I read a lot of stuff by Christian Reconstructionists, mostly because I haven’t yet found any other scholars who grapple as seriously with biblical law from a Christian perspective. It’s a rare biblical scholar who doesn’t either ignore OT law, whitewash OT law, or simply throw up his hands in confusion at it. And yet I have some reservations about some of their scholarship.
Inaugurated in 1973 by Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law, the Christian Reconstructionist movement has made a continual advance because it is the only major Christian movement that speaks in unambiguously positive terms of biblical law, because it subscribes to an optimistic eschatology, because its adherents have written an avalanche of books, and because it paints a picture of a possible world with functional limited government.
The link above points to a worthwhile review by John Frame of the Institutes which makes the following summary of Reconstructionism’s appeal:
There is a biblical pragmatism! Indeed, even those who cannot accept Rushdoony’s view that the Old Testament civil law is normative for contemporary civil government may go away from the Institutes wishing that view were true, or perhaps wanting to employ that law despite its non-normativity. . . . Therefore even if a theological argument is forthcoming to refute Rushdoony’s general thesis about the civil law, we must seriously ask ourselves what better law can be found, what wiser proposals can be made for the complex and difficult business of governing a nation (cf. Deut 4:8).
Until that last question can be answered by some other party, the Rushdoony-North tradition will continue to advance forcefully, and forceful men will take hold of it.
Regardless of whether Reconstructionism will succeed, or whether it will fizzle out, it is at this point an emerging school of thought. While reconstructionists have been making four decades of worthwhile contributions to political science, theology, sociology, education, and economics, they have not yet interacted significantly with textual criticism or with the problems of biblical translation.
Yes, it is true that North penned a fiery little polemic of a book entitled The Hoax of Higher Criticism, though by his own admission he does not read Hebrew or Greek. (I read this in one of his works, though I can’t remember where it was.) Rushdoony also saw fit to fire a shot or two across the bow of modern biblical translation in his twelve-page booklet Translation and Subversion, but he also acknowledges his lack of knowledge: “It is not our concern here to enter into the intricacies of textual criticism, nor are we qualified to do so” (8). If short book-length tirades against modern scholarship are the best theonomists can muster, then there is reason for concern.
This is not to disparage North, Rushdoony, or any other Reconstructionist author. These men, like many others, have done important work without an in-depth knowledge of Greek or Hebrew. They have worked their way through mountains of data to create the framework for an important new social/political/theological movement. But sooner or later, Reconstructionism will have to attract or produce able students of Greek, Hebrew, linguistics, and Ancient Near Eastern history. Until then, it will remain a movement consigned to the margins of academia. It will remain intellectually isolated from conversation with the broader academic world. And their biblical exegesis, no matter how skillful, will be limited by their inability to interact with what we know about the Bible’s broader cultural context, which will create an unfortunate narrowness of thinking.
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Christian Reconstructionism and the Original Languages
I read a lot of stuff by Christian Reconstructionists, mostly because I haven’t yet found any other scholars who grapple as seriously with biblical law from a Christian perspective. It’s a rare biblical scholar who doesn’t either ignore OT law, whitewash OT law, or simply throw up his hands in confusion at it. And yet I have some reservations about some of their scholarship.
Inaugurated in 1973 by Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law, the Christian Reconstructionist movement has made a continual advance because it is the only major Christian movement that speaks in unambiguously positive terms of biblical law, because it subscribes to an optimistic eschatology, because its adherents have written an avalanche of books, and because it paints a picture of a possible world with functional limited government.
The link above points to a worthwhile review by John Frame of the Institutes which makes the following summary of Reconstructionism’s appeal:
Until that last question can be answered by some other party, the Rushdoony-North tradition will continue to advance forcefully, and forceful men will take hold of it.
Regardless of whether Reconstructionism will succeed, or whether it will fizzle out, it is at this point an emerging school of thought. While reconstructionists have been making four decades of worthwhile contributions to political science, theology, sociology, education, and economics, they have not yet interacted significantly with textual criticism or with the problems of biblical translation.
Yes, it is true that North penned a fiery little polemic of a book entitled The Hoax of Higher Criticism, though by his own admission he does not read Hebrew or Greek. (I read this in one of his works, though I can’t remember where it was.) Rushdoony also saw fit to fire a shot or two across the bow of modern biblical translation in his twelve-page booklet Translation and Subversion, but he also acknowledges his lack of knowledge: “It is not our concern here to enter into the intricacies of textual criticism, nor are we qualified to do so” (8). If short book-length tirades against modern scholarship are the best theonomists can muster, then there is reason for concern.
This is not to disparage North, Rushdoony, or any other Reconstructionist author. These men, like many others, have done important work without an in-depth knowledge of Greek or Hebrew. They have worked their way through mountains of data to create the framework for an important new social/political/theological movement. But sooner or later, Reconstructionism will have to attract or produce able students of Greek, Hebrew, linguistics, and Ancient Near Eastern history. Until then, it will remain a movement consigned to the margins of academia. It will remain intellectually isolated from conversation with the broader academic world. And their biblical exegesis, no matter how skillful, will be limited by their inability to interact with what we know about the Bible’s broader cultural context, which will create an unfortunate narrowness of thinking.
Related Posts: