Greg Bahnsen: Van Tillian Philosopher, Theonomist, and Devastating Debater
I first met him in 1969. He attended a seminar sponsored by R. J. Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation. Rushdoony and I spoke. Bahnsen was a student at Westmont College in California.
He attended Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. He graduated in 1973. He was the first and only student at Westminter who received his Th.M. degree before he received his M.Div degree . . . by about 20 minutes. Students receiving the highest degrees were awarded their degrees first in the graduation ceremony. He completed the Th.M degree and the M.Div degree in three years. So, he was awarded his Th.M degree first.
At the University of Southern California, he took the five qualifying examinations for the Ph.D. in one week: Monday through Friday. He received a high pass on all of them. After this, his degree advisor, John Hospers, asked him why he had taken all of them in one week. Bahnsen told him he thought that was required. Hospers told him he was the first student he had ever advised who had done this.
His debate with atheist Gordon Stein in 1985 is famous in Calvinist circles. It is now online. Not many two-hour debates have over 100,000 hits, which the three posted recordings total. It is here. The transcript is here. For a retrospective assessment of this debate by philosopher and theologian John Frame, go here.
He wrote several major books. His most famous book was an extension of his Th.M thesis: Theonomy in Christian Ethics (1977). It would have qualified as a Ph.D. dissertation.
My Institute for Christian Economics published two of his books: By This Standard (1985) and No Other Standard (1991).
He died of heart failure in 1995 at the age of 47. A week before he died, he agreed to write a history of natural law philosophy for the I.C.E.
His posthumously published book on Cornelius Van Til appeared in 1998. It is here.
God's Law or Chaos
God's Law or Tyranny
God's Law or God's JudgmentFor over a century, most conservative Christian social thinkers and theologians have denied all three of these assertions. Some of them have even gone so far as to argue that God's law is inherently tyrannical. They have argued that the church can survive and even prosper under any legal order, except one: the rule of God's law. In this assertion, they join forces with secular humanists, occultists, and other assorted ethical rebels.
On pages 345-47 of this book, Bahnsen offers a brief, clear, 10-point summary of the biblical position on the authority of God's law in today's world. Go ahead: sneak a peek. Don't be shy. But be forewarned: it may challenge everything your pastor or seminary professor has taught you about the law of God.
God's law is Christianity's tool of dominion. This is where any discussion of God's law ultimately arrives: the issue of dominion. Ask yourself: Who is to rule on earth, Christ or Satan? Whose followers have the ethically acceptable tool of dominion, Christ's or Satan's? What is this tool of dominion, the biblically revealed law of God, or the law of self-proclaimed autonomous man? Whose word is sovereign, God's or man's?
Millions of Christians, sadly, have not recognized the continuing authority of God's law or its many applications to modern society. They have thereby reaped the whirlwind: cultural and intellectual impotence. They have surrendered this world to the devil. They have implicitly denied the power of the death and resurrection of Christ.
They have served as footstools of the enemies of God. But humanism's free ride is coming to an end. This book serves as an introduction to his woefully neglected topic.
In 1959, Rousas John Rushdoony's first book appeared, By What Standard?, a study of the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til. Van Til made it clear that the truth of the Bible must be man's presupposition, the standard of his reasoning, and the final court of appeal in history. He rejected the natural law philosophy in any form. Rushdoony believed Van Til, so he wrote Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) to demonstrate that the only standard that God provides is biblical law.That same year, 1973, Van Til's student Greg L. Bahnsen completed his Th.M degree at Westminster seminary, submitting a thesis on "The Theonomic Responsibility of the Civil Magistrate." After a delay of four years, an expanded version of his thesis appeared, Theonomy in Christian Ethics. This book was an apologetic for biblical law. So was his subsequent introductory book, By This Standard (1985).
Theonomy in Christian Ethics received only sporadic opposition in print but continual and growing opposition within the faculty at Westminster Seminary. In fact, Bahnsen's book can be said to have split the faculty into three camps: (1) the "natural law in spite of Van Til's philosophy" camp, (2) the "not natural law, but we're not sure what to substitute" camp; and (3) the "Proverbs 12:23" camp. The first group retains the upper hand. The faculty (past and present) published an attempted refutation of Bahnsen in 1990: Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, which led within a few months to responses by the theonomists: Westminster's Confession, by Gary North; Theonomy: An Informed Response, edited by Gary North; and No Other Standard.
No Other Standard is Bahnsen's response not only to the Westminster faculty's book, but also to the two other brief critical books against him, and to the various published articles and typewritten, photocopied responses that have circulated over the years. One by one, Bahnsen takes his critics' arguments apart, showing that they have either misrepresented his position or misrepresented the Bible. Line by line, point by point, he shows that they have not understood his arguments and have also not understood the vulnerability of their own logical and theological positions.
Both of these books have been released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Anyone may print them or distribute them without payment of royalties.