From Hippo to Escondido - I

We have noted before the renaissance in the appreciation of the place of natural law in Reformed theology, as exemplified by Stephen Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law In Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2006), and in Michael Sudduth’s The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology (Ashgate, 2010), in John Calvin’ s Ideas (Ch. 12) and more recently, in Calvin at the Centre (Ch.10), as well as in a number of articles. It is fair to say that in his new book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, David VanDrunen gives a considerable fillip to the trajectory of this recovery. After its publication the way in which natural law is integrated into Reformed thought from the very start becomes as plain as a pikestaff. The book also well illustrates the tensions inherent in the two kingdoms doctrine, as well as what appear to be lesser tensions in the appeal to natural law. The book cannot safely be ignored by anyone who wishes to make a contribution to this area in future.

There are several reasons for this. The first of these is its panoramic sweep, from Augustine’sCity of God through Abraham Kuyper, a figure of transition, to Van Til and his disciples including Meredith Kline, David VanDrunen’s former colleague at Escondido, in which the fate of these two themes is thoroughly treated. Then there is the way in which the author shows the integration of natural law and the two kingdoms doctrine in Reformed thought. These are not two isolated theological loci, but integral to the classic Reformed view of ethics and culture, Christology, and ecclesiology, the life of faith and the life of the citizen. The twin themes become too pervasive to ignore.

At the most basic level these themes are biblical ways of addressing the church’s difference from the world, and yet its present situatedness within the world. The author orchestrates variations on the central theme of Augustine’s two cities, and then of Gelasius’ doctrine of the two swords. These two thinkers are among the first to articulate versions of what makes the church distinctive, while recognising what Christians have in common with their non-Christian fellows. The reader is taken through later developments in Aquinas, where the idea of natural law receives considerable prominence. But not only in Aquinas, also in Duns Scotus and William Ockham, two thinkers who allegedly began to unpick the ‘medieval synthesis’ but who were nevertheless firm upholders of the moral law as natural (in the sense of concreated). All identified natural law with the moral law, and the moral law with the law of God, its universality to be understood as part of the original created endowment, though now disordered by the Fall.

This preliminary material is covered in the chapter two. The next four chapters are central to the book: on Calvin and other early Reformed figures; on Reformed resistance theory (Goodman, Hotman, Beza, Knox),and on Reformed Scholasticism (Turretin, Althusius, Owen, Rutherford, The Westminster Standards, and hosts of other sources); and on ‘theocratic New England’. At Chapter 6, ’Theocratic New England, Disestablished Virginia and the Spirituality of the Church’, the book takes (for me) a surprising twist. Through his treatment of John Cotton, VanDrunen shows how the earlier, two kingdoms doctrine which (in Calvin et al.) already had evident tensions between the role of the magistrate in upholding true religion and the ministerial function of the church, was corrupted in Puritan New England in a direction which ‘christianised’ the state in an Erastian, if not a theocractic, direction. The liberty of conscience was contracted in its scope, and there was blurring of the distinction between natural law and judicial law.

Contrasted with this is the reassertion in Virginia (at a time when the Anglican church was established in that state) of ‘the spirituality of the Church’ through the submissions of the Hanover Presbyter to the state legislature over disestablishment, leading to the passing of Statue of Religious Freedom, and the influence of the individual presbyterians Samuel Davies and later Stuart Robinson and John Henley Thornwell. By this phrase, ‘the spirituality of the Church’, is meant that the church is to be concerned exclusively with the gospel. But what if the state enacts laws which depart from the standards of Scripture? What if the church supports voluntary associations that have the moral improvement of society as their aim? VanDrunen traces some of the intricacies of such issues through the clash between Thornwell and Charles Hodge over church boards. While tensions remain in the articulation of doctrine of the two kingdoms, he sees this period as providing a further purifying of it. Throughout this time the natural law continues to be upheld, occasionally using the Scottish Common Sense Realism introduced to the United States by John Witherspoon, as a vehicle for its expression. But contrary to the charge routinely made, this was not evidence of an optimistic, ‘Enlightenment’ mood, for account was taken of the effects of sin upon the apprehension and expression of such law, and the need for Scripture to supplement and to refine it.

As an aside, VanDrunen notes the two kingdoms’ integral relation with Christian freedom, and the paradox that while the church can require of her people only what is intrinsic to the gospel, the state can require much more. He also seems to hint that the two kingdoms doctrine and postmillennialism are in a rather abrasive relationship.

So far in the panoramic survey, the two swords doctrine and the upholding of the validity of the natural law have kept a close relationship, twined around each other like the honeysuckle and the bindweed. But in Chapter 7 the author introduces the reader to another, more radical twist in the saga: the transitional figure of Abraham Kuyper, a catalyst for significant changes.

There are various general factors at work in Kuyper’s thought which must be noted. He propelled the idea of an antithesis between the regenerate and the non-regenerate into the sphere of culture. He introduced other new terminology besides ‘antithesis’ – ‘ordinances’, ‘common grace’, the church as both an ‘institution’ and an ‘organism’, the idea of Calvinism as a ‘world-view’. Theologically, he gives some priority to general revelation over special revelation. This language, and a rhetorical style that was at once pugnacious and romantic, make an assessment of his position vis a vis the historic natural law/two kingdoms view of Reformed theology somewhat difficult. Nevertheless VanDrunen sees Kuyper as falling within that tradition. For Kuyper sees the effects of common grace in restraining sin, in rather the way of natural law, and he sees the institutional church as distinct from culture. `Though somewhat misleadingly (in terms of the tradition) he thinks of the contrast in terms of the kingdom (culture and nature) and the church (grace). Christian values may percolate through the windows in the walls of the church to exert a positive influence on the surrounding culture, thus exerting the rights of Christ over all spheres of culture which nonetheless has an independent value. (I’m not sure about this, for if Kuyper is a supralapsarian, as I’ve heard alleged, then nature must be subordinate to, and for, saving grace.) In Christology, VanDrunen sees Kuyper as echoing the tradition’s distinction between the Logos’ s role in the creation and sustaining of the universe and as the Messiah and Savour of his people, and as affirming the spirituality of the institutional church in his support for religious liberty. The author finds support for this view from the fact that followers of the Kuyperian vision such as Jeremy Begbie bemoan the presence in Kuyper of what is left of the two-kingdoms’ conceptuality.

The problem is that despite all of this, the weight of Kuyper’s thought falls on the cultural side of things; the organic church triumphs over the institutional church, and the kingdom receives greater emphasis than the church. Despite his Christology, Kuyper comes to advocate the ‘christianising’ of culture, the establishing of a Calvinistic world-view, as seen in his Stone Lectures, for example. The otherworldliness of the tradition is muted, if not lost from sight. As we shall shortly see, it is this side of things that attracts his followers. the neo-Calvinists. Cultural grace swamps redemptive grace, the church as organism triumphs over the church as institution, and the cultural mandate of Genesis retains its integrity and priority, despite the Fall.

But before the author develops all this, there’s a chapter on Karl Barth. The problem that the author has with Barth is even greater than with Kuyper. Partly this is because Barth inhabits a very different thought-world, where the chief categories are not objective states but acts and events. So the concept of nature, say, is not one that Barth is very happy with. And partly it has to do with his oblique, playful, even skittish style. (I was reminded of the chapter on Barth in Eller's The Christian Anarchist.) VanDrunen notes the Christocentric character of Barth’s theology according to which every theological category must be given a Christological interpretation. He has no room. therefore, for any action of the Logos apart from his being viewed as the incarnate Christ. Hence his rejection of natural theology, and also of natural law.

Sometimes Barth seems to change the terms but leave the realities. No natural law, for we can know nothing about the world except through revelation in Jesus Christ. Is there no truth in areas of life out of contact with that revelation? Oh, says Barth, there are ‘secular parables of truth’. In such a fashion Mozart presented the world as it is, though not theologically, but as a secular parable. But how can this be? When the word of God allows itself to be reflected and reproduced in them. Though there are tests for these, such words are never valid for all times and places. So what might it mean for the character of these true but fleeting words to be guaranteed christologically?

All this is not without some interest, but it is easy to see how the author finds it impossible, almost, to categorise Barth. For even where there may seem to be some overlapping between Barth’s views and the natural law – two kingdoms categories, as in his remarks on conscience, one has the feeling that such identification may be purely nominal. When he says that the state ‘as such’ relies upon the natural law, does he mean what the tradition means? A different theological foundation, a different doctrinal superstructure, presumably.

I think that it is fair to say that the `Barth chapter is an interlude, as far as the book is concerned, except insofar as Barth was a significant factor in the developing of a strong mood in the early twentieth century that was antagonistic to the very idea of natural law. In a way this is the least satisfactory chapter of the book, but then it is the least necessary, written, I suspect, simply in order to parry the question ‘Where’s your chapter on Barth?’ The reason for this is that Barth, though regarded and regarding himself as a Reformed theologian, is not in the affirmative confessional tradition that VanDrunen is exploring, and in which what he regards as the classic Reformed commitment both to natural law and to the two kingdoms finds its normative expression. The remainder of the book addresses characteristic developments within that confessional tradition, and, as this has found expression in smaller and smaller groups over the years, so the book bears witness to a narrowing of focus, not by design, but a narrowing which is a simple consequence of the narrowing of the confessional Reformed constituency in the late twentieth century.

