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

Glossary

ANTINOMIANISM: a sixteenth-century heresy which taught that the holiness of Christ was imputed to the believer, thereby relieving him of the necessity of obeying the moral law and striving for sanctification. As such, it resembled ancient Gnosticism. Another form of antinomianism is found in modern-day Dispensationalism and Arminianism, both of which deny the Covenant of Works and teach that the demands of the moral law have been lessened so that faith and imperfect obedience fulfills God’s requirement for eternal life. Antinomianism and legalism are often juxtiposed to one another, but they are in reality two sides of the same erroneous confounding of justification and sanctification. See LEGALISM.

BI-COVENANTALISM: the traditional Reformed view which distinguishes between the Covenant of Works (law) and the Covenant of Grace (gospel). See COVENANT THEOLOGY.

COVENANTAL NOMISM: the view that either implicitly or explicitly denies the full justification of the believer through the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to the law and replaces it with a “progressive justification” in which personal obedience to the law is the requirement for either “covenant blessings” or “final justification” on the last day. See LEGALISM.

COVENANT THEOLOGY: a theological system which interprets the biblical record through a bi-covenantal distinction between the prelapsarian Covenant of Works and the postlapsarian Covenant of Grace, the latter extending in various administrations throughout the Old Testament era to its fulfillment in the New Covenant. Traditional Covenant theologians have taught that the Mosaic covenant was at least a representation, if not a republication, of the original Covenant of Works and have seen the legal elements thereof as being added and therefore subservient to the Abrahamic administration of the Covenant of Grace. See MOSAIC COVENANT.

COVENANT OF GRACE: a theological concept based on the postlapsarian promise of the Redeemer in Genesis 3:15 and the fifth chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans which teaches that Christ was incarnate in human flesh for the express purpose of perfectly fulfilling the moral law and suffering the penalty of its violation in behalf of the elect. See COVENANT OF WORKS.

COVENANT OF WORKS: a theological concept based on the Genesis account of man in the Garden of Eden and the fifth chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans which teaches that glorification, or eschatological life, was promised to Adam upon condition of perfect obedience to the moral law and judgment threatened for disobedience. Though broken, the Covenant of Works remains in force with its promises and threatenings and will be the basis for God’s judgment of the world at the last day. See COVENANT OF GRACE.

DECALOGUE: a written summary of the moral law which was unique to national Israel under the Mosaic covenant but which still serves as an ethical guide to Christians under the New Covenant.

DISPENSATIONALISM: a hermeneutical system which interprets the biblical record in terms of a series of separate covenants, each representing a new “dispensation” or period of testing of God’s people which is abrogated upon the inauguration of the succeeding covenant. Dispensationalists are multi-covenantal in their understanding of redemptive history and usually teach that the original purpose of the Incarnation was to re-establish a socio-political kingdom in Israel based on the laws of the Mosaic covenant — a purpose which will be realized in a future “millennium.”

JUSTIFICATION: the doctrine that the believer is viewed by God as having fulfilled the demands of the moral law on the basis of Christ’s perfect obedience to the law in his stead which is imputed to his account through faith alone, and that he is therefore granted the reward of eternal life originally promised to Adam in the Covenant of Works. See RIGHTEOUSNESS.

LAW: a term used by the New Testament writers to refer primarily to the Mosaic covenant, but also metaphorically to the Covenant of Works, and always opposed to grace in the context of one’s standing with God.

LEGALISM: the view which teaches that God’s favor is merited by one’s own works, obedience, or “covenant-keeping.” Legalism is an implicit form of antinomianism in that it necessarily lowers the demands of the moral law so that it may be kept by fallen man. See ANTINOMIANISM and COVENANTAL NOMISM.

MONOCOVENANTALISM: the view which denies the bi-covenantal distinction between the prelapsarian Covenant of Works and the postlapsarian Covenant of Grace, and instead posits a single “covenant of grace” which begins with Adam’s creation and extends to the New Covenant era. Monocovenantalists combine the legal demands of the one covenant with the grace of the other, resulting in some form of covenantal nomism. See COVENANTAL NOMISM.

MORAL LAW: the expression of the eternal nature of God which extends its authority over every conceivable thought, word, or deed of His sentient creatures and demands perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience to its precepts. Due to its infinite scope, the moral law cannot be fully explicated in a written code, but may be summarized, such as in the Decalogue or in the Golden Rule. See NATURAL LAW.

MOSAIC COVENANT: also known as the Sinatic covenant and traditionally viewed by Covenant theologians in some sense as a type or republication of the original Covenant of Works, promising temporal blessings within the Promised Land for obedience and temporal cursings and ultimate explusion from the land for disobedience. See LAW.

NATURAL LAW: the content of the moral law as viewed from the perspective of mankind’s created nature which is made known to him internally through his conscience and externally through social law and order. See MORAL LAW.

PRESUPPOSITIONALISM: the apologetics system derived from the teachings of Abraham Kuyper and Cornelius Van Til which denies the existence of natural law and suggests that the image of God was lost to man in the fall, resulting in the impossibility of true knowledge of the creation apart from regeneration. See RECONSTRUCTIONISM.

RECONSTRUCTIONISM: the system invented in the late-1960s by Rousas John Rushdoony and his son-in-law, Gary North, which combines a denial of natural law with a monocovenantal interpretation of redemptive history and teaches the advancement of God’s Kingdom in the earth through obedience to the Mosaic judicial law. See THEONOMY.

RIGHTEOUSNESS: the state of conformity to a standard or law, particularly in the context of a contract or covenant. Under the Old Covenant, temporal righteousness was maintained by obedience to the Mosaic law and, in the event of transgression, was re-established through the offering of animal sacrifices. Under the New Covenant, everlasting righteousness is imputed to the believer at the moment of regeneration and faith, being rooted in the active obedience of Christ to the Covenant of Works as his surety. See JUSTIFICATION.

SANCTIFICATION: the necessary result of justification and an ongoing process through which the believer is enabled by the Holy Spirit increasingly to mortify the deeds of the flesh and conform to the holiness of God through contemplation of the moral law and of Christ’s perfect fulfillment thereof in his behalf. See JUSTIFICATION.

THEONOMY: an inherently monocovenantal position which denies that the Mosaic law was in any way distinct from the Covenant of Grace and was instead normative for all time as both an ethical standard for personal sanctification and civil government. See RECONSTRUCTIONISM.