This might well be
subtitled as
“Is all psychology
atheistic and evil?”
or
“Why won't people
in patriarchy listen to me?”
The last consideration I'd like to
offer before John Weaver's guest post about problems with nouthetic
counseling or “Biblical” counseling that tends to trace problems
back to a sin cause on the part of the person in distress concerns
how Christians go about discerning truth. As previous stated in the
preceding post, this subject is one of great interest today
because of the Southern
Baptist Convention's (SBC) initiative to develop a doctrinal
statement about mental health. I will again endeavor to condense
some complex concepts down into some simple descriptions, though I
would love to jump into elaborate discussions of them. I again beg
the mercy of those with knowledge of these matters as I did in the
previous post, for I have condensed them significantly for the sake
of brevity.
In reading John's article, I realized
again just how profound the implications of how a person arrives at
truth is for those who are working through questions about mental
health and care offered to those in need. In philosophy, this
discussion of developing a theory of knowledge, is called
“epistemology.”
It seems that human beings tend to
prefer a particular epistemological style of assuring that something
is true, based upon personality preferences, styles, and personal
experiences. Each style of making sure that truth is true has its
own set of strengths and pitfalls, but a style is not necessarily
right or wrong. For Christians, we are called to bring every thought
captive to Christ, and as long as we remain balanced and faithful to
Scripture, we can remain grounded, especially with the aid of the
Holy Spirit. There are more than just two styles, but most
Christians today tend to fall into two primary categories (and that's
plenty for us to discuss in a single blog post). An excellent
introduction to this subject can be found in a chapter in Moreland
and Craig's Philosophical
Foundations for a Christian Worldview, if this kind of thing
really floats your boat (or your raft, if you prefer – as that will
make sense in a moment).
If you still don't find this all that
engaging, discrepancies and communication difficulties owing to
differences in epistemological style account for one of the biggest
early controversies in 20th Century Calvinism and
Presuppositional
Apologetics. Gordon
H. Clark and Cornelius
Van Til argued aggressively because of this issue and both
criticized one another's style, even though they stood for most all
of the same things in terms of doctrine and practice. (Google away,
as there is plenty of material available on the subject.) I have
some concerns that the same kind of friction will again erupt in the
SBC as they hash out ideas about mental health, because the subject
demands some reckoning about axiomatic and rational ideas and
information to accomplish their stated task. And if these wise men
of the past could not work things out very well in their day, I
suspect that even greater problems will emerge today among the Young,
Restless and Reformed. I find that many in Patriarchy and some
of the more legalistic Fundamentalist groups are more like Gordon
Clark (who basically don't prefer science, particularly mental
health), and I tend to be more like Van Til.
Two Styles of Validating and
Accepting Truth
Foundationalism. Someone
who prefers this style tends to look first to the world of abstract
ideas to discern truth from this realm first. For the Christian,
this source of truth concerning abstract ideas (axioms) serves as the
basis of truth. In this system, a series of basic beliefs are
accepted as “indubitable” and “incorrigible,”, then they are
built into the person's belief system like stones that are placed
into the foundation of a house. These basic beliefs are said to need
no justification because they are so obviously true. All other
beliefs that a person develops thereafter, more specific and
peripheral or specialized ones, to some degree rest upon the support
of those basic beliefs that are in the foundational level. The
foundational truths become a part of the meaning and give direction
to the more secondary beliefs. All understanding that comes after
the foundation must relate back and be consistent with the person's
understanding of those ideas when they built them into their
framework.
Rene Descartes who said “I think,
therefore I am” was said to be a type of foundationalist
because he validated truth from that which he could consciously know,
doubting other sources of information. Many Christians who prefer
this style will latch on to a belief, and hopefully, they derived
that belief from a reliable source (hopefully not a televangelist, a
smiling fool who tickled ears, or the words of a hymn that they
liked).
I believe that this system works rather
well if the basic beliefs adopted prove true and accurate, as well as
the person's perception of them. However, it is hard, once you have
your whole home built to go back to address problems with a faulty
foundation. This usually strikes fear into the hearts of people and
involves a great deal of trouble when it happens with a physical
building, so people are not so willing to go back to look at problems
in understanding, either. It can “rock your world,” or at least
your home of ideas, if you figure out that one of your basic ideas
was faulty. Truth is rock solid and immovable, (but it should not be
static).
Coherentism. A person
who prefers this style is not at all averse to axioms or principles –
they are essential, especially to the Christian. However, those with
this style also go through a process of vetting a truth by looking at
how functional that truth is and whether it can stand up to scrutiny
in the pragmatic world. Coherentists are concerned about the way and
the procedure for justifying a belief. They tend not to take axioms
at face value before submitting them to a series of tests, so to
speak, before they are willing to trust that truth. (This certainly
does not preclude them from the Christian faith and following the
Bible as the sufficient source for truth and meaning.) Relationships
between beliefs are also important.
For the coherentist, individual truths
are more like the logs of a raft, and they are examined for their
ability to float and perform as a part of a raft. In some sense,
these ideas are constantly being challenged and are evaluated, and
they are derived more from how they perform in systems than they are
from examining them in isolation. If they “take on water” like a
log that may begin to absorb water, they are not as cogent of a truth
as a more durable and buoyant idea that is seaworthy. The way ideas
are attached to one another becomes another concern, more like a
scientist tests an invention or an hypothesis. If it is true in the
abstract, the application of that truth will hold up and will
demonstrate itself to be reliable in the physical world. Abstract
truths, in particular, should be transcendent. I once wrote a post
about “Everready
Apologetics” as proof of transcendence along these same lines,
as this is my preferred natural style of understanding truth (in case
the reader wondered). Truth floats and adapts to changing
circumstances (but it should not be compromising).
Potential Problems in Communication
Looking at the example of Clark and Van
Til, some of the problems become obvious. Clark, a foundationalist,
said that we cannot derive truth from science. He also argued that
if someone looks to the material world to validate truth that they
are selling out the Bible or sola
Scriptura (by the Word of God alone) as the ultimate source
and tool of the discernment of truth. Clark counted on our ability
to read the Scriptures with a pure understanding, despite the fact
that we are studying a dead language from a culture that is long
since gone, written to people that we may or may not understand and
are depending on translations. Even with the insight imparted to us
by the Holy Spirit as Christians, there is no guarantee that we will
be able to discern perfect truth from Scripture. We need to do this
in community with other believers, in light of history and in light
of a sound hermeneutic
(with the historical
grammatical as the generally preferred one by presuppositional
apologists). How can we be sure that those incorrigible and
indubitable truths were properly discerned without putting them to
some test, even if that is just the test of the history of Christian
tradition and what other theologians thought about them?
Van Til was criticized as a rationalist
because he believed that God's creation was clearly evident in the
rational and material world, and that truths in it were consistent
with the truth of Scripture as a part of all of God's creation. We
can see the handiwork of God, and we look to the Word of God to know
how to think God's thoughts after Him by conforming to Scripture. We
are taught how to interpret what we learn about truths in the
rational and material world. Scripture becomes a critical and
essential part of the whole of reality and the measuring rod or
consistent, most precious standard by which we put other truths into
perspective. As Andrew
Sandlin once stated it in his essay, A Conflict of
Apologetic Visions,
Rational communication between men is possible not because of the Greek idea of a rational, universal, abstract principle, but because all men are made in the image of God and reflect that image in every iota of their being. God’s revelation to man is religiously holistic, not reductionistically rational. We are not saved by ideas; we are saved by union with Christ— communicated, to be sure, in the propositional ideas of the Bible.
What Does that Have to do with
Mental Health?
(If I believe that the
brain is an organ that can affect behavior and thought,
does that make me a
secular humanist
and a sell-out to
science that I've made my God?)
Certainly for the past fifty years,
Christians and presuppositional apologists in particular, have been
intimidated by the threat that secular humanism posed on America
Culture. Atheism became a more openly embraced system of belief, if
not one of evangelism. Really in what I believe became a culture of
fear as opposed to a culture of dominion that was willing to engage
competitive beliefs, Christians resorted to all sorts of means to
oppose this growing threat. I have written
about many of these influences, and the theological innovations
that were birthed from the effort to stave off the progression of
secular humanism, several of which were birthed at Westminster
Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in the '60s and '70s (where and
when Jay Adams, the father of nouthetics, attended – see a
statement about the history of nouthetics and Adams below). The
patriarchy
movement in homeschooling also promises to provide strategies to
overcome these influences.
