1. Introduction to the Presuppositional Method
1.1 God’s Self-Attesting Revelation
In a presuppositional framework, the triune God reveals Himself authoritatively in Scripture such that the Bible bears self-authenticating marks. This principle emerges throughout Gaussen’s dogmatic portion (“Method of Faith”). For instance, he states that the same God who breathed these writings out over fourteen centuries (Moses to Malachi, then the Apostles) would not leave them in ambiguous doubt or partial loss. The Old Testament sets the precedent—Israel recognized a canonical set of twenty-two (or twenty-four) Hebrew books, accepted as “the oracles of God.” By extension, the early Christian Church recognized the apostolic or apostolically sanctioned texts of the New Testament. Gaussen repeatedly notes that if we did not begin from trust in God’s character and promises (i.e., a presupposition of divine faithfulness), the entire process of collecting and receiving biblical books would be cast into perpetual uncertainty.
Here is the first presuppositional hallmark: Scripture attests to itself as the Word of God. Gaussen does not subordinate the Word to an external standard of historical neutrality. Rather, he sees it as “God-breathed,” verified by Christ’s own usage (especially of the Old Testament) and by the Spirit’s abiding testimony in the Church. Gaussen’s approach parallels Bahnsen’s argument in Presuppositional Apologetics (Stated and Defended): the final ground for the Scripture’s authority is God speaking, not an authority extrinsic to God.
1.2 The Myth of Neutrality
Bahnsen’s repeated emphasis is that no one is truly neutral in examining facts; all men either submit to God or attempt autonomy. Gaussen’s “Method of Science,” it might appear, tries to play on the field of “neutral” textual criticism. However, he clarifies that the historical approach is not an autonomous stance to see if Scripture “measures up” to human rational tests. Rather, his “historical facts” about the patristic era, the Councils, the uniform acceptance of four Gospels, or the rejection of Gnostic forgeries are integrated with a deeper conviction that God is guiding the historical process. In other words, Gaussen refuses to let “critical unbelief” become the final arbiter of the canon. He does not approach the question as though the Word of God must pass the bar of modern scholarship. Instead, he uses scholarship as a tool in God’s hand to vindicate what the Church, trusting God’s promise, has always known.
This resonates strongly with Bahnsen’s attacks on the “myth of neutrality.” Gaussen acknowledges that no one—especially not devout Christians nor radical critics—arrives with a blank slate. The difference is that believers presuppose God’s veracity and sovereignty. Unbelievers presuppose at best a purely human or natural process. He sees such unbelievers as inevitably locked in confusion and doubt, because absent God’s gracious working, historical complexity cannot yield confident finality regarding the biblical canon.
1.3 The Impossibility of the Contrary
For Gaussen, the canonical question is not “one possibility among many.” Rather, he strongly implies that if God truly intended to speak savingly and authoritatively, God must also ensure that His people reliably know which books are from Him. Indeed, for Gaussen, the alternative—that the Church is left in utter uncertainty or confusion about the Word’s boundaries—undermines the entire notion of a covenant God who “magnifies His Word above all His name.” In short, the contrary scenario (where man’s best guess or partial traditions decide canonicity) cannot supply the unwavering confidence required by the believing community or the moral-linguistic structure of Scripture’s claim to final authority. It becomes “impossible” to account for the widespread uniform acceptance of certain books across widely separated Christian communities if there is no divine impetus uniting them.
He frequently underscores that mere happenstance or historical accident does not suffice to explain how the same 27 New Testament books, none added or subtracted, came to be recognized from Syria to Gaul to Africa. As Bahnsen argues in The Impossibility of the Contrary, without God’s self-attesting vantage point, all knowledge claims collapse into mere speculation. Gaussen’s version specifically focuses on the impossibility of accounting for the canon’s unity under purely natural or rational-historical premises.
