Van Til's Counseling Movement with Jared Poulton

Well, I'd like to welcome everyone to another episode of the London Lyceum. I'm one of your host Jordyn Stefaniak and we're a podcast that's dedicated to serious thinking for a serious church. And in thinking seriously, we've endeavored from the beginning to create or cultivate or encourage, hopefully we're doing at least one of those things and intellectual culture of things like charity, curiosity, critical thinking, cheerful confessionalism. So if you're not familiar with any of those C's, listen off, join the conversation, listen to more episodes, you're going to find people who we agree with, who we disagree with, and we get to learn things along the way. While also understanding that we have a clear sense of this is sort of our identity. What we think is true, what we think is accurate, what we think is beautiful, but also we can have a conversation with someone that we disagree with and actually come to an agreement where we don't agree on certain things. And yet we can still be friends. And it's fun. So if you listen, we're going to talk history, philosophy, theology, everything in between, and it's a great time. In today's episode, I'm thrilled to introduce you all to Dr. Jared Poulton. We're going to be talking about his new book on Vantill's counseling movement. And I'm sure if you guys listen, you're probably aware of some of the biblical counseling wars. I don't know what else to call them because that seems to be an appropriate terminology for it, because people have very cherished views of these things. And I think Jared's work here is really interesting because it's kind of doing some historical investigation into some of the movements and the background of how we got where we're at. So I'm thrilled to talk to him about this. Jared, before we do any of that, though, just give me sort of a background on who you are, what you do now, because you're running an institution. I'd love to hear a little bit about that before we jump into the book. Hey, Jordan, thanks for having me on. And thanks for picking up the project with Hanover Press for Vantill's counseling movement. So this little bit about me, I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I serve as a pastor in the area at a URC and a church, a cornerstone URC. I also serve as an adjunct faculty at several institutions, Puritan Reform, Covenant Baptist. I've been married. My wife and I have four wonderful kids. I also serve primarily as the executive director of the Institute for Formed Biblical Counseling. So it's a very strong Dutch-reformed based counseling ministry, kind of began in 2007 with a desire out of this church to see elders grow in pastoral care and discipleship. And from there, we've grown within the Dutch reform community. I came on in 2025, got introduced to them in 2024, and it's been cool to just see what the Lord is doing and raising up elders, pastors, church members, and growing in pastoral care and discipleship. That's good stuff. So when it comes to this book in particular, I mean, what led you down this path to write about Vantil, Jay Adams, and everything? Have you always been interested in that? Was it something you stumbled into? No, thanks for the question. So the book is my dissertation from Southern Seminary, kind of adapted about a hundred pages chopped off and then more edits made to it. So I completed my dissertation in Biblical counseling at Southern Seminary in 2024 under Dr. Jeremy Pierre. I also had the privilege of having Dr. Wellam, Stephen Wellam and Timothy Paul Jones there. So my dissertation was reforming counseling, the adaptation of Vantilion Concepts by Jay Adams. But I think the story of the book and how I got into it is the story of my journey in the doctoral program at Southern Seminary in Biblical counseling. Whenever I got into Biblical counseling at the doctoral level, I went in wanting to study issues related to gender and sexuality, transgenderism, identity, that was growing in influence and visibility. And then the church at that time we're talking about the 2010s. But as I got further into the Biblical counseling PhD program, I did notice that Biblical counseling was lacking resources that helped to explore the foundations of our discipline. In Biblical counseling is a really broad movement right now. You have people from lots of different places practicing it. And I did find that it was difficult to engage with some of these frontline issues. If there were not works that you could cite, that could outline what would be a Biblical counseling frame of analysis. So how do we, like what ideas, what principles inform us, academically, if we want to do this deep thinking and work in these areas? So how should Biblical counselors engage with secular sources, what theological convictions and principles kind of drive how we engage with scripture, the world and other people? So I was really struggling to figure out how to handle my topic well. And so I did a radical shift, which is what you do not do after your comprehensive exams. And I wanted to find something that would be kind of a stepping stone to strengthening academic foundations and Biblical counseling. At that time, J. B. Fesco's reforming apologetics just came out. And he hinted at the relationship between Vantill and J. Adams. I also knew other people had reference that there was something there between Biblical counseling and presuppositional apologetics. But no one was writing on it. And there were very few things in print outside of comments here or there. So like what actually is relationship between these disciplines? So if you look historically, if Vantill is the bridge in Biblical counseling into the broader academic disciplines, apologetics and theology, and if he is the bridge really into the past, he seems like a good person to start with. So I kind of pivoted towards Vantill wanting to do some historical retrieval work. If you go back to the 1970s when Biblical counseling was starting, what was J. Adams doing with Vantill's ideas? So then I graduated in 2024 and the book that we have here is several more years of me wrestling with some of these arguments and sharpening them hopefully for people to engage with. Yeah, that's that's very interesting. And I think that a lot of people probably end up getting in your shoes where they change their minds after comprehensive exams. Unfortunately, I know the advice that was given to me was like, hey, pick your topic early on and write everything towards that. So when you get there, it's really easy. But it seems like no one does that actually. No, no, no, I didn't, I did the American model, right? And I have no idea how people do the European model where you just start and you have a topic and you just start writing from the beginning. But well, for me, you know, I did the European route, but I also did a THM before it. So like I sort it was kind of like an American model. And you know, it just came in two parts. Anyway, that's another here and over there. The question I want to do to set the table for the discussion is to spend a little bit of time talking about Biblical counseling, how we should define it. Because it seems like there's a lot of gatekeepers and how we use that terminology. And I want to make sure that when we say Biblical counseling, people understand what exactly we're talking about. Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I do think Biblical counseling does struggle and it suffers from a branding issue. Because the adjective Biblical, if you do any engagement or history, it can say a lot and very little at the same time. So if you're sitting there and you hear Biblical counseling and if you're a Christian, I hope that counseling you're receiving is Biblical. And I hope that you would consider it to be Biblical. I mean, like any other discipline, we hope that we have biblical theology, biblical preaching, Biblical apologetics, Biblical missions, evangelism. But what actually makes these disciplines Biblical? I think that's kind of where some of the disagreement can come through. And I think many people, they get into Biblical counseling today. If you're like at a southern seminary or a southeastern or a Midwestern, a lot of them get in because they just want to offer counsel from scripture. So Biblical counseling at its basis form is two Christians sitting together, discussing an issue. And one person is offering counsel and advice from scripture to a particular problem. So from this perspective, Biblical counseling is a practice. It's a live practice within relationships within the church. There's pastors, there's elders, church members, parachurch counselors engaged in this. But I do think formally, even as there is this Biblical counseling thing happening all the time, Biblical counseling is also a historical movement within the church. That's rooted in the 1970s. But then what's happening within that environment, a fundamentalism, evangelicalism coming back, the rise of the neo evangelical, such as Carl F. Henry. You have the conservative resurgence and places like the Southern Baptist Convention, the establishment of the PCA. I think it's hard for us and we don't want to offend our older scholars and practitioners within the field. But if you go back to when Jay Adams started, who we'll talk about more in a second, in 1970, it's a different world from where we are today. So people may not want to think about it, but you do need to do some historical work to go back and see what was the world like whenever Adams was getting started. So Biblical counseling formally is a historical movement within the church that has its roots within the 1970s. It also is a field within the discipline of pastoral theology that has its roots within Jay Adams. And then you have other leaders such as a Paul trip where David Paulson who have developed it. And so these individuals developed a specific method to arrive from scripture in offering counsel that was presented as a Biblical alternative to forms of secular counseling. So just some basic ideas Biblical counselors have historically held to a high view of scripture and for its relevancy for counseling. There's a centrality of the local church as a community of counsel and care. They have also looked to the gospel and sanctification as providing real life transformation for individuals who instead of going to a secular therapist would come to another Christian to have and receive counsel and care and things such as addictions, depression, anxiety and other. common counseling issues. So the complexity is biblical, like with many things. We all address, we know it's worth the Bible, but people may miss that there are this, there is this historical trajectory, and there also is the disciplinary reality of where biblical counseling has come from. Yeah, that's helpful. So one key question for the work that you've done here is just, you know, who is J Adams, who's Vantil, and should we think that they're connected in any relevant sense? I know when I read your book, that was really the first time I'm engaging with the history of somebody like Adams. You know, you hear a lot of what he said, but you don't always know the background of where he's coming from. I thought it was really interesting. So I'd love to hear a little bit about both of them and how that informs the project. Yeah, so it's hard to talk about biblical counseling without bringing up J Adams. Quite literally, he's responsible for the biblical counseling movement. And I think it's easy for people to take shots at Adams, but we really need to respect what he actually did, because whenever he was writing, there were a lot of theological debates happening and errantcy, exclusivity of the gospel. No one really was talking about the role of pastors and the influence of secular counseling within the church and viewing the church as a place of counseling and care. So people have commented, I think it's right, J Adams single-handedly led a movement that returned counseling to the local church as something that pastors elders and church members are engaging with. So J Adams was a pastor who lived from 1929 to 2020. And those dates are important because Adams lived a lot of his life kind of in the wasteland of American Christianity after the fundamentalist and modernist controversies of the early 20th century and then also the rise of the neo evangelicals in the 1970s. So it was a time when the landscape was a lot different. They don't have institutions that we have today. A conservative orthodoxy was Westminster, the Dutch reformed and the CRC and outside of that, there wasn't really much there. Adams grew up in an on-Christian home. He came to Christ early in life. He quickly found himself excelling in school and being guided into pastoral ministry and then seminary. He entered into ministry and spent his early years among the Bible Presbyterians. He eventually completed his PhD in homiletics. It's not a big thing, but his primary education and training was as a preacher in terms of