Reviewing A Book Review On Natural Law — Part I

Rev. Danny Hyde is a minister in the URC and is sympathetic with the R2Kt virus. Over a year ago, he reviewed fellow virus simpatico Dr. David VanDrunen’s book “A Biblical Case for Natural Law, Studies in Christian Social Ethics and Economics,” Number 1, ed. Anthony B. Bradley (Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2006).

Chapter 2—Natural Law and Human Nature

VanDrunen makes his starting point not the oft-repeated texts in discussions of natural law in Romans 1:19-20, 2:14-15, but the image of God. This pedagogical turn is commendable as it lays aside the preconceived objections of those opposed to natural law and enters this subject in a fresh way.

Everybody agrees that man is created in the image of God. Everybody agrees that the image of God in fallen man puts him in a position that so that, on a ontological level, he knows God. Everybody agrees that this knowledge of God that is inescapable leaves fallen man without excuse. What the R2kt virus people and Natural Law lovers fail to deal with is that fallen man is using his epistemological gifting in order to suppress and deny what he can’t help but know due to the fact that the ontological fingerprints of God always remain upon him. The appeal to Natural law on the basis of the image of God in man refuses to deal with the reality that that image is irreparably fallen save by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. The mistake of R2kt virus people and Natural law lovers is to think that general revelation can be read accurately and successfully without presupposing special revelation. Man does indeed bear the image of God but without being renewed he will, with his fallen epistemological gifting read natural law in such a way that God is left out of the equation.

Hence this approach does nothing to lay aside preconceived objections.

“VanDrunen, then, moves away from any abstract doctrine of natural law to its source, saying, “The foundation for speaking about natural law is not nature but the creator of nature, God himself” (8). Since God is righteous and just, our creation in his image means in the beginning we by nature had the capacity for righteousness and justice. Natural law is not something outside of God found through independent reason, but is the way God “wired” us according to the very nature of God himself.”

Yes, God wired us ontologically in this fashion. But as a result of the fall we are using our epistemological software to suppress our ontological hardwiring. If that suppression mechanism is successful in keeping the reality of God at arms distance then clearly it is successful at keeping what God’s Natural law communicates.

Those who advocate this position have a view of the consequences of the fall as less than total. Natural law advocates sound like those that contend that while the fall was really really bad it didn’t leave man hostile to God.

This is also evidenced by the classic Reformed idea that Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10 show that salvation in Christ is a re-creation of the original image of God, in righteousness, holiness, and knowledge. This seems to create a problem, though. If redemption is re-creation, then sin has obliterated the image and therefore natural capacity to do righteousness, holiness, and know God. As bad as the fall has affected us, fallen man nevertheless still in some sense continues in the image of God (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9). Appealing to Romans 1:18-32, VanDrunen states that rebellious, sinful man is inexcusable before God, whether Jew with special revelation or Gentile with only creation. All men know God exists and that there are certain moral absolutes. In fact, Paul even speaks of one sin as “against nature” (1:26 cf. 2:14-15).

The fall didn’t obliterate the image of God in man ontologically speaking. Man can never be anything other than the creation of God. But the Fall did obliterate man’s epistemological acceptance of being in the image of God. As a result of the fall, man is a schizophrenic being. He remains in the image of God. Ontologically he cannot escape that knowledge since his very existence and self-consciousness is part of the general revelation that declares the God that he is suppressing in unrighteousness, but epistemologically he swears up and down that he has escaped the knowledge of God. Hence, while God faithfully communicates Himself through Natural law fallen man is doing everything he can to jam the reception. Natural law cannot be a means by which to govern a “common realm” if only because it does not take seriously what the fall has done to fallen man’s inclination to tune out God’s Natural Law airwaves.

The Apostle well speaks of sinning against nature but that doesn’t mean that fallen man will confess that what he is doing is sinning against nature. Indeed, a Natural Law formulated by a homosexual fallen man (cmp. Rmns. 1:26) would conclusively prove that Natural law teaches that homosexuality is according to nature.

