General Equity or Penal Perpetuity? Abortion as a Test Case for Theonomic Reconstructionism

J. Neil Daniels

 

Abstract

Abortion functions as a decisive test case for Christian political theology because it forces explicit judgments about law, civil authority, and the location of judgment within redemptive history. This article argues that theonomic reconstructionism, while internally coherent and morally serious, mislocates judgment by pressing Mosaic judicial law and its penal sanctions into a covenantal context no longer sustained by the New Testament. Through exegetical analysis of Exodus 21:22–25 and Romans 13:1–7, coupled with historical examination of the magisterial Reformed tradition and Westminster Confession of Faith 19.4, the study contends that Scripture norms justice without supplying a transhistorical penal code for modern states. The moral gravity of abortion is fully affirmed, yet the absolutization of Mosaic penalties is rejected as covenantally and eschatologically unwarranted. The article advances an Augustinian and magisterial Reformed alternative that affirms the state’s God-given authority to restrain evil, recognizes natural law as clarified by Scripture, and resists both juridical maximalism and moral minimalism. In doing so, it seeks to preserve moral clarity without collapsing civil authority into eschatological judgment.

Keywords

theonomy; abortion; general equity; Mosaic law; Romans 13; Westminster Confession of Faith; civil magistrate; political theology; natural law; eschatology

INTRODUCTION

Abortion is not merely a moral controversy; it is a pressure point for political theology. It forces Christians to clarify what they mean by justice, what they think civil authority is for, how they read the continuity and discontinuity of biblical law, and where they locate judgment in the flow of redemptive history. In that sense, abortion operates as a test case. If a political-theological system cannot handle a question of innocent blood without either collapsing into quietism or escalating into juridical maximalism, the system’s underlying assumptions have likely been miscalibrated.

Theonomy, particularly in its reconstructionist form, offers a bracingly coherent answer.[1] It insists that Scripture does not merely teach general moral norms, but provides a continuing standard for civil justice through the Mosaic judicial law, including its penal sanctions, unless expressly abrogated. The appeal of this position is understandable. It promises moral clarity, principled continuity, and a public ethic tethered to divine revelation rather than to the shifting sands of modern liberalism. Yet the promise of coherence is also its vulnerability: if the system’s controlling premise is flawed, its conclusions will be consistently flawed in the same direction, even when the conclusions are reached with admirable rigor.

This essay proceeds with two methodological commitments. First, the argument is theological and exegetical before it is political. It treats the civil use of law as a downstream question, dependent upon covenantal structure and eschatological horizon. Second, it is confessional and historical rather than purely programmatic. The question is not what a modern Christian movement wishes the Reformed tradition had said, but what the magisterial Reformed tradition actually did say about judicial law, general equity, and the scope of the magistrate’s task.[2]

The thesis is straightforward. Theonomic reconstructionism presses biblical law past its redemptive-historical function by treating Israel’s judicial code as a transhistorical penal template for modern states. In doing so, it tends to relocate final judgment into present civil authority, producing what may be called a mislocation of judgment: the attempt to achieve juridical finality now that the New Testament reserves for the consummation. This does not entail a retreat into moral minimalism, nor does it deny the magistrate’s God-given authority. It entails instead an Augustinian realism and magisterial Reformed restraint: Scripture norms justice, but it does not supply a universal penal code for all times and nations; civil authority restrains evil, but it does not execute final judgment.

The argument unfolds in four movements. Section I uses abortion as a test case to expose the internal logic of penal continuity, especially in appeals to Exodus 21:22–25. Section II situates the discussion within the Westminster tradition and the meaning of “general equity.” Section III examines Romans 13 and the eschatological limits of civil authority. Section IV offers a constructive account: anti-theonomic but not anti-law, pro-life without penal maximalism, affirming capital punishment in principle while rejecting its absolutization as a covenantal requirement.

I. LAW, BLOOD, AND THE ABORTION TEST CASE

A. Theonomic ambition and the pressure of penal continuity

Theonomy, in its modern reconstructionist form, is not simply an exhortation to take divine law seriously—a concern shared across the Christian tradition—but a precise claim about juridical continuity across redemptive history. The civil laws given to Israel, including their attached penal sanctions, are held to remain morally binding on all nations unless explicitly repealed by the New Testament. God’s law is said to norm justice not merely at the level of moral principle but in concrete civil application.[3] This continuity is not limited to ethical norms; it extends to the administration of penalties by contemporary magistrates.

This claim is not incidental to the reconstructionist project. It is structural. Remove penal continuity, and the system loses its distinctive theological identity. The relevant question, therefore, is not whether God’s law is good, nor whether civil authority is ordained by God—points widely affirmed—but whether the Mosaic judicial code binds modern states as positive law in the present age.

Abortion functions as a clarifying test case precisely because it forces the system to expose its internal logic. Once abortion is classified as murder in the juridical sense—a classification reconstructionist writers consistently affirm—the question of civil sanction becomes unavoidable. If murder is a capital crime under God’s law, and if that law remains binding across covenants, then abortion must eventually be treated as a capital offense by the civil magistrate. Prudential considerations may delay enforcement, but they cannot suspend the requirement without conceding the core premise.[4]

This conclusion is not imposed from outside. It arises from the system’s own grammar.

Greg Bahnsen (1948–1995), the most systematic architect of modern theonomy, articulated this logic with characteristic precision. In Theonomy in Christian Ethics, Bahnsen argues that the moral standards revealed in the Mosaic judicial laws are permanently binding and that the penalties attached to those laws retain their moral authority. Crucially, though, the oft-cited “punishable by death…punishable by death still” line is presented by Bahnsen as an approving quotation of George Gillespie (a leading Westminster divine), not as a free-standing Bahnsen aphorism: “He who was punishable by death under the judicial law is punishable by death still.”[5] This statement is not rhetorical excess; it is a thesis grounded in a continuity-heavy covenant theology and a hermeneutic in which New Testament silence is read as tacit confirmation rather than abrogation.

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001), often described as the intellectual founder of Christian Reconstructionism, supplied the broader cultural and theological vision that rendered such claims plausible. In The Institutes of Biblical Law (modeled after Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion), Rushdoony insisted that God’s law alone provides a legitimate foundation for social order and that civil governments face a stark alternative: obedience or judgment.[6] Although his prose is expansive and frequently polemical, his insistence on penal continuity decisively shaped the movement’s trajectory, particularly in its refusal to distinguish sharply between moral norm and civil sanction.

