In commenting on my review of Darryl’s book, Bill Chellis asks,
I think that Darryl has a doctrine that makes Christianity applicable to politics. Darryl Hart is no heretic. He is no anabaptist. He affirms the soverign Kingship of Christ over both Kingdoms (one common and one holy). I am waiting to hear how, in his mind (and Scott’s) Christ’s rules the nations and how the nations should respond? What is the role of the moral law and what is the nation’s duty toward it?
I do fundamentally agree with Darryl, and I probably agree with him more now than when I wrote the review, though I stand by my comments in the review.
Darryl isn’t making Christianity apolitical. He doesn’t have to make it apolitical, since it is so in its very nature. That’s one of the great differences between the temporary, typological, national covenant, which expired with the death of Christ, and the New Covenant.
I’m a big fan of 17th-century Reformed theology, but there are three areas where we made significant mistakes as a group: 1) eschatology (the rise of chiliasm in the 17th century among Reformed folks says something about us); 2) science (many of us were geocentrists far too long; 3) politics. On one hand we set the framework for overcoming theocracy, on the other hand most of were theocrats and make reckless use of the Mosaic theocracy as it suited our needs in the 16th and 17th centuries. The 1729 American adoption of the Standards and 1789 revisions of the Standards were good and necessary consequences from our hermeneutic and theology.
No theocrat or theonomist can make a compelling case from the NT for theocracy or theonomy. Not one of the apostles made theonomic (calling for the imposition of Mosaic penalties) or theocratic (calling for the civil enforcement of the first table) arguments or overtures to any civil figure or in any civil context.
What evidence is there from the apostolic church or even from the very earliest post-apostolic church that the Christians had any political interests as Christians? As citizens they had political interests (personal and corporate security, freedom to worship etc) but one of the principal arguments by the early post-apostolic or at least early non-canonical apologists the pseudonymous “Mathetes” (The Disciple) to the secular/civil/pagan authorities was: “we’re no threat to existing order. We simply want to be left alone to worship the risen Savior Jesus peacefully. We have no civil/political/cultural intentions.” The reason that Pliny the Younger either spied or sent spies to the Christians and reported to Trajan was precisely because they suspected the early Christians of being subversive of the existing civil order. He found no such subversive activity, because there wasn’t any to be found.
To take a stab at your question concerning how Christ rules the nations, I’ll give the same answer I give to the Dispensationalists (not that you are anyone here is a dispensationalist):
Christ rules the nations in the very same way he’s been doing when he created all that is, when he installed and drowned Pharaoh and his hosts, when he installed and refused to answer Pilate, when he was being crucified, when he ascended into heaven as the true, greater-than-David King, when Stephen was stoned, and when Paul was beheaded: by his providence.
Jesus sovereignly rules over all civil realms, ordaining all that comes to pass and sustaining all civil orders in all times and in all places.
Of course that fact tells us very little about how Christians ought to theorize about the civil magistrate or how they ought to function as members of civil society.
It seems that the question assumes the premise that I’ve seen reflected in other posts, i.e., that Christians (as Christians) have special insights into the nature of things (we do, sola gratia) and therefore are specially gifted for politics. This is a non sequitur. I don’t see how we have any special insights into how to do politics any more than we have them as to how to maths. We know why politics are as they are (sin and the providence of God), and we know why maths work (providence), but those are two different questions.
We have revealed truth about ultimate matters (the Trinity, anthropology, Christology, salvation, church, sacraments and eschatological life) and they surely inform our civil conduct and speech, but apart from the general equity of the Mosaic civil code, I don’t know that we have anything to say to penultimate matters beyond that which we can learn from the natural law (i.e., the second table of the decalogue) as it applies to civil life. According to Paul in Rom 1 and 2 everyone knows this law.
As a recipients of special revelation, we do think of other citizens differently than they do and our treatment of them should reflect our understanding of the grace of God in Christ, but in matters of policy, the doctrine of predestination isn’t really relevant.
