Theonomy (or, more broadly Christian Reconstructionism) is one of the tollbooths through which pilgrims from traveling from Münster to Geneva, as it were, often seem to pass. I encountered it almost as soon as I came into contact with the Reformed churches. Because I was thinking of studying for the ministry I attended a regional gathering of pastors and elders somewhere in South Dakota. One of the ministers in the chow line ahead of us would not eat pork. “Why not?” I asked innocently. “He’s a theonomist” came the reply. “What’s that?” and the rest is history. Strictly defined theonomy, which became most visible as a movement with the publication of Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press) in 1977. In fact, the movement pre-dated that volume but its rise to visibility coincided with the end of the Carter Administration and the first Reagan Administration. Indeed, it was during the first Reagan Administration that Bill Moyers was on Public Television warning us all breathlessly about the dire threat to the Republic posed by theonomy and the allied Christian Reconstruction movement. The latter is represented by R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, 3 vols. (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982). See the excellent history and analysis of the movement in Michael J. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). If McVicar is correct, and he argues his case well, Rushdoony and company had more influence in certain quarters of right-leaning and Libertarian political and cultural leaders than most of us knew.

In brief, theonomy teaches “the abiding validity” of the Old Testament (hereafter, OT) civil law “in exhaustive detail.” The quotations are drawn from Bahnsen’s work. This was a novel view in the history of Reformed theology. It denied the express teaching of the Westminster Confession, itself the product of Constantianism or better Justinianism, the establishment of the Christian church as the state church of the Christianized Roman empire. The Westminster Divines and their sixteenth-century predecessors were theocrats and establishmentarians, i.e., they believed in the state church—they could not imagine a stable society without a state church since there had not been any such thing for 1,000 years—and they assumed that God had ordained the civil magistrate not only to enforce the 2nd table of the moral law (e.g., honor your parents, do not steal, do not lie, do not murder, do not commit adultery) but also the 1st table of the law (love the Lord your God with all your faculties). They were certain that it was the job of the civil magistrate to enforce religious orthodoxy and to punish religious heterodoxy. They were wrong but we must understand that despite their theocratic-Justinianist convictions, they explicitly denied theonomy when they said: “To [OT 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” (emphasis added). Theonomy flatly denies that the civil laws have expired and they quite misunderstand “general equity.” Now, theonomy may be correct (I doubt most heartily that it is) but it is most certainly incompatible with the Westminster Confession of Faith as understood by the Westminster Divines themselves, as received by the Scottish General Assembly shortly thereafter, and most certainly as received by the American Presbyterian churches in the 18th century and since.

That theonomy has been found plausible both by long-time Presbyterians and by evangelicals moving from Münster to Geneva (or Edinburgh, as it happens) as a system of ethics tells us how little the Westminster Confession or classic Reformed theology informs both groups. We can forgive the Münsterite for not allowing the WCF to inform his theology but how can we overlook the Presbyterian who putatively affirms the confession?

Christian Reconstructionism is a movement that begins with a relatively modern version of the postmillenial eschatology, which looks forward to a glorious earthly reign of Christ on the earth brought about mostly through Christian influence and partly, in the Reconstructionist version, through cultural-political action. It is the first half of this equation that explains the attraction among Christian Reconstructionists to the self-described Federal Vision theology. Before the advent of millennial glory (the 1,o00 years of Revelation 20 is taken figuratively), however, the Reconstructionists anticipate a social collapse out of which will come a new, society reconstructed along Christian lines as understood by Rushdoony, Gary North, Gary DeMar, Doug Wilson, James Jordan, Andrew Sandlin, Mark Horne, Doug Jones, Steve Schlissel et al. Since I first encountered theonomy in 1980 I have met one theonomist who was not a postmillennialist but most of them tend to it. Reconstructionism, however, is inherently and necessarily eschatological and that eschatology is the modern version of postmillennialism. Modern, because prior to the early 20th century, there were mainly two eschatological systems held by the Reformed: the chilliast view, which looked forward to an earthly, literal 1,000 year reign of Christ on the earth and “postmillennial,” which held that the 1,000 years of Revelation 20 is figurative. In the early 20th century Reformed writers began distinguishing explicitly between “Amillennialism” and “Postmillennialism.” The principal difference between them being whether we ought to expect some sort of earthly glory age as part of the inter-adventual period. The Amillennialists deny—though there are those who describe themselves as “optimistic amills” who expect a great degree of social transformation by the gospel (but not through political action) such that it can be difficult to distinguish them formally from the “postmills.”

