In other places, the author has presented a comprehensive, yet relatively concise defense of the Bible as the source and standard of law for the modern state. He has not intended to deal with the practical application of theonomy to the state, merely with the defense of the doctrine itself. His position on this matter is in substantial agreement with men like Bahnsen, Rushdoony, and North, as well as with men like William O. Einwechter, Robert E. Fugate, and Joe Morecraft.
The author’s political views are more in line with political conservatism than libertarianism, which might be surprising due to the fact that libertarianism has held a strong attraction for certain theonomists, who argue that the practical application of theonomy will result in a more libertarian than conservative state. It is true, broadly speaking that the political views of libertarians on small, limited government, fiscal conservatism, and often on personal liberty, are more in line with Scripture, (not to mention the U.S. Constitution), than the so-called conservatism of men like George W. Bush, or Dick or Liz Cheney, not to mention Mitch McConnell, or Mitt Romney (all better described as big government republicans).
But while libertarianism finds junction with a biblical view of the state on many issues, ultimately, the libertarian concept of the non-aggression principle, and the social liberalism that results from it is antithetical to the biblical view of the state and its functions. In any case, libertarianism departs from the thesis of this book in that it sees the source of law in nature and natural law, rather than in Scripture, just like much of conservatism today.[1]
Unfortunately, some theonomists have drank too deeply from the sweetly smelling libertarian well, and their political orthopraxy, or their theory of theonomic application has been thus poisoned. This has led them to present a political orthopraxy of theonomy not only more narrowly than what this author believes is Scripturally warranted, but to do so in ways that if implemented, would be politically unjust, and, ironically, inconsistent with the doctrine of theonomy as here systematically presented. Just a few examples will suffice to illustrate this point.
Luke Saint, author of The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy has written:
Notice that the crime is sodomy, not embracing a lifestyle or orientation. A man may, in a Theocracy, celebrate his homosexuality without punishment from the state. There is no penalty for him…Though this is clearly immoral, it is not illegal. In a Theocracy, this act of celebration would be foolish, both morally and judicially, since it will draw attention to the fact that those who practice homosexuality are committing a capital crime.[2]
All I can ask, is, has Luke Saint ever been to a sodomite pride parade? It is not merely a bunch of people peacefully holding signs and marching up a street. Public indecency at such events abounds, and all sorts of lewd behavior proliferate. To think that a society should tolerate such egregious and flagrant behavior, being thrust into their faces, an attempt to give moral societies, and ultimately God himself, the middle finger, is utterly absurd.
Of course, this author is very much aware that pride parades, and sodomite celebrations are not defined in God’s word as criminal acts with an attached penal sanction. But we should not conclude from this that sodomite pride parades and celebrations should not therefore be legal. But this author would counter that to conclude from this that pride parades, as well as sodomite protests, and be legal in a Christian society, badly misunderstands the application of theonomy itself, because it looks to proof-texting, rather than to a whole Bible approach.
Steve Halbrook records:
Apparently this is not an isolated sodomite tactic. Sears and Osten chronicle several occasions of sodomites persecuting Christians. One instance was in 1993 at San Francisco’s Hamiltion Square Baptist Church. Because a popular pro-family advocate came to speak, “Radical homosexual activists stormed the church doors, pounding on them, and screaming, ‘We want your children! Give us your children!”’ Although the activists vandalized the church, the police said it was unable to “stop the rampaging homosexual activists.” As they told the senior pastor, “You have to understand, this is San Francisco.”’ In November of 2008, in San Francisco’s Castro District a group of Christians singing and minding their own business were assaulted by hundreds of angry sodomite activists. It took a squad of police in riot gear to escort the Christians safely from the mob, which threatened to kill the Christians…Another one of the numerous incidents involved “a radical queer convergence…where activists stormed a church in the middle of services…Among other things, the activists hollered at the church members, hurled fliers, flaunted sodomite to kisses, and blasphemously called Jesus a homosexual. Militant sodomites are increasingly subverting the social order, with intimidation and violence…militant sodomites are no longer a harmless fringe group, but a group take seriously…[3]
Halbrook also records:
And “playing fair” with sodomites in civil matters, does not foster reciprocation. …sodomites do not want a free society for all men. Being self-destructive, they seek society’s destruction. Sodomites are self-destructive because they hate God. (While all non-Christians hate God, sodomites are among the most extreme in their outward rebellion against God.) Since man is made in God’s image, hating God is a hatred of one’s humanity. Therefore, sodomites seek society’s destruction because their self-dehumanization renders them inhumane.[4]
The rationale therefore, for suppressing sodomite rallies, marches, and celebrations, is that is an application of the right of biblical civil magistrates to put down unlawful rebellion against the state, because sodomites seek the destruction of the Christian state and aggressively demand social and legal domination. The legalization of sodomy would be a direct violation of biblical civil law, and the Bible that is the standard for governance of the state. To protest for the legalization of this practice is thus akin to publicly blaspheming God. It is a direct and high-handed attack on the moral and legal foundations of the state and society, like public blasphemy, and for this reason must not be tolerated.
