The Bahnsen Project

The Bahnsen Project has two aspects:
1) A full-length biography and documentary
2) Publishing more written works by Bahnsen

Learn more about, and support the project, here.

Watch the Bahnsen Project Promo:

The Bahnsen Conference - Lecture Three: Pastor Paul Viggiano with Roger Wagner

The Bahnsen Conference - Lecture Three - Pastor Paul Viggiano with Roger Wagner from Branch Of Hope Church on Vimeo.

Pastor Paul Viggiano speaks to the influence of Greg Bahnsen upon a generation of ministers and churches and how that legacy continues today.

    

Ham on Nye Debate - The Most Watched Debate in History? (Generations Radio)

"In what may have been the largest, most downloaded creation debate in history, Ken Ham faced off with Bill Nye (the Science Guy) at the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Kevin Swanson provides the play by play action, and centers in on the limitations of science. Could all of this boil down to the pride of scientists who cannot admit to the limitations of their field (whether historical or observational)?"

Answering Evolution and Islam (Greg L. Bahnsen)

The Evolution of a Fairytale (Against the World)

Quotable Theonomy: The Urgent need for Separation of Atheism and State (Mike Warren)

"Some people may still say, 'I still feel hesitant to endorse enforcement of God’s law by the State because when this was done in the past, it caused a lot of blood to be spilled over religious differences.'  If you want to compare Christian States with Atheists States, then the atheist position loses hundreds of times over.  In one century, the Twentieth Century, officially atheist states slaughtered over 100 million innocent people!  Stalin killed 10 million in his land reforms in the Ukraine.  Mao killed 50 million in his land reforms in China.  Pol Pot killed millions in the Cambodian killing fields.  Much of this was warfare directed against the civilian populace. ... 

"Atheists are still outraged that several hundred years ago some Puritans in Salem unjustly killed about 20 people before the town repented of its actions.  That’s barely worth noticing compared to the millions killed by Stalin, all with support of American Intelligentsia.  Judging by the number of lives unjustly snuffed out, separation of atheism and State is much more urgent than separation of Church and State."

-- Mike Warren, Lord of Soul and State: The Duty of Christians to Mix Politics and Religion (Christian Civilization, June 16, 2010). Retrieved August 8, 2012.

     

The Bible: God's Words to You: A Presuppositional Guide to the Reformed Doctrine of Scripture (Robert E. Fugate)

"The Bible: God’s Words to You is a Reformed, presuppositional treatment of the doctrine of Scripture, including: inspiration, inerrancy, Reformation properties of Scripture, illumination by the Holy Spirit, Old and New Testament canon, apocrypha, and textual criticism.

"One of the unique features of this book is its presentation of the subject of bibliology from the perspective of the Biblical world- and life-view, along with a presuppositional approach to apologetics.

"The book teaches from Scripture itself, while still providing abundant, choice citations from the best Reformed and evangelical literature. The author’s presuppositional presentation of the canon of Scripture and textual criticism are particularly helpful; his analysis of the unbiblical presuppositions underlying much faulty textual criticism is desperately needed.

"The Bible: God’s Words to You includes a glossary, five appendices, and memory verses. One particularly useful appendix surveys the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy throughout church history, offering a litany of carefully-selected, well-referenced citations."

863 pages

Endorsements:

“I have carefully read Dr. Robert Fugate’s The Bible: God’s Words to You, and have found it to be a well-researched, well-documented, and very comprehensive treatment of the doctrine of Scripture. One of the unique features of this book is seen in its presentation of the subject from the perspective of a Christian world and life view, along with a presuppositional approach to apologetics. Herein the Reformed doctrine of the Word of God is taught from Scripture itself. The author’s study on the canon of Scripture and textual criticism are particularly helpful, and his analysis of the unbiblical presuppositions underlying much of faulty textual criticism is sorely needed. I do believe that there is a significant need for The Bible: God’s Words to You.”

Dr. W. Gary Crampton, Ph.D, Th.D.

Research Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology Whitefield Theological Seminary

“There is a great need for a presuppositional approach to the subject of Bibliology, and Dr. Fugate’s work fills a major gap. His most distinctive contribution is in the area of New Testament canon. It is great to have a well-researched treatment of the subject from a presuppositional approach. His presuppositional treatment of Textual Criticism is also outstanding.”

Dr. Phillip G. Kayser, Ph.D.

Pastor, Professor, Missionary

“Dr. Fugate reminds us how important the doctrines of inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy are to maintaining our orthodoxy in Evangelical and Reformed churches. His presuppositional/worldview presentation of the doctrines of canon and textual criticism are valuable and needed. The church is in need of reaffirming our faith in the authority and sufficiency of the Holy Scripture for the Church of Jesus Christ, if we are to survive the 21^st century.”

Dr. Kenneth Gary Talbot, Ph.D., Th.D., Ed.D., J.D.

President, Whitefield Theological Seminary

order book

    

Worldviews in Conflict (Greg Bahnsen)

Christian Tolerance is not the Last Defense of the Secular Humanist

by Randy Pope

Modest Clothing Distributors

Christian Worldview of History and Culture

[Editor's note: this article was originally published March 23, 2012]

Americans have learned to be offended at the drop of a hat today. Last week you learned that the First Amendment to the Constitution does not protect you from offense proceeding from religious assertions of absolute truth. Today's contrast of the traditional Christian doctrine of tolerance with the Liberal Pluralist's doctrine of tolerance will shatter the remaining defenses of a godless society against the truth of God.

You may not believe that immodest dress, pornography or homosexuality are sins, but one's believing or not believing something as truth or not does not make it so. Therefore that is a question for another paper on another day. Today you will simply discover that the traditional Christian doctrine of tolerance does not protect you from assertions that may offend you, made by Christians.

The Government school system, teamed with liberal media and politicians, and ignorant or spineless conservative politicians, have taught you that tolerance is assigning equal value to every belief system whether it can be reconciled to your own or not. In other words you must not criticize others for wearing a thong or bikini in public even though it cannot be reconciled with your belief that revealing one's body in that manner violates God's explicit command from scripture to dress modestly. The absurdity of this doctrine is revealed with a radical illustration that follows logically from the assertion. If the assertion is right you must not criticize Cannibals for eating people even if you believe that Cannibalism is wrong.

Regardless of whether the new doctrine of tolerance is absurd or not, the real question is, what is the traditional Christian doctrine of tolerance. It must be admitted that tolerance of other belief systems is a Christian virtue. The question is what should that tolerance look like? Put most simply, a Christian must treat everyone with equal respect, whether they believe them to be right or wrong.

Respect for your fellow man does not include a kind of libertarian freedom to do everything that he wishes to do. It does not even mean that you must “live and let live”, allowing every activity that does not harm someone else. In fact the subjectiveness of the term harm is the cause of the loss of much freedom that would be reclaimed if the American society would once again bow its knee to the objective law of God.

Christian respect includes kindness to those whom you disagree with, while maintaining a belief in the superiority of the truth of God's commands. Therefore Christians should maintain for the triumph of Biblical truth in all arenas, but they must contend for that victory with kindness, respecting his opponent's right to be wrong. In other words in the battle for God's kingdom he may not always convince his opponent of the rightness of his position, and he may not always win the battle, but he must always contend faithfully for the truth, and he must always engage the enemy as a gentleman.

originally posted at The Examiner.com
    

Mad Secular Science (Quick Apologetics)

Secular science, in opposing logic
and itself via its own criterion,
is mad.
(attribution: JJ at the English language
Wikipedia / CC BY -SA 3.0)

by Steve C. Halbrook

Secularists often gloat about being the most rational because only they (unlike, say, Christians) supposedly base all of their beliefs on science. For such secularists, true knowledge can only be demonstrated by science.

But this rules out the laws of logic, which cannot be proven by a scientific experiment. Laws of logic are immaterial; they cannot be verified by the senses. Thus (consistent) secular science, in opposing the laws of logic, is irrational. 

Moreover, the very statement that “knowledge is only attained by science" is self-refuting. For if knowledge is only attained by science, then for this statement to be true, it itself must be knowledge attained by science. 

But, no scientific experiment has ever proven that knowledge is only attained by science. Thus the statement “knowledge is only attained by science" opposes itself, as it really says, “Knowledge attained in a non-scientific way reveals that knowledge is only attained by science.”

Secular science, then, in opposing logic and itself via its own criterion is irrational, crazy; it is mad.

"Claiming to be wise, they became fools ..." (Romans 1:22)


    

Abortion: Imposing one's views on the Unborn (Quick Apologetics)

by Steve C. Halbrook

A popular defense of abortion is that "we should not impose our moral views on others." 

But this is self-defeating, because abortion itself is an imposition of one's moral views (really, immoral views) on the unborn child. 

Moreover, murder--being the ultimate imposition--is a much greater imposition on the unborn child than a "forced" birth is to the mother; being murdered is much less desirable than giving birth. 

It is at this point where the pro-abortionist will argue that "yeah, but a mother could die while giving birth! Therefore, making her give birth can be tantamount to killing her!" But the possibility of the mother dying while giving birth is just that, a possibility, and an unlikely one at that. 

Even when doctors themselves predict death for the mother, they are still wrong sometimes. But the possibility of a child dying during an abortion is 100%. Therefore, probabilities alone still make abortion a greater imposition to the child than a "forced" birth is to the mother. We would further add that the child did not choose to be conceived, but the mother most likely chose to knowingly engage in a behavior that could likely result in conception. 

In any case, "forcing" a mother to give birth is not murder, but abortion is.

Finally, if society takes the "we should not impose our moral views on others" as a pretext for taking the life of the unborn to its logical consistency, then society would have to believe that one has the right to choose to murder anyone he wants. Some might decide, for example, that everyone who is pro-abortion should be murdered: "Who are you to say otherwise!" they might say. "Don't I have the right to choose?" Murdering anyone, then, would simply be a matter of choice.

Such is the futility of advocating abortion. But the Bible teaches that murdering anyone, of any age, is unjustified. 

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil ..." (Isaiah 5:20a)

Mindless Atheism (Quick Apologetics)

Atheists often mock Christians as being
"stupid" for their beliefs, but atheism, being
mindless, doesn't even rise to the level
of stupidity. Thus comparatively speaking,
atheism makes Alfred E. Newman
look brilliant.

Atheism—particularly materialistic atheism—holds that matter is all that exists; there is nothing that is immaterial. But if nothing is immaterial, then thoughts cannot exist, since thoughts are immaterial. Atheism, then, taken to its logical consistency must deny the existence of thoughts. 

And so atheism, by its own admission, is mindless. It doesn’t even rise to the level of stupidity, for at least stupidity assumes some level of intelligence. 

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1a)

I Don't Believe in Guns - Teaser Trailer

How Should Christians Respond to the Life and Now the Death of Anti-Christian Polemicist Christopher Hitchens?

by Doug Phillips

He was probably the most famous anti-Christian of the last decade — a man who made his living scoffing at God and encouraging others to do the same. But now Vanity Fair writer and author of God is Not Great [sic, editor], Christopher Hitchens, is dead at the age of 62. He will be remembered by most for his sarcasm, biting wit, and ‘indefatigable energy and venomous glee” in the cause of atheism and various contrarian agendas.

Of his death, the world’s leading evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, author of *The God Delusion* [sic, editor] tweeted today: “Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God.”

But how should Christians respond to the life and death of one of our most capable public adversaries?

continue reading

Biblical Stoning: "Barbarism," or Righteous Punishment?

Public stoning contrasts with the genocidal state that would
commit private executions behind closed doors or in far
away concentration camps. Need we look further than the
private twentieth-century genocides?

by Steve C. Halbrook

(Excerpt from Chapter 23 of God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws)

Stoning (as a punishment by the state for crimes worthy of death) is an act almost universally despised today.  Gary North writes:    

What we find in our day is that Christians despise biblical law almost as much as secular humanists do. … The very idea of execution by public stoning embarrasses Christians, despite the fact that public stoning is by far the most covenantally valid form of execution, for God’s law requires the witnesses to cast the first stones, and it also requires representatives of the entire covenantal community to participate directly, rather than hiding the act in a sanitary room in some distant prison.  The Bible is clear:  “The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people.  So thou shalt put the evil away from among you” (Deut. 17:7).[1]

While some may misunderstand biblical stoning to be an indiscriminate act of mob violence, Jean Kellaway, in The History of Torture and Execution, says this regarding stoning in ancient Israel:  “There is a danger in viewing historic laws with modern attitudes, heightened by the risk of mistranslation and misinterpretation.  In defense of ancient Israel’s laws, it should be stressed that the courts demanded overwhelming levels of proof before pronouncing the death penalty.”[2] 

The incredulous statement, "You want to
go back to stoning?!" is premised on a silly,
superstitious evolutionary assumption.

Not only this, but capital crimes are offenses against the entire community, since such crimes can bring God’s judgment on it.  Therefore, stoning is a logical method of execution, since it—unlike most other execution methods—is carried out by members of the community. 

Stoning carried out biblically is attacked for being primitive and barbaric. But the argument that such stoning is primitive is based on a humanistic, evolutionary assumption—an assumption implied in the incredulous objection, “You want to go back to stoning?!”  It is an evolutionary assumption in either a moral or technological sense. 

It is an evolutionary assumption in a moral sense in that it assumes man has morally evolved to the point that the death penalty is now immoral—especially in such painful death penalties as stoning.  It is an evolutionary assumption in a technological sense in that in our evolutionary mindset, we tend to relate basic elements such as stones to so-called primitive caveman times.  Only “primates” resort to basic elements when they could instead make use of great technological achievements developed over the course of evolution.  So in the case of capital punishment, methods should conform to technological innovation.

Neither of these assumptions are rational.  The assumption from moral evolution cannot object to stoning in the past, since according to the moral evolutionary philosophy itself, past stonings were moral acts by the standards of natural selection at that point in time.  And the assumption from moral evolution cannot object to stoning in the present, since an always changing, evolutionary law lacks any objective moral basis for judging stoning to be wrong at the present time.  And who’s to say that sometime in the future, stones might be morally okay to use again?  Evolution might reveal that stones were really okay to use all along—we were just not evolved enough in our thoughts to see it.

Regarding the argument from technological evolution, we must ask that, in regards to state-sanctioned executions, why prefer sophisticated technology over basic technology?  Technology has given the state such methods of “efficient” mass killings as gas chambers and nuclear missiles.  It has also given the state brutal methods of killing through the use of biological and chemical weapons, as well as doctors brutal methods of infanticide from within the womb.

We are not without stoning in our day, but
have replaced the biblically prescribed
method of stoning with "technologically
advanced stones" in everything from death
penalties to total warfare.

And, it must be further noted that technology has not replaced stoning, but only given us a different form of it, and on a much wider scale.  While the biblically prescribed method of using natural stones against convicted criminals is no longer used, we now use “technologically advanced stones” in everything from death penalties to total warfare.  Hurling stones with the hand has been replaced by hurling stones (bullets) through the barrel of a rifle, or by hurling boulders (bombs) from cannons and airplanes.  (This, by the way, “shows the madness of our times: we drop nuclear bombs on others, and attack stoning.”[3])

One of the great blessings of biblical law is that it does not hand the state carte blanche over life and death.  This is especially the case with biblical stoning.  When one is convicted in a court of law of a crime punishable by stoning, the public carries out the execution.  (Hence the balance of powers in executions: the state authorizes, the people execute: no pretrial mob violence, no secret state-sanctioned gas chambers and mass graves.)  Mitigating the state’s power to take life mitigates the state’s power to take life arbitrarily; execution by the public reminds the state that its trade isn’t primarily in death, but in justice.  And, stoning carried out by the community deters the state from creating a professional class of bloodthirsty executioners.[4]

Public stoning contrasts with the genocidal state that would commit private executions behind closed doors or in far away concentration camps.  Need we look further than the private twentieth century genocides?  Gulag survivor Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for example, writes of Communist Russia’s custom of “hiding executions in cellars under cover of night and of shooting the victims in the back of the head.”[5]  Former Hitler-youth and German soldier Hilmar von Campe writes that “most Germans did not know of the Holocaust until after the war.”[6]

Stoning also reminds society of the seriousness of state-sanctioned executions.  Unless a society is so depraved that it enjoys watching deaths—at which point it would be on the road to collapse anyway—the public and participatory nature of stoning teaches society to not be indifferent to state-sanctioned deaths.  We need look no further at the human tendency to condone deaths committed out of sight than abortion. 

Stoning people to death was part of the mob
violence during the secular humanistic
French Revolution.

Abortion is easy for many to accept because they cannot see what happens to the unborn child—out of sight, out of mind.  So public stoning can help keep society from easily tolerating unjust capital punishments.  Further, public stoning deters criminal acts.   People—particularly participants in the stoning—see firsthand what could happen to them should they commit a capital crime.

