A Reformed Response to Theonomy | Theocast

Theonomy, Covenant Theology, and the Reformed Response

Hi, this is John. Today on Theocast, Justin and I, well, we talk about theonomy. It's a pretty hot topic, but please hear us out before you turn it off. We are trying to be accurate in representing what theonomy has taught and is teaching today and the reform response to that, specifically covenant theology from a 1689 Federalist position.

We try to be charitable and gracious. We're hoping that iron sharpens iron here and that we can all glorify and love our Father together. Stay tuned. We are excited to announce we have a brand new podcast available called the Kingsmen Podcast.

It's where we are reclaiming biblical manhood by training and equipping men for the work.

Of the kingdom.

You can find it anywhere you download a podcast. You can also watch it on YouTube. We have new episodes that come out every Monday. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed and pastoral and confessional perspective.

Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. And I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, where there's lots of pollen.

So lots of sneezing today.

Say less.

Yeah.

It's good to be with you, Justin. We've had the opportunity to already talk and deal with technological problems. Praise God.

As it seems we always do these things.

For his mercy and grace.

That's right.

He is sanctifying me, John.

Yeah, he is. There you go.

There you go.

A couple of announcements for you. If you didn't know, Theocast does have a store and in there you can get some books. You can get merch like hats and shirts and I don't know, stickers, stuff like that in.

There.

If you so choose to support us in that way, a big announcement that came out recently is Theocast U is available where we already have 18 classes with lectures, several lectures. We have a reformed theology masterclass in there.

Anyways, it's just an additional way for us to help provide. I think a lot more of a educational level. Our podcast would be definitely kind of on the pop surface level to kind of help people understand on a general and be encouraged.

If you want to go to more of like a seminary lecture style, then that's available. You can go check that out. So, just go to Theocast .org and look for Simple Reformanda. That's it, JP. That's all the announcements I got, man.

We're working on stuff. Pray for GRN that's underway. And we got talks about a conference, not that there's no dates, just talking about it.

No dates.

No dates.

We're talking about TBD.

That's right.

Well, two minutes. That's pretty good. Let's go ahead and jump into it, JP. We need every minute possible to cover something that unfortunately you and I aren't excited about, but it is something that we're going to have to respond to because it's rising in the ranks and it's starting to, I think, influence a lot of people.

So talk to us about theonomy. Give us an introduction to what it is, and then you and I will do our best to respond to it in the next two episodes.

As you said, this is the first of two episodes on theonomy. This first one is going to be a little bit more overtly theological. We're going to try to talk a little bit about what theonomy is. Not at great length.

We'll link you to some articles and some different things that have been written so that you can read more about definitions of theonomy and better understand it. We'll try to briefly define it, and then we want to respond theologically in this first episode.

Then in the second one, we plan to consider more of the street-level fallout of theonomy and some of our pastoral concerns with it and how we might respond as pastors of local churches. So we hope both these episodes are helpful, maybe in different ways.

Let's begin by talking about theonomy and what it is. I'm going to briefly offer this as a definition, and then I'll read some quotes from, in my opinion, the most intentional, deliberate theonomist, Greg Bonson, who's no longer with us but wrote decades ago.

I know you're going to mention probably some more names, but there's Rush Dooney. Most of the guys who originated theonomy, the backbone of it, have passed away. Your prominent people who are now pushing it further would be Cannon Press, Doug Wilson, Apologia Radio, Jeff Durbin, and even I would say James White is starting to fall into that camp as well.

Yeah, those are the kind of contemporary, and some of those guys are a little bit more pop-level and pastoral-level with their argumentation, whereas the older school guys writing in the 80s and 90s were more academic and deliberately exegetical in their attempts to argue for it.

Greg Bonson being kind of the seminal figure amongst those.

That's right. Can I throw one more asterisk before you start reading?

Yeah, go for it.

Justin and I, on our podcast, we're trying to be pastoral and always gracious and kind. I know there will be theonomists who listen to this because the title is here, and it's a very hot topic. My encouragement to my brothers and my sisters who are listening to this, do us a favor.

