In a recent thread in the Open Forum --
Rushdoony, Bahnsen, and Van Til -- Pilgrim made this post:
After having studied these two articles, I'd like to make a few comments for the sake of stirring up more discussion of this field that sorely needs attention.
In his early definition of "Christian reconstructionism", Brother Duncan indicates that a "'reconstructionist sees it as an obligation to seek to change society in ways that will bring it into conformity with the teaching of Scripture.'". Even while recognizing that there are serious limits on what any one person can do to change society, I suspect that virtually all Bible-believing Christians have at least some marginal commitment to seeking such change, and are therefore reconstructionists in this sense of the word. But I also suspect that there are plenty of other Bible-believing Christians besides myself who find other basic tenets of reconstructionism un-Scripture and repugnant. --- I have to do a similar dance around what Brother Duncan says about "theonomy". He says it "simply means 'God's law'". Ok! Good! I must be a theonomist. But he also says that theonomy is "the belief that all of the non-ceremonial Old Testament civil code is meant to be obeyed by all nations". By my understanding of the Book, that's not so. He also indicates that reconstruction signifies "the conviction that American society and public policy are in a desperate state, salvageable only by a radical effort to bring the nation in line with the norms of Scripture". I agree with that view completely. But what the "theonomic reconstructionists" are proposing as a salvage operation looks doomed to me, because it violates Scripture in too many ways. Even so, reconstructionism is filling a void that desperately needs filling. But filling the void with something more reliable than "theonomic reconstructionism", something that's more consistent with the Augustinian / Lutheran / Calvinistic theological lineage is preferable to settling for TR's deficiencies. If I cannot, based on a reasonable reading of Scripture, (i)adopt basic dispensationalist tenets, including their "insistence on an exclusively 'New Testament ethic'"; (ii)adopt "mainstream Liberal views of Old Testament ethics", especially the resulting "social gospel" routine; or (iii)adopt the "distinctive tenets of Reconstructionism"; then I'm left with practically no existing mechanism through which to exercise my "obligation to seek to change society". So the vacuum desperately needs filling.
When Christ asked if He would find us doing His will when He returns, but we haven't bothered to adequately discover what His will is because we haven't adequately discerned the jurisdictional boundaries of His demands, will He be satisfied that we have adopted eschatological positions instead? --- "[W]hen the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8; NASB) Does it take more faith to assume an eschatological position and pretend to build one's life around it, or to "seek first His kingdom and His righteousness" (Matthew 6:33; NASB), even in mundane everyday activities like raising kids, paying debts, and doing one's part to keep governments lawful? These days it seems that all Bible-believing Christians have adopted eschatological positions, even in the face of this vacuum with respect to reliable Bible-based jurisprudence. It's reasonable under the circumstances to follow the theonomic reconstructionists in their repudiation of the dispensationalist / antinomian view of the law. It's also reasonable to repudiate the theonomic reconstructionists for adopting postmillennialism when their concept of Bible-based jurisprudence is so wrought with distortion. But of course repudiating people does nothing to fill this vacuum.
According to Brother Zorn, Bahnsen says, "'those who have criticized theonomic ethics ... have no other standard to offer'". Zorn goes on to say, "I am under no illusions whatever that the reply that I now ... give ... will be satisfactory to the exponents of theonomy.". I would not venture to speak for "theonomic reconstructionists", but I think it's obvious that one reason that not only theonomists, but any other Christian concerned about these issues might not be satisfied by Zorn's reply, is that it comes nowhere close to meeting the demands of the day. Meeting the demands of the day will probably be accomplished not so much by activism in the
de facto system as by saying "No!" to the
de facto system and being active in the
de jure system instead. Zorn mentions "increasing lawlessness and godlessness of this age", "the supreme dictator", "'the beast'", "'the Man of Lawlessness'", and "'the Antichrist'", as if staring into that eschatological vortex somehow absolves the Bible-believing Christian of the duty to follow Christ's demands, including this demand to inform governmental authorities of the biblical prescription of human law, even to the last micro-second before His return.
