Jordan Hall: Theonomy – Echo Zoe Ministries

View width= Jordan Hall is the pastor of Fellowship Church in Sidney Montana. He founded Pulpit & Pen, Voice in the Wilderness Radio, and Reformation Montana. On February 20th, he debated Joel McDurmon of American Vision on the topic of Theonomy. McDurmon advocated the position “Mosaic civil laws are obligatory for civil governments today”, whereas Hall took the contrary position. Jordan joins me for this episode of Echo Zoe Radio to discuss the doctrine of Theonomy in light of the recent debate.

The timing was providential for Echo Zoe Radio, as Theonomy is a similar view to “Federal Vision,” the topic of the January episode, and is a timely topic to follow the discussion with Dr. R. Scott Clark.

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Outline of the Discussion

Jordan recently became engaged with Theonomy after a short “rant” on his radio show over Dominionism. He compared the words in Hebrews (1:12) about the world being rolled up like a scroll to the teaching of the Dominion Mandate, that we as Christians are to “redeem the culture for Christ.”
Post-Millenial eschatology is a foundational teaching to Theonomy. Greg Bahnsen, one of the heroes of Theonomy, said that you can't really be a Theonomist without being a Post-Millenialist. The Dominion Mandate (the command that Adam was to take dominion of the Earth, Theonomists would call it the “Adamic Covenant”) is especially important to Theonomy. Theonomists broaden the dominion mandate, even turning the Gospel into a New Testament version of the dominion mandate.
The resolution of the recent debate that Jordan engaged in was “Are the Mosaic civil laws obligatory for today?” This is Theonomy in a nutshell.
Theonomy is a doctrine that is primarily held by a small group of Presbyterians.
Charismatic Dominionism came directly out of a meeting with Theonomic Dominionists in the 1980s.
The Reformed tradition sees, in scripture, a distinction within the law consisting of moral, civil, and ceremonial. Theonomists deny any distinction between the moral and civil laws. They lump them together and refer to them as “God's Law.”
Logic (formal and informal) is evidence of Natural Law, which Theonomists deny exists.
The moral law is written upon the hearts of man (we inherently know it's wrong to murder, steal, etc.). The civil law is not.
A major issue in the discussion of Theonomy is the redefinition of terms. Theonomists use terms that have a completely different meaning to them than they do to non-Theonomists.
Theonomists confuse the distinction between Law and Gospel, which is an important doctrine to the Reformation. The historic, orthodox Christian gives the Law in order to bring a person to Christ. The Theonomist gives the Gospel in order to enable a person to be faithful to the Law.
The Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 demonstrates from Scripture that Theonomy wasn't taught or followed by the first century church. If it were, there would have been no need of a council to determine which laws were binding upon the church and which were not.
Theonomists make a similar mistake as the Hebrew Roots movement. Where Hebrew Roots places believers back under the ceremonial law, Theonomists place them back under the civil law. Jordan considers Theonomy to be a Judaizing of the civil law.
We explore the similarities and differences between Theonomy and Sharia.
There is widespread agreement that the civil law is good. The disagreement is over the assertion that its goodness makes it obligatory.