This is book report number 4 out of my planned 5 reports. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I will be attempting (for the first time!) a scheduled post. I'll write it today and set it to publish tomorrow, because having two long posts on the same day... well, I don't like it. It's for my sake, not yours. Consequently, however, I suppose the next post will have less commentary in advance of the report (unless I can think up something to write.... and as I say this, something has come to mind which I can share. A story! I will write it out if I have time, and I might not.) Book report number 5 is the one I am most proud of, though it might be the most difficult to follow.

Anyway, for today, I am thinking a lot lately about the cycle of encouragement, discouragement, and loneliness I experience as an "SGE" ("Lancastrian" now?) theonomist. I'm not trying to be all pitiful and stuff; I'm just introspecting. I've got emotions happening, guys! Emotions are happening! What else has my blog always been for except to elucidate my thoughts so that I can better understand myself?

So like, I noticed that I frequently cycle through feeling encouraged (when I see something validating God's law), discouraged (when I see someone who I thought might be interested fall away), and lonely (because I am the only man I live near, other than my son, who commits himself to God's law in this way, and I desire a community with which to obey God together).

Online friends can be very encouraging, but they also are volatile; people online change their perspectives often. And, the nearest thing to a stable community of SGE theonomists that I have found on discord (the only platform I frequent) is the Pronomian community -- but they are too heavily influenced by rabbinic commentary, and they're willing to basically skip-over important passages that don't fit their peculiarities. For example, I once asked a Pronomian what we would lose if we took our black sharpies and covered up Peter's vision of the unclean animals on the blanket in Acts. The answer was that we would lose insight into Peter's personality -- because, they don't believe we can learn from the vision, because if we learned from it, we might conclude that Jesus made all foods clean. And, since they are unwilling to accept that conclusion, they only permit themselves to learn from Peter's takeaway, which was that the gentiles have been made clean (this is necessary because they themselves are gentiles). However, ask them about the law, and they are willing to dive deep into speculative or symbolic applications. It's backwards to me.

Honestly, if I had to pick a next-door-neighbor, I don't know that I could easily choose between an evangellyfish and a pronomian. The pronomian loves God's law, which is extremely favorable, but they have the above hermeneutic which is frustrating and (IMO) dangerous to young learners. They have thought their perspective out thoroughly, and have decided on a hermeneutic which I believe is bad. To contrast, the evangellyfish neglects the law, but only because he has not thought through his perspective. He has no idea what he believes or what the Bible teaches outside the simple message of the gospel; all he needs is to be weaned off of children's-Bibles and fed some solid food, and his mind can be changed. He doesn't love God's law (yet), but he has the Holy Spirit writing God's law on his heart, and so he unwittingly does most of what is required of him already. In practice, the Evangellyfish might be more easily converted, and might cook better food -- bacon and shrimp are delicious.

Anyway, I have some pronomian friends, and so I don't want to be unduly harsh on them. They know I disagree, and should not be surprised at me telling why, even if they think my reasons are bad. If they feel I have misrepresented them, they know how to reach me. I'm happy to update what I've written in the unlikely event that any of them read this blog.

Anyway, here is the book report. There's some sarcasm in here, fyi:

Levering, Biblical Natural Law

The introduction to this book positions it to be very promising! Looks like I'll be focusing primarily on the first chapter:

> The chapter engages their work so as to explore three questions: whether there are biblical warrants for natural law doctrine, what kind of natural law doctrine biblical texts support, and what happens when natural law doctrine is left out of constructive ethics arising from the Bible. The chapter proposes that biblical revelation supports a theocentric and teleological understanding of natural law, and also that the oppositions that some find between natural law and the life of grace as well as between divine commandments and natural law are unwarranted.

And, that chapter leads in with a banger:

> But does natural law in fact have significant biblical warrants? Almost all recent studies of New Testament ethics—including the works by Richard B. Hays and Allen Verhey that I will discuss in this chapter—suggest, by avoiding the subject of natural law altogether, that the answer is ‘no’. ... the general neglect of natural law in New Testament studies arises both from the influence of Barth’s concerns and from ‘the widespread academic suspicion besetting any study of universal or “natural” law’ that has resulted from postmodern scepticism about our ability to discern, rather than construct, human nature. ... Recent work in Old Testament ethics, by contrast, exhibits a significant interest in natural law.

The New Testament scholarship he's read seems to agree that the NT doesn't support Natural Law. He attributes this to their tendency to "avoid the subject of natural law altogether" and to "postmodern skepticism". He finds more attention to the topic in Old Testament scholarship. This is surprising to me, since the passage in Romans 2 seems to be (based on frequency of use) the most critical passage for Christian NLT.

He frames the book as a means to overcome a few criticisms from Bockmuehl. Namely:

- Jesus's teachings about divorce are grounded "on the strength of a direct scriptural quotation (Gen 2:24). This is 'natural law' only in a highly contingent sense, if at all..."

- Romans 2:14-15 does not exemplify 'natural law' because it has the Torah in view.

- Jesus's teachings subject nature to God's commands, placing nature and law in opposition to one another.

I can get behind the first two, but I don't think I'd commit myself to the last one. He foreshadows his response by asking what counts as "natural" morality, and by suggesting that Bockmuehl hasn't made some necessary philosophical distinctions which, if he had, would undermine these criticisms. However, he approaches the matter with humility:

> The problems raised by Bockmuehl regarding the relationship of Scripture and ‘natural’ law and the relationship of nature and grace, the order of creation and the order of redemption, will recur throughout the present book. By the end of the book, I hope to have offered some initial answers, or at least promising paths toward answers.

Oddly, I didn't find any mention of Bockmuehl in the rest of the book, and I'm not convinced they were ever fully addressed. His main argument for the Biblicity of NLT is structured around his handlings of four philosophers: Hays, Verhey, Barton, and Novak.

Hays and Verhey are the New Testament scholars he chose as foils

 = Hays = 

Hays argues that the narrative particularities surrounding the commands in the Bible are necessary to understand the commands in terms of their systematic positivism -- that is, the commands are only positive laws, so they can be changed and adapted to new circumstances, but they must be understood in terms of their participation within a legal system adapted to ancient circumstances. Following on this, Hays says that, since the church is a new circumstance, we get new ethics. Consequently: he is ok with abortion.

> Hays finds that since ‘we have no command of the Lord’ (one might think of the commandment ‘You shall not kill’, but Hays is referring to Jesus Christ), the community may approve the abortion of infants in their mothers’ wombs in certain difficult cases. Hays states, ‘Surely if the New Testament writers could dare to formulate exceptions to Jesus’ explicit teaching against divorce, the church can also act—in fear and trembling under the guidance of the Spirit—to identify exceptions to the traditional prohibition of abortion.’ ... ‘[i]n a case where the New Testament offers us no clear instruction, it is perhaps inevitable that Christians will in good conscience reach different conclusions’.

