Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 15:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: Introduction: Cracks And Light In Christian Counseling
Author: Sam Williams

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Introduction: Cracks And Light In Christian Counseling

Sam Williams

Guest Editor

The very idea of truth implies a unified field of knowledge and meaning. Such a unified field also implies the practical need for some explicit or tacit first truth discourse that enables us to organize disparate types of knowledge into a single framework of meaning. This does not, of course, imply that we can master the true field of knowledge and meaning with our tiny minds. At the level of immanent reality, our knowledge constructs are inherently incomplete, contingent, and contextual. And blessedly so. For, as Leonard Cohen might put it, it is the cracks in our pretension to complete knowledge mastery that enable the light to get in. Even so, we try to fix the cracks.1

I came to Southeastern Seminary twenty-four years ago to try to fix some cracks. I’d spent a decade in private practice as a licensed clinical psychologist and could see some cracks in the notion that psychotherapy should be a God-free zone (especially free of the Christian God). So, I started reading every systematic theology text I could get my hands on (M. Erickson, L. Berkhof, W. Grudem, Lewis and Demarest, etc.) and some light began to shine. And then I ran into a couple of “biblical counselors” (David Powlison and Sid Galloway) and the light began to pour in. So, I left my practice and came to SEBTS to think, read, teach, and write about what this particular issue of the journal is about: Christian counseling that actually merits the adjective Christian. “Christian,” the adjective that modifies the noun counseling, signifies a distinctive type of counseling that resembles or follows Christ. Of course, that makes great sense. This is what everything in life is about for us as Christians: following, resembling, and belonging to Jesus the Christ.

This issue of Southeastern’s journal (particularly the contributions by SEBTS professors) aims to identify where the SEBTS counseling program is on the Christian counseling spectrum. We want to do this

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charitably. We want to respect the different position of others, while also outlining our key convictions in this realm and why we have chosen to be where we are on the Christian counseling spectrum. I’ve seen various pushes for unity by Christian counselors.2 These calls for unity are a very welcome development in our fractious age. I would like to take the opportunity to follow suit here.

In this issue of the journal we hope to avoid the not so salutary characteristics of some forms of fundamentalism (whether on the left...