Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I have with me Dr. Jen Chen. She is ACBC certified. She’s taught biblical counseling at seminaries, universities, and at various conferences. She’s been featured on biblical counseling observation videos, and recently she published a book called Biblical Counseling and Mental Disorders.
Jenn was previously licensed as a clinical psychologist in 2002 after earning a doctorate in clinical psychology and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from Christian institutions. She was formerly trained in evidence-based practices and psychotherapy. However, midway through her psychologist career, Jen ended up receiving biblical counseling. After which she returned to school for a master’s in biblical counseling, and she left the secular world of mental health to practice biblical counseling.
Jenn, today, I want to talk about this concept of empiricism. Maybe I’ll give a little bit of background that I think can be helpful as to why I even started this conversation with you, why I thought it was maybe a helpful topic. And I thought, “man, you’d be a really good person to help us to think about this.” I see a lot of confusion with this idea of empiricism or empirical thought.
Jenn Chen: Definitely.
Dale Johnson: And yeah, this sort of concept of empiricism, I think it gets sort of an elevated understanding, and people sort of equate it synonymously with something that is settled science versus empirical data that validates some sort of theory.
And so, I want to make sure when people are reading information. So that, when they read about empirical data or empiricism, they understand what that means. Versus not putting science as a proper way of thinking about something that, oh, this has been validated. Because the pop world, when it writes, and some of your more loosely articulated journals will use language like this and maybe not clarify.
There’s a proper way to think about what’s empirical and what’s not. What’s scientific and what’s not. And sometimes I think people confuse that. I’m not sure where we’re going to go fully in this conversation, but that was sort of the backdrop at which I wanted us to think about this.
So, this certainly plays into psychology because, you know, oftentimes I think psychologists are trying to have some integrity. And, you know, they’re not essentially evil in everything that they do. The concept is that they’re trying to have some integrity and not represent all of their findings as being legitimately science.
Now, we know something in an arrogant way. We use the term empiricism in some way to describe some of the things that they’re looking into, the things that they’re discovering. So, talk a little bit about psychology, what it is, what they’re actually claiming when they’re doing research and how empiricism or empirical thought sort of plays into that.
Jenn Chen: It’s interesting because I teach an introduction to psychology course and psychology texts always at the beginning state psychology is a science. So, it is claim to a science, but at the same time, it’s saying that psychology is seeking to explain why human beings think, feel and act the way they do.
And what empiricism is, is one of psychology’s attempts to know “little t truth.” But it is a philosophical idea that knowledge comes primarily from our sensory experiences. And that forms the core principle behind the scientific method, which relies on observation, data collection, and then testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions.
And so, it’s attempting to know through observation, through what we can use through our senses. And it’s interesting because I was even talking about this. I was thinking about David Powlison’s class, theology and secular psychology. And in it, he had this analytic. So, this triangle that we’re always going to have information. Well, there’s three I’s. So, there’s information, and this is like the data that we see or the description.
And then that points to some sort of interpretation or trying to explain, or basically the theory of what we see. And he said that that is always going to be distorted if it’s not coming from a Godward view.
And then the third part of the triangle is now intervention, based on how we interpreted the data. And so again, that is going to be affected by theory, but that we have to be careful to separate out information. Which again, even in itself, we could talk about Van Til for a little bit.
But the presuppositions of what we see, because of where we are, that is not ever subjective. There are no brute facts. And so, it’s just this idea of empiricism can sound very scientific. It’s trying to use a scientific method, but ultimately, we’re ending up with theories and we’re ending up with distorted data.
Dale Johnson: And I think that’s important to notice. I want to get to a definition in a way that I think would be helpful. But even before we describe that, we have to understand who we are as human beings. And from a biblical perspective, certainly we have a material body, and we can do all kinds of scientific research on the material body. We can even study behaviors and whatnot, but biblically we have to understand that there’s an immaterial part of who we are.
So, when we try to do empirical research on the human being to narrow down variables as to what could be contributing to behavior that we see coming out, there could be lots of reasons for that, right? Which could include outside influence, which certainly includes the active heart, which is always active in past experiences, what’s flowing in my mind right now, what my experience was today, and how would I interpret in the given moment that this event is happening?
Like all kinds of things are playing in and we try to narrow down in an “empirical way.” It’s hard to do that. I mean, this is why the definition of psychology changed in 1879. Wundt recognized that you could not understand a human being from a scientific perspective if we maintained our understanding of psychology the way it was defined before 1879, which was the study of the psyche, the soul, right?
Study of the immaterial part of who humanity is. But he recognized if we’re going to apply this whole naturalistic philosophy to man. The word philosophy versus science.
That’s right.
