Dale Johnson: I’m thrilled this week to have with me Marshall Adkins. He serves as Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri and He’s ACBC certified. He’s married to Rachael, and they have three children.
Marshall, always, brother, good to have you with me in studio recording today.
Marhshall Adkins: Thanks for having me on.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, I’m looking forward to this. You’re not many days away from defending your dissertation on Cornelius Van Til and his influence on Adams. We’ll talk about that much later.
But today, what I want to talk about is the influence of Van Til on David Powlison. And certainly in your research, you’ve come across some of that influence. And again, we’ll talk more about Adams later.
Today, I want us to focus on Dr. David Powlison, who was very influential, certainly, in the biblical counseling movement. And most people may never have heard of Van Til, although we know Jay Adams and his role.
We know David Powlison, certainly, and his role in the movement. And we’re so grateful for them. Van Til was a really important influence on both of those gentlemen. And so, what I want you to do is just introduce us to Van Til, and we’ll get to the concept of presuppositional approach. But introduce us to Van Til.
And for those who are listening and may have never heard of Cornelius Van Til, or maybe they’ve heard of him, but they don’t know much about him, introduce us to Cornelius Van Til.
Marshall Adkins: Yeah, that’s great. And maybe one introductory comment. One of the things that you often emphasize in our PhD seminars for your Midwestern, is it’s important to understand ideas within their context. And so when we’re thinking about a presuppositional approach and the influence of Van Til on Powlison, I do think it’s helpful to just go back and understand, okay, who were these guys?
What were these key figures? What were the issues of the day? So when you get to key figures, key ideas, key issues, those issues really help us understand the ideas better. So getting to:, who was Van Til?
Van Til was born in the Netherlands. He immigrated to the US when he was 10 years old in the early part of the 20th century. He went to Calvin College and Calvin Seminary and ended up going to Princeton University, Princeton Seminary—well-educated, well-trained in theology, philosophy, and was invited to teach there at Princeton Seminary.
But those were in the days when Princeton—it was going liberal. And so J. Gresham Machen had the idea to start Westminster Theological Seminary in the Philadelphia area. So, he invited and recruited Van Til to come teach systematic theology and apologetics there at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. In 1929, Westminster starts, and with the founding of Westminster Seminary—Van Til joined as a part of the founding faculty.
So, he taught at Westminster from 1929 to 1972. So in short, he had this really long, rich, robust career teaching at Westminster and became a very influential Calvinistic theologian and philosopher, and he’s best known for his development of an approach to apologetics that is known as the presuppositional approach to apologetics. So, in a nutshell, that’s Van Til.
Dale Johnson: So, I want to unpack that a little bit. You talk about a presuppositional approach to apologetics. We talk about a presuppositional approach to counseling. It’s important to distinguish those a little bit.
We’re certainly gaining influence from Van Til in how we think about this presuppositional context. So, talk a little bit about Van Til in his presuppositional approach to apologetics, because again, he was a theologian, philosopher, and that’s really his wheelhouse. So, unpack that just slightly.
Marshall Adkins: So much can be said here. Basically, the idea is that the encounter with the believer and the unbeliever can’t be one just of rational argument or putting out pieces of evidence. In other words, you have to approach it at the level of presupposition, and the idea there is that every person—they have these core presuppositions with which they make sense of the world.
So an understanding of reality, an understanding of knowledge, of authority, of the meaning of life. And what Van Til sought to do is show the unbeliever the internal inconsistencies and internal bankruptcy of their system of thought, so that he could present to them the Christian faith as the only way to actually make sense of the world, and to present Christ as the Savior of the world.
He understood that the problem of unbelief is not intellectual. The problem of unbelief is spiritual, and until the spirit regenerates the heart, the unbeliever will continue to suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
While they have true, non-saving knowledge of God, so general revelation is a robust understanding of general revelation, the unbeliever will suppress that truth in unrighteousness. So, he sought to show how their systems are bankrupt and how Christianity is the only way to actually make sense of the world.
Dale Johnson: All right. So, if we understand Van Til, one of the key distinctions, or maybe I would say ways that he talks about the disparity between believer and unbeliever is he describes it, every person from a Christian distinction is either in Christ or in Adam.
Describe how Van Til would lay out, because I think this foundationally is very important when we get to Poulsen or Dr. Adams, how he would lay out this distinction as to what human beings can observe, whether they’re in Christ or in Adam.
It’s a great question.
Marshall Adkins: There are two principles that are helpful to mention here. There’s the principle of no autonomy and the principle of no neutrality. By the principle of no autonomy, it’s the idea that every person is a creature of the living God. There is no independence from the Creator.
