On Theonomy

In much the same manner as the words ‘Baptist’ and ‘Evangelical’, the simple meaning of the word Theonomy is very different from the umbrella of ideas it has come to represent. As Doug Wilson has said, every Christian is a theonomist, because theonomy (theos-God, nomos-law) is just God’s law, and every person who is truly indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit loves and cherishes his law (see Psalm 119).

God’s law is often discussed as forming three categories: moral law, ceremonial law, and civil law. These distinctions are given by the student of Scripture for the sake of effective communication, and they broadly refer to the following:

• Moral law: These laws are direct reflections of God’s character and his created order, and since God does not change, these laws never change, and are always applicable to all people at all times, e.g. prohibitions against idol worship, murder, theft, deceit, sexual immorality, etc.
• Ceremonial law: this author must admit to not knowing all the fullness of the ceremonial laws and their Christological significance, but to name a few, the rules surrounding Passover, animal sacrifice and the Day of Atonement (yom kippur) were laws that served as reminders to God’s people of what they were expecting their Messiah to do, so once the Messiah came and completed his mission, they no longer needed these.
• Civil law: God gave the nation Israel many civil laws to follow that were worded in a manner peculiar to the people who were receiving said law. These were specifically for a certain people at a certain time, and it would be a misunderstanding of Scripture to try to apply these directly and literally to our lives, e.g. Lev 23:22 states that one should not harvest their fields all the way to the corners, so that the poor people and the resident foreigners could glean just enough to eat and survive from said field. Since our societies aren’t ordered the same way as Israel, if today’s farmers left part of their field unharvested, it would just be a waste of crops and of land, since poor people and immigrants don’t just walk to the nearest farm and attempt to glean from their edges (correct me if I’m wrong). Applying this law in a wooden, direct, literal and non-contextual manner would not help at all in today’s society.

So, does the Christian uphold and attempt to fulfill all three of those categories? No. The theonomist recognises that ceremonial law, that which served to point forward to the Messiah, has been beautifully fulfilled and has now passed away. The Christian would be sinning against the cross to offer a burnt offering to God if they followed the instructions given in the Pentateuch. Hebrews makes this very clear.

The category of moral law is understood by all to have continuing authority and relevance. There is not a faction of Christians who advocate that worshipping idols or slandering one’s neighbour or committing adultery with his wife are now areas of Christian freedom.

All of this has been said to establish where the disagreement lies. The disagreement lies in the purpose and proper place of the civil law in today’s society. Let us trace out some of these topics dialogically to see the way they are discussed and how the conversation develops.

Theonomist: I believe that the best law for any given nation will be laws that honour God and love one’s neighbour, and so I think there is merit for using Old Testament civil law in today’s society.

Non-theonomist: That makes no sense. Those laws were good, but they were good for a specific people in a specific place. We aren’t mostly farmers, and we don’t stone people.

Theonomist: You’re right about the fact that given the different type of society the law was given to, it would be impossible and inappropriate to directly copy and paste it into our law books. However, that’s not what I’m espousing. The New Testament establishes a precedent for the idea behind Old Testament law being applied, though not the exact situation. We call this the ‘general equity’ of Old Testament law, and I think this absolutely should be applied to our society.

Non-theonomist: Ok that makes more sense. Even still, I’m not convinced that Biblical law should be thrust upon unbelievers. I’m ok with Christians and churches self-governing according to the general equity of God’s law, even that of the Old Testament, but we adhere to God’s law out of love, in response to grace. You can’t force an unbeliever to love and follow God’s law.

Theonomist: Do we agree that whether biblical law or not, all governments are imposing a moral framework upon their people, and apart from anarchist societies, infraction against those laws is duly punished?

Non-theonomist: Well yeah, I mean most of the time the government doesn’t have to force people to do things, but I’ll grant your point that all governments have to impose some set of laws.