1.4 Grounding Our Entire Analysis in the Self-Attesting Word of God
While Gaussen devotes large portions to Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian, Irenaeus, the Peshito, and so forth, his concluding impetus is thoroughly theological: only on the basis of Scripture’s own claims and Christ’s own usage can we possess the dogmatic certainty that these 66 books are the Word of God. He thus shares with presuppositionalism an unwavering stance on Scripture’s internal witness, consistent with the “self-authenticating triad” approach often gleaned from Calvin, made explicit in Van Til’s and Bahnsen’s arguments. Gaussen sees that canonical recognition is part of a single package: once we adopt Christ’s lordship, we must follow Christ’s affirmation of the Old Testament and the apostolic deposit. We do not weigh Scripture on a neutral scale. Instead, we weigh ourselves and our theories by Scripture’s authoritative lens.
2. Identifying the Author’s Presuppositions
2.1 View of Scripture and Divine Revelation
Gaussen’s fundamental premise is the divine inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. He devotes a prior work, Theopneustia, specifically to biblical inspiration. In Canon of Holy Scripture, this baseline continues: Scripture is not merely a helpful anthology but the living Word. God cannot fail to preserve or deliver exactly the set of texts that constitute that Word. Further, Gaussen categorically rejects the notion that the Apocrypha could be partially included, or that spurious Gospels (e.g., the so-called “Gospel of Peter”) might have any claim. Why? Because from Gaussen’s vantage, the Church from the earliest ages recognized the “divine quality” of the genuine books, and no mere social or pragmatic processes can override that spiritual testimony.
2.2 Role of the Church, Confessions, and Historical Theology
He is explicit that church councils (Laodicea, Hippo, Carthage) and patristic lists (the Muratorian Fragment, Origen, Eusebius) are historical witnesses to something deeper: the Church “receives” but does not “create” Scripture. In other words, the Church’s function is ministerial, not magisterial. Gaussen never denies that these councils can be helpful in identifying or clarifying points of dispute (e.g., with James, 2 Peter, Jude, 2-3 John, Revelation), but he vehemently denies that the Church’s pronouncement is the ultimate reason the canon is valid. The Church is an instrument used by God to preserve and confirm the text. This matches the Reformed confessional stance, especially as found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, that the Church is the “witness and keeper of Holy Writ” rather than the source of its authority.
2.3 Starting Point: God’s Sovereignty vs. Human Autonomy
Gaussen strongly emphasizes God’s sovereign orchestration in a set of “astonishing facts” that rendered the canonical books recognized. He details how the early dissemination of the Gospels or the uniform acceptance of the Pauline corpus cannot be explained by a purely autonomous historical approach. Instead, it must be that God “so superintended” the affairs of the Church that she recognized His Word. At many points, he ridicules the idea of a neutral or “autonomous” textual critic, reminiscent of Bahnsen’s critique of “free-thinking,” calling it a “monumental arrogance” to believe that man stands as ultimate judge. Indeed, Gaussen’s entire approach is that believers must stand on the vantage of God’s sovereignty, not man’s final arbitration.
2.4 Apologetic Aims: Proof or Probability?
Significantly, Gaussen does not argue that the 66-book canon is “probably” correct. He contends it is “certainly” correct, as an act of God’s providence wedded to the testimony of the Spirit, validated historically. This parallels Bahnsen’s “certainty over probability” approach: Gaussen collects a mountain of historical arguments to show that no serious counter-hypothesis can stand. In short, he is not aiming to show “the best guess.” He aims to show the absolute necessity that only these books can be God-breathed. While he organizes volumes of data, he sees that data as confirmatory, not as the ultimate ground. The ultimate ground remains the faithful word of God who cannot lie.
3. Presuppositional Critique
3.1 Two-Step Method (Proverbs 26:4–5)
One hallmark of Bahnsen’s approach is the application of the “two-step method,” gleaned from Proverbs 26:4–5: (1) “Answer not a fool according to his folly,” meaning do not adopt unbelieving premises; (2) “Answer a fool according to his folly,” meaning we demonstrate the internal incoherence of the unbeliever’s worldview. Gaussen does something similar in his structure of “Method of Faith” and “Method of Science.”