Since Christ is King, Abraham Kuyper has to be absolutely correct when he claimed that "There is not an inch in the whole of temporal life which Christ, as Lord of all men, does not say, 'Mine'.". So when "Kuyper argued for an over-arching philosophy of life resting upon God alone as the epistemological foundation", he was doing the visible Church a great favor, because we certainly need such an epistemological foundation. It's reasonable to follow Van Til's extension of Kuyper's thinking to believe that "A person cannot be neutral about God ... There are only two options: ... God-centered or man-centered.". It's likewise reasonable to believe in "a distinctively Christian approach to education and society". It's reasonable to follow Van Til in believing that "no one can approach a field of knowledge neutrally, objectively, or a-religiously", which clearly "necessitates a distinctively Christian view in every field of human educational enterprise". But when the theonomic reconstructionists extend presuppositionalism from its "emphasis on non-neutrality" into a rejection of natural law and social contract theory, I see a
non sequitur. Given the huge variety of types of natural law -- from Augustinian to Thomist to utterly secular -- there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of natural law. But dumping it begs the question: What are you going to replace it with? Given that natural law is by definition the moral foundation for human law, dumping natural law leads automatically to adoption of legal positivism. If there is any chance that the laws implemented under a legal positivist regime are bad, denying that they are based on morality, and claiming, by default, that they are based instead on brute power, is a prescription for tyranny. Human laws are either based on morality, or they're based on brutality. There are no other choices. Every tyrannical regime of the 20th century was based on legal positivism to the exclusion of natural law.
According to Brother Zorn, "Bahnsen's threefold definition of theonomy" includes a claim that "'God's Word is authoritative over all areas of life (the premise of a Christian world-and-life-view)'". Anyone who takes the Bible seriously will admit that it is "authoritative over all areas of life". But different people have different ways of reading it. Even people who all agree about this "premise of a Christian world-and-life-view" have different ways of reading it. It's reasonable to conclude that this diversity is part of God's plan. Since this diversity is part of God's plan, it must also be true that God's biblical prescription of human law must allow for peaceful discussion so that consensus about what constitutes a "Christian world-and-life-view" can develop consensually, rather than by way of Christian A cramming his "world-and-life-view" down the throat of Christian B.
To the extent that the "Kuyperian transformational worldview" allows for this kind of discussion to go on, it appears to be a good thing, because it appears to encourage Christians to be "salt and light", both through influencing society at the macro-level through social activism and through influencing society at the micro-level through personal relationships. But since the theonomic reconstructionists think they're qualified "to dump the sacred/secular dichotomy", it appears that they think they're qualified to shut down any discussion that might take place more easily in a secular arena than in a sacred arena. This relates to another important characteristic of theonomic reconstructionists that Brother Duncan mentions: "a hesitance to talk about distinctive stages in the covenant of grace". These "dispensations" or "stages" are not as important as the biblical covenants that characterize such stages, because the covenants define jurisdictions. In social contract theory, jurisdictions are always functions of covenants and contracts, and laws are always terms of such covenants and contracts, and are limited by such jurisdictions. The biblical covenants that appear in such "stages" vary in the degree to which they are secular, where secular is defined as including a wide diversity of humanity, as distinguished from a single ethnic group like Israel. So it appears that it might be more prudent to define "sacred" and "secular" strictly in terms of such covenantal jurisdictions, rather than rush "to dump the sacred/secular dichotomy". The fact that the theonomic reconstructionists would rather "dump the sacred/secular dichotomy" than investigate the covenantal jurisdictions that appear in the various "stages" of the biblical chronology is another sign of their rejection of Bible-based natural law and social contract theory.
According to Brother Duncan, Bahnsen claims that "there is no explicit Scriptural recognition of the common distinction between the moral and civil law". According to Duncan, one of the "nine distinguishing marks of a Theonomic Reconstructionist" is that "the civil law is a sub-set of the moral law." As a believer in Bible-based natural law and social compact theory, I agree with Bahnsen that "civil law is [(or at least should be)] a sub-set of the moral law." But whatever distinction there is between civil law and moral law is subject to the distinction between human law and moral law, because civil law is a function of the biblical prescription of human law. I'm convinced that because of the nature of human law, a totally distinct hermeneutic is necessary to discern its biblical prescription.
God Almighty -- as glorious Judge of the universe and therefore primary enforcer of natural law -- uses secondary causes to enforce such moral law, and therefore sometimes uses human beings to enforce such moral law. But use of human beings to enforce such moral law generally requires fallible humans to make fallible choices. So there is a need for strict distinction between moral law/natural law on one hand, and human law on the other, even though the latter is a subset of the former. --- The Bible is a covenant that manifests itself in a system of sub-covenants. Delineation of subject matter and
in personam jurisdictions of such sub-covenants is a necessary prerequisite to promulgation and enforcement of such covenants. The "theonomic reconstructionists" have failed to properly delineate such subject matter and
in personam jurisdictions. Instead, they think that forcing the entire world to live by Mosaic non-ceremonial law might be a good thing. Clearly Bahnsen's hermeneutics have blinded him to recognizing the necessary "distinction between moral and civil law".
According to Brother Zorn, Bahnsen, in his "threefold definition of theonomy", claims that "we should presume continuity between Old and New Testament principles and regulations until God's revelation tells us otherwise (the premise of covenant theology)". Given Jesus's statement, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matthew 5:18; KJV), it looks obvious that this "premise of covenant theology" is reasonable. But given that Jesus clearly used a different of set of hermeneutical principles in reading the Old Testament from those used by the Pharisees, we're automatically obligated to seek to discover His hermeneutical principles, for the sake of avoiding mistakes made by such legalists. Given that the concept of jurisdictions is rudimentary and easily ignored, is it probable that Jesus incorporated this concept flawlessly into His hermeneutical agenda, while the Pharisees failed to do so? Is it probable that the so-called theonomists are making the same mistake? If the theonomic reconstructionists are making many of the same mistakes as the Pharisees by failing to incorporate clear appreciation for covenantal jurisdictions into their hermeneutics, then (i)we can admit that the "premise of covenant theology", the presumption of "continuity between Old and New Testament principles" is correct; (ii)we can see where Bahnsen and company have gone wrong, namely, by ignoring jurisdictions; and (iii)we can see that there is no need for further canonical special revelation to resolve the continuity-discontinuity debate, because proper understanding of jurisdictions makes the solution obvious.
Looking at all the "grace-abuse" in the visible Church in America makes it obvious that the theonomic reconstructionists have a legitimate complaint about the "
peripheralization of the Old Testament". But by focusing on the chronological development of covenantal jurisdictions from Genesis 1:1 onward, it's possible to avoid such "
peripheralization" without misapplying Old Testament principles. Such misapplication shows up in the third of "Bahnsen's threefold definition of theonomy", his claim that "the Old Testament law offers us a model for socio-political reconstruction in our day". This relates to the sixth of Brother Duncan's "nine distinctive marks of a Theonomic Reconstructionist", namely, that "the Theonomist insists that the Old Testament civil case law is normative for the civil magistrate and government in the New Covenant era.". Under the circumstances, it's reasonable to take the Mosaic Covenant as informative, edifying, illustrative, and instructional. But to take it as normative for the civil magistrate is a prescription for disaster. This is especially true when our understanding of the "model" carries no understanding of jurisdictions.
Because human laws are in effect not laws at all unless they provide for penal sanctions to be executed by humans, the seventh of Brother Duncan's "nine distinctive marks of a Theonomic Reconstructionist" is getting to the core difference between what I believe is reliable biblical theology on these issues and what such TRs believe. Duncan says that "reconstructionists advocate the implementation of the Mosaic penal sanctions", and that they believe that the "state is obligated to apply the Old Testament case laws' penal sanctions". That they believe this is confirmed by Brother Zorn, who says that they insist "that the Old Testament case laws with their penal sanctions still apply today". According to Zorn, Bahnsen says that if this were not true, then "'One would have to conclude that the penal sanction of capital punishment for murder has also been abrogated since it is not reaffirmed [in the New Testament]'".
This claim by Bahnsen is a perfect example of the theonomic reconstructionist's failure to recognize jurisdictions. In fact, the Bible's first mandate against murder appears in Genesis 9:6. Genesis 9:6 is (i)overtly a mandate to execute retribution against perpetrators of bloodshed; (ii)clearly a term of the Noachian Covenant; and (iii)clearly precedent to, and extant outside of, the Mosaic Covenant. A reading of Genesis 9 makes it obvious that this covenant applies to the entire post-diluvian human race. Like the covenant that brought the human race into existence, the Noachian Covenant transcends human choice. Every human being is bound by it regardless of whether they like it or not. Furthermore, a reasonable exegesis of Genesis 9:6 leads to the conclusion that this verse is not merely a mandate to execute retribution against perpetrators of bloodshed. It is, more generally, a mandate to execute justice against perpetrators of delicts.
In contrast to the no-choice nature of the Noachian Covenant, people entered the Mosaic Covenant by choosing to do so (Exodus 6:4-5; 12:1-28). Ever since, in spite of whatever familial, ethnic, or economic pressures may have been brought to bear against potential parties to the Mosaic Covenant, participation in it has always been subject to human choice. This fact in no way denies Calvinistic soteriology, evidenced by the existence of the doctrine of Calvinistic compatibilism, which acknowledges human choice as a factor in moral accountability. The fact that the entire post-diluvian human race is party to the Noachian Covenant, while participation in either the Mosaic or New Covenant is subject to human choice, has huge implications for this continuity-discontinuity controversy. Here's an example of the implications: "Bahnsen says that 'Scripture lists the following capital offenses against God'". Then Bahnsen lists sixteen "offenses against God". Only three of the listed offenses can be counted as delicts: murder, rape, and kidnapping. Out of this list -- speaking strictly in terms of the biblical prescription of human law, and emphatically not in terms of moral law -- these three are the only offenses that pertain to every human being because these are the only three that are delicts and that thereby relate directly to Genesis 9:6. The other thirteen offenses are certainly violations of moral law, and they will certainly be punished by God. But whether God will use human beings as secondary causes in the execution of justice against these thirteen is an altogether different issue. All people are obligated, as automatic parties to the Noachian Covenant, to execute justice against perpetrators of these three delicts. But people are obligated to execute justice against the other thirteen only if they have voluntarily entered a covenant or contract that creates such obligation.