Theonomist: Great. The most basic position of the Theonomist is that the best laws any nation can have will be laws that come from and reflect the laws that God has given his people. No other source of law will produce statutes as righteous as those that God has revealed, and no other system will defend the rights of the downtrodden or preserve the dignity of the helpless as well as law that originates in Scripture.

Non-theonomist: Again, I agree that for Christians, following God’s law is great, and something that we love to do, but I’m not sure that’s the case for non-Christians. Would you make it illegal for people to be atheistic or to follow another religion?

Theonomist: There is an important distinction between sins and crimes. Theonomy as I understand it doesn’t mean making it illegal to disrespect or dishonour your parents. Now, I have to admit, I don’t yet know all the ins and outs of what would be crime, and what would remain as legal sin, but I don’t think apostasy would be illegal.

Non-theonomist: Well, I think that’s something you’d need to be clear on before I could entertain this system.

Theonomist: Now, let me ask you a question. Should abortion be legal?

Non-theonomist: No, abortion is murder, and murder is illegal.

Theonomist: Why is murder wrong? Can you defend that without reference to Scripture?

Non-theonomist: I can’t answer that without referencing Scripture, but many non-Christian societies have that law.

Theonomist: Correct, but they have no reference point, no standard, by which to correctly determine whether something is right or wrong. We both know that the heart is desperately wicked, and that man’s heart and mind alone are not wholly reliable for establishing justice. For us to say whether a law is good or not, we have to reference the standard of God’s law.

Non-theonomist: Yeah, I’m aware of the epistemological insufficiency of a non-Christian framework for moral judgement.

Theonomist: Great. My position is that for a nation to create good laws, they must reflect God’s revealed character and God’s revealed law. Stealing and murder are crimes because they violate God’s law. Abortion and things like sex-transition-surgery should be crime for the same reason.

Here ends the hypothetical dialogue. Our goal is to see the reasonable objections brought by the non-Theonomist, but also to see that they are objections to a position that the Theonomist does not hold. The fundamental end point of the discussion is that the only source of good laws is God. If laws are good, they reflect God’s character and his revealed law which we have in Scripture.

We will now address a couple more misunderstandings and objections, but no longer in dialogical form. The first matter is that of how this change is brought about in a society. Sometimes, this view of Theonomy is wrongly compared to the ‘7 mountains mandate’, which is an errant eschatological perspective that says that Christ cannot return until the church takes control of the seven major spheres of influence in society (Education, Religion, Family, Business, Government, Arts and Media).

There are a host of problems with this perspective, but the aspect we draw attention to is that it envisions top-down change rather than bottom-up change. That is, the church must ‘invade’, ‘occupy’ or ‘transform’ spheres of power so that they transform the people in them. In this way, they are targeting the ‘top’, and hoping that by transforming the highest level, transformation will trickle down to the hearts of the people (note: if the esteemed reader is a proponent of seven mountains theology and would like to offer a correction on that summary, feel free).

The view of Theonomy that we posit here does include societal change at all levels in the direction of conformity to the image and law of Christ, but it sees that change as being bottom-up. It is as simple as this: as the Good News about Jesus spreads through a population and spiritually dead people are brought to new life in Christ, it affects how they live. It becomes their desire to honour God in their place in society. Christians would choose to educate their children in a way that God has commanded, namely in the nurture and admonition of God (Eph 6:4). They would be obedient to instructions regarding worship and family life, as well as business practises. Christian artists, architects and musicians would joyfully use their gifts in worship to their creator, multiplying the renown of God’s name in society by their gifts. A nation filled with people who have been changed by the gospel will naturally bring with them gospel-shaped change. Additionally, this is an expectation of the Great Commission:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20, emphasis mine

As Christians bring the Gospel throughout the world, the gospel changes people, they are then baptised and taught to be obedient to the commandments of God. What we mustn’t miss here is the reason Jesus gives for why this is a legitimate course of action. He says that all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to him. Jesus doesn’t just reign in heaven, nor only in the heart of the Christian, nor only from the pulpit to the back door of the church. It is legitimate to bring about obedience to Christ on Earth because Christ is right now the King of all the Earth.

