The Psychological Anthropology of Wayne Edward Oates

A Downgrade from the Theological to the Therapeutic

Samuel E. Stephens

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781725268395, 9781725268401
• eBook ISBN: 9781725268418
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Theological education has historically placed a strong emphasis on Scripture as the source of principle and practice for ministry. However, when it comes to the arena of counseling, this has largely not been the case. Focusing on the significant influence of Wayne Edward Oates (1917-1999), the author seeks to explore how and why the American Protestant church arrived at the place where psychological counseling has become the norm and biblical counseling is treated as novel. A detailed study of Oates' anthropology, which served as the heart of his counseling theory and practice, demonstrates that it was shaped and informed by secular concepts, values, and principles instead of what God has to say about who we are as people, what plagues our souls, and where we find our true hope and healing. This subtle shift from the theological to the therapeutic has contributed to a much broader view from many in the church that counseling is more of a clinical and professional service rather than a personal or pastoral ministry of the Scriptures. Through these unsettling warnings and implications, the author hopes that the church will see the importance of once again engaging with the God-glorifying, Christ-honoring, and Spirit-empowering ministry of counseling.

1

Pastoral Counseling in the Age of Psychology

In the years following the World War II, America had experienced an explosive interest in the therapeutic use of psychology as returning soldiers and civilians alike faced a host of growing and seemingly insurmountable mental health problems.1 Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists sought to associate their work more with the traditional and trusted health sciences in an effort to create a niche market to meet unique postwar demands. While the burgeoning mental health industry was being realigned with traditional health sciences through the influence of scientism that emphasized specialization, industrial efficiency, and professionalization, there was also a shift in the perception of the role of Protestant pastors. Edward Thornton, widely regarded as the chronicler of the clinical pastoral education (CPE) movement, noted that in an effort to maintain credibility and relevancy in a new age that placed great value on scientific acumen and professional credentials, “pastors plunged into the traffic flowing across the health sciences bridge.”2

While ministers engaged with the growing psychotherapeutic culture and the mental health industry in an attempt to “enhance their pastoral care,” theological seminaries and Christian colleges “began offering, and eventually requiring, psychology coursework and hospital chaplaincy internships.”3 Before the 1930s, virtually no theological institution included a field experience component within its curriculum; however, with the rising influence of experience-based learning, seminarians were now spending part of their total degree “in some work in churches and other institutions which provide practical experience through which ideally the student’s academic preparation is sharpened in its relevance to human needs, and in which his maturity is furthered through his bearing responsibility for religious ministry.”4

The CPE movement, which was initially conceived and developed outside of the theological seminary and the local church, ultimately became embraced by both. This clinical approach to ministerial education involved a trained, experienced, and skilled supervisor who helped students deal with issues and problems faced on the front lines of ministry. The end goal was the “fusion of scientific understanding with Christian wisdom and concern.”5 The clinical model was perpetuated through the formation of professorships in the “pastoral field which would be filled by men who had been nurtured in the clinical training movement.”6 The most notable thinkers related to this new approach to pastoral training, namely Anton Boisen and Seward Hiltner, viewed classical pastoral care as antiquated and outmoded. They saw seminaries and churches as having failed to utilize the advances in the new behavioral sciences to educate or train ministers for meeting social and individual needs of a modern age. Clinical supervisors often challenged the “dogmatic beliefs” of their students, most of whom were seminarians preparing for ministerial work, in order to “ensure they did not conflict with the psychological understandings that clinical training fostered.”7

Boisen argued that “theological schools needed a thorough overhauling, mainly because they failed to use scientific methods in the study of religious experience.”8 Largely in agreement with his predecessor, Hiltner’s conception of pastoral theology necessitated that ministers of the gospel approach anthropological, cosmological, soteriological, and hamartiological concerns through the lens of modern psychology for an enlightened perspective. Any conclusion that communicated a less-than-flattering view of human nature or offered a direct challenge to concepts of self-esteem was to be questioned or rejected altogether.9 Both Boisen and Hiltner were important figureheads within a coordinated effort to establish a new theory and practice of pastoral counseling firmly grounded in the principles of modern clinical psychology replacing a classical approach to soul care which was birthed from conservative biblical theology.10 Though not as easily recognized, there was another important player whose contributions helped to transition the counseling work of the pastor from the realm of the biblical and theological to the realm of the psychological and therapeutic.

Born in Greenville, South Carolina, the early years of Wayne Edward Oates (b. 1917; d. 1999) were marked by poverty, hard labor, and low self-esteem. Through a turn of events which included serving as a page to a sitting senator, Oates was eventually able to attend Mars Hill Junior College, where he answered the call to full-time ministry under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Olin T. Binkley. During his years at Mars Hill, and later at Wake Forest College in North Carolina, Oates was introduced to the writings of various theologians and secular psychologists which would provide a foundation for his own later theological and philosophical convictions.11 After graduating from Wake Forest, Oates briefly attended Duke University before transferring to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (S...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Pastoral Counseling in the Age of Psychology
• Chapter 2: Shepherding Without a Staff
• Chapter 3: Pastoral Counseling
• Chapter 4: Pilgrimage of Personality
• Chapter 5: Disordered Personality
• Chapter 6: Reorganized Personality
• Chapter 7: Looking Back to Look Ahead
• Bibliography