LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE AFFAIR WITH PSYCHOLOGY
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
10/2022
THE EVANGELICAL LOVE AFFAIR WITH PSYCHOLOGY
Despite the glaring contradictions between secular psychology and biblical theology, the
evangelical church has had a thirty year love affair with psychology. MacArthur observed that
“evangelicalism is infatuated with psychotherapy. Emotional and psychological disorders
supposedly requiring prolonged analysis have become almost fashionable.”7
Why has this shift occurred? First, we must blame the modern church itself. Alien and anti-
Christian ideologies have come and gone for centuries. But today’s church is almost devoid of a
clear-cut theology of any kind. Sermons are punctuated with a conglomeration of conflicting
ideas regarding the very nature and task of the church itself. Christians in search of solutions for
their problems have brought them into a theologically illiterate church that has accepted those
insights unwittingly and uncritically.
Second, we must recognize the failure of the twenty-first-century church to make the
Scripture relevant to the needs of individuals and families. It was not uncommon twenty to
thirty years ago for people to attend church regularly but never hear a biblically relevant
message on such issues as dating, marriage, family, divorce, singleness, or even personal
spiritual growth. A number of popular Christian speakers and writers (such as Clyde Narramore,
Henry Brandt, Tim LaHaye, Bill Gothard, and James Dobson) noticed this v
acuum and began ministering to those in need. Soon terms like “Christian counselor” or
“Christian psychologist” began to appear and found acceptability within Christian circles.
Christianity Today recently observed that “popularizers such as authors James Dobson, Tim
LaHaye and Larry Crabb convinced a whole generation of evangelicals that God cared about
their psyches as well as their souls, opening the door for a marriage between theology and
therapeutic thought.”8
As a result, the church became involved in a debate over methodology in counseling. Jay
Adams called for theologically trained counselors to fill the vacuum. Larry Crabb replied that it
would take more than theology to fix damaged psyches and argued for better psychological
training. Paul Meier and Frank Minirth began popularizing Christian psychiatry. Eventually,
addiction recovery models became popular in evangelical circles. More and more Christians
began seeking professional licensure in order to guarantee third-party insurance payments for
their counseling services. The Christian counseling movement exploded, with clinics popping up
everywhere: Rapha, Alpha Care, Minirth-Meier, and so on. Christian call-in programs came to
fill the radio dial. Myriad books have been written. Counseling advice became available
everywhere.
UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS
But with this explosion came some nagging questions that remained unresolved:
– Were theology and psychology really compatible?
– Did psychological labels really help people understand their struggles or merely excuse
them?
– Was all this counseling really helping change people?
– How could psychologically trained counselors receive adequate biblical and theological
training?
– Without biblical and theological training, how could Christian psychological counselors
adequately deal with issues such as marriage, divorce, or child-rearing?
In response to those questions, Dr Gary Collins, a leader in the Christian counseling
movement, has admitted, “There are a number of people who have graduate school training in
psychology, but Sunday school training in theology!”9
We recently received a letter from a graduate student, who explained that he had to “set
aside” his “previous training” at an evangelical institution to focus on the issues of conversion
and character formation with a counselee who simply needed to “come to Christ.” “That was
one issue,” he said, “no one ever dealt with in all my counseling training!”
From the time the Christian counseling movement began on up through today, the basic
issues in the sufficiency debate have remained the same: If the Bible is really sufficient to meet
man’s needs, why do we need psychology? If psychology is sufficient, why do we need God or
the Bible? Even so-called “integrationist” approaches – which profess to combine both the Bible
and psychology – have not fully answered these basic questions.
Several key issues are still at stake in this debate:
1. How can secular training be viewed as adequate for counseling and theological training
viewed as inadequate?
2. Can Sunday school “theology” adequately prepare Christian professionals to make
intelligent theological judgments?
3. Why should Christian counselors abandon the Bible when many secularists actually
applaud the Bible?
4. Are we not undermining our evangelical belief in biblical inerrancy by denying the
sufficiency of Scripture counseling?
5. How can we properly evaluate the challenges of multiculturalism and political
correctness without a proper theological basis?
6. How does a person reconcile his own theology with competing theologies and remain
consistent in his or her counseling?
7. Why should Christian counselors not offer to pray with their clients when many Christian
doctors are now actively following this practice in the medical field?
THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN BELIEF AND PRACTICE
What has happened to the modern Christian professional? Whether in the counseling
professions, the practice of medicine, or in research, ministry, or education, many Christian
professionals have adopted the modern mindset of the world in which they live and have been
trained. Theologian John Murray rightly observed that we need to “beware of the controlling
framework of modern thinking lest its patterns and presuppositions become our own, and then,
before we know it, we are carried away by a current of thought and attitudes that makes the
sufficiency and finality of Scripture not only extraneous but akin to our way of thinking.”10
An interesting dichotomy has arisen in the church today. During the 1970s a very successful
organization developed under the leadership of James Montgomery Boice and several others:
the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. This organization produced a cohesive, scholarly,
and distilled document that cogently states the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Shortly after the
final document was issued, it became evident that evangelicals could not relax in their defense
of the Bible because the battle soon shifted its focus to the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture.
Today there is a dichotomy in the church on two levels. First, we have a church that
professes to believe the Bible is inerrant, but it is not sufficient for matters of faith and life. It is
not difficult to find evidence of this dichotomy. Survey, for example, the extracurricular
offerings in many churches. On Sunday morning these churches uphold the Bible and its
message of salvation through faith in Christ, but during the rest of the week there is a
smorgasbord of self-help groups that meet to aid the Christian in his struggles with anything
from worry to homosexuality. If you attend any of these self-help groups, you will discover that
many offer advice that does not even come close to being biblical in nature. There is a
dichotomy between the pulpit and the self-help groups, seminars, and classrooms within our
own local churches.
Second, we have a church that professes to believe in an inerrant Bible that is sufficient for
justification, but not for sanctification. Sid Galloway, who works closely with counselors in
hospital settings, gave an example of this at a recent counseling convention. He reported about
a conversation he had with one of his co-workers about the issue of biblical sufficiency. At one
point Sid said, “I know you believe the Bible is sufficient for justification, but do you believe it is
sufficient for sanctification?” After some discussion, the co-worker admitted that he did not
believe that the Bible was sufficient for sanctification.
This dilemma is not true for all psychologists who are Christians. Psychologist Chris
Thurman writes:
Obviously…God helps us by providing truth in the form of His Word, the Bible. We don’t
have to wonder what the most important truths (true truth) in life are because God divinely
inspired mortal man to write them down for our enlightenment and application. In a world
where so much nonsense is passed off as wisdom, we don’t have to be confused or in the dark
about what truth is. If people need the truth to be set free, the Bible is God’s way of giving us
the truths we must believe for true freedom in life.11
The focus among evangelicals has shifted from inerrancy to sufficiency, and this shift has
created a dichotomy with profound effects. The logical implication of this dichotomy is the
concept that the Bible is sufficient to gain passage into heaven, but it is insufficient to deal with
life on this earth.
THE PSYCHOLOGIZING OF EVANGELICALISM
How has the evangelical community arrived at this point? There
are a number of factors that have contributed to the current dilemma. It is not the purpose of
this book to trace the historical development of our present crisis; however, there is one issue
that is essential to consider. It is the issue of scientific methodology, which has been extremely
beneficial to the human community. There is no one alive today who would voluntarily wish to
return to the prescientific era. The technology available to us in the medical sciences alone is
cause for us to rejoice that the Lord has allowed us to live in this day and age. But many have
endeavored to adapt scientific methodology to the social sciences, bringing about an
unfortunate side effect. These individuals have given psychology the aura of the exactness of
biology, chemistry, and the other hard sciences. This supposed credibility has too often
translated debatable findings into truth. Phenomenological observations have become laws. “It
seems to be true that…” has become “it is true that…” Unfortunately, many times it has been
Christians who have been more prone to “deify” these findings, and not the secular community.
It is not uncommon today to hear Christians substantiating the concepts of psychology.
Many Christians accept these concepts without any comprehension of whether they are
biblically valid. For example, it is quite common to hear a Christian say, “I am a recovering
alcoholic,” or “I am co-dependent.” They accept these conditions as having the same credibility
as the substitutionary atonement of Christ. In doing so, these Christians embrace symptoms as
conditions and end up locking themselves into living with these symptoms for the rest of their
lives. Unfortunately, they never learn to deal with the root problem of their symptoms, which is
sin.