So, we’re getting here to the Creator-creature distinction, that every person is made by God in His image and that people are what God says they are. And there’s no autonomy from God. So, God is self-contained. God is independent. People are dependent and they’re dependent in every way upon the Lord. And so, there’s no autonomy.
And then there’s also no neutrality. And this gets to the fact that not only are our men and women created by the one true triune God, they also live in relationship to Him. Every person lives in relationship to God. They either live in right relationship to God through Jesus Christ, or they are still hostile toward God. And this gets us to Romans 5, the distinction, I think you mentioned just a moment ago, the distinction of being in Adam or in Christ.
So every person is born in Adam, dead in their trespasses and sins, and the only remedy is through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so having been united to Christ by faith, then you have, in other words, two types of people in the world. We live in the same world, but there are two types of people in this world, those who are in Adam and those who are in Christ. Now your question, I think you’re driving at—there are epistemological implications. Now what does that mean?
It means that whether you are in Adam or whether you are in Christ, that covenantal status, that spiritual reality, that reality has far reaching implications for your outlook and for the way you view the world.
Dale Johnson: Now what that doesn’t mean is it doesn’t mean that unbelievers are without rationality. It doesn’t mean that unbelievers are without intellectual ability. It doesn’t mean that unbelievers can’t think. They’re still made in the image of God. They can think.
The question when you talk about epistemology is, how do they know what they know? One of the primary ways that we think about the effects of sin, certainly in bodily decay that we’re all going to die, but also in our ability to process information, we call that the noetic effects of sin, that the effects of sin upon the mind.
There’s a way in which Van Til, I think, helped us to distinguish that. This is where we’ll start to hear the language of Adams and the language of Powlison and really start to flesh out because they’re following this pattern of Van Til.
Kind of flesh out that idea to where we’re describing that cognition certainly is still possible because men are made in the image of God, even when they are in Adam, but there’s a distortion about how they observe or perceive or interpret that information.
Marshall Adkins: Yeah, that’s helpful. What you’re identifying there is that rationality is a part of what it means to be human. When the fall occurred, we didn’t become less than human. We became fallen men and women.
Sin affects every part of our being. There’s no aspect of man that is untouched by the stain of sin. That includes our rationality. While we have rationality as image bearers, we use our minds in ways that express our rebellion against God. This gets to the idea of no neutrality.
There are no religiously neutral people. Every single person uses their mind either in an obedient way or in a way that expresses rebellion. Our spiritual status has far-reaching-implications to how you use your mind. So, regeneration, when we receive a new heart, a new disposition of heart, as the Holy Spirit brings new birth, that then enables us to think God’s thoughts after Him.
Dale Johnson: I think that’s critical, what you just described, because there’s nothing that an unbeliever does that’s non-spiritual. In fact, Jesus goes on to describe that an unbeliever and the things that he does, they’re actually heaping up condemnation to themselves. The way it’s said in the prophet Isaiah is, even when an unbeliever does those things which are counted, which may be seen as good or understood as good from some earthly perspective, they’re filthy rags.
So, we’re talking about spiritual adventures. It’s another thing the biblical counseling movement talks about, is the heart is always active, and it’s moving in that direction. As we hear that language, that gets us really to the biblical counseling world.
The questions about what can an unbeliever contribute in terms of extra biblical information, this is sort of where the rubber meets the road in all of this. So, I want you to talk a little bit about the connection from Van Til to Powlison, and help to bridge some of that gap, so that we can see from a theologian, philosopher, and how he thought about apologetics, how does this influence somebody like David Powlison, who’s had so much impact on me, you, lots of people who are listening, and so on.
Marshall Adkins: Yeah, and this is where I do want to be a bit historical, and even biographical. So, remember, Van Til concluded his teaching career officially in 1972. Now, he continued to teach. He was Professor Emeritus, and he continued to teach through, I believe, the end of the 70s. But let’s just zoom out and make some connections here.
Recall that Jay Adams came in the 1960s, and he was pastoring nearby, and he began to teach classes at Westminster Seminary. Taught a number of courses there, and eventually came on as one of the faculty members at Westminster Seminary. And the 1960s, that was the decade that the nouthetic biblical approach to counseling was being developed by Jay Adams. It was a recovery movement, he saw these issues, he was seeking to address them.
And here’s what Adams said, Adams proposed that his work, related to the development of biblical counseling—he argued that, “Van Til was the impetus of that work.” Those are his words, that Van Til was the impetus of his work. And then he also, in another place, suggested that biblical counseling rests on a Van Tillian foundation.
So Adams, in the 1960s, he’s there, part of the faculty of Westminster Seminary, working alongside Van Til, who now is toward the end of his career, well-established and he’s developing the nouthetic biblical approach to counseling at Westminster Seminary
Of course, 1970, Competent to Counsel was published. Well, where’s David Powlison? Well, Powlison had gone to Harvard, called Harvard College at the time. He graduated from Harvard in 1971, he was an unbeliever at that time.
