Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. Exodus 18:21 (NKJV)
In this age of over-information, simple things are almost always made complicated as if everything exists to be convoluted. Complicated things are fun to argue over, then the fun transitions into public commentary, and all of a sudden it becomes an industry. It is like a chain reaction meaning that the more confusing and chaotic the discussion gets, the more confusing and chaotic it will become.
One of the very simple things that became an industry is theology and all of the arguments that are within it, and all of the convolutions because of it. One of the casualties of this non-industrial industry is the topic of theonomy and of course theonomy vs theocracy.
Although you don’t really hear the word “theonomy” or “theocracy” or the two compared, it is actually talked about a lot, but under pseudonyms like “Christian-nationalism”, Christian nation, separation of church and state, etc. If you are wondering how the list of pseudonyms is relative to this topic, well, … it’s complicated.
It was once said that taking the complicated and making it simple is genius, and I certainly do not claim to be a genius, but hopefully, I’m good for not making it complicated. So with the disclaimer out of the way, the comparison begins starting with theonomy.
Theonomy: the state of being theonomous : government by God
Source: Website title:Merriam-Webster, URL:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theonomy
To start with, to be theonomous is to be governed by God. Governed has many definitions but the prevailing norm for it is control or regulation. That means that if you are theonomous, you are controlled or regulated by the precepts of God. In other words, the fear of God guides you in the way of morals and actions. If you live in a “theonomy”, then you live in a culture that as a norm is regulated or controlled by the knowledge of God, and the belief that there is reward and punishment in the afterlife.
If society, or a nation, believes that there is reward and punishment in the afterlife as a consequence of divine judgment, then they, as a norm, also believe that the laws of nature are also sacred and imposed by that same God. Therefore, a Theonomous culture is governed by fear of that same judgment or reward and uses it as the measuring stick for measuring right and wrong and good and evil.
A community, state, or society that possesses an inherent fear of God will invariably believe that is also necessary that its representatives, judges, and leaders should be “God-fearing” as well. The founding fathers taught because they were theonomous, that not electing God-fearing men to seats in government is a denial of God and will lead to the ruin of a Republic. As God-fearing men themselves, and not deists like secularists (and some pastors) would like you to believe, they were adamant that being separated from the favor and protection of God through rebellion to him would bring calamity and tribulation on the nation.
Theonomy and theocracy can exist at the same time, however, the administrative separation of the Church and the state is a Biblical principle that was applied in our Constitution, and again in our Bill of Rights within what was at the time, a theonomous culture.
That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;
https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/thomas-jefferson
The theocrats, however, would like us to think that either theocracy or secularism was the intent of the founders, or that the Constitution was written out of distrust for the American at the time. That however is incorrect, because theocracy is coercion, and they both lead to false religions and chronically corrupt governments.
Theocracy
1 : government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided
2 : a state governed by a theocracy
Source: Website title:Merriam-Webster, URL:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theocracy
And that leads us to the topic of theocracy, or an established religion(s), covert and overt.
Government is a tricky thing, and not because it has so many different definitions, but because it has so many different aspects. It is with government as with all other things that it is made complicated when it actually could be simple. In the case of theocracy, it is the absence of self-government that breeds imposed religion. In other words, if you don’t govern yourself, then someone, or something will. In most cases, the imposed religion comes through an untrusting government that thinks that it is secular and that it is supposed to be secular. The reality is that nothing is secular, and all attempts to do so will fall back into either fear of God or the false religion category. This is called a covert theocracy.
One example of covert theocracy is environmentalism. Like many false religions, they start off as a manifested evil spirit and then transcend into a religion, and then as the congregation grows, it becomes established in the top levels of government of that nation. Because saving the planet (humanism actually) isn’t considered a religion, the government, or at least the perceived government, gets a green light (notice the pun) to force earth worship on the population. It collects taxes, subsidizes green or renewable energy avenues, bails out failures of the green profiteers, creates positions in office for the specific purpose of carbon-neutral goals, and punishes corporations and individuals for not complying with the climate-craze order. And all to no avail, while in the middle there is “more efficient” and “less-wasteful” that would actually get the results that they are looking for, but that doesn’t happen with the subjugated masses under government by donors.
By subjugated, coerced is also implied. And while the zealots of this religion scream “Keep your religion to yourself” as if they are enlightened and free, there is usually nothing in any there skill sets, or will houses, to actually come up with any way or technology to be more efficient or less wasteful. And typically do not know of any ways to either, but the enforcement of the religion, and its spin-offs and parents, continues unbeknownst to the enforcers of it that it is indeed a religion.
Then that takes us to the “overt” theocrats. One of which is the “Christian-nationalism” type that thinks that they are smarter than not the founders, but also God. And one of the others is the “to them, for us” movement, and the two overlap in many ways. Due to the hyper-confusion caused by “to them, for us”, the overlaps are covert, and many of the ways that these theologies are theocratic are also covert, and then overt when it is appropriate for the optics.
With complete regard for the principle of administrative separation, and also the importance of what the founders intended, the Christian nationalist, or the “this is a Christian nation” crowd use the imposition of laws as the conduit for imposing their views on the nation, therefore living up to the definition of theocracy. This is precisely what the founders wanted to prevent because although it looks like rule by the Bible, by contrast, it is rule by interpretation of the Bible. That is why the Constitution explicitly says that the government shall respect no religion as an established religion because it always turns into fear of the ruler and disregard for the Creator.
Next is the “to them, and for us” teaching, which is the term to denote a sect of Christianity that teaches modern interpretations of the Bible that are conveniently and subtly aligned with humanism, modern spirituality, and other woke-ish type insinuations and compromises. These views are imposed in a way that gaslights the non-convoluters that disagree with them. For example, in the “to them, for us” sect, it is taught that it is ok for women to regularly preach sermons and have leadership roles over men in the church. If you disagree with them, they will paint you as a misogynist, old testament zealot, or simply as imposing your opinion of the Word on others. This is where the bottomless pit of intellectualism, which is manipulative convolution passed down from one wannabe to the next, and “extra-biblical” jargon starts to come into the scene, and we all know what happens next. Well, maybe not all, but enough of us.
One of the overlaps between the two is the reckless interpretations of Romans 13, which basically says that if you don’t do good, the rulers will put the sword on you. Simple, right? But instead, it is taught that what God meant was that it would be the Church that is the agent of God’s wrath and not the tyrannical government that comes to power as a judgment for denying God. The Bible repeats the principle of denying God, don’t repent, the tyrannical ruler comes to clean it up several times and no matter how many times, and how many ways you prove it, they stick with their intellectualized interpretations… Even as it plays out in real life before their very eyes…Welcome to subjugation, welcome to their interpretation, welcome to theocracy.
By D.C. Link