Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
In his magisterial ‘The City of God Against the Pagans’, interestingly, written not long after Rome had established Christianity as the official religion of the Empire (AD 380), Augustine rejects the idea that church and state should or could be combined. He lays out a Christian vision of the meaning and purpose of human history, and locates in this history two “cities.” The City of God is the universal Church, composed of God’s elect from every nation, tribe, and culture. This City is eternal, and will be perfectly instituted only with the return of Christ. The other is the City of Man, the earthly City, composed of all forms of government outside the Church—cities, states, nations, empires, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies. This City is mortal, full of sinful pride. It frequently arrays itself against the City of God, and will be judged harshly when Christ returns (Rev. 20:7-8). However, both Cities are subject to natural law.

There is no civil law, nor can there be any, in which something of natural and divine immutable equity has not been mixed. If it departs entirely from the judgment of natural and divine law (jus naturale et divinum), it is not to be called law (lex). It is entirely unworthy of this name, and can obligate no one against natural and divine equity.
Althusius, Politica
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
George Washington, Farewell Address
Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. 
John Adams
[NB: Please see the following previous articles in this series: 1, 2, 3, and 4.]
We’ve now reached the point where the question can be asked, What role does natural law play in government and society?
Two stipulations to begin. First: Christians should be fully involved in civic affairs, vote, influence legislation through petitioning public officials, seek elected office, etc. Of course, Christians have at times acted imprudently, and even destructively, nor do I mean to suggest that involvement in politics does not incur moral risk, as does political quietism. But let us not neglect the immensely positive impact Christians have had upon their state and society, such as William Wilberforce, William Booth, Abraham Kuyper, and Evangelical opposition to slavery prior to the Civil War.
A second stipulation: While there are fine works on natural law and the state written by Catholics, and much of it is compatible with Protestant approaches, the work of Protestants, especially Reformed Protestants, has been comparatively neglected. A comprehensive program for Protestant political engagement can be developed from within its ranks, as it were, with one critical addition, which is the political theology of Augustine. It is wholly unnecessary that Protestants rely on Catholic thought, even when Catholic ideas are compatible with Protestantism. My thoughts below reflect engagement with John Calvin (d. 1564), Peter Martyr Vermigili (d.1562), Heinrich Bullinger (d. 1575), Richard Hooker (d.1600), Johannes Althusius (d.1638), Samuel Rutherford (d.1661), John Winthrop (d.1649), Richard Baxter (d.1691), Samuel Willard (d.1707), James Wilson (d.1798), Friedrich Stahl (d.1861), and Groen van Prinsterer (d.1876).
The Program and the Conundrum
These theologians would all agree with the following:
1) The purpose of law is to serve the common good. The laws of the state are not merely for protecting citizens from harm, or protecting private property, rather they are for encouraging virtue, or moral decency, in the citizenry in order that the society may flourish.
2) The common good is based upon the Ten Commandments. Recall that the Ten Commandments include the First Table, requiring the worship of God. Thus, laws should also encourage spiritual development in the citizenry.
As an example, here is a quote from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which provided a policy for admission of new states to the union. Note the integration of religion, morality, and learning:
Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.[1]
3) The consent of the governed is the basis for state authority. This is the most “modern” part of their consensus.[2] Almost any formulation of the basis of state authority in the modern period draws from the consent of the governed, including our American constitutional order.
The Conundrum: Does Consent of the Governed Undermine Natural Law?
Unfortunately, as most of us know by now, the third point does not comport well with the first two. One has only to consider that laws that codify and extend abortion, LGBTQ ideology, and socialist redistribution, violations of the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th commandments, respectively, and thus inconceivable on the basis of natural law, are the products of democratic voting procedures that have elected legislators, governors, and in some cases, judges, who affirm such rights and policies.[3] In fact, the most electorally powerful plank in the Democratic Party’s current political campaigns is to protect and extend abortion rights, arguably up to and including the birth of the child. This would be political suicide if there were not millions of Americans, arguably a majority, who want elective abortion to be fully legal and accessible to all women. Our country is essentially divided between “Red States,” which generally support natural law, including recognition of the First Table as well as a natural law understanding of human sexuality, marriage, and family, and “Blue States” that reject it, including the rejection of the First Table, and the celebration and promotion of non-Christian religions and recognition of and support for alternative sexual identities. The affirmation vs. rejection of natural law is the most fundamental division in Western politics, because this division is both moral and spiritual, the most fundamental human commitments.