Powlison wasn’t converted until 1975. So, God saves David Powlison in 1975, and then within about a year, he enrolls at Westminster Seminary to do a seminary education. So here we have David Powlison, freshly converted, now going to Westminster Seminary
He did a seminary education in the late 70s, graduated from Westminster in 1980. He started working both at CCEF and then teaching practical theology at Westminster.
And he came at this period of time when—think about it—Van Til was at the end of his career. So, presuppositional apologetics, Van Til’s system of thought, it was pervasive in the curriculum at Westminster. Although Van Til had retired in 1972, he was still able to take classes with Van Til.
So, he sat in the classroom with Van Til. And even though Adams had actually left Westminster in Philadelphia in 1976, I believe, due to health reasons, Adams, he was still returning to teach classes. So, Powlison is a unique figure because he was sitting in the classroom in the 1970s, late 1970s, with both Van Til and Adams.
Now Adams understood Van Til to be the impetus and his work to be foundational to biblical counseling. But what about Powlison? What would Powlison say to that? Well, let’s fast forward actually to 2011. So at the Gospel Coalition in 2011, there’s a podcast that’s being produced.
In this podcast, a question is presented to David Powlison. The question is essentially to ask him to relate biblical counseling to presuppositional apologetics. In other words, what is the relationship between Van Tillian apologetics and biblical counseling? And Powlison’s response to that, I think it’s very important the way he responds to it. The first thing Powlison says is that biblical counseling is built on the Bible and Orthodox theology.
That’s crucial. The first thing he said is that biblical counseling is biblical. That’s our firm foundation, the foundation of Scripture. Biblical counseling is not built upon a theologian. It’s not built upon a philosopher. Biblical counseling is established firmly on the Bible.
And Powlison identified that clearly. And then based on the firm foundation of Scripture, Powlison went on to say that, “biblical counseling, from a deep structure standpoint, is Van Tillian”—utterly, those are his words. From a deep structure, it’s Van Tillian utterly.
And then he goes on to say that biblical counseling has Van Tillian genetics. Now these are massive claims, both by Adams and then by Powlison, that biblical counseling, its impetus is Van Tillian. It’s on a Van Tillian foundation. From a deep structure standpoint, it’s utterly Van Tillian. It has Van Tillian genetics. So I think it’s helpful for us as biblical counselors to understand the contemporary biblical counseling movement.
We have to understand what does this actually mean? Now I think I can say, I think I definitely want to say, if you don’t know who Van Til is and you know your Bible and you know how to practically help people with word-based ministry and the power of the Spirit, you’re fine.
But if you want to understand the contemporary biblical counseling movement and you want to understand these ideas within their context, I think you have to understand what does it actually mean to say that biblical counseling has Van Tillian genetics or that it’s from a deep structure standpoint, utterly Van Tillian?
And so what I aim to do, even recently in a breakout session at the ACBC annual conference, is that’s the question I’m seeking to answer. Now I’m not exhaustive, there’s so much that could be said here, but I try to at least point in the direction of, here are some ways to answer that question. What does it mean that biblical counseling has Van Tillian genetics?
Dale Johnson: That’s important because Dr. Powlison and Dr. Adams are at least recognizing in their minds the influence of Van Tillian thought on how they think about the practice of counseling from a biblical perspective. So it’s interesting, agree or disagree—but we have to wrestle with that on some level.
Now as we think a little bit more specific and we think about Dr. Powlison and so grateful for his life and the ways the Lord used him and his articulation of certain things, which I think were just unbelievably helpful. I want you to talk about some of the ways that Van Til influenced the biblical counseling movement specifically through the works of David Powlison.
Marshall Adkins: So, Powlison taught a course at Westminster. I think he taught the course for more than two decades. The title of the course was Theology and Secular Psychology. And in the podcast interview that I referenced earlier, it’s interesting because Powlison describes that course as it is essentially Van Tillian apologetics brought down to the street level. And he goes on to talk about how he sought to understand and engage secular thought forms the way Van Til did.
And so first of all, we could say that course was a shining example of how he took Van Tillian apologetics and used it to critique the modern psychologies. But there are so many ways that we could identify the influence or express the influence of Van Til and David Powlison.
I listed seven of these at the breakout session at the most recent annual conference. And some of those ideas we’ve already touched on even in this conversation. Let me emphasize two if that’s okay.
The first one is that Van Til taught Powlison to approach counseling with radical God-centeredness in a radically God-centered way. And even in like the early 1980s, there was an article titled, “Which presuppositions,” I think in 84’, where Powlison talks about the God referent. He describes this idea, which I know that phrase is a little odd at first, but what he means by that is that every thought, every action, every word, all of the details of counseling have to do with God. And so there was a radical God-centeredness.
