Has anyone read this book before? If so what did you think of it and are there any meaningful critiques (either positive or negative) I should consult? I am about on Page 50 and I like where he is going in his commentary on Matt 5:17-20.

Thanks for your input.

__________________
Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairmount ARP Church

Student of Theology
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
My Blog

Excellent book. Under-appreciated in the Reformed Community.

Comments On An Old-New Error by Meredith Kline, WTJ 41:1 (Fall 1978). (Much overwrought commentary, e.g., he describes Chalcedonian Theonomy ala Bahnsen as "a delusive and grotesque perversion of the teachings of scripture," and uses pithy images such as "the over-heated typewriter of Greg Bahnsen." I guess even seminary professors can get carried away with their rhetoric. Written I believe because TiCE indirectly exposes the soft underbelly of the Klinean model.)

WTJ (W. Robert Godfrey, editor) would not permit Bahnsen to respond in their Journal. You can understand why by reading Bahnsen's book, No Other Standard, which was a response to many of the critics of TiCE.

__________________
Tom Albrecht
Member, Covenant URCNA, New Holland, PA.

"I'm not a famous man. I'm just a simple country doctor with horse sense."

I am sure Daniel Ritchie has!!

__________________
Richard
CofE
UK

I'm currently on page 311 (or there abouts). I am enjoying it immensely. Setting the Thonomy argument aside for a moment, I would recommend this book to everyone. He has a very high view of the Law of God, and regardless of how "nit picky" one gets about applying OT civil laws, you can never underestimate the importance of basing all of life's decisions on the inerrant Word. IMO.

__________________
~James Helbert~, Wytheville, VA
Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, RPCUS
TheBibleAlone.com / The Edinburgh Inn
"Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” - Zechariah 3:2

I have. I am not a full-theonomist but the strengths of the book:

1. Excellent passages on covenantal unity (which on one level all Presbyterians should appreciate. All presbyterians act like theonomists on infant baptism!).
2. The section on church and state is quite good. It shows how most critics of theonomy actually do not have a heathy view of church and state. Some sectiosn are quite moving, where he talks about the power of the gospel.
3. His section critiquing autonomous ethics from Plato onwards was very good.

Some possible critiques:
1. I really thought the book by Barker/Godfrey was quite bad. It was poorly edited (referencing and refuting books that didn't exist), schizophrenic (Silva writing an essay refuting Klineanism), and at times irrelevant (Gaffin's interesting and unrelated article on amillennialism).

2. Hard to read.

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

I'm about 2/3 the way through it for the first time. So far I'm really enjoyed it.

__________________
~Greg Carpenter~
Deerfield Beach, FL

"It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet it is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne." –John Owen

Yes, Bahnsen's book is great, but I am not aware of any good critiques. I am currently reviewing Daniel Ritchie's new book that is coming out this month and he uses this book as a reference, so he could certainly tell you more about it. I would encourage everyone to purchase Daniel's book, especially if you are not a Theonomic Reconstructionist. His book is one of the few that really defines what theonomy is and clears up the misunderstandings of those who oppose Theonomy. I am learning more from this book than any other I have read in a long time.

__________________
Stephen Welch
PCA Teaching Elder
Nova Scotia

Yes, I have Barker & Godfrey's book entitled, Theonomy: A Reformed Critique. I also agree that is is not a good critique of Theonomy. Unfortunetly many who oppose Theonomy do not understand it. If you are going to critique any view at least understand the position.

At the risk of blowing my own horn (note to Bawb - I need a pussycat playing trombone smilie ASAP) I have done a review of Bahnsen's exegesis of this passage in exhaustive detail and I found it appallingly bad. I have written a book on the subject, now in pre-publication review, which I hope will be out later this year. Let me list a couple of the most egregious errors. Bahnsen cites one commentator (Meyer) as supporting him on the correct meaning of a Greek word but when one checks Meyer's commentary, he contradicts Bahnsen. Second, when Bahnsen discusses alla (but) in TICE, the parallel passage (Matt. 10:34) he gives to support the idea that alla creates a total contrast between the words it separates actually won't support his claim. As Bahnsen was later forced to admit (in his paper The Exegesis of Matt. 5), such is not the case for this '… aphorism was not meant to be universally true for any and all senses of "peace," as commentators’ note. The Jews expected and supposed that the coming Messiah would suddenly in a single action (note the use of the aorist in Matthew 10:34) impose peace for them as the immediate and sole effect of His coming. Jesus utterly denied such an understanding. The sense in which He does bring peace must be supplied from somewhere else, not here. … Extracted from its context, of course, the denial of peace-giving in Matthew 10:34 would be an overstatement, to be tempered by revealed instruction elsewhere about the Prince of Peace.'
Unfortunately, Bahnsen failed to notice that he created a problem for himself when he conceded that the apparently absolute denial of peace – giving in Matthew 10:34 “was not meant to be universally true for any and all senses of ‘peace’” and must be qualified by Jesus’ teaching elsewhere. By his concession, he effectively admitted that the presence of alla does not always force a meaning of total contradiction between the words it separates. Moreover, Bahnsen’s comment is also an implicit recognition of a truth that any scholar knows; as is the case with all words with more than one meaning, the precise sense of alla in Matt. 10:34 does not determine the meanings of the words it contrasts. Instead, its own meaning must be determined by the otherwise established meanings of the words it separates. By conceding that the presence of alla does not force the total contradiction between “peace” and “sword” in Matt. 10:34, Bahnsen has effectively refuted his own argument that alla necessarily forces a contrast of exactly opposite meanings between the words it separates in the grammatically identical Matthew 5:17. Since one cannot maintain that Matt. 10:34 teaches ' … that there is no sense in which Jesus brings peace… [one cannot successfully] argue that there may be no sense in which Jesus abolishes the law …' (D. A. Carson, Matthew loc. cit.) in Matthew 5:17. Therefore one can no longer maintain that alla necessarily forces the translation of pleroo as “confirm” in this verse. "
Finally Bahnsen does not consider all possible meanings of the Greek word pleroo (compare TICE with BAGD) and the meanings he overlooks (those involving the idea of "completing something already begun") can be demonstrated to be at least possibly relevant.
Here is my how I summed up my review of Bahnsen's exegesis of v. 17.

