Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 13:2 (Spring 2004)
Article: Pastoral Counseling: Biblical Foundations and Framework
Author: Noel Due

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RAR 13:2 (Spring 2004) p. 41

Pastoral Counseling:
Biblical Foundations and Framework

Noel Due

Introduction

Counseling is an accepted and ubiquitous part of the social landscape today, both within and outside of the Church. Its prevalence, necessity and effectiveness are often taken for granted, though much popular sentiment (which seems to treat it as a panacea) must be treated with caution.1 Moreover, a plethora of counseling methodologies exists. Each one is built on its own core theoretical model, and each one expresses that model in attitudes, actions and assumptions that inform the counseling process.2 The shape of therapy is as much governed by the assumptions of one’s core model, as by its content.

In addition, there has been a long and ongoing debate, still unresolved, as the to the relationship between counseling models developed in secular situations and those developed within a distinctively biblical framework.3 The spectrum ranges from complete isolation (rejecting any insights from secular psychology) to complete assimilation (where anything distinctively Christian is lost).4

Given all of this debate, however, the comment made by Jones and Butman over a decade ago still holds true. “The work of the church has suffered from those who promote either hastily ‘baptized’ versions of secular models or superficial

RAR 13:2 (Spring 2004) p. 42

renderings of ‘biblical’ models.” (1991, 23). They then point to the ongoing challenge “of developing the comprehensive Christian model we all so need.”

The knack is not simply to identify biblical models without becoming reductionist, though this is important enough!5 It is to be sufficiently comprehensive in our approach to the Scriptures to build a view of human beings that is both theologically robust and pastorally thorough. This is a work that cannot be done alone, and this article is only one small contribution to the task.

My aim is to identify a number of areas in which we can and must engage in some meaningful biblical/theological reflection in order to ensure that our pastoral counseling ministries are neither uncritically adoptionist, nor unnecessarily reductionist. These questions are not to be answered in methodology, but in fundamental presuppositions. These are the sorts of building blocks we need to construct a properly comprehensive “core theoretical model,” and represent my attempt to identify a number of key areas often ne...

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