Category: epistemology

Refuting A Natural Law Fan Club Member

“A lot of nonsense and misunderstanding concerning natural revelation / law / theology could be spared if people would distinguish between different points of telos. Presupps tend to reduce the discussion to the soteriological telos. But there are many others to consider.”

Cody Justice
Natural Law Aficionado

“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.”

THIRD AND FOURTH HEADS OF DOCTRINE
Of the Corruption of Man, His Conversion to God, and the Manner Thereof
Article 4

I am a presuppositionalist. Over the years I have followed this argument carefully about Natural Law. I have read books on both sides. I am finishing up one now that Cody recommended to me some time ago. It has not changed my mind. Not even close.  Having said that, I am here to tell you that Presupps understand perfectly that

1.) That their opponents (The Natural Law club) do not themselves argue that Natural Law is of any service in relation to the soteriological telos. Indeed presupps acknowledge that there is the retaining of some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and of the discovering of some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment.

Indeed, it is not possible for those outside of Christ to have a worldview system that doesn’t incorporate some aspects of God’s natural revelation and natural law for a unbelieving worldview that would be completely absent of natural revelation and/or natural law would be one that brought instantaneous death. Van Til would speak of this content of God’s natural revelation/ natural law present in unbelieving worldviews as “stolen capital” as gained by filching from Christianity.

We only insist that the this stolen capital from Christianity is in service against Christianity as it exists within the worldview of the non-Christian in order to deface Christianity. For example, over the centuries many peoples have understood the distinctions between males and females (as is going into eclipse now among some Western peoples) but the understanding of those distinctions often made for marriages where the women (wives) were slaves of their husbands. Natural Law was accepted as to male and female differences but then put into the service of demeaning women. So, in such examples we see the truth of what Dordt says when it offers;

that fallen man is incapable of using it (Natural Light) 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.”

2.) Another thing that needs to be noted here is that nobody among the presupps deny that the heavens declare the handiwork of God or that the earth showeth forth His firmament (Ps. 19). Those among the presupps who reject Natural Law as a epistemological foundation for fallen man agree that Natural Revelation exists and that God is making Himself known in all creation. Our issue is not with the fact that God makes Himself known in nature. Our issue is that as fallen man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness and as fallen man has a mind that is at enmity with God, fallen man takes Natural Law in all its varied purposes (ends/goals) and twists them thereby becoming inexcusable before God.

3.) The fact that fallen man can still produce or apprehend beauty is accounted for by the fact of the common providence of God whereby God has not yet completely turned a people over to their sin. It is not that by means of Natural Law man is climbing to a higher state. It is, rather, that by God’s common providence fallen man has not yet fallen as far as he will fall if he does not repent.

4.) Presupps believe that the proper use of teleos for Natural Law in all things (not merely soteriology) can only be arrived at by reading Natural Law through the grid of special revelation. This is one reason why Scripture teaches; “In thy Light we see light.”  To hold a contrary view, such as is held by the Natural Law fan-club denies the noetic effects of the fall, which in turn denies the standard Reformed teaching of total depravity, which in turn overturns the whole of the Reformed faith. This explains why the presupps can get a wee bit exercised over this issue.

5.) An illustration that Van Til used here touched on signals and radio stations. CVT would say that indeed Natural Revelation / Natural Law is being sent, much as radio signals are being sent out. The problem is not with the radio signals. The problem is that fallen man is constantly pushing every button on the old Delco car radios in order to find a station that is not playing God’s signals.

So, Corey is plainly in error here, as are all the members of the Natural Law fan club.

Away With This Move Back To Natural Law

“The citadel of Greek thought, or Renaissance philosophy, & of the Enlightenment has been called by Peter Gay, the great historian of the Enlightenment who also is a great champion of it, simply this; “The autonomy of critical thought.”
 
What does this mean? It means that when man exercises his reason as he approaches anything, and especially in the processes of education, man’s reason plays the role of God. For us, as Christians, reason is extremely important, but we believe in reason, not as God, but as reason…. Enlightenment faith believed that man’s reasoning, philosophy, education had to be omnipotent, autonomous, or it was nothing.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Education and the Autonomy of Thought

Thanks much to the efforts of Dr. Stephen Wolfe there has, in the recent past, been a push to restore that great whore of Natural Law so as to be sitting, once again, on the throne of epistemology. This despite the fact that it was the Enlightenment that was famous for its appeal to “right reason and natural law” as the means to answering the question of “how do I know what I know.”

Indeed it was the Enlightenment and Natural Law that gave us muck and mire we are currently stuck in by championing as a main principle, “Egalitarianism.” Henry James Sumner Maine, a 19th century legal scholar wrote, on this score;

“There cannot, I conceive, be any question that to the assumption of the Law Natural we owe the doctrine of the fundamental equality of human beings.”

It is this Natural Law … the Natural Law that was championed by the French Philosophes and Revolutionaries, which included egalitarianism that is making a comeback among a new generation of pseudo-intellectuals.

Natural Law suffers from the condition of only being as good as the presuppositions with which one begins. The man whose reason begins by valuing sodomy and pedophilia will easily conclude that, lo and behold, Natural Law teaches sodomy and pedophilia. Similarly, the man whose reason begins by valuing Scripture will find Scripture validated everywhere by Natural Law. His problem however, will be that he is positing the strength of God’s revelation on the foundation of his autonomous reasoning as opposed to founding his reason (which is never autonomous) on God’s revelation.

