I take God’s law in the Old Testament and I believe that the civil magistrate ought to use that law to inform his role as God’s servant.
Does this make me a theonomist? To many the answer is “yes, of course.” And many around me will say that they are theonomists because they believe something similar. This includes the rather strange animal, the theonomic baptist. I do not object to that being a thing. I just find it a strange thing. But the point here is not theonomic baptists per se, but how theonomy has come to mean something like “I want to take the Old Testament Law of God seriously for our civil institutions.”
A prime example (back to the Presbyterian world) is my fellow presbyter, Douglas Wilson in this recent blogpost where he argues that theonomy is one of the things that makes his work and the work of those connected to him attractive. His point is correct. His theonomy is attractive. I’m just not sure you can call it Theonomy.
Perhaps I helplessly push against the winds of history on this point. Words come to mean very different things than the word-coiner’s intentions. This transformation of the word theonomy has been going on for a long time. Perhaps, I am a theonomist.
Perhaps I am too precise about the joists and beams in my intellectual architecture. In my understanding, RJ Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen see a theonomist as one who holds that the civil law is to be directly applied to the civil magistrate’s role today. I do not agree. I believe in what the WCF calls a “general equity.” That has to be defined, but it is not theonomy. Therefore, the word is historically conditioned by a particular movement in time. I like my theology done decently and in good order, just like my worship, so I prefer to respect that historical moment. Therefore, I am not a theonomist.
For now I prefer to distance myself from the word theonomy, though I happily admire those who might not agree. Without a doubt I also admire Rushdoony and Bahnsen. They brought an important light on a forgotten topic. They are the reason I am much more sanguine about the benefits of Deuteronomy for the civil magistrate than the early reformed may have been. Let the civil magistrate have a Bible. Let him use his Bible to define his task. However, Rushdoony and Bahnsen are not careful in seeing what changed in the light of Jesus Christ. Further, they defined their project in a way that excludes certain ways of approaching this question. Therefore, I am not a theonomist.