This is the final of my 5 planned "book reports". I may write more reports for my blog later, but I am not presently planning it.

I've been putting "book report" and "report" in quotes in most of these posts, because they aren't really reports on the contents of the book, so much as targeted analysis against a predefined research question. They're more like threat assessments of Natural Law Theory advocacy against Lancastrian Theonomy. As it turns out (and as I've noted in the reports), it seems hardly any Christian Natural Law theorist has even considered the question about whether we're morally permitted to legislate at all. 

This last "report" is unique, because the author does make an attempt at this very question. I tried to include, in my report, as much material as I could find from the book which was relevant to this specific argument from McCall. Concerning the attempt itself, McCall's verbosity makes it difficult for me to tell whether or not it was half-hearted (which would be a charitable assumption, since he had practically no enemies for this argument, and may have been breaking new ground).

Before I drop the post, however, I promised a story. Basically, I took some self-report tests for autism and scored pretty high, with exceptionally high masking. I got a good score on the RMET, but also took an above average amount of time to complete it, corroborating well-trained masking as a hypothesis. So, to find out more, I joined a forum for autistic people who were researching their symptoms. The forum was welcoming, and the people there accepted me with much warmth. They were clearly all struggling with legitimate personal-life things and benefitted from the warmth and encouragement themselves. They openly posted about their lives, and pushed one another to better themselves, and expressed concern for one another in all kinds of situations. I also did a bit of posting about myself and my situation, and being rather benign and wholesome, I quickly gained a good reputation and was invited into restricted forum areas for the inner circle of participants, and I began to grow quite fond of some of the people there. 

Then the daily Q came out for people to talk about an "issue" that they're passionate about. Well, I knew there were a lot of LGBT people there, but I went ahead and explained a brief history of Theonomy, mentioned that I am in the Lancastrian camp, and outlined my "issue" in terms of my rejection of Christian Nationalism and Natural Law Theory. I made a point of including much by way of caveat and reaffirmation of my sincere affection for the whole group there, in spite of my disagreement with their LGBT-ness, but I also did not hold back any of the harshness of my position, in fact going out of my way to make myself look worse, for the sake of transparency, so that they would have no grounds for suggesting that I am being disingenuous (as one of them did attempt, but was rebutted effectively). They acknowledged the gentleness of my presentation, but let me know that my position was inherently hateful and could not be reconciled to them. A moderator in the group, one of whom I had grown especially fond, messaged me to let me know that I would not be permitted to stay because of my views. I thanked this person and said I understood (in a one or two-sentence message), and then they kicked me and blocked me, cutting off all future contact.

This occurred several weeks ago. The incident struck a major blow to my emotional state at the time, so much that my wife asked me to tell her about why I was looking bummed. Her home-cooked meal and kind expression brightened by spirits substantially, though -- she really knows how to encourage me. I have experienced rejection before, but not from a community so warm. I talk to right-wing extremists for the very purpose of dialoguing with people I disagree with. In the TQA forum we have occasionally had extreme left-wing individuals join (and usually quickly leave), and they have consistently made a point of DMing me to inform me that I was the one person in the server who made them feel most welcome. I should note that the banter which came to them from other members of the server (which led to their leaving) was no more harsh than what playful mistreatment is directed toward every member of the server at all times. (I usually don't engage in that kind of banter because I am bad at it.) I am happy to dialogue with people both on the extreme right and extreme left. I think the extreme left, however, is allergic to the extreme right, and can't share a friendly space with them, and that makes me very sad -- but not as sad as losing contact with that friendly, LGBT, autistic moderator.

At any rate, I'm pleased to report that I'm most likely not autistic. I think I'm probably just a nerd.

Here's the book report.

Book report on Architecture of Law by McCall

I'm going to focus on "Chapter 7 -- Appointing a foreman", because it's singularly relevant to my aims. The introduction really had me excited:

> This chapter makes the stronger claim that legal authority can be justified and not simply assumed.

Great!

> the architecture onto which human law is layered justifies legal authority. The authority of human laws can be justified and explained only in light of the eternal and natural law.

> ...

> To hold authority involves more than merely repeating the content of a preexisting obligation for the purpose of clarifying and publicizing its content (although those possessing authority may do this). The strongest form of the concept of authority involves a power to legitimately bring obligations into existence by choosing to enact particular laws. This strong form of authority will be defined, delineated, and defended in this chapter.