Relegating Christians to the status of mere citizens diminishes Christ’s Lordship not one iota. It does diminish our pretensions to special insights into civil life and it diminishes the sometimes accompanying lust for power and that’s a good thing. The sooner we can communicate to our fellow citizens that 1) we’re not after their money either by chicanery or through power politics; 2) that we’re not out to use the levers of power to impose the faith on them, the better off the church as an institution will be and the better off both we and our pagan neighbors will be as we come to talk with them about that which is genuinely transcendent of civil politics.
Thank you for the response Scott. It strikes me how you and Darryl always end up sounding abit like a. baptists (if you like a ecclessiastical reference) or b. deconstructionists (if you prefer a secular/academic reference). You seem to think that the New Testament should be always normative (I know you dont really think this, but you argue that way on the issue of politics). Baptists say, well we do not see NT evidence of infant baptism. They do not take account for organic development of biblical principles as the context changes. Or from the deconstructionist view point you seem to think you can take a piece of a picture and divorce it from its later organic development. I think all of this is problematic.
At any rate, arguing that the Reformed community saw things more clearly in the 18th Century than it did in the 17th is problematic. While Reformed folk had funny idea of eschatology and science they did not write these things into the confession. These were not areas where the complex of donatism-anabaptism-sectariansim was being contrasted with catholicity- the magisterial reformation- orthodoxy. I am not sure that such an important part of confessional Reformed theology can be lightly laid aside as akin to postmillenialism and geocentrism.
That said, you again come close to hashing out a Christian’s view of civil authority but seem to stub your toe on the way to kicking the ball.
First, you say that Christ’s rules through providence. I agree. Can we learn anything from a providential reading of history. I think so. Should it frame our politics? I also think so. Can you think of any good thing you enjoy in the West as being possible outside of the context of the developments of Western Christendom? Has Christ judged nations over the past two centuries? What were the judged for? Or do you believe Christ’s reign over history to be inscrutible? Can we pick sides in the great battles of history?
Second, you suggest natural law should be determinative (which you, I think strangely, identify with the 2nd table alone) yet just this issue is at the heart of the question. Since the 19th Century jurisprudence has been divorced from transcendent principles of law. Should Christian citizens embrace such a change? Or should we defend private property, and oppose abortion because they the moral law gives us sanction to do so? Finally, does the fact that all men know the law mean that each individual, or each nation (culture) have equal understanding of such matters? How does this inform how we think about the question?
ok, I should shut up and get back to work… but one more thing.
From the perspective of liberal western democracies, the political implications of Christianity for the Roman Empire seem far removed. I would challenge the assumption. Caleb has spoken about the desacralization effect of Christianity. Was this alone not revolutionary in the context of a Roman Empire theologically unified by the cult of the Emperor? Jesus is Lord had political implications in such a setting. The persecution of fanatics like Nero can be written off by the mystery of evil but what of the persecution by great men like Marcus Aurelius or Diocletian? Russell Kirk wrote a wonderful ghost story aptly entitled “The Last God’s Dream.” Kirk’s story enlightened my thinking about a tragic figure of the last emperor to be worshipped as a god. A persecutor of the church who sought to reign by what light he had from an age that had passed away. A new age had dawned and the light of the old ways was fast disappearing. Christ is Lord. The age of Diocletian was giving way to the age of Constantine. I do not believe that paganism was dying anything but a natural death.
What would you say to Reformed Christians in Japan as Shintoism seeks to resacralize their pagan political order? Only worship the shrine of the emperor six days of the week? Of couse not. Because the emperor is made in God’s image and is not a god himself. These are the historic stakes.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for your kind comments about the review. I forgot to say that before.
If I’m a Baptist (ouch!)/deconstructionist, then theonomists/theocrats are political Judaizers as they forget the fundamental fact of redemptive history that the only national covenant ever made was between Yahweh and National israel and that covenant expired with the death of Christ.
I’m not ashamed to appeal to the NT for norms as to how to relate to civil society as it’s a little complicated to appeal to Kings or Chronicles. Which Philistines or pagans do we slay first? Do we go to war against Mexico or Canada?
I think by appealing to the NT as I do, I’m doing exactly what you ask, accounting for the organic development of redemptive history. E.g., Beza’s use of the OT is very uneven. If one asked him, “Are we national Israel?” He says “Non.” If, however, we observe how he appeals to the OT, he does so with the assumption that, for the purposes of taking back France for Christ, we can appeal selectively to Kings and Chronicles as suits us. In other words, he was a pragmatic theocrat.
By recognizing consistently that the theocracy is finished in Christ, I’m being more consistent with Beza’s own stated hermeneutic. In his context, just as with the divines, he couldn’t see anything but chaos (the Anabaptists) or theocracy. There was no real alternative. We don’t have that problem. The founders of the American experiment solved that problem for us.
As to stubbing my toe, I contend that we Christians can, as Christians speak to politic and cultural issues, but it might be helpful to distinguish the two. If we consider that cultural issues (arts, communication generally) are more or less apolitical, we can make arguments as Christians in those areas. Generally the closer an issue comes to ultimate matters the more we may appeal to special revelation. The farther, however, an issue is from ultimate questions, the the more remote special revelation ought to be.
Thus, in the culture wars, we have a right and even a duty to speak up to the fact that humans are made in the image of God and therefore deserve protection from a variety of threats.
In politics, however, when were talking about the levers of power, we ought to appeal only to natural revelation (which is true, universal, and binding law). This should be sufficient ground for us to make whatever arguments Christians need to make in the civil sphere.
Why do critics of natural law politics always assume that unless Christians win every argument we aren’t participating?
My argument is that we should participate but that we should restrain the sources of argumentation in our participation. In politics, we should be willing to lose. That’s part of actually participating in politics: making rational arguments from universally accessible truths for the common good of fellow image bearers.
As to interpreting providence, as Darryl has argued for years, that’s pretty dicey business. I don’t think that it works very well. Did God raise up Luther? Of course. He also raised up Loyola! Who is right? Well, from providence it’s pretty hard to tell.
Natural law is not confined to the 2nd table absolutely but only for the purposes of the penultimate and politics. I agree with Calvin, Bucer, and all the magisterial Protestants that the decalogue is natural law.
See this:
http://www.wscal.edu/clark/1998rsclexnat.pdf
see also the work of David VanDrunen and Stephen Grabill (who doesn’t agree entirely with my view of Calvin’s relations to Thomas).
When I’m witnessing to/preaching to pagans, I appeal to both tables, but when I’m making policy arguments, the first table is cheating, as it were.
We should defend image bearers and their natural rights (endowed by their Creator) with vigor, but to do so, we don’t have to appeal to the kings of Judah and Israel. Mitt Romney isn’t David – Solomon perhaps in certain respects, but not David.
We are not Israel. I have already stated as much in my article The True and Only Theocracy. Yet, if we hold to a natural law approach, can we really write off all that God did for Israel? Was the law given to Israel real some kind of positivist imposition never to shed its light again? Of course not. We agree the moral equity is the thing. So why can we not point to Israel’s experience in order to gain insight into the general principles of natural law? So why are appeals to the first table without value? Why are Sabbath laws prohibited? Why is it wrong to trie someone for perjury? (In fact, the 3rd Commandment is at the heart of any reasonable system of jury trials right?)
Hi Bill,
No I don’t think we need to “write off all that God did for Israel.” It’s not an either/or choice (either national covenant or nothing). That’s why we confess “the general equity thereof.” We can learn from Israel, but we can also learn from the Greeks and the Romans. Calvin certainly did.
We don’t need Israelite case law, however, to teach us about natural justice or jury trials and the like. Those sorts of things can and have been deduced from natural law.
We need special revelation for the Trinity, for Christology, for soteriology, and a Christian eschatology.
I don’t know that sabbath laws are absolutely forbidden. I think a defense of the sabbath can be made from creation. We don’t need Moses, as it were, for the sabbath.
Now, however, we’re not talking about distinctively Christian approaches to politics or policy are we? Now we’re just quibbling over the details of the interpretation and application of natural law. That’s a good discussion to have and one that we can have among ourselves or with any image-bearer.
Scott writes, “we don’t need Israelite case law, however, to teach us about natural justice or jury trials and the like. Those sorts of things can and have been deduced from natural law.”
How does one know what is part of the natural law? Does it not come through revelation (general as well as special)? Now that raises a further question. How do we know how to apply natural law. Beyond scripture, how do we deduce anything from natural law. Earlier you discounted history as a souce of knowing. I disagree. Your counter-example confuses kingdoms. You point to Luther and Loyola. But this discounts the what Russell Kirk called the Christian interpretation of history (he is following Voegelin). God reveals himself to men through history. Burke understood this and is thus a light to guide Christian’s interacting with the secular kingdom. The individual is foolish but the species is wise. Cultures accumulate wisdom over time.
Now, I think, over we could be making progress in this discussion. Yet, that progress demands that we recognize that our natural law theory is Christian. In the west it has developed in the context of Christianity. It has been secularized but that has only led to problems of enlightenment egalitarianism and “rights talk”.
If we demand that natural law theory be Christian, what do with do with the different accounts of Christianity rendered by Protestants and Roman Catholics? I become uncomfortable with a “Christian” interpretation of the West and its development that ignores the sizeable differences between Geneva and Rome on the gospel. If the gospel is central to Christianity — how could it not be — then where do we come up with this “Christian” account of the West or natural law?
Yikers… more kingdom confusion. You guys talk two kingdoms but do not apply it very consistently. Did the Reformers reject medieval natural law theory? I think there is great continuity between pre-reformation ethics and reformed ethics. To insist on radical discontinuity in all areas is to make the Reformers revolutionaries. This is a Romanist rhetorical move to embarrass conservative Protestants and I do not accept it.
Justification and the gospel belong to the church and grace. Ethics belong to the “other kingdom” and Rome and Geneva had very little that seperated them. The same is actually true in the Holy Kingdom in areas like Theology proper. We share (for the most part) the same doctrine of God, the nature of the Trinity, and the person of Christ.
Reformed political theorist Samuel Rutherford had no problem “borrowing” ideas from the Spanish Jesuits and Abraham Kuyper no problem learning from 19th Century papal decrees on social justice (ok I dislike the social justice tag also but when stripped from the abused liberal version it has a meaning, no?)
Bill,
This sort of skepticism about natural law sounds a little Barthian! Calvin, Luther, and Bucer didn’t have this problem. They all accepted the proposition that all humans know the natural law, that it is “hardwired” (to use a modern metaphor) into every human. I think they were correct. I’ve never met a human being who didn’t know the essence of the law: Love God and love neighbor. Further, they all know that theft if wrong, that adultery is wrong and they invent justifications for their behaviors or they invent alternate law codes to supplant the law written on their consciences. A
I’ve argued that Calvin, Luther, and the rest did reject Thomas’s account of natural law. I realize this is sort of “in-between” position (between Barth’s skepticism about natural law and the Thomist expansive view of NL).
Thomas didn’t restrict natural law, but, because of his intellectualism (which I didn’t understand well when I wrote the article) he identifies the lex naturalis with ratio which becomes the identified with universals (which we abstract from sense experience) which is identified with the divine intellect.
Despite the repeated claims to the contrary, Calvin quite clearly identified the NL with the decalogue.
What needs to be done is to re-contextualize the 16th century Protestant doctrine of NL in a post-Christendom setting. That’s what I’m trying to do.
I don’t see total discontinuity between the Reformation and the medieval church. The continuities are many (and it takes me about 6 weeks of class to sort it out!) and deep, but the discontinuities are also very significant.
Sure the Protestants borrowed from the medievals, but they re-contextualized the things they borrowed. That re-contextualization made all the difference in the world.
