Natural Theology & Natural Law: Twin Pillars of the Reformed Classicalist Distinctive

It is difficult to miss that the critics of natural theology and the critics of natural law are almost always the same critics. This is true outside of Reformed circles as well, yet among the Reformed it takes on a particular theme. I have called it elsewhere the “soteriological critique of nature.” In simple terms, the questions of the soteriology (since the Reformation had a recovery of the core elements of the gospel as its main concern) came to swallow up questions of reason and nature.

Because of Reformed Orthodox polemics against what I call “the big four” of the seventeenth century—Romanism, Socinianism, Arminianism, Cartesianism—and because various historical circumstances would not permit an advancement of Reformed predominance in the universities of the Western nations afterward, a positive theoretical construction of reason and nature in Reformed prolegomena never got underway. In came the Enlightenment, and the rest is history as they say. In the twentieth century, under the influence of Barthianism and Van Tillianism, the Reformed traditions came under the impression that the “natural” in natural theology and natural law have as their defining feature the deliverances of “natural man” and his “autonomous reasoning.”

The use of philosophy and even logic in relating Christian doctrines to each other, or to other matters of apologetics or ethics was now suspect. Systematic theologies stopped including prolegomena sections in the front of their chapters. Conservatives began to agree with liberal theologians that the classical incommunicable attributes of God were not in fact compatible with the personal God found in the narrative flow of Scripture. There was always a fideistic presence in church history; but now among the Reformed, to reject these extra-biblical categories of the mind (as one would have expected of the Restorationists of the nineteenth century or the Fundamentalists of the twentieth century)—now, all of that was actually considered a tough-minded kind of Calvinism.

In reintroducing ourselves to natural theology and natural law, and why they matter, let me begin by citing R. C. Sproul. Two statements will be of special interest to this point.  

The first pertains to natural theology and can be found in the fifth chapter of Classical Apologetics. The second pertains to natural law, and it came from some introductory remarks made in Sproul’s debate with Greg Bahnsen. 

Natural Theology is for Grounding Rational Theology

Along with his two co-authors, Gerstner and Lindsley, Sproul spoke of a “reconstruction of natural theology” in the heading to that fifth chapter. What does this mean and why does it matter? 

When many people think of natural theology, they think exclusively of the arguments for God’s existence. That is understandable. However, if we begin our doctrine of natural theology with Paul’s own words in the central biblical text, a different picture may begin to emerge. To the Romans, the Apostle says this,

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (1:19-20).

God has communicated himself in all created things. Theologians call this general revelation. That is God’s act. The human response is the other part of the puzzle. Natural theology is literally the knowledge of God through the things that have been made.

Now it is quite true that Paul goes on to speak of how sinners distort this knowledge to the making of idols. The effect of the light is to blind and drive mad and eventually bring conviction on Judgment Day. Yet that is all because of the darkness of sin, and nothing at all about the quality of that light. It would be easy to ignore that this knowledge in itself is still true knowledge. In fact it is an objective truth. It is divine speech. As Paul goes on to say in the letter, “Let God be true though every one were a liar” (Rom. 3:4). 

One of the implications of this true knowledge that comes through nature and is grasped by reason, is that this knowledge doesn’t go away once someone becomes a Christian. We seldom think of this. The debates over natural theology tend to focus on what the unbeliever can or cannot know. Such arguments are important to refute. Recent works written by J. V. Fesko and David Haines may be consulted in consideration of those arguments.

Lost in the shuffle is what may be known about God by the reason per se. What business has a believer with natural theology? Is it solely a matter of “pre-evangelism”? 

Let us then leave aside the apologetics question. When a Spirit-filled Christian is reading his or her Bible, and moves in the mind from text to text, is it merely the ink patterns that give us the true knowledge of what God is like? Take as two instances: 1. How one summarizes the doctrine of the Trinity and 2. How one reconciles attributes like immutability and omniscience with narrative texts that seem to show God changing his mind or learning something new. 

I won’t keep the reader in suspense. Natural theology is at work here. But how so? 

Classical theologians were pretty much all agreed that the doctrine of the Trinity belongs to articles of faith and could not have been rationally demonstrated. It must have been revealed in Scripture. So what would natural theology have to do with this?