preaching and homiletics and speech. While pastoring, he eventually entered into the OPC and then Westminster Seminary reached out to him in the 1960s to help with some classes in the area of pastoral ministry. So he comes in, starts to teach, and then one class he's responsible for is a class on pastoral counseling. And this fateful class led to Adams thinking through the current state of counseling and pastoral care within the church. Because as he was starting to develop his lectures, he realized that there were not many sources being written from conservative authors and pastoral care. Most of them just copied straight from secular psychology. And so Adams, after taking the notes that were handed to him and doing his trying to engage what was available, he eventually stopped and just developed his own material, just going to the Bible to find solutions to the problems that he encountered and people were encountering in local churches. So from that note, from those notes, from that class at Westminster Seminary, he would then develop the book that would become competent to counsel, which is published in 1970. It really landed like a bomb within the broader evangelical movement. No one was really saying the types of things that he was. There was endorsements, the sales of the books, which were, I mean, in the six figures, which is crazy for a book. It had a lot of controversy, but then people were buying what he was saying. After several more years of teaching at Westminster, he did relocate to Macon, Georgia, just to focus on writing. He did play an instrumental role in getting Westminster, California's doctorate ministry program off the ground. He eventually moved to the Upstate South Carolina and spent his final years teaching and ministering in the ARP. That's a little bit about Jay Adams, but if you know Jay Adams's story, you know that he also was at Westminster theological seminary. And so Adams arrives within the final decade of Vantill teaching as a professor of apologetics at Westminster theological seminary. So how I've described it is that if Jay Adams is the founder of the Biblical Counseling Movement, then Cornelius Vantill is the Godfather. Because if you go back to that first book, competent to counsel and you open up the first pages, there is a footnote there that references Vantill's influence and he even refers to his approach as a presuppositional in nature. So if the birth of the movement is competent to counsel and competent to counsel is like the birth certificate, then Jay Adams notes that Vantill was there at the beginning. So there is some irony, though, as you think about where Biblical counseling came from, where has gone. Because in bringing Vantill, the primary inspiration, then for a counseling movement and a counseling approach is an apologist. So the closest direct influence is not another counselor or even a pastor with theologians, but it's someone who's engaging in apologetics. And I do think that that apologetic edge does even inform the trajectory of Biblical counseling and where has come to this day. But Vantill himself has his own very interesting life story. If you couldn't tell by the name, Cornelius Vantill is Dutch. He was born in the Netherlands in 1895. His family left the Netherlands for the Dutch enclaves of America in the Midwest in 1905 and I have the privilege of kind of living in that area right now. His parents were concerned because of the future of their sons in the military build up in Europe before the First World War. So you have to love, they left the Netherlands in 1905. A Vantill's life reflects that of a Dutch immigrant entering into the very conflicted world of conservative American Christianity in the early 20th century. He went to school at Calvin, a Calvin college university seminary. That's the Jerusalem of the American Dutch Grand Rapids or G.R. Russelam. His professors were students of Dutch theologians such as Abraham Kuiper and Herman Boving. So there was a lot of influence there. Eventually he did not complete his training for ministry at Calvin to the disappointment of many but he actually transferred to Princeton seminary and he observed the final years of Machen's last stand against the moderates at Princeton and also the PCUSA. At Princeton, he also ran into Gerhardis Voss, another good friend of the Dutch reformed and under the shadow of BB Warfield, he found himself steeped within the legacy of Old Princeton. He was recruited by Machen eventually to teach apologetics at Westminster, theological seminary and its founding. After Machen's untimely death, tragic as he was going to the decodas in 1937, Vantill and John Murray together would really become the backbone of Westminster seminary from the 1930s to 1970s. So many people may know the works of theologians such as Herman Boving, Abraham Kuiper, BB Warfield. They were all great friends. If you know of the lectures on Calvinism or the philosophy of Revelation by Boving, both of these were presented with Warfield hosting Kuiper and Boving with at Princeton in the early 20th century. They shared a conviction for conservative, confessional or form theology but they did disagree upon the nature of apologetics. So Vantill was aware of those disagreements between Kuiper, Warfield and Boving and then from there he developed an approach that he thought blended the best of each of those thinkers into presuppositional apologetics, which many people know as an approach to apologetics that focuses on exposing the conditions for belief and rationality, the importance of first principles and then why people must begin their system of thinking in God. So that's just a basic overview of the lives of Vantill and J. Adams. Good. So one of the, it seems like really important concepts for both of these figures and then for the later debates that come from it is the concept of general revelation. And I would be curious to understand how Vantill articulates something like general revelation, how Adams does that? Is he really in line with Vantill? Does he make some tweaks? And then obviously based on that, how does that then inform how people are talking about this concept and in the context that we have today? Yeah. That's good. I think before we get into the general revelation comment, I think it's important to make some observations about the nature of my work. I think that there are clear vantillian foundations in biblical counseling. So there are certain things that J. Adams got from Vantill that most people are not aware of that