2001 issue 3 - natural law or biblical law? - counsel of chalcedon

8/12/2019 2001 Issue 3 - Natural Law or Biblical Law? - Counsel of Chalcedon

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N TUR L L W R

BIBLIC L LAW

Joe Morecraft III

America is in the midst of the most serious

spiritual and moral declension in her history,and i t is devastating every aspect of our lifeand society. We have changed gods, and ournew gods are failing us. As a result, we areexperiencing worsening consequences as timegoes on. When did this tragic decline begin?With the election of Bill Clinton? WithWorld War I? With the War Between theStates?

Let us ask another question. When did thedecline in Israel begin that eventually led toher destruction at the hands of theBabylonians? Jeremiah, as the mouthpiece ofthe Lord, gives the answer in 32:31-33.

Indeed this city (of Jerusalem) has heen to Mea provocation of My anger and My wrath FROMTHE DAY THAT THEY BUILT IT, (998, B.C.)even to this day (586, B.C.); that i t should beremoved from before My face, becanse of all theevil of the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah,which they have done to provoke Me to ange rthey, their kings, their leaders, their priests, theirprophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitantsof Jerusalem. And they have turned their back toMe, and not their face; though I taught them,teaching again and again, they would not listen

nd receive instruction

From the day tha t they buil t t (Jerusalem) What sobering words The seeds ofJerusalem's decline and destruction weresown by the hands of the very people whomade her a great city, as the capital of theJehovah's theocracy and the center of Israel 'sworship under King David. Eventually thoseseeds, that were never adequately dug up and

removed from Israel 's thought and life,matured into full-fledged apostasy from theLiving God. God sent prophet after prophetthroughout the intervening centuries to callIsrael to repentance but she was too blindand too stubborn to repent. And so sheperished.

Like Israel, the seeds of America's presentdecline were sown by the same hands whofirst erected this "city set upon a hill ." Thefirst generation immigrants in the early and

middle 17'h Century failed to pass on theirvision to the second and third generations.In 1702 Increase Mather could write: "Youthat are aged can remember what New En_gland was fifty years ago, that saw thesechurches in their first glory, is there not asad decay and diminution of that glory? Howis the gold become dim "

The first generation of men and womenwho came from England to North America inthe 17'h Century made every effort, at greathardship and sacrifice, to reconstruct church,society and every other institution and facetof life in the light and direction of theworldview of the Bib le, inherent in theirCalvinistic theology.

The Puritan was not like other people. Hecame to North America to build a HolyCommonwealth under the Word and Rule ofthe exalted Christ. He probed endlessly theimplications of biblical truth and law tohimself and his society. He sought assiduously to draw every possible implication andapplication from every verse in the Bible,which he saw as governing every aspect ofhuman existence. And as a result thesecourageous Christians laid the foundationupon which this constitutional republic wasbuilt, which, under God's gracious blessingon their labors, became the freest nation onearth.

What happened? Ample documentation

exists in the publications of the 17'h and 18'hCenturies, and in modern research that thedecline of America began in the early Puritanism of New England, interrupted occasionally by Spiritual revivals. But the deadlyseeds in their otherwise massive Christianand Biblical worldview, continued to takeroot and grow, and advanced in each succeeding generation until Arminianism and Unitarianism got a stranglehold on New Englandin the late 18 th Century.

The 17'h and 18'h Century American Puritans, Christian giants among men that theywere, "had one glaring weakness in theirotherwise perfect system, the single but fatalinconsistency in an otherwise monumentalconsistency," w r o t e P e r ~ yMiller in. The NewEngland Mind: The Seventeenth Century Theweakness was that "in the Puritan mindconfidence in the certainty of God's Wordwas match by an eq lal confidence in theinfallibility of logic," continues Miller. In 'other words, the American Puritans, as all

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sinners, were not consistent with their firstprinciple that all of life in all its aspects anddetails must be governed by the written Wordof God and every thought must be takencaptive to Jesus Christ in whom is depositedall the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.Their Thomism crowded out their Augustinianism. Their weaker descendants seizedupon that inconsistency and developed i t into

Unitarianism, Deism, Transcendentalism andRomanticism, until it became the full-blown,antichristian Humanism of the 20 th Centuryand Post-Modernism of the 21" Century.

