God’s Abiding Law

On The Virtue Of Forced Conversions

“They open their breasts, while they are alive, and take out the hearts and entrails, and burn the said entrails and hearts before the idols, offering that smoke in sacrifice to them”

Hernan Cortes
Writing of the Aztecs

One bromide that those who oppose Christian Nationalism routinely reach for is the horror of the idea that Christian Nationalists would bring in forced conversions. I want to go on record as saying I have no problem with forced conversions to Christianity as long as we understand what we mean by the phrase “forced conversions.”

There are two ways to look at conversion. On a societal / cultural level when dealing with peoples like the Aztecs mentioned in the opening quote then forced conversion is the only option for a compassionate and God fearing people. Forced conversion at this level should be seen as conversion in an objective sense. This kind of conversion is the bringing in of a Christian law order by the sword that would force a previously wicked people to live under the terms of God’s law on a societal basis. Force would be used to bring in order and righteousness with God’s law in its political use leading the way. In the Aztec example above, sacrifices to the gods would end, laws against sundry sexual perversion would be enforced upon pain of death, property rights would be recognized and people forced to attend worship services.

Now, there can be no doubt whatsoever that most of the people that are being forced into this kind of conversion to Christian social dogmas and order would be converted in a subjective sense of the Holy Spirit taking from them a heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh but they would be converted in the sense that publicly they would not longer have a social order based on false gods. That kind of conversion would be a positive good think even if there was a need for heart conversion that would be betters still.

This kind of forced conversion by the sword would also have the advantage of preparing the social order for the presence of the Gospel being proclaimed. For example, those people freed by Cortez from the gods of the Aztecs would clearly be more open to owning a Gospel proclamation. Likewise Missionaries would have a more free opportunity to set forth the glories of Christ to a people subjugated by the Christian sword. Those Missionaries would not find their own lives in jeopardy for merely bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to a people long under the tyranny of false gods.

The ideal in forced conversions would be that the change that arrived in a massive social order change brought by the sword would open up opportunities for what we are calling “subjective conversions.” So, objectively the social order is forced to convert to Christ in the sense that the old gods are not allowed to be served, a new law order system is implemented, and the macro structures of society are changed thus making room for subjective conversions wherein people are now gladly forced to convert by the Holy Spirit’s irresistible work of regeneration.

So, mark me down as someone who has no problems with “forced conversions.” Indeed, it is my prayer that forced conversion would be brought to our formerly Christian culture. I would be delighted if Abortion clinics were forced to close down because of a policy of forced conversions. I would be delighted if idols to false gods would not be set up in our capitals across the nation because of forced conversion. I would revel in the Lord’s Day being reconstituted consistent with Blue Laws by means of forced conversion. I would rejoice if because of forced conversion a law order was established that made criminal tattooing, piercing, aborting, and soliciting for Prostitution. Now, even if that happened here I still would understand that the heart is desperately wicked beyond all things and that as such the heart would have to be reached in a way that the sword could not accomplish but that reality doesn’t make the idea of “forced conversions” a bad idea.

Also, we should state that all law orders are examples of forced conversions. There are many things our current State does that yield routine forced conversion to idol gods. The people who decry the possibility of Christianity using the sword for conversion don’t mind the sword being used to convert the majority of America’s children to a false religion via the requirements of the law for the education of children. Christians are forced, at the point of a sword, to pay taxes for all kinds of things that belong to the bailiwick of false gods that are forcefully imposed upon this nation and work to keep it worshiping false gods.

Finally, it seems to be the case that only Christians have a problem with forced conversions. This may be due to the incredible pietistic influence on the Christian faith. Christians in the West today are not realistic as to the way the world works. Christians are scared to death of the idea of using power in a righteous way. Indeed, Christians tend to think that Christians having and using power is automatically an evil thing. Now, to be sure, Christians having and using power can be an evil thing but it is not necessarily an evil thing and Christians should once again contemplate the honor to Christ it might be to wield power in a Christ like fashion.

The idea of converting by the sword means that you make the adherents of the false gods be martyrs to their false gods. It is not automatically virtuous to be the only ones ever dying for their God, as Christians seem to think.

If Charlemagne and Cromwell had no problem conquering by the sword than neither do I.

Dr. Adi Schlebusch & McAtee Correcting Jon Harris On Natural Law

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.

Nine Paragraphs On The Failure Of 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.

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.