The American people have it in their power to uphold the original, natural law-friendly US Constitution through voting for people willing to do so to restore prayer in the public schools, outlaw abortion, and end same-sex marriage, but there are seemingly no longer enough voters to achieve this. And increasingly, the Christian faith is coming under attack, such that citizens who are known to hold to traditional natural law are no longer able to win elections in many parts of the country.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
God requires that the state, a collective entity, punish evildoers (Rom. 13:4). This “sword” can be carried by the state in dealing with its own citizens, or with the army of a foreign power. Of course, to go beyond those directly responsible for the evil being judged and to punish the innocent along with them requires the explicit instructions of God, and this has occurred in only one instance: the herem against the peoples of Canaan, people groups so evil that the land itself “vomited” them out (Lev. 18:26-28). Without explicit divine instructions, however, innocent civilians may not be singled out by an army or the state, which is precisely the evil perpetrated by Hamas against Jews on Oct. 7.

On Nov. 27, Paul Copan responded to a reader’s inquiry concerned about the language of divine judgment in Ezekiel 9, specifically, Ezek. 9:5-6. 6 men, likely angels, are appointed by God to exercise divine judgment against the inhabitants of Jerusalem. One man is assigned the task of marking those who are repentant so that they may be spared, but the others are to kill the rest of the people, including women, young adults, and children:
And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark.”
While there may be various factors that lessen the severity of the divine injunction, such as that not everyone in the city is destroyed, there is no getting around the fact that in this and in other instances of divine judgment, some who appear innocent of the actions bringing judgment are not spared, including children, even infants, as well as adults not in positions of authority. The moral question is intensified by the fact that in several passages, it is not angels who execute divine judgment, rather God commands the nation of Israel itself to carry out his judgment, that is, to carry out herem (Deut. 7:1-2; 20:16-18; Josh. 6:21; 1 Sam. 15:1-3).[1]
Paul has written extensively on this topic, most recently in Is God a Vindictive Bully?[2] In his response to the inquirer, Paul claims that such passages do not mean what they appear to mean, rather this is Ancient Near Eastern hyperbole, or “trash talk,” mixed with merism, an inclusive rhetorical expression, as when we say we looked “high and low.” While I appreciate the enormous effort Paul has made to exonerate God of acting unjustly, and though I am neither a theologian nor a Bible scholar, I remain unconvinced that he is successful in respect to herem.[3] While it’s always possible that the Bible exaggerates or employs widely-accepted hyperbole, several instances in which herem against the innocent is commanded specifically and in detail make it implausible that mere hyperbole is meant.
Which Cities to Destroy: Deuteronomy 20:10-18
Here God instructs the Israelites regarding how to attack a city. They first must offer terms of peace, and only besiege it if the residents refuse. By contrast, if the city is a Canaanite city, they must “save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction” (vv. 16-17). The interpretation that this is mere hyperbole doesn’t fit with the fact that two categories are specified, and different instructions assigned to each category. Why would mere hyperbole be employed in the giving of instructions if the eventual treatment is the same? I suggest the simpler explanation is that we take the instructions at face value. This interpretation is reinforced in the passages below.
Achan and his Family: Joshua 7
God had commanded Joshua to place the entire city of Jericho under herem (6:17-18) in keeping with the deuteronomic herem policy for all the Canaanite peoples (see above). However, Achan violates the policy by keeping some of the herem bounty for himself, and so Israel is defeated by the people of Ai. When Joshua cries out to God, he is divinely guided to Achan. The latter, his entire family, and all their earthly goods are placed under herem, viz., Achan and his family, including his sons and daughters, are stoned, and all Achan’s goods are buried under rock (vv. 24-26). Joshua’s actions are fully in keeping with the herem policies in Deut. 20; there is simply no reason to think this is hyperbole or merism. But if it is not in this instance, why should we think the original policy is?
