitive science is that the mechanism for spirituality is neurally driven (bodily) and that mind (or soul) is “inherently embodied,” being incapable of independent existence.³² Philosopher Owen Flanagan claims that the “desouling” of personhood is “the primary operation of the scientific image [or enterprise].”³³

Naturalism assumes that humans are physical beings in a closed physical system. One such perspective (eliminative or reductive materialism) eliminates the mind (or soul) altogether. Another soul-denying view (property dualism) claims that the human body is a substance with two key characteristics—the physical and the mental. Self-consciousness and other mental capacities emerged from (“supervened upon”) a sufficiently complex brain and nervous system in the evolutionary process. The mental, though not reducible to the purely physical, can exist only because of the physical; once the body dies, the mind (“soul”) is extinguished as well. (Incidentally, more and more Christian philosophers and theologians—with theological modifications—are adopting this materialistic understanding of human personhood.)³⁴

Orthodox Christianity traditionally has held to another view (substance dualism). In this view, humans are comprised of both physical body and nonphysical soul, and the soul gives humans their continued identity even though the body may perish (e.g., during the intermediate state). Body and soul are distinct but deeply interactive, organically integrated substances—physical and nonphysical. My soul (my self or I)—not my body—gives me my personal identity. I am not my body; rather, I have a body. I am my soul, which organically belongs to a body suited to it.³⁵ Scripture strongly supports such a view: Jesus tells the dying criminal, whose body would soon perish, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43); to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord”—despite a temporary less-than-ideal state of “nakedness” away from the body (2 Cor. 5:8); people can kill the body, not the soul—though God can destroy both (Matt. 10:28; Luke 12:4–5); Paul’s third-heaven experience may have been “in the body” or “apart from” it (2 Cor. 12:2–3; cp. Rev. 6:9–10). N. T. Wright’s survey of the relevant literature supports substance dualism and the intermediate state as a thoroughly biblical perspective of “life after life after death”³⁶ (i.e., the believer’s death on earth is followed by disembodied life or soul in the intermediate state, which later becomes an embodied life—with a physical resurrection body—in the new heavens and earth). For Jew and Greek alike, death meant the soul’s separation from the body.³⁷ Note that “the immortality of the soul” comes from Greek philosophy, not biblical theology. Even though humans can’t kill the soul (Mt. 10:28), the soul is not inherently immortal; its existence is graciously sustained by God until it receives a resurrection body suited to it. As 1 Corinthians 15 indicates, “immortality” refers to a renewed physical body, resurrected by the Spirit (“spiritual”)—not an everlasting soul.

The Implications of Eliminating the Soul

If we tie human personhood to the physical (which CSR typically does), and concede that belief in God is nothing more than genetic hard-wiring reinforced by social pressure and traditions, the implications are immense. Besides the existence of God, the existence of the soul is also at stake, and the suggestion that our choices, behavior, reasoning, and beliefs are physically determined is hard to escape. The not-insignificant result is undermining of robust freedom of the will, moral responsibility, and human ability to reason and seek truth. The physicalist’s case against the soul turns out to be fraught with a number of problems.³⁸ I will address a few of these concerns here.

Consciousness. More than a few naturalists admit that it is hard to see how consciousness—human or animal—could emerge from nonconscious matter. Physics textbooks describe “matter” as having spatial extension, shape, size, density, and so forth—but not as “being conscious.” Mind and matter—though integrated—have utterly distinct properties. Thoughts about weight, color, shape, and size are without weight, color, shape, and size.

Naturalist Colin McGinn confesses that we cannot “explain how ever-expanding lumps of matter might have developed an inner conscious life.”³⁹ Philosopher of mind Ned Block admits that researchers are “stumped” about this and haven’t a clue where to begin explaining it.⁴⁰ Philosopher Jerry Fodor acknowledges not having “the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious.”⁴¹ Theists, however, who believe in a supremely self-aware Being who makes finite (self-) conscious creatures, have a context for consciousness.⁴² If consciousness exists, it points us in the direction of the soul’s existence as well.

Truth and Reason. Beliefs—not matter—can be true or false. Matter just is.⁴³ To say one piece of matter is true of another, C. S. Lewis observed, is just “nonsense.”⁴⁴ Matter cannot create rationality; yet Lakoff and Johnson state that reason is evolutionary, not unique to humans, and that humans are merely on an evolutionary continuum with animals, not distinct from them.⁴⁵ Darwin, however, doubted whether we could trust our beliefs any more than we could trust those of a monkey.⁴⁶ Why should we trust our beliefs as reliable if survival is what drives us? We may hold lots of survival-enhancing beliefs (e.g., “humans have value and moral duties”), but these may be completely false.

Truth is incidental to survival. Why should we trust that brain matter bumping into more brain matter should produce reliable beliefs? Geneticist Francis Crick argued that our beliefs and sense of identity are “the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules,”⁴⁷ but what about his beliefs? Material processes, over which Crick had no control, produced his beliefs as well. If Crick’s beliefs were right, they would have been right just by accident. Unless a reasoning soul exists that isn’t tied to matter, why should we trust our reasoning abilities? Our confidence in our belief-forming faculties and in our pursuit of truth, however, better reflects that we are souls, made in a rational God’s image, than that we are mere matter, incapable of reasoning reliably.

Free Will and Moral Responsibility. We have the intuition that we are self-movers with genuine freedom, that the buck stops with the agent, and that our choices make a real difference. Free will sets humans apart from animals. Law courts don’t accept my-genes-made-me-do-it arguments, whereas nonfree animals can’t rise above genetics and environment. Robust libertarian freedom would support substance dualism and undermine materialism (in which matter determines my beliefs and actions). Little wonder naturalists tend to reject free will, given their commitment to a materialistic worldview.⁴⁸

On the other hand, most theists would argue that our choices may be influenced by our environment, our bodily states, and even our character, but these don’t determine our choices. Such conditions incline; they don’t necessitate.

Miscellaneous Considerations. First, although naturalists claim that two unlike things (such as immaterial souls and matter) can’t interact, many of them acknowledge that it’s difficult to account for the mental in a purely physical world. Consider philosopher Jaegwon Kim: the mystery of consciousness “consists in our seeming inability to understand the phenomenon of consciousness as part of a world that is essentially physical, and, what is worse, not knowing just what it is that we need to know if we are to achieve such an understanding.”⁴⁹ Second, theists have a ready example of such an interaction: God—a substantial soul—created and sustains a physical universe. Third, since the entire body’s cells are completely renewed every seven years or so, personal identity must be preserved by something immaterial—namely, the soul’s existence. Fourth, some naturalists claim that persons need physical bodies to be just, kind, loving, or forgiving. People can fool others, however, by outwardly (bodily) acting as though they are showing love or forgiveness, yet they may harbor bitterness within—an act that strongly suggests that a soul lurks beneath the mask. Fifth, most people across the ages and civilizations have assumed substance dualism, implying that it’s not counterintuitive. Sixth, we know disembodiment is logically possible; we constantly imagine ourselves in another’s shoes (body) without changing identity. Such easy thought experiments should caution us against ruling out body-soul dualism.

EVALUATING CSR

I will try to bring together some of these thoughts and offer an overall assessment of CSR from a Christian perspective.

Essential Observations

Studying human thinking about religious belief is a fascinating and worthy undertaking. Christians should never fear Socrates’ advice to follow the truth wherever it leads. It is possible to research the spectrum of religious commitments to detect patterns and similarities without being reductionistic or antisupernaturalistic (e.g., eliminating the existence of the soul or God or morality or human freedom). I will focus on the main overall observations of a Christian response to CSR in the following discussion.

Passionate, “Religious” Commitments among Secularists. Many CSR researchers view “religious” believers as misguided, biased, overzealous, or even harmful, and we can agree to some extent (when considering, e.g., Jim Jones or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). The sword, however, cuts both ways. Passionate, “religious” leanings and commitments to rather nonscientific presuppositions can be found in the heart of the secular scientific community as well as the religious one. All humans—secularist or “religious”—hold to a worldview or “form of life” of deeply held metaphysical commitments, ethical beliefs, and convictions about human nature and well-being. These commitments are centrally important, comprehensive, and extremely embedded.⁵⁰ Secularists can invent their own God-substitutes—Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch (“superman”), Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, or biologist Richard Lewontin’s “Science”—and hold nonscientific philosophical commitments to those substitutes. For example, Lewontin claims “Science” is “the only begetter of truth,” yet he’s honest about his commitment to “absolute” materialism—only matter is real, “no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.” His concern? “We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”⁵¹ Such metaphysical assumptions aren’t the result of scientific research, and they often drive scientists to exclude God, freedom, and the soul.

Correlation of Soul and Body vs. Reduction of Soul to Body. If one could surgically remove or alter the brain’s spiritual part, Matthew Alper suggests that one might lose the ability to have spiritual experiences, to feel forgiven, or to sense a transcendent “presence,”⁵² and that psychopharmaceuticals could “change” desires and behaviors by biochemically manipulating human emotions in an attempt to create a sense of “well-being.” Consider also the victims of stroke or Alzheimer’s losing key “soulish” functions. Doesn’t the correlation between medications and altered inner states suggest that we’re purely physical?

Given the deep connection of body and soul, we can affirm that certain soulish capacities can be blocked or affected through physical conditions, whether medical or bodily. Such a correlation, however, does not entail the soul’s reduction to a physical body. Also, consider the reverse correlation from soul to body: what goes on in my soul (e.g., worry) can just as easily affect my body (e.g., stomach ulcers).

Distinction of the Biology of Belief from the Rationality of Belief. To say God doesn’t exist because people believe for inferior reasons or motivations is to commit the genetic fallacy—to say that a view is true/false based on its origin. God’s existence, however, is logically independent of how people come to believe in Him.

Consider the strong reasons for God’s existence distinct from human hard-wiring and psychology. The existence of valuable, morally responsible, self-aware, reasoning, living human beings who inhabit a finely tuned universe that came to exist a finite time ago is not plausibly explained naturalistically—namely, as the result of disparate valueless, mindless, lifeless physical processes in a universe that came into existence uncaused out of nothing. The better unifying explanation is a supremely valuable, supremely aware, reasoning, truthful, powerful, intelligent, beautiful Being. Such a context robustly explains—and unifies—a wide range of factors where naturalism fails. If God exists and leaves clues of his existence, then CSR’s reductionistic claims about theistic belief lose their force.

Suitability of Being Created to Know God to Being Wired to Believe in Him. God has placed eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11); so it makes perfect sense that we would be hard-wired with God-ward inclinations. That natural processes contribute to religious belief doesn’t disprove God’s existence—that is a big non sequitur in CSR. As for Dawkins’s claim that religion comes from a virus-like idea that plagues the mind, we can turn it on its head: if God has designed us in such a way that these sorts of processes enable us to come know God personally, we’re actually at our cognitive best when our faculties direct us toward true belief in God. Despite religious superstition and extremism, natural processes partly contributing to the formation of religious belief are not at odds with God’s existence; indeed, such processes may indicate that our minds are properly functioning—according to the way they’ve been designed.⁵³

God as a Better Explanation for Religious Impulse than Naturalistic Alternatives. Sociologist Christian Smith pointedly asks: “Why in a spiritless and godless world would people ever conceive of spirits and gods in the first place?” Why voluntarily sacrifice our lives for some intangible “super-empirical” realm? The reason humans persist in looking beyond the finite realm in search of the source of coherence, order, morality, meaning, and guidance for life is because this realm doesn’t contain it. Humans, though embodied, are moral, spiritual beings with the capacity for self-transcendence and reflection on our world and our condition; this in turn enables us to search for a world-transcending God.⁵⁴ Naturalistic explanations that suggest that theology is a useful fiction—or, worse, a harmful delusion—fall short of telling us why the religious impulse is so deeply imbedded. If God exists, however, we have an excellent reason for why religion should exist.

notes

1. Gordon Slack, “The Atheist,” Salon, April 30, 2005, Salon.com, http://dir.salon.com/story/ news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/index.html.

2. Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 298.

3. Matthew Alper, The “God” Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2006), 92-3, 207-24.

4. Justin L. Barrett, “Cognitive Science of Religion: What Is It and Why Is It?” Religion Compass 1 (September 2007), available through Blackwell Publishing, http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/religion/.

5. Todd Tremlin, Minds and Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7, 9.

6. Andrew Newberg, Eugene d’Aquili, and Vince Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001), 7. See also Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999).

7. Newberg, d’Aquili, and Rause, Why God, 8-10.

8. Ibid., 128-41.

9. Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe (New York: Free Press, 2006).

10. Ibid., 278-9.

11. Newberg, d’Aquili, and Rause, Why God, 145-6, 172, 162.

12. Rhawn Joseph, The Transmitter to God: The Limbic System, the Soul, and Spirituality, 2nd ed. (San Jose, CA: University Press California, 2001), 187-8.

13. Ibid., 277, 269, 270, 277-89.

14. For example, see D. Jason Slone, Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn’t (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 47; and M. D. Faber, The Psychological Roots of Religious Belief: Searching for Angels and the Parent-God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 14.

15. Boyer, Religion Explained, 309.

16. Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006).

17. Pascal Boyer, “Gods and the Mental Instincts That Create Them,” in Science, Religion, and the Human Experience, ed. James D. Proctor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 241, 243.

18. Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Evolution and Cognition Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), ch. 3.

19. Boyer, “Gods,” 244.

20. See Dean Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes (New York: Doubleday, 2004), which claims that the VMAT2 gene (a “hypnotizability-enabler”) is responsible for this. Dennett thinks “something like his [Hamer’s] hypothesis (but probably much more complicated) is a good bet for confirmation in the near future” (Breaking, 139).

21. Dennett, Breaking, 83-86.

22. Ibid., 318.

23. Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust, ch. 9.

24. Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), ix.

25. Ibid., 245.

26. Ibid., 6.

27. See e.g., Donald M. Broom, The Evolution of Morality and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), xi, 168.

28. Boyer, Naturalness, 6; see also Faber, Psychological Roots, 25.

29. Boyer, Religion Explained, 300.

30. Robert E. Hinde, Why Gods Persist: A Scientific Approach to Religion (London: Routledge, 1999), 198. Given the many similarities between religions, he believes, it’s possible that one religious system may be as “equally effective in providing for human needs” as another (236).

31. Alper, The “God” Part, 254.

32. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic, 1999), 568, 3.

33. Owen Flanagan, The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them (New York: Basic, 2002), 3.

34. See Kevin J. Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006); and Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer, eds., In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-body Problem (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

35. See J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body and Soul (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000).

36. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 3 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).

37. Robert Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994), 197.

38. Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, Naturalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

39. Colin McGinn, The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (New York: Basic, 1999), 13, 15.

40. Ned Block, “Consciousness,” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, ed. Samuel Guttenplan. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 211.

41. Jerry A. Fodor, “The Big Idea: Can There Be a Science of the Mind?” Times Literary Supplement (July 3, 1992), 5.

42. Charles Taliaferro, “Mysterious Flames in Philosophy of Mind,” Philosophia Christi NS 1/2 (1999): 29.

43. Philip E. Devine, Natural Law Ethics (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 36.

44. C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 64.

45. Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 4.

46. “Letter to William Graham Down, 3 July 1881,” in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray, 1887), 1:315-16.

47. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), 3.

48. Stewart Goetz, “Naturalism and Libertarian Agency,” in Naturalism: A Critical Analysis, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (London: Routledge, 2000), 157.

49. Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), s.v., “Mind, Problems of the Philosophy of,” (by Jaegwon Kim), 578.

50. Paul Griffiths, Problems of Religious Diversity. Exploring the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Michael L. Peterson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 26-30.

51. Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” NY Review of Books (Jan. 9, 1997), 28-32.

52. Alper, The “God” Part, 96-7.

53. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 135-63.

54. Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 110, 122.

