Click here to listen to an AI podcast of this article. There is a great deal of confusion surrounding the word theonomy . For many Christians, the term immediately evokes images of a theocracy, Mosaic civil legislation, or attempts to reconstruct ancient Israel within modern society. While some advocates of theonomy have argued for stronger continuity between Mosaic judicial law and modern civil government, that is not the issue I want to address here. By mere theonomy , I mean something much simpler: the recognition that God is the ultimate source of justice, righteousness, morality, and law. In that sense, some form of theonomy is unavoidable. Every society appeals to an ultimate standard by which it determines what is right and wrong, just and unjust. The real question is not whether a society has an ultimate authority, but what that authority is. Any nation that rejects God as the ultimate source of law does not become neutral. It simply substitutes another aut...