God’s Abiding Law

Returning To Natural Law … Again

For the purposes of illustration, the Thomistic Natural Law disciple sees himself as a farmer harvesting facts. He harvests his facts much like a farmer might harvest his corn. On his way to town with his wagons full of his corn (facts) another Natural Law farmer stops him and says… “Nice crop of sorghum you have there.” The first Natural Law farmer, now befuddled by this comment, insists, “my fact harvest is one of corn and not sorghum.” When he finally gets to town to sell his harvest the Natural Law middle man purchaser says to our Natural Law corn harvester, “Nice harvest of perch you have there. What lake did you pull all them out of?”

You see the Thomistic Natural Law disciple sees facts as a farmer sees a crop. The problem here is that there is no fact apart from a interpretation of fact, and as such corn as a fact to one Natural Law advocate may well indeed be seen. understood, and counted as counter-factual to another Natural Law advocate. One Natural Law advocate’s corn is another Natural Law advocate’s fish.

You see facts, unlike crops, while indisputably objectively real, are refashioned according to the subjective mind to fallen men harvesting the facts. The classic analogy of this truth is in found in the fossil. The fossil is an indisputable objective fact but if that fossil is presented to a evolutionary Darwinian scientist he will look at the fossil and might say something like, “We see here proof that evolution is true as this fossil so wonderfully demonstrates.” Standing next to our evolutionary Darwinian scientist we have a Biblical Christian scientist who next looks at the fossil fact and says, “Ah, here we see the proof that the world was created in six days — all good.” A third scientist present, being a nihilist, looks at the fossil and say’s something like, “This is nothing but a rock and it means nothing.”

The point here is that the Thomistic Natural Law advocate cannot collect facts like a farmer harvests his crop. Facts, while objectively true, are reinterpreted by the unbeliever so that they might not testify to the reality of the God upon whom all facts depend upon for meaning. As God gives meaning to facts, the one who hates God and His Christ has an agenda to not let facts say what they inescapably say. The problem is not with the facts — they remain objectively objective. The problem is with fallen man who is determined to not read the facts for what they are since a reading of the facts for what they are will inevitable lead them to the one who gives all facts their meaning, and that they cannot have.

Now, this tendency and determination to reinterpret God’s interpretation of facts becomes more and more radical and extreme the further a individual and/or culture rebels against God. In such cases Natural Law will be appealed to as teaching, for example, that there are a multitude number of genders and not merely two. When a rabid antithesis develops between God and man or between God and a society any Natural Law appealed too will be invoked in order to overthrow the kinds of conclusions coming from the Natural Law to which Aquinas appealed as existing independently of presupposing the reality of the God of the Bible.

Thomistic Natural Law once worked in the West as a epistemological foundation because the denizens in the West largely were operating already with Christian presupposition and having Christians presuppositions a consensus could be arrived at in terms of what Natural Law taught. However, this consensus of what Natural Law taught — absent of a Biblical presuppositional foundation — ended up having the lifespan of cut flowers in a vase. The consensus remained beautiful for a season but however the consensus, like cut flowers, eventually died because the cut flowers were not rooted in the soil of Biblical presuppositionalism.

When handled by someone who is not submitted to the God of the Bible and His Christ, facts are not like crops and men are not like farmers harvesting a crop of unquestioned and indisputable facts. Honestly, nothing should be more obvious in the climate we are living in currently.

Still, at the same time that postmodernism is going wild we now have a strong movement to return to the modernism that was built upon the foundation of Natural Law. A modernism that eventually was found empty and brought us to postmodernism. This new impulse of modernism with its Natural Law advocacy has found strange bedmates with the coupling of the R2K fanboys together with the Classical 2K followers of Stephen Wolfe. These two schools of thoughts fight like two cats knotted at the tail and cast over a clothesline when it comes to their varied conclusions on just exactly what Natural Law teaches and yet together they man the ramparts against any onslaught by Theonomists who, contrary to Thomistic Natural Law theories, appeal to the law and the testimony. Both Van Drunen’s R2K and Stephen Wolfe’s Classical 2K believe that fallen man can use right reason and natural law, independent of presupposing the God of the Bible, to come to true truth.

