Theonomy is a political-theological movement that arose within Reformed theological circles in the 1970s. It is also known as “Christian reconstructionism,” “dominion theology,” or “general equity theonomy.” While differences exist among proponents, there is a common commitment to the belief that God requires the implementation of old covenant civil laws in the governments of the nations during the new covenant era. Theonomists reject the notion that the judicial laws God gave to Israel in the old covenant have expired in the new covenant.
The theonomic movement arose in Reformed theological circles in the 1970s and 1980s. It was popularized through the writing and teaching of such figures as R.J. Rushdooney, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, Ken Gentry, and Gary DeMar. The theonomic movement has sought to advance a high view of God’s law, particularly regarding the implementation of biblical principles of justice into the governments of the world. According to theonomists, true love for God’s law involves seeking to have it structure every aspect of life and society, including the civil penalties imposed by the state.
The Christian church has historically confessed a threefold division of the law: moral, civil, and ceremonial. Scripture teaches that while Christ fulfills the Mosaic law, believers are still obligated to follow the eternal moral law (which is summarized in the Ten Commandments) as the perfect standard of righteousness (see Westminster Confession of Faith 7.2; 19.2; Westminster Larger Catechism 95), though we are not justified by keeping the moral law. The ceremonial laws functioned in old covenant Israel until the resurrection of Christ, when they were set aside on account of His final sacrifice for sin and resurrection from the dead. The civil laws functioned within Israel until they expired along with the status of old covenant Israel as a nation.
Seeking to order all of life according to God’s law is a good impulse, but theonomy tends to conflate the distinction between moral and civil law in the old covenant. It overemphasizes continuity and underemphasizes discontinuity between the old and new covenants by focusing only on the continuity between Israel and the church. Modern theonomists reject the idea that the civil laws functioned uniquely in old covenant Israel and that they are therefore not binding on civil society in the new covenant era. There is often failure on the part of theonomists to distinguish between an insistence that all Scripture, including the civil and ceremonial law, is relevant to believers today (which the New Testament teaches) and the avowal that the Mosaic civil law is binding on all societies in the new covenant era (which the New Testament does not teach).
While the civil laws that God gave Israel in the Old Testament were meant to reflect His righteous rule through a revelation of His justice and restraint of societal evil, they ultimately serve the redemptive-historical purposes of Christ and the church in the new covenant. In the old covenant, God commanded the death penalty for certain sins, saying, “You shall purge the evil from your midst” (Deut. 13:5; 17:7, 12; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21–24; 24:7). In the new covenant, the Apostle Paul applied this phrase to church discipline rather than to civil sanctions. This is a prime example of the redemptive-historical nature of the civil law and its application in the new covenant era. George Knight explained:
In 1 Cor 5:13 . . . [Paul] refers to one or more of the passages in Deuteronomy in which God in his written word instructs the people of God to remove the unrepentant wicked man from their midst (which in the OT context is done by stoning him). . . . The action Paul enjoins is not that of stoning but rather of putting him out of the fellowship with a view to his repentance (cf. 1 Cor 5:5). . . . Paul’s utilization of this theocratic case law shows that he regards it as teaching an important principle that must be followed by the Church, even though not in the theocratic form of stoning to death but rather in the form appropriate to the non-theocratic, nonnational spiritual entity that the Church is in distinction from the Israel of the OT.[1]
Many theonomists have suggested that they are following the teaching of the Westminster Confession of Faith, though the confession explicitly states that the “sundry judicial laws . . . expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require” (WCF 19.4, emphasis added). Rather than seeing old covenant judicial and civil laws as having expired, theonomists teach that these laws should be binding in the new covenant era. For support, they appeal to the Westminster divines’ use of the phrase “general equity.” Many proponents of theonomy believe that the only nonbinding part of the old covenant judicial and civil law are commandments that reflect Israel’s agrarian context.
Reformed theologians have generally understood “general equity” to be synonymous with the moral law, which they also call the “natural law” because it was written on the heart of man from creation. Theonomists, on the other hand, largely reject the notion of natural law, arguing that there is only God’s law revealed in Scripture or man’s law. Theonomists contend that unless one appeals to the divine revelation of civil law in Scripture, he is merely instituting man-made laws; he cannot appeal to an innate, God-given sense of right and wrong. John Calvin argued otherwise, noting the way that natural law works in non-Christian societies: “All the Gentiles alike instituted religious rites, they made laws to punish adultery, and theft, and murder, they commended good faith in bargains and contracts. They have thus indeed proved, that God ought to be worshipped, that adultery, and theft, and murder are evils, that honesty is commendable.”[2]
Theonomists press for the remaking of societies in which only God’s civil laws are implemented. Modern theonomists have suggested that in such a reconstructed society, non-Christians would not be allowed to vote or hold political office. Christians would control organizations in society, from banking systems to the civil government. Since the idea of a worldwide reconstruction of civil governments is unrealizable apart from the Christianization of the nations, adherents of theonomy also usually hold to a postmillennial eschatology, which envisions the eventual transformation of society as a whole through the gospel before the return of Christ.
“As we read Scripture, we see that there are some parts of the law that no longer apply to new covenant believers, at least not in the same way that they did to old covenant believers. We make a distinction between moral laws, civil laws, and ceremonial laws such as the dietary laws and physical circumcision. That’s helpful because there’s a certain sense in which practicing some of the laws from the Old Testament as Christians would actually be blasphemy. Paul stresses in Galatians, for example, that if we were to require circumcision, we would be sinning. Now, the distinction between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws is helpful, but for the old covenant Jew, it was somewhat artificial. That’s because it was a matter of the utmost moral consequences whether they kept the ceremonial laws. It was a moral issue for Daniel and his friends not to eat as the Babylonians did (Dan. 1). But the distinction between the moral, civil, and ceremonial laws means that there’s a bedrock body of righteous laws that God gives to His covenant people that have abiding significance and relevance before and after the coming of Christ.”
R.C. Sproul
Tabletalk magazine
