All through its historical past, the biblical counseling motion has skilled varied intervals of “rebranding.” Jay Adams first known as his counseling method “nouthetic counseling,” derived from the Greek phrase “noutheteo,” which means to “admonish, right, or instruct.”[1] In 2013, a number one biblical counseling affiliation “rebranded” from the Nationwide Affiliation of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC) to the Affiliation of Licensed Biblical Counselors (ACBC), figuring out a major transition throughout the motion of individuals figuring out primarily as “biblical counselors.”[2] Much more not too long ago, one other “rebranding” interval has begun throughout the motion, as individuals proceed to make clear their method to counseling with labels akin to “historic biblical counseling” and “redemptive counseling.”[3] Every interval of “rebranding” reveals a need arising from the motion to make clear (1) the identification of the motion’s counselors and (2) the kind of counseling they provide.
Inside the motion’s historical past, there may be one other potential “label” that has not obtained vital consideration: presuppositional counseling. The label “presuppositional counseling” reveals a major function of this counseling system that finds its origin in Adams—a need to research counseling concepts and strategies in accordance with their presuppositions. In Competent to Counsel, Adams outlined the “technique” that helps the conclusions of his e-book as “presuppositional,” footnoting his key supply for presuppositional considering, the Dutch Apologist and his Westminster school member, Cornelius Van Til.[4]
Adams was not alone in figuring out his method as presuppositional. In an interview between Jay Adams, David Powlison, and John Bettler, Bettler describes Adams’s counseling method as a “biblical, presuppositional rethinking of counseling.”[5] Later on this dialog, Powlison explicitly labels Adams’s method as “presuppositionally biblical counseling.”[6] In his article on “A Proposed Definition of Biblical Counseling,” David Powlison contends that “mature, presuppositionally constant, loving, and efficacious biblical counseling can be a strong evangelistic and apologetic pressure within the trendy world.”[7] Within the now-dated article, “Modern Points in Biblical Counseling,” Powlison offers his readers the next cost:
“Biblical counseling should reaffirm and finely tune its distinctive mental content material. We should proceed to ‘suppose biblically,’ letting biblical classes lead our understanding. We should proceed to reject secular classes from a self-consciously presuppositional standpoint.”[8]
Clearly, three of the unique “masterminds” of biblical counseling believed {that a} central function of biblical counseling’s system of thought is a presuppositional method derived from the works of Cornelius Van Til. Thus, it’s no shock that, in a podcast interview from 2011, David Powlison feedback that “from a deep construction standpoint, [biblical counseling] is Van Tilian totally, from starting to finish.”[9]
An Introduction to Presuppositional Counseling
To the scholars transferring across the halls of Westminster between Van Til’s lessons on apologetics and Adams’s lessons on counseling within the late Nineteen Sixties and early Seventies, little effort was essential to discern how Adams’s system was dependent upon the works of the Dutch apologist. Nonetheless, as biblical counseling has matured into an inter-evangelical parachurch motion, the Van Tilian roots of biblical counseling are a lot more durable to detect. Within the interview talked about above, David Powlison provides his personal tackle Adams’s adaptation of Van Tilian thought:
“You utilized Van Til’s perception into biblical presuppositions in two methods. Level 1: You’ve each made clear that presuppositionally biblical counseling builds the home of counseling with Scriptural ideas somewhat than constructing with secular idea and remedy. Level 2: You’ve each made clear that biblical counselors can be taught issues from observations made by secular psychologists and will be prodded by their theories and practices. Any secular area is helpful if and provided that biblical presuppositions reinterpret what secularists see and deform by their presuppositions.”[10]
On this quote, Powlison reveals his two observations regarding the function of Van Tilian thought in biblical counseling. First, biblical counseling is a counseling methodology that’s distinctly constructed upon biblical presuppositions. Second, biblical counselors have a novel approach of analyzing the observations, theories, and practices of secular counseling.
Whereas this quote offers readers a common understanding of Adams’s use of Van Tilian ideas, the perfect introduction to Van Til’s affect upon Jay Adams is an missed part towards the tip of Competent to Counsel. Within the conclusion of Competent to Counsel, Adams truthfully admits that his e-book accommodates “sweeping implications.”[11] He confesses his willingness to alter his place solely “supplied that I will be proven to be improper biblically.”[12] Adams then summarizes the biblical framework that informs his method to counseling:
“I’m not desirous about debate which strikes off non-Christian suppositions, or debate based mostly upon supposedly impartial, goal empirical information. All such proof, in the long run, is interpreted proof. There is no such thing as a such factor as brute uninterpreted reality. Information are collected and associated and offered by males, all of whom are sinners and topic to the noetic results of their sin. In God’s world, all males are associated to him as covenant breakers or covenant keepers (in Christ). The judgments of unbelievers, due to this fact, are arrived at and offered from a standpoint which makes an attempt to divorce itself from God. Such judgments should be understood, weighed and examined on this mild. I’ve tried to reexamine counseling (suggestively, however not exhaustively) in a biblical method, and I ask, due to this fact, that my work shall be equally criticized.”[13]
To these conversant in Van Til, it’s past dispute that this citation accommodates an vital revelation for the biblical counseling motion—central to Adams’s protection of his method to counseling is a utilization of three Van Tilian ideas. These three ideas are (1) covenant, (2) presuppositions, and (3) the antithesis.
Covenant
Each Jay Adams and Cornelius Van Til have been Reformed theologians throughout the custom of Presbyterian and Reformed denominations. Thus, it’s no shock that their approaches to theology and Scripture contained a covenantal framework that locations all of life in relation to God. On this quote, Adams reveals that he sees each single particular person referring to God as both “covenant breakers or covenant keepers.” This language comes initially from Van Til’s work, Christian Apologetics, the place Van Til argues that “part of the duty of Christian apologetics” is “to make males self-consciously both covenant keepers or covenant breakers.”[14]
Presuppositions
Many individuals perceive presuppositions as “foundational beliefs.” But, Van Til and Adams shared a selected view of data that understood all of the data throughout the world as a part of programs of thought. Each Adams and Van Til believed that, since fallen human beings are concerned within the figuring out course of, no data or particular reality will be impartial. Thus, Adams and Van Til each deny the existence of “brute uninterpreted details.” In accordance with Van Til, one of many central ways in which non-Christians deny God’s existence is “the belief of brute factuality.”[15]
Antithesis
In accordance with John Body, one of many clearest items of proof of Van Til’s affect upon Jay Adams is the usage of the antithesis.[16] The antithesis is the theological idea that the pure man is just not solely a sinner however actively hostile in opposition to God (Rom. 8:7-8). The pure man “suppresses the reality in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). In accordance with Van Til, the pure man is a covenant breaker who, “utilizing his ideas and dealing on his personal assumptions, should be hostile in precept at each level to the Christian philosophy of life.”[17] The antithesis helps Adams’s conclusions that Christians can not use secular counseling programs since they originate from a standpoint “which makes an attempt to divorce itself from God.”
For Additional Research
The three factors above inform the thesis of my dissertation on Jay Adams’s adaptation of Van Tilian thought, the place I argue that the theoretical framework of biblical counseling accommodates three Van Tilian ideas: the covenantal nature of data, presuppositional evaluation, and the antithesis.[18] As I work to have a well-liked and tutorial type of my dissertation obtainable for the biblical counseling motion (Lord keen!), these desirous about diving deeper into this subject can seek for Van Til’s teachings on these three ideas in two works that summarize Van Tilian thought, Cornelius Van Til: An Evaluation of His Thought, by John Body, and Van Til’s Apologetic: Important Evaluation, by Greg Bahnsen.[19]
The quote above from Jay Adams reveals the significance of understanding Van Til’s affect on the biblical counseling motion. When Adams seeks to defend his method to counseling, he instinctively reaches for Van Tilian ideas. In bookending this concluding part of Competent to Counsel with claims to reasoning “in a biblical method,” Adams reveals that he sees Van Til’s system of thought, together with Van Til’s use of philosophical language akin to “brute uninterpreted details,” as “biblical.” Actually, the foundational works of biblical counseling, together with the implicit impulses of many individuals throughout the biblical counseling motion, are indiscernible other than understanding Van Til’s function because the Godfather of biblical counseling.[20]
Questions for Reflection
- What have you ever discovered concerning the historical past of the biblical counseling motion on this weblog?
- How have you ever seen the biblical counseling motion proceed to make clear its counselors and its strategies of counseling?
- What questions do you will have about Cornelius Van Til’s affect on the biblical counseling motion?
[1] For a dialogue from Jay Adams on nouthetic counseling, see Jay E. Adams, What about Nouthetic Counseling?: A Query and Reply Ebook with Historical past, Assist and Hope for the Christian Counselor (Grand Rapids: Baker Ebook Home, 1977), 1-6.
[2] A proof for this transition is supplied right here: Heath Lambert, “From NANC to ACBC,” The Affiliation of Licensed Biblical Counselors, October 16, 2013, https://biblicalcounseling.com/resource-library/articles/from-nanc-to-acbc/.
[3] Ernie Baker makes use of the label “historic biblical counseling” within the preface to the collection “Important Points in Counseling.” Ernie Baker, “A Phrase from the Consulting Editor,” in Biblical Counseling and Widespread Grace, by Heath Lambert (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2023), 12; Ernie Baker, “A Phrase from the Consulting Editor,” in Biblical Counseling and The Psychologies, by Ernie Baker (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2023), 12; Lou Priolo, Presuppositions of Biblical Counseling: What Historic Biblical Counselors Actually Consider (Conway, AR: Grace & Fact Books, 2023). For the label of “redemptive counseling,” see Sam Williams, Nate Brooks, Kristin Kellen, and Brad Hambrick, “SEBTS Counseling Professors Roundtable: As It Is and As It Might Be,” Southeastern Theological Evaluation, 15, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 73-86.
[4] Jay E. Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling, The Jay Adams Library (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970), xxi.
[5] David Powlison, “25 Years of Biblical Counseling: An Interview with Jay Adams and John Bettler,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 12, no. 1 (1993): 8.
[6] Ibid., 10.
[7] David Powlison, ”Affirmations and Denials: A Proposed Definition of Biblical Counseling,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 19 no. 1 (Fall 2000).
[8] David Powlison, “Essential Points in Modern Biblical Counseling.” The Journal of Pastoral Follow 9, no. 3 (1988): 53-78. Powlison additionally references the significance of presuppositions in David Powlison, “Editorial: Organic Psychiatry,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 17, no. 3 (1999): 2-8; David Powlison, “Which Presuppositions? Secular Psychology and the Classes of Biblical Thought,” The Journal of Psychology and Theology 12, no. 4 (1984): 270-78; David Powlison, “Treatment of Souls (and the Fashionable Psychotherapies),” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 25, no. 2 (2007): 5-36; David Powlison, “Critiquing Fashionable Integrationists,” The Journal of Pastoral Follow 11, no. 3 (1993): 24-34; David Powlison, “Fashionable Therapies and the Church’s Religion,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 15, no. 1 (1996): 32-41.
[9] Reformed Discussion board, “Enterprise Ethics, Pastoral Searches, and Van Til as Biblical Counselor,” Christ the Heart, April 26, 2011, https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc173.
[10] Powlison, “25 Years of Biblical Counseling,” 10.
[11] Adams, Competent to Counsel, 269.
[12] Ibid., 269.
[13] Ibid., 269.
[14] Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, ed. William Edgar, 2nd Version (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003), 62-63.
[15] Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, ed. William Edgar, 2nd Version (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 163.
[16] John M. Body, Cornelius Van Til: An Evaluation of His Thought (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1995), 304.
[17] Cornelius Van Til, The Protection of the Religion, ed. Ok. Scott Oliphint, 4th Version (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 191.
[18] Jared S. Poulton, “Reforming Counseling: The Adaptation of Van Tilian Ideas by Jay Adams,” PhD diss., (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2024), 3.
[19] Body, Cornelius Van Til, Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Evaluation (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1998).
[20] Jared S. Poulton, “Cornelius Van Til: The Godfather of Biblical Counseling,” The Biblical Counseling Coalition, October 18, 2023, https://www.biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/2023/10/18/cornelius-van-til-the-godfather-of-biblicalcounseling/.
