R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology) – Page 3

Is Christ King or is He only Kind of King? — McAtee vs. Duncan & Hart

In the biblical worldview, the believer’s redemption in Christ is not limited to personal salvation from sin guaranteeing him entry into heaven at death. It must also include a universal perspective. Otherwise redemption reduces to anthropology, nullifying the material order created by God. Such reductionist theology truncates Christ’s saving work accomplished in the cross-resurrection-ascension event, which undermines the ultimate new creation age to come.

Ken Gentry

We are one day removed from Palm Sunday 2024 with its ringing endorsement of the fact that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. However, 24 hours later we are left asking many of those who insist they are Reformed what they think the Kingship of Jesus Christ concretely means.

There is a large branch out there in the Reformed world who want to recite that Christ is King right up to the point where the idea of Kingship has any teeth. At that point the idea of “Kingship” is suddenly redefined in a very Gnostic direction. “Christ is King,” they say, “just so long as He is not intent on actually ruling as the alone King.” “Christ is King,” they chant “just so long as King Christ has no legislative Law-Word that we have to pay any attention to in our family order, social orders, and law orders.” “Christ is King,” they dutifully recite, “just as long as Christ has no territorial claims over any nation or over any footage on planet earth.” The Kingship of Jesus Christ for this group is esoteric, abstract, and invisible. The best that they offer for the impact of Christ’s Kingship is the insistence that Christians should demonstrate their belief in Christ’s Kingship by being nice and making room for a pluriform of competing gods in the public square. “Christ is King” for these crypto-Gnostics means a pluralistic social order where Christ as King as to compete for the table scraps of recognition from the God-State, along with the demon gods of Islam, Molech worship, Talmudism, and Salt Lake city fantasies. The Gnostic Reformed insist with us that “Christ is King,” but then turn around and define Kingship to mean “not Kingship.”

We are seeing this all over the Reformed world today. Most recently it came out in spades with an interview of Establishment figures Dr. J. Ligon Duncan, and a podcast including Dr. Darryl G. Hart. If you listen to these back to back it will take your breath away in turns of the animated hostility for traditional and historic Reformed views. Duncan goes especially after Theonomy and Reconstructionism. Hart has a wild hair growing over the possibility of Christian Nationalism, though he manages to make clear his loathing for theonomy type movements.

Duncan’s approach to the issue is almost comical.

He opens by insisting that mocking and slander are not Christian ways to deal with issues and then proceeds to slander fellow Christians who take Christ’s Kingship seriously all the way through the section he speaks on that subject.

Next Duncan tell us that King Christ was not a mocker and yet in His ministry Jesus mocks Herod by calling him a “she-fox.” The Pulpit Commentary offers here;

“The epithet “she-fox” is perhaps the bitterest and most contemptuous name ever given by the pitiful Master to any of the sons of men.”

Ellicott’s commentary reveals,

The word was eminently descriptive of the character both of the Tetrarch individually, and of the whole Herodian house. The fact that the Greek word for “fox” is always used as a feminine, gives, perhaps, a special touch of indignant force to the original.

We learn thus, that a Chancellor of a flagship seminary does not know what he is talking about on this particular mocking issue as it relates to the life of Jesus, and we haven’t even bothered to consider the treatment Jesus gave to the Pharisees. If all that is too complex for Dr. Duncan as it touches the issue of the appropriateness of mocking, perhaps he might consider Who is speaking in Proverbs 1:26; “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;”

Duncan goes out of his ways that the bible teaches that there are different ways to be faithful, and that is true. However, Duncan doesn’t mention that the Bible also teaches that there are different ways to be unfaithful. It is my opinion that Duncan’s work in this interview is one example of how to be unfaithful.

As one continues to listen to Duncan boast of his creating a Christ, Culture, and Contextualization course that he taught one realizes that Duncan has embraced the contextualization model of Christ with culture. This paradigm can be understood by accessing Niebuhr’s book on “Christ and Culture” where Niebuhr gives different paradigms for Christians engaging culture. “Niebuhr’s five views are: 1. Christ Against Culture, 2. Christ of Culture, 3. Christ Above Culture, 4. Christ and Culture in Paradox, 5. Christ the Transformer of Culture.” Clearly Duncan’s “Christ of Culture,” paradigm is one that liberals have embraced for quite some time. Duncan’s offense at the Reconstructionist paradigm indicates that Duncan is for appeasement. This is diametrically opposed to Scripture which finds Jesus teaching, “He who does not gather with me, scatters.” We know that Duncan is for appeasement given the tongue lashing and the slander he visits upon theonomy and reconstructionism.

Duncan insists that those who disagree with him are doing what they are doing because “a lot of it is ego and envy,” and a lot of unimportant people trying to be important. Yet, in my estimation Duncan’s ego and self-importance is just dripping off the interview. Honestly, I don’t mind being critiqued but the mean-spiritedness of Duncan in his words against those who take God’s Law-Word seriously was palpable.

