A Reformed Practical Theology for Spiritual Care in a Spirited World

Abstract

Reformed theology is often considered too dogmatic to be a conversation partner with other disciplines for a viable practical theological method in spiritual care. When imaginatively engaged, however, Reformed theology can partner with psychology to ameliorate spiritual distress even in cross-cultural and interreligious spiritual care while being at once biblical, credal, and contextual even when theology is made to be the primary care giving language. This paper starts with a brief history of the search for method in practical theology as an academic field and offers critiques of some of the methods and suggests an alternate integrative/interdisciplinary approach charted by James E. Loder and Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger but with clear emphasis on the primacy of theology in this partnership as the penultimate approach to spiritual care. The essay finally demonstrates, by way of a case study, how the inherent expansiveness and hospitality of theology in its ‘pentecostalness’ frees all disciplines/languages (in this case, psychology) to full expression in aiding theology in its therapeutic enterprise, especially where belief in otherworldly forces characterises common life.