Introduction: Toward a Philonomic Hermeneutic

“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” (Psalm 119:97)

These words should be on every Christian’s lips. Not the reluctant compliance of a servant who fears the rod, but the delighted affection of a child who knows his Father’s wisdom. The psalmist does not say, “Oh how I tolerate your law,” nor “Oh how I have progressed beyond your law.” He loves it. He meditates upon it. All the day long.

And lest we imagine this love belongs only to the old covenant saint, the Apostle Paul settles the matter decisively: “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31). The gospel does not abolish our love for God’s law; it establishes it on firmer ground. The justified sinner, freed from the law’s condemnation, is now free to delight in the law’s instruction. We uphold it not as a ladder to heaven, for that way is closed to sinners by sin, but as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

This book proposes a hermeneutical framework for thinking about law, justice, and society that I will call philonomy (fi-LON-uh-mee, /fɪˈlɒnəmi/): literally, the love of law. Philonomy is not a new confession, nor a replacement for historic Reformed theology. Rather, it is an interpretive lens: a way of asking careful, principled questions about the law of God as it functioned in history, and how its enduring wisdom may be faithfully discerned and applied today.

The aim of this hermeneutic is intentionally modest. It is designed to be theologically independent at the confessional level, such that one need not resolve every ecclesiological or covenantal debate in order to employ it. A Presbyterian, a Reformed Baptist, or another confessional Christian may disagree sharply on questions of polity, sacraments, or covenant administration, and yet still make use of the same analytical framework presented here. Philonomy does not ask the reader to abandon his confession; it asks only that he agree to reason carefully from shared premises.

The Foundational Premise

The foundational premise is this: the Mosaic economy constituted a just society.

This claim is not offered as a conclusion to be defended at length in this work, but as a starting point. Scripture repeatedly affirms the righteousness, goodness, and wisdom of God’s law. Moses declared to Israel: “And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?” (Deuteronomy 4:8). The Apostle Paul affirms without hesitation: “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12).

The burden of proof rests elsewhere if one wishes to deny that the society God himself established was just. If objections arise at this foundational level, they point to deeper theological disagreements that must be addressed separately before any meaningful discussion of law and justice can proceed.

Yet a question naturally arises, and we must not avoid it: If the Mosaic economy was just, why did it require a new covenant? The prophet Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant to come (Jeremiah 31:31-34), and the author of Hebrews explains: “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second” (Hebrews 8:7).

Does this not undermine our foundational premise? Not at all, and understanding why is essential. The “fault” of the old covenant was not in its civil justice but in its redemptive adequacy. The Mosaic economy, for all its righteous statutes, could not give life (Galatians 3:21). It could not write the law on stony hearts. It could restrain sin externally, teach righteousness by illustration, and point forward to the coming Redeemer; but it could not regenerate. The problem was never the quality of the law; the problem was the quality of the people who received it. As God Himself said through Jeremiah, “they broke my covenant” (Jeremiah 31:32).

We must distinguish carefully between the adequacy of law for civil justice and its inadequacy for redemption. A society may be justly ordered even when its citizens are not spiritually renewed. Indeed, this is precisely the point of civil law: to restrain evil among sinners, not to save them from their sin. The Mosaic economy was just, but it was never designed to be salvific.¹

The Philonomic Syllogism

From this premise, the core argument of philonomy can be stated as a chain of reasoning:

God does not legislate arbitrarily. Every law He gives reflects His moral character.
The Mosaic civil provisions were God’s legislation.
Therefore, the Mosaic civil provisions reflect God’s moral character.
God’s moral character is unchanging.
Therefore, the moral content expressed in the Mosaic civil provisions has not changed.
What has not changed cannot have expired.
Therefore, there is abiding moral content in the Mosaic civil provisions.

Let me unpack this, because it is both simpler than it looks and more controversial than it should be.

The first premise says something about God as a legislator. He is not capricious. He always gives laws for a reason. Even laws that served temporary purposes (the sacrificial system, the food laws, the regulations preserving Israel’s national distinctiveness) served those purposes for moral reasons. The sacrifices taught the gravity of sin. The food laws taught the holiness of God’s people. The seed laws preserved the line through which the Redeemer would come. None of it was arbitrary. All of it reflected something true about who God is and what He values. “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12).

The second premise is simply a statement of fact. God gave Israel its civil legislation. This is not in dispute.

The third premise follows necessarily. If God does not legislate arbitrarily, and the Mosaic civil provisions were His legislation, then they reflect His moral character. Some reflected it directly–the laws against murder, theft, and false witness express God’s justice in ways that are immediately recognizable. Others reflected it more indirectly–the Year of Jubilee expressed God’s care for the dispossessed through an institutional form tied to Israel’s land system. But all of it, directly or indirectly, told the truth about God.

The fourth premise no serious Christian denies. “I the LORD do not change” (Malachi 3:6). What God calls righteous in one age He does not call wicked in another, for righteousness flows from His nature, not from circumstance.

The fifth premise follows from the third and fourth. If the civil provisions expressed God’s moral character, and that character has not changed, then the moral content they expressed has not changed either. The covenant has changed. The administration has expired. But the moral reality that the administration expressed is as true today as it was at Sinai, because it was never grounded in the covenant to begin with–it was grounded in God.

