Why Deep Wells Exists

Part II

Fracture and Recovery in the Cure of Souls

From Cultural Fragmentation to Integration: Drane, James, Netland, and the Pastoral Task Today

Proverbs 20:5 “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.”

To understand how we arrived here, we need voices that can map the modern story. John Drane shows how existentialism, psychoanalysis, and the new sciences created a cultural climate in which spirituality could be severed from theology and reframed as therapy. William James reminds us that pathology cannot erase truth, but that fruit is the true test of experience. Harold Netland explains how interpretation shapes religious experience while still leaving space for encounter with God. And contemporary pastoral theologians — Cooper-White, Root, Okholm, McRay, Yarhouse, and Butman — call us to reintegrate theology and psychology as one task: the cure of souls in our own time.

John Drane has traced how existentialism, psychoanalysis, and the new sciences shaped the cultural climate in which spirituality was eventually severed from theology and redefined as personal therapy. He observes that twentieth-century existentialists, from Nietzsche to Buber, shifted the ground of meaning from speculation about origins to the immediacy of existence. Their focus on “the here and now” created a fertile seedbed for psychotherapy, since both privileged the transformational encounter of person with self, or person with another, over abstract doctrine or system.^[1]

Drane is right: the experiential turn of existentialism made psychotherapy’s rise possible. And yet, here lies the tension. When the therapeutic encounter was severed from its theological roots, the church surrendered one of its oldest practices, the cure of souls, to secular hands. What Evagrius and Gregory had long described as vigilance over thoughts and diagnosis of affections was rebranded as “self-actualization.” William James and C. G. Jung, though mavericks, still took religious experience seriously; but their successors often stripped spirituality of transcendence, redefining it as a set of human experiences available without reference to God. Drane notes that, in the hands of figures like Maslow and Rogers, “what William James had previously classified as ‘religious’ were actually human experiences” to be renamed self-actualization.^[2]

Here is where I would press Drane further. He rightly shows how New Spirituality emerged from the marriage of psychology and cultural experimentation. But the tragedy is not only that spirituality was reduced to therapy; it is that the church allowed therapy to be reduced to secularism. The biblical and patristic witness is that therapeia psychēs, the therapy of the soul, is God’s work in Christ, mediated through community, sacrament, and prayer. When Drane points out how Buddhism was redefined as “personal therapy” for Western seekers,^[3] he unintentionally shows us what the church itself forgot: that Christian faith already possessed a psychology, already practiced a therapy of the soul, already offered a pathway of healing that joined theology and psychology long before Freud or Rogers.

Drane’s mapping of the 1960s cultural revolution is equally illuminating. He observes how science itself, through voices like Fritjof Capra and Niels Bohr, began to speak in mystical tones, connecting physics with Taoism and Buddhism.^[4] What was once theology’s domain, naming creation as charged with divine presence, was now taken up by physicists. Spiritual seekers heard scientists where once they would have heard preachers. Again, the church’s loss is clear: by dismissing psychology, the church also dismissed the very language people were using to make sense of their souls.

In vigorous agreement with Drane, I would say this: the rise of New Spirituality is not simply a cultural distraction; it is the church’s missed opportunity. We handed over to others what the Fathers, Wesley, and Barth all recognized as ours: the integration of theology and psychology for the sake of the healing of the soul. If spirituality is divorced from theology, it floats free as self-help. If psychology is divorced from theology, it forgets transcendence. But together, as the tradition bears witness, they form the pathway of genuine soul care.

William James observed that the most authentic religious experiences do not usually belong to the “ordinary believer” who simply repeats the inherited habits of their tradition. The second-hand religious life, he said, is not where the deepest insight lies. Rather, the real pattern-setters are those individuals in whom religion is not convention but “an acute fever,” those who are often eccentric, emotionally intense, even neurotically unstable.^[5]

James was blunt: figures like George Fox, Teresa of Avila, or Francis of Assisi would likely be diagnosed in his day with hysteria, epilepsy, or hereditary degeneration. And yet, he asked, does that diagnosis annul the value of their visions, their devotion, their capacity to reawaken the gospel in their time? James argued firmly that it does not. Every state of mind has organic conditions, he reasoned, even the convictions of the atheist or the formulas of the scientist. If we discredit Teresa because of her nervous system, we must also discredit the skeptic, the philosopher, or the physicist on the same grounds. No thought is without bodily condition. To argue otherwise is “medical materialism”, the attempt to reduce away meaning by pointing to origin.^[6]

Here James becomes a true ally in the integration of theology and psychology. He insists that the value of a religious experience must be judged not by its root but by its fruit: by its immediate luminosity, its philosophical reasonableness, and its moral helpfulness.^[7] That is remarkably close to the test of Scripture itself: “By their fruits you shall know them.” (Matt. 7:20).

In my own voice I would press this point for today’s readers: psychology can describe the nervous instability of George Fox, just as neurology can analyze Paul’s Damascus Road seizure. But psychology cannot adjudicate the meaning or truth of such experiences. That requires theology. At the same time, theology cannot afford to ignore psychology, because the psyche is the medium in which revelation is received. Experiences are always conditioned, embodied, mediated. Theology without psychology is blind; psychology without theology is mute.

James therefore helps us resist both extremes: the pious tendency to idolize religious experience without discernment, and the reductionist tendency to pathologize it away. He reminds us that the “neurotic temperament” may in fact furnish a peculiar receptivity to divine inspiration.^[8] This is not to baptize pathology, but to recognize that grace often comes clothed in weakness. The very cracks in the vessel become the place where the light breaks through.

For the integration of theology and psychology, James is indispensable. He compels us to name the pathological without fear, but also to insist on the irreducible meaning of religious experience. He leaves us with the task that Deep Wells has set itself: to care for the soul in its fullness, honoring both its psychological conditions and its theological destiny.

Harold Netland reminds us that all experiences involve interpretive judgments. We never encounter reality in a raw, uninterpreted state. When we look at clouds on the horizon or feel a surge of joy, we immediately begin to make sense of what is presented to us. Some judgments are quick and obvious: that kettle is hot. Others are slower and more ambiguous: that shadow on the rock looks like a mountain lion, but it can’t be, because they don’t live here.^[9] Experience and interpretation are always bound together.

This becomes even more pronounced with religious experience. Netland, drawing from both Ninian Smart and Paul Moser, argues that while religious experiences always involve interpretation, they cannot be reduced to interpretation.^[10] There is a qualitative content, a “what-it-is-like”, that presents itself to consciousness prior to our interpretive framework. Interpretation can obscure, clarify, or mislead, but it does not constitute the experience itself. In his words, “An experience can have a reality of its own… apart from its being interpreted.”^[11]

This is a crucial point for the integration of theology and psychology. Psychology helps us see how background beliefs, culture, and memory shape interpretation. Theology reminds us that the Spirit of God can break through those frameworks and encounter us in ways that exceed them. To affirm one without the other is to miss the truth: religious experiences are never neutral, but neither are they mere projections of the psyche.

Netland also develops the idea of “ramification.” Some descriptions of experience are low-level (“I saw a dog”), while others are highly ramified (“I saw a Yorkshire Terrier with a limp”). Religious language is often highly ramified: words like Trinity, bodhi, nirvana, or union with God are theory-laden, doctrinally shaped descriptions of an underlying experience.^[12] For a Christian, to say “I encountered God” is to describe something real, but also to embed that encounter within centuries of doctrinal development. This is not false; it is simply how religious experience works. But it also means that interpretation carries the risk of error, and so discernment is necessary.

Netland’s analysis confirms what the Fathers intuited and what James insisted: the experience itself has weight, but its interpretation must be tested by fruit, coherence, and truth. For me, this is why theology, and psychology must be held together. Psychology helps us recognize our background beliefs and biases. Theology tests our interpretations against the witness of Scripture, tradition, and the fruits of love. Without both, we either absolutize our experience or dismiss it as mere projection.

In pastoral ministry, this makes all the difference. People will continue to have dreams, visions, and inner impressions. Some will bear the mark of divine encounter. Others will be colored by trauma, culture, or desire. Netland gives us a way to honor both the reality of the experience and the need for careful interpretation. And in that, he confirms the work of Deep Wells: to cultivate a church that can discern wisely where God is speaking, even as we name the psychological frameworks that shape our seeing.

Pamela Cooper-White reframes psychotherapy in keenly theological terms. She notes that the Greek verb therapeúo carries two meanings: not only “to heal” but also “to serve.”^[13] In this light, the psychotherapist is not a distant technician but one who kneels, like Christ washing feet, to serve another’s healing. The patient is not merely a case to be solved, but a suffering soul to be accompanied.

This double meaning is striking, because it harmonizes perfectly with the pastoral vision of the Fathers. Evagrius counseled vigilance over thoughts, but always in humility. Gregory taught diagnosis and remedy, but as service to the soul. Chrysostom exhorted quick reconciliation, but as a way of serving the health of the community. Cooper-White shows that true psychotherapy, when rightly understood, continues this stream: to heal is to serve, and to serve is to heal.

Andrew Root insists that pastoral ministry cannot be reduced to function or program. It must be relational, because God’s action is always personal. Ministry, he argues, is “sharing in Christ by sharing ourselves.”^[14] This means that theological care is inseparable from psychological attentiveness, because to engage another person deeply is to meet them in their psyche, their thoughts, emotions, and stories.

Root’s contribution is vital in a culture that prizes efficiency and programs. He reminds us that soul care is never abstract. It happens in encounter, in presence, in relationship. Here, too, the link with the ancients is clear. The desert fathers did not prescribe disciplines in the abstract; they offered personal “words” to seekers. Gregory urged differentiated remedies based on the unique affliction of each soul. Root is calling us back to that same relational ground, in which the Spirit’s action is discerned within the psychological life of the person.

Dennis Okholm has argued that any Christian psychology must be truly Christian, rooted not in a thin veneer over secular models but in the wisdom of the church’s ascetical tradition.^[15] He notes that modern secular psychology, for all its insights, often overlooks or even reverses what the ancient Christian writers already knew. Evagrius, Maximus, and the monastic tradition wrote extensively on the roots of greed, envy, and vainglory, areas that modern therapies often ignore or reframe as virtues.