This is right in line with what I want him to justify for me. Not just authority that repeats and enforces God's edicts, but human authority that is capable of binding the conscience with new laws. He mentions "eternal law" as (at least part) of the "light" in which authority is justified and explained, so I expect something defensibly Christian (aka Biblical).

However, I'm not 100% sure that this definition of human authority (or human law) is fully aligned with Natural Law Theory proper. He later restates the exercise of authority as an act to "change the normative position of another by determining what is good for him in a particular circumstance when good can be done in two or more morally ambivalent ways". I question whether that position can be held consistently -- how can enforcement of a "morally ambivalent" activity be done without negative moral implications (tyranny)?

He proposes to solve this problem later by saying "Authority is thus more than a necessary evil instituted after the loss of original justice; ordered determination by an authority predates destruction of the natural law in us.", and “authorities make laws that directly or indirectly affect the common good.”. So that redirection of normativity is simply a good thing for governments to do where it may, directly or indirectly, cause people to conform to natural law, and should have existed in the fabric of nature. This idea *would be* consistent with NLT's framing of civil law as a discovery of natural law, except that the contents of these penlogically enforced legislative acts are simply directives that "change through legal authority people's normative position" under "morally ambivilent" circumstances in order to compel them "indirectly" to conform with natural law, and so have nothing directly to do with natural law in either their explicit formulation or the activities they prohibit.

How can the compulsory prohibition of a morally neutral activity be just? God created all things good, so morally ambivalent activities are good, and so I think the above position conflicts with *lex injusta non est lex*, which he later upholds, and also "woe to those who call good evil and evil good".

Later on he says:

> This power to determine human law involves both the rational and volitional powers. Since human law is a further specification of the natural law, which can be known by the use of reason, the process must be reasonable.

...which brings him right back into line with NLT proper. He says he'll clarify in chapter 8. 

### Digression to Chapter 8

In chapter 8, he talks broadly about proportionality, and then says:

> Human authorities are not vested with the power to make general principles of law, which are already contained in the natural law. The authority vested in human lawmakers is restricted solely to the articulation of general precepts of natural law and their determination for the particular community. ... Thus a just law must have as its proximate end the common good of the society and as its ultimate end the ultimate common good of all men as fixed by the eternal law. ... What distinguishes law from coercive violence? The answer is that the law is a just law; a violent command is not. ... "How is one to distinguish between the two cases? As to the first, laws that induce “anything else contrary to the divine law," such as idolatry, it is not legally permitted in any manner to obey them ... If obeying the human law would lead (induce) one to violate a precept of the divine or natural law, it must be refused.

Basically, the way you tell the difference between good and bad authority/law is: if it doesn't break a higher law (natural or divine), and if it serves the common good. That is to say, it can't contradict the commands in scripture.

He also talks about a third category of unjust laws that don't break higher laws:

> The circumstance of an unjust law that does not necessitate violation of a higher law when conforming to the unjust command is certainly a more complicated situation. It involves a prudential judgment as to the proper course of action because justified disobedience is permitted but not required. The touchstone of the judgment is the obligation under natural law to orient actions to the common good.

Those, he says, are known by prudence.

After spending some time discussing "the heart of Hart’s confusion" (lol), he goes on to say that there are two kinds of tolerable laws:

> Human legal authority is thus limited to two types of action: (1) the restraint of personal choices contrary to precepts of natural law, and thus incapable of orientation to the common good; and (2) the direction of the mode of execution of individual choices that are valid determinations of natural law precepts so that the mode of execution furthers the common good.

Basically, a good law can prohibit violations of natural law, or it can prohibit behaviors which don't violate natural law but which conflict with the "common good".

This approaches my questions about morally obligatory penal codes restricting morally ambivalent behaviors. The short answer to my question about legislation concerning morally ambivalent behavior is: "the common good serves as a limiting principle on the power to make legal determinations."

He continues, differentiating between prudent and imprudent laws...

> A law may be imprudent without violating the natural or divine law. Returning to the traffic example, a legislator may wrongly choose the right side of the road to direct traffic flow. He may wrongly believe that the right side is a better choice from an aesthetic and efficiency point of view. Yet, not being the best prudential decision does not invalidate the law.