Levering briefly critiques Hays by asking a few serious questions about abortion in particular, and then concludes:

> "That Hays does not, and given his approach perhaps cannot, ask these questions indicates serious deficiencies in his approach. Not only does the commandment ‘You shall not kill’ merit more attention (one notes that this commandment informs other areas of Hays’s ethical reflection), but also one finds that this commandment both requires and offers warrants for metaphysical reflection and correspondingly for natural law doctrine. In short, the ‘metaphorical paradigms’ offered by biblical stories read within the Christian community are insufficient outside this metaphysical questioning that arises from serious attention to the Old Testament theologies of law.

So, Hays is the model for Legal Positivism, and is set up as a foil for Natural Law. Since reading the OT statutes in terms of their immediate narrative context is insufficient to inform us about the underlying principles for the purposes of establishing a modern law-set, and the New Testament doesn't fully qualify what a modern application of those moral principles, perhaps Natural Law can step-in and help.

With that, he turns to Verhey.

 = Verhey =

Verhey takes the emphasis on narrative to another level -- not content to say that the narratives should inform the meaning of the law in relation to the law's historical context, Verhey argues that the law is a strictly extrinsic directive, serving pedagogically to direct the historical people under the law into performing illustrative pedagogical actions unrelated to the literal verbiage of the law. Verhey then states that the actions of individuals under the law are templated examples of morality. From this point of view, Verhey is able to arbitrarily select details about the narratives and claim that these, not others, are the true moral intent of the scriptures.

The example Levering focuses on is Genesis and homosexual marriage. 

> if the story forms a template, alternative stories may logically, even if not fully fitting the story, participate in the story. Human male–male and female–female monogamous sexual relations seem to participate in the creation-story, on this view, at least as regards the presence of monogamy.

Verhey takes the example of Adam and Eve, calls it a template for marriage, and then selects "monogamy" as the key indicator of morality in the story. Levering's response:

> Since he explores the ‘natural’ only as presented by the biblical story of creation (male and female, one flesh), he does not have resources for exploring further why homosexual actions, and homosexual unions, might not belong to human fulfilment ... Participation in the story is possible through monogamy, now separated from the bodiliness characteristic of the story.

Levering characteristically identifies natural law as the solution. He emphasizes "bodiliness" as a neglected component of the law, and explains:

> In response to Verhey, then, I would propose that to be understood, the biblical stories require metaphysical reflection upon the created order as a teleological order known by God: that is to say, natural law doctrine. Such reflection, it seems to me, would challenge both the separation of ‘monogamy’ and bodiliness, and the notion that human ‘personhood’ can be divided in terms of ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’.

If only Verhey had reflected on nature a little more, he might realize that he was missing out on this additional quality.

Notably, although he suggests reflecting on nature as his positive suggestion, a means to arrive at correct interpretations and avoid the errors of Verhey, nonetheless his negative arguments against Verhey's interpretations of various presented passages are grammatical:

> When Jesus deepens the commandment against adultery to include a warning against interior lust (Matt. 5:27–8), he is not displacing the commandment. When Jesus challenges the dietary laws by warning against ‘evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander’ (Matt. 15:19), he points to the Decalogue as the permanent and interior heart of the Law. When a young man asks Jesus what the man must do to have eternal life, Jesus places the ten commandments at the heart of following Jesus—adding a deeper story-context to the Decalogue, but by no means displacing or downgrading the Decalogue (Matt. 19:16–22).

Curious.

Now, the issue with Verhey brings up an important point about hermeneutics. The narrative is important to the story, but where does it stop? What details about a case law are legally/particularly relevant, and what details are generalizable? Levering's suggestion -- which he says he reached by reflecting on natural law -- seems not better than any other. Why, on the basis of nature, do our observations about Adam and Eve's bodiliness not factor as much as our observations about any other more restrictive feature which is unique to Adam and Eve, such as their parentlessness, or the time period in which they lived, or their position in the garden, or the absence of prior sin? Bodiliness seems to me as arbitrary as monogamy.

So far, for my part, I have not seen an instance of this question being raised where the details couldn't be resolved grammatically in view of the whole scripture. God endorses and commands marriages generally, and elsewhere commands against homosexuality. Biblical grammar generalizes one part, and particularizes another. So, thankfully, so far I haven't needed to consult with Aristotle to find answers to this kind of question.

 = Barton =

Barton is next, and the first of Levering's two Old Testament scholars. He is read as an ally of NLT in principle, but one with a "highly problematic definition of what counts as natural law". Barton makes a few interesting claims:

- That Amos 1-2 includes denunciations of sins which are not mentioned in the law

- That the prophets, wisdom literature, and Jesus find in Genesis 1-2 the context for reading the whole Torah, including God's commandments.

- That the food laws are indeed concerned about what makes people sick -- a natural matter.

I'm looking at murder and kidnapping in Amos 1 and 2, and "because they rejected the law of Yahweh" in 2:4. I'm not sure what the second bullet means. I am certain that ceremonial cleanness, while it may be reflected in nature, is not strictly derived from nature. As far as I know, pigs didn't suddenly become "safe to eat" (medically) in the New Covenant Era. 

The problems Levering points out in Barton's perspective, however, begins here:

> He does not, however, count the Ten Commandments as ‘natural law’. For him, they are strictly positive law, ‘which the people are to obey simply because they are given by God’, although their character as positive law belongs with the covenantal framework that renders such positive law less impersonal.

If the food laws were natural laws because they protected people from food borne illnesses, why isn't "thou shalt not murder" a natural law? Levering explains, it's because "thou shalt not murder" is commanded, and obedience is expected in virtue of the command, not in virtue of the natural matter described in the command. For Barton, positive law is the command, and natural law is "attuned to the particularity of the [B]iblical stories".

Barton "emphasizes that ‘the Old Testament takes it for granted that people pursue the good for the sake of an end’, a point that could lead to reflection upon natural inclinations", and he "recognizes that the Old Testament authors see God’s law as a blessing, and obedience as a form of gratitude.". Levering points out that this latter item conflicts with Barton's contrast between positive law and natural law, and suggests that on reflection, Barton might apply his insights more consistently to arrive at a more theocentric view of morality.

 = David Novak =

Next is David Novak, who Levering does not directly critique in his section. Novak rejects the common teleological approach to NLT and proposes instead that NLT be discovered through a recognition of humanity's radical and extranatural uniqueness (the imago dei) as a limiting factor for what may be done in relation to mankind. His argument is that Natural Law Theory is Biblical in the sense that only the Bible can supply us with a definite account of that uniqueness, which is necessary for rightly understanding (discovering outside of scripture) our moral obligations.

