Tango Alpha Zulu....you know what to do...this is not a drill
Posted on 09/03/2004 8:47:55 PM PDT by Choose Ye This Day
Natural Law in Our Lives, in Our Courts (Part 1)
J. Budziszewski on the 4 Ways of Knowing It
AUSTIN, Texas, APRIL 1, 2004 (Zenit) - Legal scholars and theologians debate over the details of natural law, but an expert in the field believes that the fundamentals are something that we can't not know.
J. Budziszewski is professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas and author of several books, including most recently, "What We Can't Not Know: A Guide" (Spence Publishing).
Budziszewski shared the four God-given witnesses of natural law: deep conscience, the designedness of things in general, the particulars of our own design, and natural consequences.
Part 2 of this interview will appear Friday.
Q: Your many books and articles in publications such as First Things have expressed the importance of recovering the moral truths of natural law. Briefly, how have you developed this thought over your academic career?
Budziszewski: At the beginning of my academic career I would have agreed with George Gaylord Simpson that man is the result of a meaningless and purposeless process that did not have us in mind.
When I acknowledged God, I was forced to acknowledge that the process has been neither meaningless nor purposeless; natural law expresses both "nature," the human design, and "law," the Designer's command.
In order to think clearly about these things one must unlearn a variety of errors and intellectual vices, and sometimes it seems this is all I do. On the other hand, the culture as a whole has to do the same thing, so perhaps it is not such a bad thing for some of its intellectuals to carry on their unlearning in public.
Q: What is it about natural law that attracts you to the topic? How have your studies of natural law been affected by your own pilgrimage of faith? What conclusions have you come to?
Budziszewski: In the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans, St. Paul makes an interesting remark about the pagans. Their problem isn't that they ought to know about the Creator but don't; it's that they do know about the Creator but pretend that they don't, worshipping created things instead.
In modern language, they aren't ignorant, but in denial. It seems to me that this is our problem not only with God but also with his basic moral requirements, and that the natural law tradition needs to wrestle with this problem more seriously. That is what most of my work is about.
Do these matters have anything to do with my own pilgrimage of faith? Yes, certainly. In the old days, when I said there was no God, was no good, and was no evil, it was my way of putting my thumb in his eye, because, like all of us, I really knew better.
Having been redeemed despite myself, I think I've gained some insight into these processes of denial, and in gratitude, the least I can do is write about them.
Q: Why do you say that natural law is written on the heart? Isn't the law of grace what is written on the heart? Or are they really the same?
Budziszewski: The phrase comes from St. Paul's remark in the second chapter of the book of Romans that when gentiles who do not have the law of Moses do what the law requires, they show that the "works" of the law -- its requirements -- are written on their hearts.
Traditionally, this has been considered a reference to the natural law, but it refers to grace, too. As the Catechism explains, "the preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace," and as my friend Russell Hittinger has written, the natural law is the first of these preparations -- the "first grace."
The metaphor of writing on the heart is deeply embedded in Scripture.
Jeremiah 17:1 declares that the sin of the people is written on their hearts. Proverbs 3:3 and Proverbs 7:3 exhort the people to write the law on their hearts.
In Jeremiah 31:33, quoted in Hebrews 8:10 and Hebrews 10:16, God promises to write the law on their hearts more perfectly. And Romans 2:14-15 declares that the "works" of the law, meaning the commands without this promise of further grace, are written on the hearts of everyone already.
Q: How is the natural moral law different from the physical laws of nature, like gravity?
Budziszewski: Strictly speaking, law is an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by the one who has care of the community.
It is addressed to a mind that can understand what is demanded and act accordingly. Principles like gravitation are "laws" only in an analogical sense. They certainly result from God's governance, but the falling apple is not freely and rationally aligning its behavior with a rule that it knows to be right.
Q: How is it even possible to know the natural law, considering how disputed its contents are?
Budziszewski: I hear much about this supposed dispute, but I don't believe in it.
People who talk about the natural law pretty much agree about its basic contents -- don't murder, don't commit adultery, honor your parents, and so on. They are the same things you find in the Decalogue. Moreover, these precepts are recognized -- even if only in their breach -- by societies in every time and place.
Disagreements concern not the basics but the details; as C.S. Lewis put it, the peoples of the earth may disagree about whether you may have one wife or four, but they all know about marriage.
Even the cannibal knows that it is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life; what he claims is that the people in the other tribe aren't human. I strongly suspect that deep down, even the cannibal knows better. Why else does he perform elaborate expiatory rituals before taking their lives?
Q: How then do we know the natural law?
Budziszewski: There seem to be at least four different ways that "what we can't not know" is known. In the spirit of St. Paul's remark that God has not left himself without witness among the nations, these might be called the Four Witnesses.
First, and in one sense the most fundamental, is the witness of deep conscience -- the awareness of the moral basics that has traditionally been called synderesis. Although it can be suppressed and denied, and must be distinguished from conscious moral belief, it continues to operate even underground.
Second is the witness of the designedness of things in general, and consequently of the Designer, which some people have called the "sensus divinitatis."
In another sense this is even more fundamental than deep conscience, because unless deep conscience has been designed to tell us truth, there is no reason to take deep conscience seriously. That, by the way, is the cardinal problem of so-called evolutionary ethics.
Third is the witness of the particulars of our own design. An example is the complementarity of the sexes: There is something missing in the makeup of the man which can be completed only by the woman, and something missing in the makeup of the woman which can be completed only by the man. Don't we all really know that?
I cannot be completed by my mirror image; I am made for the Other. A Christian, of course, suspects that this prepares us for intimacy with God, for whom we were also made, but who is even more Other.
Last is the witness of natural consequences. Those who cut themselves bleed; those who abandon their children have none to stroke their brows when they are old; those who suppress their moral knowledge become even stupider than they had intended. And so it goes.
We may think of this witness as the teacher of last resort, the one we are forced to confront when we have ignored the other three.
Q: I understand that you and your wife are to be received into the Catholic Church at Easter. Did your study of natural law lead to your decision to become Catholic?
Budziszewski: No, but it had something to do with it. I will always be grateful for what I learned in evangelical Protestantism, among other things its fierce loyalty to the truth and authority of the Bible.
If you do believe that the Bible comes from God, however, then you have to believe that the natural law comes from him, too, because the Bible so plainly presupposes and points to it.
In particular, it confirms all Four Witnesses: Consider for example its confirmation of the witness of deep conscience in Romans 2:14-15, which I have mentioned already, and its confirmation of the witness of natural consequences in Galatians 6:7. For this reason, I was deeply perplexed that Protestantism did not teach the natural law, and that some influential Protestant writers even condemned belief in natural law as unbiblical and pagan.
Of course I couldn't help wondering why the only place where this deeply biblical doctrine was preserved in its purity was the Catholic Church. This was especially unsettling because, according to Protestant prejudice, the Catholic Church does not take holy Scripture seriously.
Q: It seems that after a long period of skepticism, Protestants have begun to embrace the natural law tradition in recent years. What accounts for this change?
Budziszewski: This welcome change is more a return than a reversal, because the earliest Reformers believed strongly in natural law.
John Calvin remarked: "Now, as it is evident that the law of God which we call moral, is nothing else than the testimony of natural law, and of that conscience which God has engraven on the minds of men, the whole of this equity of which we now speak is prescribed in it. Hence it alone ought to be the aim, the rule, and the end of all law."
Martin Luther made similar remarks. This is one of a number of Catholic beliefs that Protestants used to accept but have over the years given up.
What happened in recent years to bring conservative Protestants back to natural law is that the culture became biblically illiterate. In former generations, Protestants could speak with their neighbors about shared concerns in the language of holy Scripture, because their neighbors knew the Bible and respected it.
Today that is impossible. The new situation requires quoting the Bible less, but following its apologetical example more closely.
Consider the example of St. Paul. When he broached Christian topics with pagans, he didn't pull Scripture verses from his pocket. Instead he appealed to things they knew at some level already.
More and more, Protestants are finding that they must now do as Paul did. In the broadest sense, however, what Paul was following was the method of natural law.
John Calvin remarked: "Now, as it is evident that the law of God which we call moral, is nothing else than the testimony of natural law, and of that conscience which God has engraven on the minds of men, the whole of this equity of which we now speak is prescribed in it. Hence it alone ought to be the aim, the rule, and the end of all law."
