The Bible, Wisdom and Human Nature

Page 144

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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Articles inside

Critique

52min
pages 144-180

Methods of change

1min
page 131

The Holy Spirit and change

5min
pages 132-134

Wisdom and the Holy Spirit

9min
pages 135-139

Analogy

4min
pages 141-143

Implications for counselling (a closer look

1min
page 140

Abnormality – individual agency and context

6min
pages 119-124

The focus of change

5min
pages 128-130

Assessment and diagnosis

4min
pages 125-127

Abnormality and neuroscience

5min
pages 116-118

Critiquing inwardness – implications for therapy

8min
pages 83-89

Repentance

7min
pages 90-93

Repentance and wisdom

9min
pages 94-98

Baxter, Scougal and motivation

3min
pages 81-82

Repentance and counselling

13min
pages 99-107

Augustine and motivation

7min
pages 77-80

Human motivation – a biblical theology?

5min
pages 74-76

Hughes and social context: psychosocial and social learning theory

12min
pages 67-73

Anthropomorphic metaphors

5min
pages 58-60

Hughes’ and Crabb’s relationality: ‘spiritual area’ of functioning

3min
pages 61-62

Relating theology and psychology

13min
pages 24-31

Image of God

27min
pages 42-57

Wisdom – a broad relationality

1min
page 63

Authority and sufficiency of Scripture

12min
pages 17-23

Sin

18min
pages 32-41

Relationality from the perspective of Genesis

5min
pages 64-66
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