We try to read you, and we try to listen to you and hear your arguments, and we try to represent you as you would like to be represented. We're going to do our best to do that. We're not going to try and use straw men.

We're going to use your words, your understandings. Our hope would be, as Iron Sharpens Iron and as brothers who love Christ together, that you would hear us out, and before you respond or retweet this or share this, maybe try and listen to what our feedback is so that we can start having a progressive conversation.

I just feel like we shoot shots over the bows at each other, and I just don't feel like it's beneficial for you or for us. So that would be my one takeaway on this before Justin starts reading, and we try to accurately represent what theonomy is.

So my own definition to begin, and then I'm going to read a little bit of Bonson to try to support it, and then I'll make a few other comments about how this often manifests itself. Like I've said a few times, street level.

Hopefully my voice will hold up. I lost it last week. We'll see. So theonomy essentially asserts that the judicial laws of the Mosaic Covenant are normative for all geopolitical entities. So civil governments are obligated, in other words, to enforce old covenant judicial laws along with their penalties, and any law not included in the old covenant judicial code would be out of bounds, right?

So in other words, theonomy understands that God has given the universal blueprint for civil government in the Mosaic judicial law. God has given us a template for how we do statecraft, and it's called the judicial code.

Of Moses, right?

And so I think it's important that before I even read Bonson, I just want to acknowledge this, that the listener needs to understand that theonomy often comes packaged with Christian Reconstructionism, kind of the rebuilding of Christendom or the building of a Christian society.

It often comes packaged with a particular kind of post-millennial eschatology that's very optimistic. So in theory, it's possible to pull those things apart. Oftentimes, practically, on the street, boots on the ground, that doesn't occur.

They often come together. And if you are familiar with Canon Press or if you're familiar with Apologia, you see a lot of these things coming together. That said, our aim today is to deal with theonomy historically and theologically.

And let me read a little bit of Greg Bonson again, who I would understand to be a seminal figure in the movement, in the stream of thought. And for my money too, I think that he is the most intentional, deliberate, exegetical guy as I've read and examined these things.

So I'm going to read a few quotes from Bonson's book called By This Standard, The Authority of God's Law Today. He says, quote, The New Testament does not teach any radical change in God's law regarding the standards of sociopolitical morality.

God's law, as it touches upon the duty of civil magistrates, has not been altered in any systematic or fundamental way in the New Testament. So there he's arguing for what I was mentioning earlier. He continues on.

We must recognize the continuing obligation of civil magistrates to obey and enforce the relevant laws of the Old Testament, including the penal sanctions specified by the just judge of all the earth.

As with the rest of God's law, we must presume continuity of binding authority regarding the sociopolitical commandments revealed as standing law in the Old Testament. Last one. It is advocated that we should presume the abiding authority of any Old Testament commandment until and unless the New Testament reveals otherwise.

And this presumption holds just as much for laws pertaining to the state as for laws pertaining to the individual. So there's a number of things going on there theologically that we're going to try to deal with in this podcast.

Last comment from me in terms of chalking the field. I want to be fair here. Reconstructionist theonomy and a different stream referred to often as general equity theonomy are not one in the same. And so Reconstructionist theonomy involves the establishment of Christendom in a Christian society, whereas general equity theonomy is going to argue for looking to the judicial law, finding the principles that it contains, and then seeking to apply that in geopolitical reality today, in geopolitical entities today.

And what we're going to try to do today is argue against both effectively by getting at the sort of kernel of the argumentation. So any comments you want to add about theonomy and what it is, John, before we pivot to our responses?

Yeah, I spend a lot of time interacting, reading. And I try and what I do, I do a bake method where I kind of let it just ruminate for a long time. I don't try and make conclusions based on the first thing I read or the first author.

What you do. Realize, as you said, there are different applications and there aren't agreement on all of theonomy.

Yeah, and all theonomists don't agree. They're not monolithic.

Definitely not. And so to say all theonomists believe this, then that's just not necessarily true. I do want to start with one of my interactions is when I'm on the internet or on Twitter, you can eventually start to pick out who a theonomist is.

It's because it's how they talk about the law. And this happened to me recently. There was Dr. R. Scott Clark from Westminster and myself and another person were getting tagged into this theocast debate on whether we're antinomians or not.

And the way he was using the law, I eventually just stopped and asked him, are you a theonomist? And he eventually said, yes, he was, which made sense to me because he was using the law against us in a way that Reformed theology doesn't use the law.

It's an outside use from history. And I would say biblically, we're going to argue that. I will give this to my brothers. They are trying to be faithful and love our Father and represent Him well.

Oh, yeah.

You know what? Praise God for you.

And they're concerned with faithfulness. All of those things. I trust their motivations are good.

And they rightly assess the world in that it's botrous. It's horrendous. So we don't hate sin any less than a theonomist does. We hate abortion. We hate homosexuality. I don't mean hate in the sense of like, I hate the person, but we don't like what the world does to the beautiful creation of God.

It's offensive to us. And this is why we proclaim the gospel and why I know theonomists proclaim the gospel as well. So the second mistake that I have heard people who oppose. So there's a mistake from the theonomist side.

Let me start there. They assume we do not hold the law of God in its proper and high place. And when a theonomist defines theonomy, they just say, well, theos, namos just means God's.

Law.

You love God's law, right? You think you should uphold God's law. And I'm not trying to say they're being facetious, but that's not the whole definition of theonomy. That's a definition from the Greek words.

It translated into English.

Theos, namos.

Yeah, but that's not what they're advocating for. And so on the surface level, on the beginning conversation, we're arguing over whether you really believe in God's law and it's sufficient and you should trust it and uphold it as being righteous.

If you do not hold the theonomist view of the law, then you basically are lessening God's holiness and you're lessening the law. And I just don't think that's a fair argument. I'm going to start there.

Guys, that's my experience. I'm not saying every theonomist says this or does this. So I'm not whitewashing or broad brushing. I'm just saying the experience I have had, this is the debate. Now, I'm going to defend theonomists now, okay?

One of the argumentation that has often been used is that theonomists believe that the world is transformed to be Christian by the law. They don't. They don't teach that. And it's not fair. It's a strawman.

We got to stop saying that.

I was going to say, theonomists that I know, they believe in justification by grace through faith in Christ alone and preach that. And they don't assume that the law changes anybody's heart. So I want to be very fair.

Yeah, and I think that what ends up happening is they're trying to clarify their position and they're defending off attacks that aren't true. So I don't want to attack them where they don't need to be attacked.

And I don't attack anybody. I don't want to ask for clarity where there doesn't need to be clarity. So I'm thankful that you preach justification by faith alone. You hold to the five solas. Praise God for you, man.

Theonomists tend to be theologically conservative and astute. They're wise men. So I'm not here to tell that they're uneducated and any of that. We're not going down those roads. It's not helpful. It's not part of the debate.

So now that we've set that up on either side, we, who are Reformed, hold very high God's.

Law.

We're going to right now get into the threefold divisions of the law. I'll let you set that up, Justin, because I've been talking a lot. But we hold it high and we want to try and use biblical language to define where the law is applicable and where it is not.

So, Justin, unless you had other comments, we could jump into it.

No, I don't. We got to get going on it. So we're going to respond theologically to theonomy effectively in three primary ways. The first of which we as confessional Reform guys, and most everybody listening probably knows, John and I both subscribe to the Second London Confession.

And being confessional Reform guys, we uphold what has historically been known as the threefold division of the law. So in our confession, it's chapter 19. There would be a corresponding chapter in the Westminster Standards as well.

And the threefold division of the law is this, that the law of God, in particular, as we think about the law of God given through Moses, can be broken down into three separate categories. The first category is the moral law.

Now, I just said the law given through Moses. Let me explain what I mean. The moral law, as we understand it, is the law that God wrote into creation. He wrote on the human conscience and then was given to Moses, summarized in 10 words, written down on two tablets of stone.

So the moral law contains what man must do in order to be righteous in God's sight. It is inherently moral. It is known innately, right? We're going to get into some of this more and more in just a minute.

And the moral law is immutable. It doesn't change because it reflects the character of God who gave it. It is binding on all men at all times because, again, it exists from the beginning. It exists prior to any other covenant arrangement being made.