Gary North (1942–2022), Rushdoony’s most prolific and confrontational disciple, pressed these principles into explicit political conclusions. In his widely circulated 1994 “Letter to Paul Hill,” written after Hill murdered abortion provider John Britton, North argued that while vigilante violence is sinful, abortion itself constitutes murder and therefore falls under the biblical death penalty.[7] North’s reasoning turns on Exodus 21:22–25 and the logic of lex talionis.[8] If accidental harm to an unborn child is treated with utmost seriousness, he argues, intentional killing must be treated as murder in the fullest juridical sense.

The shock many readers experienced at North’s conclusions is instructive. What startled critics was not a deviation from reconstructionist principles but their unfiltered application. Abortion reveals what is otherwise latent in the system: the presumption that justice requires eventual penal equivalence between ancient Israel and modern states, even if temporarily constrained by cultural or institutional factors.[9]

B. Abortion and the inevitability of the sanction question

Within reconstructionist ethics, abortion is not treated merely as a tragic moral evil but as a juridical offense. Once it is named murder, the magistrate is obligated to apply the sanction God has appointed for that crime. North was unusually frank on this point. While degrees of culpability might be assessed—particularly with respect to coercion, deception, or ignorance—the underlying conclusion remained intact: abortion, as the intentional killing of the innocent, demands capital sanction under God’s law.[10]

It ought to be noted that this line of reasoning is not uniquely North’s. It follows directly from Bahnsen’s thesis and Rushdoony’s legal framework. Abortion thus exposes a fundamental tension within theonomy: the attempt to combine uncompromising moral clarity with a transhistorical penal code in a world no longer ordered by covenantal nationhood. The pressure is not merely ethical; it is theological.

C. Exodus 21 and the problem of juridical equivalence

The exegetical pressure point beneath this argument is Exodus 21:22–25, a text frequently cited as decisive evidence that Scripture treats harm to the unborn as a matter of strict justice.[11] The passage addresses a case in which men are fighting and strike a pregnant woman, resulting in premature birth. If no further harm follows, a fine is imposed; if harm follows, the principle of lex talionis—life for life—comes into force.

Interpretive debates over the passage often focus on whether the outcome envisioned is miscarriage or premature birth.[12] While the Hebrew allows for discussion, the reconstructionist reading typically adopts the strongest pro-life interpretation: the unborn child is fully protected under biblical law, and harm to the child is treated as harm to a person.[13] That conclusion is well grounded and entirely consistent with a robust biblical ethic of life.

What does not follow automatically is the transposition of the passage’s penal structure into modern civil codes. The law presupposes a covenantal judicial setting in which penalties are administered within Israel’s theocratic framework—one that includes land theology, covenantal identity, and a magistracy directly accountable to divine revelation. The text does not function as a free-standing moral axiom detached from this setting. To move directly from Exodus 21 to contemporary penal policy without accounting for covenantal transition is to assume precisely what is under dispute.

Moreover, the passage itself models careful legal reasoning rather than mechanical severity. The case envisaged involves accidental injury arising from a brawl, not premeditated violence against the unborn. Liability is assessed proportionally, and sanction escalates only if further harm ensues. Even within Mosaic law, culpability is not collapsed into uniform severity. Intent, consequence, and proportionality matter.

What Exodus 21 therefore provides is not merely a penalty but a jurisprudential logic—a way of reasoning about justice that attends to moral gravity without flattening legal nuance. Historically, this mode of reasoning has been described as general equity.[14] To treat the passage primarily as a prooftext for modern penal replication is to flatten the legal reasoning internal to the law itself and to mistake covenant-specific application for universal mandate.

Excursus: Exodus 21:22–25 and the Miscarriage Debate

Because Exodus 21:22–25 bears so much argumentative weight in the abortion discussion,[15] it deserves a brief exegetical excursus. The debate is often framed as follows: does the passage describe a miscarriage, in which case the fine would allegedly indicate the fetus is not treated as a person; or does it describe a premature birth, in which case “life for life” would apply if the child dies, indicating full personal status? Theonomic writers typically adopt the latter reading and treat it as decisive.

Two observations should be made at the outset. First, whichever reading one adopts, the passage unmistakably treats violence against a pregnant woman and her child as a serious matter of justice, not mere private injury. Second, even a strongly pro-life reading does not by itself settle the question of transhistorical penal continuity; it settles the moral gravity of the act, not the covenantal status of the sanction.

On the text itself, the Hebrew describes a pregnant woman struck in a fight such that her “children come out” (וְיָצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ). The phrase can denote premature birth and does not inherently mean miscarriage.[16] Much turns on how one construes the following conditional: “if no harm (אָסוֹן) follows.” The “harm” can be read as harm to the woman, harm to the child, or harm to either. This is why careful commentators often treat the passage as addressing the outcome of the incident in a general way: if the result is limited (no further harm), a fine; if the result is grave (harm), talionic principle.[17]

What matters for the present argument is the jurisprudential shape. The law is case-based, proportional, and attentive to consequences. It models measured justice rather than automatic severity. It also operates within Israel’s covenantal judicial system, in which penalties function not only as deterrence but as covenantal administration for a people constituted under divine law.

This is precisely where theonomic reconstructionism tends to overread. Even if the “life for life” clause includes the unborn child (and there are good reasons to say it does), the inference “therefore modern magistrates must apply Mosaic sanctions to abortion” is not a purely exegetical conclusion. It is a covenantal conclusion. It depends on an additional premise: that Israel’s judicial code, including its penal structure, remains binding as civil law for all nations unless expressly repealed. That is the point in dispute, and Exodus 21—read carefully—does not by itself prove it. Instead, it proves something more foundational: that biblical justice treats life in the womb as a matter of profound moral concern and legal protection.

Abortion thus functions as a genuine theological stress test for theonomy. It exposes the system’s reliance on penal continuity, its hermeneutic of New Testament silence, and its tendency to locate final judgment within present civil authority. None of this diminishes the moral gravity of abortion. It does, however, raise unavoidable questions about whether fidelity to Scripture requires the reconstruction of Israel’s judicial code in a world ordered by a different covenantal economy.

Those questions set the stage for the confessional and historical analysis that follows.

II. GENERAL EQUITY AND THE MAGISTERIAL REFORMED TRADITION

A. Westminster 19.4 and the meaning of “general equity”

The confessional fulcrum for the Reformed discussion of civil law is Westminster Confession of Faith 19.4. The Assembly affirms that the judicial laws given to Israel “expired together with the state of that people,” while allowing that “the general equity thereof may require” their continued relevance.[18] The significance of this formulation lies not in its brevity but in its careful balance. The divines simultaneously affirm the moral authority of God’s law and deny the permanence of Israel’s judicial polity as positive law for all nations.

