Deuteronomy 30:11 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.
15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.
“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20
Here we have it explicitly said that God’s law is to be the standard by which all other standards are measured. We are responsible to God’s law. I should not have to say it, but the point here is not that we are saved by the law, or that we use God’s law as a ladder to climb into God’s presence or to curry His uncertain acceptance. The point here is that as Christians, who have been saved from the curse of the law’s demand that we could never meet and has been met for us in Christ, we should govern our lives consistent with God’s revealed law Word as found in Scripture or as arrived upon by good and necessary consequence as reasoning from God’s law.
This is the clear teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism;
Question 91: But what are good works?
Answer: Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8
Scripture and the catechism clearly point to the reality that we are to be governed in our daily lives by God’s law as revealed in Scripture. In the 21st century should Christians desire to know what it means to have the conversations of our life be pleasing to God then we need to have those lifestyles reflect walking in harmony with God’s law. This explains why the Psalmist delighted in God’s law both day and night.
However, another theory holds increasingly holds sway among platformed Christians, both of the R2K ilk, and of the Christian Nationalist ilk. That other theory is called Natural Law and it has a long and storied history. There is no use in denying that many including, Reformed theologians, throughout Christendom have appealed to Natural Law as a mechanism by which Christians should govern their life. This alternative theory to what we find commanded in Scripture finds Christians insisting that we are not to be governed by God’s explicit written law but rather we are to be governed in our living by a reading of Natural Law, which is a law written in God’s structured reality and stamped upon all men’s hearts.
Recently a book came out from a conservative Reformed Public theologian that argued for a return to this kind of understanding of Natural law. I quote here a few of his statements in the book to demonstrate how the Church is rushing away from God’s law to this concept of Natural law;
So civil law is not mere philosophical reflection, nor should it be the rubberstamped Mosaic civil code.11
Thus, all righteous laws are only potentially just. … This is why the magistrate cannot rubberstamp a ready-made divine civil code.12
A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws, and they should not seek some universal “blueprint” they can rubber-stamp into law.13
The Mosaic law is not above natural law; it is a perfect application of it.14
Mosaic law … is not thereby a suitable body of law for all nations.15
Mosaic law … is a perfect example of law. But it is not a universal body of law.16
We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws.17
So, this Natural Law is to be the governing structure for fallen and redeemed men alike. As such what is posited is that fallen man can and will read Natural Law the same as men who are Redeemed and are now increasing, per their individual sanctification, epistemologically self-aware.
As implausible as it seems, Natural Law proponents argue, that fallen man, with his fallen mind, must read a fallen nature and then by strength of his fallen will act in an unfallen way. And remember, this is done quite independent of the Spirit of God. This completely obliterates the truth of Romans 8:7f
7 Because the [a]carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
On the theory of Natural Law Christians and Non-Christians alike are to make a individual hunt for God’s law, by the usage of right reason interpreting this abstract Natural Law. Natural Law theory insists that men fallen and redeemed, can together use reason to arrive at truth that can then be crafted into public policy as social order guidelines for all people. Natural Law as mediated by the usage of right reason by all men — fallen and redeemed — is the foundation for all legal infrastructure in all jurisdictions (save the Church, which still uses the law found in Special Revelation) for the structuring of our living. In this theory God’s Special Revelation is not necessary for social order structure. Natural Law can do all.
But what does this appeal to do Scripture like II Tim. 3
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Nowhere in Scripture do we find that all Natural law is God breathed being useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training for righteousness.
Of course by now you realize that this is ultimately about epistemology. This is about how we know what we know. All of this answers the question of “How Then Shall We Live.” Shall we live by the use of right reason as it is dependent upon Natural Law or shall we live by reason that can only be right when regenerated men submit to God’s revealed law?
The theory of the Natural Law aficionados is that while God’s revealed special revelation law was obviously the standard for the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, something happened with the coming of Christ, followed by His finished work, whereby that law became obsolete. That law, so the Natural Law experts insist was ended when Israel as a people ended, with the consequence that mankind had to repair to the Natural law model.
