A Word from Bob
There is much discussion these days in the modern biblical counseling world concerning how the Reformed doctrine of common grace relates to the biblical counselor’s attitude toward, the use or non-use of, the engagement with, and the evaluation of non-Christian resources. We’ve been looking to Reformed theologians for insights into this vital issue.
Many biblical counselors are also quoting David Powlison to support their views. Because Powlison was a nuanced thinker, it is possible to quote him seemingly siding with those arguing for a very limited use of common grace resources, or to quote him seemingly siding with those arguing for a very engaged use of common grace resources. Elsewhere, I’ve cautioned us to be careful lest we misuse and disrespect the life and ministry of David Powlison. You can read that caution here: Cherry-Picking David Powlison.
Nate Brooks shares a similar caution in his article, What Did David Powlison Teach About Scripture and Psychology? Under the header of “(Mis)Quoting Powlison,” Brooks writes:
“We all, as biblical counselors, are stewards of the literary contributions of David Powlison to our discipline. He was wise, measured, and nuanced. And like all nuanced writers, his work can be easily partially quoted in such a way as to make him appear to deny or to support positions that he himself would not recognize.
By leaning into only his critiques of secular psychology, Powlison can be made to seem quite hostile to secular theories. After all, secular psychology is ‘a major enemy of the church” that is “a self-conscious, self-proclaimed competitor” to authentic faith practiced by “secular priest-pastors, shepherding the human soul… administering the institutions of the cure of souls, administering the mental health centers, the counseling offices, and the psychiatric hospitals’ (“Modern Therapies and the Church’s Faith,” Journal of Biblical Counseling 15.1 (1996): 32-41, 33). While such a quotation accurately captures Powlison’s words, it terribly misrepresents his actual belief system.
Likewise, it’s not difficult to make Powlison a proponent of what he would deny, as he affirms that ‘[t]he operations of God’s common grace can cause unbelievers to be relatively observant, caring, stimulating, and informative’ (“Affirmations and Denials: A Proposed Definition of Biblical Counseling,” Journal of Biblical Counseling 19.1 (2000): 21). Secular theories ‘embody helpful skills in knowing, in loving, and in speaking,’ meaning that when wise biblical counselors ‘…encounter psychological information,’ we should say, ‘I’m listening, so tell me anything and everything you know about everybody and anybody’ (“How Does Scripture Teach Us to Redeem Psychology?” Journal of Biblical Counseling 26.3 (2012), 19). Selectively quoting this side of Powlison’s thought makes him seem like an integrationist, seeing the therapies themselves as curing humanity’s greatest problems.”
In this post, I will provide you with a collation of many of David Powlison’s first-hand quotes about common grace, and about the biblical counselor’s relationship to extra-biblical resources. Please consider this post an introduction to Powlison on biblical counseling and common grace, as I hope to further expand my research and writing on Powlison on this issue.
As I’ve read Powlison on biblical counseling and common grace, it’s become increasingly apparent what a robust thinker, avid reader, and eclectic researcher he was. David Powlison was not afraid to read and think “outside the biblical counseling box.’ Because of that, as you trace his writings, it is easy to see development in his thinking on how biblical counselors engage with extra-biblical resources. In order to convey something of this development over time, under each heading, I’ll be providing these quotes in chronological order—and perhaps you’ll sense something of Powlison’s developmental thinking…
David Powlison on Common Grace and Biblical Counseling
In Powlison’s Affirmations & Denials (2000), in several places he develops the role of common grace in biblical counseling. Powlison specifically addresses this issue under his header of “God’s providence and the interplay between His common grace and the intellectual-practical effects of sin.”
“We affirm that numerous disciplines and professions can contribute to an increase in our knowledge of people and how to help them. Scripture teaches a standpoint and gaze by which believers can learn many things from those who do not believe.”
Powlison here confirms that unbelievers can make a positive contribution to what counseling is all about—“our knowledge of people and how to help them.” He also teaches what Calvin taught—that Scripture provides the “spectacles” (Calvin), or lens, or “standpoint and gaze” (Powlison) so believers can learn many things from unbelievers. Powlison is quick to explain what non-Christian systems can’t do.
“We deny that any of these disciplines and professions can align and constitute a system of faith and practice for wise counseling.”