Having its roots in early Freudian theory, the rebirth of RMT in the early 1980s gave rise to an entire cottage industry of trauma experts, inpatient treatment programs, victim support groups, lectures, seminars, books, and videos. Each extolled RMT as the pathway to healing from a myriad of ailments and promised true self-actualization. RMT has developed into five focus areas of memory recovery: forgotten incest, satanic ritual abuse (SRA), past-life regressions, space alien abductions, and regression into the womb. Proponents of RMT have made for an awkward alliance, with feminists, Christians, New Agers, and science fiction enthusiasts joining forces in their affirmation of its authenticity.

In the initial excitement, it was assumed by many that RMT’s dramatic, scientific-sounding claims were true. In the early 1990s, however, professionals started asking some basic questions: “Are Freud’s earlier beliefs about the theory of repression valid and is repression as widespread as RMT proponents claim?” “Can hypnosis really unlock hidden memories?” “Is it possible that at least some of the hypnotic images are confabulations?” The uproar that ensued is arguably one of the hottest debates in the history of psychology, and increasingly RMT therapists are finding themselves in court facing former clients and family members who are claiming malpractice.

If you’re wondering what all the controversy is about, some excellent books critiquing RMT have come out in the past few years. Told from varying points of view and insight, each has compelling stories of RMT abuse, presentations on how memory actually works, and cogent critiques of RMT theories, techniques, and research. The following six books provide a sampling to consider.

Confabulations: Creating False Memories, Destroying Families

Eleanor Goldstein and Kevin Farmer

(SIRS, 1992)

True Stories of False Memories

Eleanor Goldstein and Kevin Farmer

(SIRS, 1993)

Social Issues Resources Series (SIRS) provides information on pertinent social phenomena to over 30,000 institutions worldwide. (Incidentally, SIRS was one of the first to publish on the AIDS crisis.) SIRS cofounder Eleanor Goldstein and researcher Kevin Farmer were the first to publish on the false memory crisis and the dangers of RMT, and their writings remain as relevant today as when first published. In Confabulations, the authors share powerful stories of families victim­ized by RMT and present interviews with therapists who promote recovered memo­ries. Confabulations traces RMT’s influences from various sources, including the recovery movement, New Age doctrine, feminism, and satanic hysteria. They provide a critique of The Courage to Heal, which is known as the “Bible” of RMT, but which has since been soundly debunked in a number of publications. Their follow-up book, True Stories of False Memories, shares stories of siblings of RMT patients, explores how people can come to believe traumatic fantasies, and gives extended accounts of three well-known retractors — former patients who have rejected their RMT experiences as coercive and false.

The strength of Confabulations and True Stories lies in the authors’ style of permitting participants in RMT, both critics and proponents, to speak with little interruption. This allows the reader to experience the injustices done, the zealous tenets of RMT believers, and the incontrovertible evidence that is mounting against them. The stories are compelling, and whereas stories supporting RMT lead readers from reason into the fantastic, stories critiquing RMT lead one back from the fantastic to reason. Because of the authors’ focus on stories and dialogue, however, scholarly references are few. Despite this, Confabulations and True Stories are a must for those seeking a complete understanding of the false memory crisis.

Making Monsters

Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters

(Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994)

Richard Ofshe, an expert in the dynamics of cults and thought control, and Ethan Watters, an investigative writer who pioneered the initial questioning of RMT, bring a passionate indictment against the movement, charging RMT practitioners with mental health fraud. Making Monsters examines the spectrum of RMT, from recovery of incest memories, to its expansion into images of satanic ritual abuse, and its final culmination in a plethora of diagnoses of multiple personality disorder.

Monsters provides a revealing interview with Ellen Bass, coauthor of The Courage to Heal, and examines the fallacy of “effort after meaning” — the idea that there is someone to blame for every ailment a patient suffers. It strongly criticizes RMT’s “symptoms lists” (depression, drug use, etc.), therapists advocating narrative truth over historical truth, and the construction of irrational belief systems in vulnerable clients. There are chapters on hypnosis and its key role in inducing and reinforcing delusions, SRA beliefs and their parallel to earlier witch hunts, and multiple personality disorder revealed as a therapy-induced disorder. Ofshe played a leading role in the well-known Paul Ingram case, which is shared with the reader in convincing, behind-the-scenes detail. The book ends with moving stories of families that have been victimized by RMT and a summary critique of the recovery movement within the context of history and present culture.

Monsters is one of the more strongly worded and decisive reviews of RMT. Ofshe is not one to mince words. This is an engaging resource for the layperson looking for a concise and readable overview of RMT.

The Myth of Repressed Memory

Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham

(St. Martin’s Press, 1994)

Elizabeth Loftus is recognized as one of the world’s leading memory experts and, given her academic roots, she has created a surprisingly compassionate and readable exploration of RMT. The weight of Myth’s message rests on the author’s extensive understanding of the malleability of memory, showcased by her involvement in dramatic, high-visibility court cases (Eileen Franklin and Paul Ingram), which gives the reader an insider’s view of these proceedings. The RMT stories are shared at length, yet with easy readability.

Myth offers a strong review on the workings of memory, with the exploration of “historical truth” as compared to “narrative truth.” It includes a review of pro-RMT literature that promotes the undocumented ideas that “incest is epidemic, repression is rampant, recovery is possible.” It also explores RMT literature’s influence in misleading gullible patients and contributing to the creation of false memories. Of the books reviewed, Myth offers the most compassionate voice, seeking a middle ground of reconciliation between both sides of the RMT debate. The reader is left without black and white answers, but instead must confront an uncomfortable gray area of uncer­tainty regarding RMT.

A resulting weakness of Myth is the lack of a firm position on RMT, with a bit too much discussion by Loftus about being caught in the middle. At times the book rambles, with the reader not quite sure where it’s headed. Loftus is clearly hesitant to criticize feminism, which provides the underpinnings of much of RMT belief and practice, and she doesn’t offer a critique of commonly cited pro-RMT research. In addition, she fails to address the religious aspects of RMT, and ignores RMT for past lives and space aliens as well.

Overall, Myth is one of the more “user-friendly” books reviewed, allowing the reader a smooth, engaging reading experience and bringing him or her into a compassionate dialogue about complex, important aspects of the debate.

Suggestions of Abuse: True and False Memories of Childhood Sexual Traumas

Michael Yapko

(Simon & Schuster, 1994)

Recognized as a leading authority on hypnosis, Michael Yapko brings a convincing critique of the misuse of trance-induction techniques in Suggestions of Abuse. He shares fascinating results of a survey he conducted with therapists across the nation which reveals many serious misconceptions therapists hold, and in turn pass on to, their clients. Mistaken assumptions include: “If someone doesn’t remember much about his or her childhood, it is most likely because it was somehow traumatic” (43 percent agree), Hypnosis counteracts the defense mechanism of repression (83 percent agree), “Hypnotically obtained memories are more accurate than simply just remembering” (43 percent agree), “Hypnosis can be used to recover memories of actual events as far back as birth” (54 percent agree), and “Hypnosis can be used to recover accurate memories of past lives” (28 percent agree). Interestingly, as an advocate of hypnosis, Yapko is arguing that hypnosis itself is not bad, but that it is being misapplied and consequently creates believed-in delusions in clients.

Suggestions examines RMT in the context of a culture that encourages victim identity and freedom from responsibility.

Yapko gives a good review of how memory works, examines claims of past lives and space aliens, shows how therapists influence clients to create traumatic fantasies and reinforce them as real, and examines why we tend to accept traumatic fantasies as true. Guidelines for selecting a therapist are provided, as well as how the falsely accused can cope with the crisis. Suggestions offers a text that is shorter and more engaging than most. However, citations are not as scholarly and little critique is offered of pro-RMT literature, leaving the professional looking for more.

Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives

Mark Pendergrast

(Upper Access Books, 1995)

If you’re looking for one definitive book on the RMT controversy, this is it. Pendergrast brings his expertise as an investigative writer and couples it with a passion drawn from having lost both of his daughters to RMT. Victims offers in-depth, readable explorations of pro-RMT literature and its influence, a concise critique of research on repression, and an explanation of how one can come to believe the unbelievable. Pendergrast reviews multiple personality disorders, claims of satanic ritual abuse, child abuse hysteria, magical thinking in psychology, and victimization and survivorship as a religious dynamic. Separate chapters expose the beliefs of therapists and survivors, and shed light on RMT-advocate abuse of retractors and accused families. Victims concludes with excellent summations of where RMT is headed and the subsequent crisis for therapists.

One of the unique aspects of Victims is that each chapter is designed to stand alone, so its readers can pick through the chapters they want to peruse, in any particular order that they choose. The book offers the most in-depth, overall exploration of the various subtopics that I read, and references are extensive and well presented. The author has informed me that he is com­pleting a revision of Victims that will incorporate more recent developments and include an examination of the role that Christian therapists play in promoting RMT.

— Paul Simpson

Paul Simpson, Ed.D., is a psychologist, professional family mediator, and founder of Project Middle Ground (520) 751-0101 — the first program in the nation that provides education, mediation, and restoration for those impacted by RMT. He is the author of the forthcoming Second Thoughts: Understanding the False Memory Crisis (Thomas Nelson, Fall 1996).

In its new incarnation as Breakthrough seminars, Momentus trainings, developed and promoted by founder Daniel Tocchini, are marketed toward Christians as an effective means to attain transformation of character.1 The umbrella organization offering the trainings is the Association for Christian Character Development (ACCD). Tocchini believes the trainings provide “something lost” for most of Christian church history: “So in the spirit of providing a piece of what was missing I founded Mashiyach Ministries, Inc. and wrote Momentus Training.” He also states that Momentus was “a rebirth of the apostolic disciplines that lead to repentance.”2

Despite its Christian profile and the fact that Christians serve as trainers and sponsors and that Bible verses and concepts are used in the trainings, Breakthrough has engendered concerns, criticisms, and complaints from observers and participants throughout its history. The Christian nature of Momentus is hardly apparent in the majority of its publications. Instead, the training describes itself in the same kinds of secular terms that secular Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs) such as Lifespring or est would use. It appears primarily to be a behavior/human potential training with Christian values intermixed.

The Operating Standards Manual always calls the leader a “trainer,” never an “elder” or any other Christian position. It is always called a “training,” never a worship service or Bible study. The Personal Assessment Form filled out by recruits has 16 questions, only one of which broaches any spiritual content. Many items are synonymous with those commonly found in popular psychology. The psychological nature of the training is assumed and alluded to repeatedly. Recruits are questioned extensively about their mental health and any medications they may be taking for psychological problems.

Even though the trainer’s introduction script directs him to say that the training is from a Christian perspective (Christian songs and Bible verses are used along with religiously neutral lyrics and aphorisms), at the same time, the script makes it clear that it is not about one’s religion: “This training is not about your religion or lack of it; this training is about how you govern your vision or what matters to you into existence [sic].”

Secular rather than spiritual terms pepper the team manuals. Terms include such momentusspeak as “self government,” “mechanics of each exercise,” and “killing the victim.” The psychological terminology is considered distinctive enough that the Breakthrough trainers who wrote the book Killing the Victim include a glossary that combines dictionary definitions with “our own understanding” (223). Biblical terms, meanwhile, are often given new uses. The biblical term sanctification, for example, is described as a process that, in part, “involves killing the victim” (236), which means to stop believing one is a powerless “victim” of circumstances and instead live the “self-governed” life that will transform one’s visions into reality.

The Declaration of Commitment graduates complete after trainings includes psychological jargon as well:

The results you produce and the extent of your transformation of character are determined by how you govern yourself….The extent of the rigor and discipline you bring to this endeavor will, as always, determine the level of your success….The Plan of Accomplishment is intended to assist you in bringing your vision to reality by translating your Declaration of Commitment into an explicit written course of action, using the performative language of promises, requests, declaration and assertion.

This declaration fails to mention God’s role in transforming His people. In contrast, biblical passages such as Romans 12:2 clearly reveal God’s transforming work in His people. The biblical imperative uses the passive “be transformed” rather than the active “transform yourselves.” Breakthrough overwhelmingly promotes self-effort (a works-based emphasis) rather than God’s power to transform (a grace-based emphasis).

Christian observers are concerned more with Breakthrough’s psychological component than its Christian goals. Terms used by Breakthrough to describe its training, quoted from the Operating Standards Manual and other forms produced by Breakthrough, seem alarming rather than reassuring:

· Challenging, stressful, and/or generally uncomfortable….intense or emotional experience….anxiety and risk of dealing with the unfamiliar….disputes that may arise….may experience adverse consequences….feeling uncomfortable to a degree that you think is excessive. (The Momentus Trainings Course Outline and Questionnaire)

· The rigor of the training could aggravate some mental conditions. (Support Call Form)

· 5….I may experience deep emotions and possibly emotional stress, anxiety, tears, physical discomfort, or exhaustion….7. If I feel mental or physical discomfort or adverse effects during the TRAINING….10….any personal, physical, psychological or emotional injuries you may suffer as a result of the TRAINING….11. May contain risks of physical or psychological injury….(I) assume any and all such risks and dangers. 12….personal, physical, psychological or emotional injuries, distress, or death arising from….13….loss, damage or injury resulting from the negligence of MM…(Hold Harmless Agreement).

The Team Captain’s Manual also instructs the team to watch for participants hurting their hands when they beat the floor during the Weeping and Wailing exercise. The team is told to have “barf bags” ready for participants who need them during this exercise,³ and team members use hand signals like a hand over the heart to signal an emotional situation with a participant.

The trainings themselves warn participants of emotional and physical troubles that may be caused during the process. Although Breakthrough claims the stresses are simply due to naturally stressful self-examination, the kinds of emotional and physical problems cited are far more characteristic of the trauma known to accompany human potential seminars than anything associated with Christian discipleship programs.

Breakthrough is evidently so aware of problems that may arise from its training that it asks prospective participants detailed questions about their mental histories and psychiatric medications. Some of these disclaimers, such as those from the Hold Harmless Agreement, may be because of legal precautions to protect Breakthrough from liability. They appear to be far more numerous and cautionary than one would find in any ordinary church program or activity, however.

Many of the warnings are found in team instruction manuals, which are not intended to protect Breakthrough from liability. Even though all participants are informed before the training that they will be asked to sign this agreement, they are seldom given sufficient opportunity to read the statement with its long list of potential risks until after they have paid the nonrefundable fee, taken time off work, and begun the training. This indirectly pressures participants to sign up even if they have reservations, and it further surrounds them with peer, financial, and other pressures.

Breakthrough barely acknowledges the stressful nature of the training in its dealings with potential participants. The ACCD Web site article, What Do You Do in the Training? diplomatically admits, “It is an intense experience, because of both the rigor of the schedule and the integrity with which you are called to deal with issues that arise.” The article Is the Training Confrontational? answers some accusations from past participants that the script of the training is psychologically manipulative. ACCD changes the meaning of the term “confrontational” to assert that participants’ consciences are challenged rather than admitting that the psychological techniques used by the trainers are confrontational: “The confrontations will be between belief systems: your current beliefs coming up against the teachings of Jesus Christ and how you are actually behaving….Confront the reality of your life based on your actions not your intentions….Confront yourself through a rigorous process of inquiry.” In effect, ACCD shifts the blame for the tension from Breakthrough’s methods to the participants’ emotional weakness.

Some of the psychological techniques used by Breakthrough are nearly identical to those in other LGAT trainings such as est and Lifespring. The Awareness Page⁴ outlines a family tree of LGATs. Werner Erhard, who founded est and The Forum, and John P. Hanley, who founded Lifespring, both were Mind Dynamics teachers. The page lists 16 spinoffs of Lifespring founded by former Lifespring trainers, including Momentus, whose founder, Daniel Tocchini, was a Lifespring trainer for about eight years. While there are differences, they have significant similarities in techniques, philosophy, and terminology.

