Introduction
\n[1] However deeply ensconced the suspicion of natural law might seem among 20th-century Protestant thinkers, it cannot be attributed to the 16th-century Reformers themselves. Both Lutheran and Reformed streams of the magisterial tradition readily affirmed the doctrine of lex naturalis and cognito Dei naturalis. While it is decidedly true that they championed a particular understanding of grace, faith and justification, this was not to the exclusion of other vehicles of divine agency. Rather, they assumed the natural law as a moral-theological bedrock in their system and therein maintained continuity with their Catholic counterparts. It is accurate to insist that the Reformation controversies with the Catholic Church were foremost theological-ecclesiastical and not ethical.
\nProtestant Bias against the Natural Law: A Critique by J. Daryl Charles
\n[2] In what follows, several influential Protestant voices from the 20th century will be juxtaposed to voices from the 16th-century magisterial tradition, with a view to highlight strongly contrasting attitudes toward the natural law. Following this comparison, the present essay will offer several concluding reflections, proceeding on the assumption that ecumenical dialogue on the importance of natural law ethics is both timeless and timely, especially in a post-consensus cultural climate.<\/p>\n
Natural-Law Thinking among the Magisterial Reformers: Ethical Continuity
\n[3] To the surprise of some, the notion of the natural law is resolutely affirmed in the writings of the magisterial Reformers. The conventional stereotype of Luther, Calvin and company is that in their concern to address matters of faith, Scripture and the sufficiency of Christ, they were suspicious of \u2014 or at best indifferent toward \u2014 the natural-law emphasis of their Catholic counterparts. Much to the contrary. They remain in ethical continuity with the Christian moral tradition, even when the natural law is not a major focus in their writings compared to their accent on faith, grace and forensic justification.<\/p>\n
Luther
\n[4] Natural-law thinking is firmly embedded in Luther\u2019s thought. In his 1525 treatise How Christians Should Regard Moses, the Reformer distinguishes between the Law of Moses, with its historically conditioned components, stipulations and illustrations for theocratic Israel and the natural law.1 \u201cIf the Ten Commandments are to be regarded as Moses\u2019 law, then Moses came too late,\u201d Luther can quip somewhat wryly, for \u201cMoses agrees exactly with nature\u201d2 and \u201cwhat Moses commands is nothing new.\u201d3 And, he adds, Moses<\/p>\n
also addressed himself to far too few people, because the Ten Commandments had spread over the whole world not only before Moses but even before Abraham and all the patriarchs. For even if a Moses had never appeared and Abraham had never been born, the Ten Commandments would have had to rule in all men from the very beginning, as they indeed did and still do.4<\/p>\n
The law that stands behind the Ten Commandments, Luther notes emphatically, was in force prior to Moses from the beginning of the world and also among all the Gentiles. So far as the Ten Commandments are concerned, Luther concludes, \u201cthere is no difference\u201d between Jews and Gentiles.5<\/p>\n
[5] Reckoning with the possibility of being misunderstood, Luther clarifies his position: \u201cWe will regard Moses as a teacher, but we will not regard him as our lawgiver \u2014 unless he agrees with both the New Testament and the natural law.\u201d6 \u201cWhere…the Mosaic law and the natural law are one, there the law remains and is not abrogated externally.\u201d7 Faith, says Luther, fulfills the law, to which assertion he adduces Rom. 3:31. By contrast, those aspects of the Mosaic code that were temporal and confined to theocratic Israel are said to be \u201cnull and void\u201d and \u201cnot supported by the natural law.\u201d8 Luther\u2019s position is unambiguous: the moral norms that apply to all people, Christians and non-Christians, are the same. There are no two ethical standards that exist within the realm of divine revelation.<\/p>\n
[6] Luther adopts the basic definition of natural law that had been set forth in Philip Melanchthon\u2019s commentary on Rom. 2:15: the natural law is \u201ca common judgment to which all men alike assent, and therefore one which God has inscribed upon the soul of each man.\u201d9 Everyone, observes Luther, must acknowledge that what the natural law dictates in the human heart is right and true. There is no one, he insists, who does not sense the effects of the natural law. \u201cNature provides that we should call upon God. The Gentiles attest to this fact…[who] have it [the natural law] written on their heart…\u201d10<\/p>\n
[7] Luther is well aware of a common misperception among religious-minded people, namely, that \u201cnatural law\u201d is the common fund of only \u201cChristian\u201d societies. To the contrary, insists Luther; it is borne out by human experience that all nations, cultures and people-groups possess this rudimentary knowledge. The natural law \u201cis written in the depth of the heart and cannot be erased.\u201d11 In fact, people bring this awareness, this natural moral sense, when they enter the world. Although this natural law was merely concretized through the Decalogue in a particular manner at a single time and place on Mt. Sinai, nations knew of the moral realities behind these laws before the Law formally was given to Israel.12 Thus, \u201cit is natural to honor God, not steal, not commit adultery, not bear false witness, not murder; and what Moses commands is nothing new.\u201d13<\/p>\n
[8] In his treatise On Temporal Authority, Luther deliberates over particular situations that require Christians to participate intelligibly with unbelievers in the public square. Two such situations that potentially involve believer and unbeliever are the unlawful seizure of private property and resolving financial debts. Luther exhorts his readers to use both \u201cthe law of love\u201d and \u201cthe natural law.\u201d However, when love has no observable effect, the latter is to be our guide, since natural law is that \u201cwith which all reason is filled.\u201d14 Societies, therefore, \u201cshould keep written laws subject to reason, from which they originally welled forth as from the spring of justice.\u201d15 If neither of the concerned parties is Christian, Luther notes, \u201cthen you may have them call in some other judge, and tell the obstinate one that they are acting contrary to God and natural law….\u201d16<\/p>\n
[9] It should be emphasized that Luther is perfectly content to allow the natural law and righteousness that comes by faith to stand side by side. As with fellow Reformers, Luther in no way perceives general revelation as canceling out or undermining faith. Rather, the natural law is presumed to be at work within all people and thus to be lodged at the core of Christian social ethics. Were this not the case, Luther observes, \u201cone would have to teach and practice the law for a long time before it became the concern of conscience. The heart must also find and feel the law in itself.\u201d17 Otherwise, it would not become a matter of conscience for anyone.<\/p>\n
[10] While Luther\u2019s theology of law extends beyond the scope and time constraints of this essay,18 law for Luther is not, as many Protestants might assume, some \u201cpostlapsarian device\u201d or \u201cmakeshift repair provoked by the fall.\u201d19 To the contrary, it belongs to Adam\u2019s original righteousness and as such accords with Paul\u2019s statement that the law is \u201cgood, righteous and holy\u201d (Rom. 7:12). Properly viewed, then, Luther believes that law presupposes not sin but grace, a conviction that needs more probing by contemporary Protestant theologians. And even the Fall itself does not eliminate law\u2019s original function and identity, in Luther\u2019s understanding.20 \u201cTherefore,\u201d he insists, \u201cthe law must be preached wherever Christ is to be preached.\u201d21<\/p>\n
Melanchthon
\n[11] For Luther\u2019s co-laborer, reason and revelation co-exist and co-operate; neither is threatened by the other \u2014 a unity which, in Melanchthon\u2019s thinking, is assumed by the doctrine of divine providence. This is true even when special revelation is needed to spell out the particulars. For Melanchthon, to appreciate the symbiotic relationship between reason and revelation is to comprehend the relationship between theology and philosophy. Theology, even when theology cannot be demonstrated, enlarges our natural knowledge of God. Hence, Melanchthon can freely speak of \u201cnatural light\u201d that is accessible to all.<\/p>\n
[12] Consistent with the Reformational viewpoint, Melanchthon distinguishes between three kinds of law \u2014 ceremonial, judicial and eternal\/moral. The latter, he asserts, has three principal spheres of practical application. First, it is binding on all people in the realm of civil law, furnishing the rudiments by which social order is maintained; reason informs all people that external compliance to moral norms is demanded by human social life. Second, it governs the moral life of all people, convicting them of divine wrath and, in Pauline terms, \u201caccusing the heart\u201d; and, third, it instructs the church, the believing community.22<\/p>\n
[13] In Articles 5-8 and 14 of Loci Communes, Melanchthon acknowledges that keeping the Ten Commandments does not merit justification; yet, the unredeemed person must also abide by them because they are a specific expression of divinely-instituted natural law. And even granting that people cannot keep them entirely, he argues that man\u2019s reason \u2014 the \u201cnatural light\u201d \u2014 informs him that external compliance is demanded by human community.23<\/p>\n
