NO OTHER STANDARD Other books by Greg L. Bahnsen A Biblical Introduction to Apologetics, Syllabus (1976) Theonomy in Christian Ethics, (1977, 1984) Homosexuality: A Biblical View, (1978) By This Standard: The Authority ojGod's Law Today, (1985) House Divided: The Break-Up ojDispensational Theology, (1989) (With Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.) Contributions to: Foundations ojChristian Scholarship, ed. Gary North (1976) Iuemanry, ed. Norman Geisler (1979) Evangelicals and Iuemanry, ed. Ronald Youngblood (1984) Pressing Toward the Mark, ed. Charles Domnison (1986) God and Politics: YOur Views, ed. Gary S. Smith (1989) NO OTHER STANDARD THEONOMY AND ITS CRITICS Greg L. Bahnsen Institute for Christian Economics Tyler, Texas Copyright ©1991 by Greg L. Bahnsen Published by the Institute for Christian Economics. P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, Texas 75711 Typesetting by Nhung Pham Nguyen Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bahnsen, Greg L. No other standard: theonomy and its critics / Greg L. Bahnsen. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-930464-55-9 (alk. paper) : $25.00. ISBN 0-930464-56-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) : $9.95 1. Law (Theology). 2. Dominion theology. 3. Theonomy. 4. Church and state. 5. Religious pluralism. 6. Bible. N.T. Matthew V, 17-19 - Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. BTI27.7.B34 1991 91-18274 230-dc20 CIP With affictionate memories, this book is dedicated (at long last) to: MICKEY ANDJUDY SCHNEIDER And my good friends at St. Paul Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher's Preface, Gary North. ....... ix 1. Introduction to the Debate. ..... 1 2. A Recognizable, Distinct Position... 19 3. Spurious Targets and Misguided Arrows. 37 4. Theological and Logical Fallacies... 57 5. Change of Dispensation or Covenant. 75 6. Categories of Old Testament Law. .. 93 7. Israel's Theocratic Uniqueness. ... 113 8. Separation of Church and State. ... 133 9. God's Law and Civil Government Today. .. 153 10. Religious Crimes, Religious Toleration.... 171 11. Pluralist Opposition to Theonomy. ...... 191 12. Autonomous Penology, Arbitrary Penology.. 211 13. The Penal Code as an Instrument of the Covenant Community. .............. 233 14. Flexibility Regarding the Penal Code. 251 15. What Other Standard? . 267 APPENDIX A: The Exegesis of Matthew 5. .. 273 APPENDIX B: Poythress as a Theonomist. 291 Scripture Index. 327 General Index. 333 vii The way to test the greatness and incisiveness of any truly evan­ gelical theology is to ask how it relates Biblical law to God's gospel of grace. The history of the Church's achievement on this issue has not been remarkable or convincing. The so-called three uses of the law were vigorously debated by the Reformers, and more recently by their descendants, but with few clear exegetical results that have stood the test of time. It is no wonder, then, that when "dominion theology," under the lead­ ership of Greg L. Bahnsen, raised the question of law and grace in a form that few had ever thought of before, a cry of "legalism" went up from evangelicals and fundamentalists. Not only were the traditional unanswered questions oflaw versus grace and continu­ ity versus discontinuity between the Testaments brought to the forefront again, but now there was added the unresolved issue of the political use of the law. The law/grace question must now be answered in the larger context of the Church/state tension.... Now we had to settle all those questions in the context of a fairly extensive ecclesiology and eschatology. [The theonomists] have unleashed a number of furies from a theological Pandora's box. Life will never be the same. But this is not all bad, for the Church has always found that challenges have forced her to grow in her doctrinal expression. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.* *Kaiser, Journal ofthe Evangelical Theological Society 33 (Sept., 1990). PUBLISHER'S PREFACE Gary North In the spring term of 1973, Greg Bahnsen handed in his Th.M. thesis to his committee at Westminster Theological Semi­ nary in Philadelphia: "The Theonomic Responsibility of the Civil Magistrate." The committee accepted it and awarded him his degree that term. There was no controversy about it at the time. No protests were filed, no letters sent to faculty members by outraged presbyters, no protests of reviewers appeared. Westmin­ ster even awarded him a small stipend to go on to graduate school. Mter a delay of four years, due to circumstances beyond Bahnsen's control, the thesis, with certain additions, was pub­ lished as a book by Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Com­ pany: Theonomy in Christian Ethics. Two years after this, Bahnsen was awarded his Ph.D. in philosophy by the University of South­ ern California. Five years earlier, in 1974, his ordination to the teaching eldership (ministry) in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church had