Theonomy

theonomy faq
it's a really big topic.
i've tried to gather a few links together in a faq, i hope i can get some more help on it here.


rushdoony's chalcedon at: http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/index.shtml
north's free books at: http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/
a good intro at: http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html

http://www.pcanet.org/history/pca/2-555.html
http://www.trinityfoundation.org/reviews/journal.asp?ID=082a.html


this essay is making the rounds in the blogosphere
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content.html?oid=oid:59396

Their Will Be Done
Creating a theocracy in America

http://www.pressiechurch.org/Theol_1/Covenant-my_shift_to_covenant_theology_an.htm
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showpost.php?p=515404&postcount=44
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showpost.php?p=515921&postcount=47
http://www.livejournal.com/~rmwilliamsjr/115709.html
http://www.livejournal.com/community/christianleft/43795.html

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...te:www.theologyweb.com+theocracy+rmwilliamsjr
catches several threads on TWeb of interest to the discussion.


i'm going to need this for the sunday school class next summer. start to organize the issues here.


The PCA decided not to decide *grin*. Basically theonomy/reconstructionism/dominion can not be used one way or another at an ordination examination.
http://www.pcanet.org/history/pca/2-555.html

i like things that displease everyone-->
from the left:
http://www.presbyteriannews.org/volumes/v4/1/bvl.htm

from the right:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/reconstr1.htm

The reason it is an issue is that there are antecedents for the system both in Calvin and in Scripture. The big questions seem to be hermeneutical and not really clear nor settled in the reformed Church. which is exactly why it is a problem.

In my thinking, the issue is one of personalities and how certain people seem to gravitate to certainty and assurance that they are right and the rest of the world is wrong. I've known lots of theonomists, i became a Christian reading Rushdoony. I have yet to met a theonomist or read a book by them that was tentative, uncertain, examining lots of potential answers, in general looking like my philosophy texts rather than a law book. I think the ideas attract a particular type of personality, someone that can be very divisive in a church, and it is this personality psychology that is driving both the internal and external relationships with the thought.

but again, this is just my opinion from my experience.
from an intellectual viewpoint it appears to be an viable option but it is not a necessary complex of ideas to hold.

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this is a really big can of worms. remember once you open such a can you can never get it back into the same can, only a larger one....*grin*

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this is the only thread on CF that i am aware of on the reconstructionist issue. i collected a few links today for my blog that might be worthwhile following for those monitoring this conversation:

anti-theonomist essay, no date
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=862
via vector: http://www.livejournal.com/users/sophiaserpentia/537320.html


i recently ran across these anti-theonomic essays:
http://www.theocracywatch.org/rr_economics.htm#America's
http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050501-124025-3104r

and a few places i've responded to the theonomy issue:
http://www.livejournal.com/~rmwilliamsjr/115709.html
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/t23257
http://www.livejournal.com/community/christianleft/43795.html
http://theologyweb.com/forum/t22770

i really need to do a research project on theonomy but it will have to wait until sept. solicting links and other people's link lists for this project.

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started with:
America The Theocracy
A band of influential preachers is praying for the power to rule America. For those who disagree, they have a solution -- stoning.

BY JOHN F. SUGG
at: http://www.weeklyplanet.com/cover.html

now on the cover, you will have to look at the archives in a week for it.

which leads to my reply:
it is a good article, thanks for linking.
the problem is that he is wrong on several points.

first, theonomy, and more specifically Reformed theology is not fundamentalist, you might get away with describing it as generally Evangelical, but not fundamentalist. Go back to the big fights of the 1920's, you will find G.Machen at the center of the conservative-liberal division. and Machen was adament that he was not a fundamentalist.

see:http://www2.bju.edu/resources/library/catalogs/biblical_vpoint/machen.html

The idea that Presbyterian scholar J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) could be regarded as anything other than a Fundamentalist might seem preposterous at first consideration. Machen was the preeminent literary foe of Modernism in the 1920s with his popular work Christianity and Liberalism (1923). An heir to the Princeton theology of Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, his theological orthodoxy was as impeccable as his scholarship. When, through the Auburn Affirmation, elements within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (PCUSA) opposed the strict doctrinal test for ministers, Machen stood up firmly for the orthodox side. When reorganization threatened to shift control of Princeton Theological Seminary from conservatives to inclusivists, the professor resisted and, on losing that fight, founded Westminster Theological Seminary as an orthodox alternative. When Modernism began to make inroads in the mission boards of the PCUSA, Machen led a counterattack and founded an independent mission board as an instrument to put conservative missionaries on the field. Tried and defrocked by the PCUSA for his association with this board, Machen founded the doctrinally strict Orthodox Presbyterian Church. All of these elements seem to etch a portrait of the staunchest of Fundamentalists.