Civil magistrates may not merely put down unlawful rebellion when a crowd of rebels gathers arms and marches to overthrow the government. It is entirely lawful for the state to put down such a movement even while it is preparing to undertake this aim, its clear revolutionary goals being matters of public record.
If the state can suppress communist rebellions, then it must logically follow that it can suppress communist literature, tracts, gatherings, parties, networks, etc., that all have their aim the gathering of followers, and organizing them into a force capable of overthrowing the lawful state, can likewise be suppressed. It would be madness to assume that an armed rebellion can be put down only when its forces are on the military march, but not when they are preparing to begin their march. Does it follow that an unarmed rebellion can be treated any differently? Psychological warfare is still warfare. Viewed this way, we do not need a biblical case law to tell us that sodomite marches and rallies must be criminalized. The government’s right to put down unlawful rebellion, as established in Romans 13, and other passages, is enough.
Luke Saint also applies the penalty for sodomy as narrowly as possible, limiting it only to male sodomites.
He writes:
Women cannot be observed lying with another female “as with a man.” They simply do not have the appropriate anatomy to execute the abuse. Thus, they cannot be prosecuted.”[5]
He goes on to reason that women were prosecuted, it would mean that masturbation would be regarded as a capital crime, and points out nowhere in Scripture is this indicated to be the case. It is technically true that lesbians cannot complete the sex act and lack the anatomic equipment to do so. This is why there is no following verse that prescribes the death penalty for lesbians when they “lie with another female as with a man.” Because they cannot do so.
But to reason from this that lesbian unconsummated sex should be legal completely misunderstands the reason the prohibition against sodomy is a moral law, and a not a ceremonial one. Lesbianism threatens the biblical family, biblical social order, and biblical state, just as much as male sodomy. It carries with it all of the adverse social effects as male sodomy and is just as dishonoring to God. If protection of society is a key reason for legal suppression of sodomy, this will not be served by merely prosecuting male sodomites.[6]
Furthermore, to conclude from the lack of a verse capitally penalizing female sodomy that it should be legal, ignores the nature of Old Testament case laws themselves. As I wrote earlier:
Therefore, we can view the judicial laws given to Israel as merely a subcategory of the Moral law; they are case law applications of the moral law to specific circumstances. (“If or when this happens, this is what you shall do.”) For example, the case law command regarding a goring ox could be applied just as easily to a kicking mule. The point is that these case laws provided principles of moral law application to be applied to related cases. They flesh out the meaning of the Decalogue and illustrate how the Decalogue can be applied to everyday life. In this vein, too, but applied to all nations, and not merely the society of ancient Israel, is the book of Proverbs – a book of international wisdom literature.
As case laws, they were meant to be applied to similar and related cases by Israelite judges. And modern judges have the duty to apply their general equity to similar cases today. But what pray tell, is the most similar circumstance to male sodomite acts? Female sodomite acts of course. To narrowly reason that only male sodomite acts can be punished is to overturn the whole notion of application of biblical law to related cases, because no closer related case to male sodomy exists than female sodomy.
