JUDICIAL WARFARE
Christian Reconstruction and Its Blueprints For Dominion
by Greg Loren Durand

Chapter Nine:
The Philosophical Foundation of Reconstructionism

       By definition, Reconstructionism is the application of theonomic principles to society at large with a view to reconstructing it according to the covenantal model of Old Testament Israel. According to Greg Bahnsen, "The general continuity which we presume with respect to the moral standards of the Old Testament applies just as legitimately to matters of socio-political ethics as it does to personal, family, or ecclesiastical ethics."⁽¹⁾ Certainly all professing Christians would agree wholeheartedly that the morality taught in the Old Testament is universally applicable. However, it must be remembered that Theonomists such as Bahnsen, who depart from the traditional three-fold categorization of the Mosaic law in identifying the civil laws with the moral, have much more in mind than underlying principles when they speak of "the moral standards of the Old Testament." As we shall see, it is not merely the general equity of those laws which they seek to apply to the civil realm, but the actual laws themselves.
       The leading Reconstructionists have been unabashed in their commitment to the presuppositional apologetic system of Cornelius Van Til and it is safe to say that the structure of Reconstructionism could not have been built upon any other foundation.⁽²⁾ Hence, it is necessary to give an outline of the Van Tilian worldview and a brief rebuttal of its tenets before proceeding with an examination of Reconstructionism itself.
       The first chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans teaches that fallen man not only knows that the true God exists (verses 20-21), but he also knows that this God has an absolute moral standard which binds all mankind and to which is attached the penalty of death for disobedience (verse 32). In other words, men are aware that there is a Covenant of Works because the "work of the law" has been "written in their heart" (Romans 2:15). This assertion is proven by the fact that every religion known to man is a manifestation, in one form or another, of a works-based system of righteousness. Even the most primitive savage has a concept of deity whose wrath he fears and whose favor he seeks to earn through good deeds, rituals, or even sacrifice.
       The subject of which Paul wrote in verses 18 and 19, and also in verses 14 and 15 of the second chapter, is the conscience — a word derived from the Latin com (with) and scire (to know or to discern). A man with a conscience is a man "with knowledge." The conscience is "the faculty by which [man] perceives the moral effect of actions in Time in reference to their results upon himself in Eternity. It is that sense which over and above the idea of Right and Wrong, has with it the idea of duty, the sense that it is right, and proper, and suitable to act this way, and not that; and the sense that if we do this way, then are we to be declared just; if we do that way, then are we to be declared unrighteous. That it is the sense of Duty and of Responsibility."⁽³⁾ The function of the conscience is threefold: "The first is Prohibitory. 'This act thou shouldest not do.' The second, Recording. 'This act I have done.' The third is Prophetic. 'Therefore for this act I am responsible'.... The Prohibitory has reference to the Present; the Recording to the Past; the Prophetic to the Future."⁽⁴⁾ It is therefore the agent of the Covenant of Works, setting forth the moral standard, reminding man that he has failed to meet this standard, and declaring that he stands before his Creator in a position of condemnation as a result of that failure. William Shakespeare put it thusly: "My conscience hath a thousand several tongues; and every tongue brings in a several tale; and every tale condemns me for a villain." Conscience may at times slumber, but it is awakened by the Spirit of God through the instrument of the moral law in the myriad of ways it is brought to man's attention and again the conscience pronounces its judgment against sin (John 16:8; Romans 7:9). John Calvin wrote:

       That there exists in the human mind and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he constantly renews and occasionally enlarges, that all to a man being aware that there is a God, and that he is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service. Certainly, if there is any quarter where it may be supposed that God is unknown, the most likely for such an instance to exist is among the dullest tribes farthest removed from civilisation. But, as a heathen tells us, there is no nation so barbarous, no race so brutish, as not to be imbued with the conviction that there is a God. Even those who, in other respects, seem to differ least from the lower animals, constantly retain some sense of religion; so thoroughly has this common conviction possessed the mind, so firmly is it stamped on the breasts of all men. Since, then, there never has been, from the very first, any quarter of the globe, any city, any household even, without religion, this amounts to a tacit confession, that a sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart.⁽⁵⁾