[14] In posing the question \u201cWhat is the natural law?\u201d Melanchthon answers thus: \u201cit is precisely the eternal unchangeable wisdom in God which he proclaimed in the Ten Commandments.\u201d24 Natural law, he insists, is a \u201clegal understanding of the law\u201d that \u201cremains in man even after he sins,\u201d inasmuch as \u201cGod wants us to know his nature.\u201d25 For this reason, an awareness of the substance of the Ten Commandments is \u201cimplanted in all men at their creation.\u201d Melanchthon is struck in the Romans epistle by St. Paul\u2019s observation that Gentiles do the law \u201cby nature\u201d; \u201cby nature\u201d refers to creation and the imago Dei, not some post-lapsarian condition.26<\/p>\n
[15] \u201cExternal civil life,\u201d therefore, \u201cis to be regulated according to this natural light\u201d; God gave us this natural light so that we would not \u201cfall still further into doubt about God\u2019s nature, right and wrong, order and disorder.\u201d27 It needs emphasis that, in Melanchthon\u2019s thought, law does not operate merely as an external restraint, important as this function is; rather, it has an internal, formative function as well.28 This conviction surfaces, for example, in the 1555 edition of Loci, which is filled with references to the Anabaptists. Anabaptists, notes Melanchthon, \u201cfor several years have been clamoring that one should not preach the Ten Commandments\u201d \u2014 this on the grounds that through the Spirit the believer will \u201cdo good works without the aid of the word, and that such good works supersede the Commandments.\u201d29<\/p>\n
Calvin
\n[16] Given the emphasis on divine sovereignty and human depravity in Calvin\u2019s theological system, one would think that the Reformer might have a dim view of the natural law, in contrast to Catholic counterparts. Such is not the case.30 Notwithstanding the ravages of sin, Calvin is keenly aware of the Pauline argument in Romans, namely, that the Gentiles \u201cshow the work of the law written on their hearts\u201d (Rom. 2:14). Calvin\u2019s uses of the law \u2014 ceremonial, judicial and moral \u2014 presuppose his conviction that there are aspects of human law that are both binding and non-binding.31<\/p>\n
[17] Informing Calvin\u2019s thinking is the Thomist assumption that \u201cby nature man is a social animal.\u201d Because of this anthropological reality, man is disposed, \u201cfrom natural instinct, to preserve society,\u201d the result of which is that \u201chuman societies must be regulated by law,\u201d without which there would be no civil order.32 The seeds of just laws, insists Calvin, are \u201cimplanted in the breasts of all.\u201d Moreover, they remain unaffected by the vicissitudes of life; neither war nor catastrophe nor theft nor human disagreement can alter these moral intuitions since nothing can destroy \u201cthe primary idea of justice\u201d that is implanted within.33<\/p>\n
[18] Calvin\u2019s understanding of the natural law, properly construed, is an extension of his understanding of providence. It is a \u201cprovidential bridle\u201d34 that demonstrates the indivisible link between cosmic and moral orders. Human conscience, by nature, is able to discern this connection. But what about the problem of sin? How corrupt is the human heart in Calvin\u2019s view? Thoroughly. And is there any realm of human experience that has gone untouched by sin? Emphatically not. But to acknowledge the pervasiveness of sin and human depravity, for Calvin, is not to obliterate the rudimentary moral sense in each person.<\/p>\n
[19] Notwithstanding the emphasis in his teachings on human depravity, Calvin cannot be interpreted as saying that humans are incapable of basic moral reasoning. Rather, he sides with St. Paul: \u201cnatural law is that apprehension of the conscience which distinguishes sufficiently between just and unjust, and which deprives men of the excuse of ignorance while it proves them guilty by their own testimony.\u201d35 The Reformer acknowledges that despite \u201cman\u2019s perverted and degenerate nature,\u201d the image of God is not \u201ctotally annihilated and destroyed\u201d; rather, \u201csome sparks still shine\u201d in human creation.36 And on this point he is insistent: if Gentiles by nature have \u201claw righteousness\u201d engraved upon their minds, we surely cannot say they are utterly blind as to the conduct of life; otherwise, they could not be deemed \u201cwithout excuse.\u201d37<\/p>\n
Zwingli and Bullinger
\n[20] The threefold use of the law, for which the Protestant Reformers are well known, finds a supplemental use \u2014 belonging to the judicial realm \u2014 in the Swiss Reformational emphasis on covenant, wherein it achieves the status of a socio-political foundation. Covenant not only provides a theological basis for understanding divine work in history, but conjoined to the natural law it furnishes the basis for communal and civil-moral obligations that are thought to be binding on all human beings and all societies.38<\/p>\n
[21] In Zwingli\u2019s thought, the natural law serves as a bulwark and primary vehicle by which to resist injustice and political oppression. With the other Reformers, Zwingli believes that all human laws should conform to the natural law, which has been implanted in the hearts of all men. But with even greater emphasis than Luther, Zwingli understands the natural law to be the equivalent of \u201ctrue religion, to wit the knowledge, worship, and fear of the supreme deity.\u201d39 The \u201claw of nature,\u201d as Zwingli understands it, is implanted by God on the heart of man and is confirmed by the grace of God through Christ. This internal light is owing to the work of God\u2019s Spirit in every person, and only strengthened after conversion to Christ.40 Mirroring the Swiss Reformational distinctive, Zwingli believes that due to the imperfection of reason, only those rulers and magistrates who are God-fearers properly know the natural law.<\/p>\n
[22] Law, as the Swiss reformers understood it, has two primary functions. It mirrors grace to the extent that it is a gift from the Creator. And it has a pedagogical use in that the civil authorities protect the moral-social order, punishing evildoers and rewarding the good. Where law does not restrain evil, evildoers force their will upon society. Thus, the natural law mirrors both divine and human dimensions of justice.41 The commandments of the Creator, as Zwingli and his successor, Heinrich Bullinger, insist, are not merely spiritual in their essence; they are to be implemented in the human social context. For this reason, they require civil-legal application.42 Because of the depravity of the human heart, Zwingli reasons, humans cannot do justly; hence, the necessity of the \u201claw of nature\u201d as the divine imprint on the human heart, allowing even pagan unbelievers basic knowledge of good and evil. This \u201crestraining\u201d influence upon humans is owing to the natural law. Without this influence, society would descend into anarchy.<\/p>\n
[23] Bullinger, perhaps best known for his role in drafting the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566, like Zwingli, affirms the \u201claw of nature\u201d as \u201can instruction of the conscience…placed by God himself in the mind and hearts of men, to teach them what they have to do and what to eschew.\u201d43 This conscience is understood to be \u201cthe knowledge, judgment, and reason of a man, whereby every man in himself…either condemns or acquits himself\u201d of what he has done.44 Thereby, notes Bullinger, even the Gentiles possess a basic discernment between good and evil, so that the natural law functions in the same way as the written law, teaching us \u201cjustice, equity, and goodness\u201d and having as its source God himself.45 God has left his imprint on the soul of every person, so that each person possesses some knowledge and retains a basic awareness of justice and goodness.46 Have moral norms \u2014 and thus the requirements of human societies \u2014 changed at all in the period of the New Covenant? Bullinger answers emphatically in the negative. We are still to regard basic moral truth \u2014 for example, respecting parents, living out the Golden Rule, and keeping the Ten Commandments \u2014 for the natural law reminds us that there exists an objective moral order in which human laws are said to inhere.47<\/p>\n
[24] In his important recent volume Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics,48 Stephen J. Grabill has profiled the theological substructure of Calvin, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Johannes Althusius, and Francis Turretin, who are representative of both the magisterial Reformation period as well as Protestant orthodoxy up to the mid 18th century. Grabill\u2019s conclusion, following an exceedingly thorough examination, is unambiguous: these thinkers operated, theologically, out of a natural-law consensus that was shared by patristic, medieval, late-medieval and early-modern Christian thinkers. While Grabill\u2019s findings might seem surprising, even perhaps disconcerting, to some Protestants, they remind us that the Protestant Reformers\u2019 disagreement with the Church was fundamentally soteriological and ecclesiological, not ethical, in nature.49 While the Reformers protested what they believed to be a neglect of grace and faith, they uniformly assumed and affirmed the role of general revelation, unified in the conviction that Christian ethics presupposes \u2014 and stands on the bedrock of \u2014 the natural law.<\/p>\n