Usually, when we think of theonomy and Christian Reconstruction we are thinking about what I called in Recovering the Reformed Confession a species of the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty” or QIRC. The theonomist is searching for a sort of ethical precision or certainty that is not possible or even desirable for the Christian in the period between the ascension and return of Christ. Luther and Calvin would call it a theology of glory. We need not speculate about the general Reformed opinion about either theonomy or Christian Reconstruction. Both views were found among some of the early Anabaptists, who, like the modern Christian Reconstructionists, had an over-realized eschatology. They too were looking for more heavenly glory on this earth than they should. Some of them argued for the civil imposition of the Mosaic civil laws. In the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), addressing several of the errors of the Anabaptists (“the sects”) the Swiss Reformed confessed:

We further condemn Jewish dreams that there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgment, and that the pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms of the earth. For evangelical truth in Matt., chs. 24 and 25, and Luke, ch. 18, and apostolic teaching in II Thess., ch. 2, and II Tim., chs. 3 and 4, present something quite different.

This is a categorical rejection of the vision of Christian Reconstructionism.

The other theory undergirding theonomy and Christian Reconstruction is the correlation of the OT Israelite state to the modern civil state. Where the Monopoly says, “do not pass go, do not collect $200,” the theonomists, Reconstructionists (along with and other transformationalists) frequently succumb to the temptation to talk about the post-canonical civil magistrate as if he is King David and the citizens of the USA are OT Israelites. One can see the attraction of this move. It cuts out the messy New Testament middle-man. Indeed, the NT presents an almost insuperable obstacle for both movements since it shows no interest in social transformation or in an eschatology of earthly glory before Christ’s return or in the Christian domination of politics (or any other sphere of life) but if we omit the NT we can use the theocratic language of OT to support a theology of earthly glory and social transformation before the return of Christ.

Obviously there are grave difficulties with this whole approach and one of them, as we have been noting, is that it is not just the “Christian Right” (Rushdoony et al) who can play this game. So can the “Christian Left.”

Dispensationalism

Christian Reconstructionism (including theonomy) and Marxism are both powered by a vision of the future. Too often neither are always encumbered by the facts or by the particulars of history. This makes them both attractive to another movement also powered by eschatology (a vision of the future): American evangelical theology, piety, and practice. Most American evangelicals are premillennialists of some kind. There are essentially two kinds of premillennialists: historic and Dispensational. Historic premillennialism is also known as “chiliasm,” the belief that in Revelation 20 the Lord promised to return to set up an earthly 1,000 year kingdom on the earth which would fulfill the Old Testament promises about a time of earthly blessedness and prosperity. The word chiliasm is drawn from the Greek for 1,000 (χῑλιάς). Some of the early fathers were chiliasts and some were what Charles Hill calls “orthodox non-chiliasts.” For more on this see Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2001). Hill successfully refuted the older notion advanced by Harnack et al that all the orthodox fathers were chiliasts.

Dispensational premillennialism adds some wrinkles, e.g., the secret rapture and variations as to how to relate that rapture to the coming tribulation (in their scheme). Dispensationalism is also built on a “two-people” reading of redemptive history, which distinguishes it from historic premillennialism and from the broad sweep of Christian teaching generally. It is one thing (an error, in my view) to propose a future earthly golden age but it is quite another to teach that there are two peoples, an earthly and a heavenly people, that the real focus of redemptive history is an earthly Jewish kingdom, that the temple will be re-built in Jerusalem, and that our Savior, the Lamb of God, will sit on a throne in that temple and watch a renewed Levitical priesthood offer ritual, memorial sacrifices for 1,000 years.

The Reformed response to Dispsensationalism has been to remind us all that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29; 1:36; Rev 5:6; 7:17; 14:10; 15:3; 19:9; 22:1–3). He is the temple (John 2:19). He is our only high priest (Heb 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:11–17). His sacrifice on the cross was the final sacrifice. There can be no more. On this basis Reformed confessing Christians object both to the Romanist doctrine of ongoing memorial (propitiatory) sacrifices and the Dispensational doctrine of the restoration of Levitical sacrifices.

