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Seminary Adopts ‘Biblical’ Counseling
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is changing the way it will train ministers to deal with the needs of hurting parishioners.

After decades of integrating secular psychology and biblical training in a course of study known as “pastoral care,” the seminary in Louisville, Ky., announced a “wholesale change” of emphasis built on the idea that the Bible alone is sufficient to answer “the deepest needs of the human heart.”

The “biblical counseling movement” is a popular evangelical approach to counseling that promotes resolving personal problems through a strict Bible-based foundation, while rejecting psychology, and especially psychotherapy, as a “pseudoscience” that is incompatible with biblical truth.

“Our churches need pastors and leaders who understand depravity and the Fall to the degree that they are able to see the ways in which fallen human self-interest often masquerades as objective ‘science’—especially when this ‘science’ seeks to explain and prescribe a cure for the fallen condition of humanity,” Russell Moore, dean of Southern’s School of Theology, said in a seminary news story.

Seminary President Albert Mohler said the new program would focus on teaching pastors and other church leaders to apply the truths of Scripture comprehensively to the concerns and crises of everyday life....