Protestant Resistance toward Natural-Law Thinking in the Last 70 Years: Ethical Discontinuity
\n[25] It is admittedly difficult, in our own day, to make generalizations about Protestant theology or social ethics, given the splintered nature of Protestantism as well as the multiplicity of theological fads that are to be found within her borders. Nevertheless, people who otherwise have very little in common theologically, remarkably, find common ground in their suspicion of natural law ethics. This \u201cconsensus,\u201d it needs pointing out, can be found among revisionist theologians and ethicists as well as among those who are confessionally orthodox. What\u2019s more, it is mirrored in the fact that one is hard-pressed to identify a single major figure in Protestant theological ethics who has developed and defended a theory of natural law.50<\/p>\n
[26] James Gustafson has classified Protestant opposition to natural law in the modern era according to two notable philosophical tendencies \u2014 historicism and existentialism.51 While Gustafson\u2019s critique is accurate as far as it goes in giving an account of both rationalism and fideism as theological responses to the modernist spirit since Hume and Kant, I would add yet a third tendency, pietism (i.e., a privatization of religious faith), which is usually rendered ineffectual in public discourse.<\/p>\n
[27] In what follows, I wish to revisit \u2014 ever so briefly \u2014 several influential Protestant voices of the last 70 years \u2014 Karl Barth, Jacques Ellul, Helmut Thielecke, Paul Lehmann, and John Howard Yoder. For our present purposes, I have chosen these individuals to illustrate the inner struggle over the question of natural law, based on a strong opposition that is explicit in their writings.<\/p>\n
Karl Barth
\n[28] To his great credit, the teaching of Karl Barth in the decade before Hitler\u2019s rise to power paved the way for the resistance that took the form of the Confessing Church. This group, emergent within the official state (Lutheran) Church, \u201cconfessed with fresh devotion historic Christian commitments in the light of their immediate political situation.\u201d52 One year after Hitler\u2019s accession to power, a conference of confessional church leaders, meeting at Barmen, drew up the brief declaration consisting of six points that became the theological foundation for resistance to Nazi hegemony. Barth played a key role in the Barmen declaration, and, with others, confessed that \u201cJesus Christ, as He is witnessed to in the Scriptures, is the Word of God which we have to hear, which we have to trust and give heed to.\u201d53 With the declaration, the participants at Barmen affirmed that the sole function of the Church is to preach the Word of God and bear witness to Christ\u2019s lordship. Not for nothing would Barth be removed from his university teaching post in the year following the Barmen synod.<\/p>\n
[29] In his important work Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, Barth considers how the assumptions of the 18th and 19th centuries were mirrored in theology and political life. An \u201cidealized\u201d and \u201chumanized\u201d understanding of \u201cnature,\u201d as Barth viewed it, would have serious implications for German thought. Inter alia it would mean \u201can attitude of detachment toward…church dogma.\u201d54 The increasing secularization of European culture, he worried, coupled with a romantic view of \u201cnature,\u201d blended easily into the core assumptions of Enlightenment thinking.55<\/p>\n
[30] What sort of Christianity needed to be fashioned? The great desire, notes Barth, was a more \u201cnatural\u201d and more \u201creasonable\u201d religion, over against the dogma of a revealed or miraculous Christianity. The dominant spirit of the time understood \u201cnature\u201d as \u201cthe embodiment of what was at the disposal of [man] himself, his spirit, his understanding, his will and his feeling, what was left for him to shape, what could be reached by his will for form.\u201d56<\/p>\n
[31] It is Barth\u2019s conviction that the 18th and 19th centuries \u201clonged for a purification of the Church\u201d from elements that were offensive.57 This theological emptying of Christianity\u2019s theistic, Christological and anthropological core constituted for Barth the creation of an entirely different religion, and thus a departure from Christianity, which is revealed through Christ the Living Word of God and Scripture as the mediator of the Word of God. The result is that authority, divine command, and the sacraments all are undermined by an emphasis on \u201cnature\u201d and \u201creason,\u201d which, for Barth, has pernicious consequences. It prepares the soil for a secularized humanism that empties Christian faith of its substance and undermines or denies the absolute lordship of Christ. Correlatively, it facilitates the emergence of a \u201cnatural religion\u201d and \u201cnatural theology\u201d that serve as a substitute for a \u201cWord of God\u201d-centered and Christocentric faith.<\/p>\n
[32] Thus, any theological or philosophical concept that is rooted in \u201cnature\u201d is viewed by Barth as not merely deficient, but rather heretical, and therefore, a radical departure from Christian \u2014 which is to say, Christ-centered \u2014 faith. Likewise, any moral theology, that \u201ctries to deny or obscure its derivation from God\u2019s command\u201d and \u201cset up independent principles in the face of autonomies and heteronomies,\u201d and which aims \u201cto undertake the replacement of the command of the grace of God by a sovereign humanism or even barbarism,\u201d is to be utterly rejected.58 For \u201cnatural theology,\u201d59 Barth concluded, functions as a Trojan horse inside the walls of Christendom, producing a sort of latent deism or pantheism.60 The God of natural law cannot be the God of the Bible. Natural law theory, he worried, creates an autonomous locus of theological and moral reflection that is severed from grace and God\u2019s revelation in Jesus Christ. It is overly optimistic about the human condition insofar as it fails to address seriously the matter of sin.<\/p>\n
[33] Surely the landmark 1934 debate between Barth and Emil Brunner constitutes a mirror into the inner struggle of Protestant thought.61 At the heart of this controversy lay the epistemological question of whether fallen humans possess a natural knowledge of God. Brunner represented the position that, based on the imago Dei, nature is normative insofar as it \u201cteaches\u201d or \u201cdictates\u201d; humans possess a capacity to \u201cunderstand.\u201d62 Hence, a basic awareness of God is embedded in creation and can be recognized by all people. As Brunner saw it, the reality of sin does not eradicate reason and conscience as the constituents of the imago Dei, notwithstanding the effects of human sinfulness.<\/p>\n
[34] Barth\u2019s famous response to Brunner was a vehement \u201cNein!\u201d Knowledge that is naturally intuited about God, he argued, is \u201ca possibility in principle but not…in fact.\u201d63 Sin has obliterated any utility of \u201cnatural law;\u201d no natural Ankn\u00fcpfungspunkt (\u201cpoint of contact\u201d) exists in the aftermath of the Fall. Reason simply cannot regain its original powers.64 The difference between Barth and Brunner is illustrative, for it captures the fundamental disagreement between Roman Catholics and Protestants over natural law to the present day. Ever since the Barth-Brunner controversy Protestant theology has been riddled with suspicion and skepticism vis-\u00e0-vis the natural law, mirroring the overwhelming influence of Barth. With few exceptions, it is difficult to identify any Protestant theologian or ethicist of note to this day who has robustly championed the natural law.65<\/p>\n
Jacques Ellul
\n[35] While not particularly known for his theological writings, French legal theorist and social critic Jacques Ellul nonetheless warrants a brief critique, given his adamant and explicit rejection of natural law ethics on expressly theological and Christological grounds. In the brief but significant volume that initially appeared in 1946 and was subsequently translated under the English title The Theological Foundation of Law, Ellul concedes the renewal of natural-law thinking that was occurring in his day. Ellul grants that a response to the disastrous consequences of positivism is needed. However, the state of modern culture and the emergence of numerous and unprecedented domains of law \u2014 e.g., laws addressing liability, labor, and social legislation \u2014 constitute for him barriers that are insurmountable. The natural law, as he perceives it, cannot address these realms.<\/p>\n
[36] With Barth, at the conceptual level Ellul is suspicious of the constant attempt on the part of theologians and natural lawyers to find common ground between Christians and non-Christians. Such an aim, he believes, is misguided, since it reveals a wrong-headed wish to ignore or circumvent \u201cthe tragic separation created by revelation and grace.\u201d66 The common humanity that we all share, Ellul insists, is not subject to modification by grace. Thus, to emphasize \u201cnature\u201d is to abandon grace and the \u201csupranatural\u201d and collapse any distinction between grace and what is merely human.67 Natural law, then, as Ellul construes it, becomes part of a major humanist project to bring about reconciliation apart from grace. Even the very desire to create a universally binding law on the basis of the law of God, for Ellul, is \u201cundeniably heretical,\u201d since it presupposes the possibility of non-Christians accepting the will of God.68 Therefore, as Protestant Christians we are \u201ccalled upon to confront the fact of natural law with the teaching of the Scriptures, the rule of our faith.\u201d69<\/p>\n