 = Levering's Proposal =

Finally, Levrering makes his argument in four points:

> First, Scripture presents certain goods as constitutive of true human flourishing and thus of moral order. ... In short, the early chapters of Genesis, within a profoundly theocentric context, reveal human beings to be intrinsically teleological, ordered to certain goods constitutive of a flourishing proper to human beings.

> Second, Scripture does not countenance an absolute disjunction between divine positive law and natural law. ... The divine commandments reveal what is in the people’s ‘mouth’ and ‘heart’.

> Third, the Bible’s understanding of law is theocentric. Law does not first pertain to ‘nature’ or to human ‘reason’. Indeed, law’s theocentricity overcomes this apparent opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘reason’ at its root, since law flows from the divine wisdom, Creator of nature and human reason.

> Fourth, the grace of the Holy Spirit does not negate, but rather fulfils, the law’s precepts.

And he concludes the chapter with a sort of victory lap:

> Evaluating the four approaches, I suggested that they provide, both deliberately and despite themselves, sufficient evidence of the biblical warrants and the interpretive value of natural law reflection. If so, the question cannot be whether Christian ethics must import an extrinsic system of natural law. Rather, Christian moral theology requires a philosophically sophisticated natural law doctrine in order to do justice to the teachings of divine revelation.

Space and time forbid giving a thoughtful response to chapters 2 and 3. Here are my one-sentence summaries:

Chapter 2 explains a historical shift from the O.G. pagan "theocentric" NLT to the modern "anthropocentric" NLT

Chapter 3 makes proposals for avenues of "enriching" Biblical studies by keeping NLT in the back of your mind while reading the Bible.

Suffice it to say, I didn't find what I was looking for in those, and they were very long.

 = TLDR: =

Levering makes the case that the commands in scripture are best understood in proper consideration of NLT, basically arguing that natural law is Biblical strictly in the sense that Biblical morals are incoherent if you wrap the wrong definition of natural law around them. Then he demonstrates instead that Biblical grammar is the best motivator of a proper understanding of Biblical law, and in fact, all the troubles he mentioned are, to my knowledge, mediated by Biblical grammar without need for help from Aquinas. The foils he chose for his first chapter were weird. The first was presented as advocating subjective ethics, the next as arbitrary ethics, the next as contradictory ethics, and the last may not have been a foil. At any rate, I didn't exactly find a Biblical motivation for Natural Law theory in the sense that the Bible actually says things which should lead us to believe that humans are morally permitted to legislate.

3rd "report" today. There are 5 of these that I'm planning on posting here.

I don't have a lot of time these days to work on my book. It's weird for me to say that here, because the very fact that I'm blogging may make it seem like I have time for this.... but what I have is a few minutes here and a few minutes there, and the work I'm doing on this book requires at least an hour of focus (I think), to make reasonable progress on it, because I'm synthesizing a lot of information in it.

For several weeks I had 2 hours per week to work on it, during my son's art class. That has been shortened to 1 hour, and I have another tentatively scheduled hour during mommy&me swim for my wife and daughter. The split hours are doubtlessly less effective as far as my focus is concerned, but at the same time, I've been put in the way of some excellent insights between work sessions, which have impacted the project in exciting ways. So, I count the whole situation, including my lack of time, as a blessing.

A few notes about this report before I post it:

I have a lot to say in the way of criticizing this work, but to Burnside's credit, he actually gave me a copy of the book to help me along (I sent him a request via email, because this book is very expensive). Also, in the intro to the report, I mention a quote that I posted in #Memes -- this is a reference to a channel in the forum. Here is the relevant post from the #Memes channel:

---------------------------------------

Preview of Burnside's work in Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory... how he reasons that Psalm 19:1-6 describes accessibility of Natural Law:

The closing description of the sun encapsulates the theme of verses 1–6, namely, God’s glory displayed universally in the cosmos. The sun is strongly associated with justice and order in the Ancient Near East (ANE). As a result, biblical commentators frequently cast the psalmist’s use of the sun in purely judicial terms. ... the association can be strengthened, in my view, to refer more specifically to kingship. Kings were, of course, responsible for administering justice in the ANE, and ANE texts frequently draw a parallel between the sun and the king ruling in judgment. For example, the Prologue to the Laws of Hammurabi describes Hammurabi ...[saying he will]... "rise like the sun-god Shamash over all humankind"... Here, Hammurabi’s judicial activity, which evokes the sun-god, is clearly linked to sovereignty. I suggest that the sun image in Psalm 19 is a metaphor, not simply of judicial activity, but of sovereignty which includes ruling in justice.

P1. Psalm 19:4-6 talks about the sun.

P2. Hammurabi, a king, was compared with a sun-god.

P3. Kings do justice.

C. Psalm 19:4-6 is saying that nature reveals justice.

[He also says]

...the enlightening Torah, like the enlightening sun, brings light and joy...

...this does not seem to be spotted by scholarship on Psalm 19...

At least he's equating the law to the Torah

---------------------------------------

One user took issue with the dismissive attitude I took toward this, posting it in #memes. This is how I attempted to justify myself in the forum:

---------------------------------------

i thought it was funny.

I don't really put much stock in interpretations which draw out meaning from the Bible on the basis of ANE/archaeological finds.

Like, if he wants to prove that the Bible is concerned with justice, the Bible says it plainly. I don't need to draw analogies to dead pagan religions, or the way their holy texts treated their kings, in order to find out what the Bible thinks about the law. His treatment of Psalm 19 has all the marks of well written academic literature, but his train of reasoning is convoluted and unnecessary. I wouldn't classify it as a useful commentary (as far as the specific quote I posted is concerned) 

I still haven't read the rest of it. I'll be posting another review-type thing when I'm done

---------------------------------------

Without further ado, this is the "report":

Book Report: Burnside's Natural law and biblical law in Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory

I really like several of Burnside's conclusions, but I have to state up-front: the hermeneutics affecting his reading of Psalm 19 are generally objectionable to me. For example: in the quote I already posted in Memes, he justifies his understanding that Psalm 19:1-6 concerns the law by first going to an outside source -- a pagan religious text -- for the implication that the sun has to do with justice, and then he came back to the Bible to say that the Bible is using the sun in reference to justice. It's not an interpretation of the Bible, but an interpretation of Hammurabi, and then an imposition of Hammurabi onto the Bible. 

Another example: 

> In reconnecting nature and ethics, Psalm 19 is making a point that is foundational to the very idea of natural law. Torah asserts the very philosophical foundation of natural law theory, namely, a relationship of harmony between the natural and the ethical.