Scripture is all-sufficient to build our theology of people (anthropology), problems (hamartiology), and solutions (soteriology); it is all-sufficient to provide the lens by which we engage and evaluate any and all common grace insights from non-Christians. For Powlison, common grace does not build our model of counseling; common grace can contribute to our understanding of people and people-helping—assessed by Scripture.
Powlison makes the same balanced points in his subsequent affirmation and denial statement about common grace.
“We deny that secular disciplines and professions are entirely benighted by the intellectual, moral, and aesthetic effects of sin. The operations of God’s common grace can cause unbelievers to be relatively observant, caring, stimulating, and informative. We affirm that the personality theories are essentially false theologies, and the psychotherapies are essentially false forms of the cure of souls. Even the more descriptive and empirical psychologies are significantly skewed by secular presuppositions, and their findings need to be reinterpreted by the biblical worldview.”
The Bible provides the authoritative interpretive lens by which we reinterpret common grace contributions of unbelievers. We build our personality theory from Scripture; we use Scripture to engage with and evaluate secular personality theories.
In his first category of affirmations and denials, Powlison also emphasizes the Bible’s authoritative role for theory-building, alongside the scriptural reality of common grace resources related to understanding people and their problems.
“We affirm that the Bible, as the revelation of Jesus Christ’s redemptive activity, intends to specifically guide and inform counseling ministry. We deny that the Bible intends to serve as an encyclopedia of proof texts containing all facts about people and the diversity of problems in living.”
In 2010, Powlison was a contributing developer to the Biblical Counseling Coalition’s Confessional Statement. On common grace and biblical counseling, Powlison and other biblical counseling leaders wrote:
“When we say that Scripture is comprehensive in wisdom, we mean that the Bible makes sense of all things, not that it contains all the information people could ever know about all topics. God’s common grace brings many good things to human life…. We affirm that numerous sources (such as scientific research, organized observations about human behavior, those we counsel, reflection on our own life experience, literature, film, and history) can contribute to our knowledge of people, and many sources can contribute some relief for the troubles of life.”
As part of this common grace approach to biblical counseling, David Powlison affirmed the importance of a variety of areas and avenues that biblical counselors follow.
“We recognize the complexity of the relationship between the body and soul (Genesis 2:7). Because of this, we seek to remain sensitive to physical factors and organic issues that affect people’s lives. In our desire to help people comprehensively, we seek to apply God’s Word to people’s lives amid bodily strengths and weaknesses. We encourage a thorough assessment and sound treatment for any suspected physical problems.
“We recognize the complexity of the connection between people and their social environment. Thus we seek to remain sensitive to the impact of suffering and of the great variety of significant social-cultural factors (1 Peter 3:8-22). In our desire to help people comprehensively, we seek to apply God’s Word to people’s lives amid both positive and negative social experiences. We encourage people to seek appropriate practical aid when their problems have a component that involves education, work life, finances, legal matters, criminality (either as a victim or a perpetrator), and other social matters.”
Powlison and others encouraged biblical counselors to learn from secular psychology and from Christian integrative counselors.
“We seek to engage the broad spectrum of counseling models and approaches. We want to affirm what is biblical and wise. We want to listen well to those who disagree with us, and learn from their critiques.”
In a 2012 article (How Does Scripture Teach Us to Redeem Psychology?), Powlison had much to say about the value of secular psychology. Biblical counselors, according to Powlison, must start by looking for the good in secular psychology. To do otherwise equals “sectarian contentiousness.” Here’s Powlison in his own words:
“Look for the good. To make true sense of the psychologies, our critical thinking must intentionally look for the good. This has to be underlined.
Sectarian contentiousness only sees the bad, and does not produce redemption. But as in all the other mixed cases needing redemption, there is good in Psychology:
- Secular researchers and clinicians know reams of significant facts about people and problems, about strengths and weaknesses. (We may not have noticed or known some or many of those facts. In encountering psychological information, I’m listening, so tell me anything and everything you know about everybody and anybody.)
- Secular theories seek to answer crucial questions and address hard problems. (We may not have thought to ask those questions or address those problems. I want to take to heart hard questions that need answering.)
