What Does "Autonomy Is Madness" Mean, Anyway?

I received an email from someone who visited my blog once, and they asked me this question. Since I'm sure others may be wondering where the name "Autonomy Is Madness" came from, I will post the answer that I sent back to the questioner, since it is the most real and straightforward answer I have put into writing.

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Truthfully, I didn't really sit down and decide upon the title of "Autonomy is Madness". It actually kinda accidentally came to me one day as I was thinking about life and worldviews and what not. While I think that it is a matter of Biblical, propositional truth, I honestly think it is probably more of a phrase I coined to express my own feelings about life. Here is basically what it means.

When I speak of "autonomy", I am setting it up as the antithesis to "theonomy", so that it is autonomy (self law) versus theonomy (God's law). When we live obediently unto God, it is because we are in conformity to his law as revealed to us in the Scriptures (keep in mind that my usage of the word "theonomy" is very general, referring to living in obedience to God's law in the broad sense, and not "Theonomy" proper, which has a much more specific agenda). When we are disobedient, it is because we have strayed away from God's law and have begun to serve our own wills and desires. Thus, we have moved from theonomy to autonomy, at this point. So essentially, one of the defining elements of sinful behavior is autonomy ( i.e., submitting to our own will, rather than God's will).

So why did I say that autonomy is madness? Well, I think it was after a period when I was feeling remorse over the sin in my life, and I was trying to analyze why it is I choose to do some of the things I do. I basically had a Romans 7 moment, where I felt the reality of what the apostle Paul tells us about the Christian life: "For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin."

When I read Ecclesiastes 9:3, when it says that madness is in the hearts of man while they live, I thought of Romans 7 and about my own experience. As a Christian, because I have the Holy Spirit, I have an inward desire to serve Christ and abstain from sin. But the other reality is that, while I do have the Spirit in this life, I have still not been delivered from my sinful body. And as long as I live in this world with my flesh, I am always going to be struggling against a tendency to slip into autonomous behavior, seeking to be my own Lord. It is true that the Bible says the hearts of men are full of madness because sin corrupts our hearts and leads us away from righteousness and truth. But for me, the reason Ecclesiastes 9:3 was so significant when I read it is because "madness" often times seems like what I'm feeling as I think about my struggles. Sin can be so damn enticing sometimes that I feel like I'm going insane as I struggle against it. I want to throw up my hands and say "O wretched man that I am!" And I think this is a feeling that any true Christian can relate to.

So I guess in short, autonomy is madness because (1) it is madness to turn from the righteous law of the holy and wise God of Scripture to serve the fallen, corrupted, finite wills of our own sinful minds, and (2) the struggle with sin can feel like madness at times. But speaking from a purely existential perspective, I think it was probably (2) that led me to coin the phrase more so than (1).