PERSONAL THEORY PAPER OUTLINE
Harold Hanson
PACO 507: Theology and Spirituality in Counseling
Instructor: Dr. Marcus Tanner
Date: December 5, 2021
I. Summary
In the 21 century, human society is revolving through many changes that are influencing
st
human faith and beliefs. The critical situations or conditions in people's life makes them hurt
and scared, but learning how to ease human life is very important. Whenever a Christian
takes a step back, it is the task of the biblical counselors to be ready to step up and strengthen
him or her by following their spiritual foundation. In this course, three books have been
evolved to gather the unique viewpoint on biblical counseling. The first book is “Biblical
Counseling Movement: History and Context," which was developed by David Powlison. In
this book, the author has mentioned about theory and approach of nouthetic counseling by
Jay Adams (Powlison, 2010) Another book is Larry Crabb’s “Effective Biblical Counseling:
A Model for Helping Caring Christians Become Capable Counselors," where the author has
promoted a richer experience of worship and Christian maturity (Crabb, 1977). The last one
is “Hurt People, Hurt People," where author Dr. Sandra D. Wilson has mentioned her own
counseling methodology that may discover healing through having trust and faith in Jesus
Christ (Wilson, 2001)
a. Primary Goal
As per Powlison, Nouthetic counseling is the key element for Christian counselors, which gives
focus on the bible as the primary statute for the development of faith (Powlison, 2010) Further,
Wilson has also specified its primary goal is to find a place of balance between theology and
spirituality within the personality development and counselor function (Wilson, 2001). Larry
Crabb’s goal is to promote both spiritual maturity and psychological maturity. On the whole,