This agreement between Wolfe and Van Drunen, both of whom insist they are Reformed, strikes the garden variety Theonomist as a denial of the noetic effects of the fall playing havoc with the whole idea of the stout Reformed doctrine of “total depravity.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am glad for many of Wolfe’s conclusions via his usage of Thomistic Natural Law. I have even defended Wolfe on my Iron Rhetoric podcasts from many of the “Reformed” who oppose Christian Nationalism. My point here is, in part, that the Natural Law that was the epistemological foundation of the Enlightenment project, in the end, is not going to win the day. Thomistic Natural Law is not going to rescue the West because at its heart it is a humanistic doctrine that finds man being the interpretive center of his own world.

Critiquing Haines & Fulford on Natural Law

“By natural law, then, we mean that order or rule of human conduct which is

(1)based upon human nature as created by God

(2)knowable by all men, through human intuition and reasoning alone (beginning w/ his observations of creation, in general, and human nature, in particular), independent of any particular divine revelation provided through a divine spokesperson; and thus

(3) normative for all human beings.”

David Haines & Andrew A. Fulford

Natural Law; A Brief Introduction and Biblical Defense

#1 is not possible since human nature as created by God no longer is human nature, fallen as man is.

#2 fails to take into account that Scripture teaches that the carnal mind is enmity against God (Romans 8:7) and the Scripture that teaches of fallen man;

they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.

Also #2 fails in what is implied in the phrase “reasoning alone.” There is no reasoning that man develops that is not beholden to some God or god concept. Even the very idea of reasoning has to presuppose some kind of God in order to mean anything. The problem here is the premise that “reasoning” is a neutral something that fallen man engages in quite apart from a-priori presuppositions about God and His reality.

#3 fails the is and ought test. All because Natural Law teaches what ought to be normative for what fallen man knows does, doesn’t mean that is what fallen man claims to know.

The problem with Natural law in a nutshell is that Natural Law theorists don’t take into account the relationship between the ontological realities of fallen man and the epistemological realities of fallen man.

Ontologically fallen man remains a creature of God. He can’t avoid intuiting the fact that he is to God what a fingerprint is to a finger. He knows it in all of his being. He can’t escape it. However, fallen man, being fallen, uses his fallen epistemological apparatus to deny what he can’t escape knowing to be true ontologically. As such he suppresses the truth, via his fallen epistemological apparatus, in order that God may not rule over him.

Natural law does not take this into account positing as it does that fallen man has the ability by use of fallen reason unguided by special revelation and a regenerate mind that fallen man is capable of a knowing that can align him with the creator’s world.

In and by this move Natural Law advocates deny the uniquely Reformed doctrine of total depravity. It is the fallenness of man that makes it true that what fallen man ought to know by way of natural law fallen man claims not to know as he suppresses what he ought to know in unrighteousness.

Natural Law thus introduces into Christianity huge amounts of contradiction. Only a presuppositional approach removes that contradiction. Only a presuppositional approach is consistent with Reformed Christianity.

On Mastering One’s Fears

“I have a friend in Hollywood. He is an actor. He is a well known actor. He has work. He strongly supports President Trump. He’s a real patriot. He just asked me to be sure that I don’t tell anybody (that he supports Trump) because of the system.”

Roger Stone
Interview with Robert Davi

I am running this quote not in connection with the political aspect but rather with the reality of the fear that people have in connection with their putative convictions. I say, “putative” because how much of a conviction can someone hold who is ashamed of that conviction, or fearful of what would happen to them should their conviction be known?

I have had, as a minister, on more than one occasion have had people speak to me the same kind of idea that Roger Stone had spoken to him by his Hollywood actor friend. More than once I’ve had people say something like, “I agree with you but I can’t be associated with you because it would put my career in danger”, or “I would lose my friends,” or “my family wouldn’t understand,” or “agreeing with you publicly would make it hard on my children.” Another version of this is, “I agree with you but you make the issue at hand far more important than it really is.” Usually, such statements circle around Theonomy, or Kinism, or my views on Government schooling.

