Returning To Natural Law … Again

For the purposes of illustration, the Thomistic Natural Law disciple sees himself as a farmer harvesting facts. He harvests his facts much like a farmer might harvest his corn. On his way to town with his wagons full of his corn (facts) another Natural Law farmer stops him and says… “Nice crop of sorghum you have there.” The first Natural Law farmer, now befuddled by this comment, insists, “my fact harvest is one of corn and not sorghum.” When he finally gets to town to sell his harvest the Natural Law middle man purchaser says to our Natural Law corn harvester, “Nice harvest of perch you have there. What lake did you pull all them out of?”

You see the Thomistic Natural Law disciple sees facts as a farmer sees a crop. The problem here is that there is no fact apart from a interpretation of fact, and as such corn as a fact to one Natural Law advocate may well indeed be seen. understood, and counted as counter-factual to another Natural Law advocate. One Natural Law advocate’s corn is another Natural Law advocate’s fish.

You see facts, unlike crops, while indisputably objectively real, are refashioned according to the subjective mind to fallen men harvesting the facts. The classic analogy of this truth is in found in the fossil. The fossil is an indisputable objective fact but if that fossil is presented to a evolutionary Darwinian scientist he will look at the fossil and might  say something like, “We see here proof that evolution is true as this fossil so wonderfully demonstrates.” Standing next to our evolutionary Darwinian scientist we have a Biblical Christian scientist who next looks at the fossil fact and says, “Ah, here we see the proof that the world was created in six days — all good.” A third scientist present, being a nihilist, looks at the fossil and say’s something like, “This is nothing but a rock and it means nothing.”

The point here is that the Thomistic Natural Law advocate cannot collect facts like a farmer harvests his crop. Facts, while objectively true, are reinterpreted by the unbeliever so that they might not testify to the reality of the God upon whom all facts depend upon for meaning. As God gives meaning to facts, the one who hates God and His Christ has an agenda to not let facts say what they inescapably say. The problem is not with the facts — they remain objectively objective. The problem is with fallen man who is determined to not read the facts for what they are since a reading of the facts for what they are will inevitable lead them to the one who gives all facts their meaning, and that they cannot have.

Now, this tendency and determination to reinterpret God’s interpretation of facts becomes more and more radical and extreme the further a individual and/or culture rebels against God. In such cases Natural Law will be appealed to as teaching, for example, that there are a multitude number of genders and not merely two. When a rabid antithesis develops between God and man or between God and a society any Natural Law appealed too will be invoked in order to overthrow the kinds of conclusions coming from the Natural Law to which Aquinas appealed as existing independently of presupposing the reality of the God of the Bible.

Thomistic Natural Law once worked in the West as a epistemological foundation because the denizens in the West largely were operating already with Christian presupposition and having Christians presuppositions a consensus could be arrived at in terms of what Natural Law taught. However, this consensus of what Natural Law taught — absent of a Biblical presuppositional foundation — ended up having the lifespan of cut flowers in a vase. The consensus remained beautiful for a season but however the consensus, like cut flowers, eventually died because the cut flowers were not rooted in the soil of Biblical presuppositionalism.

When handled by someone who is not submitted to the God of the Bible and His Christ, facts are not like crops and men are not like farmers harvesting a crop of unquestioned and indisputable facts. Honestly, nothing should be more obvious in the climate we are living in currently.

Still, at the same time that postmodernism is going wild we now have a strong movement to return to the modernism that was built upon the foundation of Natural Law. A modernism that eventually was found empty and brought us to postmodernism. This new impulse of modernism with its Natural Law advocacy has found strange bedmates with the coupling of the R2K fanboys together with the Classical 2K followers of Stephen Wolfe. These two schools of thoughts fight like two cats knotted at the tail and cast over a clothesline when it comes to their varied conclusions on just exactly what Natural Law teaches and yet together they man the ramparts against any onslaught by Theonomists who, contrary to Thomistic Natural Law theories, appeal to the law and the testimony.  Both Van Drunen’s R2K and Stephen Wolfe’s Classical 2K believe that fallen man can use right reason and natural law, independent of presupposing the God of the Bible, to come to true truth.

This agreement between Wolfe and Van Drunen, both of whom insist they are Reformed, strikes the garden variety Theonomist as a denial of the noetic effects of the fall playing havoc with the whole idea of the stout Reformed doctrine of “total depravity.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am glad for many of Wolfe’s conclusions via his usage of Thomistic Natural Law. I have even defended Wolfe on my Iron Rhetoric podcasts from many of the “Reformed” who oppose Christian Nationalism. My point here is, in part, that the Natural Law that was the epistemological foundation of the Enlightenment project, in the end, is not going to win the day. Thomistic Natural Law is not going to rescue the West because at its heart it is a humanistic doctrine that finds man being the interpretive center of his own world. 

Linguistic Deception

Until the days of Magnus Hirschfield men who copulated with one another were tagged with the biblical word “sodomite.” Eventually, the word “sodomite” was changed out for the preferred word “homosexual,” with the intent to sanitize somewhat the bestial nature of the predilection. Eventually though, even that word was found to be too base and disgusting and so the word “gay,” was lighted upon in order to neutralize the detestable behavior so as to be found acceptable.

However, even that was not sufficient for the social engineers in our midst. Even co-opting a word that once meant “merry” and “happy” didn’t go far enough in mainstreaming a behavior that once found God destroying cities because of the prevalence of said behavior. No, another bridge had to be crossed in order that a mentally unbalanced group could be seen to be “normal” and that bridge to normativity was used language as a weapon to marginalize and diminish those who insisted that sodomy as hiding under any word was insane, sinful, abnormality.  And so the word “Homophobic” was birthed.

The advantage of coining the word “homophobic” to describe those who point out the twistedness of sodomite behavior was a genius linguistic move. In the ability now to label and complain about “homophobes” the table was now successfully turned and it was those who thought normally who were now the ones who were seen as social deviants and derelicts. Now the problem in society was not the sodomites, homosexuals, and gays. No, the problem in society are the homophobic who must be either re-educated or become social outcasts themselves. It is the homophobic who are the haters and who constitute a social disease that must be eliminated.

Then there is the reality that the word “homophobic” doesn’t even describe the reality of the situation. People who are opposed to faggotry are not fearful of sodomites. If they were fearful of sodomites they would keep their mouths shut and not say anything. Rather people who are opposed to the ghey lifestyle understand that it is the destroyer of civilization when it is allowed to be given sanction and celebrated. Really, if the truth was known those who oppose sodomy should be known as “homo-philes” since opposition to sodomy is the most loving disposition one can take in relation to the practice of sodomy. It is nothing but pure hatred for sodomites and those judicially innocent who will be lured into their lifestyle to accept sodomites as being normative. Just as one does not love a disobedient and errant child by not disciplining them so a society or culture does not love the sodomite by communicating that their aberrant behavior is not aberrant. It is love for the sodomite that causes the Biblical Christian to raise their voice against the perversion that is sodomy.

This linguistic deception that we are speaking of here, of course, does not end with the movement from sodomite, to homosexual, to ghey, to homophobe. No, this social engineering tool has been used repeatedly to move the Overton window leftward on what is counted and not counted as socially acceptable.

A recent linguistic weapon that has been unleashed against Western Civilization in the hopes of destroying it is the term “White supremacy.” This sobriquet is hurled at white folks for preferring their own people, culture, customs and history. It is thrown like a javelin in the face of people who want to maintain the ways of their Christian fathers. Now, the ironic thing here is that those who are doing the hurling are those who we might rightly label as “Multi-Cultural supremacists.” Their complaint of “white supremacy” is born of their hatred of white people due to the mixed multitude pursuit of multi-cultural supremacy.

Remember, there is no such thing as neutrality. As such the end of white supremacy (which is simply the age old habit of all peoples to prefer that which is familiar and known) is the rise of multi-culture mixed multitude supremacy. The complaint against “white supremacy,” is in fact a linguistic tool to untether white people from the normal and godly instinct to want to protect Christian civilization as it has been built by Christian white people over the centuries.

Think about it this way. Nobody in China or Japan complains about Yellow Supremacy. Nobody in Nigeria complains about Black Supremacy. However, in countries settled by the White man there is a hue and cry to end White supremacy and, as hinted at above, this is only because there is a desire to turn the Christian white man into a slave who becomes a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.

Ultimately, as has been said before many times on Iron Ink, this attack on the White man and “white supremacy” is a proxy war against Christianity. In God’s sovereign providence and completely by grace alone it is the white man who has been perfumed with Christ and having the smell of Christ about us we have built great civilizations that were anchored in the tenets of Biblical Christianity. Naturally enough, Christ hating civilizations and men hating Christ and Christianity are now insisting on the need to end “White supremacy, but what they are really after is rolling Jesus Christ off of his throne so that ugly cultures can be built in honor to the gods of the mixed-multitudes. These are gods who delight in seeing wombs scraped of life, gods who delight in surgeons cutting off breasts and penises, gods who delight in statutory raised to honor those who excelled in casting off the “chains” of Biblical Christianity.

Of course the potency of this movement to overthrow “white supremacy” comes not primarily from the mixed multitude, though there are plenty of haters here. No, the primary potency of this movement comes from white people who have been turned into Orcs, Goblins, and Necromancers by consuming (usually quite unknowingly) the premises, assumptions, and presuppositions of the Marxists. These useful idiots and Shabbos Goy have been employed to pour dross into Biblical Christianity so that our churches spew the ugliest and most vile lies from pulpits thus turning Christianity into a repellent and poisonous sludge stew. These useful idiots and Shabbos Goy have been employed to normalize the abnormal so that nearly of all our Institutions are tripping over themselves to see who can first hoist the rainbow flag while putting kitty litter in all our public places so that the Furries among us can feel welcome. These Shabbos Goy and useful idiots have spent generations crafting legislation that weakens the central Christian Institution of family so that normal family life is now seen as a key expression of white supremacy that needs to be eliminated.

But it all begins with linguistic deception. The subtle changing of our language to push us, societally, in a certain aberrant direction. Statist education becomes known as “public-schooling.” Equality (which itself is poison) morphs into the pursuit of equity. The glorious and dignified work of keeping hearth and home is dismissed as “oh, you’re just a housewife,” as if such a role is worse than being imprisoned. Formerly, when one was convicted of a crime they went to prison or jail. Now they go to a “correctional facility.” The Department of War (a properly labeled office if there ever was one) was changed out to the more benign “Department of Defense.” “Father,” and “Mother” on official documents has now become “Parent 1” and “Parent 2.” I am sure that soon enough the word “parent” will be eliminated for something thought to be less offensive. And let’s not even begin to mention the laundry list of acceptable labels for the sexual deviants. My favorite among these is how “pedophile” is now known as a “minority attracted person.”

When the language changes it is a precursor to a cultural change that is coming in its wake. Keep your eyes peeled for these subtle and sometimes not so subtle changes because they are going to only accelerate in their arrival upon the cultural scene.

Barbara Ann Moree, Ella Steinhauser & The Goodness of God

My mind keeps drawing me back to remember Barbara Ann Moree.

Barbara was a little girl who was on our prayer list weekly when I pastored the small country Church in Longtown, South Carolina. Barbara had been born with a severe disability (something like Cerebral Palsy) and had been institutionalized since she had been born. Over the years in Longtown I visited Barbara several times and prayed for her weekly in the long pastoral prayer during the Sunday Service.

As near as I could tell the only family that cared and looked after Barbara was her Grandmother Margaret who was a faithful member of the small flock I served in Longtown. Margaret was a gentle lady who cared deeply for this child and it was through Margaret that I came to know Barbara Ann.

I would go with Margaret occasionally to visit the child who would have been between 8 and 10 years old when I first met her as a newly minted minister. Barbara Ann couldn’t speak or walk and showed no outward signs of recognizing people being in her presence. She was thoroughly confined to a hospital bed.

Margaret had told me Barbara Ann’s story and it was a sad one. Despite that I rejoiced that Barbara Ann had her grandmother as an advocate and so was not totally bereft of family love.

Eventually, Margaret asked me if I would baptize Barbara Ann and remembering Jesus’ words to “forbid not the children to come unto me for such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” I did indeed Baptize Barbara Ann in that lonely and sterile hospital room with just Margaret in attendance. Margaret was so grateful that day that her little broken granddaughter had been given the sacrament of Baptism.

My mind keeps being drawn back to Barbara Ann because I now have a grand-daughter that is broken much the same as Barbara Ann was. And I am learning through my grand-daughter that it is possible that Barbara Ann may have understood much more of the world than I would have thought possible in 1995 when I knew Barbara Ann. Given Barbara Ann’s condition I assumed that there was nobody home. Now I realize that it is possible that Barbara Ann was very much present in a body that was completely broken.

My Grand-daughter is likewise, to all immediate appearances, a child who one could easily conclude is completely mentally inert. Like Barbara Ann, Ella cannot walk or speak. However, as of late, because of the advent of technology and the determination of Ella to let people know that she is present, Ella has, despite her broken body, begun to blossom. She is communicating now about any number of subjects — subjects that most 12 year old little girls wouldn’t ever think to take time to comment. Yesterday, for example, Ella listened to a sermon on the sin of Grumbling and the necessity to be thankful and she responded via her technology that “I would rather know Jesus than be able to walk.”

My emotions when this is reported are mixed. I rejoice that Ella is able to communicate, however at the same time I remain deeply saddened concerning her brokenness. However, I likewise am drawn back to Barbara Ann Moree with regret and shame that I just assumed that she was completely absent and inert. Maybe Barbara Ann wasn’t home … but Ella has taught me that maybe she was.  I also then find immediate gratitude and deeper appreciation for Barbara’s Grandmother Margaret who was so faithful in caring for that child.

I am also thankful again for God’s grace to Barbara Ann in the gift of Baptism. Even if I failed Barbara Ann in not being more solicitous I can thank God for His marking out this child as a member of the covenant. The one person who was more faithful to Barbara Ann than her grandmother was our and her loving heavenly father.

I don’t know why God decided to touch both Barbara Ann and Ella and countless others. These kind of disabilities can only be dealt with by trusting that God will have a final eschatological word to say about the problem of evil in general and the problem of evil as touching particular people. The revelation of the particulars of God’s goodness in these cases will only be known on the final day. Until then, we trust the testimony of Scripture that God is good to His people without fail — and we hold tenaciously to God’s goodness even though the world might scream at us the way Job’s wife did; “Curse God and die.”

I imagine 30 years later that Barbara Ann may likely have passed away given the severity of her condition. However, I look forward to meeting her again in the new heavens and the new earth.

In all this I am reminded again how important it is to be gentle with those who are physically and mentally broken. I am also reminded to thank God for those things that come into our lives that we don’t understand and am reminded to continue to trust Him despite the fact that our senses shout at us to not trust God.

Further, I thank the benevolent God for my grand-daughter Ella. She is only 12 but I already long for the ability to trust God the way she clearly does. I thank God that He has determined that Ella would be able to thank her parents for their care and I thank God that He has given her the ability, seemingly against all odds, to be able to draw and paint. If you ever met Ella you would never be able to guess that her drawings and paintings could come from her broken and crippled hand.

Finally there is a word here about the necessity to continue to be pro-life as Christians. It would be easy to conclude that lives such as Barbara Ann and Ella are not lives worth living. Yet, God is the creator of all life and who is man that he should arise to the place of Creator and sovereign to determine who should and should not be given life? For Christians especially we should be reminded of the need to esteem and minister “to the least of these.” In light of that I thank God for Margaret and for Ella’s parents and siblings (Edward, Gwen, Winry and Alphonse). It is hard work caring for a broken and disabled child and such families do not receive the recognition that they should receive for so faithfully fulfilling their calling, as assigned by God, to the least of these. So, for whatever it is worth I salute my son-in-law and daughter and their children. I salute the Aaron Belk family who I know only a wee little bit who likewise minister to a child touched by God in this way.

And I pray for a faith that can trust God in all the hardships in life that mystify us now and will continue to mystify us until all is made clear on that final day.

Trinitarianism and Kinism

“There is a most profuse diversity and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity. The foundation for both unity and diversity is in God…. Here is a unity that does not destroy but rather maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not come at the expense of unity, but rather unfolds it in its riches. In virtue of this unity the world can, metaphorically, be called an organism, in which all parts are connected with each other and influence each other reciprocally.”

Herman Bavinck 
Reformed Dogmatics — Vol. II: p. 435

Kinists are Kinists because we believe that on a creational level the reality of unity in diversity found in the fact of multiple races in the one human race reflects the Creator who is Himself unity in diversity. Likewise then, Kinists believe that Alienists who deny Kinism are, whether self-conscious of it or not, denying the trinitarian character of God in favor of a Unitarian monad theology. In point of fact Kinists insist that the denial of Kinism for social order is the consequence of social order Unitarianism. When the Kinist defends Kinism behind and below that defense is his conviction that God is both One and Many as well as the conviction that to deny that unity in diversity is to deny our undoubted catholic Christian faith.

Critiquing Haines & Fulford on Natural Law

“By natural law, then, we mean that order or rule of human conduct which is

(1)based upon human nature as created by God

(2)knowable by all men, through human intuition and reasoning alone (beginning w/ his observations of creation, in general, and human nature, in particular), independent of any particular divine revelation provided through a divine spokesperson; and thus

(3) normative for all human beings.”

David Haines & Andrew A. Fulford
Natural Law; A Brief Introduction and Biblical Defense

#1 is not possible since human nature as created by God no longer is human nature, fallen as man is.

#2 fails to take into account that Scripture teaches that the carnal mind is enmity against God (Romans 8:7) and the Scripture that teaches of fallen man;

they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.

Also #2 fails in what is implied in the phrase “reasoning alone.” There is no reasoning that man develops that is not beholden to some God or god concept. Even the very idea of reasoning has to presuppose some kind of God in order to mean anything. The problem here is the premise that “reasoning” is a neutral something that fallen man engages in quite apart from a-priori presuppositions about God and His reality.

#3 fails the is and ought test. All because Natural Law teaches what ought to be normative for what fallen man knows does, doesn’t mean that is what fallen man claims to know.

The problem with Natural law in a nutshell is that Natural Law theorists don’t take into account the relationship between the ontological realities of fallen man and the epistemological realities of fallen man.

Ontologically fallen man remains a creature of God. He can’t avoid intuiting the fact that he is to God what a fingerprint is to a finger. He knows it in all of his being. He can’t escape it. However, fallen man, being fallen, uses his fallen epistemological apparatus to deny what he can’t escape knowing to be true ontologically. As such he suppresses the truth, via his fallen epistemological apparatus, in order that God may not rule over him.
Natural law does not take this into account positing as it does that fallen man has the ability by use of fallen reason unguided by special revelation and a regenerate mind that fallen man is capable of a knowing that can align him with the creator’s world.

In and by this move Natural Law advocates deny the uniquely Reformed doctrine of total depravity. It is the fallenness of man that makes it true that what fallen man ought to know by way of natural law fallen man claims not to know as he suppresses what he ought to know in unrighteousness.

Natural Law thus introduces into Christianity huge amounts of contradiction. Only a presuppositional approach removes that contradiction. Only a presuppositional approach is consistent with Reformed Christianity.