The Destruction of the Amalekites: 1 Samuel 15
Saul is instructed to destroy the Amalekites. Speaking for God, Samuel tells Saul,
“Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction [herem] all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (v. 3).
Yet Saul fails to complete the task, sparing the sheep and cattle as well as the king, Agag, and for this reason, is rejected by God. God tells Samuel, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments” (v. 11). When Samuel goes to deliver the news to Saul, he says, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” (v. 14) Saul responds by saying that although he had devoted the Amalekites to destruction, he had spared the livestock as well as the king (v. 20). Is Saul using hyperbolic language with Samuel? This hardly seems likely. After announcing to Saul that he has lost the throne, Samuel calls Agag, who comes hoping “the bitterness of death is past” (v. 32). Why would Agag anticipate his death if no one other than Amalekite warriors had died in battle? Samuel then kills Agag himself (v. 33). The straightforward reading is that this passage is consistent with Deuteronomy 20 and Joshua 7: Saul had violated herem when he spared Agag after killing all the Amalekites.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
According to Scripture, God designs us in such a way that moral knowledge is natural. In Romans 2:14-16, Paul says the moral law is “written on our hearts,” that is, through the conscience, described by Calvin as “a certain knowledge of the law by nature,”[2] so that all are without excuse.

Natural law is that apprehension of the conscience which distinguishes sufficiently between just and unjust, and which deprives men of the excuse of ignorance, while it proves them guilty by their own testimony.—John Calvin, Institutes, Bk. II, Chap. 2, xxii.
In Part 2 of this series, we looked at the content of natural law, which is the Ten Commandments (aka the Decalogue) and the basic design of human nature. One might think that we learn the Ten Commandments by reading the Bible. But if the Bible were the only source of moral knowledge, only a very small percentage of the human race would know right from wrong. And as we will see, the Bible itself doesn’t claim that people know right from wrong only by reading it. But how do we explain how we know the Decalogue? In Part 3, we turn to how we know right from wrong.
To add to the difficulty, doing the right thing often occurs in a bewildering context in which justice doesn’t seem to prevail (Jer. 12:1; Hab. 1:13). Many suffer and die for doing the right things. So we can’t base moral knowledge upon who lives a long and contented life, or a short, difficult one.
Not only do we often fail to see justice prevail, we may find ourselves in circumstances in which being moral is dangerous. Austrian author Stefan Zweig describes a harrowing situation in post-WWI Salzburg during a period of rampant inflation, where in order to survive, one had to be immoral.
A man who respected the food rationing system starved; only one who disregarded it brazenly could eat his fill. A man schooled in bribery got ahead; he who speculated, profited. If a man sold appropriately to the buying price, he was robbed, and if he calculated carefully, he was cheated. Standards and values disappeared during this melting and evaporation of money; there was but one virtue: to be clever, shrewd, unscrupulous, and to mount the racing horse rather than be trampled by it.[1]
The situation Zweig describes challenges those who believe moral knowledge derives from our environment. Saying we obtain moral knowledge from the society or culture we live in has disturbing implications—not just in periods of civilizational collapse as in post-war Austria, but also in contexts in which being immoral is ingrained in the culture we inhabit, such as a street gang, the Mafia, or a corrupt society (Gen. 19).  Moral knowledge must have a more stable basis than what we experience most of the time.
Moral Knowledge
So we can’t simply assume people know, we must at least explain how they know, and especially, why they so often violate what they know, which complicates the question even more.