inform our approach. So things such as the covenantal nature of reality and knowledge, a presuppositional analysis, antithesis, things that if you know Vantill, but if you're not always looking for it, it can be easy to miss whenever you are reading engaging with J. Adams. So that's important. But then like any two thinkers, two people rarely agree all the way 100%. So this isn't academic work. It's kind of like a magnifying glass is trying to understand the difference between these two thinkers and also the influencer relationship. So thinking about general revelation, clearly both Vantill and Adams viewed scripture as reformed. theologians as the rule of faith in life as we think about God and how we relate to God, what we know about God in the world and the gospel. Scripture is very important, but even the category of general revelation has been debated by many throughout the history of the church, and even in the last century or so. So general revelation, just as an overview, is just the concept that Scripture teaches, that God reveals Himself to the man who the things that He has made. It's a classic text here, our Psalm 19, Romans chapter 1, "A born into the dutch reformed tradition, Vantel would have held to the Belgian confession article two. There are two books that God reveals Himself and also truth to us. We have the Book of Nature as well as the Book of Scripture." So Vantel holds to the classic reformed position that the Book of Nature does not just reveal truth about God, but that the truth of creation themselves are part of general revelation. So the facts that you and I observe all around us about the weather, even down to the sciences that we all engage with, all of them are only true because God holds everything together by His word. So God is the basis for all of the facts. This is where then you get into the whole, like, you know, pedantic debates, like, is an apple really an apple or is that God created apple? Well, that's just the idea that everything is what it is because it was created by God and that God holds everything together. And if you take that out, you are taking out something that is essential to understanding that correctly. So the facts of this world, the mystery, the beauty all around us, they all reveal to us the glory of God. Just ask some quotes then and Vantel's introduction to systematic theology. He writes that when we study physics, we do not usually think of the facts that we are dealing with as revelation. And then he continues elsewhere that any and every fact proves the existence of God and therefore the truth of Scripture. He actually has to have a point early within his introduction to systematic theology where he says that the Bible has much to say about the universe, but it is the business of science and philosophy to deal with general revelation. So general revelation plays a very important role within his system of apologetics. But at the same time, it's important for Vantel because it allows him to have home field advantage with any conversation with non-Christians. So your non-Christian wants to reject that God exists. This is kind of the basis of the trans-denial argument, also preceptitional apologetics. They want to reject that God exists, but they also want to maintain that there is meaning, that there is truth, there is morality within the world. But general revelation allows Vantel to walk into the philosopher's lounge, the scientist's lab, even the counseling room and tell the non-Christian the things that you believe are true are only true because God exists. So Vantel believes that general revelation and special revelation together, the Book of Nature and Book of Scripture, form one system of God's revelation to man, everything that God desires to man to know about God and how we ought to live as God's covenant creatures within his world. So the category of general revelation in Vantel assumes every fact of creation within a Christian theory of knowledge. He was not a Biblicalist in that way. So therefore our job as people and as covenant creatures is to go and study everything to put it into a system that reflects God's ultimate understanding of reality. Adams, though, did have a different approach to general revelation. Just by temperament, I think he had a heightened concern for theological compromise, and he saw the ways that many integrationists, those who would be more open to integrating secular psychology with the Biblical and theological truth. He was skeptical of how integrationists were appealing to general revelation and even the idea that all truth is God's truth to smuggle secular counseling ideas and interventions within into the church. So even though Adams did have very clear formed convictions, he does appear to close the Book of Nature as a Book of Council for Christians from God about how to live within the world. So Adams defines general revelation much narrower than Vantel. He divines it as non-savathic information about the existence of a good creator. So for Adams, it's not general revelation as the facts themselves, but how the facts, the reality of creation reveals that God exists. So Adams eventually falls into what we could describe than a strong one book approach to counseling. Everything that God intends for Christians to know, everything that is worthy of capital T truth is founding God's Word period. I think this also has significant ramifications for how Biblical counselors would articulate things such as this efficiency of Scripture. So thinking that about how this impacts Biblical counseling and where things go, the reform tradition has always recognized soloist cryptura that the Bible is our only rule of faith in life. It's efficient so that every person can know God, how to be saved, and the church can be equipped to make a mature disciples. That's clear. The scriptures alone are our ultimate authority for everything in the Christian life, but the reform tradition has also recognized other legitimate sources of knowledge for Christians. So you have things such as reason, tradition, philosophy, the sciences, and the reform tradition has upheld that these things can serve as handmaidens to Scripture and theology and helping us to discern God's will for counselies. But in thinking about where this view of general revelation leads today, there are many Biblical counselors who would follow Adams. That would argue that the Bible is not just our only authority, but our only source and authority. If you're currently renting a home and don't own one yet, I want to invite you to my next first time home buyer seminar. It's online, it's completely free, and it's designed to give you real tools for you, your family, and your future. Look, I constantly work with new clients that were never educated on what owning a home looks like, what it takes, and how to overcome obstacles like bad credit or no money for a down payment. There are tons of options and strategies. You just need someone who actually understands them and cares enough to help. And that's me. So if you don't yet own a home, you feel like it's impossibly out of reach or maybe it's right around the corner. I want you to sign up. It's completely free, and it's education you won't regret. I promise you, you'll find the resources in these 45 minutes. Well worth your time. So go ahead, sign up today. I'll drop a link in the show notes and you can go ahead and join me for my next class. Before counseling. And this position is very close to what people would say as like a new descriptor opposition. Because I hear it's a hard thing. If you don't use Jenna Revelation as your category for extra biblical information, you have a hard time knowing where do you put information outside the Bible within your counseling system. So those are just some some things for us to think about and have other examples as well that we can walk into. But yeah, I guess I mean, I've got a number of questions. One of them comes down to I guess the concept of sufficiency that seems to be a common watchword. And I'm wondering, how does the concept of the sufficiency of scripture play into how they are thinking about general revelation and articulating that? Is that something that Vantil deals with much? So a helpful article. It's in the infallible world word, which is a symposium put together by Westminster's faculty. It's one of these books that's out there, but not in Vantil's system or in his popular works. There, he has a chapter called nature and scripture. And Vantil does say that if he want to take the same categories that we apply to scripture, its perspicuities, efficiency, authority, we need to do the same for general revelation. And so general revelation itself has authority. It is sufficient. It's perspicuitous. Even if it's not for us as sinners who are engaging with it. So from that perspective, Vantil holds both general and special revelation very closely together. They're dependent upon one another. Now, of course, they have very different contents, one's grounded within creation. And after the fall, we do need special revelation as that greater light, as a word field would say, in order to read general revelation correctly. I think that'd be some of the concerns with like natural theology and natural law of kind of an approach to creation and let's not take scripture into account for giving us that understanding of reality. Also, you're going to go throughout the entire world and you're never going to find the truth that we have that are most essential for counseling, which are things such as the gospel. You're never going to find that within creation. So it's very clear in Vantil, that general revelation, special revelation are important. And even some biblical counselors who are engaging with this are starting to realize that that is a category we need to wrestle with. But it's tough. Another category is the antithesis between Christians and non-Christians and kind of that ethical hostility that's there. And that comes into that concern with how people are using general revelation because it would to use general revelation to justify non-Christians and their insights into a biblical system is in a way in a sense would be compromised that many of them would be concerned of because of this antithesis between a Christian and a non-Christian perspective. So that's why biblical counselors have been very skeptical of general revelation and also further, we do need to recognize that the antithesis has informed our view of sufficiency as well. Because the doctrinal sufficiency just says that God has given us everything in his scriptures for life and godliness to know him to live the Christian life. life, the church can fulfill to mission period. The moment that you do mention secular psychology, you are introducing an antithesis. So if you need secular psychology to fill out your definition of sufficiency, that is an antithesis informed understanding of sufficiency. I think we need to be aware of. Yeah, so you mentioned concept of antithesis. Catch that out for me a little bit more in depth, how vantils using that, how items is using that, and so on. Yeah. So the antithesis is a very important concept. It allows people to draw moral ethical lines across reality, and that's why it has been very strong because you basically can say like this is the line between the church and the world, the people of God, the kingdom of darkness. It also is a very strong Dutch reformed concept. So in the math or math of the French Revolution, which I don't think is as big in our minds as American, as it was within the European conscience, but after the French Revolution, many people suffer the first time where civilization really goes if you reject God and man lives according to their own principles. So many Dutch reformed and continental, theologians suffer the first time the antithesis between a Christian and non-Christian system. And so in one sense, an antithesis is just an idea that's set across from another in antithesis. But we know, biblically, that there are several dimensions to the antithesis. You have the reality that scripture clearly speaks up to people. Two groups, you have the offspring of the woman, the Serpent, you have the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of light, the church and the world, and that even we would see the antithesis and things such as Christianity and liberalism, that classic book by Machen, where he argues that liberalism is not just another form of Christianity, but it's something else entirely. But that's kind of the cosmic broader dimensions. The personal dimension is the reality that because of sin, the human heart is not just ambivalent towards God or neutral, that they actively hate God. They suppress the truth and righteousness. Those who are in the flesh cannot peace God, period, Romans 8. And so the antithesis does reveal this tension that Christians must recognize that when we're engaging with non-Christians, there's this hostility towards God within their hearts that sets their position on things off against what we