been blocked at the last minute -literally a few minutes before the actual ordination - by the protest of an OPC ruling elder. It took a year of procedural activity before his ordination was con­ fmned. What had caused such intense hostility? It was the ethical position presented by Bahnsen publicly and defended exegetically in Theonomy in Christian Ethics, although the book had yet to appear in print when the elder's attack was launched. A thesis that had raised no public protest on campus subsequently raised blood pressures all over the Reformed world, and even beyond that ix x NO OTHER STANDARD circumscribed world. One does not normally expect a master's thesis to create a sensation, but in the context of the late 1970's, this one did. Why? The reader needs to understand that this controversy was not produced by the style of the presentation. It read like what it was: a master's thesis. It was written as an academic exercise that had been aimed at a committee of professional theologians. While the book is readable by non-theologians, its style is precise, non-confrontational, and even a bit dry, given the magnitude of its content. It was the substance of the thesis, not its style, that created the controversy. What was Bahnsen's thesis? That the civil and moral laws of the Old Testament are still binding on society in the New Testa­ ment era, unless annulled or otherwise transformed by a New Testament teaching, either directly or by implication. In short, there is judicial and moral continuity between the two testaments. Animal Husbandry, Canaanite Style Appealing to a graphic biblical case law example that I hope will produce no formal protests from presbyteries around the world, let me state my deeply felt opinion that just because besti­ ality is not specifically condemned in the New Testament as it is in the Old Testament (Lev. 20:15-16), there is no biblical reason to argue that it is no longer a civil crime in God's eyes. Those critics of the Old Testament's case laws who maintain, as dispen­ sationalists do, that an Old Testament civil law is automatically annulled by the New Covenant unless formally reconfirmed by the New Testament, have a theological problem with this law. l That dispensationalists hold such a hermeneutic is not surprising; their system is based on the almost total judicial discontinuity of each of seven different covenants in history. On the other hand, that non-dispensationalists also defend a hermeneutic oftotal judi­ cial discontinuity is remarkable. It leaves them without a biblical theory of civil government. They are forced to appeal to some secular theory ofcivil law, most often a version ofnatural law - the 1. Those dispensationalists who regard only Paul's epistles as judicially binding, or narrower still, his prison epistles, have an even greater problem. Publisher's Preface Xl assertion ofthe moral and judicial neutrality ofthe mind ofcovenant­ breaking man. Yet this myth of neutrality is usually denied by most modern evangelicals. Thus, to acknowledge the continuing authority of the civil law against bestiality, those who deny judi­ cial continuity between the two testaments must resort to strange exegetical gyrations. When they do, this question is legitimate: What about the law's specified civil sanction, execution? The common answer - "Everyone knows that such action is immoral" - begs the question. If everyone knows this, why was the act formally prohibited in the Old Testament? Didn't every­ one also know this during the Old Testament era? And even if everyone did know it, were there some people who violated the law anyway? Furthermore, should we argue (as so many of theonomy's critics argue) that Old Testament civil law applied only to geographical Israel? If everyone knows that bestiality is wrong today, then didn't people also know this outside of Israel during the Old Covenant era? Ifthey did not know, then what happens to natural law theory, the only other alternative for Christians who deny the legitimacy of theonomy? If fundamental ethical and judicial standards are not universal, then natural law theory collapses. If men do not universally acknowledge that bestiality is worthy of death, as the Bible says, then what is left of hypothetically neutral natural law theory, which serves as the theoretical foundation ofmost versions of Christian political pluralism? Is neutral natural law theory opposed to the Bible? Does such a universal natural law, autono­ mous from the Bible, actually exist? And if it is a myth of self­ proclaimed autonomous man, then what remains besides biblical law as the judicial foundation ofrighteous civil government? What will the critics of theonomy then propose as a valid substitute for biblical law? Furthermore, what was the appropriate civil penalty for this crime outside of Israel? The same as in Israel, the theonomist answers. What does the non-theonomist answer? Nothing. If he says "the death penalty," then he opens the door to the same penalty today.