Yet it is here that natural law by itself is inadequate. We see this most clearly in Aristotle’s wrestling with moral responsibility in the Nichomachean Ethics. He does in fact claim that every human being is responsible for any wrong he commits, unless his action is forced by something outside himself (a blast of wind), or he’s ignorant of the circumstances (1110b25). Yet his explanation of how it is that people can be held responsible is through an indirect argument: If we say that vice isn’t our fault, then neither is virtue, yet this seems preposterous. He concludes:
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Monday, March 20, 2023
Our culture slipped away some time ago from the dictates of natural law, even though they’re fairly obvious, and have replaced them with radical individual autonomy and so-called “authenticity,” which often means simply freedom from any kind of moral, social, or natural restraint. Once we divorced Scripture’s imprimatur from natural law, it became first debatable, then questionable, then irrelevant, and now more recently and perhaps predictably, offensive.

Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as everyone to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other. ~Aristotle, Rhetoric, Bk. I, 13
In part 1, we said that a theory of a given human activity can be distinguished at three levels: Level 1 is practical, Level 2 is in relation to society, culture, and history, and Level 3 is in relation to ultimate reality, which is the realm so to speak of philosophy and religion. We also looked at what is needed for an ethical theory. An ethical theory should provide:
(1) Level 1 (practical) principles as to what we should do, including precepts, rules, duties and obligations, but very importantly, what we are forbidden to do.
(2) How we become capable of performing our duties, and also capable of avoiding bad, wrong, or evil actions.
(3) What the purpose or goal of moral actions is in terms of human flourishing and our own individual flourishing, but also in relation to God’s nature and purposes.
(4) On what basis we know right from wrong, and good from evil. This is both in relation to Level 3 questions of what the nature of morality is, but also how we know in a given situation what we should do, which occurs at Level 1.
One reason we start with the theoretical nature of ethics is the perennial danger that Level 1 and 2 considerations, the levels that look at things from a practical standpoint and the standpoint of history, society, and culture, will dominate our attitude toward and beliefs about ethics. There is of course nothing wrong with asking how history and culture affect our views of morality, but asking these questions while ignoring Level 3 will tend to undermine our confidence that ethics has to do with something that is real and true. Let’s look at an influential current example.
Probably most of you have heard the phrase “social construct.” No doubt, you’ve heard the claim that gender (whether a person is male or female), our attitudes about the family, male and female roles, or class is a “social construct.” So what is a social construct? Here’s a concise definition:
A social construct is a concept that exists not in objective reality, but as a result of human interaction. It exists because humans agree that it exists.
A good example of a social construct is etiquette. It’s considered extremely rude in Western culture to burp out loud during a meal. But in certain cultures, it’s considered a compliment because it indicates that the food is satisfying. Thus, whether burping is good or bad manners doesn’t seem to reflect objective reality, but one’s culture, that is, whether the people of the culture “agree” that it’s rude. We can say similar things about other rules of etiquette, such as how tableware is placed, or the style of clothing that a person should wear on various occasions, say, weddings vs. funerals. These seem to have been established by social agreement rather than the ultimate nature of reality.
Frequently added to the view that an ethical norm is a social construct is that it’s socially constructed to give some people power over others, such as, for example, that it’s morally appropriate to give nobles rights that serfs don’t have. But notice it’s very tempting to slip from the belief that some behavioral rules are social constructs to the idea that all behavioral rules are social constructs, although this doesn’t follow logically at all.
Against social constructivism, some philosophers seek to defend objectivity in ethics, that there really are enduring ethical norms not based merely on human agreement, and that they are knowable. A term for this view is ethical realism. To counter social constructivism, they use various arguments designed to show that constructivist views, if taken at face value, issue in absurdity or have very harmful consequences. For instance, if someone claims that a given moral belief is just a social construct designed to give some people power, why can’t we say that his view of ethics is just a social construct designed to give him power? If the person responds that he is showing that the exercise of power for its own sake is wrong, we can respond by asking why this view isn’t a social construct, too? A steady diet of social constructivism will undermine all moral beliefs, not just the ones that the constructivist wants us to abandon, but even his view that the exercise of power for its own sake is wrong.
Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with pointing out logical inconsistencies. But notice: Just pointing out that someone’s wrong isn’t yet a theory of ethics. Much more needs to be said. This is where natural law comes in, especially, because it provides an account of what moral truth is, and how we know it.
Read More

Related Posts:

Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Monday, March 13, 2023
The ethical teachings of the Christian faith are the basis for morality in the West. Of this there can be little doubt. In which other civilization was there a war to end slavery, rather than the far more typical wars to enslave another people? Where else have women been emancipated in any way close to the status of women in the West? Where else is racism seen as a great evil, and not common sense? I would submit that these achievements would have been impossible without the ethical influence of the Christian religion.

“Well, the rules of the road have been lodged, it’s only people’s games you got to dodge.” —Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma”
The ethical teachings of the Christian faith are the basis for morality in the West. Of this there can be little doubt. In which other civilization was there a war to end slavery, rather than the far more typical wars to enslave another people? Where else have women been emancipated in any way close to the status of women in the West? Where else is racism seen as a great evil, and not common sense? I would submit that these achievements would have been impossible without the ethical influence of the Christian religion.
So when Christians are asked, “Do you have a moral theory? If so, what is it?” they are likely to be confused. After all, we have the Bible, God’s Word, we have an incredibly rich tradition of ethical reflection going back centuries, as well as many contemporary theologians who regularly opine on ethical topics. We can also draw from thinkers outside the Christian tradition whose moral convictions seem to align closely with Christian morality, such as the commentator Ben Shapiro or the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Why do we need to understand ethics “theoretically” if these resources enable us to answer basic ethical questions?
Perhaps we should start with the question, What is a theory, and secondly, what is a moral theory? A theory is simply an account of the nature of a thing or practice, although this question can be asked at different levels. Richard Weaver describes three levels of abstraction. The first level is practical: How can I find out what time it is? Or perhaps, How do I fix this broken clock? The second level is more of the nature of time in relation to society and culture: Does our understanding of time change over centuries, or across cultures? The third level—the highest (or perhaps deepest) level of abstraction is the level of philosophical and religious reflection: What exactly is time? Is it real? Or is it just a subjective way of understanding our experience? And how does time relate to the nature of God—Is he beyond it, or somehow within it?
So a theory of morality asks the practical question: What should I (or we) do or not do? An easy and quick, and mostly accurate definition of morality is that it has to do with what we are obligated to do or not do, not merely what we want or don’t want to do. The second level explains whether or how morality seems to change over time and across cultures, and perhaps how views of morality play out in, say, public policy or in electoral politics. Historians and social scientists are often extremely good at describing the second level. And the third level asks what morality is, and if you are a Christian, how morality relates to the nature of God.
So a moral theory provides an account at all three levels. The practical, what we should and shouldn’t do, the Do’s and Don’ts—which is what most people think of when they think of ethics. The second level is to understand why it is that morality seems to change. For example, I began above with the observation that if it weren’t for the Christian religion, slavery would likely be seen as a natural feature of social life, as Plato and Aristotle did. This is very much a second level kind of observation: The morality of the West was deeply impacted by the influence of the teachings of Christ and the Apostles. The third level is, of course, how morality relates to the nature and being of God, and to human nature, what we might think of as the metaphysics of morality.
One thing should become readily apparent, however: The three levels can’t ultimately be separated. They interact with and affect one another constantly. For example, a freshman takes a class in cultural anthropology. Strictly speaking, the student should only be learning about level 2: How morality is viewed across time and culture. However, his professor can’t help making comments such as, “So as we can see, morality really isn’t fixed or ‘absolute.’” Well, this is a level 3 observation. The professor is making a false inference from the fact of diversity at level 2 to the very nature of morality itself, one he presumably wouldn’t make if he were talking about, say, the theory of evolution, which many peoples and cultures reject. But because the student wasn’t prepared for level 2 diversity, he thinks that the absolutes he was raised with really aren’t absolutes at all. His level 3 view of morality is affected by a level 2 observation.
Read More
Related Posts: