Who Gets to Define “Biblical Counseling”? 

How do you date the beginning of “biblical counseling”? When did “biblical counseling” begin? What’s the birthday of “biblical counseling”?

Of course, answering these questions depends upon who defines “biblical counseling.”

• If by “biblical counseling” we mean God’s Word, spoken by God Himself, instilling us with His wisdom to live for His glory, then biblical counseling began in Genesis 1-3 when God created and spoke to Adam and Eve.

• If by “biblical counseling” we mean God’s people sharing God’s wisdom and truth about how to relate to God and one another, then biblical counseling continued throughout the Old Testament, especially exemplified by the Wisdom Literature books of the Old Testament, and contained throughout the history of Israel and the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament.

• If by “biblical counseling” we mean the personal ministry of the Word as embodied by Christ—the Living Word—then biblical counseling continued throughout the four Gospels.

• If by “biblical counseling” we mean inspired writings relating the gospel to our relationship to God and others, then every book of the New Testament is a biblical counseling book.

• If by “biblical counseling” we mean “the Modern Nouthetic Counseling Movement,” initiated by Jay Adams in the 1970s, and further developed by his followers since then, then biblical counseling—in its nouthetic form—is a very young, new, novel, modern movement of 50-ish years.

Defining “Biblical Counseling” in Light of Church History 

I’d like to suggest that we define “biblical counseling” in light of church history—a history that predates the “Modern Nouthetic Biblical Counseling Movement” by at least 1,950 years.

Biblical counseling did not begin in 1970.

Biblical counseling in the church began 1,950 years earlier.

As I often say when I teach on the history of Christian soul care:

The church has always been about the business of helping hurting and hardened people to find Christ’s healing hope through the personal ministry of the Word.

Based upon my forty-year study of the history of Christian soul care, I would offer this preliminary definition of “historical biblical counseling” as:

The personal ministry of the Word of sharing Scripture (the gospel) and soul (relationship in Christ) (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8) through speaking God’s truth in love with grace (Ephesians 4:15) to sustain, heal, reconcile, and guide saints who experience suffering and struggle against sin on their sanctification journey, as practiced by pastors through pastoral soul care and spiritual direction and as practiced by believers through one-another ministry. 

Church Historians on the History of “Biblical Counseling” 

Has the church really always been about the business of biblical counseling? Rather than believing me—a biblical counselor—let’s see what church historians have to say…

J. T. McNeil, perhaps the past century’s preeminent historian of soul care, summarizes the historical evidence for mutual soul care and spiritual direction throughout church history.

“Lying deep in the experience and culture of the early Christian communities were the twin tasks of mutual edification (aedifictio mutua) and fraternal correction (correptio fraterna). In numerous passages (Romans 14:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; Romans 15:14; Colossians 3:16; 2 Thessalonians 3:15; just to list a few) we cannot fail to see the Apostle Paul’s design to create an atmosphere in which the intimate exchange of spiritual help, the mutual guidance of souls, would be a normal feature of Christian behavior” (McNeil, 1951, A History of the Cure of Souls, p. 39, emphasis added).

Where McNeil focused upon mutual lay care, Charles Kemp highlights pastoral care.

“There has apparently never been a time or place where individuals did not seek out religious leaders for personal help for: sustaining comfort, guidance and counsel, reconciliation through forgiveness and assurance, and healing or spiritual health. The process can be traced from the Old Testament to Christ and the Apostles in the New Testament to the early Church to the medieval Church to the Reformation and up to our own day” (Kemp, Physicians of the Soul: A History of Pastoral Counseling, 1947, p. 3, emphasis added).

With eloquence befitting the beauty of historical pastoral care, William Clebsch and Charles Jaekle reveal something of the breadth of historical pastoral ministry through personal care.

“The Christian ministry of the cure of souls, or pastoral care, has been exercised on innumerable occasions and in every conceivable human circumstance, as it has aimed to relieve a plethora of perplexities besetting persons of every class and condition and mentality. Pastors rude and barely plucked from paganism, pastors sophisticated in the theory and practice of their profession, and pastors at every stage of adeptness between these extremes, have sought and wrought to help troubled people overcome their troubles. To view pastoral care in historical perspective is to survey a vast endeavor, to appreciate a noble profession, and to receive a grand tradition (Clebsch and Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective,1964, p. 1, emphasis added).

Clebsch and Jaekle (1964, p. 4) further defined pastoral care or the cure of souls as historically always having involved:

“Helping acts done by representative Christian persons, directed toward the healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling of troubled persons whose troubles arise in the context of ultimate meanings and concerns” (emphasis added).

E. Brooks Holifield summarizes the history of the extensive personal counseling ministry of pastors.

The Christian clergy has been a talkative lot. But for almost twenty centuries they have spent more time listening to people than preaching to them. As early as the second century, they began to write letters and treatises instructing one another about spiritual direction and consolation, repentance and discipline, grief and growth. They designated their task as “cure of souls,” and so voluminous were their prescriptions that by the seventeenth century it was difficult to find an original cure for a wounded spirit (Holifield, 1983, A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-Realization, p. 15, emphasis added).