Augustine, 354-430, A.D., believed that,in order to understand any aspect of life, itmust be understood in the light of the Wordof God. The Protestant Reformation in the16 th Century was a revival of Augustinianism,especially in the writing and preaching ofJohn Calvin. The Puritans were Augustinianswho came to this continent to work out allthe implications of their Reformation faithand worldview.

Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274, A.D., believed that the Bible is necessary to understand some things, such as salvation and thesacraments, but that human reason is fullycapable of understanding many areas of life,such as politics and economics, withoutreference to the Bible. He believed thatreason unassisted by divine revelation candetect natural laws by which society can beconstructed. This view supplanted Augustinianism as the centerpiece of Roman Catholic thought in medieval history, and with thattransition came the corruption of the churchand tyranny in the state. The Renaissanceexploited Thomism. t taught that, i f theBible is unnecessary to understand someaspects of life and society, it is unnecessaryto understand any areas of life and society. tfurther taught that all that one needs in order tounderstand life is reason and natural law. Infact, the Bible, was eventually seen as anobstacle to the acquisition and advancement

. of knowledge that had to be discarded. Thesame is said today by humanists and post-modernists, who are children of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, which themselvesgrew out of the weakness of Thomism.Thomism attempted to synthesize Christianitywith pagan Greek and Roman thought, butended by prostituting Christianity.

The Augustinian American Puritans nevershook off the influences of Thomism and

Classical thought. This is what eventually.killed the Holy Commonwealth in NorthAmerica. Later generations of Americanswanted to preserve the benefits of Puritanism, but they also wanted to discard the oldtheology of their fathers. And so here weare.

The most devastating legacy of Thomismis the idea of "natural law" and the autonomy of human thought. This theoryoriginated in Classical thought, i.e., thephilosophy of pagan Greece and Rome.Connie Marshner, a contemporary Thomist,recommends the ancient natural law theoryover Biblical Law. She says, "Thoughintellectual fashions change, an objectivemoral order, knowable by man and within thereach of mankind, can be reasonably seen asthe most stable basis of personal, national.and international order and happiness."Future 21: Directions or America n the 21 Cen-tury p. 129. The antichristian direction ofthis viewpoint is seen in Marshner 's commentthat "the natural law is independent of divinerevelation, since its first principles arecommon to mankind as a whole, on philosophical precepts, not on religiousprec,epts,and can be understood and accepted byanyone willing to master the intellectualrigors of it."- p. 132.

Whereas the Puritans would never haVemade natural law independent of divinerevelation, believing instead that natural lawcould be understood only in the l ight of theBiblical revelation, nevertheless their failureto appreciate' fully the flaws and dangers ofthe Classical theory of reason and naturallaw, coupled with their inconsistent application of their Biblical presuppositions, openedthe door for men like John Locke, ThomasJefferson, and many other men of influenceto attempt to lay the foundation for theAmerican republican political and legalphilosophy in the theories of natural law,natural rights and autonomous reason thathas proved to be so fatal to Western culture.The more rigorously these antichristian 'theories have been applied in our history thefarther and farther they have led us froniGod, liberty, justice, morality, prosperity,peace and a regard for the sanctity of humanlife. The have led us deeper and deeper intothe suicidal tendencies of humanism, becauseGod told s that those who hate Him lovedeath.

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Because of this weakness in Puritanism,the unity o f Puritan thought and the piety of'Puritan life in private and in public, individually and socially gradually declined.Terry Elniff exphlins, in his book, The Guiseo Every Graceless Heart: "The Puritan conceptof unity ... involved a commonwealth of separate spheres of covenant activity [family,vocation, education, church, state]-close,compact, coordinate, but not confounded;independent but inter-dependent. - Theideology of Puritanism with its emphasis onlimited and divided power, its spirit of nonautonomy, and its insistence on the application of God's law as an absolute and sovereign authority outside of man was insti tutedin a form of government and social orderwhich was based on the consent embodied inthe covenant, limited by the law, and activeboth in preserving the social fabric and theindividual liberty of its citizens. At the same

time the Puritan theology developed an ethicthat enabled its adherents to live realisticallyand prosperously in the holy commonwealththat had been created."- p. 102

Elniff then quotes the author of the 7thcentury Puritan book, New England s FirstFruits: I t has been our endeavor to have allGod's own institutions, and no more than hisown, and all those in their native simplicity,without having any human dressings; havinga liberty to enj oy all that God commands, andyet urged to nothing more than he com

mands.' [Then Elniff explains] To haveanything more than God commanded washuman autonomy; to have anything less thanHe commanded was disorder and lawlessness.The essence of non-autonomy was to have allthat God commanded and no more. To theextent that New England accomplished that,to that extent she prospered. The problemNew England had and the dilemmas shefaced ... can be traced to having or attemptingto have either more or less than God's owninsti tutions. What the historians have called

the declension was simply the result ofturning away from those institutions in oneway or 'another to human autonomy."- p. 103

The increasing encroachment o f pretendedhuman autonomy into American Puritan lifeand thought resulted in a growing disharmony and disorder in colonial society. Theirgoal was "to maintain a complete harmony ofreason and faith, science and religion,earthly dominion and the government ofGod," wrote Perry Miller in The Puritans.

However, they were not successful in maintaining that unity of thought and life underthe Word of God in coming generations. I twas not because th'ey were too Puritan; ratherit was because they were 'not Puritan enough

Pretended human autonomy is tlie sense ofself-sufficiency and confidence in the abilityof human reason to understand and order lifeapart from the revelation and enlightenmentof God's Word and God's Spirit. The focalpoints of this struggle between human autonomy and non-autonomy in AmericanPuritanism were church membership, churchestablishment, the relation of church andstate, and church government. Controversiesin these areas had implications .for the entirePuritan worldview. Elniff writes:

"As the spheres separated more widely,the division between church and state wasmore pronounced: the church was seen as

ruling in spiritual matters while the stateruled in temporal and secular matters. Theelements of authority were seen as separateand divided rather than as cooperating andunified. The individual looked to the churchon moral, spiritual and theological matters,but to the secular state for protection, welfare, prosperity and j u s t i e ~ t h e'keys topersonal aggrandizement.' In tracing thisdevelopment through the writings of thePuritans, we should be aware', warns Rutman,that there ' i s a subtle difference between a

Winthrop or Cotton for whom the goal ofsociety was the pleasing of God; a SamuelWillard to whom a happy, contented peoplewas most pleasing to God; and a John Wiseto whom ' the happiness of the people is theend of [the state's] being; or main businessto be attended and dorie.'

"The transformation from the 'pleasingGod' to the 'happiness of the people' as theend of the state is certainly an example of thedeveloping autonomous outlook, but the moresignificant development is the acceptance of

the division of the commonwealth, the acceptance of the idea that the .interests of thechurch and state were mutually exclusive,divided and distinct, and that the more important concerns of the people were bound J lPwith the state rather than the church. - p 109.

Elniff continues: "The ultimate failure ofthe holy commonwealth came with the decline of the concepts of unity and piety, asthe Puritans lost both the sense of the covenanted spheres united in the Triune God and

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the reali ty of the spiritual view of life. Theconcept of human autonomy was expressed inthe secularization of the state and in the' intellectual somersaults' the Puritan made ashe moved back and forth between secular andspiri tual interests. - p. 117f.

With this synthesis in Puritan thoughtcame the deterioration of personal piety.And because of this, by the 18 th Century,colonial life was no longer harmonious. t

was shaken with all kinds of internal disorders. First generation American Puritan,William Bradford, first governor of thePlymouth Plantation, as an old man, grievedover this spiritual declension he could already see in the late 1600's. He lamented:

0 that these ancient members had not died orbeen dissipated ... or else that this holy care andconstant faithfulness had still, lived, and remainedwith these that survived, and were in times afterward

added unto them. But, alas, that subtle serpent hathslyly wound in himself under fair pretence ofnecessity and the like to untwist these sacred bondsand ties, and s it were insensibly, by degrees, todissolve or in a great measure to weaken, the same.I have been happy, in my first times, to see, and withmuch comfort to enjoy, the blessed fruits of thissweet communion, but it is now a part of my miseryin old age, to find and feel the decay and wantthereof .. and with gr ief and sorrow of heart, tolament and bewail the same.

However, it should be pointed out that this

declension at first advanced slowly in NewEngland because of the Biblical institutionsthe Puritans had put in place. Their Biblicalconcepts of checks and balances betweenvarious spheres of authority, such as thefamily, church and state, their emphasis onthe limited, non-sovereign authority of thesespheres, and their commitment that allspheres were totally governed by Biblicallaw, enabled this Holy Commonwealth to be aproductive, self-correcting, self-stabilizing,and insti tutionally balanced society withl iberty and justice for all , for a time.