Similar techniques include long hours, aggressively confronting or humiliating participants, guilt-inducing exercises, changes in stress levels, guided imagery designed to “return to childhood memories and recapture sadness,” precise control of the circumstances of the setting, and so on. LGATs also produce an experience of “transformation” and a spiritual effect very similar to that of Breakthrough, which admits that some of its exercises (such as Lifeboat, Living Mirrors, Voyage, and Weeping and Wailing) are now sold by Pfeiffer and Associates to be used in non-Christian settings.

There are similarities in terminology and philosophy between Breakthrough and other LGATs. Virtually all focus on delivering “transformation” of some sort, although their definition of it varies. Virtually all have some variation of the theme of eliminating the “victim” mentality by taking control of one’s life.

Breakthrough leaders say “adverse effects” occur in people who do not want to examine themselves or look at their own sin; however, the pretraining questionnaire participants answer seeks to exclude people who are already under emotional distress, not those who resist self-examination. Breakthrough admits to psychological manipulation, such as psychological exercises, control of lighting, music, volume, peer pressure, and the trainer’s delivery.

Techniques and methods included in the script of the training, not the people or central goals involved, is the primary issue of concern. Breakthrough training follows a close script, in part because the trainer depends on a support team to carry out well-defined duties. The script prescribes a detailed list of music for the team to play at set times. It requires the team to make copies of homework, the Hold Harmless statement, and ground rules, which are used at specific times.

It is possible to have good intentions but harmful results. Breakthrough cannot be the only way, or even the best way, that Christians can examine themselves since LGAT exercises didn’t exist when the apostle exhorted people to examine themselves (1 Cor. 11:28; 2 Cor. 13:5). The New Testament never implies that self-examination is likely to prompt “adverse consequences….feeling uncomfortable to a degree that you think is excessive….aggravate some mental conditions….emotional stress….exhaustion….adverse effects….physical or psychological injury” as Breakthrough does.

Breakthrough/Momentus has received criticism because of the stressful nature of the psychological techniques used. Breakthrough founder Dan Tocchini seeks to eliminate public criticism (which he classifies slander) by insisting that critics deal with him as a Christian elder and leader and show him where he has sinned. Tocchini’s view does not fit the biblical pattern of Matthew 18, to which he appeals. Critics for the most part do not accuse the founder or trainers of unrepentant sin against them, which is the concern of the passage, but of unbiblical practices, regardless of the motives of the founder or trainers. Another passage often appealed to, 1 Timothy 5, deals with elders within the local church, not to a paid program imported into a church. The trainings are neither a church nor an extension of a church.

About 18 Breakthrough trainings are scheduled for 2002, charging a fee of $150 per participant. Controversy, nevertheless, will continue to follow Breakthrough as long as it resembles Large Group Awareness Trainings more than Christianity.

– John Juedes

NOTES

1. Other names associated with the trainings are Masihiyach Ministries, Inc., M.O.R.E., and Association for Christian Character Development (ACCD).

2. “Christian Transformation and the Momentus Trainings,” Momentus Web site, www.momentus.org.

3. Training Notes for Team Grounding Meeting Section (not paginated).

4. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/eldon.braun/awareness/

An examination of the foundations of psychotherapy raises concerns about whether Christianity can be compatible with a system based on naturalistic, nontheistic, secular humanism. While most psychotherapeutic techniques are rooted in one of three main categories of psychotherapy, most psychotherapists are eclectic, using anything that appears to work — regardless of the techniques’ compatibility with their primary psychotherapeutic philosophy. This allows for Christians to reject techniques incompatible with a Christian world view and to use techniques they can reconcile to a Christian world view, but it does not promote a unified, coherent philosophy of therapy. Studies show that, at best, psychotherapy is “moderately” helpful, and that most people get better without any professional counseling at all. For Christian “therapy” (counseling) to be truly helpful and biblically based, it must start from the firm biblical foundation of a Christian world view, with each technique part of a coherent biblical paradigm.

Like a carnival sideshow lane, the garish booths stretched almost as far as we could see under the harsh arena lights. Neuro-linguistic programming, dance therapy, past-life regression, hypnotically enhanced eating disorder programs, Horneyian therapy, multiple impact therapy, multiple personality disorder therapies, and multiple multiples of other therapies all clamored for attention as we strolled the national professional psychotherapy convention. We’d come to indulge our own proclivity for academic research reports and scholarly philosophizing, but we also came to some interesting and sometimes surprising conclusions.

First, almost everyone we talked to had a genuine concern for people with problems and an earnest desire to devote their lives to helping others. Second, there were more therapies, theories, and techniques than there were therapists. Third, the practicing therapists approached their “science” very differently than did their academic and research counterparts, basing many of their convictions on subjective experience rather than rigorous testing or critical evaluation. Fourth, while the range of therapies and therapists touched almost every conceivable extreme, some therapies and therapists reflected well-reasoned, carefully explored, comprehensive theories of personal dynamics. Fifth (most surprising to us), we discovered that even most of the Christian therapists and therapies focused more on a collection of practices and theories isolated from a comprehensive world view than on that world view. And sixth, we learned firsthand that anyone who pronounces a universal blessing or a universal condemnation on psychotherapy has failed to understand its complexity and diversity.

Unless we define terms adequately, understand the history and foundations of psychotherapy, and carefully evaluate its theories and assumptions, misrepresentation is almost certain. The present article cannot address this vast subject comprehensively, but it will illuminate some of the broad patterns of contemporary psychology, highlight some of the foundational concerns Christians should have concerning psychotherapy, and view some of the ways Christian therapists have attempted to relate contemporary psychotherapy with a biblical world view. Many secular psychologists have strong criticisms of various aspects of contemporary psychology,¹ but since this series is narrowly focused on psychology and the church, we will limit our citations primarily to Christian authors.²

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Because psychotherapy is much more visible and directly touches many more lives than do other aspects of psychology (such as educational testing), for many people “psychology” is equivalent to “psychotherapy.” The word psychology derives from two Greek terms meaning “the study of persons.” Some argue that since the Greek root from which we get psych means “spirit” or “soul,” psychology is religious in nature and involves the study of the spirit or soul. However, one must realize that because of the evolving nature of language, word origin or etymology does not necessarily point to what the word means in contemporary usage. Those who use the term psychology today do not generally mean to make any religious statements about the human spirit or soul, but instead are referring to the nontangible personal aspects of human beings, whether they conceive of these aspects as byproducts of the brain or actual nonmaterial “mind” states.

Christians call this aspect “soul” or “spirit,” and certainly the Bible affirms the reality of the immaterial human nature as “soul” or “spirit.” Even biblically speaking, however, a significant function of this immaterial aspect involves reasoning, communicating, experiencing emotions, memory, and social interaction, all of which can be studied to some degree without focus on one’s relationship with God.

Psychology is defined in a leading Christian textbook as “the scientific study of the behavior and thinking of organisms….the study of how living creatures interact with their environment and each other, and how they cope (successfully or unsuccessfully) with that environment.”³ Given this broad definition, and recognizing that many people use the term interchangeably with psychotherapy, we will focus on psychotherapy in this article, rather than exploring the wide scope of general psychology.⁴

Psychotherapy focuses on the use of psychology to help people “cope” with their problems. Stanton Jones and Richard Butman, in Modern Psychotherapies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal, give a good broad definition focusing on technique rather than type: “The common techniques all psychotherapists seem to use (though with differing frequencies) include (1) offering reassurance and support, (2) desensitizing the client to distress, (3) encouraging adaptive functioning and (4) offering understanding and insight.”⁵

Some observers distinguish between “psychotherapy” and “counseling.”⁶ However, such distinctions have blurred over the years, are not recognized by most people who seek psychotherapy, and serve no useful purpose in our present survey. Here we will operate from the commonly held assumption that psychotherapy and counseling are fairly synonymous unless specifically distinguished in a particular circumstance.⁷

HISTORY OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

It may be helpful to consider the history of psychotherapy⁸ with the analogy of nesting dolls. Just as a large wooden Russian folk doll can be opened to reveal a smaller one, which is opened to reveal an even smaller doll, and so on, so can the history of psycho-therapy be viewed. The largest doll would represent the post-Reformation philosophy of science, with the next smaller doll representing psychology, and the smallest doll representing psychotherapy.

This article merely mentions the larger “dolls” while it focuses on the smallest.⁹ After the Reformation, during the rise of secular “enlightenment,” world views were developed and articulated that did not include any idea of theism or Christian theology.

Post-Reformation, nontheistic world views abandoned theism as the foundation for expecting orderliness in nature, and for expecting that the tools of reason could be used to understand what was observed empirically (i.e., by the senses, by physical observation or testing). For the first time science was divorced from philosophy and became an academic governing system itself. Science in the main did not support those assumptions with a foundation of belief in an infinite, personal, benevolent Creator-God. Instead, it promoted naturalism (i.e., there is no supernatural realm) concerning the real world; empiricism concerning methods for discovering truth; physicalism concerning human nature (i.e., humans are fundamentally material beings with mental aspects as part of, or produced by, the brain); and secular humanism concerning human personal, interpersonal, and social aspects (i.e., personal and social ethics or values are subjective and human-generated, not absolute and given by God).

As we described in Part One, psychology shifted orientation from philosophy to science toward the end of the nineteenth century. This occurred when Wilhelm Wundt founded a psychological testing center or laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, and brought psychology to the status of an independent scientific, academic discipline in 1879. While psychology was developing its scientific foundation, some of its assumptions and principles began to be used in therapeutic settings, most notably by the “father” of modern psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud.

Contemporary psychotherapies developed afterward either from, or in contrast to, Freud’s grand theories of psychoanalysis. One of the most significant features of Freud’s system — mirrored in almost all subsequent psychotherapies — is its amalgamation of the “science” of psychology with the therapist’s presuppositions, the accumulated “common sense” of therapist/client interaction, and the pragmatism of subjectively successful client therapy. This frequently inconsistent process of amalgamation distinguishes most psychotherapy from the empirical focus of contemporary science, although, as we discussed in Part Two, a strict empiricism is inadequate as a comprehensive philosophy of science.

Two frustrating problems psychotherapy advocates face should be mentioned before we examine the foundations of contemporary psychotherapies. The first problem involves success rates. Despite its acceptance as a scientific discipline, more than a century of psychologizing, its blatant promotion as a “wonder drug,” and public confidence in its curative powers, most of the comprehensive data available on the effectiveness of psychotherapy shows that its success is much more modest than most people have assumed.

The most oft-cited study asserting the ineffectiveness of psychotherapy was published in 1952 by H. J. Eysenck. He used insurance company files as a research base from which he concluded that almost three-quarters of those diagnosed as “psychoneurotic” improved over a two-year period regardless of whether or not they received professional psychological intervention. This conclusion flatly contradicted the common assumptions of the day, since “at the time a 60–70% success rate was being reported by most well-known psychology clinics.”¹⁰ This study is still cited by many critics of psychotherapy, even though many studies done since then have concluded otherwise, and several serious flaws were discovered in Eysenck’s study.

What is most striking about later research regarding the effectiveness of psychotherapy, however, is that it shows almost uniformly that psychotherapy is, at best, moderately helpful. Furthermore, none of the research presents an unambiguous, generally accepted description of what constitutes “helpful” and how much change toward what ends constitutes “progress.” The values and assumptions of the therapists, clients, and researchers all color this assessment.

For example, a Christian might encourage a fearful friend to “trust in the Lord” while a secular therapist might discourage dependence on some “mythological father-god figure” to overcome fear in favor of affirming one’s own autonomy. Which case represents “helpful change for the better”?

Additionally, the research has not been based on test groups isolated from all other possible influences (clergy, relatives, friends, books, etc.). We shouldn’t wonder at this, since so much of psychotherapy, especially Christian psychotherapy, also involves common sense, experience, clarification, friendship, understanding, and support — all factors present in varying degrees in almost all ongoing interpersonal relationships.

So, there is no evidence that psychotherapy is the solution to everyone’s problems, and no way to tell how many “helpful” psychotherapy techniques are simply the tools of ordinary wholesome relationships and how many are unique to psychotherapy. Psychologist and critic of psychology Dr. Paul Vitz summarizes: “Psychology overpromised and underproduced; that is, everybody thought that if they studied psychology or saw a therapist, they’d be happy ever after — but that didn’t happen.”¹¹

The second frustration is that research has been unable to support the superiority of one school of therapy over another. In other words, almost any nondestructive kind of therapy will produce this statistic of moderate success. Limited research support is available that certain broad kinds of therapy seem to be more effective for certain kinds of problems than others.¹² One of the problems with this kind of research is that many therapists are “eclectic” — that is, they use techniques and hold assumptions from a variety of psychotherapy sources, and their treatment varies not only from one client to the next, but often even with the same client over a period of time. Pragmatism (“Do whatever works!”) seems to be the standard for determining the technique or approach for any client at any given time.

A Christian who attempts to use psychology within a framework of biblical principles for personal counseling faces unique challenges and a myriad of pitfalls: he (or she) must discern what complements, illustrates, applies, and adds knowledge to biblical principles and what rivals or contradicts them. It is entirely insufficient to assume, as so many Christian therapists do, that a good education in psychology and a born-again experience is all it takes to produce a sound Christian therapy practice. Such a Christian must be better prepared in theology, biblical interpretation, and principles of Christian discipleship than he is in psychology. In addition, he must be well-versed in critical thinking methods and have a well-rounded, comprehensive Christian world view by which he can judge everything he learns and experiences, including what he learns and experiences in psychology. Jones and Butman urge, “What we need in evaluating models of counseling and psychotherapy is clear thinking about our presuppositions, our views of humanity, and our moral standards and how to apply these to real situations. While we must be careful about being overly dogmatic and rigid, good evaluation is brutally honest about the realities of the human condition in all their tragic complexities. We need guidelines on how to think clearly, critically and courageously.”¹³

FOUNDATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOTHERAPIES

Three main branches of psychotherapy have provided the foundation for the myriad of contemporary psychotherapeutic techniques, theories, and assumptions: dynamic psychologies, behavioral psychologies, and humanistic psychologies.¹⁴ Additionally, many psychotherapists seem to pick and choose varieties of elements from any or all three foundational systems without regard to their sometimes mutually exclusive or inconsistent aspects.

Dynamic Psychologies

Sigmund Freud, a late nineteenth-century neurologist-psychiatrist, developed a system of clinical practice called psychoanalysis that focused on introspection — by the therapist concerning himself, and then in a clinical setting by the client with the aid of a therapist, called an analyst. Freud’s theory of personality included the idea of two mental states, the conscious and the unconscious; and the specialized personal aspects of ego, superego, and id. He attributed adult psychopathology (mental problems) to early childhood disruption of psychosexual development. Two of Freud’s disciples, Alfred Adler (see below) and Carl Jung, developed their own systems.

Jung was a mystical philosopher and occult practitioner, a contemporary of Freud. He had been conducting his own studies and experiments in treating “hysteria” and “nerves” when he learned of Freud’s work and began a correspondence and eventual partnership with him. However, fundamental differences in psychoanalytic theory later caused the partnership to dissolve. Today Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis are considered quite distinct, although they also share many assumptions in common. Distinctives of Jung’s psychoanalysis include assumptions about the “collective unconscious” and “archetypes.”

Jung divided the human psyche into three parts: consciousness, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious Jung defined as the “top layer” of unconsciousness, “bound up with the personal characteristics of an individual.”¹⁵ The collective unconscious, a controversial concept rejected by many psychologists, was postulated by Jung as the unifying unconsciousness of humanity. This “deeper” layer of unconsciousness contains the archetypes — the intrinsic idea-forms common to all humanity and reflective of the unity or “soul” of mankind. Myths, for example, are conscious manifestations of the collective unconscious and its archetypes.