One of the great differences that often gets overlooked (probably because most Reformation historians don’t have this category in their own theology/philsophy) is the Creator/creature distinction. Thomas (liek Edwards!) obliterates this because of his Platonism. The Protestants re-asserted this distinction and de-Platonized, if you will, Christian theology.
Salvation is no longer divinization, as it was for most of the medieval church. As a consequence, knowledge is no longer on a continuum with God’s.
As a consequence, the natural law can and should no longer be identified with the divine intellect or some universally accessible ratio/reason to which God and man have recourse, but with the decalogue, which is an analogical reflection of the divine nature, the substance of which was revealed at creation (WCF 7), re-stated in the theocracy, and which persists after the fulfillment of the theocracy. It forms a stable, universally accessible moral and cultural standard to which both Christians and non-Christians may appeal in common. We understand that law differently or we explain the origin of the law differently (and we should) but we’re talking about the same law.
“The Protestants re-asserted this distinction and de-Platonized, if you will, Christian theology.”
A more concise statement of the problem with Protestantism we will not find!
I would argue that natural law is not the “natural” province of the Church, and many of these difficulties have arisen from the church’s “adoption” of the language of symbols of natural law.
I wrote on this in some detail with regard to current-day disputes over the death penalty here:
http://www.newpantagruel.com/issues/2.3/natural_law_the_death_penalty.php?page=all
Again, the ideas are heavily influenced by Milton, Lewis, Voegelin, Eliot, Augustine, Plato, etc., so I take no credit. However, I think a careful review of the neo-Catholic natural law theorists (who sound a lot like, and have a heavy influence on, conservative protestant/evangelical appeals to natural law and the 10C.) at First Things is instructive.
Scott,
I call you a baptist once and now I am Barthian! Never, maybe a Kirkian but that is a very different matter.
Seriously though, who are you answering? I have affirmed the existence of natural law every step of the way. I have affirmed that it is the summorized in the commandments.
What I am unsure about is how to apply the natural law to a political context. I know it should be but I am uncovinced that abstractions should govern our politics. Thomas approach seems to rationalist. With Dabney I am suspicious of the “higher law” abstractions of ideologues. There is a natural law, we all know it, but it is not equal known by all men. Again, the individual is foolish (the species often wise). Tradition, prescription, history, prejudice, ancient usage, these were at the heart of the Christian social philosphies of Burke, Kirk, and Weaver. Maybe it would be helpful to say that my application of the moral law to nations would have an inductive approach rather than a deductive one.
I am not challenging the natural law just wondering how you think we know it (you seem to suggest that we are dealing with some kind of innate ideas or self-evident truths but I doubt you intend this) and agree on its application.
Caleb,
In as sense I agree with you about the natural law and its relationship to the Church. The Church speaks of law through the revelation of God in the Holy Scriptures. Yet, Christians must engage in life within the context of the secular kingdom as well. Natural law should be informed by the Bible and the general revelation (I could cite a multitude of sources) but applied by Christian statesment. My question is how? Clearly not the Church legislating for them. Surely not through rationalist abstractions? How?
Bill, I think the missing piece of the puzzle that may help you make your way out of the conundrum is a recognition that the law of nature and the law of the spirit may, and often do, contradict and require different things.
Life in the in-between is suffused with tragedy which only makes sense from the ultimate perspective of the comic conclusion of the marriage feast. So, to quote myself from the link above: “While the covenantal representative can participate with the city of man in the struggle for order under the law of nature, he does so knowing that the process involves him in compromise and disorder when measured against the covenantal revelation of grace in the Incarnation. By necessity, the covenantal representative can pursue cosmic justice under nature’s laws but never without generating the experience of tragedy by which the natural law is leavened with Christian guilt, responsibility, confession, penance, mercy, and the symbolic drama of participation in the sacramental overcoming of evil with good which represents the final reality of that conquest which is yet to come.”
