The Bible, Wisdom and Human Nature
require relational sensitivity, including a general attitude of acceptance and warmth towards the client. Aron Beck, founder of Cognitive Therapy, gives weight to the necessity of clients being able to ‘be themselves’ without fear of rejection or judgment from the therapist. According to Beck, this state of affairs is fostered by therapist empathy and concern for the client. Beck argues for the development of cognitive techniques that are founded upon a good therapeutic relationship, constituted by characteristics which parallel Rogers’ ‘core conditions’. Beck states:
The general characteristics of the therapist which facilitate the application of cognitive therapy (as well as other kinds of psychotherapies) include warmth, accurate empathy and genuineness.203 These conditions are regarded as necessary but not sufficient for an optimum therapeutic outcome. i. Necessity for helpers (in order to be effective), to have personal qualities of self-awareness, genuineness and a positive regard towards those they are trying to help.204
Critique World-views will not only impact therapeutic aims and methods, but also anthropological assumptions. Therefore, in all of these areas, alongside wisdom’s anthropocentric focus, room must also be given to the Bible’s ‘Yahwistic/Christocentric’ backdrop which sets the broader interpretive context. Thus, it should not be surprising that a fully integrated Christian psychotherapy should include elements which distinguish it from many popular modern approaches that assume atheism. Dueck sums up the ‘critique’s’ position as a polemic to modern culture (in this context secular therapies): ‘Christianity is seen as a way of life entirely separate from the host culture.’205 It is in this interpretive space that Adams’ work makes most sense, although he appears to see little or no room for ‘analogy’, hence his critique of Hughes’ 144
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