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by Robert Emery

Number three in the National Reform Association's Statement of Purpose declares that "civil government... must... be conformed to the principles of biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments." In the light of this declaration, the honest inquirer into the principles espoused by the NRA must ask for a definition of the "principles of biblical law." This the NRA does not provide.

Many now active in the organization are "theonomists," followers of R. J. Rushdoony in holding that Old Testament law ("judicial" as well as moral), unless specifically abrogated or qualified by the New Testament, still provides the binding rule of action for both the state and the individual.1 This position is, as a matter of historical reality, antithetical to the classical, orthodox Calvinism set forth by the Westminster standards: "To them [Israel] also, as a body politic, 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."2 The Westminster standard is the definition of "biblical law" held by the Covenanters and, historically at least, by the Reformed Presbyterian Church.3 It is also the opinion of conventional Arminians, such as strict Wesleyans.4

Whatever view one takes on the issue, it cannot honestly be said that there is a generally accepted definition of "principles of biblical law," or that the NRA has clearly adopted its own definition as a basis for its Statement of Purpose. It is one thing blithely to declare that the civil ruler must "govern according to the expressed will of God" (NRA Statement of Purpose number two); it is another to know what the NRA means when it makes that statement.

In the context of their time, the Covenanters recognized a similar crisis of definition and tried to answer it. The British civil wars of the 1640s were, among other things, wars over definitions of church government (presbytery vs. prelacy or independency) and of the divine decrees (Calvinism vs. Arminianism). The proponents of divine-right Presbyterianism and federal Calvinism adopted clear statements of their position, open to all who could read, opponents and advocates alike, in the documents of the Westminster Assembly.5

These Westminster documents included not only a Confession of Faith (supported by Longer and Shorter Catechisms) precisely stating Reformed doctrine, and a subordinate Form of Presbyterian Church Government and Directory for Public Worship defining the ecclesiastical organization and divine worship required by Scripture. They also included, as the first Westminster document, the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, sworn by the political nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland as a platform for reorganization of the state. The Solemn League left no doubt of what the Covenanters asserted: the reformation and conformity of religion "according to the word of GOD, and the example of the best reformed Churches" (Art. I). Neither did the League omit what the Covenanters rejected: "Popery, Prelacy...., superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found contrary to sound doctrine" (Art. II)--sound doctrine being carefully defined by the subsequently adopted Westminster standards. The Solemn League may or may not have been politic or wise, but it must be recognized that the Covenanters through it and the associated standards of the Westminster Assembly forthrightly met the definitional crisis of their time.

It is intellectually indefensible to argue, with the Steelites, that the Solemn League, in literal terms, is eternally binding.6 It was written in a different time, and it addressed issues different from those that face the church today. But the Solemn League did what the NRA must do if it is to be taken seriously: the NRA must define its terms. If the civil ruler is to govern according to "the expressed will of God," and the civil government must "be conformed to the principles of biblical law," then not merely intellectual honesty, but also foundational principle, demands that the NRA publicly define those terms.

Endnotes

1. "Theonomy" is a Greco-Germanic neolegalism, dating back to the 19th century; s.v. OED, although the concept itself is much older. Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law (Phillipsburg, NJ, 1973) is probably the best explication, although in some ways Greg L. Bahnsen's Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nutly, NJ, 1977) is more accessible.

2. Westminster Confession, XIX:4.

3. See, e.g., Testimony of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland, bound with the Historical Part of the Testimony..., p. 264 (Glasgow, 1842); Samuel B. Wylie, The Two Sons of Oil; or The Faithful Witness for Magistracy and Ministry upon a Scriptural Basis, p. 16 and passim (York, PA, 2002 reprint).

4. See, e.g., Jacob Arminius, Seventy-Nine Private Disputations, LXXI, in The Works of James Arminius, vol. 2, p. 453 (Grand Rapids, 1999 reprint); and Wesley Standard Sermon no. 34.

5. The Westminster documents are conveniently contained in the Free Presbyterian Church's edition of the Westminster Confession of Faith (Glasgow, 1995 reprint).

6. Although the basic principles the Solemn League asserted, and the NRA now asserts, are indeed eternally binding; cf. . Johannes G. Vos, The Scottish Covenanters (Edinburgh, 1998 reprint), pp. 13-14, 193.

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