Now let 's go back to the subject of naturallaw, especially to the attempt by Christians,past and present, to harmonize and identifynatural law with Biblical law and to understand natural law by reading Biblical Law'.All such attempts to synthesize natural lawtheory that originated with the Greeks andRomans (Classical thought) and Biblical Laware problematic for the thinking Christianseeking to be consistent to the Biblical

worldview. Some of the problems are asfollows.

First , Christian theories of natural law areflawed, not only because they originate inGreek and Roman pagan thought, but alsobecause of the faulty epistemological foundation. They are rationalistic in that theyassume that human reason is autonomous,

that it is competent to determine good andevil , truth and falsehood, reality and i l lusion,beauty and ugliness by i tself without anyassistance by or reference to God and HisWord. Natural law theories affirm thatpagans as well as Christians using theirreason correctly can read nature and understand its laws.

But human reason was not created by Godto be the standard of good and evil , thesource of law; rather i t was given to us as atool to understand and apply the infallible

standard of Biblical Law, which is the verbalrevelation of God. Man's reason is not onlycreated by God it is fully known by God andfully determined by God. Furthermore man'sreason cannot be autonomous because it hasbeen damaged by man's fall into sin, in thatman's heart, the control center of his beingwhich guides his reason, is in rebellionagainst His Creator. - Archie J ones, NaturalLaw and Christian Resistance to Tyranny, inThe Theology o Christian Resistance p. 114.(Read Romans 1,2, and 3.)

Second, man's mind is not neutral. Allpeople have presuppositions from which theytry to understand life, although not all peopleare aware of this fact. Presuppositions arethose convictions and commitments of theheart about God, ourselves and life that havea determining influence on all we think anddo. Man does not think withpresuppositionless impartiality, but rather interms of presupposed religious ideas aboutGod, ethics, men and things. The Bible is

clear that men have two basic religiousphilosophies: one antichristian and worldly,and the other Christian and anti worldly.These two religious philosophies take diametrically opposite views of God and HisWord. - Jones, pp. 114-115. Moreover,although the unregenerate mind cannot escape the clear and unambiguous revelation ofGod in all creation including his own constitution and conscience as a human being inthe image of God, because of his depravity

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and hostility for God, he suppresses the truthin unrighteousness, Romaus 1: 18ff.

The Bible explicitly denies any such neutrality .Men are divided into saved ane lost, keepers ofGod's covenant and breakers of God's covenant.There isne agreement between the two positions.- Human reason, unaided by God's r e v e l a t i o n ~untwisted by God's grace-caimot. be expected to

devise a universal law code based on any presumeduniversal human logic. What mankind's universalreason CAN be expected to do ,is to REBEL againstGod and His law. Ethical e b ~ l sare.not'logiCilllyf i t h f u ~ t oOo.d,"- Gary:North, Moses and Pharaoh,p. 236f. . '

Third, Christiall. theories of natural lawreduce God's law in nature to ambiguous andgeneral ethical principles, subjectively andarbitrarily detected, discarding, as ConnieM,lfshner has done, the specificity of Biblical Law, with its Ten Commandments and its

practical applications of the Decalogue in thecase-laws given in the Old Testament, thusloosing the concreteness, comprehensivedirection and practical applicability of Biblical law. Natural law is vague, abstract, anduncertain and increasingly removed from the:common 'man's ability to discover it apart .from the tyranny 'of the elitist experts, making it increasinglY' i ~ e f f e c t i v eas' a guide forthe rulers or the rUled. ,As Archie Jones haspointed out; an b s t i ~ c tand esoteric lawknown only to an elite cannot serve as an,

'effective check on abuses of power by government, and thus .cannot serve, as an effective guide for either the rulers or the ruled.- Not only rulers, but also the ruled, lack aneffective guide ,to civil obedience, d i s o b e d i ~ence, and resistance to gQvernmental tyranny.When law is abstract, esoteric, and pragmatic, there can be no such clear standardsfor civil disobedience and resis,tance., becausethere .are then no. specific standards of lawand justice, right and wrong, good arid evil.- t always must be a matter of individualopinion and debate, in the ab'sence o f Bib licitl Law. - The Theology o Christiqn Resistance,p. 1 12; 11;3 : , , , . , , ' , . ,

Fourth, there is the unsolvable problem o'fHume's Gap, I.e., , the, unbridgeable difference or separation between the ' is ' and the'ought, ' 'between propositionsll.nd c o m ~ :mands. - jones; p: 117. The aflle1stic Scottish philosopher of.the lS h Century, DavidHume, explained the central logical difficultyfor natural .Iawthe'ories:how to 'deriv,e

normative statements from descriptivepropositions, (Robbins ,p .18) ,how to turnwhat is into what ought to be. HUJ;ne'sgap, writes John Robbins, that gulf between observational dahl arid: etlJ.ic'al commands, has never been bridged by a secularphilosopher. This is silllplybec,m,se there aretwo distinct logical categories o r statementsinvolved: propositions and commands. Onecannot move directly back and fQrth 'betweenthe two types


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reason leads to their denial of God, to thesecularization of all of life; and to the denialof objective and absolute moral standards.The further consequences of these assumptions include the denial of the rationality ofman and c r ~ t i o nand the rise of modernanarchism and totalitarianism in law andpolitics, the enslavement of nations andraces, mass murders on an unprecedented

scak.a nd

the present crises in liberty ;mdjustice in the West. Autonomous 'naturallaw' theory is a slippery slope, which leadsnaturally downward to its own destruction,and the destruction of the cultures and nations which follow its way. - Jones, p. 13l .

Seventh, no one has worked out the implications of natural law theory as extensivelyand consistently as the Marquis de Sade ofthe Enlightenment. The word, sadism, comesfrom the name de Sade He wrote that Nature teaches liS both vice and virtue in our

constitution ... we shall examine by the torchof reason, for it i sby this light alone that wecan conduct Ollr inquiry. - quoted byRobbins, p. 17. De Sade accepted thepremise that nature is normative, that whatever is is right, that there was no ethical falland no divine curse, and that God is a superfluous hypothesis in ethics at best. Therefore de Sade concludes: There is just asmuch harm in killing an animal as a man, orjust as little, and the difference arises solelyfrom the prejudices o f our vani ty. - quoted .

by Robbins, p. 17. In other words, any valuewe place on human beings above animalsresults from our arrogance.

Eighth, only Christianity has a basis forknowledge and morality precisely because itis divinely revealed and does not seek toderive law or an ethical system from logic,experience or nature. ' As we have seen,David Hume laid the axe to the root of allman's efforts to derive a system of ethicsfrom reason or nature. Is it not evident thatwe must go out o f o r rather, Someone must

break i n t o ~ o u rexperience in or< er to establish law? Only revelat ion-only commandsfrom a lawgiver-can provid'e u with theneeded ethical guidance. - Natural lawtheorists, rather than worshipping the Creatorand obeying His law, worship the creatureand attempt to discover her laws. Naturallaw theory is, in the final analysis, a form ofidolatry, [the replacing of God with humanreason]. What has nature to do with law?Nothing. Law is God's commanding. -

Law cannot be discovered by men; neithercan it be made. Its source is neither theuniversity nor the legislative chamber. Governments may enact statutes; judges maypronounce decisions; juries may deliververdicts. None can make law but God. Allhonor due to statutes, decisions, and verdictsis i tself commanded by God. There is nothing in the things themselves that warrants

honor. Our compliance with them is mandated by law, by God's commands, Romans13:1-7. Where they contravene law, they arenot to be obeyed, for ~ ought to obey Godrather than men, Acts 5:29. - Robbins, p. IS.

Ninth,. Biblical Law i tself refutes naturallaw. Biblical Law is a comprehensive andcompleted law-word from God that needs nosupplementation or abridgement. As theBiblical Lawgiver Himself said: Whatever Icommand you, you shall be careful to do;you shall not add to uor take away from i t ,

Deuteronomy 12:32. King Solomon said inProverbs 30:5 ,6-Every word of God istested; He is a shield to those who takerefuge in Him. Do not add to His wordslest He reprove yon, and yon be proved al iar. Moses, the mouthpiece of the Lord,threw out this challenge to anyone anywhere:What great nation is there tha t has statutesand judgments as r ighteous as this wholelaw which am setting before you today?Deuteronomy 4:8. Therefore, God commanded everyone in Israel to read or to have

read to them Biblical Law at least once everyseven years, Deuteronomy 31: 10-13. Apparently God assumed that people would notunderstand His Law unless they read it orheard it read to them, 31: 13. From thiscommand, Gary North argues against naturallaw. He writes:

I f the whole of Biblical law had been ingrainedinto the consciences of all men from the beginningof time, or if the terms ofthe law including thelaw's explicit penalties, were always available to allmen through the exercise of man's universal reason,then the law would not have required the priests toread the Mosaic law before the congregation ofIsrael every seventh year.

