¿Quién es la persona que aconsejamos?
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Dialogue II, titled "Who is the person we counsel?", examines the anthropological foundations that undergird the practice of biblical counseling. The document begins with a central question: how do we accompany a person without reducing them to either their sin or their suffering? To address this, it explores a theological anthropology that recognizes the human being simultaneously as the image of God, a fallen creature, and a person redeemed in Christ. The text examines how impoverished anthropologies—rationalist, biologistic, social, or pragmatic—distort the understanding of the person and, consequently, impoverish our capacity to accompany them through their crises. In contrast to these reductions, biblical anthropology upholds the irreducible dignity of every person, regardless of their moral, social, or clinical condition. The Dialogue also addresses the four-dimensional framework of human suffering (biological, psychological, social, and spiritual) and warns against the temptation to spiritualize physical or emotional pain without validating its reality. It examines the ontological vulnerability of the human being, constituted in and for relationship, and how the sin of others can deform not only one's behavior, but the very capacity to know, love, and perceive the truth. Finally, the document confronts the counselor with the uncomfortable question of whom it is more difficult to treat as the image of God: the one who sins or the one who suffers, revealing how human affections and loyalties can distort moral discernment.
Author: Leal Ramirez, Sergio
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204698673