Timeless Truth for Our Changing Times 

You’re reading Part 4 in an ongoing RPM Ministries blog mini-series on Timeless Truth for Our Changing Times: The Ancient Paths of Soul Care. In this series:

• We’re examining ancient, historical Christian soul care to see what our 50-year-young modern nouthetic biblical counseling movement can learn from the ancient paths of 2,000 years of church history.

In Part 1, I tell the story of my history with church history. I also introduce you to my writings on the history of soul care. You can read that post here: 3 Books on Biblical Counseling in Church History: A Treasure Hunt.

In Part 2, I introduce you to “the democracy of the dead”—to past voices speaking to us today. You can read that post here: 18 Resources on the History of Pastoral Counseling, Soul Care, and Biblical Counseling.

In Part 3, I ask and answer a series of questions. How do we date the beginning of “biblical counseling”? When did “biblical counseling” begin? What’s the birthdate of “biblical counseling”? What is “historic,” “classic” biblical counseling? You can read that post here: What Is “Historic,” “Classic” Biblical Counseling?

In Part 5, we learn that it is theological, biblical, and historical to patiently, relationally engage counselees in their earthly laments and to empathetically enter their painful emotions. This is psalm-like biblical counseling.Go here to read the full post: Lingering in Lament: Life Lessons from Church History.

My Story 

I love history. I love church history. I love the history of Christian pastoral care and counseling.

For over a quarter-century, I taught a course on The History of Christian Soul Care. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the history of Martin Luther’s spiritual care. I’ve written three books on the history of Christian soul care.

God’s Story in Church History

Studying church history exposes our modern blind spots and our arrogant assumption that somehow we alone have cornered the market on understanding and applying God’s truth. G. K. Chesterton said it poetically.

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.”

History teaches. History humbles. That’s why I encourage all of us in our 50-year-young modern biblical counseling movement to look to that great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) throughout 2,000 years of church history (see here and here). That’s why I describe my model of biblical counseling, in part, as “church history-informed.”

How might our modern biblical counseling movement benefit if we returned to the history of Christian pastoral care and counseling?

• Wisdom from the ancient paths (Jeremiah 6:16) of historical Christian pastoral care offers us a template for compassionate, comprehensive care and counseling.
• Historical pastoral care provides a four-dimensional model of comprehensive, compassionate care. Understanding the history of pastoral care helps us avoid a one-dimensional mindset that mistakenly acts as if pastoral counseling is primarily about confronting sin.
• Historical pastoral care models how to provide shepherding care for saints on their sanctification journey who suffer in our sinful world and who struggle against sin journey.

A Word of Caution 

When God commanded His people to look to the ancient paths, they stubbornly and haughtily proclaimed, “We will not listen!” (Jeremiah 6:17).

Let’s not be like them. Let’s not say,

“Our modern approach is never one-dimensional. We always proclaim and practice a perfectly balanced approach of comprehensive, compassionate care. We do not need any corrective counsel from church history.”

Instead, let’s listen humbly to the most obscure of all classes—our spiritual ancestors—the democracy of the dead. As modern biblical counselors, let’s learn from ancient pastoral care givers. 

The DNA of the Modern Nouthetic Biblical Counseling Movement 

I am grateful for Jay Adams. In an era where some segments of the church were ignoring sin, Adams called on the church to provide nouthetic counseling, which he often defined as confronting sin out of concern for change. Adams was not shy to decry the irony of secular counselors like Mowrer and Menninger asking the church, “Whatever happened to sin?”

While Adams did more than counsel about sin, and while the modern nouthetic biblical counseling movement does more than counsel about sin, confronting sin is embedded in the DNA of modern biblical counseling. For example, In 2013, David Powlison penned an intriguing article, Revisiting Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair. Powlison explained that he had first written about “idols of the heart” in 1991 in order to expand the nouthetic counseling model beyond the idea that “sin is more than behavior.” Powlison also explained that he was disappointed that “idols of the heart” took on a life of its own as people moved in “introspective directions” and went on “idol hunts” in their own lives and in the lives of their counselees.

Was this overreaction of “idols of the heart” almost predictable given the DNA of the modern movement? Was this overapplication due, in part, to the very DNA of the modern nouthetic counseling movement and its stated focus on confronting sin out of concern for change?

You might be reading along at this point and be thinking, “Bob Kellemen! How dare you suggest that the modern nouthetic counseling movement has confrontation of sin embedded in its DNA!”

Well, don’t believe me. Believe Heath Lambert in his dissertation/book, The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams. Read many sections, including pages 57-60, where Lambert specifies areas where he saw deficits in the biblical counseling movement’s compassionate counseling of sufferers. Written a mere fourteen years ago, it may be a tad naïve to assume that in just over a decade we have all overcome every shortfall in our approach to counseling and suffering.

The Progressive Sanctification of Biblical Counseling 

Humbly learning from church history keeps us from a defensive posture where we reject even the possibility that our current counseling approach might be in need of progressive sanctification. Heath Lambert’s dissertation/book, wisely taught that a movement focused on progressive sanctification in counseling, should also be a movement focused on the progressive sanctification of our counseling. I addressed this same need for the progressive sanctification of the biblical counseling movement in my book, Consider Your Counsel: Addressing Ten Mistakes in Our Biblical Counseling.

The 2025 ACBC national conference will wisely focus on the history of soul care—for the same reason as this blog post. We both want to encourage one another to learn from church history, rather than assuming that we have cornered the market on biblical counseling. Our modern biblical counseling movement is not glorified. It is not perfected. We all, myself definitely included, have much to learn.

We have a multitude of areas to learn from a multitude of (historical) counselors. Being church history-informed is part of God’s process of progressively sanctifying the modern biblical counseling movement.