Inonr day, why should Christians who haveBiblical law written in their heart, Hebrews 8:9'11,still have to listen to the pnblic teaching of this law?Because the implantation of Biblical law at the timeof a person's regeneration is definitive not progres-sive and certainly not final. Biblical law is implanted in the believer, but the old sin nature still

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wars against the law Romans 7. Thus, Christiansalso as sinners tend to hold back the truths of thelaw in unrighteousness, Romans 1: 18. Nevertheless,the defmitive implanting of Biblical law in thehearts of the regenerate-a defmitive event leadingprogressively through study and application to ourfmal understanding of the l aw- is different from thework of the law which is in the heart of the unbeliever. What the unbeliever has in his heart is

definitive rebellion, in Adam. As he progressivelyworks out the implications of his faith, he loses sightofthe work of the law. He works out progressivelywhat is definitively inherited by him, namely, ethicalrebellion. - Gary North, pp. 236-237.

At this point we should bring up Romans2: 14-15 because it is often used to support atheory of natural law available to reasonapart from Biblical Law. I t reads: For whenGentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these,.nothaving the law, are a law to themselves, in

tba t tbey show the work of the Law writ tenin their hearts , their conscience bearingwitness, and their thoughts alternatelyaccusing or e.lse defending themselves ...

Instinctively (NASV), or by natnre '(KJV), refers to what is imprinted on ourhuman being and constitution, as contrastedwith that 'hich comes from external sources.What is done instinctively' is done by naturalextinct or spontaneous impulse as distinguished from influences external to ourselves. The things we do by instinct orimpulse are said to be the thIngs of the law.Paul does not say that they are the fulfillment of the law or that they are done inobedience to the law, and he must havedeliberately refrained from using such expressions. The things of the law denotescertain things which the Law commandswhich are practiced by instinct even bypagans at least externally, although not in away that is pleasing to God, such as pursuinga vocation, producing children, parentalaffection, ciiIe for the poor and the sick, andnumerous other things prescribed by God'sl a ' Y : , ; W p \ , n . f l } ~P f l W." , ~ \ o h a snever seenthe Bible, does instinctively these things,the things of the Law, they are a law untothemselves. This is not the same as a popular saying that a person is a law to himself.Rather, i t is to say the opposite. All humanbeings, being in the image of God, defiledthough i t is, have the work of the Lawwrit ten in their hearts, their consciencebearing witness, and their thonghts al ter-

nately accusing or else defending them-.selves,2:15. Therefore when human beingsdo instinctively .. the things of the law, theyare a law unto themselves, whi ch means thatthey are squarely confronted with the Law ofGod. They themselves reveal the Law ofGod to themselves- their person is the medium of revelation ... Hence with respect tothose without specifically revealed law three

things are true: (1). The law of God confronts them and registers i tself in their consciousness by reason of what they nativelyand constitutionally are; (2). They do thingswhich this law prescribes; (3). This doing isnot by extraneous constraint but by naturalimpulse. - John Murray, ROMANS, NICNT,Vol. I, pp. 73-74. And in the l ight of RomansI: 18f, another important truth can be saidabout those who are unregenerate, whetherthey have seen a Bible or not. When they areconfronted with God's Law in their human

constitution, they suppress the t ruth inunrighteousness, because they hate the Godwho confronts them, Romans 1 :30.

Two important points should be emphasized here: (I). The law of God that confronts a person in his heart is not a lawdifferent from Biblical law. As John Murraysaid, i t is not a rival law to the law delivered.to God's people through Moses. quoted by North, p. 238. (2). The work ofthe Law on the conscience is not an independent source of law available to the proper use

of reason. Man cannot look within himself todraw an ethical system for several reasons:(a). Man was never meant to live withoutverbal divine revelation, Genesis I :28; (b).Sin has corrupted the conscience, Hebrews9:14; (c). Unregenerate man hates the Lawgiver and is unwilling and unable to live inobedience to His Law, choosing rather to be alaw to himself, Romans 8:6-8.

