"On January 30 Jay Adams will celebrate his 90th birthday! While Jay no longer receives email, we have established a special email address for his friends to communicate with him on this special occasion." - INS
Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
The greatest advantage of the Nouthetic approach is that it truly attempts to exalt the sufficiency of Scripture. Further, it rejects mainstream, integrated, and Christian psychology. However, there are some significant disadvantages: Nouthetic is imbalanced, in that all counseling is considered to be admonishment; it is very behavioristic and sin focused; it abandons the discipline of psychology altogether; it is rooted in the B+t of contemporary Reformed or Covenant theology. Each of these concerns is significant enough to warrant discussion here.
In a Venn diagram illustrating this assertion, the two circles would be completely overlapping (Diagram A.), but this doesn’t square with the Biblical data. There are eleven NT instances of νουθετέω/νουθεσία. Five are descriptive.106 Six of these instances are prescriptive,107 and in several of these νουθετέω/νουθεσία is considered with other verbs, so there is no exegetical warrant for asserting that all counseling is simply nouthetic.
Paul encourages transformative learning in several contexts in 1 Thessalonians. In 2:11-12 he describes “exhorting (parakalountes), encouraging (paramuthoumenoi), and imploring (marturomenoi)” believers to walk appropriately. These three are modes of communication for facilitating transformation through mental processes that effect the spirit, engage the will, and are manifested in conduct—the believer’s walk. In 5:14-15 Paul exhorts (parakaloumen)80 believers to engage with one another in several particular ways: admonish (noutheteite) the unruly, encourage (paramutheisthe) the fainthearted, help (antechesthe) the weak, be patient (makrothumeite) with all, see (orate) that no one repays evil for evil, and pursue (diokete) good for one another and for all.
Presented August 1, 2018 to the Bible Faculty Summit, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina.
Paul affirmed to Timothy the authority, capacity, and sufficiency of the Scriptures for the adequacy of the believer.1 In similar fashion Jesus applied the sufficiency of Scripture in responding to His testing by Satan. Yet in close proximity to both instances we observe the employment of extra-Biblical resources in complementing the situation. In Paul’s case, even as he exhorts Timothy to faithfulness in the word, he acknowledges value in Timothy’s attentiveness to not only what Paul taught and wrote, but to his experiences as well.2 In Jesus’ case, He acknowledges there is a place for bread, though it ought not be viewed as the sole source of life.3 Likewise, after His testing He was the beneficiary of angelic ministry.4
"A proposed law in California could outlaw helping people with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender-identity confusion. If passed, the bill, introduced last month by Assemblyman Evan Low, would be the most expansive ban on therapy related to sexual orientation and gender in the country." BPNews
"yesterday I posted the case conceptualization of Tim Allchin, a biblical counselor in Chicago who runs a ACBC approved training site. In today’s post, I provide a case conceptualization from A.J. McConnell, a Christian psychologist" Patheos