Psychodynamic psychologies take the basic psychoanalytical models and add to them a focus on “cognitive [thought] and interpersonal processes.”¹⁶ In other words, they first add to the fundamental assumptions of psychoanalysis ideas concerning the effect of early childhood interpersonal relationships on personality development. They proceed to suggest that personality dysfunction can be resolved through repairing, reexperiencing, and/or reinterpreting early childhood interpersonal experiences. Psychodynamic psychologies place a much more dynamic responsibility on the therapist, who is not Freud’s “blank canvas,” but instead is the font of wisdom and healthful personal interaction that the client needs to restructure his or her personality, recovering from the traumas of unhealthy early childhood relationships.

Most psychodynamic therapies last a long time (such as twice-weekly 50- minute sessions for three to five years), the goal being to use the healthy relationship between the mature therapist and the dysfunctional client as the basis for the client to experience personal growth and change. This is one of the most popular forms of therapy today, and can be extremely dangerous in the hands of an inadequate therapist. The client can be like putty in the hands of the therapist:

A healthy therapist will judge the maturity of the patient’s behavior with reasonable effectiveness and accuracy. He can monitor the countertransference and separate much of what is his internal interpretation of reality from that of the patient. An immature therapist, however, can model a distorted sense of maturity and influence the client to develop according to the therapist’s faulty perspective. Little possibility exists, in this theoretical framework, for the therapist leading the patient to a greater level of maturity than the therapist has personally attained.¹⁷

Some of the worst horror stories of therapeutically induced or enhanced psychopathologies have come from therapists incorporating or assuming some sort of psychodynamic approach in their therapy. Alien abduction therapy, past-life regression therapy, recovered memory therapy, and other kinds of irresponsible therapy fit a psychodynamic model well.

An entire article could be devoted to a critique of the dynamic psychologies, but four fundamental problems that especially concern Christian evaluators address our survey purposes here. First, the dynamic psychologies assume that most behavior arises from instinctive, nonmoral urges rather than from personal, morally responsible willfulness.

Second, most of these psychologies presuppose a deterministic naturalism that allows no justification for absolute ethics, responsible decision making, the existence of God, or people’s spiritual natures. This makes dynamic psychologies prone to misuse by dysfunctional therapists, who can enhance a client’s subjective feelings of victimization, and can fail to encourage clients to assume personal responsibility and moral commitment. Because of the close association between therapist and client, and the assumption that the client is a victim of early childhood trauma who cannot rise above it on his or her own, the client is almost literally at the mercy of the therapist.

Third, many types of dynamic psychology reflect the anti-Christian, anti-religious, and/or unorthodox biases of their founders, such as atheist Sigmund Freud and occult mystic Carl Jung. Therapists whose therapies are compatible with these systems are likely to reject biblical Christianity, its world view, and its values as well. Even dynamic therapists who are Christians or who are sympathetic to Christian clients tend without biblical warrant to apply certain antireligious assumptions from these systems selectively against religious ideas they don’t like. “Therapy is never value free and…all therapists either implicitly or explicitly communicate their values and personal religion. Therefore, the question is not whether the therapist has certain personal values or goals but how these influence the therapy process.”¹⁸

Finally, strict psychoanalytic theories are ultimately self-contradictory, because if everything in human experience is shaped by early childhood traumas, then perhaps one’s acceptance of psychoanalysis is shaped by an early childhood experience. In other words, we have no way of knowing if it’s true or not, only if we think it’s true because we’ve been shaped to think it’s true. Jones and Butman explain this self-stultification of psychoanalysis in relationship to religion: “If atheism can be explained in as facile and convincing a fashion as religion, then there is no ultimate hope of ever knowing anything truly….Such an all-encompassing ‘psychologizing’ of our capacity to know is repugnant to Christians, who believe that we are capable of knowing truly, at least at some level.”¹⁹

Behavioral Psychologies

The second building block of contemporary psychotherapy was the development of behaviorism, first by Freud’s disciple Alfred Adler, and then under academic psychologist John Watson. The most popular behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, started with a strict (and, to some, artificial) behaviorism and developed his system to such a complexity that many believe his clearly demarcated behaviorism spurred the leap to humanistic psychology.

Adler’s system²⁰ focused on “helping the individual clarify constructive life goals and plans, develop proper social interest (concern for others), and better understand his or her life style and how this relates to psychological development.”²¹ Watson’s most influential work was published in the first 20 years of this century. He approached psychotherapy from an academic rather than a clinical perspective. Additionally, he was the first to focus on the study of observable behavior rather than subjective introspection. This is one of the most important distinctives between analysis or dynamic psychology and behavioral psychology. Although behaviorism and psychoanalysis both assume naturalism and that early experiences are determinative of adult mental states, behaviorism applies different principles of psychotherapy. While psychoanalysis focuses on introspection, behaviorism focuses on observable behavior. Many people, including Christians, are attracted to behaviorism because of this emphasis on “the scientific method.”

B. F. Skinner’s “operant conditioning” theory is perhaps the aspect of his behaviorism most pervasive in contemporary society. His theory is assumed and used in education, business, job training, and correctional incentives. Skinner was “committed to the propositions that human nature can be completely understood through the methods of natural science; that human behavior is determined by the environment; and that the psychological control of human behavior is the only hope for the immense problems facing mankind.”²²

The two basic assumptions of behaviorism are naturalism and empiricism. In other words, matter is the only reality and reality can only be tested through the senses.

Strict behaviorism totally rejects any idea of God or the immaterial aspect of humankind. There is no ultimate, eternal, infinite, personal God by whom we are created and to whom we are responsible. In fact, “we” are not persons, minds, or spiritual beings with bodies — we are merely brains in bodies. The mind is mere electrical functionings, or a “byproduct” of the electrical processes of the brain. Consequently, everything human is explainable by natural law.

If only the material world is real, and the material world is subject to natural law, then it is not surprising that all the tools for discovering, observing, understanding, and changing things about the mind are physically based as well. Humans are understandable, behaviorists say, only from an empiricist perspective. In other words, human behavior is shaped by physical forces and is observed through physical means. An assumption of strict behaviorism also implies determinism, that one’s actions are explainable by external, empirical (sensory) causes.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy progresses through several stages: education about the relationship between thoughts and personal well-being, training in assessing one’s thoughts and comparing them to external reality, training in how to modify one’s thoughts to accurately reflect reality, and, in some applications of cognitive-behavioral therapy, an additional time of learning to translate one’s new thought patterns into both a comprehensive world view and correspondingly healthy actions.²³

Several features or goals of some behavioral therapies have been used by Christians in a Christian world view setting, such as assumptions about rational apprehension of reality, changing behavior to correspond to truth,²⁴ and so forth. Jones and Butman explain one kind of behavioral therapy, rational emotive therapy, that attracts Christians: “The highly rational and didactic nature of [rational emotive therapy] as a counseling method fits with the instincts of many conservative Christian believers who tend to be comfortable with rational discourse about belief and are primed to believe that belief has a formative impact on behavior and quality of life.”²⁵ However, the core of behaviorism (including rational emotive therapy), with its assumptions of strict naturalism, determinism, and physicalism, is completely incompatible with Christianity.

Humanistic Psychologies

Humanistic psychology built on the beginnings of psychoanalysis and behaviorism with the ideals of Abraham Maslow, and was developed further by Carl Rogers. Calling itself the “Third Force,” it rejected the “dehumanizing” determinism in both psychoanalysis and behaviorism (in which human behavior is predetermined either internally or externally) in favor of an emphasis on human autonomy and potentiality.

Fundamental to humanistic psychologies is the idea that human behavior, and change in human behavior, is caused by internal, personal perceptions, experiences, and reactions to those experiences, all focused on the basic human need for personal fulfillment or “self-actualization.” Sometimes humanistic psychologies credit behaviorism, especially the strict kind of behaviorism advocated by Skinner, for their development, because they developed in reaction against the “dehumanizing” aspects of behaviorism, rather than as a further development of behaviorism.

Humanistic psychology acknowledges the value of introspection, and tests many of its ideas through observable behavior, but its orientation is on conscious subjectivity. It is commonly called “client-centered” or “person-centered” therapy — an approach developed by Rogers in the 1940s. Jones and Butman summarize: “Person-centered therapy emphasizes the primacy of the individual and is often criticized for contributing to modern narcissism and the erosion of any shared sense of meaning or value in contemporary society.”²⁶

Transactional Analysis (TA), developed by Eric Berne, is one of the most popular forms of humanistic psychology. It is from TA that we get the common psychotherapeutic concepts of the inner tripersons — the Parent, the Adult, and the Child.

At the core of the humanistic psychologies is the fundamental assumption that “man is the measure of all things,” as the ancient humanist slogan put it; or “I must find myself!” as the person-centered client is likely to lament. In other words, personal fulfillment and happiness is the goal of individual human living, and therapy is the attempt to obtain professional assistance to reach that goal through personal transformation.

Beginning with the premise that their goal is to help relatively well-adjusted people achieve greater self-actualization (as opposed to the dynamic and behavioral psychologies, which focus on psychological deviations), the humanistic psychologies start with the self, work on the self, reward the self, and fulfill the self. It is no wonder that humanistic psychologies also tend to be intensely subjective — truth and reality are relative to the individual (the client) experiencing them. Jones and Butman describe the view: “What we are and what we do is a reflection of our subjective experience of the world and ourselves. External reality can only be known through the inner reality of personal experience.”²⁷ Commonly, one hears a humanistic psychologist say something like, “It’s not for me to determine whether or not my client is telling me the truth. What matters is what my client experiences as the truth.” This approach is compatible with many of the more bizarre therapy trends such as alien abductions, where the reality of extraterrestrials (or other-dimensional beings) is irrelevant: what matters is that the client believes in alien abductions.

We experienced another example when we talked with the mother of two youngsters who had allegedly been ritually abused by Satanists in a child-care situation. We asked the mother if she ever had doubts about the reality of their abuse since years of investigation had turned up no corroborative evidence that her children had been abused. “No,” she replied, “I can’t have any doubts. Frankly, whether or not they were, I believe they were and they believe they were, and the success of their therapy depends on our beliefs, not on the reality.”

Some Christians who encounter humanistic psychologies in the therapy room first are drawn to their emphasis on personal human responsibility, encouragement to reach one’s potential, assistance in developing a system of ethics, and focus on each person’s unique value. However, these attributes of humanistic psychologies have developed on a foundation that is thoroughly non-Christian; that is, humans must assume personal responsibility because they are accountable to no one but themselves — there is no God to answer to.

Reaching one’s potential has been substituted for seeking God’s will as the highest goal of humankind. The self-actualization focus is on personal, subjective well-being and social functioning rather than on reconciliation with God. While Christians certainly need to learn how to be content with their lives, to reach their “potential,” and to adequately socialize, none of their “coping” has eternal significance. Only Christ’s death on the cross can transfer the significance of the eternal to humans who otherwise are temporal and undeserving: “Our biggest problem, then, is not depression, anxiety, or anger. It’s not our past history, difficult and ugly as that may be. Nor is it sickness, an accident, loss or affliction. Our greatest problem is not even the sins we commit. It is the deep crevice that wants to open in your soul and mine separating us from the love, joy, and peace of a life lived in the closest possible union with our Creator.”²⁸

The humanistic system of ethics is subjectively based and relative rather than coming from God’s holy nature as an absolute standard of conduct for all humankind. As Dr. Paul Vitz notes, “The idea that each person creates their own values is the most extreme form of relativism that exists,” and “anyone who worships himself worships a fool.”²⁹

In the humanistic psychologies personal unique value rests upon subjective self-centricism, not on the fact that each person is created lovingly by God. Such preoccupation with self — such narcissism — is reflective of “a cultural context frequently closed to the transcendent,” a cultural context that values life “only to the extent that it brings pleasure and well-being [and] suffering seems like an unbearable setback, something from which one must be freed at all costs,”³⁰ rather than as an opportunity to “not only believe on [Christ], but also to suffer for him” (Phil. 1:29).

“Seat-of-the-Pants” or Pragmatic Psychotherapy

Despite the clear developmental trends in this history of psychotherapy and the orientations of the major psychologies, most contemporary American therapists do not practice any one psychotherapy exclusively and consistently. Instead (as we’ve stressed several times in this series), most therapists have some sort of basic orientation in one of the three major psychologies but then they pick and choose from hundreds of different systems, techniques, methods, schools, and ideas, applying “what works” in individual cases with different people with different problems. The typical therapist system is derived from clinical experience, intuition, common sense, and reflection without any coherent paradigm or framework to reconcile everything into a cohesive therapeutic world view.³¹

This eclecticism is generally unpredictable, frequently unhelpful, and usually inconsistent. Without a coherent world view, the therapist is unable to adequately or objectively test new theories or techniques. Not only is this not helpful from a therapeutic standpoint, it can be therapeutically harmful and spiritually harmful when it promotes unbiblical (and sometimes occultic) concepts. Even Christian therapists can cause severe physical, mental, and spiritual harm without a rigorous, consistent, biblical therapeutic approach. This has been made abundantly clear in the practice of some poor psychotherapies such as repressed memory therapy³² or in failure to ensure appropriate therapist/client relationships such as when sexual relationships occur between therapist and client.

Ideally, one should first develop a consistent, comprehensive, and coherent philosophical framework or methodology, including an understanding of personality, human nature, abnormality, and mental/emotional/personal soundness. Then one can judge the different therapies, techniques, and approaches by how they correspond to this basic model: “In fact, whatever else Christian counseling is, surely it must be based on and informed by these biblical perspectives on human nature. Three biblical themes seem particularly relevant: the unity of personality, creation in the image of God, and the reality of sin.”³³

Disappointingly, most Christian therapists do not carefully and thoughtfully construct a biblical paradigm of counseling by which they judge all theories, schools, techniques, and ideas. Instead, they focus almost always on clinical experiences rather than comprehensive data built into a coherent framework — although some Christian psychologists have attempted to develop a good system in their “integration” discussions.³⁴ This makes the evaluation of Christian psychology confusing, and the difficulty is increased because many Christian psychologists also use terms common to secular psychology, such as “self esteem,” “self-actualization,” “inner child,” and so forth, but assign new, Christian definitions to those terms without clearly stating so.

The most popular contemporary Christian psychologists, such as James Dobson, Gary Collins, Frank Minirth, Paul Meier, Fred Gross, and William Backus, come under particular scrutiny in these areas. Each criticism does not apply to each therapist, nor always to the same degree. Nonetheless, too frequently they do not explain what underlying, comprehensive biblical world view they may possess; they promote techniques and/or ideas for which they do not demonstrate a clear biblical compatibility; and they fail to explain that they have redefined common terminology to fit their world views.

Eclecticism is not completely useless, especially for the Christian who can build from other systems a quasi-system that more or less reflects the broad approach of the Bible to personal development. Jones and Butman explain:

Almost any form of counseling interaction in the Bible can find its counterpart in the practice of secular psychotherapy. It is interesting, though, that each major school of psychotherapy tends to build its identity around a rather limited number of styles of therapist-client interactions — so that cognitive therapists are teachers, person-centered therapists are accepting, psychoanalytic therapists are distant and interpretive, and so forth. No counseling model we know of embodies the diversity of interaction styles that seem to be recommended in Scripture. So, as the Christian therapist moves beyond a secular theory, one needed area of growth is an expanded vision of technique that incorporates the eclecticism found in Scripture.³⁵

SPECIAL PROBLEMS WITH CHRISTIAN “INTEGRATION”

Christian eclectics, or “integrationists” as they are frequently labeled, face problems not only with determining and rejecting those elements of psychology that are incompatible with Christianity, but they must also determine how to integrate psychology and Christianity.³⁶ Views on this aspect range from the antipsychologists who declare it is impossible to find any harmony between the two, to some unsophisticated and/or inconsistent evangelicals who think that when a born-again Christian uses an intact secular psychology, it automatically becomes “Christian psychology.” Thoughtful Christians with both theological and psychological competence recognize that any one term, whether “integration,” “amalgamation,” or “eclecticism,” is inadequate without a contextual definition to explain how psychology and the Bible could intersect. (The above chart clarifies some of the assumption problems in integrating common psychotherapy ideas with Christian beliefs.)