It is literally written into the world that the Lord has spoken into existence.

Part of the DNA.

That's right.

Correct.

And so it is binding on all men at all times. It transcends any unique era of redemptive history. And we're going to get into maybe texts more in just a minute, but we would see this in the New Testament supported by texts like Romans 2, 14, 15, and also Romans 5, 12 to 14.

And it's very plain that the moral law of God is binding and that even the moral law is a piece of the covenant that God made with Adam is a thing. So that's the moral law. The next kind of law, in addition to the moral law, God gave Israel ceremonial laws.

These pertain to institutions under that covenant. They are typological in nature. They contain many commands related to Israel's worship. And they also contain moral obligations. But they all point to the Messiah to come, the Savior who would come and fulfill them and are abrogated thereby by Christ when he comes.

So that's the ceremonial law. The third category of law would be the civil law or the judicial law. Those terms are interchangeable. Those are the laws that God gave to govern the nation state of Israel.

And we would understand that those laws cease to be binding on any geopolitical entity once Israel under the old covenant ceases to be. That's what our confession states. So that's the threefold division of law.

Moral, ceremonial, and civil. We can link maybe to our episode that we did last year. Is the law relevant today where we deal with the threefold division of the law? Let's unpack this a little bit as to how this is relevant.

Now sometimes you will hear an argument. Well, there's no one scripture that makes that division. You guys are pushing. That's a reformed dogma. You're pushing on top of the text. And is the actual division, did one of the disciples make that or Christ make that division?

No, they did not. But when you read the application of the law and you look at how the law is being used, it's easy to come to a walking away saying, okay, this is how it's being used. Justin, specifically, we're dealing a lot with the civil and ceremonial.

I think that just to help someone, this might even be brand new. That word ceremonial might even just be brand new. I think it would be healthy just to stop so people, when we keep using these phrases, if this is a new term for you, I think it would be helpful.

Give an example of what a ceremonial law would be.

Ceremonial laws, I can rattle off a number. So you have the priesthood and its function. You have the sacrificial system in total. You have particular days that are related to sacrifice, like the day of atonement.

You have the feasts. You have all of those sorts of things. Food laws, laws related to jubilee, etc.

Justin Perdue. This is God using a system to set the nation apart, to set them apart. So they are given these laws. Go ahead.

Justin Perdue. The ceremonial law, in particular, teaches the people a lot about how they would be saved and reconciled to God. Because atonement needs to be made for sin. They need a mediator. Their sin needs to be atoned for and taken away from them.

There's all of that stuff.

Jon Moffitt So when you said typology or a type or a shadow, something that's pictured, typological, God gave the ceremonial system so it would show them what atonement looks like, what cleansing looks like, what being set apart looks like.

So it's important to understand the nature of that section of the law.

Justin Perdue. Yeah, and those laws served a purpose in their context. So you were ceremonially clean through the sacrifices of goats and cats, right? But we read in the New Testament that those things could never take away sins, and ultimately they were pointing to something other and greater, which is Christ for us, that Jesus came to die and to make atonement, to cleanse us in a way that those sacrifices never could.

Civil law, right. So civil law, how would we describe civil? Go ahead.

Civil law is all of the things related to how Israel as a nation state would govern.

Itself.

So there's a lot of stuff there regarding, you know, how laws pertaining to inheritance, particular codes in terms of how certain disputes are to be settled, how this issue is to be addressed, et cetera, that has to do with just civil society and its arrangement as the nation state of Israel.

Jon Moffitt If your animal killed somebody, how do you rectify that? Justin Perdue Sure, exactly. So that was related to that particular, and to get into this, those particular ceremonial and civil laws were related specifically to a unique nation that had a unique purpose, which we're going to get into in just a minute.

Right.

So now we're going to get a little bit nerdy. Hey, look, this is fun. But Justin, do we want to now explain the moral and positive?

Justin Perdue. So another prong of our response, and these are all kind of building on each other, and I trust that will become plain, is the distinction between moral law and positive law. Or let me be clear here, in this portion of the pod, when we say moral law, that should be understood to be synonymous with natural law.

So we're talking about the distinction between natural law and positive law, between moral law and positive law. And so what we mean by natural or moral law in this instance is this, again, it's summarizing the Ten Commandments, but it is this law written into creation, written on the human conscience that is known innately by all.

Jon Moffitt. That's the moral.

Justin Perdue. It's the light of nature that we can appeal to, whereas positive laws are different. They are posited by decree or by kingly fiat. They are not dealing with things that are inherently moral or immoral, but once the command, the decree is attached to them, they become so.

Examples, eating the fruit of a tree is not inherently sin.

Jon Moffitt. That's right.

Justin Perdue. But when God says, don't eat the fruit of that tree, it becomes sin.

Jon Moffitt. That's right.

Circumcision, not inherently moral or immoral to cut the foreskin off of your eight-day-old boy, but when God says, you must do it, that decree makes it an issue of faithfulness. It makes it an issue of morality.

And we can go on and give a number of other examples. I trust those two will suffice.

So positive law, it's a weird way of saying it. I remember the first time I heard it, I'm like, was there a negative law?

Justin Perdue. Correct.

So what it means, I think, is a good definition. By divine fiat, it's being decreed. You could even say decreed law. And that's important to understand that those two, because, all right, I'll just kind of jump into some of the theonomy argumentation, Justin, is that one of the biggest ones is that there is a struggle to believe that the moral law is sufficient to accomplish what it has been presented to do, which is to govern the heart of men and the minds of.

Men.

And this is why even Bonson's book says, by this standard, you know, the question is often asked in his book, by what standard do we tell someone they are right or not right before God. If we're not using the law, is what typically has been given.

And we would absolutely say that regarding the moral law.

Justin Perdue. That's right.

Justin Perdue. Again, known innately. People know to kill someone is wrong.

Right.

People know to steal something is wrong. Right. That's what's unique about the moral law or in the natural law, right? The light of nature, we can appeal to it. Whereas when it comes to the positive laws, nobody would know innately.

Nobody would know that they should obey it unless they're told to. That's again, remember, nobody would know that I don't eat the fruit of that tree unless I'm told that nobody would know that I need to circumcise my son unless I'm told that nobody would know that I'm supposed to let my pick.

I'm kind of collapsing some categories here. But in terms of positive laws, nobody would know that I'm supposed to rest my fields on the seventh year or nobody would know that this is how we're to handle an issue of a kinsman redeemer.

Like if I, if my brother is married, you know, under the old covenant, right? If my brother's married to his wife and they don't have children and he dies, then I, as his brother, am to marry her and have children for my brother's sake.

Nobody would know that, you know, unless you're told to do it. And I don't want to jump the gun here. We're going to get into this in a minute. But we would understand that the ceremonial law and the civil law of Israel are positive law, whereas the moral law is moral and it is natural law in that regard.

You can appeal to it as such, which has a ton of implication for what is binding on people today in a different era of redemptive history.

So for those of you that maybe have lost, you know, we've been going through something, let me bring this back. So you understand part of the debate here is it should nations be required to live under positive law and then be punished by their corresponding judgment that God puts upon.

It.

That's the debate that theonomy is about. So we wanted to take this time to appropriately represent them and also set up a situation and say that, OK, there's some collapsing and confusion of categories here and a really.

Important, really important, like flashing red light, important thing to say at this point. And it makes sense now to say it. Theonomists, in terms of the traditional argumentation, like Greg Bonson, for example, they see not a threefold division of the law, but a twofold division of the law.

That's right.

Rather than seeing moral, ceremonial and civil, they see only moral and ceremonial. And what they do, and what Bonson says, is that the judicial law of Moses is moral law just illustratively applied. So in that sense, the theonomic argument is that the judicial law is moral law.

And we would say, no, the moral law stands on its own, the ceremonial law we agree about, and the civil law of Moses was a particular set of commandments, particular laws given to a particular people in a particular place at a particular time for a particular purpose.

That's right.

They're positive law, not moral.

Right.

And the argumentation to be a theonomist at the moment and defend my brothers in this area, their argumentation is that what your guys are saying is that the whole law is not.

Good.