This truth bookends Paul’s Magnum Opus, the Epistle to the Romans:

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ”

Romans 1:1-6, emphasis mine

“Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.”

Romans 16:25-27, emphasis mine

It is the expectation of both Jesus and Paul that as the gospel goes out into the world and changes hearts that lives will be changed, and that faithful obedience to God’s law will follow. In short, the gospel changes people, and a society of changed people becomes a changed society.

We argue here that this view was explained in parables by Jesus when he told his audience about the Kingdom of God:

“It is like a mustard seed that a man sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

Luke 13:19

“It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”

Luke 13:21

The Kingdom of God is something very small, something almost insignificant or hidden, that slowly but surely spreads and grows until it has reached its fullest extent. This is how the Good News works. It started with 12 scared disciples, but praise God that it has surely been spreading throughout the loaf, for today there are around 2 billion people professing faith in Christ. Whatever one’s eschatological (end-times) perspective is, one must see here that Jesus himself says that the Gospel will succeed in working throughout the dough. Compare Psalm 8, Psalm 110 and 1 Corinthians 15: in summary, Jesus is reigning, and will reign until all that opposes him has been subjected to him, and been brought low as a footstool for his feet. Only after he has destroyed all his opposition in the world will he present the Kingdom of God to the Father. This happens after the general resurrection from the dead.

For the person who has a defeatist mindset, expecting the Christian church to be oppressed into oblivion before her last-minute rescue by Jesus, this teaching will be a challenge. However, I challenge the esteemed reader to see that it is Biblical. 

Before we conclude, there is one more historical matter to address. Many nations at many times, even to the present, have organised themselves in such a way that national identity was paired with religious identity. To be Egyptian was to worship Isis and Osiris. To be Thai is to be Buddhist. To be Saudi Arabian is to worship Allah. To be Genevan under Calvin was to be Protestant. These are called Sacral societies, and this type of unity between the church and state is not endorsed or recommended by this author. This type of unity fails to understand that God has ordained three governments in Scripture: the government of the family, the government of the church, and the government of the state. Each of these is proper and Biblical. As such, the Theonomist recognises ‘sphere sovereignty’, meaning that there are different spheres of life with independent sovereignty, preventing the government from ordering the church what and how it must worship (as you see in Communist nations like China), also preventing the church from ordering the state government (as happens in nations like Iran), and recognising that the family unit is the essential building block of these governments.

We shall conclude by means of a caveat, because in discussion with a fellow theonomist, this author was reminded of one other truth: for the person who has been raised to life in Christ, and seated with him in the heavenly places, all the value of Christ’s active obedience (his having perfectly followed God’s law all the days of his life) is credited to the account of the Christian. Christ was and is the only man who ever could and ever will perfectly obey God’s law, the ultimate Theonomist, you could say. Though we have made a case here for the continuing validity and authority of God’s law, we recognise that ultimately all of God’s law was fulfilled and completed by Jesus, and as such we are not striving to be justified by our adherence to the law. We recognise that we are freed from all bondage to the law, whilst at the same time confessing that it continues to have authority over our lives. As such, the Christian can say ‘I am a slave of righteousness, and out of joyful obedience to Christ I strive to live in accordance with his law’ whilst also saying ‘My striving to adhere to God’s law is not because I hope to find justification therein, but because I love to please God, and his law brings me great liberty and freedom to glorify him and enjoy him forever’.

Dear Christian, meditate on Psalm 119, asking yourself if you can echo the Psalmist. His law is a beautiful and delightful thing, the awesome justice of it is truly the envy of nations. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Blessed are those whose way is blameless,

    who walk in the law of the Lord!

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,

    who seek him with their whole heart,

who also do no wrong,

    but walk in his ways!

Psalm 119:1-3