Against Natural Law (Part 2)
Because of our fallen nature and our finitude, we cannot know this natural law without the light of Christ to illuminate the darkness of our hearts and minds, or without the spectacles of the Scriptures to enable us to see these laws of nature clearly. So, while natural law does exist, it is both unhistorical and unrealistic to say we have access to it without the grace of Christ.
In the first article of this series, I began to make the case against Christians putting too much weight on the use of “natural law.” I argued that there is a moral structure to the world that is as immutable as the physical laws of nature, just like gravity. But because of our fallen nature and our finitude, we cannot know this natural law without the light of Christ to illuminate the darkness of our hearts and minds, or without the spectacles of the Scriptures to enable us to see these laws of nature clearly. So, while natural law does exist, it is both unhistorical and unrealistic to say we have access to it without the grace of Christ.
Natural law entices a society to believe we can be moral and just through our own rationality and inherent goodness.
That all might sound esoteric, so in this article I’d like to list a number of practical reasons for rejecting an emphasis on natural law. This is the “so what” part of this series. In particular, I want to highlight how this theory applies to politics and education:
If we believe Natural Law will give us a common ground, we will use this as a way to marginalize Christ in public discourse. Natural law promises a common ground between Christians and non-Christians, so we end up saying things like, “Well, not everyone believes the Bible, so let’s just leave the Bible out of our public discussions and focus on what everyone can agree on through natural law.” This is always the first step toward the secularization and moral decline of a society. The more we do that, the more people get used to keeping the Bible off-limits in public discourse. We need to get people more used to the Bible, not less. We need to celebrate its authority in society more, and speak about its moral vision with confidence. Natural law entices a society to believe we can be moral and just through our own rationality and inherent goodness.
Christians will be tempted to leave the Bible behind and put confidence in the MAGA movement for cultural renewal and change.
A focus on Natural Law will tempt us to think that society can be transformed simply through political action, and that we don’t need revival and conversion. If we think non-Christians can be moral and just without Christ, we will neglect worship and the spiritual discipleship of the nation in favor of political policies that seem conservative. This is a particular temptation for conservative Christians at this moment. Donald Trump has come into power, and intends to implement policies that are friendly to the church and Christianity. Christians will be tempted to leave the Bible behind and put confidence in the MAGA movement for cultural renewal and change. Natural law would be a theological justification for doing so. While I agree that Christians must learn to be co-belligerents with non-Christian conservatives, we must not deceive ourselves that our society can have just laws without reference to God’s law revealed in the Scriptures. As Christians, we know that the true transformation of American society can only happen in Christ through revival and reformation. But natural law is the kind of thinking that welcomed pagan prayer at the Republican National Convention, and ultimately will just lead to a conservative version of moral decline.
Natural law has been the prime culprit in the secularization of Western education. As late as the 1870s, every college president in America was an evangelical (see George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Unbelief). Even here in Bellingham, the first president of Western Washington University was an elder at First Presbyterian. By the early 20th century, just a few decades later, not one president was a Bible-believing Christian. What happened? Basically, the university system adopted the belief that “all truth is God’s truth,” and so assumed that you could remove the Bible as the foundation of learning, and that scientific discovery would lead to the truths of the Bible. That is, they approached learning through natural law. This idea did not factor in how sin has affected the intellectual faculties of humans, causing us to “suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). We thought science was an a-moral, objective discipline. But many philosophers (including non-Christians) over the past century have shown how false this is. Science is never purely objective. Whether trying to secure money for a grant that funds their work, or wanting to justify an atheistic understanding of the world, all science is motivated by the human heart of the researcher. It is always done with a worldview as the lens through which one sees the world. Without the Bible, this worldview will always distort reality and lead us away from God, into moral decline.
If we can have God’s blessings (i.e. a moral society) without God himself, we will always tend to choose the gift over the Giver.
Related to this, natural law will tempt Classical Christian schools to become more elite prep schools than institutions for discipleship in Christ. Christians will always be tempted to be accepted and respected by the world. Classical Christian Schools have proven to be very effective institutions, and as public schools continue to decline in their efficacy, classical schools will gain more attention from the world. This will tempt schools to focus more on natural law and virtue formation instead of teaching the Scriptures and leading children to Christ. It is easy to think, “We can bring in non-Christians who want morals and discipline, and then later introduce them to Christ.” It never works that way. What you win people with is what you win them to. If people signed up for general morality, hard work, college prep, and disciplines to help you be successful and get rich (you might call all this natural law), then that is what they will care about. They won’t care about Christ.
If we can have God’s blessings (i.e. a moral society) without God himself, we will always tend to choose the gift over the Giver. This is what the Israelites did when they were brought into the promised land. The Lord warned them before they entered:
“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’” (Deut. 8:11-14, 17)
This warning is precisely the reason we should be against natural law. Let us not forget the Lord who, through the gospel and his word, has saved us from the darkness of our futile hearts and has brought massive freedom and prosperity to the Western world.
Simply stated: natural law doesn’t work. If humans depend on their own minds and rationality instead of the wisdom of the Creator given by grace in revelation, they will always distort things to suit their sinful desires. So as a church, seeking to apply the Bible to every area of life (including politics and education), let us never depart from Christ and his word, and may we boldly proclaim its goodness and beauty in our church, in our school, and in the society around us.
