I would like to preface this post by saying that I have a profound respect for Dr. Bahnsen. 

God used him to pull me out of a mire of humanism and state-worship.  He literally taught me the history of Western philosophy even though he passed away long before I had ever heard of him.  I’m indebted to the man and his legacy in so many ways.

This is why I was appalled to hear him support (though indirectly) a Satanic worldview through his defense of miscegenation.  Of all the lectures I’ve listened to, I’ve never heard Dr. Bahnsen present so careless a case, nor have I ever heard him so unprepared.  He gets confused over at least two scripture references, his main definition is open to embarrassing ambiguity and he leaves a major premise un-argued for!  Out of respect to Covenant Media, I cannot make the file available for download but it can be purchased at the Covenant Media website and is available in the lecture series titled: “General Ethical Issues” under the category of Bahnsen audio.

In this post I’d like to succinctly outline his case and highlight a flaw in his argument against race-based discrimination in a family unit.

Bahnsen begins by citing Acts 17:26 (though as expected, he never interacts with the latter half of the verse) and Romans 5:16 as evidence that all men are “one” in Christ.  We are all under the same federal headship. 

He then attempts to define the term “racism.”  His statements are interesting, and help the listener identify his attitude towards the issues involved, and so I quote from the lecture:

The title of my little discussion this afternoon is “The morality (or perhaps immorality) of racism”.  Now, nobody is going to deny the existence of race, as a matter of fact.  RacISM, however, is not the declaration that there are different races, but that there should be different treatment of different races.  Or maybe, one particular race should be given particularly good treatment or another particular race, particularly bad treatment.  That is:  That there is some discrimination in the way one reacts to a member of another race or even of his own race.  That is racISM.  Not the declaration that there are races, but that they should be treated in somehow different ways.

We want to ask ourselves about the moral question: what is the morality of racism?  What is the morality?  That is the categorical question.  Then in the title, as it’s been indicated, I’m really going to be talking about the immorality of racism for the most part.  That is, how in terms of the general question of the morality of racism, the judgment we must come to is that it is immoral.  That is, that it is immoral to treat a member of another race in a way other than what you would treat a member of your own race.  God looks on all humanity as a common humanity, and I’m going to argue therefore that any racism is immoral.

Dr. Bahnsen later implies that the sin of racism is a violation of the 6th commandment and is, therefore, very serious.  More needs to be said before we can claim that the above definition is a violation of the 6th commandment.  His definition is very ambiguous.  For instance:  It would be absurd for a barber to use the same method on his black customers that he uses on his white customers!  By the very nature of the case, the black and white customers must be “treated differently” by the barber…the two customers have different hair types and must be treated accordingly!  If we adhere to the above definition of racism, the barber would be guilty of breaking the 6th commandment!

He goes on to distinguish between inner attitudes of the heart and external factors. 

In dealing with external “racism” he discusses four different spheres.  Racism in the State.  Racism in the Church.  Racism in the Family.  And Racism in the Private Sector.

He argues against racism (as he’s defined it) in each situation, except in the private sector, where he admits that, while immoral, it should still be legal because the state has no authority to provide sanctions against it in that context.

I would like to look closer at Bahnsen’s case that “racism” is immoral in the institution of the family.

He makes two arguments:

1.  He does find a basis for families to discriminate among people in regards to whom their children marry…but race is not one of the Biblical factors.  In both the Old and New Testaments, says Bahnsen, the only concern is one of religious affiliation.  Race is never important.

2.  Moses married a negress.  (Bahnsen admits that “people who disagree with interracial marriage have labored long and hard to prove that Moses did NOT marry a negress, but they haven’t done a very good job.  This is a major premise left undefended by Dr. Bahnsen.)

Moses, Dr. Bahnsen argues, is the OT type for Christ!  And, here he is, involved in an interracial marriage!  So, by implication, Dr. Bahnsen is saying that interracial marriage must be moral because Moses engaged in it.  This is a weak case, because Moses was not a perfect man, and therefore more needs to be said before we accept any of his actions wholesale.

