There has been a lot of discussion flying around on the blogosphere recently on whether Glenn Beck and his Black Robed Regiment want to establish a theocracy in America. To those who recite the pledge of allegiance every day, as I have done for the past ten years, it should come as a surprise that although our nation’s school children each confess that we are “one nation under God,” many people are threatened by the idea of a theocracy.

A theocracy simply means a nation ruled by God. As a Christian, I understand that all nations are ruled by God whether people want to recognize that or not. However, most people define theocracy to mean a state ruled over by a church or a religion. This is not a theocracy, but rather an ecclesiocracy.

A true theocrat would resist the rule of men – whether they are churchmen or secular men – but instead would seek always to be ruled by law. The question ultimately becomes, “Whose law?” Is it man’s law, autonomy, or God’s Law, theonomy?

A while ago, I made the observation that all Christians, and in fact all people, are theonomists whenever God’s Law appeals to them. A true theonomist is simply one who tries to obey God’s Law even when he doesn’t like it or fully understand it.

This is a truism. You will either stand for God’s higher law or you will be a law unto your own self. You will either stand for theonomy or autonomy.

A while back, I published an short essay by an Internet friend who gave an excellent definition of postmodernism. In the introduction to the esay, I noted that I have often encountered an “atheist syndrome” when having discussions with these young postmodernists on my blogs and vlogs. Not all atheists are like this, and are thankfully inconsistent with the implications of their own worldview. Only the “New Atheists” insist on being epistemologically consistent. In my observation, I wrote that the atheist syndrome seems to be a mental disorder characterized by the following:

1. They claim to love reason and logic, but are unreasonable and overly emotional.
2. They claim that Christians cling to blind faith, and yet their propagation of lunatic conspiracy theories is endless.
3. They are obsessed with logical fallacies, but don’t know what a logical fallacy is and commit them constantly.
4. They claim to respect research and authority, but don’t have a clue on how to do proper research and will abandon a debate when faced with solid scholarship that refutes them.
5. They start endless arguments, but quickly change the topic when they have no rebuttal and resort to ad hominems and strawman arguments when they have no other place to run to.

Today, a postmodernist atheist weighed in on my theonomic syllogism. He was responding to the following video, which is a clip from a DVD I produced called, God’s Law and Society.

The following response is a perfect example of the atheist syndrome. In just two sentences it contains most of the aspects I listed above.

TheGodlessGuitarist has made a comment on Second American Revolution: Rousas John Rushdoony – 1 of 9:

@jcr4runner

“A true “theonomist’ is one who accepts and tries to obey God’s law even when he doesn’t like it or fully understand the reason for it.”

Yeah yeah.

A decent person aspires to do the right thing no matter what they are told. A religious person does what they are told no matter what is right.

I wouldn’t expect you to examine this fundamental problem in your own worldview critically, diligently and honestly as you are a christian [sic] apologist, i.e., a hardcore narcissist.

My Response

It’s interesting. Only a postmodernist can flip around definitions, calling white “black” and black “white,” without noticing the contradiction. A postmodernist’s definitions, like everything else, are driven by whatever they “feel” must be right. In fact, postmodernism is the ultimate form of narcissism.

You say someone who does whatever they decide is right must always be the one who sees the world “critically, diligently and honestly.” But someone who ascribes to a higher law that constrains their behavior must be a “narcissist.”

However, the definition of narcissist a person who has excessive love or admiration of his own desires or opinions.

Of course, a true narcissist will just redefine the terms to mean the opposite of the conventional use in order to justify his own feelings. I’ll leave it to the truly critical, diligent and honest observers to decide which definition is correct.