He concludes that judges can ignore laws that break higher laws, but they should "tolerate" imprudent laws.

It seems to me that, if divine law is an application of natural law, then the discussion here really needs more attention to Deut 4:2 and 12:32. I haven't yet encountered a reasonable non-SGE interpretation of that statute -- people either (a) make it ridiculous ("don't add or subtract laws while pretending I told you to do it"), (b) obey only half of it ("add laws as long as you don't contradict my laws" i.e. "add but don't subtract"), or (c) brush it off carelessly ("Deut 4:2 is positive law"). If we want to lump that law into the "morally ambivalent" category, "prohibitions on behaviors contrary to the common good" (this is (c)), then how in the world do we find that distinction in scripture? We don't; the only way is to decide what God's law is allowed to say prior to reading it, and for NLT, God's law isn't allowed to say that God's law is complete and universal, because that wouldn't leave room for NLT, and so when God's law says Deut 4:2 and 12:32, it ***must*** be construed in a way that makes it irrelevant to us, but Christians need to see relevance in scripture, so they make it relevant to us by assigning a purely didactic teleology to divine law's relationship to us, and then basically using (a) to explain why that teleology matters ("Deut 4:2 is there because God didn't want Israel to mess up his universally helpful teaching book").

The TLDR for chapter 8 is: "good laws are good for the common good; bad laws are bad for the common bad. You'll know which is which by discovering natural law, exercising prudence, and reading the Bible." 

### End of digression to Chapter 8

Anyway back to chapter 7, these are the 5 criteria he uses to evaluate the success of theories of authority:

> To justify the conclusion that there is, within a given legal system, a general obligation to obey the law, the supporting argument or arguments must, according to Green, show that this obligation is (i) a moral reason for action; (ii) a content-independent reason for action, meaning a reason to do as the state directs because the state directs it and not because its directives have a certain content; (iii) a binding or mandatory reason for action, as opposed to a reason which simply happens to outweigh other relevant reasons; (iv) a particular reason for action, meaning a reason that arises only for the directives of a citizen’s (or subject’s) own state, and not for the directives of other states; and, finally, (v) a universal reason for action, in the double sense that it binds all of a state’s citizens to all of that state’s laws.

I'm not sure I actually agree with this criteria... as I think a word from God is enough without all that demonstration, while all that demonstration without a word from God is impossible (on criteria 1). As a side note, using the itemizations in my own work, here's how SGE measures up to his list:

(i) corresponds to VI.2.g

(ii) corresponds to VI.2.a

(iii) corresponds maybe to VI.2.f and g

(iv) corresponds to VI.1 or VI.2.f, h, and i

(v) corresponds to VI.2.e and c

I'm not suggesting that the Bible can be seriously subject to this kind of evaluation, nor that SGE without all of its stated covenantal defenses can be shoehorned into this kind of critique. It was just a bit of fun.

After this, he evaluates consent/contract theories, and finds them inadequate on the basis that consent is transient and partial in large and multi-generational groups, while laws are universally binding and persistent.

Then he addresses Utilitarianism, criticizing it on all of the obvious bases. For example, that a law imposed on the basis of utilitarianism implies an obligation to disobey the same law wherever it lacks utility. In short, it fails (ii), (iii), and (v). He spends quite a bit of text on this.

A problem I perceive in philosophical moral/civil arguments is that mental-gymnastics can be a legitimately winning move *if* none of the laws acknowledged by society's current "rule of recognition" for philosophical discourse are broken. Someone who's good with words could probably rationalize ways in which utilitarianism and consent/contract theories meet all of the above criteria, or they could just reject the criteria. For a utilitarian, what good is a moral obligation apart from the very premise of utilitarianism anyway? All that said, I basically agree with the practical issues he identifies in the above systems, but again I'm not sure whether his 5 criteria for theoretical success are real.

That's it for offense. Let's see if he does more than mere artistry in his defense:

He starts with ontology, and serves dessert first:

> The natural law justification of authority can be summed up in the old saying: “All authority comes from God.”...Authority comes from God only, and all authorities that hold sway are of his ordinance.”