Most Christian psychologists will agree that integration cannot include any compromise of a biblical world view, theology, or doctrines of humanity, sin, and redemption. They would say that responsible integration must exclude compromise, omission, or contradiction of biblical theology. Gary Collins notes:

Never do I recall committed Christian psychologists suggesting that integration is the same as merger. For the Christian psychologist, integration involves a recognition of the ultimate authority of the Bible, a willingness to learn what God has allowed humans to discover through psychology and other fields of knowledge, and a desire to determine how both scriptural truths and psychological data can enable us better to understand and help people.³⁷

While Christian psychologists are appreciative of some of the observations, ideas, and data of psychology, many, such as William Backus, explicitly draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not:

Sometimes, however, the psychological must be moved over to accommodate the prior claims of God’s revealed truth. For instance, the fundamental human plight is not anxiety or the oedipal situation or imbalance in neurotransmitting chemistry, though all of these may exist. Man’s greatest plight is a separation from his Source, which is God. This separation was wrought by human sin….

The cure is not insight, or desensitization, or healing of memories, or making the unconscious conscious, or increased rationality, or finding one’s real self, though one or another of these might help. The cure is God’s free gift of righteousness, gained for us when Jesus offered himself for us. We gain this gift by grace through faith. This righteousness alone reunites us with God; it is our life-giving reconnection to our Source.³⁸

The Christian who attempts integration, either as a client or a therapist, must remember that no therapy comes without a world view, even if that world view is myopic and incoherent. It is not possible to embrace wholeheartedly any one of the three foundational schools without compromising one’s Christian world view or becoming hopelessly inconsistent. Each of the three foundational schools presupposed nontheistic naturalism, and many of their proponents have been actively anti-Christian. As Christian psychology professor Gary Collins notes, “There can be no denial that much of psychology is more than indifferent to religion; it is opposed to religion.”³⁹

THE BOTTOM LINE FOR THE CHRISTIAN

Is there any compatibility between psychology and the church? As our brief survey has shown, such a vast field with such a divergence of philosophy, theory, and practice as psychology can’t be summarily embraced or dismissed.

The major kinds of psychologies, described here as dynamic, behavioral, and humanistic, are foundationally nontheistic or even antitheistic as to the existence of God, naturalistic (often materialistic) as to the nature of reality, physicalistic or pantheistic as to the nature of humankind, relativistic as to values and ethics, and pragmatic as to treatment. None of these assumptions is compatible with a comprehensive Christian world view.

When we turn to the application of psychology in therapy, we find a cacophony of conflicting practices seemingly divorced from their psychology foundations. Such inconsistencies and lack of a cohesive world view create a subjective arena in which a mixture of helpful, neutral, and damaging practices can coexist. Christians risk practicing biblically inconsistent counseling when they fail to adhere closely to an underlying coherent biblical world view.

Among the myriad of practices and ideas, however, Christians may attempt to discern helpful therapies compatible with a Christian world view. For example, Dr. William Backus has borrowed and redefined aspects of cognitive therapy into a counseling system that focuses on helping clients to conform their thoughts to Christian truth, and then have their “Christianized” thoughts conform their behavior. Dr. James Dobson, who does not have a clinical practice, frequently mentions the importance of “self-esteem,” but he has attempted to redefine the term within the Christian context of God’s love for us as His creations, and the sacrificial love He expressed toward us “while we were still sinners” (Rom. 5:8).

While many Christians may contest the degree of success such Christian psychologists have had at bringing secular therapies into a Christian world view, it is at least logically possible to affirm that “a Christian psychotherapist can within limits practice any one of many counseling techniques and approaches; and may choose…to use several methods, depending on his skills and the particular problems of his clientele” (emphasis in original).⁴⁰ Such an attempt will be more or less successful depending on several factors: first, the Christian therapist’s understanding of and commitment to a comprehensive, coherent, biblical world view; second, an understanding of the foundations of the various psychologies; third, an examination of how integrally any theory or technique is connected to its foundational psychology; and fourth, an assessment of the degree of correspondence that can be obtained between a given theory or technique and biblical principles.

Some of the observational data and logical evaluations of psychology can be relevant to a practical counseling application of a broad biblical foundation. A simplistic example would be that we learn through advice, observation, and experience not to touch a hot stove and burn ourselves. We thus grow in our ability to apply the biblical principle to take care of our physical bodies. Meier, et al., explain: “Thus both Christians and non-Christians who study creation will be observing God’s truth. Christians place their ultimate faith in God, who is revealed in the Bible. This gives them an accurate understanding of the truth of God in creation. Secular scientists who can also observe truth in creation, do make important discoveries…. Such discoveries of God’s truth, although not contained in the Bible, are still representative of the grace of God toward humankind.”⁴¹

Many of the techniques of psychotherapy are compatible with a Christian world view because they are not unique “psychology” discoveries or inventions but reflect the common sense, experience, and thoughtful reflection every Christian should practice as a matter of course. In other words, many times the secular world “borrows” from our world view. Gary Collins calls this intersection of psychology and the church “overlap”: “Even those who try to dichotomize counseling into psychological versus biblical approaches have to admit that there is overlap. Listening, talking, confessing, accepting, thinking and understanding are neither purely psychological nor exclusively biblical activities….The person who wants to understand and help others cannot avoid at least some overlap and integration of psychological and Christian principles.”⁴²

Above all else, the use of ideas, practices, techniques, methods, and theories from psychology in Christian counseling must be circumscribed at every point that it diverges from a consistent biblical world view. Collins gives a concise statement reflective of many Christian psychologists: “Of course there is much that is wrong about psychology — but there is also much that is sensitive, helpful, valid, and good. The best psychologists carefully sift the conclusions and evidence, reject that which is invalid and make use of the rest.”⁴³

NOTES

¹See, for example, Terence W. Campbell’s Beware the Talking Cure (Boca Raton, FL: Upton Books, 1994), or Robyn M. Dawe’s House of Cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth (New York: The Free Press, 1994). ²The authors cited in this article are representative of the Christian psychology movement, although we are not exclusively limiting the movement to these authors or their views. Publishing in Christian psychology is so prolific that the limited number of sources used in one review could be statistically misleading. ³Paul Meier, Frank B. Minirth, Frank B. Wichern, and Donald E. Ratcliff, Introduction to Psychology and Counseling, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), 17. ⁴See Part One in this series, “Psychology and the Church: Laying a Foundation for Discernment” (Winter 1995), for further discussion of the terminology. ⁵Stanton Jones and Richard Butman, Modern Psychotherapies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 12. ⁶Clinton W. McLemore, “Counseling and Psychotherapy: An Overview,” in Psychotherapy in Christian Perspective, ed. David G. Benner (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 4–5. ⁷Jones and Butman, 14. ⁸See Part One in this series for an earlier discussion of the history of psychology. ⁹For further information on post-Reformation philosophy of science, see Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton’s The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), and J. P. Moreland’s Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989). ¹⁰Michael J. Lambert, Dean E. Barley, and Ellie L. Wright, “Research in Psychotherapy Effectiveness,” in Psychotherapy in Christian Perspective, 61–62. ¹¹Kurt Hoeksema, interview with Paul Vitz, “The Cult of Self: Psychology and the Culture of Narcissism,” Cornerstone 23:106, Spring 1995, 13. ¹²See especially Lambert, et al., 65–72. ¹³Jones and Butman, 30. ¹⁴We are grateful to Jones and Butman for this threefold classification of psychologies. While many authors, both Christian and secular, group psychologies differently, for the purposes of our broad survey this classification system is helpful. ¹⁵David Cox, Modern Psychology: The Teachings of Carl Gustav Jung (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968), 80. ¹⁶Jones and Butman, 93. ¹⁷Ibid., 104. ¹⁸Gary Collins, Can You Trust Psychology? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 27. ¹⁹Jones and Butman, 78. ²⁰Adler’s system was so broad-ranging that it is difficult to classify. We follow the lead of Jones and Butman, who view Adler’s system as primarily cognitive-behavioral rather than either psychoanalytical or humanistic (see Jones and Butman, 226). ²¹McLemore, 9. ²²Mark P. Cosgrove, B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorism: An Analysis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), 10. ²³See, for example, L. Rebecca Propst, “Cognitive-Behavior Therapy,” in Psychotherapy in Christian Perspective, 134. ²⁴This is developed more fully, for example, in William Glasser’s Reality Therapy, which is also popular among Christians. Even biblical counseling movement “father” Jay Adams acknowledges that some of Glasser’s ideas helped him to understand how to apply biblical principles in counseling situations, although he rejected Glasser’s world view (see, for example, Jay Adams, Competent to Counsel [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1970], xix). ²⁵Jones and Butman, 192. ²⁶Ibid., 256. ²⁷Ibid., 257. ²⁸William Backus, Hidden Rift with God (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1990), 32. ²⁹Hoeksema, 11, 14. ³⁰Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (New York: Random House, 1995), 115. ³¹Jones and Butman, 11. ³²See our article “The Hard Facts about Satanic Ritual Abuse,” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1992, 20–23, 32-34. ³³David G. Benner, “Christian Counseling and Psychotherapy,” in Psychotherapy in Christian Perspective, 16. ³⁴For example, see Gary Collins’s Christian Counseling (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1988), or his The Biblical Basis of Christian Counseling for People Helpers (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1993); Meier, et al., Introduction to Psychology and Counseling; Benner’s Psychotherapy in Christian Perspective; and Jones and Butman’s Modern Psychotherapies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal. ³⁵Jones and Butman, 59. ³⁶Specific arguments given by biblical counseling movement proponents were discussed in Part Two in this series and are not repeated here. ³⁷Collins, 127. ³⁸Backus, 16. ³⁹Collins, 119. ⁴⁰Mark Cosgrove and James D. Mallory, Jr., Mental Health: A Christian Approach (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977), 52. ⁴¹Meier, et al., 32. ⁴²Collins, 129. ⁴³Ibid., 163.

This second of four articles on “Psychology and the Church” focuses on what is called the “Biblical Counseling movement” (BCM). This is a popular evangelical approach to counseling that not only promotes its own program for resolving personal problems within a strict Bible-based foundation, but also asserts that “psychology” — or more specifically, “psychotherapy” — is completely incompatible with its approach. This article defines the Bible Counseling movement, reviews its common criticisms of psychology, summarizes its foundations, commends its many positive contributions, and notes some of its inadequacies.

The Bible’s teaching on God’s boundless mercy and love for His children assures the Christian that there is no problem too difficult, no situation too desperate, and no condition too bleak that He and His Word cannot bring comfort, courage, and the power to overcome adversity and sin. Jesus promised, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30, NIV).

THE BIBLICAL COUNSELING MOVEMENT (BCM)

These and other biblical promises form the basis for the argument many Christians use to reject psychotherapy specifically and psychology generally as “a religious wolf in pseudoscientific clothing.”¹ This rejection of psychology has a strong following among many conservative evangelicals. Frequently this approach is referred to as “biblical counseling” in distinction from “psychological counseling.” While many Christian therapists consider their counseling biblical in its approach, the “biblical counseling movement” (BCM) proponents reject any attempt to integrate psychology and a biblical approach. For them, “true spirituality has nothing to do with psychology (1 Cor. 2:11), a fake science based primarily on man’s rationalizations; i.e., self-deceptions.”²

Psychology³ is severely criticized not only by BCM advocates, but even by some psychologists and psychiatrists such as William Glasser, O. Hobart Mowrer, Thomas S. Szasz, William Kirk Kilpatrick, Terence W. Campbell, Robyn M. Dawes, and Paul C. Vitz. These criticisms will be reviewed in the third installment of this series.

BCM CRITICISM OF PSYCHOLOGY

BCM proponents are vociferous in their denouncements of psychology (especially, but not exclusively, psychotherapy) and of Christians who value psychological principles, discoveries, and/or applications.⁴ Gary Almy and Carol Tharp Almy, Christian medical doctors, state: “Psychology is a false gospel. Its teachers are nothing less than false prophets. They fill people with false hope and lead them into false peace.”⁵ Sometimes Martin and Deidre Bobgan are even broader in their denunciation of psychology as anti-Christian, as when they say, “Because psychology, which gives rise to psychotherapy, is not science and has not proven itself in either research or reality, and because it has unnecessarily replaced religious cures, it would be appropriate to label it ‘psychoquackery’ and to regard it as psychoheresy. Psychoquackery becomes psychoheresy when it is combined with Christian verbiage. Psychotherapy and its philosophical and practical implications and influence could very well be intrinsic to the great seduction in preparation for the antichrist.”⁶

It is not simply psychology in isolation from biblical principles that BCM proponents reject. They are at least as vociferous in their denunciations of “Christian psychology” as they are of “secular psychology.” For example, popular author Dave Hunt declares,

“Christian psychology” represents the most deadly and at the same time the most appealing and popular form of modernism ever to confront the church….

Then what is meant by this term? What is so-called Christian psychology? It is simply one form or another of secular psychology developed by godless humanists hostile to the Bible and now dressed up in Christian language….

Psychotherapy is, in fact, a rival religion that cannot be integrated with Christianity. Having nothing of value to offer to anyone, much less Christians, it is both deceptive and destructive.⁷

While most BCM advocates dismiss all psychotherapy and much of the broader field of psychology, most allow for certain interventive actions that can correct a physically based problem that may manifest in conjunction with personal problems. For example, the spiritually based problem of depression may also be accompanied by a metabolic problem that can physically enhance the depression. The Almys note, “Certainly, a counselor’s first priority may be to meet a crisis: getting a client out of a dangerous, life-threatening situation. As Jay Adams says, ‘If you see a naked man running down the street with a meat cleaver, don’t call your pastor.’ There are times when the police or physicians must be called. Some need hospitalization for disabling symptoms. Suicidal people may need to be restrained by police.”⁸

The BCM has drawn the parameter. Any personal problem that is not physiological in nature is spiritual, and must be addressed biblically.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE BCM

The BCM advocates do not simply criticize psychology and Christian psychology. They also promote an alternative way of helping hurting people, most commonly referred to as “biblical counseling” as distinct from psychology. Various other names are given for this approach, including Jay Adams’s “nouthetic counseling” and the Bobgans’ “spiritual way.” According to the BCM, biblical counseling is the only biblically acceptable way to help people solve their personal problems.