The Four-Dimensional Model of Historic Pastoral Care and Counseling

Church history provides not a one-dimensional, but a four-dimensional approach to pastoral care and counseling. In Clebsch and Jaekle’s classic work, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective, they outline four themes consistently practiced in 2,000 years of pastoral care and counseling: sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding. In my training manual, Gospel-Conversations: How to Care Like Christ, I picture these themes as four biblical compass points for biblical counseling. Here is a summary of what I have learned from church history (and Scripture) about these four compass points of four-dimensional pastoral care.

Sustaining 

• “It’s normal to hurt.”
• “Life is bad.”
• The earthly story. The temporal story.
• Grief. Lament. “The world is fallen and it often falls on us.” “Suffering like a psalmist.”
• Empathy.
• “Climbing in the casket” (identifying with people who, like the apostle Paul, “felt the sentence of death and despaired of life”—2 Corinthians 1:8-9).
• “Weeping with those who weep.” Commiseration. Comfort.
• Patiently journeying together with sufferers.
• “Shared sorrow is endurable sorrow.”
• Psalm 13; Psalm 88; Job; Ecclesiastes; Romans 8:21-27; Romans 12:15; 2 Corinthians 1:8-9.

Healing

• “It’s possible to hope.”
• “God is good.”
• The heavenly story. The eternal story.
• Groaning with hope.
• Encouragement.
• “Celebrating the empty tomb” (identifying with people who, like the apostle Paul, “relied not upon ourselves, but the God who raises the dead”—2 Corinthians 1:8-9).
• “Cropping Christ back into the picture.”
• Compassionately and patiently exploring together how God’s eternal story relates to our earthly story.
• Wisely weaving God’s eternal story into our earthly story.
• Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:17-39; 2 Corinthians 1:8-9.

Reconciling 

• “It’s horrible to sin, but wonderful to be forgiven.”
• “Where sin abounds, grace superabounds.”
• Enlightening (Opening Eyes): Enlightening people to their sin and to God’s grace.
• Exposure: Of heart sin and of Christ’s amazing grace.
• “Dispensers of grace.”
• “Grace is God’s medicine of choice for our sin. Grace is God’s prescription for our disgrace.”
• Ephesians 4:15; Romans 5:20; Hebrews 3:7-19.

Guiding 

• “It’s supernatural to mature.”
• “Fanning into flame the gift of God.”
• Equipping/Empowering.
• Wisdom for daily living and relationships.
• “Changing lives with Christ’s changeless truth.”
• Philippians 3:10; Hebrews 10:19-25; Ephesians 1:15-23; 2 Timothy 1:6-7.

Historical Soul Care: Parakaleo and Noutheteo 

Church historian, J. T. McNeil, in his classic work, A History of the Cure of Souls, explains that from the early church until our day, God’s people focused on parakaletic soul care for suffering and sanctification (sustaining and healing), and on nouthetic spiritual direction for sin and sanctification (reconciling and guiding). This focus follows God’s all-sufficient word which highlights parakaletic care, using forms of the parakaleo word group 143 times. By comparison, the Bible uses the noutheteo word group only 11 times.

Being church-history informed helps us to assess whether our approach to counseling overly emphasizes the nouthetic aspects of spiritual direction to the possible neglect of the parakaletic aspects of soul care. Perhaps a few self-confrontation questions might help us to detect this a-historical de-emphasis on parakaletic soul care.

1. At times do we seem to be a tad uncomfortable with the parakaleo aspects of sustaining and healing in suffering?
2. Do we maintain a mindset that communicates, “You are not theological enough if you focus on parakaletic compassion for the suffering and patiently stay with feelings, rather than quickly moving to truth”?
3. Do we have a tendency to think, “If you empathize with people in their suffering, then you’re not getting to sin soon enough”?
4. Do we imply that parakaletic relational engagement with emotions, suffering, grief, and trauma is somehow less theological than nouthetic directive counseling?
5. Are we hyper-cautious that feelings (including grief) might take us in sinful directions?
6. Do we imply that psalm-like-care and psalm-like lamenting are somehow less theological than confrontation?
7. Do we have a tendency to think, “Commiseration is not counseling. Coming alongside of and journeying with people is good, but it is not counseling. Listening is not counseling. These are all pre-counseling. Biblical counseling is giving counsel. Counseling is talking.”
8. Do we assume that reconciling and guiding nouthetic spiritual direction are more theological than parakaletic sustaining and healing soul care?
9. Do we teach (and practice) that reconciling and guiding are more sanctification-related than are sustaining and healing?

Being church-history informed also helps us to assess whether our approach to reconciling overly emphasizes the confrontation of sin to the possible neglect of the amazing grace of Christ. This can be quite subtle. Perhaps a few self-confrontation questions might help us to detect this a-historical de-emphasis.

1. Are we perhaps more skills in the first half of reconciling and “it’s horrible to sin,” but perhaps less competent and practiced in the second half of reconciling and “it’s wonderful to be forgiven”?
2. Are we perhaps more skilled in the first half of reconciling and “idols of the heart,” but perhaps less competent and practiced in the second half of reconciling and “where sin abounds grace superabounds”?
3. Are we perhaps more skills in the first half of reconciling and “loading the conscience with guilt,” but perhaps less competent and practiced in the second half of reconciling and “lightening the conscience with grace”?
4. Are we perhaps more skills in the first half of reconciling and “exposing sin,” but perhaps less competent and practiced in the second half of reconciling and “exposing Christ’s grace”?
5. Are we perhaps more skills in the first half of reconciling and “confronting sin,” but perhaps less competent and practiced in the second half of reconciling and “dispensing grace”?

The Rest of the Story 

Here’s your invite to return for Part 5. We’ll use real-life counseling vignettes to illustrate how to apply this four-dimensional historical model to our biblical counseling today.