- Secular therapies often embody helpful skills in knowing, in loving, and in speakingso as to catch the ear of strugglers. (We may be relatively clumsy. O skillful God, make me more probing. Make me more patient and kind. Make me more able to speak constructive words, according to the need of the moment, that I might give grace to those who hear.)” (18).
“We gain much and lose nothing by being appropriately attentive to and appreciative of their strengths” (19). “Secular therapists describe troubled people so vividly! Their desire to help is so palpable!” (19). “We gain a point of contact with non-Christian psychologists when we wed something true and clear to the very things they know, care about, pursue, and do” (20).
Clearly, Powlison insists that biblical counselors should be secular psychology-aware, secular psychology-informed. Clearly he suggests numerous categories and areas where secular psychology can make contributions to biblical counseling.
In a 2018 article, Powlison had even more to say about the benefits of common grace insights for biblical counseling.
“But it is a true common grace that secular theories and practices always retain an instinct for the first word in that definition of human flourishing: love. Like most thoughtful people and most religions, they value human kindness and certain other aspects of person-to-person goodness. They witness and grieve the pain and misery caused by bad behavior, bad feelings, bad thoughts, and bad experiences. They know that caring for others is better than narcissism, arrogance, manipulation, revenge, and self-righteousness. To be cherished is far better than to be despised. Hope is far better than despair. Safety is far better than danger. Sanity and realism are far better than paranoia and delusion. Treating others well and being treated well is far better than all forms of using, misusing, mistreating, abusing, and betraying. A constructively purposeful life is far better than a pointlessly self-destructive lifestyle. To be part of the solution is far better than being part of the problem. And so forth!”
Powlison on the Usefulness of Secular Psychology
In a 1993 article, Powlison noted how Jay Adams saw the value of secular psychology.
“This is not to say that biblical counselors should ignore or dismiss the various secular psychologies. For example, see Jay Adams’s What About Nouthetic Counseling? (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), page 31: Question: ‘Don’t you think that we can learn something from psychologists?’ Answer: ‘Yes, we can learn a lot; I certainly have. That answer surprised you, didn’t it? If it did, you have been led to believe, no doubt, that nouthetic counselors are obscurantists who see no good in psychology’” (24).
“Every wise biblical counselor engages in lifelong empirical researches, informally if not formally. In this process psychologists, sociologists, historians, counselees, the non-Christians who live next door, USA Today and Agatha Christie may contribute to our grasp of the styles and how they develop. Often in counseling or reading—and even in our own repentance!” (21).
“Biblical counselors who fail to think through carefully the nature of biblical epistemology run the danger of acting as if Scripture were exhaustive, rather than comprehensive; as if Scripture were an encyclopedic catalogue of all significant facts, rather than God’s revelation of the crucial facts, richly illustrated, that yield a world view sufficient to interpret whatever other facts we encounter; as if Scripture were the whole bag of marbles rather than the eyeglasses through which we interpret all marbles; as if our current grasp of Scripture and people were triumphant and final” (32).
It’s safe to say that neither Adams nor Powlison were fascinated by secular psychology or frustrated with Scripture. It’s also safe to say that Adams and Powlison were secular psychology-informed. It’s safe to say that Powlison wanted biblical counselors to be research-aware, research-informed. It’s safe to say that historically biblical counselors did not avoid secular psychology, but that psychologists and non-Christians can make contributions to the thinking of biblical counselors.
Powlison (and Adams and Bettler) on the Use of Secular Psychology
In a 1988 article, Crucial Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling, Powlison boldly lays out his concern at the very beginning of his article. “Counseling in the Christian church continues to be compromised significantly by the secular assumptions and practices of our culture’s reigning psychologies and psychiatries” (53-54). However, by the end of his article, he develops the crucial need for contemporary biblical counselors to “appreciate” secular psychology.
“Perhaps it seems a paradox, but the final crucial issue for contemporary biblical counseling is the need to define more clearly the nuances in our relationship to secular thinking. The relationship of presuppositional consistent Christianity to secular culture is not simply one of rejection. Half of what biblical presuppositions give us is a way to discern the lie that tries to make people think about themselves as autonomous from God. But the other half of what biblical categories do is give us a way of appreciating, redeeming, and reframing the culture of even the most godless men and women” (5).