Personally, I look at Scripture much
like men like David Stoop and Chris
Thurman who were some of my first introduction to expressly
Christian clinical psychology and appreciate how they see the Bible
as the foremost authoritative book on psychology. I had a discussion
not long ago about Matthew 18 which I see as a model for assertive
communication that avoids what Murray
Bowen coined as “triangulation.” I see Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy as disciplined spiritual warfare, etc. I could go on and on.
I also look to empirical and physical findings in science and the
objective rigors of statistics concerning medical research to
validate this information, and I see appropriate and compassionate
care for people in need, people with mental health issues, emerging
and converging from all of these different disciplines, like a web of
truth. (Explore these
posts to read many things that I've written concerning the new
information that we have about the physical nature and sometimes
physical cause of many mental health problems.) I do not see these
truths as at odds with Christianity and do see it validating
Christian truth. I rather like how Daniel
Amen described things in an earlier book, echoed in Earl
Henslin's that the physical brain is the hardware of the soul and
what we put into it (like Bible Study) is like the software, to draw
an analogy. (Both of these men are born again Christians.)
Sometimes, we need to heal the hardware of the soul when physical
problems present as behavioral or emotional or physical ones. These
things give us more ability to have better self control and can make
us better stewards so that we can be better Christians.
These ideas about the brain and the
mind are not shared by all of us, however. For many Christians,
science and the scientific method became an enemy. If the Bible were
the source of all truth and meaning, it was treated as it was the
ONLY source of truth. Any other truths seemed to pose a threat to
it. It was also believed that because secular humanism turned to
science as the sole source of truth, that Christians who embraced
science in any capacity would do the same. Some groups, out of fear,
vilified all psychology as evil, citing antiquated and almost poor
modern examples like Freud and Jung as representative of anyone who
studied and practiced any kind of psychology, even if it was purely
clinical, functional, and pragmatic. (What do you do when someone's
memory fails, if they struggle with confusion, if they lose some
aspect of mental function, or if you have a child born with special
needs? Is that spiritual or sin-based? What resources did or does
the church have to offer?) But the atheist Freud who was obsessed
with sex, likely out of guilt for fornicating with his sister-in-law
and spiritists like Jung who walked with his spirit guide, Philemon,
every morning in his garden became the poster child Hitlers that were
used to prove that all mental health care was secular humanism in
disguise, and it was creeping into our precious churches under the
guise of altruism.
There is also a resistance and fear
regarding the idea of the physical brain as an organ that has the
ability to affect how a person functions in terms of the soul and
spirit. If an organic brain issue (one with a physical cause) has
the physical ability to influence those things that overlap with the
mind, it is seen as a terrible threat. Many disorders today, through
brain imaging and other advances, are proving to have treatable
physical components. Post Traumatic Stress, Attention Deficit
Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the like are often due to
physical issues and are not issues that owe to behavior and attitude.
In some examples, even Cognitive Behavioral Techniques and appeal to
control one's thoughts are limited
or are triggering/aggravating, depending on the condition and the
individual's state of management and recovery.
A number of years ago, as an
alternative to drug therapy, I found a skilled physician who found
that I had a high systemic yeast problem in my blood producing a host
of physical symptoms including brain fog. I was also found to have
high levels of toxic metals, a serious deficit of key nutrients that
are required by the brain to function properly, and several
sensitivities that affect brain function. About 80% of my physical
symptoms were alleviated when these conditions were treated because
my physical body was able to work again. Were it not for these
advances in understanding the brain as an organ in the body, I would
still be suffering with these symptoms. (Not all psychologists and
psychiatrists seek to dive in there to put people on “psychedelic
drugs.” And to be honest, I can argue that most drugs and many
foods do have psychoactive effects.) None of these things have
anything to do with atheism or secular humanism. I will not say that
all but many practitioners if not most of them, just due to the
limited funds available to pay for services, are very interested in
restoring a state of optimal function and health to their clients –
and nothing more.
