In an article meant to dissuade Christians from seeing Theonomy as a cure from what ails a more secular America, Andrew Walker (click here for a bio), from The Gospel Coalition, presents a similar cure that Theonomy does in a recent article on the Gospel Coalition website (click here).
Why would Christians consider Theonomy today? It is because of the spiritual state of the nation, according to Walker. The nation is becoming more secular and is rejecting more and more of God's laws. Some see this increasing secularization as a culture war that Christians are losing. So to bring the nation back to God, Walker is afraid that Christians would look to Theonomy to solve the problem.
What is Theonomy? It is a Christian perspective on the Church-state relationship where the laws of a nation become the laws of God as expressed in the civil laws from the five Books of Moses. Theonomy would then stop perils that the further secularization of America would bring.
Walker provides some background information on Theonomy including the definition, how it is different from Christian Reconstructionism, its tendency to adopt Postmillenialism, and key figures in the Theonomy movement. Walker also provides reasons why Theonomy should not be even tried by Christians in response to America's spiritual decline.
Why should Christians reject Theonomy? The first reason Walker gives is that Theonomy misrepresents what the Scriptures are saying to us today. It misrepresents the Scriptures because of its eschatology, which is the study of the end times. Theonomy teaches an eschatology of 'triumph' causing it to make errors in its analysis of the relationship between the Church and the state. Because of the emphasis on triumph, the state and Church are merged enough so that sin is contained by the religious civil laws. Walker notes that Theonomy fails to recognize the limited time period for those civil laws. For those laws were only in force for the nation of Israel while it enjoyed its unique position of being God's covenant people. That time period has ended.
Theonomy's error is the belief that those civil laws from Moses were also meant to be a model for all other nations to follow. It also wrongly measures the Church's faithfulness by a given society's following of those civil laws. And while Walker acknowledges Theonomy's criticisms of the rejection of God's standards by society, its solution is one that tries too hard in responding to that rejection.
Walker is right in noting that it is unrealistic for any society to reach Theonomy's standards. It is basically to dream the impossible dream. So in contrast to the standards used by Theonomy, Walker suggests that we use the Noahic covenant as a better model of thought in terms of what to expect from the nations. That model of thought is based on what reason and nature can tell us, according to Walker.
Walker then describes the dilemma that he believes the modern Christian faces. On the one hand, no state can long survive when it flaunts God's laws. On the other hand, the New Testament does not provide detailed guidance on how the state should exist.
The substitute for Theonomy that Walker suggests is to use natural law as a guide for the laws of a nation. Such tells us that things like 'murder' and 'bestiality' should not be allowed.
Walker adds to the end of the article what we should be aiming at. We should be trying to disciple nations to 'glorify Christ' and to obey God in 'every domain.' A just government, according to Walker, is a result of nations following natural law. Thus, Walker's article is not there to argue about the goals of Theonomy as much as to say it is the wrong method to use in achieving any Christian notion of justice and what a nation should be.
We should note that in the middle of his article, Walker stresses the need for freedom of religion, but his notion is a limited freedom at best. And it is at this point we should note that Walker shows how many religiously conservative Christians do not understand what Democracy is about. Such a statement would probably surprise and confuse many such Christians. And that might be because they, and here I am specifically referring to American Christians, have reduced Democracy to the set of political processes by which we choose our representatives. Ironically, these same Christians would not view nations like Iran or Venezuela as being democracies even though they too have elections.
We should note that Democracy can also be a state of being measured by how the state and society is shared by the different groups within it. And this is where Walker's replacement for Theonomy fails. For in replacing natural law for Theonomy, we are still talking about having a Christian view of natural law and thus Christianity having some degree of supremacy in society and the culture. That means that though we wouldn't dominate society and culture like we would under Theonomy, the state would belong to us Christians more than it would belong to some others if we succeeded. And if we did succeed, then despite our democratic processes, we would not be a democracy. This is what many American conservative Christians don't understand about Democracy.
Now Walker acknowledges that we might not be able to have any place of supremacy over society and culture with natural law. He states that we must then be satisfied with just being able to speak prophetically to our nation. So where is the harm with following his suggestion? The harm is found in that by substituting natural law for Theonomy, we Christians are still trying to gain a privileged place in society. That is because in doing so, we would be promoting our own view of natural law and thus would be seeking the marginalization of those who disagree, and live that disagreement.
There is another problem with using natural law to control society, there is no uniform view of what natural law says. To give an example here, Christians would, and have already, used natural law arguments block the legalization of same-sex marriage without which there can be no full equality for the LGBT community in society. But, again, that is a Christian view of natural law. We find approximately 1,500 species of animals in which homosexuality is practiced and with beneficial effects for some of them. So if we look to nature to understand natural law, we see an acceptance of homosexuality. But the Christian view of natural law, which I believe is correct, would prohibit homosexuality in society, which I disagree with, if it could. So whose version of natural law should be used to act as a guideline for our nation's laws?
In the beginning of the article, Walker alludes to the current culture war that Christianity is losing. Most of the time, the defeat of Christianity in this culture war was marked by the legalization of same-sex marriage facilitated by the Obergefell decision. But there is only a culture war when one side decides that it wants to conquer the other side. So the question for Christians is this: Where does the New Testament tell us to fight such a war? The answer is in the book of Utopia--with the understanding that Utopia is defined as an imaginary place.
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