These three terms are among the most maligned, slandered, and libeled in recent history. Google any of these terms and you will find ten-or-more-to-one blogs against the Biblical thought and historic Christian purpose these terms represent.
The really sad thing is that the antis are just as likely to be written by ostensibly Biblical Christians as non-Christians. We expect rage from materialists and pagans and all God haters. Jesus told us to expect such (e.g., Matthew 10:17). Yet we receive misrepresentation, dismissal, invective, and worse from Christians over a Biblical-historical argument for applied-faith Christian living in every area of life. Sad.
Let’s set the record straight. Theonomy means governed by God’s Law. Who doesn’t want to be governed by God’s determined Way for man? [1] The Bible never sets God’s Law against his grace. The apostle Paul does explain in the Epistle to the Romans that justifying oneself by law opposes both grace and faith. Yet Paul also claims the Law is spiritual (of the Holy Spirit), and that the carnal (hardened sinner) cannot subject himself to God’s Law, precisely because the Law is spiritual. The opposite of Law is not grace, but sin. Thus, the godly must be subject to the Law. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My [eternal] commandments [My Law]” (John 14:15). Christ will send “another Helper” to make it so. The saved man receives the grace of God’s Law in his heart (Hebrews 8:10). King David claims the Law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul (Psalm 19:7ff.). Isaiah tells the man of God to go to the Law, and if anyone does not speak according to it, there is no light in him (Isaiah 8:20).
Some may complain that—well, those latter are Old Testament Scriptures. Yet the New Testament claims that God never changes (James 1:17), and that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)! All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for His holy things (Second Timothy 3:16–17).
We must conclude with Scripture that God’s Law is good. It is His eternal standard by which God’s converted people see their need for grace and receive grace to live it and be blessed by it. Why do some consider this as evil? Woe to the one who calls evil good, and good evil (Isaiah 5:20).
The term dominion suggests a plausible excuse for reviling theonomy. God commanded it. It is Law. Granted, men naturally seek dominion over their fellow men. This is not Biblical dominion! God liberated Israel from Egypt over the injustice of its slavery—men taking dominion over other men. The Biblical theology of dominion, rather, commands man to take dominion over the earth through procreation and economic activity (Genesis 1:26). Never rescinded, God repeats the creation command to take dominion after the Fall and Flood as part of His blessing to Noah (and mankind in turn, Genesis 9:7). King David refers to dominion in Psalm 8:6. To take dominion over the earth is to take economic activity and stewardship over it, which includes legal protection of private property. Stewardship of anything requires authority over it. The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1)! Yet, God gave man to have dominion over His works in the earth (Psalm 8:6). Therefore, you shall not steal (Exodus 20:15).
Dominion is not destruction. Dominion is not economic monopoly or coercion—essentially theft. You shall not steal. Dominion is not wanton polluting, as pollution of others’ land, water, and air is also a form of theft, destroying resources from the common supply. While pollution is an unpleasant reality in a fallen world—no economic activity can be perfectly efficient—loving one’s neighbor requires taking all economically sensible effort to minimize pollution.
Then, what is dominion? Christian dominion bears fruit as blessing to humanity. A little-realized element of Christian dominion is that successful economic activity blesses everyone, and not only materially. Of course, free and just economic systems benefit all, as each one produces something more than he consumes and shares it with his neighbor for mutual blessing. America—including its poor—has received more material blessing from its Christian, relatively free market than any other people.
Furthermore, when God curses agricultural economy in the Fall (Genesis 3:17), He simultaneously includes great evangelical blessings. To harvest a crop or receive the fruit of any economic investment requires faith. Exercising dominion teaches the practice of faith. Likewise, for men mutually to receive the material blessings of a blessed economy, they must learn to get along with each other—to love one’s neighbor. A godly economy helps man practice Christian faith. Sinful wrong and injustice will always require further correction, yet how can we condemn godly Biblical Christian dominion?
Ah, it must have something to do with Christian Reconstruction. God’s Law or dominion may not be the problem but how Reconstructionists treat those things must be. Everyone knows that Christian Reconstructionists design to overthrow legitimate governments in favor of Islamic-style theocracies, murdering unbelievers and enslaving everyone. This is another complete misrepresentation. Reconstructionists outright reject revolution and any kind of political authoritarianism. Yes, at one time, God granted kings to a debased and immature people who rejected Him as their King (First Samuel 9:17). This came, as with laws of divorce, because of the hardness of their hearts. Yet it was not always so. Anyone with any intellectual honesty, having made any depth of study into the teachings of the founders of this view—those of R. J. Rushdoony and the Chalcedon Foundation—know civil authoritarianism is nowhere on the radar.
Admittedly, Christians are sinners, and we all frequently miss the mark. Some Reconstruction advocates have used strident language to make a dent in the existing ethos of Evangelical selfishness—get saved, live for myself. Yet, nothing in the mature literature in the mainstream of Christian Reconstruction teaches anything like authoritarianism. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Rather, mainstream Reconstructionists define Christian Reconstruction as the spiritual (by the Holy Spirit) and practical result of taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ in every area of life (Second Corinthians 10:5), and whether therefore we eat or drink or whatever we do, we “do all to the glory of God” (First Corinthians 10:31).
Imagine if every Christian learned everything he does in life from a Biblical foundation by faith—how different the world would be. What if individuals, homes, businesses, schools, every art and every science self-consciously learned the ability to think and act according to God’s Word? What if corporations properly balanced economic mission with honoring the individual contribution of every employee? What if the wealthy became Biblically generous? (How many know the Biblical Law requires a tithe for the poor every three years (Deuteronomy 14:28 and 26:12)? What if American Christians did not abandon the public sphere to pagans and authoritarians, but continued as stewards of law, justice, and individual liberty? What if contemporary Christians relearned the Biblical principles and practice of restrained local self-government, and the Biblical republican principles of covenantal association (constitutionalism), relational representation, and federalism (to handle the problems of scale)? What if we looked once again to the U.S. Constitution as the first and premier, national example of a godly governing covenant inspired by the Word of God? Admittedly, these comments are teasers to the godly and curious. [2]
If theonomy means being governed by God rather than sinful men, if dominion means godly investment and productivity by faith, with generosity, and if Christian Reconstruction means learning to do all things in ways that specifically and self-consciously glorify God with evangelical, material, and social blessings following, including godly justice—if given these things—how can Christian brothers condemn them? When Jesus first came, and from that time, He called upon Israel—all God’s people—to repent, for the kingdom of heaven was at hand. The kingdom coming on earth is God’s down payment on glorious eternal life! Men husband the territory God gives them, they plant and cultivate by faith, and God brings the increase. This is a gentle, benign, Biblical system of thought among a loving people of God. Vengeance is God’s (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19; and Hebrews 10:30–31). May we withhold premature judgment (First Corinthians 4:5).
May it be so and may we Christians not misrepresent our brothers.
Notes:
- I inclusively use the Biblical and historical generic term man to refer to humanity, just as God does in Genesis 1:26–27.
- Bobbie Ames’ NPI book Land That I Love is brilliant on this subject, particularly exposing the historic problem, and the solution in principle. My own Nordskog Publishing book Thy Will Be Done: When All Nations Call God Blessed documents the Biblical concepts with a detailed blueprint for recovery. Taken seriously, these books promise inspiration and plan, a prospective answer in God’s people to Christ’s prayer, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
To learn more of the historic Christian view of life, government, and education, see the Nordskog Publishing title by Ron Kirk Thy Will Be Done: When All Nations Call God Blessed.
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