That aside, let’s grant Dr. Bahnsen the truth of 1, and the truth of 2.

Most commentators agree that Moses only married one wife, Zipporah, who was a Midianite (the daughter of Jethro, the pagan priest.)  John Calvin, St. Augustine, Matthew Henry, and a plethora of others all agree with this.  Zipporah was not a believer, and did not share Moses’ faith.  This means, that Moses is in violation of Dr. Bahnsen’s first argument!  He failed to discriminate against Zipporah on account of her unbelief!  And, given the truth of the implied argument in 2 (that, since Moses did it, it must be ok), that must mean that 1 is false!  A contradiction!

Dr. Bahnsen could always say that Zipporah converted to Moses’ faith before they married or Dr. Bahnsen could claim (along with Josephus and a minority of commentators) that Moses married an Ethiopian woman after he married Zipporah; however there is no Biblical evidence of either.  A prima-facie reading of the text leads to an embarrassing contradiction in Dr. Bahnsen’s case.

(John Calvin argues that Zipporah had not fully converted since Moses failed to have his son circumcised before returning to Egypt.  God shows up and almost kills Moses in the desert, but Zipporah relents and performs the circumcision…appeasing God’s wrath.  And, later on in Numbers 12, we again see evidence that Moses’ wife is causing him to act outside his culture by leaving Miriam and Aaron out of the loop in choosing the 70 elders.  Many commentators agree that the Numbers 12 passage has nothing at all to do with the race of Moses’ wife, but rather with her undue pagan influence over him.)

So, without looking at the absurdities that would arise from denying a family the right to discriminate based on physical characteristics…we can see that Dr. Bahnsen’s case itself is weak and may very well be self-contradictory.

Much more could be said about his entire presentation…but it deserves a more learned critique than I have the faculties to provide.

Let no Christian man stay silent while this sort of garbage pours from the mouths of our best and brightest teachers!

Excellent. I’m sure Dr. Bahnsen would be forced to reformulate his argument in light of yours and I hope and believe he would have demonstrated the intellectual honesty and spiritual humility to do so were he alive. The Scriptures and logic are plainly on our side here.

I address the issue from a philosophical angle in an article of mine which I hope will be published in the upcoming edition of the Kinist Review.

Thanks for the kind words Daniel.

I’ve been thinking about this all day, and, while I can come up with many counter-arguments Dr. Bahnsen could make…I can’t think of any that work.

For instance, he could claim that his first argument (that discrimination based on religious affiliation) is a valid standard to discriminate by, but not a necessary one.  But then, this would leave him having to produce an awkward Biblical case, and also it would render the entire “be not yoked with unbelievers” passages, useless.

There are others…and I admit that I could be missing something…but, I just don’t see how this is not an apparent contradiction on Dr. Bahnsen’s part.

And, are you going to make us anxiously await the publication of your article, or are you going to post it for us?

I think John is going to put it in the next Kinist Review which is supposed to be out soon.

The new number of the Kinist Review will be published in July. Not much longer to wait.

I want to make the brief comment that “racial discrimination” is only at issue in so-called “open societies,” (those which have liberal immigration policies) and I see no biblical basis for supposing that a society must, of necessity, be open. Bahnsen’s argument takes for granted the proximity of members of other races eligible for marriage, however this proximity of exogenous elements has been the exception in history rather than the rule, and it is typically only in imperial states that one sees the “cosmopolis” arise. I cannot, therefore, conclude that Bahnsen is making a case for a preference toward imperial states, due to their cosmopolitan racial structure, which would directly contradict many of his previous commentaries on biblical polity.

We run into various dangers using “types” as general social paradigms. There is much in the comportment and conduct of these types that is not to be emulated, nor were they always in perfect conformity to the law, or to the inescapable logical implications of the law. If racial preference is verboten, then we find Paul’s ethnically preferential perspective on his Hebrew derivation to be sinful. And yet Paul informs us that we ought to emulate him.

