Nouthetic counseling

Nouthetic counseling (Greek: noutheteo, to admonish) is a form of Evangelical Protestant pastoral counseling based solely upon the Bible and focused on Christ. It repudiates mainstream psychology and psychiatry as humanistic, fundamentally opposed to Christianity, and radically secular. Its viewpoint was originally articulated by Jay E. Adams, in Competent to Counsel (1970) and further books, and has led to the formation of a number of organizations and seminary courses promoting it. The viewpoint is opposed to those seeking to synthesize Christianity with secular psychological thought, but has failed to win them over to a purely Biblical approach. Since 1993, the movement has renamed itself Biblical counseling to emphasize its central emphasis on the Bible. The Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology and Counseling states that "The aim of Nouthetic Counseling is to effect change in the counselee by encouraging greater conformity to the principles of Scripture."

Nouthetic counseling has been criticized as narrowly conceived, with a confrontational focus upon sin and behavior, which fails to deal adequately with emotion, grief, and suffering, and which lacks understanding of complex human motivations.

Clinton and Ohlschlager describe what they call the historic debate between nouthetic counselors and integrationists. Nouthetic counselors, they say, argue that truth can only be known as revealed in the Scriptures. According to an article published by the Spring Christian Counseling Center, secular counseling and psychology are primarily pseudosciences which only can be into "true" sciences within the framework of faith-based Christian dialog. Integrationists argue that God reveals his truth universally. This includes general revelation, or what they define as truth known by scientific investigation, as well as truth known by special revelation in Christ. Clinton and Ohlschlager express their belief that "shrill criticism and rancorous debate" are ill-suited to the mission of uplifting Christ as the model for counseling.

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