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xiiWESTMINSTER’S CONFESSIONthe humanists and the Arminians were uninterested in stealing,namely, TULIP.5 Hardly anyone was interested in a TULIP.So, the only thing they had left of their own was somethingthat nobody wanted.And so Calvinism shrank in influence, decade by decade, tothe point of cultural invisibility. Its legacy is nearly lost.In the United States, there are perhaps ten Calvinist theological seminaries, most of them with fewer than a hundredstudents, some with only a dozen. There are about four supposedly Calvinist colleges: but none of them has restructuredits curriculum to reflect the creeds and confessions of Calvinism. None of them teaches the six-day creation in its scienceclasses. Therefore, the larger Calvinist seminary campuses havegrown since the mid-1960’s by recruiting students from fundamentalist and neo-evangelical colleges and graduates of standard humanist colleges. Seminary students on these largercampuses are not required to take a course on Calvin’s Institutesin order to graduate. There are no required courses on thehistory, creeds, and confessions of Calvinism. The result ispredictable: gradwates who know veq little about Caluirukm. Thisleads to the watering down of Calvinism within those denominations that accept these graduates without rigorous screening.One denomination that does carefidly screen its candidates forthe ministry is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It has paida heavy price for this. The entire denomination has about9,000 fewer members than the First Baptist Church of Dallas.A similar growth vs. screening crisis has stymied the Reformed5. Total depravity of man, Unconditional election, Limited (particulm-) atonement, Irresistible grace, and the Perseverance of the saints.6. Calvin College, Dordt College, Covenant College, and Geneva College. In afill-page ad in Christiun@ To&y (March 11, 1991), Geneva College did not mentionCalvinism under its list of “distinctive.” It did list its kation in the lowest crimeregion of the country and its award horn the Consolidated Natural Gas Foundation.

Foreword.XlllPresbyterian Church of North America, the Protestant Reformed Church, and the Reformed Episcopal Church.Calvinism is not only in an institutional crisis; it is in a philosophical crisis. Its advocates no longer agree on what Calvinismis or what it means. In this sense, it has a great deal in common with every other movement on earth. Calvinism’s leaders,generation after generation, have signed up almost all of theirfollowers to sail on a ship run by humanists. Now that ship isvisibly sinking.The West’s Philosophical Crisis: DisintegrationThe cultural moorings have been ripped up: in CommunistEurope and in the Western democracies. The universities ofthe West in principle became multiversities a century ago withthe creation of the elective system at Harvard. Since then,knowledge has exploded into more and more tiny fragments.But with this fragmentation, the coherence, meaning, andwisdom of humanist education have disappeared. This is notan epistemological crisis limited to the ideologically disruptivesocial sciences; it is basic to the physical sciences, too.Quantum physics since 1927 has taught us that there isnothing holding the universe together at the subatomic levelexcept mathematical equations, except when there is a humanobserver. No obseruer means no “down there. ” Only when measured by a human being does material reality in the form ofwave functions return to subatomic nature, we have beentold.’ This has been accepted in theory by most theoreticalphysicists; only recently have a series of experiments suggestedthat there really is something “down there” besides equationsin between” scientific observations.s7. John Gribbin, In Search of Schrodinger’s Cd: Qwtium Physks and Realiiy (NewYork: Bantam, 1984).8. I refer here to the experimen conducted by a team of physicists led by

xivWESTMINSTER’S CONFESSIONAnother anomaly: everything in the universe is connectedsimultaneously at the subatomic level, said theoretical physicistJohn Bell in 1964, and no one has been able to prove himwrong. Every experiment backs him up. Here is the remarkable implication of Bell’s Theorem: the speed of light, modernman’s last agreed-upon constant, disappears as a limit at thesubatomic level. Furthermore, because everything in the universe is connected with everything else, anything can conceivably influence everything else. His theorem tells us that nonlocal influences do not diminish with distance. They act simultaneously. They link up without crossing space. “A non-localinteraction is, in short, unmediated, unmitigated, and imm.ediate.”gAs physicist David Mermin puts it, “Anyone who isn’t botheredby Bell’s Theorem has rocks in his head.”loModern physics has become the domain of the absurd,unless we assume that there is a Creator God who sustains theuniverse and provides ultimate meaning and coherence beneath the seeming absurdities. Otherwise, modern physics isdriven mad by questions that make no sense. Assertion: “Spaceis curved.” Question: “Compared to what?” Assertion: “Theuniverse is expand ing.” Question: “Into what?”This arcane intellectual material from the realm of physicshas led to a monumental judicial crisis. One of the first men torecognize this was Harvard Law School’s dean, Roscoe Pound.In 1940, he delivered an address to students at the Claremontcolleges in southern California. He announced: “Nothing hasbeen so upsetting to political and juristic thinking as thegrowth of the idea of contingency in physics. It has taken awayProfessor Terry Clark of the University of Sussex. See “Schrtiinger’s SQUID,” TheEcmwmist (Jan. 12, 1991), pp. 79-80.9. Nick Herbert, Qwwttum ReuMy: Beyond thz New Physti (Garden City, NewYork: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1985), p. 214.10. James Trefil, “Quantum physics’ world: now you see it, now you don’t,”Smithsonian (Aug. 1987), p. 75.

Forewordxvthe analogy from which philosophers had reached the veryidea of law. It has deprived political and juristic thought of thepattern to which they had conceived of government and law asset up. Physics had been the rock on which they had built.”11Problem: to the extent that Christian scholars have adoptedthe “latest findings” of the secular humanist world as their professional standard of academic discussion and inquiry, they aretrapped on board without lifeboats. But now the good shipR&mul Cause and E’ect is visibly sinking.The Newtonian IdealHow long had this connection between physics and civil lawbeen true? When did physics become the primary model forsocial theory? 12 From the seventeenth century, especially after1660. When Cromwell’s reign ended and Charles II returnedto the throne, social thought turned from the Bible and medieval (organic) natural law theory to physics. Descartes had setthe mathematical ideal early in the century; Sir Isaac Newtonand the Fellows of the Royal Society after 1661 established themathematical-experimental ideal in physical science, and themagnitude of their achievements restructured the realm ofsocial theory.13This triumph came at the expense of biblical Christianity,especially Puritanism. Newton was a unitarian (Arian) theologically, although he kept his theological opinions quiet.14 He11. Roscoe Pound, Contem@nzry@istic Theo?y (Claremont, California: ClaremontColleges, 1940), p. 34. Cited by R. J. Rushdoony, “The United States Constitution,” !Jourmd of Christian lieconstructiun, XII (1988), p. 35.12. There is a competing humanist viewpoint, organic social theory, with biologyas the model.13. Louis I. Bredvold, The Brave New World of h Enligh&mrnen# (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1961).14. Gale E. Christiansen, In th Press-rue of ttu Creator: Isauc Newton and His Times(New York: Free Press, 1984), pp. 470,564.

xviWESTMINSTER’S CONFESSIONwould have lost his job as Director of the British Mint had theybecome known. His hand-picked successor at Oxford, WilliamWhiston, did go public with his own Arian views, and he wasdismissed.15 In private, Newton was also a practicing alchemist. His magical experiments were conducted in secret, andhis successors in physics successfully suppressed this information. It did not become known until the British economist JohnMaynard Keynes bought the Newton papers at auction. Hewrote an essay on these experiments, published posthumouslyin 1947.16 Even today, only a handfi.d of historical specialistsare aware of this occult side of Newton’s thought.1’ Keynescalled him the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, for Newton looked at the universe as if it were a gigantic riddle. Forquantum physics, it is a much more puzzling riddle than it wasfor Newton and his followers, 1660-1927.The first social science, economics, was developed in theseventeenth century as a conscious reaction against the EnglishCivil War and the subsequent cultural disruptions (1640-60).The Christians could not agree on anything; thus, concludedthe fledgling economists, a truly scientific approach to socialtheory would have to renounce any appeal to the supernatural.It would have to renounce morality, too. Science would have tobe morally and religiously neutral. Writes historian WilliamLetwin: “Nevertheless there can be no doubt that economictheory owes its present development to the fact that some men,in thinking of economic phenomena, forcefully suspended alljudgments of theology, morality, and justice, were willing toconsider the economy as nothing more than an intricate mechanism, refraining for the while from asking whether the mecha15. Ibid., p. 471.16. John Maynard Keynes, “Newton the Man,” in Newton Tmcenknq CeMn-atiuns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947).17. Betty J. T. Dobbs, T/u Foun.dahn of Newtonk Akhq; @ “i% Hunting of theGreen Lyon” (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1975).

