By Thomas Scarborough

The term theonomy, from theos (god) and nomos (law), although it has more recently been associated with Christian Reconstructionism, is in its broader meaning the belief that ‘revelation, rather than reason, is the central locus for ethical guidance’. The term autonomy, from auto (self) and nomos (law), is the belief ‘that moral direction is internal … believed to lie in the light of reason present within each human being’ (both of these definitions being taken from the Pocket Dictionary of Ethics). Pneumonomy, from pneuma (spirit) andnomos (law) is a neologism, a newly minted term, which I shall seek to motivate in a moment. First of all, some background observations.

Normative ethics considers how people should act. This is chiefly distinguished from descriptive ethics, which considers how people do act. NormativeChristian ethics, then, studies the way in which Christians should act.

Normative Christian ethics has traditionally been distinguished from normativesecular ethics, the fundamental difference being that normative Christianethics is said to be founded on divine decree (theonomy), while normativesecular ethics is said to be founded on autonomous human reason (autonomy). The theologian Cornelius van Til famously stated: