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The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context

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Recommended: Dr. David Powlison of CCEF unites the twin themes of biblical counseling and church history in his excellent work The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context. Everyone interested in the modern biblical counseling movement will benefit from this well-researched and well-written book. It presents a fair and balanced exploration of one of the most important developments in the Evangelical church over the past generation. Readers will be equipped not only with historical insight, but more importantly, with wisdom for how to speak the truth in love.

The name "Jay Adams" and the method of counseling known as "nouthetic counseling" are familiar to Evangelicals in the biblical/Christian counseling world. As author David Powlison notes, most people either love or hate Adams and nouthetic biblical counseling.

Powlison, while acknowledging his own personal history as one trained within the nouthetic biblical counseling movement, and as a friend of Dr. Adams, still is able to write with a historian's objectivity. The Biblical Counseling Movement is neither hagiography nor a blistering attack. It is a balanced, nuanced examination, not only of the history, but also of the theology and methodology of Jay Adams and nouthetic biblical counseling.

The core chapters were originally Powlison's Ph.D. dissertation. The book edition adds a lengthy appendix, containing articles by Powlison. These extend and deepen the history, offering an intriguing analysis of the birth and development of the nouthetic biblical counseling movement and its relationship to Evangelical psychotherapists.

The History and Shaping Factors

Powlison first takes his readers to the historical backdrop that led to the rise of modern nouthetic biblical counseling. As E. Brooks Holifield explained in A History of Pastoral Care in American, so Powlison traces the movement of pastoral ministry from a focus on salvation and progressive growth in Christlikeness to a focus on self and "self-actualization." In the generation before Jay Adams' ministry (the 1920s to 1950s), pastoral counseling was strongly influenced by liberal Protestantism and secular psychology.

Powlison tells the riveting story of Adams' journey as a young pastor facing crisis after crisis among his parishioners and feeling inadequately prepared. Adams' internship under the secularist O. Hobart Mowrer, of all people, was a culminating experience leading to Adams' rejection of secular psychology.

In Powlison's hand, the narrative is never shallow. He describes other influencing factors on Adams' theory, including his personality, his background as a preacher, his Reformed Presbyterian theology, and his study of Van Til's pressupositional apologetics, among others. One cannot understand Adam's nouthetic approach apart from grasping these background elements.

An Afternoon Soap Opera

Once Adams launched the nouthetic biblical counseling movement with his publication of Competent to Counsel, along with the start of the Christian Counseling and Education Center (later to be renamed the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation--CCEF), and later with the start of the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC), the history begins to sound like an afternoon soap opera. Powlison colorfully depicts the intrigue within and without the movement.

While Adams spent part of his ministry critiquing secular psychology, he reserved more of his bombast for those within the church whom he considered "integrationists" who he believed had sold their birth right for a bowl of pottage by trying to blend and merge biblical truth with psychological theory and practice. Engaging page after engaging page illustrates the important interaction between "nouthetic biblical counseling" and "Christian integrationist psychology"

Of course, many would not accept being placed in either "camp." In fact, not everyone today who claims the title "biblical counselor" would equally own the label "nouthetic counselor." This is the one weakness I find in the title and language of the book--the seamless merging of "nouthetic counseling" and "biblical counseling." (In this review, I have used the phrase "nouthetic biblical counseling" to indicate the specific model espoused by Adams and explored by Powlison).

Perhaps much lesser known to "outsiders" are the historical in-house squabbles between early leaders of the nouthetic biblical counseling movement. In particular, Powlison addresses the differences in personality, theory, and methodology that arose between Adams and his nouthetic biblical counseling peer, John Bettler. If ever there was an antithesis to Adams, it was Bettler. Their eventual drifting apart, despite mutual respect and friendship, almost could have been predicted.

Powlison also tracks the ups and down of the movement in terms of influence (memberships, readership, sister organizations, "competing" organizations, etc.). To see the widespread impact of nouthetic biblical counseling today, it may surprise some to read about the many years when, according to Powlison, it languished.

What Makes Biblical Counseling Truly Biblical?

Powlison's work is not only historiographical. It also offers readers a thoughtful analysis of the theology and methodology of nouthetic biblical counseling, of Christian psychology, and of Christian counseling. Two lengthy and informative chapters outline the views, accusations, counter-views, and perspectives of most of the leading characters in biblical Christian counseling and psychology from the 1960s to the 1990s.

It would be almost impossible to read Powlison's summaries without being challenged to reflect seriously about one's own beliefs about the real meaning, in practice, of the sufficiency of Scripture. Just what does it mean and what does it "look like" to practice truly biblical Christian counseling that is Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed?

Reading The Biblical Counseling Movement is like discovering a time capsule. You un-bury it, read the enclosed note, and say, "Aha! So, that's why things are the way they are today!" You come away with a greater appreciation for what Jay Adams was attempting to do. You come away with a greater appreciation for those who attempted to say, "Jay, you may have pulled the pendulum too far and done so a little too caustically." You come away with a better understanding of the ongoing "camps" in the biblical Christian counseling movement(s) that exist to this day.

For a rollickingly good read (yes, I said that about a book that once was a dissertation!), and for vital insight into the shape of pastoral, biblical, Christian counseling and psychology today, The Biblical Counseling Movement is a unique contribution to the field.

I was first introduced to Jay Adams work while completing my masters in social work. At the time I was struggling integrate my faith with my clinical work and Jay Adams books (especially Competent to Counsel, A Theology of Christian Counseling, and the Christian Counselors Manual) were very helpful in providing a counterpoint to my studies. As I moved from school into practice, however I began to struggle with many of the concepts introduced by Adams and others in the Nouthetic Counseling camp. I struggled with their exegesis of certain Biblical texts, I struggled with their (mostly) complete rejection of modern psychology and psychiatry, and I struggled with the harshness I read in their techniques.

Over the last 10 years I have learned that the Biblical counseling movement, no matter how frustrating to me personally, is an important balance to mainstream psychology and psychiatry for the Christian. Powlison's excellent historical study of the Biblical counseling movement further underscores that important truth. While it is clear from the book that Powlison has serious reservations about some of the more extreme stances taken by Adams, NANC, BCF, and others involved with Biblical counseling it is also clear that Powlison has a deep respect for the overarching aim of shifting the focus of pastoral counseling and Christian counseling as a whole to the Bible. Anyone involved in Christian counseling should read this book for that lesson alone.

Make no mistake: this book outlines the entire history of the Biblical counseling movement. It is not a fluff piece that only gives one side of the story. This book presents the background of the Biblical counseling movement complete with detractors and serious questions about Adam's knowledge system, theology, seeming lack of compassion, and understanding of even the basic tenants of psychology. Through it all Powlison's work is steady and fair. And I would argue that we are better for it.

You may have an immediate reaction to and an opinion about Biblical Counseling. Powlison provides detail of the movement, when it began, why it began and connects the dot between now and then. For any student of Biblical Counseling this will be a work worth having. Powlison himself has been incredibly influential in helping define and refine Biblical Counseling and there may be no better person to take on the task of documenting it's roots.

Powlison's work is a fair treatment of the history of biblical counseling with a focus on its prevalence in the last 50 years. This book was assigned in my seminary's Intro to Counseling class and it provides a great framework from which to grapple with the different issues involved in counseling in church ministry. The strength of this work is not only good historical research but also the engaging and illustrative writing Powlison is known for. Read and enjoy!

This is a great book written by a thoughtful and faithful author. One of the most important and weighty jobs in the world today is that of counseling. Anyone who would be in this profession has immense responsibility for how they care for those who would look to them for help. Whether they know it or not, professional counselors can lead people deeper into death or towards the light of the gospel. What a responsibility! This is not like just any old profession. This is people's lives we are talking about. May God use this book to inform and give discernment to a new generation of counselors who are able to care for people in ways that can truly help, even for eternity.

This book was birthed out of Dr. Powlison's doctoral dissertation and is an historical analysis of the formation of the biblical counseling movement. He also provides some new analysis in the back of the book on his perspective of how things are now.

Dr. Powlison is an able guide here, having been involved in this movement from early on and having a deep commitment to the Scriptures and to the centrality of the gospel of Jesus. I am thankful he has written this book!

This is very much an insider's view of nouthetic counseling, which has its advantages, but also the great weakness of a lack of critical distance and detachment. As a result the author is not able to see the presuppositions of the movement that have led others to question whether it is biblical at all in its basic outlook.

After all, if God created humanity with a nature, as he created nature with a nature, why can't there be a natural science of human nature as there is of everything else?

Critics have said that the nouthetic movement is 18th century British empiricism with its assumptions of the tabula raza (hence no human nature to have a science of) and also the supremacy of the will in the human heirarchy of faculties. In so far as the movement has theological affinities it seems fundamentally Arminian. This is what the author should have devoted a few chapters to.