The sixth premise is a logical principle. If something has not changed, it has not ceased to be. Moral truths do not have expiration dates. The justice of protecting laborers from exploitation (Deuteronomy 25:4) did not become unjust when the Mosaic covenant ended. The duty of honest testimony (Deuteronomy 19:15) did not become optional when the temple fell.

The conclusion is modest but significant: there is abiding moral content in the Mosaic civil provisions. Not all of it transfers in the same way. Some laws expressed God’s character through institutional forms that no longer exist–and the task of distinguishing permanent moral substance from expired covenantal form is genuinely difficult. But the moral content is there. It has not vanished. It cannot have vanished, because it was never merely Israelite. It was divine.

Now notice what this argument does not claim. It does not claim to have identified which moral content abides and how it applies. It does not claim that every law transfers directly. It merely establishes that the project of looking for abiding moral content in the Mosaic civil provisions is legitimate–that the gold is in the mine, even if extracting it requires careful work.

The opposite position–that there is no abiding moral, normative content in the Mosaic civil provisions–requires denying one of the premises above. Either God legislates arbitrarily (deny premise 1), or His character changes (deny premise 4), or moral truths can expire (deny premise 6). Each of these denials carries consequences that most Christians would not accept.

There is a further problem with the opposite position, and it is worth stating plainly. The claim that no abiding moral content exists in the Mosaic civil provisions is a universal negative, and universal negatives are notoriously difficult to defend. As the late Steve Hays observed in a different theological context, the burden of proof falls far more heavily on the one who asserts that something never occurs than on the one who asserts that it sometimes does. To establish that some moral content abides, one needs only a single clear example. Paul’s appeal to Deuteronomy 25:4 in 1 Corinthians 9:9 provides exactly that: an apostle treating a Mosaic civil provision as a source of abiding moral instruction for the new covenant church. The one who denies abiding moral content must explain this away. The one who affirms it need only point to it. The philonomist’s task is to show that there is gold in the mine; his opponent’s task is to prove that an entire mine contains no gold whatsoever. One of these tasks is considerably easier than the other.

The work of this book is to supply a method for that careful extraction–what the Reformed tradition calls discerning the general equity. The syllogism tells us the gold is there. The method tells us how to find it.

The Analytical Task

Granting this premise, a question naturally follows: what elements of the Mosaic economy were essential to its justice, and which, however good and purposeful, served more limited ends?

The New Testament provides critical guidance. It explicitly teaches that certain components of the Mosaic law were temporary: the sacrificial system (fulfilled in Christ), the food laws (declared clean in the New Covenant), and regulations bound up with preserving Israel as a distinct people until the Seed arrived. These were not unjust; they were good, holy, and purposeful. But they were fulfilled. Laws designed to preserve the genealogical line until Christ came have accomplished their purpose now that Christ has come. With the arrival of the substance, the shadows fade.

This book develops a method for examining each Mosaic law carefully, identifying which elements within it were tied to these temporary purposes, and which reflect the enduring moral wisdom that the Reformed tradition calls general equity. Rather than overwhelming you with methodology here in the introduction, I want simply to extend an invitation: what follows is a system designed to liberate the Old Testament law from being dusty and ignored, and to transform it into a mine from which gold may be extracted. The details are developed in later chapters, with the full method presented in Chapter 5. For now, come and see.

A note on covenant theology: Philonomy is designed to be accessible across confessional traditions: Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Baptist. While the author writes from within a particular covenantal framework, the philonomic method does not require resolution of every covenantal question before proceeding. Readers from various traditions may employ this method while holding different views on the relationship between old and new covenants. For a fuller discussion of how philonomy relates to specific covenantal frameworks, see Appendix D.

A Big Umbrella

Before we proceed further, I must set your expectations rightly. The goal of this book is not that you agree with every specific application I offer. It cannot be and will not be in a fallen world.

Throughout the chapters that follow, you will encounter worked examples: case laws analyzed, principles extracted, applications proposed. These are one attempt at philonomic reasoning. They represent my best effort to apply the method faithfully. But I am a fallen interpreter with limited wisdom, and others working from the same premises may reach different conclusions on particular questions. This does not trouble me. Indeed, I would be troubled if it were otherwise, for that would suggest I had confused my applications with the method itself.

What I am asking you to stand under is a big umbrella. The ground it covers is defined not by agreement on every particular, but by a shared posture toward God’s law.

That posture is articulated more fully in Appendix A, where you will find a series of Affirmations and Denials. These mark the boundaries of the umbrella. If you can affirm that the Christian loves God’s law and desires to obey Him in every sphere of life; that the Ten Commandments remain binding when properly interpreted; that case law provides wisdom for application; that Christ is Lord over all and no domain exists outside His rightful authority; that there is no neutral ground between submission to God’s law and rebellion against it—then you belong under this umbrella, whatever you conclude about the specific applications in Chapter 9 or Chapter 10.

