An extremist movement in Christianity, that advocates the modern-day application of Old Testament law in ''reconstructing'' the Kingdom of God (lost with the Fall) on earth. Constructionism is advocated by individuals, groups, organizations, and churches collectively known as the ''Christian Right.''
Constructionism is also known as ''theonomy.'' In includes elements of Dominion- or
Kingdom Now theology
What is Reconstructionism?
Reconstructionism is a theology that arose out of conservative
Presbyterianism (Reformed and Orthodox), which proposes that contemporary
application of the laws of Old Testament Israel, or ''Biblical Law,'' is the basis
for reconstructing society toward the Kingdom of God on earth.
Reconstructionism argues that the
Bible is to be the governing text for all
areas of life--such as government, education, law, and the arts, not merely
''social'' or ''moral'' issues like pornography, homosexuality, and abortion.
Reconstructionists have formulated a ''Biblical world view'' and ''Biblical
principles'' by which to examine contemporary matters. Reconstructionist
theologian David Chilton succinctly describes this view: ''The Christian goal for
the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in
which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus
Christ and the rule of God's law.''
More broadly, Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of
governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under
God's covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of
the family, and wife and children are ''in submission'' to him. In turn, the
husband ''submits'' to Jesus and to God's laws as detailed in the Old Testament.
The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government
exists to implement God's laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law,
the implementation of which is called ''theonomy.''
The Origin of Reconstructionism
The original and defining text of Reconstructionism is Institutes of Biblical
Law, published in 1973 by Rousas John Rushdoony--an 800-page explanation of the
Ten Commandments, the Biblical ''case law'' that derives from them, and their
application today. ''The only true order,'' writes Rushdoony, ''is founded on
Biblical Law.
All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents
an anti-Christian religion.'' In brief, he continues, ''Every law-order is a state
of war against the enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare.''
Gary North, Rushdoony's son-in-law, wrote an appendix to Institutes on the
subject of ''Christian economics.'' It is a polemic which serves as a model for
the application of ''Biblical Principles.''
Rushdoony and a younger theologian, Rev.
Greg Bahnsen, were both students of
Cornelius Van Til, a Princeton University theologian. Although Van Til himself
never became a Reconstructionist, Reconstructionists claim him as the father of
their movement. According to Gary North, Van Til argued that ''There is no
philosophical strategy that has ever worked, except this one; to challenge the
lost in terms of the revelation of God in His Bible. . .by what standard can man
know anything truly? By the Bible, and only by the Bible.'' This idea that the
correct and only way to view reality is through the lens of a Biblical world
view is known as presuppositionalism. According to Gary North, Van Til stopped
short of proposing what a Biblical society might look like or how to get there.
That is where Reconstructionism begins. While Van Til states that man is not
autonomous and that all rationality is inseparable from faith in God and the
Bible, the Reconstructionists go further and set a course of world conquest or
''dominion,'' claiming a Biblically prophesied ''inevitable victory.''
Reconstructionists also believe that ''the Christians'' are the ''new chosen
people of God,'' commanded to do what ''Adam in Eden and Israel in Canaan failed
to do. . .create the society that God requires.'' Further, Jews, once the ''chosen
people,'' failed to live up to God's covenant and therefore are no longer God's
chosen. Christians, of the correct sort, now are.
Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law consciously echoes a major work of the
Protestant Reformation, John Calvin's
Institutes of the Christian Religion
. In
fact, Reconstructionists see themselves as the theological and political heirs
of Calvin. The theocracy Calvin created in Geneva, Switzerland in the 1500s is
one of the political models Reconstructionists look to, along with Old Testament
Israel and the Calvinist Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Capital Punishment
Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical ''warfare'' is the
centrality of
capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably
Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of
crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and
murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith),
heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, ''sodomy or homosexuality,''
incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case
of women, ''unchastity before marriage.''
According to Gary North, women who have abortions should be publicly
executed, ''along with those who advised them to abort their children.'' Rushdoony
concludes: ''God's government prevails, and His alternatives are clear-cut:
either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against
them.'' Reconstructionists insist that ''the death penalty is the maximum, not
necessarily the mandatory penalty.'' However, such judgments may depend less on
Biblical Principles than on which faction gains power in the theocratic
republic. The potential for bloodthirsty episodes on the order of the Salem
witchcraft trials or the Spanish Inquisition is inadvertently revealed by
Reconstructionist theologian Rev. Ray Sutton, who claims that the Reconstructed
Biblical theocracies would be ''happy'' places, to which people would flock
because ''capital punishment is one of the best evangelistic tools of a society.''
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