Greenville Seminary required new students to read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book [1]as we prepared for our studies. It was a very valuable book! One of his instructions for reading non-fiction is to peruse the fly-leaves, bibliographies and indexes. Here are the take-always from Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics.[2]
Influences
There are many names in the bibliography that Reformed theology readers will recognize immediately. The three top influencers are John Murray, Herman Ridderbos, and John Calvin. By far, John Murray receives the most quotations in Theonomy. Bahnsen notes the significance of Murray’s writings in his life in the “Preface to the First Edition” (xlii). Gary North has a good little article on Calvin titled, Was Calvin a Theonomist? available for free on his website.[3]
Significant Scripture Passages
Theonomy has quotations from virtually every book of the Bible, and Bahnsen advises the reader to have Bible in hand as he reads.[4] A handful stand out:
Deuteronomy 24:1–4 (ESV): When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Romans 3:31 (ESV): Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law
Romans 7:12 (ESV): So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Romans 8:4 (ESV): in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
All of Romans 13, obviously, but especially Romans 13:4 (ESV): for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
Galatians 3:15–19 (ESV): 15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. 17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
Other major mentions are:
Genesis 9, esp. 9:6
Exodus 21
Leviticus 18, esp. 18:19; 19:2, 15; 20
Deuteronomy t 4:2; 6:24; 10:13
Psalm 119
Proverbs 8:13; 16:12
Matthew 5; esp. 5:17ff.; 28:18-20
John 1:17
Romans 4:15; 6:14; 7:6-7
Galatians 2:21; 3:10; 3:13; 5:13-14
1 Timothy 1:8
Hebrews 2:2; 10:1
1 Peter 2:13-17
1 John 5:3
[1] Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972).
[2] Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, Third Edition. (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 2013).
[3] Gary North, Was Calvin a Theonomist? (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
[4] Bahnsen, Theonomy, xl.
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