This is a very abstract conclusion from this text. At length, the surrounding text from Burnside aims to show that, since Psalm 19 juxtaposes commentary on nature and law, it is treating nature and Torah as a sort of unified substrate for activity. I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that the law and nature treat and describe one another, (etc.), but it is just as easy (without reference to Rabbinic or pagan commentary) to read Psalm 19 as simply extolling God by reference first to natural and then to special revelation, telling by a holistic portrait of creation how the real attributes of both kinds of revelation teach the excellence of the same God. 

All that said, I agree with many of his conclusions. For example:

> ...Torah in verses 7–11 is distinctly covenantal, putting it in an overtly creational framework has the effect of universalising its message. ... the Psalm presents God as ‘both Creator … and teacher of mankind through His Torah’. ... Torah is intelligible and communicable to the surrounding nations...

Torah, the law given to Israel, is universalizable. Very good.

> As Levering writes, affirming the existence of natural law in the Bible ‘does not … adduce universal norms that make the biblical narrative unnecessary’. I certainly agree ... This much is clear from the reference to Deuteronomy 4:5–8 ... Torah has a message that can be commended to the nations. ... Even more challengingly, it is addressed to nations some of whom are in conflict with Israel herself.

Torah is countercultural and addressed to nations both in and outside Israel. Also lovely, but what need to ask Hammurabi and the Rabbinic commentaries first before concluding it? These conclusions are easily reached by more direct Biblical routes outside Psalm 19.

He is right to note:

> Since Psalm 19 does not say everything we might want to say about natural law in the Bible, what other texts might be relevant, and why, and what might they suggest regarding the relationship between natural law and the Bible?

The Psalm doesn't tell everything he wishes it would tell about Natural Law. (I appreciate this transparency, but I am confused by it, since he was willing to impute the words of Hammurabi to the Psalm earlier. The implications of that hermeneutic seem potentially limitless). The question "what other texts" is a foreshadowing of the next point.

He suggests that an interface between philosophy and Biblical exegesis is necessary to reach the conclusions he aims for:

> ...dialogue between biblical exegesis and philosophy (as well as theology) can enrich our understanding of natural law in the Bible... in our pre-interpretative stage of asking whether there is natural law in the Bible, we cannot assume that it all boils down to a single idea (e.g. ‘law according to nature’ or ‘universal law’) and then ask whether this idea is present in the biblical materials. This may not do justice to the complexity of the task.

This is, as far as I can tell, a suggestion to own the the very thing most criticized about Christian Natural Law theory; that it depends on the importation of aristotelian categories alongside Biblical exegesis. Only, Burnside's explanation goes a step further -- he wants to find Natural Law in scripture. The effect is that Burnside is doing motivated exegesis: realizing scripture doesn't motivate the conclusions he wants to reach, and telling us that he needs to confer with Pagan sources prior to reading the Bible, and then seek out corroboration of their ideas in the Bible in order to conclude that the Bible agrees with them.

But what things, exactly, does he hope to find out, which Psalm 19 isn't saying clearly enough? Well, the very item which I was searching for when I began to read his work: 

> ...one way of thinking about natural law is to see it as asserting continuity between, on the one hand, acts of human lawmaking and legal judgment and, on the other, that which is required of human beings...

That natural law asserts "continuity between" morality ("that which is required of human beings") and human lawmaking. That is, that natural law theory requires that human lawmaking is morally permissible.

Burnside concludes by suggesting that, since the Bible doesn't teach Natural Law, we may be able to find it in the Bible anyway by looking for Natural Law-adjacent themes in scripture.

> This means that if we wanted to think about various ways in which natural law might exist in the Bible ... we might start by looking for a connection between divine activity and human activity in the realm of normativity. This could be one way in which we might bring the biblical material into dialogue with the philosophical tradition of natural law. ... Thus, I suggest we could be looking for a number of different things, including the following: ...[list of suggestions]... These themes can all be seen as different manifestations of natural law in the Bible...

And, after that, he gives brief attention to each of the suggestions on his list. His conclusions from the list are:

- Creation is designed to flourish, therefore Torah is teleologically aimed toward human flourishing.

- Morally-linked human behaviors have an effect on the wellbeing of humans, therefore nature/law are connected.

- God judges non-Israelite and pre-Mosaic people by reference to Torah, so they must have known it.

- Since all of God's revealed commands are coherent with one another, and reflective of his own acts of judgment, all issuances of divine commands in the Bible are drawn from one and the same law.

Since Burnside doesn't present these as proofs of a scriptural motivation for Natural Law theory, (I am grateful to Burnside for saying so more plainly than others), they amount to the use of references to nature in scripture as confirmation of Natural Law theory. He presents them as corroboration, not as proof, and he's right about that. Beyond that, I've already discussed each of these at length elsewhere.

TLDR

Burnside is, for the most part, clear about where his conclusions are motivated by scripture, and where they are motivated by sources outside scripture. He acknowledges that the Bible doesn't motivate the jurisprudential implications of natural law theory, but expresses repeatedly that he is comfortable with bringing prior philosophical conclusions to the text giving philosophy a voice in dialog with scripture. In the end, Burnside suggests that the means of finding Natural Law in scripture is likely to be: a motivated search for evidence of agreement with natural law theory, hidden inside themes found broadly across scripture. He acknowledges critics of this point at the end of his work:

> despite the views of my critics, I persist in the view that looking for these sorts of continuities in biblical texts is a way of revitalising the topic of natural law in the Bible.

Round 2 today of "book reports". 

I may as well update the void concerning my family before posting. Things are generally going very well. My wife and I are very, very busy, but we try hard to here-and-there make time to sit and unwind with one another.

My son is excelling at everything he does. He finishes a new Redwall book every week, and I require book reports before I will purchase the next one. His math skills outpaced his handwriting, so I've had to slow down on math until I can get his writing under better control. He is very active with his peers, engaging in frequent play dates with the participants of his two or more homeschool groups. He excels at soccer, swim, and Tae Kwon Do, and I am the recipient of much praise from his teachers in serious tones to avoid his hearing. He is able to sight read basic guitar music (not only chords, but he is being trained classically, and plays sheets of individual notes), and his drum teacher has told me he is the most talented student he has ever had. He loves to climb trees, tell stories, and play board games with me. I am concerned that we put too much on his plate, and I think he would benefit from more time at home being bored or doing chores -- it is important to spend time at home doing more than just winding down after a busy day, and also to make room to accustom oneself to finding joy in mundane tasks, and to be skilled in all manner of home upkeep. I also worry he is flowing from one predefined, high-engagement activity to another without time to learn to moderate his mind and think independently. At any rate, we have not yet seen his limit, as he absorbs whatever content we provide faster than we are able to provide it.

