At the beginning of this review a few definitions are in order.  Theonomy means God's law and a theonomist is a person who believes in God's law as opposed to being antinomian, that is against the law.  All Christians should be theonomists.  Any Calvinist believing in the sovereignty of God over all areas of life is a theonomist.  North is not only a theonomist but a "Theonomist", that is with a capital "T".  He is a leading member of the "Tyler Christian Reconstructionists".  This is a group that believes in the wholesale application of the civil law of Israel to all nations for all time.  Theocracy means God's rule.  All Christians should believe in theocracy.  All Calvinists who believe that God rules all things in the universe therefore believe in theocracy.  North believes in "Theocracy", again with a capital "T".  He believes as do most of the Christian Reconstructionists that the particular theocracy that God established in the Old Testament, the particular way that God ruled over Israel, is binding on all men and all nations for all time.  North believes that the Sinaitic Covenant, which he frequently quotes as an authority for his arguments, is still in force, and that all nations are obligated to enter into a similar civil covenant with God.  These definitions and distinctions are important to the debate.  North constantly frames the debate as a choice between his particular brand of theonomy and secular humanism.  For him the only choice is either the theocracy of the Old Testament Hebrew Republic or a secular state governed by natural law as man defines it.  Only by keeping these distinctions in mind can the debate be framed as between different scriptural understandings of God's law and God's rule under the New Covenant.

It is interesting how the argument of God's sovereignty can be used selectively to support one's own position, but ignored when it is used to maintain an opposing opinion.  If there is anyone who is adamant, insistent, and persistent in maintaining the total sovereignty of God over civil government it is North. This book is a seven hundred page testimony to that fact. But North is not as consistent about God's sovereignty in the church, especially in matters of worship.  He rejects regulative principle, at least as the Puritans believed it and as it is expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith. That is he loves what the Puritans held about civil government, but disagrees with what they believed about the ecclesiastical order.  For example he accepts baptized paganism in the church in the form of unscriptural holy days of pagan origin, but searches out every imagined trace of it in the state. (The Tyler Reconstructionists were basically Episcopalian in worship, advocating a rather elaborate church calendar.) North would undoubtedly argue that man has the authority to institute these extra scriptural modes of worship, but would castigate the position of this book for rejecting God's total sovereignty over the state by setting aside some of the Old Testament civil code. Ultimately it comes down to one's understanding of the scriptures. The readers must decide which position most consistently represents the sovereign will of God revealed in scripture.

North does quite a job critiquing Roger Williams. This is not very hard to do. Williams was rather theologically unstable to say the least, and held a lot of quirky opinions, though not always for long. However Williams bashing, no matter how effective or well documented does not establish his argument.  Williams raised some questions that North never answers. Williams argued that Israel was unique.  From this he drew two conclusions.  First, that the civil magistrate had no authority to enforce the first table of the law since the only model for this in the scriptures was Old Testament Israel.  Secondly, that the settlers had no authority to seize their land and to enslave or slaughter the Indians. God had promised the land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed. God had given Joshua a commission to conquer the land and exterminate its inhabitants. Williams questioned how this could be transferred to the New England Puritans and their "New Israel" in the wilderness.  North buries Williams in criticism, much of it merited, but offers no answer to these questions.

Overall North's work suffers from three main defects. First of all it is more of a historical review than a theological defense of his position. Historically North establishes his position very convincingly.  But for a Van Tillian presuppositionalist crying "sola scriptura" this is a strange defense.  Ultimately by his own statements it should not matter what Calvin or the New England Puritans believed and practiced. The only thing that should matter is "thus saith the Lord".  It should all be established by the Holy Spirit speaking in the scriptures.  However North states at the outset that he believes that the theological basis for his position has already been ably defended by others such as Rushdoony and Bahnsen et al, and sees no need to reiterate those arguments.  This is unfortunate.  Without a scriptural defense of his particular view and application of covenant theology his historical review of Puritan civil covenants can only convince traditionalists.