Public stoning has an important sobering effect.  Not only does it remind citizens of the death they could face for committing heinous crimes, but it reminds them of God’s final judgment.  As Gary North writes, “Public stoning forces citizens to face the reality of the ultimate civil sanction, execution, which in turn points to God’s ultimate sanction at judgment day.” [7] 

Every instance of public stoning then reminds unsaved citizens to repent and turn to Christ, else they will suffer an eternal death penalty much worse than stoning.  But not only does public stoning remind citizens of eternal damnation, but of the inevitable victory God’s people will have over evil and death itself, due to Jesus Christ.  Again, North: “Stoning … faithfully images the promised judgment against Satan: the crushing of his head by the promised Seed (Gen. 3:15).”[8]

Because of the public nature of stoning, those sentenced to death are able to address the public prior to their execution.[9]  Thus in cases where the Bible’s strict due process is followed[10] and yet an innocent man is nevertheless stoned to death, that man can publicly proclaim his innocence and even indict those responsible for his unjust death.  The impact such an outcry can have on the community can pressure the state to be very cautious in whom it sentences to death, and can deter future malicious witnesses.

Stoning wasn’t unique to Israel.  Humanists who decry stoning sanctioned by biblical law conveniently ignore stoning carried out by other ancient civilizations.  Consider Greece:

The Pharmakoi—persons considered worthless by Greek communities—were kept in Athens and other cities at public expense and used as sacrifices for annual events.  “In Athens one of these was celebrated in the middle of summer, when two men were led out and stoned to death as scapegoats for the wrongs of others.  If one of these Pharmakoi were to be killed, he would first be paraded around the city, in order that he should drain off the impurities of others and take them upon himself; he was then slain in a ceremony in which the whole population took part.”  That was in the city which is hailed above all others as the birthplace of democracy.[11]

This incident, carried out in Athens—the darling of democratic humanists—is democratic humanism taken to its logical conclusion.  These stoning victims did not commit any crimes but the majority nevertheless singled them out as inferior and worthy of death.  This is the logical and inevitable outcome of rejecting God’s will for the will of the people.  Stoning in Athens cannot be compared with stoning in biblical law because Athens sanctioned stoning of the innocent, while biblical law sanctions stoning for those guilty of criminal offenses (as determined by God) proven in a court of law under the testimony of at least two credible witnesses.  Athens was a depraved society on the road to collapse, while the Christian theocracy is sustained by a godly—albeit imperfect—society. 

This "shows the madness of our times: we drop
nuclear bombs on others, and attack stoning."
--Daniel Ritchie

One might think that the real problem of secular humanists with stoning is not stoning itself, but with stoning sanctioned by the Bible.  Strangely, secular humanists appear to have no problem with certain modern-day stoning riots.  And when mobs of Palestinians attack Israel’s military with stones, a “barbaric tactic” becomes “heroic.”  Whether or not Palestinians ever successfully stone a superiorly-armed Israeli soldier to death is beside the point; stoning is stoning.  And do we really think there would be a secular humanist outcry if an Israeli soldier was actually stoned to death?  Perhaps instead they would consider the assailants to be heroes. 

Secular humanists have historically employed stoning; the difference between biblical law and secular humanists is that biblical law only permits lawful stoning, while secular humanists prefer unlawful stoning.  For instance, mob violence in support of the French Revolution included the stoning of people to death.[12]  The early secret police for the Soviet Union, the Cheka, also stoned to death some of their victims.[13]  One tactic by Soviets was to use a piece of rock to dash out the brains of those who survived being shot.[14]

Should an abortion procedure ever be invented that is comparable to stoning—say, if a doctor injects the womb with a lethal chemical that, with a similar velocity to thrown stones, attacks the unborn child from several directions simultaneously until the child dies—would the secular humanist condemn this?  Of course not—he would adamantly defend this procedure as another liberating breakthrough for “womens’ rights.” 

Excerpt from the (Lord willing) upcoming book, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws: Biblical Theocracy, Justice, and Slavery versus Humanistic Theocracy, "Justice," and Slavery by Steve C. Halbrook.  Copyright © 2010 by Steve C. Halbrook.  Based on the master's thesis, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws

---

     [1] Gary North, Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), 273.    

     [2] Jean Kellaway, The History of Torture and Execution: From Early Civilization through Medieval Times to the Present (London: Mercury Books, 2003), 17.

     [3] Daniel F.N. Ritchie, e-mail message to author, June 9, 2010.  

     [4] As Gary North puts it, “The Bible does not allow the establishment of a professional, taxpayer-financed guild of faceless executioners who, over time, inevitably either grow callous and impersonal toward their awful (full of awe) task, or else grow sadistic.”  Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), 45.

     [5] Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago:1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Thomas P. Whitney, trans. (New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers Inc., 1973, 1974), 300.

     [6] Hilmar von Campe, How Was It Possible? The Story of a Hitler Youth and a Vital Analysis for Today’s Times (Top Executive Media, 2006), 36.

     [7] North, Tools of Dominion, 44.

     [8] Ibid.

     [9] Ibid., 45.

     [10] Conviction can only be on the testimony of 2-3 witnesses, and witnesses themselves are threatened with the same punishment as those they testify against should they be found to bear false witness (Deut. 19:16-19).  Hence those who are false witnesses in a trial where the accused, if found guilty, would be stoned will themselves be stoned if exposed.

     [11] Otto Scott, “The Great Christian Revolution: Part One,” The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, ed. R.J. Rushdoony, vol. 13, no. 2 (1994): 5.  Scott cites Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 6, 848.

     [12] See Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 130 and Frank McLynn, Napoleon: A Biography (NY: Arcade Publishing, 2002), 56.

