"Redemptive counselling" revisited: a pastoral study

Abstract

This thesis Redemptive counselling revisited: A pastoral study, another perspective on Christian counselling is presented. The central theoretical statement of this study is that a critical revisitation of Gomes’ "Redemptive Counselling" can enrich the existing views of Christian Counselling. Christian counselling has been mainly understood under five rubrics. The study presents for each view a proposed paradigm that underlies and guides the view. This made it possible to describe and discern their main strengths and weaknesses. The study explores the contours of a Redemptive Counselling view (RCv) and its hermeneutical, historical and philosophical underlying frameworks. It was suggested that a Redemptive Counselling view would provide satisfactory answers to the three-identified hiatus other views in Christian counselling did not. Finally, the study proposes some contributions to the Christian counselling field with the purpose of presenting the Redemptive Counselling view as a valid perspective among the already existent options. This study also has the goal to promote this RCv to the English-speaking world, since Redemptive Counselling had been mainly developed in Portuguese. The study was done under Richard Osmer’s (2008) research model, which is structured by four tasks of practical theological interpretation. They are the Descriptive task, the Interpretive task, the Normative and the Strategic (or Pragmatic) tasks. The essential had been on providing more foundational research on pastoral studies.