Gary North and Gary DeMar in the Christian Reconstruction Movement take social justice to another level. They teach that the church should practice social justice to reconstruct society in order to bring in the kingdom.
The author, in this section, will demonstrate that Christian Reconstructionists misinterpret social justice because the advocates misinterpret the Cultural Mandate, the Law of Moses, and Millennial promises.
Gary North writes that the church should provide, “health care, education, welfare, social security, and many other social needs.”[1] He explains how this social reform can happen:
Every revolution needs slogans. Here is mine: politics fourth.
1. First, comes personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
2. Second, comes Church renewal. There can be no successful reformation of society without first beginning a reformation of the Church.
3. Third, comes family renewal. This involves pulling your children out of public schools.
4. Fourth, comes local politics. At a minimum, this would involve public protests against abortion. From there we go to state and national politics.[2]
Therefore, all Christians who have not pulled their children out of public schools or protested at abortion clinics are not, according to North, fulfilling God’s mission.
The Theonomy
Charles Ryrie calls this movement theonomy[3] and defines theonomy as the state of being governed by God.[4] This governance by God is through the Law of Moses. This social reform of society based on Genesis 1:28 is called the Cultural Mandate. Interpreting the Cultural or Creation Mandate as operative today for the church, however, is incorrect.
The Cultural Mandate
All people including individual believers keep the Cultural Mandate
God gave Adam dominion over all creation before the Fall into sin according to Genesis 1:28 when God said, “Subdue it and have dominion over…. the earth.” This is why Christian Reconstruction is also called Dominion Theology.[5] Scott Aniol writes “Traditional dispensationalists recognize that God’s first expression of the relationship between humans and creation was in the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26-28.”[6] Rolland McCune adds, “The prefill ‘dominion mandate’ of Gen 1:28 .... is given to all men as human beings, not only to men as believers or covenant keepers; i.e., all people are to ‘subdue the earth for the benefit of mankind to the glory of God.”[7]
The church keeps the Great Commission
Equally true is that the mandate for the church is not the cultural mandate but the Great Commission. Michael Vlach confirms this statement: “The church’s primary responsibility in this age is gospel proclamation and making disciples. Members of the church are destined to reign over a restored earth when Jesus returns. But in this age before Jesus comes again, the church’s mission is not cultural or societal transformation.”[8]
What about the modern slavery issue in light of Christian Reconstructionism? What is the church’s responsibility for this social injustice? There are more slaves today with human and sex trafficking than before the Civil War. Free the Slaves[9] reports there are 50 million slaves today who are forced to work without pay. In April 2014, it was reported that forty people had been arrested for human trafficking in North Carolina, including thirty in Winston-Salem.[10] Tragically, children and young people are bought or kidnapped for prostitution.
Homer Kent writes that slavery in the Roman Empire could be considerably harsher than under the Mosaic Law. However, one must not generalize from the cases of outrageous abuse which have been publicized, and erroneously suppose that such were typical of first-century practice…. The difference between an average urban slave and a poor freeman was more a matter of principle than of practice…. Such slaves functioned as clerks, accountants, doctors, nurses, teachers, advisors, musicians, and artists. For various reasons, therefore, a poor freeman might sell himself into slavery in order to better his status.[11]
How did the apostle Paul respond to the slavery issue in the Roman Empire?
He advised slaves and their masters how to treat each other as Christians. Why did Paul not raise the inhumane treatment of slaves who were equally made in the image of God?
Dispensationalists contend that the church's primary responsibility is the great commission and not social involvement. Advocates of traditional dispensationalism do not mean that individual Christians within the church do not have social responsibilities. Scott Aniol writes: “While the church as church has no social responsibility outside of itself, this does not mean that Christians must refrain from involvement in cultural spheres. According to Rolland McCune, ‘a church saint lives in two separate spheres, the church and the state,’ and as such, individual Christians are ‘dual citizens’ who can and should engage in politics, arts, education, law enforcement, science, and other cultural activities. However, ‘this is in their capacity as citizens of earth,’ not as ‘the church.’”[12]
Paul writes that the church’s responsibility for slavery was different from the individual believer’s responsibility for slavery.
Paul writing to the church at Colossae and then to the individual, Philemon in the church at Colossae shows Paul’s two responsibilities concerning slavery.
His first view related to the church’s role which was to fulfill the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:19-20. The church’s ministry is spiritual, not social. To attempt to overthrow the embedded institution of slavery in the Roman Empire would be suicide for the church. Spartacus in 70 BC, led a slave revolt against the Roman Empire and thousands of slaves were massacred. Therefore, Paul gave the household codes in Colossians 3:22-4:1 which gave instructions on how to live in a pagan, corrupt culture. Paul instructed the church at Colossae as to how slaves were to behave (Col 3:22-25) and how slave masters (Col 4:1) were to behave. He does not try to get the church at Colossae to rid society of this social injustice.
Paul’s second view concerned individual Christians who had more liberty. Paul’s second view was that individual believers are citizens of both heaven and earth. They have responsibilities in both countries. This is why Paul in writing to the individual believer, Philemon, who was in the church at Colossae, strongly advised him to “do more” than Paul was insinuating, in other words, it seems Paul is encouraging Philemon to free Onesimus from slavery.
What the Old Testament and Paul instructed sowed the seeds that undid slavery. The church at Colossae was not to reconstruct society through social activism but rather to focus on the Great Commission of making disciples through winning souls, baptizing them, and teaching them God’s Word. Part of making disciples and teaching to observe God’s Word would be that individual citizens should seek to overthrow slavery by winning people to Christ as Paul had done with Philemon and then instructing them to free their slaves.