Perfect Being Theology

The idea of ‘Perfect Being Theology’ gets short shrift from modern Reformed Christian theologians, even from some who should know better. The phrase is associated with St. Anselm, and with his ontological argument for God’s existence, which some have regarded as a stroke of genius. Here I am less concerned with that proof than with the idea of God as a perfect being, or as the sum of perfection; ‘God is a being than which no greater can be conceived’ is a premise of that argument but it is worth thinking about it on its own account.

It is more or less agreed that ‘perfect being theology’ is the brainchild of St. Anselm of Canterbury ( ) But where does St. Anselm get that idea from? Kevin Vanhoozer thinks that ‘he might have pulled it down from the metaphysical shelf’, whatever that means. But is the idea not central to the Bible’s account of God? Consider, for example, what the writer to the Hebrews says

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely. I will bless you and multiply you’……For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, [the reference here is certainly to Gen.22.16 ‘ By myself I have sworn…’]so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope ‘set before us’. (Heb. 6.13-4)

This is a significant and interesting argument. (I reckon that it’s one of the most significant statements in the whole of Scripture). It goes something like this

Necessarily, anyone who swears an oath, swears by someone greater than themselves.

Necessarily, had there been a greater than God, then God would have sworn by that greater.

He swore by himself

Therefore, there is none greater than God

Therefore, God is the greatest being

But that may be thought to be a little too quick. Perhaps we ought only to conclude that God is the greatest in respect of veracity, or faithfulness, leaving it an open question as to whether he is the greatest in love , or mercy, or….

So perhaps we ought to conclude the argument

There is none greater than God in respect of veracity, or faithfulness

Therefore, God is the greatest being in respect of faithfulness

It is interesting, however, that regarding the greatness of God, the writer makes his point in an unqualified way, referring to the one besides whom there is no greater, and not simply to some attribute of that being. It seems an appropriate inference from what he is saying to suppose that he is talking about the being of God, and therefore saying, or implying, that he is a being than which none greater can be conceived. Not simply that he has this or that feature which is an instance of something than which no other instance can be considered greater.

Where does the writer of Hebrews, or the writer of Genesis, get this idea from, that God is a being than which a greater cannot be conceived? I suggest that he does not get it from the metaphysical shelf, but from reflecting on the biblical teaching that God is the Creator of all that is. If he is the Creator of all that is, then by definition no one thing other than himself is as great of he is, let alone greater than he. For there is one God, and he is the only creator of all that is. This conclusion is supported by the Second Commandment, which makes a sharp distinction between that which is in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth; that is, is a created something or other, and that which is God. Such created objects are not fit objects of worship, any more than they are fit objects to swear by. The only such object is he who is uncreated, the greatest.

Of course there are other biblical data to support the wonderful verses of Hebrews in their assertion about God’s unsurpassable greatness. David refers to the greatness of God, and the fact that there is no God besides him (2 Sam. 7 22); Nehemiah refers to the great, the mighty God, (Neh. 9.32, also Jer.32.18, Titus 2.13)). Besides, the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods (Ps. 95.3); he is to be feared above all gods (Ps. 96.4. 77.13); he is greater than all gods (Ex.18.11) ; his greatness is unsearchable ( Ps. 145.3). (Perhaps I should apologise for all this proof-texting, but I know of no other way to draw attention to these data of Scripture.)

A strong human intuition that arises from or is strengthened by reading the overall presentation of the being and character of God in Scripture, is the instinct that tells us that none is greater than God, and that God alone is worthy of worship. How could God be worshipful if he could have been greater than in fact he is? If there is a being greater than God then why is he not God instead? It is hard to see, from these data, and from the intuition, what objections there can be to the idea of God as the most perfect being, or as that than which a greater cannot be conceived.

