On the passing of the man who would have been Christian America’s version of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

ProtoProtestant

https://www.garynorth.com/public/23334.cfm

He was ‘Scary Gary’ to many – a reference to his cantankerous style. An original member of the Theonomic Three and its last survivor, he married RJ Rushdoony’s daughter – a connection I know many did not make.

I encountered him early on in my Christian life. I remember receiving materials in the mail from Still Waters Revival Books. They tirelessly promoted the Theonomic line and in my files I still have many of their pamphlets headed by Bahnsen, Rushdoony, and Gary North.

I’ve written elsewhere about my early struggles with Theonomy. Having broken with the Dispensationalism of my upbringing I was diligently studying the Scriptures and learning about the basic structures of the Bible. Theonomy was still a ‘hot topic’ at the time (in the mid-1990’s) and I was encountering it everywhere – in the book catalog world, magazines, and through others. Through one of my uncles, I came into contact with Steve Schlissel in New York City and for years received his newsletters and cassette tapes of his sermons.

I was never convinced of Theonomy but I was compelled by it and challenged by its arguments. Their propaganda was aggressive and I’m thankful in that it forced me to reckon with these issues. I knew they were wrong – a basic reading of the New Testament told me their views of Old Testament Law and Postmillennialism were in error, and yet at the time I wouldn’t have been able to fully elaborate as to why and just how wrong they were – and are. Though the movement has changed its form and now exists in various permutations, it’s still very much alive.

I was further convinced of the movement’s errors when I encountered some of the horrendous exegesis of men like North. Bahnsen was much better and more plausible and yet over time I came to better understand his errors as well. Rushdoony’s Institutes struck me as something of a mess and I wasn’t impressed or convinced to say the least. But North’s exposition of texts like the Sermon on the Mount demonstrated just how far these men were off the mark. They were in fact at war with Christ’s doctrines and imperatives in the Gospels – and frankly their Judaized theology is at war with the New Testament and certainly its ethics. Theonomy is about power, mammon, and ultimately violence in the form of coercion, censorship, inquisition, and execution.

And this is where the errors of Bahnsen, and even the strange and almost deranged views of Rushdoony seem tame when compared to North. Decades ago North threw in with the Libertarian crowd, with Ron Paul, Rothbard, von Mises, and the Austrian School of economics.

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