If I sound too much like I know what I am talking about, then it is to the degree that I have a brain to think (therein lay my limitations) and a Bible to read. I've read precious little about theonomy and am not it's best student, so you are in good company. We needn't read much Calvin and to an arminian look like a Calvin PhD. Folks here on the forum are mostly honest, direct, and inquisitive and we're all learning, far as I'm concerned. So ask away.

And still slightly on point, you do have the problem there of American context...a problem not because a Christian there can't be American in their topical approach to matters (what else could they be in local matters?) but that so much of the latter development of theonomy is/was in the US by Americans talking about the context of American politics, including all the rhetoric of the American right, which does not always help us. But I think you've already overcome that when I read that you are focused now on "being salt and light and "conquering the culture" by means of the gospel lived out and demonstrated." Don't do like Duncan did and look elsewhere for what to conquer with....you have the Law.

I had the pleasure once of being at a Reformed (Baptist) Church in the States one Sunday July 4th. The sermon was usual, not nationalistic, people didn't worship draped in flags and they weren't lighting off firecrackers during the picnic....you could have been in Canada and not have been able to tell the difference (except you guys say "about" kinda funny) but people focused on the Lord. I have to say, I was suprised...I thought all American Christians blended Jesus with America like a John Haggee, especially on a July 4th. But they didn't. I felt more like I was in a Christian brotherhood than I ever had. Next day things got wierd, but in a good way. You guys spend a lot of money on firecrackers.

And in just that way you, indeed most of us, already have what is needed to understand the theonomic approach to the society around us...as the Baptist Catechism and Westminster say, we have the light of nature in us and the works of God around us and that is sufficient for us to all be judged by him for not submitting to him....the people in Noahs day and at Sodom had the same criteria and suffered the same wrath and neither had much of Godly heritage in theonomy so far as we know. And we have the Word giving us greater detail than common man can know and that's it...that's all we really need I think. So don't worry about not being studied ... it wearies the flesh to read it too much.

"the only major difference between Postmils and Amils is in their views of what the Lord will find on the earth when He returns: Is that an accurate summary of the difference, or have things changed in the common definitions of Amil and Postmil?" I would say you're right. Amillenialism is a form of postmillenialism, and is generally taken to precede it in Church history in case that statement suggests to anyone that Amil came from Postmil. Postmil gave a new impetus to hurry up and prepare for theonomic bliss because that's what's needed before the end can come. I've always been convicted that he could return right now, save for the fact that there are elect left to save, thus the purpose of the great Commission and thus the implication of theonomy for societies. That is the purpose of history, to save the uttermost, not to muck around making suitable arrangements like a war here or there or Apache helicopters launching stinger missiles at Jack Van Impe. Or even making a theonomic society; that's not a criteria for the end, though it should continue to be our ethic until the day he arrives. We're supposed to do be doing that because, much more simply, it is the right thing to do. Churches should be governed after the law of God, families should be governed after the law of God, and so should our own Christian lives and all the while show how we love the law...there is no flaw in it and it was a graceful act of God to give it. And with all my reason, and all my Bible it is sufficient for me that all the world should submit to his revealed law now....all the world will be judged accordingly by it sooner or later.

"Apparently the common understanding of the word "theonomy" has been changed by to refer to the views of more recent writers like Gary North"

Not among theonomists it hasn't changed. That the Bible teaches that all the world should submit to God, from the individual, through families, all the way to state level, is unchanged by the fact that Gary North wants a Christian America.. Can you sense how those are subtly different things? North et al are simply being particular in the application of a universal principle. We must all do that...I must do it here for my own country, too. But that Canadian aspect I may apply to theonomy for Canada does not nullify all of theonomy, nor does it change it universally. Once you read Gary North et al, you see they are not trying to define theonomy, they are trying to take the universal truth of it and apply it to one country in one time. If different theonomists in the US want to apply it differently this way or that, great...that's called political debate and it is a great tradition, it is part of what healthy debate and sharpening the ideas is all about. Where would America be if it's founders gave up on the notion of "America" just because some people had nutty ideas about it? The crude, crass, ore being fashioned by Rushdoony and North and DeMar and Bahnsen today is just to get the fire lit so that real examination can get going....what it will ultimately be still remains to be seen and even they are ALL humble enough to admit that, at least in the texts I've read. Applications in theonomy are in their infancy because the rebirth of the doctrines of grace are still going on around the world. Like the way in which collectible cars increase in number by moving from mass production to being kept, true Christians may become more apparent in a society, more refined and outstanding, but that's probably just because the hoy polloy is being consumed around them. We're not really growing like Postmils might say, it just seems that way because we're being refined. But more minds doing more work seeing farther may yet produce the right reconstruction, the good theonomy, for a particular time and place. The key is to continue, and not give up, on thinking as Noah did and as Abraham did, thinking theonomically despite the fact that not all the world is turning to God.

Theonomy is right and proper for a Christian to believe. If North is too polemic or some moron tells you all Baptists or Presbyterians would have to die under theonomy (oh yes, in the infant years all manner of wierd sounds are made) then that is still no reason to abandon it for the ethical relativism of human autonomous thinking that got us all here in the first place. Forget North if you want to, and examine a less polemical theonomy in Bahnsen or let's just take our Christian minds to Scripture and just read it, and then read the newspaper, then read the Bible, then read the paper, then the Bible and it really will not take any confessing Christian long to to understand...theonomy is a way of thinking, about anything, including a way of thinking about our society.