Something else here that doesn’t ring true. Duncan says he gave up on critiquing Theonomy in 1996 or so because it was dead. However, in the archives on Iron Ink you can find a piece from 2009 where Duncan was again slamming theonomy. In this interview Duncan says that theonomy has risen from the grave like a zombie. Yet another slander from Duncan comparing a Reformed movement with the living dead.

Here is the fact of the matter. As much as he might like to, Duncan cannot kill the Theonomy/Reconstructionist movement. (Though Moscow aberration of it might kill it.) The Theonomy/Reconstruction movement may be dead for the Boomers and those over 50 even. At 64 I am a relic and a Dinosaur … one of the elder statesmen of the movement. However, I am seeing the rise of a 20-40 somethings who are never going to accept Reformed-Surrender theology. They are not going to be taken off to the gulag camps without a fight. They are no longer going to salute the post-WWII consensus that Duncan and Hart (and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church) cherish with their whole beings. The Enlightenment version of the Reformed faith with its bastardized version of the Westminster Confession of Faith is in a nursing home and the prognosis is not good for its long term health.

Ducan, Hart and their ilk are wedded to pluralism but let’s consider what pluralism has done. I’m old enough to remember the residuals of Christian America. I’m old enough to remember the theonomic blue laws that found every business, park, and amusement shut down on Sundays. I’m old enough to remember how on good Friday every year all the businesses would close at 12noon in order to attend noon good Friday services. I’m old enough to remember distinct male and female roles that were premised upon Christianity. I’m old enough to remember the necessity to refer to your elders as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” I’m old enough to remember Sunday being enforced as a day of rest. And remember, these were only the residuals of a Christian American that was already in its death throes. Darryl Gnostic Hart in his conversation asks, “what could it possibly mean for a nation to be Christian” and I offer the above as a partial answer.

At appx. the 49:40 point of the interview with Duncan he begins to mock fellow Christians. Irony much Lig? From there Duncan goes on to say that the Reconstructionist understanding of Christ’s Kingship has no possibility of being implemented in any possible world. First of all we would ask, “Lig, not being God how could you possibly know that?” Second we would ask, “Even if you could somehow know that is true would that mean therefore that Christians should cease to continue to advocate for the crown rights of Jesus Christ?” Third we would ask, “If it is possible for Sharia to be the law of nations why is it impossible to think that God’s better law could not be the law of nations? Is the Allah stronger than King Jesus Lig?”

Next Duncan trots out the old canard that Reconstructionism/Theonomy is not a Reformed view. These chaps have been trying to sell that nonsense ever since this ker started to fuffle. A book that came out early in this debate was “Theonomy; An Reformed Critique,” and in that book the authors try to sell the bilge that Theonomy/Reconstructionism was not Reformed. The fact of the matter is, is that it is the surrender monkeys found among the Reformed Establishment who are the ones holding to a Reformed faith that isn’t particularly historically or traditionally Reformed. Can anyone look at the original Westminster Confession on the Civil Magistrate or the original Belgic Confession of Faith on the Civil Magistrate, and tell me with a straight face that either the Westminster Divines or Guido de Bres would have recognized the pablum that Duncan and Hart are trying to sell as “historic Reformed Christianity?” To suggest that the Divines or de Bres would have agreed with Duncan and Hart is just gaslighting at its best.

Much more could be said but others have probably already said it. I come to this, as I said earlier, as an Elder Statesman to this debate. I’m a year older than Duncan. I wasn’t following the debates at ground zero but I was pretty close to ground zero. I know the players. I have read around all sides. I know Duncan and Hart are peeing on us and trying to tell us it is just rain. Don’t you believe them.

My fellow believers in Jesus Christ, either Christ is King with all that Kingship means or He is a the Gnostic King of Duncan and Hart and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church.

Palm Sunday tells me that Jesus Christ is King and that His Kingship is tangible.

McAtee Challenges Dr. W. Robert Godfrey’s Amillennialism

“We must never lose sight of the real inheritance, which is not cultural influence. The real inheritance is the eternal kingdom that Jesus brings with him when he returns in glory.”

Dr. W. Robert Godfrey

Is the church in America idolizing politics and placing freedom above theology?

Abounding Grace Radio

1.) Keep in mind that culture is theology externalized. Since that is the definition of culture, Godfrey here is complaining that our desire for the externalization of Christian theology (culture) is not our (Christians) real influence. Does that make sense that a Christian theologian would say such a thing?

