Darkness Receding: Biblical Hermeneutics, Depression, and Pastoral Care

How can the Bible inform the pastoral care of people with mental health challenges? This book suggests that many if not most readers of Scripture a adopt a "foundationalist" hermeneutic, which runs the risk of reducing Scripture to a book of instructions and pastoral care to a matter of dispensing advice. For people suffering from mental health challenges in general and depression in particular, however, this approach can be counterproductive, adding to spiritual and mental distress rather than helping to alleviate it. Here, Marion Carson offers an alternative way of reading Scripture for pastoral care that draws on the work of biblical studies as well as pastoral theology. Focusing on Rom 5:1-5, in which suffering and hope are explicitly linked, she argues that a hermeneutic based on character ethics can help Christian communities of faithful, hopeful, and loving people to develop sensitive and nuanced approaches to pastoral care and so to be "agents of hope" to those who are feeling hopeless because of severe depression.