Now, we should interject here that God’s word clearly teaches that all the law that prefigured, announced, and shouted Christ in the OT (called “ceremonial Law”) was fulfilled in Christi and since that was fulfilled that expression of the Law was no longer requisite and so we as Christians, for example, no longer sacrifice animals. However, there is never a word in Scripture that what is now called the civil (or judicial) law given in the Old Testament became obsolete in the new and better covenant. Indeed, our Master Himself said;
Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”
So today, those who raise mint, anise, and cummin should be tithing on the increase of their mint, anise, and cummin.
The Westminster Confession faith affirms this when it offers in Article XIX,
To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.
Anti-Natural lawists today insist that the phrase “general equity thereof” proves indisputably that the heart and stuffing of God’s civil (judicial) law remains applicable today.
That St. Paul thought the same as seen by his appeal to the law;
8Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses: “ Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf?
Paul, as inspired by the Spirit of the living God is doing the very thing that the Westminster divines wrote in Article XIX. St. Paul is taking the general equity of that passage and applying it today, communicating thus that God’s Special Revelation and not Natural Law remains the standard by which all standards are measured.
The Westminster Confession itself reaches for OT civil law and not Natural law in order to teach that;
he WCF 24-4 teaches that marriage cannot lawfully occur if it is within degrees of consanguinity and affinity forbidden by the Scriptures.
Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden by the Word.481 Nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together as man and wife.48
So, for the Natural Law fanboys Israel was an exception in terms of being ruled by God’s explicit special revelation in the common realm. With the dissolution of Israel, the idea that God’s people should be ruled explicitly by God’s explicit revelation and the general equity thereof is extinguished and the new governing matrix for God’s people is the use of right reason based on Natural law. The special Revelation of the OT has passed and the new has come with Natural Law.
David Van Drunen of R2K invention notes of Natural Law,
“The moral order inscribed in the world and especially in human nature, an order that is known to all people through their natural faculties (especially reason and/or conscience) even apart from supernatural divine revelation that binds morally the whole human race. “
[2 I believe the last clause, “that binds morally…” is intended to describe the moral order = natural law, rather than its nearest antecedent (“supernatural divine revelation”). I think that to make this clear Van Drunen should have put a comma after “revelation.” Or, better, he should have put a period after “revelation,” then written “This moral order binds…”]
Dr. Stephen Wolfe in his book Christian Nationalism writes similarly on pages 244 & 245;
“Societies, need, in other words, an ordering of reason — reason expressed as civil law.”
And again,
“Law is an ordering of reason by an appropriate lawgiver for the good of the community.”
“The Natural Law is an ordering of reason, consisting of moral principles that are innate in rational creatures, given by God, who is the author of nature.”
For Van Drunen and Wolfe (each Natural Law fanboys who are not happy with one another) God only authors Special Revelation law in its specificity for OT Israel but not for contemporary man. Instead God authors nature which in turn authors a law that fallen and redeemed man together, starting autonomously from themselves, quite without presupposing God, reasons to by an act of the human will (fallen or unfallen).
The autonomy of man in all this is seen in Dr. Wolfe saying,
“A Christian nationalist must have the strength of will to affirm what is true, even if it doesn’t feel good to him. This is the main reason why I emphasized the will throughout this book…. we have to retrain the mind by the strength of will.”
So, the appeal here for the Christian Nationalist is find the strength of will to affirm the true, but the true this strength of will is to be affirming is a true that is drawn not from Scripture but from Wolfe’s “Natural Law.”
This is a “Natural Law,” that is contained in zero volumes in any library in the world. This is a “Natural Law,” that is kaleidoscopic, having as many variants as there are schools of philosophical thought. I promise you that the Natural Law of the Romanticist is not going to agree with the Natural Law of the Nihilist and they are not going to agree, in turn, with the Natural Law of the Deist who is not going to agree with the Natural Law of the Marquis de Sade.
We also see the reality of the instability of Natural Law by observing that there are now two contesting interpretations of Natural Law that are adamantly opposed to one another in definition and meaning in the Reformed World. One can choose Dr. David Van Drunen’s R2K Natural law or one can choose Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s Natural Law. These two Natural Laws are at each other’s throats and come to exactly opposite conclusions on a host of matters. Both contestants will tell you that their Natural Law is THE Natural Law. One wonders if there is a Natural Law that can tell us which competing Natural Law we are to choose vis-a-vis Wolfe and Van Drunen.