[37] But Ellul\u2019s bias against natural law is rooted not merely in the fear of rationalist autonomy. Ellul insists that \u201c[t]here is no place in biblical revelation\u201d for \u201ca legal concept, an idea, or law governing all human laws and measuring all human law.\u201d70 And because all justice and judgment in Scripture are understood by Ellul within the context of redemption,71 we cannot therefore understand law without the cross of Christ at the center; only at the Cross do we understand God\u2019s will.72 A Christocentric view of justice, as Ellul sees it, \u201cradically destroys the ideas of objective law and of eternal justice.\u201d73<\/p>\n
[38] Ellul is forced, then, to side with Barth on this theological point. He writes: \u201cIf one adopts a strictly biblical view, then it would seem that one could hardly do otherwise than to follow Karl Barth on the subject of the impossibility of the natural knowledge of God by man, which leads to the same impossibility for the knowledge of the good.\u201d74 And on this point Ellul is emphatic: \u201cIn scripture, there is no possible knowledge of the good apart from a living and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.\u201d75 Ellul does not offer \u2014 nor is he able to offer \u2014 an account of how Noah or Abraham or Melchizedek knew right from wrong. For him, there is no \u201cnormative ethics of the good,\u201d only an \u201cethics of grace.\u201d76 Ellul is adamant in his contention that natural knowledge of the good does not derive from a knowledge of the will of God but rather competes with it, producing what he views as two moral sources.77 One is either wholly in obedience to the Word of God and Christ the Lord or one is wholly in disobedience. Thus, for Ellul, unregenerate man is incapable of doing what is authentically good; one can only perform what is good as a result of radical conversion. For him there is no innate pre-conversion \u201cvoice of conscience\u201d that leads one to an awareness of the need for repentance and conversion, no vestige of the imago Dei that endures.<\/p>\n
[39] In the end, Ellul is forced to reject natural law ethics as, at best, a mistaken, \u201cmedieval\u201d construct.78 The boundless diversity of moralities existing within human societies is viewed by Ellul as confirmation of his position: \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d he writes, \u201cthere is no more agreement among the theoretical moralities than among the lived moralities, which destroys the moralist\u2019s claim to universality.\u201d79<\/p>\n
Helmut Thielecke
\n[40] In volume 1 of Theological Ethics, Helmut Thielecke devotes considerable attention to the subject of law and natural law. It would be \u201cquite erroneous,\u201d he argues, to ascribe to law a kind of \u201ctimeless validity.\u201d \u201cThe moment we do this,\u201d he observes, \u201cthe Decalogue becomes \u2018natural\u2019 law\u201d and takes on an abstract and ahistorical cast.80 For Thielecke, \u201cthe Law of God has significance [only] for a particular epoch within salvation history\u201d; law cannot stretch as a legal, moral norm from \u201ccreation across this interim to the eschaton\u201d81 \u2014 a claim that helps clarify his suspicion of natural law ethics. \u201cThe Decalogue,\u201d he maintains, \u201ccannot be understood in terms of natural law\u201d; the two \u201cin fact belong to completely different worlds.\u201d82 In truth, Thielecke asserts, the Decalogue is not about natural law but about \u201cnatural lawlessness,\u201d given human sinfulness and rebellion.83 The Law of God can only correspond to man as sinner in a fallen world, not as a part of the created order.84 Therefore, the natural law is to be viewed as a \u201cdoubtful concept,\u201d one \u201cwhich man has himself brought into being.\u201d85<\/p>\n
[41] Thielecke\u2019s understanding of law is instructive. As a concept, law possesses a purely negative function, corresponding to human sinfulness, i.e., what is forbidden and in need of restraint. Law expresses \u201cconcessions [that] God makes to a world which has \u2018gotten out of hand\u2019\u201d; it represents, in Thielecke\u2019s remarkably telling words, \u201cGod\u2019s virtual capitulation to this world.\u201d86 As it applies to salvation history, God \u201crelativizes\u201d law as expressed in the Old Covenant through the New Covenant, which expresses \u201cthe real Law.\u201d In the New Testament, this \u201crelativizing\u201d is thought by Thielecke to proceed \u201cin the Sermon on the Mount\u201d and \u201cin Paul\u2019s relating the Law to transgressions.\u201d87<\/p>\n
[42] Observing that Roman Catholic moral theology affirms an objective component of human nature, Thielecke insists that it errs inasmuch as it believes \u201csin does not permeate all things\u201d but rather understands a sphere of \u201cnature\u201d to remain unaffected and intact, hence its affirmation of the natural law.88 Thielecke is resolute: the conscience cannot furnish any point of contact to divine law89; sin prevents us from \u201cworking back to the eternal order.\u201d90 And because it does not take sola fide of the Reformation seriously, it tends to nurture a \u201cfalse security\u201d that humans can satisfy the law, which in turn undermines the Gospel.91<\/p>\n
Paul Lehmann
\n[43] In his important work Ethics in a Christian Context, Paul Lehmann concedes that the Protestant Reformers \u201cfind the Decalogue, the Sermon [on the Mount], and natural law interchangeable.\u201d92 He further grants that natural law ethics is \u201ca very influential answer\u201d to the question of how Christians and non-Christians relate to one another behaviorally and make ethical judgments. Nevertheless, he believes, a theory of natural law is ethically inadequate both in itself and as a possibility open to a so-called koinonia ethic.93<\/p>\n
[44] Lehmann\u2019s \u201ccomplaint against the natural law tradition\u201d is \u201cnot that it relates Christian and extra-Christian ethical elements but that it does so in an artificial way and by observing or surrendering the Christian factors.\u201d94 The proper meeting place between Christian and non-Christian, according to Lehmann, must be the \u201ccommon ethical predicament\u201d and nowhere else.95 In the end, natural law is deemed \u201cinsufficient to shape man\u2019s conduct,\u201d so that an additional help is required.96<\/p>\n
[45] In The Transfiguration of Politics, the reader acquires essential insights into Lehmann\u2019s theology of creation. Tellingly he writes: \u201cthe law subserves order rather than affirms justice and destroys rather than serves the freedom that being human takes.\u201d97 Lehmann grounds this understanding inter alia in the conviction that \u201can authoritarian understanding and application of law has obscured the human reality and dimension of justice.\u201d98 Alas, the reader learns in Transfiguration that Lehmann, who is writing in the mid 1970s, is a child of his time, for he maintains that law is part of \u201cthe Establishment\u201d rather than part of the created order.99<\/p>\n
John Howard Yoder
\n[46] Yet another species of opposition to natural-law thinking grounds itself in what it believes to be \u201cradical obedience\u201d to the biblical witness to Jesus. Perhaps the most persuasive representative of this view is Anabaptist theologian John Howard Yoder, whose well-known work The Politics of Jesus sets forth the argument that the authentic Christian social ethic is rooted in a radical understanding of Jesus\u2019 teaching \u2014 and a particular reading of the so-called \u201cSermon on the Mount.\u201d100<\/p>\n
[47] In seeking to understand the political order theologically, Yoder laments that two dominant interpretations have clouded our thinking. One rests on the \u201ccatholic\u201d concept of natural law, which is questionable because it presumes an optimistic view of human nature and capacity for divine revelation,101 while the other, the \u201cAugustinian-reformed\u201d version, represents a \u201cnecessary compromise or order of preservation.\u201d Both of these, Yoder insists, are \u201cunacceptable.\u201d102<\/p>\n
[48] A baseline assumption pervades Yoder\u2019s work. It is the belief that the early church, over time, wrongly absorbed pagan philosophical influence \u2014 for example, the Stoic emphasis on reason and the law of nature \u2014 which played a significant role in permitting it, by Ambrose\u2019s and Augustine\u2019s day, to be \u201ccompromised\u201d by the political powers. Christian ethics, according to Yoder, evolved in such a way as to justify Christian presence and participation in Roman imperium; hence, Yoder\u2019s unrelenting \u201cradical critique of Constantinianism.\u201d The history of the church, for Yoder, is one long, unrelenting road of apostasy and cultural idolatry, apart from the \u201cradical Reformation\u201d in the 16th century. Christian ethics, as Yoder conceives it, is located neither in human \u201cnature\u201d nor in rational notions of justice or the common good. Rather, it subsists in our radical obedience to what Yoder understands as Jesus\u2019 ethics of non-violent resistance to political and social oppression.103<\/p>\n