But we do not have to rely on inference to make our case. Scripture does it for us. In Romans 1:32, Paul writes that “the judgment of God” is “that they which commit such things [sodomy] are worthy of death…” Note here that he is speaking both of male and female sodomites, as the previous context makes clear. But while Saint will only admit that “it is possible the penalty should be extended to both sexes,” we would counter that Scripture’s statement does not merely allow for the possibility, but would strongly seem to require it. While he did not say so explicitly in the Old Testament, in the fullness of God’s revelation as revealed to us in the New, he has made it clear that female sodomy is just as deserving of death as male sodomy. The argument might still be raised that female sodomite acts cannot be completed. But this objection is overcome if we understand the sex meant here not to be defined narrowly as sexual penetration, which lesbians cannot perform, lacking the necessary anatomy, as we have said, but rather sexual activity brought to a climax, a standard which female sodomy would meet. There is certainly no moral difference between the two. As Bahnsen points out in a heterosexual context:
It should be noted that “sexual sin” (fornication) need not involve genital intercourse. Imagine a wife who engages in romantic kissing, undressing, caressing, fondling, mutual masturbation, or oral sex with someone not her husband. It would be ridiculous to defend her against the charge of “fornication” by appealing to the absence of genital intercourse.
Can we conclude that same holds true for two women engaged in the same acts? I think so.
Moving on, we should note that to narrowly hold that the state may only punish those specific acts as criminal as provided with penal sanctions in Scripture badly misunderstands the nature of Old Testament case law, which as we have said above, was to apply the moral law to specific circumstances and were meant to be applied to related cases. Pedophilia, for instance, is never explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament case laws and provided with a sanction. Using the narrow application of theonomy view, we would have to conclude that pedophilia should thus be legal. (A conclusion that Saint, creditably, does not take). But again, applying the rape case laws of Scripture to the related cases of pedophilia, we can determinate appropriate penalties for this crime without need of a specific case law revealed in Scripture dealing with this crime. That is how biblical case laws are supposed to work.
Author Mark A. Ludwig of The Third Paradigm: God and Government in the 21rst Century, another book taking a very narrow view of the application of some of the Old Testament case laws, writes:
The Bible…does not even condemn public nudity…Whether we like that or not, it is a fact…For the state to outlaw nudity is to add to God’s law, and that is a sin. As such nudity…would be completely legal in such a state. Again, it may bring censure from one’s church…However, in ancient Israel we can plainly see that there was no law against nudity.[7]
This is true as far as it goes. The Old Testament contains no law against public nudity.[8] But are we to conclude that to walk around completely in the nude, exposing private parts and all, should be legal? With theonomists coming to conclusions like this, it is little wonder that people abandon biblical law for Christian natural law instead! Differing Christian views on modesty are one thing, but proponents of differing views should at least be able to agree on the impropriety of public nudity. Clearly, however, the source for a law can be found not in the case laws of the Old Testament, but in the Creation Order revealed in Genesis, which establishes that clothes are to be worn to cover nakedness. If sodomy, which is a violation of the Creation Order, is banned by Scriptural case law, and penalized by criminal sanction, does it logically follow that the public nudity, which would be a violation of the Creation Order, would be legally protected? Especially when a key role of the state is to protect the family and the institution of marriage, which undergirds it, parts of the Creation Order that it is to upheld by man and his institutions.[9] That would be akin to a Christian society tolerating an alien and ultimately enemy philosophy like communism that seeks its ultimate destruction!
The argument that social custom can restrain this practice has merit, but not enough, because in a Christian society, public nudity would expose the nudist to social consequences and sanctions, but that it is no guarantee that they would stop the practice.
The only way to stop their behavior, ultimately, in the short term, would be to physically remove them from public. Yet the use of the physical sword is only given to the state, meaning that it is the only institution God has given us that can realistically deal with the problem of public nudity. (The church’s sanctions are spiritual, and do not involve physical force, while the father’s use of the rod is limited to his children, not unrelated adults). Keep in mind too, that the Israelites had a much more patriarchal, clannish, and tribal society that we have today, one that was governed by strict cultural norms and social customs that are not spelled out for God’s word but bound the Israelites nonetheless, such as the details of their betrothal customs, for instance. Thus, social sanctions would have had more effect on an Israelite, than on an atomized and hyper-individualistic American today. Thus, perhaps it simply wasn’t necessary to have a biblical law against public nudity because social customs were enough to guard against this shameful practice, which is not the case in our own day. Shame as a social sanction is more effective in a close, tight and thick community than in a hyper-individualistic and mobile society such as ours.
One possible reason for the absence of a law against this fact, is that the Israelites were supposed to be smart enough to figure that out, as the judges of Israel meditated on God’s law and applied it to cases that came before them. If we can connect the reason for the prohibition of sodomy to the creation order, the Israelites could do the same thing, and reason from this, that the creation order would likewise prohibit public nudity when such a case came before them.
No law exists against female soldiers in Israel either, though women wearing male attire, armor, and the other gear of a warrior is regarded as an abomination (Deuteronomy 22:5) Keep in mind that this law has no penal sanction attached. Should we conclude then, that if woman stubbornly tried to join the Israelite militia, that the officers would have had no recourse but to allow her to remain in the ranks? If the Israelite army were permitted to send cowards home (Deuteronomy 20:8), because of the desultory effects this could have on morale, can we conclude honestly that they would have to retain women, despite the desultory effect fighting alongside women would have on the morale of masculine men living in an army fighting to defend a patriarchal social order? Not only that, but newly married men and those who had just established households were exempt from the militia draft, underscoring the greater importance of what the Israelites were fighting to uphold over the prosecution of the war itself. (Deuteronomy 20: 5-7) If home and family were so important as to exempt men from combat duty, can we conclude women serving in the ranks would have been legally acceptable, if the reason for the biblical exemptions be understood?
Such a conclusion, that women would have had to be accepted, despite the undermining of family and home that was involved in women defending hearth and home, but that that newly married men and those had just built home and property were exempted, completely misses the point of the exemptions and guts all meaning from them. The Israelites were supposed to meditate on the law of God, day and night, and through this, reach the ’conclusion, though not spelled out explicitly in God’s word, that females were ineligible to serve in the militia. To reason otherwise is patently absurd.
Those holding to a narrow application of theonomy to the state have also held that taxation should be voluntary. Luke Saint writes:
In a theocracy, there is no penalty for not paying taxes. The Bible lists no such crime or punishment, nor is there a body of legislators to create a new law that says as much. People are free to give, or not, just like the tithe. If God does not list a penalty for withholding the tithe (something to which He has more of a claim than Ceasar has for taxes), then for man to speak where God has spoken is wicked.[10]
As Saint’s argument is predicated on the notion that the tithe is likewise voluntary and he makes a greater to the lesser argument here, we should deal with the issue of the voluntary tithe.
Three points should here be made. First, while God is indeed robbed when the tithe is not paid to one’s local church, we should understand here that God is not the only victim here. Also victimized are church elders, who are due renumeration for laboring in the word and doctrine, and their families, as well as those requiring support, such as widows without living relatives, from the church. As such, real people are actually being defrauded from what is theirs by Scriptural right when congregants fail to pay the rightly owed tithes.
Second, there is no biblical list of approved sins that are eligible for church discipline. To use Saint’s reasoning would be to conclude that churches may not enact church discipline for any sins at all, then, but this is obviously absurd and counter-Scriptural. The lack of a biblical list of sins with ecclesiastical sanctions attached should not lead us to that conclusion, but rather to the opposite conclusion. Put simply, churches have the right to discipline congregants for any sin that they refuse to repent of. With this in mind, we can understand why we are not given a list of sins with ecclesiastical sanctions attached. The church is supposed to discipline for any sin that congregants commit and do not repent of when confronted, provided that it can be investigated and proved to have occurred, which would include failure to pay the tithe.