If we’re going to apply the scientific method under this philosophy of naturalism, then we have to redefine what psychology is. It’s not a study of the immaterial man or the soul. It’s a study of emotions, behaviors, things that you can observe with the natural eye. Things that you can experience and feel in the natural world. And that’s a truncating. That’s an alteration of anthropology from the Word.
So, let’s back up. Knowing a little bit of history, I think, could be helpful. Let’s talk about a definition. It’s always good to frame what we talk about—empiricism or whatever we’re talking about. Frame this, so that we have common language, and we know what we’re talking about. So, give a definition of this concept of empiricism. You’ve described it, now let’s define it. Since people are using it to try to utilize psychological studies as science.
Jenn Chen: I took the definition from the American Psychological Association, and they define empiricism as “an approach to epistemology,” which basically is, how do we know truth? So, “an approach to epistemology, holding that all knowledge of matters of fact, either arises from experience or requires experience for its validation.” So, we have to be able to test it and revalidate it.
They also say that the view that experimentation is the most important, if not the only foundation of scientific knowledge and the means by which individuals evaluate truth claims or the adequacy of theories and models. So, this idea, experimentation, we have to be able to prove it through an experiment or disprove it through an experiment. And that is how we know things, that is how we know truth. And these experiments are what can approve or disprove a theory. And again, a theory is not a science. A theory is, again, that explanation of why we see the data. It isn’t scientific in itself.
Dale Johnson: That’s a really important distinction that you just made. And I think that plays into how we would understand what you just gave as a definition. And you can already begin to see, based on this definition, if you’re paying attention, that this creates problems when we’re talking about a biblical understanding of studying man, right?
Because as I mentioned, there is an immaterial part. And so, we start to see different problems when we’re trying to study. I don’t know if you’re going to talk about this later, but one of the things we see is people get so confused between cause and correlation, right? Cause and correlation.
So, when we talk about empirical nature of things—because we can’t reduce the variability because the immaterial part of man, you can’t study that part scientifically and motivation specifically—it’s hard to describe something as being causal, right? Versus something that correlates, right? So, talk about some of the problems, that being one for sure. But there are other problems that we see with even this definition applied to a biblical understanding of humanity.
Jenn Chen: Right. So, first of all, just that whole idea of variability, you know. Even just body-wise, there are so many variables that it’s hard to even talk about some sort of disease process at times. I mean, yes, there could be things that can contribute to something and different influences about why somebody might develop an illness.
It could be genetic components. It could be behavioral components. There could be environmental components and it’s already complicated, right? But now you’re getting out of the material body into the immaterial where there are just millions more variables.
I mean, and we’re just talking again about, some of the things we just talked about bodily-wise, but then most of all our worshiping heart in the center, we’re talking about social, we’re socially embedded and we have lived in a culture or multiple cultures that are going to influence the way that we think and frame things in our worldview. And then of course, we are in a spiritually embattled place where there is an evil one who wants to, although for the believer, he can’t have our soul. He definitely does not want us to flourish. You know, he comes to heal and kill and destroy, but yet there is the God, the infinite God around all of this.
And empiricism cannot capture all of these variables—an experiment cannot capture all these variables, when we’re talking about why people think, act and feel the way they do.
Dale Johnson: Yeah. And I think that starts us in a much better place to try and understand, okay, what are they trying to accomplish in a secular world? I appreciate what they’re trying to accomplish, but they’re not starting with some of those major variables that start to provide us as Christians reality. They’re not starting with the God of the universe. They’re not starting with this immaterial part of man that is responsible to God, that is active in our heart and so on.
But it’s not just this whole concept of the inability of what empiricism can do. There are other problems, right? Like you and I’ve talked even before about things like, you know, rationalistic thinking and other problems. Just describe some of those problems that might arise when we’re describing empiricism
Jenn Chen: I think the biggest thing is, how do you find certainty apart from God’s revelation? You know, when He explains who we are, that He’s the Creator of the universe, and how it runs, and even after the fall, what is to come. And yet, we want to try to explain man through a scientific method that is so faulty. In part because of the noetic effects of the fall, which is just simply meaning that all of us, noetic comes from our mind and that because of the fall, there’s things the way our intellect, it can be distorted and how we see things can be distorted. And then the things that we worship are distorted. And so it really starts to interfere with our ability to really study things from a objective manner in which the empiricists are trying to do. That’s one thought.
And then another thought, this is actually from Weber, Max Weber. I don’t even know if I’m saying is it Weber like Wundt? Weber, yeah. But he was an economist and also a student of human behavior. So, we would say psychologist, but he really cautioned that empirical knowledge never includes all the facts, that it has to be narrowed down to narrow situations. And so when we get data that it’s still very abstract and he’s not saying let’s just throw out all empiricism altogether, but we have to know that this is a generalization that we cannot universalizing.
So, the thing about these studies, it’s interesting for me to even—part of my journey too, as an Asian American woman, of seeing how much of the psychology sometimes was from a upper middle class male worldview. And then that describes what’s normal.