Almost four decades ago, Powlison urged biblical counselors to understand God’s common grace, to understand the noetic effect of sin, and to use the Bible as our spectacles or lens for engaging with and evaluating extra-biblical resources.
In a 1993 article, 25 Years of Biblical Counseling: An Interview with Jay Adams and John Bettler Conducted by David Powlison, Powlison outlines six words describing what modern nouthetic biblical counseling does with secular psychology (you can read my summary here). According to Adams, the goal of the discussion was:
“To produce a word that adequately and accurately expresses what a biblical Christian does with secular knowledge.”
They use six “R” words. Note that none of these “R” words are “Reject.” Instead, Adams, Bettler, and Powlison explain that biblical counselors should recycle secular knowledge, reinterpret secular knowledge, reshape secular knowledge, reconcile secular knowledge, redeem secular knowledge, and recast secular knowledge. Bettler suggests that biblical counselors recycle error (in light of the truth). Sounds a bit like “integrating.”
In a 1996 article, Powlison illustrates reinterpreting secular psychological theory using Adler as a specific example.
“Take as an example Alfred Adler’s Understanding Human Nature. He has a seventy-page section that is one of the finest descriptions of total depravity I’ve ever read. What’s interesting is that Alfred Adler doesn’t believe in total depravity; he doesn’t believe in sin. But he dissects things right down to why people pick their noses. He gets into the dirt of life and looks at the tricks and the chaos and the self-centeredness. He cares to help. But here’s where we see the distorting, pervasive effects of sin. Adler’s observations don’t just hang in space as good ideas that a Christian can bring unaltered into a Christian framework. What Adler or anyone else describes and cares about is controlled by a grid, a framework of presuppositions. That has an effect even on Adler’s “data” in three ways” (38).
Here we see Powlison both affirming insights from Adler (“a seventy-page section that is one of the finest descriptions of total depravity I’ve ever read”) and assessing those same insights theologically (“but here’s where we see the distorting, pervasive effects of sin”). Throughout his article, Powlison illustrates “the reinterpretive task” by which “Christians can engage our culture’s belief systems” (39).
Powlison (And Adams) on Being Psychology-Informed
In 2007, David Powlison wrote one of his most influential articles: “Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psychotherapies).” This is a detailed, thirty-five page article that could easily be a booklet if not a small book. In this article, as the title suggests, Powlison specifically addresses how biblical counselors view, use, and engage with secular psychology theory and practice. Powlison also contrasts how Christian integrative counselors and biblical counselors see the relationship of the Bible to extra-biblical resources.
It is in this article that Powlison introduces his acronyms “COMPIN” and “VITEX.” COMPIN is Powlison’s summary of the biblical counseling position on secular psychology which states that,
“The Christian faith contains COMPrehensive INternal resources to enable us to construct a Christian model of personality, change, and counseling” (11).
The other model—the Christian integrative counseling model—is “VITEX,” which:
“Believes that secular psychologies must make a VITal EXternal contribution in the construction of a Christian model of personality, change, and counseling” (11).
In an article about how Christianity provides comprehensive resources for building a biblical counseling model of people, problems, and solutions, it may be surprising to read how Powlison describes the biblical counselor’s view and use of extra-biblical information. One might assume that since biblical counselors do not believe secular psychology makes a vital contribution to building a counseling model, that therefore secular psychology makes little contribution. However, this is not Powlison’s position at all.
Put in the language of 2024, Powlison is saying that biblical counselors are sufficiency-centered and psychology-informed. That is quite the claim. Let’s see how Powlison develops his theology of the Christian use of non-Christian resources.
Insisting that biblical counselors “believe that the Bible fiercely resists syncretism” (8), Powlison adds:
“But they [biblical counselors] still claim that something can be learned from the psychologies: wrong does not mean stupid; error must borrow elements of truth to be plausible; God often allows observant and persuasive error to expose lacunae, crudities, and distortions in His own children’s thinking and practice. That Scripture is ‘sufficient’ to transform us never means that the Bible is ‘exhaustive’” (8).
So, what should biblical counselors do with such secular information? Study it!
“There is solid theological rationale for viewing secular disciplines as fit subjects for hard study. The stuff of psychology does not necessarily wholly overlap the Bible” (9).
