Wow. Thanks Shawn. I am intrigued by Bahnsen and am trying to digest as much as I can this summer.

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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

Is this available online somewhere?

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~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

There is a web site which contains some of Bahnsen's work...I believe it it Freebooks.com which is ran by Gary North (I think).

To get most of Bahnsens stuff though, you would need to go to Covenant Media Foundation. The works that I have are from internet downloads and computer discs. I've got several lectures, papers written, books, etc. on a file on my computer.

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Shawn Atkins
Member, Parkhill Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Denver, Colorado

Open my eyes Lord, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. Psalm 119:18

Right you are!!! Since Bahsen is dead he is beyond critique.

Gary North got it right in that both gracious and humble introduction to By This Standard. Bahnsen was Godzilla!!! And the rest of his day and for all time who disagree with him are mere Bambis.

To think that someone would question a position held by Bahsen!!! THE UNMITIGATED GALL OF IT!!! Since we all know that if Bahnsen were alive he would squash all who oppose him under foot, it is audacious to question his exegesis. So to all those who would question Bahsen...SQUASH!!!

Who do you think you are!?!? Do you think you are smarter than him? Yea right! Bahsen could have beat up any argument you leveled against him with half his brain tied behind his back while juggling 6 eggs and skip roping at the same time!

You see, it is just pointless to argue against him. Though I can't answer all your critiques, he sure could if he were here and that settles it. He was right.

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Robert Truelove
Pastor
Christ Reformed Church
Lawrenceville, GA

Necessary Robert?

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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

Absolutely unnecessary; Barnpreacher was referring to an overstatement in an earlier comment that Greg Bahnsen's exegesis of Matt. 5:17-19 was "appallingly bad". Now, while I respect someone's right to disagree with Bahnsen's exegesis, that particular statement was inflammatory. Moreover, "appallingly bad" exegesis - even if somewhat mistaken - does not get someone a ThM. from Westminster.

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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 would also add that we all can benefit from reading Chapter 15 on "Latent Antinomianism". I especially like this quote,

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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

I do hope this is intended as sarcasm, but in case it's not: outside the relatively small circle of those who personally met Bahnsen and were impressed by him, his arguments have not gone unchallenged in Reformed circles. And the result has been far from a knockout for Bahnsen. Although no full critique of his work from a Reformed perspective is currently in print (an ommission I am presently rectifying), such critiques as exist have raised sufficient doubts in the minds of those studying both sides of the question that John Frame can report that more moderate positions, such as those of Poythress presently seem to be carrying the day. Incidentally, Bahnsen's son David is on record that his father hated North's intro to BTS and apologized for it at every opportunity.

I think that I (the one who originally pointed out the errors Bahnsen made on this thread and who summed up his work on the key passage as "shoddy") am one trained to the same level of exegesis that Bahnsen was when he wrote "Theonomy in Christian Ethics:" that is, I am midway through a MTS degree.

Not the critiques I made on this thread. It is indisputable that Bahnsen made the errors in exegetical technique that I document and it is also indisputable that one of the good and necessary consequences of those errors is that the case "Theonomy" puts forward for the ethical perpective of Christian Reconstruction is no longer sufficient to establish that perspective.

This may be the exception that proves the rule. None of Bahnsen's committee were exegetical or Greek specialists: two members of Bahnsen's field committee (a historian, and an apologist) were among those specifically reproved by Gary North a few years later when he criticized the decline in the Westminster Faculty's exegetical abilities (in ither "Theonomy: A Reformed Response" or "Westminster's Confession"). And the third member of that committee was Norman Shepherd, whose exegetical abilities remain controversial among the Reformed to this day.

__________________
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

Actually, it was Gary North who told me that "appalling bad" exegesis does not get someone a Th.M. from Westminster. Moreover, you would also have to say that all the Reformers and Purtians and even the WCF were guilty of "appallingly bad" exegesis when they quoted Matt. 5:17-19 in support of the view that Christ came to uphold the law.

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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 don't know whether or not you told North that 2 of 3 members of Bahnsen's committee were men whose exegetical skills North himself later castigated. So North is contradicting himself. He can't say that the Westminster Faculty's level of exegetical expertise is greatly dropping and then profess surprise that they overlook errors. In this particular case, North has an additional reason for being unqualified to comment: having turned down an invitation to be a pre-publication reviewer of my book, despite being informed of the points at which new ground is broken in the debate, he lacks full knowledge of the facts.

The allegation that an egg is rotten is best countered by smelling the egg. If it smells sweet, the claim is incorrect. A mere counterclaim that the egg is not rotten simply will not do. The claim, supported by an attempted demonstration that Bahnsen's exegesis is bad is not best countered by an unsupported claim that his examiners could not possibly have erred, but by demonstrating that the attempted demonstration of errors is itself flawed.

Gary North has given us some good advice for judging debates. He writes: "I have debated publicly for 50 years. I am pretty good at it. I suggest this to anyone who ever sees a formal debate. When you see a debater use rhetoric to refute an opponent who has provided strong evidence for his case, and who also fails to mention the existence of this evidence, he usually loses the debate. When his opponent points out this omission in the first rebuttal, he [the opposing rhetoritician] surely loses the debate if he cannot answer this in the second rebuttal." (Steve Saville Says the FED Is Inflating. He Says I Dont Know What Im Talking About. Meanwhile, the CPI Is Flat and Gold Is Falling. He Conveniently Ignores Both of These Events. (4 4 2008). For three years I have been publicly offering Theonomists (including specifically North, Gentry, Strevel and Ritchie) the chance to demonstrate that my critique of Bahnsen's exegesis is unsound. To date, not one has attempted to engage my analysis of Bahnsen's exegesis. By North's standard (of judging debates), it is the Theonomists who, by ignoring my analysis of Bahnsen's exegesis, continually lose the debate. Meanwhile, I am starting to feel like an unsquashed Bambi watching scared Godzillas flee.