In early modern usage, general equity was a term of legal art, not a theological loophole. It referred to the moral reasoning embodied in a law—its underlying principles of justice, proportionality, and concern for the common good—rather than to the replication of its specific sanctions. The language reflects the juristic culture of the seventeenth century, shaped by Roman law, common law, and scholastic moral reasoning. It does not anticipate a program of transhistorical penal enforcement.[19]

This historical context is essential, because modern theonomic readings often redefine general equity as near-identity. On that reading, Mosaic penalties are presumed binding unless explicitly repealed in the New Testament. The burden of proof is thereby reversed. Rather than judicial law expiring except for its equitable substance, it is treated as persisting except where expressly abrogated. This move effectively empties the Confession’s expiration clause of real force and transforms a principle of moral reasoning into a mandate of legal reconstruction.[20]

B. General equity in its legal-historical setting

Understanding Westminster 19.4 correctly necessitates recovering the legal world in which the Confession was written.[21] The Westminster divines were not operating with a modern notion of “equity” as a vague moral appeal. In seventeenth-century jurisprudence, equity (sourced in the older Greek concept of epieikia and the Latin principle of aequitas)[22] referred to the rational application of law to varying circumstances, guided by the law’s intent rather than its bare letter. Equity functioned as a corrective principle within legal systems, not as a mechanism for universalizing statutes beyond their proper jurisdiction.[23]

English common law, Roman law, and scholastic moral theology all employed this distinction. Laws were framed for particular polities, but their underlying rationale—justice ordered to the common good—could be abstracted and applied analogically elsewhere. Working from this terminus technicus, when the Westminster Confession speaks of “general equity,” it assumes this juristic framework. The divines were not carving out an exception to the expiration of the judicial laws; they were explaining the manner in which expired laws could still instruct conscience and inform legislation.[24]

This point is decisive for evaluating theonomic appeals to the Confession. Reconstructionist readings often treat “general equity” as a theological backdoor through which Mosaic penalties re-enter civil law. But for the divines themselves, equity was the opposite of replication. It was the principle that prevented wooden transposition by insisting that justice be adapted to persons, places, and political forms. Equity preserved moral continuity precisely by rejecting juridical identity.[25]

C. Reformed diversity on church and state

It is also important to situate the Westminster position within the broader spectrum of Reformation-era political theology. The magisterial Reformed tradition occupied a distinct middle position between two alternatives that remain live options today.

On one side stood the Anabaptist tradition, which tended toward withdrawal from civil authority or radical separation of church and state. While Anabaptists often exhibited strong moral witness—sometimes surpassing their magisterial counterparts in personal holiness—they typically denied the legitimacy of coercive civil power for Christians. The Westminster divines explicitly rejected this position, affirming the magistrate’s God-given authority and the lawfulness of Christian participation in government.[26]

On the other side stood a more juridically maximalist impulse, visible in some strands of later Protestant political thought and now revived in theonomy. This impulse seeks a direct identification between divine law and civil statute, minimizing prudential judgment and historical contingency. While motivated by a desire for fidelity, it risks collapsing covenantal distinctions and overburdening civil authority with theological tasks it cannot bear.[27]

The Westminster position charts a careful course between these extremes. It affirms the magistrate’s authority without sacralizing the state, and it affirms God’s law without converting Israel’s judicial code into a universal civil constitution. This balance reflects not compromise, but theological realism.

D. Lutheran contrasts and covenantal specificity

A brief contrast with Lutheran political theology further clarifies the Reformed approach. Classical Lutheranism, shaped by the two-kingdoms doctrine, tends to emphasize the sharp distinction between the spiritual and temporal realms. Civil law operates according to reason and natural law, while the gospel governs the church. While this approach offers valuable insights, it can risk under-theologizing civil authority by insulating it too completely from Scripture’s moral critique.[28]

The Reformed tradition, by contrast, insists that civil authority remains accountable to God’s revealed will, even as it denies that Scripture supplies a ready-made civil code. This covenantal specificity—law truly divine, yet historically administered—allows the Reformed to avoid both juridical literalism and moral autonomy. Westminster 19.4 is an expression of that balance.[29]

E. Calvin and covenantal restraint

John Calvin (1509–1564) articulated the magisterial Reformed position with particular clarity. In Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.20, Calvin affirms the divine ordination of civil magistracy and the continuing relevance of God’s moral law, while explicitly rejecting the notion that Israel’s judicial code binds all nations. To impose Mosaic civil laws universally, Calvin warns, would be “false and foolish,” since God has not bound all peoples to a single form of political administration.[30]

Calvin’s concern is not relativism but covenantal propriety. God governs different peoples through different legal arrangements, all of which remain accountable to his moral law. Positive civil laws are necessarily adapted to time, place, and polity, even as they are measured against enduring standards of justice. This distinction allows Calvin to condemn grave sins without demanding the uniform enforcement of Mosaic penalties across non-Israelite societies.

Calvin’s biblical commentaries reinforce this restraint. His treatment of Exodus 21 affirms the full moral seriousness of harm to the unborn while refraining from transposing Israel’s judicial sanctions into a universal penal mandate.[31] Modern scholarship has repeatedly emphasized that Calvin’s political theology presupposes continuity at the level of moral norm and discontinuity at the level of judicial form.[32]

F. Rutherford, Gillespie, and the Westminster consensus

The same pattern appears among the leading figures of the Westminster Assembly. Samuel Rutherford (ca.1600–1661), a Scottish theologian and commissioner to the Assembly, argues in Lex, Rex that while God’s moral law is immutable, civil laws are necessarily adapted to time, place, and polity. Rutherford repeatedly appeals to Scripture, but he does so in defense of equity rather than identity. The magistrate is bound to rule justly, not to replicate Israel’s legal code.[33]

George Gillespie (1613–1648), another Assembly member and a principal architect of the Confession, draws the same distinction. In Aaron’s rod Blossoming, Gillespie explicitly denies that Israel’s penal statutes bind Christian magistrates as positive law. The judicial laws, he argues, were covenant-specific applications of moral principles, suited to Israel’s unique vocation and circumstances.[34]