Powlison, as always, is careful and nuanced. Biblical counselors do not build their model on secular psychology, however, they are secular psychology-informed:
“While the modern psychologies will stimulate and inform, they do not play a constitutive role in building a robust model” (11).
“But as honest observers and thinkers, COMPIN advocates want to gain what knowledge they can, both theoretical and applied, from the social sciences and other fields” (13).
“Theoretical and applied”—that is, theology and methodology. Powlison asserts that biblical counselors want to gain knowledge about the theory and methods of counseling from the social sciences—from modern psychotherapies.
Speaking of COMPIN biblical counselors and of VITEX Christian integrative counselors, Powlison explains,
“Both sides say we can learn something from psychology; both sides say the Bible gets final say” (13).
In Powlison’s eyes, biblical counselors learn from secular psychology and use biblical eyes to assess what they learn.
In the Cure of Souls, Powlison discusses tiered priorities, with the first priority being building our counseling model from Scripture, the second priority being biblically assessing non-biblical models, and:
“Our third priority must be to learn what we can from defective models. We will always be stimulated, challenged, and informed by those with whom we disagree and whom we aim to convert. Articulating our own model (1st) and critiquing other models (2nd) frees us to learn from others without being counter-converted or becoming syncretistic. Such learning also enables us to enter the frame of reference of those we hope to persuade” (14).
Thus, according to Powlison, biblical counselors are sufficiency-of-Scripture-centered, while being psychology-informed.
But what about specifics? In Powlison’s theology, what can biblical counselors learn from non-believers?
“The third priority: learning what we can from other models. We can learn from everything around us. Saying that God Himself ‘learns’ from ancient Near Eastern societies is inaccurate. But there is no doubt that God’s prophets and apostles learn from everything around them. God adapts His message to time, place, language, culture, and people. The Bible freely co-opts surrounding cultures as one aspect of God’s redemptive, transformative working. God’s servants work with what is around them linguistically, politically, religiously, economically, artistically, educationally, agriculturally, militarily. Committed to knowing the truth and critiquing error, they then appropriate lots of things. Redemption works with what is at hand, the “human documents,” both individual and social, and the cultural products” (15).
“From the standpoint of fundamental model building, such learning plays a distinctly tertiary role. But this third priority is not unimportant. Because we ourselves are both limited by finitude and tainted by sin, God often uses “perceptive error” to reprove His people. It’s part of how He makes us work to refine our understanding and application of His truth. Others may be seeing things we aren’t seeing, doing things we aren’t doing, asking questions we aren’t asking. God’s redemptive revelation is constitutive, but even counterbiblical theories may be provocative. And extra-biblical knowledge—of ourselves and our world—is always the grist with which biblical truth works continually to extend the range and depth of understanding. We learn, critique, reinterpret, convert, apply. We are able to traffic in the extra-biblical constructively when we know what we ought to know that reorients and controls our gaze (the first and second priorities)” (15).
“This is God’s world, so everything, even if it intends to efface God, bears witness to God—understood and reinterpreted through biblical eyeglasses. The Bible freely traffics in the extrabiblical, in the creation, in fallen cultural products, in the terminology of the very contemporary falsehoods that God is attacking. But God always interprets or reinterprets. He is imperial. Biblical truth is a corrective gaze” (15).
This is classic Powlison:
Eyes open to God’s world; eyes focused with the corrective lens of God’s Word.
Powlison explains how the Bible itself models how to engage with extra-biblical sources.
“The Bible never fears secular education. Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22); God gave Daniel and his friends knowledge and intelligence in every branch of Chaldean literature and wisdom (Dan. 1:17); Paul was a man of great learning (Acts 22:3, 26:24). But Moses, Daniel, and Paul interpreted life through God’s redemptive grid. Paul could quote with favor an “anthropologist” who studied life in Crete (Titus 1:12), and he could weave the words of Greek literati into his argument in Athens (Acts 17:28). Where the living, speaking, seeing, acting God rules, His servants move freely into the culture of their time and place. The Bible gives no warrant for Christians to be intellectual isolationists, to be biblicistic, cut off from culture, speaking a private language to our own kind” (15).
Powlison does not give short shrift to this, instead, he gives frequent attention to the biblical counselor’s engagement with extra-biblical models.