My daughter is a happy baby, and very insistent on being included in everything the family does. If we sit on the couch, she must be on the couch with us. When we pray, she must be near, clasping her hands and waiting quietly until all are done. When we eat, even if she is not hungry, she must be in her high chair. When the family has a discussion, she makes clear her desire to have a turn to babble her opinions. And, if we do things she cannot join, she protests. But, she is always happy to see each of us, readily returns a laugh, and absolutely loves to dialogue (though she only knows 2 or 3 words that we can distinguish, and those are not totally certain). She also very much enjoys dancing, and I take advantage of every opportunity I can find to put on some music and pick her up for a dance. 

I can't say enough good things about my kids! I'm very proud of them, and thankful to God for raising them as he has, because every good thing is from God.

Anyway, the report!

Haines and Fulford. "Natural Law: A Brief Introduction and Biblical Defense"

This book is in two halves, written by separate authors. Haines wrote from a Philosophical perspective, and Fulford wrote the Biblical defense. I'm only really interested in the Fulford-half of the book for my purposes. Here's my summary:

This book did well to establish the idea that God's law is coherent with the natural order, and that natural arguments can be made in favor of moral principles. That is, the book demonstrates this as a strict possibility, but Fulford states up-front that he won't be giving any attention to noetics:

> One could also discuss how sin and the Fall affect the human ability to know natural law. We will not be discussing these questions here, but in the rest of this guide we will seek to show that natural law is not only philosophically coherent, and founded upon Being itself, but that natural law is also biblical.

Obviously, since a big part of his work aims to prove that humans are capable of discerning just laws in nature, noetics is a big deal, but his neglect for them is merely disappointing. I've got a few long excerpts which I think form the meat of the book, insofar as it pertains to my interests. I'll discuss them below.

> To see the Bible as supporting natural law means that the unique civilization that two-kingdoms Protestantism contributed to is not undermined by Scripture. The precisianists and Anabaptists were wrong to deny that any just political order could be founded that did not submit to their private and special revelation, since justice can be known from the wisdom in God’s good creation. Natural law also frees up the civil magistrate to carry out his office apart from subordination to the clergy, since he is equipped to reason justly, thus making sense out of those biblical passages like Romans 13:1-7.

[emphasis mine]

This is the key conclusion he draws from Natural Law theory: he thinks passages like Romans 13:1-7 don't make sense unless humans are "equipped to reason justly", which means they are able and morally permitted to legislate just laws independently, by reference to nature. He argues that this is a freeing component of the New Covenant. This is from his last concluding paragraph in the book:

> For, apart from a few commands, the “law” of the New Covenant is nothing other than the law of love, which is just to will good for others, where “good” is defined by the structure of their being. In other words, almost the entirety of God’s demand for New Covenant believers is simply to obey the law of their own being, their own flourishing. And this is really like being under no law at all...

[emphasis mine]

The above is the practical outcome of his conclusions -- that the moral requirement on New Covenant believers (outside the sacraments) is to pursue material flourishing.

He reasons to these conclusions, more or less, in the following manner:

> On the other hand, as we have noted, the apostle Paul and others do seem to apply some Old Testament laws to Christians, for example in the realm of sexual ethics. But sexual immorality clearly does defy the natural purpose of the sexes, and harms human beings as such.[175] In light of these things, is it possible that, aside from a handful of commands that require ritual acts of Christians (e.g., Baptism and the Eucharist),[176] the rest of New Testament “law” is simply expressing what natural law and prudence already demand?[177] If so, we may be able to get a new handle on the logic of NT ethics as a whole, without trying to treat it as casuistry based on a positive law code somehow vaguely different from an OT positive law code.

The alternative to Natural Law theory (for jurisprudence), he thinks, is to see New Covenant ethics as "casuistry based on a positive law code somehow vaguely different from an OT positive law code". I get that my perspective is out-of-view of his rhetorical goals, but I think that his line of reasoning here betrays a perspective where the Mosaic Law lacks continuity for reasons he admits he simply doesn't know -- he's speculating.

> Realizing that the Bible assumes knowledge of the natural law may also help us in exegetical quandaries that continue to puzzle Bible scholars to this day. More specifically: how do we explain the logic of Jesus and Paul, when they declare some parts of the Torah no longer binding on Christians (e.g., Sabbath and Kosher laws), but other parts still in force (e.g., laws against sexual immorality)? Natural law may provide the key here, in that the former examples are clearly “socially constructed” (even if divinely so), and the writers of Scripture explicitly note this.

He continues speculating -- and (afaict) continued revealing confusion about why we don't have to obey certain Mosaic Laws anymore, and then just suggested that NL might have an answer.

This is why I emphasize that the mode of abrogation for any Old Testament laws which we say no longer apply to us is very important. If the Bible said directly that "New Testament 'law' is simply expressing what natural law and prudence already demand" (Fulford), then he wouldn't need to ask the above questions. He speculates because he doesn't know how/why the laws were abrogated. But the Bible does say directly that the reason we don't worry about the law against eating unclean foods is that Jesus made all foods clean, so we don't actually need to speculate about whether anything more abstract or mysterious is what made our practical obedience change. 

TLDR: Most of the Biblical portion of the book really amounted to (I'm repeating myself) construing Biblical references to nature as confirmation of Natural Law theory. He does make some positive arguments against my ideas from certain passages in scripture, but incidentally I already included his arguments in the passage arguments I wrote and posted before. [Note for the blog: this is a reference to a rough draft of one of the chapters in my book I'm writing for my son, which I posted for feedback in the same forum where I originally posted these reports. Here is the document] 

Notably, he doesn't actually show Biblical proof that humans are morally permitted to write legislation (making this proof was not his aim); he only makes the case that we're able to see justice in nature, then states that our capability (assuming a moral permit to legislate) helps him make sense of certain difficult passages. He mentions the 2 Kingdoms idea again -- if his understanding of that doctrine is the same as what I read in my prior book, then it explains his assumptions. His final conclusion is that the New Covenant Law can be summarized by a word: that we should pursue human flourishing by means of human prudence. 

Now, I'm just being real here -- I don't see how that doesn't amount to either moral consequentialism or "vibes". But that's a separate argument, I guess. 

The bottom line is, this book was helpful, but it didn't quite build the kind of bridge I was looking for. I'm getting ahead of myself, but I might end up critiquing NLT by just saying that nothing about the Christian version of the theory as-it-stands necessitates or implies legislative permit. To be fair, I don't imagine past NL writers had SGE in mind for their rhetoric -- they all seem to be simply assuming it, because everybody knows that humans can and should legislate all the time -- so future NL writers might develop the theory better if they have some SGE material to react to. We'll have to wait to see if my arguments, or those of any other SGE advocate, survive.