And after some iteration on that topic, the moment I've been waiting for! His thesis on the justification for human authority:

> The eternal law is the only law that is an uncaused cause since the eternal law is nothing other than the divine wisdom ordering the universe. The eternal law legislates the ends of things, including legal authority and human law. If we can find authority legislated into the eternal law, we will have found a source from which all subsequent authority can be derived. Yet, as we showed in chapter 4, we come to know the content of the eternal law not directly but through our participation in the eternal law, or through the natural law. Likewise, we encounter the natural law not solely in the abstract but through the developing customary history of real political communities. Thus, by dialectically examining the authority exercised in actual historically developing communities, we can find the origin of authority in the eternal law.

[page 289-290]

Here is the flow:

1. Human authority [to legislate normative changes as defined above] is legislated into eternal law
2. The content of eternal law is known through participation in it via natural law
3. natural law is encountered through the developing customary history of real political communities
4. Most real historical political communities had legislators

C: We know from examination of historic communities that human legislators are everywhere, so they are founded in natural law (4,3), so they are eternal law (2,1)

(Chapters 4 and 6 develop P3 from Romans 2 and some practical observations about group survival)

He goes on:

> Aquinas begins his consideration of sovereign authority by considering man’s ends. In doing so he begins with the eternal and natural law. As we discussed in chapter 2, the eternal law establishes the ends of man’s nature. Those ends become known through the natural inclinations, which direct man.

Is this compatible with the method he proposed earlier for discovering normative principles from natural law?

> (1) counsel, (2) equity, (3) the nurturing of good habits, and (4) the advice and example of a good man

Are pagan kings in category (1) or (4)?

He flows this into a larger teleological justification:

> Man is meant to live in a society. Since a community is a heterogeneous organism, it needs a principle of order to unify it. Authority is therefore both “appropriate and sometimes necessary” because in order to be effective in a social context, the determinations of natural law that affect the common good will have to be “public and relatively stable.” ... This justification appears on the surface to be utilitarian. Authority is justified because it is necessary to make social life possible. But this appearance is only superficial. Authority is not only necessary but, as Porter says, appropriate, and is in fact good. Authority fulfills a particular need for public and definitive determinations to be made for individuals in a social context.

Remember, when he says "authority", he's not just talking about rulers (i.e. like Mosaic judges), but human legislators with the power to impose new normative sequences; to invent moral obligations (by means of the investigation into Natural Law which we described elsewhere). He says this is necessary to make social life possible.

He builds on this:

>  Put another way, human authority was not strictly necessary. The eternal law could have specified all principles of action in the natural and divine law, leaving no room for determination. God chose to leave this task, in a sense, unfinished and thus intended the need that authority satisfies.

Now, he clarifies, he's concerned with particulars:

> If natural and divine law explicitly contained all particular determinations of right action, there would be no room for the election of means—the realm of human liberty.

But as his prior discussion about legislative explosion demonstrated, he doesn't expect all the particulars to be expressly accounted for in any government anyway. He later reiterates:

> [Aquinas] does not advocate the formulation of an all-encompassing omnibus code, for “certain individual facts that cannot be covered by the law” need to be left to individual judgment.

He accepts the role of case law, but denies that Biblical case law accounts for all circumstances, and supposes that if it did, we'd lack "human liberty". 

Much of the rest of the chapter is elaboration on what NLT stipulates:

He proceeds to talk about how virtue-making obedience only exists if the authority is good. No particular objections with that premise; this section seems apologetic. He also argues for the inclusion of precedent in judicial consideration, and *ex ante* formulation of general rules as laws. In this discussion, he also explains basically that legislation is good where it, in a utilitarian sense, accomplishes the good (directly or indirectly, as I commented earlier).

Then he talks about how theories of consent are properly positioned in the context of authority-delegation; people choosing and maintaining their leaders. His argument here reminds me a lot of Lex Rex, which is a book I'm very fond of in spite of much disagreement with it. He develops the idea by noting that consent to particular legal acts are not legitimizing criteria, but simply useful for the leader to redirect his efforts.

He borrows Isidore from Aquinas, concerning the teleological orientation of law toward "common good". (From what I can tell, this is differentiated from atheistic notions of human flourishing only by a examination of its expressed intent. Humans flourish when they know about God, we suppose.)