Still, it is clear that the Dispensational, chiliast, and Christian Reconstructionist vision of the future is the energy behind these movements. My experience suggests that most Dispensational laity do not know what their movement teaches about the renewed sacrificial ministry during the millennium. They typically are told that Dispensationalism reads the Bible “literally, where possible” and that “the liberals” do not. Despite the primar facie implausibility of that program as applied to a book as obviously and intentionally symbolic as the Revelation—a fact which they recognize, both they are historic premillennialists are prepared to accept the notion that, in the same chapter in which we read about a dragon, which they take symbolically, an abyss, an a seal, and thrones all of which seem evidently symbolic, and in the passage just before chapter 20 (19:17–21) there are a series of symbols, that the 1,000 years is nevertheless to be taken to refer to a literal 1,000 years upon the earth.

Such is the power of a vision of future earthly glory. This shared vision of future earthly glory helps to explain the relatively easy transition made by so many former premillennialists to Christian Reconstructionism (and to theonomy). They have traded in one vision of future earthly glory for another. Some of the details are different but there are strong connections between the way both groups read the Bible. Some Dispensational groups divide the New Testament in remarkable and even in bizarre ways. E.g., some Dispensationalists unashamedly announce that the teaching of our Lord in the gospels is “not for today” (i.e., not for the so-called “church age”). Others, following the Marcionites, segregate the Pauline epistles from the canon on the same basis. Some theonomists and Christian Reconstructionists do similar things. I recall Gary North arguing in Dominion and Common Grace (1987) that we might have to turn the other cheek and walk and extra mile now but when Christians achieve cultural/political hegemony, there will be none of that. Bahnsen’s interpretation of the Hebrews 7:11–14 was remarkably similar to that of the Dispensationalist Robert P. Lightner. In these cases the eschatological a priori runs the exegetical show. So, premillennialists need not walk very far to trade in one vision of future earthly glory for another.

All this serves to explain the remarkably swift embrace by evangelicals of mediating versions of Marxism. Like chiliasm and postmillennialism, the great attraction of Marxism is not so much its explanation of history as its vision of the future. To be sure, as an advocate of an organic, developmental reading of history (nothing in history just drops out of the sky) I can see the attraction of the Hegelian dialectic. Can can see how this movement clashed with that and things progressed from their. Yet, the notion that history is the story of God’s self-realization is not history but theology, eschatology. The same is true for the materialized version of Hegel. Again, one can see the attraction of the notion that there are evil bourgeois capitalists and a (mostly) good proletariat, a down-trodden, oppressed working class victimized by a sort of Capitalist conspiracy. In essence it is a wonderfully simple story of bad guy and good guys. Spoiler alert: according to Marx the good guys win but middle class folk had better side with the proletariat or they will regret it in the eschaton. Hence the nearly constant online “consciousness raising.” The swift and (to me) unexpected influence of Marxist thought in prosperous post-cold War, post-Berlin Wall America explains the triumph of “victimization.” If the Proletariat are the winners, and the Proletariat are essentially victims of a capitalist conspiracy (hence most bad guys in most films are evil corporate titans), then the victim is really the hero. In a few short years we have moved from cultural heroes (e.g., Gary Cooper in High Noon [1952], to the anti-hero (e.g., Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde [1967]), to the victim-hero. In how many cultural narratives today, in multiple media, are victims portrayed as the true heroes?

When a vision of the future dominates the story historical details tend to get trampled. This is why Marxists are able to say with a straight face,” yes, Marx-inspired Communists murdered somewhere north of 100 million people in the 20th century but give us another chance. We promise we will get it right next time.” Who would accept such an offer?

A future-dominated approach to biblical hermeneutics can also lead to significant problems, namely, to passing over some important details.

The Problems of A Future-Dominated Hermeneutic

So far we have been focusing on the kinds of continuity between the Mosaic theocracy and the post-canonical nation-state claimed by the theonomists and the Christian Reconstruction movement more broadly. There is another way, however, of misconstruing the degree and kind of continuity that exists between the Mosaic theocracy as it existed from Moses until the crucifixion of Christ and the post-canonical civil magistrate. This happened in history with the gradual creation of what came to be known as Christendom under the establishment of the church and the state enforcement of religious orthodoxy.