Okholm insists that modern Christians should not despise secular psychology, but we should not forget that the church’s own tradition is itself a treasury of psychological insight. Ancient ascetics often had deeper accounts of the human person than contemporary clinicians. His call is for integration, but integration rooted in the church’s own soil.

Barrett McRay, Mark Yarhouse, and Richard Butman describe what has happened in recent centuries as a “segregation of the soul.”^[16] Spiritual care was given to pastors, psychological care to therapists. Each was walled off from the other. While specialization has benefits, they argue that the result has been a tragic division, because the soul is not divisible. The psyche and the spirit are one reality, and so the care of souls must be holistic.

They call for a reunification: pastors must recover psychological wisdom, and therapists must recover theological depth. Soul care that attends only to the spiritual neglects the wounds of the psyche; soul care that attends only to the psychological neglects the wounds of sin and alienation from God. True cura animarum must be psychospiritual, a reintegration of what was never meant to be divided.

When we listen to these contemporary voices alongside the ancients, we realize they are not inventing a new project but recovering an old one. Evagrius taught vigilance over thoughts. Gregory taught discernment of the soul’s faculties. Chrysostom warned against the rumination of anger. Wesley described religion as the therapy of the soul. Barth called pastors back to the cure of souls as their first task. And today, Cooper-White, Root, Okholm, and McRay/Yarhouse/Butman are all pointing in the same direction: theology and psychology are not rivals but companions in the healing of persons.

In our time, this integration is urgent. To ignore psychology is to ignore the very terrain in which grace takes root, the mind, the emotions, the affections, the unconscious. To ignore theology is to sever psychology from the horizon of God’s healing and hope. The task of Deep Wells is to resist both errors, and to offer instead an integrated vision of the soul’s care, rooted in Scripture, informed by the Fathers, renewed in the Reformers, and carried forward by modern wisdom.

From the deserts of Egypt to the pulpit of John Wesley, from the careful diagnoses of Gregory of Nyssa to the probing insights of William James, one conviction emerges again and again: the soul cannot be cared for by theology alone, nor by psychology alone. The two belong together in what the church has long called the cura animarum, the cure of souls.

Evagrius taught us vigilance over thoughts, Gregory discerned the faculties of the soul, Chrysostom exposed the danger of rumination, Wesley spoke of the gospel as the healing of the psyche, and Barth reclaimed the cure of souls for the modern pastor. John Drane showed how spirituality and psychology became fragmented in our own time, while James insisted that pathology does not nullify truth, and Netland reminded us that interpretation, though inevitable, does not erase the reality of encounter. Today, Cooper-White, Root, Okholm, and McRay remind us that our task is not to reinvent this wisdom but to recover it, to resist the segregation of the soul and to hold theology and psychology together for the sake of healing.

This is why Deep Wells exists. The church cannot afford to retreat into slogans that dismiss psychology as if the Spirit were threatened by science. Nor can we afford to reduce spirituality to therapy stripped of transcendence. We live in a weary age, tired of distrust, overwhelmed by information, numbed by consumption, exhausted by anger, and starved of imagination. What we need is not more technique, but deeper wells.

To draw from these wells means to take seriously both the reality of God’s action and the reality of the human psyche. It means discerning not only the fact of an experience but its interpretation, its fruit, its coherence with the gospel. It means acknowledging weakness and pathology without fear, because grace so often enters through the cracks. Above all, it means remembering that the Spirit of God continues to work as healer, counselor, and guide, not apart from our humanity, but through it.

The task before us is urgent. To care for souls in this time is to refuse the false choice between theology and psychology, and to embrace their integration for the sake of love. For as the ancients and the moderns alike have testified: the soul is healed where truth is spoken in wisdom, where experience is discerned with care, and where the living God is encountered in the depths of the human heart.

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^[1] John Drane, Do Christians Know How to Be Spiritual? The Rise of New Spirituality, and the Mission of the Christian Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg Books, 2020), 120–122.

^[2] Ibid., 134–136

^[3] Ibid., 138–140.

^[4] Ibid., 145–147.

^[5] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York; London; Bombay; Calcutta; Madras: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902), 6–9.

^[6] Ibid., 12–18.

^[6] Ibid., 22–24.

^[7] Ibid., 25–26.

^[8] Ibid. 25.

^[9] Harold A. Netland, Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God: The Evidential Force of Divine Encounters(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 49–51.

^[10] Ibid., 52–53; see also Ninian Smart, “Mysticism and Religious Experience,” in Philosophy and Religion (1965).

^[11] Netland, Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God, 53, citing Paul K. Moser.

^[12] Ibid., 52–54.

^[13] Pamela Cooper-White, Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy in Relational and Theological Perspective(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 9–11.

^[14] Andrew Root, The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by Sharing Ourselves (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2012).

^[15] Dennis Okholm, Dangerous Passions, Deadly Sins (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014).

^[16] Barrett W. McRay, Mark A. Yarhouse, and Richard E. Butman, Modern Psychopathologies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016), 26–28.