       According to Calvin, the ability to investigate the “divine perfections” of God “is common both to those within and to those without the pale of the Church.”⁽⁶⁾ However, through his conscience, the unregenerate man can only know God as His Judge. Inheriting original sin from Adam, and worsening his condition by his own actual sins, the sinner is always running away from God and yet at every turn, God thunders out His judgments through the faculty of his own conscience. Indeed, there is a civil war raging within the unbeliever in which his depraved will urges him to indulge his sinful passions in opposition to the authority of conscience. In fact, the obstinate sinner will spend his whole life trying to silence the voice of his conscience — to suppress the righteousness of God (Romans 1:18) — and in this effort he will only be successful if abandoned by God to his own lusts (Romans 1:28). The traditional Reformed doctrine of common grace enters at this point to teach that all men are not as evil as they could or would be because God inhibits such efforts to render the conscience inactive.⁽⁷⁾ Man longs for autonomy, but his own conscience — the ever-present voice of God's moral law — stands as a barrier to that goal and he is thus prevented from giving full vent to his depravity.⁽⁸⁾ The utter impossibility of escaping God's presence should lead him to repentance, but, if left to himself, he will instead respond by hating his perceived tormenter. The unregenerate sinner is therefore rendered unable to hear the call of a merciful God as it is declared in the Gospel and unable to trust in Christ for salvation.
       The Calvinistic doctrine of "total depravity" is often misunderstood to mean that fallen man is so thoroughly wicked that he cannot do or know any temporal good. Of course, the Bible itself nowhere teaches that the functions of human nature are inoperative or that they are evil in and of themselves. Man's problem is that his will has been corrupted by sin and his mind is "enmity against God" (Romans 8:7), but, under normal circumstances, the conscience remains quite active and it is to this human faculty that the Gospel message is addressed. Cornelius Van Til, on the other hand, went far beyond the Scriptures and mainstream Reformed theology in his concept of "antithesis," adopting a hyper-depravity, or total corruption, which virtually eliminated the image of God in man after the Fall. Unregenerate man, according to Van Til, is so thoroughly depraved that he has no knowledge whatsoever of right and wrong: "The natural man cannot will to do God’s will. He cannot even know what the good is."⁽⁹⁾ Hence, there can be no such thing as an inherent moral law natural to man in his fallen state and therefore no common ethical ground between believers and unbelievers. To the Van Tilian, there is "no other standard" for ethics outside of special divine revelation, for even though fallen man has access to general revelation through the creation, he will always and without exception interpret it "in terms of his assumption of human autonomy" (i.e., that there is no God). Therefore, "The unbeliever is the man with yellow glasses on his face. He sees himself and his world through these glasses. He cannot remove them. His interpretation of himself and of every fact in the universe relating to himself is, unavoidably, a false interpretation."⁽¹⁰⁾
       Van Til insisted that there are only two ways of interpreting reality: "in exclusively temporal categories or in exclusively eternal categories."⁽¹¹⁾ Unregenerate man interprets reality in "exclusively temporal categories," and therefore it is impossible for him to know anything about God. In fact, if he does believe in a god, it must by definition be a finite deity. In other words, fallen man is an epistomological atheist. However, this assertion flatly contradicts Paul's clear teaching in Romans 1:19-20 that all men know the true God and His "eternal power and Godhead" through the universe which He has made. Man's culpability — his lack of excuse, as Paul describes it (verse 20) — derives from the fact that, though he begins with the "first principle" of knowledge of the true God, he actively rebels against that knowledge and turns aside to idols (verses 21-25). Yet even amidst the gross immorality that results from his idolatry, sinful man cannot escape "knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death...." (verse 32) Clearly, "knowing the judgment of God" is an eternal category which Van Til claimed is alien to the natural man's mind.
       Not only is the unbeliever unable to have any knowledge of his Creator, according to Van Til, but he also cannot even understand the natural world correctly: "...[T]he natural man is as blind as a mole with respect to natural things as well as with respect to spiritual things,"⁽¹²⁾ and "the natural man does not, on his principles, have any knowledge of the truth."⁽¹³⁾ To a Van Tilian, therefore, there can be no such thing as natural revelation, natural religion, or natural law. The natural man has to be constantly "stealing" from the revealed Christian worldview in order to make sense of the world around him: "Men need to presuppose the truth of Christian theism [Trinitarianism] in order to account for their own accomplishments,"⁽¹⁴⁾ and "the Christian theist must claim that he alone has true knowledge about cows and chickens as well as about God."⁽¹⁵⁾
       Van Tilianism constitutes a subtle denial that the conscience is the voice of God within all men and effectively reduces fallen man to the level of a brute with whom it is impossible for the Christian to communicate:

       It will be quite impossible then to find a common area of knowledge between believers and unbelievers unless there is agreement between them as to the nature of man himself. But there is no such agreement.⁽¹⁶⁾

       But without the light of Christianity [regeneration] it is as little possible for man to have the correct view about himself and the world as it is to have the true view about God. On account of the fact of sin man is blind with respect to the truth wherever the truth appears. And truth is one. Man cannot truly know himself unless he truly knows God.⁽¹⁷⁾

