John H. Chapman

Developments in Biblical Counseling

Are you looking for a brief introduction to what the biblical counseling movement is and how it has changed over the years? In Developments in Biblical Counseling, J. Cameron Fraser turns a journalistic eye to this question and presents a concise assessment. Introducing us to the formative work of Jay Adams, Fraser outlines several themes of biblical counseling that became foundational for the movement as a whole and observes how the movement received criticisms from outside and made necessary developments from within.

He points out that some of these developments have an affinity with Puritan approaches to counseling that Adams rejects but may point in a more consistently biblical direction.

Table of Contents: 
1. Some Foundational Views of Nouthetic Counseling
2. Some Criticisms of Nouthetic Counseling
3. Some Developments in Biblical Counseling
4. Biblical and Puritan Counseling

Notes from the Blogger:

Fraser does a good job of providing a brief history and understanding of where the Biblical Counseling Movement has been and Jay Adams who essentially began the movement decades ago. He provides a concise way to understand the beginning stages of the movement through what he would call the second generation of biblical counselors. This book is a much smaller version of the information found in The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context written by David Powlison.

Where I found this book to fall short was in the area of current and coming developments. When seeing the title, the expectation was that the author would explain the current and future context of the movement; however, the reality is that it fell short of that expectation. If you are hoping to understand where biblical counseling began and moved to in the earlier 2000’s, this book would be a great read.