In this post, Tom Hicks from Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary provides nine reasons why Theonomy is unbiblical.1 Our friends must be careful when they say "Say Yes to Theonomy!" Theonomy has many faces. Theonomy is very subtle in its agenda. We should be equipped to challenge its assertions.

Certainly, the moral law of the Old Covenant is a universal norm for all nations. And we ought to use the Old Testament to help us understand God's moral law. But the positive laws of the Old Covenant had many different functions according to Scripture, and all of them were bound to the unique objectives of the Old Covenant.

As we have seen, the judicial law was tied to the land, to ceremonial worship, and to the preservation of Christ's line of promise. Some of the judicial laws were simply designed to create a distinct culture for Israel that separated them from the nations. Others were about preserving family lines for the sake of property and inheritance. But all of the positive laws of the Old Covenant were related to the typological character of the Old Covenant and/or to its unique cultural situation and place in redemptive history.

In conclusion, theonomy, in the technical sense of the term is not a biblical idea. Scripture itself refutes the theonomic position, such that in fact, theonomy is not in favor of God's law at all, but adds to the good law of God positive covenantal precepts that were designed to expire with the coming of the Lord Jesus.

— Tom Hicks

Here are the nine reasons, with supporting citations from Reformed theologians:

1. Theonomy Has a Flawed Hermeneutic of Old Testament Priority

"The theonomists had failed to account for this unique setting. They had also rejected the traditional Reformed law-gospel dialectic and instead embraced something more akin to a law-gospel continuum... Kline argued that this had resulted in the theonomists' failure to see the primary importance of typology in Israel's law. This, in turn, was the reason for their error in seeing the Israelite kingdom, along with its civil laws, as the normative ideal for all nations."2

"Theonomy tends to grossly overemphasize continuity to the point of being virtually blind to discontinuity."3

2. Theonomy Does Not Account for the Fact That Gentile Nations Are Not and Never Were Under the Old Covenant

"For the Lord through the hand of Moses did not give that law to be proclaimed among all nations. Rather, it was designed for the Jewish nation with whom God had established a special relationship."4

"For the Lord gave not that law by the hand of Moses to be promulgated among all nations, and to be universally binding; but after having taken the Jewish nation into his special charge, patronage, and protection, he was pleased to become, in peculiar manner, their legislator…"5

"How could the Gentiles, described by the apostle Paul as 'outside of the law' (ἀνόμως) possibly be obliged to the law? How could it possibly be meaningful for Paul to distinguish Jews from Gentiles because 'to them belong… the covenants, the giving of the law' (Rom 9:4), if the covenant and its laws oblige non-Jews equally with Jews?"6

3. Theonomy Doesn't Properly Account for the Fact That the Old Covenant as a Whole, Together with All of Its Laws, Has Been Abolished

"To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require."7

"It is impossible to avoid the clear teaching of Hebrews 9:19 that the book of the covenant, the summary of the judicial law of Israel, has expired."8

"This means that with the fulfillment of the Old Covenant in Christ and the passing away of that covenant, all the commands and temporal promises of the Old Covenant have been abrogated."9

4. Theonomy Doesn't Acknowledge the Existence of Positive Law in Contrast to Moral or Natural Law

"While the newer versions of theonomy often sound like they affirm the classic Reformed threefold division of the law (moral law, ceremonial law, judicial law), they do not consistently view the judicial law as positive law. Rather, they collapse the judicial law into the moral law… Positive law is law that God posits, or decrees, by way of kingly fiat for a particular time and a particular reason…"10

"'Positive law' differed in that it required a direct and special revelation to be known, and generally remained in force only during a particular historical covenant."11

5. Theonomy Does Not Account for the Fact That the Judicial Laws of Israel Were Only to Be Practiced in the Land of Canaan

"Israel's experience under the law of Moses in the Promised Land of Canaan was not meant to exemplify life under the two kingdoms. The cultural commonality among believers and unbelievers ordained in the Noahic covenant was suspended for Israel within the borders of the Promised Land."12

"The Ten Commandments were always to be obeyed everywhere (Ps 37:31; 40:8; Isa 51:7), but the judicial and ceremonial laws were only to be kept in the land of Canaan, according to the holy nation of Israel's government and system of worship (Deut 5:30–33)."13

6. Theonomy Misunderstands the Reason for the Death Penalties in Old Covenant Judicial Law

"In two significant passages it makes clear reference to the Mosaic penal sanctions (Heb 2:1–3; 10:28–31). In both passages the penal sanctions of the judicial law are seen as pointing typically to the destruction of those who apostatize from salvation in Christ."14

"The New Testament seems to teach that the death penalties of the Old Covenant are types of eternal condemnation… All of the death penalties of the Old Covenant are associated with Israel's unique place in redemptive history."15

"…while Israel's theocracy existed to foreshadow the redemptive kingdom, part of this typology involved a proleptic realisation of the final judgement."16

7. Theonomy Does Not Account for the Fact That the Old Covenant Law Was Intentionally Severe to Preserve the Line of Promise

"At certain points, the judicial commandments of the Old Covenant were quite strict and burdensome in order to preserve the line of promise, which was being carried in national Israel until the appointed time of Christ's birth (Acts 15:10; Gal 3:19)."17

"Furthermore, the harsh penalties of the Old Testament theocracy (Acts 15:10) were types of eternal judgment (Heb 10:28–29), and were intended to preserve the line of Christ until the coming of Christ (Gal 3:19), but they were never given as a universal moral norm for all nations."18

8. In Each Case, When the New Testament Applies One of the Judicial Laws of the Old Covenant, It Applies the Law's General Equity to the Church, and Never to the Government of a Gentile Nation

"Not once in the New Testament is the civil aspect of the Old Testament law applied to the civil authority as an ideal."19

"The judicial law is also cited in relation to the judgments which the spiritual kingdom of Christ in the church now executes to maintain the purity of the church. Corrective church discipline properly executed foreshadows the ultimate judgment of the apostate in the day of judgment (1 Cor 5:1–13)."20

"Paul saw that the general equity of Deuteronomy 25:4 is nothing other than the eighth commandment, which means that churches should pay their pastors… Any version of general equity theonomy, which does not look for prior transcendent moral law within the judicial law… uses a hermeneutic contrary to the New Testament."21

9. To Sum Up, Theonomy's Central Mistake Is Believing That God Gave the Judicial Law of Israel as a Universal Norm of Societal Justice for All Nations

"For the Lord gave not that law by the hand of Moses to be promulgated among all nations, and to be universally binding; but after having taken the Jewish nation into his special charge, patronage, and protection, he was pleased to become, in peculiar manner, their legislator…"5

"This, in turn, was the reason for their error in seeing the Israelite kingdom, along with its civil laws, as the normative ideal for all nations."2

"Theonomy teaches that Israel's judicial law is God's unchanging moral standard for civil government, and a universally binding blueprint for all societies… The greatest mistake of such a hermeneutic is that it does not begin with the universal transcendent norms of natural and moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments… wrongly assuming they are all essentially moral, in order to apply them universally."22

Indeed, we must reject their misleading rhetoric: "Theonomy simply means that God's law must be supreme over man's law. Don't you want that?" Because this is not what Theonomy technically means. These citations demonstrate that historic Reformed theology consistently distinguishes the positive, temporary civil code of Old Testament Israel from the abiding moral law written on the human heart and summarized in the Decalogue.

References

Works Cited

Footnotes

  1. According to Tom Hicks, "Some of the most prominent early proponents of this kind of theonomy include Greg Bahnsen, Rousas Rushdoony, and Gary North." This theonomy is Reconstructionist Theonomy. The modern one by Doug Wilson, Joel Webbon, and others is called General Equity Theonomy. For a discussion of "general equity theonomy," see here. ↩

  2. Michael Beck and Charles Lee Irons, Covenant Lord and Cultic Boundary: A Dialectic Inquiry Concerning Meredith Kline and the Reformed Two-Kingdom Project (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2021), pp. 37–38. ↩ ↩2

  3. William S. Barker and Robert W. Godfrey, eds., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), p. 502. ↩

  4. John Calvin, cited in Matthew J. Tuininga, Calvin's Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Christ's Two Kingdoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 262. ↩

  5. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, quoted in Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New: A Reformed Critique (Owensboro, KY: CBTS Press, 2020), p. 331. ↩ ↩2

  6. T. David Gordon, "Critique of Theonomy: A Taxonomy," Westminster Theological Journal 56, no. 1 (1994), p. 40. ↩

  7. Westminster Confession of Faith 19.4, quoted in Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 394. ↩

  8. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New: A Reformed Critique (Owensboro, KY: CBTS Press, 2020), p. 396. ↩

  9. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 433. ↩

  10. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 419. ↩

  11. Ronald S. Baines, "Separating God's Two Kingdoms: Regular Baptists in Maine and Nova Scotia, 1796–1815" (PhD diss., University of Maine, 2014), p. 295. ↩

  12. David VanDrunen, Living in God's Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), p. 166. ↩

  13. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 423. ↩

  14. Dennis E. Johnson, cited in Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 398. ↩

  15. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, pp. 441–442. ↩

  16. Michael Beck and Charles Lee Irons, Covenant Lord and Cultic Boundary, p. 39. ↩

  17. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 422. ↩

  18. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 374. ↩

  19. Dan G. McCartney, in Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, ed. Barker and Godfrey, p. 566. ↩

  20. Dennis E. Johnson, cited in Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, p. 399. ↩

  21. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, pp. 370, 459. ↩

  22. Sam Waldron and Tom Hicks, Theonomy Old and New, pp. 436, 463. ↩