Chapter 3—Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms Doctrine

Another line of argument on natural law is that God rules over all things, but in two different ways: he rules the civil kingdom (Calvin)/kingdom of the left hand (Luther) as creator and sustainer of temporal, earthly, and provisional matters, while he rules the spiritual kingdom (Calvin)/kingdom of the right hand (Luther) as creator, but especially as redeemer of the eschatological kingdom.

But Calvin understood that the Magistrate was answerable to God. Turretin insisted that the Magistrate was responsible to enforce both tables of the Law. The Puritans had the idea of the Holy Commonwealth. An idea they supported from Scripture. All of these agreed with the idea of two Kingdoms but they all did not advocate it the same way that those in Escondido are advocating it.

While VanDrunen’s cursory survey of the two kingdom’s doctrine in the history of the Church is helpful, the rest of chapter 3 is incisive. Reading like a primer on classic covenant theology, VanDrunen traces these two kingdoms through Old and New Testaments. After the Fall, God called Adam and Eve as his redeemed people and despite cursing the elements of creation mandate of Genesis 1:26-27 these things would continue in the world.

The task of Adam and Eve in the Garden was to have dominion over their world. After the fall, Noah is given the same commission to be fruitful and multiply and so have dominion. The chastisement that God visits upon His old covenant people is due to their idolatry and their failure to take Godly dominion. There is no place in Scripture where the command to have godly dominion in all the earth is ever revoked. Indeed, our Lord Christ reminded His disciples that “all authority had been given Him in heaven and earth.” In light of that they were to take His dominion forward into all the earth and into every area of life to teach the nations to observe all things that Jesus had commanded them.

Typhoid (R2Kt virus) Bob Strikes Again

Dr. R. Scott Clark has gone from the ridiculous to the surreal in his latest advocacy of Radical Two Kingdom Virus Theology. It appears that one affect of long exposure to the R2Kt virus is dementia and addlepatedness.

“The Fourth Circuit has upheld the ban of a minister from praying at city council meetings in Fredericksburg, VA. His crime? He prays in Jesus’ name. That’s a sectarian prayer. Yes, it is and it’s a good thing too.

I can’t think of a non-sectarian prayer, at least not one in which I would want to be involved. As I understand Scripture non-sectarian prayer is idolatry.”

If Typoid Bob can’t think of a non-sectarian prayer why can he not think of a non-sectarian education, or a non-sectarian sociology, or a non-sectarian legal theory, or a non-sectarian culture? Why is it that all prayer is sectarian (and it certainly is) but all economic theory, governmental arrangements, art theory, and educational praxis is not sectarian?

This is an important question because part of Typhoid Bob’s problem is that he thinks that his ‘common realm’ or ‘secular realm’ can be a realm that is not a manifestation of some theology thus making it a non-sectarian realm. Suffice it to say that cultures are every bit as sectarian as prayers.

“People will decry this ruling as blow to religious freedom and freedom of speech (it is perhaps the latter) but there may be no clearer example of the confusion of the two kingdoms when Christ’s ministers do the bidding of Caesar by praying for divine blessing on behalf of the magistrate, as a civil function. Ministers and all Christians are commanded by God to pray for the magistrate. We do so during the week. We do so on the Sabbath, but do we have any business doing so to open legislative sessions? Legislators ought to pray as private persons before, during, and after their civil work but ministers are called by God as Christ’s servants in his eternal, immutable kingdom. They are not called as civil servants. If they will to be civil servants they have only to resign their ecclesiastical office. To attempt to function as an officer in both kingdoms simultaneously is a blow to the spirituality (which doesn’t mean ethereality) of Christ’s church.”

First, when a minister from the Church realm prays, he prays at the bidding of God, even if another minister of God in a different realm (the magistrate) requests him to pray.

Second, there is no confusion of the two kingdoms here as is seen in the reality that it is clearly seen, by God’s minister in the civil realm asking God’s minister in the ecclesiastical realm to come and offer an invocation that God, who reigns over both realms, and to whom both respective ministers (pastor and magistrate) are required to be in submission to, might grant wisdom to decision making and to be benevolent. Everybody in the room understands that reality of the two Kingdoms when a pastor is invited to offer invocation if only because it is clearly seen that the representative of God’s right hand is coming in to beseech God for the Kingdom of His left hand. Further, a wise pastor will include in his prayer the idea of the two Kingdoms to make that intuitive understanding clear.

Third, a wise pastor who is invited to pray in the context of a civil realm will include in his prayer the petition that these ministers in the civil realm will remember that they will be answerable to God for their decisions and will request that God will visit them with chastisement if they legislate contrary to God’s revealed word. There are a myriad of ways to make it clear that the minister isn’t present as the magistrates lackey. Equally so, there are an abundant means in which it can be communicated that the minister’s presence doesn’t mean that he supports any malfeasance that is taking place by God’s ministers in the civil realm.

Fourth, the prayer of a minister at a opening of a legislative session makes him a civil servant the way a Father being present at the birth of his child makes him a mother.

Typhoid Bob’s problem again is seeing spirituality as “otherworldliness” as opposed to seeing spirituality as incarnating the age to come in this present wicked age.

Make no mistake, the disagreement between those infected with R2kt virus and those who aren’t is a disagreement over what counts as “spirituality.”

“Afraid that the local imam will be opening a legislative session near you? You should be, but not because he’s a Muslim, but because he has no more business opening a session than your minister. God is sovereign. He raises kings and dashes them to the ground, but he administers two distinct kingdoms, by his sovereign power and will, in two distinct ways. He governs the spiritual kingdom, the visible church by the Word of God. He governs the civil kingdom by general revelation and the 2nd table of the natural law.

Recently, somebody has suggested that the close relation of Reformed people and Roman Catholics in the Acton Institute (where a big push for natural law is coming from) is leading to a Romanizing of Reformed Theology. When I read things like this I can’t help but perk up my hears when that argument is made.

The fact that Typhoid Bob desires to keep Imam’s out of the public square the same way he desires to keep ministers out of the public square indicates again that he desires a naked public square. Dr. R. Scott Clark’s theology is one with the ACLU on this score.

Also, the 2nd table of the law presupposes the first table. It is no more possible to govern the civil kingdom by the 2nd table of the law without the 1st table then it is to fire a gun that doesn’t have any bullets in it. Bullets presuppose a gun in order to be effective. Just so, the 2nd table presupposes the first table in order to be effective. The breakdown of the West over the last 100 yeas ought to be testimony of that fact.

“Can you imagine the Apostle Paul opening a session of the Roman senate? The real question is whether we’re going to continue to try to hang on to the last remnants of Christendom.”

Note the hatred of Typhoid Bob for Christendom. We must remind our readers here that if we will not have a Christendom we will have some other kind of “dom” whether it is Islamadom, or Humanismdom. It is not possible to have a naked public square, despite all the insistence of the R2kt types that such a thing is possible. This hatred of Christendom represents a failure of nerve to incarnate the Christian faith into every area of life.

I cannot imagine the Apostle Paul being asked to open a session of the Roman senate in prayer but I can imagine the Apostle Paul praying to open the session of the Roman senate just as I can imagine him giving a defense of the Gospel on Mars Hill. Such a prayer would have been a wondeful opportunity to give the Gospel.

“Why does any legislative body need to invite anyone to pray? Why do they need to open sessions with prayer?”

Because they understand that they are ministers of God in the civil realm? Because they desire God to bless their deliberations? Because they desire to communicate that unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain attempting to legislate anything not according to His will? Because they are a pious Christian people and a pious Christian people are notorious for invoking God at important events.

Is he serious by asking those questions?

“Yes, Christians ought to serve in government and Christians ought to pray for government and Christians who serve in government should pray while they’re serving, but a city council meeting is not a worship service. It’s not a prayer meeting. It’s not a bible study.”

