Developing an Awareness of the Demonic in Biblical Counseling, in Conversation With William Perkins

Abstract

William Perkins, the father of Puritanism and the great popularizer of Reformed and Puritan theology from the sixteenth century onward, articulated a robust situational demonology further developed by Puritan writers subsequent to his theological contributions to the field. His demonology serves as the foundation of later pastors’ and theologians’ expansions and applications from this systematic locus. Thus, beginning with a Perkinsian understanding of the demonic, particularly, an awareness of direct and mediated influence from evil spirits in the present epoch of the church, engaging in synthesis with later Puritan advancements and expansions of his thought, and moving onward to pastoral application, this dissertation demonstrates the historic practical theology of a Reformed demonology. After explaining what may be expected between the two advents of Christ in all cultures and across all times, the biblical response to such demonic phenomena is developed. The Reformed and Puritan answer to the demonic is an engagement with the enemy through the ordinary means of grace—Word, sacrament, and prayer—and eschewing a deliverance or ekballistic response to the demonic.

Finally, Perkins’s demonology, as the foundation of Puritanism, is contrasted with Jay Adams’s demonology, as the foundation of the contemporary biblical counseling movement. Subsequent generations of biblical counselors have expanded on Adams’s articulation and have largely retained the practical outworking of his over-realized eschatology and situational understanding of demonology. Thus, Adams and his followers—the theological heirs of Puritanism within the field of pastoral counseling— are compared and contrasted with their theological forefathers under the systematic heading of demonology to determine which approach is most biblically faithful. While a historical and practical corrective to the contemporary demonology of the biblical counseling movement is offered, a positive application to pastoral counseling is also presented—a robust but straightforward embracing of Word, sacrament, and prayer-based ministry. Perkins serves as an historical basis for standard Puritan demonology; reexamining such an historical demonology allows the contemporary practitioner of pastoral counseling to reclaim a genuinely Reformed understanding of the demonic.