I can be very bi-polar about my response to this. On one hand I understand the necessity sometimes to play one’s cards close to the breast. There are times when one keeps the false flag flying and doesn’t raise the Jolly Roger to let everyone know you’re a pirate. I, myself, have, in the past, played the “clever to protect myself” game. I genuinely understand the more than a few ministers who correspond to me telling me that they agree with my Kinism but they dare not let Kinism come from the pulpit or in their online writings — and that even though they agree it is a Biblical doctrine. The price to be paid by especially clergy is a high price to be paid. It means very possibly the end of their career, the inability to provide for their family, and the hatred of countless numbers of dumb people (i.e. — the Normies).

So, I understand the sentiment captured in the opening quote. And I get people’s fears. I myself live with those fears daily.

But at some point it is my conviction that people have to rise above these natural fears because until people in the shadows come out and nail their flags to the mast, the depredations of our egalitarian culture, our lawlessness, and our thinking destroying habits is going to destroy us, first as a visible church, and then as a people. If we will not stand up in favor of Kinism, in opposition to government schooling, and in opposition to the prevalent opposition to God’s law then we will disappear as a people and our children and grandchildren will be the victims of what too often is nothing but cowardice dressed up in the evening clothes of personal pragmatism and an egocentric self protection.

Jesus spoke about the necessity of taking up the cross, and denying one’s self. The writer to the Hebrews reminds his recipients not to give up on Christianity because of the difficulties they were facing by embracing Christianity, reminding them, “you have not yet resisted unto the point of blood.” Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progess” is all about the theme of the winning through the difficulties of following Christ. It was not about the theme of avoiding the difficulties of following Christ.

I can hear now the potential protests. “But those issues and those types of issues are not really hills to die on. They are not the issues upon which Christianity pivots.” It’s hard to believe that someone would argue this way given how government schools are brainwashing our children against Christianity, and given how our culture (and Church) is manifestly doing everything it can to evade championing God’s law, and given the egalitarianism that has now gone so far as to seek to normalize the most aberrant of behaviors. This egalitarianism did not start with the transgenderism that we are embracing as a culture now but started far further up on what turned out to be the slippery slope of all slippery slopes.

And yet people are frightened. So frightened that even some of them don’t want to it to be publicly known that they embrace what Trump symbolically stands for. (Admission … I like Trump as a symbol, but I do not think the man matches the symbol and so will not be voting for Trump.) However, fear, is no reason to not play the man and come forward consistent with one’s “secret convictions.”

Here I am in the middle. Being frightened myself I get that people are scared. However, the whole idea of courage is the ability to stand even in spite of legitimate fears.

I hope, that in the near future, Roger Stone’s Hollywood friend can have enough courage to come out of the closet and let it be known he is done being ashamed of his convictions, and that regardless of the cost.

Four Brief Observations Regarding Natural Law

1.) The acceptance of Natural Law (NL) as a epistemology for fallen man not only touches on the issue of epistemology but it also is a demonstration of warped thinking regarding Christian anthropology and Christian hamartiology.

Anthropology and Hamartiology because NL adherents are out of step with the effects of sin on fallen man. For NL adherents man is not quite as fallen as for Reformed folks and neither has sin affected man quite as thoroughly as for Reformed folks.

2.) The great unstated premise of advocates of Natural Law is that fallen man can observe the Universe and quite apart from any beginning theological premises can read the law of nature correctly by the usage of naked reason… reason unclothed with any theological a-prioris.

Of course this is a literal impossibility. Reason is never exercised as if naked. Reason always operates upon and with a theological grist. This is why it is irrational to speak of “right reason” in the context of NL because the fallenness of man w/ its noetic effects of sin upon the mind does not allow any fallen man to have this thing called “right reason.”

3.) The mind of man is at enmity with God. (Romans 8:7)

Romans 8 teaches that the mind of man is at enmity w/ God. If the mind of man is at enmity w/ God then certainly this includes being at enmity w/ God’s revelation of NL with the implication that NL is no trustworthy epistemology for ordering society.

