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Originally Posted by Ivanhoe  I don't think anyone is claiming an exact parallel between "The Reformed Tradition" (whatever that is) and Bahnsen. |
On the question of how to apply the civil laws today, quite a number of people are attempting to do exactly that. Because both sides propose or implement many Mosaic judicials, some committed followers of Bahnsen try to include Calvin, his successors and the Westminster Divines within the orbit of Bahnsen's Theonomy, either not discerning or refusing to accept the considerable evidence demonstrating that the mainstream of the Reformed tradition employed a hermeneutic that significantly differed from Bahnsen's approach to justify their positions.
To illustrate what I mean, consider a recent post in this thread which claimed that the excerpt from Fisher's catchism stating that insofar "contains any statute, founded in the law of nature, common to all nations, it is still of binding force" means that "the Reformed regarded many of the Mosaic judicials as being moral/natural laws". Unfortunately the poster missed an equivocation in the term "moral". The word can be used as a synonym for "equitable" and in this sense there is no doubt that the Reformed viewed many judicials as moral. But the word moral can also be used in the term "moral law" and the WCF 19: 1-3 specifically defines the moral law as the Decalogue; a definition only confirmed in the answer to WLC 98 where the Divines use the words "summarily comprehended in the decalogue" to define the moral law. Summarily means "giving the essentials" and, as the Oxford English dictionary shows, every meaning of "comprehended" includes all of the thing being comprhended: “To grasp with the mind,
conceive fully or adequately, understand, ‘take in’. (App. the earliest sense in English.)…."To lay hold of
all the points of (any thing) and include them within the compass of a description or expression; to embrace or describe summarily; summarize; sum up.... To include or comprise in a treatise or discourse: now more usually said of the book, etc.... To include
in the same category....To enclose or include in or within limits...To
enclose or have within it; to contain; to lie around." The the Divines use of the word “comprehend” to describe the moral law rules out the idea that they were referring to an incomplete summary. For the Divines the moral law equalled the decalogue which they defined as the essential moral will of God.
The Divines defintion had been anticipated by Calvin (Institites 4, xx, 14 "We must attend to the well-known division which distributes the whole law of God, as promulgated by Moses, into the moral, the ceremonial, and the judicial law, and we must attend to each of these parts, in order to understand how far they do, or do not, pertain to us... the ancients who adopted this division, though they were not unaware that the two latter classes had to do with morals,
did not give them the name of moral, because they might be changed and abrogated without affecting morals. They give this name specially to the first class, without which, true holiness of life and an immutable rule of conduct cannot exist.") and William Perkins: "Moral law . . . is contained in the Decalogue or ten commandments; and it is the very law of nature written in all men's hearts . . . in the creation of man: and therefore it binds the consciences of all men at all times . . . . . Judicial laws of Moses . . . . . were specially given by God, and directed to the Jews; who for this very cause were bound in conscience to keep them all . . . . . But touching other nations and specially Christian commonwealths in these days, the case is otherwise." (William Perkins, A Discourse of Conscience (1596), in Works (Cambridge: John Legate, 1608), 1:513,). Perkins goes on to make the distinction between a law being moral in the sense of equitable and the moral law itself when he writes: "judicial laws, so far forth as they have in them the general or common equity of the law of nature are moral; and therefore binding in conscience, as the moral law." (Perkins,Conscience 1:514). If Perkins is using the two uses of moral here in the same sense he is writing a tautology, which is not likely. Likewise John Ball specifically limited the moral law to the Decalogue. "The [moral] Law was written in tables of stone, yet so as it was engraven in the tables of the heart, though not in the plenty and abundance that afterward; for under the Old Testament God would have both letter and Spirit, but more letter and less Spirit." (John Ball, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, London: G. Miller for Edward Brewster, 1645. p.165. Ball’s earlier comment “The obedience that God required at his [Adam’s] hands was partly natural, to be regulated according to the Law engraven in his heart by the finger of God himself, consisting in the true unfeigned and perfect love of God, and of his neighbour for the Lord’s sake…” (Ball, Treatise, p.10) does not contradict this claim as Ball is there summarizing the commandments.)