And of course this is only in the Reformed World. How many other Natural Law paradigms are out there? One can only guess that there as many Natural Laws as there stars in the sky or sand on the seashore.
It is a utterly failed model, and yet because we are in need of a Transcendent authoritative word to serve as the North Star of our Epistemology we turn to this completely contrived idea of Natural Law instead of turning to God’s Law and Testimony.
Why not be like the Psalmist who when wanting to arrive at Truth could speak about the blessed man finding,
his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
And again,
The law of the Lord is perfect, [e]converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
8 The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
And of course that Magnum Opus of the Law found in Psalm 119.
Isaiah in 8:20 was merely echoing the resolve of all God’s people when he wrote,
“To the law and to the testimony: if they (the Mediums vs. 19) speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20
I do not think it is going to far to say that those who make Natural Law walk on all fours as a foundation for epistemological theory are indeed consulting a kind of man created medium.
Listen to the warnings against Natural Law, not only as what we have seen from Scripture but also many church Fathers;
Canons of Dort III/IV.4:
-2- Rom 1:18, 20.”
“Where the leaders have no vision, the people perish. And natural law theory with its rationalism was the Trojan horse that brought the legions of Satan further and further into God’s world. The leaders–Grotius, Locke, Rousseau, and in our nation our Presidents, Senators, churchmen–all have failed to see the command of their Creator for their lives and offices, and we as Christians, the salt of the earth, have failed to see and lead for the blessing of ourselves and our posterity.”
“This synthetic; (Aristotelianism w/ Christianity) standpoint found its most powerful philosophical and theological expression in the system of Thomas Aquinas. The; two foundational tenets of this system were the positing of the; autonomy of natural reason in the entire sphere of natural knowledge, and the thesis that nature is the understructure of supernatural grace.”71 It is in the acceptance of the idea of the autonomy of reason, even though it was supposed to be restricted to the sphere of “natural knowledge,” that Romanism (and all systems that embrace Natural Law — BLM) makes its alliance with the religious dualism of the Greek form-matter scheme. In consequence, the “Biblical creation-motive was deprived of its original integral and radical character.”72 “Creation is proclaimed to be a natural truth, which can be seen and proven by theoretical thought independent of all divine revelation.”
Christianity & Barthianism
“If you want my thesis of natural law theory in one graphic sentence, I will provide it: the most consistent defender of natural law theory was the Marquis de Sade. De Sade’s incomparable perversity was self-consciously based on his observation of the workings of nature. … He also opposed civil laws against prostitution, adultery, incest, rape, and sodomy. After all, these are all natural urges and practices; they are found in nature. Marriage and monogamy are not normal in nature.”
Westminster’s Confession
“Law is rooted in God’s essence. Apostasy means forsaking justice. For atheists, there are only natural inclinations, no natural law. Conscience and moral inclinations are merely weak reverberations of God’s Law, and wherever the latter is done away with, duty is replaced by pride and selfishness.”
– Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer
“Furthermore, although natural demonstrations teach nothing concerning God that is false, yet men, without the knowledge of God’s word, obtain nothing from them except false notions and conceptions of God; both because these demonstrations do not contain as much as is delivered in his word, and also because even those things which may be understood naturally, men, nevertheless, on account of innate corruption and blindness, receive and interpret falsely, and so corrupt it in various ways.”
Commentary on Heidelberg Catechism
Conclusion;
The message of the Gospel is that man is a sinner in need of His sins being forgiven by the work of Christ on the cross. One of the main sins of that fallen man is guilty of is the sin of operating autonomously …. operating as if he and not God is the operator of reality.
There is the garden man operated autonomously according to his fallen reason. His fallen reason told him that the fruit was pleasing to the eye. His fallen reason believed that if he only ate he would be as God knowing good and evil. And then, on the basis of right reason and natural law, per his beginning presupposition that God was in error in what He said, Man ate .. and fell.