Christendom: Our Default Mode

In 313 the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan legalizing Christianity. It was not immediately adopted as the state religion. The decree granted to Christians and other religions, among other things, “full authority to observe that religion which each preferred…”. As a result no one was to be “denied opportunity to give his heart to the observance of the Christian religion.” Those who wished could “observe the Christian religion…freely and openly, without molestation.” Remember, in the middle of the previous century Christians had suffered grievous government-sponsored persecutions. They were put to death merely for refusing to renounce Christ and for refusing to say,”Caesar is Lord,” by which the Romans meant to make the Christians recognize Caesar as a deity and thus required them to pour out of drink offering to the gods. Though Christianity was legalized, the decree was pluralist. It intended that “we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion.” Property belonging to Christians that had been confiscated was returned to them. Churches that had been confiscated were returned to the Christians.¹

Under the Emperors Gratian (d. 383) and Theodosius I (d. 395) Christianity was gradually recognized first as the de facto state religion under Gratian and de iure under Theodosius, who issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. By the death of Justinian I (565) the Christian church was well established as the state church of the empire.

The transition through the 4th century from a marginal, illegal religion to first a legal religion (religio licta) and then to the state-enforced church whereby heresy was not only forbidden but suppressed and then punishable brought about significant changes for the life and practice of the church. In this period ministers began to imitate the dress and customs of Roman civil officials. Pressure grew for the practice of worship to change. The Romans were familiar with military hymns and hymns honoring the emperor and some churches began to sing them, though not without controversy.

Through the course of the middle ages following Justinian and Gregory I (d. 604), the church gradually began to re-create not only the Mosaic civil order with a state church enforced by civil authority but also the religion of the Mosaic period. Popular elaborations on the sacraments (sacramentals) came, over time to be regarded as sacraments. Gradually pastors became priests. The stage was set in the 9th century the monk Radbertus had theorized about what we now know as transubstantiation, the alleged transformation, at consecration, of the bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ.

So, there is a long history in the East and the West of drawing rather straight lines from the Old Testament theocracy to the post-canonical state, of treating the civil magistrate as though he were King David. We see this pattern even in the Protestants who theorized about the right of resistance to tyrants. In his On the Right of Magistrates (1572), Theodore Beza (d. 1605), Calvin’s successor in Geneva, argued both for a separation between church and state (elaborating on Calvin’s distinction argued in his Institutes 4.20) while he treated the magistrate as though he were King David and France was the Israel of God. We see the same sort of paradox in the anonymously written The Vindication Against Tyrants (1579).

Christendom was the default in the West and East for a very long time. Since the ascension of our Lord there were roughly 300 years in which Christianity was not a state religion before Christendom and the American experiment is only 242 years old this summer. The period of time in which Christianity was the state religion somewhere (which it remains nominally in several places) is much greater than the period of time in which it has not been the state-enforced religion. Because of history, Christendom has become our default mode.

The Theocracy of Compassion

In light of our long history of drawing direct connections between the Israelite state and her laws and our state and laws, it is not surprising that those who want to see Christians offering relief to the poor and suffering should fall into the default mode. We see evidence of this default mode in sermons and articles appealing, e.g., to the poverty legislation in Deuteronomy 15 where Scripture says:

If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that Yahweh your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to Yahweh against you, and you be guilty of sin. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this Yahweh your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land (Deut 15:7–11; revised from the ESV).

What should Christians do with this sort of legislation and with the Jubilee legislation? Should we argue that the state ought to enforce a Jubilee? Consider a farmer outside of Holdredge, Nebraska. His grandfather bought the land they farm or perhaps their family came to the land via a land grant by the Federal government as part of a program to induce farmers to work the land. To whom does the land revert? To the Federal Government? Just to ask the question begins to signal the difficulties of drawing a straight line between the Mosaic poverty laws and the post-canonical state.

