“How do anti=natural law folks contend w/ the story of Abimelech and Abraham (Gen. 20) in God says that King Abimelech had ‘integrity of heart’ (v. 6), and he appears to have a sort of fear of God ( v. 14-15), a degree of civil righteousness (v.4), and clearly had knowledge of justice (v.9)?
Dr. Stephen Wolfe
1.) Dr. Adi Schlebusch answers,
Groen van Prinsterer on the traditional nature of General Revelation:
“Natural law is not known from reason. But, people say, look at much wisdom the ancients had! For sure. But they derived it from tradition. I mean not to say that they had actually seen the Books of Moses, but rather that their wisdom came from that same divine revelation that was written down in Scripture, albeit mediated by tradition.”
2.) Bret continues;
Anti-natural law types do not say that all pagans have zero notions of civil righteousness. Indeed, we would say that any pagan who has zero notions of civil righteousness will need to be locked up. (And given the recent P. Diddy revelations and before that in 2016 the Pizzagate revelations we are now at the point where we desperately need to start locking people up.) Similarly, anti-natural law types do not deny that the pagan will, buffet style, pick and choose that from natural law that can be used to get their Christ denying worldview off the ground and operating. The Christ-hater will use natural law to climb up into God’s lap in order to slap him in the face. So, anti-natural law types note that the Christ-hater is very selective as to what he will “learn” and not “learn” from natural law. For example, the natural law advocate at a early stage of departure from God’s reality may well say “adultery is wrong,” yet, 40 years later, because they have no anchor in special revelation (God’s Law Word) will now have no problem with sodomite marriage. Natural law hasn’t changed over that course of time but the Christ hater, being blown about by cultural relativism have given up that particular notion of natural law formerly embraced. This is because the carnal mind is at enmity with God (Romans 8:7). Luther offered long ago that anything noble that the Christ-hater did should be counted as “splendid vices.”
So, what anti-natural law types deny is that the pagan will be consistent in what he says he learns from natural law. Remember, at every turn the pagan will disallow natural law to instruct him in complete righteousness and so the anti-Christ types natural law like a wax nose that he can accept or not accept according to his liking as that liking is influenced by the cultural around him. The greater the culture becomes unhinged from God’s revealed law word the more likely the garden variety Christ-hater will choose to drop natural law options that he might have previously accepted.
The denigration of our own culture bears this out. In previous generations in the West, influenced as it was by God’s special revelation, those who were not Christians borrowed capital from Christianity to inform their reception of certain natural law categories — yet without embracing enough of them to be genuinely walk in righteousness as God counts righteousness — while dismissing other natural law categories at their whim.
All of this to say that, as I’ve noted before that what is called Natural Law can be seen as working in a culture highly influenced by Christianity but this is only due to the fact that the larger culture is shaped by special revelation. Natural law in these cases is “seen as working,” but it is not really what is working. What is working is that the Christ-hater is borrowing capital from the Christian worldview. Later, then we turn around and point back and call that “borrowing” natural law.
