06-04-2007, 10:17 PM
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| Puritanboard Doctor | | Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: LA
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Here are some differences, perhaps Bahnsen at the Stein debate Quote:
Bahnsen’s transcendental argument was carefully put together and eloquently stated: logic, the laws of nature, and the laws of morality make no sense unless God is presupposed. I confess I was not fully convinced that Bahnsen’s “transcendental argument” was as different from the arguments of Aquinas as he claimed. For I think the implication of Aquinas’s argument, too, is that at least one cannot account for the laws of nature without God. And I suspect that Aquinas would have said the same thing about logic and morality. Both Bahnsen and Aquinas believed, “without God, no logic, natural law, or moral law.” So the difference between Bahnsen and Aquinas needs to be spelled out further than was done in the Stein debate. Of course there was no time for such a methodological discussion in that context. Bahnsen and I later discussed our differences on that subject in various venues, and that discussion still continues among us years after Bahnsen’s untimely death. Before Bahnsen entered the hospital for the last time, we exchanged emails, reaffirming our friendship and mutual respect. The last words of his email to me, and the last I ever heard from him, were, “but I still disagree with you on the transcendental argument.” How typically Bahnsen, indeed.
| Penultimate Thoughts on Theonomy Quote: |
4. Both Bahnsen and Kline make broad, bold programmatic statements which they modify considerably in their detailed discussions. This happens to such an extent that in my opinion their bold programmatic statements do not really or fairly represent the views they are presenting. In actual fact, they are much closer together than their rhetoric would suggest. See my essay in the WTS volume Theonomy: a Reformed Critique.
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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College
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