"At the beginning of this chapter we saw that Bahnsen's view of Mathew 5:17 would depend on whether at least four of five key premises could be established. Having examined each of Bahnsen's attempts to show that his chosen alternatives are either the only possible meaning of the words in question or are superior to all other relevant options, we now can evaluate his argument as a whole.
Bahnsen's first premise, that Christ meant His hearers to understand "the law or the prophets" as referring to "the ethical stipulations of the law," has been shown to be flawed by a number of methodological errors, including insufficient supporting arguments and a notable failure to check the original languages and the standard reference tools at key points. When we draw the logical conclusion and wonder why Christ bothered to add “or the prophets” at all, Bahnsen’s explanations are unsatisfactory. And Bahnsen does all this, in spite of Christ’s deliberate use of e, (or) (the meaning of which Bahnsen, by misrepresenting a source! misrepresents), which makes his reduction of the meaning of “the Law or the Prophets” from the entire Mosaic covenant administration to its “ethical stipulations” less likely. In addition, Bahnsen's refutation of the more likely meaning of the phrase "the law or the prophets," i.e. the Mosaic covenant, has been shown to be inadequate on two of his three grounds, and the third will be shortly be shown to be equally flawed. Thus Bahnsen's first premise, already highly unlikely, presently hangs by a thread shortly to be cut off.
Bahnsen's second premise, that katalusai must mean "annul" here is clearly unproven: Bahnsen failed to discuss why kataluo, which certainly took the meaning “destroy” rather than “annul” when used of the law in Gal. 2:18, cannot mean the same thing in Matt. 5:17, a particularly significant omission given that the KJV translators thought “destroy” was a better fit in the Matthean context. In addition, even if katalusai was intended to mean "annul" here, alla, as Bahnsen himself later recognized, does not always force a meaning of total contradiction on the words it separates, and thus Bahnsen's required third premise that katalusai must force the translation of pleroosai as "confirm" collapses.
Bahnsen's next error is his rejection, without sufficient discussion, of four known and decidedly relevant meanings of “fulfill” for pleroo despite the substantial Scriptural support that they enjoy, and their demonstrable relevance that each has in the context of Matthew 5:17. Instead, he opts for the uncertain translational possibility “confirm” in the sense of "establish the ongoing validity of," a possibility made considerably weaker by the lack of solid evidence that either the Hebrew mala or the Greek pleroo ever took the meaning "confirm" in that sense in the New Testament era. This lack of evidence destroys the fourth premise that pleroosai meant "confirm" in that sense. Finally, the now essential fifth premise: that "confirm" in the sense of "establish the ongoing applicability of commands" is a logical and legitimate implication of translating pleroo by "fulfill" has been demonstrated to be both illogical and false to the Scriptures.
Finally, Bahnsen makes Christ out to have made a massive error in His choice of words by using the misleading pleroosai to mean “confirm,” rather than the far more fitting istemi (“confirm/establish”) which was well known, available to Him, and would have established the Theonomic thesis beyond any possibility of doubt. In short, by inserting the meaning “confirm” for pleroo with no real lexical grounds for doing so, it is Bahnsen, not Poythress who is “…overlook[ing] the obvious…” and “…importing preconceived ideas into the text, rather than reading them out of the text” and doing violence to the context. Of Bahnsen's five premises, his first now hangs by a thread, his failed second premise has been made irrelevant by the failure of his third, and both of his last two premises have been shown to be insupportable.
Since Bahnsen has misunderstood the subject of Christ's thought, the relationship between the two verbs brought about by the conjunction 'but', and the meanings of both of the key verbs in this verse, his exegetical case for the Theonomic thesis has not met the burden of proof. Already it is clear that Bahnsen’s Theonomy is one thesis Christ is not teaching here."
Sadly, I must also report that I found his work on v. 18 equally shoddy.

