Angus Harley

I visited with a friend. He had a pigsty. It wasn’t your traditional muddy kind of pigsty with a wooden fence or a brick wall. It had an electric fence and was quite sizeable within a field. It’s was grassy in parts, of course. If I were a pig, I’d have considered it prime real-estate.

Christian nationalism is grabbing the headlines. It’s a form of theonomy, or of trying to impose ‘divine law’ upon the nations of the world. When I think of theonomy, I imagine my friend’s pigsty with perhaps a golden trough for the pigs to eat out of, and a higher quality of scraps to eat. We might fling in a small pond for the pigs to frolic in. Theonomy, in the Harley Dictionary of Theology, is defined as, ‘A completely futile exercise in trying to control an evil world by making it wear some nice Christian bling.’ You know, the proverbial pig with the golden ring through its nose, or the sepulchre that looks beautifully clean on the outside, but is full of the stench of death on the inside.

There was a man, you might know him, called ‘Jesus’. He came into this evil world and was hated by it, murdered by it, and to this day is detested by it. He said to his disciples that the world will hate them, and will murder them, but he had taken them out of it, and was going to take them to a new, heavenly, world. They were to testify to this evil world of the heavenly world and its authority and life, and were to be ready to die at this world’s hands- just like him. One of Jesus’ best mates, John the apostle, even wrote a letter commanding (yikes!) Christians not to associate with this evil world.

Undaunted, theonomists are like fans of Dallas Cowboys or of Notre Dame: they actually think they’re going to win the big one. They’ve being saying so for decades. I mean, it is said Elvis is not dead. So…. Delusions are extraordinarily-powerful. For the world is in such thick blackness, so utterly rotten to the core, that sinners are saved FROM IT!!! Yet, in the delusional world of postmillennial theonomy, this evil world will be fully delivered from sin.

In trying to mitigate the enormous task theonomy faces, theonomists whittle matters down to primarily one thing: to get this whole Christian-nation thing going, you have to care of big, oppressive government first and foremost. Why is that? Because in history and life, and as recorded in the book of Revelation, big corporate government oppresses the people. I wonder, is that the same big corporate government, the same beast, that the same book of Revelation states will continue on until the very end, until it is destroyed by the appearance of Christ? How, then, does this giant evil beast, the devourer of Christians, suddenly transform into Puff the Magic Dragon? Is there more revelation to add to Revelation? I heard say some leaders of theonomy are prophetic-like.

Like the good son of Covenant Theology that it is, theonomy dutiful plays the ‘restoration’ card. The world will be restored to its former glory. Christ will make that old world shine again…and then some! I could have sworn that the writer of Hebrews wrote that the Lord will roll up the earth like an old garment and change it. But, what do I know? And didn’t Peter and John refer to a new heaven and a new earth? Maybe not. And even if they did, they must have meant the ‘restored’ type of new. Salvation must logically mean the restoration of the old man to be shinier and more holy, right? (We’ve got to follow our system through consistently!) “If any man be in Christ- restored old creation!” Jesus is surely a cloned copy of Adam, restoring Adam himself, but with more spiritual apps and added-on holy bits.

Patron-saint Aquinas is well-proud of his sons, the theonomists, but only a quarter as proud with his somewhat estranged relatives in Covenant Theology. The law is what it is all about. Moses Law is divided into three parts. There is a moral law inserted into Genesis 1-2, and it is imprinted as law in the hearts of all men. It is but a mere trifle- a nothing burger- that Genesis never mentions this moral law in man. Of course, in continuing the Roman Catholic tradition, one must, of course, ignore the actual textual reference to the presence of the divine image as the moral ‘difference maker’, and instead concentrate upon the esoterical things of the ‘white spaces’. Aquinas said so! Nor be troubled, we are told, that Romans 2:15 employs classic New Covenant language, as in Jeremiah 31. And since you have come this far in following Aquinas, you might as well go the whole way; for, it does not really concern us that whenever any form of an internal law is mentioned in the OT, it is exclusively related to…well…believers. As I said, a mere trifle, a nothing burger. What counts is “exhaustively” applying the Mosaic Law, unearthing all the hidden moral and spiritual laws that lie underneath each and every command of Moses, to carry forward all those wonderful moral essences- or what is pompously called ‘general equity’- into life in general. This is the moral law of creation, given to man, in his heart, after all. The Ten Commandments were the epitome of this creational moral law.