[49] Commenting on \u201cstandard ethical discernment\u201d of our time, Yoder advances what he understands as Jesus\u2019 prophetic stance over against other models of ethical decision-making, which he believes have \u201cdistracted\u201d us over the last several centuries. One \u201cdistraction\u201d is that Roman Catholics keep reminding us that nature and grace, as embodied in the natural-law tradition, do not stand in opposition; the Catholic emphasis, Yoder believes, has \u201cforeshortened\u201d the vision of the Kingdom of God by its focus on \u201cthe nature of things\u201d in this fallen world.104 Given his over-arching commitment to ideological pacifism, Yoder\u2019s rejection of natural law might be viewed as a by-product rather a cause of his pacifist ethics.105 But like Barth, Yoder believes that the natural law is \u201can addition\u201d to the Word of God as divine revelation. In this regard, he maintains, \u201c[t]he warning of the Barmen confessor is still needed.\u201d106<\/p>\n
Concluding Reflections: Recovering the \u201cCatholic\u201d Character of Christian Social Ethics
\n[50] Why the notable suspicion toward natural law among Protestants in recent history? Perhaps, for some, it is simply a forgotten legacy \u2014 the vestige of a distant past. For others, perhaps it is an extension of anti-Catholic prejudice. For yet others, it issues out of the belief that nature and grace stand in opposition, or that the natural law is insufficiently logocentric and Christocentric.107 For many, there is the nagging concern that it doesn\u2019t take the pervasiveness of sin seriously enough, and correlatively, that it is too optimistic regarding reason and human \u201cknowing\u201d; hence, an appeal to nature in the public sphere is thought to represent \u201ccompromise.\u201d<\/p>\n
[51] To this list of reasons we might add yet another, namely, a fear of legalism or even a fundamental misunderstanding of law. For many Protestants, \u201claw\u201d is thought to stand in opposition to the Gospel and grace so that one sees little or no ethical continuity between the New and Old Testaments.108 But Jesus is unequivocal: \u201cThink not that I have come to abolish the law…\u201d109 Law is not merely a \u201cChristian\u201d question, though it is indeed that. It is rather a human question, as Wolfhart Pannenberg persuasively argues in Ethics.110 Law is part of the order of creation, and thus, part of moral reality, to which the imago Dei is ordered. While love speaks to the proper motivation to obey, law provides the necessary God-given structure in which obedience is carried out. Paul and James speak with one voice in this regard: love fulfills the law.<\/p>\n
[52] Christian moral thinkers from the early fathers to Aquinas to the magisterial Reformers to 20th-century voices such as Jacques Maritain, Heinrich Rommen, John Courtney Murray, and John Paul II have argued for the application of natural-law thinking in the realm of public discourse. All were cognizant of the need to argue for moral first principles on the basis of our common human nature. To do such in a pluralistic environment is not to \u201ccompromise\u201d as some suggest.<\/p>\n
[53] Someone has said that public morality must rest upon public principles \u2014 principles that are rooted in the fabric of creation. Herein we rediscover the utility of the natural law, that is, of general revelation that is accessible to all people externally, via creation, and internally, via God-given reason and conscience. One Christian writer expresses it this way:<\/p>\n
The idea that Christianity brought an entirely new ethical code into the world is a grave error. If it had done so, then we should have to conclude that all who first preached it wholly misunderstood their own message: for all of them, its Founder, His precursor, His apostles, came demanding repentance and offering forgiveness, a demand and an offer both meaningless except on the assumption of a moral law already known and already broken.111<\/p>\n
It is no more possible, therefore, to invent a new ethics than \u201cto place a new sun in the sky. Some precept from traditional morality always has to be presumed. We never start from a tabula rasa: if we did, we should end, ethically speaking, with a tabula rasa.\u201d112 General revelation, thus, does not compete with special revelation; rather, the latter presupposes the former.113<\/p>\n
Not only does the natural law not contravene Christian ethics, as an ethical standard it simply cannot be circumvented insofar as it is the source from which all moral judgments spring, based on the orders of creation.<\/p>\n
[54] Not only does the natural law not contravene Christian ethics, as an ethical standard it simply cannot be circumvented insofar as it is the source from which all moral judgments spring, based on the orders of creation. Basic human virtues such as faithfulness, justice, mercy, and generosity depend thereupon. As Gilbert Meilaender has recently reminded us, human nature is creation, coming from the very hand of God.114<\/p>\n
[55] I conclude. The Barth-Brunner dispute remains. This essay has considered 20th-century Protestant voices who are skeptical of the natural law for chiefly Christocentric reasons and who thereby erect a false dichotomy between nature and grace. It follows, then, that the natural law is purportedly autonomous from \u201cChristian social ethics.\u201d115 Sadly, however, this minimizing (or dismissing) of the role that our common human nature plays in moral theory contributes to an impoverishment of public discourse, thus undermining Christian witness in the public sphere. For if we insist on denying (a) a moral nature that is common to all people, (b) a common moral standard to which all people \u2014 religious or not \u2014 are held accountable, and (c) a language of moral engagement to which all people have access, then as Christians we remove the basis for developing any robust public philosophy.116 For this reason the Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts:<\/p>\n
In defending the ability of human reason to know God, the Church is expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about him to all…and with all…, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists.117<\/p>\n
An abiding task for the Christian community is to understand natural law in relationship to public discourse.
\n[56] An abiding task for the Christian community is to understand natural law in relationship to public discourse. Because of the inherent tension in this relationship between faith and culture, we are naturally prone to multiple errors and thus need to be sensitized to their character. One error is the tendency toward relativism, situationism and subjectivism. A consequence of this lack of moral discrimination is our propensity for finding some sort of \u201cneutral\u201d common ground in our social spaces. While there is common ground, there exists no moral neutrality; no aspect of the public realm is neutral or naked. Therefore Christians, like all others, will need to contend in public spaces.<\/p>\n
[57] The theocratic temptation, which is abiding in every generation and in every culture, will also at times need chastening. While not many Christians set out to \u201cChristianize\u201d the culture, and while today it is quite popular to jump on the anti-imperial bandwagon, thereby exaggerating its possibility and presence,118 such is nonetheless an ever-present temptation in diverse cultural contexts. Political ethicist Jean Elshtain rightly speaks of Christian citizens as \u201cchastened patriots.\u201d That is, taking our cue from Augustine, we take seriously our earthly citizenship and do not abandon the public square. At the same time, we do this with a certain detachment, ever conscious that we have ultimate allegiances that are not of this world.119<\/p>\n
[58] Yet another error is the existential, pietist, even so-called \u201cprophetic\u201d retreat, which fails to take the world \u2014 and Christian stewardship \u2014 seriously. This tendency might express itself through theological and cultural conservatism \u2014 such as one finds in some pockets of Protestant evangelicalism \u2014 as well as in more \u201cmainline\u201d circles, where negative sociopolitical reactions to perceived \u201cfundamentalism\u201d have greater effect in shaping one\u2019s belief system than a positive commitment to Christian faithfulness and the \u201cgreat tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
[59] In response to the mistaken and widespread belief that natural law is \u201cautonomous\u201d and that its emphasis on \u201cnature\u201d and \u201creason\u201d serves to undermine grace and a distinctly \u201cChristian\u201d or \u201ckingdom\u201d ethics, Aquinas is straightforward: grace perfects nature and in no way is at odds therewith. Virtue \u2014 that is, the good \u2014 is rooted in the natural obligations of all human beings to God based on the imago Dei. There is, then, no dualism, no discontinuity, in Thomistic thinking between the natural law and \u201cChristian social ethics.\u201d And Aquinas stands in agreement with the teaching of Jesus: the Ten Commandments, which express the contours of the natural law, are summed up in \u2014 not abrogated or eclipsed by \u2014 the \u201cChristian ethic.\u201d John Courtney Murray expresses it well, observing that the natural law \u201cpreserves humanity\u201d and \u201cstill exists at the interior of the Gospel invitation.\u201d120 Thus, those Protestants who oppose or reject the natural law, for whatever reason, are burying the wrong corpse.<\/p>\n