     [13]  Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, The Red Terror in Russia (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, Inc., 1975), 178. 

     [14] Ibid., 78. 
   

Can Old Testament Civil Laws be "Dangerous"?

The mindset of many is that God's civil laws
should not be implemented because they can
be abused by a bloodthirsty state. But such
an approach is self-defeating and takes
justice itself to the chopping block, for
without God's standards of justice, any act
by the state is permissible.
(photo by Andrew Butko)  

by Steve C. Halbrook

(Based on "Chapter 24: The Question of Abuse," of God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws)

Critics of God’s capital sanctions often argue that the sanctions shouldn’t be implemented since they can be abused to take innocent life.  Therefore, the state should autonomously decide punishment.

But such thinking destroys justice.  It is true that because man is fallen and finite, God’s penal justice will inevitably be abused.  But to reject justice in the name of justice is self-defeating.  A “justice system” opposed to God’s justice is by its very nature unjust—it is actually a criminal injustice system. Instead of making injustice the exception, the philosophy that says the state should decide justice for itself in order to avoid abuses of God’s justice says “let’s go ahead and make injustice the rule.”  As Greg Bahnsen writes,

[E]ven with the mistakes that we may make in using God’s law today, I prefer it as the basis for ethics to the sinful and foolish speculations of human beings.  It would be absurd for anyone to resign himself or herself to poison just because medical doctors occasionally make mistakes with prescription drugs![1]

Civil penalties based on the sinful speculations of fallen man are therefore poison by their very nature.  Moreover, God’s capital sanctions presuppose the lex talionis, which means they are perfectly proportionate to the crime.  Is it just to enact penalties disproportionate to the crime?  And yet without biblical law disproportionate penalties are what we will get.  More than a century ago Rev. S.H. Kellogg wrote,

The modern penal codes vary as widely from the Mosaic in respect of their great leniency, as those of a few centuries ago in respect of their undiscriminating severity.  In particular, the past few generations have seen a great change with regard to the infliction of capital punishment.  Formerly, in England, for example, death was inflicted, with intolerable injustice, for a large number of comparatively trivial offenses; the death-penalty is now restricted to high treason and killing with malice aforethought; while in some parts of Christendom it is already wholly abolished.[2] 

Outside the Bible’s civil code, there is no authority to determine what constitutes fitting punishments (nor for what even constitutes a crime, for that matter).  Thus the state can embrace either extreme—it can kill with impunity, or it can be criminally pacifistic.

We must here note that no matter how pacifistic a country claims to be, there will be capital sanctions anyway.  It is only logical that societies that reject God’s law inevitably embrace more death than if they accept God’s law, penal sanctions and all.  (After all, “the wages of sin is death” [Rom. 6:23b], that is, the wages of violating God’s law is death.)  This is the case regardless of a country’s ostensible pacifism.  A “pacifistic” country is not without killings; at the very least, it simply transfers killings from the state to the private citizen.  Hardened criminals are free to employ their trade of death either in prisons or on the streets.  Doctors are free to execute babies, the elderly, and the mentally disabled.  In short, execution of the guilty is exchanged for the execution of the innocent.  

Humanistic societies simply tailor their capital sanctions to suit their sinful priorities.  For the Nazis, the Aryan white race was the highest priority, so they murdered Jews.  For Americans, sex and egalitarianism are the highest priorities, so they murder unborn children.

The Protestant Reformer Martin Bucer spoke of the priorities and corresponding sanctions of his day.  These sanctions may or may not have entailed capital punishment (by Bucer’s language they likely did), but they do drive home the point about punishments and priorities:

But what shall we say is the reason that theft is dealt with so fiercely, whereas all too many wink at rape and adultery, at offenses against divine worship, at the distortion of the heavenly doctrine in which both the present and eternal salvation of men is contained, and at blasphemy of the Divine Majesty? Why, unless it is because money and external wealth are so much more dear to men than God himself, their eternal salvation, and decency and honesty?[3]

Again, removing God’s standard of punishment—no matter how harsh we might think it is—in no way shape or form preempts capital sanctions.  Rejecting God as the standard of justice simply hands the state absolute power over life and death.  While the law of God guarantees against genocide and killing the innocent, humanistic law has no such safeguard. 

Commenting on Romans 13, one author writes:

He [the ruler] must punish evildoers.  What is an “evildoer”?  Again we must ask:  Is the ruler free to decide the answer for himself?  To answer Yes is to give a despot a blank check for statist absolutism: he may decide that all babies in Bethlehem are “evildoers,” for instance.  King Herod was only doing his job, therefore, when he ordered the murder of the infants (Matthew 2:16).  Clearly, God has given civil rulers the power of the sword: obviously, they are supposed to execute somebody.  But whom?  If your answer is based on anything but God’s law, I repeat: you’ve just handed the state a blank check—and God’s civil minister might add you to his hit list.[4] 

Such a blank check is possible since, without God’s law as the standard for criminal punishment, civil penalties do not presuppose moral absolutes.  Without moral absolutes, what is left?  Moral relativism?  Immoral relativism?  Immoral absolutes?  The only absolute certainty is death and destruction—a far cry from “escaping the ‘dangers’ of biblical law.”

If you think man should decide law instead
of God, don't complain if your photo
winds up on a wanted poster--even
if you committed no crime whatsoever.
After all, there is no moral basis for opposing
unjust state persecution outside of God's
standards of justice.

After all, to the extent the humanistic justice system is consistent with its relativistic philosophy, justice is merely a façade.  Buddy Hanson writes, “Once we dismiss the idea of absolute ethics, the words in our law books become worthless.”[5]  For example, in the courtroom, “winning the case becomes more important than bringing about justice.  So lawyers (and judges) look for legal technicalities, rather than the rightness or wrongness of the charges.”[6]  In denying absolute moral standards, humanism lacks any standard for even knowing justice—let alone criticizing the Bible’s standards of justice.