The Natural Law chaps seem to believe that folks can look out upon reality and quite apart from any fallen biases can begin to read the proper nature of things just by the use of this presumed unbiased reasoning. However, this stands in contradiction to God’s special revelation. If these Natural Law types would refers to God’s special revelation first as opposed to referring to Natural Law first there they would read that “the heart is deceitfully wicked above all things.” As such man never looks out upon creation and reasons in an unbiased manner. As the saying goes, “Man has a ox to gore” and that ox is to read all things in terms of himself as the highest and best interpreter.

Natural law aficionados have failed to take seriously the noetic effects of the fall on the mind of fallen man, and as such they are denying the doctrine of “total depravity” with their precious (gollum gollum) doctrine of Natural Law. Indeed, it is not to much to say that the Church’s embracing over the centuries of Natural Law has been one of the greatest boondoggles of the Church in her entire history.

John Dewey in his book Experience in Education, says that man must learn to set his own standards, his own ideals, in terms of himself, as the ultimate criterion.  This is exactly what the Natural Law attaboys are promulgating when they advocate for homo mensura (man the measure). The idea that fallen man will create a just and Christ honoring social order by relying on his autonomous ability to read Natural Law is right up there with the idea that Ph.D. clergy from Reformed denominations are trustworthy men from which to garner advice.

Fan boys of Natural Law think that they are avoiding presuppositions but they have instead merely embraced the presupposition that fallen man has no bias and can indeed act in a neutral fashion as a autonomous free agent. They have returned us to De Cartes by positing that the thinking self is the highest point of reference. This gives us, just as it gave De Cartes, subjectivism. What Natural Law does is it takes the subjective (fallen man) fills him and his thinking with helium so that his thinking becomes a transcendent something and then labels that helium filled subjective as his “objective” naming it with the name of “Natural Law.” The “objective” that the Natural Law man has is a subjective that has been given the status of objectivity. It is a subjective objective.

We would be better served by remembering Van Til  on this score;

“If God exists, there are no brute facts. If God exists our study of facts must be the effort to know them as God wants them to be known by us. We must then seek to think God’s thoughts after him. To assume that there are brute facts is therefore to assume that God does not exist.”

There are no facts that can be known truly as independent of God. Fallen man is by definition someone who seeks to be a knower independent of God. He uses Natural Law to proclaim that all facts are brute facts until he, as fallen man, gives them meaning and coherence. He can know apart from and without God just by the use of right reason and natural law. But, without God, pray tell what is the standard for this thing called “right reason,” and apart from God how does Natural Law have any objective meaning whatsoever?

Natural law, when it “works” is a classic example of robbing capital from a Christian worldview and importing into a pagan concept in order to get it off the ground. Natural Law can only work as a reasoning mechanism if one presupposes the God of Christianity to begin with but if one is going to presuppose the God of Christianity then why not go all the way and presuppose that God’s law as found in special revelation? Why presuppose instead man’s epistemological ability to start from his fallen self and by the use of his right (right by what standard?) reason properly cogitate about the nature of reality?

Save yourself of presupposing yourself as your own God and flee Natural Law theory.

Postmodernism & Fact Checking?

“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed.”

Hannah Arendt

This morning I was watching an interview by a BBC reporter with Elon Musk The reporter was complaining to Musk about the misinformation that Musk allows on his social media platform X. Musk turned the tables and asked the interviewer about the misinformation that routinely occurs on the BBC. Suddenly, it hit me. The heavens opened. A sunbeam spotlighted me and angels sang.

We have all this massive carping about misinformation, misinformation and disinformation to the point where even Hillary Clinton worries that if we don’t do something about the social media platforms, “We are going to lose total control.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/06/hillary_clinton_if_social_media_platforms_dont_have_to_moderate_content_we_lose_total_control.html

Indeed, a whole cottage industry has sprung up of “fact checkers.”

However this is all one giant contradiction we have going on here because on the one hand we have these complaints about misinformation while on the other hand we live in a culture that touts the epistemological philosophy of postmodernism which teaches that there is no such thing as true truth. The current prevailing epistemology at the University level teaches that while sub-communities may have their little “t” truths, no macro “T” truth exists. Truth, for postmodernism is reduced to preferred narratives embraced by sundry different communities.

And yet despite that epistemology we are drowning in accusations of misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information. However if truth is reduced to merely preferred narratives that different social groups want to own then who is to say that something is misinformation? What might be true for the Lugenpresse might not be true for MAGA groupies and how dare anybody suggest otherwise.

In brief, were we rational, (and we most definitely are not) we would shut down the whole “fact checking” nonsense that is going on at every turn. What we see is that the elites want their cake and to eat it also. The elites don’t believe in true truth and yet they scream about “misinformation.”

Really, it is quite comical if you think about it.

However, what all this “fact checking” is all about is control as Hillary informed us above. Information is power and the ability to say what is and isn’t “fact” is power over people’s thinking, and so power over people. The elites don’t want anybody determining reality except for themselves. The elites want to keep selling us the false reality they have been feeding us for decades now. The access of counter information finds them trotting out the threat of misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information in order to shore up their power.

And this in spite of swearing allegiance to postmodernism at the same time.