2.) Technically, Godfrey may be right that cultural influence is not our key inheritance. Technically speaking cultural influence is our key command as seen in Christ’s final words that we are to disciple the nations. (See Mt. 28:16-20)

3.) Note that Dr. Godfrey, in typical Amillennial fashion, sees the eternal Kingdom of Jesus as only being future. For Godfrey the eternal Kingdom is all not yet. There is no now. And yet Jesus said that He came to give life and to give it abundantly. The Kingdom, while having a not yet component also has a now component that the saints currently have. That our inheritance of the eternal Kingdom of Christ is explicitly taught in Scripture in Colossians;

“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”

4.) The optimistic eschatology of postmillennialism could never utter such words as the Amillennial Dr. W. Robert Godfrey. The whole statement breathes surrender and pessimism.

5.) Abounding Grace radio is an arm of R2Kism.

6.) We have to admit that it is possible to make an idol out of politics.

7.) Would Abounding Grace radio insist that the “Black Robed Regiment” during the run up to the American counter-Revolution was guilty of making an idol out of politics when it preached freedom from Reformed pulpits all across the colonies? I suspect had they been alive then they would have indeed censored those Reformed Pastors.

8.) The idea of placing freedom above theology is a non-sequitur since for Christians freedom is defined by theology. Freedom is defined as the ability to be obedient to God’s law Word. In other words if freedom was prioritized over theology than the freedom that might be achieved would not be freedom.

9.) Taken as a whole these two quips are really bad theology driven by bad R2K militant amillennial eschatology.

Heidi Complains That Christian Nationalists Believe Rights Come From God

“The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists, (not Christians because Christian nationalists are very different), is that they believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any Earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God,”

Heidi Przybyl

Guest on Talking Head MSNBC Show

Imagine my effrontery to believe that I am endowed by my Creator with certain inalienable rights, and as such do not have to wait, hat in hand, for some government, steeped in humanism and owning allegiance to Man as God said loudly, to determine for me what “rights” they will piece meal out to me.

The stupidity of this woman is a new low but it is revelatory of the mindset of our enemies. These people really do believe that “in the state we live and move and have our being.” These people really do embrace that since we have no god over us, the State is therefore god.

Of course, she really doesn’t believe that it is a problem for people not to believe rights come from the State. If the state took away the right to abortion, for example, can you imagine how loud Heidi’s screeching would be that “the Government has no right to do that?” Would Heidi, at that point, suddenly become a Christian because she would be acting in a way as to demonstrate her belief that “rights come from something higher than the state.”

Now, keep in mind in all this that R2K agrees with Heidi that rights don’t come from God — at least not directly. R2K believes that all rights come from Natural Law. So, Heidi and David Van Drunen have in common that Christians should not be appealing directly to God but to some other agency for human “rights.” Heidi believes the appeal should be made to the State. David Van Drunen believes the appeal should be made to Natural Law.

R. Scott Clark Platforms Lems … Embraces Doug Wilson’s View of Ethnonationalism

“Furthermore, once a government separates people into groups based on ethnicity, I can’t imagine such groups existing without any racism happening. As a Christian, I’m fundamentally opposed to any type of political theory or nationalist view that separates people based on ethnicity.”

Shane Lems

1.) Governments don’t typically need to separate people into groups because it is ethnic groups that create governments. What Governments do is slam different people’s together so that the Government can control by dividing and conquering.

2.) Clark doesn’t define “racism” so I have no earthly idea what he is talking about when he uses that word therefore it is not possible to respond to such non-defined claims.

3.) Clark says he’s “Opposed to all nationalist views?”

All Nationalist views?

Acts 17:26 From one man He (God) made all the nationS, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and HE marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

4.) Here is something that R. Scott Clark and Doug Wilson (mortal enemies) have in common. Perhaps they could start a Bromance based on this shared view?

R. Scott Clark’s analysis makes the analysis of Alfred E. Newman look like genius.

More Firepower Against Natural Law Theory

^{Deuteronomy 30:11}“For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. ¹²It 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?’ ¹³Nor 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?’ ¹⁴But 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, ¹⁶in 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

⁷Because the ^[a]carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. ⁸So 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

¹⁶All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷so 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

This is implicit theonomy for the obvious reason that the civil law is being appealed to as a basis for an ongoing principle of general equity. On this score the WCF is theonomic.

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;
⁸The 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:

“The Inadequacy of the Light of Nature

To be sure, there is left in man after the fall, some light of nature, whereby he retains some notions about God,-1- about natural things, and about the difference between what is honorable and shameful, and shows some regard for virtue and outward order. But so far is he from arriving at the saving knowledge of God and true conversion through this light of nature that he does not even use it properly in natural and civil matters. Rather, whatever this light may be, man wholly pollutes it in various ways and suppresses it by his wickedness.-2- In doing so, he renders himself without excuse before God.

-1- Rom 1:19-20; 2:14-15.

-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.”

Rex Downie

Natural Law and God’s Law: An Antithesis

“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.”

CVT

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.”

Gary North

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

Ursinus in his Commentary on Heidelberg (p. 506) writes,

“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.”

Zacharias Ursinus

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.