Recent historical work confirms that this restraint reflects a genuine consensus rather than an isolated strand. Chad Van Dixhoorn’s analysis of the Assembly’s debates shows that the divines consistently affirmed the expiration of Israel’s judicial laws while appealing to their equitable substance as a guide for justice.[35] William Barker’s classic study likewise demonstrates that theonomy’s modern construction of Westminster 19.4 represents a departure from the divines’ intent, not a recovery of it.[36]

G. Implications for the abortion debate

When read against this backdrop, the Confession’s rejection of continuing judicial obligation is neither evasive nor timid. It is principled. The divines deny that Israel’s civil laws bind modern states as laws, while affirming that their moral reasoning remains instructive. Theonomy’s attempt to revive penal continuity therefore represents not a recovery of the Westminster position but a reconfiguration of it—one that subtly shifts equity from analogical reasoning to legal obligation.[37]

This confessional framework has direct implications for the abortion question. If general equity authorizes moral reasoning rather than juridical replication, then the church may affirm the full moral gravity of abortion while recognizing that civil responses will vary according to political context, legal tradition, and prudential judgment. The state may prohibit abortion, impose severe penalties on providers, and marshal legal and social resources in defense of unborn life without being bound to replicate Mosaic sanctions.

Theonomy’s insistence on penal continuity collapses this distinction. By treating equity as obligation, it transforms a confessional allowance into a legal mandate and converts moral clarity into penal absolutism. The magisterial Reformed tradition resists this move, not because it softens the law, but because it locates the law’s civil application within covenantal change and historical circumstance.

Law remains normative. Justice remains required. What is rejected is the claim that fidelity demands the reconstruction of Israel’s judicial code in the present age. That restraint is not a concession to modernity, but a feature of the Reformed confessional inheritance itself.

III. ESCHATOLOGY, ROMANS 13, AND THE MISLOCATION OF JUDGMENT

A. Romans 13 and the scope of civil authority

The final theological pressure point in the theonomic case is eschatological rather than confessional.[38] Even if one grants continuity of moral norms across covenants, the question remains whether the New Testament authorizes present civil authorities to exercise a form of judgment that Scripture elsewhere reserves for the consummation of Christ’s kingdom. It is at this juncture that theonomy strains most visibly.

Romans 13:1–7 is the New Testament’s most explicit affirmation of civil authority. Paul describes governing authorities as “appointed by God,” designates the magistrate as “God’s servant,” and affirms the legitimacy of the sword as an instrument for punishing wrongdoing. Reconstructionist interpreters frequently infer from this language that the magistrate is thereby obligated to enforce God’s law in its Mosaic form, including its penal sanctions. Yet this inference exceeds what the text itself affirms.[39]

Exegetically, Romans 13 establishes authority, not content.[40] Paul offers no catalogue of crimes, no appeal to Sinai, and no directive to replicate Israel’s judicial code. The passage is remarkably non-specific regarding legal substance. Instead, Paul grounds civil authority in God’s providential ordering of the fallen world for the restraint of evil and the preservation of public order. John Calvin, commenting on the passage, stresses precisely this limitation: magistrates are ordained by God “not to frame laws at their own pleasure,” but neither are they commissioned to impose Israel’s polity upon the nations. Their task is civil justice, not covenantal administration.[41]

The historical context intensifies the point. Paul writes to believers living under Roman rule—a pagan legal order that tolerated abortion, infant exposure, sexual exploitation, slavery, and idolatry. If Romans 13 were intended to mandate Mosaic enforcement, Paul’s exhortation would amount to an implicit condemnation of the very authorities he commands Christians to obey. Instead, Paul affirms the legitimacy of these rulers as rulers, even while their moral failures remain manifest. Civil authority is real, but it is provisional and limited.

Major commentators converge on this reading. C. E. B. Cranfield (1915–2015) emphasizes that Paul’s concern is the maintenance of public order rather than the articulation of a Christian legal code.[42] James D. G. Dunn (1939–2020) likewise stresses that Romans 13 functions as a theological explanation for political obedience in a fallen world, not as a charter for Christian legislation.[43] N. T. Wright (b. 1948) situates the passage within Paul’s apocalyptic framework, arguing that present rulers exercise delegated authority that will ultimately be displaced by the reign of the risen Christ.[44]

B. Romans 13 and Second Temple expectations

This restraint becomes even clearer when Romans 13 is read against the backdrop of Second Temple Jewish expectations. Many Jews in Paul’s day anticipated divine judgment against pagan rulers and longed for a restored theocratic order. Apocalyptic literature frequently envisioned the overthrow of wicked regimes and the vindication of God’s people through direct divine intervention. Against this backdrop, Paul’s exhortation to submit to pagan authorities is striking.

Paul does not reinterpret Rome as covenantally faithful. Nor does he deny the reality of injustice. Instead, he reframes political authority within an eschatological horizon in which God governs even through imperfect rulers until the appointed time of judgment. The sword borne by the magistrate restrains disorder; it does not inaugurate the kingdom.

Paul’s deliberate avoidance of Mosaic legal language is therefore theologically significant. Where one might expect an appeal to Torah, Paul appeals instead to God’s ordering of creation and providence. This is not silence born of oversight, but restraint born of eschatology. The present age is not the age of final reckoning.

C. The strongest theonomic objection—and why it fails

At this point, the strongest theonomic objection typically takes a fairly disciplined form. It runs like this: Romans 13 does not need to specify Mosaic case law because “the law of God” remains the only coherent standard of justice; the magistrate is described as God’s servant who bears the sword; therefore, unless Scripture provides an alternative penal theory, the magistrate is obligated to conform civil penalties to God’s revealed judicial standards. Theonomy presents itself as the only position that takes Paul’s language about divine appointment and “wrath” seriously.

The problem is not the seriousness of the claim but the category mistake it tends to commit. Romans 13 grounds the magistrate’s authority in divine ordination, but divine ordination is not the same thing as covenantal commission. God ordains pagan kings in the Old Testament, sometimes explicitly for judgment on his own people, without thereby treating those kings as administrators of Mosaic judicial law. Ordination establishes legitimacy and limits rebellion; it does not supply a complete penal code.

Further, Paul’s use of “wrath” language in Romans 13 must be read in a Pauline register. The same letter will later insist that final wrath and judgment belong to the day when God judges the secrets of men through Christ (Rom. 2:16). Civil punishment participates in God’s providential governance, but it does not collapse into eschatological judgment. The magistrate’s “wrath” is real, but it is penultimate.