[60] Implied in the present argument is the conviction that ecumenical dialogue on the place of the natural law in Christian ethics is not only appropriate but indispensable, given both the tradition we\u2019ve inherited and the wholesale deconstruction of metaphysical foundations going on in our culture \u2014 a deconstruction that has moral, social and political implications. Thus, in the words of one natural lawyer, \u201cAs a metaphysical idea…natural law is timeless, and for that reason[,] timely.\u201d121<\/p>\n
Endnotes
\n1. Luther joins Melanchthon and Calvin in making the threefold Pentateuchal distinction of ceremonial, judicial and moral law, notably in his exegesis of Jesus\u2019 affirmation of the law as recorded in Matt. 5:17. So, for example, \u201cAgainst the Sabbatarians,\u201d in Luther\u2019s Works [hereafter LW] vol. 47 (ed. F. Sherman; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971) 88, and \u201cAgainst the Heavenly Prophets,\u201d in ibid. vol. 40 (ed. C. Bergendorff; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958) 92-93, 97.<\/p>\n
2. Ibid., 47:89.<\/p>\n
3. \u201cHow Christians Should Regard Moses,\u201d in ibid. vol. 35 (ed. E.T. Bachmann; Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960) 168.<\/p>\n
4. Ibid., 47:89 (emphasis added).<\/p>\n
5. Ibid., 35:168.<\/p>\n
6. Ibid., vol. 35:165.<\/p>\n
7. Ibid., 40:97.<\/p>\n
8. Ibid.<\/p>\n
9. Charles L. Hill, ed. and tr., The \u201cLoci Communes\u201d of Philip Melanchthon (Boston: Meador, 1944) 112.<\/p>\n
10. LW 35:168.<\/p>\n
11. Ibid. and 47:90. Luther adds, \u201cThe devil knows very well too that it is impossible to remove the [natural] law from the heart\u201d (ibid., 47:111). Moreover, even the demons themselves help illustrate the reality of the natural law\u2019s intuition. \u201cThe very reason for their condemnation,\u201d Luther writes, \u201cis that they possess his [God\u2019s] commandment and yet do not keep it, but violate it constantly\u201d (\u201cOn the Jews and Their Lies,\u201d in ibid., 47:168).<\/p>\n
12. Ibid., 47:94-110.<\/p>\n
13. Ibid., 35:168; cf. also 47:90.<\/p>\n
14. \u201cTemporal Authority: To What Extent it Should Be Obeyed,\u201d in ibid. vol. 45 (ed. W. I. Brandt; Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1962) 128.<\/p>\n
15. Ibid., 129.<\/p>\n
16. Ibid., 127.<\/p>\n
17. Ibid.<\/p>\n
18. Luther\u2019s theology of law has frequently been less than fully understood, and a significant reason for this has to do with the standard \u201claw-versus-Gospel\u201d antinomy for which Luther is well known. It needs emphasis, however, that the proper context for this antinomy is the realm of salvation, not ethics. Despite conventional thinking about the Reformer, it is not an all-encompassing rubric in Luther\u2019s theological system that absorbs every other theological topic. And yet the Protestant tendency since Luther has been precisely that, namely, to amplify the law-versus-Gospel presumption, as Bernd Wannenwetsch correctly points out: \u201cThe narrow focus on this antinomy as the formal principle of modern Protestantism…has led to a variety of antinomian accounts of law\u2019s fundamental opposition to grace and gospel, in which law is either flatly rejected as altogether \u2018heteronomous\u2019 or, by way of a second-order antinomy, reduced to its (formally) negative impact as a mirror of sin or a barrier against anarchy… Apart from the soteriological language game, in which the most extreme contrast of law to gospel is required to convey the radical nature of grace, when it comes to moral theology, the law [in Luther] plays a more complex role (\u201cLuther\u2019s Moral Theology,\u201d in Donald K. McKim, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003] 124-25, emphasis added).<\/p>\n
19. Thus Wannenwetsch, \u201cLuther\u2019s Moral Theology,\u201d 125.<\/p>\n
20. This remains true even when the law assumes an \u201caccusatory\u201d function due to sin. Helpful correctives to some Protestant readings of Luther and law are to be found in Wannenwetsch, \u201cLuther\u2019s Moral Theology,\u201d 123-35, and David Yeago, \u201cMartin Luther on Grace, Law and Moral Life: Prolegomena to an Ecumenical Discussion of Veritatis Splendor,\u201d The Thomist 62 (1998): 163-91. More generally, see also John T. McNeill, \u201cNatural Law in the Thought of Luther,\u201d Church History 10 (1941): 211-27.<\/p>\n
21. LW 47:113.<\/p>\n
22. Loci Communes (1555) Art. 7.<\/p>\n
23. Much of Melanchthon\u2019s thinking regarding law as displayed in Articles 5-8 of Loci is thought to be in response to Johannes Agricola (1494-1566), who argued that the Christian is \u201cfree from the law\u201d (and thus antinomian), even free from keeping the Ten Commandments.<\/p>\n
24. Here I am relying on the translation provided by Clyde L. Manschreck, in Loci Communes 1555 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965) 128.<\/p>\n
25. Ibid.<\/p>\n
26. Philip Melanchthon, Commentary on Romans (tr. F. Kramer; St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1992) 89. In Loci, he reiterates that the moral law is \u201cimplanted in all men at their creation\u201d (ibid., 128). Melanchthon, however, wishes not to be misunderstood: Paul does not say that Gentiles were righteous before God (ibid., 90).<\/p>\n
27. Ibid., 128-29.<\/p>\n
28. See, e.g., Deut. 6:5 and Ps. 119:2, 16, 24, 34, 44, 47, 92, 97, 127, 165, 167, 174. This emphasis is found in Article 6 of Loci published in 1543. Law, for Melanchthon, would seem to possess both positive and negative functions: it corresponds to created human nature (e.g., worship, purity and fulfillment); it instructs us regarding our wretched state; it instructs us regarding spiritual reconstruction; and it points us to grace that expresses itself ultimately in Christ (ibid.).<\/p>\n
29. Loci Communes 1555, 126. Elsewhere \u2014 in his treatise \u201cAgainst the Anabaptists,\u201d published in 1528 \u2014 Melanchthon decries Anabaptists in the strongest terms for their view of the sacraments. The text is reproduced in Elmer E. Flack and Lowell J. Satre, eds., Melanchthon: Selected Writings (tr. C.L. Hill; Westport: Greenwood Press, 1962) 103-24.<\/p>\n
30. While it is sharply debated among Reformed scholars precisely how important in Calvin\u2019s writings the natural law is, that he affirmed it whole-heartedly is not in question.<\/p>\n
31. Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.7.6-13.<\/p>\n
32. Ibid., 2.2.13.<\/p>\n
33. Ibid.<\/p>\n
34. Susan Schreiner, \u201cCalvin\u2019s Use of Natural Law,\u201d in Michael Cromartie, ed., A Preserving Grace: Protestants, Catholics and Natural Law (Washington, D.C.\/Grand Rapids: Ethics and Pubic Policy Center\/Eerdmans, 1997) 67-69, helpfully examines this metaphor in Calvin\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n
35. Ibid. 2.2.22.<\/p>\n
36. Ibid. 1.15.4 and 2.2.12.<\/p>\n
37. Ibid. 2.8.1 and 2.2.22.<\/p>\n
38. Hereon see Leonard J. Trinterud, \u201cThe Origins of Puritanism,\u201d Church History 20 (1951): 37-57; Charles J. Butler, Religious Liberty and Covenant Theology (PhD dissertation, Temple University, 1979); and more recently, Andries W.G. Raath and Simon de Freitas, \u201cCalling and Resistance: Huldrych Zwingli\u2019s Political Theology and His Legacy of Resistance to Tyranny\u201d (unpublished manuscript, University of the Free State, 2001). The interlocking themes of sovereignty, the natural law and covenant retain a special place in Reformed theology, particularly in its Dutch Reformed version, which like its Swiss counterpart, sought to embody a synthesis of the social, political and theological. This would reach its apex in the \u201csphere sovereignty\u201d and political theology of Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper, who believed that no political scheme ever has flourished which was not founded on religious and natural-law assumptions (Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, [9th ed.] 1976),\\ 78). For Kuyper, common grace and moral law together constitute the best guarantee and safeguard of certain liberties.<\/p>\n
39. Huldreich Zwinglis Werke (Z\u00fcrich: Schultess, 1828-42) 4.243.<\/p>\n
40. Ibid.<\/p>\n
41. SW 2.481-83.<\/p>\n
42. Ibid.<\/p>\n
43. The English translation is drawn from sermons of Bullinger collected and edited by Thomas Harding. See The Decades of Heinrich Bullinger (4 vols.; Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1849) 2.194 (sermon 1).<\/p>\n
44. Ibid.<\/p>\n
45. Ibid., 2.195.<\/p>\n
46. Ibid., 2.194-95.<\/p>\n
47. Ibid., 2.340. In the main, what distinguishes Bullinger from Zwingli, despite the affirmation by both of the \u201claw of nature\u201d as the means by which God restrains human beings, is the ability to avoid the theocratic tendency. While both Zwingli and Bullinger share a high view of the magistrate as ordained by God, for Bullinger, the ministry and oversight of the church is not to be conflated with the magistrate of Romans 13, which bespeaks all political office. The priest is not called \u201cto sit in the judgment seat, and to give judgment against a murderer, or by pronouncing sentence to take up matters in strife,\u201d just as the calling of the magistrate is not to teach, baptize and administer the sacraments (ibid., 2.239).<\/p>\n
48. (Emory Studies in Law and Religion; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).<\/p>\n
49. Thus, the contention of Roman Catholic theologian Romanus Cessario that \u201cthe sixteenth-century Protestant Reform championed grace and faith to the practical exclusion of all other instruments of divine agency\u201d (Introduction to Moral Theology [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001] 69) needs moderation.<\/p>\n
50. As an exception one might cite Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten.<\/p>\n
51. James M. Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochement (Chicago\/London: University of Chicago Press, 1978) 62-80.<\/p>\n