Now, now, calm down, theonomists do jam in the New Covenant and the Gospel of Jesus. Don’t forget, that to the follower of Aquinas, that the Gospel of the New Covenant presents to us…you’ve got it…internal law. Voila! The cycle of infinity is completed, the circle closed, the restoration consummated. Jesus restores dutiful obedience to the moral law through his wonderful regenerative Gospel of the restoration of the moral law.

Won’t it all be so incredible? Imagine: New York ruled by the divine law. Crazy, right? Everybody living by law- gospel-law, let’s not forget! There will be a rule for every step in life, every stage, every sphere, every little nuance. Let’s not complicate matters which are simple: the law brings civil control, judicial structure, heavenly piety, and, the peak of the mountain, worship! Just ask the Pharisees. Alas, if only Jesus had consulted them, and not rather rudely kicked them around like a hacky-sack!

I know: you baptists will be flappin’: ‘Hey, it’s been tried. Remember Geneva and the killing baptists!’ Look, to get this puppy going, don’t sweat the intricacies and details. We need to get this juggernaut on the road, and we can get into these other matters later, when in a position of strength. We will even allow for some debate and disagree- but later! For the moment, let’s just sweep aside all those things of the past, all major theological issues, and everything to do with killing homosexuals and the like. Big picture, lads, big picture!

Doug Wilson, a founding father of modern theonomy, has shown us the way. You see, you don’t need to worry about the finer details of the Gospel, of justification by faith; just present the general ‘Gospel’ as the transformative power that allows us to recover the moral law. After all, Tucker Carlson, a Episcopalian who has no time for the Reformation teaching of justification by faith, and is not a true Christian, will make the best kind of ally in getting that giant moral-law ‘gospel’ juggernaut moving that will restore the glory of ‘Christian America’. I’ve seen this method for decades in Scotland. You see, they would invite the Prime Minister to speak in their General Assembly, to address them about life in the country. And it must have worked, since the Church of Scotland is so radically political now that the Gospel is a curse word. Job well done!

Now, if you’re a historian, like me, you will be a tad bothered about the claim of theonomists that certain nations have to get back their ‘Christian’ heritage. Our Founding Fathers were Christian, we are told. Didn’t I just say that theonomists don’t really care for justification by faith? For if they did, they would not be tacking the good name of ‘Christian’ onto a group of fathers, who were, for the most part, deists, liberal Christians, and other alien species of a false gospel. There were some who were true Evangelicals. That’s all that counts- by dint of their true Christian nature, the other, weaker, ‘Christians’ were sanctified by the stronger. Isn’t that the theonomists’ process? It must just be sheer coincidence that this follows exactly the same Covenant Theology, Presbyterian, method, which says godly parents sanctify ungodly children in the covenant. But it has already been established that I know nothing. It must be my NCT, baptist, roots that are the problem, for I have always thought of the assemblies (‘churches’) as being heavenly entities, not earthly, representing a heavenly king, not an earthly lord, and preaching a heavenly Gospel, not an earthly hybrid of gospel-law. Christian are to build ‘spiritually’ in this world, in order to leave it, and to enter into the next world, to prepare for the new heaven and the new earth. But there I go again with my textual theology. In this era of safe spaces, keep, dear theonomist, to your Aquinas white-spaces.

‘Sour grapes! Miserable wretches! Unbelievers!’, theonomists will exclaim. ‘Just look at all the evidence in history of the success of the gospel-law! Don’t you want America to be great again? Aren’t you a spiritual MAGA guy?’ I do want America to flourish, and every nation in the world, too. But as a Christian, my true concern is that the Gospel is allowed to go forth in every nation; for all of these nations are in darkness. I measure ‘politics’ by the simple rule of which party permits: the freedom to preach the Gospel, assemblies to come together to worship, and, Christians to be left to live and witness as followers of Christ. The other, earthly, matters, that are important to life here (I did say ‘important’) are things I can sweat after the foundation of freedom to be a Christian is guaranteed. Having said this, I know that the world hates God, his Christ, and his people, and it could be that tomorrow, nay, today, unmitigated persecution takes us over. So, I will make Christian hay whilst the political sun shines; but I will, by the grace of God alone, endure the devouring of the beast when it comes.