Agreement on posture matters more than agreement on every particular. The posture is this: we love God’s law, we seek to apply it to all of life, and we reject the autonomy that sets human wisdom above divine revelation. From that shared posture, we can disagree charitably about whether a specific case law implies this or that for modern circumstances. Such disagreement is not failure; it is the church reasoning together, iron sharpening iron, as we pursue wisdom in community.

So when you encounter an application that strikes you as mistaken, do not throw down the book. Ask instead: Is this author reasoning from the right premises? Is he taking the text seriously? Is his method sound even if his conclusion is contestable? If the answer is yes, then critique the application while remaining under the umbrella. We need more people doing this work, not fewer. We need charitable disagreement among those who love the law, not silent withdrawal into separate camps.

The umbrella is big enough. Come stand under it with me.

General Equity

What remains after this careful analysis is what the Reformed tradition has historically called general equity: those moral and judicial principles embedded in Israel’s law that transcend its ceremonial and national particulars.

The Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession all affirm this category. The Westminster Confession states that the judicial laws of Israel “expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require” (19.4). The 1689 Baptist Confession echoes this language precisely.

I must be honest with you: the Reformed tradition has not always agreed on how to identify this general equity. The confessional affirmation is clear enough, but the method has been contested. Some have been too restrictive, treating general equity as so abstract that nothing concrete survives. Others have been too expansive, reading continuity where the New Testament signals fulfillment and discontinuity.

Yet the tradition is not without resources. John Owen, in his exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, supplied two things the tradition desperately needed. First, an ontological ground: the judicial laws were “an application of the moral law to their state and condition.” They were not arbitrary positive legislation but the moral law worked out in concrete cases. Second, an epistemological test: where both the subject-matter and the formal reason of a command remain the same across redemptive-historical epochs, “there it is of natural equity, and unalterable.”

Owen established the principle but never formalized it into a repeatable framework. This book attempts to do so. Philonomy seeks to supply a principled method for identifying general equity: not by innovation, but by disciplined, text-driven analysis rooted in the conviction that God’s law is wise, coherent, and good. The difficulty of the task does not release us from the obligation to attempt it.

What This Book Is Not

This book is not an argument for the wholesale re-imposition of Mosaic law. It does not advocate theocracy², nor does it confuse the civil magistrate with the priest or the prophet. We are not attempting to rebuild ancient Israel in modern garb.

Neither is this book a dismissal of Mosaic law as obsolete, irrelevant, or morally primitive. Such dismissals betray a low view of Scripture and an inflated view of modern moral progress. The God who thundered from Sinai knew what He was doing, and the society He established deserves our careful attention, not our condescension.

What This Book Is

This book is an attempt to love the law rightly: to understand what it accomplished, why it took the form it did, and how its enduring wisdom may still inform the pursuit of justice today.

It is written for the Christian who takes Scripture seriously but cringes at simplistic, reductionistic readings of the Bible. For the believer who cherishes gospel freedom but knows that antinomianism is a ditch on the other side of the road. For the thoughtful reader who suspects that “we’re not under law” cannot mean what the lawless claim it means, but who lacks the categories to articulate why.

James speaks of “the perfect law, the law of liberty” (James 1:25). This is no contradiction, however paradoxical it may sound to modern ears. The law of God, rightly understood, does not enslave but liberates. It frees us from the tyranny of autonomous self-will. It shows us what love looks like in concrete circumstances. It is “perfect” because it comes from a perfect God, and it is “liberty” because obedience to God is the only true freedom. The one who “looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

The Bible Is Better Than You’ve Been Told

“The Bible is better than you’ve been told.” This simple truth, which I first heard articulated by the YouTuber A.D. Robles, animates everything that follows. For too long, Christians have been taught to set aside the Mosaic law as primitive, embarrassing, or irrelevant, fit only for ancient Israel, certainly not for us. Philonomy is a tool to help you pick up your Bible again and discover the wisdom that has always been there. Others have done this work before. Jay Adams showed a generation of counselors that Scripture actually speaks to the struggles of the soul, and the establishment buried his work. The Theonomists showed that Scripture speaks to civil justice, and they were marginalized. The work remains, waiting to be picked up. This book is another attempt to recover what should never have been lost.

Philonomy offers categories for reading this law rightly. Not a system complete in every detail, but a hermeneutic: a way of reading, a way of reasoning, a way of applying the wisdom of God’s law to the complexities of human society.

The psalmist was not ashamed to declare his love for the law. Neither should we be. For in loving God’s law rightly, we love the Lawgiver Himself, the One whose character it reveals, whose wisdom it displays, and whose Son fulfilled it perfectly on our behalf.

Let us start digging for gold.

Readers who find this distinction between civil justice and redemptive adequacy troubling may benefit from consulting Appendix D, where the covenantal framework behind this claim is developed more fully. The argument does not require agreement with the author’s particular covenant theology, but understanding that theology may clarify why the distinction is drawn as it is. ↩
The meaning and applicability of “theocracy” is more contested than many realize. We will address this term carefully in Chapter 11, “Kings Are Not Priests,” where we distinguish between the unique theocratic elements of Israel’s polity and the abiding moral principles that undergirded it. ↩