He talks a bit about street lights, and gives the socially relativistic explanation for NLT legislation -- how some laws are better for some societies than others, etc.. I've talked a lot about why I reject that in the past. I have no reason to think that Biblical law isn't sufficient for today.

Then he talks about original intent; compares deistic NLT to Christian NLT (Deism fails because it lacks the information that Special Revelation tells us about God); then he measures his formulation in terms of the 5 criteria above and concludes that NLT wins.

TLDR:

(This is a highly critical summary, guys. I hope I'm not overstating my criticism here, but honestly thinking about this kinda drives me crazy -- that is to say, I'm aware that I feel passionate about this and I'm trying self consciously to limit the influence of my emotions on the topic.)

Main points from the book:

1. Laws are just (and actual) if they (1.a) don't break natural or divine laws, or (1.b) indirectly and prudently direct people toward the common good.

2. Human civil authority is defined by its ability to create new moral/normative obligations by means of civil legislation (category 1.b)

3. We know that human civil authority is legitimate and morally permissible because every country has it, and it seems necessary for a functioning society, and so it's part of the natural law.

4. The Biblical description of morality is, concerning particular judgments, incomplete on purpose, to leave room for us to have freedom to exercise our human liberties by legislating prudentially.

5. He has a 5-point criteria for validating legal theories.

I take some issue with 1.b in NLT -- McCall permits prudent legislation that penalizes morally ambivalent behavior. I see that as unjust, but within his system, the prohibition makes the target immoral.

His statements about the necessity of human authority are very nearly the opposite of my understanding of 2 Tim 3:16-17. Scripture does account for all possible moral circumstances, and it is for this very reason that God's law is a freeing law. We know the bounds of our liberty, and are at peace with God because of Christ's satisfaction of that very same written law.

Every country (including Israel) since the dawn of humanity has practiced idolatry; is it natural law? (No.) Why not? (Reference to Bible as "divine law".) What if the Bible told us that God's law was perfect, complete, timeless, and that we shouldn't add or subtract from it? (Incompatible with prior commitments; ignore.) His grounding for the source and permission for human civil authority is compelling in its verbosity, but neither Biblical nor reasonable. If we look at the history of societies and see they all had human lawmakers, that doesn't mean human lawmaking is necessary, nor that it is in natural law or divine law. The necessity of human lawmakers wasn't proved, as far as I can tell, and I can hardly imagine how he would prove it.

Both CNLT (if he's right) and Biblical Law (if I'm right) satisfy his 5-point criteria. That was fun to check out. And, at least by that standard, he at least doesn't invalidate SGE. (Anyway how could he? If he did, Biblical law wouldn't be answerable for ancient Israel either). So, his criteria isn't exhaustive. That's fine and normal.

After reading it, I'm still kinda wondering about an inherent ambiguity in CNLT. He gives it a lot of treatment in the book, but I can't seem to get past the answers in a way that's practical to me; there's so much inference and "prudence" involved in it -- Idk maybe I'm not the right kind of prudent for NLT style thinking lol:

- How do statements like "shouldn't conflict with natural law" not reduce to "prudence" when natural law can be derived from secular examples (i.e. "developing customary history")?

- How do statements like "shouldn't conflict with divine law" not reduce to "prudence" when, categorically, Biblical statutes that have face-value conflicts with NLT can be recontextualized?

- And what does "prudence" mean if not "pursuant to common good"? 

- And what does "pursuant to common good" mean, when natural and divine law, the candidate answerers, have been reduced to "prudence"?

I understand that without God any moral/judicial theory is ridicuous, but what if we just tack, "and also acknowledge God", onto the end of the Humanist manifesto. How would it look different in practice?

I know, that's a bit of an unfair question, and a CNLT advocate who has spent half as much time elucidating his thoughts as McCall will be indignant at it -- but really, it feels like the huge quantity of words is serving to obfuscate systematic incoherence in this theory. But more imporantly, I'm just not seeing a clear criteria for dividing Biblical laws into normative and not, and without that, if we can brush off Mosaic laws on the basis that they'd subtract from NLT, or if we consider Mosaic law incomplete on the grounds that NLT needs it to be incomplete, then what are we even using the Bible for, really? Is it just for training our mind, by reading it often, to increase our prudence?

 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"