Harris wrote,
Stop conflating sinful activities with natural law please. It just muddies the waters.
Bret wrote;
Natural law can teach any number of sinful things depending upon the one doing the natural law.
Harris responds;
Wouldn’t that same critique apply to interpreting special revelation?
Dr. Schlebusch responds to Harris;
No because 1. We confess that the Spirit guides us in interpreting Scripture while NL proponents claim it is “self-evident” 2. Scripture contains written propositions in an infallible text. NL does not.
McAtee chimes in;
In addition … special revelation is perspicuous to the Spirit illumined while Natural Law clearly is not perspicuous to fallen man given that he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. However, Jon, you get bonus points for coming up with the old as Methuselah common “what about.”
Harris responds,
1. The root issue for this question is whether God communicates in ways that lead to sin, not the mechanism He uses. Sinful man will violate reason and ignore the Spirit to arrive at interpretations that suit them.
2. The nature of Scripture communicates theological truths natural law cannot and must be propositional, but that’s not the issue here either. Neither communicates sin (especially if we believe the propositions Scripture gives us about what the natural order conveys)- that’s a problem with receiving and interpreting.
Bret responds,
a.) Right … which explains why Thomistic Nat’l law theory is bogus. Sinful man ontologically knows but epistemologically insists that he doesn’t know what he can’t help but know. Fallen man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.
b.) This is dualism. Nat’l law declares handiwork of God per Scripture (Psalm 19, Romans 1:19-20). Hence, Natural Law teaches theological truth. See confessions here.
Canons of Dordt — 3rd & 4th Head / Article 4
There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay, further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God.
c.) I agree with your last sentence in your #2 above, but fallen man does not agree with you. Hence we have a major problem with Thomistic Nat’l law theory. Thomistic Natural Law theory denies Total Depravity by denying the noetic effects of the fall.
