Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast I 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 also ACBC certified. He’s married to Rachel, and they have three children. Marshall, I’m very interested in talking about this subject today with the thoughts of common grace that are floating around everywhere today. And you’re actually working on a dissertation currently that dives into this subject quite a bit and I’m looking forward to how we’re going to talk about this idea of common grace today. Welcome to the podcast.
Marshall Adkins: Thanks, Dale. I’m glad to be on.
Dale Johnson: Now I want to start in a proper place, and this is a point that needs to be clarified at the very outset when we talk about the definition of common grace. When people use that term, we’re not always talking about exactly the same thing. So, it’s important that each person that talks about this start with a definition. I think that’s an appropriate place to start if you can, Marshall. So, let’s start with a definition and then also provide really an exegetical biblical basis of what common grace actually is and where we see it from in the Scriptures.
Marshall Adkins: Yeah, maybe a place we could start would be Psalm 145:9, where the Bible says the Lord is good to all and His mercy is over all that He has made. So, when we’re talking about the doctrine of common grace, we’re talking about God’s mercy, His kindness toward all people. There are a number of things that common grace includes. So first, we could identify that common grace, God’s mercy toward all, includes the delay of His final judgment. So, when the fall occurred, when Adam and Eve sinned, and committed treason against God, God didn’t immediately destroy them. There was a promise in Genesis 3:15, a promise of redemption. God delayed the dispensing of His wrath, delayed His final judgment, and that’s a kindness of God to delay His final judgment, and undeserved kindness of God as He works out this plan of redemption to save sinners through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Secondly, we could say that God shows this mercy, this kindness, not only in His delay of final judgment, but also in the restraint of sin. And finally, we can come back and flesh out some of these. We could say that God shows this undeserved kindness in the bestowal of external blessings, allowing man to enjoy creation to some extent and in various ways. So, I think that’s the way I would sum it up in this context. There’s so much more that we could say and unpack in these things, but it’s God’s non-saving, undeserved kindness that He shows to all people. It’s manifested through the delay of His final judgment, the restraint of sin and the bestowal of these external blessings and creation.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, two things that I’ll add to what you said is part of what you’re describing at the very end is the demonstration of God’s goodness. We see this in Him giving rain to the just and the unjust. That’s sort of a display of the passage that you mention of God’s kindness toward all people. It shows the emphasis of God’s goodness is more than just something about man; I think is really important. The second piece that you mentioned, and I think this has even been debated in the history of reformed thinking, is the use of the term common grace itself. That grace a lot of people got nervous because grace was really intended to communicate the idea of something that was salvific. Like man, do we really want to use that term? So, we want to make sure we’re clarifying what we’re describing. When you use this phrase common grace, we’re certainly not talking about anything that is salvific in nature or even a precursor of something that is salvific. I think we have to be cautious about describing it that way. So, bring us up to context. We’ve sort of set a definition. We’re giving some biblical parameters of just summaries of how we would think about God’s goodness to all of creation. Talk about some recent developments that really come close to where we are in the biblical counseling world. Some of the recent developments and discussions that are happening, even now in the biblical counseling movement, because people might be saying, “Why are we discussing this on the truth and love podcast?” It’s very relevant to where we are in the biblical counseling world right now. So, bring us up to speed on some of those discussions.
Marshall Adkins: Interestingly, it’s not just in the biblical counseling movement and it’s not just recently. In fact, the doctrine of common grace has been debated within reformed theology for a long time. And in fact, you know, some would say that the doctrine sort of has its seed in Calvin and was really developed in the Dutch reformed tradition by great theologians like Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper, and then even later by (Louis) Berkhof, John Murray and Van Til. So, you have a lot of great reformed theologians who have given their mind to this doctrine, and it’s been debated. In fact you know, if you look at the 20th century and reformed theology, there were those who denied common grace because they were concerned about the idea of grace being anything but salvific both the term and then the content of the doctrine that they had concerns with. Not only those who wanted to deny it, but also those who wanted to modify it and adapt it and tweak it. So, you know, I think we can’t say that there’s this one single definition, that everyone has agreed on and that everyone has signed off on. In fact, it’s been debated, and not only the definition, then the implications of the doctrine. There are some things that the doctrine helps us make sense of this. For example, we know that the Bible teaches that man is totally depraved. Ephesians 2 says we’re dead, spiritually dead, and now how do we account for the fact that though unbelieving man is dead in his trespasses and sins, he isn’t as evil as he possibly could be in practice? Well, that’s one of the types of problems that the doctrine of common grace seeks to solve is: How do you account for the relative good? how do you account for how the man, who in his unbelieving state is totally depraved, doesn’t manifest that depravity to its full extent? So that’s been one of the ways that this conversation has ensued, so my point here is that the definition in the implications of the doctrine have been discussed and debated and they’re important.
Now coming into the biblical counseling world, it really comes to the issue, I think, of what do secular psychologists know about man as man, man’s problems, man’s solutions? Are there resources, insights, are there things that God has provided on the basis of common grace out there among the unbelieving world that we need to harvest and to use to care for people holistically. So, to bring us up to speed, I think the doctrine has been debated, both its definition and implications. And today, what’s happening in the biblical counseling movement is we are having a fresh conversation about the definition, the parameters, and the implications of this doctrine. They’re important implications.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, they’re important implications because if we’re describing things that we would say, are common grace insights, then that means we ought to be implementing those because they’re actually beneficial to man. But if we would say no, no, these things are not salvific, and if the primary aim of biblical counseling is sanctification, then this common grace adds something that is distinctly salvific because we would argue that the work of biblical counseling is intended to be salvific in terms of not just justification, but sanctification, when we’re dealing with a believer. And so, it really begins to raise these points of tension, if you will, of what we can use? Not to mention, what are the things that can be seen? If this is a “common grace insight” that a non-believer has seen, we should implement it maybe wholeheartedly. Rather than seeing the basis from which this idea has come from and the philosophy that’s built this view of anthropology that a secularist has, that brought him to this particular technique. My current feelings just to put my cards on the table is, I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to approach counseling. I don’t think that that’s the way that man should be revealed. I think God makes very clear, the claim that His Word is what makes us aware of who man really is. I don’t think that that’s something that can be understood by natural eyes to see the fullness of who man is. So, maybe I’m getting ahead of where you are but if I’m just laying my cards on the table as you’re talking, that’s sort of how I see this doctrine unfolding. It is helpful to describe the goodness and mercy and kindness of God, toward all people, despite sin, but not something that’s intended to be beneficial toward salvation or sanctification, in terms of the work of biblical counseling. So, let’s go into that I’ve sort of laid some of these things out, what are some implications of this ongoing discussion? And maybe I’ve set some parameters for you to dive into here but talk about some of the implications of this ongoing discussion of common grace, specifically for biblical counselors. When we get into the trenches of what ministry actually looks like common grace is not this, you know, abstract intellectual idea. We have to bring it down to, okay, what does this look like when I’m seeing something out there and I’m wanting to implement it in the counseling room? Talk about some of those implications.
Marshall Adkins: Even the way you were describing it, so common grace, it’s displaying the glory of our God, in His mercy and kindness toward all. And even if we unpack or just articulated again without even really unpacking the items that I mentioned before, His delay of final judgment, His restraint of sin, His bestow of external blessings. It doesn’t follow that there is a body of knowledge that’s been provided in secular psychology, insights, interventions, that we as biblical counselors must harvest in order to care for people holistically, and well that doesn’t follow. Part of what I think we have to bring to the surface is that restraint—the restraining work of the Holy Spirit is—the Spirit is at work to restrain the full effects of the devastation of sin. But there’s not in that an intellectual empowerment, intellectual enhancement, that is from the Spirit providing discoveries and insights and intervention, and discernment about man and man’s solutions, as we think about in terms of counseling. I don’t think it’s an appropriate way to apply this. I think it’s a misunderstanding, and a misapplication of the doctrine of common grace to say that now there’s an additional body of knowledge, insights and interpretations and discernment and things that we need to harvest in order to care well for people. I think, if you take that approach, you’re using the doctrine of common grace the way classical integrationist has used general revelation and common grace. What’s new is there are some who would claim to be within the bounds of biblical counseling, the boundaries of biblical counseling, who are wanting to use common grace it seems in that way, to say that common grace is now giving the theological justification to say that there’s this insight in attachment theory. Or maybe there’s an intervention in behavior therapy that I can redeem and assimilate and then use in the way that I counsel and care for people, and my justification for doing it is that common grace provided those insights, those resources. In fact, to put it maybe more plainly, I think even using the phrase common grace resource can be misleading, because what it’s suggesting is that what the unbeliever knows is somehow granted through enhancement or empowerment or revelation and I don’t think that that’s an operation of the Spirit that we see in Scripture. So, when we think about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I don’t see in Scripture that one of the operations of the Holy Spirit is to empower unbelieving man, to discover things that then we need to turn to and use adjunctly in our counseling care of souls.