would consider as Christians to be true. So Vantil applied the antithesis consistently within his approach and engage with non-Christians. So he followed the strong Dutch reformed impulse of having Christians develop their own science, their own education from consistently Christian principles, knowing that non-Christians and their systems would reflect man's hostility towards God. And then within his apologetic, he would be very skeptical of non-Christians who would claim that they are neutral. He basically calls their bluff. Vantil, every human being is either a covenant keeper in Christ or their covenant breaker. But as we've even talked about already, the antithesis is one of these concepts that has a very strong undercurrent within the system of biblical counseling, where this is why it's hard to take biblical counseling just as counsel that's offered from the Bible without understanding some of the deeper things that are informing how biblical counselors have engaged with these topics. So you probably can tell the antithesis is one of the main ways that biblical counseling is distinct in how we would conceptualize the relationship between Christianity and secular psychology, where other approaches would see some level of cooperation between Christians and non-Christians within counseling, psychology, and psychiatry. There is a very strong antithesis between the counsel and scripture and the counsel that non-Christians would offer. But then going further, where things get interesting is how absolute is the antithesis really between Christians and non-Christians? So going into Vantil, but further, Vantil would say that there is an absolute ethical antithesis against God. The natural man hates God, period. This is total depravy. There's not a part of us that is like slightly depraved. We're entirely depraved. Every aspect we're being is corrupted by sin, and there's a hostility against God. And yet, we know from life and also scripture that reality within this world is quite complex. And for Vantil, he would stress the fullness of the antithesis, but then later recognize that there are other ethical influences, moral influences upon non-Christians. So he would argue that the absolute antithesis is only operating in principle because non-Christians still have the image of God in them. There's the effects of common grace and restrain the antithesis. So even though, like we've told depravity, we know that not every non-Christian is a Hitler, that our hostility towards God is not as bad as it could be. This leads to something of a complex situation, then. Because for Vantil and Romans 214 through 15, and the Bible is teaching that the laws were written upon the heart, these are things are important for apologetics. Because the non-Christian actually knows that God exists. And what the Bible teaches about morality is true, even if they want to suppress the truth and righteousness. So where things get complex is then how absolute really is the antithesis in practice, especially as we're thinking about non-Christians and they're counseling. I think Vantil would argue it's impossible for non-Christians to always be consistent in their suppression of the truth. They're made in God's image. They have common grace. And therefore, there are things that, you know, not ultimate, not good works as the Reform tradition would understand it. But there are things that we would consider as consistent with Scripture and the system of truth there because the moral law of God has been written upon their hearts. A very clear example to skip practical with this is just within communication and conflict. How many non-Christians have essentially applied the teaching that you ought to view and treat others as yourself? That's something that we know is deeper because of how God created us in terms of how we ought to relate to one another. So non-Christians do not fully understand the law. They don't have the gospel. They clearly are many ways we look all around us that secular psychology has many expressions of ends rebellion, objection against God. But I think it's impossible to conclude that non-Christians who are made in God's image and live in God's world would have a system that's entirely antithetical to the council we have in the Bible. So that's really the rub. Adams seems to put forward a very strict antithesis between the Bible and the world. Banto would affirm that the antithesis is absolute. And this is where some of the nuance comes in, but you need to recognize kind of the complicated situation that not only just non-Christians, but Christians find themselves in as well. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it when you're describing this, it makes me think of questions of like it's taken virtue possible. And a lot of the questions that come through a lot of those streams. And for better or for worse, Adams, I mean, the way that I've seen him, I almost see him kind of as a Luther personality, right? And it seems like he's just really kind of over the top and says some things. And I've wondered, is there a sense in which he's just kind of a flamboyant personality? And if I went and had dinner with him, it would be much different experience. That's a very interesting question. I will say, even Adams is personal decisions to remove himself really toward the end of his life in the broader conversation. I think we'll find something of him. He really was writing in the style originally of like your 1970s leader, right? He kind of has that old style kind of like if you put on Billy Graham and he may sound weird, there's kind of some of that in some of his writings. And I think here's the rub that's hard. People who know Adams would say that he's an absolute teddy bear. And like he really is a pastor's pastor. And so that's where some of the engagement can be difficult because people can take things way personally because like he's a very dear friend of them. So in thinking just about Adams and kind of who he was in some of these things, he was very clear that he was setting a trajectory. He would say, I would have there's possibility that there's planks within my system that are rotten. I'm just he's the guy in the brush with the machete trying to clear a pathway forward. And really without who without him, Biblical counseling and the movement would not have started just because you kind of needed that Martin Luther life figure to go forward. But even back to the point that you brought up, it is interesting. The theological world. And I think why I appreciate the one and I see him. It's quite complex. And the complexity has only grown because of the retrieval. It within the last 30 years, especially with like the reforms, galastics. I think there are certain things from Vantil that we do need to keep to keep Biblical counseling if it's going to be a discipline together, particularly the relationship between systems, counseling methods. There are some things that if non-Christians and their systems, if how non-Christians approach problems and what they do are not connected to their systems and how they're approaching God, how they're thinking through things, we can just take them out without some radical reinterpretation Biblically. I don't know how we can avoid a conclusion that isn't just like a Christian integration. If you wanted to maintain things out of there, at the same time to your point, and personally engaging with the broader form tradition, and virtue, it's not an ultimate category of natural virtue, but it's something that the reform tradition does recognize. As like how do we, as biblical counselors, like recognize the awareness within the reform tradition that there's a sense that non-Christians and Christians overlap within the natural rums of life in the family within the workplace. And there is an element of the natural virtues that the reformers would have seen, of diligence, of temperance in that way. And so even if non-Christians are not gonna have the gospel, are there ways in which they can help us to understand reality and life within this world? I think that's something the reform tradition would have us to wrestle with. - So in your perspective, where we're at today with a lot of, just let's say, anybody who wants to claim the label of biblical counselor for what they do, is it, are they operating unaware of Adams and Vantill or just Adams or just Vantill? And would it be useful for them to say, let's engage some of these resources so I can better have a framework to understand and self-identify where I sort of fit and think about the practice of biblical counseling? - Well, yes, you should all engage with it because you should buy my book and read it. (laughing) It's tough, this goes back to another issue that I'm not sure we've engaged with. Biblical counseling has grown exponentially within the last several decades. I mean, right now you have everyone from dutch reform to Calvary Chapel, charismatic, non-denominational. And so you have people, several generations or moved from, J. Adams, a lot of people don't even read Adams in their training anymore. They don't read, much palestin. Some, they may know a Paul Trip book here or there, but you have different generations of people who are being trained that are disconnected from it. I think that's why I do appreciate the concern of like, hey, is there something here that is gonna unite us within some of the conservative voices saying like, hey, we have to figure out like, what is this practice? I do think Biblical counseling has a good chance of transitioning from a unified set of beliefs about counseling to we're all doing similar things within the local church. So all of us are committed to one another, discipleship, pastoral care, counseling stuff. So not as much belief defined, but more like practice defined. But I do think that there are always going to be some of these Vantillian and J. Adams impulses, specifically with like, general revelation and even relationship between systems and methods. There are certain things that if you are confused about why debates are happening certain ways or why Biblical counseling seems to use a different type of language, then you would find in other disciplines in your theology, things like that. I do think it's important to understand. So hopefully the book can kind of give people a window where I'm not trying to solve all the debates for everyone. But if you want to go out there and say like, hey, why are there intuitions that I don't fully understand? That's why this conversation can be helpful. - Yeah, no, that's right. And that's what I found helpful is to think through like frameworks for how to think why people think this way and to give language to some of those intuitions like you mentioned. I mean, I came away, I think reading the book and in greater appreciation of Vantill, but also in greater confusion of Vantilla points of like, this just doesn't make sense to me. I have no idea why he's thinking this. But it allowed me to have a better picture for him, for Adams, and then for all the continued debates and thinking through maybe there are better questions to ask that can help advance the discussion beyond where we're at. 'Cause it does seem right now in our moment, there's definitely a lot more scrimishes than there are victories in moving the ball forward for everybody as far as the discussion goes. Would you agree with that? - No, I think I would agree with that. I think like with any type of movement, it's not just ideas, it's people, it's institutions. I would like us to get to a point where we are no longer the last people who are having the debates we're having, like things online, conflict. It's tough for the counselors to be the one who seems like they're always fighting. But I do understand kind of why it is the way it is because the movement has grown so quickly. Almost our growth has been both a positive as well as a negative. On the ground, biblical counseling is as broad as ever been. More people are getting counseling, more people are getting trained, more people are receiving help. I think decisions that the leaders are going to make within the next several years are going to determine how much of this is a unified movement or because of certain postures, certain leaders. I mean, even just the willingness to put the hand across the aisle, is this going to be something that is a unified movement where there is resourcing or you're going to see things are to splinter out into little silos, which Lord will do what He will do with the biblical counseling. We trust that at the end of the day, I would glorify God, but it's in His hands to see how law of this unfolds. - Yeah, have there been these sort of questions and debates ever since sort of the modern discipline of psychiatry came along? I mean, were people thinking about these questions? - Which questions in particular? - I mean, I don't like a lot of just the idea of are we competent to counsel as pastors? Do we need to have a sort of actual prefer somebody to these counseling movements or groups? 