The BCM includes four foundational premises. The first maintains that every principle for personal fulfillment is contained in the Bible. When BCM advocates declare that the Bible is the source for counseling principles, they generally make this an absolute, complete, and exclusivistic statement. The Bobgans make this clear, stating that “the Bible gives the only accurate understanding of why man is the way he is and how he is to change,”⁹ and that “any counseling which uses philosophies and methods other than Scripture will not nourish and build a believer’s relationship with God.”¹⁰ The Almys encourage their readers to ask a prospective counselor “if he sees Scripture as sufficient for every problem.”¹¹ Jay Adams, considered by many to be the “father” of the BCM, places his exclusive focus within the wider context of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, saying, “since the Holy Spirit employs his Word as the principal means by which Christians may grow in sanctification, counseling cannot be effective (in any biblical sense of that term) apart from the use of the Scriptures.”¹²

Second, BCM assumes that all personal problems (if they are not organic, biological, and/or physical in nature) are spiritual problems. Although BCM proponents sometimes distinguish among emotional, mental, and spiritual problems,¹³ most also assume that anything that is not physically based must be spiritually based:

The psyche or soul and all of its concerns are spiritual matters.¹⁴

Problems of living are spiritual problems which require spiritual solutions.¹⁵

The majority of BCM advocates believe that “most psychotherapeutic systems either reject or ignore the spiritual relationship between man and his creator.”¹⁶ They further hold that biblical counseling is the only approach to personal problems based on the fundamental idea that personal problems (mental or emotional) are rooted in spiritual problems: “Spiritual solutions are not merely operative upon the spirit, for the Word of God applies to every aspect of daily life, including mental attitudes and interpersonal relationships.”¹⁷

Third, the BCM frequently equates the resolution of personal problems with the experience of personal salvation and subsequent sanctification. To the prospective client whose goal is to overcome fear of the dark, the biblical counselor preaches that Jesus is the “Light” (John 1:4-9) and that coming to Him in repentance to be saved opens the door to freedom from the fear of darkness. This element of the BCM is closely related to the second, that personal problems are spiritual problems. The Bobgans summarize this: “A true spiritual counselor does not place his confidence in any of the thousands of psychotherapeutic techniques, nor in the ideologies of determinism or humanism behind the personality theories. His confidence is in the truth set forth in the Bible, the way of salvation and sanctification, which includes forgiveness, new life, walking in the Spirit, putting off the old man and putting on the new….according to God’s wisdom, understanding, knowledge, compassion, forgiveness, truth, nurture, guidance, comfort, strength, and very presence.”¹⁸

The fourth foundational principle of the BCM is that the goal of counseling is a saved individual who lives in obedience to God’s Word. The direct goals are not conscientious work habits, consistent parenting, harmonious marriages, stress-free habits, or personal joy. Rather, the successive direct goals are, first, salvation and, second, obedience to God’s Word. As a consequence, salvation and sanctification will produce good employees, parents, spouses, and individuals. Jay Adams affirms positively, “God wants us to ‘lose’ ourselves in this world by throwing ourselves wholeheartedly into the service and love of Christ and His empire.”¹⁹ Adams also identifies personal satisfaction as a product of obedience: “Satisfaction, like peace and joy, comes not when one pursues it, but unexpectedly and always as a by-product of faithful, fruitful Christian living.”²⁰ T. A. McMahon clearly states, “As a Christian, true spirituality is a product only of our submission and obedience by His grace to His Word.”²¹

POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THE BCM

The BCM promotes several important concepts that challenge assumptions held by many psychology advocates. (Many psychology advocates, including many Christian therapists, recognize these principles as well and apply them against what they consider to be invalid psychological principles.)

First, the BCM recognizes that value-neutral or value-free counseling is impossible. Many secular therapists (even some Christian ones) say it is inappropriate to impose or assume any values regarding a client’s actions or attitudes. For example, a therapist, instead of telling a client, “Adultery is wrong,” might instead ask the client, “Are the benefits you perceive from your adultery (excitement, positive emotions, sexual indulgence, and hope for future well-being) worth you risking the negative consequences of your adultery (exposure to sexually transmitted diseases, incurring the anger of your spouse, conflicting emotions, etc.)?” These approaches, however, are not value-free at all. They assume the value that all values are equal in value. This, of course, is completely contrary to the biblical principle that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Prov. 14:12).

Second, the BCM recognizes the ambiguity in the claim that “psychology is science.” While some aspects of psychology deal with empirical (that which can be tested with the senses) data and evaluation, and would fit an empiricist theory of science, much of psychology (and most psychotherapy) deals with philosophies, values, emotions, and other intangibles that are not empirically governed. The BCM also recognizes that “psychology as science” becomes a convenient label that can be used or discarded seemingly arbitrarily. An empiricist psychologist can avoid commenting about God or the gospel by claiming “religion is not empirically testable,” but the same psychologist can make a vague appeal to science as “validating” even those assumptions about psychology that are beyond empiricism.

Third, the BCM emphasizes personal responsibility and accountability for behavior. While some forms of psychotherapy (such as Mowrer’s “Moral Model” or Glasser’s “Reality Therapy”) also emphasize personal accountability, the BCM applies personal accountability in a strictly biblical context. The BCM proponent would counsel in the same way Jesus did, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). The BCM focus on personal accountability is especially refreshing in the current “victimization” climate of our contemporary society, where everyone is a victim of something or someone and no one is responsible for anything negative in his or her own life.²²

Fourth, the BCM focuses on biblical principles of godly living. While psychotherapy frequently focuses on subjective feelings of emotional “wellness” or contentment, the BCM focuses on self-denial, commitment to studying God’s Word, worship of God, prayer, service to others, and development of what Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit” — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22).

Fifth, the BCM emphasizes goal-oriented, usually short-term counseling. This gives the client almost immediate positive feedback, encouragement that the problem can be resolved quickly, and a manageably simple course of action. While some psychotherapies anticipate that many clients will need years (if not lifetimes) of therapy, most biblical counseling considers a client’s problem resolved when he or she has recognized the problem from a biblical standpoint, confessed and repented of his or her own sin in the matter, and begun practicing biblical obedience in the specific matter.²³

Sixth, the BCM correctly understands that human-to-God and God-to-human relationships must be reconciled to ensure fulfilled and soundly functioning human-to-human relationships. The BCM recognizes that humans are basically sinful, not basically good, and that true and complete human fulfillment can only occur if one is regenerated through the power of the Holy Spirit by means of Christ’s redemption for us on the cross. Interpersonal or social “redemption” is only fully possible among redeemed individuals. Thus BCM counseling stresses human sinfulness and the need for redemption as root causes of personal distress. It also provides a standard of absolute ethics by which all actions can be judged, both good and bad.

Seventh, the BCM recognizes human needs as they are defined or at least given in principle in Scripture. This objective standard of need is far shorter than most subjective assessments of human “need,” which tend to focus on personal pleasure rather than the minimum requirements for humans to worship and serve God. To the typical BCM counselor, God “owes” humans nothing, because all have sinned and deserve only eternal punishment. Through the grace of God, both generally in His sustaining power in the world toward all and specially in salvation to those who believe, people enjoy the blessings of God. To the client who complains to his BCM counselor that he doesn’t have good self-esteem, the response is likely to be something like Jay Adams’s response to the self-esteem movement based on two secular psychologists, Adler and Maslow, and articulated by Christian psychologist Larry Crabb: “There is absolutely no biblical basis for any such statement. Indeed, following the Adler-Maslow line too closely here leads Crabb to contradict Jesus’ words: ‘There is only one real need’ (Luke 10:42). The real need of which He spoke was not the ‘need’ for a sense of personal worth or for the acceptance of oneself as a whole, real person. It was the need for Himself and His Word.”²⁴

In summary, the BCM has made seven positive contributions: (1) recognition that value-free counseling is impossible; (2) recognition of psychology’s ambivalence toward empirical science; (3) emphasis on personal accountability; (4) emphasis on biblical principles of godly living; (5) short-term counseling; (6) focus on the relationship between God and humans; and (7) emphasis on contentment in God’s will. These contributions have equipped many pastors and other Christian workers to work much more effectively with troubled Christians.

INADEQUACIES OF THE BCM

As helpful as the BCM is, and however much it more closely follows an exclusively biblical framework, we believe it has some serious inadequacies as well. These are certainly not inadequacies in God, or in God’s Word, but they are inadequacies in a human attempt to understand and apply God’s revelation to human experience.

First, the BCM generally fails to recognize that some of what we learn about God, ourselves, our relationship to God, and our relationships to others comes from what are called natural theology (understanding God and His relationship with the universe by means of rational reflection) and general revelation (that which can be known about God generally — especially through the created world — on a universal basis).²⁵ God speaks not only specially (in the Bible, through prophets, and in His Son — see Hebrews 1:1–2), but also through reason, the material universe, social history, and conscience.

Revelation through reason is assumed in several Bible passages, such as when the apostle Paul says in Romans 8:18 that he “considers” (literally, “has come to a reasoned conclusion”) that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us,” and in the same passage, “I am convinced” that nothing can separate believers from the love of God (Rom. 8:38–39).

Revelation through the created world is assumed throughout Scripture, such as in Psalm 19:1–4, which proclaims: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” The apostle Paul echoes this in Romans 1:19–20: “What may be known about God is plain to [the wicked], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Social history is appealed to by many Scripture writers as evidence of God’s will, such as when the writer of Hebrews points to the examples of previous “people of faith” (Heb. 11:4–40), when the apostle Peter refers to the judgment that came on the wicked of Noah’s day (1 Pet. 3:19–21), and when Paul affirms the value of good role models, exhorting, “Join with others in following my example brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you” (Phil. 3:17).

Conscience is an important source of general revelation, and the apostle Paul declares that it can provide a moral standard by which one’s actions can be judged according to God’s truth: “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them” (Rom. 2:14–15).

Believers as well as nonbelievers can observe God’s standards through general and natural theology. This “practical wisdom” is congruent to the broad principles laid down in the Bible, but can go beyond the specific prescriptions of Scripture. John Coe, assistant professor of theology and philosophy at Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology (part of the evangelical Biola University), notes that

the Scriptures recognize a non-propositional source of wisdom embedded and evident within the patterns and dynamic structures of both the inorganic and organic world. God Himself through the prophet Jeremiah expresses His loyalty to His covenant and laws in written Torah by likening it with His loyalty towards His covenant and laws evident in nature. Moreover, the OT sage appeals to this natural law or cosmic order as the data base and source for both his natural and social science not only in terms of theoretical, practical and technological knowledge but also wisdom and moral knowledge.²⁶

Second, since the BCM fails to recognize varieties of God’s communication to humans in natural theology and general revelation, it also establishes a false standard of comprehensive exclusivity regarding the Bible. The BCM wrongly assumes that the Bible is the sole source of all values and prescriptions, when in reality God is, and the Bible is one of the ways God communicates the values and prescriptions He has ordained for human behavior. God communicates most clearly and extensively, but not exclusively, in the Bible. (This article doesn’t have the space to discuss a related, ongoing BCM problem: how do counselees know that the interpretation and/or application of Scripture given them by their BCM counselor is accurate?)

God uses other people, personal observation, rational discourse, experience, and, as we have already seen, natural and general revelation as well as the Bible. This pattern is encouraged even within the pages of Scripture,²⁷ especially in the Book of Proverbs. Godly parental influence is acknowledged even without restricting that godly counsel only to repetition of the words of Scripture: “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching” (Prov. 1:8). Industriousness can be learned even from insects in the natural world: “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest” (Prov. 6:6–8).

In the New Testament, Jesus repeatedly uses examples from the natural world as sources for practical wisdom, as when He says, “Look at the birds of the air…” (Matt. 6:26), or when He compares the power of His words to a house’s strong foundation (Matt. 7:24–25).

To reduce God’s communicative power of His infinite principles of godly living to the exclusive domain of the Bible is to ignore the comprehensive nature of His governance and nurture of a world that reflects His nature. As we have seen, the Bible itself confirms this point.

The third fundamental inadequacy of the BCM is that it presents a falsely restrictive and dichotomized view of science and faith, and, consequently, of human nature and of the parameters of psychology as science. Philosopher J. P. Moreland argues convincingly in Christianity and the Nature of Science that it is not possible to separate science from other disciplines simply by declaring it so. Science occurs in a philosophical, historical, linguistic, and social milieu that integrally affects its nature and practice.²⁸ The BCM view of science is adopted from a non-Christian Enlightenment philosophy of science that wrongly divorced material realities from immaterial realities and wrongly affirmed empiricism (knowledge gained through sense verification) in isolation from other tools of knowing.²⁹ It is the secular humanist who needs to dichotomize between empirical and nonempirical means of knowledge and between the material and the nonmaterial realms. In this way he can safely exclude God (a nonmaterial Being) from the world around him (which is material) and from the entire field of relevant knowledge.

John Coe explains why Christians should reject such a philosophy:

Until the Enlightenment, reality was seen as a unified whole (material and nonmaterial), subject to God’s design, creation, sustaining power, and governance. One expected to see evidence of the invisible God’s existence and power in the material universe because He created and sustained that universe. One could use reason and logic to understand empirical observations because one presupposed that God had given humans reason and logic as tools to help them understand reality. No one strictly separated “science” from “faith,” or “daily living” from “spiritual living.” This view of reality is straight from the principles of Scripture, which affirms that God is Lord of all, not simply Lord of spiritual realities.³⁰

The BCM advocates, in their zeal to preserve the supremacy of the Bible as God’s sole revelation, have actually limited God’s supremacy by agreeing with the secular humanists that one can “know” material reality apart from God. The thoughtful Christian, however, recognizes that one cannot divorce God’s presence from any successful pursuit of truth because God’s sovereignty extends throughout all reality, material and immaterial.

“Science,” when restricted to its supposed value-less empiricist bare bones by secularists and BCM advocates, becomes merely a meaningless jumble of incomprehensible observations. For science to truly be science one must presuppose truths inherent in God’s creative and sustaining power, such as the laws of logic; the purposefulness of creation; order and predictability in nature; the possibility of knowing; the human mind’s ability to be self-cognizant, reflective, and rationally critical in its observations of reality; and the capacity for rational discourse.

“Science” is never “safe” if it is divorced from philosophy (and the only true philosophy is wisdom from God). When BCM counselors approve a godless medical doctor but not a godless psychologist, they are promoting the same “scientism” that has excluded God from science. They are saying that empirical science can safely make judgments about physical conditions, but not about nonmaterial or spiritual ones. The Christian should understand that humans are not essentially physical nor essentially spiritual, but instead are both physical and spiritual, the two natures creatively knit together in one rational person created in the image of God.

The BCM counselor should recognize that all truth flows from God’s nature, whatever its communicative medium and to whomever it is communicated. God’s truth can be communicated in Scripture, in prophecy, in wisdom, in experience, and so forth. It can be communicated to nonbelievers as well as believers. Armed also with the full complement of God’s special revelation and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, the believer is in the best position possible to test, discover, and apply truth in any course of study, including science, history, and human relations.

When one applies a comprehensive philosophy of science, one is then able to use the full range of God’s revelatory tools to discover truth. Observation can be extended not only to laboratory experiments, but also to human behavior. Predictive assumptions can be used not only to observe the law of gravity, but also to observe general principles of godly behavior producing human contentment. Godly counseling coupled with godly science can both distinguish between sin and immaturity (such as the difference between laziness and nail biting), and also prescribe appropriate corrective action (such as confession and repentance for laziness and foul-tasting nail polish for nail biting). But to divorce “science” from “faith” is to destroy true science and also true faith.

Finally, because the BCM wrongly limits godly wisdom to the Bible alone, it easily can neglect to nurture client-specific effective communication and application of godly principles.³¹ The BCM counselor who truly held Scripture as the exclusive source of godly wisdom would merely repeat Scriptures without personal intervention or interpretation. In actuality, however, even the most Bible-focused BCM counselors talk with their counselees, share their experiences or observations, and suggest ways of implementing the scriptural admonitions. By their actions they go beyond the strict limits of Scripture even as they preach “the Bible alone.” Biblical counseling ought to be within the same kind of context as any other activity by godly people: We preach original sermons based on and reflecting godly principles, we develop personal relationships based on and reflecting godly principles, and we conduct our lives based on and reflecting godly principles — we are not merely walking Bible automatons, and neither should we counsel as though we were.

The BCM has brought some important perspectives to the study and practice of human living. It has much to offer and has made some important criticisms of ungodly counsel. However, its inadequacies, especially in the area of wrongly isolating God’s sovereignty from some fields of study and practice, should encourage modification of current biblical counseling approaches toward a more comprehensive godly counseling movement.

Bob and Gretchen Passantino are nationally recognized, award-winning investigative journalists and directors of the apologetics discipleship organization Answers in Action.