Let us start at the simplest point of entry. How many times has the reader heard the complaint that “The Trinity is not in the Bible!” How do we help our friend to progress? We may lay out the premises (each supported inductively by various texts) and then draw our conclusion. Note that it is not merely a handful of rules of logic in play. Even in our exegesis of individual texts, there are objects of the mind where the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” so to speak. Take a clear enough text: Matthew 28:20. Sure, there are three names that Matthew calls by one Name. But what of it? No matter how you answer, you have immediately moved beyond the bare linguistic symbols.  

Now the non-classicalist may agree to where this is headed and reply, “Yes, but this is only to say that our exegesis must be logical. I may be doing logic, but that is still not natural theology.” But this “doing” of logic—are the rules of logic mere inventions of man or do they not reflect something of the very nature of God? Gordon Clark thought so. Vern Poythress says the same today. Both may be labeled presuppositionalists and nonetheless they would have agreed that logic does not simply presuppose God but is a knowledge of things about God. Things which are nowhere explicitly taught in the text of Scripture. There are other ways in which Trinitarian reflection requires natural theology, but those get more complicated.

For now, think of natural theology — nature as the object and reason as the subject — as “foundational” to our system of doctrine. I don’t mean like a foundation to a house, necessary to be sure, but remaining flat and stationary; but instead think of something more like what DNA is to the whole of a living organism.

The knowledge of God, as he must be, retained in the mind, everywhere the mind moves through the sacred text. A great deal of our conception is a result of intellectual reflection upon abstract concepts. This knowledge of God is formative as we continue to assimilate more of the inspired data from Scripture. 

That brings a second instance in. How does one answer an Open Theist or a Molinist concerning texts that contain counterfactuals, or else those narratives that seem to show God learning or changing his mind? Aside from pointing to the use of anthropomorphisms, we might ask: What lies behind the finite narrative angles? It is nothing other than what God must be. This too borrows profusely from nature. If we like, we may tack a dozen proof texts on to such reasoning. As we should.

But what one is doing, even in demonstration from those proof texts, is precisely reasoning about natures—objects of divine attributes (analogically known, yes, but of the divine nature all the same)—whether one is exegeting a particular text, or else logically relating two or more texts. Hence natural theology is always pervading our systematic theology and our biblical theology and any other kind of theology one wants to talk about.

None of this should be misunderstood. The traditional arguments for the existence of God should not be minimized. Indeed we should recognize that popular criticisms of them are typically just that — popular, but not much more. Even more sophisticated criticisms, like those of Kant against the validity of such arguments in the early part of the modern era; or those of Plantinga against their necessity in our own time, may be deconstructed under careful analysis. But this is not the place for that essential work. At the moment I only want to set before the reader the foundational roles of nature and reason in the synthesis of general revelation and special revelation.

Natural Law is for Maintaining Civilization 

If one can stomach the rough audio, the debate between Drs. Sproul and Bahnsen featured some very interesting opening remarks. When summarizing his concerns with presuppositionalist thinking, Sproul mentioned two. Neither one regarded the practical work of apologetics per se. Of course, that is not to suggest that Sproul did not also object to elements of the apologetic method—the instance of the fallacy of circular reasoning being a prime example. What most of my Reformed brethren utterly fail to grapple with is the more profound philosophical-cultural analysis behind the larger criticisms.

The first was a kind of parallel to Neo-Orthodoxy. Likely that just offended all the Van Tillians. It always does. “Don’t you know that Van Til wrote two books against Barthianism?” Indeed. I will have to content myself with explaining all of those parallels on another day. For now, I would direct the reader’s attention especially to Sproul’s second concern: the loss of natural law and thus the erosion of the intellectual and moral tools to save Western Civilization. 

“What! How did he get from that A to that Z?” 

Allow me to explain. 

Natural law, as Aquinas put it, “is participation of the eternal law in the rational creature” [1]. Here is one of those examples of Platonic influence in Thomas. In the interest of demystifying this statement, let me offer this translation into the language of the post-medieval mind. 

Natural law is (1) the way things are in nature (2) because of the way things are in God (3) seen by reason.