'Cause I mean, for me, just transparently, sometimes when I think back, did people actually get counsel prior to the last 50 years? Was there this job for this counselor that existed? And if so, what does that look like? And how should that shape our thinking about our current discussions? - Now you're hitting more historical questions. I'm shooting from the hip here, but I'll try to put some things together. We do need to recognize there is something very American and Western about counseling itself. So if you go internationally, a lot of people struggle with counseling because there's this individualistic, I have my own problems that it doesn't transfer into more communal cultures. So in terms of counseling, people have been offering counsel to one another all the time, right, throughout. But it's more communal in nature or not. I'm gonna sit with this professional who I'm gonna bear my soul towards in this type of way. It does fit kind of the modern ethos. If you go back through church history, there have always been categories of wise men of pastors. You hear about the past, the Puritan's talking about finding a wise person to bear your soul out towards. The complexity though kind of comes into several things. How did the reform tradition understand philosophy and the relationship between philosophy and psychology? Because before the 1800s, psychology would have been succumbed under philosophy. So faculty psychology, I mean, everyone, the mind, debate between Aristotle and Plato on the soul, that is a kind of pre-modern psychology that's a handmade and for understanding reality. You also have the pre-modern understandings of madness, Galen, there's a medical psychology that's quite complicated and that has a stream that Americans kind of abandoned with atoms in like the 1960s and '70s because of abuses. But there are questions about, okay, if I'm counseling someone, what do I do with the more complicated cases, right? There's a lot of times where counselors will settle in with kind of like the worried, well-middle class person, but the person on the street with like the schizophrenia or like the out of control behavior. There's a little we can do in terms of counseling there. So I think the church has always wrestled with these things. You have different approaches, right? For some people, it's just we're gonna provide care for these individuals. But there has always been this level of pastoral care. I think even within America too, there's a tension in biblical counseling right now because we wanna say that everyone's competent to counsel. But yet, some people are moving very much into the pair of church space, which I understand. But how does the movement navigate your local church member as a competent counselor or a pair of church counselor within a counseling center or a virtual counseling ministry? And they're kind of doing the same thing, but there's also different levels of expectations and care. So there are ways in which our growing pains have raised questions, especially even like the academic, like the whole counseling having PhDs is quite new. So there are growing pains with all of this. But it'll be interesting to see how the Lord will bring all these together. - Yeah, I'm very interested and I'm sure professionalization and specialization and all those sort of things have a hand in making the debates complex. But I appreciate people who are trying to do the sort of historical work to help move the discussion forward so we can have more fruitful conversations and think through stuff. So Jared, I mean, for somebody who picks up the book for the first time, what's the one takeaway you hope that they walk away with? - So if you read my book, you're going to hear some history, you're going to hear some philosophy, you're going to hear counseling debates. But there is one thing that I think holds Vantil and Adams together for the differences. And I think that this is kind of the heart of biblical counseling. Like this is biblical counseling at its best. Because of Vantil, one truth I think is true. That counseling is not possible without God. So if you kind of take a non-Christian counselor and at face of values. someone who rejects God. The logical conclusion of their position is you have one person standing on thin air, right, in mid-air, kind of suspended there, talking to someone else about how they ought to live their lives. Have how to have purpose, direction, hope, within what they would consider as a dying universe. So if the pre-supositional argument falls something like knowledge there for God, we could say counseling there for God. So our triune God is the one who makes all counseling possible. The earth is his. God knows us. God cares for us. He's given us his word so that we can know him and see everything in all of life from his perspective. I think this is where a vantillin atoms and palace can get very practical for me because of the fact that God exists. The we know that no matter what you are facing, the people you're caring for are facing, the people in your church, people in your counseling practice, no matter what's going on that God is with them in their problems. They have the saying that God is man's environment. And so the beauty of what vantillin atoms put forward is this very big view of God for life that the problems that we face have to do with God are hard dynamics have to do with God. Our thoughts, our fears, our burdens, our pains. They have to do with God. And God has counsel for us in his word about it. And so through the ministry of the word, God desires to transform people from the inside out. And regardless of where you land on vantillin atoms or, you know, the integration, reciprocal counseling debates, there is one council, one form of council that we can only find from God's word that transforms people from the inside out. And that is the gospel. And that's our hope. Excellent. Well, this has been a pleasure and a delight. So for those who have listened, whether you agree or disagree, join the conversation and to go get a copy of Jared's book, share it with other people, read it with other people, and have some good, healthy, strong discussion, spirited discussion so that we can continue to have a hopefully more unified approach to some of these things. But even if not, that, you know, sometimes that can be healthy in a minute of its own way. So I appreciate everybody listening and tuning in to the only analytic Baptist and Confessional podcast on the planet. And we'll talk to you guys soon.