TIL 539: A Presuppositional Approach (feat. Marshall Adkins)
Truth in Love
Association of Certified Biblical Counselors
4.8 • 627 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
1. Who was Van Til?
2. What was Van Til's presuppositional approach to apologetics?
3. How would Van Til lay out the distingush between what human beings can observe and know?
4. How does a fallen human being use their mind?
5. What is the connection from Van Til to David Powlison?
6. What are ways Van Til influenced the biblical counseling movement through David Powlison?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A presuppositional approach on this edition of Truth and Love. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm Dale Johnson, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, |
| 0:16.5 | where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the problems that people face. |
| 0:20.7 | I'm thrilled this week to have with me, Marshall Adkins. |
| 0:23.8 | He serves as assistant professor of biblical counseling at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary |
| 0:28.2 | in Kansas City, Missouri. |
| 0:30.3 | And he's ACBC certified, and he's married to Rachel, and they have three children. |
| 0:34.5 | Marshall, always, brother, good to have you with me in studio recording today. |
| 0:39.4 | Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. You're not many days away from |
| 0:44.4 | defending your dissertation on Cornelius Van Teal and his influence on Adams. We'll talk about that |
| 0:50.7 | much later. But today, what I want to talk about is the influence of Van Teal on David Palison. And certainly in your research, you've come across some of that |
| 0:59.1 | influence. And again, we'll talk more about Adams later. Today, I want us to focus on Dr. David |
| 1:04.8 | Paulson, who is very influential, certainly in the biblical counseling movement. And most people |
| 1:09.9 | may never have heard of Van Teal, although we know |
| 1:13.4 | Jay Adams in his role. We know David Palison, certainly in his role in the movement. And we're so |
| 1:19.8 | grateful for them. Van Teal was really important influence on both of those gentlemen. And so what I |
| 1:25.6 | want you to do is just introduce us to Van Teal, and we'll get to the concept of a presuppositional approach, but introduce us to Van Teal. And for those who are listening and may have never heard of Cornelius Van Teal, or maybe they've heard of him, but they don't know much about him, introduce us to Cornelius Van Teal. Yeah, that's great. And maybe one introductory comment, one of the things that you often emphasize in our PhD |
| 1:50.2 | seminars for your Midwestern, it's important to understand ideas within their context. |
| 1:56.3 | And so when we're thinking about a presuppositional approach and the influence of Vantil and |
| 2:01.8 | Palisin, I do think it's helpful to just go back and understand, okay, who were these guys? |
| 2:07.3 | What were these key figures? |
| 2:09.6 | What were the issues of the day? |
... |
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