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.
As Rushdoony has pointed out concerning NL: Nature is fallen, and therefore not normative.
God, not nature is the source of Law, and there is no universal standard of NL that is available to fallen human reason.
An Englishman’s idea of NL and a Chinaman’s idea of the same are two different things. NL is another humanistic attempt to evade God’s Law.
Applause…. Applause!
Aquinas would agree with you, revelation from God is necessary because man generally cannot come to perfect knowledge of natural law without Gods help.
He says as much in the Summa.
However, Aquinas likewise insists that fallen man can interpret Natural Law aright without being converted. The Reformed do not agree here.
Fallen man CAN, as in, he possesses the ability by nature, but it is difficult and very unlikely for such a man to interpret natural law 100% correctly without God’s direct aid, either through public or private revelation. That is Aquinas’ position, it is not unbiblical. Romans 2:14
No… fallen man CANNOT because he does NOT possess the ability by nature because his nature IS FALLEN.
Rom. 2:14 does not mean what you think it means.
Maybe you are right, I don’t think its likely or common at all for man to come to PERFECT Understanding of natural law without God’s aid. I’d probably even give you that it would be so unlikely its nots worth speaking about.
See
https://ironink.org/2023/05/is-thomistic-natural-law-legitimate-part-i/
Could you elaborate a little on how Rom. 2:14-15 SHOULD be read? I think I’m a consistent Calvinist in that I believe our minds are fallen (radically corrupt, and therefore not completely trustworthy) – but not utterly corrupt.
Second, VD appeals to Romans 2:14-15 as another base of support for Natural law theory. Let us consider that passage.
14For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.
On this passage we must immediately note that the context is the Apostles indictment against Gentiles for their suppressing what they can not avoid knowing. The consequences of their suppression of this known truth is that they exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship things that are not worthy of worship. God having predestined them for such an end thus gives them over to the lusts that they freely desire. This results in a final proclamation from the Apostle in Romans 1:29-32 that they ‘know the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, (yet) not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’ Romans 2:1-15 finds the Apostle continuing to build the case that the Gentiles are guilty before God even though unlike the Jews they didn’t have God’s written law. St. Paul argues that what proves that they have a knowledge of the moral law of God is seen in that the Gentiles ‘do by nature the things contained in the law,’ and that they have a conscience that judges their conduct consistent with the law. However what we find in Chapter two can’t be made to contradict what we find in Chapter 1 where the Gentiles are characterized as suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. When in the passage quoted above the Apostle says what he does he is not teaching that there are Gentiles who receive the moral law through Natural law mechanisms and who keep the Natural law and so are saved by their righteousness. Such a reading would be contrary to what the Apostle explicitly teaches in 3:19-20, 23. What the Apostle is (again) arguing is that there is a universal sense of obligation — a obligation that is suppressed but still exists. What the Apostle teaches throughout Romans 1-3 is that Gentiles (and all men) are conscious of the moral law to a degree that makes them both guilty before and accountable to God. Romans 2:14-15 thus is anything but a recommendation for a Natural law theory that makes room for the ability of fallen men to not suppress the truth in unrighteousness. In point of fact Romans 1-3 is a round condemnation of any idea of Natural law theory. How can gentlemen like VD appeal to Romans 2:14-15 to support a theory that teaches that men can be governed by their reception and embrace of Natural law when when the immediate context teaches that the Gentiles suppress natural revelation(Romans 1:18-20), worship nature (Romans 1:23-25), act against nature (Romans 1:26-27), and deny their natural affection (Romans 1:31)? If anything the context implicitly suggests that any theory of Natural law that is arrived at by fallen man is a theory that will use Natural law as a means to justify and rationalize their perversions and anti-Christ agenda.
This post also deals exegetically with Romans 2;
https://ironink.org/2023/05/is-thomistic-natural-law-legitimate-part-i/
That and the link were very useful and much appreciated. The drawing of a distinction between the law itself and ‘the work of the law’, as well as pointing out no hard-and-fast distinction between Jews and Gentiles on this question also is enlightening. I assume that those in the world who have no conscience (and unfortunately I’ve known some) are under judicial hardening and judgment.
I’m hoping maybe you’ll do a future piece on Scottish Common Sense Realism.
I looked over those two links Bret put above and found an interesting additional detail to add:
In the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia entry for “conscience” there is a helpful summary of the Greek use of the word:
“In summary, secular Greek usage does not always give conscience a moral meaning, for conscience includes self-awareness in the broader sense. Nevertheless there was a highly developed awareness of the capacity of the conscience to inflict intense inward pain upon those who reject its testimony. Conscience is basically, however, a positive rather than a negative ingredient, and one is well-advised to live in such a way as to be on good terms with one’s conscience” (763).
Christians, since the advent of Christendom, have a difficult time acknowledging how different the pagan conscience is from a conscience conditioned by the revealed Law of God. One of the earliest problems in the 1st century church were impurities and sexual immoralities that pagans took for granted as acceptable, but Jews found abhorrent. It took preaching of the Law to remove the ignorance of pagan converts and to rehabilitate their minds to Christ, before darkened by sin.
The idea of a natural law by which all men can govern only makes sense when 1) the natural law is conflated with the Decalogue, and 2) a culture has inherited its sense of conscience from the Decalogue, and not from the general restraining work of the Holy Spirit (which is, I would argue, the Agent behind the works of the law operating upon the consciences of pagans). In other words, “natural law” only “works” within a Christian framework, which doesn’t actually need any “natural law” to operate, since it has the revealed Law of God.
Theoretically at least, I agree with you. But I’ll always remember in a lecture by the late Dr. John Gerstner on ‘The Parable of the Ten Virgins’, his making the statement that “Christians should be the most moral people in the world.” That such is far from the case has always been unaccountable to me, in that the Holy Spirit, according to Scripture, is to be guiding the Christian into all truth. How do we account for all the Christian Zionists who are the most deluded people on the planet – Christian or otherwise? I can only surmise that there must be many millstones surrounding the judgment seat of Christ waiting for their recipients.
Thank you for this Joshua.
Good to hear from you.