Is Theonomy Insufficient?
In a recent article (probably the most recent one, but I’ve jumbled the order before), I made some acerbic remarks on Stephen Wolfe’s assertions in Biblical sufficiency in A Study Report on Reformed Christian Politics (though in fairness he’s just the most famous of the several authors). I do not withdraw those comments, but they subject deserves more elaboration, more detail and nuance, than I could afford it in a single paragraph.
“The Mosaic judicial law,” Wolfe asserts, “was never intended to serve as a manual for all civil government, and thus it is insufficient for modern nations. Not only was the Mosaic law particular to ancient Israel, but the judicial laws also do not cover important areas of governance (e.g. water law). Thus, the civil magistrate must look to natural law and reason, along with the experience of history, to navigate such things” (126).
Now, two clarifications are necessary before proceeding to refute.
First, neither I nor any worthwhile theonomist (from Bahnsen to Rushdoony and beyond) will deny that history and reason are proper implements of governmental analysis. Nor would we deny the role of observation in finding facts. Civil governors use observation and logic, by God’s grace, to figure out what the facts are and what their options are. If Wolfe is saying God’s law is insufficient to know what the specs on various military systems are, he’s fighting a specter of his own imagination.
Theonomists hold that Scripture is sufficient authority for the moral aspects of government (the more important part, honestly), the moral principles applied to the technical (amoral) facts. Moreover, we recognize that history, both theological and political, is of immense value in understanding the circumstance and understanding his law; we are quite willing to stand on the shoulders of giants, from James Madison to John Calvin to Alfred the Great to Augustine of Hippo, and to learn from the incompetent, the vicious, and the unfortunate.
Second, theonomists (to my knowledge) do not hold that the Mosaic judicial code is or ever has been proffered as our only and sufficient civil code. Even at time of giving, the rest of the Pentateuch operated alongside it, expanding it; now, we have the entirety of Scripture to build our political theology from. We use John and Romans and Nehemiah and Genesis; we don’t avoid using Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
With these cleared away, does theonomy have an insufficient legal code?
The testimony of history is our least effective witness by far, but it’s worth bringing to the stand nonetheless. History testifies that theonomists have found in Scripture sufficient to grapple with and answer all moral questions in government (fallibly, like all interpretation, especially of ‘natural law’ (Prov. 3:5)). Works like North’s God and Government testify to as much, and while I’ve not finished it, Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law Volume Three deals with a wide swathe of political issues from a theonomic perspective. Moreover, we can look at the wide reach of Scriptural application perpetrated through history by Christians, Reformed and otherwise (many of which Wolfe quotes), to assure ourselves that Scripture is indeed relevant to all moral matters of government. I’ve read Rutherford and Junius and Althusius, and they provide at least inductive proof of my point.
The clincher is the witness the other article referenced: Scripture itself. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is traditionally the knock-out verse in arguing with Roman Catholics about tradition, but we shouldn’t forget about it outside that debate. Government’s moral matters are just as much “good works” for which Scripture is suited to make us “complete” as any private deeds. Scripture itself says it is sufficient guide to civil government’s morality. Arguing otherwise is perpetrating exactly the error Roman Catholic apologists have to perpetrate in arguing for the Papacy and Roman ‘tradition,’ which is why I said Wolfe was nudging towards the Tiber.
Wolfe makes, further, the explicit claim that the Mosaic code is insufficient to cover “water law.” I am frankly baffled by this assertion. Of course the Mosaic code is not sufficient to the technical aspects of how polities deal with the use of water resources (or how ships operate, if we turn to maritime law) and never directly addresses the matter to my knowledge. But the principles of honesty, of theft and good commerce, of governmental jurisdiction, of accountability, of responsibility towards neighbor, of judicial proceedings, these principles can be applied to the matter, producing a correct answer if correctly applied (a difficult task, yes, but by God’s grace (Dan. 9:13)). Theonomy thus can deal with water law unflinchingly- using a procedure which seems to me to be that of general equity, stripped of its excuses to ‘re-shape’ the law al a Saul (1 Sam. 15:23).
But that’s for next time….
