Editing Theonomy (section)

==Origin==
[[Thomas Aquinas]] held, "if a sovereign were to order these judicial precepts to be observed in his kingdom, he would not sin."<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2104.htm Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 104, a. 3]</ref> Some have mistakenly referred to that as "General Equity Theonomy"<ref>Clausen, Mark A., Professor of History, [[Cedarville University]] "Theonomy in the Middle Ages". Paper presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the [[American Political Science Association]], Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, Washington Hilton, Washington, DC.</ref> but it is in fact distinct from theonomy insofar as Aquinas believed the specifics of the Old Testament judicial laws were no longer binding. He instead taught that the judicial precepts contained varying degrees of universal principles of justice that reflected [[natural law]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=|date=2016-07-16|title=The General Equity of the Judicial Law|url=https://reformedbooksonline.com/the-general-equity-of-the-judicial-law/|access-date=2021-04-09|website=Reformed Books Online|language=en-US}}</ref>

In [[Christian reconstructionism]], theonomy is the idea that God provides the basis of both personal and social [[ethics]] in the [[Bible]]. Theonomic ethics asserts that the Bible has been given as the abiding standard for all human authority (individual, family, church, and civil) and that [[biblical law]] must be incorporated into a Christian theory of biblical ethics.

{{Quote|Theonomic ethics, to put it simply, represents a commitment to the necessity, sufficiency, and unity of Scripture. For an adequate and genuinely Christian ethic, we must have God's word, only God's word, and all of God's word. Nearly every critic of theonomic ethics will be found denying, in some way, one or more of these premises.|The Theonomic Antithesis to Other Law-Attitudes<ref name='Theonomic Antithesis'>{{cite news | first=Greg | last=Bahnsen | author-link=Greg Bahnsen | title=The Theonomic Antithesis to Other Law-Attitudes | publisher=Covenant Media Foundation | url=http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pe054.htm | access-date=2008-11-27 | archive-date=2009-05-21 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090521224329/http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pe054.htm | url-status=dead }}</ref>}}

Critics{{who?|date=March 2021}} see theonomy as a significant form of [[dominion theology]], which they define as a [[theocracy]]. Theonomy posits that the biblical law is applicable to civil law, and theonomists propose biblical law as the standard by which laws may be measured and to which they ought to be conformed.