But just even just in things like in psychological assessment, the norms tend to be based around Caucasian, middle-class, somewhat educated persons. And so, if the way I’m trying to measure somebody is compared to that, it makes it very confusing about the subjectivity of these norms that I have.
Meaning, I’m comparing somebody not from that norm group to this group of people, and then making a statement about the way they are—maybe their intelligence or their memory or their attention. When is it allowed to be that generalizable? So maybe even too with some of the empiric studies where they’ll say, oh, this type of treatment…
But then it’s interesting, they’ve done a study, where so much scientific research is actually done on college students who are taking a class in psychology. And so, can we base our results and universalize them because this is what we discovered with college students. So, it’s just very complicated.
And then all the variables within that where they’re just really trying to, just because something is empirically validated with one particular sample, because all experiments are done just on a sample group, because we can’t do an experiment on the whole country or a whole anything, how much of that are we really able to say that, therefore, that means it works for these other people?
Dale Johnson: And that it’s cause-and-effect vs. correlation. I mean, so, I wrote down a couple of things that you said that I, as you’re talking about Weber and his contribution. You said that he describes empiricism as “carefully limited to narrow interest or narrow situations.”
That’s fascinating to me that he’s even recognizing he has an agenda, right? If you’ve ever read Weber, he has an agenda of what he’s trying to accomplish, but he’s recognizing that the value of empiricism is certainly not what we give it to today.
He’s recognizing its limitations. And I think today when people read empirical research, they sort of equate it as if it is this sort of cause-and-effect explanation of things, or it becomes this strong correlation that just around the corner, we’re going to discover the cause and effect.
That’s actually not what he’s describing, right? He describes it, as you mentioned, even in terms of generalizations. That’s what empiricism can accomplish. I think often we’re giving it way too much credit. And what I’m seeing happen is we’re accepting empirical ideas and theories, and it’s causing us to reshape even our method and how we approach different things in biblical counseling.
It’s making us sort of like question how we think about the Bible or whether it is really sufficient and comprehensive and so on. So, these are the kinds of things that raise up in my mind. And I think that was really helpful to hear, you know, and Weber’s not alone in this, right?
Where he would describe the generalization of empiricism, its usefulness for very narrow situations, and it’s not extrapolated. You can’t extrapolate that information and apply it broadly in the way that we do, as if it’s a law vs. some generic theory or concept. And those are two radically different things.
So now, let’s sort of bring this discussion into the realm of psych diagnosis, or psychiatric diagnosis. And so, talk about empiricism as it relates to—you know, maybe in our world, what we’re more familiar with is maybe less of the inventory and statistical analysis of different groups of people in sociological or psychological studies. But we’re more familiar with the DSM and its constructs. So, talk about how empiricism is utilized within the context of psych diagnosis.
Jenn Chen: So, in terms of psychiatric diagnoses, empiricism refers to the practice of basing diagnoses primarily on observable, measurable symptoms and behaviors. And then relying heavily on clinical data and research findings, rather than solely on subjective interpretation.
So, they’re aiming to create a more objective and reliable diagnostic process. So essentially, it’s emphasizing the importance of gathering evidence through observation and systematic study to be able to inform psychiatric diagnoses.
Dale Johnson: Yeah. So, what they’re trying to do is take a philosophical approach—as they observe with natural eyes, they’re putting together in a subjective way, the best information that they can, what they think happens more consistently. And they’re trying to achieve something objective.
Now, notice in that admission, how you described that, what’s not achieved yet, not objectivity, right? They’re seeking to do that. But empiricism is not accomplishing that, right? Empiricism is just giving generalizations, hoping that at some point we can state something more clearly scientific.
But when you read empirical or empiricism, just be very cautious about those types of observations, those types of subjectivity in approach to these diagnoses. And so, I just want us to be cautious about this. So maybe a final word, as you think about what helps you, Jen, when you’re reading pop science, pop psychology, or even legitimate research.
What helps you discern when you’re reading, and you see things that use terms like empirical or empiricism or an empirical approach to this? Or trying to validate something by using that language, what helps you when you think, how do you categorize it? How do you put it properly so that it makes sense? Where you are giving them credit for what they’re doing, but you’re not also giving them credit beyond as if this is, man, this is cause and effect helping me to understand fully. So, help us to understand how you discern that.
Jenn Chen: You know, I had the blessing of being under a supervisor who was actually a forensic psychologist. He actually really taught me to think through, how would this look like in front of a jury? And so, for me, I would think through, how would this look through a jury of some of the finer research psychologists I know? And interestingly enough, you and I had this conversation.
So now, one of the hot terms is evidence-based practice, but before evidence-based practice, they used to use the term empirically validated. And so, I think both of those terms are kind of used almost as a marketing tool. When we think about evidence-based practice, it sounds so professional and so medical and so scientific. But there is not a consensus actually what makes an evidence-based practice.
And so, pretty much if you could find two studies and submit it—then somehow you get this title. But it makes it sound like you’re getting this very scientific treatment that works. What I am thinking through is more of how many studies are there? Who have they been done on?
And even in that case, I am thinking—so, I actually worked in the inner city that—okay, this worked for a middle-class Caucasian group that is probably picked for the study. Does that mean it’s going to work for my African American group here in the inner city with totally different context, different education, everything like that?
Before I was thinking more clearly, it was like, I was just trying—I think sometimes when you’re downstream, meaning you’re sitting across from the patient or the client, the counselee, you’re just thinking, what do I need to do? Pragmatics of, how can I best help them? And then what is the research saying? And not having a lot of time to think through it.
But then the more I practiced evidence-based practice, I could see that, yeah, once you start changing it—then it’s no longer the evidence-based practice because you’ve changed from the protocol of the actual evidence-based practice. Plus, the people who did the evidence-based practice, who actually did the study, meaning they were the ones who conducted the therapy, were very highly trained in a very specific setting with a very specific group of people.
So, it may have helped in that particular setting. And then, what did it actually help with? So, maybe it helped at the end of treatment, but what about six months down the line? What about a year down the line? What about all the people that dropped out?
For me, the larger body and the more diverse type of people, but I’m still just thinking: but the outcome is still just going to be about, did their depression decrease? Did their anxiety decrease? Did their automatic thoughts?
So, some of it too is, what is the theory behind the treatment? And what do they consider the proper outcome? Because if it’s cognitive behavioral, then obviously the outcome they want is the thoughts and the behaviors changed. So it’s just, again, how do we even measure—how do we decide what the measurement of success is? Or what efficacy is?
Dale Johnson: Yeah, that’s honestly so helpful to just pause and think about. I want to bring this around. And maybe it’s the last thing we can shut down with. But to me, with what you’re describing, we have to see that there’s an opportunity cost in this generation, right? The opportunity cost is if we buy into these concepts of empiricism—okay, and I’m not just trying to dismiss them out of hand, and we learn different things about how groups of people behave in certain ways. Okay, I mean, some of that can be helpful.
But to recognize what empiricism actually means is generalizations and subjective observations, we’re not talking about cause-and-effect scientific approaches. My concern is that the opportunity cost is it’s diminishing the way we see the authority and the beauty and the sufficiency of the Bible. In how it really helps us to understand and make us aware of what’s happening in the depths of a human being in any given moment.
There’s nothing else known to man that can accomplish that work. You see, every single counseling theory and approach, psychological study is trying to make man aware of man. And with all subjectivity, can they observe certain things outwardly? Yes. But can they tell us identity, who man is, what makes man go, what motivates man?
Nothing human-made or human-discovered can help us to understand that, because the Bible lays claim to that role. Only the Scripture, by the power of the Spirit, can make us laid bare fully, exposed and naked, as the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 4:13. Only the Scriptures, the perfect law of liberty, can help us to see the type of man that we really are.
All this psychological stuff is trying to make us as people self-aware, and yet that’s the Bible’s domain. It’s claiming that it does that, and nothing else can do that except the Word, by the Spirit, in the depths of the human being. That not even we, as we look at our own life, can do, because we’re deceived.
So my concern in all this language is not like, “hey, I’m wanting to throw out everything that we see with, “empirical language,” that none of it’s useful or whatever. No, let’s put it in its category. People are starting to take it as if it’s completely scientific—we just need to bow to it.
No, it’s observation. It’s subjective. It’s generalizations. It’s causing us to devalue the Bible. So let’s pay attention to what the Scripture’s claiming it can do, and nothing else that man has discovered or created can accomplish self-awareness the way the Bible helps us to see ourselves for who we really are. Any final thoughts on that concept and the opportunity costs that’s there?
Jenn Chen: Right. I can’t go back—and God has his reasons. But I wish I had spent, you know, those 20 years in psychology, learning more about His word and who He is through His word and my relationship with Him, rather than learning all these theories. And yet, He, in his providence and His sovereignty, allowed me to that. But that actually makes my Bible reading all the more sweet.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, and it does. And I really want to make sure that we’re clear on, maybe why these things—as we get intrigued by them. I’m intrigued when I read things like this, but our intrigue of these things cannot veil what we see as the beauty and the sufficiency of the Word. And keep us from what are the wonderful riches of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge found in Christ. And I want us to be able to promote that, unashamed in all of its beauty for the good of man and the glory of God.
Thanks for helping us think through this today. I think this concept of empiricism. Empirical thinking can be confusing to some, and I think you’ve offered some clarity on it for us. So, thank you for that.
Jenn Chen: Thanks for having me.