This reading is strengthened by the very problem of audience. Paul addresses believers who cannot possibly presume that Roman magistrates are poised to implement Mosaic case law. If the divine task of the magistrate is defined as Mosaic penal enforcement, Paul’s instruction becomes pastorally incoherent: it commands submission to authorities who are, by definition, failing the very task that makes them legitimate. But Paul does not place the legitimacy of civil authority upon covenantal conformity. He places it upon divine ordination in the common order of providence.

Finally, and most importantly for the present thesis, theonomy’s objection depends on making New Testament “silence” do too much work. Silence is interpreted as continuity, and continuity is interpreted as penal identity. That is not exegesis; it is a hermeneutical policy. And it sits uneasily beside the New Testament’s broader insistence that the Mosaic covenant, including its legal administration, has reached its telos in Christ. To say this is not to deny moral norms; it is to deny that Sinai’s judicial apparatus is the permanent civil constitution of the nations.[45]

D. Deferred judgment and the structure of the present age

The New Testament consistently distinguishes between the present age and the age to come, assigning final judgment to the latter. Jesus’ parables of deferred separation—the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13:24–30), the dragnet (Matt. 13:47–50), and the patient landowner—establish a pattern in which evil is restrained but not eradicated prior to the harvest. Judgment is certain, but it is not yet exhaustive.

George Eldon Ladd (1911–1982) famously described this tension as the “already/not yet” structure of the kingdom. The reign of God has been inaugurated in Christ, yet its consummation awaits his return. The present age is therefore marked by real authority, real moral responsibility, and persistent injustice. What it is not marked by is final reckoning.[46]

Herman Ridderbos (1909–2007) develops this point further by emphasizing that the presence of the kingdom does not authorize its consummation by human agents. The church bears witness to the coming judgment; it does not execute it. The state may restrain evil, but it does not purify the world. To confuse these roles is to collapse eschatology into politics.[47]

This restraint is classically articulated by Augustine (354–430) in his doctrine of the two cities. In The City of God, Augustine insists that the earthly city, even when pursuing relative justice, remains irreducibly intermixed with the City of God until the final judgment. Political authority is therefore limited by design.[48] Jean Bethke Elshtain (1941–2013) draws out the implications of this Augustinian realism, warning that political projects which seek moral finality inevitably overreach their mandate and distort the ends of justice.[49]

E. Abortion and eschatological impatience

Abortion brings this eschatological tension into sharp relief. The moral outrage it provokes creates a powerful temptation to demand finality now—to close the gap between offense and retribution. Theonomy provides a theological rationale for this impulse by treating the civil magistrate as an agent of covenantal purification. Yet in doing so, it collapses the distinction between restraint and consummation, assigning to the state a task the New Testament reserves for Christ alone.

This is the heart of the mislocation of judgment. The problem is not that theonomy affirms judgment, but that it insists upon its premature execution. By locating eschatological finality within present civil authority, the system overburdens the magistrate and obscures the church’s distinctive vocation as a community of proclamation, discipline, and hope.

The New Testament offers a different vision. Evil is named without equivocation. Authority is affirmed without absolutization. Judgment is promised without being hastened. This eschatological patience does not excuse injustice; it situates justice within the horizon of God’s redemptive purposes.

IV. TOWARD A BIBLICALLY FAITHFUL POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF LIFE

A. Moral clarity without penal absolutism

The critique of theonomic reconstructionism would be incomplete if it ended merely in negation. To reject penal continuity is not to retreat into moral ambiguity, political quietism, or a privatized faith. What is required instead is a constructive political theology capable of opposing abortion with full moral seriousness while remaining faithful to Scripture’s covenantal structure and eschatological horizon.

Any such account must begin with moral clarity. Abortion constitutes a grave moral evil because it involves the intentional destruction of innocent human life made in the image of God. This judgment does not depend upon modern embryology or confessional distinctives, though both may confirm it. It rests upon Scripture’s consistent witness to the sanctity of human life and the special concern owed to the weak and voiceless. From the earliest post-apostolic sources, Christians condemned abortion as incompatible with fidelity to Christ, often in cultures far more permissive than our own. The Roman world into which Christianity was born practiced abortion and infant exposure with brutal regularity. The Didache, an early Christian manual, condemns both practices explicitly: “you will not murder a child by means of abortion.”[50] Tertullian (ca. 160–ca. 220), writing in the second century, describes abortion as murder and denounces it in the strongest terms.[51] The early church’s moral clarity on this issue is beyond dispute.[52] Moral clarity, therefore, is neither novel nor sectarian.

What moral clarity does not require is penal absolutism. Scripture itself distinguishes between the permanence of moral norms and the variability of their civil enforcement. Adultery remains a serious sin across covenants, yet its penal administration changes. Blasphemy is condemned in the strongest terms, yet the New Testament does not commission either church or state to stone offenders. The New Testament intensifies moral demand even as it restrains coercive application. This distinction is not a concession to weakness but an expression of redemptive-historical realism.

B. Civil authority as restraint, not consummation

A biblically faithful political theology understands civil authority as an instrument of restraint rather than redemption. The state is ordained by God to preserve order, protect the innocent, and punish wrongdoing within the limits of its vocation. It is not authorized to consummate righteousness or to execute final judgment. This limitation does not weaken civil authority; it clarifies and protects it from theological overreach.

Within this framework, robust legal opposition to abortion is not only permissible but obligatory. The state may prohibit abortion, regulate medical practice, impose severe penalties on providers, protect conscience rights, and deploy social resources to defend unborn life. None of these measures requires the replication of Mosaic judicial sanctions. They may be grounded in natural law reasoning—publicly accessible and morally intelligible—while being clarified, disciplined, and corrected by Scripture rather than bypassed by it.[53]

This distinction allows Christians to pursue justice vigorously without confusing the penultimate with the ultimate. The civil law may aim at protection and deterrence without presuming to bring about moral purification. The refusal to absolutize penalties is not a failure of nerve; it is a recognition of the state’s creaturely limits.

C. Natural law clarified by Scripture

Appeal to natural law in this context does not represent a retreat from biblical authority. Within the Reformed tradition, natural law has consistently been understood as a mode of moral knowledge grounded in God’s creative order and rendered more fully intelligible by special revelation. Francis Turretin (1623–1687) affirmed that natural law provides genuine moral knowledge while requiring scriptural clarification and correction in a fallen world.[54] Natural law is not autonomous reason; it is reason accountable to its Creator.

Johannes Althusius (1563–1638), often regarded as a foundational Reformed political theorist, likewise grounded civil authority in natural law while subordinating it to divine sovereignty and covenantal accountability.[55] His work demonstrates that robust public reasoning and theological fidelity are not mutually exclusive. Civil law may appeal to shared moral knowledge without denying Scripture’s normative authority.