Third, the obligation to pay a tithe to a particular local church is part of a congregant’s duty as a member of that local church. He assumes that duty when he voluntarily covenants with that church and with its leadership to join it. As such, it is entirely appropriate for that church to enforce the church covenant.[11] After all, gossip, causing division in the church, backbiting, unloving conduct, etc., would all be violations of the church covenant too, and would be acceptable issues to discipline a congregant for. But failure to pay the tithe breaks the ecclesiastical covenant just as much as these other sins. Saint writes that “When your local church is acting wickedly by instituting un-biblical standards and doctrines, your obligation to supply it with your tithe is null.”[12] Saint is absolutely correct on this point, but that is because the local church in this scenario is the one breaking the ecclesiastical covenant, not the congregant. If a church is not acting wickedly, the obligation remains just that for the church member.
Returning to the issue of taxation, we can deal once more with Saint’s quote, particularly the latter part. He says: “If God does not list a penalty for withholding the tithe…then for man to speak where God has spoken is wicked.”[13] But the problem with this objection is that it is the same as others that that I have dealt with above in relation to our issues besides taxation. A failure to use the whole Bible to answer this political question, rather than merely arguing from silence. We find the right of the state to enforce taxation, not stated explicitly, but rather indicated, for us, in Romans 13. Verse 7 of this passage requires Christians to pay all their dues, including duly owed taxes. Of course, whether of not this taxation is morally owed depends on the reason attached for government taxation in verses 3 and 4 that is spelled out in verse 6. It is for the cause of being a terror to evil and not good, that we pay taxes, which are no longer owed when the civil government ceases to be a terror to evil and becomes a terror to good instead. But as long as the civil government remains a terror to evildoers, it is owed taxation by a godly citizenry, a point that would be granted by Saint. But if the civil government is indeed owed taxes by the citizenry, then it amounts to a form of robbery for the citizen to withhold what is justly due the state. Yet looking to Scripture, we see that it is indeed Scriptural for the state to punish theft. As such, it must follow that the state may lawfully punish those who commit theft against it, just as it may lawfully punish embezzlers.[14]
Saint, and other authors in this vein, such as Chris Hume, rightfully decry the multiplicity of ungodly taxes we see today, and the horrendous abuses of state enforced taxation. But abuse of a lawful power does not negate that lawful power. In any cases, much of this abuse could be curtailed by returning the power of taxation to local civil governments more responsible and accountable to citizens, which in turn can pass tax money to higher governments, provided those governments are fulfilling their Scriptural duty. In this way, local governments can act as a buffer against potentially tyrannical states. We should not understand biblical taxation through the lens of the 17th Amendment, which treats citizens as individuals accountable to all powerful leviathan state, and essentially devoid of any allegiance to lower civil governments, which it effectively bypasses, and reason from this obvious abuse that enforced taxation is inherently unjust. Other systems of enforced taxation besides that in the 17th Amendment and in our lengthy and gargantuan tax codes exist, at least in theory.
The perceptive reader will note that a key problem running trough most of the narrow applications of theonomy is that these objections all are based on the absence of direct legislation with attached civil penalties. If these are absent, it is reasoned, then civil government cannot enforce them. But this objection commits the error, which we have already noted, of misunderstanding the nature of biblical case law, which was designed to act as a guide for civil judges to decide related cases, namely those where no direct biblical law or penalty was given. Indeed, if this function was not to be exercised by judges, then there is no reason for biblical judges to be either “able” as Exodus 18:21 demands, or wise. It requires little wisdom to sentence a murderer to death, when the penalty is already written for us on paper, and we may not deviate from the prescribed sentence, but it requires much more wisdom and spiritual ability to apply the principles of God’s law to cases not directly mentioned therein.
But besides this first error of fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of biblical case law, it commits a second serious error of failing to understand the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture itself. As the Westminster Confession puts it:
The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.
Catch that? Not only are we to look to express commands, including those with penalties attached, to determine God’s counsel for our lives, including in this case, the state, but we are also to deduce his will for the state by deducing from Scripture, using the qualification that such deductions are made by good and necessary consequence. It is precisely this approach that we are upholding. If theonomy is the application of the sufficiency of Scripture to the state, then we must uphold this aspect of the doctrine in forming our theology of the state and its proper duties.
[1] Blind tradition, and a belief in a virtue extracted not from Scripture, but from common grace and general revelation have traditionally helped to anchor conservatives to a generally more Christian view of social issues than libertarians, but this distinction is fast breaking down as the political conservate movement in the United States becomes increasingly less tethered to a Christian worldview.