Almost without exception, the Reformers and Puritans who quote Matt. 5:17-19 in support of the view that Christ came to uphold the law can be demonstrated to be following Calvin who argues in his commentary on Matthew that it is specifically the moral law (cf Calvin on Matt. 5:19), (which for Calvin was the decalogue alone -cf. Institutes 4 xx 14-16), that Christ was upholding and not the judicial laws, a distinction not observed by most Theonomists. And the claim that Christ was upholding the law is not entirely wrong. Christ was upholding the validity of the entire law in that passage, - but only until the old covenant was brought to its end by the inauguration of the new, but not throughout the church age. As Ferguson has shown, although WCF quotes Matt. 5:17 to support the idea that some judicial laws continue by general equity, it also supplies other scriptures to support the point which when taken together argue for a different approach than Bahnsen attempts to put forward. Finally, neither Calvin nor the better known of his followers attempted to justify their position by any of Bahnsen's unsound reasonings or fallacious arguments.

Which brings me to the essential difference between mistaken opinions and bad exegesis. One's understanding of a biblical passage is not the same thing as the exegesis used to support that understanding. For, as Don Carson has written in "Exegetical Fallacies", the "essence of all critical thought, in the best sense of that abused expression is the justification of opinions...critical exegesis in this sense is exegesis that provides sound reasons for the choices it makes and positions it adopts." (p. 12). Notice that for Carson, exegesis is the justification of opinions and not the opinions themselves. But when any view (even the correct view!) of any passage is supported by more unsound reasons and fallacious arguments than sound ones, that supporting exegesis fully deserves being called appallingly bad. And as I demonstrated in a previous post in this thread Bahnsen made sufficient and serious exegetical errors in his justifications of the ethical perspective of CR to merit the label "appallingly bad" being applied his work on that point. Since Calvin, the Reformers, most Puritans and the WCF did not use any of Bahnsen's justifications to support their opinions, they are not "guilty of appallingly bad exegesis".

__________________
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

So tell me Tim, where did you get your PhDs in Greek, Hebrew and Exegesis from?

The idea that the Reformers and Puritans believed that the moral law was the Decalogue alone is too ridiculous to either deserve or require refutation.

Gary North told me that the reason no Theonomic writer would engage in a debate with you is because they would not give advertisement to an unknown theological writer.

I don't waste my time with endless debates either - God has not chosen to convince everybody of everything.

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

"I do hope this is intended as sarcasm"

I thought it was overwhelmingly obvious I was using sarcasm.

Is it called for? From my experience I think so. I can't tell you the conversations I have had with men regarding Bahnsen where I was not on the same page with him regarding a particular point where the individual I spoke with bypassed my point altogether and stated that if Bahnsen where alive to defend his position, he would tear my objection apart (while offering no Biblical argument to answer my objection).

And for the record, I am not anti-Bahnsen. I think that much of his work was and remains very profitable. Even points I disagree with him on are typically challenging and present a wake up call for the church in regards to our thinking (even if I believe on some of those points there are better answers).

Also for the record, I am not saying that I agree with Mr. Tim Cunningham's arguments in this thread. I have not had the time to go back over Bahsnen's exegesis and compare it with what Mr Cunningham has said.

What I strongly object to is holding up a position because it was defended by a particular teacher. I could say the same for any other defense of a position based upon the man that held to it. If one presents faulty exegesis, it should be challenged with an exegetical critique.

I remember when a lady in my church was arguing with the Session over the fact that we use wine in communion instead of grape juice. Her arguement was that Christ used unfermented grape juice because 'so and so' (I forget the name) said so and he has a PhD. Case closed. Or someone who argued a particular point because 'John Piper' held to it; or so and so held this or so and so said that and because I respect so and so, it must be correct.


"Incidentally, Bahnsen's son David is on record that his father hated North's intro to BTS and apologized for it at every opportunity. "

I have heard this as well. I always found that introduction to be out of step with the humility that seemed to characterize Bahnsen's 'tone' in all of his works. Perhaps we will have future editions that will leave off that introduction? I know some people who closed the book without even reading it because of that introduction and have encouraged them to go back and rip out the intro, forget it exists, and read the book.

To those who knew Bahnsen personally, I meant no disrespect to him. He has my respect as one of the greatest Christian minds of the 20th Century, even if I don't agree with him on some points.

__________________
Robert Truelove
Pastor
Christ Reformed Church
Lawrenceville, GA

Another great quote:

__________________
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

OOPS!! I was in the wrong thread!

Isn't that a song by Dr. John?

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The man who is disposed to think of his sin as a great calamity, rather than as a heinous crime, is not likely either to reverence God or to respect His law. - John Kennedy, 1873
Meg
Blog
Member, Intown Presbyterian Church,PCA, Portland, OR

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

Ok, Well I finished the Book and while I disagree with Bahnsen on a couple of issues I found the book to be invaluable in a number of places and well worth the read. I recommend the work to anyone who wants a readable book to look at these serious issues. I certainly now have a much healthier and fuller understanding of the Law in every sense after reading this book. I also will now use the "Older and Newer Testament" monikers from now on.

As I said in the Witsius and Turretin thread my next reading will take me into Turretin's Institutes and Witsius Economy of the Covenants.

__________________
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