       "Every one of fallen man's functions [the emotions, the conscience, the reason, etc.] operates wrongly," according to Van Til.⁽¹⁸⁾ He insisted that "the ‘reason’ of sinful man will invariably act wrongly,"⁽¹⁹⁾ and so the Christian may only declare "thus saith the Lord" and should never attempt to reason with him on the subject of sin and judgment. Although an unbeliever may appear to assent to biblical truths, Van Til believed that this was only "formal" (apparent) and not actual assent, because "there can be no intelligible reasoning unless those who reason together understand what they mean by their words."⁽²⁰⁾ The unbeliever may speak of such matters as the soul of man or of a supreme Being, but what he means by these terms is completely different from what the believer means. Van Til criticized traditional Reformed apologists because "they attribute to the natural man not only the ability to make formally correct statements about ‘nature’ or themselves, but also to mean by these statements what the Christian means by them."⁽²¹⁾ The "antithesis" between believer and unbeliever is so severe that they cannot even agree on the meaning of the words "is" and "is not."⁽²²⁾
       This view undermines the very preaching of the Gospel, which, biblically speaking, is a direct appeal to the conscience and the reason of the sinner using the moral law. God Himself reasoned with unbelievers on the irrationality of their rebellion thusly: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18). The Apostle Paul, certainly a master of evangelism, constantly declared the reasonableness of Christianity to his unbelieving Gentile audiences. While Peter, the Apostle to the Jews, relied exclusively on special revelation in making his evangelistic appeals, Paul rarely, if ever, appealed directly to Scripture, but rather drew his arguments from natural revelation and even from heathen philosophers. In Acts 17, we find Paul utilizing logical argumentation when introducing his pagan listeners to the righteous demands of God’s moral law in an attempt to awaken their consciences — something which would have been unthinkable for him to do if Van Tilianism were indeed true.
       Besides the conscience, there is another voice through which the eternal God speaks to the fallen world — the civil magistrate, who occupies the same external office which the conscience occupies internally. Everything that is said of the conscience in Romans 2:14-15 is also said of the magistrate in Romans 13:1-6 and there is no reason to assume that the law which each enforces is not the same natural law. However, in removing the natural law from the individual, Van Tilianism, if consistent, likewise removes it from society as a whole. Everything which is denied to the private citizen must also be denied to the civil magistrate.⁽²³⁾ According to lecturer Brian Schwertley, "With the doctrine of total depravity [as interpreted through the lens of Van Tilianism] you cannot say that man can autonomously determine his own law system, and have a good law system."⁽²⁴⁾ Since true knowledge is supposedly impossible apart from special revelation as understood by the regenerate man alone, the groundwork has thus been laid for a proposed society ruled by Christians imposing "biblical law" upon unbelievers. However, because the New Testament lacks any "blueprint" for such a theocracy, the Reconstructionist necessarily is driven back to the judicial laws of Old Covenant Israel. This point must be kept in mind for it is crucial to an understanding of the theonomic position relating to law and government.

Endnotes

1. Bahnsen, By This Standard, page 347.

2. According to R.J. Rushdoony, "in every area of thought, the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til is of critical and central importance” (in E.R. Geehan, editor, Jerusalem and Athens [Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1971], page 348).

3. William Adams, The Elements of Christian Science: A Treatise Upon Moral Philosophy and Practice (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: H. Hooker, 1850), page 78.

4. Adams, ibid., page 81.

5. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chapter III:1.

6. Calvin, ibid., Book I, Chapter III:6.

7. Calvin, ibid., Book II, Chapter II:3.

8. It seems that this common grace was largely absent from the antedeluvian world, and as a result, the world was plunged into such a state of chaos that its complete destruction was necessary. With the exception of Noah and his family, the entire human race at that time was a living illustration of Paul's doctrine of reprobation in Romans 1:18-32.

9. Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1967), page 54.

10. Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969), pages 258-259.

11. Cornelius Van Til, Metaphysics of Apologetics (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1931), page 99.

12. Cornelius Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1974), page 82).

13. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1972), page 184).

14. Van Til, Defense of the Faith, page 120.

15. Van Til, Metaphysics of Apologetics, page 194.

16. Van Til, ibid., page 67.

17. Van Til, ibid., page 73.

18. Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1976), page 43.

19. Van Til, ibid., page 83.

20. Van Til, Defense of the Faith, page 77.

21. Van Til, Systematic Theology, page 113.

22. Van til, ibid., page 37.

23. On this point, however, Van Til was not consistent with his own system and he expressed great concern that some of his students, such as Rushdoony and North, were applying his teachings to the political realm in a way he did not approve. Gary North complained at length of this lack of consistency in Van Til's thought in his book, Political Polytheism.

24. Brian Schwertley, "A Reformed View of the Judicial Law," Part Four, posted at www.sermonaudio.com on September 2007.