My Concerns About The Implications
I am deeply concerned that populations
of Christians who can greatly benefit from mental health services may
be marginalized and shamed, particularly if a “Biblical”
counseling only model such as Jay Adams' nothetics system is
adopted by a group such as the SBC. The Bible is the ultimate
arbiter of truth for the Christian and the means by which we put
other truths into perspective, but it is not the source of all
truths. If the foundationalists who resist science and see it as
competitive with what I understand as medical concerns get over into
the practice of medicine. I'm concerned that out of fear, much along
the lines of the problems that Gordon Clark voiced, that effective
treatment could be outlawed for whole populations of people suffering
with disorders with primary physical components (ADHD, PTSD, OCD,
etc.). I am so weary of the claims of ignorance that people seeking
treatment for such disorders are seeking psychedelic experiences or
are avoiding sin and spiritual growth through medication which is
ignorantly labeled as “psychedelic,” when treatments for these
types of disorders are outcome based and are directed at the
alleviation of symptoms. The blatant ignorance is embarrassing to me
as a nurse and as a Christian, because we ought to be well-informed
and able to engage physicians and other biomedical scientists
intelligibility.
I understand the motivation of fear
after decades of rhetoric and the ignorance of laypersons who lack
understanding in some of these areas. I do have some compassion for
those who have been indoctrinated and manipulated with these
antiquated ideas, but it all disappoints me nonetheless.
And I think that my greatest concern of
all and a point of great grief for me can be read in the next essay
to be posted here, written by John Weaver. He has chosen to largely
reject Evangelicalism and is quite ambivalent about the Christian
faith as a result of the poor care and the condemnation that he
received when seeking help through a nouthetic program. And he sees
this lack of care and compassion in other populations within many
other Evangelical groups. Like Rachel
Held Evans noted as discussed in
a recent post, he did not find Jesus in the “Biblical”
counsel offered to him, and I wonder how much of the “Benevolent
God” was shown to him in the midst of that process. He left the
church. The individuals who are trodden under foot in the name of
principles and axioms and systems grieve me deeply. I hope that many
take heed to what he has to share with us so honestly.
Finally,
Dr.
John Weaver's guest post
about
problems with nouthetic counseling
will
follow imminently.
Cited
in text was an essay by P.
Andrew Sandlin entitled A
Conflict of Apologetic Visions.
Circa 2000-2001, I suspect published in the Chalcedon
Report or in his own Center
for Cultural Leadership newsletter. I obtained a copy from him
personally many years ago. Written from the perspective of someone
from the school of thought of Van Til, it addressed issues posed in a
Trinity Review article written by Gary Crampton that touched on
the Clark Van Til Controversy.
~~~~~
A
note from a
previous post concerning the nouthetic counseling system of Jay
Adams:
I also bear a weight of concern over this instruction, for Jay Adams is the creator of the system of “nouthetic counseling,” a concept of Christian counseling that views emotional and mental problems as rooted in some sin or willful resistance of God's grace. As a clinical nurse who deals with so many people afflicted with post traumatic stress as a consequence of spiritual and other types of abuse, and as someone who can appreciate the physical cause of many mental health problems and illnesses, I don't have a very high opinion of nouthetic counseling (a term which derives from the Greek word for “admonishment”). Certainly, if someone has a problem with sin which creates other difficulties and problems as sin does, then such counsel is warranted. But I find that in problems with abuse, nouthetic counseling revictimizes real victims who quite often do nothing to warrant the harm done to them. So it deeply troubles me that Adams adds another layer of potential harm to broken people and to victims in addition to the inadequacies that I already note within his system of counsel. In certain cases, it seems to actually facilitate abuse, specifically spiritual abuse. (What if the corruption rests with those leaders who can apparently circumvent the role of the whole community?)
I also find it curious that Adams does not appear to have any formal, peer reviewed training in mental health, mental disorders or physical health, yet he has established a program which rivals and replaces mental health counseling. His fields of study and training include Divinity, Arts in Classics, Sacred Theology, and Speech (which I am inclined to think, as a terminal degree without prior training in clinical speech pathology, must be a program in rhetoric or homiletics). Again, as a clinical based and trained nurse, I find this all a bit disconcerting. Concerning matters of sin, I'm sure that nouthetic material can be helpful, but in terms of clinical disease and the physical and mental aspects of both physical disorders with mental health effects and neurophysiologic disorders, I have great concerns about the efficacy if not safety of nouthetic counsel.