But there has been some dissent from this viewpoint. One of the earliest dissenters was Machen’s first biographer, Ned Stonehouse, who argued against identifying Machen with Fundamentalism, saying that

one must take account of the fact that, judged by various criteria adopted by friend and foe, he was not a fundamentalist at all. His standards of scholarship, his distaste for brief creeds, his rejection of chiliasm, the absence of pietism from his makeup, and in brief his sense of commitment to the historic Calvinism of the Westminster Confession of Faith disqualified him from being classed precisely as a fundamentalist. And he never spoke of himself as a fundamentalist; indeed he dislike the term. 1


second, presuppositionalism entered into theonomy via C.Vantil, who was influenced by A.Kuyper. Both long preceded theonomy. Presuppositonalism is not the province of theonomy having been learned by people as different from Machen, Vantil and Kuyper as AiG and the YEC.

theonomy, even in its home denominations of OPC or PCA is little more than a fringe movement, although one that attracts the best and brightest (and apparently the loudest), something directly against the article, which sees a theomonist behind every fundamentalist tree.

but it is a good article, i think theonomy is dangerous but i am concerned to get the facts right as well.

here is my quote pulls from the essay to discuss:


The movement, also dubbed "dominion theology" and "theonomy," has spread far beyond the right wing of Presbyterian and Reformed churches. It has penetrated, to some degree, most conservative denominations, including Southern Baptist.
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The Reconstruction movement has burrowed deep into the religious right. Its architects have gained strength via a broad alliance with other religious advocates who seek a radical restructuring of America. Reconstruction and dominion theology certainly set much of the agenda for conservative Christianity's political activism.
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Yet, these men, their theology and the secretive groups they have founded are like an invisible black hole whose gravity inexorably pulls the religious debate toward a theocracy with its closest parallel in Iran's government-by-mullahs.

Reconstructionists, who don't hesitate at casting the first stone, are behind-the-scenes strategists for much of the religious right. They and their fellow travelers established a beachhead in the White House (although the Bush administration is rapidly falling from grace because of its failure to unequivocally condemn Islam as a religion of the devil). Many in Congress pay tribute, and they're backing Reconstruction-inspired legislation.

The goal, one Reconstructionists feel is now within reach, is a transformation of America into a religious state whose mission is to spread the Gospel (as they interpret it). Violence isn't shunned. As Gary North, the current grand man of the movement, wrote, "In winning a nation to the Gospel, the sword as well as the pen must be used." Those who don't buy the plan could flee, or face unbending Mosaic "justice."

In the beginning, 1981, a radical Calvinist named Francis Schaeffer published a book, The Christian Manifesto, which depicts America sliding down the slope of humanistic secularism. Schaeffer called for action to restore biblical principles. And he mapped out a battle campaign to ignite the movement: Stop abortions.

Thus was born dominion theology, sometimes dubbed covenant or kingdom theology. From this theology comes the concept of theonomy, literally "God's law," which advocates define as application of the 600-plus Old Testament proscriptions to today's society. Theonomy would be the law of the land in the future that the dominionists want to construct.

"Schaeffer made abortion an issue for Christians more than anyone else, and he commanded Christian soldiers to start marching," said Ed Larson, a University of Georgia professor of history and religion. "Before The Christian Manifesto, most Protestants were indifferent to abortion because it was seen as a Catholic issue."
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The core faith of Reconstruction is Calvinism -- which during its early European history and in America's Puritan colony, had got a taste of governing. Two conservative denominations, the Presbyterian Church in America (both the Midway and Chalcedon churches in Cobb County are affiliates) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church are Reconstruction-occupied territory.

Those denominations deny that they foster extremists, and they say they abhor violence. It's a matter of interpretation. North, for example, has vented, "How long do we expect God to withhold His wrath, if by crushing the humanists who promote mass abortion ... He might spare the lives of literally millions of innocents?" From there, it's not a great distance to Paul Hill, executed last September for the 1994 murders of abortion clinic workers in Pensacola, Fla. Hill had been a minister for both ultra-Calvinist Presbyterian sects. (The Reconstruction movement shouldn't be confused with mainstream Calvinist groups, such as the Presbyterian Church USA.)
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At the heart of dominion beliefs -- whether Boys' gut-punching invective or Rushdoony's and North's complex theological contemplations -- are two biblical passages. Genesis 1:28 commands men to have "dominion" over "every living thing." Adam and Eve broke their covenant with God, and Satan seized dominion. The church -- the church sanctioned by the Reconstructionists, that is -- claims it has a reconstituted covenant with God, and the right to a new dominion in his name.

Then, in Matthew 28:19-20, the "Great Commission," Jesus commands his followers to proselytize to the world.

Put another way, for the dominion theologians, the motto is: We rule!

Starting from those verses, dominion theology preaches that government would be largely replaced by the church. Or, more precisely, three "governments" would emerge, according to Cobb County's DeMar: the family, the state and the church. All three would be subject to strict religious oversight.
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Don't dismiss the dominion theologians and their movement as fringe. Christian Reconstruction "has been the driving force behind the Christian right for some time," says Daniel Levitas, an Atlanta author who follows extremist groups, many of whom, such as the racist "Christian Identity" sects, have found succor in the words of Rushdoony and his disciples.The movement holds sway over a broad spectrum of conservative religion, and its power extends throughout local and federal governments. George Bush, for example, has called Reconstructionist Marvin Olasky "compassionate conservatism's leading thinker." Olasky, according to The New York Times, was one of Bush's "original advisers" on the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives -- but became a critic after the agency's first director sought to rein in taxpayer-paid-for proselytizing.

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Bulldog said:

Any thoughts on Theonomy?

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