It may be that the animus against perfect being theology is not so much due to the idea of God as the most perfect being, as to St. Anselm’s procedure in his work the Proslogion. It is a pity (to my mind) that Charles Hodge is rather dismissive of this method in the Introductory Chapter to his Systematic Theology. He says that his method is ‘to a greater or less degree’ reduced all the revealed doctrines of Scripture to a philosophical system. But a careful reading of Anselm shows how inaccurate that is. Yet Hodge is somewhat ambivalent. Later on he refers to the Cur Deus Homo? as ‘epoch-making’

If you have never read this short work, with its carefully-constructed, spare, lean, chapters, then I urge you to do so. It consists of a series of short, elegant arguments, by which Anselm develops a doctrine of God from what we earlier concluded, that the idea that God is the sum of perfection is wholly and purely biblical, the one than whom no greater can be conceived.

How does he do this?

Once Anselm has stated a version of his ontological argument, establishing the existence of the God than whom no greater can be conceived, he proceeds by successive applications of the claim that whatever is better to be than not to be must be true of God, than whom no greater can be conceived. So, for example, it is better to be just than not just, blessed than not blessed, perceptive than not perceptive, and the same with omnipotence, mercy and impassibility; as well, God is ‘living, wise, good, happy, eternal, and whatever it is better to be than not to be.And (for those who think of Anselm as neglecting the Trinitarian life of God), he claims that God’s Trinitarian character expresses his supreme goodness. Is this a priori reasoning? In a way, yes, but the premises of the reasoning are biblical themes and biblical doctrines, as with the Trinity. Is it speculative? It is hard to see how it is. Does the exact character of God’s life, his wisdom, his happiness etc. not have to be drawn from Holy Scripture? Yes of course. But not for a minute does Anselm deny this. There are numerous supporting references to Scripture in the work.

Finally, far from being a piece of a priori, logic chopping theology which some love to excoriate, it is worth noting that the Proslogion is a Christian meditation. Think of that. Theology as meditation.

Strange Things Happen in a Court of Law

Lord Justice Laws

Strange things happen in a court of law, and even stranger things in a Court of Appeal.

In a recent article in The Spectator, ('Who will judge the judges?’ (10 July 2010)) Peter Jones has complained of the failure of judges to explain judgments which seem to go against the public interest and of the role of the law to uphold it. Some judges, he says, defend this reluctance by claiming that some legal decisions are too delicate and difficult to be discussed in a public court. He complains of the judges as looking like an oligarchic elite accountable only to themselves. If there is, as Jones argues, a democratic deficit in the courts, there is certainly such a deficit in the Courts of Appeal, or at least so it appears from press reports of a recent case.

I

Gary McFarlane worked for Relate (formerly Marriage Guidance) as a relationship counsellor. While willing to counsel gay couples, on the grounds of conscience he declined to offer sex counselling to such a couple. Relate dismissed him, and this action was upheld by an Employment Tribunal ruling. He sought to appeal against this ruling but this leave to appeal was dismissed by Lord Justice Laws. Perhaps he had no alternative, given the eallier decision by Lord Justic Neuberger in the Court of Appeal in the Labele case. But it is not so much his decision, unfortunate (in my view) as it was, as his extraordianry language in expressing it. In rejecting McFarlane’s application the Judge said

We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion — any belief system — cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic. (The Times, April 30)

and

The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified. It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary. (As reported on the Christian Legal Centre’s website)

II

English Law has an honourable tradition of respecting the dictates of an individual’s conscience in matters of religion (or of no religion), diet, dress, issues of life and death, and the like. So that a nurse with strong views on the immorality of abortion may not be forced to assist in the performance of an abortion. A pacifist may not be required to bear arms and fight for his country. An orthodox Jew may not be forced to eat pork, or a Muslim prevented from attending Friday prayers. A Sikh busdriver is permitted to wear his turban, a Seventh-Day Adventist may not be required to work on a Saturday. People who hold nonconformist views may or may not hold them as part of their religious convictions; but irrespective of that, the law maintains that they are entitled to hold and express them. And in granting them relief in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, it would appear to be an absurdity to suppose that the law was conniving at the attempts of such people to take the nation down the road to autocracy, or worse, to theocracy.

If anything, the law seems to have adopted the very opposite view, that granting such people relief, though it may cause inconveniences of various kinds to their respective employers or associates, and (in the case of conscientious objection to bearing arms) even marginally weaken the military effort against an enemy, such relief is an expression of a liberal political culture, not that of an autocratic tendency. The public expression of a plurality of views, and the support of a culture whose citizens have differently attuned consciences, has generally been regarded as a basic safeguard against that very political authoritarianism – what J.S. Mill called the ‘tyranny of the majority’ - that Lord Justice Laws seems to fear.