Dale Johnson: Now, I want to be clear we’re not saying that man, who is fallen, loses his capability of being rational. I want you to talk about that in a positive way, that certainly is a part of what you would see is consistent, right? If people, being made in the image of God, don’t lose their rationale capability, but in that rationale capability, they’re never able to reason things that are true according to God’s perspective of both seen and unseen things—which specifically relate to man when we’re talking about not just body issues, but also man is made up of more than just the body. He’s made up of the soul as well, that immaterial, unseen part. So, talk about that aspect of how we’re not losing rational capability, but we’re also saying that it doesn’t help us to see the way things truly are. Maybe the passage that I think about most is Jesus repeating this refrain from the Old Testament that the Pharisees “have eyes but they do not see, they have ears, but they do not hear to understand.” And I think that’s a key distinction. So, just talk about that for just a second.
Marshall Adkins: Yeah, you know, I think if we consider what happened to man at the fall, man didn’t become less than man. So, we were still moral, rational, volitional, affectional creatures of the living God, even after the fall. However, after the fall, there is obviously total depravity. That every aspect of man’s being has been corrupted by sin. And so, as an image-bearer, man as man still has rational capacities. We have to account for the fact that common grace does restrain the effects of sin, but it doesn’t provide any sort of enhancement or empowerment of man’s intellect. And so, what fallen man will do with his rationality is he will use it to suppress the truth about God. And so, it doesn’t mean that man can’t make observations, it doesn’t even mean that he can’t understand aspects of creation. But that knowledge is never neutral because the antithesis is always there. Which as we talk about the antithesis, it’s a spiritual antithesis. It doesn’t mean that he’s less than man. But as man, there is this noetic effect of sin on the mind, where one author says that, “man can use his mind adequately but not properly,” to where it’s not that we are no longer rational creatures, but our rationality has been stained by sin. So, we’re not saying that unbelieving man can’t make observations, but those observations are never neutral, and they don’t end there, then they move into interpretation and they’re built on based upon a worldview and presuppositions that are antithetical and if consistent then we see where that disparity emerges.
Dale Johnson: That’s right. They’re not coming to full reality because what makes up reality even in the physical world that we live in is also the supernatural reality from God’s perspective. That’s what they’re blinded to, where they can see parts of the puzzle, but they can’t see the fullness of the puzzle. I think that’s critical. Let me make one more statement and I’m interested to see when I make this statement how you respond to that or how you think of it. You know, I am fascinated that Christians are so enchanted with modern secular psychology and the proposals of theories, and I want to emphasize theories here. Where they are so enchanted by modern psychological theories and these theories are not validated science. They’re actually debated within the scientific realm—secularists. We’re talking about sociologists; we’re talking about psychologists and psychiatrists who debate things like the validation of EMDR theory and its scientific nature. The understanding of something like EMDR from a neurological standpoint, the idea of trauma theory, right? And accepting some of that as if it’s common grace insights, when secularists are currently debating, whether or not, these things are validated from a neurological scientific perspective. The way that Christians have been enchanted to try and utilize a doctrine like common grace to bring this stuff in has been interesting for me to watch. I think it’s dangerous, especially if we look back at the history of psychiatry, and we think about things like the humoral theory. You know, with this same approach, Marshall, what we would have said during that time—and some Puritans did say this, I think wrongly, and I love the Puritans you know that—but they would have adopted the humoral theory as a perspective of common grace. I don’t think we can be in a position to claim that something comes from God, when science doesn’t bear that out. We have to be cautious about what is theoretical and what is truly and genuinely scientific information that represents the world from God’s perspective and God’s order. That’s a concern for me, how readily we’re making ourselves available and enchanted with the theories that are out there that are still radically debated among seculars themselves. Give me your thoughts on that in its relation to common grace and it’s implication for counseling.