52. Karl Barth, The Church and the War (New York: Macmillan, 1944) v.<\/p>\n
53. Ibid., 7.<\/p>\n
54. Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History, rev. ed. (London: SCM, 2001) 45.<\/p>\n
55. Ibid., 41-45.<\/p>\n
56. Correlatively, reason was understood as \u201cthe embodiment of his capacity, his superiority over matter, his ability to comprehend it and appropriate it for himself.\u201d Thus natural Christianity simply means a Christianity that \u201cpresents itself to man in a manner appropriate to his capacity,\u201d and reasonable Christianity means a Christianity that is \u201cunderstood and affirmed by man in accordance with his capacity\u201d (ibid., 91).<\/p>\n
57. Ibid., 92.<\/p>\n
58. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics [hereafter CD] (tr. G.W. Bromiley; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961) II\/1, 527.<\/p>\n
59. To condescend to \u201cnatural theology,\u201d Barth insists, is to allow \u201cunbelief\u201d and \u201cerror\u201d to \u201cdisguise\u201d themselves, since they are in \u201cactive enmity against God\u201d and constitute a \u201cdeprivation of the truth\u201d (CD II\/1, 95. Thus, Barth can belittle St. Paul\u2019s strategy of \u201cnatural theology\u201d as recorded in Acts 17:22-31. And regarding the suggestion that in Romans 1 and 2 the apostle is affirming the \u201cnatural\u201d witness of the natural law, Barth answers in the negative. Gentiles \u201clack this direction [of God\u2019s revelation] altogether\u201d and \u201chave no impress of it to guard\u201d (The Epistle to the Romans [tr. E.C. Hoskyns; London: Oxford University Press, 1933] 66). Commenting on the same suggestion in CD II\/1, Barth cites 1 Corinthians 2 and the deficiencies of the \u201cnatural\u201d man. Revelation through creation, at best, is said to be a \u201csideline\u201d in the Bible, by which Barth means that it is inferior to grace. See in this regard chapter 5 (\u201cThe Knowledge of God\u201d) of CD II\/1.<\/p>\n
60. CD II\/1, 93-99.<\/p>\n
61. See Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology: Comprising \u201cNature and Grace\u201d (tr. P. Fraenkel; London: Geoffrey Bles\/Centenary Press, 1946). Strangely, in the last 70 years surprisingly little theological reflection has occurred as to the roots of Barth\u2019s and Brunner\u2019s differences. One exception to this is John W. Hart, Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner: The Formation and Dissolution of a Theological Alliance (New York\/Bern\/Oxford: Peter Lang, 2001).<\/p>\n
62. Natural Theology, 32.<\/p>\n
63. CD II\/1, 106.<\/p>\n
64. Barth does not deny general revelation, only its utility through the \u201cnatural law.\u201d Brunner, in \u201cNature and Grace,\u201d argues on the basis of general revelation, the imago Dei and divine ordinances that there indeed does exist an Ankn\u00fcpfungspunkt between the divine and human; otherwise, the notion of \u201crepentance\u201d \u2014 which presupposes moral knowledge and \u201csin\u201d \u2014 would be fully meaningless.<\/p>\n
65. An exception is Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten. See, e.g., his essay \u201cProtestants and Natural Law,\u201d First Things (January 1992): 20-26. In his critique of Barth\u2019s views, appearing as a response to Russell Hittinger, \u201cNatural Law and Catholic Moral Theology,\u201d in Michael Cromartie, ed., A Preserving Grace: Protestants, Catholics and Natural Law (Washington, D.C.\/Grand Rapids: Ethics and Public Policy Center\/Eerdmans, 1997) 31-40, Braaten properly discerns the flaws in the substructure of Barth\u2019s theological system without denying the importance of Barth\u2019s resistance to totalitarianism in his day.<\/p>\n
66. Jacques Ellul, The Theological Foundation of Law (tr. M. Wieser; New York: Seabury, 1969) 10.<\/p>\n
67. Ibid.<\/p>\n
68. Ibid., 13.<\/p>\n
69. Ibid. Ellul does not deny that in human civilizations law is necessary, or even that it has religious significance. Rather, what disturbs him is the inevitable evolution of law that takes places, so that an enormous separation occurs between law as a concept and the practice of law in juridical systems. With Barth, Ellul rehearses developments stemming from the Enlightenment, whereby \u201cnatural law\u201d was no longer discovered but rather became the product of autonomous reason, exalting itself against the Creator (ibid., 25).<\/p>\n
70. Ibid.<\/p>\n
71. Ibid., 61.<\/p>\n
72. Ibid., 46-47.<\/p>\n
73. Ibid., 49. Ellul\u2019s Christocentric rejection of the natural law is further buttressed by his peculiar reading of the early chapters of Genesis. Through the Fall, man loses any resemblance to Adam that he may have otherwise had. Man\u2019s perversion by sin is radical; hence, \u201cwe cannot admit the idea of the imago Dei being preserved in man as the foundation of natural law… To identify natural law with the imago Dei means either to admit that man has not totally fallen, or to rob human law of all its value (ibid., 61). Remarkably, Ellul insists that prior to the Fall, \u201cthere is no moral conscience [in Adam]; there are [sic] no ethics\u201d (Jacques Ellul, To Will and to Do [tr. C.E. Hopkin; Philadelphia\/Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1969], 6). Adam has knowledge of the good and of evil only after the Fall: \u201c…before the alienation, Adam had no knowledge of the good\u201d (ibid., 14, emphasis his). It should be noted that much of Ellul\u2019s critique appears to be a reaction to Paul Ricoeur, and particularly Ricoeur\u2019s views as expressed in The Symbolism of Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).<\/p>\n
74. Ibid., 16. One the similarities in the theological vantage-point of Ellul and Barth, see Church Dogmatics II\/2, 747-48.<\/p>\n
75. The Theological Foundation of Law, 49.<\/p>\n
76. Ibid., 43.<\/p>\n
77. See ibid., 73-110 (chapter 5, \u201cThe Double Morality\u201d).<\/p>\n
78. Ibid., 118.<\/p>\n
79. Ibid. 126. Ellul assumes a sort of crude \u201cdivine command\u201d ethics which presupposes that human beings, prior to disobedience, had no moral intuition of what would please the Creator. Morality, Ellul believes, is born of disobedience, not the divine image, and \u201cwhatever it is of the imago Dei which survives [i.e., original sin, for Ellul], that cannot in any case be the moral sense\u201d (ibid., 42). What humans call the \u201cmoral conscience,\u201d Ellul contends, \u201ccannot be a reflection of God, a remainder from man\u2019s initial integrity\u201d (ibid., 43). \u201cCommandment is not based on the divine essence but on the sovereign will of God\u201d (ibid., 268, n. 1). Human beings are not born with the divine essence within, Ellul insists; rather, the \u201cimage of God\u201d is to be understood in the sense of humans\u2019 ultimate destiny. In support of this contention, Ellul disputes both the standard translation of Gen. 1:27 \u2014 \u201cman was created in the image of God\u201d \u2014 and its inference. He believes that the \u201cimage of God\u201d is intended to denote promise \u2014 which is to say, future actualization or a state of becoming \u2014 and not a sacred quality of divine essence at the moment of creation (ibid., 277, n. 3). One cannot understate the tenacity with which Ellul holds to this position. He writes: \u201cTo claim to find any other origin than the fall for the phenomenon of natural morality is to run counter to all that the Bible can tell us\u201d (ibid., 269, n. 4). To adopt Ellul\u2019s position in this regard, however, is to deny that men and women \u2014 indeed, that Adam and Eve \u2014 were created in the divine image. To require, as Ellul does, that human moral reasoning exists only after the Fall, predicated solely on disobedience, is to collapse any theology of creation and cut off Christian social ethics at the knees.<\/p>\n
80. Helmut Thielecke, Theological Ethics \u2014 Vol. 1: Foundations (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966) 149-50.<\/p>\n
81. Ibid., 150.<\/p>\n
82. Ibid., 443-44.<\/p>\n
83. Ibid., 440, 444. This discussion of the negative character of the Decalogue is found in the section \u201cThe Negativity of the Commandments and Natural \u2018Lawlessness\u2019\u201d (440-47).<\/p>\n
84. Ibid., 569.<\/p>\n
85. Ibid., 266, 269. In fairness, we must recognize Thielecke\u2019s great burden that the Christian message not be secularized (ibid., 431, 441, 443, 450-51).<\/p>\n
86. Ibid., 569. Significantly, this discussion of the character of law is found in the section \u201cForms of Compromise in the Religious Sphere\u201d (494-519).<\/p>\n
87. Ibid., 149.<\/p>\n
88. Ibid., 501-2. Thielecke is convinced that according to Roman Catholic theology sin violates creation \u201conly in a peripheral way\u201d; Reformation thought, by contrast, views the world as \u201ctotally permeated\u201d by sin, preventing us from still discerning the \u201corders of creation\u201d (648). See as well chapter 21, \u201cA Critique of the Roman Catholic View of Natural Law\u201d (420-33).<\/p>\n
89. Ibid., 383.<\/p>\n
90. Ibid., 398.<\/p>\n
91. Thielecke concludes that Luther was \u201cinconsistent,\u201d in that he did not \u201cclearly see the consequences of his doctrine of justification\u201d (ibid., 326).<\/p>\n
92. Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (New York\/Evanston: Harper & Row, 1963) 78, n. 2.<\/p>\n
93. Ibid., 147-48. In his writings, Lehmann is inclined through the lens of his \u201ckoinonia ethic\u201d to set charity and justice in opposition, thereby creating a false ethical dichotomy.<\/p>\n
94. Ibid., 149-50.<\/p>\n
95. Ibid., 154.<\/p>\n
96. Ibid., 308-9.<\/p>\n