ROFLOL

I guess this means I, as the minister, should quit praying before our covenant mealtimes since covered dish dinners are not official worship services.

They’re meeting to discuss whether to pave my walk or not. They’re meeting to approve a budget but we’re not a theocracy.

First, note how Dr. Clark belittles what happens in the public square. This seems to communicate that where the really important stuff happens is in his “spiritual” Kingdom.

Second, does God’s Word have nothing to say how money should be spent?

Third, we are a theocracy. All governments are theocracys. Even if Bob got his way with R2Kt the government would be a theocracy. Theocracy is an unavoidable category. We live under one now. Dr. Clark’s theology won’t allow him to realize that.

“We don’t have a state church.”

We most certainly do. It’s called the government schools. If the city council wants to be inconsistent by asking a minister to pray as opposed to the local school principal Christian ministers should take advantage of that.

“We don’t have an officially approved doctrine of God.”

We do in a defacto sense. It is, “In the State we live and move and have our being.” If the city council wants to be inconsistent by asking a minister to pray as opposed to the some government official in the tank for the State Christian ministers should take advantage of that.

“We don’t know or care about the church affiliation of those whom we elect to office.”

Typhoid Bob may not care but I care and take pains to find out before I cast a vote.

“In that case, what am I doing praying with Unitarians, pagans, Hindus, and Roman Catholics? That’s crazy. I can agree with them on street paving because of the providence of God but I don’t have to agree with them theologically and I don’t have to and don’t want to pray with them.

I’m only praying with them because I’m the one praying. If a priest or Imam were praying you can bet I wouldn’t be praying with them.

What if the pagans decided that they were going to pave the street with sub-standard filling charging the citizens for the good stuff while keeping the difference. You see, worldview does make a difference for paving streets.

His congregation didn’t call him to pray at city council meetings. They called him to preach the gospel to them and to evangelize the community and the catechize their children. If he’s doing his job I don’t know that he has time to pray at city council meetings.

And what makes Typhoid Bob think that praying in a God honoring Biblical fashion at the opening of a legislative meeting isn’t evangelism?

Dr. Clark has tunnel vision.

Cleared… Well, Kind of…

The following statement is being posted per the instruction of Rev. Charles McGowan, Chairman of the Institutional Personnel Committee.

“The administration and Prof. Peter Enns wish to announce that they have arrived at mutually agreeable terms, and that, as of 31 July, 2008, Prof. Enns will discontinue his service to Westminster Theological Seminary after fourteen years.

The administration wishes to acknowledge the valued role Prof. Enns has played in the life of the institution, and that his teaching and writings fall within the purview of Evangelical thought. The Seminary wishes Prof. Enns well in his future endeavors to serve the Lord.

Prof. Enns wishes to acknowledge that the leaders of the Seminary (administration and board) are charged with the responsibility of leading the seminary in ways that are deemed most faithful to the institution’s mission as a confessional Reformed Seminary.

Prof. Enns expresses his deep and sincere gratitude to the Lord for his education and years of service at Westminster Theological Seminary.”

Translated from political speak and diplomatese to street English,

The administration and Prof. Peter Enns wish to announce that they have arrived at an arrangement whereby everybody involved can save face and wherein nobody will be taking anybody else to court. Those terms stipulate that, as of 31 July, 2008, Prof. Enns will discontinue his service to Westminster Theological Seminary after fourteen years.

This face saving and court avoiding arrangement requires the Westminster administration to say, even if we don’t mean it, that we wish to acknowledge the valued role Prof. Enns has played in the life of the institution, and that his teaching and writings fall within the purview of Evangelical thought. We, Westminster administration, can concede this because in today’s climate “Evangelical thought” includes everything from open theism to evangelical feminism. Indeed, in today’s climate it is difficult for anybody to not be an Evangelical, therefore we are more than happy to concede that Dr. Enns is within the purview of Evangelical thought. We, the Westminster administration admit of this concession in order to surround Dr. Enns discontinuance with warm fuzzies and in order to deliver our fat from the legal fire. The Seminary wishes Prof. Enns well in his future endeavors to serve the Lord, even though we believe his writings cast doubt upon the Lordship of Jesus.

(I mean really, folks, does anyone think that Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, 25 short years ago, would have said that Dr. Enns teaching and writing falls within the purview of Evangelical thought?)

Prof. Enns wishes to acknowledge that the leaders of the Seminary (administration and board) are charged with the responsibility of leading the seminary in ways that are deemed most faithful to the institution’s mission as a confessional Reformed Seminary, even though Prof. Enns thinks confessional Reformed teaching is all wet as it touches inspiration and inerrancy.

Prof. Enns expresses his deep and sincere gratitude to the Lord for his education and years of service at Westminster Theological Seminary and earnestly wishes that they lose students to the Seminary he will be hooking up with next.

Parable Of The Foolish Fountain Folk

Though it had the natural sentiments in it that all mountain fresh water contained the mountain fresh water was perfectly safe, and yet despite its natural purity the community folk refused to buy it. They drank instead the water they had quaffed for years that they bought from one of two long established fountains. Water, from the first fountain had been laced with cyanide for decades. Water from the second fountain had been laced with strychnine for even longer. Both of these popular fountains were killing the folk, but as ingrained habit is a relentless force they just kept supporting the foul fountains.
All pleading with people to drink the water that was healthy for them fell on deaf ears — even on the ears of people who were by all accounts concerned about their health and the health of their children and neighbors.

The community folk reasoned that since the mountain fresh water would never become the most popular water they needed to drink from the other fountains. They insisted that only by supporting the foul fountains could they influence the amount of cyanide or strychnine that were mixed into the water of the foul fountains.

“Why, if we elected to drink the mountain fresh water who knows how high the level the poison could go in the other fountains,” they said. “Besides” they offered, “if we give up electing to drink from the lesser foul fountain everybody will end up having to drink from the greater foul fountain.”

When it was suggested that they would be better off to drink the mountain fresh water and just break the poisonous fountains altogether if that was necessary they blanched at what they considered a radical idea.

“Better to have some water source, even if poisonous, then fight for pure water,” they said with one voice.

And so time went on and eventually even those who styled themselves health nuts developed a taste for the poisonous fountains, insisting that they weren’t really that bad. Indeed, so ferocious was their loyalty to the poisonous fountains that they heaped opprobrium upon anybody who dared to suggest that the the folk were killing themselves and their community.

Let those who have ears to hear, hear the parable of the foolish fountain folk.

Obama’s Speech To Be President Of The World

“The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”

Barack Hussein Obama
Berlin Speech

I don’t know if I’ve read a speech from an American Politician speaking in such a public context that was more explicitly globalist than the speech delivered by Barack Hussein Obama in Berlin last week. It was clear when reading the speech that Obama has his sites set on something quite loftier than President of These United States. Obama clearly understands that if he is elected as President he is literally the leader of the free world.

There is much that troubles me about Obama’s wall deconstruction vision. Obama wants all kinds of walls to fall choosing the fall of the Berlin wall as a metaphor for barriers in society and between nations that he believes likewise need to come down. The problem is that the metaphor doesn’t work well without some kind of enemy named that needs to be defeated. It is true that the Berlin wall fell but it was only because some enemy (communism) was totally defeated and extinguished. It would seem then, that in order for Obama’s other walls to fall what has to first happen is that an enemy has to be identified so that it may be defeated so that the B. Hussein Obama’s walls can fall.

First, what will a President Obama do to make sure that the walls between the haves and the have not countries will fall? What enemy is to be defeated here? Is the enemy the wealthy? Will they be defeated by his entering into some kind of trans-Atlantic socialistic redistribution of wealth where America will “share” (by plunder) its wealth with those designated as have nots? People don’t generally seem to realize that Marxist plans to tear down walls between countries with the most and countries with the least result not in the country with the least being lifted to a plane of equivalence with the rich country but rather the richer country, as an enemy, is brought down to the same level of misery as the country that has not. Socialism never enriches people, but instead gives those who are impoverished the satisfaction of knowing that everyone is as miserable as they were and are. Tearing down walls between the countries with the most and countries with the least when not pursued in the context of genuinely free market incentives only leads to all countries being equally impoverished and results in the enemy of wealth creators being defeated. If Obama does for the poor countries of Europe what LBJ did for the poor people of America in his war on poverty we are certain to move from our current economic twilight to the darkest midnight. If the walls between the countries with the most and the countries with the least are to fall then some enemy in all this needs to be identified and crushed just as the communists were crushed leading to the fall of the Berlin wall. My guess, given what Obama has spoken about concerning his economic plan, is that the enemy is private property not held by the State. This is the enemy that must be defeated so that the countries with the least can become the equal of the countries with the most.

Second, what will a President Obama do to make the walls fall between races and tribes. Who is to be the enemy identified here? Is the enemy that must be destroyed before the walls fall between races and tribes those who find satisfaction in the race and tribes God placed them? Will President Obama have a forced miscegenation program? Will he give tax incentives to people to marry out of their race and tribe? (By the way… what tribes still exist in Europe?) It is clear as Obama’s speech is read in full that Obama believes in the idea of America being a proposition nation.

“What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people…

It is his belief that Mongolians, Rwandans, and Venezuelans,et. al. can be genuine Americans if they just believe the same set of ideals. The insistence that a nation is made out of shared culture, shared history, shared sense of homeland, shared religion, and a shared extended family is the enemy that must be destroyed if the walls are to fall between races and tribes. America is to become the universal propositional (set ideal) nation where concrete realities are set aside for abstractions. The walls that come with being a particular people in a particular place with a particular history, religion, culture and lineage must come down. Everyone should understand that the result of the walls falling down between races and tribes is becoming part of one global race and tribe. The pursuit of the erasing of racial, ethnic and cultural distinctions is the pursuit of the Tower of Babel wrapped in soaring egalitarian rhetoric.

Third, a President Obama would tear down the walls between native and immigrant. Consistent with our approach so far, we ask, where is the enemy that needs to be defeated before those walls can fall? I suspect the enemy is the native who cherishes his way of life and how his culture and society is organized and doesn’t desire to pay for his own destruction through confiscatory taxation so as to prop up the, more often than not, illegal immigrant. Immigration in America is being used to destroy what is left of what little remains of Christendom and the lingering memory, kept alive in out of the way lacunae, of what it means to be uniquely American. America’s globalist imperial elite have decided that they desire a constituency that is anything but American and so the walls must fall between native and (illegal) immigrant so that we can achieve status as a universal nation.

Fourth, and perhaps most troubling is that a President Obama desires to tear down the walls between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. And so we ask, who is the enemy that needs to be defeated so that these walls can fall? The answer to that question is any adherent of these particular faiths who take their God and faith seriously. In order for the walls to fall down between these faith expressions the content of these faiths systems must be watered down so that the respective gods in the systems are made subservient to the new faith system that will unite the global village where the distinctions that come with economic variance, race, tribe, homeland, culture, or religion are completely eclipsed. What is ironic here is that the pursuit to tear down the walls between Jews, Christians and Muslims, could conceivably unite them in order to oppose a one world religion.

Obama’s speech in Berlin was boilerplate globalism. He understands that the next epochal move for humanity, as directed by the religion of humanism, is to reconstruct Babel. Before that can be achieved the walls that keep the unitarian and unipolar world from being achieved must be destroyed. This is a different vision from Christianity. Christianity sees a world where walls fall because false religions (Judaism, Islam, humanistic globalism, etc.)are destroyed through the proclamation of the Gospel and Spirit wrought regeneration but where the diversity of races, tribes, and culture is retained and treasured. The vision of the Christian faith and the vision of unipolar humanistic globalism is the difference between heaven and hell.