Yes! Exactly!

Furthermore, Calvin and Turretin claimed that "Natural Law" has the power to change the Mosaic judicials, and even change the penalties imposed by the judicials. This is a far cry from Bahnsen's views on Theonomy.

I like Bahnsen alot, and I even met him shortly before he passed away. His work in Apologetics is second to none. He had a clear view of the Gospel. He is sitting closer to God than I ever hope to be. Hopefully, I will meet him in heaven.

The "bath water" of his theology is this Theonomy stuff. I would rather toss that out and remember him for all of the good he has done for the Church.

Blessings,

-CH

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In Essentials Unity, in non-Essentials Liberty, in all things Charity.

Robert Paul Wieland
Springs Reformed Presbyterian Church
Colorado Springs, CO
RPCNA

So why does Calvin say that if we want justice we must look to Moses?

If many of the Mosaic judicials are natural/moral laws then their principles mus remain binding.

Do you believe that it would be fine to change the death penalty for murder to a $10 fine?

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Actually, it is his commitment to presuppositional apologetics and epistemology which undergirds Bahnsen's Theonomic ethics.

If we cannot have any true knowledge independent of God, then we are dependent upon the word of God to know what is acceptable in terms of criminal justice and penology. Therefore, in order to prove that a penal sanction is just we must go to the Bible - not to Calvin and Turretin (who usually agree with the Bible).

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

It is nie impossible to separate Bahnsen's Apologetics from his Theonomy.

As far as Calvin and Turretin go we must be careful not to make Calvin, Turretin, etc... as "near-Scripture" but as godly (and decidedly more competent than me) expositors of Scripture whose wisdom is to be consulted.

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Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairmount ARP Church
Student of Theology
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
My Blog

"Nothing is sweet to me without the enjoyment of Christ in it." -- Thomas Brooks

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.

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.

__________________
In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC

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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon

I'll be honest with you, Tim. I didn't read most of that. I am not as Puritanical or "TR" as most people here. While I am Reformed (e.g., baptize babies, covenant, 5 points), LONG quotes by the Puritans don't impress me.

I freely grant that Bahnsen's hermeneutics is not identical to---well, stop right there. I was about to say "The Reformed Tradition," then I realized there is no such thing. No matter, I can grant some novelty to it. But I really don't care. That doesn't make Bahnsen de facto wrong.

But back to the natural law thingy. I was trying to suggest that the Patristic-Medieval-Reformed view of natural law is different from the modern day Reformed view of natural law. The older tradition used natural law to defend Christendom and a quasi-theocratic state. The modern view (e.g., Modern Reformation, D.G. Hart's Secular Faith ) use natural law to attack Christendom and defend a secular state. They simply can't claim continuity on this point. They are just as novel as Bahnsen.

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

The long citations of the Puritans on moral law= decalogue was not aimed at you but, at another who had argued that the claim that the Reformed equated the moral law and decalogue as being "ridicluous" and undeserving of a reply.

I am well aware that the Puritan view of Natural law differs from the Modern view and contemporary Christians such as those you name. But I still say that one can avoid a lot of confusion by identifying the specific version of "natural law" that you are promoting. If you say natural law = moral law = decalogue, you have just distinguished yourself from both the secular moralist and the Modern Christian who use a different concept of natural law to justify a secular state.

__________________
In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC

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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon

There is a difference between moral law=Decalogue, and moral law=Decalogue alone; the latter is ridiculous and unworthy of reply.

__________________
Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

As the evidence cited in post 85 shows, Calvin, Perkins, Gouge, Burgess, the WLC, Witsius and Brown of Haddington all took the position that the moral law=the decalogue alone. Whether they were right or wrong in doing so may be debated; that they held that view is a certainty. That it was these individuals who held this view puts the idea that the moral law=decalogue alone squarely in the mainstream of Reformed Confessionalism.