In the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans, St. Paul makes an interesting remark about the pagans. Their problem isn't that they ought to know about the Creator but don't; it's that they do know about the Creator but pretend that they don't, worshipping created things instead. In modern language, they aren't ignorant, but in denial. It seems to me that this is our problem not only with God but also with his basic moral requirements...
Thanks for linking to this article. Funny that I just read through the archive of FR articles and came across a thread on suggesting a constitutional monarchy in the United States. I know a Catholic Briton on that thread who argued that the whole concept of natural rights as embedded in American Founding is Protestant (nor Catholic) and Lockeian humanist, is therefore anti-God and hence garbage.
The thread is here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1160018/posts?page=329#329
That's gonna hurt. (snicker, snicker)
Tango Alpha Zulu....you know what to do...this is not a drill
Actually, John Calvin wove most of his moral philosophy around the concept of Natural Law. He found it to be in harmony with his interpretation the scriptures.
But this begs my point. Some in the church has taken Natural Law to say that man is basically good. I'm sure this was not Calvin's definition of Natural Law since he felt man was depraved. Natural Law, since it is not defined, can be interpreted by anyone to mean anything. Thus, many in the Western world (even atheists) accepted Natural Law because it meant exactly what they wanted it to mean.
This is the position I take as well, Locke distorted the idea of natural law as did Hobbes before him.
To understand this you have to look at the history of Europe and the history of Western philosphy and see how they converge. I'm a monarchist as well, certainly a rare thing in America.
People misunderstand the concept of monarchy, I am not an absolutist. Absolutism was a Protestant, statist doctrine. The centeralization of authority, this is not how the Catholic monarchies of Chistendom operated. Rather the Catholic monarchies operated under the principle of subsidiarity, or decentralization of power.
Let's consider the life a typical person in the Europe in the Middle Ages.
One might have a piece of land or a tradeskill, whatever it was you owned it and were free to use it as you saw fit. One might live under the protection of a noble lord who lived nearby, in exchange for his protection from bandits or common criminals you paid a small tax. One might be aware of the fact that somewhere out there there was a great King but you have never seen him and don't expect you ever will because it has no effect on your daily life. You are truly free of state involvement in your daily life, can any of us in the US say that? This is what Burke was referring to when he lamented the dissolution of "buffers" between the people and state in Reflections on the Revolution in France The church provided that buffer, also the trade guilds and the aristocracy itself.
A noble or King's legitimacy and authority was connected to his piety, he spent most of his days being the final arbiter of legal disputes, like a supreme court of sorts. His actions in all matters were guided by tradition, common law and the infallible moral teachings of the Church. This is what we call "the social Kingship of Christ"
This last part is, of course, what the Protestants cannot swallow since they have rejected religious authority. It is in this rejection where you find the basis of liberal thought - the sentiment of Satan - "I will not serve".
Once man rejected the authority of the Church a vacumn of power was created and the state begin to increase in importance. John Calvin and Martin Luther's doctrines that rejected the authority of the Church to interpet what was truth gave permission to the power hungry Monarchs to reject the authority of the Church over their actions, enter the theory of absolutism. The whole idea of separtion of Church and State is a reaction to the absolutist monarchs that indeed made themselves God but of course did not possess the charisma of infallibility. Henry VII was the first, although there were rumblings in Spain and France prior to his action to separate himself from Rome and make himself Pope of his own Church. James I of course took the theory of absolutism to its natural conclusion and openly advocated it in word and deed.
What always happens when a group leaves the true Church, the Anglican and Protestant movements began to fragment, they no longer had anyone in strict doctrinal authority so they started interpeting Christianity to be whatever suited their political agenda. Oliver Cromwell and his Puritians (A signficant influence on America) for instance.
In France the rationalists and growning Athiest movements of the philosophes gained power and threatened the rule of the Catholic monarchy, which unfortunately responded by embracing the doctrines of Absolutism.
I could go on, but from there it continued to deterioate. The English civil war, the reign of terror under Elizabeth the I and eventually the atrocity of the French Revolution.
