This book would be a useful text for a course in pastoral care at a mainline Protestant seminary. It's written by a mainline pastor/scholar, and its descriptions resonated with my experience of studying pastoral care in such a setting: "The modern pastoral care movement within the North American Protestant theological academy by and large revolves around psychological categories regarding human experience and symbolic interpretations about God . . . [It is] concerned largely with questions of meaning rather than truth, acceptable functioning rather than discipleship, and a concern for self-actualization and self-realization rather than salvation" (3). In response to this, Purves calls for a return to "theological realism" and to renewed study of classical texts, not assuming that their approaches can be uncritically adopted, but that they might prompt students to ask different questions.

His presentation of Nazianzen and Chrysostom didn't give me a lot of new insights for my research, but it is thorough and places them in their respective contexts. He also introduces Gregory the Great, then jumps to a little-known work of Martin Bucer's and finally Richard Baxter. ( )