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.