I realize this is a provocative restatement of the issue, especially for late-moderns and especially protestants who are accustomed to believing and assuming that every human act is either “right” or “wrong.” This is, I believe, the source of our problem. We are unable to say with Augustine that the weilding of political power is both necessary and unjust.
Again, quoting from the link above: “By recognizing and articulating clearly the source, location, and function of both the natural law and the Christian law, and by understanding them as mixed in an age that was passing away but which contained “loved things held in common,†Augustine made a key breakthrough in the development of political theology which in its fundamental form remains valid today–a penitent, tragic political theology bound to pay an ongoing debt to nature yet cemented by a love that is both universal and particular: it transcends the City of God and orders all mankind; it is also concerned with the things of this world–“the things which are passing awayâ€â€“and not with the things to come. However, this Augustinian balance has always been precarious. When the tension between the natural law and the Christian law collapses, the result is a disordering pressure either towards a rolling back of the protective shadow of the Christian law and engagement in the world wholly under the stark glare of nature which rewards only power and results in open tribal and political conflict, or towards a Gnostic denial of the reality of the law of nature and ideological attempts to remake the present age into the age to come.”
Thanks Caleb. I am in fundamental agreement. I posted this back in November:
“It is election eve and what is a paleo-protestant theoconservative to do? The Testimony of the RPC notes that it is the duty of Christians to vote for candidates committed to Christian principles of civil government.
What does this mean? First of all, it does not mean that we can only vote for candidates who are committed to the five points of calvinism and the regulative principle of worship. We are electing politicians (oh that they might be statesmen) not Pastors and Ruling Elders.
Second, it does not mean that we must withhold our votes from any candidate who does not publicly declare his support for a constitutional amendment honoring the name of Jesus Christ. Advocating such an amendment has a mostly symbolic advantage anyway.
Rather, we must vote for candidates who understand the following things. First, that God exists and that His moral will is a standard for personal as well as public behavior. Second, that our inheritance as a branch of Western Christendom is not to be squandered through neglect or ideological fancy. Third, that mankind is fallen and cannot be perfected through a political process. Finally, that Christ’s Church is to be protected and that our Churches must continue to be free from the intervention of the State.
Some might object that I have outlined rather broad categories. Will it not be possible that Christians will end up voting for the lesser or two evils? I boldly answer that this is entirely possible. Our intrepid interrogators might continue to object, “but the lesser or two evils is still evil!†In response it is necessary to remember that we are pilgrims dealing with fallen (but still legitimate) creation institutions. In this age we must expect that justice will always be seen through a mirror dimly. In fact, I suspect few of us who govern our homes do not mix a great deal of foolishness and tyranny with our better moments of grace leavened justice. We who are saints remain sinners. Let us not expect more from those who exercise the sword than we expect from ourselves.”
Bill,
Of course you’re not a Barthian, but I was teasing about the implied skepticism about NL.
The argument I’m hearing is that, “if we don’t know exactly the “correct” application of NL in any given instance, then it provides no real guidance.”
I reply that there may be a variety of applications to a given circumstance. I suspect that, in reaction to our social/political condition, we sometimes want more certainty than can be had in this life. So long as we’re talking at city council meetings or where ever about the application of norms that are built into creation, then that’s a healthy conversation to be having. It might be a difficult conversation, but at least we can get a hearing. For example, in re the Supreme Court’s redefinition of eminent domain so that higher tax revenues are sufficient ground to take private property, I think a compelling NL argument could be made that it’s contrary to the nature of the state and it’s natural relations to citizens to take property on such a basis since it violate the implied contract between the governed and the governors. It’s an abuse of power.
I agree that, in many cases, NL is inductive or at least the applications of it to a given circumstance would be inductive. This seems to be the way Calvin often approached concrete issues.
I do think that every person has an innate knowledge of the God who is and of the substance of the moral law. We can and should capitalize on that knowledge in civil as well as religious discourse.
“What does this mean? First of all, it does not mean that we can only vote for candidates who are committed to the five points of calvinism and the regulative principle of worship.”
Bill, if the Magistrate is supposed: “not only to have regard unto, and watch for the welfare of the civil state; but also that they protect the sacred ministry; and thus may remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship” and “countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere” and “it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed.”
Then shouldn’t they be solid on what the gospel and true worship are?
Scott, I was not offended. Just surprised that you have impied skepticism about NL in my argument. In fact, there is more Thomas than Barth in me. Still, I have reason to be skeptical. Not about NL but am skeptical of how we know it and how we apply it. A healthy skeptism about ideological approaches to the kingdom of men.
My point is not that I am skeptical of natural law but that it cannot be anything but Christian (even when advocated by a pagan like Cicero).
Caleb,
I don’t think I could reject the re-injection of Plato into Christian theology with any more force. In many respects the difference between the Reformation and Rome is the difference between the Reformed appropriation (and modification) of Aristotle’s categories and the medieval/Roman substantial appropriation of Plotinus.
The fundamental human problem is not lack of being or ontological. It is sin or a moral problem.
The two different ways we analyze the human problem has profound implications for politics. For one, it allows Reformed folk to distinguish between grace and law. Politics is a covenant of works/law not a covenant of grace. Theocrats and Social Gospellers (left and right) don’t understand that distinction. I think Machen did.
What do you make of politics advocated by the Radical Orthodoxy folk?
Scott wrote: “The argument I’m hearing is that, ‘if we don’t know exactly the “correct†application of NL in any given instance, then it provides no real guidance.’”
I will be as clear as I can be, though I am not sure if the above is addressed specifically to me. Regardless, this is not my argument at all (which Bill has claimed–perhaps to his ultimate regret!–to agree with).
Rather, the truth is that the law of nature can be known and will often require acts contrary to the law of the spirit. The law of nature says, in the gritty voice of Sean Connory: “If he pulls a knife, you pull a gun. If he sends one of your guys to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.” It is largely about survival of one’s kin and tribe in a world of shortage and during a life that is nasty, brutish, and short. We know what the law of the spirit says about that. The kinds of compromises we make between the two in life in the in-between is the seed-bed of tragedy which is the fount of penitence which is the coin of the church as she mediates between the various debts that man owes.
And as such, even the Church herself is a deeply tragic figure in history. See, e.g., Coppolla’s The Godfather.
Scott,
While I agree with what you are saying about our problem not being “being” but sin, I am not sure I want to transfer all of that to the secular kingdom. Doing so will invoke the terrible ghost of Richard Weaver upon you.
A covenantal metaphysic does not make us nominalists but modified realists. If politics were a covenant of works the nations would all be in the exact position Israel was… would they not? Rather, the difference between Israel’s experience and ours is that the law is opporating within the context of common grace which, by the way, is a non-saving benefit of Christ’s cross. It is why the nations are under His mediatorial authority.
I am thankful that God does not deal with us according to a strict covenant of works our America would have been vomited from this land long ago. America owes a great deal of gratitude to Christ.
Scott, I would argue that the theocrats and the social gospellers are the only two possible outcomes of the reformational stripping we are talking about. History bears me out. By conflating natural law with scriptural revelation (which includes conflating their respective ends even if you posit them as distinct means) you either end up with the desacralization of the church and its descent into shill for procedural liberalism (see Jim Wallis) or the gnostic sacralization of the state which by necessity requires the church to take up arms (see the variety of theocrat-lites such as Jim Dobson).
I don’t much like what little I have seen of RO.
Caleb,
I don’t see how neo-Platonic approach to politics can avoid the same problems that the RO have.
Scott, in so far as I think of RO, this is what I think of it:
http://japery.newpantagruel.com/2005/10/18/timid_theoretical_radicals.php
I am not sure what you are driving at though. You will have to make your connections more explicit.
Here’s another good link with an appendix of sorts at the end, including pieces by DRC contributors Hart and Leithart:
http://japery.newpantagruel.com/2006/01/17/im_too_principled_for_this_church_too_principled_for_this_church_so_principled_it_hurts.php