So when the American founding fathers were writing about "separation of Church and State" they were responding, primarly to the unjust imposition of the Angelican hereasy on the people of England. They were also strongly influenced by the anti-clerical (anti-Catholic) philosphes of France and Lutheran northern Europe. Their secularist, materialist and statist ideas lead directly to Marx and the statist atrocities of the 19th and 20th Century.
In order to oppose the cancer that is liberalism we must reject it in its entirity.
The Catholic Church has never expressed an explicit preference for the form of government, only that any government must be orientated towards the common good and work with the Church in its primary mission which is the salvation of souls. It is my personal opinion that democracy or republicanism can never meet this standard for it is founded on the error that authority comes from the "consent of the governed" not on the truth that authority comes only from God. Under the structures of Christendom the Church had a disciplinary fuction to correct the behavior of rulers that acted or failed to act in opposition to Church teachings, how would one accomplish this if 51% of the populace acted in the same manner? You cannot of course, only by making one individual responsible can you guide a society correctly.
Some historians interested persons should review:
Hilaire Belloc
Christopher Dawson
H.W. Crocker
G.K. Chesterton
The economic organization of Christendom
www.distributism.com
The political organization of Christendom
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/national/hre.htm
Some good websites on Catholic counter-revolution and monarchism:
http://www.angelfire.com/in3/theodore/opinion/articles/coulombe.html
http://www.tfp.org/
http://jkalb.org/
http://crclinks.tripod.com/
http://www.crc-internet.org/
http://www.dailycatholic.org/2004cats.htm
http://www.geocities.com/dawsonchd/
A fascinating booklet from the late 19th Century, imprinteur by the Church http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/dissent/libissin.htm
Traditionalist Catholic online magazine, often with articles on these issues
http://www.seattlecatholic.com/ I would add I was like many on this board two years ago, slavishly devoted to the cult of Deists and Protestant and the errors of liberal thought. As I said, liberalism is a cancer on Western civilization, we cannot excise the parts of it we don't like and leave the rest to fester and grow.
The only thing you demonstrate with your comment is you don't have a clue as to the definition of natural law. It cannot be interpreted to mean anything. Those who know what it means understand very well its implications. First and foremost it does not mean man is totally depraved in the sense the GRPL claims.
The obvious implication is that the GRPL form of Calvinism is in conflict with the writings of Calvin to such an extent, that several members can reasonable be considered hyper-Calvinists.
Your attempts to massage the writings of Calvin that conflict with your understanding are so obvious it's funny.
Calvin understood that all men have been given grace sufficient to know that God exists and a sense of ritht and wrong. This is all a part of what every reasonably informed person knows is part of the concept of natural law.
The only people (on this forum) who go around saying the natural law can mean anything are those who are so emotionally attached to their form of Calvinism that to admit that the knowledge of natural law is part of the way God created man would require him/her to re-evaluate their theology and alter their beliefs about predestination. If you were to do so, you just might bring your brliefs more in line with what Calvin actually wrote.
I would like a clarification of the rules here, if you don't mind.
Is it the official policy of Free Republic to allow members to constantly call others on this forum heretics (hyper-Calvinists)? If so, does this rule apply only to calling Calvinists heretics or will others be allowed to call any member of this forum heretics?
Secondly, does the antics of some of this thread and many other recent threads not constitute bait, especially given the continual calling of certain groups of posters here heretics?
In the service of the Lord,
Christian.
Secondly, does the antics of some of this thread and many other recent threads not constitute bait, especially given the continual calling of certain groups of posters here heretics?
Pointing out that a member of the GRPL has views that are contrary to the writings of John Calvin himself is the same as calling that person a heretic? Give me a break.
And let's get real, there are hyper-Calvinists in the world. To claim that no members of the GRPL could possibly fit within the parameters of hyper-Calvinism is naive and somewhat arrogant. After all, I think I recall that Philip Johnson stated that no one has ever admitted to being a hyper-Calvinist, but everyone admits they do exists.
Do you not have a comment on the substance of my post? apparently not. Seems to me that you are acting a bit like John Kerry who whines that the Republicans are challenging his patriotiam when they are merely talking about his record.
I doubt that there is hardly anyone on the religion forum who has been subject to more unwarranted personal attacks than me, yet you act like an immature crybaby ala Kerry. I don't go whining to the moderator just because I don't like something some idiot posts about me. I am a man, and I can handle it. My post wasn't even directed to you.