Are Christians against human and sex trafficking? Absolutely! While abolishing human and sex trafficking is not the mission of the church, Christians still can get involved in this social justice issue in order to do the mission of the church which in part is to witness and win the lost to Christ. The mission, however, is not the reconstruction of society by the abolition of slavery.
The Law of Moses
How does The Christian Reconstruction Movement propose reconstructing society? By placing our nation under the Law of Moses. Not just the Moral Law but under also the Civil Law of Moses with capital punishment for a multitude of sins. Reconstructionists espouse “the continuing validity and applicability of the whole law of God including the Mosaic case laws as the standard by which individuals, families, and civil governments should conduct their affairs.”[13]
This use of the law, according to Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce Demarest in their Integrative Theology[14], means capital punishment for a rebellious son (Deut 21:18-21), witchcraft (Ex 22:18), bestiality (Ex 22:19), adultery (Lev 20:10), homosexuality (Lev 20:13), and blasphemy (Lev 23:16).[15] According to the Christian Reconstruction Movement, the Law is a means of sanctification.[16]
Paul wrote clearly in Romans 6:14 that believers are not under the Law. North and DeMar say Romans 6:14 prohibits the law as a means of salvation.[17] Paul’s intention in making this statement in Romans 6:14 is not salvation but sanctification. Paul says earlier in Romans 6 to Christians, “Yield not to sin.” The context is sanctification.
In Galatians, Paul argues that the Law is not a means of justification (Galatians 3, 4) nor a means of sanctification (Galatians 5, 6). The means of sanctification according to Paul is yielding to the Holy Spirit, not placing yourself under the law (Galatians 5:16-23). Under the law in the Old Testament adulterers were stoned, but in this church age according to 1 Corinthians 5, adulterers are church disciplined not stoned.
Millennial Promises
The Christian Reconstruction Movement is post-millennial in believing that the church will bring in the kingdom not only through the gospel but through social and political activism.[18] The Biblical teaching is that Christ brings in His pre-millennial kingdom according to Revelation’s chronological outline: the Second Coming to Earth in Revelation 19 and the 1000-year millennial reign in Revelation 20 and the New Heaven in Revelation 21, 22.
The Christian Reconstruction Movement is joined by Prosperity Gospel advocates in believing that the kingdom is now with the prosperity promises of the millennium being presently experienced.[19] “Kingdom Now” is the Prosperity Gospel wing of the Christian Reconstruction Movement. A proof text referenced by Gary North and Gary DeMar is Isaiah 65:17-25. These millennial promises of prosperity include long life as before the flood. According to Christian Reconstruction, how can this longevity of life become a present reality? The reconstruction of society will include better medicine, health care, and technology so that these millennial prosperity promises come to pass now. In other words, the church through social activism will produce millennial prosperity.
Wayne Grudem, referring to passages like Isaiah 65, correctly teaches that these promises in Isaiah will be fulfilled in the future millennium because they are not being fulfilled today nor will they be fulfilled in eternity:
Several Old Testament passages seem to fit neither in the present age nor in the eternal state. These passages indicate some future stage in the history of redemption which is far greater than the present church age but which still does not see the removal of all sin and rebellion and death from the earth.[20]
Christian Reconstructionism is a misinterpretation of social justice because of a misinterpretation of the Cultural Mandate, the Law of Moses, and Millennial promises. When Christ returns as King of kings and Lord of lords in Revelation 19, He will establish the millennium and partially lift the curse and bring in the prosperity prophesied by Isaiah. Christ will get the glory and we will join the great voices of heaven proclaiming, “The Kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, who sat before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, we give you thanks, O Lord God Almighty, who is and was and are to come; because you have taken to yourself your great power, and have reigned” (Rev 11:15-17).
[1] Gary North and Gary DeMar, Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn’t (Tyler, Tex: Inst for Christian Economics, 1991), 126.
[2] Ibid., 124, 125.
[3] Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth, New Edition edition (Chicago, Ill: Moody Publishers, 1999), 231.
[4] Ibid., 515.
[5] North and DeMar, Christian Reconstruction, 65.
[6] Scott Aniol, “Polishing Brass on a Sinking Ship: Toward a Traditional Dispensationalist Philosophy of the Church and Cultural Engagement,” The Journal of Ministry & Theology, vol. 24, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 18.
[7] Rolland McCune, Promise Unfulfilled: The Failed Strategy of Modern Evangelicalism Greenville, SC: Ambassador-Emerald International, 2004, 261.
[8] Michael Vlach, Michael. He Will Reign Forever: A Biblical Theology of the Kingdom of God. Lampion House Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition. Location 9000.
[9] “Free the Slaves,” accessed November 28, 2016, http://www.freetheslaves.net
[10] “40 People Arrested across NC for Human Trafficking | myfox8.com,” accessed November 9, 2015, http://myfox8.com/2014/04/17/30-people-arrested-in-winston-salem-for-human-trafficking/.
[11] Homer A. Kent, Treasures of Wisdom: Studies in Colossians and Philemon (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Pub Group, 1978), 156, 157.
[12] Rolland McCune, A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity, vol. 1 [Allen Park: Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, 2009], 137) (Scott Aniol, “Polishing Brass on a Sinking Ship: Toward a Traditional Dispensationalist Philosophy of the Church and Cultural Engagement,” The Journal of Ministry & Theology, vol. 24, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 23.
[13] North and DeMar, Christian Reconstruction, 82.
[14] Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology, Three Volumes in One edition (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 1996).
[15] Ibid., 352.
[16] North and DeMar, Christian Reconstruction, 105.
[17] Ibid., 100, 102.
[18] Ibid., 59, 60; 127.
[19] Ibid., 127.
[20] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester, England : Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 1994), 1127.