There are greater problems. The poverty legislation in Scripture was never intended to be applied to any other civil society. It was intended for national Israel, for the theocracy. Surely we can learn principles (“the general equity thereof”) from those laws but to whom does this legislation actually apply? The USA is not the new national, theocratic people. The USA is another in a line of nations and states that has arisen, in the providence of God, between the ascension and the return of Christ. The USA has no special place in redemptive history. Israel’s role in redemptive history was to point to and produce the line of the Savior, Jesus. That is done. Praise God!

The poverty legislation of Deuteronomy 15 does have an application: to the visible church. Notice how Paul handles these sorts of questions:

The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.  As it is written,

“He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor;

his righteousness endures forever” (Ps. 112:9)

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! (2 Cor 9:6–15; ESV).

When Paul thinks of poverty relief, he thinks of the obligation of Christians, in the visible church, to relieve the suffering of other Christians, those professing the name of Christ, those who have been baptized, those in the visible church. The congregation in Corinth was to relieve the physical suffering of other Christians. There is nothing in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence about a general, social poverty relief program.

We see the same pattern in James 2, where he prosecutes the members of the Jerusalem congregation for their failure to meet basic Christian obligations to one another. First he criticized them for marginalizing the poor in their congregations and showing favoritism to the wealthy. “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors (James 2:8–9; ESV).

He appeals to the church’s responsibility to care for her members, to see that they are fed and clothed, as the chief example of the fruit and evidence of true faith. How does he know that many of them, though they profess faith, lack true faith? Because they do show love to one another in practical ways:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead (James 2:14–17; ESV).

The New Testament application of Deuteronomy 15 is in the visible church. The Apostles did not draw a line from Old Testament Israel to Roman society. James did not prosecute the church for failing to feed the pagan Romans but for failing to feed and clothe the members of the visible Christ-confessing covenant community—the church.

There are really two types of theonomy: right-wing theonomy and left-wing theonomy, Just as the right-wing theonomist may not draw a straight line to the post-canonical state from the judicial laws of the Old Testament in order to determine how crimes ought to be punished neither can the left wing theonomist determine what the state must do or exactly which policy a Christian must support out of the poverty legislation in the Old Testament. We have no precedent in the New Testament for ecclesiastical social action. It simply does not exist.

This means that Christians who want stricter punishments upon rebellious teen-agers or tighter swimming pool regulations must argue from facts, logic, and the moral law as known to all in nature. We may argee freely, accounting for the progress in redemptive history and revelation, from the Old Testament as to how members of the church ought to treat one another but to expand that program beyond the church lacks the authority of the Scriptures as understood in the New Testament.

Conclusions

Christian Reconstructionism (including theonomy) and Marxism are both powered by a vision of the future. Too often neither are always encumbered by the facts or by the particulars of history. This makes them both attractive to another movement also powered by eschatology (a vision of the future): American evangelical theology, piety, and practice. Most American evangelicals are premillennialists of some kind. There are essentially two kinds of premillennialists: historic and Dispensational. Historic premillennialism is also known as “chiliasm,” the belief that in Revelation 20 the Lord promised to return to set up an earthly 1,000 year kingdom on the earth which would fulfill the Old Testament promises about a time of earthly blessedness and prosperity. The word chiliasm is drawn from the Greek for 1,000 (χῑλιάς). Some of the early fathers were chiliasts and some were what Charles Hill calls “orthodox non-chiliasts.” For more on this see Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2001). Hill successfully refuted the older notion advanced by Harnack et al that all the orthodox fathers were chiliasts.

Dispensational premillennialism adds some wrinkles, e.g., the secret rapture and variations as to how to relate that rapture to the coming tribulation (in their scheme). Dispensationalism is also built on a “two-people” reading of redemptive history, which distinguishes it from historic premillennialism and from the broad sweep of Christian teaching generally. It is one thing (an error, in my view) to propose a future earthly golden age but it is quite another to teach that there are two peoples, an earthly and a heavenly people, that the real focus of redemptive history is an earthly Jewish kingdom, that the temple will be re-built in Jerusalem, and that our Savior, the Lamb of God, will sit on a throne in that temple and watch a renewed Levitical priesthood offer ritual, memorial sacrifices for 1,000 years.

The Reformed response to Dispsensationalism has been to remind us all that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29; 1:36; Rev 5:6; 7:17; 14:10; 15:3; 19:9; 22:1–3). He is the temple (John 2:19). He is our only high priest (Heb 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:11–17). His sacrifice on the cross was the final sacrifice. There can be no more. On this basis Reformed confessing Christians object both to the Romanist doctrine of ongoing memorial (propitiatory) sacrifices and the Dispensational doctrine of the restoration of Levitical sacrifices.

Still, it is clear that the Dispensational, chiliast, and Christian Reconstructionist vision of the future is the energy behind these movements. My experience suggests that most Dispensational laity do not know what their movement teaches about the renewed sacrificial ministry during the millennium. They typically are told that Dispensationalism reads the Bible “literally, where possible” and that “the liberals” do not. Despite the primar facie implausibility of that program as applied to a book as obviously and intentionally symbolic as the Revelation—a fact which they recognize, both they are historic premillennialists are prepared to accept the notion that, in the same chapter in which we read about a dragon, which they take symbolically, an abyss, an a seal, and thrones all of which seem evidently symbolic, and in the passage just before chapter 20 (19:17–21) there are a series of symbols, that the 1,000 years is nevertheless to be taken to refer to a literal 1,000 years upon the earth.

Such is the power of a vision of future earthly glory. This shared vision of future earthly glory helps to explain the relatively easy transition made by so many former premillennialists to Christian Reconstructionism (and to theonomy). They have traded in one vision of future earthly glory for another. Some of the details are different but there are strong connections between the way both groups read the Bible. Some Dispensational groups divide the New Testament in remarkable and even in bizarre ways. E.g., some Dispensationalists unashamedly announce that the teaching of our Lord in the gospels is “not for today” (i.e., not for the so-called “church age”). Others, following the Marcionites, segregate the Pauline epistles from the canon on the same basis. Some theonomists and Christian Reconstructionists do similar things. I recall Gary North arguing in Dominion and Common Grace (1987) that we might have to turn the other cheek and walk and extra mile now but when Christians achieve cultural/political hegemony, there will be none of that. Bahnsen’s interpretation of the Hebrews 7:11–14 was remarkably similar to that of the Dispensationalist Robert P. Lightner. In these cases the eschatological a priori runs the exegetical show. So, premillennialists need not walk very far to trade in one vision of future earthly glory for another.

All this serves to explain the remarkably swift embrace by evangelicals of mediating versions of Marxism. Like chiliasm and postmillennialism, the great attraction of Marxism is not so much its explanation of history as its vision of the future. To be sure, as an advocate of an organic, developmental reading of history (nothing in history just drops out of the sky) I can see the attraction of the Hegelian dialectic. Can can see how this movement clashed with that and things progressed from their. Yet, the notion that history is the story of God’s self-realization is not history but theology, eschatology. The same is true for the materialized version of Hegel. Again, one can see the attraction of the notion that there are evil bourgeois capitalists and a (mostly) good proletariat, a down-trodden, oppressed working class victimized by a sort of Capitalist conspiracy. In essence it is a wonderfully simple story of bad guy and good guys. Spoiler alert: according to Marx the good guys win but middle class folk had better side with the proletariat or they will regret it in the eschaton. Hence the nearly constant online “consciousness raising.” The swift and (to me) unexpected influence of Marxist thought in prosperous post-cold War, post-Berlin Wall America explains the triumph of “victimization.” If the Proletariat are the winners, and the Proletariat are essentially victims of a capitalist conspiracy (hence most bad guys in most films are evil corporate titans), then the victim is really the hero. In a few short years we have moved from cultural heroes (e.g., Gary Cooper in High Noon [1952], to the anti-hero (e.g., Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde [1967]), to the victim-hero. In how many cultural narratives today, in multiple media, are victims portrayed as the true heroes?

When a vision of the future dominates the story historical details tend to get trampled. This is why Marxists are able to say with a straight face,” yes, Marx-inspired Communists murdered somewhere north of 100 million people in the 20th century but give us another chance. We promise we will get it right next time.” Who would accept such an offer?

NOTES

1. Lactantius, De Mort. Pers., ch. 48. opera, ed. 0. F. Fritzsche, II, p 288 sq. (Bibl Patr. Ecc. Lat. XI). Translated in University of Pennsylvania. Dept. of History: Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press [1897?-1907?]), Vol
4:, 1, pp. 28-30.

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