My Extensive History with Nouthetic Biblical Counseling
I was weaned on Jay Adams’s nouthetic counseling. Christ saved me in 1974 at Grace Baptist Church in Gary, Indiana. My Sr. Pastor was Bill Goode, who was the first Executive Director of NANC (National Association of Nouthetic Counselors). Pastor Goode took several of us through some of the very first training in nouthetic counseling. My Youth Pastor was Ron Allchin—NANC/ACBC Fellow, long-time NANC/ACBC BOD Member, and NANC/ACBC Treasurer. For my senior year in high school, I transferred from a public school to Calumet Baptist High School—where our psychology course consisted of reading Jay Adams.
Like I said:
I was weaned on Jay Adams’s nouthetic counseling.
My History with Church History: My Historical Treasure Hunt
After earning my BA in Pastoral Ministry and Bible at Baptist Bible College in 1981, I “matriculated” to Grace Theological Seminary. There, I earned my Th.M. in Theology and Biblical Counseling.
While at Grace, “counseling wars” erupted. That’s right, the current counseling wars between NNC (Neo-Nouthetic Counselors) and CIBC (Clinically-Informed Biblical Counselors) are not nearly the first such battles. Matters became so intense at Grace Theological Seminary that eventually both Dr. Larry Crabb and Dr. John Whitcomb were fired. Even before that, a “mutiny” erupted in the student body with many students refusing to take any course taught by Crabb. Instead, they drove ninety minutes to Lafayette, Indiana to be trained by Pastor Bill Goode, who had by then moved from Grace Baptist Church to Faith Baptist Church.
During this upheaval, I kept saying to myself,
“Surely the church has always been about the business of helping hurting and hardened people!”
I also kept thinking,
“What did the church do before the 1970s when Crabb and Adams came upon the scene?”
So, I embarked on a forty-five-year treasure hunt. I began devouring every book I could find on the history of Christian pastoral care. (For a few of these, see: 18 Resources on the History of Pastoral Care, Soul Care, and Biblical Counseling.) I studied everything I could on both the theology and methodology of soul care. Over the past twenty years, I’ve written three books on the history of pastoral care.
Historical “Retrieval”: Two Types
Though I did not know it a the time, I was doing what now is call “historical retrieval.” Typically, that phrased is used primarily for retrieving what the church has taught about theological topics—historical theological retrieval. I was doing that, but even more.
I was also doing historical pastoral care methodological retrieval. I was retrieving what the church practice in caring for hurting people, along with retrieving what the church taught theologically/doctrinally about people.
My research was doing both of these:
- Historical Theological Retrieval: The History of Theological Anthropology
- Historical Methodological Retrieval: The History of Christian Pastoral Care
In doing one, I was always also doing the other.
You can’t study the history of pastoral care without also learning the history of how pastoral care givers viewed people, problems, and solutions—a Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation theological anthropology.
You can’t study the history of pastoral care without also learning what historical pastoral care givers believed about the Bible and extra-biblical resources—a bibliology (theological study of the Bible) of epistemology, special revelation, general revelation, the sufficiency of Scripture, and common grace.
This historical retrieval treasure hunt became so important to me, that I did my Th.M. thesis on a historical, lexical, exegetical retrieval of theological anthropology”
Hebrew Anthropological Terms as a Foundation for a Biblical Counseling Model of Man
This historical retrieval treasure hunt became so important to me, that I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on Martin Luther’s theology and methodology of pastoral care:
Spiritual Care in Historical Perspective: Martin Luther as a Case Study in Christian Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding
This also became one of my books:
Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life
My first two books, and two subsequent books, collated this historical retrieval—this “treasure hunt.”
- Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction along with Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives. These books focused on a comprehensive biblical-historical systematic theology and their application to the ministry of biblical counseling—historical theological retrieval applied to historical pastoral care.
- Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction along with Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ. These books focused on a comprehensive biblical-historical practical theology of biblical counseling based upon historical theological anthropology—historical pastoral care retrieval founded on historical theological retrieval.
Moving from the Past to the Present
My reflections on this have been prompted by my friend, and fellow biblical counselor, Joe Hussung. Joe posted a fascinating X (Twitter) tweet thread about historical theological retrieval and current debates in the modern biblical counseling world. You can read Joe’s wise insights here.