Bahnsen’s reading of the matter is superficial at best, and tendentious at worst. If find more and more that those who operated under the general label of “Reconstructionist,” outside of Rushdoony himself, tended to permit their a priori ideological commitments to infect their exegesis at key points, especially on the issue of race, as we see amply evidenced in the work of both Bahnsen and North. No one can deny the service that Bahnsen did biblical apologetics in general, and Theonomy more specifically, but he is not to be digested uncritically. North is consistent, but highly unbiblical, most especially in his considerations of national sovereignty, trade, the biblical understanding of interest, and other topics in which a laissez faire outcome is vital to his ideological commitments. Funny how the “bible” always ends up resembling the man reading it.

On the other hand, one can read tome after tome by Rushdoony and never run into such poppycock. So, you could say that I vastly prefer Rush and Otto Scott to Bahnsen and North.

The new number of the Kinist Review will be published in July. Not much longer to wait.

Excellent John! That gives me time to fine tune my paper.

I think you’re spot on about everything else.

Sola Scriptura often seems to fall by the way side with some, but thankfully, at least the abandonment of the principle is not yet “total” (I hesitate to say that since it is an all or nothing principle) in Reformed circles (and certainly less so with Dr. Bahnsen than with the Reformed church at large) so we at least have raw material, in the form of an institutional framework that presupposes the basic tenants of our worldview, to work with and within.

I find a lot of the error in Reformed circles arises from a superficial understanding of what is (or ought to be) denoted by the term race, as if it is simply some distinction to be seen in the pigmentation of the skin. We use that distinction as a marker, an indicator of the probability of certain genetic, epigenetic, and social characteristics in weighing our various possible options. This kind of discriminatory thinking is vital to life itself, and is literally fundamental to human epistemological process. Indeed, you could claim, without much overreach, that human thinking IS, in essence, more or less elaborate processes of discrimination.

Amen…this is where a discussion of the “One and the Many” problem has literal application.

On another note:

I’d love to read up on Dr. Bahnsen’s view of polity.  In this lecture on “racism” he discusses the “external sin of racism” in application to the State. 

His discussion is very ambiguous and leaves one wondering if national borders are Biblical at all.  And if they’re not, then serious work needs to be done to demonstrate why Israel was being sinful in establishing herself according to tribe.

The proof-texts Dr. Bahnsen uses in his argument against racism in the state are as follows:

Lev 19:15 (Maybe…but, he wasn’t sure if this was the correct verse or not.)
Deut 1:17
Deut 16:19
Jeremiah 22:3

This kind of discriminatory thinking is vital to life itself, and is literally fundamental to human epistemological process. Indeed, you could claim, without much overreach, that human thinking IS, in essence, more or less elaborate processes of discrimination.

Indeed. Asserting that A = A is completely discriminatory. It is the most basic application of human reason to determine the boundary between self and non-self and then the boundaries between various non-selves.

I think that the foundation for the identity postulate, or law of non-contradiction, is fairly established in Genesis by the principle of creation: “kind after kind.” So the point you are making is a brilliant one. Needs more unpacking (learning to hate that term) but the kernel is there for a nice paper or two.

One more insight following Quine: synonymy is essential for predication (and thus knowledge) which is based on the same problem (universals) under discussion. If the human lexicon consisted of words entirely and utterly distinct from one another (the many) then synthesis and predication would be impossible.

Man, I could run with this for all of 2011!

You find examples everywhere, in each branch of knowledge, where “grouping” is essential to understanding. This goes back to the problem of nominalism seen in Objectivism. Synonymy is a term that seems to ably describe this grouping activity in thought. In developmental psychology, the ability to group and classify is considered essential in human cognitive maturation. And yet our pastors tell us that this very thing is wrong. Value assessments follow closely these classification activities, as the brain evaluates each thing it sees and assigns measures of usefulness, threat, and other judgments needful for the maintenance of life, and the defense of group and home. These are instincts wired into the human cognitive process. Thus what is being condemned by clergy, plutocracy, and government alike, really, is the survival instinct itself, and our very humanity.

You guys might be interested in Owen Barfield’s “Night Operation.”

The main character Jon slowly emerges from an existence without distinctions and begins realizing that words themselves present a variety of meaning, shades of understanding that must be discriminated from one another.

Consider this classic line from the text where Barfield describes the futuristic utopia that Jon lives in:

“A powerful movement arose for a return to the older and simpler practice of instructing children in ‘the three Rs’ (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and leaving it at that.  Anything else would come under some such heading as ‘learning’ or ‘erudition’, the encouragement of which was admittedly undesirable.  The sponsors of the movement argued something like this:  It is agreed on all hands that the primary purpose of education is to avert elitism by scotching discrimination. But it also has a subsidiary aim, namely the transmission of knowledge, which has been widely regarded as an end in itself.  If we confine education to the three Rs, then on the one hand we achieve its primary purpose, while on the other we lean firmly on an educational principle which has been established as effective by many centuries of practice.

To this argument their opponents had two replies.  First, it is not the case that instruction limited to the three Rs discourages elitism.  Some children acquire them more easily and apply them more cleverly than others and in doing so become different from those others.  Obsession with the three Rs belongs to the old twentieth-century ideal of equality of opportunity.  Modern education aims at equality of result. Mastery of the three Rs may end in using language correctly enough to convey coherent meaning, and an ingrained habit of speaking and writing correctly is the deepest and most pernicious of all the hidden roots of class-distinction and racism.  But secondly, and more importantly, that whole approach to the problem is out of date.  It is based on a way of life that has long been declining and has now practically disappeared.”

Jon and his friends try to escape this horrible underground utopia.  As they begin to find meaning in words, they begin to regain their humanity. 

I can sympathize with them.

That does sound cool. I’ll have to check it out.

The more I look into Bahnsen’s speeches and public appearances, set apart from his books on theonomy and philosophy, the more he looks like a neocon to me. Sad.

“If find more and more that those who operated under the general label of “Reconstructionist,” outside of Rushdoony himself, tended to permit their a priori ideological commitments to infect their exegesis at key points, especially on the issue of race, as we see amply evidenced in the work of both Bahnsen and North. No one can deny the service that Bahnsen did biblical apologetics in general, and Theonomy more specifically, but he is not to be digested uncritically. North is consistent, but highly unbiblical, most especially in his considerations of national sovereignty, trade, the biblical understanding of interest, and other topics in which a laissez faire outcome is vital to his ideological commitments. Funny how the “bible” always ends up resembling the man reading it.”

Mr. Marhsall, exactly. I have long ago realized that the construct of the ‘Consensus patrum’ means that they are correct when they are in AGREEMENT, not correct simply because they are a ‘Church Father.’ Even infallibilists of the Roman camp didn’t use to believe that (or I never heard them say so!) Therefore, because Bahnsen, Rushdoony, Clark, et al. were agreed on SOME of the Constructs of Christian reconstruction, there were differences almost from the beginning- the liturgical arguments between Chilton, Sutton, and Jordan, for instance.

And I am SURE that no one in Reformed circles wants to give ‘infallible’ status to mere Elders in their tradition! (As a catholic Christian, I am speaking with a bit of sarcasm here, FYI!)

Next, “Moses, Dr. Bahnsen argues, is the OT type for Christ!” Here I think Bahnsen is making it up, as it were.

I believe that no less an authority than St. Paul, has clearly shown that ADAM is the OT for Christ, NOT Moses. And, as the Hebrew word meaning for Adam is clearly noted in Strongs #119, racism is DEFINITELY in view among the Hebrews, and should also be the norm in the Church. I don’t want to get into all the reasons I believe this to be so, but I have addressed them on my blog at length.

Let one just say that recent columns over at SWB have been having a field day with so-called “Reformed” types, who think schtupfing another race for Christ, is ‘doing God service.’ [John 16:2]
I can only say, ‘How wrong they are!’