“Third, we will develop our model through interacting with contemporary models. Their successes can certainly reprove us, and help us see more clearly places where we are inept and ignorant—as long as we do not counter-convert. Their observations of what makes human life go and not go can inform us—if we radically reinterpret them from within our world view. At every point, the first priority must be first, the second second, the third third” (16).
There it is again and again and again:
Engaged with the world; enlightened by God’s Word.
In Powlison’s theology, as long as we keep the first thing first—the authority/sufficiency of Scripture—then we can engage extra-biblical sources wisely.
“First, the necessity of reordering our priorities does not mean that it is wrong to closely study psychological, relational, and counseling processes. Exactly the opposite. Psychological study that submits itself to God’s truth becomes part of the joyous outworking of the church’s first priority. When we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, we enter into a vast practical-theological task, not a concordance search for the proof-text for every problem. Adopting a frankly biblical worldview, we should get about the business of hard, fruitful study, in subordination to the mind of Christ” (16).
Notice that Powlison does not say, “a cursory study of psychology.” He says “closely study” modern psychotherapy theory and methodology. Sufficiency of Scripture, rather than shutting our eyes to the world, opens our eyes to engage and evaluate the world through the Word.
Instead of the sufficiency of Scripture secluding us from secular psychology, it motivates us to be psychology-informed.
“Careful ‘psychological’ study is one direct implication of the sufficiency of Scripture and of getting our first priority straight” (17).
We tend to think that the implication of sufficiency is avoiding being psychology-informed. Powlison claims the opposite. A “direct implication of the sufficiency of Scripture” is being psychology-informed—“careful ‘psychological’ study.”
Is Powlison deviating from classic Jay Adams nouthetic counseling? Powlison does not believe so.
“Adams’s formal epistemology is a rather typically reformed transformationist position toward the observations and ideas of secular disciplines. He denied their necessity for constructing a systematic pastoral theology, but affirmed their potential usefulness when appropriated through Christian eyes. Epistemologically, Adams is a radical Christianizer of secularity, not a biblicistic xenophobe. He is no triumphalist, believing that Christian faith has already arrived at the sum of all wisdom, but believes that secular disciplines can both challenge and inform us” (30).
According to Powlison, Jay Adams was secular-psychology-informed while being sufficiency-of-Scripture-centered.
In a footnote, Powlison adds this about Adams:
“Adams’s transformationist attitude towards culture is most apparent in his attitudes towards medicine. He is less interested in and more suspicious of the social sciences, but never denies that things can be learned from anyone and everywhere. In The Christian Counselor’s Manual (p. 80), he even cited a swami favorably! Adams’s willingness to appropriate and rework insights from secular theorists is most evident in his discussions of moralistic therapies (e.g., Mowrer and Glasser) and existentialists (e.g., Frankl). No doubt, if Aaron Beck’s cognitive-behavioral therapy had been prominent in the early 1970s when Adams wrote in this vein, Beck would have come in for treatment similar to what was extended to the moralists and existentialists. Adams rarely demonstrated the same sort of carefully critical appreciation when discussing psychodynamic and humanistic psychologists, which in my view is a weakness in how he applied what he believed. The playing field is level, and none of the secular psychologies are either uniquely privileged or uniquely hobbled in comparison to each other” (footnote 3, page 35).
Adams learned from a swami! He appropriated insights from secular therapists—especially the behavioralists like Mowrer and Glasser. And notice what Powlison is saying. He would have gone further than Adams by studying and being informed by psychodynamic and humanistic psychologists.
In another footnote, Powlison argues against those who say that Adams was opposed to learning from psychology.
“Roger Hurding’s The Tree of Healing (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1985) is an exception to the ritual charge that Adams is against ‘psychology’. He recognized Adams’s principial willingness to learn from and interact with secular psychological knowledge and theory, but accurately observed that this was not a “developed argument” in Adams’s overall writing and practice (285)” (footnote 2, page 35).
Powlison agrees with Hurding: Jay Adams had a willingness to learn from secular psychological knowledge and theory.
Summarizing David Powlison
Perhaps one way of summarizing David Powlison’s position on common grace, biblical counseling, and secular psychology might be to say that he was:
Theologically-saturated, sufficiency of Scripture-centered, total depravity-alert, common grace-focused, and psychology-informed.
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