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

Chapter Three:
An Overview of the Theonomic System

       Although it has some roots in Puritanism and Covenant Theology, Theonomy is a distorted version of both and may perhaps be classified as "hyper-Puritanism." As already discussed, the traditional Reformed position sees a continuous unfolding of redemptive history in various administrations of the one Covenant of Grace, beginning with the promise of the Redeemer in Genesis 3:15, continuing with the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant, and finding its clearest pre-Christian expression in God's promise of the "New Covenant" in Ezekiel 37:36 and Jeremiah 31:31-34. The Mosaic covenant, or "Old Covenant," is seen as a temporary addition to the Covenant of Grace, existing from its establishment at Mount Sinai 430 years after Abraham until its judicial termination on Calvary and its actual termination with the expiration of the nation of Israel in A.D. 70. As a restatement, or type, of the original Edenic Covenant of Works, it was "added because of transgression" (Galatians 3:19) — the rebellious and "stiff-necked" nature of the Israelites (Exodus 32:9-10; Acts 7:51) — and served to "shut [them] up unto the faith" (Galatians 3:23) which was foreshadowed in the various sacrifices and ceremonies and would later be fully revealed in Christ Himself. It was the Mosaic covenant itself that separated the Jews from the Gentile nations of the world and made them a distinct theocratic people, and it was this covenant which has now passed away.
       As we shall see, this is clearly the doctrine of the New Testament, particularly the Pauline epistles. However, Theonomists deny the provisional character of the Mosaic economy and instead view it as one of the two administrations of the one Covenant of Grace, which they extend back into the prelapsarian state. The terms "Older Covenant" and "Newer Covenant" were coined by Bahnsen in Theonomy in Christian Ethics, and have been used by other lesser-known writers such as Brian Schwertley and Daniel Ritchie, in order to distinguish between the previous administration of Moses and the new administration of Christ without implying substantial covenantal discontinuity. For Bahnsen and Rushdoony in particular, there never was an original Covenant of Works which held forth eternal life as the reward for its fulfillment, and for this reason, neither the Mosaic law nor the Israelites' tenure in the land of promise should be viewed as typical restatements of the Edenic arrangement, but as normative expressions of the believer's covenantal relationship with God. Such a denial of the Covenant of Works undermines the doctrine that Christ came to fulfill the demands of the law in the elect's stead, thus vicariously earning justification and securing the original promise of eternal life in their behalf, and substitutes in its place the teaching that Christ instead confirmed and established the covenantal authority of the Mosaic law "in exhaustive detail" for all time.
       Adherents to Theonomy often will claim that they hold to the classic three-fold division of the Mosaic law into ceremonial, judicial, and moral categories, but they actually collapse the judicial into the moral and therefore think in terms of only a two-fold division. In fact, according to Greg Bahnsen, it is "latent antinomianism" to "draw a line between 'moral' and 'civil' laws."⁽¹⁾ This presupposition may be seen in their frequent reference to the "moral case laws" found in the Old Testament, which, as we will see, they insist were binding on the nations outside of Israel and remain perpetually binding. However, this division is much different than in conventional Reformed thought, amounting to a radical separation of "the ceremonial law" from "the moral-judicial law" so that the one may be abolished while the other remains intact. Consequently, Theonomists have two different things in mind when they speak of "the law," depending on the context. When Scripture speaks of "the law" as having been "established," as in Romans 3:31, or "fulfilled," as in Matthew 5:17-19, they interpret this to mean "the moral-judicial law." However, whenever Scripture speaks of the Mosaic law as having been "done away" (2 Corinthians 3:7-11) or "abolished" (Ephesians 2:15), Theonomists invariably interpret this to refer to "the ceremonial law." They wrongly identify only "the ceremonial law" as the covenantal barrier between Jew and Gentile which was "added" at Mount Sinai and later "nailed to the cross" (Colossians 2:14), thus ending forever the covenantal separation of Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14-15).⁽²⁾ Consequently, they cannot see Paul's cogent argument in his epistle to the Galatians that any attempt to carry the Mosaic economy over into the New Covenant era is an implicit denial of the very Gospel itself, and instead read this epistle as a diatribe against the use of "the ceremonial law," and circumcision in particular, as a means of justification.
       These underlying errors lead to others still more serious. Chief among these is their concept of "taking dominion" using "God's law-word" (the "moral judicial law") — a novel version of Postmillennialism which arises from R.J. Rushdoony's theory of "restitution." Briefly stated, Theonomists view themselves as having been restored to the covenantal relationship which Israel forfeited by disobedience, together with its mission to make restitution to God for Adam's rebellion by subduing the world, or reconstructing the nations of the earth in God's image. They believe that this covenantal restoration, or "justification," is through faith alone, but that the dominion mandate, or "sanctification," is fulfilled individually through the application of "moral judicial law" to "every area of life" (Theonomy), and nationally through the application of that same law to society by the civil magistrate (Reconstruction). When a five-fold restitution has been paid to God by the Christian Church, according to the principle of Exodus 22:1, her mission will be complete and Christ will return to consummate history. To reject this "restitution gospel" in favor of the mainstream eschatologies such as either historic Postmillennialism or Amillennialism, or even Dispensationalism, is to be "antinomian" and thus an enemy of the true covenant people of God. This will be discussed in greater detail in a later chapter.

Endnotes

1. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1984), page 310.

2. This false assumption also appeared in the writings of E.P. Sanders and other proponents of the so-called "New Perspective on Paul," and was later adopted by the Federal Vision movement, the ranks of which are filled mainly by Theonomists and former Reconstructionists such as Steve Wilkins, James Jordan, and Steve Schlissel. The contention of the New Perspective/Federal Vision writers is that the Protestant Reformation was mistaken in identifying the Galatian error as legalism, but that Paul's anger was instead directed against the Judaizers for attempting to maintain the "covenantal boundary markers" beyond Calvary. Thus, the "gospel" to a Federal Vision advocate is not the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer through faith, but the inclusion of the Gentiles within the covenant community of God. There have been only a handful of Reconstructionists who have remained apart from the Federal Vision movement — the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States being the most vocal in opposition to its teachings. It is the contention of this writer, however, that Federal Vision is closely related to Reconstructionism and that the two movements share a common origin in the teachings of R.J. Rushdoony.