Attempts to dismiss it without refutation by calling it "ridiculous and unworthy of reply" will prove counter-productive for Theonomy's advocates, since all a critic then will then have to do is point inquirers to the primary sources, which will quite nicely demonstrate to the inquirer that any Theonomist who belittles the view that the moral law=decalogue alone in the Westminster Standards or other key figures in the Reformed tradition simply does not know what he is talking about. When fighting for a cause, one is well advised to use a gun that shoots the enemy not oneself.

__________________
In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC

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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon

AMEN and DITTO

__________________
In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC

------------
"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon

Actually, you do not prove your point at all; you turn the word "summarily" into completely - which is ludicrous. Summarily comprehended means a comprehensive summary of the whole moral law, not an exhaustative statement. But anyway, I do not pretend to have the power to convince you, any more than I would pretend to have the power to convince Wesley of Calvinism.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

I must disagree about Witsius and Calvin thinking the Decalogue alone = the Moral Law, take a look at Benjamin Farley's book on Calvin's Sermons on the Ten Commandments. Moreover, Jesus' own teaching in the Gospels does not say that. Look at Mark 7:1-13 where Jesus in speaking of the 5th commandment verifies Moses teaching in Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9.

Look at what Matthew Henry has to say concerning Exodus 21:17:

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Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairmount ARP Church
Student of Theology
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
My Blog

"Nothing is sweet to me without the enjoyment of Christ in it." -- Thomas Brooks

Dial it back lads.

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Chris Coldwell
Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
• Naphtali Press: Presbyterian & Reformed Books
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When heresy rises in an evangelical body, it is never frank and open. It always begins by skulking, and assuming a disguise. Its advocates, when together, boast of great improvements, and congratulate one another on having gone greatly beyond the ‘old dead orthodoxy,’ and on having left behind many of its antiquated errors: but when taxed with deviations from the received faith, they complain of the unreasonableness of their accusers, as they ‘differ from it only in words.’ This has been the standing course of errorists ever since the apostolic age. Samuel Miller, Introductory essay, The Articles of the Synod of Dort (1841).

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All right, I am maybe being a bit extreme here, apologies. However, I am sure such a clear misrepresentation of the what the Westminster Standards teach should not be tolerated.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

That the Westminster Standards use the term "moral law" to equal the decalogue alone is demonstrably what the standards teach. For the Oxford English Dictionary is absolutely clear that at that date, the key words the standards used in WLC Qu. 98 and its answer, "summarily" and "comprehended" had the following meanings.

The answer to QU 98 claims that “the moral law is “summarily comprehended” in the Ten Commandments” something quite different. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), “summarily” then meant “in a summary or compendious manner; chiefly of statement, in few words, compendiously, briefly.” The OED also states that “compendiously” then meant: “containing the substance within small compass, concise, succinct, summary; comprehensive though brief; esp. of literary works; also of their authors.” Finally, “comprehended” in such a context meant either "understood" or "included" as in 'education comprehends the training of many kinds of ability' from the Latin comprehendere,' (a meaning well known to the Divines who had all received their University instruction in Latin). OED supports the idea of included in the relevant definitions of “comprehended” as follows:

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."

Since in contemporary English “summarily” included the idea of “compendious” which meant that the statement of he concept summarized was comprehensively contained within a small compass, the Divines uses of "summarily" to describe the Ten Commandments relationship to the moral law excludes any possibility that they believed the Decalogue to be an incomplete summary of the moral law. The possibility is doubly excluded by their use of "comprehended" which meant including "all the points of" the thing described. When the WLC states that the moral law is "summarily comprehended in the ten commandments," it is teaching that anything not in the Ten Commandments is not included in the moral law.

If Theonomists want to prove the contrary proposition that the term "moral law" in the Standards means the decalogue plus anything else, they are welcome to make the attempt. But, for their first step they simply must prove that the OED has misdefined the three words given above. Absent such proof, it will not be surprising if their case continues to be rejected by better informed Reformed folk.

__________________
In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC

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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon

I suggest you read your own post again; it evidently proves that your interpretation of "summarily" is erroneous.

__________________
Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)