97. Paul Lehmann, The Transfiguration of Politics (New York\/Evanston: Harper & Row, 1975) 257.<\/p>\n
98. Ibid., 259. To the objection that law is readily exploited for authoritarian and oppressive purposes, one can willingly grant that where tyranny has ruled, the human spirit has been crushed. It does not follow, however, that in sic law destroys human freedom; in truth, authentic freedom (over against unbridled autonomy) presupposes law as its backdrop. To maintain that obedience and ethical freedom are of a different quality is to erect a false ethical dichotomy.<\/p>\n
99. Ibid., 238. The necessary corrective to this faulty view of law is the distinctly Lutheran emphasis on the orders of creation. Thus Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilisation (New York: Scribner\u2019s, 1948): 107-8: \u201cIn creating the world, God has given to all things their order and by that their law… When the Church Fathers were speaking of lex naturalis, they connected it with that Logos in whom the whole world is created and in whom creation has its order… That is why they [Gentiles] know something of justice…\u201d Law, and hence justice, therefore correspond the order of the created world, in the same way that human \u201cnature\u201d corresponds to the imago Dei.<\/p>\n
100. John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972 [rev. 1994]).<\/p>\n
101. John Howard Yoder, Karl Barth and the Problem of War (ed. M.T. Nation; Portland: Wipf & Stock, 2003) 120.<\/p>\n
102. Ibid., 90.<\/p>\n
103. For Yoder, the political powers are always and irrevocably fallen \u2014 inevitably opposed to the purposes of God. Revelation 13, not Romans 13, represents the state as normative for all time. In Discipleship as Political Responsibility, Yoder writes, \u201cThe divine mandate of the state consists in using evil means to keep evil from getting out of hand\u201d (Discipleship as Political Responsibility [Scottdale\/Waterloo: Herald Press, 2003] 18). This predisposition toward political power is a recurring theme in Yoder\u2019s writings. See esp. \u201cThe State in the New Testament,\u201d in Discipleship as Political Responsibility, pp. 17-47, wherein Yoder\u2019s position finds perhaps its most highly concentrated form. In fact, because the state is \u201ca pagan institution in which Christians would not normally hold a position\u201d (ibid., 25), it follows that participation by the Christian in the affairs of the state constitutes ethical compromise. Yoder believes that as Christians we have failed to understand the Cross with its implications. If our understanding was properly formed, we would be ever-vigilant to the triumphalist temptation and assume our place, with the crucified Lamb, in opposition to the powers in whatever form they might appear. While opposition to the powers is a consistent theme in Yoder\u2019s writings, particularly instructive is his essay \u201cThe Power Equation, the Place of Jesus, and the Politics of King,\u201d in For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical (Grand Rapids\/ Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 1997) 125-47.<\/p>\n
104. See in this regard John Howard Yoder and Donald E. Miller. \u201cDoes Natural Law Provide a Basis for Christian Witness to the State? A Symposium,\u201d Brethren Life and Thought 7 (1962): 8-22.<\/p>\n
105. In assorted writings, the Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas confesses his debt to Yoderian Anabaptism, wishing to advance Yoder\u2019s vision of Christian social ethics. Hauerwas has been explicit in his rejection of the natural law \u2014 for example, in The Peaceable Kingdom and in Truthfulness and Tragedy. As with Yoder, the deep-seated distrust of natural-law thinking in ethics for Hauerwas is related to the Church\u2019s purported compromise with \u201cConstantinianism.\u201d Thus, he argues, \u201cthe alleged transparency of the natural law norms reflects more the consensus within the church than the universality of the natural law itself\u201d (The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics [Notre Dame\/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983] 51). Hauerwas believes that \u201cthe power of natural law as a systematic idea was developed in and for the Roman imperium and then for \u2018Christendom\u2019 (ibid.). Consequently, the natural-law tradition, as interpreted by Hauerwas, rather than offering an account of moral principles that are \u201cthe same for all, both as to rectitude and as to knowledge\u201d (thus Thomas Aquinas) and that are intuited by all (thus St. Paul in Romans 1 and 2), is a \u201cculturally assimilationist\u201d attempt at \u201cChristian ethics\u201d that mirrors the Church\u2019s cultural captivity. As viewed by Hauerwas, the \u201cabstractions\u201d of \u201cnature and grace\u201d have \u201cdistorted how ethics has been undertaken in the Catholic tradition\u201d (ibid., 55-57). Ultimately, he believes that \u201cChristian ethics theologically does not have a stake in \u2018natural law\u2019\u201d (Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations in Christian Ethics [South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983], 58).<\/p>\n
106. John Howard Yoder, \u201cDiscerning the Kingdom of God in the World,\u201d in For the Nations, 245. That a Barthian cast can be detected in Yoder\u2019s writings should not be surprising, since Yoder studied under Barth. He writes in the preface of his work Karl Barth and the Problem of War (Nashville\/New York: Abingdon, 1970), \u201cTo Karl Barth, who taught me to rethink my faith in the light of the Word of God\u201d (7).<\/p>\n
107. While \u201cnature\u201d can acquire a variety of meanings, in the natural law tradition it refers to divinely implanted moral knowledge.<\/p>\n
108. It is a supreme irony that many opponents of natural-law thinking \u2014 indeed, of law as a theological concept \u2014 view the \u201cSermon on the Mount\u201d as the crux New Testament text for Christian social ethics yet fail to grasp its context, established in Matt. 5:17-20. In this introductory text, which must establish and guide our interpretation of Matt. 5:21-48 (the case-illustrations), ethical continuity over against discontinuity as clearly and painstakingly enunciated by Jesus.<\/p>\n
109. Matt. 5:17; cf. 7:12.<\/p>\n
110. Ethics (tr. K. Crim; Philadelphia\/London: Search Press, 1981), 24-41.<\/p>\n
111. C.S. Lewis, \u201cOn Ethics,\u201d in Christian Reflections (ed. W. Hooper; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 46.<\/p>\n
112. Ibid., 53.<\/p>\n
113. Few have argued this more persuasively than Emil Brunner in Revelation and Reason (tr. O. Wyon; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1946) and Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology (tr. O. Wyon; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1947). On this score, Brunner believes that Barth misunderstood the magisterial Reformers, which may in part help explain the vehemence of Barth\u2019s reaction to Brunner.<\/p>\n
114. Gilbert Meilaender, \u201cWhat Lutheran Ethics Can Learn from Other Christian Ethical Traditions,\u201d Journal of Lutheran Ethics 9, no. 10 (October 2009), accessible at www.elca.org\/What-We-Believe\/Social-Issues\/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics\/Issues\/October-2009\/What-Lutheran-Ethics-1.aspx.<\/p>\n
115. The assumption that nature and grace stand in opposition would seem to erect a false dualism that finds no place in the mainstream of historic Christian theology, as Oliver O\u2019Donovan (Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986] 15) has well argued.<\/p>\n
116. Herein the work of St. Paul in Athens (Acts 17:16ff) \u2014 and particularly his address to the Areopagus Council (17:22-31) \u2014 is instructive, when not infrequently misunderstood by contemporary interpreters.<\/p>\n
117. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1994) no. 39.<\/p>\n
118. Clearly, for many on the religious left, it is a time of paranoia in American politics; hence the prostituted usage of the term \u201ctheocracy\u201d to designate that which, in social-political terms, undermines their inherently secular assumptions about the public sphere. Consider, for example, the ridiculously shrill works of James Rudin, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right\u2019s Plans for the Rest of Us (New York: Thunder\u2019s Mouth, 2006); Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006); and Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America (New York: Basic Books, 2006). Marginally less preposterous is Michelle Goldberg\u2019s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007). It is difficult to disagree with one social critic, who observes that the specter of a looming Khomeini\u2019ism has migrated into the realm of pop sociology (Ross Douthat, \u201cTheocracy, Theocracy, Theocracy,\u201d First Things [August-September 2006], accessible at www. firstthings.com\/print\/article\/2007\/02\/theocracy-theocracy-theocracy-5).<\/p>\n
119. See esp. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War, rev. ed. (Chicago\/London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 252-53, 268.<\/p>\n
120. We Hold These Truths, 298.<\/p>\n
121. Ibid., 320.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction [1] However deeply ensconced the suspicion of natural law might seem among 20th-century Protestant thinkers, it cannot be attributed to the 16th-century Reformers themselves. Both Lutheran and Reformed streams of the magisterial tradition readily affirmed the doctrine of lex naturalis and cognito Dei naturalis. While it is decidedly true that they championed a particular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n