Secondly, he constantly sets up a straw man. Repeatedly he seeks to compel his readers to accept his position or sucumb to secular humanism. North effectively demolishes the idea that there is some kind of neutrality possible in the civil sphere. He compellingly argues that we have to accept either God's word and God's law or surrender to humanism. He convincingly asks "by what standard" if not by the standard of God's word. But how we get from there to accepting the Sinaitic Covenant as normative for all nations today is never explained.

Thirdly, he seems to overlook the radical thrust of a true revolution in the American republic, the passage of the infamous fourteenth amendment.  North's view is that the Constitutional Convention of 1788 was a coup d'etat.  He does an excellent job of documenting the Christian and Biblical roots of the colonies.  He reviews the various state constitutions in force at the time and demonstrates their commitment to God and Biblical law.  He contrasts this with the United States Constitution and claims that a silent revolution occurred that destroyed the scriptural foundations of our civil government.  To him Philadelphia was a conspiracy against Biblical theocracy and the evil fruits of this successful conspiracy is what is being manifested today.  He thoroughly documents the Deist, Unitarian, and Masonic roots of many of the founding fathers.  He performs a useful service in dispelling the myth of a united band of theologically orthodox Christian patriots founding a Christian Republic.  But his conclusion is that the people were hoodwinked and accepted a pig in a poke.  They were tricked into accepting a secular, godless Constitution based on Masonic ideology.  This I find hard to accept.  Bancroft tells us that at the time of the American Revolution the United States was 98% Protestant and 67% Calvinist.  A half century later Alexis DeToqueville has a similar assessment of not only the strong, but the informed, religious (i.e. Christian) commitment of the American people.  Could all these Calvinists really have voted for a Constitution that would have created a secular state based on humanist natural law? 

The reason that they voted for it is not that they were either stupid or blind.  Rather they voted for it because they saw it as the best way to preserve Biblical civil government.  As North himself states it each colony had a distinctive Christian constitution and government.  During the Revolution one of the great concerns of the colonies had been that the British government would establish the Church of England in all the colonies and send over a English bishop to lord it over the colonial churches.  They had the same fears about a central federal government.  They feared any federal interference in the various religious establishments then existing in the colonies.  The intention of the first amendment was not to establish a secular humanist state.  The intention was not to undermine and subvert the religious establishments in the separate states.  Rather the intention was to protect these disparate expressions of "Christian" civil government from any federal interference and control.  The federal government was constitutionally barred from this area.

North makes a major point of the lack of Trinitarian oaths to hold civil office in the federal government.  He contrasts this with the oaths required to hold public office in the various colonies.  Again the federal government did not require any particular religious oath because it left these requirements up to the states.  The states would require a particular religious oath for public office as they saw fit.  Most federal office holders had probably held state office and were already subject to the oaths of that particular state.  Before the direct election of United States senators, they were chosen by the legislature of the state, generally from one of their number, and would have already been required to take a religious oath as a condition of holding office.  Again the existence of a religious establishment and any religious oaths in the states would not be abolished, but only protected from federal interference by the original intent of the Constitution.

The real problem that we have with all this is the existence of the fourteenth amendment.  The effect of this amendment was to make the federal constitution binding on all the states.  Now the restrictions originally applied by the states to the federal government now restricted their own authority.  Rather than protecting each state in the free public exercise of its religion it abolished any state involvement in religion.  Instead of each state being its own master in an area out of bounds for the federal government now the federal judiciary would lord it over the states enforcing every jot and tittle of the federal constitution.  The rest is history as the Supreme Court has by judicial fiat imposed one revolutionary mandate after another on the states.  The original constitution is in shreds as Christianity is besieged, the Biblical family dismembered, prayer and Bible reading banned from the schools, capital punishment practically non-existent, while triumphant sodomites are accorded legal protection, and feminists practise abortion on demand.  None of this would have been legally possible without the fourteenth amendment, which has destroyed the sovereignty of the states and created an unelected judicial oligarchy that directs the cultural war against the peoples of every state.

Nonetheless as a historical study this book is worth reading and North's dismemberment of the secular humanists and their "Christian" fellow travellers is good reading.