It's not holy. It's not right. We shouldn't love it. And the way, and they'll use passages old and new to defend the twofold division of the law and that the ceremonial side of it should be abrogated.

Right, right, right.

So we agree on, but the civil side of it, they would say, no, we need to look at that as good and right for all humans in all places, just like the blueprint for civil society. Right. So we're collapsing something that was positive that was given to a nation for a specific purpose and a reason.

And the argumentation is, well, the Bible references the law as good. And therefore, if it's good and right and holy and loved, all people in all times should love the law and obey the law in that particular way.

And we absolutely agree that the law of God is good and holy and upright. And in particular, we're going to say that about the moral law, but we would say the same thing about the ceremonial and civil law, rightly understood in the context of revelation, rightly understood via the biblical covenants, which is the arguments that we're trying to make today.

And I want to be very plain to say that the civil law of Moses or the judicial law of Moses is circumstantial, does not mean that it's arbitrary.

No.

It was intentional, purposeful, good, right, and perfect for Israel.

That's right.

And that has everything to do with the purposes of God in and through Israel, which is effectively where we're going to go in just a moment. I think a couple more comments of clarification while we're on this distinction between moral and positive law are good to make.

So we are going to appeal to not only the light of nature, the natural law, but we're also going to appeal to the covenant God made with Noah in a number of ways when it comes to the establishment of civil society and the governing of those societies.

So the Noahic covenant establishes proportionate retributive justice, right, that if you take the life of a human being, your life is required. So in that regard, it's not the law of Moses that establishes such a thing.

It's the covenant God made with Noah that applies to all human beings at all times.

And the reason that is, is that wasn't made to a specific nation.

Correct.

That was made to all humanity because Noah, basically, they restarted humanity.

Represents, effectively, represents all of us in that regard. And God makes a covenant with him, I'm going to sustain the creation, and there are going to be things that are going to be upheld that I am saying you should uphold.

The building of civil society, procreation, and proportionate retributive justice is good in this fallen world. Because if you take someone's life, then your life should be required of you. If you harm another person in terms of their life, their property, then the civil magistrate should step in, and in an act of proportionate retributive justice, act on behalf of the victim.

That's Noahic covenant principle. And so we would absolutely uphold that and affirm it in every way, but that is different than what the theonomists are appealing to.

That's correct.

So I trust we've said enough for now, and let's pivot to our kind of last prong. So our threefold response theologically to theonomy, one, threefold division of the law and what that means today, then the distinction between moral and positive law and what that means today.

Now we're going to talk about covenant theology, particularly from our perspective as 1689 Federalists, and how this really helps us see the unique purposes that God has in and through Israel under the old covenant, and then what that's going to mean, how God deals with them, how he gives them the law, the covenants that he makes with them, how that's going to affect what we carry over from the old covenant into the new covenant era.

So all that, hopefully, in the next 15 minutes. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e-book available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

So typically, at this point, we would stop, and this would be the end of the podcast, and we would carry over into Semper Reformanda. But once in a while, we like to stop and just let you guys in on what does SR look like, which tends to be a little bit more heady and lively.

So instead of pausing here, welcome to Semper Reformanda. We're just going to continue the conversation.

Justin Perdue. And basically, we're continuing the convo today.

Jon Moffitt. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, Justin, this next section, I think, is important. Now, if you're new to us, to the podcast, and the whole idea of covenant theology might be new to you, and 1689 federalism might be new to you, we have some material on this, a lot of it available.

I did something on 1689 federalism on YouTube. We've got multiple things we've done on covenant theology. So we're going to try our best to keep this at a high level so you can follow us.

Justin Perdue. And then we're going to link to an article that I wrote recently, kind of an essay for a journal that's going to have an overview of 1689 federalism as a part of it as well.

So there's a number of things you can read. Jon Moffitt. Yeah, that link's in the comment.

Right.

All right, so, Justin, now I feel like we have been flying by. We could have done probably hours on this, but this has been complicated. So here's where the table's at, and then I'm going to toss it to you to help us look at this from a covenantal federalist position.

The playing field we're dealing with is we've got a people of God that he has selected, and in drawing these people to himself, he gave them a specific promise. And in those promises he gave them, he posited to them laws, right?