Don’t Answer According to Folly
Gaussen never concedes that historical scholarship stands over Scripture as an ultimate judge. He remains unwavering: Scripture is God’s Word, and we presuppose a God who can deliver a sure canon. This refusal to “answer the fool according to his folly” appears whenever Gaussen repudiates the posture that a purely rational or purely critical-historical method, absent faith, can yield the same results. He warns that “science” alone will breed doubt and confusion if divorced from the bedrock confidence that God gave us these books.Answer According to Folly
Gaussen carefully enumerates historical data: the unanimous acceptance of certain books from the earliest times (the homologoumena), the partial doubts about others that were ultimately resolved, the consistent rejection of Gnostic forgeries, the evidence from synods/councils across centuries, etc. In doing so, he enters the “historical” realm often championed by critics, but he uses it to show how critics cannot account for or plausibly explain the final shape of the canon. Absent God’s providence, the emergence of the same 27 New Testament books across the known world stands as an intractable puzzle. By pressing them on their own evidential terrain, Gaussen effectively reveals that the unbeliever’s attempt at a purely human explanation collapses into speculation, inconsistency, or historical ignorance.
3.2 Impossibility of the Contrary
Gaussen’s argument lines up with Bahnsen’s thesis in The Impossibility of the Contrary: if God did not preserve the biblical canon, we end up with an inscrutable swirl of textual claims, contradictory councils, or uncertain manuscripts. The entire notion of “God’s Word” would unravel, ironically eviscerating the basis for the knowledge of redemption or correct doctrine. Gaussen’s text repeatedly emphasizes that the plan of redemption itself is inseparable from the sure knowledge of the canonical texts. Once we see that “the Word of God must be preserved,” it becomes untenable to suppose that God would not govern the process to ensure that 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation, etc., become recognized or that spurious works remain excluded.
The upshot is that the alternative hypothesis—that purely human processes yield the final canon or that no stable canon exists—proves self-refuting, for it robs the Church of the foundation for all Christian doctrine. Gaussen is no less insistent than Bahnsen that all meaning, all redemptive truth, depends on God’s self-revelation, and thus God’s self-revelation must remain consistent and recognized.
3.3 Transcendental Challenge
When Gaussen explores the attempts by heretical groups or by the Roman Church to tamper with the text or to add apocryphal materials, he effectively issues a “transcendental challenge”: how do you, from a purely human vantage, explain that such attempts consistently failed to rewrite the canon at any ecumenical level? The only coherent explanation is that the Holy Spirit guided the people of God to test such attempts and refute them. This is a typical presuppositional move: Gaussen does not just say, “It so happened that the Church refused the Apocrypha”; he underscores that no ephemeral or purely sociological phenomenon can thoroughly account for this refusal, especially over centuries of diaspora and persecution. In short, the attempt to deny God’s providence leads to an arbitrary or contradictory stance, leaving one incapable of explaining the unity and fixity of the final Bible.
4. Theological and Practical Consequences
4.1 Authority of God’s Word vs. Autonomy of Man
Gaussen repeatedly draws a sharp line between “Scripture’s absolute authority” and “Man’s inclination to set himself up as judge.” He also shows how disastrous it is to treat Scripture as pending verification by higher authorities. For instance, in analyzing the Apocrypha, he condemns the idea that the Church could elevate certain suspect texts to canonical status by raw decree (as happened at the Council of Trent). He sees that as a form of human autonomy ironically undermining Scripture’s divine authority. The entire premise of the Reformed tradition, and indeed presuppositional theology, is that Scripture stands as ultimate judge over the Church, not vice versa.
4.2 Role of the Holy Spirit and Regeneration
Mirroring Bahnsen’s stance in Against All Opposition and Always Ready, Gaussen acknowledges that historical proofs and patristic testimonies are not enough to convert hearts or produce infallible certainty. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit enlightens the eyes of believers to accept Scripture wholeheartedly. Gaussen’s “Method of Faith” is thoroughly pneumatic, pointing to how the regenerating Spirit grants the Church a recognition of the Father’s voice. This dovetails with the Reformed confessional principle that the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is the final subjective ground of certainty for believers.
