Presuppositional Counseling: An Introduction to Van Til’s Influence Upon Jay Adams

This article was previously published at the Biblical Counseling Coalition. The original post can be viewed here.

Throughout its history, the biblical counseling movement has experienced various periods of “rebranding.” Jay Adams first called his counseling approach “nouthetic counseling,” derived from the Greek word “noutheteo,” meaning to “admonish, correct, or instruct.”¹ In 2013, a leading biblical counseling association “rebranded” from the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC) to the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC), identifying a significant transition within the movement of people identifying primarily as “biblical counselors.”² Even more recently, another “rebranding” period has begun within the movement, as people continue to clarify their approach to counseling with labels such as “historic biblical counseling” and “redemptive counseling.”³ Each period of “rebranding” reveals a desire arising from the movement to clarify (1) the identity of the movement’s counselors and (2) the type of counseling they offer.

Within the movement’s history, there is another potential “label” that has not received significant attention: presuppositional counseling. The label “presuppositional counseling” reveals a significant feature of this counseling system that finds its origin in Adams—a desire to analyze counseling ideas and methods according to their presuppositions. In Competent to Counsel, Adams defined the “method” that supports the conclusions of his book as “presuppositional,” footnoting his key source for presuppositional thinking, the Dutch Apologist and his Westminster faculty member, Cornelius Van Til.⁴

Adams was not alone in identifying his approach as presuppositional. In an interview between Jay Adams, David Powlison, and John Bettler, Bettler describes Adams’s counseling approach as a “biblical, presuppositional rethinking of counseling.”⁵ Later in this conversation, Powlison explicitly labels Adams’s approach as “presuppositionally biblical counseling.”⁶ In his article on “A Proposed Definition of Biblical Counseling,” David Powlison contends that “mature, presuppositionally consistent, loving, and efficacious biblical counseling will be a powerful evangelistic and apologetic force in the modern world.”⁷ In the now-dated article, “Contemporary Issues in Biblical Counseling,” Powlison gives his readers the following charge:

“Biblical counseling must reaffirm and finely tune its distinctive intellectual content. We must continue to ‘think biblically,’ letting biblical categories lead our understanding. We must continue to reject secular categories from a self-consciously presuppositional standpoint.”⁸

Clearly, three of the original “masterminds” of biblical counseling believed that a central feature of biblical counseling’s system of thought is a presuppositional approach derived from the works of Cornelius Van Til. Thus, it is no surprise that, in a podcast interview from 2011, David Powlison comments that “from a deep structure standpoint, [biblical counseling] is Van Tilian utterly, from beginning to end.”⁹

An Introduction to Presuppositional Counseling

To the students moving around the halls of Westminster between Van Til’s classes on apologetics and Adams’s classes on counseling in the late 1960s and early 1970s, little effort was necessary to discern how Adams’s system was dependent upon the works of the Dutch apologist. Nevertheless, as biblical counseling has matured into an inter-evangelical parachurch movement, the Van Tilian roots of biblical counseling are much harder to detect. In the interview mentioned above, David Powlison offers his own take on Adams’s adaptation of Van Tilian thought:

“You applied Van Til’s insight into biblical presuppositions in two ways. Point 1: You’ve both made clear that presuppositionally biblical counseling builds the house of counseling with Scriptural principles rather than building with secular theory and therapy. Point 2: You’ve both made clear that biblical counselors can learn things from observations made by secular psychologists and can be prodded by their theories and practices. Any secular field is useful if and only if biblical presuppositions reinterpret what secularists see and distort by their presuppositions.”¹⁰

In this quote, Powlison reveals his two observations concerning the role of Van Tilian thought in biblical counseling. First, biblical counseling is a counseling methodology that is distinctly built upon biblical presuppositions. Second, biblical counselors have a unique way of analyzing the observations, theories, and practices of secular counseling.

While this quote gives readers a general understanding of Adams’s use of Van Tilian concepts, the best introduction to Van Til’s influence upon Jay Adams is an overlooked section toward the end of Competent to Counsel. In the conclusion of Competent to Counsel, Adams honestly admits that his book contains “sweeping implications.”¹¹ He confesses his willingness to change his position only “provided that I can be shown to be wrong biblically.”¹² Adams then summarizes the biblical framework that informs his approach to counseling:

“I am not interested in debate which moves off non-Christian suppositions, or debate based upon supposedly neutral, objective empirical data. All such evidence, in the end, is interpreted evidence. There is no such thing as brute uninterpreted fact. Data are collected and related and presented by men, all of whom are sinners and subject to the noetic effects of their sin. In God’s world, all men are related to him as covenant breakers or covenant keepers (in Christ). The judgments of unbelievers, therefore, are arrived at and presented from a point of view which attempts to divorce itself from God. Such judgments must be understood, weighed and examined in this light. I have attempted to reexamine counseling (suggestively, but not exhaustively) in a biblical manner, and I ask, therefore, that my work shall be similarly criticized.”¹³

To those familiar with Van Til, it is beyond dispute that this quotation contains an important revelation for the biblical counseling movement—central to Adams’s defense of his approach to counseling is a utilization of three Van Tilian concepts. These three concepts are (1) covenant, (2) presuppositions, and (3) the antithesis.

Covenant

Both Jay Adams and Cornelius Van Til were Reformed theologians within the tradition of Presbyterian and Reformed denominations. Thus, it is no surprise that their approaches to theology and Scripture contained a covenantal framework that places all of life in relation to God. In this quote, Adams reveals that he sees every single person relating to God as either “covenant breakers or covenant keepers.” This language comes originally from Van Til’s work, Christian Apologetics, where Van Til argues that “a part of the task of Christian apologetics” is “to make men self-consciously either covenant keepers or covenant breakers.”¹⁴

Presuppositions

Many people understand presuppositions as “foundational beliefs.” Yet, Van Til and Adams shared a particular view of knowledge that understood all the knowledge within the world as part of systems of thought. Both Adams and Van Til believed that, since fallen human beings are involved in the knowing process, no knowledge or specific fact can be neutral. Thus, Adams and Van Til both deny the existence of “brute uninterpreted facts.” According to Van Til, one of the central ways that non-Christians deny God’s existence is “the assumption of brute factuality.”¹⁵

Antithesis

According to John Frame, one of the clearest pieces of evidence of Van Til’s influence upon Jay Adams is the use of the antithesis.¹⁶ The antithesis is the theological concept that the natural man is not only a sinner but actively hostile against God (Rom. 8:7-8). The natural man “suppresses the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). According to Van Til, the natural man is a covenant breaker who, “using his principles and working on his own assumptions, must be hostile in principle at every point to the Christian philosophy of life.”¹⁷ The antithesis supports Adams’s conclusions that Christians cannot use secular counseling systems since they originate from a point of view “which attempts to divorce itself from God.”

For Further Study

The three points above inform the thesis of my dissertation on Jay Adams’s adaptation of Van Tilian thought, where I argue that the theoretical framework of biblical counseling contains three Van Tilian concepts: the covenantal nature of knowledge, presuppositional analysis, and the antithesis.¹⁸ As I work to have a popular and academic form of my dissertation available for the biblical counseling movement (Lord willing!), those interested in diving deeper into this topic can search for Van Til’s teachings on these three concepts in two works that summarize Van Tilian thought, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought, by John Frame, and Van Til’s Apologetic: Critical Analysis, by Greg Bahnsen.¹⁹

The quote above from Jay Adams reveals the importance of understanding Van Til’s influence on the biblical counseling movement. When Adams seeks to defend his approach to counseling, he instinctively reaches for Van Tilian concepts. In bookending this concluding section of Competent to Counsel with claims to reasoning “in a biblical manner,” Adams reveals that he sees Van Til’s system of thought, including Van Til’s use of philosophical language such as “brute uninterpreted facts,” as “biblical.” Truly, the foundational works of biblical counseling, along with the implicit impulses of many people within the biblical counseling movement, are indiscernible apart from understanding Van Til’s role as the Godfather of biblical counseling.²⁰

1. For a discussion from Jay Adams on nouthetic counseling, see Jay E. Adams, What about Nouthetic Counseling?: A Question and Answer Book with History, Help and Hope for the Christian Counselor (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977), 1-6. ↩︎
2. An explanation for this transition is provided here: Heath Lambert, “From NANC to ACBC,” The Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, October 16, 2013, https://biblicalcounseling.com/resource-library/articles/from-nanc-to-acbc/. ↩︎
3. Ernie Baker uses the label “historic biblical counseling” in the preface to the series “Critical Issues in Counseling.” Ernie Baker, “A Word from the Consulting Editor,” in Biblical Counseling and Common Grace, by Heath Lambert (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2023), 12; Ernie Baker, “A Word 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 Historical Biblical Counselors Really Believe (Conway, AR: Grace & Truth 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 Could Be,” Southeastern Theological Review, 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, “Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling.” The Journal of Pastoral Practice 9, no. 3 (1988): 53-78. Powlison also references the importance of presuppositions in David Powlison, “Editorial: Biological Psychiatry,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 17, no. 3 (1999): 2-8; David Powlison, “Which Presuppositions? Secular Psychology and the Categories of Biblical Thought,” The Journal of Psychology and Theology 12, no. 4 (1984): 270-78; David Powlison, “Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psychotherapies),” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 25, no. 2 (2007): 5-36; David Powlison, “Critiquing Modern Integrationists,” The Journal of Pastoral Practice 11, no. 3 (1993): 24-34; David Powlison, “Modern Therapies and the Church’s Faith,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 15, no. 1 (1996): 32-41. ↩︎
9. Reformed Forum, “Business Ethics, Pastoral Searches, and Van Til as Biblical Counselor,” Christ the Center, 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 Edition (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003), 62-63. ↩︎
15. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, ed. William Edgar, 2nd Edition (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 163. ↩︎
16. John M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1995), 304. ↩︎
17. Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, ed. K. Scott Oliphint, 4th Edition (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 191. ↩︎
18. Jared S. Poulton, “Reforming Counseling: The Adaptation of Van Tilian Concepts by Jay Adams,” PhD diss., (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2024), 3. ↩︎
19. Frame, Cornelius Van Til, Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (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/. ↩︎