Paul is careful and deliberate in his choiceof words to express these things. In verse 14he does not say that pagans fulfill or obeyGod's Law, rather he says that they do thethings of the Law; and in verse 15 he does:not say that the Law of God is written on theunregenerate person's heart, but that thework of the Law is implanted in their hearts.' ' 'Such expressions as ' fulfil l ing the Law'and ' the Law written upon the heart' arereserved for a state of heart and mind andwill far beyond that predicated of unbelieving Gentiles.' (Murray) So the work of theLaw, or the thin s of the Law, written in

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their hearts, is comprehensive enough tocondemn them, but it is not the transformingreworking of the heart which the Bible refersto as regeneration. - North, p. 238.

Conclusion

First, because, with the Enlightenmentand Modern Times, the natural law doctrinecut i tself loose from any attachment to Biblical Law, because natural law became completely naturalistic, now only power remains,not law. Natural law theory abandonedreliance on the revealed law of the God ofthe Bible in order to assert its autonomy anduniversality, only to lose both its autonomyand naturalness (self-attesting universalvalidity) to the new sovereignty of the powerState. - Men seele a sovereignty greaterthan themselves, a sovereignty which canguarantee meaning to their lives and successin their many ventures. I f God is not thesource of .law, and law is not universallyvalid because it is revealed Biblical Law,then only a hypothetical universal powerState remains to give man the sovereignty heseeks . - North , p. 241. When the modernstate claims absolute competence, it placesi tself above any and all other laws. Therefore the essential nature of the modern stateis power, and it maintains i tself in terms ofpower, its most basic law is power. - Thehumanistic state may profess the commongood, democracy, equality, fraternity andmuch else, but it moves essentially and

always [not in terms of liberty and justice forall, but] in terms of power, or else it findslean and hungry humanistic wolves ready todevour it. - R.J. Rushdoony, introduction,

he New Legality by Hebden Taylor, p. viii.This means that humanistic law is inescapably totali tarian law, for the humanistic

. state not only lacks a transcendental limitation on its law, it also lacks all such limitations on its power, so that its total power

'reinforces its total law. The state thus unitesabsolute power to absolute jurisdiction and t

inevitably claims absolute competence. Rushdoony, p. vi, vii.

Second, Gary North has made this astuteobservation: To believe that reason will

'reveal to men the universal principles ofGod's dominion covenant [marriage, procreation, vocation, dominion, Sabbathobservance] ... is to believe that reason isuntainted by the Fall o f man But reason hasbeen as twisted by that ethical rebellion as

surely as any other aspect of man's personality. o believe in natural law is to believe innatural reason; to believe in naturalreason .. .is to believe in the primacy o f theintellect. The Bible does not teach theprimacy of the intellect; it teaches the primacy o f aith. - pp. 241-242.

Third, we must respond to the crisis inWestern law with the answers it does not

want to hear, but which are its only hope:the restoration of Christianity as the foun

dation of Western religion, the restoration ofthis religion as the foundation of moralityand reason, and the establishment of BiblicalLaw-and not the restoration of natural lawtheory-as the foundation of social order.Nllthing else will revive the West. A truereligious reviva l -a comprehensive revivalwhich restructures every human institution interms of Biblical Law-a lone can establishthe West's foundations of long-term social

and legal order. - North, p. 248. Along withthe pressing of these answers upon the consciences of people, we must make everyeffort in the power of the Holy Spirit tocapture the hearts and minds of Americanswith the gospel of Jesus Christ, which alonegives a person or a nation the desire andability to obey and enforce Biblical Lawfrom the heart.

Fourth, where does all this leave us in theUnited States in the 21 century?

t means that today's Christians, armedwith the old Puritan vision and worldview,obtained from and perfected by the Bible,must recognize the magnitude of the taskbefore us. We must further recognize as Christians that we, and we alone, not only understand the true nature of our national crisis,by God's grace, but that we also hold theonly solut ion-the reconstruction of theUnited States in terms of the universality andvictory-orientation of the kingdom of Christ,the comprehensive sufficiency of the Biblicalrevelation and the sovereignty of God'sgrace, avoiding the mistakes our forefathersmade. This is not nostalgia. But i t is only aswe build on the foundation laid for us in theBible that we can take this nation and futurefor Christ the King.