4.3 Worship and Intellectual Life
For Gaussen, studying the canon is not an abstract or purely academic matter. It bears directly on the Church’s doxology and devotion. If the canon is uncertain or if we suspect spurious texts, our worship of God is compromised. Gaussen, therefore, invests substantial rhetorical energy in showing that any doubt about the received books robs the believer of joy and clarity in reading Scripture. Conversely, the more we see that God has superintended the entire biblical corpus, the more we respond in worship and trust.
4.4 Polemic Aims: Humility and Gentleness
While Gaussen can be polemical—he condemns certain Roman approaches, Gnostic infiltration, rationalist critics—he is also careful to direct his argument to theological students, pastors, and faithful laymen. He exhorts them to approach the question with humility, reminding them that God’s Word is authoritative. If there is any tension between “Method of Science” and “Method of Faith,” that tension is resolved by humbly acknowledging that God’s Word stands supreme and that historical science can only confirm, never supplant, that Word’s authority.
5. Conclusion: A Clash of Worldviews
Ultimately, Gaussen’s argument about the canon is not a side tangent but an integral piece of the broader worldview clash. On the one hand, one can adopt the assumption that God is personal, sovereign, and faithful, thereby concluding that He would ensure a closed canon recognized by His people. On the other hand, if one rejects God or insists on an autonomous approach, canonicity devolves into indefinite speculation, as is so frequently evident in rationalistic textual criticism. This is precisely the “clash” that Greg Bahnsen underscores in his major works: the atheist or the rationalist and the believer stand on irreconcilable foundational principles. Gaussen’s text, albeit from the 19th century, in a sphere of biblical scholarship, prefigures that collision.
5.1 Summary of the Author’s Presuppositional Coherence
- Aligned with Key Presuppositional Tenets: Gaussen starts with God’s sovereignty, rejects neutrality, uses historical evidence only in a subordinate role, and sees the Spirit’s testimony as definitive.
- Where He Resonates with Van Til/Bahnsen: He emphasizes the self-attestation of Scripture, the abiding faithfulness of God, and the necessity that the Church not act as judge but receiver of the Word.
- Gaussen’s Unique Accent: He invests considerable detail in enumerating patristic catalogs and summarizing them, not to weigh Scripture in the scale of men but to demonstrate, as Bahnsen might phrase it, the “impossibility of the contrary”: these phenomena cannot be explained outside of God’s guiding hand.
5.2 Key Observations
- Gaussen’s “Double Point of View”: He is conscious of the difference between an internal, believing vantage and an external, historical vantage. This parallels the “two-step method.”
- Methodological Faithfulness: Even while enumerating historical arguments, Gaussen never allows them the final say, thus refusing to compromise the final authority of God Himself.
- Contrast to Autonomy: The major “villains” in Gaussen’s narrative—radical critics, Gnostics, or authoritarian pronouncements—are all forms of human autonomy that compromise or overshadow God’s Word.
5.3 Final Reflection / Exhortation
In line with Bahnsen’s presuppositional approach, Gaussen’s treatise on canonicity challenges the Church not only to “defend the faith” but to do so from a position of trust in God’s covenant faithfulness, rather than from a posture of anxious neutrality. Gaussen exemplifies how one may legitimately gather historical data, weigh patristic testimonies, and still rest fundamentally in divine authority. Indeed, any other approach leads to philosophical and theological chaos, leaving the Church in doubt about the fundamental shape of God’s redemptive message. That scenario is not only unacceptable to faith but also indefensible historically, for no purely natural explanation can plausibly account for the universal acceptance of the same 66-book canon or the unstoppable rejection of spurious works.
Thus, Gaussen’s The Canon of the Holy Scriptures stands as a case study in “faith seeking understanding,” consonant with the Reformed presuppositional tradition. He effectively “pushes the antithesis” between a faith-based recognition of God’s Word and the rationalistic illusions that treat the Church’s recognition as if it were arbitrary or uncertain. In the end, one sees that, to use Bahnsen’s turn of phrase, “without God, you cannot prove anything”—and, crucially, one cannot prove or even maintain the concept of a stable biblical canon, apart from presupposing the triune God’s self-authenticating speech.