And even the idea of this phrase that Powlison had, “that human beings have a worship core.” There was a radical God-centeredness and Godwardness that Powlison learned from Van Til. And that shows up all throughout biblical counseling. And the idea of no brute counseling facts, Van Til liked to use this phrase, “no brute facts.”
What does that mean? It means that every fact is defined by and interpreted by God. It is what God says it is. And so when we come to the counseling moment, we know that it has everything to do with God, this person living before God, and God is in the details. His providence and every aspect of the counseling relationship has to be interpreted through the lens of what God says it is.
And so there’s a radical God-centeredness and there are practical applications of this. So we’re not just talking about abstract ideas here. There are some today that would be okay with so-called honoring the religious values of the counselee, allegedly honoring their religious values, and they would be willing to offer what they believe is helpful to people with no reference to God. Biblical counseling has no category for that because it’s a radically God-centered ministry.
So we understand people. We understand their problems. We understand their solutions in reference to, with reference to God. So that’s one way that Powelson, he learned these ideas from Van Til, and that shaped the way he thought about counseling conceptually. It shaped the way he thought about it methodologically.
It shaped the goal, that God is the goal of counseling. It’s not symptom alleviation. It’s not preoccupation with self-improvement. It’s about knowing and fearing the Lord and walking in obedient faith before the living God. So that’s one way.
The second way that I can identify here that Van Til influenced Powilson is with the practice of presuppositional analysis. The idea here, remember when we talked about what Vantillian apologetics, when we talked about what it’s all about earlier, this idea of critiquing other systems based upon their core presuppositions, and then offering Christianity as the true hope of the world, that Jesus is the only way, the only light by which we can see anything.
This is the idea that when we think about presuppositional analysis, we approach other counseling systems not as religiously neutral, but as committed, and we see them as expressing—these other counseling systems as expressing coherent worldviews.
And we also know that the Bible expresses a coherent worldview, and it provides a comprehensive way of understanding people and how to bring remedy to the vexations of people. And so when we encounter the secular modern, the so-called “secular modern psychologies,” we do so at the level of their core presuppositions, and then we build a counseling model.
That includes methodology, it includes our goal. We build it based on Christian biblical presuppositions. And so, that is at the heart of a presuppositional approach to counseling—encountering the modern psychologies and evaluating and critiquing them based upon their core presuppositions, showing the internal bankruptcy and the way that they see the world wrongly, and then presenting Christ and his riches and his wisdom and his ways as our true model of care and helping people.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, I think one of the key aspects of that last point that you’re describing is you recognize that in being human, what human beings will do, what unbelievers will do, is they want to make sense of the world.
And Van Til had a category for that. And I think you see that superimposed in the way that Jay thought about secular models, the way David thought about secular models, the way I hope we think about secular models, is that they’re trying to make sense of the world, and they’re trying to put together pieces of the puzzle or information together, that they’re not seeing everything, particularly, most importantly, from God’s perspective. And by what God describes is true about a given thing.
And while we can recognize and even thank the Lord that God has given them rationality to see these things, they’re not putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. And our job is to be provoked by that back to Scripture to try and understand, what are they groping for?
The way Powlison would describe it is that, “secularists are groping in the dark,” and he’s just simply asking the question, what in the world are they groping for? And where he finds clarity on that is not by meditating or borrowing from the secular methodology. What he does is he says, “okay, Lord, their heart is longing for something, they’re looking for something. What do you say about this? How do you put this information together?
How do you describe when a person is exhibiting this emotion, or they’re struggling with this behavior, or they seem to be enslaved by this issue in their life?”
And he’s running back to Scripture to see that, as you described, this comprehensive explanation from Scripture that’s built on distinctly Christian presuppositions. And that’s critical. I couldn’t help but think, when you were describing your first point about Powilson and him being influenced by Van Til, is I’m thinking of Jay describing that counseling is by nature theological. It is by nature. Why? Because life is by nature theological. So when we’re dealing with the issues of life, it has to be that.
Brother, this has been so fun and so helpful. We’re running out of time today, but maybe we can come back and talk about your five other points, which I think would be a great follow-up on how Vantil influenced Dr. David Powlison.
It’s certainly there. We certainly see the influence in how we think, how we approach, how we try to apply Scripture consistently. Again, no theologian is worthy to bear all the weight of a practice, but we believe that there are certain things that Van Til said and did that reflect accurately this picture of Scripture, and it’s a helpful framing when we think about the practice of counseling and soul care
And Marshall, thanks for your work. I appreciate you sharing that with us.
Marshall Adkins: It was my joy, thank you.