__________________
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

Please forgive me if this comes across the wrong way. My wife and I are going to the hospital at 5:30 in the morning for the birth of our second child, so I am a little edgy.

The man is dead and cannot get on here and defend his position. If he was still alive and could get on here and defend his position I doubt that anyone would fare any better against him now than they did before.

To say his exegesis on Matthew 5 was shoddy is just a little out of line for my taste.

__________________
Ryan Barnhart - Pastor of OGBC
Husband to a beautiful wife, Father to two beautiful girls
"But by the grace of God I am what I am." I Corinthians 15:10

"I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms. And in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer." - John Paton

Most of the people that we talk about here are dead!

__________________
Nathan Eshelman
Grand Rapids, MI
First Reformed Presbyterian Church

PRESBYTERIAN THOUGHTS

First Reformed Presbyterian Church

Tim, was it you or someone else who has run down the "Godfrey wouldn't let a response be run" claim?

__________________
Chris Coldwell
Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
• Naphtali Press: Presbyterian & Reformed Books
• The Confessional Presbyterian, A Journal for Discussion of Presbyterian Doctrine & Practice
• The Blue Banner Archive

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).

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I realize that, but I fail to see your point.

Found it Tim.
Objections to the Abiding Validity of the Judicial Law

Sir: with all due respect and sympathy, you're not coming across in the wrong way or edgy; you are just illustrating a common experience found among those who knew Bahnsen. Like yourself, many who knew him have a hard time getting their minds around the possibility that he was anything less than unanswerable in exegetical debate.

That's somewhat understandable since he seems to have been just about unanswerable in apologetic debate. But...

Exegesis and apologetics are not the same thing. And since I supplied sufficient evidence to show Bahnsen's exegetical work on Matt 5:17 in TICE (whatever else is true of his exegesis of other passages in TICE or elsewhere) is simply not up to the same standard as his apologetic work, I don't think we can presume that he would emerge unscathed from a debate with someone who has thoroughly reviewed his exegesis of these verses. AFAIK, he never encountered such a critique in his lifetime written from a Reformed perspective: the one full review that I know about was written by a dispie four years before Bahnsen's death as a Master's thesis, and I don't know whether or not Bahnsen ever saw it. (Fowler really only dealt with a couple of the key words in v. 17 and v. 18 not all of them, as did Long. Poythress only partially dealth with one verb in v. 17.)

Granted Bahnsen is dead and unable to reply. But so are Luther, Edwards, and every thologian born before 1900. On this board, when somebody finds past theologians in error, they are criticized, sometimes as strongly as I have done. Why should you believe that only Bahnsen could not possibly be wrong? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not what somebody thinks is possible, and the proof of "shoddy" and "appalling" exegetical malpractice is the presence of methodological errors that render the exegete's thesis either impossible or at best unproven. And what is certain, - not just claimed - but certain, is that such errors are present and vitate Bahnsen's work on this passage.

Please reread what I wrote above "shoddy" in my original post. Bahnsen misrepresented a dissenting commentator as being in agreement with him, drew a conclusion that does not always follow from the meaning of alla and attempted to support his premise with a Scripture in which that conclusion clearly is not present, something he himself would later admit. Finally he clearly overlooks relevant meanings of a key word in the passage; an exegetical no-no if ever there was one. If these errors taken cumulatively do not demonstrate "shoddy" or "appalling" lapses in exegetical judgement, what would?

Brother,

I respect your study on the subject. You're obviously anti-Bahnsen (at least anti-theonomy) because you're usually pretty quick to reply on Bahnsen threads. We all know that you disagree with him. That's fine, but it doesn't change what I said in the post.

What usually happens with Bahnsen threads is it becomes anti-Bahnsen versus pro-Bahnsen. That doesn't lead to very profitable discussion, but again I respect your study on the subject.

AFAIK, these are the principal critiques of Bahnsen's exegesis that are presently available. None of them is exhaustive.

Carson, D. A. The Sermon on the Mount: An Evangelical Exposition of
Matthew 5-7. Grand Rapids, MI. Baker Book House, 1978. loc. cit. ch 5:17-20.

Fowler, Paul B. "God’s Law Free from Legalism: Critique of Theonomy in Christian Ethics," Jackson, MS: Reformed Theological Seminary, 1985.

Long, Gary D. Biblical Law and Ethics: Absolute and Covenantal.
Perspectives: Studies in Baptist Thought Rochester NY, Backus Books, 1981.

Poythress, Vern S. The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses. Brentwood TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers Inc., 1991.

Gordon, T. David. “Critique of Theonomy: A Taxonomy,”
Westminster Theological Journal 56 (Spring, 1994): 23-43

Hodge, Steven R. “An Exegetical Response to Bahnsen’s use of Matt. 5:17-19 in Theonomy in Christian Ethics” M. Th. Thesis, Capital Bible Seminary, 1990.