Dialogues Concerning Natural Equivocations, Part 1

Dialogue I  

Upon taking the new pastoral role, Noland would have the chance to meet the two elders who would serve with him. The names of the two were VanTithesis and VanDualyfe.

VanTithesis. What was your area of study? 

N. It was over the question of what place nature and reason have at the foundations of our whole theological thinking.

VT. Is it not the Scriptures that make up the whole of our foundation?

N. Certainly—if what we mean is that only final authority on all relgious controversies. 

VT. What about in matters of science or history? Surely you would not exclude those from the subject matter of the Bible, right?

N. Right. That would be to take the position of “limited inerrancy,” where the Bible may be God’s word only in a compartmentalized sense, so that it speaks truly to “spiritual” or “redemptive” matters, but we are free to regard the rest as outmoded. I reject that.  

VanDualyfe. That is good to hear. But when you say “nature and reason” at the foundations, I assume you are drawing attention to truths such as natural theology and natural law, correct?

VT. Ha! Truths, indeed! 

VD. Ah, yes, you should know that our brother here and myself do not see eye to eye on these things.

VT. Certainly not. He is willing to build on the foundations of the pagan, and I insist we take our stand in Scripture, no matter what the subject. 

N. Well, not meaning to take a side so quickly, but why should the truths which God has communicated through nature (even using language outside of Scripture) be the property of the pagan?

VT. They are not. However, when we consult them for our reasons to believe this or that, we are most certainly resting faith on the foundation of an autonomous reason: another authority back behind, or beyond, the authority of Scripture. And even our brother here will defend this when he speaks of his ‘natural law’ and ‘common grace,’ since the unbeliever and believer have an ethical and political life with shared goals and therefore shared basic assumptions. 

VD. True, we do. He speaks of the covenant that God made with Noah—and therefore with all his posterity—which is not a covenant of salvation into the next world, but one of preservation of the world in this age. The historical initiation of that as recorded in Genesis may be for all who believe, but even unbelievers are still bound to it by that natural law.

N. So, just so I don’t misunderstand, would you agree that where Paul mentions that law written on the heart, in Romans 2, that this implies the same substance of the moral law given to Israel is also obligated of the Gentile?

VD. Yes, of course, at the principle level.

N. Principle level? Ok, we can come back to that. But as your brother here sees it, these common assumptions and ends that believer and unbeliever have in this covenant—is your focus that God has given a set of obligations in common, that is, a common moral stage in which all are bound by God’s law as it is in itself?

VT. No—he can’t believe that because of what he will say about the Mosaic law in its civil dimension. The two cannot cross paths in the city of man. All of that, he will tell you, was for the Old Testament theocracy, and he will charge anyone who says otherwise as a Theonomist.

VD. Well, aren’t you? 

N. Let’s pause for a moment, if you don’t mind. Not to be too presumptuous or hasty, but it seems to me that there may be a different definition of “nature” or even “common” in both of your positions than the one that I hold to.

VD. Alright, tell us what you mean, or perhaps also, what you think each of us means.

N. Sure. For starters, Mr. VanTithesis, it seems that by the concept we signify in the adjective “natural,” you take it for granted that when we come to believe things about God on the basis of truths “in nature,” that we are asking the “natural man” for their judgment on the subject. In other words, it seems that you are taking the concept of “nature” to mean something like “the sinful nature,” and I think this is similar to when I hear people speak of “fallen reason.” 

VT. And you don’t think that reason is fallen? 

N. No, it’s not that. Certainly the fall has had an effect on the mind that comes to bear in exactly the way Paul expressed in Romans 1. But in that same place, he still says that the knowledge of certain things about God is known by all, and so clearly that they are without excuse. 

VT. Yes, they are without excuse. That is the function of this knowledge. It convicts. It does not save.

N. Of course. It doesn’t save at all. But I think, there again, I detect that you are reducing the whole question to how the “sinful nature” performs in its handling of this knowledge. I think there, we would agree that the unregenerate mind handles it very poorly. 

VT. Then why would you want to build your theology upon it? Why would you want the unbeliever to believe the gospel on the basis of it?

N. I don’t think that I would—at least, in the way that you may have in mind. But we can come back to this. I mentioned that both of you are using the concept of “nature” in ways that I would not, or perhaps, I would expand upon. 

VD. Yes, I would very much like to hear how my view is guilty of this.

N. No, no—I don’t mean to say that it is the same disagreement about nature, and in fact, I might even say that it disagrees from the opposite side. For example, I couldn’t help but notice that when you were describing this common sphere that the Noahic covenant created, there was positive assessment of nature and what is common. Recall that our brother here objected that this implies not only a “common ground,” so to speak, where the same obligations exist for the believer exist for the unbeliever alike, but that all the basic assumptions and even ends are held in common—at least those assumptions and ends that would make this old world “go round,” so to speak. Is that accurate?

VD. Yes, but I want to stress that this is not the saving covenant. It is not the covenant of grace. And so to speak of this common grace is not at all to suggest any common footing toward particular grace. 

N. Sure, I can see that. But when you speak of a natural law in this setting, you would still divorce that from the civil use of the law as confessed by Christians?

VD. Not at all. There is still a civil use of the law. What I deny is that the Mosaic civil legislation can be taken as a framework for the modern secular state—indeed, for any other state—as Israel was God’s one-time typological people, and so even its civil law had a “holy,” or we might say “priestly people,” dimension.

N. I can certainly see how that follows, but I am actually trying to drill in at another spot. Are we to say that the natural law is not “God’s law through nature,” such as Paul said was the same substance as came through the law of Moses, in Romans 2:14-15? Or are we speaking of a natural law where the basic assumptions and ends of the secular culture are authoritative in the civil sphere? And what exactly does that mean when they are at odds with the Ten Commandments, for example?

In other words, what is the “nature” of this nature? Is it something God made objective over all, or is it finally subjective in natural man? And, on this last part, I am really asking both of you, because it certainly seems as if there is a fixation on the subjective at both extremes.

VD. Oh, so we are at the “extremes,” are we? 

VT. He hasn’t even gotten up into the pulpit yet and already we are on trial! 

N. No offense intended, brothers. I do not consider these heresies. It’s just that—

VD. How gracious of you! What other positions in your private confession have we fallen short of!

Sensing the tension behind the smiles, which smiled even through mockery, Noland would have to take another pathway to making ground. Perhaps he would meet the elders each separately and attempt to isolate error, all without the distraction of a war on two fronts. 

(To be continued)