Forewordxviinism worked for good or evil.”ls He writes this at the beginning of his chapter, ‘John Locke: Philosopher as Economist.”It was Locke’s vision of religiously neutral politics that triumphed after 1690: the Whig tradition. This Whig traditionreplaced Puritan social theory. In doing so, it restructuredCalvinism itself. Whig political theory was the philosophicalbasis of the American Presbyterian revision of the WestminsterConfession of Faith in 1788.1’ Newton and Locke by 1700 hadtriumphed philosophically over Aquinas and Calvin. The ultimate political victor (posthumously) was Roger Williams.Why Did I Wfite This Book?This book is a refutation of Theonoq: A Reformed Ctitiqzu(1990), written by the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary. I do not regard either book as a classic. My book is whatsome people will call a “quickie. M The Westminster book is, too,but it took about five years to get it into print; mine will takeabout five months. While writing this book, I finished ChristiunReconstruction: Whut It 1s, Whut It Isn’t (1991), which I co-authored with Gary DeMar. I finished work on Millennium.sm and SocialTheoV (1990). I wrote my usual three newsletters per month. Ioversaw the shutting down of my investment newsletter officein Texas and its move to Phoenix, Arizona. I spent my normalten hours a week on writing my economic commentary on theBible (Leviticus). Finally, I tried (without much success) to keepup with the war in Iraq. In short, I did not devote my fullattention to writing this book. (And when I say “writing,” Imean typing with my lone index finger.) So, it is hardly a great18. Wiltiam Letwin, Tlu Origins of Scias.tijic Ecorwmia (Garden City, New York:Anchor, 1965), pp. 15 S-59. Published originally by MIT Press, 1963.19. Gary North, PoMad Polytheism: T/w Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institutefor Christian Economics, 1989), pp. 543-50.

.XvlllWESTMINSTER’S CONFESSIONbook. It does not have to be a great book. It just has to bebetter than Theonoq: A Reformed Critiqw.1 do not have to cover everything. What I neglect will becovered by Greg Bahnsen in the book I commissioned him towrite, NO Other Standard. What he neglects will be covered bythe contributors to Theonoqv An Znfinmwd Response. We willpresent in three volumes our case for theonomy and againstWestminster’s critique.I do not like to write or publish exclusively defensive books.I much prefer to take the offensive. (A lot of people have saidthat I am offensive, and I have to agree.) It is my deeply feltbelief that you cannot beat something with nothing. It is notsufficient to show here that Westminster Seminary has self-consciously gone down a pathway leading to a cultural dead end.I have to point out the correct path and explain why it is correct. I have attempted to do this in Westminster% Confession.But Westminster’s Conf ion is intended to be more than amonograph on how a particular Calvinist institution sold itsbirthright for a pot of message. What Westminster Seminaryhas done is a representative example of a much larger processthat has been going on for well over three centuries. It is a casestudy of how the intellectual leadership of Calvinism refuses toadopt the heritage that God has graciously given to Calvinists,and only to Calvinists. Instead, the leaders return again andagain to the fleshpots of academic Egypt. They also allow theirenemies to set the covenantal war’s agenda. Worse; they submitto certification by their enemies before they even begin to dobattle. This has been going on from the very beginning of Calvinism. It is time to call a halt to the process. Westminster’s Confession is a warning to Calvinist leaders of the future: “Just sayno.”Cornelius Van Til taught us how to say no. Let us follow hisgood example.

PREFACEAnd Maqy arose in those days, and went ifito the hill count withhastg into a city ofJuda; And entered into the ho-use of Zachurias, andsaluted Eltkabeth. And it canu to pass, that, when Eltiabeth heard thesahdution of Mary, the babe li?aped in her womb; and Elisabeth waJfilled with the Holy Ghost (Luke 1:39-41). (emphasis added)In the first month of the year of our Lord, 19’73, the UnitedStates Supreme Court handed down a decision, Roe v. Wiie. Itannulled all state laws that prohibited abortion. No Protestantseminary in the United States said a word in protest, as far asI am aware. There were no outraged manifesto. In that year,every one of them that remained silent lost its moral legitimacy.1 They announced by their silence: “In matters of life anddeath, we have nothing to say.” The humanist world had suspected this for many decades.Later that year, Rousas John Rushdoony’s Institutes of BiblicalLaw appeared. Rushdoony had for many years pointed to theimpotence of the modern Church. He had warned his readersin 1970 about the growing pressure within the medical com2munity in favor of abortion. He attacked the abortionists1. The Reformed Episcopal Church later did take a stand, and by implication,so did Reformed Episcopal Seminary (Philadelphia Theological Seminary).2. Chaksdun Report Uuly 1970). Reprinted as Ru.dtdoony urs Abortiun: Distuti EarlyWarning (Tyler, Texa.x Institute for Christian Economics, 1989).

