JUDICIAL WARFARE
Christian Reconstruction and Its Blueprints For Dominion
by Greg Loren Durand

Chapter Five:
Theonomy's Doctrine of Covenantal Nomism

       In the words of Thomas Boston, “Such is the natural propensity of man's heart to the way of the law, in opposition to Christ, that, as the tainted vessel turns the taste of the purest liquor put into it, so the natural man turns the very gospel into law, and transforms the covenant of grace into a covenant of works."⁽¹⁾ No better illustration of this fact may be seen than in the theonomic system. One of the key tenets of Theonomy is that Christians are supposedly under the same pedagogical covenant as were the Israelites. In his book, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, Greg Bahnsen wrote, "...[L]awlessness and disobedience lead to captivity for the Jews and removal from the promised land. Only when the people of God had learned the lesson of obedience to God's law could they be delivered according to the promise (Deut. 30:1-3)...."⁽²⁾ This much is true. However, because Bahnsen saw the Mosaic covenant as a mere administration of the one Covenant of Grace,⁽³⁾ rather than a temporary type of the Adamic Covenant of Works, he necessarily carried Israel's requirements for possession of the promised land over into the New Covenant era and applied them to the Church:

       The New Testament and Covenant continue the same demand for obedience. Entrance to the kingdom is dependent upon attesting obedience (Matt. 7:21), and the kingdom itself is synonymous with righteousness.... Without the obedience of kingdom righteousness Christ cannot be one's Savior (Heb. 5:9)... All men are exhorted to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness (Matt. 6:33). The chastening of God which comes in the form of affliction or persecution makes one righteousness, obedient to the law, and worthy of the kingdom.... The kingdom, righteousness, and law-keeping are inseparable and mutually inclusive. The Messianic kingdom is to be advanced in the earth along with the teaching of obedience to the law of God (Matt. 28:19f). When Christ returns in judgment He will take vengeance upon all those who do not obey the gospel (2 Thess. 1:7f) [emphases in original].⁽⁴⁾

       This is an astounding statement: "Entrance to the kingdom is dependent upon attesting obedience." Bahnsen clearly identified "kingdom righteousness" as what is wrought in the believer through the "chastening of God... in the form of affliction or persecution" and through "obedience to the law of God." Thus, the Christian is made "worthy of the kingdom," not by the imputation of the perfect righteousness of Christ through faith alone, but by an infused righteousness that is ultimately maintained by his own "law-keeping." This is the "gospel" through which "the Messianic kingdom is to be advanced," according to Bahnsen: "Continued blessing for Adam in paradise, Israel in the promised land, and the Christian in the kingdom has been seen to be dependent upon persevering obedience to God's will as expressed in His law. There is complete covenantal unity with reference to the law of God as the standard of moral obligation throughout the diverse ages of human history" [emphases in original].⁽⁵⁾ As already discussed, “continued blessing” for Adam in the Garden and Israel in the Promised Land was part and parcel of the Covenant of Works — in the former, the actual covenant itself; in the latter, a republication or type thereof. Since Bahnsen insisted upon “complete covenantal unity" between Adam in the Garden, Israel in Canaan, and the Christian in the Kingdom, he understood the Covenant of Grace as being merely a renewal of the original Adamic covenant. This necessarily leads to the conclusion that “obeying the Gospel” is not “resting upon Christ alone for salvation,” but obeying the law in order to remain in a covenantal relationship with God and escape His wrath on the last day. Such a doctrine is known as "covenantal nomism," which was described by E.P. Sanders as "the view that one's place in God's plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression."⁽⁶⁾ To put it more succinctly, the believer enters the covenant by grace and remains there by obedience; sanctification, then, is merely a progression of justification throughout the believer's life.
       While Bahnsen attempted to conceal his covenantal nomism under the guise of Reformed terminology, R.J. Rushdoony was openly critical of the Reformed doctrine of sanctification precisely because it was not based on law-keeping:

       Sanctification depends on our law-keeping in mind, word, and deed. The perfection of the incarnate Word was manifested in His law-keeping; can the people of His kingdom pursue their calling to be perfect in any way other than by His law-word? ...If the law is denied, how is man then to be sanctified? ...Protestant theology left man justified but without a way to be sanctified.... To separate the law from the gospel is to separate oneself from the law and the gospel, and from Christ....
       The infiltration of Hellenic thought into the Christian community meant, among other things, the introduction of a new doctrine of sanctification. The Biblical doctrine is thoroughly practical: it calls for the progressive submission of man and the world to the law of God. It is a program for conquest and victory. The greatness of medieval culture was built on the bedrock of an obedience to the law, and the same was true of Puritanism. The staying power of the Jew in the face of adversities has been the measure of his loyalty to the law....
       The Reformation restated clearly the doctrine of justification, but it failed to clarify the doctrine of sanctification. The confusion is apparent in the Westminster Confession of Faith; chapter XIII, "Of Sanctification," is excellent as far as it goes, but it fails to specify precisely what the way of sanctification is....⁽⁷⁾

       Thus, according to the theonomic system, sanctification is directly identified with earthly dominion, and even the unbelieving Jew, who has but an outward, ritualistic obedience to the Mosaic law, is somehow sanctified, or given "staying power." We will see in a later chapter how this led directly to Rushdoony's "gospel of restitution."
       It should be noted that whenever Paul wrote of the believer's justification, he did so in the context of "the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Such righteousness is always described as being alien to the believer, never what he does himself or what he possesses other than by imputation through faith: "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them who believe" (Romans 3:21-22). "The kingdom, righteousness, and law-keeping" are indeed "inseparable and mutually inclusive," but the question is, Whose righteousness and law-keeping are they? Bahnsen cleverly shifted the focus away from Christ, to whom alone righteousness and law-keeping is attributed in the New Testament, to the believer himself. Rushdoony did the same thing when he claimed that "the call to sanctification... is a summons to obey the law...." [emphases in original]⁽⁸⁾ Such a shift is fatal to the Gospel, for "[I]f righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Galatians 2:21).
       According to Rushdoony, "The antinomian believes that faith frees the Christian from the law, so that he is not outside the law but is rather dead to the law. There is no warrant whatsoever in Scripture for antinomianism."⁽⁹⁾ He went on to admit that the phrase "dead to the law" is indeed found in Scripture, but he insisted that "it has reference to the believer in relationship to the atoning work of Christ as the believer's representative and substitute" and concluded:

       ...[T]he believer is dead to the law as an indictment, a legal sentence of death against him, Christ having died for him, but the believer is alive to the law as the righteousness of God. The purpose of Christ's atoning work was to restore man to a position of covenant-keeping instead of covenant-breaking, to enable man to keep the law by freeing man "from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2), "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us" (Rom. 8:4). Man is restored to a position of law-keeping.⁽¹⁰⁾

       Rushdoony completely missed Paul's point here. According to Paul, the "law of sin and death" from which the believer has been freed is none other than the Mosaic covenant itself. As a picture of the original Covenant of Works, the Mosaic law required perfect and perpetual obedience - something which no man, not even the regenerate, is able to produce (Romans 3:23). Rushdoony's misunderstandings cut at the very heart of the biblical doctrine of justification. Because of his weak, or non-existent, doctrine of the active obedience of Christ to the law in behalf of the elect, he failed to see that the "righteousness of the law" is fulfilled by the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer through faith alone. Contrary to Rushdoony, the Gospel message is therefore not that men may be restored to "a position of covenant-keeping," but rather that those who trust in the righteousness of Christ alone for salvation are viewed by God as covenant-keepers. For them, the broken Adamic covenant has been fulfilled in Christ and they have already become partakers of the glorified life promised in that covenant. In the words of Christ Himself, the Christian has "passed from death unto life" (John 5:11). Theonomy's anemic gospel merely places men back into the probationary state of Adam in the Garden, but the true Gospel lifts men far beyond that state and actually seats him with Christ "in heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6). There are no more conditions for him to fulfill, for he is already complete in Christ.
       Rushdoony wrote, "Salvation is by the grace of God through faith; sanctification is by the law of God.... Those who are in the covenant are in a covenant of grace which is also a covenant of works. The grace enables them to perform the works which are required of them."⁽¹¹⁾ According to this "gospel," we are put into a state of grace through faith, but kept there by obedience to the law. Rather than merely teaching what the Bible teaches — that regeneration enables the Christian to obey God freely and without external compulsion — Rushdoony here implied that "grace" is an inward quality which empowers the Christian to perform the works required to maintain right standing with God (justification). Greg Bahnsen taught much the same thing. In a lecture in which he defended the views of Norman Shepherd, he said:

       Let me very briefly point out, some people will say James can't mean the word justify in a forensic sense, because then he would contradict Paul. Paul says we are justified by faith, not works. James says we are justified by works. So if they both mean "justify" in the forensic sense, there is a contradiction. Well, I don't think so, because in Galatians 5:6 Paul teaches exactly what James does. Paul says we are justified by faith working by love. We are justified by working, active, living faith. I think that's what James is teaching. They mean exactly the same thing. But... this has been a bone of controversy in my denomination even, because a professor at Westminster Seminary insisted James means this in the forensic sense.
       Now… people who don't like that say, It is to be taken in the demonstrative sense. The problem is, the demonstrative sense of the word justify means "to show someone to be righteous," and that doesn't relieve the contradiction between James and Paul, because Paul in Romans 4 looks at Abraham as an example of how God justifies the ungodly. James is saying, Look at how God justifies someone demonstrated as godly. The contradiction is not relieved. And so what you really get — and this is crucial, this is a crucial point — modern interpreters who don't like what I am suggesting and what Professor Shepherd is suggesting end up saying that to justify in James 2 really means "to demonstrate justification," not to "demonstrate righteousness." That is, they make the word to justify mean "to justify the fact that I'm justified." And the word never means that. That's utterly contrived. It means either "to declare righteous" or "to demonstrate righteous." It does not mean "to justify that one's justified."
       Am I making myself clear? I'm suggesting that the reason Paul and James are not contrary to one another is because the only kind of faith that will justify us is working faith, and the only kind of justification ever presented in the Bible after the Fall is a justification by working faith, a faith that receives its merit from God and proceeds to work as a regenerated, new person.⁽¹²⁾

       By injecting works into the definition of saving faith and then ascribing merit to such faith, Bahnsen was left with an understanding of justification which was based, at least in part, on works.⁽¹³⁾ However, contrary to Bahnsen, the believer is not justified by his faith at all, but by the one in whom his faith is placed. In reality, the faith through which justification comes is not a "working faith," but a resting faith which surrenders all and throws oneself on the mercies of God in Christ. In the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel." The good works that necessarily follow flow from a regenerate heart into which the principle of obedience has been planted, but the good works are evidence of true faith, they have nothing to do with justification itself. Sanctification is therefore a growth in grace, not a growth in works. The Covenant of Grace was a covenant of works only for Christ, not for the believer to whom Christ's perfect obedience to the law is already imputed. Because Theonomists deny that the Mosaic covenant was a restatement of the Covenant of Works that was temporarily added to the Covenant of Grace and was fulfilled in Christ and therefore abolished (Matthew 5:17-19), they have effectively concocted a system of works-righteousness which is very similar, if not identical, to that of the Roman Catholic Church⁽¹⁴⁾ and also bears more than a striking resemblence to the Judaizing heresy of the First Century:

       When Paul speaks of a man being justified he means, not that he has been made righteous, but that he has been accepted as righteous. And in two important respects his doctrine of justification differs from that of the Judaizers with whom he is in opposition. In the first place he insists that man can never win acceptance by the due performance of the divine requirements — the transcendent holiness of God and the depravity and servitude of man combine to make that way of acceptance impossible. Man cannot be justified by his own works but simply by faith in God. In the second place acceptance need not be postponed till that final day when we stand before Christ for judgment: man may be justified here and now, so soon as he turns to God in faith and flings himself on God's mercy.... As conceived by the Judaizers, however, justification came not at the beginning, but at the end of the process; it came not before the gift of the Spirit, but at the day of judgment; and the special significance of the gift of the Spirit was that it enabled the recipients so to live that they might in the end be justified. It was a noble ideal; but in Paul's eyes it was not Christian, for the simple reason that it reverted to the legalist conception of a man being judged and justified by works [emphasis in original].⁽¹⁵⁾

       The true Gospel — the one for which Paul so vehemently contended in his epistle to the Galatians — declares that, not only are we justified by faith in Christ alone, we are also sanctified by faith in Christ alone. Both aspects of salvation are firmly grounded in the imputed righteousness of Christ.⁽¹⁶⁾ Theonomy categorically denies that the Mosaic covenant was a picture of the Adamic Covenant of Works,⁽¹⁷⁾ and because of this, it was difficult for its founders to fit the imputation of Christ's active obedience to the law into their system.⁽¹⁸⁾ According to Rushdoony, God has relieved the Christian from the penalty due to his sins because that penalty was suffered by Christ on the cross. There is therefore a negation of punishment, but, according to this scheme, there is no positive declaration of righteousness; there is a payment of past debts, but not the fulfillment of that which is required for the promise to take effect. The believer is declared innocent and therefore naked, but not clothed in a positive righteousness. The believer is merely restored to the position of Adam before he sinned and therefore has the law set before him with all its requirements, together with blessings for obedience and cursings for disobedience. This misunderstanding of the Gospel message is directly related to the denial of the Adamic Covenant of Works. If there was no covenant made with Adam in which he would have been rewarded for his obedience with eternal life — a condition which transcended his natural created state — then he was forever in a probationary state, never secure because ever liable to fall. Applying this concept to the Christian's own status, if the believer has merely been restored to Adam's probationary condition, then he, too, is never secure in his salvation. Thus, the denial of the Covenant of Works leads directly to an Arminian understanding of salvation and an undermining of the Reformed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. However, if the doctrine of the Covenant of Works is affirmed, along with the belief in Christ's active obedience to the law as the fulfillment of that covenant in behalf of the believer, then insecurity regarding one's salvation dissipates. The works required by the law have already been done, and therefore our own works have absolutely nothing to do with our standing before God. They flow from our salvation, but never do they contribute to it.
       While the Bible does speak of the necessity of perseverance (Matthew 10:22), it is the perseverance in faith that is in view. In other words, it is necessary to maintain the imputed righteousness of Christ as the sole ground of our acceptance before God; once our own obedience enters into the equation, we are "fallen from grace" and are cut off from Christ (Galatians 5:4). The elect will, in fact, persevere in this faith, whereas the non-elect professor will eventually fall into the error of works-righteousness and either be drawn into a system which will accord with that error, such as Romanism or one of its myriad of imitators, or will become disillusioned with Christianity altogether and apostatize back into the world system (Hebrews 6:4-6).

Endnotes

1. Thomas Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Presbyterian Board of Publications, 1860), page 70.

2. Bahnsen, Theonomy, page 200.

3. Bahnsen, ibid., Chapter Eight.

4. Bahnsen, ibid., pages 202-203.

5. Bahnsen, ibid., page 203.

6. E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Norristown, Pennsylvania: Fortress Press, 1977), page 75.

7. Rushdoony, Institutes, pages 307-308, 549-550.

8. Rushdoony, ibid., page 555.

9. Rushdoony, ibid., page 3.

10. Rushdoony, ibid.

11. Rushdoony, ibid., page 714.

12. Bahnsen, Calvin's Institutes (1986), Session 34, audio tape lecture #GB449b.

13. Shorter Catechism, Question 86.

14. Sixth Session of the Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, January 1547.

15. George S. Duncan, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1934), pages xliii-xliv.

16. The original Theonomists did not have the temerity to refer to this system as one of "progressive justification," choosing to conceal it beneath the orthodox term "sanctification," but their theological descendants within the so-called Federal Vision movement have been unabashed in teaching a "final justification" which is necessary for entrance into Heaven. According to Rich Lusk, "Final justification, however, is according to works. This pole of justification takes into account the entirety of our lives -- the obedience we’ve performed, the sins we’ve committed, the confession and repentance we’ve done" (“Future Justification to the Doers of the Law,” www.hornes.org/theologia/content/rich_lusk/future_justification_to_the_doers_of_the_law.htm).

17. Bahnsen, Theonomy, page 187; Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, Volume One, page 376.

18. Wilhelmus A'Brakel was correct in noting that "whoever errs here or denies the existence of the covenant of works, will not understand the covenant of grace, and will readily err concerning the mediatorship of the Lord Jesus. Such a person will very readily deny that Christ by His active obedience has merited a right to eternal life for the elect" (The Christian's Reasonable Service [Morgan, Pennsylvania: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1992], Volume One, page 355). While Bahnsen attempted to retain this crucial doctrine of Reformed theology, the next generation of Theonomists saw the implications of rejecting a Sinaitic covenant of works and have therefore jettisoned the doctrine of imputation altogether. In the "Federal Vision" scheme, the focus is shifted entirely to the passive obedience of Christ in His death on the cross, thereby rendering justification a mere forgiveness of sin, or a negation of guilt, rather than a positive declaration of righteousness.