[2] Luke Saint, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, or Statism and the Christian Mind (Independently Published: 2022) p. 88
[3] Steve Halbrook God Is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws (Theonomy Resources Media, 2011) p. 247
[4] Ibid
[5] [5] Luke Saint, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, or Statism and the Christian Mind (Independently Published: 2022) p. 88
[6] Author Mark A. Ludwig, of another book advocating for theocracy, gives a differently argument for the same conclusion. He writes:
“The male homosexual act is forbidden with the death penalty; the female act carries no written penalty…The matter of female homosexuality is intended to dealt with by fathers and husbands, not the state. Likewise, we may properly understand by the lack of a statute that female homosexuality is not as great a peril to society as male homosexuality, and thus not an offense that carries the death penalty. God made man leaders—leaders of their households, leaders in society. Homosexuality, being totally contrary to God’s created order, puts the men who practice it at war with God. …While female homosexuality may be just as perverse, it is not dangerous to society, because women do not generally lead, (though they may, from time to time).” (Mark A. Ludwig, True Christan Government [Las Vegas, Nevada: Geodesics Publishing Inc. 2008) p. 111 While Ludwig is probably correct that sodomy in men is more harmful to society, because men are to lead in family and society, his conclusion from this that women should not be capitally punished for sodomy does not hold water, when we examine it in light of the Bible’s capital sanction against adultery, which prescribe the death penalty for both adulterers and adulteresses. Yet a case can be made that female adultery is more harmful to society than male adultery, and such a case has been made many times throughout history, such as by the Ancient Romans, who penalized female adultery, but not male adultery. True, this may be, it thus cannot be relied upon as the reason why adultery is to be treated by the civil magistrate as criminal. An alternate conclusion is that male and female adultery are equally destructive to society and for that reason are both treated as criminal matters in Scripture.
[7] Mark A. Ludwig The Third Paradigm: God and Government in the 21rst Century (Las Vegas, Nevada: Geodesics Publishing, Inc.)
[8] I will not here get into what constitutes biblical “nakedness.” Put simply, the Biblical definition of nakedness is usually complete nudity, the root of the word meaning to uncover the buttocks and groin, and this definition being obvious in Leviticus 18. Yet some uses of the word naked are to be understood by their surrounding context, such as Peter’s nakedness in John 21:7 in which he removed only his outer garment, retaining his inner garment, which would have been a long nightshirt type garment, and the nakedness described of the virgin daughter of Babylon (Isaiah 47:1-3)
[9] While female leadership in society is effectively banned by God’s qualification that civil leaders be men in Exodus 18:21, and Deuteronomy 1:13, polygamy, another violation of the Creation Order, is a more difficult case to deal with, considering that it is codified into God’s law. However, polyamory, and polyandry, which are not codified into God’s law, and are clear violations of the Creation Order, can find no legal protection in Scripture, and ought to be banned for the protection of the institution of marriage and the sake of the biblical family. No criminal sanction is given in Scripture for these crimes, but reasoning that these should be banned for the same reason that sodomy and adultery are treated as criminal in God’s word, would be proper for judges, if the case laws relating to adultery and sodomy, and the Creation Order, should serve as guides for judges to deal with related cases.
[10] [10]Luke Saint, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, or Statism and the Christian Mind (Independently Published: 2022) p. 36
[11] If churches cannot enforce their church covenants, then what institution can? The state? The family? Both of these institutions would be unqualified to do so, and in the case of the state, the failure to pay the tithe is a spiritual, but not physical crime, which would put it outside of the state’s jurisdiction.
[12] Luke Saint, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, or Statism and the Christian Mind (Independently Published: 2022) p. 36
[13] [13]Luke Saint, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, or Statism and the Christian Mind (Independently Published: 2022) p. 36
[14] In the case of embezzlement, the crime committed is not merely against a specific individual, but against an entire business, company, or organization. This corresponds to failure to pay taxes being a theft not against a specific individual, but against an entire organization, and ultimately against society, and God himself, who has established civil government.
[15] Ibid p. 38
