Published in the December 2020 edition of the Charleston Mercury
by Charles A. Collins, Jr.
Although an Anglican for the past two decades by studied conviction I was raised a Presbyterian – first in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (the old “Southern Presbyterian Church”), later in the Presbyterian Church (USA) when the PCUS ceased to exist by merger in 1983, and later when I realized the the PC (USA) would not be a practical place for an Evangelical to minister, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was as an Associate Reformed Presbyterian, then, that I entered their seminary in the mid-1990s, a time that Providentially afforded me the opportunity to get to know and learn from the Rev'd Dr. Jay E Adams, who died on November 14 at the age of 91 as his family surrounded him singing hymns.
Jay Adams was born in Baltimore, Maryland, as the son of a police officer father and secretary mother, neither of whom were Christians (although he later had the opportunity to lead them both in making professions of faith) or took their son to church. He was a very intelligent child and graduated from high school at the age of 15. Also at the age of 15 a neighborhood friend – Milton Fisher, who was himself to later serve as a missionary to Ethiopia, Old Testament scholar, and seminary dean – was very concerned about an author who denied the Scriptures. Wondering what so unsettled his friend, Jay found a Gideon New Testament that his father had been given as a soldier in World War I and after reading the Gospel of John his heart was opened by God and he believed what he was reading.
He began attending church with his his friend and began to grow in his faith. After his early graduation from high school he asked his minister where he could study Scripture in greater detail; his minister pointed him to the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, where an exception had to be made to allow a 15 year-old with no undergraduate degree to enroll. Following his time there he attended Johns Hopkins University and in 1952 at the age of 23 he received the Bachelor of Arts in Classics from Johns Hopkins and the Bachelor of Divinity from Reformed Episcopal Seminary on the same day.
He was ordained in the United Presbyterian Church and served several churches while completing the Master of Theology at Temple University and later earned the Ph.D. at the University of Missouri, writing his dissertation on the noted preacher and scholar Andrew Blackwood, under whom he'd studied at Temple University.
By the early 1960s he'd become minister at an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in New Jersey and was teaching homiletics (preaching) at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He was also assigned to teach pastoral care which included a section on pastoral counseling. With few resources from which to draw he began examining the various materials that were available on Christian Counseling and was less than impressed, discovering that many of them were written from the perspective of Sigmund Freud or Carl Rogers. He later had the opportunity to spend six weeks observing Dr. O. Hobart Mowrer, a former President of the American Psychological Association and atheist who had written a book that Jay had found provoking as it posed the question, “Has evangelical Christianity sold its birthright for a mess of psychological pottage?” While not certainly not agreeing with Mowrer's presuppositions nor his methods he found the time stimulating.
In 1970 Dr. Adams published Competent to Counsel, in which he critiqued the then-standard psychological systems of Freud, Rogers, and John B. Rogers/B.F. Skinner and called for their rejection by pastors and encouraged them to counsel out of the Word of God. His work was revolutionary and his output – more than 100 books on counseling, pastoral care, preaching and ethics, followed. Though them and the Nouthetic Counseling (now more commonly known as Biblical Counseling) movement of which he was the acknowledged father as well as his teaching at several seminaries and numerous conferences he has influenced countless clergy and laity of various churches. Through that corpus of work he will continue to have influence for years to come.
In 1990 Jay had left Westminster Theological Seminary in California, where he had established an innovative Doctor of Ministry program in preaching, and moved to upstate South Carolina where he planted Harrison Bridge Road Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Simpsonville. It was primarily as minister of that church that I came to know him, not well, but well enough to have spent time talking to him and seeing him from time to time. Harrison Bridge Road Church had a church bookstore (as an aside, I am a huge fan of churches having bookstores that can offer sound material) where many of his books and tapes were available.
Despite his impressive credentials Dr. Adams was an unassuming man. His infrequent wearing of neckties was a running joke (although he showed up at a church banquet in black tie on at least one occasion in response) and he could take good natured ribbing in the spirit in which it was intended, not taking himself too seriously because he took his Lord so seriously. He also had an abiding love for God's Word, producing his own translation of the New Testament in large part because he wanted to force himself to focus on each verse in detail in the original Greek. One time I stopped by the church to do some shopping in the book room and he was teaching a group of middle school youth in the congregation New Testament Greek.
I am very thankful for the life and work of Jay Edward Adams and exceedingly grateful that I had the opportunity to interact with him. Servant, well done.
The Rev'd Charles A. Collins, Jr., is an Anglican priest and graduate of Erskine Theological Seminary, where he is currently pursing doctoral work. He serves as chaplain for a local hospice and may be contacted at drew.collins [at]gmail.com Much of the biographical details for this article came from a reflection on Dr. Adams' life by the Rev'd Donn R. Arms that may be found at https://nouthetic.blog/2020/11/14/jay-e-adams-1929-2020/ and is gratefully acknowledged.
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