Nevertheless, many still recoil against the idea of a society based on God’s law because of its plurality of capital sanctions.  But there is another way to look at it.  While God’s law does in fact require a plurality of capital sanctions, it also forbids an even greater plurality of capital sanctions.  This is because God’s law forbids adding to (as well as taking away from) it (Deut. 4:2). 

Thus it is the only legal system providing an absolute authority guarding against the following humanistic forms of state-sponsored killing:  Genocide; ethnic cleansings; infanticide; indiscriminate bombings of civilians; human sacrifice; Jim Crow laws; mass drownings; throwing Christians to the lions; beheading of “infidels”; lethal torture of prisoners; liquidation of the mentally and physically handicapped; euthanizing the elderly; encouraging the spread of fatal diseases (e.g., AIDS); and any other unjust executions imaginable.  So instead of sanctioning a bloodbath, God’s law safeguards against one.

We must realize, too, that the legitimacy of God’s capital sanctions are not based on whether or not they produce a greater amount of deaths than desirable in man’s eyes.  Man’s sole purpose is to obey God’s commands, whatever the outcome:  “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (emphasis mine) (Ecc. 12:13). 

“Political success” then is not measured by the humanistic utilitarian philosophy of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people (greatest happiness in this case being the least number of executions by the state).  Rather, it is measured by the degree the state upholds God’s law.  

We noted in chapter 7 that utilitarianism cannot be coherently applied to politics.  Utilitarianism is also a wicked philosophy, one reason being that it believes humanistic happiness is more important than fearing God.   In any case, the utilitarian argument of minimal executions by the state used against God’s law collapses on its own terms, since we can say that on net balance, “Christian” states (whether actual or in the name of Christianity) have spilled less blood than humanistic states.  In fact, we can make this case against secular humanistic states alone.  Just compare the entire Inquisition, Calvin’s Geneva, Cromwell’s Britain, and Puritan New England with the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the pro-abortion West.[7]  The body count differences are not even close. 

Not that examples are necessary (at least for those reasonably acquainted with history), but we will give just one. 

Organized irreligion in the twentieth century committed atrocities on a scale that the fiercest religious wars never approached.  The scientific racism of Nazi Germany killed forty million and attempted genocide against Europe’s Jews.  The scientific socialism of the Communist countries killed a hundred million (and still counting) people around the globe.  As the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has noted, people in the West routinely invoke the Spanish Inquisition as an example of religious horror.  And they are right to do so.  But the Inquisition, in the course of three centuries, and after legal procedures of a sort, killed fewer people—probably around three thousand—than the Soviet Union killed on an average day.[8]

Joseph Stalin, opponent of biblical civil law
and one of history's greatest murderers.

We might add that none of the twentieth century’s nine greatest mass murderers were Christian or even part of a Christian regime, and five of the nine held to the outright atheistic religion of Communism.[9]  Far from being the persecutors, Christians numbered among the greatest victims of last century’s genocides.[10]  

We can’t address the question of whether a particular law code will lead to a bloodbath without addressing the rate of taxation that law code permits.  On the surface it sounds insignificant, but it makes an enormous difference.  What you subsidize, you get more of.  So the more you subsidize the state (and thereby its sword), the more power you give the state to take lives.  This is a major reason why humanistic law codes have led to bloodbaths. 

But the Bible, by contrast, only permits a taxation rate of less than ten percent of one’s income (see 1 Sam. 8, where ten percent taxation was considered tyranny).  In this way “the Bible restrains the State,” since “it’s impossible to run a ruthless dictatorship on such a small tax rate.”[11]  It’s harder for the state to commit genocide without significant cash reserves for bankrolling such things as influence, weapons, and manpower.  And so it hard for humanists to argue that biblical law, which limits taxation, can be “abused” to further a bloodbath, while humanism—where man arbitrarily decides all things for himself—cannot justify any taxation limits. 

Arguments from abuse are absurd on their face.  The question is whether something is good, not whether it can be abused.  In a fallen world, all things are abused.  (Maybe we should reject the argument from abuse itself for its own abuse).  But if we remove all good things because of abuse, bad things are all we are left with.  

God’s moral law is often abused by false teachers to promote damnable heresies (e.g., salvation by works) resulting in eternal damnation.  Eternal damnation is far worse than physical death, which can result from the abuse of God’s moral law in the civil realm.  But does it follow that we reject personal morality (personal obedience to God’s law) because of false teachers?  Of course not, and as such, then it also doesn’t follow that we should reject God’s law in the civil realm.  We no more reject Christ’s Lordship over the state than His Lordship over individuals.

And what would we have left by eliminating good law that is abused?  “If abuses of law by the magistrate are corrected by removing any law to abuse, then there will be no law for the magistrate to enforce except his own, arbitrary will—which is the surest way to achieve tyranny!”[12]  The conflict is not between biblical law along with its abuses versus humanistic law.  The conflict is between biblical law and humanism, period.  Humanistic law bases itself on sin; it is any law outside the boundaries of biblical law.  So when the state abuses biblical law by ignoring it, it behaves equally sinfully and therefore equally humanistically as when it adds to biblical law  (cf. Deut. 4:2). 

And so we cannot blame abuses of biblical law on biblical law at all, but on humanism.  (This gives, in the case of the horrible, humanistic Inquisition, all the more reason to enact biblical law—which gives us the only moral basis for opposing humanistic inquisitions.[13]) 

While biblical law can possibly be abused to further tyranny, humanistic law not only definitely can lead to tyranny—by the very nature of the case, it is tyranny!  So where is the logic in eliminating biblical law because it is sometimes or even often abused (occasional imposition of humanism) and replacing it with a whole system of legal abuse (perpetual imposition of humanism)? 