May we, Christians, all over this country,recommit ourselves by the grace of God topray for and work for the reestablishment ofthe crown rights of Christ the King over allthe earth, and for the Christian reconstruc-

AprillMay 2001 - THE COUNSELo

Chalcedon - 39


9/9

, , t ionof all aspects of American life, thought and cultureby. the infaIIibleWord of Godin the pqwer o f the HolySpirit to the glory of AIm1ghty God. May we notrest until we. see, under theLord's blessing, Christianindividuals, loving each

other in Christian families,worshipping in Christian.c h u r c h e s ~equcating theirchildren in Christian schools,

'working in C;hristian busi- 'nesses, under the protectionof a Ghris t ianRepubl i c ofChristian States, governed by

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1 conclude with this mov-ing exhortation by A.A, Hodge of oldPrinceton Seminary:

"In the name of your own interests I plead withyou; in the name of your treasure houses and barns;of yOur rich fanils and cities; of your accumulationsin the. past and your hopes in the future, I chargeyou--:-you never will be secure if you do not faith- .fullY:'Inaintain all the crown rights of Jesus the King,

. of mim. In the name of your children and their'inheritance of the. precious Christian civilization youin turil have received from your sires; in the name ofthe Christian C;hurch, I charge you that its sacredfrancbise, religiQus liberty, cannot be retained bymen whoin civil matters deny their allegiance to theKing. In the name of your own soul and its salvation; in the name of the adorable victim of thatbloody and. agonizing sacrifice whence you draw allyour hopes of salvation; by Gethsemane and Calvary; I charge you, citizens of the United States,afloat on your wide sea of politics, there is anotherking, one Je.sus: th.e safety of the state can besecured only in the way Of humble and whole-souledloyalty to His Person and o f obedience to His Law." 5

IAutoriomy ,is the quality at condition of being selfgoverning' and indep'enqeilt of God. It is the' ~ i e f t h a tmancan ~ d e r s t a n dlife, det ermine the differe'nce between goodand evil. and be happy independently of God and the Bible.

.2 Several excellent Reformed critiques of natural lawtheories include: (1). "Natural Law arld Resistance toTyranny," by Archie P. Jones in The Theology o/ChristianResistance, pp. 94f; (2). Moses and Pharaoh by Gary North,pp. 236ff.; (3). "80\11e Problems with Natural Law by JohnRobbins in The Journdl a/Christ ian Reconstruction, Vol. II,No.2,pp. 14f; (4). "Non"Autonomy and Some Puritan

Dilemmas' by -TerrillI .

Elniff in The-Journalo Chri;$tianReconstruction, Vol. V, No.2, pp 97f; (5). The Guise o fEvery Graceless Heart by Terrill LElli iff; (6). "TheReformation and Natural Law" by August Ulllg in Calvinand the Reformation, pp. 56f.

3 Bahnsen, Greg L., Van Til's Apologetic, (Phillipsburg,., , I _ , , ' .' . . , _'..... , ' . . . '

NJ: Pre sbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1998)." ' t

4 I Corinthians 11: ~ is also used to support natural lawtheories. I t says: Does not even, ,nature itself teac h youthat if. a mao; a s ,long hai-r, it iE :8 ~ i s h o n o rto him.. I t isthe phrase; does not even nature itself teach you, that thenatural law theorists jump on a futile ~ f f o r tto find their

theory in the Biple. Paul' s appeal here is not to natural lawor "nature", as in "mother natu re," but to "the way things are"(NIV) or to instinctive, feelings or judgments that are theeffects of the i m p l a ~ t i n gof God's Law in the heart . :Naturehere refer s to the way God has mad e human beings. Certain thi ngs are unnatural an d for ,that reason lack propriety.Thus, wh en a man wears long hair, this is really not inaccord with the nature of a man . .In Corinth such long hairwill make a man seem much like a woman and will thusbring a corresponding 'dishonor' upon m > -Lenski,Interpretation a First Corinthians, p. 449. 'Ephesians 2:3says that uI)l'egenerate human beings are by nature children

of wrath, l.e.-, because of-the way they a r e ~assin has madethem, untouched by saving grace, fallen into-sin and'totallydepraved, ~ h e yare children of wrath:

5 Hodge, Archibald ~ _ e x a n d e ~Popular Lectures onTheological Themes, p. 287, (philadelphia: PresbyterianBoard of Publication and Sabbatit"School Work, 1887).

.40 -,THE COUNSEL of Cbalcedon - April/May, 2001

2001 issue 3 - natural law or biblical law? - counsel of chalcedon

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