Classic Pastoral Care provides a topical arrangement of passages from classic Christian writings offering guidance on all major topics of pastoral theology. The four-volume set features writings from more than two hundred notable Christian authors--from Abelard and Ambrose to Isaac Watts and Zwingli--arranged in thirty topical sections.

Volume three, Pastoral Counsel, deals directly with the nature of the counseling relationship, the metaphors of soul care (from medicine, guidance, and education), the elements of a therapeutic relationship, the timing of good counsel, pastoral discernment, language and silence in counsel, truth-telling and deception, admonition and discipline, care of the conscience, anticipations of modern psychotherapy by classical writers, and dynamics of the self-alienating will.