This approach avoids two symmetrical errors. It does not collapse into Anabaptist withdrawal, denying the legitimacy of civil authority. Nor does it embrace modern liberal privatization of faith, in which moral convictions are excluded from public reasoning. At the same time, it avoids a generic natural-law minimalism that treats Scripture as superfluous to moral reflection. Natural law is clarified by Scripture, not insulated from it.

D. Culpability, coercion, and proportionality

Attention to moral agency further distinguishes this approach from theonomic penal maximalism. Abortion occurs within a complex network of fear, coercion, misinformation, social pressure, and abandonment. While these factors do not negate moral responsibility, they do affect culpability and therefore the justice of civil response. Scripture itself models this attentiveness, distinguishing between intentional and unintentional harm and calibrating penalties accordingly.

This concern bears directly on the question of capital punishment. The legitimacy of the death penalty in principle has been affirmed by many within the Reformed tradition, including John Calvin, who regarded it as a lawful exercise of civil authority in response to the most serious crimes.[56] Yet neither Calvin nor the broader magisterial tradition treated capital punishment as a covenantal requirement universally binding across all times and places. To absolutize the death penalty in cases of abortion is therefore to exceed both Scripture’s warrant and the Reformed inheritance.

Justice requires proportion. It requires attention to intent, circumstance, and moral agency. A political theology that collapses all participants into uniform guilt may satisfy a demand for symmetry, but it fails to reflect the moral texture of human action in a fallen world.

E. Church, state, and eschatological hope

Equally important is the preservation of the church’s distinctive vocation. The New Testament assigns to the church the ministry of proclamation, discipline, and restoration. Its authority is real, but it is exercised through Word and sacrament rather than coercive force. When civil punishment becomes the primary means of addressing moral evil, the church’s role is diminished and the gospel’s call to repentance risks being eclipsed by juridical finality. This is not an argument against civil justice, but against confusing the sword with the keys.

Eschatological humility underwrites this entire account. The present age is not the age of final reckoning. God’s patience is not indifference but mercy, allowing space for repentance while guaranteeing that no injustice will ultimately escape judgment. Confidence in the final judgment frees Christians to pursue justice now without usurping Christ’s role as judge of the living and the dead.

In this light, abortion exposes the limits of theonomic reconstructionism with particular clarity. By collapsing covenantal distinctions and locating final judgment within present civil authority, theonomy burdens the state with an eschatological task it was never given and distorts the church’s mission in the process. A more faithful political theology resists this compression, affirming the sanctity of life, the legitimacy of civil authority, and the hope of final justice—all without reconstructing Sinai or collapsing the ages.

CONCLUSION

Law, Judgment, and the Limits of Reconstruction

This essay has argued that abortion exposes a fundamental tension within theonomic reconstructionism: the attempt to uphold uncompromising moral clarity while simultaneously importing a transhistorical penal code into a redemptive-historical context that no longer sustains it. The tension does not arise because abortion is a marginal case, but because it is paradigmatic. Few moral evils more starkly involve innocent blood, and few questions more directly force a reckoning with the relationship between divine law, civil authority, and eschatological judgment. If a political theology falters here, it does so at a structural level.

Theonomic reconstructionism offers a coherent and internally consistent system, but coherence alone does not guarantee fidelity. Its commitment to penal continuity rests on a series of interconnected assumptions: that Mosaic judicial laws retain positive civil force unless expressly repealed; that New Testament silence implies continuity; and that the civil magistrate is covenantally obligated to administer divine sanctions in the present age. When these assumptions are applied to abortion, the result is juridical maximalism: the claim that capital punishment is not merely permissible, but required, as a matter of covenantal obedience. The problem is not moral seriousness, but covenantal mislocation.

By contrast, the magisterial Reformed tradition—articulated in Calvin, codified in Westminster Confession of Faith 19.4, and sustained in later Reformed political theology—affirms a different configuration. God’s law remains normative. Civil authority is genuinely ordained. Justice is required. Yet Israel’s judicial code, including its penal structure, is understood as covenant-specific rather than transhistorical. Its moral reasoning endures by way of general equity; its sanctions do not bind modern states as positive law. This distinction is not evasive. It is principled, historically grounded, and exegetically defensible.

The New Testament sharpens this restraint by locating final judgment decisively in the age to come. Romans 13 affirms the magistrate’s authority to restrain evil and punish wrongdoing, but it does so without assigning to the state the task of covenantal purification or eschatological finality. The sword is real, but it is penultimate. The attempt to collapse this distinction—by pressing present civil authority into the service of final judgment—overburdens the state and obscures the church’s vocation. Augustine’s insight remains decisive: the two cities remain intermingled until the end, and political authority, even when just, operates under conditions of moral ambiguity that await resolution only in the consummation.[57]

This does not entail retreat. To reject theonomy is not to embrace liberal privatization of faith, Anabaptist withdrawal, or natural-law minimalism. A biblically faithful political theology can affirm the sanctity of unborn life, oppose abortion through robust legal means, recognize degrees of culpability, and even affirm capital punishment in principle—all without absolutizing Mosaic penalties or reconstructing Sinai. Such a position is anti-theonomic but not anti-law; pro-life without penal maximalism; Augustinian in eschatology and magisterial Reformed in its understanding of civil authority.

Abortion, then, clarifies rather than confuses the task before Christian political theology. It demands moral clarity without juridical overreach, justice without eschatological impatience, and fidelity without reconstruction. The challenge is not whether Scripture speaks with authority, but how that authority is to be honored within the covenantal economy inaugurated by Christ. On that question, the Reformed tradition offers a path that is neither timid nor triumphalist, but sober, principled, and—precisely for that reason—enduring.

Selected Bibliography

Althusius, Johannes. Politics. Translated by Frederick S. Carney. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995.

Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin Books, 2003.

Bahnsen, Greg L. By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today. Tyler, Tex.: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985.

Bahnsen, Greg L. Theonomy in Christian Ethics. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1977.

Barker, William S. “Theonomy and the Westminster Confession.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 23.4 (1980): 289–302.

Barker, William S., and W. Robert Godfrey, eds. Theonomy: A Reformed Critique. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Edited by John T. McNeill. 2 vols. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960.

Chismar, Douglas E. and David A. Rausch. “Regarding Theonomy: An Essay of Concern.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 27 (September 1984): 315–323.

Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Augustine and the Limits of Politics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Gillespie, George. Aaron’s Rod Blossoming. London, 1646. Reprint, Dallas: Naphtali Press, 1985.

Gordon, T. David. “Critique of Theonomy: A Taxonomy.” Westminster Theological Journal 56.1 (Spring 1994): 3–43.

Grabill, Stephen J. Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.

Gundry, Stanley, ed. Five Views on the Law and Gospel. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999.

House, H. Wayne, and Thomas D. Ice. Dominion Theology: Blessing or Curse? Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1988.

Ice, Thomas D. “An Evaluation of Theonomic Neopostmillennialism.” Bibliotheca Sacra 145 (July–September 1988): 281–300.

Karlberg, Mark W. “Reformation Politics: The Relevance of OT Ethics in Calvinist Political Theory.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (June 1986):179–91.

Karlberg, Mark W. “Reformed Interpretation of the Mosaic Covenant.” Westminster Theological Journal 43 (1980): 1–57.

Kline, Meredith G. “Comments on an Old-New Error: A Review of Greg Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics.” Westminster Theological Journal 41.1 (Fall 1978): 172–89.

Lightner, Robert P. “Theonomy and Dispensationalism.” Bibliotheca Sacra 143 (January–March 1986): 26–36.

Lightner, Robert P. “Nondispensational Responses to Theonomy.” Bibliotheca Sacra 143 (April–June 1986): 134-45.

Lightner, Robert P. “A Dispensational Response to Theonomy.” Bibliotheca Sacra 143 (July–September 1986): 228–45.

McGlasson, Paul C. No! A Theological Response to Christian Reconstructionism. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012.

Neuhaus, R. J. “Why wait for the kingdom? The theonomist temptation.” First Things 3 (May 1990), 14.

North, Gary. Westminster's Confession. Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991.

Oss, Douglas A. “The Influence of Hermeneutical Frameworks in the Theonomy Debate.” Westminster Theological Journal 51 (1989): 227–58.

Peters, G. N. H. The Theocratic Kingdom. 3 vols. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1884.

Poythress, Vern. The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses. Nashville, TN: Wolgemuth and Hyatt, 1991. See especially the Appendices, “Evaluating Theonomy” (311–61) and “Does the Greek Word Pleroo Sometimes mean ‘Confirm’?” (363–77).

Reisinger, Ernest. The Law and the Gospel. Philipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1997.

Rushdoony, Rousas John. The Institutes of Biblical Law. Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973.

Rutherford, Samuel. Lex, Rex: The Law and the Prince. 1644. Reprint, Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1982.

Schaeffer, Francis. A Christian Manifesto. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1981.

Turretin, Francis. Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Translated by George Musgrave Giger. Edited by James T. Dennison Jr. 3 vols. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992.

Van Dixhoorn, Chad. By Good and Necessary Consequence. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017.

VanDrunen, David. Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.

Witte, John Jr. Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004.

 

Notes

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[1] For purposes of clarity, theonomy refers, in its narrow and technical sense, to the claim that God’s revealed law (nomos) provides the normative standard for justice, including civil justice. While this claim can be affirmed in a general sense by many within the Reformed tradition, the term theonomy in contemporary theological discourse most often designates a more specific position: theonomic reconstructionism. Reconstructionism denotes a movement that emerged in the late twentieth century, particularly through the work of R. J. Rushdoony, Greg L. Bahnsen, and their associates, which seeks the “reconstruction” of social, legal, and political institutions according to biblical law. Within this framework, theonomic reconstructionism advances the further claim that the Mosaic judicial laws, including their penal sanctions, retain continuing moral authority for modern civil governments unless explicitly abrogated by the New Testament.

More recently, theonomy has sometimes been associated—often imprecisely and polemically—with Christian Nationalism. While limited points of overlap may exist at the level of shared moral concerns, theonomic reconstructionism is not inherently nationalist in character, as its claims are not grounded in ethnic, cultural, or national identity, but in theological judgments about covenant, law, and authority. Careful distinction among these categories is therefore necessary in order to assess theonomy on its own terms, rather than as a proxy for broader political or cultural movements.

[2] William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey, eds., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990); Chad Van Dixhoorn, By Good and Necessary Consequence (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), 253–69.

[3] Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1977), 433–39.

[4] Ibid., 440–41.

[5] Greg L. Bahnsen, “What Is ‘Theonomy’?” New Horizons (April 1994): 4, reprinted as PDF by The Bahnsen Institute at https://www.bahnseninstitute.com/what-is-theonomy/, accessed 22 January 2026, approvingly quoting George Gillespie, Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty; or, The True Resolution of a Present Controversie Concerning Liberty of Conscience (London: Printed for Christopher Meredith, 1645), A4, 9. See further Bahnsen’s chapter on penology in Theonomy in Christian Ethics, 421–452 (esp. 433–39). Note, too, his earlier chapter, “The Abiding Validity of the Law in Exhaustive Detail” (41–88).

[6] Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, vol. 1 (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), 4–31.

[7] Gary North, “Letter to Paul Hill,” in Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), 509–27; cf. idem, Lone Gunners for Jesus: Letters to Paul J. Hill (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), esp. 23–29.

[8] Lex talionis (Lat for “law of retaliation”) is a principle of proportional justice whereby the punishment corresponds directly to the nature and severity of the offense—famously expressed in the biblical phrase “an eye for an eye” (Ex 21:24; Lev 24:20; Deu 19:21). This concept was not unique to Israel but appears in earlier ancient Near Eastern legal codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 18^th century BC), which prescribes similar reciprocal penalties (e.g., §196: “If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye”). In the biblical context, however, lex talionis served not merely as legal deterrent but also as a theological affirmation of measured justice, ensuring penalties were neither arbitrary nor excessive and that vengeance was restricted to the judicial domain, ultimately under God’s authority.

[9] Barker and Godfrey, eds., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique.

[10] North, “Letter to Paul Hill,” 520–23.

[11] Bernard S. Jackson, Wisdom-Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21:1–22:16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 175–83; idem, “The Problem of Exodus 21:22–25,” in Essays in Jewish and Comparative Legal History (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 75–107; William Johnstone, Exodus 20–40, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2014), 122–27; Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Das Bundesbuch (Ex 20,22–23,33): Studien zu seiner Entstehung und Theologie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), 97–99. These studies converge in recognizing Exodus 21:22–25 as casuistic legislation governing accidental harm and proportional liability rather than mandating mechanical retaliation. Lex talionis functions here as a juridical principle limiting vengeance and calibrating penalties within Israel’s covenantal legal framework, not as a transhistorical penal rule.