BTW, if you are going to complain to the moderator about something I posted, at least have the decency to ping me as well.
Besides, your argument is not only with me, it is with John Calvin himself.
CTD is exhibit A as to why mature theological discussion is impossible on this forum.
Well, I must admit that before the post I have never heard it put into those terms before. However, the Internet is a wonderful resource for gathering information. I would not qualify myself as deeply knowledgeable but I did read about 15-20 articles in researching this. You should try it. But in this regard you are correct. I don't have a clue as to the definition of Natural Law because no one else does as many articles both pro and con admitted. If you could find me one I would be appreciative.
I wasn't approaching this as a theological issue but as a philosophical issue which is what the Encyclopedia of Philosopher's termed it. This makes sense to me since it spans a number of theologies of diverse views. You may wish to look up this resource.
BTW-Your hatred for Calvinism and particularly for some of the Calvinists here is so apparent from this post you may wish to reexamine your objectively. We are all seekers of understanding God. It is one thing to take theological issues with a religion which does not meet with your interpretation. It is another to slander someone of another belief on this site.
Certainly natural law witnesses to the existence of God as Creator, and of His ordering of all things. No argument there. And that is sufficient to hold man accountable before Him. No man can claim credibly that there is no God, because the evidence is all around him. He can choose to reject that knowledge, just as he can choose to acknowledge it. But acknowledgement of God's existence does not endow him with the ability to exercise saving faith when presented with the Gospel, because the revelation of Jesus Christ to an individual is by the Holy Spirit, not just hearing words. Otherwise, Grace has no power, no meaning. It is Grace which saves, through faith. Salvation is not a "cooperative" or synergistic experience. Salvation is of God, beginning to end.
This is the religion forum, not a humanist philosophy forum. Personally, I have no substantive disagreement with John Calvin's comment about natural law that appears early on in this thread. His definition works fine for me.
I didn't say it did, but I think it can be argued that it is sufficient to cause a man to seek after God and to comprehend the Gospel message when he hears it if his heart and mind are open. Certainly the Holy Spirit is someway involved, but exactly how that is is something man cannot fuly comprehend.
I didn't post this. Someone else did.
To give you an illustration between theology and philosophy I think of John Piper. Dr. Piper requires all his staff who works at his church live close to the church. This is a philosophical view based upon his understanding of the scriptures. One can argue whether Dr. Piper is right or wrong in requiring his staff to live close to the church but it doesn't have any bearing on his theology.
Likewise, Calvin had strong moral principles as well and apparently believed in Natural Law (from what I can discern). Like Dr. Piper, I can agree or disagree with those principles but it makes no difference to his theology.
After reading these articles I happen to think Natural Law is a bunch of hoo-hah. It cannot be proven one way or another. If you want to get into theology and say that man is basically good because Natural Law proves it to be so I would respectfully disagree.
Natural law does not say man is basically good. It would be fairer to say that man knows the difference between good and evil from birth. It does not mean that a man's mind cannot become so corrupted during his life that he no longer recognizes the difference. It does not mean that man will naturally choose right from wrong, hust that he is aware of the difference.
I wasn't aware Budsizewski had entered the Catholic Church. Though I'm glad to hear it, it means that there's one less non-Catholic proponet of Natural Law theory, and this could cause political problems. In Evans v. Romer, before the Supreme Court of Colorado and then the US Supreme Court, certain lawyers argued that natural law theories of ethics are but "sectarian" doctrines of Roman Catholicism, and thus not part of public reasoning. This is plainly false, since even a rabbi, David Novak, has attempted a Jewish version of natural law theory, and Justice Clarence Thomas believed in natural law theory while an Episcopalian.
And with the threads of the past two days, it becomes evident that certain theologies have an interest in denying natural law, so I guess one counterargument to those lawyers is that the denial of natural law is also a "sectarian" practice.
As for the actual article, I'm not entirely convinced design is a self-evident principle. I wonder how Budsizewski would respond to John Henry Cardinal Newman: "I do not believe in God because I believe in design, but I believe in design because I believe in God."
Past FR Thread: The Reappearance of Natural Law
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