Category: Natural Law

This morning I caught a interesting exchange on X between a chap named “Luke Stamps” and the Natural Law 2K fanboy Stephen Wolfe.

Stamps wrote,

Theological retrieval should recognize a hierarchy of doctrine. We should read everything we can get our hands on, but I’m way more interested in the tradition’s views on Trinity and Christology than its opinions on politics and science.

Stephen Wolfe responded,

“You’re a theologian, and you care more about theology. I support this. Leave politics to others.”

Bret responds,

This is the essence of presuppositionalists disagreement w/ Natural law fanboy Dr. Stephen Wolfe.

The presuppositionalist observes that politics (& economics, education, mathematics, arts, etc.) are all just the out-working of theology in other fields. These disciplines are not theology independent but each and all reflect a particular theology driving their respective emphasis. Show a man’s politics and I will tell you, his theology.

The NL chaps see the various academic fields as completely isolated from theology. Wolfe, and all Natural Law fanboys, actually believe that when they are doing “politics” they are not doing theology at the same time. Wolfe, like the R2K simps that he so much disagrees with, believes that his politics is a “theology free zone.” However, politics must work off of various theological axioms in order to move forward. Politics must consider, for example, ontology, epistemology, anthropology, axiology, teleology, etc. and all these are what they are because of they are informed by theology. All of this is why the Medievalists were correct in asserting that “Theology is the Queen of the sciences.” The Medievalists understood that theology was the fountainhead of all other disciplines.

The Natural Law chaps like the R2K fanboys (Van Drunen, Darryl Gnostic Hart, J. V. Fesko, etc.) and the 2K fanboys (Wolfe, Baird, Justice, etc.) though have their own theological biases that are informing their 2K declaration of Independence. All of them presuppose that man, starting from himself, without presupposing the God of the Bible and His Word can, while relying on right reason and natural law, arrive at proper conclusions regarding truth in fields like politics, education, philosophy, etc. This is called “humanism.” It was this subjectivist humanist theology that has brought us, via incremental epileptic fits, to the destruction of the West. The appeal to that which was the genesis of our downfall is hardly a remedy for restoration. This is why the presuppositionalist is forever crying out,

^{Isaiah 8:20}  To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. 

And,

^{Psalm 36:20} For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light

The presuppositionalist, contrary to the humanist Natural Law fanboy understands that any light that is seen in politics is because of the light provided by theology that makes politics genuinely politics.

The danger of the Natural Law position, of course, is the inability to realize that neutrality is a myth. No man comes to politics (or any other discipline) without carrying his theological baggage into his conclusions. There exists no theological nowhere man living in a theological nowhere land.

The thread on X wherein I began with found the exchange above found a Dr. Daniel Strand piping in. His comment was interesting because Strand apparently teaches “ethics.” Strand says of Wolfe’s anti-theology in politics stance;

“A very sensible position. I read theology but am not a theologian. I tend to defer on matters of theology proper. I wish theologians took a similar attitude to ethics and politics, which they often are ill equipped to address.”

This is astounding if only because it is hard to imagine of any discipline that is more theology dependent than ethics. Strand says here that theologians are ill equipped to address the issue of ethics. Such a statement tis to boggle the mind. Ethics are the immediate consequence of theology. What a man thinks and believes about the character of God necessarily forms and shapes his ethics. Scripture teaches that we become what we worship. If we worship a vile God our ethics will be vile.

The inability of people to connect theology with all of life leaves me bumfuzzled. I can’t understand the inability to understand the centrality of theology.

At one time I had hopes that Wolfe and company might overthrow R2K but increasingly I doubt that the Wolfe project, even if successful, will leave us in any better of a situation than we would be if R2K continued to dominate the “conservative,” “Reformed,” “churches.”

“Christians do not think that their unbelieving neighbors should be baptized or participate in the Lord’s Supper, but they do think they should work rather than steal, get married rather than cohabitate, bear and raise children rather than abort them, and vote for good candidates rather than bad ones. But how can Christians have meaningful moral conversations about such things? If Christians only appeal to Bible verses to try and persuade their non-Christian neighbors, they communicate a not-so-subtle hint that such moral issues are simply Christian things, things our Holy book tells us to do. But work, marriage, and child rearing are not simply Christian things, but human things. They concern matters that obligate all human beings and that have profound effect on earthly communities. Without natural law, we could not explain why these moral issues concern all members of our societies and not just Christians who read about these issues in Scripture. The reality of natural law creates the possibility of Christians making moral appeals to their unbelieving neighbors in ways other than simply quoting the Bible.”

David Van Drunen (DVD)
Natural Law; A Short Companion

1.) Do not miss the subtlety of what DVD is doing here. DVD has told us that we cannot appeal to non-Christians on the basis of Biblical authority. We must set aside Biblical authority and move to an authority that the non-Christian can accept according to their epistemological standard. We must move away from God’s authoritative word as standard to a standard that man’s authoritative epistemology can accept. Fallen man cannot accept God’s standard, but he will accept Natural Law as a standard for right and wrong and so since that is a standard he will accept we must use that standard.

This is a subtle appeal to neutrality. Natural law, DVD, is telling us, is more acceptable because there is a neutral cast to it that an appeal to God’s revealed law does not have. We are to move to Natural law appeals because it is more acceptable to fallen man’s sense of independence from God’s law. Thus, DVD re-establishes the standard from “thus saith the Lord,” as a moral standard, to “this seems reasonable to fallen man.” Fallen man’s epistemological independence from God is thus left unchallenged. Van Til squashed the idea of neutrality but here DVD dusts it off and makes it the centerpiece of His epistemology.

2.) I hate to tell DVD this but those items that DVD uses as illustrations are moral issues and the morality or immorality of them can only be defined in the matrix of one belief system or another. It is true that DVD’s “things” are also human things but these things that humans do or do not are either moral or immoral and morality or immorality can only be defined according to the God or god concept that every person or people owns and embraces.

3.) DVD seems to fail to understand that natural law itself and what it teaches is worldview/religious dependent. For example, for the pagan Christian Natural law teaches that Radical Two Kingdom theology is taught by Natural law. However, for the Natural Law followers of Stephen Wolfe Natural law teaches that Radical Two Kingdom theology is an abomination. Now, why the difference here between two putatively Christian camps as to what Natural law does and does not teach? The explanation of the difference is that each camp has embraced a worldview/religion that teaches alternate and opposite views on Natural law. So, we see that it is not Natural law that gives us objective truth, but rather it is the worldview/religion prism with which we view Natural law that convinces those in error that their subjective error is objective truth. When DVD or the Stephen Wolfe disciples shop their Natural law they are not shopping Natural law. They instead are shopping their worldview/religion that renders up the Natural law that they subjectively prefer.

4) It seems to be the case that given the quote above that DVD is suggesting that people can be moral without being Christian. Now, most Christians would say that is true in a relative sense. Some non-Christian people(s) can be more moral than other non-Christian people(s) but most Christians would never agree that non-Christians can be moral according to God’s standard.

5.) But work, marriage, and child rearing are not simply Christian things, but human things.

It is true that work, marriage, and child rearing are human things, but they only become fully human as they are pursued as increasingly Christian. I would argue that these human things become increasingly human as they are defined and lived out in terms of being Christian things. These things are indeed human things, but they become less and less human the more they are preformed outside the definitional boundaries of Christianity. Take marriage as an example. Marriage is a human thing but if it is not defined according to a Christian worldview/religion it becomes a decidedly less human thing. This is being testified to right now by the pursuit of polyamory in our social order. These folks will argue that Natural law teaches polyamory. They will argue that they are most human when allowed their polyamory. Only Christianity, and not Natural law, can give an objective standard by which to challenge the Natural law of those who are pursuing polyamorous marriages.

6.) The best that DVD’s Natural law can do is give us one Natural law to contest against other Natural laws. DVD’s natural law cannot even reign supreme within conservative Christian circles.

7.) Without natural law, we could not explain why these moral issues concern all members of our societies and not just Christians who read about these issues in Scripture.

I’m pretty sure I can easily point to the wrecked lives of the gender blenders, the ruined lives of children living through divorce, the high body count of today’s youth to explain why these moral issues concern all members of society. I don’t need Natural law to explain why these moral issues concern all members of society. The culture of narcissism that we live in is daily living proof that these moral issues concern us all.

The only answer to our current situation is a return to the law and to the testimony. DVD’s appeal to Natural law as being a lifeline to restore Western culture is bankrupt. It has no power in it to restore. The same is true of the Stephen Wolfe anti-DVD version of Natural law. Both of these methods begin their reasoning with allowing fallen man to retain his authority. Both of these methods appeal to the idea of some neutral realm where man does not have to epistemologically kneel to God’s authority.

“By his hatred of God the natural man is bound to repress the truth of revelation given him. He does not want to be confronted with the demands of the God against whom, ever since the day of Adam at the beginning of history, he is in rebellion. Even in the field of philosophy this opposition to God appears. Everywhere, in man’s own constitution as well as in his environment, God speaks to man. But everywhere too man  the sinner, seeks to suppress the truth about himself and his relation to God his creator. Even when God in his grace speaks redemptively to man through Christ, and then Christ speaks redemptively to man through the Scriptures, the natural man again seeks to repress this revelation. He uses his scientific and philosophic as well as his theological systems in order to keep under the challenge of the revelation of God to him. Everywhere God meets man and everywhere asks man to answer. Man is inherently a covenantal being. He is one who cannot help but answer to God. He can give the right answer to God only through Christ’s atoning blood and through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. Once Christ has become a curse for him on the cross, and once Christ has risen from the dead for his righteousness and he has by the Spirit’s power accepted this salvation wrought for him in history, then he seeks at every point to be a covenant-keeper. He then seeks to be a covenant-keeper in the field of science and philosophy no less than in the field of theology. The great presupposition of all his efforts at interpreting himself and the world about him is the fact that he and the world are first interpreted by God in Christ as revealed in Scripture.

On this basis human self-awareness is awareness of self in relation to what God has revealed himself as being for man through Christ. On this basis God speaks to man from above and man answers to God as a scientist, as a philosopher and as a theologian. All his predication constitutes one great answer of covenant gratitude to his redeemer through whom he has been brought back to God the father.”

Cornelius Van Til
Christianity & Barthianism – p. 432

This provides a succinct explanation by CVT on presuppositionalism. In the explanation of it we see why Thomistic Natural Law theories are not and can not be true. Man as fallen, is out of covenant with God and as out of covenant with God fallen man seeks to interpret all reality in relation to himself as the prime epistemological authority. Man, as it were, takes himself as God and seeks to interpret all reality is light of his own legislative word. As such, fallen man, necessarily interprets the totality of reality amis.

That fallen man, necessarily interprets the totality of reality amis does not mean that fallen man does not manage to get some micro matters of reality aright but when he does get some micro matters of reality aright it is always in service of his worldview that is determined that “we shall not have this God rule over us.” At those points when fallen man gets micro matters aright in service of his rebellion against God and His reality fallen man can never account for how it is he was able to get micro matters aright. As Dr. Greg Bahnsen was fond of saying; “Fallen men can count but they cannot account for how it is they can count.”  It should be noted though that over the course of time as the anti-thesis works itself out in history fallen man get fewer and fewer matters touching reality right. For example, fallen man in the West pretty much once understood that boys were boys and girls were girls but as time has passed and as the anti-thesis has developed now there is uncertainty about the answer to the question; “What is a woman.”

Fallen man, then, will use stolen capital from God’s reality to get his denial of God’s reality off the ground and flying.  This is necessary to fallen man because there is no way to have a perfectly God hating worldview and still remain alive, for a perfectly God hating worldview is the worldview of a graveyard. It is at the point of stolen capital that the apologist must challenge fallen man. For example, natural law has stolen capital from God’s worldview by saying that man is a knower. Fallen man is indeed a knower however what Natural Law does not take into consideration is that fallen man as a knower is committed, a-priori, to not knowing the one reality that would make fallen man a knowing knower. Natural law admits that all ground is common ground but it refuses to acknowledge that no ground is neutral ground and it refuses to admit that fallen man is not neutral to the matter of knowing. Knowing man may be a sharp blade but he is a sharp blade that cuts at the wrong angle every time.