NOTES

¹T. A. McMahon, “The Psychospiritual Approach,” The Berean Call, April 1994, 1. ²Ibid., 1. ³“Psychology” and “psychotherapy” are frequently synonymous for most laypeople. This is the common practice in the BCM, as the Bobgans note in Psychoheresy (Santa Barbara, CA: Eastgate Publishers, 1987), 4. ⁴Some BCM advocates are more sweeping and vociferous than others. Some admit the validity of some branches of psychology that they perceive to be more “scientific,” such as educational testing. Some admit that some psychotherapies can even echo (however imperfectly) some important biblical principles. What adds confusion to the situation is that some even make contradictory statements. For example, Martin and Deidre Bobgan universally describe psychotherapy negatively in their book Psychoheresy in such statements as, “The theories of psychological counseling poison the soul” (7); “Psychological theories and methods continue to subvert Christianity” (23); “The research results [in this book] also call for an elimination of the cure of minds (psychological counseling) in all of its forms, no matter where it exists in the church and no matter how popular and talented the psychologizers” (56); and “Psychotherapy intrudes upon some of the most important themes of Scripture….To dress these [theories and techniques] up in biblical terminology and call them Christian is to compound the evil” (120). However, in a subsequent book, Prophets of Psychoheresy II (Santa Barbara, CA: Eastgate Publishers, 1990), the Bobgans accused us (the Passantinos) of misrepresentation for referring to Martin as “representing the position that all psychotherapy is evil and unbiblical” (274). They protested, “We have never made such a statement! It was contrived by the Passantinos, attributed to us, and is a misrepresentation” (274). Regardless of some BCM proponents’ inconsistent and scattered exceptions to their condemnations, the BCM as a whole rejects all psychotherapy and usually rejects most general psychology as well. ⁵Gary Almy and Carol Tharp Almy, Addicted to Recovery (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1994), 222. ⁶Bobgan and Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 129. ⁷Dave Hunt, Christian Information Bureau Bulletin, July 1986, 1. ⁸Almy and Almy, 238. ⁹Bobgan and Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 10. ¹⁰Ibid., 210. ¹¹Almy and Almy, 239. ¹²Jay Adams, Competent to Counsel (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1970), 23–24. ¹³Martin Bobgan and Deidre Bobgan, The Psychological Way/The Spiritual Way (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1979), 27–42. ¹⁴Bobgan and Bobgan, Psychoheresy, 120. ¹⁵Ibid., 138. ¹⁶Bobgan and Bobgan, The Psychological Way/The Spiritual Way, 145. ¹⁷Ibid. ¹⁸Ibid., 161–62. ¹⁹Jay Adams, The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-Love, Self-Image (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1986), 108. ²⁰Ibid., 119. ²¹McMahon, 1. ²²See also Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992). ²³This is carefully developed in Jay Adams’s classic Competent to Counsel (44–49) and has been adopted and/or adapted by most BCM counselors since. ²⁴Jay Adams, The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-Love, Self-Image (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1986), 45. ²⁵For further information see “Revelation” and “Natural Theology” in The New Dictionary of Theology, ed. by Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988). ²⁶John Coe, “Educating the Church for Wisdom’s Sake or Why Biblical Counseling Is Unbiblical,” paper delivered at the 1991 international Christian Association for Psychological Studies conference, 12–13. ²⁷We are not saying that the following examples are themselves outside of Scripture, but that they assume the learning principle that one can gain godly wisdom from observing the natural world and human behavior. ²⁸J. P. Moreland, Christianity and the Nature of Science (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), 57. ²⁹A comprehensive examination of the philosophy of science is contained in J. P. Moreland’s Christianity and the Nature of Science. ³⁰Personal interview, February 22, 1995. ³¹Article three reviews some of the natural and general wisdom God gives outside Scripture which is included in the positive aspects of psychotherapy.

Summary

Psychology, specifically psychotherapy, is one of the most controversial issues in the church today. Some Christians argue that psychology is a rival religion, others that inclusion of psychological principles into biblical counseling is essential, others that neither extreme is accurate. Psychology has adopted the scientific method, but that method cannot be consistently applied to its field of study. The theories that have developed from psychological research have given rise to three major schools and literally hundreds of psychotherapies (which are often unscientifically mixed in practice). Many Christians believe they have been abandoned by the church and consequently turn to psychology.

What are we to do when the problems of daily life seem insurmountable and no one seems to care enough to listen or suggest solutions? For millions of Americans — including many Christians — “professional” mental health workers are the expensive answer.

In 1988 Americans spent an estimated $273.3 billion on mental health services.¹ To handle this growth market, between 1959 and 1989 the number of practicing professional clinical psychologists increased by a factor of 16, from 2,500 to 40,000.² Additional kinds of mental health workers have proliferated, including licensed social workers, clinical workers, lay counselors, pastoral counselors, peer counselors, support group leaders, and other assorted caregivers. Nearly every American will at some time seek out — or be exposed to — mental health practices, whether through job application personality assessments, school evaluations, crisis counseling, or several of the literally hundreds of forms of mental health practices prevalent in American society.

Churches, Bible colleges and seminaries, Christian speakers, and Christian publishers across the country are promoting mental health programs to help Christians solve their personal problems and find personal fulfillment. Many Christian educational institutions have added psychology classes and majors, and some even have Masters and Ph.D. programs in psychology. Twelve Step programs patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) have been adapted by churches to address almost any kind of persistent personal problem, from obesity to “spiritual” addictions. Some churches offer a personality evaluation with membership forms to ensure that new members have their emotional and mental health needs met in addition to their spiritual needs. There are even study Bibles designed especially for people “in recovery.” Indeed, some Christians argue that inclusion of psychological principles and teachings into a biblical counseling setting is the only way to provide competent mental health care to Christians.

A perusal of Christian publishers’ catalogs reveals that for most publishers, books on self-help, recovery, addiction, personal emotional or mental health and growth, and relationships form the bulk of their best-selling new titles. Bible study and biblical reference books appear to be almost an afterthought at the back of most catalogs.

At the same time, there are those Christians who completely reject any psychological theories or therapies, denouncing psychology as a rival religion and substitute for the atoning and cleansing work of Christ. Authors such as Martin and Deidre Bobgan, Dave Hunt, and Jay Adams clearly demarcate between “the psychological way” and “the spiritual way.” Some Christians not only condemn psychology as ungodly and reflective of fallen man, but also warn of spiritual deception and demonic attack as possible consequences of involvement in “secular psychology.”

THE COMPLEXITY OF THE PROBLEM

Many Christians are not prepared to embrace either of the above points of view. They see the issues as much more complex than total acceptance or total rejection, and have genuine concern about how best to resolve not only their own personal problems, but also problems for those they love and to whom they minister.

One of our Christian friends, who spent years as a drug and alcohol abuser, explained to us why he continued supportive involvement in AA, even though he also pursued a strong biblical counseling practice: “I know of very few churches where a fallen alcoholic can show up on Sunday morning, contrite but hung over, and be accepted in forgiveness and love, despite his sour breath and dirty clothes. Why do we wonder when Christians who abuse alcohol go to secular programs when they are not welcome in their own churches?”³

Another Christian friend, frustrated because his many attempts to help his wayward son failed, explained why his disillusionment hadn’t caused him to dismiss psychology altogether:

My son was in the in-patient treatment program for less than two weeks, and it cost us more than $10,000. They claimed it was a Christian program, and they claimed to understand him and his problems. But not only did I think their evaluation was dead wrong, my son did, too.

Even though he didn’t really want to change, my son laughed at their futile attempts at accurate diagnosis, and I think his ridicule of them spilled over into his opinion of me, too. What kind of a fool was I for sending him to such a foolish place?

At the same time, if I dismiss all psychology because it didn’t work with my son, does that mean I must dismiss the Bible because biblical counseling didn’t work either? I don’t believe that the end justifies the means, so I can’t really reject psychology until I know more about it and how it’s supposed to work. To me, it seems like a bunch of guesswork fueled by personal biases and masked by scientific jargon, but I don’t know. Maybe there’s something to it after all.

A third friend is a mental health professional, and well respected in his field. Although he has several graduate degrees in psychology, he rejects much psychological theory and practice as worthless. Most of his counseling principles are consistent with biblical ethics and biblical truths, and his success rate with clients is impressive. He says his greatest reward as a professional is that many of his patients no longer need him. This friend came from a Christian family, was educated at Christian schools, and even completed graduate degrees and did intern counseling at Christian institutions. He hesitates to identify himself as a Christian, however, because his experiences in Christian environments were so painful and damaging to him:

You wouldn’t believe the hypocrisy, the cruelty, the spiritual manipulation that was rampant through most of my Christian experiences. Blatantly unbiblical practices were condoned or covered up by supposedly mature Christian leaders who tried to justify sin as “normal” or who denied there were any problems. Give me an honest nonbeliever any day. At least I know who I’m dealing with, I have no false illusions, and I don’t get that sick feeling that I’ve learned to associate with “God’s people.” If I judged Jesus and the Bible on the basis of most of His people I’ve known, I’d reject Him and His Word in a second. I’m afraid to reject my faith totally, but how can I believe the Bible has all the answers for fulfilled personal living when people who “swear by it” are so messed up?

Each of these people represent thousands of Christians who have a wide variety of genuine concerns both about biblical counseling and psychology. Indeed, psychology is one of the most controversial and divisive issues in the church today. This is partly because it is a complex subject and the lines must be drawn carefully to produce a responsible and balanced evaluation of it.

A proper biblical consideration of the relationship between psychology and the church — the goal of this four-part series — cannot be attempted without a good understanding of several larger issues. This first installment will therefore lay a foundation for discussion by surveying the history and complexity of American psychology, and by searching out the parameters of a biblical counseling world view. Part Two will focus specifically on biblical counseling and will explore why some Christians turn from the Bible to psychology. Part Three will identify serious inadequacies in American psychology, both historically and as it is practiced today. Part Four will then attempt to sort out those psychological perspectives that may be compatible with biblical counseling and those that are not, concluding with a perspective on the future of psychology and the church.

THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY

The word psychology derives from two Greek terms meaning “the study of persons.” Some argue that since the Greek root from which we get psych means “spirit” or “soul,” psychology is religious in nature and involves the study of the spirit or soul. However, one must realize that because of the evolving nature of language, word origin or etymology does not necessarily point to what the word means in contemporary usage. Those who use the term psychology today do not generally mean to make any religious statements about the human spirit or soul, but instead are referring to the nontangible personal aspects of human beings.

Christians call this aspect “soul” or “spirit,” and certainly the Bible affirms the reality of the immaterial human nature as “soul” or “spirit.” Even biblically speaking, however, a significant function of this immaterial aspect involves reasoning, communicating, emotions, memory, and social interaction, all of which can be studied — to at least some extent — without full consideration of how these aspects relate to one’s relationship with God. This is the focus of psychology.

Psychology is defined in a leading Christian textbook as “the scientific study of the behavior and thinking of organisms….the study of how living creatures interact with their environment and each other, and how they cope (successfully or unsuccessfully) with that environment.”⁴ This relatively simple definition represents a broad field that encompasses far more than simply psychotherapy (the direct interchange between counselor and counselee). It includes theories of personality, mind/body relationships, education, behavior, and socialization. It includes scientific testing and data gathering for each of these areas. It also includes theories of change in each of these areas, including the application of these theories in counseling situations.

Most of these categories of theorizing, testing, learning, and knowing are conducted at educational institutions and/or research facilities, and most people have little direct contact with such programs. However, psychotherapy — the application of these theories in counseling situations — not only accounts for the greatest number of practitioners and the greatest expenditure of funds, but also interacts directly with more people than all the rest of the processes combined. Because of this disproportion of interaction, our focus in these articles will be on (though not limited to) psychotherapy.

THE ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology is among the youngest sciences. Physiologist Wilhelm Wundt founded a psychological testing center (or laboratory) in Leipzig, Germany. He is generally credited with first according psychology the status of being an independent scientific, academic discipline in 1879. “While his predecessors emphasized either the philosophy of the mind or the physiology of the brain, Wundt used both emphases to develop an experimental approach to understanding human behavior.”⁵ Wundt attempted to understand the components of consciousness.

Following Wundt were other scientists and philosophers who built on his experiments and theories, and developed their own schools. In 1890 William James wrote the first general textbook of psychology, The Principles of Psychology. James focused on how consciousness functions.

By the 1920s a third focus emerged from American psychologist John B. Watson, whose work reflected his commitment to understanding behavior. The most famous behaviorist was B. F. Skinner, whose generalizations and developed theories today characterize the psychological school of behaviorism.

European developments in psychological theories became dominated by Sigmund Freud’s convictions about unconsciousness and early childhood experiences. His system came to be called psychoanalysis. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, had some significant differences with Freud (especially in his theories of the collective unconscious), but his theories also focused on the inner workings of the mind as affected by experience.

A fifth system of thought in psychology has developed over the past thirty years and is concerned with combining biological factors with personal responsibility and decision-making. This school, the cognitive, is one of the fastest growing schools in modern psychology.

Academic or research psychologists generally subscribe to one of these five schools of thought. However, most mental health counselors⁶ do not subscribe completely to any one of them, but instead pragmatically choose what they like or think will work from any of the three major branches of psychotherapy that have developed from these schools (see below). This they do with little consideration to the rational underpinnings of a particular theory or technique of therapy. While this is neither scientific nor consistent, when clients get better, therapists assume it is because of the complex therapies applied in the particular case.

This eclectic approach gives mental health counselors flexibility in their counseling approaches, but it also often confuses important issues, since some of the schools’ basic principles are mutually exclusive. For example, a strict behaviorist understands human behavior in terms of genetic, environmental, and experiential causes that determine an individual’s subsequent behavior and/or mental state. A cognitivist, on the other hand, is convinced that humans are morally and mentally responsible beings who can choose against their backgrounds and experiences.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

There are many ways of knowing. The branch of philosophy that concerns knowledge is called epistemology (the “theory of knowledge”). One can know through intuition, rational processes, revelation, direct experience, inferential experience (history and testimony), experimentation, and so forth. Different means of knowing are useful for different kinds of knowledge.⁷

Since science focuses on the material world, experimentation is the core of the scientific knowledge process. Of course, experimentation is not isolated from all other kinds of knowing. An experiment cannot be planned, conducted, and evaluated without using rational processes as well. However, experimentation has become so associated with science that it is often referred to as “the scientific method.” The scientific method necessarily involves the threefold process of hypothesis, testing (experimentation), and evaluation. Encompassed within this threefold process are additional factors, such as observation, calculation, statistically significant repetition, elimination of other factors and/or causes, compensation for unavoidable biases, and critical review.

When psychology moved from the field of philosophy to the field of science, the scientific method was incorporated into psychological theory, research, and application. However, consistent, comprehensive application of the scientific method is impossible in psychology because of certain unique features.

For example, while replication of the experiment with consistent results is foundational to proper scientific methodology, such replication is frequently impossible in psychology. If a research psychologist wants to study the effect of violent kidnapping on a child’s emotional stability and sense of security, social ethics preclude him or her from designing experiments where target children are violently kidnapped in large number to provide a large database for evaluation. The researcher is limited to working with data accumulated from actual kidnapping cases, which introduces other variables. No two actual kidnapping cases occur in the exact same framework, with the exact same kinds of violence, perpetrated by the exact same kinds of people who relate to their victims in exactly the same way.

Another reason why the scientific method is compromised when applied in psychology pertains to the intangible nature of the subject matter. While the scientific method is the tool of choice for learning about material reality, it is far less useful for learning about immaterial reality. “Love,” for example, is an intangible attribute and is difficult to test empirically, although a love letter or bouquet of roses might give some indication.

Because much of psychology relates to intangibles such as trust, decision-making, responsibility, moral values, and the like, the scientific method is limited in what it can discover. A research psychologist can study the tangible effects of intangibles — such as incidents of honesty as an effect of commitment to moral values — but he or she cannot study the intangible commitment to moral values itself.

This intangibility also makes it much more difficult to prove the causes of behavior empirically and univocally (i.e., to prove that only one explanation of the behavior is plausible). To return to our love-demonstrated-by-love-letters-and-flowers example, one cannot prove that these actions come from a love commitment. Perhaps the letter-writing flower buyer is actually tricking the object of his attention into believing she is loved so that the schemer can marry her and gain access to her sizable fortune. Or perhaps the letter-writing flower buyer is consumed by feelings of inadequacy and is incapable of a true love relationship, but he so craves the love and attention of another that he will go to great lengths to persuade someone to love him. The hypothetical causes of these actions are multiple, and the best scientific method will still have problems identifying a genuine intangible cause.

The third (and perhaps most significant) factor that inhibits the scientific method from yielding consistently valid results in psychology is the variable of human decision-making. When psychology studies human behavior as a scientific endeavor, it assumes the applicability of natural scientific laws that govern the material world, such as cause and effect. Most of these presuppositions, however, are not valid within a random or nondetermined setting.

We expect 1,000 experiments dropping nickels to affirm the law of gravity because we presuppose the invariant nature of the law of gravity and we presuppose that nickels do not have the inherent power to resist gravity. However, when we conduct 1,000 experiments exposing people to a chance to steal money, our results will not be uniform because people make moral choices. Some may steal because they can get away with it, while others may not steal even if they would get away with it because they believe it is wrong to steal.

Laws of cause and effect would be expected to predict accurately the actions of people from similar backgrounds, with similar abilities, in similar situations. The reality is, however, that while statistical patterns may develop, human decision-making precludes any of these patterns from revealing invariant natural laws. It may be statistically true that urban poverty-stricken minority children from broken homes tend to grow up to be gangbangers, but personal decision-making commitments can also produce, out of the same social situation, a Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas.

Other problems with applying the scientific method in psychology are common to other kinds of scientific inquiry, such as inability to control all other factors or variables, biases in subject selection, placebo effects, experimenter bias, and so forth. It is beyond the scope of this article to evaluate these more comprehensively, but we will return to this subject in Part Three.

Because of the varied, significant problems with applying the scientific method uniformly in psychology, some argue that psychology should not be considered a scientific discipline. Paul Meier and his co-authors summarize Christian author and former professor of psychology Mary Stewart VanLeeuwen’s cautions concerning the narrow materialistic paradigm assumptions of psychology:

VanLeeuwen doubts whether the approach used by physicists and biologists is appropriate for the study of human behavior and thinking. If the paradigm is faulty, the methods of research and theories that are produced by that paradigm are then also suspect….

VanLeeuwen questions the strict cause-and-effect assumptions of natural scientists, and instead favors recognition of the freedom of choice people exercise. She notes the presence of reflexivity — the tendency of participants in experiments to think about the experiment and thus change their behavior from what it would be otherwise.⁸

PSYCHOTHERAPY

Psychotherapy is the area of psychology people are the most likely to encounter and/or experience, involves the greatest number of participants, interacts more with the public, consumes a greater number of consumer and government dollars, and consequently is what most people think of when the topic of psychology comes up. In 1987, 15 million Americans made 120 million visits to psychotherapists.⁹ The numbers have increased dramatically since then.

The term psychotherapy — informally known as “the talking cure” — encompasses a variety of approaches to helping people identify, understand, and cope with the dynamics of their mental and emotional states, individually and in social interaction. Richie Hernick, editor of The Psychotherapy Handbook, defines psychotherapy as “an umbrella term for all activities involving one or more patients or clients and one or more therapists, which are intended to improve a patient’s or client’s feelings of psychological well-being.”¹⁰ Even this broad definition is somewhat inadequate, since it does not define “psychological well-being” and it promotes the subjective goal of improving one’s “feelings.” Some psychotherapies, especially some of the cognitive ones (and certainly we would hope ones practiced by Christians), intend to improve not simply one’s feelings, but also one’s abilities to act individually and socially in reality. Stanton Jones and Richard Butman define psychotherapy more descriptively: “We would describe individual counseling or psychotherapy as a dyadic (two-way) interaction between a client who is distressed, and perhaps confused and frightened, and a professional helper whose helping skills are recognized and accepted by the client.”¹¹

There are literally hundreds of different psychotherapies. As we’ve already noted, most counselors do not limit themselves to a single therapy but instead use in their practices a variety of techniques from a variety of different psychological “schools.” Not only this, but their techniques can vary from patient to patient as well. One editor identified more than 350 different psychotherapies in his research, noting that “depending on how wide the net is cast, there may be said to be as many psychotherapies as there are therapists (or perhaps even as many as there are patients!).”¹² He narrowed the number to 250 for inclusion in The Psychotherapy Handbook.

The primary explanation for this wide variation and inconsistency in psychotherapeutic practice is that most counselors use what appears to work at various times with various patients, without strict regard to the foundational schools from which the techniques developed, and without the scientific objectivity and testing one would expect from a practitioner of a science. Jones and Butman explain:

The varied theories and techniques are derived, for the most part, from clinical experience and reflection rather than systematic empirical research. This [inconsistency] helps to explain the unique experiences of the type of people he or she has seen for counseling, the types of problems they manifest, the cultural context of the therapist, his or her assumptions about how people change, and the core beliefs that shape the therapist’s life philosophy.¹³

The benefit of such diversity is that counselors can acknowledge their clients’ unique problems, emotional and mental states, and abilities to make changes in their own lives. Daniel Goleman, in the Foreword to The Psychotherapy Handbook, observes, “one force behind the vastness of the array of therapies may be the equally large spread of human suffering. Each therapy, as the entries here make clear, has its most appropriate domain. Each is a tool for a unique psychological job. The ecological niche each new therapy must find is the particular variety of mental anguish it best soothes.”¹⁴ This is the ideal.

This diversity, however, also exposes a serious weakness in the attempt to scientifically validate psychotherapy. If it is classified as a science, it must be judged as a science; but if it is subjective and inconsistent, it is not good science. The ideal of tailor-made counseling is all too often replaced by a mishmash of inconsistent, ineffective, and even destructive counseling. The confusion of therapeutic techniques — validated only through subjective, anecdotal experience — masks the reality that all too often the therapist has no reliable way to predict who will get better (or not), and when improvement will take place, if it does at all. Sometimes the counseling itself causes additional problems, even though the counselor has great faith in the therapy. Sadly, some counseling does worse than no good at all; it actually harms the clients.¹⁵

The many varied psychotherapies can be grouped under three primary categories developed from the schools of thought described earlier in this article. These three categories are behaviorism, analysis, and client-centered or humanistic psychotherapy. These categories provide the framework for the hundreds of different psychotherapeutic techniques ranging from Active Analytic Therapy to the Zaraleya Psychoenergetic Technique.¹⁶ Some of the most popular forms of psychotherapy include Adlerian therapy, aversion therapy, biofeedback, co-dependency, cognitive therapy, crisis intervention, hypnotherapy, kinetic therapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming, past-life regression, psychoanalysis, reality therapy, and recovered memory therapy. (The most important groupings of the myriad of therapies will be examined closely in Part Three of this series.)

Despite the proliferation of psychotherapies, in varying degrees certain common elements are reflected in most psychotherapeutic techniques: “(1) offering reassurance and support, (2) desensitizing the client to distress, (3) encouraging adaptive functioning and (4) offering understanding and insight….”¹⁷ These seem to be good goals, compatible with a more complete system of biblical counseling. It is no wonder, then, that psychotherapy is so attractive to Christians and non-Christians alike. Terence W. Campbell documents this enormous influence, noting that “in 1987, approximately fifteen million people in the United States made 120 million visits to psychotherapists. This is more than double the number of visits made to physicians specializing in internal medicine….In the 1950s it is estimated that only one person in eight involved themselves in psychotherapy….That number is now one American in three.”¹⁸

BIBLICAL COUNSELING

Within our culture psychotherapy increasingly functions in the place of pastoral guidance, spousal support, friendship, applied Bible study, and parenting. Goleman explains:

No doubt for many the therapist has replaced or supplements the clergyman as the place to turn to for counsel in times of distress. A case can be made that therapies are the current cultural response to a perennial human need, one served in former times by the shaman or the priest — even the physician, the family, or the good friend. Now that each of these supports has to some degree collapsed, modern doctrine has it that salvation is to be found in therapy.¹⁹

This may seem like welcome news to those who believe Christianity has failed to meet their personal needs, but it should alarm Christians who believe the Bible’s promises that all our needs are met through Christ.

Christians who recognize this problem often focus their criticism on psychotherapy and exhort Christians to return to God’s Word for the solutions to their problems. This approach has merit, but it is not only an inaccurate generalization, it also is inadequate. We believe that a far more critical concern is the cause of this turn away from God’s Word to psychotherapy. When the church fails to minister in a complete and biblical way, people’s needs go unmet and they turn to other sources for solutions to those needs. The ministry of the church should include support and nurture for its members, including biblical counseling.

The term “biblical counseling” is used in different ways by different authors. Some use it to refer to the preaching of God’s Word apart from application. Some use it to refer to a counseling approach that “affirms the Bible as its sole source for authority concerning human nature, values and prescriptions for healthy living.”²⁰ Some use the term to refer to counseling that uses the Bible as its foundation and standard, but also borrows compatible and testable information and principles from other sources, such as laboratory experimentation, statistical surveys, clinical experience, and so forth. In this series of articles we use the term in this latter way.

Our presupposition is that God works authoritatively and infallibly in His written Word, but also dynamically in the world and among people. While we look to God’s Word as the standard by which to judge all things (1 Thess. 5:21-22), we recognize that the same God who preserved His Word also gave the world order and consistency, created natural laws, created humans with the ability to use logic and reasoning processes to apply biblical principles to new situations and to understand new experiences, and gave us the ability to develop testing tools to help us understand ourselves and the world around us.

For example, we don’t expect to find a Bible verse specifically addressing the morality of Beavis and Butthead (popular MTV cartoon characters), but we do expect to be able to use the biblical principles of avoiding vain and profane speech, ideas, and activities, and of focusing on spiritually meaningful, good, and godly speech and activity. When we use the principles of God’s Word as our standard (2 Tim. 2:16), and we understand how to evaluate claims (2 Tim. 4:2), we can confidently test the truth or falsity of a claim.

Biblical counseling seeks to help people worship and serve God to the best of their abilities with confidence and love toward God. The initial focus of biblical interpersonal intervention is, of course, the preaching of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1-4). The apostle Paul identifies the gospel as “the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16), and assures Christians that when they have been saved the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit frees them from the worst sort of personal inadequacy — the bondage of their sinful natures (Rom. 8:1-9). Human suffering is explained and placed in the context of God’s transforming work (Rom. 5:1-5; 8:35-39).

Christians are instructed to learn God’s Word as the path to personal fulfillment and holiness (2 Tim. 3:15-17). The focus of a Christian’s thoughts should be that which comes from God and reflects His perfect character and nature (Phil. 4:8).

God’s Word gives us instructions regarding decision-making in the course of daily living (Pss. 19:7-8; 119:105). And when we have difficulty making a decision we can seek counsel from others. Biblical counselors are described and commended in the Bible (Prov. 11:14; 15:22).

In Part Two we will focus on biblical counseling and explore in greater detail the biblical wisdom that helps us cope with our inner, interpersonal, and social difficulties. Each of the biblical principles mentioned above — and those to be discussed more fully in the next article — is part of a comprehensive biblical pattern of spiritual, emotional, and mental growth by which the Christian can find fulfillment as a child of God. The result of using godly wisdom is described by Solomon:

Keep sound wisdom and discretion; so they will be life to your soul and grace to your neck. Then you will walk safely in your way, and your foot will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid; Yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet. Do not be afraid of sudden terror, nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes; For the Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being caught. (Prov. 3:21-26)

When the church fulfills its responsibilities for biblical community, nurture, and support, then Christians will not feel the need to turn to secular psychotherapy. By contrast, as the stories opening this article illustrate, when the church does not embrace the repentant alcoholic, the parent with the troubled teen, or those emotionally bruised by sinful behavior, then the hurting and needy will look elsewhere for help.

It is our contention that psychotherapy has become enormously popular among Christians primarily because the church has failed to fulfill its biblical obligation to nurture, protect, admonish, and mature its members. Should we have to pay $100 per hour for a friend? Of course not. And yet, if as Christians we turn our backs on those with problems, shun those who wrestle with sin, and denigrate those who struggle to follow Christ, why should we be surprised that hurting people turn to psychotherapy for answers? Even though the answers of secular psychotherapy pale in comparison to biblical wisdom — and at best borrow from biblical principles — if psychotherapy offers some help while the local church does not, can we blame those who turn to it for relief?

The popularity of psychotherapy in the church should not consume our critical attention: It is but a symptom of fundamental problems in contemporary American Christianity. In the next three installments we will describe and evaluate biblical counseling and psychotherapy, and then consider a scriptural agenda for restoring biblical counseling as part of a healthy church. When the genuine is available, people will no longer be attracted to the imitation.

Bob and Gretchen Passantino are nationally recognized, award-winning investigative journalists and directors of the apologetics discipleship organization, Answers In Action.

NOTES

¹D. P. Rice, S. Kelman, L. S. Miller, and S. Dunmeyer, The Economic Costs of Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Mental Illness (San Francisco: Institute for Health and Aging, University of California, 1990), 81.²Robyn M. Dawes, House of Cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1994), 12. ³These friends’ stories are meant as illustrations of the complexity of the issue. They are not presented here as proof or documentation for any position. Consequently, their privacy can be protected by not naming them and changing insignificant details of their stories.⁴Paul Meier, Frank B. Minirth, Frank B. Wichern, and Donald E. Ratcliff, Introduction to Psychology and Counseling, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), 17.⁵Ibid.⁶We apply the terms “counselor,” “counsel,” and “counseling” to not only lay or paraprofessional mental health work, but also to professional psychotherapy. Some differentiate between the two, but we have found in our research that the lines between “professional” and “lay,” and between “psychotherapy” and “counseling,” have become so blurred as to make the terms almost interchangeable. Jones and Butman follow this same pattern, noting,

Although some authors still prefer to make a distinction between counseling and psychotherapy, we have chosen to use the terms interchangeably in this text for two main reasons. The first is that clinical and counseling psychology, which were once substantially different disciplines and arose out of different historical roots, have grown closer together over the last several decades. The distinctions between the two subdisciplines are hard to make out today….Perhaps more importantly, we will not make the distinctions here because the very same theories are utilized as guides for the change process by psychotherapists and counselors. (Jones and Butman, 14).

To this we add that little difference is made from the perspective of most people who have been recommended for, or have received, professional counseling. In an informal survey we conducted of a dozen people who had received professional counseling, several were unable to tell us what kind of a counselor they had seen (psychologists; Marriage, Family, and Child Counselor [MFCC]; licensed social worker [LSW]; and so forth), and none could define for us the differences among the different professional counselor titles.⁷For basic information about epistemology, see Norman L. Geisler and Paul D. Feinberg’s Introduction to Philosophy: A Christian Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), 83-163. For cogent discussion of the nature of scientific inquiry and the limits of scientific paradigms, see J. P. Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 185-224, and his Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), 196-202.⁸Meier, et. al., 24.⁹Terence W. Campbell, Beware the Talking Cure (Boca Raton, FL: Upton Books, 1994), 7.¹⁰Richie Herink, The Psychotherapy Handbook (New York: New American Library, 1980), 15.¹¹Stanton L. Jones and Richard E. Butman, Modern Psycho-Therapies: A Comprehensive Christian Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 12.¹²Herink, xv.¹³Jones and Butman, 11.¹⁴Herink, xviii.¹⁵This problem is explored in depth and documented in Part Three of this series, forthcoming.¹⁶Herink, x, xiii.¹⁷Jones and Butman, 12.¹⁸Campbell, 7. Parts Three and Four in this series will comprehensively examine and critique psychotherapy. ¹⁹Herink, xviii.²⁰John H. Coe, “Educating the Church for Wisdom’s Sake,” presented at the 1991 International Christian Association for Psychological Studies.