Marshall Adkins: A couple things to say: So, I think it’s helpful that we have to have a category for human knowledge that’s not built around an operation of the Holy Spirit. In other words, unbelievers can make observations, they can theorize, and I’m not ascribing that as an operation of the Holy Spirit via common grace. And so, part of the way I limited that earlier is trying to hedge against that sort of confusion, where you’re having some sort of unproven theory that’s being adopted, really without discernment, by perhaps a counselor who is a Christian and they’re saying, “well, I’m using this technique because it’s a common grace resource.” I think that sort of confusion is that you’re not separating that that’s a theory, coming from a theorist, and we can’t confuse that as some sort of operation or gift of the Holy Spirit and slap the label of “common grace” on top of it. The other thing I think that we just need to say out loud is that whatever your doctrine of common grace is, it can’t limit what the Bible teaches about itself in terms of its own sufficiency. So, the main and plain teaching of the Scripture that the Bible is sufficient for sanctification. We can, you know, just go through myriads of text’s to show how this was Paul’s philosophy of ministry. For example, you proclaim Christ, and he was not turning to you the wisdom in the philosophies, in the resources of the world to try to supplement and fill in the missing pieces and improve on. He didn’t see it that way at all. He saw this in terms of antithesis, where these things are antithetical to one another. And with that, if the Bible claims for itself sufficiency related to sanctification, then we would not anticipate that there’s ever going to be any sort of body of knowledge outside of Scripture that’s going to be used as some sort of supplement for our counseling. You know, think about just one text for example in Hebrews 4:12, “the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing division of the soul, and the spirit of joints and marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” It is through the Word that the creature is laid bare, right? That no creature is hidden from His sight. So, when it comes to immaterial man, his spiritual nature and the realities that are underlying, the problems of living, his relationship problems, his emotional issues, the patterns of sin in his life, suffering and responses to that suffering, the effects of the body, these are issues that the Bible speaks to you particularly and sufficiently. And so, however it is that we’re framing the doctrine of common grace, it can’t compete with and contradict what the Bible teaches about itself, in terms of its own sufficiency. So, I think when we move from, what does the Bible actually say about common grace, it’s a glorious doctrine. God is kind and merciful and praises the Lord, like we should thank God for his kindness toward all. And when we see the way that manifests in His delay of judgment, in the restraint of evil, and in the bestowal of these external blessings, we can praise God for all of these things. But we should not think that now somehow is creating a body of knowledge that we need to go pursue for counseling. Instead, we need to let that rightly understood and rightly applied doctrine of common grace be interpreted in light of the clear teaching of Scripture related to its own sufficiency for soul care. Does that make sense? How would you respond to that?
Dale Johnson: No, absolutely. And I’m just thinking, as we respond to these basic ideas, we can’t cover with the time that we have left, you know an exhaustive expression of our view of common grace. But what we can do is at least get some of these ideas started and help people to see that when I want to look in the doctrine of common grace and I see how, okay, there seems to be external good that’s happening out here. How do I relate that and how do I think about that in terms of counseling? We cannot leave what we have as settled doctrine in our hearts and minds and use common grace to upend our hermeneutics. That’s not the proper way to think about Scripture or upend our view of anthropology and the implications of that, upend our view of epistemology and how we think knowledge is gained, upend our view of the aim of biblical counseling, which is sanctification in that we’re going to use something that’s other than the Word to accomplish sanctification. No, the Bible makes very clear that sanctification happens by faith. Colossians 2:6 “In the same way in which you received the Lord Jesus, which was by faith, so walk in Him.” He says, and that happens that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word. And so, we have to be very clear on when we make statements about common grace insights, it’s making a statement that has implications on doctrines that we believe firmly, that we’ve held, that we practice. Those things are not neutral when we start to invite those into our counseling practice or counseling thought, and we just have to be cautious and careful. Let me finish by saying this today: I think it’s important to note we can’t cover common grace in one 20–25 minute discussion. There are lots of things that we can discuss, and I’m sure we will on future podcasts about, you know, how do we understand what we perceive in the earthly realm as being good things that man does that we can say, “okay yes.” And there’s a distinction between what I would consider to be a social good or earthly good, versus what is good, what theologians have called spiritual good, or that which is good and accounting before God. There’s a distinction of that and the aim of biblical counseling and the work of church ministry, and the ministry of the Word is to promote that which is good in relation to God’s perspective. We have to be careful not to be deceived in some way into thinking that we are satisfied with earthly good. That’s not the ministry of the church—to be satisfied with earthly good. It’s to press toward what God sees as being good, right, just, moral, and most healthy for individuals and that comes by discernment. Discernment, Hebrews 5:14, growing in our powers of discernment so that we see the difference from God’s perspective of that which is good and evil, not an earthly perspective. So maybe in the future, we can cover topics like that which are very prevalent, with the information that we need to address and deal with under this topic of common grace—which has now become very, very relevant in the discussion of biblical counseling. Marshall, thanks for leading us in this and helping us to think through some of this at a time where it seems very confusing out there. I hope this is helpful to many of our listeners. Brother, so thank you.
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