[12] For cautions against overloading Exodus 21:22–25 with modern bioethical categories, see Bernard S. Jackson, “The Problem of Exodus 21:22–25,” 84–90; Jacob Weingreen, “The Concepts of Retaliation and Compensation in Biblical Law,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 76C (1976): 7–8; Sofie Lafont, “Ancient Near Eastern Laws: Continuity and Pluralism,” in Theory and Method in Biblical and Cuneiform Law, ed. Bernard M. Levinson (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 108–12. The lexical questions surrounding yĕladîm (“children”) and ʾāsôn (“harm”), as well as the divergent Septuagint rendering (“fully formed”), demonstrate the complexity of the text but do not justify treating the passage as a self-standing authorization of capital punishment for abortion, especially apart from covenantal and juridical context.

[13] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, trans. Charles William Bingham (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 3:41–46.

[14] The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), 19.4. General equity denotes the enduring moral rationale underlying particular judicial laws given to Israel, abstracted from their historically and covenantally specific form. As employed by the Westminster Confession, general equity affirms that while Israel’s judicial laws have expired as laws, their principles of justice—rightly interpreted through prudence and attention to circumstance—remain instructive for moral reasoning and civil legislation without requiring juridical replication.

[15] Contra Jacques Berlinerblau, Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2008) 52–55, especially 158 n. 48. On the relevance and interpretation of Ex 21:22–25, see M. Sprinkle, “The Interpretation of Exodus 21:22–25,” Westminster Theological Journal 55 (1993): 233–53.

[16] For a defense of the premature live childbirth reading, see John Frame “Abortion from a Biblical Perspective,” in Thou Shalt Not Kill, ed. Richard Ganz (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1978), 52–57.

[17] Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, New American Commentary 2 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006), 495–501; John I. Durham, Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary 3 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), 322–325.

[18] The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), 19.4; cf. 19.3–4: “Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the New Testament. To them also, as a body politick, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.”

[19] William S. Barker, “Theonomy and the Westminster Confession,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 23.4 (1980): 289–302. See further Dixhoorn, By Good and Necessary Consequence. See further Sinclair B. Ferguson, “An Assembly of Theonomists? The Teaching of the Westminster Divines on the Law of God,” in Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, ed. William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 315–349.

[20] Barker and Godfrey, eds., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique.

[21] For legal-historical background on equity as a juristic category, see Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

[22] See, e.g., Plato, Statesman, 294a; and Aristotle, Ethics, V, ch. 10, VI, ch. 11; Rhetoric, I, ch. 13; cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologicae, II-II, a. 2 ad 3.

[23] Berman, Law and Revolution, 45–73.

[24] Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 255–70.

[25] Barker, “Theonomy and the Westminster Confession,” 289–302.

[26] George Hunston Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3^rd ed. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000), 124–58.

[27] Barker and Godfrey, eds., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, 11–34.

[28] Martin Luther, Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), in Luther’s Works, vol. 45, ed. Walther I. Brandt (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962), 75–129.

[29] John Witte Jr., Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 110–45.

[30] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.14–16.

[31] Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, 3:41–46.

[32] John Witte Jr., Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 87–115.

[33] Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or The Law and the Prince: A Dispute for the Just Prerogative of King and People (1644; repr., Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1982), questions 19–21. Rutherford makes the same point in his A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (London, 1649), 190–191, 298.

[34] George Gillespie, Aaron’s Rod Blossoming (London, 1646; repr., Dallas: Naphtali Press, 1985), 173–203.

[35] Dixhoorn, By Good and Necessary Consequence, 253–69.

[36] Barker, “Theonomy and the Westminster Confession,” 289–302.

[37] Dixhoorn, By Good and Necessary Consequence, 253–69.

[38] See Richard B. Gaffin, “Theonomy and Eschatology: Reflections on Postmillennialism,” in Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, ed. Barker and Godfrey, 197–226.

[39] David G. Peterson, Romans, Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 390; Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 536–37.

[40] Peterson, Romans, 386–91; Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 531–37. Romans 13:1–7 explains the divine ordination and instrumental legitimacy of civil authority within a pagan context, grounding submission in God’s providential governance rather than in the continuation of Mosaic judicial law. Paul deliberately refrains from appealing to Sinai or Israel’s case law, and the magistrate’s bearing of the sword signifies coercive authority in the present age rather than a covenantal mandate to enforce biblical penalties. Civil punishment is thus penultimate and provisional, operating under divine sovereignty without collapsing into eschatological judgment.

[41] John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 478–84.

[42] C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), 658–70.

[43] James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16, Word Biblical Commentary 38B (Dallas: Word Books, 1988), 759–73.

[44] N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 1307–22.

[45] On the role of the law generally, see the counterpoint symposium Five Views on Law and Gospel, ed. Wayne G. Strickland (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996). See further Continuity and Discontinuity: Perspectives on the Relationship Between the Testaments, ed. John S. Feinberg (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1988).

[46] George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974).

[47] Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962).

[48] Augustine, City of God, 19.17–24.

[49] Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 65–92. 

[50] The Didache 2.2, in The Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction and Translation, ed. William Varner (London: T&T Clark, 2023), 16.

[51] Tertullian, Apology 9, in Apology and De Spectaculis, trans. T. R. Glover (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 39–41.

[52] See further Tertullian, On the Soul 25; Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 35; Basil of Caesarea, Letter 188; Augustine, On Exodus 21; Enchiridion 85; On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.15; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II–II, q. 64, a. 8; Commentary on Exodus 21.

[53] Natural law refers to the moral order embedded in creation by God and accessible to human reason, by which basic norms of justice, right, and wrong may be discerned apart from special revelation, though never independently of God. Within the classical Christian tradition, natural law is not autonomous reason legislating morality, but reason functioning as a creaturely faculty responding to the divine order, and therefore subject to correction, clarification, and confirmation by Scripture after the Fall. See Arthur F. Holmes, “Natural Law,” in New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, ed. David J. Atkinson and David H. Field (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 619–21; Craig A. Boyd and Don Thorsen, Christian Ethics And Moral Philosophy: An Introduction to Issues and Approaches (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 71–81; more fully, J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1997); classically, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae I–II, q. 94 (especially arts. 1–6); John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.2.22; 4.20.15–16; Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 2, topic 11, questions 1–5.

[54] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:7–12.

[55] Johannes Althusius, Politics, trans. Frederick S. Carney (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995), 17–38.

[56] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.10–12.

[57] Augustine, City of God, 19.17–24; Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics, 65–92.