DEVELOPMENTS IN BIBLICAL COUNSELING
By J Cameron Fraser
Reformation Heritage Books. 124 pages.
£6.99
ISBN 978 1 601 783 851
As you will gather from the spelling of the title, this book hails from the USA. So really it is a brief history of the developments of what the Americans call ‘biblical counseling.’
The reader might wonder what relevance this subject has to us in the UK – but as we all know, what’s ‘over there’ soon comes ‘over here’ and we are at the beginnings of another attempt to grow a biblical counselling movement in the UK. The author has studied the subject, attempted ambitious doctoral research which he abandoned, but then wrote some research papers. In the book he is honest about his own pastoral attempts to follow the ‘nouthetic’ line and his branching out to investigate other approaches.
Big names
The author mentions the ‘big’ names in the biblical counselling movement – Adams, Crabb and Powlinson, for example, but is honest in saying that he is not an expert in counselling theory and practice. And so the book is more of a descriptive overview of the current American scene, with an excellent bibliography. I found the reflections on the Puritans of greatest interest.
I don’t think this book is for the general reader but anyone studying this subject would find it a good overview and hopefully will then move on to Eric Johnson’s more weighty tome Foundations for Soul Care (IVP Academic).