xxWESTMINSTER’S CONFESSIONagain in August of 1973, with this warning: “Moral reform doesnot mean the ability to recognize evil but the power to do goodand to rebuild in terms of righteousness and justice.” Butseminaries in 19’73 had not yet advanced even to the preliminary stage of recognizing evil. In the year of our Lord, 1991,they still haven’t.In 1973, Greg L. Bahnsen submitted his Th.M. thesis to thefaculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, ‘The TheonomicResponsibility of the Civil Magistrate.” It was accepted. Forseventeen years, some members of the faculty remained unhappy with the decision to award him his degree. For over seventeen years, they have successfully blocked his appointment asprofessor of apologetics, despite the fact that he played by theseminary’s rules and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at a secularuniversity. But they never publicly offered a reason.Then, in late October, 1990, they finally offered an indirectexcuse for this exclusion: Thmnomy: A Reformed Cti@e.4 Thissymposium can be analyzed from many angles, but one anglesurely is this: the book is a dressed-up theological defense oftwo decisions taken by the seminary a decade earlier: (1) not tohire Greg Bahnsen; (2) to fire Norman Shepherd. 5 The seminary has long needed a cover for these two decisions. It hasneeded a specifically theological justification. Now it has one.The theological justification that the faculty has now adopted isthis: a denaizl that the estubli.shment of Christendom is a valzli biblicalgoal. Bahnsen and Shepherd came far too close to this ancientChristian ideal. Thus, they had to be excluded from Westminster Seminary. They had rejected Westminster’s confession.3. Chukedun Re@rt (August 1973).4. Th@twmy: A Reforoud C*, edited by William S. Barker and W. RobertGodfrey (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondeman Acadetnie, 1990).5. See Appendix E “Julius Shepherd.”

PrefacexxiMotivationI will say it again: the real motivation behind this book waspersonal as well as theological. It was to provide a retroactivetheological justification for the Board’s hiring and fiing policy.When Shepherd was fired, every faculty member should havequit in protest. The job market being what it is in the world ofseminary education, they did not even threaten to quit, andnow they have publicly justified themselves a decade late. Shepherd strayed too close to the traditional Calvinistic ideal ofChristendom, and he paid the price. The faculty is saying withthis book that he deserved to pay that price. But they are unwilling to say this openly, so they have used Bahnsen as aconvenient surrogate. Shepherd was a not-quite theonomist;Bahnsen is the real thing.Furthermore, they really have agreed with the Board in itspermanent and ongoing decision not to hire Bahnsen. They donot want him around. They will not, however, as gentlemenacademics, simply announce that “Bahnsen is a personal painin the neck, a nit-picking, faculty meeting-disrupting, know-itall who quite frankly is a lot smarter than we are. We don’thave to hire him, and we won’t. He can take his Ph.D. andstick it in his ear. Nyah, nyah, nyah.” (Neither did ReformedTheological Seminary when it refused tore-hire him in 1979.)The Board long ago decided not to come to him with thisoffer: “Look, Bahnsen, you are the best mind in apologetics,now that Van Tll is dead. We don’t like you, but the studentsand the Church need you. Therefore, we will make you a deal:stay out of our faculty meetings, and we will pay you a salarycomparable to a tenured professor’s salary. Cause us any trouble outside of the classroom and you’re gone. Keep your noseclean and your mouth shut outside of the classroom, and youcan teach here until you die.” No, they had to publish a bookagainst an entire movement in order to justi themselves.

xxiiWESTMINSTER’S CONFESSIONHad they really wanted to attack theonomy as s

Westminster Theological Seminary. Torn picture reproduction courtesy of Robert Langham Photography. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data North, Gary. Westminster's confession : the abandonment of Van Til's legacy / Gary North. P" cm" Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN -930464-54-0(alk. paper) : 14.95 1 .