I don’t want to put words into Joe’s mouth, so please read his tweet. Here’s what I “got out of” Joe’s tweet—my thoughts, not his words.
Some of the current debates in our biblical counseling world exist because some biblical counselors primarily retrieve and rely upon Jay Adams’s theology and methodology of nouthetic counseling, while other biblical counselors are increasingly retrieving and relying upon the broader, older Christian history of theological anthropology and methodological pastoral care.
That’s a mouthful. Let’s try to simplify, definitely in my words, not in Joe Hussung’s words:
One group primarily retrieves the fifty-year-young modern nouthetic approach.
Others retrieve the two-thousand-year-old ancient church history approach.
Obviously, that’s my perspective. Others will disagree. It does make a lot of sense to me. It does explain a lot to me.
If someone maintains deeply held convictions that the modern nouthetic counseling movement has substantially “gotten it right” about biblical counseling, then any significant departure from that is psycho-heresy, or, nouthetic-heresy.
If the modern nouthetic counseling movement is substantially correct biblically in theology and methodology, then any significant departure is neo-integrationist.
If the modern nouthetic counseling movement is substantially correct biblically in theology and methodology, then, to use the recent words of some neo-nouthetic advocates, any significant departure is like “watching a train about to wreck” or “is not well researched and lacking in knowledge of both integration and biblical counseling,” and demonstrates a “lack of scholarship.”
On the other hand, if we believe that theological and methodological retrieval for biblical counseling should go back more than just fifty years ago, then we might have some other responses, such as:
Departures from the fifty-year-young, modern nouthetic model could be viewed as iron sharpening and as a catalyst for further biblical, theological, and historical studies—especially when those departures are based upon a retrieval of historic Christian theological anthropology and pastoral care methodology.
Some Examples from My Theological/Methodological Retrieval
I could share numerous examples. I’ll keep them to two.
- Example #1: Parakaletic and Nouthetic Care
For almost half-a-century, I’ve studied the Bible and church history regarding pastoral care. I’ve come to believe that parakaleo provides a comprehensive approach to pastoral care. I’ve also come to believe that noutheteo provides a less comprehensive approach. You can read all about it in just about any of my books, including,
Parakaleo and Noutheteo: Understanding and Applying Two Richly Practical Biblical Counseling Words
In the late 1990s and the early 2000s, as I presented this approach of parakaletic soul care for suffering to biblical counseling audiences, some balked at it as new, novel, and not nouthetic enough. Interestingly, two decades later, few balk at this now…
- Example #2: Soul Physicians of Embodied-Souls
For almost half-a-century, I’ve studied the Bible and church history on theological anthropology—how God designed us, how sin impacts us, and how salvation renews us. Increasingly, my studies have examined the biblical-historical truth that we are embodied-souls, and that God calls biblical counselors to be soul physicians of embodied-souls.
Some neo-nouthetic advocates balk at this—regardless of how many biblical passages I exegete, how many theological concepts I develop, or how many theologians and pastors I quote from church history. They are welcome to examine my exegesis. However, what typically happens is a generic dismissal—because I am not saying what they think Jay Adams said. I say it that way, because I have also robustly documented that Jay Adams believed we must be soul physicians of embodied-souls. This is one reason I have recently taken to using the term, “neo-nouthetic advocates,” because I don’t believe some current counselors who call themselves “classic” biblical counselors, are classic at all. They are more narrow than Adams.
I suspect that over the next decade few nouthetic counselors will balk at the theological anthropological truth that we are soul physicians of embodied-souls and that physiological interventions are a legitimate aspect of comprehensive pastoral care, as Adams and most Christians believed and practiced throughout church history. See, Physiological Interventions and Relief-Oriented Care for the Embodied-Soul in Biblical Counseling.
The Point
Here’s my summary:
The measure of the orthodoxy of a counseling approach is not whether it aligns with a fifty-year-young modern movement.
Theological retrieval and pastoral care retrieval can provide the iron sharpening historical catalyst for each of us to humbly reexamine to what extent our current approach to biblical counseling is truly biblical.