Holifield illustrates his point about the plethora of pastoral counseling materials produced throughout church history. He quotes a seventeenth-century pastor who apologized for writing yet another manual on the cure of soul, suggesting that everything that could be said perhaps already had been written!

Ignoring “the Great Cloud of Historical Witnesses” 

Sadly, we have lost respect for the great cloud of historical witnesses. 

Thomas Oden, through his historical research insights, explains how we tend to focus almost exclusively on modern approaches to pastoral care and counseling, rather than learning from church history.

“It is well known that classic Protestant evangelical teachers made frequent and informed references to the ancient Christian pastoral writers. Calvin was exceptionally well grounded in Augustine, but was also thoroughly familiar with the texts of Cyprian, Tertullian, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Leo, and Gregory the Great. Not until the late nineteenth century did the study of ancient pastoral writers atrophy among Protestant pastors” (Oden, 1987, (Oden, 1987, Classical Pastoral Care, Vol. 1” Becoming a Minister, p. 1, emphasis added).

“The preaching and counseling pastor needs to know that current pastoral care stands in a tradition of two millennia of reflection on the tasks of soul care. The richness of the classic Christian pastoral tradition remains pertinent to ministry today. The laity have a right to competent, historically grounded pastoral care. The pastor has a right to the texts that teach how pastors have understood their work over the centuries. Modern chauvinism has falsely taught us a theory of moral inferiority: that new ideas are intrinsically superior, and old patterns inferior. This attitude has robbed the laity of the pastoral care they deserve, and the ministry of the texts that can best inform the recovery of pastoral identity” (Oden, 1987, Classical Pastoral Care, Vol. 3: Pastoral Counsel, p. 4, emphasis added).

The loss of connection to church history and the history of the care of souls was vividly illustrated in an article by Thomas Oden in 1980. Of that article, Ian Jones notes:

“Oden studied the frequency of references to the classical pastoral tradition in the works of seven nineteenth-century pastoral care writers, representing six denominations. He found over 150 references to ten classical pastoral writers: Cyprian, Tertullian, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Richard Baxter, George Herbert, and Jeremy Taylor. Turning to the twentieth century, Oden examined seven pastoral care writers. Not one of these authors referenced a single work from the classical pastoral care tradition. Where, then, were these writers turning for authoritative sources in pastoral care and counseling? Oden found 330 references in these modern writings to Freud, Jung, Rogers, Fromm, Sullivan, and Berne. Over 1,800 years of wisdom and instruction on pastoral care and counseling had disappeared” (Jones, Unpublished ETS Paper, 2012, emphasis added).

“The Democracy of the Dead”

G. K. Chesterton explains the need for a church history understanding of “biblical counseling” when he observes that:

History and tradition are democracy extended through time. History gives “votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” It refuses to submit to the small and arrogant elite “who merely happen to be walking around.” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 3, emphasis added).

The Bible explains the need for a church history understanding of “biblical counseling.” Living in a generation without answers, facing abuse from every direction, pending destruction crouching around the corner, Israel desperately needed to heed God’s counsel.

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for yours souls” (Jeremiah 6:16a, emphasis added).

God pictures His people as lost travelers on a life-and-death journey. Confronting a fork in the road, they are to stop to ask directions because the ancient markers are overgrown and need to be searched again.

But who should they consult? Their fellow travelers find themselves just as blinded by their corrupt culture. Reminiscent of the words of Moses, they are to, “Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you” (Deuteronomy 32:7).

If they are humble enough to seek wisdom from the former generations and discover what their ancestors learned, then they will find rest for their souls—soul care. Unfortunately, in their arrogance they say, “We will not walk in it” (Jeremiah 6:16b).

A Forgotten Art: Reclaiming Our Historic Mantle of Mutual Biblical Counseling

Are we so different? In swiftly changing times, as we desperately search every which way for spiritual solutions:

• We seem to lack respect for the traditional time-tested ways in which God’s people of the past have dealt with personal problems.

• We prefer the latest trends and newest fads.

• We tend to focus almost exclusively on defining and learning “biblical counseling” from literature in just the past fifty short years.

All the while we could be drinking deeply from the rivers of historic Christianity; feasting from the root system of Christianity. The history of Christian soul care and spiritual direction provides a spiritual root system deep enough to withstand high winds and parching drought so that our souls can be nourished and our spiritual lives can flourish.

By following in the footsteps of our predecessors in the faith over the past 2,000 years, we can reclaim the ancient gifts of soul care and spiritual direction, restore the forgotten arts of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding, and experience a reformation in how we minister to one another through speaking and living gospel truth in love—historical biblical counseling.

The Rest of the Story 

For a list of a dozen resources on the history of biblical counseling, see:

12 Top Resources on the History of Biblical Counseling, Pastoral Counseling, & Soul Care.

Join the Conversation

How do you date the beginning of “biblical counseling”? When did “biblical counseling” begin? What’s the birthday of “biblical counseling”?

How could our “modern biblical counseling movement” benefit from a greater awareness and application of 2,000 years of biblical counseling throughout church history?