 It's been a while since I posted here. I decided today I would begin putting up some book reports I wrote a while ago. These were written as part of my investigation into Christian Natural Law Theory, for the book I'm working on for my kids. I figured, if a theory is a "Christian Theory", then it should be motivated by distinctly Christian ideas -- that is to say, it should be traceable to scripture references. I started with Summa, and I was looking specifically for scriptural justifications for Natural Law Theory as a theory of jurisprudence. Most importantly, I wanted to know where they get the idea that humans have been given permission or authority from God to make laws.

All authority is from God. So, if we have not received a delegation of authority from God to do something, then we don't have authority to do it. This applies especially to government, since God expressly outlined a system of government and said "do not add or subtract from my laws". So, if we're going to say that God wants us to make up new styles of government, I hoped such a well developed theory would be able to provide some justification for the assumption.

In fact, it seems the thought never crossed the mind of Aquinas, nor of any of the other sources I initially read on the topic. In fact, on the topics of nearest relevancy, Aquinas and his sources (I read the chapters he cited from Augustine etc. as well) only a handful of verses are mentioned; and the whole verses are not used, but only a phrase from them; and the phrases are not used to motivate Aquinas's jurisprudence, but only to corroborate it. The most important verse appears to be from Romans 2, which I'll be giving some attention in my book.

At any rate, after much independent reading on the topic, I was dissatisfied, because this theory is advocated so boldly as Christian by Christians, both Protestant and Catholic alike. So, not knowing where else to look, I joined forums and asked AI for more informative sources, and I read what was recommended to me. For the benefit of the TQA forum, I wrote targeted "book reports" on a handful of books which were the most popularly recommended to me, both by AI, and by Catholic and Protestant Natural Law Theory advocates. These books were named as important independently by several of the groups I asked, and no other books came with comparable praise, so I think they must be the best. My reports focus on the chapters which were commended to me as relevant to my topic, but I also looked over the other chapters in the books in order to be more sure I didn't miss anything important. Truly, I don't know how I could be more fair to Aquinas's followers, except if I had written about them with less bias. But I do not intend to be an academic; I am a Christian and Biblicist first, and all the rest, I pray, is ministry.

So much for context. This is the first and shortest report I wrote.

Summary of VanDrunen "A Biblical Case for Natural Law"

First Chapter: "Human Nature" 

1. God is Moral as to his nature

2. Man is the image of God, which entails a moral character, implying knowledge of morals

3. Though sin clouds our minds, man still is in the image of God, so the knowledge of morals still persists.

On the basis of Romans 1, he argues that the knowledge of God's law which exists in man -- the naturally revealed law, or "natural law" -- is "practically comprehensive".

On the basis of Romans 2, he argues that "the requirements of this natural law are essentially the same as those of the law of Moses", and, "the Law [both natural and of Moses] judges people on the basis of their obedience to it, and 2:14-15 explains how this can be true even of those who do not have the law of Moses".

Commentary from me: So far, this is all well and good, and I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that we have a certain imperfect awareness of the law; only that it (as is very apparent even in legislation generated by Christians) doesn't enable us to reproduce the law of God in legislation, nor permit us to try. Chapters 2 and 3 are where the rubber meets the road. 

Second Chapter: "Two Kingdoms"

Basically, in Chapter 2, he bridges the gap between natural law and civil legislation by rejecting theonomy -- even WGE theonomy as I understand it. Here are some relevant excerpts:

> ...Furthermore, God never gave the church a civil code... 

> ...the Noahic covenant is for all people, the Abrahamic covenant is for some...

> Instead of mingling with unbelieving nations in cultural endeavors, God’s people were now commanded to exterminate the pagans within their nation’s borders (e.g., Deut. 7:1–5)... Yet, biblical revelation makes clear that this was a temporary, extraordinary situation that God established only for a certain time and place in order to accomplish specific purposes in his redemptive plan and to point ahead to the eternal, heavenly state.

> Solomon carried on a general commercial trade with nations all around ... The two kingdoms dynamic, therefore, again became operative for Israel when they were outside the bounds of the Promised Land. Only when abiding within the land, according to the theocratic principles of the Mosaic covenant, was the two kingdoms model temporarily set aside.

> New Testament Christians, therefore, live in two kingdoms, as Abraham and the patriarchs did before them. The social and cultural realm is a mixed realm, a common realm, whose magistrates hold legitimate authority apart from their religious convictions and where Christians and non-Christians may intermingle freely...The character of the civil kingdom as a common realm calls for a moral standard that is common to all human beings, and this is what natural law is.

[emphasis mine]

The argument in this chapter is, basically, since we're supposed to share government with pagans in the New Covenant, we can't argue for laws on the basis of scripture (although he never states "because they'd never agree to it" directly, I think it's strongly implied by what he wrote), instead we have to appeal to the natural law in them. 

And, to what end, he describes in chapter 3. Summarily:

> Moral goods such as peace and prosperity are to be cultivated (Jer. 29:7). Civil magistrates exist for the good of the people, and the people are to obey magistrates (Rom. 13:1– 7; 1 Tim. 2:2; 1 Peter 2:13–17)....The appropriateness of natural law as the moral standard for the civil kingdom becomes all the more important in light of the fact that, in a certain sense, Scripture is not the appropriate moral standard for the civil kingdom. Scripture, of course, provides much relevant teaching for God’s people concerning their attitude toward the world at large and their conduct in it.

[emphasis mine]

Chapter 4 talks about how nature will be different in heaven, and basically talks about how references to nature in the Bible are evidence of natural law.

So, TLDR, his argument (as I read it) is: Mosaic law is mandatory for everyone -- except for the parts about not having a pagan society; those were temporary; now we work with pagans, because 2K -- but the pagans wouldn't obey any of it if we told them it was from the Bible, so we have to convince them to obey it by appealing to their awareness of natural law. 

I could be wrong, but I'm thinking this isn't exactly compatible with Westminster General Equity Theonomy (WGE). And, in either case, I don't think his construal of the two kingdoms is really defensible, or even a component of Natural Law theory on its own, so my takeaway is (if this were the only representative) that the idea of Natural Law results in permit for human legislation only after bringing in an additional theory. Moving on to the next book.

So lately I've been especially attentive to styles of argumentation, in hopes of elevating my own consistency. I notice I have a habit, and I am not sure what I am accomplishing by it. Is it a temptation, a set of barriers, a defense, intellectual laziness? Here is the phenomena:

I am presented with a debate topic. I begin with argument A. It is an argument that is short, pointed, easy to deliver, and witty. It is an argument which I love, but one which I know is wrong, but I have genuinely forgotten that it is wrong because of my love for it. In fact, it was refuted several times before, but in the heat of those moments, I did not take the time to acknowledge its refutation. I quickly moved onto another closely related argument B; substantively linked but formally distinct, requiring my opponent to shift gears in order to rebut me. My opponent did not even notice that I shifted gears; in fact, without careful observation, it may appear that A and B support one another.

Argument B is, maybe, a very good argument, but I do not have the time to substantiate it. I will never have the time to substantiate it. The topic at hand is important, but life is short, and I must choose my battles. A good argument on an important topic requires years of research to formulate. Why am I wasting time on this topic anyway? What am I doing in this debate? My opponent asks for substantiation, and I am instantly discouraged. I realize my error and shift to argument C.

Argument C involves expressing the realization that I'm totally unqualified to be engaged in this debate. But there's a problem; I'm not less qualified than the person I'm debating. Argument C is, therefore, a call to epistemic submission to the forces accessible to persons of our mutual qualifications. It dawns on me that we're both citing research articles we barely understand, but it's too late, because I've already submersed myself in the muck with my opponent, and the mode of dialogue is established beyond repair. 

Can you guess the topic that caused me to notice this? Evolution is where this comes up most often.

This debate strategy is surely a defense mechanism; witless, reflexive, and developed involuntarily. I am discarding it. Argument C is where I belong.

I'm recently engaged in a series of conversations which have cornered me. First, I defend the notion that Presuppositionalism doesn't pin me to a position of inability to learn from secular sources. Later, separately, with the same people, I defend the notion that YEC and OE sources are similarly scientific (this is argument B). My opponent states that YEC and OE are not on equal footing with regard to science because of the freedom of the experts to express themselves. Here are my options:

- Deny that experts have freedom to express themselves (scholarly papers don't permit YEC). But if I make this argument, I have to defend it, and I can't. It has conspiracy-theory-level backing. It may be true (I like conspiracy theories), but in its current form it can't bear the weight I'm putting on it.

- Deny that atheists are capable of intellectual honesty (something I can argue well from Presuppositionalism, but I have already rejected in principle)

Either I am being inconsistent, or I am failing to notice an important category. This will be on my mind all weekend.

"Happy Valentines Day"

Right now I have something (maybe very silly) weighing heavily on my mind and I want to tell someone a story, but I'm the only one awake, and this place is an old reliable fallback, prepare to be the emotional outlet.

I recently listened to one of kitboga's scammer conquest videos. In this one he convinced the scammer that he was an old couple with a few hundred big in the bank. The scammer told him to move the money to a secure account to safeguard the funds (the scammer's own account, of course). This went on for a day or two I think. At some point there was a break in the conversation, and post gap kitboga informed the scammer that he had moved the money to the account of his son in law. The scammer, a little emotional about it, asked if kitboga trusted his son in law with the money. Kit said yeah, it will be an inheritance later anyway. The scammer said he was a good dad. Kit asked if the scammer was a good dad. The scammer explained he tries to be a good dad. The conversation went on, his son wants to be just like him, but he doesn't want his son to be like him. Here the scammer was being vulnerable, and Kit began a severe moral bludgeoning. The scammer tried to hint that the call was being monitored so he couldn't confess to being a scammer, and eventually, reduced to tears, gave in, then hung up. 

It was really sad to hear. I love to see criminals get pwnd, but this was an instance where I was thinking along the lines of, "I take no pleasure in the suffering of the wicked". The scammer's son is the same age as my son, and he's impoverished, and his dad hates himself. It's terrible for him! Even though his immediate surroundings attempt to normalize dishonesty, his conscience is inescapable.

I used to get a lot of scam calls, and I would share the gospel with them. One time, the caller cried on the phone with me.  I told him that Jesus died so he wouldn't have to live that way anymore. He tried to stick to the script, so I told him, "come on man, your company is paying you to lie to people. You can do better than this."  He broke down and said "but I have no other choice. What else can I do?"  I told him to go find a church that teaches about Jesus, and that they would help him out. I sure hope and pray it worked out for him. I had a few conversations like that, and then they stopped calling me. 

It actually makes me pretty emotional to think about those guys and imagine their situation.  Am I just too tired right now to process it impassionately? Idk. I think it has been weighing heavily on me for a few days, and the weight has been increasing as I have been listening to a lot of kitboga lately. Some of his videos are genuinely hilarious, and some really show that nobody can escape their God given conscience "bearing witness against them". 

Ok well that's the end of the story. Idk if I feel better having typed it out or not. What is it in people that makes them need to tell these kinds of things? 

"A hero"

My second child, a daughter, was born on July 4th! We gave her a name that we hope will point her toward the importance of generosity, service, forgiveness, and God's covenant: Lydia Jubilee. "Lydia", after the gentile seller of purple cloth who opened her home to the service of the saints, and whose entire household was saved -- a cool picture of the covenant and regeneration. "Jubilee", the backbone of the Biblical economy, forgiveness of debt and a return of everyone to their permanent inheritance, and a picture of the gospel (thinking of Isaiah 61:1-3). I'll be calling her Jube for short.

The first week has been basically sleep deprivation and a tiny bit of chores. The house wasn't quite ready for her -- we got a lot of our baby gear at the last minute because the second-hand donations that we'd been receiving up until that point were mostly actually kinda gross, so it isn't quite organized yet. Well, so I'm doing my best to get things in shape, or at least keep them from getting worse. 

Chowon suffered some more-than-typical harm during the delivery, but she's slowly getting back on her feet. I'm doing all the diapers, any soothing, swaddling, etc, so that all Chowon has to worry about is nursing and self-care. Chowon can't be satisfied by that kind of inactivity, though, and has managed to fill her time by responding to congratulations on the phone, the result of which has been a ton of meal deliveries at our house, which is really awesome.

Isaac is taking it very well. He's been very positive about having a baby sister, and he's been playing alone very well, and making himself breakfast sometimes. I'm trying to prioritize playing with him in my spare time, which also reduces the chores I can do. But family cohesiveness is more important than cleanliness in the final analysis, and I think my priorities are in the right place. The house is messy, but it's not gross, and it is slowly improving.

I have a lot of paid paternity leave. I'm nervous about getting back to work at my job after all of this.

In my progress on the book that I'm working on for Isaac (and now for Jubilee too!), I've noticed that Paul is rebutting the Circumcision party in nearly all of his letters. He's really seriously campaigning against them. That realization, and my renewed understanding of Paul's journey, has painted a more human picture of Paul in my head. 

I'm often praying that God will guide me to write what's true in my book, and not just write what I want to be true. I've definitely changed my perspective about a lot of topics as a result of this study, so that's something -- I hope, an indicator of God's activity in guiding my mind to some truth. 