Note that what we said of the fuller definition of natural theology will apply here as well. In the same way that natural theology was first a “theology” before it is applied to apologetics, so natural law is first an “ontology” (of the nature of things) before it is applied to ethics. Now it is true that moral natures are the basic focus, yet the masculinity of a man is first a nature, and, as such, is a rational grounding for both the absurdity and the ensuing misery of sexual deviancy or in cowardly speech.

Now it would only take a few short paces of our imagination to think of other ways in which the objective nature of things in this world spells the right way to act in relation to those objects. This is true whether the object be a virtue or vice we see in others, a danger to be faced, or an animal to either eat or to treat with kindness, or both. 

This too has a scriptural foundation, and not coincidentally in the same early going of Paul’s epistle to the Romans as we grounded our concept of natural theology.

For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them (2:14-15).

There is much about this passage that exceeds our present concern. What I would draw attention to is that the same substance of God’s moral requirements that the Jews have by the Mosaic law—excluding the ceremonial and the letter of the civil law of course—the Gentiles have “written on the heart.” This imagery is not to be confused with that New Covenant promise of Jeremiah 31:33, where the Holy Spirit will “write” the law on the hearts of those he makes regenerate. That is related, but it is not the same thing being described. Here Paul is speaking of all mankind, possessing in what we call conscience that knowledge of moral principles and conclusions—not merely, “You shall not murder,” but by implication, “That goes for the infant in the womb as well.”

Incidentally, have you not noticed how Barth [2] and Van Til [3] shared the same disdain for natural law? We should also not so easily gloss over the several criticisms of the concept in the writings of Bahnsen [4] and Frame [5]. There is indeed a common thread between Barthianism and Van Tillianism, and it is simply that one cannot go back behind Christ (Barth) or beyond Scripture (Van Til) to some autonomous zone. One must have only the truth that is by revelation—here they equivocate, as general revelation and special revelation are both, well, revelation. But I digress. 

It is those amidst the present recovery of natural law that may need more of a tongue-lashing than prior generations who have feared it. Let us take care that our newfound discovery of the nature of things does not become an exercise in mere distinction, and finally that distinction of ourselves that goes by the name elitism. 

Enough of that, though. What matters is that we spare no moral action nor arena nor means of assessment from this old rational law of nature. Empirical data in economics is an object with a nature. Animosity based on racial differences (and repentance for being guilty of it) is an object with a nature. The tendency of power to flow toward a central state, and in accordance with the intellectual sloth of a population—this too is an object with a nature. So is the sloth, by the way. 

If a particular ideology, say, Marxism, is the culprit in the death of a quarter billion behind us and probably a solid billion in the path ahead, then mere biblicism is quite out of its league in naming the elephant and making a quick kill before it tramples us all. This is no deficiency in the Bible. It is rather a superstition of ours, to ignore the Bible’s own speech about how to apply its general truths where those truths remain general.

Anti-intellectualism in the church always involves the loss of natural theology and natural law.

It stands to reason that these two should be considered “pillars” of Christian thought. Apologetics and ethics deal with showing why our faith is true and working out our response in the world. Both are kinds of spiritual military engagement, if we are to take Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 seriously. In one we engage with skeptical assaults on the faith and in the other we engage with the image of God: exercising its virtues or else protecting it against violence. To be unskilled in the natures involved in either arena can only inevitably lead to retreat.

Here is the real upshot. Reformed Classicalism has a very practical aim. We are not engaged in intellectual shadow-boxing. Nor do we blame the intellect where we find that happening. It is a failure of nerve. That moral failure is first a failure to have appreciated that, perhaps, the greatest minds of the Christian church may have known what they were talking about when they talked about truth. How easily the seminarian (who becomes your pastor) is weaseled out of that reservoir that flows from eternal things to all that can be thought about below.

Do not be surprised if natural theology and natural law leads one precisely to orthodoxy in religious matters and to the rules of law and liberty in political matters. And be very much suspicious of those who would easily dismiss pillars that have stood since ancient times, and of those who would “recover” them only by covering up their, shall we say, Western implications. 

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1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.1.91.3

2. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2:528-35.

3. Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 38; The Defense of the Faith, 78; 279.

4. Greg Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, 30; 399; 545.

5. John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, 95-96; 242-50; A History of Western Philosophy and Theology, 78; 191; 764.