Those Opposing Theonomy Should Get the Death Penalty

I won't take the time to do a full rebuttal to the pro-theonomy article online at http://www.forerunner.com/theofaq.html. But to begin with I would like to point out that theonomy reconstructionism in general has rejected the traditional Reformed position that the civil laws of the theocracy of ancient Israel passed away with that nation. Practically all the Reformed confessions of faith and catechisms hold this position and so does John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion and other writings. Theonomists only want to rule out the dietary laws and ceremonial laws of the Old Covenant and whatever else was specifically fulfilled in the New Covenant through Jesus Christ.

Theonomists often will say that they only want the civil/governmental law to be enforced and that they are not talking about justification by grace alone through faith alone. But it becomes increasingly obvious that they are inferring justification/sanctification issues based on their interpretation of the moral law of the Old Covenant/Old Testament as the same as the civil laws of ancient Israel. Anyone who disagrees with them is automatically an "antinomian," which they try to say comes solely from dispensationalism and the John Darby/Scofield Bible tradition. However, this is misleading and absolutely wrong. Most Reformed believers are not antinomian nor are most Arminians and Wesleyan Holiness folks, to name but a few. Dispensationalism does not have the far reaching effects on evangelical Christianity that theonomists/reconstructionists imagine. The article states that:

• A Christian is not under the Law as a means of obtaining salvation; nor are we under the curse of the Law since we were justified by faith. Yet when modern evangelicals claim, "I'm not under the Law," what they often mean is that they are not in favor of it or they are not keeping it. Such a view is called: antinomianism (anti-Law) -- a heresy.
• http://www.forerunner.com/theofaq.html

What we have here is a conflation of two different issues under one idea. For the theonomist anyone who happens to disagree with his definition of "moral law" as the same as the civil laws of the theocratic ancient nation of Israel is automatically an antinomian and a heretic and presumably under the theonomic form of civil government, worthy of the death penalty since that was the penalty exercised under the Old Covenant and in some Puritan communities like Geneva and those in the New World.

Don't take it lightly. If you're opposed to theonomy, theonomists would like to have the death penalty imposed against you according to future civil laws that would be voted in by a society dominated by theonomists. Presumably every denomination would now become reformed at least on the idea of the covenants and theonomic in their views on the moral law being equal with the civil laws imposed in the theocracy of Israel in the Old Testament. If this thought doesn't scare you, nothing will.

More on theonomy in an upcoming post. Please stay tuned.