Abstract
To whatever school of psychology we lay claim, it makes modest sense as pastors engaging in counseling as an act of faithfulness to the God who created the creature with the capacity to change, that we remain first and foremost the theologians we are called to be. We may lament that legions of priests and priestesses from the pantheon of classical and popular psychology have bowed the knee to an unknown God as though there were no God, and turned Psyche herself into a fragmented oracle. This reflects the pride of human achievement and the limitation of human learning. Nonetheless, it is this believer's persuasion that from cradle to grave, at the crossroads of suffering and thresholds of pain, at the heights of development and depths of regression, the beginning of wisdom is the confession of faith in the living God. Any thoroughgoing psychological theory of natural change encompasses more than psychology. Nature, including human nature, is never bereft of the forming and transforming presence of the Holy.
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Davidson, C.N. A Theory of Natural Change Revisited: Theology, Psychology, and Pastoral Counseling. Pastoral Psychology 47, 425–437 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021311714863
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021311714863