Westmintster Divnine William Gouge (who was one of the men who drafted Chapter 19)judicials and the moral law: "There were other branches of the judicial law which rested upon common equity, and were means of keeping the moral law:" (William Gouge, A Learned Commentary on the Whole Epistle to the Hebrews, (London: A. M., T. W. and S. G. for Joshua Kirton, 1655) second part p. 171. This commentary consists of lectures originally given before the Assembly and later published.), as did his colleague on that committee, Anthony Burgess who wrote: "…the moral law had the great preheminency, being twice written by God in tables of stone…The word moral [is here used] as to denote that which is perpetual and obliging as opposed to that which is binding for a time." (Anthony Burgess, Vindiciae Legis or a vindication of the morall law and the covenants, from the errors of Papists, Arminians, Socinians, and more especially Antinomians in XXX lectures preached at Laurence-Jury London, (London, 1647), pp. 147, 148. The sermons in this work were preached earlier, within six months of the Assembly’s discussion of these matters.)
Later figures made the same distinction. Witsius wrote "…several kinds of laws given [Israel] of which there are three principally mentioned by divines. The moral or the decalogue, the ceremonial, and the political or forensic… The law of the decalogue was given [Israel]; which as to its substance is one and the same with the law of nature, and binds men as such..." (Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man, Utrecht 1693 reprint 1990 Den Dalk Christian Foundation Escondido CA vol. 2, p. 162.). Witsius felt strongly about this, he echoes the point 13 pages later "…the decalogue contains the sum of the law of nature, and as to its substance is one and the same therewith, so far is it of perpetual and universal obligation. And thus far all Divines are agreed, Socinians not excepted." Finally Witsius also follows Calvin (Commentary on Matthew s.v. 5:19) in limiting the referent of “the law” in Matt. 5:17 to the Decalogue when he writes, “But that Christ speaks of the decalogue we gather from what follows where he explains the precepts of that law.” (ibid p. 188 cf. p. 388). John Brown of Haddington limits the moral law to the decalogue when he writes that the: "…whole moral law, which regulates our love to God and men, and all the actings of it, is contained in the ten commandments.” (John Brown, A Compendious View of Natural and Revealed Religion, Edinburgh, 1796, p. 436) In addition Brown also specifically identifies the commandments with the law of nature: "The ten commandments, above explained, may be viewed …as a Law of Nature antecedent to and disengaged from any covenant-transaction between God and us…God, as a Creator and absolute Sovereign imposed it…upon man’s heart in his creation…included in the instamped image of God the lawgiver. Gen. 1:26, 27; Eccl. 7:29." (ibid p. 475).
Given this history, two things are apparent. First, we need to avoid equivocation when taking about "moral" laws for the word can identify an "equitable" legal stipulation, or the decologue. Second, the idea that the moral law does not include the judicials, but is the decalogue alone has been held by many of the key figures in the Reformed faith. If those who would attempt to establish Bahnsen's view of theonomy by subsuming the judicials laws under the category "moral law" want Bahnsen's theonomy to stand criticism, this positions of the Reformes and Divines needs refutation by demonstration that others of equal influence rejected this view. Until such demonstration is provided, Bahnsen's Theonomy will remain vulnerable to criticism at this point.
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Originally Posted by Ivanhoe Any talk of natural law, on both sides, is misleading. For the "Reformed Tradition," who were heirs of Christendom, natural law participated in God. For modern talk of Natural law, NL is purely secular. |
Not always. As you note, in the minds of Calvin and the Westminster Divines, natural law originates in God and is not some "purely secular" concept existing apart from him. If one defines natural law in the sense that the Reformers and Divines used it, then subsequent uses of the term in discussion will not be misleading to anyone who has the intellectual capacity and honesty to call to mind the definition previously given.