This exercise should make it obvious that any reliable hermeneutic that's aimed at discovering the biblical prescription of human law should take discovery of
in personam jurisdiction (i.e., whether a given person is party to a given covenant) and subject matter jurisdiction (i.e., whether a given subject matter is covered by a given covenant, the discovery of which depends upon whether a proposed legal action is
ex contractu, out of a contract, or
ex delicto, out of a delict) as necessary prerequisites to discovering such human laws.
According to Brother Zorn, "The church is not just the kingdom of Christ's right hand ...; it also exists within the society governed by the state .... Where possible it is to influence society and the state with a Christian interpretation and application of the law." --- Zorn says that this is the "view of the relationship between church and state" according to Calvin and Kuyper. Besides legal positivists, who would argue with it? --- In America the visible Church has largely abandoned this responsibility "to influence society and the state with a Christian interpretation and application of the law" by allowing the Church to go awash in secular influences, failing to understand biblical law, and allowing legal positivism to dominate jurisprudence with little or no objection. The "theonomic reconstructionists" have come forward to remedy these circumstances, but have failed to offer reliable solutions because theirs is simply another breed of legal positivism. Until we learn to stand on the Augustinian dictum that "unjust law is not law", civilization will continue its slide into oblivion because the visible Church is failing to offer a genuinely "Christian interpretation and application of the law". Given that this is the truth, I see nothing inherently wrong with developing "a systematic and exegetical connection between the Bible and the conservative ideology of limited government and free market economics". But on the other hand, to claim that "it is the Christian's duty to obey and work for the enactment of the Old Testament civil law and its penal sanctions in the modern nation-state", is repugnance on a stick.
This brings me to the last of Brother Duncan's "nine distinctive marks of a Theonomic Reconstructionist": Am I willing to label as antinomian anyone who doesn't share my views? No! But if their views are so far away from the truth that they blaspheme God and the Bible, and clearly damage the visible Church, then I am. I'm also willing to label "theonomic reconstructionists" as antinomian because legal positivism is inherently against Scripture.
One of the biggest jurisprudential problems resulting from the theonomic reconstructionist's rejection of natural law and social contract theory is that such rejection simultaneously eliminates the distinction between legal actions
ex contractu and
ex delicto. This is precisely the same thing that legal positivists have been doing in America since the 1930s, when they took over the supreme court and gave natural law the boot. This is the road to tyranny because it fails to acknowledge that the right to contract and the right to own property undisturbed are natural rights inherent in the
imago Dei.
In spite of such big problems with the theonomic reconstructionists' agenda, I have great sympathy for parts of it. For example, I think all Bible-believing Christians should have huge problems with state-funded education. Since it amounts to indoctrination into secular humanism, all taxes collected from Bible-believing Christians to support it are violations of the 5th Amendment, because they are "takings" without "just compensation". This situation is also an obvious violation of the 1st Amendment "establishment clause". Likewise, any serious study of money and banking in America, from a moral perspective, will lead to conclusions like the theonomic reconstructionists', specifically, that the present monetary and banking systems are inherently fraudulent.
On the other hand, the theonomic reconstructionists are ignoring something extremely important: Just laws never stand alone. They are always terms embedded within covenants and contracts, and such covenants and contracts define jurisdictions. If there's any feature of covenant theology that should be taken as defining, this is one of them. Both the secular legal positivists who have taken control of the American government, and the theonomic reconstructionist legal positivists, are in violation of this principle. Both reject Bible-based natural law and social contract theory, and thereby put themselves at odds with both reliable biblical theology and American legal foundations. The act of taking Genesis 1:26 as the foundation for "Dominion Theology" -- because it jumps into legal positivism instead of respecting covenantal jurisdictions -- is an act of taking Scripture out of context. Whatever good fruit this theological tree produces needs to be engrafted into the natural law / social contract jurisprudence that's consistent with the Augustinian / Lutheran / Calvinistic theological lineage, before this sick tree dies of immuno-deficiency.
