Jones, The Counsel of Heaven on Earth

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Ian F. Jones, The Counsel of Heaven on Earth: Foundations for Biblical Christian Counseling. B and H Academic, 2006.

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Referenced in: Pastoral Counseling

LifeandLeadership.com Summary

Most texts in Christian counseling are built on biblical principles, but ministers who are skilled in exegesis and theology are often disappointed to find what is often shallow, “proof-texty” appropriations of scripture in many counseling manuals. Also there is the issue of many self-claimed biblical practitioners who reject counseling theories without integrating valuable features. Ian Jones provides a great service by offering a well-crafted and integrative theology of Christian counseling from an evangelical perspective.

He begins by revealing how our creation in God’s image gives us a desire for relationships that is distorted by our sin, which leads us into varying and confusing disorientations from God’s original intent. This is followed by a discussion of lostness as the human location. From there, he proposes an understanding of Christian counseling as a special kind of communication designed to help persons recover what has been lost. He reflects upon the Greatest Commandments as the fundamental text for the practice of counseling, and the implications this has for structured and unstructured helping relationships. He also presents Jesus as the chief counselor of heaven on earth, and how Christ’s presence is mediated in us by the power of the indwelling Spirit. A significant section discusses the role of the Holy Spirit and spiritual disciplines in counseling.

Throughout, he shows how theology reveals significant shortcomings of both secular counseling theories and narrow biblical approaches. He also shows how to integrate the best of both with integrity. This is a good text for theologically trained ministers who want to help others but feel a strange disconnection with the commonly suggested pathways for caregiving that are uninformed by the Christian story. It assembles good theology, uses it to disassemble (critique) secular theory, and then reassembles a new whole that is more properly integrative.

From the Publisher

The Counsel of Heaven on Earth provides a helpful introductory look at the principles of biblical Christian counseling based on models found in the books of Genesis and Isaiah. It also includes extensive survey research plus insight from personal counseling experiences that author Ian F. Jones encountered at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, where a gunman killed seven people and wounded many others in September 1999.

Broadening his audience, Jones also addresses the debate between biblical/nouthetic counselors and Christian/integrationist counselors, inviting all professionals to consider his fresh biblical Christian counseling approach.

About the Author

Ian F. Jones, Ph.D., was born in Sydney, Australia. With degrees in sociology, Christian ethics, psychology and counseling, and religion, he now chairs the Department of Psychology and Counseling at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.


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