I have no understanding how someone can say they are Reformed while at the same time holding to NL.

4.) The basic division between the Thomistic NL types and Presuppositionalists is that the Thomists believe that man reasons from man to God via right reason and natural law, while Presuppositionalists believe that man reasons from God to God via special revelation.

There is no reconciling Thomistic NL and Presuppostionalism. Those in each camp who understand there worldview will NEVER be reconciled.

Talking About Natural Law

Fallen man remains God’s man and as Gods man fallen man remains the fingerprint of God. However, fallen man hates God and by extension hates himself as the fingerprint of God. Therefore fallen man both knows God and doesn’t know God. Ontologically fallen man cannot get away from the realities of who he is. However, fallen man uses his epistemological apparatus to deny what he can’t escape ontologically. In Romans this is called “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” This epistemological suppressing the truth in unrighteousness is applied to all of creation and nature since all creation and nature likewise are fingerprinted with the finger of their creator and as such the real meaning and truth of them must be suppressed and denied. The further fallen man becomes consistent with his suppression the more God’s creative reality must be assaulted and denied. This explains the current perplexity where a sitting Supreme Court justice and countless others like her no longer can answer the question; “What is a woman.” Fallen man cannot answer this question because even though fallen man cannot escape ontological reality, he will, by the usage of his epistemological apparatus suppress and deny what he can’t escape from knowing.

When a whole culture is given over to this consistent denial and suppressing of Natural Law givens the result eventually will be death, because all those who hate God love death.

However, cultures strewn with the unregenerate can be stabilized by the presence of believers who are not suppressing reality and who read Natural Law aright because they are reading it through the lens of Special Revelation. In such cultures and in such cases what happens is that fallen man, being inconsistent with his self avowed God denying principles, sneaks into his Christ hating worldview capital from the Christian world and life view. This stolen capital keeps the unbeliever afloat so that, as one example, in a culture leavened with Christ (a Christian culture) they can make marriages that last and are comparatively stable.

In such a culture stabilized by a Christian ethos you would then expect there to arise a philosophy that embraced Natural Law because then the stability of the culture can be ascribed to man who reads NL aright instead of being ascribed to the Biblical beliefs of the Christians in the social order. However, all along, the epoxy of the social order is special revelation.

In such a culture, Christian thinkers themselves may well begin to talk about Natural Law as being the epoxy that allows Christians and fallen man to together create a stable social order. However, if those same Christian thinkers could live long enough lives to see the deterioration of their once stable cultures because the Christ hater began to be more and more consistent with their suppressing the truth in unrighteousness they would then realize that it was not Natural Law that was the epoxy that held the culture together but rather it was the explicit special revelation that was embraced by them and their kind that created a sturdy headwind that allowed the unregenerate to sneak that earlier spoken of stolen capital into their worldviews in order to keep stability in the culture leavened with Christ.

If the above isn’t helpful try to reverse engineer all of this. Imagine growing up in a Cannibalistic adulterous ridden culture where treachery and treason were exalted as genius and so was untouched by Biblical Christianity. Could anyone imagine that such fallen people would ever come up with a Natural law that taught the precepts found in the 10 commandments?

Of course the problem here is never with God’s natural revelation of which Natural Law is a subset. The heavens do indeed declare the handiwork of God. All of creation screams the truth of God. However, fallen man is like the chap who is constantly pushing the buttons in order to find a radio station that doesn’t play “the truth of God’s revelation.” Fallen man, becoming increasingly consistent with his enmity against God (Romans 8:7) would go as far as to rip his own eyeballs out in order to not see the truth contained in Natural Law.

Because of this Natural Law is a weak reed in order to lean on to make law for a particular social order populated by a large majority of people who are being ever more increasingly consistent with their hatred of Christ. We are seeing this daily in the West.

For Christians in the West then, the appeal is not to Natural Law. The appeal is to the politicus usus of God’s perspicuous Law in order to order social order aright. This, in combination of heralding the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to pull back anti-Christ social orders from the edge of the abyss. Appeals to Natural Law will only hasten our nearing, ever nearing, to the final fall.