Mr McFarlane, a Pentecostal Christian, was not demanding to have his beliefs enforced by his employer, but requesting relief for his own conscience. The case was not that his former employer was not Christian and ought to be, but that he, as an individual Christian, should be able, in accordance with his conscience, to refrain from certain duties.

So the Judge’s reasons (as reported) for dismissing the application to Appeal, besides being couched more in the language of a Hyde Park Corner barracker than a judge in a court of law, appear to be beside the point. They were also extraordinary, particularly the remark that if Mr McFarlane’s appeal was upheld ‘our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy’.

Why is upholding a person’s liberty of conscience in the least theocratic in its tendency? By what steps of reasoning is allowing a Pentecostal Christian liberty of conscience putting our liberal democracy in peril? Is the implication that were he to be granted freedom not to do what was against his conscience he would be, or become, autocratic, seeking to rule his employer, and before long, to rule the country in the name of God? Even cases of passive disobedience on an issue seem scarcely able to connect with a project to theocratise the nation, much less a case such as Mr McFarlane’s. He was not claiming the benefit of some charisma, to have heard the voice of God, or to be directly ruled by him in some way, but (as the result of a variety of influences, no doubt) he has had his conscience sensitised on the matter of ‘gay’ relationships. Or perhaps, his conscience has remained sensitised notwithstanding recent changes in the law. There is, after all, a time-honoured distinction between matters of morality and matters of law.

His action was essentially personal and passive in character, a desire to withdrawl from the undertaking of certain duties. Nor was he even concerned with a matter that is unique to his understanding of Christianity, as his opinions would be shared by many Muslims, for example. Is there any evidence that he was seeking to rule others, or even to impose his beliefs upon others? There is no more evidence for this than there is for the idea that Mr McFarlane was being frivolous in his appeal to his conscience.

III

Or so it seems. Mr McFarlane’s case seems prima facie to be a case based upon the rights of the individual conscience.

Perhaps something that occurred provoked the judge. In this particular case waters were somewhat muddied by a rather ham-fisted intervention by Lord Carey of Clifton, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, who presented a witness statement to the Court. In the course of the letter Lord Carey said

It is, of course, but a short step from the dismissal of a sincere Christian from employment to a religious bar to any employment by Christians. I believe that further judicial decisions are likely to end up at this point and this is why I believe it is necessary to intervene now.

This certainly reads like a piece of special pleading for Christians. But in his apparent eagerness to rebut Lord Carey, Lord Justice Laws ought not to have allowed himself to be distracted from the main point, the point about conscience. He should have borne in mind the advantage of explaining to us why his judgment seemed to be so extreme, but was in fact otherwise.

Lord Justice Laws’ other remarks about it not being a function of the law to protect a position held purely on religious grounds since it would be ‘irrational…..divisive, capricious and arbitrary’ also appear to be beside the point, or at the very least to stand in need of some explanation. It is precisely one of the benefits of freedom of speech and of conscience that it allows debate over whether views held by one’s fellow citizens are or are not irrational, or merely subjective, or rational and an objective fact of the matter. One might ask, Who is the judge to settle such debates in advance? Perhaps he believes that he has good legal reason to do so, but if so he appears to have kept this reason to himself.

Maybe there was more to this case than reached the press: a tricky point in law, some crucial evidence that the reporters missed. Maybe Judge Laws believed that his hands were tied by the recent Labele Case, in which a Christian Registrar lost her Appeal against dismissal for refusing to act as Registrar in the civil marriage of a homosexual couple. It seems that as the law is now interpreted, provided that Christians keep their beliefs to themselves and their co-religionists they may live within the law, but if their beliefs have consequences for how they work, they are now being routinely denied such freedom. Anything not done only in a Christian church, but expressed in action in the public square, is now regarded as being a direct political challenge, and subversive of the state. The absurdity of this reasoning is apparent. Judges are going to have to give some attention to the nature of Christian religious belief. Otherwise they might have to get used to being accused of 'Christophobia'.

In his remarks to the Court, giving grounds for his refusal to grant the right to appeal, the Judge certainly appears to have missed a golden opportunity. Other than reprimanding Lord Carey, he could have taken the time to tell us why an appeal to the sanctity of the individual conscience was, in this case, of no avail, a matter not even to be taken seriously. So far as what he said was publicly reported, there was not a word from the Judge about why this particular case was to be treated not as a case of individual conscience, but as an action with potentially subversive consequences.

I am grateful for help from Sam Webster of the Christian Institute. See his 'Misconceptions about the Nature of Religious Belief' , (Equal Opportunities Review, April 2010)