I'm often back-and-forth about whether or not I will give the finished work to the guys who said they want to publish it if I finish it. Maybe I'll just pay to get the pages durably bound, and then give a copy each to my son and daughter, and call that the end of it. The more I research, the more I realize I'm a layman doing layman's research. I'm an autodidact and it definitely shows. What am I doing pretending to have answers to all of these arguments I'm taking on in my book? Who am I to lay claim to any true knowledge pertaining to scripture? By teaching, if I say anything true, I've only done what's commanded and expected of me, but if I say what's false, I have sinned and caused my neighbor to sin! I can only hope that my son will filter out the failures I present to him, and follow the Holy Spirit toward Christlikeness, becoming himself a better man than me. 

But I have to say something! I certainly can't leave my children to the wolves. I'm not merely subject to the belief that these philosophies I'm arguing against in the book are complete garbage; they really are trash and my children would only injure themselves by giving serious consideration to some of these thinkers. There are a lot of things in these writings I'm compiling about which I am firmly convinced I can't be wrong. Combing my conclusions to draw up a detailed blueprint of the structure connecting them to those primary beliefs is perhaps the work of many lifetimes, so I have to prioritize what I put my effort toward and how I do it. I can't let myself take too long, because I will age and lose my zeal (and besides, I might die tomorrow!); I can't be too quick or I will miss the important details. 

I don't want my children to waste time evaluating pop philosophy. I know it's a very common idea that people eventually have to evaluate the religious landscape for themselves and establish a personal conviction for Jesus anew after leaving their parent's household (I certainly did that), but I don't think that the activity needs to include any time wasted critically examining bullshit ideas like atheism or islam. Like, how thoroughly do we need to refute that crap before it doesn't deserve our attention anymore? Think of all the progress we can make if we rather devoted our minds to the truth! 

Don't get me wrong, apologetics is good work, and having a defense against outside arguments is important for everyone as a necessary evil, but I don't think that's the same as having a "reason for the hope that is within us". My reason for believing in Jesus is entirely compelling to me, but it isn't an argument in the common sense of the term; it's becoming more and more a blend of relational, spiritual, experiential, and rational ideas that feels increasingly bound up in my very self-ontology.

I want to present my children with something that they can use as a foundation to build-on. We're homeschooling them so that I can, by going alongside them, fill the gaps and equip them for this. I want them to skip all the trash philosophers I read, (I'll give them a cursory understanding of the history of philosophy insofar as I can make it an interesting story), and I want them to make positive progress by so thoroughly immersing themselves in the truth that the answers to outside challenges become too obvious for care. "The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them."

I once read the argument that people need to have an experiential understanding of "darkness" in order to know what "light" is. For example, if they only ever saw the color "white" they would never know what white was until they first saw other colors. I don't buy it. They would only know what white was until they saw other colors, and then they would know the other colors. I think contrast is helpful to demonstrate magnitudes and to build a sense of relevance by way of application, which is helpful to expedite learning, but not necessary to know truth. I don't need to go worship another god in order to know that Jesus is the true God. Nobody in Israel needs to be proselytized toward false religion in order to understand God's covenant with them. Deut 13:6-11 permits no such proselytization in Israel, while elsewhere the Bible commands repeatedly that Israel take plenty of time to learn God's words, precisely because in-depth knowledge of false ideas is not necessary. 

There are infinite falsehoods out there, and only one truth; how can I invent a falsehood in order to contrast it with the truth in order to gain knowledge of the truth if I haven't already known both the truth and the falsehood in order to contrast them with one another so as to understand the falsehood I'm inventing? The idea that knowledge must be founded on dialectical contrasts is philosophically incoherent.

My kids don't need to read Nietzsche as a prerequisite in order to know that he's not worth reading. Nor do they need to critically examine the theory of evolution in order to know that God created mankind from the dust on the 6th day, nor do they need to dabble in other religions to gain deep insight into Christianity. I want them to build on the foundation that was laid for them in God's word, and skip the crap. If I can give them that much, then I've saved them years of time, and if God graciously sees fit to give me so much of a great blessing, he may place them among those in heaven who never bowed to a false god, and to retain a man for God's kingdom from among my children for future generations. Oh God, do not permit my family to go astray, and my generations to be struck from the book of life!

"My soul is crushed with longing for your judgments at all times."

ETA:

I've been thinking about what I wrote here, and maybe I'm being redundant by re-engaging with my self-doubt here... (I thought about making it a separate blog post, but it's too soon). I do want to clarify that I'm not going to completely leave my kids ignorant of things like OE/TOE or the various manners of approaching nihilism, so I'm not completely isolationist here, but I do intend to give thorough emphasis both in time and effort to teaching things I believe to be true (as every teacher does, right?)... but also, I'm concerned about myself. Am I deceiving myself by means of a false humility, whereas I'm actually unwilling to budge on issues about which there are legitimate challenges out there?

I won't say I am not concerned about the possibility. Indeed that's why I write here. But on the other hand, I'm not quite ready to yield to it.

One time I read a philosopher argue along these lines, "if your ideas are contradictory to mine, and aren't at least as well developed as mine; at least as thoroughly challenged and time-proved as mine; at least as comprehensive in their explanatory power as mine; at least as coherent as mine -- then I may be willing to engage with you concerning challenges you have to my own ideas, but I see no need to spend any time versing myself on your ideas.". I suppose that may seem a sort of philosophical hubris, but on the other hand, Christianity is truly the best established system in existence on all accounts. I may not be an expert in Christianity (or any other system for that matter), but I don't need to be an architect to know which building is tallest. And, let's face it: Christianity does engage in internal criticisms of outside philosophies, but it is also entirely consistent with Biblical Christianity to maintain an attitude of derision toward non-Christian perspectives. "The fool says in his heart, 'there is no god'.". "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Sure, "what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?", and so some analysis of the enemy is necessary when in battle. And Christianity is a conquering ideology, aimed at ideological warfare, "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete." But given limited time to build an awareness of the situation, whose troops should the king know better, his own or his enemy's? And should the king verse himself on armies which will not be involved in the current battle as thoroughly as on those who will? The most efficient use of my time as a teacher is to teach the truth, not to verse my kids on every untruth, nor even on those aspects of untruths which are easily refuted by things my students already know. 

If I am able to expand that category of prior knowledge effective to refute an enemy idea, so that it encompasses very much of the enemy's ideology, then there is little left for me to do by way of teaching on the enemy, except insofar as it expedites teaching the truth. Only: am I able? That is the prompt for my self-doubt. I'm not really all that worried about whether or not Christianity is subject to an undermining refutation, only whether I can prepare my kids sufficiently that they are not deceived by a weak refutation.