However bad the legal system under biblical law would be, it can only get worse under outright humanistic law.  When a doctor makes a mistake, we don’t tell him to always make mistakes in order to never make mistakes.  We tell him to take extra precautions in the future. 

Similarly, the abuse of biblical law should not motivate society to get rid of biblical law—a self-defeating approach—but to be ever more vigilant to keep biblical law.   The answer, in short, is not to fight occasional humanism (abuses of biblical law) by a stricter adherence to humanism (no biblical law at all), but to fight occasional humanism by a stricter adherence to biblical law.

Moreover, the rejection of the Bible’s capital sanctions undermines the authority of all of biblical law, since to reject the sanctions’ authority (God) is to reject the same authority for the other civil laws.  Thus rejection of the capital sanctions is a package deal.  To reject the death penalty for blasphemy is to theoretically reject the principle of innocent until proven guilty (Deut. 19:15).  To reject the death penalty for the incorrigible son is to theoretically reject the principle of impartial judgment (Lev. 19:15).  To reject the death penalty for Sabbath-breaking is to theoretically reject the civil distinctions between murder (Ex. 21:12), manslaughter (Deut. 19:4, 5), and self defense (Ex. 22:2, 3).  In fact, to reject the capital sanctions is to reject the lex talionis (Ex. 21:23-25), and to thus repudiate any basis for a just system.  Such gives ammunition to Supreme Court Justice Kennedy’s perverse reasoning that “We cannot dismiss the years of long anguish that must be endured by the victim of child rape.  It does not follow, though, that capital punishment is a proportionate penalty for the crime.”[14]

Many who argue that biblical sanctions should be ignored simply because of potential abuse also dismiss biblical sanctions as being “utopian,” i.e., an unrealistic attempt to create “heaven on earth.”  The irony is that the idea of eliminating biblical sanctions that can be abused is itself utopian.  Holding to civil sanctions is inescapable, and so those who reject biblical sanctions simply replace them with their own humanistic sanctions. 

In light of this, those who reject biblical sanctions simply because they can be abused must believe that their own humanistic sanctions cannot be abused.  Such a scenario—where a society has laws that cannot be abused—is almost as utopian as it gets.

It is such utopian humanists—those who exalt human nature, support eliminating the law of God, and imagine the possibility of a civil paradise on earth with no laws being abused—who should be kept from civil power.  History tells us over and over again that those with such a mindset not only support eliminating God’s law, but eliminating people—whatever it takes to usher in their utopian order.  Thus when asked how long he would kill people, Stalin replied, “The process would continue as long as was necessary”[15]—i.e., until the establishment of a communist utopia.[16]

We must add that unlike humanistic law, biblical law provides a dual-system of deterrence.  Not only is there a harsh penalty for serious criminal acts, but there is a harsh penalty for false witnesses.  Those exposed as false, or “malicious” witnesses must suffer the penalty the accused might have otherwise suffered:

If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot (Deut. 19:16-21). 

God's law is the only logical and
moral basis for justice.

Thus biblical law, unlike humanistic regimes, does not disproportionately threaten the accused without threatening the accusers.  And unlike humanistic regimes, neither does it disproportionately threaten the accuser without threatening the accused.  Biblical law is balanced and impartial towards accused and accuser alike.  Threatening false witnesses with the punishment the accused would have received minimizes illegitimate convictions and unjust punishments.  Threatening the accused with punishment proportionate to the crime if proven guilty maximizes just punishments.  In short, in biblical law just punishments are maximized while illegitimate convictions and unjust punishments are minimized. 

Therefore, biblical law provides inner-safeguards against abuse.  By contrast, what safeguards against abuse does humanism have?  If God doesn’t decide morality, man does.  If man decides morality, then there are no objective standards for morality.  Man makes himself out to be his own god and determine right and wrong for himself.

Thus in the humanistic society, morality is decided by the one (the tyrant), the few (the oligarchy), or the many (the mob).[17]   In any of these cases everything from extreme torture to genocide can be justified.  Moreover, when man rejects God’s authority, “the mind of man not only is its own ultimate authority, but also replaces God as the intelligent planner and creator of the experienced universe.”[18]  Thus the humanistic state treats life as fodder for its deadly metaphysical assumptions.  “Making widespread use of the Darwinian term ‘selection,’ the Nazis sought to take over the functions of nature (natural selection) and God (the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away) in orchestrating their own ‘selections,’ their own version of human evolution.”[19]

Western humanism deifies reason.  In such humanism the greater one’s education,  the more valuable one is considered.  One’s level of education reflects one’s closeness to the god Reason, or how close one has advanced in becoming his own god.  Thus man lacks any intrinsic worth; his value is not based on being in God’s image, but on his ability to reason. 

Hence in the French Revolution, those considered unreasonable were considered subhuman and had to be guillotined.  And in our day, liberal intellectuals hold that the unborn are not cognitively developed enough to reason, and hence can be executed.  Such was their justification for murdering Terri Schiavo.  And such was the justification for the Nazis murdering the so-called “useless eaters.” 

 
We see, then, the futility of rejecting God’s capital sanctions in the name of abuse.  To reject God’s capital sanctions in order to achieve justice is equivalent to saying, “Justice demands that we replace occasional injustice with continual injustice.”  And, rejecting God’s capital sanctions in the name of abuse is itself an abuse.  It is equivalent to keeping the bath water and throwing out the baby.