It was a mistake to ever take up right reason and natural law as an epistemology…. as an answer to the question how do we know what we know. The answer to the question of how do we know what we know is by affirming our reliance on God’s special revelation.
Only by having a right understanding of special revelation can we read natural revelation correctly.
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Below is an excerpt taken by something Martin Selbrede wrote for the Chalcedon Inst.
In Dr. Wolfe’s view, “revealed theology serves to complete politics, but it is not the foundation of politics.”8 Theology provides capstones, not foundations (contra Luke 6:47-49) because man’s “political life is fundamentally natural.”9 Christianity provides a cosmetic finish to perfect a nation.10 The concept of the same hands laying the foundation also installing the capstone (Zech. 4:9) is alien to Dr. Wolfe.
Man, as a moral being, is bound only by the natural law (or God’s moral law) as the rule for his actions. But the natural law in itself doesn’t prescribe specific action. … Being mediators of God’s civil rule, civil rulers issue civil commands – expressed and promulgated as civil law – that are ordinances of God and bind the conscience, though only when they are just … So civil law is not mere philosophical reflection, nor should it be the rubberstamped Mosaic civil code.11
Thus, all righteous laws are only potentially just. … This is why the magistrate cannot rubberstamp a ready-made divine civil code.12
A people need the strength, resolve, and spirit to enact their own laws, and they should not seek some universal “blueprint” they can rubber-stamp into law.13
The Mosaic law is not above natural law; it is a perfect application of it.14
Mosaic law … is not thereby a suitable body of law for all nations.15
Mosaic law … is a perfect example of law. But it is not a universal body of law.16
We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws.17
Natural law can hide inside a chrysalis to later emerge as a butterfly. For Dr. Wolfe, allegiance to the written Law of God consigns a society to caterpillar status. Whereas Mosaic law may have been a perfect reduction of natural law for pre-Christian Israel, it isn’t for us. We must draft the blueprints for a butterfly to emerge from the jelly.
For Dr. Wolfe, “the prince mediates God’s divine civil rule … he makes public judgments in application of God’s natural law, effectively creating law (though derivative of natural law).”18 The prince fills the void left by God’s written law, for “the prince is the instrument by which natural law becomes human law.”19 There is an implied vacancy for the position of lawgiver, and secular lawgivers are seen as divinely inspired bakers cooking up new butterflies from the jelly. “Girolamo Zanchi states that ‘the laws of Solon, Lycurgus, Romulus, and Numa’ were ‘divinely inspired.’ If this is true of pagans, why exclude Christian civil leaders?”20 As John Owen noted, “the scholastics (in whose eyes Thomas Aquinas is second only to God), have conscientious scruples about disagreeing with Aristotle.”21
A “vague knowledge”22 is sufficient to start the legislative ball rolling. This veers away from Mosaic law because “the precursor to any Christian nationalism is a people intentionally working their natural good according to man’s nature.”23 The path to blessings revealed in Psalm 1, Psalm 19, and Psalm 119 is supplanted by Dr. Wolfe’s preferred route.
Dr. Wolfe says that “the magistrate is the living law”24 since otherwise “civil laws have no force.”25 The flying scroll of Zech. 5:1-4 certainly puts the lie to such claims: God’s law enters into the homes of transgressors and destroys them.
Wilson diverges from Dr. Wolfe, referring to “the end result that we are aiming for — obedience to every word of Christ — including the things He said about the words of Moses.”26 In fact, Wilson seems troubled by any alleged inapplicability of Scripture: “What good is an absolutely infallible book that cannot be applied?”27 We would argue that its applicability has been laid out in Dr. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law.
In contrast, the Puritans “never wavered in their belief in the supreme authority and necessity of revelation, and they confidently assumed that the dictates of ‘right reason’ received their full enunciation in the revelation of God’s will contained in Scripture.”28 The mechanisms Dr. Wolfe invokes are denied to him by Jacques Ellul, who “points out that ‘law by itself, as an autonomous entity, does not exist in the Bible,’ … that the Stoic and Thomist and Rationalist arguments are insufficient to produce a Law at all.”29 There’s simply no jelly available for making butterflies.