In the end, it must be remembered that whatever the result of following God’s law—whether it fosters a bloodbath or not[20]—we must follow God’s penal sanctions because God said so.  Man’s only job is to obey God, not to rebelliously speculate about calamities that could occur for obeying Him.  To quote William Perkins, one of the original great Puritan theologians,[21] “We must doe that which we find to be the will of God: and the events of things must be left to God.”[22]

Excerpt from the (Lord willing) upcoming book, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws: Biblical Theocracy, Justice, and Slavery versus Humanistic Theocracy, "Justice," and Slavery by Steve C. Halbrook.  Copyright © 2010 by Steve C. Halbrook.  Based on the master's thesis, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws

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     [1] Greg L. Bahnsen, “The Theonomic Reformed Approach to Law and Gospel,” in Five Views On Law And Gospel, ed. Wayne G. Strickland (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 116.

     [2] S. H. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus (Minneapolis, MN: Klock and Klock Christian Publishers, 1978), 424.

     [3] Martin Bucer, “The Fourteenth Law: The Modification of Penalties,” The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, ed. Gary North, vol. 5, no. 2 (Winter 1978-79): 14.

     [4] David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1981), 32.

     [5] Buddy Hanson, How to De-Program Yourself from all of the Blasphemous Ideas You Learned in Public School (Tuscaloosa, AL: Hanson Group, 2009), xxxvi.

     [6] Ibid.

     [7] While we condemn the Inquisition (and the heretical Catholic Church which sanctioned it), the humanistic Soviets were hypocritical to attack the inquisitors.  Burleigh writes: “The medieval and early modern Inquisition played a part in the Communists’ demonisation of the Christian Church, with Young Pioneers chasing inquisitors from the state in a celebrated Bolshevik play.  In fact, the modus operandi of the Communist Party itself bore a marked similarity to the Spanish Inquisition, an arm of the Spanish monarchy rather than the Church, with the important differences that torture was an acknowledged and legal part of the latter’s proceedings, whose overarching objective was to induce heretics to seek forgiveness for the sake of their souls.  Only unrepentant heretics were ceremonially burned.  In the Soviet cover version, torture was frequently used but never publicly acknowledged, and confession did not bring forgiveness, but rather either a swift death or disappearance into the camps.”  Michael Burleigh, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 81.

     [8] Robert Royal, The God that Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West (NY: Encounter Books, 2006), xvii.  Cited in Gary DeMar, “The Invisible God Called ‘Reason,’” Biblical Worldview Magazine, November 2006, vol. 22, no. 11: 5.

     [9] R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 8.

     [10] Charl Van Wyk, Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self-Defense (Torrance, CA: WND Books, 2006), Appendix “Gun Control Precedes Genocide: Case Studies of Major Twentieth Century Genocide.”

     [11] Mike Warren, Lord of Soul and State: The Duty of Christians to Mix Politics and Religion (Christian Civilization, April 23, 2008).  Retrieved December 21, 2009, from http://www.christianciv.com/Lord_Soul_State.htm.

     [12] Greg L. Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), 337.

     [13] On the Inquisition and the need for the magistrate to uphold God’s law, Bahnsen writes, “But of course God never commanded these abuses in his law (for example, He did not grant the magistrate the right to judge heretics in the first place), and so this argument [against unsaved magistrates abusing God’s law] is actually an argument in favor of our thesis.”  Bahnsen, By This Standard, 336.  The Inquisition, moreover, is not an example of what happens when Christians are involved with civil government—it is an example of what happens when actual Christians are not involved in civil government, and humanists, and counterfeit “Christians” (humanists masquerading as Christians) are involved in civil government.  The Roman Catholic Church was and is an apostate church, not a true church of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

     [14] Kennedy v. Louisiana, 957 So. 2d 757, reversed and remanded, IV A (2008). 

     [15] Rummel, Death by Government, 79.

     [16] Ibid.

     [17] The idea of the state being the ultimate standard of morality—and therefore law—was characteristic of twentieth-century totalitarianism.  In 1939, Dr. William Burdick, a firsthand witness of Nazi Germany’s legal operations, wrote, “It is a necessary part of the machinery of dictatorships that the law and the courts shall be subservient to the ruler.  In 1933, it was officially declared in Germany that the final authority as to the principles of the State and the law is the National Socialistic German Workers’ Party; that no other political party could be formed; and that the Fuehrer should make its laws.  Does this declaration differ in principle from the decree of Soviet Russia stating that the ‘Socialist Conscience’ shall be the final arbiter?” W. L. Burdick, The Bench and Bar of Other Lands, 422.  Cited in John Warwick Montgomery, The Law Above the Law (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 1975), 22, 23.

     [18] In the words of John Frame, discussing the autonomous philosophy of Immanuel Kant.  John M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1995), 45.

     [19] Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (U.S.A.: BasicBooks, 1986), 17.     

     [20] Kevin Clauson turns the argument that Biblical sanctions would lead to a bloodbath on its head:  “If this were so, if this could even be so, and assuming the law was being used correctly, it would only prove that many law-breakers deserve their just punishment.”  Clauson adds that such would be unlikely, since biblical law wouldn’t be established outside a societal consensus anyway, and because of the law’s deterrent effect (“the ‘hear and fear’ factor”).  Kevin Clauson, “The Great Law-Book of the Nation,” in Explicitly Christian Politics: The Vision of the National Reform Association, ed. William O. Einwechter (Pittsburgh, PA: The Christian Statesman Press, 1997), 162.

     [21] Marc A. Clauson, A History of the Idea of “God’s Law” (Theonomy): Its Origins, Development and Place in Political and Legal Thought (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), 141.

     [22] William Perkins, A Commentary on Galatians, edited by Gerald T. Sheppard (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 204.26-27.  Cited in Clauson, History of the Idea of “God’s Law”, 144.